Category Archives: Japan
Japan, officially the State of Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People’s Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south. The characters that make up Japan’s name mean “sun-origin”, which is why Japan is sometimes referred to as the “Land of the Rising Sun”.
TPP :: The treaty from hell
Obama’s Secret Treaty Would Be The Most Important Step Toward A One World Economic System
By Michael Snyder, on November 12th, 2014
Barack Obama is secretly negotiating the largest international trade agreement in history, and the mainstream media in the United States is almost completely ignoring it. If this treaty is adopted, it will be the most important step toward a one world economic system that we have ever seen. The name of this treaty is “the Trans-Pacific Partnership”, and the text of the treaty is so closely guarded that not even members of Congress know what is in it. Right now, there are 12 countries that are part of the negotiations: the United States, Canada, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. These nations have a combined population of 792 million people and account for an astounding 40 percent of the global economy. And it is hoped that the EU, China and India will eventually join as well. This is potentially the most dangerous economic treaty of our lifetimes, and yet there is very little political debate about it in this country.
Even though Congress is not being allowed to see what is in the treaty, Barack Obama wants Congress to give him fast track negotiating authority. What that means is that Congress would essentially trust Obama to negotiate a good treaty for us. Congress could vote the treaty up or down, but would not be able to amend or filibuster it.
Of course now the Republicans control both houses of Congress. If they are foolish enough to blindly give Barack Obama so much power, they should all immediately resign.
And it is critical that people understand that this is not just an economic treaty. It is basically a gigantic end run around Congress. Thanks to leaks, we have learned that so many of the things that Obama has deeply wanted for years are in this treaty. If adopted, this treaty will fundamentally change our laws regarding Internet freedom, healthcare, copyright and patent protection, food safety, environmental standards, civil liberties and so much more. This treaty includes many of the rules that alarmed Internet activists so much when SOPA was being debated, it would essentially ban all “Buy American” laws, it would give Wall Street banks much more freedom to trade risky derivatives and it would force even more domestic manufacturing offshore.
In other words, it is the treaty from hell.
In addition to imposing Obama’s vision for the world on 40 percent of the global population, it is also being described as a “Christmas wish-list for major corporations”. Of the 29 chapters in the treaty, only five of them actually deal with economic issues. The rest of the treaty deals with a whole host of other issues of great importance to the global elite.
The following list of issues addressed by this treaty is from a Malaysian news source…
• domestic court decisions and international legal standards (e.g., overriding domestic laws on both trade and nontrade matters, foreign investors’ right to sue governments in international tribunals that would overrule the national sovereignty)
• environmental regulations (e.g., nuclear energy, pollution, sustainability)
• financial deregulation (e.g., more power and privileges to the bankers and financiers)
• food safety (e.g., lowering food self-sufficiency, prohibition of mandatory labeling of genetically modified products, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or mad cow disease)
• Government procurement (e.g., no more buy locally produced/grown)
• Internet freedom (e.g., monitoring and policing user activity)
• labour (e.g., welfare regulation, workplace safety, relocating domestic jobs abroad)
• patent protection, copyrights (e.g., decrease access to affordable medicine)
• public access to essential services may be restricted due to investment rules (e.g., water, electricity, and gas)
Why can’t we get this type of reporting in the United States?
And if this treaty is ultimately approved by Congress, we will essentially be stuck with it forever.
This treaty is written in such a way that the United States will be permanently bound by all of the provisions and will never be able to alter them unless all of the other countries agree.
Are you starting to understand why this treaty is so dangerous?
This treaty is the key to Obama’s “legacy”. He wants to impose his will upon 40 percent of the global population in a way that will never be able to be overturned.
Of course Obama is touting this treaty as the path to economic recovery. He promises that it will greatly increase global trade, decrease tariffs and create more jobs for American workers.
But instead, it would be a major step toward destroying what is left of the U.S. economy.
Over the past several decades, every time a major trade agreement has been signed we have seen even more good jobs leave the United States.
And it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why this is happening. If corporations can move jobs to the other side of the planet to nations where it is legal to pay slave labor wages, they will make larger profits.
Just think about it. If you were running a corporation and you had the choice of paying workers ten dollars an hour or one dollar an hour, which would you choose?
Plus there are so many other costs, taxes and paperwork hassles when you deal with American workers. For example, big corporations will not have to provide Obamacare for their foreign workers. That alone will represent a huge savings.
Any basic course in economics will teach you that labor flows from markets where labor costs are high to markets where labor costs are lower. And at this point it costs less to make almost everything overseas. As a result, we have already lost millions upon millions of good jobs, and countless small and mid-size U.S. companies have been forced to shut down because they cannot compete with foreign manufacturers.
Later this month, consumers will flock to retail stores for “Black Friday” deals. But if you look carefully at those products, you will find that almost all of them are made overseas. We buy far, far more from the rest of the world than they buy from us, and that is a recipe for national economic suicide.
We consume far more wealth that we produce, and anyone with half a brain can see that is not sustainable in the long run. The only way that we have been able to maintain our high standard of living is by going into insane amounts of debt. We are currently living in the largest debt bubble in the history of the planet, and at some point the party is going to end.
Please share this article with as many people as you can. We need to inform people about what Obama is trying to do.
If Obama is successful in ramming this secret treaty through, it is going to do incalculable damage to what is left of the once great U.S. economy.
Wisdom From Steve Jobs On The Coming System Reset
April 30, 2014
Santiago, Chile
by Simon Black via Sovereign Man blog,
Steve Jobs used to tell a very inspiring story about an article he read in Scientific American when he was a boy:
He said that the article measured the ‘efficiency of locomotion’ of various species– essentially how many calories different animals spend getting from Point A to Point B.
The most efficient of all? Not human beings. Not by a long shot. It was the condor. The condor expended the least amount of energy per meter or kilometer traveled. Human beings were pretty far down the list.
But as Jobs recounts, the authors had the foresight to also test the efficiency of a human being on a bicycle. And this absolutely blew all the other species away.
Jobs later said that this was incredibly influential on his thinking because he realized that human beings were fundamentally tool creators. We take our situation, however grim or rudimentary, and we make it better.
There’s undoubtedly a lot of bad news in the world these days. Some people realize it. Others refuse to believe it and stick their heads in the sand.
Our century-old monetary system is unraveling before our very eyes.
This absurd structure in which we award a tiny central banking elite with the dictatorial power to control the money supply in their sole discretion is now drowning the world in paper currency.
ALL financial markets are manipulated by central banks, predominantly the Federal Reserve. One woman– Janet Yellen– has the power to affect the prices of nearly everything on the planet, from the wholesale price of coffee in Colombia to the cost of a luxury flat in Hong Kong.
Moreover, politicians in some of the most ‘advanced’ economies in the world (Japan, the US, France, the UK, etc.) have accumulated so much debt that they have to borrow money just to pay interest on the money they have already borrowed.
They have indebted generations who will not even be born for decades.
They wage endless, costly wars. They spy on their citizens. They tell people what they can and cannot put in their bodies. They confiscate private property and wages at the point of a gun.
They abuse the population with legions of heavily armed government agents. They conjure so many codes, rules, regulations, laws, and executive orders that it becomes nearly impossible for an individual to exist without being guilty of some innocuous, victimless crime.
And they arrogantly masquerade the entire ruse as a free society.
This system is on the way out. It will reset.
Like feudalism before, our system will go the way of the historical dust bin. And future historians will look back (just as we view feudalism) and say “why did they put up with that nonsense…?
This reset is nothing to fear. Human beings are incredible creatures who have a long-term track record of growth. We rise. We progress.
Your Quick Guide To The IMF-World Bank Meetings Today
World leaders are meeting in Washington, D.C., to attend a joint IMF-World Bank meeting.
Their focus? The funding available to the IMF, specifically to support the ongoing debt and bank crises in Europe.
Countries in Europe and Asia have expressed interest and even firm commitments in contributing more money to the fund. The U.S. and Canada, however, have said they won’t contribute any more cash to an effort EU leaders should be able to resolve themselves.
While we could hear more pledges over the course of the day, so far Japan, Switzerland, Poland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and the euro area have all made dollar commitments totaling $320 billion, according to Bloomberg:
Read more: BI
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- Selected Headlines from Business Insider, April 19, 2012 (jhaines6.wordpress.com)
- IMF Director LaGarde responds to move to rescind U.S. tax dollars (humanevents.com)
- IMF Exploits Euro-Crisis to Create Global Money Power (mb50.wordpress.com)
Tokyo Is Planning To Piss Off China By Buying These Disputed Islands In The East China Sea
TOKYO (AP) — Tokyo‘s outspoken governor says the city has decided to buy a group of disputed islands in the East China Sea to bolster Japanese claims to the territory, a move that could elevate tensions with China.
Gov. Shintaro Ishihara said the city is close to reaching an agreement with the private Japanese owner of three of the four islands in the group known as Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu in Chinese.
The islands, surrounded by rich fishing grounds, are also claimed by China and Taiwan. They have been a frequent flash point in diplomatic relations between Japan and China.
A collision between a Chinese fishing boat and Japanese coast guard vessels in 2010 near the islands set off a serious diplomatic spat, with Beijing temporarily freezing trade and ministerial talks.
“Tokyo has decided to buy the Senkaku islands. Tokyo will protect the Senkakus,” Ishihara said in a speech Monday at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington. “The Japanese are acquiring the islands to protect our own territory. Would anyone have a problem with that?”
Ishihara, a strong nationalist, said the idea is to block China from taking the islands from Japanese control, as the central government is reluctant to upset China.
He did not indicate how much the city would pay, but said the deal would be finalized while he is visiting the United States.
In Beijing, Liu Weimin, a spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, reacted harshly to Ishihara’s comment and reiterated China’s claim over the islands.
“Any unilateral measure taken by Japan is illegal and invalid, and will not change the fact that those islands belong to China,” he said in a statement.
Tokyo city official Tatsuo Fujii said details of the deal could not be released immediately and further discussions would be held with Okinawa prefecture, which has jurisdiction over the islands, and other related authorities.
The government currently pays rent to the owners of the four islands in the Senkaku group so they won’t be sold to any questionable buyer. It pays 24.5 million yen ($304,000) a year to the owner of the three islands, which are unused. The fourth island is used by the U.S. military for drills.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura reiterated on Tuesday that Japan has sovereignty over the Senkaku islands and said the central government might purchase them.
Japan and China also have disputes over undersea gas deposits in the East China Sea and Japan’s wartime history.
Ishihara previously helped to erect a lighthouse on one of the Senkaku islands, which a group of nationalists later replaced with a larger one recorded on navigation charts.
Ishihara’s comments about the disputed islands are also seen as politically motivated to discredit Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda‘s government, which is struggling to gain public support.
Related articles
- UPDATE2: Tokyo gov’t in talks with owners to buy Senkaku Islands: Ishihara (english.kyodonews.jp)
- UPDATE4: Tokyo gov’t in talks with owners to buy Senkaku Islands: Ishihara (english.kyodonews.jp)
- UPDATE3: Tokyo gov’t in talks with owners to buy Senkaku Islands: Ishihara (english.kyodonews.jp)
- Tokyo governor says city will buy disputed islands (newsinfo.inquirer.net)
- UPDATE1: Japan protests China’s possible East China Sea gas drilling (english.kyodonews.jp)
- Japan names 39 unihabited islands to cement economic zone (english.kyodonews.jp)
Japan: Osaka Gas Eyes U.S. LNG
Japan’s Osaka Gas is in negotiations to buy liquefied natural gas from Dominion Resources, Sempra Energy and Freeport LNG in the United States, Bloomberg reported, citing Tetsushi Ikuta, general manager of Osaka Gas energy resources and international business development.
He said that Osaka Gas may invest in planned LNG terminals in Maryland, Louisiana and Texas.
Osaka Gas said recently that it plans to purchase 7.19 million mt of LNG during fiscal 2012.
The company also plans to invest 290 billion yen (3.49 billion U.S. dollars) in LNG storage facilities and laying pipelines in five years from fiscal 2012-2016.
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Japan Eyes LNG from 3 U.S. Terminals
Japan is in talks to buy a part of the combined 30 million mt a year of LNG from Cameron in Louisiana, Cove Point in Maryland and Freeport terminal in Texas, Bloomberg reported, citing Hisayoshi Ando, director general of natural resources and fuel at the country’s trade ministry.
“Japan is facing an unprecedented crisis,” he said.
“We are asking the U.S. to consider our circumstances and allow Japan to import from terminals from the U.S. mainland,” he added.
Japan’s LNG imports reached 8.15 million mt in January, a rise of 28.2 percent compared to a year earlier.
The country’s monthly LNG imports have been rising steadily year on year, due to the devastating earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.
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Geithner to pressure China and Japan to back economic sanctions against Iran
By Erik Wasson – 01/04/12 09:52 AM ET
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner will travel to China and Japan next week to hold high-level economic talks, the Treasury Department announced Wednesday.
High on the agenda will be getting Chinese support for new sanctions against Iran, which is forging ahead with its plans to develop a nuclear weapon. Iran will also be a top priority in Japan.
President Obama last weekend signed harsh new U.S. sanctions into law as part of the 2012 defense authorization bill.
Tensions between the United States and Iran have ratcheted up in recent weeks as the new U.S. sanctions against Iran’s central bank were sent to Obama’s desk.
Iran has threatened to block shipping in the Persian Gulf in order to cause a spike in oil prices, in retaliation. China is one of the biggest customers for Iran’s oil and has shown reluctance to punish Tehran.
China’s foreign ministry on Wednesday criticized the new U.S. sanctions.
“China has always maintained that sanctions were not easing tensions, the Iranian nuclear issue has to be resolved in a fundamental way, that dialogue and negotiation is the only correct way,” spokesman Hong Lei said when asked about the U.S. law.
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“China is opposed to a country putting its domestic law above international law, by placing on the other countries unilateral sanctions. Like many other countries, China and Iran maintained normal, open and transparent trade and energy exchanges, these transactions do not violate United Nations Security Council resolutions should not be affected.”
Geithner’s trip on Jan. 10 to 12 will start off with a meeting with Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan.
In a conciliatory gesture to China last week, Treasury once again decided not to name China a “currency manipulator,” despite acknowledging that the renminbi is undervalued.
The low value of China’s currency promotes China’s exports into the United States and hurts the ability of U.S. products to compete in China. A Senate-passed bill to slap trade sanctions on China over its currency has stalled in the House since October.
Geithner will meet with Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda on his journey to Japan. Japan is contemplating trying to join the TransPacific Partnership trade agreement being negotiated by the Obama administration.
For such a TPP agreement to be completed, Congress would almost certainly need to renew fast-track trade negotiating authority for the president. That power would force up-or-down votes in Congress on any trade pact.
Related articles
- China downplays effect of new U.S. sanctions on Iran (ctv.ca)
- China opposes ‘unilateral’ US sanctions on Iran (thehimalayantimes.com)
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- France Calls for Stricter Sanctions on Iran (ibtimes.com)
- Geithner headed to China, Japan next week (forexlive.com)
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USA: Mitsui Closes Texas Shale Oil/Gas Deal
Mitsui & Co., Ltd. announced that Mitsui E&P Texas LP, a wholly owned subsidiary of Mitsui, and SM Energy Company have closed the previously announced agreement for MEPTX to acquire a 12.5% working interest in SME’s Eagle Ford property in Texas, USA.
Mitsui has participated in shale oil/gas projects in the United States and Poland, and aims to expand its shale business into other countries leveraging its global network and the knowledge acquired through these projects.
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Continents of the World
Mb50's "Liquid Mud" Rant 