Nader writes: "Last month, the ruling Japanese coalition parties quickly rammed through Parliament a state secrets law. We Americans better take notice. Under its provisions the government alone decides what are state secrets and any civil servants who divulge any 'secrets' can be jailed for up to 10 years. Journalists caught in the web of this vaguely defined law can be jailed for up to 5 years."
This handout picture taken by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on November 27, 2013 shows review mission members of the IAEA inspecting the crippled Tokyo Electric Power CO. (TEPCO) Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in the town of Okuma in Fukushima prefecture. (photo: AFP/IAEA)
The Fukushima Secrecy Syndrome
25 January 14
ast month, the ruling Japanese coalition parties quickly rammed through Parliament a state secrets law. We Americans better take notice.
Under its provisions the government alone decides what are state secrets and any civil servants who divulge any "secrets" can be jailed for up to 10 years. Journalists caught in the web of this vaguely defined law can be jailed for up to 5 years.
Government officials have been upset at the constant disclosures of their laxity by regulatory officials before and after the Fukushima nuclear power disaster in 2011, operated by Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO).
Week after week, reports appear in the press revealing the seriousness of the contaminated water flow, the inaccessible radioactive material deep inside these reactors and the need to stop these leaking sites from further poisoning the land, food and ocean. Officials now estimate that it could take up to 40 years to clean up and decommission the reactors.
Other factors are also feeding this sure sign of a democratic setback. Militarism is raising its democracy-menacing head, prompted by friction with China over the South China Sea. Dismayingly, U.S. militarists are pushing for a larger Japanese military budget. China is the latest national security justification for our "pivot to East Asia" provoked in part by our military-industrial complex.
Draconian secrecy in government and fast-tracking bills through legislative bodies are bad omens for freedom of the Japanese press and freedom to dissent by the Japanese people. Freedom of information and robust debate (the latter cut off sharply by Japan's parliament in December 5, 2013) are the currencies of democracy.
There is good reason why the New York Times continues to cover the deteriorating conditions in the desolate, evacuated Fukushima area. Our country has licensed many reactors here with the same designs and many of the same inadequate safety and inspection standards. Some reactors here are near earthquake faults with surrounding populations which cannot be safely evacuated in case of serious damage to the electric plant. The two Indian Point aging reactors that are 30 miles north of New York City are a case in point.
The less we are able to know about the past and present conditions of Fukushima, the less we will learn about atomic reactors in our own country.
Fortunately many of Japan's most famous scientists, including Nobel laureates, Toshihide Maskawa and Hideki Shirakawa, have led the opposition against this new state secrecy legislation with 3,000 academics signing a public letter of protest. These scientists and academics declared the government's secrecy law a threat to "the pacifist principles and fundamental human rights established by the constitution and should be rejected immediately."Following this statement, the Japan Scientists' Association, Japan's mass media companies, citizens associations, lawyers' organizations and some regional legislatures opposed the legislation. Polls show the public also opposes this attack on democracy. The present ruling parties remain adamant. They cite as reasons for state secrecy "national security and fighting terrorism." Sound familiar?
History is always present in the minds of many Japanese people. They know what happened in Japan when the unchallenged slide toward militarization of Japanese society led to the intimidating tyranny that drove the invasion of China, Korea and Southeast Asia before and after Pearl Harbor. By 1945, Japan was in ruins, ending with Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The American people have to be alert to our government's needless military and political provocations of China, which is worried about encirclement by surrounding U.S.-allied nations and U.S. air and sea power. Washington might better turn immediate attention to U.S. trade policies that have facilitated U.S. companies shipping American jobs and whole industries to China.
The Obama administration must become more alert to authoritarian trends in Japan that its policies have been either encouraging or knowingly ignoring - often behind the curtains of our own chronic secrecy.
The lessons of history beckon.
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https://www.lewrockwell.com/2007/08/charles-burris/americas-first-fascist-president/
Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal: An Annotated Bibliographic Guide
roosevelt did not talk about socialism because he knew the owner class thought of socialists as people who would steal their money and than make slaves of them.
of course socialists don't see themselves that way. they see themselves as defending workers from employers who steal their money and make slaves of them.
it's still not smart to call yourself a socialist in american politics.
it's even less smart to run around "demanding" the rich pay for everything you want.
FDR made sure Social Security was NOT "welfare" but insurance for workers paid for by the workers themselves it turned out to be a really good idea.
no wonder both the insane right and the far left both hate it.
the right settling for nothing but law of the jungle and the left settling for nothing but "make the rich pay."
and the pundits knowing nothing about it.
In principle I don't care if the rich get richer, UNLESS they do so at my expense, which is generally the case. But emphasizing that muddies the issue.
Ultimately the one percent are better off if they understand that they have a lot in common with everyone else. Having as much money in comparison with even, say, the 50th percentile as the one percent currently does insulates them from the real tribulations of everyone else to the extent that they see themselves as a different KIND of person, or maybe not a person at all but some kind of inherently superior beings.
DINO'S. =. Democrats In Name Only
because so few "get it!"
and media does not care to explain it!
We have just been through a week of acrimony over what makes a "concentration camp" different from, say, a Boy Scout camp or an outdoor prison surrounded by razor wire whose occupants are abused, starved and treated as sub-humans. Similarly, the word "socialism" is used to mean more different arrangements than there are people who identify as socialists, with virtually everyone who uses the term claiming that their definition is its one and only true meaning.
Words that have such broad and disparate meanings have no meaning at all, so become bludgeons to say "You're wrong, COMPLETELY wrong, and I'm completely right" (cf. "liberal," "conservative") . The issue is not what socialism is or isn't, nor is it whether socialism is good or bad, but "cui bono?" (for whose benefit--Latin, so this has been an issue for a very long time). Propagandists for every tyrant who ever lived insisted that their every act was for the good of the people, and enough of the people believed it enough of the time to keep the tyrants in power most of the time, and it is still the case today. The only real remedy seems to be universal public education in BS detection.
But, in any case, Bernie doesn't get too far ahead of what he thinks is possible to accomplish in the intermediate term. The programs he has outlined may not meet some peoples definition of socialism but they will lay the groundwork for more after he is out of office.