Report: More Americans going hungry

By Amy Goldstein Washington Post
November 16, 2009; 3:14 PM

The number of Americans who lack dependable access to adequate food shot up last year to 49 million, the largest number since the government has been keeping track, according to a federal report released Monday that shows particularly steep increases in food scarcity among families with children.

• Report: More Americans going hungry
• The USDA's 2008 report (pdf)

In 2008, the report found, nearly 17 million children -- more than one in five across the United States -- were living in households in which food at times ran short, up from slightly more than 12 million youngsters the year before. And the number of children who sometimes were outright hungry rose from nearly 700,000 to almost 1.1 million.

Among people of all ages, nearly 15 percent last year did not consistently have adequate food, compared with about 11 percent in 2007, the greatest deterioration in access to food during a single year in the history of the report.

Taken together, the findings provide the latest glimpse into the toll that the weak economy has taken on the well-being of the nation's residents. The findings are from a snapshot of food in America that the U.S. Agriculture Department has issued every year since 1995, based on Census Bureau surveys. It documents both Americans who are scrounging for adequate food -- people living with some amount of "food insecurity" in the lexicon of experts -- and those whose food shortages are so severe that they are hungry.

"These numbers are a wake-up call . . . for us to get very serious about food security and hunger, about nutrition and food safety in this country," Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said during a briefing of reporters.

The report released Monday is the first produced during the tenure of President Obama, who pledged during his campaign for the White House last year to eliminate hunger among children by 2015, a goal that no previous president has set. The administration has not produced a full-fledged plan to meet that objective, but White House and Agriculture officials said in recent interviews that they are developing policies. Among the first is a decision to use $85 million freed up by Congress as part of a recent appropriations bill to experiment with ways to get food to more children during the summer, when subsidized school breakfasts and lunches are unavailable.

Vilsack attributed the marked worsening in Americans' access to food primarily to the rise in unemployment, which now exceeds 10 percent, and in people who are underemployed. "It's no secret. Poverty, unemployment, these are all factors," he said. Vilsack acknowledged that "there could be additional increases" in the 2009 figures, due out a year from now, although he said it is not yet clear how much the problem might be eased by the measures the administration and Congress have taken this year to stimulate the economy.

The report's main author at USDA, Mark Nord, noted that other recent research by the agency has found that most families in which food is scarce contain at least one adult with a full-time job, suggesting that the problem lies at least partly in wages, not just an absence of work.

The government's next significant forum for debating how to improve access to food is likely to come next year, when Congress is scheduled to renew the country's main law covering food and nutrition for children. In the meantime, the White House has been convening frequent meetings with officials from several federal departments -- including Education, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, in addition to Agriculture -- that deal with youngsters' well-being.

The report suggests that the main federal programs intended to help people struggling to get adequate food are only partly fulfilling their purpose. Just more than half of the people surveyed who reported they had food shortages said that they had, in the previous month, participated in one of the government's largest anti-hunger and nutrition programs: food stamps, subsidized school lunches or WIC, the nutrition program for women with babies or young children.

Last year, people in 4.8 million households used private food pantries, compared with 3.9 million in 2007, while people in about 625,000 households resorted to soup kitchens, nearly 90,000 more than the year before.

Food shortages, the report shows, are particularly pronounced among women raising children alone. Last year, more than one in three single mothers reported that they struggled for food and more than one in seven said someone in their home had been hungry -- far eclipsing the food problem in any other kind of household. The report also found that people who are black or Hispanic were more than twice as likely as whites to report that food in their home was scarce.

Poverty and food shortages are linked but are not the same thing, according to the report. Just half the households in which food is scarce have incomes at or below the official poverty level, the data show, while most of the rest live at less than twice the poverty level.

Around the Washington area, the extent of food shortages varies significantly. In the District, an average of 13.7 percent of households between 2006 and 2008 have had at least some problems getting enough food, although the problem in the District is not as severe as it was from a three-year period a decade earlier, according to the report. In Virginia, the prevalence of food shortages also has fallen in the past year to less than 9 percent. In Maryland, the problem has grown slightly worse, increasing to an average of 9.6 percent the past three years from 8.7 percent a decade before.

Overall, the data show that people who do not consistently have enough food experience the problem repeatedly, but not all the time. On average, households with such scarcity had the problem seven months out of the year, while about one-fourth said the problem occurred almost every month.

In the survey used to measure food shortages, people were considered to have food insecurity if they said that answered "yes" to several of a series of questions. Among the questions were whether, in the past year, their food sometimes ran out before they had money to buy more, whether they could not afford to eat nutritionally balanced meals, and whether adults in the family sometimes cut the size of their meals -- or skipped them -- because they lacked enough money for food. The report defined the degree of their food insecurity by the number of the questions to which they answered yes.

President Obama: Don’t Lecture China on Censorship

By Dave Lindorff
The Public Record
Nov 16th, 2009

President Obama, in his visit to China, held a “town meeting” with Chinese students in which he praised openness and lectured them on the value of freedom of information, saying that he is a “supporter of non-censorship” and that open access to information was a “source of strength.”

And yet America is hardly free of censorship. Heck, the president himself has gone to court to prevent the release of photographs of US troops torturing captives in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Guantanamo. Talk about censorship! But it goes way beyond just such crude, totalitarian style control over information.

Let’s just take the issue of depleted uranium weapons, over 1000 tons of which have been expended in the US invasion of Iraq, most of it in populated areas where millions remain exposed to the radioactive dust of the burned material. There is almost no reporting on this topic in the US media. The Pentagon has for years lied about and hidden the effects of this deadly substance, used in shells, bombs and bullets because of its unique ability to penetrate hard steel armor and concrete bunker walls.

It has refused to disclose where the weapons were fired, and has denied US troops the tests that would show if they have been contaminated. It has even resorted to having paid Pentagon hacks surreptitiously libel, slander and otherwise undermine those military sources and journalists who have tried to expose this scourge (this reporter has been the target of such disinformation attacks).

But censorship in the US goes beyond these crude efforts at government-directed control of information. In America, some of the most potent censorship is done by the privately owned media—supposedly a bastion of freedom of expression.

There is no reason why the US media cannot report on depleted uranium and its deadly legacy in places where it has been used, such as Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Kosovo, or on and around American military bases from Maryland to Hawaii. And yet it does not. Just recently, stories have appeared both on Britain’s SkyTV and in the Guardian newspaper, reporting on an alarming rise in unusual birth defects and infant cancers in Fallujah as well as in other Iraqi cities like Basra, Najaf, Baghdad and Samara—all urban areas where there were major assaults by US forces both in the initial invasion, when most of the DU weapons were used, and later during fights against holed-up insurgent groups.

In Fallujah, the Guardian reports that birth defects are up by a staggering 15 times normal—an increase of 1400%! While the article doesn’t mention depleted uranium specifically, and says that doctors in Fallujah have been reluctant to attribute the astonishing number of birth defects to the massive assault on that city by US forces in late 2004, they do cite “radiation and chemicals” which were dumped on the city.

There is no such report about this in the US media.

Is that censorship? Of course it is.

The American government doesn’t tell CBS News or CNN not to report this story, which amounts to a US war crime. It does not (at least generally), contact the editors at the New York Times or the Washington Post and say, “Don’t report on the infant mortality crisis in Iraq, or on the possible connection to US weaponry.” The editors of those news organizations themselves simply decide that either the story is of no importance to readers or they worry that they may be criticized either by the government or by other media organizations for being unpatriotic, or biased.

The end result of such a process, however, is that the American public is as ignorant about certain things as someone in China.

More ignorant in fact.

One thing I learned from living and working as a journalist and journalism teacher in China back in the 1990s is that the Chinese people, with their long experience of living in a totalitarian dictatorship in which all media are owned and tightly controlled by the state and the ruling Communist Party, are acutely aware that they are being lied to and that the truth is being hidden from them. Accordingly, they have learned to read between the lines, to pick up subtle hints in news articles which honest journalists have learned how to slip into their carefully controlled reports. They have also developed a sophisticated private system of person-to-person reporting called xiaodao xiaoxi or, literally, “back-alley news.”

This system used to be word-of-mouth between neighbors and friends. As telephones became ubiquitous, it was done by phone, allowing transmission over long distances quickly. Now there is the internet, which, while it is systematically controlled via what has become known as China’s “Great Firewall”—effectively all of China is like a vast corporate “intranet” which blocks access to outside websites—still allows the flow of email. This is nearly impossible to monitor, particularly when the messages are not bulk mailed to large numbers of addressees.

So in China, reports of corruption, of local rebellions or strikes, or of important news about the outside world that the government wants to keep at bay, manage to circulate widely inside China despite a huge state censorship apparatus.

It works because the Chinese people know they are being lied to and kept in the dark, and they want to break through that official shroud of secrecy and control.

In the US, in contrast, we have a public that for the most part is blissfully unaware of the extent to which our news is being censored, filtered and controlled. We boast of our “free press,” and our open society, and indeed, as a journalist, I am free to write what I want to write.

But given that most people get their news either from corporately owned newspapers or from corporate radio and TV stations, it doesn’t really matter what I or other journalists critical of the Establishment write because it won’t appear in the corporate media. Since most Americans, unlike most Chinese people, assume that they live in a society with a free press and no censorship or control of information, they don’t even bother to look beyond the information that is spoon-fed to them by corporate media sources.

The result is that in my experience I have found peasants in rural Jiangsu or Anhwei Province to in many cases be better informed about their own country and the world than are typical American suburbanites. Certainly if an American wants to be informed, all the information you could want is available, but you have to be first of all aware that you aren’t getting certain information via the obvious sources, and then you have to want to get it, and make the effort to find it. For most Americans, all three of these elements are missing.

The list of censored stories and issues in the US, about which the American public knows almost nothing is staggering, going well beyond just the use of nasty weapons.

Do Americans know that all the other modern western Democracies in the world have some form of national health care—either a state-run system like that in the UK or a single-payer model like that in Canada, or some hybrid like they have in France or Switzerland—and that in all those countries, the systems are so popular that they have survived decades of conservative governments? No. Our corporate media instead report on the crank critics of those systems and allow us to believe they are hated by their citizens.

Do Americans know that the US no longer boasts the best standard of living in the world—or even close? No. Because the American media continue to portray the US as “number one.”

Do Americans know that Al Qaeda was actually a creation of the CIA? No. This important bit of information doesn’t get mentioned in the US media, which always starts the organization’s history at 1988, when it got its name, when actually, its early origins date to the arming of the mujahadeen by the CIA and the CIA-linked Pakistani intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the US wanted to create and support resistance to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

And of course, we rarely get to see the slaughter of women and children that our beloved soldier “heroes” are conducting in Iraq and Afghanistan in our name.

No censorship in America?

Mr. President, please. You may fool us, but at least don’t insult the intelligence of your Chinese audience.

Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-based journalist. He is author of Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Penalty Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal (Common Courage Press, 2003) and The Case for Impeachment (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work is available at thiscantbehappening.net

Clinton to Palestinians: US Policy on Settlements Has Changed

By Hanan Awarekeh | Al-Manar

16/11/2009 In the aftermath of media and White House reports of a strained relationship between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama, footages published days later showed that the meeting was far from tension. On the contrary, it even showed a very positive atmosphere between the two leaders who were meeting in the presence of key leaders of the Zionist Lobby.

At some point in their meeting, Obama reminded Netanyahu about Juniper Cobra, a recent U.S.-Israeli anti-missile exercise which took place in Israel and included thousands of U.S. troops and their sophisticated systems. Obama used the exercise to illustrate America’s continued commitment to Israel and perhaps he promised to join an eventual military strike against Iran once diplomacy and sanctions run their course. That might explain what Netanyahu meant by the “importance” of the meeting becoming “clear in the future.”

Meanwhile, former US president Bill Clinton confirmed on Sunday that Washington is committed to Israel’s security. He added that Israel must also want the US president to be accepted by non-extremist Muslims in the world.

Clinton also urged the Palestinians to accept America's modification of its anti-settlement policy and return to the bargaining table. "Take where we are and the reformulation of the settlement issue and find a way [to move forward]," Clinton told a Jerusalem gathering of high level American and Israeli policy makers at the Saban Forum in occupied Jerusalem.

The Palestinians, he warned, were more likely to get a good deal through negotiations. By refusing to talk with Israel, he said, they risked irking the international community, which might then blame them for the stalled peace process.

His words were consistent with the policy of Obama's administration, which has backed Israel's call to the Palestinians to open an immediate dialogue without preconditions.

That statement pleased Netanyahu, who opposes any freeze but angered many Arabs by appearing to reverse Obama’s commitment to a total freeze. It also put Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas in an untenable position because he refuses to resume talks “…without a full cessation of settlement construction.”

America has said it wants Israel to freeze settlement activity but that Israel's refusal to comply with this demand should not stop the two sides from talking. "We have to work with the politics we found in Israel just like we have to work with the politics we found with the Palestinians," Clinton said.

He added that he would not be shocked if Netanyahu's government "actually does make some kind of an agreement or makes a proposal that would be beyond anything anyone expects," Clinton said.

The Palestinians, he warned the Israelis, are having children at a faster rate. "If you want to be a democracy and a Jewish state you have to cut a deal," he said.

There is a physical danger to a deadlocked peace process, he added. It is only a matter of time, he warned, before Hamas is capable of putting a GPS system on the rockets that it continues to launch from Gaza against the occupied territories.

He said that all of America wishes Israel well and would like to see a resolution to the Middle East conflict. Clinton assured Israel that but in the process, he said, Israel should be careful "not to sound too victimized." It should also believe that America is its friend and remains deeply committed to Israel and its security. "You should not think that President Obama is your enemy," Clinton said.

Clinton, however, stressed that the US, and Obama, remain deeply committed to the peace process. "I think that when we meet someone new, in any context, we are always looking for clues that will tell us something," said Clinton.

"No American president can serve in good conscience and not be committed to the security of Israel," said Clinton.

"The United States cannot make you do something that you do not want to do," Clinton said. He added that if the US spends federal funds to support Israel's security needs, "then we owe it to you to say what the best way to achieve that security is."

He said that Israel should interpret America's rejection of the Goldstone Report, which accused Israel of war crimes in Gaza, as a strong sign of its commitment to Israel.

For America to be an effective partner in the peace process it is critical that Israel believes and trusts in the deep bonds between the two countries. He cautioned Israelis not to "over-analyze the Obama-Netanyahu relationship."

When asked about Iran's nuclear program, Clinton said that he sees increased European support for the US position than there was in the past, saying that the Europeans have finally understood that the true problem is that if Iran has a bomb, all of its neighbors will also want one.

According to Clinton, the Iranian regime is far less "crazy" than Israel thinks. He said that all options must be kept on the table and that Israel must work efficiently – no less and no more – and emphasized that the true threat is not in a nuclear Iran, but in nuclear proliferation throughout the region.

Clinton said that if Geneva talks are not successful, harsh sanctions must be imposed on the Islamic Republic. Clinton said that if one positive thing has come from the fact that the Iranian nuclear issue has not be resolved, it is that Arab states are showing increasing willingness to be open and friendly towards Israel.

Who’s Afraid of Hiroshima? Obama’s nuclear hypocrisy

James Corbett

The Corbett Report
November 16, 2009

Now, with President Obama’s nuclear abolition rhetoric turning out to be more hot air, it seems the Nobel Peace Prize committee once again has egg on its face.

When the Nobel Prize committee announced their choice for this year’s Peace Prize winner, they stressed that a key factor in awarding Obama the prize had been the commitment to a nuclear-free world he had outlined in speeches such as the one he delivered in Prague earlier this year. “The committee has attached special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons” said the committee chairman when announcing that Obama had won the prize.

Assuming that the committee truly believed that the Obama presidency would signal a meaningful change in American nuclear policy, they did not have long to wait for a clear refutation of that thesis. Having learned in advance that Obama would be visiting Japan ahead of last week’s APEC summit in Singapore, the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki extended formal invitations for Obama to visit their cities. Had he done so, he would have become the first U.S. president to visit the cities since they were the victims of the world’s first nuclear attacks. However, Obama turned down the requests, citing scheduling concerns and offering vague promises to visit the cities sometime in the future.

While such a move may come as a surprise to the Nobel committee, it is decidedly less shocking to those who have been studying American nuclear policy for decades. One such man is Motofumi Asai, the President of the Hiroshima Peace Institute, who noted in a recent interview with The Corbett Report that, while surprised that Obama says he intends to visit Hiroshima one day, “anyhow, it is clearly not now.”

“In a very long historical term, his speech in Prague in April may be remembered as a departure from the nuclear century to the non-nuclear century” Asai said about the nuclear rhetoric that won Obama the Peace Prize. But, he added, “I am rather sober about the prospects of a change of U.S. nuclear policy.”

Observers of the Obama administration’s actions on the nuclear front would indeed have good reason to be ’sober’ about the prospects of Obama living up to his nuclear disarmament rhetoric. As The Washington Times reported last month, the Obama administration has reaffirmed an unspoken decades-old U.S. policy to officially ignore Israel’s nuclear stockpile. This support ensures that Israel does not have to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which would require them to relinquish their hundreds of nuclear bombs. As The Washington Times report makes explicit, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu accidentally revealed in a television interview that Obama’s rhetoric about a nuclear-free world is not meant to apply to America or its allies:

“It was utterly clear from the context of the speech that he was speaking about North Korea and Iran,” the Israeli leader said. “But I want to remind you that in my first meeting with President Obama in Washington I received from him, and I asked to receive from him, an itemized list of the strategic understandings that have existed for many years between Israel and the United States on that issue. It was not for naught that I requested, and it was not for naught that I received [that document].”

The report exposing Obama’s nuclear hypocrisy was printed just one week before he received the Nobel Prize for his valiant efforts to bring about a “nuclear-free world”.

Even Obama’s most logical political allies have questioned the sincerity of his “commitment” to the abolition of nuclear weapons. As Joseph Gerson wrote on CommonDreams.org earlier this year:

“there appears to be less to Obama’s ‘perhaps not in my lifetime’ commitment to nuclear weapons abolition than the adoring press has let on. It is no accident that in his message to the NPT Preparatory Conference earlier this month that he made no reference to abolition. Similarly, the subject did not arise when President Obama and former Secretary of State George Shultz spoke with the press following their meeting at the White House.”

Now Obama’s most fervent supporters are noting that his actual actions on nuclear disarmament so far have amounted to a series of token gestures and empty platitudes. Even basic steps like affirming a no-first strike nuclear policy have not been forthcoming. Obama’s nuclear promise, it seems, can be added to the bonfire of dashed hopes along with his broken promise to end warrantless wiretapping, his broken promises to close Guantanamo and end secret detentions, his broken promise to not use signing statements, his broken promise to allow voters time to read legislation before it gets signed, and his broken promise not to appoint lobbyists to his administration.

Sadly, this is not the first time the Nobel committee has erred so badly in its judgement of a world leader promising nuclear eradication. In 1974, Japan’s Prime Minister Eisaku Sato won the prize for his formulation of the so-called Three Non-nuclear Principles that every Japanese government has paid lip service to since they were first adopted by the Diet in 1971: that Japan will neither develop nor possess nuclear weapons, nor allow them in their territory. It has since come to light that Sato himself broke the third principle when he negotiated secret agreements with the Nixon adminsitration that allowed the U.S. to bring nuclear weapons into Japanese territory.

Full article

The Struggle for Net Neutrality

By Stephen Lendman
November 16, 2009

During his 2008 campaign, Barack Obama promised to "Support the principle of network neutrality to preserve the benefits of open competition on the Internet."

Perhaps not given a worse record than his fiercest critics feared, worse than George Bush, across the board on both domestic and foreign policies, including:

-- failing to deliver promised change;

-- being the standard bearer for the corrupted political/business elite;

-- governing like a crime boss in league with Wall Street;

-- disdaining democratic rights, freedoms, and the rule of law;

-- betraying working Americans;

-- proposing social services cuts instead of increasing them when they're most needed;

-- denying budget-strapped states vitally needed aid;

-- ignoring growing poverty, hunger, homelessness and despair;

-- expanding militarism, imperial wars, and state-sponsored terrorism;

-- violating human rights and civil liberties; and

-- providing open-ended banker bailouts, an array of pro-business measures, and the greatest ever amounts of military spending at a time America has no enemies.

Will Net Neutrality fare better? As the last frontier of press freedom, it gives consumers access to any equipment, content, application and service, free from corporate control. Public interest groups want it preserved. Giant telecom and cable companies want control to:

-- establish toll roads, or premium lanes;

-- charge extra for speed and free and easy access;

-- control content to stifle dissent and independent thought;

-- co-opt this essential public space for profit; and

-- subvert digital and political democracy.

Founded in 2002, "Free Press is a national, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization working to reform the media (by) promot(ing) diverse and independent media ownership, strong public media, quality journalism, and universal access to communication."

It says Net Neutrality "means no discrimination (by) prevent(ing) Internet providers from blocking, speeding up or slowing down Web content based on its source, ownership or destination."

Giant providers want it privatized to "discriminate in favor of their own search engines (while) slowing down or blocking services by their competitors. (They're) spending hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying Congress" and the FCC to defeat Net Neutrality and jeopardize the Internet's future.

Its loss will stifle innovation, limit competition, and control, restrict or prevent free access to information. "Consumer choice and the free market would be sacrificed to the interests of a few corporations."

The Internet will resemble cable TV with providers deciding "which channels, content and applications are available," and at what price.

At stake is whether digital democracy or corporate control will prevail. For media scholar Bob McChesney, it's "a defining issue (at a) critical juncture (window of opportunity) to create a communication system that will be a powerful impetus (for) a more egalitarian, humane, sustainable, and creative (self-governing) society."

Media reform activists agree that a corporate-free and open Internet must be defended at all costs. The stakes are that high. This battle must be won, but no law mandates it, and under George Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress, several proposed ones were quashed.

HR 3458: The Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009

Introduced on July 31, 2009, it's "To amend the Communications Act of 1934 to establish a national broadband policy, safeguard consumer rights, spur investment and innovation, and for related purposes." It was referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce for consideration.

On October 22, 2009, Senator John McCain (with no cosponsors) introduced S. 1836: A bill to prohibit the Federal Communications Commission from further regulating the Internet." In other words, to prohibit Net Neutrality, an idea McCain calls a "government takeover." It was referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation for consideration.

The Center for Responsive Politics and Sunshine Foundation found that from January 2007 - June 2009, McCain was the largest recipient of telecom and industry lobbyist contributions, getting $894,379, including amounts for his presidential campaign. During the same period, 244 members of Congress got $9.4 million, second only to what the pharmaceutical and health products industry gave, according to the Center for Public Integrity.

On October 23, 2009, a Federation of American Consumers and Travelers news release announced that:

"An aide to Sen. Byron L. Dorgan said the North Dakota Democrat will reintroduce his "Preserving Internet Freedom" bill, which he last sponsored in 2007." The bill "is intended to support and help codify new net neutrality principles announced Sept. 21 by" the FCC.

FCC to Establish New Net Neutrality Rules

On September 21, an FCC press release headlined:

"FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski Outlines Actions to Preserve the Free and Open Internet....in a speech today at The Brookings Institution."

He called the Internet "an extraordinary platform for innovation, job creation, investment, and opportunity (that has) unleashed the potential entrepreneurs and enabled the launch and growth of small businesses across America. It is vital that we safeguard the free and open Internet." The way forward will be debated pitting consumers against powerful industry groups wanting full control and the profit potential it holds. In the end, new rules will be crafted, hopefully to fulfill Obama's promise, but so far with no assurance.

Previously, the FCC embraced four open Internet principles giving consumers access to:

-- lawful Internet content;

-- applications and services of their choice;

-- legal devices not harmful to the network; and

-- whatever network, application, service, and content providers they wish.

Two new ones are now proposed:

-- preventing providers from discriminating against content or applications, "while allowing for reasonable network management;" and

-- ensuring providers are transparent about their management practices.

On October 22, Genachowski affirmed the six principles (applying to all Internet accessing platforms) in announcing a "Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM)," stating:

"With today's Notice, we seek public input on draft rules to preserve an open Internet - the next step in an ongoing and longstanding effort at the Commission....In examining the issue, the Commission has provided abundant opportunities for public participation, including through public hearings and requests for written comment, which have generated over 100,000 pages of input in approximately 40,000 filings from interested companies, organizations, and individuals."

"Throughout this extensive process, one point has attracted nearly unanimous support: The Internet's openness, and the transparency of its protocols, have been critical to its success....Because of the historically open architecture of the Internet, it has been equally accessible to anyone with a basic knowledge of its protocols," including for commerce, speech and "an immense variety of content, applications, and services that have improved the lives of Americans....The Commission has a statutory responsibility to preserve and promote advanced communications that are accessible to all Americans and that serve national purposes."

Up to now, the "Internet Policy Statement" helped preserve Internet openness, but it's time "to build on past efforts and to provide greater clarity regarding the Commission's approach to these issues through a notice-and-comment rulemaking....to help address emerging challenges to the open Internet." Comments are sought on:

-- the six principles in draft language;

-- the need for "reasonable network management;"

-- "managed" or "specialized" services;

-- how and to what extent they should apply to "non-wireline forms of Internet access, including, but not limited to, terrestrial mobile wireless, unlicensed wireless, licensed fixed wireless, and satellite;" and

-- enforcement procedures to ensure compliance.

A new FCC web site, openinternet.gov, was launched to encourage public input, with no assurance the agency or Congress will heed it.

Nonetheless, Free Press policy director, Ben Scott, said:

"After years of hard work, we are pleased that the FCC has begun this crucially important rulemaking on Network Neutrality. A well-crafted Net Neutrality rule can assure that the open Internet continues to serve as a great force for economic innovation and democratic participation for all Americans. (The agency is taking) an important step toward securing the open Internet and a victory for the public interest and civil rights organizations, small businesses, Internet innovators, political leaders, and millions of people who have fought to get to this point...."

"We welcome a new era at the FCC in which decisions made in the public interest withstand the cynical lobby of special interests from a few big phone and cable companies," and those in Congress who support them like John McCain and the man Free Press calls the "Congressman from Comcast," Robert Brady (D. PA), because of his "long-standing history of supporting (its) policies" to the detriment of consumers.

Potential FCC Net Neutrality Loophole

Free Press' Tim Karr fears it may undermine Internet freedom if not addressed and corrected, and a group of six prominent law professors agree. They include:

-- Jack Balkin, Yale Law School;

-- John Blevins, South Texas College of Law;

-- Jim Chen, University of Louisville School of Law where he's also Dean;

-- Larry Lessig, Harvard Law School;

-- Barbara van Schewick, Stanford Law School; and

-- Tim Wu, Columbia Law School.

They've all "spent many years devoted to research on the architecture of the Internet and its related policies (and) published widely on" Net Neutrality.

On November 2, they emailed Chairman Genachowski to "flag what (they) believe are two (serious) ambiguities in the Notice that (they) hope can be addressed early to provide a clearer foundation for comments:"

"Non-Discrimination"

For nearly a century, this has been a central concept in telecommunications law and policy. Nothing should be done to subvert it, so a clear definition is essential. So far, it's "surprisingly narrow."

"Reasonable Network Management"

It's a significant ambiguity because what's not reasonable is "key to the entire rule."

The professors "seek to understand whether, by (NPRM's) language, the Commission seeks comments on what the standard should be, or whether (it) proposes not to have one."

They ask why "the FCC would not want to provide some guidance on the applicable standard for reasonable network management, lest....the exception swallow the rule," and want clarification now to prevent it. Otherwise, these ambiguities will "provide generous opportunities to try to work around the Commission's efforts in this area." In other words, subvert Net Neutrality, not affirm it.

To be effective, FCC rules and congressional legislation must be unambiguous and strong with clear standards in the public interest, especially regarding content.

Free Press Policy Brief on the FCC's Proposed Net Neutrality Rule

Free Press calls the NPRM "a very important step in the right direction," but some elements need clarification to "preclude ISP's from preventing their customers from sending and receiving lawful content, running lawful applications, or connecting lawful devices to the network." Also to assure them free choice among network, applications, service, and content providers.

If properly crafted, new rules will establish a legal framework to require nondiscriminatory treatment of all Internet traffic under reasonable, fair network management standards. Yet significant ambiguities may subvert final ones because of loopholes that must be avoided.

So far, it appears that the FCC "is very committed to protecting the open Internet with rules that have meaning and teeth....This is clearly a very good start (that) lays a good foundation for a final rule that will serve as an unassailable, yet appropriately flexible, firewall to protect and preserve the open Internet." With precise clarification, established standards "once enacted will withstand scrutiny in the courts" and be a victory for digital democracy. But not easily against powerful interests determined to subvert it, so therein lies the struggle ahead.

Disturbing Implications of The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) for Net Neutrality, Consumer Privacy, and Civil Liberties

Launched on October 23, 2007, America, the EU, Switzerland and Japan began negotiating a new intellectual property enforcement treaty, ACTA. Other nations as well, including Canada, Australia, Korea, New Zealand, Mexico, Jordan, Singapore, and the UAE. Ostensibly for counterfeit goods protection, critics say it's more about Internet distribution and information technology rules to subvert Net Neutrality, privacy, and personal freedoms.

Powerful interests want stronger global intellectual property rights, and are pursuing them through the:

-- WTO;

-- World Customs Organization (WCO, "the only intergovernmental organisation exclusively focused on Customs matters);"

-- the G 8;

-- the World Intellectual Property Organization's (WIPO) Advisory Committee on Enforcement: WIPO is a UN agency "dedicated to developing an accessible international intellectual property system which reward creativity, stimulates innovation and contributes to economic development...;" and

-- the Intellectual Property Experts' Group's (IPR) protection and enforcement efforts to "achiev(e Pacific region) free and open trade and investment."

So far, few details are known, yet ACTA is being secretly fast-tracked to completion.

Concerned Americans got some information through Freedom of Information (FOA) requests. Canadians also through Canada's Access to Information Act (AIA).

Of concern are provisions endangering consumer privacy, civil liberties, legitimate commerce, restrictions on developing nations' rights to choose their preferred policy options, and, pivotal for this article, a free and open Internet.

The US Trade Representative's (USTR) Fact Sheet and 2008 "Special 301" report shows an intent to create tougher intellectual property enforcement standards than under the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). If successful, they'll override national sovereignty, be binding on ACTA members, and give them enough power to enforce global compliance.

The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) is "a not-for-profit association registered in twenty European countries, dedicated to the development of information goods for the public benefit, based on copyright, free competition, open standards."

In 2008, Brussels rebuffed its request for ACTA documents saying:

"the documents contain negotiating directives for the negotiation of the above mentioned agreement. These negotiations are still in progress. Disclosure of this information could impede the proper conduct of the negotiation."

In appealing the ruling, FFII accused the EU of "a gross violation of the basic democratic principles (these nations are) supposed to stand for." In a November 10, 2008 press release, it said:

"The EU Council of Ministers refuses to release secret (ACTA) documents. (This) secrecy fuels concerns that the treaty may give patent trolls the means to extort companies, undermine access to low-cost generic medicines, lead to monitoring all citizens' Internet communications and criminalize peer-to-peer electronic file sharing."

In May 2008, Wikileaks obtained a leaked four-page document titled, "Discussion Paper on a Possible Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement," saying:

"If adopted, (ACTA) would impose a strong, top-down enforcement regime, with new cooperation requirements upon (ISPs), including perfunctionary disclosure of customer information. The proposal also bans 'anti-circumvention' measures which may affect online anonymity systems and would likely outlaw multi-region CD/DVD players. The proposal also specifies a plan to encourage developing nations to accept the legal regime," with perhaps consequences for those refusing.

The document covers:

-- legal measures to encourage ISPs to cooperate with right holders to remove infringing content;

-- material on anti-camcording laws; and

-- network-level filtering to enforce a three-strikes-and-you're out rule. That is, consumers found three times to have infringed copyrighted content will have their Internet connections terminated.

These provisions way exceed current treaty obligations by imposing binding copyright demands requiring:

-- ISPs to police copyrighted material and deter unauthorized storage and transmission of alleged infringed content;

-- terminate Internet access of alleged "repeat infringers" or be liable;

-- remove alleged infringed material;

-- enforce digital rights management (DRM) rules relating to systems that identify, track, authorize and restrict access to digital media - to protect and enforce copyrights, patents, trademarks, and other forms of intellectual property; and

-- impose global US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) rules relating to intellectual property that will impose censorship, subvert free expression, and undermine innovation.

IP Justice is "an international civil liberties organization promoting balanced intellectual property laws and free expression." It addressed ACTA as follows:

Its "text will be 'locked' and other countries who are later 'invited' to sign-on to the pact will not be able to re-negotiate its terms....few countries will have the muscle to refuse an 'invitation' to join, once the rules have been set by the select few conducting the negotiations."

Other IP Justice concerns are over:

-- secret negotiations;

-- an undemocratic process;

-- the exclusion of public interest groups;

-- using questionable data,

-- the burdens imposed on public and private interests;

-- criminalizing ordinary consumer activity;

-- free expression;

-- privacy issues;

-- due process rights;

-- the need for flexibility to address technological change;

-- anti-innovative and anti-competitive provisions;

-- the claim that stronger consumer protections aren't needed; and

-- universally binding top-down rules overriding national sovereignty.

On April 6, 2009, the USTR released a summary of ACTA negotiations stating they're to:

-- "negotiate a new state-of-the art agreement to combat counterfeiting and piracy;" and

-- help "governments around the world....more effectively combat the proliferation of counterfeit and pirated goods."

-- Also presented was a draft agenda for the November 4 - 6, 2009 Seoul, Korea negotiations to be followed by a press release similar to the post-July 5th Morocco round saying little more than "discussion focused on International Cooperation and Enforcement Practices and Institutional Issues" as well as others regarding "transparency."

From what's known, if ACTA measures are adopted, consider the implications. Consumer Internet communications and content will be monitored, threatening privacy, civil liberties, and a free and open Internet. In addition, new Net Neutrality rules and congressional legislation codifying them will be subverted by ACTA authority.

The Cybersecurity Act of 2009

This writer's May 22 article said the following:

On April 1, two bills endangering a free and open Internet were introduced in the Senate:

-- S. 773: Cybersecurity Act of 2009 "to ensure the continued free flow of commerce within the United States and with its global trading partners through secure cyber communications, to provide for the continued development and exploitation of the Internet and intranet communications for such purposes, to provide for the development of a cadre of information technology specialists to improve and maintain effective cybersecurity defenses against disruption, and for other purposes."

S. 773 was referred to the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, but not yet voted on.

-- S. 778: A bill to establish, within the Executive Office of the President, the Office of National Cybersecurity Advisor (aka czar). The bill was referred to the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee where it remains.

Accompanying information said Senators Jay Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe introduced the legislation to address:

"our country's unacceptable vulnerability to massive cyber crime, global cyber espionage, and cyber attacks that could cripple our critical infrastructure."

We presently face cyber espionage threats, they said, as well as "another great vulnerability....to our private sector critical infrastructure - banking, utilities, air/rail/auto traffic control, telecommunications - from disruptive cyber attacks that could literally shut down our way of life."

"This proposed legislation will bring new high-level governmental attention to develop a fully integrated, thoroughly coordinated, public-private partnership to our cyber security efforts in the 21st century" through what's unstated - privacy violations by subverting a free and open Internet.

During a March Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee hearing, Senator Rockefeller said that we'd all be better off if the Internet was never invented. His precise words were: "Would it have been better if we'd never have invented the Internet and had to use paper and pencil or whatever!" Left unsaid was that without a free and open Internet, few alternatives for getting real news and information would exist, at least with the ease and free accessibility computers provide.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) Jennifer Granick expressed concern about "giving the federal government unprecedented power over the Internet without necessarily improving security in the ways that matter most. (These bills) should be opposed or radically amended."

Here's what they'll do:

-- federalize critical infrastructure security, including banks, telecommunications and energy, shifting power away from providers and users to Washington;

-- give "the president unfettered authority to shut down Internet traffic in (whatever he calls) an emergency and disconnect critical infrastructure systems on national security grounds....;"

-- potentially "cripple privacy and security in one fell swoop" through one provision (alone) empowering the Commerce Secretary to "have access to all relevant data concerning (critical infrastructure) networks without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule, or policy restricting such access...."

In other words, the Commerce Department will be empowered to access "all relevant data" - without privacy safeguards or judicial review. As a result, constitutionally protected privacy protections will be lost - ones guaranteed under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Privacy Protection Act, and financial privacy regulations.

Another provision mandates a feasibility study for an identity management and authentication program that would sidestep "appropriate civil liberties and privacy protections."

At issue is what role should the federal government play in cybersecurity? How much power should it have? Can it dismiss constitutional protections, and what, in fact, can enhance cybersecurity without endangering our freedoms?

S. 773 and 778, as now written, "make matters worse by weakening existing privacy safeguards (without) address(ing) the real problems of security."

Months later, S. 773 was secretly redrafted, but from what's known, leaves it mostly unchanged. Like the original version, it gives the president carte blanche power "to decide which networks and systems, private or public, count as 'critical infrastructure information systems or networks," according to the EFF's Richard Esguerra. It also lets him shut down the Internet in both versions of the bill.

The original one states:

"The President....may order the disconnection of any Federal Government or United States critical infrastructure information systems or network in the interest of national security."

The new bill says:

"The President....in the event of an immediate threat (may) declare a cybersecurity emergency; and may, if the President finds it necessary for the national defense and security, and in coordination with relevant industry sectors, direct the national response to the cyber threat and the timely restoration of the affected critical infrastructure information system or network."

In other words, he can shut down the Internet and leave privacy, authority, and security effectiveness unresolved. According to EFF's senior staff attorney, Lee Tien:

"The language has changed but it doesn't contain any real additional limits. It simply switches the more direct and obvious language they had originally to the more ambiguous (version). The designation of what is a critical infrastructure system or network as far as I can tell has no specific process. There's no provision for any administration process or review. That's where the problems seem to start. And then you have the amorphous powers that go along with it."

Esguerra adds:

"there is vague language about mapping federal and private networks; there is an unexplained scheme to certify cybersecurity professionals at the federal level; and the mandated implementation of a 'cybersecurity strategy' before the completion of a legal review that could protect against inadvertent privacy violations or inefficiency."

In late February, Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair, told the House Intelligence Committee that the NSA, not DHS, should be in charge of cybersecurity even though it has a "trust handicap" to overcome because of its illegal spying:

"I think there is a great deal of distrust of the National Security Agency and the intelligence community in general playing a role outside of the very narrowly circumscribed role because of some of the history of the FISA issue in years past...." So Blair asked the committee's leadership to find a way to instill public confidence.

On February 9, Obama appointed Melissa Hathaway to be Acting Senior Director for Cyberspace for the National Security and Homeland Security Councils - in charge of a 60-day interagency cybersecurity review, now completed. On August 3, she resigned citing personal reasons, but people close to her said the president's economic advisers marginalized her for favoring private sector regulatory options. As of late October, her position is still unfilled.

On April 21, NSA/Chief Central Security Service director, General Alexander, told RSA Conference security participants that "The NSA does not want to run cybersecurity for the government. We need partnerships with others. The DHS has a big part, you do, and our partners in academia. It's one network and we all have to work together....The NSA can offer technology assistance to team members. That's our role."

Spying is its role with DHS enforcement. Cooperatively with the administration, they threaten our constitutional freedoms. Infringing them can't be tolerated nor measures to subvert a free and open Internet.

Justice Department Targets Internet First Amendment Freedoms

On January 30, US Attorney Tim Morrison subpoenaed the Philadelphia-based Independent Media Center (IMC) to give an Indianapolis grand jury all IP address logs, times, and other ID information for June 25, 2008. In addition, under a gag order, its system administrator was prohibited from "disclos(ing) the existence (or contents) of this request" without Justice Department permission.

On November 9, EFF discussed the "Anatomy of a Bogus subpoena: How the Government Secretly Demanded the IP Address of Every Visitor to Political News Site Indymedia.us."

According to senior staff attorney Kevin Bankston:

"Secrecy surrounds law enforcement's communications surveillance practices like a dense fog. (Especially the) demands issued under 18 USC 2703 of the Stored Communications Act (SCA) that seek subscriber information or other user records from communications service providers."

Court orders can require phone companies or online service providers to reveal them, "along with a gag order preventing (them) from disclosing the existence of the government's demand. More often, companies are simply (subpoenaed) by prosecutors without any court involvement; these demands, too, are rarely made public."

EFF called the gag order "Bogus (for) Demanding the Recipient's Silence Without Any Legal Basis." It's "ready to provide assistance (whenever) government knocks on someone's door with an unlawful, invalid, overbroad, free speech-threatening, privacy-invasive demand for your sensitive Internet data." It represented IMC and prevailed, in part because the site doesn't keep historic logs on its visitors.

On November 13, indymedia.us announced:

"....we've managed, after nearly a year of legal action on our behalf by (EFF), to successfully fight back against a bogus (DOJ) subpoena request in conjunction with a grand jury investigation....not only did (we) object to this blatantly illegitimate and overly broad request, but, per accepted Indymedia best practices, we do not keep such logs in the first place, in order to maximally ensure the privacy of our site users. Also troubling was the (gag order prohibiting any discussion of) the legal issue with the broader network of collectives cooperating on the indymedia/us site."

EFF stresses that "the level of secrecy surrounding how the government uses its surveillance authority under the Stored Communications Act encourages abuses," including a free and open Internet. What Jefferson understood by saying that:

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com

Obama Promise To End The War, 2007 - "You Can Take That To The Bank"

"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank. "

- Barack Obama Campaign Promise - October 27, 2007

Well Obama you have been in office for almost a year now and the wars are still multiplying. Afghanistan has turned into an American Troop Meat Grinder. Iraq is now worse off than it has been in decades, and there is no discussion of ending the wars at all.

New US prison in Afghanistan draws criticism

Press TV - November 16, 2009 11:23:07 GMT

A new detention centre at the US Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul

Rights groups have criticized a new US detention center in Afghanistan that will replace Bagram prison, saying it still falls short of basic legal standards.

"The Bagram detention facility serves as a symbol of the US operating outside a proper legal framework in Afghanistan," Amnesty International's Asia-Pacific director Sam Zarifi said.

The new Parwan Detention Facility, which has been built at the Bagram military base at a cost of $60 million, will be able to hold up to 1,100 detainees.

Rights groups say Parwan does not address the issues of arbitrary detention or allowing detainees to be tried under Afghan law, Agence France-Presse AFP reported.

"Given the real problems with the existing Afghan judicial system, the US and Afghan governments must immediately begin to establish a long-term solution that respects the rights of the detainees to have their cases heard in a court of law," said Zarifi.

Bagram, which opened shortly after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, has earned a reputation for brutality, as well as being part of a secret system of detention and torture of suspects.

In 2002, the Bagram detention facility drew international outrage over the deaths of two detainees. No reporters have so far been allowed into the old prison.

The new prison has been built in the shadow of prisons at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and Cuba's Guantanamo Bay, where US authorities have detained people accused of involvement in terrorism without charge or trial.

Capitol Hill Hosts First-Ever Jerusalem Conference

By Steve K. Walz
Jewish Press
November 04 2009

Key Democratic and Republican lawmakers met Tuesday with members of the Knesset and high-ranking Israeli cabinet ministers as part of a Capitol Hill conclave under the auspices of the Jerusalem Conference.

The daylong event marked the first time a Jerusalem Conference gathering was held outside Israel's capital. The annual Jerusalem Conference (the next one is scheduled for February 2010) showcases a wide range of Israeli politicians, political and military strategists from around the world, and members of the Israeli settlement enterprise who discuss the Jewish state's military, political and social challenges.
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The Washington conference, which focused on the realities of the Middle East peace process and regional threats to global security, featured panelists such as Rep. Howard Berman (chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee), Sen. Sam Brownback (Senate Committee on Appropriations), Sen. Joseph Lieberman (Senate Committee on Homeland Security), Rep. Shelly Berkley (House Foreign Relations Committee) and Israeli Minister Without Portfolio General (Ret.) Yossi Peled.

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The Battle of Okinawa 2009: Obama vs Hatoyama

Gavan McCormack

The making of an unequal, unconstitutional, illegal, colonial and deceitful US-Japan agreement.

Yes We Can – But You Can’t

Elections at the end of August gave Japan a new government, headed by Hatoyama Yukio. In electing him and his Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), the Japanese people, like the American people less than a year earlier, were opting for change – a new relationship with both Asia and the US, including a much more equal one with the latter. Remarkably, however, what followed on the part of the Obama administration has been a campaign of unrelenting pressure to block any such change.

The Obama administration has targeted in particular the Hatoyama desire to re-negotiate the relationship with the United States so as to make it equal instead of dependent. Go back, it seems to be saying, to the golden days of “Sergeant-Major Koizumi” (as George W. Bush reportedly referred to the Japanese Prime Minister) when compliance was assured and annual US policy prescriptions (“yobosho”) were received in Tokyo as holy writ; forget absurd pretensions of independent policies.

The core issue has been the disposition of American military presence in Okinawa and the US insistence that Hatoyama honour an agreement known as the Guam Treaty.

The Guam Treaty

The “Guam International Agreement” is the US-Japan agreement signed by Secretary Hillary Clinton and Japanese Foreign Minister Nakasone Hirofumi in February and adopted as a treaty under special legislation in May 2009, in the first days of the Obama administration. Support for the Aso government in Japan was collapsing and the incoming Obama administration moved urgently to extract formal consent to its plans in such a way as to ensure that any such agreement would bind any subsequent Japanese government.

8,000 Marines and their 9,000 family members were to be relocated from Okinawa to Guam, and the US marine base at Futenma would be transferred to Henoko in Nago City in Northern Okinawa, to a new base to be built by Japan. The Japanese government would also pay $6.09 billion towards the Guam transfer cost ($2.8 billion of it in cash in the current financial year). [1] The effect in Okinawa would be that the US military would vacate some of its larger bases in the densely populated south but concentrate and expand those in the north of the island.

Cape Henoko, Projected base Construction Site

Henoko Base Design, showing V-shaped Runways

These matters (save for the detailed financial clauses) had all been resolved by a previous agreement, nearly four years earlier under Koizumi - the October 2005 agreement on “US-Japan Alliance: Transformation and Realignment for the Future” reconfirmed by the May 2006 “United States-Japan Roadmap for realignment Implementation.” [2] Now, to compel compliance, Article 3 of the new Agreement declared that “The Government of Japan intends to complete the Futenma replacement facility as stipulated in the Roadmap [i.e. by 2014]” even though the parties had virtually given up hope that that was possible in the face of entrenched Okinawan opposition. [3]

The Agreement was one of the first acts of a popular, “reforming” US administration and one of the last of a Japanese regime in fatal decline after half a century of LDP rule. It set in unusually clear relief the relationship between the world’s No 1 and No 2 economic powers. The Agreement is worthy of close attention because, as analyzed below, it was unequal, unconstitutional, illegal, colonial and deceitful.

Unequal

First, it was in the classic sense of the term, an “unequal treaty.” The Government of Japan interpreted it as a binding treaty, while for the US it was merely an “executive agreement”, lacking Congressional warrant. [4] It obliged Japan to construct and pay for one new base complex for the US on Okinawa and to contribute a very substantial sum towards constructing another on Guam, while on the American side it merely offered an ambiguous pledge to withdraw a number of troops (on that ambiguity, see below). Though binding on Japan, it was not binding on the US (which even reserved to itself the right, under Article 8, to vary it at will). [5] Furthermore, it may be that the Guam Treaty is in breach of US law: as a revenue raising measure (stipulating the sum of $6 billion to be supplied by Japan), it requires Congressional authorization but has merely presidential executive authority. A treaty binding on one side only is by definition an unequal treaty.

Unconstitutional

Second, it was unconstitutional . Under Article 95 of the Constitution, “A special law, applicable only to one local public entity, cannot be enacted by the Diet without the consent of the majority of the voters of the local public body concerned, obtained in accordance with law.” The Guam treaty was plainly a special law in its effect on the single prefecture of Okinawa, yet not only was no attempt made to consult the people of Okinawa, but the Diet rode roughshod over their well-known wishes.

Furthermore, to ram the Agreement through the Diet, the Aso government utilized extraordinary constitutional powers under a procedure (Article 59) unused for more than half a century that allowed adoption of a bill rejected by the Upper House if passed a second time by a two-thirds majority in the Lower. Ramming the bill through the Diet on 13 May 2009, Aso was sidelining, in effect abolishing, the Upper House in a kind of constitutional coup d’état. [6] Much of the rest of Aso’s legislative record during his 9 months in office – ten major bills including the Terror Special Measures Law and virtually all the legislation of importance to Washington – was of dubious constitutional propriety for this same reason, though it must have been pleasing to Washington.

Illegal

Third, the Guam treaty is in breach of Japanese law. Since the Treaty took precedence over domestic law, it also had the effect of downgrading, in effect vitiating, the requirements of Japan’s environmental protection laws. Any serious and internationally credible environmental impact assessment (EIA) would surely conclude that a massive military construction project was incompatible with the delicate coral and forest environment of the Oura Bay area. But it was taken for granted that Japan’s EIA would be a mere formality and the treaty further undermined the procedure.

Further, the Diet and the Obama administration were pre-empting any order that might issue from the San Francisco court where a judge is hearing a suit against defendants including the Pentagon. The judge has already ordered the Pentagon to take conservation measures as required by the National Historic Observation Act, and to require the same of the Government of Japan, in relation to the Henoko construction project. [7]

Sakurai Kunitoshi, president of Okinawa University and a specialist on environmental assessment law, argues that since 2005 Japanese governments have been in breach of the Environmental Assessment Law in the way they have pursued the Futenma Replacement Facility. Therefore, the process must be reopened. He concludes that any serious and internationally credible EIA would conclude that the FRF cannot be built at Henoko. [8] If Sakurai is right, the Japanese government’s EIA is fatally flawed and an internationally credible, independent scientific survey has to be launched.

Colonial

Fourth, it was colonial. The US had grown increasingly irritated at the lack of progress following the 2005-6 Agreements and peremptory in spelling out what Japan had to do. In November 2007, Defense Secretary Robert Gates instructed Japan to resume its Indian Ocean naval station (then hotly debated), maintain and increase its payments for hosting US bases, increase its defense budget, and pass a permanent law to authorize overseas dispatch of the SDF whenever the need arose. It was essentially the position of the Armitage-Nye report on the US-Japan Alliance through 2020 published earlier that year. [9] Armitage, Gates and other US officials generally added the pious sentiment that everything was up to the sovereign government of Japan. Occasionally, however, they spelled out the consequences of non-compliance, as when Secretary Gates bluntly told Japan that it could not hope to receive US support in its bid for a permanent seat on the Security Council unless it pursued the prescribed agenda. [10]

Richard Lawless, who as Deputy Defense Secretary had headed the negotiations that culminated in the Roadmap, told the Asahi in May 2008 that the alliance was drifting.

“What we really need is a top-down leadership that says, ‘Let's rededicate ourselves to completing all of these agreements on time; let's make sure that the budgeting of the money is a national priority’… Japan has to find a way to change its own tempo of decision-making, deployment, integration and operationalizing [sic] this alliance.” [11]

He castigated Japan for “self-marginalization” and for “allowing the alliance to degenerate towards sub-prime because of its withdrawal syndrome.”[12] Under that pressure, Prime Minster Aso appears to have buckled, clinging to power through 2008 and early 2009 at least in part to try to do Washington one last favour by adopting the “top-down” steps it was demanding for “operationalizing” the alliance. That had to be done while the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) still enjoyed the Koizumi majority in the Lower House precisely because support for Aso had sunk below 20 per cent with virtually no prospect of recovery.

In keeping with its colonial character, the Obama administration was firing a shot across the bow of the then opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), assuming without question the prerogative of intervention in the Japanese political process. By pressing the Guam treaty on Japan, sending Hillary Clinton to Tokyo as enforcer in its opening weeks, the Obama administration was maintaining the defining features of Bush diplomacy: paternalistic, interventionist, anti-democratic, intolerant of any Japanese search for an independent, regional or UN-centred foreign policy. Secretary Clinton spoke with satisfaction of the deal: "I think that a responsible nation follows the agreements that have been entered into, and the agreement that I signed today with Foreign Minister Nakasone is one between our two nations, regardless of who's in power." [13] What she meant was this: You in the DPJ had better learn which side your bread is buttered on.

Characteristic of colonial policy, the “natives” were to be guided but not consulted, so the thinking of the people of Okinawa was always irrelevant in the deliberations that culminated in the Guam Treaty.

Deceitful

Fifth, the treaty was characterized by what in Japanese is known as “gomakashi” – trickery and deceit dressed in the rhetoric of principle and mutuality. There is no precedent for a sovereign country paying to construct a military base in another country. Thus the Government of Japan had to minimize debate and rely on lies.

Although reported as a US concession to Japan, a “withdrawal” designed “to reduce the burden of post-World War II American military presence in Okinawa,” [14] it was actually something quite different: a design to increase the Japanese contribution to the alliance by having it pay an exorbitant sum towards construction of US military facilities on Guam, in US territory, and by having it substitute a new, high-tech, and greatly expanded base at Henoko for the inconvenient, dangerous, and obsolescent Futenma.

The Agreement was riddled with deception. It stipulated withdrawal of “8,000 Marines from Okinawa to Guam” and the Japanese government insisted this was the key to reducing the burden of the bases on Okinawa, yet interpellations in the Diet early in 2009 revealed that there were only 12,461 Marines actually stationed in Okinawa, and since the Government of Japan insisted that 10,000 was the necessary deterrent force, it meant that fewer than 3,000 would actualy be withdrawn. [15] And only in a San Francisco courtroom hearing a suit on behalf of the endangered dugong was it revealed that the so-called “Futennma replacement” included a 214 meter long wharf. The Government of Japan had not thought to mention that the Futenma facilities were to be expanded by addition of a deep-water Oura Bay port capable of hosting nuclear submarines.

One of the last acts of the Aso government was to hand over 34 billion yen, $363 million, as its fiscal year 2010 contribution towards the Guam construction costs, although the US had yet to produce any detailed cost estimates, let alone to appropriate its proportion of the funds. Months later, Congress slashed by 70 per cent the appropriation sought by the Pentagon for the same year, from $300 million to $89 million, about one-quarter of the Japanese contribution. [16] So dire are the US financial straits that it is far from certain that Congress will authorize any more. The Guam Agreement committed the US side to use the moneys only in the stipulated ways, but Japan had no right to supervise the expenditure. Once the Pentagon pocketed the money it seems highly unlikely Japan will ever see it returned, whether the base works proceed or not. Furthermore, the housing for the Guam Marines was calculated at 70 million yen per unit (enough to construct the most extravagant mansions, three-quarters of a million dollars each. Put differently, this was about 14 times the going rate for housing construction in Guam.

One Japanese member of the Diet protested, what happens if, indeed, the US Congress decides not to fund the Guam plan? Would Japan get its money back? [17]

Obama and the DPJ

While working to tie Japan’s present and future governments by the Guam Agreement, the US knew full well that the then opposition DPJ’s position was clear: no new base should be built within Okinawa and Futenma should be returned tout court. [18] US pressure rose steadily through the months leading to the party’s electoral triumph in August 2009 and from then to this day.

When DPJ leader Ozawa began to adumbrate a shift in Japanese foreign and defense policy from a Washington centre to a UN-centre, ending its deployment of the Maritime Self-Defense Forces to the Indian Ocean in service to the US-led war effort in Iraq (then hotly debated), Ambassador J. Thomas Schieffer, who till then had refused to meet him, suddenly demanded a meeting, and prominent US scholar bureaucrats joined in issuing thinly veiled threats about the “damage” that Ozawa was causing to the alliance. [19] During Hillary Clinton’s February visit to Japan, Ozawa Ichiro spent a perfunctory 30 minutes with her, while he found three times as much time a week later to meet and discuss the future of the region with the Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party’s International Section. He also made clear his dissent from the new president’s resolve to expand and intensify the Afghanistan War, and then went further, raising the possibility of reducing the US presence in Japan to the (Yokosuka-based) US 7th fleet. His message was clear. If the 7th Fleet was indeed sufficient to all necessary purposes for the defense of Japan, then the bases – all thirteen of them with their 47,000 officers and military personnel – were unnecessary. Immediately after stating these controversial views, Ozawa was caught up in a corruption scandal involving staff misuse of funds, late in May resigning as party chief and being replaced by Hatoyama Yukio. Though it must have given Washington satisfaction to see Ozawa shunted from party leadership, he remains the party’s undisputed grey eminence. The DPJ issue was not so easily settled.

The Futenma replacement issue gradually became the centrepiece in the confrontation between the Obama and Hatoyama governments. Obama’s “Japan team” simply inherited the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld agenda and applied steadily heightening pressure on Japan to “honour” its Guam Treaty commitment. So much for those in Okinawa who hoped that Obama’s administration might actually mean “change”.

With the exception of the new US Ambassador to Japan, John V. Roos, Obama retained the same personnel who had played formative roles in the negotiation of the agreements since 2005: Kurt Campbell, who had been responsible for the Futenma negotiations under Bush became Obama’s Deputy Secretary of State for East Asia, Wallace Gregson, marine commander in Okinawa under Bush became head of the Department of Defense’s Asia-Pacific section, and Kevin Maher, Consul-General in Okinawa under Bush became director of the State Department’s Office of Japan affairs. [20] The policy settings of the Nye-Armitage vision were adopted, apparently without question. Joseph Nye, principal architect of post-Cold War US Japan policy, issued two unmistakable warnings to the DPJ. In a Tokyo conference in December 2008, he spelled out the three acts that Congress would be inclined to see as “anti-American”: cancelation of the Maritime Self-Defense Agency’s Indian Ocean mission, and any attempt to revise the Status of Forces Agreement or the agreements on relocating US Forces in Japan. [21] He repeated the same basic message when the Democratic Party’s Maehara Seiji visited Washington in the early days of the Obama administration to convey his party’s wishes to renegotiate these agreements, again warning that to do so would be seen as “anti-American.” [22]

As the year wore on and as the new agenda in Tokyo became apparent before and after the August election, the confrontation deepened. Warnings became more forceful. Kurt Campbell told the Asahi there could be no change in the Futenma replacement agreement. [23] Michael Green, formerly George W. Bush’s top adviser on East Asia, though moved under Obama to the private sector at the Centre for International and Strategic Studies, warned that “it would indeed provoke a crisis with the US” if the Democratic Party were to push ahead to try to re-negotiate the military agreements around the Okinawa issue.” [24] Gregson, for the Pentagon, added that the US had “no plans to revise the existing agreements. [25] Ian Kelly, for the State Department, stated that there was no intention on its part to allow revision. [26] Kevin Maher (also at State) added a day later that there could be no reopening of negotiations on something already agreed between states. [27] A “senior Department of Defense spokesperson” in Washington said it would be a “blow to trust” between the two countries if existing plans could not be implemented. [28] Summing up the rising irritation in Washington, an unnamed State Department official commented that “The hardest thing right now is not China. It’s Japan.” [29]

The drumbeats of “concern,” “warning,” “friendly advice” from Washington that Hatoyama and the DPJ had better not implement the party’s electoral pledges and commitments rose steadily leading up to the election and its aftermath, culminating in the October Tokyo visit by Defense Secretary Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Michael Mullen. Gates is reported to have insulted his Japanese hosts, refusing to attend a welcoming ceremony at the Defense Ministry or to dine with senior Japanese Defense officials. [30]

Gates’ message was no-nonsense:

“The Futenma relocation facility is the lynchpin of the realignment road map. Without the Futenma realignment, the Futenma facility, there will be no relocation to Guam. And without relocation to Guam, there will be no consolidation of forces and the return of land in Okinawa.” [31]

For Michael Green, architect of Japan policy under George W. Bush, this showed that Gates was a “shrewd judge of his counterparts,” and that Hatoyama and his government would not be able to “continue slapping around the United States” or to “play with firecrackers.” [32] In case there remained any shadow of doubt in Japanese minds, Admiral Mullen added that the Henoko base construction was an “absolute requirement.” [33] “Challenge the Guam Treaty at your peril,” was the Obama administration’s unambiguous message.

Intimidation had an affect. Defense Secretary Kitazawa Toshimi was first to yield and suggest that there was no real alternative to construction at Henoko. [34] Foreign Minister Okada Katsuya began to waver. In late July, a month before the election, Okada had a brief exchange with U.S. Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy: [35]

Fluornoy: The reorganization of US forces in Japan is in accord with agreement between the two countries.
Okada: There are 64 years of history dragging along behind the US-Japan relationship.

Weeks after the victory, he told British journalist Simon Tisdall, “If Japan just follows what the US says, then I think as a sovereign nation that is very pathetic.” [36] He seemed clear on the point that building a new base at Henoko was not the way to reduce the burden on the people of Okinawa. “It should be inconceivable in ordinary thinking,” he said, “for the sea to be destroyed to construct a base.” [37] It was also Okada who said, “The will of the people of Okinawa and the will of the people of Japan was expressed in the elections … I don’t think we will act simply by accepting what the U.S tells us…” [38]

One day after the Gates and Mullen statements, however, Okada shifted ground to say that moving the Futenma base out of Okinawa was “not an option” (kangaerarenai) and to suggest (23 October) that the functions of the Futenma Marine base might after all be transferred within Okinawa. He declined to endorse the Henoko project, but proposed Futenma’s functions be merged with those of the relatively close US Air Force base at Kadena, and that the agreement be limited to 15 years.

Okada’s suggestion of a transfer of the Futenma functions within Okinawa, even though through this rather novel formula, caused shock waves of disbelief in Okinawa. 80 per cent of Kadena township is already occupied by the existing base. The prefecture’s Ryukyu shimpo in a passionate editorial lamented the incapacity of the new Hatoyama government to counter the “intimidatory diplomacy” of Gates and Mullen, and the drift back towards “acceptance of the status quo of following the US.” If that is to be the new government,” it concluded, “then the change of government has been a failure.” [39]

The Okinawan Perspective

Okinawa “reverted” from the US to Japan in 1972, but nearly four decades later most major US bases remain intact, taking up one-fifth of the land surface of Okinawa’s main island. Nowhere is more overwhelmed by the US military presence than the city of Ginowan, which has grown around the US Marine Corps Futenma Air Station. The US and Japan agreed in 1996 that Futenma would be returned, but made return conditional on construction of a replacement, which would also have to be in Okinawa, and not just anywhere in Okinawa but in environmentally sensitive north, the coral and forest environment of Henoko in Nago City, where a precious colony of blue coral was discovered only in 2007, where the internationally protected dugong graze on sea grasses, turtles come to rest, and multiple rare birds, insects, animals thrive.. Thirteen years on, there the matter still stands.

Futenma Marine Air Station surrounded by Ginowan City

Between 1996 and 2005, a peace and environment citizens’ coalition fought the first version of that plan – for a pontoon-supported structure on the reef just offshore from Henoko (originally a modest “helipad,” as it was referred to in 1996, 45 metres in length according to the first designs), [40] which gradually grew to have a runway stretching to 2,500 meters across the coral – to such effect that in 2005, Prime Minister Koizumi canceled it, citing "a lot of opposition." It was an unprecedented triumph for a mobilized citizenry over the combined resources of the two powerful states. The second, and current, version, adopted in 2006, was for a significantly expanded project, this time based on an onshore site in the same Henoko district. It would be built on land and landfill extending from the existing Camp Schwab US base into Oura bay and would boast dual 1,800 meter runways stretching out into Oura Bay, plus a deep sea naval port and other facilities, and a chain of helipads scattered through the forest - a comprehensive air, land and sea base able to project force throughout Asia and the Pacific.

Time and again, the project was blocked by popular opposition, but time and again the Japanese government renewed and expanded it. The struggle continues throughout Okinawa against this latest, largest, most environmentally devastating design. On the sea-floor from 2007, teams of divers acting as surveyors for the state, and even backed by a Maritime Self-Defense Force frigate, confronted civic opponents determined to defend the sea and its creatures; in San Francisco, a judge continued hearings in a suit against the Pentagon on behalf of the Okinawan dugong and their marine habitat; and at Henoko and Takae (deep in the forest) the sit-in continued.

Japan’s nation state under the “old regime” to 2009 of the Liberal-Democratic Party insisted that military priorities prevail over civil or democratic principle, the interests of the Japanese (and American) states over those of the Okinawan people, and the US alliance over the constitution. As government in Tokyo struggled to secure the compliance of the Okinawan people to their own continuing subordination to the military, Okinawa became Japan’s domestic “North Korea” in the sense of a prefecture committed to “Songun” (Military-First-ism). Except that in this case, it was a foreign military power imposing its will. It was bitter for Okinawans to have Nobel Peace laureate Obama continuing to thrust such priorities on them.

On the only occasion the people of Nago were consulted as to whether they would accept a new base, in a 1997 plebiscite, despite massive government intervention designed to sway them in favour, the outcome was unambiguously negative. In a bizarre outcome, the then mayor flew to Tokyo to announce the outcome, reject it on behalf of the City, and announce his resignation. For almost a decade thereafter, the views of Nago citizens were studiously ignored save that monies were poured in to “development” projects designed to subvert them. By dint of enormous effort, however, the people thus far have thwarted Tokyo’s and Washington’s plans.

In October 2009, the “sit-in” protest launched by that opposition at Henoko in 2004 passed its 2,000th day, well outlasting the Solidarnosc Polish worker sit-ins to become the longest in modern history. Despite pressures from the state, anti-base opinion in the prefecture seems, if anything, to have strengthened. Where, in 1999, opinion had been almost evenly divided between those who opposed relocation within Okinawa and those who were ready to accept it, a May 2009 survey by the Okinawa Times found prefectural opinion running at 68 per cent against and only 18 per cent in favour. [41] Six months later, in the heat of the current “battle of Okinawa,” a joint Mainichi shimbun and Ryukyu shimpo survey found the number of Okinawans who wanted the Futenma base shifted outside of Okinawa, whether in Japan or overseas, had risen to 70 per cent, while hardly anyone – a derisory 5 per cent – endorsed the Guam Agreement formula – the formula on which Washington and Washington [Tokyo] were insisting, for a base to be constructed at Henoko. [42]

In the national elections of August 2009, DPJ candidates swept the polls in Okinawa, recording a higher vote than ever before in the proportional section and sweeping aside the representatives of the “old regime.” Both prefectural newspapers, the majority in the Okinawan parliament (the Prefectural Assembly, elected in 2008), are also opposed, [43] and 80 per cent of Okinawan mayors believe the Futenma base substitute should be constructed either overseas or elsewhere in Japan. [44] On 2 November, the Naha City Assembly passed a unanimous resolution calling for Futenma to be relocated beyond Okinawa, whether in Japan or elsewhere. [45]

Okinawan newspapers hardly circulate outside the prefecture, or mainland ones within it, and mainland Japanese opinion is remarkably ignorant, and unsympathetic, to Okinawa. Even the “liberal” Asahi editorially scolded the Hatoyama government, saying “There is a limit to Washington’s impatience … It would be very unfortunate for both countries if the Futenma issue became blown out of proportion.” [46] Okinawan civic thinking was paid little attention. At the time of Hillary Clinton’s February 2009 February visit to Tokyo, a representative group of Okinawan civic leaders wrote her an “Open Letter.” It read, in part: [47]

“Okinawa, a small island, has lived under such great stress for over sixty years. The presence of US military bases has distorted not only the politics and economy of Okinawa, but also its society itself and people’s minds and pride.

We do not need to remind you that Okinawa is not your territory. Your fifty thousand military members act freely as if this is their land, but, of course, it is not. Please remember that we, the Okinawa people, own “the inherent dignity” and “the equal and inalienable rights of all the members of the human family,” which is stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, just as your family and friends do.

The governments of the United States and Japan legitimized the US military occupation of Okinawa with the San Francisco Treaty in 1952, and the reversion of administrative rights in 1972 created a structure of economic and financial dependency in exchange for the presence of US military bases on Okinawa. The governments have changed their strategy for maintaining the base presence from using force to using money.

This is very cruel treatment. The people of Okinawa have increased dependency on such money. The money has created a system which has corrupted our minds. It has taken away alternatives. The acceptance of US bases is seen as the only way to live. … It is as if the Japanese government has made Okinawa a drug addict and the US government takes full advantage of the addiction, in order to maintain its military presence …

In 2005 and 2006, the governments of the United States and Japan reached agreement on the construction of new bases and it seems that they are trying to make the US military presence in Okinawa permanent. This plan would add a further burden on the people of Okinawa who have suffered long enough.”

They ended by demanding cancellation of the Henoko plan, immediate and unconditional return of Futenma, and further reductions in the US military presence.

However, although “old regime” thinking, predicated on absolute compliance with the US and on continuing priority to US strategy and planning in determining Okinawa policy, long cultivated by conservative LDP governments in Tokyo, never sank roots in Okinawan society, it did sway high levels of Okinawan administration, especially the prefectural governor and the Nago mayor. In the LDP system, such local dignitaries focused on “development,” “employment” and the “promotion” of Okinawa, avoiding any stance on base issues, while Tokyo poured in money designed to serve those purposes. A May 2007 law extended nation-wide the policy pioneered in Nago and Okinawa’s northern districts of reward for cooperation and punishment for recalcitrance in promoting US base interests.

Tokyo’s cultivation of regional dependence encouraged cynicism and corruption, while blocking development rooted in local needs. After a decade of such a system, Okinawa’s income levels remained the lowest in the country, unemployment was roughly double the national average, and virtually all local governments were in the throes of unsustainable fiscal crisis.

But, despite the “betrayal of the clerks,” the political winds of 2009 suggested that the Okinawan social consensus against base development had strengthened under the change of government. Certainly the political credibility of the promise of “development” in return for submission had been fatally weakened by failure to deliver. However, when in August 2009 the government of Japan that had tried unsuccessfully by every means to weaken, split, buy off and intimidate those opposed to the construction of the new base was itself thrown from office, the local representatives of the system in Okinawa, the Governor of the Prefecture and the Mayor of Nago, remained in office (till elections in 2010).

Both tried to shield their submission by seeking a slight revision of the Guam Agreement – to shift the construction design a short distance offshore – as if a reversion to the basic scheme of 1998-2005 would somehow solve the problem. Knowing the American resistance to the idea, they made it only in perfunctory way, with no attempt to insist on it. Governor Nakaima also spoke of a “best” solution – even if it was impractical - being relocation somewhere outside the prefecture.

Governor Nakaima

It was characteristic of the Governor’s vacillation that he chose to absent himself from the prefecture on the occasion of the 8 November All-Okinawa Mass Meeting to express opposition to the Futenma relocation within Okinawa. When Okinawans joined in demanding the closure of the “world’s most dangerous base,” their Governor was in Washington. Days before the Mass Meeting, he stood alongside Kanagawa Governor Matsuzawa Shigefumi who, as head of the Association of Base-Hosting Japanese Prefectures, told their hosts that he saw no alternative to construction at Henoko of the Futenma replacement. [48] Nakaima protested only in the most feeble terms.

Regime Change

In the 64 years since the Marines stormed ashore on Okinawa amid a rain of fire and steel, the islands have known no peace. The intractable nature of the prefecture’s problem stems from the fact that the base issue is set in a procrustean bed of assumptions and principles inherited from the US occupation and the Cold War. Hatoyama might declare the aspiration for “equality” in the relation with the United States, but submission, and the assumption that to please the United States was the first principle of Japanese diplomacy was deeply entrenched. Apart from the $6 billion “relocation costs” for the Guam transfer it is estimated that the Henoko base construction, if it went ahead, would cost around one trillion yen (some $11 billion). These sums come on top of the annual subsidy of around 200 billion yen (roughly $2.2 billion) Japan has been paying the US ever since the reversion of Okinawa in 1972 under the rubric of “omoiyari” (consideration or sympathy, known in the US as “Host Nation Support”), [49] the $13 billion subsidy towards the costs of the Gulf War and the many subsequent appropriations towards the costs of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. [50] It was once said of George W. Bush that he was inclined to think of Japan as “just some ATM machine” for which a pin number was not needed. Hatoyama has made no move to close the “sympathy” spigot, and must know that to do so would provoke Washington even more than his attempts to renegotiate the Guam Treaty.

The Japanese state of the “old regime” became a “mercenary in reverse,” one that paid to subject itself. To explain such a peculiar state formation and its accompanying psychology, I have suggested thinking of Japan as America’s “Client State,” i.e. a state that enjoys the formal trappings of Westphalian sovereignty and independence, and is therefore neither a colony nor a puppet state, but which has internalized the requirement to give preference to “other” interests over its own. [51]

Prime Ministers of the “old regime” sought ways to channel Japanese monies to Washington, while seeking in return help in shoring up their government and resisting the will of the Japanese people. It would be too much to think that a single election could securely install a “new regime,” but the Hatoyama government has taken some steps in that direction.

Throughout the post-1945 decades, there has never been such a confrontation between the US and Japan as grew during 2009 around the change of government in Tokyo. At issue, the Ryukyu Shimpo insisted on the eve of the All-Okinawa Mass Meeting, was nothing less than whether the Japanese constitution’s guarantees of popular sovereignty, basic human rights, and peace applied to Okinawa. [52] The Hatoyama government is split: Defense Minister Kitazawa for implementation of the Guam Agreement and construction at Henoko, Foreign Minister Okada for merger of Futenma facilities with those of the USAF base at Kadena on a 15 year limited basis, while Prime Minister Hatoyama has called for prioritizing the views of Okinawans.

By November, despite their worries, officials in Washington must have felt with satisfaction that they had accomplished a lot in a short space of time, opening divisions within the Hatoyama government. They would have noted with pleasure that Okinawa Governor Nakaima and Nago Mayor Shimabukuro had both kept a low profile as the crisis grew and maintained their distance both from the new Government in Tokyo and the Okinawan popular movement, and that both were conspicuously absent from the platform of the All-Okinawa Mass Protest meeting of 8 November. Washington would be bound to pay more attention to that fact, and to the message of quiet reassurance that Nakaima was delivering to his American hosts, than to the message of the Mass Meeting that followed days afterward.

All Okinawa Mass Meeting on 8 November, Ginowan City)
Rejecting the Provisions of the Guam Treaty and demanding immediate, unconditional return of Futenma Marine Air Station (Ryukyu shimpo)

With the last shots from the Washington barrage still exploding around him [53] and Obama’s visit imminent, Hatoyama continued to study his options and Washington to insist on its demands. Hatoyama faced an impossible choice: he could reject the US demands, risking a major diplomatic crisis, or he could submit to them, provoking a domestic political crisis and driving Okinawans to despair. The optimism one could feel just a few short months ago as the new Government was elected slowly drained away.

Gavan McCormack is emeritus professor at Australian National University, coordinator of The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, author, most recently, of Client State: Japan in the American Embrace (in English, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean), and contributes a monthly column to the Korean daily Kyunghyang shinmun. For his earlier articles on Okinawan matters, see The Asia-Pacific Journal.

Notes at Source

Video: Taliban record American defeat in Nuristan

It was one of the deadliest attacks of the war for U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The target: a remote U.S. outpost in Wanat, Nuristan. The date: July 13, 2008. ABC News has obtained a view of the battle unseen until now: the attack, filmed by the Taliban as they assaulted the base. The exclusive video of the attack was obtained via the NEFA Foundation.

The video begins by showing Taliban fighters walking on a mountain path. They appear relaxed and comfortable, walking through the area armed but unchallenged. They are heard chatting calmly on their radios.