Nuclear Rods Melting Inside Three Fukushima Reactors, Japan Admits

JAPAN’S NUCLEAR AUTHORITIES say they believe that three reactors at the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant are now melting.

 

A woman who fled from the vicinity of the Fukushima nuclear power plant sits at an evacuation center set in a gymnasium in Kawamata, Fukushima Prefecture in northern Japan, March 14, 2011. (REUTERS/Yuriko Nakao) The country’s chief cabinet secretary, Yukio Edano, said that although staff at the nuclear facility – where two containment buildings have been destroyed by hydrogen explosions – were unable to check for certain, it was “highly likely” that the nuclear cores at reactors, 1 2 and 3 at Fukushima I nuclear station had begun to melt.

Reuters had earlier reported that the cooling mixture of seawater and boron in the number 2 reactor had totally evaporated, with the reactor’s nuclear rods therefore totally exposed for a significant period of time.
The plant operator TEPCO had earlier said it couldn’t rule out the possibility of a nuclear meltdown in the reactor – and had admitted that a partial meltdown could already be underway.
TEPCO had previously said it believed a partial meltdown had occurred at the number 1 reactor, where a hydrogen explosion occurred at a containment building on Saturday, but retracted reports that a similar meltdown had occurred following another hydrogen blast today at the number 3 reactor.
Though authorities are adamant that the explosions at reactors 1 and 3 have not resulted in any leak, they believe the increased level of radioactive emissions detected outside the Onagawa plant 120 miles away may be a result of Saturday’s explosion at the number 1 containment building.
Authorities still maintain, however, that any meltdown can be contained by the various safety structures in place at each reactor, and that there is no significant chance of any release of radiation into the atmosphere.
AP explained that some experts would refuse to use the term ‘meltdown’ when referring to the plant, unless the nuclear fuel was to melt through the innermost chamber at each nuclear reactor.
A report in the NY Daily News cited a US military spokesman as saying 17 members of the US Navy had been contaminated with low levels of radiation during their first humanitarian efforts in Japan.
The US’s 7th Fleet, which is position around 100 miles northeast of Fukushima, had to move its ships further away in order to avoid ‘airborne radioactivity’.


The affected staff had been treated with soap and water, the military said, and “no further contamination was detected.”
The helicopters in which the marines had been travelling were also decontaminated.

$1.2 Trillion: The Real U.S. National Security Budget No One Wants You to Know About

If Americans were ever presented with the real bill for the total U.S. national security budget, it would actually add up to more than $1.2 trillion a year.

March 1, 2011  

 

 Welcome to the world of the real U.S. national security budget.  Normally, in media accounts, you hear about the Pentagon budget and the war-fighting supplementary funds passed by Congress for our conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.  That already gets you into a startling price range -- close to $700 billion for 2012 -- but that’s barely more than half of it.  If Americans were ever presented with the real bill for the total U.S. national security budget, it would actually add up to more than $1.2 trillion a year.

Take that in for a moment.  It’s true; you won’t find that figure in your daily newspaper or on your nightly newscast, but it’s no misprint.  It may even be an underestimate.  In any case, it’s the real thing when it comes to your tax dollars.  The simplest way to grasp just how Americans could pay such a staggering amount annually for “security” is to go through what we know about the U.S. national security budget, step by step, and add it all up.

So, here we go.  Buckle your seat belt: it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

Fortunately for us, on February 14th the Obama administration officially released its Fiscal Year (FY) 2012 budget request.  Of course, it hasn’t been passed by Congress -- even the 2011 budget hasn’t made it through that august body yet -- but at least we have the most recent figures available for our calculations.

For 2012, the White House has requested $558 billion for the Pentagon’s annual “base” budget, plus an additional $118 billion to fund military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.  At $676 billion, that’s already nothing to sneeze at, but it’s just the barest of beginnings when it comes to what American taxpayers will actually spend on national security.  Think of it as the gigantic tip of a humongous iceberg.

To get closer to a real figure, it’s necessary to start peeking at other parts of the federal budget where so many other pots of security spending are squirreled away. 

Missing from the Pentagon’s budget request, for example, is an additional $19.3 billion for nuclear-weapons-related activities like making sure our current stockpile of warheads will work as expected and cleaning up the waste created by seven decades of developing and producing them.  That money, however, officially falls in the province of the Department of Energy.  And then, don’t forget an additional $7.8 billion that the Pentagon lumps into a “miscellaneous” category -- a kind of department of chump change -- that is included in neither its base budget nor those war-fighting funds.

So, even though we’re barely started, we’ve already hit a total official FY 2012 Pentagon budget request of:

$703.1 billion dollars.

Not usually included in national security spending are hundreds of billions of dollars that American taxpayers are asked to spend to pay for past wars, and to support our current and future national security strategy.

For starters, that $117.8 billion war-funding request for the Department of Defense doesn’t include certain actual “war-related fighting” costs.  Take, for instance, the counterterrorism activities of the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development. For the first time, just as with the Pentagon budget, the FY 2012 request divides what’s called "International Affairs" in two: that is, into an annual "base" budget as well as funding for "Overseas Contingency Operations" related to Iraq and Afghanistan.  (In the Bush years, these used to be called the Global War on Terror.)  The State Department’s contribution? $8.7 billion.  That brings the grand but very partial total so far to:

The White House has also requested $71.6 billion for a post-2001 category called “homeland security” -- of which $18.1 billion is funded through the Department of Defense. The remaining $53.5 billion goes through various other federal accounts, including the Department of Homeland Security ($37 billion), the Department of Health and Human Services ($4.6 billion), and the Department of Justice ($4.6 billion). All of it is, however, national security funding which brings our total to:

$765.3 billion.

The U.S. intelligence budget was technically classified prior to 2007, although at roughly $40 billion annually, it was considered one of the worst-kept secrets in Washington. Since then, as a result of recommendations by the 9/11 Commission, Congress has required that the government reveal the total amount spent on intelligence work related to the National Intelligence Program (NIP).

This work done by federal agencies like the CIA and the National Security Agency consists of keeping an eye on and trying to understand what other nations are doing and thinking, as well as a broad range of “covert operations” such as those being conducted in Pakistan. In this area, we won’t have figures until FY 2012 ends. The latest NIP funding figure we do have is $53.1 billion for FY 2010.  There’s little question that the FY 2012 figure will be higher, but let’s be safe and stick with what we know.  (Keep in mind that the government spends plenty more on “intelligence.”  Additional funds for the Military Intelligence Program (MIP), however, are already included in the Pentagon’s 2012 base budget and war-fighting supplemental, though we don’t know what they are. The FY 2010 funding for MIP, again the latest figure available, was $27 billion.)  In any case, add that $53.1 billion and we’re at:

$818.4 billion.

Veterans programs are an important part of the national security budget with the projected funding figure for 2012 being $129.3 billion. Of this, $59 billion is for veterans’ hospital and medical care, $70.3 billion for disability pensions and education programs. This category of national security funding has been growing rapidly in recent years because of the soaring medical-care needs of veterans of the Iraq and Afghan wars. According to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, by 2020 total funding for health-care services for veterans will have risen another 45%-75%.  In the meantime, for 2012 we’ve reached:

$947.7 billion.

If you include the part of the foreign affairs budget not directly related to U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as other counterterrorism operations, you have an additional $18 billion in direct security spending.  Of this, $6.6 billion is for military aid to foreign countries, while almost $2 billion goes for “international peacekeeping” operations. A further $709 million has been designated for countering the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, combating terrorism, and clearing landmines planted in regional conflicts around the globe.  This leaves us at:

$965.7 billion.

As with all federal retirees, U.S. military retirees and former civilian Department of Defense employees receive pension benefits from the government. The 2012 figure is $48.5 billion for military personnel, $20 billion for those civilian employees, which means we’ve now hit:

$1,034.2 billion. (Yes, that’s $1.03 trillion!)

When the federal government lacks sufficient funds to pay all of its obligations, it borrows. Each year, it must pay the interest on this debt which, for FY 2012, is projected at $474.1 billion.  The National Priorities Project calculates that 39% of that, or $185 billion, comes from borrowing related to past Pentagon spending.

The Right Wing's New War for Culture

The new conservative mediamakers are shedding the baggage of culture war hangups, freeing up energy to infiltrate culture industries and attack the left.

March 6, 2011  |  

 

“You looking for Hollywood? Come on in!”

I walked into a small but packed room at this year's Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) for a primer on entering show business stage right. It was the panel’s second year at the annual convention, and the young people gathered were planning to skip the D.C. internships and look for jobs in film, music and television.

The movement is shifting away from the outright opposition to popular culture that defined the culture wars of the 1990s. They have embraced a two-pronged strategy to get their message out: making their own films and music, and using Tea Party or church networks to distribute them; and working inside the mainstream entertainment industry to release films and other products with movement themes into the mass market.

The prospect of political action and personal fame proves alluring for a generation where online celebrity meshes easily with real-world political power. A young man canvassed the room--“who does video?”--saying that he helps young videographers plug into local campaigns as he passed out his business card. Young men discussed their Twitter feeds, and two others tried to understand Obama through the prism of Star Wars.

Larry O’Connor, editor-in-chief at Andrew Breitbart’s Breitbart.tv (of ACORN and Shirley Sherrod political character assassination fame), delivered an insider account. Before coming to the right-wing web-o-sphere, O’Connor worked as a production manager on Broadway and in Los Angeles. Wearing square-frame glasses, with untucked dress shirt, jacket, and jeans, salt and pepper stubble, and a proclivity to strike a sardonic tone, I would have easily mistaken him for a liberal.

“If you’re thinking about coming to Washington to be in politics or you’re thinking of working for some congressperson and be their aide,” an animated O’Connor told the room, “there are a hell of a lot of people who can do that already...We need conservatives in Hollywood...The culture and what happens in Hollywood and in the entertainment industry is a driving factor for what happens in our country and, frankly, for what happens in Washington.”

“Politics is downstream of popular culture,” moderator Kevin McKeever chimed in. “That’s one of the reasons why we do this panel.”

Presenters encouraged the eager young attendees to paddle upstream. One suggested that young conservatives become “sleeper agents” in the entertainment world: establish yourself doing high quality but conventional work as an actor, agent or producer. Keep quiet on politics until you have established influence and power.

Remarkably, John Nolte, editor-in-chief of Big Hollywood (another Breitbart enterprise), pointed to the gay rights movement as an example of the power of (what conservatives tend to call) “the culture.”

“Look at the issue of gay marriage,” he said, arguing that it was an important case study whatever your position was. (This was itself supporting evidence for his argument, as his comments reflected an important shift: gay rights have become a seriously contested issue at CPAC and throughout the conservative movement.) “Look how far we’ve come on gay marriage in 10 years. In the '90s, we were saying ‘are we gonna' do civil unions, are we okay with that as a country?’ Now we’re one vote away probably from legalizing gay marriage throughout the country. And that’s not politics. That’s the culture. That’s television, and movies, and music changing the way we think, and changing what we believe.”

The new conservative film movement has two main currents: the political documentary and the Christian moral narrative. Fahrenheit 9/11 was a wake-up call for right-wing documentarians eager to match the power of progressive documentary. Mel Gibson’s The Passion of Christ sent the opposite message to conservatives and to Hollywood at large: we have a market.

In popular culture as in politics, conservatives don’t openly defend the oppressor against the oppressed. They deny that any such injustice exists--particularly when it comes to race. The overall goal is simple: more movies with clearly defined good and evil. Less moral ambiguity.

Producer Ralph Winter, who made The Fantastic Four and the X-Men trilogy, is an evangelical. He also produced the film versions of the best-selling “Left Behind” book series--the plot of which is: what happens when Jesus comes back? He throws all the non- or wrong-believers into a lake of fire. He has also made a number of “small-budget, direct-to-video movies based on popular Christian novels.”

“I think things are changing in Hollywood,” said Nolte. “You do have a better environment to walk into than there was five years ago. Andrew Breitbart has a lot to do with that...For your country, I think it’s a very patriotic thing to be willing to go in there.”

Megachurches are also tapping their substantial resources to produce sophisticated media in-house. Evangelical producer Dallas Jenkins, the son of one of the “Left Behind” series’ two authors, is now director of visual media at Harvest Bible Chapel in Chicago and is planning to produce feature films directly out of the church. This is a remarkable feat of vertical integration.

The Chronicles of Narnia and even Lord of the Rings strike religious notes in the guise of fantasy. One Baptist writer, though acknowledging that the “Hobbit habit of ingesting mushrooms and smoking ‘pipe weed" got translated into drug use for counter-culture readers,’ was pleased that the Christian J.R.R. Tolkien had set out “the reality of evil and the task to struggle against it."

After a major delay caused by Chapter 11, MGM is planning to release its remake of the Cold War classic Red Dawn. The original Soviet invasion of the U.S. will be Chinese in the new version.

The biggest, most recent and utterly surprising coup for the religious right is the 3-D “documentary” of tween idol Justin Bieber, whose mother is a devout evangelical Christian. Paramount has a Christian outreach plan with special church screenings, which a St. Louis Post-Dispatch article calls “a page torn from the Passion of the Christ marketing playbook.” (Though Wonkette notes that Focus on the Family is worried that Bieber has fallen prey to an “entertainment industry [that] is a sexual and political minefield” thanks to an ambiguous comment about pre-marital sex.

Hollywood is a complicated thing for the right, which hates it for sex and moral ambiguity but celebrates or declines comment on the glorification of war and crass commercialism. And they blame liberals for everything, including stuff that most liberals dislike. Left-wing forces cannot be held responsible for the music video of 17-year-old pop star Miley Cyrus writhing on a bed in her underwear. The conservative hysterics about Hollywood ignore the role big business plays in keeping the system conservatives so cherish up and running.