Japanese ignored Tsunami threat

By Ai Lung Nguyen - March 2011.

ENVIRONMENT - The Japanese government admitted Tuesday that its safety precautions were insufficient to protect a nuclear plant against the earthquake and tsunami that crippled the facility and caused it to spew radiation. An overhaul of safety standards is in the works.

The Fukushima Daiichi struggle has unfolded with constant missteps and accidents, including an incident where two workers were drenched Tuesday with radioactive water.

A level of imcompetency has plagued the disaster relief efforts as a plethora of other incidents have led to serious doubts about the quality of the workers at the nuclear plant, hired perhaps because of their willingness to risk their lives in exchange for money, and not because of any engineering background.

The March 11th tsunami which killed over 25,000 Japanese (some people are still missing and not confirmed dead) has unveiled a lack of education and safety standards amongst the workers.

Damage from the tsunami exceeds $310 billion, the most expensive natural disaster on record, and has crippled Japan's economy. Coupled with the incompetency of the workers its a shameful exhibition that will hurt Japan's reputation for years to come.

More Accidents and Gaffs:

The Japanese government has been telling residents near the disaster zone to stay indoors and that this will protect them from the radiation. (Radiation goes right through walls, stone, etc. Only lead walls slows down radiation, although not completely.)

Specks of Plutonium has been found in earth samples found near the plant, the result of debris from explosions inside the plant. If someone collected enough Plutonium (10 kg worth) they could make a small nuclear bomb. The region should be sealed off by the Japanese military and they should be checking all people leaving the zone for radiation levels to prevent plutonium smuggling.

The Japanese have been dumping radioactive water into the ocean because they don't know where else to put it. Trucking the water and storing it somewhere safer has not occurred to them. The radioactive water is now causing many countries to be skeptical about fish imported from Japan.

The dirty radioactive water in question includes plutonium debris as well.

There has been proposals that the water could be stored in oil tankers instead, but the Japanese government seems to be too busy bickering. For now the water is being poured into poorly dug trenches, causing the water to seep into the ground and into the local drinking water, rivers and the ocean.

Another mishap happened Tuesday, when three workers trying to connect a pump outside the Unit 3 reactor were splashed by radioactive water that gushed from a pipe. They were supposed to be wearing radiation protective suits meant to be waterproof but ended up soaked with the contaminated water.

Last week, two workers were hospitalized with severe burns after issued ankle-high protective boots and told to walk through highly radioactive knee-high water.

There has also been a lot of miscommunication and lies company from TEPCO, the utility company in charge of the nuclear plant and cleanup has been lying constantly about the radiation levels being released (the same way BP Oil lied about the amount of oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico).

“This quake, tsunami and the nuclear accident are the biggest crises for Japan,” says Prime Minister Naoto Kan, saying that Japan was grappling with its worst problems since World War II.

But Naoto Kan is hardly able to do anything. He is being hampered by opposition lawmakers like Yosuke Isozaki. “We cannot let you handle the crisis,” says Yosuke Isozaki. “We cannot let you be in charge of Japan’s crisis management.”

You would think Japan would learn to work together in such a crisis, but apparently there is always a few bad eggs who would rather resort to partisan politics.

Tough Economic Times Ahead

CANADA/POLITICS - Consumer confidence fell almost 6% in March, but its just one sign of a growing economic crisis.

Bailouts, buyouts and stimulus packages have all failed to boost the economy back to pre-2007 levels. And why should they? They're just bandaids measures, not real solutions for the serious problem with North America's manufacturing sector.

Consumer confidence measures how much people are spending, and Canada's CC levels are leagues ahead of the USA's thank to Canada's stronger mining and oil sectors, whereas the USA is more dependent on manufacturing. In March Consumer Confidence fell to 83.7 from 89.3 in February. Consumer confidence is now worse than it was in March 2010.

Canadians are becoming increasingly worried about their finances, part of the pre and post-xmas phenomenon. Before the Christmas shopping season Consumer Confidence routinely goes up because people think the economy will get better with lots of xmas sales. But in January when the credit card bills come people become worried about finances again.

What doesn't help is that many gifts are manufactured overseas, boosting the economy in China, Taiwan and so forth, often with no positive impact whatsoever on the North American economy because our trade deficit is so high (around half a trillion USD / year).

Here is some interesting stats for you to consider:

USA Interest Rate 0.25%
USA GDP Growth Rate 3.1%
USA Inflation Rate 2.1%
USA Jobless Rate 8.9%
USA Budget Deficit -$4.08 billion per day.

Meanwhile back in Canada...

25% of Canadians are in worse financial shape than they were 6 months ago, up 2.4% from February.

According to the report Canadians have been in worse and worse financial shape "for 30 consecutive months"

Less than 1% of people said their finances got better.

20% of Canadians say they expect their finances to get even more worse in 6 months time.

Meanwhile soaring oil ($103 USD) and gasoline prices aren't helping. Thanks to unrest in the Middle East we've seen the return of "hundred dollar oil" and with a Canadian election coming in mere weeks (and an American election coming in 2012) we can expect economics to be a big issue.

Record gold prices also suggest that many of the financial gurus know even worse economic times are coming.

CREDIT CARD DEBTS SOARING

Weird question... what is more important to you? Paying your credit card bill or your mortgage?

Apparently many Americans are dragging their feet on mortgage payments and paying their credit card debts first, and yet at the same time credit card debt in both the USA and Canada are soaring to record highs.

The danger of this unusual phenomenon is that many people will end up homeless, people will default on their mortgages, and banks will end up holding the debts when the real estate market crashes again.

CREDIT COLLAPSE

With unemployment still high, another real estate market collapse coming, the next thing we can expect to happen is a credit crunch with the credit card companies. Eventually the debt will get so high that people will just plain start refusing to pay their credit card bills.

And when that happens we're going to be facing some extremely tough economic times.

At which point our governments are going to have no choice but to find a real solution to our economic problems instead of these bogus bailouts which only fatten the wallets of bankers.

See also The Enslavement of the American People.

Israeli president Katsav gets 7 years for rape

FEMINIST/POLITICS - Former Israeli president Moshe Katsav was sentenced last Tuesday to seven years in jail for rape. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commented on the case, saying “that no person is above the law.”

Katsav twice raped an aide while he was a cabinet minister during the late 1990s. He molested / sexually harassed two other women who worked for him during his 2000-2007 term as president.

A tribunal of three judges in Tel Aviv District Court convicted him in December, saying that his testimony had been “riddled with lies.”

“The defendant committed the acts as any man and as any man he must bear the punishment,” the judges said at sentencing last Tuesday. The judges added that his clean record and political stature were insufficient grounds for granting leniency.

So justice won out in the end.

The verdict in December was welcomed by Israeli women's groups who have long complained about sexual harassment in workplaces.

Following the verdict Katsav started shouting at the judges, even threatening them, before bursting into tears. Katsav, 65, was whisked out of court by bodyguards. A scuffle broke out when one of his sons attacked a camera crew trying to photograph the former president.

Katsav's lawyers say they will launch an appeal, which would mean going before another tribunal. Otherwise his sentence is to begin on May 8th.

This scandal has been going on for years. It forced Katsav to step down as Israeli President in disgrace, although it should be noted the presidency is largely a ceremonial position with no real power (the Israeli Prime Minister is the one with the real power).

Katsav was born in Iran, raised in the slums where poor Jews and Africans lived. His family moved to Israel in 1951 and at the age of 24 became its youngest mayor and went on to hold a number of Likud cabinet posts.

Parliament elected him president in 2000 in a surprise victory over Shimon Peres, Israel’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning elder statesman. Peres later succeeded Katsav as president, restoring dignity to the post that Katsav had tarnished with his reputation for being a rapist and a molester.

See Also: The Truth about Rape Trials

Should you vote?

CANADA - So Canadians are going to another election, the 4th in 7 years thanks to Stephen Harper's inability to gain the trust of Canadians and general ineptiness.

But should you even vote? ie. If you don't know who to vote for, and you don't even know about the issues, maybe the best thing for you to do is NOT to vote. Check out the following video: