Letters

Dear NVT,
The ceremony of accession to the throne of Emperor was performed on 12
November.  On the day I made a nonviolent action to oppose to raise the flag
called Hinomaru.  This was a good challenge to Japanese prudentialism related
to the flag and the system of Emperor.  My nonviolent action, which caused a
controversy inside the teachers' union and/or among the concerned persons,
yielded a successful result due to many supporters from outside.

I met Margaret Pestorius yesterday, who has come to Japan with some other
friends for her rainforest campaign.  She and other members developed a
marvellous session in Yokohama City University.  We'll meet again in December
and have a meeting where she will give us nonviolence training.

The reason of our opposition against Hinomaru:
"Hinomaru" or Rising Sun is not established legally as the national flag of
Japan.  Therefore the government intends to make it prevalent among the
Japanese so that the government can say it is established customarily. 
"Monbushou" or Ministry of Education enforces us, in conformity with a course
of study, to raise the flag when to perform a ceremony of entrance and
graduation at schools.

Rising Sun, however, contains a lot of problems, one of which is that the
rising sun was the fascist flag along with German Nazis and Italian fascist
flags.  The latter two countries have already changed motifs of their flags. 
Japan only holds fast to the same flag despite that the Constitution was
changed at the end of the second world war in 1945.  We have not fully
reflected on our own conducts on the basis of a historical research and
evaluation of our war crimes to human beings during the war.  The flag shows
an imperialist threat to Asian people even still now. 

The government relies upon the system of "Tennou" or Emperor as the identity
of the Japanese; Tennou is described as the symbol of the nation in the
Article 1 of the Constitution despite that we citizens are sovereigns of
Japan.  The rising sun is needed therefore to legitimise the system. 

As shown in the case of recent Middle East conflict since 3 August, the
government has the long-range strategy of overseas dispatch of Japanese
military forces.  This is combined with economic invasions of Japanese
enterprises towards rainforest areas as well. 

The identity and the power of Japan of this type are the two things that the
government ambitiously seeks now, and those two are the things that we have
got to oppose.

"Monbushou" is more dangerous than "Boueichou" or Agency of Japan Defense
Force.  This is what Dr. Johan Galtung of SIPRI said sharply this March at the
International Christian University, Tokyo. 

Yumiko Kanebako


Dear NVT
A great milestone has been achieved in conflict resolution in Australia - the
establishment of the Centre for Conflict Resolution at Macquarie University to
be managed by the School of History, Philosophy and Politics.  The Centre will
provide both undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, including a graduate
diploma course, continuing education (for the wider public) and consultation. 
It will gradually take over the literature distributing function of the
Conflict Resolution Network, from which the Centre has grown.

Membership of the Centre will be open to academics, students and the
community, and members will receive a newsletter.  The Centre can be contacted
through Dr. Greg Tillet at Macquarie University.

You can also contact Pyotr Patrushev by electronic mail on Pegasus - 
peg:crnaust.


Dear NVT,
Citizen Directed Taxation:
As a devoted reader of NVT, I have been excited by the numerous letters which
have been published within its covers from readers and supporters who are
conscientiously objecting to, the payment of taxation.
 
I believe that government would be more democratic, more responsive to
Community needs, and more effective in serving the Community if electors
determined how a proportion of taxation is to be spent.
 
Initially, electors could help determine how funds were allocated between
government departments; subsequently they might help determine how funds are
to be allocated between government departments and voluntary service delivery
agencies, and ultimately they might be able to help determine the allocation
of funds across international boundaries.
 
This would promote service delivery competition between government agencies:
between government and the voluntary service sector; and between governments
with ordinary citizens sharing responsibility for arbitrating appropriate
funding allocations. 

Robert Burrowes and his supporters have taken the first steps toward
promoting, community control of taxation, but it seems to me that they deserve
more Community support, and that more needs to be done to promote citizen
direction, to broaden its application, and to provide protection to
individuals who wish to express their dissatisfaction with government.

If there are any readers of NVT who share this view, I would be most
interested to hear from them.  Maybe those based in Melbourne could get
together to share ideas and hopes. 

Michael C Wyatt.
Moora Moora Cooperative Community
PO Box 214, Healesville
Vic 3777 Australia
Ph (059) 62 3316.


Dear NVT,
Though generally in agreement with much of what Robert Burrowes writes, and as
an activist does, there are some features of his article, 'Kooris Stride
Towards Freedom', (NVT #17), which I question.  This does not relate to his
support for the nonviolent struggle by Aborigines for self-determination and
cultural identity.  However, it does relate to the linking of this with a
claim for sovereignty and nationhood.

In his article Burrowes gives support to the Aboriginal Provisional government
in claiming sovereignty for Aborigines.  But, sovereignty and nationalism are
concepts alien to all indigenous cultures; they are Western concepts which
emerged, (at least in the modern form), in Europe after the Renaissance.  To
be an effective part of a new emerging world community, Aboriginal people have
no need to align themselves with social and political structures of the past
which are crumbling, and which are really at the core of the problems faced by
all people.

In an article, 'The Scourge of Nationalism in the Modern World' in Social
Alternatives Vol. 8 no. 4, January 1990, I outlined how the acceptance of
these structures has determined our inability to live peaceably in a world
community, with a suggestion concerning actions that are possible to build
more human formations.  It is cultural identity and not nationalism that is a
force of positive value in human affairs.  The roots of culture are deeply
embedded in pre-history whereas nationalism is a recent hybrid graft whose
appearance gives an aggressive face to a culture.

A forthcoming article, 'The Right and Wrong of Land Rights', to appear in
Social Alternatives Vol. 9 No. 4, January 1991, deals more specifically with
the needless tragedy involved in some Aboriginal people pursuing sovereignty
and nationalism.  Land rights are not only a problem for indigenous people;
the Western view of land as just another commodity is a different form of the
problematic.  The Western focus, in the social sphere, on human rights cannot
find effective expression without some deeper understanding of the land
question.  To quote, from the above article - "Land rights are right and they
are an essential element in human rights.  When merged with nationalism they
are wrong because nationalism ultimately negates human rights."

I am prepared to forward free of charge copies of the above articles, (or
complete copies of Social Alternatives), to anyone who would care to write to
me at - Social Alternatives, C/- Department of Government, University of
Queensland 4072.

Les Hoey


Dear NVT,
May I contribute some comments in relation to Thomas Weber's article, "Alinsky
and Gandhi on Means and Ends", in NVT #16?

I would like to endorse Thomas' repudiation of the position attributed to
Gandhi by Saul Alinsky, that: "If Gandhi had had the weapons and the people to
use them, this means would not have been so unreservedly rejected as the world
would like to think."  This is a completely erroneous statement, according to
my understanding also, for the reasons Thomas suggests.

This specific accusation seems to be an illustration of the more general one
of Alinsky's also quoted by Thomas, that "History, and religious and moral
opinion, have so enshrined Gandhi in [a] sacred matrix that in many quarters
it is blasphemous to question whether this entire procedure of passive
resistance was not simply the only intelligent, realistic, expedient program
which Gandhi had at his disposal; and that the 'morality' which surrounded
this policy of passive resistance was to a large degree a rationale to cloak a
pragmatic program with a desired and essential moral power..."

An assertion that Gandhi's profession of religious faith in nonviolence was a
cloak for the requirements of his political activity could be, as Thomas
suggests, the result of either deliberate misrepresentation or the simple
inability to understand. One comes across instances of both.  Which ever it
is, such a statement tells one more about the critic than about Gandhi.

It does appear to me that many who are happy to voice criticism of Gandhi
understand him little.  Often when friends express criticism of Gandhi to me,
I begin by asking what they have read of Gandhi.  This is often minimal.  May
I suggest that all nonviolent activists would profit from a thorough reading
of Gandhi's own writings.  In these pages they should be capable of sensing
the absolute sincerity of the man, and appreciate that he was incapable of the
type of moral sin many of his detractors accuse him of, though which they
sometimes unfortunately appear quite capable of.

Stephen Murphy
Secretary, Gandhian Movement of Australia and Editor, "Global Conscience"