COMFORT WOMEN WERE WHORES, IMPLIES ABE

No one's ever accused the LDP [Liberal Democratic machine Party] of being high on humanitarianism, but even that dim rep went down a notch when Prime Minister Abe said there was no proof that so-called "comfort women" had been forced into prostitution during the war-- in other words that they were all in fact whores, and all their complaints lies. The LDP is more like a party in big denial, running a country that claims to be democratic.

Abe asserted his wishfully gossamer belief before addressing an LDP group of about 120 rightist lawmakers who were meeting to plan a retraction of Japan's 1993 apology to the comfort women. The group's position was clarified by its chairman Nariaki Nakayama, another LDP master of tact, who clarified the wartime government's involvement in the brothels by comparing it to a kind of simple business situation, say like when a school hires a company to run its cafeteria, no big deal.

"Some say it is useful to compare the brothels to college cafeterias run by private companies, who recruit their own staff, procure foodstuffs, and set prices," he said, probably smiling and jingling the change in his pocket. Interesting reference to 'foodstuffs'.

"Where there's demand, businesses crop up... but to say women were forced by the Japanese military into service is off the mark," he said [that "into service" says a lot more]. "This issue must be reconsidered, based on truth... for the sake of Japanese honor."

What type of honor is he talking about? What type of honor is blind to base wrongdoing? Ah yes: honor among thieves.

This all flies in the faces of the hundreds of thousands of women who, even in their old age, often bringing shame on themselves and their families through their public quests for justice, nevertheless go to court in Japan year after year for decades, are turned away unacknowledged and now are even scorned by alleged lawmakers in quest of the same dark honor under which those unrepented crimes were perpetrated.

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As to changes of the heart...

Japanese denial of WWII military brothels shocks former professor

Japanese PM Provokes Fury over Sex Slaves

"Japan, having failed to integrate Asia by force of arms,
has remained largely alienated from its own continent,
clinging out of misplaced pride to a distorted and self-defeating picture of the past."

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'Comfort women' military rape victims: Schieffer

Hear the story of a 'comfort woman'