Geography Archives: Asia

Yes, “collaborators,” that’s the word, not “revolutionaries.”  Calling a spade a spade can at least get rectification started, though, pace the street-fighting intellectual, too late in the game. — Ed. The US-Nato intervention in Libya, with United Nations security council cover, is part of an orchestrated response to show support for the movement against one […]

  Long before it happened in Japan, regulators in the United States knew that a similar, days-long power failure, whatever the cause, could lead to a radioactive leak in this country. Alan Kolaczkowski, Nuclear Engineer: Looking at the blackout situations and losses of all power, we know that once those pumps finally die off — […]

It’s difficult to make any sense of the data being reported from various quarters regarding dose rates and contamination levels at varying distances from the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) could do a public service by establishing a consistent reporting framework so the public can assess whether radionuclide release rates […]

Nuclear power is unreliable for fighting global warming. Scandals, earthquakes and accidents can shut down numerous plants simultaneously. When one of these problems occurs, without sustainable alternative energy sources, fossil fuel plants must kick in, spiking greenhouse gas emissions.

  People from all walks of life and different faiths have come to the aid of the victims.  Members of the Muslim community of Tokyo are among the thousands of sincere and caring volunteers who are rushing supplies to Japan’s needy. . . .  Between Tokyo and the ravaged areas lies Fukushima Prefecture, where radiation […]

The combination of an earthquake followed by a tsunami in Japan initiated a sequence of events that ultimately led to damage to the reactor cores at Fukushima Dai-Ichi Units 1, 2, and 3 caused by inadequate cooling. Can’t happen here?  Perhaps not by the same method, but definitely with the same consequences. The earthquake caused […]

High Levels of Radiation Detected in Vegetables, Unprocessed Milk, Water, and Soil
Unnecessary Radiation Exposure Imposed Due to Japanese Government’s Lack of Evacuation Plan and “Declaration of Safety”

The imperialist killers headed by the USA, France, Britain and NATO as a whole and with the approval of the UN started a new imperialist war.  This time in Libya. Their allegedly humanitarian pretexts are completely misleading!  They throw dust into peoples’ eyes!  Their real goals are the hydrocarbons in Libya. We, the Communist and […]

Given the large amount of radioactivity that could be released from the damaged reactors and spent-fuel pools at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi facility, the Japanese government was wise to evacuate residents within a 12 mile (20 kilometer) radius of the reactor site. Unfortunately, the crisis in not over.  Given the uncertainty over future releases, we believe […]

The Japanese government, taking a break from its nuclear class war against its own people, issued a nonsensical statement on Libya,1 supporting the Western war against Libya . . . and at the same time claiming to support the African Union, which is opposed to the war, and the Arab League, which is now trying […]

  March 20, 2011 We Urge the Japanese Government to Take the Following Actions Regarding the Crisis at the Fukushima Nuclear Plants: Despite strenuous efforts, there is an increasing danger that large amounts of radioactive material might be released from Unit No. 3, which is loaded with fuel containing plutonium.  We are particularly concerned about […]

Note that the criminal government of Japan is still advising people outside the 20-km exclusion zone to just use umbrellas, wear raincoats, and wash themselves later if they are worried about the radioactive fallout in the rain. — Ed. Prime Minister Kan Cancels Visits to Disaster Areas “Due to Bad Weather” Asahi Shimbun, 21 March […]

  China’s Foreign Ministry on Sunday expressed regret over the multinational military strike against Libya, saying that it did not agree with resorting to force in international relations. “China has noticed the latest development in Libya and regrets the military strike against Libya,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said. China, as it always, does not […]

In these bitter days we have seen pictures of an earthquake that reached 9 on the Richter Scale with hundreds of strong after-shocks, and a tsunami 10 metres high whose waves of dark waters dragged tens of thousands of people between cars and trucks over homes and 3 and 4 storey buildings. Sophisticated mass media […]

Prabir Purkayastha: If you really look at what is happening, what we have is a historical split between the east and the west, which could be the outline of what could emerge at least in the near future, unless Gaddafi has the strength to push his troops right up to Benghazi.  Aijaz Ahmad The real […]

Fidel Castro was right.  The West was planning an attack on a sovereign third world nation imminently: Libya.  Nothing like a good old war against brown and black people in Libya by the West to remind oneself of what Western civilisation is all about.  Many of us who have been politically active since the 1990s […]

Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist.  Cf. “Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center, a Japanese environmental group, has documented previous safety problems and cover-ups by Tepco at the Fukushima reactor complex: cnic.jp/english/newsletter/nit92/nit92articles/nit92coverupdata.html” (Nuclear Information and Resource Service, “Fact Sheet on Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant,” 11 March 2011). | Print

At last, the prime minister of Japan faced up to the inconvenient truth.  Had he done so from Day 1, and based his evacuation plan on the possibility of this worst case scenario, it would have been possible to evacuate tens of millions more people, in orderly fashion, than we can now.  The criminal government […]

Even in the best case scenario available at this point, all workers at Fukushima 1 and 2 battling to save the lives of others must have already suffered great harm to their health, and the harm is about to become greater. — Ed. Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare has determined that the existing […]

  As of 11:30 pm EDT Monday 3/14/11 Three of the six reactors at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear facility were operating at the time of the earthquake — Units 1, 2, and 3.  The reactors shut down when the earthquake hit, but even after they stopped producing power, the reactor cores were very hot and […]