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Thursday, August 8, 2013

Filmmaker Oliver Stone in Hiroshima: "The specter of war has returned to Asia....The spirit of World War II is being revived..."




Video of part of American filmmaker Oliver Stone's speech in Hiroshima (he's traveling with Peter Kuznick, nuclear historian at American University and Satoko Norimatsu, co-author of Resistant Islands: Okinawa Confronts Japan and the US.)

Two years before she helped found the Network for Okinawa in 2010 (US-based network of environmentalist, faith-based NGOs and diverse think tanks, including the Institute for Policy Studies),  Satoko said she wanted to include Okinawa in the annual American University Hiroshima-Nagasaki summer study tour.  This year they're doing that.

In this clip at IWJ (Independent Web Journal), Stone challenges Tokyo's lip service to "nuclear abolition" and "peace" with his sobering observations about the ongoing Washington-Tokyo-Asia-Pacific military build-up:
...Obama's resupplied Japan with stealth fighters. Japan has the 4th largest military in the world. No one admits that. You call yourself a Self Defense Force...You're the 4th largest military in the world, after Great Britain and China. The US is your full accomplice in this. You are some of our best buyers. We make you not only pay for the weapons we sell you, but we make you pay for the wars we fight. We made you pay for Kuwait...Iraq...

We are bullies. You're facing a dragon of great size and the dragon is not China, it's the U.S.  Four days ago, I was in Jeju, Korea, where South Korea...is destroying a UNESCO World Heritage site, destroying the land and inhabitants...they're going to build the harbor so deep so the George Washington, the largest aircraft carrier in the world, carrying all kinds of nuclear missiles, is going to sail to Jeju. South Korea - armed to the teeth. Japan - armed to the teeth...Philippines...we're back in Subic Bay...

We are looking for arrangements in Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, and I heard India...India was always non-aligned...This is very dangerous...This is like NATO. It began as a defense arrangement and became an offense arrangement...

This year, the specter of war has returned to Asia...The spirit of World War II is being revived...So you can talk all you want about peace and nuclear abolition but the poker game is run by the U.S.

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