Dog in the Night
A terrifying bit of news from Japan, that should not by any means be taken out of proportion.
Every time I see a piece like this I think back to some of the things that Michael Moore talks about in Bowling for Columbine - how American violence is a direct result of American television, and that a culture of fear creates a culture of guns which in turn develops into a culture of murder. It's the sort of thing that makes sense.Japanese police arrested a 17-year-old boy on Tuesday on suspicion of murdering his mother after he turned up at a police station carrying a severed human head in a bag.
[...]
The boy had not been attending school recently and was being treated by a psychiatrist, Kyodo said, adding that he had told investigators: “It would be
good if terrorism and war were gone from this world. I didn’t care who I killed.”
Kyodo [News Agency] said Tuesday was the mother’s birthday and she would have turned 47.
But then I go off to safe Japan and see a murder on the news every night. Sometimes, if an especially intrepid reporter arrives early at the scene of an especially gruesome murder, they replay crimson clips of bloodstains and black garbage bags as I eat dinner. And I look at news about shootings in Toronto and gang-violence in Vancouver and I think "it would be good if hatred and violence were gone from this world."
And then I look at the statistics. And it's the same everywhere.
While government statistics show that overall juvenile crime and murder by minors -- those under 20 -- have declined in recent years, a number of sensational crimes has led to calls for harsher punishment of young offenders.
Labels: Japan
posted by Matt @ 10:09 AM
2 Comments:
yes, I agree that the statistics is about the same just about anywhere where people are in high density. In chian, murder cases were not even given out to the public, but since my mother used to work for the government, there was statistics shows that more than 1 case of murder per day happens in Beijing alone. However, they were not juvenile crimes, but poor people, or drug addicts. and they kill for money.
I was reading/browsing a new economic novel from the UBC bookstore, called "Freak Economics" written by an university economic prof I have forgotten the name. It was kind of satirical that he reasons the reason that American crime has gone down not due to better policing, but because of abortion. and he reasons that most aborted child's parents are poor and could not give them a good education and such, in turn, those children are the ones that end up becoming murders, gangsters and thugs on the streets. (still haven't got enough money to actually buy the book yet, but I'm gona get it, pretty interesting read)
Yeah, the book is Freakonomics, but I can't remember the author's name either. I own a copy but I'm pretty sure it's been cycled to the eternity section of my bookshelf in Toronto. Have yet to read it.
Interesting what he says about abortion and crime though.
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