Society's ChildS


Nuke

Vindicated Seismologist Says Japan Still Underestimates Threat to Reactors

Kobe University Professor Emeritus Katsuhiko Ishibashi
© Yuzuru Yoshikawa/BloombergKatsuhiko Ishibashi, professor emeritus at Kobe University.

Dismissed as a "nobody" by Japan's nuclear industry, seismologist Katsuhiko Ishibashi spent two decades watching his predictions of disaster come true: First in the 1995 Kobe earthquake and then at Fukushima. He says the government still doesn't get it.

The 67-year-old scientist recalled in an interview how his boss marched him to the Construction Ministry to apologize for writing a 1994 book suggesting Japan's building codes put its cities at risk. Five months later, thousands were killed when a quake devastated Kobe city. The book, "A Seismologist Warns," became a bestseller.

That didn't stop Haruki Madarame, now head of Japan's Nuclear Safety Commission, from dismissing Ishibashi as an amateur when he warned of a "nuclear earthquake disaster," a phrase the Kobe University professor coined in 1997. Ishibashi says Japan still underestimates the risk of operating reactors in a country that has about 10 percent of the world's quakes.

People

US: Flash Mob Shoplifts at Silver Spring, Maryland 7-Eleven

50 shoplifters hit 7-Eleven at once


Montgomery County is dealing with another flash mob robbery and it was all caught on tape. Dozens of kids raided a 7-Eleven in Silver Spring over the weekend. Police are searching for all the teens that were involved.

At least 70 people simultaneously shoplifted from a Silver Spring, Md., 7-Eleven Saturday night.

Officers arriving at the store in the 12200 block of Tech Road after 11:20 p.m. saw several people gathered in surrounding parking lots and on side streets, police said. They began to disperse when police arrived.

The shoplifters -- described as teens and young adults -- took items including snacks and drinks, police said.

Family

US: Harold Rodman, TSA worker, arrested for sexual assault


Image
© UnknownHarold Rodman
A Transportation Security Administration employee is accused of sexually assaulting a woman in Manassas, Virginia.

TSA won't say where or what suspect does for agency

The suspect, Harold Glen Rodman, 52, allegedly was wearing his uniform and displayed a badge to the victim, a 37-year-old woman.

Police arrested Rodman on Nov. 20. He is charged with aggravated sexual battery, object sexual penetration, forcible sodomy and abduction with intent to defile.

A TSA spokesperson confirmed that Rodman works for the agency but wouldn't say in what capacity or where.

Chess

Anonymous targets pepper-spraying policeman

Image
© Agence France-Presse/Justin SullivanA man types on a laptop in May 2011 in San Francisco, California. The online "hacktivist" group Anonymous published the personal contact details on Monday of a California university policeman who used pepper spray on protesters, and it urged supporters to flood him with phone calls and emails
The online "hacktivist" group Anonymous published the personal contact details on Monday of a California university policeman who used pepper spray on protesters, and it urged supporters to flood him with phone calls and emails.

YouTube videos of Friday's incident on the campus of the University of California, Davis have gone viral and led to the suspension of the college police chief, two police officers and calls for the chancellor to step down.

In the YouTube videos, one of which has received 1.44 million views, two university police officers in riot gear are seen spraying an orange mist on protesters sitting peacefully on the ground.

Following the spraying, the crowd begins chanting "Shame on you!"

Che Guevara

Egyptian protesters reject military's timetable for elections

Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators gather in Tahrir Square to demand immediate exit of Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi



Heart - Black

Psychopath Alert: Fox News Host Dismisses Pepper Spray Attack By Cops: 'It's A Food Product, Essentially'

Last night, Fox News hosts Megyn Kelly and Bill O'Reilly attempted to defend a UC Davis police officer's use of pepper spray against nonviolent protesters. "I don't think we have the right to Monday-morning quarterback the police," O'Reilly said, "particularly at a place like UC Davis, which is a fairly liberal campus." He didn't explain why the abuse of violent force might be more necessary or justified against liberal students. Kelly went even further in dismissing the suffering of students attacked by the pepper spray, speculating that it's not that harmful because "it's like a derivative of actual pepper. It's a food product, essentially."

Watch it:


Green Light

Palestine: Riding The Bus Towards Freedom

palestine freedom riders
© Unknown
Restricted mobility is one of the main obstacles experienced by Palestinians living under occupation. A couple of months ago, a Palestinian friend told me how she overcame this obstacle when she had to go to Jerusalem on an urgent matter, without having the Israeli permit usually required. She simply did what many of the settlers in the West Bank do when they want to go to Jerusalem; she took the "public" bus. Because the settler buses travel on Israeli-controlled roads and through settlements where Palestinians are not allowed to enter, these buses and their passengers are not inspected in the same way as Palestinian buses are at checkpoints entering Jerusalem. This - and not least of all her incredible courage - got my friend all the way to Jerusalem. She told me how she simply pretended like she belonged there, even though her heart was in her throat the entire ride. When she got in, one of the male settlers yelled at her. Apparently she had sat down in the wrong seat, so she got up and sat somewhere else. When the bus was boarded by Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint she put on her sunglasses, acted a little snobbish and gave them the impression that she had all the right in the world to be there.

Even though it required a great deal of courage and acting from her side, my friend was not wrong; she does have all the right in the world to be there. The segregation of the Israeli road and bus system discriminates against the Palestinians who have far from the same mobility as Israeli settlers living in the West Bank. By only serving Israeli settlements and not Palestinian areas in the West Bank, the bus companies are discriminating against the Palestinians. Parallels can be drawn between this apartheid-like system and the segregation policies in the United States in the 1960s, which is exactly what six Palestinian activists did on November 15, as they boarded Israeli public bus number 148, connecting the illegal Israeli settlement of Ariel to Jerusalem.

Megaphone

You can't Occupy Newsnight

Taking a quick look at part of a recent Newsnight discussion about the Occupy movement. Journalist Laurie Penny and former partner with Goldman Sachs Richard Sharp (recently recruited as an adviser by the Conservative Party) speaking with BBC Newsnight's Emily Maitlis, 17 November 2011.
Image


Vader

Pregnant Woman Blasted with Pepper Spray and Hit in Stomach by Seattle Police Department has Miscarried

ows,pregnant,pepper sprat
© Joshua Trujillo / Seattlepi.comA woman who gave her name as Jennifer and said she was two months pregnant is rushed to an ambulance after being hit with pepper spray at an Occupy Seattle protest on Tuesday, November 15, 2011 at Westlake Park. Protesters gathered in the intersection of 5th Avenue and Pine Street after marching from their camp at Seattle Central Community College in support of Occupy Wall Street. Many refused to move from the intersection after being ordered by police. Police then began spraying into the gathered crowd hitting dozens of people. An 84 year-old activist was also hit with spray.

One of Occupy Seattle's outspoken activists who blogs under the name Ian Awesome has a post up this afternoon about the pregnant woman who was hit in last Tuesday's pepper spray attack by Seattle police:
On the 20th, Jeniffer Fox received news that she has miscarried, and alleges the miscarriage is due to the injuries she received during the police action on the 15th.
"It hurts. It's upsetting. I was ready to have a kid, because my family was going to support me in taking care of the child. Her name was going to be Miracle."

Compass

As the floods recede, Bangkok blame game begins

Image
© Apichart Weerawong/APA Thai couple and a dog ride on a floating material through a flooded road in Don Muang district of Bangkok, Thailand, on Nov. 14.
Thailand - One of the most striking things about the Thai floods is the sheer ingenuity people have shown to simply get around.

I've seen all manner of aquatic contraptions, from rafts made from empty drinking water bottles to crafts fashioned from larger plastic drums, with a bicycle mounted on the deck driving a home-made propeller through the increasingly fetid waters.

Thailand's National Science and Technology Development Agency even ran a competition called "Mobility in the Time of Flood," which attracted 89 entries and was won by another bicycle-driven raft cobbled together by a bunch of students. The Bangkok Post devoted most of its back page to the contest Tuesday under the headline "Amateur Inventors to the rescue."

It provided a note of humor amid increasingly angry recriminations over who's to blame for a deluge that's swamped a third of the country and killed more than 600 people. The floods have also affected some 10,000 factories, and hit the global supply chain for automotive parts and hard disk drives.