Up through the 1990s, you could meet hundreds of Japanese people and they would all be middle class. Then came the recession of the 1990s, the recession that has been continuing on and off and since then, but mostly on. Japanese today no longer all say they belong to the middle class. The Japanese underclass is growing as the recession continues and single mother families increase.

If one person in the West symbolizes the growing resistance to corruption it is Eva Jolly, the Paris based investigating magistrate in the Elf Aquitaine affair. With its allegations of bribes and suspicious arms deals involving those at the highest levels of French political life the case have rocked France…




