IMF's Christine Lagarde Pays No Taxes - Praises Japan's Effort to Increase Sales Tax

What's wrong with this picture?


It has come out in the news today that the IMF head cheese, Christine Lagarde, while in Tokyo, has praised the Japanese government's misguided attempts to raise sales tax. 

The economy is bad enough as it is without our food prices going up 5% to boot!

Of course, with all of these government wonks, the answer is always to spend more of someone else's money (see how well it's doing in Europe, the USA and Japan) instead of cutting spending and living within means.


But the gaul of this IMF commissar, er, I mean bureaucrat! She doesn't pay any taxes at all!


The Guardian reports in Christine Lagarde, scourge of tax evaders, pays no tax!

IMF boss who caused international outrage when she suggested that Greeks should pay their taxes earns a tax-free salary.

Christine Lagarde, the IMF boss who caused international outrage after she suggested in an interview with the Guardian on Friday that beleaguered Greeks might do well to pay their taxes, pays no taxes, it has emerged.

As an official of an international institution, her salary of $467,940 (£298,675) a year plus $83,760 additional allowance a year is not subject to any taxes.

Ready to bend over and get bow-legged, Japanese public? 

The Coolest Businessman in All of Japan! More Fruits Photos!

The photos of the cool kids in Osaka and their fantastically amazing fashions featured in Osaka Fruits! Wild Osaka Japanese Fashions!  was a very successful blog post with over 1,000 page views. Thanks.


I've asked Apple if they want to make a photo book of photos taken by Apple iPhone as a project and use the proceeds to help charities related to the Tohoku disaster of March 11, 2011.


We'll see.


In the meantime, I've been wondering why the young kids should get all the action? Here's the photo of a guy I shot with my iPhone this week. I see him almost everyday and he is so incredibly fashionable dressed (in a sort of old Japanese style) that I just had to take his picture.


You can just tell by looking at this photo that this guy has some great stories to tell and would be a fun guy to have a few drinks with.....

しぶい！ "Shibui!" means "tasteful" or "stylish"

While the guy above goes to work dressed like something from 60 years ago... Here's an image that I shot from in front of my station about how the young people dress (for work) these days.

This is a guy with a banner that says, "All you can drink for ¥1,200!" (about $16.00 USD!)

What the hell, it's a job, right?

And speaking of a job, not fruits, but having a job and enjoying life! Can anyone ask for more?

Or, if you're retired, playing Chinese Chess...

Finally, "Calm the F*ck Down!" and another great T-shirt:

Oh, and by the way, screw Getty Pictures, please use these photos freely and anyway that you see fit. See: 

Destroying My Blog - I Don't Want to Be Dishonest Like Getty Images

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.

Real UFO (WTFIT?) Over Tokyo July 4, 2012 - Photographic Evidence

7/4 二子玉川に出没したUFO目撃情報まとめ！　（日本語一番した！）


Last night I was headed home by car from the radio station. It was about 8:45 pm when I passed by my train station. There I saw hundreds of people all stopped and looking into the skies and taking photographs. 


I wondered what they were looking at so we stopped the car and got out. I couldn't believe it. There, up in the sky, was a UFO... Or as I would call it a "What the f*ck is that?!" (WTFIT). 


The object was very far into the skies and it was sitting in one place and not moving about, yet it was vibrating and pulsating and slightly changing forms. The edges would turn red. This is what it looked like to the naked eye:

The object wasn't completely spherical and seemed to "wobble" (Photo by Michio Hashimoto)

The object would also, while remaining in the same place, mutate in form (Photo by Michio Hashimoto)

This blew my mind. I thought, "I've waited all my life to see a UFO. Now I've seen one! I have to show my wife and son!" So we rushed home and there, in front of my house, were the neighbors and they were staring at the object in wonderment too!


My next door neighbor, Mr. Yamawaki, is a professional photographer so he had his camera out with a super high quality telephoto lens. These are the pictures he took (at 750 x - so there's no way the naked eye could see these):

At close up, you could see why the object seemed to be "wobbling" from the naked eye: It was blinking and changing forms (Photo by T. Yamawaki)

I began to realize that this wasn't a real UFO...(Photo by T. Yamawaki)

By the time I saw this one, I was sort of sad. I was hoping that there really were aliens! That way maybe I could take the day off from work tomorrow! (Photo by T. Yamawaki)

Finally the object changed into a form like this and then, poof! It disappeared! (Photo by T. Yamawaki)

Just before the UFO vanished, my wife (being the logical one - and former TV news reporter) ran into the house and came back out with the news. She said, "Here's a news update... It's not a UFO... It's some sort of 'electric kite.' It seems to be a possible sales promotion."


"Sh*t!" I thought.... "Now I have to go to work tomorrow." Oh well.... It was great fun while it lasted.


To prove that I am not making this up, here's a story on it from Excite News:

7月4日 二子玉川にUFOが出現した!? Twitterで話題の目撃情報まとめ

本日20時20分過ぎのこと。東京の二子玉川周辺で「UFOを見た」という情報が相次ぎました。

目撃者もかなりの数に上るようで、その謎の光る飛行物体の写真が続々とTwitterにアップされています。

その情報は一気に拡散され、30分ほどでtogetterにまとめページもできるほど。

21時45分現在、トレンドキーワードのトップにもなっています。
　

こうして原稿を書いている間にもその話題のツイートが次々に投稿されており、もはや祭り状態。

私は実際に目にすることはできませんでしたが、Twitterの目撃情報によると、星の見えない曇り空なのにもかかわらず、赤や緑の光が動いていた、と主張する家族もいるそう。21時過ぎに「え、一瞬にして空から消えた」とつぶやいている人もいます。

この騒動で、駅前はすごい人だかりができていたんだとか。

「はっきり見えすぎて逆に謎」「電子凧では？」という声もありますが、最近、世界各地でUFOの目撃情報がありますし、もしかしたら本当に、とうとう（!?）UFOが東京に進出してきたのかも!?

さらに、奇しくも4日は満月。

これから何かが起こるかも、と思わずにはいられません。

と思っていたところで、望遠カメラで撮られた画像がアップされました！　デコトラUFO......束の間の話題をありがとう。

7/4 二子玉川に出没したUFO目撃情報まとめ！［Togetter］

Cool & Strange Music: Japanese Maestro on a Child's Pianica Playing Classics

This is amazing. You gotta watch this for your daily laugh... But I don't mean this is silly. It's a video of a professional Japanese pianist, Suguru Ito, playing a classic on a child's toy. This is awesome!

I mean that this guy is awesome and he's playing a child's instrument. He really get's into it at 1:30.

The description from Youtube says:

The Japanese-born pianist Suguru Ito performs his own Csardas Paraphrase for melodica solo (2009) - after Vittorio Monti's celebrated Csardas. Live in Concert at the Hotel Japan Shiga.


Suguru Ito is Japanese a professional pianist who now lives is Switzerland. I gather that he is dead serious as he performs this piece here. I love his look as he has that professional musician / madman look that really fits and is quite funny and endearing.


Thanks to my wife Yuka for finding this and giving me a good laugh and also a "Wow!"

Letter from a Conscientious Objector? What a "Good American soldier" should be doing; disobeying orders.

Recently, again, some people insist that the individual US soldier cannot be held responsible for the US militarism and imperialism and killing of brown-skinned people 24/7. I think they are wrong.


Any soldier fighting on foreign soil is a criminal. Bar none. That includes Japanese soldiers in China in WWII, German soldiers in France and the Balkans and Russia in the same war, and that includes ALL US forces stationed overseas and in combat in foreign nations.


Another commentators wrote something along the lines of "regular German soldiers were not put on trail at Nuremberg" after World War II in response to my insistence that "Just following orders" is no excuse... Nobody remember the ten thousand conscientious objectors in American who fled the Vietnam War?


By the way, the utter notion that "regular German soldiers weren't tried at Nuremberg" is completely false. There were over 1,800 Germans put on trial at Nuremberg; even lowly prison guards, businessmen, radio commentators, and magazine editors were tried at Nuremberg.


Anyhow, I got this from a friend, and thought you'd enjoy what a "Good American soldier" should be doing; disobeying orders.... Or shall we be selective in our wars and ideas? Maybe you're right! Nanking was a very bad thing in China, but not all the Japanese soldiers there were bad guys. Some of them were trying to do what is right (Yes, I'll bet there were - and they were shot if they tried to desert.)

World's Biggest Shark Captured! Weighed Over 22,000 Kilograms! (50,000 Lbs.)

Holy Sh*t! That's some sushi!

From the web page:

One of the biggest sharks to ever be officially record was found off the shores of Pakistan in early 2012. This whale shark was measured to be over 40 feet long and weighted almost 50,000 lbs.