Atomic-Powered Crazy
Filed Under Cloud gazing, Energy, Environment, Madness | Leave a Comment
(Illustration: Salvador Dali’s ‘The Three Sphinxes of Bikini‘ found here).
Apparently, another subject placed on the news cycle back-burner, thus, out of the public eye.
Yesterday, from CNN on the NRC’s order putting southern California’s San Onofre nuclear power plant out of commission indefinitely until somebody figures out how radioactive gas is leaking from a steam generator:
The power plant has been shut down since this winter, when a small amount of radioactive gas escaped from a steam generator during a water leak.
At the time, federal regulators said there was no threat to public health, though they could not identify how much gas leaked or exactly why it had happened.
The water leak occurred in thousands of tubes that carry heated water from the reactor core through the plant’s steam generators.
…
“Tubes are vibrating and rubbing against adjacent tubes and against support structures inside the steam generators,” the agency noted.
…
In addition to driving the turbines to create electricity, the steam generators are “one of the barriers between the radioactive material in the reactor core and ultimately the external environment,” Jaczko noted.
This so-called ‘external environment‘ is home to literally millions and millions and millions of US peoples, all living not-all-that-far away from the San Onofre power plant near San Clemente — just 57.5 miles south of the very heart of Los Angles, and according to Google maps and in current driving conditions, one could get from downtown LA to the Dick Nixon library in about an hour and 10 minutes.
Oddly, I couldn’t find mention of the report on either the LA Times online front page, or the SF Chronicle.
According to the CNN story, the announcement came Friday from Gregory Jaczko, chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission: “We won’t make a decision (to approve the facility’s restart) unless we’re satisfied that public health and safety will be protected,” Jaczko told reporters. “They have to demonstrate to us that they understand the causes, and … that they have a plan to address them.”
Seemingly, that would cause some mention by California’s two biggest newspapers — and including this: Anti-nuclear activists gathered Friday, not far from where Jaczko, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-California, toured the power plant, to question the need for nuclear energy and raise alarms about a potential environmental catastrophe.
WTF.
Going nuclear — going atomic — is one of mankind’s all-time great worse mistakes.
There’s a humongous shit list of intentional/unintentional errors humanity has brought upon themselves, the environment, many, many other living things, but cranking out nuclear energy without really thinking about the whole, big picture might be a real biggie.
And when something happens at these nuclear plants ought to flash red to everybody, especially when a major US facility is put offline indefinitely.
Along with this from the Orange County Register in a article last week previewing RNC Chairman Jaczko’s visit, a twist in the tale:
And with nearly 20,000 tubes per reactor, the plugging of worn tubes is routine during the life of steam generators; the many tubes ensures that plugging some will not affect the generator’s performance.
But San Onofre’s steam generators — two for each reactor — are only two years old.
Such wear on the tubes so early in their life is considered “unusual,” an Edison spokeswoman said.
Operators shut down the plant Jan. 31 after a leak was discovered in those tubes, which resulted in a small release of radioactive gas: …and Edison says neither the public nor plant workers were placed at risk.
Pay no attention to that guy behind the curtain — or even the NRC, as spokesman Victor Dricks concluded two days after the San Onofre incident that radioactive gas “could have” escaped the San Onofre facility after it was shut down but added, “It would have been a very, very small, low level, which would not pose a danger to anyone.”
The Southern California Edison Webpage on San Onofre is ludicrous, creepy PR, and would make one laugh out-loud if the subject wasn’t so scary.
Meanwhile, and also announced on Friday, Japan’s government scrapped a rule requiring cattle farmers still living within 20 kilometers of the Fukushima nuclear power plant to slaughter their livestock, but they are still not allowed to sell, transport or breed the animals.
And from the SF Chronicle today: Kelp off California was contaminated with short-lived radioisotopes a month after Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant accident, a sign that the spilled radiation reached the state’s coastline, according to a new scientific study.
Fukushima just keeps on giving.
Nuclear is just nuts — and let’s not get started on the huge highly-radioactive piles of horror these plants produce — nuclear waste — a byproduct that is/will be around for a long, long time stored right near millions and millions of people, as the rant-filled discourse could take forever.
Some background on Salvador Dali’s ‘The Three Sphinxes of Bikini‘ pictured above.
The surrealist’s subject was the tragedy of the Bikini Atoll — from UNESCO:
In the wake of World War II, in a move closely related to the beginnings of the Cold War, the United States of America decided to resume nuclear testing.
They choose Bikini Atoll in the Marshall archipelago in the Pacific Ocean.
After the displacement of the local inhabitants, 23 nuclear tests were carried out from 1946 to 1958,. The cumulative force of the tests in all of the Marshall Islands was equivalent to 7,000 times that of the Hiroshima bomb.
…
The emergence of the atolls forming the Marshall archipelago is relatively recent.
The arrival and settlement of the Micronesian populations in the islands goes back to the 4th and 3rd millennia BCE.
Their lifestyle, which remained largely traditional over a long period, was based on fishing, and the gathering of fruit, coconut in particular.
The traditional Micronesian way of life was little affected by the visits in the 16th-18th centuries of the first European explorers such as Captain Marshall, after whom the islands were named.
The same was true of the first colonial episode, as a German protectorate at the end of the 19th century. Coconut plantations were developed.
After World War I the islands were made a Japanese mandate by the League of Nations.
The bombs changed it all.
The inhabitants of Bikini Atoll, who numbered just over one thousand, were evacuated in March 1946 to the neighbouring atoll of Rongelap.
…
The Bikini inhabitants were relocated several times from one atoll to another.
Those on Rongelap were authorized to return to their island in 1957, but the return proved a failure as the high degree of cesium-137 pollution made food grown on the islet hazardous.
…
From 1967 onwards the US authorities considered the possibility of the Bikini people returning to their atoll, and this led to work to clean up radioisotope contamination
This was carried out from 1970 onwards, backed up by an agricultural production programme.
Medical follow-up of inhabitants showed, however, high levels of human contamination as a result of consuming food produced on the atoll and water from its wells.
The atoll had therefore to be evacuated once again in 1978.
And check out a most-modern nuclear horror story at Aljazeera English on the town of Muslyumovo, not far from Russia’s southern border with Kazakhstan.
One nightmare place.
Understandably, that’s all off war products, but busting the atom is still busting the atom, and people are still flesh and blood.
The ‘midget’s turd’ has left the building
Filed Under Cloud gazing, Musings, Terror | Leave a Comment
One of the more-mysterious assholes on earth is dead — Kim Jong Il, the self-styled “Dear Leader” of North Korea died of a heart attack it was reported last night or early this morning.
The guy reportedly has been dead two days and passed while hard at work: A tearful broadcaster reported that Kim died due to “overwork” after “dedicating his life to the people.” Kim suffered “great mental and physical strain” while on a train during a “field guidance tour,” North Korea’s state-run KCNA news agency reported.
Yeah, right.
KCNA eventually noted Kim suffered a heart attack and couldn’t be saved despite the use of “every possible first-aid measure” — a heart way-bloated by too much Hennessy, lobster and women.
(Illustration found here).
Keeping it tight, within hours of the announcement, a South Korean news agency said the north tested an unspecified number of short-range missiles in a kind of wake-up notice that just because Kim is dead, his so-called country is still bat-shit crazy.
Kim Jong Un, one of Kim Il’s sons, is believed to be now in charge, though no one knows for sure, in fact, no one seems to even know the boy’s age, other than he’s in his 20s.
And that is the way-crux of the problem — the darkness of information.
Via the BBC: Val Hamer in South Korea tweets: “I live in South Korea. Military on high alert. Choppers everywhere. Strange tension in the air.#kimjongil #northkorea.”
How this whole scenario plays is fairly crucial due to the horrible fact that North Korea is both unstable, and they possess a shitload of material for nuclear weapons, and as the above rocket-launch announcement dictates, can throw that material around the region.
The US White House played it softly, commenting only that officials are “closely monitoring reports that Kim Jong Il is dead.”
The BBC, though, did report President Obama and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak have spoken by telephone, keeping all eyes on the pathic north.
Although Kim Il was greatly disliked by the rest of the world, he scared people.
A retort from a US version of a political shithead: “I loathe Kim Jong Il,” former President George W. Bush once told journalist Bob Woodward, calling him a “pygmy” and a “spoiled child.”
Some background via the LA Times:
Kim was born Feb. 16, 1941, in the Russian city of Khabarovsk, where his father was stationed with other Korean and Chinese guerrillas being trained by the Soviet army to fight the Japanese.
The North Korean propaganda machine later claimed his birth took place a year later on Mt. Paektu, a sacred peak in Korean folklore, and that it was heralded by a double rainbow.
It was only the first of many outlandish legends in a cult of personality that also credited him with writing dozens of books and operas and making 11 holes-in-one in a single round of golf.
…
He borrowed heavily from Christian imagery (nobody was any the wiser since the Bible was banned in North Korea, along with other religious literature) to create the myth of a holy family destined to rule.
He was credited with designing the little red badge bearing a portrait of his father that North Koreans to this day are required to wear on their lapels.
Kim eventually became director of the party’s bureau of agitation and propaganda.
The position gave him an excuse to get involved with one of his great passions: cinema.
He expanded North Korea’s film studios and wrote a book, or at least had one published under his name.
In that 1973 tome, “On the Art of Cinema,” he espoused the theory that “revolutionary art and literature are extremely effective means for inspiring people to work for the tasks of the revolution.”
In 1978, overcome with a passion for movies, Kim IL ordered the kidnapping of Choi Eun Hee and Shin Sang Ok, a South Korean film couple — she an actress, he a director — to improve the North’s film industry.
The couple were held for eight years before escaping:
The pair had covert tape recordings of their conversations with Kim and later wrote a memoir containing one of the few firsthand accounts of his personality.
They described a man who could be alternately imperious and self-deprecating, once quipping to Choi about his height, “Small as a midget’s turd, aren’t I?”
A funny, strange little man, who was a self-centered asshole:
Throughout the 1970s and ’80s, tales of Kim’s eccentricities spread throughout the world.
Defectors told of wild drinking parties and naked dancers.
Some of the stories were hyped by South Korea’s fiercely anti-communist propaganda machine, but many were corroborated.
Kim imported $650,000 worth of Hennessy’s finest cognac in a single year.
His appetite for women and drink was exceeded by a love for the finest foods.
He hired for his private kitchens a sushi chef from Tokyo and a pizza chef from Italy, both of whom wrote accounts of their experiences.
At the time, North Korea was in the midst of a famine that would eventually kill as many as 2 million people, up to 10 percent of the population, and leave many of them permanently stunted.
Homeless, starving children became a common sight at North Korean train stations.
Kim nonetheless sent couriers on shopping excursions to buy rice cakes in Tokyo, mangoes in Thailand, cheese in France.
And what happens now with the Great Face-Stuffer gone?
The son could keep the hideous shit going like the dad: “The latest move indicates Kim Jong-Un is being put forward formally as a powerful leader like his father,” Sejong Institute analyst Cheong Seong-Chang, a specialist in the succession issue, told the AFP news agency in October. “Jong-Un is known to have the potential to become a strong, ruthless leader,” added Cheong. “He has a take-charge personality.”
Time will tell if he takes charge of some awful shit.
Demented
Filed Under Bullshit, Double Standard, Politics | Leave a Comment
Despite a near-worldwide call for a stay amid a legal case with an “enormous cloud of doubt,” Troy Davis was executed last night in Georgia, once again showing how the US will kill — Texas also put a guy to death at near the same time.
In a country which supposedly puts a great value on a human life, the US kills with an official near-glee — a lot of political hacks call the procedure a kind of justice.
GOPers love it.
And apparently so do rank-and-file US peoples — 44 years ago only 40 percent of people supported the death penalty, but in recent poll on the subject (October 2010), that number’s up to 64 percent.
(Illustration found here).
Although most of the free world (some 139 countries) have done away with the death sentence, 34 US states still perform the ritual, and since 1976, 1,267 people have been put to death in the US — three already in Georgia this year prior to last night, and Davis was the 35th nationwide this year.
Not only is state-sanctioned murder ineffective as a crime tool, but also expensive: The DPIC (Death Penalty Information Center ) reports that, in Texas, “a death penalty case costs an average of $2.3 million, about three times the cost of imprisoning someone in a single cell at the highest security level for 40 years.”
Don’t seem to defer them, though — China executed the most with estimates into the thousands, followed by Iran with 380, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, then the US.
Good company there, huh?
There is a sliver of light in the killing.
In another 2010 poll, this one conducted by Lake Research Partners revealed growing support for alternatives to the death penalty compared with previous polls. A clear majority of voters (61 percent) would choose a punishment other than the death penalty for murder, including life with no possibility of parole and with restitution to the victim’s family (39 percent), life with no possibility of parole (13 percent), or life with the possibility of parole (9 percent).
To kill, or not to kill.
On the right side of the noodle wagon, however, the death penalty is a rightful death.
Despite passionate pleas from people from the likes of South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Jimmy Carter, even the pope, along with Amnesty International calling the Davis execution a “catastrophic failure of the justice system,” the kill-emotion displayed in the recent Republican debates is still alive and kicking.
From Think Progress:
But Fox News didn’t seem too concerned.
Throughout the day (Wednesday), the network has overwhelmingly presented the prosecutions’ view, giving little airtime to the other side.
Fox and Friends host Gretchen Carlson said Davis “murdered a police officer 22 years ago” and will soon “pay the ultimate price,” while host Bill Hemmer called Davis a “cop killer.”
The network then interviewed the daughter of the victim, who is convinced of Davis’ guilt.
The first time Fox interviewed anybody with an alternative view, it was a “short segment” debate in which host Megyn Kelly repeatedly interrupted Amnesty International’s Laura Moye, and echoed former prosecutor Jeffrey Steinberger’s argument to such a degree that he said, “that’s exactly what I said!”
And from one of the most nasty-faced and foul-mouthed right-wingers around, Ann Coulter, also put in her hardcore feelings on the subject:
For decades, liberals tried persuading Americans to abolish the death penalty, using their usual argument: hysterical sobbing.
Only when the media began lying about innocent people being executed did support for the death penalty begin to waver, falling from 80 percent to about 60 percent in a little more than a decade. (Silver lining: That’s still more Americans than believe in man-made global warming.) [...]
Davis is the media’s current baby seal of death row.
Cute as only ugly can be.
Remove that bloody GOP logic, executions don’t work.
The death penalty doesn’t defer people from killing each other: Criminologists who belong to the American Society of Criminology, the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, and the Law and Society Association were polled. Over 80 percent believe that our current knowledge does not indicate a deterrent effect. 75 percent felt that increasing the numbers of executions or decreasing time spent on death row would not result in a deterrence.
Another reason the US is slowly/quickly going down the toilet.
Premature Extraction — Drawdown Everlasting
Filed Under Bullshit, War & Politics | Leave a Comment
Actually, when you think about it, this country has had a manhood problem for some time.
You can tell the language we use; language always gives us away.
What did we do wrong in Vietnam?
We ‘pulled out’! Not a very manly thing to do.
No. When you’re fucking people, you’re supposed to stay with it and fuck them good; fuck them to death; hang in there and keep fucking them until they’re all fucking dead.
But in Vietnam what happened was by accident we left a few women and children alive, and we haven’t felt good about ourselves since.
– George Carlin
(Illustration found here).
In about four months, the war in Afghanistan will a decade old — the longest war in US history, and arguably one of the most-screwed up.
A nasty, two-faced case in horrible point was the hypocritical, sanctimonious, and total-dumb-ass remarks this past weekend from Karl Eikenberry, the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, who blubbered like a baby because the Afghan leadership doesn’t appreciate the war’s total disaster as they should.
From CBS News:
“I must tell you that I find occasional comments from some of your leaders hurtful and inappropriate,” Eikenberry said Sunday.
“When we hear ourselves being called occupiers and worse and our generous aid programs are being dismissed as totally ineffective and the source of all corruption, our pride is offended and we begin to lose our inspiration to carry on.”
…
“Mothers and fathers of fallen soldiers, spouses of soldiers who have lost arms and legs, children of those who have lost their lives in this country,” Eikenberry said.
“They ask themselves about the meaning of their loved ones’ sacrifice.”
Eikenberry was talking out-his-ass about Afghan President Hamid Karzai and other Afghan officials who have commented lately about the half-assed US war machine’s decade-old operation in country.
CBS added this at the end of its story: Eikenberry is accusing Karzai of more than just ingratitude. He’s saying the president of Afghanistan doesn’t get what this war is all about.
Which is a pure crock of shit.
No one in DC has a shit-kicker’s clue about what the whole Afghan adventure was about, much less anyone else in the whole frickin’-frackin’ world.
As far as those ‘generous aid programs’ are concerned, a report earlier this month indicated that money is often not having a positive impact — and in many cases, may be contributing to corruption and to future economic woes for the poverty-stricken country.
And for Afghan’s heroin operation, according to Viktor Ivanov, head of Russia’s Federal Service for Narcotics Control, the drug production pipeline is 40 times higher than a decade ago, and there’s no real-quick remedy.
The Afghan war is like a punch-drunk fighter just swinging his fists at empty air.
Seemingly, the war in Afghanistan has had two possible conclusions at hand, both nearly a decade apart.
The first, the best option, was in December 2001 when US forces trapped Osama bin Laden in the Tora Bora Mountains, but aborted the mission.
How wonderful if George Jr. had finished up then, but nooooooo….
And the second end, of course, occurred this year with bin Laden’s assassination — that should have been the big gong to get the shit out of Dodge (or Kabul).
US peoples in a high majority think it’s time — according to a Pew Research Center survey released this week showed 56 percent of respondents wants the US out of Afghanistan “as quickly as possible,” the largest result in such polls and up eight percentage points in less than a month.
And along with the public’s response is also the huge cost of the thing, especially in the current economic climate — Spending on the war in Afghanistan has skyrocketed since Mr. Obama took office, to $118.6 billion in 2011. It was $14.7 billion in 2003, when President George W. Bush turned his attention and American resources to the war in Iraq.
Money way-needed back home.
And today, President Obama is expected to to announce a draw-down of US troops in Afghanistan — maybe up to 30,000 GIs — but it will take place over an 18-month period, which is double-speak for we’re going to be in country for a long, long time.
But the DOD has other thoughts:
The military is asking President Barack Obama to hold off on ending the Afghanistan troop surge until the fall of 2012, in a proposal that would keep a large portion of the 33,000 extra forces in the country through the next two warm-weather fighting seasons.
So, no pull-out too early, and like George says, fuck ‘em until everybody’s dead.
Osama’s Legacy
Filed Under Bullshit, War & Politics | Leave a Comment
“The invasion of Iraq I believe will turn out to be the greatest strategic disaster in U.S. history.”
– Retired Army Lt. Gen. William Odom, 2005
The late Gen. Odom — he died in June 2008 — was one the earliest outspoken critics of George Jr.’s horrible foray into Iraq, astutely commenting in 2007: “The president’s policy is based on illusions, not realities,” he wrote. “There never has been any right way to invade and transform Iraq.”
Osama bin Laden’s legacy is carried upon the hard-ass backs of George Jr. and his nefarious crowd.
Of course, we now know Iraq was in George Jr.’s gun-sights long before Sept. 11, 2001, with the Twin Towers horror just the starting gun — the big question is how the freakin’ f**k did Osama know George Jr. would way-way-over-react and tear the world asunder?
(Illustration found here).
Despite a shitload of George Jr.’s supporters claiming the x-prez had a great hand in Osama’s killing this past weekend, the reality of the reality is the exact opposite.
Read an excellent lowdown on the historical revisionists low-life’s at ThinkProgress.
From Patrick Cockburn, one of the best Middle East observers, in a post at Counterpunch:
Its (Al-Qaeda) success has not been all its own doing.
Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s number two and chief strategist, wrote at the time of 9/11 that the aim of the group was to lure the US into an over-reaction in which it would “wage battle against the Muslims.”
Once the US was committed to a ground war, and no longer exercised its power primarily through local surrogates, the way would be open for Muslims to launch a jihad against America.
By over-reacting, President Bush, aided by Tony Blair, responded to 9/11 very much as al-Qaeda would have wished.
…
The US itself played a role in the expansion of al-Qaeda.
In Iraq the US army spokesman in Baghdad attributed all armed attacks to al-Qaeda regardless of who carried them out.
He hoped thereby to discredit the insurgents in the eyes of Shia Iraqis and the outside world.
But within Iraq this only added to the high profile of the organization among those hostile to the new order of things, while abroad it made it much easier for al-Qaeda to raise money.
The wave of anti-Americanism that swept the Muslim world after the invasion of Iraq also benefited the group.
One vicious aspect of al-Qaeda activities is always under-reported in the western media: It has always killed more Shia Muslims than it ever did Americans.
The US occupation of Iraq benefited the group, but it was sectarian before it was nationalist.
The Shia were seen as heretics as worthy of death as an American or British soldier.
Again and again its suicide bombers would target Shia day laborers as they waited for work in public squares in the early morning in Baghdad or massive bombs would be detonated as Shia worshippers left their mosques.
Likewise in Pakistan the Pakistan Taliban, ideologically linked to al- Qaeda, has shown equal enthusiasm for slaughtering Shia where ever they can be targeted.
George Jr. gave Osama and his boys a get out of jail card with the invasion of Iraq, even disbanding the CIA bin Laden search to more concentrate on the chaos flaming up in Iraq.
And what about Iraq?
And now eight years later, how are these peoples doing?
From antiwar.com just for Tuesday:
In Baghdad, a car bomb rocked the poor, Shi’ite neighborhood of Abu Dsheer, leaving 16 dead and 37 wounded. Another blast killed a driver and wounded two others, including the grain board director. Nearby, a bomb killed a female government employee. Three people were wounded in a bomb blast in Doura. Another blast left one person with injuries in Nasser Square. Two civilians were shot dead last night in Hurriya.
(Illustration found here).
And in the Iraqi nightmare came the al-Qaeda — not there until the US showed up.
William Blum further dissects:
Unfortunately, they’ve lost just about everything else as well.
Twenty years of American bombing, invasion, occupation and torture have led to the people of that unhappy land losing their homes, their schools, their electricity, their clean water, their environment, their neighborhoods, their archaeology, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their state-run enterprises, their physical health, their mental health, their health care, their welfare state, their women’s rights, their religious tolerance, their safety, their security, their children, their parents, their past, their present, their future, their lives … more than half the population either dead, disabled, in prison, or in foreign exile … the air, soil, water, blood and genes drenched with depleted uranium … the most awful birth defects … unexploded cluster bombs lie in wait for children … a river of blood runs alongside the Euphrates and Tigris … through a country that may never be put back together again.
Ah, that about covers it.
But what about US peoples all this time?
The US public seems pretty pissed at Pittsburgh Steelers running back Rashard Mendenhall, who wondered on Twitter about the ethic, morals and humanity of celebrating a death.
Jason Ditz observes at antiwar.com:
Mendenhall’s comment was a paraphrase of Matthew 7:1, a part of the biblical Sermon on the Mount termed the “discourse on judgementalism.” Though the sermon is considered the canonical word of God throughout Christendom, there is a considerable debate among Christians today over whether there is an implied Osama Exemption within the sermon that permits Christians to celebrate his slaying.
Osama bin Laden was an asshole killer and much-better off dead, but a celebration is just freakish.