White blogule to Kofi's last throes of morality

Why now ? All of a sudden, the UN's Secretary General asks Koizumi to stop his provocating visits to Yasukuni and a UN panel asks the US to stop Guantanamo's tragic farce. Maybe Kofi Annan feels his days are counted at the head of this not yet dead international body. That won't save Darfur but bad guys can be found everywhere.
Anyway, both Japan and the US do as if nothing happened. Toni Snow said "everything that is done in terms of questioning detainees is fully consistent with the boundaries of American law" and I'm afraid he is right : Amerika's administration changed America's laws to allow torture, illegal tapings, illegal abductions among other small steps for W but giant leaps backwards for humanity.

Red blogule to Japan's neofascists - forget Takeshima and Mandchukuo

On April 31st, Young People's Comrades black trucks would cruise Tokyo, with mock missiles on their rooftops and loudspeakers blasting calls for young warriors to join the neo-fascist organisation, a member of the far-far-right Zen-Ai Kaigi alliance.
"Japan Youth" ? I could only see septuagenarians in those trucks ; the kind who long for the Showa era (not for the late Hirohito's granddaddy image but for the early Hirohito's imperialist spree), their don Corleone faces as animated as that of Leonid Brezhnev on his last May the 1st.
Meanwhile, the site of the MOFA (Ministry Of Foreign Affairs)* maintains its utterly revisionist position regarding the Korean islets of Dokdo :

"(1) Based on historical facts and international law, it is apparent that Takeshima is an integral part of Japan's sovereign territory.
(2) The occupation of Takeshima by the Republic of Korea is an illegal occupation undertaken with absolutely no basis whatsoever in international law. Any measures taken with regard to Takeshima by the Republic of Korea based on such an illegal occupation have no legal justification."

Here are the actual historical facts :
1) Indeed, Dokdo happened to be Japanese in the past, but only during occupation periods, each time Japan would aggress its peaceful neighbor. If Japan claims Dokdo, it must also claim the whole Korean peninsula.
2) Following a long tradition of eradication of anything Korean, Japan renamed Dokdo "Takeshima" in 1905. Like all the names changed during the occupation period ended with WWII, it was turned back to its original name at the Korean independance. Note that the "Sea of Japan" was never renamed "Sea of Korea".
3) Significantly enough, Dokdo means "remote island" in Korean, which reflects the difficulty for this country to defend this couple of rocks far away from its shores.
4) Significantly enough, Takeshima means "bamboo island" in Japanese, which seems absurd considering the fact not much can grow on these rocky islets but piles of guano. On the other hand, the name makes perfect sense if you know how bamboo reproduces : by its very name, "Takeshima", perfectly symbolizes the first implantation of imperial Japan on Korean soil during the 1905 wave (Dokdo was the first piece of land conquerred).

President Noh Moo-hyun asked PM Junichiro Koizumi to take his responsibilies and demanded the issue to be settled for good. I would love Mr Koizumi to be totally transparent : either he ends this sick fascist revival or he pleases the country's neo-imperialist lobbies and claims back the full Empire.
I'm sure Beijing (another expert in revisionism) will appreciate when Tokyo demands the liberation of Mandchukuo...

Red blogule to Junichiro Koizumi - Too right to be right

I did wish Japan's PM good luck for his 9/11 elections, provided he would actually seize the opportunity and get rid of the country's extremists. The fact is I'm not even surprised Koizumi nominated a few of them in his government, especially at such key positions as Foreign Affairs.
I actually finished that white blogule by a rather pessimistic "on the other hand, if he didn't seize such an opportunity, I wonder what could save Japan".
I can now complete this bright red blogule by a totally realistic Nothing can save Japan because Japan doesn't want to be saved.

White blogule to Japan's 9/11

Junichiro Koizumi pretends to be the last samurai, sending assassins to get rid of reformophobic politicians and lashing by himself the throats of the Empire's most dangerous thugs : the infamous postmen.
Well. The least one could say is I'm not a supporter of his, but I wish him luck.
If he loses, the old guard wins : even if the LDP ended up in shatters, nothing would change since the opposition is already welcoming hardliners and so called "rebels" on board.
If he wins, the old guard may still win. That is if Koizumi maintains his suicidal revisionist agenda.
What if Weirdo Hairdo Junichiro actually played the bad boy just to please Hirohito fanatics, and simply got rid of them after the elections ? What if his seppuku diplomacy were to end right after the 9/11 elections ? Imagine the winner over the ruins of the conservative fortress, asking the ultimate forgiveness for the crimes of a whole nation, accepting the past, enlightening the present and embracing the future...
On the other hand, if he didn't seize such an opportunity, I wonder what could save Japan.

Red blogule to US - Japan erasers

As they celebrated the 60th anniversary of liberation from Japan and listened to Koizumi repeat the same empty excuses for an excuse as his predecessor ten years ago, Koreans learned why they couldn't get the proof of major wartime atrocities committed by Japan.
They knew the proof was in the US, they now know why it landed there in the first place : the US purchased all data related to Japan's sick medical experiments on civilians of occupied countries. Actually, they bribed the perpetrators to get the exclusivity and even granted them immunity for this favor. This completed the scandalous Hiroshima-Nagasaki cleanup : you don't sue us for using weapons of mass destruction against your civilians, we don't sue you for committing atrocities on civilians from other countries. The 1951 San Francisco Treaty put an ultimate lid on this sick stew between one of History's most fascist regimes and the World's most cynical country.
Sixty years have passed and Japan is just realizing it may have to postpone its claim for a permanent seat at the UN council. Ten years from now, all witnesses and survivors to their atrocities will have vanished. Japan's radical old guard too, but they've made sure younger generations got overwhelmed by their forgetful propaganda and textbooks.
The US ? Don't worry about them : they know propaganda by heart. Hell : it didn't take them sixty years to have most people believe they defeated the Nazis singlehandedly (if it weren't for another master in propaganda - Vladimir Putin - who would remember the lighter side of Uncle Joe ?). And if you ask US citizens about the use of WMDs or torture against civilians, they point the finger to some far away Evil.

White blogule to Park Chu-Young - take me to the ball, Park

As expected, Park Chu-Young and Park Ji-Sung led the Korean national soccer team to a qualification for the World Cup 2006. They even outscored another mediatic Park couple ; the former dictator Park Chung-Hee (strongly criticized in recently released books and movies) and his daughter Park Geun-Hye (now the successful ruler of the Grand National Party).
I wish Korean politicians were shining as brilliantly as the country's soccer players. Roh Moo-Hyun seems a fairly smart guy but he's been wasting opportunities with the same dedication as Jacques Chirac (whatever happened to the momentum following last year's failed impeachment / coup ?). Lee Myung-Bak, Seoul's Mayor and a former presidential favorite, is drowning in corruption scandals around his much acclaimed Cheonggyecheon project. The rest of the league looks like pre-Koizumi Japan's snake nest : conservative SIG representatives with dark blue suits.
Park Chu-Young will be 20 for Germany 2006, Park Ji-Sung was 21 during Korea-Japan 2002.
Bring us fresh blood in politics and, in order to motivate new candidates, get rid of this one-term-limit. The times of dictatorship are over in Korea. Let the new wave rule !

Red blogule to Junichiro Koizumi - Wake up Japan !

Strange way of apologizing : just a few days after restoring a public holiday as Showa Day, a controversial homage to war-time emperor Hirohito and when asked by a parlementary committee IF he would get back to the Yasukuni shrine after all the turmoil it caused across Asia, Japan's Prime Minister answered he would decide on time WHEN his next visit is appropriate...
Strange how Showa sounds like Shoah... as if revisionist Japan wanted to destroy the memory of that tragedy too...
Strange how this man plays a dangerous game at the international level as well as at home : Japan Inc could get tired of his boldness (Sony and Co surely were instrumental in the said parlementary committee).
Once again : no way Japan should be allowed a permanent seat at the UN.

Red blogule to Japan - No UN Council seat for an Unrepentant Nation

Japan shouldn't be offered a UN Council seat before they fully apologize for their past and moreover for their unacceptable present continuously devoted to revisionism (Dokdo, Yasukuni Shrine, Comfort Women, history textbooks, even archaeological hoaxes...).
Germany showed the way and can be proud of it. This is worthy of a great nation and a great people, both responsible and respectable.
Japan is simply wrong : just like Bush, Junichiro Koizumi keeps sending the wrong messages at the wrong places and the wrong moments. In order to please hardliners and prevent them from losing face he doesn't realise he actually has his whole country lose face in front of History and the rest of the world. Humility is their only way out of utter humiliation, but this is too disturbing a concept for such a stubborn bunch of fanatics.
I fully support the opposition to a permanent seat for Japan at the UN Council : the world should seize this opportunity and demand a true act of contrition (without the religious flavor, of course), which would be a genuine act of grandeur. Stephane MOT