Entry details

Curzon
Author

Curzon

Date

October 25th, 2004

Tags

, ,

Comments

1 Comment so far.
Add yours.

Sgt. Jenkins Reporting for Duty

This is several weeks old, but check out these pictures and even a movie of Sgt. Charles Jenkins, alleged deserter to North Korea, reporting for duty at Camp Zama in Kanagawa, Japan. I think Mr. Jenkins saga is interesting and not necessarily easy to figure out. Check out this article in the Far East Asian Economic Review, ominously titled “Four Decades in North Korea.”

Comments to this entry

ComingAnarchy.com » Blog Archive » Adding one to the pile
July 27, 2005
1:17 am
[...] Japan has lots of issues and scandals. We have only covered history books, wartime apologies, beef imports, gender relations, whaling, Article 9, so-called foreign criminals, and the beloved Jenkins. Above and beyond those are milk scandals, management crises, iron-triangle problems, mercury poisoning and a horde of other topics. But today we have the return of something that has been on the back burner for a while, and that is asbestos: The Economist ... Although the World Health Organisation declared in 1980 that asbestos was a carcinogen, its use in construction was not banned in Japan until 2004, and a ban on all asbestos—introduced in July—will not come into effect until 2008. ... The country lags decades behind other industrialised nations when it comes to containing the harmfulness of asbestos. All six regional Japan Railway (JR) companies created after privatisation in 1987 still use carriages insulated with asbestos. JR East has announced that it will decommission 90 of its 250 asbestos-containing carriages by 2006. [...]