Then Again

Then again, about yesterday's post, if Hiroko Tabuchi of The New York Times has revealed results of an internal investigation finding connections between Olympus overpayments and the Yamaguchi Gumi, facts that even the police and the Tokyo Prosecutors Office are loathe to divulge, then she may have pulled a Jake Adelstein.

We shall see.

What's The Reason For The Difference in Coverage?

I am trying to get a handle on why the non-economic news media complex is fascinated with the Daio Paper scandal while remaining virtually silent on the much, much larger Olympus scandal. Every night we are treated to breathless updates featuring snippets of the handsome, young former chairman of Daio, mostly walking down the steps of his home. Not that there is much to the story: little rich boy takes over Daddy's company, uses its cash reserves as his own personal piggy bank, blows the money in Las Vegas and other venues, finds that his own personal fortune cannot pay back even half the loan from the company's kitty. Even the Japanese press does not make any bones about this being a story of a company where the founding family treated the company as its own private possession, with their underlings obliging them (en).

By contrast, the Olympus story is rife with "you cannot make this stuff up" international skullduggery: a foreign president brought in to clean up the company uncovers a mega-sized scandal and is summarily sacked for doing his job properly; record advisory fees paid to a Cayman islands company that has since evaporated, acquisitions whose value Olympus had to write off in a year; a pair of mysterious banker brothers -- it is all just incredible (en - with a special double hurrah for Hiroko Tabuchi).

Yet in the mainline press and on television, nada. Just a rote announcement that the chairman who sacked the foreign CEO himself resigned on Wednesday due to "confusion over acquisitions" made by Olympus.

The scale of the robbery of Olympus is 50 times 5 times the size of the Daio Paper scandal.

What gives?

Things I Did Not Know

You can learn a lot from reading Martin Fackler.

Like about the fierce Aves vs. Sapiens competition in the real estate market:

Blackouts are just one of the problems caused by an explosion in Japan's population of crows, which have so grown numerous they seem to compete with humans for space in this densely crowded nation.

About the frailty of the Japanese homeless:

Communities are scrambling to find ways to relocate or reduce their crow populations, as ever larger flocks of loud, ominous birds have taken over parks and nature reserves, frightening away human residents.

Or about the official and scholarly consensus on the Western origins of garbage:

Behind the rise, say experts and officials, has been the growing abundance of garbage, a product of Japan's embrace of more wasteful Western lifestyles. This has created an orgy of eating for crows, which are scavengers.

Or about the Japanese embrace of satyagraha and knee-jerk environmentalism:

The crow explosion has created a moral dilemma for Japan, a nation that prides itself on nonviolence and harmony with nature, because culling programs are the only truly effective method of population control.

Or about the truism that when a government official tells you an absurd story of how the past was a golden age, the job of the journalist is to reproduce the quote without examination:

"In the old days, crows and humans could live together peacefully, but now the species are clashing," said Naoki Satou, the head of planning in Tokyo's environmental department, which conducts crow countermeasures. "All we really want to do is go back to that golden age of coexistence."

Or about the miraculous wonder of the the land of the Rising Sun that if someone somewhere says something, it is important--whether or not the person is making sense or not.

While the city said it only killed 200 crows last year, the use of traps has stirred opposition. A local ornithologist, Michiyo Goto of Yamagata University, called for nonviolent alternatives, such as relocating the crows outside the city by building an appealing habitat for nesting, which she said was a brightly lighted area with no underbrush to hide predators.

"Once you start killing them, there's no end," Goto said. "You can't stop the damage unless you exterminate every last crow."

You, in the back, you have a question?

"Yes. If the crows are moved out of the city, what do they eat? Won't they just find new garbage dumps or worse yet raid the fields of farmers? And if they reproduce successfully, what prevents their offspring from returning to the city? And doesn't the ornithologist admit in the end that if the goal is to eliminate all damage you have to kill all the crows? But if that is not the assumption... "

Silence Unbeliever! Read your full Fackler and feel a faith in the editorial board of The New York Times coursing through your veins!