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(San Francisco) Two 10,000 lb (4,545 kg) uranium poison gas “dirty” bombs with small nuclear  dispersion devises set Japan on the road to extinction on August 6, 1945 and August 9, 1945 at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. A row of six modified and enlarged US Navy submarine reactors pioneered by US Navy Admiral Hyman Rickover and manufactured by the US based General Electric Corp (GE) finished the kill March 11, 2011. Thanks to the US Navy designed and GE built atomic reactors, the Japanese people are dying, the country of Japan is no more and the land is permanently uninhabitable.

Lethal nuclear vapors created by the destroyed Navy/GE reactors and thousands of tons of garbaged and burning old reactor cores are spreading invisible radioactive death and sickness all over the world. What’s more: the atomic reactors spilled their burning guts into the basements and there is evidence the melted reactor cores are still “reacting” 160 days out. Shutting them down is mostly just plain impossible. The burning, radioactive gates of hell are still open wide. Breathe deep everyone. Breathe your own poisoned Fuku tainted air.

The Total Fertility Rate (TFR) The best measure of population growth or shrinkage is a country’s Total Fertility Rate (TFR). It is, simply put, the average number of children women have in a society over their child bearing years. Two kids per woman is the “replacement value” for one woman and one male. Two kids per woman means the man and woman replace themselves and the next generation will be the same size as their preceding generation.

OURCE: Coast To Coast AM, September 29, 2011 Frank E. Daulton, Ph.D. — Professor of Economics and Linguistics at Ryukoku University in Kyoto — interviewed by Linda Moulton Howe. At 11:55 in In  my family, we don’t eat fish anymore. My wife is Japanese. My children have grown up as Japanese. For Japanese people to stop eating fish is a huge adjustment. Just as 9/11 changed everything -- especially in the United States -- 3/11 that happened ten years later -- 3/11 has changed everything in Japan. And I’m just afraid this has dealt a near-fatal blow to Japan. Japan will never be the same.

15:15 in In a really tragic sense, Japan has lost its future. I can’t believe this is going on! This is a nightmare that you think you can just wake up from. Listen to full interview here.

Not all co-ops (grocery stores operated as cooperatives) are equal, but some are decidedly more customer-friendly (as opposed to producer-friendly) and take care in sourcing the food that are not contaminated with radioactive materials AND disclosing the detailed information of their testing.

One of the readers of this blog, William Marcus, has sent me his observations on sourcing the safe food in Japan. William currently lives in Osaka with his family with the toddler son. He says co-ops in Japan are not centralized (which I didn't know), and that more east and north you go co-ops tend not to disclose the details of the testing they do (if they do the testing) on the foodstuff they sell.

The particular COOP that he recommends is "Shizenha" co-op headquartered in Kobe, Hyogo Prefecture and has operations in Tokushima Prefecture in Shikoku region. The co-op, he says, has just started to accept membership from Kanto and Tohoku regions.

The news was there on Yomiuri Shinbun on January 5, 2012, but little noticed until someone picked it up and spread on Twitter overnight.The Japanese government in close collaboration with the big businesses in Japan is to build a city in southern India that will house 50,000 people, with "Japanese-quality" infrastructure including seaside resort, industrial park, hospital, shopping mall, and golf course (of course).

Many on Twitter are speculating that this is part of the plan by the Japan's political and business elites to abandon ship (Japan), and part of the reason for the Noda administration's insistence on the tax hike despite the incipient recession.While there is a great need for money within Japan to actually rebuild tsunami-devastated areas (not the bogus "decon" projects), the Noda administration has been busy distributing money in Asia. The Bank of Japan has opened multi-billion dollar currency swap lines with India ($15 billion) and South Korea ($70 billion).

Scientists and doctors are calling for a new national policy in Japan that mandates the testing of food, soil, water, and the air for radioactivity still being emitted from Fukushima's heavily damaged Daiichi nuclear power plant."How much radioactive materials have been released from the plant?" asked Dr Tatsuhiko Kodama, a professor at the Research Centre for Advanced Science and Technology and Director of the University of Tokyo's Radioisotope Centre, in a July 27 speech to the Committee of Health, Labour and Welfare at Japan's House of Representatives. "The government and TEPCO have not reported the total amount of the released radioactivity yet," said Kodama, who believes things are far worse than even the recent detection of extremely high radiation levels at the plant. There is widespread concern in Japan about a general lack of government monitoring for radiation, which has caused people to begin their own independent monitoring, which are also finding disturbingly high levels of radiation. Kodama's centre, using 27 facilities to measure radiation across the country, has been closely monitoring the situation at Fukushima - and their findings are alarming.According to Dr Kodama, the total amount of radiation released over a period of more than five months from the ongoing Fukushima nuclear disaster is the equivalent to more than 29 "Hiroshima-type atomic bombs" and the amount of uranium released "is equivalent to 20" Hiroshima bombs.

Kodama, along with other scientists, is concerned about the ongoing crisis resulting from the Fukushima situation, as well as what he believes to be inadequate government reaction, and believes the government needs to begin a large-scale response in order to begin decontaminating affected areas.Distrust of the Japanese government's response to the nuclear disaster is now common among people living in the effected prefectures, and people are concerned about their health.Recent readings taken at the plant are alarming.When on August 2nd readings of 10,000 millisieverts (10 sieverts) of radioactivity per hour were detected at the plant, Japan's science ministry said that level of dose is fatal to humans, and is enough radiation to kill a person within one to two weeks after the exposure. 10,000 millisieverts (mSv) is the equivalent of approximately 100,000 chest x-rays.

t is an amount 250 per cent higher than levels recorded at the plant in March after it was heavily damaged by the earthquake and ensuing tsunami. The operator of Japan's crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), that took the reading, used equipment to measure radiation from a distance, and was unable to ascertain the exact level because the device's maximum reading is only 10,000 mSv. TEPCO also detected 1,000 millisieverts (mSv) per hour in debris outside the plant, as well as finding 4,000 mSv per hour inside one of the reactor buildings.

Extract An independent investigation in Japan has revealed a long history of nuclear power companies conspiring with governments to manipulate public opinion in favour of nuclear energy. One nuclear company even stacked public meetings with its own employees who posed as ordinary citizens to speak in support of nuclear power plants. “The number one reactor has been operating for 30 years and I’ve never had a problem selling my rice or vegetables because of fears of radiation,” a man posing as a farmer told a gathering of citizens discussing a proposal to use plutonium fuel at the Genkai nuclear plant on the southern island of Kyushu. The man was not a farmer at all. It turns out he is an employee of the Kyushu Electric Power Company, the operator of the Genkai nuclear plant. End Extract http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-10-03/japan-nuclear-companies-stacked-public-meetings/3206288/?site=melbourne

Part of the Radiological Assistance Program (RAP) team, region five, their normal operating ground covers 10 Midwestern states—but this time their expertise was needed abroad. Trained in radiation detection and monitoring, RAP teams are on call twenty-four hours a day to respond to any release of radiological materials in the U.S. When the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi began to emit radioactive material, the Department of Energy’s national emergency response assets, including several RAP teams, responded to calls from both the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. military. They wanted guidelines on protecting U.S. citizens and military personnel stationed in Japan from radiation hazards; but this raised the enormous task of finding out how much radiation had been dispersed.

In late March, several Argonne members flew to Japan to take over shifts from the initial response team members, who had been working around the clock to take measurements at U.S. military bases, other U.S. interests, and elsewhere in the 50-mile radius around the reactors. On the ground, small teams set out to comb the earthquake-stricken countryside, radiation detectors in tow. They took hundreds of readings and collected soil samples, mostly between the 20-80 kilometer zone from the plant. They ran into challenges right away.

"One of the problems we ran into was accessibility," said Dave Chamberlain, an Argonne chemical engineer with RAP. "When you practice going out to get samples, the classic technique is to divide the area into a grid and take samples say, every 10 meters. But many of the areas we were sampling in Japan were mountainous, forested and damaged by earthquakes, so you can't stick to the grid plan. We were often limited to roadside sampling." "The other difficulty was that we wanted samples from ground that hadn't been disturbed since the accident," explained Chamberlain. "If someone had plowed or watered the ground, it changes the dynamics of the distribution—and that time of year is rice planting season in Japan."

In May, Ian and cameraman Colin O'Neill ventured into the evacuation zone surrounding Fukushina to find children going to school and people trying to make sense of what had happened. In September, the pair re-visited the evacuation zone to see what has changed. You can see more of Ian's documentary work by visiting Ian's YouTube Channel. He also regularly updates his personal blog, Documenting Ian. WIDE ANGLE: Japan in Crisis   After the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, explosions at the Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Fukushima spewed radioactive dust over the surrounding areas.

We realize now that the government and the power executives think we are not intelligent enough to understand the technical jargon about nuclear power. Of course, we were not familiar with those esoteric terms when the disaster struck. But we do understand we are facing a nuclear winter on this beautiful archipelago, placed on the Ring of Fire, and may not live long enough even to see such a winter

Since bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan has cultivated a religion that condemns nuclear arms. Along the way, however, Japan metamorphosed into a strange creature that felt immune to things nuclear. Few Japanese left the country within the first weeks after the Fukushima meltdown. We can remain calm even in the midst of a horrible reality. Meanwhile, the falsehood of safe, cheap, and forever clean energy is swept away like the receding sea

Toshio Nishi is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. From 1991 to the present, Nishi has been a distinguished guest professor at Reitaku University in Chiba, Japan, and from 2004 a graduate school professor at Nihon University in Tokyo. [...] From 1985 to 1991, Nishi was a foreign correspondent for NHK Journal, a radio program of Japan’s largest media system. [...] Nishi has been one of the most sought-after speakers on Japan’s national speaking circuit. He has been a member of the board of regents of Executive Forum of Japan since 2000. From 1997 to 1999, Nishi was a commentator for TV Tokyo. Nishi is chairman of the editorial board and a monthly columnist for Kokkai News (a news magazine on politics), Japan’s oldest monthly magazine

Japan less likely to trust officials, main media, since disaster, Los Angeles Times by John M. Glionna, December 18, 2011: Day One

Hajime Shiraishi’s moment of truth came when her online video news show, at the time relatively unknown, decided to buck the government line and call a story as it saw it. On March 11 [... Tepco] announced on national TV that all was well [...] Mainstream media dutifully reported that story. But not Shiraishi’s “Our Planet TV,” which soon broadcast a live interview with five Japanese reporters in Futaba City [...] The reporters, who had covered the Chernobyl disaster, told a very different tale.

Chernobyl Reporters: We’ve Never Seen Anything Like It “They held up Geiger counters showing the level of radiation was almost beyond calculation,” said Shiraishi, a former network TV journalist who co-founded the Internet venture in 2001, hosts the show and reports many of its stories. “They’d never seen anything like it.” For Shiraishi and others, that broadcast was a turning point, a moment many see as marking a profound shift in the trust younger Japanese place in government and media. Since that show, “Our Planet TV” viewership has shot up from about 1,000 to more than 100,000 as people have begun to seek alternative sources of information

Writer urges Taiwan to abandon nuclear power, Taipei Times, Nov. 9, 2011: Saying that the compensation for damage caused by the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Japan was way beyond what Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) or the Japanese government could afford, a Japan-based Taiwanese writer yesterday urged Taiwan to abandon all nuclear power. Writer Liu Li-erh (劉黎兒), who has lived in Tokyo for 30 years, made the appeal at a press conference held at the legislature [...]

Liu said the president of TEPCO had remarked that nuclear power was actually a very expensive power source when compensation fees are calculated, and that a professor from the University of Tokyo has even estimated that it would cost up to ￥800 trillion, amounting to approximately 10 years of the national budget, if the soil and road surface of radiation-affected areas are to be cleaned up. The damage is so much that the Japanese government would go well beyond bankruptcy, Liu said.

I wrote on Monday November 14 about the paper by the international team of scientists on cesium-137 deposition simulation after the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant accident, from March 20 to April 19.In the English paper that I linked, there was a map of cesium-137 deposition simulation in much wider area of Japan, which I showed in the post.But then, in the press release by Nagoya University (one of the scientists is from this university), I realized I should have linked the different map of cesium-137 deposition simulation on land and on the ocean. A whole lot of radioactive materials may have fallen on the ocean, the Pacific Ocean AND the Japan Sea. (Remember, this is a simulation map, not the actual measurement.)

Looking at the map, I don't think I want to eat anything from the Pacific Ocean. Or the Japan Sea. Abalone fishing just started in Iwate Prefecture.By the way, the paper and the researchers were criticized heavily on Twitter a couple of days ago (it still continues) from other researchers in Japan. Their beef was that the researchers of the paper withheld this information from the public when it could have made the difference in determining the government policy or in alerting more people on the possibility of much wider radiation contamination. Instead, the researchers waited for the peer review in the very prestigious scientific venue (the National Academy of Sciences of the United States) to be finished and the paper published. Some say the researchers had the temerity to say in their Nagoya University press release on November 15, "We request that the information in the paper not be used to spread a new set of "baseless rumors" [on the contamination]."

Well, as we have seen, they are not alone. There have been a lot of Japanese researchers who have done what they just did, announcing what could have been the vital information after their papers got accepted by foreign peer-reviewed magazines. I personally know one, whose radiation survey result in locations in Fukushima might have made a significant difference. But the researcher is still sitting on the data (though he was careless enough to put it on his website for a long time), because his paper is being peer-reviewed.But then there are researchers like Professor Yukio Hayakawa of Gunma University, who released the radiation contour map he created soon after the accident, to much ridicule from the establishment initially. And Professor Bin Mori of Tokyo University, who published his world-first discovery of bio-concentration of radioactive silver in spider on his personal blog, and allowed me to spread the information both in Japanese and in English so that more people know about it as soon as possible.

Hold the annual high school cultural festival, gathering high school students from all over Japan to Fukushima, in cities where high-radiation hot spots have been discovered throughout, or highly radioactive rice hay/meat cow has been found, or both. In one of the cities, Fukushima City, cobalt-60 has been detected in the soil in a park.Business as usual, extend and pretend that everything is back to normal. Radiation? What radiation?

The 35th All Japan High School Cultural Festival in Fukushima 2011 started, as scheduled, on August 3. A variety of events organized by the high school students (yes, students in Fukushima Prefecture had been so hard at work), with the help of teachers and administrators, will be held in cities like:Fukushima CityKoriyama CitySukagawa CityShirakawa CityAizu Wakamatsu CityKitakata CityMinami Soma CityIwaki City

The event is organized by the Agency for Cultural Affairs and the Boards of Education in each city in Fukushima, both under the Ministry of Education and Science.Asahi Shinbun, which is one of the special sponsors of the event, reports, with hardly a mention of the Fukushima I Nuke Plant accident or radiation contamination in Fukushima. All it says about radiation is that "some venues have been changed because of a concern for radiation level..." It's just a "concern", not the real thing:

Fears that large amounts of rice in Japan may be contaminated with radioactivity saw the price of the staple grain soar 40pc on the first day of trading for the country's new futures market.

Japan yesterday launched its first rice futures contract in 72 years, but trading had to be suspended on the Tokyo Grain Exchange as the price per contract shot up immediately. The price of 60 kilograms of rice had a reference price of $13,700 (£8,399) for delivery in 2012 but it reached more than $19,210 on the Osaka exchange, which carried on trading. There is concern that crops may be damaged by radioactivity in the wake of the nuclear accident at Fukushima earlier this year. Japan has begun rice trading to try to open up the market and increase transparency in the trade of its staple foodstuff. Analysts are predicting that stockpiles of rice will be at their lowest level in four years in 2012. The mood in Japan is nervous after it emerged that cattle has been fed rice straw contaminated by caesium. Some prefectures are currently banned from exporting beef.

The Ministry of Education and Science announced that it will conduct the aerial survey of 23 prefectures (out of total 47) to determine the level of soil contamination. For some reason, Hokkaido is excluded, but every prefecture from Aomori to Shiga, which is located about in the middle of the Honshu Island will be surveyed. It's all of Tohoku, Kanto, Chubu-Hokuriku.(In the map, Hokuriku is bundled with Chubu; Hokuriku includes prefectures facing the Japan Sea. For more details within the regions, go to the web-japan.org page.)If I were the official at the Ministry, I would test Hokkaido, too. I have seen too many radioactive plumes sweeping the island of Hokkaido in the simulation animations by several European meteorological institutions. (For the latest from the German Weather Bureau, go here. But even they will stop publishing the dispersion map on July 29... )

According to estimates provided by the military and compiled by Stars and Stripes, more than 7,900 residents at bases in central and northern Japan want to flee on flights sponsored by the U.S. military.

There were 233 family members on the first voluntary evacuation flight from Yokota to Seattle, Wash., on Saturday as Japan continued spraying water on reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant about 130 miles north of Tokyo. Even though power was restored to part of the plant this weekend, the country still faces a possible meltdown that many fear could spread dangerous radiation over the region.

So far, only Yokota has ferried residents out of Japan, but more flights are expected in the next two days.

MISAWA AIR BASE, Japan — U.S. officials said this week that they are hearing that some people already want to return to Japan after taking a free flight out of the country.The simple answer: Don’t do it.“Right now, the government will not pay to bring them back,” said Marine Lt. Col. Katherine Estes, the staff judge advocate for the joint task force overseeing Operation Pacific Passage. “Families who have taken advantage of the authorized departure are now in a ‘safe haven status’ and should remain at their safe haven location until ordered to a designated location or authorized to return.”

A former top diplomat vying to become the next prime minister proposed Saturday that Japan stop building new nuclear power plants after the Fukushima disaster and phase out atomic energy over 40 years.Former Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara took the clearest stand against nuclear power at a news conference where five ruling Democratic party members outlined their policy goals in their campaign to replace Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who announced Friday he is stepping down.

The ruling party will vote Monday to pick a new party chief, who will then become prime minister — Japan's sixth in five years.Nuclear energy is hot topic in Japan following the accident at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, damaged by the March 11 tsunami. Some 100,000 people have been evacuated from around the plant, and government officials have warned that accumulated radiation in some spots may keep areas off limits for the foreseeable future.

The leadership contest is emerging as a close race between Maehara, a youthful defense expert and the public's top choice, and Economy Minister Banri Kaieda, who secured the backing of the ruling party's behind-the-scenes powerbroker, Ichiro Ozawa.

Some 100,000 people are still living as evacuees away from their homes in the wake of the severe accidents at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. Kyodo News has reported that some 17,000 children in Fukushima Prefecture have changed schools or kindergartens because of radiation fears. Of these children, some 8,000 moved out of the prefecture.

Given this situation, it is imperative that the central government vigorously push the work of decontaminating areas contaminated with radioactive substances released from the nuclear power reactors. The central and local governments also should provide psychological care to both children who moved to new schools or kindergartens and children who have remained at their schools and kindergartens.

The Diet is expected to soon enact a special law under which the central government will be responsible for disposing of highly radioactive rubble and sludge, and decontaminating radioactive soil. In some cases, the central and local governments will carry out decontamination work together. The cost will be shouldered by Tepco.

After the tragic nuclear accident in Fukushima, many people in Japan decided to further educate themselves about energy. There is now a nation wide critical thinking based debate going on about energy policy to which people are openly expressing themselves. This could be a sign of societal shift because in Japan, going against convention is not common. If an action or view point disturbs the harmonious status-quo, it is often avoided. I heard about a few young people who were on a ten day hunger-strike, camped out in front of the Ministry of Economy Trade and Finance building in Tokyo. To further understand why they are starving for change, I asked them for an interview. The long-term question is will these pockets of cries for change actually lead to reform in Japan.