WW3: Japan Activates Marines For First Time Since WWII On Chinese Border

Fears of a third world war spiked over the weekend as Japan activated their marines for the first time since World War 2. About 2,100 members of the Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade (ARDB) were activated in a ceremony in which the troops wore camouflage.

ARDB also completed a 20-minute mock drill for the public in which the “retook” an island from an invading force. According to Reuters, the formation of the Japanese marine brigade is controversial because amphibious units can project military force and could, critics warn, be used to threaten Japan’s neighbors. In its post-WW2 constitution, Japan renounced the right to wage war.

The newly activated unit is highly trained to counter invaders occupying Japanese islands along the edge of the East China Sea that Tokyo fears are vulnerable to attack by China. “Given the increasingly difficult defense and security situation surrounding Japan, defense of our islands has become a critical mandate,” Tomohiro Yamamoto, vice defense minister, said in a speech.

The brigade is the latest component of a growing marine force that includes helicopter carriers, amphibious ships, Osprey tilt-rotor troop carriers, and amphibious assault vehicles. All of these marine measures are meant to deter China as it pushes for easier access to the Western Pacific.

The activation of the 2,100 strong ARDB takes Japan a step closer to creating a force similar to a U.S. Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) able to plan and execute operations at sea far from its home base. “They’ve already demonstrated the ability to put together an ad hoc MEU. But to have a solid, standing MEU capability requires a concerted effort,” Grant Newsham, a research fellow at the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies. “If Japan put its mind to it, within a year or year and a half it could have a reasonable capability.”

Coincidentally, the United States last month deployed its F-35Bs for their first at-sea operations aboard the USS Wasp amphibious assault ship, which is based in Sasebo. The Kyushu port is also home to Japan’s Ise and close to the ARDB’s base.

All of these military decisions seem to coalesce and reignite fears of a war. The amphibious marine force of Japan has been advancing over the past few years with the help of the United States Marines. 

Preppers Stuck In Cities: Elite Chartering “Getaway Boats in Case of Manhattan Emergency”

There is an inherent dilemma for most of the people living in cities.

Even those who are aware of the extremely fragile fabric of society are often stuck living urban lives. Perhaps they plan to retire to a country abode, or construct a hideaway to escape to if the need ever arises, but for now, they are stuck in the city making a living.

This is true even for the rich, but now, they have a back-up plan.

The biggest of American cities, and one of the most gridlocked, is New York City, with Manhattan and Long Island both isolated islands – trapped during emergencies from the rest of the world.

That’s why those with means, and forethought, are now chartering emergency charters to get out of the city – probably a good idea, especially if the helicopter is out of your price range.

via NY Post:

“A lot of people don’t want to wait on a line to get on a ferry, and they don’t want to worry about walking off of Manhattan, as people had to do in the past,” [Chris Dowhie, co-owner of Plan B Marine] told The Post.“They know a boat is the fastest way, and we take the worry out of maintaining and preparing and always readying your vessel,” he added.

Not only does the company promise a speedy getaway, it plans individual evacuation routes for each person, depending on their personal needs.

[…]

“You don’t have a captain. You have to drive this boat yourself,” Dowhie told The Post, adding that in a crisis, people are more concerned with helping their own families than maneuvering someone else’s escape vehicle.

[…]

The unique evacuation service costs an annual fee of $90,000 and is catered toward wealthy individuals and corporations who don’t have time to mastermind their own escape.

Clients access the boats with an individual punch-in number, and should they need to abandon it at any time, Dowhie’s company will locate it.

Interesting concept, and the fact that this has become a business model is also telling of the times.

Estimates have placed evacuation from major coastal cities at more than 24 hours:

Estimated evacuation times during major emergencies.

For Long Island, where millions of New Yorkers live, it would be 20-29 hours to get off the island – during that time, people will lose their patience, run out of gas, become hungry, be denied access to medications and drugs, need emergency services, resort to crime, etc.

The one percenters have long been serious about their prepping, for they know too well about the very real dangers being constructed, and the house of cards that is ever poised to collapse.

There has been a steady rise in the upper class investment into underground bunker communities – typically decked out with furnishings and amenities that nearly compare with above-ground living.

They have also been the high profile investors buying up getaway farms in places like New Zealand or South America, and hedging with mountain retreats and fortified safe rooms.

While the amount of money they are spending remains mostly pocket change the biggest players, it represents a serious consideration of the high risk for social disruption, chaos and mega-disasters, such as the collapse of the power grid.

The good news is that while the rich may indeed be living the high life, with escape hatches built in, there are many steps that the average, and more modest, individual can also take to increase your chances of survival during modest times.

When it comes to elite prepping, you have to always ask yourself: ‘Do they know something that I don’t know?‘

Considering their access to power, and their insider vision of human affairs, the chances are very good that they may.

Boats and hideaway properties can be arranged at lower prices as well, or DIY. If you’re not on an island, there are likely some back roads that can save your life, and keep you out of the major chaos. Plan your escape route, with several alternate routes, that avoid the major intersections with highways, bridges and other points at which the majority of traffic is forced to flow, at a slow, grinding and dangerous pace.

Safe rooms can been adapted to almost any space, and for relatively little money, and fortifications can be retrofitted where ever you need them. Just food for thought, better now than too late.

Something big is coming.

Read more:

The Prepper’s Blueprint: The Step-By-Step Guide To Help You Through Any Disaster

Elite Bunker Down in “Secure, Safe Rooms Hidden in Plain Sight”… And You Can, Too

Considerations for SHTF Living & Bug Out Locations

How to Create a Safe Room in Your House or Apartment

Strategic Relocation Guide: How To Position Yourself To Survive A Major TEOTWAWKI Event

A Green Beret’s Guide To Low-Budget Home-Defense Techniques 101: “Early-Warning Systems and Fortifications”

Elite Are Prepping For a Collapse: “A World That’s Becoming Increasingly Unstable”

This article was written by Michael Snyder and originally published at his Economic Collapse blog.

Editor’s Comment: There is little doubt that the world is becoming quite unstable. What remains arguable is whether or not we’ve reached a tipping point from which things cannot return to normal. The start of the Trump presidency has been marked by sharp divisions, protests, anger and political turmoil that has gripped headlines and brought anger to a fever pitch. Economically, the  flashpoint for crisis is just around the corner, and could hit home at literally any point.

While things may continue to appear normal, the fabric of society is extremely vulnerable, and those with the means and advanced effort to prepare for the collapse are doing so. Things are incredibly delicate and the number of viable potential threats and catastrophic emergencies is many fold. Perhaps the fact that things have remained stable for this long is a piece of great fortune and a source of false security. Do what you can and get ready, because there is no guarantee that the future will take care of you and yours.

Now It Is The Elite That Are Feverishly ‘Prepping’ For The Collapse Of Society

by Michael Snyder

Once upon a time, “prepping” was something that was considered to be on “the lunatic fringe” of society. But in 2017, wealthy elitists are actually the most hardcore preppers of all. This is particularly true in places such as Silicon Valley, where a whole host of young tech moguls are putting a tremendous amount of time, effort and money into preparing for apocalyptic scenarios. So while interest in prepping among the general population has fallen extremely low right now, the election of Donald Trump has given liberal wealthy elitists even more urgency to prepare for what they believe is a very uncertain future.

In the January 30th, 2017 edition of the New Yorker, reporter Evan Osnos has done an extraordinary job of profiling these wealthy elitists that are “getting ready for the crackup of civilization”. One of the people that he interviewed was Steve Huffman, the young co-founder and CEO of Reddit…

Huffman, who lives in San Francisco, has large blue eyes, thick, sandy hair, and an air of restless curiosity; at the University of Virginia, he was a competitive ballroom dancer, who hacked his roommate’s Web site as a prank. He is less focussed on a specific threat—a quake on the San Andreas, a pandemic, a dirty bomb—than he is on the aftermath, “the temporary collapse of our government and structures,” as he puts it. “I own a couple of motorcycles. I have a bunch of guns and ammo. Food. I figure that, with that, I can hole up in my house for some amount of time.”

According to the article, Huffman estimates that “fifty-plus percent” of his elite friends in Silicon Valley have some form of “apocalypse insurance”. Needless to say, that number would be far higher than for the general population as a whole.

Another tech mogul that was interviewed by Osnos for the story was former Facebook product manager Antonio García Martínez…

Last spring, as the Presidential campaign exposed increasingly toxic divisions in America, Antonio García Martínez, a forty-year-old former Facebook product manager living in San Francisco, bought five wooded acres on an island in the Pacific Northwest and brought in generators, solar panels, and thousands of rounds of ammunition. “When society loses a healthy founding myth, it descends into chaos,” he told me. The author of “Chaos Monkeys,” an acerbic Silicon Valley memoir, García Martínez wanted a refuge that would be far from cities but not entirely isolated. “All these dudes think that one guy alone could somehow withstand the roving mob,” he said. “No, you’re going to need to form a local militia. You just need so many things to actually ride out the apocalypse.” Once he started telling peers in the Bay Area about his “little island project,” they came “out of the woodwork” to describe their own preparations, he said. “I think people who are particularly attuned to the levers by which society actually works understand that we are skating on really thin cultural ice right now.”

As you can see, a lot of these liberal elitists are actually secretly stashing away lots of guns and ammunition.

So don’t believe everything that you read about them being “anti-gun”.

Other big names in Silicon Valley have decided that having a property on the other side of the planet is the best form of “apocalypse insurance”. The following comes from a story about Paypal founder Peter Thiel in the New York Times…

Mr. Thiel’s admiration for New Zealand is longstanding. “Utopia,” he once called it. He has an investment firm in the country that has put millions into local start-ups. He also owns lavish properties there, which his Silicon Valley friends hope to fly to in the event of a worldwide pandemic.

And of course Thiel is far from alone. So many wealthy individuals are buying up property in New Zealand these days that it is actually becoming a significant political issue over there. In fact, it is being reported that foreigners purchased an astounding 3500 square kilometers during the first ten months of 2016…

Statistics showed foreigners had bought over 3500 square kilometers of New Zealand in the first ten months of 2016, which is over four times as much as they did in the same period in 2010.

LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman told The New Yorker that New Zealand had become the hot topic among Silicon Valley leaders lately.

“Saying you’re ‘buying a house in New Zealand’ is kind of a wink, wink, say no more. Once you’ve done the Masonic handshake, they’ll be, like, ‘Oh, you know, I have a broker who sells old ICBM silos, and they’re nuclear-hardened, and they kind of look like they would be interesting to live in.”

Hoffman estimated that over half of the Silicon Valley insiders were into preparedness – especially since anti-elite sentiment has risen around the globe in recent years. It was intensified by events like Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, he added.

So are these wealthy elitists ahead of the curve, or are they just being paranoid?

Only time will tell, but they didn’t become exceedingly wealthy in the first place by being stupid.

As I discussed yesterday on The Most Important News, there are certainly reasons to be optimistic now that Donald Trump has become president, but there are also lots of reasons to be prepping harder than ever.

We should be hopeful for the future and working for a better tomorrow, but we also need to understand that we live in a world that is becoming increasingly unstable.

And most of us think that it is just common sense to purchase insurance for our homes, our cars, our health, our lives and so many other things, and yet most of the population is completely unprepared for a major catastrophic event.

It is a good thing to have balance in life. My wife and I are very proud preppers, and there won’t ever be a time when we aren’t prepping.

But we also live our lives without any fear. We know that the world is going to get crazier and crazier, but we do not believe that it is a time to dig a hole and try to hide from the world.

Rather, now is a time to rise up and become the people that we were created to be.

This year my wife and I are going to be taking on some new adventures, and these new adventures are going to give us a bigger voice than ever before.

Someone once told me that life is like a coin. You can spend it any way that you want, but you can only spend it once.

We don’t want to spend our lives paying bills and killing time.

Instead, we want to do all that we can to make a difference and to change the world.

So unlike these wealthy elitists, let us not be in fear of what is coming. There is no other time in history that I would have rather lived than right here and right now, and I can’t wait to see what comes next.

This article was written by Michael Snyder and originally published at his Economic Collapse blog.

Egypt Court Rejects Plan to Give Red Sea Islands to Saudis

January 16, 2017   |   admintam

(MEE) A top Egyptian court on Monday rejected a plan to transfer two uninhabited Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia in a deal that provoked outrage among Egyptians.

The Egyptian government had appealed against a lower court ruling in June that found the controversial border demarcation agreement was illegal.

But the courtroom erupted in cheers on Monday as the judge delivered the final verdict on the issue, with lawyers and activists chanting: “These islands are Egyptian.”

Tiran and Sanafir are our right, Egypt’s right, the right of our children and of our ancestors who were killed there

– Island protest organizers

Ownership of Tiran and Sanafir, the uninhabited islands at the entrance to the Gulf of Aqaba, has long been disputed, with Cairo and Riyadh both claiming them, although they have been under Egyptian control for more than 30 years

They are considered strategically important because they lie on the key sea route to the Jordanian port of Aqaba and the Israeli port of Eilat.

The islands were occupied by Israel in 1967 during the Six Day War, before being handed back to Egypt in 1982 when the two sides signed the Camp David peace accords.

Islands deal resulted in aid

A deal to hand over the islands was signed during a visit to Cairo last year by Saudi King Salman, when Riyadh showered Egypt with aid, provoked accusations that the government had “sold” the strategic islands.

Cairo said the islands were Saudi to start with but had been leased to Egypt in the 1950s. But the court said it was its “unanimous” decision that the two islands were sovereign Egyptian territories.

The islands saga has deeply wounded national pride and brought people out onto the streets against the government of president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. “Our right to this land is won by blood, not by documents and maps,” protest organizers wrote on their Facebook page at the time, while showing images of Egyptian soldiers on the island of Tiran in 1967.

“We gave more than 100,000 martyrs in our wars with Israel to restore this land. Tiran and Sanafir are our right, Egypt’s right, the right of our children and of our ancestors who were killed there.”

More than 150 protestors were jailed following mass protests against the decision, according to Human Rights Watch.

The Muslim Brotherhood said at the time “that no one has the right to abandon the property and resources of the Egyptian people in exchange for a fistful of dollars”.

Cairo and Riyadh ties may get complicated

But this latest and final ruling may complicate ties between Egypt and Saudi Arabia, a main financial backer of Sisi since he came to power in 2013.

Relations have cooled over Egypt’s stance on Syria, which is seen as closer to Russia: Moscow backs President Bashar al-Assad, while Saudi Arabia supports rebels fighting to topple the Damascus government.

In 2010, Egypt and Saudi Arabia began formally discussing the drawing of their maritime borders, including the ownership of the two islands.

The islands deal was one of several choreographed announcements during King Salman’s visit. More than a dozen other accords, including plans for a Red Sea bridge and a memorandum of understanding to set up an industrial zone in Egypt, were also announced at the time.

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This article (Egypt Court Rejects Plan to Give Red Sea Islands to Saudis) by MEE and agencies originally appeared on MiddleEastEye.net and was used with permission. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.