Some Chinese farmers have decided to stop fighting Mother Earth’s climate change, and have rented out their farm land to movie studios.
In one area, the farmers gave up farming and now use their land as huge film studios. The former farmers also double as movie extras. They have made enough money to replace their old farm homes with big modern homes.
It’s not only crops that are suffering in China, because of drought. Bee keepers say they’re losing their bees as well.
Honey production is down due to a decrease in flower pollen production, thanks to climate change. Bee keepers say it will also mean a decrease in bees, because pollen is their food.
China has the largest rapeseed field in the world. Rapeseed is used to make canola oil. Farmers there say drought keeps seed production too low for use in canola oil production. It also keeps rapeseed flower growth too low for the bees.
Sharp has announced that production of their Liquid Crystal Display TVs will be halted, due to parts shortages in Japan, due to the ongoing disasters.
Sharp is not too worried as they say they still have a one months supply of parts on hand.
The recent huge aftershock, in Japan, has resulted in one thousand ATMs being shut down.
Japan Post Bank blames it on the power outage caused by a big aftershock on April 7. The power outage caused a computer glitch that shut down the Automated Teller Machines.
On 09 April 2011, fish samples off Japan were found still contaminated with cesium.
On 07 April 2011, one in four fish samples had levels of contamination above set limits.
The fish tested were lance fish, and two kinds of flat fish.
More than 14,000 people are still missing, even after a massive three day search by military and police forces. Local governments are begging for another large scale search.
The search will be conducted on April 10. It will involve 22,000 personnel, 50 vessels and 90 aircraft. It will not cover the radiation danger zones.
People of Japan have been driving into the 20km evacuation zone, violating their government’s orders. It’s all because so many people being affected feel they are not being told what is really going on with their homes and animals they left behind. I have links to 2 videos people should watch.
In a 12 minute video journalists enter the area, find packs of dogs, and surprisingly, people driving around.
At the 17km point their Geiger counter alarm goes off. They then pass armored semi-trucks with the drivers wearing gas masks. At 15km the radiation levels go up. They are then stopped by massive quake damage to the road. Driving down another road they come across cattle eating radioactive grass. More earthquake damaged road. We’re only four minutes into the video. Driving through seemingly abandoned cities with quake damaged buildings. Another car with people wearing surgical masks. Tsunami damage. Geiger counters still sounding the alarm. Seven and a half minutes into the video Fukushima DaiNi nuclear plant. Someone’s vegetable garden. At 2.5km radiation spike. A lone dog, they feed it. At 1.8km radiation increases. Cattle loose in the town. 11 and a half minutes in Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. 112 micro sieverts per hour on their counter, 1.5km from plant. This means radiation sickness will show up after 92 days, if you stay. Could be cesium.
There is a 10 minute video where they go right up to the Fukushima Daiichi gates.
They actually walk around the destruction taking Geiger counter readings. They pass road repair crews wearing full contamination suits, how’d you like to patch pot holes dressed like that. Just like the other guys, the Geiger counter goes up the closer they get to the nuke plant. At 1.5km from Fukushima Daiichi their counter goes into the yellow zone. At the gate they are waved off by people in full nuke suits. They drive around the perimeter of the nuke plant, their Geiger counter staying in the yellow zone. At one point it goes over 100 micro sieverts per hour. This video ends with a trip to Chernobyl, in Ukraine, in which they demonstrate that even 25 years later everything there is still radioactive, and, that people are still dealing with genetic mutations in their children (it begins with the scenes of snow and old Soviet tanks).
And the Japanese government wants the media to stop “sensationalizing”? Video’s speak louder than words, Baka!
In Aneyoshi there is a one hundred year old stone tablet that gives a dire warning: “High dwellings are the peace and harmony of our descendants. Remember the calamity of the great tsunamis. Do not build any homes below this point.”
The families living in Aneyoshi are glad they headed their ancestors advice. But thousands of others suffered the wrath of the tsunami. There are hundreds of these stone tablets all along the coastal areas of Japan. Some are 600 years old.
Many tablets are not as specific as the one at Aneyoshi. Some simply say beware of tsunami, or were blank. Some of those stone tablets have been washed away by the March 11 tsunami, which is an indicator of that it was probably the mother of all tsunamis to hit Japan for the past thousand years.
The trucks are made by a German company, Putzmeister, for building skyscrapers. The Soviets also used eleven of them to help dump concrete on the failed Chernobyl nuclear plant about 25 years ago.
The 26 wheeled trucks can be operated by remote control. You know the situation at Fukushima Daiichi is bad when so many other countries get directly involved to help control the crisis.
Thanks to a WikiLeaks release, tensions between the United States and Ecuador are heating up.
The WikiLeaks document showed that the U.S. ambassador to Ecuador, Heather M. Hodges, made some not so nice comments about their President. Apparently President Rafael Correa gave her a chance to retract, or explain, her statements, and she allegedly refused. She was then declared persona non grata (unwelcome) in Ecuador, but not officially kicked out.
Now the United States has actually kicked out the ambassador from Ecuador. The U.S. State Department says it’s in retaliation for Ecuador ordering Hodges out of the country, which President Correa disputes. Correa says they simply said she was no longer welcome, but they were not “kicking her out”.
This continues a long list of problems between Ecuador and the U.S. In the past few years the United States was pushing Ecuador to allow U.S. military bases to be set up on their soil. The official reason was to fight drugs in Columbia, but many people believe it was to encircle Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. President Correa responded, in 2009, by saying that the only way the U.S. could build bases in Ecuador, was if Ecuador was allowed to build bases in the United States.
Now we have the WikiLeaks/ambassador fiasco. What’s next, oil? Maybe!
Ecuador has oil! They have been fighting international legal battles to prevent oil companies from coming in and drilling. That’s right, they do NOT want anymore oil pumped out of their ground. Ecuador does have active oil fields, but they don’t want anymore. The oil corporations, backed by governments (Chevron/United States), are saying to bad so sad, you just a piddly country, what you gonna do about it?
So far Ecuador has been petitioning United Nations members, but not getting much support. There’s estimated to be hundreds of millions of barrels of oil still to be drilled and pumped out in Ecuador. And with the price of oil making it more tempting, could President Obama (or any other future U.S. president) be planning some kinda humanitarian military intervention in Ecuador?