Well today (or tonight) Japan has decided to shoot themselves in the foot by electing Yukio Hatoyama as the new Prime Minister. The news is impressive because it ousts the LDP (Liberal Democratic Party) after over 60 years in power. The DJP (the democratic party of Japan) has won with a land-slide victory, ushering a rather uneasy change and shift in political power.

I don't think foreigners need worry though, if anything the new party is going to bend over backwards to make sure Japan gets ruined by foreign influence in Japan, especially from China and Korea.

The BBC however decided to report the party as 'young' and 'vibrant'. A significant change in power, even going as far to compare it to New Labour's election in 1997 and Obama in the US.

I almost choked....

What? Am I reading and understanding this the same way? 'Young' - Hatoyama is in his 60's. 'Vibrant' - Hatoyama is the stiffest most wooden person in the world. A plank has more charisma than he does. So maybe they are 'fresh'. Fresh? Hatoyama's grandfather was a prime minister in the 1950's and he comes from the same political back-scratching background as the staid and corrupt politicians from the dying oligrachy he claims he wants to oust. He studied at the most prestigious university in Japan and holds a PhD from Stanford. Yes, a real socialist, a man of the people.

Hatoyama represents a real worry for Japan, because he is an alternative purely because he is an alternative and nothing more. Embittered and battled current PM, Taro Aso probably offers no answers to Hatoyama's questions but does it not discount the fact that Hatoyama doesn't really know what the correct questions are in the first place. Only late into the election process did the DJP ramp up their own manifesto than simply billing themselves as 'seiken koudai' (a change in government.)

I think Hatoyama's policies are brilliantly shown here (albeit in a LDP advert) where Hatoyama is serving patrons in a ramen restaurant. If you don't know the context, ramen is a highly popular noodle dish that contains many different types of things with many local variants. Japanese people are very proud of their local ramen and what goes into their ramen.

Woman: Excuse me.
Hatoyama: Ah welcome. Its been a long-time. You know, I'm not just some mouth-piece, I'm working on some policies.
Woman: Well, can you please show me them?
Hatoyama: This restaurant's specialty! Which is my manifesto!　It is the one thing that will win me the election. *shows her a giant ramen dish*
First customer: Ah, there's not enough oil in this! (a reference to his attitude to potential dwindling fuel imports from the Middle-east)
Hatoyama: Don't worry, I'll add some oil.
Second customer: Err, excuse me. Should you being use that much oil?
Hatoyama: Ah okay. I'll stop adding oil.
Third customer: This is has no local flavour to it? (reference to the decentralisation of the government in rural areas.)
Hatoyama: Ah here you go, look. *adds various vegetables*
Fourth customer: There is no taste to this don't ya think?
Hatoyama: Ah, here you go look. *adds salt and soy-sauce*
Fifth customer: Please make this easier even for a child to understand.
Hatoyama: Well then.... I'll just sprinkle 26,000 yen's worth of furikake onto this. (furikake is a type of dried seaweed that you sprinkle as condiment. 26,000 refers to the potential tax increases as result of increasing child benefit costs)
Woman: Wait a minute. Isn't that a completely different dish from the beginning?
Hatoyama: No, no. This is the thing I showed you at the beginning.
Woman: Really?

Slogan: Just opposing the opposition, makes nobody happy.

Policies that do not sway. The LDP.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8088381.stm

Just recently, the BNP (The British National Party - in case you didn't understand) have just won two seats in the European Parliamentary elections. As you can image, the reaction from the socialist, anti-fascist hub of students I reside my life around have taken this news as a swift smack in the face for democracy. How have we arrived at such at a place, were around 600,000 of my fellow British nationals would vote in such a party? Have I, just like the rest of the political parties in this country, really badly misjudged the electorate and their incandescence towards the European Union?

The reason people have voted for the BNP is down to the fact that all the main political parties in this country are becoming far more isolated from the roots of its own people and completely nescient to the concerns of its society. The BNP, despite the faults of it being a proto-fascist party, does have genuine concerns for the British Isles, albeit fairly squinted down the barrels of a loaded shotgun towards some Somalian asylum seeker.

History has shown that when you a country is on a brink of economic and social meltdown - it will resort to voting in powers that go against the structural norm - especially when the norm is doing bugger or has done bugger all for the country. People crave change and will often rear the seedy underbelly of racism, fascism, nationalism or even anti-Semitism once mass discontent has riled people into action.

Amid the growing concerns of political party scandals and whether or not we are paying £30,000 for some Labour MP to keep a houseboat and where some MP's have decided to label us mere jealous plebs staring up at the ivory towers in Whitehall, the smell of the air is certain. It is a putrid, acrid smell of discontent. This has been stench that has wafted its way across Britain for the past 40 years since Britain joined the European Union (or then EEC 'European Economic Community' as it was called.)

Supposedly Britain was archaic, out of touch with a Europe that had recovered from the disaster of the second world war and was leading the new charge forward in a world dominated by the interests of the much larger conglomerates of the Soviet Union and the US. The French president De Gaulle, in many previous years had rejected the UK for admission due to a lack of serious political intent. And if he were alive today, he may just as well be repeating those words both to the UK and many of its Western and Northern European neighbours. For want of some better words, the European Union and its schematics will and shall always remain, in the minds of many in this country - a political plan draw up to protect Continental European interests (especially of those between Germany and France.)

It seemed almost ironic in many ways that 1973 saw the inclusion of both the UK, Ireland and the Kingdom of Denmark. In the post Oil-Shock years, Denmark opted out of the single-currency (although it will be introduced from 2011), the UK actively maintained their own opt-out cause (relying on the strength of the pound sterling) whilst most recently, the Irish people rejected the Lisbon treaty in 2008.

Going by the European parliamentary election results, it is the European sceptics, hardliners and right-wingers that have dominated the vote. UKIP (The UK Independence Party) managed to acquire 16.5% of the vote.

Should the Tories attempt to shed off the whole nice persona of 'Just call me Dave' Cameron and go with a much more tougher line on the policies of the EU and more importantly of UK domestic policies - they would marginally clean up in both the European and the general UK elections next May. We will have to wait until next year to finally see the Labour party and its dwindling and fractured factions finally split up and see what will almost certainly be a Conservative victory in the next general election. Even though, I'm a more of a Libertarian with mild socialist leanings, I would rather support a Conservative party than one which would want to see my friends repatriated out of the UK on the basis of their skin colour.


So ultimately, where does the BNP come into this? As a party that espouses a 'Britain First policy' they tap into the hugely demoralised and disenfranchised British public who are sick of inane mandates from Brussels and impositions of items that cannot be accepted into public.

However, more worryingly, is that if indeed people voted because of the above reasons, it seems that a vote for the BNP is just as easier as a vote for UKIP (who are more anti-EU and less 'look at all these foreigners' fascist) The BNP votes are perhaps more underlying of a genuine race problem in this country, which bubbles under the surface and often boils over the Daily Mail cauldron into a frothy mixture of rage and violence. The UK, for all its angles of multi-cultralism, suits many well who live outside the UK or within the hubs of ethnic mixing in London for example. But for all its idealism, the system is flawed once you venture out into the heartlands of the United Kingdom. The British people (or a proportion of them) do not believe that miscegenation from Europe and abroad is a good thing - and the blame rests squarely with the powerbrokers in Brussels and London who are allowing such people as Eastern European migrants into the country. Britain is an island. An island that was the conqueror of others rather than the subservients to others.

I am not too surprised in an age of political apathy and one of painfully acute racial problems (especially in areas that are not used to mass-immigration - the North as a prime example) has decided to turn to the BNP.

As I'm told by my friends about the horrors of fascism and the visceral machinations of evil that the BNP is, I wonder if indeed the British people themselves are infinitely more a machine of evil themselves than any political party could ever hope to be...

It was supposed to be a pleasant New Year’s Eve. It was supposed to be fun. It was supposed to be a time when we all forget the hardships of the past year, sweep them under the rug and obliterate the memory of them through copious amounts of alcohol.

I can’t remember what I was doing when the chord struck midnight to signal in the New Year, but I remember with a vivid illusion the time, the place, the exact moment when I heard the news that Israel had began bombing Gaza. It was 10pm, it was the kitchen, it was making a sandwich, it was digital radio. Not again. Just not again.

Yes. It seems as if this time of the year has come around and reminded us of the painfully poignancy of our fragile situation as human beings. The intense emotion I felt made me feel uncontrollable, practically unmovable from my hatred. I couldn’t sleep… just thinking… ruminating… concerned… truly worried about the amount of Anti-Israel ‘protests’ and ‘campaigns’ that will face me once I venture back to university next week. It was a great shame that the copious amounts of alcohol couldn’t consume from this inevitable fear.

I’ve never once understood people’s reactions and hostile emotions when it comes to the Palestine-Israeli conflict – especially over a conflict such as this, one that seems the most logical yet is fostering such illogical public hate and anger towards the Israeli government. There seems to be a lighting quick reaction that seems to presuppose Israel’s wrongdoings and supports Palestine unequivocally - regardless of the forces that surround it.

People have seemingly caught onto the conflict, without ever realising what started it, who is behind it and the necessary lead-up to the event which has helped shape the public consciousness. Israel have immediately assumed the bad-guy role in the film, purely because they are misunderstood or portrayed in such a shallow light of hate because we don’t know enough about them. This dark, brooding mysticism of hatred is partially because we never hear of Israeli actions in any positive light and partially because we are bombarded with the positive image of the lesser downtrodden man overcoming adversity. Its hard to construct a plausible Hollywood film, when the perceived bad guys are perceived to be good. I don’t blame them to be fair. Israel hasn’t always done the right thing, yet in the past decade or so, they have taken progressive steps to formulate a peace process – which have only be undermined by the extremist groups they must seemingly negotiate peace with.

Israel’s reaction once you strip away the flesh underneath the media masquerade is perfectly rational. Its citizens face fear in the form of rocket attacks from militants and Israel has the right to protect its citizens. It was the same right the British government exercised in Northern Ireland to protect its people and the same basic right should be provided to all Israelis. No-one should live in constant fear.

In the 21st century, Israel always strike me as clean, crisp and controlled. Okay, if get rid of that fancy desk and office building and remove the rational females like Livni from the situation, you’d still get the heavy handed approach of any mad-capped Middle-Eastern state waging war. But, Israel generally seems to care for its people. One life lost is one life too much seems to be the rallying call. And if you study the rhetoric of Israel over the past decade or so, it has seemingly always been this throughout the peace negotiations. Israeli would rather sacrifice its principles and politics than that of its people. Politics change – but you should always represent the people of your nation.

The elected government of Hamas on the other hand, are more than happy to sacrifice their own people, before, during and after death in a bid to propagandise its bloody conflict. You don’t defend your people by blindingly leading them into a conflict that is unwinnable on all fronts. You may win the Hollywood love story – but from all avenues of conflict – it’s a nil gain for Palestine. I don’t buy the argument of a disproportionate response, when you are waging war between matchstick men and fighter jets. Causalities such as those are not shocking, they should be expected. Israel cannot start engaging in actions that will kill one Palestinian terrorist when one Israeli citizen is killed. Warfare doesn’t work in such measures and never has done. Its certainly not a book that has been written, read and understood by such groups as Hamas anyway.

But I can understand the reason why people derive such hatred for the state of Israel. As with everything, it is a microcosm of society. It is the richer, bigger state supposedly bullying the little one into submission through persecution and occupation. However, like all societies there are harsh lessons to be learnt. You don’t bully your bigger larger more powerful brother into response and expect the outcome to be a bunch of slaps and hot air. Occupation or no occupation.

So as the people mount upon Israel, perhaps one should ask, what you would do when faced with such a crisis? You withdraw from Gaza, see the people elect a terrorist group to represent the people there, and then see them fire rockets at your citizens as a political parlay. In fact, if you get happen to see any of these celebrity campaigners on the streets of London or even Sheffield – ask them sternly in their two-car, large house and swimming pool in the country houses what they would do under this situation? Then ask them to live a day in Sderot or Ashkelon under the daily fear of some terrorist militant deciding to fire a rocket at you.

We should not rally behind Palestinians in the Gaza Strip under these conditions. They are the masters of their downfall unless they are willing to oust Hamas and take a more sensible stance for peace. I would love nothing more for the Israelis and Palestinians to find peace. But at present, when groups like Hamas are in the political fold, then there can be no time for peace.

Israel has proved its restraint both politically and militarily on many occasions. Perhaps the international community and the band of self-appointed overlords (that would be Galloway and Livingstone apparently) should show as much restraint towards the Israelis, as the Israelis themselves did in the lead-up to this conflict.

We should of course be against the loss of life. Perhaps that’s what people are against…But now If you’ll excuse me I’ll be finishing my sandwich now, downing the last of this New Year’s Eve booze and be off to the first train to London in the morning to throw shoes at the Ugandan embassy.

Laters.