The crisis has brought out the worst in some of the most loyal and supportive Debito.org Commenters, who have decided to impugn my very character despite the fact I’m doing what I’ve always done: raised issues that were on my mind and that I thought deserved attention and discussion.
No, you weren’t raising issues, you were posting any old alarmist nonsense that people pointed out was wrong in a number of ways, and you are still to interleave the corrections and refutations as you said you would. Furthermore, you also insult your readers by telling them it is their fault for over-reacting, not your fault for publishing rumour.
We as a people were promised by The State that nuclear power was safe. The promise was for full containment of dangerous materials and zero emissions of radiation. Zero.
–Source please.
It is honourable to take a stand opposing nuclear power, but you seem to be saying that you are for 100% safe nuclear power, an offer than no scientist in their right mind would make nor that any environmental group would accept. Furthermore it’s not as if it’s the first leak from a Japan plant. Oh, and under normal operating conditions a coal-fired plant emits more radiation than a nuclear one.
We have been kept largely ignorant of the process and the dangers of nuclear power for generations now
How does Chernobyl figure in this statement?
I will not compromise with anything other than zero emissions because that necessarily leads to matters of degree, sliding scales, and dangerous tendencies towards compromise as our land and food chain becomes irradiated for who knows how long
Have you given up eating bananas? I’ve seen pictures of The State handing them out at evacuation centres – it must be all an evil plot! Furthermore, we do know how long, based on the half-life of the elements.
The criticisms in my view should be directed at The State and the organizations that allowed people like TEPCO, once again, to get us into this mighty fine mess. May people find the sense to level their sights on them instead, elsewhere, instead of shooting the messenger.
So, your ill-informed scaremongering anonymous sources are innocent, then?
PS: I am quite angry at reading the post on Debito.org, and I think that is reflected in the text above. Let’s try to keep the comments a bit more calm, thanks!
Looks like the anonymous “trustworthy” source has decided to out himself:
http://www.debito.org/?p=8692#comment-243455
IMO, almost everything he posts matches his opinion, but he usually carefully withholds actually clearly stating that he agrees with his guest posts, as he does here again.
And of course, it wouldn’t be a Debito comment without a condescending line at the end.
BTW, I thought Mr Arudou’s rant about zero radiation sounded rather similar to the anti-vax nuts who want guarantees of 100% safe vaccines.
http://www.debito.org/?p=8700#comment-243492
Oh dear god is this guy for real? A disaster happened hundreds of kilometers away and I’m going to jump ship because I listen to a bunch of paranoid fearmongers and now am sad because my boss made me feel guilty and wanted everyone to work every day you know like it was a business or something…
Seriously, how do debitards even keep a job? And I certainly hope this guy doesn’t have one when he returns…
and debito wants this nut’s story to become an article for debito.org!
“I hope you will write something up for here once it comes out of vacation.”
Another unbiased story for sure.
So, I guess my first suspicion was right (but not the guess about it being a debitard dad). I stand by what I said above. The second source seemed mostly right techincally, with a couple odd points and an agenda.
But, I agree with this anti-TEPCO agenda. They have a bad history, and it doesn’t seem to have changed, despite whatwever heroic actions are being taken by those in the trenches, the management seems pretty fucking evil. Their first pirnciple seems to be “We have to cover up our sloppiness or else we’d go bankrupt!”
If you’re sloppy and in the nuke industry, you SHOULD go bankrupt.
Just because debito is anti-TEPCO doesn’t mean we can’t eye TEPCO with suspicion as well.
writing his name in katakana or representing foreigners speaking accented Japanese with katakana is off-limits. however, making fun of Japanese “R” and “L” pronunciation is apparently A-okay. Witness this exchange from his Facebook wall:
Nice, Debito. What a mature and thoughtful response. You really know how to make people feel better about themselves. Why he is shunned by a large majority of the Japanese population and faces such harsh criticisms is beyond me.
Also, I’ve noticed quite a few of his FB friends have changed their profile pics to a “help Japan” message of some kind, but old Debi decided to stick with the cover of his new book.
Classy.
@LB – you know I always wondered why someone, I think it was not-usenet, used to call him Danny Devito…
I still think it’s somebody with no technical knowledge.
Only the media is saying that. Gives an indication this person has no sense of scale for radiation levels.
The only documentation in the original post was an article.
Repeats the same mistake with the acronym, yet again. Reactor Pressure Vessel … PRV?
There’s been many put out there. I highly suggest the MIT site for example.
http://mitnse.com/
ie: be nice and don’t question his credentials or he’ll take his ball and go home. Just like Debito.
I was going to write a “page xyz” entry for the In Appropriate topic dealing with the “katakana = racism” bit; but I’m not feeling it at the moment.
Making fun of other people’s accents out of spite is low. I’m not surprised to see him doing it.
MCC – PRV is pressure relief valve. Basically a spring loaded valve that will open if the pressure inside a pipe/vessel gets to high preventing it from exploding. These are pretty standard on boilers/compressors/etc. The basic idea is if the pressure inside the boiler gets to high then it opens and releases the steam to the atmosphere and lowers the pressure.
Anyone who has ran a site with commentary struggles with where to draw the line between moderation and censorship. In Debito’s case, there can be no doubt which way he’s gone.
The guy has to approve every single comment. Most that reflect badly on him get deleted outright, a few he attaches his own note into your comment, and others he changes your note entirely and then posts it.
That’s not moderating a discussion, it’s just creating an echo chamber.
Given that’s how he operates, he doesn’t need to clarify that he agrees. 90% of the commentary that makes it through is material he hand picked to begin with.
Right, but how do you vent a Pressure Release Valve?
I understand that release valves are the mechanism for the venting, but you don’t vent the valves themselves.
You vent the reactor vessel using release valves.
You really don’t understand the meaning of the law you are citing, do you. By binding TEPCO to disclosure it actually does the opposite of what you say it does.
I’m actually of the opinion that there are all sorts of areas where TEPCO simply doesn’t know what is going on. But, unlike American “experts” they refuse, quite sensibly, to speculate. Please tell us one aspect of their operations they have covered up in the past few weeks.
Malcolm. There are seven laws known as “emergency laws” (有事法制7法) in Japan. There are also international agreements that fall under the general rubric of the emergency measures framework and at least one law “related to” that framework. Perhaps if you could be more specific as to what law you are talking about, we could read the relevant law and determine whether or not you are spouting nonsense. If you are simply taking what you say from your reading of a newspaper article, then you have no right to be so litigious, but even then you might provide a link to the article so the rest of us can at least have some idea of what the fuck you are on about.
Somebody made a comment about not needing to make this a pro/anti-TEPCO thing, but I can’t find it now.
For me, the issue with Debito’s “anonymous source” is that it wreaks of the bs in the press, it wreaks of bs in general, it offers 0 insight whatsoever, and is just bad “journalism” even for a blog.
Additionally, Debito isn’t going after TEPCO so much as he is after the Evil Empire of Japanese government and Nuclear Industry at large. I think for him, TEPCO is just a means to get at the usual anti-establishment woe-is-me rhetoric.
Anyway, I thought I would add this article to balance out the situation. And perhaps to demonstrate that it’s not the position, but the methodology and laziness which I (and presumably others?) take exception to.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-17/japan-s-nuclear-disaster-caps-decades-of-faked-safety-reports-accidents.html
Unlike Debito’s “anonymous” source, this article is very well researched. It has quotes and interviews with real insiders who the journalist, Jason Clenfield, took the time to find and contact.
He also proffers a realistic and sensible solution that bypasses the usual rhetoric of anti/pro stances.
Had something like this came out of Debito’s website I would not be slamming it. And I imagine others wouldn’t either.
But he is as important as Ghandi or MLK. On his crusade to rid Japan and the world of racist onsen owners, he was constantly thinking what they would do. You should read about it in “Japanese only.” Available on his website. Only 2000 yen or so.
KT, Kazuhide Otani is a fictional character who used to appear in The Alien / Japanzine (I think; might have been Metropolis) and was a caricature of the salaryman oyaji. Whoever created the profile on Facebook is just writing in character, with Debito going along with the joke.
You can either manually vent it to release pressure, or the valve will fail to safety (if properly designed) and basically vent on it’s own if the pressure gets to high.
Oppps – the valve will have some sort of actuator so you can open or close it, might be electric, might be magnetic, might be go turn a knob. But there is normally some way to manually make the valve open. If you have a water heater instead of an on demand system look on it, there will be a pressure relief valve on it that you can (if you’re a little crazy) open and relieve the pressure in your water heater (and watch the Mythbusters where they forced one to close to see what happens when a PRV fails – scary stuff).
The thing I was trying to get at is that the phrasing doesn’t make any sense, at least not to me — unless he’s speaking of the reactor.
“venting of the [pressure release valve]”
or
“venting of the [reactor pressurized vessel]”
It only makes sense to me if he’s talking about the reactor — for which he earlier designated with the extraneous acronym RPV [reactor pressurized vessel].
I’m still of the opinion they don’t know any more than I do (quite likely less), and I’ll be the first to say I don’t know much.
I still think they introduced an acronym to sound credible, and then have proceeded to confuse that very acronym several times now.
Mark, thanks for explaining that and helping me avoiding making a fool of myself by posting about that!
I never found that character terribly funny; it seemed to be an excuse to hide hatred behind “oh, but it’s satire!”
AJ Says:
March 24th, 2011 at 7:53 am
Joe, take the point and pull your head in. Debito put other sources and accepts comments that differ from his opinion as a matter of routine to spark debate.
http://www.debito.org/?p=8700#comment-243562
a liar
That was me. And I agree with you, debito isn’t really against TEPCO. He is just against everything, the J government, nuclear power (and any large industry) as a whole, the Men in Black who cover up the radiation readings even though they aren’t covered up, etc. and is happy to take and post any submissions to him that fit in with his views.
So we get the stupid first anonymous source, which may as well have been written by debito himself.
And then the second de-anonymized source, which had no inside information, just a fairly accurate technical viewpoint (although with some strange errors or exaggerations) but with a very doom-and-gloomy bias which debito agreed with, although there are just enough weasel words thrown in that the author can maintain a claim of accuracy even if/when the crisis is resolved.
Basically, if you mail in an analysis of any event, claim some sort of knowledge or personal experience, throw some sort of a left-friendly spin on it, will debito just post it immediately on his site?
In a way, I can see that maybe he wants his site to give a voice to the voiceless. This is true for alleged incidents of racism in Japan. If you can’t get a mainstream media outlet to interview you, you can at least post to debito.
But this Fukushima incident is getting plenty of attention, some of which is thoroughly researched. WTF is the point of debito posting this stuff? It has nothing to do with discrimination in Japan. He has no special knowledge or even relation to the topic beyond being Japanese. And it boggles me that someone would think to send an alleged technical assessment of Fukushima to debito. Why?!
It’s like me writing a letter to the editor of Sankei Sports regarding my theory on the brontosaurus.
Oh, yes, not-Usenet…
Mr Arudou is reinventing himself at the moment. His LinkedIn profile, for instance, now has him working at:
Non-profit – but, didn’t we see earlier that Debito-gumi is a K.K.? Surely that kind of misrepresentation of one’s credentials deservers a door-stepping interview.
Ahh, where was I? I’ve completely lost the place…
“Going back to vacationing Debito.org “when non-Japanese desperately need helps and adequate information but let you post comments I like and will post my comments on how racist the Japanese are until all of you leave Japan.
Bye-bye
Yeah LB I read that too and had to wonder, has he ever actually successfully negotiated with anyone in government? I mean he couldn’t even get his ex-wife to sponsor an anti-discrimination law in his own town.
。Jonholmes Says:
April 5th, 2011 at 7:33 pm
http://www.debito.org/?p=8692#comment-244755
“I don’t really care enough about living in Tokyo anymore to really give much of a toss; if they make it difficult for me to come back then I won’t, plain and simple. ”
Can you expect Japanese officials to be kind and nice to gaijin? It can not be “not difficult”.
“The business folds. Or relocates to China.”
I am sure you’ll be a good activist like Debito in China.
I am looking forward to good reports on China, Chao !!
Good luck to you! (^^)/