Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Assassin for Kikawada? Is Ozawa Crazy? But Will the DPJ Miss a Golden Opportunity?

As a long-time observer of the US political scene, where no opportunity to slam the enemy is missed by highly paid professionals of political warfare, I cannot but see a golden opportunity for the DPJ to cash in on this report about Ozawa plotting to send assassins for two Diet members in his Iwate fiefdom who failed to obey his orders to leave the DPJ with him.

It seems that Ozawa himself has lost track of where his one-time disciple is coming from, so it’s no shame if you happen to know little about Mr. Kikawada. This obscure backbencher’s initial fifteen minutes of national [fame] came at unfathomable personal cost. Mr. Kikawada became the political face of the 3.11 tragedy when he lost [his wife, oldest son and parents as well as one of his political assistants] to the tsunami. (And you thought the Fukushima victims had it bad.) He has subsequently used it to champion the cause of the tsunami victims in the political sphere. He reluctantly left a subcabinet post at the nexus of the reconstruction efforts at Ozawa’s bidding only after pleading, successfully, to Ozawa to come back to Iwate for the first time in over a year to address Kikawada’s constituency. In case you are not overly familiar with the Japanese political scene, Ozawa’s ex-wife sent out a scathing letter to key Ozawa supporters that he had cowered indoors with fear after the Fukushima disaster and that it had been his fear of radiation exposure had kept him away from his Iwate home for so long.

Now imagine what Karl Rove or David Axelrod could do with this kind of situation. Of course it [could] have been a red herring; the Japanese media, as is often their wont, reading something sinister into a seemingly innocuous statement. But it doesn’t matter. It’s in the Yomiuri, so it must be true, right? Ozawa could deny it, but the damage will have been done. Oh, well, guess what the odds are against the DPJ just sitting on its hands and do[ing] nothing?

3 comments:

Mark said...

Hmmm...interesting. But here's something that's more interesting.

http://cablegatesearch.net/cable.php?id=06SHANGHAI7129

Did you know that Huang Ju refused to receive medical treatment from Beijing doctors because he thought Hu Jintao would tell those doctors to kill him? So Huang Ju had his doctors flown in from Shanghai. Eventually, he left Beijing and went to Shanghai because he was so fearful of Hu Jintao. He died anyways.

Mark said...

Oh, another interesting thing in that cable is that Hu Jintao prosecuted Chen Liangyu for corruption because Chen opposed Hu Jintao's policies.

What that cable doesn't say is that Chen Liangyu opposed Hu Jintao's policies to slow down the Chinese economy (particularly in Shanghai).

And indeed, after Chen was prosecuted, fixed investment, imports, and bank lending immediately fell in Shanghai. So it looks like whoever was left after Hu Jintao smashed Chen Liangyu got the message and decided to weaken the Shanghai economy. But why would Hu Jintao want to slow the Shanghai economy? Could it be that Hu Jintao is a stooge of the West? I ask you, Jun Okumura, because I know you're such an expert on these things and I know you're so responsive to my inquiries.

Mark said...

BREAKING!!! MY GOVERNMENT JUST TOLD ME A REALLY, REALLY BIG SECRET!!!

For a long time I wondered why the Chinese leadership decided to
embark on the Cultural Revolution. The Cultural Revolution seemed to me to be such a crazy act of madness. Today, I was told that Mao Zedong decided to embark on the Cultural Revolution for the following reason. He realized that the West made China communist and Japan capitalist to split the two countries. In addition, the West
made China communist so that the West had an excuse to isolate China. Mao Zedong realized that Japan had the correct system. To unite China and Japan, to allow China to interact with the West, Mao Zedong knew that China was the one that had to change. China needed to drop communism. So he embarked on this crazy thing called Cultural Revolution which showed everyone that China had the wrong system. Mao Zedong was in fact threatening to change China into a capitalist system by doing his job so badly that the people would decide that China must become capitalist. In fact, this
is why Nixon decided to go to China. Because he wanted Mao Zedong to end the Cultural Revolution. Nixon wanted China to remain communist so he could continue to isolate the country to a certain extent. Obviously, less than before.

This is why the subject is so taboo in China. The Cultural Revolution is an admission that China has the wrong system of government. But if the current generation of Chinese leaders say why Mao started the Cultural Revolution, this would bring about significant change in China. The current generation of leaders might not be needed. The legitimacy of the princelings, the descendants of the original Communists, would be called into question.

Postscript:

Why has no one by now learned by now that there is no defense for the Blithely Idiot?

Oh, and one more thing...

BEHOLD THE INCONCEIVABLE INCOMPREHENSIBLE SO-CALLED RETURN TO ASIA WHICH IS 100% BASED ON HANDLING SENSITIVE ISSUES PROPERLY!!!