Posted originally on May 22, 2025 by Martin Armstrong
Japanese Minister Taku Etō has been forced to resign amid the ongoing rice crisis. For those unaware, Japan has been facing a severe rice shortage since 2024, which makes the US egg crisis look minuscule in comparison. Etō delivered a fatal blow to his career by saying that he does not need to worry about the price of rice since he receives it freely through donations.
His comments were taken as a modern-day “Let them eat cake.” “I asked myself whether it is appropriate for me to stay at the helm [of the agriculture ministry] at a critical time for rice prices, and I concluded that it is not,” Etō added, according to the Kyodo news agency. “Once again, I apologise to people for making extremely inappropriate comments as minister when they are struggling with surging rice prices.” He later added that his wife was upset with him for his comments, as they do purchase rice once the donations run dry.
Poor weather conditions in 2023 led to a significant decline in crop yields. The Japanese government has placed high tariffs on imported rice, and Japanese consumers strongly prefer domestic varieties. The government is releasing over 300,000 metric tons of rice from its emergency reserves through July, in addition to the 310,000 tons released since March, but this is not sufficient to meet demand.
Japan reluctantly began importing rice to meet demand. In February alone, Japan imported roughly 40% of what it imported in FY2023. Last week, rice prices hit a record ¥4,268 yen ($29) for 5kg of rice, up from ¥4,214 the previous week. The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications alerted the public that rice prices rose 92.1% year-on-year in March, but prices continued to rise. Last month in mid-April, a 5kg bag of rice reached ¥4,220 (about $29–$30), marking the highest price on record and over an 80% YoY increase.
Japan was previously nearly entirely self-sufficient in rice production, but recently bought rice from South Korea for the first time in 25 years, and has also turned to the United States to fill the gap. Panic buying remains prevalent despite the high cost of rice, as it is a staple in the Japanese diet.
The rice crisis controversy is causing the public to lose confidence in the government at large. Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s Administration approval rating sunk to an all-time low of 27.4%. This scandal is occurring weeks ahead of the July Upper House election. This is yet another blow to the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which previously derived mass support from farmers. Over 4,000 farmers took to the streets of Tokyo to demand that the government lift regulations, as the government has been paying farmers to limit their harvest for over 50 years.
The New York Times reported that the average farmer earned $23,000 annually as of 2022, making the industry unattractive to the youth as the number of farmers begins to shrink with an aging population. One farmer told the NYT that a third of rice paddies in his town have been abandoned, and farmers worry that misguided agriculture policies are spurring the decline. The EU and US allow farmers to produce as much as possible, and the government subsidizes any losses, while Japan has taken an opposite approach. The Japanese government believes it would lose $2.65 billion per year if it were to subsidize harvests, but it is already paying farmers $2.32 billion to ration production.
The Liberal Democratic Party has primarily been in power since 1955. The rice crisis is causing a serious decline in confidence as the party is polling at a historic low. Prime Minister Ishiba issued a public apology for his minister’s remarks that led to public outrage, but the damage has been done. The economy is always the driving factor behind political support. The people no longer have trust in the Liberal Democratic Party as they have refused to change policy and seem disconnected from the current cost-of-living crisis.
Posted originally on CTH on May 20, 2025 | Sundance
… And Director Gabbard may not know they exist.
If you have followed the construct of the Trump-Russia collusion story, you are likely outraged that accountability has not followed. There’s a very frustrating reason for that and I will explain how two distinctly different issues are being conflated. Separating them is the key.
The first issue is the FBI’s illegal surveillance of presidential candidates’, including candidate Donald Trump. The second issue is the Clinton campaign inspired Russia-Collusion story, that led to Crossfire Hurricane, colloquially known as “Russiagate.” All investigative emphasis, including John Durham, has been on the latter which takes you into a DC silo construct where all tentacles lead to dead ends and inaction.
Russiagate was a Clinton-inspired political smear campaign that was given the patina of credibility by the FBI opening the investigation called “Crossfire Hurricane.” If you focus on that storyline, you end up with zero accountability and endless talk that goes nowhere.
However, if President Trump and DNI Tulsi Gabbard reveal the first element, the FBI’s illegal surveillance of candidate Donald Trump, that path has a physical trail and documents that cannot be deflected by political obfuscation.
♦THE FBI SURVEILLANCE – The original agreement between Clinton and Obama going back to 2008 was for Obama to take the nomination, the presidency and then eventually support Hillary Clinton’s 2016 election bid.
Obama would be President. Obama would appoint Clinton to Secretary of State, Hillary would then use her office to build wealth for herself and her family, and then HRC would exit the Dept of State to begin her presidential run.
John Podesta would enter the Obama administration as Hillary left (post Benghazi mess) in 2013. Podesta would look out for Hillary’s interests from his position inside the Obama White House. The Clintons and Obamas never fully trusted each other.
Barack Obama would put all the mechanisms into place that would transition his administration into Hillary Clintons’. That was always the plan running in the background.
In 2015 Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama had a check-in meeting; just touching base to firm up the goals and objectives as Hillary began her campaign launch. Podesta then left the White House to take up position inside the campaign, and Obama would maintain Clinton’s interests as planned without a monitor.
All of President Obama’s appointments in/after 2015, were essentially through the prism of assisting Hillary Clinton to win in 2016. Attorney General Loretta Lynch (tarmac meeting), Deputy AG Sally Yates, Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe and FBI Director James Comey were all part of that.
This is a key point missed by many. In the last two years of Obama, the cabinet and top-tier members of the administration would align their institutional interests to that of Hillary Clinton.
Technically Hillary had eyes and ears all over the White House at the time, and with Hillary Clinton being a foregone conclusion per the expectations of Washington DC, everyone would fall in line during the transition from Obama to Clinton.
Again, this was the general plan. Obama would show up in 2016 to campaign for Hillary and all would be seamless.
The FBI was aware of the plan for transition from Obama to Clinton. Hence, the FBI role in eliminating the threat later presented by the Hillary Clinton laptop scandal, private servers and the subsequent issues of her receiving and transmitting classified information.
Remember, Clinton’s motive as Secretary of State was to sell her position for material wealth. That’s why she used a personal email, maintained her own servers, and generally controlled how her activity could be monitored and tracked. [Also, she didn’t fully trust Obama]
The FBI activity was to support, defend and facilitate the Clinton effort. This is again a key to understanding “Russiagate.”
After March 2016 (Super Tuesday) it became obvious Donald Trump was going to win the Republican nomination. Trump would be Clinton’s opponent.
♦The surveillance – Using access to the NSA database, the U.S. Govt., specifically “FBI Contractors”, began doing political surveillance of Donald Trump’s campaign. This intel was then sent to the Clinton team. Clinton would benefit from knowing the communication inside the Trump campaign. All of that intel was in the metadata captured by the NSA and searched by the FBI contractors.
All of this activity was political surveillance, using govt resources to feed the Clinton team the info.
♦”RUSSIAGATE” – When the Clinton campaign launched the Russia Collusion dirty trick move against her opponent Donald Trump, originally using Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson, the role of the Obama administration was to facilitate the political hit, and at the very least not impede it. Hence, former CIA Director John Brennan briefing Barack Obama on the status of the Russia collusion hoax as it spread in 2016 via the Clinton campaign.
However, as a result of the circle of information, Obama had a problem. The sourcing of the intel could trace to the illegal FBI surveillance of the NSA database. That’s why they needed a plausible shift within the surveillance. That’s where the Carter Page FISA comes in.
Specifically because President Obama was, by extension, now a participant in the Clinton created “Russia Collusion hoax,” and specifically because his administration officials were participants in the process (DOJ, FBI), when President Trump won the 2016 election President Barack Obama was now exposed by the threat the operation represented. This context is the impetus for the January 5, 2017, meeting and subsequent Susan Rice memo.
Following the surprising result in the 2016 election, the team around Obama was constructing plausible deniability.
President Obama did not orchestrate the Russia Collusion hoax; he facilitated it by not interfering with his administration officials who were assisting Hillary Clinton. This is a key distinction.
President Obama knew what was going on and he was willfully blind as it was carried out. However, the mess and fallout from the effort his FBI and DOJ officials put into assisting Hillary Clinton eventually represented a threat to President Obama.
With an assist from pressuring allies in the legislative branch, Robert Mueller and all 19 of his Clinton-aligned Lawfare operatives were put into place to cover-up the mess created within the Russia Collusion operation. Mueller +19 Lawfare embeds continued the Crossfire Hurricane operation, while the extreme Lawfare strategy was deployed against the Trump administration.
That’s the short, encapsulated version.
The Russia Collusion hoax was created by Hillary Clinton, spread to media through Fusion GPS and given the patina of credibility by the DOJ and FBI. President Obama facilitated the operation by not interfering in it, until it became a threat to him personally.
Both the Obama and Clinton political teams supported and organized the Robert Mueller cover-up. All of this activity is because Hillary Clinton was supposed to win.
♦ Awakening the public. Among the information President Donald Trump has requested for declassification, there are two important document sets being overlooked.
#1 is the 2017 99-page opinion of FISA Court presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer covering 2016 FBI Contractor abuse of the NSA database. Tulsi Gabbard needs to get the unredacted version, read it and declassify it. [Yes, revealing the names of the actual FBI contractors]
#2 are the NSA “audit logs” which were preserved by NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers, as outlined in his testimony. Where does NSA store their audit logs?
Both document trails outline the FBI conducting political surveillance of the 2016 Republican Presidental nominee, Donald Trump.
This is the originating data that follows a parallel path in the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation.
Both paths, (1) the FBI illegal political surveillance, and (2) the Clinton campaign Russia Collusion/Crossfire Hurricane investigation, intersect at the Carter Page FISA warrant, and merge together. However,it is important to see them as two distinctly different paths.
The illegal surveillance path was made legal retroactively by the FISA Warrant against Carter Page.
Investigating ‘Russiagate‘, as dirty and unseemly as it was, takes you to a place where politics infected the DOJ/FBI and every participant carries plausible deniability. However, investigate the 2016 illegal surveillance of Donald Trump’s campaign via the NSA database and all of that activity cannot be justified.
Focus on the FBI surveillance of the GOP in 2016, by focusing on how they exploited the NSA database.
As to the Audit Logs preserved by Director Rogers, there are two strong likelihoods:
#1) I suspect one of the workstations involved in the database searches will be identified as an FBI workstation in the DC Law Office of Perkins Coie.
#2) I suspect one of the workstations involved in the database searches will be located in the office of Samantha Power at the State Department; with a user id login designated to Power (but she may not have physically logged in).
Both #1 and #2 above are directly connected to Hillary Clinton. #1 was her campaign law firm, and #2 was her former office.
Bottom line. The FBI was conducting illegal political surveillance and funneling the results to the Clinton campaign. There is a document trail directly to this activity, and audit logs showing exactly who was doing it.
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This is a library of News Events not reported by the Main Stream Media documenting & connecting the dots on How the Obama Marxist Liberal agenda is destroying America
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