I found an article written by a well-known Japanese business consultant, Kenichi Omae. in the website of Nikkei BP. The title was a bit stimulating.
Personally, I think that the fact that the government cheats citizens may be universal, but as a case study, I want to roughly summarize the article:
Very unfortunately, we cannot count how many times government has cheated citizens. A recent example of the deleted pension shows it well. The matter is so critical that the nation may fall down. However, in the website of Social Insurance Agency, there is no serious reflection except for routine apologetic phrase that the government officials often use.
Government has mainly three ways to cheat citizens.
First, change the name of organizations without seriously changing inside. For instance, high-way related public corporations were privatized, but no government officials were fired. No system was changed.
Second, don't tell anything to citizens. For instance, so many government officials of baby-boomer generation have started to retire from 2007. For their crazy amount of retirement fees, so many local authority bonds were issued. It's a debt that the general citizens have to pay. If the private companies are under huge debt, how can they pay for the big retirement fee?
Third, pretend not to know. For instance, though Japan has three antinuclear principles, America have brought it to Japan freely without letting Japanese citizens know.
That's it. Yes, I quite agreed with the article. Since traditional mass media have not disclosed important things, citizens have not known what's going on in underground. However, some people start to disclose them on internet. And finally, even traditional mass media seem to have no choice but to pick up a part of the matters that citizens start to know though just a part.
Now will be the time that we have to think as independently as possible.
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hello Shogo
In Maine, the us state we have a border with, the price of eggs is exploding, the eggs producers try to replace corn with other grains (like soy beans) to feed the chickens, but they too are getting more expensive as corn is replacing other grains in the fields. The farmers say this is just the beginning and the price of eggs will keep going up for years to come. Not only is the food hitself getting more expensive, but the wrapping too, when i buy just one or two grocery items, the cashier is almost begging me not to take a bag and carry the items in my hands to my car... i guess because the cost of plastic bags must have gone up recently. What if ramen in a cup get more expensive because the polystyrene cup itself is only possible because of oil? Of course, styrene is an hydrocarbon made from ethylbenzene, that means that the cup is made from oil, and as the price of oil goes up, so does the cup. In order to stay in business, they need to keep the price of the ramen low and change the polystyrene for something else, like a steel can. When the price of ramen in a polystyrene cup gets higher than the price of an identical ramen in a steel can, the old polystyrene cup will be history. Peak Oil is visible right now everywhere, yet, the mass media is avoiding the subject. The growing use of oil changed and shaped the 20th century, and the decline usage of oil will be the number one factor shaping the 21st century. Peak oil is a taboo subject and avoiding it would be like the J meteorologists telling you about regular rain drops to come but omitting to report a typhoon is going to hit Hokkaido.
They don't speak about it, but they act on it. Vélib (vélo libre) is the response of the parisiens authorities to peak oil, but officially this is to reduce global warming.
http://www.velib.paris.fr
They created 750 stations (much more to come later) where those anonymous grey bicycles can be taken in and out almost for free at any stations. Gradually, Paris will look more and more like the China of the 60's where there was almost no car and everybody had to use a bicycle. This is going to be comical.
One way to keep the public away from reality is to replace information with infotainment, where entertainment is more dominant than information, the most infamous being:
http://www.nakednews.com
but (or should i write butt) foolish personalities are more commonly used for that, and this is a real exemple that even a news anchor (Mika Brzezinski) used to present garbage on-air can "snap" live on tv (after the 1st minute):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VdNcCcweL0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQAmMBQSLj4&NR=1
Sometimes they lie about stuff more serious that "weight loss natto", the us military is lying so much they cannot remember their own lies and killed the same iraqi twice:
http://www.examiner.com/a-815250~U_S__eagerness_shows_in_dismantling_al_Qaeda.html
and if i remember correctly, the us military have killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi more than three times... Those iraqi are REALLY tough guys, heh heh heh
I first heard mainichi saying there was no radioactive leak:
http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/national/news/20070716p2a00m0na006000c.html
but then, there WAS radioactive leak, but even then, it might be more serious than they say, and there is no choice besides their version of the important of the radioation leak
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=16640&
sectionid=351020406
Omissions and distortions are the main tools of journalists, their real job is not to inform, but to distract, entertain, omit, distort, and sometimes, to simply lie to the public, especially on television!
Marc
Editor: a person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to
separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed.
--Elbert Hubbard
Bonjour Marc. Thanks again for your interesting comment.
I quite understand the reason why a campaign of the reduction of plastic bags is so spreading recently. It's not the abstract campaign for environment, but just direct for oils. That's why…
As for peak oils, I have never heard of the word in Japan media. I think that few Japanese know about it.
Infortaiment is really dominant. When those like idols or popular talents who are not expert in specific fields make a comment, it tends to be comedy with high probability.
Decadence of mass media may have reached the "Peak".
Shogo
hello Shogo
I can't wait to see the solution to peak oil from a bunch of tarento on a tv show, it would probably be an electric mixer and many condoms, heh heh heh.
As i was sadly watching the J population struggling with the natural catastrophes, the predictable behavior of the J nuclear authorities about the true seriousness of the problems made me laugh considerably, it felt like looking a child telling you he did not eat the chocolate cookies while his lips and hands are full of chocolate stains, giggle!
If it takes three months to have the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear station up and running, then the oil demand in J will be really high for the next three months.
Japan's Nuclear Plant Shutdown May Boost Oil Demand
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=a_RWE1HAlzgU&refer=japan
and now it's not maybe, but yes to half of Yen for oil
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=16773&
sectionid=351020102
Here, the american propaganda is massive, they used an old tape of bin laden and presented it as new footage, then it was revealed as already shown in 2003 and 2001 they admitted, yet, the media are still using it... The public is so gullible it's crazy, they are frighten by it and swallow all the garbage of the mass media, when the next pearl harbor happen, they will swallow it completely. This is insane.
Of course, they had to tell Chicago's local media about some "gut feeling" that the Usa would faced an increased risk of attack this summer, it had to be Chicago, in Illinois where that was "ill noise":
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-security_thursjul12,1,3853309.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true
And this pretext to make war with Iran as certainly something to do with the increased diplomatic tensions between "the west" and Russia. It will be interesting to see how the new russian arms sold to Iran will perform in the war. It will be an intersting test, but being an "iranian tester" will be bloody...
Cheney pushing Bush to hit Iran
http://www.presstv.ir/Detail.aspx?id=16811&
sectionid=3510304
US Vice President Dick Cheney is reportedly planning to topple the democratically elected government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki
http://www.presstv.ir/Detail.aspx?id=16701&
sectionid=351020201
Incidently, when Iran will be destroyed, Osaka might be the unvolontary keeper of the remaining historical relics of the Iranian civilization!
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=16024&
sectionid=351020105
On your side of the pond, the catastrophes are genuine; here they are staged and more deadly. And the next one will certainly be genuinely radioactive and fakely arabic.
Marc
I find television very educating.
Every time somebody turns on the set,
I go into the other room and read a book.
--Groucho Marx
Hi Marc. Thanks always for your comment. I put the presstv in my favorites. I'll see their website sometimes.
When I heard the explosive accident in NYC this morning, I thought something serious finally happened!! But, it seems that it was truly an accident. Can you believe it?
Even if it was just an accident, the timing was too perfect… Mightn't it have been a signal sent by something great?
Japan's earthquake must have been caused by nature though leak of radioactivity might have been prevented.
hello Shogo.
Even if the steam pipe explosion is genuine, the fact that the media mention 9/11 and keep saying officials ruled out terrorism for the blast, the fear factor is there and the purpose is accomplished.
The mass media are hysterical, they use anything they can for fear mongering, the true purpose is not to inform, but to disinform, their goal is to put the population in a state of fear, simply by parotting the lies of politicians. Look at this political video of
http://www.wearechange.org
in July 18, 2007 called "CHANGE confronts John McCain" after the first minute, the political reunion begins and you can hear senator McCain talk about al queda, suicide bombers, fight between good and evil, radical islamic extremism, christian ethics, irainians involved in iraq, another attack on america, everything to brainwash the public and prepare them to think what they want them to think for the next pearl harbor, this is all they hear all day long from every media. Fear mongering. So yes, the gullible public will swallow the next self inflicted wound.
There are no more divine winds now that the nuclear power plant will stay off for at least a year and they are not sure when it will be up and running, this, at the worst possible time because one of their source of crude oil (Iran) is sure to be attacked way before twelve months!
Shares of Tokyo Electric Power Co. dropped to a nine-month low on concern the company's nuclear facility in central Japan, the world's biggest, may be shut for a year after an earthquake caused radioactive leaks. Investors sold the stock on concern the company will have to switch on oil, coal and gas-fired power plants at a time when prices for the fuels are at or near records. Tokyo Electric asked six other generators to make up any supply shortfalls.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=aISahKatmLSM&refer=japan
When gazoline price exploded in the 70's it destroyed gazoline demand in the Usa and delayed peak oil for 10 years, the only positive could be the current destruction of demand for gazoline... but not without an economical crisis.
impressive summary of peak oil:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2716
This dow jones newswires is a paid news services for a small group of people working in the stock exchanges and you won't see that in the mass media, the Dubai authorities have been liying massively about the true numbers of oil production, they have peaked a while ago, their solution is to lie a lot. No wonder the price of crude oil in January 2001 was 20$ and now is close to 80$. When the war with Iran began, it will surely go above 100$ a barrel.
Dubai Oil Output Two-Thirds Below Official Figure
Sunday, Jul 15, 2007
By Matt Chambers
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
LONDON (Dow Jones)--Production of Dubai's crude oil has fallen as much as a third in the past two years and is a fraction of that recorded in some government statements, company documents show, undermining the already fragile position of one of the world's top three oil price reference points. Current output in the booming Persian Gulf sheikdom, one of seven semi-autonomous enclaves in the United Arab Emirates, is some two-thirds below the figure released by the national government, according to calculations by Dow Jones Newswires using data from the previous operators of the fields. It has fallen as much as a third in the past two years. The Dubai government took over operating the oil fields in April from a joint-venture led by ConocoPhillips Corp. (COP), which has since complained of poor financial returns due to the structure of the previous operating agreement. Daily output in the first three months of this year fell to between 65,000 barrels and 80,000 barrels against the 240,000 barrels stated on the U.A.E. government's Web site. Dubai's crude is often used as a basis to price oil exports to Asia, including cargoes from Iran and Saudi Arabia. Like blended Brent crude sourced from the North Sea between the U.K. and Norway, its relevance is under threat as supplies dwindle. To deal with this, Platts, a unit of McGraw-Hill Cos. (MHP) that assesses the price of physical oil, last year allowed crude from Abu Dhabi's Upper Zakum field, similar in its specification to Dubai's output, as an alternative to Dubai. Also, the Dubai government this year threw its weight behind a regional oil futures contract on the Dubai Mercantile Exchange, or DME, based on some 700,000 barrels a day of oil of production from neighboring Oman in an attempt to create a new benchmark. The DME is a joint venture between Nymex Holdings Inc. (NMX) and the Dubai and Oman governments. "I think DME Oman may become the benchmark sooner than we think," a trader in Asia said. "Problems associated with Dubai are certainly well understood," said John Vautrain, vice president at U.S. energy consultancy Purvin & Gertz Inc., though he questioned the size of the gap between the Dow Jones Newswires calculations and the official figures. The challenge to the benchmark isn't "unique to Dubai," Vautrain added. U.S. light, sweet crude and Brent "are still vibrant benchmarks" with high volumes traded.
Halting Decline
Dubai, which remains secretive about its oil industry, is trying to ease its dependence on crude but in April employed London-listed contractor Petrofac PLC (PFC.LN) to help stem the output declines. The oil sector accounted for 5.1% of Dubai's gross domestic product last year, down from 5.6% in 2005 and 24% in 1994. Petrofac and Dubai Petroleum Establishment, the state-owned company that took over the fields, both declined to comment. A senior oil adviser to the Dubai government, Jim O'Connell, declined to verify or reject Dow Jones Newswires' calculations, which were emailed to him. When asked about the figures, U.A.E. Oil Minister Mohamed Al Hamli referred inquiries back to the Dubai government. A person familiar with Dubai's oil production policy said: "While ConocoPhillips will have you believe it (the local oil industry) is in decline, there is still a lot of potential in Dubai's production."
No Incentives
The previous operators have said the terms of the Dubai oil production agreement, which started in 1961 and ended five years early, gave little profit. With little incentive to boost production, this has probably contributed to the decline in output at the offshore fields. Dubai's daily crude production in the three months to March 30 slid below 65,000 barrels, according to calculations using figures in corporate filings by ConocoPhillips. Filings by Spain's Repsol YPF SA (REP), a former junior partner of ConocoPhillips in Dubai, translate into output estimated around 80,000 barrels. Spokespeople for both companies backed their published figures and wouldn't comment on why they indicate different production levels. These figure contrast with an average last year of 88,000 barrels, and 100,000 barrels in 2005, based on corporate filings by Repsol and Germany's RWE AG (RWE.XE), another junior partner in the old joint venture. Its agreement with the Dubai government now over, ConocoPhillips gave its recent figure for Dubai daily production as 21,000 barrels when it released its first-quarter report this year. With Houston-based ConocoPhillips owning a 32.5% stake in the venture, this represents total production of 64,615 barrels for the Dubai fields. Production numbers for the last two years are based on similar calculations from figures in filings by Repsol and RWE. ConocoPhillips said last year that the loss of its Dubai operations "is not expected to have a material impact on our financial statements or proved reserves," indicating the little value it attributed to the Dubai oil fields. Corporate filings also show the owners of the field believed they could profitably extract less than 150 million barrels of oil between 2006 and the 2012 termination of the agreement, indicating Dubai's outright oil reserves are probably much less than its official estimate of 4 billion barrels, a level unchanged in almost 20 years. If Dubai is able to achieve its stated aim of halting field decline and could produce at 65,000 barrels a day for another 30 years, it would pump a little more than 700 million barrels of oil. The U.A.E., on its Web site, concedes Dubai's reserves have fallen over the past decade and will be exhausted within 20 years. Madrid-based Repsol, which had a 25% stake in the fields, attributed 36.6 million barrels of its proven reserves at the end of 2005 to Dubai, which translated to total proven reserves of 146.4 million barrels for the partners combined. The International Energy Agency has expressed skepticism over Dubai's official reserve figures and in recent reports estimated it at between 1.6 billion and 2 billion barrels, citing the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. The U.A.E. cited the same figure in its 2006 yearbook. The Dubai government has been privately critical of ConocoPhillips' efforts to improve performance at the declining fields. The person familiar with Dubai's oil production policy said it is hoped the industry can operate for another 30 years. The government has publicly said it expects to be able to extend the fields well beyond 2010. With neither the current nor previous operators prepared to comment on the field, it is hard to gauge what chances Dubai's government has of maintaining crude production. Recent comments from the former operators do, however, indicate the production agreement gave them little incentive to squeeze all they could from Dubai's oil fields. "The reason we left Dubai is our earnings were just $2 million or $3 million a year; we were making at best 50 cents a barrel" of oil, ConocoPhillips Chief Executive Jim Mulva said on an April conference call to discuss earnings. Repsol, in its first-quarter report this year, said its tax rate will be 40% lower this year, largely because of the abandonment of its activities in Dubai, which it says were taxed at a rate of 98%. The partners in the previous Dubai petroleum agreement were operator ConocoPhillips, Paris-based Total SA (TOT), which had 27.5%, Repsol, Germany's RWE, with 10% and Wintershall, a unit of Germany's BASF AG (BAS.XE), with 5%.
-By Matt Chambers, Dow Jones Newswires; 44-207-842-9347; matt.chambers@dowjones.com.
(Jun Yang in Singapore contributed to this story.)
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 15, 2007 02:00 ET (06:00 GMT)
Marc
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two
opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still
retain the ability to function. --F. Scott Fitzgerald
well, looks like the price of gasoline is not high enough to curb demand is the usa, so the war with Iran will help:
a government advisory group led by former Exxon Mobil Corp. chief Lee Raymond — surprised many observers by urging government leaders to help curb demand
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/energy/4980285.html
but this is welcome and might help, heh heh heh
Masked Men Smash 5-Day-Old SUV With Baseball Bats
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/07/18/national/main3070288.shtml
i'm not worried because i drive a smart fortwo, giggle!
that's even better, nice media coup, the next nuclear pearl harbor will be more believable!
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — A contract employee at a nuclear material cleanup site pleaded not guilty Thursday to charges that he stole classified equipment used in enriching uranium and sold it to an undercover FBI agent posing as an official for the French government.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/politics/4983673.html
sure enough, just after the nuclear power plant is confirm to be off for long, "Japanese industry barons" are making sure they can get a lot of coal...
Mr Obata said the companies were not looking to source their coal elsewhere but needed to know that Australian mines would meet their contractual obligations. "We rely on Australia so much," he said.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22102708-601,00.html
hello Shogo
i just listen to Paul Craig Roberts on a marginal radio station and he said more than what he wrote in his column
http://www.vdare.com/roberts/070718_wakeup.htm
Paul Craig Roberts is NOT a fringe lunatic crackpot; he was a high ranking man in the Ronald Reagan administration and was called the father of reaganomics and got La Légion d'Honneur for his works.
In a nutshell, he said the next pearl harbor is certain and after that event, those who do not comply with the autorities will be tagged an "enemy combatant". What that means in the new american legal lingo since 9/11, is that habeas corpus no longer exist!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus
All laws are irrelevant without habeas corpus because any policeman or any type of "law enforcement officer" can put you in jail for as long as they want, and there is nothing you can do about it, just like the prisoners in guantanamo bay
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detainment_camp
and the requirements to be tagged an "enemy combatant" is simply that an enemy combatant is anybody they want to. If you walk in the street with a banner that says "9/11 was an inside job" and a policeman simply decides you are an enemy combatant, he can put you in jail for the rest of your life regardless of any constitutional rights or any other laws.
It is expected that the next pearl harbor will be the perfect pretext for law enforcement organisations to silence those who oppose the authorities (by labeling them enemy combatant) and that many small alternative media will be silenced... This is the new nazi gestapo of the 21st century!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestapo
how can i put this... ...i remember a post (on an energy blog) from a guy piloting boats on the mississippi river, moving harvest of grains, and he read a book on the history of grain transport, and the gist of what he learn from it, is that the transport of grain in the world is done by a very small group of people and that it is important enough that they have an influence on governments because if they stop the grain flow to a population, that population will revolt because of hunger and any revolt are dangerous to the governments, or like when an hungry mob of frenchmen revolted and went to the palace with the intent to kill the royal family at the beginning of the french revolution.
Today it is not grain, it is oil, and the puppet masters behind the american government are scared shitless, scared of an inevitable revolt when the oil-made "western socities" disintegrate from the lack of oil. The american population will prove a lot harder to control than an unarmed society (like J), not only because they can legally own an M2 browning .50 caliber machine gun, but because there are many war veteran that posses more powerfull military grade equipment and they know how to use it. To control such a society require extreme control, and the pretext to protect the population from a terrorist attack with extreme police control is in fact to protect the ruling elite from the population, just like they need a pretext to steal the oil of Iran. All those people in control of western-like societies (dependent on oil) are playing the game of terrorism to avoid a revolution and stay in power. Their main tool is the propaganda from the mass media they control. Their are playing the citizens like a fiddle.
Marc
The least of learning is done in the classrooms.
--Thomas Merton
Good morning. Thanks a lot for your story as always.
I'm pretty convinced that the next Pearl Harbor will take place after reading your stories a lot though such a barbarous war should never be allowed...
Umm...
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