Culture of Resistance

Original text from Ryusaku Tanaka Journal 30.06.2012 http://tanakaryusaku.jp/2012/06/0004591

A presage had already appeared before the meeting started. The Meeting was to protest against restarting nuclear power plant held on every friday (Promoted by Metropolitan Coalition Against Nukes). Passed 5:30pm when the sun started to go down, the line of people who gathered in front of Prime Minister’s Office almost surrounded the corner of the Cabinet Office. Overflowed people filled the sidewalk next to the congress hall. At the beginning of the protest there were already 45 000 people, like at the last demonstration (Issued by Promoter). There was a group who came from Nagano by chartered bus, an old couple who came from Fukui Prefecture, the locality of Ôi nuclear power plant. I called with my cellphone the representative of Nagano whom i had an appointment with. “I’ll be at the point of 10M from Kasumigaseki station of Tokyo Metro”. So i went there but i couldn’t find him. A journalist friend called me as well but i couldn’t find him neither. I saw nothing but people in every direction.

[…]

DISSENSUS JAPAN: A flood of 200 000 people shouting “Oppose to restart nuclear power plant.” Vehicles of Riot Police stopped people from bursting into the PM’s Office.

2012/06/04

I am now making a map with becquerel of algae types.

Near the end of this week with 100 samples,

On the Sea of Japan side : Yamagata, Niigata, Toyama, Ishikawa 

On the Pacific side : Miyagi, Fukushima, Ibaraki, Chiba, Tokyo, Gunma, Tochigi

I plan to bring together the informations of the widespread area.

This biological concentration is one of the environmental indication.

This is an element which is as dangerous as the level of elevated concentration of radioactive isotope which have not been imagined or have been ignored daringly.

The clearance level of ICRP for cesium 134 and cesium 137 are 100 becquerels / Kg.

But in Minamisoma City and in Fukushima Prefecture, there’s 100,0000 becquerels that are left uncontrolled.

And there’s a danger that children step up on it and they also may touch it.

Although I went to see the police so many times to talk about it and also talked to public health institute and talked with the city administration every time my demand were just refused.

Please send out SOS signals to the world! 

Thank you for your help.

Koichi Oyama

DISSENSUS JAPAN: A Message from Koichi Oyama

John Glaser, April 27, 2012

The U.S. and Japan have come to an agreement on the relocation of about 9,000 U.S. Marines that will leave their bases in Okinawa, with about 5,000 transferred to Guam and the rest spread among other locations in the region like Hawaii, Australia, etc. This is just one part in the Obama administration’s broader imperial plan to boost American military and naval presence in Asia-Pacific to counter China’s regional influence. I wrote about this agreement earlier in the week, so read on to find out about how the citizens of both Japan and Guam have resisted the Defense Department’s meddling on their land.

I wanted to point out some key quotations from defense officials on this so-called strategic ‘pivot’ to Asia the Obama administration laid out months ago. It’s interesting, they’re very frank about what is happening. Other measures that Washington takes to expand the global military empire come with exhaustive propaganda about why it must be done. In Latin America, the war on drugs is the pretext to support undemocratic regimes and maintain a military presence throughout the region. In the Middle East, its usually about “terrorism” or a single dangerous regime that presents an existential threat.

But there are no such lies when it comes to expansion in Asia-Pacific. Nobody is screaming about any threats, or rogue nations, or criminal networks or terrorism. They’re just admitting the sole purpose is to expand the military presence without the justification of any military threat.

Here’s one senior defense official explaining:

Well, as you know, one of the goals of the administration in Asia is to create a — to build a presence in the Asia-Pacific that’s more geographically distributed.  And I think this agreement is part and parcel of that.  When you look at it in combination with our plans to build a rotational presence in Australia, what you have are sort of an ongoing ability for U.S. forces to be visible and present in multiple places across the region at any given time.  And we think that that presents advantages in building relations with partner countries; helping to respond to, for example, humanitarian emergencies; and as needed, respond to contingencies.

And again:

This new posture that we’ve created results in a more operationally effective presence across the region through Marine Air-Ground Task Forces, which we call MAGTFs — in multiple locations.  So in multiple locations, we’ll have combinations of command, ground, air and logistics capable of deploying and operating together in a — in a self-contained way.  So that’s what the presence on Guam will be like, it’s what the presence on Okinawa will be like, as well as other locations in the region.

No “Hitler-reincarnated” is needed, I guess, for expanding the empire in Asia. The crafters of U.S. foreign policy are openly admitting that this “presence” is reason enough in itself. It’s kind of like what BBC reporter Jonathan Beale described onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Gulf’s Strait of Hormuz last February: “This carrier and these [fighter] jets are more than just a show of force, they’re here to send a clear message to Iran as to who really controls these waters.”

A similar show is being played out off the coast of the Philippines. Armed Chinese and Filipino naval vessels have been standing off for about two weeks after a dispute about territorial claims in contested waters. This standoff happened just days before the U.S. and the Philippines engaged new military exercise included in a new agreement facilitating greater U.S. military and naval access to the Philippines. The U.S. has a security agreement with the Philippines promising we’ll defend it against any threats. Not only is Washington playing World Policeman, but they’re making sure China never has the ability to declare its very own Monroe Doctrine.

We want to deter potential adversaries (China) from daring to grow their economies or build up their militaries. Those are strictly American prerogatives. And defense officials don’t mind admitting it.

Imperial Hegemony in Asia: ‘Visible and Present’ « Antiwar.com Blog

Posted by EU Times on Apr 15th, 2012

A new report circulating in the Kremlin today prepared by the Foreign Ministry on the planned re-opening of talks with Japan over the disputed Kuril Islands during the next fortnight states that Russian diplomats were “stunned” after being told by their Japanese counterparts that upwards of 40 million of their peoples were in “extreme danger” of life threatening radiation poisoning and could very well likely be faced with forced evacuations away from their countries eastern most located cities… including the world’s largest one, Tokyo.

The Kuril Islands are located in Russia’s Sakhalin Oblast region and stretch approximately 1,300 km (810 miles) northeast from Hokkaidō, Japan, to Kamchatka, Russia, separating the Sea of Okhotsk from the North Pacific Ocean. There are 56 islands and many more minor rocks. It consists of Greater Kuril Ridge and Lesser Kuril Ridge, all of which were captured by Soviet Forces in the closing days of World War II from the Japanese.

The “extreme danger” facing tens of millions of the Japanese peoples is the result of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster that was a series of equipment failures, nuclear meltdowns, and releases of radioactive materials at the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, following the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami on 11 March 2011.

According to this report, Japanese diplomats have signaled to their Russian counterparts that the returning of the Kuril Islands to Japan is “critical” as they have no other place to resettle so many people that would, in essence, become the largest migration of human beings since the 1930’s when Soviet leader Stalin forced tens of millions to resettle Russia’s far eastern regions.

[…]

Russia Stunned After Japanese Plan To Evacuate 40 Million Revealed | EUTimes.net