---Obama Signs Equal-Pay Legislation--- By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG Published: January 29, 2009 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/30/us/politics/30ledbetter-web.html?em
WASHINGTON — President Obama signed his first bill into law on Thursday, approving equal-pay legislation that he said would “send a clear message that making our economy work means making sure it works for everybody.”
Mr. Obama was surrounded by a group of beaming lawmakers, most but not all of them Democrats, in the East Room of the White House as he affixed his signature to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, a law named for an Alabama woman who at the end of a 19-year career as a supervisor in a tire factory complained that she had been paid less than men.
After a Supreme Court ruling against her, Congress approved the legislation that expands workers’ rights to sue in this kind of case, relaxing the statute of limitations.
“It is fitting that with the very first bill I sign — the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act — we are upholding one of this nation’s first principles: that we are all created equal and each deserve a chance to pursue our own version of happiness,” the president said.
He said was signing the bill not only in honor of Ms. Ledbetter — who stood behind him, shaking her head and clasping her hands in seeming disbelief — but in honor of his own grandmother, “who worked in a bank all her life, and even after she hit that glass ceiling, kept getting up again” and for his daughters, “because I want them to grow up in a nation that values their contributions, where there are no limits to their dreams.”
The ceremony, and a reception afterward in the State Dining Room of the White House, had a celebratory feel. The East Room was packed with advocates for civil rights and workers rights; the legislators, who included House and Senate leaders and two moderate Republicans — Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, both of Maine — shook Mr. Obama’s hand effusively (some, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, received presidential pecks on the cheek) as he took the stage. They looked over his shoulder, practically glowing, as Mr. Obama signed his name to the bill, using one pen for each letter.
“I’ve been practicing signing my name very slowly,” Mr. Obama said wryly, looking at a bank of pens before him. He handed the first pen to the bill’s chief sponsor, Senator Barbara Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland, and the last to Ms. Ledbetter.
The ceremony also marked First Lady Michelle Obama’s policy debut; she spoke afterward in a reception in the State Dining Room, where she called Ms. Ledbetter “one of my favorite people.”
Mr. Obama told Ms. Ledbetter’s story over and over again during his campaign for the White House; she spoke frequently as an advocate for him during his campaign, and made an appearance at the Democratic National Convention in Denver.
Now 70, Ms. Ledbetter discovered when she was nearing retirement that her male colleagues were earning much more than she was. A jury found her employer, the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company plant in Gadsden, Ala., guilty of pay discrimination. But in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court threw out the case, ruling that she should have filed her suit within 180 days of the date that Goodyear first paid her less than her peers.
Congress tried to pass a law that would have effectively overturned the decision while President George W. Bush was still in office, but the White House opposed the bill; opponents contended it would encourage lawsuits and argued that employees could delay filing their claims in the hope of reaping bigger rewards. But the new Congress passed the bill, which restarts the six-month clock every time the worker receives a paycheck .
Ms. Ledbetter will not see any money as a result of the legislation Mr. Obama signed into law. But what she has gotten, aside from celebrity, is personal satisfaction, as she said in the State Dining Room after the signing ceremony.
“Goodyear will never have to pay me what it cheated me out of,” she said. “In fact, I will never see a cent. But with the president’s signature today I have an even richer reward.”
---What Red Ink? Wall Street Paid Hefty Bonuses--- By BEN WHITE Published: January 28, 2009 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/29/business/29bonus.html?bl&ex=1233464400&en=5bd41c19514c4845&ei=5087%0A
By almost any measure, 2008 was a complete disaster for Wall Street — except, that is, when the bonuses arrived.
Despite crippling losses, multibillion-dollar bailouts and the passing of some of the most prominent names in the business, employees at financial companies in New York, the now-diminished world capital of capital, collected an estimated $18.4 billion in bonuses for the year.
That was the sixth-largest haul on record, according to a report released Wednesday by the New York State comptroller.
While the payouts paled next to the riches of recent years, Wall Street workers still took home about as much as they did in 2004, when the Dow Jones industrial average was flying above 10,000, on its way to a record high.
Some bankers took home millions last year even as their employers lost billions.
The comptroller’s estimate, a closely watched guidepost of the annual December-January bonus season, is based largely on personal income tax collections. It excludes stock option awards that could push the figures even higher.
The state comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli, said it was unclear if banks had used taxpayer money for the bonuses, a possibility that strikes corporate governance experts, and indeed many ordinary Americans, as outrageous. He urged the Obama administration to examine the issue closely.
“The issue of transparency is a significant one, and there needs to be an accounting about whether there was any taxpayer money used to pay bonuses or to pay for corporate jets or dividends or anything else,” Mr. DiNapoli said in an interview.
Granted, New York’s bankers and brokers are far poorer than they were in 2006, when record deals, and the record profits they generated, ushered in an era of Wall Street hyperwealth. All told, bonuses fell 44 percent last year, from $32.9 billion in 2007, the largest decline in dollar terms on record.
But the size of that downturn partly reflected the lofty heights to which bonuses had soared during the bull market. At many banks, those payouts were based on profits that turned out to be ephemeral. Throughout the financial industry, years of earnings have vanished in the flames of the credit crisis.
According to Mr. DiNapoli, the brokerage units of New York financial companies lost more than $35 billion in 2008, triple their losses in 2007. The pain is unlikely to end there, and Wall Street is betting that the Obama administration will move swiftly to buy some of banks’ troubled assets to encourage reluctant banks to make loans.
Many corporate governance experts, investors and lawmakers question why financial companies that have accepted taxpayer money paid any bonuses at all. Financial industry executives argue that they need to pay their best workers well in order to keep them, but with many banks cutting jobs, job options are dwindling, even for stars.
Lucian A. Bebchuk, a professor at Harvard Law School and expert on executive compensation, called the 2008 bonus figure “disconcerting.” Bonuses, he said, are meant to reward good performance and retain employees. But Wall Street disbursed billions despite staggering losses and a shrinking job market.
“This was neither the sixth-best year in terms of aggregate profits, nor was it the sixth-most-difficult year in terms of retaining employees,” Professor Bebchuk said.
Echoing Mr. DiNapoli, Professor Bebchuk said he was concerned that banks might be using taxpayer money to subsidize bonuses or dividends to stockholders. “What the government has been trying to do is shore up capital, and any diversion of capital out of banks, whether in the form of dividends or large payments to employees, really undermines what we are trying to do,” he said.
Jesse M. Brill, a lawyer and expert on executive compensation, said government bailout programs like the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, should be made more transparent.
“We are all flying in the dark,” Mr. Brill said. “Companies can simply say they are trying to do their best to comply with compensation limits without providing any of the details that the public is entitled to.”
Bonuses paid by one troubled Wall Street firm, Merrill Lynch, have come under particular scrutiny during the last week.
Andrew M. Cuomo, the New York attorney general, has issued subpoenas to John A. Thain, Merrill’s former chief executive, and to an executive at Bank of America, which recently acquired Merrill, asking for information about Merrill’s decision to pay $4 billion to $5 billion in bonuses despite new, gaping losses that forced Bank of America to seek a second financial lifeline from Washington.
A Treasury department official said that in the coming weeks, the department would take action to further ensure taxpayer money is not used to pay bonuses.
Even though Wall Street spent billions on bonuses, New York firms squeezed rank-and-file executives harder than many companies in other fields. Outside the financial industry, many corporate executives received fatter bonuses in 2008, even as the economy lost 2.6 million jobs. According to data from Equilar, a compensation research firm, the average performance-based bonuses for top executives, other than the chief executive, at 132 companies with revenues of more than $1 billion increased by 14 percent, to $265,594, in the 2008 fiscal year.
For New York State and New York City, however, the leaner times on Wall Street will hurt, Mr. DiNapoli said.
Mr. DiNapoli said the average Wall Street bonus declined 36.7 percent, to $112,000. That is smaller than the overall 44 percent decline because the money was spread among a smaller pool following thousands of job losses.
The comptroller said the reduction in bonuses would cost New York State nearly $1 billion in income tax revenue and cost New York City $275 million.
---Deal of the Decade? Lehman's Fuld Gave $13.75 Mil Estate to Wife for $100--- Transfer Could Be Effort to Avoid Potential Creditors, Attorneys Say By MEGAN CHUCHMACH January 26, 2009 http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=6735513&page=1
This home in Jupiter Island, Florida was purchased by former Lehman Brothers CEO and Chairman Richard Fuld and his wife Kathleen in 2004 for $13.75 million. In November, less than two months after Lehman Brothers collapsed intro bankruptcy, Fuld transferred the home to his wife for $100. Collapse (ABC News)
Less than two months after the investment banking firm he led collapsed in the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history, Lehman Brothers CEO and Chairman Richard Fuld transferred his $13.75 million ocean front estate in Jupiter Island, FL to his wife for just one Benjamin Franklin bill, Florida real estate records reveal.
The move is garnering attention for what might be Fuld's attempt to avoid creditors as he could face civil lawsuits in the future.
It sounds like Fuld is "trying to save as many assets as he can," said Palm Beach attorney Jeffrey Zane, who does not represent Fuld. The move, he added, is basically an interfamily transfer that was necessary because Fuld, as a non-resident of Florida, was not safeguarded by the state's homestead property laws that can protect a family home from creditors.
After failing to find a financial savior to save it from collapse - which was a partial consequence of its heavy involvement in sub-prime mortgage investments - Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy Sept. 15, 2008.
he transfer of the lavish home to Kathleen Fuld took place Nov. 10, 2008, according to public records, which came just over one month after Fuld faced scrutiny during a heated Congressional hearing.
The couple purchased the more than three-acre estate in 2004. Cityfile.com first reported the recent transfer from Fuld to his wife.
Florida attorney Eric S. Ruff told the New York Times that Fuld's transfer is "the oldest trick in the books." "It's common when you hear the feet of your creditor approaching to divest yourself," Ruff said.
Ruff also told the Times that the sale could be deemed fraudulent if Fuld's wife is determined to not have paid enough for the property, potentially paving the way for creditors who come wanting to collect.
Zane said that should any question arise surrounding the legitimacy of the transfer, the Fulds could argue the move was part of their overall estate planning and that the transfer date coincidentally "happened at the same time that [Fuld] was under so much glare or publicity."
Fuld did not immediately return a message left for him by ABCNews.com.
Fuld Testified Before Congress
Many at Lehman blame Fuld for dallying while his investment bank went bust, taking risks with other people's money while he cleared over $40 million in salary and stock in the last year alone.
Fuld became the poster boy for Wall St. greed last October, when he stood before Congress and defended the $484 million he received in salary, bonuses and stock options since 2000. Fuld said that given the worthless stock of Lehman Brothers after its collapse, his actual holdings were closer to $350 million.
Fuld, who also owns a mansion in Greenwich, CT, a ski chalet in Idaho and a Manhattan apartment, told the Congressional panel that he took "full responsibility" for the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and "felt horrible" about it. But he also said he has yet to understand why the federal government helped to bail out the AIG insurance company and other investment banking firms, but did not do so a few days earlier to save Lehman Brothers.
"Until the day they put me in the ground, I will wonder," Fuld told the Congressional panel, seeming to seethe with anger.
"This is a pain that will stay with me the rest of my life."
In his opening remarks, Waxman lambasted both Fuld and Lehman.
Internal documents obtained by the committee, Waxman said, "portray a company in which there was no accountability for failure."
Waxman cited an e-mail exchange among top Lehman executives. After someone sent an e-mail suggesting that Lehman's top management give up their bonuses, both Fuld and George H. Walker, a member of Lehman's executive committee and a cousin of President Bush, sent e-mails disagreeing with the suggestion.
Walker, according to Waxman, replied by writing, "Sorry team. I'm not sure what's in the water at 605 Third Avenue today. … I'm embarrassed and I apologize."
Waxman said that Fuld "mocked" the suggestion by adding, "Don't worry - they are only people who think about their own pockets."
Waxman also cited a request submitted to Lehman's compensation committee four days before the firm filed for bankruptcy. The request, he said, recommended that the board give three departing executives over $20 million in "special payments."
"In other words, even as Mr. Fuld was pleading with Secretary Paulson for a federal rescue, Lehman continued to squander millions on executive compensation," Waxman said.
Richard Fuld Testifies Before Congress
Despite warnings that "liquidity can disappear quite fast," Fuld "depleted Lehman's capital reserves by over $10 billion through year-end bonuses, stock buybacks, and dividend payments," Waxman said.
Others at the hearing voiced their own concerns about compensation at Lehman.
Nell Minow, the editor of the research firm, The Corporate Library, highlighted Fuld's compensation, which exceeded $70 million last year.
"I think it is fair to say by any standard of measurement that this pay plan is as uncorrelated to performance as it is possible to be," she said.
Minow also found fault with Lehman's corporate board. The Corporate Library grades the performance of corporate boards and last month, Minow said, the firm downgraded Lehman's board to an "F."
"In this case, the board was too old, had served too long, was too out of touch with massive changes in the industry, had too little of their own net worth at risk, and was too compromised for rigorous independent oversight," she said.
Prior to Fuld's testimony, Minow and several other experts testified before the committee on Lehman's bankruptcy and today's financial turmoil.
Dr. Luigi Zingales, a professor of finance at the University of Chicago, said that Lehman's demise was a result of its aggressive use of leverage, or debt to finance investments, "in the context of a major financial crisis."
It made Lehman especially vulnerable to insolvency, Zingales said.
"Lehman did not find itself in that situation by accident; it was the unlucky draw of a consciously-made gamble," he said.
Robert Wescott, the president of the economic analysis and public policy research firm Keybridge Research LLC, said that the root of the financial crisis, overall lay in "easy credit."
Variable rate mortgages with low initial interest rates "gave many families an inflated sense of their capacity to afford housing," Wescott said. As a result, he said, housing prices began rising as high as 30 percent per year and "a housing frenzy developed."
Near the end of the Congressional hearing, after some two hours of questioning, Fuld stressed his personal feelings about Lehman's bankruptcy.
"My employees, my shareholders, creditors, clients have taken a huge amount of pain and, again, not that everybody on this committee cares about this, but I wake up every single night thinking what I could I have done differently," he said.
"I have searched myself every single night, and I come back to at the time ... I made those decisions, I made those decisions with the information that I had ... I can look right at you and say this is a pain that will stay with me for the rest of my life, regardless of what comes out of this committee."
Waxman closed the hearing noting that he was dissatisfied with Fuld's testimony.
"You took responsibility for the decisions you made in retrospect, you think you should have done some things different," he said, "but you don't seem to acknowledge that you did anything wrong."
---Report: Rescued Citigroup Shelling Out $50M for Corporate Jet--- Monday, January 26, 2009 | FoxNews.com http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,483007,00.html
Beleaguered Citigroup is upgrading its mile-high club with a brand-new $50 million corporate jet -- only this time, it's the taxpayers who are getting screwed.
Even though the bank's stock is as cheap as a gallon of gas and it's burning through a $45 billion taxpayer-funded rescue, the Citigroup's execs pushed through the purchase of a new Dassault Falcon 7X, according to a source familiar with the deal.
The French-made luxury jet seats up to 12 in a plush interior with leather seats, sofas and a customizable entertainment center, according to Dassault's sales literature. It can cruise 5,950 miles before refueling and has a top speed of 559 mph.
There are just nine of these top-of-the-line models in the United States, with Dassault's European factory churning out three to four 7Xs a month.
Citigroup decided to get its new wings two years ago, when the financial-services giant was flush with cash, but it still intends to take possession of the jet this year despite its current woes, the source said.
---Discrimination claims die hard in Japan--- Despite official claims, prejudice against former 'buraku' outcasts said active from bottom to top By MARI YAMAGUCHI The Associated Press Sunday, Jan. 25, 2009 http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20090125a2.html
As the United States welcomes its first African-American president, Japan is still struggling with prejudices that are preventing it from breaking ancient taboos and installing a minority as its leader, some say.
Nearly a decade ago, seasoned politician Hiromu Nonaka was on the verge of becoming prime minister in a heated battle with the man who now holds the post, Taro Aso.
The issue took an ugly turn when Nonaka's roots as a "burakumin," or a descendant of former outcasts, was allegedly raised by Aso, the scion of a wealthy, establishment family.
The burakumin are the descendants of people who were considered under Buddhist beliefs to be unclean - butchers, tanners, undertakers - and separated from the general population.
Though Japan officially did away with its caste system several years after the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution abolished slavery in 1865, discrimination against the burakumin remains strong, affecting everything from their employment to their marriage prospects and social interaction.
Maps detailing the areas where the burakumin were once forced to live together in enclaves are still used to "out" people who don't want their roots known.
About 900,000 people live in areas designated as "buraku," mostly in western Japan.
Nonaka never hid his roots.
He was raised in a buraku farming village in the ancient capital of Kyoto, but that did not stop him from surging to top posts in the ruling party and government. Known as "the shadow premier," the charismatic Nonaka served in the government's No. 2 post as chief Cabinet secretary when Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori quit. That made him the man most likely to succeed.
But in a back room meeting of party elders in 2001, Aso allegedly told his fellow faction members: "We are not going to let someone from the buraku become the prime minister of Japan, are we?"
For reasons that remain unclear, Nonaka pulled out of the 2001 leadership race. Aso lost. Junichiro Koizumi came to power instead.
Aso has denied making the comment. But it has come back repeatedly to haunt him.
The alleged remark was made public in a 2004 book. It was raised in the Diet in 2005, and Aso denied ever saying it. Since Aso took office in September, however, it is back in the media spotlight.
One of the people who attended the meeting, Hisaoki Kamei - now a leader of a small opposition party - told The Associated Press through his secretary that he recalled Aso making a remark "to that effect."
Kamei declined to elaborate, adding he did not plan to push Aso over the issue because it would be like beating a dead horse.
Nonaka was not at the meeting where the alleged remark was made but has nonetheless said he would "never forgive" Aso for the comment. In a recent TV interview, he said Aso's prime ministership is "misery" for Japan.
"A man who grew up without seeing any of the suffering of the lowly people, he never looks at the public to share their perspective," Nonaka said of Aso.
No one picked up the phone in Nonaka's office, so he could not be reached for comment.
Tomoaki Iwai, a political science professor at Nihon University in Tokyo, said prejudice against burakumin likely still exists in politics, which is dominated by second- or third-generation lawmakers from blue blood families.
Iwai said Nonaka was also likely a target of bitter envy in the ruling party, because he quickly climbed to top posts in the ruling party and government, though he said Nonaka's decline was due to his back room deals - which Koizumi opposed.
Iwai said the allegations of Aso's comment didn't generate much outrage because many people share such views, or are afraid of questioning them.
"Everybody is staying away from the issue, and not even taking it up as a scandal, because the topic is still a major taboo in this country," he said.
In recent years, however, a growing number of people from the former buraku have achieved success in academics, businesses and politics, including several who have been elected to the Diet. Japan has spent nearly -15 trillion ($170 billion) on affirmative action programs for the buraku since 1969, according to government figures.
So the door to the prime ministership may not be completely shut, Iwai said.
"You never know," Iwai said. "Prejudice against them has softened to the extent it is hardly felt, at least in Tokyo."
---Breaking the silence on burakumin--- Minority community has plenty to offer By IAN PRIESTLEY Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2009 http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20090120zg.html
For those who don't know - and you would be forgiven considering the lack of coverage the issue receives - a buraku is the term used to describe an area where some, but not all, of the residents have ancestral ties to the people placed at the bottom of feudal society in the Edo Period. These people were assigned tasks considered "tainted" according to Buddhist and Shinto beliefs, such as butchery and leather work, where the killing of and use of animal corpses was involved. Today, official statistics put the number of burakumin at around 1.2 million, with unofficial estimates as high as 3 million.
Despite the numbers, the issue is something of a taboo in Japan: Mention the word "burakumin" in conversation and the response you often get is a polite silence. This approach seems to extend to the mainstream media, with television and newspapers barely covering the issues regarding this minority group.
On the Internet, where people are less likely to be held accountable for what they say, things are different. On one discussion forum, a human resources worker explains that his company will not employ someone "if there is doubt about whether he/she comes from a buraku." Another contributor says that while the habit of not employing people from buraku areas may have ceased for big companies, "for smaller, older companies, it is normal."
As well as postings supporting the view that discrimination exists, you are just as likely to come across the opinion that not only is discrimination a thing of the past, but that buraku communities have unfairly benefited from special treatment by the government. There is criticism of the funding of dowa projects, first set up to help buraku communities in the 1960s, as well as allegations of corruption and links to organized crime.
On popular sites like 2channel, the topic is often discussed in less measured, often abusive, terms. This was noted by a U.N. report into discrimination in 2006, which criticized the level of discriminatory abuse on Web sites, much of it targeting the burakumin.
Dismissing all criticism as bigotry, however, would be unfair. Or more specifically, criticism leveled at the group representing them, the Buraku Liberation League. Recent events have not done much for their image. The 2006 arrest of a leading member of the Osaka BLL, Kunihiko Konishi, and the revelation that he was a member of Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan's largest mob syndicate, did little to weaken the accusations of links to organized crime.
On his blog, freelance journalist and BLL critic Atsushi Terazono sees the image associated with the BLL as having worked in the group's favor, allowing them to gain preferential treatment and funding for projects with few questions asked.
"As long as the projects were related to non-discriminating activity, things were accepted in local government even though they were preposterous." writes Terazono. "The most important thing for people in local government has become trying to avoid collisions with the BLL and other organizations."
After the arrest of Konishi, the BLL issued an apology, and pledged to "reform more than 2,000 branches all over Japan, ensuring the liberal conduct of each group, making sure there are no connections to gangster groups and getting rid of those who are related to them."
The scandal seems to have had an impact on local government attitudes to support for buraku communities. Osaka Gov. Toru Hashimoto's budgetary plan for 2009 allows no further subsidies for buraku-related projects. This has led to protests from within the buraku community that they are being punished for the crimes of certain individuals.
Aside from the accusations of corruption, central to the whole issue of funding is the question of whether, or to what extent, discrimination still exists.
In his 2006 report, then-U.N. Special Rapporteur on race issues Doudou Diene described discrimination as "deep-rooted" and urged the government to draft a national law against it. A recent survey conducted by the Osaka prefectural government on the attitudes of residents toward human rights issues seemed to support the U.N. view. To the question of how respondents consider the placing of priority on family lineage when deciding on a future spouse, 38.7 percent said that they "think it natural" or "think it unreasonable but cannot do anything about it," a 6.3 point increase from a 1995 survey. In terms of important issues in deciding on a potential spouse, 20 percent answered, "Whether he/she is of buraku origin." In Tottori, a study of the economic situation of dowa communities revealed that 55.6 of dowa district residents are in permanent employment - 8.7 points lower than the prefectural average, indicating a worsening of conditions since 2000.
Discrimination and its effects are not an easy thing to gauge, especially when communication between buraku communities and the rest of society is so limited. Apart from the Konishi case, the public has heard little else about the burakumin in recent years. A joint statement issued by a group of 71 nonprofit organizations in the wake of the U.N. report recognized this and called for an end to "the marginalization and invisibility" of minority groups in Japan.
Ironically, this invisibility may be partly due to the BLL itself. Buraku issues are considered dangerous, and there is a fear that mere mention of the word "burakumin" or criticism of something related to dowa policy may be construed as discriminatory.
"People are not sure what they can say," said one journalist who, as seems to be the norm, wished to remain anonymous. "If they talk about this issue and mention some area which is buraku or criticize the BLL it might be called discrimination, so it is easier to say nothing."
He has a point. The BLL seems to employ a rather broad view of discrimination that makes discussion difficult. For example, a comment placed on a Web site asking for information about the location of buraku areas was cited as an example of "a discriminatory incident" on the BLL-related Buraku Liberation and Human Rights Research Institute home page. Yet surely this depends on how that information is used rather than the question itself? The reaction is understandable given the way such information has been used in the past, when buraku lists were once circulated around companies, but it hardly promotes understanding. Researchers also note the difficulty of communicating with the BLL. The group declined to comment for this article.
There seems to be confusion all round as to whether invisibility is a problem or a solution. A suggestion on another discussion site underlines this, with the writer wondering why "the burakumin don't move out of their communities so people don't know their background." Another contributor suggests that if "more outsiders move in, areas won't be considered buraku anymore."
But if invisibility is a goal, this implies that the buraku community has nothing to offer in terms of its history, culture and particular experience, and this is not the case. In Kansai, the Naniwa buraku community celebrates its 300-year history with a 500-meter road showcasing the traditional buraku industries of leather work and taiko drum production. The road - lined with monuments to the community, information boards and taiko-shaped benches - leads to the Osaka Human Rights Museum, where that other important aspect of buraku culture is investigated: its involvement in the human rights struggle, documented through the literature and art of those who have suffered often terrible discrimination.
In places with a relatively large buraku population, some attempts have been made to bring the problems into the light. One of the areas that the U.N.'s Diene visited was the Nishinari district in Osaka. Here, district leaders reported that racism and xenophobia were "deeply linked with ignorance" and that "neighboring districts are much less discriminating than ones that are far away." The district is thus making efforts to establish links between buraku and nonburaku communities, promoting mutual awareness.
It would be nice if the Japanese media took its cue from such an approach and, instead of avoiding the issue, took heed of the recommendation from the U.N. report that the national media "give more space to programs on minorities in order to reflect the pluralism of its society." This could only be done with help from those charged with representing the buraku communities. Encouraging easier media access and allowing for debate would, as well as allowing the BLL to show it has cleaned up its act, take the issue out of the shadows of Internet chat forums and into the open. Then, perhaps, the public would gain a better understanding of what it is like to come from a buraku and of how the lives of those who do are affected. And surely, in the long run, access to information is a much more effective weapon than invisibility in the fight against discrimination.
---Japan's outsiders waiting to break in--- By Norimitsu Onishi Published: January 16, 2009 http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/16/news/japan.php
KYOTO: For Japan, the crowning of Hiromu Nonaka as its top leader could have been as significant as America's election of its first black president.
Despite being the descendant of a feudal class of outcasts who are known as buraku and still face social discrimination, Nonaka had dexterously occupied top posts in the governing party and acted as the government's No. 2. The next logical step, by 2001, was to become prime minister. Allies urged him on.
But not everyone inside the party was ready for a leader of buraku origin. At least one, Taro Aso, the current prime minister, made his views clear to his closest associates in a closed-door meeting. "Are we really going to let those people take over the leadership of Japan?" Aso said, according to Hisaoki Kamei, a politician who attended the meeting.
Kamei said he remembered thinking at the time that "it was inappropriate to say such a thing." But he and the others in the room let the matter drop, he said, adding, "We never imagined that the remark would leak outside."
But it did, spreading rapidly among the nation's political and buraku circles. And more recently, as Aso became prime minister just weeks before Barack Obama's victory, the comment has become a touchstone for many buraku.
How far have they come since Japan began carrying out affirmative action policies for the buraku four decades ago in a mirror of the American civil rights movement? If the United States, the yardstick for Japan, could elect a black president, could there be a buraku prime minister here?
But the questions were not raised in the society at large. The topic of the buraku remains Japan's biggest taboo, rarely raised in private conversations and virtually ignored by the media.
The buraku, who are ethnically indistinguishable from other Japanese, are descendants of Japanese who, according to Buddhist beliefs, performed tasks considered unclean. As slaughterers, undertakers, executioners and town guards, they were called "eta," meaning "defiled mass," or "hinin," meaning "nonhuman." Required to wear telltale clothing, they were segregated into their own neighborhoods.
The oldest buraku neighborhoods are believed to be in Kyoto, the ancient capital, and date back a millennium. That those neighborhoods survive to this day and that the outcasts' descendants are still subject to prejudice speak both to Japan's obsession with its past and its inability to overcome it.
In Japan, every person has a family register that is kept in local town halls and that, with some extrapolation, reveals ancestral birthplaces. Families and companies widely checked birthplaces to ferret out buraku among potential hires or marriage partners until a generation ago, though the practice has declined greatly, especially among the young.
The buraku were officially liberated in 1871, just a few years after the 13th Amendment abolished slavery in the United States. But as the buraku's living standards and education levels stayed below national averages, the Japanese government, under pressure from buraku liberation groups, passed a special-measures law to improve the buraku's condition in 1969. By the time the law expired in 2002, Japan had reportedly spent about $175 billion on affirmative action programs.
Fumie Tanaka, now 39, was born just as the special-measures law for the buraku went into effect. She grew up in the Osaka ward of Nishinari, one of the 48 neighborhoods that were officially designated as buraku areas.
At her neighborhood school, the children began learning about discrimination against the buraku early on. The thinking in Osaka was to confront discrimination head on: The problem lay not with the buraku but with those who harbored prejudice.
Instead of hiding their roots, children were encouraged to "come out," sometimes by wearing "buraku" sashes, a practice that Osaka discontinued early this decade but that survives in the countryside.
Sheltered in this environment, Tanaka encountered discrimination only when she began going to high school in another ward. One time, while she was visiting a friend's house, the grandparents invited Tanaka to stay for lunch.
"The atmosphere was pleasant in the beginning, but then they asked me where I lived," Tanaka said. "When I told them, the grandfather put down his chopsticks right away and went upstairs."
A generation ago, most buraku married other buraku. But by the early 1990s, when Tanaka met her future husband, who is not a buraku, marriages to outsiders were becoming more common.
"The situation has improved over all," said Takeshi Kitano, chief of the human rights division at the Osaka prefectural government. "But there are problems left."
In Osaka's 48 buraku neighborhoods - ranging from 10 to 1,000 households each - welfare recipient rates remain higher than the Osaka average. Educational attainment still lags behind, though not by the wide margins of the past.
What's more, the fruits of the affirmative action policies have produced what is now considered the areas' most pressing problem: depopulation. The younger buraku, with better education, jobs and opportunities, are moving out. Outsiders, who do not want to be mistaken for buraku, are reluctant to move in.
By contrast, Tokyo decided against designating its buraku neighborhoods. It discreetly helped buraku households, no matter where they lived, and industries traditionally dominated by buraku groups. The emphasis was on assimilation.
Over time, the thinking went, it would become impossible to discriminate as people's memory of the buraku areas' borders became fuzzier. But the flip side is that the policy effectively pushed people with buraku roots into hiding.
In one of the oldest buraku neighborhoods, just north of central Tokyo, nothing differentiates the landscape from other middle-class areas in the city. Now newcomers outnumber the old-timers. The old-timers, who all know one another, live in fear that their roots will be discovered, said a 76-year-old woman who spoke on the condition that neither she nor her neighborhood be identified.
"Me, too, I belong to those who want to hide," she said. "I'm also running away."
One of the rare politicians who never hid his buraku roots was Nonaka, who in 2001 was considered a leading contender to become president of the Liberal Democratic Party and prime minister.
Now 83, he was born to a buraku family from a village near Kyoto. On his way home at the end of World War II, he considered disappearing so that he would be declared dead, he once wrote. With the evidence of his buraku roots expunged, he thought he could remake himself in another part of Japan.
But Nonaka eventually entered politics and, known for his intelligence, rose quickly. By 2001, he was in a position to aim for the post of prime minister but had made up his mind not to seek the job.
Although he had never hidden his roots, he feared that becoming No. 1 would draw a harsh spotlight on them. Already, the increasing attention had hurt his wife, who is not from a buraku family, and his daughter.
"After my wife's relatives first found out, the way we interacted changed as they became cooler," Nonaka said in an interview in his office in Kyoto. "The same thing happened with my son-in-law. So, in that sense, I made my family suffer considerably."
But rivals worried nonetheless. One of them was Aso, now 68, who was the epitome of Japan's ruling elite: the grandson of a former prime minister and the heir to a family conglomerate.
Inside the Liberal Democratic Party, some politicians labeled some of Nonaka's closest allies as fellow buraku who were hiding their past.
"We all said those kinds of things," recalled Yozo Ishikawa, 83, a retired lawmaker who was allied with Aso.
"That guy's like this," Ishikawa said, lowering his voice and holding up four fingers of his right hand without the thumb, a derogatory gesture indicating a four-legged animal and referring to the buraku.
And so, at the closed-door meeting in 2001, Aso made the comment about "those people" in a "considerably loud voice," recalled Kamei, the politician who attended the meeting. Kamei, now 69, had known Aso since their elementary school days and was one of his biggest backers.
Aso's comment would have stayed inside the room had a political reporter not been eavesdropping at the door - a common practice in Japan. But because of the taboo surrounding the topic of the buraku, the comment was never widely reported.
Two years later, just before retiring, Nonaka confronted Aso in front of dozens of the party's top leaders, saying he would "never forgive" him for the comment. Aso remained silent, according to several people who were there.
It was only in 2005, when an opposition politician directly questioned Aso about the remark in Parliament, that Aso asserted, "I've absolutely never made such a comment."
The prime minister's office declined a request for an interview with Aso. A spokesman, Osamu Sakashita, referred instead to Aso's remarks in Parliament.
In the end, Nonaka's decision not to run in 2001 helped a dark horse named Junichiro Koizumi become prime minister. Asked whether a Japanese Obama was now possible, Nonaka said, "Well, I don't know."
That was also the question asked by many people of buraku origin recently as they wavered between pessimism and hope.
"Wow, a black president," said Yukari Asai, 45, one of the two sisters who owns the New Naniwa restaurant in the Osaka ward of Naniwa, Japan's biggest buraku neighborhood.
"If a person's brilliant, a person's brilliant," she said, reflecting on Obama's election. It doesn't matter whether it's a black person or white person."
After serving a bowl of udon noodles with pieces of fried beef intestine, a specialty of buraku restaurants, Asai sounded doubtful that a politician of buraku origin could become prime minister.
"Impossible," she said. "Probably impossible."
In Kyoto, some had not forgotten Aso's comment.
"That someone like that could rise all the way to becoming prime minister says a lot about the situation in Japan now," said Kenichi Kadooka, 49, a professor of English at Ryukoku University who is from a buraku family.
Still, Kadooka had not let his anger dim his hopes for a future buraku leader of Japan.
"It's definitely possible," he said. "If he's an excellent person, it's just ridiculous to say he can't become prime minister because he just happened to be born a buraku."
---Japan’s Outcasts Still Wait for Acceptance--- By NORIMITSU ONISHI Published: January 15, 2009 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/16/world/asia/16outcasts.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=Norimitsu+Onishi&st=nyt
KYOTO, Japan - For Japan, the crowning of Hiromu Nonaka as its top leader would have been as significant as America’s election of its first black president.
Despite being the descendant of a feudal class of outcasts, who are known as buraku and still face social discrimination, Mr. Nonaka had dexterously occupied top posts in Japan’s governing party and served as the government’s No. 2 official. The next logical step, by 2001, was to become prime minister. Allies urged him on.
But not everyone inside the party was ready for a leader of buraku origin. At least one, Taro Aso, Japan’s current prime minister, made his views clear to his closest associates in a closed-door meeting in 2001.
“Are we really going to let those people take over the leadership of Japan?” Mr. Aso said, according to Hisaoki Kamei, a politician who attended the meeting.
Mr. Kamei said he remembered thinking at the time that “it was inappropriate to say such a thing.” But he and the others in the room let the matter drop, he said, adding, “We never imagined that the remark would leak outside.”
But it did - spreading rapidly among the nation’s political and buraku circles. And more recently, as Mr. Aso became prime minister just weeks before President-elect Barack Obama’s victory, the comment has become a touchstone for many buraku.
How far have they come since Japan began carrying out affirmative action policies for the buraku four decades ago, mirroring the American civil rights movement? If the United States, the yardstick for Japan, could elect a black president, could there be a buraku prime minister here?
The questions were not raised in the society at large, however. The topic of the buraku remains Japan’s biggest taboo, rarely entering private conversations and virtually ignored by the media.
The buraku - ethnically indistinguishable from other Japanese - are descendants of Japanese who, according to Buddhist beliefs, performed tasks considered unclean. Slaughterers, undertakers, executioners and town guards, they were called eta, which means defiled mass, or hinin, nonhuman. Forced to wear telltale clothing, they were segregated into their own neighborhoods.
The oldest buraku neighborhoods are believed to be here in Kyoto, the ancient capital, and date back a millennium. That those neighborhoods survive to this day and that the outcasts’ descendants are still subject to prejudice speak to Japan’s obsession with its past and its inability to overcome it.
Yet nearly identical groups of outcasts remain in a few other places in Asia, like Tibet and Nepal, with the same Buddhist background; they have disappeared only in South Korea, not because prejudice vanished, but because decades of colonialism, war and division made it impossible to identify the outcasts there.
In Japan, every person has a family register that is kept in local town halls and that, with some extrapolation, reveals ancestral birthplaces. Families and companies widely checked birthplaces to ferret out buraku among potential hires or marriage partners until a generation ago. The practice has greatly declined, though, especially among the young.
The buraku were officially liberated in 1871, just a few years after the 13th Amendment abolished slavery in the United States. But as the buraku’s living standards and education levels remained far below national averages, the Japanese government, under pressure from buraku liberation groups, passed a special law to improve conditions for the buraku in 1969. By the time the law expired in 2002, Japan had reportedly spent about $175 billion on affirmative action programs for the buraku.
Confronting Prejudice
Fumie Tanaka, now 39, was born just as the special measures law for the buraku went into effect. She grew up in the Nishinari ward of Osaka, in one of the 48 neighborhoods that were officially designated as buraku areas.
At her neighborhood school, the children began learning about discrimination against the buraku early on. The thinking in Osaka was to confront discrimination head on: the problem lay not with the buraku but with those who harbored prejudice.
Instead of hiding their roots, children were encouraged to “come out,” sometimes by wearing buraku sashes, a practice that Osaka discontinued early this decade but that survives in the countryside.
Sheltered in this environment, Ms. Tanaka encountered discrimination only when she began going to high school in another ward. One time, while she was visiting a friend’s house, the grandparents invited her to stay over for lunch.
“The atmosphere was pleasant in the beginning, but then they asked me where I lived,” she said. “When I told them, the grandfather put down his chopsticks right away and went upstairs.”
A generation ago, most buraku married other buraku. But by the 1990s, when Ms. Tanaka met her future husband, who is not a buraku, marriages to outsiders were becoming more common.
“The situation has improved over all,” said Takeshi Kitano, chief of the human rights division in Osaka’s prefectural government. “But there are problems left.”
In Osaka’s 48 buraku neighborhoods, from 10 to 1,000 households each, welfare recipient rates remain higher than Osaka’s average. Educational attainment still lags behind, though not by the wide margins of the past.
What is more, the fruits of the affirmative action policies have produced what is now considered the areas’ most pressing problem: depopulation. The younger buraku, with better education, jobs and opportunities, are moving out. Outsiders, who do not want to be mistaken for buraku, are reluctant to move in.
By contrast, Tokyo decided against designating its buraku neighborhoods. It discreetly helped buraku households, no matter where they were, and industries traditionally dominated by buraku groups. The emphasis was on assimilation.
Over time, the thinking went, it would become impossible to discriminate as people’s memory of the buraku areas’ borders became fuzzier. But the policy effectively pushed people with buraku roots into hiding.
In one of the oldest buraku neighborhoods, just north of central Tokyo, nothing differentiates the landscape from other middle-class areas in the city. Now newcomers outnumber the old-timers. The old-timers, who all know one another, live in fear that their roots will be discovered, said a 76-year-old woman who spoke on the condition that neither she nor her neighborhood be identified.
“Me, too, I belong to those who want to hide,” she said. “I’m also running away.”
A Politician’s Roots
Mr. Nonaka is one of the rare politicians who never hid his buraku roots. In 2001, he was considered a leading contender to become president of the long-governing Liberal Democratic Party and prime minister.
Now 83, he was born into a buraku family from a village outside Kyoto. On his way home at the end of World War II, he considered disappearing so that he would be declared dead, he once wrote. With the evidence of his buraku roots expunged, he had thought, he could remake himself in another part of Japan, he wrote.
Mr. Nonaka eventually entered politics, and, known for his fierce intelligence, he rose quickly. By 2001, he was in a position to aim for the prime ministership. But he had made up his mind not to seek the post. While he had never hidden his roots, he feared that taking the top job would shine a harsh spotlight on them. Already, the increasing attention had hurt his wife, who was not from a buraku family, and his daughter.
“After my wife’s relatives first found out, the way we interacted changed as they became cooler,” Mr. Nonaka said in an interview in his office in Kyoto. “The same thing happened with my son-in-law. So, in that sense, I made my family suffer considerably.”
But rivals worried nonetheless. One of them was Mr. Aso, now 68, who was the epitome of Japan’s ruling elite: the grandson of a former prime minister and the heir to a family conglomerate.
Inside the Liberal Democratic Party, some politicians gossiped about Mr. Nonaka’s roots and labeled some of his closest allies fellow buraku who were hiding their roots.
“We all said those kinds of things,” recalled Yozo Ishikawa, 83, a retired lawmaker who was allied with Mr. Aso.
“That guy’s like this,” Mr. Ishikawa said, lowering his voice and holding up four fingers of his right hand without the thumb, a derogatory gesture indicating a four-legged animal and referring to the buraku.
And so, at the closed-door meeting in 2001, Mr. Aso made the comment about “those people” in a “considerably loud voice,” recalled Mr. Kamei, the politician. Mr. Kamei, now 69, had known Mr. Aso since their elementary school days and was one of his biggest backers.
Mr. Aso’s comment would have stayed inside the room had a political reporter not been eavesdropping at the door - a common practice in Japan. But because of the taboo surrounding the topic of the buraku, the comment was never widely reported.
Two years later, just before retiring, Mr. Nonaka confronted Mr. Aso in front of dozens of the party’s top leaders, saying he would “never forgive” him for the comment. Mr. Aso remained silent, according to several people who were there.
It was only in 2005, when an opposition politician directly questioned Mr. Aso about the remark in Parliament, that Mr. Aso said, “I’ve absolutely never made such a comment.”
The prime minister’s office declined a request for an interview with Mr. Aso. A spokesman, Osamu Sakashita, referred instead to Mr. Aso’s remarks in Parliament.
In the end, Mr. Nonaka’s decision not to run in 2001 helped a dark-horse candidate named Junichiro Koizumi become prime minister. Asked whether a Japanese Obama was now possible, Mr. Nonaka said, “Well, I don’t know.”
Hopes for the Future
That is also the question asked by many people of buraku origin recently, as they waver between pessimism and hope.
“Wow, a black president,” said Yukari Asai, 45, one of the two sisters who owns the New Naniwa restaurant in Osaka’s Naniwa ward, in Japan’s biggest buraku neighborhood, reflecting on Mr. Obama’s election. “If a person’s brilliant, a person’s brilliant. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a black person or white person.”
After serving a bowl of udon noodles with pieces of fried beef intestine, a specialty of buraku restaurants, Ms. Asai sounded doubtful that a politician of buraku origin could become prime minister. “Impossible,” she said. “Probably impossible.”
Here in Kyoto, some had not forgotten about Mr. Aso’s comment.
“That someone like that could rise all the way to becoming prime minister says a lot about the situation in Japan now,” said Kenichi Kadooka, 49, who is a professor of English at Ryukoku University and who is from a buraku family.
Still, Mr. Kadooka had not let his anger dim his hopes for a future buraku leader of Japan.
“It’s definitely possible,” he said. “If he’s an excellent person, it’s just ridiculous to say he can’t become prime minister because he just happened to be born a buraku.”
Makiko Inoue contributed reporting.
---It's official: Aso family mine used POW labor--- Friday, Dec. 19, 2008 By MASAMI ITO Staff writer http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20081219a1.html
The government said Thursday it has documents showing Allied POWs worked at a coal mine run by Prime Minister Taro Aso's family during World War II.
Many similar documents have surfaced, but this is the first time the government has acknowledged that Aso Mining Co. in Fukuoka Prefecture used POWs, said Yukihisa Fujita of the Democratic Party of Japan.
"Prisoner policy is important in many ways for diplomacy, and it is a major problem that the issue has been neglected for so long," Fujita said at a news conference. "For a long time, the government has been continuing to deny the many revealed documents and the (existence of) POWs" at Aso Mining.
Although the use of POWS as laborers was not illegal in Japan during the war, their maltreatment violates the Geneva Conventions, which Japan was not party to, and the government has been reluctant to delve into the history of Aso Mining.
Fujita, who requested the probe, said the key point to the Aso Mining issue is whether the POWs were mistreated by the company.
At a meeting of the Upper House panel on foreign affairs and defense Thursday, an unnamed health ministry bureaucrat revealed that Aso Mining had used 300 Allied POWs between May 10 and Aug. 15, 1945.
Of the 300, 101 were Britons, two were Dutch and 197 were Australians. The bureaucrat also announced that two of the Australians died while working there, although their names and causes of death were not disclosed for privacy reasons.
The government also acknowledged that a report on POW treatment that Aso Mining submitted to the Japan POW Investigation Section in 1946 was authentic. The report, stored at the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, was submitted to the panel by Fujita last month.
---Aso Mining's POW labor: the evidence--- Records the government seems unable - or unwilling - to find Tuesday, May 29, 2007 By WILLIAM UNDERWOOD http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20070529zg.html
One year after media reports that Aso Mining used 300 Allied prisoners of war for forced labor in 1945, Foreign Minister Taro Aso is refusing to confirm that POWs dug coal for his family's firm - and even challenging reporters to produce evidence.
That is not hard to do. Records produced by both Aso Mining and the Japanese government clearly show that POWs toiled at the Aso Yoshikuma mine in Fukuoka Prefecture.
But the Foreign Ministry's provocative stance is raising questions about Japan's commitment to historical reconciliation even with current Western allies.
Last year's flurry of media coverage reflected the nationalities of the World War II prisoners involved: 197 Australian, 101 British and two Dutch. Newspaper stories in The Australian, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald were supplemented by newscasts by the Australian Broadcasting Corp. British readers were informed by The Guardian, The Observer, The Times and The Telegraph.
Survivors of forced labor at the Aso Yoshikuma coal mine were tracked down and interviewed. An 87-year-old Australian sent a personal letter to Foreign Minister Aso, according to The Japan Times. The former POW received no reply to his request for an apology and compensation for his unpaid work for Aso Mining Co.
Japanese-language media have treated the existence of the Aso Yoshikuma labor camp, formally known as Fukuoka POW Branch Camp 26, as a virtual taboo. Taro Aso has avoided all public comment on the matter.
But when The New York Times referred to forced labor at Aso Mining last November, the Foreign Ministry issued a startling rebuttal.
According to the Web site of the Consulate General of Japan in New York: "The Government of Japan is not in a position to comment on employment forms and conditions of a private company, Aso Mining, at that time. However, our government has not received any information the company has used forced laborers. It is totally unreasonable to make this kind of judgmental description without presenting any evidence."
This attitude was criticized by Linda Goetz Holmes, a Pacific War historian and author of a book on POW forced labor called "Unjust Enrichment." Proof that Aso Mining exploited prisoner labor originated with the Japanese government in the immediate postwar period, she noted.
"The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is continuing the disturbing Japanese government trend of being unwilling to search its own archives for the corroborating evidence of POW slave labor," Holmes said. "Instead, it is challenging others to produce such records."
On Aug. 19, 1945, the Imperial Japanese government's Committee to Negotiate Surrender delivered to U.S. Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur, by hand in Manila, a list of prison camps in Japan and the names of private companies using Allied POWs. The Fukuoka section of the document shows the Camp 26 workforce was assigned to Aso's Yoshikuma colliery. This POW camp list can be found today in the MacArthur Memorial Archives in Virginia (Record Group 4, Box 23).
On Jan. 24, 1946, Aso Mining submitted a 16-page report detailing conditions at Yoshikuma to the Japanese government's POW Information Bureau, using company stationery and attaching an English translation. Ordered by Occupation authorities investigating war crimes against POWs, the company report claims the Westerners were fed, clothed and housed better than Aso's Japanese workers and Korean labor conscripts. The Aso report includes the company's Feb. 22, 1945, letter to the Japan War Ministry requesting use of 300 Allied prisoners for one year. Camp 26 opened on May 10.
These records produced by Aso Mining can be viewed in Maryland at the U.S. National Archives (Record Group 331, Box 927). The U.S. National Archives also retain the comprehensive Camp Management Report, compiled by the Japan POW Information Bureau and submitted to American military investigators in Tokyo on June 7, 1946. It confirms the "Aso Mining Industry Company" utilized 150 of the healthiest Camp 26 prisoners in the Yoshikuma coal pits. The remainder performed farm work and camp tasks like cooking and digging bomb shelters.
Arthur Gigger, now 86 and living in South Australia, recalled 12-hour shifts and "pretty primitive conditions" deep in the Aso mine.
He arrived at Camp 26 after American firebombing destroyed the Kobe shipyard where he had worked since late 1942. He became a POW when Singapore fell to Japanese forces.
"The food was certainly meager, but clothing was our biggest problem," Gigger said. "We were down to absolute tatters by the end of the war. I don't think we'd have seen it through another winter."
The Aso-compiled records, however, say prisoners' clothing was of superior quality.
Gigger disputed other aspects of Aso Mining's description of life at Camp 26. While the company reported that prisoners could "take a rest in the recreation room," Gigger insisted "there was no such thing."
The company report also claims that, soon after Japan's surrender, prisoners thanked Aso officials for their kind treatment by giving them gifts.
"That's all bull," Gigger said with a laugh. "Absolute rubbish."
Despite its often self-serving nature, such evidence of forced labor at Aso Mining exists in the national archives of other Allied countries - and in Japan. Produced by American Occupation staff based on Japanese company reports, a copy of the "Roster of Deceased Allied POWs in Japan Proper" resides at the National Diet Library in Tokyo. The roster records the names of the two Australian soldiers who died at Aso Yoshikuma: John Watson and Leslie Edgar George Wilkie. It is accessible online at the Web site of the POW Research Network Japan, run by Japanese citizens working to clarify the historical record.
Another U.S. government document in the National Diet Library is Report No. 174, issued by the Investigation Division of GHQ's Legal Section on Feb. 1, 1946. It summarizes a two-day inspection of the Camp 26 site, referring to the statement of an Aso company official as "Exhibit One." It also lists the names and ranks of Imperial Japanese Army personnel who guarded the POWs when they were not in Aso Mining's custody.
While there were no charges of war crimes involving Camp 26, the paper trail for prisoner labor at Yoshikuma is extensive. A 1982 book published by Japan's National Defense Academy also states that the camp's prisoners worked for Aso Mining.
Yet at the peak of overseas media coverage of the Aso-POW connection last July, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson appeared to dispute wartime events. The ministry official lashed out during a press conference at "malicious news reports that contained statements contrary to facts and nevertheless have aroused a lot of debate precisely because they were very far-fetched."
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe provoked international controversy more recently by doubting the evidence for Japan's wartime system of military sexual slavery. A nonbinding resolution now being debated by the U.S. Congress calls on the Japanese government to "formally acknowledge and apologize for" the comfort women system - and to refute revisionists who deny the historical reality. That could include Foreign Minister Aso, who last February described the congressional resolution as "not based on objective facts."
Aso, 66, finished second to Abe in last year's contest for prime minister and still aspires to Japan's top post. Founded in 1872, the family firm was known as Aso Cement when Taro Aso headed it in the 1970s. It is called Aso Group today and is run by Aso's younger brother.
Dozens of compensation lawsuits were filed over the past decade against Japanese corporations that profited from forced labor during World War II. All have now failed. Courts in Japan, the U.S. and elsewhere have agreed that the San Francisco Peace Treaty and other postwar accords waived the rights of victims to seek legal redress.
Hundreds of thousands of Nazi-era forced laborers and their heirs, by contrast, have received billions of dollars in compensation from the German and Austrian governments and corporate sectors since 2000. Formal apologies and educational initiatives were key components of those reparations programs.
The Japanese government should "take immediate action to bring about an honorable closure to the history of Japan's wartime forced labor," according to Kinue Tokudome, director of U.S.-Japan Dialogue on POWs. The California-based NPO promotes reconciliation on a humanitarian basis.
"As Japan's top diplomat and because of his family background, Foreign Minister Aso should be more sensitive to this issue and more willing to resolve it," Tokudome said. "No conscientious politician would just wait to receive the information that his family coal mine enslaved POWs and Asian civilians."
Arthur Gigger, long active in ex-POW groups in Australia, said Japan's Foreign Ministry should stop denying the reality of forced labor at Aso Mining.
"I know it happened," he said. "I was there."
---[噂]奴隷制度廃止運動--- Wikipedia 最終更新 2009年1月25日 (日) 08:10 （日時は個人設定で未設定ならばUTC） http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%A5%B4%E9%9A%B7%E5%88%B6%E5%BA%A6%E5%BB%83%E6%AD%A2%E9%81%8B%E5%8B%95
第三者による見解 * 2004年9月16日全国地域人権運動総連合は根拠を示した上での弁明ではなく、差別発言が事実である可能性がきわめて高いとして、真相究明と責任を問う申し入れを麻生太郎に対して行った。また、この申し入れでは、発言が事実でないのであれば、野中や魚住、講談社などを訴えるべきであるとしているが、麻生側から納得のいく回答は得られておらず、「2004年の段階で（麻生を）国会議員としての資格なしと判断している[16][17]。 * 奈良県部落解放同盟支部連合会も民主党奈良県連に（小泉内閣）閣僚差別発言への事実究明を行うよう要望書を提出している[18]。 * 2009年、ニューヨーク・タイムズ紙のノリミツ・オオニシ記者は、麻生の発言に同席した人物として亀井久興の名前を実名で挙げたが、発言自体は英訳のこともあり抽象的になっている。－－「“Are we really going to let those people take over the leadership of Japan?” Mr. Aso said, according to Hisaoki Kamei, a politician who attended the meeting.」（By NORIMITSU ONISHI Published: January 15, 2009 ）
---FYI:Burakumin--- From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This page was last modified on 23 January 2009, at 20:34. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burakumin
Burakumin (部落民, literally tribe people?), are a Japanese social minority group. The burakumin are one of the main minority groups in Japan, along with the Ainu of Hokkaido, the Ryukyuans of Okinawa and the residents of Korean and Chinese descent.
The burakumin are descendants of outcast communities of the feudal era, which mainly comprised those with occupations considered "tainted" with death or ritual impurity (such as executioners, undertakers or leather workers), and traditionally lived in their own secluded hamlets and ghettos.
They were legally liberated in 1871 with the abolition of the feudal caste system; however, this did not put a stop to social discrimination and their lower living standards because Japanese family registration (Koseki) was fixed to ancestral home address until recently. In certain areas of Japan, there is still a stigma attached to being a resident of such areas, including some lingering discrimination in matters such as marriage and employment.
The long history of taboos and myths of the buraku left a continuous legacy of social desolation. Since the 1980s, more and more young buraku started to organize and protest against their social misfortunes. Movements with objectives ranging from "liberation" to encouraging integration have tried over the years to put a stop to this problem.
Current numbers The number of burakumin asserted to be living in modern Japan varies from source to source. A 1993 investigative report by the Japanese Government counted 4,533 dowa chiku (同和地区 "assimilation districts"-buraku communities officially designated for assimilation projects), mostly in western Japan, comprising 298,385 households with 892,751 residents.
The size of each community ranged from under five households to over 1000 households, with 155 households being the average size. About three quarters of settlements are in rural areas. The distribution of discriminated communities varied greatly from region to region.
No discriminated communities were identified in the following prefectures: Hokkaido, Aomori, Iwate, Miyagi, Akita, Yamagata, Fukushima, Tokyo, Toyama, Ishikawa and Okinawa.[1]
The Buraku Liberation League (BLL), on the other hand, extrapolates Meiji-era figures to arrive at an estimate of nearly three million burakumin.[2] A 1999 source indicates the presence of some 2 million burakumin, living in approximately 5,000 settlements.[3]
In some areas, burakumin hold a majority; they account for over 70 percent of all residents of Yoshikawa in Kochi Prefecture. In Oto in Fukuoka Prefecture, they account for over 60 percent.[4]
Japanese government statistics show the number of residents of assimilation districts who claim buraku ancestry, whereas BLL figures are estimates of the total number of descendants of all former and current buraku residents, including current residents with no buraku ancestry.
Terminology The term 部落 buraku literally refers to a small, generally rural, commune or a hamlet. People from regions of Japan where "discriminated communities" do not exist any more (e.g., anywhere north of Tokyo) may normally refer to any hamlet as a buraku, indicating that the word's usage is not necessarily pejorative.
---Animal rights campaigners jailed--- Page last updated at 13:16 GMT, Wednesday, 21 January 2009 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/7837064.stm
Members of SHAC covered their faces during a raid http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7797604.stm
Seven animal rights activists who blackmailed companies linked to an animal testing laboratory have been jailed for between four and 11 years.
They used paedophile smears, criminal damage and bomb hoaxes to intimidate companies associated with Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) in Cambridgeshire.
Heather Nicholson, Gerrah Selby, Daniel Wadham and Gavin Medd-Hall were found guilty of conspiracy to blackmail.
Gregg and Natasha Avery, of Hampshire, and Daniel Amos admitted the charge.
Winchester Crown Court heard that during a six-year campaign members of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) falsely claimed managers of the companies were paedophiles.
They also sent hoax bomb parcels and made threatening telephone calls to firms telling them to cut links with HLS.
One of the features of intimidation included sending used sanitary items in the post to the firms and daubing roads outside managers' homes with slogans such as "puppy killer".
Nicholson, 41, of Eversley, Hampshire, was jailed for 11 years; married couple Gregg, 41, and Natasha, 39, Avery, also from Eversley, were sentenced to nine years each; and Medd-Hall, 45, of Croydon, south London, was given an eight-year prison sentence.
All were given indefinite Anti-Social Behaviour Orders, banning them from travelling to the firms targeted.
Wadham, 21, of Bromley, south London, was jailed for five years while Selby, 20, of Chiswick, London, and Amos, 22, of Church Crookham, Hants, were both sentenced to four years in prison.
The court heard that Nicholson and the Averys were the founders of SHAC, and managed the "menacing" campaigns against the firms.
Sentencing the activists, Mr Justice Butterfield called the campaign "urban terrorism" and a "relentless, sustained and merciless persecution" which had made the victims lives "a living hell".
He said he accepted that the seven had genuine deeply-held beliefs that animal testing was wrong, and had the right to protest against it.
'Fanatical activists'
But he told them that companies had the right to conduct vital biomedical research and the right to conduct lawful trading.
He called the leaders "lifelong, veteran, fanatical animal rights activists" and said: "It was a relentless, sustained campaign designed to strike such fear in the minds of employees that the companies would capitulate.
"I expect you will be seen by some as martyrs for a noble cause but that would be misplaced.
"You are not going to prison for expressing your beliefs, you are going to prison because you have committed a serious criminal offence."
The court heard that between 2001 and 2007, SHAC, which was based near Hook, Hampshire, targeted companies in the UK and Europe that either supplied or had secondary links with HLS.
About 40 companies were victimised and the total cost of damage and increased security was L12.6m, not including loss of profits, the court was told.
Det Ch Insp Andy Robbins from Kent Police, who led the L4m inquiry involving five forces, said: "I hope today's sentences provide some comfort and a sense of justice to the individuals and the families who suffered such sustained harassment."
Science Minister Lord Drayson, added: "Those involved in life-saving medical research make a huge contribution to society. They deserve our thanks, support and protection.
Another defendant, Trevor Holmes, 51, from Newcastle, was cleared.
---Fifty years for 'urban terrorists': Animals rights fanatics jailed for campaign of intimidation--- By Tom Kelly Last updated at 9:46 PM on 21st January 2009 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1125842/Fifty-years-urban-terrorists-Animals-rights-fanatics-jailed-campaign-intimidation.html
A judge branded seven animal rights extremists 'urban terrorists' yesterday as he jailed them for a total of 50 years for a ruthless campaign of intimidation.
Mr Justice Butterfield said the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty activists made life a 'living hell' for thousands of men, women and children by subjecting them to a 'relentless, sustained and merciless persecution'.
He also called for the law to be changed to allow tougher sentences for blackmailers, after warning the ringleaders of the network were likely to return to extremism once they were freed.
Ringleaders: Greg and Natasha Avery got nine years each
The plotters - a mix of veteran animal rights protesters and their young middleclass disciples seduced by the 'excitement and glamour' of the group - were jailed for between four and 11 years.
The group aimed to intimidate firms into ending dealings with Cambridgeshire-based Huntingdon Life Science, which carries out animal testing for medical research, Winchester Crown Court heard.
They targeted workers at firms supplying HLS by sending letters to neighbours claiming they were paedophiles.
They also sent hoax bombs and items that claimed to be contaminated with Aids to homes. And at night-time they would pour paint stripper on cars and daub walls with words such as 'murderer' and 'puppy killer'.
The plot was funded with ??1million raised from innocent donations on high-street stalls.
Mr Justice Butterfield said: 'You cloaked your activities in what was a hypocritical sham pretence that Shac was a vehicle for legitimate lawful protest. It was nothing of the sort.
Vandalism: The extremists caused thousands of pounds worth of damage to property including this car
'I expect that you will be seen by some as martyrs. But you are not going to prison for your beliefs, you are going to prison because each of you has committed a very serious offence.
'Hundreds, probably thousands of decent, men, women and children have had their lives made a living hell by your activities.'
Greg and Natasha Avery, the husband and wife who masterminded the operation, were jailed for nine years each, reduced from 14, after admitting conspiracy to blackmail.
Daniel Amos, 22, the son of a bank manager from Swindon, got four years after also admitting the charge.
The remaining four were convicted last month.
Heather Nicholson, 41, an ex-nanny from Swansea and another founder member, was jailed for 11 years.
Animal rights activists raid a company linked to Huntingdon Life Sciences. Seven of the group have been jailed
Gavin Medd-Hall, 45, a jobless computer technician of Croydon, South London, got eight years and Daniel Wadham, 21, son of a former librarian from St Austell, Cornwall, got five.
Gerrah Selby, 20, the daughter of an IT consultant from Chiswick, West London, and a former A-grade public schoolgirl, was given a four-year term.
Mr Justice Butterfield told her: 'You are basically a thoroughly decent, highly intelligent, capable and hard working young woman. You allowed yourself to be seduced into participation in a vile and wicked conspiracy.'
The court heard Shac cost the companies they targeted ??12.6million in criminal damage and extra security.
After jailing the Averys and Nicholson, Mr Justice Butterfield said he hoped the Home Secretary would consider making blackmail one of the specified public protection offences which would allow for offenders to be kept in jail if deemed a threat.
Speaking after the hearing, Kent Police DCI Andy Robbins, who led the ??4million inquiry, said: 'I hope today's sentences send a strong message that campaigning needs to remain lawful, and those who cross the line will be brought to justice.'
Mastermind of a twisted cult and his disciples
The ringleader
In terms of his determination to achieve his aims, he compares himself to Nelson Mandela. And he boasts that he is ready to die for the cause.
Former associates describe him as a cult leader who brainwashes idealistic but naive middle-class teenagers.
For many years Greg Avery has run a string of brutally effective terror campaigns against animal testing firms around the country.
The 41-year-old told an interviewer: 'Whatever you think of us, you have to admit one thing - what we do works. We have a 100 per cent success rate. Whoever we choose to target is finished.'
He inspires astonishing loyalty - before his arrest he shared a house with his wife and ex-wife, who were both key lieutenants in Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty.
And while he was arrested countless times on minor charges, for years he avoided a major conviction by using aliases, paying for everything in cash and moving house every six months.
Avery grew up with five brothers in the well-heeled Cheshire village of Bollington. His father, Philip, was an aero-electrician with British Aerospace, and his mother, Gwen, was a tailor who ran her own textiles business.
As a boy Avery was more interested in Manchester United than animal rights, but was an overnight convert after attending a protest against an animal research laboratory when he was 15.
He became a full-time activist and met his first wife Heather Nicholson, the daughter of a lecturer, in 1994 at a Coventry airport protest against the export of live animals for slaughter.
Two years later the couple launched a campaign of intimidation against Consort Bio Services kennels, which bred beagles for animal research in
Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire. Following a relentless ten-month campaign, including intimidating protests outside the homes of workers, the business was forced to close.
Greg Avery: Avoided detection by moving every six months
Avery's current wife Natasha Avery
ex-wife Heather Nicholson
Their next campaign was against Hillgrove Cat Farm in Witney near Oxford, which closed after the owner's wife was tied to a tree with a bag over her head.
Avery met his second wife, Natasha, during the protests and together they decided to go after the biggest target yet --Huntingdon Life Sciences, which had featured in a critical undercover Channel 4 documentary entitled: 'It's a dog's life.'
But Avery soon found that protests outside the company's headquarters in rural Cambridgeshire had little impact.
He said: 'We could go there and shout at people, but they just don't care. We decided most of the damage could be done from hundreds of miles away if we did our homework.'
He targeted shareholders and also went after HLS's 'supply lines' by intimidating staff at companies that provided them with materials and services - a tactic favoured by the IRA.
Avery has also been involved with other animal rights plots and was spotted several times at the notorious campaign against Darley Oaks guinea pig farm in Newchurch, Staffordshire, which included the theft of the remains of the owner's mother-in-law, Gladys Hammond.
It is unlikely that his conviction will dampen his misplaced zeal. As he said before being detained: 'I'm in the kitchen and I can take the heat. It took Nelson Mandela 27 years in prison. You can't win by doing things at weekends. It takes 100 per cent.'
The public schoolgirl Gerrah Selby: She turned down a place at Edinburgh University after being brainwashed by Avery
The mother of a former public schoolgirl told of her horror after her daughter was brainwashed into joining the band of animal rights terrorists.
Gerrah Selby was one of a group of middle-class youngsters who abandoned promising lives to become leading figures in Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty.
The talented 20-year-old turned down a place to study zoology at Edinburgh University after being groomed by leader Greg Avery.
Her mother, Deanne, an IT consultant from Chiswick, west London, said: 'I never supported Gerrah joining Shac. I felt she could do so much more with her life.'
The 44-year- old said she believed Shac became a ' surrogate family' to her daughter after she and her husband divorced a few years ago.
Selby attended the ??9,000-a-year Ryde School with Upper Chine on the Isle of Wight before moving with her family to the south of France, where she studied at the fee-paying Sophia Antipolis International school.
Teachers there described her as a 'delightful and extremely thoughtful young lady' who scored high marks in her International Baccalaureate exams.
But after joining the Shac hierarchy in mid-2005 she became involved in violent protests against companies in the UK and Europe.
On one demonstration last year she yelled at workers: 'You're not going to be laughing when your children are screaming at night.'
Other middle-class recruits included Daniel Amos, 22, whose father was a building society manager and his mother, Janet, worked as a bank clerk.
Amos was a classmate of Laurie Pycroft, the Swindon teenager who formed the group Pro-Test in to support the testing on animals for medical research.
Daniel Wadham
Daniel Amos
Gavin Medd-Hall
One of his first acts as an activist was to post Mr Pycroft's name, address and phone number on an animal rights forum. Amos wore steel-capped boots - non-leather - so he could kick the cars of victims.
Another of Avery's disciples was Daniel Wadham, 21, who grew up in St Austell, Cornwall, where his mother, Denise, worked in the library and his German-born father, Michael, was a photostat operator.
Police believe he was being groomed to take over Shac when he was jailed in 2006 with Natasha Avery and Heather Nicholson for attacking a family - including a pensioner - for having a pro-hunting sticker on their car.
After his release he moved to Wales where he set up a vegan erotica shop selling items such as hemp whips.
---Former Merrill head resigns from Bank of America--- COMBINED WIRE REPORTS January 23, 2009 http://www.newsday.com/services/newspaper/printedition/friday/news/ny-bzthain236009118jan23,0,4685068.story
John Thain resigned under pressure from Bank of America yesterday after reports he rushed out billions of dollars in bonuses to Merrill Lynch employees in his final days as chief executive there, while the brokerage was suffering huge losses and just before Bank of America took it over.
Thain "agreed his situation was not working out and that he should resign," Bank of America spokesman Robert Stickler said in an e-mail yesterday.
Brian Moynihan, 49, the bank's general counsel and a former investment banking chief, will replace Thain.
Thain, 53, negotiated the sale with Bank of America chief executive Kenneth Lewis, 61, whose credibility was undercut when the brokerage reported a record $15.4 billion fourth-quarter deficit. The takeover was completed less than a month ago. Lewis, who considered backing out of the deal when he learned of the extent of Merrill's losses last month, went ahead at the insistence of U.S. regulators who provided a new $138-billion aid package.
Thain could not be reached for comment, and Merrill was unavailable for comment.
Thain's exit was announced a day after he acquired 84,600 Bank of America shares worth about $483,320, boosting his direct stake to 549,671 shares. The purchase was disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
Complicating the matter was that Merrill announced bonuses in late December, earlier than usual and just before the $19.4-billion merger closed on Jan. 1. New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is investigating the possibility that Merrill awarded "large, secret, last-minute" bonuses, a person familiar with the matter said yesterday. Cuomo's office declined to comment.
Also yesterday, CNBC reported Thain hired well-known Los Angeles interior designer Michael Smith to redecorate his Merrill office a year ago and ran up a $1.22 million bill. Smith's designing company could not be reached for comment.
Former Merrill Lynch & Co.
chief executive John Thain, left, spent $1.2 million redecorating his downtown Manhattan office last year as the company was firing employees, a person familiar with the project said. Thain hired Los Angeles-based decorator Michael Smith, CNBC reported yesterday. Among the outlays:
$87,000 for area rugs $68,000 for 19th century credenza $35,115 for a "commode on legs" $28,091 for curtains $25,000 for a pedestal table $18,468 for George IV chair $10,967 for Roman shade fabric $7,315 for Roman shades $5,852 for coffee table $2,741 for wall sconces $1,405 for parchment waste can - CNBC.com, Bloomberg
---オバマ大統領就任演説全文（英文） Remarks of President Barack Obama--- 2009.1.21 10:47 http://sankei.jp.msn.com/world/america/090121/amr0901211050021-n1.htm
My fellow citizens:
I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors. I thank President Bush for his service to our nation, as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.
Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often, the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forebearers, and true to our founding documents.
So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans.
That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.
These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land -- a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights.
Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America: They will be met.
On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.
On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.
We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.
In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the fainthearted -- for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things -- some celebrated, but more often men and women obscure in their labor -- who have carried us up the long, rugged path toward prosperity and freedom.
For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life.
For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.
For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn.
Time and again, these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.
This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions -- that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.
For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act -- not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.
Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions -- who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.
What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them -- that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works -- whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account -- to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day -- because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.
Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control -- and that a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous. The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on our ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart -- not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.
As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: Know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.
Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.
We are the keepers of this legacy. Guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort -- even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We will begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people, and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan. With old friends and former foes, we will work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the specter of a warming planet. We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.
For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.
To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West: Know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.
To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect.
For the world has changed, and we must change with it.
As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us today, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages. We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service; a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves. And yet, at this moment -- a moment that will define a generation -- it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all.
For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.
Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends -- hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism -- these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility -- a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world; duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.
This is the price and the promise of citizenship.
This is the source of our confidence -- the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.
This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed -- why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent Mall, and why a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.
So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled. In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:
"Let it be told to the future world ... that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive... that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [it]."
America. In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested, we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back, nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.
