How Japan’s “Stealth Constitution” Destroys Civil Rights and Sets the Stage for Dictatorship

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If there was ever a clear sign that the leadership of Japan is fully aware that the country is about enter a terminal economic catastrophe this is it. Using the cover of currency devaluation and a rising stock market, Japan’s Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, is attempting to make it easier to change the country’s constitution so that they can eliminate freedom of speech and set the stage for a military dictatorship.  Reuters reports that:

The draft deletes a guarantee of basic human rights and prescribes duties, such as submission to an undefined “public interest and public order.” The military would be empowered to maintain that “public order.”

This article will blow your mind.  Some key excerpts:  

(Reuters) – Shinzo Abe makes no secret of wanting to revise Japan’s constitution, which was drafted by the United States after World War Two, to formalize the country’s right to have a military – but critics say his plans go deeper and could return Japan to its socially conservative, authoritarian past.

Abe, 58, returned to office in December for a second term as prime minister and is enjoying sky-high support on the back of his “Abenomics” recipe for reviving the economy through hyper-easy monetary policy, big spending and structural reform.

However, sweeping changes proposed by Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in a draft constitution would strike at the heart of the charter with an assault on basic civil rights that could muzzle the media, undermine gender equality and generally open the door to an authoritarian state, activists and scholars say.

Abe’s grandfather Nobusuke Kishi was a pre-World War Two cabinet minister who was arrested but never tried as a war criminal. Kishi served as premier from 1957-60, when he resigned due to a furor over a U.S.-Japan Security Treaty.

If you’re like me, you may have to read the above paragraph twice.  Absolutely incredible.

“The real concern is that a couple of years later, we move to a redefinition of a ‘new Japan’ as an authoritarian, nationalist order,” said Yale University law professor Bruce Ackerman.

You can guarantee that will happen as soon as that country enters its final economic death spiral.

“The current constitution … provides protection for a long list of fundamental rights – freedom of expression, freedom of religion,” said Meiji University professor Lawrence Repeta. “It’s clear the leaders of the LDP and certain other politicians in Japan … are passionately against a system that protects individual rights to that degree.”

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Barrack Obama Celebrates May 1st as “Loyalty Day” with an Orwellian Statement

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While some alternative media sources are implying that Obama has decided to declare May 1 “Loyalty Day,” this is actually not true. From my very brief research, it appears that this Orwellian “holiday” was created by public law 85-529 in 1958.  Clearly the intent was to remove the occasion as one where labor traditionally stood … Read more

Las Vegas Housing: 8% of Single Family Homes Vacant, Yet New Construction Permits Up 50%

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If there is any market that demonstrates the complete and total misallocation of capital that results from Banana Ben Bernanke’s money printing and artificially low interest rate policy, it the latest phony American housing bubble. With a record numbers of citizens on the food stamp electronic breadline, with unemployment stubbornly high no matter what data you use, billionaire financial oligarchs are running around bidding up “homes for rent” and pricing out the random average person that actually has the capacity or desire to bid. I just read an excellent article that demonstrates the degree of insanity that has now been unleashed upon the streets of Las Vegas.

As the title of the post mentions, a study from the University of Nevada at Las Vegas show some 40,000 homes are vacant, or 8% of the metropolitan area’s single-family housing stock.  So it would seem that this would provide plenty of good deals for investors right?  Certainly there doesn’t seem to be a need for new home construction.  Well think again!  In their QE-forever induced delirium, homebuilders have gone Chinese and in Las Vegas “permits for new home construction are up 50 percent, twice the national average.”

My favorite line in the entire article comes at the end when a prospective buyer explains what happens when an actual citizen attempts to purchase a home to actually live in:

“We know there is a minute chance we get anything,” she says. “The most frustrating part of all this is how home prices keep going up and up, yet you have so many empty homes.”

Oh and it seems Oaktree has followed Och Ziff’s lead and pulled back from the “buy to rent” insanity.  Soon all that will be left are the dumb money and homebuilders, who should start thinking about what kind of bailout they will lobby for when this entire thing unravels.  From Reuters:

These big investors and a handful of others have bought at least 55,000 single-family homes across the U.S. in the past year. In the Vegas area alone, they have accounted for at least 10 percent of the homes sold since January 2012, according to a Reuters analysis of housing transactions.

That added firepower helps explain why home prices in this metropolitan area of 2 million people are up 30 percent over a year ago, far more than the national average of 10 percent. Permits for new home construction are up 50 percent, twice the national average.

Las Vegas would seem a highly unlikely locale for a new housing bubble. There are at least 20,000 homes in some stage of foreclosure, and the jobless rate hovers near 10 percent, some two points above the U.S. average. A healthy housing market depends on people having good-paying jobs so they can accumulate down payments and finance their mortgages.

Healthy markets?  That’s so last century!

Cracks are showing in Vegas and beyond. Here, rents on single-family homes were down an average of 1.9 percent in March from a year ago. In other regions targeted by institutional buyers, such as Phoenix, Southern California, Atlanta and Florida, rents are either falling or flat, according to online real estate service Trulia.

Industry insiders estimate that roughly half of the more than 55,000 homes acquired by institutions over the past year in the U.S. have yet to be rented.

In Oceania, that is a market signal for build more homes.

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Another Day, Another Temper Tantrum from Mayor Bloomberg

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It is just incredible how quick NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg is to throw a temper tantrum whenever anyone dares question his crusade to rid the nation of its remaining civil liberties.  In this case, his targets are those that criticize his feudalistic and extraordinarily racist “stop and frisk policy,” which I highlighted last October in my post: The Hunted and the Hated: An Inside Look at the NYPD’s Stop-and-Frisk Policy.

So now that the policy is being questioned in court, Bloomberg has once again transitioned into his usual role as a petulant child.  Scott Shackford at Reason.com did a great job covering his latest nonsensical outburst.  First he quotes the New York Times:

Speaking at Police Headquarters, Mr. Bloomberg took a swipe at those suing the department in Federal District Court in Manhattan over the stop -and-frisk practices, but he saved his strongest words for legislators and mayoral candidates “playing politics with people’s lives.”

“Look at what’s happened in Boston,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “Remember what happened here on 9/11. Remember all of those who’ve been killed by gun violence and the families they left behind.”

Remember Boston!  Remember 9/11!  This guy has zero shame.  All he does is immediately exploit national tragedies to advance his surveillance state agenda.

Scott then goes on to write:

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Court Decided it’s OK to Not Hire Cops with High IQs

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I heard about this case a while ago, but never got around to posting it previously.  Amazingly, back in September 2000 the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York decided it is lawful for the New London, Connecticut Police Department to not hire Robert Jordan on the basis that he is too intelligent for the job. Unfortunately, I’m not making this up.  While this is more than a decade old, I think everyone should be aware of it.  From ABC News:

A man whose bid to become a police officer was rejected after he scored too high on an intelligence test has lost an appeal in his federal lawsuit against the city.

“This kind of puts an official face on discrimination in America against people of a certain class,” Jordan said today from his Waterford home. “I maintain you have no more control over your basic intelligence than your eye color or your gender or anything else.”

Jordan, a 49-year-old college graduate, took the exam in 1996 and scored 33 points, the equivalent of an IQ of 125. But New London police interviewed only candidates who scored 20 to 27, on the theory that those who scored too high could get bored with police work and leave soon after undergoing costly training.

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Welcome to Guantanamo: Obama’s Hunger Striking, Force Feeding Torture Camp

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What’s happening in Guantanamo Bay right now is bad, very bad.  For those of you who aren’t paying attention, 100 of the 166 prisoners at Gitmo are engaged in a hunger strike and some of them are in such dire straights they are being brutally force fed.  No big deal you say? Well the American Medical Association (AMA) disagrees and they are concerned that such treatment is contrary to medical ethics.  In fact, the AMA’s president sent a letter to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel asking him “to address any situation in which a physician may be asked to violate the ethical standards of his or her profession.”

And yes, this is on Obama. While he blames Congress (as usual) for not closing the facility, in reality all he ever wanted to do was just move it to the United States. The man is a pathological liar.  From Reuters:

(Reuters) – The Navy sent extra medical personnel to the Guantanamo detention camp because of a growing hunger strike, and the American Medical Association questioned whether doctors were being asked to violate their ethics by force-feeding prisoners.

He said 100 of the 166 detainees had joined a hunger strike that began in February to protest their continued detention at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base in eastern Cuba. Twenty-one of those had lost enough weight that they were being fed liquid supplements via tubes inserted in their noses and down into their stomachs, House said.

On Thursday, the president of the American Medical Association sent a letter to U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel reiterating its long-held position that it is a violation of medical ethics to force-feed mentally competent adults who refuse food and life-saving treatment. 

It urged the defense secretary “to address any situation in which a physician may be asked to violate the ethical standards of his or her profession.”

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Political Activists May be Banned from San Francisco’s Public Transportation System

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This article seems innocuous enough…until you keep reading.  At first it appears entirely reasonable that the BART system (Bay Area Rapid Transit) might look to ban riders for a year who act violently while using the service. However; as is becoming increasingly typical these days, what sounds reasonable at first tends to be awful upon deeper inspection.  For example, according to ABC News in San Francisco:

AB 716 won’t only target violent behavior. It can be applied to protestors who have been arrested during free-speech movements.

I mean this is beyond outlandish and absolutely unacceptable in a free society. It seems to open up a Pandora’s box to punish anyone who publicly expresses dissent against the oligarch controlled society we live in.  Why should anyone who gets into trouble at a protest have their right to public transportation stripped?  It’s one thing if BART wants to ban someone for a year if they cause problems on the BART system itself, it is a whole other issue to ban them from it because of protest activity that has nothing to do with the public transportation system.  If this report is accurate, it is an awful development and a surreptitious attack on free speech.

From ABC News:

OAKLAND, Calif. (KGO) — BART is rolling out a new plan that will allow it to ban passengers who don’t behave. The process started more than a year ago, when state legislators passed a law giving BART that power.

BART already has something called a “stay-away” order that the transit agency can issue, but that needs to go through local prosecutors’ offices and can take a long time. This new plan gives BART the power to make a decision and act right away.

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CME President on Gold: “They Don’t Want Certificates, They Want the Real Product”

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What’s interesting about gold, when we had that big break two weeks ago we saw all the gold stocks trade down significantly, we saw all the gold products trade down significantly, but one thing that did not trade down, was gold coins, tangible real  gold.  That’s going to show you, people don’t want certificates, they … Read more

How the CIA Enriches Warlords, Drug Dealers and the Taliban in Afghanistan

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This article from the New York Times further solidifies the notion that we clearly have no idea what we are doing anywhere, whether it relates to the domestic economy or foreign policy. While the American citizenry remains unemployed and increasingly on food stamps, we are paying tens of millions of dollars to Afghan warlords and drug dealers so that they can build their “dream homes.”  My favorite line is: “the cash has fueled corruption and empowered warlords, undermining Washington’s exit strategy from Afghanistan.”   Makes sense.  We are simply exporting our domestic economic model abroad.  From the New York Times:

KABUL, Afghanistan — For more than a decade, wads of American dollars packed into suitcases, backpacks and, on occasion, plastic shopping bags have been dropped off every month or so at the offices of Afghanistan’s president — courtesy of the Central Intelligence Agency.

“We called it ‘ghost money,’ ” said Khalil Roman, who served as Mr. Karzai’s deputy chief of staff from 2002 until 2005. “It came in secret, and it left in secret.”

Kind of like Corzine at MF Global!

Moreover, there is little evidence that the payments bought the influence the C.I.A. sought. Instead, some American officials said, the cash has fueled corruption and empowered warlords, undermining Washington’s exit strategy from Afghanistan.

Payments ordinarily range from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars, the officials said, though none could provide exact figures. The money is used to cover a slew of off-the-books expenses, like paying off lawmakers or underwriting delicate diplomatic trips or informal negotiations.

It is not clear that the United States is getting what it pays for. Mr. Karzai’s willingness to defy the United States — and the Iranians, for that matter — on an array of issues seems to have only grown as the cash has piled up. Instead of securing his good graces, the payments may well illustrate the opposite: Mr. Karzai is seemingly unable to be bought.

But the C.I.A. has continued to pay, believing it needs Mr. Karzai’s ear to run its clandestine war against Al Qaeda and its allies, according to American and Afghan officials.

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A Look into the Malware the FBI Uses to Spy Through Webcams

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Really interesting article that discusses a case in which a Texas judge decided to block the FBI from installing malware on suspect’s computer that would allow them to take over the machine’s webcam amongst other malicious things.  While it’s good news that the judge blocked its use, the author accurately points out that: “another of Smith’s reasons was that he could not justifiably issue a warrant on a computer that could be outside of that area. A federal judge may have fewer qualms with that issue.”

Indeed, which is why we should all be acutely aware of the kinds of “tools” the FBI has at its disposal against peaceful dissidents, particularly after they identified Occupy Wall Street activists as “terrorists.”  From Wired:

A Texas judge has blocked the FBI from installing malware on a laptop that would have been able to take over its webcam.

This kind of malware is extremely common elsewhere on the web, of course, but that’s the kind of nefarious, underhand tactic you’d expect from scammers, or even just perverts wanting to spy on women undressing. But the FBI is apparently learning from these techniques, and it wants to install similar malware on the computer of an unknown person they suspect of being guilty of fraud so they can track him down.

Smith described the warrant the FBI sought as “not a garden-variety search warrant”. It wouldn’t have just taken control of the laptop’s webcam — it would also have recorded a heap of personal information, including email and other web activity, personal passwords and files and the laptop’s location. It also aimed to gather “accounting entries reflecting the identification of new fraud victims”.

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