Now China Says It May Own Okinawa, Too

This ought to get interesting real quick … Since 1972, United States Armed Forces personnel remained on Okinawa Island by the invitation of the Government of Japan as a measure partially fulfilling the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan.

US Sale Of Armed Drones To Japan And South Korea Would Transform Tensions In The Pacific China’s top newspaper on Wednesday published a call for a review of Japan’s sovereignty over the island of Okinawa — home to major US bases — with the Asian powers already embroiled in a territorial row.

The lengthy article in the People’s Daily, China’s most-circulated newspaper and the mouthpiece of the ruling Communist party, argued that the country may have rights to the Ryukyu chain, which includes Okinawa.

The island is home to major US air force and marine bases as well as 1.3 million people, who are considered more closely related to Japan in ethnic and linguistic terms than to China.

The authors of the article, two scholars at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, considered China’s top state-run think-tank, said the Ryukyus were a “vassal state” of China before Japan annexed the islands in the late 1800s.

“Unresolved problems relating to the Ryukyu Islands have reached the time for reconsideration,” wrote Zhang Haipeng and Li Guoqiang, citing post-World War II declarations that required Japan to return Chinese territory.

The article also repeated Chinese government arguments for China’s historical claims over a set of tiny uninhabited islets in the East China Sea known as Diaoyu in Chinese and Senkaku in Japanese.

The two nations have stepped up a war of words over the dispute in recent months, with Beijing’s vessels regularly entering the waters around the Tokyo-controlled islands, stoking fears of armed conflict.

Read more at businessinsider.com …

Ever Hopeful The Hoax Can Be Salvaged

From the  National Center for Atmospheric Research/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research

I can see the EPA jumping all over this one. Black carbon is likely a contributor, as it changes the albedo of ice sheets and one that is much easier to manage. Problem is, the USA isn’t much of a black carbon emitter any more, but India and China are.

First point — POLLUTION IS NOT A SIGN, OR CAUSE, OF GLOBAL WARMING …

Another Record for Food Stamps

Record Dow, record S&P, record debt, record plunge in gold, and now: record US households on foodstamps. What’s not to like. While today’s gold selloff may be confusing to everyone, one can scratch off some 23,087,886 US households, or the number that according to the USDA were on foodstamps in January and just happen to be a fresh all time high, as the likely sellers, especially when one considers that the average monthly benefit to each household dropped to a record low of $274.04. This number probably ignores, for good reason, the once every four years fringe benefits of Obamaphones and other such made in China trinkets.

Here is what the chart looks like … the free loader society. You want food stamps with that Obamaphone. The helpless of it all, the dependency of Big Government. Beginning to looks a lot like FDR’s Fascists utopia is it not? Liberals are so compassionate. Look at all the free time you have for other things? Like vagrancy. You know hanging out? With nothing to do. Like in the sald days of the Old Soviet Union, and there searching the empty stores for stuff.

You do realize with a real job, you get the freedom to to what you want with your money. The red line shows how as more people hop on, there is simply less to go around. Equal misery for all … Socialism.

Food stamps have replaced soup kitchens.

The cause is the same:  Obama’s Economic depression.

COMMUNIST China’s Managed Economy Goes Bust

Corny capitalism is nothing but cronyism — In surprise, wait for it, it is the liberal media, recovery in China loses steam.

HONG KONG — The Chinese economic recovery lost some of its momentum during the first quarter of this year, official data released on Monday showed, surprising analysts who had expected growth to accelerate on the back of ample credit, strong infrastructure spending and firm exports.

The economy expanded by just 7.7 percent during the first three months of the year, compared with a year earlier, short of the 8 percent that economists polled by Reuters had projected, and slower than during the previous three months, when gross domestic product rose 7.9 percent year-on-year.

Disappointing industrial output data for March also underlined the fading momentum. Year-on-year growth dropped to 8.9 percent, the lowest pace of expansion since August 2012, when fears of a “hard landing” in China were widespread.

It has no momentum … China is a parasite of the west. They have no middle class. Only rulers and peasants.

USA Shale Energy Boom, What’s Going On…

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Divine Intervention? Why the US Is No. 1 in Shale.

America is the leader of the global shale energy boom, and the rest of the world is racing to catch up. But countries like China and Australia are having difficulty replicating the successes of the US. Whether due to providence, dumb luck, or plain old technological prowess, the US shale revolution just isn’t easily exported. Writing for Forbes, Jeff McMahon explains why.

First of all, America’s existing pipeline infrastructure has been a boon to shale production. The US has the most extensive network of pipelines in the world, and though the system needs updating, it has allowed wildcatters to bring hydrocarbons to market relatively quickly. The US also benefits from world-class drilling expertise, which is in short supply elsewhere around the globe.

But the most interesting point McMahon makes is the role that US mineral and land rights have played in the shale boom. “Individual landowners in the United States can lease mineral rights to their property, a right landowners do not possess in some other nations.” . . .

This is an important point, and it helps explain why oil discoveries Nigeria lead to land confiscation and rioting while similar discoveries in America are more likely to create more wealthy Clampetts.

Of course, all of this is happening despite, not because of, Administration policy.

Free market capitalism works every time it’s tried.

 

Your diplomats are not safe here, warn North Korea as madman dictator is pictured brandishing a gun… and Britain considers evacuating embassy by Wednesday

• Rogue communist state issued a deadline of April 10 to every government
• Russia in ‘contact with U.S., China and South Korea’ about staff safety
• About two dozen countries, including the U.K., have embassies in North Korea – although the U.S. has no diplomatic relations
• N Korea has moved second Musudan missile with 3,000km range
• South Korea deployed two warships with missile-defence systems
• Pyongyang releases footage of Kim Jong-un joining in with target practice

Western nations, including Britain, are deciding whether to pull diplomats out of North Korea after being told that their safety  cannot be guaranteed beyond Wednesday.

Whitehall has been told it should consider evacuating its embassy in Pyongyang.

Several aid organisations were also given the warning yesterday, as the North Koreans moved more mid-range Musudan missiles to their east coast – where they could directly threaten Japan and America’s Pacific bases.

The Foreign Office last night said it had ‘no immediate plans to withdraw’ Britain’s embassy in Pyongyang and condemned ‘provocations’ by the North Korean regime.

Read more:

A Lesson In Free Hogwash

You notice progressives have the same song and dance?

Has government ever done anything in an efficient way?

Can you see the BS, it’s the new mine mapping …

And we paid $100 million for that!!!

It’s so hard …

Science is hard …

Global Leading Indicator .. Swirlogram

The first estimates are always wrong.

The red arrows show the relative size of adjustments from the initial estimates…

It would appear that between the historical revisions of over-optimistic initial prints in macro data in the last few months and the reality of the weakness in Europe; the global economy is in Slowdown. Goldman’s Swirlogram has now seen its Global Leading Indicator in the ‘slowdown’ phase for two months as momentum fades rapidly and seven of the ten major factors in the index declining with Global (Aggregate) PMI, and Global New Orders-less-Inventories worsening. Quite comically, the three factors providing some positivity are the Baltic Dry Index (which we are told is irrelevant when it drops), Japanese Inventory/Sales (which improved but remains at depression-era levels), and US initial jobless claims (which have become a farce statistically from what we can tell). Of course, none of this macro reality matters for now – until it does that is.

The red arrows show the miss.

And the last 3 days have seen the biggest drop in US macro data in 9 months…

Downward ho!!!

We Don’t Need Giant Mirrors

Bankruptcy … Chinese solar company Suntech goes bust.

The Economist;

As a clean-energy company, Suntech at least had the chance to fulfil BP’s misleading promise of going beyond petroleum. Alas, Suntech has instead ended up beyond profit.

The company’s solar-panel operations in Wuxi, China, were declared bankrupt on March 20th. That came just days after it defaulted on some of its bond obligations. Suntech has been shutting down various facilities worldwide and Mr Shi, who once was a green hero among the fat cats who gather at the World Economic Forum’s annual Davos gabfest, has been ignominiously booted out of his job as company chairman.

[...]

So dire is the industry-wide crisis that, on one estimate, over 30 solar firms have gone bust globally of late. Clearly, any company, never mind the world’s largest, would find it hard to survive in such an environment.

[...]

What next? If past experience is a guide, China’s leaders may not allow the world’s largest solar bankruptcy to tarnish their ambitions of becoming a clean-tech powerhouse. Nor will they likely let its financial troubles lead to unrest resulting from massive sackings of workers. Unconfirmed rumours are swirling that the local government in Wuxi is already organising some sort of bail-out. One thing is for sure: even if a rescue package is organised, foreign investors are going to lose a packet.

Beyond profit.

Ubuntu tapped by China for national operating system

Ubuntu is going to become the reference architecture for a Linux distribution, backed and developed by the Chinese government.

The news means Ubuntu-stewards Canonical will work with China’s National University of Defense Technology, and The China Software and Integrated Chip Promotions Center, to develop a Chinese-flavored version of the popular Linux distribution.

 This software will help China provide “a flexible, open, widely-used and standardized operating system,” Canonical said on Thursday.

“This collaboration will bring local investment and participation to ensure that the platform is relevant for the Chinese market, and close coordination with the global Ubuntu project ensures that it is familiar to software and hardware vendors, and useful for export products made by Chinese companies as well,” Canonical chief executive Jane Silber said in a statement.

A “CCN Open Source Innovation Joint Lab” has been create in Beijing where where engineers from all three organizations will code “an enhanced version of the Ubuntu desktop with features specific to the Chinese market”.

The first distribution made under this scheme will come out in April 2013 and will be named Ubuntu Kylin.

“Canonical, the software company that manages and funds Ubuntu, announced that the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will base their national reference architecture for standard operating systems on Ubuntu, and they will call it Kylin. Arguably China is the largest desktop market and the announcement has important implications. Shuttleworth says, ‘The release of Ubuntu Kylin brings the Chinese open source community into the global Ubuntu community.’”

With a population of 1.34 bn and rising, China is all but certain to be the largest market for desktop operating systems in the world in terms of users, and with Mark Shuttleworth leading a charge to get the Unity-dressed Ubuntu in front of as many people as possible, who can blame him for hitching Canonical a little bit closer to the Chinese state?