by Humphrey McQueen
When Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe addressed the Australian parliament on July 7 it was as if its members were welcoming a Neo-Nazi who had become Chancellor of Germany. Abe worships his maternal grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi , who had been a wartime cabinet minister. He escaped prosecution as a Class-A War Criminal when the US reversed course in 1948 to embrace its imperialist rival as the northern anchor of its Cold War strategy. Abe’s 2006 book Towards a Beautiful Nation argues that Manchukuo was not a puppet state and that Class-A War Criminals were not criminals under domestic law.
Abe wants to rewrite the Constitution to dump its pacifist clause and to get a real military instead of self-defence forces. He has just boosted them with stealth bombers. He is talking about nuclear weapons. None of which pleases most Japanese voters.
Abbott sat in on the Japanese newly formed National Security Council during his visit to Tokyo. These links are part of US PIVOT into Asia. They are tied to the US Marine and drone bases in the Northern Territory set up under the ALP’s Gillard. If unions now take action like the Wollongong workers in 1938, they would be fined thousands of dollars under Gillard’s WorkChoices Lite.
The cozying up to US and Japanese warmongers is being sold around a BIG LIE about some rocks in the South China seas. The ‘news’ tears bits of information from their contexts. In this case, one strand goes back to 1895 and the other to 1972.
The Japanese militarists grabbed the rocks in 1895 after the war when they annexed Formosa (Taiwan). The militarists kept them until 1945 when the US imperialists took charge as part of its occupation of Japan.
Trailing along behind Washington in 1972, Tokyo recognised Mao’s Red bandits as the government of China. Part of that deal was that China and Japan accepted that the rocks were in dispute; the understanding was that neither side would do anything to claim them. That remained the case until an inexperienced administration in Tokyo mismanaged a 2010 clash over fishing boats in the area.
In 2012, Abe’s regime ‘nationalised’ the rocks by buying them from the people who claimed to have title to them. However, Tokyo has not yet asserted sovereignty. Instead, its warmongers are taking small steps to get total control.
China is trying to lever Tokyo back to the 1972 position, that is, to agree that a dispute exists. At some time, all the claimants will have to go to arbitration. The Law of the Sea has problems with overlapping maritime borders of 200 kms from shorelines. No one has a clear right in these cases, anywhere in the world.
The Chinese response has been measured. Its no-fly zone is limited. It applies only to military aircraft and requires only advance notice. This arrangement is quite common around the world. It is far from a claim for sovereignty. The ABC continues to push the lie that the Chinese are the aggressors. The Beijing bosses are swine, but not in this case.
Beijing is even more upset by a new element. Taiwan did a deal with Tokyo to go fishing in those waters. That is provocative in itself. But what the deal signals is that Tokyo recognises Taiwan as its new puppet government of China. That points to a rupture with Japan’s 1972 recognition that there is only one China.
New Year Greetings from a Japanese democrat closed with this warning:
Politics here is horrible. If Australians think they’ve got a right-wing ideologue as PM, I have to say Tony Abbott is intelligent, caring, rational and moderate compared with Japan’s Abe. He seems to be hell-bent on bringing Japan back to pre-WWII era and very keen to start a war or two with China (and Korea, not just North but South, too). I have to say quasi-fascists are now in charge here. I do hope Australia can keep long distance from Japan on the Sino-Japanese disputes.
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