Fukushima! Super Typhoons! The Destruction of the Entire Northern Hemisphere!... And the Most Deadly Subways in Tokyo!

Oh God! Monster Typhoons! Nuclear fuel rod pools that are about to fall over and destroy the entire Western civilization! The greatest short-term threat to world civilization! (Wait a minute, you guys just said the radiation had a half-life of 30,000 years! I don't know about you, but I don't think 30,000 years is very "short term.") 


What's a citizen to do? It's the end of the world!

Tokyo subway. (Use this photo freely as you wish!)

You are going to die!!! Well, yes. You are going to die. But before you do, we in the mass media are going to do our best to make you miserable with worry before you do.


Since March 11 of last year and the Fukushima disaster, Japan has had nothing but "Super Typhoons" that all were going to go directly over Fukushima and probably destroy the entire northern hemisphere of the world! ENENEWS (a site that survives on sensationalist headlines) reports in: 150 mph Super Typhoon Sets Aim at Japan: Fukushima near center of forecast track — “Expected to intensify” and already the highest category storm.


And, as usual with ENENEWS, the headlines have zero to do with the story. Let me quote word for word:

Guchol, a tropical cyclone in the western Pacific, rapidly strengthened Saturday afternoon, local time. Winds are now in excess of 150 mph, making Guchol a super typhoon, the highest classification for tropical cyclones in the western Pacific.

If Guchol were an Atlantic Hurricane, it would be considered a Category 5 storm.

[...]

the storm is also expected to intensify further over the next day or two.

[...]

Guchol will still likely be a very powerful tropical cyclone upon reaching the Ryukyu Islands of Japan. Powerful winds, torrential rain and intense surf will be among some of the problems expected for the islands.

[...]

In fact, the main threat the storm poses to the main island of Japan will be its torrential rains. Heavy rain could lead to mudslides and flash flooding, especially in the mountains just west of Tokyo.

[...]

You see anything about Fukushima there? No? Me neither.

But we all know that doesn't matter. What DOES matter is sensationalist headlines that scare stupid people and sell advertising.

And what does matter is not super typhoons (we have those all the time nowadays - every typhoon is now called a "Super Typhoon")... It's not spent fuel pools (they didn't collapse in a 1 in 1000 year 9.0 quake; a 6.0 quake - that is 1/3000th the power of a 9.0 quake - isn't going to knock them down)... What is going to kill you is the dangerous Tokyo subway system and the "People-eating danger traps" that they are (cue ominous music here).

Oh, fear for your lives people! Never forget that the next time you ride a Tokyo subway, it could be your last! 

Josei Jishin, the oldest and most popular women's magazine in Japan has the scoop in "The Top 50 Most Dangerous Subway Stations in Tokyo."


The most dangerous subway stations in Tokyo! It's kind of like old East Germany and West Germany... I mean, how it sizes up for Tokyo subway stations; the stations on the "old" east side of Tokyo are death traps! The higher the score (#1 Sumiyoshi) has a score of 61.6.... What does that mean? Hell, if I know... But 61.6 spells, "Death trap!" "Game Over!" "Dead as a Doorknob!" "Fin!" "Owari!"

Notice that all the death boxes are on the East end. 

I circled Shibuya for your reference....

Be afraid. Be very afraid!

The top ten death traps subway stations in Tokyo are:

#1  Sumiyoshi on the Hanzomon Line

#2  Morishita on the Oedo Line (What!? They just built that train line!)

#3  Suitengumae on the Hanzomon Line (Going to Narita to fly in a jet plane? Ha! Hope you actually make it to the airport!

#4  Kinshicho on the Hanzomon Line

#4  Oshiage on the Hanzomon Line

#4  Kiyosumi Shirakawa on the Hanzomon Line 

#7  Hamacho Station on the Toei Shinjuku Line 

#8  Tsukiji Ichiba on the Oedo Line 

#8  Nishi Oshima on the Shinjuku Line

#10 Higashi Ginza on the Hibiya Line (actually, I'm surprised that there's not more stations on the Hibiya Line here on this list. They all seem like death traps to me!)

#10 Morishita on the Shinjuku Line (Your chances of dying at Morishita station are double!)

Here's the next 11 ~ 50.... Look, I'm not going to translate this for you. If you live in Japan long enough to care about this nonsense and you can't even read your own station's name in Kanji, then you deserve to die!

Trust, citizen, that you are going to die someday! It is a proven medical fact that every single person who has - and ever will - ride a Tokyo subway has died or will die! Sometimes, and some rare cases, those are a painful and incredibly excruciatingly painful death!

Could that be you? I think it might!

Be afraid. Be very afraid!


Sure, you are going to die, citizen.... 


But before that, we are going to make damned sure that you worry to death... 


Please make sure you tune in next week (or buy next week's issue for more "dangerous man-eating subways!")

-Thanks to Ken Nishikawa

Japan's Nuclear Disaster and Wall of Shame Reporting

As you've read here at this blog basically from day one of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident crisis in Japan, the western media has been having a field day with the over the top sensationalist reporting. Please! Click on the video and then read on! You just can't make this stuff up!

SHIRLEY & COMPANY - SHAME SHAME SHAME

Well, now more and more people are starting to go on record taking these clowns to task. It's too bad that too many people consider the news god's gospel truth instead of tabloid sensationalism because that's what it basically is.

Pull up a chair, grab a beer, and get ready for some really humorous stuff.

Thank god, there are many others, besides me, who have been skeptical and suspicious from the start and many more people are finally waking up to the prospect that, once again, the mass media is not to be believed by any stretch of the imagination.


There's a guy who writes a blog called, "Squeeze Box Press." I don't know his name but he gets a hero award from me. In his post of March 17th, 2011 entitled: 

WHY BAD JOURNALISM HAS DRIVEN ME TO DESPERATE ENDS

He explains that he is starting a Wall of Shame to list up all this crap reporting. It is a wonderful read too. He writes: 

In retrospect, I should have had this idea before, but I guess today I just hit critical mass (not sure if it’s appropriate to use a nuclear energy turn of phrase here): one too many pieces of bad journalism.

So I decided to start a wiki Bad Journalism Wall of Shame and invite some of the other people who were frustrated with some of the shoddy, alarmist, and shockingly wrong journalism we’ve seen since last Friday’s Tohoku quake.

I take everything I read with a grain of salt these days, and have for many years.  When I read an article or see a television report that makes sensational claims, I try to fact check on my own, because I no longer trust most journalists to have done it for me.  There are several major areas that journalists particularly suck at:

• Science reporting.  I have a degree in fine arts, and I could write better science articles than most science writers could.  Any journalist who suggested that Fukushima could be “another Chernobyl” should be made to retake his 9th grade science class and then have his journalist license revoked.   Oh wait…
• Reporting on Japan.  JAPAN IS SOOO WEIRD!  JAPANESE PEOPLE HAVE NO EMOTION!  If everything you think you know about Japan was learned from the movies Gung Ho and Mr. Baseball, then maybe you’re not qualified to write an article about Japan.  Also, spending a few days, hell, even a month in Japan (probably in a hotel or furnished apartment, or otherwise isolated location) does not make you an expert on the place.  Nor does interviewing someone who has lived here for a few months (or even year, if living in one of the many gaijin bubbles).
• Disaster reporting.  Two and a half words: Exaggeration and fear-mongering.

This is not new information.  Not to me, and probably not to you.  However, in the aftermath of the quake, all three of these elements joined together to create (to use a term journalists are so fond of using themselves) the “perfect storm”.  News piece after news piece full of inaccuracies, misinterpretations, and just plain lies.  (My favourites are the photos, shown out-of-context.  For instance, showing a photo of a girl in a surgical-style mask and implying that she was wearing it due to radiation, while the reality is that we’re in allergy season here and many people wear masks to keep pollen at bay.)

The worst offenders are the 24-hour news networks.  A few hours into the quake, I stopped looking at them.  The problem there (as we learned during the 9/11 coverage) is that the anchors feel like they have to keep talking to fill dead air, which means that they inevitably end up saying dumbass things.

But no news source gets off scot free.  Some seem to make stuff up, others seem to repeat rumours floating around in the electronic ether, while others interview obvious idiots or crazies and take what they say as gospel truth.  Some, I think, pick information up from another news source, and never bother to check it for accuracy.

This last paragraph is particularly damning and I think right on target. But I am of the opinion that, even more disasterous for everyone is not so much the actual reporting, but the fact that so many people actually believe this stuff! What planet are these people living on?


When will people ever learn? I hear that in the old Soviet Union that the Russian people didn't believe anything that Pravda said because they knew it was propaganda... You'd have thought that western society would have produced more discerning intelligent people... But I guess not.


This guy then goes on to explain what the Wall of Shame is all about: Atrocious, bad, malicious and/or fear mongering reporting going on in the western media and how he wants to put them all on record. He writes:


This Wall of Shame is being assembled by various people, many of whom are on the ground in Japan as residents, not temporarily assigned journalists, who are sick of the sensationalist, overly speculative, and just plain bad reporting that has gone on since the Tohoku quake in Japan on March 11. We feel that contacting each and every publication and reporter every time a bad report shows up independently is not effective, and it is our sincere hope that this will encourage journalists to aspire to a higher (some would say minimal) level of responsibility in their reports. If you would like to add a report of your own, feel free. What can you do if you've read some of the articles listed here and you want to do something? We're compiling a list of press organizations to which you can complain HERE.


I highly recommend that you go to the Wall of Shame and view this artwork in progress. Here are just a few of my favorites (many others are not listed yet):  


Germany's BILD Zeitung gets an award for total nonsense:


Headline titling "Atomic Horror" mit 4 (!) exclamation marks. The picture on the front shows a person with gas mask/some suit against radioactive pollution. In the background a devastated landscape is shown. On first sight it looks like a nuclear desert, however it is a picture from the destruction caused by the Tsunami. 
On the next pages they ask: "And what´s up with the Sushi 
in the restaurants? Can we still eat it"?  (emphasis mine)


Even the alternative media get in on the act of ridiculous reporting with Kurt Nimmo's nonsense in Infowars.com:


Comparing Fukushima to Chernobyl;

Fear-Mongering Headline "Japanese Nuclear Meltdown Would Be Hundreds of Times Worse Than Chernobyl" with no supporting evidence;

Grotesque factual errors: "The 480-megawatt Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is a hundred times more powerful than the ill-fated reactor at the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine." In fact Chernobyl reactors were 1000 MWe while Reactor 1 at Fukushima Daiichi is 480 MWe, less than half Chernobyl's power.

We're doomed!

Oh, no! Not Scientific American!? Yes. Scientific American too needs to sell ad space. They allow writer Steve Mirsky off his leash to fan the flames of panic:


"Radioactive waste dump for years to come." and "This is going to be like Chernobyl." Scientific American joins the ranks of popular journalism. Added offense severity points for retaining the word 'scientific' in their name. (emphasis mine)


If you are intelligent and sick and tired of the mass media sensationalism (but I repeat myself) you can see much much more at the Wall of Shame: http://jpquake.wikispaces.com/Journalist+Wall+of+Shame


Thanks so much to the Wall of Shame, Ray Hearn