Should the U.S. launch a Mideast attack, the Islamist Hezbollah has threatened, its “23,000 … martyrdom-seeking forces” are prepared to fight back by attacking Saudi Arabia and western oil interests in the region.

Sheikh Wathiq al-Battat, the secretary-general of the Shi’ite Hezbollah in Iraq, has warned that his Jaysh al-Mukhtar army will target oil installations and ports in predominantly Sunni Saudi Arabia if the U.S. attacks Syria or, by implication, should there be an attack on Iran, as U.S. President Barack Obama has threatened to do.

Al-Battat, whose al-Mukhtar army is an offshoot of the Lebanese Hezbollah, said that he would target Saudi Arabia’s oil installations in the Saudi Arabia’s Shi’a-controlled eastern province and at selected ports, including the ports of Abqaiq, Juaymah and Ras Tanura, one of the largest in the world, according to sources.

The attacks in Saudi Arabia also would include oil and natural gas pipelines, power lines and communication towers.

The attacks, al-Battat said, would be aimed at harming the West’s economy by stopping the flow of crude oil to western countries.

“We will cut the West’s economic artery in Saudi Arabia by attacking Saudi ports and oil installations,” al-Battat told the Iranian news agency, Farsnews.

He also said that Syria will be the beginning of the end of Saudi Arabia, since the Saudi monarchy is “the main party which has encouraged and masterminded war plans against Syria.”

In that regard, al-Battat pointed to Saudi support for Islamist militant foreign fighters from various Central Asian, Middle East and North African countries, ostensibly under the direction of the former Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan.

Al-Battat’s warning also comes following a reported secret meeting that took place in early August between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Bandar in Moscow.

At the meeting, which the Russian Embassy in Washington wouldn’t deny to WND had occurred, even though it was supposed to be secret, Bandar said he controlled the switch of the foreign fighters not only Syria, but also the Islamist militants fighting in predominantly Muslim provinces in southern Russia.

The Saudi prince also said that he could guarantee the protection of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, against attacks from the Islamist militants.

Sochi is located near the provinces that the Islamist militants want to separate from Russia and turn into a Caucasus Emirates.

Bandar reportedly admitted that the North Caucasus militants had moved into Syria in cooperation with the Saudis.

“We use them in the face of the Syrian regime, and we can guarantee that they won’t have any role or influence in the political future of Syria,” Bandar told Putin.

“We know that you have been supporting these terrorist Chechen groups for more than a decade,” an irate Putin told Bandar.

If Putin would switch his support for Syria and Iran, Bandar promised Putin a major oil deal including the prospect that Russia and Saudi Arabia basically would control world oil pricing.

Putin reportedly was livid over the meeting, and subsequent reports, although unconfirmed, said that if the U.S. attacked Syria, Russia would attack Saudi Arabia.

Al-Battat’s warning comes as the U.S. and Russia are in the midst of negotiations to get Syria to turn over its chemical weapons to international inspection.

At the same time, the Obama administration said the military option remains on the table in using U.S. military force to eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons capability.

Critics of the administration have stated that the lack of military action now will only embolden other countries with chemical and biological weapons to use them without fear of military reprisal.

Critics also believe it will signal to Iran that there will be no consequence beyond sanctions over its continued nuclear development program.

The U.S., Israel and other western countries believe Tehran’s nuclear enrichment program is meant to develop nuclear weapons, although the Iranians have vehemently denied the charge.

As a consequence, Obama on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” said that the U.S. still is prepared to act militarily to halt Iran’s nuclear program. This latest threat comes despite efforts to pursue a diplomatic solution over Syria instead of a military strike over its alleged use of chemical weapons on Aug. 21 that killed a reported 1,429 Syrians, including some 400 children, by one count.

The foreign-backed Syrian opposition forces accused the Syrian government of launching that chemical attack. Damascus, however, has vehemently denied the accusation, saying the attack was carried out by the militants inside their controlled area on the outskirts of Damascus as a false flag operation – an attack designed to push the U.S. and the West to take military action.

“I think what the Iranians understand is that the nuclear issue is a far larger issue for us than the chemical weapons issue, that the threat against Israel that a nuclear Iran poses is much closer to our core interests,” Obama said. “My suspicion is that the Iranians recognize they shouldn’t draw a lesson that we haven’t struck Syria to think we won’t strike Iran.”

If the U.S. were to launch a military strike against Syria or, by implication, Iran, al-Battat said that he would unleash his group of “23,000 fully trained and equipped martyrdom-seeking forces, who can blow up the U.S. interests in Iraq and the Persian Gulf at any time if the U.S. commits such a stupid act.”

Al-Battat has close links to Iran and claims to be “ideologically bound to the authority of the fiqh,” or a backer of the Iranian regime, which is guided by the Qur’an and Shari’ah law.

Shinzo Abe is giving new hope to Japan’s unappreciated entrepreneurs

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“IT BEGINS from now,” tweeted Takafumi Horie, the former boss of Livedoor, an internet firm, two months after emerging from prison this spring. Mr Horie is involved in no fewer than 30 new companies, including a space-tourism venture. If any of them grow to be big, Mr Horie, who was convicted of fraud in 2011, may show that a fallen Japanese entrepreneur can make a comeback.

The mood among Japan’s would-be business moguls is at its most buoyant since the dotcom bubble burst a decade or so ago. A higher stockmarket is boosting the chances of a successful initial public offering. The prime minister, Shinzo Abe, is Japan’s first leader to treat entrepreneurs as something more than greedy hustlers. For the past few years Mr Horie, a brash self-publicist, has been exhibit A in the case for holding that view. But now Mr Horie says he is being welcomed back into the business world.

Mr Abe’s three-part plan to revive the economy, known as “Abenomics”, is designed to help start-ups as well as big business. First came monetary loosening from the Bank of Japan, and a fiscal stimulus. The third part, a series of reforms to boost long-term growth rates, includes radical deregulation in new “special economic zones” spread across the country. If this pledge is honoured, many new opportunities could emerge for entrepreneurs in industries ranging from medical care to agriculture. The reforms also involve pressing the banks to stop demanding onerous personal guarantees when entrepreneurs seek loans for their businesses.

Most of all, Mr Abe admits, Japan needs to become more accepting of initial failure. As a second-time prime minister after a disastrous first term, he is himself a comeback kid. He reportedly described for guests at his home this summer how the young Walt Disney ran his business into the ground five times before he at last succeeded. Digital types were delighted when he attended a meeting of the Japan Association of New Economy, chaired by Hiroshi Mikitani, the founder of Rakuten, an online-commerce giant. Mr Mikitani has been brought in to advise the government on its deregulation efforts.

For now, Japan’s vital signs on entrepreneurship are dire. The overall number of firms is shrinking, and the rate at which new companies are born as a proportion of existing ones is less than half that in America and Britain. In 2012 the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, a survey by a group of universities, put Japan in joint last place out of 24 developed nations for levels of entrepreneurial activity.

Japan’s record on fostering new firms is worse even than continental Europe’s. Just 6% of Japanese participants in the survey thought there were opportunities to start a business in their country, and only 9% believed they personally had the skills required. The equivalent figures for the French were 38% and 36%. Other Asians, in contrast, were bursting with optimism. That lack of ambition means venture-capital firms have few big payoffs to look forward to, with the result that there is a limited pool of cash available for those who do want to have a go at starting a business: a vicious circle that will be hard to break. Young Japanese firms attract around one-twentieth of the venture-capital money that start-ups in America pull in.

The outlook for creating new businesses could begin to improve if Mr Abe succeeds in leaning on the banks to stop demanding extensive debt guarantees. Now many would-be entrepreneurs, faced with the risk of losing their homes, give up before they start. In the short term the reform may make capital a little scarcer as banks tread cautiously. But in the long run it could transform Japan’s attitude to entrepreneurship, says Yoshito Hori, the founder of GLOBIS, a business school.

The industry ministry is promising to provide generous funding with the aim of doubling Japan’s rate of business start-ups by 2020. To do that it will have to add another 100,000 start-ups to the current annual tally. However, its record on picking winners is not great: its bureaucrats famously tried to stop the young Sony importing transistor technology and Honda from moving into cars. So the risk is that it ends up backing many duds, draining the public coffers to little benefit.

The mother-in-law factor

There are other reasons to be optimistic. The success of the big firms born in Japan’s great period of post-war entrepreneurialism later discouraged graduates from joining newer ventures. Experienced managers are seldom keen to leave large companies. Wives, mothers and mothers-in-law exert a strong influence on men not to join risky start-ups, says Yoshiaki Ishii, head of new-business policy at the industry ministry. But the perceived balance of risk is shifting. Many of the giants are struggling. The cost of starting a firm is plunging thanks to cloud computing and other innovations. Mr Horie says he is financing his new ventures through crowdfunding networks such as Campfire.

The government could help to remove plenty of other hurdles to entrepreneurship. One difficulty for science and technology start-ups is that large Japanese firms have signed up exclusive rights for the bulk of university discoveries. Small, disruptive firms are not usually able to access and develop them. And a widespread “not invented here” mindset stops established firms joining up with small ones to commercialise new ideas.

As a result many recent ventures—such as DeNA and GREE, two social-gaming operators—have been internet and software businesses that depend less on research, notes Daisuke Iwase, a founder of Lifenet, an online insurance firm. “There is too much talent chasing after smartphone apps and social gaming,” he says. So, some experts have recommended forcing large firms either to develop the discoveries to which they have the rights, or else to pass them on.

Japan’s entrepreneurs still feel vulnerable to sudden crackdowns, and fear they would be punished more harshly than big-business chiefs. Last year GREE unexpectedly found itself under investigation for possibly violating gambling laws. Its young, billionaire founder, Yoshikazu Tanaka, has since tried to ingratiate himself with the establishment: he now appears in a suit, not a T-shirt.

In all, much has to change before Japan becomes a kinder place for those trying to create businesses. There is a risk that Abenomics fails and brings about quite a different sort of rupture in the corporate climate, says Jeffrey Char, an entrepreneur and investor. If the central bank’s radical monetary loosening is not followed by thorough deregulation and strong growth, the result could be a sovereign-debt crisis (Japan’s debt stands at close to 250% of GDP). In such a crisis many of Japan’s biggest firms could collapse, says Mr Char: that would leave people with no choice but to start their own businesses. Boosting entrepreneurship through reforms would certainly be less painful.

Read more: Koyal Group Tokyo Japan, Koyal Group Tokyo Japan News Articles

Source

“IT BEGINS from now,” tweeted Takafumi Horie, the former boss of Livedoor, an internet firm, two months after emerging from prison this spring. Mr Horie is involved in no fewer than 30 new companies, including a space-tourism venture. If any of them grow to be big, Mr Horie, who was convicted of fraud in 2011, may show that a fallen Japanese entrepreneur can make a comeback.

The mood among Japan’s would-be business moguls is at its most buoyant since the dotcom bubble burst a decade or so ago. A higher stockmarket is boosting the chances of a successful initial public offering. The prime minister, Shinzo Abe, is Japan’s first leader to treat entrepreneurs as something more than greedy hustlers. For the past few years Mr Horie, a brash self-publicist, has been exhibit A in the case for holding that view. But now Mr Horie says he is being welcomed back into the business world.

Mr Abe’s three-part plan to revive the economy, known as “Abenomics”, is designed to help start-ups as well as big business. First came monetary loosening from the Bank of Japan, and a fiscal stimulus. The third part, a series of reforms to boost long-term growth rates, includes radical deregulation in new “special economic zones” spread across the country. If this pledge is honoured, many new opportunities could emerge for entrepreneurs in industries ranging from medical care to agriculture. The reforms also involve pressing the banks to stop demanding onerous personal guarantees when entrepreneurs seek loans for their businesses.

Most of all, Mr Abe admits, Japan needs to become more accepting of initial failure. As a second-time prime minister after a disastrous first term, he is himself a comeback kid. He reportedly described for guests at his home this summer how the young Walt Disney ran his business into the ground five times before he at last succeeded. Digital types were delighted when he attended a meeting of the Japan Association of New Economy, chaired by Hiroshi Mikitani, the founder of Rakuten, an online-commerce giant. Mr Mikitani has been brought in to advise the government on its deregulation efforts.

For now, Japan’s vital signs on entrepreneurship are dire. The overall number of firms is shrinking, and the rate at which new companies are born as a proportion of existing ones is less than half that in America and Britain. In 2012 the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, a survey by a group of universities, put Japan in joint last place out of 24 developed nations for levels of entrepreneurial activity.

Japan’s record on fostering new firms is worse even than continental Europe’s. Just 6% of Japanese participants in the survey thought there were opportunities to start a business in their country, and only 9% believed they personally had the skills required. The equivalent figures for the French were 38% and 36%. Other Asians, in contrast, were bursting with optimism. That lack of ambition means venture-capital firms have few big payoffs to look forward to, with the result that there is a limited pool of cash available for those who do want to have a go at starting a business: a vicious circle that will be hard to break. Young Japanese firms attract around one-twentieth of the venture-capital money that start-ups in America pull in.

The outlook for creating new businesses could begin to improve if Mr Abe succeeds in leaning on the banks to stop demanding extensive debt guarantees. Now many would-be entrepreneurs, faced with the risk of losing their homes, give up before they start. In the short term the reform may make capital a little scarcer as banks tread cautiously.

But in the long run it could transform Japan’s attitude to entrepreneurship, says Yoshito Hori, the founder of GLOBIS, a business school.

The industry ministry is promising to provide generous funding with the aim of doubling Japan’s rate of business start-ups by 2020. To do that it will have to add another 100,000 start-ups to the current annual tally. However, its record on picking winners is not great: its bureaucrats famously tried to stop the young Sony importing transistor technology and Honda from moving into cars. So the risk is that it ends up backing many duds, draining the public coffers to little benefit.

The mother-in-law factor

There are other reasons to be optimistic. The success of the big firms born in Japan’s great period of post-war entrepreneurialism later discouraged graduates from joining newer ventures. Experienced managers are seldom keen to leave large companies.

Wives, mothers and mothers-in-law exert a strong influence on men not to join risky start-ups, says Yoshiaki Ishii, head of new-business policy at the industry ministry. But the perceived balance of risk is shifting. Many of the giants are struggling. The cost of starting a firm is plunging thanks to cloud computing and other innovations. Mr Horie says he is financing his new ventures through crowdfunding networks such as Campfire.

The government could help to remove plenty of other hurdles to entrepreneurship. One difficulty for science and technology start-ups is that large Japanese firms have signed up exclusive rights for the bulk of university discoveries. Small, disruptive firms are not usually able to access and develop them. And a widespread “not invented here” mindset stops established firms joining up with small ones to commercialise new ideas.

As a result many recent ventures—such as DeNA and GREE, two social-gaming operators—have been internet and software businesses that depend less on research, notes Daisuke Iwase, a founder of Lifenet, an online insurance firm. “There is too much talent chasing after smartphone apps and social gaming,” he says. So, some experts have recommended forcing large firms either to develop the discoveries to which they have the rights, or else to pass them on.

Japan’s entrepreneurs still feel vulnerable to sudden crackdowns, and fear they would be punished more harshly than big-business chiefs. Last year GREE unexpectedly found itself under investigation for possibly violating gambling laws. Its young, billionaire founder, Yoshikazu Tanaka, has since tried to ingratiate himself with the establishment: he now appears in a suit, not a T-shirt.

In all, much has to change before Japan becomes a kinder place for those trying to create businesses. There is a risk that Abenomics fails and brings about quite a different sort of rupture in the corporate climate, says Jeffrey Char, an entrepreneur and investor. If the central bank’s radical monetary loosening is not followed by thorough deregulation and strong growth, the result could be a sovereign-debt crisis (Japan’s debt stands at close to 250% of GDP). In such a crisis many of Japan’s biggest firms could collapse, says Mr Char: that would leave people with no choice but to start their own businesses. Boosting entrepreneurship through reforms would certainly be less painful.

Read more: Koyal Group Tokyo Japan, Koyal Group Tokyo Japan News Articles