Thursday 30 June 2011

Alpine energy - a nuclear euphemism

Austria, home of the IAEA's head office in Vienna, prides itself on being a nuclear-free-zone.

There are no nuclear power stations in Austria. But the truth of the matter is that Austria, population 8 million, imports the amount energy produced by 2 nuclear plants of equivalent MW-size to those at Torness (see post below) mainly from neighbouring pro-nuclear country Czech Republic. This (in population/energy terms) would be the equivalent to the output of 32 nuclear reactors in Japan where the population is 127 million.

Japan has 55 nuclear reactors. The proud nuclear-free-country of Austria is relatively speaking quietly importing about 60% of what a pro-nuclear country like Japan is producing per head for its own population!

Small wonder that the IAEA is happy to have it's head office in the nuclear free Alpine Republic.

Image is everything.

But why does Austria need to import so much nuclear energy when it has hydro-electric dams along the Danube and on all its major rivers except one?

Perhaps an Austrian nuclear lobbyist can provide the answer?
.

Wednesday 29 June 2011

Jellyfish invade nuclear plant

As if the wildfire at Los Alamos nuclear facility, the floods at Fort Calhoun and Omaha nuclear plants, and the disaster at Fukushima are not enough to worry about . . .

. . . we now learn that two 640 megawatt nuclear reactors at Torness, Scotland, have been shut down (since Tuesday) due to a mass invasion of jellyfish.

The jellyfish are obstructing the filters in the cooling water inflow area. The nuclear plant will remain in shut down mode until at least the 5th or 6th July; assuming that is, that a second wave of wobbly invaders doesn't arrive in the meantime!

_____
6/6/2011 UPDATE: Jellyfish have now invaded a second power plant. This time, in Israel.

Faster driver - releasing clutch

He appeared through a swathe of gray-ash fog
that buried a city up to the rooflines
on a late unsettling autumn day
the conductor - Maestro Silvio-tone -
in hotel 5-star elegance
was shoe shined stiff-
white-collar shirted
precisely shaved, notecase fat
and broad felt hat
the gloved-up fists
in leatherette kids . . .

. . . he requested me
in a guttural Sprache
to conduct him to the terminal schnell
where the warmed-up jets are whining
away in the Flugbahn fog
and banking away
on the gold-tipped clouds
- now there shall be no going back -
he grinned when he said
the broadsheet press was on the case
and then
when he left
he slipped me the notes

- a bisserl Trinkgeld!
for all the trouble

______
gw2011

The Leaden-Eyed

Let not young souls be smothered out before
They do quaint deeds and fully flaunt their pride.
It is the world's one crime its babes grow dull,
Its poor are ox-like, limp and leaden-eyed.

Not that they starve, but starve so dreamlessly,
Not that they sow, but that they seldom reap,
Not that they serve, but have no gods to serve,
Not that they die but that they die like sheep.

_____
Vachel Lindsay
1879-1931
.

Tuesday 28 June 2011

Joan Cairns

Joan, you can see her at "Joan Cairns - 89 and still going strong" via the blog-searchbox, passed away recently. There are Joan Cairns' poems* on the Poet-in-Residence blog and on the side-blog 'POETRY 2010'. Joan is also featured on YouTube - where she is seen as a member of England's oldest band.

Gus Cairns, Joan's son, informs me that a selection of Joan's poetry is to be published posthumously. It will be a fitting tribute to one overflowing with joie de vivre who brought so much sunshine into the lives of others.

Joan Cairns will be remembered with great affection by all who knew her.
________
*3 of Joan's poems can be found at the side-blog POETRY2010
and 1 poem on the main Poet-in-Residence blog. Please enjoy.

lines from Beowulf

- taken from Hrothgar's speech

It is wonderful to recount
how in his magnanimity the Almighty God
deals out wisdom, dominion and lordship
among mankind. The Master of all things
will sometimes allow the soul of a man
of well-known kindred to wander in delight:
He will grant him earth's bliss in his own homeland,
the sway of the fortress-city of his people,
and will give him to rule regions of the world,
wide kingdoms: he cannot imagine,
in his unwisdom, that an end will come.
His life of bounty is not blighted by hint
of age or ailment; no evil care
darkens his mind, malice nowhere
bares the sword-edge, but sweetly the world
swings to his will; worse is not looked for.
At last his part of pride within him
waxes and climbs, the watchman of the soul
slumbering the while. That sleep is too deep,
tangled in its cares! Too close is the slayer
who shoots the wicked shaft from his bow!
For all his armour he is unable to protect himself:
the insidious bolt buries in his chest,
the crooked counsels of the the accursed one.
What he has so long enjoyed he rejects as too little;
in niggardly anger renounces his lordly
gifts of gilt torques, forgets and misprises
his fore-ordained part, endowed thus by God,
the Master of Glory, with these great bounties.
And ultimately the end must come,
the frail house of flesh must crumble
and fall at its hour.

Beloved Beowulf, best of warriors,
resist this deadly taint . . .
______
from p105,106 (lines 1704-34, 1735-66) Penguin Classics

Monday 27 June 2011

The Dogs of Woe

Two stray dogs seen wandering around the Fukushima plant have been rescued by animal lover Hiroshi Hoshi.

A TEPCO official said: "The dogs were on our premises so they must be our property. They must be returned."

Mr Hoshi has rescued many other animals.


You don't want know the rest!
e.g. Humans testing positive for radiation in urine. . .
.
TEPCO officials just don't appear to get it. After feeding us with false data for more than 3 months and contaminating large areas of the planet, in spite of what the news blackouts would have you believe, they now feign concern for 2 stray dogs. Barking mad, I call it.

There are unconfirmed suggestions surfacing on the internet that unscrupulous organizations may be using the cover of the Fukushima disaster to slyly release their own nuclear waste problems into the environment. Surely nobody would stoop so low as that - or would they?
.

Monday 20 June 2011

A poem chosen to mark the northern hemisphere summer solstice 2011.

The poet John Clare, son of a poor labourer, was born in the year 1793 at Helpstone, near Peterborough. He spent the last 22 years of his life living in a lunatic asylum, forsaken by family and friends (mentioned in the second line of the following poem: 'I Am'). He died on 20th May 1864. His last wish was to be buried near his birth place and this was granted.

I Am

I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am, and live with shadows tost

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise.
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And een the dearest - that I loved the best -
Are strange - nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smiled or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below - above the vaulted sky.

--------
John Clare (13th July 1793 - 20th May 1864)
--------
tost - tossed
een - even

haikushima 6


the cows
have eaten the best of the grass
and now they lie

down
dead






IAEA meets to discuss Fukushima and nuclear safety


I felt a lot better when I gave up hope - Woody Allen

A macabre piece of theatre is taking place at the HQ of the IAEA here in Vienna. The organization is having a "ministerial" conference on nuclear "safety".

Today, Monday, there will be an "assessment" of the Fukushima accident and a discussion regarding "actions" for "safety" improvements.

Tomorrow and over the next few days this will be followed by subjects like future "actions" for "safety" improvements, emergency preparedness and "response", "lessons" identified and "learned" in "response" to the Fukushima accident and of course the inevitable "Way Forward" will be found . . . and so on and so on . . . including in conclusion "possible" ways for strengthening the nuclear "safety" framework.

And there you have it. Or rather you don't. For the officials who will be talking shop and taking extended luncheons at the IAEA's "ministerial" conference are handicapped by the fact, as nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen says, that they cannot think outside the box.

It's an illusion. It's an old three card trick designed to fool the public who have long ago left the auditorium. It's a true theatre of the macabre where a moth eaten curtain has fallen and the spotlights won't work any more. They perform to our ghosts.

The plain fact of the matter is that nuclear energy is not safe.

There are hundreds of nuclear reactors include fast-breeder reactors, which are even more dangerous than Fukushima and Chernobyl, situated on earthquake fault lines, in tsunami areas, on flood plains, in coastal areas subject to heavy erosion, in areas where typhoons and hurricanes occur; not to mention other likely hazards such as human error, component failure, computer malfunction, corrupt politicians, madmen, blackmailers, terrorists, sand storms, wildfires, plague, aircraft accidents, etc., etc, etc..

The unhealthy alliance of silence, between the IAEA and the WHO, which has existed since 1959, must NOW be ended. I suggest that this "ministerial" conference take an emergency vote to recommend to the UN that this is done without delay.

At least then they can report that something positive has been achieved.



Sunday 19 June 2011

Saturday 18 June 2011

Bye bye Western Gray Whale


When it comes to the unfolding tragedy of the Western Gray Whale the sad fact is that there are now only 30 breeding females left in the world.

The 130 world population of Western Gray Whales lives in the radioactive ocean around Japan; the area from Kamchatka in the north to the tip of Japan in the south, to Sakhalin Island in the west and along the eastern seaboard of Japan is their feeding ground.

At least 3 whales* suffering from the effects of Fukushima radiation have already been found in the ocean near Japan.

The WWF's Heather Sohl says of the Western Gray: The death of just one mature female each year could send it on the track to certain extinction.

The WWF is trying to stop plans for a third oil-drilling platform off Sakhalin Island by Sakhalin Energy (i.e. Shell) and calling for a sanctuary to be established in the whales' feeding zones.

It is too late. The food-chain has already been compromised. The sentence of death has been pronounced.

Man, with his insatiable appetite for power, is the enemy of nature and therefore of the Planet.

What shall we write on the Western Gray's watery tomb? That we didn't mean to do it? That it will never happen again? That we are sorry?

Sadly, having now destroyed this beautiful and intelligent life, this great and graceful 15 meter long creature which has been around for hundreds of millions of years longer than man, we shall, as we always do, simply carry on regardless.

Bye bye Western Gray Whale. May you rest in peace.
___________
*Minke Whales

Friday 17 June 2011

a collection of babies in jars

- Fukushima nuclear accident - terrible consequences are inevitable

after the earless rabbits
there will come
the survivors -

the kids with hydrocephalus
and the young men
with sarcoma of the prostate

the mute
the deaf
the brain tumors


or the bone
strangely diseased
so that it makes the body shrink

the immune system is of course destroyed
this goes without saying

now please press your skin
and keep the medicine in

now fight the pain

the artificial breathing machine
is only here for those too weak
to move

the mentally handicapped
will not have the option

of suicide


have you already forgotten
the Russian hamsters
- how one disappeared

who told you the truth

_____
gw2011


Rev. Eli Jenkins' prayer


Every morning when I wake,
Dear Lord, a little prayer I make,
O please to keep Thy lovely eye
On all poor creatures born to die.

And every evening at sun-down
I ask a blessing on the town,
For whether we last the night or no
I'm sure is always touch-and-go.

We are not wholly bad or good
Who live our lives under Milk Wood,
And Thou, I know, wilt be the first
To see our best side, not our worst.

O let us see another day!
Bless us all this night, I pray,
And to the sun we all will bow
And say, good-bye - but just for now!

_____
from Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas
- on a postcard from Wales.

Wednesday 15 June 2011

USA NUCLEAR ALERT




The outcome of this unfolding drama will depend on whether the levees hold up against the rising floodwaters. We can all remember what happened when the dam was breached at New Orleans.

As someone (Arnie Gundersen I think it was) rightly said: We shouldn't be hearing the words "sandbags" and "nuclear" in the same sentence.




Tuesday 14 June 2011

Red Moon Rising

At 22:12 CET tomorrow night, here where I am based, in Central Europe there will be a Lunar Eclipse and the moon will turn red like blood as it says in the scriptures.

I shall be out and about with my camera and if the sky is clear and I can get a good shot of the astronomical event I shall post the image here.

>unfortunately my camera was not up to the job and there was also, as this morning's local news is reporting, a problem here with smog - hope you had better luck where you are<*

What does it mean, this biblical talk of the moon as red as blood and if my childhood Sunday School memory serves me correctly the sun as black as sackcloth (which of course it was in the mystery of night to the ancient scribes)?

The ancient peoples may have imagined that the sun, a disc, somehow turned black and so disguised retraced its path in the night across the firmament to the point where it would once again appear at dawn, for of course they knew that the Earth was flat and was the only solid surface below the sky (or Heaven) and above the inferno (or Hell).

They definitely did NOT mean the solar eclipse, for then the sun shows its corona and therefore is not and never is a black disc.

So we have sackcloth and blood. In other words DEATH.

A tension is building. You may sense it.

*CLICK on RT NEWS LINK in sidebar for ECLIPSE VIDEO >>> From Russia with Moon >>>


haikushima 5


in the damp gusts bringing the rain

we ingest the past with the seeds

and wait . . .

for the fragments to sprout


A love song

Let us go then, you and I,
where the evening is playing out
inside the hollow radioactive pile
the giant lobster boiling in the dried-out pot;
Let us through this certain cornered street
with stuttering chirp-and-tweet
of Geiger swipes to Sleep Motel
and the Sushi Restaurant
with its radioactive oysters in their shells:
the tweets and chirps seem hollow
as the hideous
aftertaste whose tangy metal smell
leads us to an overwhelming question . . .
just what is a becquerel? -
Oh, do not ask!

The Yellow Sea returns
the sky with re-fused hue
this end of dazed!
The patient has no watchword.

_____
gw2011

A Wasted Land


In the thin frost of a spring morn a group slouched over Fukushima Bridge. Sore a number, who now faced death, death which had undone so many enemies and friends. Sighs long and frequent, were inhaled, and each one fixed his eye upon the counter. Down the hill and up New Trapco Street, to where the locks no longer kept us out and women combed the beach for crabs and weeds. There saw I one I vaguely knew, and she stopped me, smiling, calling: "Cowboy! You who were with the gray-suits at the plant! The top-soil you removed when you killed your garden, where is it now? How will your beansprouts grow this year?" "Will the silver frost of winter take your friend? See how he's glowing more like you and me?" said I. "Let us go partake the tainted local tea, we three," she quickly said. And so thereto we stirred . . .

Monday 13 June 2011

HOT AND DANGEROUS FUKUSHIMA PARTICLES

In his new video, released yesterday, nuclear expert Gundersen shows a chilling photograph of a chimpanzee's lung which has been invaded by just ONE hot particle.

In Tokyo during the month of April residents were inhaling TEN hot particles per day, in Seattle (USA) up to FIVE hot particles and in Fukushima up to FOUR HUNDRED hot particles per day.

Hot particles contain cesium, strontium, plutonium, uranium and other dangerous 'materials'. These HOT PARTICLES CANNOT BE DETECTED WITH GEIGER COUNTERS.

If you live in Japan you would be well advised, for example, NOT TO CHANGE A CAR AIR FILTER unless you are wearing protective clothing.

_____
Japan latest: RT (visit link >>>) reports radiation levels of between 30 x and 1,000 x the safe level in Fukushima City which is situated outside the exclusion zone.

Sunday 12 June 2011

Unsafe at any dose

Alexej Jablokow, ex-President Gorbachev's environmental advisor and founder of Greenpeace in Russia, was recently asked by Manfred Kriener to estimate the number of deaths resulting from Chernobyl. The full interview was published in Neue Argument no. 117.

From the interview (my translation) - some points in brief:

Kriener: Mr Jablokow, you have looked at hundreds of scientific studies . . .

Jablokow: . . . not hundreds, thousands!

And so we come to the figures -

Jablokow: . . . independent US and Canadian experts have reckoned the total deaths (from Chernobyl) will be between 900,000 and 1.8 million. This number includes those who are still to die . . .

Kriener: . . . other calculations give the actual deaths to have occurred around the world.

Jablokow: . . . in 1996 the EU published a special atlas showing the cesium distribution pattern in Europe . . . calculations based on this give a total of 1.03 million deaths around the world.

Kriener: Official figures from the UN and WHO speak of only 9,000 deaths. A macabre juggling of the victim numbers. Who can we believe?

Jablokow: . . . I myself have protested outside the WHO building in Geneva for 2 years. On our placards it's written: Remember your Hippocratic Oath!

Kriener: At least the deaths of the Liquidators must be included . . .

Jablokow: My research shows that there were 830,000 Liquidators and not 600,000 as reported. Of these between 112,000 and 125,000 had died by 2006 . . . and their average age was about 43 years . . . the number of nuclear accidents is not decreasing, the reactors are getting older, their life span is being extended. You cannot make a new car from an old car. Therefore a new Chernobyl is not far away. On the contrary: it comes nearer.

Date of Interview: FEBRUARY 2011.

I urge readers to look at Dr. Helen Caldicott's webside and her article Unsafe at any dose. Caldicott's research and conclusions are strikingly similar to Jablokow's.

I have explained before on this Poet-in-Residence blog why you cannot trust the WHO any more than you can trust the IAEA. It's time their unholy alliance was ended. When it comes to the activities of the nuclear energy industry the WHO is nothing but a cover for the IAEA and the IAEA is nothing but a lobby for the nuclear industry. And it all takes place under the devalued flag of the UN.

See also Prof. Robert Jacobs comments regarding the Fukushima media cover-up via the RT sidebar link >>>




Friday 10 June 2011

Wednesday 8 June 2011

Wot, no earthquake?

Today the 8th June 2011 is the first day (complete 24-hour period) since the mega-earthquake of 11th March 2011 that there has been no significant earthquake recorded on the NZ based Japan-Quakes Live LINK --->.

In fact, at the time of writing, the earth in Japan, seismically speaking, has been silent for 39 hours.

This is a strange thing. I hope it does not mean that tension is building. I hope it means that tension has now been released. We shall have to wait and see,

Meanwhile we can contemplate the fact that nuclear giant TEPCO admits to under-informing us of the seriousness of the radiation leaks by at least half.

Residents of Tokyo are inhaling 10 hot particles per day, in Seattle (USA) it's 5 particles per day. A hot particle is a cancer inducing nuclear particle that you cannot detect with a Geiger counter and which sticks to the insides of your lungs.

My reliable source of information is Arnie Gundersen.


post script
Will somebody please give Gundersen the Nobel Prize and prove to me that there is, despite all the devious and corrupt dealings we see every day (if we open our metaphorical eyes) that there is something rare and precious still to be found . . . and that is 'intelligence' coupled with 'integrity'.


pps
Why am I only now receiving Google messages telling me to stock up on freeze dried food? This deadly radiation has been spewing out for 3 months!

ppps
Why am I only now learning about hot particles? These dangerous and almost undetectable particles must have been around for 3 months - so why didn't the WHO or the IAEA tell me about them?

Tuesday 7 June 2011

Paper talk

They told me not to eat cucumber
then they showed me a picture of a Spanish cucumber



They told me not to eat sprouts

then they showed me a picture of German beansprouts



Till now they have NOT told me not to eat MOX

or shown a me a picture of a Japanese hot particle



Till now -



But maybe

they will


when they have to?



_____

gw2011