FOLLOW me on my popular Twitter feed. Just click this photo! @hbbtruth - David - Common sense on #Politics #PublicPolicy #Sports #PopCulture in USA, Great Britain, Sweden and France, via my life in #Texas #Memphis #Miami #IU #Chicago #DC #FL 🛫🌍📺📽️🏈. Photo is of Elvis and Joan Blackman in 'Blue Hawaii'
Beautiful Stockholm at night, looking west towards Gamla Stan
Arirang News YouTube Channel video: Japanese Prime Minister Shenzo Abe statement inflames tensions between Korea and Japan 아베의 '망언'...한일. Uploaded April 24, 2013. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWRVleXJIvM
Steve Miller reports from South Korea on the latest Abe controversy that has the Koreans and Chinese so irate:
theqirangervlog YouTube Channel video: Shinzo Abe Denies Historical Colonization of Korea. Uploaded April 23, 2013. http://youtu.be/lLMGdNGdZ1g
WaPo's editorial is important because it matters and will be read in lots of important places: Washington Post Editorial Board mulls facts over and fillets Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for his well-known, self-destructive penchant for engaging in historical revisionism and nationalism: "Shinzo Abe’s inability to face history"
Get it, the Post's intentional or unintentional double-meaning of face?
Defenders of Abe and at least some of the Japanese Establishment will no doubt see this criticism of him as a result of China and South Korea teaming-up behind the scenes to... blah blah.
No, it's that Abe, far too often for comfort's sake, seems unable to help himself and keep his mouth shut and his head focused, a habit that is NOT a positive trait for anyone, least of all, Japan, China, South Korea or the U.S. and its military forces in the area to protect our allies, capisce?
But how do you convince the Chinese people or their government of this, or that this character fault of his can be overcome, since some of them at least, officially or not, STILL believe in 关系, guanxi and feel that in this equation, we, the U.S, are still NOT doing enough to make Abe stop indulging himself at their expense and humiliation?. Our dilemma is that we don't seem to always act like we know when Abe is playing to small elements within Japanese society that he feels he must sate, but with his fingers crossed, or when he's actually serious about what he's saying or doing.
But there's no real confusion of what it means to Koreans and Chinese when Abe goes to the Yasukuni Shrine.
Our perceived confusion on this part, whether real or feigned for public consumption in Asia, only is making things worse, and as most of you know, I'm not a fan of John Kerry's, so I don't see him bringing anything to the equation that's going to change the dynamic. And now the main course...
The Washington Post
Editorial Board
Shinzo Abe’s inability to face history
April 26, 2013
From the moment last fall when Shinzo Abe reclaimed the office of Japanese prime minister that he had bungled away five years earlier, one question has stood out: Would he restrain his nationalist impulses — and especially his historical revisionism — to make progress for Japan?
Until this week, the answer to that question was looking positive. Mr. Abe has taken brave steps toward reforming Japan’s moribund economy. He defied powerful interest groups within his party, such as rice farmers, to join free-trade talks with the United States and other Pacific nations that have the potential to spur growth in Japan. He spoke in measured terms of his justifiable desire to increase defense spending.
CopenhagenAirport1 YouTube Channel video: SAS commercial: Så godt som hjemme (As good as home) Former Danish Foreign Minister Uffe Ellemann-Jensen is discovering Tokyo, Japan via SAS. Uploaded January 25, 2009. Music: Ryuichi Sakamoto. http://youtu.be/33CQKswrPlg
Have begun preliminary pre-flight checklist for trip to snowy Stockholm, yet am already taking flight in my imagination, even while researching how many NFL playoff games I won't be able to see in Stockholm sports bars because of the six-hour time difference.
Like former Danish Foreign Minister Uffe Ellemann-Jensen and his trip to Japan depicted above, I'll soon be the proverbial fish-out-of-water, a tanned Floridian in snowy Sweden in darkest January, riding sweet-looking trains, trying to figure out vending machines, and taking photos of normal, everyday things that cause passersby to wonder why I'm taking photos.
But those with a yen for the Internet will quickly spot my Sony Bloggie videocamera and surmise, "Oh, he must be a blogger! Everything is fascinating to them." My first full day there I'm slated to say hallå to a day where sundown comes around 3:15 p.m. http://www.smhi.se/ More on that in the days to come...
by Lois Beckett, Special to ProPublica March 18, 2011, 1:22 p.m.
The crisis at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi has already been dubbed the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl, and the situation there continues to worsen.
But along with references to the "ch-word," as one nonproliferation expert put it [1], experts have been quick to provide reasons why the Daiichi crisis will not be "the next Chernobyl."
Experts have noted several key differences in the design of the reactors in question, as well as in the government's reaction to the crisis:
1. Chernobyl's reactor had no containment structure.
The RBMK reactor at Chernobyl "was regarded as the workhorse of Soviet atomic energy, thrifty and reliable -- and safe enough to be built without an expensive containment building that would prevent the release of radiation in the event of a serious accident," The Guardian's Adam Higginbotham noted [2].
As a result, when a reactor exploded on April 26, 1986, the radioactive material inside went straight into the atmosphere [3].
Fukushima's reactors [4] are surrounded by steel-and-concrete containment structures [5]. However, as the New York Times reported Tuesday, the General Electric Mark 1 reactors at Fukushima have "a comparatively smaller and less expensive containment structure [6]" that has drawn criticism from American regulators. In a 1972 memo [7], a safety official suggested that the design presented serious risks and should be discontinued. One primary concern, the Times reported, was that in an incident of cooling failure -- the kind Fukushima's reactors are now undergoing -- the containment structures might burst, releasing the radioactive material they are supposed to keep in check.
At least one of Fukushima's reactors [4] -- No. 2 -- seems to have cracked, and has been releasing radioactive stream. The seriousness of this breach is still unclear [8], with a Japanese government official maintaining on Wednesday that the damage to the containment structure may not be severe.
2. Chernobyl's reactors had several design flaws that made the crisis harder to control. Most crucially, their cooling system had a "positive void coefficient," which means that as coolant water is lost or turns into steam, the reaction speeds up and becomes more intense [9], creating a vicious feedback loop.
Shan Nair [10], a nuclear safety expert who spent 20 years analyzing the consequences of Loss of Coolant Accidents like the one at Fukushima, discussed this factor on TIME's Econcentric blog [11]. Nair was a member of a panel that advised the European Commission on how to respond to Chernobyl. As he explained:
[Fukushima] can't be Chernobyl because the Boiling Water Reactors (BWRs) at Fukushima are designed differently than the High Power Channel-type Reactor (RBMK) reactor at Chernobyl. The RBMK was designed so that the hotter the core gets the greater the reactivity -- so you have a situation where you are in a vicious cycle and a race to an explosion. [Fukushima's] BWRs are designed in such a way that the hotter it gets the less radioactive the core gets so there is a self-shutdown type of mechanism. But the problem is that before you can get to a safe level you might have a complete meltdown. I believe that's what they are battling against now in Japan.
3. The carbon in Chernobyl's reactor fueled a fire that spewed radioactive material further into the atmosphere. Fukushima's reactors do not contain carbon, which means that the contamination from an explosion would remain more localized.
Dr. Colin Brown, director of engineering for the UK-based Institution of Mechanical Engineers [12], described another of the Chernobyl reaction's design flaws in a post on the Institution's website [13] explaining why it was "unlikely" that Fukushima "will turn into the next great Chernobyl with radiation spread over a big area." He wrote:
The reason why radiation was disseminated so widely from Chernobyl with such devastating effects was a carbon [graphite] fire. Some 1,200 tonnes of carbon were in the reactor at Chernobyl and this caused the fire which projected radioactive material up into the upper atmosphere causing it to be carried across most of Europe. There is no carbon in the reactors at Fukushima, and this means that even if a large amount of radioactive material were to leak from the plant, it would only affect the local area.
In this reasonable worst case you get an explosion. You get some radioactive material going up to about 500 metres up into the air. Now, that's really serious, but it's serious again for the local area. It's not serious for elsewhere even if you get a combination of that explosion it would only have nuclear material going in to the air up to about 500 metres...And to give you a flavour for that, when Chernobyl had a massive fire at the graphite core, material was going up not just 500 metres but to 30,000 feet [about 9144 metres]. It was lasting not for the odd hour or so but lasted months, and that was putting nuclear radioactive material up into the upper atmosphere for a very long period of time. But even in the case of Chernobyl, the exclusion zone that they had was about 30 kilometres. And in that exclusion zone, outside that, there is no evidence whatsoever to indicate people had problems from the radiation.
One of the most pressing worries about Fukushima is that radiation might be spewed into the atmosphere not from reactors themselves, but from spent fuel rods exposed to the air [16] once the pool of water protecting them boils away. According to the Los Angeles Times, U.S. officials believe one of the spent fuel pools has been breached [17], potentially exposing 130 tons of uranium.
4. Unlike Chernobyl, however, a meltdown at Daiichi could end up contaminating the water table.
One troubling possibility that has received little attention is that a reactor meltdown could send radioactive material downwards until it reaches the water table, which could contaminate both water supply and crops. Discussing Daiichi on TIME's Ecocentric blog [18], Nair, the nuclear safety expert, noted:
If the entire fuel has melted the odds are it will go straight through the pressure vessel and therefore through the ground until it gets to the water table. Then it will cool down, but the problem is that the water table will start leaching actinides and fission products from the melted glob of fuel into the environment. So you will end up with some radioactive contamination of water supplies and ultimately crops and other products. That's a major problem because radioactive particles are much more dangerous when digested -- they cause internal irradiation of organs with resulting increased cancer risks...The severity of the water table risk depends on the local topography -- it depends on the depth of the water table, which itself moves up and down. I would imagine the water table is quite close to the surface right now because of all the flooding, which is not good.
At Chernobyl, fears that the radioactive material from the exploded reactor would reach the water table prompted a massive two-part project: first, to use liquid nitrogen to freeze the ground beneath the exploded reactor, and secondly, to build a shielding structure beneath the reactor. Although the effort exposed many miners to intense radiation [2], it was ultimately unnecessary.
5. Much of the public health impact of Chernobyl was the result of the Soviet government's attempt to cover up the crisis, rather than moving quickly to inform and protect the public.
In Japan, the government evacuated the 20 kilometers, or 12 miles, surrounding the Fukushima plant fairly quickly, and have continued to upgrade the warnings to citizens in the vicinity (although, according to the United States government, not quickly enough [19]).
That didn't happen at Chernobyl. In the sunny April morning after the explosion, the residents of the nearby town of Pripyat were left to go about their business. As the Guardian has noted, children went to school [2], an outdoor wedding was celebrated, and sunbathers went out to enjoy the good weather, as the plume from the exploded reactor continued to fill the air with radioactive particles.
One of the plant's employees, who had been away on business, returned home to find his wife outside in the garden, where she was paying no attention to the small pieces of graphite that had landed "on the petals of her wild strawberry plants." Before long, the sunbathers began to experience strange cases of nausea and vomiting. The town would not be evacuated until the next day. And it was only after heightened levels of radioactivity set off alarms at a nuclear plant in Sweden [19] that the Soviet government finally admitted publicly that something had gone wrong.
The delay and denial had serious implications, including an epidemic of thyroid cancer among about 6,000 people [20] exposed to radiation as children.
As the New York Times noted, this epidemic "would probably not have happened if people had been told to stop drinking locally produced milk, which was by far the most important source of radiation [20]."
(Russia distributed iodine tablets, as has Japan. But as we reported on Monday, these offer little protection [21] against ingesting contaminating food or milk.)
6. Emergency workers at Chernobyl took few precautions, and may not have been fully informed about the risks they were taking.
The "Fukushima 50 [22]" who stayed at the plant on Tuesday and Wednesday to keep containment efforts underway have been facing serious risks. But they have been taking precautions, the Times reported [23], including breathing through respirators, wearing full-body jumpsuits, and limiting their exposure time.
[The firefighters] had had no protective clothing, or dosimetric equipment to measure radiation levels; the blazing radioactive debris fused with the molten bitumen, and when they had put the fires out with water from their hoses, they picked up chunks of it in their hands and kicked it away with their feet.... This heroic but utterly futile action took them closer to a lethal source of radiation than even the victims of Hiroshima...When they died two weeks later in Hospital No 6, Zakharov heard that the radiation had been so intense the colour of Vladimir Pravik's eyes had turned from brown to blue; Nikolai Titenok sustained such severe internal radiation burns there were blisters on his heart. Their bodies were so radioactive they were buried in coffins made of lead, the lids welded shut.
Chernobyl's final toll [25] of deaths and injuries [26] is still a subject of fierce debate [3]. A 2005 Chernobyl Forum report [27], jointly produced by eight UN agencies and the governments of the Russian Federation, Ukraine, and Berlarus, concluded that up to "4,000 people could eventually die of radiation exposure" from Chernobyl, including 50 emergency workers who died of acute radiation syndrome, 15 children (as of 2005) who had died of thyroid cancer, and a projected total of "3940 deaths from radiation-induced cancer and leukemia" among emergency workers, evacuees, and residents of the most contaminated areas around Chernobyl. (The report noted that it's impossible to tell which cancer deaths in the region were specifically caused by Chernobyl radiation, only that there is an expected 3 percent increase.)
Lois Beckett writes for the Nieman Journalism Lab, the SF Weekly, and the East Bay Express.
From our clever British cousins across the sea at Anorak: "Fukushima Is Only Another Chernobyl For Lazy Journalists"
----- Anorak Fukushima Is Only Another Chernobyl For Lazy Journalists
Two things have intervened in the media coverage of the Japanese nuclear plant crisis to make it misleading to the point of incomprehensible, writes Richard North.
The one is the frequent use of the Chernobyl disaster as a comparator, where there are absolutely no comparisons with the incident at Fukushima. The second is the childish refrain of “meltdown” by scientifically and technically illiterate journalists, who seem to be incapable of understanding what is happening, yet seem determined to spread their own incomprehension far and wide. Read the rest of the spot-on post at: http://www.anorak.co.uk/276390/media/fukushima-is-only-another-chernobyl-for-lazy-journalists.html
See also: http://richarddnorth.com/ http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/richard-d-north Nuclear Energy Institute - Information on the Japanese Earthquake: http://nei.cachefly.net/newsandevents/information-on-the-japanese-earthquake-and-reactors-in-that-region/
http://www.youtube.com/user/NEINetwork
----- In case you didn't see it the very first time I ran it on November 28th, you may find this excerpt from my post that details Maria Sharapova's relationship with the Chernobyl disaster of 1986 worth perusing: Yes, a photo withMaria is exactly what this blog needs!
Maria's website is athttp://www.mariasharapova.com/
Maria was the focus of a terrific mid-August segment on ABC News'Nightline that I've been waiting to post here on the blog when there was a good reason. Now there is. It's the second of three segments and starts at 07:34. I'd recommend going Fullscreen.
ABC NewsNightline, August 17, 2010 Out of the Ashes: Maria Sharapova Reporting: ESPN's Rachel Nichols http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/video/nightline-081710-11425198
Related article at:http://newsbusters.org/blogs/ken-shepherd/2011/03/11/chris-matthews-sees-japan-earthquake-opportunity-obama-remind-people-h As a person who, once-upon-a-time, pre-2003, liked Chris Matthews, always watched his TV show, and even bought his books and gave them as gifts to friends and colleagues -just like I once did before for Paul Krugman, pre-NYT column!- much like Dolphins ownerStephen Ross, Broward School Board membersAnn Murray & Jennifer Gottlieb, Broward County Comm.Stacey Ritterand Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Alvarez, his own words are like a noose he puts around his own neck. Can I help it if I just want to share his self-evident foolishness with you?
Screen-shot of CNN coverage of Japanese earthquake and tsunami at 2:25 a.m. Eastern Early this morning I was watching the 12:30 a.m. repeat airing on The BigTenNetwork of IU's loss to Penn State in the Big Ten basketball tourney in Indy at Conseco Fieldhouse, their ninth loss in a row.
Screen-shot of BigTenNetwork at Big Ten basketball tourney During a second-half commercial break, l flipped over to Fox News Channel and it was then that I first saw the story that is developing as South Florida's news media snoozes -THE largest earthquake in the recorded history of Japan, and the seventh largest ever recorded in the world. A tsunami warning is now in place for the entire Pacific Coast of the United States and Canada, with six-foot waves expected to hit Hawaii around 9 a.m. Eastern and smaller waves hitting California, Oregon and Washington state at 11 a.m. Eastern.
Evacuation orders for all beach hotels in Hawaii are already in place, with nobody permitted to remain after 8 a.m.Eastern. Screen-shot of Fox News Channel at 2:15 a.m. Eastern The South Florida Sun-Sentinel finally posted something about the earthquake and subsequent tsunami in northeast Japan at about 3:45 a.m., two hours AFTER other major newspapers started posting information to their websites, usually screen-shots from NHK-TV in Japan. Watch NHK-TV's LIVE streaming coverage in English at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/42025198#42025198 After flipping around to check certain key news websites to see who was asleep and who was awake on this amazing story, the Miami Herald was in its customary state -sound asleep. At 4 a.m. Eastern there was still NADA on the Herald's website. Screen-shot of Miami Heraldat 2:30 a.m. Eastern http://www.miamiherald.com/ Screen-shot of The Drudge Report at 2:30 a.m. Eastern http://www.drudgereport.com/ Screen-shot of The New York Times at 2:18 a.m. Eastern http://www.nytimes.com/ Screen-shot of The Los Angeles Times at 2:30 a.m. Eastern http://www.latimes.com/ Screen-shot of Svenska Dagbladetat 2:45 a.m. http://www.svd.se/ MSNBC even got into the picture for a change on this story, unlike their invisible news coverage early-on last year during the Polish Prime Minister's airplane crash in Russia and the Moscow subway bombing, where they stuck to their curious 'crime-block' programming, featuring repeats of their 'Predator' series or profiles of U.S. prisons, which is still a weird programming choice no matter how many years they run that overnight and on weekends, instead of actual news programming. They were, however, 'punked' at 4:04 a.m. by someone claiming to be at Narita Airport, outside Tokyo, who ended his personal account with the new maxim of 2011: "Winning!" That's the lasting power of Charlie Sheen.
Screen-shot of MSNBC's coverage The unseen male MSNBC anchor seemed a bit stunned but didn't let on that anything unusual had just happened. Sometime around 4:30 a.m., the Miami Herald finally awoke and posted something. Better late than never I suppose, huh? Watch NHK's LIVE streaming coverage in English at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/42025198#42025198 ------ 1:15 p.m. Friday Update:
If you're looking for some LIVE coverage from Hawaii, try Hawaii News Now at http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/Global/category.asp?C=176904&nav=menu55_1_1 Remember, Hawaii is five hours behind Eastern, the same amount we are behind GMT, to give you some perspective. Hawaii gets roughly 4,000 Japanese visitors a day and the latest news that Narita Airport is going to remain closed due to physical damage from the disaster is NOT good news. According to what I heard on Hawaii News Now around Noon Eastern-time, three airports in Japan hope to resume flights soon to Hawaii, including Nagoya. Honolulu Star-Advertiser newspaper website; http://www.staradvertiser.com/
Russia Todayis a 24/7 English-language news channel based in Moscow and other international cities that I first watched the Saturday morning in April when Polish President Lech Kaczynski's plane crashed outside the airport in Smolensk, on his way to represent Poland at a ceremony commemorating the 1940 Katyn massacre, killing all 97 people on board.. http://articles.latimes.com/2010/apr/11/world/la-fg-polish-president-crash11-2010apr11 RT was the only TV news network reporting the story LIVE from near the scene, plus had well-informed analysts on the phone from various European capitals, including Warsaw, who could speak knowledgeably about Kaczynski's personal life and Polish political history and how these events all connected in one horrible day for modern-day Poland.
As I wrote at the time here, since I was awake when it happened, the Fox News Channel was first U.S. cablenet to report the crash, and as usual, MSNBC slept, showing one of their many old crimedocumentaries they lard their overnight and weekend schedule with, rather than break into it. That was not the first time that I saw MSNBC be the last TV cable net to air some breaking news, so now I never even bother flipping to them to see their take on anything. Homepage: http://rt.com/ Their YouTube Channel has some interesting videos. https://www.youtube.com/user/RussiaToday Alyona Minkovski in particular interviews all sorts of characters on her show: http://www.youtube.com/user/TheAlyonaShow Here's a video from her show about the topic du jour: lovelorn otaku nerds in Japan taking their virtual girlfriends on holiday with them to a hotel in Atami on the Pacific Coast.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebrvafpjIlg Some of you longtime readers may recall me writing in the past here on the blog that my first year living in Washington, D.C., I lived next door to (in front of) the Japanese Ambassador's official residence on Nebraska Avenue, N.W., thus putting yours truly in one of the safest neighborhoods in the city, due to all the security details in the area, which I greatly appreciated. This was when the crime and murder rate in D.C. was out-of-control and made D.C. America's murder capital.
I was living just down the street from the campus of American University, as well as the Swedish Ambassador's home, NBC-TV's Washington news bureau and their DC affiliate, WRC-TV, as well as the real-life HQ for NCIS. (Years later, when I was living in Arlington County, I had an NCIS agent for a neighbor.)
