Japanese politicians plundered bottomless state fund

Senior Japan­ese politi­cians used a secret bot­tom­less state fund to bribe oppo­nents and help fund their elec­tion cam­paigns, it has been disclosed.

by Julian Ryall
Telegraph.co.uk
For­mer offi­cials have come for­ward to describe a huge safe in the chief cab­i­net secretary’s office stacked with tens of mil­lions of yen that they were able to hand out without [...]

FTR #689 Interview with Sterling and Peggy Seagrave

William Faulkner noted that “the past is never dead and buried. It isn’t even past.” War Gold stolen by the Japan­ese dom­i­nates the con­tem­po­rary eco­nomic land­scape; the engines of world polit­i­cal power turn in pre­ci­sion with these hid­den engines of wealth.

FTR #688 Darkness in the Vaults

Global finan­cial sys­tem pred­i­cated on tril­lions of dol­lars in wealth stolen by the Axis in WWII; “vic­to­ri­ous” allies shared in the spoils; the rule of law is totally dis­carded in order to pre­serve the sta­tus quo and the secrecy that sur­rounds it.

Defense Minister Ishiba Considers Japan’s Options in UFO Attack

by Stu­art Biggs
Bloomberg
Japan’s Defense Min­is­ter Shigeru Ishiba is con­sid­er­ing how his Self-Defense Forces could respond to an attack by space aliens while adher­ing to lim­its on mil­i­tary action under the country’s war-renouncing Con­sti­tu­tion.
Ishiba is the sec­ond Cab­i­net mem­ber to pro­fess his belief in uniden­ti­fied fly­ing objects after Chief Cab­i­net Sec­re­tary Nobu­taka Machimura sug­gested on Dec. [...]

FTR #616 Going Native, Part 3: Homeland Insecurity

Recorded Octo­ber 28, 2007
MP3: Side 1 | Side 2
REALAUDIO

Con­tin­u­ing analy­sis from FTR#550, this pro­gram looks at the use of native, “unrep­re­sented” peo­ples by polit­i­cal ele­ments that don’t appear to be gen­uinely con­cerned with the wel­fare of those pop­u­la­tion groups. Specif­i­cally, we look at a strange brew of Tibetan Bud­dhists, Mon­go­lian Bud­dhists, Islamists and Pan-Turkists working [...]

Oil Price Rise Causes Global Shift in Wealth

Iran, Rus­sia and Venezuela Feel the Ben­e­fits
By Steven Muf­sonWASHINGTON POST
High oil prices are fuel­ing one of the biggest trans­fers of wealth in his­tory. Oil con­sumers are pay­ing $4 bil­lion to $5 bil­lion more for crude oil every day than they did just five years ago, pump­ing more than $2 tril­lion into the cof­fers of oil [...]

FTR #615 Going Native, Part 2 German Foreign Policy and Its Implications

Recorded Octo­ber 21, 2007
MP3: Side 1 | Side 2
REALAUDIO
Con­tin­u­ing analy­sis from FTR#550, this pro­gram looks at the use of native, “unrep­re­sented” peo­ples by polit­i­cal ele­ments that don’t appear to be gen­uinely con­cerned with the wel­fare of those pop­u­la­tion groups. Specif­i­cally, we look at a strange brew of Tibetan Bud­dhists, Mon­go­lian Bud­dhists, Islamists and Pan-Turkists working [...]

Science museum bans DNA genius at centre of race row

Daily Mail
Nobel Prize win­ner Dr James Wat­son was this week banned today from speak­ing at London’s Sci­ence Museum after report­edly say­ing black peo­ple were less intel­li­gent than whites.
In an extra­or­di­nary out­burst, the vet­eran aca­d­e­mic, 79, claimed he was “inher­ently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social poli­cies are based on the fact [...]

FTR #613 The Socialism of Fools, Part 2: American Dreyfus

Recorded Octo­ber 7, 2007
MP3: Side 1 | Side 2
REALAUDIO
Sup­ple­ment­ing FTR#567, this pro­gram high­lights the resur­gence of anti-Semitism in the United States and else­where. [The title of the pro­gram refers to a char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of anti-Semitism by a 20th cen­tury social critic as “the social­ism of fools.”] Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance in the pro­gram is the scape­goat­ing of [...]

Strategies of Attrition (III)

GermanForeignPolicy.com[See also Strate­gies of Attri­tion (I) and Strate­gies of Attri­tion (II).]
LHASA/BEIJING/ULAAN BAATAR/BERLIN(Own report) — Last week­end, par­lia­men­tar­i­ans of the Ger­mano­phonic minor­ity in North­ern Italy (“South Tyrol”) vis­it­ing the head­quar­ters of the Tibetan “exile gov­ern­ment” in India, declared Tibet’s being part of the People’s Repub­lic of China to be “ille­gal” and called for the seces­sion of [...]