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Fukushima Is Here
500 people assembled on October 19th on Ocean Beach in San Francisco and formed the letters with their bodies to demonstrate their growing concern about eventual fallout on the west coast. Credit and More Information: FukushimaResponse.org
An ocean current called the North Pacific Gyre is bringing Japanese radiation to the West Coast of North America:
The leg of the Gyre closest to Japan - the Kuroshio current - begins right next to Fukushima:

While many people assume that the ocean will dilute the Fukushima radiation, a previously-secret 1955 U.S. government report concluded that the ocean may not adequately dilute radiation from nuclear accidents, and there could be “pockets” and “streams” of highly-concentrated radiation. Physicians for Social Responsibility notes:
An interesting fact for people living on the US west coast is also included in the UNSCEAR [United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation] report: only about 5% of the directly discharged radiation was deposited within a radius of 80 km from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power station. The rest was distributed in the Pacific Ocean. 3-D simulations have been carried out for the Pacific basin, showing that within 5–6 years, the emissions would reach the North American coastline, with uncertain consequences for food safety and health of the local population.
The University of Hawaii’s International Pacific Research Center created a graphic showing the projected dispersion of debris from Japan:
Last year, scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory and 3 scientists from the GEOMAR Research Center for Marine Geosciences showed that radiation on the West Coast of North America could end up being 10 times higher than in Japan:
After 10 years the concentrations become nearly homogeneous over the whole Pacific, with higher values in the east, extending along the North American coast with a maximum (~1 × 10?4) off Baja California. *** With caution given to the various idealizations (unknown actual oceanic state during release, unknown release area, no biological effects included, see section 3.4), the following conclusions may be drawn. (i) Dilution due to swift horizontal and vertical dispersion in the vicinity of the energetic Kuroshio regime leads to a rapid decrease of radioactivity levels during the first 2 years, with a decline of near-surface peak concentrations to values around 10 Bq m?3 (based on a total input of 10 PBq). The strong lateral dispersion, related to the vigorous eddy fields in the mid-latitude western Pacific, appears significantly under-estimated in the non-eddying (0.5°) model version. (ii) The subsequent pace of dilution is strongly reduced, owing to the eastward advection of the main tracer cloud towards the much less energetic areas of the central and eastern North Pacific. (iii) The magnitude of additional peak radioactivity should drop to values comparable to the pre-Fukushima levels after 6–9 years (i.e. total peak concentrations would then have declined below twice pre-Fukushima levels). (iv) By then the tracer cloud will span almost the entire North Pacific, with peak concentrations off the North American coast an order-of-magnitude higher than in the western Pacific. ***
(“Order-of-magnitude” is a scientific term which means 10 times higher. The “Western Pacific” means Japan’s East Coast.) In May, a team of scientists from Spain, Australia and France concluded that the radioactive cesium would look more like this:
A team of top Chinese scientists has just published a study in the Science China Earth Sciences journal showing that the radioactive plume crosses the ocean in a nearly straight line toward North America, and that it appears to stay together with little dispersion:
On March 30, 2011, the Japan Central News Agency reported the monitored radioactive pollutions that were 4000 times higher than the standard level. Whether or not these nuclear pollutants will be transported to the Pacific-neighboring countries through oceanic circulations becomes a world-wide concern. *** The time scale of the nuclear pollutants reaching the west coast of America is 3.2 years if it is estimated using the surface drifting buoys and 3.9 years if it is estimated using the nuclear pollutant particulate tracers. ***
The half life of cesium-137 is so long that it produces more damage to human. Figure 4 gives the examples of the distribution of the impact strength of Cesium-137 at year 1.5 (panel (a)), year 3.5 (panel (b)), and year 4 (panel (c)). *** It is worth noting that due to the current near the shore cannot be well reconstructed by the global ocean reanalysis, some nuclear pollutant particulate tracers may come to rest in near shore area, which may result in additional uncertainty in the estimation of the impact strength. *** Since the major transport mechanism of nuclear pollutants for the west coast of America is the Kuroshio-extension currents, after four years, the impact strength of Cesium-137 in the west coast area of America is as high as 4%.
Bluefin tuna on the California shore tested positive for radiation from Fukushima, and there are reports of highly radioactive fish in Canada. The CBS show The Doctors warned that we should be moderate with our fish intake, and children and pregnant women should be especially careful:
BONUS:
? Which Is Worse: A Rogue NSA … Or A President Who Gives His Approval And Then Lies About It?
? Top Mainstream Journalists: Key Evidence Withheld from Warren Commission and Other Government Investigations
? Countries Which Want to Rein In NSA Spying Collectively Have Bigger Economies than the U.S. and Its Spy Buddies
? Congress Gets More Info On NSA Spying from Newspapers than from Classified NSA Briefings
? Jim Rogers and Doug Casey: Never Before In History Have All Central Banks Printed At the Same Time
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does not work unfortunately. you will need professional lab gear to measure that. one molecule of plutonium will kill you, but will not show up on your geiger counter. i know it,s counter intuitive but its a fact.
Until Gore figures out a way to make money off of this, we'll continue to here nary a peep about it from the propaganda media.
I blame all the radiation on Manbearpigfukuppy, and I'm serial!
I blame it on Manbearape...
Fukuppy to the rescue!
But seriously, the fact that virtually ALL North American radiation monitoring stations (or at least their data) have been 'coincidentally' shut down since IMMEDIATELY after the Fukushima disaster tells us most of what we need to know about this crisis --- which is mainly that it IS a crisis, otherwise our benevolent federal government wouldn't care about suppressing knowledge of its true extent.
Here's all you need to watch about this disaster. It's about 48 mins long and you will not have any questions HOW this ends, just a matter of when.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4NRdbkGM_8
Let me recap some of the video for you but you really need to watch it to believe this.
1. Pacific ocean is completely dead in 2 years regardless of what they do tomorrow. They can completely stop all radiation pouring into the Pacific and it's dead in 2 years.
2. Starting Nov 10th they will attempt to pull the hot rods out of bldg 4 tower. This is going to be an almost impossible task done by non professionals because of how often they need to rotate. When, not if, this fails they will have to abandon Fukushima. Even if they are successful, the amount of radiation coming from the 3 melted cores will poison earth within most of our lifetimes.
3. In a very short time after abandonment, the island of japan ceases to be liveable.
4. Within a couple of years the whole of the northern hemisphere will die unless they have relocated.
5. A few short years later the southern hemisphere is dead.
I am not even worried anymore about loss of sovereignty or martial law as we are going to see billions of deaths in short order for those of us a couple of years away from the timeline above. I don't think this is bullshit either. Watch the guy in the video, he sure as hell believes it. Unless TPTB have a way to clean up radiation or plan to abandon earth, they are as fucked as we are.
Criminal negligence not to do the monitoring and research on concentration pathways and risk potential. Here is a few dozen pages of why that's so.
http://jopy.org/jimn.pdf
Highlights:
--Largest radiological event since atmospheric nuclear tests
--Larger iodine and xenon releases than entire Nevada Test Site sequence, said by US gov't to have killed tens of thousands at greater distances.
--Radiocesium is one of the most bioaccumulative substances known, no upper limit to concentrations in fish etc.
--Ocean and air dispersal studies, such as those that produced the charming graphics in GW's post here, were ALL conducted using intial release estimates that are a small fraction of what has now been proven.
And, breaking today in Japan...TEPCO says won't pay, government kinda shrugs.
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201310270048
Documents show government tacitly accepts TEPCO’s refusal to pay for cleanup
Fukushima: 28 Signs That The West Coast Is Being Absolutely Fried With Nuclear Radiation…http://ukiahcommunityblog.wordpress.com/2013/10/22/fukushima-28-signs-th...
And the lovely lady that was responsible for shutting them down after 3/11 is now the head of the EPA.
Bullish for rad sickness!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09LTT0xwdfw
Go long on pain pills...
Hope & Change MF'ers. No one said anything in the US govt since ths happened. Hillaryt sent the USS Ronald Reagan with some pumps - that's it. The West Coast voted for this.
http://www.jimstonefreelance.com/fukushima.html
"Hillaryt sent the USS Ronald Reagan with some pumps..."
And now they're all sick and dying - all 3,000+ of them - and the Reagan is going back.
NTI:
Any source on this?
or is it just common knowledge that I am ignorant of?
Scared sailors in SD, on their way to God knows what.
I wish the military took better care of their people. Pray for them.
I pray everyday this all goes away. Hasn't worked yet, but I keep trying.
Wei tu bright
Freddy, there is really no limits to your partisan inanity. You really think that Bush/McCain/Romney wouldn't be pulling the same "pretend it ain't happening" shit? No one "voted" to get poisoned by Fuckushima. The average person on the west coast is of little to no concern to the bought and paid for whores of both parties. Get a clue.
Good luck.
All these downvotes? Has no one ever seen a jetstream map?
http://www.intellicast.com/National/Wind/JetStream.aspx
Common sense, people.
"Jim Stone: The 'Groundbreaking' Fukushima Whistleblower is Now "The Fugitive," Running for His Life"
http://educate-yourself.org/cn/jimstonethefugitivehero03mar12.shtml
Gee I wonder why?
Do you think anyone in the U.S. Government will be selfless enough to bring the truth of this event into the public domain with criminal prosecution just like 9/11 and the U.S.S. Liberty incident?
Where are those dancing Israelis when you need them???
But wait! There's more. DO read the link to the South China Morning Post. It's going to be great next month!
http://www.scmp.com/news/asia/article/1340687/fukushima-nuclear-plant-op...
Of course all the scientists reached the same conclusions on this, they're probably all running the same simulators they use for global warming.
We still might buy a condo down here in Lima anyway, just sayin´... But, I agree, NO ONE knows how all of this is going to work out.
Ok these "Fukushima was a staged event" nuts are really making the true story seem like tinfoil. Fukushima is a disaster of epic proportions. It's a much, much, much bigger deal than most people appreciate. It's a story of gross negligence and incompetence, mixed with a devastating earthquake and a tsunami that people seem to have forgotten, killed thousands of Japanese people. What Fukushima was not, is some plot to blow up a reactor. Nobody was conducting any kind of operation during a major tsunami. And there are many much easier and devastating ways to blow up a reactor. Bringing up this hokey shit just makes the real dangers of Fukushima radiation sound like tinfoil -- which they're not. Leave this uber wacky shit on the sidelines, and spread the word about the radiation dangers. There was no sekrit government plot to create a cloud moving towards California, which will kill people in 40 years. It's not even a good theory.
Could not agree more popo, the lack of capacity to rationalize data and prosaic natural phenomena, which is commonplace to this area, in these fuku threads, has me despairing at the shear nincompoopery I keep seeing. That absurdist jim-stone crap is the most pathetic garbage I've perhaps ever seen on the internet, and now he's supposed to be some sort of fucking 'hero' on the hoof? ... omg, please make it stop.
There is a major radiation release, it's a chronic health issue, that will over the next few generations kill thousands (almost all Japanese), but it is not the end of the world, it is not even close to the end of Japan, it is not the end of the pacific ocean. Though it may eventually be the end of eating seafood taken from Japanese mid-coast fisheries, for a century or so, and from coastal farmland.
As for California, what a bunch of pussies you are, let me know when you've given up being fat-asses, smoking, drinking, not exercising and eating all sorts of shit junk food, driving cars and sucking up blow, and sucking down whatever form of drug smoke you use, before you whine about your pitifully low radiation exposure from fuku and incapacity to weigh the scale of this hazard, in proportion to all the other chronic health risks, that you daily don't give a damn about, eh?
You're just self-centered sooks, pretending to be 'victims'.
Jim Stone crap? Why was there a massive 'emergency drill' involving the US and Japan one day before 3/11?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydAj1pT7upk&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dyd...
All the previous drills are listed, which all 'coincide' with nasty events happening. Pretty disgusting.
Hey Element
Since you are the resident expert on nuclear technology and radiation effects. Was curious what you have to say about the medical benefits? In particular to those "fat-ass, drinking, sucking up blow" crowd that constitutes the vast majority of people out on the West Coast that want to conceive -in your opinion?
Can't wait to hear your response.
http://www.alternet.org/environment/american-babies-born-right-after-fukushima-show-elevated-rate-abnormalities
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-04-03/study-almost-one-third-babies-born-after-fukushima-alaska-california-hawaii-o
http://rt.com/op-edge/fukushima-catastrophe-health-japan-803/
Say, you're not trolling are you? I see you like to over-react and to feel upset if you don't get your confirmation-bias fix and consensus, and not he first time recently either.
That's OK, but analysis and counterpoint will not spare your feelings or confirmation-biases. That you can count on.
"There is a major radiation release, it's a chronic health issue, that will over the next few generations kill thousands (almost all Japanese), but it is not the end of the world, it is not even close to the end of Japan, it is not the end of the pacific ocean."...
So Element
Let me get this straight as I read it correctly the first time you said it.
It will continue to devastate and last for "a few generations" and will "kill thousands" or "most of Japan" which has a population of well over a hundred million. Can you put a bit more specifics in with the ambiguity in the estimates you just served up when we're talking about the residual half life of cessium strontium and the like?
It's bad enough when you destroy a Country (the same Country) you decimated not once, not twice but three times in the last 68 years and wash your hands of it again like a good criminal would, but you are confident that it's not going to kill anyone else across the Western Hemisphere first and of course eventually the Southern when it "mozies on down that a 'way"... I also noticed that you didn't bother to mention any of the links I provided -but who the hell is Helen Caldicott anyway???
I would ask you if you were getting paid for this, but it seems pretty clear that you run independent and either don't know or don't care about the subject on which you appear to show an interest.
Don't try to put your words in my mouth, I said, "... that will over the next few generations kill thousands (almost all Japanese) ... i.e. almost all of the people who die will be people from Japan.
Hellen Caldicott is an hysterical over-reactive dingbat with a vivid imagination and no sense of proportion, and that's on a good day, minus coffee, so I'm not surprised you're an avid fan there, Moonbeam. Why should I refer to some links? I answered your smart-arsery troll question with more attention than it deserved.
Be careful on that high-horse, your hienie might slip and fall on your ample confirmation-bias.
EDIT: just noticed your 10 weeks 25 min noob status at zh. A tip; if you want to cry your jowls wet over the plight of Ghia's little children you best go find one of those internet ghettos where group-hugs and affirmations abound like lollipops. But don't think your habit of indulging in sappy-schtick and faux indignation cuts it. You've already accused me of working for GE, and a couple of other corporations, and also of being a former pentagon employee, which all tars you as an ignorant dimwitted paranoid fuckwit who can't face facts and analysis.
hey Element. Who the fuck are you and what makes you better qualified to disparage Dr Caldicott in this way you fucking pea brain?
Au-contraire, who is 'Dr' Caldicott to discuss any nuclear science matter, as though she's qualified, when her only formal training and qualified degree, is in medicine?
i.e. so she has no relevant training or qualifications at all, she's an anti-nuke protester (as are most people actually, I'm very anti-nuclear-weapons myself), she has no qualifications to talk on nuclear energy matters. Open and shut case.
You didn't know this? Well now you do.
Most people trained in nuclear related sciences think she's a prodigious spreader of bullshit, an irrational nut-job, a joke. I've heard her talking on radio, TV and video over the years, hence my descriptive and well-informed comments about the sort of person she is. You may treasure one-eyed propagandists like her but I do not. I look at things as they are, and pay as little attention as possible to the waffling narcissistic warped morons like Caldicott.
I'll do my own thinking on these things thanks - get over it. :D
Wow! I'm honored -3 years and 8 weeks
Looks like you've had plenty of time to cover before Fukushima even happened?
Me thinks we hit some sort of a nerve!...
"We?" So you're a "we" now? What, like a collective hive-mind of bullshitters? You know nothing of discussions at zh, in over 2.5 years of closely following this topic, and you obviously don't like nor wish to acknowledge straight fact, plain-English analysis, and appropriate skepticism in discussions. But you do drool touchy-feebly anecdotes and sop-stories, like they matter or impart credibility to your views. And now you presume to know my views, as well? People here know my views, and you sure don't, they're on the zh record though. You act like many previous dewy-eyed examples of the dumb-dumb tribe who've stumbled into zh sprouting emotive tales of woe and actually expecting to get a pat on the head for citing ignorant populist drivel.
Hey man, some of us here are like, regular folks lol.
I was on the Amtrak over the weekend. I wasn't a part of it, but the train was packed with Raiders fans heading from the Sacramento area to Oakland, drinks at 8 in the morning, the usual. These two people sat behind me and they sounded like farming trailer folks, real simple. The guy kept pointing stuff out from the window, every little thing that passed, and the gal responded with some comments. She sounded too nice for this gayass world. You don't get real nice simple people too much these days. It was kind of refreshing to hear.
Of course, they were equipped with iPhones. =P
Bit too much cali stereo typing? lol Yeah, I know, was just making that point SB, cheers.
Element:
The last few weeks I have been wondering what the effects of the math of the 'background' radiation might be.
The thought came to me that if the old 'normal' was x-10 to the something power that over time this background radiation has to increase and we have no idea of what that means in increased cancer fatalities.
I don't really know what I am asking except that intuitively I sense that this is going to be much uglier than anyone is talking about----have you heard anything about the math of this increased nuclear radiation?
Sorry to be such and ignoramus, but that is who I am
One thing about your intuition and humans in general is they always underestimate the effect of the exponential function. In this case the effect on decay rate. A year or so back some one asked how people can even be walking around on the SPF deck near to where so much lethal radioactivity was present and measured in Mar-April 2011?
Exponential decay.
It's not possible for me to make a meaningful dispersal model as the movement of fluids, isotopes and concentrations are all unknown. I think it's safe to say if you're in the exclusion zone it's not a healthy place to be (especially in the NW quadrant), but as has been pointed out, the air-borne radiation dispersed and fell-out much more widely than the exclusion zone within the first week anyway. The cloud was observed and measured, and the background delta is now measurable where the cloud's deposits fell and were concentrated. So modelling background delta is then superfluous.
If none of the cores start self-interacting and spluttering, at high temperature, that should largely be it with regard to regional background fall-out inputs. So the radiation fallout contour maps are more meaningful, as most radioactive metal cations will bind chemically almost immediately with phyllosilicate mineral structures, within clays in soil and river systems. So they are not likely to become airborne after that.
So that's it, except for the on-going dispersal in the water table and Japanese marine environment, close to the plant. That I think is going to increase steadily with time, despite the pumping and treatment of ground water. Rain is also increasing this contamination's mobility. But also, as we've also just seen, every time you get a typhoon and heavy rainfall, coming close to the plant, the rain and wave action and induced rapid current flow along the coast and over the littoral means the tendency to dilute, disperse, and to also bury the contaminants that are already present in sediments, is going to be high.
It remains to be seen what the NET background effect of that will be, ten years on, and I don't think math can tell us much that's realistic, it will come down to measuring what's present in marine life and sediment, and if there are any 'hotspots' emerging, further from the plant.
I know this website shows some scary 'models' of radiation dispersment over the years.
Scary radiation model simulations report
One radiation model showing appx radiation levels (in the ocean) 3 years out from the fukushima accident
Best not to tell them about Santa Susana, which melted down inside the LA metro area......might cause anxiety
Great example. The fact you can walk around the Navada Test Site these days as well will little issue from RAD accumulation, and that people in Nevada and Utah don't have a second head, and massive cancer death rates shows the former chronic effects were ameliorated by exponents, and dispersal.
Any way you look at that, it's pointing to the fact that even the >95% of an A-bomb's core that does not fission, is still a whole lot less numbers of atoms than the rest of the exposed landscape of the the mid-western states. Add time and exponential decay rates to that and the chronic radiation hazard is quite low. And that was from scores of bomb cores detonated in Nevada.
So the longer it takes the Fuku water to spread, the better. With any luck (i.e. if removing the fuel from SFPs goes well, big 'if') we'll be waiting a long time before we see serious health effects from Fukushima prefecture's population, and neighboring prefectures. The slower the water moves the better and as I see it, the engineers are trying to slow it, so I don't know why everyone keeps saying they are doing nothing.
For sure other things will occur and everyone will begin to freak-out periodically, but if they keep pulling out the gamma components, and slow the water migration, that's a far better result than I would have hoped for, two years ago. The problem of continuous gamma-treated water accumulation remains and I can't see any happy ending coming for those water tanks.
How many long term storage tanks can the build Jim? None so far it seems.
They are using the filtration system to strip out the contaminants and then putting the ultra-nasty stuff into cask-like containers in a trench. Lots of concrete blocks are involved too. It's a lot like medium term above ground storage in the US. Although honestly, the site is so wet and unstable that I hope they are not thinking decades for this storage model...but chances are they are. And it COULD be OK....
There is a shitload (technically) of cesium in the post-treatment gunk. And other stuff. Kind of Hanford-style nasty. Nothing like this has been handled in Japan as they didn't have nuclear weapons fab (that we ever heard about, heh).
They're only able to 'filter' a very small portion of the cascading fluid emissions from the failed NPP's. If they're even bothering to filter anything at this point.
Nuclear weapons fab?
'Secret Weapons Program Inside Fukushima Nuclear Plant?'http://hetuurvandewaarheid.info/2011/04/12/secret-weapons-program-inside...
I guess the French came in handy in that respect. Looks like the plan is to let most of it decay in the barrels before taking it any further. Sure going to be a lot of it in ten more years. I'm wondering what they plan to do about the strontium90 in the storage tanks. If it gets flushed out in rain storms it's probably going to travel a ways before getting incorporated into crustaceans and plankton, fish, etc.
great .#Eugene..who needs 'nuclear free' when you got nuclear 'tracktown' look for @Nike to exploit this market!
re:nuclear underwear
re: frogs...http://www.midilibre.fr/2013/10/25/tricastin-un-reacteur-arrete-en-urgen...
re:#EWEB's secret deal regarding Trojan Nuclear Power Plant...(R.I.P.)
Yeah, but John Wayne and a bunch of the crew that filmed that one movie in the '60's where they brought in truckloads of soil from Nevada to CA to reproduce the look for the movie all died of cancer years later. It was determined that soil was in fact radioactive from the '40's-50's nuclear testing.
They were filming directly downwind of recent and on-going nuclear testing. Exponetial decay still takes time and they didn't give it any, and 1955-56 was one of the more active periods of US testing. A very bad location to set up camp.
Thanks for the clarification. Another subject - Google barges - Drone Swarm Launch Platforms (DSLP's). 1.3 billion rounds of hollow point ammo; 30-40,000 drones in the air 24/7 by end of '14 - "the bigger the lie, the easier it is for people to believe it," Goebbles, I believe. All the appointed czars - a government within a government; usurped America. Attack to proceed as soon as everything is in place - 4-6 months. Ok; crazy? if you knew it were true, what would you do about it? What could anyone do about it? Drones with hollow point ammo. FEMA coffins....doesn't it seem like there's something really bizzare going on? I know I'm not the only one who 'feels' it.
very interesting information...
The timing of this event (tsunami, nuclear catastrophe) is uncanny, though. The triumvirate of USA, Japan, Germany (due to the military reorganizations of all those nations post WWII) is a study in itself. The defeated two, stripped of military defence, were directing their significant population's powers into production. Not by accident is Germany the lynchpin holding a leprous EU together. Not by accident is Japan (bereft of natural resource) such a has-been exporting powerhouse: See MacArthur's reorganization effort and establishment of constitution, land reform, and banking structure mirroring the USA. So the economic cooperative of the EU is pinned by the exorbitant skills, intelligence and production of Germany. The East is pinned by the Japanese satellite. (We shan't speak of the 1971 Nixon nix of the gold standard and rapprochement of China).
The financial crises with two waves, 2000 Nasdaq and 2008 Everything Else including collossal state-sponsored fraud, revealed the global system of recent construction. Stepping back, 1913 Warburgs from Hamburg help set up Fed in USA, coincidentally and obviously without relationship 1914 began a "Great War" which devastated Europe. Tremendous debt accrued to other "disinterested" nations. Then a revolution in wealthy Russia. Tipped over by the Russo-Japanese weakening underwritten partially by a fantastic internationalist. 1917. The great upper continent to the East of that terrible conflict. Balance sheet wipeout. Complete accounting sheet do-over. 1929, 16 years from foundation, the great industrial powerhouse nation USA unaccountably tips everything over into a global recession. The poppy-eaters who took on too much debt reaching for "gain" found that debt could not be serviced. Someone, something, took over a vast swath of USA productive capacity. Intended? No certainly not. Transfer of thousands of independent lights of free enterprise over to some vast unknown "dark empire"? Surely not. 1929-1939. Interim years where blighted nations consolidated their "new world order". Click boots and salute, you slime.
Another Great War. USA remarkably retooled, reordered, shifted to meet these attacks on "democracy and the rights of men". Lend-Lease. Marshall's great plan. Pawnshop for the world. "How can we help". Coincidentally China goes on a self destruction (make some fields fallow so that the next, next planting might be bountiful) and cleans house. SouthAsia goes into a copy-cat routine but a such small scale that they can host "wars" of small enough scale that they can stimulate economies without spill-over.
Anyway, long=short. The latest financial crises or war by other means required that sufficient fear be generated that the unwashed crew of this RED OCTOBER warcraft be able to ingest the next formulations. Pure money printing, much sterilized, much not. Pretense of floating sovereign debt into a global market practically without trade-supplied surplus. How to mop up this call for liquidity by debt purchases without necessary surplus of global production? Fiat. USA massive expansion of sovereign debt to counteract the withdrawal by the tiny free-market remnant of its household economy. Not enough, not enough.
Fukushima. Now Japan was terrifically indebted due to their usury roll over of decades before; however, how to nudge them into the global debt ponzi? Still commendable exporter. Still commendable industry, robust and delevered generally. Ah! Energy. Middle East and those Texas Tesoroans. 10 gallon hats and Keffiyah. Anglo-Semetic knitwork. Nationally impactive, horror-inducing (nearly as terroristic as huge skyscrapers falling unimpeded except Ma Nature wuz the culprit, not box-cutter madmen) AND requiring the suspension of all nuclear generated power. Where to source the gap in production? Ah-ha. LNG and Crude oil. Japan tips over into a structural and mortal death-spin as it goes over to the dark side of energy importation. The YEN and central bank? Can't settle energy in YEN, must settle in new Thalers, New Rome's hottest issuance. "Who's image and superscription impresses this coin? Caesar? Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's--and unto God that which is God's". No God on this dark chessboard. Japan enters into the INTERNATIONAL debt expansion to keep the roulette wheel spinning. Corrupt croupiers? Surely not. What Nasdaq bubbles of impossible computer/information companies could not deliver, what sponsored fraud of the entire globe's lands and structures could not provide, surely energy and sovereign bonds shall do.
China announces, "the 2008 global crisis nullified our foreign purchases and international markets, we have turned inward, and to our near neighbors." Japan announces 2/2/2 while filling their occupied space with radioactives (real and imagined), USA pretends to put their bonds to the "severe scrutiny of the marketplace" while really purchasing them directly with the ruse of some impartial middlemen.
Rock-ribbed realists under dominion must face their appointed destinies. They are not in driver's seats. And while their nominal leaders are buffoons without any memorable redeeming national policies and corruption, graft, and contemptuous failure, the "lessor", pitiable nations have Peter the great or energetic emporer types guiding the helm.
A sorry state of affairs. Glad that I only know what I read in the (online) papers.
http://j.people.com.cn/94476/206575/8434604.html
http://j.people.com.cn/94476/8436173.html