On the Non-Defense of Japan: The Japan-US Treaty of Mutual Deception, Ignorance and Insecurity

By D. H. Garrett

“The war with Japan had been enacted in the game rooms at the War College by so many people and in so many different ways that nothing that happened during the war was a surprise absolutely nothing except the kamikaze tactics toward the end of the war. We had not visualized these.”

-Chester W. Nimitz-

Students protesting against the Ampo treaty and then-PM Kishi

The “Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan” is known in shortened form in Japanese as the “Ampo Joyaku.”  It could more accurately be known as the “Ampo Noyaku” (農薬) one possible very rough translation of which would be the “U.S.-Japan Bulls**t” treaty.  It is a BS treaty not because it took the release of Class A War Criminals and massive amounts of CIA money over the years to get the U.S. the sufficiently anti-communist government it needed to allow U.S. bases willy-nilly wherever they wanted to plunk them down on Japanese soil (especially Okinawa)1); it is a BS treaty not because it was only passed by the Japanese Diet by tricking the opposition into taking everyone’s usual lunch-break and then having only the LDP members sneak back in to vote 2); it is a BS treaty not because Japan faces no threats of sufficient “threateningness” to warrant it: Russia (and the Soviet Union before it) although it does have some amphibious landing capability has rarely in its long military history utilized it, and China has all of one purchased, slightly-used formerly Ukrainian aircraft carrier; it is not a BS treaty because Article 1 of the treaty which states, “The Parties undertake, as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations, to settle any international disputes in which they may be involved by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security and justice are not endangered and to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state,” is ritually ignored by the United States. No, it is a BS treaty because it doesn’t have the sense that god gave a goose to focus on the real existential threat that Japan is facing: climate change.

Prior to the Battle of Okinawa and the firebombing of Tokyo and the atomic butcherings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan did -it is true- have a history of being attacked.  That was though all the way back in 1274 and 1281 when Mongol fleets attempted to land invading hordes. These were famously eventually beaten back to the mainland by what came be known as the “Kamikaze” divine winds.  Now, as 2015 heads to the record books as the hottest year ever recorded, there is another invading force bearing down on Japan. Think of this enemy as a Super Kamikaze on steroids in reverse.3)4) In reverse, because this kamikaze is not here to protect Japan from outsiders.  It is here to destroy Japan as we know it.  This Super Kamikaze is climate change, and its multiple manifestations, all of which are appearing fast, and furiously, and all of which are building in momentum, even as the imagination needed to visualize and deal with them as a security threat, remains almost totally lacking, with a few exceptions.4)5) Anyway, the professional –have the ear of our fearless leaders- security establishment’s imagination is easily distracted by the pinpricks of asymmetrical lashing out (terrorism), and pop-culturesque boogey-men (North Korea).  As an exercise in readjusting the hallucinations of the U.S.-Japan military-industrial-political complex to reality as it really is, just imagine if the damage done by Typhoon Etau (100,000 ordered evacuated) had been done by one their favorite bogeymen, North Korea or China?  These sorts of events are only going to ramp up in frequency and severity.  Oh, and need I mention that Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka face a good probability they will need to be relocated to higher ground, either that or trillions of dollars in defensive infrastructure will need to be built.5)6)

So here is some of what needs to be kept in mind, if the Ampo Joyaku is to move out of the field of fertilizer and into the realms of something truly useful, and even life-saving7)8):

1.  Japan Needs to Ally Itself With the Best, Not an Ally That Excels at Destruction and Loses to Minor Insurgencies (After Creating Them)

First of all, the U.S. is its own worst enemy and so by Japan being allied with the U.S. it is also allied with its own worse enemy.  This is true of the extremely minor threat of terrorism, almost entirely brought into being as manifestations of blowback to various forms of U.S. violence and injustice, and more importantly in terms of the blowback of climate change, almost entirely brought into being by a Western economic model predicated on enriching the few by dangling illusions of happiness to the many all at the expense of the earth's life support systems.  One would have thought Japan learned in WWII that allying itself with a country that was, shall we say, morally problematic, was not a good idea.  The majority of Japanese want to ally themselves with forces trying to bring into being a more just, more sustainable earth.  That its leadership has been seized by nationalistic paranoids only serves to remind one of a similar phenomena that happened in the U.S.

2. When “Growth” Kills It is Suicide/Murder

The current dominant economic system is delusional in the extreme.  When real costs are factored in (negative externalities including but not limited to climate change impacts, direct and indirect subsidies, and human and social costs) none of the world’s leading corporations are really profitable.9) Given that we are destroying our life support systems in favor of the illusion of abundance, we must radically correct our economic evaluations of “profit” to incorporate natural system sustainability and repair, and human happiness as opposed to human greed.  Japan’s natural cultural inclinations are to lead exactly in this direction.  One might think of this, in terms of sustainability, as a push toward a global “Edo Period.”

3. Seizure and Internationalization of the Assets of Oil and Gas Companies That Committed Criminal Acts of Deception

Although it can be expected that U.S. courts will eventual find the major oil and gas companies culpable of practicing criminal deceit10) resulting in massive loss of life and property, given that the preponderance of damage is in the global south it would be preferable for these trials to be handled by an international tribunal so that assets are better assured of reaching the majority of the victims.  With it’s strong support for the resolution of issues through the use of international law (the exception between it’s disputed island territory issues) Japan would be a natural leader to support the set up of this type of international environmental tribunal

4. Emergency Build-up of Food Emergency Infrastructure

With Japan importing more seafood than any other country in the world (80% of the world’s fish stocks fully exploited, overexploited, or recovering and the oceans acidifying quickly), and importing roughly 60% of its food, one needs to keep in mind that food security is one of the earliest victims of climate change. Local regional and global food supply networks can be expected to quickly shatter in a non-linear fashion after one or two significant climate events.11)  As such a global focus on new climate change-resistant food security infrastructure is of the essence, and Japan, given its great vulnerability should be in the forefront.  Vertical farming at every scale from the mega-scale ringing mega-cities, to the quickly installable “food security life raft” version for small remote communities must be put in place if societal break-down is to be avoided.

5. Rational Staged Withdrawal from the Coasts

Although there may be some high value coastal cities where a cost-benefit analysis suggest that expensive coastal defenses may be a viable alternative (and certainly there may be creative ways to save some of Japan’s coastal plains where 96% of its population dwells) it is probably a better defense to put in place plans now to begin shifting 10’s of millions of people inland to avoid inundation.  Models that incorporate real-world fast and slow feedbacks predict multi-meter seal level rise by the end of the century, and perhaps even earlier, and moreover, paleo-climactic data from eras that had our current level of CO2 in the atmosphere reveal we have a 200-300 feet deficit between where sea levels are now and where we can expect them to reach.7)

6. Degrowth and “Other-growth” in the so-called developed world.  Green growth still allowable in the developing world.

We can all live simpler, and by living simpler, actually be happier.  There are few countries with an innate economic-ecological-philosophy that are so naturally akin to this idea, as Japan.  Go forth Japan and lead the world towards happy Zen-garden sustainable sobriety!

7. A Massive “New Hydrology” Effort to Protect, and Expand the Carbon Sequestration Ability of Terrestrial Land Masses

There is a set of super-high tech, deus ex machina technologies capable of sucking CO2 from the atmosphere and directly transforming it into a useful form.  They are called TREES.  Japan, do everything you can, for your own protection, to lead the world in a massive effort not just to protect existing forests, but to radically expand efforts at global reforestation.

8. An agreement on shifting to a complete, global, climate change war footing including rationing, until such time as the crisis is past.

Once upon a time, Japan imagined itself, unhappily for its neighbors, at the center of an Asian Co-Prosperity sphere.  There are no centers any more. But the sphere, the global and local sphere of the commons is with us now.  Japan could be a radiant green beacon of loveliness and livability and that vision, would do more for its standing in the world then scrapping the peace constitution, and going to bed with a country that ignores, -when it so choses- international law, ever will.

Inashu wa

jisei o homete

tatarekeri

(The doctors

praise his death poem

and depart.)

References:

1. “Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA,“ Time Weiner, Anchor, May 2008
2. Ibid
3. “Why Tropical Storm Vongfong May Just Be The Beginning For Japan” Jeff Spross, Climate Progress, Oct 12, 2014 (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/10/12/3579143/vongfong-japan-storm-losses/
4. “Catalogue of abrupt shifts in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change climate models” Sybren Drijfhout, et al, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) Oct. 12, 2015
5. DOD 2014 Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap, http://www.acq.osd.mil/ie/download/CCARprint_wForeword_c.pdf
6. Could a US-Japan “Green Alliance” Transform the Climate-Energy Equation? Andrew DeWitt, Japan Focus, May 2014 http://japanfocus.org/-Andrew-DeWit/4111
7. “Sea-level rise due to polar ice-sheet mass loss during past warm periods” A. Dutton, A. E. Carlson, A. J. Long, G. A. Milne4, P. U. Clark, R. DeConto5, B. P. Horton, S. Rahmstorf, M. E. Raymo; Science 10 July 2015: Vol. 349 no. 6244
8. “Ice melt, sea level rise and superstorms: evidence from paleoclimate data, climate modeling, and modern observations that 2OC global warming is highly dangerous” Hansen, et al, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussion, 15, 20059–20179, 2015
9. “The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity, Ecological and Economic Foundation” TEEB http://www.teebweb.org/our-publications/teeb-study-reports/ecological-and-economic-foundations/
10. “The Climate Deception Dossiers” Union of Concerned Scientists Report http://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/fight-misinformation/climate-deception-dossiers-fossil-fuel-industry-memos#.VapofIvR-ug July 2015
11. "Trade-Off: Financial System Supply-Chain Cross-Contagion: a study in global systemic collapse" David Korowicz, Metis Risk Consulting & Feasta, June 30, 2012

Author's Note: D. H. Garrett is a Senior Associate at the Asia Institute and a former U.S. Department of State Foreign Service Officer.

DISCLAIMER:  The views expressed herein are solely those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Department of State or the U.S. Government.

Why Most Of What You Think You Know About The Paris Climate Deal Is Wrong: An Annotated News Story

by

Avi Lewis , Rajiv Sicora 

Commondreams.org

 14 Comments

(Photo: Francois Mori/AP)

With a little distance from the COP21 climate negotiations in Paris, it’s clear that the meaning of the deal struck there is deeply contested. From the euphoric pronouncements of politicians like U.S. President Obama (this is “the best chance we have to save the one planet that we’ve got”) to the scathing dismissal of climate scientist James Hansen (it’s a “fraud”), lots of people reading the coverage of the agreement are understandably confused about what to make of it.

As independent journalists who were in Paris for the duration of the talks, following the twists and turns of the negotiations, we’ve been dismayed (if not surprised) by how faithfully large news organizations have reported spin as fact.

So in the spirit of correcting the record, we’ve annotated parts of a typical news story on the deal. While we chose the New York Times, we could easily have done the same for any of the major wire services or other big news organizations: the coverage was by and large as homogenous as it was inaccurate.

Nations Approve Landmark Climate Accord in Paris

By CORAL DAVENPORT

DEC. 12, 2015

LE BOURGET, France — With the sudden bang of a gavel Saturday night, representatives of 195 nations reached a landmark accord that will, for the first time, commit nearly every country to lowering planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions to help stave off the most drastic effects of climate change.

If only this were true. In fact, the agreement does not commit countries to lowering emissions. To be sure, the text “invites,” “recommends,” “encourages,” “requests,” “further requests,” and even “urges” countries to do a number of procedural things. And there are reporting requirements. But the key obligation on each one is to submit goals that it “intends to achieve.” As long as a country’s goals are regularly updated, and as long as governments “pursue” actions “with the aim of achieving the objectives,” they are all free to completely fail to lower emissions without consequence.

The deal, which was met with an eruption of cheers and ovations from thousands of delegates gathered from around the world, represents a historic breakthrough on an issue that has foiled decades of international efforts to address climate change.

Given that the deal just binds countries to a process, rather than actual results, the smog of self-congratulation has been surprisingly thick. John Kerry boasted that it would “prevent the worst, most devastating consequences of climate change from ever happening.” Al Gore called it a “universal and ambitious agreement,” and insisted that the era of “sustainable economic growth is now firmly and inevitably underway.”

We learned from Richard Branson that “the course of history has shifted”—thanks to “the world’s greatest diplomatic success,” as a headline in The Guardian proclaimed. Bloggers like Jonathan Chait called it “one of the great triumphs in history.” Economists like Jeffrey Sachs said that “agreements such as these appeal to our better angels” and called on us to “hail the Paris climate change agreement and get to work.”

Traditionally, such pacts have required developed economies like the United States to take action to lower greenhouse gas emissions, but they have exempted developing countries like China and India from such obligations.

The accord, which United Nations diplomats have been working toward for nine years, changes that dynamic by requiring action in some form from every country, rich or poor.

Actually, the deal changes the dynamic by all but erasing the crucial principle of equity from the climate regime.

The Paris deal pays lip service to the idea of “common but differentiated responsibilities” (CBDR), which was a bedrock of the UN climate convention that began these talks in 1992. It says that the richest, long-time polluters are obligated to cut emissions first and deepest, while providing climate finance for poor countries, where people are the least culpable and the most vulnerable.

But inside the Paris talks, wealthy countries launched a determined assault on that idea, waging a successful campaign to shift far more of the burden onto the countries of the global South. That’s not going to be a helpful “dynamic” in the years ahead, particularly because many of those developing countries are already leading on climate policy—another under-reported fact that is key to understanding the true nature of the Paris deal.

According to a landmark civil society review of current climate pledges, when you factor in each country’s responsibility for historical emissions and its capacity to pay for climate action, developing countries—including China and India—are already doing their fair share (or even more). Rich countries are not. The US and EU have each pledged roughly a fifth of their fair shares.

“This is truly a historic moment,” the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said in an interview. “For the first time, we have a truly universal agreement on climate change, one of the most crucial problems on earth.”

What Does a Climate Deal Mean for the World?

A group of 195 nations reached a landmark climate agreement on Saturday. Here is what it means for the planet, business, politics and other areas.

President Obama, who regards tackling climate change as a central element of his legacy, spoke of the deal in a televised address from the White House. “This agreement sends a powerful signal that the world is fully committed to a low-carbon future,” he said. “We’ve shown that the world has both the will and the ability to take on this challenge.”

As Obama crafts his climate legacy, the U.S. role in the negotiations has been woefully under-reported. One of the key U.S. goals in Paris was to rule out liability or mandatory compensation for climate damages in poor countries. To help push through that and other demands, Obama’s negotiators cynically dangled support for a temperature target of 1.5 degrees Celsius—the goal that low-lying island and African nations have long fought for, given that their survival is at stake.

It seems that was enough to convince many poor countries to drop their demand for a strong “loss and damage” mechanism that could have been an immediate, concrete lifeline for countries hardest hit by the climate crisis. And in the end, of course, the “carrot” of 1.5 degrees was withdrawn and the very weakest language related to the temperature target was adopted. The final deal sets a goal of “well below” 2 degrees Celsius, adding only that governments should “pursue efforts” to meet the 1.5 target.

But the damage to “loss and damage” had been done.

The U.S. was also behind a last-minute “technical correction” announced at the scene of celebration at the final plenary. While this was presented in many news accounts as the great grammatical catch that saved a global climate deal, it actually marked the final watering down of the text. The U.S. insisted on changing the word “shall” (legally binding) to “should” (clearly not) in a crucial section: the duty of industrialized countries like the U.S. to take the lead on cutting emissions. From the beginning of the negotiations process in Paris, developing countries found themselves outmaneuvered and outnumbered, with smaller delegations struggling to keep up with the dozens of closed-door sessions happening at any one time. Civil society organizations and frontline voices, meanwhile, were often simply shut out.

Scientists and leaders said the talks here represented the world’s last, best hope of striking a deal that would begin to avert the most devastating effects of a warming planet.

Mr. Ban said there was “no Plan B” if the deal fell apart. The Eiffel Tower was illuminated with that phrase Friday night.

The new deal will not, on its own, solve global warming. At best, scientists who have analyzed it say, it will cut global greenhouse gas emissions by about half enough as is necessary to stave off an increase in atmospheric temperatures of 2 degrees Celsius or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. That is the point at which, scientific studies have concluded, the world will be locked into a future of devastating consequences, including rising sea levels, severe droughts and flooding, widespread food and water shortages and more destructive storms.

In fact, one of the most remarkable features of the agreement is that it makes a point of highlighting its own inadequacy, noting that “much greater emission reduction efforts will be required” to meet even the 2 degree temperature target—and that current country commitments will likely lead to a 3 or even 4 degree temperature rise. That level of climate change, experts say, is “incompatible with any reasonable characterization of an organized, equitable and civilized global community.”   

No major news organization felt that this fact might serve as a strong lead. But even buried deep in a news story, it puts all the triumphalism in a different light. This is a special breed of “historic breakthrough,” one that asserts itself as totally insufficient and that happens to put us on a path to apocalypse.

But the Paris deal could represent the moment at which, because of a shift in global economic policy, the inexorable rise in planet-warming carbon emissions that started during the Industrial Revolution began to level out and eventually decline.

At the same time, the deal could be viewed as a signal to global financial and energy markets, triggering a fundamental shift away from investment in coal, oil and gas as primary energy sources toward zero-carbon energy sources like wind, solar and nuclear power.

This is an interpretation shared by both politicians and many large environmental groups. It is clear that climate campaigners will be using the deal to pressure governments to make precisely this kind of historic shift.

But again, the text itself tells a different story. It never mentions fossil fuels. Not once. The phrase “renewable energy” appears a single time.

In fact, in the definition of the long-term emissions reduction goal (the absolute weakest option that had been on the table in Paris), we catch a glimpse of the future envisioned by the parties. The text says that countries will “aim” for a “balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century.”

First of all, experts are pretty unequivocal that we should be entirely off of fossil fuels by mid-century. By introducing the notion that, post 2050, we can balance emissions with the removal of carbon from the atmosphere, the Paris deal keeps the door wide open for fossil fuel corporations to continue polluting, as long as they try to develop unproven and risky technologies to capture carbon and store it somewhere. This language also throws a lifeline to carbon trading schemes with so-called “offsets,” which have failed miserably at reducing emissions, while too often displacing communities from their traditional lands to clear the way for monocrop plantations.

Inside the Paris Climate Deal

There’s a lot we could say about the historical and political context of these talks, but we’ll stick to the deal itself. Skip ahead a bit for the next comment.

Highlights from the final draft text of a climate agreement submitted to the delegates in Paris.

“The world finally has a framework for cooperating on climate change that’s suited to the task,” said Michael Levi, an expert on energy and climate change policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Whether or not this becomes a true turning point for the world, though, depends critically on how seriously countries follow through.”

Just five years ago, such a deal seemed politically impossible. A similar 2009 climate change summit meeting in Copenhagen collapsed in acrimonious failure after countries could not unite around a deal.

Unlike in Copenhagen, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius of France said on Saturday, the stars for this assembly were aligned.

The changes that led to the Paris accord came about through a mix of factors, particularly major shifts in the domestic politics and bilateral relationships of China and the United States, the world’s two largest greenhouse gas polluters.

Since the Copenhagen deal collapsed, scientific studies have confirmed that the earliest impacts of climate change have started to sweep across the planet. While scientists once warned that climate change was a problem for future generations, recent scientific reports have concluded that it has started to wreak havoc now, from flooding in Miami to droughts and water shortages in China.

In a remarkable shift from their previous standoffs over the issue, senior officials from both the United States and China praised the Paris accord on Saturday night.

Representatives of the “high-ambition coalition,” including Foreign Minister Tony de Brum of the Marshall Islands, left, wore lapel pins made of dried coconut fronds, a symbol of Mr. de Brum’s country.

Secretary of State John Kerry, who has spent the past year negotiating behind the scenes with his Chinese and Indian counterparts in order to help broker the deal, said, “The world has come together around an agreement that will empower us to chart a new path for our planet.”

Xie Zhenhua, the senior Chinese climate change negotiator, said, “The agreement is not perfect, and there are some areas in need of improvement.” But he added, “This does not prevent us from marching forward with this historic step.” Mr. Xie called the deal “fair and just, comprehensive and balanced, highly ambitious, enduring and effective.”

Negotiators from many countries have said that a crucial moment in the path to the Paris accord came last year in the United States, when Mr. Obama enacted the nation’s first climate change policy — a set of stringent new Environmental Protection Agency regulations designed to slash greenhouse gas pollution from the nation’s coal-fired power plants. Meanwhile, in China, the growing internal criticism over air pollution from coal-fired power plants led President Xi Jinping to pursue domestic policies to cut coal use.

In November 2014 in Beijing, Mr. Obama and Mr. Xi announced that they would jointly pursue plans to cut domestic greenhouse gas emissions. That breakthrough announcement was seen as paving the way to the Paris deal, in which nearly all the world’s nations have jointly announced similar plans.

The final language did not fully satisfy everyone. Representatives of some developing nations expressed consternation. Poorer countries had pushed for a legally binding provision requiring that rich countries appropriate a minimum of at least $100 billion a year to help them mitigate and adapt to the ravages of climate change. In the final deal, that $100 billion figure appears only in a preamble, not in the legally binding portion of the agreement.

The way it treats climate finance is another major failing of the Paris deal, though it has received little attention in the reporting. In fact, a little context makes this development even starker.

For developing countries, this issue has been one of the crucial sticking points in negotiations for the last decade. The Paris deal represents a huge step backwards.

First of all, the goal of $100 billion a year has been weakened, with developed countries striking any mention of “new” or “additional” funding from the legally-binding part of the agreement. There is no real process for strengthening existing finance commitments.

And even those existing commitments are not being honoured. Not even close. Much of the $100 billion was supposed to be channeled through the “Green Climate Fund,” created in 2010. It took 4 years for pledges to the fund to reach a mere $10 billion. By the start of the Paris talks, less than $1 billion had actually been collected, and a first round of projects amounting to a grand total of $168 million was hurriedly approved.

Finally, the goal of raising $100 billion per year was woefully inadequate to begin with. According to the International Energy Agency, in order to meet the 2 degree goal, annual green energy and efficiency investments need to be approaching $1 trillion by 2020, with most new spending happening in the developing world.

“We’ve always said that it was important that the $100 billion was anchored in the agreement,” said Tosi Mpanu-Mpanu, a negotiator for the Democratic Republic of Congo and the incoming leader of a coalition known as the Least Developed Countries coalition. In the end, though, they let it go.

Despite the historic nature of the Paris climate accord, its success still depends heavily on two factors outside the parameter of the deal: global peer pressure and the actions of future governments.

The core of the Paris deal is a requirement that every nation take part. Ahead of the Paris talks, governments of 186 nations put forth public plans detailing how they would cut carbon emissions through 2025 or 2030.

Those plans alone, once enacted, will cut emissions by half the levels required to stave off the worst effects of global warming. The national plans vary vastly in scope and ambition — while every country is required to put forward a plan, there is no legal requirement dictating how, or how much, countries should cut emissions.

Thus, the Paris pact has built in a series of legally binding requirements that countries ratchet up the stringency of their climate change policies in the future. Countries will be required to reconvene every five years, starting in 2020, with updated plans that would tighten their emissions cuts.

Countries will also be legally required to reconvene every five years starting in 2023 to publicly report on how they are doing in cutting emissions compared to their plans. They will be legally required to monitor and report on their emissions levels and reductions, using a universal accounting system.

We can’t afford to wait years for our global political class to “ratchet up” its ambition. Thankfully, countless movements around the world are already leading the way, today, where the real action is—keeping fossil fuels in the ground and championing alternatives, whether it’s kicking Shell out of the Arctic or building community wind and solar from Germany to Bangladesh. Every week, these movements are racking up new victories, building pressure from below for governments to take the kind of ambitious action that the crisis—and the science—demands.

And that is where we see the best hope of urgent, immediate climate action: local victories building momentum and power, politicians taking their cue and implementing scaled-up policy frameworks that translate those breakthroughs to the regional and national levels.

A great example is the city of Portland, where years of local victories against coal export terminals and Arctic drilling schemes have culminated in the municipal government passing a resolution against any new fossil fuel infrastructure. And now cities across the Pacific Northwest of the U.S. are discussing doing the same.

There is nothing triumphant about declarations of intent at diplomatic confabs. But as movements ratchet up the pressure on the politicians who spoke such fine words in Paris, history could indeed be written in the wake of this deal.

And it better be. We need to see signs of genuine, real-world progress before the “Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement…take[s] stock of the implementation of this Agreement to assess the collective progress towards achieving the purpose of this Agreement and its long-term goals” in eight long, hot years’ time.

© 2015 This Changes Everything

Avi Lewis is a journalist and documentary filmmaker who, alongside the book written by his wife Naomi Klein, is working on the feature-length film of their joint project, This Changes Everything.

Rajiv Sicora edits The Leap. He worked with Naomi Klein as leader of the research team on This Changes Everything from 2010-14, and was an Associate Producer on the companion documentary film directed by Avi Lewis. He lives in New York City.

Autoradiograph: a photo project to visualize radiation released from Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.

The author of the below website has asked us to remove the image and video. 

While TokyoProgressive posts news and opinions from other websites under FAIR USE principles, we are complying in this case since readers can go to the site in question and make up their own minds.

PLEASE SEE
http://www.autoradiograph.org/en/

and

Short movie2 - History and Process of Autoradiograph - from Masa on Vimeo.



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American Veterans for Peace Activist in Okinawa

Veterans for Peace Solidarity Action/退役米軍人ら連帯の座り込み抗議「辺野古にも高江にも新基地要らぬ」

両脇を抱えられて、機動隊車両と鉄柵による囲い込み場所へ連れて行かれるＶＦＰ
メンバー＝１１日午前７時２４分、名護市辺野古

Thanks to Masami Mel Kawamura, who writes: Along with other local protesters, the VFP members were forcefully removed by Japanese riot police. Nonetheless, the VFP members' presence was a huge boost to the sprit of the local protesters. After regrouping themselves at the main gate of Camp Schwab, the protesters celebrated their solidarity with each other and their commitment to creating a peaceful world. 

基地内に入る米軍車両に新基地建設反対を訴えるＶＦＰ
メンバー＝１１日午前７時５０分、名護市辺野古

【辺野古問題取材班】米軍普天間飛行場の名護市辺野古への移設に反対する市民の座り込みが続く米軍キャンプ・シュワブゲート前で１１日午前、米軍の退役軍人らで構成する平和団体「ベテランズ・フォー・ピース（ＶＦＰ）」のメンバー１１人が座り込みに参加した。旧ゲート前で英語で「辺野古新基地はいらない」「普天間飛行場の閉鎖を」「高江にヘリパッド要らない」と書かれた横断幕を掲げ、移設に反対する市民ら約８０人と拳を上げた。

両脇を抱えられて、機動隊車両と鉄柵による囲い込み場所へ連れて行かれるＶＦＰメンバー＝１１日午前７時２４分、名護市辺野古 　米海兵隊員としてイラク侵攻にも出兵したマイク・ヘインズさんは、機動隊員に抱えられて排除される時も「ＮＯ　ＮＥＷ　ＢＡＳＥ」と訴え続けた。 　

新ゲートでも抗議デモと座り込みが行われ、ＶＦＰのメンバーがあいさつした。ＶＦＰ全国組織の理事タラク・キャウフさんは、イギリスや韓国での連帯経験から「辺野古の反対運動は国際的な広がりを持っており、世界中で同じ闘いをしている人がいる。私も皆さんと一緒に闘い続ける」と激励した。 　

早朝抗議行動にＶＦＰが参加したため機動隊らは「日本人から排除。外国人は後」と声を掛け合い、慎重さを見せる場面もあった。 　１１日は、午前７時ごろと同９時ごろに砕石を積んだダンプカーやミキサー車などの大型車両１３台を含む工事関係車両約２０台が基地内に入った。 　大浦湾海上では目立った海上作業は確認されていない。市民らは抗議船４隻、カヌー１３艇で抗議行動を続けている。 【琉球新報電子版】

 FROM http://ryukyushimpo.jp/news/entry-186778.html

Hoover's War on Gays: Exposing the FBI's Sex Deviates Program

Here is a necessary addition to the literature on FBI harassment of Americans and on U.S. social movements over the last century.

Philip Clark

Lamda Literary

November 27, 2015

Hoover’s War on Gays: Exposing the FBI’s “Sex Deviates” Program
By Douglas M. Charles
University of Kansas Press
ISBN: 9780700621194

I confess to a degree of skepticism when I began reading Douglas M. Charles’s new tome, Hoover’s War on Gays: Exposing the FBI’s “Sex Deviates” Program. The activities of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and J. Edgar Hoover, its insufferable longtime director, would seem by this point to be well-worn scholarly territory.

The field is both broad and deep. To name just a relevant few, FBI historian Athan Theoharis (a mentor to Charles) has written extensively about the FBI’s role in civil liberties abuses, Cold War-era red-baiting, and failed counterintelligence, and even addressed the longstanding rumors about Hoover’s own sexuality in J. Edgar Hoover, Sex, and Crime. Betty Medsger’s recent The Burglary detailed the rise and fall of the FBI’s COINTELPRO program that illegally surveilled and attacked a variety of civil rights, New Left, and countercultural groups. Meanwhile, Douglas Charles himself has surveyed the FBI’s role in “the rise of the domestic security state.” In his brief and brilliant exposé, The FBI’s Obscene File, he also described the bureau’s classification of alleged obscene materials, including how it used such classification to attempt to destroy the organized gay and lesbian movement.

But as is often the case, a thorough scholarly explication of the role and importance of gays and lesbians to any particular historical moment has been the last to arrive. Fortunately, though, Hoover’s War on Gays is that necessary book. It takes its place beside such works as Kenneth O’Reilly’s Racial Matters, about the FBI’s attack on black civil rights organizations, in exhaustively detailing the effects of Hoover’s policies on specific social movements.

Charles dates Hoover and the FBI’s obsession with gays and lesbians to the 1930s, particularly the 1937 kidnapping and murder of a young boy named Charles Mattson. This particular case previewed features of decades of Hoover’s future actions: attacking marginalized groups for political gain and currying favor with the politically powerful. Despite there being no evidence that Mattson was sexually assaulted, the press reported that the FBI was seeking “sexual pervert[s]” in the case, and the public made mental associations between homosexuality and sexual degeneracy. Democratic president Franklin D. Roosevelt also made public statements regarding the case; this forced Hoover, a Republican appointee who was obsessed with maintaining his job and the FBI’s status, into prioritizing solving Mattson’s murder.

Although the Mattson case was never solved, it was one prominent piece in a late 1930s sex crimes panic that played a role in Hoover’s beginning to collect information about gays as part of a larger drive against “sex offenders.” The FBI’s collecting of such information was intensive, building up to a formal Sex Deviates Program and File beginning in 1950. Although it was not confined to federal government employees, this program frequently used information gathered about such employees to have them fired. For Hoover, information collecting was in no way a passive activity; what he learned was used to destroy lives and to solidify his own power and influence.

The creation of the Sex Deviates File in 1950 displays links to what historian David K. Johnson has dubbed “the Lavender Scare”–the long-term attack on federal employees that had its roots in the same era as McCarthyism. What Johnson showed and Charles more extensively documents here, though, is that the attack on gays in government predates the McCarthy era. The FBI had its hand in helping to oust Sumner Welles, FDR’s undersecretary of state, when Republicans receive evidence of Welles’ repeated drunken solicitations of African American train employees. This was just one of repeated FBI investigations into rumors surrounding the sexual lives of the prominent, among them Senator David I. Walsh, General Philip Faymonville, Supreme Court justice Abe Fortas, and Illinois governor and two-time Democratic presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson (whose index card from the Sex Deviates File is the only one to escape the file’s late 1970s destruction by the FBI). Some of these rumors were true, some not. What Charles makes clear is that Hoover ultimately did not care. These rumors’ truth or falsity was secondary to how useful they might be to Hoover in his relationships with the presidents and lawmakers whose favor he sought.

Of course, as time went on, there were increasing numbers of openly gay men and women for Hoover to harass and attack. The FBI’s investigations into, and surveillance and harassment of, among many others, Mattachine Society founder Harry Hay; Mattachine member and ONE, Inc. founder W. Dorr Legg; original Mattachine Society-DC leader Buell Dwight Huggins; the Daughters of Bilitis; Mattachine Society of Washington co-founder Jack Nichols (whose father, an FBI agent, was demoted and cut off all contact with his son after the FBI uncovered the connection), and, later, the Gay Liberation Front, show Hoover’s desire to crush subversion. That these men and women, who could easily have submitted to fear of the FBI’s power, continued to fight for social and legal changes forms an inspiring counter-narrative in what could have been (and sometimes is) a litany of sad tales. Although Hoover won many battles, the war continued well beyond his death in 1972, and the forces he supported are losing.

And what of Hoover’s own sexuality? His relationship with right-hand man Clyde Tolson has certainly been cause for speculation, and that speculation was firmly in place during Hoover’s lifetime. But as Charles points out at the very beginning of Hoover’s War on Gays, comment on Hoover’s personal sexuality remains speculative. (Certainly anyone who believes the accounts of Hoover appearing in public in drag or at orgies — even without knowing the dubious sources of those claims–has very little understanding of the era in which Hoover lived or the social and political position he was attempting to maintain.) Still, Charles’s further assertion, that Hoover’s sexuality simply does not matter, may be surprising to many. He makes a compelling case, though: Hoover’s relentless assault on gays makes perfect sense even if he were straight. Gays and lesbians were an easy target in the culture wars, and rumors of the prominent’s homosexuality were politically advantageous to Hoover’s continued reign. While it may be psychologically satisfying to assume Hoover acted out of self-hatred, that prism is unnecessary; as Charles says, even if Hoover “was, as they say, straight as an arrow…[his] treatment and targeting of gays would still make sense to us given the era and the larger historical, political, social, and cultural forces at play.” For a thorough treatment of those forces, Hoover’s War on Gays will likely remain unsurpassed.

- See more at: http://portside.org/2015-12-02/hoover%e2%80%99s-war-gays-exposing-fbi%e2%80%99s-sex-deviates-program#sthash.RaRvdRR9.dpuf