Friday's class

On Friday at ELP, we watched a video about demonstrations against WTO policy in Seattle and how media changes facts of what actually occurred there. It was really hard to believe because America is often said to be like "a country of freedom", but in reality what WTO and police were doing was oppressing the weak violently. My heart ached for it a lot..but at the same time I felt kind of ashamed of myself too. People in this demo seemed to be very powerful and believed that they could change the situations, and even though they were subjected to police violence, they looked like satisfying with having been there. Probably that is because everyone in there had same hope which gave strong unity to people. As told in class, Japanese seems contrast to these people. They are uninterested in what is happening outside and also inside of Japan. That may be because unless something is directly related to their lives, they think they are not their business. Or I could say they tend to think they cannot change things if they get actions....I am Japanese, and I think I can be these sort of people, but I have no idea why Japanese way of thinking is like this.
I have been searching about Futenma issue because currently it is a main topic of Japan, and it seems that people in Okinawa and a few educated people in mainland protest that Futenma base should be at least outside of Okinawa, but many many people in mainland do not get action to protest against this issue. It is true that people in Okinawa has been suffered for this 65years because of American air bases. However in one video I watched, one guy said that people in Okinawa profit from American bases..perhaps some of aspects of these bases can be profitable for some people...but Japanese media says 70% of people in Okinawa are against this issue. I do not think I can get true information from Japanese media because I am in mainland and it must be quite different from contents of news in Okinawa. How can I get true information in Japan though we are now able to know things in overseas from freedocumentaries?
I now think that I knew only a few things about the world I live in. It is really shame that we Japanese people are not interested in the weak who are subjected to violence, and those who are suffered from wars and diseases in developing countries...I will get efforts to know about it and in the future want to change these situations.