What is Apostasy?

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia banned slavery in 1962, under reported pressure from U.S. President John F. Kennedy. Of nearly a half-million freed slaves, very many continued working for their former masters.

What's the surprise? That slavery was forbidden so recently? That it was outlawed at all? Why should the Saudi royal family kowtow & grovel to an American president? Can a person dirt poor be truly "free" ...?

Saudi King Faisal offered opportunity. We can imagine he reflected on the teachings of the Prophet (Peace be upon Him). He made a positive step forward.

America may claim responsibility... truth is more murky.

Fighting Over Debtors

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, AIIB, is preparing to launch under Chinese guidance. The USA (World Bank) and Japan (Asian Development Bank) have thus far resisted cooperating, piqued by expected operational overlap with the AIIB.

Japan is further irritated to be perceived a US flunky. Surely Japan's government continues to be a satellite to US government power -- but irritated when their subservience is on display.

Nature shows that apex predators don't play well together...

8 in the Back

A recent police shooting in South Carolina, USA, was recorded by a passerby: Walter L. Scott was killed by North Charleston police officer Michael Slager, who fired eight rounds as Scott tried to run away from a traffic stop.

Can many Americans claim surprise & shock?

The biggest surprise was that the person with the camera continued filming. Being nearby made him a target - maybe lucky the officer's weapon was then empty.

America's police expect obedience. They themselves are scared. If they mistakenly grab you, you still must obey and not resist. Sass 'em -- you may be killed.

You may be brutalized for no reason. Previously, Officer Slager was accused of unprovoked assault, but exonerated by his police department peers. (Justice hinges on what type of American claims damage -- and what proofs are offered -- that ain't changed from ages past).

Americans, taught their rights, are not taught how to survive partial lockdown of their local communities by law enforcement bullies. America needs citizen education courses on being rousted by cops. Anyone suddenly can be drawn into a deadly situation.

Everyday, Americans are trampled by public officials.
Learn to persevere. Obey the Law. Don't complain.
Live -- and protest later.

Welcome AIIB

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, AIIB, (亚洲基础设施投资银行 or 亚投行) is just now finishing its drive for founding membership (31 March 2015). Under first-stage leadership by China, those on-board as Founding Members include a large number of Asian & major Western nations, including the UK, Russia, Brazil, Egypt & Turkey. Many have communicated their application for membership in the closing days & hours.

Notably missing are the USA and Japan. The USA has been a critic of AIIB, though in past days has greatly moderated its opposition as American allies have increasingly ignored US disapproval and joined anyhow. (The USA itself may belatedly participate - see these news accounts: here and here).

It seems to be all about influence. The World Bank, for example, has 188 members (IBRD) but in the past was quite explicit about US influence on leadership: "Traditionally, the Bank President has always been a U.S. citizen nominated by the President of the United States, the largest shareholder in the bank. The nominee is subject to confirmation by the Board of Governors, to serve for a five-year, renewable term."  Recent World Bank explanations are less revealing: "Dr. Jim Yong Kim is the 12th president of the World Bank Group. He was selected by the Boards of Executive Directors for a five-year renewable term." [Kim is the 12th US citizen in a row appointed as President] Analysis of this US hegemony can be read here and here (links)

The Asian Development Bank (ADB), with 67 members, has been largely controlled by Japan -- at least so far, as to date all nine Presidents have been Japanese.

So tall tales of "fair governance" concerns holding back Japan and the USA are weighty as wind from a peasant's backside. If the AIIB is dominated by China, the process of big-power influence will be nothing new...

For most of us little folk, and for the very poor who need help most, it doesn't much matter if the loans we're supplied (and the bosses who offer aid) are from the USA, Japan or China. More help needed !

Radionuclide Latte

The Fukushima nuclear plant is highly dangerous.

It's dangerously unstable. The Mark I containment structure and spent fuel rods are perched high up in the air on a damaged undercarriage. Another huge earthquake, perhaps even a small earthquake, could rupture the containment vessels, releasing huge amounts of radioactivity into the environment.

Fukushima tries containing their bad news, while they're not containing their radiation. Japan's nuclear disaster is compounded by four years of feeble site repairs. Stabilizing the disaster site is incomplete and inadequate.

Forget debates on how much now is leaking -- how many xray exposures received, and natural base radioactivity...

Japan has regular deadly earthquakes. The scale of a new accident could easily be massive, exposing tens of millions to painful early death. Nobody pretends Fukushima Daiichi is stable - it's not.

RUN !

Flush TPP down Toilet

Trans-Pacific Piracy, the TPP agreement, hugely threatens self-determination.

We're being forced to accept corporate controls. Elite negotiators secretly debate & covertly agree hidden binding rules, in a bold attempt at wide-ranging enslavement.

TPP institution will force communities and national governments to welcome encroachment or pay punitive damages. There's no choice but to accept monstrosities such as the Fukushima nuclear cyst.

A century from now, if society survives, they'll surely hate TPP.
Where's corporate leadership after meltdown?
Corporations evade any & all responsibility.

TPP:  From the devils corrupting Fukushima
TPP = Trans-Pacific Partnership

Holy Indiana

Rastafari can celebrate the advent of Indiana's "religious freedom law" (SENATE ENROLLED ACT No. 101) by rolling a big spliff of sacrament. Congrats!

Accompanied Suicide

The recent Germanwings air crash in the French Alps is being described now as a deliberate act (link); the dead co-pilot had a "psychological illness" that reportedly caused the crash.

A similar crash in 1982 killed 24 people, when Japan Air Lines pilot Seiji Katagiri (片桐清二機長) dove his Flight 350 DC-8 (JA8061) into Tokyo Bay. JAL crew reportedly had been unwilling to work with senior pilot Katagiri due to his odd behaviour, so he typically flew with a quite junior crew who'd little or no choice. Captain Katagiri survived the crash; he was cleared of responsibility after being judged insane (心神喪失の状態にあった).

Katagiri's name is officially unmentioned now in Japan, maybe in respect to illness & privacy. In such case of diminished responsibility, Japan Air Lines seems all the more at fault. They had warnings of trouble, did little or nothing, and 24 people died. Very sad...

The world of work can be close to the edge. How many insane people are around us, and what should be done with them? Can trouble be identified before it erupts and kills?

TPP

Trans-Pacific Piracy

Big corporations seek to bind a dozen national governments to the new TPP agreement. The shackles will severely hurt non-corporate interests. We'll be chained to lobbyists and lawyers, taking away all possibility to regulate aggressive businesses.

Remember Enron? Bernie Madoff? They'd be given free entry everywhere, and when the flim-flam unravels, consumers and democracy forfeit all.

This is not a trans-pacific partnership, it's piracy. It makes us each a trans-pacific peon. Pee on.

You nations still not completely enslaved:
You're being tricked.  Wake UP.  Never accept TPP !
There's no "partner" in RAPE

Fiddle

Too often it seems our political economy shuts out the common citizenry: huge corporate interests manipulate our politicians and dominate community resources.

Imagine the worst?

Detente Poisoning

The Foreign Ministers of Japan, South Korea & China have been meeting together, finding areas of agreement and building a groundwork for a possible upcoming trilateral leadership summit.

Photo: Michael Gross & US State Department

Somehow, at the same time, diplomat Stephen Bosworth, former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea (and eight-year President of the Sasakawa-funded United States-Japan Foundation) is widely quoted in the press declaring Japan "should not go back on what it has already agreed ... on the subject of comfort women and other subjects."  Major story in Korea!

This important topic has simmered for more than seventy years. It's a poorly-timed coincidence that the former U.S. official undiplomatically stirs-up trouble the same day a foreign minister's trilateral meeting is being held (to which the USA was pointedly not invited). 

Ambassador Bosworth & Secretary of State Clinton, 26 Feb. 2009

Bosworth goes on to discuss what he believes is "in Japan's interest" -- but if he really cared, he'd zip his lip.

Two friends? Hamster duo.

The USA is frightened of East Asia finding common ground & co-prosperity. Discussions find Yankee somehow pushing in...

Today's BBC (link) reports of meetings between China, the ROK and Japan:
'The poor relationship between Japan and South Korea has become a concern for the US, which sees the two countries as its main military allies in Asia. Last week, US Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Russel described the tension between its "two friends" as a "strategic liability".'

"Team USA" is an increasingly illusive domestic abstraction, as 1% hoodwink the vast majority to submit.

South Korea & Japan are more apparently subjugated: the USA bases tens of thousands of young & vigorous American military troops in each nation. For more than sixty years the two lands and their gelded leaders have been reliable pet hamsters to American Empire.

Poison Japan

20 March 1995 I had an early appointment at a western Tokyo university. I walked from my home to Kasuga subway station, then rode a packed commuter train to Suidobashi and changed to the westbound Chūō Line for a 30-minute standing ride.

The trip just then was memorable for being crowded. At the start we were packed so tightly, I still remember being unable to move my arms to wipe my forehead or pat-down my hair. Swearing to avoid Tokyo rush hour trains, I've kept off 'em for the past 20 years.

The morning's further memorable dimension emerged later in the day, after returning home on an almost empty train: nearby painful death. Deluded people on five Tokyo subway trains silently released sarin nerve agent (a deadly poisonous chemical weapon) and then disembarked. I'd been blissfully unaware; the cars I rode were spared, and I saw nobody sick. But I was perhaps just a few meters away from the poisoners and their clear plastic bags of liquid. Hundreds were sickened, a dozen people were killed.

Spooky?  Sure. But two points are most horrible:

1) Nine-months earlier (on 28 June 1994, 240km west of Tokyo) the same group wreaked their first sarin attack in Matsumoto: killing eight & injuring 200 people (link). Japanese Police took some time to discover the killing agent was sarin, and the police throughout were woefully inept. A victim identified as the prime suspect, Yoshiyuki Kōno (河野義行), was vilified by media around Japan (Shincho Weekly later reportedly disavowed its article 「毒ガス事件発生源の怪奇家系図」 after threat of lawsuit - link; see also here). If Japan's police had been slightly alert that year, they'd have solved the Matsumoto case and avoided the Tokyo attack.

2) Response to the Tokyo sarin terror attack on the day was very poor & slow. One Marunouchi line train with poison gas went on its route back and forth and back again for one hour and forty minutes. Many stations were visited three times... and that train passed through my neighborhood twice while dripping poison (and a prior time with culprits pre-release)...

Lessons? Avoid reliance on Japanese officials. One book on the incident (Murakami's Underground. - link) depicts the sarin attacks as laying bare glaring problems of fragmented & sensationalized Japanese society. I wholly agree.

Israel's War

Israeli PM Netanyahu, facing a tight election, tried to position his opponents as Arab-leaning, and promised never to allow a "two-state solution" ...

Netanyahu and his supporters have chosen WAR -- a continued genocidal policy to expand the  Zionist state for Jewish settlers.

Similar to the Cherokee and Comanche while the US Army butchered them without mercy, the local Palestinian people and the Palestinian State will never be completely exterminated. They've good reason to be upset.

Israel should get no support for its political war.
STOP U.S. aid & political graft to Israel NOW.

Israeli Election Day

Benjamin Netanyahu - בנימין נתניהו

Tuesday 17 March (2015) at 3:23AM (Israel Standard Time) 
Israeli Election Day

== שתפו עכשיו ==

שלטון הימין בסכנה. המצביעים הערבים נעים בכמויות אל הקלפי. עמותות השמאל מביאות אותם באוטובוסים.

לנו אין V-15, יש לנו "צו 8", יש לנו רק אתכם. צאו אל הקלפי, תביאו את החברים ובני המשפחה, הצביעו מחל כדי לסגור את הפער בינינו לבין מפלגת "העבודה".

בעזרתכם ובעזרת השם נקים ממשלה לאומית שתשמור על מדינת ישראל.


 == שתפו עכשיו ==

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10152778935532076

Polls had actually not opened when PM Netanyahu posted his video (hover mouse on Netanyahu's page "March 17" date to see his Facebook time stamp)  - Nobody observed hordes of Arabs bussed to the polls -- clear bullshit [ just the PM's personal 3AM nightmare ] -- He's trying gross inflammatory scare & fear tactics...

And this troubled dude can set-off multiple nukes

ByeBye Bibi?

Can Israel cast-off the rightwing shackles of Netanyahu - Lieberman?

HOPE

The present belligerent government suffers economically, and is able only to buy or bully "friends" -- While the likely alternative is continued chauvinism, there are some encouraging signs of change. In any event, Netanyahu is a mean-hearted despot whose time is past.

PS - Here's a link to Israel's decayed PM appealing to his right-wing constituents, calling for all help defeating the droves of lefties and Israeli-Arab voters. "With your help, and with God's help, we will create a Nationalist Government to protect the State of Israel." (link)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERc6hi_F9LA

Politicized Poor

Self-absorbed people in the USA have some sense of how Vietnamese and Venezuelan people, Haitians & Hondurans, comparatively are more politicized.

Them folk mess with politics & revolution!

Because they've been driven like sheep to the slaughter, and have fought-back at great cost, they're now politicized. Oligarchs of their nations, backed by the USA, raped the land and enslaved their people with empty dreams of excess and extravagance.

"El Tigre" -- helping the Honduran people?

Most of the world are naturally calm & happy folk who'd prefer a mañana lifestyle - to relax & not worry much. But that's difficult when US-sponsored paramilitaries & death squads seize the neighborhood... when your cousin disappears, or your uncle's defiled corpse is dumped in the village center.

Even one death squad's too many.  
How many murders have we funded?

What's responsible for this dirty business?  (link)     Greed.
Me-first big wealth is an unsustainably violent motivator...

Obama in 2012

I don't like President Barack Obama... but there's much more to dislike about Mitt Romney, the arrogant Republican who lost the 2012 Presidential election...

Why conjure up the past?

It is worth considering what we'd be facing if Romney had been elected. We'd almost certainly be in open war with Iran (bowing to Israeli demands) and also more actively fighting Venezuela. American forces might also be more extensively deployed in the Ukraine, and around China...

Militarism has engulfed America -- greedy, deadly & grotesquely limitless.

Thank President Obama  for avoiding even more War.

Dead Beyond Count

Militarism is expensive. Costs are more than monetary -- including many forms of continuing trauma and death.

Afghanistan intervention cost at least 2356 American lives (link)

Iraq intervention cost at least 4489 American lives (link)

Each fatality is a tragedy (with far more killing of local people). Death is a continuing shock to friends & loved ones. The victim may suffer an instant of surprise, but hopes & promises are muddied & too-quickly erased.

The heroism of those serving overseas is tempered by reality: they should be home -- not enslaved to Big Capital or protecting an ugly foreign potentate. Courageous people who risked life & lost everything for an unknown flag. Bad choices led each of these troops to work & die overseas, away from family, far from home.

Our Law

Law should clearly reflect well-considered public opinion & basic human rights. Society's dreams tempered with good judgement.

Instead, Law is too often Public Relations. Our rulers twist Law to justify their misdeeds and solidify their controls.

The rulers have no mandate to operate above the Law.

It's unacceptable when medical doctors decide to euthanize chronic-care patients. Recurring sinusitis? Painful arthritis? Treat by lethal injection.

No less preposterous are politicos kidnapping people & holding the abducted without charge. After many years captive without legal conviction, the illegally imprisoned at Guantanamo became victims.

Sowing Enmity

American military forces based overseas may not be arrogant, but they're an occupying power, and some local people despise & resist them. Imagine Chinese or Russian or Israeli or Nigerian armed forces based in your community -- would you like it?

Bad enough disliking your rulers; worse they 'invite' a foreign army.

Open hostilities ended 60+ years ago - US Army Occupy goes on & on...

We overpay for our preventive militarism...

Goodbye GI Joe ?

The terrible slashing incident injuring US Ambassador Mark Lippert in Seoul, Korea (link) plus anti-military activism in Okinawa, Japan, confirm that US military bases are often unwelcome overseas.

New construction of Henoko U.S. Marine Base, heatedly-resisted by local people in Okinawa, is endorsed by America's arrogant political allies in Tokyo (some facts at this link). Similar conflicts arise around the new Jeju Naval Base (Gangjeong, South Korea), a military installation being developed in a UNESCO-listed conservation region that far-off Seoul has readily sacrificed.

Of course Seoul & Tokyo prefer peace, but directing any 'first-strike' at distant Okinawa or Jeju (where fallout blows far away from their major cities) is best bad choice (link).

Uncle Sam could simply decide his protective forces are unwelcome, and let the Japanese & Koreans protect themselves...

Military agenda is laborious, oppressive, and part mystery. Our Yankee GI Joe has parked himself in Asia for 70 postwar years. Problems and challenges have been hushed-up, ignored & misreported. Let's now teach the local yokels one great word of English: Goodbye.

Master & Messiah

Top fat-cat US Republican lawmakers are usually calculating & unemotional - they've shut down America for unpaid bills, funded death squads overseas, and continue to bomb & suppress in support of militarism and personal wealth maximization. So how can we explain Congress giving 25 standing ovations to Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu?

Netanyahu spoke to a fuller US Congress on 24 May 2011 and received 29 standing ovations. This week he got only 25. Do U.S. Republicans fear retaliation if unenthusiastic, so they clap and applaud and stand and cheer? Was this spectacle an unseemly disgrace? Not if you love Bibi. Sure, he's not the Messiah, nor a national hero. He's only a mean-hearted visiting foreign politician. But those with good humor can laugh watching Yank politicos dance to kiss his fat arse.

Sly Spies

"The White House admits ... disclosures about US spying have caused diplomatic tension with America's allies"
       --- BBC News, 29 Oct 2013

Bugger All!

Prepared Lies

Look carefully at this photo.
The green display is designed to show the amount of radiation along Japan's newly-opened Joban nukeway. Readings on 17 Feb 2015 were 5.5µSv/h (microsieverts per hour).   Notice anything odd?

Radiation on Japan's Joban Expressway (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

No higher reading than 9.9 can be displayed.  Convenient?

Maybe the 5.5 pictured is actually 25.5 or even 95.5µSv/h -- the display has no 10s or 100s columns ... Good design?

Losing People

In Korea the new school year began yesterday (Monday 2nd March).

Look at photos in this linked article: an elementary school with only one new first-grade child. But 120 schools had no new children, and 130 schools had only one new entrant.

Korea suffers low birth rate & young adults moving to larger population centers. Foreign immigration is very low.

Look next month for similar stories from Japan - their new school year starts April 1st...

Isotope Run 2020

Tokyo's 2020 Olympics will be the most expensive ever. Fukushima nuclear pollution must not cloud the games - face the problem & laugh!

Leaders deviate from promises (link), switching venues to cut costs.

Olympic 2020 marathon can ring the nuclear dead zone!

Two hours round the meltdown site will expose athletes to only 15.0 microsieverts of radiation (best case scenario). Slower runners, camera crews, and volunteer support staff are only slightly more threatened.

Viva Tokyo 2020 ?

Fukushima Nukeway

Japan celebrates the world's only nukeway - you can drive your vehicle through atomic radiation, including 8-km (5 miles) within the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster exclusion zone... What luck!

Today Japanese Prime Minister Abe inaugurated the controversial nukeway, as maximum aerial radiation dose on that section of the road was reportedly 5.4 microsieverts per hour (link). "A driver who crosses the section at a speed of 70 kph will be exposed to 0.2 microsievert..." What of services in the dead strip? Car breakdown?  Past radiation measurements in the area have been much higher, and isotope compositions unrevealed.

Visiting British Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, was brought to the region's periphery, where he reportedly (link) tasted local produce.

Tokyo policymakers & global business interests are increasingly emboldened, as Japan's docile people are now mostly stoic about Fukushima nuclear emissions. (Nuclear meltdown began 11 March 2011 in three of six Fukushima Daiichi reactors. Leakage & widespread contamination continue). Trust industry & government?  How many more mistakes are they making?

Visit Japan !   ?

Japanese PM Shinzō Abe (安倍 晋三) -- symbol of continued errors

Trust?

Just noticed the following in a BBC news article:

[ quote ]
Washington rejected the accusations as ludicrous.
[ unquote ]

Mmmm.

Ludicrous: "so foolish, unreasonable, or out of place as to be amusing."  But far too many deadly serious manipulations are ongoing, with a history (even a single case = too many) of supporting dictators and death squads. Remember the Vietnam War / massacre? US politics, US militarism, and US overseas adventurism are never laughable.

Nuclear Waste Neighbor?

Don't be deceived by those selling nuclear development 'opportunity' -- offers of jobs & money mean nothing when poisoned (as in Fukushima) and being forced to evacuate your neighborhood forever.

How can industry & government impose massive quarantine while claiming "All is well" ... ? Only possible for a public deliberately misinformed and confused.

We must learn from past mistakes! Nuclear power generates nuclear waste dumps. Your nuclear waste is stockpiled a short distance from your atomic reactor. Your local nuclear waste dump is an unstable target for deliberate misadventure, poisonous accident, and deadly stupidity.