The Huffington Post

“ ‘Tokyo As a Leader for Peace, for Human Rights, and for the Environment’: Interview With Hattori Ryoichi, the Internationalist Japanese Progressive”

February 23,2016

Emanuel Pastreich

One of the most articulate defenders of workers’ rights in a conservative age, Hattori Ryoichi has served as a meaningful democratic alternative in Japan. Hattori served in the Japanese House of Representatives as a representative for Osaka’s third district (elected in 2009). He currently serves as director of international relations for the Social Democratic Party (Shaminto).

Hattori has engaged in a wide range of actions to defend Japan’s constitutional commitment to peace and opposes sending the self -defense forces overseas.

A close friend of former prime minister Hatoyama Yukio, Hattori has thrown himself into promoting close exchanges with the other nations of Asia, especially Korea and China. He has led delegations of Japanese politicians and NGO members to Korea and China to promote a broader dialog. Hattori is an outspoken advocate for a full accounting for Japanese crimes during the colonial period, seeking proper compensation for all victims of Japanese imperialism, not just for Japanese citizens.

Hattori fought for the removal of the Futenma U.S. Marine base in Okinawa and he opposes the construction of a new base at Henoko. He has argued for the revision of the US-Japan agreement on bases, and for compensation for the victims of accidents and U.S. military wrongdoing related to the bases.

Hattori attended Kyoto University in the 1960s but had no particular commitment to social justice. He saw the efforts of Chinese students to change society when he visited China in 1969 and decided that he had a duty to do his best for society. He left college his sophomore year to work with underpaid laborers and never looked back.

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Huffington Post

“Announcing My Candidacy for President of Facebook”

February 20, 2016

Emanuel Pastreich

Dear Citizens of Facebook:

Facebook is much more than Mark Zuckerberg’s server farms and his army of coders. Facebook is the most effective means today for people to communicate with each other and to form networks for collaboration beyond national borders. Facebook is an unprecedented international network of people who could make a tremendous contribution to solving the challenges of our age, if permitted. The time has come for us to declare our independence from the empire that controls us.

The Internet is often conceptualized as a series of separate layers that range from Layer 1, the physical connections of wires and cables that support our communications, to Layer 7, which is the operation of applications over the Internet. But the global community of Facebook is at a higher level than Layer 7, the Facebook web application, forming a Layer 8 which is cultural, social, and political in nature and is only tangentially related to the seven layers below.

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