Archivi per la categoria ‘expat’

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

by Yoichi Shimatsufrom Global Research, March 13, 2011

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. 

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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. ….Continua »

Umbria Jazz Winter N. 18

by Diego Torroni

Despite some initial economic difficulties, the programme for this edition of the Umbria Jazz Winter No.18  is packed with talent and top names. Chick Corea is, of course, the highlight of the festival. As an outstanding pianist, his repertoire spans his original Latin textured rendering of the music of Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk. This time he’s joined in a duo format by our very own Stefano Bollani, an excellent pianist in his own right and a great stage animal as well. Still in the realm of fine “acoustic jazz”, is an excellent ensemble, Four Others, featuring four saxophonists playing the classical but still highly listenable arrangements of the legendary Four Brothers from Woody Herman’s 1949 orchestra.

Keep an eye out for Ray Anderson and Lew Soloff’s group, the percussionless acoustic trio of Locke Moroni Giuliani, and if it’s dancing you like, start shaking to Gary Brown’s R & B band. Other highlights are the solo piano of our own Danilo Rea, Orvietan by adoption, dedicated to Fabrizio de André, the renowned Roberto Gatti quintet, paying tribute to the late lamented drummer Shelley Manne and the Paolo Fresu and Gianluca Petrelli’s Brass Band.

Another interesting gig features Enzo Pietrapaoli, the bass player from Doctor Three, and lastly the Roma Trio, with Roberto Gatto and Danilo Rea, with visual effects by Massimo Achilli. To finish off,  lovers of stringed instruments, try not miss the concert by Quintorigo, with guest singer Maria Pia de Vito, based on a rereading of the music of Charles Mingus. And to bring in the New Year, what better way than listening to the gospel music of the Selvy Singers.


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