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DEBITO.ORG NEWSLETTER JULY 13, 2008
SPECIAL ON SUMMIT AND POST-SUMMIT HOKKAIDO

The themes as far as I can see of the G8 Summit in Toyako, Hokkaido was largesse (gourmet meals while discussing a food crisis), waste (a ton of lamb left uneaten, and idling hundreds of police cars creating a huge carbon footprint at an “Eco Summit”), sequestering (both activists and the media), and ineffectuality (what was accomplished that could not have been done by video conferencing, without all this expense and public inconvenience?).

A particular highlight is an eyewitness account by Eric Johnston, Japan Times reporter on the scene, who gave a stunning speech July 10 in Sapporo, which you can download and hear/read in full below. By all account (including the very fact that the Summit Site is generally rendered in overseas media as “Toyako”, not “Hokkaido”, in contrast to the “Okinawa Summit” eight years ago), an event which gave back little to nothing to us locals. Writing this Newsletter as one:

Table of Contents:
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DURING THE SUMMIT:
On-Site Briefing: Summit seeps into Sapporo on little cat feet…
Hokkaido Shinbun: Hokkaido Police report 15 requests for demos, grant permission for one
Hokkaido Shinbun: Summit Activists get sequestered to faraway campsites
Kyodo: J Man arrested for making bomb threat at Sapporo Chitose airport
Good news from Summit Sapporo July 8: security cops are mellow (photo record)

SUMMIT AFTERMATH AND WOOLGATHERING:
Japan Times Eric Johnston’s July 10 Sapporo speech on G8 Summit
with audio recording, powerpoint, photos
Japan Times: JPY 60 billion G8 Summit budget draws flak, amid social shortfalls
World media on uselessness of G8 Summit(s), including FT’s Clive Crook
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By Arudou Debito, Sapporo, Japan
debito@debito.org https://www.debito.org
Freely Forwardable

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DURING THE SUMMIT:
(for a report on what happened pre-Summit, see last Debito.org Newsletter at
https://www.debito.org/?p=1776 )

On-Site Briefing: Summit seeps into Sapporo on little cat feet…

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(excerpt) Final word for now: It seems the Japanese police are more concerned about giving the appearance of security than creating actual security. A friend of mine, trained in undermining infrastructure and assassination (yes, I talk to a lot of people) due to his stint in a foreign military, has eyewitnessed numerous flaws in the Chitose security (such as being able to drive a van into Chitose with tinted windows–and not be stopped! Could have brought in all manner of subversive elements that way). And that any trained assassin is capable of coming months before the event and hiding out in the woods until needed. He doubts that we’re significantly more secure after all this expense, public inconvenience, and precedent renewed of subverting Japan’s civil society.

Forget these summits. How about a video conference for world leaders? Stop putting overreactive societies like Japan through these sorts of things.
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Full commentary at
https://www.debito.org/?p=1777

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Hokkaido Shinbun: Hokkaido Police report 15 requests for demos, grant permission for one
July 2, 2008:

Hokkaido Shinbun on the police’s control over Japan’s right of assembly: “According to the police, applications to hold a total of ten demos in Sapporo were lodged from June 2 to 8, and five around Iburi Subprefecture’s Toyako Town were applied for between June 6 and 9. The Hokkaido Public Safety Commission has granted permission for one of them, to be conducted in Sapporo on July 2. The other approaches are now under consideration.”
https://www.debito.org/?p=1778

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Hokkaido Shinbun: Summit Activists get sequestered to faraway campsites
July 3, 2008:

“Campsites for civil activists from around the world who are visiting the area for the Hokkaido Toyako Summit were set up in Sapporo and Ishikari Subprefecture’s Tobetsu Town on July 3. Approximately 30 campers from the United States, Germany and other countries arrived in the morning at the Disaster Reserve Center in Tobetsu Town, which has been set up in a closed school, and immediately pitched tents there.

“A total of 300 visitors are expected to flock to the sites between now and July 6, and voluntary study meetings are scheduled to be held there. The Sapporo International Exchange Camp Executive Preparation Council (the organization managing the campgrounds) intends to use the sites as spaces to discuss ways of internationalization in a style different from the talks led by the G8 nations.”
More at https://www.debito.org/?p=1779

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Kyodo: J Man arrested for making bomb threat at Sapporo Chitose airport

Here’s something simultaneously scary and amusing: a bomb threat by a Japanese man during (but unrelated to, he claims) the G8 Summit. Naturally, as contributor AW points out, he would not have been snagged by the Hokkaido Police’s racial profiling.

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Man arrested for making bomb threat at Chitose airport
Kyodo/Japan Today Wednesday 9th July 2008

A bomb threat by a male passenger on Tuesday grounded a commercial flight bound for Tokyo from New Chitose Airport, the closest major airport to the site of the ongoing Group of Eight nations’ summit, airport and police officials said. Takanari Deto, a 69-year-old realtor living in Sapporo city, was arrested on suspicion of obstructing business by force. He had said his luggage contained a bomb and started making a scene after boarding Air Do Flight 20, which was scheduled for departure at 2 p.m., the officials said.
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And imagine the hay the police would have made if the perp had been NJ. “Hey, good thing we did all the security checks on the gaijin!.” Sorry there’s not much hay to be made this time around–wrong race. Maybe it’s time the police disengaged race and nationality from criminal intent. But I’ve suggested that both to them and to readers here ad nauseam by now. Sigh.

Full article and comments at:
https://www.debito.org/?p=1800

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Good news from Summit Sapporo July 8: security cops are mellow (photo essay)

Here’s a quick eyewitness report on what effect security forces in downtown Sapporo are having on residents. The good news–the cops are mellow while plentiful, and not quick with a daystick when they see someone like me taking pictures. I was not stopped for an ID check once, a definite improvement on World Cup 2002.

The bad news–people are staying away from Summit security areas and business is being adversely affected. Now let’s just hope something good comes out of this goddamn Summit to justify all the time, effort, expense, and inconvenience inflicted upon everybody. On-site photos included.
https://www.debito.org/?p=1784

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SUMMIT AFTERMATH AND WOOLGATHERING:

Japan Times Eric Johnston’s July 10 Sapporo speech on G8 Summit
–with audio recording, powerpoint, photos

Wrapping up this long-running series on the G8 Summit, here’s a blog entry on last night’s Sapporo speech by Japan Times Deputy Editor Eric Johnston, sponsored by the Hokkaido International Business Association (HIBA). Photos and links to his powerpoint and an audio recording of the event below.

Brief: On July 10, 2008, Eric spoke for an hour and change on the state of newspaper media (versus the bloggers, who at times were better connected to Summiteers than the mainstream journalists), the inefficiencies of Summit reporting and how it blocked true journalism (including a press center far away from the Summit site, and a GOJ stranglehold over press schedules–one example given was four hours’ travel and wait time for a sixty-second press conference with PM Fukuda), the incredible economic and ecological waste that goes on at these Summits (including, he says, a ton of lamb meat left uneaten due to journalist time constraints), and the flat-out lying to the local governments by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs re getting the local economies involved in Summit events (this was apparently Tokyo’s show all the way–shutting out local pensions for “Ministry-certified hotels”, which gouged the journalists with JPY 60,000 hotel rooms, and not allowing local businesses to take much advantage of the world’s attention). Thus sequestered and sealed off from the stories they had come a long way to report, the journalists at the media center could have been anywhere in the world, and all that any journalist (working 16 to 18 hour days), who didn’t have the gumption to leave the site and go searching for his or her own stories, saw of Japan was the center’s sushi bar.

Oh yes, and Eric talked about the goal of the Summit and appraises whether or not it was successful. Most people don’t think so. And despite the relative boosterism by GOJ-influenced press like NHK, the world media is now beginning to see these summits for what they are–basically highly wasteful and expensive parties for politicians, with only one real working day to consider a few major issues and, for the most part, agree that something is “a good idea”, rather than hammer out any specific policy or agreement. All with us taxpayers footing the bill (particularly us Japanese taxpayers, paying ten or more times more, as usual, than last year’s Summit).

As one of the attendees of tonight’s speech commented, it was like the circus had come to town, set up their tent on a vacant lot, then shut the locals out from their show. Then they departed, leaving nothing behind but a vacant lot.

Listen to Eric and read his powerpoint presentation at https://www.debito.org/?p=1804

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Japan Times: JPY 60 billion G8 Summit budget draws flak, amid social shortfalls

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G8 COUNTDOWN
JPY60 billion G8 budget draws flak
Although less than 2000 outlay, critics see amount as excessive amid social shortfalls
Japan Times July 1, 2008

Japan plans to spend more than JPY60 billion in taxpayer money to host next week’s Group of Eight summit in Hokkaido and related events, prompting some to question if that sum could better be used to alleviate the national health-care and social welfare crises…

“The previous (Japanese) summit was held for the first time in a provincial area. So we wanted no mistakes and tried to provide as much hospitality as possible,” Masamoto said. Before the Kyushu-Okinawa gathering, Japan hosted three summits, all in Tokyo.

Masamoto admitted the Kyushu-Okinawa gathering drew public criticism about spending at a time when Japan’s economy was in a prolonged slump.

During the leaders’ banquet hosted by Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, they feasted on black Russian caviar, lobster from Bretagne, France, and Foie gras.

Souvenirs were also given to the leaders, their wives and journalists.

They included wine glasses with their names inscribed, clothing by famous designers, lacquer letter boxes, IC recorders and Licca-chan dolls…

The Foreign Ministry said it has no comparable data of other countries’ budgets for past G8 meetings.

But according to the British government’s Web site, the U.K. budgeted about JPY12.1 million, or around JPY2.6 billion in present value, for the 2005 summit it hosted in Gleneagles, Scotland.
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More at https://www.debito.org/?p=1780

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World media on uselessness of G8 Summit(s), including FT’s Clive Crook

Concomitant to my recent assertion that the world media is waking up to how much of a useless gathering, if not an outright scam, these G8 Summits are, let’s collect some articles on this blog entry demonstrating as such. Feel free to add articles in the comments section below, only please take care to include the name of the media publication, date, full text of article, and link? Thanks.

Kicking off with the Financial Times, London:
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Pipe dreams and cigar smoke
Published: Financial Times July 10 2008
For proof that the G8 has outlived its usefulness, one need look no further than the inability of the world’s richest democracies to forge an agreed global strategy for tackling climate change. The refusal by China and India to endorse its proposed cuts in carbon dioxide emissions renders this week’s G8 summit in Japan pointless. Any notion a club of eight nations could run the world – never plausible – is now so discredited as to call into question the value of all its declarations…
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Also Clive Crook:
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Summit nadir
Published: Financial Times July 11 2008

Clive Crook’s blog: Even by the dismal standards of these events, this year’s G8 summit in Japan was a wearisome spectacle. I cannot think that what was achieved – nothing – justified the meeting’s impressive carbon footprint. I will remember it mainly for the quote from IPCC’s head, R.K. Pachauri, who said the developed countries “should get off the backs of China and India” (and Pachauri wasn’t even at the summit; he was speaking in Delhi). Yes, I understand that he wants the rich countries to move first – but is it wrong to expect anything of the countries that before long will be the world’s biggest GHG emitters? I mean, isn’t the planet in peril, or something?
More at http://www.ft.com/crookblog
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See these articles and more at
https://www.debito.org/?p=1808
and please feel free to add your own favorite article there as well!

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All for today. We’ll get back to our regular themes next Newsletter. Thanks for reading!
Arudou Debito, Sapporo, Japan
debito@debito.org
https://www.debito.org
DEBITO.ORG NEWSLETTER JULY 13, 2008 ENDS