Monday, Nov. 10, 2208, Kyodo News.

Memorial services honors widow of Chiune Sugihara - Friend and film director Steven Spielberg sent a letter of condolence, while representatives from the Israeli and Lithuanian governments were among the mourners who expressed sorrow at the loss of a “brave woman.”

Sugihara died of cardiac arrest on Oct. 8 at the age of 94.

“Yukiko has continued to stand as a heroic, brave woman, a true humanitarian, and a righteous person, whom the world should never forget,” Spielberg said in the letter.

He has praised Chiune as “Japan’s Schindler,” comparing his deeds to those of Oskar Schindler, the German factory owner in Poland who provided Jews with safe haven during World War II and was depicted in Spielberg’s film, “Schindler’s List.”

Chiune, who was the consul general in the then Lithuanian capital of Kaunas from 1938 to 1940, is known for rescuing 6,000 Jews from the Holocaust.

***

“We have lost yet another important witness who saw with their own eyes the Holocaust tragedy and who had made a personal decision to defy indifference,” Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus said in a letter.

Kaunas was sandwiched between Germany and the Soviet Union. After German leader Adolf Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939, Britain and France declared war on Germany. Nazi armies invaded Poland and Jewish refugees streamed into Lithuania.

Chiune repeatedly sought permission from the Japanese Foreign Ministry to issue visas for the fleeing Jews, but his request was turned down.

He then issued them with transit visas on his own initiative. Records show that the recipients traveled via Siberia and Japan to eventual safety in the United States and other destinations.

***

The Israeli government expressed condolences to Yukiko’s family through its embassy in Tokyo, saying, “She stood by her husband, assisted and supported him as he followed the voice of his conscience . . . in the face of what later became known as a tragedy of unprecedented magnitude.”

Monday, November 10, 2208, North Korea allegedly ready to allow 1977 abductee to meet family

TOTTORI (Kyodo, Japan Times online) A senior North Korean government official has told a Chinese person involved in a trade business that the government official intends to arrange a meeting between Kyoko Matsumoto, who was abducted by the North in 1977, and her family, Matsumoto’s brother Hajime said Sunday.

The 61-year-old brother was also told by the Chinese person that Matsumoto’s husband and a Japanese couple, who are all suspected to have been abducted by North Korea, are at the same workplace with Matsumoto.

Hajime received the information in a meeting with the Chinese man in early October, which was arranged by the Investigation Commission on Missing Japanese Probably Related to North Korea.

“It has become increasingly likely that Kyoko is alive. It’s hard to tell how true the information is, but I would go to meet with her if asked,” Hajime Matsumoto said.

The investigation commission said earlier this month a woman who may be Matsumoto conveyed in mid-October a message that includes information only she could know.

Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone said Sunday on a Fuji Television program, “If the information (about the message) is true, Ms. Matsumoto is doing fine and it’s a good thing. We will make further efforts to achieve a resolution through diplomatic channels.”

Matsumoto, who disappeared from Tottori Prefecture at age 29, was recognized by the Japanese government as an abductee in 2006, making the total number of such people listed 17. The Japanese government says that North Korea has denied she ever entered the country.

Melting ice in the Arctic, but the lure of resources is just too strong. Europe’s Arctic adventure - The new cold rush for resources.
LEIGH PHILLIPS, the EUobserver, November 7, 2008. THIS ARTICLE FROM TROMSO, NORWAY.

EUOBSERVER / TROMSO - PART ONE - There’s this grizzled old guy in the hospital with worsening lung cancer. The doctors can’t tell him whether it’s fatal yet, but each new test shows a rapidly deteriorating condition.

He’s been a heavy smoker all his life, although he’s trying to quit, but one day, while he’s wandering the corridors, he comes across a long-abandoned storeroom and it’s rammed to the gills with cigarettes, cigars, roll-your-own tobacco of every brand and region. There are Cuban cigars, Moroccan apple-flavoured nargileh tobacco, Swedish snus and jars of aromatic pipe shag. It’s an Aladdin’s cave of tobacco left over from the days when hospital cafeterias still sold cigarettes, and the nurses and security staff are nowhere to be seen.

The man briefly thinks that he should just forget he ever opened the storeroom door and get back to the business of quitting, but he’s dazzled by the hoard and instead stuffs as much of it into his pyjamas as he can to take back to his bed and puffs his nicotine-addled brains out.

There’s no tobacco hoard in a cupboard somewhere in the Arctic, but there is however a quarter of the world’s remaining undiscovered oil and gas now within reach as a result of the far north rapidly melting.

Like the old man in the hospital, the European Union and countries on the shores of the Arctic sea have said to themselves: “There may be a chance that we can slow down and reverse global warming, so we really should give up our addiction to fossil fuels. But how can we turn our backs - and our wallets - on such a bonanza, even if it’s full of the very stuff that caused the problem in the first place?”

Or is such an environmentalist caricature unfair to the people of the northern regions, for the most part long shut out from the industrial development and the wealth of the more southerly parts of Europe, Canada, Russia and the United States?

Many of those living in the Arctic are aboriginal people, who have historically borne the double burden of underdevelopment in their regions and racial prejudice. And until recently very little has been available to anyone up north apart from far-from-bountiful farming and the occasional mine that inevitably closes down.

Can we really say “No” to improving the standard of living in the north through development, especially if it can be done sustainably?

With recent months in particular seeing both a cascade of truly alarming news on how fast the Arctic is changing and pronouncements from the European Union and other circumpolar powers on plans for exploitation of newly accessible resources, the EUobserver decided to visit Europe’s patch of the Arctic, the northernmost tip of mainland Norway - still outside the EU, but very much Brussels’ advance guard up in the high north - to find out the reality behind the headlines about the coming “scramble for the Arctic”, and look at all sides in the debate over the Arctic’s future.

***

Methane burps:

The situation at the top of the world has taken a sharp turn for the worse just in the last few weeks.

On 6 September, leading European and American ice specialists at the US National Ice Center reported that for the first time, a ring of navigable waters around the Arctic ice cap opened up the fabled Northwest Passage through the Canadian Arctic archipelago - the maritime Holy Grail of a faster trade route from Europe to Asia sought for centuries by explorers - and the Northern Sea Route, also known as the Northeast Passage, over Eurasia, at the same time.

Then, in late September, Swedish and Russian scientists found the first evidence that millions of tonnes of methane - a gas that is 20 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide - is bubbling up from beneath the Siberian Arctic seabed.

The amount of methane stored beneath the Arctic is greater than the world’s remaining global stores of coal and it is now rising up from the bottom of the ocean through “methane chimney” discovered by scientists aboard the research ship Jacob Smirnitskyi.

Days later, British scientists aboard the James Clark Ross found hundreds of plumes of methane burping up from the Arctic seabed to the west of the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard midway between mainland Norway and the North Pole.

NASA’s top climate scientist, James Hansen, says that the release of methane clathrates from permafrost regions and beneath the seabed will unleash powerful feedback forces that could produce runaway climate change that cannot be controlled - the so-called methane time bomb - a prediction of radical environmental transformation far worse than the worst-case scenarios theorised by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Then on Tuesday (28 October), the European Space Agency reported that Arctic sea ice was thinning at a record rate, with the thickness of sea ice in large parts of the Arctic having declined by as much as 19 percent last winter compared to the previous five winters.

***

Last days of the ‘ice bear:’

“The Arctic is warming at two times the rate of the rest of the world,” says Nalan Koc, a senior scientist with the polar climate programme at the Norwegian Polar Institute, in Tromso, explaining why all of this is happening.

Tromso, in the far north of Norway and home to the world’s northernmost university, at the same time is preparing itself for the economic bonanza that the melting will bring.

Nalan Koc, however, is not as excited as other Tromso inhabitants. In a Power Point presentation of this Arctic apocalypse, she starkly lists the myriad ways in which the environment is fundamentally altering. “Amplified by positive feedback, the Arctic is seeing increased precipitation, declining snow cover, rising river flows, thawing permafrost, melting glaciers, retreating summer sea ice, rising sea levels, and ocean salinity changes making the water less saline.”

The talk, despite its subject, is deceptively banal. Where are the four horsemen? A moon turned blood-red? Instead, the end of days is being announced not by skeletonous biblical heralds but in bullet points and embedded videos that take three minutes to load.

The permafrost is melting under tundra that previously was stable, she explains, buckling roads and highways as the ground beneath them gives way.

In the marine environment, sea temperatures are rising and the ice cover is melting. Ice-dependent species such as the polar bear, which the Norwegians more accurately call “isbjorn” or “ice bear,” as well as the walrus and the ringed seal all face an uncertain future. Some scientists believe the polar bear will be extinct by mid-century.

“When you’ve been around up here for as long as I have, you begin to see it with your own eyes from year to year,” she says. “You can feel it in your bones.”

Last year saw a record low extent of Arctic sea ice cover - 4.3 million square kilometres - more than 40 percent below averages in the 1980s and more than 20 percent below the previous record low in 2005. “But more important than the extent is the volume of the ice. Most of the older thicker ice is not surviving from one summer to the next. As of 2007, most of the ice was three or four-year-old ice. As of 2008, most ice is just one year old.”

The massive ice loss and thinning is forcing scientists to quickly ratchet lower even their worst expectations - the 2007 melting came some 30 years ahead of model predictions.

In 2004, it was predicted that the ice would have melted sufficiently to allow commercial traffic in the Arctic Ocean by 2090. In 2007, it was predicted that commercial traffic would be able to cross by 2040. As of 2008, the predictions are for some time in the next five years, with the first start-up possibly in 2009. Models now predict an ice-free Arctic Ocean in the summer some time between 2013 and 2040.

The last time the Arctic Ocean was ice-free in the summer was over a million years ago.

Her colleague, Kit Kovacs, the Biodiversity Research Programme leader at the institute says: “The changes are happening so rapidly that scientists are having trouble processing it all. From initial tests to publishing papers takes at a minimum months or a couple of years, but change is happening much faster than that.

“The biodiversity loss is just as profound as if there were a loss of the Amazon rainforest within the space of five years.”

***

Oil and gas bonanza:

What looks like the end for the polar bear, however, looks like Christmas for resource companies and European energy security concerns.

Johan Petter Barlindhaug, the chair of North Energy, a northern-Norway-based oil-and-gas start-up currently exploring energy sources on the Norwegian continental shelf, says the melting Arctic could offer northern peoples, who have historically lived in a very much underdeveloped region, a chance to have similar standards of living as those who live in the cities and towns further south.

“Climate change poses lots of threats, but it also opens up a range of possibilities,” he says.

Oil companies like North Energy and Norwegian energy giant Statoil Hydro believe the Arctic holds as much as 25 percent of the worlds undiscovered oil and gas deposits - as much as the combined reserves of Canada and Saudi Arabia.

Russia’s Gazprom already has approximately 34 trillion cubic metres (113 trillion cubic feet) of gas under development in the Barents Sea and Moscow is claiming territory in the Arctic that contains an estimated 586 billion barrels of oil.

Mineral resources may also abound, particularly coal, iron, lead, copper, nickel, zinc and sulphides, as well as precious minerals such as gold and diamonds. Recent diamond discoveries in the Canadian Arctic have made the country, which previously didn’t produce any of the stones, the third biggest exporter of diamonds in the world.

On maps that place the North Pole at the centre of the world, instead of the equator, Mr Barlindhaug shows how a melting Arctic also opens up three different shortcuts for shipping goods between Europe and Asia - routes that will save shipping firms, exporters and importers, and the world’s navies and smugglers - billions of euros.

The shipping industry is hoping for a 20 percent saving, he enthuses, with still greater savings for the megaships that cannot fit through the Suez or Panama canals and have to sail round the tips of Africa or South America.

Although Mr Barlindhaug believes that the third shortcut - straight across the pole - offers the most potential.

“The Northwest and Northeast Passages aren’t as important as building ports on Iceland and in Norway and Russia,” he says. “This is because the Canadians view the Northwest Passage as domestic, and there’s something of the same with the Northeast Passage, which is within Russian borders.

“In any case, international waters closer to the North Pole provide routes that are much shorter. But it’s also a matter of speed and cost. Between the Canadian or Russian islands, you can’t pick up much speed while you’re navigating through them. It’s too narrow.

“But at 20-25 knots across the pole, then you’re really saving some money. It would take just five days to cross from the Bering Sea to the Barent Sea. It doesn’t need to be completely ice free.”

He then moves on to the expanded fishing opportunities and potential for discoveries of new medicines derived from invertebrates living in extreme polar environments that round out the economic bounty becoming available as the climate warms up.

Some 10 percent of global white fish stocks swim through the waters of the Barents Sea, the Bering Sea, and near Iceland, offering catches worth billions of euros.

Nonetheless, “bio-prospecting” for new medicines is by far the greater catch, believes Mr Barlindhaug: “These invertebrates are chemical factories that will produce the next generation of medicines. They’re far more important than the fish that is up there.”

In a visit to brand-spanking new labs at the University of Tromso, Jeanette Andersen, of Mabcent-SFI, a public-private bio-prospecting outfit launched last year with €20.5 million (180m NOK) in funding, explains the potential for new treatments and cures coming from molluscs that poison passing fish or colourless mini-starfish that love the cold.

“The marine environment in the high Arctic is unparalleled with respect to combination of temperature and light regimes,” she says. “This implies evolution of organisms with unique physiological and biochemical adaptations.”

She says that the potential is enormous, from antibiotics, chemotherapy, and painkillers to anti-bacterials, anti-oxidents, anti-inflammatory medicines, but Mabcent also hopes to discover creatures that have cosmetic and industrial applications, and even better food and drink preservation.

“But all high-profit,” she enthuses, describing how her biologist and chemist colleagues dive off into the depths of the Arctic Ocean like a team of submariner Indiana Joneses, before they race back to the university to freeze the hundreds of different specimens. They then grind them into a pulp that is investigated by viking boffins at stupidly expensive machines who identify the wild new molecules produced by the exotic biochemistry of these nigh-on alien creatures.

“Living in environments that range from 1.8 to 8 degrees celsius, these organisms are adapted to cold temperatures. As you warm up the metabolism, you speed up the effectiveness of enzymes, so the thinking is that enzymes existing at these temperatures will work faster in warm humans.”

However, some of the different industries opening up as Arctic waters open up pose a threat to others.

Pooh-poohing the idea that oil and gas exploration threatens the environment, North Energy’s Mr Barlindhaug reckons it’s a massive expansion of unsustainable fishing practices and illegal fishing that pose the greatest threat, particularly to bio-prospecting.

“Bottom trawling is much more damaging than oil and gas exploration, as the you find oil all over the rocks and sand on the sea bed. These creatures are used to it - there’s nothing to worry about from oil and gas exploration.

“Bioprospectors should be more scared about increased fishing activity. That’ll damage these organisms much more,” he insists.

Jeanette back at Mabcent is not so sure: “We need to be worried about oil and gas exploration. What Mr Barlindhaug said is too easy an answer to the question of oil spills. Some organisms will adapt, yes, but others are very vulnerable.”

In the second part of the EUobserver’s look at the politics and business of the melting Arctic, appearing on Monday, we look at Kirkenes, a small harbour town sometimes called ‘Little Murmansk’ for its 10 percent Russian population, and how it is set to be transformed by the oil and gas bonanza opening up as the ice disappears.

Friday, Nov. 7, 2008

Europe’s mania for a black U.S. president.

By IAN BURUMA
NEW YORK — Why do Europeans adore America’s president-elect, Barack Obama? Stupid question, you might say. He is young, handsome, smart, inspiring, educated, cosmopolitan, and above all, he promises a radical change from the most unpopular American administration in history. Compare that to his rival John McCain, who talked about change, but to most Europeans represented the opposite.

And yet, there is something odd about the European mania for a black American politician, even as we all know that a black president or prime minister (let alone one whose middle name is Hussein) is still unthinkable in Europe. Or perhaps that is precisely the point.


Europeans have long been hospitable to black American stars. Think of Josephine Baker, who wowed Parisians and Berliners at a time when blacks could not vote — or even use the same bathrooms as whites — in many parts of the United States. Cities like Paris, Copenhagen and Amsterdam offered refuge to black American jazz musicians, who needed a break from institutionalized racism. The same was true for other artists. James Baldwin, for example, found a home in France.

Since there were very few black people in Europe, the adoration of black American stars came easily. It made Europeans feel superior to Americans. They could pat themselves on the back for their lack of racial prejudice. When large numbers of people from non-Western countries started to come to Europe after the 1960s, this proved to be something of an illusion. Still, the illusion was nice while it lasted, and Obamamania may contain an element of nostalgia, as well as hope.

The other reason for the European love affair with Obama is that he is seen as something more than an American. Unlike McCain, the all-American war hero, Obama looks like a citizen of the world. With his Kenyan father, he carries the glamour once associated with Third World liberation movements. Nelson Mandela inherited that glamour; indeed, he personified it. Some of that has rubbed off on Obama, too.

***

This did not help him much at home. Indeed, it could easily have hurt him. Republican populists have long tried to depict their Democratic opponents, often with great success, as “un-American” elitists, intellectuals and the kind of guys who speak French — in short, “Europeans.”

When Obama made his rousing speech at the Berlin Tiergarten in July, in front of 200,000 cheering Germans, his popularity ratings at home actually fell, especially in the old industrial “Rust Belt” of Ohio and Pennsylvania. He came dangerously close to looking too “European.” But the real Europeans loved him for it.

But the main reason for Obamamania may be more complex. It has become popular of late for European pundits and commentators to write the U.S. off as a great power, let alone an inspirational one. In this, they have more or less followed public opinion.

Many liberal-minded people expressed, often sorrowfully, their deep disillusion with America during the dark Bush years. The nation they had grown up looking up to, as a beacon of hope — a place that, while flawed, still inspired dreams of a better future and produced great movies, soaring buildings, rock ‘n’ roll, John F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr. — had been hopelessly tainted by reckless wars, officially sanctioned torture, coarse chauvinism, and extraordinary political arrogance.

Others expressed the same disillusion with a gloating air of schadenfreude. At last, that big, arrogant, fatally seductive nation, which left the Old World in its shade for so long, had been brought to its knees. Watching the economic rise of China, Russia and India, and the American debacles in the Middle East, it was tempting to believe that U.S. power really did not count for very much anymore. A multipolar world, many thought, would be vastly preferable to more Pax Americana.

Yet such projections could never entirely disguise a nagging anxiety. How many Europeans (or Asians, for that matter) would really be happier being subjected to the superior power of China or Russia? Under all the confident-sounding dismissals of U.S. power, there is still some yearning to return to a more reassuring time, when the democratic world could lay its collective head on Uncle Sam’s broad shoulders. This, too, is probably an illusion. Too much has changed since the Marshall Plan, the Berlin Airlift, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. But I do not believe that the American dream has died in Europe quite yet. Obamamania seems to have revived it.

Obama’s election has demonstrated that things are still achievable in the U.S. that remain unthinkable elsewhere. As long as this is so, the U.S., as primus inter pares, can still be looked up to as the defender of our freedoms.

***

Europeans — and others — may regard China’s rise with awe, and hope to find a modus vivendi with Russia, but without the hopes inspired by that extraordinary republic that represents the worst and the best of our battered Western world, we would all be much worse off. In their hearts, most Europeans know this. That is why they are going crazy over Barack Obama’s election.

Ian Buruma is professor of human rights at Bard College. His most recent book is “Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance.”

Friday, Nov. 7, 2008

Japan asked to join new Arctic shipping regime.

By KEISUKE OKADA, Staff writer, The Japan Times online.
Japan should join hands with the United States and other Arctic states in ongoing multilateral efforts to create a new shipping regime in the Arctic Ocean, a U.S. official said Thursday in Tokyo.

International cooperation is vital to ensure that shipping in the Arctic is “safe, secure and reliable,” according to Mead Treadwell, chairman of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission, an advisory body to the president and Congress.

As a result of receding sea ice, caused by global warming, the Arctic is expected to open up for global shipping in the future. This will present strategic options for Japan’s industry in light of shorter shipping routes from Japan to Europe via the Arctic Ocean, Treadwell said at a media conference in Tokyo.

The eight-nation Arctic Council, established in 1996 as a high-level intergovernmental forum to promote cooperation among Arctic states, is currently working on an Arctic marine shipping assessment, due to be completed in 2009, according to Treadwell.

Aware of the strategic importance, China and South Korea have already joined the Arctic Council as observers and Treadwell recommended that Japan do likewise.

Aside from its potential for shipping, the Arctic is surfacing as a new battleground for energy resources. In August 2007, Russia stunned the world by planting its national flag in a titanium capsule on the seabed beneath the North Pole, causing other Arctic states — the U.S., Canada, Denmark and Norway — to scramble for a share of a potential new oil bonanza.

Thursday, Nov. 6, 2008

Fukui town of Obama erupts in victory parties

By ERIC JOHNSTON
Staff writer, The Japan Times.
OBAMA, Fukui Pref. — Yes we did. That’s what residents in the Sea of Japan town of Obama were chanting Wednesday during a boisterous celebration following Barack Obama’s victory in the U.S. presidential election.

Obama for Obama: Residents of the town of Obama, Fukui Prefecture, rejoice Wednesday at the news that U.S. Sen. Barack Obama will be the next U.S. president. KYODO PHOTO

Nearly 150 Obama supporters, including a number of Americans, were on hand to celebrate Barack Obama’s victory as America’s next president.

Until the U.S. presidential campaign attracted international media attention, the town had been known in Japan more for its fresh seafood, proximity to nuclear power plants and for being home to two Japanese nationals abducted by North Korea, than as a bastion of ardent support for a U.S. presidential candidate.

The party kicked off Wednesday morning with Hawaiian dancing performed by the “Obama Girls,” in honor of Obama’s adoptive state, where his grandmother, who passed away Monday, had lived.

There was also a performance by the Anyone Brothers Band, who played a rendition of their hit single (in Obama at least) “Obama is Beautiful.”

Many residents were excited about the victory, but some also wondered what kind of change the new president can bring to U.S.-Japanese relations, especially under Japan’s current government.

“He’s young, so he’ll have lots of new ideas and he ran on the mandate of change. Hopefully, he’ll use his connection with our town to improve Japan’s relations with the U.S.,” said Masao Okao, a local guide.

“Obama’s election is good news for now. But will he make Japanese-U.S. relations better? It’s difficult to say if he’ll have a good relationship with (Prime Minister Taro) Aso,” said Hiroko Morishita, who owns a small restaurant in the town. “We may have to wait until after the Lower House election to see what direction Japanese-U.S. relations will take.”

Not all residents were excited by the prospect of their namesake becoming the U.S. president, however.

One local fisherman, who refused to give his name, said he feared that under the new president, who has said he favors direct talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, there will be no progress on the fate of the Japanese who were abducted to North Korea.

Two Japanese, Yasushi and Fukie Chimura, were abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and returned to Japan in 2002. Both are from Obama.

Town leaders hope the international fame generated by their support will translate into increased business opportunities, and local merchants are already selling Obama Burgers, Obama sushi rolls (called Victory Wraps) and other products with the president-elect’s face stamped on them.

Alcillena Wilson, a black American English teacher and Obama supporter based in the town, said it is possible more tourists visiting Japan will make the trip to Obama.

“Obama is only a couple of hours from Kyoto, so the town is in a good position to attract tourists from abroad who want a day trip,” she said.

The town’s support for the president-elect began early this year after unconfirmed reports that the candidate had passed through Japan last year and jokingly told immigration officials he was “Obama who had come from Obama.”

A support group for Obama’s candidacy was formed, and the mayor sent Obama a small selection of local products and an explanation about the town.

“I understand Obama is a city of rich culture, deep traditions and natural beauty. We share more than a common name. We share a common planet and common responsibilities. I’m touched by your friendly gesture,” Obama said in a thank you letter sent to the mayor in February.

Obama officials plan to attend the January inauguration in Washington, and will issue a formal invitation for Obama to visit their town after he is sworn in.

At a separate ceremony Wednesday evening, Kenyan Ambassador to Japan Dennis Awori, representing the country where Obama’s father was born, said it was a great day for the city of Obama, for the U.S. and for Kenya.

America’s relations with Africa are expected to grow particularly strong under Obama, he said.

Obama Mayor Koji Matsuzaki added that his city hoped to form a sister-city relationship with the Kenyan town of Kisumu.

Monday, Nov. 3, 2008

Tibetans will decide strategy with democracy: Dalai Lama

By JUN HONGO
Staff writer, Japan Times

The people of Tibet should and will decide negotiation strategy with China later this month through a genuinely democratic manner, the Dalai Lama said Sunday.

Dalai Lama YOSHIAKI MIURA PHOTO

The Tibetan spiritual leader, accused by Beijing of masterminding a separatist movement, is in Japan for a week at the invitation of a Fukuoka-based Buddhist organization.

During a joint interview with Japanese media at a Tokyo hotel, he explained that envoys from Tibetan communities will meet for a week at Dharamsala, India, beginning Nov. 17, and international groups supporting Tibet will gather in Delhi later in the month to decide Tibet’s approach toward achieving “realistic autonomy” from China.

Envoys for Tibet’s government in exile left India on Wednesday for talks with officials in Beijing, but the Dalai Lama said he hasn’t received word yet on how the meeting has been going.

While he said he hasn’t given up hope or resigned from his position, the Dalai Lama said he could no longer take direct responsibility for discussions with Beijing, and decisions will be made based on a consensus of the people through a democratic process.

The meeting of Tibetan communities and international organizations could alter Tibetans’ strategy with China, and the Dalai Lama said he intends not to talk of his preferences until the meetings are over.

Tibetans believe in genuine democracy “unlike the communist democracy in China,” he said, explaining that “people may not express (their thoughts) freely” if he were to voice his position.

However the Dalai Lama repeated during the interview that his ultimate goal is not to gain independence from Beijing but to make sure Tibet’s cultural and religious heritage is not destroyed.

“We are not seeking separation from China” because remaining a part of the rapidly growing economy will help Tibet’s development, he said.

Preserving Tibetan Buddhism and its ideology will benefit China as well, where “very dirty, corrupted capitalism” is emerging, he added.

“But the Chinese (government) ignores these things, continues to accuse us, and is full of suspicion,” the Dalai Lama said, criticizing the regime for having “no ear but only mouth.”

China has controlled Tibet since invading the region in the 1950s. Beijing has ruled its people through what the Dalai Lama described as “use of force to keep stability,” which has caused scores of riots. Frustration reached its peak this spring, when antigovernment monks rioted. The Dalai Lama criticized Beijing’s crackdowns on the Tibetan people during and after the clashes. Tibet “very much hoped that the Chinese government may see reality, and how many grievances are in Tibetan mind,” the Dalai Lama said, but he expressed disappointment that China has only continued to blame him as the mastermind of separatists and the riots.

“There is an iron curtain within their minds, never seeing reality. Never seeing others’ views,” he said.

“It is important to know the limitation of material value,” the Dalai Lama said, explaining that repletion of the mind is far more valuable than financial wealth.

The Dalai Lama’s health has been a concern after the 73-year-old underwent surgery for gallstones last month, but he said that although the operation was complicated, he has surprised his doctors with his quick recovery.

Google got onto a Green Business Information Spree With Its GREEN CHIP sending out Green Chip Review
<gcr-eletter@angelnexus.com> and telling potential subscribers:

International Companies are Dominating the Cleantech Space:

Many of the world’s new energy technologies are being developed in countries outside the United States. Germany, for example, is mother to the modern solar industry. The Danes have all but cornered the wind industry with the now-famous Vestas Wind Systems. Green Chip International is taking full advantage of this phenomenon. Its latest German solar recommendation is up about 11% in under two weeks. Everyday, international renewables companies are delivering monster gains.

Further:

Google’s Green Imperative
By Sam Hopkins | Saturday, November 1st, 2008
What’s the one industry that’s changed as much in the past few decades as energy?  Infotech.