Why I Don't Go To Protests Anymore - Not Nuclear, Not Anti-War, Not Anything...

“It's just opportunists taking advantage of a trending social wave.” - Michael Distacio

There is a big concert this weekend with some very famous stars, lead by Ryuichi Sakamoto from Japan, and others from Japan and around the world at Makuhari Messe. The concert is called, "No Nukes 2012." The event proceeds will go to "Sayonara Nuclear Power 10 Million People Organization."


I'm not going to this event. No way.


For one I don't understand how running a concert and burning tons of electricity helps the problem and I don't like the idea of spending $150 a ticket... Why don't these musicians have the concert for free at a park and take donations there? And I've seen too many of these sorts of things that protest but actually mean nothing.


I'm sure the musicians all mean well (if they truly meant well, they'd perform for free - George Harrison! Where are you when we need you?), but this reeks to me of the typical modern "feel-good-protest" that we've seen far too many of in the last few decades; Yeah, yeah, yeah. In this case it's; "Let's get together and spend a bunch of money (and tons of electricity) partying, feeling good about ourselves (and acting like we've actually done something), and demanding an end to nuclear power!" 


Right on! Power to the People! Oh, and Budweiser beer cost $12 a plastic cup! What!?!!


Or is this concert just another excuse to promote, sell music, drink, and pick up on girls?


Then at night, we go back home, drink several more cold ones and watch TV and turn on the air conditioner full blast and do absolutely zero to change our lifestyle. The same lifestyle that, by the way, gave rise to an industry that produces nuclear power to feed a nation with a ravenous appetite for electricity.


I find it to be, well, frankly speaking, bullshit.


That is not to say that I think taking to the streets in protest is completely bullshit, that's much better than a concert ... But I still wonder why, if people weren't truly concerned about the environment (and I'm not just talking about the dangers of nuclear power), why they don't throw away their TV sets and turn the air conditioner off and leave it off?


Anyone who has studied the issue for more than 15 seconds knows that oil and coal produced energy are proven killers.

I helped organize a demo in front of the US embassy before the Iraq invasion... Attendance? Maybe 300... Dead Iraqis today? Over 1.2 million. And Japan even sent troops to Iraq in violation of the Japanese constitution! Think the government even cares about an anti-nuke concert? Ha! Get real!

By the way, I threw my TV out years ago and we haven't used our air conditioner at home... This is coming up to our third summer without an air conditioner at home. I might sound like I am patting myself on the back, but I am not. At the start of summer 2010, the A/C broke and since the repair bill was so high, we decided to wait until summer 2011 to fix it. Then there was Fukushima and we just decided to do without... This is 2.5 summers with no A/C. Not that big of a problem. It's hot, but not that bad...


On the webpage of the Sayonara Nuclear Power 10 Million People Organization it says:

We have always been aware that humans cannot live with nuclear. We are deeply regretting that even though we knew this fact, our protesting voices and actions against nuclear energy have been far too weak.

We are determined to take actions for a “peaceful and sustainable society”, reconsidering our lifestyles that exploit nature and waste limitless energy, and focusing on natural energy. For that purpose, we set the following goals:

1. Cancellation of construction plans for new nuclear power plants
2. Planned termination of existing nuclear power plants, including the Hamaoka nuclear power plant.
3. Abolition of “Monju” and nuclear reprocessing plants which use plutonium, the most dangerous radioactive material.

We will achieve these goals in order to save our own lives, and fulfill our responsibilities to the future children.

See? This is what I mean by bullshit. They even write, "...reconsidering our lifestyles..." Yet they have nothing at all listed on a personal level... All talk; no call for personal action or sacrifice. It's great to demand these things and to make other people sacrifice, but how about some personal sacrifice and personal responsibility? Or is that too much inconvenience for you folks?


How about adding:


4) Pledge that all our members will stop using air conditioners at their homes.


5) Pledge that all our members will throw out their TVs at home. 


6) Pledge that all our members will use only public transportation. (Sorry rock stars, you take the train home, and not limousines, after the concert - and that goes for the bosses of the, ahem... "Sayonara Nuclear Power Charity!")


7) Pledge that all our members will cut all electricity use by 30%.


8) Pledge that all our members will not litter or waste food.


Of course, we can't have people throwing out their refrigerators as spoiled food, especially in a damp and hot climate like summer in Japan could lead to massive food poisoning... 


Just like the anti-nuclear demonstrations in the 70s in California or the weak anti-Iraq war demonstrations we held in early 2003 (that I helped arrange - so ask why I am disillusioned) or the "Aids Awareness" concerts held in the mid-eighties: Everyone gets together for a few hours, claps their hands and feels good about themselves and feels like they actually did something or learned something.....


The fact is that they did nothing... 


How about some real effort and sacrifice and not just going to a concert and clapping your hands or walking down the street for a few hours only to return to a tall cool beer in time to watch the big game or American Idol on your big screen plasma TV in your most-comfortable air conditioned pad?...


"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself" - Leo Tolstoy

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NOTE: If folks really wanted to have a protest that made The Powers That Be (TPTB) sit up and take notice (and not some lame-assed concert) they'd do something real and make a sacrifice! Like how about getting 50,000 people to all dress up in black and march down main street in Shibuya or Shinjuku and gather at a big intersection. There they'd all take out their credit cards and burn them there, right on the spot. Now that would make TPTB sh*t their pants.... ...Nah, but that would be too much of a sacrifice, right? After all, there's a sale at the big department store next week, right? And every cog in a consumer society needs a credit card.... Now if there was a demo like that, I'd participate and I'd burn my credit card, gladly!

The End of Japan's Economic Golden Age: Financial Times Covers Anti-Nuclear Power Demonstrations in Japan

Who says the mainstream media doesn't cover anti-nuclear power demonstrations in Japan? The Financial Times has. This seems to me to be a very fair report.

My take on this? Japan is damned if it does, damned if it doesn't. The economic miracle of Japan from the 1960s to the mid-1980s is over. The bursting of the bubble in the mid-80s was the beginning; Fukushima is the nail in the coffin.


The protestor who says, "Japan is an earthquake prone country so building nuclear power is crazy," is correct. It is.


But what are the alternatives?


Then prime minister Noda says that its not just energy, it has to do with the entire economy of Japan; he's right too.


Finally comments are made that Japan will try to utilize more "renewable energy sources." Folks the most efficient and cost effective bio fuel resources are oil and coal by far. That being said, for every one person who has died from nuclear power (including Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Chernobyl) 4,000 have died from coal.


So called renewable energy resources such as solar and wind are expensive, inefficient, and, wait for it... rape the environment (though no where near as bad as coal or oil).


Japan has nuclear power plants that are running on technology that is 50 years old. Those plants should be shut down.... But to reject nuclear power as unfeasible is ignorant. 

Throwing out all nuclear power because we have problems with 50 year old plants is like throwing out the baby with the bath water.


How about Thorium?

Japan cannot survive as an economic power without nuclear energy. Japan is too far in debt already to be subsidizing inefficient and expensive "projects" in so-called renewable energy resources (like wasting $78 billion on renewables in 2010)... People need to eat and need to have jobs....


Since the Japanese people and government can't seem to think past their noses, this surely is, the end of Japan's golden economic era.

USA Government Hypocrisy

Do I even need to comment? Make up your own minds.

Thanks to Karl Denninger

Anti-Banking / Anti-Government Demonstrations Occurring All Over the USA

Could it finally be happening?


Are you aware that huge demonstrations are occurring all over the United States, yet these demonstrations are ignored by the mainstream media? The demonstrations grow in size by the day, yet, as I said, they are ignored.... Even as the New York demonstrations reach nearly one million protestors. This just goes to show how the mass media is all a part of the scam to steal and rob the American public blind. Now, people are fed up with being cheated and getting ripped off by the government and the big banks.... (I did, though, find one major media report just out today: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Wall-Street-protesters-Were-apf-2881190123.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=4&asset=&ccode=)


Besides these reports on the Alternative media, basically these demonstrations do not exist as far as the MSM is concerned. But, ignore them or not, people are fed up and rising up.

Karl Deninger hits a homerun at Market Ticker:

The danger, as I have repeatedly pointed out, in the government's willful, intentional and repeated refusal to put an end to these abuses is that there is a point at which the people have had enough and will simply not sit for it any more, nor will they believe they can vote for a change and actually receive that change. 


....How many people voted for "change" in 2008 yet did not receive it?

Once that point is reached civil order can be lost, perhaps irretrievably so.

Government, for its part, always seems to believe that this day will never come, no matter the severity of the abuses they tolerate by the rich and powerful, the favors they grant or the screwing they either mete out themselves or allow others to perform in exchange for some renumeration in campaign contributions.  The King of England didn't think the people would snap.  Neville Chamberlain was quite sure that we could have "peace in our time" through appeasement of bad acts by others, in his case Adolph Hitler.  In the more-recent past there was Hosni Mubarak, among others.

Likewise, both President Bush and President Obama have taken this same approach, and have even said in public that we must "move on" and not look to what happened, but to what we can do in the future.

Will this willful refusal to hold people to account for their ponzi schemes in the interest of "Wall Street" and continued pretension that we'll "muddle through" be proved correct in the fullness of time?

Or will, as this video states, the simple fact that once there is nobody left to screw an ugly reality will face those who have been doing the screwing: The man who you have screwed out of everything -- the man with nothing left -- has nothing left to lose.

I do not look forward to the day being proclaimed and looked toward in this presentation.  There is no reason for our political and justice system to have allowed the financial******of our nation and her people, not to mention that of the rest of the developed and developing world.

Anonymous - The Bankers Are The Problem

If you're of the religious sort it would seem that prayer would be appropriate at this time.

Could it be that the end of the American empire is in sight? Could American people finally be waking up? Finally? I wrote about it in 2005 in "America is Bankrupt" and people scoffed. No one is scoffing anymore. 


If things continue as they are going now, things are going to get very ugly folks. 


Make no mistake about it... These events actually started a long time ago... When the US government nakedly committed aggression and invaded a nation that posed no threat to us. That was merely the start of the most recent fire... It began long before that.


This most recent farce and naked aggression has lead led to massive US government borrowing and defense spending and wars against many Muslim nations... Wars that will suck the USA of her riches and treasures dry t the bone... These wars and the military-industrial complex that leads them has led us to the economic malaise we now face and the corruption of the government in bailing out Wall Street and the banks and the Status Quo.


The people finally see what is going on. People are mad, unemployed and, as Gerald Celente would say, "When people have nothing more to lose, they lose it!" 


It will take some time, but could this finally be the end of the US political and economic system? Could it be upon us now? I believe that we are witnessing history.

I wrote about an economic collapse of Japan this autumn (various reasons and due to Europe, USA and other western nations here). Could it be here so soon? 


I don't mean to sound alarmist, but this is a country with many earthquakes and natural disasters anyhow. I suggest that you stock up on food and water and get some gold and silver while you can. It's not like you will lose any money being prepared, right? If you have kids and do not have at least a week of water and food, then you are foolish.


LIVE STREAMING FROM OCCUPY WALL STREET DEMONSTRATIONS: http://thecritical-post.com/blog/2011/10/the-occupy-wall-street-movement-the-biggest-news-story-in-the-world-all-the-latest-news-for-occupy-wall-street-tcpchicago/

Police Start Shooting Protestors in Spain w/Rubber Bullets- Still Not News in Japan

Astounding. The peaceful demonstrations in Spain are over. The people have begun beating people and shooting them with rubber bullets. As usual, Japanese news is eerily silent on the matter. What's going on here? 

THE CLASH - REVOLUTION ROCK

Google reports that the government has sent in police in Barcelona with truncheons and they are beating peaceful demonstrators and shooting them with rubber bullets. Google reports:

Police fire rubber bullets at protesters in Barcelona

BARCELONA — Spanish police fired rubber bullets and swung truncheons to disperse anti-crisis protesters in a Barcelona square Friday as cleaning crews cleared their tent camp.

Catalan police in anti-riot gear moved in after about 50 protesters sat down on the street to block a convoy of cleaning trucks leaving the Plaza de Cataluna square with remnants of the encampment.

Police, some with plastic shields, were shown on television dragging protesters along the street and swiping with truncheons at activists, who had been chanting: "They shall not pass."

An AFP reporter at the scene saw rubber bullets fired.

The protest blockade was broken up within minutes but about 100 protesters regrouped in the square. They were surrounded by two police cordons blocking hundreds more people from entering from nearby roads.

Demonstrators chanted: "The people, united, will never be defeated!" and "No to violence!"

Cleaning crews with 10 lorries dismantled the last of the tents under police surveillance. Later, police left the square and let thousands of demonstrators flood in.

By the evening, at least 5,000 people were in the square protesting against the police intervention, some having put up tents. A dozen police vehicles were in streets leading to the square.

"What happened today was awful but it is a warning" for the country's leadership, said Ramon Deltran, 50, a psychiatrist.

I predict that this situation is going to seriously escalate and, like I wrote on May 21 in Massive Anti-Government Protests in Spain Spreading to Italy! No Mention at all in Japanese Press, the exact same thing is going on now! 

Ultimately, unemployment, taxes and austerity measures have caused these huge demonstrations that are, as one protester said, "... against the criminal behavior of the central bankers and IMF. Taking tax money from the people and giving it to rich bankers have finally made the people take to the streets...."

Yet, this news is nowhere to be found in the Japanese news services in English or in Japanese.

I predict that this demonstration in Spain will collapse the Spanish government.

There's no way unemployment or the situation with government debt, which will lead to higher taxes and more austerity measures in Spain is going to go away anytime soon, so these demonstrations are going to go on. The government, by taking a heavy hand are just escalating the situation. They are toast.

But, once again, not a word about it in the Japanese press! I checked both Yahoo! Japan and NHK and cannot find any mention of this news!

Here's a screen capture of NHK news site:

Quick translation from top to bottom:

Anti-Nuclear Demonstrations Prompting Closure of Nuke Plants

President Expected in Poland

Tourism promotion delegation sent to China

U.S. envoy continuing investigation of food shortages in North Korea 

Honda in Canada leaks personal information

The state of the last shuttle maintenance announced

"The strange quiet of territorial negotiations"

Syrian crackdown as police fire at protesters

Democratization and  assistance in the Middle East

Massive demonstrations protesting the army in Egypt

U.S. Secretary of State visits Pakistan

......Nothing about police shooting people with rubber bullets in Barcelona Spain. How about Yahoo! Japan?

Well, what do you know!? Yahoo! Japan does come through and has a story about Barcelona! (Marked in red)... Yippee... Er, well, not exactly about demonstrations and the police rousting people out like the Nazi Gestapo, but about how some soccer team from Barcelona won a soccer championship for the fourth time beating Manchester United..... .....Yawn!

Unemployment in Spain is the highest in the EU at over 21%, the entire country is about to go bankrupt and these stupid people care about who wins some professional sports title? Are you kidding me? Morons. 

Who was it that wrote something about "Bread and Circuses for the masses"? 

Massive Anti-Government Protests in Spain Spreading to Italy! No Mention at all in Japanese Press

UPDATE! LIVE FEED OF PROTESTS IN SPAIN AT BOTTOM! 

IS THIS SITUATION IS FAST SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL? MUST SEE!

The demonstrations in Egypt weren't nearly this big! In Europe, first Greece then Iceland now Spain! Massive demonstrations and protests have broken out all over Europe. There's not a word mentioned about these huge protests in the Japanese media or in the US media either! See the live feed at the bottom of this post. These demonstrations are huge and the news about them seems to be blocked all over the world!

Twitter comment about the protests from Poland

The demonstration first started out in Madrid but have now spread to Barcelona, Valencia and other cities in Spain. The Spanish government cannot withstand this pressure. 

RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE - WAKE UP

Elections are tomorrow but the protesters have said that they will continue to protest until they get what they want... I'm sure the elections will not satisfy their demands. What's next? This and events in Portugal and Italy bode ill for the Euro and the world economy. This will certainly hurt Japan's already faltering economy.

These massive demonstrations continue to grow and have turned quite ugly and violent in Greece and have now been banned in Spain (which has only served to increase their size). In Spain's case, the government has banned these gatherings, but absolutely cannot afford to send the police in and kick these people out. 


Ultimately, unemployment, taxes and austerity measures have caused these huge demonstrations that are, as one protester said, "... against the criminal behavior of the central bankers and IMF. Taking tax money from the people and giving it to rich bankers have finally made the people take to the streets...." 


Yet, this news is nowhere to be found in the Japanese news services in English or in Japanese.


I predict that this demonstration in Spain will collapse the Spanish government.


Hence this blog post.


Mish Shedlock has an excellent write up about it: 


"After passively submitting to the crisis, young Spaniards have finally taken to the street. Breaking out on the eve of municipal elections, the protests of recent days have been inspired by those in Iceland that led to the fall of the government in Reykjavik.

One morning in October 2008, Torfason Hördur turned up at what Icelanders call the “Althing”, the Icelandic parliament in the capital city, Reykjavik. By then, the country's biggest bank, the Kaupthing, had already gone into receivership and the Icelandic financial system itself was in danger of going under. Torfason, with his guitar, grabbed a microphone and invited people to talk about their dissatisfaction with the freefall of their country and to speak their minds.

A movement spawned by the Internet

But those voices calling for real democracy are not just being raised in Iceland, a country of about 320,000 inhabitants. Here in Spain, the umbrella organisation for various Spanish movements – Democracia Real Ya (Real Democracy Now) – already lists among its proposals some 40 points ranging from controlling parliamentary absenteeism to reducing military spending through to abolishing the so-called Sinde law (a law restricting on-line infringements of copyright).

Spain demonstration yesterday. This is not news in Japan!????

The demonstrations have broadened spontaneously, as was the case for those who rallied under the umbrellas of the "alternative globalisation" movements, and have evolved, one decade after the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, on a more modest stage than the one demonstrators faced in the past at the World Economic Forum of the global elite in Davos, Switzerland.

All this is happening at astonishing speed via the Internet, which has amplified the echo of discontent and opened the lanes of cyberactivism to groups such as Anonymous, notable for intervening against companies like PayPal and Visa during the advocacy campaign for Wikileaks chief Julian Assange. Yet it was also there at the beginning of the revolts in the Arab world, to help people get round the censorship of the Tunisian and Egyptian dictatorships.

“When we grow up, we want to be Icelanders!" cried one of the leaders of the organisation during the march on Sunday May 15 before a column of young – and not so young – parents and children, students and workers, the jobless and pensioners. Many Saturdays in Iceland were needed before citizens won the changes they had demanded. Spain’s first Sunday has taken place, and was followed by a Tuesday [May 17]- but there’s still a long way to go.


Protests have now spread to Italy and beyond.


Why these massive outpourings of discontent for government policies are being ignored in the Japanese press is a real curiosity. Here is a screen capture of NHK News English site. As you can see, not a word about it mentioned but there is a story of vital interest about Brazilian students sending letters to survivors of the Tohoku disaster!

CLICK ON IMAGE FOR LARGER VIEW

And here's a screen capture of the Japanese language page. Nothing about protests in Europe:

CLICK ON IMAGE FOR LARGER VIEW

Let's see: Something about the Hague Convention member states welcoming something called "the Buddha policy," Asia's largest exhibition of Naval Weapons, special trains, Japanese children in Brazil... Oh! There's demonstrations! No. No. Those are in Thailand. Nope. Nothing about demonstrations in Europe.

Quite odd, don't you think?

MISH SHEDLOCK posts this: "SOL TV has a continuous direct broadcast from Puerto del Sol in Madrid, where today's gathering has just started."

Madrid Spain time is 7 hours behind Tokyo, Japan time

More information and additional links (in Spanish) can be found here:http://www.soltv.tv/soltv2/index.html
Use Google Translate to translate any of the links. You can use a link, not just portions of text.

The summer of 2011 has started. It's going to be a very hot one too. Got gold?

Here's a map and more information about the global insurrection against banker occupation. There's even an event planned in Tokyo today!!! http://www.thetechnoant.info/campmap/ 

Egypt Riots and Made in USA... Will Japan Explode Someday Too?

I don't really want to write about what's going on in Egypt as this is a blog about Japan and Marketing... But I do feel that I need to comment as I believe that these events will have serious repercussions in Japan too:


1) I think that what is going in in Egypt and the people power demonstrations and revolutions going on all over the world (especially now all over the Middle East) will have a profound effect on the Japanese people and economy. I think these events point to what I have been saying all along: 2011 is the pivotal year for Japan. Either we default on our debts or we get hit with massive inflation - or both. 

2) The other thing I want to say is that Japan definitely needs to get away from the USA and the American Empire. America is just, as Clint Eastwood would say, "A clusterf*ck, sir." Sticking with the USA, through thick and through thin, is a bad idea. Especially since the government of the USA is stark raving mad. Japan needs independence; unfortunately Japan needs to remilitarize and needs to rejoin her Asian brotherhood as an equal partner. Japan can never do that as America's weak little sister.


The riots in Egypt show us just how messed up US policy is and just how foolish it is for Japan to stick with it... 


The government doesn't allow peaceful assembly in public places so that means that the only alternative for the people is violent demonstrations. Here's what happens when the authorities start to kill:





This will on serve to inflame the people.


The demonstrations are now taking over Europe and the Middle East. The government's response to demonstrations that start out peacefully is violence... In Egypt's case, siding with the USA is a sure loser too. Why? Because while the Egyptian authorities shoot and kill civilians... They also shoot them with tear gas and other weapons... Many of these weapons have "Made in USA" written on them.


Think that makes the Egyptian people the friend of the USA? 


Proof that gas canisters in Egypt have "Made in USA" written on them:

The people are rising up and revolting all over the world. The government's are bankrupting the people and taking our money and giving it the big bankers. Somethings got to give. 


(Read: Former Managing Director of Goldman Sachs: Egyptians, Greeks, Tunisians and British Are All Protesting Against Pillaging of Their Economies)

Egypt today

Narita Japan 1971

People think the Japanese are docile and do not revolt. It has happened before... As they say, history repeats:

Puss TV - Watch Video

Once again, I am reminded of an ancient Chinese curse; "May you live in interesting times."


My friends, we are living in very interesting times.

Thanks to Daily Bail and What Really Happened