Vetoed for the Third Time

Yesterday, on 19 July, the Security Council failed to adopt for the third time a resolution for a greater restraint on the present regime in Syria, as it was vetoed by China and Russia.  Pakistan and South Africa abstained.
In case of Russia, I think the reason is clear.  It is the importance of Syria as a weapons market.  I wonder if those tanks, missiles and rocket launchers which are shown on the TV as the weapons of the government forces in Syria are not all Russian made.  Two decades ago, when the Iraqi army under Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, Iraq had the largest number of tanks, 5,500, among the countries in the Middle East.  And the Middle East was the largest market for the weapons.  Most of them were said to have come from the then USSR.  They used those for a trench warfare, and were easily destroyed by the US forces trained to fight the Soviet tanks coming on the North European plains.
Syria had the second largest number of tanks then.  They must have been updated by now.
In the case of China, the reason is not that clear.  Mr.Ban Ki-mun was having a talk with President Hu Chin-tao the previous day, and one would be allowed to think that there must have been some understanding reached between the two by the time the resolution was submitted for a vote.
Perhaps one would also be allowed to imagine like this.  Mr.Hu was also having a meeting with a large Pan-African delegation on that day, and is said to have promised $ 20 billion to those countries in the next three years.  They were all heads of governments, or other high dignitaries, headed by South Africa's President Zuma.
Suppose some of those governments were not as democratic as others?  Suppose Mr.Hu's mission was to assure them their present incumbency?  Then it may be natural that China was against the resolution on the pretext that it would mean 'regime change' as well.       

Raining Cats and Dogs in Western Japan

For the past nearly a week it has been raining quite heavily in some parts of Western Japan, particularly in the three Prefectures out of seven in Kyushu Island.  Many roads have been cut by the landslides caused  by the heavy rain.  Some river banks have been breached.  Thousands of people have been either ordered or advised to leave their homes to safer shelters, which are usually public buildings.
So far it is more or less a normal affair.  But this time, as the meteorological stations have announced, the quantity, and if I may add the duration as well, of the rain is unprecedented.
On the average, the annual precipitation in those three Prefectures in the Central-northern Kyushu is from 1,600 to 2,000 mm, of which about 40% falls in June and July.  So these two months is a rainy season, but not in the same sense that the word is understood in many other countries on earth.  The total rain is fairly well distributed throughout the year, and the two months' rain also covers the two months very well.  The rice cultivation needs a lot of rain in this time, as the transplantation is over and the crop is in the growing period.
But in the past week or so, we have often heard that it rained as much as 80mm/hour in many places, and at 110mm at least on one occasion.  You cannot see ahead, the umbrella will not hold, and what is worse, the water level in rivers will rise rapidly up to the danger point and more in no time.
Some eye-witnesses have talked of the standing trees moving toward them at a great speed.  They are not talking of "Macbeth".  They are telling us that the landslide no longer takes place in the barren land, unprotected by the plant, but it involves the land and the plant together.  Here we may have to look into the nature of the forest in this country to see whether the plant is of such a type as to get well-rooted.  But that apart, we can quickly come to the conclusion that our forest land has become very vulnerable.
Researchers are telling us that the basic cause of the series of these accidents is the increased water in the air because of global warming, which needs an outlet.  The warming is not simply a problem for the residents of small islands, but unmistakably ours also.              

Narayan Desai's New Gandhi Volumes

Mr.Narayan Desai(1924-)is an eminent social worker of India.  He is also a biographer of Mahatma Gandhi to whom his father, Mr.Mahadev Desai, was the secretary.  His new four-volume biography of Gandhi(2009), 2,260 pages in all, is overwhelming.  Here I would venture to discuss one point from the third volume, not as a review of the book but rather to put my thinking in order.
It is on a political process of great significance under Gandhi's initiative that was unfolding in India exactly 70 years ago.  It came to be known as the "Quit-India"movement.
The movement was conceived by the resolution Gandhi himself submitted to the AICC(All India Congress Committee)toward the end of April 1942.  It requested the British to evacuate from India, declared that India would win independence by non-violence and defend it in a similar way, and if the Japanese would invade India, the Indian people would resist it by means of non-violent noncooperation.  Due to the difference of opinion in the AICC, that part of it saying that India would defend her independence (solely)with non-violence was dropped.  Gandhi himself did not go to the meeting and sent Mirabehn, an English woman, instead.
Anyway India said it wanted to be left alone by war, but if involved by the Japanese it would resist the invasion(Desai, p.449.  Why Gandhi's resolution was modified is not clear here).
Since when, by the way, did Gandhi think of independent India without arms?  At the public meeting at Paris on his way back home from the Second Round Table Conference at the end of 1931, one of the questions was if independent India would have its own army.  He replied that 'he was confident that if India were to win freedom through means of truth and non-violence, she would have no use for the army'(Desai, pp.57-8).  In my view this was the first time Gandhi categorically said so.
Then in Switzerland where he arrived from France, he said something very remarkable on what the Swiss would do to an invading army.  'I would have invited every citizen to refuse all supplies to invading armies...and build a living wall of women and children and invite the invading armies to walk over  their bodies...Non-violence is not and has never been the weapon of the weak'(Desai, p.68).
In my view also Gandhi never pointed out the strength of non-violence so forcefully.  This must have been what was in his mind when he talked of resisting the Japanese.
After the above AICC, Gandhi sent Mirabehn this time to Orissa to observe the situation there.  It is a coastal  province facing 'Malaya, Singapore, Burma'(Gandhi's words) already under the Japanese occupation.  Gandhi might have imagined Japanese landing army there would meet very little armed resistance, as Mirabehn reported that the British were keen to defend the inland steel town of Jamshedpur, and 'the dislike of the British Raj being so great, that anything anti-British will be welcomed with open arms(Desai, pp.450-1).
What Mirabehn told him must have made Gandhi's determination for the 'Quit-India' movement still firmer.  The British police, however, arrested Gandhi and almost all other leaders early in August, and the movement collapsed even before it got started.  But I do not think that we the people of Japan can easily forget it away, even after 70 years.    

The Parliamentary Committee Has Said It

On 5 July, exactly the day when Japan ceased to be a nuclear-free country, the Parliamentary Investigation Committee(appointed by the Parliament and not necessarily composed of MPs) on the Fukushima nuclear plant accident published a report of more than 600 pages.  Here are some of its salient features.
First and foremost, it says that the basic cause of the accident goes back before 11 March 2011, the day of the disaster.  The regulating authorities as well as the management of the Tokyo Electric Company actually in charge of the plant have, either through postponing the issues concerning security, inaction, or attempts to safeguard their own organizations, have not squarely faced the problems concerning the security till 11 March.
The Tokyo Electric Company, which should have been the object of regulating actions, has, through its monopoly of information, turned its position upside down and has been exerting strong pressure so that the carrying out of the necessary regulation would be postponed, or loosened.  In this connection its close relation with the Ministry of Economy and Industries worked as the source of such pressure. 
Thus a number of opportunities for improving the safety standard has been overlooked.  Seen in this light the accident was not a natural disaster.  It was a man-made one.
Secondly, it is yet to be clarified how the process of destruction of the plant has actually taken place.  According to the Company, the main cause was the tsunami, the magnitude of which exceeded all the expectations, and therefore it was a natural disaster.  But there are signs that the earthquake should also be taken into account as the main cause of the accident.
Thirdly, once the disaster took place, it was found that neither the PM' Office, the regulating bureaucracy, nor the Company, was prepared to cope with it.  They also lacked the necessary will to do so.  Also the boundaries between the parties concerned were not clear.  The PM's Office, by directly giving orders to the Company, has added to the confusion.  Moreover, the dissemination of e necessary information to the local bodies was not only delayed but flawed.
Fourthly, the local residents are still living in a condition of accident.  Radioactivity-induced health, maintaining family and community life, contamination of a large area-estimated to be 1,800 square km-are the major problems.  Thousands are forced to live in temporary housing without having an idea of for how long more.
The decision on reactivating the Ooi reactors, which has been discussed here recently, should  have waited until the publication of, and a minimum discussion on, this report.