Monday, December 17, 2012

Radioactive Japan chooses the path of ultranationalism and warmongering

Shinzo Abe will be PM again
General elections in ailing radioactive Japan were marred by extremely high abstention (almost 50% of the people abstained, underlining popular distrust on the system). However actual voters were massively supportive of the ultra-conservative Liberal-Democratic Party (the traditional seat of power in Japan) and the neo-fascist Japan Restoration Party. 

Both are determined to reform the Japanese constitution so they can have a regular military force and wage war outside their borders, something that was banned by the constitution imposed after WWII. Other right wing parties have also grown in representation.

Both Japan and South Korea have been raising the level of tensions in the last years in the region by provoking North Korea and China respectively. Recently private agents of ultra-nationalist ideology used the disputed islands of Diaoyu (Senkaku for the Japanese), near Taiwan, to create an international incident with China that would fuel the nationalist and militarist feelings in a Japan terribly frustrated by decades of economic stagnation and now also by the catastrophic impact of the Fukushima nuclear disaster (not well understood probably by citizens who remain largely brainwashed by the media but demoralizing in any case). 

Curiously the parties which have opposed the nuclear industry all this time, the Communist and Social-Democratic parties, have lost positions, even if just mildly. A new allegedly anti-nuclear party (Tomorrow Party) totally failed to capitalize the discontent as their campaign was horrible and not at all at the height of their responsibility. In prospective they can be seen as an attempt to divert votes from the Left, which is the only force consistently anti-nuclear in Japan but never too influential. 

The winner-takes-all system, by which most seats are allocated by district,  does not allow for the smaller parties to have any chance (a typical case of rigged "democracy") but then they also failed in the less important proportional election. 

In brief, we should expect a warmongering Japan which will make all in their hand to raise tensions and trigger wars in East Asia in a desperate attempt to hide the huge problems it has: ailing elderly population, a failed economy and half the country worryingly polluted by nuclear radiation. 

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