The 40-Year Scream / no help from Buddha for this never-ending American fuckup / Check one: [ ] Jane Fonda, Woman of the Century [ ] Burn the traitor Hanoi Jane at the stake

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Hiya R** --

And now for something entirely different.
 
Most of us despise war for the obvious reasons. And those are good enough reasons to despise war.
 
But then, for those who get through a war safely and in one piece, there's the saddest thing -- the rest of your life violently shaken up like a milkshake about the political and cultural trauma of your war.
 
Ain't no use telling K******* -- and the 7,000,000 other Vietnam-era folks who still want to have Jane Fonda publicly executed -- to Get Over It already. I run into this all the time, I see it all the time on Fox News Channel, half my V-vet acquaintances fall into this camp.
 
And There Is No Cure.
 
Jane just chose to make herself a central lifelong icon in America's Culture Wars. To half the people of the 60s, she's Woodstock and Love and Peace. To the other half, she's an unforgivable traitor whose punishment -- public burning -- is 40 years overdue.
 
And no one in either camp is ever going to hear or read anything persuasive enough to switch sides.
 
I met her once, btw, when she spoke at my community college, I guess in 1973. I was in student government and my job that night was to take tickets at the entrance to the auditorium. When she and her entourage got to the door, I impersonated a robotic moron and put my hand out and asked for her ticket. She got a big chuckle out of that. I was happy I could make her laugh.
 
Sigh ... poor K*******. I am so happy he came home in one piece. But medical health can be such a small part of your life after the war. I didn't even get to Vietnam, and that fucked-up interminable war has been making me sick, jumpy, depressed and neurotic ever since. Ditto K******* and about 7,000,000 other Americans of roughly our vintage.
 
And there is no cure. There is no healing. On both sides of the Vietnam Culture War, we're all like that painting "The Scream," and none of us seems to be able to stop screaming.
 
Buddhism has been very tempting to me -- they promise a method to Let It Go.
 
I think they're lying. Maybe it works for every other kind of woe, but I don't think Buddha ever ran into something as big, toxic and intractable as the American reaction to the Vietnam War.
 
You know I'm from Washington DC and still have friends and family there. But I've never gone near the Vietnam Memorial. Can't work up the nerve.
 
Where it hurt me the worst was when I went back to college, very naturally joined the veterans' club, and found myself in the middle of the most violent, hate-filled feud between the lefty vets (pot) and the righty vets (beer). I'd naively assumed all us vets would make common cause and work together to make our re-integration into civilian life as smooth and successful as possible. In very short order I had to flee the company of the student vets, the lingering Vietnam War was just too painful.
 
Poor K*******. I'd give him a hug, but that's the last thing he wants; he'd pull a knife and stab me.
 
And it's happening all over again with the Iraq-Afghanistan generation. (And Libya -- Watch This Space for Further Developments.) Now we're institutionalizing wars without end and wars without political consensus.
 
We're institutionalizing lifelong lingering wars among the veteran survivors. Jane Fonda has been replaced by PFC Bradley Manning and the Wikileaks guy.
 
Well, okay, here's the best Buddhism I can come up with. We need to hug our loved ones, define them as The Only Important Thing In Life, and free the rest of the world to blow itself up and go to hell in a handbasket -- with no help from us. We choose far more important things to do.
 
If we're feeling superhuman, of course we can keep advocating for peace, for wiser political leadership, for sanity -- and for the safety of our children and the world's children.
 
But America's capacity for perpetual warfare and perpetual unforgiveness -- I am ashamed to confess what a weenie I am, but maybe it's bigger than we are. It sure seems to have sent K******* 'round the bend.
 
I liked him back then. I knew he had a Short Fuse, I knew he was wrapped in an unusual degree of Anger, and I strongly suspected his politics were quite different from mine. But I liked him. He was generous, he was honest, he was everything you need from another soldier you're stuck in the barracks with.
 
If Buddhism falls short, hell, I'll pray for a miracle to heal him. To heal all of us who lived through those ghastly times.
 
Big Sad Sigh.
 
Bob

=======================

Here's the e-mail from my old Army buddy R** (from the USA state shaped like the palm of a right-hand mitten, so you can point to the palm of your right hand to show where you live), and the forwarded e-mail from our old Army buddy K*******.

Jane Fonda visited North Vietnam in June 1972. I was honorably discharged from the US Army (never got anywhere near Vietnam, but lots of my buddies did) in March 1971. The names of several of my high school friends are carved on the Vietnam Memorial in Washington DC -- among about 52,000 other names of USA servicemen and servicewomen killed in the war.

===============================

Bob,

K******* just sent this Never Forgive a Traitor thing to me. What do you think of this?

I often feel like I can’t believe either side's arguments completely. It was just a giant mess we were in.

Seems like we keep doing it.

R**

=====================

------ Forwarded Message
From: V******
Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2011 08:47:17 -0400
Subject: Never Forgive A Traitor

If you had family in Vietnam this will interest and remind you of a time long forgotten by many.

Never Forgive A Traitor 

For those of you too young to remember, Hanoi Jane is a bad person and did some terrible things during the Vietnam war. Things that can not be forgiven!
 
and now President OBAMA wants to honor her ...
   
In Memory of LT. C. [LTC = Lieutenant Colonel] Thomsen Wieland who spent 100 days at the Hanoi Hilton
 
IF YOU NEVER FORWARDED ANYTHING IN YOUR LIFE, FORWARD THIS SO THAT OTHERS WILL KNOW.
 
She really is a traitor.
 
A TRAITOR IS ABOUT TO BE HONORED .        

KEEP THIS MOVING ACROSS AMERICA
 
This is for all the kids born in the 70's and after who do not remember, and didn't have to bear the burden that our fathers, mothers and older brothers and sisters had to bear.
 
Jane Fonda is being honored as one of the '100 Women of the Century.'
 
BARBARA WALTERS WRITES:

"Unfortunately, many have forgotten and still countless others have never known how Ms. Fonda betrayed not only the idea of our country, but specific men who served and sacrificed during Vietnam ..."

The first part of this is from an F-4E pilot. The pilot's name is Jerry Driscoll, "a River Rat".
 
In 1968, the former Commandant of the USAF [United States Air Force] Survival School was a POW [Prisoner of War] in Ho Lo Prison, the 'Hanoi Hilton.'
 
Dragged from a stinking cesspit of a cell, cleaned, fed, and dressed in clean PJ's, he was ordered to describe for a visiting American 'Peace Activist' the 'lenient and humane treatment' he'd received.
 
He spat at Ms. Fonda, was clubbed, and was dragged away. During the subsequent beating, he fell forward on to the camp Commandant 's feet, which sent that officer berserk.

In 1978, the Air Force Colonel still suffered from double vision (which permanently ended his flying career) from the Commandant's frenzied application of a wooden baton.
 
From 1963-65, Col. Larry Carrigan was in the 47FW/DO (F-4E's) ... He spent 6 years in the 'Hanoi Hilton' ,,, the first three of which his family only knew he was 'missing in action'. His wife lived on faith that he was still alive. His group, too, got the cleaned-up, fed and clothed routine in preparation for a 'peace delegation' visit.
 
They, however, had time and devised a plan to get word to the world that they were alive and still survived. Each man secreted a tiny piece of paper, with his Social Security Number on it, in the palm of his hand.
 
When paraded before Ms. Fonda and a cameraman, she walked the line, shaking each man's hand and asking little encouraging snippets like: 'Aren't you sorry you bombed babies?' and 'Are you grateful for the humane treatment from your benevolent captors?' Believing this HAD to be an act, they each palmed her their sliver of paper.
 
She took them all without missing a beat ... At the end of the line and once the camera stopped rolling, to the shocked disbelief of the POWs, she turned to the officer in charge and handed him all the little pieces of paper ...
 
Three men died from the subsequent beatings. Colonel Carrigan was almost number four but he survived, which is the only reason we know of her actions that day.
 
I was a civilian economic development advisor in Vietnam, and was captured by the North Vietnamese communists in South Vietnam in 1968, and held prisoner for over 5 years.
 
I spent 27 months in solitary confinement; one year in a cage in Cambodia; and one year in a 'black box' in Hanoi. My North Vietnamese captors deliberately poisoned and murdered a female missionary, a nurse in a leprosarium in Ban me Thuot, South Vietnam , whom I buried in the jungle near the Cambodian border. At one time, I weighed only about 90 lbs. (My normal weight is 170 lbs)
 
We were Jane Fonda's 'war criminals ...'
 
When Jane Fonda was in Hanoi, I was asked by the camp communist political officer if I would be willing to meet with her ...
 
I said yes, for I wanted to tell her about the real treatment we POWs received ... and how different it was from the treatment purported by the North Vietnamese, and parroted by her as 'humane and lenient.'
 
Because of this, I spent three days on a rocky floor on my knees, with my arms outstretched with a large steel weights placed on my hands, and beaten with a bamboo cane.
 
I had the opportunity to meet with Jane Fonda soon after I was released. I asked her if she would be willing to debate me on TV. She never did answer me.
 
These first-hand experiences do not exemplify someone who should be honored as part of '100 Years of Great Women.' Lest we forget ...' 100 Years of Great Women' should never include a traitor whose hands are covered with the blood of so many patriots.
 
There are few things I have strong visceral reactions to, but Hanoi Jane's participation in blatant treason, is one of them. Please take the time to forward to as many people as you possibly can. It will eventually end up on her computer and she needs to know that we will never forget.  

RONALD D. SAMPSON
CMSgt [Chief Master Sergeant]
USAF 716 Maintenance Squadron
Chief of Maintenance
DSN: 875-6431 COMM: 883-6343
 
PLEASE HELP BY SENDING THIS TO EVERYONE IN YOUR ADDRESS BOOK. IF ENOUGH PEOPLE SEE THIS MAYBE HER STATUS WILL CHANGE!

Happy Passover / Pesach 15 Nissan 5771 !

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Happy Passover 15 Nissan 5771 !
Okay, it's Passover / Pesach, the celebration of the Exodus of the Jews from the land of their enslavement, Egypt.

The end of the story -- escape from slavery -- makes Passover the happiest of Jewish holy days, and one with meaning and hope not just for Jews, but for all human beings enduring enslavement, oppression, or any form of inequality or second-class citizenship.

But what leads up to the happy ending is pretty grim. Pharaoh refused to grant the Jews' petition to let them leave Egypt, and for his stubborn recalcitrance, God visited ten ghastly plagues, each one more hideous than the plague before, on Egypt. Above, some renditions of the plagues by Tissot and Doré.

Some believe Passover is the oldest continuously celebrated religious holiday on Earth. It's celebrated not in the synagogue, but with a festive and often raucous family supper -- with quite a bit of wine -- in the home. The presence of children is essential, because Passover teaches each new generation the story of the liberation from slavery.

There are several degrees of Jewish observance, from the strict ultra-Orthodox, to the Conservative, to Reform, and most recently to the Reconstructionist movement. The Reconstructionist and Reform have ordained women rabbis for a few decades. Not so the Conservative movement, and absolutely not the Orthodox.

In the center of the Passover table is a traditional seder (meaning "order," referring to the order of the supper and religious service) plate with various foods, each symbolising an aspect of the Passover story. 

A few years ago I attended a Passover seder, and noticed something odd about its seder plate -- an orange, and I was pretty darned sure I'd never seen an orange on the seder plate before.

A young woman guest explained. A prestigious American Conservative rabbi was asked when the Conservatives would ordain a woman rabbi, and he replied, "A woman rabbi would be like an orange on the seder plate."

And from that year on, oranges began appearing on the symbolic seder plates.

Even the most ancient celebrations move forward, evolve, progress into the future. Every year, Passover liberates and brings equality to more human beings.

Meanwhile, in the even older (1948) State of Emergency next door ...

In what follows, "Knesset" is Israel's parliament.

Haaretz הארץ‎ 
("The Land," national daily, Israel, founded 1918)
Wednesday 20 April 2011 / Nisan 16, 5771

When will Israel, 
like Syria, lift 
its emergency laws?

A state of emergency allows a government to bypass regular legislative processes. It bestows upon the government broad powers that infringe on civil liberties.

by Aluf Benn

At the heart of the uprisings in Arab states is the demand to rescind emergency laws that confer governments sweeping security powers, and seriously infringe upon civil rights.

Yesterday Syria's President Bashar Assad surrendered to protesters' demands, and annulled emergency laws that had been in effect in the country since the Baath [Party] coup in 1963.

Emergency law in Israel long predates its institutionalization in Syria. Four days after the state's establishment in 1948, the acting government declared a state of emergency, which remains in effect.

Israel effectively adopted the state of emergency that had been declared by the British Mandatory government [more commonly known as "the Mandate"] nine years earlier.

A state of emergency allows a government to bypass regular legislative processes. It bestows upon the government broad powers that infringe on civil liberties. These include the power of administrative detention, seizure of land, arrest of infiltrators, and limitations on the rights of terror suspects. In Israel's improvisational style, numerous writs have been issued under emergency law guidelines for the monitoring of goods and services. In such case, the emergency law was used not because of any real concerns about state security, but rather for bureaucratic convenience.

In addition to laws that are meant to be implemented in times of declared emergency, such as various anti-terror measures and the law for the prevention of infiltration, Israel's security forces have broad powers under the 1945 "defense regulations," which were carried over from the British Mandate. These regulations can be implemented even when a state of emergency is not formally declared. They confer to security forces "draconian deterrence and punitive authority, including powers of seizure and confiscation, right of search and entry, the right to impound vehicles, censorship powers, the right to demolish homes, declare curfews, and more" (from "The Constitutional Law of the State of Israel," Amnon Rubinstein, Barak Medina).

By the 1990s, criticism leveled by jurists about the extension of the state of emergency led to a revision in the law, whereby the Knesset can authorize a state of emergency for a year. However, any extension beyond a year requires discussion and approval of the Knesset. Since this revision was adopted, the Knesset has mechanically approved the extension of Israel's state of emergency every year. The last time such renewal was authorized was June 14, 2010.

In Israel, unlike Syria, citizens are accustomed to living under a state of emergency, and there is no public or political pressure to rescind emergency law. It is hard to imagine an Israeli prime minister standing up in the Knesset and declaring the annulment of the country's emergency laws, on grounds similar to the ones cited by Bashar Assad last weekend: "The annulment of the state of emergency will strengthen the security of Syria, and promote security while preserving the dignity of the Syrian citizen."

The Association of Civil Rights in Israel petitioned the High Court of Justice 12 years ago, demanding that the declaration of a state of emergency be overturned on the grounds that it infringes free speech, the right to strike, the right of assembly and other liberties. Whether or not we face an emergency, the Court's judges are acting as though they have time on their hands; they are still considering the petition.

The government has promised the High Court that it will act to "normalize" legislation in areas such as monitoring of goods and services. It has also drafted a new anti-terror law. Judges have reprimanded the government for the slow pace of emergency law revision, yet there is no sign that the High Court will decide on this petition in the near future, or that the state of emergency will be annulled.

And so Syria, by cancelling its state of emergency, has surpassed Israel. Perhaps that provides cause to revisit and review Israel's emergency laws, before the present declaration is automatically renewed by the Knesset on June 13th?

- 30 -

The 48-year emergency / government by oubliette / tell Bob what a judgmental bourgeois ignoramus he is (but sign your name)

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 oubliette (noun, from the French "oublier, to forget"): A tiny prison or dungeon cell where one prisoner is sealed inside, with a small hole for food, and forgotten forever.

~ ~ ~

In Vleeptron's informal survey of sucky Earth places, Syria is tied with Myanmar (those who wish it freed of its brutal, repressive junta call it Burma) as the nation with the worst systemic human-rights abuses -- abductions, murders, massacres, torture.

I used to volunteer with my town's chapter of Amnesty International. I am no shrinking violet, but I found that the work we'd chosen was the most depressing, spiritually miserable work of any volunteer effort I'd ever been associated with. The work we tried to accomplish wasn't hopeless -- but it sure put on a damned fine impersonation of hopelessness. 

I strongly urge you to join your local or campus chapter of Amnesty International. I think it's the most important work in the human-made world.

But prepare yourself for a brutal stomping of your heart, and a sense of profound shame to realize that human beings, members of your own species, do such vile things to their neighbors, sisters and brothers -- and dare to call it a valid form of government.



Our specific focus was activities to try to free a Syrian university student who had held up a sign politely calling for a little more freedom at his  university. 

He remained in a Syrian prison for about 18 years. If he'd had anything anybody called a trial, it was secret, closed to press and public, conducted by the security police, and he had no lawyer and no chance of acquittal. They may not even have bothered with the sham trial.

And then, miraculously and mysteriously, we learned he was released from prison and freed. We had no way of knowing how much our A.I. chapter's 18 years of advocating for him had to do with his release.

We were thrilled. Our instincts were to celebrate with him, hug him, congratulate him.

But we couldn't.

If we'd aimed any communication his way to congratulate his release from prison -- a phone call, or one lousy $2 Hallmark greeting card ("Congratulations on your release from political prison!"), it might have attracted the Syrian security police enough to get him arrested and tossed back into his oubliette again. 

So we had to pretend that we didn't know him and didn't know our adopted prisoner had finally been freed. 

Likewise, he didn't dare send us the slightest hint of thanks for our efforts.

A long time ago I used to believe that I had no right to be judgmental about other nations, cultures and societies, because I was here (USA) and they were a world away, I didn't speak their language, I was woefully ignorant of their history and their religions, I hadn't been raised among them -- and hell, my USA had tons of its own human-rights nasty habits.

That's crap. Murder is murder, injustice is injustice, rape is rape, making people disappear for decades -- or forever (Pinochet's Chile used to fly prisoners over the Pacific and throw them out of the Air Force plane) -- is a bestial form of "governing" which no heritage, however ancient, can justify. 

Be as judgmental of crappy shitholes like Syria as you like. Be judgmental until their people rise up as they've been doing all over the Middle East and North Africa to force progressive and democratic change, and overthrow regimes which rule by gunfire and dungeon.

If you disagree, and maintain that a bourgeois ignoramus like me has no right to be judgmental about the human-rights atrocities of nations like Syria, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Yemen, Myanmar, Zimbabwe, Cuba, North Korea, Iran and Bahrain, please Leave A Comment and set me straight. Make it persuasive. I got to see that. 

If you're really passionate about perpetual autocratic one-man or junta rule by live-ammo massacre and dungeons, sign your name. 

I may be a judgmental bourgeois ignoramus -- but I sign my name to my ignorance.

~ ~ ~

Al Jazeera (Doha, Qatar)
Tuesday 19 April 2011

Syria 'lifts emergency law'

Government approves bill lifting emergency law, in place for 48 years, following demands by pro-democracy protesters.
 
Syria's government has passed a bill lifting the country's emergency law, in place for 48 years, just hours after security forces fired on protesters.

Tuesday's move is a key demand of pro-reform demonstrators who have been holding protests across the country for weeks.

A senior lawyer said Bashar al-Assad, Syria's president [son of Hafez al-Assad, Syria's previous dictator for 29 years], was yet to sign the legislation, but that his signature was a formality.

According to the country's official SANA news agency the government also abolished the state security court, which handled the trials of political prisoners, and approved a new law allowing the right to peaceful protests.

However the interior ministry also passed a law that says citizens must obtain permission to demonstrate, the agency said, hours after the ministry imposed a total ban on political gatherings.
 
Syria's emergency law gave the government a free hand to arrest people without charge and extended the state's authority into virtually every aspect of citizens' lives.

Cal Perry, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Damascus, said the three steps were a major concession to protesters.

"The people on the ground here really wanted to see not only that court dissolved but also the state of emergency lifted because of these abitrary detentions, as they would put it.

"But the government is certainly going to draw a line between what they call peaceful protesting and an armed insurrection."

Hours before the decision, security forces had fired on protesters in the city of Hom, killing at least six people.

Rights groups say that more than 200 people have been killed in the protests which started in the southern city of Daraa one month ago, inspired by uprisings gripping Arab nations.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies 

- 30 -

Japan upgrades nuclear disaster to maximum 7 -- the equivalent of the 1986 Chernobyl accident

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The New York Times
Tuesday 12 April 2011

Japan Tries to Explain 
Delays in Reporting Radiation

[IMAGE / David Guttenfelder/Associated Press ]
A Japanese policeman wearing a protective radiation suit watched as his colleagues loaded a body into a van on Thursday in the Odaka area of Minamisoma, inside the evacuation zone established around the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

by KEITH BRADSHER, HIROKO TABUCHI and ANDREW POLLACK

TOKYO — Japanese officials struggled through the day on Tuesday to explain why it had taken them a month to disclose large-scale releases of radioactive material in mid-March at a crippled nuclear power plant, as the government and an electric utility disagreed on the extent of continuing problems there.

The government announced Tuesday morning that it had raised its rating of the severity of the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station to 7, the worst on an international scale, from 5. Officials said that the reactor had released one-tenth as much radioactive material as the Chernobyl accident in 1986, but still qualified as a 7 according to a complex formula devised by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Japan’s new assessment was based largely on computer models showing very heavy emissions of radioactive iodine and cesium from March 14 to 16, just after the earthquake and tsunami rendered the plant’s emergency cooling system inoperative. The nearly monthlong delay in acknowledging the extent of these emissions is a fresh example of confused data and analysis from the Japanese, and put the authorities on the defensive about whether they have delayed or blocked the release of information to avoid alarming the public.

Seiji Shiroya, a commissioner of Japan’s Nuclear Safety Commission, an independent government panel that oversees the country’s nuclear industry, said that the government had delayed issuing data on the extent of the radiation releases because of concern that the margins of error had been large in initial computer models. But he also suggested a public policy reason for having kept quiet.

“Some foreigners fled the country even when there appeared to be little risk,” he said. “If we immediately decided to label the situation as Level 7, we could have triggered a panicked reaction.”

The Japanese media, which has a reputation for passivity but has become more aggressive in response to public unhappiness about the nuclear accident, questioned government leaders through the day about what the government knew about the accident and when it knew it.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan gave a nationally televised speech and press conference in the early evening to call for national rebuilding, but ended up defending his government’s handling of information about the accident.

“What I can say for the information I obtained — of course the government is very large, so I don’t have all the information — is that no information was ever suppressed or hidden after the accident,” he said. “There are various ways of looking at this, and I know there are opinions saying that information could have been disclosed faster. However, as the head of the government, I never hid any information because it was inconvenient for us.”

Junichi Matsumoto, a senior nuclear power executive from the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, fanned public fears about radiation when he said at a separate news conference on Tuesday morning that the radiation release from Daiichi could, in time, surpass levels seen in 1986.

“The radiation leak has not stopped completely, and our concern is that it could eventually exceed Chernobyl,” Mr. Matsumoto said.

But Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director general of Japan’s nuclear regulator, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said in an interview on Tuesday evening that he did not know how the company had come up with its estimate. “I cannot understand their position,” he said.

He speculated that Tokyo Electric was being “prudent and thinking about the worst-case scenario,” adding, “I think they don’t want to be seen as optimistic.”

Mr. Nishiyama said that his agency did not expect another big escape of radiation from Daiichi, saying that “almost all” the material that is going to escape has already come out. He said that the rate of radiation release had peaked in the early days after the March 11 earthquake, and that the rate of radiation had dropped by 90 percent since then.

The peak release in emissions of radioactive particles took place following hydrogen explosions at three reactors, as technicians desperately tried to pump in seawater to keep the uranium fuel rods cool, and bled radioactive gas from the reactors in order to make room for the seawater.

Mr. Nishiyama took pains to say — and other nuclear experts agreed — that the Japanese accident posed fewer health risks than Chernobyl.

In the Soviet-era accident at Chernobyl, a burning graphite reactor pushed radioactive particles high into the atmosphere and downwind across Europe. The Japanese accident has mostly produced radioactive liquid runoff into the ocean and low-altitude radioactive particles that have frequently blown out into the ocean and fallen into the water as well.

The Nuclear Safety Commission ordered the use of a computer model called Speedi — short for System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information — to calculate the amount of radiation released from the plant, said Mr. Shiroya, the commissioner on the safety agency, who is also the former director of the Research Reactor Institute at Kyoto University.

To use the model, scientists enter radiation measurements from various distances from a nuclear accident. The model produces an estimate of the radioactive material escaping at the source of the accident.

Speaking at a news conference, Mr. Shiroya said those calculations were complex, and it was only recently that researchers had been able to narrow down the amount to within an acceptable margin of error.

“At first, the calculations could have been off by digits,” Mr. Shiroya said. “It was only when there was certainty that the margin of error was within two to three times that we made an announcement,” he said, later adding, “I do not think that there was any delay.”

Even so, some people involved in the energy industry have been hearing about the results of the Speedi calculations for days. A senior executive said in a telephone interview on April 4 that he had been told that the Speedi model suggested that radioactive materials escaping the Daiichi complex were much higher than Japanese officials had publicly acknowledged, and perhaps as high as half of the releases from Chernobyl.

Mr. Nishiyama and Mr. Shiroya said separately on Tuesday that that estimate had been wrong. But their two government agencies also released different figures for the level of emissions so far, and there appeared to be a degree of supposition embedded in the numbers.

Mr. Nishiyama’s agency said that emissions totaled 370,000 terabecquerels; a terabecquerel is a trillion becquerels. The agency’s figure is 20 percent of the former Soviet Union’s official estimate of emissions from Chernobyl.

But most experts say that the true emissions from Chernobyl were 1.5 to 2.5 times higher than the Soviet Union acknowledged. Mr. Nishiyama’s agency appears to have assumed that true emissions from Chernobyl were twice the official figure, and so calculated that the current nuclear accident had released 10 percent as much as Chernobyl.

Mr. Nishiyama’s agency is part of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, which promotes the use of nuclear power. Mr. Shiroya’s commission, which is independent from nuclear power operators and their equipment providers, issued an estimate that emissions totaled 630,000 terabecquerels.

Although Mr. Shiroya did not provide a comparison to Chernobyl, that works out to 34 percent of the official Soviet estimate of emissions and 17 percent of the unofficial higher estimate.

Mr. Shiroya also said there was a threefold margin for error involved. The outside estimates of total releases would range from as low as 6 percent to as high as 51 percent of the unofficial totals from Chernobyl.

- 30 -

The Lede Blog: A Look at the Nuclear Accident Scale (April 12, 2011)

Egypt's military rulers imprison pro-democracy blogger Maikel Nabil for three years

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Maybe one of these days my big mouth will get me into this kind of trouble, but until then, all I can do is make some noise about the other bloggers around the world whose big mouths get them tossed into prison -- like Maikel Nabil, the 25-year-old Egyptian author of the blog "Son of Ra," who copied and pasted criticisms of the Egyptian military from Human Rights Watch and other prestigious human rights groups, and has begun serving three years -- incommunicado -- in a military prison.
 

"Son of Ra" described the ruling Egyptian military as a continuation of the corruption and anti-democratic practices of the recently removed dictator Hosni Mubarak. This hurt the military's feelings; they're very sensitive murderers and torturers.

To get to the crux of the problem: Now that a popular uprising has removed Mubarak, the ruling military wants the world to think there's a new, free, democratic Egypt waiting for tourism -- Egypt's biggest industry -- to resume.

Well, that's crap. Egypt isn't new, it isn't free, it certainly isn't democratic. Under the current circumstances, it's dangerous -- lethally -- for Egyptians and foreign visitors.

And the last place people who want freedom and democracy should visit and spend their money is Egypt. While Mikail Nabil is locked up, unable to speak, in a military prison -- and hundreds of other Egyptian political prisoners are locked up, too -- find somewhere else to travel and spend your money.

The ruling military regime doesn't get it. They think it's sufficient to tolerate a big public party of pro-democracy kids in Cairo -- something theatrically reminiscent of the fall of the Berlin Wall -- fire Mubarak and put him and his family under house arrest in the resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh ( شرم الشيخ‎ )

-- but then continue to rule Egypt with the brutal suppression of secret police and live ammo fired into uncomfortably large and aggressive anti-government demonstrations. The ruling Army regime has no intention of liberalizing or democratizing Egypt. The thrilling mass demonstrations of March have -- sad to say -- changed very little in the way Egypt is really ruled and run.

Write the Egyptian Minister of Tourism and tell him you're taking your vacation somewhere else.

Write U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and tell her to stop playing footsy and kissy-face with Egypt's ruling military, and to demand the immediate release of Maikel Nabil and every other political prisoner.

Crank up the Zeta Beam! Get me the fuck off this crazy, violent planet! / Help pick a name for the unnamed CV Underway station / Why is Libya getting hammered, but Syria and Bahrain and Yemen get a free pass to murder their pro-democracy protesters?

 Click images to enlarge.

As I recuperate from 2 Big Surgeries, my eyes are on the prize: a return to my life of travel, which was beginning to seem as if it had come to a Dead End. During the last year, my feet and legs have been misbehaving so badly that I haven't even been able to hop the Zeta Beam to spend time in my holiday condo in Ciudad Vleeptron, capital of Planet Vleeptron, in the Dwingeloo-2 Galaxy. But my doctors assure me all that's coming back, with time and exercise.

My holiday condo, by the way, is just a few steps from the Shoe Mirrors station of the CV Underway.

The last time I posted the CV Underway map was to announce, with embarrassment and shock, that one station had no name. A few names were nominated in the Comment Sewers Deep Beneath Ciudad Vleeptron, but none of them was approved by the CV Underway Board of Supervisors. 

So I'm re-opening the nominations. This situation must be fixed. The station -- between Mozart and Mollyringwald Centre -- must have a name.
 
Vleeptron, and particularly its capital, are just wonderful travel destinations, with fantastic music clubs and marvelously delicious ethnic restaurants, take my word for it. More and more I've come to rely on the Zeta Beam (when it's working) to get me the fuck out of here when Earth just sucks beyond my pathetic capacity to endure it.

You may have noticed that the United States of America has now embarked on ***3*** simultaneous wars. 

Fortunately wars are free, they don't cost us anything. In fact Iraq is turning a big profit for us with all that free oil, and there are big promises of enormous profit from previously untapped natural resources in Afghanistan. 

Any day now, the USA will embark on an ambitious program of rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, building new routes of high-speed rail, and building new schools and hospitals all over the place with this cornucopia of colonial riches. 

There's a reason for these wars, and it sure doesn't have anything to do with Freedom or Democracy or Third-World Gender Equality.

Well, there are two reasons. There's Greed, of course.

But it also seems very odd that all three wars (or 2 wars and 1 No-Fly Zone) are aimed at whomping the shit out of Muslims. 

Now the USA is most explicitly NOT an officially Christian nation; the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution makes that clear.

But let's face it: Everybody (or 93 percent of everybody) thinks this is a Christian Nation. It's now a centerpiece of our political process that whoever wants the presidential nomination of either major party -- certainly the nomination of the Tea-Party-flavored Republicans -- has to first demonstrate that he or she is a ferociously devout Born-Again Christian, with tons of Sunday church-going photo ops.

So what does a Christian Nation do to reflect its core identity? We periodically launch a Crusade to whomp the crap out of Muslims here and there. 

(And Buddhists -- my old war was aimed at Correcting the Thinking of Buddhists on Bicycles. We lost, they're still Buddhists and Atheists, with some lingering Roman Catholics from the French Colonial days.)

So what's Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya? Oh, it's hard to keep track, but I'd guess they're something like The 53rd, 54th and 55th Crusade.

Onward Christian Soldiers!

Yeah, well, I can only take just so much of that Krusade Klown Krap, and then I start dreaming of spending some quality Off-Earth Time on Vleeptron. (Vleeptron's last war, the 2nd Garlic War, ended 124,000 years ago.)

Right now I've given the keys to my holiday condo to Lenny and Spike, the hitchhiking teenage stoat and weasel dropouts, and I hope they haven't trashed the place, because I intend to get reassembled at the Akira Kurosawa Zeta Beam Drome (AKZBD) and toss my backpack into the condo any week now.

This has absolutely nothing to do with our high-minded humanitarian reasons for establishing the No-Fly Zone, but Libya produces 2 percent of the world's oil. Most of it, I imagine, goes straight north across the Mediterranean to Italy, Libya's former (and notoriously brutal) colonial ruler.

Meanwhile, dictators-for-life, and autocratic monarchs, are the USA's longtime allies all over the Middle East.  

Bashar al-Assad of Syria isn't the USA's friend or ally -- Syria's relationship with the USA is chillier and more hostile than Libya's -- and in the wave of popular uprisings sweeping North Africa and the Middle East, Assad is taking the hardest line, sending his security forces to fire live ammo to suppress the demonstrations. 

Why isn't the USA and NATO sending naval and air assets to the coast off Syria? Why isn't there any media or diplomatic talk about a No-Fly Zone, or some protective mechanism for the unarmed protesters, in Syria? Why is there no military assistance for the protesters in Bahrain or Yemen? 

Our foreign policy regarding the pro-democracy anti-totalitarian protests seems to be a very mysterious picking and choosing, going to war against Khaddafy's Libya, and completely ignoring brutal suppressions elsewhere. 

No one -- not Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, not President Obama, not UK Prime Minister David Cameron, not French President Nicolas Sarkozy -- devotes a single sentence to explain who gets hammered with Cruise Missiles, and who gets completely ignored, and allowed to murder its own unarmed citizen protesters.

Since 1995, the US Navy Fifth Fleet, whose operational region is the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea, has been headquartered in Manama, the capital of Bahrain. The King of Bahrain, Sheikh Hamad ibn Isa Al Khalifa, has sought and received troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to help suppress unarmed protests in Manama. 

I can find at least five protesters killed by security forces as of mid-March, and Manama's distinctive Pearl Roundabout tower (before oil, pearl-fishing was Bahrain's economic centerpiece) was torn down because it had become the gathering place of many hundreds of pro-democracy protesters. 

The USA isn't making a peep about it.

Fan Mail from some Flounder? ( <-- Bullwinkle to Rocky ) / SOMEBODY appreciates my jokes! / The 7th Voyage of Sinbad / Why can't kids watch movies about eating people and duelling skeletons? Huh?

Click image, maybe gets bigger.

At first I thought you might be some kind of left wing nut case then I read the part about swell new teeth!
You may be all those things but you have a great sense of humor.
Cheers
Ohyan

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Oh hiya Ohyan! Glad you like my jokes. Old jokes are the best, I get a lot of them from carvings on Mesopotamian ziggurats circa 4000 BCE.
 
Who are you where are you what are you? How'd you find Vleeptron?
 
Bob

PS. The teeth are great, but about as expensive as a car. The only thing I can't chew is raw carrots, but I never liked raw carrots anyway.

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Love the avatar.
Cyclops from “The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad” by Ray Harryhausen.
Excellent.
Cheers
 
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Oh yeah, I think "7th Voyage of Sinbad" is my fave childhood movie. I was 11 and my eyes popped out and flies buzzed in and out of my mouth for an hour. Wow.
 
Second favorite: "Forbidden Planet."

In the UK, they censored out the scene where Cyclops roasts Sinbad's men, and where Sinbad fights the skeleton on the spiral staircase. They thought these scenes were too scary for little kids.
 
Censors can bite me.
 
There's a new CD of Bernard Herrmann's magnificent music score from Varese Sarabande. Of all Herrmann's scores -- from "Citizen Kane" to "Taxi Driver" -- I think "Sinbad" is tied with his score for Hitchcock's "Vertigo." Lush, lurid, exotic. His leitmotif for the skeleton is, of course, vibraphones, musical clanking bones.
 
The producer Schneer said they were very lucky to cast Kerwin Matthews as Sinbad, because very few actors look authentic and sincere when they're battling monsters which won't be there until the special effects guys put them in later. Matthews was great at duelling invisible monsters.
 
Wikipedia says "Sinbad" was made on a budget of $650,000. Can you believe that? Chickenfeed -- but the movie thrills and terrifies you better than most sci-fi crap with FX budgets of millions. "Avatar" was about the most expensive movie ever made; I slept through most of it.
 
Here, if you ever need the genie to come out of the lamp, say this:
 
From the land beyond beyond
from the world past hope and fear
I bid you, Genie, now appear!
 
Bob

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Me too. Another absolute fav I’ve watched about 30,000 times is “Jason and the Argonauts” you have to go here

www.rayharryhausen.com/filmography.php

I always hated movies where you never see the monster or only some ridiculous thing in the last 30 seconds of the film.

Ever watch MST3K? [Mystery Science Theater 3000] Very funny stuff. They do a great lampoon on “The Mole People” it starred John Agar and Mr. Cleaver!! How cool is that?

“Monsters, John. Monsters from the Id” How creepy was that the first time you heard it?

I almost never watch new movies and the kids (adult now) hated when I said “All the good movies have already been made and most are in b&w.”

Forbidden Planet cost about $1,900,000 a big budget for it’s to be sure. grossed 3,000,000.

Don