"Japan's children of the tsunami " BBC program in full. First aired 1st March 2012

Thanks to EK-SKF Blogspot

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Hysterical & Hysterically Funny Maps of Nuclear Radiation and Danger Zones in Japan

I just read some reports saying that Tokyo was so radioactively contaminated that it needed to be evacuated - all 30 million plus of us who live here. That alarmed me so I got out my handy dandy Geiger counter and measured the background radiation here in Setagaya-ku, Tokyo. It was basically the same it always has been. And completely within safe levels. (To see the current levels look that the top of this blog for link.)

If you want to read this outlandish reporting, you can. It is here. But I will quote this report at length:

(San Francisco) Widely known Physicist Dr Paolo Scampa, the publisher of the EU AIPRI Blog and an eminent chemical physicist, announced today his latest calculations of deadly radioactivity in Tokyo itself.  Both the nuclear regulatory and media responses have been missing in action.

.....

The Tokyo suburbs are about 100 miles or 160 km South of the six destroyed, deteriorating and badly leaking nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Station for Nuclear Reactors.

Dr Scampa stated:

“An absorbed dose of 2,94 microSievert/hour at 1 meter of soil means an average deposit of 9,065E5 Bq/m2 of Cs137 -0,661 MeV-. This amount for 1 meter is in fact situated between a maximum deposit of  5,439E6 Bq/m2 for low energy gamma rays from radioactive elements such as U238 (0,0495 MeV) and a minimum deposit of  2,176E5 Bq/m2 of very energetic gamma rays from radioactive elements such as Co60 (2,55 MeV). This dose corresponds to 25 times the maximum permissible “artificial” hour dose (0,114 microSievert/h-1) and 5 times the maximum permissible total – natural and artificial – hour dose (0,571 microSievert/h-1). [1]” Dr. Scampa. [End Quote]

This is a tragedy of huge proportions. There are 30 Plus Million People in Greater Tokyo. It is brought home personally to each person who sees the work of Fukushima Diary by Mochizuki.

There are thousands of US troops stationed with their families in Japan. American politicians must remove all US Troops and dependents from Japan immediately.

You might notice that Dr. Scampa's statement is about dangerous levels of radiation. This I don't argue; those dosages are dangerous. My only question is where in Dr. Scampa's statement does he say something like, "Tokyo is experiencing currently dangerous levels of radiation"? He doesn't. This is typical of the wild unsubstantiated claims being made in some circles. 


May I ask that the facts be given and then relevant information also be given? I don't see how a dissertation on dangerous radiation levels - something I can learn in a book - can be directly related to facts on the ground here in Tokyo by what I have read in this article. This reminds me of the claims about a year ago that the "Top 1/3 of Japan is uninhabitable for decades." 


This sort of panicky reporting is still going on... Fear mongering and completely baseless.


But how do the Japanese see it the nuclear problem? Here is a bunch of excellent, funny and cynical maps that have been making the rounds on the Internet here in Japan amongst the Japanese.


This is from the Testosterone Pit: Nuclear Contamination as Seen by Japanese Humor

After an endless stream of horrid reports on the tragedy of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, and the subsequent nuclear catastrophe in Fukushima, and the hotspots that are cropping up in odd places, and food scares, and even contaminated grasshoppers, we’re ready for something ... lighter. This has been circulating in the Japanese internet community for months, has garnered countless comments, and a lot of nodding, agreement, and knowing smiles. Though it’s not based on science or statistics, and certainly not on any polls, it represents, in the eyes of many Japanese, a larger tongue-in-cheek truth.

Note: the areas seen as contaminated are marked in red.

Thanks to Zerohedge and Testosterone Pit

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Japan is Earthquake Capital of the World Visualization Animated Map

After the March 11, 2011 Tohoku earthquake, tsunami and subsequent Fukushima nuclear power plant accident, I was inundated with all sorts of ridiculous mails claiming that I was working for the nuclear industry or an "nuclear apologist." The more absurd ones were from people who claimed that the March 11 disaster was caused by HAARP or, as Benjamin Fulford claimed, "The USA detonating a nuclear bomb undersea off the coast of Japan."

All nonsense. I am no expert on HAARP but I like to think I know a tad bit about Japan. Japan has a hell of a lot of earthquakes. We had two yesterday that I felt. We have them almost everyday... Hell, we have hundreds of them everyday. Don't believe me?

Well, then watch this. Here is an animated map of earthquake activity in Japan in 2011. See if you can find where the nuclear attacks were:

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Best Place for Up-to-the-Minute Radiation Readings for All of Japan

In English 日本語もあり ここです （http://blog.safecast.org/ja/）。 Nationwide readings. Proper measurements by independent worldwide volunteer organization called Safecast. If that link doesn't work, see: http://blog.safecast.org


There have been many recent stories of high radiation readings in Tokyo that were proven to be not related to Fukushima. For example, false alarms in the water, in Tokyo's Setagaya Ward, and a litany of others, Safecast data proves that Tokyo is well within safe limits and has lower radiation levels than major international cities such as Rome, Italy or Hong Kong, China.


PBS recently featured Safecast:

From Youtube:


Eight months after a tsunami caused a nuclear accident in Japan, ordinary people are using new technology and the power of crowdsourcing to find radiation hotspots. NewsHour science correspondent Miles O\'Brien reports from Japan.


The results still show several danger zones in and around Fukushima... The Tokyo areas show completely safe levels. Please check your area for yourself.

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Japanese Gov't to Rent Land Near Fukushima? Nuts!

There's some things going on about the Fukushima disaster that I just cannot understand. These problems all involve the government handling of the situation. I've written much about my dissatisfaction with that. 

The problem with the entire situation stems from government incompetence and the desire to be all things to all people in this crisis.


Yesterday, it came to fore that areas near the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plants will be declared uninhabitable for many ears to come. Does that come as a surprise to anyone? I wouldn't think so.


Now, it seems that the Japanese government is going to reimburse land and property owners near the Fukushima plant by paying them rent for all the coming years that they won't be able to live in their homes. I am completely against this notion and think this is just another government boondoogle that makes the rest of us pay for something that we had nothing to do with.


The New York Times reports:

TOKYO — Broad areas around the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant could soon be declared uninhabitable, perhaps for decades, after a government survey found radioactive contamination that far exceeded safe levels, several major media outlets said Monday.

The formal announcement, expected from the government in coming days, would be the first official recognition that the March accident could force the long-term depopulation of communities near the plant, an eventuality that scientists and some officials have been warning about for months. Lawmakers said over the weekend — and major newspapers reported Monday — that Prime Minister Naoto Kan was planning to visit Fukushima Prefecture, where the plant is, as early as Saturday to break the news directly to residents. The affected communities are all within 12 miles of the plant, an area that was evacuated immediately after the accident.

Why is this a surprise? Didn't everyone expect this long ago? When the government announced a few weeks ago that they were planning to allow residents to return this year, didn't everyone think they were talking like the fools that they are?

The government is expected to tell many of these residents that they will not be permitted to return to their homes for an indefinite period. It will also begin drawing up plans for compensating them by, among other things, renting their now uninhabitable land. While it is unclear if the government would specify how long these living restrictions would remain in place, news reports indicated it could be decades. That has been the case for areas around the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine after its 1986 accident.

Like I said, under what twisted rules will the government determine the land value of these areas? Their current value must be zero, right? What is the difference between this and the US government buying all those billions of dollar of so-called "toxic-assets" from the failing uS banking system? There isn't any. It is just throwing public money down the toilet.

Since the Fukushima accident, evacuations have been a sensitive topic for the government, which has been criticized for being slow to admit the extent of the disaster and trying to limit the size of the areas affected, despite possible risks to public health. Until now, Tokyo had been saying it would lift the current evacuation orders for most areas around the plant early next year, when workers are expected to stabilize Fukushima Daiichi’s damaged nuclear reactors.

Ha! No one who has been paying any attention even thinks anything the government says is anything but a sick joke. Once again, they show their total incompetence and lack of common sense and delusion. Kan and his cronies keep hoping that things will get better but as a friend once told me, "Hope isn't a very good business plan." How in the world it is that Kan is still prime minister is astounding.

The government was apparently forced to alter its plans after the survey by the Ministry of Science and Education, released over the weekend, which showed even higher than expected radiation levels within the 12-mile evacuation zone around the plant. The most heavily contaminated spot was in the town of Okuma about two miles southwest of the plant, where someone living for a year would be exposed to 508.1 millisieverts of radiation — far above the level of 20 millesieverts per year that the government considers safe.

The survey found radiation above the safe level at three dozen spots up to 12 miles from the plant. That has called into question how many residents will actually be able to return to their homes even after the plant is stabilized.

The only good note that can be deemed from all of this is that, with everyone being so nervous and doing some serious checking and investigation, that no one has found any wide contamination in Tokyo is a good thing. Let's hope it stays that way and people remain vigilant.


Frankly speaking, in a nutshell, here's what I think:


1) The TEPCO nuclear power plant is a privately owned business. When they made profits, they kept them. When they lose money (as in the recent accident) I don't understand why the public has to bail them out. They make a profit, they pocket the money. They lose money and the public has to pay through increased taxation? Does that seem fair to you? It doesn't to me.


2) Once again, the government is easy to spread around public tax monies paid for by you and me.... After all, it's not their money.


3) This sounds really cold, but the people who lived around those nuclear power plants profited in their businesses and livelihoods for decades due to the business and economic benefits those nuclear power plants provided as a main source of jobs and revenue for the people living in the area. Why are they different than TEPCO? They profited for many years off of businesses and jobs created by the TEPCO plant. Now that there has been a terrible accident, why do the rest of us have to pay them rent for their houses that they can no longer live in?


4) Who will decide the amount of rent to be paid? Surely we will be paying way over current market value on those properties as their current value - since the disaster - must be close to zero.


5) Why are we, the public, being asked to pay for these properties? What is the purpose of private so-called "fire and marine" insurance? (Insurance for covering accidents and disasters befalling private property?) If the owners of property had no insurance, then that is their stupidity and loss. Why should the rest of us pay for that?  When, say, a property on a mountainside is burned down in a fire, are the rest of us expected to pay for that property owner's loss? No.


The disaster of March 11 is a tragedy for those who lost homes, family and livelihoods. These sorts of occurrences are why there is insurance. There is no good reason that the government has volunteered for the rest of us to pay for these people's losses. They profited from the good times, they must suffer for the bad. 


Paying these people, like paying TEPCO, is not fair. It is the same as the US government using tax monies to bail out the big banks when they were in trouble.


The rest of us didn't experience personal or financial gain from the good times, we should not be expected to pay for the bad.


I am against this sort of expenditure of public monies whether it is to be spent to help a private business like TEPCO or a private landowner like those who lived near the Fukushima reactors. People must have known the risk. They should have moved if they didn't like the chances. The rest of us should not be expected to pay for their poor judgement or bad luck.


That is what insurance is for.


As with all tragic events, I wish for good luck for those people and survivors of these disasters... But I can't see how you or I should be forced to pay for it.

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No Nuclear Power? Dangers of Natural Gas!

Here's an interesting video about the dangers of natural gas mining. Food for thought...


"Fracking Hell"

I have written about this nuclear power versus coal or oil issue before. Click here.

Thanks to Douglas Phillips!

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Radiation Levels in Tokyo, Japan, Thursday July 28, 2011 at 8:38 am

It's Thursday July 28, 2011 at 8:37 in the morning.  A slight rain has hit the Kanto area. Here is a map from Yahoo Japan:

I wanted to use this rainy day chance to measure the background radiation levels here in Tokyo. As you can see from the video, I measured the air and near a drainage spot in the road.

Radiation Levels in Tokyo, Japan, Thursday July 28, 2011 at 8:38 am

The levels were well within safe ranges between 0.11 ~ 0.12 microsiverts per hour. The levels are usually between 0.09 ~ 0.12.

For more up to the minute readings on the air and water with comparisons and simple, easy to understand instructions on how to read and understand them, see

here. If that link doesn't work, use this: http://bit.ly/eESfcx

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We're Doomed! Japanese Nuclear Polluted Tires Found in Iraq!

I go to the store, walk around Tokyo, ride the trains, go to the grocery store. The kids are playing in the streets, school is out. Summer is here. Life in Tokyo is as always... 

Even the shat in their pants, run and ask pertinent questions later, panic stricken foreigners who were called "Flyjin" are back and too embarrassed to even bring up the subject (what subject? Oh, why returning to Tokyo now is OK when it's no worse or better now than it was on March 15th or 16th?)... 


Since millions have yet to die from Fukushima and 1/3 of Japan is still inhabitable (but for how long?) the purveyors of doom need something else to freak out about, so they have harped on about beef (in a nation that is a predominately fish eating country)... 


I don't eat beef or pork, but how come the pigs don't get equal billing? Just asking...


But now, this radioactive nonsense has gone surreal. The puppet government of Iraq (who is, I'm sure, absolutely not corrupt) wants a $1 million dollar fine for "tires polluted with radioactive rays" from Japan.


You're kidding me with this sh*t, right?


Wireupdate reports from Baghdad:

BAGHDAD (BNO NEWS) — Iraq’s Planning Ministry announced on Monday that a shipment of Japanese tires which bear traces of nuclear pollution were found to have entered the country.

“A shipment of Japanese tires, polluted with nuclear rays coming from Japan, has actually entered Iraq,” Iraqi Planning Minister, Ali Shukri, told a news conference in Baghdad on Monday, according to the Aswat al-Iraq news agency.

Shukri said his Ministry has previously signed contracts with a French and a Swiss company to check the goods coming from other countries. “In the event that the two said companies, with whom the said contracts were signed, committed any violations, the Ministry will enforce a penalty of one million U.S. dollars on them,” he said.

Radioactive tires!? Riiiiiiiiiiight.


If these idiots had a clue they could find someway to make even more money on them than regular tires.


Thanks to my alert friend Scott McLean for the "hot" tip. 

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Irradiated Beef Shows Japanese Government Incompetence

It seems the biggest ruckus about Fukushima is the contaminated hay that has been fed to cattle all around Japan.


Reuters reports:

Turmoil caused by the recent detection of cesium contamination of beef shipped from Fukushima Prefecture, home to the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, is spreading to hurt producers of high-quality beef in other parts of the country. With cattle shipments and bidding suspended or canceled due to people's fears over the contaminated beef, livestock farms and related firms worry they may be forced out of business. Since radioactive cesium above the government-designated limit was detected in beef cattle from Fukushima at a Tokyo slaughterhouse on July 8, it has been discovered that cattle possibly fed with contaminated straw have been transported across the country, except for Okinawa Prefecture.

I don't really have much to say about this excepting that this is once again proof of incompetent Japanese government.

Many might claim that this is proof that the situation at Fukushima is out of control and the government must do something about it... In fact, I gather that's what the vast majority of people think.

Well, I would like to point out something that seems missing from the conversation and ask dear reader a question:

Folks, think about this: That these animals were fed tainted hay is not proof of a situation growing out of control at all. This is only proof of government incompetence. This hay was harvested and feed to animals as feed. This is a past event. Not a current or future one. That this hay wasn't destroyed is proof that the government is unable to act and think proactively and, in any case, it is, undoubtedly, proof and another example of government incompetence.

Now, here's my question: Everyone knows how this event happened and the chain of events that lead to it. Consider that along with the government being unable to anticipate obvious problems, then how in the world would anyone in their right mind want that same government to nationalize TEPCO and take over the crippled nuclear power plants?

Now, that would be madness and would most definitely precede many future problems. It astounds me that so many people express opinions of such a nature

Don't people seem to realize the huge contradiction in their own thinking?

"Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform." - Mark Twain

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Radiation, Fukushima Facts and Blogger Frustration

Being a blogger is so frustrating... I guess it comes with the territory... 


At the top of this blog, it says, This blog is about "ALL THINGS ABOUT THE MEDIA, MARKETING AND JAPAN..."

I want to write about Japan and the media and marketing as, good bloggers are supposed to write about their expertise. It is the death-knell of any blogger to go off on subjects that they are not expert in. 

I consider myself an expert on mass media, Japan in particular. 

Surprisingly, this blog never was about nuclear power nor Fukushima. I only wrote about Fukushima when it concerned mass media sensationalism or media reporting. I wrote lots of those....

Especially when idiots said stuff like, "A large chunk of Japan will be  uninhabitable." 

Laughable...

Even so, people still attack my former comments on the prophets of doom. 

Here's one that just makes me want to pull my hair out:

You seem to have gone very quiet about the radiation and how safe we are in Japan since the beef story hit? You have no comment about such a big issue? Are we all still safe living with this risk? You think beef will be the last of it? It is amazing how much faith people have here in the authorities ability to manage such an enormous and complex situation. How they try to show support for the region by buying food that will now damage the thing they were trying to support. Is it not obvious that there is contamination and food safety issues relating to the release of radiation in the region??

I responded:

Anonymous! I've written about this much. I am not a radiation expert. I am a media expert. I have written that I wanted to stop writing about Fukushima. When I wrote about (Fukushima) I wrote about media and sensationalism. I don't eat beef - (Mad-cow, chemicals, hormones, etc. that will kill you)... I've even written that if you want factual information on the Fukushima disaster, go to the right of my blog to recommended blog and go to EX-SKF blog and/or Alexander Higgins blog. 

As I've said 100 times, living in Fukushima area near the plants are not... What do you mean, "(Is it safe) Here in Japan?" Do you mean, Okinawa? Nagoya? Osaka? From the information available, Tokyo is safe. The radiation levels are listed at the top of this blog everyday. See for yourself.

Eating beef from Fukushima is probably not (safe). I don't know. When we get a sensationalist story about how radioactive cows are killing "everyone who eats a burger or at McDonalds," I will probably have a comment. 


I've written several times that I want to stop writing about anything to do with Fukushima. Here is the post where I tried to send people to other blogs who need information on facts about Fukushima:

Need Facts on Fukushima Disaster?

I added a link on my blog to this: http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/

Japanese kid who writes well and his English is awesome! Factual reporting on Fukushima... Often makes my blog posts look stupid. Good stuff. Never ventures into conjecture or sensationalism.

I've also linked to my recommended posts a site run by my friend, Alexander Higgins. http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/ and to an excellent blog by Marc Shaffner: http://www.sheffnersweb.net/blogs/accuratemaps/ 

Anyhow, no. I have no intention of writing about anything that has to do with eating beef. In my, opinion, beef is not healthy - in some cases unsafe - to eat anyway. It is too expensive. We don't eat the stuff. Used to. Mad Cow disease finished us off on that... Never really were big beef fans anyway... 

Like I said, though, if some clown comes out in the mass media and starts making wild claims along the lines of "Fukushima beef is irradiating our food supply and 20,000 McDonald's customers are going to die from eating it!" I will write about it...

But, I would write, if only to say that eating McDonald's food regularly will probably kill a hell of a lot more people than the meat from a thousand cows from Fukushima will.

I've gone silent on this? Yes. 

Arnie Gundersen said that "20,000 people were going to die from Fukushima." 

Yawn! 

Many say that Fukushima is much worse than Chernobyl...

Here's fun fact for you about Chernobyl from Wikipedia: At Chernobyl, 237 people suffered from acute radiation sickness soon after the accident, of whom 31 died within the first three months.

Here's a fun fact for you about Fukushima: Total number of people reported to have acute radiation sickness from Fukushima; 0 (zero). Total deaths from Fukushima nuclear accident in first four + months; 0 (zero). Total number of affected cows; almost 1500.

Very bad news for the cows who will be destroyed.

Fukushima: You'd think that foreigners in this country would bother

to learn how to read second-grade kanji... You'd think wrong.

Afraid of irradiated beef? Don't eat beef... 

Also, here's another hint.... Learn to read and write basic Japanese. At ALL grocery stores in Japan they list where produce is from. If it says 福島　(Fukushima) and you are worried about it. Then don't buy it and don't eat it.

Simple. Problem solved. 


UPDATE: on Fukushima from Business Insider: Fukushima Stabilized. 


UPDATE TWO: The worst thing so far about this tainted beef is that 240 school children were fed it it Yamagata. Now there' some kids parents who, if I were them, I'd be screaming bloody murder!


Yamagata Shimbun Newspaper (7/20/2011) reports:

Concerning the beef from the cows from Asakawa-machi in Fukushima Prefecture that were fed with the rice hay that contained the high level of radioactive cesium, Sakata City (in Yamagata Prefecture) announced on July 19 that 3 nursery schools in the city purchased the beef in late April, and total 290 children and teachers ate the meat in school lunches.

According to Sakata City, the three nursery schools purchased the meat from the same food grocer in the city. The meat was cooked into "hashed beef" dish and served as lunch. 240 children and 50 teachers and administrators ate 20 to 40 grams per person.

The food grocer alerted the nursery schools . Sakata City traced the history of the meat, and confirmed that the meat that was delivered to the three nursery schools came from the Yokohama City Central Wholesale Meat Market, and the cow had come from Asakawa-machi in Fukushima Prefecture.The city notified the parents of children at these nursery schools on July 19, and decided not to use beef in school lunches until the safety is assured.  

NOTE: If you are worried about the government not testing and checking our food. All I can wonder is why in the world after all the recent deaths from food in the west does anyone in the west complain of Japanese government incompetence concerning beef. Just Google search "2010 food deaths" and you'll find 5,000 people die in the USA from tainted food every year and 40,000 die from eating junk food... The USDA doesn't test USA produced milk for radiation. Read here. That the government is incompetent is a foregone conclusion. Why anyone wants that same government to take over the nuclear power plants is beyond comprehension.

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Online Petitions, the UN and Big Government: Three Scams and You're Out!

I'm going to lose my fans with today's blog post (both of them) but some things need to be said. So, I'm going to say one right now.

"Scam three! You're out!"

People today have been so totally indoctrinated by public schooling into believing that government is here to help them that they seem to completely forget recent history that shows that this is definitely not the case. I've written before that for every crisis or disaster - that happens while on the watch of the government, by the way -  the knee-jerk reaction from that government is to expand upon itself and increase our taxes.

It doesn't matter if we are talking about a so-called democracy or socialist or fascist or communist government; the purpose of all government is expansion of itself. It was a famous US politician who said, "The government can never let a good crisis go to waste."


People who think that they can depend on the government for real help are dreaming.

EVERLY BROTHERS - ALL I HAVE TO DO IS DREAM

If expansion of the government; expansion of government duties along with the costs of paying for those duties were the answer to our problems, then the Soviet Union would have been a very successful country. 


But, it wasn't. It was a disaster.

I got an email the other day from a nice lady who wishes for me to promote an online petition for a group called, "Appeal for Fukushima". It is an online campaign to petition the UN to take over the Fukushima nuclear reactors. I will write about it, but I have nothing flattering to say about these people nor the UN.


To be exact, I have nothing good to say about what these people want in their online appeal. I just think it is confused. It ignores history and is, frankly speaking, a huge waste of time. I also think is is self-serving and dishonest that these people claim to want to "protect the Japanese people". The fact of the matter is that I suspect that that is a ruse and they selfishly want to protect themselves and make it look like they are being magnanimous. Why? Well, if they were really sincere in wanting to protect people, and take care of humanity, how about orphaned and starving kids in Rwanda or Darfur?... Or, hell, orphaned kids in Northern Japan?


Oh, no. That would require a sincere and conscientious effort. They don't want to do that. Sitting on their fat a*ses and acting like they are doing something important is a lot less work, but it feels better than doing nothing. Though, for all practical purposes, they might as well do nothing.


If these people were really sincere, they'd get off their lazy a*ses and donate money or make some sort of real effort instead of sitting in their sofa at home making online "petitions" to a useless organization like the United Nations in some bizarre attempt to make themselves feel like they are actually doing something useful.

Online petition? Pfffft! What a waste of time. Like George Carlin once said, "At least when I sit at home and masturbate, I have something to show for it when it's over."


Like the Atlantic Wire wrote about useless online petitions. They are basically a scam to collect people's email addresses:


Back away from the keyboard. That online petition you're about to sign is "pretty much a sham."... 

It's the great lie of online organizing: that your voice to Congress or your voice to whomever can make a difference. It can, it should, but not through them. Nearly every organization in Washington is focused on one thing--inventing new and interesting ways to get your email address. And they want your email address so that they can ask you for money. The truth is: my.barackobama.com was and still is, the most sophisticated suite of tools designed primarily to capture your email address and ask you for money.
Online organizers for political groups are trained to recognize "strategic moments"--to find events in the media and in the national narrative that they can use to their advantage. ... The most basic and common method for political organizations to get your email address is via a petition.

  
The "Appeal for Fukushima" is another of many in a long line of online petitions to the United Nations launched by some people for the expressed purposes of having the UN take over the nuclear reactors "under UN mandate" in order to "protect the people of Japan." But they just want your email address.


Hate to break it to you well-meaning folks, but, besides wasting your time and effort, the UN doesn't really have any mandates. It never has and never will. This is just another scam.


But, let's say it is real and honest, so what? If anyone has been paying attention to the history of the UN over these years since its inception the idea of the UN taking over anything "in order to protect people" should be a massive red flag. When has the UN successfully taken over anything or protected anyone?

The UN is a huge organization that includes a host of smaller organizations like the World Health Organization (WHO). Generally speaking, even though the UN was set up to prevent war and conflicts, it has done nothing of the sort. To its credit, though, it has helped to eradicate disease and has been somewhat useful on that front. For example, in a world wide campaign, mostly financed by the USA, the WHO has successfully eliminated Small Pox. 

But when it comes to "protecting people" the UN has been an even more miserable failure than the League of Nations before it. The UN was created to stop conflicts. It hasn't stopped even one. Everyone knows the reason the UN was created in the first place was to act as a global body that would stop all conflicts. And since the inception of the UN in 1945, we've had countless wars, civil wars and genocides. 

The UN is not a state. It hasn't the power to order any country to do anything. One need only look at 50 years of ignoring at least 66 UN resolutions by the Israeli government to see proof of that. The UN is not a state, it is an international organization. It cannot control the actions of any state, member or not, it can only try to convince the state to change it's actions. If a state commits aggression, the UN can only take actions against it if the other members of the UN decide to - which is nearly impossible as the UN is used as a political tool to advance the interests - both politically and economically - of the major player imperialist nations. 

De facto the UN has been a tool of mostly US imperialism since its inception. It was used to cover US military actions in North Korea, and as a cover for numerable US actions and crimes concerning Southeast Asia, South America and, most recently, the Middle East. Remember how the UN was fooled into supporting US actions when Iraq invaded Kuwait? There's been many other hot spots that the UN miserably failed to intervene and save lives. The Bosnian war and genocide in Rwanda to name a few. 

And, once again, let's not forget the total failures of the UN to do anything about US and NATO led wars in the Middle East over these last 20 + years.

Oh, and did I forget Palestine? No? OK, I'll say that again too. Let's hear what the Palestine Telegraph has to say about the warm support those people have received from the UN all these years:

Since its inception the United Nations has failed the people of Palestine, especially those living in the Gaza Strip. It predecessor, the League of Nations, also had many failings which eventually led to its demise and collapse. It is obvious that the UN of today is clearly not working and in many cases has no strength or accountability. We frequently see a majority vote take place but then when it gets into the hands of the Security Council (the elite few) it fizzles out, either by someone abstaining or using their trump card, the dreaded veto.

But enough about my total disregard for the United Nations. When I asked for an explanation of this petition for the completely illegal and impossible task of the UN taking over a private company, this is the document I was sent. 

The text of the petition is online in English and in Japanese (and it can be signed) at http://www.appealforfukushima.com:

“APPEAL FOR FUKUSHIMA"

Considering the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states:

Article 1 : All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 3 : Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Considering the current situation of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, which endangers the Japanese population and the rest of the world, and considering the inability of the utility TEPCO and the Japanese government to manage the situation,

We, the peoples of the Earth, appeal to the UN, WHO and all international organizations and governments. We ask:

1. The establishment of an international, interdisciplinary team with authority to take over management of the plant in Fukushima Daiichi and its consequences, under a UN mandate

2. The establishment of a crisis team within the UN responsible for implementing all measures necessary to protect the Japanese people at any price whatsoever.

We are human beings born free and equal. With reason and conscience, we act in a spirit of brotherhood. We are concerned for the life, liberty and security of our Japanese brothers and our children.

This sounds wonderful. The idea that the UN could or should take over in a situation like this is completely illegal and a wild pipe-dream. I hope these people can become more realistic and use their efforts and energy for more practical and useful endeavors in the future. This is nothing short of socialist day-dreaming.


I think petitions and fax campaigns, especially to an organization like the UN, are a total and complete waste of time. Why don't these folks do something for real like making an effort or donating time or money.


Clicking a mouse is BS.


But, hey! Don't listen to me. Good luck with the campaign.

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