Deja vu for Japan. Starting in 1947, the US occupation forces in Japan, allied with conservative business groups, powerful US companies and suddenly rehabilitated Japanese war criminals, turned its immense power on the Japanese trade union movement and its communist leadership. First a general strike scheduled for Sept. 1 1947 was banned on MacArthur's orders. In the coming years, strong unions were busted in the railroads, Nissan, the steel industry and coal mines; then, with the Korean War 'boom,' those industries took off and didn't come down until the 1990s. In 1948 a Detroit banker named Joseph Dodge was brought in to force an austerity budget on Japan that sharply reduced state spending and was almost a carbon copy of what the IMF would later do in Asia, South America and Africa. The CIA poured millions of dollars to create and sustain the LDP, which remains the most slavishly pro-American ruling party in the world. I'd say Japan already had its US-sponsored counter-revo! ! lution.
TShorrock