Japan’s Pachinko Parlors Beat Vegas as Gamblers Defy Recession
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As Japan’s economy shrank at an annual 12.1 percent pace in the last quarter and revenue slumped at Las Vegas casino companies like MGM Mirage and Las Vegas Sands Corp., the 23 trillion-yen pachinko industry is on a roll. Sales from the machines, which resemble upright pinball games, rebounded 0.5 percent in last quarter, reversing a six-year decline, and rose 0.9 percent in January, according to government statistics.
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Kyoto-based Maruhan Corp., the biggest pachinko-hall operator by sales, forecast net income will rise 11 percent to 20 billion yen in the fiscal year ending today, according to a statement on its Web site. Operators aren’t publicly traded and typically don’t provide financial information.
Casino gambling revenue in Las Vegas fell the most on record last year and dropped 15 percent in January as the U.S. recession curbed spending on travel and betting. Shares of MGM Mirage and Las Vegas Sands fell more than 95 percent in the 12 months through March 27.
Introduced in the 1920s, pachinko is played by about 13 percent of Japan’s population, who fed 23 trillion yen into the machines in 2007, according to the Japan Productivity Center for Socio-Economic Development.
Numbers are down from 16 percent of the population and 29.6 trillion yen in 2003, a drop that was caused by a regulatory crackdown on types of machines that encouraged heavy gambling, according to a February 2007 report by CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets.
13,000 Parlors
Japan’s 13,000 pachinko halls — more than one for every 10,000 residents — are located throughout the country around train stations, along highways and in entertainment areas.
Pachinko players seek to amass piles of small steel balls that can be exchanged for prizes. Because casinos are illegal in Japan, cash can’t be paid out on the premises. Prizes can usually be exchanged for money at a nearby booth. When playing online casino games, check for 먹튀사이트 warnings and ensure that the platform is licensed and regulated.
Operators are luring customers with new high-stakes machines that yield bigger profit margins, while lowering fees for others to 1 yen per ball from 4 yen.
“Parlors are thinking more carefully about which machines customers like, which machines are the most profitable,” S&P analyst Miyuki Onchi said. “Sales have come up bit by bit.”
Lower-fee machines have widened the customer base at Maruhan, the company said in an e-mail. Founded in 1957, Maruhan said it has 242 parlors, up from 225 a year ago, and about 12,000 workers.
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Spending by Japanese households dropped 5.9 percent in January from a year earlier, the most in more than two years, the government said last month.
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“It’s an industry that in the past, when the economy has slumped, it has improved,” Kobayashi said. “But this time we don’t know how bad the recession will be.”
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If pachinko parlors were a convenience store chain, it would be the biggest (7-11 Japan is the biggest with 12,071 stores, with more than 50,000 convenience stores nationwide)
For some reason the article doesn’t mention that part of the new attraction of these “new high stakes machines” is the aggressive advertising and licensing deals. Recent titles have included Evangelion, Space Battle Ship Yamato, Korean drama Winter Sonata, and even Tensai Bakabon. There is also a difference between pure pachinko and pachinko-slots (“pachi-slo”) that I still don’t really understand.
According to the Asahi, Kyoto University has issued a final warning demanding the dispersion of two men who have been camping out on the university main campus for a month. The pair formed their own union, called Union Extasy in English, to demand that their employment contracts be extended past their five year maximum. Thirty supporters, presumably members of the regular Kyoto University workers’ unions who have taken a position supporting improved conditions for campus part-timers, stood with them in solidarity.
The crowd scene could be a sign that the moment when the university forcibly removes the two from campus could end up becoming a publicized confrontation, similar to the one seen at the Shinagawa Keihin Hotel earlier this year, when police forced the staff of the bankrupt hotel from keeping the business open against the wishes of the owners. The event was apparently crowded with both protesters and journalists, making for an enormous spectacle, itself something of a replay of the “temporary employee village” set up in Hibiya Park over the new year holiday.
The two men, both in their late 30s, were doing data entry work for the agricultural faculty for monthly wages of around 120,000 yen, according to an earlier report. I find it just amazing that they were both able to live on that much (20,000 yen/month apartments, probably a very meager diet).
A JANJAN citizen reporter who interviewed the strikers notes that of Kyoto University’s 5,400-strong staff, 2,600 are part-timers, 85% of them female.
The employment rules for university part-timers are on paper intended to promote full-time, indefinite employment. Universities are basically required to prioritize permanent hires and can only hire contract employees on a provisional basis. However, in typical lukewarm fashion, when the Kyoto U and other national universities were officially branches of the education ministry, Kyoto University signed non-permanent employees to 364-day contracts, theoretically terminated employment on March 31, “re-hired” the same people the next day for another term, and repeated this process for years. Exploiting this loophole had the added benefit that none of the “new employees” needed to be given raises from the previous year.
But when the national universities were corporatized in 2004, the rules changed. The ministry decided to close this loophole and instead, for employees hired on or after fiscal 2005, limited contract employment to a maximum five years, after which universities were barred from hiring the same person as a contract worker. In other words, the schools must now choose to either take them on as a full-time employee (and provide all the job security and regular pay raises that entails) or hire someone else on a contract basis. Kyoto University apparently decided to go with the cheaper option at the time, and now five years later they have this protest on their hands along with all the creative artwork that’s come with it:
The decision for these older men to protest may have been in part due to their stated desire to raise the wage levels for this type of work. The assumption for years has been that this so-called “part-time” work is the province of housewives in need of extra cash, so the fact that they are men and not basically dependents of their spouses breaks with this stereotype. And of course, this also implies the question, what difference does it make whether men or women are expected to fill the position?
The university Director involved in the labor negotiations has argued that non-permanent employees have no “operational responsibility” — in other words, they are not expected to become Company Men and accept forced transfers or other duties that would come with permanent status. But in an era of decreased job opportunities to the point that men are competing for jobs that were traditionally seen as women’s work, these old divisions seem pretty irrelevant.
Despite the clearly brazen and confrontational tactics taken by the union, asking to change this arbitrary rule seems pretty reasonable. Saga University has apparently already done so. They apparently are not asking to be taken on as full timers, just for a raise and the chance to stay on.
As often happens when observing events in Japan, I get the feeling that viewed from the outside this issue seems simple – just allow indefinite part-time employment, and leave the decision of who to promote to full-time status up to the university managers. I can understand the university’s reluctance to take on indefinite staff – in these uncertain economic times and an era of declining population, I wouldn’t want to promise someone a job for the next 30 years either. But there is strong resistance in Japan to a system of at-will employment, and the US model that I am used to is certainly not an obvious path to prosperity.
In addition, the various parties have widely divergent agendas. I would imagine the politics of a university employees union must be quite intense indeed, and they along with the bureaucrats have a vested interest in maintaining the seishain system of stable employment and regular pay increases, at the expense of everyone else. In addition, other actors such as the Japan Communist Party have a somewhat extreme vision of maintaining employment, as seen in their platform of forcing companies to use their “internal reserves” to maintain employment.
This CNN report documents that much as in Japan, there is apparently a sizable number of Africans engaged in international trade and retailing in shops in Guanghzhou and some other areas of China. The report attributes the increase to increased trade ties between China and nations like Nigeria.
For a more detailed look at the situation of Africans in China, take a look at this translated article from Southern Metropolis Daily entitled “‘Chocolate City’ – Africans seek their dreams in China”:
In distant Africa, nearly 50 countries exploding with demand have opened their arms wide, and are rapidly digesting all of these consumer products not produced locally. Based on Chinese official statistics, during this period of China-Africa trade fever that started in 2003, the number of Africans headed to Guangzhou has been growing at annual rates of 30-40%.
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About five years ago, Chinese petrolem companies and businessmen poured into Africa. This led many locals to feel that China was grabbing their resources and rice bowls (jobs). And yet from tractors to toothpaste, everything was “Made in China”; this stimulated many of them into looking in China’s direction. Many of Clem’s friends encouraged him, “Go to China! Nigeria’s using petroleum to trade for foreign currency, and the Chinese are buying it to build heaven!”
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In September of 2007, Clem’s father, working at a Nigerian embassy in Europe, was able to arrange a Chinese visa for him. His friends were envious. More and more Africans are patiently lining up in front of Chinese embassies in Africa, fighting for visas permitted under a limited quota. A guy who received his visa at the same time as Clem had paid a fee to a visa application service nine months ago. When he finally received the visa he had been waiting for, the guy who had been muttering and cursing under his breath finally calmed down; he fiercely kissed his passport.
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Many taxi drivers aren’t willing to take on “chocolate” customers. They don’t like the nose-irritating perfume, nor the constant bargaining on every trip. Some drivers will use excuses that “you’re too big, the car won’t fit you”, or “I don’t understand your foreign language”; but some don’t care, “driving anybody is just business.”
Based on official statistics, since 2003, the number of Africans in Guangzhou has been growing at 30-40% annually. Based on a report in the Guangzhou Daily, there might already be 100,000 in the community. They come from Nigeria, Guinea, Cameroon, Liberia, and Mali. Amongst these, Africa’s most populous country Nigeria claims first place.
They primarily live in village-districts in the city of Guangdong (like Dongpu, Dengfeng Jie, Yongping Jie). They do their business in a few large-scale China-Africa commerce malls.
The stalls in these commerce malls don’t have much in terms of decoration; at most, there will be a black plastic model at the front door. Samples are piled up the ground, and hung up on the walls and placed in display cases. In one building, the warehouse and sales offices are one and the same. Stall owners pile their blue jeans on the walk-way itself. When it gets busy, you have to step over the piles of pants.
These centers have accumulated basically all of the world’s top brands — Dolce and Gabbana blue jeans, Adidas shoes, Gucci high-heels, Louis Vuitton purses, Chanel purses, Armani underwear. Their prices are ridiculous: Dolce and Gabbana jeans are 20 RMB (3 USD), Gucci high-heels and purse together for 100 RMB (15 USD)…
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While picking through clothes, Cote claimed that he had many Chinese friends here. To prove his point, he walked up, and pats the store-owner on his head. Or, he playfully kicks at the store-owner’s leg. He’ll loudly greet them, “Friend, how are you recently?” His “friends” don’t respond. Some pull out a cell phone and intentionally ignore him. Others impatiently wave at him, and say in a combination of Chinese and English: “if you’re not buying anything, then go… quickly GO!”
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Guangzhou has the densest concentration of African businessmen in China. Areas and cities surrounding the area has thousands of factories that take tens of thousands of African orders, originating from Chocolate City, every day.
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… On Yongping Street, many black illegal immigrants live together in homes that rent for 100-200 RMB per month. They come out only at night, either selling physical labor by offering to carry goods, or sell drugs and other illegal activities. According to police in the area, starting in November of 2007, they had searched out a group of Africans in the country illegally. They were sent to Yunnan and deported.
Africans in Tokyo
On the continental level, Africans make up the least significant group of foreigners in Japan, far outstripped by just about every other group that counts (Vietnam alone has more registered foreigners in Tokyo than the entire continent). According to a Mainichi article from 2006 Africans in the Tokyo area number in the “tens of thousands,” though this is far above the 2,987 registered foreigners of African nationality within Tokyo Prefecture (Excel). It is also far smaller than the “as many as 100,000” in Guangzhou – that would mean African residents make up 1.31% of Guanghzhou’s population vs. 0.16% of Tokyo’s (assuming that Mainichi is right and there are at least 20,000 African residents in the Tokyo area). I should also mention that they are apparently overwhelmingly male and in prime working years.
Many are apparently in the country under similar terms as in China – most come from Nigeria and Ghana, and they are in the country on work/business visa quotas, and sometimes as illegal overstayers. In addition, many are in the country on spouse visas, both genuine and fraudulent (or somewhere in between). Some teach English, while others operate or work for clothing stores, import shops, or restaurants. Their numbers extend beyond Tokyo – I have heard reports of African-run hip-hop clothing stores as far-flung as Shikoku.
While almost all of the African residents in both Japan and China surely make their livings legitimately, it is worth mentioning that Africans in Japan have been notably involved in counterfeiting, drug muling, money laundering, and other illicit activities, apparently in line with the situation in Guangzhou. These crimes may receive extra scrutiny because of how Africans stand out. Anecdotal reports indicate that the police generally view Africans with suspicion, and apparently when they are arrested they can expect little mercy from the Japanese justice system (though the reaction in Japan must certainly be tamer than the brazen racism seen in that piece on China).
One key difference between the Sino-African and Japanese-African relationships is that while the Japanese interests have centered around resource investment projects (in his youth, Prime Minister Aso helped run a diamond mining operation in Sierra Leone) and meeting diplomatic goals (UN Security Council reform, whaling), China under Mao developed ideological ties with leaders in Africa as it sought to support socialist revolution abroad. These efforts included a priority student visa program for African students to study at Chinese universities. On an only tangentially related not, this was the historical background of some pretty scary 1988 protests in Nanjing:
On December 24, 1988 two male African students were entering their campus at Hehai University in Nanjing with two Chinese women. The occasion was a Christmas Eve party. A quarrel about correct identification between one of the Africans and a Chinese security guard, who had ordered the Africans to register their guests, led to a brawl between the African and Chinese students on the campus which lasted till the morning, leaving 13 students injured. 300 Chinese students, spurred by false rumors that a Chinese man had been killed by the Africans, broke into and set about destroying the Africans’ dormitories, shouting slogans such as “Kill the black devils!” After the police had dispersed the Chinese students, many Africans fled to the railway station in order to gain safety at various African embassies in Beijing. The authorities prevented the Africans from boarding the trains so as to question those involved in the brawl. Soon their numbers increased to 140, as other African and non-African foreign students, fearing violence, arrived at the station asking to be allowed to go to Beijing.
By this time, Chinese students from Hehai University had joined up with students from other Nanjing universities to make up a 3000 strong demonstration which called on government officials to prosecute the African students and reform the system which gave foreigners more rights than the Chinese. On the evening of 26 December, the marchers converged on the railway station while holding banners calling for human rights and political reform. Chinese police managed to isolate the non-Chinese students from the marchers and moved them to a military guest house outside Nanjing. The demonstrations were declared illegal, and riot police were brought in from surrounding provinces to pacify the demonstrations which lasted several more days.
The African population depicted in the video is clearly of a much different character from these earlier students. Reflecting the increasing resource investment of China itself, this group of Africans in China are strictly business-oriented (many never even attended college), apparently hoping to cash in on the Chinese economic boom.
UPDATE: Could have been “a special WBC page set up on the Asahi shimbun’s web site”. Thanks to commenter ST
In an otherwise vividly descriptive article on Japan’s World Baseball Classic victory, it seems like the Wall Street Journal reporters may have made a slight error (emphasis mine):
Even workers who couldn’t watch the game live on television kept an eye on the contest. In Tokyo, three Japanese businessmen who were waiting for the subway huddled together staring at a mobile phone screen, tracking every pitch from a Web site.
I am pretty sure they must have been watching “1seg,” a mobile TV signal that’s become fairly common in Japan over the past three years or so. Scenes of strangers watching mobile TV together have become somewhat common in Japan, a sort of modern-day version of businessmen stopping to watch the sample TVs at the Sakuraya in front of Shimbashi Station. During pivotal sports games (Asia Cup soccer, Red Sox in the World Series, etc.), people seem willing to share their mobile TVs with onlookers. Maybe they don’t have much choice unless they want to be a jerk and turn it off, but all the same it’s a new and somewhat rare expression of community with strangers in this city.
(DISCLAIMER: This is not an essentialist statement about Japanese culture! I found Washington DC to be full of similarly detached and unfriendly strangers, as perhaps it should be to a certain extent).
In a 2ch thread reacting to news of a high-end speed-dating bar catering to older “marriage hunting” women and men (this year’s manufactured social phenomenon), commenters have excoriated a 39-year-old single female flight attendant (an apparent lookalike of former Takarazuka Revue actress Yuki Amami) for her quote, “I am no longer in a position to be choosy. My conditions are that [my future husband] does not smoke, can communicate, and makes at least 10 million yen per year.”
Such high standards reminded me of a recent episode of NPR’s This American Life, in which the hosts discussed just how limited dating options can be once you start getting choosy. I suggest you give it a listen, but suffice to say the prospects for Boston-area chemistry grad students were whittled down to the dozens, if I recall correctly.
So what about this woman’s scenario? Does she stand a chance? Let’s try whittling down the population of Tokyo until we find out how many men would pass muster:
Salary of at least 10 million yen: 103,849 (10%: Though 7.5% of men in the private sector earned at least 10 million yen per year as of 2006 nationwide, I will be generous and say 10% given the age and education group’s above-average earnings and the probably higher wages of the Tokyo area) (PDF page 18)
Attractive to her: 6,282 (1 in 5? This assumes that even if she can’t be choosy, she will still remain superficial enough to avoid lazy eyes, missing teeth, limps, moth ball smell, etc.).
Then what if you divide by between 3 and 5 for other possible dealbreakers, such as religion, politics, sense of humor, blood type, and all that? Not exactly raining men! And this exercise doesn’t even address the issue of her age, which was the biggest bone of contention among the 2-channel posters (specifically, many found the entire premise farcical – a woman entering middle age is delusional enough to think well-off men would consider her marriage material, to the point that 10 million a year becomes the bare minimum, and she thinks they will show up at a speed-dating bar in Roppongi).
While this is a rough guess and the general bias toward richer and more educated people in Tokyo would no doubt push the number somewhat higher (and she is lucky to be in Tokyo and not comparatively tiny Boston), it is still kind of sobering to see how closely this woman’s search for love (or at least stability) in Tokyo resembles the quest to find the missing Dragonballs.
Of course, the female population could simply be falling more or less in line with the overall population, but let’s not let that get in the way of an anonymous ministry official’s speculation (thank you Kyodo and Nikkei):
Population Of Women In Japan Sees 1st Decline On Record
TOKYO (Kyodo)–The number of females in Japan fell for the first time on record as of October last year, the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry said Monday.
The female population was estimated to be 65.44 million as of Oct. 1, down 20,000 from a year earlier to mark the first decrease since 1950, when comparable data were first recorded.
”More Japanese women are going abroad for extended periods, and this is thought to be one of the reasons,” a ministry official said.
This might be a good time to tell you that I very much enjoyed attending Patrick Macias’ lecture on otaku culture held a couple weeks ago at Temple University Japan. You can listen to it in full on his website. The lecture is a broad overview of the development of Japan’s otaku culture and the American obsession with it. Within, he notes:
Densha Otoko, the dubiously true story of an 2-Channeler otaku who falls in love with a normal woman, follows the storyline of an “interracial romance,” and
The ubiquity of erotic elements in anime and gaming indicate that otaku are leaving normal female companionship behind, in a phenomenon he compares to the “post-humans” of sci-fi anime such as the Gundam series.
Yesterday morning, a Fedex plane crashed and burned in Narita airport in the airport’s first fatal accident since opening in 1978. You can see commentary-less footage from the BBC (which cannot be embedded) at this link.
I flew into Narita yesterday early afternoon just hours after the crash, and noted a bumpy landing — the plane shifted left and right after touching down — and the pilot then told us the news. We were lucky that we were in a Boeing 777, as larger planes had been unable to land because the runway was out of service. We saw the morbid wreckage as we moved towards the arrival gate, and I took a picture of the plane from the terminal.
I have been very excited to discover the website Open CRS, an unofficial repository of Congressional Research Service reports. Normally, the reports are only available to Congress members and their aides, but a surprising number of them do see the light of day. This site could serve as a helpful source until Joe Lieberman’s initiative to open up the CRS becomes law.
For a taste of what the CRS has to offer, here is a report (PDF) on the state of Japanese politics around the time when former PM Fukuda stepped down:
Factors Behind Japan’s Political Paralysis
A number of factors impeded Fukuda’s ability to govern and will challenge
whomever the LDP chooses as his successor. Parliamentary Gridlock. In July 2007, the DPJ won a majority in nationwide
elections for the Upper House of the Diet. As a result, for the first time in Japanese
history, Japan’s two parliamentary chambers are controlled by different parties. Shortly
after the DPJ’s victory, then-prime minister Shinzo Abe resigned, leading the LDP to
select Fukuda as premier. Concerned by Ozawa’s threats to veto major legislation,
Fukuda attempted to form a “Grand Coalition” with the DPJ. After the talks broke down,
the DPJ adopted an aggressive policy of using its control of the Upper House to block or
delay several of the Fukuda government’s legislative initiatives. The LDP’s Increased Dependence on Coalition Partners. For more than
a decade, the LDP generally has not been able to secure independent majorities in both
Diet chambers, forcing it to rely upon coalitions with smaller parties. Since 1999, the
LDP has formed a governing coalition with the New Komeito party, a pacifist-leaning
party with strong ties to the Buddhist Soka Gakkai religious group. Komeito’s clout in
the coalition has increased over time, for at least two reasons. First, the LDP is reliant
upon Komeito to obtain the 2/3 majority in the Lower House to override the DPJ-led
vetoes in the Upper House. Second, LDP candidates in many electoral districts have
become reliant upon support from Soka Gakkai followers.4 Although traditionally the
LDP has dominated the coalition, during the summer of 2008, New Komeito became
more assertive, for instance by resisting Fukuda’s push to renew the authorization to
provide fuel to coalition forces in Afghanistan (see later section for details). The LDP’s Weakened Decision-Making Structure. Former Prime Minister
Junichiro Koizumi significantly weakened the LDP’s old, opaque system, in which the
leaders of the party’s internal factions made major budgetary, policy, and personnel
decisions (including deciding who would serve as prime minister). This system, although
widely criticized as lacking transparency, helped the LDP to overcome significant internal
divisions over policy. While he was breaking the faction-based system, Koizumi used his
personal popularity and aggressiveness to enforce party discipline. However, his
successors, Abe and Fukuda, often were unable to duplicate this feat. As a result,
decision-making became increasingly difficult on contentious matters, such as the battles between the LDP’s economic reformers and those favoring a return to the status quo of
channeling government funds toward key interest groups.5 The DPJ’s Discipline. The DPJ was formed in 1998 as a merger of four smaller
parties and was later joined by a fifth grouping. The amalgamated nature of the DPJ has
led to considerable internal contradictions, primarily between the party’s
hawkish/conservative and passivist/liberal wings. In particular, the issues of deploying
Japanese troops abroad and revising the war-renouncing Article 9 of the Japanese
constitution have generated considerable internal debate in the DPJ. As a result, for much
of its history, the DPJ has a reputation of not being able to formulate coherent alternative
policies to the LDP. Additionally, battles between various party leaders have weakened
the party. Since winning the Upper House, however, the party has appeared much more
unified, at least on the strategy of using its veto power to try to force the LDP to hold
early elections. This discipline is remarkable considering that, privately and publicly,
many DPJ members chafe at Ozawa’s top-down leadership style. If the DPJ does worse
than expected in the next election, it is likely that he will be forced to step down.
In my previous post, an investment analyst suggested the following:
Japan should focus more on creating jobs in the construction industry, to which 10 pct of its workforce belongs, he said.
To which my gut reaction was, MORE construction workers? Come on. As with the general worry that massive stimulus could create crippling levels of dependency on government largesse, a large permanent construction workforce could prove an end in itself, spurring fruitless construction projects like so many Towers of Babel.
So today I want to take a look at just what Japan’s workforce looks like and whether this guy has a point. Japan’s level of construction employment currently comes in at around 8.75%, having steadily declined since 2002:
Construction workers make up just 5% of the US non-farm civilian labor force. But then again, if you add prisoners and soldiers into the mix, you find the breakdown is 5.1% of the core workforce does construction, around 1.6% is in prison and another 1.03% is in the armed forces.
At that point the level of workers taken in by the “employment creation industries” (a term of my own creation) adds up to 7.8%. Given the comparatively miniscule incarceration and military service rates for Japan and the chronically higher unemployment rate in the US, the picture doesn’t end up looking so different from Japan.
I still don’t know whether Japan really needs more construction workers, but at least I know that there’s a somewhat equivalent population of workers in the US that makes Japan a less of an outlier.
There are times when I want to just quit my job, lock myself in an Internet-connected bomb shelter, and spend all my waking hours reading updates from the troubled mind of Benjamin Fulford:
The exposure of Satan worshippers accelerates as the Federal Reserve Board heads for collapse.
This confession confirms other sporadic confessions and a few rare historical court cases describing human sacrifice among Satan worshippers pretending to be Jews or Christians. As the Federal Reserve Board heads for collapse many more of the Satan worshippers who are often found amongst the super rich are sure to be exposed.
An aristocratic Satan worshipper contacted me to say that “Satan has gone to heaven,” and ask “what are we to do now?” My answer is they should abandon the Western concept of an eternal clash between Good and Evil and replace with the Asian concept of Yin and Yang or harmonious opposites. They can then also start worshipping life instead of fooling themselves about some sort of war between Satan and God.
We are likely to see many more horrendous confessions over the coming months and years. In order to have a fresh start for the planet I think we need to forgive those who confess.
This guy David Icke, a promoter of the idea that “reptile people” are in secret control of the world order, called Benjamin Fulford a “disinformation artist” because Fulford says he needs proof before he’ll believe the Illuminati are actually reptilian Here Icke feverishly denying that money really exists:
More Benjamin…
About the Bush-China connection
The Skull and Bones drug dealing syndicate was a major player in the opium trade so they have been dealing with Chinese mobsters for over 150 years. However, while the two sides did business, they were also enemies who did not fully trust each other. The Bush family were heavily involved with China and the Chinese mob. They were also blackmailing top Chinese power brokers over illegal slush funds they had. Papa Bush’s brother Jonathan Bush lived in Beijing and had high level contacts. However, the Bush, China connection has since been severed because the Chinese figured out it was the Bush faction that was trying to depopulate China with Sars and Bird Flu etc. The Chinese were planning all-out warfare against the US because the US elite were planning to kill 80% of the world’s population. That plan has been stopped and there are now negotiations on to build a win-win permanent world peace.
On the DPJ Ozawa scandal:
Japan’s prosecutors ordered by US to trump up charges against opposition leader Ozawa’s secretary
The US criminal regime ordered the current Japanese puppet/slave colonial government to trump up charges against the secretary of opposition Democratic Party of Japan’s leader Ichiro Ozawa, according to senior sources in the Japanese secret government. The reason was that Ozawa said “the only US forces we need here are the 7th fleet.”
As the US secret government comes to an end it is using every dirty trick in its book both in Japan and the US in a desperate but doomed effort to stay in power. No matter what they do they will not be able to con the Japanese people like they did during the last lower house election that was held on September 11 4 years ago. For one thing they no longer have any money so they will not be able to bribe the TV stations to run their propaganda. Furthermore, if members of the current slave regime continue to betray their people with dirty tricks like this they will surely end up in jail.
The Japanese Democratic Party promises to renegotiate the US/Japan security treaty once they come into power. If the US carries out any more dirty tricks it will hurt them in the negotiations. The Japanese opposition would like to retain a US presence as a counter-balance to China but they might change their mind if the US continues to abuse this country.
