The efforts of a committed behind-closed-doors conniving cohort of corporate-type cackling old coots racing to make Canada an unwitting accomplice to the fascistic militarism that is sweeping the globe these days in a throwback to Nazism are still fully underway, as this video documents. This is dementia caused by disease. How could our countrymen (can we call them that?), sell out to these war-pimps, sell out the most sacred values which were paid for with the blood of our forefathers, if they weren’t sick? It’s greed and corruption, graft and high crime. How can we be supporting, thinking of joining these madmen? How can we sit around and take this? Shouldn’t we be running for our pitch-forks and pole-arms? Shouldn’t we organize like our Muslim brothers across the pond and camp out in front of the fraudster banks and break down their bloody doors to demand a fairer system, one that doesn’t clean us all out – us decent folk upon whose sweat and tears this fucking country was built and continues to stand upon. Should we not demand a return to productive work and sound money and put an end to this neo-fascist corporate nightmare of debt-usury? Shouldn’t we take to the streets and lob Molotov cocktails at the obeisant cops lining up in riot gear to block us from attending the SPP and G7 meetings which have our livelihoods at stake in those meetings? Shouldn’t we drag those violent “peace officers” who disguise themselves as “protestors” out into the open and unleash mob justice on them for inciting violence as agents-provocateurs and derailing our legitimate right to assemble and speak and making us look like freaks?

Oh, that’s right – The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse have a special delivery for these knuckleheads, a self-gift they wrapped up with their ribbons of karma that as we speak are transforming themselves into the tangling vines of permanent burial in the annals of history. You bastards won’t be forgotten, and neither will you be missed. We are all glad there’s a merciful God out there who has probably set aside a special version of hell for you to sit out eternity in contemplation of your crimes against humanity and life itself. So, just go ahead with your North American Union – there’s not one sane, intelligent citizen in either country who will want to be part of it. And even though we’ll have to tolerate it for some time as your juggernaut of never-ending progress careens to a halt, we all take solace in the fact that this is just part of an inflammatory response of excretion that will ultimately bring peace to the world once your days are numbered and your olde system has collapsed. And once it does, I’ll write a piece entitled, “Good Riddance!”

Thanks to the real journalists out there like James Corbett!

Terence McKenna spoke of the ‘density of connectness’ increasing in spiraling cycles analogous to what are known as ‘fractals’ as we go through the ‘short epochs’ approaching the end of history. Each and every day we are faced with an incredible assault of data at many different levels, such as the ongoing revolutions in a multitude of countries of the world and hidden struggles for power. But, few of these daily tidbits are as enlightening as the simple but profound vision of the view from the International Space Station. I believe I’ve shared the comments of a team recently returned from it recently, but seeing the view even in a video screen is humbling at least. It makes McKenna’s comments above, and Marshall McLuhan’s famous expressions, much more understandable as we begin to really comprehend what the global village really is… As you float above the earth watching this can you not sense the approach of an event horizon, and an increase in novelty?

Think the North American Union is on the shelves? Think again. Check out what the Army Corps of Engineers have been busy at since 1960. It’s called the North American Power Alliance and it’s a massive project with untold implications.

On another project front, hats off to Daryl Hannah for using her fame for something productive – protesting the Keystone XL pipeline in Washington. Naomi Klein was also arrested a couple of weeks ago for doing the same. Glad someone is out there expressing what we all feel but don’t have the time or balls to fight against…

But on a positive note, current working Int’l Space Stn astronauts seem to be in agreement at least, and are taking initiatives that world leaders seem unable to. Perhaps the rumors that there are ‘white hats’ on the inside ‘doing good’ for humanity and fighting the ‘good fight’ are true. Reading between the lines, I can say that it does seem there is some kind of coalition “of the unwilling”, so to speak, forming an alliance against the bastards who are presently setting our planet on a collision course with annihilation. Cross your fingers!

The Center for Research on Globalization war correspondent  Mahdi Nazamroaya, staying at the Rixos Hotel in Tripoli, has had his life threatened by the ‘coalition of the willing’, rebel and NATO thugs and mercenaries as well as other corporate media stooges, to the extent that he has to leave the site of ongoing NATO war crimes and discontinue his reporting of these dire world events.  This leaves those of us who would like to discern an accurate picture of what’s going on over there with even fewer sources of information in an environment of bloated disinformation and mainstream media cheerleading of an ongoing human tragedy.   We’re left in a state of cognitive dissonance, where what we see and hear is at odds with what we suspect deeply or feel with our instincts, where the world is, “turned on it’s head” and “realities are reversed” – war is peace.  Here’s the latest article on Mahdi’s foiled efforts to bring us the truth:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=26164

I am reminded of John Pilger’s salient comments on the state of journalism nowadays and the global situation:

This is unbelievable.  The mainstream media are so embedded, so compromised, so corrupted, their efforts to hide the truth have become pathetic.   Today, for lack of a better theme, I want to discuss the toxic state of our world.

Terence Mckenna had it right when he supposed that what we call reality seems to be, “self-similar across scale”, which is another way of saying, “as above, so below”, or that the universe reflects itself from the microscopic realms up to the galactic. He said it doesn’t take a physics degree to recognize the similarities between galaxies and atoms. Well, as the tailings ponds of the oilsands accumulate more and more toxic sludge, it seems there is a mirroring going on in all levels of our reality. The metaphor is appropriate on more than one level.

Libya

True journalism is dead, and is only really being practiced by a few brave souls, such as Canadian independent reporter Mahdi Nazemroaya, who is one of only a few correspondents providing an honest perspective on events in that, now damned, country.  A friend asked me why I always watch CNN, the only English channel I get here, when she knows that I always curse at the TV when it’s on.  I  replied, ” at least if I see the lies they’re telling, I can start to discern the truth!”  So, watching CNN’s blatant psy-op propaganda campaign trumpeting a ‘rebel/NATO’ victory, I knew there was something rotten in Tripoli, and I looked to alternative media.

There’s a guy in regular contact with Nazemroaya giving some of the best reportage I’ve seen.  This is a fascinating story in the works as I write.  Look, NATO’s backing a ragtag mercenary group, many of whom are not even Libyan nationals.  CNN was reporting that Gaddafi’s regime had fallen and the Libyans were celebrating in the streets.  Turns out ol’ Moammar had them outsmarted and had his forces lie in wait to ambush the so-called rebels.  In truth, there’s no way this is over the way it’s being reported.   All the mainstream media were on board with this fakery, saying it was all over.   But the die hard true journalists holed up in the Tripoli Rixos hotel are telling a very different tale… I like this guy who is posting up all these videos – it’s the only real journalism I’ve seen out there lately.  Listen to this guy.

I can’t help but to keep abreast of the situation as the dominoes fall in the mid-east.  In each case, the stakes get higher and the desperation of the military-industrial petro-kings becomes more and more obvious.  There’s a lyric by my favorite songwriter of late, Daniel Lanois:

A man carried metal

carried gold

more than he could handle

more than he could hold

It weighed him down to a sand shallow grave

Where his bones were eaten by a heat wave

While the war planners will probably never answer for their crimes and sins, it could be an appropriate swan song for the downfall of the old guard, of which we are all waiting in great anticipation.  Give ‘em hell!

Japan

Our mother earth continues to be poisoned by the ongoing complete meltdowns of at least 3 nuclear reactors.  There’s a huge discrepancy between those who think radiation isn’t a serious concern (think the mainstream media, financed by the nuclear industry) and those scientists who suggest otherwise:

New Data Supports Previous Fairewinds Analysis, as Contamination Spreads in Japan and Worldwide from Fairewinds Associates on Vimeo.

Oilsands

Right now hundreds of people are protesting the Keystone XL pipeline in Washington.  If that deal goes through, you can bet it will ramp up oilsands activity in Fort McMoney.  How much water do we have to give up for these Petro-bastards?  How many communities will have to suffer?  Glad to have Maude Barlow to fight the good fight!

Damage to the Environment and Wholesale Sellout of Alberta’s Resources

For all their faults, the CBC puts out great documentaries once in a while, and this is one of them.

I’m as guilty as anyone in being ignorant of what has been going on in northern Alberta and Saskatchewan.  But this report shows how if we surrender control of the resources of our land to wholesale casino capitalism, we shortchange ourselves and future generations.  Why shouldn’t we levy higher royalties to the bastards who profit from the dirty destruction they are wreaking upon the land of our forefathers?  At least Peter Lougheed set something aside for the future from all his plunderings.  People in Alberta have been seduced into the ideas that jobs are everything, when the picture is much bigger.  What can we take away from this:

• oil sands are dirty – those open pits are an eyesore on God’s country
• water is being sullied in the north on an unprecedented scale
• we are selling out “pay dirt” for the price of, well, dirt
• we could be saving something for the future, but aren’t
• we could be manufacturing the bitumen in Canada for added value, but aren’t
• we could be taking advantage of multiple markets, like the Chinese, but aren’t

I, along with many others, am still working out my personal position regarding piracy and the ideal of complete information freedom.  It’s a murky question, like many other issues we face recently.  Of course, artists and writers should and do get credit for their work.  However, purely “safeguarding” their right to the work is, I think, backward-looking to say the least.  The way of the future is through sharing and “mashing up” the content.  Watch this brilliant doc and see how rules are obliterated, and replaced with guidelines and just good form, the same way academic writing is done. 

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Update 4/16

Once again, to get a complete and accurate picture of the situation is not easy. We know that governments and corporations involved won’t be sharing all they know about the radionuclides in the air or water.  Even more, they probably don’t know for sure either.  And while there does seem to be a good deal of over-reaction and hyperbole with respect to the possible levels of the fallout, it certainly will do no one any good to have cesium – 137 in the food chain, or iodine – 131 accumulating in their thyroid gland.  There’s even plutonium thrown into the mix, and it’s all just being dumped into the ocean and atmosphere continuously.  On the bright side, there’s a team of researchers at the  U of Berkeley doing all kinds of sampling, and if there work is any indication, it seems most of the radiation is being dispersed to levels that may not be harmful to our health.  See http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/UCBAirSampling

For those who want to be completely informed about the probable hazards that we as earth-dwellers now face on a day-to-day and growing basis, read this article and skip to the assessments of radiation experts Dr. Caldicott and Dr. Busby.  While the research by the team from Berkeley and the normal background radiation readings here in Taiwan (courtesy the Taiwan gov’t) and in the US (courtesy of the Radiation Network) give reason to believe that the threat to human health is still low, I will be keeping a close eye on events, watching where my food comes from and staying alert with respect to how the radioactive plumes from Japan behave meteorologically.

Update 3/28

Don’t want to be alarmist, but ignorance could be costly.  The unfolding nuclear disaster in Japan could be much worse than we think.  I did up the original post for this about a week ago, and decided not to publish it.  But, as I was checking for some radiation monitoring stations, I found a site called the Radiation Network.  They update the stations’ readings every minute, and just today, as you can see on the site now, there’s something, “triggering an alert” at a station in Alabama.  Now, watch this guy’s video.  He’s getting projected “potential” models from a variety of weather monitoring sites.
Take a look at this graphic taken from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1365781/Japan-earthquake-tsunami-All-3-Fukushima-nuclear-plant-reactors-meltdown.html

According to the graphics, large releases of radioactive material could be carried by the jetstream quite literally all over the northern hemisphere. Some writers are bringing up the possibility of El Nino weather patterns pushing the jetstream north, which would mean the fallout would probably come down in or near Calgary. Here’s the full report from globalresearch.ca:

Emergency Special Report: Japan’s Earthquake, Hidden Nuclear Catastrophe

by Yoichi Shimatsu

Emergency Special Report I

The Wave, reminiscent of Hokusai’s masterful woodblock print, blew past Japan’s shoreline defenses of harbor breakwaters and gigantic four-legged blocks called tetrapods, lifting ships to ram through seawalls and crash onto downtown parking lots. Seaside areas were soon emptied of cars and houses dragged up rivers and back out to sea. Wave heights of up to10 meters (33 feet) are staggering, but before deeming these as unimaginable, consider the historical Sanriku tsunami that towered to 15 meters (nearly 50 feet) and killed 27,000 people in 1896.

Nature’s terrifying power, however we may dread it, is only as great as the human-caused vulnerability of our civilization. Soon after Christmas 2004, I volunteered for the rescue operation on the day after the Indian Ocean tsunami and simultaneously did an on-site field study on the causes of fatalities in southern Thailand. The report, issued by Thammasat and Hong Kong Universities, concluded that high water wasn’t the sole cause of the massive death toll. No, it’s buildings that kill – to be specific, badly designed structures without escape routes onto roofs or, in our greed for real estate, situated inside drained lagoons and riverbeds, or on loose landfill. In the Tohoku disaster, an ultramodern Sendai Airport sat helplessly flooded on all sides while nearby a monstrous black torrent swept entire houses upstream.

Other threats are built into the vulnerabilities of our critical infrastructure and power systems. The balls of orange flames churning out of huge gas storage tanks in Ichihara, Chiba, should never have happened if technical precautions had been properly carried out. Whenever things go wrong, underlying risks had led to a liability and, in a responsible society, accountability.

Most people assume that the meticulous Japanese are among the world’s most responsible citizens. As an investigative journalist who has covered the Hanshin (Kobe) earthquake and the Tokyo subway gassing, I beg to differ. Japan is  just better than elsewhere in organizing official cover-ups.

Hidden nuclear crisis

The recurrent tendency to deny systemic errors – “in order to avoid public panic” – is rooted in the determination of an entrenched bureaucracy to protect itself rather than in any stated purpose of serving the nation or its people. That’s the unspoken rule of thumb in most governments, and the point is that Japan is no shining exception.

So what today is being silenced on orders from the Tokyo government? The official mantra is that all five nuclear power plants in the northeast are  locked down, safe and not leaking. The cloaked reality is that at least one of those – Tepco’s Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant – is under an emergency alert at a level indicative of a quake-caused internal rupture. The Fukushima powerhouse is one of the world’s largest with six boiling-water reactors.

Over past decades, the Japanese public has been reassured by the Tokyo Electric Power Company that its nuclear reactors are prepared for any eventuality. Yet the mystery in Fukushima is not the first unreported problem with nuclear power, only the most recent. Back in 1996  amid a reactor accident in Ibaraki province, the government never admitted that radioactive fallout had drifted over the northeastern suburbs of Tokyo. Our reporters got confirmation from monitoring stations, but the press was under a blanket order not to run any alarming news, the facts be damned. For a nation that’s lived under the atomic cloud of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, total denial becomes possible now only because the finger on the button is our own.

People are the best defense

Despite the national addiction to nuclear power that keeps the neon lights bright over Shibuya’s famous corner, Japan still remains the most prepared of all societies for earthquakes, tsunami, conflagrations and other disasters. Every work unit, large or small, has an emergency response plan. The Tohoku quake hit on a workday afternoon, meaning the staff in every factory and office could act as a team to quell small fires, shut the gas lines, render first aid and restore their communication system. Even in most homes, residents have a rechargeable flashlight plugged into a socket and emergency bottles of water.

Northeast Japan is better prepared than other  localities because in the wake of the Kobe quake in 1995, the regional Keidanren, or federation of  industrial organizations, sponsored a thorough risk-management and crisis response study. Tohoku Keidanren staffers, who had known of my reporting on the San Francisco and Kobe quakes, asked me to write an article prioritizing disaster preparedness.

First on my list was a people-based communications network such as the citizen’s band radio that enabled Northern Californians to self-organize despite power blackouts. That point directly led to the fast licensing of new mobile phone towers equipped with back-up batteries. Second was independent power generation inside all major factories so that these large facilities could recharge batteries, provide lighting and pump water for their neighborhoods and, if necessary, offer shelter, sanitation and medical care. These systems must be routinely used at least on weekends so that the equipment is regularly checked and the staff stay familiar with their operation.

.Third, and most important, is the ability of individuals to rally as a self-sustaining community. In Kobe, society collapsed under a sense of personal defeat. In San Francisco, by contrast, neighbors reached out as friends and opened their doors, food stocks and hearts to victims and their kin. Without compassion, each of us is very much alone indeed.

As participants in communities, who can suddenly find themselves naked before unthinkable hazards, we must act to defuse the deadly “bomb” that provides us lighting, energy for appliances and air-con. Prevention of the next Chernobyl or Three Mile Island  begins when we stop naively believing in the cost efficiency of uranium, and for that matter the cleanliness and healthiness of “clean” coal.

Japan has vast untapped reserves of offshore wind energy, the only practical alternative to nuclear power and fossil fuel. Yet the nuclear lobby, coal companies and oil majors have strong-armed the government and industry to stubbornly refuse to invest in advanced and efficient turbine engineering, including magnetic-levitation rotors that eliminate the need for energy-sapping bearings.

At certain stages of societal evolution, there arrives an unmistakable message to leave behind our worn-out security blanket and surf the wave of the future. The tsunami is just such a signal arising from the ocean’s depths to awaken Japan, as a global technology leader, to push much faster into a cleaner, greener and safer world.

Emergency Special Report II

Quake Monitor: Meltdown has started -  Saturday 12 March (noon Japan time zone)

Meltdown is underway. Japan’s Industrial Nuclear Safety Agency reported that the radioactive isotopes cesium and iodine were detected by a monitoring station in  the Fukushima No.1 nuclear power plant. The presence of these substances in air samples is a sure indicator that an uncontrolled chain reaction has started. Overheated uranium rods have eaten through their protective metal casings and have started nuclear fission. The regulatory agency’s announcement overturns the earlier claim of plant operator TEPCO that all uranium rods were intact.

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The National Institute of Radiological Science, in Chiba outside Tokyo, has flown a team of doctors and nurses by helicopter to a health center 5 km from the Fukushima plant to monitor nuclear exposure in workers, emergency crew and local residents.

Nuclear workers, who this morning restarted the pumping of cold water into the reactor, are being hampered by aftershocks of larger than Richter 6. Plant operator TEPCO ordered the release of steam from the overheated reactor this morning because internal pressure is twice higher than the allowable limits of the original facility design. Plant officials say that the steam is being filtered of radioactive particle. Outside the plant, however, the monitoring station detected outdoor radiation levels 8 times higher than normal, indicating either leakage or filter malfunction.

Three of the six reactors of the TEPCO Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, were operating at the time of the Tohoku quake. The failure of back-up generators caused significant rise in temperatures inside No.1 (46 MW output) and No.2 (784 MW) reactors.

The Japanese government overnight dispatched truck-mounted power generators to both plants in order to restart cooling pumps. On-site back-up batteries that run the control system were depleted of power within 8 hours of the blackout. Authorities are now locating robots to dispatch for remote control repairs to the reactors because the interior is unsafe for human employees.

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Impact on North America:

The Pacific jetstream is currently flowing due east directly toward the United States. In the event of a major meltdown and continuous large-volume radioactive release, airborne particles will be carried across the ocean in bands that will cross over the southern halves of Oregon, Montana and Idaho, all of California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, the Dakotas, northern Nebraska and Iowa and ending in Wisconsin and Illinois, with possible further eastward drift depending on surface wind direction.

Most of the particles can be expected to travel high in the atmosphere, with fallout dependent on low pressure zones, rainfall and temperatures over the US. If a meltdown can be contained in Fukushima, a small amount of particles would be dispersed in the atmosphere with little immediate effect on human and animal health.

Another climate factor to be taken into account is the potential for an El Nino Variable bulging the jetstream further northward, causing fallout over western Canada and a larger number of American states.

Seasonal rainfall over Japan does not normally begin until mid-April and does not become significant until early June.

If very high radiation releases are detected at some point, a potential tactic to lessen contamination of North America is for the US, Canadian and Russian air forces to seed clouds over the northwest Pacific to create a low pressure front and precipitation to minimize particle mass reaching North America.

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Emergency Special Report III

Ohoku Quake and Tsunami Monitor 2: “The Good News Guys”

Sunday 13 March 2011 (0800 hrs Tokyo Time)

Following a high-level meeting called by the lame-duck prime minister, Japanese agencies are no longer releasing independent reports without prior approval from the top. The censorship is being carried out following the imposition of the Article 15 Emergency Law. Official silencing of bad news is a polite way of reassuring the public.According to the chief Cabinet Secretary, reactor heat is being lowered and radiation levels are coming down. The Unit 1 reactor container is not cracked despite the explosion that destroyed its building.

The explosion did not erupt out of the reactor.

So what caused the explosion that blasted away the reinforced concrete roof and walls? Silence.

Yes, there’s nothing to worry about if residents just stay indoors, turn off their air-cons and don’t breathe deeply. Everyone, go back to sleep.

The radiation leak at Fukushima No.1 nuclear plant is now officially designated as a “4″ on the international nuclear-events scale of 7.  This is the same criticality rating at an earlier minor accident at Tokaimura plant in Ibaraki. Technically, there is no comparison. Tokaimura did not experience a partial meltdown.

Enough of the Good News

The mayor of Tsuruga City, home of the trouble-plagued Monju plutonium-breeder reactor in Fukui Prefecture, isn’t buying Tokyo’s weak explanation about the Fukushima 1 blast and demanded the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency to conduct an all-points investigation immediately.

A specialist medical team from the National Radiology Health Institute, flown by helicopter from Chiba to a field center 5 km from the No.1 Nuclear Plant,  found radiation illness in 3 residents out of a sample group of 90. Overnight that number of civilian-nuclear “hibakusha” shot up to 19, but in other counts to 160. The evacuation zone has been further widened from 10 km to 20 km.

A third reactor, Unit 6, has lost its cooling system and is overheating along with Reactors 1 and 2.

Fukushima No.2 plant, further south, is ringed by a wall of silence as a quiet evacuation is being conducted.

Firefighters are pumping seawater into the three overheated Fukushima 1 reactors. The mandatory freshwater supply is missing, presumably due to tsunami contamination from surging ocean waves. An American nuclear expert has called this desperation measure  the  equivalent of a “Hail Mary pass”..

So, the Prime Minister should be hoping that Japan’s tiny Christian community is feverishly praying. Because right now, Japan and much of the world are living on a prayer.

Players not prayers

USA: The White House sent in a team to consult withe US-friendly  Naoto  Kan  government. Instead of dispatching in experts  from the Department of Energy, Nuclear Safety Agency and Health Department, President Obamas sent representatives of USAID, which is cover for the CIA.

The presence of these paranoiac bumblers only confirms suspicions of a top-level cover up. Why would the Agency be worried about the disaster? There are security considerations, such as regional “enemies” Pyongyang, Beijing and Moscow taking advantage of the crisis. To the contrary, China and Russia have both offered carte blanche civilian aid.

Second, to coordinate a pro-American public campaign synchronized with the US relief effort from the nuclear carrier USS Ronald Reagan. Many Japanese might actually be alarmed by Navy ships offshore, reminding them of the firebombing campaign in the big  war, and US helicopters rumbling overhead as if Sendai was Danang Vietnam 1968. The whole “aid” exercise smacks of a con job aimed at keeping US military bases in Okinawa and surreptitiously at a Japanese Self-Defense Force firing range at the foot of Mount Fuji.

Third, to ensure the safekeeping of Misawa Air Force Base in quake-hit Iwate Prefecture. Misawa, the hub of US electronic warfare and high-tech espionage in East Asia with its fleet of P-3 Orions and an ECHELON eavesdropping antennae.

PRC: In contrast to Washington’s ulterior motives, China in  an unprecedented move  has sent in an emergency team into Japan. Unbeknownst to the world, China has world-leading expertise in extinguishing nuclear meltdowns and blocking radiation leaks at their uranium mines and military nuclear plants. This was discovered on a 2003 visit to a geological research center in the uranium-rich Altai mountain region of Xinjiang, where a scientist disclosed “off the record” China’s development of mineral blends that block radiation “much more than 90 percent, nearly totally”. When asked why the institute doesn’t commercialize their formulas, he responded: “We’ve never thought about that.” That’s too bad because if one of China’s exports was ever needed, it’s their radiation blanket.

Russia: Moscow too, is offering unconditional aid, despite ongoing territorial conflict with Japan over four northern islands. The Russian Air Force, from bases in Kamchatka and the Kuriles, could play a key role in cloud-seeding to prevent radioactive particles from drifting over to the United States. Americans should learn how to act as team players in an international community, especially now their own children’s lives will be at stake in the event of a total meltdown in Fukushima.

Canada: Meteorology is becoming evermore interesting, despite the “what me worry” attitudes of the global-warming skeptics. A freak of nature called El Nino Variable, if it occurs later this spring, could push the Pacific jet stream northward, meaning western Canada and more U.S. states could find themselves along a winding stream of radiation fallout from Japan.

Correction to Monitor 1: In our haste, we blurred over some important details on the use of potassium iodide tablets. These are taken to block radioactive iodine-131 from affecting the human thyroid gland, thus lowering the risk of cancer and other disorders.

Yoichi Shimatsu currently with Fourth Media (China) is former editor of the Japan Times Weekly, has covered the earthquakes in San Francisco and Kobe, participated in the rescue operation immediately after the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 and led the field research for an architectural report on structural design flaws that led to the tsunami death toll in Thailand.