Dear People of the World (formerly Dear Americans)

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.

 

 

 

Today marked 7th anniversary of 911 attack on WTC and Pentagon.

 

The U.S. army attacked Afghan and Iraq without mercy to civilians. The purpose was to find Bin-laden.

 But where is he now? In Guantanamo?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Things are getting worse since 911. The photo was taken in July, 1993 just after first terrorist attack took place in WTC. As you see, I was wearing United Nations T shirt. I don' t have that shirt any more.

I think 911 opened the door to awful 21st century.

That is the title of a book written by Mika Tsutsumi, who wrote this book, which I wrote the review of.

She has lived in New York as college student and office worker but since she experienced 911 turmoil, she started to learn what went wrong in the U.S.

In this book, she paid attention to poverty issue. Some of the things mentioned overlap in her previous book.

The book became best-selling non-fiction book in Japan. It was sold at the price of 700 yen (US$7).

At first she talked about subprime loan crisis. The real estate business took mean advantage of poor people who have dreams of having their own houses, which they could never afford by their cheap salaries. They ended up losing  houses and dreams and then being poorer than before.

50 million people don't have medical insurance. 60 million live by the wage under $7 per day. 35 million people are in hunger. That was a result of free economy. The poor gets poorer, the rich gets richer.

Although so many are in hunger, but at the same time so many of them are suffering from obesity. The poverty and the obesity are linked. Poor people cannot afford healthy food. They had to buy cheap junk food which is filled with oil and contain less nutrition. They get fat but lack nutrition that result in sickness but they have no medical insurance to cure. The medical insurance issue she mentioned is similar to Micheal Moore's "Sicko."

Americans favour free competition, smaller government, and privatization. Hurricane Katrina was a catastrophie caused by privatization. FEMA was privatized and disaster prevention budget was cut-off.

In the last chapter, she described working poor became new type of military drafting system. A truck driver was offered high-paying job in Iraq by a military contractor. After months of labor in Iraq, he got leukemia because he drunk highly radioactive water. He had no insurance coverage to take care of his illness. Even though he got a big money for that job, he had to use all of it to cure the illness and ended up being poorer and getting heavy illness.

The poor people had no choice but to work for the military which offers only very hard and dangerous tasks.

That is the true figure of America, now. The popularity of Obama seems to be supported by those who experience such hard situations.

Today the U.S. marked very historical moment, Afro-American was nominated for presidential candidate of major political party. Some might hope because he is Black, he should know how the oppressed feel.

Can Ob(s)ama-Bi(nla)den change things better for the U.S. rather than fighting against terrorists outside their country? No more war and poverty, please! 

 

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.