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Meet The Minimum-Wage Homeless Who Are "Cleaning Up" Fukushima (For The Yakuza)
"We're an easy target for recruiters," one homeless man explains. "We turn up here with all our bags, wheeling them around and we're easy to spot. They say to us, are you looking for work? Are you hungry? And if we haven't eaten, they offer to find us a job." As Reuters exposes, 3 years after the earthquake and tsunami that caused the meltdown at Fukushima's nuclear facility, Northern Japanese homeless are willing to accept minimum wage (from yakuza-based entities) for one of the most undesirable jobs in the industrialized world: working on the $35 billion, taxpayer-funded effort to clean up radioactive fallout across an area of northern Japan larger than Hong Kong.
Seiji Sasa hits the train station in this northern Japanese city before dawn most mornings to prowl for homeless men.
He isn't a social worker. He's a recruiter. The men in Sendai Station are potential laborers that Sasa can dispatch to contractors in Japan's nuclear disaster zone for a bounty of $100 a head.
"This is how labor recruiters like me come in every day,"
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It's also how Japan finds people willing to accept minimum wage for one of the most undesirable jobs in the industrialized world: working on the $35 billion, taxpayer-funded effort to clean up radioactive fallout across an area of northern Japan larger than Hong Kong.
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In January, October and November, Japanese gangsters were arrested on charges of infiltrating construction giant Obayashi Corp's network of decontamination subcontractors and illegally sending workers to the government-funded project.
In the October case, homeless men were rounded up at Sendai's train station by Sasa, then put to work clearing radioactive soil and debris in Fukushima City for less than minimum wage, according to police and accounts of those involved. The men reported up through a chain of three other companies to Obayashi, Japan's second-largest construction company.
Obayashi, which is one of more than 20 major contractors involved in government-funded radiation removal projects, has not been accused of any wrongdoing. But the spate of arrests has shown that members of Japan's three largest criminal syndicates - Yamaguchi-gumi, Sumiyoshi-kai and Inagawa-kai - had set up black-market recruiting agencies under Obayashi.
"We are taking it very seriously that these incidents keep happening one after another," said Junichi Ichikawa, a spokesman for Obayashi. He said the company tightened its scrutiny of its lower-tier subcontractors in order to shut out gangsters, known as the yakuza. "There were elements of what we had been doing that did not go far enough."
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Reuters found 56 subcontractors listed on environment ministry contracts worth a total of $2.5 billion in the most radiated areas of Fukushima that would have been barred from traditional public works because they had not been vetted by the construction ministry.
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"If you started looking at every single person, the project wouldn't move forward. You wouldn't get a tenth of the people you need," said Yukio Suganuma, president of Aisogo Service, a construction company that was hired in 2012 to clean up radioactive fallout from streets in the town of Tamura.
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"There are many unknown entities getting involved in decontamination projects," said Igarashi, a former advisor to ex-Prime Minister Naoto Kan. "There needs to be a thorough check on what companies are working on what, and when. I think it's probably completely lawless if the top contractors are not thoroughly checking."
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"I don't ask questions; that's not my job," Sasa said in an interview with Reuters. "I just find people and send them to work. I send them and get money in exchange. That's it. I don't get involved in what happens after that."
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"The construction industry is 90 percent run by gangs."
It would seem, perhaps, that France (and the US) need their own nuclear accident to unleash an employment boom...
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Remember, there but for the grace of God (and a little forward planning) go we.
Wait your turn but it is coming don't worry.
Tough to accept that the only people willing to volunteer for this shit job is the desperate homeless.
TEPCO says all is well though.
Sushi anyone?
the pride of tepco, an army of bums.
In Russia they did the same thing.
But what was even worse by contracting poor people is that they are stealing everything that isn't nailed down.
In Tjernobyl for example, all the television sets, radio's, furniture... all the belongings from the citizens of the city ended up in second hand stores in Moscow and other cities.
Needles to say that all that crap was highly radioactive...
Should dump all the radioactive crap on the CEO's / HR's front door. Might be able to negotiate a pay rise. I wonder if any of them will figure it out?
And the unemployed in the USSA say there are no jobs....smh
Vlad the impaler would sooooooo approve of this! Fix two problems at once. Kill off the homeless and almost fix the greatest ecological disaster ever known. Freakin' brilliant.
And Hitler need the jews to clean up his act too.
Expect to see the same tactics in the future. A somewhat more 'civilized' approach that avoids messy 'showers' and crematoriums.
The homeless in Japan are referred to as 'lost people'.
That nobody gives a fuck about them in Japan should come as no surprise as nobody gives a fuck about them anywhere you go (as long as they're kept away).
Also, the whole thing is probably easy to justify by the govheads in Japan as they tend to be elderly and less vulnerable to the radiation.
Sickening, but that's what they're probably thinking.
Fallout fodder.
Actually, I think you will find that when it comes down to sacrifice, NOONE gives a fuck about anyone else except perhaps their wife/husband and kids, the dog, and perhaps any surviving parents.
@sudden debt
interesting article from Wikipedia regarding this cleanup:called liquidator
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquidator_%28Chernobyl%29
Liquidated.
this tells you more.
No., cause they can tell you anything.
Show respect. They are no longer bums. They are SACRIFICING THEIR LIVES FOR YOU. Blame the exploiter, not the exploited.
Give them CBLB 502 and they will be fine. It is immoral to put them in harms way without this novel safe and effective immunotherapy antidote for radiation toxicity.
Nowhere does it say they volunteered.
Man's inhumanity to man. And yes, but for the grace of God it could be us.
Haha, are you taking the piss. We're all the same, all equal. Your god isn't going to vanquish one person or group of people because they are "them" and not "us". No, silly me, you are taking the piss.
Mea maka big dollah
Dona care if Donga grlow-you worka now!
These people are worthless to the authorities, they will not complain, they won't sue and when they die no one will look for them.
I guess the Japanese ran out of Chinese and Koreans to use for the labor. I am sure they miss their labor camps from WW2 right about now.
They don't want to use the Chinese or Koreans for this kind of work; they save those people for real work they want done. They put the homeless to work on this so that a) organized crime makes more margin money on the labor hours using homeless people, b) you keep your foreign, imported, indentured labor for real work, and c) you eliminate a social problem and save money in so doing while cleaning up the site by using the homeless.
Oi, FM, you never answered my rebuttal of your thesis on gold and why, if it is such a bad thing, central banls are loading up on the stuff like it's going out of fashion.
As to your god comment, "but there for the grace of god go we". I have been racking my brain for a word to succinctly describe the untold suffering of innocents in this world, suffering on a scale that is simply unimaginable and unthinkable. Finally, with your help I have that word: Grace.
This makes me sick
End of man look pretty not.
Very slowly at first - then, WOW! All of the fuckin' sudden!
The fall and devastation, even over the last 20 years - even with the spiffy new gadgets that makes it seem like we're progressing - has been breathtaking.
The one thing I cannot stand is the "look how great we are"' and "look how far we've come" mentalities that permeate the technology sector and its end users (all humans now). The smartest of the smart, who actually work on the stuff we 'enjoy' as 'consumers' accept without compromise or question completely-closed-system, mass-produced, limited-functionality products as the crowning achievement of humanity.
The longer the acceptance of an evil heirarchy, the greater the end damage.
I've heard of a country that actually build a city right next to a nuclear testing ground where they exploded over 57 nuclear bombs in the open air!!
sick shit...
and it's proven that the people living there are almost all obese and have half the normal IQ's...
Which came first, the IQ or the living there?
trick question
Las Vegas? That would certainly explain all of the dumb ass people I see walking on the strip when it's 117 outside.
Half the normal? Well lets now, 60 divived by 2 equals 30, oh yeah that explains it!
Japan and the Japanese are SO SO DISGUSTING! They deserve what will be coming their way!
It's not just the Japanese.
And, no one deserves what's coming our way except the fucktards that 'lead' us here.
Dad?
nuclear fodder. the poor always make the best fodder.
Beat me to it Snob. Grist for the mill.
Yep. There's plenty of them, they make more of them every day and they never complain (unless you count a tree falling in the forest with nobody around to hear it as complaining).
what a great idea! maybe ben/fat cow can authorize a nuclear meltdown in the US to create jobs for all the homeless in the states. if you cant starve them to death, you can radiate them to death. BULLISH!!!
Just when I thought the elites could not get any lower.........ROT IN FUCKING HELL TEPCO AND NIP ELITES.
i think they hit the short term bottom in 2001 when they had planes fly in the towers and then blew up the pentagon. not sure if they will go lower. altho, drastic times call for drastic measures. so grab your nuts and hold on tight. 2014 going to be really bad.
Perhaps our illegals could be rounded up and sent there to help for 2 years minimum... penance for breaking our laws. Might also be a good penalty for Contempt of Congress and perjury.
Amazing, all focus on the financial cost and lets just ignore the concept of people.
The TEPCO CEO should be in there shovelling this shit in the clean up ...he ain't!
Where are the rest of the management team ... put them in there too.
That's how I'd handle it. Round up every TEPCO Board Member and Executive and place them in a conference room onsite under armed guard. Tell them you've made this mess, you are responsible, and you will solve it or die trying. Seize the Chairman and throw him into one of the reactor buildings. Every 48 hours, throw another one in.
Instead, you have the Japanese leadership spinning furiously, the entire country in denial, the Construction Mafia sucking huge amounts of taxpayer funds to turn over dirt, a future water and food crisis, and a large number of children developing leukemia and thyroid cancers. This is only the beginning, and it will get worse.
Look! Olympics!
Fuckers.
It makes all the sense in the world and yet no sense at the same time.
You could envy a sociopath... at least until you observe how bored they are.
I think I see a pattern.
What a bunch of Kamikaze the Japs are
This is such a life affirming story; to think that these guys at the end of their rope are offered another chance in life. It might seem a little cheesy, but im reminded of a song, so don't feel foolish for singing along ...
I see trees of green,
red roses too.
I see them bloom,
for me and you.
And I think to myself,
what a wonderful world.
The darker the sky, the brighter the stars. How people come together and support each other in this difficult time really warms my heart. It reminds me of a song too:
The world is full of beautiful things Butterfly wings, fairy tale kings And each new day undoubtedly brings Still more beautiful things. ... Our lives tick by like pendulum swings Delicate things, butterfly wings Life is full of beautiful things Beautiful people, too … Beautiful people like you.Still better than going days without food, wondering if that meal of moldy melon bread was the last one. Who knows, maybe some of them will grow into respected nuclear energy experts.
Oh it's all okay because they agreed to do the work. Happy capitalist transaction. Shame about the minimum wage though, now they won't be able to hire enough homeless bums to get it all cleaned up in time.
/sarc !!!!!!! ( because I know some people here won't get it )
Yet more evidence of the amazing recovery.
I'm thinking they must do a hell of a job in cleaning radioactive fallout! Isn't there supposed to be some training/work experience/whatever?
Japan will probably soon declare decontamination is over. But with such skilled cleaners as these poor people, I'd doubt it.
There's a clever jingle in here somewhere, for those who recall the old Noodle Roni Fettuccini Taste of Old Italy -- insert Fukushima Yazukami Glowing Low Wage Employee.
This isn't much different than the situation in say West Virginia. You go into the coal mines, ruin your lungs, but your wife and kids get to eat.
TEPCO is the Yakuza.
Everything always comes down to money. The central bank of Japan keeps printing to support the rich, and the poor are subjected to the worst possible abuses a person can think of. It's a sick fucking never changing world we live in.
Someone please explain to me again why it's a good idea to have nuclear reactors producing electricity instead of coal fired plants????
Oh yeah, I get it; so you can lower those unsightly homeless & unemployed numbers from your economic reporting!
"The goverment reported that the homeless percentage is 7....uh, make that 5...percent of the population..."
Maybe, later on, they can call the heroes and patriots?
how else do you call walking meat willing to die for minimum wage?
I'm waiting for the Edward Snowden of TEPCO!
another reuters report
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/25/us-fukushima-workers-specialreport-idUSBRE99O04320131025
Special Report: Help wanted in Fukushima: Low pay, high risks and gangsters
Yakuza?
Wait a minute im confused...
you mean TEPCO, right?
Micky D's Japanese style.
D= death.
"I don't ask questions; that's not my job," Sasa said in an interview with Reuters. "I just find people and send them to work. I send them and get money in exchange. That's it. I don't get involved in what happens after that."
Wow! This man should be the head of the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare. Such a purist. No need for corrupt influences........he is a pure sociopath.
Sounds like a candidate for Obamacare navigator.
Good Old Capitalism in its paroxism, straight ahead to the end.
"It's a wonderful world..." Indeed.
old british doc from 13 years ago about clean up crews includes yakuza recriuting the homeless tepco has been killing people along with ge for decades.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNq0qyQJ5xs
+1000
Much obliged for the continuing education and the rabbit hole that has no bottom. It's timely this was posted just one month after the Fukushima disaster and only has a "few thousand" posts?
It's too bad public television in the U.S. back in 1995 didn't have the guts to confront the DOE/NRC with the showing of this documentary, but then again the U.K. did, and was anybody out there really paying attention 18 years ago till now? You come to the conclusion like the individuals in this documentary that anything can be purchased for a price with pieces of paper in exchange for silence even when it's over a technology that threatens everything.
Hope everybody on this thread spends the 30 minutes to view this for it's historical relevance. It's not even New Year's yet, but after watching this I think everyone should make the celebration a marathon this year!
There are thousands of highly qualified nuclear clean up technicians all over America. Tepco needs to recruit them too.
And if the model works out well enough just think of all the commericial nuclear reactors in the U.S. and Europe that may need the same care and feeding after years of neglect because there is no more money to keep them running properly courtesy of the MIC.
I have 50+ candidates in the U.S. already that are sutiable for the job having worked with nuclear technology that are a perfect fit. Just so long as they don't die too soon.
P.S.
I also have a fabulous Israeli Company for hire that will take care of all of the perimeter security to ANY commerical nuclear facility for a great price.
Please contact the Israeli embassy, CIA or Pentagon in Washington D.C. for further details.
So...this is about the best place to ask....
Is there anyone that is going to/can/be willing to collect radiological data off the shores of Hawaii?
It would be helpful to hear some real time reporting going into 2014 with the expected 'plume' arriving there before hitting the west coast.
Any one NOT part of a government agency that is?
A typically brilliant strategy by Banksters: Kill Two Birds with One Stone. Get rid of your homeless and your nuclear mess at the same time.
Except methinks they'll only cure the homeless mess and not the other.
so what, a .500 batting average gets you into the hall of fame in many sports, we are talking sports right??
The poor design of the reactors was enthusiastically guided by GE top management amid protests from many engineers back in the day.
They use homeless because they couldn't find enough graduate students to do the work.
In th 1950's there were all these movies about monsters in an irradiated Japan.. it has come to pass. The monsters just work for TEPCO.
We should send all the federal government drones (the machine kind) to do this, thus solving toxic radiation and toxic surveillance.
Send the non machine drones too please.
"The construction industry is 90 percent run by gangs."
and not just in Japan. and not just the construction industry.
And that's how you get rid of the riff raff.
What if prisoners were given extra 'good time' for Fukashema public service. Japan is past the time where hard moral choices can be avoided. Really, that country should be thinking more desperately, such as considering ways to recruit and compensate terminally ill patents, long term criminals, homeless and hopeless people in decline, or other extreme considerations. 3 Fully melted down neuclear reactors will continue to expand their poison the way politicians there are going.
Just wait till this begins to bite if you want to see nasty.....
Former BP geologist: peak oil is here and it will 'break economies'
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/dec/23/british-petroleum-geologist-peak-oil-break-economy-recession
http://ourfiniteworld.com/2013/10/23/rising-energy-costs-lead-to-recession-eventually-collapse/
http://ourfiniteworld.com/2013/12/06/diminishing-returns-energy-return-on-energy-invested-and-collapse/
http://ourfiniteworld.com/2013/10/14/two-views-of-our-current-economic-and-energy-crisis/
http://ourfiniteworld.com/2013/12/18/th-real-oil-extraction-limit-and-how-it-affects-the-downslope/#more-38658