FreeLists / tokyoprogressive / [tokyoprogressive] CPN#140 9/11, Iraq, Good and Evil, Drums of War and a call for sanity

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               TokyoProgressive's ChocoPaul News
                    http://tokyoprogressive.org

                     The death of a fish and 9/11

                Issue 140, September 15, 2002
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 Before I introduce this week's articles, a little essay of my own. If you
prefer to skip it, the links are below. Scroll down.

                                  ********************
                                 9/11, Iraq,  Good and Evil,
                           Drums of War and a Call for Sanity
                           ***************************
A Japanese friend, recently resident in the U.S., was saddened by the death
of her pet fish on September 11. The fish was a present from her American
college room-mate. And so she decided to bury it next to her room-mate's
fish, which had died one day earlier.  The room-mate noted that the fish had
died on an "important day," but my friend, trying hard not to be seen as
acting inappropriately, said nothing and decided to share her feelings with
me instead:

"Every time I hear how important today is for America..or even for the
world,
I can't help thinking about the people who died before September 11 without
any recognition......So I don't want to go to any ceremony...I just want to
think about people both in America and Afghanistan in my room".

She also wrote of her admiration for those who are able to see beyond their
own pain and try to share the pain of those now targeted by the U.S. in
its 'war against terrorism':

".......I really really respect the parents who lost their son (Greg
Rodriguez) on 9/11, and wrote a letter  telling the government, 'don't use
our son's name for retaliation, '" she wrote.

                         --Good States and Bad Ones?--

 Thank God for the family members of 9/11 victims who have gone to
Afghanistan or Iraq and tried to share the pain of those who now suffer
under sanctions, war and threats of even greater hell-to-come. What a
contrast to some of the messages I get even from family members which
tell me how barbaric Palestinians are and how humane Israeli soldiers
are--citing one case of an Israeli unit which saved a Palestinians's
life despite their terrorist acts.

Not one word about the many lives snuffed out and homes crushed  by giant
Caterpillar bulldozers, or the ambulances denied passage by the "noble"
Israeli troops, forced to serve as hearses instead.

Why are we immune to the death and destruction visited on the weak when the
weak are not our own?  Why do we talk about how brave we are, how
traumatic 9-11 was for us and totally ignore the trauma WE and our
proxies have visited on most of the rest of the world for so long?
What is this strange capacity we humans have for harboring the fiction
that we (our country, our family, our friends, our race, our group....)
have right (or God, as Dylan once sang) on our side?


Why does the death of a fish have to be linked to the attacks on the World
Trade Center and not the deaths of 3 million Vietnamese, of hundreds of
thousands of East Timorese, of the assassination of the president of Chile
by
Kissinger's hired gunman, Pinochet?

               ---The Crimes We Commit are not ALL Exported--

We want to believe we are so good and the evil terrorists out there are so
bad, but to do so, we have to ignore our own crimes, just as we must
ignore the tightening of the screws around us as dissent is once again
labelled unpatriotic and people who look a little funny are locked away
without access to lawyers or any rights whatsoever.

Along with ignorance of our own terrorist actions comes an intolerance
of any other but the official viewpoint. Just this past week, a Canadian
woman even hinted to the hosts of a Japanese  human rights site that the
views of TokyoProgressive and others like us should be banned.  The
irony of censoring others who say it is hypocrisy to kill for peace and
freedom is lost on her. It reminds me of those who told us to move
back to Russia during the Vietnam war or, as a variation on that theme,
told us we did should not be allowed to protest because the people in
Russia and China were not free to do so.

                    -Whittling Away the Japanese Peace Constitution--

 Meanwhile, our "friends" like   Japan use the excuse of terrorism to
destroy their anti-war Constitution and issue platitudes about
contributing blood, not  ONLY money (money is bad enough!), though
 most of the blood that will be spilled will continue to be that of the
disenfranchised and dispossessed of the world.

Many people in Japan have the good sense to see that the U.S. is a bully,
but unfortunately much of the opposition to lending money and bodies to
a U.S. led war focuses on how Japan will suffer and does not also focus
on how Japanese money for or even direct participation in such a war
would make them murderers too. Somehow there is too much respect for the
notion that the U.S. is a rational nation asking Japan to make rational
choices.  Or an unwillingness to believe that their nation and the U.S.
could actually be partners in terrorism.

Yet it is ironic that the very politicians pushing Japan toward war
(which involves the so-called YUJI HOSEI bills that would take away
many freedoms, criminalize non-cooperation and force the media to
broadcast official news) are those who defend Japanese imperialism,
refuse to admit they hired sex slaves or offer those who are still
living any  compensation, and deny the existence of Unit 731 (biological
experiments on living Chinese victims, the existence of which was also
hidden by the GHQ, which actually is said to have enlisted some of the
scientists for its own bilogical and chemical warfare research).

And it is these very same neo-conservative Japanese politicians who are
now clamoring to get on board the U.S. war train who have on many
occasions said Japan needs to discard the peace Constitution because it
was imposed by the U.S.  Opportunists all. I recall how eager they were
to defend the U.S. imposed fingerprinting policies used on Korean and
Chinese residents because these policies maintained the pre-war policies
which the U.S. found convenient in order to enlist Japan's cooperation
in the Korean war and in its campaign against communism.

How odd that Japanese politicians  are now eager to go to war for their
former enemy, and in the UN.even defend a beligerent U.S. nuclear policy
that continues to justiy  the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and call
for more of the same "if needed". Yes, Koizumi and the Liberal
Democratic Party, true to their legacy as a party that rose from the
still smouldering ashes of fascism, are actually in favor of the
destruction that was visited upon those two atom-bombed cities, at least
if we examine the policies they claim to be in favor of.  If I were the
major of Hiroshima, I would bar them from ever stepping foot in my city,
but--unfortunately--such rationality does not apply, and Koizumi is stil
welcomed with open arms by the city and  many of its people.

Like in the U.S., I believe this is partly the fault of the education
system and the media, and it scares me that when demonstrations occur
here they are on a scale smaller than in many other cities around the
world. Given thatJapan's peace constitution is at stake and that its
government is planning to continue bankrolling death and destruction
rained from the skies by the U.S., the people should be risng up in
anger and fear. Maybe soon, maybe soon, I tell myself....

And then there are nations such as Russia or China who jump on the
anti-terrorism bandwagon even as they commit atrocities against their own
minorities, all with the blessing of Marshall Bush and his nuclear armed
Christian fundamentalists out to save the world and deliver it from the
great evil empire (Reagan),  the axis of evil (Bush II), or whatever the
phrase of the moment is. So the "War Against Terrorism" is really a good
opportunity for all the despots who were looking for a way to sanitize
the crimes they have been carrying out. Much cheaper than hiring a
Madison Avenue ad agency, though they all do that as well.

                                           --On the Death of a Fish--

I wish we lived in a world where the death of a fish, or a pet cat, or
the homeless person we had stepped over on the way to work so many times
without a thought, moved us to consider how  much we trivialize life and
how estnaged we have become from life. I wish the deaths of 3000 made us
think of the other thousands who have been similarly  sacrificed for
someone's
noble goals.  As Aziz Choudry says in his  piece below,

"As September 11 continues to be used as a pretext for wars at home and
abroad, to consolidate the political and economic hegemony of the US and
other major economic powers, it is important to reaffirm that the world did
not begin on that date. Appalling as the suffering and tragedy of that day
was, its use to trivialise, demean or even legitimise the suffering of
others - victims of the 'war at home' and victims of US foreign and economic
policy overseas - is indefensible."

As Azra Sayeed, in The Macabre Face of Globalisation, September 2001,says:

"The media seems to be implying as if this was the first ever macabre
happening in this world and no other atrocity has been seen before. From the
projection of pain and grief by media one can assume that intensity of
feeling pain is measured on one's place in the power systems of the world."

Thank god for my friend and the fish she would like to bury without linking
that death to the horrors of 911. Thank god for the parents of Greg
Rodriguez.

                                         --Don't Envy, Get Angry--

Last, I often hear people say how much they admire people like Chomsky or
Zinn, or even me with my own humble attempt at a newsletter/website.  But
admiration and envy are also synonyms for inaction and paralysis, for
surrender to feelings of impotence, or even for just plain laziness.

The cure for feelings of deseration is action, whether that means going
to a demonstration, getting together with a couple of friends and talking
about how we can resist the repression and derail the terror that is
committed in our name, or simply refusing to be a part of this mass refusal
to acknowledge the pain of others and who is inflicting that pain.  It means
informing ourselves as best we can and immunizing ourselves against the
lies and omissions of the mainstream media which seeks to render us
powerless .


                                       **********
                                       CONTENTS
                                       **********


Counting For Nothing: Reflections On The First Anniversary
Of 9/11 --By Aziz Choudry

In the USA, the September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, a group
of family members of September 11 victims have stood resolutely against the
"war on terror". After visiting Afghanistan earlier this year, meeting
families of Afghanis killed in the US attacks, Kristina Olsen, whose sister
Laurie was on American Airlines Flight 11 said: "Now I know what people in
other countries feel. We were so comfortable and sheltered. Around the world
people die horrible deaths on a continual
basis, and it's routine."
http://tokyoprogressive.org/blog.html#85440728



An Open Letter to America by Chilean Poet Ariel Dorfman
-----------------------------------------------------------
Dorfman mourns with -- and for -- America in the aftermath of September 11th
Dorfman knows such suffering well, have lived through Pinochet's repression
(after America helped bring him to power in Chile). The list is long of
those who have likewise suffered from American political and military
misuses of power in Afghanistan, Iran,  Nicaragua, the Congo, Indonesia,
South Africa, Laos, Guatemala, and perhaps most prominently, Vietnam. In our
mourning over last year's attacks, we Americans might yet learn, Dorfman
believes, to have compassion for those we have so casually made to suffer.
http://tokyoprogressive.org/2002_09_12_tokyoprog_archive.html#85440659



Another September 11
-----------------------
Recall Sept 11, 1973. This was when Henry Kissinger, in pursuit of US
foreign policy,
had General Augusto Pinochet murder Salvatore Allende the democratically
elected presidentof Chile. Thus unleashing a reign of terror against the
Chilean people after installing himself as president. Even then Pinochet was
able to retain control of the armed forces until he was arrested in the
UK in 1998 at the request of a Spanish court for 'crimes of genocide and
terrorism'.

This is a reprint of a reprint found on the International Green forum
Japan site.
http://tokyoprogressive.org/2002_09_12_tokyoprog_archive.html#85440601



Afghanistan on the  Brink of Another Disaster-Robert Fisk
----------------------------------------------------------
In a "war against terror", journalists are supposed to keep silent and rely
on
the good guys to sort out the bad guys without worrying too much about
human rights.
http://tokyoprogressive.org/2002_09_12_tokyoprog_archive.html#85440546



Hilton Hotel Workers Lose Their Jobs
You Can Help Them
---------------------------------------
http://tokyoprogressive.org/2002_09_12_tokyoprog_archive.html#85440581



World Food Day
-----------------
Tengu Foods (Japan) will sell you selected items and
then ,rather than deliver them to you, will send 1 and a half times the
purchased amount of food to groups feeding the hungry in Japan. Didn't know
there were hungry and homeless people in this country?  Read on...
http://tokyoprogressive.org/2002_09_12_tokyoprog_archive.html#85440698

                                           Issue 139--Fri, 6 Sep 2002
http://www.freelists.org/archives/tokyoprogressive/09-2002/fullthread1.html

Includes the following:

John Pilger-Remebering 911

Kyoto Water Summit : Water, but not a drop to drink World Water Forum
promotes privatisation and deregulation of world's water-- from
Corporate Europe Observer - Issue 7

People's forum on water Japanese site

30% OF 'ORGANIC' SOYBEAN PRODUCTS
GENETICALLY MODIFIED-

Citizens Nuclear Power Information Center

Japan for Sustainability

Geopolitics of Jo'burg Protests: Independent Left beats Ruling Party
September 01, 2002

A War Based on Lies-John Pilger

Joining theExpanding Middle-Dennis Fox

Gush Shalom Refuser Solidarity Network


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