Published: January 1st, 2013 at 12:03 am ET
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Title: Back to the future for Japan?
Source: The Japan Times
Author: EDITORIAL
Date: Jan. 1, 2013
[...] The Abe administration’s position on nuclear power generation is extremely regrettable considering the fact that the catastrophe at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, which contaminated vast areas with radioactive substances and forced hundreds of thousands of residents to evacuate — including some 160,000 local residents who still cannot return home — made it clear that operating nuclear power plants in this earthquake-prone country is inherently dangerous.
Japan’s nuclear fuel cycle project has stalled, with the Monju fast-breeder reactor remaining inoperative despite years of work, and the spent nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture, plagued by a series of accidents. A decision to continue the project makes no sense and is deplorable from both an ethical and safety standpoint. Nuclear waste storage facilities are nearly full now, and technology to safely store high-level radioactive waste permanently does not exist. Mr. Abe must understand that continuing nuclear power generation in Japan will create serious environmental problems for future generations. [...]
See also: Prime Minister: Japan will build more nuke plants
Published: January 1st, 2013 at 12:03 am ET
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sending...
The reactor is just the machine that produces the evil product … there is already enough nuclear product to destroy all life … our fate is sealed … $$POD$$
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Japan could replace the energy of 25 nuclear power plants if they fully developed Geothermal Energy in Japan.
http://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Geothermal-Energy/Will-Japan-Embrace-Geothermal-Power-to-Move-Away-from-Nuclear.html
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100+
Then add tidal power; 25 foot tides
Then add solar
Then add small scale hydropower
Then add wind power
Presto; 100% renewable energy
No risk
No radioactive waste to guard for 1 million years
No melt downs and contamination of thousands of square miles of land, water, air
No global disasters that wipe out all life on the planet
JUST DO IT
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One could add other epithets, like demented, nonsensical, illogical, insane, pathologically psychotic, genocidal.
But, deplorable is good too.
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I find it truly enlightening that such a "Prime," "supreme," member of humanity has come forth to express such concern, as to use the words… “extremely regrettable” and… “Deplorable.”
I'm getting a warm feeling in my gut. (Maybe indigestion from tuna.)
Is this another paid off DUNG-Faced peon of global control banksters?
DUH…
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Nuclear disasters keep happening.
Each from an unforeseeable cause.
The concept of controlling fission failed, as proven by past and present nuclear disasters.
So, time to move on.
We have safe technologies for producing electricity. Lets use them.
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Happy New Year to the 'newsers!!!
So the winning politician in Japan wants to build more nuclear pyramids …
"Look on my works, oh ye mighty, and despair …"
Ozamandius reigns supreme … not a function of intelligence …
I hope the Japanese Sheeple continue to protest and deny him this insidious crime …
I also hope we few who are glued to this cluster-f… can keep up our truth-telling … for in time it will become obvious, even to the pro-nuke crowd, that this is a failed technology, a regular market-failure, which needs to be wound down and mothballed …
mothballs versus radioactivity???
Meanwhile, the Great American Desert continues its relentless expansion …
Here's to a nuclear-free new year, someday soon!!!
Peace and light to you all, everywhere!!!
Keep on sharing; it's good for us all, and you, too!!!
off to absorb some more General Electric-designed and produced radioactive isotopes, actinides …. you decide ….
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It's now GE-Hitachi Nuclear.
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I won't ever forget this Kodak moment.
The… 'cannot be breached' containment:
(Hitachi-GE)
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/2099954/Rad%20Fuku%20Yellow%20Lid%20Removed%20R4%20001.JPG
See the names of 'some' of the GUILTY parties posted clearly.
I wonder if the workers put those signs up on purpose in order to send a message to the world? It certainly sent a message to me.
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or-wells' New year wish
for Shinzo Abe.
"We'll build new Nukes,
restart old ones too.
We don't give a shit how many get screwed.
We'll go out yelling 'Banzai!' in nuke-glory
without so much as an 'Oops, so sorry.'"
Take a pill Abe. Cyanide would be good.
How 'bout a stake? Thru the heart, of wood!
May be there's a bullet, out there, with your name…
Oh no! I hope not, that would be a shame,
if you died quickly without suffering and pain.
Revulsion! Disgust! The Peaceful in abhorrence!
They'd drown you in healing words! Such annoyance!
Or help you find your inner clairvoyance!
Or sweat lodge you to a state of reason and joyance!
Take your pick, Abe the Psycho – a life of word torture
or a quick exit to go meet your ancestors.
Ah, but that's not the choice, is it?
Perhaps you'd prefer a world tour and visit
to children suffering all over the world.
You could lecture nuke-injured boys and girls
about their folks giving nukes a new whirl.
So Abe, here's my wish for your new year -
Die screaming as your guts pour from your rear.
May you and all nucleopaths live in mortal fear
you'll be erased from the race
about which you don't care.
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its so obvious that the people we vote in power act for a minority of privileged people. In Canada its a pipeline to the west coast that nobody wants, in USA they talk about the fiscal cliff as if it wasn't a contrived crisis while your own boondoggle reprocessing spent fuel program gets billions while conveniently being off the radar. Democracy requires eternal vigilance, in Japan and elsewhere the public has dropped the ball.
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This country sailing of a fiscal cliff is unfortunately very real. We are operational because it's still in our creditors best likely interest.
The numbers are not pretty, //www.usdebtclock.org/
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GREEN NEW DEAL; How To End Global Unemployment; via A Green Road
http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/10/green-new-deal-how-to-end-global.html
The Fiscal Cliff Myth And Propoganda; Realistic Solutions To 'Debt Crisis'; via A Green Road
http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-fiscal-cliff-myth-and-propoganda.html
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Not only will they re-nukeify, but
"We WILL re-populate poisoned prefectures
by hook and by crook and Professors' lectures
and building some brand-new infrastructure!
Our campaign will be persuasive perfection!
To all our lies make genuflection!
Don't plan on honest radiation inspection
and if you dissent, lacking happy Affection
we'll subject you to Official Correction!"
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Trying to apply arm's-length critical thinking to Abe's odd insistence on restarting nukes, consider…
1. He acknowledged in interviews at election time that, although he would win, it wasn't because the people wanted him or nuke power.
2. The latest stories are that he plans to build first and attempt to convince later.
3. His party was in power during most of the nuke buildout phase that created the existing flawed nuke infrastructure.
4. Fukushima won't go away, and its consequences are real despite all the denial.
5. He could have campaigned on "we've learned a lesson – let's go green" and been a hero to the people, giving him everything he's got now without all the headaches he's inviting.
Sooooo… why would he do it? He's a politician, so he knows how to blow with the wind, but he's standing up to the wind of reasonableness. He's insisting on a disastrous course, but for what? What could possible be in it for him (from his point of view)? A tempting answer is "money", but surely it can't be that – he can get all the money he wants with far less friction. Similarly, it can't be "power" – he's already got it.
Can it be something as simple, human and ugly as imposing his will, the thrill of exercising power rather than acquiring it – a need to "cut the wings off puppies", as it were? If so, he wouldn't be the first politician to take that path. Big stakes this time though.
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"Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac". Henry Kissinger, the quintessential frog prince.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Henry_Kissinger
This addendum gives me an excuse to compulsively correct a typo above: "possibly" not "possible", of course.
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Good advice – stand at arms-length,
let not Rage be ones' strength,
but – know Emotions' potions
are mixed in the cup
from which one must drink,
facing horror-ed insanity
swirled 'round the sink
by those who'd support
Big Nuclears' stink.
That wasn't what I started to say. Reboot.
Why would he – or any of his ilk – do it?
Will we ever really know, short of forcible confinement, sophisticated interrogation, deep psychological analysis?
Does it even matter? I think 'yes', BUT, does it matter AS MUCH as identifying what I call "the Will To Power" in those who would claim power? I won't say "lead", because they are NOT Leaders, they are Rulers, Co-rulers, Regents, puppets, Satraps etc etc. None of them are "Supreme", not even North Koreas' Boy Big Brother. They are all deeply part and parcel of systems, interlinked with many other people and systems, embedded in mindsets and belief systems driven by momentum, inertia, circumstance and the Intent of many.
Whatever Abe thinks/believes, I cannot believe he is unaware of at least some of the forces circumscribing his actions. Whatever personal private hopes he may harbor for "more" of something, be it raw power, control, wealth, self-validation or justification or basic ego-gratification, he can't be oblivious to the role others play in his attaining and keeping his position.
Damn, almost out of space. To be continued…
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re "money" and "…surely it can't be that – he can get all the money he wants with far less friction."
Maybe, but maybe not.
I don't think that can be asserted from our position 'outside'.
I'm sure many can see scenarios involving money, 'degrees' of money as it were, to come, sooner, or later, or money that will NOT be there at some time, sooner or later.
Not just 'money', but in association with it, things like potential future privilege, or security as in keeping what has been accumulated, or status and reputation ('face'?) being free from future attack or impugnment or impeachment.
All that inextricably tied into Abes' personal interpretation of what all that means.
"Similarly, it can't be "power" – he's already got it."
It may seem to us he has enough power to be satisfied. Does it seem that way to him? Can we know? For Abe, can there be "enough"?
Money, power, the thrill of imposing his will, all possible.
Maybe he's a psychopath.
Maybe he's just an essentially stupid, unconscious person where matters outside of politics are concerned, or someone blindly enmeshed in unquestioned paradigms.
Whatever the case, he, and so many others, get to where they are because we haven't learned yet, after thousands of years, to create systems that prevent hierarchical dominance of the many by the few, aided and abetted by those who'd surf the wake of Power.
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You're right, or-well. It's a system thing and the unsavory individuals are the symptoms at least as much as they are the cause of it.
Ants, anthills, how to change both through change to one?
Mu.
Compared to this, the old "chicken/egg" question seems trivial. A prehistoric bird that was not quite a chicken mated with another prehistoric bird that was not quite a chicken. RNA/DNA combination produced a small change, as it always does, an embryo formed in an egg and hatched into a chicken. Easy peasy.
Where was I? Oh yeah, new government system structures needed for humanity. You go first.
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aig, me first? I'm or-well-come-lately. There's no shortage of structure ideas out there. It seems a more immediate problem is entrenched systems that have capabilities for resisting even broad societal discussion of alternatives, let alone even a tentative process of replacement.
Possibilities – meet Resistance.
Reality – meet History.
To get from here to anywhere represented by those ideas involves overcoming resistance.
To create better – or worse – societal directions takes time – in conditions favoring either direction.
No degrees of political freedom or its lack happen suddenly, no matter how abruptly critical events may seem to occur.
We face an unprecedented closing window of time, IMO.
We don't have time to slowly reform from within the structures of government, education, faith-oriented or nationalistic mythologising etc, and especially not in this age of mass persuasion and globalisation of structures favoring control by increasingly powerful special interests.
I think we – or certainly those younger now alive – can expect crisis.
We've closed off a lot of options.
History says it won't be pretty.
What will we salvage?
I think that will depend on external factors beyond our control, on if enough people realise our predicament,(at all hierarchical levels), the response that will come from "who we collectively are now" and not from "what we might collectively come to be had we time enough".
I hope for more time.
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or-well, I'm quite naive about what formal models are "out there". I made fun of my friends majoring in Poli. Sci. long ago, but now wish I had paid more attention.
If I understand your last paragraph and your wonderful poem from 9:25, you suggest a kind of organic, unstructured way out in which people just "wake up", each in his/her own way at more or less the same moment, and do something a bit different, resulting in a huge collective social shift.
I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I like that concept a lot, and it seems to have happened often historically – no leaders, the herd just turns.
It's nerve-wracking to wait for it, never quite sure whether things will fall into place or not. It's so very simple, elegant and obvious – everyone just do something a little bit different, on your own terms, and everything changes overnight – and yet so "just out of reach", rudderless, scary, Zen-like. Cool!
Enenewsers have been doing their bit, for sure.
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aigeezer, late reply, sorry, went out.
I too like what you thought I suggested, but it wasn't what I was suggesting, unless or-wells' or Fingers' unconscious has really got me
Re: the 9:25 poem, it's a "Country X" alternative to the violent "Spring" approach. It could grow organically after some initial level of organisation I guess, (if, if & if) but would of course meet resistance and consequencial re-action.
However, it's odds of success would be greater if it wasn't about Gov overthrow but single-issue, as in No Nukes. Important point.
Re the 1:33 post above, well, the organic, unstructured response is more likely in the event of significant exogenous shock(s) IMO, but the main point in the last paragraph was again, "our", or the general reaction, would come from our current models of thinking, not from a new societal paradigm that hasn't yet had time to evolve, so the results could well be chaotic and unfortunate, and so too the counter-reaction.
I do think it possible large #s of folk might just "wake up", in response to the unfortunate stimuli that most likely lie ahead.
That leads to the point that the possibility of such "waking" is diminished or retarded by pro-active efforts aimed at doing just that on the part of societal elements informationally positioned to see wakefullness-inducing change coming.
Nerve-wracking indeed, Where are the tipping points to Consciousness or physical reality changes?
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I have worked with government for 3 decades…indeed i was amazed to see how far they go out of their way to exercise power, especially in making the absolute worst choices "because they can".
It is really sick.
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@aigeezer
Under another article you asked for links to NRC audio tapes during Fukushima disaster. Here they are. I also posted them under you request but thought you might not get back to that to see it.
Audio Links to NRC conversations during the beginning of the nuclear crisis.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciRRsCIAy6A&feature=bf_prev&list=PLA258D78E160AEAAB
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Oooh! Thanks very much, enoughalready45. I hope we'll all be listening to them today, teasing out some of the "inaudible" bits.
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My mother, born in 1905, had a saying that "whatever you do on New Year's Day is what you will be doing all that year." Of course, that makes me somewhat reflective every New Year's Day, which was probably the purpose of the saying.
I certainly don't plan to listen to NRC audio all year long, but it seems like a really good start on the bigger goal:
SHUT THEM ALL DOWN
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enoughalready45, I apologize – I've been procrastinating over this all day. I put your link into "favorites", wondered what lists that would put me on, thought about clicking "like", noticed that nobody else has (gulp), peeked at the dates – looks like the real thing, about 12 in all…. anything but buckle down to the task.
I'm not sure what I'm afraid to find, and I promise I'll dive in to them Real Soon Now.
Hehe – anyone else want to put me to shame and show how it should be done? That link again:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciRRsCIAy6A&feature=bf_prev&list=PLA258D78E160AEAAB
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The fundamentals people MUST assert -
move to renewables, learn to conserve,
shutdown all nukes and Life preserve.
The Nukers with Lies, Crime and Profit to serve
no longer have any say deserved.
Pull all kids out of school,
stage a General Strike,
speak the Truth to the Fools
that it's out go the lights,
that here's the new rule -
the People have Rights!
Forget the details, they'll just throw curves,
they'll bob and weave, they'll duck and swerve,
hold up funhouse mirrors, blow smoke out their asses,
so give all their tricks and 'Hail Mary' passes
a whack with the stick every people possesses.
Let armed enforcers patrol empty streets,
let panicked Pols scream in their retreats,
shut down the nation, polite and discrete,
for each other, the nation, world and children sweet.
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A new year has started, the new Japanese government is trying to sound active about planning the future. Does it realize how much the disaster is going to cost? Let's just consider the health costs, even if medical authorities are going to do their best to cover up the causal relationship with Fukushima. More patients to take care of, less revenue for the State. We know Chernobyl caused over a million deaths. Considering the population density in Japan, the lack of a true picture of the extent of the fall-out, the fact that people are unaware of the danger and forced to live in highly contaminated areas, the fact that decontanination is not working, the fact that 4 reactors melted down and other plants had problems too, the fact that the crippled reactors are still releasing contamination, the fact that food safety is not sufficient … how many more deaths will this disaster cause? 10 million? And that is with the optimistic assumption that the pools won't collapse.
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Hubris. Mankind's fatal flaw.
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The newly elected leader of Japan is an extremely hawkish and nationalistic war monger and descendant of fascist era politician Nobusuke Kishi. Kishi was a wartime cabinet minister during WW2 who was imprisoned but never tried as a war criminal after the war.
Abe has run on the fear of the masses. He is going to change the apologetic wording on a national monument memorializing Japans invasion of Korea and China during WW2 to make it more "forward looking". Abe will usher in political "brownshirts" of pro-nuke power in Japan who are going to organize and attempt to silence all opposition by labeling it as anti-japan. The industry rebuilds its deathly profile in the shadow of this ultra-right madman. It is hard enough culturally to speak out in Japan but those brave souls who do are now on the short list to being ostracized. The Japan Times may question Abe's choices but the people elected him because they desire to shore up their pride in their country in spite of its accidents, mistakes and misdeeds. If only nukes were limited to national borders. The fact is Japan may have elected our worst nightmare as residents of the planet downwind in the jetstream. Electing this clown was literally bad for the entire northern hemisphere.
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He will be the exaulted ruler of, as it seems, a barren radioactive wasteland. Hail the mighty Abe!
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Turning up the heat: Probe finds 'inadequate fireproofing' in Japanese reactors
http://rt.com/news/japan-fireproofing-nuclear-reactors-177/
Regrettable..more like delusional..
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In spite of the "regrettable" and "deplorable" news from Japan, I can't help myself: HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!
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Kill nuke before it kills us
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The LDP party was responsible for installing nuclear power in Japan in the 1950s.
More recently this party has linked nuclear energy to nuclear security, conceived militarily.
The story of how nuclear energy was developed in Japan is quite interesting.
See "How Nuclear Energy in Japan Got Linked to National Security" http://majiasblog.blogspot.com/2012/12/how-nuclear-energy-in-japan-got-linked.html
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