East Asia quest for oil and gas

James Brooke NY Times ("DRAWING THE LINE ON ENERGY",
2005-03-29) reported that when Japan commissions a
survey of what is hidden below the contested waters of
the East China Sea, the PRC coast guard ships treat the
surveyors as spies, radioing warnings to leave and
shadowing the ship for days on end.

In days of sharply higher energy prices, long-dormant
border disputes have suddenly come alive for Japan, the
world's second-largest energy-consuming nation after the
US. In talks in Tokyo on Monday between Japan and the
PRC, the world's second- and third-largest oil
consumers, Japanese negotiators again demanded that the
PRC share its drilling data or drop the project, news
agencies reported. The PRC side rejected the demands
and repeated an earlier proposal for a joint venture.

end of quotes

France fears 'omnigooglisation' !

The question is : how future generations conceive the
world with the anglo saxon eye, or is it an other French
way to censure the world public from Internet access and
the raw news it contains?

Waiting for the Froggle engine research...

quotes :

French President Jacques Chirac has vowed to launch a
new "counter-offensive" against American cultural
domination, enlisting the support of the British, German
and Spanish governments in a multi-million euro bid to
put the whole of European literature online.

Seeking help: Chirac wants Europe to join fight against
Google-Print project. The president was reacting this
month to news that the American search-engine provider
Google is to offer access to some 15 million books and
documents currently housed in five of the most
prestigious libraries in the English-speaking world.

The realisation that the "Anglo-Saxons" were on the
verge of a major breakthrough towards the dream of a
universal library seriously rattled the cultural
establishment in Paris, raising again the fear that
French language and ideas will one day be reduced to a
quaint regional peculiarity.

Chirac has met with Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de
Vabres and National Library president Jean-Noel
Jeanneney and asked them "to analyse the conditions
under which the collections of the great libraries in
France and Europe could be put more widely and more
rapidly on the Internet".

"In the weeks to come, the president will launch
initiatives in the direction of his European partners in
order to propose ways of coordinating and amplifying
efforts in this field," a statement said.

"A vast movement of digitalisation of knowledge is
underway across the world. With the wealth of their
exceptional cultural heritage, France and Europe must
play a decisive part. It is a fundamental challenge for
the spread of knowledge and the development of cultural
diversity."

France fears 'omnigooglisation' will change perception
of the world and history It was Jeanneney who alerted
Chirac to the new challenge. In an article in the French
daily Le Monde, France's chief librarian conceded that
the Google-Print project, with its 4.5 billion pages of
text, will be a boon to researchers and a long-awaited
chance for poor nations to get access to global
learning.

But he went on: "The real issue is elsewhere. And it is
immense. It is confirmation of the risk of a crushing
American domination in the definition of how future
generations conceive the world.

"The libraries that are taking part in this enterprise
are of course themselves generously open to the
civilisations and works of other countries .... but
still, their criteria for selection will be profoundly
marked by the Anglo-Saxon outlook," he said.

Jeanneney drew as an example the 1989 celebrations to
mark the two hundredth anniversary of the French
revolution - which he himself was personally in charge
of. It would have been "deleterious and detestable" for
the image of France if the only texts popularly
consulted around the world for an interpretation of the
revolution were English-language ones, he said.

"It would have meant The Scarlet Pimpernel triumphing
over Ninety-three (Victor Hugo's eulogistic account of
the revolution); valiant British aristocrats triumphant
over bloody Jacobins; the guillotine concealing the
rights of man and the shining ideas of the Convention,"
he said.

Fear of American cultural hegemony has been a constant
of French policy since the first sticks of chewing gum
arrived during World War II.

The all-pervasive nature of the internet makes
protectionism impossible The country's instinctive
reaction has been protectionist, and today France
maintains a complex web of laws and subsidies to defend
its film, music and publishing industries. Only a few
voices are ever raised to argue that protectionism can
lead to introverted mediocrity.

But in the battle over what the French press has dubbed
omnigooglisation, protectionism is not an option. The
all-pervasive nature of the internet makes any attempt
to freeze out a competitor impossible. Which leaves no
alternative, Jeanneney said, but to "counter-attack".

France in fact already has a minuscule version of the
Google initiative already in hand. The Gallica project
has put some 80,000 works and 70,000 images on-line, and
is soon to make available the BNF's stock of 19th
century newspapers.

But the programme's budget is less than one thousandth
of the USD 200 million that the US corporation is
prepared to spend.

So Chirac has decided to turn to Europe in the hope that
an alliance of nations can find the finance and
will-power to fight back. With his belief in the
so-called multipolar world, it is exactly the sort of
mission that he believes Europe is ordained to carry
out.

Donnedieu de Vabres is to meet in April with experts
from several EU countries, and in May Chirac himself
will outline his ideas at a European culture week in
Paris.

end of quotes

Freeters & Neets : Fears for Japan's 'dropout' generation

Known here as freeters, many scenarii such as the Neets
one reach the tabloids. One is a pure hysterical
projection of those tabloids on the alleged lazy young
Japanese generations.

Most appropriate is the lack of analysis and
responsibility of the elder local generations who mostly
abandoned Japanese youth with the abyssal burden of an
indebted country, and a total lack of initiative, and
sense of rightness. Then, what does the society plan
for these unemployed free, disillusioned generations
when emergency crisis rings the bell? Cannon meat...?

quotes :

The number of Japanese youth lacking motivation to study
or work is growing at an alarming pace, fuelling fears
of future labour shortages in a nation with one of the
lowest birthrates in the world.

Some 850,000 people aged 15 to 34 are believed to be
neither in school nor employed as of October 2002,
according to a national survey released by the Cabinet
Office.

The number of such people – known as NEETS (not in
education, employment or training) – has jumped 27% from
670,000 in 1992, the office says.

“Many young people seem to have lost motivation to get a
job,� said Hiroshi Ito, an official at the Cabinet
Office’s youth section. “We must find ways to get them
to regain motivation and return to society.�

About 425,000 had tried but failed to find jobs or enter
schools, while the other half simply made no effort to
seek economic independence, he said.

Japan’s population has grown increasingly older in
recent decades as work demands, a shortage of daycare
and the high cost of education have caused couples to
opt for fewer children, resulting in an average
birthrate of just 1.29 children per woman – among the
lowest in the world.

Demographers have predicted the population in one of the
world’s fastest-greying countries could peak at about
127.7 million next year and fall rapidly over the next
50 years to roughly 100 million.

The prospect of a declining population has caused
concern that young workers will not generate enough
taxes to care for the burgeoning number of elderly
people.

end of quotes

Re: Europe delays lifting China arms embargo

quotes :

[LatelineNews: 2005-3-18] PARIS - French President
Jacques Chirac said on Friday the European Union was
clearly in favour of lifting a ban on arms sales to
China.

"You know the European position, it is clearly for
lifting the embargo," he told a news conference after
talks with the leaders of Germany, Spain, and Russia.
The United States wants the embargo to remain.

end of quotes

On the sales :

quotes :

French President Jacques Chirac said that lifting an EU
arms ban on China 'does not mean selling arms' to
Beijing, in an interview with the Japanese daily Asahi
Shimbun. 'I want to reassure the Japanese who have
expressed concerns,' he told the newspaper, according to
the transcript of the interview released to reporters
accompanying Chirac at an EU summit here. 'Lifting the
embargo does not mean selling arms.

Europeans have no intention of committing themselves to
a policy of arms exports to China,' he said, before
adding: 'Neither does lifting the embargo mean ending
arms export controls'. The EU arms sales ban has been in
place since 1989 when pro-democracy students in Beijing
were crushed by the Chinese military, but France has led
a group of EU countries arguing that it is outdated and
should be lifted.

end of quotes

Europe delays lifting China arms embargo

Indeed : delays is the right word.

Perfect timing, right before French president Jacques
Chirac's official visit to Japan. Media speculation on
the Taiwan issue and the "Yieldding to pressure" to US
President by EU officials is absurd. Delay does not
mean cancel. China will get security enforcing
equipments from EU, according to a specific sales
conduct code. China already gets softwares and military
equipments from Israel and Russia.

Re balancing deals?

Japan gets weapons and military equipments from US.
Besides, recent case related to the acquisition of
European made new helicopters by Japanese navy
demonstrates that the Asian market for security is now
widely opened. A pilot does not want to fly a grave but
the right plane with the proper intelligence and
electronics capability. Right?

Quotes :

"Yielding to pressure from President Bush and threats of
retaliation from Congress, the European Union has put
off plans to lift its arms embargo on China this spring
and may not press the issue until next year, American
and European officials said Monday.

The officials said that in addition to American
pressure, European nations have been shaken by the
recent adoption of legislation by the Chinese National
People's Congress authorizing the use of force to stop
Taiwan from seceding. The Chinese action, they said,
jolted France and undercut its moves to end the embargo
before June.

"Europe wants to move forward on the embargo, but the
recent actions by China have made things a lot more
complex," said a senior European official. "The
timeline has become more difficult. The timeline is
going to have to slip."

The embargo was imposed after China's crackdown on
pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in 1989,
and although some countries have eased their
restrictions, it has curbed the supply of weapons to
China while also becoming a major irritant in China's
relations with the West.

A senior State Department official said European
"signals" of a shift in position had been transmitted in
the last few days, most notably by Javier Solana, the
European Union's foreign policy chief, and by a comment
from the British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, over the
weekend.

Mr. Straw said in a television interview in Britain on
Sunday that the problems of lifting the embargo "have
actually got more difficult rather than less difficult,"
and that the Chinese action on Taiwan had created "a
difficult political environment" that had stirred
concern by both conservatives and liberals in Europe.

In Beijing early Monday, Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice said Mr. Straw's "sobering comments" reinforced
the United States' continuing concern that lifting the
embargo now would alter the balance of military forces
in the region and undercut American efforts to get China
to improve its human rights record.

Ms. Rice returned from Asia on Monday evening after
several tough comments directed at China and, less
directly, at Europeans. With tensions building in the
Taiwan Strait, she said, and China seeking advanced
technology for its navy, the sale of European equipment
would jeopardize American efforts to secure the area.

"After all, it is American forces here in the Pacific
that have played the role of security guarantor," Ms.
Rice said.

European officials say the European Union will not back
off its commitment, made last December and pressed by
President Jacques Chirac of France, to lift the embargo
at some point, but that doing so now would not be worth
jeopardizing relations with the United States.

American and European officials said internal European
politics had played a role in the timing of the planned
easing of restrictions: Prime Minister Tony Blair of
Britain was willing to go along with the move, but he
did not want it to occur while he serves as president of
the European Union.

The presidency alternates among the union's 25 members
every six months. Mr. Blair, who takes over at the end
of June, could not be seen as defying American wishes on
such a critical issue, those officials said. Some
European and American officials said action on the
embargo would probably wait until next year, after he
has stepped down.

In the past few weeks, Europeans have pressed their case
for lifting the embargo with the administration and with
Congress, arguing that the rules covered lethal weapons
but not the high-tech equipment that the United States
worries about, like equipment that could help China with
its command and control systems and tracking submarines
and ships.

A top European envoy, Annalisa Giannella, was sent by
Mr. Solana to Washington last week to make the case
that Europe would expand a "code of conduct" restricting
such equipment and set up a regime that would be
effectively tighter than the current one. But Ms.
Giannella was said to have persuaded no one, especially
in Congress.

Indeed, administration and European officials say that
Europeans have been taken aback by the ferocity of
Congressional opposition to lifting the embargo, led by
such Republican heavyweights as Senators Ted Stevens of
Alaska and John McCain of Arizona.

Mr. Bush and his top aides have been increasingly vocal
over the last couple of months in their demands that the
arms embargo not be lifted. In addition, President Bush
was reported by administration officials to have told
the Europeans in Februrary that even if he went along
with lifting the embargo, Congress would not. Congress
has been alarmed by Chinese military expansion since the
1990's, when it opposed moves by President Clinton to
expand military sales to the Chinese.

After Ms. Giannella's visit, Congressional leaders
reiterated their opposition to lifting the embargo, in
some cases threatening retaliation by blocking purchases
of European military equipment for American forces.

The senior State Department official noted that Ms.
Giannella "said she was here on a listening mode" and
was "pummeled" on Capitol Hill. "The alarm bells tipped
off Brussels that this wasn't going to work," he said,
referring to the headquarters of the European Union.

President Chirac first proposed lifting the embargo in
late 2003, arguing that it was obsolete. European
diplomats say that France is not so much interested in
selling arms to China as using the possibility of such
sales as a way to sell commercial equipment, from Airbus
planes to computers.

The European Union cannot take any action without a
consensus. Mr. Bush and Ms. Rice have impressed
enough European leaders with their stance that consensus
to move on the embargo is now unlikely.

"You won't see a backing away from the commitment," said
a European official. "But there's no consensus to act
right now."

end of quotes

North Korea threatens to build more nuclear bombs

Pyongyang continues the diplomatic gimmick...
Wire news quotes and extract from analysis on
geoeconomics by Foreign Affairs Jeffrey E Garten :

" North Korea says it will strengthen its atomic arsenal
in an angry response to upcoming joint US-South Korean
military exercises which the communist state denounced
as nuclear war games.

The North justified its possession of nuclear weapons as
establishing a balance of power to prevent a nuclear
holocaust, ahead of the joint war games in South Korea
starting Saturday.

"The exercises will be nuclear war exercises aimed to
invade the North to all intents and purposes in view of
their nature, scope and contents," a foreign ministry
spokesman told the official Korean Central News Agency.

"The DPRK (North Korea) will take necessary
counter-measures including the bolstering of its nuclear
arsenal to cope with the extremely hostile attempt of
the US to bring down the system in the DPRK though it is
the Korean people's own choice," he said.

"The reality testifies to the fact that the DPRK's
nuclear weapons serve as powerful deterrent to keep the
equilibrium of forces in the region, avert a new war and
ensure peace."

The week-long military drills come amid diplomatic
efforts to bring Pyongyang back into six-nation talks
aimed at persuading it to give up its nuclear weapons
program.

They coincide with the arrival here Saturday of US
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, on a three-nation
North East Asia tour to discuss the nuclear standoff.

North Korea declared on February 10 it had nuclear
weapons and withdrew indefinitely from the disarmament
talks due to "hostile" US policy.

The Stalinist state has since sent mixed signals on its
willingness to return to the talks, with its leader Kim
Jong-Il saying Pyongyang would resume dialogue if
"conditions" are met.

Washington believes North Korea possesses one or two
crude bombs and may have reprocessed enough plutonium
from spent fuel rods at its Yongbyon nuclear complex for
half a dozen more.

The two Koreas, the United States, China, Russia and
Japan have met three times to try to resolve the nuclear
standoff that erupted in 2002 when the United States
accused the North of operating a secret
uranium-enrichment program.

The talks made little progress, with the final round
held in June 2004. North Korea boycotted a fourth round
scheduled for September last year.

The North says the US-South Korean military drills are a
rehearsal for a preemptive nuclear attack while
officials in Seoul and Washington have said they are
defense-oriented to cement the military alliance.

North Korea's state media said Sunday that the exercises
could turn into "an actual war" and demanded they be
called off.

A US naval battle group led by the USS Kitty Hawk
aircraft carrier arrived on Monday in Busan, 450
kilometers (280 miles) south of Seoul, to take part in
the exercises.

The drills from March 19-25, involve mock battles aimed
at evaluating command capabilities with US and South
Korean troops mobilized for anti-commando operations and
computer war games.

Some 32,500 US troops are stationed in South Korea to
help deter aggression from communist North Korea's
1.1-million-strong army, alongside about 650,000 South
Korean troops.

US forces have remained in the south since the 1950-1953
Korean War. "

end of quotes

The Global Economic Challenge by Jeffrey E. Garten

From Foreign Affairs, January/February 2005

Summary: Improving U.S. foreign economic policy after
four years of neglect will require addressing a series
of problems that, if left to fester, will have grave
consequences for U.S. domestic interests and U.S.
foreign policy as a whole. Above all, the second Bush
administration must recognize that geopolitics and
geoeconomics are deeply intertwined and must be managed
accordingly.

(Jeffrey E. Garten is Dean of the Yale School of
Management. Formerly a Managing Director of the
Blackstone Group, he also served in the Nixon, Ford,
Carter, and Clinton administrations.)

Extract :

As he begins a second term, President George W. Bush
faces daunting global economic challenges. It will not
be easy to meet them successfully, for although some of
his administration's policies have been encouraging,
many have been deeply flawed. Most important, his
administration will have to increase vastly the emphasis
it places on international economic policy in general.

For the last four years, global finance, trade, and
development, and the cultivation of overseas
relationships to advance U.S. interests in these areas,
were not given the priority that they generally received
in the preceding half-century. During the Cold War,
lowering barriers to trade and investment, granting
generous foreign aid, and strengthening international
economic institutions--all in close cooperation with
U.S. allies--were a central part of Washington's fight
against communism. After the Soviet Union collapsed,
the administrations of George H.W. Bush and Bill
Clinton geared much of their foreign and domestic policy
to enhancing U.S. competitiveness in global markets and
to spreading U.S.-style capitalism abroad. During this
time, the United States had intense policy interactions
not just with the European Union and Japan, but also
increasingly with emerging markets in Latin America,
eastern Europe, and Asia.

It is no mystery why the current President Bush has
subordinated global economic issues in the hierarchy of
his concerns: since September 11, 2001, combating
terrorism and waging war in Afghanistan and Iraq have
been the primary lenses through which the administration
has viewed nearly every aspect of its foreign policy.
There has been little time, interest, or energy for
anything else. But even if terrorism remains the focus
of U.S. foreign policy in the second Bush term, as
seems likely, the United States cannot succeed in this
fight with a strategy that is predominantly military and
that fails to gain foreign help in terms of both people
and money. The United States has neither the skills nor
the resources to mount adequate postconflict
stabilization and reconstruction efforts in the Middle
East or elsewhere entirely on its own. And it certainly
does not have the wherewithal to deal single-handedly
with the massive longer-term development challenges
around the world that must be met if future generations
of potential terrorists are to feel they have a less
destructive alternative.

The need for a broader foreign policy that focuses more
attention on economic growth and development becomes
even more urgent when the interests and goals of other
nations are taken into account. Washington may be
obsessed with fighting terrorism, but economic and
social advancement matters more to most other countries.
It is on that plane that the United States must build
stronger international relationships if it wants other
nations to embrace its priorities.

President Bush also must devote more attention to global
economic policy in order to strengthen the U.S.
domestic economy. Bush has set out an ambitious agenda
for his second term that includes tax reform and the
partial privatization of Social Security. The president
will be better able to gain needed political support for
such complex and controversial goals if economic ... "

end of quotes.

JjL

RE : And now the news... anchored by President Bush!

Voltaire wrote about fanaticism in 1732

Quotes In French language :

Pour instruire la race humaine
Faut-il perdre l’humanité ?
Faut-il le flambeau de la Haine
Pour nous montrer la Vérité ?
Un ignorant, qui de son frère
Soulage en secret la misère,
Est mon exemple et mon docteur ;
Et l’esprit hautain qui dispute,
Qui condamne, qui persécute,
N’est qu’un détestable imposteur.

(Voltaire Sur le fanatisme, 1732)

JjL

And now the news... anchored by President Bush!

The Bush government produced look-alike news propaganda
clips and then persuaded television stations across the
country to air them uncritically and, often, uncut. As
many as 20 government departments have produced fake
news which stations broadcast as though they had
produced the segments themselves, according to The New
York Times. Practiced before, elsewhere too. One
difference : it is not always known or revealed by
media...

Quotes :

"... Under the Bush administration, the federal
government has aggressively used a well-established tool
of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve
news report that major corporations have long
distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from
headache remedies to auto insurance. In all, at least
20 federal agencies, including the Defense Department
and the Census Bureau, have made and distributed
hundreds of television news segments in the past four
years, records and interviews show. Many were
subsequently broadcast on local stations across the
country without any acknowledgment of the government's
role in their production... "

End of quotes

Read the article : click the title
(To access the NY Times, need to register)

Inter Korean economic cooperation moxie!

This is the sort of thing that destroys Washington's and
Seoul's Neo-Con family : The normalization of inter
Korean peninsula business and industrial links.

This also is the reality for most Korean hearts,
brutalized (say... for the recent history) by a century
of invasions.

Russia is reported to have said it is ready to flow
infrastructures in, with pipes for oil and gas, to
achieve this update on world affairs.

A world in the blue with the yet to come cynic
aggiornamento leadership on Korean peninsula.

Quotes :

"Yonhap news (2005-03-09) reported that the ROK
Federation of Textile Industries plans to set up an
office tasked with helping local textile companies
advance into an industrial complex in the DPRK, the
federation said Wednesday. The federation hoped to
establish the office in early April inside its
headquarter building in Seoul, as the public
announcement of allotment of the Kaesong complex land
comes out at the end of this month, which amounts to
50,000 pyeong in size.

Asia Pulse/Yonhap News (2005-03-09) reported that a ROK
apparel maker, said Wednesday that the first shipment of
its clothes made at the Kaesong industrial complex in
the DPRK will arrive in Seoul on Thursday. "One
thousand shirts of the casual brand 'KOOLHAAS' will
arrive at our headquarters in downtown Seoul Thursday
afternoon," the company said. Shinwon has a plant in
the industrial park near the inter-Korean border, which
symbolizes economic cooperation between the rival
countries.

Yonhap news (2005-03-09) reported that in recent public
appearances of DPRK leader Kim Jong-il, a new face has
emerged beside him -- Premier Pak Pong-ju. According to
DPRK watchers here, Pak has been rapidly rising above
traditional power holders in the DPRK's military and
ruling Workers' Party.

Yonhap news (2005-03-09) reported that the DPRK is
pushing for the modernization of its railway in the
western part of the country after completing a similar
project in the eastern area last year, the DPRK's Radio
Pyongyang said Wednesday. The report, monitored here,
said that the DPRK is also modernizing a process in
manufacturing wooden blocks used in building railways,
adding that it is making efforts to produce equipment
and parts used for rail transportation."

End of quotes

Russian oil corporation linked to international money laundering network arrest

Spanish authorities have broken up an international
money laundering network worth 250 million euros (337
million dollars) and arrested 41 people, officials said.

Among those arrested in the swoop, involving Interpol
and Europol, were people from France, Finland, Morocco,
Russia, Spain and Ukraine, among them several lawyers,
the interior ministry said in a statement.

The interior ministry said the money laundering
operation involved capital and real estate dealings by
several organized crime groups centred on the Costa del
Sol.

It said it was its largest operation ever against money
laundering, lasting ten months and involving more than
300 officers.

The arrests were first announced late Friday by Spanish
anti-corruption police, who said people had been
detained around Marbella.

Large sums of money were believed to have been diverted
from the Russian oil giant Yukos to a Dutch company and
then to one of its Spanish branches, the ministry
statement said.

Russian authorities had assisted Spanish police in their
investigations, it said.

A number of bank accounts were frozen and two private
planes, a boat and 42 luxury cars were impounded during
the police operation.

The ministry said there could be further arrests.

end of quotes