By Maidhc Ó Cathail. Published in Kansai Time Out, June 2009.
In Client State: Japan in the American Embrace, Gavan McCormack demonstrates how Japan’s apparent nationalist turn owes much to the need to conceal the country’s increasing subordination to American imperial designs. However, a closer examination of the driving forces behind the US Empire in the 21st century suggests that both countries may be serving a quite different agenda.
By Maidhc Ó Cathail. Published in Kansai Time Out, May 2009.
Sending the Maritime Self-Defense Force destroyers Sazanami and Samidare 12,000 kilometres from Japanese shores to combat piracy off the coast of Somalia clearly marks a further dimunition of Japan’s postwar pacifism. While it has been suggested that China’s decision to send some of its fleet to the region was the catalyst for Tokyo to join the international naval operation, the predominant motive is more likely to have been Japan’s eagerness to flex its substantial but as yet unused military muscle on the world stage.
By Maidhc Ó Cathail. Published in Kansai Time Out, April 2009.
A high-ranking U.S. Air Force officer and his Turkish wife, alleged to be part of an international weapons smuggling ring by an FBI whistleblower, moved to Yokota Air Force Base in Japan in 2006. According to former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, Lieutenant Colonel (then Major) Douglas Dickerson and her fellow translator Melek Can Dickerson tried to recruit her to this network in late 2001. If Edmonds is to be believed – and there seems little reason to doubt her credibility – the implications could be very serious for Japan.
By Maidhc Ó Cathail. Published in Kansai Time Out, March 2009.
As last year drew to a close, while Kansai dwellers were indulging in the typical debauchery of the seasonal bonenkai (forget the year gathering), the people of Gaza had little cause for celebration and even more reason to forget 2008.
