The Fukushima Crisis Demonstrates how Lowly the Global Elites Hold the Common People

[Octafish]

The owners of TEPCO and their servants, the government of Japan, failed to warn, let alone protect, hundreds of thousands of children in harm's way.

Where’s the compassion? Where’s the admission of guilt for ruining another’s life? Where’s the basic human requirement for a civilized society, that is: to treat every other human being with dignity?



Human life is nothing to them. They see other people as things to be used and tossed aside. They are like solipsists or sociopaths who think other human beings are nothing who exist merely to be used for their own comfort and benefit.

Japan ignored own radiation forecasts

EXCERPT...

They were never informed of the predictions that they were at risk. In an interview with the AP, Namie's mayor said it took more than 24 hours for him to realize — from watching TV — that the evacuees were in danger. He sent buses to move some of them out. But, unaware of the risks, they were taken to another part of town also forecast to be in the plume's path. Most were left to fend for themselves.

"When I think about it now, I am outraged," Principal Hidenori Arakawa said. "Our lives were put at risk."

Documents obtained by the AP, interviews with key officials and a review of other newly released documents and parliamentary transcripts indicate that the government's use of the forecast data was hamstrung by communication breakdowns and a lack of even a basic understanding of the system at the highest levels.

It's unclear how much radiation people might have been exposed to by staying in areas in the path of the radioactive plume, let alone whether any might suffer health problems from the exposure. It could be difficult to ever prove a connection: Health officials say they have no plans to prioritize radiation tests of those who were at the school.

Question: Did Corporate McPravda inform you that TEPCO and Tokyo sent out a 200-page form people needed to read and return a major chunk thereof in order to make a claim on their losses? That doesn't include the receipts they were supposed to have held on to during their evacuation.

The owners of TEPCO call the tune. And the government of Japan does go along with it. For shame.

Tepco Compensation Rules Outrageous, Fukushima Evacuees Say

EXCERPT...

Evacuees from around Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant said the company's 200-page package for compensation claims is “outrageous” and needs to be simplified.

The utility known as Tepco started sending out 60,000 application forms this week to those forced to evacuate after the plant started belching radiation in March. The package includes three forms that need to be filled in, one of which has 56 pages. A 156-page explanatory booklet completes the bundle of documents, while claimants are required to submit receipts and other records to support claims.

Their complete and utter disregard for human life in Japan and around the world is not only a criminal offense, their dereliction of duty constitutes crimes against humanity.

Now, just to make sure everything gets fixed up right, the PTB in Japan have selected to lead the clean up the same guy who sold Japan on the idea that sunflowers will soak up fallout and to to think happy thoughts and remember that plutonium's nothing to worry about.

Japan puts ex-spokesman in charge of nuclear crisis

EXCERPT...

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda gave a former government spokesman the cabinet post responsible for the Fukushima nuclear crisis on Monday, acting to limit the damage to his new cabinet after the previous minister quit over gaffes.

Yukio Edano was named trade minister, a job that oversees energy policy, making it a key role in a country still coping with the affects of meltdowns at the Fukushima power plant. The plant was damaged by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, causing the world's worst nuclear accident for 25 years.

That's not crazy. That's criminal, in every sense of the word.



I. Kid. You. Not.

[ixion]

1. "Where’s the basic human requirement to treat another human being with dignity?"

Humans are know for many things, but treating one another with basic human dignity isn't one of them, unfortunately.

[Octafish]

3. My Bad: Should say: basic human requirement for civilized society is to treat others with dignity.

Or something like that. I'll go back in ...

[malaise]

2. 100% correct

Power, wealth and corporate dominance in any order - fuck humanity!!

[Octafish]

4. Fukushima is impacting everyone on the planet.

It's still kicking out radiation by every vector and toward every sector.

Australia's 60 Minutes exposes Fukushima

Thanks, Ozzyland! Now, where's America's free press? AWOL? Held hostage? No, it's run by Corporate McPravda, who'd thank us all very much to move on.

[TheWraith]

5. No, it's not.

Please go buy yourself a Geiger counter and learn to use it. Maybe then you'll realize that no, there is not and never was a radiation threat to the US.

[Gregorian]

6. Internal exposure?

You might want to do some research on that end of things. A whole different issue when compared to external exposure.

[Octafish]

8. Thanks for your advice and opinion.

You must be a professional scientist.

[Angry Dragon]

12. Bubble

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

15. ...

[OnyxCollie]

18. It's true. Honest.

TheWraith has a quote from Russ Feingold to prove it.

(And if he doesn't, well, he'll just make one up. Because that's how he rolls.)

[Gregorian]

7. But not in a vacuum. The percentage of people who care is so small they can get away with it.

How many people protested Diablo Canyon power plant? It was considered a big deal. But not big enough. Had the entire state descended upon their doorstep, it would have been different.

The number of Americans who are engaged is so small they are considered fringe.

My point is, most people are not interested in their own good. I can't blame them. Even without having to work, and having no children, I find it difficult to do what a real human has to do each day. With a job, with kids, and all of the rest (mortgage), there is no way people can get organized as one huge unit to stop the evil corporate madness. Bechtel, I believe, built the Diablo units. They did have to make some kinds of compromises, if I recall, due to the massive public pressure.

I continue to see that our problems are ours, and ours alone. We have the power. In situations like these, we can make decisions. Most of them are so uncomfortable that we just avoid making them.

[Octafish]

13. Nuclear power and weapons have served to concentrate power and wealth.

People are overloaded with to the point of missing important information. Case in point: Nuclear power and weapons are most un-democratic. Apart from The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, there's almost no one talking about it in the media.

US nuclear tab at $5.8 trillion

South News July 1

Washington: In an enormous drain on resources the United States has spent $5.8 trillion on nuclear weapons according to a new study

A four-year study of newly declassified Pentagon documents, released yesterday by the Brookings Institute, looked at the expenditures of producing and deploying nuclear explosives over the past 5 1/2 decades with current spending on the arsenal at about $35 billion annually, or roughly 15 percent of the total defense budget.

Since the birth of the atomic weapons program in 1940, a total of $5.5 trillion was spent through 1996, the Washington think tank reports. That is 29 percent of all U.S. military spending and almost 11 percent of all government spending through the 52 years.

In the first comprehensive audit of the US nuclear arsenal,it calculated costs for research, development, deployment, command and control, defenses and dismantlement. The U.S. government has never attempted to track these costs, and whether the weapons helped to bring down the Soviet Union, against whom most of the arms were aimed after World War II, remains an open question, Stephen I. Schwartz, chairman of the four-year study, said in the report.

"Given the significant sums expended on nuclear weapons and their central role in the cold war, it is striking that so few have expressed an interest in either the cumulative or the annual costs,'' Schwartz wrote.

SNIP...

Highlights of the report:

• The United States produced 70,000 nuclear warheads between 1945 and 1990, with an arsenal that peaked in the 1960s at 32,000 warheads
• Making the warheads was relatively inexpensive. Firing, storing and handling them was extremely costly. The 70,000 warheads cost $409.4 billion, only about 7 percent of the total. But thousands of aircraft, submarines, ships, missiles, and a large network of factories, bases and personnel cost $3.241 trillion.
• In 1996 dollars, the World War II Manhattan Project cost more than $26 billion.
• The United States has produced 65 warhead types for 116 different weapons systems.
• Thirteen major U.S. facilities - including Washington state's Bangor submarine base - handle and maintain nuclear weapons, and cover an area larger than Delaware, Rhode Island and the District of Columbia combined.
• Some 6,135 strategic ballistic missiles were purchased at a cost of $266 billion, as well as 4,680 strategic bombers since World War II at a cost of $227 billion.
• The 2,975 submarine-launched ballistic missiles alone cost $97 billion, said the report. Since their inception, the United States has designed and deployed 14 kinds of strategic bombers. Some 210 nuclear-powered military vessels have been built or are being built.
• The figures include the estimated $7 billion costs of attempting to develop a nuclear-powered airplane, which never got off the ground.
• At the moment, the U.S. nuclear arsenal - long-range strategic and short-range tactical - is estimated at 10,635 warheads.
• The current stockpile has the equivalent explosive force of about 120,000 Hiroshima bombs.
• The United States is spending an estimated $35 billion a year on nuclear weapons and related programs, the Brookings Institution says in a massive study.

CONTINUED...

http://southmovement.alphalink.com.au/southnews/980701-USnukes.htm

Our Nuevo Police State has powers undreamed. Our only real weapon is Truth.

Remembering the Killing of Karen Silkwood

August 11, 2009 in Capitalism, Environmental Justice, Nuclear, Organizing

After watching the brilliantly-acted and courageous film Silkwood (1983, starring Meryl Streep), I learned the compelling story of Karen Silkwood and her death, which has seemingly been forgotten by America. Karen, only 28, was a union activist working in a Kerr-McGee nuclear power plant in Oklahoma, who died in a suspicious car accident while on her way to meet with a New York Times reporter for a story that would have exposed the company’s dangerous and illegal mishandling of plutonium.

Karen was active in her union, calling attention to the radioactive contamination in the plant, and spent months compiling evidence to show that the company was deliberately covering up the fact that their fuel rods contained imperfections, which could put millions of lives at risk if they sparked a meltdown. The night of her death, many believe Karen was deliberately driven off the road by another car, and her family was later able to sue Kerr-McGee for $1.3 million in damages, but the company admits no wrongdoing.

The nuclear plant where Karen worked was shut down in 1975, one year after her death. When Karen’s story became public controversy, it helped display the dangers inherent to nuclear power, contributing to the amazingly successful anti-nuclear movement that has stopped construction of all new nuclear plants in the US since 1979. Thus is especially important today as some corporate lobbyists are trying to repackage nuclear power as a “clean” or “carbon-free” energy “source.” In fact, it’s none of those things.

Karen’s story is both a warning and an inspiration – that capitalism pushes companies to sometimes do terrible things to protect their profits, even if it means endangering lives, but also that brave people such as Karen Silkwood, in bringing the truth to light, can challenge us to create a better world.

CONTINUED w LINKS:

http://endofcapitalism.com/2009/08/11/remembering-the-killing-of-karen-silkwood

Nook Biz is a most bipartisan insider industry. Kerr-McGee was the family firm of Robert McGee, longtime conservative Democratic senator from Oklahoma. They made a mint mining uranium.

Also most important: I very much appreciate your perspective, Gregorian, for many years now. And I agree who can solve our problems, the same ones who are supposed to constitute our government, We the People. That's why I abhor secret government, including the owning and operating of the nuclear power & weapons industry.

[Art_from_Ark]

16. One comment about the last blue box:

"The nuclear plant where Karen worked was shut down in 1975, one year after her death. When Karen’s story became public controversy, it helped display the dangers inherent to nuclear power, contributing to the amazingly successful anti-nuclear movement that has stopped construction of all new nuclear plants in the US since 1979."

Actually, the State of Missouri had a referendum on a proposed nuclear power plant in 1980 and (unfortunately) it passed by a wide margin. As a result, work started on building the Callaway nuclear facility in Callaway County near Columbia, and it started operations in 1984.

[Octafish]

32. Thanks for the heads-up, Art_from_Ark!

Hope all is well for you and yours!

[Gregorian]

19. Really interesting points.

There is an active roll in keeping us from ever being a democracy.

I appreciate your reply. Especially since my reply was somewhat tangential.

Wow, I just about missed your last sentences. Thank you! It means a lot to me. I've learned and grown so much from all the experiences on this forum. I owe you.

[Karmadillo]

9. K&R

nt

[Octafish]

14. Caldicott says evacuate North-West Japan

This is something that should have been at the top of TEPCO's to-do list March 12:

Caldicott says evacuate North-West Japan

Dr Helen Caldicott says radiation many times in excess of that which led to the evacuation of Chernobyl has been reported in North-West Japan — so the area should be evacuated immediately.

Independent Australia
by David Donovan

The confusing crisis

Last Friday came the alarming news from Japan’s nuclear agency that the amount of radioactive cesium that has so-far leaked from the tsunami ravaged Fukushima nuclear plant is equal to 168 Hiroshima atomic bombs. Apparently, the damaged plant has released 15,000 tera becquerels of cesium-137, which has a half-life of 30 years and causes cancer, compared with the 89 tera becquerels released by the American World War II bomb.

On the other hand, in the same report, Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) said the March 11 Fukushima disaster is likely to have released only about 15 per cent of the radiation that went into the air in the 1986 Chernobyl accident, although this equates to roughly seven times the amount of radiation produced by Three Mile Island accident in the United States in 1979. Then, a couple of days ago, rice grown close to the Fukushima power plant was rather surprisingly declared fit for consumption by the Japanese authorities.

SNIP...

The Japanese credibility crisis

After significant dithering after the tsunami in March, the Japanese government eventually banned people from entering an area within a 20 kilometre radius of the crippled power plant, which led to between 80,000 and 130,000 people being evacuated from this precinct. Since then, in large part, local residents outside this area have been left to clean up by themselves, because the plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) is still struggling to bring the damaged reactors under control. TEPCO now plan to have the reactors, three of which went into melt-down, finally turned off cold by January, if you can believe their latest reports, which many experts do not.

The problem is that the reliability of claims from TEPCO, NISA and the Japanese Government are – as we have reported before – highly questionable. All three bodies have a major credibility crisis, with clear evidence that they colluded to cover up evidence that they knew the nuclear reactors melted down within hours of the March 11 tsunami. The reason for this seems to be that Japan is highly dependent on nuclear energy for its power needs, such that NISA has become more or less a branch of TEPCO – with staff perenially shuffling between the two bodies – and with a Japanese Government that is primarily concerned with talking down the extent of the crisis to avoid widespread panic amongst the Japanese population and allay rumblings about the viability of nuclear power.

What are we to make of it all?

CONTINUED...

http://www.independentaustralia.net/2011/health/fukushima-crisis-caldicott-says-evacuate-north-west-japan/

Wish the people at the top had more, eh, opportunities to interact with those who have to live with their decisions and policies -- in Japan and in the United States.

[enough]

10. I think this is a basic mistake we have been trained to make as Americans.

We have been trained to think that our (that is modern) society believes "human life is valuable," etc. etc.

The fact is that is not true and never has been true. But it's hard to wake up to that.

[Octafish]

21. It's true for most Americans -- the ones raised by parents who believe in Democracy...

...That is, the idea that all people are created equal and deserve to have an equal voice in how the nation is governed.

There is a well-armed minority that believes they are better than others -- whether by birth or wealth or prestige or whatever -- that makes it OK for them to use the law of the jungle to advance their own agenda, improve their positions, and make their life better. They're the modern conservative, exemplfied by the likes of the well-paid Vulgar Pigboy Rush Limbaugh and the psychotic liar and plain old moron, Andrew Breitbart.

In the past, they're the ones who thought it perfectly acceptable to use biological warfare against the Native American peoples via the gift of smallpox infected blankets.

In more modern times, we've seen the behavior in the likes of Dr. Cornelius Rhoads, a "respected" government physician and "researcher" who in the 1930s injected Puerto Ricans with cancer cells and watched them die for entertainment. The gangster not only was most conservative, he was instrumental in the establishment of the Centers for Disease Control, as well as in the Atomic Energy Commission.

[lonestarnot]

11. K & R!

[Octafish]

22. Breaking News: TEPCO watching us in stealth mode

Smile! You're in Candid Catalogue!

Breaking News: TEPCO watching us in stealth mode

EXCERPT...

There is a thriving industry that gets paid very very well to surveil the web for content that might or might not be of concern to various corporate interests. You may find hits on your blog from such companies even (or especially?) if all you write about is the transcendent qualities of a fresh twinkie.

Some of those companies do it openly. They are not breaking any laws and the information seems to be considered public domain.

Some companies prefer to do this surveillance cryptically and what we will show you today is just such action by a company – Dream Train, inc. – that has been owned in the past by TEPCO – is currently owned by Mitsubishi – company that not only makes cars – it makes nuclear reactors in its Heavy Industries division. Needless to say, the Japanese politicians are deeply invested in helping Mitsubishi and other companies export nuclear power plants as a growth strategy for Japan (sad and part of the whole death cult/disaster capitalism that is going on right now).

Also, towards the end, I will show you a document that puzzles me about the ownership of the company in question.

Ok, let me walk you through it.

CONTINUED...

Wish I knew Tech Stuff. Perhaps some Dude more versed in such things...

[Overseas]

17. K&R.

[Octafish]

25. Japan Atomic Scientists convene their FIRST meeting since disaster.

Things move slowly Bureaucracytown, but really, it'd be a good idea to get these folks on the case Day One...

Japanese nuclear energy experts discuss Fukushima

NHK

Japanese experts on nuclear energy are discussing ways to contain the nuclear accident in Fukushima at their first conference since the accident.

The Atomic Energy Society of Japan started a 4-day conference in Kitakyushu City, southwestern Japan, on Monday.

Society president and University of Tokyo Professor Satoru Tanaka said in an opening address that the society finds it extremely regrettable that the accident in Fukushima has had such a huge impact on the people of Japan and caused them such great worry.

Professor Hisashi Ninokata of Tokyo Institute of Technology, who leads a subcommittee investigating the accident, said even experts had had too much confidence in the safety of Japan's nuclear power generation. He said the society should face the accident squarely and work hard to contain it.

During the morning session, Japanese nuclear experts discussed how to contain the Fukushima accident and help affected areas recover.

CONTINUED...

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/19_15.html

From where type, time is of the essence.

[suffragette]

20. Exceptional post

Thank you for this Octafish.

Here's another good article to add to it:
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/asiapacific/news/article_1663556.php/Japanese-nuclear-disaster-puts-critics-in-spotlight
Japanese nuclear disaster puts critics in spotlight

[Octafish]

26. Hiroaki Koide stood up these gangsters.

Thank you for the heads-up, suffragette! That is a most important article, detailing those who've opposed the construction of nuclear power plants in the middle of an earthquake- and tsunami-prone area.

Have you heard about these two guys?

Masanobu Shishikura: The Man Who Predicted the Tsunami in 2009.

and...

Toshiaki Sakai: Utility Engineer Warned of Tsunami Threat at Japanese Nuclear Plant in 2007.

Guess their suggestions would've cut into profits. You know how popular that is, these days.

[suffragette]

31. That answers the "No one could have predicted" - as they noted these guys did

I was not aware of them and good to know about this.

And yeah, profits over people reigns large. Here too with Hanford/Columbia Generating Station.

[Liberal_Dog]

23. We Are Just "Useless Eaters" According To Henry Kissinger

[Octafish]

33. Henry Kissinger is the personification of something.

Evil doesn't quite capture Kissinger, who revealed his inner nature to Richard Nixon -- himself no slouch when it came to evil:

Kissinger: Gassing Jews would not be a U.S. problem

EXCERPT...

Kissinger’s remarks come after a meeting he and Nixon had with Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir on March 1, 1973 in which Meir pleads for the United States to put pressure on the Soviet Union to release its Jews. Nixon and Kissinger, then the secretary of state, dismiss the plea after Meir leaves.

“The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy,” The New York Times on Saturday quotes Kissinger, as saying on the tapes. “And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.”

Nixon replies, “I know. We can’t blow up the world because of it.”

[Blue_Tires]

24. It's like the people running these plants never learned a single lesson from Chernobyl

What? Was 1986 *that* long ago?

[Octafish]

34. Greg Mitchell recently explored that question...

Lessons lost from Hiroshima to Fukushima

EXCERPT...

My colleague Robert Jay Lifton wrote an op-ed for the New York Times titled “From Hiroshima to Fukushima.” He pointed out: “One may ask how it is possible that Japan, after its experience with the atomic bombings, could allow itself to draw so heavily on the same nuclear technology for the manufacture of about a third of its energy. There was resistance, much of it from Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors. But there was also a pattern of denial, cover-up and cozy bureaucratic collusion between industry and government, the last especially notorious in Japan but by no means limited to that country.”

The Mainichi Shimbun sought out Sumiteru Taniguchi, now 82, and currently director of the Nagasaki A-Bomb Survivors Council, for comment. It noted that while he normally talks quietly and haltingly, “when the conversation turns to the ongoing crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant it is as if the floodgates open, and his tone suddenly turns harsh.” Taniguchi said: “Nuclear power and mankind cannot coexist. We survivors of the atomic bomb have said this all along. And yet, the use of nuclear power was camouflaged as ‘peaceful’ and continued to progress. You never know when there’s going to be a natural disaster. You can never say that there will never be a nuclear accident.”

As it happens, I have interviewed Taniguchi three times, in the United States and in Japan. He is perhaps the iconic symbol of the hibakusha today, thanks to footage of him taken after the bombing, showing him, months after the attack, still on a floor, spread-eagled, his entire back an open wound, flaming red. It was part of footage shot by a US film crew, and suppressed for decades, as I probe in my new book Atomic Cover-Up. (You can see some of the Taniguchi footage here.)

In April, 2011, five survivors’ organizations including Taniguchi’s Nagasaki group submitted a statement to the Japanese government declaring the collapse of the “safety myth” around nuclear power and demanding a change in the government’s energy policy to prevent creating any more hibakusha. And Hidankyo, where Taniguchi still served on the board, “has sent a statement to the government,” Mainichi Shimbun reported, “demanding that it distribute health record booklets—similar to the ones that are distributed to atomic bomb victims and can be used as proof of radiation exposure—to nuclear power plant workers and residents living close to them, and also provide periodic health examinations to those populations.”

CONTINUED...

The nuclear "industry" is the civilian front for War Inc. Like all good fronts, it makes money for the back-room types. More importantly, it brings them power to keep their mafia running.

[marions ghost]

27. And what is going on in Japan

is exactly how a similar problem with a plant would be treated here in the US.

Fallout from Fukushima, particularly on the West Coast, but extending to the east-- who, other than independent voice Arnie Gunderson --is informing the public about that? Crickets.

Katrina, Deepwater Horizon, offshore drilling, fracking etc etc-- the public is treated as though we don't matter. No different with a nuke accident of any kind.

[Initech]

28. Assholes - each and every fucking one of 'em. We're all disposable to them it seems.

Hey if no one's there to make your crap how do you expect to get rich? :argh:

[Electric Monk]

29. Error: you can only recommend threads which were started in the past 24 hours

kick

[Blue_In_AK]

30. K and too late to R. n/t

[Quantess]

35. Sad, but true.