"President Arroyo and her aides may choose to call it a Declaration of the State of Emergency, but the stench of Martial Law has pervaded the entire country."

By "saving democracy," Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has just destroyed it. FLAG calls on Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to withdraw her Proclamation.

We condemn in strongest terms GMA's Proclamation 1017 which is short of formally declaring Martial rule.

Calling for opposition to the continued stationing of U.S. forces in Sagamihara and Zama, about 1,200 citizens took part in a rally in Sagamihara City on January 29.

The first round of joint US-Philippine war games, a month-long small-unit field training exercise, is to be held starting 17 January 2006 in and around Camp Lucero, the base of the Philippine Army's 602nd Infantry Brigade in Carmen town, North Cotabato province, in the southern island of Mindanao. The last time that war games were conducted by US forces with their Filipino counterparts in this town was in July 2004.

After lifting the ban on U.S. beef imports, a shipment of U.S. beef has arrived with the backbone, vulnerable to BSE infection. It was found during visual quarantine inspection. The government must be held responsible for this.

A close-circuit video camera in every bank, on every shop front, every shopping mall,  every train station, every local government camera, any private business with a camera, every corner shop - centrally linked with live feeds to police command – not science fiction or a left-wing paranoia, but a reality in Australia's state of New South Wales.

Australian society has become increasingly militarised over the last five years but legislation introduced in the Senate on December 7, as many people were winding down for the summer break, goes much further.

The fall out from the riots on Sydney’s beaches continues amid accusations that the State government and police have ‘gone soft’ on Australians from Lebanese backgrounds.

The Japanese government plans to submit to the next ordinary Diet session a bill to revise the special agreement on Japan's funding for the stationing of U.S. forces in Japan under Article 24 of the Status of U.S. Forces in Japan Agreement (SOFA) so that it can be extended two more years.

During Indonesia’s occupation of Timor there were some 18,600 unlawful killings or disappearances between 1975 and 1999. The Report says that the Indonesian military was responsible for 70% of the killings.

A woman U.S. sailor driving a vehicle on December 22, 2005 hit three elementary school boys (3rd graders) at an intersection in Hachioji City, Tokyo, and drove away. She was immediately arrested by the Hachioji Police on suspicion of professional negligence resulting in injury and violating the Road Traffic Law, but was released after the U.S. Atsugi Naval Air Station command sent a certificate stating that she had been "on duty."

"This is racism and must be condemned and opposed", said ...the Communist Party in a statement strongly condemning the riots on several Sydney beaches over the past few days. Racism is a generations-old policy cynically used by the ruling circles in a number of countries to divert attention from their inability to look after the economic and social needs of the people and to blame "outside" groups for their failures.

Earlier in the day, Koizumi held a meeting with leaders of the Opposition: the Japanese Communist Party, the Democratic Party of Japan, and the Social Democratic Party. JCP Chair Shii Kazuo emphasized that extending the Iraq deployment of SDF troops has no justification and demanded that the government immediately bring them home.

"This is racism and must be condemned and opposed", said the Secretariat of the Communist Party in a statement strongly condemning the riots on several Sydney beaches over the past few days.

The Japanese government is planning to pay the costs necessary for constructing a new U.S. base in Guam to relocate 7,000 U.S. Marines from Okinawa. Japan already pays 600 billion yen that covers most of the costs of stationing U.S. forces in Japan.

A weakened Japanese government resolution calling for nuclear disarmament was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly First Committee with 166 votes for and 2 votes against (the United States and India), with 7 abstentions.

The Howard Government has included in its latest “anti-terrorist” legislation horrific provisions that allows police to “shoot to kill” anyone they claim to be involved in terrorist activities... Anti-war demonstrations, for example, could easily be deemed to be violent if they involved a physical attack by pro-government counter-demonstrators.

Tokyo Governor Ishihara Shintaro in the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly on September 27 discredited the United Nations by stating, "Only fools take the U.N. Charter seriously."

The government plans to publish an interim report on the Japan-U.S. talks on U.S. military realignment in October after a long delay due to the general election...The need now is for the government to let the U.S. government know how strong local refusal to accept U.S. bases in their municipalities is and to call for the cancellation of the realignment of U.S. bases in Japan.