Aichi World Expo 2005 : "Japan's expo of contradictions"

A stimulating presentation of the ambivalence of the
2005 Aichi Expo :

Quotes

By Cem Ozturk

NAGOYA - Two green plant-like cartoon creatures of
Japan's long-lost natural woodlands, Kiccoro, the
"Forest Child", and Morizo, the "Forest Grandfather" -
cute and ubiquitous official mascots - are overrunning
the 2005 World Exhibition, known as Expo 2005, dedicated
to "Nature's Wisdom". That wisdom, however, has been
thwarted and perverted with concrete coastlines,
cemented riverbeds, concrete and ironclad hillsides and
man-planted commercial forests that afflict many
Japanese with tearful pollen allergies. They - perhaps
as many as a third of the population - could be weeping
for Japan.

Click the title to access Asia Times article./.

East China sea gas : Japan ready to full scale drilling

Japan will prepare to grant exploratory drilling rights
in disputed waters of the East China Sea adjacent to
where China hopes to launch full-scale drilling for
natural gas, industry minister Shoichi Nakagawa said
Friday.

His comments came on the heels of an announcement that
the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has
completed a geophysical survey that found that the two
natural gas reserves China is currently developing
extend into Japan's exclusive economic zone.

Unless Beijing releases data on the deposits it is
tapping, Japan will conduct its own test drilling for
oil and gas, he said.

The minister said: "We want China to suspend drilling.
We have repeatedly and politely requested China to
release data (on the reserves) so that we can seek a
cooperative solution (to issues) in these waters."

Nakagawa's remarks are the latest development in Japan's
ongoing disputes with China, South Korea and Russia over
rights to develop undersea oil and gas fields.

In particular, Tokyo and Beijing -- the second- and
third-largest consumers of energy in the world,
respectively -- have clashed often, as energy prices
soar.

"If China does not respond in good faith to our
requests, we must proceed to the next step," Nakagawa
said.

Tokyo will wait "about one week" after notifying China
of its survey results, then prepare to designate areas
for drilling, he said.

Japan has no exploratory vessel of its own. It
chartered a seismic ship from Norway in July 2004 for
its geophysical survey to determine if the undersea
natural gas reserves China is tapping, roughly halfway
between Okinawa Prefecture and China, extend into waters
claimed by Japan.

Chinese Coast Guard ships approached the exploratory
vessel, sending it repeated radio warnings and nearly
colliding with it at one point, according to Nakagawa.

METI officials said test-drilling at one location in the
disputed region would cost at least 3 billion yen. They
said the government plans to shoulder all costs for
exploration companies due to the high economic risks.

"This is not a project that private businesses can carry
out alone," a ministry official said. "The government
will entrust those companies to test-drill in the sea
area."

It could be months before Japanese firms begin
exploration, the officials said.

Several companies have already applied to do the
test-drilling, according to the officials.

JY & Information from Kyodo added

Japan plans satellites monitoring

Japan Education, Science and Technology ministry plans
to launch a group of satellites in fiscal 2012 to
monitor earthquakes, tsunami, volcanic activity and
other geological events in the Asia-Pacific region.

The group comprises four radar satellites and a
geostationary satellite, which would circle the Earth at
an altitude of between 600 and 1,000 kilometers and
36,000 kilometers, respectively.

If a natural disaster occurs, the radar satellites could
send images of the disaster area within three hours, the
official said. The ministry will announce the plan as
"a part of Japan's contribution to minimize damage
caused by natural disasters, such as the recent large
quakes off Sumatra, at the Asia-Pacific Regional Space
Agency Forum set for October in Kitakyushu."

The radar satellites are designed to emit electric waves
and produce an image of the Earth's surface from the
reflection of the waves. This system works at night or
in rain.

end of quotes

China & South Korea opposed to Japan UN Security Council seat

Choson Ilbo ("KOREANS, CHINESE IN MASS OPPOSITION TO
JAPAN'S UN BID", 2005-03-29) reported that grassroots
ROK and PRC opposition to Japan's bid for a permanent
seat on the UN Security Council is growing fast.

In ROK, 24 civic groups, including the Young Korean
Academy, the Dokdo Resident in Seoul Association, Korean
YMCA and Transparency International declared at an event
at the Young Korean Academy auditorium Monday the start
of a signature campaign against Tokyo's bid for a
permanent council seat.

Meanwhile, the PRC's Xinhua News Agency reported that as
of Tuesday 9 million Chinese had signed up to an online
campaign opposing Japan's ambitions for permanent
Security Council membership, and the number was likely
to rise to 10 million.

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