Johanna Faust, a mixed race Jew, prefers to publish pseudonymously. She is committed: first, to preventing war, ecological disaster, and nuclear apocalypse; last to not only fighting for personal privacy & the freedom of information, but, by representing herself as a soldier in that fight, to exhorting others to do the same. She is a poet, always. All these efforts find representation here: "ah, Mephistophelis" is so named after the last line of Christopher Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, whose heretical success flouted the censor for a time.

FUKUSHIMA VIDEO:
If you can only
show one video,
show "Blind"


I suggest being seated, being close enough to catch all the subtitles, and being uninterrupted for approximately the next six minutes.


Now ask everyone you showed it to if they might show it to others – repost, email, whatever will help its reach – – – please.








Animal Insurrection Committee
(Translation by Max Black)
(original text following)


And we continue to encounter those who we have an ethics in common with.

The street was a space of encounter. But there is something we must notice: That this moment must be sustained, for as long as we have anticipated it, for longer than we have anticipated it. Even if this body disappears, politics will continue. We have noticed this. We have come from Minami-Soma, we have come from Namie. We exchanged greetings, we passed the time, we watched over each other. No, we saw each other off. How shall we become without seeing off this moment? We shall become anyhow. We are not one being that is alone. Encounter is not a becoming-one. We encounter each other again, for the third time. For a long time having danced, drank, and anticipated in this close intimacy, we encounter each other in this street again. After this street, we may not go along blindly with the 4/4 beat and the speakers, the rhythm and the bass. We may not just throw our hands up when the break comes in. We will hybridize the speakers with the rhythms that we play, and make up our own beats. When we take in the sound, the agitation on our skins repeatedly forms connections and catastrophes, it disseminates in secrecy on the border. We call forth the street. If there is exchange in the streets, it is always hybridizing, it creates new moments. Each one of us knows how this works.

The words of the approved textbooks, which teach us that friendship is a human relation where we affirm our togetherness through mutual sharing of feelings of trust and sympathy for our partners, has nothing of substance to it. Among us, seeking agreement from those who have come from Minami-Sanriku or Namie by calling for them to shout slogans beginning with ‘anti…’ or ‘no more…’ may not be solidarity in the real meaning of the word. For them the long fight has already begun. We were the ones who blinded ourselves to this. This will not be created through collusion in the mutual sharing of lies. The point of our mutual connection is not to get us money. It is not born through social mixers that we participate in for exorbitant fees. We have been forced into a situation where there is nothing but a ‘lifestyle’ where we can only make our withdrawals from these connections. A human being that places its hopes and expectations for new values and change in that existence has nothing available to it besides paranoia.



Original text:





動物蜂起委員会 a.k.a. AIC

そして私たちは私たちの倫理を共有する者達と出会い続ける。

路上は出会いの空間だった。しかしこの先も私たちは気づいていかなければならない。待機していた時間と同じ長さ、それ以上に長いあいだ、この瞬間を続けなければならないことを。この身が消滅しようとも、まさにいまも、政治は続いていく――。私たちは気づいていた。南相馬から来ていた。浪江から来ていた。ともにあいさつを交わし、ともに時間を過ごし、見守った。いいや、見送った。このさき、この瞬間を見送らずにいかように成るか。いかようにも成れる。私たちはひとつではない。出会いとは一つになることではない。わたしたちは再び、三度、出会う。長いあいだともに踊り、酒を飲み、近しい親しさのなかで待機していた私たちは、まさにこの路上で出会い直した。この路上のあと、四つ打ちのビート、スピーカーを通したリズムや低音にやみくもに乗ることはないだろう。ブレイクに易々と手を挙げることなどしないだろう。私たちは好きなときにスピーカーと自らの奏でるリズムを交配し、それぞれのビートをつくりだす。音を呼びこみたければ、皮膚のざわめきが接続と破局を繰り返しボーダーの上を秘密裏に伝播していく。酒の場でさえ慣れ合いを捨て出会い直す空間に。路上を呼びだすのだ。路上で交歓するものがいれば、その都度交配しあらたな瞬間をつくりだす。方法は私たち各々が知っている。

友情は彼(女)への信頼や共感の情を抱き合って互いを肯定しあう人間関係だという御用教科書が教える言葉にはなんの内実もない。私たちのあいだには。南三陸や浪江から来ていた、彼(女)らに同意を求め、「反」や「脱」をともに叫ぼうと呼びかけることすら、真の意味では連帯ではないのかもしれない。彼(女)らにとって長い戦いはすでにはじまっていた。それを看過してきたのは私たちだ。お互いに嘘を忍ばせた馴れ合いで生まれるのではない。お互いの関係がお金を生み出すからではない。高い金を払って参加する交流会で生まれるのではない。関係をそこからしか引き出せないような「生活」しか存在しないかのように私たちは追い込まれている。そこに新しい価値や新しい変化、期待や希望を見いだせる人間はパラノイアでしかないだろう。



I have heard that activists in Japan have taken to greeting each other in a new fashion: 'hello' and 'goodbye' are replaced by "no nukes" (or to be more ribald, "原発やめろ!!" There is evidence of it in the quote above. In this approach (corroboration of which I would appreciate and request – leave a comment) I recognize a time-tested method by which the accomplishment of true Will may be successfully engineered.  It is certainly a good one.  

Paul Gunter from Beyond Nuclear knows this.  Recently he was interviewed by Thom Hartmann, in Hartmann's piece on the ongoing China Syndrome at Fukushima.  (If you have been following this blog or you know me at all, you can imagine my response – enthusiastic, to say the least. THANK YOU Mr. Hartmann!) Listen to him as he shakes Hartmann's hand at the end of this clip:


The situation at Tepco's Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear  power plant – 'a China syndrome'? Who knew?  Certainly not Time magazine – nor did they want anyone else to.  (But of course, Thom Hartman told us this from almost the very beginning.)  Judging from retweets alone, the influence of the MSM is enormous.  I spent the better part of a Sunday @ing the retweeeters of that Time Fukushima-was-no-China-syndrome article, especially journalists. Because they were wrong.  (The first draft of my analysis of that bit of propaganda is here).

Now do not misunderstand me: more data must be gathered and analyzed before such a thing may be pronounced conclusively, a fact of which I appreciate being reminded.  This is why Mr. Gundersen of Fairewinds is withholding judgement, and this is the right thing to do.

(More from Fairewinds: site | updates | vimeo).   

As he said, however, he is certainly not ruling it out.  Precisely the opposite of Time's objective – come to think of it, that Time brought up the topic at all – at such a late date, months after the initial meltdowns, when Tepco itself could no longer believably deny the truth, and so was also forced to revise tactics – signifies the extent to which the true nature of the situation had, despite all the efforts to prevent it,  nonetheless been comprehended.  All those efforts, all that energy, which could have been spent on the problem itself, which cannot be solved if it is not understood.

Be seeing you.