Thursday, September 28, 2006
On the ascension of Abe as PM, bad for peace, bad for women, just plain bad
With an ultra conservative cabinet, newly annoited Prime Minister Abe, who talks as if he would like nothing better than to go to war with North Korea, is poised to:
(1) continue neoliberal policies that have widened the gap between rich and not-so-rich
(2) promote ultra-nationalism even in the face of a court ruling protecting the rights of teachers not to be have a flag and anthem shoved down their throats
(3) promote the traditional IE system that relegates women to second-class status. His minister of Gender Equality actually is opposed to it-kind of like putting a KKK member in charge of affirmative action and his education advisor is cut of the same thread: “Eriko Yamatani [was appointed to] to the post of education advisor. A 56-year-old former reporter for the Sankei Shimbun, a right-wing daily, Ms. Yamatani has been a vocal critic of sexual education and teaching of “excessive” gender equality in schools. The incoming state minister in charge of gender equality, Sanae Takaichi, was another social conservative who opposed allowing women to legally keep their maiden name after marriage.” (NY TIMES, Sept 26)
(4) get rid of war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution, an act which, while ostensibly promoted as an act of regaining the sovereignty that supposedly was denied it by the U.S. after World War II, actually follows a script imposed by the U.S. and which seeks to maintain US imperial aims, a strategy in which Japan and the LDP in particular have played a supporting role.(Note the link to the left: Japan as a base for defense of the US Homeland)
Article Nine, America’s Gift To Japan
by David Rothauser
In 1946 The United States Government decided that Japan needed a peace
constitution. One was written. It included Article Nine which stated that Japan
should never make war again....
ALSO:
David’s web site (view film segments, contribute, synopsis)
Posted by paularenson