[P2P-F] Fwd: Necropolitics of Radiation and the Struggle

[Michel Bauwens]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Dante-Gabryell Monson <dante.monson at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 6:43 PM
Subject: Necropolitics of Radiation and the Struggle
To: econowmix at googlegroups.com




---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Sixteen Beaver <lists at 16beavergroup.org>
Date: Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 1:20 PM
Subject: Monday -- 10.24.11 -- Necropolitics of Radiation and the Struggle
To: generales at 16beavergroup.org



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-oppression-and-nuclear-power-industry/

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-caffentzis/

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&#8242;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 …

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__________________________________________________
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 …

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__________________________________________________
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 …

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__________________________________________________
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/


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