13 September 2008
Attempted Resistance Attack to Yokosuka Navy Base?
Last Friday, on the day U.S. Navy announced the entry of Nuclear aircraft carrier in Yokosuka city, George Washington to be 25 of September. The kind of granade weapon were fired from mountain near the U.S. Navy Base in Yokosuka. The shots could not reach the base, but it was appearent they were aimed towards the base. Yokosuka is located near Japan's capital Tokyo. The most dense region in the world with the population of 30 million.
Citizens have been protesting the deployment because of the danger of nuclear reactor inside the ship. The ship itself caught the fire on the sea and the deployment was delayed for more than a month. It was supposed to be deployed on 19 of August. The fear grew by the fire accident. Not only that it was found U.S. navy submarine, Houston leaked radioaction into the sea for 2 years.
Such incident was easily predicted. Americans might call it "Terror Attack." For us, it is not. It is a resistance attack like what happened in Occupied France by Nazi-Germany, Vietnam in 1960's to 70's and Baghdad currently.
It is illegal, and the violent act should not be encouraged but those who do not welcome the ship and the U.S. military presence at all, are reluctant to condemn such act.
However, I am doing another type of resistance. Boycotting American goods (except things necessary for my life and movies, music, books and art works.) That way is more peaceful. I also demand Japanese goverment not to provide aid to the U.S. military bases and eventually get rid of them from Japan. I am no longer American friend. The below is what I posted You Tube for the PR of protest. This was before the arrival schedule change was announced. So the scheduled arrival date indicated in the clip is August 19, which was delayed to September 25. I am planning to make new version of it with music and more details after the dangerous ship arrived in our capital region.
22:35 Posted in Japan News, US-Japan relationship, USA issues | Permalink | Comments (0) | Tags: military, navy, nuclear aircraft carrier, nuclear power
04 August 2008
Stupid comic book and Fireworks
On 2nd of August, I went to U.S. Navy Base in Yokosuka city, 30 kilometers from Tokyo.
On that day, "Navy Friendship Day" festival was held there. "Friendship?" Huh? Are they our friends?
The navy is bringing very dangerous ship to the sea near our capital. That is CVN 73, George Washington.
They were providing comic books that describe life of the crews, how much they are excited to live in Japan, how much they love Japan. Such a cliche just irritated me.
In fact the story were all fiction including the scene of the fire in laundry room. A crew extinguished the fire from a dryer immediately and prevented it from spreading.
In May the CVN 73 caught a big fire on the sea near South America. The fire spread out to 80 compartments in the ship. It took 12 hours to extinguish the fire. The cause of the fire was announced 2 months later and it was from cigarette in non-smoking area. The fire was flashed off flammable fuels near it. The fuels were placed in prohibited area.
The morale of the crews was proved to be terrible. We can never rely on such crews for controlling the dangerous nuclear ship. I've already written a post about danger of nuclear aircraft carrier on this blog several times. I also posted You Tube video clip for this issue.
At night I saw fireworks lighting over the sea. It was very beautiful scene. I really enjoyed especially because I could see it lying on the football field inside the base.
The cost of maintaining the base facilities came from our tax. If they are protecting our land, I wouldn't care. But they just use that for their purposes and threaten our lives. We don't want them around us any more.
America should change their policy. They have to care about their own people rather than people outside their country. Abondon foreign bases and go back to traditional isolationism.
Last month I saw the documentary film featuring the U.S. soldiers and their miserable lives. The title was "AMERICA BANZAI, crazy as usual." The film featured Iraq war veterans who ended up being homeless after they came back home. Young soldier who refused to go to Iraq and dishonorably discharged. I hope this would be shown in the U.S. The director of the film is Japanese.
Living as American seems so hard except being Paris Hilton.
21:55 Posted in Japan News, US-Japan relationship, USA issues | Permalink | Comments (0) | Tags: nuclear aircraft carrier, military, Movies, navy, documentary, nuclear power
06 July 2008
I was right! That was racist ad!
Last month, I mentioned the below ad was racist using monkey as OBAMA in presidential election campaign.
The company that uses the ad, EMOBILE admitted the commercial was offensive to Afro-Americans considering the historical fact that monkey character had been used to portray Blacks as inferior creature to other people. Then early this month, they announced they would not air the commercial on TV and pulled the ad. However, they said they never meant to insult Black people by this ad because monkeys has been their maskots in their company's products.
I've mentioned this issue last month on this blog, see this article posted on June 21. I also mentioned on Japan's well-known internet newspaper, JANJAN. This is the article (in Japanese.) Some people object my view because I seem to make extreme interpretation of the ad concept. There are a lot of commercials that use animals to portray human characters.
But as a result, I was right. EMOBILE received so many complaints from Americans living in Japan. CNN covered this story. I knew that would happen because I used to live in the U.S. and learned so much about history of racism. I took Black Studies course.
Well, that helped. Most Japanese are ignorant about this issue because our society is much less diverse than the U.S. in terms of race and ethncity.
EMOBILE wasted so much ad budget but they learned good lesson. So did many Japanese citizens.
20:20 Posted in Japan News | Permalink | Comments (0) | Tags: racism, election, Afro-American
21 June 2008
Isn't this Racist Ad?
18:05 Posted in Japan News, Politics | Permalink | Comments (0) | Tags: racism, election, Afro-American