Nuclear Meltdown Watch

[JackRiddler]

I think the ever more and more sketchy establishment snopes, who's article on this makes this line of speculation even more suspect adds some interest. But of course they don't let you copy and paste from there as that browser functionality is blocked.

http://www.snopes.com/business/names/sony.asp

Watch out, or this statement of yours will be turned into the subject of an article on snopes. I have yet to find a web page that I couldn't cut and paste, though some are a serious pain.

Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V for Voila:

SONY

Claim: The Japanese corporation known as Sony based its name on an acronym formed from 'Standard Oil of New York.'

Status: False.

Example: [Collected on the Internet, 2000]
I heard that SONY got its name by way of Mr. Morita's (former SONY Chairman) connections with a Rockefeller. I understand Mr. Morita got the small post-WWII company going with a substantial load/investment and SONY stands for Standard Oil of New York.



Origins: In 1953, the electronics company we now know as Sony was called Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo, an outfit whose primary business was the manufacture and

sale of tape recorders and magnetic tape. When Akio Morita (later head of Sony

America) returned from his first trip to the United States that year, he realized that the company needed a name that was recognizable (and pronounceable) outside of Japan. "Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo" was an unwieldy name and had no particular meaning to the rest of the world; its translation, "Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Company," wasn't much better, and its three-letter abbreviation (TTK) had already been claimed by the Japanese national telephone company.

The inspiration for the new company name came from a brand of tape TTK had been marketing since 1950: Soni-tape. The "Soni" in "Soni-tape" was derived from the Latin sonus ("sound"), and Morita created Sony from a combination of sonus and the English phrase sonny boy, which "conveyed to him the youthful energy and irreverence he wanted at the heart of the company." (Because "o" is pronounced in Japanese with a long vowel sound, the connection between "Sony" and "sonny" is not apparent to English speakers.)

The name Sony was first used as a trademark on the company's TR-55 transistor radio in 1955, and Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo officially changed its name to the Sony Corporation in 1958. The only connection between Sony and the Rockefellers is that Sony head Akio Morita and David Rockefeller both served on the Trilateral Commission beginning in 1973.

Last updated: 19 March 2007

Urban Legends Reference Pages © 1995-2011 by Barbara and David P. Mikkelson.
This material may not be reproduced without permission.
snopes and the snopes.com logo are registered service marks of snopes.com.

Sources:
Nathan, John. Sony: The Private Life.
New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1999. ISBN 0-39-89327-5 (pp. 73-74).

By the way, I think we all know that while so much is going on in the world, Fukushima and BP have been the most significant events of the last year. I follow the stories but I don't know what to say, I don't post in this thread because it's so enormous and feel helpless about it. From the perspective of our posterity, these two events, which are both disasters and maximal warning signals, dwarf everything we might imagine more important. Both are legitimate Pearl Harbor events, in the sense of something sudden and terrible that reveals a great and immediate emergency, something that should rouse a focused, determined and broad societal response: the investment equivalent of war in taking the fastest possible route toward replacing the present energy regimes of hydrocarbons and nuclear. It shows how the present world system is blind in setting priorities, even when these involve its own survival down the line, and suicidally irrational in its responses. A killing of one man that won't even affect the so-called terrorism problem is at the moment of far greater interest, and tomorrow some other lesser priority will come along to distract.

.

[Rory]

By the way, I think we all know that while so much is going on in the world, Fukushima and BP have been the most significant events of the last year. I follow the stories but I don't know what to say, I don't post in this thread because it's so enormous and feel helpless about it. From the perspective of our posterity, these two events, which are both disasters and maximal warning signals, dwarf everything we might imagine more important. Both are legitimate Pearl Harbor events, in the sense of something sudden and terrible that reveals a great and immediate emergency, something that should rouse a focused, determined and broad societal response: the investment equivalent of war in taking the fastest possible route toward replacing the present energy regimes of hydrocarbons and nuclear. It shows how the present world system is blind in setting priorities, even when these involve its own survival down the line, and suicidally irrational in its responses. A killing of one man that won't even effect the so-called terrorism problem is at the moment of far greater interest, and tomorrow some other lesser priority will come along to distract.

.

Is right. While in the UK I would talk about what was happening in Japan and the responses would be about the tsunami, how awful it was and people having lost their homes. When the Nuclear fires and radiation releases were mentioned there was little or no reply: That they could only relate along the lines of something they can comprehend. I have a similar worries as the danger is invisible and undetectable by normal means (and the agencies enabled with the power and tech to do so aren't discussing it at public community or national level).

I am also genuinely worried that the magnitude of this isn't widely known, that it's many times worse that Chernobyl and still happening. The releases (are toxic besides the radiation) and cause damage at cellular and dna level: Possible damage to our source code meaning we pass the damage along to our offspring! The proper global response should be to demand that Nuclear tech be dicontinued. Coprorate proffits be damned (oops: did I take the lords name in vain?)

I mean, I'm perturbed by frakking: seems like the tech, similar to how we've poisoned the 3rd world with over the years is coming home to roost (through deregulation and corporate maleficence). But that affects the immediate area.
This shit (along with BP Gulf oil leak)will affect everyone, globally and for a long time to come.

As JackR says: 'both disasters and maximal warning signals, dwarf everything we might imagine more important'.
But we have a royal wedding; a specific, murderous and extra-judicial breach of international law; the sporting callendar, etc..
It's as if they never happended unless kept alive in the current media consiousness

[JackRiddler]

.

Yes. But it's not the usual circus of distraction from important things so that the bosses can keep plundering the world and picking your pockets while you eat shit and stay stupid. It's like the Xaton conquest ships landed in full view of the cities, and the High Bulbus went on all channels and announced in impeccable English, Chinese and Arabic that they have come to kill all humans, rich and poor, no exceptions, and they've already started. But the humans go back to watching TV. Not only that, but human-friendly Xaton dissidents have already explained a confirmable means to make the Xatons go away at a relatively low cost, and still the humans watch TV. Hereabouts we always see the systemic death-drives of state and capitalism and culture that we might describe as "features, not bugs," but now I'm thinking there's also some kind of reptile-brain defect writ large in the civilization's code. It doesn't even merit the label of a death-drive. It's like a cat's color-blindness or a frequency we can't hear or collectively acknowledge, even though we read it with our instruments and know it to exist. These two objects of our collective inaction are not models abstracted from cumulative data, using scientific deduction to show the likelihood of collapse or extinction events over decades and centuries. They aren't debatable. Fukushima and BP fucking are apocalyptic god-words, the flaming sword and the floating ark. No reaction. Flatline.

.

PS -- Rory, at this juncture this will seem a bit bent, but could you go back and edit the paragraph from me that you quoted to correct "effect the terrorist problem" to affect, with an a? See, when I catch myself doing that, or confusing it's for its, it's as though... for other people it might be like their first major hair loss, or worse.

Scratch that, never mind, no need, I feel much better now after saying it. Thanks.

.

PPS == Rory, did I give you the big old welcome, whoever you are? Welcome!

.

[smoking since 1879]

Jack, i love you.
that is all.

[Nordic]

you're quite right, jack, and i suspect it's no accident that the ptb's know far better than we do what those blind spots are. compare the reactions between fukishima and the supposed killing of obl. one is perhaps the most deadly event to have hit humankind since whenever it was the last comet struck the earth, the other is the alleged death of some guy who was as good as dead anyway. hell, compare the reactions to gmo's being in our food supply, and the near-revolution that occurred when coke decided to change their recipe. bernays was long long ago.

[bardobailey]

http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9390.html

doggone that pesky reptile brain!

[cptmarginal]

Hereabouts we always see the systemic death-drives of state and capitalism and culture that we might describe as "features, not bugs," but now I'm thinking there's also some kind of reptile-brain defect writ large in the civilization's code. It doesn't even merit the label of a death-drive.

http://twitter.com/cptmarginal/status/69594007734468608

Jack, i love you.
that is all.

I was just about to post the same thing!

[eyeno]

http://mp3.oraclebroadcasting.com/Intel ... 07_16k.mp3

Interview with Alexander Higgins of Alexander Higgins blog.

[Rory]

Is very nice of you to say JackR. I'm a long time lurker (of this past 7-8) years and for the most part, rarely have much to add beyond what's been said (often much more eloquently). I have recently moved to SouCal and am adjusting to the lovely new (and irradiated) world here.

So, where I'm at is that the shit at Fukishima is apparently (and I think you used 'effect' correctly in your instance - I don't know that I need to correct anything but you're welcome, and very kind of you to ask) affecting the crops and water supply here on the West Coast of California. I'm going to be drinking and eating from sources here for the foreseeable. I'd rather know what to avoid, or, what to moderate.

I do think what you're saying makes sense but also that the drip feed of information has an effect on our collective reaction also. Had we been told the full truth from the get go I can't imagine that we (or indeed, the Japanese on the ground) would be watching idly by.

But I don't know and don't know what to do or if anything can be done. The magnitude of this (and as you see it) is that of global effect level: gona fuck with your shit wherever you are, both now and for the foreseeable.

And as stated by Nordic, this is as bad as anything we've done or seen happen. I can only think that Krakatowa is comparable at a global level (not that I was around then to witness). As far as reach and toxicity, this is in a league of 3 or 4 other events during the last 2 or 3 hundred years for sure. And I doubt any of them had the gift of cumulative damage as this: That keeps giving and giving into virtual perpetuity...

[AhabsOtherLeg]

From the perspective of our posterity, these two events, which are both disasters and maximal warning signals, dwarf everything we might imagine more important... A killing of one man that won't even affect the so-called terrorism problem is at the moment of far greater interest, and tomorrow some other lesser priority will come along to distract.

.

It's just denial. Bog-standard, and not very psychologically interesting, denial. Not so much on the part of the public, but in the industry and government and scientific and press circles. The horse they backed, at ruinous odds for great potential returns, just keeled over and died on the course. Their Achilles just got shot in the heel, because they wouldn't chip in to buy him decent boots. Now they're grieving for him. They're only human, after all. Anger, depression, bargaining, and acceptance have already taken up a lot of time, and will take longer - the problem is, there's no time for it.

I was lurking on the Something Awful forums throughout the entire tragedy, because they seem to have a huge number of science graduates and nuclear engineers/technicians (and Japanophiles) on there, who also write well, and contribute (and fight) fanatically for their respective corners. Hundred page threads, I read, of which I remember little but constant minimization of the likely outcomes from the opinion leaders (and mods)were a constant. That's one of the reasons I never saw this disaster as being on a par with Chernobyl, Three Mile island, or even the Sellafield fire, or Kyshtym.

I listened to a bunch of people who appeared to know a lot about the nuclear industry, because they had studied long and hard for jobs in the nuclear industry, and had staked their personal futures on the continuation of the nuclear industry - and I expected them to be honest about the drawbacks and dangers of the nuclear industry. That was dumb. And I'm supposed to know better, since I'm at least allowed to acknowledge how spook-ridden and shady the industry is. A politician or goverment dealing with the IAEA, who can't admit those facts, could easily end up even more moronic than me.

Anyhoo, the pro-nuclear advocates, naysayers, and believers in hormesis are pretty much silent on those threads now, and
I'm sure most of them were free agents, which is not a good sign for anybody, because even the honest supporters are now scared and shocked. Their worst case scenario (where they lose income) is now on the table.

Also, while I'm here, Rory, you are not supposed to mention the fact that damage caused by radiation, even low-level radiation, can be passed on genetically. Didn't you notice that nobody else in the mainstream media had mentioned it? Shame on you!

[Rory]

-snip- or even the Sellafield fire

That will be 'Windscale' rather than 'Sellafield'. Orwell notwithstanding.

I grew up on the opposite coast line from Sellafield and remember my MP being a spanner in the BNFL works. Reading the Wiki entry scares the fuck out of my then, yet to be born, retrospective ass. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire

http://www.irlandinit-hd.de/main_chap/dogdi.htm
http://www.mwg.utvinternet.com/iss_nuc_news.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/nort ... 498390.stm
(just a few I googled with Eddie McGrady and Sellafield)

I've eaten more than a few mackrel and other fish caught directly from the Irish Sea directly opposite Sellafield. I've swam in and probably ingested a bit of the waters there. I remember Eddie McGrady asking questions (of BNFL) about cancer clusters on the south eastern Northern Irish coast. Yet, they built the MOX reprocessing plant (under new labour) there and, even after leaks at the THORP processing plant. What do a few irradiated paddys mean to the grand scheme of things eh?

Fukashima is a whole (wind)scale of different and more dangerous than has gone before though. Reality is as is defined by the government nowadays though and I'm sure it will be downplayed in years to come. (what was it some whitehouse official stated about them defining our reality for the media to write about afterwards?)

And, I don't know what damage radiation causes beyond what I read in WorldBook 25 years ago: I don't and don't have much concept of what Cs this and Id that mean but I can remember my highschool Chemistry teacher telling the class that they were openly releasing aqueous PlutoniumHydroxide solution, directly into the sea off Cumbria.

Stop eating food - drinking water - breathing?? I don't know. That can't be healthy: Fucked if you do and screwed otherwise as far as I can see.

And I remember, and still encounter the ballbags that big-up 'new-clear' energy as being the future.
Is dirty - and always has been - toxic - without the tech to treat or store waste;
finite - so not the future anymore than oil, gas or coal (with the added damage of dna mutations for da kidz);
expensive - subsidised by the taxpayer, often to the benefit of the offshore, non-taxpaying business/corporate interest;
Tell me the benefits again (even without the spectre of future meltdowns)???

{edit for grammar}

[JackRiddler]

.
smoking, cpt...

You are kind to this coot.

cpt, indirectly that was my first ever twitter I guess, so thanks for that too. You're in OH, eh?

smoking, I see: CZ. I have to say that's a tad more exciting to my tastes. Let's get married in Prague.

bardobailey's book recommendation is an important point (how ethics fails and our self-delusions about what good people we are) but I think Ahab gives the right and obvious name to the the collective inability to accept the necessities of survival as species and invidividuals. The technocrats at the levers are too invested in a highly particular iteration of technocracy and the need to change it is received as a deadly challenge to their identity, cannot be addressed rationally. However, I disagree that "denial" is simple or not very interesting. It must be flexible and stealthy and tangle itself into everything, to work so well.

It's just denial. Bog-standard, and not very psychologically interesting, denial. Not so much on the part of the public, but in the industry and government and scientific and press circles. The horse they backed, at ruinous odds for great potential returns, just keeled over and died on the course. Their Achilles just got shot in the heel, because they wouldn't chip in to buy him decent boots. Now they're grieving for him. They're only human, after all. Anger, depression, bargaining, and acceptance have already taken up a lot of time, and will take longer - the problem is, there's no time for it.

I was lurking on the Something Awful forums throughout the entire tragedy, because they seem to have a huge number of science graduates and nuclear engineers/technicians (and Japanophiles) on there, who also write well, and contribute (and fight) fanatically for their respective corners. Hundred page threads, I read, of which I remember little but constant minimization of the likely outcomes from the opinion leaders (and mods)were a constant. That's one of the reasons I never saw this disaster as being on a par with Chernobyl, Three Mile island, or even the Sellafield fire, or Kyshtym.

I listened to a bunch of people who appeared to know a lot about the nuclear industry, because they had studied long and hard for jobs in the nuclear industry, and had staked their personal futures on the continuation of the nuclear industry - and I expected them to be honest about the drawbacks and dangers of the nuclear industry. That was dumb. And I'm supposed to know better, since I'm at least allowed to acknowledge how spook-ridden and shady the industry is. A politician or goverment dealing with the IAEA, who can't admit those facts, could easily end up even more moronic than me.

Anyhoo, the pro-nuclear advocates, naysayers, and believers in hormesis are pretty much silent on those threads now, and I'm sure most of them were free agents, which is not a good sign for anybody, because even the honest supporters are now scared and shocked. Their worst case scenario (where they lose income) is now on the table.

Also, while I'm here, Rory, you are not supposed to mention the fact that damage caused by radiation, even low-level radiation, can be passed on genetically. Didn't you notice that nobody else in the mainstream media had mentioned it? Shame on you!

One of the more astonishing parts of this has been watching the (excuse the Japanese metaphor coming up) pro-nuclear punditry and guild of media-compatible experts commit unwitting harakiri with their so evidently premature reassurances. You'd just think everyone would be hedging their predictions in the middle of the meltdown, and leave any crowing for afterwards (that is, if the minimum-damage scenario had actually happened). Also, given that they were pretty much as blind to the situation as everyone else, since Tokyo and TEPCO weren't giving them sneak peeks.

.

[82_28]

Japan widens evacuation zone around Fukushima nuclear plant

JAPAN has started the first evacuations of homes outside a government exclusion zone after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami crippled one of the country's nuclear power plants.

About 4000 residents of Iidate-mura village and 1100 people in Kawamata-cho town, in the quake-hit northeast, began the phased relocations to public housing, hotels and other facilities in nearby cities.

Their communities are outside the 20km radius from the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, officially designated as an area of forced evacuation due to health risks from the radiation seeping from the ageing and damaged plant.

The government told people in communities such as Iidate-mura they had to leave but authorities are unlikely to punish those who choose to stay.

"I am sure all of you have lived in Iidate-mura all your life and never moved," mayor Norio Kanno told a group of residents preparing to leave their homes.

"Considering the future of our children and young people, as well as the health of our village residents, we have no choice but to go ahead with the village-wide evacuation.

"I will do whatever I can so that you will be able to return home as soon as possible."

The first batch of evacuees were mostly those with small children and pregnant women, who are considered more vulnerable.

Although Iidate-mura and Kawamata-cho are 30km from the plant, they have consistently received high amounts of radioactive materials due to wind patterns.

The plant, operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), was heavily damaged by the record 9.0-magnitude earthquake and ensuing tsunami, which sparked the world's worst atomic crisis in 25 years.

Emergency crews have also started reassessing the status of reactor one at the six-reactor power plant after discovering the fuel inside had apparently melted down, TEPCO said.

About 3000 tonnes of highly radioactive contaminated waste water have been discovered under reactor one, forcing officials to think of ways to properly pump it out and process it, it said.

Ruling-party MP Goshi Hosono, special aide to Prime Minister Naoto Kan, said the government still hoped to keep its pledge to achieve the cold shutdown of four damaged reactors by the end of the year.

He added reactor three has not cooled down as hoped earlier, saying it was more of a worry to him than reactor one, which has been relatively stable at low temperatures.

In a related development, Chubu Electric Power Co said all reactors at its ageing Hamaoka nuclear power plant entered into a state of "cold shutdown" on Sunday.

Seismologists have long warned that a major earthquake is overdue in the Tokai region southwest of Tokyo where that plant is located.

Kan said it should stay shut until a higher sea wall is built and other measures are taken to guard it against a quake and tsunami.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/b ... 6056379940

[JackRiddler]

.

What is Newspeak for "tons of deadly radioactive material escaping from the still uncontrolled nuclear meltdowns"?

health risks from the radiation seeping from the ageing and damaged plant.

Seeping, ageing, damaged.

How about dilapidated? Poorly painted? Aesthetically outre?

.

[Tucy]

you're quite right, jack, and i suspect it's no accident that the ptb's know far better than we do what those blind spots are. compare the reactions between fukishima and the supposed killing of obl. one is perhaps the most deadly event to have hit humankind since whenever it was the last comet struck the earth, the other is the alleged death of some guy who was as good as dead anyway. hell, compare the reactions to gmo's being in our food supply, and the near-revolution that occurred when coke decided to change their recipe. bernays was long long ago.

We're setting sail
To the place on the map from which no one has ever returned
Torn by the promise of the joker and the fool
By the light of the crosses that burn
Torn by the promise of the women and the lace
And the gold and the cotton and pearls
It's the place where they keep all the darkness you meet
You sail away from the light of the world on this trip baby

You will pay tomorrow
You're gonna pay tomorrow
You will pay tomorrow

Save me, save me from tomor-orrow
I don't want to sail with this ship of fools, no no
Oh-oh-oh, save me, save me from tomor-orrow
I don't want to sail with this ship of fools, no no
I want to run and hide
Right now - ri-ight now-ow yeah-eah-eah

Avarice and greed are gonna drive you over the endless sea
They will leave you drifting in the shallows
Drowning in the oceans of history
Travellin' the world, you're in search of no good
But I'm sure you're philosophic like I knew you would
Using all the good people for your galley slaves
As your little boat struggles through the the warning waves

But you don't pay, but you will pay tomorrow
You're gonna pay tomorrow
You gonna pay tomorrow
Save me-ee, save me from tomor-orrow
I don't want to sail with this ship of fools, no no no no
Oh-oh-oh, save me-ee, save me from tomor-orrow
I don't want to sail with this ship of fools, no no no no

Where's it comin' fro-om or where's it goin' to?
It's just a - it's just a ship of foo-oo-oo-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ools

Yeah, oh Lord

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ket-ndpx ... re=related


this song came out in ..what, 1985??
it was too late then too.