Octafish
Octafish's JournalNixon got let go.
He showed such promise only a few years earlier.
“Did Richard Nixon—then Citizen Nixon—jump-start the Vietnam War on a secret mission to Saigon in 1964? The following piece by Jim Hougan suggests that he may have. The following story originally appeared in the anthology, Nixon: An Oliver Stone Film, edited by Eric Hamburg (Hyperion, New York, 1995).”
http://jimhougan.com/wordpress/?tag=oplan-34-a
TEPCO and the Yakuza
How the Yakuza went nuclearWhat really went wrong at the Fukushima plant? One undercover reporter risked his life to find out
By Jake Adelstein
The Telegraph, 11:30AM GMT 21 Feb 2012
On March 11 2011, at 2:46pm, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake struck Japan. The earthquake, followed by a colossal tsunami, devastated the nation, together killing over 10,000 people. The earthquake also triggered the start of a triple nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, run by Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco). Of the three reactors that melted down, one was nearly 40 years old and should have been decommissioned two decades ago. The cooling pipes, “the veins and arteries of the old nuclear reactors”, which circulated fluid to keep the core temperature down, ruptured.
Approximately 40 minutes after the shocks, the tsunami reached the power plant and knocked out the electrical systems. Japan’s Nuclear Industrial Safety Agency (Nisa) had warned Tepco about safety violations and problems at the plant days before the earthquake; they’d been warned about the possibility of a tsunami hitting the plant for years.
The denials began almost immediately. “There has been no meltdown,” government spokesman Yukio Edano intoned in the days after March 11. “It was an unforeseeable disaster,” Tepco’s then president Masataka Shimizu chimed in. As we now know, the meltdown was already taking place. And the disaster was far from unforeseeable.
Tepco has long been a scandal-ridden company, caught time and time again covering up data on safety lapses at their power plants, or doctoring film footage which showed fissures in pipes. How was the company able to get away with such long-standing behaviour? According to an explosive book recently published in Japan, they owe it to what the author, Tomohiko Suzuki, calls “Japan’s nuclear mafia… A conglomeration of corrupt politicians and bureaucrats, the shady nuclear industry, their lobbyists…” And at the centre of it all stands Japan’s actual mafia: the yakuza.
It might surprise the Western reader that gangsters are involved in Japan’s nuclear industry and even more that they would risk their lives in a nuclear crisis. But the yakuza roots in Japanese society are very deep. In fact, they were some of the first responders after the earthquake, providing food and supplies to the devastated area and patrolling the streets to make sure no looting occurred.
CONTINUED...
Remember the Phantom Zone, where Superman sent Lex Luthor?
http://www.supermanartists.comics.org/superwhoswho/phantom%20zone.htmThere.
New galaxy 'most distant' yet discovered
Source: BBC
By Rebecca Morelle
Science reporter, BBC World Service
An international team of astronomers has detected the most distant galaxy yet.
The galaxy is about 30 billion light-years away and is helping scientists shed light on the period that immediately followed the Big Bang.
SNIP...
The system is small: about 1-2% the mass of the Milky Way and is rich in heavier elements.
But it has a surprising feature: it is turning gas and dust into new stars at a remarkable rate, churning them out hundreds of times faster than our own galaxy can.
CONTINUED...
Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24637890
z8_GND_5296
It's on the other side of practically forever.
Machine Gun Mouth
One of the things I first noticed at "Passing the Torch: An International Symposium on the 50th Anniversary of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy" was that many of the authors, researchers and others gathered were very reserved in one-on-one conversation.
Understandably so, after they met me. I have what Lisa Pease called "machine gun mouth." It's an unnatural phenomena. Anybody I met, from Joan Mellen to Jefferson Morley from Rex Bradford to William Kelly to a few new -- and good -- friends from Ohio and Pennsylvania and a whole nation over, fell like dominoes -- victim to my nonstop 500 word-per-minute verbal assault. I wasn't ranting at them, I was trying to tell them everything I'd learned over the last 50 years in about 50 seconds.
The looks on people's faces made me realize I needed to dial it down three or four orders of magnitude. I tried, but even then I couldn't help myself, the words would come up and fly at breakneck speed from my gob. Every single person there -- including arch-supporter of the Warren Commission, John McAdams, was interesting and kind to me and to everyone else.
It was unplanned. Some sort of venting of steam from a pressure cooker of a psyche. Normally, I'm intense, but it was ridiculous. I should have worked a simple elevator speech, which is a nice, brief, overview professional pitch-sters use. The point is: I need to learn how to make complex information concise, understandable, memorable -- and repeatable.
Why? Democracy depends on it.
PS: I knew I was too old to be cool anymore when I tried zooming in and focusing up on Oliver Stone as he made a presentation to the symposium. For some reason, he shot me a look. I looked at my borrowed camera and learned it shoots out a laser beam to focus and was zapping him as he talked. I put it away as soon as I realized it did that.
After JFK Conference, when I got home, I felt like RFK.
Heartbroken: I returned to Detroit to discover my best friend had died on the Wednesday I drove to Pittsburgh. It was a shock followed by a hammer blow -- the sudden, unexpected and complete loss of a most trusted friend who truly was my brother in work and in spirit.
My wife and friends did not want to tell me while I was there. Even my best friend's wife, whom I consider a sister, told my wife she wanted me to enjoy the once-in-a-lifetime experience. That's what my friend would have wanted, too.
A journalist, reporter and writer of the Old School, he was the one colleague with whom I most wanted to share what I learned at Duquesne. I got the tragic word upon my return home at 10:30 p.m. Saturday. When I saw my friend and her children at the service yesterday, Sunday, I cried. I'm still crying, typing these words.
The minute before I got the news, I felt like I was on top of the world. I had just returned from hearing many of the great people from whom I've learned over the past 50 years. Some of the younger authors and presenters knew about DU, a couple at least who said they'd learned and benefitted from DU. Regardless of names or percentages, we were there, learning and sharing information.
What I want to first report: DUers we aren't wasting our time following research, news, and analysis pertaining to the assassination of President Kennedy. In those three days, I learned more in many college courses I’ve taken on history or science. I couldn’t wait to share what I learned with my family and friends on DU and in life.
So, after being gone four days, I got home and greeted my family, whom I missed dearly. I sat down and took a bite to eat and asked why everyone was sad to see me. My wife told me my that we had lost a friend. His name was the first that came to mind, considering his job involved a lot of travel. My friend had passed away on Wednesday, perhaps while I was driving up to the conference.
No one knew what happened until his daughter came home from school and found him. He was a great man. Tops in every way. A family man. A patriot. A man of integrity. He was only 60. The blow will never leave my heart or anyone blessed to be part of his family, nor from the hearts and minds of those who knew him or crossed paths with him. He was that great a human being.
When I get my stuff together, I promise to share exactly the news and information from the JFK Assassination and what We the People can do to restore Justice in the JFK case. Of course it has to do with fair elections, stopping Wars without End for power and profit, and end Police State America. Hint: All it takes is You.
I will tell you why I felt like RFK upon my return from Pittsburgh: The loss of a brother leaves a void that cannot be filled.
Links for ALL that *** from DU.
At least in the present incarnation, the poster's only been here a week, so may've missed these:
Among new evidence that the Warren Commission did not disclose to the American public are the CIA-Mafia conspiracy to assassinate Fidel Castro, something that they had done previously to Patrice Lumumba and other world leaders before JFK was elected. Oh, and they never told President Kennedy that they were still working together to murder Castro, even though ordered to stop when President Kennedy learned of them. Of course, the American public might've objected when the disgraced director of that agency had been appointed to the Warren Commission, Allen Dulles. His brother, John Foster Dulles was Secretary if State for Ike and Tricky Dick, the nuclear bomber of Vietnam.
Thank you for grokking, Ghost in the Machine! There were dozens of instances where the presenters at the conference were documenting what we have long discussed on DU.
The Air Force One tape from Nov. 22, 1963 extant is now available for review...
Thanks to William E. Kelly, Jr. and Ed Primeau, the audio expert who analyzed the phone recording of the Zimmerman-Martin confrontation:
http://vimeo.com/76173546
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