Peace Demonstrations in Japan, "Freedom Fries"


Peace Demo in Japan Posted by Hello

I don't know if media in other countries has paid any attention to the many peace demonstrations that are taking place all over Japan. There is a strong peace movement that opposes the war in Iraq, and also wants to maintain the Article 9 of the Japanese constitution. The photo (from a demonstration that I joined last December) is from Greenpeace Japan's website.

Meanwhile, The Guardian reports that the US politician who led the campaign to change the name of french fries to "freedom fries" has turned against the war. I always like when people are not afraid to change their minds! Quote:

Walter Jones, the Republican congressman for North Carolina who was also the brains behind french toast becoming freedom toast in Capitol Hill restaurants, told a local newspaper the US went to war "with no justification".

Mr Jones, who in March 2003 circulated a letter demanding that the three cafeterias in the House of Representatives' office buildings ban the word french from menus, said it was meant as a "light-hearted gesture".

But the name change, still in force, made headlines around the world, both for what it said about US-French relations and its pettiness.

Although he voted for the war, he has since become one of its most vociferous opponents on Capitol Hill, where the hallway outside his office is lined with photographs of the "faces of the fallen".

"If we were given misinformation intentionally by people in this administration, to commit the authority to send boys, and in some instances girls, to go into Iraq, that is wrong," he told the newspaper. "Congress must be told the truth."

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

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