Haven't seen the flick, so I'm in no position to judge whether this analysis of the latest Godzilla movie is incredibly astute or utter hogwash…
Category: Relations – Sino-Japanese
Japanese Coast Guard Officer Admits Leaking Senkaku Videos
Story at The Japan Times.
I can certainly understand why he did it. Must be demoralizing to spend hours chasing a Chinese fishing boat which has rammed two coast guard vessels . . . only to see the Japanese government let the perp walk.
UPDATE (Nov 10/2010): Thought so.
"He was aboard a patrol boat for many years, and I suppose he might have felt righteous indignation about the fact that his colleagues' clash with a Chinese ship at the risk of their lives was hidden from the eyes of the public," a JCG official said.
That Left Turn At Albuquerque
Japan Probe, on the Chinese fishing boat "collision" with Japanese coast guard vessels near the Senkaku Islands in October:
According to international rules, ships that are in risk of collision should turn to the right. In the video, the Chinese ship is very clearly veering to the left: straight into the Japanese ship.
I've indeed confirmed that this is true. Here's Rule 15 of the International Regulations for the Prevention of Collisions at Sea:
When two power-driven vessel are crossing so as to involve risk of collision, the vessel which has the other on her starboard side shall keep out of the way . . .
Let me remember now . . . port is left, starboard is right. Got it. Pretty commonsensical. If a ship is on your starboard (right) side, you're not supposed to steer LEFT because that might, y'know, cause your ship to RAM into the other one.
(Image from Rule 15 explanation of the International Regulations for the Prevention of Collisions at Sea)
Of course, if that's your intention all along, then go for it. Just don't forget to gun the motor!
Which brings me to Rule # 8e of the regulations, unmentioned in the Japan Probe blog entry:
If necessary to avoid collision or allow more time to assess the situation, a vessel shall slacken her speed or take all way off by stopping or reversing her means of propulsion. [emphasis added]
All that black diesel smoke suddenly belching from the Chinese boat at 1:29 . . . Sure looks like an intentional acceleration to me.
Postscript: I've added new related updates at the end of this post, as well as this one.
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Winning Hearts And Minds
87% of Japanese view China as untrustworthy.
Which reminds me: Not content with snatching Taiwan & Tibetan flags, Chinese ultranationalists have decided to bring some joy into their dreary little lives by snatching Japanese flags as well.
UPDATE: The Chinese Communist Party spends millions on propaganda to inculcate rabid anti-Japanese sentiments in its citizens . . . then spends millions more to PROTECT Japanese against those very same citizens.
UPDATE (Nov 9/2010): The Chinese Communist Party is so concerned about the anti-Japanese Frankenstein's monster it created, that it fills the stadium with well-behaved astroturfed government workers to prevent racial violence against Japanese spectators.
The Truth Will Out
During the Senkaku incident of September 2010, newspapers mistakenly claimed that a Chinese fishing vessel "collided" with two Japanese coast guard vessels.
Now the video has leaked, so we can all decide: Collision…or deliberate ram?
You make the call: (It's an 11 minute video, with the impact taking place at 2:18. There's little of interest beyond the 5 minute mark, but knock yourself out if you like.)
Another video shows the Chinese ship ramming (sorry, "colliding with") the second ship. This one has English subtitles:
No wonder the current Japanese government wanted to keep these under wraps — for they clearly show that Prime Minister Naoto Kan released guilty men under pressure from the Butchers of Beijing.
Best thing Japan can do now is release ALL the tapes in the interests of transparency. We've got all the money shots now, but for completeness sake the rest need to be made public.
And the worst thing? Attempt to cover it all up by maintaining the current fiction that the tapes are part of "an ongoing judicial investigation" and cannot be released. Because in case Prime Minister Kan hasn't noticed, the case ceased to be a judicial one the day the Chinese took Japanese hostages in order to get Captain Ramboat back.
UPDATE: Good story, bad headline — Senkaku collisions video leak riles China. (Bad headline because the story itself makes it clear that China doesn't seem too "riled". And of course, the two ramming incidents were more than mere "collisions").
Nonetheless, it seems the Japanese government is blustering about prosecuting those whose only crime was revealing the totality of Kan's surrender on this issue. Idiots.
UPDATE #2: Great stuff from the Afterword of this post by Ampontan:
"Had the Kan government been born with a spine, they would have done [what Adlai Stevenson did at the U.N. during the Cuban missile crisis]. They could have shown the world what the Chinese did, just as the world saw what the Soviets were doing in 1962."
UPDATE (Nov 9/2010): Japanese government seizes YouTube records to find identity of leaker. Dunno how well that's gonna go over — freeing Captain Ramboat but punishing the guy who revealed C.R.'s guilt.
UPDATE #4: Prosecutor's office bombarded with over a thousand requests from the Japanese public to drop the inquiry against the leaker.
Meanwhile, opposition parties in Japan grouse that the government has shown them less footage (6 minutes in total) than were leaked to the public.
Phantom Menaces
The China Post (Taiwan's pro-Communist newspaper of record) frets that the greatest menace to peace in Asia is . . . Japan. Beware a second Pearl Harbor, the editors darkly warn.
LOL. The chances of PACIFIST Japan pulling Pearl Harbor II anytime during our lifetimes ranks somewhere between an attack by trident-wielding Mer-people and a Zombie Apocalypse.
In other words, not bloody likely.
Quiet, you.
UPDATE: China now matches the number of attack submarines (63) that Japan had when it struck at Pearl Harbor. Funny coincidence, that. (Modern Japan has only 16.)
Some other facts the Chinese ultranationalist editors of the Post may be aware of:
- China has nuclear weapons. Japan has none.
- China has over a thousand missiles targetted onto Taiwan. Japan has none.
- China has offensive weaponry. Japan is constitutionally prevented from possessing same.
- China maintains the largest number of territorial disputes (somewhere between 19 and 26) in all of Asia.
- China has recently laid expansionist claim to the entire South China Sea. Japan has not.
- China's military has enjoyed double digit budgetary increases for several years now. While on the other hand, high Japanese vehicle costs mean that Japan's military expenditure in real terms is roughly on par with South Korea or Taiwan.
And finally, China routinely ranks among the 10 worst countries in the entire world when it comes to press freedom. Maintaining strict media censorship, the government indoctrinates the population with ultranationalist propaganda, just as Imperial Japan once did.
(Far more difficult to imagine the Japanese being similarly brainwashed since Japan has the world's 11th freest press.)
So 2,500 Japanese marched in downtown Tokyo in defiance of Chinese bullying over the Senkaku Islands. Big deal. With a population of 128 million, that's a 0.002% turnout.
Reckon more people showed up for the latest "Tentacle Pride" rally . . .
UPDATE (Oct 26/2010): A profile of those Japanese "wildmen" Taiwan's China Post is so afear'd of.
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Chinese Communist Party Releases Final Japanese Hostage
Beijing graciously releases Japanese chemical munitions removal specialist from captivity.
Advice to the Japanese government: When you're in a hole, stop digging. The CCP has demonstrated its eagerness to take hostages, so stop providing them with the hostages it so desperately craves.
They want 65 year-old chemical shells removed from their soil? Let 'em clean 'em up themselves.
No need for them to be on the Japanese dole, now that they're a big, rich, powerful country.
When It Absolutely, Positively, DOESN’T Have To Be There…
Google went Galt in China earlier this year, and perhaps it's high time that Japan followed its example. Because both the Daily Yomiuri and Asahi Shimbun are reporting that Beijing is erecting politically-motivated customs trade barriers to cripple Japanese industry. From the Daily Yomiuri:
Shanghai customs authorities informed major Japanese transport firms last Tuesday of a decision to immediately boost the ratio of imports and exports subject to sample inspections at the city's customs house from the previous 30 percent to 100 percent.
Shanghai's quarantine authorities have also raised the ratio of quarantine inspections of commodities from the previous 10 percent to 50 percent, they said.
Because of the subsequent delay in the clearance and quarantine procedures, many air cargoes bound for Japan, including electronics parts, remain in Shanghai, according to the sources.
Similar measures have been taken at many other customs houses, including those in Fujian, Guandong and Liaoning Provinces…
Meanwhile, Communist China is denying that it had ANYTHING to do with the decision of Chinese rare earth exporters to cease shipments of their products to Japan. Just as they denyed that the equipment they moved into the East China Sea had ANYTHING to do with oceanic gas field drilling.
[Surprise, surprise – the latest word is that the water near the Chinese offshore facility is dirty and turbid. Which is just the sort of thing that one expects when AN UNDERWATER DRILL BIT MEETS SOLID ROCK.]
Democratic Japan Suffers Economic Pearl Harbor At Hands Of Communist China: Loses Sovereignty Over Senkaku Islands
Releases Chinese captain who rammed two Japanese Coast Guard vessels in Japanese waters.
On Tuesday of this week, Premier Wen Jiabao of China issued this threat:
"China has no choice but to take the necessary 'coercive measures.' "
And a mere three days later, Japanese prosecutors cut loose Captain Ramboat. A sad spectacle it must have been to watch them claim that their decision was based solely on the law…and then hear them quickly contradict this by declaring that the political importance of smooth Sino-Japanese relations was something they also had to consider.
Japan's Asahi Shimbun newspaper outlines the precise 'coercive measure' which may have been most instrumental in bringing Japan to heel:
A Chinese government source said Thursday that Beijing resorted to the harsh measure of stopping all exports of rare earth metals to Japan because "Japan had crossed over the red line."
The paper further reports that "a sense of shock, fear and helplessness" began to grow in the Japanese industrial sector, as managers discovered to their horror the folly of economic dependence on Asia's Communist behemoth. The Japan Times elaborates on this latter point:
Japan imported 31,383 tons of rare earths in 2008, of which 29,275 tons, or 92 percent [emphasis added], came from China…
92%. [And in another news, a hospital somewhere in Michigan recently granted Dr. Jack Kevorkian control over 92% of their life-support equipment. Because really, what could go wrong?]
The Asashi Shimbun reports that China's unofficial embargo was apparently not as clumsy or as random as a blaster:
The stoppage was designed to hurt Japan's high-tech industries, and it was apparently planned well in advance.
According to several sources, top leaders of the Chinese Communist Party issued instructions in mid-September to the Foreign Ministry, Commerce Ministry, State Development and Reform Commission as well as researchers covering Japan at government-affiliated think tanks to devise specific measures that could be imposed on Japan.
"Instructions were given to consider sanctions that would hit the Japanese economy where it is especially vulnerable," a Chinese government source said [emphasis added].
It's almost superfluous to point out that earlier this year, the Chinese Nationalist Party of Taiwan assured voters that the Communist Party of China would never, ever, EVER mix politics and economics. Signing a free-trade agreement with Zhongnanhai would be an economic shot in the arm for Taiwan — so the argument went — and there was absolutely no chance that becoming Beijing's industrial and commercial satellite would imperil Taiwan's democracy or its sovereignty.
Ask the Japanese whether that holds true today. Because the Taiwanese should be aware that the KMT's flimsy hypothesis now utterly without foundation.
The only question which remains is: When will Communist China choose to launch a similar assault on the economy of democratic Taiwan?
UPDATE: In what I assume is pure bluster meant for domestic consumption only, Japan's Trade Minister threatened to file a grievance with the World Trade Organization in response to China's rare earth embargo.
No way in hell that'll happen. They didn't have the stones to prosecute a mere Chinese fishing boat captain…but instead they'll take on China in a WTO courtroom, mano-a-mano?
Who's he kidding?
UPDATE (Sept 25/10): It's not enough that I must win — everyone must know that YOU have lost. Not satisfied with having enforced its will upon Japan, Chinese ultranationalists demand a kowtowing apology to boot.
UPDATE #3: Heh. "Eternally ours, since 1971." Good to see that not all Taiwanese have drunk President Ma Ying-jeou's Chinese ultranationalist Kool-Aid.
UPDATE #4: A 1969 P.R.C. map showing the Senkaku Islands as Japanese territory. Think I've seen this somewhere before, but I've never posted it here.
UPDATE #5: Realizing that Communist China is an unreliable supplier, Japan looks to Mongolia as another source of rare earths.
UPDATE #6: China's belligerence towards its neighbors causes them to seek closer relations with the U.S.A. The law of unintended consequences strikes again.
(Speaking of which, Okinawans are apparently livid about Tokyo's latest surrender, fearing large Chinese fishing flotillas will now ply the local waters. Will this glimpse of China's "Yakuza diplomacy" cause them to view American military bases with greater favor? We'll see.)
UPDATE #7: Japan's Foreign Minister seems appreciative of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's assurances that the Senkaku Islands "are within the scope of application of Article 5 of the Japan-U.S. security treaty."
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Drill, Baby, Drill?
Speculation that China may begin unilaterally drilling in a gas field, the ownership of which is disputed with Japan. And that Japan may therefore follow suit.
All this is contingent on whether Beijing is lying or telling the truth about the purpose of some heavy equipment they've moved into the area — which it claims is simply for maintainence work.
UPDATE (Sep 19/10): Starting to look like the Chinese Communist government was lying. Aerial reconnaisance photos of the machinery appear to show that it's drilling equipment.
UPDATE #2: Japanese Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara is quoted as saying, "Territorial disputes do not exist in this region."
In your dreams, pal. Wherever China's borders lie, there's a dispute to be had.
UPDATE (Sep 20/10): Rather than aping China's infantile behavior, Japan may instead take the case to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. Good for them.