The truth might not set you free, but it will get a lot of people off your back
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, having built his career on his credentials as a nationalist and having built his credentials as a nationalist on denying the darkside of Japan's wartime past is now claiming the whole sex slaves, sorry -- "so-called comfort women"kerfuffle -- is a result of bad reporting in the press. Meanwhile the historian who found the documents that weren't supposed to exist stands by his research that the Imperial Japanese Army forcibly abducted tens of thousands of women and forced them into sexual slavery for the glory of the empire.

Abe and nationalist in the Japanese government have very nearly derailed the six party toalks on North Korea's nukes by lambasting the North Koreans over Pyongyang's abduction of a couple of dozen Japanese in the 70's and 80's -- a reprehensible act for which there is no justification, and one which Kim Jong Il has admitted to, though the North Koreans have not come completely clean on the matter. At the same time though, Abe's government refuses to discuss or take responsibility in any sincere way for the abduction and repeated rape of thousands of Korean women at military "comfort stations" or compensation for Koreans brought to Japan as forced labour during the war. The Washington Post had a good editorial on this last week

Then there is this extended exercise in revisionism, denial and just plain nonsense -- part 1, part 2 and part 3 of why I shower when I get home from work.