Monday, December 12, 2005

December 2005 Postings

ADDED December 13, 2005

JAPANESE (UN)DEMOCRACY
Locking peace activists away for more than two months, as Japan has done in the case of several citizens who distributed anti-war literature to a Self-Defense Forces housing project, which has now been approved by the morally bankrupt Tokyo High Court, is certainly evidence that the Japanese government is on the same page as that of the more open repressive governments it pretends to disdain.
Articles and links here

IRAQ
Harold Pinter on U.S.-U.K (and Japan by default) War Crimes
The Nobel Prize winner did not mention Japan by name, but he included those who went along with the Bush-Blair deceptions and helped to prop up the lies.

Art, truth and politics
Pinter`s speech at the prize ceremony

Note that a story in which former British parliementarian Tony Benn, Pinter and more than two dozen others submitted war crimes charges to both United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and British legal authorities has been deemed non newsworthy by most press outlets.  TokyoProgressive has written to major news organizations asking them why they have seen fit not to print the story. That story is here.

Robert Fisk on journalism, war, terror, good/evil and “democracy.. delivered by tanks & helicopters”

WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION PROTESTS IN HONG KONG
Understanding the Anti-WTO Protests
From APEC to WTO: trajectories of protest in Korea and East Asia

Our world is not for sale!
by Vandana Shiva, scientist and glabalization activist

Chinese/English Links:民間監察世貿聯盟
Many more links inside

CULTURE
Is Europe Western?
Writer TAWADA Yoko’s essay on nation, region, identity, orientalism:  Several years ago a new law was passed in Japan decreeing that the Japanese flag was to be raised at every ceremony taking place at schools and universities in the country. It determined the exact size of the flag. ..The law insisted that the flag was to be raised in the middle of the stage where it could be seen by everyone...The Academy of Foreign Languages in Tokyo… raised the national flag as instructed by the law, with one small difference: it also raised a further hundred and ten flags from other countries.....

ENVIRONMENT
Worse Than Fossil Fuel: Biodiesel: the most carbon-intensive fuel on earth
Over the past two years I have made an uncomfortable discovery. Like most environmentalists, I have been as blind to the constraints affecting our energy supply as my opponents have been to climate change. I now realise that I have entertained a belief in magic....In 2003, the biologist Jeffrey Dukes calculated that the fossil fuels we burn in one year were made from organic matter “containing 44 x 10 to the 18 grams of carbon, which is more than 400 times the net primary productivity of the planet’s current biota."(1) In plain English, this means that every year we use four centuries’ worth of plants and animals....The idea that we can simply replace this fossil legacy - and the extraordinary power densities it gives us - with ambient energy is the stuff of science fiction....

ADDED December 3 2005

Japan’s Peace Constitution/映画 日本国憲法

Japanese Americans and the Making of U.S. Democracy During World War II

Okinawa and the Revamped US-Japan Alliance嘘とごまかしの重ね塗り/Masuoka Ken’s latest posting

The Bush Plan to Bomb Al-Jazeera: Press Freedom or Freedom to Bomb the Press?
(Also see The War on Al Jazeera)

How many people have died in Iraq?

Power Politics, the LDP and Willing Masses (Kato Shuichi)

Unit 731 and the Japanese Imperial Army’s Biological Warfare Program

Hu Jintao’s Strategy for Handling Chinese Dissent and U.S. Pressure

Other recent articles from Japan Focus are here:
Japan’s Deadly Game of Nuclear Roulette
http://japanfocus.org/article.asp?id=460

Japan’s Hidden Arms Trade
http://japanfocus.org/article.asp?id=459

Japan’s Kamikaze Pilots and Contemporary Suicide Bombers: War and Terror
http://japanfocus.org/article.asp?id=458

Compensating Colonial Lepers, Slave Laborers and Hibakusha: Troubling Legacies and Evolving Standards of Postcolonial Justice in Japan
http://japanfocus.org/article.asp?id=457

Family Ties: The Tojo Legacy
http://japanfocus.org/article.asp?id=445

田中宇の国際ニュース解説
http://tanakanews.com/

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