Friday 24 February 2012

Direct Hit

Last year I missed the sunset making a direct hit down the throat of Fuji-san due to some rare crappy winter weather on the golden weekend. It seemed that Sunday Feb 19 was the likely day for the bullseye though so this year I cleared my weekend early evenings for a bit of  “magic-hour” photography.

Cold, clear, sunny days are the norm for mid-winter here and I can usually see Fuji-san well over half of the time, but mostly just first thing in the morning. As the day gets going a haze builds up which obscures her from view till just before sunset when she’s sometimes been known to make a brief reappearance before dark.

The sunset on Saturday 18th was a classic and crashed into the South-facing slopes.

Sunday 19th was cloudier in the morning but cleared up a bit by lunchtime. An hour before sunset though and there was still too much cloud around. Things weren’t looking good. I set up the camera anyway hoping for one of the old girl’s occasional curtain calls before dark.

The sun was nearly setting but still there was no sign of her. Then right at the death, just as the sun was disappearing, you could slowly start to make out the familiar triangular silhouette emerging. A couple of minutes later, with the mountain now almost fully in view, the sinking crescent of the sun seemed to briefly form a red-hot peak to complete a perfect cone above the usual square-edged crater. Well worth waiting a year for.

Direct hit - Feb 19, 5:19pm

3 minutes earlier. Feb 19, 5:13pm


Saturday warm-up - Feb 18, 5:16pm

Sunday 5 February 2012

The Frying Dutchman

HUMAN ERROR

Powerful, passionate wake-up call that may go unheard for a while, but  another step in the right direction. 

Full lyrics below. Read them all if you can. The World is watching!


Long ago, human beings lost their true sense of time, and because of this, their senses grew dull and they lost other-dimensional creative powers that would be unimaginable today, like telepathy and advanced powers of thought.

Ever since then, evil people have created a false sense of time to keep those abilities smothered. Using the science of destruction, they built civilizations dependent on material things and created religion to force their self-serving rules on a bewildered populace, while behind the scenes, they monopolized energy and built money-based economies, snuffing out our powerful natural abilities.

Over thousands of years, genetic memory loss set in: after numerous reincarnations, here we are, having completely forgotten those abilities. We all have collective amnesia! Talking about four-dimensional science and philosophy may bore people who have no interest in fantasy, so let me put it simply: For a long time, some people have made money by destroying nature and irresponsibly making dangerous products, all while using the media to deceive the masses and inflicting horrible pain and suffering on those in harmony with nature.

The electricity powering our lives is no exception -- it’s built on the suffering of others.
But peer deep into Pandora’s box and you’ll see advanced technologies that harness natural energy without destroying nature. With technologies like solar power and other renewables, we can get all the electricity we need without nuclear power, and cheaply, too. We could shut down all the nuclear plants and easily make up the difference by operating our hydroelectric and thermal power plants at full capacity.

But powerful interests hide this fact from us. Why? Because of money! Money! Those people are terminally insane!

Power companies get up to a trillion yen (about US$13 billion) in subsidies from the government to build a nuclear power plant. Once the location is chosen, the power company showers the locals with money. They take the guys to hostess bars and the old people to hot springs.
Wine and dine, wine and dine!

And they lie to them about the nuclear plant being good for the local economy. They actually have a manual on how to use money to divide the community into supporters and opponents.  Fishermen even sell off their fishing rights for enormous sums. Then there’s a PR barrage that’s nothing but propaganda, about safety measures and secret dangerous experiments.

Where does the money for all that come from? From your taxes!

This is how Japan has aggressively constructed 59 nuclear power plants, either operating, decommissioned, or planned.

That means we are now living with over 50 time bombs strapped to our bodies. If even one blows up, the entire area around it becomes uninhabitable for all living things, and contamination slowly spreads all over.

That’s not pleasant to imagine. Japan built these reactors under the banner of peacefully using nuclear power, but the real reason is that the government wants nuclear weapons.

Right now, in Kaminoseki Town in Yamaguchi, Chugoku Electric Power wants to build what would be two of Japan’s largest nuclear reactors, filling in ocean along the beautiful Tanoura coast.
For 30 years, the people of nearby Iwai Island have fought these plans. They devoted their lives to this cause, and they stopped the construction.

These people lived in harmony with their island’s verdant nature for generations. It’s an amazing place, with history and wide-open nature. But Chugoku Power wants to ignore all that and force their plans through.

“Fukushima?” they say. “We didn’t have anything to do with that.” Until only recently, they were working on that plant every day. How stupid!

And now other companies that shut down their nuclear plants after Fukushima want to restart them. “They’re safe,” they say. What do you mean, safe? Did a meltdown happen inside your heads? They are terminally insane. With all that chanting of “It’s safe, it’s safe” they’ve brainwashed themselves, like people in a religious cult. What idiots! But we’ve been deceived by those idiots, which makes us idiots, too. We’re completely caught in their trap!

A lot of people on Twitter and the Internet nitpick what the anti-nuclear people say, but those shallow types don’t understand the situation at all. It’s pathetic! Don’t say you support nuclear power until you know the real history -- Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the radiation exposure from Fukuryumaru Reactor No. 5.; the United Nations “peaceful use” campaign starting in 1953, which was just a cover for the Cold War nuclear development race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.; the nuclear energy plans drafted by America and sold to the public by Matsutaro Shoriki’s Yomiuri newspaper and TV station. That’s how uranium came to Japan. Once you know that history, your views will change!

Once you see the negative chain reaction that nuclear energy has throughout our society, it’ll make you want to puke! If you have a heart, that is.

Television and newspapers are tools for deceiving the public, and it’s really bad in Japan. The TV news is absolutely horrible. Only now have they even started mentioning plutonium -- the most dangerous substance in the world! Fukushima Reactor No. 3 is a plutonium-thermal reactor,
the kind promoted in the Kansai Power commercials starring baseball coach Sen’ichi Hoshino.

A reactor that uses plutonium -- that’s the one that blew up! But the newspaper headline the next day just said it was a “planned stoppage.” That is pure propaganda! Just how many people’s lives will they sacrifice to cover up their crimes? Enough already, you bastards!

Plutonium is far deadlier than other radioactive materials.  If you breathe in even just a tiny amount, it attacks your cells and destroys their DNA so they can’t reproduce. That’s the stuff that leaked out, but for a long time, those bastards never even mentioned plutonium.

They just kept repeating:
“There is no immediate health risk.”
“There is no immediate health risk.”

That phrase should win some kind of propaganda award.

This is organized crime committed by a gang of murderers. More lives could have been saved if they had disclosed more information, and not just about nuclear power. You TV news people are nothing but mindless cheerleaders for the nuclear industry.

Do you have any respect for human life, you stupid morons! You scumbags!

Right now, those lying, deceiving bastards aren’t thinking about the Japanese people.
They’re desperately trying to think up excuses to avoid taking responsibility for what they’ve done. What a joke! That’s their job. “Human error”? Anyone can see through that crap!

The whole world is watching.
The whole universe is watching!

Now, the world is watching to see how the Japanese will overcome this horror -- what Japan’s young people will do, how artists and musicians will express this pain in their art, and the world is watching, Japan is in crisis, so this is no time for hair-splitting arguments. It’s time to wake up! Nuclear energy is outdated!

The Swedish government was honest with its people. “Nuclear energy is headed for disaster,” they said. “We can give it up, but it will be hard at first.” But the people still said no to nuclear power, and now the country is working to get by without it!

Japan already has the technology to get by with just natural energy, but that fact is covered up with lies and fear-mongering. Because of money!

So wake up! How can you be so apathetic?

At the Rokkasho nuclear reprocessing plant in Aomori, nuclear waste leaked from a 3,000-ton pool. There was too much liquid waste to bury, so they dumped it into the ocean.
Can you believe that? And they’re hiding that from everyone.

There’s so much nuclear material there that if the plant ever exploded, forget about Japan -- the whole world would be finished. The government is hiding so much, and that’s just what they’re hiding about nuclear power.

Those recent planned power outages were outrageous. They intentionally did that to fool people into believing they need nuclear power. People died because of those outages, but what’s the point? Japan has so much electrical power that more and more homes and buildings are switching to electricity-only power.

Think about it, everyone. Japan has hot springs almost everywhere, so there’s plenty of hot water underground for geothermal energy! Japan is an island nation, and we’ve created the technology to generate unlimited energy from the tides.

Japan also has high-tech power-transmission lines that could almost eliminate electricity loss -- the lines we use now to transmit electricity from power plants to your homes and office buildings lose a lot of power!We Japanese have amazing technology! If we had the money for all that stuff, then we absolutely can achieve the goal of getting by on natural energy alone.

So why don’t we? Because of nuclear weapons and money! Dirty damned money!

And the money has them in a feeding frenzy! Japan’s electric power companies are monopolies, so they themselves are illegal! What are you all paying taxes for? It’s all about money, money, money! Sure, money is important, but there are more important things than money!

Right! Don’t forget it!

You can buy a house, but you can’t buy a home.
Money buys you a watch, but it can’t buy you time.
You can buy a book, but you can’t buy knowledge.
You can buy a bed, but you can’t buy sleep.
Money pays the doctor, but it can’t cure disease.
Buying electricity destroys nature.

A lot of people feel frustrated because they want to help, but all they can think of is sending in a donation. Donating money is a good thing, but how many people think about how that money is spent or who benefits from it? Many people send in donations out of guilt, but they don’t really care.

One thing we can do is democratize electric power. In Kyoto, wherever you dig a hole you hit a hot spring, so the city could create a power grid where every community has its own hot spring to generate electricity. Wouldn’t that be awesome? Geothermal has its downsides, but communities can decide what the right balance is.

Kyoto also has dams, so cloudy weather is no problem, and the dams can turn rain into more hydroelectric power. With all that, Kyoto could generate the electric power it needs without harming nature. That is electric democracy. Let’s take over their transmission lines!!

Of course a project like that will take capital, along with thorough discussions and transparency, so everyone can see how donations, subsidies, and taxes are used. Working together, we can do it! People would want to donate if it was for a good cause and if there was transparency. Donation scams are out there. You can’t trust a company just because it’s big. In fact, big companies are better at pulling off scams. I hate to say it, but there is a dismal amount of dishonesty in Japan today.

Nuclear energy has powered our daily lives, and being ignorant of the situation, we let that happen. While we played around, engineers designed nuclear power plants. They knew the dangers better than anyone, and they got paid well, so maybe they did the best job they could.

Maybe I should feel grateful for nuclear power, but I just can’t, not with all the lies we’ve been told. Irresponsible people have left us contaminated waste that will plague the nation for who knows how many generations. The power companies, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, bureaucrats, politicians, bankers, corporate executives, the mass media, and government scientists are all chasing money around like characters in a comedy. But it’s too painful to watch anymore!

If we pursue the truth and keep our eyes on those criminals, if we open our eyes to reality, to see how things should change, we’ll be able to visualize creatively and come up with concrete ideas. We’ll also figure out how everything we lost over thousands of years can be regained, even if it takes thousands of years.

 But no matter what, we do not need nuclear energy anymore. Staying apathetic and gullible will only lead us to destruction!

This isn’t about not having enough electrical power, because you can live without electricity, but you can’t live without nature. Irreversible damage has already been done. I’m not talking about feeling sorry for animals and plants harmed by our egotistical ways, because you know who we should really feel sorry for? The children! They’re our future! If we don’t protect them, who the hell will?

Fifty, a hundred, or two hundred years from now, people might look back on our era and say, “They were a bunch of Hitlers! They were a bunch of genocidal maniacs!” If we see the truth behind the lies, we can change the world overnight without violence!

No matter how many detours we take, or how many times we are reborn, the goal remains the same: love! Love!  It’s not just some corny word, and don’t be embarrassed to say it: “Love!”  
Love is what we need! Shout it out: “LOVE!”

Now let the bastards hear you! “You bastards!” Shout it: “YOU BASTARDS!”

Now stand up and make your voice heard! Wake up!!

NO MORE NUCLEAR POWER!
NO MORE NUCLEAR POWER!
NO MORE NUCLEAR POWER!
SHUT DOWN ALL NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS!