The Worst Internship Ever: Japan’s Labor Pains

Published on Apr 30, 2015

Japan is facing a serious labor shortage, a problem that can be traced back to an aging population and a prevailing fear that immigrants will dilute the country’s pure gene pool. In order to keep the world’s third-largest economy afloat, the Japanese government offers an internship program that attracts foreign workers from China, Vietnam, and the Philippines. The program, which allows workers to stay for three years, is advertised as providing laborers with transferrable new skills for when they return home.

VICE News recently traveled to Japan to investigate the internship program. We found that many interns are underpaid, saddled with insurmountable debt, and forced into a form of indentured servitude. Many are illegally placed as oyster shuckers, construction workers, and other unskilled positions. And, despite international condemnation, Japan plans to use thousands of new foreign interns to build the infrastructure for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.

Teenage Schoolgirls for Sale in Japan

- By Simon Ostrovsky and Jake Adelstein - July 20, 2015 | 3:45 pm

Japan's obsession with cutesy culture has taken a dark turn, with schoolgirls now offering themselves for "walking dates" with adult men. Last year the US State Department, in its annual report on human trafficking, flagged so-called joshi-kosei osanpo dates (that's Japanese for "high school walking") as fronts for commercial sex run by sophisticated criminal networks.

In our exclusive investigation, VICE News host Simon Ostrovsky will bring you to one of Tokyo's busiest neighborhoods, where girls solicit clients in their school uniforms, to a concert performed by a band of schoolgirls attended by adult men, and into a café, where teenage girls are available to hire by the hour. But the true revelations come behind closed doors, when schoolgirls involved in the rent-a-date industry reveal how they've been coerced into prostitution.

The Gary Null Radio Show 4-part Interviews with Daniel Sheehan

Revealing a new deep level of the criminal elites and their wide spread control on all aspects of our lives

Les Jamieson Reporting

Activists from all backgrounds would be well-served to gain a thorough understanding of the corporate, military and financial forces that operate behind the scenes and exert control over governments and institutions. Even presidents have had to contend with such forces.

"Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the U. S., in the field of commerce and manufacturing, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it." --President Woodrow Wilson, 1913.

Now we have a new window into such matters. Recently a 4-part series of interviews by Gary Null with one of our most important and influential Constitutional and public interest lawyers, Daniel Sheehan, has provided an extensive amount of historic information coming from firsthand experience and legal investigations on how elements of the "deep state" came to power. He names many key players, and many of the corporations involved.

Daniel Sheehan has degrees from Harvard College and Harvard Law School. He played a central role in high level cases such as the Pentagon Papers, the Three Mile Island case, the Karen Silkwood case, and the Iran/Contra Affair.

Sheehan's discourse begins with a description of the forces which took over corporate, military, and economic dictatorship at the end of the robber baron era in the late 1800's. These same forces continued to wield absolute and unaccountable power decade by decade by establishing special status for corporations and protections for their board members. To name a few topics covered, he speaks about the power base within Brown Brothers Harriman which represented ultra-wealthy interests. He speaks of the individuals who financed the rise of Hitler, shaped the ideology and operations of the national security state, and the formal creation of the OSS and CIA which was supposed to counter the threat of communism, but whose operations went far beyond its initial purpose.

Sheehan explains how corporate interests got us into Viet Nam, drug trafficking of Operation Phoenix to finance off-the-books CIA operations, the individuals from within our security state who committed high level assassinations, machinations within the Watergate scandal, and orchestrating coups throughout South America. He describes the roles of the Bush patriarchs going back to Herbert Walker and Prescott Bush, the rise of the Dulles Brothers, and the rise and decades-long influence of Deputy CIA Director Ted Shackley who was translator for Nazi General and spymaster Reinhard Gehlen.

Sheehan describes an ongoing power base of Fascists who fled to areas of South America, basically alleging that our own CIA has operated as a continuation of the covert operators behind the Third Reich. Their ideology and objectives go a long way towards explaining the development of a transnational structure with consolidation of wealth and power that intends to wield "full spectrum dominance". He also shares his insight into the current presidential race and what a Clinton presidency will look like.  

You can listen to all 4 parts linked below. Since they are very packed with information, it's suggested that you download them for easy access and repeated listening. 

Daniel Sheehan Interview Part - 1

Daniel Sheehan Interview Part - 2

Daniel Sheehan Interview Part - 3

Daniel Sheehan Interview Part - 4

You can visit Daniel Sheehan's interfaith, nonprofit law and policy organization, The Romero Institute, at http://www.romeroinstitute.org/

After listening to the Gary Null radio show 4-part interviews with Daniel Sheehan,  in order to understand Daniel Sheehan’s historic exposure of vital importance information, you should also watch the Mother of all documentaries: THRIVE