Under strong pressure by the U.S. establishment, Shinzo Abe's ultra right wing Japanese regime violently forced passing of the illegal, inhumane, undemocratic Legislation for Peace and Security, which many of us call the War Act (1), (2).
Along with Abe's other initiatives to remilitarize Japan, the new regulation has the potential to turn one of the leading economies into a war economy. It can force many people to earn their living by making tools of killing and destruction, holding their livelihoods hostage to the death and suffering of wars. Once the lives of the workers are locked in place, the capitalistic pursuit and the hierarchy of money and violence will give the newly born military industrial complex a life of its own. Imagine a nightmarish future filled with Japanese-made high tech weapons.
This remilitarization has the potential to give huge profits to multinational weapon makers and colluding ruling elites in Japan and the US. It will support ongoing colonial wars and interventions across the globe, which have killed millions, displaced far more, and destroyed communities and countries. It will pave the road for corporate restructuring and privatization to suck the blood and souls out of the war torn people and terrorized people in neighboring nations who are subjected to the same neoliberal plundering.
This dark age must end. Half of our tax money should not go to wars. What country needs 1400 military bases across the planet? The worst things have already happened to millions who lost their family members, friends, cultures and countries; how could we keep going for more?
As Martin Luther King Jr. said, those bombs being dropped in far away lands are exploding in our cities --- destroying our communities, social safety nets, infrastructures, our healthcare, our educational system, free higher education, homes for everyone and food to feed our children. The normalized notion of drone killings, "humanitarian interventions" and racism against enemies blind our conscience and feed our helplessness. Meanwhile our friends, many Black and Brown friends, continue to endure wholesale violence by the street cops, mass incarceration and economic war against them.
Let's stand with the victims of those wars. Let's join their struggles to renounce the colonialism, imperialism and corporatism of the U.S. /Japan criminal team against humanity.
With more of us opening our minds and hearts, another world is inevitable, where we share what our planet can offer and what we the people can offer each other.
Peace.
1. 8/19/2015 "The national security bills are an exact copy of the third Armitage Nye Report"
www.taro-yamamoto.jp/english/5168
2. 8/19/15 "The Sunagawa Ruling, the Japanese Government's Pretext for Allowing the Collective Self-Defense, Was Ordered by the US"
www.taro-yamamoto.jp/english/5304