NewsCorp Go Boom! July 16, 2011

“We are sorry” says News Corp boss Murdoch  "Dear World:  I am so, so sorry I got caught.  Terribly, terribly sorry..  that I got caught.  Now Fuck off and go away.  Was that nice enough?"

Chair of Dow Jones, close Murdoch ally, quit today. And, it’s crisis PR time.   I didn't think Hinton and Brooks would resign not only on the same day, but during the first real week of this newly international scandal?  That's huge, and not a good sign at all for anyone left..

Murdoch hit by FBI 9/11 hacking inquiry  The Independent(with video)  Excerpts:

The investigation into criminal behaviour by journalists at Rupert Murdoch's News Corp crossed the Atlantic yesterday as the FBI opened an inquiry into claims that the News of the World tried to hack the phones of victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

As News Corp's shares slid in New York and legal problems threatened to engulf the rest of his media empire, Mr Murdoch launched a vigorous defence of his own handling of the scandal and of the conduct of his son, James.

The FBI opened the inquiry after sustained pressure from both Republican and Democrat politicians, who expressed outrage at the claims that 9/11 victims could have been among the NOTW's targets. The FBI is following claims first made in the Daily Mirror at the start of this week that NOTW journalists contacted a former New York police officer, now working as a private investigator, and offered to pay him to retrieve the phone records of those killed in the 2001 terrorist attacks. Police sources said the investigation is at a preliminary stage.

Phone hacking: Murdoch paid US anti-bribery law lobbyists  The Guardian.  Excerpts:

Rupert Murdoch donated $1m to a pro-business lobby in the US months before the group launched a high-profile campaign to alter the anti-bribery law – the same law that could potentially be brought to bear against News Corporation over the phone-hacking scandal.

News Corporation contributed $1m to the US Chamber of Commerce last summer. In October the chamber put forward a six-point programme for amending the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, or FCPA, a law that punishes US-based companies for engaging in the bribery of foreign officials.

Progressive groups in the US have speculated that there is no coincidence in the contemporaneous timing of the Murdoch donation and the launch of the chamber's FCPA campaign, which they claim is designed to weaken the anti-bribery legislation. "The timing certainly raises questions about who is bankrolling this campaign – if it's not News Corporation who is it?" said Joshua Dorner of the Centre for American Progress action fund.

Ilyse Hogue of the monitoring group Media Matters said the donation was in tune with Murdoch's track record. "Time and again we've seen News Corporation use their massive power and influence to change laws that don't suit them. The proximity of this contribution and the chamber's lobbying campaign at least should raise eyebrows."

Murdoch Has Blood on His Hands  Information Clearing House.  Excerpts:

Nailing Rupert Murdoch for his employees' phone tapping or bribery would be a little like bringing down Al Capone for tax fraud, or George W. Bush for torture. I'd be glad to see it happen but there'd still be something perverse about it.
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In this video, Murdoch confesses to having used his media outlets to support the Iraq War and to having tried to shape public opinion in favor of the war. That is the very definition of propaganda for war.

The propaganda is, also by definition, part of the public record. Although that record speaks for itself, Murdoch has not been shy about adding his commentary. The week before the world's largest anti-war protests ever and the United Nation's rejection of the Iraq War in mid-February 2003, Murdoch told a reporter that in launching a war Bush was acting "morally" and "correctly" while Blair was "full of guts" and "extraordinarily courageous." Murdoch promoted the looming war as a path to cheap oil and a healthy economy. He said he had no doubt that Bush would be "reelected" if he "won" the war and the U.S. economy stayed healthy. That's not an idle statement from the owner of the television network responsible for baselessly prompting all of the other networks to call the 2000 election in Bush's favor during a tight race in Florida that Bush actually lost.

Murdoch's support for the Iraq War extended to producing support for that war from every one of his editors and talking heads. It would be interesting to know what Murdoch and Blair discussed in the days leading up to the war. But knowing that would add little, if anything, to the open-and-shut case against Murdoch as war propagandist. Murdoch had known the war was coming long before February 2003, and had long since put his media machine behind it.

It is in America that Rupert Murdoch faces ruin  The Telegraph.  Excerpts:

We’ve been waiting a long time, but now the moment of reckoning is here: American journalists, long maligned by their British colleagues as boring and earnest, can finally take their revenge.

American newspapers have featured the News International meltdown on front pages since the story broke. American websites have posted every new development, as it breaks.

Gawker.com cheerfully writes that News International is “besieged by a strange and unfamiliar phenomenon called 'bad publicity that can’t just be ignored’”.

I wonder if Rupert and his minions are astonished at the level rage-into-action their actions have provoked.  The event has exploded from "scandal," to "international criminal corporatism," all within the month of July!  Politicians from across opposing aisles and common people alike are lining up to voice their disgust, with what is looking more and more like systemic behavior, not limited to just murder victims and 9/11 families.  All the wrongs will begin to exposed, as The Wronged never forgot.  The investigations will go deeper, overlap, and the shoes will continue to drop, every revelation adding to the damage. 

Will Rupert's creation survive, or die?  If the latter, will death come in the form of one as yet unknown, spectacular revelation, or will NewsCorp International bleed out from the 1000 cuts it is now receiving?

Neumayer Station Antarctica Personal witness BROWN Dwarf and Nibiru over SKYS! 7/14/11

 Courtesy of You Tube.  This one really freaks me out.  Things really take off at the nine minute mark, but the whole clip is interesting.  This could be a hoax, or it goes along way to explain all the International interest in Antarctica in the last few years.

If these images are true, then It's Already Happening, and we'll start seeing and feeling the effects really..  soon..

"How Would Your Consciousness Handle Your Body Being De-Localized In Space?"

Quantum Breakthrough Stuns World, Changes Reality For All Mankind  From What Does It Mean.    Watch the video.  Excerpt:

Aaron O'Connell PhD is the first person to experimentally induce and measure quantum effects in the motion of a human made object, bridging the quantum and classical worlds.  His breakthrough provides the most astounding evidence in history (outside of faith that is) that our reality isn’t what we’ve been told to believe, but is, in fact, something far more wonderful.

NewsCorp Go Boom! July 14, 2011

Murdoch Digital Ambition for BSkyB Dashed by Tabloid Scandal  Business Week.

 Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. spent two decades building the largest U.K. pay-television company. His efforts to leverage that into new digital businesses were dashed by a scandal at a 168-year-old tabloid.

News Corp. was forced to drop a 7.8 billion-pound ($12.6 billion) bid for full control of British Sky Broadcasting Plc yesterday after a phone-hacking scandal at the News of the World prompted Prime Minister David Cameron’s coalition government to side with the opposition Labour Party to block the deal.

Full ownership of BSkyB, which has 10 million subscribers, would have facilitated the bundling of print and pay-TV subscriptions by spreading content over different media platforms. That in turn would make New York-based News Corp. less susceptible to advertising sales at its newspapers. (In other words, editorially uncontrollable..)
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About 3 billion pounds has been wiped off BSkyB’s market value since the Guardian reported on July 4 that the News of the World in 2002 hacked into the voice mails of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler and deleted messages. Before the allegations, U.K. Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt had said several times this year that he was minded to approve the deal.

Phone hacking: pressure in United States to investigate News Corporation  The Telegraph.  Excerpts:

 A powerful Senate committee chairman has said that phone hacking raises "serious questions" about whether Rupert Murdoch's News Corp "has broken United States law".

The statement by Senator Jay Rockefeller, a White House ally and Democratic chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, dramatically raises the stakes for Mr Murdoch by signaling potential legal repercussions in America.

"The reported hacking by News Corporation newspapers against a range of individuals - including children - is offensive and a serious breach of journalistic ethics," he said in a statement issued following inquiries by The Daily Telegraph.

"This raises serious questions about whether the company has broken US law, and I encourage the appropriate agencies to investigate to ensure that Americans have not had their privacy violated.
..
One group has even written to the Security and Exchanges Commission (SEC) and the FBI calling for investigations into possible breaches of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). Under the FCPA, it is a crime for any American-linked company to bribe foreign officials to obtain or keep business.
..
Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), said that congressional investigations were essential because it was evident there was a culture of corruption within News Corp.

“It’s hard to imagine that the same things have not been happening in the United States.”

The tipping point, she added, would be if it became apparent that the phones of Americans had been hacked.

“Republicans are very tied to Murdoch but not at the expense of constituencies of Americans such as terror victims and soldiers,” she said.

She also noted that Les Hinton, the Dow Jones chief executive, and Robert Thomson, the Wall Street Journal editor, were former senior figures in News International.

I think we'll be seeing a lot of former NewsCorp executives "noted" publicly now for their past work/deeds..

Australia PM open to review amid News Corp scandal  Yahoo News.  Excerpts:

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said she would be open to an inquiry into media regulation and ownership after the "disgusting" scandal engulfing News Corporation.

Australia's Greens party has called for a parliamentary review of the nation's media, in which News Corporation's boss Rupert Murdoch is a dominant player, adding to the pressure on his beleaguered global empire.

"I'm not surprised to see that in parliament or amongst parliamentarians a conversation is starting about the need for a review, and I will be happy to sit down with parliamentarians and discuss that review," Gillard said.
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Greens leader Bob Brown has called for a full inquiry into media practices and ownership as the scandal over telephone hacking and payments to police officers by News Corp's British newspapers reached fever pitch.

Bancroft Family Members Regret Selling The Wall Street Journal To Murdoch   And they all begin the pile - on..   Business Insider.  Excerpts:

A number of key members of the family that controlled The Wall Street Journal say they would not have agreed to sell the prestigious daily to Rupert Murdoch if they had been aware of News International's conduct in the phone-hacking scandal at the time of the deal.

"If I had known what I know now, I would have pushed harder against" the Murdoch bid, said Christopher Bancroft, a member of the family that controlled Dow Jones & Company, publishers of The Wall Street Journal. Bancroft said the breadth of allegations now on the public record "would have been more problematic for me. I probably would have held out."

Bancroft had sole voting control of a trust that represented 13 percent of Dow Jones shares in 2007 and served on the Dow Jones Board.

Lisa Steele, another family member on the Board, said that "it would have been harder, if not impossible," to have accepted Murdoch's bid had the facts been known. "It's complicated," Steele said, and "there were so many factors" in weighing a sale. But she said "the ethics are clear to me—what's been revealed, from what I've read in the Journal, is terrible; it may even be criminal."

Clegg urges Murdoch to submit to grilling  Financial Times.  Excerpts:
Nick Clegg on Thursday said there were “big questions” over whether News International was a fit and proper organisation to own media in Britain and urged Rupert Murdoch to demonstrate his accountability by appearing before a select committee of MPs next week.



Speaking on the Today programme, the deputy prime minister said it “cannot not be right” that while journalists and people working in the News of the World office lose their jobs, people “higher up the food chain” were not taking any responsibility. “That is a basic issue of corporate governance.”

Mr Clegg said Mr Murdoch must show he is accountable for what happened in the phone-hacking scandal by submitting himself to a grilling at the hands of MPs. But he acknowledged that MPs would have to consider what powers were available to “compel'' attendance.
..
David Cameron, prime minister, has announced an inquiry into all aspects of phone hacking and other unethical media practices.

Is he on his last legs? Murdoch in meltdown as shares plummet, BSkyB deal is shelved, and shareholders sue  Daily Mail.  Excerpts:

Rupert Murdoch’s media empire today risked implosion amid claims he could abandon his British newspapers over the phone hacking scandal.

The embattled News Corp boss may sell his three remaining national titles after accusations were made against The Sun and the Sunday Times.
Lending weight to the claim, Mr Murdoch’s other tightly-controlled paper, The Times, reported that ‘City analysts asked whether News Corps could walk away’.
This afternoon News Corp launched a $5billion shares buyback, artificially bolstering the value of the company after days of losses.

News Corp. Paid No Taxes After Profiting $10B (Yet Rec'd $4.5B In Refunds)  And hence should be referred to as "Corporate Welfare Queens."  OpEd News.  Excerpts:

Over the last four years, the Rupert Murdoch's Newscorp conglomerate earned $10 billion dollars and received $4.5 billion in federal refunds after paying zero taxes. Who is David Cay Johnston, the reporter of this provocative piece ? He is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has been focused on economic and tax policies for some time, Johnston wrote for Reuters, 'Over the past four years Murdoch's U.S.-based News Corp. has made money on income taxes. Having earned $10.4 billion in profits, News Corp. would have been expected to pay $3.6 billion at the 35 percent corporate tax rate. Instead, it actually collected $4.8 billion in income tax refunds, all or nearly all from the U.S. government.' UPDATE Reuters has drastically revised the article this was based on, basically retracting the main claim.

Because Reuters has revised this article and its claims, does it make those claims untrue, or just less available?

Japan Update, July 14, 2011

The Conspiracy Theorists Were Right!  or:  Validation!  We're Dead..  The End!


Contaminated Water System: Leak Was from the Same Joint  It really seems like they're just flailing and reacting, creating more chaos.  I didn't know that ferric sulfates could corrode cast iron, but I'm not paid to know things like these, either.  Amazing..


"During April, The People In Seattle Could Have Just As Easily Been In Tokyo For The Amount Of Hot Particles That Were There"   Washington's Blog.


Arnie Gundersen: What the Nuclear Industry Doesn't Want You to Know - July 10, 2011  New video.


Radiation in Japan: As It Is Being Spread Almost Willfully, The Country Is Getting Unhinged  Ex-SKF.  Wow..


*4,320 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium found from the beef from Minami Soma City, Fukushima: the cattle farm that shipped cows found with radioactive cesium far exceeding the already loose provisional safety limit of 500 becquerels/kg is located in the "emergency evacuation-ready zone" - not even "the planned evacuation zone" or plain "evacuation zone", both of which do exist in Minami Soma City.


*Fukushima Prefecture has announced it will shut down the official shelters within Fukushima, which will force the evacuees to go back to their own homes.


*Minami-Soma City has issued a notice to all 32,000 city residents who have been living in the shelters, temporary housing outside Fukushima Prefecture that they must return to Minami-Soma, high radiation or not.


*The national government will spend 100 billion yen (US$1.26 billion) to observe the health of 2 million Fukushima residents for 30 years, instead of evacuating them ASAP. About 1600 yen (US$20) per year per resident. Life is cheap. Since the national government is utterly broke, it will be ultimately paid for by the taxpayers of Japan.




Fast and furious. Shock and awe. I think most people in Japan still cannot fathom how their elected officials and government workers with high education from distinguished schools (Tokyo University, Kyoto University, Oxford University...) could do such things to them. Better wake up really, very quickly.


People say that the Japanese are law-abiding citizens. The Japanese say that to themselves. The truth, as has been slowly revealed over the past 4 months, is that they are followers of the arbitrary and capricious orders, as long as the orders are given to them from the government sources. Never mind if those orders are very much counter to the law itself or the natural law or the common sense.


52,547 Bq/Kg Off Cesium Radiation Found In Soil Just Outside Tokyo  Alexander Higgins/Examiner.  Excerpts:


52,547 Bq/Kg of of Cesium radiation measured in soil samples collected just outside of Tokyo over 135 miles south of the Fukushima nuclear power plant.


A reader from Japan has sent me a copy of his official Lab results for nuclear radiation soil samples collected in Kashiwa, Japan, which is on the outskirts of Tokyo and over 135 miles south of the Fukushima nuclear reactor. The lab results show that 52,547 Becquerels Per Kilogram Of Cesium Radiation was found in the sample. 23,663 Bq/Kg of Cesium 134 radiation was found. 28,884 Bq/Kg of Cesium 137 was detected.
And:
During Chernobyl the threshold for declaring an area a permanent dead zone and issuing a mandatory evacuation was 500,000 Bq/kg so this test, which is by far the highest result for soil yet that I am aware of outside of the area already evacuated around Fukushima, comes in about 1/10th of the permanent Chernobyl "dead zone" threshold.  (And we're only four months into this multiple year marathon..)


Nuclear scientists working at the University of Berkeley in California, who are doing their own radiation testing in the United States, have also pointed out radioactive substances accumulate in broad green leafy plants at a factor of 5-6 times above the surrounding soil. That would indicate the grass or other green plants growing in this soil may have radioactive contamination up to 250,000 Bq/Kg which is extremely high and approaching over half of the 500,000 kilogram permanent "dead-zone"threshold.


This soil sample is also over 50 times higher than the 2,000 Bq/Kg threshold for international nuclear waste.
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This reading is also startling because as shown in the official nuclear fallout readings from the Government of Japan, as shown on the map on this page, show the highest levels of radiation to the northwest of the Fukushima power plant. The reason for that is most of the prevailing winds have blown to the northwest, north and to the northeast out over the pacific. So far that has spared Tokyo and central Japan as the radiation has been blowing away from these locations. This high of a reading so close to Tokyo makes the situation much more dire as we can clearly see radiation levels very close to Tokyo now building up to permanent "dead-zone" levels.


This high of a level of contamination so close to Tokyo also directly contradicts all official government tests done in the area so far. Those tests so far have shown no "levels of concern" in anything except for sewage slag.

Radioactive Beef from Fukushima Update: Already Been Sold in At Least 9 (not 5) Prefectures  Ex-SKF.  Excerpts:

Beef from 6 cows from the same cattle farmer in Minami Soma City in Fukushima Prefecture have already been sold at least in 9 (not 5) prefectures, according to Mainichi Shinbun Japanese latest update (1:28AM, 7/12/2011).

Unlike the 11 cows whose meat all tested cesium exceeding the provisional limit of 500 becquerels/kg, the meat from these 6 cows had never been tested and allowed to circulate in the market.

The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries is in charge of testing live cattle, and the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare is in charge of testing meat. They do not talk with each other.

No one in power here is learning anything constructive or applicable.  And even if they are, they are not behaving as such..

Amazing -'Massive Growing Sinkhole' In Texas

From Before It's News

NewsCorp Go Boom! July 12, 2011

Americablog States The Obvious And Inevitable..

Multiple Murdoch news entities allegedly broke law - it’s fair to ask whether Fox News was involved as well

We now know that it wasn't just News of the World, but three of Rupert Murdoch's "news" organizations that allegedly broke the law in order to gather information on the British Prime Minister, the Queen, 9/11 victims, and more. Since this problem was not just isolated to one paper, but rather to the Murdoch empire, it's fair to ask whether other properties in the Murdoch media empire also were in any way involved with this alleged behavior. Did anyone at Fox News, for instance, know about this? Did anyone at Fox ever engage in similar behavior?

In other words, what did Fox News know and when did they know it?

Rupert Murdoch’s Reporters Illegally Spied on the British Prime Minister

Last week, when News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks faced down News of the World reporters to explain why the paper was being cashiered, she warned darkly that all would become clear when the full extent of the rot at her company became known. Today another shoe dropped: Reporters for News International's Sunday Times and Sun illegally accessed former Prime Minister Gordon Brown's bank account, legal files, and family medical records.

The Guardian's Nick Davies and David Leigh are reporting that investigators believe Times, Sun, and News of the World reporters and private investigators surveilled Brown ruthlessly for more than a decade, looking at his bank records, attempting to listen to his voicemails, stealing files on him from his lawyers' offices, and gaining access to his children's medical files. They also believe that an unnamed newspaper gained access to his tax records. The papers used the information for hot scoops like this one:

In October 2006, the then editor of the Sun, Rebekah Brooks, contacted the Browns to tell them that they had obtained details from the medical file of their four-month-old son, Fraser, which revealed that the boy was suffering from cystic fibrosis.

..
And:
What's less clear is if there are any tactical moves that might save Les Hinton, the CEO of Dow Jones, who oversees the Wall Street Journal. Hinton ran News International during the initial, abortive investigations into phone hacking in 2005 and 2006, and assured Parliament—falsely, it is now known—that the practice was limited at News International and that all the culprits had been rooted out. Now Reuters and other news outlets are turning their attention toward Hinton and wondering whether the man in charge of Murdoch's American flagship helped engineer a massive cover-up or was merely galactically stupid.

News of the World is accused of hacking phones of 9/11 victims  Again; gross. The Daily Mail Online.  Excerpts:

News of the World reporters tried to hack the voicemails of dead 9/11 victims, a former New York policeman claimed last night.

He alleged he was contacted by News of the World journalists who said they would pay him to retrieve the private phone records of the dead.
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The voicemails are likely to have included harrowing messages from distraught relatives desperately trying to contact their loved ones in the wake of the terrorist attacks in New York in 2001.
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Under American law, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) makes it a crime for American companies to offer corrupt payments to foreign government officials.

If the allegations of payments to police officers are proven, Mr Murdoch could face an American prosecution in his role as deputy chief operating officer the US-listed News Corp.
In 2009, the former Hollywood producer Gerald Green was jailed for six months after being prosecuted under the FCPA for making $1.8m (£1.1m) in bribes to a Thai government official. Butler University law professor Mike Koehler, an FCPA expert, said: 'I would be very surprised if the U.S. authorities don't become involved in this News International conduct.'

He said the FCPA could be invoked because News Corp is an American company and because the alleged payments would have been made in order for the newspaper to make money from the stories obtained.

Brett Pulley, media correspondent for the Bloomberg news agency in New York, said: 'If the fall out were to continue, my goodness, if it were to impact James Murdoch, then we start to talk about it impacting News Corp’s succession plan, so that affects the company globally.'

Leading article: A growing stench of lies and cover-up  **Boom.**  The Independent.  Excerpts:

News International insisted for many years that phone hacking was not a systemic practice at the News of the World. In 2007, when the newspaper's royal reporter, Clive Goodman, was convicted of illegally intercepting the voicemails of Prince William, the company declared that Goodman was a single rogue reporter and that editors had not approved, or even known, what he was doing.
..
.. Les Hinton, and the News of the World editor, Colin Myler – have also appeared before Parliamentary committees over the years to stress that phone hacking was the work of a single journalist.

But yesterday the existence was reported of an internal News International dossier, compiled in 2007, indicating that hacking was "more widespread than previously admitted" at the News of the World. In other words, this dossier suggests that senior News International executives may have knowingly misled the public and Parliament when they claimed that phone hacking was a strictly isolated phenomenon. The dossier also apparently indicates that Andy Coulson, a former News of the World editor who went on to become the Prime Minister's communications chief, may have authorised the payment of bribes to the police.

.. It now appears that some senior figures at News International may have lied about phone hacking and also suppressed evidence of a criminal conspiracy to bribe police officers. They might also have allowed (Prime Minister)David Cameron to employ Mr Coulson knowing that he had broken the law.


Boom, indeed.

Rupert's Crisis Expands, Deepens..

Carl Bernstein: Closing News of the World is Murdoch’s Watergate–just the beginning of the "seismic event"  From Americablog

Writing in Newsweek, Carl Bernstein (of Watergate fame) says that the closing of the scandal-ridden scandal-rag News of the World is the start of the crumbling of the Murdoch world-wide empire.
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[T]he empire is shaking, and there’s no telling when it will stop. My conversations with British journalists and politicians—all of them insistent on speaking anonymously to protect themselves from retribution by the still-enormously powerful mogul—make evident that the shuttering of News of the World, and the official inquiries announced by the British government, are the beginning, not the end, of the seismic event.
..
“In the end, what you sow is what you reap,” said this same executive. “Now Murdoch is a victim of the culture that he created. It is a logical conclusion, and it is his people at the top who encouraged lawbreaking and hacking phones and condoned it.”
And:
Investigators are already assembling voluminous records that demonstrate the systemic lawbreaking at News of the World, and Scotland Yard seems to believe what was happening in the newsroom was endemic at the highest levels at the paper and evident within the corporate structure. Checks have been found showing tens of thousands of dollars of payments at a time.

As the scandal and its implications become clearer, you'll see more reports like this..

The Game in Syria

Or:  Why Assad Isn't Going Anywhere..  From Information Clearing House.  Bottom Line/Excerpts:

The situation in Libya, for example, should not be taken as a measure of anything significant when it comes to a country like Syria. The departure of Libyan leader Moammar Qadhafi will not leave a dramatic regional political vacuum, while the departure of Assad and his government will have significant repercussions in neighboring countries, whether it’s Iraq, or Lebanon, or elsewhere. So far, Washington is offering tacit support for Assad, despite the news flashes that one might hear from time to time. The U.S. is not in a position to take the risky move of choosing sides, and is aware that Assad’s government, in its own way, offers the kind of “security” that Washington and other foreign capitals are anxious to see.

The most important lesson from this week is that the Arab peoples who are engaging in courageous public protests should focus on the internal requirements of their actions. They should not wage on the outside world to help them, because history has shown that only interests, and nothing else, guide such policies.

(fuse burning..)

Softer pot laws saved Philadelphia $2 million in 2010

From Raw Story.  Let me get this straight:  Softening/Decriminalization pot laws could not only generate multiple types of revenue to local, state, and federal coffers, but not having to enforce these laws would save every municipality/town/city tons of money, too?

The fucked up stance would be to do nothing, so let's do that. 

Is America that freaked out that potheads might actually save the day?

Japan Update july 10, 2011

Japan: Strong earthquake rattles tsunami-weary Japan  From Before It's News. 


A strong earthquake with a magnitude of 7.3 hit Japan‘s northeastern coast on Sunday, prompting a brief tsunami warning for the area still recovering from a devastating quake and killer wave four months ago.


Residents in coastal areas were warned to evacuate for about two hours after the quake, but there were no immediate reports of damage.
And:
Sunday’s quake registered 4 on the Japanese scale of 7, meaning it was felt as moderately strong. Because of the damage from the March quake and tsunami, however, many buildings in the area are structurally weak and seawalls have been destroyed, making the region more vulnerable to relatively weaker quakes.


Scandal: Japan Arrests People For Collecting Radioactive Rubble While Claiming No Radiation In The Area
Before It's News.  Excerpts:


As Japan insisted Fukushima was not leaking radiation into the surrounding environment in March, the government was arresting people over 60 kilometers from Fukushima for collecting radioactive rubble without a license, claiming the collection of radioactive material violated the Waste Disposal and Public Cleansing Law.


According to the Government of Japan and TEPCO, as of March 26th they official story was there was the pressure vessels at the Fukushima nuclear reactor were still intact and radiation was not leaking into the environment.
..
Yet while assuring the public radiation was not leaking into the environment, the Government of Japan was busy arresting citizens who were collecting radioactive rubble over 60 kilometer from the Fukushima Nuclear plant.


It would have been nice had they used all that energy towards a dumb ass cover up and directed it towards containment and cleanup.  But they were trying to protect their Bottom Line, which has since gone away.  TEPCO has to stay alive to pay damages to..  essentially everyone in Japan(By the time this bullshit wraps up!), but how can it stay afloat without nationalization?


If anyone is left to read them, there's like.. twenty thousand books about The Earthquake and Nuclear Nightmare just dying to be written..


#Fukushima I Nuke Plant Reactor 3: Humans Entered Reactor Bldg and Did What Bots Couldn't Do  From Ex-SKF via Rense.  Does this sound like anything close to "contained" to you?


TEPCO seems to be in a great hurry to start the nitrogen injection into the Containment Vessel of the Reactor 3. At first I thought it was just a window-dressing effort for the national government who had decided, on some inexplicable reason or unreason, it would be safe enough for people to come back to their homes in the planned evacuation zone as long as the nitrogen gas was pumped into the Reactor 3 Containment Vessel, just so that the government could tell the citizens "See what we've done for you? It's now so much safer you can go back!"


Or, the Reactor 3 is actually in danger of blowing up in a hydrogen explosion.


They have hardly done any work on other reactors. The Reactor 1's basement water, last seen as gushing out 4 sieverts/hour steam through to the 1st floor, hasn't been touched. That water doesn't even go to the water treatment system. I haven't heard any news of TEPCO sampling the water for analysis. There's hardly any news on the Reactor 2, after they opened the double door and supposedly drove out the radioactive materials and moisture inside. They still don't know the water level (if any) inside the Reactor 2's Pressure Vessel, because the pressure gauge and water gauge don't work. As for the Reactor 4, they've been injecting water into the Reactor well and the equipment pool from the bottom of the Reactor Pressure Vessel, which seems peculiar. Other than that, and the photo of a hot-spring-like Spent Fuel Pool on the 5th floor, there's not much information coming out.


Govt., TEPCO draw roadmap to reactor decommission  Story/Video courtesy of NHK World...


A roadmap toward decommissioning of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant indicates that the removal of melted nuclear fuel rods at the plant may begin in 10 years.


NHK has obtained the mid- and long-term roadmap which was presented when officials from the operator of the Fukushima plant, government officials in charge of nuclear safety, and manufacturers of nuclear reactors met last week.
..
The work is considered to be the most important phase in the decommissioning process. The roadmap indicates that removal will start in 2021 if technology essential for the work has been developed before that.


If not, then the timeline pushes back.  At the earliest, the containment process ends in ten years.