WHAT OBAMA WON'T TALK ABOUT IN JAPAN

   Our beloved leader, Barack Obama is on his way to visit the Japanese Empire amidst a series of humiliations for both governments. Obama hasn't bowed to Imperial demands (yet) and apologized for President Truman's decision to win WW2.

   But both leaders are having problems in the region.

   Obama is reeling from a string of recent military humiliations at Chinese hands. Three times in the last month, American naval and air forces have been chased away from Chinese territory, and this morning a US reconnaissance plane nearly collided with an airliner off the coast of Korea. Iraqi forces, now augmented with Chinese military advisors are clearing their country of Jihadist forces while the Pentagon can't even get permission to do photo-ops in Iraq anymore.

   Akihito and his camarilla aren't faring much better. Their censorship of the Japanese press has been internationally exposed, as well as their cover-ups of the damage caused by the Fukishima nuclear disaster. And their hopes of building a united coalition against China were thwarted when Thailand agreed to sign a mutual defense pact with China.

     As if these things weren't bad enough, yet another crisis broke out in Okinawa. Okinawa is a country jointly occupied by Imperial Japan and the United States; the former ruling its civil government and the latter maintaining a large military base there. Last weekend, a US defense contractor was arrested for the rape and murder of a 20 year-old Okinawan girl---stories which are not uncommon there---leading for further calls for the US to leave the island and for Okinawan independence.

       Protestors swarmed around the US base last weekend and the Pentagon commander there, one Lawrence Nicholson, laconically offered his heartfelt prayers and condolences to the outraged Okinawan populace.

      When one considers that America's frontline brave men and women in uniform break out in tears in front of the Iranian Coast Guard, or that US Army officers like Major Nidal Hasan go berserk and shoot up military bases, it is not difficult to imagine what sorts of dregs get stationed in a backwater base like Okinawa.

       A similar incident occurred just two months earlier when a US sailor was arrested for the rape of a Japanese girl in a Naha hotel. The most infamous incident occurred in 1995, when some of the few, the proud, the Marines gang-raped a 12 year-old.

      Since 1972, when joint US-Japanese occupation of Okinawa was ratified, there have been 26 murders, 129 rapes, 394 burglaries, and 25 arsons linked to American military personnel, according to Okinawan authorities.

      Catherine Fisher, an Australian journalist who was raped by an American defense contractor in 2002, was among the protestors.

       "They need to stop trying to cover up these cases." Fisher said "And each time it happens, the US military and the Japanese government say, 'we will make sure this never happens again'. But it just keeps happening."

       Okinawans have also been protesting a proposal to move the US base to an ecologically sensitive part of the island and to force Okinawans to pay for the project. With nearly 90% of Okinawans against the base relocation plan, the governor was forced to order its temporary suspension.

        With the Empire suppressing Japanese media and its deep financial connections within the American press, very little news is forthcoming from this troubled island. Yet there is a growing independence movement among the Okinawan people, though split by different political aims. Yet it is to be hoped that Okinawans can find the unity to throw off the Western yoke and forge their own way in freedom.

                                        
                                         US and Japanese Officials React to Okinawan Protests