printThe following is from “Stoic, Heroic Japan Vs. Neurotic Nation USA,” my new, WND.COM column:
” … Our country’s edgy experts have ordered the evacuation of Americans in Japan within a 50-mile radius of the damaged reactors at Fukushima. Japan is being harangued to ape America. The Japanese have, so far, moved people from within a 20-kilometer radius of the power plant. Funny that. The Neurotic Nation, whose military personnel in Japan are popping iodine pills if they’ve so much as flown over, or visited, the vicinity, expects the country that is fielding “The Fukushima 50″ to do the same. …
… Judging by their bombast, you’d think that our experts have been to the site at Fukushima. Indeed, Gregory Jaczko, chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, asserted that the water meant to cover and cool the spent fuel pool at the No. 4 reactor had evaporated, leaving the rods dangerously exposed. They were overheating, he declared from ground zero … at the House Energy and Commerce Committee panel in Washington. …
Are the nuclear plants in Japan working the way ours do in America? MSNBC’s Chris Matthews asked one of the many American specialists to shamelessly share his findings from afar.
Hardball’s blowhard has a point. The USA’s stellar safety record—the best in the world, perhaps—is helped by the fact that we don’t have much of a nuclear power industry. Following the recommendations set out in ‘The China Syndrome,’ a Hollywood dramatization of the incident at Three Mile Island, the construction of new reactors in the USA was practically halted. Nobody died in that 1979 accident in Pennsylvania. Nobody but the nuclear-power industry. …
… The chauvinism with which our ego-bound elites are treating The Japanese Other continued apace. After all, this genteel, able people do not qualify as members of an easy-to-patronize, protected group, the kind so valued in the U.S. …”
The complete column is “Stoic, Heroic Japan Vs. Neurotic Nation USA,” now on WND.COM.
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UPDATE (March 20): Newsweak acknowledges Japan’s strengths: “In spite of monumental collapse and ruin, the Japanese politely wait in long lines for hours, without once complaining. Law and order are respected at every step. The Shinto-Buddhist tradition, which stresses social harmony and cohesiveness and looking out for your neighbor, is deeply ingrained in the culture. This stands in sharp contrast to some of the spontaneous reactions that have flared in the West. In the US, for example, a simple blackout back in 1977 unleashed an embarrassing wave of looting and mayhem, with marauding bands of thieves making off with anything they could carry.” …
But then, the reporter tries to blame Japan’s “ethical and social homogeneous” culture for the horrific monetary policies the country’s leaders have pursued, and for the country’s apparent paucity of “new off-beat ideas and technology, where the key is to be nimble and creative.” Any assertions will do when you are trying to redeem the morass and misery of official multiculturalism.
Funny but the RIGHT WING blowhards had me nuked to death by Saddam’s “mushroom clouds” back in 2002….
Now the LEFT WING has Japan emitting more radioactivity than 10,000 Supernovae – so I am dead once more.
Yes, it was NUKE-YOU-LAR power that died in the US under Carter and may now die elsewhere.
Unfortunately, I don’t know of any antedote to bloviator’s GOOF GAS.
Well said. When Americans kill each other in a “Black Friday stampede” to obtain a Walmart X-box for their young darlings (http://articles.nydailynews.com/2008-11-28/local/17910475_1_wal-mart-worker-long-island-wal-mart-jdimytai-damour), you wonder what the USA will look like when economic disaster strikes and grocery store shelves are bare. You got a taste of it in New Orleans during Katrina.
Oh for the days when “the news” was relegated to 20 minutes each afternoon and newscasters informed rather than speculated and fear mongered.
A slight correction: “The China Syndrome” was released 12 days before the Three Mile Island nuclear accident. Still, your point is valid. The fear churned up by the movie served the anti-nuclear chicken littles very well.
Re my previous comment on “radiation phobia” I’ve just discovered La Coulter wrote on the subject in more depth here http://townhall.com/columnists/anncoulter/2011/03/16/a_glowing_report_on_radiation
Furthermore, she reminded me of the word for the phenomenon I’d been racking my brain to try to remember: hormesis.
Hormesis is not “threshold phenomenon,” where exposure to a toxin/pathogen/radiation is only harmful above a certain threshold. The hormesis model holds that low-level exposure is actively good for you.
[I had linked to her good column days ago in a previous post.]
You will be gratified to know that Rush Limbaugh seems to agree with you right down the line on this subject. If it makes you feel better, I do too. You are a smart lady and I want to be just like you, almost, when I grow up.
I lived in Japan in the early seventies. Not liking it there had more to do with being 16 years old and finally tired of being an airline brat, dragged from one country to another. Though I have a Japanese aunt who taught my siblings and I the language and customs I was resistant to any and all attempts to assimilate me into the culture. Well, I managed to survive my ordeal but always looked upon my experience there with memories that I could only describe as fond and, in some cathartic way, look forward to my infrequent returns with pleasure, a means to reconcile with a people and country I had an affinity for, but didn’t know it at the time.
The distinction you make re the Japanese and Katrina victims is at the same time striking and maddening and stems from not just a difference of cultures, but an understanding of the natural order of things, something sadly lost in this country.
The Japanese have endured for thousands of years, we for only a couple hundred. We, as a people, have much to learn if we’re to survive as they have.
Ilana, I worked as a Mechanical Engineer for five and a half years in the Nuclear power industry in Chicago, many years ago, reviewing many many dozens of Government required seismic stress analysis safety reports and seismic testing safety reports for Nuclear Power Station safety-related equipment, written by original Nuclear Power Station safety-related equipment suppliers, or by my company, and unfortunately, the company and industry were dominated by incompetent idiot Engineers, or corrupt and lying and unethical Engineers who covered up negative Seismic safety reports or falsified Seismic safety reports with a falsely positive “spin”, or who were too stupid to know the extent of the Seismic Engineering safety problem. Five and a half years of Engineering disputes with my corrupt Engineering supervisors eventually cost me my job in the Nuclear industry. The Government and the News media has no clue about the terrible extent of the Engineering lying and coverup and corruption within the Nuclear power industry, because the Government itself reviewed only a tiny fraction of the hundreds of seismic safety reports written for each Nuclear power station, and thus allowing the industry Engineering incompetence, or the coverup of the design and engineering problems.
JH-” You are a smart lady and I want to be just like you, almost, when I grow up.”
I 2nd that !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Well said, Ilana. As a radio talker I’ve been fielding callers, emails, all sorts of communication assuring doom at every turn. Amazing how quickly the story morphed from “Poor Japanese” to “Poor us with the radioactive cloud”. A theory: We’re experiencing the end product combining the crush of statism, authoritarianism, & regulatory democracy, blended with real economic stress and delusion. This hysteria and dive for the KI supplies could be a collective manifestation of the “Fight or Flight” syndrome. Whaddya’ say?
An oldie song of mine:
ODE TO CHERNOBYL (to “Oh What a Beautiful Morning”)
There’s a bright golden haze in the Ukraine
There’s a bright golden haze in the Ukraine
The corn is so bright, it’s seen clearly at night
But it’s giving consumers a heck of a fright
Oh what a mess at Chernobyl
Everyone’s feeling dismay
I’ve got a terrible inkling
Dust clouds are coming this way, dust clouds are coming this way
Cows are grazing on Strontium 90
Cows are grazing on Strontium 90
You don’t need a heater to make your hot water
The food lines around here are very much shorter
Oh what a mess at Chernobyl
Everyone’s feeling dismay
I’ve got a terrible inkling
Dust clouds are coming this way, dust clouds are coming this way
Ilana,
I read you often, agree with you 71% of the time (grin), and today you nailed it!!! I am going to write the Japanese Embassy and offer apology for the likes of Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper. There is enough newsworthy material without the liberal need to manufacture such tripe.
In Christ,
Dennis McCutcheon
Vice President
Asociacion Vine International Guatemala
http://dennis51.wordpress.com
Bill Maher once observed that Americans tend to do one of two things in a crisis: nothing at all or freak out. I’m paraphrasing but only slightly. I’m afraid he’s right.
Even the dogs are civil http://tv.gawker.com/#!5782342/dog-protect-its-injured-friend-after-the-tsunami
It looks like it is getting better in the house of the rising sun. They have restored power to the Fukuskiama plant. Numbers are getting better.
http://www.france24.com/en/20110321-hopes-rise-power-restored-fukushima-reactors-tsunami-earthquake-japan-nuclear
[Which means my week-old, even-keeled column struck the right chord.]