Celebrating nuclear shutdown in Japan! - historic day

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HAPPPY CHILDREN'S DAY JAPAN!

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TOKYO - Thousands of Japanese marched to celebrate the last of this nation's 50 nuclear reactors switching off Saturday, shaking banners shaped as giant fish that have become a potent anti-nuclear symbol.

Japan will be without electricity from nuclear power for the first time in four decades when one of three reactors at Tomari nuclear plant in the northern island of Hokkaido goes offline for routine maintenance checks.

After last year's March 11 quake and tsunami set off meltdowns at Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, no reactor stopped for checkups has restarted amid growing public worries about the safety of nuclear technology.

People gather at an anti-nuclear demonstration on the Children's Day national holiday, calling for a safer future for younger generations at a park in Tokyo on May 5, 2012. The last working reactor in Japan is to be switched off May 5, 2012, leaving the country without nuclear power just over a year after the world's worst atomic accident in a quarter of a century. AFP PHOTOS / KAZUHIRO NOGI

"Today is a historical day," shouted Masashi Ishikawa to a crowd gathered at a Tokyo park, some holding traditional "Koinobori" carp-shaped banners for Children's Day that have grown into a symbol of the anti-nuclear movement.

"There are so many nuclear plants, but not a single one will be up and running today, and that's because of our efforts," Ishikawa said...

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> more: Japan Nuclear Power: Thousands Celebrate As Last Of Reactors Switch OfF | CP | By Yuri Kageyama, The Associated Press

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see also

whats up: RC's NUCLEAR BLOG
NO NUKES | #RE-TOOL NOW
Occupy Nuclear Daily (#OccupyNuclear)

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broken column

four dead in ohio

The Kent State shootings—also known as the May 4 massacre or the Kent State massacre—occurred at Kent State University in the U.S. city of Kent, Ohio, and involved the shooting of unarmed college students by the Ohio National Guard on Monday, May 4, 1970. The guardsmen fired 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis.

Some of the students who were shot had been protesting against the American invasion of Cambodia, which President Richard Nixon announced in a television address on April 30. Other students who were shot had been walking nearby or observing the protest from a distance.

There was a significant national response to the shootings: hundreds of universities, colleges, and high schools closed throughout the United States due to a student strike of four million students, and the event further affected the public opinion—at an already socially contentious time—over the role of the United States in the Vietnam War. (read more) (four dead in ohio)

this is israel

r. crumb

r. crumb 

(documentary)

radio bikini

Looking Back

Remembrance
By Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926)

1.  

YOU wait, with memories drifting,   
For the something that made life blessed,   
The mighty, the rare, the uplifting,   
The awaking of stones, the rifting   
That opened deeps unguessed.           

The books in your shelves are staring   
Golden and brown, as you muse   
On the lands you crossed in your faring,   
On pictures, on visions unsparing   
Of women you had to lose.           

All at once it comes back: now you know!   
Trembling you rise, all aware   
Of a year once long ago   
With its grandeur and fear and prayer.

                    --Margarete Münsterberg, ed., trans.  A Harvest of German Verse.  1916.


I wanted to save this.  Mr. Rilke is new to me and I wish to look deeper into his work.

Sgt Bales vs War

Recent information blows my PTSD theory. Sgt Bales wasn’t suffering the effects of multiple deployments. He re-up’d and saw the military as his calling. It sounds like a deliberate attack. I have a new theory. The only sane response to an irrational and life-threatening situation is to act in an equally irrational manner. U.S. soldiers are trained to fight with ‘discrimination’ and regard for civilian life. However, they’re constantly put into battle with an enemy that fights without such civility. The Taliban are known to place little value on the lives of civilians. The Afghan people live in fear of the Taliban, but the Taliban are there all the time and they know they’ll continue being there after we’re gone. They side with them out of necessity. As a result, U.S. soldiers are operating in a region “..riddled with mistrust and hostility.” In an effort to deprive Taliban fighters of cover, U.S. soldiers routinely bulldoze houses, orchards, and farms. This fuels more hostility. As a result, residents regularly assist the Taliban. They help plant IED’s and U.S. soldiers often find bomb-making material in their homes. The war in Afghanistan has put our troops in an un-winnable situation. I deplore the killing of innocent women and children (any killing for that matter) ..but the civilian population is harbouring and assisting the enemy and the Taliban have no problem getting their compliance out of the barrel of a gun. This is no doubt the case in the Panjwayi district where Sgt Bales and his squad were operating. Perhaps the only way Sgt Bales felt he could deliver a message of strength was to act with equal ruthlessness. It’s been seen before. During the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam, orders were given to shoot civilians  “They're all V.C., now go and get them” [ link ]. Instead of prosecuting Sgt Bales, perhaps it’s the U.S. war in Afghanistan that should stand trial.

...the program.

...same agenda

...different face.

TSA stands for ?

The Federal Reserve Turns Left | The Nation

The Federal Reserve Turns Left | The Nation:

'via Blog this'

nuclear hubris

Chernobyl disaster

26th Anniversary of Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster | NUCLEAR "SAFTEY" = NUCLEAR THREAT

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26th Anniversary of Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster

GABRIELA BULISOVA photo - Chernobyl Children International

It was 26 years ago today when a deadly explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the former Soviet state of Ukraine led to what was then the worst nuclear disaster in history. It sent a cloud of radioactive fallout into Russia, Belarus and over a large portion of Europe.

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All nuclear reactors and their waste should be declared illegal, and can be considered crimes against humanity and the ecosphere - all governments and corporations and their officers should be made directly liable for the immediate decommissioning of all nuclear power plants, and for the security, clean up and management of the eternal quagmire of nuclear waste that they have created.

see also: Nuclear Power = Crime Against Humanity

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Chernobyl nuclear reactor after the disaster. Reactor 4 (center). Turbine building (lower left). Reactor 3 (center right). This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons

much more at whats up: 25th Anniversary of Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster | NUCLEAR "SAFTEY" = NUCLEAR THREAT

Miraho -Nie chcemy atomu (DiesProduction).avi

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we poison our children

Tomoko Uemura in Her Bath

Hallelujah

the racetrack

The Racetrack Playa, or The Racetrack, is a scenic dry lake feature with "sailing stones" that leave linear "racetrack" imprints. It is located above the northwestern side of Death Valley, in Death Valley National Park, Inyo County, California, U.S..

The sailing stones are a geological phenomenon found in the Racetrack. The stones slowly move across the surface of the playa, leaving a track as they go, without human or animal intervention. They have never been seen or filmed in motion. Racetrack stones only move once every two or three years and most tracks last for three or four years. Stones with rough bottoms leave straight striated tracks while those with smooth bottoms wander. (read more)

on to mars

mother earth

Earth Day: what are we doing to our home ?

click here to watch the full movie "Home"

try try again

"If at first you don't succeed...


skydiving is not for you...


...maybe golf."

what on earth will it take ?

Rippin' The Imagination Freestyle

project romanek

"Naked Air"

dancing flames

Sensory integration

This garden universe vibrates complete. Some we get a sound so sweet. Vibrations reach on up to become light, and then thru gamma, out of sight. Between the eyes and ears there lay, the sounds of color and the light of a sigh. -  Moody Blues 

The Power Of Nightmares: The Politics Of Fear

would you like to know more ?

solving the mystery of wtc7

zero: an investigation into 911

time to tell the truth

100 years ago today: Titanic

RMS Titanic was a passenger liner that sank in the North Atlantic Ocean on 15 April 1912 after colliding with an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton, England to New York City. The sinking of Titanic caused the deaths of 1,514 people in one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in history. She was the largest ship afloat at the time of her maiden voyage. One of three Olympic class ocean liners operated by the White Star Line, she was built between 1909–11 by the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast. She carried 2,223 people.


Her passengers included some of the wealthiest people in the world, as well as over a thousand emigrants from Great Britain and Ireland, Scandinavia and elsewhere seeking a new life in North America. The ship was designed to be the last word in comfort and luxury, with an on-board gymnasium, swimming pool, libraries, high-class restaurants and opulent cabins. She also had a powerful wireless telegraph provided for the convenience of passengers as well as for operational use. Though she had advanced safety features such as watertight compartments and remotely activated watertight doors, she lacked enough lifeboats to accommodate all of those aboard. Due to outdated maritime safety regulations, she carried only enough lifeboats for 1,178 people – slightly more than half of the number traveling on the maiden voyage and one-third her total passenger and crew capacity.


After leaving Southampton on 10 April 1912, Titanic called at Cherbourg in France and Queenstown (now Cobh) in Ireland before heading westwards towards New York. On 14 April 1912, four days into the crossing and about 375 miles (600 km) south of Newfoundland, she hit an iceberg at 11:40 pm (ship's time; GMT−3). The glancing collision caused Titanic's hull plates to buckle inwards in a number of locations on her starboard side and opened five of her sixteen watertight compartments to the sea. Over the next two and a half hours, the ship gradually filled with water and sank. Passengers and some crew members were evacuated in lifeboats, many of which were launched only partly filled. A disproportionate number of men – over 90% of those in Second Class – were left aboard due to a "women and children first" protocol followed by the officers loading the lifeboats. Just before 2:20 am Titanic broke up and sank bow-first with over a thousand people still on board. Those in the water died within minutes from hypothermia caused by immersion in the freezing ocean. The 710 survivors were taken aboard from the lifeboats by RMS Carpathia a few hours later. (read more)