The Japanese government’s decision one year ago to dump radioactive water from Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant storage tanks into the Pacific Ocean, starting in the spring of 2023, is facing increasing pressure to back off, especially in light of the facts that not only is it illegal but also morally reprehensible as well as a despicable disregard for the lifeblood of the ocean.
Meanwhile, in a startling maneuver indicative of desperation to convince citizens of its true worthiness, the Japanese government is using mind control tactics reminiscent of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (Chatto & Windus, 1932), which depicts harmful effects that the expansion and development of a capitalist ideology can impose on a society.
To wit: Japanese citizens are outraged over a new government policy of brainwashing children by distributing flyers to primary school students claiming TEPCO’s “diluted, nuclear-contaminated water is safe.”
“The government sent a total of 2.3 million booklets directly to elementary, junior and senior high schools across the nation in December in an effort to prevent reputational damage caused by the planned water discharge. The school staffers say the leaflets are unilaterally imposing the central government’s views on children.” (Source: Booklets Touting Fukushima Plant Water Discharge Angers Schools, The Asahi Shimbun, March 7, 2022)
“A Fukushima resident surnamed Kataoka told the Global Times on Wednesday that the Japanese government’s move was a kind of mind control, and she was strongly opposed to it.” (Source: Japanese Groups Voice Growing Opposition, Organize Rallies Over Govt’s Nuclear-Contaminated Water Dumping Plan Decided One Year Before, Global Times, April 13, 2022)
Japanese citizens are fighting back as four separate civic organizations from Fukushima and Miyagi prefectures submitted a petition signed by 180,000 people to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and to Tokyo Electric Power Company on March 30th 2022 expressing opposition to the government’s plan.
Additionally, Japanese environmental protection groups have organized national rallies in Tokyo and Fukushima, stating they will continue to rally in the streets until the government revokes its decision: “Once the nuclear-contaminated water is discharged into the sea, the result is irreversible. It’s not only Fukushima. The ocean connects the whole world. We hope we don’t discharge toxic substances into the sea,” said protester Ayumu Aoyanagi. “I am angry. They completely ignored public opinion. I hope people understand that the danger may not appear soon but will definitely affect our health in the future,” said another protester named Makiyo Takahashi.” (Source: Fukushima Residents Oppose Government Dumping Radioactive Water Into Ocean, CGTN News, April 14, 2022)
Zhao Lijian of the Chinese Foreign Ministry claims the Japanese government has turned a deaf ear to any and all opposition, failing to provide any convincing evidence of the legitimacy of the discharge program, no reliable data on the contaminated water and effectiveness of purification devices, and no convincing evidence about environmental impact. (Source: Japan Severely Breaches Obligations Under International Law by Persisting in Discharge of Nuclear-contaminated Water Into Ocean, People’s Daily Online, April 15, 2022)
Moreover, “this water adds to the already nuclear polluted ocean. This threatens the lives and livelihoods of islanders heavily reliant on marine resources. These include inshore fisheries as well as pelagic fishes such as tuna. The former provides daily sustenance and food security, and the latter much needed foreign exchange via fishing licenses for distant water fishing nation fleets,” Vijay Naidu, adjunct professor at the School of Law and Social Sciences at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji, told Al Jazeera. (Source: ‘Not a Dumping Ground’: Pacific Condemns Fukushima Water Plan, Al Jazeera, Feb. 14, 2022)
The principal radioactive isotope to be released “tritium is a normal contaminant from the discharges, the cooling water from normal reactor operations, but this is the equivalent of several centuries worth of normal production of tritium that’s in this water, so it is a very large amount,” according to Tilman Ruff, a Nobel laureate and associate professor at the Institute for Global Health at the University of Melbourne in Australia, Ibid.
Japan claims the radioactive water dump will be safe, however: “Obviously, the higher the level of exposure [to radiation], the greater the risk, but there is no level below which there is no effect,” Ruff said. “That is now really fairly conclusively proven, because in the last decade or so there have been impressive very large studies of large numbers of people exposed to low doses of radiation. At levels even a fraction of those that we receive from normal background [radiation] exposure from the rocks, from cosmic radiation. At even those very low levels, harmful effects have been demonstrated,” Ibid.
Chang Yen-chiang, director of the Yellow Sea and Bohai Sea Research Institute of Dalian Maritime University is urging the international community to stop the discharge by first requesting the International Court of Justice to issue an advisory opinion on the illegality of Japan’s dumping plan followed by motions to stop the process by China, South Korea, Russia, North Korea, and Pacific Island nations at the UN General Assembly.
Japan, as a signatory to: (1) the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (2) the Convention on Early Notification of a Nuclear Accident (3) the Convention on Nuclear Safety (4) the Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management, and (5) the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management has clearly and knowingly breached its obligations under international law.
According to the plan released by TEPCO for the disposal of nuclear-contaminated water generated by Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, the country will soon begin official preparations for the release of the contaminated water and plans to begin long-term discharge of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean in the spring of 2023.
However, according to an article in People’s Daily Online d/d April 15, 2022: “Data from TEPCO showed that the contaminated water from the Fukushima nuclear accident still contains many kinds of radionuclides with a long half-life even after secondary treatment.”
Shaun Burnie, senior nuclear specialist at Greenpeace East Asia claims the toxic water dump risks additional nuclear debris into the Pacific Ocean whereas the discharge is not the only option as “ the Japanese government once admitted that there is enough space near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and areas around Fukushima prefecture to build more storage facilities for the water.” (Global Times)
The Citizens Committee on Nuclear Energy recommends proper storage on land in Japan similar to storage the country uses for its national oil and petroleum reserves. “The argument that they make… is that, if this water was stored not for an indeterminate period, but even for a period of about 50-60 years, then, by then, the tritium will have decayed to a tiny fraction of what it is today and hardly be an issue.” (Al Jazeera)
Even though the US boldly approves of the dumping plan, the Northern Mariana Islands, a US territory with a population of over 50,000 people, has declared Japan’s plan as “unacceptable.” In December 2021, the US territory adopted a joint resolution opposing any nation disposing of nuclear waste in the Pacific Ocean as well as suggesting the only acceptable option is long-term storage and processing using the best technology available.
In all similar circumstances, historical events have a way of swinging back and forth in time and landing smack dab in the middle of new controversies, for example, when it comes to radioactivity in the Pacific, memories are long. More than 300 atmospheric and underwater nuclear tests by the US, UK, and France from the 1940s, especially in the Republic of the Marshall Islands and French Polynesia, left uninhabitable land in many locations as well as long-term health disorders throughout the region. Japan’s dumping plans bring back haunting memories.
“Satyendra Prasad, the Chair of Pacific Islands Forum Ambassadors at the United Nations, reminded the world in September last year of the Pacific’s “ongoing struggle with the legacy of nuclear testing from the trans boundary contamination of homes and habitats to higher numbers of birth defects and cancers.” (Al Jazeera)
Meantime, and especially over the past couple of decades, Japan increasingly and fearlessly adheres to, and puts into actual practice, the overriding theme as expressed in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, which is “the dangers of state control” whilst the father of liberalism John Locke (1632-1704) not surprisingly spins in his grave.
For example, in December 2013 Japan passed the Protection of Specially Designated Secrets Act providing for whistleblowing civil servants to face up to 10 years in prison and the journalists who work with them could face up to five years for leaking state secrets.
Here’s a major twist to that law: The guidelines empower the heads of 19 ministries and agencies to subjectively “designate which documents and subjects comprise state secrets.” In short, subjective judgment by any given state official determines who goes to jail.
“The result is that while civil servants will be aware of a document’s classification, journalists cannot be sure just what comprises a state secret. Whistleblowing civil servants and journalists could face arrest even if they are convinced they are acting in the public’s interest.” (Source: Japan’s State Secrets Law, A Minefield for Journalist, Committee to Protect Journalists-NY, Nov. 4, 2014)
Since Japan appears to be adhering to the precepts of Brave New World, it’s interesting to note that thirty years following publication of Brave New World, Huxley wrote Brave New World Revisited: “If the first half of the twentieth century was the era of the technical engineers, the second half may well be the era of the social engineers— and the twenty-first century, I suppose, will be the era of World Controllers, the scientific caste system and Brave New World.” (Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited, Harper & Brothers, 1958)
Huxley warned that a Brave New World type of order could be the “final” or “ultimate” revolution when people have their liberties taken from them, but “they will enjoy their servitude and so never question it, let alone rebel.”
Really?
Robert Hunziker is a writer from Los Angeles
It has become increasingly clear to the world that there is not one, but two, actually three, distinct levels of conflict embedded in what the world’s media and political leadership deceptively insist of calling the ‘Ukraine War.’ The first level was clearly initiated on February 24, 2022 when Russia launched an aggressive war against Ukraine imperiling its sovereign rights and territorial integrity. The second level was difficult to discern in the first weeks of the war, but became soon evident as the NATO countries led by the United States placed an increasing emphasis on lending escalating support to Ukraine’s adopted goals of achieving an unexpected military victory. This support took various forms including the steady supply of heavy weaponry, robust economic assistance, punitive sanctions, and a drumbeat of ‘official’ demonization of Russia and its leadership. In the beginning it seemed appropriate to lend support to Ukraine as the target of aggression, and hail the resistance effort led by President Volodymyr Zelensky, in defense of a relatively small country being overrun by its large neighbor.
Even this widely endorsed narrative was deceptive and one-sided as it overlooked the provocative nature of NATO expansion, abetted in Ukraine’s case by American interference in the internal politics of the country to help turn the political tide in the country against Russia. It is in this internal setting that the third level of the war persists as there is no doubt that anti-Russian elements in Western Ukraine were deeply abusive toward the majority Russian speaking population in Eastern Ukraine known as the Donbas region. The non-implementation of the Minsk Agreements negotiated in 2014-15 to protect the Ukrainians in the East was never properly implemented. It remains uncertain as whether the Russia/Ukraine level of combat can be resolved without serious addressing Russian and Donbas concerns at the core of this third level of conflict.
What has been apparent to critics for some time is that Western diplomacy has become primarily committed to second level Geopolitical War even at the cost of greatly prolonging and aggravating the Ukrainian war on the ground and producing growing risks of a wider war. Only in the past few days has this priority been more or less acknowledged by high officials in the U.S. Government, most dramatically in the visit of Antony Blinken, Secretary of State, and Austin, Secretary of Defense to Ukraine and later to meeting in Europe with their NATO counterparts. What was revealed was that the number one policy goal of the U.S. was ‘the weakening of Russia’ made a viable undertaking by the unexpected resistance capabilities of Ukrainian armed forces bolstered by a show of unified patriotic resolve. In keeping with this line of thinking, arms shipments to Ukraine were increased significantly, and more tellingly, overtly acknowledging the shipment of so-called heavy armaments with offensive capabilities. As this dynamic unfolded, Germany dramatically reversed its policy of not providing heavy weaponry, and the whole tenor of assistance was shifted from helping Ukraine resist to addressing the geopolitical agenda with its two goals: inflicting a humiliating defeat on Russia and signaling to China to not doubt Western resolve to defend Taiwan.
Despite this shift in emphasis, earlier concerns with escalating the Geopolitical War with Russia have not been abandoned, such as inducing situations that tempt the use of nuclear weapons. White House perceptions of what will cause such a temptation seem dangerous divergent. Apparently, the Biden presidency continues to oppose a No Fly Zone in Ukraine because it would greatly increase the prospects for direct combat encounters between NATO and Russia, and with it risks of this new species of cold war turning hot. But what of Biden’s demonization of Russia as guilty of genocide and Putin as a war criminal who should be driven from power. And what of the continuously increasing diplomatic, financial, and military assistance to Ukraine. What has been missing all along has been any indication by Washington of receptivity to a diplomacy emphasizing the primary humanitarian imperative of an immediate ceasefire and a political process of compromise and mutual security between Russia and Ukraine the overt international antagonists. It is missing because the U.S. commitment to the Geopolitical War takes precedence over the well-being of the Ukrainian people.
Zelensky early in the war indicated receptivity to a ceasefire and political compromise, including permanent neutrality for Ukraine, and signaled his willingness to meet with Putin. More recently, however, Zelensky has pulled back from this dual stance of armed resistance and peace diplomacy, and come to adopt a position seamless with that of the U.S. My conjecture is that Zelensky, although displaying great talents as a wartime resistance leader has very little sophistication about international relations in general, and seems susceptible to this more militarist line both by promises of decisive support from Washington and possible militarist advice from his own general staff. After all, Zelensky’s background is in theater and as a performing comedian without any signs that he is aware of the wider risks at stake if Ukraine goes along with the premises of the Geopolitical War.
As expected, Moscow has already reacted to this escalation of the second war with the warning that it will not back down, but will take all necessary steps to protect its national security interests, intimating a possible recourse to nuclear weapons. Such inflamed atmospherics can easily produce preemptive acts that accelerate escalation, which is especially serious in the current context that lacks crisis management links of the sort established between Moscow and Washington in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis. It took that close encounter with an all out war scenario that led these superpower antagonists to understand that they had averted a monumental mutual catastrophe by sheer luck.
While most attention is focused on the inter-governmental play of forces it is helpful to take account of other perspectives: civil society peace initiatives, the views of the Global South, and the initiatives of the UN Secretary General. These perspectives call attention to the startling fact that alternatives to war and geopolitical ambition exist, and that Russia is more globally supported in the Geopolitical War than is the United States. The Global North controls the discourse prevailing on the most influential media platforms, creating the misleading impression that the whole world, except the outliers, are content with U.S. leadership.
Civil Society Initiatives
Almost from the day the Russian attack began, peace activists and NGOs concerned in some way with peace, security, and humanitarianism urged an end to the killing by way of a ceasefire and some political process that dealt with the level 1 and 3 grievances. This is not to say there were not sharp tensions within civil society, especially surrounding how to interpret the pre-war NATO maneuvers or the strife in Dombas. Provocations. By and large the liberal and left-liberal mainstream supported outright condemnation Russian aggression, but favored an immediate ceasefire and diplomacy to end the war and mitigate the humanitarian emergency of death, devastation, and displacement. Those who can be crudely identified as the anti-imperial left tended to excuse or at least place heavy emphasis on the context of Western provocations and interference in Ukraine’s internal politics since 2014 as did some on the extreme right who identified with Putin’s authoritarianism as the wave of the future.
What contrasted the civil society perspectives in spite of their diversity, with NATO/mainstream media postures, was their shared stress on stopping the killing, the relevance of diplomacy, and their implicit or explicit refusal to condone recourse to the Level 2 Geopolitical War. Typical examples of civil society proposals can be found in the Pugwash Peace Proposal and the Just World Education booklet distributed under the title “Ukraine: Stop the Carnage, Build the Peace” (available from Amazon or from www.justworldeducational.org with its eight policy recommendations).
The Voice of the Global South
Given little notice in the Global North was the refusal of the greater part of the Global South to support the mobilization of coercive and punitive sanctions diplomacy directed at Russia and its leader. This split from the West first became evident in the two votes on Ukraine in the UN General Assembly. The entire world including the most of the main countries in the Global South supported the condemnation of the Level 1 Russian aggression, but either abstained or opposed support for the Level 2 Geopolitical War Initiated by the U.S. against Russia in the early stages of the attack on Ukraine. As Trita Parti of the Washington-based think tank, Quincy Institute, pointed out much of the Global South actually supported Russia in the Geopolitical War context, which was interpreted as the U.S. commitment to extending the mandate contained in a unipolar world order of the sort it had acted upon since the Soviet collapse and the end of the Cold War. The Global South greatly preferred the dynamics of a multipolar world, and regarded Russia as seeking in Ukraine to reassert its traditional geopolitical suzerainty over its ‘near abroad,’ a stand against the U.S. as the unopposed guardian of security throughout the planet. It should be appreciated that the U.S. has 97% of overseas military bases and accounts for 40% of the world’s military expenditures, or more than the next 11 countries.
The U.S. position in no way renounces traditional geopolitics but seeks to monopolize its implementation. In that spirit it views the attempted reassertion by China and Russia of traditional spheres of influence as an intrusion on international law, while the U.S. at the same time defends its practice of managing the first global sphere of influence in world history. Blinken has said as much, declaring spheres of influence as contrary to international law ever since World War II while claiming for the U.S. the sole prerogative of managing security throughout such a rule-governed world. The UN or international law are subjugated in the face of this assumption of geopolitical dominance resting on a mixture of political ambition and military capabilities.
The UN Secretary General
Throughout the Ukraine crisis Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary General, has articulated a point of view toward the Ukraine Crisis that contrasts in fundamental ways from the positions taken by the political actors on the three levels of conflict. His words and proposals are much closer in spirit to the calls emanating from civil society and the Global South. He expressed the spirit of his endeavors concisely shortly after Russia attacked: “End the hostilities now. Silence the guns now. Open the door to dialogue and diplomacy.” “The ticking clock is a time bomb.”
Traveling to Moscow to meet with Putin and the Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, the message was the same: Focus on ways to end the war, and desist from carrying on the fight against Russia a day longer.
He told Lavrov that “We are extremely interested in finding ways to create the conditions for effective dialogue, create conditions for a ceasefire as soon as possible, create conditions for a peaceful solution.” Putin in their one-on-one meeting given the aggressiveness of his counterpart in Washington seemed guardedly receptive to allowing the UN and Red Cross to play a humanitarian role in Ukraine and seemed willing to seek a negotiated end to the conflict on the ground. Of course, it is premature to reach any assessment until deeds follow words, but we have yet to hear a comparable level of peace-mindedness in Biden’s public statements, which so far seem calculated to stir anti-Russian fury rather than to set the stage for ending this frightening multi-level conflict.
The stark difference between the UN SG’s approach and that of the geopolitical leadership of the world, should make many persons dedicated to a better future initiate a campaign to set the UN free from geopolitical primacy.
Conclusionary Observation
Unraveling the intertwined nature of these three levels of conflict bound up in the ambiguities of the Ukraine War is crucial for an understanding of its complexity and to analyze whether responses and proposals are of service to the general betterment of humanity. It also facilitates the identification of unresponsive policies and proposals. On this basis, I believe that two overriding assessments emerge: stop the killing by all means available and unconditionally repudiate the Geopolitical War.
Roeland Park, KS: The Kansas chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-KS) has called upon Kansas Democratic Governor Laura Kelly to issue an executive order for the removal of the vestigial racist covenants contained in property records across the state. The unenforceable covenants contain insulting, degrading and discriminatory language from a bygone era that are hurtful to many homeowners. The organization has taken issue particularly with the small eastern Kansas town of Roeland Park where such discriminatory language still resides in its property records.
Discrimination as delineated in property contracts, restrictions, deeds, plats, homeowner association documents and other official real estate instruments are nothing new in America. They are reflective of the Jim Crow era of the South when developers and municipalities enforced this brand of racial segregation and discrimination of housing to keep neighborhoods, towns and cities White. Racially restrictive covenants historically were used widely in newspaper ads to promote sales of real estate developments usually at a premium to prospective buyers, in assuring them of the “racial purity” of new neighborhoods.
The vitriolic language contained in some property documents recorded in Roeland Park in this lingering racist remnant state that the properties “shall never be conveyed, devised, leased, rented, used, owned or occupied by anyone of ‘Negro blood…’” A similar document from the Buena Vista Heights neighborhood of the city goes even further by expanding on those affected to include anyone “…more-than one fourth of the Semitic race, blood, origin, or extraction,” further describing those affected as “Armenians, Jews, Hebrews, Turks, Persians, Syrians and Arabians.”
Perhaps the most egregious effect of these types of restrictions along with “Redlining” areas in depriving residents of financial services has been the net effect it has had on people of color and low-income residents who have thus been circumscribed to only owning property in poorer and less desirable neighborhoods. Their inability to aggregate familial wealth through home ownership in wealthier and more desirable areas has diminished their capacity to pass that economic benefit on to future generations. These discriminatory factors combined have destined those affected to an endless cycle of poverty by limiting their potential of a fair opportunity to rise into a new socio-economic stratum that has been an upwardly fundamental in elevation to the American middle class.
Thankfully, the racially restrictive covenants were prohibited when Congress passed the 1968 Civil Rights Act that included Title VIII, The Fair Housing Act. Signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson the legislation put the full weight of the federal government into its enforcement, even though the Supreme Court had decided in two earlier cases, Hansberry v. Lee in 1940 that overturned such covenants on a technicality, and later in the landmark 1948 case Shelley v. Kraemer, that racially restrictive covenants were unenforceable under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Although these decisions had little practical effect in the matter, the 1968 Civil Rights Act at last prohibited “…discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin in housing sales, rentals, or financing.” The act was further amended by the Fair Housing Amendments Act in 1988 to expand upon and to eliminate other forms of discrimination. Nevertheless, the hateful and racist language of a bygone era is still present across the country in many older property records.
Roeland Park officials have established that under the law they are not able to expunge such language from public documents once they have been recorded and affirmed that the complexities of having to do so for its six affected neighborhoods would be both costly and time-consuming. CAIR’s call for an executive order from the governor in effect would allow a remedy to the myriad of complications statewide surrounding the many individual circumstances in these matters by allowing Register of Deeds to redact such language in one sweeping action. To date, more than 21 states have enacted such anti-covenant legislation in various forms for the removal of racially restrictive covenants from property documents.
CAIR-Kansas Board Chairman Moussa Elbayoumy told this reporter that the more preferential solution would be the universal removal process via an executive order being called for by the civil rights organization. “It is unacceptable that racist, discriminatory language continues to be present in property documents,” Elbayoumy said. “Governor Kelly should immediately issue an executive order allowing for the swift removal of such content from property documents in Roeland Park and statewide. Doing so would be a step toward ensuring equal housing opportunities for all citizens.”
Governor Laura Kelly responded to CAIR Kansas’ call for her issuance of an executive order during a NPR interview in February when she stated that she could not issue such an order and that, “The fastest, easiest, most cost-effective way to deal with this would be to have the legislature just do something blanket that would help all of our local communities.”
State Representative Rui Xu (D) whose district includes the city of Roeland Park told this reporter that, “A lot of the cities in my district still have these on the books, and I’m fully in support of whatever we can do to get them off.”
CAIR Chairman Elbayoumy recently disclosed that several members of the House and one Senator are now working on a bill that once the specific language is worked out would be introduced and hopefully passed in this legislative session before the end of the year.
Kansas property owners anxious to see an end to these racist covenants on their property deeds and records will have to wait patiently as the legislative process works its way to a final resolution for the long overdue change so vitally needed in putting an end to such outmoded remnants of a shameful past.
Phil Pasquini is a freelance journalist and photographer. His reports and photographs appear in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Pakistan Link and Nuze.ink. He is the author of Domes, Arches and Minarets: A History of Islamic-Inspired Buildings in America.
This article first appeared in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January 2022 issue and Pakistan Link on April 15, 2022
