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from the explain-the-sound-of-one-hand dept.
With no families or visitors to speak of, many older tenants spent weeks or months cocooned in their small apartments, offering little hint of their existence to the world outside their doors. And each year, some of them died without anyone knowing, only to be discovered after their neighbors caught the smell.
The first time it happened, or at least the first time it drew national attention, the corpse of a 69-year-old man living near Mrs. Ito had been lying on the floor for three years, without anyone noticing his absence. His monthly rent and utilities had been withdrawn automatically from his bank account. Finally, after his savings were depleted in 2000, the authorities came to the apartment and found his skeleton near the kitchen, its flesh picked clean by maggots and beetles, just a few feet away from his next-door neighbors.
The huge government apartment complex where Mrs. Ito has lived for nearly 60 years — one of the biggest in Japan, a monument to the nation's postwar baby boom and aspirations for a modern, American way of life — suddenly became known for something else entirely: the "lonely deaths" of the world's most rapidly aging society.
To many residents in Mrs. Ito's complex, the deaths were the natural and frightening conclusion of Japan's journey since the 1960s. A single-minded focus on economic growth, followed by painful economic stagnation over the past generation, had frayed families and communities, leaving them trapped in a demographic crucible of increasing age and declining births. The extreme isolation of elderly Japanese is so common that an entire industry has emerged around it, specializing in cleaning out apartments where decomposing remains are found.
Compounding matters, Japan has a declining birthrate and bans immigration.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @11:40PM (5 children)
Immigration may not be the best answer to economic growth in a slow economy facing the immediate realities of increased automation. Have you considered this? If Africa had necessary low birth rates would you support westerners emigrating in such numbers that the entire native culture would be replaced within a couple of generations? Why the native-phobia?
This is a separate issue and the historical record shows that Islam has continually persecuted and destroyed native cultures for over a millennia. The heightened security and concrete blocks across European cities are not in place to prevent terrorist attacks from Atheists, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Jains or Zoroastrians. Just a decade ago, liberals were the first to admit there was a serious problem with Islam. More recently, they cover their eyes after every murderous display of intolerance and enact a tired pathetic display of intellectual and moral cowardice by shrieking incoherently about islamophobia and the threat of the far-right.
Of course, why engage in rational discourse on the economic and cultural dilemma of our time when you can drop a bogus "Cheeto-Hitler" bomb and run off claiming faux-superiority? We liberals can do better than conflating open discussion and comments here with the odious outpourings of a controlled opposition imbecile like Richard Spencer. Liberty requires us all to speak out. [youtube.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 04 2017, @12:17PM (3 children)
Bulgaria and Greece were part of the Otoman Empire for quite some time. Both of them are still mainly christian countries, with non-muslim cultures (although they probably have some left-over muslim minorities, just like Bulgaria's neighbouring Romania does).
Is this the historical record that you're talking about?
(Score: 1) by ewk on Monday December 04 2017, @03:03PM
They weren't exactly part of it by choice....
Besides, the Otoman Empire can be regarded as an 'Islam Light' for all practical purposes. The 'rough edges' mostly polished of by contact with exactly those mainly christian countries they kept om invading.
I don't always react, but when I do, I do it on SoylentNews
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Monday December 04 2017, @05:10PM (1 child)
I suspect he's talking about the Moors and their occupation of Sicily and the Iberian Peninsular for 600 years, before being driven away by Christians
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday December 04 2017, @10:00PM
I suspect you're talking about the Moops, not the Moors.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f0uYJjDHeDU [youtube.com]
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 4, Insightful) by isostatic on Monday December 04 2017, @02:07PM
concrete blocks across European cities are not in place to prevent terrorist attacks from Atheists, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Jains or Zoroastrians
The ring of steel wasn't put in to prevent terrorist attacks from Muslims. Waste bins weren't removed from the streets to prevent terrorist attacks from Muslims. London doesn't have 100 times as many CCTV cameras as New York to prevent terrorist attacks from Muslims.
The American funded IRA was there way before the latest attacks from the British, Irish and Italian ones more recently. The common theme amongst recent attacks is people brought up in the UK (or at most other western european countries). The common theme in the 70s, 80s and 90s was attacks by people brought up in the UK (or at most other western european countries).