Police on Friday raided the home of the man suspected of using an improvised firearm to assassinate former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and said they seized multiple weapons that also appeared to be homemade.
The discovery followed the arrest of the suspect — identified by officials as Tetsuya Yamagami, 41 — in the western Japanese city of Nara, where Abe had been delivering a campaign speech outdoors ahead of parliamentary elections this weekend.
Local media captured video and photos of the bulky weapon that police said was used to kill Abe. They confirmed that the firearm consists of two metal barrels attached to a wooden board and is more than a foot long.
“We are conducting forensics, but clearly it looks homemade,” a Nara police chief said at a news conference.
Police said several weapons were also found at Yamagami’s residence and were similar to the firearm believed to be used to shoot Abe. They added that it was unclear whether the suspect had the proper licenses for the weapons.
The shooting death of Abe, Japan’s longest-serving leader before resigning in 2020 because of health issues, has stunned a nation where gun violence is extremely rare.
The assassination of a leading politician in America would also be stunning, despite the prevalence of “gun violence,” for the simple reason that most “gun violence” is connected to drug gangs and other criminal activity involving what are politely called “inner city youth.” Americans are a well-armed people, but it is only a small fraction of the population that commits most of the violent crime, yet our media doesn’t want to provide the public an accurate understanding of crime, because that would not advance the desired political narrative. However, this NBC News story raises a question that it does not answer: If “gun violence” is so common in America, why aren’t our politicians getting gunned down on a regular basis? The main reason is that they aren’t hanging around drug dealers in downtown Baltimore or Detroit or other crime-plagued inner cities. Being safe from “gun violence” is mainly a matter of geography; if you avoid certain areas, you’re unlikely to get shot.
The other reason our politicians don’t worry about “gun violence” is because the most prominent of them are guarded by armed security. You cannot enter any federal building without going through a checkpoint with a metal detector, and similar security precautions are in place at most statehouses, etc. Whether these precautions are necessary or effective is seldom questioned. It’s not as if would-be assassins are so numerous that we must be eternally vigilant, but as the shooting of Shinzo Abe illustrates, it is difficult to prevent a truly determined killer: Where there’s a will, there’s a way. You outlaw gun ownership, and some murderous kook will manufacture a homemade weapon.
Biden hijacks the assassination of Shinzo Abe to lament 'gun violence' https://t.co/QrSuu1dCAi (Washington Examiner)
.@CBSMornings trashes Shinzo Abe hours after his assassination, calling him "a polarizing figure," "right-wing nationalist, and conservative" whose "political opinions were controversial" pic.twitter.com/XAUXAkqKu2
Nuclear-armed North Korea said Tuesday its missile launches were training for a strike on US bases in Japan, as global condemnation of the regime swelled.
Three of the four missiles fired Monday came down provocatively close to US ally Japan, in waters that are part of its exclusive economic zone, representing a challenge to US President Donald Trump.
In separate phone calls, Trump — whose rhetoric on the campaign trail had raised doubts about the issue — reaffirmed Washington’s “ironclad commitment” to Japan and South Korea.
The US will demonstrate to Pyongyang that there were “very dire consequences” for its actions, the White House said in a statement.
The UN Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting for Wednesday after a request by Washington and Tokyo to discuss additional measures following the launch.
Japan moved to the highest possible alert level after North Korea fired four ballistic missiles simultaneously into nearby waters, the latest provocation from Kim Jong Un’s regime.
Three of the missiles fell into Japan’s exclusive economic zone, with one dropping about 350 kilometers west of the nation’s northern Akita prefecture, government spokesman Yoshihide Suga told reporters after a meeting of Japan’s National Security Council. Authorities were still analyzing the type of missile launched, he said.
The launches “clearly show that this is a new level of threat” from North Korea, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told lawmakers in Tokyo. American officials held phone calls afterward with counterparts in Japan and South Korea, which rely on the U.S. for security.
The first pieces of a US-built missile defense system designed to mitigate the threat of North Korean missiles arrived at the Osan Air Base in South Korea Monday night, according to the US military.
The announcement comes just a day after North Korea test-fired four ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan, also known as the East Sea.
China has voiced opposition to the proposed placement of the military hardware known as the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, which it sees as a threat to its own security.
“We will firmly take necessary measures to preserve our own security interest, and the US and South Korea must bear the potential consequences,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Geng Shuang said Tuesday.
North Korea’s latest volley of missile tests put new pressure on a preoccupied Trump administration Monday to identify how it will counter leader Kim Jong Un’s weapons development.
North Korea’s march toward having a nuclear-tipped missile that could reach the U.S. mainland is among the pressing national security priorities President Donald Trump faces. He has vowed it “won’t happen” but has yet to articulate a strategy to stop it. . . .
An administration official told The Associated Press Monday that tougher sanctions, military action and resumption of long-stalled negotiations with North Korea are all under consideration as part of a policy review to provide options for the president within weeks.
The North Korean people are starving, but the communist dictatorship under Kim Jong Un has got money for a ballistic missile program.
Anti-Christmas protesters calling themselves “Losers with Women” marched through Tokyo’s streets Saturday, bashing the upcoming holiday as a capitalist ploy that also discriminates against singletons.
The group of about 20 — part of the Communist-inspired group that routinely protests Western holidays — marched under angry banners that read “Smash Christmas!” in Tokyo’s Shibuya district, where couples and families strolled for holiday shopping.
The scrooges — mostly single men — said they were against capitalism and were opposed to the commercialisation of Christmas.
“In this world, money is extracted from people in love, and happy people support capitalism,” said the head of the organisation, formally called Kakumeiteki Hi-mote Domei, or the Revolutionary Losers’ League.
“Christmas is the most symbolic event for this,” he added.
The man . . . said the rally was also in support of unloved men. “Unpopular men, who don’t have a girlfriend or are not married, are overly discriminated. We want to break this barrier,” he told AFP amid the shouting protesters.
In America, guys like this call themselves “Democrats.”
A survey by the Japan Family Planning Association reported that over a quarter of men aged 16–24 “were not interested in or despised sexual contact.” For women, it was 45 percent…
Forty-nine percent of women under 34 are not in any kind of romantic relationship, and nor are 61 percent of single men. A third of Japanese adults under 30 have never dated. Anyone. Ever. It’s not that they’ve stopped “having sex”… It’s bigger than that: It’s a flight from human intimacy. . . .
The Japan Times . . . quotes the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research as saying that the country’s population is expected to decline between 26% and 38% by 2060.
That information comes from Mark Steyn, whose ancestors were on a first-name basis with the author of the commandments previously cited, and here’s more of the same:
“See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil . . . I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.”
— Deuteronomy 30:15, 19 (KJV)
It’s really simple, but some folks think they’re smarter than God.
Left to right: Yuya Watase of the Tokyo Tea Party and Jikido “Jay” Aeba of HRP
wait while Herman Cain listens to translator Yuki Oikana.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Yesterday afternoon I got a phone call from one of Herman Cain’s aides, asking if I could attend a meeting at 5 p.m. Well, sure, of course, but what was the meeting about? It was explained to me, and I was subsequently informed that I would be the only reporter in the room, at Mr. Cain’s specific request. The story was truly remarkable, and the exclusive is now online at The American Spectator:
Herman Cain’s famous 9-9-9 tax proposal has inspired international admiration, and two Japanese activists hope to bring their own version of the Atlanta businessman’s plan to their country.
During a private meeting Thursday with Tokyo Tea Party leader Yuya Watase and Jikido “Jay” Aeba of Japan’s Happiness Realization Party (HRP), Cain agreed to travel to Japan and speak at events to promote the idea.
“I would love to come and address your event in Japan, if that is something that you all would want me to do. . . . I would be honored to do so,” Cain told Aeba and Watase, who have organized public rallies against government proposals for higher taxes in Japan.
Cain’s 9-9-9 plan helped boost the retired restaurant executive to the top of the polls in October. His proposal — which would replace the current tax code with 9 percent flat taxes on personal income, corporate income and retail sales — was praised by the Wall Street Journal and others who credited Cain’s campaign with making tax reform a central focus of the debate among Republican presidential contenders.
Aeba, whose fledgling HRP has made tax reduction and economic growth a key part of its policy agenda, told Cain he wanted to adapt his 9-9-9 plan at an even lower rate: 7-7-7.
“We got this idea from the Americans for Tax Reform, Mr. Grover Norquist,” Aeba told Cain through a translator. When he heard Aeba pronounce “7-7-7,” Cain laughed approvingly.
“I understood that without translation,” Cain said, and immediately asked whether the 7 percent rate would be revenue-neutral. . . .
Have we pilloried Ezra Klein enough for his über-knob assertion that “it’s impossible to understand the US Constitution because it’s over 100 years old”? No. The notion that ‘wisdom is timeless’ is like Levis 501 blue jeans, only older.
Old like an obelisk whose wisdom you ignore at your peril.
“High dwellings are the peace and harmony of our descendants,” the stone slab reads. “Remember the calamity of the great tsunamis. Do not build any homes below this point.”
It was advice the dozen or so households of Aneyoshi heeded, and their homes emerged unscathed from a disaster that flattened low-lying communities elsewhere and killed thousands along Japan’s northeastern shore.
Hundreds of such markers dot the coastline, some more than 600 years old. Collectively they form a crude warning system for Japan, whose long coasts along major fault lines have made it a repeated target of earthquakes and tsunamis over the centuries.
The markers don’t all indicate where it’s safe to build. Some simply stand — or stood, until they were washed away by the tsunami — as daily reminders of the risk. “If an earthquake comes, beware of tsunamis,” reads one. In the bustle of modern life, many forgot.
One must re-emphasize: the purpose of this post is not to kick the Japanese when they are down. Population growth will assess risk and go where it wills. If anything, we should redouble support.
Too, technology is variable. So ideas must expand to include new possibilities, e.g. space travel, that could not be undertaken previously. Got that.
However, that has nothing to do with human nature, and by that I mean the capacity for corruption. As the debt tsunami rolls in, James Madison reveals the foolishness of the Kleins:
It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule which is little known, and less fixed?
Given this wisdom, what we need are candidates who are dedicated to de-scoping the federal behemoth, spending less than the government collects in taxes, and politically moving us back above the tsunami markers.
Common sense is the new radicalism.
Japan faced the likelihood of a catastrophic nuclear accident Tuesday morning, as an explosion at the most crippled of three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station damaged its crucial steel containment structure, emergency workers were withdrawn from the plant, and a fire at a fourth reactor spewed large amounts of radioactive material into the air, according to official statements and industry executives informed about the developments.
(Via Memeorandum.) As Ace said in declaring an early open thread: “I’m not lovin’ the news today.” Let’s stipulate that situations like this generally come in two types:
Type A. Disaster strikes, things seem very bad at first; some people panic, invoking worst-case scenarios; however, once the initial scare is over, things don’t turn out nearly so bad as first feared. Type B. Disaster strikes, and most people don’t really grasp how bad the potential outcome could be; however, events steadily shift toward a worst-case scenario that few people originally imagined.
This one is definitely beginning to look a lot more like Type B.
UPDATE: “Tens of thousands” have already been evacuated from a zone with a 20-kilometer radius of the plant. Officials are telling people within 30 kilometers to stay indoors to avoid radiation exposure. Meanwhile, note the highly technical language in this ABC News story:
The explosion at unit 2 and the fire at unit 4 of the plant, where units 1 and 3 also have exploded since the powerful earthquake and tsunami hit Japan on Friday, have Japanese officials “freaked out,” a senior U.S. official said.
So, we have explosions at units 1, 2, and 3, plus a fire at unit 4. While many of the safety issues surrounding nuclear power are difficult for layment to comprehend, you don’t have to be a senior U.S. official to understand what “freaked out” means.
Japan’s nuclear crisis showed signs of spinning out of control Tuesday, after officials reported a third explosion and warned of possible damage to a critical part of the cooling system at the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear-power complex. . . .
Even before the reported explosion, officials were becoming increasingly worried about No. 2 reactor, due to a problem in the cooling system that hasn’t occurred in the others. Now all three appear to be experiencing a degree of melting of the fuel rods in their cores—a condition that, if it worsens, could lead to dangerous radiation leaks.
In a surprise turn of events, Monday saw a sharp deterioration in the condition of the No. 2 reactor, which had previously been stable. By late Monday night, No. 2 had become the most problematic of the three reactors, with all its fuel rods fully exposed, making them highly vulnerable to significant damage.
Someone sent me an e-mail Saturday night with this prediction:
Stacy, mark my words. We’ll all be heaving a collective sigh of relief on Monday or Tuesday when we learn that the Japanese have the situation well under control. And you can quote me on that.
OK, my friend, it’s Monday night and I’m thinking this “collective sigh of relief” is very unlikely in the next 24 hours. Do you want to own that quote with a link to me, and an admission that the best-case scenario hasn’t materialized?
UPDATE II: In the comments below, an accusation:
You might as well drop the act, you were in this to promote hysteria from the start so you could “prove” how “balanced” and “impartial” you are.
Horseshit. What I’ve been trying to do from the start is to separate facts from spin and hype. Go back to my multi-updated Saturday post: I woke up (and you’ll have to scroll down to the sequence beginning at 11:57 a.m. ET) to the news of the first explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, a situation that Stratfor was already calling a “meltdown.”
Japanese officials denied that there was a meltdown, and the Economist wrote: “There was a momentary sense of relief on Saturday evening when the government assured the public that the explosion had not been caused by the meltdown of the reactor.”
Freely admitting my own ignorance of what exactly constitutes a “meltdown” — which I’m told is a colloquial term, rather than a scientific one — what I recognized was that official sources had an interest in minimizing the severity of the situation in their public statements. And so, when asked about a Christian Science Monitor story that conveyed the official “all-is-well” reassurances, I responded:
THE FUCKING ROOF BLEW OFF!
OK? I mean, sure, “officials say” everything’s just hunky-dory with the reactor itself, but when there’s a massive explosion that destroys the building that houses the reactor, excuse me for suspecting that the “officials say” version of the story might be a bit too sunny-side-up.
Call that a gut hunch, common sense, whatever. But it has nothing to do with any effort to appear “balanced” or “impartial” — as I said this morning, I was surprised when bloggers began taking sides on this story — and everything to do with detecting the distinct aroma of bovine excrement in those official assurances that the situation at Fukushima Daiichi was hunky-dory.
UPDATE III: I’m trying to calm down after being forced to defend myself against the bogus charge of having some kind of hidden agenda about the Japanese nuke-plant situation. I’m just a dude aggregating the news. If you want to see somebody pushing an agenda, check out the university psychology professor taking cheap shots at Milton Friedman. (Hat-tip: Insty.)
Japan’s benchmark Nikkei average plummeted 14 percent on Tuesday, after the country’s prime minister Naoto Kan warned of an increasing possibility of a radioactive leakage.
Japan is the world’s third-largest economy, so a 14-pecent loss on their stock market is very bad news, generating economic ripples that could affect our own economy.
Am I trying to “promote hysteria”? No, but watch this video interview with “independent nuclear energy consultant” Shaun Burnie:
