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..) .. 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.
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..
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. .. 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.
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 Britainand urged Rupert Murdoch to demonstrate his accountabilityby 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.
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.
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?
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..
*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 provisionalsafety 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 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 highand 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 thresholdfor international nuclear waste. .. 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.
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..
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?
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 whetherthe man in charge of Murdoch's American flagship helped engineer a massive cover-up or was merely galactically stupid.
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 byNews of the World journalists who said they would pay him to retrieve the private phone records of the dead. .. 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. .. 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.'
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 thateditors 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.
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. .. [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.
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, orelsewhere. 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 thatAssad’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.
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?
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.
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..
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.
A roadmap toward decommissioning of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plantindicates that theremoval of melted nuclear fuel rods at the plantmay beginin 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 2021if 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.
As the phone-hacking scandal involving Rupert Murdoch’s media empire widens, attention is increasingly being focused on his son, James Murdoch.The Guardian reported on Friday that the younger Murdoch, who has already admitted misleading Parliament, “could face criminal charges on both sides of the Atlantic.”
James Murdoch is the deputy CEO of News Corp, the US company which owns the British company News International that allegedly paid police officers in the United Kingdom for information. This could make him liable to prosecution in the US under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits American companies from bribing foreign officials.
Investors in companies controlled by Rupert Murdoch have been dumping the shares amid fears on both sides of the Atlantic over the fallout from the phone-hacking scandal at the News of the World.
Shares in broadcaster BSkyB are down 5% in the last week, wiping some £666m off the value of the business, while News Corp had lost 2.6% – slicing some $400m off the value of the News of the World's ultimate parent company.Many hedge funds which had bought into BSkyB in the hope of making a quick profit from the bid have been selling the shares on fears that the deal now faces substantial delay.
Closing the News of the World may seem like the most radical step Rupert Murdoch could take to stop the telephone hacking row from engulfing his News Corporation empire.
But it may not be enough to insulate his son from the fall-out — and preserve him as his heir apparent.
The 200 staff who were effectively made redundant by News International when it shut down the News of the World are set to sue the company for unfair dismissal - and it could cost the company £14million.
Many of the paper's journalists believe they have been badly mistreated because they had no involvement in the phone hacking scandal, and the large majority were not even working on the paper when the alleged offences took place.
There is the belief among the staff that the axed journalists have been used as scapegoats for NI's chief executive Rebekah Brooks and BSkyB's James Murdoch.
Legal experts said that if the staff did chose to sue for unfair dismissal, each of the 200 could receive £70,000 at employment tribunals.
That would leave News International with a £14 million bill, reported the Evening Standard.
There was yet another problem for News International today as car manufacturer Renault become the first company to extend its bar on advertising to all of News International's title, not just the defunct NotW.A source in the NotW newsroom told The Independent: 'Murdoch has sacrificed a newspaper to save one woman.'
Prior to the plug being pulled on the paper, a flood of major advertisers began withdrawing their custom from the News of the World specifically. If Renault's boycott proves the be the first of many, it could have serious repercussions for its other title such as The Sun,The Times and the Sunday Times.(Think BIGGER..) And:
I'm curious as to how much Rebekah Brooks knows about everything. Thank god I've been stocking up on popcorn, as this is going to be a pretty fun and funny scandal! And I do love a good comedy.. Let the shoe dropping and hilarity begin!
Paul Ryan caught buying $350 bottle of wine. Hopefully, somebody will be picking up on the "Paul Ryan: Man of the People" ads that are begging to be written, produced, and viewed on YouTube..
Murdoch's people allegedly deleted voice mails from family members to the murdered girl imploring her to get in touch with them (they didn't know she was dead already). The paper then found that the voice mail was filling up, and they wanted to hear more messages,so they deleted some of the current messages for the dead girl, making the family think the girl was checking her messages and was still alive.The paper then interviewed the family who talked about their hope that the girl was still alive, while the paper said nothing about how it had helped create this false hope.
Excerpted from The Guardian..
Then, with the help of its own full-time private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, the News of the World started illegally intercepting mobile phone messages. Scotland Yard is now investigating evidence that the paper hacked directly into the voicemail of the missing girl's own phone.As her friends and parents called and left messages imploring Milly to get in touch with them, the News of the World was listening and recording their every private word.
But the journalists at the News of the World then encountered a problem. Milly's voicemail box filled up and would accept no more messages. Apparently thirsty for more information from more voicemails, the paper intervened – and deleted the messages that had been left in the first few days after her disappearance. According to one source, this had a devastating effect: when her friends and family called again and discovered that her voicemail had been cleared, they concluded that this must have been done by Milly herself and, therefore, that she must still be alive. But she was not. The interference created false hope and extra agony for those who were misled by it.
The Dowler family then granted an exclusive interview to the News of the World in which they talked about their hope, quite unaware that it had been falsely kindled by the newspaper's own intervention. Sally Dowler told the paper: "If Milly walked through the door, I don't think we'd be able to speak. We'd just weep tears of joy and give her a great big hug."
The deletion of the messages also caused difficulties for the police by confusing the picture when they had few leads to pursue. It also potentially destroyed valuable evidence.
For Murdoch,thisis serious. These allegations could be pointing to systemic criminality not only at NOTW, but in potentially ALL of Murdoch owned media. Investigations will spread, and more evidence will surface. I wonder what those investigations will find? Fox News has pissed a lot of people off--Don't you think those people won't want every shred of evidence they can get? How ever will anyone come to a fair and balanced decision without every last shit nugget?
Rupert is now 80, and facing what will probably be the largest and most destructive scandal of his career. In the spirit of Fox News itself, I wish you well, Rupert, in all your future endeavours..
Rumors About Gavins Point Dam FalseAt least on 7/7.. This is an unusually heavy flood season along the Missouri River. And in no way is it close to over. The stress of containing more water than some of these dams have ever held back continues..
Claims of man made terrorism aside, the threat Nature poses to Gavins Point, Fort Peck, and the dam and levee system all along the Missouri River is very real, and should be treated as such. Lest we forget that Ft. Calhoun Nuclear Plant is already flooded.. How badly would several reservoirs worth of water compound the situation at Fort Calhoun?
Come on deteriorating infrastructure: Please continue to hold fast..
Scientists are closely monitoring unusual underground activity that could signal a massive explosion at a volcano dubbed the 'Gateway to Hell.'
The Heckla volcano in southern Iceland is capable of producing four times the debris of the country's last ash-producing blast that caused flights to be cancelled across northern Britain in May. .. 'No eruption has started in Hekla volcano. But it might start without any warning.' said Icelandic volcano expert Jon Frimann. .. If Heckla blows, the amount of disruption it causes will depend on it size and the speed and direction of the wind. (Obviously, experts expect this to be a substantial eruption..)
Both of Iceland's latest eruptions provided warning signs several hours before, but Hekla is known for having a very short fuse.
'Hekla never gives you much of a warning,' said Mr Einarsson, In 2000, it began rumbling an hour and a half before the outbreak of magma, which was actually an unusually long warning. In 1970 we only got 25 minutes notice,' he added.
Sweet. The potential or active catastrophes continue to pile on, don't they? In honor of Hekla resurgence, here's some B-52's. Fuck it; let's dance..
I don't care. I'm sorry a little girl is dead, but in no way, shape, or form is National News. The investigation, incarceration, and trial had no national significance. It has no political or economic impact. It is, however, Hyper-Sensational and MediaSexy As Hell, and concluded its three year run with a substantial chunk of the country hanging on every move, and now, passionately attacking or defending the outcome.
In terms of global significance, Fukushima is way, waaaaay more important. The unfolding collapse of Greece, then Portugal, Ireland, Spain, Italy, and the E.U. is more important. America's continuing economic stagnation-into-collapse is more important. Missouri River flooding and potential Nuclear Nightmare scenarios are more important. Los Alamos wild fire and potential Nuclear Nightmare scenarios are more important.
And yet, day in, day out, breathless condemnations disguised as coverage, a real time television lynchin' that failed to deliver when the verdict was read. Now everybody's talking about their huge, blue judicial balls, and still the important stories continue to go on unnoticed. Fuck, man, this was not the climax the NewsPeople promised. The people that are madabout this verdict are really mad, and the crazies mad about this verdict are crazed. My guess? Someone will take matters into their own hands, and she'll be maimed or dead by Labor Day. Obsessed fans or Avenging Angels, The Crazy Peopleare really riled upby Casey Anthony's very existence.. And no, this isn't wishful thinking, just an estimation based on the level of crazy surrounding the investigation/media circus/frenzy dating all the way back to her public conviction back on Day One.
As an aside, I'm looking forward to Casey Anthony's civil suit against Nancy Grace. Will Nancy Grace sentenceNancy Grace guilty of slanderand the character assassination of Casey Anthony? So much evidence alreadycommitted to tape..
The story will continue, as the media and public hound her every move. If anything, the story might have just begun. Again, why should we care? We're being irradiated every day. But the media got some stellar ratings, so everything worked out fine.
The 33-page brochure underscored that General Electric Co. (GE)'s Mark I containment system was employed at the Fukushima plant, while containing speculation and describing fuel melting in the spent fuel storage pool,which never took place. On its last page, the brochure concluded that Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) apparently had not released most of the information it held. (And yet, it's hard to get worked up about someone smearing TEPCO..)
The leaflet sent shockwaves around Tokyo and Washington, as well as GE officials, who were busy responding to the nuclear crisis.Areva lobbyists stressed that the accident was peculiar to Japan when they handed out the leaflets, hinting that similar accidents would never occur with nuclear plant systems provided by Areva.It was obvious to the recipients of the brochures that they were part of Areva's maneuvering to quash its competitors in the nuclear power business.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy's visit to Japan on March 31almost coincidedwith the distribution of the leaflets.During a meeting with Prime Minister Naoto Kan, Sarkozy made assurances that Japan will recover from the crisis and promised to offer the country his full support.He further requested Kan to deliver the opening speech at the G8 summit meeting starting on May 26 in Deauville, France --marking the first time for a Japanese prime minister to do so. .. Japanese nuclear reactor manufacturers were also overwhelmed by France's marketing strategies.They were effectively overtaken by Areva when the company appealed to TEPCO that it has a better purification system to decontaminate radioactive water released from the Fukushima plant than any other manufacturers and that it could deliver the system swiftly. "We had no choice but to put up with the unendurable," lamented a senior official with a Japanese manufacturer.
After successfully receiving an order from TEPCO, Areva's Lauvergeion stated that the era of low-price competition in the nuclear power business was over, signaling her confidence in Areva's products.She subsequently resigned in late June.
Areva proves they are soulless. Kinda funny, then(if this were a movie, mind you..) that theirdecontaminationsystem is apiece of shit.. Yup. Here in the real world, the joke's on us.
Throughout the months of lies and misinformation, one story has stuck: “The earthquake knocked out the plant’s electric power, halting cooling to its reactors,” as the government spokesman Yukio Edano said at a March 15 press conference in Tokyo. The story, which has been repeated again and again, boils down to this: “after the earthquake, the tsunami – a unique, unforeseeable [the Japanese word is soteigai] event - then washed out the plant’s back-up generators, shutting down all cooling and starting the chain of events that would cause the world’s first triple meltdown to occur.”
But what if recirculation pipes and cooling pipes, burst, snapped, leaked, and broke completely after the earthquake -- long before the tidal wave reached the facilities, long before the electricity went out?This would surprise few people familiar with the 40-year-old Unit 1, the grandfather of the nuclear reactors still operating in Japan.
The authors have spoken to several workers at the plant who recite the same story:Serious damage to piping and at least one of the reactors before the tsunami hit. And: The reason for official reluctance to admit that the earthquake did direct structural damage to reactor one is obvious. Katsunobu Onda, author of TEPCO: The Dark Empire (東京電力・暗黒の帝国), who sounded the alarm about the firm in his 2007 book explains it this way:“If TEPCO and the government of Japan admit an earthquake can do direct damage to the reactor, this raises suspicions about the safety of every reactor they run. They are using a number of antiquated reactors that have the same systematic problems, the same wear and tear on the piping.” .. Onda notes, “I’ve spent decades researching TEPCO and its nuclear power plants and what I’ve found, and what government reports confirm is thatthe nuclear reactors are only as strong as their weakest links, and those links are the pipes.”
Radioactive cesium-137 was found in Tokyo’s tap water for the first time since April as Japan grapples with the worst nuclear disaster in 25 years.The level was below the safety limit set by the government. (Which, I'm sure, is comforting..)
Cesium-137 registered at 0.14 becquerel per kilogram in Shinjuku ward on July 2 and none(?!!) was discovered yesterday, compared with 0.21 becquerel on April 22, according to the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Public Health.No cesium-134 or iodine-131 was detected, the agency said on its website. And: Products including spinach, mushrooms, bamboo shoots, tea, milk, plums and fish have been found to be contaminated with cesium and iodineas far as 360 kilometers (224 miles) from the station.Prolonged exposure to radiation in the air, ground and food can cause leukemia and other cancers, according to the London-based World Nuclear Association.
A worker doing the routine inspection of the site in the morning of July 3 noticed the seawater gushing from the pipe that connects to one of the two temporary RHRS (residual heat removal system) pumps for the Reactor 5. The rupture on the pipe was 30 centimeters long and 7 centimeters wide. .. TEPCO called it "leakage", just like a "puddle" that turns out to fill the turbine basement or reactor building basement.An understatement.
Not a water purification plant or at a waste water treatment plant, but a plant that burns regular, household garbage in eastern Tokyo was found with a high level of radioactive cesium in the fly ashes caught in the incinerator filter.
Edogawa-ku is located at the eastern end of Tokyo. Along with its northern neighbor Katsushika-K, Edogawa-ku seems to have been in denial of the elevated radiation levels throughout the ward,and has only recently (June 18) started to measure the radiation at multiple locations within the ward.
The Edogawa waste disposal plant is located by the Edogawa River that separates Edogawa-ku and Chiba Prefecture. The plant can burn 600 tonnes of garbage per day with 24-hour operation, with 2 incinerators.It's in a mixed residential/commercial neighborhood,with 2 elementary schools nearby, and a nursery school right next to the plant, according to the Google Map. And: As I said above, a nursery school is right next to the plant, and there are 2 elementary schools nearby.
Gary Schaeffer’s grandkids ran to an overlook of Gavins Point Dam. “Ooh, man. Ooh.” Schaeffer followed and looked down in disbelief. A riot of water roiled where he’d spent a lifetime of lazy fishing. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said. “Nothing even close.” Eight years out of 10, the 14 flood gates, 40 feet wide, spill not so much as a bucket of the brown water into the Missouri River. Now enough is barreling out of Lewis & Clark Lake to cover a football field 3½ feet deep every second. Water will race through the dam at that record rate, ultimately swamping farms and towns for hundreds of miles downstream, through August.
U.S. military forces landed in Somalia to retrieve the bodies of dead or wounded militants after a U.S. drone strike targeted a group of insurgents, Somalia's defense minister told The Associated Press on Friday.
Censorship in Japan: The Fukushima Cover-upDissident Voice via Xymphora. Excerpts:
Today, “four out of fiveJapanesewant to see Tokyo abandon nuclear power in the wake of the Fukushima atomic crisis…”3But any professional in industry, government or media would have no chance of career advancement if they spoke out against nuclear power.
Japan's leading business journal Toyo Keizai has published an article by Hokkaido Cancer Center director Nishio Masamichi, a radiation treatment specialist. The piece, entitled“The Problem of Radiation Exposure Countermeasures for the Fukushima Nuclear Accident: Concerns for the Present Situation”, was published on June 27 and is consistent with the critical coverage of the Fukushima crisis that has appeared in independent weekly magazines, notably Shukan Kinyobi, which have taken a strong anti-nuclear stance since the March 11 earthquake-tsunami-meltdown, and have repeatedly focused on the dangers of radiation exposure while calling for far-reaching measures to protect those at risk. Nishio begins by asserting that the Fukushima crisis has caused Japan’s “myth of nuclear safety” to crumble. He has “grave concern” for the public health effects of the ongoing radiation leak. Nishio originally called for “calm” in the days after the accident. Now, he argues, that as the gravity of the situation at the plant has become more clear, the specter of long-term radiation exposure must be reckoned with.
The Reckoning has already begun, and will continue to manifest, becoming clearer and more horrible, over the coming weeks and months. The Bombardment continues..
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BOOK:
This, ultimately, will be a record of the evolution of my consciousness through life experience. It's a bit of a jigsaw puzzle at the moment, but the archive is close to achieving some form of order.
I'm not sure this.. will have an "end," as much as a stopping point.
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