---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Dante-Gabryell Monson <[email protected]> Date: Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 6:43 PM Subject: Necropolitics of Radiation and the Struggle To: [email protected] ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Sixteen Beaver <[email protected]> Date: Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 1:20 PM Subject: Monday -- 10.24.11 -- Necropolitics of Radiation and the Struggle To: [email protected] Monday -- 10.24.11 -- Necropolitics of Radiation and the Struggle CONTENTS: 1. About this Monday 2. Films 3. Participants 4. Suggested Readings 4.1 Dystopia of Civil Society / Part 1 and 2 4.2 Notes on the 4.5 Great Kamagasaki Oppression and Nuclear Power Industry 4.3 Must We Rebuild Their Anthill? A Letter to/for Japanese Comrades 4.4 An Elementary Algebra of Common Goods and Evils 4.5 Soil and Farmers 5. links __________________________________________________ 1. About this Monday What: Films & Discussion When: Monday -- 10.24.11 @ 7:00PM Where: 16 Beaver Street, 4th Floor Who: Free and open to all In many ways, Fukushima remains an unsurpassable and ineffable ghost haunting today's burgeoning revolts against Wall Street. Unsurpassable in its invasiveness, intensity, scale, and duration. Ineffable because it remains an obvious indication of the exceptional state of things in the midst of this crisis. How one might ask? Well, even the potential destruction of entire regions, ecologies, habitats and life forms - outstripping even national borders - does not seem to put a pause on resuming literally and figuratively 'business as usual.' It is an emblem of how the exigencies of profit (above all else) act as the central determining force for the reproduction and organization of entire societies. In this way, Fukushima continues to remain a missing part of the puzzle we attempted to put together in our meeting with activists, organizers, and artists in late July in the lead-up to the general assemblies and occupations which have spread throughout the US in this last month. Although information has been coming in from Japan since 3/11, there is a huge gap between what the people in Japan are actually experiencing, doing and thinking after the Fukushima nuclear accident, and what the people in the US know and think about it. We are inviting three intellectuals/activists from Japan, Yoshihiko Ikegami , Chigaya Kinoshita and Ayumi Goto to share their first hand experiences and thoughts with us here in the US, and to discuss together the significance of the situation, the question of our human survival and the global struggles for it. We all know that 3/11 is a global event. What has already happened in Japan is and will be affecting the world over. Firstly there are effects of radiation that could expand more and more for the years to come, though they might not be immediately evident. Secondly, Japan sinking into the abyss has a big impact on the global economy and power relations. Thirdly, the management of post-nuclear-disaster society is rendered as both a continuation and new phase of the capitalist regime that is global in essence. Fourthly, in the regime, being forced to live under radiation (of varied degrees, forms and extents) is a new misery imposed upon all creatures on the planet. So it is that 3/11 Fukushima must be an occasion for all of us to think over the world we have constructed - and ideas for how we will reconstruct it. __________________________________________________ 2. Films At this event, two films will be shown, followed by a public discussion with Yoshihiko, Chigaya and Ayumi. Both films deal with sacrifices of radiation -- one from the bomb and another from labor -- which are politically and industrially imposed upon the commoners. Together, we intend to analyze (1) the political and industrial complex of the nuclear regime, (2) the present state of day-workers working for nuclear industry, and (3) the rising struggles against the regime. Atomic Wounds Marc Petitjean | 2008 | 54 min. At 89, Doctor Hida, a survivor of the 1945 atomic bomb at Hiroshima, continues to care for some of the other quarter of a million survivors. Atomic Wounds retraces his dedicated journey and highlights how the terrible danger of radiation was concealed by successive American administrations in the 50's - 70's so that nuclear power could be freely developed, with no concern for public health. Nuclear Ginza -Hidden Labor Under Radiation Nicholas Röhl | 1995 | 30 min. The story follows the photojournalist/ anti-nuclear activist Kenji Higuchi as he exposes the exploitation of the “untouchables” who were pulled out of the slums of Tokyo and Osaka in order to work while exposed to radiation, often without their knowledge. Referring to the tacit cooperation and close ties between the Japanese government and the country’s nuclear industry, a man notes in one scene that “democracy has been destroyed where nuclear power stations exist.” The film shows how Japan, having suffered nuclear attacks in the past, remarkably transformed itself within a few decades into one of the most “nuclearized” nations worldwide. The two films can be viewed at (but we will use DVD for the screening): Atomic Wounds http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxIAVzDvOQY Nuclear Ginza (1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_qb0uAc1dg Nuclear Ginza (2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BO_xZW7P8mY Nuclear Ginza (3) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFA-h-_BcWM __________________________________________________ 3. Participants Yoshihiko Ikegami (forrmer editor of Gendashiso, independent writer) Chigaya Kinoshita (political scientist, activist based in Tokyo) Ayumi Goto (historian, activist working with day laborer struggles in Osaka) Moderator/translator <jfisssures.org> editors: Yuko Tonohira and Sabu Kohso __________________________________________________ 4. Suggested Readings 4.1 Chigaya Kinoshita, Dystopia of Civil Society (Part 1 and 2) http://www.jfissures.org/2011/04/09/dystopia-of-civil-society/ http://www.jfissures.org/2011/05/04/dystopia_of_civil_society_-_part_2/ 4.2 Takeshi Haraguchi, Notes on the 4.5 Great Kamagasaki Oppression and Nuclear Power Industry http://www.jfissures.org/2011/04/14/notes-on-the-4-5-great-kamagasaki-oppres... 4.3 Silvia Federici and George Caffentzis, Must We Rebuild Their Anthill? A Letter to/for Japanese Comrades http://www.jfissures.org/2011/04/22/a-letter-from-silvia-federici-and-george... 4.4 Ferruccio Gambino, [An] Elementary Algebra of Common Goods and Evils http://www.jfissures.org/author/ferruccio-gambino/ 4.5 Yoshihiko Ikegami, Soil and Farmers http://www.jfissures.org/2011/08/29/soil-and-farmers/ 4.6 Jfissures, Editorial 8/15/2011 http://www.jfissures.org/2011/08/15/editorial-8152011/ __________________________________________________ 4.1 Dystopia of Civil Society / Part 1 By Chigaya Kinoshita Published: April 9, 2011 In his “A Response to Rebecca Solnit,” Yoshihiko Ikegami highly appreciates A Paradise Built in Hell, and at the same time argues that the principle of hope inherent in the disaster utopia might not work for the present situation in Japan, confronting as it is not only natural disaster by earthquake and tsunami but also nuclear disaster. As he points out, radiation exposure causes calamities not only on living humans but also future generations. And nuclear accident deprives us of the place/space itself where the utopia can come out of disaster. Unfortunately hopes for recovery drastically diminish here. In the worst case, parts of Fukushima and Ibaraki prefectures will be no man’s land for an indefinite length of time. Possibility for a recovery of community is zero in such condition. Now it must be considered how one can talk about the disaster utopia in the present situation of Japan in relationship with the previous nuclear disasters in Ural 1950 and Chernobyl 1980. This is our task. However, I think that the difficulty of building a disaster utopia in Japan is not simply due to the characteristics of nuclear disaster per se but something else. For instance, some foreign media have repeatedly praised diligence and order the Japanese people sustained in confrontation with the critical situation, but at the same time expressed a sense of oddity that there have been so little critical discourses and actions being observed there. It is not that there have been no resistances, though being scarce. I shall name a few examples here. The resistance that has been most spoken about so far among the general public took place in professional baseball. After 3/11, the home stadium of the Eagles based in the northeast has been damaged and out of use. In response, the Pacific League to which the Eagles belong determined to postpone the season until April. But the Central League whose member teams are centered in Tokyo and Osaka areas insisted on the determined date of March 25th. The background to this insistence is problematically interesting. The one who was behind this coercion was Tsuneo Watanabe, the owner of Yomiuri Newspaper. Once an agent of CIA in the cold war age, Watanabe played a major role in introducing nuclear power plant in Japan during the 1950s. (I shall write a piece about the US/Japan strategy vis-à-vis the introduction of nuclear power.) The intension of Watanabe to start the season on the predetermined date was evidently to create an image of successful recovery by shifting the public attention from the on-going nuclear disaster to the baseball season. The teams of the Central League followed this decision. Meanwhile the union of professional baseball players declared: “it is nothing but conceit to start a season in this situation,” and its intention to go on strike. Public opinion largely supported this, and finally the Central League was forced to delay the season. The union was able to express their voice under the state of emergency only because it had a previous experience of all team strike against amalgamation plan in 2004. This strike was a rare example that achieved a wide range of support from Japanese public who generally hold anti-strike sentiment. At that time as well, the main enemy of the players was Watanabe, and the axis of opposition has returned in the current dispute, with repeated success in establishing a commonsense with the public. Such was the motive drive for the radical response of the players. Another example is the struggle of Ohta Kinoshita, the former news desk of Nippon Television Network. He was the one who reported the critical accident at Tokaimura Nuclear power Plant in 1999. At the wake of 3/11, he gave up his post at the TV station, and began a blog <http://twitter.com/KinositaKouta> to propagate the danger of nuclear energy. With his profound criticism of Japan’s mass media that is spreading ungrounded optimistic views, and resisting accusations against himself being escapist and traitor, he persists in his critical conviction by giving up his high salary job. There are lineages of such oppositional spirit in Japan that are not familiar for foreign media, but they are unfortunately very rare. At the wake of 3/11, the transportation system and infra-structure of Tokyo were plunged into chaos. All workers had difficulties in commutation. Foreign owned enterprises announced to their employees that they did not have to come in for work. It is said that foreign workers did not come following the reasonable recommendation, but alas! Japanese workers came to work by making tremendous effort to reach the metropolis. There are more examples like this, say, of conformism. Fukushima University is in Fukushima City, located within 60 KM radius of the power plant, where radiation is detected well over the standard measure. The university dares to resume its courses in May. The president issued a declaration that sounded nothing but a self-enlightenment; the administration ignored the objection of some faculties and accused as traitors those who refuged outside the prefecture; to the students it vaguely suggested that they go home when the government issues the order of standing by at home. The resumption of courses in coming May will inexorably bind all students and all university workers. The administration has no concern about the lives and well being of the students and workers; it just seeks to carry out its everyday business, blindly obeying the order of the Ministry of Education. While the disaster of the nuclear accident is getting worse and worse everyday, Japanese society is held tight by such conformism. Observing this, many of us immediately think of the total war mobilization during the Pacific War. They might associate Fukushima University with Kamikaze attack, or they might find it as derivative of the traditional characteristics of diligence and submission. Stereotypically this can be deemed the nature of nationalism of Japan-type. However, it is my contention that the basis of the present conformism is not there. Foreign media have been reporting also about the insufficiency and incapacity of the Japanese government in terms of emergency measures and information disclosure. What is at stake here is a question of Japanese civil society that approves of such problematic governance. I think that the problem exists not in nationalism but the structure of the civil society. The present conformism must be analyzed from the vantage point of class struggle within Japanese society after the high economic growth of the 1960s, where the civil society has come to be dominated by capital, while its class nature has been made invisible within the civil society. A clue to approach this issue is “the death by overwork [karoshi].” This internationally circulated term signified a serious social problem during the 1980s when Japan was celebrating the bubble economy. After having overcome a strong yen in the mid 80s, Japan’s economy began to enjoy prosperity since 1986. In consequence, the sense that Japanese are rich and the society is wealthy generally spread. On the other hand, however, also generalized was the image of the Japanese as working bees, based upon the fact that the workers work intensely for long hours. The incredibly speedy economic growth and karoshi both indicated an abnormality that derived from a same root. Here I would like to pay attention to the fact that the Japanese workers were not mobilized and driven by such external coercion as the state of total war. Workers would not likely work so hard and long as to reach karoshi by an external coercion. Karoshi became a wide social problem only because of the existing structure in which the workers voluntarily devoted themselves to their companies to the extreme. I doubt that this structure is derivative of the tradition and convention inherent in Japanese society. At the end of the Pacific War, from the 1940s through the 60s, there was a powerful labor movement. Up until the mid 1970s, strikes and street actions were part of the everyday landscape. Thereafter, however, strikes drastically plunged and the industrial actions of labor unions fell to the bottom. Be it white-collar or blue-collar, as the workers lost their class-consciousness, they came to identify themselves dominantly with their companies. Despite the increase of working populations under the high economic growth, the rule of conservative LDP lasted for such a long time, because the working class supported it instead of the Japan socialist Party or the Japan Communist Party that tended to social democracy. In this manner, the myth of the Japanese being obedient and diligent got fixed only during these forty years. A work-centrism grasped the entire society under the directive of capital; autonomy was totally lost in domains of everyday life and culture; the view of life was homogenized under the idea of company=citizenship, based upon the principle of competition among individuals. These broad senses of everyday life were created after the defeat of class struggle, which are the very disciplines that would not allow resistance, disobedience, and exodus at this moment. Certainly the enduring recession that began in the 1990s and the abuses of neoliberal reforms leveled the economic basis for creating and sustaining the everyday senses of Japan’s civil society. At the moment, however, the collapse of economic basis have not yet triggered the willingness of the people to look for an alternative, but are rather spurring on the tendency to compete their submission even harder for survival. Now what is grounding Japan’s conformism is a delusive obsession: “if I am kicked out from my job, my everyday life, I won’t be able to come back.” On top of that, as people are confronting threats of radiation that is invisible and may produce long-term effects as opposed to immediate, this prolonged state of crisis is reinforcing the structure of Japan’s corporate-civil society. I am aware that the actual difficulties of Japanese society cannot be reduced only to the problematic of class. Its nationalism should be shed light on in itself. There are many more moments to be scrutinized in relationship with Japan’s crisis: i.e., globalization, neoliberalism, disaster capitalism, empire and the US, correspondence or mirroring with the revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa, whereabouts of social movements, etc. What I wanted to clarify in this short piece were that the present crisis is rooted in the way of Japanese modernity; and that Japan is confronting a tremendous social and political shift that cannot be spoken of, without rethinking its past and present in their entirety. Now in spite of its superficial tranquility, Japanese society is about to be losing its coherence of past-present-future and torn apart into pieces. __________________________________________________ 4.1 Dystopia of Civil Society / Part 2 By Chigaya Kinoshita Published: May 4, 2011 Silvia Federici and George Caffentzis’s “Must we Rebuilt their Anthill?” is very rich in suggestions, and includes indicators to Japan’s present and future as well as showing an important direction for the re-posing of the question of the relationship between Japanese capitalism and society. Until a little while ago I had planned to write a response to their suggestions. But at present, there is an urgent need to talk about the ugly aspects of Japanese civil society that are rapidly spreading before our eyes. On April 16th, the Ministry of Education reestablished the yearly limit for radiation exposure for children at 20 millisieverts. The yearly limit up to this point had been one millisievert, and even the ‘Nuclear Safety Committee,’ a collection of academics working in the service of the government, had announced that 10 millisieverts was the highest that this limit should go. Nevertheless, the limit was raised by twenty times at once. In short, this aimed to get the schools in Fukushima Prefecture open on schedule as usual, and in fact, even in areas where Greenpeace surveys have found radiation levels that are not innocuous, children are going to school ‘like usual.’ A survey conducted recently by a citizen’s group found radioactive material, in trace amounts, in the breast milk of mothers not only in Fukushima but also Ibaraki and Chiba prefectures, far away from the reactor. (In response to this survey, the Vice-Governor of Tokyo, Naoki Inose, made the ugly remark that they should “not stir up excessive worry and the housewives should get back to work right now.”) The radioactive pollution of Fukushima prefecture is getting considerably worse each day and there is a crisis situation where the health of children who are the most sensitive to radioactive material is concerned. But in response the government and Fukushima Prefecture do nothing but preach safety and are not attempting to take concrete measures. At any rate, Yoshihiko Ikegami can argue this point on this blog. What I would like to take up here is the appearance of ‘an exterior,’ ugly civil society outside Fukushima prefecture. Right now there are two reactions to the people of Fukushima Prefecture in the ‘exterior’ civil society that would initially appear to be completely opposed. One is the ‘Let’s go, Fukushima!” reaction, specifically an organized campaign saying “Fukushima is suffering from reputation damage, let’s buy its vegetables and products.” It is very widely said that one should buy things, and eat things, from Fukushima. The other reaction is a form of discrimination directed towards those who have been evacuated out of Fukushima. There is the beginning of harassment and bullying of students from Fukushima who have transferred to schools in other prefectures. Cars with license plates from Fukushima are being denied service at gas stations, and people from Fukushima are being denied lodging at hotels. These two reactions initially look like complete opposites of each other in the sense that the former appears as ‘good intentions’ and the latter appears as ‘bad intentions.’ In reality the two complement each other and function as a quarantine by ‘containing’ the people of Fukushima inside the area exposed to radiation. And these two reactions are bound together through the discourse of ‘reputation damage.’ In this context, ‘reputation damage’ connotes that ‘even though it’s safe, rumors are being spread that it’s pretty dangerous, and as a result people in Fukushima are taking damage to their livelihood and business.’ Of course, the problem is with a nuclear reactor and the situation is dangerous. But this fact is of no real importance. When the danger level at the Fukushima reactor was raised to 7, a television commentator made the following statement: “With a level 7 nuclear accident, reputation is a concern.” This discourse, which we might as well call Kafkaesque absurdity, is unchecked in Japan today and is a matter of course. That agricultural products and seafood from the area of Fukushima Prefecture are in danger is already a matter of course. Most agricultural products and small fish originating in Fukushima prefecture are already blocked from shipment. This also means that a danger is closing in on the people in Fukushima who live off of this basis in the soil, and use this water. But, nevertheless, citizens outside of Fukushima might as well be saying this: “Let’s go, people of Fukushima! Don’t give in to reputation damage: we’ll buy your products!” while at the same time saying “this business of ‘danger, danger’ is a lie! Humans of Fukushima, calm down and (however bad it gets) live your lives with restraint, and work diligently.” However, in actuality, most citizens outside of Fukushima Prefecture are conscious that something dangerous is happening. In other words, a distinction is being made between outward appearances and inward feelings. And the ugliest appearance of inward feelings here is in the problem of discrimination. As for discrimination, most of the media is rephrasing this undeniable discrimination in terms of ‘reputation damage.’ To quote a television news headline, for example, “Evacuees from Fukushima Suffer Scientifically Baseless Reputation Damage.” This definition of reputation damage is a means of shifting the discourse, so as to say, ‘the problem isn’t with the government and TEPCO, who created the problem, but with the guys who are fanning the flames about danger,’ and in the case of individuals and companies which are practicing discrimination, the tacit suggestion is made that “they aren’t discriminating, the problem is with believing wrong information, and if we believe the government, as is correct, discrimination will disappear.” And if one believes the government, there isn’t any need for an evacuation or anything of the kind. In brief, the message is: ‘Stay in Fukushima.’ In my previous essay, “Dystopia of Civil Society, Part 1,” I argued that the strength of Japanese conformism originates not in tradition but the force of discipline in a civil society that has been brought into being by the logic of capital. In the present, a month and a half after 3/11, Fukushima is being positioned in the ‘outside’ of civil society. What is being positioned in the space between it and its outside is not a material wall. It is the wall of ‘primary responsibility for oneself.’ Who can flee when they are told, “Fukushima is perfectly safe, but if you want to flee, go ahead. But we won’t make any guarantees, and we have no idea what will happen to you afterwards?” Can you imagine the true repressive nature of a civil society that states in chorus “Let’s Go! Try harder!” to the people in Fukushima who are struck with anxiety and conflict while at the same time whispering under its breath, trying not to get involved, “but don’t disturb our everyday lives?” If you can’t, you would do well to imagine New York financial brokers gulping down Prozac while staring at the uncontrolled fall in California energy prices on their computers, yelling “Let’s Go!” while deciding, “But also there’s no way our electricity is going to be cut off.” Still, the disaster has only been going for a month and a half (and what a long month and a half it has been…) It will take at the very shortest a year and at the longest will continue for decades. And it is fully possible that the situation will get worse. The situation is still in the process of unfolding, and while it does not show an accomplished form of control with fixed norms and ideals, but rather a situation that is moving along pragmatically along with changes in the balance of power, the picture drawn of civil society here is of an ugly civil society. But at the same time, a current among farmers, fishermen, and the participants in and sympathizers with the 15,000-person demonstration, which Mouri Takayoshi reports on in this blog, one that takes aim at the ‘real enemy,’ is growing stronger in the media and public opinion. But, Fukushima cannot be saved by this alone. This is where we stand now. Translation by Max Black to read further and for Original text in Japanese please go to … Chigaya Kinoshita, Dystopia of Civil Society (Part 1 and 2) http://www.jfissures.org/2011/04/09/dystopia-of-civil-society/ http://www.jfissures.org/2011/05/04/dystopia_of_civil_society_-_part_2/ __________________________________________________ 4.2 Notes on the 4.5 Great Kamagasaki Oppression and Nuclear Power Industry By Takeshi Haraguchi, Published: April 14, 2011 On April 5, 2011, Kamagasaki in Osaka suffered the largest case of oppression in recent years. Osaka Prefectural Police arrested 6 activists (and 2 more in the following few days) who were engaged in the struggle in Kamagasaki, and raided at least 14 places around the city. The occasion of this oppression dates back to 2007. In Kamagasaki, many day laborers, who hop around cheap lodging houses and bunkhouses as well as those who can’t afford these facilities, kept their registration of residency at the addresses of support organizations in and around the neighborhood. However, in 2007, Osaka City abolished residency certificate of all day laborers who were using the addresses of three support organizations such as Kamagasaki Release Center. Day laborers, who often suffer rejection from basic human rights, were now without certificate of residency hence without the right to vote. As a protest against this reckless act by the city, outside a voting station during the House of Representatives election-day in July 2010, supporters of Kamagasaki communities and day laborers themselves took an action to stand against this human rights violation. On April 5th 2011, the City attacked individuals and groups associated with the protest from the previous year, as a preventive oppression to keep them from voicing their demands at then-upcoming general regional election on April 10, 2011. We ought to take this 4.5 Great Kamagasaki Oppression as an incident that differs from other forms of oppressions against human rights, considering the particular characteristics of Kamagasaki. Since this has a direct link to the situation with nuclear power plants after 3.11. I would like to note crucial points in relating 3.11 and the Kamagasaki incident. Workers in Yoseba (day laborers’ community) like Kamagasaki in Osaka and Sanya in Tokyo have always been a vital labor power at constructions and various industrial works. Highways, high-rise buildings and dams would not be built without the work force coming from the day laborers’ communities. Who else could have built the site of Osaka World Expo of 1970, for instance? However, facts of their labors and efforts are hidden in the shadow and forgotten. Away from the eye of the general public, in the places hidden from social consciousness, day laborers have burdened themselves with the works nobody else would want to do. And one of the works they took was no other than the radiation labor at nuclear power plants. In “The Reality of Radiation Workers at Nuclear Power Plants” [original at http://san-ya.at.webry.info/201103/article_11.html], there is a series of testimonies by nuclear plant workers from Sanya in Tokyo. The text records the straight-up voice of a worker who was recruited without much explanations of radiation by his employer, taken to the site with no sense of fear, eventually his body eaten up with diseases, and even lost a friend of his for leukemia. Precisely like Kamagasaki was necessary for the success of the World Expo, day laborers’ sacrifice was necessary in order to maintain the cursed apparatus called nuclear power plant. And now countless number of workers are brought out for the ever ominous labor at the Fukushima Power Plant. It’s not certain whether the workers are from day laborers’ communities or elsewhere. But the workers at the plant are definitely under, not just similar but, totally the same condition as the typical lives of day laborer’s. Today’s Kamagasaki workers might be sent to power plants tomorrow, and today’s Fukusima workers might wind up living the lives of Kamagasaki day-workers tomorrow. The oppression on Kamagasaki equals the oppression on all the workers who are at work in nuclear plants and who are going to be sent there in coming days. One of the targets in the police raid on 4/5 was a space of a documentary film collective. This frankly reveals what the authority fears and attempts to destroy all methods of recording, expressing and conveying the facts. Here we shall recall the 24th Kamagasaki Riot in June 2008. Since the 1990′s, Kamagasaki has suffered the shrinkage of job market and transformed from “the town of the laborers” into “the town of the unemployed.” During this period, especially after the 23rd riot in 1992, the fire of riots turned into the legend of the past. Therefore the 2008 riot surprised all of those who were involved in Kamagasaki. And most importantly, many young workers joined the insurrection. In response to the 2008 riot, I have written as follows: The riot of 2008 taught us that the fury of the day-workers – though the majority of whom are now unemployed — has never disappeared. Furthermore, many young people participated in the riot. Which means that they rediscovered the place to express their own fury in Kamagasaki, the sanctuary of riot, that inscribes the history of militant struggle. While the older day-workers and the younger precariats confronted the riot squad together, the method of expressing fury was bequeathed from one generation to another. The most important lesson from this insurrection is that in the city of Osaka dwelling latently yet certainly is the fury of the oppressed people, which could explode whenever the opportunity comes. The expression of the fury could speak in any possible ways — not only in Kamagasaki but also in any urban space. It is imminent that the whirlpool of rebellion detonates everywhere. (From “Kamagasaki: A Geo-History of Rebellion” by the author) Documentary films potentially play a crucial role in conveying expressions of anger into various ends. Now the role has become even more important in the aftermath of 3.11, as foundation of anger is widely spreading around the issues of nuclear power. Therefore this role of expression – the film collective – became an immediate target at the 4.5 Great Kamagasaki Oppression — I cannot help but believe so. If this is the case, to record, express, and convey are on the foremost line of the struggles in Kamagasaki as well as against nuclear plants. The 4.5 raid was an oppression not only on day laborers, but also on all of those who create forms of expressions as messengers of struggle. [supplements] Kamagasaki is a small section of town in Osaka in which approximately 20,000 to 30,000 day laborers live. When the town had the largest population, well over 200 cheap lodging houses stood side by side, in which many day laborers lived. Such day laborers’ communities exist in every larger city such as Sanya in Tokyo, Kotobukicho in Yokohama, and Sasajima in Nagoya, and they are typically called Yoseba (laborer’s community). Yoseba did not come into existence spontanieously, but they were a product of capital and the nation-state, for their own necessities. In order to successfully construct the site of 1970 World Expo in Osaka, the Japanese government reportedly hired a large number of young workers from all over Japan to work at construction sites. To ensure as many useful and cheap work forces as possible, the government turned Kamagasaki into a concentrated day laborers ghetto in the late ’60s. Since then Kamagasaki has been used by capital as a main site of labor power for the lowest paying jobs like construction and other industries. Then the capital has also left many to live on and die on the street. Yoseba has always been a stage to voice our demands to the nation-state and capital, as well as a base for resistance. The most important action of Kamagasaki resistance has been insurrection. August 1st in 1961, following a car incident that killed a day laborer whose body was left on the street without proper attention of the local police, the first Kamagasaki riot began. There have been 24 major riots there since. to read further and for Original text in Japanese please go to … http://www.jfissures.org/2011/04/14/notes-on-the-4-5-great-kamagasaki-oppres... __________________________________________________ 4.3 Must We Rebuild Their Anthill? A Letter to/for Japanese Comrades By Silvia Federici and George Caffentzis Published: April 22, 2011 Dear comrades, We are writing to express to you our solidarity at a time when the pain for those who have died or have disappeared is still raw, and the task of reshaping of life out of the immense wreckage caused by the earthquake, the tsunami and the nuclear reactor meltdowns must appear unimaginable. We also write to think together with you what this moment marked by the most horrific nuclear disaster yet in history signifies for our future, for the politics of anti-capitalist social movements, as well as the fundamentals of everyday reproduction. Concerning our future and the politics of anti-capitalist movements, one thing is sure. The present situation in Japan is potentially more damaging to people’s confidence in capitalism than any disaster in the “under-developed” world and certainly far more damaging than the previous exemplar of nuclear catastrophe, Chernobyl. For none of the exonerating excuses or explanations commonly flagged in front of man-made disasters can apply in this case. Famines in Africa can be blamed, however wrongly, on the lack of capital and technological “know how,” i.e., they can be blamed on the lack of development, while the Chernobyl accident can be attributed to the technocratic megalomania bred in centrally-planned socialist societies. But neither underdevelopment nor socialism can be used to explain a disaster in 21st century Japan that has the world’s third largest capitalist economy and the most technologically sophisticated infrastructure on the planet. The consequences of the earthquake, the tsunami and, most fatefully, the damaged nuclear reactors can hardly be blamed on the lack of capitalist development. On the contrary, they are the clearest evidence that high tech capitalism does not protect us against catastrophes, and it only intensifies their threat to human life while blocking any escape route. This is why the events in Japan are potentially so threatening and so de-legitimizing for the international capitalist power-structure. For the chain of meltdowns feared or actually occurring stands as a concrete embodiment of what capitalism has in store for us —an embodiment of the dangers to which we are being exposed with total disregard of our well-being, and what we can expect in our future, as from China to the US and beyond, country after country is planning to multiply its nuclear plants. This is also why so much is done, at least in the US, to minimize the severity of the situation evolving in and around the Fukushima Daiichi plants and to place the dramatic developments daily unfolding in and out of the plants out of sight. Company men and politicians are aware that the disaster at Fukushima is tremendous blow to the legitimacy of nuclear power and in a way the legitimacy of capitalist production. A tremendous ideological campaign is under way to make sure that it does not become the occasion for a global revolt against nuclear power and more important for a process of revolutionary change. The fact that the nuclear disaster in Japan is taking place in concomitance with the spreading of insurrectional movements throughout the oil regions of North Africa and the Middle East undoubtedly adds to the determination to establish against all evidence that everything is under control. But we know that nothing is further from the truth, and that what we are witnessing is the deepening crisis, indeed the proof of the “unsustainability” of the energy sector — since the ‘70s the leading capitalist sector— in its two main articulations: nuclear and oil. We think it helps, then, in considering this crisis, to think the Fukushima disaster together with different scenarios that, in their representation on the US evening news seem to have nothing in common with it and with each other. *Libya: where NATO and the UN are collaborating with Ghedaffi in the destruction of a rebellious youth whose demands for better living conditions and more freedom may jeopardize the regular flow of oil. *Ivory Coast: where French, UN and Africom (the US military command devoted to Africa) troops have joined ranks to install a World Bank official, handpicked by the EU, to clearly gain control of West Africa’s most important country after Nigeria and create a solid Africom-powered bridge connecting the Nigerian, to the Algerian and Chadian oilfields. *Baharain: where Saudi Arabian troops are brought in to slaughter pro-democracy demonstrators. Viewed, in this context, the threat the disaster at Fukushima poses to international capital is not that thousands of people may develop cancer, leukemia, loose their homes, loose their sources of livelihood, see their lands and waters contaminated for thousands of years. The danger is that ‘caving in’ in front of popular mobilizations, governments will institute new regulations, scrap plans for more nuclear plants construction and, in the aftermath, nuclear stocks will fall and one of the main sources of capital accumulation will be severely compromised for decades to come. These concerns explain not only the chorus of shameless declarations we heard in recent weeks (bouncing from Paris and Rome to Washington) to the effect that the path to nuclear power is one with no return, but also the lack of any international logistic support for the populations living in the proximity of the melting reactors. Where are the planes carrying food, medicines, blankets? Where are the doctors, the nurses, and engineers? Where is the United Nations that is so readily fighting in Ivory Coast? We do not need to ask. Clearly, as far as the EU/US are concerned, the guideline is that everything must be done to prevent this nuclear disaster from sinking into the consciousness of people and trigger a worldwide revulsion against nuclear power and against those who knowingly have exposed so many to its dangers. There is also something else however in the response of the world politicians to this juncture. What we are witnessing, most dramatically, in the response to the tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan, especially in the US, is the beginning of an era in which capitalism is dropping any humanitarian pretense and refusing any commitment to the protection of human life. Not only, just one month after its inception, the catastrophe that is still unfolding in Japan is already being pushed to a corner of the evening news in the same way as nothing is any longer said about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. We are also repeatedly informed that catastrophes are inevitable, that no energy path is safe, that disasters are something to be learnt from, not a cause for retreat, and, to top it off, that not all is negative, after all, Tokyo’s troubles are Osaka’s gain! This is the same doctrine that today we are dished out in debates on the financial crisis. Financial experts now all agree that it is impossible to prevent major economic crises, because, however clever government regulations may be, bankers can elude them. As Paul Romer, a finance professor in Stamford University, put in a New York Times interview (3/11/2011): “Every decade or so, any finite system of financial regulation will lead to systemic financial crisis.” That is, those of us who are on pensions or have a few savings or have taken out a mortgage must prepare for periodic losses and there is nothing that can be done about it! What we see, then, today in Japan, is the moment of truth of a world capitalist system that, after five centuries of exploitation of millions across the planet, and after endless litanies on the fact that science opens a path of constant perfectibility of the human race, has decided that it is not their business to offer solutions to any major human problem, obviously convinced that we have become so identified with capital, and have so lost the will and capacity to construct an alternative to it, that we will not be able to prise its future apart from ours even after it has demonstrated to be totally destructive of our lives. We are reminded here of the response that Mr. Chipman, an official of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), gave when asked, thirty years ago, if “American institutions” would survive an all-out nuclear war with the Soviet Union. “I think -–he replied– they would, eventually, yeah. As I say, the ants eventually build another anthill.” We think is our task to prove Mr. Chipman wrong –to prove that we will not be like the mindless laborious ants who mechanically reconstruct their hill not matter how many times it is destroyed. We believe it will be a major political disaster if in the months to come we will see business as usual prevail, and the surge of a broad global movement protesting what has been done to the people of Japan and to us all as the current will bring to our shore the radioactivity leaking from the unraveling plants. We are concerned however that a mobilization in response to the disaster in Japan should not be limited to demanding that no more nuclear plants be constructed and those in existence be dismantled, nor that more investment be directed to the development of ‘clean energy’ technology. Undoubtedly, the Fukushima meltdowns must be the spark for a worldwide anti-nuclear movement. But we think, judging also from our experience in the aftermath of the disaster at Three Mile Island, that this movement will not have any hope of success if the struggle to eliminate nuclear plants or against the existence of nuclear armaments, is approached in the narrow manner characteristic of the anti-nuclear movement of the 1980s, if approached, that is, as a special issue, according to the argument that if we do not eliminate first nuclear power we will not be around to deal with other issues. This, we believe, is a short-sighted argument, as death, genocide and the ecological destruction of the environment come in many forms. Indeed, rather than as exceptions we should see the proposed proliferation of nuclear plants and the callous indifference demonstrated by world politicians to the possible destruction of million of lives under a nuclear regime as symptomatic of a whole relation to capital and the state that is the real threat to people across the planet. What we need is to approach the question of nuclear power as the prism through which to read our present relation to capital and bring our different struggles and forms of resistance together. Short of that, our political activities will remain powerless, separated and fragmented like the reports about Libya, Ivory Coast and Japan on the networks’ evening news. A first step in this direction is to establish that Nuclear Power has nothing to do with energy needs, in the same way as nuclear arms proliferation had nothing to do with the alleged threat posed by communism. Nuclear power is not just an energy form, it a specific form of capital accumulation and social control enabling capital to centralize the extraction of surplus labor, police the movements of millions of people, and achieve regional or global hegemony through the threat of annihilation. One of its main objectives is pre/empting resistance, generating the kind of docility and passivity that we have witnessed in response to such capital-made disasters as Katrina, Haiti and today Japan, and that in the past enabled the French and US governments to explode hundreds of atomic bombs in open air and underground tests in the Pacific and use entire population from the Marshall Islands to Tahiti, as guinea pigs. Nuclear power, therefore, can only be destroyed when social movements come into existence that treat it politically, not only as a destructive form of energy but as a strategy of accumulation and terror– a means of devaluation of our lives– and place it on a continuum with the struggle against the use of the “financial crisis,“ or against the cuts to healthcare and education. To this program, those of us who live in the US must add the demand for reparations for the descendants of the people who have been the victims of US nuclear bombs and nuclear tests. For our struggle must revive the memory of the crimes that have been committed in the past through the use of nuclear power beginning with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For with memory comes the demand for justice. In solidarity, Silvia and George to read further and for text in Japanese please go to … http://www.jfissures.org/2011/04/22/a-letter-from-silvia-federici-and-george... __________________________________________________ 4.4 An Elementary Algebra of Common Goods and Evils By Ferruccio Gambino Published: August 21, 2011 (Translated by George Caffentzis)* 1. Capitalism has used an elementary algebra of common goods and evils even before understanding and conceptualizing the meaning of common goods and evils. Once upon a time it used to be said that capital is for the socialization of losses and the privatization of profits. However, in some sectors, multiple advantages – of both profit and rent – are joined together in a perverse way with commonized evils. The nuclear sector provides an especially clear example of this phenomenon. 1.1 Water, wind, air and quite a few other elements of this planet, where 350 seismic tremors a day are recorded, are common goods as long as they are not polluted. When they are polluted, the goods leave a trail of remarkable disadvantages to all living creatures, and therefore become common evils. In order to become again common goods, the different polluted elements have to be “de”polluted, if it is possible. Only if and when they are reclaimed is it possible to turn them into common goods again. Water in general is a common good, but radioactive water released from a nuclear reactor after a meltdown is not any longer a common good, it is a common disaster, an evil coercively commonized and as such it is imposed upon society. Public and private authorities discharge damage on the entire surrounding population in an indeterminate (and often indeterminable) range with such a damaged plant. 1.2 Within the spectrum of industrial activity, the transformation of common goods into common evils is most evident in the case of nuclear power. Contrary to other sectors, the birth and expansion of the nuclear military was financed by state’s treasury, most especially in the US, but also in the USSR and other countries since the end of the 1930s (and for a long time) mainly for war purposes. Although the physicist Enrico Fermi was then of the opinion that nuclear energy is a wonderful new form of energy, even in the 1940s it should have been possible to ask why the push to develop it was above all the race to create the absolute weapon. Following the war, however, nuclear power was sold to the public as energy with a peaceful end. It should be noted that for many reasons in the US the government was not and is not the direct financer of civilian nuclear plants; they are privately financed. However, the state protected investors in nuclear power plants with a crazy law that put a limit on the insurance costs of these plants in case of accidents and disasters. Nuclear reactors were government funded in the final instance, since this private liability limit was a small fraction of the eventual damage claims a serious accident at a nuclear plant would generate. It is a fact that the danger and consequent fears of the “peaceful” atom have given popular legitimacy to the militarization – both in the public and private realms – of the entire atomic sector in all nuclear nations. There is much to say about this subject, but I will limit my remarks to a few observations. 1.3 Since the first decades of the “nuclear era,” the construction and running of nuclear plants in most countries has depended upon public funds and financing. Private capital has played a marginal role, providing almost homeopathic doses of cash, but private capital has been destined to sneak in, to have a managerial role in the plants and to profit from this role, with the consumers footing the bill. In the case of nuclear disasters, private capitalists are protected by a double armor: on the one side, the public treasury is the creditor of last resort and, on the other, the payment with public funds for the evacuations, the hospital bills and in the end the clean up of the nuclear waste. In other words, the private management of nuclear power has been subjecting large populations to blackmail under a continual, though muffled, reign of terror, while obtaining tax money from the public treasury with the excuse of dealing with emergencies. 1.4 The expense of maintaining and decommissioning the plants and the custody of the radioactive waste for thousands of years impose a tremendous tax and pollution burden on the population. In any case, the population is condemned to pay a tribute of blood and labor to the Minotaur for thousands of years. Sometimes, in a kind of endemic complicity, the state attempts and often succeeds in corrupting an overseas regime to bury the more dangerous waste on its coasts. It is an open secret that in the course of time the storage places that are filled with radioactive waste wrapped up in ridiculous barrels of cement are no better protected than if they were wrapped in velum. No one really knows what to do with nuclear waste and no one will remember how to dispose of it in the arc of the thousands of years that are necessary for it to be “de”-toxified. 1.5 There are about 627 nuclear power plants in the world that are producing electrical energy at the beginning of this second decade of the 21st century. Some of these plants have been damaged just years after their construction. In the longer period, there is the probability of the desertification of whole territories for thousands of square miles around damaged plants and not for years but for centuries. The consequences that would befall any large area in the case of a new nuclear program would be likewise: the creation of unapproachable deserts for a duration measured in biblical time. 1.6 In countries that are densely populated (such as Italy and Japan) the noxiousness to the environment of a damaged plant appears in two modes: in the first place, the radiation that effects the population in general and which generates serious illnesses from cancers to birth defects in a radius of thousands of square miles around the nuclear site—though still far from where the media personalities and the haute bourgeoisie live—in the second place, at a closer distance, the radioactivity that directly affects the workers in the plant. In both cases, it appears that space and distance is what determines the distribution of harm. In reality, however, this distribution follows from the criteria of the separation of classes and the position within a class and gender structure. 1.6.1. In the case of workers’ labor after a typical nuclear accident like the one at the Fukushima plant run by Tepco (Tokyo Electric Power Company) in the Spring of 2011, the division is starkly revealed between the few long-term workers paid directly by Tepco and the many precarious workers–considered unskilled and receiving the lowest wages–who are attached to contractors and a cascade of sub-contractors and who are to take care of the maintenance of the three stricken reactors at Fukushima as well as the other 52 nuclear reactors in 18 sites around Japan. The precarious workers constitute 88% of the 83,000 workers in the Japanese nuclear sector (with 73,000 precarious workers, to be more precise). At Fukushima, in the twelve months that preceded the nuclear disaster 89% of the 10, 303 workers had been placed in various steps in the wage ladder of the sub-contractors, with the salary and the danger increasing with the increase in the exposure to radioactivity. After the disaster, they faced the challenge of unsustainable levels of exposure of radiation while they cleaned the spent-fuel pools with mops and rags in order to open up a path for the inspectors and the technicians of Tepco. They had to work in intense cold in order to fill up trash cans with contaminated refuse. As always in work that is very noxious, the recruitment always seems to take place in random settings: in rundown construction yards that have experienced a long period of crisis and seen much unemployment, among local poor rural workers and in labor gangs organized by local gangsters. Always and everywhere the precarious workers in nuclear sites are intended to hide the wounds and contusions they receive on the job, under penalty of immediate firing. After the disaster at Fukushima, the precarious workers were offered higher wages due to the general fear of radioactivity: about $350 a day for two hours of work; that is more than double of the preceding pay when the working day was longer. That is to say, they receive the wages of fear. The conditions of work were generally better during the 1990s when the exposure to radioactivity had decreased since the 1980s, but later the exposure began increasing again due to the increase of accidents in the obsolete plants, in spite of shorter work schedules. In fact, the group of people sacrificed to radioactivity has not faded away; on the contrary, the sacrifice of human lives has become systemic: from each the absorption of his modicum of radiation, to each the loss of his job once the early symptoms of disease are detected (“his” since most of these workers are men). In short, it is a case of nuclear socialism. [In Japan] the first trade union of precarious workers in the nuclear energy area was founded in the 1980s to contest this state of affairs with a platform of claims, conspicuous among which was the one concerning putting a stop to both fake data on the exposure to radiation and to the strict orders given to the workers to lie to the inspectors about how security procedures were being sidestepped. After the first 180 workers had signed up for the union, in democratic Japan, anonymous thugs smashed the doors of the apartments where union officials were staying and threatened them and their families. Clearly, nuclear power shapes democracy (not the other way around!) In brief, one needs to be quiet because, as they say in union circles, “when one enters a nuclear site, all is secret.” 1.7 Elaborated in the 1940s and 1950s in the military world, the paradigm of nuclear labor was constituted as a general paradigm of a tripartite division patterned on that of the armed forces: in the first and highest rung, the scientists, planners, and strategists, invisible in their Olympus but not totally secure; in the second rung, inspectors, technicians, and programmers with their stable jobs but also with a bit more exposure to dangerous radioactive materials; on the bottom rung, the precarious “service” workers, who constitute the “base force,” as they say in the navy. This scheme has been applied to an increasing number of workplace situations from the dockworkers of the US’s West Coast in the 1950s —separated in three rungs: the A-men, the B-men and the rest—to the contemporary plague of casual work that has hit and continues to hit stratum after stratum of workers in all the world. Everyone manages exactly the danger that emanates from their jobs. The management of fear and illness is a private and solitary affair, thanks to the casual collection and secrecy of sensitive data in the health statistics kept by the power companies, at least until the affected people organize themselves, as they have begun to do in the US. 1.8 Nuclear power plants require a nuclear state. The nuclear state can even have a patina of democracy, in the sense that it permits regular elections where one votes to choose in whom the executive power will be vested. In reality, however, one votes only in order to show that one is “de-voted”[to regimentation]. To be a voter is the inevitable deceit in the nuclear state. [Morevover, the nuclear state cannot permit any discontinuity in the discipline of the population and in the regular flow of lies], whatever the list of candidates that win the elections. 1.9 The absence of reliable information is one of the characteristic traits of the nuclear state. It was and is a great forge of falsehood in both East and West. The nuclear state’s repression of information and plain fraud is far greater than the diplomatic lies that Wikileaks has so well documented in 2011. This secrecy is an instrument of the perverse solidarity of the nuclear ruling class, it is part of their complicity with the narco-information given to the population which is expected to submit passively and live in a no man’s land, where nuclearization is a state of enclosure promoted by state power and legalized and enforced by the monsters of so-called “governance.” *Translator’s Note: The above article was written by Ferruccio Gambino, a sociologist at the Univesity of Padova, in May 2011 during a campaign to pass a national referendum resolution barring the construction of new nuclear power plants in Italy, as the Berlesconi government had planned. Italy is not now a nuclear state, since it does not have any operational nuclear power plants on its territory and its military does not claim to have nuclear weapons. (Although this nuclear-free status cannot be applied to the US and NATO air and naval bases on Italy’s soil.) Thus, the referendum resolution was intended to stop Italy from becoming a nuclear state. The anti-nuke resolution passed by a wide margin. The author expresses his thanks to Hiroko Tabuchi who wrote “Less Pay, Fewer Benefits, More Radiation,” International Herald Tribune, April 11, 2011, p. 1, 6. to read further and for Original text in Japanese please go to … http://www.jfissures.org/author/ferruccio-gambino/ __________________________________________________ 4.5 Soil and Farmers By Yoshihiko Ikegami Published: August 29, 2011 More than a hundred days have passed since the accident. Thanks to the autonomous investigative actions of the people, the radiation situations within Fukushima Prefecture as well as in the Tokyo metropolitan area are, if gradually, being revealed day by day. Considering the need of measuring radioactivity in every corner of individual lives, this movement still needs to grow further. It is certain, however, that more and more individuals will begin to acquire and use their own Geiger counters. Though far from sufficient, local governments have reluctantly begun to measure radioactivity. The doses of radiation in all districts are publicized in local blogs, becoming guidelines for our everyday activity. We are progressing in this sense. But this is only the story of external exposure. We are facing another, more serious threats of radiation: the internal exposure. Everyday we are breathing and eating as life activity; by so doing we are introducing radioactive substances into our bodies. The radiation of food products is in a very knotty condition. Calling it a temporary measure, the state allows circulation of them, especially vegetables, that are contaminated by 10~20 times higher radiation than the international standard. It is totally unclear as to how long the temporary measure will be in effect. The cruelty of this standard is proven by the fact that one would accordingly receive a total of 50 millisievert of radiation annually by eating the vegetables and breathing the air, by both internal and external exposure. We cannot continue to purchase such vegetables for our food. We can only try to be extremely careful in buying them. But since each product does not show its own radiation level, we have to judge by the indication of the producing areas. By visiting the website of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries <http://www.maff.go.jp/ >, we can learn sample data of day-to-day radiation of vegetables from different prefectures. But these offer only standards and are totally insufficient. Therefore, buying vegetables plays a deadly role in our everyday struggles. The state not only refuses to alter the lax standard of radiation, but also follows the strategy of morally accusing those consumers who would not purchase the food products from radiated areas. To thwart this boycott, the state even schemes to blur the indications of the producing areas as much as possible. There is also a serious problem with manure processing. Radioactive substances accumulate by being washed by water and becoming part of the mud in ditches. Mud has been used as manure for agriculture, and even after the current accident, the contaminated mud has been processed as manure and is about to be distributed across the nation. So it is inevitable that all the soil of Japan will be contaminated by radiation. Why on earth does the state dare to moralistically judge these consumers in its strategy? It is in a consideration of the farmers’ existence. In other words, the state is behaving as if it were a representative of morality, as if it were a guardian of farmers’ interest. In this scheme, the farmers appear to be protected at a glance. But are they really? We don’t hear much of farmer’s voices any more, while we were shortly after the accident. What are they thinking at the moment? In the wake of the accident, radioactive substances emitted from the nuclear reactors poured over the entire Kanto Region; the farmland was polluted instantaneously. The soil was affected by radiation. But it took a while until the public recognized the fact, only after radioactive substances such as iodine and cesium came to be detected in vegetables. Farmers were dumbfounded while looking at their polluted land, and then mourned unable to ship the vegetables they produced with their heart and soul. For the farmers, the earth is the most important thing, the basis of their living and the ground of their existence. They can no longer rely on this resource of all. Thereafter their mourning and rage against the nuclear power plant were repeatedly reported in the news media. But now it is necessary for us to share and ponder their chagrin time and time again. We must not forget the fact that the farmers are next to the plant workers in terms of the amount of radiation they are exposed to. They work closely with soil which tends to accumulate radioactive substances more than anything else. Thus the farmers are likely to be exposed to tens of times more radiation than urban dwellers. Therefore it may be they who have to evacuate first. There has been no official report of death directly by radiation since the accident. But at least several farmers have killed themselves. This is because their future was completely blocked by soil contamination and the impossibility of continuing their subsistence as a farmer. In recent years only in the historical imagination have we encountered miseries and famines of farmers caused by draught and other natural disasters. But now such tragedies are unfolding in front of our eyes. On April 26th, the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident, a farmers’ protest took place in front of the headquarters of TEPCO in Marunouchi Tokyo. They carried with them the vegetables they produced but cannot ship to markets. What impressed us most was a cow they brought with them. The presence of the creature was stunning amidst the high-tech mega-city Tokyo. Cattle are more than friends for farmers; living together and mourning together, they are like their own children. Marching with a flag made of a straw mat, the cow revived the scenery of the mediaeval in our minds. Listening to the moo echoing over the metropolitan skyline, we were inside the history of hundreds of years past. In this sense, the accident shook and dug out the old layers of our memories. But again, the voices of the farmers we heard in the beginning are no longer. In the shadow of the argumentation about the right or wrong of selling the farm products, the existence of farmers themselves is again about to be sealed off. It is becoming harder and harder to find out what really is going on in the entire scheme of facts. As far as the accelerating action of measuring radioactivity is concerned, it has so far been an urban-based movement. But it is necessary to have that practice on the farmland, in order to understand the situation of radiation on the soil. All sorts of support must be guaranteed for the farmers. No matter how extensive the areas are, soil replacement will be necessary. And of course, further evacuation must be planned for certain areas. We cannot simply accept the situation. The silencing of the nuclear colonial regime must be broken. Shiro Yabu has called the measuring movement a new public hygiene, a new meteorology. And I would say: a new stratigraphy must be initiated – before the new harvest season of autumn arrives. to read further and for Original text in Japanese please go to … http://www.jfissures.org/2011/08/29/soil-and-farmers/ __________________________________________________ 4.6 Jfissures, Editorial Published: August 15, 2011 It was a week after 3/11 that <jfissures.org> was created. Since then we have been publishing critical writings in Japanese-English bilingual format, as a convergence point of discourses from within and without Japan, all tackling the unprecedented situation that the human society is now confronting. For now the radiation scattering is being experienced mainly by the people of the far-eastern archipelago, but unfortunately will expand globally, in both radioactive effects and social-economic situation. One of the main premises of the project is to see it as a global event. Humanity has long been exposed to radioactivity as well as other fatal substances of industrial waste in various places on the planet. But there is a singularity, that is, an irreversibility that distinguishes Fukushima from previous conditions and incidents. One of the significant differences is the exposure of massive population (including the residents of Tokyo metropolis) to radioactivity, to which neither total measure nor complete solution is seen on the horizon. Another issue that characterizes Fukushima nuclear accident is that the Japanese ruling power’s responses and their absurdity has clearly shown to us that people’s lives are of lesser matters in the well-being of the nuclear regime even after the ‘safety’ of nuclear power was proved otherwise. No matter what we do – even if we accomplish our important tasks of ousting nuclear plants and finding alternative energy — we will have to live with various forms and degrees of radiation whose effects are varied temporarily and spatially. It has already happened and it will continue to happen. The extent of its influence is yet to be experienced, but this is a matter of fact. Meanwhile we are observing the advent of a global nuclear regime consisting of pro-nuke states and capitals (the majority of the neoliberal forces), that is both publicly and tacitly urging humans to get used to and live with radioactivity as long as life exists on the planet. For making its political strategy, the global regime relies on the blurred spatiality and temporality of, or the variety and unpredictability of radiation effects over the populace. As Japanese ruling power says: “There are no immediate effects. Mind your own business!” — Such is the slogan of the necropolitics after 3/11. In this new situation, it is crucial for us to note that the anti-nuke or de-nuke call can no longer be just a preventive one for possible future disasters, but should also instigate a struggle against the present management of nuclear disaster, that is what the people of Japan have already begun. Stopping existing nuke operations is a must, but the struggle for our survival under existing radiation should be created anew against and beyond the new control of capitalist/nation/state over our entire life world, since the necropolitics of radiation is just a part of the necropolitics of all other forms where political oppression, social control and profit making are becoming one and the same practice. For that matter, atomic power and the society grounded upon it are the ultimate embodiment of the civilization that the capitalist production has reached. As writings from Japan unequivocally attest to, the anti- or de-nuke movement after Fukushima can no longer be a single-issue movement. It has to involve all aspects of reproduction of life. It must be an anti-capitalist/nation/state movement. It must target all the climate and environment injustices. It must be an all-inclusive struggle involving politics, information, science, medicine, culture and everyday life. <jfissures.org> intends to be a hub for presenting information, criticisms and theories for creating such a movement on a planetary scale, based upon and for the sake of what the people in Japan are and will be experiencing for the years to come. It seeks to situate itself on the lineage of anti-capitalist struggle and mass insurrection in the world over, at the same time as paying attention to the heritages (failures and successes) of global justice, climate and environmental justice movements. <jfissures.org> hopes to work with innumerable radical groups in and out of Japan fighting locally or globally for a full-hearted transformation of the planetary apparatus. to read further and for text in Japanese please go to … http://www.jfissures.org/2011/08/15/editorial-8152011/ __________________________________________________ 16 Beaver Group 16 Beaver Street, 4th fl. 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