LHL support Japan bid for UN perm seat
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Anyone saw today's TNP? LHL says he agrees that Japan should become a permanent memebr of the UN, but feels concerned about its wartime past. Accordint to the report, many Singaporeans also do not feel comfortable with Koizumi's Yasukuni visits.
Personally, I prefer India to be a permanent member of the UN. Why India? Note that I am no Bollywood beng, but I think India is one of the largest emerging economies around, and a nuclear power to boot. This makes it a major player in South Asia. -
Small countries like Singapore should all the more practise consistency and well-balanced foreign policies in order to survive and do well.
Shut-up or neutrality is part of our overall foreign relations strategy which should be well defined, widely recognized and respected by all neighbours and larger countries affecting our interests.
Do we have such a consistent, well-balanced and widely recognized foreign policy to this day.
If we still do not work out such well-defined consistent and well-strategized foreign policy finesse we will continue to fumble with constant ups-and-downs relationships with Malaysia, Indonesia, China (over Souzhou and Taiwan issues), Taiwan, Hongkong, Japan and USA.
We will continue to run into unnecessary jealousy and human problems with other countries bigger than or potentially of help to us. Remember our neighbours are as impressed by our leaders' publicized presumed leadership ability and unlike our own citizens they are not going to be easy meats.
Legalistic foreign policies based on international laws or UN or international opinions are definitely out of date. Playing big thinkers and brothers like our leaders have been doing is not a very wise or good strategy in foreign relations.
We have to cultivate well-planned social and cultural and people-to-people considerations in our particular foreign policy to suit our circumstances.
People to people exchanges, ASEAN solidarity, technical and technological cooperation etc are definitely important ingredients in our foreign policy that these are not well thought out or established up to this date.
Ministers will have to ponder long and hard to give us this kind of well-balanced strategic policy direction consistent with our size and circumstances if they want to cultivate sounder relations with major players and neighbours to survive well in this vastly complex world. -
I beleive so too.Originally posted by SilverPal:The political arena in asia today is one of economics,shifting loyalties and changing powers. I feel that Barry has his reasons for the whole Japan issue considering that Harry allowed he to respond in this manner. Since we are not prevy to inside information and high level assumptions and deductions, we would never understand the actual reason why barry supports the jap seat in un.
From my rudimentary understanding of politics, I believe the worse thing to do is for our leaders to take sides and strongly support any 1 power. Although this will earn us immense short term benefits, they might not buy us long term goodwill once the powers shift or when we want to conduct commerce with the very country we refused to support.
Being a small country, we have to play both sides of the court and seem to be supporting progress, harmony and commerce. It is of course a great benefit if we can also be perceived as a matured voice of reason in the din of childish bickering. The important word is 'seem' because we may not be.
Even though I may disagree with many policies and action taken by the ruling class, I have to go with Barry on this one.
Foriegn affairs are tricky matters,
with internal/external, short/long-term considerations.
Being a small country makes it even harder,
any wrong word sure kenna bombard, esp from larger neighbours. -
In one fell swoop, he ensured that China had nothing to say about this issue.One rare moment of brilliance from an otherwise lackadaiscal performance in international affairs.Originally posted by foxtrout8:Mr Lee is being pragmatic in his support of Japan's bid for a permanent seat. I see no fault in it. He also made a gentle but clear comment that Asians are uncomfortable with Japan's action towards historic-irresponsibility. He also brought up Germany as a role model in this case. I dont know how China would react but on how China should reaction, in my opinion, is to say nothing or at least dont be in a position to condemm Singapore. Why?
.....
All these, the interest of China. -
if Singaporean are unhappy can they show it ? cannot demostrate and all the news will be censored.Originally posted by iveco:Anyone saw today's TNP? LHL says he agrees that Japan should become a permanent memebr of the UN, but feels concerned about its wartime past. Accordint to the report, many Singaporeans also do not feel comfortable with Koizumi's Yasukuni visits.
Personally, I prefer India to be a permanent member of the UN. Why India? Note that I am no Bollywood beng, but I think India is one of the largest emerging economies around, and a nuclear power to boot. This makes it a major player in South Asia. -
i dont care about stupid shrine visits... its not something that any LOGICAL nation would base a national foreign policy on.
i feel that INDIA and JAPAN should both become part of the UNSC perm member... its in singapore's interest to see a balance of power in the region for the sake of global and national security.
if JAPAN is not given a Perm seat in UNSC... just think the amount of concern the japs would have and the amount of money they would divert and pour into their military and the chain effects!!
the same goes for India...
with perm seats... we will see a triumvate power in asia that would only benefit the security and wellbeings of smaller nations, especially singapore, given our minute size.
once the 3 powers equilibrium is established... PRC would be less inclined to bully others around too... its for the benefit of all smaller nations in asia...
i am sure that given the geopolitical reality.. most if not all nation in asia, US, EU and russia would support JAP and INDIA in UNSC. -
Who cares about LKY,he is supposed to die by now,if not for him,our lives wont be so miserable!!!Originally posted by SMAPLionHeart:Didn't you see? The university head has just presented LKY an award..don't think he's gonna be happy.. -
Yup,i think LHL has done the right thing.Mainland China has reacted over-sensitive recent years,a little thing against their "will" only kpkb.It is time to let them know she dont owned the whole god damn world.Originally posted by LazerLordz:I think in essence, we have our own right to support whoever we like, and not let the big powers control us.It seems like we are trying to move away from dependancy on China, as the recent episodes have shown that she is volatile.
If we let the fear of China dictate our foreign policy, we have become their lackey.I'm behind LHL on this one..think about it, it's not about taking Japan's side on the WW2 issue, it's letting the world know that we are sovereign.
There is a message here to be told.. -
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/apr2005/japa1-a25.shtml
World Socialist Website
published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI)
Behind China-Japan tensions
Washington fuels Japanese militarism
Part One
By Peter Symonds
25 April 2005
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The following is part one of a two-part series. The concluding part will be published tomorrow.
In the extensive media coverage of the current tensions between Japan and China, the insidious and deeply destabilising role of the Bush administration has been virtually ignored. Yet Washington has been insistently pressing Japan to rearm and play a more “active” role in North East Asia—the basic issues that have repeatedly sparked fears, protests and frictions not only with China, but throughout the region.
The Bush administration’s backing has encouraged Tokyo to take an uncompromising and antagonistic stance towards the latest anti-Japanese protests in China. The White House immediately lined up with the Japanese government by criticising Beijing’s failure to “prevent violence” and bring the demonstrations under control. US spokesmen remained silent on the provocative actions of Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi who deliberately added more fuel to the fire.
In the midst of the demonstrations, the Koizumi government authorised a new school history text that whitewashes the crimes of Japanese imperialism in the 1930s and 1940s and then gave the green light for Japanese companies to drill for oil in an area of the East China Sea contested by Beijing. To cap it off, Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura went to Beijing to demand an apology and compensation for damage caused to Japanese property in the course of the protests.
Koizumi was well aware that these actions would provoke an angry response. But by stirring up fears and prejudice against China, he is pursuing a definite political strategy: to turn the widespread alienation and hostility in Japan over deteriorating living standards in a right-wing nationalist direction and thereby create a social base for his reactionary policies. Allowing for the obvious differences between the two countries, the agendas and methods of Koizumi and Bush are strikingly similar. Each is preying on fear and ignorance to garner support for an aggressive assertion of national interests abroad, and a savage onslaught on the social position and democratic rights of working people at home.
KoizumiÂ’s reaction to the Chinese demonstrations is not an isolated event. Last September, the Japanese prime minister provocatively boarded a coast guard vessel and sailed close to the Russian-held Kurile Islands off the northern tip of Hokkaido. He used the occasion to reiterate TokyoÂ’s demand for the return of the islands that were seized by Soviet forces in the final days of World War II. KoizumiÂ’s stunt provoked criticisms in Moscow, complicated negotiations over the issue and contributed to delays in a visit by Russian president Vladimir Putin to Tokyo, mooted for February.
In November, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) government reacted to the intrusion of a Chinese submarine into Japanese territorial waters off the Okinawa Islands in a belligerent fashion. The Japanese military was ordered to intercept the vessel and force it to surface. Even after it had fled the area, Japanese maritime patrol planes tracked the submarine for hours. While the Japanese navy has previously been involved in clashes with North Korean ships, the incident marked the first occasion that a Chinese vessel had been set upon. The government, backed by the media, seized on the intrusion to demand an apology from Beijing and to whip up fears in Japan about the dangers of a Chinese military threat.
In February this year, a diplomatic row blew up over Japan’s claims to several South Korean islets lying between the two countries. The dispute erupted when the assembly in the Shimane Prefecture in Japan passed an ordinance to establish February 22 as “Takeshima Day” provoking an angry reaction in South Korea. Takeshima is the Japanese name for the islands known as Dokdo by South Koreans. The following day, Japan’s ambassador to South Korea reiterated Japan’s claim to the islands, making clear that the prefecture had Tokyo’s backing. These barren, uninhabited rocks have a symbolic significance for Koreans as their incorporation into Japan in 1905 was a step towards Japan’s full colonisation of Korea in 1910.
The media has focussed on the recent protests in China, but there have also been angry anti-Japanese demonstrations in South Korea. The ambassador’s remarks triggered South Korean demands for a Japanese apology, headlines accusing Japan of a new invasion and protests in Seoul during which Japanese flags were burnt. Renewed demonstrations erupted this month over the latest Japanese school textbooks, which, among the other affronts to South Korea, included a photograph of the disputed islands with a caption reading “illegally occupied by South Korea”.
Even a decade ago, the actions of the Koizumi government would have been beyond the pale in official circles. Tokyo’s limited and grudging expressions of regret for the actions of the imperial armies in Asia in the 1930s and 1940s have always stopped short of an open acknowledgement of Japanese war crimes. At the same time, postwar governments have generally been careful to present Japan as having turned a new leaf. The symbols of Japanese militarism were shunned, publicly at least, and efforts were made to normalise relations with the country’s neighbours—including China and South Korea.
The installation of Koizumi as prime minister in April 2001, however, marked a sharp turn. For all the media hype about his personal style, he has longstanding connections to the LDP’s hawkish Fukada faction, which has consistently pushed for increased military spending, opposed Japan’s recognition of China in 1972 and sought to eliminate the so-called pacifist clause from the Japanese constitution. From the outset, Koizumi brazenly appealed to right-wing nationalism, openly breaking previous political taboos—most notably by visiting the controversial Yasukuni Shrine that houses memorials to Japan’s war-dead, including a number of convicted war criminals.
KoizumiÂ’s stance, at home and in the region, is due in no small measure to the support he has received from the Bush administration. For the past five years, the White House has actively pursued a strategy of forging close military ties with Japan, pressing it to end the constitutional limitations on its armed forces and to take a more aggressive international posture, particularly in relation to China. These objectives dovetail, for the present, with the ambitions of Koizumi and the most right-wing sections of the Japanese ruling elite, who have been seeking a means of clearing away the legal and political obstacles to the assertion of Japanese imperialist interests.
To be continued -
Maturing the US-Japan alliance
The essential basis for the Bush administration’s policy was laid out in an influential bipartisan document issued in October 2000 entitled “The United States and Japan: Advancing Towards a Mature Partnership”—more usually known as the Armitage-Nye report. Richard Armitage, who became Bush’s deputy secretary of state, and another study group member, Paul Wolfowitz, who was installed as US deputy defence secretary, played major roles in implementing its recommendations.
Both the Democrats and Republicans in the study group agreed that the “prospects for conflict in Asia are far from remote” and concluded that the US had to ramp up its alliance with Japan. “Japan remains the keystone of the US involvement in Asia. The US-Japan alliance is central to America’s global security strategy,” the report stated. It went on to declare: “We see the special relationship between the United States and Britain as a model for the alliance”. In other words, just as London had become Washington’s loyal instrument in Europe, Tokyo was to play a similar role in Asia. The unnamed, but unmistakable, target was China.
Many of the report’s elements—closer cooperation between the two militaries; reorganisation of US military bases in North East Asia; broadening the scope of US-Japan missile defence cooperation; encouraging Japan to play a larger international role; US support for Japan’s bid for a permanent UN Security Council seat—read like a recipe book for the Bush administration’s subsequent relations with Japan. Its most controversial aspect was the open advocacy of constitutional change in Japan. While paying lip service to the need for the Japanese people to decide, it bluntly declared: “Japan’s prohibition against collective self-defense is a constraint on alliance cooperation. Lifting this prohibition would allow for closer and more efficient security cooperation.”
Immediately after Bush was installed in office, it appeared that the US, in league with Japan, was heading for a direct confrontation with China. Throughout the 2000 election, Bush had campaigned against Clinton’s policy of establishing closer relations with Beijing, by declaring China to be a “strategic competitor” rather than a strategic partner. The Bush administration reaffirmed its commitment to building a National Missile Defense (NMD) system, abruptly ended moves towards normalising relations with North Korea and announced a major arms sale to Taiwan, all of which were designed to put pressure on Beijing.
Following a mid-air collision between a Chinese jet and a US spy plane off the Chinese coast in April 2001, the White House ratchetted up its rhetoric against Beijing. When asked in the immediate aftermath of the incident about the means the US would use to defend Taiwan, Bush declared: “Whatever it took to help Taiwan defend herself.” The obvious implication of this extraordinary statement was that, in the event of conflict between Beijing and Taipei, the US would use the full weight of its military, up to and including nuclear weapons, against China.
In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, Washington’s focus shifted away from China. Beijing made itself a useful partner in Bush’s “global war on terrorism”, fully backing the US-led military intervention into Afghanistan. There were also concerns within US ruling circles about the wisdom of provoking a conflict with a country in which American corporations had so much at stake economically. While tensions with China eased, the Bush administration’s policy of forging a closer strategic alliance with Japan nevertheless proceeded apace.
In fact, September 2001 proved to be a turning point in cementing US-Japan relations. Like Bush, Koizumi saw in the “global war on terrorism” the means for realising his agenda. By exploiting concerns over terrorist attacks, particularly after Bush branded North Korea part of an “axis of evil”, Koizumi calculated that he could stampede public opinion into supporting constitutional change and a military build up. Moreover, by forging closer ties with the US, Japan would gain Washington’s backing for these ends.
The Koizumi government immediately supported the US military adventure in Afghanistan. It pushed new legislation through the Diet to circumvent the Japanese constitution and give a veneer of legitimacy to its naval support for US operations in Central Asia. In flouting Article 9 of the constitution—the so-called pacifist clause—previous governments had always insisted that Japan’s substantial armed forces were simply there for “self defence”. The new legislation, which enabled the deployment of an armada of sophisticated destroyers and logistics ships half way around the world to the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea, stretched “self defence” to an absurdity.
Koizumi’s decision to back Bush’s “war on terrorism” provoked divisions in Japanese ruling circles and an open split in his government. In January 2002, amid bristling tensions, the prime minister sacked his foreign minister Makiko Tanaka over trumped-up claims that she had lied to parliament. The central issue in the dispute was the direction of foreign policy. Koizumi’s warm embrace of Washington and his promotion of right-wing nationalism cut directly across Tanaka’s efforts to steer a more independent course and to establish closer ties in Asia, especially with China. An outspoken, populist politician with a significant personal following, Tanaka made little attempt to hide her contempt for the Bush administration.
By unambiguously stamping his own imprint on foreign policy, Koizumi cleared the way to cement relations with the Washington. His determination to adhere to this political course was underscored by his governmentÂ’s decision to dispatch Japanese troops to Iraq early last year in the face of overwhelming popular opposition. Under the flimsy guise of carrying out humanitarian work in Iraq, 800 military engineers and other soldiers have been sent for the first time since World War II to an active war zone. The glaring discrepancies between the enabling legislation and the constitution have intensified the governmentÂ’s push for the modification or outright abolition of Article 9. -
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/apr2005/japa2-a26.shtml
Part Two
By Peter Symonds
26 April 2005
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The following is the concluding part of a two-part series. Part One was published on April 25, 2005.
Two significant shifts in Japan’s defence posture have been set out in recent documents. Last December the government released a comprehensive security statement—the National Defence Program Outline (NDPO)—which for the first time named China, along with North Korea, as a potential threat to Japan. “China... is attempting to expand it sphere of maritime activity while driving the modernisation of its nuclear and missile forces as well as naval and air forces. Japan needs to pay attention to these trends,” it declared.
The NDPO reflects similar US defence and intelligence reviews that also paint an overblown picture of the present and future Chinese defence capacities. It should be recalled that, while paying lip service to the pacifist clause of the constitution, Japan has, over the last five decades, built its “self-defence forces” into one of the best-equipped and largest military forces in the world. Japan’s official military spending is more than double that of China.
In mid-February 2005, a top-level meeting of Japanese and US defence and foreign ministers marked a second decisive change. The joint statement specifically named Taiwan as a mutual security concern for the first time. While the reference was very tame—the need for “a peaceful resolution of issues concerning the Taiwan Strait”—the meaning was undeniable. It represented a shift from Tokyo’s previous scrupulous support for the “One China” policy to Washington’s ambiguous stance, which nominally recognises Taiwan as part of China, but is nevertheless committed to defending it against Beijing.
The significance of the statement was not lost on Beijing, which responded by angrily denouncing Japan for interferring in ChinaÂ’s internal affairs. Beijing is justifiably concerned that the deepening collaboration between the US and Japan, the worldÂ’s two largest economic powers, is the most dangerous element of a US strategy of encirclement. This fear has only been heightened since September 2001 by the establishment of US military bases in Afghanistan and Central Asia; closer US security relations with India and Nepal, as well as US efforts to reestablish its military presence in South East Asia.
Behind the scenes, a major reorganisation of US-Japan military relations is well underway as part of a broader global repositioning of the American military. The Washington Times noted on April 15 that over the coming months US and Japanese military officers and defence officials will hold meetings in Washington, Tokyo and the US Pacific Command headquarters in Hawaii “to determine ways to put muscle behind the swiftly maturing alliance between the United States and Japan”.
The object of this intense discussion is to prepare for a joint declaration later this year that will effect “the most fundamental and far-reaching revision of the alliance” since the US Japan Security Treaty was rewritten in 1960. According to the Washington Times, the new relationship will be a partnership of “near equals” that will involve a more thorough cooperation on training, intelligence, war planning and operations.
The Asahi Shimbun reported on April 13 that the Japanese government has given approval in principle for one key element of the plans: the transfer of the command headquarters of the US armyÂ’s 1st Corps from Washington state to Camp Zama near Yokohama, south of Tokyo. The move is aimed at reinforcing US-Japan military ties at the top-level, even as American forces in Japan and South Korea are cut, in line with the PentagonÂ’s plans for a more flexible, mobile US military, capable of striking anywhere in the world.
Constitutional amendments
Growing military collaboration between the US and Japan has generated new pressures for constitutional change in Japan. Article 9 has been stretched beyond recognition to allow Japanese troops to be deployed in an active overseas war zone in support of the US occupation of Iraq. Koizumi has used the subterfuge that Japanese military forces are simply engaged in humanitarian efforts—just like the pretext that was used to justify the dispatch of Japanese troops as “peace-keepers” to Cambodia and East Timor in the 1990s.
Article 9 nevertheless remains a legal obstacle to the dispatch of military forces to an overseas war, either as part of an alliance or directly by Japan. Even within the immediate North East Asian region, the constitution creates problems for joint planning and operations by US and Japanese forces. The Koizumi government has passed legislation allowing for the Japanese military to collaborate with the Pentagon, not only in the immediate defence of Japan, but in support of broader US operations in the region. Nevertheless, the difficulty of justifying Japanese involvement as “self-defence” in, say, the US military backing for Taiwan, remains.
The issue is particularly acute when it comes to US-Japanese collaboration on a ballistic missile defence shield. Koizumi has justified support for the US project on the grounds that Japan needs to be able to defend itself from a North Korean missile attack. This political ruse barely disguises the fact that the shieldÂ’s primary purpose is to neutralise ChinaÂ’s missile arsenal. But it does complicate the joint deployment of the anti-missile system for purposes other than the defence of Japan.
An article entitled “The revival of the US-Japanese Alliance” published in February/March by the influential right-wing US thinktank, the American Enterprise Institute, enthusiastically endorsed closer military ties between the two countries. However, author Dan Blumenthal noted the problems that would emerge when the US called on Japan to deploy naval assets to assist in missions not directly related to “self-defence”. “Given the short time frames involved in a decision to intercept a missile, drawn out security deliberations by policymakers will be impossible. Military personnel will have to make on-the-spot decisions to activate the system without necessarily deciphering whether the missile being intercepted is targeted at Japan, another US ally, or at the US homeland,” he explained.
Plans for an overhaul of the Japanese constitution are already well advanced. A panel of the Diet’s lower house submitted its final report summing up five years of discussion on April 15. The report dealt with a number of different aspects of the constitution, but among the most controversial were proposed changes to Article 9. As the panel comprises representatives of all parliamentary parties, no clear-cut recommendation was made. However, the thrust of the proposals was to explicitly allow for “self-defence” and “collective defence”—a phrase that would clear the way for far more active defence alliances with the US, in particular. A similar upper house report is being prepared.
Koizumi is actively pushing for the constitutional amendments. An LDP committee is due to release draft constitutional amendments as early as next month. But the government faces major obstacles to constitutional change, which requires a two-thirds majority in both houses of parliament and the support of a majority of voters at a referendum. While the LDP, coalition partner New Komeito Party and the opposition Democratic Party of Japan have backed the report, the Social Democratic Party and the Japanese Communist Party have opposed it. On the crucial issue of “collective defence”, the panel was split three ways between opponents, supporters and those who supported a more limited amendment.
The parliamentary opposition and reservations about changing Article 9 reflect several concerns. For postwar governments, the pacifist clause has proven to be a convenient diplomatic device to deflect criticism from China and other countries over Japanese rearmament. More fundamentally, however, JapanÂ’s brutal militarist regime of the 1930s and 1940s generated deeply felt antagonisms among working people to imperialist war. These sentiments remain, despite KoizumiÂ’s efforts to whip up nationalist sentiment. They are reflected in the hostility to the deployment of Japanese troops to Iraq and changes to Article 9. A Mainichi Shimbun poll last May found that, while 78 percent of Japanese favoured constitutional change, 70 percent opposed changes to Article 9.
continued below -
US backing for Japanese militarism
Some of the most strident support for amending Article 9 and rearming Japan is to be found in Washington, rather than Tokyo. In an interview last August, US Secretary of State Colin Powell warned that Tokyo must consider changing the clause if it wants a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. “If Japan is going to play a full role on the world stage and become a full active participating member of the Security Council, and have the kind of obligations that it would pick up as a member of the Security Council, Article Nine would have to be examined in that light,” he stated. His comments reflect the Bush administration’s alignment not simply with Japan, but with the most right wing, militarist sections of its political establishment.
During her trip to Asia last month, Powell’s successor Condoleezza Rice enthused: “Japan has earned its honorable place among the nations of the world by its own effort and by its own character. That is why the United States unambiguously supports a permanent seat for Japan on the United Nations Security Council.” Speaking at Sophia University in Tokyo, Rice lauded Japan as a model for “political and economic progress in all of East Asia” and a partner in the “global war on terrorism”. She declared that US alliances with Japan and other countries were “not against China” but then added, “we want to push, prod and persuade China on a positive course”. In South Korea, she brushed off comments from reporters questioning US support for Japanese rearmament and a UN Security seat by reiterating her praise for the US-Japan alliance.
In his recent American Enterprise Institute (AEI) article, Dan Blumenthal was not so reticent about the target of Washington’s strategy. After declaring that US policy makers should welcome and support Japan’s emergence as a strong American ally, he stated: “While the upgrading of the alliance serves a number of Tokyo’s strategic purposes, there is no mistaking the fact that Japan has decided to join the United States in its grand strategy of checking China’s great-power ambitions. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, Tokyo has taken advantage of the US-led war on terrorism, Washington’s encouragement of Japanese efforts to bolster its defence capabilities, and the North Korean nuclear standoff to assert a defence posture commensurate to its stature in the international community.”
Blumenthal’s praise for Koizumi’s adroitness points to another feature of the US alignment with Tokyo: an increasingly open defence of the government’s efforts to stir up Japanese nationalism. Just as Bush is relying on extreme right-wing Christian fundamentalists in the US, so Koizumi is basing himself on militarist layers who regard Japan’s colonial adventures in Asia as “a war of liberation” from Western imperialism and, in the manner of the pro-Nazi holocaust deniers, flatly declare that atrocities like the Rape of Nanking are a Western fabrication. It is not surprising therefore that supporters of the Bush administration have no difficulty in joining the apologists for Japanese militarism—as long as it advances US interests.
Blumenthal pays tribute to Koizumi’s cleverness in playing what he terms “the history card”—that is, visiting the notorious Yasakuni Shrine and defending the publication of history texts that whitewash Japan’s war record. “In fashioning his China strategy, Koizumi had to both build public support and overcome Chinese pressure. Koizumi has accomplished these dual goals by skillfully turning the Achilles heel of Japan’s China policy—the ‘history card’—into a political advantage.”
According to Blumenthal, Koizumi’s great skill, along with sharply polarising public opinion in Japan, has been to inflame regional tensions by promoting the symbols of wartime Japanese imperialism as a cover for his more fundamental objective of Japanese rearmament. “Because the Chinese leadership continues to emphasise this symbolic issue, Koizumi’s substantive reforms of Japan’s defence posture have received far less criticism than they otherwise would. Indeed, China has overplayed its hand by allowing Japan-bashing to boil over within the Chinese populace.”
In a comment in the Wall Street Journal on April 13, James Lilley, one of Blumenthal’s colleagues at the American Heritage Institute, makes a similar point about the latest anti-Japanese protests in China. Lilley notes that regional reactions to Japan’s territorial claims and controversial textbooks “reflect deep historic animosities and distrust” but then openly defends Koizumi’s actions, stating: “Japan has been bludgeoned unmercifully by China and Korea for its brutality during its invasions and occupations of the 20th century. Some of this represents genuine emotion, but it also reflects an attempt to put Japan on the defensive while at the same time gobbling up its goods and superior technology.” -
China and South Korea clearly exploit nationalist sentiment for their own political purposes. The Beijing bureaucracy, which has presided over two decades of free market restructuring and is integrating itself into the emerging capitalist class, has all but given up its past socialist pretences. The Chinese leaders, like their counterparts in Japan, are deliberating whipping up nationalism to divert widespread and deepening hostility over poverty and unemployment as well as to push for a greater role for China in the region and internationally.
At the same time, however, there is an understandable fear among broad layers of the population in Asia, that the justifications being advanced for the past crimes of Japanese imperialism are aimed at preparing for new ones. As in the 1930s, Japan is heavily dependent on the import of raw materials, particularly oil, to feed its huge manufacturing base. After a decade and a half of economic slump and crisis, sections of TokyoÂ’s ruling elite support a more aggressive and expansionist strategy to secure access to cheap commodities, labour and markets. It is no accident that its territorial conflicts with China, Russia and South Korea all involve areas in the surrounding seas that are potential sources of oil and gas. To back its ambitions, Japan needs to be able to exert its military muscle.
Not all sections of the US ruling elite welcome the reemergence of Japanese militarism. Some can still recall a time when US imperialism was compelled to fight a devastating war in the Pacific to defend its economic and strategic interests in Asia. They regard the present foreign policy of the Bush administration as shortsighted and reckless. At present, Tokyo may be prepared to play second fiddle to Washington as the means for rearming and asserting its status as “a normal nation”. But alignments can change. Japanese interests not only conflict with those of China, but, more fundamentally, with Washington’s long-term plans to establish US control over the resource-rich regions of the Middle East and Central Asia. These were the seeds of the Pacific war that erupted in December 1941. They could also become the trigger for another bloody conflagration.
In a scathing recent attack on current US policy towards Japan entitled “The real ‘China threat’”, academic Chalmers Johnson made the following observations:
“I recall 40 years ago, when I was a new professor working in the field of Chinese and Japanese international relations that Edwin O Reischauer once commented, ‘The great payoff from our victory of 1945 was a permanently disarmed Japan.’ Born in Japan and a Japanese historian at Harvard, Reischauer served as US ambassador to Tokyo in the administrations of presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. Strange to say, since the end of the Cold War in 1991 and particularly under the administration of George W Bush, the United States has been doing everything in its power to encourage and even accelerate Japanese rearmament.
“Such a development promotes hostility between China and Japan, the two superpowers of East Asia, sabotages possible peaceful solutions in those two problem areas, Taiwan and North Korea, left over from the Chinese and Korean civil wars, and lays the foundation for a possible future Sino-Japanese conflict that the United States would almost surely lose. It is unclear whether the ideologues and war lovers of Washington understand what they are unleashing—a possible confrontation between the world’s fastest industrial economy, China, and the world’s second-most-productive, albeit declining, economy, Japan; a confrontation that the United States would have caused and in which it might well be consumed.”
WashingtonÂ’s reaction to the latest tensions between Japan and China, along with the record of the last five years not only in North East Asia but internationally, makes clear that, whether they understand what they are unleashing or not, the warmongers of the Bush administration are intent on pursuing a military alliance with Japan, regardless of its potentially catastrophic consequences.
Concluded -
Political sensitivity aside,Originally posted by drawer:Yup,i think LHL has done the right thing.Mainland China has reacted over-sensitive recent years,a little thing against their "will" only kpkb.It is time to let them know she dont owned the whole god damn world.
I am Against Japan in Security Council 101 Percent.
If Japan is allowed in the UN council,
they will continue to think that they can play around
anyway they like in handling their war time history.
I think Japan recent actions showed that they
are more politically provocative than china.
Its also in US interest and political game to start such provacation
against China. All bcos of US's own fear.
The only reason LHL/spore support japan for UN seat
is bcos spore econonmy still very depend on japan's mnc investments here. -
http://www.guardian.co.uk/japan/story/0,7369,1187678,00.html
Tokyo dispatch
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Sing or be sacked
Japan's teachers are in uproar over a directive forcing them to pay respect to the 'militarist' national anthem and flag, writes Justin McCurry
Wednesday April 7, 2004
It was a moment I had been quietly dreading for days. Would I remain seated and keep my conscience clear, or would I stand, open my throat, and spare my daughter acute embarrassment on her first day at school? Perhaps I could sing deliberately off-key, Ã la Les Dawson.
In the end, the decision was made for me. The dozen or so teachers had already been standing for several minutes, listening to the head teacher, before the solemn, muffled tones of the Japanese national anthem drifted across the gymnasium. They had not remained seated for the anthem, but they had not exactly stood for it, either. The rest of us - parents and children - were allowed to stay as we were.
Five lines and 45 seconds later it was all over, and we could relax again as a group of seven-year-old recorder players treated us to a medley of much jollier tunes.
But at dozens of school graduation and entrance ceremonies held a few miles away in Tokyo in recent weeks, proceedings have not been quite so straightforward. There, teachers are not only encouraged to perform their patriotic duty at official events; they risk losing their jobs if they refuse.
Last October, the Tokyo metropolitan board of education issued a lengthy directive requiring teachers at hundreds of state primary, middle and high schools in the capital to stand and sing "Kimigayo", eyes front, fixed on the national flag.
The edict was a minor victory in a battle of wills that has tainted official school events for years. To many teachers, the anthem and the "hinomaru" flag are reminders of an era of unbridled militarism and have no place in today's Japan, where sovereignty resides with the people, not the emperor.
They say that being forced to show respect for the symbols is a violation of their constitutional freedoms of conscience and expression. In defence of those freedoms, they have been willing to tolerate the opprobrium of colleagues and parents, but not a premature end to their teaching careers.
They are up against an equally strong-willed opponent in the form of the Tokyo metropolitan government, led by the rightwing populist Shintaro Ishihara, who has made no secret of his disdain for the highly politicised teachers' unions.
This spring, almost 200 teachers have been punished for refusing to stand and sing Kimigayo. Five of them - retirees employed on annual contracts - were effectively sacked last week when the board of education decided not to rehire them for the new academic year.
According to a union official, the board will consider taking tougher action, including dismissal, against teachers who breach the rules three times.
The controversy over the national anthem was reignited in 1999 by the death of Toshihiro Ishikawa, a head teacher in Hiroshima, whose attempts to placate pro-anthem local education bosses and rebellious staff drove him to suicide.
His death gave the government the excuse it needed to impose its authority. Later that year, Kimigayo and the hinomaru were officially recognised as Japan's national anthem and flag. The prime minister at the time, Keizo Obuchi, indicated that, while it would be mandatory to honour the symbols at school ceremonies, teachers who chose to opt out would not be punished.
The authorities in Tokyo have sent officials, armed with seating plans, to school ceremonies to ensure the rule is enforced and to identify rebels. Reports have emerged of pupils privately begging popular teachers to swallow their pride and sing to avoid the sack.
Judging by the media response, there is no place for compromise. The conservative Yomiuri Shimbun accused the rebel teachers of "poisoning the atmosphere" at schools. "They must correct their thoughtless behaviour," it thundered.
This week, the liberal Asahi Shimbun felt moved to defend its stance after coming under attack from another newspaper. "We recognise the right to raise the flag and sing the anthem," it said in an editorial. "We also demand the freedom to choose not to do these things."
The debate over the role of patriotism in education is unlikely to disappear, even after the capital's pupils have been formally welcomed to their new schools.
If conservative elements within the ruling Liberal Democratic party get their way, the principles underpinning Japan's post-war state education could be in for an overhaul.
The object of their ire is the 1947 Fundamental Law of Education, which, they claim, places priority on children's individuality to the detriment of their love of country. The answer, they say, lies in patriotic and religious instruction, with children graded on their enthusiasm.
So far, they have been held in check by members of the LDP's sceptical coalition partner, New Komeito, the political wing of a lay-Buddhist organisation. And with critical upper house elections just three months away, Mr Koizumi has shown rather less enthusiasm for patriotism in schools than for his annual visits to a Shinto shrine honouring Japan's war-dead or the deployment of Japanese troops to Iraq.
This is not the first time Japan's schools have been used as conduits for ideological crusades. In the pre-war period, teachers were given no choice but to instil in their pupils a nationalistic fervour that would eventually lead them to kill, or be killed, in the name of imperial Japan. The wider political environment has changed beyond recognition, but Japan's teachers again find themselves operating in a climate of fear. -
yup...me also agree wif ya......look around u.....mostly japs factories......Originally posted by NuLife:Political sensitivity aside,
I am Against Japan in Security Council 101 Percent.
If Japan is allowed in the UN council,
they will continue to think that they can play around
anyway they like in handling their war time history.
I think Japan recent actions showed that they
are more politically provocative than china.
Its also in US interest and political game to start such provacation
against China. All bcos of US's own fear.
The only reason LHL/spore support japan for UN seat
is bcos spore econonmy still very depend on japan's mnc investments here. -
extract from
http://www.labournet.net/world/0503/japan3.html
Japan: Teachers resist revival of nationalism and war mentality
Report by Nobu
Published: 13/03/05
[Japan-info] generated by Nobu (Pen: Hiroshi)
[email protected]
http://stopwar.fc2web.com
TeachersÂ’ struggle is hot in Japan now! Let me forward you 3 articles:
(1) AGM of National Coordinating Center of Labor Unions
(2) TeachersÂ’ leaflet to show their determination to fight (3, 800 words)
(3) Harsh oppression against teachers (430 words from one of major papers)
Any one can write solidarity message for fighting teachers in Japan at [email protected]
In solidarity,
Nobu
National Coordinating Center of Labor Unions held Annual General Meeting
Anti-War Joint Action CommitteeÂ’s web (5 February 2005)
http://www.anti-war.jp
“Teachers’ struggle is the key for workers’ fight in 2005”
From February 5 to 6, National Coordinating Center of Labor Unions held its Annual General Meeting. It decided its policy for struggle in 2005. Delegates discussed about bills over 2 days. They confirmed the importance of 4 major industrial struggles (teachers, prefectural and municipal workers, post workers and rail workers) with teachers struggle on its center, and they expressed their determination to stand up for the international anti-war rally on March 20.
At the end of the meeting, all delegates from all over Japan chanted slogans and pledged to win the struggles with the power of all workersÂ’ solidarity.
REFUSE TO STAND UP FOR “HINOMARU” AND “KIMIGAYO” ACROSS THE COUNTRY!
Leaflet of National Coordinating Center of Labor Unions
Graduation and enrollment ceremonies of March/April will be decisive.
Solidarity with teachers in Tokyo!
Education Workers Division,
National Coordinating Center of Labor Unions
Motoasakusa 2-4-10 5F
111-0041 Taito-ku
Tokyo Japan
Tel: 03 (3845) 7461
FAX 03 (3845) 7463
E-mail: [email protected]
A large number of education workers gathered in front of the Tokyo Metropolitan Teachers Training Center to protest against “recurrence prevention course” aiming to brainwash the education workers who had refused to stand up and sing “Kimigayo” and got punished (August 30, 2004)
STOP THE REDRAFT OF THE FUNDAMENTAL LAW ON EDUCATION, WITH THE POWER OF THE “HINOMARU AND KIMIGAYO” STRUGGLE!
Brothers and Sisters, participants in the 54th National Conference for Education Research of the Japan TeachersÂ’ Union,
This Conference for Education Research is going to be held under a very serious situation: education workers now face historical attacks, such as enforcement of “Hinomaru” and “Kimigayo” and attempt of redrafting the Fundamental Law on Education. The year 2005 is a crossroad of the history, a decisive year of our struggle. Our longstanding slogans, “Never Send Our Students to the Battlefields Again!” and “Build up Democratic Education for Peace and Truth!” created during the Korean War (1950. 1953) are now to prove their worth in this era of new wars.
Education workers have already launched fighting back against these major attacks. On March and April last year, hundreds of education workers in Tokyo refused to obey coercive order of Tokyo Governor Ishihara and Tokyo Metropolitan Board of Education: “Honor and stand up for Hinomaru and Kimigayo or you will be subjected to disciplinary measures”. The refusal of education workers was a hard blow for Ishihara and the Board of Education; they announced massive punishment against 248 teachers. The punished teachers have been fighting back the unjust disciplinary measures and have energetically developed their fight into a great struggle. Their struggle has been encouraging not only education workers across the country but also workers of various industries and thus advancing working class solidarity.
The struggle on the occasion of graduation and enrollment ceremonies of March/April this year will be decisive. In solidarity with the education workers in Tokyo who are going to refuse again to stand up overcoming enormous pressure, let us fight against “Hinomaru” and “Kimigayo” in coming graduation and enrollment ceremonies throughout Japan. Let us stop the redraft of the Fundamental Law on Education!
KOIZUMI ADMINISTRATIONÂ’S RUSH TO REDRAFT OF THE FUNDAMENTAL LAW ON EDUCATION AND AMENDMENT OF ARTICLE 9 OF THE CONSTITUTION
The Koizumi administration completed last year the Emergency Legislation in the ordinary session of the Diet. Last December a series of grave cabinet decisions was carried out one after another: prolongation of the stationing of the Self-Defense Forces in Iraq, formulation of the new Basic Defense Program, which abandoned “exclusively defensive defense policy”, revision of the “Three Principles on Arms Export”, which had restricted arms exports, and so on.
Koizumi administration is intent on introducing a bill for revision or rather total redraft of the Fundamental Law on Education to the next ordinary session of the Diet. The constitutional revision is also on the agenda. It aims for full transformation of Japan into a “war waging state”.
The second Bush administration, sucked deeper and deeper in the quagmire of Iraq war, is going to spread the aggressive war throughout the Middle East and furthermore preparing a war on North Korea and China.
The Koizumi administration has accepted the plan of the transformation of the US Armed Forces, which makes Japan into the strategic staging point of a new world war. As a partner of the Japan-US Axis, it is going to step into a way of full-fledged use of armed force abroad through lifting the prohibition on “right to collective defense.”
At the same time, under its “Basic Policies for Economic and Fiscal Management and Structural Reform 2004”, the Koizumi administration is going to sweep away all the public sector labor unions. the Japan Teachers’ Union (JTU), All Japan Prefectural and Municipal Workers’ Union, Japan Postal Workers’ Union etc.. and to completely dismantle the post-war social security system.
continued below -
Not all sections of the US ruling elite welcome the reemergence of Japanese militarism. Some can still recall a time when US imperialism was compelled to fight a devastating war in the Pacific to defend its economic and strategic interests in Asia. They regard the present foreign policy of the Bush administration as shortsighted and reckless. At present, Tokyo may be prepared to play second fiddle to Washington as the means for rearming and asserting its status as “a normal nation”. But alignments can change. Japanese interests not only conflict with those of China, but, more fundamentally, with Washington’s long-term plans to establish US control over the resource-rich regions of the Middle East and Central Asia. These were the seeds of the Pacific war that erupted in December 1941. They could also become the trigger for another bloody conflagration.
In a scathing recent attack on current US policy towards Japan entitled “The real ‘China threat’”, academic Chalmers Johnson made the following observations:
“I recall 40 years ago, when I was a new professor working in the field of Chinese and Japanese international relations that Edwin O Reischauer once commented, ‘The great payoff from our victory of 1945 was a permanently disarmed Japan.’ Born in Japan and a Japanese historian at Harvard, Reischauer served as US ambassador to Tokyo in the administrations of presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. Strange to say, since the end of the Cold War in 1991 and particularly under the administration of George W Bush, the United States has been doing everything in its power to encourage and even accelerate Japanese rearmament.
“Such a development promotes hostility between China and Japan, the two superpowers of East Asia, sabotages possible peaceful solutions in those two problem areas, Taiwan and North Korea, left over from the Chinese and Korean civil wars, and lays the foundation for a possible future Sino-Japanese conflict that the United States would almost surely lose. It is unclear whether the ideologues and war lovers of Washington understand what they are unleashing—a possible confrontation between the world’s fastest industrial economy, China, and the world’s second-most-productive, albeit declining, economy, Japan; a confrontation that the United States would have caused and in which it might well be consumed.”
WashingtonÂ’s reaction to the latest tensions between Japan and China, along with the record of the last five years not only in North East Asia but internationally, makes clear that, whether they understand what they are unleashing or not, the warmongers of the Bush administration are intent on pursuing a military alliance with Japan, regardless of its potentially catastrophic consequences.
note. -
extract from
http://www.labournet.net/world/0503/japan3.html
REDRAFTED FUNDAMENTAL LAW ON EDUCATION IS A LAW FOR DEMOLITION OF JTU AND FOR WAR EDUCATION
Submission of a bill to redraft the Fundamental Law on Education to the ordinary session of the Diet is drawing near. The bill presented by the governing parties formulates the objectives of education anew: “to cultivate the attitude for respect of traditional culture, love of country, and contribution to peace and development of international community.” In other words, “to build up Japanese who are prepared to sacrifice their own lives for the country” (NISHIMURA Shingo, member of the House of Representatives). It is inseparable from their agenda for amendment of Article 9 (peace clause) of the Constitution.
The governing partiesÂ’ redraft bill definitely reverses Article 10 of the Fundamental Law on Education:
“education shall not be subject to improper control...” which prohibits improper control of education by the administration and governing parties, into “education administration shall not be subject to improper control...” by inserting ‘administration’. This means an openly declared control over education by the state power. The activities of the Japan Teachers’ Union are thus considered “improper control”. The redrafted Fundamental Law on Education would be an awful weapon for demolition of the JTU and prohibition of peace education as “biased education”. The mission of education workers would be war education to make students “kill people of other nations and sacrifice their own lives.”
The Liberal Democratic Party and a part of the Democratic Party are aiming for massive introduction of history and civics text books edited by “Tsukurukai”* into high schools, starting with introduction of those into six-year high schools in Ehime Prefecture and Tokyo. The redraft of the Fundamental Law on Education would trigger revision of the Basic Objective of Education under the School Education Law, Education Ministry Curriculum Guidelines, and Criteria of Textbook Screening. They are intent on pressing education workers into glorifying aggressive wars in classrooms; the obligation to use official textbooks would be a lever for it.
* “Tsukurukai”: a far right revisionists group, “Society for New History Textbook” or “Society for History Textbook Reform”,
In Tokyo, those teachers are now under sever administrative repression who do not sing “Kimigayo” and who cannot make student sing it. They are labeled as “ill-qualified teachers” and as “teachers lacking in teaching ability” respectively. The MOE is going to introduce teacher’s license renewal system with the aim of dismissing teachers who do not meet the norm of loyalty to the state under renewed Fundamental Law on Education.
The redraft of the Fundamental Law on Education is an attack against education workers in order to utilize them as advance guards of aggressive wars. This must be stopped by every means.
UNITY IN WORKPLACES AGAINST BUSYNESS AND TIGHTENING OF CONTROL!
For us education workers, workplaces have been rendered into a hellhole with busyness and tightening of control. Education workers are now boiling with rage. The JTU leadership is responsible for all that in abandoning struggle and adopting the line of “partnership with the Ministry of Education (MOE)”, The MOE has been hammering out “reform” after “reform”; education workers are swamped with meaningless works, such as giving grade for grade’s sake and submitting reports for reports’ sake. As a result, teachers are deprived of times and have no time to share common experience with the students or talk with fellow teachers.
Overloaded schedule with 5 days week and drastic change of working time are forcing teachers run around second after second without break time. Moreover, practice of supplementary lessons on Saturdays has been spreading. Number of overwork deaths, juvenile retirements and sick leaves has been sharply increasing due to longtime and overloaded work and extreme stress created by mounting difficulties in education.
On the other hand, control over education workers has been tightened: teachers evaluation system, “teachers lacking in teaching ability” control system, introduction of managerial positions under assistant principals, enhancement of principals over personnel relocation. Discrimination and division among teachers have been brought in and silence has been imposed on workplaces. Deprivation of the right to independent research and training, educational training by administration, prior censorship of supplementary materials and even of classroom correspondence, in a word, tightening of education control, are suffocating independent and creative education practices. A lot of fellow education workers are sharing the feeling: “We can no longer continue working in a situation like this. It’s enough.”
The JTU leadership’s “partnership” with the MOE is responsible to these circumstances of schools. Abandonment of “five pillars of workplace struggles” is the principal cause of destruction of unity of education workers in the workplaces. Regeneration of the JTU is the most urgent agenda of life and death for us.
CONFRONT THE “EDUCATION REFORM” FOR MAKING WAR STATE
“Yutori education” (education at ease) means concentration of resources on the education of tiny percentage of elites who lead international competition and cutting down of competency-based education for most of the students. “It is important not to waste resources and effort in raising the lower level of unsuccessful students, but to concentrate instead on helping talented children,” said former chief of the Agency for Cultural Affairs MIURA Shumon, “With the slow children, it’s more important to nurture their honest spirit.” Under this education policy, diversification is promoted from the elementary school level. introduction of nine-year elementary-junior-high schools and six-year high schools. and expansion of classes formed according to degree of advancement. Processive description of the textbooks widens gaps of contents of learning. Recently a policy of boosting the academic achievement was made in response to criticism against decline of achievement. This policy accelerates competence race and screen out children from families’ of little financial strength.
It is an illusion to stop the redraft of the Fundamental Law on Education without confronting by unity of workplaces the “education reform” and enemies’ attacks in anticipation of the redraft.
However, the leadership of the JTU resorts to the MOE for maintenance of state contribution to the education and for establishment of Education Advancement Program and barters away the struggle against the redraft of the Fundamental Law on Education for it. Today, “to send our student to the battlefields” has become a reality. Just in these circumstances the JTU leadership do not fight at all against war mobilization of education workers. Capitulation of the JTU leadership to the redraft of the Fundamental Law on Education means final abandonment of our slogan: “Never Send Our Students to the Battlefields!” We cannot tolerate this complete betrayal.
There is no middle way for us: whether we accept the complete turn of an education into war education, patriotic education, or not; whether we become the advance guards of war to “send our student to the battlefields” or refuse and fight against it. -
extract from
http://www.labournet.net/world/0503/japan3.html
REFUSING TO STAND UP IS A VERY STRUGGLE AGAINST THE REDRAFT OF THE FUNDAMENTAL LAW ON EDUCATION
Hundreds of education workers who refused to stand up last spring have awakened the “fighting JTU” and showed the course of its regeneration.
In their “Regulation of October 23, 2003” on school ceremonies, Ishihara and the Tokyo Metropolitan Board of Education gave minute instructions including 12 provisions from the position of the national flag and aspect of seats to the manner of command: “stand up!” to sing the national anthem It is aimed to transform the graduation and enrollment ceremonies to loyalty ceremonies for the state. All the teachers were handed out instruction paper, which ordered, “to seat at the designated seat, then stand up straight ahead of the flag and sing the anthem there.” The ceremonies were besieged and monitored by the staffs of the Board of Education. The explanation on “freedom of inner conscience” (in regard to the individual attitude to the national flag and the national anthem), which had been made in former ceremonies, was suppressed.
Under the Fascist Governor Ishihara, who openly states his intention to abrogate the Constitution, schools in Tokyo have been put under actually wartime control. Citation of wordings concerning the Constitution, the Fundamental Law on Education, and the Convention on Rights of the Child disappeared from Tokyo’s Objective and Basic Policy of Education. The Tokyo Board of Education adopted instead “nurturing of Japanese who respect the history and culture of our country.” The Board has been enforcing an allegiance test on education workers.
The Ishihara and the Board of Education are attacking education workers with an aim of breaking up their class-consciousness as members of working class, to devastate their personality and conscience, and to make them to assume the role of war educators. To allow obediently this attack means the “demise of education workers.”
Although the union members face these realities, the leadership of the JTU issued a policy to “obey the instruction of the Board” in the name of “focusing on defense of the organization” to avoid conflict. This leadership’s policy put the rank and file members in agony. We cannot allow this gross sell-out.
However, hundreds of rank and file union members carried through refusal to stand up, after their great suffering and distress. They could not behave obediently to the administrative order against their conscience in front of their students whom they had told “importance of conviction and courage to carry out justice” and stuck to their own conscience as education workers.
LAST YEAR’S GREAT ADVANCEMENT OF THE “HINOMARU” AND “KIMIGAYO” STRUGGLE, WITH THE PUNISHED IN IT FOREFRONT
This defiant uprising gave heavy blow to Fascist Ishihara and the Board of Education and caused enormous repercussions in the whole Japanese society; even the national papers. Asahi, Yomiuri, Mainichi, Sankei etc. argued among each other in their editorials over the issue. The struggle against coercion of “Hinomaru” and “Kimigayo” has attained a central position in the struggle against the planned revision of the Fundamental Law on Education and the Constitution. Thus a broad united front of their supporters and sympathizers has been created.
The punished teachers are carrying on independent struggle in strong unity. They have brought the case to the court as preventive lawsuit and have been touring throughout Japan for support and calling for enhancement of resistance struggle in workplace as graduation and enrollment ceremonies are approaching.
The congress of the Tokyo High School Teachers’ Union (THSTU) last June adopted a lot of amendments submitted by the punished teachers demanding support of the struggle for withdrawal of the punishments in the “Hinomaru and Kimigayo” issue and other problems. The adoption of their amendments indicates that the refusal of the enforcement of the “Hinomaru and Kimigayo” ceremony represents general feeling of teachers and that the resolute struggle has encouraged them through its determination as education workers with their entire existence. Even the national leadership of the JTU was moved and eventually admitted the punished teachers, executive members of a union and its local, as speakers in the “National Rally to Defeat Authoritarian Education Administration” in Hibiya Open-air Stage on Dec. 3 in Tokyo sponsored by four different teachers unions and endorsed by the JTU.
An enthusiastic appeal for the support of the punished teachers was issued also by the “Stop the Revision of the Fundamental Law on Education! National Rally”, held on Nov. 6 in Hibiya Open-air Stage gathering 5, 500 workers and citizens.
The rally declared in its statement: “The teachers refused to stand up in the”Hinomaru and Kimigayo“ ceremony, risking inevitable punishment. This struggle is offering a stiff resistance against the administrative repression on education workers that precedes the revision of the Fundamental Law on Education. This struggle will lead on to a movement to crush the reactionary attempt.
The teachersÂ’ struggle has given a great impact on the entire labor movement as an example of rank and file struggle to take back unionÂ’s power in their own hand and also of struggle in the workplace to refuse involvement in war.
On Nov. 7,”National Workers’ Rally“ was held in Tokyo sponsored by the Kan-Nama (Solidarity Union of Japan Construction and Transport Workers Kansai Area Branch), Minato-Godo (Metal and Machinery Workers’ Union in Osaka), and Doro-Chiba (National Railway Motive Power Union of Chiba). The following is the main slogans of the rally:
”Make a National Network of Fighting Unions!“
”International Solidarity to Fight Against Massive Unemployment and War!“
3, 600 workers from around Japan joined in the rally and pledged international solidarity of working class together with the guest participants, seven unionists from the U. S. including the official delegate from the ILWU Local 10, Brother Jack Heyman, and two unionists from South Korea, Brothers Pak San-yun and Mun Mun-ju, Secretary General and Organization Director of the KCTU Seoul Regional Council respectively.
The rally wholeheartedly and enthusiastically welcomed the twenty teachers who fought against the “Hinomaru” and “Kimigayo” ceremony in Tokyo and were punished or dismissed. They energetically emphasized the cause of their struggle on the platform.
The uprising of the education workers against “Hinomaru” and “Kimigayo” is providing a victorious perspective for rank and file members to fight back, getting over the union bureaucracy who has surrendered to capital and betrayed the cause of the working class, while the Emergency Laws has already been legislated and workers of every industry are faced with an imminent issue of fighting war duty instruction. This is because the workers of other industrial branches are saying: “Let’s fight as the education workers do!” “For the joint struggle against the ‘Hinomaru and Kimigayo’ ceremony this spring”.
The fighting education workers joined other fighting workers who participated in the rally of Nov. 7th, namely the National Railways workers who have been fighting for withdrawal of dismissal of 1, 047 union members, the postal workers who fight intransigently against privatization of the Postal Services and the members of All Japan Prefectural and Municipal Workers’ Union (Jichiro) who fight against “21st Century Manifesto” of Jichiro leadership. Thus a starting point has been successfully made to defeat the “Basic Policies for Economic and Fiscal Management and Structural Reform 2004” and the union busting in the public sector.
The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) regards the struggle against “Hinomaru” and “Kimigayo” as a “struggle against revival of militarism” and shows great sympathy. The American fighting unions consider it a “genuine rank and file movement”. International solidarity is now growing around this struggle.
photo. 3600 workers gathered in the National WorkersÂ’ Rally. Punished education workersÂ’ appeal intensified solidarity. (November 7, 2004. Hibiya, Tokyo) -
extract from
http://www.labournet.net/world/0503/japan3.html
FOR NATIONAL STRUGGLE AGAINST “HINOMARU” AND “KIMIGAYO” THIS SPRING
“Hinomaru” and “Kimigayo” are not only the symbols of the past aggressive wars but also the instruments for new wars and a resurgence of chauvinism. The struggle against this aggressive trend is a litmus test of our slogan: “Never Send Our Students to the Battlefields Again!”
Scared of this struggle against “Hinomaru” and “Kimigayo”, the enemies are aiming to force education workers to submission. Reactionary attacks against the great advancement of the struggle are now growing.
First, the Emperor, upon hearing Tokyo Education Board member YONENAGA Kunio to avow in the imperial garden party that “I feel it my duty to make sure that students and teachers raise the rising-sun flag and sing the national anthem at schools across the country. I’m doing my best”, suggested to him, “It’s not desirable to do it by force”. The Emperor meant that any dispute upon this issue should immediately be settled and “Hinomaru” and “Kimigayo” should be accepted without enforcement or protest. It is an imperial order to crack down the sturdy struggle of the education workers. Now, the Japanese Emperor, who had long been prohibited to have power related to government by the Constitution* after WWII, has finally started to overtly meddle in education. It is a beginning of a fierce attack upon people.
*Article 3: The advice and approval of the Cabinet shall be required for all acts of the Emperor in matters of state, and the Cabinet shall be responsible therefor.
*Article 4: (1) The Emperor shall perform only such acts in matters of state as are provided for in this Constitution and he shall not have powers related to government.
Second, the Japanese Communist Party and Kakumaru* have begun maneuvering to destroy the struggle of refusal to stand up. Showing total abhorrence to the educational workers’ struggle, they insist that the refusal would incur punishment and repression and the struggle should be stopped. December last year, Kakumaru launched a “ movement to accuse and impeach Governor Ishihara and the Head of the Board of Education, Yokoyama”. This “movement” beg the prosecution, that is, the state power apparatus, to indict Ishihara the Governor and Yokoyama the Education Officer, while demanding teachers to obey the duty instruction and stand up for “Hinomaru” and sing “Kimigayo” in stead of fighting the administrative enforcement. Kakumaru even smears the teachers who refused to stand up as being “provocateurs” or “odd men”. Their vicious aim is to destroy the struggle against “Hinomaru” and “Kimigayo” in the graduation and enrollment ceremonies this spring.
*Kakumaru is a notorious Fascist group, which had violently promoted the division and privatization of Japan National Railways.
LET’S FIGHT BACK REACTIONARY OFFENSIVE AND CARRY OUT REFUSAL OF “HINOMARU” AND “KIMIGAYO” IN THE COMING GRADUATION AND ENROLLMENT CEREMONIES.
The education workers in Tokyo are now preparing to rise up against “Hinomaru” and “Kimigayo” this spring in defiance of tremendous reactionary attack and enormous pressure of every kind. Ishihara and the Board of Education have resorted to severe repressive measures on teachers who refuse to stand up during the singing of “Kimigayo”: reprimand for the first refusal and reduction of pay for one month for the second refusal. They have issued a warning that “those who repeatedly refuse” would be dismissed. In face of this grave situation, the fighting teachers are expanding the struggle to defeat the unjust massive punishment.
Brothers and Sisters, fellow union membership! We must not let the fellow workers in Tokyo fight alone. If tens of thousand of education workers rise up against “Hinomaru” and “Kimigayo” this spring, we can surely gain a perspective to definitely defeat the redraft of the Fundamental Law on Education and the revision of Article 9 of the Constitution.
Let us launch a new struggle of refusal and disobedience throughout the country! It is, for us education workers, a matter of our life.
With the huge struggle against “Hinomaru” and “Kimigayo”, let us stop the redraft of the Fundamental Law on Education!
Get back the militant teachersÂ’ movement represented formerly by the Japan Teachers Union to the hand of union membership through rank and file struggle!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Police arrest flier distributors at Tokyo schools
Mainichi Shimbun, Japan, March 11, 2005
http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/news/20050311p2a00m0dm011001c.html
Police have arrested several demonstrators protesting against compulsory singing of the national anthem and raising of the Japanese flag at Tokyo schools, accusing them of trespassing, it has been learned.
The Tokyo Metropolitan Board of Education has stepped up efforts to enforce the singing of the anthem and raising of the flag, and the protesters maintain that they have not done anything illegal by opposing this move.
Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officials say the protesters were arrested for trespassing because they refused to leave the school grounds when asked to, but the protesters argue that their arrests were politically motivated because distributors of other fliers were able to carry out their activities without arrest.
Each of the incidents occurred at high schools in the Metropolitan area. In one case a former teacher at a high school was indicted without arrest for obstructing officials from carrying out their duties.
Officials said he delayed a graduation ceremony at the Tokyo school by handing out copies of a magazine article reporting on the Tokyo Metropolitan Education BoardÂ’s plans.
On March 4 this year, two other men were arrested for handing out fliers protesting against the compulsory singing of the national anthem and raising of the Japanese flag at a high school in Machida, Tokyo, while another man was arrested for carrying out a similar protest at a school in TokyoÂ’s Katsushika-ku on March 8.
The three protesters remained silent when police questioned them, and they were later released. MPD officials deemed the three to be radical activists.
After their release, the three held a news conference. “Prep schools and cram schools were handing out fliers, and we can only conclude that arresting only us was politically motivated,” one of the three said during the conference.
Commenting on the arrests, an MPD official said, “We rushed to the school after receiving a call, and instructed them to leave the school grounds, but they refused so we arrested them.”
Many Metropolitan high schools carried out their graduation ceremonies on Friday. Publications issued by radical groups have stated they want to conduct nationwide protests, with members stating they “will not stop even if arrested.”
In December last year the Hachioji branch of the Tokyo District Court handed down a not-guilty ruling on men accused of trespassing when they handed out fliers at a Defense Agency dormitory.
Another man was arrested in December last year after distributing Communist Party fliers inside an apartment block in Tokyo’s Katsushika-ku. Residents filed a complaint against the man, but he defended his actions, describing them as a “fair political activity.”
(Mainichi Shimbun, Japan, March 11, 2005) -
http://www.refuseandresist.org/war/art.php?aid=1668
NYT: Tokyo's Flag Law: Proud Patriotism, or Indoctrination?
December 16, 2004
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
TOKYO - Toru Kondo, an English teacher at a public high school here, had never before been reprimanded in his 32-year career. But he was recently required to take a two-hour "special retraining course," lectured on his mistaken ways and given a sheet of paper on which to engage in half an hour of written self-examination.
His offense was to defy the Tokyo Board of Education's new regulation requiring teachers to sing the national anthem while standing and facing the national flag. He and scores of colleagues refused, because for them the rising-sun flag and the anthem, "Kimigayo," or "His Majesty's Reign," are symbols of imperialism.
"When the Japanese military invaded Asia, the rising-sun flag led the corps and the 'Kimigayo' was sung when Japanese soldiers won a battle," Mr. Kondo said. "I've been telling students that the two are linked to Japan's militarism."
Many Japanese felt the same way for decades after World War II. But perhaps because they are now more comfortable with their history, or perhaps because Japanese society has moved right, the authorities here have made respect for the flag and anthem mandatory for teachers and students. To supporters, the move is a step to make Japan into a so-called normal country that can be patriotic and proud of itself. To critics, it is dangerous indoctrination that has no place in a democracy.
In a city in Fukuoka Prefecture, education officials conducted a survey this year on how loud students sang the anthem at graduation and enrollment ceremonies, classifying each school as "high," "medium" or "low." In Tokyo, 243 teachers have been punished this year because they did not stand before the rising-sun flag and sing the anthem; 67 more have been warned because they did not instruct their students to do so. The police raided the home of one former teacher here who handed out copies of a magazine article about the issue at a graduation ceremony.
In Tokyo, the only municipality to have meted out broad punishments, the authorities were hoping to use the capital's influence to make respect for the flag and anthem compulsory nationwide. While newspaper polls show voters here opposing such a movement, voters have still remained firmly behind its leader, Shintaro Ishihara, the rightist governor of Tokyo.
The movement suffered a setback recently, from an unexpected corner: Emperor Akihito, who stated his opposition to the regulation. The Imperial Household Agency, some politicians and newspapers played down the comment by the emperor, who, according to the Constitution, is forbidden from interfering in political matters. But others saw in his rare political utterance a sign that he was worried about Japan's direction.
After Japan's defeat in World War II, the rising-sun flag was banned for more than three years under the American occupation. Asian neighbors remain suspicious of Japanese nationalism and of the country's new assertiveness overseas, including sending 550 troops to Iraq. The young in Seoul or Shanghai may consume Pokémon or other symbols of the new Japan. But since they are thoroughly taught about the brutalities of Japanese colonialism, unlike their Japanese counterparts, their often visceral reactions to symbols of the old Japan lie near the surface.
Japan long was ambivalent toward its flag and anthem, and it was only in 1999 that the government made them legal national symbols. Since 1990, public school teachers have been told they "should instruct" students to pay respect to both. But in October 2003, Tokyo made respect compulsory at graduation and enrollment ceremonies in public schools, and disobedience punishable.
The regulation states that the national flag must be raised in front of the stage, with the Tokyo government flag to the right. An official will cry out, "Singing of the national anthem," then teachers and students must rise, face the flag and sing. Board or school officials instruct sitting teachers to stand and sing - and take the names of those who refuse.
"The deputy principal walked down the aisle between the wall and the teachers' seats and approached me and said, 'Please stand up and sing,' " said Mitsuo Kondo, 61, a martial arts teacher, who is not related to the English teacher. "So I said: 'I won't stand up. I won't sing.' "
Mr. Kondo, whose teaching contract was canceled as a result and who now is a part-time carpenter, said he had not opposed the anthem and flag until showing respect was required. He said he used to sing the anthem at the top of his voice.
"Patriotic feelings can't grow by force," he said. Takayuki Tsuchiya, a Tokyo assemblyman, said the new regulation was necessary to counterbalance decades of leftist lectures by teachers, especially members of the Japan Teachers' Union. For decades, he said, the teachers have led a campaign to denigrate the nation's symbols, placing the flag next to toilets.
"The Japan Teachers' Union has been teaching students that the white of the rising-sun flag is the color of bone and red is the color of people's blood," he said. "They are depriving students of the freedom to stand up. They hate the emperor and they hate Japan. Would American kids stand up if you teach them America did terrible things in Vietnam?"
The teachers' union, considered one of Japan's largest left-leaning organizations, has been losing membership and influence in keeping with Japan's overall political shift.
Yuzuru Nakamura, the union's secretary general, said the group did not oppose the flag or anthem, but rejected the Tokyo government's regulation. Mr. Nakamura said he saw it as part of a rising nationalism in a Japan made increasingly insecure by its generation-long economic malaise and China's ascendancy.
"The government needs symbols of unity for the country," he said. "I think the national flag and anthem are being used to establish Japanese ethnicity or identity."
Tokyo officials clearly hoped they could spur the stand-and-sing movement to grow nationwide by drawing the emperor to their side.
In October, Kunio Yonenaga, an education board member who oversees the new regulation in Tokyo but evidently wants his influence to reach beyond, told the emperor: "Making sure that students and teachers raise the rising-sun flag and sing the national anthem at schools across the country is my job. I'm doing my best."
Mr. Yonenaga, who had expected encouragement, was instead rebuked by the emperor, who said, "It's not desirable to do it by force." Taken aback, Mr. Yonenaga, who declined to be interviewed for this article, interrupted the emperor and blurted out, "Thank you for your wonderful words."
Mr. Tsuchiya, the Tokyo assemblyman, could barely disguise his disappointment. Asked why he thought the emperor held such a view, Mr. Tsuchiya mentioned the influence of Elizabeth Vining, a Quaker schoolteacher from Philadelphia, who tutored Akihito, then the crown prince, from 1946 to 1950, and even gave him a nickname. "The emperor was raised by Mrs. Vining, who called him Jimmy," he said. -
It is to be expected that Japan will re-arm itself one way or another for self-defence or revival of Japanese imperialism. Once the non-war constitution was removed or dismantled all it takes is for one of their aspiring politicians to take the route of reviving their particular nationalism.Originally posted by boy in blues:http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/apr2005/japa1-a25.shtml
World Socialist Website
published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI)
Behind China-Japan tensions
Washington fuels Japanese militarism
Part One
By Peter Symonds
25 April 2005
Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the author
The following is part one of a two-part series. The concluding part will be published tomorrow.
In the extensive media coverage of the current tensions between Japan and China, the insidious and deeply destabilising role of the Bush administration has been virtually ignored. Yet Washington has been insistently pressing Japan to rearm and play a more “active” role in North East Asia—the basic issues that have repeatedly sparked fears, protests and frictions not only with China, but throughout the region.
The Bush administration’s backing has encouraged Tokyo to take an uncompromising and antagonistic stance towards the latest anti-Japanese protests in China. The White House immediately lined up with the Japanese government by criticising Beijing’s failure to “prevent violence” and bring the demonstrations under control. US spokesmen remained silent on the provocative actions of Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi who deliberately added more fuel to the fire.
In the midst of the demonstrations, the Koizumi government authorised a new school history text that whitewashes the crimes of Japanese imperialism in the 1930s and 1940s and then gave the green light for Japanese companies to drill for oil in an area of the East China Sea contested by Beijing. To cap it off, Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura went to Beijing to demand an apology and compensation for damage caused to Japanese property in the course of the protests.
Can anyone see the common characteristics of the Japanese race. They as a people are nationalistic and ambitious. They desire to lead and be no. 1 and will desire to conquer others politically or economically in the long term. This is fundamental in their race. With or without any help from Bush or any outside world they will work towards this end in the long term as a race.Koizumi was well aware that these actions would provoke an angry response. But by stirring up fears and prejudice against China, he is pursuing a definite political strategy: to turn the widespread alienation and hostility in Japan over deteriorating living standards in a right-wing nationalist direction and thereby create a social base for his reactionary policies. Allowing for the obvious differences between the two countries, the agendas and methods of Koizumi and Bush are strikingly similar. Each is preying on fear and ignorance to garner support for an aggressive assertion of national interests abroad, and a savage onslaught on the social position and democratic rights of working people at home.
The above-stated report merely confirms that the Japanese behaviour is one towards reviving their nationalism as a race not because of outside influences or events. Even if there is no misunderstanding of events or ignorance among Japanese younger generations, even if China does not blame the Japanese about their latter's textbook rewriting to mull over their war crimes committed in WWII, Japan will sooner or later create some issues to give excuses or justifications to re-arm themselves.KoizumiÂ’s reaction to the Chinese demonstrations is not an isolated event. Last September, the Japanese prime minister provocatively boarded a coast guard vessel and sailed close to the Russian-held Kurile Islands off the northern tip of Hokkaido. He used the occasion to reiterate TokyoÂ’s demand for the return of the islands that were seized by Soviet forces in the final days of World War II. KoizumiÂ’s stunt provoked criticisms in Moscow, complicated negotiations over the issue and contributed to delays in a visit by Russian president Vladimir Putin to Tokyo, mooted for February.
Japan will as a race continue to use their economic powers and alliance with USA to re-establish itself as a country with military might to control the seas and the air routes plus all the off-shore islands. They will continue to use their economic might to check on China's modernisation.In November, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) government reacted to the intrusion of a Chinese submarine into Japanese territorial waters off the Okinawa Islands in a belligerent fashion. The Japanese military was ordered to intercept the vessel and force it to surface. Even after it had fled the area, Japanese maritime patrol planes tracked the submarine for hours. While the Japanese navy has previously been involved in clashes with North Korean ships, the incident marked the first occasion that a Chinese vessel had been set upon. The government, backed by the media, seized on the intrusion to demand an apology from Beijing and to whip up fears in Japan about the dangers of a Chinese military threat.
Why not? Japan will want to control its seas and air spaces around the Japanese seas. Can anyone go near enough these areas to pose a threat to them? Not likely. China does not possess a powerful navy to surround or blockade Japanese seas and air spaces.
In February this year, a diplomatic row blew up over Japan’s claims to several South Korean islets lying between the two countries. The dispute erupted when the assembly in the Shimane Prefecture in Japan passed an ordinance to establish February 22 as “Takeshima Day” provoking an angry reaction in South Korea. Takeshima is the Japanese name for the islands known as Dokdo by South Koreans. The following day, Japan’s ambassador to South Korea reiterated Japan’s claim to the islands, making clear that the prefecture had Tokyo’s backing. These barren, uninhabited rocks have a symbolic significance for Koreans as their incorporation into Japan in 1905 was a step towards Japan’s full colonisation of Korea in 1910.The media has focussed on the recent protests in China, but there have also been angry anti-Japanese demonstrations in South Korea. The ambassador’s remarks triggered South Korean demands for a Japanese apology, headlines accusing Japan of a new invasion and protests in Seoul during which Japanese flags were burnt. Renewed demonstrations erupted this month over the latest Japanese school textbooks, which, among the other affronts to South Korea, included a photograph of the disputed islands with a caption reading “illegally occupied by South Korea”.
The Japanese are interested in developing alliances with USA to assert its powers over other countries in the East. Whether Bush has a plan to use Japan as a bulwart against a rising China is immaterial. Japan will over time assume greater power with the help of USA. East Asia will have to ally themselves to fit Japanese overall plan to revive its nationalism. This will be the beginning of more problems in the East. China is not a belligerent power or super-power. It has no ambition of the kind practised by Japan. China can do well be remaining steadfast in modernisation and building its goodwill without over-exposing itself in militarism. However China must continue to equip its military powers including nuclear ones to pose a good counter defence against Japanese aggressive intent as a race.
Even a decade ago, the actions of the Koizumi government would have been beyond the pale in official circles. Tokyo’s limited and grudging expressions of regret for the actions of the imperial armies in Asia in the 1930s and 1940s have always stopped short of an open acknowledgement of Japanese war crimes. At the same time, postwar governments have generally been careful to present Japan as having turned a new leaf. The symbols of Japanese militarism were shunned, publicly at least, and efforts were made to normalise relations with the country’s neighbours—including China and South Korea.
The installation of Koizumi as prime minister in April 2001, however, marked a sharp turn. For all the media hype about his personal style, he has longstanding connections to the LDP’s hawkish Fukada faction, which has consistently pushed for increased military spending, opposed Japan’s recognition of China in 1972 and sought to eliminate the so-called pacifist clause from the Japanese constitution. From the outset, Koizumi brazenly appealed to right-wing nationalism, openly breaking previous political taboos—most notably by visiting the controversial Yasukuni Shrine that houses memorials to Japan’s war-dead, including a number of convicted war criminals.
KoizumiÂ’s stance, at home and in the region, is due in no small measure to the support he has received from the Bush administration. For the past five years, the White House has actively pursued a strategy of forging close military ties with Japan, pressing it to end the constitutional limitations on its armed forces and to take a more aggressive international posture, particularly in relation to China. These objectives dovetail, for the present, with the ambitions of Koizumi and the most right-wing sections of the Japanese ruling elite, who have been seeking a means of clearing away the legal and political obstacles to the assertion of Japanese imperialist interests. -
balls to them.We are a sovereign nation and we make our own independent decisions.while we are friendly with them and will accomodate their interests where possible as a good ally would,we make our own decisions on who we support and how we conduct ourselves in the world.Originally posted by goaler:wao.. the other time he went taiwan already create a big hoo-ha...
now he still want to support japan to bid for UN perm seat?
why can't he see? China is a rising dragon... and japan is a setting sun country....
why he still want to offend China? -
if we poke nose into their business of course they buay song. usa kpkb sg cane michael fay you song or not ?Originally posted by drawer:Yup,i think LHL has done the right thing.Mainland China has reacted over-sensitive recent years,a little thing against their "will" only kpkb.It is time to let them know she dont owned the whole god damn world.