And now come the Japanese...

It never rains but it pours. The Associated Press dispatched the following story from Manila: "Citing security concerns, the Japanese Embassy in Manila said Wednesday it was cancelling a reception to celebrate Emperor Akihito’s birthday scheduled for next week."

Sanamagan. Not only did the AP start off on that note, but it went on to remind readers that "Australia and Canada closed their Manila embassies indefinitely on November 28, citing ‘specific and credible’ terrorist threats. The European Union office, located in the same building as the Australian Embassy, also closed. All remain shut as of Wednesday."

Is this Japanese diplomatic move on the same level as "Remember Pearl Harbor!", which was commemorated only last Sunday? Well, not exactly. The Embassy spokesman, Kenichi Kimiya, said that the Japanese Embassy will remain open. Thank the gods of Shinto and Bushido for small mercies, anyway. But the move of calling off the Emperor’s birthday bash hurt our "image" abroad quite a bit more.

As one of the invited guests, though, I’ll have to say that the actual notice sent us by the Japanese was more polite than the statement they might have released to the wire services. Or did the wire services insert the term cancellation? It was entitled: "Postponement of the National Day Reception." The message said: "Please be advised that the reception celebrating the birthday of His Majesty The Emperor of Japan scheduled on Tuesday, December 17, 2002.... will be postponed until further notice due to unforeseeable circumstances."

However, postponement might just have been a euphemism for cancellation, and the postponement probably is until next year, or two years from now. The Agence France- Presse subsequently sent out its own story with kinder implications. AFP quoted the same Mr. Kimiya as saying that while the embassy had not received "credible, accurate or individual" information relating to threats against them, the Japanese government is "generally considering international circumstances".

He added that "the Japanese foreign ministry in Tokyo has also advised Japanese embassies in 17 other locations to cancel their respective celebrations".

It will be recalled that some years ago – on December 17, 1996 – leftist Tupac Amaru guerrillas infiltrated an Emperor's birthday reception at the Japanese ambassador's residence in Lima, Peru, and took hundreds hostage, including Cabinet ministers, government officials, and scores of diplomats and prominent persons. Although many captives were released in dribbles over the succeeding five months, the hostage crisis lasted until April 22, 1997, when Peru's tough-as-nails President Alberto Fujimori (of Japanese descent) ordered his special forces and soldiers to smash their way in.

The assault resulted in 71 of the remaining hostages being rescued, one hostage killed, plus two soldiers. All the 14 guerrillas were shot down. By coincidence, the Japanese ambassador involved in that painful caper had just arrived in Peru from his previous posting in Manila!

It's no wonder the Japanese Gaimusho or Ministry of Foreign Affairs is so paranoid about embassies celebrating the Emperor's birthday. I might ask, however: What happened to the banzai spirit? Has it become bonsai?

* * *

While we’re on the subject, it’s interesting to recall what happened to Peruvian President Fujimori subsequently. To take it from the top, he was elected President in June 1990. He started out with a bang. In truth, by his being tough, he saved Peru from a merciless Marxist revolutionary group calling itself the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) movement. This insurgent force had killed thousands, most of them civilians, not just military and police, destroyed public utilities, power lines, and buildings in terrorist attacks which had ruined the economic life of the nation. Fujimori cracked down with equal ruthlessness, captured the ringleader and brains of the rebellion – a college professor! – and crushed the Sendero Luminoso. He turned the economy around.

Memories are short, however. Within just two terms the people were crying for Fujimori’s scalp. He was, of course, the instrument of his own downfall. He succeeded in dissolving the National Congress (which he charged with being corrupt), suspending parts of the Constitution, and imposing press censorship on April 5, 1992. For such bold moves, he was initially hailed as a reformer – even by his suspicious neighbors and, reluctantly, by the United States.

But you know how it goes: "Power corrupts" . . . because it is absolutely delightful (with apologies to Lord Acton for my mangling of his over-quoted dictum). He was finally hounded out of Peru by outcries of corruption and connivance with the shenanigans of his former, vicious Interior Minister and secret police boss. Would you believe? He even sent feelers to former President Joseph Estrada as to whether the Philippines could grant him "asylum". In any event, he finally opted to flee to Tokyo – where it was, luckily for him, discovered that under the tradition of the "Family Book", Fujimori (a Nisei) was entitled to Japanese nationality. He now lives in Japan as a Japanese citizen.

To have been elected President of Peru for three terms (though the third term is iffy and was derailed), then "revert" to Japanese nationality to escape persecution and prosecution is certainly one for Ripley! But this is a world of strange happenings.

If you doubt this, just to EDSA.

* * *

We’d better keep a sharp eye on the price and availability of oil. A cause for worry is not just the climate of unease in the Middle East (where our main source is Saudi Arabia) over the uncertainty of "war" on Iraq. Many suspect – and I share this suspicion – that George "Dubya" Bush, the wartime Commander-in-Chief of the USA, will attack Iraq in January or February, despite the 12,000-page report submitted by Baghdad to the United Nations on its biological, chemical, nuclear and missile development programs (but insisting that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction).

Washington, DC grabbed the report from the UN Security Council, sanamagan, so it could "distribute" it to the other four permanent Council members (Britain, France, Russia and China) but "sanitize" it of sensitive weapons information before giving an edited version to the ten rotating temporary Security Council members.

Mind you, I sympathize with America’s paranoia, but in my opinion, this unwise move was an example of Superpower arrogance (the buzzword is hubris). Indeed, I was startled to receive as one of my early Christmas gifts a copy of the latest book by the famous Managing Editor of The Washington Post and Pulitzer-Prize winner Bob Woodward (one of the two who blew the whistle on Dick Nixon and Watergate). It was entitled, BUSH AT WAR. Wow! I exclaimed. Already? The volume published by Simon & Schuster (New York, London, Toronto, etc., 2002) turned out to be about the aftermath of 9/11 and the Afghanistan War. I guess Bob has Volume II still under preparation.

On the other hand, as I’ve said, alarm bells should also be ringing over the crisis in Venezuela. Oil production in that volatile Latin American country, which has 7.4 percent of the world’s oil reserves, has virtually ground to a halt. This is the offshoot of an escalating general strike in which an angry opposition, sick and tired of four years of President Hugo Chavez’s heavy-fisted pro-Marxist rule (his idol is Cuba’s Fidel Castro), is demanding that Chavez schedule Presidential elections years ahead of schedule, in the first quarter of 2003.

Whether it will succeed in ousting Chavez – who like Erap still has the backing of the slum-dwellers and the Venezuelan masa – is problematical but the strikers have succeeded in bringing the economy to a standstill and, most of all, paralyzed the $40 billion-a-year national oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela, which is the mainstay of the nation’s $100 billion economy – shrinking it by 7 percent since the strike began on December 2, a week and a half ago.

Gas stations have run dry in many parts of that oil-rich country; oil tankers stand at anchor, their crews having joined the mutiny; all exports – much of them to the US – have dried up. Carlos Ortega, the leader of one of the most militant spearheads of the strike, the million-member labor group called the Venezuelan Workers Confederation, vows that "the strike will achieve the objective of removing Chavez." That may remain in doubt, but there’s no doubt the dry-up of the oil faucet in Caracas will discombobulate the world’s oil markets.

Indeed, it is the battle over oil which highlights the current worldwide crisis. As those aggressive bumper-stickers now popular in America say about Saddam Insane: "Kick his ass, steal his gas!"

Iraq’s gas, whatever the more "idealistic" rhetoric may proclaim about protecting the world from that madman, may be the name of the game – as Baghdad goes on shrilly declaring. Iraq, next to the Saudis, holds the second biggest oil reserves – namely 10.7 percent. Saudi Arabia (co-owner of our local PETRON) has 24.9 percent. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) holds 9.3 percent. Kuwait has 9.2 percent. Russia, officially, has only 4.6 percent – but, in reality, Russia’s oil reserves, if properly developed, may not only rival but surpass those of Saudi Arabia’s (which makes Moscow the Joker in the pack). Iran, of course, has 8.5 percent. The Libyans have 2.8 percent.

In other hemispheres, the US has 2.9 percent; Mexico has 2.6 percent.

* * *

The seizure by a Spanish naval frigate, the Nevada, of a North Korean freighter carrying 12 Scud missiles and enough spare parts to assemble eight more Scuds, indicates that Pyongyang remains a dangerous source of weaponry and missile technology for rogue nations and terrorists. Where was the freighter, with its deadly cargo, bound? For Yemen? The speculation about the shipment being intended for Iraq seems far-fetched, but not out of the realm of possibility. After all, the ship was detected 980 kilometers off the Horn of Africa, not far from Yemen itself — and tried to escape, but halted when fired upon by the Spanish warship. It is now in tow. Destination? Bahrain or some port where US naval vessels can cordon it off, and it can be inspected more minutely?

The discovery of the Scud missile shipment may take the sting out of the massive anti-US demonstrations now taking place in Seoul, as a growing number of South Koreans have been demanding the ejection of the 37,000 US troops and servicemen garrisoning South Korea. When US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage planed in the other day, he was greeted with a furious demon-strating crowd in front of the US Embassy despite the freezing weather.

The awful truth is that the American military, in its typical bull-headed way, shot itself in the foot. The storm erupted over the US presence in South Korea when two American sergeants whose armored vehicle – careening through a narrow street – crushed two 13-year-old Korean girls to death last June. Would you believe? A US military court acquitted the two American servicemen the other week, without even a slap on the wrist! This move provoked the biggest anti-US demonstrations in South Korea’s history – and anti-American feeling has been burgeoning by the day.

This should be a warning to some American servicemen down in Zamboanga, where their welcome is still warm. These US personnel have been insolently speeding their vehicles pass red lights, and ignoring traffic rules altogether as they run their Mitsubishi Strada 5x5s around town. Put on the brakes, fellows! If you run over somebody, your "welcome" will go pfft. It’s the US military way, sad to say. The Legions of Imperial Rome must have bullied their way around in the same manner. The Empire’s gone, but admittedly they still have pizza and pasta, and Berlusconi.