Only those who never knew it could be 'proud' of colonialism

A good opinion piece describing the feelings when someone from the colonized land hears about the colonizer boasting about their cultures & development over centuries. Although, the piece is about an British-Indian-African speaking against the British rule in African countries, this can be easily expanded to include America, & other European countries (Germany, France, Belgium, Spain etc.)

British boast that at one point in history their empire was so big that sun never set in that empire, & they are proud of the legacy of their empire. But those British also forget to mention what British did in those colonized lands, in Australia, SouthEast Asia, South Asia, Middle East, several African countries, & of course, even in US. British policies colonized, humiliated, & subjugated the native people of these lands. They looted & transferred billions of treasures (if we value those treasures in current money) to UK. Even after exiting their colonies, they still interfere with the domestic policies of their colonies, because they still think that these regions are their colonies.

Let's talk about Americans. They proudly say that America is the most powerful country in the world, they have the best "democracy" in the world, & other regions, & their residents, should learn from America that how a country & its people should live, so these people can also develop. Americans don't stop to think how did their country become so "powerful"? By constantly interfering with the domestic & foreign policies of those countries, & if someone doesn't listen to the dictated terms of America, then they are forced to change their thinking or get punished severely. This is what political scientists have named, "imperialism."

If we look this international, diplomatic relationship on a micro level, it's very similar to a school yard bully forcing another student to do what the bully wants him / her to do. If that another student refuses to do such act, he / she is severely punished. When this happens on the school grounds, all of us, including Americans, call it bullying & condemn it, wholeheartedly. But these same Americans conveniently forget what America does on the international level is exactly same; "do what I say or you won't like the consequences for disobeying."

After all, an Iraqi, a Panamanian, a Colombian, a Yemeni, an Afghani, & the list goes on & on, won't feel such affection for America. They have felt, & are still feeling & living, the death & destruction of what America did to them. They don't feel happy or proud that America is such a powerful country, because that power is achieved by spreading terror, violence, misery, suffering, death & destruction. All that knowledge, scientific or otherwise, is useless if it is not backed by work, which doesn't harm anyone else. All that philanthropic work of Americans around the world is no good if those same Americans' tax dollars & moral support is for that same American army, which spreads misery, death & destruction in the poor villages of Afghanistan, Iraq, & Yemen.

After all, as the author of this piece pointed out, all empires, old & new, are "motivated by greed & cultural disrespect," & when one country wants to forcibly rule another country, it will always spread more misery & destruction than create anything valuable.

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https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/only-those-who-never-knew-it-could-be-proud-of-colonialism-a6831196.html

Way back in 1973, when I was a postgraduate student at Oxford, I fell out with my new best friend, Samantha. She was the daughter of a South African businessman and I had been exiled from Uganda. Africa bonded us for a while, then things fell apart. She couldn’t understand why I went on and on about colonialism and its impact on the subjugated. And I couldn’t forgive her for not understanding. ...

A new survey found nearly 43% of Britons are proud of the British Empire. They hang on to these feelings because this nation has never gone through an honest assessment of that past. Though British rule did deliver some good, like all empires it was motivated by greed and cultural disrespect. The 18th-century historian Edward Gibbon observed, “The history of empires is the history of human misery.” They who have assiduously painted over dark episodes in British history should know that whitewash is unreliable and temporary. Truths will out.
...

Ah, the many lessons we subjugated natives had to suffer through, amid the daily micro-humiliations of Western supremacy. The British banned home languages from playgrounds and spicy food in lunchboxes at our school; money spent on educating black children was a fraction of the funds made available for white kids in occupied lands. Just like in the UK, when the poor stole food, they were punished with extreme harshness. Resistance movements, like the Mau Mau in Kenya, had members tortured, imprisoned or killed.

Around 85 million Indian people died in famines between the years of 1760 and 1943, partly because of ruthless grain control policies. Churchill was unmoved when millions were perishing in Bengal. Indians, he thought, were “beastly people with a beastly religion.” They had no food because they bred like rabbits. There has not been a single deadly famine in India since independence. The Great Hedge of India (2001) by Roy Moxham described a vast hedge that was built by Victorian administrators so they could collect salt tax. Impoverished Indians were no longer able to afford this essential. Many suffered illnesses as a result or died.

What Rhodesians did to black people during this period remains hidden from British people. All they hear about is Mugabe, a monstrous product of colonialism, as was Idi Amin.

My last book, Exotic England, is both a critique of and a paean to my nation. I am here because they, imperialists, were there, in our lands. Though never equal, the relationship was not black and white. We learnt things, changed, fell in love sometimes. All of us have a responsibility to look honestly at this history, because so much of it lives on.

... Our education syllabus focuses on imperial vanities not realities. The media and arts do not yet reflect modern, global Britain.

So too, our foreign policies remain colonial. Blair was proud of the empire, so too Brown. The British still own the Chagos archipelago. In the Seventies, inhabitants were forcibly removed from the islands by our government and the largest atoll, Diego Garcia, turned into a US military base. A report quietly published last week suggests 98% of the dispossessed Chagossians want to go back. They do not matter. ...

That is not to mention the unconsciously colonialist British culture. A travel supplement on South Africa in a Sunday paper featured happy pictures almost all of European travellers and commentators, plus two local ladies selling fruit and a vineyard worker ... .

Kissinger forever

I really can't say much on this story, since it might be considered overtly anti-American & then who wants to deal with its "consequences". But, this is still a great opinion piece on one of the most powerful men in the world. Reading this piece reminded me of a piece Canadian Business magazine did back in August 2013 in which it showed that Henry Kissinger is the only man in the world who is a member in all of the 3 most powerful & elitist organizations in the world (World Economic Forum, Bilderberg Group, & Trilateral Commission).

Henry Kissinger is also the one who said that "power is the ultimate aphrodisiac." In my personal experience, whoever loves power so much, he/she will certainly abuse it & will hurt a lot of people in the process. This piece made me think that the way this man thinks, he has done & will still do anything to achieve what he wants more, which is, power. We try to teach our children that "with great power comes great responsibility," but, as this piece suggests, Kissinger's hunger for power almost makes him a sociopath.

As the piece below states how Kissinger supported prolonging the Vietnam war & the secret Cambodian war, in which hundreds of thousands people died. His powerful actions in the hallowed halls of government irreversibly changed the lives of millions around the world, from Latin America to North America to Asia. He apparently loved to attack other countries to show American military prowess. He loved more violence, government secrecy, militarism & ruling with the classic dictatorial "divide & conquer."

The piece ends with an excellent, & rather unfortunate, line that the world's humanity still has dark days ahead, since, his methods are still being employed by the American government & he is still deeply involved with the foreign policies of US governments.

But, hey, he will not be tried, for his actions, in the International Criminal Court (ICC) or any other court of justice in this world. Per my last quote picture of Criminal Minds here, the society is definitely not taking the place of thousands of victims & on their behalf demanding any atonement for Kissinger's push for military actions against innocent people around the world. At least dictators like Saddam Hussein, Muammar Qaddafi, Joseph Stalin, Robert Mugabe, & several others from Latin America, Africa, or Asia killed innocent people of their own country. Henry Kissinger's actions made the life hell for thousands of people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Vietnam, Cambodia, Chile, Panama & who knows wherever else. So who is the bigger dictator here? Where is the justice coming from the largest self-anointed "just" & "fair" country of the world?

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http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2015/08/kissinger-america-book-150823083842452.html

In 1950, Henry Kissinger - who would go on to serve as an inordinately powerful US National Security Adviser and Secretary of State - wrote that "life is suffering, birth involves death".

As historian Greg Grandin documents in his just-released book "Kissinger's Shadow: The Long Reach of America's Most Controversial Statesman", the man's "existentialism laid the foundation for how he would defend his later policies". In Kissinger's view, Grandin explains, life's inherently tragic nature means that "there isn't much any one individual can do to make things worse than they already are".

Of course, the victims of Kissinger-sanctioned military escapades and other forms of inflicted suffering might beg to differ. Among the countless casualties are the dead and maimed of the Vietnam War - a disaster Kissinger fought to prolong despite recognising that it was unwinnable - and the secret US war that was launched on neutral Cambodia in 1969.

'Power for power's sake'

A pet project of Kissinger and then-President Richard Nixon, the bombing of that country killed more than 100,000 civilians in four years, according to Ben Kiernan, the director of Yale University's Cambodian Genocide Program.

To this day, the cluster bombs with which the US saturated sections of southeast Asia continue to wreak deadly havoc.

And from Chile to Panama to Iraq to Angola to East Timor, there's no dearth of evidence linking increased earthly suffering to Kissingerian policy & tradition, which still exert a preponderant influence over the US political establishment. (Complaints could even be filed by impoverished victims of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which Kissinger unofficially helped negotiate years after leaving office.)

As Grandin notes, Kissinger had an "outsized role… in creating the world we live in today, which accepts endless war as a matter of course".

Embracing the pursuit of "power for power's sake", Kissinger advocated for war in order to "show that action is possible", Grandin writes, and to thus maintain American power - the purpose of which "is to create American purpose". With such an approach to existence, it's perhaps no wonder the former statesman found the whole phenomenon to be rather dismal.

Campaign against history

Grandin details Kissinger's contributions to the "rehabilitation of the national security state" in the US around a "restored imperial presidency", which, he contends, was based on "ever more spectacular displays of violence, more intense secrecy, and an increasing use of war and militarism to leverage domestic dissent and polarisation for political advantage".

A key aspect of Kissinger's own dominant role in contemporary history is his philosophy of history itself, which Grandin summarises as follows: "For Kissinger, the past was nothing but 'a series of meaningless incidents'". According to this mindset, under no circumstances must history be seen as a collection of causal relationships capable of guiding current policy choices.

The concept of blowback, for example, is conveniently disappeared - such that Kissinger, for one, is excused from having to acknowledge the reality that US military aggression against Cambodia in fact helped propel the Khmer Rouge to power. Instead, further US military aggression was deemed to be the proper antidote to the new state of affairs.

Two and two

The forcible severing of cause from effect has also come in handy in places like Afghanistan, a country whose history is often reduced to one date: September 11, 2001. But go a bit further back in time, as Grandin does, and you'll find that the conversion of the country into a base for transnational jihad was in no small part an effect of policies put into place by - who else? - Kissinger.

These included facilitating destabilising behaviour vis-a-vis Afghanistan by the shah of Iran, Pakistani intelligence, and Saudi Arabia, and encouraging the flow of weapons to radical Islamists.

Naturally, none of this history prompted an internal questioning of US qualifications to spearhead the post-9/11 war on terror. Now, nearly 14 years and trillions of dollars later, it might be a good time to start putting two and two together - particularly given the expansion of the war to encompass the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), an entity the US helped create in the first place.

Dark days

In an interview last year with radio host Todd Zwillich, Kissinger defended his infamous bombing of Cambodia on the following grounds: "The current administration is doing it in Pakistan, Somalia". The "it" apparently refers to Barack Obama's covert drone strikes on countries with which the US is not at war.

But as Grandin points out, this retroactive justification fails to account for the fact that "what [Kissinger] did nearly half a century ago created the conditions for today’s endless wars". In Cambodia and elsewhere, he "institutionalised a self-fulfilling logic of intervention", whereby US "action led to reaction [and] reaction demanded more action".

Of course, if power depends on the constant proof that "action is possible", this seems like a pretty logical - if sociopathic - arrangement.

As for Kissinger's shadow, it doesn't appear to be budging anytime soon - portending many a dark day ahead for humanity.


Belen Fernandez is the author of The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work, published by Verso. She is a contributing editor at Jacobin Magazine.

The US in Cuba: a history of organized crime

Loved this opinion piece on Cuba & US reconciling their differences after decades. It essentially explains, in a short summary, how Cuba will end up being a loser, once again, with the thawing of its relationship with business-minded imperialist America.

Couple of paragraphs beautifully summarize American control, direct & indirect, of other so-called sovereign nations, & how American foreign policy is geared towards causing internal strife, if & when, a particular country tries to not toe the American line.

First of these paragraphs is the 4th one in the article below that how Cuba's gangster past & violent history were a product of US government policies, to help make sure that Cuba was continually beset by violence. This feature of American foreign policy can easily be attributed to it when considering violence in Middle Eastern, African, South Asian, South East Asian, & Latin American countries. As I have pointed out in my blog posts multiple times that this violence helps Western developed countries (North American & European) with getting cheap labour (immigration), exorbitant debt loads on developing countries (hence, no investment in education, infrastructure, technology, healthcare etc.), arms & weapons exports (also helps in increasing debt load on developing countries), & of course, keeping the western developed countries as the patrons with whom developing countries will always look towards for any help.

On top of all that, foreign American, Canadian, & European companies get access to the inordinate amounts of riches developing countries have under them; namely, precious metals (diamonds, copper, gold etc.) & fossil fuels (oil & gas). Since, the developing countries are constantly involved in internal & external strife (as explained above & in the 4th paragraph in the article below), they are unable to invest in the development of infrastructure to fully exploit their own riches for their national advantage, & hence, these foreign companies come in & strike deals, which deprive the host nation of its riches for mere pennies in return. Human rights abuses by these companies in their host nations are another matter, which I won't discuss here, but a mere mention should be sufficient for now.

Another paragraph (last one in the article below) is essentially the summary of the opinion piece. It very nicely summarizes that the system of neoliberal plunder that has become the American trademark all over the world could easily be described as organised crime. The aggressive military policies of America ensures that this "system of neoliberal plunder" or "wealth" remains in the hands of a few elites at the top, who in turn, not only listen & follow their American masters, but keep their citizens in line, with the help of strict internal controls.

Countries, which decide to take the route of non-compliance with American demands are relegated to the Stone Age, with the help of American might (political, military, or media) & American friend, the UN. The recent history of past few decades is littered with countries which tried to defy America & how American media (which is pretty much all over the world) successfully did a smear campaign against those countries; Afghanistan, Vietnam, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Soviet Union, North Korea, Venezuela, Colombia, Chile & of course, Cuba. One after another, each of these countries either fell to American might or will in the near future, & when the dust settled, the civilian population of each of these countries, suffered the most. Millions died or have been displaced in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Chile, Vietnam, North Korea, & even in Cuba. So, as the opinion piece correctly surmises that Cuba, & its people, will end up being the loser after it becomes another conquest of America.

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http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2015/07/cuba-history-organised-crime-united-states-neoliberalism-150719090821297.html

In a recent blog post for the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a prominent American membership organisation & think-tank, research associate Valerie Wirtschafter assesses the course of the "Cuban Renaissance" that is apparently now under way thanks to domestic reforms & the diplomatic thaw with the US.

Based on her own mid-Renaissance visit to Cuba earlier this year, Wirtschafter remarks on some counterintuitive aspects of the expanding tourism industry on the born-again island.

"The hotel industry in particular - including the State run Hotel Nacional in Havana - seems to glorify the country's gangster past, a violent history that partially spurred popular support for Fidel Castro's Revolution."
...

Nowhere does the article mention a certain - perhaps far more bewildering - fact: that Cuba's "gangster past" & "violent history" were largely a product of US government policies & machinations by the American Mafia. In the wake of Castro's triumph, both entities continued to help ensure that Cuba was continually beset by counter-revolutionary violence.

Gambling colony, gangster state

Historian Jack Colhoun documented the evolution of the nexus between the American state & organised crime in his exhaustively researched book "Gangsterismo: The United States, Cuba and the Mafia, 1933 to 1966".

Cuba's debut as what Colhoun called a "neocolony" of the US took place at the end of the 19th century when the latter intervened in the Cuban war of independence from Spain, effectively nipping the whole "independence" option in the bud & appointing itself Cuba's new master.

The arrangement led to the US appropriation of Cuban territory for a naval base-cum-future-torture-centre at Guantanamo Bay, along with other goodies. By the mid-20th century, Colhoun wrote, Cuba had become "a virtual economic appendage" of the US, with Americans controlling many of its sugar mills, railways, & utilities, & inundating the island with US brands.

The author detailed how the establishment of a "mafia gambling colony" in Cuba starting in the 1930s was facilitated by a special relationship between North American mobsters & Fulgencio Batista, two-time Cuban ruler & one-time dictator. Batista received a cut of the profits from mafia operations & oversaw the conversion of Cuba into a "full-fledged gangster state".

The casinos provided money-laundering opportunities for other lucrative businesses, as well. In 1946, the mafia-run Hotel Nacional hosted a summit of US underworld leaders to lay the foundations for converting the island into a heroin trafficking hub.

No beard, no revolution

When the Cuban revolution brought down the curtain on the gangster state, Colhoun explained, the mobsters regrouped with their corrupt political allies in the Cuban exile movement in the US, where they "squared the circle of gangsterismo" by plotting with the CIA to assassinate Castro.

The CIA also considered less terminal methods for dealing with the Cuban leader ... .

Both the CIA & the mafia sponsored commando raids & sabotage operations in Cuba, the 1961 CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion being merely one of the better known efforts on account of its grandiose failure.

As Colhoun demonstrated, the US joint chiefs of staff even pondered the option of shooting down a civilian airliner & blaming Cuba to serve as a pretext for military intervention. Another proposal entailed staging a "terror campaign" against Cuban exiles, for the same purpose.

Who needs conspiracy theorists when you've got the US government?

Of course, the US could not come right out & say what the real problem with Cuba was: that the revolution had killed the cash cow.

In order to justify its hostile approach to the island, the US instead cast it as an existential threat - over which it was apparently worth risking nuclear armageddon.

Towards a reconquest?

When the two nations finally began patching things up in December of last year, the BBC News observed that, "in Cuba, limited economic reforms carried out by [President] Raul Castro have begun to relax the tight grip of the state and pique the interest of American business".

But while the neoliberals salivate away about business prospects in Cuba, what are the prospects for the average Cuban?

For starters, as Wirtschafter acknowledged in her CFR post, Cuba's current healthcare system "actually provides for the people". That's one thing that can only go downhill in the event of a US economic reconquest of the island. After all, there are loads of profits to be made off of sick people. Ditto for education.

And while the White House claims that its efforts in Cuba are "aimed at promoting the independence of the Cuban people so they do not need to rely on the Cuban state", it is difficult to see how popular independence might be achieved via imperial meddling in a country that already offers universal access to food, shelter, medicine, & other basic rights.

Wirtschafter also noted that opening up the private sector in Cuba "has increased inequality" & that "as Cuban Americans begin to buy properties in Havana and elsewhere in the coming years, they will further exacerbate [socioeconomic] divisions." In other words, we'll be back to where we started.

All of this would no doubt be music to the ears of the American Mafia bosses who connived for years to terminate the Cuban revolution & its leaders.

But the gangsters aren't the only ones deserving flak. The system of neoliberal plunder that has become the US trademark worldwide - requiring aggressive military policies to ensure that the wealth remains in the hands of a few at the expense of the rest - could just as easily be described as organised crime.


Belen Fernandez is the author of The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work, published by Verso. She is a contributing editor at Jacobin Magazine.

Japanese nationalism: Decoy for American imperialism?

wow ... another great piece from Andre Vltchek. Left me speechless. All I can say that Japan is digging a hole for itself by isolating itself from its Asian neighbours.

As always, with these kinds of articles, I ask one question: Is this democracy? Would you consider Japan a democratic country when you come to know that a sizable majority of Japanese are against militarization of Japan & want nothing to do with America?

I specially loved the quotation from a Japanese philosopher, Tenshin Okakura, that “the average Westerner, in his sleek complacency, will see in the tea-ceremony but another instance of the thousand-and-one oddities which constitute the quaintness & childishness of the East to him. He was wont to regard Japan as barbarous while she indulged in the gentle arts of peace: he calls her civilized since she began to commit wholesale slaughter on Manchurian battlefields.”

That's always been the way for the West. You are a disease to the world as long as you are doing something good for your own people & which might be going against the wishes of the West, but you are civilized & appreciated profusely, if you are slaughtering thousands, as per the wishes of the West. Current case in point is full American support for Saudi Arabian war against Yemen. Past examples include American & British support of Saddam Hussein when he waged war against Iran, or the full support of Uganda's Idi Amin.

And there are many, many more examples of the West's full support of terrorists & despots around the world as long as the actions of those terrorists & despots support the vision of the West. As soon as those "terrorists" stop being subservient to the West, they are removed from power & replaced with another thug.
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http://www.rt.com/op-edge/261693-japan-us-dangerous-right-wing/

Japan is ready to change its post-war pacifist constitution; it is rapidly arming itself to the teeth, building battleships & purchasing fighter jets. Recruitment posters are everywhere. Meanwhile, Japan is standing - obediently & loyally - by its occupier & closest ally, the United States.

In light of the situation, one has to wonder what is really ‘nationalist’ about Abe? His loyalties appear to lie towards the West, particularly the US. Definitely not towards his own country & the Asian continent.

All that the US desires, Japan supports. Washington is dreaming about a ‘Pacific Century’, in which it would play a decisive role; it is relentlessly promoting its ‘Pivot to Asia’ doctrine, which envisions Japan firmly by its side, militarily & demagogically; it is pushing for 12-nations Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), & Japan claps.

Kuril Islands dilemma

In Wakkanai - the northernmost city in Japan from which the Russian island of Sakhalin can be seen - military radars & surveillance systems are humming & coastguard ships are standing by in the historic harbor, ready for action.
...

From the window of my hotel I can see Sakhalin, if weather allows. During the summer, two mighty sea vessels are shuttling Japanese tourists between Wakkanai & the Russian town of Korsakov, situated on Sakhalin Island. Russian fishing boats regularly visit Hokkaido Island, where there are cultural exchanges & even some trade.

In the Pechika restaurant, delicious Russian food is served, beer flows & Russian songs are sung (a popular tune is ‘A million red roses’). Across from the parking lot, the Fukakō-ichiba complex proudly displays old black-and-white photos from the days when Sakhalin, & in fact all of the Kuril Islands, belonged to Japan.

The islands constitute an issue that has never been resolved. Japanese propaganda is constantly repeating the claim that the Soviet Union grabbed the Kurils at the end of WWII. For decades Japan has been demanding their return.

But even in Wakkanai, not everyone is convinced that Russia should be compromising on the issue. A captain of a small Japanese fishing vessel explains:

“We have an extreme-right-wing prime minister here in Japan. He is very close to the US, a country that is antagonizing, & in fact most likely wants to destroy, both Russia & China. If the Kuril Islands & Sakhalin go back to Japan, they would be immediately converted into another Okinawa; full of US Air Force & naval bases, very near the Russian mainland.”

Some 3,000km away, the former ancient kingdom of Okinawa is living a continuous nightmare of occupation & consequent militarization. From here, thousands of US & Japanese aircraft regularly provoke China & North Korea. At the same time, local residents are outraged at the occupation as massive demonstrations shake the islands; people are demanding an end to the US military presence & want the US bases dismantled. But Abe’s government wants more US hardware, more runways & more war games.

I worked in Okinawa on 2 occasions. The last time was in 2013/14 when I was involved with a documentary film about the American bases, ‘Battle of Okinawa’, for South American network TeleSUR.

Douglas Lummis, an ex-US Air Force pilot who is now a writer & professor, explained the situation to me in the city of Nahu:

“Okinawa hosts about 75% of the American troops & American facilities in Japan. It's out of sight & out of mind of most of the Japanese people on the mainland. Okinawa is a thousand miles away from Tokyo, from the capital. If you talk to Okinawans they're angry & disappointed that for over 60 years now they’ve been asked to essentially shoulder the American-Japanese military alliance. The military alliance with America is also accompanied by what critics would say a subservient attitude towards Washington in general. Japan rarely balks against what Washington wishes on foreign policy.”

The bases are now expanding even to pristine parts of Okinawa, like Haneko Bay.

Okinawan scholar Masaki Tomochi has expressed alarm by what he perceives to be the imperialist tendencies of both the US & Japan. He is well aware of the suffering of local people:

“We think that US imperialism uses Japanese colonialism against us. The Japanese government made a security treaty with the US, & then the United States used Japan to force us, Okinawans, to accept the US military bases,” he explained.

There is no doubt that the bases are there to antagonize, to provoke China & North Korea, as well as Russia. Many believe that the WWIII could easily begin from Okinawa.

Geoffrey Gunn, a leading Australian historian & Professor emeritus at Nagasaki University, is concerned about Japan’s increasingly aggressive role in the region:

“All changed when the Abe government nationalized the Senkaku/Diaoyu [Islands]. The status quo changed because now Japan declares that there is actually no dispute over these so-called disputed islands. Therefore the Tokyo government has angered China. China is indignant with this change of the status quo.”

Japan, land of contradictions

For many years, Japan was able to boast of the smallest disparities between rich & poor anywhere in the world, as well as developing an incredibly compassionate social model. No matter how right wing some its rulers may have been, in many ways, Japan could easily pass as a ‘socialist’ country.

But there is one essential problem: It is ‘socialist’ only for its own people.

For decades, Japanese corporations have been behaving like colonialist thugs all over East Asia. For instance, I was told repeatedly that Japanese car manufacturers had destroyed many cities, corrupting local governments, forcing them not to build comprehensive public transportation systems. Now numerous megalopolises like Jakarta or Surabaya, which are choking on car & scooter fumes, lack a single subway line or light rail system.

The reason for this is largely explained by Japan’s efforts at indoctrinating Asian peoples with a pro-Western worldview. For decades, Japanese universities had been offering ‘scholarships’ to students from poor Southeast Asian nations. They would indoctrinate these students with pro-Western dogmas, breaking the revolutionary spirit, while converting young people to behave as servants of the Empire; essentially doing to other Asians what was done to the Japanese.

After being defeated in WWII, Japan eventually became loyal to its Western masters. Many Asian leaders, including former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, demanded that “Japan return to Asia.” It never did. It became rich during the Korean War, manufacturing goods & equipment for the Western military might. It continued doing the same during the Vietnam War. It is on the same course now.

David McNeill, Irish professor at the prestigious Sofia University in Tokyo, also works for the NHK, Japan’s national broadcaster. He is increasingly critical of the new, militarized & indoctrinated Japan:

They are rewriting text books; they skip through WWII, dedicating to it only 8 pages... Nationalism is rising. Naoki Hyakuta, a comedy writer, published a novel about Kamikaze fighters, entitled ‘Forever Zero’… The novel sold 5 million copies! You know that nothing sells 5 million copies in Japan!

“Abe read the book & loved it. He put him on board of directors of NHK! And the director of NHK is another right-wing thug. There is so much self-censorship in Japanese media, now. And the government is issuing ‘guidelines’, so called ‘Orange Book’, for instance: how to treat anything that is ‘contagious’... or anything related to history. There are instructions to writers & translators. For instance: ‘never use words like Nanking Massacre, except when you quote foreign experts’. Or ‘Yasukuni Shrine – never use word “controversial” in connection to it.’ We cannot write about ‘sexual slaves’ from WWII.”

I am also told that the Japanese public is given a one-sided interpretation of current affairs. When it comes to topics like Russia, Syria & China, Japanese people are made to consume Western propaganda exclusively.

“And they actually believe what the NHK says,” says David.

As we are implementing images from Hong Kong’s ‘Umbrella Revolution’ into my film with Noam Chomsky, my film editor, Hata Takeshi, smiles:

“In Japan, people will not understand that the West is behind those ‘color revolutions’ & recent events in Hong Kong. Here, there is total consensus that HK was a movement for freedom & democracy. It is because there are hardly any alternative sources of information available.”

Even in the places like Abu Dhabi & Beirut, television channels like RT are available in every major hotel. Not in Japan. In all big international chains, it is mainly a diet of local channels, plus CNN, BBC & Fox.

Discontent with politics as usual

It appears that dissatisfaction with Japan’s present political course is visible everywhere, and not only in some small, anti-establishment circles. Former vice-president of a major civil engineering company, Segi Sakashi, 79 years old, recently expressed his outrage to me:

With an extremely close relationship with the US, & an antagonist approach towards Russia, China & others, Prime Minister Abe appears to be highhandedly bringing the country into military conflict with its neighbors, namely Korea & China, while the population is completely ignorant of this & stuck with ever shrinking social services.

“What is absurd & ridiculous about all this is that there does not exist any need whatsoever to antagonize our neighbors. China is one of the main trading partners of Japan. So is Korea. We have been growing (or shrinking) economically, through mutual gains & losses. Honestly, Abe is playing a very stupid game thinking that because of the 1960 Security Treaty with the US, we should be behaving like this.”
...

... Japan is working hard to support the West at the very moment when the West is pushing the world towards a possibly fatal confrontation with peaceful but mighty nations, like China & Russia.

For this, Japanese leaders are facing fury in many parts of Asia, but great support & admiration in the West. It is timely to recall the words of the great Japanese philosopher, Tenshin Okakura, who wrote more than 100 years ago in his work, ‘The Book of Tea’:

“The average Westerner, in his sleek complacency, will see in the tea-ceremony but another instance of the thousand-and-one oddities which constitute the quaintness & childishness of the East to him. He was wont to regard Japan as barbarous while she indulged in the gentle arts of peace: he calls her civilized since she began to commit wholesale slaughter on Manchurian battlefields.”

The Asian continent would be delighted if Japan would stick to its tea ceremonies, especially after sending Prime Minister Abe to his ideological adopted homeland across Pacific Ocean.


Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker & investigative journalist. His latest books are: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire” & “Fighting Against Western Imperialism”. Discussion with Noam Chomsky: On Western Terrorism. "Point of No Return" is his critically acclaimed political novel. Andre is making films for teleSUR & Press TV. Vltchek presently resides & works in East Asia & the Middle East.

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