A piece well worth reading, factual, hard to stomach, but a keen insight
into Japan Inc. Substitute corporate CEO's, Blackstone et.al. and
bureaucrats for Mafioso and its resembles the USA.
Richard
Jed wrote..
The nightly NHK National New broadcast in Japan has often discussed global
warming lately. Prime Minister Abe says that Japan should take a leading
role in combatting it, and he will say that at the G 8 conference now
underway. Former P.M. Koizumi gave a speech the other day along the same
lines.
Japan has had extremely hot weather in recent years, and the news
broadcasters and newspapers now routinely attribute it to global warming,
without doubt or dissension. They have not done much to stop global
warming, but at least they take the problem seriously and they are
beginning to launch serious efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
Plus they are imitating the U.S. and deploying some nonsense programs such
as ethanol, fortunately on a tiny scale that will cause little harm. The
nuclear power industry is a shambles, with revelation after revelation of
misconduct, accidents and cover-ups over the past 30 years now coming to
light. But this state of affairs is so common for Japanese industry and
government that I do not think anyone will oppose the expanded use of
nuclear power. The power companies are being grilled by the police and the
Parliament, and the investigations have revealed many problems with coal
and gas fired plants too, and even hydroelectric dams. It is a little
difficult to decide whether you would prefer to live next to a coal-fired
plant run by idiots & street-hood Mafiosi dropouts, or a nuclear plant run
by those same idiots. . .
I do not ever recall seeing Japanese press coverage of the sort of
anti-global warming arguments that are common in the U.S. In Japan they
tend to assume that pronouncements made by mainstream scientists are
authoritative and cannot be questioned. There is no opposition to global
warming from religious kooks, as there is in the U.S. Religion has had
little impact on post-WWII Japanese culture and politics.
That does not mean that officials or industry follows recommendations made
by scientists, but they do not contradict them or contradict them.
Unfortunately, going by the same standard of respect for authority, nearly
all Japanese newspapers and magazines denounce cold fusion research. The
only reason it is still funded to a small extent is that many aspects of
Japanese society -- and universities in particular -- are heavily
balkanized. They are decentralized. The left hand does not know or care
what the right hand is doing. Industrial and data processing standards,
for example, are weak. Leaders are often figureheads. Political and
budgetary power is in the hands of low-ranking officials in corporations
and government. Japan's disastrous war in China was orchestrated by
low-level field officers who acted contrary to orders from headquarters.
(They assassinated Chinese leaders and organized fake attacks against
themselves, like the German attacks against Poland, and the U.S. Tonkin
Gulf "incident," which as President Johnson said at the time, 'was
probably our guys shooting at a whale or something, but who cares?')
This system of letting the staff run the organization may seem awkward,
but it has some advantages, such as the fact Mizuno and others can
continue for years doing research that, in the U.S. or Europe would get
them harassed, fired, or hauled before the kind of Congressional witch
hunt that Rusi Taleyarkhan faces. Nobody at the University cares what
Mizuno does, except for his immediate "superiors" and they are not all
that superior. They have been making desultory efforts to stop him since
1989, and they told him he would never be promoted above "assistant
professor" (which he has not been), but they do not care much one way or
the other. He will soon face mandatory retirement, so he will be out of
their hair.
- Jed
