Economic Sanctions (Nov. 4th)

Today's class consisted of a lecture on various topics. First, Mr.Paterson introduced COP26, the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference. I am a member of an organization called "Fridays For Future" where we take action to advocate for climate justice, and so this summit is a very hot topic.  However, when Mr.Paterson asked for a show of hands, nearly no one in our class knew about this global conference. This was absolutely shocking, but come to think about it, the name of this conference is not often broadcasted on Japanese TV. Moreover, the fact that Japan was awarded "Fossil of the day", after Prime Minister Kishida's unpersuasive speech has not been reported on the mainstream. Alongside, Japan's declaration on continuing to use existing thermal power plants, there have been countless demonstrations and events occurring in Glasgow (Mr.Paterson's hometown!) which in my opinion, should be acknowledged by the public. Media manipulation regarding climate change and global issues is pretty severe even though these social issues impact our future. Regardless, COP26 was not the main discussion point in today's class, but rather, we talked about how the price of coal is being controlled mainly for the profit of rich countries. 

Coal is a significant and, at times consequential product that has been brought to my attention several times. Notwithstanding the endless conflicts for coal being infamous, I had never even heard of such an extreme and unfair war happening in the middle-east. From what I understand, America's two allies were angering each other and were approaching a war. It was foreseeable that America would decide to support Saudi Arabia because that meant more profit for America. The most shocking news was the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq. The restrictions Iraq citizens faced were beyond extreme, and ridiculous. Not only were these sanctions really severe, but they were also still recovering from a recent war. A ludicrous economic sanction Mr.Paterson had stressed was not allowing pencils in the country, a stationary that is crucial for education. Hence, they had banned pencils for too many years just because they could be utilized to manufacture machines. Something else that was shocking was the number of years these sanctions were imposed. At first, when I heard about these regulations, I estimated that they were carried out for at most, three years. However, Mr.Patterson said they were implemented for a shocking, 7 years (1991-1997). 

To further elucidate, depleted uranium permeated Iraq and since it is a radioactive chemical and caused countless cases of cancer, it is considered a nuclear weapon (in the broadest sense). Although it seems like the story could not get any worse, it still gets worse. A person (whose name I did not take note of) probably in the top-right quadrant on the political scale, said that "this price was worth paying" as if killing half a million children was okay. Putting aside her quotes, the worst part is that America did not actually pay the money to clean up the depleted uranium in Iraq, regardless of them obtaining the technology to do so. Although the sanctions were slightly lifted, they still heavily impact innocent citizens in Iraq and benefit corporations in the US, preserving dollar hegemony which is far from being destructed in the first place. To stand up against this horrid reality, millions of people took to the streets and demonstrated in over 80 cities, but to no one's surprise, only a small number of people demonstrated in metropolitan Tokyo. At the time I was not aware of the issue, but if I am constantly on the lookout for advocates posting on social media, I definitely think I can take action next time. 

Notes: 

Kuwait stole oil from Iraq, drilled it diagonally to acquire coal. 

economic sanction: Iraq could not buy anything, their embassies were all frozen. 

by 2000, the UN now had 23 billion dollars in a bank account that they could not get to 

EU is an economic rival against the US

80 cities around, 70m + people demonstrating. 

UN gave 23 billion to the US pentagon, to rebuild Iraq.