''Crime, Osprey add to Okinawan anger over US bases''

From The Guardian

''For nearly 70 years, Okinawa has gotten more than its share of America's military — more jets rattling homes, more crimes rattling nerves.

It's the only Japanese island invaded by U.S. land forces during World War II. It endured 27 years under U.S. administration, and it continues to host two-thirds of Japan's U.S. bases.''

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''Tokyo - Seoul call emergency meetings on N Korean rocket launch''

From Voice of Russia

''The Government of Japan announced the convening of the Security Council of the country in connection with the North Korean missile launch, and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak has also convened an emergency meeting of his countriy's security ministers.''

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''How U.S. Economic Warfare Provoked Japan's Attack on Pearl Harbor''

From Mises

.............'' the U.S. government engaged in a series of increasingly stringent economic warfare measures that pushed the Japanese into a predicament that U.S. authorities well understood would probably provoke them to attack U.S. territories and forces in the Pacific region in a quest to secure essential raw materials that the Americans, British, and Dutch (government in exile) had embargoed.''

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 http://us1.campaign-archive1.com/?u=bf16b152ccc444bdbbcc229e4&id=6bcd77ec8b

Japan: ''7.3-magnitude temblor triggers tsunami alert''

From Japan Times

''Authorities issued a tsunami alert for the northeast coast Friday after a powerful 7.3-magnitude undersea earthquake struck, setting buildings in Tokyo swaying violently.''

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''Okinawa Move, Key To Pacific Pivot, Will Cost More Than $10.6B'': GAO

From AOL Defense

"WASHINGTON: Sloppy number-crunching at the Department of Defense means that the official price tag to move 9,000 Marines off Okinawa to Guam, Hawaii, and Australia – already estimated at a whopping $10.6 billion – is probably short of the real cost, according to a draft Government Accountability Office (GAO) report obtained by AOL Defense.''

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''Powering up Asia's super-grid''

From Asia Times
By John A Mathews

''The integration of East Asia is a topic of perennial interest - whether it be monetary integration (much discussed in the wake of the 1997 financial crisis), trade integration (promoted via ever-expanding FTA areas) or even political integration. But what is not widely discussed (as yet) is actually the best hope for effective integration - and that is energy integration, via an Asian super grid linking the enhanced electric power systems of China, Japan, Korea, Mongolia and perhaps Russia.''

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''Bank of Japan Posts Whopping ¥233 Billion Loss As Its Soaring Balance Sheet Hits Record ¥156 Trillion''

From ZeroHedge

.................''the Bank of Japan, just reported that in the quarter ended September 30, the Japanese central bank reported an operating loss of ¥183.4 billion, and a net loss of ¥232.9 billion. As a comparison, the loss in the same period in 2011 was "only" 91 billion. This is a harbinger of the total collapse that is the utterly meaningless capital tranche of all central banks will go through before the terminal phase of the global Keynesian experiment is finally completed.''

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''The Japanese Are About To Enter The Gold Market In Size''

From King World News

.........''But it seems to me that the Japanese are close to some sort of agreement on weakening the yen.  This will spur demand for gold from the Japanese public.  Up to now the Japanese have been relatively quiet when it comes to gold, but I think things are stirring.  If you look at the gold price in yen, it’s right back to the highs from February.  So gold has had a good run as the yen has weakened.''

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''How Sony Is Turning into a Ghost in Japan and Around the World''

lets hope sony makes it.............From Kotaku

''For some people in Japan, Sony is already dead. The only question they have is how did Sony die, or who killed it, and how long will the spectre of Sony remain haunting Japan. It's a pessimistic view of the company but it's one reality in this island country.''

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''Japan's sun is setting quickly''

From Japan Times

''It's hard these days to be optimistic about Japan's economy or have much faith in Japan as the Rising Sun, a global economic power, Asia's industrial and technological powerhouse, or about any other laudatory epithets, as the country's political, bureaucratic and economic leaders determinedly squabble in a headlong rush to take the country from economic superpower to over-indebted Third World country.''

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''China Slams Dalai Lama as Tibetans Self-immolate''

From The Irrawaddy

''China accused the Dalai Lama of allying with Japanese right-wingers in an island dispute as a way of attacking China and blamed him for glorifying a wave of self-immolations among Tibetans. The comments came as state media reported two more Tibetans died after setting themselves on fire.''

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''The US 'rape of Okinawa' continues''

From Digital Journal
By Brett Watkins

''The alleged rape of an Okinawan woman by two American sailors is but the latest in a string of literally thousands of crimes committed by US troops on the small Japanese islands over the past seven decades.

Okinawans have been trying in vain to get the Americans to leave their little corner of Japan for generations. 

In 1945 a farmer armed only with a bamboo pole was shot dead as he attempted to protect his land from US forces. Okinawan property was seized at gunpoint; homes and farms were bulldozed or burned. The Americans promised Okinawans good farm land and financial assistance if they would only move halfway around the world to Bolivia. Thousands took them up on their offer only to find themselves shipped off to an inhospitable wilderness where many died from disease. They never saw a penny of the promised money.''

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''Japan’s Coming Political Earthquake''

From ISN Blog

''Japan is now confronting challenges at home and abroad that are as serious as any it has had to face since World War II’s end. Yet the Japanese public is displaying remarkable apathy. The country’s two major political parties, the governing Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) recently chose their leaders, yet ordinary Japanese responded with a collective shrug. But Japan’s political system is unlikely to remain a matter of popular indifference for much longer.''

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''China’s IMF boycott undermines quest for clout''

From Reuters
By John Foley

''If China wants a bigger say at the IMF, boycotting the fund’s meeting in Japan is the wrong way to get it. The head of the central bank, Zhou Xiaochuan, withdrew on Oct. 10, amid a territorial dispute between the two countries. Yet the IMF is supposed to be about finance, not border politics. If China doesn’t agree, maybe it isn’t ready for a bigger role.''

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''Disposable Fukushima workers, “One person can only work for 30mins a day, 20 days a month, one month a life”

From Fukushima Diary

''About the workers in reactor buildings, it’s like “Run and climb up to there to get the stuff.”
About the workers in water purifying equipment, it’s like “You see the lever there right. Run to get it here.”
Because the radiation dose is too high, we can work only momentarily.
When contaminated water is leaking, we have to use remote controlling robots, but we have to prepare for it and get things back to be like before after using the robot.
We can’t work for longer than 20 ~ 30 minutes. We need more workers.
It can’t progress.
Because we always need new workers, it goes really slow.''

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''Ospreys Over Okinawa''

From CounterPunch
by KAMADOU GWA NO TSUDOI

''To our Brothers and Sisters in the US Marines,

When you joined the Marines, maybe you thought you could help propagate, or protect, democracy in the world.

Now is a good time to think about democracy in Okinawa.

On the question of whether to bring the Osprey to Okinawa, do we Okinawans have a right to participate in that decision?  After all, this is our island, and the sky over it, which the Osprey will be flying through, also belongs to us.  Is it democratic for the US and Japan to decide to bring it in, ignoring the Okinawans?''

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''Okinawa Protests Explode''

From Japan Focus

''Okinawa, host to 25% of the American military facilities in Japan despite making up only 0.6% of the country’s land mass, is currently in the throes of some of the largest protests that the prefecture has ever seen''

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''Kissinger played key role in giving Diaoyutais to Japan''

From Phantom Report

''Asahi Shimbun, one of Japan’s five major newspapers, has offered evidence that the United States illegally handed over the disputed Senkaku (Diaoyu or Diaoyutai) islands over to Japanese administration along with Okinawa in 1972 by citing two declassified CIA reports, according to Duowei News, an outlet operated by overseas Chinese.

The two reports, regarding natural resources beneath the islands and the sovereignty dispute between China, Japan and Taiwan, were completed before the signing of Okinawa Reversion Agreement on Jun. 17, 1971. Though the Republic of China on Taiwan was at the time desperately trying to gain support from both the US and Japan to keep its seat at the United Nations, it was more aggressive than the People’s Republic of China to demand the return of the Diaoyutais, as Taiwan refers to the islands. The report indicated that the armed forces of the ROC might launch an amphibious assault against Japan if the sovereignty of the disputed islands was turned over to Tokyo.''

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''Power Struggle In East Asia''

From Eurasia Review

''The China-Japan conflict over the sovereignty of Diaoyu/Senkaku chain of islands in the East China Sea is almost over a month old now. Such confrontations are not new. But none before lasted so long. This time, the two countries clashed at the highest level. Both have started gathering support from friendly countries to their point of view. Neither side is willing to stand down even an inch. Full military show of flag has come into play.''

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''Pew unveils the US-China pantomime''

a must read...........From Indian PunchLine
By MK Bhadrakumar

''The real winner of the Daiaoyu/Senkaku tensions of the past few weeks is of course Washington. It utilized the developing tide of nationalism in Japan to get away with the deployment of the anti-ballistic missile defence system [BMD] on Japanese soil. It’s a first-class scoop. With this, the US’ BMD arc around Russia is further tightening. 

The BMD deployment in Japan is supposedly against North Korea’s missiles, while Russian commentators insist it is against China, but in reality, it is part of the US’ global strategy to establish nuclear superiority, which entails deflating Russia’s assertions of keeping a global strategic balance with the US despite its loss of superpower status. ''

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