Tag Archives: debt

Fukushima

One Year Later: GE designed Fukushima Daiichi Reactors still leaking cooling water! No decommissioning until it stops!

8 June 2012, Tokyo Electric (TEPCo) said that employees inspected the basements of Reactors 2 & 3, for the first time since the March 2011 nuclear disaster began!

Now, more than a year later, TEPCo officials say it is clear that the reactor vessels are damaged and still leaking! Really, after all this time?

The basement of Reactor 2 has 5.33 meters (17.3 feet) of contaminated water, and Reactor 3 has 5.43 meters (17.7 feet)!

Rather than dump sand, lead, boric acid and concrete on the thing (as the Soviets did with Chernobyl), the Japanese government, and TEPCo, have decided to shut down the GE designed disaster reactors, as if they were functioning normally!

The problem is that it requires the cooling down of the reactors, and the removal of melted fuel rods.  And that can only be accomplished by stopping any leaks and removing all contaminated water.  Here’s the thing, more than one year later, TEPCo still does not know where the water is leaking from!!!

Business/Economics, International, U.S.

What Economic Recovery? U.S. job creation crashing! European unemployment holding at record high! Production falling in China! Japan going down! Government bonds at record lows! Dow Jones erases all gains of 2012!

1 June 2012, bad news for everyone, that is bad news for everyone playing the western (U.S./British dominated) game of capitalism (including the “communist” Chinese)!

Employment numbers did not live up to the expectations of experts in the United States. The U.S. Department of Labor reported that only 69,000 net jobs were created in May.  Employment experts in the private sector expected at least 150,000 new jobs.

To top that, the Labor Department revised the April and March employment numbers…down!  For the two months before May, the number of net jobs created was revised downward by 49,000!

In the past labor officials said that in order to have an economic recovery unAmerican Corporate America must create 200,000 net new jobs every month.  That hasn’t happened, and now it’s worse!  The latest estimates are that 362,000 net new jobs must be created every month, for three years straight!  That would bring down the unemployment rate to 6%.

Here’s some factual numbers: At least 12.7 million people in the U.S. are “officially” unemployed.  At least 100,000 million people are “unofficially” unemployed!  Both those factual numbers come from the U.S. Department of Labor!

As one of the many Low Income workers who recently went back to work, working for the Man in the U.S. (after two years of unemployment), let me just say this: No Shit Sherlock!

We Low Income workers, still with jobs, have seen the unAmerican Corporate America bullshit first hand, on a daily bases.  It’s now to the point many of us see it on an hourly bases!  Nothing has changed, people!  If anything the glorified, deified, well educated, well financed leaders of our country are only picking up speed with their snowballing moronic decision making!  Need proof?  How about JP Morgan Chase  (I now work for a contractor who lost a contract with Chase, now I think we know a major reason why Chase canceled the contract)?  Wake up people!!!  UnAmerican Corporate America is the cause of our economic decline!

Now for Europe.

The 17 member European Union held onto its record unemployment rate for the second month in a row. The latest report is for the month of April, and it stands at 11%.  When you break it down by EU member countries it gets worse: Italy  10.2%, Portugal 15.2%, Greece 21.7% (stats for February only).

But how about that Spain?  24.3% unemployment!  When you look at just youth unemployment (workers under 25 years of age) it’s 51.5%!!!  Can you say “get ready for civil war”?

The result of the collapse of the EU is causing the euro to crash & burn, and forcing the Japanese yen to increase in value.  Not only that, but today was the first day that China and Japan began trading their money (in order to avoid the U.S. dollar) and the yen gained in value over the Chinese yuan!

That will kill Japanese business.  Japan is a country whose economy depends on international trade.  Since 2011 the yen has gained in value, and has already caused major harm to Japanese companies.  Yesterday Toyota announced that it was selling $2.5 billion USD in bonds to raise cash, because they believed another credit crash was coming (funny how the U.S./British mainstream media misreported the news).

China is reporting a drop in the Purchasing Managers’ Index, down 2.9 points from April.  The drop is caused by a combination of decreased sales internationally, and domestically.  It means China’s economy is slowing down, and if China is the manufacturing center of the western capitalist world, then it makes for a good canary in the western capitalist economic coal mine.

Oh, let’s not forget those stable government bonds.  On 1 June 2012, U.S. ten year bonds hit a record low of 1.5% interest!   German government bonds hit a record low of 1.1%!

The result of all this doom & gloom, based on factual data, is that all the stock markets in Asia went down.  In the United States the Dow Jones Industrial Average (aka Wall Street) lost all its gains for January to May 2012, falling more than 200 points in one hour and 30 minutes!

Fukushima, Idaho

East Idaho Gamma Ray detector not functioning? Gamma levels higher than “typical”? Evidence of Fukushima Daiichi?

As the Japanese nuclear disaster continues on, with no end in sight, I discovered that a public radiation detector, or High Pressure Ion Chamber (HPIC)/gamma detector, in the middle of nowhere eastern Idaho, apparently is not working.

It’s part of the Idaho Environmental Monitoring Program (IEMP), which is actually run by a conglomeration of Federal and State agencies.  They include the State of Idaho, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Shoshone-Bannock Tribes and the Idaho National Laboratory (INL).

Big Lost River IEMP Tower

IEMP is located at the Big Lost River rest stop along U.S. 26/20 highway.  It’s sandwiched between the INL complex and EBR 1.  The area is home to at least 50 nuclear power projects, a sign at the rest stop claims it’s the most nuclear projects in one area in the whole world.

HPIC gamma detector. Note that it is made by GE, the same company behind Fukushima Daiichi.

At the rest stop there is also a display that presents current IEMP data to the public. However, the gamma radiation display is blank.  There is a website, www.idahoop.org.   The website is not put together well, but when I clicked on the Rest Area Tower (found under the Community Monitoring section) it does display the gamma levels.  As of 25 May 2012 background gamma radiation is at 16.1 μR/h (micro Roentgens per hour).

Big Lost River rest stop IEMP display board

This might be a little high, but how are we in the general public supposed to know?  Here’s a couple of examples: According to Wikipedia 9.8 μR/h equals approximately 86 mR/year, which is considered “less than typical”.  Another example is that of the ghost city of Pripyat, which was contaminated by Chernobyl in the 1980s.  As of 5 January 2012 the city was still showing gamma levels as high as 66 μR/h, which is why no one can live there!

The IEMP website also gives you locations of several other gamma stations throughout eastern Idaho. They surround the INL. Here’s what the many Towers were picking up on 25 May 2012: Blackfoot  10.4 μR/h, Idaho Falls 13.8 μR/h, Fort Hall reservation 14.5 μR/h, Rexburg 13.0 μR/h and Terreton 15.0 μR/h.

The major problem with this IEMP website is that it does not give you any historical gamma readings.  The system was put into place in 1997, and having that historical data would be the best way to see if gamma radiation was increasing or not.  We also don’t know if the current, slightly higher than “typical”, micro Roentgens per hour of gamma radiation is the result of the record number of nuclear projects in the area, or from Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi!

Big Lost River IEMP station

There are many EMP sites throughout the United States, such as CEMP in Nevada.  But not all monitor gamma radiation. The CIEMP checks only solar radiation (net radiation).  You can search under “environmental monitoring program” to see if any are in your area of the U.S.

Fukushima

One Year Later: Cops suffering PTSD after responding to tsunami & nuclear disasters!

24 May 2012, Japan’s National Police Agency reports that their own study finds that at least 4% of police who responded to the disasters that began on 11 March  2011, are showing signs of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

The study followed cops in the three hardest hit prefectures of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima. The study also broke down results according to workload, and proximity to the ongoing nuclear disaster reactors at Fukushima Daiichi.

At least 10% of police officers, who’ve had an increase in workload since 11 March 2011, are showing more signs of PTSD.  At least 7% of cops working near the GE designed reactors have signs of PTSD.

People working as police in the disaster areas are not only having to enforce laws and protect property, but they too are dealing with the disaster as victims as well.

The National Police Agency (NPA) says no cop has been officially/medically diagnosed with PTSD (’cause it could end their careers), but the NPA says it will work to create policies for coping with PTSD symptoms.

 

Fukushima

One Year Later: Government literally ignoring calls for help from tsunami & radiation refugees!

23 May 2012.  Back in March local level governments in Japan set up a help hotline for refugees from Iwate, Fukushima and Miyagi prefectures.  Supposedly this was to insure that refugees were able to be heard by local government officials.

So far only about 10% of those who call are getting through. Out of the 370,000 calls made to the hotline, only 40,000 were answered!

The hotline is called Yorisoi, which operate 38 call centers in Japan.  Their northeastern boss blames the lack of answered calls on lack of reconstruction in the disaster hit areas, and on refugees making calls at night (even thought it is a 24 hour call center).

Yorisoi officials claim they can not find enough employees to take calls at night!

 

Business/Economics, U.S.

What Economic Recovery? Official ‘Unofficial’ unemployment numbers way up. Nearly 100 million Americans unemployed! Record number of people who refuse to work slave wage jobs!

“At this point, the labor market is worse than people realize because people are discouraged. Certainly, a large number of workers have given up on the job market.”-Keith Hall, former commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Believe it or not the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics actually attempts to track those people who’re unofficially unemployed.

The “official” unemployment numbers count those who’ve been looking for work for the last four weeks, and people who already have jobs but are looking for better work.  The fact that “official” unemployment numbers includes people that are actually employed should be enough for you to doubt them.

But it turns out the Bureau of Labor Statistics does try to count people who’ve been out of work longer than four weeks, or who have just stopped looking for work, they just don’t include those people in the “official” unemployment reports.

One way they look at it is what they call labor force participation.  According to their latest numbers, the labor force participation rate in the United States is at it’s lowest level since 1984. There are 86 million U.S. citizens who gave up looking for work!  That’s 86 million “unofficially” employed on top of the 12.7 million “officially” unemployed!

That means there’s actually 98.7 million people known by the federal government to be unemployed in the United States!

Department of Labor officials say that at least 6 million unofficially unemployed have stopped looking for work because most jobs available are not worth taking (from the unemployed’s point of view).

Labor officials also admitted that they didn’t know why about 36 million of the unofficially unemployed refuse to look for work.  In fact the labor force participation rate has been steadily dropping since 2000, years before the credit crisis began!

To make matters worse, the Chicago Federal Reserve bank expects labor force participation rate to continue to fall.

Why is the Labor Department coming forth with this dismal unemployment announcement?  Because federal government officials and politicians have realized that with nearly 100 million people out of work, and signs that it’s going to get worse, the money the federal government steals through income taxes will continue to be less and less (don’t be surprised when they start jackin’ up taxes on those who are employed).

 

Business/Economics, International

What Economic Recovery? Spain hits record unemployment, highest in Europe!

April 27, 2012, Spain’s National Statistics Institute announced that Spain’s unemployment rate is officially at 24.4%, the highest ever for Spain, and currently the highest in Europe!

That’s 5.6 million people out of work in a country with a population of 46 million people!

The 24.4% rate is for the first quarter of 2012.  It’s a 370,000 increase from the last quarter of 2011!

Now realize that Spain is considered the fourth largest economy in Europe!

The government of Spain plans on enacting even more spending cuts, and increases in taxes.  Mmmm, I think that’s whats actually making things worse?

Influenza

War on Terror shifts to War on Flu. Politicians opposed were removed before votes were cast! New law says who will get help and who won’t!

April 27, 2012, Japan’s Diet (parliament) has passed a bill that allows near martial law like conditions in response to a major epidemic.

The Japanese government can now set up a special task force to deal with an outbreak of unusually virulent influenza.  A state of emergency can be declared if the epidemic threatens the economy.

The special task force can decide who will be given priority for medical help! Education can be suspended, and public gatherings and events restricted.

Something else to be concerned about, this law was passed only because all those politicians that opposed it were not present in the parliament, including members of the Liberal Democratic Party.

Japanese media says the law passed with a majority of the votes, but that’s a given when all those opposed were not present.

The committee that debated the bill warned that provisions should be added that protected individual liberties, and that the special task force should be required to heed the advise of medical experts.

Note: Japan is part of the Trilateral Commission (Europe, North America, Japan/Asia)

Fukushima

One Year Later: Proof that being a refugee will kill you, more than 1600 people die in Japan. Money does not help!

More than a year after the March 11, 2011, earthquake/tsunami and nuclear disaster, 1,618 people have died.

Japan’s Reconstruction Agency announced on April 27, 2012, that living as refugees was the cause of their deaths.

Most had lost their homes and were living in makeshift housing. The Agency determined that extremely stressful and unhealthy conditions causes people to die. Some people died because they needed medical treatment, but were unable to get help.

Deaths occurred in nine prefectures. So far Fukushima leads the list with 764 deaths, followed by 636 in Miyagi and 179 in Iwate.

The Reconstruction Agency started tracking refugees only because of the money that was given out for disaster relief. Turns out the money did little to make life better for the refugees.

Note: Japan is part of the Trilateral Commission (Europe, North America, Japan/Asia)

Fukushima

One Year Later: Radiation contaminated fish found in Japanese rivers!

In a town 180 kilometers (111.8 miles) from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear plant, which continues to spew radiation, fish in a major river are contaminated with Cesium.

Silver crucian carp caught in the Tone River contain 110 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram.  The new official safe limit is 100 becquerels.

This is not the first time contaminated animals have been caught in the river.  Last month shellfish were also found to be contaminated.

Chiba prefectural officials are asking all commercial fisherman not to sell any fish caught in the river.  People are warned not to eat anything from the river.

ONE YEAR LATER: SOME FUKUSHIMA FARM ANIMALS WILL BE ALLOWED TO LIVE

FUKUSHIMA TO EUTHANIZE ABANDONED LIVESTOCK AND PETS!

ONE YEAR LATER: MORE RADIOACTIVE SHROOMS, SHOOTS & BEEF