JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION

KevinMcgue's past comments

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  KevinMcgueAug. 14, 2011 - 08:50PM JST

  Just a few clarifications: The Three Stooges film was released several months before Chaplin's The Great Dictator, and is widely considered the first film to satirize Hitler. Moe Howard was the first American actor to play a parody of Hitler.

  Life is beautiful was indeed part of this program: http://cinemavera.com/programs.html

  Posted in: Film series looks at world under Nazi rule

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  KevinMcgueApr. 13, 2011 - 10:17AM JST

  These products aren't actually made by Tully's Coffee. They are made by Ito-en, who license the use of the Tully's name. So you can't really expect it to taste like Tully's coffee in stores.

  Posted in: Tully's Espresso

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  KevinMcgueJun. 16, 2009 - 03:55PM JST

  There are many, many issues I wanted to add to this article, but could not due to limited word count.

  Here are a few additional points:

  Deterrence - Agnes Heller points out that the death penalty can not deter violent crimes because they fall into three general categories: 1) Crimes of profit, in which the criminal carefully plans and really believes they will never get caught, and so is not deterred. 2) Crimes of passion. If someone hates their spouse so much they kill them, they are not thinking of consequences in the heat of the moment. 3) Crimes of compulsion, including people who commit crimes against children, torture, etc. These people have a warped sense of morality, and are so so strongly compelled to do the horrible things they do, no threat can deter them. Furthermore, as others have commented here, some people have commit horrible crimes precisely because the death penalty exists. Mamoru Takeda killed 8 kids in a school and injured many more. He told police he wanted many times to commit suicide but could bring himself to do it, and so wanted the death penalty.

  Inhumanity - in the past some people have commented that if Japan does want to get rid of the death penalty, they should at least get a more human method like lethal injection. Despite the fact that "human killing" is an oxymoron, consider this: A recent medical study in the US examined 49 lethal injections, and found in 43 cases the person was not given sufficient anesthesia, and would have experienced excruciating pain while other drugs paralyzed them and induced cardiac arrest. In all cases, the did not meet the legal standards imposed for putting down animals. In other words, if a humane society euthanized a dog using this method, they would face legal action from the government. In the case of hanging, in Britain before they abolished the death penalty, they worked out a formula for adjusting the length of the rope based on the persons weight. If the rope is too short, the person has to choke to death, which actually can take quite a long time, even hours. If the rope is too long, they are decapitated. If the rope is just the right length, the neck is snapped and death is more or less instant. This system was used in Britain and is still used in Singapore. Is it used in Japan? No one knows. Almost all details of executions are kept secret. The justice ministry says they are doing this for the benefit of society, why then do they hide the details from society?

  The Legal System - I agree that abolishing the death penalty would not fix the judicial system. There would still be a lot of people convicted on forced confessions and flimsy evidence. The difference is, if someone is in prison for life, they have a chance to be acquitted if new evidence proves them innocent, this is still a very, very slim chance in Japan, but still. If someone is executed, then of course there is no chance.

  Agnes Heller says, "If you support the death penalty, and only one innocent person is executed, and killing an innocent person is murder, then you become a murderer and you must agree to be executed according to that system you support." Forensic science is still developing. In the US lots of people have been released from death row because of DNA evidence, which was something no one had even imaged 40 years ago. In the future, there be a way to irrefutably prove that an innocent person was executed by Japan. When that happens, people in Japan will start to call for the end of this.

  Posted in: Hung jury

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