Japan bankruptcies a record

Economic recession continues to plague Japan as personal bankruptcies hit record levels, rising 50 percent between 1997 and 1999. Last year, the number of bankruptcy claims climbed to 110,000 in the first 11 months, topping the 103,803 claims filed in 1998.

Mounting bad debt has marked the Japanese economy over the past several years. Government officials estimate the debt could soar to more than 130 percent next year. At the beginning of 1999 banks in the country held some $1 trillion in bad loans. Meanwhile, unemployment is higher than at any time since World War II.  
 

Japan's oil plans on the rocks

Japan's capitalist rulers are growing nervous about the country's oil supply after government officials failed to secure an agreement to extend drilling rights to the Khafji oil field in Saudi Arabia. Officials from Tokyo's Ministry of International Trade and Industry flew to Saudi Arabia in mid-January to renew the contract that expires on February 27 on Japan's largest oil field. The Saudi rulers rejected Tokyo's offer to build a $2 billion railway in exchange for the drilling rights.

Tokyo imports nearly all of its oil supply, of which 85 percent comes from Middle Eastern countries. Lack of raw materials was a primary factor that drove the Japanese rulers into the slaughter of World War II. Washington prepared its imperialist military confrontation with Tokyo by cutting off Japanese access to petroleum, iron ore, aluminum, and other raw materials in Latin America, the Philippines, Malaysia, India, and elsewhere.  
 

Fascist to join Austrian gov't

Austrian president Thomas Klestil said January 27 that he would meet with ultrarightist politician Joerg Haider and Foreign Minister Wolfgang Schuessel in early February to discuss forming a new government. Klestil announced the decision after negotiations to renew the 13-year coalition between the Social Democratic party and Schuessel's Austrian People's Party collapsed.

Haider's right-wing Freedom Party made the biggest gains in Austria's parliamentary elections last October, placing second. The Freedom Party's campaign focused on the demand to stop immigration and attacked the established parties as corrupt. Many of the themes in Haider's demagogy are rooted in the Nazi Austrian tradition going back to Adolf Hitler. His parents were deeply involved in the German Nazi party in the 1930s and 40s.  
 

Rape of Nanjing at issue

In several cities in China and Japan protests have condemned a January 23 Osaka conference organized by rightists, titled "The Verification of the Rape of Nanjing: The Biggest Lie of the 20th Century." Around 500 came to the conference in the Japanese city of Osaka to hear the professor of history at Tokyo's Asia University claim that "there was no massacre of civilians at Nanjing." Many right-wing groups and academics in Japan campaign on that theme. "Nanjing is an undeniable fact," read a banner carried by 100 protesters nearby. Survivors of the massacre gathered in Nanjing to denounce the meeting. Protests also occurred in the Chinese cities of Shenyang and Hong Kong.

Nanjing, the capital of China at the time, was the second city overrun by the Japanese army in its invasion of China in late 1937. The orgy of looting, execution, and rape that followed the city's fall has entered history as the Massacre, or Rape, of Nanjing. Historians commonly put the death toll at 300,000 and the number of women raped at 20,000, but some estimate the figures are much higher. The Japanese government claims these figures are exaggerated.  
 

Euro drops below parity

The euro fell to a record low of 98 cents January 27 pushing down bond prices to new lows. "Investors sold off their European bonds in droves as the dollar value of the assets dwindled," noted London's Financial Times. "Europe is simply not attracting enough investors." In the first 10 months of 1999 there was a net outflow of $99 billion, the financial daily reported.

The currency has lost 17 percent of its initial value against the U.S. dollar after 11 governments in Europe began using it as a common currency last year to denominate stock, bond, and banking transactions. The weakened euro reflects stiffening competition from U.S. capitalist investors against their imperialist competitors in Europe who created the currency union as a rival to the U.S. dollar.  
 

Algerian rulers attacks rebels

Algerian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika sent paratroopers, infantry units, and helicopters into a guerrilla base in the Relizane province six days after issuing an ultimatum for the rebels to surrender or face "eradication" in a "fight without mercy." The Bouteflika regime seeks to crush the remaining forces of an Islamic insurgency in a civil war that has left some 100,000 people killed.

The war has its roots in 1992 when Paris, the country's former colonial ruler, collaborated with the regime in Algiers to annul the national elections won by the Islamic Salvation Front, a bourgeois opposition party that promised to be less subservient to the French imperialists. After a military junta took control in Algeria, the French government supplied the new regime with attack helicopters and other war materiel.  
 

Lima peasants fight landowners

Homeless peasants defended themselves against attacks by landowners in the Villa El Salvador district of the Peruvian capital of Lima on January 27. The landowners organized armed thugs to try to expel "squatters" who had built shacks on a 124-acre stretch of land during the previous week. Gunfire took four lives, but the peasants fought back with rocks. President Alberto Fujimori said that police would not act to clear the land. Villa El Salvador was founded in 1971 by about 200 families from Lima's slums and shantytowns, who seized a piece of government-owned land. The district's numbers have swelled as tens of thousands of peasants from the Andes have migrated to the city in search of work. Such events are common in the shantytowns that circle Lima, although it is unusual for private land to be seized.  
 

N.Y. cops raid homeless shelters

New York cops raided the city's homeless shelters in the pre-dawn hours of January 19, arresting at least 125 men and women. Spokespeople for the city's Department of Homeless Services defended the action, stating that those arrested had failed to appear in court after being summoned on minor charges. The arrests would ensure "a safe environment," said the officials. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani recently ordered police to arrest homeless people sleeping in the streets. In October last year he announced that shelters would be closed to those not prepared to accept work, a policy that sparked several protests.

— PATRICK O'NEILL  
 
 
 
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