We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Sunday, February 5, 2017

Radiation at Fukushima Spikes to Highest Levels Since 2011

Click here to access article by Whitney Webb from True Activist
Nearly six years after the initial explosion caused a catastrophic meltdown at the Daiichi nuclear power plant in the Fukushima prefecture of Japan, the situation has suddenly taken a drastic turn for the worst. Last Thursday, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the company which owns and operates the now defunct power plant, announced that radiation inside the containment vessel of one of the plant’s failed reactors has now reached levels undetected since the disaster first occurred in 2011. Radiation inside the reactor has reached 530 sieverts per hour, a drastic increase from the previously recorded 73 sieverts per hour recorded in the aftermath of the meltdown. The level of radiation is so high that an official of the National Institute of Radiological Sciences told the Japan Times that medical professionals have never considered dealing with this level of radiation in their work.
I remember viewing last month a sixty minute PBS TV program called "The Nuclear Option", funded by billionaire David Koch, which pretended to deal with nuclear power from an objective point of view. The more I watched the program the more I was convinced the it was clearly designed to allay fears about Fukushima and to promote the safety of nuclear power which capitalist enterprises will clearly need to ward off the threat of climate destabilization and increasing costs of drilling for hydrocarbons. 

The broadcast of this program was not produced by neutral scientists. It happened because a billionaire capitalist wanted it to be broadcast in order to fill our minds with disinformation about nuclear energy to conform to that of his and his class friends' interest to develop this source of energy in order to keep their engines of profit and power running. What needs to be understood is that this propaganda program is, as always, broadcast because of huge contributions by capitalists. It's just that usually it's not nearly so obvious because they often prefer to hire upper-middle class intellectuals to do it in their name or their organizations' name. The same principle applies to history books, print and electronic media, educational institutions in general, and even in entertainment provided by Hollywood, etc.