Take action now. Join us on October the 15th.

Act now, for tomorrow may be to late.

Take part in the global people uprising and spread the word. United we will build a world where Equality, Justice, Fraternity and Duty shall be taken literally.

On October 15th people from all over the world will take to the streets and squares. From America to Asia, from Africa to Europe, people are rising up to claim their rights and demand a true democracy. Now it is time for all of us to join in a global non violent protest. http://15october.net/jp/ 

Le 15 octobre des gens du monde entier descendront dans les rues et sur les places. De l’Amérique à l’Asie, de l’Afrique à l’Europe, ces personnes se mobilisent pour réclamer leurs droits et exiger une vraie démocratie. Maintenant il est temps de nous réunir dans une protestation mondiale non-violente.

Am 15. Oktober werden Menschen aus der ganzen Welt auf die Straßen und Plätze gehen. Von Amerika bis Asien, von Afrika nach Europa protestieren die Menschen, um ihre Rechte zu fordern und eine wahre Demokratie zu verlangen. Nun ist es Zeit uns alle einem globalen gewaltfreien Protest anzuschließen.

يومه 15 أكتوبر ستنظم مسيرات كبري في الشوارع والساحات ، من أمريكا إلي آسيا ومن أفريقيا إلى أوروبا. ودلك من اجل المطالبة بالحقوق و فرض ديمقراطية حقيقية محضة.

El 15 de octubre personas de todo el mundo tomarán las calles y las plazas. Desde América a Asia, desde África a Europa, la gente se está levantando para reclamar sus derechos y pedir una auténtica democracia. Ahora ha llegado el momento de unirnos todos en una protesta no violenta a escala global.

"The world will not be destroyed by those that do evil, but by those that stand by and do nothing about it!" said Albert Einstein.

We are the people and the masses of this planet, we cannot allow those in power and control to destroy our planet and its citizens. It is time to act and demand real democracy and take the power away from the bankers, stock-holders, share holders, and politicians. We have to make them listen. Only united can the citizen of this planet change their future and the future of their children.  

Natural disasters a gogo. When is it enough or can it ever be to much.

While I have witnessed many natural and men made disaster through out my short stay on this planet we like to call earth, at least in the English language. Feeling their impact financially, emotionally and maybe even health wise.
I have never once felt sorry for my self. However, I often felt tiered and beaten, maybe even ready to trow in the towel at times.
When ever that happens, I re-call my grand parents life and the stories I grow up with. As children they grow up in war times, the war 1870 was still felt in their parents souls and they witnessed the first world war which was followed by starvation, deprivation and misery, all this, just to live through the second world war as adults, raising their own children surrounded by the ashes left behind a men made agony and yet they managed to raise out of the debris and rebuild a society that even they could not have imagined to be possible after all that was destroyed, devastated and so many souls that where lost for nothing more than humanities arrogance, greed and pride.
Only the last decade of my grand parents life was peaceful and worry free so to speak, all their lives they struggled, worked hard, stayed positive and managed build a future for their children and grand children in spite of all the odds that where against them.
My parents did not have it much easier, they grow up in war times to and the post war era was a continual struggle as well.
By the time they thought that they made it and as we where still children our selfs new conflicts broke out in Niger which we called our home then. Coups, Libyan attacks, famines, diseases broke out and spread like wild fires and my parents lost their home and belongings to a sense less conflict.
Still they started all over again in Algeria just to lose it anew due to some fundamentalist that raided their town.
I went to Canada to build a farm there and spend a lot of energy designing it, building it and making it work, always in the back of my mind to be ready for what ever may happen. I was ready for all sorts of disasters, but not for human hate towards common sense, changes due to climate change and pollution.
I had to let go of my farm after a decade and half putting up with broken windows, people killing my fruit trees with herbicides and burned down buildings.
How I ended up in Japan, where I started to rebuild a farm based on my believes that it had to be environment friendly, organic, energy self sufficient and a model for other to be able to copy with ease so pollution would gradually stop and so we could restore what we humans have destroyed over the past two centuries.
Since I started out here, building and planting, we where struck by two major typhoons causing great damage as well as floods, not to forget one major earthquake and an unprecedented devastating tsunami  that claimed over 20,000 lives and caused the greatest devastation since WWII in Japan.
Nevertheless, what may be much harder to deal with may be the radiation that poisoned our soils, our water and our future. We can rebuild and learn and improve, but we cannot protect our selfs against radiation. A place that is contaminated with radioactive isotopes becomes like a leprae colony, even once it safe again to live and stay in those affected areas, the stigma remains and the people find them self isolated and labeled in the same manner as a leprosy.
This stigma makes it difficult for many, because we humans are social animals and fear nothing more than to be isolated from the rest of our specie.
Further, it is getting difficult to rebuild and find the strength and optimism needed to keep up with it all due to the avalanche of never ending new disasters that keep on striking to no avail and that seem to cause more devastation making the reconstruction more difficult and generating more frustration. It seems at times that for every building that we manage to rebuild several more get destroyed by another disaster. For every repair done, ten more have to be done with each new strike of another earthquake or typhoon.
This latest typhoon just about send me out with an axe to break what ever was left standing and set fire to it. I was so mad, I just had one roof fixed and another still standing when this typhoon took our neighbors greenhouse apart and send all the glass and steel our way destroying roof, windows and more.
I though to my self, how much more can Japan handle before its back breaks? No one knows since it all depends on the people them self and how much they are willing and able to handle.

My grandmother always said "you will never be burden with more than you can handle." This believe made her handle the impossible and I suppose it is true in a way, "if it does not kill us, it can only make us stronger." And hopefully wiser as well. Prevail we shall than. If our generation was to give up or give in for that matter, then all our ancestors would have struggled to survive in wain.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2011/sep/21/typhoon-roke-japan-video


 

Radioactive iodine spread much further south from Fukushima than originally believed.

A Japanese government survey published on Thursday the 22th of September, showed that radioactive iodine emitted from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant spread not only northwestward but also to the south of the plant.

The ministry of science sampled soil at 2,200 locations, mostly in Fukushima Prefecture, but also as far south as Tokyo in June and July, and created another map indicating the extent of the radioactive contamination as of June 14th.

This map is giving information about radioactive contamination that where not previously published nor know by the public or even government workers.
Officials were able to obtain data for iodine 131 at only 400 locations, because of its short half-life of 8 days and because they waited to long to start collecting data on iodine 131.

The latest map shows that iodine 131 spread northwest of the plant, just like cesium 137 as indicated on an earlier map. But the substance was also confirmed south of the plant at relatively high levels.
The researchers found that accumulation levels of iodine 131 were higher than those of cesium 137 in coastal areas south of the plant.

Officials of the ministry said the clouds that moved southward over the plant apparently caught large amounts of iodine 131 that were emitted at the time.

Iodine 131 could cause thyroid cancer through internal exposure. The ministry is therefore trying to determine at what levels the substance spread immediately after the accident at the plant in March. 

Six month after the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima dai ichi plant it is starting to become clear that high level of radioactive Cesium 137 as well as radioactive iodine 131 have contaminated large areas of the prefecture of Fukushima and reached as far North as Hokkaido and as far south as Tokyo prefectures leaving hot spots with well over the maximum permissible safety limits of radioactive elements. Contaminating soil, lac's, rivers and the ocean to a far greater extend than previously believed. 

Still, many areas in the 300 km radius from the Fukushima plant have not been sampled to this day nor has any form of assessment taken place. In stead people are being told that all is fine and that they should not worry. Why so many are taking things into their own hands, trying to assess the amount of radiation their area or town received.

This in some cases could lead to false data and needless fear mongering. Why it is of the outmost importance that all areas be tested and that an accurate map be made public so that the public can make an educated and objective assessment of their own and decide on the actions they want to have implement.

http://houseoffoust.com/group/?cat=32

Japans environmental policies review part one.

Current Japanese environmental policy and regulations were the consequence of a number of environmental disasters in 1950s and 1960s. Cadmium poisoning from industrial waste in Toyama Prefecture was discovered to be the cause of the extremely painful itai-itai disease (イタイイタイ病 Itai itai byō, lit. "ouch ouch sickness") which causes severe pain in the back and joints, contributes to brittle bones that fracture easily, and degeneration of the kidneys. Recovery of cadmium effluent halted the spread of the disease, and no new cases have been recorded since 1946. In the 1960s, thousands of inhabitants of Minamata City in Kumamoto Prefecture were poisoned by methylmercury drained from the chemical factory, known as the Minamata disease. The number of casualties in Minamata is 6,500 as of November 2006.

In Yokkaichi, a port in Mie Prefecture, air pollution caused by sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide emissions led to a rapid increase in the number of people suffering from asthma and bronchitis. In urban areas photochemical smog from automotive and industrial exhaust fumes also caused the rise in respiratory problems. In the early 1970s, chronic arsenic poisoning attributed to dust from arsenic mines occurred in Shimane and Miyazaki prefectures.

Consumers Union of Japan was founded in 1969 to deal with health problems and false claims by companies, as Japan's rampant industrial development was seen as causing problems for consumers and citizens. In the 1970s, Consumers Union of Japan led the opposition to nuclear power, calling for a nation-wide Anti-Nuclear Power Week Campaign.

Japan maintains one third of its electric production from nuclear power plants. While a majorities of citizens generally used to support the use of existing nuclear reactors. Since the nuclear accident at the Fukushima dai ichi power plant on March 11 2011, this support seems to have shifted to a majority wanting Japan to faze out nuclear power. Former Prime Minister Naoto Kan was the first leading politician to openly voice his opposition to Japans dependance on nuclear energy and suggested a faze out form nuclear towards renewable energies.(http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/08/japan-nuclear-debate-idUSL3E7F70K320110408) Objections against the plan to construct further plants has grown as well since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami which triggered the nuclear melt down of three reactors at the Fukushima dai ichi plant in Eastern Japan. {http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/japan-pm-naoto-kan-vows-nuclear-free-future/story-fn3dxity-1226109855727}

The treatment of radioactive wastes also became a subject of discussion in Japan. New spent-nuclear-fuel reprocessing plant was constructed in Rokkasho in 2008, the site of the underground nuclear-waste repository for the HLW and LLW has not yet decided. Some local cities announced a plan to conduct an environmental study at the disposal site, but citizens' groups oppose strongly against the plan.

Japan will rise again, hopefully wiser humbler and better

The impact of radiation on the food chain in Japan is far more serious than first thought. Back in March after the gravity of the nuclear accident in Fukushima became clear the World Health Organization warned that 

tap water, leafy vegetables, eggs, meat mushrooms and milk in an 80 kilometer radius of the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant were placed on its ‘danger list’.

The organization warned that Japan needed to act ‘quickly’ and ban food sales from areas around the plant if products there are found to contain excessive levels of radiation.

A spokesman for the Geneva-based agency said radiation in food can accumulate in the body and that it poses a greater risk to health than radioactive particles in the air, which disperse within days. 

WHO spokesman Peter Cordingley said: ‘It’s a lot more serious than anybody thought in the early days when we thought that this kind of problem can be limited to 20 to 30 kilometers.

‘It’s safe to suppose that some contaminated produce got out of the contamination zone.’

Those statements form the WHO where made by the end of March, today six month after the melt down of three nuclear reactors at the Fukushima dai ichi power plant from TEPCO we know that tea leaves, rice and other products show in some cases over five times the permissible maximum radiation levels and this reaching as far as the prefectures of Saitama, Chiba and Tokyo. (exceeding a 300 kilometer radius from the Fukushima nuclear power plant.)

The areas that were the most affected by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami are also some of the main supplier of food products such as rice, milk, fruits, also fish, poultry, beef and pork. 

Japan needs the East to feed the nation. Banning food from Eastern Japan due to radiation will create a political and economical disaster. No nation could afford to compensate all those farmers for their losses all the wile importing food products from oversea. The collapse of the Japanese food industry would create massive unemployment and plunge the country into an crisis of cataclysmic proportions. 

Why, the government is now desperately trying to find ways to lower the radiation levels in the soils and the sea and this with drastic measures such as removing the top 30 cm of the soil in all affected areas and replacing the contaminated soil with new clean top soil. 

This project is almost bordering madness, since the volumes of soil in question here are titanic and be on what most would be able to fathom. 

The cost is equally phenomenal. Sadly though that is not all, since all the removed soil that is radioactively poisoned has to be stored now and decontaminated with means that are still unclear, since no one has ever tried to undertake such a massive project. Some may wonder why would Japan not just move all the people and its agriculture some where else and leave the contaminated area for a few centuries until is save once again to live and farm there. Well, Japan being about the seize of California or the Netherlands and with a population of 127 million does not have much room to play with. Further, who would want to take in a few million Japanese as refugees, since those want to preserve their culture, their language and their customs. Russia or Canada even though being the two largest countries on this planet, all the wile having the lowest population density would not dream of taking in a few million refugees, no matter where they came from.

This issue of refugees due to wars, climate changes, natural disasters or men made disasters needs to be dealt with on a global level. We humans are born into a setting which is be on our control or choice, we do not chose our ethnicity, nationality, religion or sex, we are just born into it. Most would never dare question their culture, religion or social rank into which they are born. Most accept all this with out giving it much thought. However, if we stand by our ideals of equality, fraternity, justice and freedom than it is unacceptable to allow some few humans to control wast areas of land and resources will most of humanity is being plunged into a cataclysmic era of natural disasters and famines in large part due to climate changes that are generated and made worth to some extend by those countries that now refuse to take in refuges in large enough numbers, namely the United States, Canada, Russia and Australia. I have not forgotten the EU, however, the EU has already one of the highest population densities and will be affected to a far greater degree by climate changes than other areas of this planet may. Further, the EU has been accepting refugees in large numbers until recently.

Japans population is in decline and this may very well be what will help save Japan over the next century. Unfortunately, the worlds population is still increasing and our planet will simply not be able to handle it, especially not the way we manage it. Disasters such as Fukushima or Tchernobyl will only multiply, simply because we will face more natural and men made disasters and because our economies are in trouble and when ever that happens safety is usually the first to be cut and aging power plants that should be shut down will find them self still running long after their time was up. Through out the world we are facing a massive loss of farm land due to expanding cities and we also lose production on the remaining cultivated land in the agricultural sectors due to climate changes, pollution and other factors. When we look rationally at all those factors, we have to come to the unpleasant conclusion that Japan will have no other choice than to allow radioactive contaminated food to be sold to its population and the Japanese people will have to accept that they will have to pay the price for generations of mismanagement and wrong choices that all lead to this disaster. The next four generation will have to learn to live with radiation and accept shorter life expectancies, health troubles and lower quality of life so that the country may be able to recover and take a new, a wiser and more humbler course allowing future generations to be able live better again. The era of consumerisms and wants is coming to an end and we have to relearn to live simpler with less comfort, less luxuries and less help. Japan is not alone to have to face those facts, Europe, North America, Australia and  others will have to engage in the same process very soon. However, due to this triple disaster last March, Japan has been forced to face those realities much sooner than others and maybe this will help Japan to come out of all this much stronger and better than others that still refuse to face the realities at hand that will force us all to change with in the next generation. 

High radiation levels fund in Green tea and other products in Chiba and Saitama, Japan.

The Japanese health ministry says radioactive cesium exceeding the government's safety limit has been detected in tea leaves in the prefectures of Chiba and Saitama, near Tokyo.

This is the ministry's first discovery of radioactive substances beyond the legal limit since it began unannounced tests of food products last month.

However, other organizations such has Greenpeace that conducted test earlier have warned of such high radiation levels and urged to government to take actions two month ago.

The tests were started in order to verify local government data using different numbers and kinds of food samples.

The ministry says the leaves of one type of tea from Chiba Prefecture contained 2,720 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram, more than 5 times the safety limit.

Meanwhile, a maximum level of 1,530 becquerels per kilogram was detected in 3 kinds of tea leaves from Saitama Prefecture.

The prefectural governments of Chiba and Saitama say they will investigate where the teas were grown and how much has made its way to market.

They say they will order tea producers to recall their product, if necessary.

Our neighbor a tea farmer has already burned all his crop due to high level of radiation since he wont be able to sale any of it. In his frustration he also burned all his tree bushes, believing that he wont be allowed to sale any tea for years to come. Now he has no idea what he will do. Due to this latest news the value of properties and farm land has fallen even further. The farmers are not only losing their income but also their land value and any way out of this crisis with it. 

As harvest time for sweet potato, carrots, rice, wheat and other products is now underway, many farmer worry that they may lose their crops and end up in ruins. Even though the government has promised compensations for those affected, there is no warranty that one will receive compensation nor is the amount known or the time. Leaving many in limbo as to what to do and how to survive. Further, what will happen next year or the year after that, knowing that Cesium has a half life of 40 years it is unlikely that in the next few years much will change, leaving many farmers to wonder if they will still be able to farm tomorrow.

Saturday, September 03, 2011 22:23 +0900 (JST)