Saturday, March 26, 2011

mordor...,

Der Spiegel | It was in the spring of 1962 that farmer Nels Allison first noticed something was ominously wrong. "Son of a bitch," he said to his wife. Sheep were always "the first to lie down and die" when something was amiss on Allison's farm near Basin City, a rural town near the Columbia River in the far northwestern corner of the continental United States. He started referring to that deadly night "the Night of the Little Demons."

Although the Allisons have long since passed away, the shock endures. As chronicled by journalist Michael D'Antonio in his 1993 book Atomic Harvest, their tale is one of thousands of horror stories that took place in the area surrounding Hanford, Washington, the site of America's first full-scale plutonium production facility. The site haunts the locals to this day -- and imperils them.Hanford is America's original atomic sin. At this giant facility sprawled over 586 square miles (1,517 square kilometers), a four-hour drive southeast of Seattle into the vast emptiness of Eastern Washington, the United States once produced most of its nuclear raw materials for the Cold War. Though it was decommissioned in 1988, it remains the most contaminated location in the entire Western Hemisphere.

The US Department of Energy (DOE) recently revised its timetable for Hanford's decontamination, the biggest environmental cleanup in American history. The end date was moved back, once again. It now hopes to finally wrap up this Herculean task by September 2052 -- more than 108 years after Hanford was opened.


12 comments:

Big Don said...

__OTOH, we could all be speaking Japanese in some forced labor camp...

Tom said...

BD, never seen this before, your paranoia actually casting folks who were actual enemies at one time as the bad guys? And a scenario that was conceivable. What's up, the subrealism finally rubbing off on you?

CNu said...

BD's clearly absorbed waaaaay too many roentgens over time.

Need I remind you of how Roosevelt forced Japan into war, and why it attacked the Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor? http://subrealism.blogspot.com/2011/03/why-did-japan-enter-world-war-ii.html

There's no sane or credible justification for any of this. That said, given that Mordor exists, better in your backyard than in mine....,

Tom said...

No argument with any of your points there, CNu.

I was only making a differential diagnosis, BD vs BD, Then and Now. Compared to his tirades about us all being forced to learn Arabic or Farsi, his jingoistic paranoia this time is almost down-to-earth. But only by that standard.

Big Don said...

__ Don't think you have the complete background. For the Nth time, read "Flyboys" (it's visible on the shelf in the classic foto of BD's library). The Japanese were masssively killing Chinese and Pacific Islanders building an empire. Roosevelt just wanted them to knock it off. The book describes the roots of Japanese cultural hubris and mindset that led them to consider USA a pushover...

Big Don said...

__ The point here is while there may be consequences of actions required to defend oneself, the consequences of not mounting an adequate defense can be far worse. BD has mentioned this occasionally in the past whenever CNu strays into "war socialism" bellyaching mode.

Defense is *Number_One*, and you can't have too much of it...

CNu said...

The Japanese just wanted a little of what your ancestors had so successfully stolen from others, and, to be able to protect themselves from any future instances of Commodore Perry marching his stinking bear-like backside around their sanctuaries. http://www.corvalliscommunitypages.com/asia_pacific/japan/expedition.htm

Big Don said...

The Japanese warrior culture was ruthless. Part of the Japanese Army "final exam" for pre-WW2 "Officer Candidate School" was to swing your sword and successfully behead a (usually) Chinese person, with one stroke...

CNu said...

That's an out-and-out lie.

Nothing you have to say about the alleged ruthlessness of the Japanese can hold a candle to the American re-write of the ancient rules of war during WW-II. Prior to WW-II - war was waged by and between groups of professional or conscripted soldiers.

America took its cue from the Nazis and made the aerial bombardment of civilians the primary play in its military book, culminating with the unnecessary, racist, and utterly ruthless totalitarian slaughter of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Your propaganda is entirely too thin and transparent to carry the day on this subject BD. And like I said upthread, if you're content to live in proximity to Mordor as part of the cost of offensive totalitarian slaughter, then I'm tickled pink to have you living in proximity to Mordor because that's a karmically righteous turn of the great Archimedean screw....,

Big Don said...

Dood!! BD will see your "out-and-out lie" claim and raise you a ton of links to this stuff, even fotos of beheadings acts.

"New officers were indoctrinated to the expectations of war by beheading Chinese captives": http://www.ww2pacific.com/atrocity.html
Here's another foto: http://www.ww2incolor.com/japan/147337.html
Another foto with atrocity stories: http://www.vspa.com/k9/war_crimes.htm
More fotos: http://123nonstop.com/pictures/Beheading_Chinese_Prisoner
And "Flyboys" devotes a whole chapter to it...

To close the loop on your original post re: Hanford/Mordor, whatever residual radioactive waste problems remain, it was certainly worth defeat of this enemy.

Big Don said...

Google "Japanese beheadings Chinese," over a million hits. BD just gave the tip of the Google Iceberg. Even out on the tenth page of hits, it's still solid stuff. Fotos of this sort were common back in the 40's, Life/Time/Newsweek mags, newspapers, back before the wimpy libs forced journalism to sanitize. We took the LA Examiner (sensational Hearst newspaper)...

Beheadings defendants were some of those prosecuted in the war crimes trials. The detailed nature of the Japanese "OCS" final exam is discussed extensively in "Flyboys."

umbrarchist said...

"Where Safety Comes First"

Damn that reminds me of the NAZIs.

"Work means Freedom"

Words create the reality of the mind that is out of touch with reality.
.

Master Arbitrageur Nancy Pelosi Is At It Again....,

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