Japanese government appeals to the US public regarding comfort women issue

This article was published on the Washington Post on 6.14.07

Red Army Faction (RAF)

Throughout this class, we have been exposed to a wide variety of activism: activism through the law (Nakajima Michiko); activism through the internet (Emi Koyama); and activism through film (Kamanaka Hitomi). What we have not come across–except perhaps in narratives of ANPO–is activism through violence. The issue of violence and its relation to protest is extraordinarily complex, and gives to rise to a number of conceptually difficult questions. What, for example, is the limit of protest? Is violence necessarily a part of dissent? Also, how should protesters distinguish between individual instantiations of structure and the structures themselves, or, put another way, between the MAN and a person in a business suit?

As a way to get at some of these issues, my presentation explored the rise of the Rote Armee Fraktion in West Germany in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In the following, I have provided a time line of the major events leading up to the wave of violence known as the German Autumn.

The RAF emerged out of the mid 1960s student movement in Germany, especially from the Extra Parliamentary Opposition and groups such as Kommune I.

The members of Kommune I lived in alternative lifestyle communities and staged “happenings” in West Berlin, in which they would do things like throw custard balloons at American officials.  Members of Kommune I made explicit connections between consumption and imperialism/capitalism.  In one pamphlet, they connected German consumption to Vietnam, writing: “the burning department store with burning people revealed for the first time in a European metropolis that crackling Vietnam feeling (being there and burning along), that we still have to do without in Berlin.”

The Red Army Faction also made this connection between consumption at home and imperialism abroad.  Perhaps motivated by the Kommune I pamphlets, Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin set off bombs in a Frankfurt Department store in April of 1968.  Two days after the bombing the police arrested Baader and Ensslin.

Also in April, Rudi Dutschke, the head of the APO was shot by a Joseph Bachmann, a right wing activist.  This shooting intensified the dissolution of the united and largely peaceful student movements associated with the APO.

Ulrike Meinhof who had been a writer for the leftist journal konkret, began harboring Baader and Ensslin in 1970.
Baader was soon caught and returned to prison.

In May of 1970 Meinhof and Ensslin successfully freed Baader from prison.  It was at this point that the conservative press coined the term the Baader Meinhof gang.

On June 2 1970, the group published a communiqué claiming responsibility for Baader’s rescue.  This “Manifesto for Armed Action” called for immediate action: “Build Up the Red Army!  Let the Class Struggle unfold!  Let the Proletariat organize!  Let the Armed Resistance begin!”  It also argues that it was meant for those who might join the struggle rather than for the majority of society.  “There is no point to explain things to the wrong (falschen) people.  We’ve done that too long.  The action to free Baader was not meant for the intellectual chatterers, the pant shitters, the know it alls, but rather for the potentially revolutionary segment of the population.”

Shortly after they freed Baader, members of the Red Army faction traveled to a Palestinian training camp to learn guerrilla tactics.
Upon returning, they began to rob banks and steal cars to finance gun purchases.  They also set off bombs in places like the Springer Press and buildings related to the United States.

In Winter 1971, Ulrike Meinhof wrote the Baader Meinhof Gang’s manifesto: “The Concept of the Urban Guerrilla.”

The group continued to gain members throughout this period. In early 1971, for example, the radical Socialists Patients Collective–a group of psychiatry patients who had, under the leadership of their doctor, broken from the institution to become a revolutionary group–started signing their documents RAF.

Police managed to catch the primary members of the RAF in the summer of 1972.  They were kept in different prisons throughout West Germany, but managed to communicate with one another through their lawyers.  While in prison, they went on various hunger strikes and called attention to what they believed to be the brutal tactics of the West German police. Rather than stymie the group’s development, the imprisonment of their leaders served as a catalyst for the RAF’s expansion. Indeed a whole new wave of RAF guerillas joined the battle, which increasingly was one waged to free the captured leaders.

The November 1974, death of Holger Meins from a hunger strike initiated a new wave of violence and state repression. One example of this state repression came from the January 1975  “Lex Baader-Meinhof” or  “Baader-Meinhof Laws,” which drastically curtailed civil rights and increased the powers of the police.

In May of 76 Meinhof was found hanging in her cell. Massive demonstrations against Meinhof’s “murder” were held throughout the Federal Republic, the largest being in Frankfurt and Berlin.

In June of 76, terrorists including RAF figures hijacked an Air France plane and demanded the release of the remaining RAF prisoners.  Before their demands were met however, Israeli commandos stormed the plane and freed the hostages.

In April 1977 in the midst of the case against Baader and Ensslin, Federal Prosecutor Buback was killed in Karlsruhe.

On April 28, the defendants—Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe—were found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.
In response members of the RAF shot Jürgen Ponto, chairman of the Dresdener Bank.

In September of 77, Hans Martin Schleyer, President of the Employers Association and the Federation of German Industry, was kidnapped by the RAF.  They demanded the release of the prisoners in Stammheim.  In October, RAF and Palestinian groups hijacked another plane, and again demanded the prisoner’s release.  Like the last hijacking, however, this one ended in failure.

On October 17, Baader, Ensslin and Raspe supposedly commited suicide in prison.  Days later Schleyer was killed in retaliation.

The violence continued sporadically into the 1980s, though it slowly lost momentum.

The question then, is what are we to make of this?  How do we connect activism to violence?  When and why do protests turn violent? Some scholars argue that the violence of the German left was driven by memories of the fascist past.  Jeremy Varon’s Bringing the War Home, for example, argues “The RAF sought to punish Germany both for the sins of the that past and for what is saw as a their repetition in the present through such things as police repression and German support for American ‘genocide’ in Vietnam.” Varon also interprets the strong response of the state in terms of fascist continuities.  The state argued that the RAF was the true successor to the fascist past and that extreme measures were necessary to protect German democracy. These measures included: the Berufsverbot which permitted the dismissal of any civil servant deemed to be supportive of terrorism, increased censorship of leftist papers, and a general persecution of anyone thought to sympathize with the RAF.

According to this interpretation, the RAF’s violence stemmed from the peculiarities of the German past. This explanation, however, does not provide an explanation for why similar violence emerged throughout the world. Indeed, it seems that significantly more work needs to be done in order to understand the nature of postwar leftist violence. Does it occur when normal institutional channels are blocked as many sociologists would argue? Does it arise from regionally specific historical circumstances as historians would have it? Was it a result of the specific ideological formulations of the postwar Left? I do not have any grand answers to these questions, yet what does seem certain, is that to understand the international eruptions of protest in the 1960s and 70s, we need to grasp the complex connections between activism and violence.

Asahi Shinbun article on Tari-san

Greetings from Tokyo! I arrived here yesterday, and today I am heading to Kumamoto.

This is an article from the June 6 issue of Asahi Shinbun on Tari Ito’s upcoming performance on “comfort women” issue in the Philipinnes.

Tari article

Emi’s eminism

I just read through Emi’s “Whore Revolution” zine that I bought during her visit this weekend. I remember some of us in class were confused or challenged by Emi’s fliers that read “Sluts Against Rape!” After reading the zine, which includes an email exchange with an academic feminist about the agency of prostitutes, the concept of “When prostitutes are safe, all women are safe.” became really powerful for me.

I think most feminists and feminisms think that the exclusion of working-class women, women of color, prostitutes, and third world women has been overcome with a complex academic understanding of “intersectionality,” but Emi’s stuggles with institutionalized feminism points in a different direction. That’s one thing I’ll definitely remember from her visit.

I will see Nori soon!

As I wrote here, I will meet Nori this weekend in Kumamoto. So check this blog even if you are done with the quarter!

nuclear action plan factsheet

… and the DOE’s official “fact sheet” regarding the joint US-Japan Nuclear Action Plan can be found here:

http://nuclear.energy.gov/pdfFiles/USJapanFactSheet042507.pdf

US & Japan Sign Joint Nuclear Energy Action Plan to Promote Nuclear Energy Cooperation

Signed on April 18, 2005:

“This Action Plan establishes the necessary framework to coordinate activities designed to promote the expansion of safe and secure nuclear power, in our respective countries, and globally. It also formalizes an agreement between our two nations – leading nuclear technology countries – to collaborate in four main areas, and provides the additional foundation for the U.S. and Japan to align efforts in support of global expansion of nuclear energy.

Four main areas outlined in the Action Plan are:

1. Cooperation of nuclear energy research and development under GNEP;
2. Collaboration on policies and programs that support the construction of new nuclear power plants;
3. Establishment of a nuclear fuel supply assurance mechanism; and
4. Joint collaboration to support the safe and secure expansion of nuclear energy in interested countries while promoting non-proliferation, consistent with GNEP.

Implementation of the Action Plan will begin immediately. Its execution will be overseen by a Steering Committee, co-chaired by the U.S. and Japan. Both nations will establish six GNEP research and development working groups in the following areas, to benefit from each other’s expertise and implement areas of cooperation identified in the Action Plan:

• Fast Reactor Technology;
• Fuel Cycle Technology;Simulation and Modeling;
• Small and Medium Reactors;
• Safeguards and Physical Protection and;
• Waste Management.

The U.S. and Japan share the objectives for establishing a global framework to expand nuclear energy use and minimize proliferation risks while enabling the benefits from the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Both nations support the development of a global nuclear energy infrastructure as envisioned in GNEP to develop innovative nuclear reactor and fuel cycle technologies. GNEP seeks to bring about a significant, wide-scale use of nuclear energy worldwide, and to take actions that will allow that vision to be achieved, while decreasing the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation and effectively addressing the challenge of nuclear waste disposal.”

–from the US Department of Energy website:

http://nuclear.energy.gov/newsroom/2007PRs/nePR042507.htm

 

…I find it difficult to interpret “safe /peaceful nuclear energy expansion” as anything other than an oxymoron, especially of this recently passed Action Plan intends to bring about “a significant, wide-scale use of nuclear energy worldwide”. !!

It is amazing to see the DOE attempt to portray and disguise plans of nuclear proliferation and nuclear energy (read: defense) research as some kind of environmentally friendly solution for a more sustainable future.

-may

Enjoying Protest

When we had our little experiment in class, dividing into “conservative”, “progressive activist” and “apathetic” camps and trying to have a discussion, it seemed like “apathy” made sense from the standpoint of seeing activism as futile. This might not be the whole picture, but it seems really important to find optimism in activism.

I remember noticing how many of our guests talked about getting hooked on activism and protest. MASA mentioned it, Nakajima-san talked about how fun it was to be active and see things change, and Tawara-san talked about the joy of participating in the Anpo protests. And I remember having this feeling, listening to that, that you aren’t supposed to enjoy protesting; you should be desperately upset if you are going to protest, or be calm and rational with no emotions playing a part. And I don’t think this is an uncommon position: I’ve heard it said that the union marches in Paris are like a carnival or festival, implying that they are not quite serious or legitimate, or that otherwise activists are only riding along. But I mean, I thought it was a bit sad how much effort was necessary yesterday to “fire up” the Darfur marchers in order to give social and political justice a voice–why should it be so hard?–and it was based on getting (rightly) upset about the situation.

I thought, there should be joy in protest, it should be fun and easy to get into. It wouldn’t make the position less right. I don’t know, maybe this is all very obvious, but as the title of the lecture series, “Celebrating Protest”, suggests, one of the major lessons, for me, was that we should be trying to make protest enjoyable. I say this because protest and activism are critical of society, and in that sense negative, and we seem to be able to come up with innumerable criticisms, but the positive side of protest is as important, but so difficult.