bananas
bananas's JournalNew NHK boss ignites a firestorm, Momii's debut speech puts sex slave row back in spotlight
Source: Kyodo, AP, JIJI, Japan Times Staff Report
The new chairman of NHK expressed regret Monday for his earlier comments that seemed to defend the nation’s wartime use of sex slaves, calling his words “extremely inappropriate.”
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Momii, also former president of Nihon Unisys Ltd., told reporters Monday in Tokyo that while the remarks represented his personal opinion, “even as an individual opinion, it’s not something I should have said.”
“It was my first time (speaking) at such an occasion and I did not know the rules,” he said.
Momii, rumored to have been the preferred choice of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for the top NHK post, said he will continue to deal with the fallout from his comments and devote himself to the role of president.
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Read more: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/01/27/national/new-nhk-boss-ignites-a-firestorm/
He regrets he said it - but he hasn't changed his mind, it's still his opinion.
Neocon Abe wants regressive assholes like this to head NHK, where they can affect how the news is reported.
Abe: No fallout from remarks in Davos about World War I
Source: Asahi Shimbun
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe dismissed any negative impact from his comparison of Japan-China ties with Europe before World War I, saying his intention was clear to all media members who heard him.
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The remarks in question came on Jan. 22 in front of about 30 senior media representatives on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum’s annual Davos meeting in Switzerland. Abe compared the soured Japan-China relationship to Britain and Germany in 1914, noting that despite their strong economic ties, the two European countries fought each other in World War I.
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Jiang Jianqing, co-chair of the Davos meeting and chairman of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, said Jan. 25 that whether an armed conflict erupts between the two nations depends on Japan’s actions.
Jiang mentioned that Japan had already invaded China by 1914, when World War I broke out, and encroached further inland after the war ended.
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Read more: http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/politics/AJ201401270066
Utilities secretly buy tickets for pro-nuclear minister’s fund-raisers
Source: Asahi Shimbun
Using money paid by consumers, nuclear plant operators have secretly bought tickets worth several million yen a year for fund-raising parties of Akira Amari, a pro-nuclear Cabinet minister, since 2006, The Asahi Shimbun learned.
The utilities have kept each ticket purchase at 200,000 yen ($2,000) or less to prevent their names from appearing in the political fund reports of Amari, the minister in charge of economic revitalization, sources said.
It was already reported that directors of electric power companies have made individual donations to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, but the utilities were found for the first time to have bought fund-raising party tickets with electricity fees paid by consumers.
Amari, an LDP lawmaker with economic and industrial interests, exerts strong influence on energy policy and advocates reactivating idled nuclear reactors.
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Read more: http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/politics/AJ201401270057
David Swanson book signing in Maine on Feb 15, 2014
Sunday, January 26, 2014
SWANSON COMING TO MAINE
David Swanson in Brunswick, Maine
Feb. 15, 2014 Saturday
3 - 5 p.m. Curtis Memorial Library
Sign up on Facebook.
Flyer: PDF.
David Swanson in Portland, Maine
Feb. 15, 2014 Saturday
6:30 - 8:30 p.m. Lee Hall, Wishcamper Center, USM, 34 Bedford Street
Parking in garage next to Wishcamper
Flyer: PDF.
Talks & Book signings. Free and open to the public.
David Swanson will discuss and sign copies of his new book, War No More: The Case for Abolition.
Swanson's books include When the World Outlawed War, named by Ralph Nader as one of the six books everyone should read; the best-selling classic War Is A Lie, and Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union, of which Glenn Greenwald said, "There have now been many books written which chronicle the imperial, lawless presidency of the Bush era, but Swanson’s superb new book is one of the very few to examine how we can recover from it and reverse its pernicious trends."
Swanson is the host of Talk Nation Radio. He helped plan the nonviolent occupation of Freedom Plaza in Washington DC in 2011. Swanson holds a master's degree in philosophy from the University of Virginia. He has worked as a newspaper reporter and as a communications director, with jobs including press secretary for Dennis Kucinich's 2004 presidential campaign.
He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org and works for RootsAction.org. Swanson is Secretary of Peace in the Green Shadow Cabinet.
These events are co-sponsored by: PeaceWorks, Peace Action Maine, Global Network, CodePink Maine, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Maine Veterans for Peace, Brunswick Friends Meeing, PAM Action Committee.
For more information contact mSpiess@myfairpoint.net 207-865-3802.
GE Hitachi to Pay $2.7M Over Flawed Nuke Design
Another nuclear whistleblower vindicated.
Of course, GE Hitachi continues to deny everything.
You just can't trust the nuclear industry.
GE Hitachi to Pay $2.7M Over Flawed Nuke Design
WASHINGTON January 23, 2014 (AP)
Associated Press
A subsidiary of General Electric has agreed to pay $2.7 million to resolve claims its employees made false statements to the U.S. Department of Energy and Nuclear Regulatory Commission about a reactor component.
The Justice Department announced the settlement Thursday with General Electric Hitachi Nuclear Energy Americas, a provider of nuclear energy products and services based in Wilmington, N.C.
According to the government, GE Hitachi made false statements to conceal flaws in a component of its advanced nuclear Economic Simplified Boiling-Water Reactor known as the steam dryer. GE Hitachi had received federal funding for up to half of the cost of designing and developing the new nuclear power system.
GE Hitachi spokesman Christopher White said the company denies the allegations, but determined that settling the case was in its best interest.
More info at Platts:
GE Hitachi reaches settlement with US DOJ over alleged false claims
Washington (Platts)--23Jan2014/641 pm EST/2341 GMT
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GE Hitachi submitted the ESBWR design to NRC in December 2005 for certification that would allow the design to be used to build new US nuclear power reactors, subject to the issuance of construction permits and operating licenses for individual projects.
DOJ said Thursday that NRC's review requires that applicants "demonstrate that vibrations caused by the steam dryer will not result in damage to a nuclear plant. The government alleged that GE Hitachi concealed known flaws in its (ESBWR) steam dryer analysis and falsely represented (to NRC) that it had properly analyzed the steam dryer in accordance with applicable standards and had verified the accuracy of its model using reliable data."
Unanticipated excess vibration in steam dryers in both GE boiling water reactors at Exelon's Quad Cities-1 and -2 in Illinois damaged the dryers, requiring their replacement in 2005 at the cost of millions of dollars. The Quad Cities reactors and their original dryers used earlier designs and began operation in 1973.
DOJ said LeRay Dandy, a former GE Hitachi employee, first raised the ESBWR allegations in a whistleblower lawsuit.
<snip>
Dominion is considering building an ESBWR at its North Anna plant in Virginia, and DTE Energy is considering building one at its Fermi plant in Michigan. Both utilities previously have said they will not decide whether to build an ESBWR until after NRC certified the design.
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University of Alaska Scientists: Fukushima Radiation May Be Making Alaska Seals Sick
University of Alaska Scientists: Fukushima Radiation May Be Making Alaska Seals Sick
Posted on January 26, 2014 by WashingtonsBlog
Is Fukushima Radiation Making West Coast Wildlife Sick?
American sailors on the USS Reagan got really sick after having snowball fights with radioactive snow blowing off of the coasts of Fukushima.
University of Alaska professors Doug Dasher, John Kelley, Gay Sheffield, and Raphaela Stimmelmayr theorize that radioactive snow might have also caused Alaska’s seals to become sick (page 222):
On March 11, 2011 off Japan’s west coast, an earthquake-generated tsunami struck the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant resulting in a major nuclear accident that included a large release of airborne radionuclides into the environment. Within five days of the accident atmospheric air masses carrying Fukushima radiation were transiting into the northern Bering and Chukchi seas. During summer 2011 it became evident to coastal communities and wildlife management agencies that there was a novel disease outbreak occurring in several species of Arctic ice-associated seals. Gross symptoms associated with the disease included lethargy, no new hair growth, and skin lesions, with the majority of the outbreak reports occurring between the Nome and Barrow region. NOAA and USFWS declared an Alaska Northern Pinnipeds Usual Mortality Event (UME) in late winter of 2011. The ongoing Alaska 2011 Northern Pinnipeds UME investigation continues to explore a mix of potential etiologies (infectious, endocrine, toxins, nutritious etc.), including radioactivity. Currently, the underlying etiology remains undetermined [i.e. scientists don't yet know what caused the seals' sickness, but they think it might have been Fukushima radiation]. We present results on gamma analysis (cesium 134 and 137) of muscle tissue from control and diseased seals, and discuss wildlife health implications from different possible routes of exposure to Fukushima fallout to ice seals. Since the Fukushima fallout period occurred during the annual sea ice cover period from Nome to Barrow, a sea ice based fallout scenario in addition to a marine food web based one is of particular relevance for the Fukushima accident. Under a proposed sea ice fallout deposition scenario, radionuclides would have been settled onto sea ice. Sea ice and snow would have acted as a temporary refuge for deposited radionuclides; thus radionuclides would have only become available for migration during the melting season and would not have entered the regional food web in any appreciable manner until breakup (pulsed release). The cumulative on-ice exposure for ice seals would have occurred through external, inhalation, and non-equilibrium dietary pathways during the ice-based seasonal spring haulout period for molting/pupping/breeding activities. Additionally, ice seals would have been under dietary/metabolic constraints and experiencing hormonal changes associated with reproduction and molting.
Here are some pictures of the sick seals:
Many other West Coast animals have gotten sick. Scientists need to get to the bottom of what is making them sick, whether it’s radiation or something else.
I Was a Covert Agent in the War on Poverty - by Frances Moore Lappe
I Was a Covert Agent in the War on Poverty
Frances Moore Lappe
Posted: 01/14/2014 10:02 am
Okay, I didn't wear a hidden mic. (Did they have those in '67?) I didn't don gloves to mask my fingerprints that hot summer in Philly. But, I was truly an infiltrator, a provocateur-for-progress in the War on Poverty declared 50 years ago this month.
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After a stint in a Quaker-run organizing school in Chester, PA, where training included speaking against the Vietnam War on (literally) soap boxes in Rittenhouse Square and watching FBI agents snap our photos, it was increasingly clear to me: Ending the war was not enough, something was deeply wrong here at home.
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And that's the door that opened. It turned out that in addition to hiring actual housing inspectors, some gutsy folks launching the Neighborhood Renewal Program also began hiring organizers. They were hush-hush about it, but my bosses made clear: Pass the test to get on the payroll as an inspector but hit the streets as an organizer. In ending poverty, it's not enough to have dwellings in better repair if their inhabitants feel defeated. So just as critical as holding landlords to account was, in their view, going door-to-door to help spark what we'd now call self-organized initiatives. Coming together, poor people will find their voices and push for their rights, thereby helping, much more broadly, to right our broken system.
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Then came the moment -- the "Lilly's truth moment." Working on "fair housing" in racially segregated Oakland as part of my grad program, one morning I woke up with this thought: I can't do this anymore. I can't do anything to "save the world" until I understand how it contributes to uprooting the causes of Lilly's needless death.
So, starting with Diet for a Small Planet, I've spent decades pursuing that root-cause question, and, thank God, I have come to grasp how, within a systemic vision, bottom-up organizing is truly central to transformative democratic change. What's heart breaking to admit, though, especially in this anniversary year, is that as a society we lost our way.
<snip>
In this moment, though, I just hope that in reliving how Lilly's needless death forced me to dig deeper I'll rekindle my own belief in possibility: the possibility that today's staggering inequality - with 95 percent of all income gains since 2009 going to the top one percent -- could trigger a rebirth in America of a sustained quest for root-cause solutions with everyday citizens in center stage, a possibility just as unimaginable by most people today as was the War on Poverty before January, 1964.
January 29 is the 50th anniversary of Dr. Strangelove
Def Jeff ?@eqracer
Joe Cirincione @Cirincione was brilliant on @Maddow about our nuclear war arsenal and its use in modern day warfare #NoNukes #DrStrangelove
[hr]
Joe Cirincione ?@Cirincione
@eqracer @maddow Thank you! Ironically, this month is the 50th anniversary of the release of Dr. Strangelove.
7:57 PM - 24 Jan 2014 from Takoma Park, MD
NASA Announces 5 New Missions To Study Earth From Orbit In 2014
NASA Announces 5 New Missions To Study Earth From Orbit In 2014
By Joanna M. Foster on January 23, 2014 at 3:29 pm
This week, NASA celebrated ten years of its rover Opportunity looking for signs of life on Mars. And while the allure of that mysterious planet doesn’t seem to have abated, scientists at the space agency are now turning a more critical eye down to a place where they already know there’s life — and hope to keep it that way — Earth.
NASA announced on Wednesday that it has five missions planned for 2014 that are designed to collect much needed data on Earth’s vital signs, from the water cycle, to wind patterns and pollution. The missions consist of three satellites and two instruments that will join the massive floating laboratory that is the International Space Station.
In just over a month, the first of the satellite missions will launch from Japan’s space center. The satellite, the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Core Observatory is a joint mission with Japan’s Aerospace Exploration Agency and will collect detailed observations of global rain and snowfall patterns.
In July, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO)-2 will also be launched into Earth’s orbit. The “2? is because the original satellite intended to gather this data, which made a launch attempt back in February 2009, failed to reach orbit and was destroyed as it fell back to Earth. Once safely up in orbit, OCO-2 will start collecting the most precise measurements of atmospheric CO2 ever made from space. The satellite will help characterize both artificial and natural sources and sinks at a regional scale, of the greenhouse gas.
The last of the satellites NASA has planned for launch in 2014 is the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission, which will monitor the water content in Earth’s soil. The high-resolution maps of soil moisture the collected data will produce will help researchers studying flooding and droughts as well as help predict area of high plant productivity an agricultural potential.
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Six more missions are ready to launch by the end of 2020, including satellites that help measure the dynamics of the polar ice sheets and measure human use of water in aquifers.
Calif. high court asked to take up high-speed rail
Source: Associated Press
Gov. Jerry Brown's administration on Friday petitioned the California Supreme Court to overturn two lower-court rulings that have stalled progress on the state's high-speed rail project, one of the nation's most expensive public works projects.
The petition seeks an expedited review and asks the court to overturn two decisions that prevented the state from selling $8.6 billion in voter-approved bonds. The lower-court rulings also require the high-speed rail authority to write a new financing plan.
The governor, the rail authority and the state treasurer argue that the rulings prevent California from quickly starting construction on the $68 billion project and could hurt the state's ability to finance other voter-approved projects in the future, a change of course for the officials, who previously said the rulings wouldn't significantly affect the project.
"The trial court's approach to these issues cripples government's ability to function," the 49-page petition filed late Friday said. "The rulings thwart the intent of the voters and the Legislature to finance the construction of high-speed rail, and do so in a manner that has implications for other important infrastructure projects."
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Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/01/25/6100356/calif-high-court-asked-to-take.html
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