Bye bye Senkaku, hello Fuku

The current (recent?) dispute over the ROCKS in the East China seems to have exceeded its “use by” date in terms of its usefulness as a hot news item—at least until the next flare up.

Does anybody remember the Fukushima nuclear disaster?

Yoshihiko Noda

In what could be basically a photo op for the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) Prime Minister (Noda) in an attempt to shore up his dwindling popularity in the run up to a general election widely speculated to return power to a possible new coalition government headed by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), he paid an “inspection” visit to the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant. Apart from posing in a white protective suit and hard hat and expressing "heartfelt" thanks to the Tepco workers who risked their lives in the immediate aftermath of the tsunami disaster its hard to see what “inspection” value there was in a look see by someone who knows nothing about nuclear energy.

Be that as it may, an article in The Japan Times by staff writer Reiji Yoshida does give a bit of an update on the current conditions at Fukushima. The overall message seems to be that things haven't gotten worse but it will take a very long time to clean up the mess.

Since Fukushima has potentially much farther-reaching consequences than some rocks in the sea for people other than the nationalist nutjobs shooting water pistols at each other, sane people might be interested in learning about the current state of ongoing repairs or non-repairs there. Here are a few excerpts from the article:

Experts say that over the past year, the risk of another serious accident at the plant has considerably lessened, although long-term concerns about the durability of equipment and facilities remain since decommissioning the reactors could drag on for up to 40 years.

Plant workers are now speeding up work to remove about 1,500 nuclear fuel assemblies stored in a spent-fuel pool on the fourth floor of the No. 4 reactor building, which suffered extensive damage from a hydrogen explosion.

Tepco now plans to start extracting the fuel assemblies by the end of next year, and to finish moving them to another spent-fuel pool designed for long-term storage by the end of 2015.

Once accomplished, the likelihood of another serious accident will be even slimmer, according to Kyoto University professor Hajimu Yamana...

"There won't be any more serious trouble unless something extraordinary happens," Yamana said, pointing out that simulations by plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. showed the reactor 4 building can withstand an earthquake measuring upper 6 on the Japanese seismic intensity scale of 7.

But it's better to move all the spent fuel to the second pool, which is more resistant to earthquakes and has a better cooling system, Yamana noted, because "you can't totally deny the possibility of (another) gigantic earthquake" striking the area.

Meanwhile, the remaining decay heat from the nuclear fuel in the damaged reactor cores is estimated to have fallen to 1 megawatt from 2.35 megawatts over the past year as radiation is emitted, according to calculations by Tepco.

This has considerably reduced the risk of another disaster at the complex "and as time passes, (Tepco) will get greater scope" to fix the critical water coolant system, Yamana said.

The decay heat is expected to fall to 0.61 megawatt by next October and to 0.42 megawatt a year later, according to Tepco's data.

The question is how much trust and confidence you have in Tepco's calculations!

Bibi's bomb - bomb fallout

Bibi's ACME bomb at UNGA inspires Israeli meme artists

Some of these are really funny.  Check 'em out!

I don't think we have to worry too much about Israel's continuing "existence" as long as Israelis (who actually live in Israel) can laugh at the antics of their "leader". 

 

An interesting political analysis of Bibi's bomb bomb by investigative journalist Gareth Porter has it that after months of trying to maneuver the Obama Administration into committing the US to attack Iran by a specific date (the famous "red line") and being rebuffed unceremoniously and publicly by US officials, his UNGA speech was, in effect, a concession that his tactics had failed and was merely a sop to Israeli public opinion that isn't interested in a unilateral attack on Iran by Israel itself. 

Here are a few excerpts:

Journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, whom Netanyahu had twice used to convey to the US his purported readiness to go to war with Iran, called it a "concession speech". Netanyahu conceded, in effect, that his effort to force the US to accept his red line had failed completely.

As the Republican Party prepared to nominate Netanyahu's old friend Mitt Romney as its presidential candidate, all the pieces seemed to be in place for Netanyahu to maximize the impact of his Iran war bluff.... [but] the Republican convention in Tampa Bay from August 27 to 30 failed to make an American ultimatum to Iran, as demanded by Netanyahu, a central theme of the convention.

... Netanyahu met unexpectedly firm US resistance to his pressure tactic. On August 30, General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, talking with reporters in the UK, said an Israeli strike on Iran would be ineffective, and then dropped an unexpected bomb. "I don't want to be complicit if they [the Israelis] choose to do it," Dempsey said.... [but] after such a "public, bold statement" by Dempsey ... "the situation had to be reassessed".


Obama and other senior US officials had clearly decided it was time to cut off Netanyahu’s ham-handed effort at pressure on US policy at the knees. In an interview with Bloomberg Radio on September 9 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared, "We're not setting deadlines". And when Netanyahu pushed Obama in a phone conversation on September 11 to adopt his "red line" ... Obama flatly rejected the demand, according to American sources. Three days later, Panetta told Foreign Policy magazine, "Red lines are kind of political arguments that are used to put people in a corner".

And in an unmistakable signal by Obama that Netanyahu should end his meddling in US politics and policy, the White House even rebuffed a Netanyahu request for a meeting during his upcoming US trip, as the Israelis leaked to the news media. 

Haaretz editor Aluf Benn has suggested that Netanyahu's UN speech reflected not only the Obama administration's rebuff but the realities of Israeli public opinion. He wrote that the Prime Minister had tailored his speech to polls showing that Israelis wanted the US to handle the problem of Iran, not Israel.   

The full article:

www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/10/201210493522531400.html  

Pants on fire

Look people, we're in the game!

It isn't very often that one gets caught in flagrante delicto, with his metaphorical pants down. But in a recent video shot at a policy forum luncheon at WINEP (Washington Institute for Near East Policy) the Director of Research, Patrick Clawson, suggested that a Pearl Harbor type incident is needed to coerce the US into acceding to Israel's demand for an attack on Iran's alleged nuclear weapons facilities--"crisis initiation" in Newspeak. No description of the video can do justice to the flagrantly, if not immoral, diabolical nature of the proposal and the man proposing it. 

William A. Cook, and English professor at a university in southern California, characterized Clawson as a "Clown" in one of the most drippingly sarcastic pieces of writing I've seen come down the pike in a long time:

...the absolute darkness of this soulless Clown who joked his brilliance before his peers ... this idiot vomited out of his mouth the way to move forward with his agenda and that of his peers, “after all people, we are in the game”.

But the consequences are far greater than the lost sailors in our Clown’s descriptive false flag; “after all people,” this act will propel the world into a catastrophic war, and we will “not be in a game.” Put this in context; here’s the Clown, an appointed researcher for an exclusive think tank the purpose of which is to push the Israeli agenda in the United States at all costs. These un-appointed individuals draw up strategic plans for the US government, maneuver them into strategic places in the Pentagon, the Congress, the State Department, and into the Executive Branch in order to bring them to action. This action is to force the US to go to war on behalf of Israel. That the people of the US do not favor such a war, that hundreds and thousands of their soldiers, the sons and daughters, the fathers and mothers of American families will be the fodder for WINEP’s war is irrelevant to them since they work for Israel and for AIPAC. The end purpose alone counts—their end purpose. That is what Patrick Clawson told us in that released video, a video I suspect WINEP wishes never saw the light of day. The absolute arrogance of his presentation, the total commitment he uttered in his remarks tell of a man incapable of human sympathy, oblivious to international law, uncaring, bestial.

http://palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=19610

As an accessory piece to the clown metaphor we have the cartoonish performance of drawing “red lines” in the sand (and on cartoon bombs) by the supposedly mature adult macho man PM of Israel in the United Nations. But it seems the bomb may have been a dud:

Binyamin Netanyahu's cartoon nuclear bomb certainly grabbed attention, but not necessarily the kind he wanted. No doubt it was intended as a bold and graphic way of presenting the Iranian nuclear threat, but much of the initial response – on Twitter, at least – was ridicule. -  The Guardian

These kinds of performances by Israeli officials and their hired public relations and black ops operatives will do nothing to stabilize the tensions and rivalries in the Middle East. Nor will it endear them to any but the most right wing and neo-conservative types in the United States, who still don't realize how much their benighted adventure in Iraq has weakened the US's ability to successfully fight wars in that region. The Administration main's concern, although unstated openly, appears to be getting out of the military quagmire without losing more once friendly allies and face than necessary. An Israeli-inspired military fiasco in Iran will only inflame the already volatile Middle East, further damage the reputation of the United States and keep the global economy locked into a very long term recession if not plunge it into a depression.

We've had enough farce in the region already, let's not Send in the Clowns.