198 Methods on Non Violent Action

Nonviolence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man.

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.

Mahatma Ghandi

A week is a long time under the eyes of the global media. Events in Japan managed to stay on screens and front pages for just about that long, until last night when 'Allied forces' started missile attacks on Libya. The hunt for drama and stories is a hunger that must be constantly fed, thus all eyes moved on. Explosions carry far more drama than firehoses (the main story coming out of Fukushima Daiichi).

While there are many arguments given in favour of outside military intervention in Libya's internal conflict, some even hard to refute, a stepping up of aggression inevitably leads to more trouble down the line, more deaths, and easy propaganda coups for those such actions are directed against (in this case Gaddafi).

Should there not be a long and drawn out conflict, in Britain Cameron may well come out of this with his own 'Falklands moment' - a comparable incident that turned around Thatcher's unpopularity and laid the groundwork for a decade of Thatcherism - making it harder to turn back the tide of cuts and changes in this country. This may be of little importance to the Libyan people opposed to Gaddafi, but could be but one consequential turning point in Britain felt for many years to come.

Peaceful objection to militarism of any sort is harder to justify in the face of the slaughter of innocents, but I think that as more and more countries slide into bombing campaigns, it's worth taking a moment to pause and consider other methods of non violent action. Maybe none of the actions that are described in the content of this post would make a jot of difference to what Gaddafi seems to be doing, but they certainly had some effect in Egypt and Tunisia this year.

Dr. Gene Sharp created a list of 198 methods of non violent direct action that can be used to express opposition to an individual, government or other system. These include protest and persuasion, noncooperation, and intervention. This list was supposedly influential (and translated into Arabic) in what happened in Tahrir Square just last month, as it was in the revolutionary changes that swept Eastern Europe in the late 80's/early 90's.

They are published in English here in the document below, or are available as direct downloads here (same document as embed) and here (1 page, full colour). If any readers have pdfs of version translated into other languages, they are welcome to link to them in the comments below and I'll try to update the post with more versions. For more on the Albert Einstein Institution, an organisation that studies nonviolent action around the world and is part-run by Sharp, click here.

198 Methods of Non Violent Action

Photo credits: Atomic Headlines by London Permaculture (issued under CC-BY- NC-SA licence), LIBYA/ by B.R.Q. Network (issued under CC-BY licence)

Tokyo update

Sendai, March 12,2011 by U.S. Pacific Fleet (issued under licence: CC-BY-NC)

Here is the latest email send from my friend Paul in Tokyo:

Prime Minister of Japan press conference at 11:00AM Tuesday morning in Tokyo. Quick summary:

Fukushima Nuclear Plant #1

• Reactor #1 - Suffered hydrogen explosion on Saturday
• Reactor #2 - An explosion of unknown origin occurred within the containment vessel at 6:15AM today. It looks like some fuel rods are exposed. Currently being investigated
• Reactor #3 - Suffered a hydrogen explosion on Monday
• Reactor #4 - Exploded approximately 30 minutes after the #2 explosion, currently on fire, reactor is not in operation, but contains spent fuel rods that is creating a hydrogen oxygen build-up similar to reactors 1 and 3. The substantial increase in radiation may be coming from this fire.

Radiation levels immediately at the plant are substantially above safe levels. The 10 and 20 km radius areas are now being evacuated as those areas are no longer considered safe. People are being told to stay indoors between 20 and 30 km from the plant.

It is not clear if the explosions with #2 and #4 this morning are related.

The Onagawa plant has somewhat increased levels, but not at dangerous levels. The substantial increase I noted in the previous email was thought to be from a cloud moving north from the Fukushima plant as levels dropped quickly after the earlier high readings. The Tokai plant (75 miles from Tokyo) has been confirmed to be stable. It does have a broken pump, but all other pumps are working. The fuel rods are cooling down normally and the plant is operating smoothly. The Fukushima, Onagawa and Tokai plants all shut down operations when the 9.0 earthquake occurred, so nuclear reactions are not happening. The fuel rods in the Fukushima plant are still too hot, and being cooled with sea water as all other forms of cooling have failed due to earthquake and tsunami damage.

To keep things in perspective, the new radius around the Fukushima plant is 30km. We are ~260km from the plant here in Tokyo. Also, this is not the same situation as Chernobyl. The plant in Chernobyl was incredibly poorly built and was in full operation when fire broke out. In other words, it was still creating nuclear reactions while burning. The Fukushima plant is not creating nuclear reactions. It is more similar to the situation at 3 Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979. Similar. Not exactly the same. Each situation has it's differences, of course.

Winds over the stricken nuclear plant are blowing slowly towards the Kanto region, which includes Tokyo, Reuters reports. However, the winds are expected to change between 12-2PM to blow from the west to east. We just got word from the BBC that there is a slight increase in the level of radiation in Tokyo.

Good links that I have found for information are:

The BBC live update page

The NHK English video stream

I agree with a post on the BBC live site by a man in Saitama in Japan who writes:

Ben Slaney, from Asaka City, Saitama, Japan, writes: "Most of the shops are closed and quite a few Japanese people have left Tokyo to stay with relatives further west. Right now it's very difficult to understand who to trust. While the government wants to minimize panic, the foreign media wants to exaggerate the importance of the latest developments to create a more compelling story. This is leaving many foreign nationals in Japan confused as to who to believe."

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School on Monday was good and, mostly uneventful. Except for the 6.0 earthquake in the middle of class. That was fun. The school rocked around while we hid under the desks. The early warning system that is in place here is amazing. A siren went off throughout the neighborhood about 10 seconds prior to the earthquake, which allowed us to move under the desks prior to the 'quake starting. Once the earthquake was finished, we waited for the all clear, and proceeded with the lesson. No big drama. Just life post big earthquake. I guess there was concern about a tsunami, but, luckily, nothing emerged.

I stayed home today (Tuesday) as I woke up with a stuffed nose, cough and fever. Yoko and I are staying in our apartment, and discussing the situation and our options with friends and family. We are entertaining ourselves by sending audio messages to each other on Google Translate. We are eating lots of brown rice with salt, miso soup and kelp. This mix of food was found to be helpful to victims of the Hiroshima bombing. Hmmmm...that was a weird sentence to type.

In Tokyo, many restaurants are closed now as they have run out of food. Also, many stores have bare shelves as people are still stocking up. Surprisingly, the convenience stores are full of bentos!

The streets are jammed with pedestrians and cyclists, because the police are limiting the number of people allowed in the different stations to catch the trains and subways. Both the trains and subways are running at 50-60% of capacity and are packed. Some train lines are unable to run at all as the particular route travels through areas in which multiple black outs are taking place. It is difficult and uncomfortable to travel by train right now.

Lines of cars at gas stations are all over the city. I saw a "short line" that had formed at the local gas station that went down the street and around the corner. Probably about a quarter mile long.

Despite all of this, everyone is staying calm, fairly friendly and, despite the stress, things are okay.

The situation in Northern Japan is dire. Many people are missing, the death toll is rising every hour and more than 500,000 people are displaced. The temperatures this week are expected to drop below freezing in many areas of Central and Northern Honshu. Again, if you can help in any way, please follow this link:

Google Crisis Response page for 2011 Japanese Earthquake/Tsunami (English)

Anyway, you probably know a lot of this already, but I just wanted to give you an idea of what is going on here.

I'll be in touch!

Control K remixes Ryuichi Sakamoto

The first new recording by Control K in two years is finally released, a remix of a Ryuichi Sakamoto song. Constructed over a six month period, 'Rokkasella (New Clear Mix)' is my first venture into remixing.

'Rokkasella' is a radical reworking of a track originally produced by Team 6, comprising of electronic music pioneer Ryuichi Sakamoto (YMO, 'Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence') and US-based Japanese rapper Shing02, amongst others.

Following in the spirit of 'electronic protest music' that inspired the debut Control K album release 'The Front Line (Redux)', this remix builds on the ambient dub vibe that ran through that album. It also draws clear parallels between the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the use of nuclear power, and weaves a narrative of US energy imperialism into the tale.

The track is available for free download from the 'Stop Rokkasho' website, included with the likes of Kraftwerk, DJ Krush and Mick Karn (formerly of 80's band Japan). It is available to listen to at Control K's MySpace page. All remixes in this project are also available for free download from the iTunes Music Store.

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The original recording 'Rokkasho' was intended to draw attention to the dangers of Japan's nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in the North of Japan. Japan has previously commissioned reprocessing plants in Europe to reprocess its spent nuclear fuel and then shipped the waste back to Japan, but is now set to resume full scale reprocessing in Japan.

The reprocessing process releases large quantities of radioactivity into the environment. Extracted plutonium can be used in nuclear weapons and reprocessing entails clear environmental, social and safety risks.

An English language petition relating to the reactivating of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Plant that was damaged in the Niigata earthquake of 2007 can be found here.