From Anarchist Black Cross-Osaka via the 325 Collective, June 6:

Anarchist in Kansai area (West Japan) arrested in G8 preparations—Solidarity needed!
Tabi Rounin, better known as 'Rebel_Jill' has been detained by police on minor charges in the run-up to the G8 in Japan, as the police attempt to investigate his international connections and disrupt his revolutionary activities. This is a known tactic of the Japanese political police, see here for a similar case (Comrade 'M') and also see this interview with Tabi.

China's Ministry of Water Resources has dispatched teams to Sichuan, Chongqing, Yunnan, Gansu and Shaanxi provinces to prevent dams that were damaged by the devastating earthquake from bursting and endangering the lives of residents. Several dams are believed to be imminently threatened in the key region where the Tibetan plateau meets the Sichuan plain.

Just two days after Beijing's surprise announcement that it would shortly meet with aides to the Dalai Lama, the Chinese Communist party's official mouthpiece hurled fresh invective at the exiled Tibetan leader. The April 27 People's Daily commentary stated: "The Dalai clique have always been masters at games with words and the ideas that they have tossed about truly make the head spin... Those who split the nation are criminals to history." The Dalai Lama's nephew, Khedroob Thondup, a member of the Tibetan parliament-in-exile, dismissed the overture as a "ruse" designed "to deflect pressure and give false assurance to Western leaders." (The Guardian, April 28) A story on the front page of the New York Times business section April 26, "At Trade Show, China's Police Shop for the West's Latest," sported a picture of an armored vehicle on display and contained such gems as:

Some 700 Japanese anti-nuclear activists protested April 12 in Rokkasho (Aomori Prefecture, northern Honshu) as French Prime Minister Francois Fillon toured a new nuclear fuel reprocessing facility recently built in partnership between Japan Nuclear Fuel (JNFL) and France's nuclear giant Areva. The plant is scheduled to begin operations next month, but critics charge that it poses a safety risk and could be vulnerable to an earthquake.

German activist Martin Kramer, en route to Japan to prepare for the Hokkaido G8 summit protests, was arrested by police in the city of Vanino in the Habarovsk region of the Russian Far East March 3. He was turned over the FSB agents, in whose hands he was harshly interrogated and beaten. Martin was accused of carrying "extremist" and "secret" documents. These included archival materials from the 1920s, long since made public, that Kramer had for research purposes. Also included were a copies of the Ukrainian anarchist paper Liva-Sprava and Udar, the paper of Vladivostok's Autonomous Action. After a few hours, he was put in a car and thrown out in a strange part of the city. On March 10, arriving in Sapporo via ship from Sakhalin, he was denied entry by Japanese authorities. As of the 11th, he remained on board the ship, while local activists appealed to the authorities. (Via No-G8 Action Japan mailing list)

Japan deployed a Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missile interceptor system at the Takeyama base in Yokosuka, just southwest of Tokyo Jan. 30, military sources told AP. Yokosuka is the site of Japan's largest naval base and homeport of the US Seventh Fleet. PAC-3 systems were installed at two other bases near Tokyo last year, and eight more are slated to be deployed around the nation. The fourth will be deployed at Kasumigaura in Ibaraki by the end of March. While the first three are deployed to protect the capital, they will have to be moved closer to Tokyo to be effective in the event of attack.

Japan's outgoing Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said he resigned to break a deadlock in parliament over Japan's support for US-led operations in Afghanistan. Former foreign minister Taro Aso, who shares Abe's pro-remilitarization agenda, is considered the frontrunner to take over as party leader and, consequently, prime minister. Under the proposed plan, the Air Self-Defense Forces would provide airlift support for NATO's ISAF mission in Afghanistan, a provision of a new law planned to replace the current counter-terrorism law that expires Nov. 1. The new legislation would also continue and expand the Maritime Self-Defense Force's NATO-linked refueling mission in the Indian Ocean. (Euronews, Sept. 12; Japan Times, Sept. 9)

The Japanese anti-war group Zenko, whose 37th annual conference just closed in Tokyo, is a critical voice of dissent to the controversial Yasukuni shrine, where "Class A" war criminals like Hideki Tojo, as well as many hundreds of common soldiers, are honored. Not all of the survivors of those soldiers are happy that their loved ones are enshrined at Yasukuni, and Zenko has organized support for Koreans and Okinawans who have brought suit in the Japanese courts to have the names of their fathers or grandfathers removed from the shrine. Kinjo Minoru, an Okinawan sculptor and leading voice against the US military presence on the island, is one of the litigants. He said his father did not fight for Imperial Japan willingly, and that official Japanese history is trying to erase the memory of the "Okinawa massacre"—in which military authorities ordered the island's inhabitants to commit mass suicide rather than surrender to the US in July 1945, leading to hundreds of deaths.