Killer targets bureaucrats responsible for pension scandal
Japanese police are trying to track down a criminal that may be targeting former health ministry bureaucrats:
Police launched a murder investigation following the discovery Tuesday morning of the bodies of former vice health minister Takehiko Yamaguchi, 66, and his wife Michiko, 61.
In the evening, Yasuko Yoshihara, 72, wife of former vice health minister Kenji Yoshihara, was stabbed and seriously injured by someone disguised as a parcel deliveryman when she answered the door of their home in Nakano Ward, Tokyo, police said. Although no connection has been established between the two cases, NPA officials acknowledged the possibility of serial attacks against former top health ministry bureaucrats.
Mainichi reports that Kenji Yoshihara and Takehiko Yamaguchi both held important posts overseeing the pension program during a period when incompetence and misconduct led to the loss of information for 64 million pension accounts.
- Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
- dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)
- Kirainet.com – A geek in Japan (Subscribe)
| Related Posts: |
|
Killer who targeted health bureaucrats turns self in to police Man murdered people because he was angry about pet euthanization |
Full RSS Feed
Hot on the heels of the actual murder, Mainichi has committed a colossal flop regarding this case.
They ran an article in the morning edition, claiming that the attacks were declared beforehand on Wikipedia, speculating that it was yet another case of netizens announcing crimes on the Net.
Their reason was that the name of the assassinated minister was annotated as being assassinated on the wikipedia, and the timestamp was apparently before the actual crime. They even claimed police were investigating connections.
Except there’s one catch.
The Wikipedia article edit timestamp was in GMT, not JST (GMT +9:00).
The edit was about 3 hours after the crime, but Mainichi assumed it was 6 hours *before* the stabbing, and jumped the gun.
As soon as it was published on the web, 2channelrs caught on to the flub and the big lulz started, and Mainichi pulled the web article but couldn’t stop the presses, and this wound up on the morning edition.
web screencap
article scan
They even plastered the name of the poor wikipedia editor, “Popons” in huge font on the Osaka edition.
article photo
The morning TV shows, whose “journalism” consists of reading and summarizing the newspaper for the viewers didn’t bother to check their facts as well and were caught with their pants down.
Since then, Popons has apologized on the Wikipedia notes for being the cause of such confusion.
Mainichi featured a tiny “apology” on an obscure place on their site around noon.
Later on, they placed a correction their evening edition but not before blaming Popons for making the confusing entry.
Well, “colossal flop” may be pushing it a bit
Oh come on, is this for real? Way to live up to your reputation of late, Mainichi.
This story has it all: an error that should not have made it past the most rudimentary fact checking, baseless accusations thrown toward “netizens”, removal of the article followed by flimsy apologies; are they purposedly trying to troll 2ch or something? Someone should tell them it can be done easily without compromising their credibility.
And of course the guy who delivered timely and accurate information on this matter (Popons) is the one who ends up apologizing. There isn’t enough eye-rolling in the world to react to this.
One thing though. I’d say Popons isn’t 100% blame-free either. Maybe 99%, but not 100%.
He clearly wrote on the edit that Yoshihara was “assassinated” and not just murdered, so that has some sensational speculation unfit for an encyclopedic entry. He left himself open to irresponsible speculative accusations in that respect.
With the two people in the hot seat for the same national scandal both getting attacked, the motivations may be circumstantially pretty clear cut, but I think it shouldn’t be featured on an encyclopedia entry (even if it’s Wikipedia), until a little more is known and established.
Sorry to keep on adding to the end of it, but a correction.
Yoshihara wasn’t the one killed (his wife was stabbed but is still alive).
Popons has said in the Wikipedia notes that he mistakenly annotated the wrong person as being killed.
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%88%A9%E7%94%A8%E8%80%85%E2%80%90%E4%BC%9A%E8%A9%B1:Popons
Sorry for the repost Admin.
I need more html practice…
Putting the machinations of the masturbatory Mainichi and their efforts to escape public mastication to one side – (I enjoyed writing that!)
So there are at least 64 million suspects? Not including the relatives of those who have been affected by the pension scandal.
It must surely be the opinion of the perpetrator of these killings that they are doing a public service. The government failed to sufficiently punish those overseeing the pension program and the perpetrator is ‘balancing the books’ so to say.
For too long there has been a disparity in the letter of the law in Japan. Members of the public are prosecuted to the full extent of the law, while those in positions of ‘authority’ escape with slapped wrists and a good telling-off. How many politicians have gone to prison in Japan? I’ve only found:
– (sorry folks, it’s a JapanTimes link.) Prison terms for politicians happen from time-to-time in the US, UK and many other countries – but it’s not a regular occurrence in Japan – please feel free to find elected politicians who have gone to prison.
There is a beyond the normal ‘One law for us and one for them’ in Japan. Sure, rich and powerful people escape justice every day in other countries – but SOME rich and powerful people fail to escape justice and go to jail. The ‘Livedoor’ incident, Horie – maybe his persistent denials led to the 2.5 year jail sentence.
and more here
Horie is going to the supreme court to appeal, so he may still escape. Aside from the link I supplied above relating to the politician, Joji Yamamoto, the number of rich and powerful escapees from Japanese justice far outweigh those that have paid the price.
There is a current case in the press of a top Tokyo cop who was driving drunk, hit a car, left the scene of the accident, was pursued, dumped his car, chased on foot and caught smelling of alcohol. Only a few days ago he was regarded as a responsible officer – advising the public “Don’t drink and drive” – and we believed him! What kind of role model is he? To date, all that has happened is that he has been dismissed from the police force… I’ll be following developments in this story.
Those in positions of responsibility are not above the law. In fact, those in positions of authority who break the law should be made example of, as a warning to others in authority who may be tempted to shirk their duty and line their pockets.
These recent killings, unfortunate as they are, may also serve as a warning to other incompetents in successive inept Japanese governments and a resident bureaucracy that the public can only take so much of ‘One law for us and one for them’, before taking the law into their own hands.
This is not terrorism, this is the work of someone who regards themselves as a vigilante.
Corrected- Please note the use of / when closing the tag.
http://www.w3schools.com/HTML/html_links.asp
Thanks James, I was using the example ahref entry, just below the ‘Your Comment’ text window. It’s the ‘You may use’ list. I thought it was a dialect of HTML special to JapanProbe that didn’t need the closing delimiter. I just slotted in the href value and title value into:
From memory another politician that was sent to jail was Muneo Suzuki. What was amazing in his case was that he was elected into the parliament again either while in jail or straight after getting out.