As the desperate battle to put out the hellish fires at the Fukushima nuclear facility continues.
“What you are seeing are desperate efforts — just throwing everything at it in hopes something will work,” said one American official with long nuclear experience who would not speak for attribution. “Right now this is more prayer than plan.”
I can't help thinking about the heroic plant workers who are sacrificing their lives, to try to save their country, and the world, from a nuclear catastrophe.
One, his body being bombarded with soaring doses of radiation but refusing to give up the fight, wrote to his wife: “Please continue to live well, I cannot be home for a while.”
Or the pain of their families.
One young girl tweeted about her doomed father: “My dad went to the nuclear plant, I’ve never seen my mother cry so hard. People at the plant are struggling, sacrificing themselves to protect you. Please daddy come back alive.”
Heroes is a word that is awarded cheaply these days. But they are the real thing.
Death came to the many firefighters and staff who stayed and the divers who swam in radioactive pools to reach critical valves. Helicopter pilots also fell ill as they ferried in water and cement to smother the whole mess from above. Had they not sacrificed themselves -- or been sacrificed -- the harm would have been a great deal worse to the rest of the public.
To paraphrase that old saying... greater love hath no human, than one who lays down his or her life for others.
The film was inspired by events that were very real and very controversial. In March 1954, a massive thermonuclear weapon tested by the United States near Bikini Atoll in the Pacific, codenamed “Bravo,” detonated with about 2.5 times greater force than anticipated. The unexpectedly vast fallout from the bomb enveloped a distant Japanese tuna trawler named the Lucky Dragon No. 5 in a blizzard of radioactive ash. Crewmembers returned to their home port of Yaizu bearing blackened and blistered skin, acute radiation sickness and a cargo of irradiated tuna.
Audiences who flocked to “Gojira” were clearly watching more than just a monster movie. The film’s opening scenes evoked the nuclear explosion in the Pacific and the damaged Japanese bodies so poignant to domestic viewers. Godzilla — relentless, vengeful, sinister — looms as an overt symbol of science run amok.
The tragic irony is that this latest nuclear Godzilla is self inflicted.
Japan now has 54 nuclear reactors, ranking third in terms of energy output behind the United States and France. Japan also has an unusually shoddy record for nuclear safety.
But the destruction so familiar....
When I was a boy I carried a teddy bear under one arm, and a Godzilla doll under the other one. When I was a teenager I used to collect the movies. Now I'll never be able to watch another one without thinking of this terrible tragedy.
The good news? The Japanese are an amazingly resilient people. La Presse's Patrick Lagacé quotes Jean Dorion, a well known Montrealer who is married to a Japanese woman.
I don't believe in the "soul of peoples"; the culture of a nation doesn't come from any genetic code; it's the product of the conditions in which a people must live, and has lived.
Almost all the Japanese archipelago is nothing more than a long mountainous mass sprung from the ocean, covered with thick forest, with steep slopes that cannot be cultivated or inhabited. On its narrow coastal plains are crammed 125 million people, whose life would not be livable without civic discipline, good manners, and a desperate passion for work. Work and ingenuity are key to the prodigious success of a country devoid of resources.
When you put US before ME it's amazing what you can do eh?
Well we know how low he can go. Lower than any other Prime Minister in Canadian history. But never let it be said that Stephen Harper could ever be stopped from plumbing the depths of depravity.
I think the Japanese will find their way of coping, but the fact of the matter is this should be a wake-up that we cannot afford to take our focus off the economy and get into a bunch of unnecessary political games. Or, as I said, an opportunistic, unnecessary election that nobody is asking for."
And hypocrisy. Denouncing the opposition for threatening an election he has been planning for months. Bombarding the air waves with attack ads. And now making sure that when it comes, it will be fought on his terms.
The government has put off until March 25 a Liberal opposition day, which had been tentatively scheduled for Monday.
By delaying it until three days after the budget, the government has guaranteed it will get at least one last chance to trumpet its economic management before heading to the polls.
So now if the opposition parties bring him down on the contempt of Parliament issue, he can say I wanted to give you all those goodies but the nasty coalition didn't let me.
The bad news? A new poll suggests that most Canadians don't want the government brought down over the budget.
The Ipsos Reid poll found that only 27 per cent of Canadians believe the opposition parties should vote against the budget.
A further 17 per cent believe the opposition should wait to see what's in the budget before deciding what to do, while 40 per cent say the budget should be supported.
The good news? Canadians believe that the Cons should support medicare, and social programs. On that battlefield the Cons are vulnerable. And on the question of raping our democracy they stand condemned.
So what will the progressive parties do? Will they go sooner rather than later? Or will they keep the Cons in power for another year?
It's a difficult decision. But all I can say is when you gotta go.
You gotta go...
And the best news? The Cons are more vulnerable than they appear.
And when things are desperate, and you're staring at The Abyss.
I had a hard time getting up enough energy to blog tonight. Every story I wanted to write about is so depressing. Starting with this one.
As if the poor Japanese people hadn't suffered enough, now they must face their worst nightmare.
As must the rebels in Libya. Because now that the eyes of the world are focused on Japan, who will stop the degenerate tyrant from slaughtering them?
Then there's Obama, the human rights champion Pentagon stooge declaring that the treatment of Bradley Manning was "appropriate."
Obama responded that if Manning's treatment is good enough for the Pentagon, it is good enough for him. "I've actually asked the Pentagon whether or not the procedures that have been taken in terms of his confinement are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards," Obama said, suggesting some of those procedures were to protect Manning's safety. "They have assured me that they are."
"I became upset. Out of frustration, I clenched my hair with my fingers and yelled: 'Why are you doing this to me? Why am I being punished? I have done nothing wrong.'"
And then of course, there's that other cloud hanging over my head. The possibility that we could be fighting an election in less than ten days.
Stephen Harper might finally win his precious majority. And use it to torture and slaughter the Canada we know and love.
Oh boy. Talk about blogging in a nightmare world. If you don't blog you can try to ignore what's going on out there. If you do you can't.
I think I need a break. I may have to give up blogging, and just make videos. Or go back to writing poems about trees, even though the woods are full of policemen.
Or maybe I'll just do what the guy in this new R.E.M. video does.
And hope I'll feel better tomorrow ...
If I'm not ARRESTED.
And that's it eh? That's all I wanted to say.
Live life to the fullest. Fight for freedom as hard as you can.
