Tour my Japan file for more, thank you.
That's why we are getting sprinklings of stories like these:
"Plan would ban bluefin tuna exports" by Associated Press | February 6, 2010
GENEVA - The world should ban the export of Atlantic bluefin tuna, a UN panel declared yesterday, backing a proposal that is fiercely opposed by Japan, which prizes the fish as a key ingredient in sushi.
Okay, seeing as the UN lied about global warming....
(Btw, readers, it has been a miserable 10 degrees all day here today)
Atlantic bluefin populations have declined more than 80 percent since the 19th century, so establishing special protections is justified, said CITES, the UN group that oversees the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.
That could all well be true; however, WHY SHOULD WE BELIEVE THEM?
Monaco is asking the 175 nations that are members of CITES to agree on a global ban on Atlantic bluefin exports at a meeting in Qatar’s capital of Doha from March 13-25. The plan is one of 42 conservation proposals CITES members will consider, along with similar trade bans on products from polar bears, some sharks, and other species.
The meeting will also decide whether to restrict or ease the ban on trade in elephant ivory, another hotly contested issue.
Well, we can do without the ivory; the fish are food.
But the dispute over tuna - which pits most northern European countries against Japan and several Mediterranean fishing nations - will likely command the biggest attention because it threatens to wipe the iconic fish off the sushi menu.
Turkey, Spain, Greece, Italy, and Malta have thousands of jobs that depend on catching and shipping the fish to Japan, while France and Britain have signaled they would favor a ban.
That E.U. coming apart again, huh?
Atlantic bluefin can reach 10 feet long and weigh more than 1,430 pounds. Japan buys 80 percent of the world catch, with Europe, South Korea, and the US sharing the rest....
Oh, so it is like a market thing, huh?
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What I'm opposed to, readers, are the MILES-LONG DRIFT NETS that catch EVERYTHING in their PATHS! And I'm not for starving the Japanese.
They have other problems than feeding themselves, too:
"In Japan, crisis looms as economy slips; Nation faces fiscal, industrial woes" by Blaine Harden, Washington Post | February 5, 2010
TOKYO - It’s been a humbling few days for Japan.
Related: Toyota's Troubles
Standard & Poor’s threatened to downgrade the Japanese government’s credit rating because Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama is moving too slowly to reduce the debt. And China overtook Japan as the largest maker of cars, according to an announcement from the Japanese Automobile Manufacturers Association.
The triple whammy of manufacturing and fiscal problems is a harbinger of what Japan faces in the coming years as its listless economy slips into an era of reckoning and national loss of face.
Same with YOU and YOURS, AmeriKa!!!!
Within a year, Japan will probably lose to China its longtime status as the world’s second-largest economy. It is also expected to descend into the uncharted waters of public indebtedness as government debt swells to double the size of the country’s gross domestic product.
Then they will NEVER be able to REPAY! Chinese going to get stiffed again?
Although the alarming headlines grabbed the public’s attention, Japan’s most fundamental economic ills have not. Like distant melting glaciers, they have not alarmed voters, mobilized lawmakers, or triggered a national emergency response.
The agenda-pushing continues even when it need not, MSM?
“I do think the current situation is quite doomed, but Japan does not yet have a sense of crisis,’’ said Hiroko Ogiwara, an economic commentator and author of popular money management books.
Uh-oh.
The building blocks of Japan’s future are collapsing, in the view of many economists.
Ours are already dust, America.
Japan has fewer children and more senior citizens as a percentage of its population than any country in recorded history, but the government does little to encourage childbirth or enable immigration. Even as the working-age population shrinks, only a third of Japanese women stay on in the workforce after having a child, compared with about two-thirds of women in the United States.
“The current direction is clearly unsustainable, and something has to be done,’’ said Takatoshi Ito, a professor of economics at the University of Tokyo.
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