VS coup in Nicaragua mislukt, een feit dat niet wordt gemeld door de reguliere media

Charles Redvers, de schrijver van het hieronder opgenomen artikel dat eerder op Creative Commons werd geplaatst, stelt in zijn schrijven dat de 'opstand' in Nicaragua die moest leiden tot een coup tegen de socialistische regering Ortega, als een soufflé is ingezakt. De bevolking staat, zoals bij de laatste verkiezingen, voor het grootste deel achter Ortega.

Redvers stelt dat de oppositie, die zich eerder meermaals liet fêteren in de VS, met claims kwam, die het volk aan het twijfelen brachten, daar deze claims eenvoudigweg te fantastisch waren en men er simpel doorheen kon prikken vanwege de eigen ervaringen met de Ortega regering......

Zo klopt er van het genoemde aantal doden geen bal en wat geen westerse regulier medium vertelde: een groot aantal van de doden waren aanhangers van Ortega en politiepersoneel, waar de laatsten soms op vreselijke manieren werden vermoord......

Over de berichtgeving in de reguliere westerse media gesproken, deze was voor het overgrote deel ronduit vals te noemen, waar de meeste 'journalisten/correspondenten' niet eens vanuit Nicaragua berichtten/berichten....... Zoals de zwaar gekleurde berichtgeving van Koopman op Radio1, die je het best kan zien als grootlobbyist voor VS ingrijpen.....* Nog steeds berichten dit soort correspondenten en journalisten over Nicaragua als dat het land in één grote chaos is gedompeld, terwijl het gewone dagelijkse leven al lang is teruggekeerd in Nicaragua....... Ook wordt Nicaragua afgeschilderd als een land waar de misdaad welig tiert, terwijl het land tot april dit jaar het op één na veiligste land van Zuid-Amerika was.....

Al een aantal jaren is de VS bezig de sociale golf in te dammen die Latijns Amerika overspoelde met mensen als Chavez van Venezuela en Lula da Silva in Brazilie. Het geijkte recept: eerst een niet welgevallige regering onder druk zetten en als dat niet lukt een economische oorlog tegen het land ontketenen, waar de VS haar macht zo misbruikt dat zelfs bedrijven uit Europa geen handel meer durven te drijven met nu bedrijven in Nicaragua, maar zoals eerder al gebeurde in Venezuela (waar de VS voorlopig ook geen poot aan de grond krijgt, al is de NAVO nu in buurland Columbia en reken maar dat men broedt op een plan om de regering Maduro omver te werpen........)

Vandaar ook alle leugens die de wereld in worden geholpen door de CIA, NSA, Pentagon, politici en uiteraard de reguliere (massa-) media over de situtatie in landen als Venezuela, Nicaragua en Bolivia (met de socialistische president Evo Morales).

Niets nieuws, daar de VS een geschiedenis heeft met het omverwerpen van regimes in Latijns Amerika, waar geen middelen worden geschuwd en een mensenleven niet veel meer waard is dan dat van een malaria mug........ Of anders gezegd: de VS baadt in het bloed van mensen uit Latijns Amerika......

Opvallend ook: over een grote pro-Ortega demonstratie in Nicaragua, waar men vervolging eiste voor moorden begaan door 'de oppositie', werd niet eens bericht in de reguliere westerse media, nee de leugens worden keer op keer herhaald.... 

Lees het volgende artikel van Redvers met veel verwijzingen, waarin hij een aantal leugens feilloos doorprikt, voorts stelt Redvers dat Nicaragua het wel moeilijk heeft en wellicht te maken zal krijgen met sancties van de VS, echter deze sancties zijn al lang een feit, ook al werd dit (nog) niet officieel uitgesproken door de VS, zo worden winkelketens met een VS achtergrond al niet meer bevoorraad, zoals de VS dit o.a. eerder deed met dit soort ketens in Venezuela:

Nicaragua’s Failed Coup: What You’re Not Being Told

N

August 13, 2018 at 8:22 am

Written by Open Democracy

While the international pressure continues, by mid-July it became clear that, for the time being at least, the opposition in Nicaragua no longer has sufficient local support to achieve its goal.

(OD Op-ed) — For three months Daniel Ortega and his government in Nicaragua were under intense pressure to resign – from protesters and opposition groups, from local media and from right-wing politicians in the US. But by mid-July it became clear that, despite persistent images of near-collapse painted by the international press, the country appears to be returning to something close to normality. How did a protest that seemed so strong when it began, lose momentum so quickly?

Daniel Ortega has been in power since 2007, in the last election won 72% of the vote and until recently was running high in independent opinion polls. Despite this, a casual reader of the national and international media would get the impression that he’s deeply despised.

In Open Democracy, the international protest group SOS Nicaragua calls him a “tyrant hell-bent on the bloody repression of the nation.” His local detractors agree. For example, on July 10 Vilma Núñez, a longstanding opponent of Ortega’s who was originally his ally, told the BBC that he is rolling out an “extermination plan” for Nicaragua.

When rebels briefly held one of Nicaragua’s cities a few weeks ago, their leaders said they had ended “eleven years of repression”. SOS Nicaragua even claims that Ortega is a “more hated and more long-lived tyrant than Nicaragua’s former dictator” (Anastasio Somoza and his family, who ruled Nicaragua ruthlessly for more than 40 years).

A casual glance at social media will show that plenty of people share these views, and at the peak of the opposition’s popularity they clearly had considerable traction. But the opposition’s first mistake might have been its overblown rhetoric, as people began to question whether it squared with their own perceptions.

For example, until April this year, Nicaragua was the second safest country in Latin America despite also being one of the poorest. Its police were renowned for their community-based methods in which (unlike in the “northern triangle” countries of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala) killings by police officers were a rarity. Drugs-related crime was at a minimum and the violent gangs found in neighbouring countries didn’t exist.

Of course the police weren’t perfect, but people could safely report problems such as domestic violence without expecting a violent response from police themselves. Yet the same police are now labelled “assassins” by the opposition and blamed for the majority of the deaths since the protests started.

No one has questioned how a force with a record of limited violence was transformed overnight into ruthless murderers, supposedly capable of torture and even of killing children.

That there have been violent deaths in the past three months is not in doubt.

Bloomberg repeated the claim from local human rights groups that 448 had died by the end of July. However, a detailed analysis of those reported in the first two months of the crisis showed how the numbers were being manipulated. By then nearly 300 deaths had been recorded by the two main human rights organisations or by the Inter-American Human Rights Commission.

A claim made right from the beginning by the protesters was that they were either unarmed or at best had only homemade weapons to protect themselves. Again, the international media were convinced. But local people could see otherwise.

A case-by-case analysis showed that of those listed only about 120 were definitely attributable to the protests, with many unrelated to the events or having unclear causes, or involved bystanders or resulted from double-counting.  Of course, the exaggerated picture is still held in many people’s minds (only the other day someone told my wife that “hundreds of students have been killed”), but many others have gradually realised that no massacre has in fact occurred.

In an important respect the opposition succeeded. They created what The Guardian calls “a widespread and growing consensus within the international community that Nicaragua’s government is in fact largely responsible for the bloodshed.” While human rights NGOs repeat the message that the police and security forces (in Amnesty International’s words) “shoot to kill”, the people themselves mostly know otherwise. Whatever the provenance of the deaths in the April protests, recent victims have often been government supporters or the police themselves.

In an analytic interview, Nils McCune explained to journalist Max Blumenthal how the opposition violence grew and Sandinistas were persecuted. Examples include a little reported incident on July 12, in which opposition gunmen killed four police and a schoolteacher in the small town of Morrito, kidnapping nine others.

On July 15, protesters captured a policeman from Jinotepe while he was on his way home, tortured him and burnt his body. Of the deaths verified in the analysis above, about half are of government officials, police or Sandinista supporters. On August 4 there was a massive march in Managua of government supporters calling for justice for these deaths, which are little reported internationally.

A claim made right from the beginning by the protesters was that they were either unarmed or at best had only homemade weapons to protect themselves. Again, the international media were convinced. But local people could see otherwise. The dangerous homemade mortars were soon being supplemented by more serious weapons. In the places where the protesters rested control of the streets, AK47s and other arms were being carried openly.

This was not surprising, as what started as mainly a student protest quickly changed to one in which trouble-makers were recruited from outside. There were reports from various cities of youths being paid to man the barricades; in some cases, more serious criminals became involved.

One of the student leaders of the protest, Harley Morales, admitted on June 10 that they had lost touch with what was happening on the streets. It was increasingly clear to local people that the coup attempt was leading to danger and insecurity of a kind they hadn’t experienced for years.

An initially successful element of the opposition’s campaign was building road blocks (“tranques”) on city streets and on the country’s half-dozen main highways. At one point the country was effectively paralysed and the government was forced to demand the lifting of the tranques before it would continue with the “national dialogue” aimed at resolving the crisis (hosted by Catholic bishops and involving both opposition and government supporters).

If the opposition had been sensible, it would have taken the government at its word, lifted the blockades and insisted that the dialogue proceed at pace. But either it was hooked on the power that the blockades had given it, or it couldn’t control those who were manning them. As well as simply being intimidating for local people to cross and very disruptive for local businesses, by this stage the tranques were the main focus of violence.

They quickly turned from being an opposition asset to being the main reason why people wanted a quick return to “normality” (a plea frequently heard in the streets). In the space of only a week or two, the opposition lost perhaps the best chance it had to influence the outcome of the crisis. When police and paramilitaries finally moved in to clear the tranques, people were out celebrating in Leon, Carazo and Masaya.

Another area in which the opposition wasted its initial gains was in use of social media. The starting point for the crisis was a forest fire in one of the country’s remote reserves. The opposition accused the government of ignoring the fire and turning down offers of help to fight it. By the time these were shown to be false, attention had moved on to a much more inflammatory issue, reforms to the social security system.

The strength and pace of the protests were fuelled by a stream of real and fake news, principally via Facebook. Of course government supporters were doing the same, but the opposition proved far more effective.

Again, there were distorted messages both about the reforms themselves and the subsequent protests. In perhaps the first example of mass manipulation of social media in Nicaragua since smartphones became widely available a couple of years ago, the strength and pace of the protests were fuelled by a stream of real and fake news, principally via Facebook. Of course government supporters were doing the same, but the opposition proved far more effective.

Any death was of a protester. Scenes were staged of tearful students uttering their “last messages” while under fire or people “confessing” to doing the government’s dirty work. While manipulation by the government side was more obvious and less sophisticated, many people became sceptical about what they saw on their phones and began to place more trust in their own experiences.

As the opposition became more desperate, social media took a turn for the worse, with instructions to track down and kill government “toads” (“zapos”), leading to the victimising and even torturing of government workers and supporters.  The intolerance has spread to the US and Europe, with SOS Nicaragua members shouting down anyone speaking about Nicaragua who does not support their line (as happened in early August in San Francisco).

Yet another opposition tactic that misfired was in calling strikes. That these came about was due to big business, which for long was happy to live with the Ortega government but was called to action by the US ambassador in March, when she told them they needed to get involved in politics. From day one they supported the opposition, even at the cost of their own businesses.

But Nicaragua is unique in Latin America in having only modest reliance on big firms. Thanks both to the nature of its economy and support from the Ortega government, small businesses, artesan workshops, co-ops and small farmers have grown in number.

What’s known as the “popular economy” contributes 64% of national income, far higher than is the case with Nicaragua’s neighbours. As well as being strangled by the tranques, small businesses couldn’t cope with strikes. Some observed them (perhaps under threat) but many did not, and the opposition lost other potential allies.

The protest marches, tranques and strikes were all aimed at putting pressure on the government, with the (televised) national dialogue as the public platform. Here, the opposition not only missed its best chance to secure reforms but its attacks misfired in other ways. It had only one argument, repeatedly put forward, that the government was responsible for all the deaths that were happening and must resign forthwith.

In other words, it didn’t really want dialogue at all. A belligerence that found approval among its hard-core supporters was simply off-putting to the majority of people who desperately wanted a negotiated outcome that would end the violence. The national dialogue now receives little attention, in part because the government has regained control of the streets but also because it is obvious that the opposition were using it only to insult and criticise, with no real intention of engaging properly.

Furthermore, instead of the Catholic church staying to one side as mediators, their priests have again and again been found to support the protests, so their role as neutral actors in the dialogue is no longer credible, if it ever was.

By aligning itself with the right wing of the US Republican party through its well-publicised trips to Washington and Miami, and its acceptance of US government finance, the opposition points to a change of political direction for Nicaragua which would be anathema to most Sandinistas and even to many of its own supporters.

By having to speak publicly in the dialogue, the opposition has also exposed other weaknesses. While it is united in wanting Ortega to go, it is divided on tactics and even more fundamentally in its politics. Whatever one thinks of the Ortega government, it can be seen to have taken the country in a certain direction and to have accumulated many social achievements during its eleven years in power.

What would happen to these? Even on the issue that ostensibly began the protests, the national social security fund, the opposition offers no clear alternative. Worse, by aligning itself with the right wing of the US Republican party through its well-publicised trips to Washington and Miami, and its acceptance of US government finance (detailed by the Grayzone Project), the opposition points to a change of political direction for Nicaragua which would be anathema to most Sandinistas and even to many of its own supporters.

There is a paradox here, because a tactic which backfired in Nicaragua may yet serve the opposition’s cause internationally and damage both Nicaragua and the Ortega government in a different way. While for the Trump administration Nicaragua is hardly a priority, there is long-running resentment about the success of Sandinista governments within the US establishment, awoken by the recent protests.

The same establishment also sees an opportunity to attack an ally of Venezuela’s. It has been working hard in bodies like the Organisation of American States, aided by its new allies in the region, to restrict Nicaragua’s support to the small number of Latin American countries that refuse to play the US game. While the OAS/OEA can take few concrete steps itself, it is contributing to an image of Nicaragua among US lawmakers that may allow sanctions to be imposed that could be very damaging to its economy and hence to its people.

As a result of all the opposition’s mistakes, and of the government’s concerted action to regain control, Nicaragua’s real situation has shifted markedly in the few weeks since mid-July. But international commentators are failing to keep up. The New York Times, Huffington Post, Guardian and other media continue to talk about the tyranny, or the mounting political violence, or (in the case of Huffpost) even the rise of fascism in Nicaragua.

In Open Democracy, José Zepeda claims that “the majority of the Nicaraguan people have turned their backs on [Ortega]”.  In Canada, the Ottawa Citizen talked about Nicaragua imploding. But most of these correspondents are not in the country. In practice the violence has slowed almost to a halt, Nicaraguan cities are clear of barricades and normal life is being resumed. The prevailing feeling is one of relief, and better-informed commentators have begun to conclude that the attempted coup has failed.

Of course there are enormous challenges, and huge potential pitfalls for a government now having to repair the country’s infrastructure with reduced tax revenues, scarce international investment and near-zero tourism, as well as facing open hostility from its neighbours and possible economic sanctions by the United States. But in terms of the strength of its core support among Nicaraguan people, Daniel Ortega’s government may even be stronger now than it was before the crisis began.

By Charles Redvers / Creative Commons / Open Democracy / Report a typo

===================================
* Edwin Koopman die zich godbetert journalist en analist durft te noemen, werkt zowel voor Trouw, de VPRO en Clingendael (Clingendael is een lobbyorgaan voor de VS, de NAVO en het militair-industrieel complex)..... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! Nee, echt een 'geheel onafhankelijk journalist' die Koopman.....

Zie ook:
'VS vermoordde meer dan 20 miljoen mensen sinds het einde van WOII........'

'VS buitenlandbeleid sinds WOII: een lange lijst van staatsgrepen en oorlogen..........'

'List of wars involving the United States'


'CIA 70 jaar: 70 jaar moorden, martelen, coups plegen, nazi's beschermen, media manipulatie enz. enz.........'

Hashima en de Japanse ontkenning van wreedheden tijdens WOII

De schrijver van het hieronder opgenomen artikel, Andre Vltchek, heeft een reis gemaakt naar Japan om daar het eiland Hashima (ook bekend als Gunkanjima), in de buurt van Nagasaki te bezoeken.

Vltcheck wilde met eigen ogen het eiland zien waar Japan duizenden Koreaanse en Chinese gevangenen liet werken in de mijnen en op de scheepswerven waar oorlogsschepen werden gebouwd. Het meest gruwelijk was wel het lot van Chinese en Koreaanse vrouwen die daar als seksslaven te werk werden gesteld....... 

Vltcheck beschrijft hoe je je als bezoeker moet onderwerpen aan de strakke regie van de gidsen, die geen vragen wensen te beantwoorden die niet in het Japanse straatje passen, dus geen vragen over de werkslaven en de seksslaven. Van 1919 tot 1945 werd Korea bezet door Japanse troepen en in die tijd werden naar schatting 60.000 Koreanen gedeporteerd naar Japan om daar als slaven te worden ingezet (op plekken als Hashima)....... 

Het eiland heeft intussen de status van werelderfgoed gekregen (van de UNESCO), daarvoor heeft Japan beloofd aandacht te schenken aan de slavernij op Hashima en nog een paar van dergelijke industriële terreinen. Je raadt het al: van die aandacht is niets te merken en men wordt zelfs pissig als je ernaar durft te vragen.......

Japan herschrijft haar geschiedenis en voor WOII heeft men amper plek in de geschiedenisboeken, e.e.a. heeft alles te maken met het steeds sterker wordend nationalisme, dat zoals je weet vaak de voorloper is van fascisme en vooral gepaard gaat met een fascistische zienswijze op de geschiedenis........

Men zegt vaak dat we kunnen leren van de geschiedenis, echter dat geldt duidelijk niet voor zaken als fascisme, of de vele uitwassen van het kapitalisme waar zovelen, het dodelijke slachtoffer van werden......... (het cliché: 'van hard werken is nog nooit iemand doodgegaan', is een smerige leugen, vooral gebezigd door welgestelden en neoliberale politici, zoals die van de VVD, CDA, D66 en de zogenaamde christelijke partijen CU en SGP, zelfs politici van de PvdA hebben deze leugen in het verleden gebezigd........ Al duizenden jaren hebben mensen zich daadwerkelijk doodgewerkt, 'niets nieuws onder de zon.....')

Hashima – Brutal History and the Most Haunted Island on Earth

By Andre Vltchek

August 08, 2018 "Information Clearing House" - Do you want to see perhaps the spookiest island on earth – Hashima (also known as Gunkanjima – the Battleship Island) – which is located just 30 minutes by speedboat from the historic Japanese port city of Nagasaki? Now you can. Just book online, pay the equivalent of 40 American dollars, and then hop on one of those shiny sleek vessels belonging to Gunkanjima Concierge or to some other company.

Do it, and you will see the island which looks like an abandoned monstrous wreck; like a sunken and haunted ship.

You will sail around it. You will even be able to disembark and walk a few hundred meters on a fenced path. Guides/minders will let you take a few snapshots.

But that is all. No stepping left or right off the path. No going ahead of the group. No lagging behind. And please, no ‘provocative’ questions!

The guides are well trained to ‘entertain you’, to tell you just how ‘haunted’ the island is and how ‘vibrant’ it used to be in the past.

Sugary smiles never leave their faces.

But were you to defy their written and unwritten rules, they’d immediately jump and appear next to you. They would even loudly scold you. Suddenly they’d become very rude.

What are they afraid of? What are they hiding? What really took place on this island?

The true horrors of the past will never be conveyed to you. It is all about WWII, and Japan is still in denial.

A Japanese tour guide (designated for the Japanese-speaking visitors) as well as a carefully prepared electronic recording for the English speakers, will recount countless details about the island’s geography and uncontroversial chapters of history, but close to nothing about the terror of the slave labor into which the Korean and Chinese people were forced into, during World War II.

*

On 6 July 2015, The Guardian reported:

“Unesco has decided to grant world heritage status to more than 20 old industrial sites in Japan after officials from the country agreed to acknowledge that some of them used Korean forced labourers before and during the second world war.

The 23 Meiji period (1868-1912) sites include coalmines and shipyards that Japan says contributed to its transformation from feudalism into a successful modern economy.

South Korea, however, had opposed the application for world heritage status unless clear reference was made to the use of an estimated 60,000 labourers forced to work at seven of the sites, including the island coalmine Gunkanjima, during Japan’s 1910-1945 colonial rule over the Korean peninsula.”

Opposition was also expressed by China (PRC).

The issue of forced labor and Tokyo’s stubborn rejection to acknowledge it, delayed the inscription of the sites by UNESCO. However, in 2015, Japan yielded, and its delegation to UNESCO declared:

“Japan is prepared to take measures that allow an understanding that there were a large number of Koreans and others who were brought against their will and forced to work under harsh conditions in the 1940s at some of the sites”.

The sites, including the notorious Hashima/Gunkanjima, eventually gained world heritage status. In exchange, both South Korea and China expected Japan to highlight the suffering of their people during the occupation and WWII. The sites where forced laborers used to be held, were supposed to carry clearly marked and detailed explanations. But as in so many other cases related to its dark history, Japan did close to nothing to keep its side of the bargain. With the world heritage status, it got what it wanted, but gave almost nothing in return.

*

In May, I spent three days in Nagasaki, visiting my friend, a leading left-wing Australian historian, Geoffrey Gunn.

For many years, I have been coming to this city, searching for answers to a myriad of questions related to Japan’s and Asia’s complex past.

The past of Nagasaki has it all: great old Japanese culture, Christians and their prosecution, the Dutch traders and their settlement, a vibrant Chinese minority. Nagasaki was always one of the most ‘open’ cities in Japan, by choice or by force. But also, this is where the military ships were built, where many slave laborers were brought to from the occupied territories, and this is also where the second A-bomb was exploded by the US at the end of WWII.

Seen from the roof of the imposing Nagasaki Prefectural Art Museum, the bay of the city is still dotted with WWII ‘relics’. Near the water, there is a huge crane, another fragment of an industrial UNESCO world heritage site. The crane belongs to the Mitsubishi shipyards, which have been, for long decades, producing and repairing Japan’s military vessels.

“Officially, Japan does not have a military,” I said, sarcastically. “But look, it is in possession of these huge battleships, docked at the other side of the bay.”

“You are lucky. They just arrived here,” said Geoff. “These docks played an extremely important role in the past. Gunkanjima mines also belonged to Mitsubishi. They were excavating coal there, and then building some of the largest battleships here, in Nagasaki.”

For the rest of the evening we discussed the bizarre refusal of the Japanese governments and public to acknowledge the past. Even now, more than 70 years after the end of the war, these issues are taboo: the genocide committed against the Chinese people, and the terrible crimes against the Koreans.

Often, when the past is mentioned, the famously polite Japanese people suddenly become defensive, even aggressive.

*

In 2015, Japan began literally blackmailing UNESCO, temporarily withdrawing its payment dues, after the United Nations Education, Science and Culture Agency listed the 1937 Nanjing Massacre documents in its “Memory of the World” program. The funds were eventually released, but the message was sent, clearly and patently.

This stubborn refusal to deal with the horrors of the past is bringing Japan closer and closer to the deadly embrace of the West, particularly the United States, and further and further away from potentially friendly relations with the rest of north Asia, particularly China.

After WWII, the so-called Tokyo Trial supervised by the US (also known as The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE)) was clearly designed to punish just a few individuals, while preserving the Japanese industrial, business and political system in its original form, so it could serve the interests of the West. After the trial, Japan was allowed to rebuild and to join the West in its aggressive policy towards the Asia Pacific. It played a significant role in the brutal Korean War, during which the West massacred millions of Korean citizens.

“Modern Japan has no foreign policy,” I was once told by the Irish academic and political analyst David McNeal, who is based in Tokyo. “It is strictly following the US dictate. The same goes for the media coverage of the international events.”

David has no illusions about the Japanese take on its history:

“They are rewriting text books; they skip through WWII, dedicating to it only eight pages… Nationalism is rising… There is so much self-censorship in Japanese media, now. And the government is issuing ‘guidelines’, the so-called ‘Orange Book’, for instance: how to treat anything that is ‘contagious’… or anything related to history. There are instructions to writers and translators. For instance: ‘never use words like Nanking Massacre, except when you quote foreign experts’. Or ‘Yasukuni Shrine – never use word “controversial” in connection to it.’ We cannot write about ‘sexual slaves’ from WWII.”

The more ignorant about its past Japan gets, the more it seems to strongly dislike its former victims – China and Korea. According to a Pew Research Center poll (2017), 83% of the Japanese people have an unfavorable view of China. Korea does not fare much better. Both countries (PRC and ROK) are now clearly leaving Japan behind, when it comes to the economy and in the case of South Korea, the standard of living. The reaction of Tokyo: moving closer and closer towards the West, while adopting an increasingly aggressive policy towards two communist nations: China and North Korea.

*

But back to the Battleship Island… You pay, and you get onboard. Right from the beginning, even before the vessel departs from Nagasaki, you get bombarded by outrageous propaganda: about that “samurai spirit” of Japan and the entire Nagasaki area.

There is continuous control, right from the start. You get up from your seat, and immediately someone approaches you: Where are you going? Do you want to change seat? No, you cannot sit here…” Guides (or call them minders) sound extremely rude: their English is primitive, while their obsession with all sorts of rules and regulations is fundamentalist.

An old dude who is here clearly in order to play the role of the main propagandist, is continuously clarifying things into the microphone. His voice is amplified, and his performance soon turns into an annoying and uninterrupted flow of verbal diarrhea. There is no space for reflection – no time to feel and to pause or let alone to ask some serious questions.

Whenever he stops, some cheaply-made video begins playing on the screen. Then advertisements of Kirin Beer are beamed.

The yacht is sailing towards the place that held thousands of people as slave laborers, where many died, where women were turned into sexual slaves. But the circus goes on. No reflection and no repentance.

On the island, I refuse to follow the group. I lag behind, trying to avoid loud noise and the herd of people. Of course, I soon get confronted by two “guides”, trying to push me back towards the flock.

I ignore them, keep filming.

They become aggressive. One shouts: “This is Japan. Follow our rules!”

I keep filming.

I did not come here to be loved. The reason for my journey was simple: to determine whether the Japanese government sticks to the deal it made with UNESCO, Korea and China – whether it marks and commemorates the sites where forced laborers were pushed into an inhuman existence and work, and where some of them, died.

I found nothing of that kind: no information, no commemoration!

Back in Nagasaki, I asked for brochures explaining the past. There were no such brochures. The organizers of the island visits had no idea what I was asking about.

Later, the next day, professor Gunn took me to a small private museum managed by local Koreans, commemorating the terror which Japan committed against the Korean and Chinese people.

At least this is where the truth about ‘the most haunted island’ on Earth can be found. If one could find that tiny museum…

Gunkanjima – a ghost island which resembles, at least from a distance, a mighty destroyer; an island dotted with tall buildings now lacking windows and doors. An island where thousands of miners used to go down into deep shafts, some voluntarily, some by force. An island – Gunkanjima – where many people used to live, and many died. A place so mysterious and so unique, beautiful in its own way, but also both symbolic and horrifying.

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Three of his latest books are Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism, a revolutionary novel “Aurora” and a bestselling work of political non-fiction: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire”. View his other books here. Watch Rwanda Gambit, his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and DRCongo and his film/dialogue with Noam Chomsky “On Western Terrorism”. Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website and his Twitter.

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Zie ook:
'In de VS berichtte men in 1945, dat Hiroshima 'a military base' was.......'

'Hiroshima, één van de grootste oorlogsmisdaden ooit, 71 jaar later redenen te over voor herdenking!'

'De werkelijke reden voor de VS atoomaanvallen op Hiroshima en Nagasaki.... Niet om de oorlog met Japan ten einde te brengen.......'

'Hiroshima en Nagasaki, aanvallen zijn niet te verdedigen enorme oorlogsmisdaden >> The Indefensible Hiroshima Revisionism That Haunts America To This Day'

'Atoomaanvallen op Hiroshima en Nagasaki, één van de grootste oorlogsmisdaden uit de menselijke geschiedenis'

'Overlevenden atoomaanval op Hiroshima vragen om een verbod op kernwapens' (2018)

en zie voor verdere VS-terreur na WOII:
'VS vermoordde meer dan 20 miljoen mensen sinds het einde van WOII........'

'VS buitenlandbeleid sinds WOII: een lange lijst van staatsgrepen en oorlogen..........'

'List of wars involving the United States'

PS: Als je het artikel van Vltcheck leest, zou je kunnen denken dat de tweede atoombom die de VS afwierp op Nagasaki ook Hashima trof, echter dat is niet waar, wel werd Nagasaki afgeschilderd als doel met grote militaire aanwezigheid en militaire bedrijvigheid...... Al had de VS met een atoomaanval op Hashima de duizenden werkslaven daar getroffen. De VS gebruikte de leugen over 'het militaire karakter van Nagasaki' om de atoomaanval op die stad 'te verantwoorden..........' (en ja ook de VS overheid is expert in geschiedvervalsing......) Wel werden veel dwangarbeiders in de stad Nagasaki zelf getroffen door de tweede atoombom die de VS op Japan afwierp (in feite was de aanval op burgerdoel Nagasaki, zoals die op Hiroshima, ook een test zodat men de gevolgen van zo'n laffe schoftenaanval nog beter kon bestuderen....)......