Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Nov 22 2006 content
JAPANESE LANGUAGE SECTION
http://tokyoprogressive.org/november2006.html#j
フィリピンは日本の有害ごみ溜め？
日本は、自国内の廃棄物をリサイクルすることができない貧しい近隣国の中に有毒で危険な廃棄物を捨てるための場所を見つけました。日本の医療機関で働く看護士や介護士と引き換えに、フィリピンの7、100もの美しい島は、日本の海洋投入処分海域になるように受け入れられました。
― 被害者とメディアについて、河野義行さんに聞く―
私は以前から松本サリン事件の捜査と報道に興味を持ち、個人的にこの事件の報道について調べていました。そして、今回河野義行さん（同事件被害者、前長野県公安委員）が２００６年７月５日、同志社大学今出川校地で学際科目、「マスメディアの現場」（科目責任者・渡辺武達教授）でゲスト講義に来られるということを浅野教授から聞き、翌日の７月６日午後６時から７時まで、河野さんと直接お話をする機会をいただきました (ASANO Ken’ichi)
and more
http://tokyoprogressive.org/november2006.html#j
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JAPAN AND ASIA IN ENGLISH
http://tokyoprogressive.org/november2006.html#je
Japanese Toxic Waste to be Dumped in the Philippines
JAPAN just found a site to dump Toxic and Hazardous wastes in a poor neighbouring country who cannot recycle its own domestic waste. In exchange for Nurses and Caregivers to work in Japanese Health Services, the Philippines 7, 100 beautiful islands accepted to be the dumping site for Japan.
NATIONALIST EDUCATION AND |GOVERNMENT CONTROLLED JAPANESE MEDIA
Article 1
Government confirms it planted pre-scripted questions at town meeting on education
Article 2
Shii demands thorough discussion on 3 issues before voting on education bill
Article 3
Opposition parties agree to jointly block government bill to revise education law
Government orders to NHK of what to air in violation of freedom of press
Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Suga Yoshihide on November 10 ordered NHK to air programs on North Korea’s abductions of Japanese nationals on Radio Japan, NHK’s international shortwave radio service.
http://tokyoprogressive.org/november2006.html#je
The Okinawan Election and Resistance to Japan’s Military First Politics
The National Politics of Yasukuni Shrine
Takahashi Tetsuya’s “The National Politics of the Yasukuni Shrine,” is among the most important statements to emerge from the debate over Yasukuni Shrine, historical memory and war nationalism.
North Korea’s Nuclear Test—Bush’s Godchild?
Politicians have hastened to express moral outrage even if, and perhaps especially if, they come from countries which have many nuclear weapons and have conducted tests. Journalists have been having a field day, many delighting in the opportunity to write lurid stories unencumbered by the need to check facts and qualify opinions. Under the circumstances, it is more necessary than ever before to keep a clear head and try to disentangle fact from fantasy, to unearth what has been going on, and what is likely to happen.
http://tokyoprogressive.org/november2006.html#je
ADDED 24 OCTOBER
Reporter Eric Johnston on McGowan victorious appeal
On Oct. 18th, the Steve McGowan case ended with a partial victory, when the Osaka High Court awarded him 350,000 yen. McGowan had sued Takashi Narita, the owner of an eyeglass store in Daito, Osaka Pref. for racial discrimination after Narita barred him from entering his store and told McGowan he didn’t like black people. (debito.org)
http://tokyoprogressive.org/november2006.html#je
ENVIRONMENT-JAPAN: Readying for Life Without Bluefin Tuna Dishes
[A]landmark agreement, based on evidence that Japan had caught 1,800 tons of southern bluefin tuna more than permitted, was reached during the Oct. 10-13 meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna in Miayazaki, southern Japan. (interpress)
http://tokyoprogressive.org/november2006.html#je
“We Don’t Negotiate with Evil” :How the US Declared War on North Korea
As Bush entered office, physicist Gordon Prather writes, “according to the IAEA, there were no nuclear programs peaceful or otherwise underway in Iraq or North Korea.” But in 2002 the U.S. administration claimed that Pyongyang “had violated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty by obtaining unbeknownst to the IAEA prototypes of high-speed gas centrifuges from Pakistan and that by 2001, DPRK engineers were producing unbeknownst to the IAEA enriched uranium in significant quantities.” As in the case of Iraq, U.S. officials claimed to have “intelligence” at variance with U.N. inspectors’ reports.
http://tokyoprogressive.org/november2006.html#je
Economic Reforms Breeds Young Underclass
According to experts, this growing young underclass is the product of new economic reforms in Japan, launched five years ago, to reduce the national budget deficit, by cutting down on public spending and the squeezing of costs on personnel by private companies. (interpress)
Women In Action: Cultures and Diversity
Women In Action covers a broad range of issues affecting women globally, but focusing on the particular needs and concerns of women in the Global South, and forwarding a progressive perspective tempered by the experiences of the thirld world women’s movements. Some of the topics included here are:
Strengthening Counterculture, Group Rights vs. Individual Rights? Navigating the Tension in Western Liberal States, Putting You in Your Place: Culture and the Filipino Lesbian, Turbulent Times for Multicultural Societies: Gap between Cultures in The Netherlands Widens Drastically, Boys Don’t Learn!!! Also see this issue: Queering: Social Movements and Queer Theories, which includes a review of the book Queer Japan. (isiswomen)
http://tokyoprogressive.org/november2006.html#je
Japan Aids Prevention Awareness Network Newsletter
Information for teachers, students, everyone. Where to go to get tested. Japanese link such as the CAMPUS AIDS INTERFACE
HIV感染者・AIDS患者に対する偏見・差別の払拭を、感染者・患者と共に考え、社会的啓発活動を"楽しみながら"行う大学生/OB・OGを中心とした団体です。なお、政治団体・宗教団体との関わり合いは一切ありません。 (Louise Haynes)
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OTHER NEWS
http://tokyoprogressive.org/november2006.html#w
ADDED 17 NOVEMBER
War Crimes Suit Prepared against Rumsfeld (Democracy Now)
Watch 128k stream Watch 256k stream Read Transcript
http://tokyoprogressive.org/november2006.html#w
Donald Rumsfeld: The War Crimes Case
JURIST Contributing Editor Marjorie Cohn of Thomas Jefferson School of Law, president of the National Lawyers Guild, says that although Donald Rumsfeld is resigning as US Secretary of Defense, steps should be and will be taken to hold him accountable for breaches of international law and even war crimes sanctioned in Iraq and Guantanamo during his tenure. Read more…
http://tokyoprogressive.org/november2006.html#w
North Dakota Braves and the Atomic Bomb: Priest and Two Veterans in WMD Protest Sentenced for Prayer for Peace (Updated)
On August 6, 1945 the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Three days later, it dropped another atomic bomb on Nagasaki. These nuclear weapons killed over 200,000 people, almost all civilians, and injured many more.
http://tokyoprogressive.org/november2006.html#w
On Tuesday morning, June 20, 2006, a Roman Catholic priest and two veterans were arrested at a nuclear missile silo in North Dakota. Fr. Carl Kabat, 72, Greg Boertje-Obed, 51, and Michael Walli, 57, sit in jail in North Dakota awaiting a federal criminal trial because of weapons of mass destruction and because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
http://tokyoprogressive.org/november2006.html#w
Let’s now charge the accomplices (John Pilger)
Why isn’t George Bush Snr being charged.....Why isn’t Douglas Hurd being charged...Why isn’t Donald Rumsfeld being charged...Why isn’t Madeleine Albright being charged...Above all, why aren’t Blair and Bush Jnr being charged with “the paramount war crime”, to quote the judges at Nuremberg and, recently, the chief American prosecutor - that is, unprovoked aggression against a defenceless country? Read more…
http://tokyoprogressive.org/november2006.html#w
The Terrorists Who Aren’t in the News
Anti-abortion fanatics spread fear by bombings, murders and assaults, but the media take little notice. Read more…
http://tokyoprogressive.org/november2006.html#w
Rhoderick Gates page
1. Gaping Flaws of the Intellectual Community
2. The Tide Has Turned
3. Dissent, Destruction and Consequences: Anti-Imperialism Without Prisoners
http://tokyoprogressive.org/november2006.html#w
IN ADDITION:
All the usual sections: Links, Creative and Education, Video, Audio…
http://www.tokyoprogressive.org/
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All opinons are those of the original authors
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Wednesday, October 11, 2006
OtherOct2006
Giving Terrorism a Reason to Exist
The war in Iraq: creating terrorism
More Dissention in the Ranks
U.S. soldier refuses to fight
The Vocabulary of Fascism
“Over time it’s going to be important for nations to know they will be held accountable for inactivity. You’re either with us or against us in the fight against terror.”
– George W. Bush, 2001
“My party comrades, today the swastika forces the world to take a position for or against us. The world must decide, it has no choice. There can be no compromise.”
– Dr. Robert Ley, Nazi Reich Organization Leader, 1939
The War, Palestine and Clean Energy
Going beyond Disease to Address Disability
Nike to the Rescue? Africa needs better jobs, not sweatshops
Japanese2006Oct
安倍訪中と北朝鮮の核実験 (２００６年１０月１７日 田中 宇)
Japanese-Eng2006Oct
Still Taboo After All These Years: Japan’s new imperial heir and the media
William Pfaff: When will the 5 Original Nuclear Powers Get RId of THEIR Nuclear Weapons?
Japan Focus Nuclear Weapons section
U.S. Neo-Conservatives Call For Japanese Nukes, Regime Change in North Korea
The North Korean Problem, Japan and the U.S.: the Politics of Hypocrisy
Making Sense of the Korean Crisis (reprinted from 2004)
Targeting North Korea (repinted from 2004)
People’s News From Asia: Interlocals.net
Reactions to the North Korean test from around Asia
The Boom Heard Around the World
[F]our other countries officially--Britain, France, India and Pakistan--officially joined the nuclear club, with another, being Israel, unofficially a member. There was no alarm registered in Washington at Britain’s application for membership and very little at France’s. India and Pakistan provoked a bit of a shock, but nothing truly substantial changed in their relationship with the US. The outcry from other nations not considered friends of Washington was less positive. At the same time, they couldn’t help but notice that a nuclear enemy of Washington was much less likely to be attacked than a non-nuclear one.....
In fact, it was the failure of Washington to follow through on its end of the deal brokered by Clinton’s administration--a deal that would have provided northern Korea with light-water reactors capable of making energy but not weapons--that some say led to the impasse between the two capitals. However, it should be noted that Pyongyang had frozen the reactor where yesterday’s test fuel came from after 1994 under the terms agreed to by Washington and Pyongyang. Indeed, it was only after George Bush included Pyongyang in his so-called axis of evil that the reactor was started up again and the process that led to the nuclear test restarted.
Bush and North Korea
The crisis with North Korea was entirely avoidable for anyone with even minimal diplomatic skills and an elementary understanding of human psychology. Instead, the Bush troupe persisted for 6 years with the same inflexible policy nudging Kim ever-closer to producing his first nuclear weapon.Now, half the population of the United States is in the gun-sights of a madcap tyrant whose basic grasp of reality has always been seriously in doubt.
Welcome to the Nuclear Club
For the next four weeks, the Bush administration will do its best to exploit the North Korean nuclear test to stave off a loss of the Republican majority in Congress. We should not allow those efforts to obscure how Bush’s reckless record has heightened the nuclear dangers for everyone.
North Korea: Tomorrow May Never Come
North Korean Nuke Tests Say World Must Return to Peace Agenda
Here is another listing (partially the same) that contains more references to North Korea and Japan
Here is a listing that focues on Hiroshima, partially the same
Here is a listening that focues on Japan, North, South Korea and the U.S.
Abe’s “normal” Japan: a vision with a legacy
Abe supporter of right-wing textbook by “Tsukurukai”
Rising tide of conservatism threatens reproductive health and gender equality
Minoru Morita: Abe promises more of Koizumi’s Bush-style extremist politics
Abe and Ishihara promote censorship, anti-woman bias and repression
You can see LDP’s anti-women policy on “gender equality here
Monday, October 02, 2006
special article-pepsi and coke in india
Posison in your Coke and Pepsi? The news from India was shocking, until the media started reporting verbatim from press releases direct from these two big multinational corporations, which effectively limited the coverage to the “fact” that they contained “acceptable” amounts of dangerous chemicals. In addition, there is the question of misappropriation of drinking water, the percentage of water polluted in the process of creating the beverage, and als the question of ingredients that have become suspect worldwide as the world races heaqdlong into an obesity epidemic.
Read the press releases of the cola companies
Read a pro-cola news report from Fox, stressing that the ban was initiated in a “communist” state. This is the usual type of reporting from Fox: if it is about free enterprise and making the world safe for American corporations, Fox is behind it.
ARTICLES FROM THE CRITICS
CORP WATCH (using cached version due to web trouble)
Article by well known scientist, Vandana Shiva: Coke Pepsi and the Politics of Food Safety
special article-pepsi and coke in india
Posison in your Coke and Pepsi? The news from India was shocking, until the media started reporting verbatim from press releases direct from these two big multinational corporations, which effectively limited the coverage to the “fact” that they contained “acceptable” amounts of dangerous chemicals. In addition, there is the question of misappropriation of drinking water, the percentage of water polluted in the process of creating the beverage, and als the question of ingredients that have become suspect worldwide as the world races heaqdlong into an obesity epidemic.
Read the press releases of the cola companies
Read a pro-cola news report from Fox, stressing that the ban was initiated in a “communist” state. This is the usual type of reporting from Fox: if it is about free enterprise and making the world safe for American corporations, Fox is behind it.
ARTICLES FROM THE CRITICS
CORP WATCH (using cached version due to web trouble)
Monday, September 25, 2006
Japanese-Engish25-9-06
NHK裁判高裁審理第13回口頭弁論">NHK裁判高裁審理第13回口頭弁論
詳しく：
VAWW-NETジャパン政治家によるNHK番組介入問題について
U.S. Resorting to ‘Collective Punishment’
Israel’s Use of American Cluster Bombs
瓦礫の中を歩いて: イスラエルはアメリカ合衆国製クラスター爆弾を使った
世界で一番“大人気ない”政治家はあなただ
Others: 書評の紹介と浅野から近況報告...
【郷土の帰還兵たちが劣化ウラン被曝を以て政府を訴えた】Dean Meminger,NY1 News(2006/9/7)
Local War Vets Take Fight Against Government Over DU Exposure To Court:
【アフガニスタン：「俺は、君のために死にに行く」側のメディアより】
Kyoto Event: How To Save Refugees!/『難民を助ける仕事(後半）』京都イベント
アジアの人々のニュース：『インタローカルズ』ピックアップ（９月
JapanEng25-09-06
The Struggle for the Japanese Soul: Komori Yoshihisa, Sankei Shimbun, and the JIIA controversy
Forced to ‘Choose’ its Own Subjugation: Okinawa’s Place in U.S. Global Military Realignment
Foreign Policy as a ‘Fight’: Abe and the future of East Asian relations
The Epistemology of Torture: 24 and Japanese Proletarian Literature
World9-25-06
Thai Coup: Old Elites Against New
George Bush is the Devil? Chavez is only saying what much of the world has been saying all along:
Friday, August 04, 2006
TokyoProgressive August 2006
JAPAN AND ASIA
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Immunity of Non-Combatants and Myth of Good Intentions: 61 Years After Hiroshima/Nagasaki
...Truman initially “attempted to minimize the impression that civilians had been attacked with the atomic bomb.” His first press release had identified Hiroshima as “an important Japanese military base,” ignoring that the bomb had targeted the city’s civilian center in order to maximize civilian casualties....Most recently, the U.S. and Israel have taken the World War II pattern of city and infrastructure bombing and applied it to Lebanon. On July 12, 2006, Israel launched an air and limited ground attack on the sovereign state of Lebanon, using as a pretext the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers by Shiite Hizbollah fighters in south Lebanon. The Israeli plan, cleared months in advance with the Bush administration, was to destroy Lebanon’s communications system, roads, bridges, oil depots, factories, buildings and homes, and kill large numbers of Lebanese civilians--all in the mad hope of turning the Christian and Sunni populations against Hizbollah.
Read more:
Herbert Bix: Myth of Good Intentions
Iran, North Korea, Israel, Hiroshima: Media’s Love-Hate for Nuclear Weapons
...By all credible accounts, Tehran is at least several years—and probably more like a full decade—away from acquiring a nuclear bomb. But America’s top officials and leading pundits have been sounding urgent alarms. Judging from the frequent denunciations of some countries for alleged plans to build a nuclear arsenal, you might think that the U.S. media are down on nuclear weapons. Not so. Red-white-and-blue nuclear weaponry has been depicted by U.S. news media as a reassuring guarantor of national security—or at worst an unfortunate necessity—since the nuclear age went public 61 years ago with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima…
Read more:
Solomon:Nuclear Love-Hate
and:
Forced to ‘Choose’ its Own Subjugation: Okinawa’s Place in U.S. Global Military Realignment
http://japanfocus.org/products/details/2202
Japan’s Quake Standards Fall Victim to Greed
By Michael Zielenziger
http://www.jpri.org/members/zielenziger_LAT_0406.html
Rightist textbook adopted for use by public junior high school in Tokyo
http://www.japan-press.co.jp/2490/education.html
Edinburgh International Film Festival Returns Israeli Money in response to Boycott Plans
http://www.scottishpsc.org.uk/EIFF.html
【重大発表エジンバラ国際映画祭が、ボイコット計画に呼応してイスラエル出資金を返却】Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign
http://blog.livedoor.jp/awtbrigade/archives/50360926.html
【ギリシャがイスラエルの映画祭から撤収】The Daily Star, Lebanon(2006/8/2)
http://blog.livedoor.jp/awtbrigade/archives/50355819.html
WAR & PEACE. TERRORISM, AND THE POLICE STATE IN OUR MIDST
Terrorism. Lebanon. Israel and Palestine. Issues in the news, and yet how little of the information one gets from the news media is reliable. if there is one thing that is striking is that almost no-one in the mainstream media is connecting the rise of “terrrorist threats” with the ongoing policies of death and destruction of the Bush and Blair regime. Israel and the West are portrayed as innocent victims of a culture war. As was true after 9-11, we are still expected to believe that envy or resentment of our freedoms is what it is all about. That all 3 countries do retain the rhetoric of democracies and and an almost fanatical faith in their status as democracies, and since those who do not challenge the prevailing assumptions are rarely on the receiving end of repression, it is easy for the average television viewer to conclude, falsely, that democracy is under attack from cultures that do not share “our” democractic values.
TokyoProgressive does not pretend to know all there is to know about these issues, but in the interest of counterbalanacing the assumptions and biases of the mainstream media, which are clearly those of the elites, we present the following commentaries by Americans, Israelies, and British writers who do not buy into the prevailing assumptions. Inclusion here, as always, does not automatically mean we endorse evereything the individual writers say. Nor does it mean there may not be other voices worthy of being heard. Their inclusion here, IS intended, however, underscore how the mainstream media systematically denies its audience an opportunity to learn what is really happening or, at least, that there are views other than those the mainstream media and those in power would like you to know about.
Feel free to join the forum and post your comments as well.
Terrorism: The Real Threat We Face In Britain Is Blair
On 12 August, the Guardian published an editorial ("The challenge for us all"), which waffled about how “a significant number of young people have been alienated from the [Muslim] culture”, but spent not a word on how Blair’s Middle East disaster was the source of their alienation. A polite pretence is always preferred in describing British policy, elevating “misguided” and “inappropriate” and suppressing criminal behaviour.
Read more:
Pilger: Blair is Terrorist Threat
Also:
We should be sceptical about this alleged plot, and wary of politicians who seek to benefit
(Written by the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan)
Noam Chomsky on Media Treatment of Israeli attacks on Lebanon
The posture of outrage over the capture of Israeli soldiers is cynical fraud, facts underscored by the (null) reaction to the regular Israeli practice over many years of kidnapping Lebanese. It also follows at once that there is no moral legitimacy to either of the two major escalations against the populations of Gaza and Lebanon. And of course if we look at the ratio of killings, it’s overwhelmingly US-Israel, always....
Read more:
Chomsky: Attack on Lebanon
“Are Israel and Jews” Synonymous? and AIPAC Congratulates Self on Slaughter
Notice how few, even in the anti-war contingent had the courage to speak out...Some organizations are just shilling for the Israeli government -no matter what it does-out of both tribal loyalty and political fealty to neo-con/Likudnik politics, a perspective which enjoys unrivalled and disproportionate access to the media and its think-alike punditocracy. Some are just money generating mechanisms sending money to Israel, a developed county that gets $3 billion dollars annually in US aid intended for developing nations. The Federation which supports many social service just sent millions. One wonders how much of this will go to Israeli Arabs who have also had homes bombed?
Read more:
Schechter and Walsh: AIPAC
Uri Avnery: From Mania to Depression
At the head of the critics are marching--surprise, surprise--the media. The entire horde of interviewers and commentators, correspondents and presstitutes, who (with very few exceptions) enthused about the war, who deceived, misled, falsified, ignored, duped and lied for the fatherland, who stifled all criticism and branded as traitors all who opposed the war--they are now running ahead of the lynch mob. How predictable, how ugly. Suddenly they remember what we have been saying right from the beginning of the war.....The brain-washing by the military commentators and the ex-generals, who dominated the media at the time, has turned the foolish--I would almost say “criminal"--operation into a rousing victory parade. The decision of the political leadership to stop it is now being seen by many as an act of defeatist, spineless, corrupt and even treasonous politicians. And that is exactly the new slogan of the fascist Right that is now raising its ugly head.
Read more:
Avnery: Madness
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Tuesday, July 18, 2006
TOKYOPROGRESSIVE 7-17-06
WAR & PEACE AND THE POLICE STATE IN OUR MIDST
The War on Civil Liberties Continues
How to Spot a Terrorist: State and local law enforcement agencies have been eager to join in the terrorism investigation game with the availability of large amounts of federal money. Soon after 9/11, local officials in DeKalb County outside Atlanta, set up what they described as the nation’s first local department of Homeland Security. The county quickly obtained almost $12 million in federal grants to fight terrorism. A police intelligence unit was established......In one of the more bizarre episodes in a continuing saga of paranoia and silliness, the state of Texas issued a pamphlet alleged to help the public identify potential terrorists. Some characteristics people were advised to watch for were: the purchase of baby formula or beer, the wearing of Levi jeans, carrying identifying documents such as a driver’s license and traveling in the company of women and children. This quickly narrowed the range of terrorist suspects to about 80 percent of all men in the state.
Read more:
The War on Civil Liberties Continues
URGENT PETITION/これ以上の殺戮をどうかやめてください」署名サイト
イラクの状況を変えるためにー皆様へお願い: Please join the Iraq Hope Network in signing a petition calling for an immediate end to the suffering of people in Iraq that is resulting from the violent and illegal tactics presently being employed by the U.S. military. The petition will be delivered to President George W. Bush, with a copy to the U.S. Embassies in Tokyo and Baghdad.
Please read/sign!!!
You can find the petition here
署名サイト（日本語解説）
Top Lies About Iraq from the Bush Administration
(1) Iraq was a “grave and gathering threat”
(2) Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction” programs after the early 1990sv
(3) Iraq had “ties to Al Qaeda” and 9/11
(4) Our invasion of Iraq was to support “Security Council resolutions”
(5) Our invasion of Iraq was to “promote democracy”
(6) It is better to “fight them there” than on our streets
(7) If the lies were true, then we would have been justified in invading Iraq
Read more:
Top Lies About Iraq from the Bush Administration
PALESTINE/ISRAEL
Legitimizing Palestinian Bantustans
How much money are we forced to pay to support the Occupation? When will people realize that Palestinians are not facing a humanitarian crisis, but a political attack on their lives? How can we continue to shun our responsibilities to uphold Palestinian rights and international law?
...The Occupation might want to “converge” or to “disengage,” but it is doing so in pursuance of racist and colonial interests to ensure all that remains for Palestinians are enclaves without sovereignty. “Disengagement” from Gaza resulted in social and economic suffocation, continuous shelling and killings of “liberated” people within their prison walls. It shows that redeployment of settlers cannot be equated with liberation and justice.
Read more:
Legitimizing Palestinian Bantustans
More on Palestine Israel
As Brian Dominick,editor of THE NEW STANDARD, notes: “The quality of journalism on this story has declined rapidly, as the initial acknowledgement of asymmetry and the preponderance (near exclusivity) of civilian suffering in Lebanon has given way to the need for apparent “balance” (parity). The latest ridiculousness is dutiful identification of who supplies Hezbollah’s missiles without ever noting who supplies Israel’s missiles. I can’t really recommend any of the links I’m finding (except IPS) at this point; if you see good coverage (not commentary), please bring it to my attention. “ Meanwhile, here are a few stories:
Israel Violates Law on U.S. Weapons in Mideast
And commentaries/analyses:
Omiting Palestinian deaths
On June 28, CBS Evening News anchor Bob Schieffer turned to CBS reporter Bob Simon for analysis of the current Israel-Palestine crisis. What Simon offered, however, was a familiar scenario that puts the blame squarely on the Palestinian side....From the start of the Intifada in September 2000 through March 17, 2002, the three major networks’ nightly news shows used some variation of the word “retaliation” ("retaliated," “will retaliate,” etc.) 150 times to describe attacks in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. About 79 percent of those references were to Israeli “retaliation” against Palestinians. Only 9 percent referred to Palestinian “retaliation” against Israelis.
Read more/take action:
CBS’s Mideast ‘Cycle of Violence’-Analysis omits Palestinian deaths
From FAIR (US)
Also:
In U.S. Media, Palestinians Attack, Israel Retaliates
MEDIA ALERT: BLAMING THE VICTIM IN GAZA
From MEDIA LENS (UK): “In the last six months, approximately 80 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza due to Israel artillery firing… There have been exactly eight Israelis killed in the last five years from the Kassam missiles. Again, we have a huge disproportion, a huge discrepancy.” (’AIPAC v. Norman Finkelstein: A Debate on Israel’s Assault on Gaza,’ June 29, 2006).....The extent of media bias is exemplified by the New York Times which reported July 3: “for all the pyrotechnics, the [Israeli] operation has been relatively restrained”. (Ian Fisher and Steven Erlanger, ‘Israel steps up Gaza raids in bid to free soldier,’ New York Times, July 3, 2006). This represents the view of Western journalists numbed to the suffering the West and its allies consistently heap on impoverished Third World people. To merely inflict intense suffering on hundreds of thousands of people, rather than to kill them, is “relatively restrained” for elite media executives...On the BBC’s July 3 Newsnight programme, anchor Jeremy Paxman reported breaking news that a Palestinian had been killed and two wounded in an Israeli airstrike in Northern Gaza. Paxman then went on to interview an Israeli government spokesman, Mark Regev. Regev said: “Our preference, our chosen policy preference, is that he [Shalit] is released and this can end peacefully.” Paxman said not a word in response about the death he had just reported, about the five other deaths, or about people dying because of the attack on the power station.
And:
The Real Aim
Uri Avnery: THE REAL aim is to change the regime in Lebanon and to install a puppet government. That was the aim of Ariel Sharon’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982. It failed. But Sharon and his pupils in the military and political leadership have never really given up on it. As in 1982, the present operation, too, was planned and is being carried out in full coordination with the US. As then, there is no doubt that it is coordinated with a part of the Lebanese elite. That’s the main thing. Everything else is noise and propaganda.
See also Uri Avnery: “Stop That Shit”
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1153268185
Israeli Left
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en
Avnery’s organization
http://www.alternativenews.org/
Joint Palestinian-Israeli organization
http://otherisrael.home.igc.org/contents.html
http://www.btselem.org/English/index.asp
http://www.oznik.com/
Israeli resistance organization
http://electronicintifada.net/new.shtml
US Jewish Left
http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/
Other
http://www.muscanet.com/~ampal/
American and Palestinian
http://www.jfjfp.org/
Jews for Justice (UK)
http://electronicintifada.net
“The Electronic Intifada (EI) publishes news, commentary, analysis, and reference materials about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict from a Palestinian perspective. EI is the leading Palestinian portal for information about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its depiction in the media.”
See also:
What are they fighting for?
Tanya Reinhart, The Electronic Intifada, 14 July 2006
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article4995.shtml
http://www.middleeast.org/mereport/index.cgi
Middle East Report
The American Left and the Middle East: The Case of the Nation Magazine, II.
Perhaps you have not heard the news because the western news has not been reporting it. Perhaps you have seen the pictures because the western news is not printing the pictures (the media has access to the pictures, but is choosing not to print them).... People have protested in Australia and in Germany. Protest in the United States, as well! Protest in solidarity with the Lebanese people—who are standing united in the face of this aggression. The division is from the politicians, but not from the people. Protest in solidarity with the Palestinian people—who have been standing strong for decades in the face of Israeli aggression. We Americans, you Americans, have a particular responsibility: these weapons that are being used to massacre and destroy are paid for by US taxpayer dollars, and supported by George Bush and an acquiscent Congress.
Also see
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=107&ItemID=10589
Fleeing Lebanese Speak of Indiscriminate Bombing
What Does Israel Want?
Alternative routes for the conflict are not even raised in Israel, not even by the Zionist left. No one mentions commonsensical ideas such as an exchange of prisoners or a commencement of a dialogue with the Hamas and other Palestinian groups at least over a long ceasefire to prepare the ground for more meaningful political negotiations in the future. This alternative way forward is already backed by all the Arab countries, but alas only by them. In Washington, Donald Ramsfeld may have lost some of his deputies in the Defense Department, but he is still the Secretary. For him, the total destruction of the Hamas and Hizballah – whatever the price and if it is without loss of American life – will ‘vindicate’ the raison d’être for the Third World Theory he propagated early on in 2001. The current crisis for him is a righteous battle against a small axis of evil – away from the quagmire of Iraq and a precursor for the so far unattained goals in the ‘war against terror’ – Syria and Iran. If indeed to a certain extent the Empire was serving the proxy in Iraq, the full fledged support President Bush gave to the recent Israeli aggression in Gaza and Lebanon, shows that may be pay off time has come: now the proxy should salvage the entangled Empire.
JAPAN AND ASIA
U.S. “Double-Dealing Diplomacy, North Korea and Japan/北朝鮮ミサイル危機と日本
Read more:
(1) ここです。
(2) この記事は「続・北朝鮮ミサイル危機で見えたもの」の続きです。
Japan at a constitutional and political crossroads
“Since its founding in 1955, Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has repeatedly called for revision of the constitution. Over the decades, attempts to carry out this policy faltered, primarily because the pacifist and democratic clauses of the constitution enjoyed broad support among the Japanese people. Unable to mobilize the two-thirds vote of both houses of the Diet required for revising the constitution, LDP efforts never went beyond the discussion stage..... In the late 1990s, the prospects for revision began to shift. The centrist Democratic Party of Japan, which is not averse to revision, replaced the strongly anti-revision Social Democratic Party as the main opposition party, while continuing tensions with North Korea began to erode public support for pacifism. Sensing that its moment had arrived, the LDP set up research commissions on the constitution in both houses of the Diet in January 2000 to begin the lengthy process of building a consensus in favor of revision.” A number of issues are tackled here in this roundtable discussion between John Junkerman, Gavan McCormack, and David McNeil. One can well ask, in light of what they write, whether the North Korean missiles aren’t being manipulated (by Japan) to revive militarism and (by the U.S.) to insure subserviance to the U.S. agenda of world domination. What will the possible revision of the peace constitution mean? Is the Emperor system being revived? Why does the media go out of its way NOT to cover the growing threat to Japanese democracy such as the increasingly repressive tactics of the Japanese police toward peace aqnd social activists.
Read more:
The Politics of Constitutional Revision
SINGAPORE: Crackdown Underway on Satirical Blogging
One could be fined for breaking the laws against chewing gum, fined against littering the streets, fined for not flushing the toilet and fined for indulging in unnatural sex. What next?
Read more:
Satirising government, a new offence?.
The United States and the Japanese Mengele: Payoffs and Amnesty for Unit 731 Scientists
Everyone has heard of Auschwitz, but what about Pingfan? This Japanese germ warfare headquarters and laboratory in Manchuria, northern China, did not hold as many victims, but atrocities committed there were physically worse than in the Nazi concentration camp, and lasted much longer.....
Dr. Ishii Shiro...was the chief of Japan’s well financed, scientifically coordinated and government approved biological warfare program from 1932-45....and supervised deliberate infection of thousands of captives with deadly diseases. He also conducted grotesque surgeries, but the unique medical specialty of Ishii and his surgical team were dissections, without anesthetic, on an estimated 3,000 live, conscious humans......In exchange for cooperation from the Japanese side, the horrific war crimes of Unit 731 were suppressed by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East.
A Foreign Ministry spokesman was quoted by Reuters on April 19, 2006, as saying: “The government is not in possession of materials that tell us about the activities of this unit. If we do find some materials, we would accept it as a solemn fact of history.” The Japanese government, then, does not currently view Dr. Ishii Shiro’s atrocious programs as historical truth....Critics accuse the Chinese government of manipulating historical issues to foster nationalism and bolster the regime’s domestic legitimacy, while scoring easy points against Japan in the global arena of public opinion. But it was Japan, not China, which carried out the biological terror of Unit 731 and continues to evade accountability for it today—with more than a little help from its American ally.
Read more:
The United States and the Japanese Mengele: Payoffs and Amnesty for Unit 731 Scientists
Race and Gender
Hip Hop’s Betrayal of Black Women
Unlike men, women in hip-hop don’t speak in a collective voice in defense of themselves. The pressure on women to be hyper-feminine and hyper-sexual for the pleasure of men, and the constant threat of being called a bitch, a ho—or worse, a dyke—as a result of being strong, honest, and self-possessed, are real within hip-hop culture and the black community at large. Unless women agree to compromise their truth, self-respect, and unity with other women and instead play dutiful daughter to the phallus that represents hip-hop culture, they will be either targeted, slandered, or ignored altogether. As a result, female rappers are often just as male-identified, violent, materialistic, and ignorant as their male peers.
Read more:
Hip Hop’s Betrayal of Black Women
The Gay Rights Movement Has Hit a Brick Wall
The gay rights movement has hit a brick wall. Yes, we have same-sex marriage in Massachusetts. Yes, the Supreme Court overturned state anti-sodomy laws. Yes, gay characters are all over mainstream TV. Still, after 35 years of slow, incremental progress, we are at a decisive crossroads. Simply put: to bring about social change—dependent on truly transforming hearts and minds—we need to reassess what kind of a movement we want it to be....While the aim of the fight for privacy was to keep the government out of people’s bedrooms (a good thing), it also perpetuated the idiotic and incorrect idea that homosexuality was a completely separate aspect of a person’s identity. The “privacy” argument was attractive to mainstream culture because it kept gay people invisible. But the downside was that it also continued the social isolation of gay people, removing them from the public sphere. A right to privacy is no help to the openly queer high- school student who is forbidden by school administrators from forming a gay-straight alliance or wearing a gay T-shirt in the hallways. The right to privacy is of no use to the gay man who is visibly living with HIV/AIDS or to the lesbian couple with kids facing discrimination in school or housing.
Read more:
The Gay Rights Movement Has Hit a Brick Wall
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
TOKYOPROGRESSIVE 7-5-06
UPDATED JULY 23
Japan and Asia
North Korea
The Washington Post reported today that North Korea’s missile testing prompted “a hastily called session of the UN Security Council after the Stalinist state unnerved the region.”
The Associated Press reported on June 14: “The Air Force successfully tested an unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile early Wednesday, officials said. The missile traveled 4,800 miles in about 30 minutes before its three warheads struck targets at the Kwajalein Missile Range in the western chain of the Marshall Islands [in the Pacific]...”
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/14816002.htm
ALICE SLATER, , http://gracelinks.org/nuke
President of the GRACE Policy Institute, which works on issues of nuclear power and the environment, Slater said today: “We are reaping the whirlwind when the North Korean government launches this shocking series of missile firings. The U.S. has been hurling missiles over the Pacific, most recently in June, after the Korean threat was reported as a ‘provocation’ to U.S. interests. Russia is getting into the act, too, having launched a ballistic missile on June 29, from a submarine in the Barents Sea, at a target nearly 4,000 miles away in the Pacific. It is folly to think we can tell North Korea what to do, when we are unwilling to restrain our own missile testing.
“We ought to be negotiating a treaty to ban all missiles. Instead, the Bush administration has pulled out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, an agreement we had with Russia not to provoke a missile arms race, brazenly asserting our U.S. right to ‘dominate and control the military use of space,’ proclaimed in the mission statement of the U.S. Space Command.”
IAN WILLIAMS, , http://www.ianwilliams.info
Author of the book “The U.N. For Beginners,” Williams said today: “The manner in which the Security Council is dealing with Israel and North Korea is quite an interesting exercise in hypocrisy.”
“Israel has just announced it’s moving into civilian areas [in Gaza], and was already in egregious violation of international law and a multitude of UN Security Council resolutions. It has ripped up the ‘Road Map’ and, despite occasional hot air from ambassadors, the U.S. government has made sure nothing is done about it.
“Meanwhile, whatever you may think of the provocative...actions of the North Korean government, it is not violating any international statute—there is no treaty governing missile launches—but there is a rush to put the issue on the Council agenda.”
An old article on North Korea and U.S. policy that is still helpful. Meanwhile, the Union of Concerned Scientists saya that now there is more of a need than ever for diplomacy rather than Bush-style antagonisms. Both Bush and fellow war-hawks Abe and Koizumi want to convince people that a strong military is needed, but many say the U.S. military presence in Japan actually INCREASES the danger. Plus, the Missile Defense System that Japan and the U.S. are persuing is just false security used to justify big military expenditures.
And who says the U.S. is dedicated to peaceful coexistence? Certainly not the Pentagon, which exaggerates the theat to the U.S. to jsutify its own belligerency. And all along the U.S. media reports what the Pentagon says as fact, but ignoring the equally disturbing fact that the U.S. has for decades threatened North Korea with nucelar destruction.
See also the excellent ‘The North Korean Problem,’ Japan and the US: The Politics of Hypocrisy
Koizumi’s Kingdom of Illusion
What has this man and his band of neo-liberal LDP “assasins” given Japan? The loss of jobs,"reduction of salaries, increases in social security payments and reductions in benefits...over one million households subsist[ing] on welfare....the suicide rate [leaping] from around 22,000 per year to over 30,000, subordination to the US [despite a nationalist pose]” and estrangement from the rest of Asia but, in the words of the late Masaharu Gotoda, Japan will have to lapse into “hell,” before the eyes of the people are opened.
Palestine/Israel
BNN SATIRE: Poll: 68% of American Christians would refuse to live in same building as an American Jew
From the BNN Department of Change One or Two Words in an Israeli Media Article and See How it Flies Then: Sixty-eight percent of Americans would refuse to live in the same apartment building as an American Jew, according to the results of an annual poll released Wednesday by the Center for the Struggle Against Racism. The “Index of Racism Towards American Jews,” conducted by Geocartographia, revealed only 26 percent of Americans would agree to live with Jewish neighbors in the same building…
Israel’s Aggression
The daily horrors emerging from Iraq have caused a majority of people in the United States to oppose Bush’s war there. Meanwhile, the humanitarian crisis Israel has created in the occupied territories hovers below the radar for most Americans....
When will Israel learn?
The message is that Palestinians should not resist - they should just wait for the Israelis in their homes, schoolyards and on the streets, ready to die. Palestinians should not defend themselves or defend their children; they simply need to wait to be killed without resistance because any resistance, even if it comes from a victim, is an act of terror…
Stop illegal collective punishment
Israel continues to carry out fly-bys with resulting super-sonic booms over the Gaza Strip. These actions lead to psychological torture which causes damage in children whose lives have turned into a continual nightmare....In the Gaza Strip there is an intermittent food shortage which is used to exert forbidden pressure on the Palestinian civilian population [in violation of] the Geneva Conventions [which say that] “in no event shall actions...be taken which may be expected to leave the civilian population with such inadequate food or water as to cause its starvation or force its movement.” Additionally, the power stations in Gaza were harmed by Israeli attacks resulting in an acute shortage in electricity. One of the consequences of this action is that the water pumps, which use electricity, are only partially operational, creating a shortage of drinkable water…
“Israel Advocacy” in North America and how it hijacks the notion of anti-Semitism
The creation of CJPAC is part and parcel of the dramatic restructuring which the Canadian Jewish establishment has undergone in recent years… For decades, elements of corporate Canada represented by a fundraising federation structure closely tied with the United States and Israel have been increasing their control over mainstream Canadian Jewish organization…
Happy Birthday?
4th of July: Put Away the Flags (Howard Zinn)
On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed… and.....Patriotism & The Fourth of July (Howard Zinn)
Mark Twain, having been called a “traitor” for criticizing the U.S. invasion of the Philippines, derided what he called “monarchical patriotism.” He said: “The gospel of the monarchical patriotism is: ‘The King can do no wrong.’ We have adopted it with all its servility, with an unimportant change in the wording: ‘Our country, right or wrong!’ We have thrown away the most valuable asset we had—the individual’s right to oppose both flag and country when he believed them to be in the wrong. We have thrown it away; and with it, all that was really respectable about that grotesque and laughable word, Patriotism.”
