Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Kitakyushu City Hall on May 23: Mothers vs City Officials


First, young mothers with small children (photo from @mama_jp):


The sign says, "Adults should protect the future of children. We're against disaster debris burning. Protect Kyushu for Japan."

Professor Yukio Hayakawa's tweet was: "Mothers in Kitakyushu, have they all gone nuts?"

On his May 23 blog, he proclaimed, "This day will be long recorded as the day when the discrimination against Tohoku has started."

He probably has not seen this picture of Kitakyushu City officials blocking the passage (photo from @Saikeman):


If he did, he may highly approve of the high-handed way the Kitakyushu City officials have treated the whole issue - from not bothering to tell anyone (residents, neighboring cities) to laughing at the protesters to calling the police to disperse the protesters yesterday. The professor is recommending that Kitakyushu City declare independence from the rest of Japan if the residents want to keep out the disaster debris.

The city is test-burning the debris from Ishinomaki City, Miyagi Prefecture right now at an incineration plant for regular household garbage. In the test burn, 1 part of disaster debris is supposed to be mixed with 9 parts of household garbage and burned. Protests apparently have no impact to the city officials or the mayor, and the residents of Kitakyushu City are indifferent for the most part, I hear.

NHK reports that about 70 people are protesting near the incineration plant, but there are more than 150 policemen blocking the road to protect the debris-carrying trucks.

Kyushu have been mostly spared from the fallout from the Fukushima accident, so the residents' sensitivity to radiation contamination is probably not the same as that in Kanto or Tohoku. Professor Hayakawa's later tweet says "176 becquerels per kilo? That's just normal."

Measurement of soil for cesium-137 in the nearby Fukuoka City in 2010 was 2.3 becquerels/kg. The highest I could find was 155 becquerels/kg in 1964. (Data from Japan Chemical Analysis Center)

Radioactivity of disaster debris from Ishinomaki City, Miyagi, from the Ministry of the Environment:

24 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yukio Hayakawa very much in the pay of the Japanese government and a total sellout... in the early days he was mapping the fallout and giving good info, now he has lost his mind along with most people here in Japan.... the criminally insane government needs to be stopped somehow...

Interesting that when people value the health and safety of their families they are labelled as nuts in Japan.... very very warped mindset indeed

Chibaguy said...

I read the tweets and am saddened that he doesn't understand his own research. He states that radiation levels be one half of what they are now three years from now. If so, why burn it now in a place that is not contaminated. Does not make sense.

Anonymous said...

@chibaguy , nothing makes sense in a warped society which japan is right now..

Chibaguy said...

@ex skf, I visited his blog and he is now censoring comments. Something is wrong as he is a professor. Professors need to be challenged and censoring comments has nothing to do with proving a point. What happened?

@anon 12:16, completely agree.

arevamirpal::laprimavera said...

Chibaguy, I don't think he "censors" the comments. The comment section of his blog has ALWAYS been moderated, and he can approve or disapprove the comments to be posted.

If you want to argue with him, Twitter is a better platform.

I completely disagree with him on this issue, but agree with him on other issues. People can be extremely stupid on certain issues, like a gap or flash crash in IQ.

Anonymous said...

Sc%e# Hayakawa. I love these Moms! Stand up to the b@&t#r%s!

Chibaguy said...

@ex skf, thank you for the explanation. I thought the moderation was just recent. Anyway, I am not sure why he would take such an ignorant stance. I guess we cannot all agree all the time. I just wish he would scientifically explain his stance instead of throwing people under the bus.

Anonymous said...

Selfish ignorant fools like Hayakawa, have they all got any balls?

The important thing isn't what we agree on, but the reasons why each person agrees. I wouldn't listen to Hayakawa even if he explained himself scientifically, because anyone who understands and cares about the current situation wouldn't say the things he has. He clearly has his own twisted agenda and beliefs.

I've yet to find a human society that isn't warped. Everyone likes to point their fingers at each other's failings, but they gleeflully ignore their own.

Anonymous said...

Also, I still don't understand the point of mixing the radioactive material. It's not like it'll be any less radioactive. They're treating the whole situation like a family cookout.

If I had a dollar for every stupid thing I've heard about the Fukushima disaster...

AtomicLobotomy said...

Send the people of Miyagi and Fukushima who have lost their homes and farms to Kyushu--plenty of ghost towns and lots of abandoned farmland. Don't send their radioactive debris. What is the point of contaminating the whole of the country?

Anonymous said...

Got to love the brain-dead play of the "discrimination" card...

Anonymous said...

the discrimination card is a Japanese projection, its the most discriminatory country i have been to... dont like foreigners, hate the Chinese and Koreans and very closed to the world.... as i say, projection, ..now their karma is radioactive

Anonymous said...

gotta love the censorship here on EXSKF, what happened to my last post? deleted? because i mentioned discrimination in Japan i guess ... too much for the blog writer to take i think..

Anonymous said...

Support Tohoku by destroying the planet! What? You don't want to kill everyone and everything? How dare you discriminate against Tohoku victims!!

Human logic at its finest.

Anonymous said...

clearly censorship going on here on this site, i had many posts that didnt appear...wonder why?

Anonymous said...

People of Japan, please continue to educate yourselves to find out what has really been happening. The Fukushima nuclear disaster will go down in history books as a turning point for mankind's 'love affair' with nuclear power, and the reputation and honor of the nation of Japan is at stake. There are experts predicting that, under the worst-case scenario, the events at Fukushima could result in a decimation of the human race on this planet.

Do not allow an industry where a single accident is able to result in the eventual destruction of all life within a nation, or throughout the whole world. It this industry is allowed to continue, it means people do not care about the future, or the future of their children. Money brings a lot of power, but the ultimate power is in the hands of the ordinary everyday people like you and me. There is always a choice to be made.

arevamirpal::laprimavera said...

Here you go, anon who was complaining about the "censorship" practiced by me (which is not true), I fished out your discrimination post and your complaint out of today's first batch of SPAM. I also fished out other regulars' posts, too.

I don't read comments other than when I do some maintenance of the blog by finding legit comments from the SPAM filter.

In the future, if you want to be found quickly in the SPAM that only GOOGLE controls (not me), I suggest you use online handle, instead of "anonymous".

Anonymous said...

'mothers in Kyushu have gone nuts'-Hayakawa.

And what does Hayakawa know about being a mother?

Nothing whatsoever.


If I was one of those officials I would feel quite ashamed standing/blocking the way from an army of mothers with push chairs of sleepy babies. They are the past and the mothers and children are the future.

Bless their hearts and all power to them. Those dumb ass civil servants again who are impotent. Just look at them! Never done a real days work in their life...unlike mothers who have already suffered enough pain to bring new life into this world.

DONT DELETE MY COMMENT.

arevamirpal::laprimavera said...

In Hayakawa's defense, almost the first thing he did after the start of the nuke accident last year was to evacuate his two sons overseas, spending the family's savings. He was one the very few to actually warn people of the radioactive fallout. He was certainly the first to vocally criticize Fukushima rice farmers for growing rice in contaminated soil.

Anon above, Google can SPAM your comments days and weeks later. So if that happens, sorry.

Snoogly said...

If the anonymous commenter learned how to use capital letters, he might discover that his comments don't get deleted by Google as spam.

Just a thought ...

m a x l i said...

What this professor says about "discrimination" is not more bizarre than someone asking people to walk into the ocean and drown themselves, because if they don't do so, it would be discrimination against the people who died in last years tsunami.

Beppe said...

Where will I buy milk and vegetables if Kyuushu becomes contaminated too? How come the farmers there do not protect their interests?

Not burning garbage fron Tohoku would be discrimination If it were not contaminated, however it is contaminated, so it is just common sense.

Diluting contaminated material (garbage, garbage ash, plastic sheets found in Tokyo schools, possibly even milk) to bring it below the safety levels should not be legal.

Anonymous said...

Beppe:

powdered milk from US is avaialable through fbcusa. com. canned vegetables too.

Japan used to be such a wonderful place. soft cream at Yatsugatake, fresh carrots from the farmer down the road, sushi without worry about where the rice was farmed, ...

thank you tepco. thank you so much for turning my whole world on end....

Anonymous said...

Folks who don't care about radiation in Kyushu are just accepting ahead of time what is the inevitable: wide-spread, far-reaching contamination.

You can't release contaminent on a waterlocked region like Japan and expect to be immune just because it didn't happen in your back yard. It'll come in by the trains and other vehicles that visit northern Japan, it'll come by the food, the occassional gust of weirdly-directed wind...

Eventually, the whole area will be contaminated as this disease spreads. Some recognize they can make a profit today at what will eventually happen anyways over the next decade... so why not...

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