Takae activists share official's "Rape of Okinawa" comment with workers forcibly constructing U.S. military Osprey helipads in Yanbaru Forest

Via Takae Blog:



See also this related post "Head of Okinawan branch of Japanese Defense Ministry compares DC-Tokyo forced US military construction in Okinawa to "rape"; assault on Yanbaru Forest."

Head of Okinawan branch of Japanese Defense Ministry compares DC-Tokyo forced US military construction in Okinawa to "rape"; assault on Yanbaru Forest

The head of the Okinawan branch of Japan's Defense Ministry compared DC-Tokyo forced US military construction in Okinawa to "rape." For his transparent comment about US-Tokyo strategy, Satoshi Tanaka was fired yesterday.

Japanese Defense Minister Ichikawa apologized to Okinawans for Tanaka's remark.

In mid-November Tanaka moved ahead, despite local oppostion, with US military construction in biodiverse Yanbaru Forest, a subtropical rainforest in northern Okinawa. The U.S. Marines want to destroy one of Yanburu's most well-preserved areas, a habitat for unique, indigenous species, to make way for US military V-22 "Osprey" aircraft heliports.


(For English subtitles, please visit the Okinawa Outreach website or on YouTube. Hit the "CC" button.)

The U.S. Marines, the manufacturer, and congressional representatives from the district in Texas in which the factory is located, have lobbied for years against the axing of the expensive, accident-prone military Osprey aircraft from the U.S. defense budget. This Iron Triangle even beat out former Vice President Dick Cheney who argued against the program. Despite extreme costs, accident risks, and no strategic value for the aircraft, US Marines have pushed to build heliports for the Osprey aircraft in Okinawa since they need someplace to put them, according to some U.S. foreign affairs analysts.

As a result, residents of Takae, an eco-village in Yanbaru Forest, have been in a cold war with the U.S. Marines for years. Residents report assaults by U.S. military helicopters against civilian protesters. Some fly low to the ground, terrorizing villagers destroying their property, and damaging forest trees. One villager reported that a U.S. soldier demanded food, at riflepoint, while laughing at her. These are just a few reports that reflect the tip of an iceberg of accounts of U.S. military injuries and intentional infliction of emotional distress upon local people.

The pattern of U.S. military abuse of northern Okinawans is not recent, but historical. During the Vietnam War, the U.S. military forced Takae villagers to dress like Vietcong for war games. US troops sprayed toxic herbicides in the forest. For these Okinawans, U.S. military assaults upon Okinawan property and persons have been continuous from the Battle of Okinawa through the Vietnam War era to today:

Okinawa's two major newspapers, Okinawa Times and Ryukyu Shimpo reported at length on Tanaka's "injudicious remark"; Japanese newspapers called it "indiscreet." It might be better described as a Freudian slip.

More background information on the movement to protect Takae and Yanbaru Forest:

"Voice of Takae".

WWF's "No Military Helipads in Yanbaru Forest".

"Saving the Okinawan Woodpecker," (The Center for Biological Diversity).

John Feffer's Okinawans Continue to Resist in Takae (HuffPost, Feb. 25, 2011).

Jon Mitchell's "Postcard from Takae," ( Foreign Policy in Focus).

Peace Not War Japan’s Film/Live Music Festival Highlights Citizen Movements: Mt. Takao・Okinawa's Yanbaru Forest・ Iraqi Refugees in Jordan (TTT, Nov. 12, 2009).

Takae Village Sit-in protest against US Helipads in Pristine Yanbaru Forest (TTT, Jan. 25, 2010).

"Peaceful New Earth Celebration" in Tokyo spotlights Okinawa, indigenous cultures, sustainability, & global networking (TTT, June 24, 2010).

Biodiversity 100: Preserve the biodiversity on Okinawa Island, including Yanbaru Forest's spiny rat, Noguchi's Woodpecker, & Namiye's Frog (TTT, Oct. 27, 2010).

Save Takae Village and and the biodiversity of Yanbaru Forest (TTT, Jan. 4, 2011).

"Latest Photos of Nonviolent Action to Protect Okinawa's Yanbaru Forest" (TTT, Feb. 3, 2011)

"Futenma is not the only problem" by Yoshio Shimoji (The Japan Times, Feb. 20, 2011).

More background on the V-22 Osprey:

"Key Amendments to H.R.1, Fiscal Year 2011 Appropriations Bill" compiled by The New York Times. (Congressman Luis V. Gutierrez (Democrat, Illinois sponsored an Amendment To Eliminate Financing for the V-22 Osprey Aircraft (H.AMDT.13). The House of Representatives voted (326 to 105, mostly Republican, but also Democrats) against this amendment; resulting in U.S. taxpayers footing the bill for at least $415 million for the V-22 Osprey aircraft this year. So far, the Osprey has cost Americans $60 billion.)

"V-22 Osprey: A Flying Shame" ( TIME Magazine's Sep. 26, 2007 cover story).

"Accidents and incidents involving the V-22 Osprey" (Wikipedia).

"Cuts to U.S. defense budget would hurt some investors, RBC Capital report says" (National Post, Nov. 16, 2010.)

"The Military Money Pit" by Joshua Green (The Boston Globe, June 17, 2010). (Green quotes Dick Cheney's description of the V-22 Osprey as a "turkey.")

"Panel commissioned by Barney Frank recommends nearly $1T in defense cuts" (TheHill.com, June 11, 2010).

Ishinomaki Update

Update from Matthew on Toshihiko Fujita's citizen-based relief support group in Ishinomaki:

For those looking for more information on Fujita-san's group you can find my English Facebook page for the group here:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/Koganehama/

Thank you for all of your continued support and I hope to see you all soon at Koganehama Kaikan.

Please see Kim Hughes' luminous post, "Eight months after disaster, tsunami survivors taking things as they come," for more background:

“It’s crucial to build community through activities such as common meals and café events, so that no one will succumb to loneliness and isolation.” The community center is used as a gathering space for local citizens and volunteers alike, and often hosts events for locals put on by NGO volunteers, such as art therapy workshops, massage sessions, community meetings, and more.

Fujita, who saw his mother swept away by the tsunami, has been working tirelessly since the day after the disaster struck—beginning with the traumatic work of clearing away bodies. Again trying to lighten the heaviness of the subject at hand, he commented dryly, “Here, we just call ourselves the mudbusters.”

With the extent of the damage to cities that faced the tsunami’s destruction, including Ishinomaki, mud will indeed be a steady reality for the months and even years to come. On Sunday, after having spent a comfortable night outside the local community center inside a parked mobile home that Fujita has made available for visiting volunteers, a group of us joined up with members of another volunteer organization known appropriately as "It’s Not Just Mud".

"Global Gandhian Moment" — Fukushima, Okinawa, the World, Occupy & Civic Empowerment

Peace Studies and Okinawa scholar Satoko Oka Norimatsu renders a historical analysis of a Japanese political pattern of sacrificing backwaters for the temporary economic benefit of those in privileged zones of urban centers.

Of course, destroying entire regions, ecosystems, and peoples is not a traditional Japanese societal pattern. It was borrowed from the Anglo-Saxon industrial model and has been the basis of global colonial and neoliberal "development." It would take an encyclopedia to chart the forced sacrifice of peoples and ecosystems throughout our planet, for the profit of a miniscule elite, over the centuries.

It would also take an encyclopedia to chart the citizen movements that have arisen throughout the world to challenge these patterns of exploitation and destruction.

Norimatsu, director of the Peace Philosophy Centre in Vancouver and a co-founder of the Network for Okinawa, compares the plight of Okinawans, who have campaigned nonstop since 1996, against forced new U.S. military construction at biodiverse Yanbaru Forest and Oura Bay to the more recent plight of residents of post 3/11-Fukushima. Both groups have endured national governmental and establishment media dismissal of their collective concerns. As a result, Okinawan and Fukushima citizen movements and citizen media, have grown to address a myriad of issues, in parallel the burgeoning of action of citizen groups worldwide.

Norimatsu's fierce take, "Fukushima and Okinawa – the “Abandoned People,” and Civic Empowerment":

Will people of the periphery choose to remain abandoned? Certainly not all. In Northeastern Japan, many people have stood up, taking safety into their own hands. Citizen groups conduct independent radiation measurements and publish their own radiation protection guides. Anti-nuclear power demonstrations spread, with a scale and intensity not seen in mainland Japan since the 1960s anti-Anpo (Japan-US Security Treaty) movement. As seen in Sato Eisaku’s words quoted above, perceptions of commonality between Okinawa and Fukushima – the state imposition of military bases or nuclear reactors on the basis of discrimination against marginal and vulnerable areas at the expense of well-being of those living there — seems to be growing in Japan, awakening some with sympathy with the Okinawan situation on a level not seen before 3.11.

Though the scale of current anti-nuclear demonstrations in Japan are not comparable to those of anti-base movements in Okinawa for the past six decades that mobilize as much as ten per cent of the population, it is notable that some mainlanders seem to emulate the Okinawan movement, using the same symbolic colour yellow, and slogans like “life is precious” (“Nuchi du Takara” in Okinawan). As in the “Arab’s Spring” movements of 2011, civic voices spread through newly emerging social media such as Facebook and Twitter, integrating existing movements, connecting different generations, and merging anti-nuclear, anti-base, anti-neoliberal and the burgeoning “Occupy” movements, suggesting a broader possible social base for movements throughout Japan.

Because of increasing public distrust in the government and mainstream media’s information concerning the crippled nuclear reactors and radiation risks, internet media have attracted a surge of new users in post-3.11 Japan. There is an emerging crop of internet journalists, such as Iwakami Yasumi, Uesugi Takashi, Kinoshita Kota, and Shiraishi Hajime, and many others, as well as widely read bloggers and Twitterers29 Their influence threatens the monopoly on information of the Japanese government and major media, leading the government to call on telecommunication companies to 'take appropriate measures to prevent groundless rumours on the internet...'

With Okinawa’s all-island determination to refuse construction of another military base on their land in the face of unremitting pressure form the Japanese and US governments, and with people across the nation awakening to new dimensions of citizenry and autonomy through alternative media and direct action, are we living in “a global Gandhian moment," as international law scholar Richard Falk suggests, in which the “abandoned people” are empowered and engaged in non-violent confrontations with established powers, making the impossible possible?

An answer is in each of us, and how we capture this critical historical moment.

Satoko Oka Norimatsu is a writer and educator based in Vancouver, BC, Canada. She is Director of Peace Philosophy Centre and a Coordinator of The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus. Her upcoming book co-authored with Gavan McCormack, “NO! Okinawa’s Message to Japan and the United States” will be published in spring 2012 by Rowman and Littlefield.

Japan Meteorological Agency: Half of radioactive materials from Fukushima fell into sea

A division of the Japan Meteorological Agency announced that up to 80 percent of the radioactive contamination from the 3/11 Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster fell into the ocean, but the remaining airborne material circled the planet on jet stream winds. The Meteorological Research Institute said its computer simulations calculated that radioactive materials, including cesium-137, were blown northeastward from 3/11 toward Siberia and Alaska before mostly falling into the Pacific.

Remaining atmospheric nuclear radiation blew over the Pacific coast of the United States around March 17. Radioactive particles that remained aloft completed their first round-the-globe trip by March 24.

Kyodo via The Mainichi Daily News:

(A screen capture of a map released on Nov. 11 by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology displaying accumulated radioactive cesium levels in eastern Japan. Image: Mainichi)

Half of radioactive materials from Fukushima fell into sea: study

November, 17, 2011

TOKYO (Kyodo) -- More than half of the radioactive materials that were emitted into the atmosphere in the days after the Fukushima nuclear disaster have since fallen into the ocean, according to a recent simulation by a team of researchers.

Between 70 and 80 percent of the radioactive cesium from the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Fukushima Prefecture had fallen into the sea by April, with the rest having fallen on land, according to the simulation done by the Meteorological Research Institute in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, and other researchers.

"The Fukushima nuclear power plant is located on the eastern edge of Japan, so only small amounts ended up falling on land because (such materials) get carried by the westerlies between March and April," said Yasumichi Tanaka, a senior researcher at the Japan Meteorological Agency institute and a member of the research team. However, it suggests the fallout that did not make landfall polluted the ocean, he added.

A simulation model applied in the study was developed by the institute and the agency, and was used to see how such radioactive isotopes as cesium-131, cesium-134 and cesium-137 got dispersed in the days after the disaster triggered by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

On the premise that the materials were dispersed with each particle being the size of less than 1 micrometer, the simulation showed they largely completed a trip around the globe in roughly 10 days after first crossing the Pacific.

Once released into the atmosphere, the materials were dispersed mostly northbound and reached the western coast of the mainland United States around March 17 after passing through eastern Russia and Alaska, according to the simulation. They are likely to have largely completed a round-the Earth trip around March 24.

Most of the radioactive materials fell with rain as they got carried through the atmosphere, the study showed, saying that about 65 percent of the cesium-131 released into the air in the disaster has since fallen into the sea.

The results of the study will be presented to an academic meeting in Nagoya that began Wednesday.

The Clash of Civilizations, Moral Sensitivity & the Evolution of Society

If the crux of societal and planetary survival is social and moral development, is it possible for the Occupy Movement and related social movements to support a collective shift from decision-making dominated by greed (short-term profit) and fear (war-mongering) to decision-making based on higher levels of multiple intelligence by those who occupy the upper levels of power structures?

Many of the principles in nonviolent social change movements over the past decade (from the Ukraine to Egypt to Wall Street) were disseminated by scholar Gene Sharp. Perhaps it's time for social movements to turn to scholars of emotional and moral development for insights needed to encourage higher level values and behaviors needed to change dysfunctional dominant societal patterns. Emotional and moral development have been a topics for some time in psychology, education, and theology, with many recent advances in scholarship...There's a wealth of insights to draw from, on empathy, dialogue, altruism, healing historical trauma, indigenous renewal, ecological sensitivity, community-building, and love...

In the 1950's, psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg constructed a universal theory of moral development, demonstrating similar patterns across cultures. The first (corresponding to early childhood) is the premoral stage, where the child is deferent to a superior power to avoid punishment. Actions are judged by physical consequences. The second stage is egoistic in orientation, where self-interest is paramount. Children at this level will cheat without guilt. "Survival of the Fittest" and "Looking out for #1" are the slogans of adults who are fixated at this level. In the third stage, children conform to elicit approval from others. The fourth stage is characterized by duty to authority to maintain social order. The last two stages are more complex. People who have achieved the fifth stage of moral development understand and negotiate contractual and institutionalized norms, rules, and laws; diverse points-of-view are considered. At the highest stage, orientation is towards universal principle of justice: dignity and equality for all; respect and empathy for human beings as individuals.

At one end of the spectrum, fraudulent, predatory economic practices reflect the institutionalization of concepts emanating from a regressive level of morality. At the other end of the spectrum, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Okinawan cultural concept of nuchi du takara (Life is a Treasure), the Ecuadorian concept of planetary rights are all examples of the institutionalization of concepts formulated at the highest stage of moral development.

In the 1960's, Kazimierz Dabrowski, a Polish psychologist who survived Nazi-controlled Europe, in a quest to understand human destructiveness and human creativity, constructed a theory of emotional development, based on studies of nonaggressive, highly intelligent, and creative individuals. His studies are well known in gifted educational research.

Psychologist Daniel Goleman popularized similar concepts in his best-selling book Emotional Intelligence and a related title, Ecological Intelligence.

One of the most intriguing articles on moral development has to be Linda Kreger Silverman's "The moral sensitivity of gifted children and the evolution of society." Silverman's multi-faceted article notes the interplay between biology, individuals and the societies in which they are situated:

 Social psychologist, David Loye (1990, 1993), drawing from psychology, sociology, archeology, history, evolutionary studies, and brain research... According to Loye (1993), the potential for moral sensitivity...seems to have originated with the emergence of the sex drive, then expanded with the appearance of parental caring at the reptilian level and sociability at the mammalian level, culminating in full blown moral sensitivity with the human capacities for greater emotionality and higher intelligence largely governed by frontal lobe development. From this perspective, moral sensitivity is believed to be essential to the preservation of the species and appears to increase with higher intelligence (Loye, 1990).

Amplifying the work with Riane Eisler (1987), Loye describes two basic forms of social organization with opposing moral frameworks: a primary partnership mode involving equality, freedom, moral sensitivity and peaceful relationships, and a later, corrupted dominator mode that relies heavily on competition, power, domination and moral insensitivity. Loye views the re-establishment of the morality of the partnership mode as an evolutionary necessity if we are to avoid species' extinction. Theorists counted among those who detected these two worlds of morality are Kant (1788/1952), Piaget (1932), Fromm (1947), Freud (1966), Dabrowski (1967) and Gilligan (1982). 

 Csikszentmihalyi (1993), in The Evolving Self, also detects two worlds: one that leads toward harmony by the cooperative use of energy and one that leads toward entropy by the exploitive use of energy. He substantiates the evolutionary thrust of moral concern and explicates the role of complexity in morality...

Nonviolent social movements for democracy, ecological protection, renewable energy, human rights, and social justice inherently embody high moral values and reflect collective social and moral giftedness. This is the clash of civilizations before us: the majority of people worldwide who want to construct a just, life-sustaining, peaceful, ethical civilization challenging a primitive, dominator-based, violent system that privileges ostentatious material gain and violent power for a few at the cost of exploitation, suffering of the many and the destruction of entire eco-systems.

Empathy gene?

Thoughtful discussion of latest on empathy research at Ed Yong's blog at Discover:

Consider the OXTR gene. It creates a docking station for a hormone called oxytocin, which has far-ranging effects on our social behaviour. People carry either the A or G versions of OXTR, depending on the “letter” that appears at a particular spot along its length. People with two G-copies tend to be more empathic, sociable and sensitive than those with at least one A-copy. These differences are small, but according to a new study from Aleksandr Kogan at the University of Toronto, strangers can pick up on them after watching people for just a few minutes.

Psychopathological 1%?

"Weeding Out Corporate Psychopaths" by Mitchell Anderson, published on Thursday, November 24, 2011, by the Toronto Star:

Given the state of the global economy, it might not surprise you to learn that psychopaths may be controlling the world. Not violent criminals, but corporate psychopaths who nonetheless have a genetically inherited biochemical condition that prevents them from feeling normal human empathy...

A peer-reviewed theoretical paper titled “The Corporate Psychopaths Theory of the Global Financial Crisis” details how highly placed psychopaths in the banking sector may have nearly brought down the world economy through their own inherent inability to care about the consequences of their actions...

Psychopathy should not be confused with insanity. It is best described by Robert Hare, global expert and psychologist, as “emotional deafness” — a biochemical inability to experience normal feelings of empathy for others.

This shark-like fixation on self-interest means that psychopaths often feel a clear detachment from other people, viewing them more as sheep to be preyed upon than fellow humans to relate to...

The human ability to build social capital means that people can cooperate and trust each other. We can reliably predict the behavior of others even if we have never met them. Social capital is the glue that holds together our communities, complex societies, large institutions and the economy. The one and only superpower possessed by psychopaths is their ruthless ability to spend the social capital created by others.

Scientists believe about 1 per cent of the general population is psychopathic, meaning there are more than three million moral monsters among normal United States citizens. There is emerging evidence that this frequency increases within the upper management of modern corporations. This is not surprising since personal ruthlessness and fixation on personal power have become seen as strong assets to large publicly traded corporations (which some authors believe have also become psychopathic)...

Boddy is not hopeful that the current round of expensive public bailouts will solve the problem. If psychopaths have in fact installed themselves in the upper reaches of the world’s financial institutions, their genetic deficiency dictates that their greed knows no bounds. They will continue to act in anti-social, remorseless ways, amplified by their enormous corporate influence until the institutions they represent and perhaps the entire global economy collapses. Obviously, more academic research in this area is urgently needed.

Original article: "The Corporate Psychopaths Theory of the Global Financial Crisis" by Clive R. Boddy, Journal of Business Ethics, Volume 102, Number 2, 255-259.

Korean Protest Culture: Struggle for Democracy — "still being negotiated, in parliament & on the street..."

(Citizens and students participating in a candlelight vigil demonstration against the South Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA) at Seoul Plaza attempt to march down street while police assault them with water cannons, Nov. 23, 2011. Photo: The Hankyoreh: "FTA fallout")

("Candlelight Vigil (Chopul): Widespread since the 2002 Yang-ju incident in Kyoung-gi Province. A U.S. military vehicle killed two school girls, but the American military court exonerated the driver, bringing discontent with U.S. military presence to a boil. Nationwide candlelight vigils ensued, quickly becoming a dominant protest genre..." Text: Gabriele Hadl. Photo: Kyoto Journal)

The Nov. 23 South Korean police assault on citizens during a candlelight vigil against the South Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA) in Seoul brings home the fact that South Korea has only been a democracy since the late 1980's. It took South Koreans decades of political and social resistance to overturn the U.S.-backed military dictatorship established after the Korean War.

The Lee Myung-bak administration has attempted to turn back the clock and undo many of the democratic reforms of the 1990's. This, in turn, has given rise to an intensification of resistance: a part of everyday culture in South Korea. Engaged scholar Mark Selden, editor of The Asia-Pacific Journal, notes that South Koreans have created the most vibrant and sustained grassroots democratic movement in the Asia-Pacific, comparable only to the Okinawan movement in intensity, longevity, and creativity.

Korean-Jewish-American filmmaker Koohan Paik explains the South Korean passion for democracy:

When I was a child in South Korea during the 1960s, we lived under the repressive dictatorship of Park Chung-hee. Anyone out after 10 p.m. curfew could be arrested. Anyone who tried to protest the government disappeared. A lot of people died fighting for democracy and human rights.

Today, the South Korean people carry in living memory the supreme struggles that forged the freedom they currently enjoy. And after all they’ve sacrificed, they are not going to give that freedom up.

In "Korean Protest Culture", a photo essay for the Kyoto Journal, Gabriele Hadl describes some of the many symbolic actions found in Korean social movements:

Downtown Seoul has more protest spots than coffeehouses. Protesters of many persuasions have taken up a permanent, rotating residency in front of the Blue House, South Korea’s presidential mansion, while the American embassy is never without riot police.

For most of the country’s history, demonstrations have been put down with an iron fist. In the 1960s, widespread protest won a three-year respite from dictatorship. Though short-lived, it piqued the hunger for democratic reform. Dissent then burned underground for two decades. Ultimately, the military regime could not contain it. In 1985, the struggle was reignited en masse, and a two-year protest campaign brought down the government. No velvet revolution here, but a series of powerful, sustained confrontations, culminating in a radical rewriting of the social contract. Its provisions are still being negotiated, in parliament and on the street...

A labor media activist reflects, “We separate action and daily life…go to a rally, then home. We have to integrate struggle into our everyday lives.”

Background on the KORUS FTA candlelight vigil demonstration:

• The Hankyoreh:"Preventing a KORUS FTA train wreck"

• Tim Shorrock: "Korea-US Trade Agreement: The Hidden History":

...In fact, KORUS represents a major victory for U.S. multinational corporations, banks and financial institutions, which have lobbied intensively for the pact for more than half a decade. It’s also a major setback for Korean and American unions. Both (with the exception of the U.S. United Auto Workers) saw that KORUS, like NAFTA, was above and beyond an investment agreement designed to improve conditions and decrease risk for foreign capital while doing nothing to improve labor rights (dismal in both South Korea and the United States, as recognized by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions) or lift the general conditions of workers and consumers in either country. Now that the AFL-CIO has failed to convince a Democratic president and Senate to oppose it, it remains to be seen if South Korea’s labor-led opposition can muster the strength to defeat the treaty in Seoul. We shall see...

The South Korean-U.S. free trade agreement (KORUS) cannot be seen apart from U.S.-South Korean security ties, the presence in South Korea of more than 30,000 U.S. troops and a 50-year economic relationship that has been heavily weighted towards American interests. From this perspective, KORUS is the fourth attempt by the United States to force its economic will on South Korea over the past half-century.

Occupy Movement: Americans & South Koreans protest US-South Korea FTA deal that will hurt the 99% in both countries

Via Democracy Now!:

Occupy, South Korean Activists Protest Trade Deal

Occupy Wall Street protesters joined with a group of South Korean activists on Tuesday to rally against the so-called free trade deal between Seoul and the United States. The demonstrators rallied outside the South Korean mission in New York. Protest organizer Adam Weissman of Occupy Wall Street criticized the crackdown on protesters who have been rallying at the South Korean parliament.

Adam Weissman: "It’s outrageous that peaceful protesters are being subjected to a weapon that can cause permanent injury — people have been blinded for life by water cannons — and President Lee, instead of violently assaulting protesters, should respect democracy and listen to his own people who are telling him that they don’t want this FTA (Free Trade Agreement), that it’s putting its country’s laws on the chopping block and compromising their rights in service to corporate profits."

The deal with South Korea is the largest trade agreement the United States has signed since the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico in 1994. South Korean farmers and workers oppose it, saying it threatens their livelihoods. South Korean organizer and church pastor Kim Dong-Kyun said the deal would harm the 99 percent in both countries.

Kim Dong-Kyun: "The FTA is a trade agreement that benefits the one percent of Korea and the U.S., therefore it will bring pain to the 99 percent of America and the 99 percent of Korea. That is why we are doing this with the Occupy Wall Street people from both countries."

Good News from South Korea: Mayor Kang of Gangjeong released from political imprisonment at Jeju Island

Gangjeong village Mayor Kang (in orange shirt) was freed from prison today with the other political prisoners from the village.

Mayor Kang spent 92 days in jail for not standing aside quietly as the South Korean military, in violation of democratic due process, seized farms, homes, and other real property belonging to Mayor Kang and the villagers he represents. The Gangjeong villagers are tangerine farmers and fisherpeople descended from Jeju Islanders who have farmed and fished on this once idyllic coastline for centuries. Mayor Kang and his neighbors received fines and probation for "obstructing business."

What about the prosecutor's role in "obstructing democracy"?

Eight months after disaster, tsunami survivors taking things as they come

For Tokue Ohyama, an octogenarian resident of Ishinomaki City in Miyagi prefecture, some days since last March have been harder than others.

“Shortly after the tsunami hit, when I felt lonely I sometimes wished that it just would have swept me away,” Ohyama confided when I met her last weekend in the temporary housing unit where she is now living. I was there helping to serve coffee and sweets through a volunteer initiative run by a local organization to make sure that survivors—particularly the elderly with no other family—are not left in isolation. “Now that I have made friends here, though, I’m feeling much more positive,” she added.

And positive she was indeed. She had been the first to come into the community room where our makeshift café had been set up, beaming as she proudly offered a plate of delicious pickled daikon radish that she had prepared for the gathering. I strained to understand her speech due to her strong local dialect (as did the non-local Japanese volunteers, to my relief), but despite the language barrier, she was clearly playful and even satirical. “That tsunami chased me so fast that I swear it was in love with me!” she said, cackling with obviously ironic laughter.

At Ohyama’s side was Shoko Matsunaga, who has found herself acting as a leader of sorts among the housing unit’s mostly female residents. “After the tsunami, while spending those several long days stranded in the freezing cold with no electricity, food or drinking water, I honestly thought I would not make it,” she said softly. “The fact that I am actually sitting here right now in fact feels like a dream. I am so incredibly thankful for having survived, and I want to spend the rest of my life doing whatever I can to try and help others.”

Top: Temporary housing unit, still under construction

Bottom: Shoko Matsunaga (left) and Tokue Ohyama (right), with volunteers in the background

A total of some 20,000 people in Ishinomaki are now living in the temporary housing units. While being thankful for the shelter, residents must put up with a lack of privacy due to paper-thin walls that let in every noise made by neighbors at all hours. And in several instances, residents bedridden from depression or illness have actually died without anyone discovering so for days.

“One additional significant problem we are facing now in these housing units is that of suicide,” explained Toshihiko Fujita, who founded a small organization in Ishinomaki based at the Koganehama Community Center, where my partner and I volunteered over the weekend. “It’s crucial to build community through activities such as common meals and café events, so that no one will succumb to loneliness and isolation.” The community center is used as a gathering space for local citizens and volunteers alike, and often hosts events for locals put on by NGO volunteers, such as art therapy workshops, massage sessions, community meetings, and more.

Fujita, who saw his mother swept away by the tsunami, has been working tirelessly since the day after the disaster struck—beginning with the traumatic work of clearing away bodies. Again trying to lighten the heaviness of the subject at hand, he commented dryly, “Here, we just call ourselves the mudbusters.”

With the extent of the damage to cities that faced the tsunami’s destruction, including Ishinomaki, mud will indeed be a steady reality for the months and even years to come. On Sunday, after having spent a comfortable night outside the local community center inside a parked mobile home that Fujita has made available for visiting volunteers, a group of us joined up with members of another volunteer organization known appropriately as "It’s Not Just Mud".

While several of the volunteers had been involved with the relief operations since the days immediately following the disaster, it was quite disconcerting for me as a first-time volunteer to encounter personal items—coins, dishes and ceramics, a remote control, a section of a car stereo, chopsticks, baby-sized silverware— while standing inside a ditch shoveling mud.



Top and bottom: The "It's Not Just Mud" crew at work

Despite having seen images of the tsunami’s destructive path through photographs and videos, it was a similarly jarring experience to walk near the coastline and see row after row of completely gutted homes and shops, some with toppled futons and furniture still as they were just after the wave hit.

An indescribable sensation also made me pause as I walked past Watanoha Junior High School, separated from the ocean by a mere thin stretch of forest, with its busted windows and its clock stopped eerily at 3:46 PM—exactly one hour after the earthquake had struck, and likely 30 to 45 minutes after the tsunami had reached land. I imagined the students having a normal day at school before the tragedy struck, laughing and joking in the now empty stairwells. Had they managed to escape in time, I wondered? Where were they now?

Obviously, in two days I was only able to scrape the surface of the issues that survivors continue facing in Ishinomaki and other disaster-hit areas (although I definitely plan to return soon). According to community leaders leading recovery efforts at the grassroots level, such as Fujita, a full recovery is years ahead, with local families continuing to face the agonizing decision of rebuilding or leaving to start anew.

Fujita also pointed out that such issues are further compounded by other problems such as local and national government apathy, a general lack of community cohesiveness, and local in-fighting over issues such as resource distribution in the wake of the disaster. “I’m so busy that I have not even had time to do my own grieving,” he admitted. “Maybe in a year or two, when things have settled down, I’ll have that luxury.

"Reparing buildings is one challenge, but repairing hearts is another one altogether," he added. "The trauma that people here have experienced is profound."

Fujita describing the problems facing Ishinomaki citizens, berating the Japanese mainstream media for its lack of coverage of issues facing survivors in affected areas, and urging volunteers from around the world to come join the relief effort

Top: 800 heads of Chinese cabbage donated by a farmer from Nagano prefecture, which Fujita drove around delivering to members of the local community together with a personalized message from the farmer

Bottom: Flyer announcing a tea-drinking and craft-making workshop at the Koganehama Community Center

Despite the enormity of existing obstacles, which seem to make the efforts of individual volunteers only miniscule, each shovelful of mud—as well as each and every human interaction—truly does make a difference, as I learned when being thanked countless times by residents who were so clearly grateful for the work of volunteers.

While chatting with another woman after our mobile café had moved to a second temporary housing area on Saturday afternoon, the conversation flowed easily from the NHK trophy ice skating competition, which was on television in the background, to more serious matters. She told me that she had lost almost every one of her friends in the tsunami—and that she dreamt of them every night. She then began describing earlier memories, when she had been a young woman in her late teens during the second world war.

“The military police used to walk around with bamboo spear weapons in case they came across any U.S. military enemies, and we were not even allowed to be caught using any words that came from the English language, such as kyabetsu (“cabbage”) or bo-ru (“ball”), she reflected. “I lost my chance to fall in love because of that war. What a meaningless waste it all was.”

Shoko Matsunaga, while she didn’t specifically mention the wartime past, did say at one point, “I certainly never thought I would be here sitting at a table with an American. And now, here I am, meeting volunteers from all over the world.

“Truly, I have so much to be thankful for.”

Top: Sign at entrance to local shrine: "Caution--Falling Rocks"

Bottom: Scenery in undamaged areas of Ishinomaki, with gorgeous rolling vegetable fields

Ishinomaki-based volunteer organizations:

It’s Not Just Mud

Peace Boat Emergency Relief Operation

Ishinomaki Volunteer Support Base: Kizuna (Japanese only)

Japan Emergency NGO (JEN)

Toshihiko Fujita’s volunteer troupe (e-mail: i77lav77u@gmail.com)

--Kimberly Hughes

Marilynne Robinson: "The earth has been under nuclear attack for almost half a century."

While on sabbatical in Canterbury in the 1980's, American novelist and essayist Marilynn Robinson was shocked to learn that, during that period, the largest known source of radioactive contamination of the world's environment was Great Britain. For decades, the UK has been discharging nuclear waste from Sellafield, a nuclear weapons and nuclear waste reprocessing complex, into the Irish Sea. The complex, located in a national park (which includes the Lake District) on the northwest coast of England, just south of Scotland, has been storing tons of nuclear waste in an open pit which Robinson calls "the world's nuclear dustbin."

The writer explored her findings in an exquisitely crafted long essay, Mother Country: Britain, the Welfare State, and Nuclear Pollution. Robinson maps out historical threads between the abuse of state authority and power, predatory capitalism, and exploitative, throwaway attitudes that prioritize profit before human lives and the natural environment. Robinson specifically charts the movement from the pre-Elizabethan Poor Laws to state-sponsored industry in the UK.

This revelatory book, published in 1989, was essential reading before the Fukushima era: to enlighten us to the realization that many nations have been nuking themselves and the entire world via radioactive nuclear waste emissions on a daily basis for decades (as well as via the 2,083 "test explosions" conducted in their own backyards or "colonies").

Long before the the Bush/Blair invasion of Iraq on the basis of nonexistent WMD and the preoccupation with possible issues with Iran and North Korea, Robinson questioned the rationality of fears over potential nuclear weapons capabilities and deployment, in light of widespread inattention regarding ongoing nuclear hazards, including the continuous dumping of radioactive nuclear wastes into the Irish Sea at Sellafield.

She concludes, "It is a very comfortable thing to think that the greatest threat to the world is a decision still to be made, which may never be made—that is, the decision to engage in nuclear warfare. Sadly, the truth is quite otherwise. The earth has been under nuclear attack for almost half a century."

In the first part of her prescient and essential book, Robinson describes the layers of history that resulted in the creation of the radioactive nightmare known as Sellafield, located in an otherwise idyllic backwater of England:

:...the largest commercial producer of plutonium in the world and the largest source, by far of radioactive contamination of the world's environment, is Great Britain...The primary producer of plutonium and pollution is a complex called Sellafield, on the Irish Sea in Cumbria, not far from William and Dorothy Wordsworth's Dove Cottage. The variety of sheep raised in that picturesque region still reflects the preference of Beatrix Potter, miniaturist of a sweetly domesticated rural landscape.

The lambs born in Cumbria are radioactive. This fact is ascribed to the effects of the Russian nuclear accident at Chernobyl, but Sellafield is so productive of contamination that there is no reason to look elsewhere for a source. Testing of lamb and mutton was only undertaken some months after Chernobyl, though the plant at Sellafield routinely releases plutonium, ruthenium, americium, cesium 137, radioactive iodine, and other toxins into the environment as part of its daily functioning. The fact that food had not been tested systematically in an area whose economy is based on the production of food as well as the production of plutonium is characteristic of British policy, wherever there is a potential impact of industrial practice on public health.

It should be noted that the plant at Sellafield was built by the British government. It was developed and operated by the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority, and then given over to British Nuclear Fuels Limited, a company wholly owned by the British government. It should be borne in mind that the plant receives waste and reprocesses plutonium for profit, to earn foreign money...

The plant is expanding. Wastes from European countries, notably West Germany, and from Japan are accumulating there, while the British develop means of accommodating the pressing world need for nuclear waste disposal. Their solution to the problem amounts to extracting as much usable plutonium and uranium from the waste as they find practicable and flushing the rest into the sea or venting it through smokestacks into the air. There are waste silos, some of which leak uncontrollably. In an area called Driggs, near Sellafield, wastes are buried in shallow earth trenches. Until the practice was supposedly ended in 1983 by the refusal of the National Union of seamen to man the ships, barrels of nuclear waste were dropped into the Atlantic. In other words, Britian has not solved the problem of nuclear waste, but has in fact greatly compounded it, in the course of producing plutonium in undivulged quantities...

And then the British are not especially fortunate. Sellafield has had about three hundred accidents, including a core fire in 1957, which was, before Chernobyl, the most serious accident to occur in a nuclear reactor. Sellafield was called Windscale originally, until so much notoriety attached itself to that name that it had to be jettisoned. That an accident-prone complex like this one should be the storage site for plutonium in quantity is blankly alarming...

Robinson questions appearance and realities of "democracy" in the UK and other parts of the world in which a tiny minority makes decisions affecting entire populations, largely without their knowledge or input. These decisions made on the basis of exorbitant taxpayer-enabled profit; the nuclear industry would not survive without government subsidies and protections

For thirty years a pool of plutonium has been forming off the English coast. The tide is highly radioactive and will become more so. The government inspects and plant and approves the emissions from it. The government considers the plant poorly maintained and managed, and is bringing pressure to lower emissions. The government is expanding the plant and developing another one in Scotland. Foreign wastes enter the country at Dover and are transported by rail through London..Whose judgment and what reasoning lie behind these practices and arrangements? The question is never broached...

No hearing will ever convene to assess the wisdom of shipping radioactive wastes through a populous capital, or dumping them into the sea, or extracting weapons materials from them to be shipped by air into Europe, and through North America to Japan...

This book is essentially an effort to break down some of the structures of thinking that make reality invisible to us...

I am so angry to the depths of my soul that the earth has been so injured...This book is written in a state of mind and spirit I could not have imagined before Sellafield presented itself to me, so grossly anomalous that I had to jettison almost every assumption I had before I could begin to make sense of it...I must ask the reader to pardon and assist me, by always keeping Sellafield in mind—Sellafield, which pours waste plutonium into the world's natural environment, and bomb-grade plutonium into the world's political environment. For money.

...For decades, the British government has presided over the release of deadly toxins into its own environment, for money, using secrecy, scientism, and public trust or passivity to preclude resistance or criticism and to quiet fears...

If Americans have heard about Sellafield nuclear waste dump and plutonium factory, they have heard the name Windscale, which appears from time to time with little or no elaboration in lists of nuclear accidents. The Windscale fire of 1957, which for our purposes is the history of the public-relations strategies surrounding the event, bears an uncanny, not to say unnerving, similarity to the recent accident in the Ukraine. Windscale was the most serious accident in a nuclear reactor before Chernobyl. It occured in a graphite-moderated reactor with the sole function of producing plutonium for British bombs...

The clientele of Sellafield is a Who's Who of technologically advanced countries: Japan, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Holland, and Sweden. France has its own pipeline into the sea at Cap de la Hague on the English Channel...

According to the New Scientist, in 1986 the Central Policy Planning Unit of the Ministry of the Environment suggested that "it would be prudent to place restrictions on any development along and off the coast near Sellafield which could disturb the concentrations of radioactivity building up in mud and silts."

In her concluding words, Robinson links Sellafield with parallel nuclear history affecting other backwaters throughout the globe. It took more than Chernobyl, it has taken Fukushima, to awaken a majority of citizens in Japan to understanding and action. Fukushima families follow Cumbrian families who raised money to purchase their own Geiger counters because they cannot rely on the UK government's radiation monitoring. At intervals over thirty years, they protest and strike. Yet, most people worldwide know nothing about the suffering of the residents who live daily with plutonium and other nuclear radiation from a nuclear complex in one of England's tourist destinations.

Maybe the beaches at Sellafield had begun to glow in the dark. Islands in the Pacific that were used for atomic testing glowed for years, and contamination levels at Sellafield are like those at testing sites.

...the world's public arrives at this parlous moment with a grinding history behind it, badly educated, starved of information, full of sad old fears and desperate loyalties, injured in its self-regard, acculturated to docility and stoicism...There is no agora, where issues are really sorted out on their merits and decisions are made which, at best and worst, give permission to political leaders to carry our policies the public has approved. This model assumes information of a quality that is by no means readily available to us. It assumes a reasonableness and objectivity which allow information to be taken in and assimilated to our understanding, and in this we are also thoroughly deficient...

My greatest hope, which is a very slender one, is that we will at last find the courage to make ourselves rational and morally autonomous adults, secure enough in the faith that life is good and to be preserved, to recognize the grosser forms of evil and name them and confront them...We have to...consult with our souls, and find the courage, in ourselves, to see, and perceive, and hear, and understand.

-JD

Could studies of the decades of radioactive (plutonium) contamination at Sellafield, UK help in understanding Fukushima radiation risks?

(Via Shut Sellafield: Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tim_d/)

(Map of nuclear radiation at Sellafield, in northwest England, just south of Scotland, on the Irish Sea: "In 1990 a government funded project used helicopters to survey radiation "hot spots" in the area. The map (above) shows the radiation levels are highest (red and brown) around the estuary of the Rivers Esk and Mite and around Sellafield itself." Image: http://www.lakestay.co.uk/hot.htm)

This week the UK government gave approval to NuGen (owned by Spanish multinational Iberdrola and French multinational GDF Suez) to construct a new nuclear plant at Sellafield, a plutonium manufacturing and nuclear waste reprocessing complex plagued with a history of accidents, radiation (plutonium) contamination, and tons of nuclear waste:

...Britain has held firm in the post Fukushima-era to the advancement of nuclear power, unlike many large European economies like Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Belgium, all of whom are either abandoning their nuclear power capacities or have voted not to begin building nuclear facilities to begin with in the wake of the Japanese disaster.

Germany will be phasing out its nuclear power plants in favour of renewable energy by 2022 and Switzerland is following suit in 2034. Belgium has said it will shutter its oldest plants by 2015, with the remainder to come offline by 2025, dependent on whether the country can find alternative power sources. And Italy voted overwhelmingly in a summer referendum not to even start a nuclear programme.

Even Japan has opted for a 40-year nuclear phase out plan.

The announcement of the construction of the multi-billion-pound nuclear fuel plant has followed the closure of an identical plant, shut down because it was unfit.

The UK built the Sellafield nuclear complex in the 1940's for the same reason as the US constructed the toxic Hanford nuclear complex in Washington State and the Soviets constructed the Mayak complex in Siberia: to produce nuclear weapons. As with Hanford and Mayak, the region around Sellafield, located in England's largest national park has become a nuclear waste dump. The park, which includes the Lake District, is a tourist destination.

For decades, Sellafield dumped radioactive waste by pipeline into the Irish Sea. The Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic (OSPAR Convention) reported Sellafield has deposited an estimated 200 kilograms (441 lb) of plutonium into the marine sediment of the Irish Sea. Cattle and fish are contaminated with plutonium-239 and caesium-137 from Sellafield.

Sellafield, where Japanese nuclear energy companies sent nuclear waste for reprocessing, also produced Technetium-99, a radioactive element created from reprocessing, which Sellafield also discharges into the sea. Between 1952 and 2009, Sellafield discharged more than 47,855 terabecquerel of cesium-137 and strontium-90, two of the most dangerous radioactive elements to human health, according to calculations based on data from the U.K. Environment Agency and the Journal of Radiological Protection.

In 1983, high radioactive discharges of ruthenium and rhodium 106 resulted in the closure of beaches along a 10-mile stretch of coast in Cumbria, along with warnings against swimming in the sea. Greenpeace protested the discharges by attempting to cap the pipeline gushing radioactive waste into the sea. Their Geiger counters indicated radioactivity at 1,500 times the "normal" level.

An open pit has been used to store radioactive waste, including over a ton of plutonium (some from the Tokai Mura plant in Japan). The pool is not watertight and has been leaking.

A 1997 UK Ministry of Health report stated that children living close to Sellafield had twice as much plutonium in their teeth as children living more than 100 miles (160 km) from the nuclear complex; afterwards a UK official stated that the plutonium did not present a health risk. However, instances of leukemia in children who live on the English and Irish coasts reflect anomalies: the rate of childhood leukemia in the area near Sellafield exceeds the national average by ten times; one child in sixty in Seascale, the village of nearest the plant, will die of of leukemia.

Both the Irish and Norwegian governments have sought the closure of the facility.

On Aug. 3, the government (Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA)) owned MOX (plutonium) fuel plant, subsidized by British taxpayers, was closed. Its primary customers were Japanese nuclear plants, including Fukushima Dai-Ichi:

"The Hamaoka plant, owned by Chubu, the intended recipient of the first fuel, is currently closed awaiting extensive reinforcement work. Following Chubu, Tepco [Tokyo Electric Power Company] were destined to take 50% of the plant output and they as owner of the Fukushima plants are clearly facing the most extreme challenges."

Speculation about the future of the plant has been rife for months, as it became clear that the Japanese nuclear industry was unlikely to recover after Fukushima.

The NDA said: "[We have] concluded that in order to ensure that the UK taxpayer does not carry a future financial burden from [Sellafield Mox plant] that the only reasonable course of action is to close [the plant] at the earliest practical opportunity."
The NDA said it would continue to store Japanese plutonium safely, and "further develop discussions with the Japanese customers on a responsible approach to support the Japanese utilities' policy for the reuse of their material".

Sellafield still dumps eight million liters of radioactive nuclear waste into the Irish sea—every day.

How has this radioactive (especially plutonium) contamination affected fish and agricultural food products from the region surrounding Sellafield? When did cancers, including leukemia, begin to spike? Is the UK keeping and sharing longitudinal records on radiation levels and correlating these with cancers and other disorders (heart disease) correlated with nuclear radiation exposure? This kind of information might be helpful to residents of Fukushima and Japan, many whom express concern at plutonium exposure from MOX fuel, which was manufactured at Sellafield and used at Fukushima.

The Sellafield Nuclear Complex:

• REPROCESSING: 2 Plants - B205 Magnox, responsible for gross discharges and historic enviromental contamination. THORP, opened1994, adding greatly to discharges. Failing to meet 10 year target of 7000 tonnes. No new overseas contracts.

• VITIRFICATION: Opened 1991. Subsequent poor performance and accident rate. Third production line being constructed after original lines failed to meet yearly targets.

• ENCAPSULATION: 2 Plants. Drumming solid and sludge intermediate level wastes from historic and current operations. At least 30 years before any UK final disposal site for wastes.

• MOX: 2 Plants. Demonstration facility (MDF) producing 8 tonnes MOX fuel per year since 1993 for Europe and Japan. New 120t plant (SMP) not yet licensed to operate due to concerns on justification and viability. No plans to use MOX fuel in UK power stations.

• REACTORS: 4xMagnox 50MW. Operating 25 years beyond original life-span, until recently producers of Plutonium for UK weapons

Some sources, including Marilynne Robinson's meticulously researched Mother Country: Britain, The Welfare State, and Nuclear Pollution, published in 1989:

• "Dublin demands Sellafield action" (Ian Black, The Guardian, Feb. 18, 1984)
• "More pollution found on coast near Sellafield" (The Guardian, March 10, 1984):"
• "'Plutonium food' sought for children" (Richard Evans, The (London) Times, May 21, 1985)
• "Shut this open sewer" (New Scientist, Feb. 27, 1986)
• "A lot of fuss about a few millisieverts" (Sharon Kingman, New Scientist, May 15, 1986)
• "Majority say No to nuclear power" (Steve Vines, The Observer, Sept. 14, 1986)
• "Minister admits total failure of Sellafield 'MOX' plant" (Geoffrey Lean, March 9, 2008)
• "Ministers gamble on new £6bn Sellafield plant" (Steve Connor, Oct. 10, 2011)

Environmentalist Watchdog Groups:

• Shut Sellafield

• Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment

• People Against WYLFA-B (The campaign against a new nuclear power station at Wylfa, Anglesey (Cymraeg: Yr ymgyrch yn erbyn atomfa newydd yn y Wylfa, Ynys Môn)

Dorli Rainey of Occupy Seattle: "Take one step out of your comfort zone."

He's high drama, however American broadcast journalist Keith Olbermann deserves an Emmy for his brilliant and comprehensive coverage of the Occupy Movement.

Yesterday he interviewed filmmaker Michael Moore, who talked about the Obama administration's coordination of recent raids on protests in various cities.

Olbermann's restrained and reverent interview with Occupy Seattle supporter Dorli Rainey, an 84-year-old retired schoolteacher who was pepper-sprayed in Seattle, is beautiful. Rainey speaks of growing up in Austria during the Nazi era, and witnessing the march towards the shut-down of civil society and diminishment of individual rights and protections. She advises us all to "take one step out of your comfort zone" to address the erosion of civil liberties and due process protections since the George Bush administration.

These and other interviews are available online at Current.com.


* Another great interview with Dorli Rainey at Democracy Now!.

Occupy Love: ”We have not left: we have moved into your consciousness!”

In Spain, when the time for camping ended, one camp left behind an enormous sign that said: ”We have not left: we have moved into your consciousness!”

The movement is growing and evolving in it’s own organic manner. Expect the unexpected. Occupy Consciousness.

- Filmmaker Velcrow Ripper's latest blog, Occupy Love

Save Jeju Island: Please stop the scheduled Nov. 18 dynamite blast of soft coral habitat at Jeju, a new "Seven Wonders of Nature"

(Jeju Island is a beautiful volcanic island south of Korea. In 2007, UNESCO named Jeju a natural World Heritage Site. The southern coast of Jeju is home to the only natural dolphin habitat in the Korean peninsula and to the soft coral habitat, clown fish, and other subtropical marine wildlife in this video. In 2001, the Korean Cultural Heritage Administration designated it a national monument protection area. The South Korean government and military-industrial corporations profiting off the project want to destroy it (and farmland and homes forcefully seized, without due process, from the lawful owners) to make way for a mega-military complex.)

* UPDATE * from Sung-Hee Choi on Nov. 18:"It is told that the police have turned down the companies' request for the blast of the Gureombi rocks for three times. It is told that the reasons were: 1. insufficiency of the documents; 2. concern about the incident during the blast; 3. requirement for the agreement with the Island governor.

"We think your continued pressure to the Island Governor Woo (lmw2828@jeju.go.kr) really greatly helped to at least to delay the blast but we don’t know yet when the navy would suddenly conduct the blast without the consultation with the Island governor as the navy has done on Oct. 6 under the excuse of ‘test blast,’

"We so thank you for your solidarity and want to ask to you to continuously pressure the governor Woo. We also want to ask your pressure to the Ministry of Defense (S. Korean Defense Attach: defenattache@yahoo.com) to revoke all the naval base construction policy and not to blast the Gureombi, South Korea so that the military don’t commit crime unilaterally.

"The Headline Jeju reports this morning that the chief of the naval base business committee would be changed on Nov. 23. The newly appointed person will be the guy who has been a vice-commander of the 2nd Fleet, Pyeongtaek base where the large U.S. military base locates.

"Otherwise, there is a trial of the three including mayor Kang Dong-Kyun, villager Kim Jong-Hwan and photographer Kim Dong-Won at 3pm today. There will be the final statements of the three and I will inform on it later. The court decision will be on Dec. 1 and many people here are starting to send the appeal letters to the judge by Nov. 25. I have to hurry for my own appeal at the court at 2pm, too."

Earlier Action Request from Save Jeju Island:

Dear friends of Jeju Island,

On November 18th, the South Korean Navy is scheduled to blast Gureombi, the smooth volcanic rock along the coastline of Gangjeong village where the local people have been fighting day and night almost for 5 years to stop the naval base. Please take 5 minutes to be part of this global collective effort to stop this destructive blast.

Jeju was recently selected among the New Seven Wonders of Nature, which with its UNESCO triple-crowned status makes the island among the world’s most precious cultural and national treasures. In addition, the marine ecosystem that lines Gureombi is an absolute preservation area designated by the South Korean government because of the many endangered species that inhabit Gureombi, including the red-clawed crab and soft coral. The spring water that bubbles up from Gureombi provides up to 80% of the drinking water for residents of Seogwipo City, the southern half of Jeju Island. The destruction of Gureombi threatens the surrounding marine life and the clean water that farmers and villagers depend upon for their survival.

Please take action now and send an email to Jeju Governor Woo urging him to halt the blast and construction of the naval base. The Jeju Island governor should protect Jeju’s pristine nature from being destroyed. Although Governor Woo has the authority to order the Navy to halt construction, he is overseeing the destruction of this pristine coastline.

Gangjeong villagers are pleading for our help to prevent the Gureombi blast at whatever cost. Your contacting the Governor now will not only encourage them but also help save their village and lives. As one villager says, “Gureombi is Gangjeong, Gangjeong is Gureombi.”

STOP the BLAST. Write to Gov. Woo: lmw2828@jeju.go.kr

Dear Governor Woo,

You have the power to stop the blast of Gureombi, a government-designated absolute ecological preservation area. You also have the power to order the Navy to stop construction of the naval base and release innocent citizens. Will you leave behind a legacy of overseeing the destruction of a UNESCO preserve site and ancient Korean relics, or will you be remembered as a protector of democracy and peace on Jeju Island? Uphold your promise to those who elected you and stop the blast and construction immediately. We don’t want the ‘New Seven Wonders of Nature’ to be brutally destroyed.

Sincerely,


Facebook:

Save Jeju Island: Save Jeju Island on FB
No Jeju Naval Base: No Jeju Naval Base on FB

Website:

Save Jeju Island Save Jeju Island

Also see this previous Ten Thousand Things post featuring poignant commentary Sung-Hee Choi, who spoke about how love motivates her work when interviewed by American University anthropologist David Vine who visited the South Korean peace activist when she was a political prisoner in Jeju Island earlier this year.

Finally, this new Al Jazeera documentary, "Activate - A Call Against Arms," is well worth watching:

Aloha: Occupying APEC

Mahalo to Temple Valley Times for posting Hawaiian musician Makana's "We Are the Many" which he sang before Pres. Obama and other state leaders meeting to discuss "free trade" at the APEC meeting this past weekend in Hawai'i.

PM Noda did not enter into TPP negotiations

(A Via Campesina (family farmer cross-border network) conference convened in Chiba, Japan earlier in the fall to address the TPP threat to small farmers in Japan and other Asian countries)

Many thanks to Martin Frid at Kurushii for his nuanced and sensitive analysis of PM Noda's ambiguous ("To join or not to join") remarks re whether the Japanese government will or won't enter into Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations.

Headlines in the North American media and a favorite Japanese newspaper, the Mainichi, made much ado about nothing: giving the impression that Noda had announced that Japan had formally joined the TPP talks. Martin's post quotes a variety of sources, rendering a multi-dimensional picture from Japanese (and other Asian) perspectives

Asahi Shinbun had somewhat better coverage of the TPP debacle. They quoted coalition partner Shizuka Kamei of the People's New Party, who has experience as a trade negotiator, and is against the TPP:

The TPP concept originated from trade rules established by Singapore and other small countries. The United States is seeking to use them to govern the Pacific Rim free trade zone. If Japan gets involved in TPP rulemaking, it would amount to being unfair to China, South Korea and Indonesia, which are all major trading partners for Japan and not parties to the TPP regime.

Asahi also had this analysis of how difficult it might be for Japan to get serious about negotiations, as different ministries are responsible for different sectors of talks, with opposite goals...

My conclusion is that Noda's announcement, for whatever it is worth, amounts to little of substance. This is how opponents of TPP look at it, according to Asahi's analysis:

DPJ members opposed to Japan's participation in the TPP negotiations watched Noda's televised news conference at a room in the Diet. "I was relieved," said Masahiko Yamada, former agriculture minister who is a staunch opponent of the TPP. "(Noda) did not go as far as to announce Japan's participation in the TPP talks, but stopped at entering consultations."

The archipelago's traditional culture of family farms is a starting point for Japan's transition into a sustainable future. Localized food production on small farms (the only energy-efficient method of food production) is an essential strategy to slow climate change and protect our natural environment and biodiversity.

Among food and climate change experts are calling for the localization of food production. Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, an advocate for sustainable, small-scale agriculture ("Agroecology"), explains:

International trade only concerns nine to 10 percent of the food that is produced globally, yet it has had decisive influence on the way decisions are made on the way infrastructure develops and on how farmers are being supported...

Governments have generally supported export-led agriculture, supported global supply chains, and under-invested in local and regional markets.

Instead of going backwards (shutting down family farms and increasing imports of fossil-fuel intensive, emissions-based, GMO, pesticide-laden food products—that must be transported over long distances—from state-subsidized industrial factory farms and plantations), the Japanese government would be undertaking a domestic and global public service if it would further support and share its countrypeople's ethos of simplicity, sustainability and food security with the world.

Voices from Fukushima: Japanese citizens demand accountability on domestic, global levels as government continues reckless nuclear policies

Eight months have passed since the disaster of March 11th, since which time I have been riding the same emotional see-saw as many others after emerging from the cocoon of fear and shock that ruled the initial days and weeks following the outbreak of the nuclear crisis. When facing the choice, however, of engaging my critical mind or succumbing to the more comfortable state of mind that most others here seem to have clearly chosen—blissful denial—I seem to find myself on most days choosing the latter.

With the exception of occasionally attending and writing about Japan’s steadily growing anti-nuclear movement, I have by-and-large opted to focus upon my everyday life and personal concerns. For some living in Fukushima, however, no such escape option exists. Every day is filled with uncertainties and questions with regard to matters of basic survival: What food is safe to eat? Can I drink this water? Is it is safe to send the kids outside to play?

Outraged at being forced into this situation, a group of Fukushima women decided to take things to the next level by holding a sit-in last week in front of the Ministry of Economy. Organized by members of NGOs and ordinary citizens, the first leg of the sit-in from October 27-30 was attended exclusively by women from Fukushima, then followed by a week-long solidarity sit-in action until November 5th for anyone else who wished to offer their support.

With the national and prefectural governments continuing to add insult to injury following the 3.11 triple disaster by making one outrageously irresponsible decision after the next, there is plenty to be indignant about: Stopping citizens from attempting their own radiation measurements, radioactive dumping in Tokyo Bay, feeding Fukushima schoolchildren with quite possibly contaminated food, and releasing negligent information regarding radiation figures, for starters.

I visited the sit-in the end of the final week, after darkness had fallen. Around 30 or 40 women (and a few men) were in attendance—a small number compared to the hundreds who were normally there during the daytime, I was told. Speaking with the woman staffing the registration tent, I could barely hear our exchange because of trucks parked nearby with a loudspeaker blaring the same message over and over again: “How dare you women come here and protest without identifying yourself! Each and every one of you should put your face and name on the Internet. What kind of cowards are you?” Unreal.

"Women's Action: We Don't Need Nuclear Power!"

“Typical men!” commented the woman I was speaking with, referring to the voice behind the loudspeaker, as I turned to make my way to those assembled for the sit-in. Trying my best to ignore the loud distraction (and to quiet my own anger at those causing it), I sat down with the women and began listening to the speaker addressing the group. Born and raised in Fukushima but living in Ibaraki at the time of the 3.11 disaster, long-time anti-nuclear activist Yuko Yatabe was propelled by shock to travel to Chernobyl following what had happened in her home prefecture. There, she met with citizens in order to discuss the lessons that might be learned for those in Fukushima now facing similar anxieties.

Yatabe showing artwork drawn by a child from Chernobyl

In response to Yatabe’s presentation, one woman raised her hand and commented about the need for Fukushima citizens to become self-empowered with regard to their own health. I approached her as the group was dispersing to ask her what she meant. I learned that she was named Ms. Shirai, and that she ran a grassroots network for alternative energies. “If people in Fukushima are fearful and depressed, their immune systems will be compromised, and they will be at an increased risk for succumbing to the negative effects of radiation,” she told me in an extremely animated voice. “I am trying to reach as many people as I can with the message that there are things they can do to increase their chances of staying healthy, such as waking up early and absorbing positive energy from the sun, or thoroughly cleaning their food in order to reduce possible radiation consumption.”

Shirai, who aims to help empower Fukushima citizens to take charge of their own health

I returned to the sit-in several days later during the afternoon, when one or two hundred participants were in attendance. I was delighted to meet Ruiko Muto, a Fukushima woman whose moving speech during the September anti-nuclear action in Shinjuku had gone viral (at least in Japanese circles) and had inspired me greatly. “While men may try and approach the world intellectually, we women feel things—particularly the power of life itself,” she told me. “And I believe that there is nothing wrong with approaching activism from this emotional perspective.”

“This may appear to be Fukushima’s problem, but as a matter of fact, it will very soon be Tokyo’s problem, as well as that of other Japanese cities,” said another woman, Setsuko Kuroda, who had also traveled from Fukushima for the sit-in. “For this reason, we must all begin working together and cooperating.”

I also ran into Yuko Yatabe again, and was thrilled to see that she was together with a small group of women including Yukie Tokura from the STOP! Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant movement and performance artist/activist Rena Masuyama who were on their way to deliver a petition to the Diet demanding that Japan cancel a plan to export contaminated food from Fukushima. Thanks go to Shingetsu News for filming the meeting:



Perhaps the most egregious of all (in)actions—the failure to protect children—is now the subject of a worldwide petition from Avaaz that is still collecting signatures. The petition’s website (which was updated November 11th) reads:

Right now, thousands of local residents are still trapped in the highly contaminated areas in and around Fukushima City. With black rain falling from the sky and local crops poisoned, children in families left destitute by the tsunami can’t afford to get out — and the government is failing to help them.

But a group of brave mothers have taken to the streets to ensure their children are helped out of the disaster zone. Hundreds of supporters from around the country have gathered for a sit-in outside the Ministry of Economy in Tokyo demanding that Prime Minister Noda grant their children the opportunity to evacuate. We can stand with them.

This is, literally, the fight of their lives. Children, sitting in the midst of radioactive contamination, don’t have a day to lose. In hours, the government will decide whether to act at an emergency meeting -- let's build a giant outcry for a healthy future for Fukushima children. Sign the urgent petition on the right and forward this campaign widely -- it will be delivered directly to the Prime Minister's office before the meeting.

This blog article from Greenpeace gives beautiful insight into the hopeful aspects of the Fukushima women’s protest, and Tokyo area blogger Ruthie Iida gives a thought-provoking account of her visit to the sit-in on her website, Kanagawa Notebook. Finally, British-born, Paris-based Japanologist Kevin Dodd gives a nuanced account about the post-3.11 culture of silence surrounding nuclear issues (which I also referenced above) on his website Senrinomichi.

As I was leaving the sit-in during my second visit, one woman approached me to say that she had been extremely inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement, and the way that it had taken off globally after being motivated by the Arab Spring and similar demonstrations in Europe. “These protests have their roots in the very same problems as do the nuclear issue in Japan,” she told me pointedly. “The nuclear industry are the 1%, while the rest of us are the 99%. If we want to solve these problems, it is critical that people from around the world continue working together in solidarity.”




--Kimberly Hughes