The following is from an article by international journalist Mika Tsutsumi, an exertion that rebukes society, which appears in a unique feature titled "Japan, Dangerous Waters!"
It is a must-read not only for the Japanese people but for people worldwide.
The Shock Doctrine Eating Up Japan
Giving No Choice
Have you ever heard of the term "shock doctrine"?
When a shocking event such as terrorism, war, natural disaster, financial crisis, or infectious disease occurs, the government and corporations will legally loot the nation and its people's valuable assets by introducing neoliberal policies (the three pillars of deregulation, privatization, and cutting social security) and unreasonable rules at breakneck speed while the people are in a state of fear and a state of suspended thinking. The "revolving door" of government and corporations moves back and forth between the government and the corporations, and the government and its corporate friends make a killing.
Canadian journalist Naomi Klein, who introduced this term to the world in 2007, became famous for exposing the fact that the Schotzkopf Doctrine has been used behind many historical events, from the coup in Chile to the collapse of the former Soviet Union, the Tiananmen Square incident, the Asian currency crisis, the 9/11 attacks, the Iraq War, and many others, The original idea was based on the Nobel Prize in Economics.
The original idea may ring a bell with many people when they hear that Professor Milton Friedman of the University of Chicago, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics, was the man behind the doctrine.
Fifteen years have passed since then, and with the arrival of a new player, Big Tech, the Shock Doctrine has also evolved.
Cognitive warfare," which works on the human cognitive domain to induce public opinion and manipulate policy decisions, has become faster with the spread of digital technology and smartphones. With the advance of globalization, the scope of shocks has also become global.
During this period of pandemics, the Ukraine conflict, climate change, bank failures, and other events affecting the world, unreasonable policies that would typically be impossible were introduced one after another in the United States and Canada, in India, and the countries of the European Union, under the guise of emergencies.
It is, for example, in 2022.
In Canada, the state of emergency of Corona was used as a reason to push for excessive behavioral restrictions through vaccination requirements.
When there was a domestic outcry, Prime Minister Trudeau suddenly declared a "state of emergency," expanded police powers, and froze the bank accounts of protesters and donors.
Although the freeze had to be lifted due to the outcry, Prime Minister Trudeau was subsequently criticized as a "totalitarian" by EU parliamentarians.
The Shock Doctrine is a game of speed and does not give the public time to think and make "choices.
Vaccination during the new Corona pandemic was a choice between "vaccinate or don't vaccinate and die.
Alerts were placed on posts that differed from the WHO (World Health Organization) position; Facebook issued a policy to suspend accounts that posted the opposite. YouTube announced a procedure to remove videos opposing all vaccines, not just the new coronavirus.
Many countries survived with measures other than vaccines, and the WHO admitted that not all of them were failures. Still, those cases and different views only reached some people because Big Tech restricted their access to the Internet.
As a result, while public money poured like hot water and vaccine makers made enormous profits in medical history, the lid was lifted, and the vaccine was not as effective as advertised in preventing infections or reducing the severity of illness and infection rates among vaccinees remained high, with serious side effects and deaths increasing rapidly in many places.
At the European Parliament, where it called Pfizer executives witnesses, the floor was abuzz when they testified that they had not tested the vaccine's effectiveness in preventing infection.
A press conference was held afterward in which the company was heavily criticized.
Significant class action lawsuits have been filed (and prepared in Japan) in Australia, the United States, Germany, the Netherlands, and others.
In Japan, however, there is almost no media coverage of the incident, and the minister in charge of the case blocked the voices of the bereaved families of the deceased on Twitter.
Similarly, the government has not changed its policy of abolishing paper health insurance cards and adopting a minor option despite the many-discussed My Number Card problems.
Regarding the issue of climate change, the government is promoting solar panels as a national policy, saying, "The earth will perish if we don't reduce CO2 (CO₂) as soon as possible" and "The global trend is toward EVs.
The people are not given room to think, they are not informed when they have a choice, and they believe what the government and the media tell them.
It is why Japan is losing the perception battle, especially in the last few years.
The Dollar Box of Solar Power
Did you know that the shock doctrine set up in the wake of the Great East Japan Earthquake is why electricity bills are now soaring and hitting our households?
While the Japanese people were in a state of panic due to the dual disasters of the earthquake and the nuclear power plant accident, Masayoshi Son of Softbank raised his hand. He said, "I want to restore Japan with renewable energy."
Democratic Party of Japan Prime Minister Naoto Kan speedily introduced a feed-in tariff (FIT) for renewable energy that incorporated the renewable energy policy proposed by Mr. Son.
The FIT was seven times higher than the 6 yen per kilowatt-hour subsidy paid to electric utilities at the time, which was 42 yen per kilowatt-hour, and it was quickly decided that the amount of solar electricity generated and purchased by power companies would be added to our monthly electricity bills as a surcharge for renewable energy.
In Europe, the average purchase price for a kilowatt hour of mega solar power is 58 yen. So Japan needs to make it about 40 or 41 yen."
In fact, when Mr. Son presented on FIT to the DPJ and the government leaders, the data he used was from two years ago (2009).
Why is that?
In Europe, the previous year, 2010, the purchase price of renewable energy collapsed.
The average purchase price was less than 20 yen, less than half of the 58 yen Mr. Son had mentioned, and in Spain, the FIT collapsed after only two years.
The fact that no such information was given and only the advantages were emphasized is a typical shock doctrine.
Furthermore, Mr. Son showed the purchase price of roof-mounted solar panels, which is much higher than ground-mounted mega solar panels (giant panels that generate 1,000 kilowatts of electricity).
In retrospect, it all seems strange. Still, the atmosphere in the disaster-stricken country was so full of "nuclear power is bad; renewable energy is good" that a renewable energy system, which was extremely bad for the people, was implemented at a breakneck pace without any choice.
After the government set up FIT's dollar box, Mr. Son entered the solar panel business and "successfully" started a nationwide rollout.
The Renewable Energy Business is an Enormous Concession
Although the purchase price was subsequently lowered, the initial cost was fixed for ten years.
The high subsidies received by early entrants have remained unchanged.
Since the installation cost is getting cheaper year by year, the difference between the purchase price and the purchase price becomes profitable, making it a truly "tasty investment product.
The annual renewable energy surcharge of 2 trillion yen has increased more than 10-fold in the ten years since its introduction in 2012, and each citizen now pays 100,000 yen per person to cover the annual surcharge.
Among the enormous concessions created in this way, mega solar power plants installed by cutting down forests in various parts of the country have caused landslides and other disasters whenever there is heavy rainfall, and local residents continue to scream.
Each panel is so thin that strong winds can easily blow it away, peeled off by heavy rain or destroyed by heavy snowfall.
Even if the panels come off, they continue to generate electricity, so there is a severe risk of spontaneous combustion and electric shock if the panels are flooded by a typhoon and fall off.
Even now, large numbers of panels are installed one after another, but there are not enough disposal sites. The labor cost of disassembling aluminum frames is too high to make it a viable recycling business, and taxes will eventually have to be raised.
According to the International Renewable Energy Agency, only 1 out of 10 disused solar panels are recycled.
There is still no way in the world to dispose of the toxic materials used in the components.
In the U.S. state of California, cadmium and other toxic substances that cannot be processed have become a social problem.
Furthermore, the fact that 45% of panels made in China, which accounts for about 80% of the market, are made using forced labor in Xinjiang, where labor costs are at their lowest, has emerged as a human rights issue, prompting the U.S. and European governments to restrict imports and switch to home production.
We also must recognize security issues.
Some solar panels, such as those at the Iwakuni power plant owned by Shanghai Power Company, are installed near military bases.
As of October 2020, 1,700 sites in Japan have been purchased by Chinese-owned renewable energy companies. The mega-solar project in Hiragori-cho, Nara Prefecture, is being developed by a U.S.-based investment company undercover by a Japanese dummy company, and other foreign companies are entering this promising market in the United Kingdom, Spain, Singapore, and France.
It should be noted that foreign investors fund the majority of mega solar projects in Japan, and the market has become a mowing ground.
The Reality of Advanced EV Countries
Japanese people are very susceptible to the phrase "global trend." Still, in fact, it is phrases like this that stimulate anxiety and impatience that should make us pause and think carefully.
For example, Norway is touted in Japan as the "world's most advanced EV country," but when you open the lid, you find that without massive subsidies, Norway would be in the red and unable to make ends meet.
Moreover, the source of the subsidies is income generated from the North Sea oil fields.
In other words, how do the environmental activists who promote EVs explain the fact that behind the spread of EVs is the export of oil and gas?
The reality of these "advanced EV countries" is rarely reported.
To begin with, EVs are not eco-friendly.
Although EVs emit little CO2 while driving, they emit a large amount of CO2 in making the batteries installed in them.
If the battery is replaced in the middle of the journey, a large amount of CO2 emitted in the battery production process is added to the total.
I must tilt my head and ask myself, "Is this a decarbonization?"
Most of the minerals used, such as cobalt, lithium, rare piles of earth, and graphite, are imported from China, Iran, Indonesia, and the Congo, and in addition to forced labor and human rights abuses, environmental destruction and health hazards caused by mining and refining have been pointed out.
What about the United States, the original country calling for countries to decarbonize?
Immediately after taking office, President Biden rejoined the Paris Agreement, the international framework for global warming prevention, and proposed carbon neutrality by 2050 and an environmental budget of $2 trillion over four years.
A World That Doesn't Think for Itself
YouTube, a Google subsidiary, banned statements that contradicted what the government and WHO were saying and content harmful to the Corona vaccine due to the Corona disaster, and at the same time, Facebook announced that it was censoring posts in the name of fact-checking and removing hundreds of accounts that spread negative information about the vaccine.
Censoring and manipulating the information we see daily on our smartphones is much easier than it used to be and has gone unnoticed.
In my book "Tsutsumi Mika's Shock Doctrine" (Gentosha Shinsho), I introduce several search engines that are not censored.
If we take the initiative to use them, we can discover what they are trying to hide.
We are moving at breakneck speed toward a world where we don't have to think for ourselves.
The rapid shift from print to video, the inability to wait for even a 10-minute video on YouTube, the one-minute video on TikTok, a Chinese video site, and now GPT, a chat service that answers your questions without even thinking about the search terms (although there are some lies mixed in), have made it mainstream.
As the technology of information manipulation becomes more sophisticated, more and more people are being deprived of the chance to think for themselves in exchange for the convenience of publication.
To put it the other way around, we are heading towards a society where people who set up shock doctrines can't stop laughing.
Many readers may feel gloomy after reading this far.
But don't worry, you don't have to give up.
While information and the economy are becoming more and more standardized, another silver lining is quietly sprouting right under our feet.
After the Great East Japan Earthquake, Mr. Masayoshi Son launched the "Natural Child Infrastructure Council," and he became its executive director, soliciting the heads of local governments.
While many of the leaders joined without question, ordering solar panel and mega solar installation projects from SoftBank in their hometowns and donating more and more land, two leaders felt uncomfortable with the council itself and declined to join.
They were Toshihito Kumagai, the mayor of Chiba City (now the governor of Chiba Prefecture), and Hajime Furuta, the governor of Gifu Prefecture.
Their sense of discomfort was later proven correct.
Still, many local governments have since listened to the voices of residents who felt something was "wrong" and have taken action to protect their local communities.
Unknown to most citizens, as of April 2023, seven prefectures (Hyogo, Wakayama, Okayama, Yamanashi, Yamagata, Miyagi, and Nara) and municipalities have introduced ordinances regulating solar power generation.
Japan's Hope Lies in the Regions
In Yamanashi Prefecture, which has the strictest ordinance in Japan, the prefectural government has taken thorough measures to strictly check everything from installation, maintenance, and management to disposal of the panels after use.
If rules are violated, the prefecture will conduct on-site inspections and pay the owner a fine.
Governor Kotaro Nagasaki of Yamanashi Prefecture said.
"Yamanashi will no longer cut down forests to build solar power generation facilities. I'm not afraid of the risk of being sued. Instead, I intend to approach the matter with the determination to set a Supreme Court precedent."
As seen in Heguri Town, Nara Prefecture, where citizens stopped a mega-solar project, and Bizen City, Okayama Prefecture, where the mayor rescinded the policy of making the MynaCard a condition for free childcare, the more citizens wake up from their cessation of thinking, the more likely they will react. The region is where the energy to rewind in the area becomes large.
The key to overcoming the Shock Doctrine is nothing less than the power of citizens who stop and think for themselves and local governments committed to putting residents and communities first face-to-face.
From the bottom of my heart, I am convinced that this tectonic swell occurring now is none other than Japan's hope.
