@thejapantimes@mastodon.social avatar thejapantimes , to random

A 43-year-old man accused of murder and other charges has pleaded not guilty to killing three members of a family at a house in Hanno, Saitama Prefecture, in December 2022. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2026/02/16/japan/crime-legal/saitama-family-murder-first-trial-hearing/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon

@thejapantimes@mastodon.social avatar thejapantimes , to random

Families of Bondi Beach shooting victims have urged Australia’s prime minister to launch a royal commission — an independent public inquiry — into the “rapid rise of antisemitism” in the country. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/12/29/world/crime-legal/bondi-families-antisemitism-probe/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon

@thejapantimes@mastodon.social avatar thejapantimes , to random

The Australian state of New South Wales — where the Bondi Beach shooting took place — is introducing what it calls the “toughest firearm reforms in the country.” https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/12/22/asia-pacific/crime-legal/australian-state-gun-laws/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon

@thejapantimes@mastodon.social avatar thejapantimes , to random

A gunman killed two people and wounded nine others on Saturday at Brown University, plunging the eastern U.S. campus into lockdown as hundreds of police hunted the suspect. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/12/14/world/crime-legal/gunman-kills-two-at-brown-university/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon

@thejapantimes@mastodon.social avatar thejapantimes , to random

Behind the civil war tearing Sudan apart for more than two years lie the country's natural riches, with foreign powers vying for control of its gold, fertile farmland and coastline. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/11/21/world/sudan-natural-riches-civil-war/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon

@thejapantimes@mastodon.social avatar thejapantimes , to random

New satellite imagery has detected activity "consistent with mass graves" in the Sudanese city of El-Fasher, more than a week after mass killings were reported in the area. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/11/07/world/sudan-satellite-images-mass-graves/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon

@thejapantimes@mastodon.social avatar thejapantimes , to random

Fighters riding camels rounded up a couple of hundred men near the Sudanese city of al-Fashir last weekend and brought them to a reservoir, shouting racial slurs before starting to shoot, according to a witness. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/11/01/world/sudan-paramilitaries-shot-disappeared/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon

@thejapantimes@mastodon.social avatar thejapantimes , to random

Japan's Public Security Examination Commission has extended restrictions on the activities of Aleph, a successor group of the now-defunct Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult, until March 2026. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/09/04/japan/crime-legal/aleph-restriction-activities/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon

@thejapantimes@mastodon.social avatar thejapantimes , to random

The Public Security Intelligence Agency has officially recognized the second son of Chizuo Matsumoto, former leader of the now-defunct Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult, as leader of the group's successor organization Aleph. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/08/04/japan/crime-legal/aum-shinrikyo-founder-son-aleph-leader/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon

@thejapantimes@mastodon.social avatar thejapantimes , to random

A memorial was held in the city of Kyoto on Friday for victims of a deadly arson attack on Kyoto Animation's No. 1 studio six years ago. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/07/18/japan/kyoto-animation-ceremony/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon

@GeriatricGardener@mstdn.social avatar GeriatricGardener , to random

“Between those carrying sacks of flour and others bearing the bodies of loved ones, Gaza’s tragedy is captured in a single image — a stark reflection of relentless aggression and deepening famine.

بين من يحمل أكياس الطحين ومن يحمل جثـ..ـامين الأحبة، تتجسد مأساة غزة في مشهدٍ واحد، يلخص قسوة العدوان ومرارة المجاعة.”

via Eye On Palestine on Telegram

https://t.me/Eyeonpalestine2/14912

@thejapantimes@mastodon.social avatar thejapantimes , to random

The election eve truck-ramming that killed 11 people and injured dozens more in Vancouver sent waves of grief across Canada's Filipino community, integral to Canada in part through many members' roles as caregivers. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/04/29/world/filipino-canada-truck-ramming/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon

@thejapantimes@mastodon.social avatar thejapantimes , to random

Japan's justice minister has asked a legal panel to review the country's retrial system after the acquittal of the world's longest-serving death row prisoner last year heightened scrutiny of the system. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/03/29/japan/crime-legal/japan-retrial-system-probe/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon

@AnarchoNinaAnalyzes@treehouse.systems avatar AnarchoNinaAnalyzes , to random

To the surprise of precisely no one who isn't a credulous rube high on imperialism, settler colonialism, and weapons contractor bribes, Israel has started bombing children and houses again in Gaza. Naturally of course a Trump regime that wants to pave over Gaza and build luxury hotels and casinos for an obscenely wealthy, globetrotting ruling class if it can just find a way to get rid of all those pesky Palestinians, stands fully in support of resuming the US armed, funded, and politically protected genocide.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-violates-cease-fire

Backed by Trump, Israel Shreds Cease-Fire Deal and Kills Over 400 Across Gaza

"A barrage of Israeli airstrikes across the Gaza Strip early Tuesday killed more than 400 people and left a fragile cease-fire agreement in tatters just over two months after it was reached, with Israel's prime minister pledging "increasing military strength" in an enclave already decimated by more than a year of bombing.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that the Netanyahu government consulted with the Trump administration ahead of the latest Gaza bombardment. Leavitt expressed the White House's total support for Israel's attacks.

While Israel had been carrying out more limited deadly attacks on Gaza despite the cease-fire deal—including strikes over the weekend that killed at least nine—Tuesday's bombings were described as the "heaviest assault on the territory since the cease-fire took effect in January."

Speaking frankly, there are more detailed articles featuring a lot more atrocity porn available online, but I chose to highlight this short piece because the headline writer understood the importance of centering the Trump regime's full support for this monstrous, objectively illegal bullshit. The US government is supplying the bombs, funding the Netanyahu government, and actively praising Israel for resuming crimes against humanity; that makes the atrocities in Gaza Trump's genocide, the same as it made them Biden's genocide before him. None of this is lost on most media observers outside of the United States, but an American corporate media complex that has always supported the mass murder of Palestinians remains reluctant to center that knowledge, even if it hurts the fascist assclown currently calling their work "illegal" and threatening to come after them with the full force of the U.S. government.

Of course everyone in the media, American or international, is claiming to be "shocked" that Israel has willfully imploded the ceasefire, and telling you that you should be shocked too. Naturally however, that position too is a grotesque farce that ignores available evidence and reality itself. This may be the first large-scale bombing since Netanyahu agreed to pretend he cared about a cease-fire for a while, but Israel already resumed the genocide when it tightened the blocked of, and cut electricity to Gaza; a region that is more or less constantly in a state of humanitarian crisis because Israel has been conducting a war of extermination there and purposely starving the population inside for seventeen months and counting. Furthermore, all of this is pretty consistent with statements made by various high ranking officials in the Netanyahu government, who have openly flouted their intentions to break the cease fire and ethnically cleanse (by whatever means are necessary) the Palestinian people in Gaza. The fact that American corporate media rarely reports on these stated intentions, and is foundationally committed to credulously taking Netanyahu's word when he claims to be seeking peace while bombing hospitals and murdering babies, does not mean the larger US establishment is unware of these facts - just that they're hoping you are.

The fact is, Trump, his administration, and American arms manufacturers should be on trial for crimes against humanity as we speak, and the reality that he is not alone in that because committing genocide in Gaza is a largely bipartisan position in the American establishment does absolutely nothing to alter the situation.

AnarchoNinaAnalyzes OP ,
@AnarchoNinaAnalyzes@treehouse.systems avatar

Well, I guess members of the Isareli government have repeated their intentions to permanently occupy and ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians enough times that even American corporate media has to care; the Guardian however is doing a much better job of honestly acknowledging what Israel's latest plan for Gaza ultimately means.

On the heels of the Netanyahu government's plan to displace the population of Gaza and consolidate territorial control over the occupied region, Finance Minister Smotrich said the quiet part out loud - Gaza will be completely destroyed, and Palestinians will (be forced to, presumably) "leave in great numbers for other countries" - essentially as refugees from a genocide the colonizer world refuses to acknowledge; but we can't expect Smotrich to admit that part too.

Israel's finance minister Bezalel Smotrich

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/06/hamas-israel-hunger-war-in-gaza

Gaza will be entirely destroyed, Israeli minister says

"An Israeli government minister has vowed that “Gaza will be entirely destroyed” as a result of an Israeli military victory, and that its Palestinian population will “leave in great numbers to third countries”, raising fears of ethnic cleansing in the occupied territory.

The declaration on Tuesday by the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, came a day after Israel’s security cabinet approved a plan for Operation Gideon’s Chariots, which an Israeli official said would entail “the conquest of the Gaza Strip and the holding of the territories”.

The Israeli threats to seize control of the territory permanently has stirred global outrage.

“We strongly oppose the expansion of Israel’s operations,” the UK’s Middle East minister, Hamish Falconer, said. “Any attempt to annex land in Gaza would be unacceptable.”

The disturbing part here is that Smotrich's horrifying, genocidal statement is really only "news" because Pig Empire media is objectively pro-genocide and has caught a case of intentional amnesia about Israel's now-nineteen month long campaign to wipe out the Palestinian people in Gaza. Israeli ministers have been talking about emptying Gaza of Palestinians for months, the goddamn President of the United States has openly mused about turning the entire area into beachfront condos built by American companies, and as we speak Israel is actively engineering a famine in Gaza by blockading food and medical supplies into the occupied region.

Ethnic cleansing is just a more polite term for genocide, and even if you're too ignorant to understand that, International Courts have already ruled that Israel is plausibly committing a genocide in Gaza, and warrants have been issued for the arrest of Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Taken as a whole, the actions and statements of the Israeli government, both before and after it broke the ceasefire, have always indicated that their plan was to permanently occupy and "ethnically cleanse" Gaza; it is only through willfully complicit ignorance that clearly pro-genocide mainstream media outlets have refused to properly contextualize news from Gaza in the context of Israel's obvious and openly articulated intentions to complete the ongoing genocide of Palestinians.

Unfortunately for the cowards, collaborators, and profiteers in our mainstream establishment however, the combination of Israel's announced Operation Gideon’s Chariots offensive, and Smotrich's crude, gleeful bluntness, have made it more or less impossible to pretend we don't know what the Netanyahu government is doing; even if that same mainstream establishment is still struggling to admit there can't be any good reasons to conduct "ethnic cleansing" regardless of their political alliances and personal racisms.

@thejapantimes@mastodon.social avatar thejapantimes , to random

The health ministry will electronically preserve medical records of victims of the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult's 1995 sarin nerve gas attack on Tokyo's subway system, starting from April at the earliest. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/03/18/japan/japan-cult-sarin-gas-attack-medical-records/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon

@thejapantimes@mastodon.social avatar thejapantimes , to random

Thirty years after a sarin attack on Tokyo's subway system, a former emergency room physician describes the terror of treating large numbers of patients without initially knowing what happened to them. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/03/18/japan/japan-cult-sarin-attack-ex-doctor/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon

@thejapantimes@mastodon.social avatar thejapantimes , to random

The widow of Tomomitsu Niimi, who took part in Aum Shinrikyo's March 1995 Tokyo subway sarin attack, has opened up about her marriage, saying, "Until the very end, he gave no apology to those who died." https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/03/18/japan/crime-legal/japan-cult-sarin-attack-inmate-widow/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon

@AnarchoNinaAnalyzes@treehouse.systems avatar AnarchoNinaAnalyzes , to random

The awesome thing about American politics is that genocidal imperialism, settler-colonialism, and capitalist extraction at bayonet point are so inherently bipartisan that each successive American regime, regardless of stated ideological positions, will continue the malevolent policies, murders, and crimes against humanity of the prior regime without it so much as inspiring questions or commentary from our (clearly) pro-genocide media/commentariat. Oh wait, no that's not awesome, it sucks ass.

To the surprise of precisely no one, and very little fanfare, it took the Trump administration about five weeks to greenlight Israel's continued genocide in Gaza via crimes against humanity (in this case, intentional starvation.) I guess it's hard to build luxury condos in Gaza if any Palestinians are alive to object.

https://truthout.org/articles/trump-admin-bypasses-congress-to-send-israel-4b-as-it-blocks-aid-into-gaza/

Trump Admin Bypasses Congress to Send Israel $4B as It Blocks Aid Into Gaza

"The blockade, which began on Sunday, deprives Palestinians of basic needs like food, water and medicine, plunging the Gaza Strip back into some of the worst days of the genocide. This is after Israel had indeed increased the amount of aid entering Gaza amid the first phase of the captive swap deal, but still had not fulfilled all of its obligations to allow in supplies like shelter.

Human rights groups have condemned the blockade, saying that it amounts to collective punishment and a deadly continuation of Israel’s genocide.

“Israel is once again blocking an entire population from receiving aid, using it as a bargaining chip. This is unacceptable, outrageous, and will have devastating consequences,” said Médecins Sans Frontières’s emergency coordinator Caroline Seguin.

UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) head Phillippe Lazzarini suggested that Israel was using basic needs as “weapons of war” and that the blockade “threatens the lives of civilians exhausted by 16 months of brutal war.” The use of starvation and the withholding of aid as a weapon of war have been cited by human rights experts as acts of genocide by Israeli authorities."

As the article notes, the $4B that little maggot Rubio is only part of a larger 12B the Trump administration is sending Israel, and the White House has publicly backed Israel's renewed efforts to starve women and children to death, citing some presumably made up shit about "HAMAS" - despite the fact that these are crimes against humanity and thus cannot be justified or legally authorized no matter what excuse Downmarket Mussolini wants to offer for doing so. The more things change, the more they stay the same I guess.

Predictably, this aid package and Trump's support for again, a genocide we're arming, funding, and ideologically supporting on the world stage, has generated mostly subdued commentary from an American for-profit media complex that liked that genocide a lot when Joe Biden was the one approving weapons shipments and foreign aid Israel doesn't need; their primary focus appears to be contrasting Trump's financial support for Netanyahu with the administration's decision to cut off all military aid to Ukraine - which does indeed raise some questions that are probably already answered by Downmarket Mussolini's craven bootlicking towards Putin and his administration's open charm policy shift towards Russia. As important as that discussion is however, you'd think in any sort of responsible media environment we might see at least SOME significant sort of outrage over the fact that the US government is once again helping Israel conduct a genocide, but I suppose I'm the greater fool for thinking bombing hospitals and starving babies rates as a news item compared to how rude that shitbird Trump was to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on live TV. I guess that kind of callous disregard for innocent human lives and full-throated amour for US imperial predation in our media, doesn't change much from election to election either.

@thejapantimes@mastodon.social avatar thejapantimes , to random

The Public Security Intelligence Agency launched a special website Friday to preserve public memory of the 1995 sarin nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway system by the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/02/21/japan/sarin-attack-website/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon

@thejapantimes@mastodon.social avatar thejapantimes , to random

A shooting at an adult education center in a Swedish city on Tuesday has resulted in around 10 deaths, marking Sweden's deadliest gun attack. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/02/05/world/crime-legal/sweden-deadliest-attack-adult-school/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon

@thejapantimes@mastodon.social avatar thejapantimes , to random

A man suspected of plowing a car through crowds at a German Christmas market in an attack that killed five people and injured scores faces multiple charges of murder and attempted murder. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/12/23/world/crime-legal/suspect-german-christmas-attack/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon

@thejapantimes@mastodon.social avatar thejapantimes , to random

Tokyo police on Saturday distributed flyers asking members of the public for any information on the murder of four members of a family in the capital's Setagaya Ward in late December 2000. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/12/14/japan/crime-legal/setagaya-murder-police-information/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon

@thejapantimes@mastodon.social avatar thejapantimes , to random

In the wake of Bashar Assad's ouster, Syrians in a Damascus district recall the horrors of suspected mass killings that took place there and hope the site can be cordoned off for those responsible to be held accountable. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/12/13/world/crime-legal/syria-mass-graves/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon

@thejapantimes@mastodon.social avatar thejapantimes , to random

The head of the Shizuoka District Prosecutors Office, Hideo Yamada, is expected to apologize in person to former boxer Iwao Hakamata, who was recently acquitted of a 1966 quadruple murder, over his prolonged court proceedings. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/11/21/japan/crime-legal/japan-prosecutor-to-apologize-to-hakamata/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon

@thejapantimes@mastodon.social avatar thejapantimes , to random