Okinawa: Caught between a rock and a hard place

US Marines discharge Perfluoro octane sulfonic acid (PFAS) into the sewers. Okinawan officials are “furious” while the Japanese government is complacent | PAT ELDER

U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma is located in densely populated Ginowan City, Okinawa


Okinawan residents call for removal of U.S. military bases. [Source: teenvogue.com].

Warship Watch. Canada joins largest-ever US-Japanese war exercise

Japanese people protest against US base in Naha, Okinawa in 2015 | AFP

The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan led Japanese destroyers and two Canadian warships in a combat readiness war game that began on October 29 and ended on November 8.

Japan and the United States reportedly mobilized some 57,000 sailors, marines and members of their air forces for “Keen Sword” – the biggest joint war game in Japanese history. Japan’s contingent in the Keen Sword exercise represented a fifth of the nation’s armed forces. In the 2016 simulated air combat and amphibious landings exercise, the joint military personnel was estimated to be some 11,000 less, Reuters reported.

Vancouver Meeting on Korea: No good will come from considering the DPRK an aggressor

By PAULINE EASTON

The meeting of the “Vancouver Group,” comprised of the states which made war against the Korean people in 1950-53, took place on January 16 in Vancouver. From the point of view of its stated aim – to find a diplomatic versus military solution to the crisis on the Korean Peninsula – the Vancouver meeting was as unproductive as expected. It could not have been otherwise given that the participants did not include the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), which is the target of UN sanctions that the meeting sought to strengthen, nor China or Russia, two parties which border the DPRK. The “Vancouver Group” seeks to circumvent the UN Security Council, which is still regarded as the organization entrusted to safeguard world peace, and the UN General Assembly, which is said to represent all the countries of the world.

No more Hiroshimas! No more Nagasakis! Canada needs an anti-war government! All out to make Canada a zone for peace

On the occasion of the 71st anniversary of the first use of a nuclear weapon against human beings, the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) calls on Canadians to go all out to make Canada a zone for peace that stands against all U.S. imperialist war preparations and gets Canada out of NATO and NORAD.

CPC(M-L) calls on Canadians to be on alert to the manoeuvres of the U.S. ruling elite to unite its warring factions behind a Hillary Clinton war president with their own program to “make America great again.” The biggest efforts of the U.S. establishment and its allies at this time are to block the resistance movements of the people, especially their political mobilization for democratic rights and against war and aggression, in particular against U.S. preparations for a third world war. On the anniversaries of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, CPC(M-L) emphasizes the internationalist duty of Canadians to ensure Canada is not a factor for war as well as to directly oppose the election of a war president and the acceleration of war preparations in the U.S.

Thousands protest against new US military base in Japan

According to a 2010, survey 71 per cent of Okinawans considered that U.S. Marines are not necessary on the Japanese island. 

Japanese protesters raise placards saying “Do not yield to authority” during a rally to protest against a controversial US airbase in Naha, Okinawa, May 17, 2015 | AFP

teleSUR (May 18) – Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets of Okinawa’s capital, Naha, Sunday to protest against the building of a controversial U.S. marine airbase in the southern Japanese island. According to local police at least 35,000 people gathered in the massive rally.

Marching towards disaster: What’s really behind the US push in the Asia-Pacific?

US war preparations in Asia

Young Japanese women hold banners during a major rally against the US military at a park in Okinawa after a string of serious misconduct by its soldiers including alleged rapes in the Japan’s southern island province on March 23, 2008. More than 6,000 people took part in the rally on the island, home of more than 40,000 US troops stationed in Japan. (TORU YAMANAKA/AFP/Getty Images)

On the sidelines of the Group of Twenty (G20) Summit in Brisbane on 15–16 November 2014, US President Barack H. Obama delivered a keynote speech to diplomats, policymakers, faculty members, and students at the University of Queensland on the United States of America’s foreign policy and his so-called “Asian pivot” or “pivot to Asia.”

By MAHDI DARIUS NAZEMROAYA

In 2013, a report by Brian Andrews and Kurt Campbell for the British think-tank Chatham House described Washington’s redeployment efforts in the Asia-Pacific region like this: “The United States government is in the early stages of a substantial national project: reorienting significant elements of its foreign policy towards the Asia-Pacific region and encouraging many of its partners outside the region to do the same.”

Obama’s visit to Japan: Necessity to break away from imposed reference point of the ruling elite

Tokyo protest against visit of President Obama to Japan, April 23, 2014. Signs oppose Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s direction for Japan and U.S. demand to relocate its Futenma military base in Okinawa to ecologically sensitive Henoko Bay.

Special report by TML correspondent in Japan

U.S. President Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Abe met in Tokyo April 23-25, 2014 to consolidate the aggressive U.S./Japan military alliance. The U.S. President has been applying pressure for the Japanese military to participate directly in U.S.-led wars of aggression wherever they occur and to accept yet more U.S. weapons of mass destruction on its territory. Obama was in Japan to formalize the demand that no longer was it acceptable for Japanese military and industrial power to act only as a rearguard for the U.S. Empire and its predatory wars.

US-NATO’s drive into Asia

ASIAN NATO CONCEPT FLAG | Pnyxblog

A global military bloc | RICK ROZOFF

(January 29, 2009) – With the sixtieth anniversary summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to occur jointly in the French city of Strasbourg and and the German one of Kehl on April 3-4, the world should take note of how far from its original area of operations this, history’s first international military bloc has expanded in the interim since its creation in 1949.