The thing to remember is this: the NEW RULING party is simply a set of factions that emerged from the OLD RULING party over 10 years ago. They ran as opposition on MORE FREE MARKETS, DEREGULATION, LIBERALIZATION and appeasement of big business interests that seek to co-habit with American big business interests and the US military. It's true that they said they were going to re-think the postal privatization (now that everyone realizes it's about the only thing in the country that appeasing American interests hasn't yet ruined), but it's also important to remember that, at the time the simpleton Koizumi of the old ruling party (LDP) was arguing for privatization and running on this issue, the DPJ was vaguely arguing the privatization didn't go far or deep enough.
One would expect the usual interests of the American national security state empire to argue that Japan started its reforms too late or did too little--except the collapse of the US bubbles leaves them so thoroughly repudiated by their own stupid free market rhetoric (which was more about making Japan pay for more of the US's military spending while securing insider deals and monopolized markets with US-Japan trade anyway). The LDP truly sucked, the DPJ promises to suck even harder. CJ _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis