Monday Reads: Money can’t buy Class, Love, Intelligence or a Sense of Decency

Posted: February 13, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Afternoon Reads, Foreign Affairs, Japan, North Korea, Russia | Tags: | 47 Comments

Good Afternoon!16681545_10154458478078512_3319331744579545500_n

It’s hard to know where to get started on the utterly boorish behavior of our of so-called President over the weekend.  It’s only topped by his utter cluelessness when it comes to the decorum of the world stage.  Our country makes Banana Republics look perfectly democratic and functional at the moment.

All I can say, is get ready, there’s bound to be some war or major attack coming down the pipe.  What’s worse is that our allies and our own national intelligence assets are unlikely to share that information with our So-Called President because the assumption is that the current White House shares everything with the Kremlin. The breaches of security protocol are just unbelievable.

Today’s photos are of Saturday Night’s Krewe de Vieux Parade coming out of my neighborhood and heading into the French Quarter and downtown.  It’s a political satire parade and you can see where it went this year.  You can enjoy the fun while I write about extremely scary things.

BB sent me this extremely important article written by John R Schindler for The Observer. Among the horrifying conclusions is this: “Intelligence Community pushes back against a White House it considers leaky, untruthful and penetrated by the Kremlin.”

In light of this, and out of worries about the White House’s ability to keep secrets, some of our spy agencies have begun withholding intelligence from the Oval Office. Why risk your most sensitive information if the president may ignore it anyway? A senior National Security Agency official explained that NSA was systematically holding back some of the “good stuff” from the White House, in an unprecedented move. For decades, NSA has prepared special reports for the president’s eyes only, containing enormously sensitive intelligence. In the last three weeks, however, NSA has ceased doing this, fearing Trump and his staff cannot keep their best SIGINT secrets.

Since NSA provides something like 80 percent of the actionable intelligence in our government, what’s being kept from the White House may be very significant indeed. However, such concerns are widely shared across the IC, and NSA doesn’t appear to be the only agency withholding intelligence from the administration out of security fears.

What’s going on was explained lucidly by a senior Pentagon intelligence official, who stated that “since January 20, we’ve assumed that the Kremlin has ears inside the SITROOM,” meaning the White House Situation Room, the 5,500 square-foot conference room in the West Wing where the president and his top staffers get intelligence briefings. “There’s not much the Russians don’t know at this point,” the official added in wry frustration.

So, it’s hard to know where to start other than our foreign policy has turned into a complete dumpsterfire. Instead of the usual State Dinner at the White House with celebrities, cultural and intellectual folks, political leaders, artists and musicians, and just basically the cream of the US crop, Japanese Prime Minister Abe got treated to a tacky weekend in Florida. The Taxpayers undoubtedly footed the bill and wrote a huge check to that tacky “resort” owned by the Uber Tacky So-called President.  I’m pretty sure the Prime Minister wasn’t expecting he’d become a wedding crasher but I’m also pretty sure that every one knows that anything classy, dignified, and in keeping with decorum is off the table these days.

Then there was a phone call about North Korea taken on his cell phone in the middle of the public dining room.

And, folks were worried about Hillary’s private server?  

What was happening — as first reported by CNN — was an extraordinary moment, as Trump and Abe turned their dinner table into an open-air situation room. Aides and translators surrounded the two leaders as other diners chatted and gawked around them, with staffers using the flashlights on their cellphones to illuminate documents on the darkened outdoor terrace.

The scene of their discussion, Trump’s club, has been called “The Winter White House” by the president’s aides. But it is very different than the actual White House, where security is tight and people coming in are heavily screened. Trump’s club, by contrast, has hundreds of paying members who come and go, and it can be rented out for huge galas and other events open to non-members. On the night of the North Korea launch, for instance, there was a wedding reception underway: CNN reported that Trump dropped by, with Abe in tow.

As a Mar-a-Lago member, DeAgazio already had remarkable access to a president that day. He had earlier snapped pictures of Trump and Abe golfing and of the president and White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon schmoozing guests.

Now, as a national-security crisis broke out in front of him, DeAgazio continued snapping pictures — and posting them on Facebook.

“The President receiving the news about the Missile incident from North Korea on Japan with the Prime Minister sitting next to him,” DeAgazio wrote as the caption for a photo he posted on Facebook at 9:07 p.m. Eastern time on Saturday.

Later, he posted other photos of Trump and Abe’s discussion, including some that seemed to have been taken from just a few feet away. Those photos have now been seen around the world, providing photographic proof of this unusual moment.

16730375_10154458488688512_2817565483131739753_n This description came from Richard “DeAgazio — a retired investor who joined Mar-a-Lago three months ago … ” as described by David Farenholdt.

But DeAgazio, for one, said he was impressed that Trump had not gotten up from the table immediately, to seek a more private (and better-lit) place for his discussion with Abe.

“He chooses to be out on the terrace, with the members. It just shows that he’s a man of the people,” DeAgazio said.

Membership at the Mar-a-Lago Club now requires a $200,000 initiation fee — a fee that increased by $100,000 after Trump was elected.

DeAgazio also posted photos of himself with a man that he identified as the military member who carries the “football” that would allow Trump to launch a nuclear attack. In that Facebook post, DeAgazio described how “the football” functions, but said that the military member did not divulge that information to him.

“I looked it up” on Wikipedia, DeAgazio said. “He didn’t say anything to me.”

Yes. A real man of the people.  That initiation fee is about what my entire house is worth.

Oh, and the wedding crashing part came after the let’s broadcast stuff about North Korea around Florida thing and an embarrassing presser.

On Saturday, as President Donald Trump was hosting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, news broke that North Korea had launched a ballistic missile into the Sea of Japan. CNN was the first to report last night that Trump was joined at the dinner table by his embattled national security adviser, Mike Flynn, and chief strategist Stephen Bannon. As Mar-a-Lago members dining separately looked on, they reviewed classified documents with Bannon and Flynn using their cell-phone lights so Trump could see what he was reading.

After that awkward exchange, Trump and Abe held a hastily assembled joint press conference where Trump made a statement that was shorter than his awkward handshake with Abe at the White House on Friday.

What did Trump do after that? Bunker down with his National Security Council? Spend the evening on the phone with his Defense Secretary James Mattis? No. CNN reported that Trump dropped by a wedding that happened to be taking place at Mar-a-Lago, took the mic, and spoke to the guests.

crude-is-magicalI’ve seen movie frat boys with a better sense of gravitas than our So-called President.  So, first a guest gets a photo op with the nuclear football and then we get some twisted version of The Wedding Crashers.  WTF?  We’re going to owe Japan some big time apologies for insulting their PM.  Phillip Bump points out the absolute hypocrisy on running intelligence security breaches by Clinton and then governing like the entire world can listen in to our highest secrets and he’s got no issue with it.  Good Grief there must be Victory Dancing Putin over there in Moscow.

Earlier in the week, Trump had been criticized for leaving intelligence documents vulnerable to people without security clearance. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) noticed that the president kept the key in a secured bag while hosting people in the Oval Office, which is a bit like leaving your house keys in your front door while you’re having a party in your backyard. There’s no indication that anyone saw anything confidential in this incident, but this, Heinrich suggested, was “Classified 101.”

Compared to holding a national security conversation over dinner in the public dining room at his private club, though, the lockbag incident pales.

It’s not clear that anyone heard particulars of the conversation, but other diners certainly noticed. Richard DeAgazio was in the room and posted photos of the moment to Facebook.

 Shock and awe aside, there’s this:

Why is this important? Mobile phones have flashlights, yes — and cameras, microphones and Internet connectivity. When Edward Snowden was meeting with reporters in Hong Kong at the moment he was leaking the material he’d stolen from the NSA, he famously asked that they place their phones in the refrigerator — blocking any radio signals in the event that the visitors’ phones had been hacked. This was considered the most secure way of ensuring that the phones couldn’t be used as wiretaps, even more secure than removing the battery. Phones — especially phones with their flashes turned on for improved visibility — are portable television satellite trucks and, if compromised, can be used to get a great deal of information about what’s happening nearby, unless precautions are taken.

Plus, more news on Flynn and others with deep ties to the Kremlin.

orange-is-the-new-black

It’s just hard to know what to say about all!

President Trump’s national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, had a pretty wretched week. The Post’s reporting revealed that Flynn, contrary to his and the White House’s earlier assertions, had discussed U.S. sanctions against Russia with Moscow’s ambassador in Washington prior to Trump’s inauguration. Flynn, according to intelligence sources, likely signaled that the question of sanctions would be revisited by a more friendly Trump administration.

So, I’m just left smh and rather speechless.

How do you explain this kind’ve behavior? I mean, if I had a relative that did this sort’ve thing I would surely get them committed! I wouldn’t freaking elect them President.

The fun news today is that the White House cannot find a comedian to do Nerd Prom and the entire things seems to be falling apart. It’s the press’ big party and damn ya’ll cry if you want to!!

In recent years, the dinner has become a star-studded event attracting A-list celebrities ranging from George Clooney to Helen Mirren to Lindsay Lohan, with politics mainly an afterthought.

This year, The New Yorker and Vanity Fair have canceled parties they traditionally host as part of the hoopla surrounding the dinner.

Also, many stars are avoiding the event this year and no “headliner” comedian has committed so far, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

– ‘Stick a fork in it’ –

Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan said the glitzy party and related events around it no longer seem appropriate.

“Once merely embarrassing and ridiculous, the annual White House correspondents’ dinner is poised to tip over into journalistic self-abasement,” she wrote. “It’s time to stick a silver-plated fork in it.”

Slate correspondent Jacob Weisberg echoed those sentiments, saying in a tweet: “Please cancel the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Unseemly spectacle, totally at odds with the press holding administration accountable.”

Well, Sky Dancers, have at it! I’m not sure I’m up to describing the many ways that all this is so very very very wrong.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Monday Reads

Posted: December 5, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Crime, Economy, financial institutions, Foreign Affairs, investment banking, Japan, morning reads | 28 Comments

Good Morning!!

One of the few television shows I actually watch regularly these days is Criminal Minds.  The profiling activities fascinate me. I’ve actually passed on my addiction to BostonBoomer who sent me this CBS story which sounds like something right off of their series.  A young woman was abducted by a very disturbed young man and was successfully returned to her family in Kearney, Nebraska. Gotta love a happy ending!

Kidnapping victim Anne Sluti came home Friday, a week after the 17-year-old was whisked away from a local mall parking lot and kept hostage hundreds of miles away in Montana.

With a bruise under her right eye and an FBI baseball cap on her head, Sluti stepped off a private jet with her parents and brother. A small group of family members and friends shrieked with excitement.

“Thank God she’s alive,” said her aunt Sue Daniel. She placed a sign in the dashboard of her minivan that showed a happy face and said “Welcome Home, Anne.”

“I’m just happy to get back home,” Sluti said earlier in the day as the family prepared to leave Kalispell, Mont. “I want to thank everyone who helped me get home safely.”

Remarked her mother, Elaine Sluti, “Someone at the hotel said to me this morning, ‘Have a good day.’ Believe me, we are having a very good day.”

We knew there was a major cover up on the Fukushima melt down.  Here’s a Guardian story that indicates that the fuel rods may have completely melted down. Scary stuff. This time reality mimics the move The China Syndrome.

Fuel rods inside one of the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant may have completely melted and bored most of the way through a concrete floor, the reactor’s last line of defence before its steel outer casing, the plant’s operator said.

Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) said in a report that fuel inside reactor No 1 appeared to have dropped through its inner pressure vessel and into the outer containment vessel, indicating that the accident was more severe than first thought.

The revelation that the plant may have narrowly averted a disastrous “China syndrome” scenario comes days after reports that the company had dismissed a 2008 warning that the plant was inadequately prepared to resist a tsunami.

Tepco revised its view of the damage inside the No 1 reactor – one of three that suffered meltdown soon after the 11 March disaster – after running a new simulation of the accident.

It would not comment on the exact position of the molten fuel, or on how much of it is exposed to water being pumped in to cool the reactor. More than nine months into the crisis, workers are still unable to gauge the damage directly because of dangerously high levels of radiation inside the reactor building.

If you haven’t read Eliot Spitzer’s article on Slate about the $7 trillion secret loan program, you really should.  It is also something that seems more Hollywood than reality.  Spitzer is calling for perp walks.

During the deepest, darkest period of the financial cataclysm, the CEOs of major banks maintained in statements to the public, to the market at large, and to their own shareholders that the banks were in good financial shape, didn’t want to take TARP funds, and that the regulatory framework governing our banking system should not be altered. Trust us, they said. Yet, unknown to the public and the Congress, these same banks had been borrowing massive amounts from the government to remain afloat. The total numbers are staggering: $7.7 trillion of credit—one-half of the GDP of the entire nation. $460 billion was lent to J.P. Morgan, Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley alone—without anybody other than a few select officials at the Fed and the Treasury knowing. This was perhaps the single most massive allocation of capital from public to private hands in our history, and nobody was told. This was not TARP: This was secret Fed lending. And although it has since been repaid, it is clear why the banks didn’t want us to know about it: They didn’t want to admit the magnitude of their financial distress.

The banks’ claims of financial stability and solvency appear at a minimum to have been misleading—and may have been worse. Misleading statements and deception of this sort would ordinarily put a small-market player or borrower on the wrong end of a criminal investigation.

Spitzer cites this Bloomberg Analysis which is something we’ve looked at before but bears a second viewing. After stabilizing the financial system, every effort should have been made by regulators and the current administration to purge the financial industry of toxic senior management. They also should have taken over some of the huge banks and sliced and diced them into more appropriately sized regional banks.  None of this actually happened, however if you read Confidence Men, you’ll see that it wasn’t for Sheila Baer’s lack of trying and it was actually the original concept supported by Obama.  The Geithner Treasury evidently ran all kinds of end run plays to stop this from happening.  Geithner continually proves that his loyalties are to huge financial institutions.

… the Fed and its secret financing helped America’s biggest financial firms get bigger and go on to pay employees as much as they did at the height of the housing bubble.

Total assets held by the six biggest U.S. banks increased 39 percent to $9.5 trillion on Sept. 30, 2011, from $6.8 trillion on the same day in 2006, according to Fed data.

For so few banks to hold so many assets is “un-American,” says Richard W. Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. “All of these gargantuan institutions are too big to regulate. I’m in favor of breaking them up and slimming them down.”

Employees at the six biggest banks made twice the average for all U.S. workers in 2010, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics hourly compensation cost data. The banks spent $146.3 billion on compensation in 2010, or an average of $126,342 per worker, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s up almost 20 percent from five years earlier compared with less than 15 percent for the average worker. Average pay at the banks in 2010 was about the same as in 2007, before the bailouts.

“The pay levels came back so fast at some of these firms that it appeared they really wanted to pretend they hadn’t been bailed out,” says Anil Kashyap, a former Fed economist who’s now a professor of economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. “They shouldn’t be surprised that a lot of people find some of the stuff that happened totally outrageous.”

Bank of America took over Merrill Lynch & Co. at the urging of then-Treasury Secretary Paulson after buying the biggest U.S. home lender, Countrywide Financial Corp. When the Merrill Lynch purchase was announced on Sept. 15, 2008, Bank of America had $14.4 billion in emergency Fed loans and Merrill Lynch had $8.1 billion. By the end of the month, Bank of America’s loans had reached $25 billion and Merrill Lynch’s had exceeded $60 billion, helping both firms keep the deal on track.

This is completely unacceptable.  It is one thing for the FED to help stabilize the financial system, it’s another one for the Treasury to ignore the requests of the President and to prevent a key regulator–FDIC in this case–from doing its job. The other culprit identified in the Confidence Men narrative is Rahm Emmanuel.  The narrative on Obama and Baer’s desire to shut down Citibank and the obfuscation from Geithner and Emmanuel is the stuff of movies focused on government conspiracies.

One of the plotlines in Ron Suskind’s Confidence Men concerns the various bureaucratic and substantive moves through which Tim Geithner and Rahm Emmanuel dissuaded the president from ordering the seizure and shutdown of Citigroup. The story starts with the fact that Larry Summers and Christina Romer, who were sympathetic to the idea, lacked the staff resources to develop a plan for doing it, while Geithner, who had the staff, thought it was a bad idea. Sheila Bair also had the staff, and also wanted to go ahead, but was out of the loop:

But when it came to controlling information, there was one area in which Geithner’s office had been successful. Key disclosures of what actually happened in the March 15 “showdown” never leaked. Bair didn’t know, and never found out, that the president had been trying to push forward what the FDIC chairwoman was recommending. He wasn’t successful, either. Alan Krueger said one reason Treasury dragged its feet on a constructing a plan for Citigroup’s resolution was Sheila Bair. They would have had to consult the FDIC chairwoman. After all, her agency is in the business of closing banks. “The fear was that Sheila would leak it,” Krueger said, in a comment echoed by others at Treasury. “And there’d be a run on Citi.” He added that this was one of many reasons: “It was more than just that. The bottom line is Tim and others at Treasury felt the president didn’t fully understand the complexities of the issue, or simply that they were right and he was wrong, and that trying to resolve Citi and then other banks would have been disastrous.”

Krueger, for one, disagreed, and that very day he was due to have lunch with someone uniquely suited to edify him about the resolution of troubled banks: Andrea Borg, the Swedish finance minister.

It seems that many West Wing technocrats are much more interested in their post-DC careers than their current duties and responsibilities to US law.  I’ve said many times that were in a much better position for a major and uncorrectable meltdown–much like the Japanese Fukushima plant–should these circumstances continue.  The vulnerability of the nation’s largest banks to any kind of contagion is substantial.  Their ability to bring down the payments and credit system is fully understood by the FED who instigated more money floodgate opening last week to aid those same banks with that same senior management muck their way through the Eurozone crisis.  Any private institution that has had to call on the Government for that much assistance doesn’t deserve to be in business.  We shouldve GM’d them all.

Here’s a link to CBS and last night’s 60 minutes (h/t Elizabeth Warren) on Prosecuting Wall Street.

Two whistleblowers offer a rare window into the root causes of the subprime mortgage meltdown. Eileen Foster, a former senior executive at Countrywide Financial, and Richard Bowen, a former vice president at Citigroup, tell Steve Kroft the companies ignored their repeated warnings about defective, even fraudulent mortgages. The result, experts say, was a cascading wave of mortgage defaults for which virtually no high-ranking Wall Street executives have been prosecuted.

So, that’s my little contribution to the discussion this morning.  What’s on your reading and blogging list this morning?

Open Thread: Inside Japan’s Evacuation Zone

Posted: April 8, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Foreign Affairs, Japan, open thread, We are so F'd | Tags: , , , , | 12 Comments

Via Raw Story, see what it’s really like inside Japan’s evacuation zone–empty streets, abandoned houses, ruined roads from the earthquake, packs of dogs and livestock roaming free–it’s like something out of a science fiction movie.

Japanese journalist Tetsuo Jimbo made a trip inside the restricted evacuation zone near the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant last week. At 17 km from the plant (about 2 minutes into the video), the Geiger counter alarms go off and remain on for the rest of the trip….

Jimbo terminates the mission at about 1.5 km from the nuclear plant, where radiation is thousands of times above normal.

Watch the video:

See dramatic photos at Buzzfeed

Tuesday Reads

Posted: April 5, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Environment, Foreign Affairs, Japan, Libya, MENA, toxic waste, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics | 25 Comments

What's with all the bad news?

Good Morning, politics junkies! Let’s get right to the news.

The best news as far as I’m concerned is that Eman al-Obeidi is still alive and still telling her story. I was so afraid she would be killed if she refused to recant. Read all about it in Wonk the Vote’s late night post from last night.

This story made me laugh out loud. Awhile back, Maine’s right wing tea party nut Governor ordered that a mural that celebrates Maine’s labor history be removed from the Labor Department building. The Governor thinks it’s unfair that the mural didn’t celebrate the bosses along with the workers.

So the mural was removed, but it turns out it had been paid for by a Federal government grant and the feds now want their money back.

Whoops: The governor of Maine’s decision to remove a pro-labor mural from the state’s Department of Labor may cost taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars, all because he wanted to “send a message.”

Apparently unknown to Maine’s recently elected Republican governor, the mural targeted by his ire was initially paid for by a federal grant — the terms of which he violated by having it removed.

And now, according to the Associated Press, the U.S. Department of Labor has officially demanded reimbursement.

The grant, awarded in 2008 to pay for the 37-foot-long mural, fulfilled 63 percent of the $60,000 historical art project.

If the state decides against putting it back up, they’ll be forced to repay 63 percent of the mural’s fair market value, which has likely gone up since it became a centerpiece in Republicans’ battle against workers.

Bwaaaahahahahahahaha!!

That world famous right wing nut tea party Governor in Wisconsin’s antics are still making news. It seems Scott Walker, who thinks school teachers are overpaid, is not as worried about saving money when it comes to pleasing wealthy donors.

Just in his mid-20s, Brian Deschane has no college degree, very little management experience and two drunken-driving convictions.

Yet he has landed an $81,500-per-year job in Gov. Scott Walker’s administration overseeing environmental and regulatory matters and dozens of employees at the Department of Commerce. Even though Walker says the state is broke and public employees are overpaid, Deschane already has earned a promotion and a 26% pay raise in just two months with the state.

So how did this kid get his big-time job?

His father is Jerry Deschane, executive vice president and longtime lobbyist for the Madison-based Wisconsin Builders Association, which bet big on Walker during last year’s governor’s race.

The group’s political action committee gave $29,000 to Walker and his running mate, Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, last year, making it one of the top five PAC donors to the governor’s successful campaign. Even more impressive, members of the trade group funneled more than $92,000 through its conduit to Walker’s campaign over the past two years.

Total donations: $121,652.

According the The Hill, 41 senators have committed to filibuster any spending bill that defunds Planned Parenthood.

The group, led by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), includes thirty-nine Democratic senators and two Independents, Sens. Joe Lieberman (Conn.) and Bernie Sanders (Vt.).

It’s just large enough to sustain a filibuster to block any spending bill that cuts Planned Parenthood funding from passing the upper chamber.

Let’s hope they stick to their guns this time. Frankly, I’ll believe it when I see it.

I’m not sure how many of the people who object to the UN approval of intervention in Libya realize that the UN has had troops in the Ivory Coast for awhile now. Today UN helicopters

attacked President Laurent Gbagbo’s forces in Ivory Coast, destroying their weapons at four places where they had been shelling civilians, a UN spokesman said.

The helicopters fired four missiles at a Gbagbo military camp in the main city of Abidjan, witnesses told Reuters. “We saw two UN MI-24 helicopters fire missiles on the Akouedo military camp. There was a massive explosion and we can still see the smoke,” one said. The camp is home to three battalions of the Ivorian army.

Hamadoun Toure, spokesman for the UN mission in Ivory Coast, said in an email: “We launched an operation to neutralise heavy weapons Gbagbo’s special forces have been using against the civilian population for the last three months. We destroyed them in four locations.”

The French are helping out too. Of course the massacres have already happened there….

The BBC is reporting that the presidential residence in Abidhan has been “taken.”

Forces loyal to Alassane Ouattara, the country’s internationally recognised president, said they had taken the building after a day of fierce combat.

A spokesman for Mr Ouattara, Patrick Achi, told the BBC it was not yet clear whether Mr Gbagbo had been inside.

Earlier, UN and French helicopters attacked targets near the residence.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the attacks were ordered to defend civilians and were not a declaration of war on Mr Gbagbo.

Hmmmm…protecting civilians…”not a war.” That sounds familiar somehow. Nahhh, I must be imagining it.

Yesterday the Daily Mail reported that two of Gaddafi’s sons have offered to “get rid of their father” if Saif can take over for him.

The opposition forces won’t accept that, but there are definitely negotiations going on to remove Gaddafi. The UK has announced that any defectors from Gaddafi’s regime will be treated fairly, and Scottish authories are meeting with defector Moussa Koussa regarding the Lockerbie bombing.

In Japan, Tepco is dumping highly radioactive water directly into the ocean.

Tepco began discharging 11,500 tons of water yesterday, enough to fill 4 1/2 Olympic-sized swimming pools, to make room to store more highly contaminated fluids. The United Nations nuclear watchdog said the partial meltdown at the station was a result of “errors” from the time a March 11 quake and tsunami knocked out pumps used to cool reactors and spent fuel.

Meanwhile, even more toxic water is still leaking from damaged reactor core. What a mess!

That’s about it for me. What are you reading and blogging about today?

Saturday Night: A Little Bit of Good News

Posted: April 2, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Foreign Affairs, Japan, just because, open thread | Tags: , , , , , , | 19 Comments

Japan Times:

SENDAI (Kyodo) The Japan Coast Guard managed to save a small brown dog Friday from a floating rooftop 1.8 km off Miyagi Prefecture, three weeks after a massive tsunami ravaged the northeast coast.

The team’s initial rescue attempt failed after the dog, perhaps scared by the hovering helicopter, jumped from the roof over to nearby driftwood.

A rescue boat with three guardsmen was then dispatched and succeeded in catching the pooch an hour later by using rescue stretchers.

The dog, which was wearing a black collar that had no indication of who its owner might be, was fed biscuits and sausages aboard the coast guard vessel and is behaving itself, the coast guard said.

How did he survive for three weeks surrounded by salt water? One suggestion: Perhaps with all the rain, perhaps the dog was able to drink rainwater that collected in spots on the house roof.

The dog was wearing a collar, so his rescuers will try to find his family.


This is an open thread, but I encourage you to share any heartwarming animal stories that you know about.

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