Tag: Empire of Japan

  • Japan’s Remilitarization is a Danger to the World

    Japanese PM Sanae Takaichi stunned the world when she declared publicly in the Japanese legislature, that a Taiwan contingency could constitute a “survival threatening situation” that would allow Japanese military intervention in “collective defense”. Words matter. Especially when they are words with legal force, uttered in an official capacity. These words are legal terms of art […]

  • If You Were a Korean Patriot

    Given the massive changes in geopolitics brought about by the isolationist and bizarre behavior of the Trump administration, activists and scholars have a major role to play in drawing attention to the dangers and possibilities for peace of this embryonic new world order. It is very unfortunate then, that one of the most crucial components […]

  • Might May Rule the Moment, but Right Prevails Forever

    Might May Rule the Moment, but Right Prevails Forever

    Zainul Abedin (Bangladesh), Untitled, 1944. On 28 November 1924, Sun Yat-sen delivered a speech in Kobe, Japan titled China and Japan: Natural Friends, Unnatural Enemies. Here, he outlined his progressive vision for Pan-Asianism – a world where the ‘rule of right’ would triumph over the ‘rule of might’, where the multitudes of oppressed peoples in […]

  • Undeniable Proof: How 1945 Taiwan Surrender Ceremony Smashes “Independence” Myths

    This year marks the 80th anniversary of victory in the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and #WWII. Eighty years ago, Japan’s surrender ceremony took place in Taipei. Behind it, a few telling details completely shatter the narrative of “historical nihilism”… all pointing to one undeniable fact: #Taiwan has always been part of […]

  • Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

    What follows is a revised and updated version of an essay from my 2020 book, Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies.   “The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid ‘dens of crime’ that Dickens loved to paint…But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and […]

  • Ending Yoon Suk Yeol’s Legacy of Betrayal and Dismantlement of Korea’s Sovereignty

    For more than 44 hours Koreans have braved freezing snowstorms to demand the arrest of the elusive Yoon Seok Yoel, who has barricaded himself inside his official residence in defiance of constitutional and legal authority.  Yoon, extolled by Washington as a “champion of democracy,” has vanished from public view behind hastily erected barricades manned by […]

  • Visions of an Asian NATO

    Japan’s new prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, is stirring the pot – notably on regional security matters.  He has proposed something that has done more than raise a few eyebrows in the foreign and defence ministries of several countries.  An Asian version of NATO, he has suggested, was an idea worth considering, notably given China’s ambitions […]

  • Another War Diary Entry

    Another War Diary Entry

    Critical cultural historical perspective is not easy to obtain. Yet its importance as an orientation is immeasurable. One episode in the past American century of war is still virtually unknown and/ or misrepresented, the longest single armed conflict in the history of the North American republic—its campaign against Korea. In terms of active hostilities conducted by […]

  • Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World

    Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World

    Iri and Toshi Maruki, XV Nagasaki, 1982, from The Hiroshima Panels. For Prabir, who is now out of jail. On the evening of 14 May, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken climbed onstage at Barman Dictat in Kyiv, Ukraine, to pick up an electric guitar and join the Ukrainian punk band 19.99. Ukrainians, he said, are […]

  • Guilt by Decryption

    At regular intervals the high representatives of the Allied Powers (West) congregate to commemorate the “kick-off” that led we are told to victory in Europe ending part of the hostilities in the Second World War. They meet on the often-cold beaches of Normandy, the western coastal region of France from which William the Conqueror led […]

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