Wednesday, September 3rd, 2014
WILLIAM BOARDMAN, - Reader Supported News
Stephan: Here is the latest on Fukushima. It is a nasty tragic story, and what most people don't seem to yet realize it will probably be going on for the rest of our lives.
TEPCO executives bow their heads to apologize to evacuees at a shelter in Koriyama. Will any face criminal prosecution? (photo: Ken Shimizu/AFP/Getty Images)
Nobody in the world knows how to dispose of radioactive waste safely and permanently. That’s a given. The Japanese central government is presumably aware that anything it does with still the unmeasured but vast amount of radioactive waste from Fukushima’s six nuclear power generators will be temporary. Leaving it in place is not an option. So Tokyo announced on August 29 that the Fukushima waste would be stored for 30 years in Fukushima prefect, in an “interim facility” to be built probably in nearby Okuma or Futaba (now evacuated).
“We’ve screened and confirmed safety and regional promotion measures as offered by the state,” Fukushima prefect governor Yuhei Sato said when announcing the decision. The temporary plan was proposed by the environment minister in late 2013, an offer few thought the Fukushima officials […]
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Wednesday, September 3rd, 2014
TREVOR TIMM, - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: Here is a prominent and respected British newspaper's take on the American police state. If you travel outside the U.S. you know that the respect and admiration in which America was once held has largely dissipated like a morning mist. Now our international image is quite unpleasant and negative. Sophisticated people in other countries at dinner parties or other private events ask you, "What happened to the United States?" I am never quite sure how to answer.
Want the federal government to reign in the local police? Follow the money. Photo illustration: DonkeyHotey / Flickr via Creative Commons
For three weeks and counting, America has raged against the appalling behavior of the local police in Ferguson, Missouri, and for good reason: automatic rifles pointed at protesters, tank-like armored trucks blocking marches, the teargassing and arresting of reporters, tactics unfit even for war zones – it was all enough to make you wonder whether this was America at all. But as Congress returns to Washington this week, the ire of a nation should also be focused on the federal government agency that has enabled the rise of military police, and so much more: the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
The 240,000-employee, Bush-invented bureaucratic behemoth that didn’t even exist 15 years ago has been the primary arms dealer for out-of-control local cops in Ferguson and beyond, handing out tens of billions of dollars in grants […]
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Wednesday, September 3rd, 2014
JAMES WEST, - Mother Jones
Stephan: The next IPCC report has been leaked. I will let it speak for itself.
A massive “ice island” breaks free from the Petermann Glacier in Greenland in 2012. Rex Features/AP
How many synonyms for “grim” can I pack into one article? I had to consult the thesaurus: ghastly, horrid, awful, shocking, grisly, gruesome.
This week, a big report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was leaked before publication, and it confirmed, yet again, the grim-dire, frightful-reality the we face if we don’t slash our global greenhouse gas emissions, and slash them fast.
This “Synthesis Report,” to be released in November following a UN conference in Copenhagen, is still subject to revision. It is intended to summarize three previous UN climate publications and to “provide an integrated view” to the world’s governments of the risks they face from runaway carbon pollution, along with possible policy solutions.
As expected, the document contains a lot of what had already been reported after the three underpinning reports were released at global summits over the past year. It’s a […]
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Wednesday, September 3rd, 2014
DAVID WETHE, MARGARET CRONIN FISK and LAUREL CALKINS, - Bloomberg
Stephan: Here is what looks like some good news from the BP-Halliburton Gulf catastrophe, although it is not quite settled. The amount is still not enough, but at least it is a serious amount of money they are being penalized.
Photographer: Kari Goodnough/Bloomberg
Empty beach chairs rest on the sand as oil washes ashore in Orange Beach, Alabama, on June 19, 2010.
Halliburton Co. agreed to pay $1.1 billion to settle a majority of lawsuits brought over its role in the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history.
The agreement is subject to court approval and includes legal fees, the Houston-based company said in a statement today. Halliburton was accused by spill victims and BP Plc of doing defective cementing work on the Macondo well before the April 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Halliburton blamed the incident on decisions by BP, which owned the well.
The settlement comes as the judge overseeing oil-spill cases weighs fault for the disaster. An agreement now averts the company’s risk of a more costly judgment for some spill victims and removes much of the uncertainty that has plagued Halliburton for the past four years […]
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Tuesday, September 2nd, 2014
MIRANDA BLUE, - Right Wing Watch
Stephan: Here is a taste of what I read in the Theocratic Right bubble. This kind of discourse is why I see the Great Schism Trend as gaining momentum.
On Tuesday, VCY America’s ‘Crosstalk” hosted End Times prophet Ed Hindson to discuss the impact of the End Times and the Rapture on the United States.
‘The United States would be incredibly impacted by the Rapture because there are more professing Christians here than perhaps any other place on the planet,” Hindson predicted.
‘What would happen, I think, in the United States is the sudden Rapture of believers would leave this country totally secularist, totally atheist, totally in the hands of anti-Christian forces, and it would decimate the economy, the banking system, even the military, the police system. It would throw this country into chaos overnight. Now, it would throw any country into chaos, but the larger percentage of born-again believers, the larger percentage of the chaos.”
But why, Hindson asked, is the United States not mentioned in the Book of Revelation? Because, he explains, so many Americans will be raptured that the country will be totally decimated and all of the action will shift to Europe, where the Antichrist will arise.
‘Unless you try to view the Babylon of the End Times as America, there’s no indication that America’s there anywhere [in the Bible],” Hindson said. ‘So, is she totally destroyed? Possibly, but […]
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