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Tens of Thousands March Against Nuclear Power in Tokyo
Chanting "Sayonara nuclear power" and waving banners, tens of thousands of people marched in central Tokyo to call on Japan's government to abandon atomic energy in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear accident.
An aerial view from Kyodo shows people attending an anti-nuclear rally at Meiji Park in Tokyo September 19, 2011. Some 60,000 protesters from across Japan including a Nobel-prize-winning author Kenzaburo Oe, gathered in central Tokyo for an anti-nuclear rally on Monday, urging the Japanese government to cut reliance on atomic power. (REUTERS/Kyodo) The demonstration underscores how deeply a Japanese public long accustomed to nuclear power has been affected by the March 11 crisis, when a tsunami caused core meltdowns at three reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex.
The disaster — the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl — saw radiation spewed across a wide part of northeastern Japan, forcing the evacuation of some 100,000 people who lived near the plant and raising fears of contamination in everything from fruit and vegetables to fish and water.
"Radiation is scary," said Nami Noji, a 43-year-old mother who came to the protest on this national holiday with her four children, ages 8-14. "There's a lot of uncertainty about the safety of food, and I want the future to be safe for my kids."
Police estimated the crowd at 20,000 people, while organizers said there were three times that many people.
In addition to fears of radiation, the Japanese public and corporate world have had to put up with electricity shortages amid the sweltering summer heat after more than 30 of Japan's 54 nuclear reactors were idled over the summer to undergo inspections.
Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, who took office earlier this month, has said Japan will restart reactors that clear safety checks. But he has also said the country should reduce its reliance on atomic energy over the long-term and explore alternative sources of energy. He has not spelled out any specific goals.
Before the disaster, this earthquake-prone country derived 30 percent of its electricity from nuclear power. Yet Japan is also a resource-poor nation, making it a difficult, time-consuming process for it to come up with viable alternative forms of energy.
Mari Joh, a 64-year-old woman who traveled from Hitachi city to collect signatures for a petition to shut down the Tokai Dai-ni nuclear plant not far from her home, acknowledged that shifting the country's energy sources could take 20 years.
"But if the government doesn't act decisively now to set a new course, we'll just continue with the status quo," she said Monday. "I want to use natural energy, like solar, wind and biomass."
Before the march, the protesters gathered in Meiji Park to hear speakers address the crowd, including one woman from Fukushima prefecture, Reiko Muto, who described herself as a "hibakusha," an emotionally laden term for survivors of the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Those evacuated from around the plant remain uncertain about when, if ever, they will be able to return to their homes.
An AP-GfK poll showed that 55 percent of Japanese want to reduce the number of nuclear reactors in the country, while 35 percent would like to leave the number about the same. Four percent want an increase while 3 percent want to eliminate them entirely.
The poll, which surveyed 1,000 adults between July 29 and Aug. 10, had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.
Author Kenzaburo Oe, who won the Nobel literature prize in 1994 and has campaigned for pacifist and anti-nuclear causes, also addressed the crowd. He and musician Ryuichi Sakamoto, who composed the score to the movie "The Last Emperor," were among the event's supporters.
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37 Comments so far
Show AllEither sloppy or uninformed reporting by AP. A report not long ago made it clear that the cooling systems at several of the Fukushima reactors were damaged by the earthquake before the ensuing tsunami arrived.
""But the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first and most important requirement for success."
Actually from "War Propaganda", in volume 1, chapter 6 of Mein Kampf (1925), by Adolf Hitler"
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum
I think you have misinterpreted my reason for including the quote. Like the poster to whom I was replying I was struck by the repetition of the now disproved "blame the tsunami" meme.
The meme I was referring to was in the article. I was agreeing with the poster that the tsunami wasn't the cause of the crisis. That's why I wrote: " Like the poster to whom I was replying I was struck by the repetition of the now disproved "blame the tsunami" meme." I suppose adding, "in the article." would have made it clearer. The quote from Hitler, usually misattributed to Gobbles, is about repeating the same lie over and over - like the press repeats the lie that the tsunami, not the earthquake, caused the problem.
From the article: "..March 11 crisis, when a tsunami caused core meltdowns at three reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex."
The term Reductio ad Hitlerum originated with Leo Strauss, the daddy of neo-conservatism and a man who believed that governments should use evil as an every day tool. Strauss was a student of Martin Heidegger, one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century (Being and Time, perhaps only Ludwig Wittgenstein had more influence in the philosophic world, but Heidegger had much more practical influence on the world). Martin Heidegger was a true believer Nazi who never denounced the holocaust. When asked in an interview in the 1960s about the holocaust, Heidegger said the Sudetenland Germans suffered, too.
Strauss was a Nazi, just like Heidegger, and Cheney, W, and all the U of Chicago boys and PNAC boys are Nazi followers.
I know you hear seemingly intelligent people say that the first person who brings up the Nazis loses the argument (see Thom Hartmann), but this is a fallacious statement, as after WWII, many Nazis flocked to the US and the US welcomed them with open arms into the CIA and our universities.
Instead, Americans should ask the question why did the USA embrace these monsters and how did their philosophy become the main stream of modern American political thought?
Does the fact that we embraced German scientists, whether they were Nazi party menbers or not, have squat to do with what is happening at the Fukushima nuclear power plant?
If it does have squat to do with that continuing disaster, maybe we should bring up the Aroostook War we had with Canada? ~~Ctrl-z~ was only bringing up a good valid point about very effective propaganda.
Our mainstream political thought began long befrore Hitler came to power. The American powers who be, the big business tycoons of the early 1900s embraced Hitler and his ideals, that included Preston Bush, the Shrub's grandpop.
Btw,, how many knew we once went to war with Canada? __ Yep, we did, and we won too, without bombing them...Pretty neat huh?
55 percent of Japanese want to reduce the number of nuclear reactors in the country
35 percent would like to leave the number about the same.
Four percent want an increase
3 percent want to eliminate them entirely.
(from the article)
===================
So even after three core meltdowns in Japan, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Chalk River, John Gofman's efforts and book "Irrevy", Chris Busby's and Euradcom's work, the monumental report on Chernobyl by the top academician at the former Soviet Academy of the Sciences, the efforts of Helen Caldicott and 'Beyond Nuclear', only three percent, plus or minus three or four percent, understand and say 'close the plants now.'
That about sums it up for me - I imagine similar numbers would be found as regards man-made global warming, or any of the other environmental threats which surround us. People as a generality, i.e., the majority, cannot apprehend abstract concepts as if they were reality - cannot see in the imagination clearly enough to respond accurately.
Democracy is based in part on the idea that the majority will apprehend reality and respond accurately.
Aside from my theorizing (above), I have seen nothing in human nature to lend hope to the prospect that we will respond to the multiple environmental, political, economic and social threats which assail us now.
We live, and have always lived, in the "Age of Stupid."
Manysummits
=========
Do not put your faith in the "polls" conducted by the same people behind the MSM. We are never told how the polls were conducted, nor even the questions. All trained in research methodologies know that polls are one of the most unreliable forms of research on public opinion--almost never do they qualify as 'scientific,' that is, they never attain a statistically representative sample of the population whose opinions are in question. In other words, they are bogus information, always suspect.
A real study would attempt to triangulate various types of research including both qualitative and quantitative methods, but never would a study really on a survey of opinion. Such work is not considered 'scholarly.' Rather, it is the pulp fiction of the corporate media.
Take note! You've been duped again.
I pointed this out to my wife when last week polls seemed to indicate that even among democrats the majority opinion was that Obama's job act would not create jobs. I postulated that to anyone paying attention the reality is that nothing is going to be passed by this congress, therefor the conclusion his proposal is not likely to create jobs. She scoffed at me saying I was giving the majority of politically disinterested Americans too much credit for critical thinking. I'm not so sure, but in many things her natural wisdom far outstrips mine.
Poll question: Do you want to see the end of nuclear power in Japan even though it will mean that you will have to live in poverty with no lights, water, medical care or sewage?
Yes__ No_X_
Pollster, "See, the people don't want an end to nuclear power!"
And that, Virginia is how polls work.
The islands of Japan sit on some of the finest sources of geothermal on the planet. There is no need for them to live in poverty if they replace all of their nuclear reactors and,,,, all oil and coal fired power plants with that excellent source of enegy, with zero cost for fuel.
Last Monday there was a (6.1) earthquake off the coast of Japan, ample geothermal energy there... The cost per KwH for geothermal production is less than 2 cents and no deadly radioactive wastes to (hide) for millions of years in a futile attempt to "safely" store it.
Criticism of the Japanese for not using geothermal energy is not fair... America could easily do likewise. Our west coast sits very near the "Ring Of Fire" fault lines. The key is, (no cost for fuel).. No (profit) there for the powers who rule all of us .
First, I am uninterested in what you 'think' I should do or not do.
Second, I think this poll is reasonable, and was reasonably worded - I have faith in Associated Press.
Third, there is an interesting coincidence here. Let's say four percent are ready and willing to abandon nuclear, and do whatever is necessary to compensate. This might include alternate energy, the introduction of best practice in a variety of associated technology, and even a considerable actual reduction in demand, achieved through any number of methods.
That four percent would include me, if I lived in Japan, and it includes me here and now, in Canada.
Four percent is one in twenty-five, or four in a hundred.
A hundred is the human being's approximate natural group size biologically - which is why a company of soldiers is about a hundred, likewise the Roman 'century', likewise the maximum size a corporation can grow to without complex structure, why the band size hunting buffalo is roughly a hundred or less.
In a band of a hundred hunter-gatherers, one might then expect, given that only four percent are statistically capable of advanced abstract thought, and possess in addition the self-assurance and courage to lead, that two of these are children, and two are adults.
That gels with what I have read, which is considerable, of hunter-gatherers, and it gels with my own experience of life in dangerous and demanding situations requiring abstract accurate thinking, and a modicum of steadiness of nerve.
From an evolutionary biology perspective then, the four percent makes perfect sense, since we have always lived that way, with four in one hundred, on average, smart leaders.
Time to abandon thoughts and pie in the sky wishes for an enlightened and aware public - they have never existed.
Any good science theory needs predictive ability - I'll bet no more than four percent of the eligible voters in America read Common Dreams or alternative websites like it, because no more than four percent can see what is happening, and have the native curiosity and energy to find and read alternatives to the mainstream media, now largely in thrall to the plutocracy.
Manysummits, in Calgary
===========
The Age of Stupid is appropriate, though I prefer to call it the dark age or Kali Yuga. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kali_Yuga Nevertheless, I always question the results of polls.
Further to my post above, that brings us to James Kunstler's "The Long Emergency", Cormac MacArthy's "The Road", or, in a non-fiction assessment, the archaeologist Joseph Tainter's conclusions in "The Collapse of Complex Societies", i.e., we will probably devolve to a much more normal state of lower complexity - suited, I presume, to 'the majority'.
==========
Wonderful! Wish we could do the same here.
"Police estimated the crowd at 20,000 people, while organizers said there were three times that many people." LOL
ON "Meet the Press" yesterday, the press refused to ask
Bill, Slick Willie, Clinton anything about Nafta and his destruction of the Banking regulations. Slick Willie
does not have to answer to anything especially his new found 200 million dollars that he is now worth..
The press is responsible for our situation as they simply
go along to get along with politicians and help coverup
their miss-deeds.
"3 percent want to eliminate them entirely." ... Looks like the 3% are doing the screaming no more nukes and protesting in mass..
They waited too looooong, they should have done that 40 or 50 years ago. Us Americans should have done that also.
We should not be at all surprised if many of them and millions more Japanese are being treated for cancer or have died of cancer within the next three to fifteen years... Pregnant mothers, babies and childen first.
We did protest nuclear power, notice there are large areas of the U.S. that don't have any nuclear plants. Most of them are east of the Mississippi River, which always made it curious that they chose the West coast for a permanent waste disposal as it would have to be shipped across the entire country.
Oh, excuse me...~clearbluesky~ I don't remember (hundreds of thousands) protesting against nulear power in Washington DC or any states's capitol at any time and I'm sure old enough to remember what happened 60 years ago when I was tuning up my 40 Ford coupe.
I do believe we most always built nuclear power plants where the population was the greatest... That said, I believe there are only about 6 states out of 50 where nuclear power plants are not located, like North Dkota and not many live there. There also is one in Puerto Rico, plus many atomic facilities built to play with building atomic weapons and such fun things.
I'd say that our puny protests obviously didn't do a lot of good.
WayneWR, slightly more than 6 states without nuke power, but only slightly.
http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/map-power-reactors.html
The map is a little hard to be sure about, but it looks like east of the Mississippi only West Virginia (coal power) and Kentucky (also coal power) don't have nuke power (maybe Maine, too). West of the Mississippi, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Nevada, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Idaho, Oregon, Alaska, and Hawai'i, don't have nuke power. All these states combined have not so many people.
You can walk to the Indian Point from NYC.
Yeah ~~tomcarberry~~ thanks, that was a typo, the (1) didn't go on and I didn't notice... It should have read about (16) not (6) of 50 states... Thanks for spotting the error.
East of the Mississippi... None in Maine, RI, Delaware or Ind either. My point was most are built near high populated areas.
And in Kentucky we have Oak Ridge, a glowing place that makes a nucker seem like a good deal, which of course they are not... Don't go swimming there, they use dead fish for flashlights.
WayneWR: "..they use dead fish for flashlights.'
That is a great line!
Hi~CT~.. It's almost true... There are lot's of geese there which live for about two years max before quacking up.. At the nuclear facility if someone steps on any gooseshit in the auto parking lots, when they enter a building it sets off radiation alarms... That's true.
One of my lines wasn't so great.... The Oak Rigde nuclear facility is in Tennessee, not Kentucky... Senior moment.
". . . resource-poor nation -- making it difficult, time-consuming process for it to come up with viable alternative energies."
Apparently, this earth quake prone island nation has never heard of geo-thermal, tidal, or wind power.
The current figure is that 1,000,000 Japanese will die and about 1.5 million more people, world-wide, will die from this disaster. Meanwhile, the governments will continue to build more and more of the worst possible power plants because they can be subsidized by citizen taxes and create huge corporate profits without any real responsibility for their disasters. Japan's people will bail out this utility and life will go on...except for the dead and dying.
That's pretty grim figures ~~robert1234~~...Wonder what the current figures will climb to after a few more years of those melted down reactors at Fukashima still spewing out deadly radioactive poisons?
For the past few years, half a million people, (500,000), have (died) of cancer (every year) in the United States, millions more are beng treated for cancers every year and it isn't a bunch of old folks.
When the first medical symptoms of cancer begin to show up due to Fukushima, that figure will probably go over the top... Cancer deaths are already an epidemic that is not publicized... It does help a bit to reduce the over-population problem.
There a massive coverup by the Japanese Government on the media as to the scale of this disaster.
It is NOT under control. This dwarfs Chernobyl.
Researchers have found soil contamination in Tokyo that is TWICE the level of what was measured in Russia when the areas around Chernobyl evacuated.
And it is climbing.
If Japan had the same standards as did Russia for protecting its population form its effects TOKYO would need to be evacuated.
And all those Nuclear apologists who claimed this was a minor event are in hiding.
Perfectly stated ~~GwNorth~~ Thank you.
Pre-1900 cancer rates v. today's cancer rates:
http://www.nutrimedical.com/announcements.jhtml?method=view&announcements.id=18
After TMI and Chernobyl there was a dramatic increase in camcer cases and deaths due to cancer... Increased cancer rates in children and young adults soared.
http://www.webmd.com/cancer/news/20081209/global-cancer-deaths-double-2030
"Around the world, the burden of cancer doubled between 1975 and 2000, and it is predicted to double again by 2020 and triple by 2030." __ Those projections were made prior to the now infamous "Fukushima".
We do not need nuclear power plants or coal fired power plants and we never did need them.
"if sunbeams were weapons of war, we would have had solar energy centuries ago."
~~Sir George Porter~~, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry.