Kim Dotcom

A somewhat surprising article, coming as it does from Paul Holmes

Paul Holmes: One more episode of official incompetence

NZ Herald,

30 September, 2012

By Paul Holmes

With the Prime Minister's abject and humiliating apology to Kim Dotcom for the behaviour of the GCSB - the spy agency that the PM is supposed to oversee - the entire Dotcom saga has descended into farce.

I do not believe for a minute it was human error. Too many humans were involved. Dotcom spent half a million on fireworks to celebrate his residency. Rather, GCSB broke the law because they're spooks and spooks only ever acknowledge the law in order to disregard it.

The Crown has made a dick of itself at every turn. So far, nothing has stuck.

What's worse, the officials from every government agency involved - the police, Crown Law and the all-powerful spy pooh-bahs at GCSB - have bent over backwards to please the FBI and betray a man who has the rights of an official resident of this country.

The Crown case is in tatters. On and on it goes. What happened to a man's right to quick justice? I shouldn't think it long before the judge, who does not appear frightened of anyone, throws the whole affair out of court.

What an indecent display it's been, right from the get go when the cops got that helicopter out and put the ninja suits back on for the raid on the man who, from what I know of him, would probably have come to the front door if they'd only knocked.

I say this because recently I spent a couple of hours talking to Kim Dotcom. I suspect he is a genius. He is also very nice.

I don't think he set out to make the Government look foolish. The Government's done that to itself. The spy agency was quite unmindful of civil liberties.

Paul Davison, QC, Dotcom's lawyer, implied darkly the other day that they had information that GCSB was poking its nose into Dotcom's affairs much earlier than it has admitted.

Everything the Crown has taken to court has been thrown out. Davison is fighting every inch of this case with the steely patience and understanding of the judicial system for which he is justly famous.

I know him quite well personally, and have studied the brilliant work he performed at the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Erebus disaster more than 30 years ago.

New Zealand officialdom has a history of corruption and covering up. And Erebus is a shining example. I recently spent a couple of years researching it. The departmental inquiry into the accident was malevolent in the blame it levelled at the dead pilots. Never mind that certain staff at the airline had been incompetent in the hours before the disaster. What did it matter? The crew were dead. They could take the blame. That's all it was about.

Think of Peter Ellis and the Christchurch creche case, where the official world was captured by the nuts and the Christians. Think of the electrocution of children at Lake Alice many years ago. Think of Freyburg and his incompetence at Crete which cost the island its freedom, something covered up by the army and the government for more than half a century.

Think of the "unfortunate experiment" at National Women's and how the medical establishment covered for those arrogant old men and how getting the truth was like pulling teeth.

I recall Joe Karam describing to me the obstruction he received from the police when he was researching the Bain case. They did everything they could to stymie him.

What about Crown Law and the Ureweras?

And what about Crown Law advising the police to make a ninja entry to the Dotcom mansion that we now know was illegal. Any apology yet?

GCSB broke the law and encouraged the Deputy Prime Minister to do the same. Any heads rolling yet?

My colleague Fran O'Sullivan wrote that she gets sick of Dotcom's buffoonery making fools of our politicians. I think it's the other way round.

Our officials are buffoons. And I think Key took his eye seriously off the ball and for the first time since he was elected Prime Minister he will take a hit. As regards the principal charge against Dotcom, that he steals copyright, he denies it, of course, and when you think about it he's only done what thousands of others are doing all around the world.

A man spends years building a $2.5 billion international internet business in broad daylight and suddenly the FBI come panting to New Zealand that this man has to be dragged off the street and locked away.

And the New Zealand Government can't wait to do everything it can to help, even if it means betraying its own people.

Dotcom is not only likeable, he's becoming a folk hero.

And he's hired a lawyer who's the smartest in the land.

Iran

Iran’s Imminent Nuclear Weapon

John Aziz

Zero Hedge

29 September, 2012

Here’s some context behind the claims that Iran will imminently possess a nuclear weapon.

It started a long time ago (but not, unfortunately, in a galaxy far, far away):

1984: Soon after West German engineers visit the unfinished Bushehr nuclear reactor, Jane’s Defence Weekly quotes West German intelligence sources saying that Iran’s production of a bomb “is entering its final stages.”US Senator Alan Cranston claims Iran is seven years away from making a weapon.

Seven years away? And did they have a bomb in 1991?

1992: Israeli parliamentarian Binyamin Netanyahu tells his colleagues that Iran is 3 to 5 years from being able to produce a nuclear weapon – and that the threat had to be “uprooted by an international front headed by the US.”

 

1992: Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres tells French TV that Iran was set to have nuclear warheads by 1999.“Iran is the greatest threat and greatest problem in the Middle East,” Peres warned, “because it seeks the nuclear option while holding a highly dangerous stance of extreme religious militancy.”

 

1992: Joseph Alpher, a former official of Israel’s Mossad spy agency, says “Iran has to be identified as Enemy No. 1.” Iran’s nascent nuclear program, he told The New York Times, “really gives Israel the jitters.”

So was there a bomb by the late 1990s?

1995: The New York Times conveys the fears of senior US and Israeli officials that “Iran is much closer to producing nuclear weapons than previously thought” – about five years away – and that Iran’s nuclear bomb is “at the top of the list” of dangers in the coming decade. The report speaks of an “acceleration of the Iranian nuclear program,” claims that Iran “began an intensive campaign to develop and acquire nuclear weapons” in 1987, and says Iran was “believed” to have recruited scientists from the former Soviet Union and Pakistan to advise them.

 

1997: The Christian Science Monitor reports that US pressure on Iran’s nuclear suppliers had “forced Iran to adjust its suspected timetable for a bomb. Experts now say Iran is unlikely to acquire nuclear weapons for eight or 10 years.“

So now we’re looking at a nuclear-armed Iran by 2007. Scary stuff, right?

2007: President Bush warns that a nuclear-armed Iran could lead to “World War III.” Vice President Dick Cheney had previously warned of “serious consequences” if Iran did not give up its nuclear program.

 

2007: A month later, an unclassified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran is released, which controversially judges with “high confidence” that Iran had given up its nuclear weapons effort in fall 2003.

 

June 2008: Then-US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton predicts that Israel will attack Iran before January 2009, taking advantage of a window before the next US president came to office.

 

May 2009: US Senate Foreign Relations Committee reports states: “There is no sign that Iran’s leaders have ordered up a bomb.”

And Iran still doesn’t have a bomb today — all of those reports, all of that scaremongering and warmongering was wrong. Both the CIA and Mossad agree that there is no specific evidence that Iran is working on nuclear weapons today. And many experts believe that even if Iran were working on a bomb it could take up to ten to fifteen years.

Yet, it seems that nothing except a war will satisfy Binyamin Netanyahu, who felt the same way about Iraq:

There is no question whatsoever that Saddam is working towards nuclear weapons.

And how did that work out? A hugely expensive war and occupation, American imperial overstretch, thousands of dead soldiers, hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis and no weapons of mass destruction. We should judge people on their predictive record.

On one level, I understand Netanyahu’s paranoia especially in the context of the 20th Century and

the holocaust. Iranian Generals have talked about annihilating Israel.

In August 2012, Brigadier General Gholam Reza Jalali, who heads Iran’s Passive Defence Organisation, said “No other way exists apart from resolve and strength to completely eliminate the aggressive nature and to destroy Israel.”  And just six days ago in September 2012 Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh threatened to attack Israel and trigger World War III, saying that “it is possible that we will make a pre-emptive attack” which would “turn into World War III.” In the same statement, Hajizadeh threatened to attack American bases in the Middle East as well. Hajizadeh said that as a result of this attack, Israel would “sustain heavy damage and that will be a prelude to its obliteration.”

All disturbing rhetoric, yet almost certainly baseless threats given the context of Iran’s technological and military disadvantage. Iranian missiles fired at Israel would likely be shot down long before they reached Israeli airspace by Israel’s advanced missile defence systems that can intercept even short-range fire from Gaza and Lebanon. And Israel’s nuclear submarines in the Persian Gulf would almost certainly retaliate in kind. As Shimon Peres noted in 2006: “The President of Iran should remember that Iran can also be wiped off the map.” Most importantly, if Iran attacked Israel, it seems far less likely that other powers would come to Iran’s aid.

Yet an attack on Iran by Israel could well trigger a larger conflict, sucking in Iran’s trade partners who do not want to see the flow of oil and resources out of Iran disrupted. Just this week China announced new contracts to provide super-tankers to deliver oil from Iran to China. Would Russia and China sit idly by and see their Iranian investments liquidated while America and Israel invade Iran and destroy its infrastructure? Would they sit idly by and see their ally deposed? China and Pakistan have both hinted that they could defend Iran if Iran were attacked. An attack on or invasion of Iran is an incredibly risky adventure — and in my view the real danger to Israel. And for what? To discover that like Saddam Hussein, Ahmadinejad is not working on a nuclear weapon, and all the hot air about weapons of mass destruction is once again just bullshit?

Police brutality in Spain

Spain reels at violent tactics by riot police

Officers lash out at passengers and austerity protesters as they storm into Madrid rail station

The Guardian

29 September, 2012

The middle-aged man sitting on a railway station bench protects a younger man by wrapping his arms around him as he shouts desperately at the helmeted, baton-wielding police officers running up and down the platforms at Madrid's Atocha station.

"Shame on you! Shame on you! Shame on you!" he bellows repeatedly in a video that shows how police charged into the station during violent demonstrations that shook Madrid last week.

On the other side of the ticket barrier a younger man is whacked with truncheons by two policemen. "I don't know whether he is a passenger or a protester," one of them admits. A third man who was waiting for a train is bundled down the platform by police officers as he asks: "And what have I done?" A youth points to blood running down his face. "What the hell is this?" he asks.

On Friday, police told a judge they had needed to chase a group of violent protesters across the railway tracks and had later arrested some in a nearby bar. They, too, had suffered injuries. "People who had been hurling stones at police tried to hide in the station, passing themselves off as normal passengers," a spokesman said. "We had to go in."

As Spaniards respond with dismay to the violence shown by demonstrators, who launched attacks on police, and the response of some riot police, during scuffles in the area around Madrid's parliament building last week, the long-running drama of the country's deflating economy has lurched into a newly confrontational stage, amid fears that there will be more violence to come.

While police and the conservative government of prime minister Mariano Rajoy were accused of authoritarian behaviour, radical protesters from both the far left and the far right were putting a hard, street-fighting edge on to the once peaceful protests of the civilised but ineffectual indignados.

Cristina Cifuentes, the government delegate in Madrid, had warned before the protests that they were being infiltrated by violent members of Spain's far right and were attracting the country's most radical leftwingers. But protesters later pointed to a group of undercover policemen who, they claimed, had been at the front of the protest waving red flags and encouraging others to violence.

Other police certainly thought their undercover colleagues were troublemakers, and there is also film of one of them being dragged out of the crowd to be arrested and shouting: "I am a colleague! I am a colleague!"

On Saturday, a 72-year-old man was among some 30 demonstrators who had been accused of attacking police and given bail. "But I was sitting down when they arrested me," he said.

The radicalisation came amid worries that the ratings agency Moodys would downgrade Spain's creditworthiness, reigniting the pressure on its debt and sending the interest rates that it must pay spiralling up again.

Ministers have said that €10bn (£8bn) of cuts and tax increases must come in next year's budget just to cover a leap in interest payments. On Friday night, they said a coming round of bank bailouts, paid for by the eurozone rescue fund, would send the country's debts soaring by some €50bn. Spending is to be cut by 7% next year, bringing another wave of cuts in health, education and other welfare services. Yesterday, Spain's civil servants heard that, for the third year running, their wages were being frozen.

A period of calm in Europe's more troubled economies created by the European Central Bank president Mario Draghi, when he announced plans to buy the debt of countries who asked for bailouts in the future, also seemed to have come to an end. And with the threat of Catalan separatism adding to worries about Rajoy's ability to control events in Spain, many now expect him to ask for a full bailout for the country – placing it in the hands of those who have forced Greece, Portugal and Ireland into round after round of spending cuts.

Budget minister Cristóbal Montoro presented an austerity budget to parliament on Saturday, with analysts widely seeing it as an attempt to pre-empt the conditions that Spain would have had imposed on it anyway for the bailout. "Reducing our budget deficit is essential," he said.

With unemployment at 25%, however, and the economy already set to shrink for the next two years, Spaniards see no end to the tunnel of misery.

Iranian response to Netanyahu

A pretty reasonable response to Netanyahu's UN tirade I would have thought.

Israel has long crossed nuclear red line: Iran's Vahidi

Iran’s Defense Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi says Israel has long crossed the red line with regard to its nuclear program by possessing dozens of nuclear weapons.

Press TV,

29 September, 2012

“If having nuclear bomb is crossing the red line, the Zionist regime [of Israel], which has dozens of nuclear warheads and various kinds of weapons of mass destruction, has crossed the red line years ago and should be dealt with,” Vahidi said on Saturday.

“An occupier and aggressive regime like the Zionist regime [of Israel] which possesses nuclear weapons and threatens to launch military attack is more dangerous, or Iran which has no nuclear weapons, and stresses the necessity of nuclear disarmament?”

“If American and other Western authorities truly seek to avert threats against the region and the world, they must mount pressure on the dangerous regime of Israel through cutting ties with the regime and imposing sanctions on it until all its weapons of mass destruction are destroyed,” Vahidi added.

Netanyahu told the annual session of the UN General Assembly on Thursday that the world has to set a "red line" on Iran's nuclear program.

He said that line would be the enrichment of uranium that could be used to manufacture nuclear weapons. If that line is crossed, the Israelis say the world will have to take military action to stop Iran from building nuclear weapons.

The United States, Israel and some of their allies have repeatedly accused Iran of pursuing non-civilian objectives in its nuclear energy program with the Israeli regime repeatedly threatening Tehran with a military strike to force Iran to halt its nuclear energy work.

Iran rejects the allegations and Iranian officials have promised a crushing response to any possible attack on the country’s nuclear facilities. winds of around 241 kilometers per hour – as it moved towards Taiwan. Jelawat maintained its intensity as it lingered for a few days south-southwest of Okinawa, Japan.

On September 28, Jelawat had maximum sustained winds nearing 204 kilometers per hour, making it a category three typhoon. The storm is expected to weaken further before reaching Japan's mainland.

Typhoon hits Japan

65 injured as Typhoon Jelawat churns towards Japanese mainland

Typhoon Jelawat inched closer to the Japanese mainland on Saturday, the country's national weather agency said. The storm battered the southern Okinawa and Kagoshima prefectures, injuring dozens and leaving hundreds of thousands without power.

RT,

29 September, 2012

Violent winds of up to 234 kilometers per hour injured at least 65 people. Over 331,000 households suffered power outages, Russia’s RIA-Novosti news agency reported. 

 

Online video showed that the destructive gusts have flipped over cars, overturning a four-ton truck in Okinawa's Naha City and blocking a main road, adding to traffic chaos.

Flights and ferries in the region were canceled.

Japan's Meteorological Agency reported the typhoon is moving northeast towards Tokyo at a speed of 30 kilometers per hour, with gusts and heavy rains expected in the Japanese capital on Sunday and Monday. By that time, Jelawat is expected to weaken and become a low-end (category 1) storm.

On September 20, a NASA satellite tracked Tropical Storm Jelawat forming in the northwest of the Pacific Ocean. Jelawat began as a tropical depression, and later intensified into a tropical storm east-southeast of Manila, Philippines. The cyclone slowly tracked west-northwestward over the previous weekend, bringing rains and gusty winds to the Philippines.

Three days later, the cyclone intensified into a category four storm on the Saffir-Simpson scale – a powerful 'super typhoon' with maximum sustained winds of around 241 kilometers per hour – as it moved towards Taiwan. Jelawat maintained its intensity as it lingered for a few days south-southwest of Okinawa, Japan.

On September 28, Jelawat had maximum sustained winds nearing 204 kilometers per hour, making it a category three typhoon. The storm is expected to weaken further before reaching Japan's mainland.

Huge rally in Pakistan

Make no mistake.  This is not just about an insult to the Islamic faith.  This is about America and American power, about drones and violation of sovereignty

'Our beloved Prophet is our honor!': Thousands rally in Pakistan against anti-Islam video

Over 15,000 people flooded the streets of Karachi, Pakistan, for a rally against the US-made 'Innocence of Muslims' video. The amateurish clip mocking the Prophet Muhammad sparked two weeks of protest in Pakistan, during which over 20 people died.

RT,

29 September, 2012

Demonstrators filled the streets of the southern Pakistani port city, waving Islamic flags and banners and chanting “Down with America!” Hundreds of police were deployed to monitor the scene.

Speakers at the rally slammed the US for refusing to outlaw the video clip despite persistent demands from Muslim countries. Both American leaders and Google – the company that owns the video website YouTube that is the main platform for the 14-minute trailer – said the clip cannot be banned outright, as this would violate freedom of expression laws.

“We strongly condemn this anti-Islam movie, it is a criminal act,” prominent Muslim cleric Mufti Muneebur Rehman said during the Karachi rally.

Muslim clerics at the rally said that while they support freedom of expression, the West should respect the Muslim community’s sentiments and stop promoting hatred towards Islam. They demanded that the video be removed from YouTube entirely.

Also a target of ire at the rally were caricatures of Prophet Mohammed published in France in the wake of massive anti-film rallies around the world. Demonstrators called on Western nations not to permit blasphemous acts, especially for the sake of monetary gain.

The rally was organized by moderate Sunni groups, and took place despite a three-day ban on protests ordered by authorities. Over 20 people died at similar rallies in recent days. On Friday, clashes between police and protesters broke out in front of the American embassy in Islamabad after demonstrators burned an American flag and portraits of US President Barack Obama.

An exception was made for the Saturday march in Karachi, which wrapped up peacefully, after religious leaders promised authorities the rally would be nonviolent.

Meanwhile, Pakistani leaders tabled a declaration at the annual meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York City. The document, which the OIC adopted, decried a rise in Islamophobia under the “pretext of freedom of expression” and called for an international ban on sacrilegious acts. 

 

Islamabad’s official position sharply contrasted with calls issued by Pakistani Federal Railways Minister Ghulam Ahmed Bilour, who refuses to withdraw a $100,000 bounty he offered for the killing of the 'Innocence of Muslims' filmmaker. On Saturday, Bilour reaffirmed his position and threatened further bounties on those who commit future acts of blasphemy. The Pakistani government was quick to clarify that Bilour's position did not represent government policy.

The protests, which broke out over two weeks ago, appear to be waning in every country in the Muslim world except for Pakistan, with more demonstrations expected later on Satuday. Clerics called on protesters to remain peaceful, as violence mars the country’s image. The chair of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, was forced to cancel his visit to Islamabad due to the protests.

'Innocence of Muslims,' which so far has only been released as a trailer, initially sparked protests in Egypt, where an infuriated mob assaulted the US embassy in Cairo. Protest then spread to other Muslim nations, and countries with prominent Muslim minorities: Yemen, Tunisia, Bangladesh, Indonesia, India, Malaysia, Iran as well as France, Belgium, the UK and elsewhere 

 

Protests were often staged in front of the countries' US diplomatic missions, forcing them to shut down operations. More than 50 people died and hundreds more were injured in the rallies, which often erupted in violence.

Official Sinophobia

Chinaphobia: Obama blocks Chinese wind farm over nearby drone base, citing 'national security'

For the first time in 22 years, a US President has ordered a foreign company to abandon an American investment. President Obama blocked a Chinese company from developing a wind farm in Oregon, citing its proximity to a naval base that tests drones.

RT,

29 September, 2012

On Friday, Obama ordered Ralls Corporation, a company owned by Chinese nationals, to liquidate its holdings in a wind farm purchased earlier this year. The US President justified the decision through a rarely used authority provided to his office by the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States (CFIUS). Ralls is connected to the Sany Group, China’s largest construction equipment manufacturer. The wind farm in question was slated to be built near the Naval Weapons Systems Training Facility in northern Oregon, which has been used as a testing ground for US fighter jets and drones.

The CFIUS revealed their investigation into Ralls in September, after it announced its purchase of local assets earlier this year with the stated intent of developing the wind farms. Ralls did not voluntarily report its purchase to the CFIUS, but the committee has the authority to review all foreign purchases in the US.

On Friday, President Obama shut the project down: "There is credible evidence that leads me to believe" that Ralls, Sany and the two Sany executives who own Ralls "might take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States," Obama said in statement accompanying the order.

Neither the White House nor the CFIUS specified the nature of the alleged national security risks.

Presidential intervention based on CFIUS reports is rare. The last time a US President intervened was in 1990, when President George H. W. Bush voided the sale of Seattle-based MAMCO Manufacturing to a Chinese agency.

The move comes at a risky time for US-China trade relations, and also during the run-up to the US presidential election in November. Obama’s opponents have criticized him as being soft on China, and the order could be a way for Obama to deflect those charges by appearing tough on China in a one-time decision, without setting a precedent that could damage trade relations.

“The President’s action demonstrates the Administration’s commitment to protecting national security while maintaining the United States’ longstanding policy on open investment,” the US Treasury Department said in a statement following the order. “The President’s decision is specific to this transaction and is not a precedent with regard to any other foreign direct investment from China or any other country.”

The Treasury Department’s statement claimed that “The wind farm sites are all within or in the vicinity of restricted air space.” However, Ralls was quoted in a Reuters report as saying that only one of its four wind farms are in restricted airspace, despite the blanket order by the CFIUS for Ralls to divest itself of all four sites. Lawyers representing Ralls also argued that a Danish and a German company both operate wind farms in the area as well.

“The project poses no national security threat whatsoever, and the President's order offers no explanation otherwise,” Ralls' lawyer Tim Kia said in a statement. “The president's order is without justification, as scores of other wind turbines already operate in the area where Ralls's project is located."

The Chinese company now has 90 days to divest itself of all its holdings in the four projects.

Japan

The Pauperization Of Japan

Wolf Richter

Testosterone Pit,

28 September, 2012

“Pauperization,” the word, became infamous when three executives of huge consumer products companies voiced it as the new challenge in Europe. To market their products successfully, they changed their commercial strategies and applied what worked in poor countries [The “Pauperization of Europe"]. In Japan, a similar process has hounded the economy, but for much longer. And nothing shows this better than the plight of the ubiquitous but hapless “salaryman.”

 

He is a cultural phenomenon. He enters the formidable corporate hierarchy upon graduation and struggles within it till retirement. Most of the time, the career trajectory flattens sooner or later. Often enough the aging salaryman is shuffled aside to a “window job” where he might not even have the tools to work, such as a phone.

His life is defined by commutes in packed trains and long hours at work. After work, at restaurants and bars, the informal part of work begins with clients or coworkers to hash out inter-office issues, price differences, design problems, or product failures under the influence of alcohol—the official excuse to be direct in a culture that prizes vagueness.  

In return for his labors, the salaryman hands his paycheck to his wife. She manages the household budget, pays the bills, buys what is needed, and makes investment decisions. Stories abound of the Japanese housewife who blew the couple’s life savings on leveraged investments that no one understood. And she’s known for her impeccably wrong timing [The Japanese Are Dumping Their Gold].

She also gives her husband a monthly allowance, kozukai, to buy lunch, dinner, drinks, etc., though regular visits to “soapland,” due to their higher costs, would have to be covered by special company cash bonuses. Now a lot of these structures are loosening up, and lifetime employment is no longer the ground rule, nor is marriage, but for those who end up married, especially if the wife stays at home, the allowance still applies.

In 1979, Shinsei Bank started one of the most insightful polls into consumer spending habits, or rather into male consumer spending ability—the Salaryman Pocket Money Survey. Back then, the average salaryman’s allowance was ¥47,175 ($590) per month. By 1990, the peak of the bubble when money grew on trees, wives indulged their husbands with an allowance of ¥77,725 ($971) per month. Then it crashed. By 2004, it landed on the ¥40,000 mark.

This year? ¥39,756.

And those with kids receive ¥15,000 less than those without kids.

The bursting of the Japanese bubble, now in its third decade, has ravaged salaries, bonuses, household budgets, and thus allowances—and spending. The zero-interest-rate policy that the Bank of Japan has perfected, extensive quantitative easing, and two decades of stimulus budgets that have left Japan saddled with the worst debt-to-GDP ratio in the world ... all conspired against the hapless salaryman. He works harder and longer than ever before, for less pay, and even his lunch money is getting cut.

In 1992, the average salaryman spent ¥746 ($9.32) on lunch; this year, ¥510 ($6.38). Back then, when everybody was still assuming that this was just a temporary lull in the excitement, the average salaryman took an almost leisurely 27.6 minutes to eat lunch; this year, he inhaled it in 19.6 minutes. After-work drinking took the biggest hit: in 2001, the average salaryman forked over ¥6,160 ($77) when he went out to drink. That’s a serious amount of beer. Hence the image of a midnight train stuffed with drunken and barfing guys. This year, he spent only ¥2,860 ($35) per drinking excursion.

The beer industry caught the brunt of it. Beer shipments, a closely watched index based on data from the five major brewers, dropped by 3.7% in 2011, the seventh straight year of declines. Only 442.39 million cases were shipped, the lowest EVER in recorded Japanese beer history. But this August, a miracle occurred. For the first time in years, there was an uptick in beer shipments for the month of 2.8%. Where there is beer, there is hope.

Or maybe not. Eating out got slammed. Again. In 2010, 22.6% of the salarymen said they didn’t eat out at all; in 2011, 35.8% weren’t eating out; and this year, 37.9%. If this trend keeps going, it will destroy the core of Japanese social life. (But those are the lucky ones. The number of welfare recipients set a new record: 2.115 million individuals and 1.543 million households, according to the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare.)

This has got to be the icing on the Japanese cake. The website of the Japanese Ministry of Finance, more specifically the FAQ page on government bonds, has been catapulted to stardom on Facebook and Twitter. It posted the question: “In case Japan becomes insolvent, what will happen to government bonds?” Incredibly, it answers with a terse action plan for when the Big S hits the fan. Read....  Japanese Ministry of Finance To Japanese Bondholders: You’re Screwed!

And here is my book about Japan. It all started in France with a Japanese girl—a “funny as hell nonfiction book about wanderlust and traveling abroad,” a reader tweeted. Read the first few chapters for free.... BIG LIKE: CASCADE INTO AN ODYSSEY, at Amazon.