...eighthundred thousand employees from talking about what they do. I have just bought a new suitcase, which has a keyhole next to its number lock. Only America’s security agents have keys with which they may look in my absence at what I may be carrying with me if I ever pass through an American airport. Over a thousand new agencies operating in strict secrecy, suck up so much money that no one can have a reliable overview of what this apparatus accomplishes besides sowing confusion about genuine threats, and delivering fortune to new types of entrepreneurs in the supposedly ‘private’ sector. Meanwhile the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), which has ballooned to some 25.000 soldiers operating in the greatest secrecy, carries out assassinations, keeps secret prisons and has been reported to engage in torture. While numerous obstacles have since the demise of the Soviet Union hindered the United States in formulating a foreign policy beneficial to itself and the world, the ‘war on terror’ has completely incapacitated the country from doing so. The United States is today not run by a political elite capable of perceiving the world’s realities, and is therefore acting blind, and therefore dangerous. President Obama is...

...even if nothing more happens than the re-emergence of the situation in prewar Japan, when two politically almost identical parties, the Seiyukai and the Minseito, used to take turns in forming the government, Japan would get the benefit of “new brooms” that sweep clean. With those brooms, obstacles to what should be done, in the form of entrenched relationships, can be cleared away. It already experienced a bit of this in 1993, when the LDP was shortly out of power, and when I noticed the new broom effect even in the prefectures. But one may already expect more. The Minshuto welcomes anyone in the media to its press conferences; doing away with the traditional cartel-like newsgathering practices through “press clubs” closed to outsiders, notorious for their frequent self-censorship. If Minshuto ministers will follow this example, as seems likely, political reporting is bound to change in Japan, and with that probably also the manufacturing of official political reality. It could make a huge difference. Along with breaking the LDP hold on what is formally the government, and the possibility of the introduction of real government, it makes the coming elections the most important Japanese political event in at least sixteen years....

...has been dealing with the recent calamity. Japan’s newspapers indulge in routine criticism of politicians in government, no matter what. Unfortunately, foreign reporters and commentators, including those of the Financial Times and the New York Times, fall back on copying their tone and opinion, for lack of independent knowledge. The Japanese business newspaper Nihon Keizai Shimbun, to take just one example, lamented the shortcomings of current government action, emphasizing the poor lines of command running from responsible politicians to the officials carrying out rescue and supply operations. This was perfectly true. But the paper failed to mention that the feebleness of such coordination was precisely the number one weakness of Japan’s political system that the founders of the DPJ had focussed on as something to be repaired. And it is indeed trying hard to overcome bureaucratic rigidity and untested chains of command and lines of communication. Those who have impatiently decided that the DPJ taking over from LDP has been Tweedledee replacing Tweedledum ought to pause and bring bring to mind how after the previous catastrophic earthquake, which struck Kobe in 1995, the central government appeared to be washing its hands of the miseries of the victims. The contrast could...

...have evolved into the constitutional monarchy, comparable to those in Europe, which quite a few Meiji period intellectuals had in mind. Also, the bureaucrats would not have been able to hide behind an Emperor whose innately benevolent political will they were supposed to be carrying out – an Imperial political will that was non-existent as far as practical matters were concerned. While Japanese politics underwent huge changes in the twentieth century, Yamagata’s legacy prevented the formation of a coordinating center once all the elder statesmen of the Meiji Period had died. The lack of coordination when circumstances call for it has of course not gone unnoticed in Tokyo, now the need for drastic remedial action in the economy and other areas becomes ever more obvious. So, in January [of 2001] the Japanese central government was reorganized for the ostensible purpose of stimulating politicians to initiate policy, instead of leaving that to career bureaucrats. But that new system was in effect for only a few days when already there was criticism in the air, about the concept of a ‘politician-led bureaucracy’ being misinterpreted. Politicians, especially ministers and a newly named category of senior vice ministers, appeared – horror of horrors –...

...to that strain of anti-American thought within the Hatoyama administration. Back to that despicable universe of conspiracy theorists: Ironically, the Washington Times, not known for anti-Bush/Cheney positions, lent these alleged kooks its ears when with a straight face it reported the press conferences of a new group with a thousand members, the ‘Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth’ . They are supported by ‘Firefighters for 9/11 Truth’, who point at the crime committed by the government when it failed to hold a forensic investigation of the fires that destroyed the Trade Center complex. They do not peddle any conspiracy theory, all they hope for, like Fujita, is the re-opening of aspects of the case with new investigations. Fujita appears to be in a company that keeps on growing. In fact, judging by the online commentary attached to the Washington Post editorial (at 692 when posting), the editors may inadvertently have aided this growth as many commentators are supplying inquiring minds with links to sites for further study. This is as good an opportunity as any to pause for a moment and consider the interesting phenomenon of a flood of books, articles and references in recent years in which truly outrageous...

...domination is not feasible, and hence cannot be a serious long term goal. What used to be called the ‘free world’ shows as yet no signs of grasping the obvious fact that a common cause that held it together before the demise of the Soviet Union has vanished. Unending wars do not belong to the aims endorsed by the member states of the European Union, or Japan. So, the fundamental condition of any alliance — shared political purpose — does not obtain. Daily news about Egyptians and Lybians wrestling to free themselves from tyrannical regimes keeps alive imagery of Western values, and of a laudable effort to help along the democracy sought by others. What used to be called the ‘free world’ has not yet awakened to the reality that, with all its professed intention of spreading democracy and the rule of law over the world, the United States itself no longer has the functioning institutional underpinnings to be a democracy on the national level. Or, for that matter, that its legal system does not do the most important thing it is meant to accomplish: to protect common citizens against the rapacity, political priorities and caprices of powerful entities, which...