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Progressive News & Views (since 1982)
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People are followers. They follow each other even to death. I'm an atheist
and I don't want to give up on life even though I know it has very little
purpose and there is no other life; no second chances. As dumb as it is, I
can understand the rationale of Islamic Jihadists blowing themselves up
and Kamakazi pilots in Japan dying for their cause because they all
believe they'd get a second chance and while I know it is stupid and
destructive of themselves and others, they do rationalize it and that too
is why religion is so dangerous and insane
As for the motivation for these suicides it is also crazy.
It is also a social problem. Our economic/social system makes people
crazy - no less so than religion makes people crazy.
It seems to me that atheists have an even stronger reason to hold on to
life since they KNOW this is the only shot we have, even when life sucks.
Hank Roth
[March 11, 2006]
Japan shaken by group suicides among young
(The Irish Times Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)Japan: A bizarre trend
for internet-led group suicides shows no signs of abating in Japan
where the police yesterday found the bodies of six young people in a
sealed car.
The five men and one woman, all in their 20s, are thought to have died
from inhaling carbon monoxide from charcoal stoves, which were still
smoking when the police arrived.
Their car was spotted by a passerby in a remote area at the foot of a
mountain in Saitama prefecture, nearly 100km (about 60 miles) north of
north of Tokyo. It follows the discovery of three bodies in a car in
northern Aomori prefecture earlier this week.
Japan has been plagued by dozens of similar cases over the last three
years.
The victims usually arrange to meet via internet sites that facilitate
suicides before driving to quiet scenic areas, often before dawn, and
taking their own lives.
Media reports in Japan say three of the six who died yesterday had
told friends they wanted to commit suicide after meeting in a
hospital.
The police said that they believe the three then sought out the others
online.
Japanese authorities said last month that a record 91 people had
committed suicide together after meeting via the internet in 2005, up
from 55 people the previous year. The figure has tripled since the
police began keeping records in 2003.
Ninety-four people in Japan took their own lives every day in 2003,
setting a record of 34,427 that broke the previous high of 33,048, in
1999. Since the Asian crash of 1997-8, when the statistics jumped 35
per cent, suicides have claimed over 220,000 lives.
The latest deaths will likely lead to more demands for monitoring of
cyberspace. Internet service providers already work with the police
who had hoped until this week that the group-suicide phenomenon had
peaked.
Yukio Saito, who runs Japan's largest telephone-helpline network,
cautions against complacency. "People will always find a way to end
their own lives if they want to. The wider issues must be tackled."
Japan's suicide statistics are still heavily weighted by middle-aged
men who have been made redundant or fallen into debt, but the country
has been stunned by the recent deaths of dozens of young men and
women.
Nearly 8,000 people in their 20s and 30s killed themselves every year
in Japan, making suicide one of the leading causes of death for young
Japanese in the prime of life.
Many of these youngsters are drawn from the ranks of hikkikomori,
social recluses who have locked themselves in their rooms, sometimes
for years on end. They are often linked to the outside world only
through their computers, which they use to find like-minded folk.
One measure of how common group suicides have become in Japan is how
little news coverage they are now given. Yesterday's deaths were well
down the list of most news bulletins and one major news organisation
did not carry them at all.
http://TMCnet.com
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