bm164 Ishiharas Tokyo

He has been the governor of Tokyo since 1999, and successfully made many enemies with his opinions and policies. Shintaro Ishihara takes a lead role in his city, changing politics, society, and culture… but it may not be in the direction you expect. In another edition of the global series on mayors, Arudou Debito joins me to help explain the person and the policies behind Ishihara.

Correction from Debito, in case anyone is fact checking: I said the Takeshima/Tokdo islands were between China and Korea. They are in fact between Japan and Korea.

Shintaro Ishihara on Wikipedia
Debito.org

Hypocracy of Death

So lets just review:

A president of a country.

Gets involved in a few deadly and terrible wars.

Targets civilians and uses deadly weapons.

Strips citizens of their rights

Pockets most of the country’s wealth for himself or his friends

Plunders the wealth of other countries

Refuses to admit he has done anything wrong.

Insists that a president must do everything in his power to preserve the country and his office.

…..gets sentenced to death.

bmtv25 Busblog National Tour, NYC


Click To Play

A little throwback to last month, when I happened to be in NYC at the same time as my friend Tony Pierce. He was on the east coast swing of his busblog-cross-country extravaganza. This is just a little video gift for him to post and a souvenir of that day.

Oil in my Lamp

It is wintertime in Amsterdam. They skipped fall this year, just like they skip spring as well… welcome to the new globally warmed world.

Part of it being wintertime means it gets dark pretty fast in this upper part of continental Europa. Which of course means, more time with the lights on.. and that is where my subject of today came to mind: energy.

It powers your lamp. Or that fan on the powerbook that is now getting very loud cause Ive probably left it on all day. Electricity is obviously vital; so what do you know about where you electricity comes from? By all means, if you know, write it in the comments.

I’m going to take a guess about mine here in the Netherlands. I believe it is nuclear. Nuclear and perhaps parially windpower, since the city is basically surrounded by those beautiful white one-legged animals. Much of central Europe is actually nuclear powered, a side effect of having destroyed themselves in WWI and II, plus the investment dollars from the US of A that were likely earmarked for those big Montgomery Burns style cooling towers.

Of course it provides alot of power to alot of people, all over the world. And I was just reading how the UN’s nuclear agency is going to go on a PR mission to promote building more nuclear plants. Sounds lovely in their words. Clean, efficient, safe, powerful sources of energy.

Iranians with some fun stuff.

But I can’t help but think of the waste. The umm.. nuclear waste. The waste they still don’t know what to do with or how to get rid of it. In fact, they know they can’t get rid of it. In Nevada they built a giant radiation dump under a mountain called Yucca, where they believe they can hide all the nuclear waste and they won’t wake up one day to find their groundwater glows in the dark and they’ve got lots of previously unheard of cancers. In France I think I saw a report about a similar idea for disposal center where they’ll just pile it up in neat little piles for about 1,000 years when it won’t be as deadly.

It is not that I don’t like having power for my fridge or to charge my batteries, i recognize the necessity. But the choice of nuclear, and the continued investment in making more plants, that I cannot understand. For a world that still has not resolved IF there is even a way to handle the hazardous waste that comes from making this energy, it seems rather short sighted to push ahead with making more.

My suggestion, besides not investing in more nuclear, is to seek other sources. I’m not a scientist, I just play one on the blogosphere; but I know we have a never ending list of intellegent and innovative minds that could surely find another solution. Hell, maybe every city should surround itself in pretty wind generators. Or let them persue something more powerful… but please… let it be sustainable and beneficial to future generations, not some crazy burst of energy that leaves a deadly mess which cannot be cleaned.

Collective Amnesia and Unecessary Deaths

One US television weekly news program that I watch fairly religiously is 60 minutes. I don’t love it, but I’m fascinated by it and my own research indicates that 1 out of every 6 stories they cover are actually quite good. Still, I watch them all; the good, bad, and obscenely cliché.

In their most recent program, they began with a piece that had me extra annoyed and yelling at the screen as I so often do as I slowly spiral into madness. I highly recommend watching it online, as the channel has apparently decided to “get with it” and offer their content online for free.

The piece focused on the US military’s medical care for wounded soldiers, how modern, fast, efficient, and effective it has been. Throughout the report they include lots of impressive images of helicopters and super-medical planes to hammer home the point that the military is very modern and good at treating wounded. Which, I must say, is useful since you’ve got over 44,000 wounded soldiers so far.

Also included in the report are a few first-hand testimonies, from soldiers who survived and army doctors based in Baghdad. One particular lady got on my last nerve, as she did what so many of those interviewed did: get very solemn and teary eyed remembering those that died and then she goes on to say how hard they fight to save lives of soldiers and iraqi’s as well. There’s a few minutes even dedicated to an Iraqi child who died on the operating table.

Dead, wounded, and still they rationalize the bullshit.

That is about when I lost it, and I shall try to explain why…

There is no ignoring the enormous irony in all this. An army doctor crying about not having saved an iraqi child, while for most of the last 15 years, her military has bombed the shit out of the country and killed thousands upon thousands of children. Or the spectacle of an Iraqi working with the military talking about how so many people have died, but it is worth it.

How the hell does he know it is worth it? Who promised him that when democracy comes all lives will get better and peace/justice will reign. I can think of many many nations that have democracy and no such conditions exist in those countries. Yet this guy tells the camera, as he looks over the dead bodies of children: it is a sacrifice, but it is worth it.

What the hell measuring stick do these people use? How do they determine how many dead people per vote or maimed children per mcdonalds, indicate that it was all “worth it.”

All I see is violence on a terrible scale. And deaths that did not have to happen. Crying army doctors, destroyed lives, and legless veterans, going around telling us what a shame it sometimes is…. but hey.. it is all WORTH IT.

bm163 Other Elections Around the World

Everywhere you turn in the world of media it seems like the only election is that of the US congress next week. Yet big decisions are being made in different corners of the world, on every continent actually. This program is a brief run down of who and what is on the agenda in different elections worldwide right now. Naturally my opinion is mixed in there.. but so are the cold hard facts.

Wikipedia has a good Electoral Calendar