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Best of the Web: First pictures emerge of the Fukushima Fifty as they battle radiation poisoning to save Japan's stricken nuclear power plant

The darkness is broken only by the flashing torchlight of the heroes who stayed behind.

These first images of inside the stricken Fukushima Dai-Ichi power plant reveal the terrifying conditions under which the brave men work to save their nation from full nuclear meltdown.

The Fukushima Fifty - an anonymous band of lower and mid-level managers - have battled around the clock to cool overheating reactors and spent fuel rods since the disaster on March 11.

Fukushima Fifty
Conundrum: Two of the Fukushima Fifty pour over plans as they try to work out how to fix the stricken plant

Heart - Black

Best of the Web: The New Robber Barons: All Politicians "In the Hands of the Super Wealthy," Sachs Says

The cataclysm in Japan pushed it off the front page, but last Friday was a landmark day in America as Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker signed into law a controversial bill restricting the collective bargaining rights of public sector unions.

There's been a lot of talk, here and elsewhere, about whether the standoff in Wisconsin was about pure economics or partisan politics. (See: Wisconsin Lt. Gov: This Is About Balancing the Budget, Not Political Payback)


"It's pretty clear there's an agenda nationwide: Republican governors backed by the Koch Brothers [and] extreme right wing money want to crush the unions," says Columbia Professor Jeffrey Sachs. "The public is against it, but public opinion doesn't count much in this country these days."

Alarm Clock

Best of the Web: Geologist Predicts Major N. America Earthquake Imminent

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Retired USGS geologist Jim Berkland, who is credited with predicting (four days in advance) the 1989 San Francisco Bay area 6.9 magnitude earthquake, has stated that North America looks to be next for a major quake. Berkland says that the months of October March and April are historically the months on which the most powerful earthquakes have struck the San Francisco Bay area. He also links the upcoming 'supermoon' on the 19th and, the next day, the equinoctial tides. A 'top seismic window', according to Berkland, is developing between the 19th and 26th of March. Berkland also implies that massive recent fish kills at Redondo beach and Acapulco are not a result of the Japan quake or its aftermath, but rather signs (changes in magnetic field) of a coming quake on the Western seaboard of North America.


Nuke

Best of the Web: Japanese authorities: We have no control over the Fukushima Nuclear plant, people will probably die from fallout

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© AP Photos/KyodoOverwhelmed: Tokyo Electric Power Company Managing Director Akio Komiri cries as he leaves after a press conference in Fukushima
  • Officials admit they may have to bury reactors under concrete - as happened at Chernobyl
  • Government says it was overwhelmed by the scale of twin disasters
  • Japanese upgrade accident from level four to five - the same as Three Mile Island
  • We will rebuild from scratch says Japanese prime minister
  • Particles spewed from wrecked Fukushima power station arrive in California
  • Military trucks tackle reactors with tons of water for second day
The boss of the company behind the devastated Japanese nuclear reactor today broke down in tears - as his country finally acknowledged the radiation spewing from the over-heating reactors and fuel rods was enough to kill some citizens

Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency admitted that the disaster was a level 5, which is classified as a crisis causing 'several radiation deaths' by the UN International Atomic Energy.

Officials said the rating was raised after they realised the full extent of the radiation leaking from the plant. They also said that 3 per cent of the fuel in three of the reactors at the Fukushima plant had been severely damaged, suggesting those reactor cores have partially melted down.

After Tokyo Electric Power Company Managing Director Akio Komiri cried as he left a conference to brief journalists on the situation at Fukushima, a senior Japanese minister also admitted that the country was overwhelmed by the scale of the tsunami and nuclear crisis.

He said officials should have admitted earlier how serious the radiation leaks were.

R2-D2

Best of the Web: Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media by creating online sockpuppets to spread propaganda

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© Cliff Owen/APGen David Petraeus has previously said US online psychological operations are aimed at 'countering extremist ideology and propaganda'.
Military's 'sock puppet' software creates fake online identities to spread pro-American propaganda

The US military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter by using fake online personas to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda.

A Californian corporation has been awarded a contract with United States Central Command (Centcom), which oversees US armed operations in the Middle East and Central Asia, to develop what is described as an "online persona management service" that will allow one US serviceman or woman to control up to 10 separate identities based all over the world.

The project has been likened by web experts to China's attempts to control and restrict free speech on the internet. Critics are likely to complain that it will allow the US military to create a false consensus in online conversations, crowd out unwelcome opinions and smother commentaries or reports that do not correspond with its own objectives.

Comment: This Guardian article is arguing slightly too much to convince us that this sort of thing would never be tolerated against anyone other than "Muslims in remote Muslim countries that we don't like (because they don't like us)!"

Army of Fake Social Media Friends to Promote Propaganda


Alarm Clock

Best of the Web: Japanese Earthquake Could Be Replicated In Washington

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The Cascadia subduction zone
While Japan struggles to recover from one of the greatest earthquakes in world history, West Coast seismologists are warning that a quake just like it could occur at any time off the Washington and Oregon coasts.

Friday's subduction earthquake in Japan has been calculated at magnitude 8.9, although experts say the number may be increased slightly. The last subduction quake off the West Coast, which occurred on Jan. 26, 1700, has been judged at between magnitude 8.7 and 9.2.

The size of the 1700 earthquake was determined from evidence buried in sediments along the coast. The date is known, because it created a tsunami that washed up in Japan, where observers recorded the date.

In broad-brush terms, "the two earthquakes are very similar," said John Vidale, director of the Pacific Northwest Seismograph Network at the University of Washington. "As a first guess, what might happen here is what happened there."

Subduction earthquakes are caused by the slippage between two tectonic plates. Plates on opposite sides of the Pacific Ocean are different, but in either case a tsunami would travel a short distance before hitting land. As in Japan, people living in Washington's coastal communities might have less than half an hour to escape from a surge of water from a subduction earthquake.

Robert Yeats, professor emeritus of geology at Oregon State University, said West Coast residents should take the Japanese experience to heart.

"What you are seeing in Japan today is what you will see in our future,"he said, "except that they are better prepared than we are."

Bizarro Earth

Best of the Web: US: Terrifying ordeal for 800 motorists rescued from their cars as blizzard sweeps through North Dakota

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© APGoing nowhere: Motorists had to abandon their cars in North Dakota after 60mph winds caused a blizzard and plunging temperatures turned roads to ice rinks.
Around 800 people had to be rescued from their cars after a blizzard in North Dakota made roads impassable.

Motorists were yesterday forced to abandon their vehicles after 60mph winds created whiteouts and plunging temperatures turned roads to ice rinks throughout the state.

Traffic came to a grinding halt and there were multiple pileups that caused more delay. Miraculously there were reports of only minor injuries.

Rescue workers, including around 70 soldiers, had to use military lorries and other heavy vehicles that could plough through huge snow drifts to pluck people from more than 500 cars abandoned along major highway routes.

They were taken to churches, schools, bars and gas stations that became makeshift shelters while the highways were closed.

Katie Woodbury, a North Dakota State College freshman, was driving from the school in Fargo to her family's farm in Stanley, northwest North Dakota, when road conditions forced her take shelter at a church in Medina.

'It was scary - I was talking to myself the whole time,' she said of her drive. 'I just want to get home and see my mom and dad and the 13 new piglets at the farm.'

She said she talked to her parents by phone today and, after having a hot meal, was just waiting for the weather to clear.

Camera

Best of the Web: Photos: Japan Earthquake Aftermath

Three days after a massive earthquake that is now estimated to have registered a 9.0 magnitude, Japanese rescue crews are being joined by foreign aid teams in the search for survivors in the wreckage. Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan has called the disaster the nation's worst crisis since World War II, as the incredible scope of the destruction becomes clear and fears mount of a possible nuclear meltdown at a failing power plant. It is still too early for exact numbers, but the estimated death toll may top 10,000 as thousands remain unaccounted for. Gathered here are new images of the destruction and of the search for survivors.

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© REUTERS/Mainichi ShimbunA wave approaches Miyako City from the Heigawa estuary in Iwate Prefecture after the magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck the area March 11, 2011. Picture taken March 11, 2011.

Magnify

Best of the Web: The Oppression of Women as a Party Platform

To start with, let me be clear: The oppression and general subjugation of women is not an exclusively Republican issue. Measures proposed, adopted, or supported by some Democrats, such as the Stupak-Pitts amendment and the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, make that clear. Nor is the oppression and subjugation of women even an exclusively male issue. The fact is, a lot of conservative women adhere and/or contribute to the doctrine of male domination, perhaps because it is politically useful (see Palin, who is no feminist), or perhaps because they have simply been indoctrinated to do so. Despite all the calls for equality and the efforts of feminists throughout the country and around the world, everyone who has grown up in the United States has been influenced, in one way or another, by the pervasive and prevailing mindset of masculine domination. Some of us are more resistant to indoctrination than others, but few are entirely immune. We are all subject to the influences of gender stereotyping, no matter how careful our parents may have been to prevent it. Every day, we are inundated with indoctrinating images and ideas, through television, literature, music, and innumerable other mediums.

oppresswomen-1 Reagan McCain
© Unknown

What is most important isn't that we are completely free of assumptions about the opposite sex, or even our own, but that we strive to understand the causes and effects of sexism and rail against it when we perceive it.

So let's make sure I am being sufficiently transparent about this issue and my overall take on it. I am not writing this diary to "blame men" in general. I happen to be very fond of men, and in fact, most of my friends are male. But while both men and women in this country are confronted with a nigh constant deluge of sexist and/or stereotyping information and behavior, and while people from both parties occasionally participate in attacks on women's rights, it is the GOP which has specifically made the oppression, domination, and even degradation of women a party platform.

Comment: Psychopaths in power are a danger to us all, particularly disadvantaged women. If we substitute the word 'Republican', for Psychopath when reading this article, it may bring us close to the reality of the situation.


People

Best of the Web: Why don't we all just trust one another? And would it work as long as we live in pathological environment?

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© Wayne Leidenfrost, PNG, Vancouver SunStrong market economies help create more trusting societies, a University of B.C. psychologist-anthropologist says.
"Trust me."

Have you heard that one before? Have you said it yourself?

It's an expression sometimes heard in the workplace, in the marketplace, and in personal relationships, even in the bedroom.

We often greet requests to "trust me" with suspicion, however, as if the phrase is the last resort of shifty usedcar salespeople or dictators secretly stealing the people's money.

Without thinking about it, most Canadians assume a degree of trust in any relationship: intimate, mercantile or social. We tend to go around assuming other people are reasonably honest and reliable.

Trust is necessary to cut through suspicion to accomplish goals, and to make a personal connection. Without trust, we wither. As individuals. And as cultures. For these reasons, trust is becoming a big topic in Canada and around the globe.

Trust is being studied by psychologists, anthropologists, business leaders and governments.

Comment: World religion based on values of truth and conscience, that cultivates healthy and non-pathological way of living in flourishing and nurturing communities may seem as a dream long gone in our infested by psychopathy world. And, yet, there is hope amidst the chaos, that urges us to wake up and see that we are one step from extinction.