Kazuaki Shimazaki comments

If NATO wants Chinese help, they can start by acknowledging what they are asking for is Help. Once they understand and accept that's what they are really asking for, they would find it easier to dream up an incentive package that might just get the Chinese to help.

China "allowed" the Philippines to operate legally in its own internationally-recognized waters?

That's ... actually a bit of a doozy. The problem is whether you believe the Shoals count as land. The Permanent Court of Arbitration's solution was that it doesn't stick out of the water enough to count as land, so it is ocean, and control of the relevant surface is determined by EEZs ranging out from other places that are at least of island size - that happens to make it Filipino.

However, both the PRC and the Phillippines act like that was land (you don't beach a ship onto a random point in the mundane ocean as a makeshift base). If we accept the Shoals are land, then the PRC has a valid, in fact probably leading claim to the land - it helps that China was at least a country when the Phillippines was an US colony. And if it is Chinese land, then even as a "rock" it can generate the 12 mile territorial sea - so we'd have a patch of Chinese territorial sea interrupting Philippines EEZ.

Further, without disputing most of the PCA's judgment, it's still possible to beef about this one because it exceeds the PCA's own self-admitted boundaries - it can't adjudicate sovereignty claims. Refusal of nine-dashed line or downgrading islands into rocks doesn't attack the sovereignty claim, only the extent of water that the claim influences. Defining a piece of land as not land does attack and neutralize the claim, which the PCA admitted was beyond what it can do because it is beyond what UNCLOS controls for - this creates an argument at least this part of the judgment is void ab initio due to ultra vires.

Thus, the PRC's legal claim may be better than what people give it credit for.

Do you SIT on top of the suitcase?

It might not look classy, but they are cheap. I'm looking at one now that's only HK$4000. It claims to be able to hold up to 110kg. It's empty weight is 9.4kg. So, it and me put together will be under 90kg, which leaves 20kg for cargo. Of course I can walk and only use it as a cargo lifter, too. Either way, it looks very welcome.

My thought is darn it, let it go cop. People can make over 13km/h in a sprint, and I don't think if I'm sitting on such a thing I'd dare push it that hard - I'd be going at walking speed in case it loses its balance. This thing's dangerousness is no more than a large human being. I won't even bother to issue a warning for that even if it is a formal violation of the rules. Don't make people miserable over a HK$4,000 purchase, which even with today's weak yen would only be 20,000 yen, less than a good bicycle.

This is in the same class as "Hair must be Black".

Workers need to pay regardless what happened, remember if companies doing good and profitable those worker will get only flat payment same as previous months!

Just to note, that's the nature of the labor contract, as opposed to say a service contract. The obligation on the employee is to work rather than produce results. It's true this means they don't directly get more when times are good, but they are also buffered when times are bad. You still get paid as an agent even if you made zero sales, as long as you worked.

Note also the obligation is to actually work, not just be prepared to work.

OK, the scenario given doesn't seem to justify opprobrium. There's no sign that the intention of the company was anything other than to have the factories be ready on time. But they weren't, and this won't be the first or last project that ran late.

At the very least, it's hard to think of it as wage theft. The involved Vietnamese did not work. On principle, those are labor contracts, so the worker doesn't have to produce results other than as the natural result of him working, but he has to work, and they didn't. That wasn't their fault - they were presumably prepared to work. But neither is it necessarily the company's fault for them not being able to work. Which leaves undisputed only the fact they did not work.

As a company with a commercial (profit-making purpose), it's only natural to first explore the route of not paying people who ended up spending their day playing mobile games. There's already a significant loss in money earnings thanks to the delays, and paying people that didn't even work would just add to the losses.

Besides, in the end, the company chose to pay up. Either because the balance of the law demanded it, or for humanistic considerations. I don't see the reason for opprobrium here.

If you think over 99 percent of applicants are frauds, fine.

It helps that one of the most famous applicants was someone who entered on a Student Visa, stopped going to school (thus voiding the visa), went out with some man and began to work (thus violating the visa further), eventually had some kind of breakup. Only then did she turn herself in, and tried to apply for asylum on the theory that her ex-boyfriend (not the government) would kill her if she returned to Sri Lanka. An ex-boyfriend that lives in Japan ...

Study after study has shown that immigration is a net benefit for countries.

If you think purely in GDP terms, yes, but in terms of social strife ... etc, less so. Studies are better equipped to valuate the increase in GDP over the decrease in social strife.

We also have to consider that a refugee is someone who can't get in through the front door. Situations generally do not happen all at once, and when things go bad, those that can would first try to emigrate using more conventional routes that usually require them to be a prospective asset. Refugees are thus those who can't get out that way, and as a group are less of an asset.

On the other hand, the entire process of kids being able to walk (rather than be bused) to their primary school is a small but valuable way to increase their independence. As it is, the practice that some areas have of forcing them to go as a flock is degrading this training opportunity because of One-Kid-Died.

As it is, Japanese kids don't get as many opportunities as say American kids to do things independently. For example, 13-year-olds babysit in America, but babysitters in Japan are adults. The average Japanese middle or high school kid joins a club that uses up their excess hours after school but also keeps them from wondering about to make independent decisions. And of course there's the studying.

Busing the kids would be just another opportunity deprived from them.

I am concerned about the chilling effect. Ultimately, if you don't want accidents, you have to keep the students indoors. Then you won't have to be responsible for anything.

Further, people that have conducted more intentional crimes: Taibatsu or deliberately over-exercising the students have gotten away without even suspended sentences. I get the deaths are tragic but there is some disbalance here.

People need to put themselves in the shoes of the teacher who is in the position of having to refuse a bunch of enthusiastic students. There is a chance nothing would happen, after all.

@purple_depressed_baconMay 24 05:10 pm JST

Why is the program voluntary? Any organisation or institute involving children should be told that signing up for the program is mandatory.

Because as it is, this kind of de facto punishment after sentence is highly legally and morally problematic.

It's only Westerners that see the word Kids and think that the hard won legal improvements can be compromised.

Thus, this is to maintain at least a pretense that it is private players using their own right to employ or not employ, rather than the State forcing the issue.

Why is this bill giving sex offenders the option to decline the job offer? If they have a record, it should be an immediate no. What kind of toothless, spineless bill did the Japanese government just cook up?

Same reason as above: To maintain at least a pretense that it is not The State depriving rights from someone who has already served his sentence.

To be fair, the Two Michaels case did end up in a way that suggested the Chinese had more on the two Michaels than most would have guessed they had. Still, it's amusing they usually answer this way and then believe the UK must give them details when it's their turn under the sun.

Given the shape of the object in question, the anatomical area near where it was being held, the reaction by the family and their calling it "inappropriate," and the councilor's subsequent apology?

Except would the family be this accomodating had that been the case?

"My daughter was surprised at the time and the three of us (including his wife) exchanged glances at what was an inappropriate gesture," Dickerson said in an email sent to Kyodo News. "We discussed it briefly the next day, but the issue was not of a serious enough nature to warrant any further action."

It is being pushed as a discount, a beneficial act subject to certain conditions. If you fail to prove you are a local to their satisfaction, they do not grant you the discount.

The first thing I think of, rather than Xenophobic or not, is that it's sad Japan has gone from being a First World country to being obliged to try these Third-World tactics.

Putin declared his crimes on Russian television.

He declared his acts - he argues they aren't crimes and may even be sincere about it. And TBH I really don't want the world of international criminal law to go in the direction that we should leave orphans in a warzone (because there's still no prospect of getting rid of laws).

At least use a proper safe, not an unsecured box...

It is also interesting that one plaintiff is American and the other is Japanese, so the outcome there could be different for both plaintiffs

Yes. The law generally allows you to treat Foreigners (non-citizens) differently. The American is on an upslope and the Japanese who Looks Foreign is on a downslope since he's supposed to be treated the same.

One defense the State can try is that due to the low number of naturalizations, going by appearance is a 95%+ reliable method of identifying the Foreigners in the mix.

Procedures are never perfect - there will always be some false positives. A street questioning is low invasive. The question for the law is whether a 95%+ reliable, low-invasive method should be abandoned because of the occasional unfortunate.

Don't complain - I'm just pointing out what defenses can be tried. Think of how you might counter this as the plaintiff.

If that's the case, then this lawsuit is lost before it started. Only if discrimination is indeed illegal in Japan would they even have a chance.

There is no way beating up a kid so it would require 2 weeks of recovery

I agree, and I believe Owzer does as well. That's another reason he's distinguishing between this and what he considers "acceptable" corporal punishment. On the other hand, that you are saying "can be described as a beating" suggests that there are some applications of violence you would consider either less serious or even potentially justified.

Your justification that "some children" would not have problem is as valid as someone justifying smoking constantly in your face saying that "some people" would not have cancer even with constant exposure to secondary smoke, worthless.

Isn't that exactly what our remaining smokers believe? That the odds are against them is undeniable unless they give no credit to science at all, but I don't think many of them would be smoking if they believe they would be the one hit. So we can surmise they believe they would not be personally hit with cancer due to smoking.

Another example is torture. The scientific view on that is well known. But even if they can say, for example, that 95% of torture confessions are unreliable, they can't say 100%. There's a 5% chance the truth might come out, and when you've got no leads and a 5% lead is better than a completely random search (for say an IED) over a large area ... well ... that's why we hadn't gotten rid of torture.

@virusrexApr. 22 09:56 am JST

Slapping a child is physical abuse, no other way to see it,

Actually, that's not true. Punishment can be defined as the intentional infliction of harm within socially acceptable limits by an accepted authority figure (often even by the victim himself, at least partially) justified with at least a sincere belief it would contribute to the positive aim of improving the victim's behavior.

Without condoning corporal punishment, we can still acknowledge that there is a difference between a beating that has that justificatory element, and a beating without that element, and owzer clearly classes this case with the latter.

Regarding the social acceptability of corporal punishment (separate from the legal acceptability), in a country where only maybe 20% of people are willing to unconditionally rule out corporal punishment:

An online survey of 20,000 adults carried out in January 2021 found that 41.3 percent of respondents approved of using corporal punishment for disciplinary purposes. 0.9 percent said it should be used proactively, 7.8 percent said it should be used if necessary, and 32.6 percent said it should be used only as a last resort.

sadly we have to accept it is still "socially acceptable".

The scientific view, of course, is not unknown. The problem is that the scientific view is on averages and probabilities.

Beating kids increases the chances of problems down the road, true, but not everyone will have problems. And it is undeniable corporal punishment does sometimes solve problems.

This creates an incentive for parents to rationalize while the odds are, as a whole not favorable, they can maneuver themselves and their kid into the clean part of the probability cones, that in their local case beating is the best solution even if overall it may not be.

The point is that they had no other violations, but the court decided they were liable for discrimination anyway. Thus, your statement is not true. I can acknowledge there's no legislative act specifically for discrimination, but it nevertheless is not legal - thus a legislative act is only useful to increase liability, which apparently the Diet considers un-necessary when taking into account the disadvantages of such an act.

You have to remember that anti-discrimination ordinances means State Coercion to Force Contracts on the Unwilling.

@InspectorGadgetToday 02:47 pm JST

3) 23 Chinese atheles all were contaminated by the same drug at the same time inbetween the tests that CHINADA administrered and those which caught these cheats out. That would be one hell of a coincidence.

China's story is that they were all eating the same meal at some dinner, which happened to be contaminated.

It's not disputed that chemicals were found. The only dispute is whether the Chinese athletes, or any state bodies supporting them, were at fault. The Chinese of course said they weren't, and WADA has no information to counter them. If WADA rejects a country's official explanation without anything on its side, its no different from saying WADA can disqualify anyone anytime it wants, which is clearly arbitrary.

One way out would be to decide that athletes bear absolute liability - if there's any detectable drug in the body, it's over. If God teleported the drug into him, then blame God, but the athlete's not competing. That may be a good idea but didn't seem to be the standard WADA or anyone else is taking, and it'd obviously be biased to suddenly change things only for one country.

So. In the well known cases what other laws has the proprietor broken?

If it is not why can anyone win cases and get money from the other exercising his right to not contract?

This is well-known urban myth, and one I think you have stated before (and been corrected on).

Not the rest of us then. Educate us because a quick Google search is not telling me bears that have attacked once before are not an elevated risk. Thanks in advance.

@Aly RustomApr. 16 12:29 pm JST

Because it means that discrimination isn't illegal.

That's not true to the point of being defamatory. A more accurate description would be that present, the Japanese judiciary applies the existing law in such a way to inflict civil liability against discrimination.

What you want is to add administrative and/or criminal liability to the situation, which is effectively placing the minority in a position of superiority and places the State in the role of coercing people who might have legitimate or at least sincere reasons to not contract to enter a contract.

You will need a strong justification for that - that is to say a strong problem that cannot be solved any other way. For example, if no one is willing to enter a lease with a foreigner. But while they can still get their flat after awhile, the necessity is low.

You can actually see their full list of gripes here:

https://www.call4.jp/file/pdf/202402/ad1dbcd370a7ece6927e1e5aa9c014ee.pdf

Was considering he might want to help, because he was thinking she might drowning until reading particular part of body he finally touched.

Maybe he thought she wet her pants, thus explaining the "lower body" bit?

The fact he didn't seem to have run is a point in his favor - he didn't even realize he's about to be arrested. If he had indecent thoughts, he would conclude he's in danger of being arrested and ran away as fast as he could trying to break contact.

Good, let that be the end of it. Israel was wrong to hit the embassy. I don't care if it's hiding generals or whatever - nefarious activity has always been part of embassies and it is always tolerated in the name of the greater value of Diplomacy.

So Iran fires back, gets a few hits. Hopefully everyone is satisfied and can break it up.

All the anti-base, Japanese or US, people have to wake up and smell the proverbial coffee. Time to stop singing "Kumbaya" around the campfire and realize that Okinawa IS and always will be the southern gateway to Japan, and any way one looks at it, it IS responsible for protecting Japan, more so in many ways than other prefectures.

Maybe Japan needs to revise its laws on autonomy to place national defense as cleanly outside issues where the local governments have a say. If national defense needs a base to be put there, that's it.

The same should apply for any project that involves more than a single prefecture (I'm thinking of that rail project that's being blocked selfishly by Shizuoka).

This really is getting out of hand. I'm not denying that there is a climate problem, but the ECHR is ballooning its self-ego by the case. The ECHR is a court for human rights issues, and however you want to define this, it is not the Court of Everything. People shouldn't be submitting such cases to them, and if received the Court should rightly decide this is out of its jurisdiction and throw it back in their faces.