No! G8 Action Japan: World Info-tour with Go Hirasawa and Sabu Kohso

The annual meetings of the G8 – Eight heads of state who together represent two thirds of the world economy – have increasingly become a flashpoint for global anti-capitalist protests.

In anticipation of the July 2008 G8 meeting in Lake Toya in Hokkaido, Japan, a network of anti-authoritarians and anarchists in Japan have formed No! G8 Action. Members of the group are currently on a world-wide “info-tour” discussing the implications of free trade, neo-liberal reforms, militarization, and other global issues for Japan and East Asia, as well as their plans for direct action resistance at the upcoming summit.

Go Hirasawa is an activist and film critic, teaching at Meiji-gakuin University in Tokyo. He has published a number of books on postwar avant-garde cinema in Japan. His focus has been on the relationship between radical politics and underground cinema production of the 1960s. He has organized a number of symposia and screenings world-wide on this and related subjects. He has been active in the anti-fascist movement in Japan, and is a member of the No! G8 Action.

Sabu Kohso is an activist, writer, and translator living in New York since 1980. He has published two books in Japanese about New York`s radical culture and movements, and has translated books by theorists such as David Graeber (from English to Japanese) and Kojin Karatani (from Japanese to English). He is a member of the No! G8 Action, and is also a member of IWW’s New York chapter.

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This talk is the second in a series of conversations in various San Francisco locations on critical contemporary topics. To be added to the mailing list for future events, please send a request to kathellenw [at] aol.com.

For more information on GCF: http://www.globalcommonsfoundation.org

For more information on No! G8 Action: http://a.sanpal.co.jp/no-g8 and http://www.jca.apc.org/alt-g8