Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Yahoo Japan Collaborating with Ministry of the Environment to Promote Wide-Area Disaster Debris Disposal


Yahoo has a much more significant presence in Japan. People go there for news, and its auction site (after the premature departure of eBay from Japan) competes with Rakuten.

Now, Yahoo Japan is collaborating with Goshi Hosono's ministry, along with two other media outlets, to spread the message of what wonderful things the wide-area disaster debris disposal can achieve.

According to the Ministry of the Environment press release on July 31, 2012, the other two are ソトコト (Sotokoto) magazine and J-WAVE (FM radio station).

Here's the screen shot of the site that Yahoo Japan hosts in collaboration with the Ministry of the Environment:


On the masthead, the message is:

震災復興応援特集
みんなの思いが復興の力に
みんなの力でがれき処理

Disaster Recovery Support Special
Everyone's thought gives power to recovery
Let's all participate in disaster debris disposal

In other words, "Think wide-area disaster debris disposal (burning and burying) and do it, then we will have the recovery of Tohoku." The same old message that Goshi Hosono has been repeating for nearly a year since his appointment as the Minister of the Environment.

Scrolling down, there are suggested activities which you can participate to help expedite the recovery:

Work as a volunteer!
Buy goods from disaster-affected areas!
Support municipalities accepting the disaster debris!


(Uh... you mean supporting people like Governor of Tokyo?)

The look and feel is not that of Yahoo Japan, as it says on the top right corner that the site is a "Yahoo Japan Promotional Event, from August 1 to September 30, 2012".

Looking at the site, a lot of taxpayers' money must have gone into building the site. Win-win for the parties involved, no doubt - Ministry of the Environment bureaucrats who want to spend as much money as possible to justify their bloated budget, nation's top PR agency (Hakuhodo or Dentsu; maybe Dentsu, as Hakuhodo has been busy carrying out surveys for the Cabinet Office) coming up with the contents for the site and the site design, company who actually assembles the site, and the portal like Yahoo Japan who will host the site.

What's crazy about all this is that the Ministry of the Environment has already instructed the municipalities who have expressed interest in receiving the debris not to proceed, as the amount of the debris has turned out to be much, much less and there is hardly any need after all to ship the debris outside the prefectures affected by the disaster (Miyagi, Iwate).

So, spending all this money in building a site to achieve exactly what? To persuade residents of Osaka City and Kitakyushu City, whose mayors are adamant as ever to bring the debris and burn it to help the recovery?

I wonder if Yahoo's new CEO (former Google engineer) knows about this project, but the last I read about Yahoo's own recovery effort, Yahoo wanted to divest its Asia operations including Yahoo Japan to raise cash. So it may be totally OK with her if the Japanese subsidiary openly collaborate with the government ministry pushing this totally unnecessary project of spreading the disaster debris contaminated with industrial pollutants from the tsunami and radioactive materials that fell on it after the nuclear accident, as long as the collaboration is highly profitable.

9 comments:

kintaman said...

Sorry but f*ck the recovery of Tohoku at the expense of other prefectures. If you were to spill a bucket of sh*t in your home you would not spread it to all the other rooms of your home to clean up the spot that had the spill. You would be sure to clean up that area and quarantine it from spreading to the rest of the home.

The logic here is simply non-existant. It just goes to show the total incompetence of the Japanese government just as much as TEPCO was before and after 3.11. It is incompetence, negligence and sheer criminal behavior. Those responsible for these efforts MUST be removed from positions of power by force and incarcerated.

Anonymous said...

The propaganda campaigns are crimes against humanity. By confusing and misleading the people, these campaigns have divided families and have caused many people to make bad, potentially fatal decisions. They are as guilty as TEPCO and should be held accountable.

Anonymous said...

Yahoo can go fuck themselves, this needs to be brought to the attention of the world and boycott yahoo, as for the government in japan ... criminal psychopaths... and yes fuck the recovery of tohoku at the expense of everyone else...

JAnonymous said...

As far as I understood, YahooJP was more Softbank than Yahoo, if Yahoo at all. And with Softbank chief being suspected of anti-nuke crime of thought, we end up in a very tricky situation. Because he has also been very visible (efficient?) while trying to help disaster-stricken areas.

In any case, it all comes up to something I think I mentioned in one comment in the past : the only thing you can do about nuke processing (including recycling, treating, decontamination, etc...) is dilution/concentration. Good news is, you can do so in two universes, kind of.

If you have a moderate amount, you might want to concentrate it in one place (sounds like spent fuel processing) which gives you space concentration. Space dilution is what happens every single day at any NPP in the world, and for which those plants have a permit. It is thus regulated, and the volume of water or air available on earth is still large at the moment. Oh, I heard it also happens at the former Fuku1 NPP (without permit, it would seem, but nobody cares). Thus, space dilution is more useful for insane amounts.

The other dilution universe is time. Acutally, if nobody cares (or knows) about your nuke-related waste, you can simply wait for time-dilution. It happens automatically and for free. Well, mother nature might charge you here and there with a few cancers, but not so many, as our elite researchers have been showing. Also, note that 'radioactive entropy' is only decreasing in the time universe, unless you take the space expansion factor into account, although I don't think you can apply it to local space. I know i know, , send all nuke wastes into the sun. Maybe ask Gundam.

As usual, please sort the sarcasm from the rest, if you care.

arevamirpal::laprimavera said...

Softbank was a large shareholder of Yahoo (US), and when Yahoo Japan started, it was the largest shareholder. It still is, with 35.45% of Yahoo Japan's share. Yahoo Inc. holds 34.74% of Yahoo Japan. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:c49sVlO1tHMJ:ir.yahoo.co.jp/en/holder/status.html+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a

Anonymous said...

Let's start burning stuff in Chernobyl too, that'll recover it! Hell, we should burn entire cities! We'll all be happy and stress-free and dead).

Anonymous said...

Should I buy Tohoku products? Let me see: if I do so I help relieving Tepco from paying damages for unsold produce while putting at risk my family health... hmm.
Well, maybe I will keep doing what I am doing: buy almost nothing that comes from anywhere between Nagano and Aomori, buy fresh produce from other prefectures and buy as much as possible of the rest from abroad. Also, cut to zero mushrooms and bamboo shoots purchases, regardless of declared provenience.
Sorry, but better safe than sorry: I never asked my electricity to be made in a npp.
Beppe

Anonymous said...

Let's boycott Yahoo world-wide. Don't use Yahoo emails, don't read Yahoo news feeds, don't partake in any Yahoo groups and services. Let's prepare to shun all Yahoo related services, including Flickr.

Let's help Yahoo kill itself.

Anonymous said...

Yahoo's endorsement of spreading radioactive debris across Japan is troubling. It will definitely affect my purchase decisions relative to Yahoo's services in the future.

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