Disqus - Friends of egbegb

Re: Singapore rejects South Korean nationalists’ attempt to erect comfort women statue

Sam Gilman — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 01:58:33 -0000

You haven't read a book, yet you're prepared to comment on its contents? Is this how you always form your opinions?

Re: Singapore rejects South Korean nationalists’ attempt to erect comfort women statue

Sam Gilman — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 03:21:12 -0000

Your post is here for me to read, and I read it. On the other hand, you haven't read Soh's book, yet you're telling the whole world what it contains. What's worse, you're doing this based on misunderstanding what the word "apparently" means in a sentence like this. Here, "apparently" refers to whether or not it was the first mention, not whether or not the comment appeared at all.

I appreciate that English isn't your first language, but to be honest, you're not coming across as particularly stable.

Re: Keep Abe’s hawks in check or Japan and Asia will suffer

Sam Gilman — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 08:42:01 -0000

Fact: I'm afraid you've got things all muddled.

You're entirely mistaken about the official position of the Japanese government which explicitly states that the Nanjing massacre is undeniable and that the comfort women not only existed but were forced into service. Even Abe himself doesn't deny the existence of and suffering of comfort women - he made a statement about it only recently as reported in the Japan Times.

It's also not true that the population of Japan in general denies these events. For example, it is a Western media myth that Japanese schoolchildren do not learn about Nanjing in history classes.

To write about "the Japanese" as if the population thinks with one mind and with the same mind as the leader of the government is a bit, well, suspect, don't you think? Why take one side of one wing of the politics of the country and assume it represents the whole place? Isn't that a crude, orientalist stereotype?

Re: Keep Abe’s hawks in check or Japan and Asia will suffer

Sam Gilman — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 09:50:50 -0000

I don't like Shinzo Abe. He was a dreadful Prime Minister last time around, and he has some very dodgy friends in politics. So it takes a special kind of klutz to drop the ball in an attack on him. Debito Arudou is not unique here - a whole lot of western coverage has been pant-wettingly frantic, as if it's only a matter of months before the airwaves are filled with patriotic marches and and the bellowing of anti-Chinese propaganda. He does go the extra mile, however. In saying "The current Abe administration is in pole position to drive Japan back to a xenophobic, ultra-rightist, militaristic Japan that we thought the world had seen the last of after two world wars", he simply comes across as a little unhinged.

It's also surreal to accuse modern-day Japan of being the main source of aggression and instability in the region. I'm not sure if Debito Arudou understands how international law works, but "specks" like these imply access to fishing, oil and other commodities, as well as influence over shipping lanes. Chinese "historic" claims of ownership are very shaky indeed, and the government in Beijing appears to be engaged in a cover-up over just that, as reported in this paper. Is he suggesting that Japan just roll over and surrender because China says so? Is it that he prefers to support a real authoritarian militarist regime to an imaginary one?

There are a few errors too: While some of his political friends have, I don't believe Abe himself has ever publicly denied the Nanjing massacre, let alone "consistently". The constitution also requires a referendum before it can be amended, not just supermajorities in both houses. Logorrhea does not mean "saying unwise things" (Abe's words were planned, not logorrheic). Foreign children in Japan are not excluded from schools (very odd idea that).

I am deeply uncomfortable with Abe's associations, his statements on history, and his past attempts to introduce compulsory patriotism. But I'm pretty sure he's not planning to invade Manchuria.

Re: Keep Abe’s hawks in check or Japan and Asia will suffer

Sam Gilman — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 21:58:17 -0000

It's a terrible shame that the reasonable point you made originally about the author's nationality has been entirely undermined and more by your bizarre resort to the language of racial paranoia. "One of their own", "uncle Toms", "scraps from the Master's table" - you write as if criticising an article in the Japan Times is an act of race betrayal! (The mind boggles). Quite apart from the silliness of that, you appear happy to make an issue of Debito Arudou's ethnicity when it suits you, but object vehemently when others do the same. If he is "Japanese", then, surely, he is not "one of their own" to for foreigners to victimise. You can't have it both ways. (Personally, I don't think the kind of passport he holds matters as to whether he's right or wrong.)

It's also disturbing (or perhaps just comical) that you support suggestions that critics of this article should be silenced and "purged", and you yourself suggest they are less deserving of basic human rights. When Debito is arguing that Abe represents a return to Japanese fascism, the irony is glaring.

As to your main charge, I don't think any conspiracy forced Debito to make such wild exaggerations as to compare the current Prime Minister with wartime leaders (such as Hideki Tojo, presumably), nor to get the 2006 changes to education law horribly wrong, nor to get wrong what it is that Abe has controversially said about the war, nor to get constitutional procedure wrong, nor to wholly misunderstand the Senkaku dispute, nor - incredibly in 2013 - to write as if China's military assertiveness doesn't exist. That's all his own work.

Perhaps instead of paranoid name-calling (I echo another commenter who suggests you don't understand what "apologist" means), you could address some of the criticisms made by what looks like a diverse group of people making a diverse range of comments. Otherwise Fight Back's and your support of Debito looks autonomic and cult-like. A cult of personality perhaps?

I wouldn't have bothered writing this response (I actually thought at one point your praise of Debito was so effusive as to be sarcastic) if I hadn't discovered that you and Fight Back are indeed genuine respondents on Debito Arudou's personal website, and apparently quite typical of his school of thought. Perhaps you should invite him here to respond? He might make a better, less racially-charged fist of it than you.

Re: Keep Abe’s hawks in check or Japan and Asia will suffer

Sam Gilman — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 22:17:13 -0000

Jim, the term "Uncle Tom" is a very well-known and offensive accusation of race treachery that comes out of the African-American experience of slavery. There's no modern ambiguity to it. When you tell me you're not making such accusations, I'm not inclined to believe you. What, for example does "taking scraps from the master's table mean", if it isn't an attempt to compare westerners like myself as in a master-slave relationship with Japanese? If you can't take responsibility for the words you use, please use terms you are more at home with.

(The disturbing thing is, an archive search on the term "uncle tom" shows me that Arudou used it in the same Japan Times article where he introduced the term "apologist" for people don't agree with his rather unorthodox views on Japanese society. It's almost as if you and Fight Back are parroting everything he says. It looks really weird from the outside. it genuinely appears cult-like.)

The thing is, when I asked you to address various criticisms people have made of/errors found in this article (I listed several), you didn't. You made further paranoid comments about "sockpuppets", and continued to obsess about the meaning of Debito Arudou's nationality and ethnicity and who said what on some site or other. If anyone here is guilty of not addressing the content of the article, it's you and Fight Back. It's as if you're trying to distract people's attention as a form of defence. So what if someone suggests he's not good at Japanese history, or failed to jettison age-old ingrained western colonialist attitudes, or is out of touch because he's returned to the states (which is what people are trying to say, not that his DNA disqualifies him from comment) - these are just attempts to explain why he's written what he did. How about you, like me, try to address what he's written. That's where the argument should be instead of these ad hominem attacks that you are joining in with.

Look, the only substantive point you make yourself is that China has zero responsibility for the increase in regional tension. Given that the government in Beijing recently sponsored anti-Japanese riots, has repeatedly violated Japanese territorial waters, has been concealing evidence that undermines its territorial claims, and most recently had one of its helicopters lock weapons radar on a Japanese ship, I don't see how you can reach this conclusion. These events happened both under Noda and under Abe. (No one here, by the way, is saying "Abe is a great guy" - a point that seems to have flown past you. No one is playing down what he has done or said. Some are trying to correct Debito's factual errors about Abe, but that's not apologism). Other countries in the region are also highly worried about Chinese expansion and cooked-up territorial claims. What you write about China - now that's apologism according to the standard definition - trying to play down the controverisal. Do you really think China has no responsibility? How does that square with recent Chinese actions?

Re: Keep Abe’s hawks in check or Japan and Asia will suffer

Sam Gilman — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 22:19:18 -0000

Sorry - this was from me; I accidentally pressed post as I was beginning my reply. I thought I had deleted it, but Disqus kept the comment.

Re: Tohoku has been truly rent asunder for untold generations yet to be born

Sam Gilman — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 11:48:32 -0000

Who are Anders Pape Moller and Timothy Mousseau, the researchers whose work provides the scientific basis for this article? I fear the author here has done the same thing so many other non-science journalists do: they choose their “experts” based on their personal prejudices without checking their credibility or what the vast majority of scientists in their area think of them. He’s choosing his "experts" based on what he wants to hear, not on how sound they are.

Anders Pape Moller is a bird researcher from Denmark. In the first part of his career he was a star, charismatic and assertive, with an amazing ability to get great results in his research on inherited asymmetry in barn swallows. Guess which country he was banned from doing bird research in? In 2003 the Danish committee on Scientific Dishonesty revoked his license: basically, he had been fabricating data. He didn't help the inquiry, claiming that a lot of his data could not be made available because it had been lost or stolen.Scientific American reports on a widely held belief among researchers in the field that he had been cheating his figures in even his most famous studies.

Timothy Mousseau’s own past in relation to radiation study is also suspect. A staunch defender of Moller as being “beyond reproach” even after Moller’s conviction, he was responsible for persuading the New York Academy of Science to publish an infamous book they later distanced themselves from on the health effects of the Chernobyl accident. The book claimed nearly a million deaths already from the accident, but did this by pretty much ignoring all internationally published scientific research (including from the former Soviet Union), counting pretty much any increase in deaths from all sorts of conditions including cirrhosis of the liver (while the alcohol-soaked Soviet Union was undergoing collapse!), and most famously explicitly rejecting the “scientific method” which underpins modern science, all in the pursuit of the highest number possible. It was savaged by professional reviewers, who only paid it attention because of the noise it was generating amongst anti-nuclear campaigners. Any scientist attached to this project has to have their professional integrity at least questioned.

Of course, that’s all just background, and maybe their research on the radiation effects on wildlife is utterly sound? Alas... Their work on Chernobyl in itself is an outlier in terms of the severity of negative effects of radiation. It has been severely criticized by scientists also working in the area, specifically that Moller and Mousseau manage to find serious effects of radiation on animals at exposure levels found naturally in the UK (where such effects are not found). In one case, a Ukrainian researcher Sergey Gaschak, who had been working with them, asked to have his name removed from their research after he questioned their analysis. He directly accused them pushing an ideological agenda at the expense of scientific integrity.

Their research on Fukushima - which also finds surprisingly (ie implausibly) serious effects is equally problematic, and has been criticised for a whole series of problems, such as lacking baseline comparisons, making unwarranted statistical conclusions, poor sample sizes and so on. The critics have asked for the data to be made publicly available for analysis, but as far as I know, to no avail.

Of course, Roger Pulvers is not a scientist, and can’t be expected to know all about this. Except that neither am I a scientist. I’m just another foreigner living in Japan who, like him, had to learn about radiation from a standing start on March 12. Given that it was clear from the outset that all kinds of people were making all kinds of extreme claims, surely it is the responsibility of a journalist to check sources on this topic. Moller and Mousseau do not represent the mainstream, and they certainly should not be used to trump organizations like the WHO, which firmly are.

There are not three Tohokus. There are two. There’s the real one that suffered immensely from the earthquake, tsunami, evacuation and stoked-up radiation fears, and then there’s the imagined one that too many journalists write about in order to earn money. The WHO warns of the real health cost of exaggerated fear. If the author cares so much about the area, shouldn’t he be taking a bit more care in who he uses as sources?

Re: Beijing urges Senkaku nationalization reversal

Sam Gilman — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 13:10:03 -0000

There was peace - and actually no dispute at all - before the discovery that there might be oil and gas in the waters around the Senkakus. Both Chinas used the Japanese name in official documents, identified the islands as part of the Ryukyu island chain, and had no dispute with Japan over sovereignty. As far as both Chinas were concerned, the islands were part of Japan, given that the Ryukyus were part of Japan.

Do you believe Okinawa belongs to China?

Re: Tohoku has been truly rent asunder for untold generations yet to be born

Sam Gilman — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 04:22:15 -0000

I have to disagree with you flatly and strongly. What people need is reliable science-based information from disinterested sources. Those blogs you mention are avowedly anti-nuclear and have been responsible (ENEnews in particular) for the most astonishing scaremongering.

I don't know if you live in Japan, but when the crisis at Fukushima started, many people struggled to get the best scientific information because extreme anti-nuclear activists immediately took the airwaves and Internet to spread the most apocalyptic stories. They made the crisis WORSE, affecting people very far from Fukushima by scaring the hell out of them for no reason whatsoever. According to some of the stories they spread, half of Japan should be dead by now. They continue to torment people living nearer Fukushima by spreading the false idea that lots of people are going to die. Please do not support this by spreading nonsense. It has a real, physical impact on the health of people here.

It would be really nice if the anti-nuclear movement could be anti-nuclear based upon reliable information, rather than invented and manufactured scare stories. Then they could make a contribution to Japan's (and the world's) energy debate.

(By the way, for the moderators - I had put up a previous post which got through moderation. I edited it to correct a couple of bad links, and it's now disappeared. Any chance of putting it back up again?)

Re: Tohoku has been truly rent asunder for untold generations yet to be born

Sam Gilman — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 04:49:12 -0000

Your reaction to what I wrote is a classic example of cognitive dissonance.

Cognitive dissonance occurs when one “cognition”, such as a deeply held belief (religious, political etc.) is contradicted by another cognition – such as a real-life event or scientific evidence. This dissonance needs to be resolved either by holding onto the belief and dismissing the evidence, or altering the belief to accommodate the evidence. It’s unfortunate that human nature leads people a lot of the time to defend their beliefs and deny evidence. It’s why many Christians of a certain type become creationists, denying the evidence for evolution; it's why many free-market ideologues become climate-change evidence deniers because they detest state intervention; it's why certain parents, unable to process that no one or nothing is to blame for their child’s autism, join the anti-vaccine movement.

I’m not name-calling. Here’s what just happened. I provided evidence, references, links, to show not only that Moller has a history of fraudulent scientific practice, but also (directly contrary to what you imply) that his current research has been criticized not because of that history but because the research in itself is “under the microscope” suspect and also contradicted by many other studies. Yet you see no reason at all to call Moller/Mousseau into doubt, and based on nothing at all, accuse their critics (quite a number of senior professional scientists) of having their “head in the clouds”.

Yet on another Japan Times’ thread (your Disqus comments make it clear you are passionately anti-nuclear), you are happy to dismiss on far flimsier grounds the work of a radiation scientist whose work contradicts your beliefs. Your reason is worth reproducing here: you dismiss his opinion on how radiation can cause cancer because he is an expert in how radiation causes cancer, rather than how cancer may be cured. Not a word about the quality of his research and its reception by other scientists. And ultimately, you end up endorsing a surreal conspiracy theory about the WHO and global medical research into radiation that has unfortunately caught on in the fringier parts of the anti-nuclear movement.

It’s obvious. You prefer Moller and Mousseau’s research because it supports your beliefs, and you will continue to do so regardless of all evidence that it’s suspect. You dismiss all research on radiation and health that contradicts your set beliefs, regardless of the quality of the research or the standing of the researcher. This is all the wrong way round. You should base your scientific beliefs on what the best science says. Otherwise, you make yourself only as credible as creationists, climate change deniers, anti-vaccinists and all the others like them. Ask yourself honestly: if a scientist who claimed the radiation levels were not a big threat to human health had Moller’s profile of fraud and critical savaging, would you ignore that? Honestly?

And ask yourself another question. Since the beginning of this crisis, when the extent of the releases was clear, mainstream, independent, properly accredited and respected scientific opinion has consistently been that the health and environmental effects from Fukushima radiation are going to be minimal. This is not a conspiracy: it's entirely in line with mainstream research on radiation and health from before Fukushima. In the long run, how much influence is the anti-nuclear movement going to have on governments around the world if it continues to cite fringe and junk scientists, conspiracy theories and paranoiacs, right at the time when these governments are looking at the difficult problem of post-carbon energy? Years from now, people will look back at Fukushima, see the very, very low death toll and say "the anti-nuclear movement was wildly wrong." Do you want that to happen?

How are you going to resolve this dissonance? By hoping for more deaths?

Re: Rosy Fukushima health report faulted by experts

Sam Gilman — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 11:09:57 -0000

Brian, I'm afraid that Ken has been far too gentle on the sources you use. I'd be stronger. They're tripe. Tosh. Bad Science. Made up. I see no reason to be diplomatic about this.

Yablokov's book that claims nearly a million deaths from Chernobyl is not science but propaganda pretending to be science. When a book explicitly rejects the scientific method as his does (i.e. the foundation of scientific knowledge for the past few hundred years), ignores pretty much all the internationally published research - including that coming out of the former Soviet Union - in favour of obscure news articles, blames cirrhosis of the liver on radiation then it's clearly a joke. The house that was tricked into publishing it disowned it and returned the rights to the authors.It's just a junk study.

Arnie Gundersen is not a world expert on radiation, health and nuclear power. He may say he's an expert, but what he actually is, is someone who collects consultancy fees from anti-nuclear groups that amount to a very healthy hourly sum. That is, he's financially invested in nuclear scaremongering. He's the mirror image of a TEPCO executive. He supports a theory of radiation (hot particles) which has been examined and rejected repeatedly by actually qualified scientists. Gundersen has also been found to have "padded" his CV quite substantially. As Ken says, this is easy to find out. I suspect you never tried to check.

Hiroaki Koide is not a world expert on nuclear power, but someone who managed to get a tenured job in an age when they were plentiful and then proceeded to do (little or?) no apparent scientific research for the next forty years (staying firmly at the bottom rank of academia - which is pretty impressive if mediocrity impresses you), and just published popular anti-nuclear tracts that have no scientific standing. He has not demonstrated to his scientific peers that he is any good at all. Again, I don't think you ever seriously asked yourself "is this Hiroaki Koide a respected expert?"

I'm fairly confident that the only reason you cite these people is because they are people who support your point of view (given their lack of standing, what other reason could there be?). You have done nothing to check if they are respected in their field, or what happens when their ideas are subject to scrutiny by other experts.

Your claims about the WHO having to get IAEA approval about all research to do with nuclear contamination is simply wrong. If you actually go look at the interagency agreements, you'll find that the WHO is totally free ("without prejudice") to say what it likes in relation to health. Funnily enough, it's actually in the same sentence of the document where the IAEA is given the lead in promoting the safe use of nuclear power. A sentence I suspect you've never checked. Why did you never check it?

We know from Chernobyl on a grand scale, and now, very sadly, from Fukushima, that (overblown) fear of radiation from accidents has widespread serious physical and mental health effects. If you genuinely cared about people, about their children and their welfare, you'd have checked to see if your "experts" were what they were cracked up to be before spreading such fear. You'd have checked if the fears were warranted.

But the thing is, Brian Victoria, you didn't check, did you? If you're going to dismiss the work of internationally respected scientists and scientific organisations, don't you think a bit more due diligence is appropriate?

Look, if you want a serious and informed debate, that's fine. But before anything else, you need to sort yourself out before you can join it.

Re: Rosy Fukushima health report faulted by experts

Sam Gilman — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 11:18:49 -0000

Actually, there is a history of Greenpeace, for example, rejecting reports on Chernobyl by mainstream scientists, and reacting by producing their own in-house or sponsored reports that inflate the numbers way beyond anything scientifically plausible. They seem to be constitutionally invested in more, rather than fewer deaths.

Journalists are also invested in horror stories. They have a natural inclination to choose the high-end figure in any tragedy, to create false science controversies where none exists (see also vaccines, climate change).

And then there are people who directly make money out of massively overstating risks. Chris Busby, Arnie Gundersen and others get consultancy fees, court appearance fees and so on.

You say "the jury is still out", which is technically true. But it's wrong to read that as "we have no idea". We do actually have a fairly good idea of the possible range of deaths. The estimates of people like Gundersen are way outside of that, and are based on junk science anyway. We can safely dismiss them, like we can safely dismiss homeopathy.

Re: Rosy Fukushima health report faulted by experts

Sam Gilman — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:10:02 -0000

Roy, could you explain what puts you in a position to know that Koide has been prevented from doing any research by the Japanese government because of his opinions?

The thing is, Koide was anti-nuclear before he got his job (it's why he wanted the job in the first place); there are anti-nuclear academics in Japan who have been promoted above the first rank, and to my knowledge, the ministry of education in Tokyo is not required to approve university promotions anyway. In addition, the ministry of education does not directly control the editorial decisions of all Japanese scientific journals, science funding comes from all kinds of organisations in Japan, and there has been nothing stopping Koide publishing in non-Japanese academic journals. As for research funding? He works at a reactor research institute. Do you think they employed him not to do any funding? And if he's that good his word should be taken over opinions published in the most prestigious international scientific journals, why didn't he just get a job in another country?

To be honest, I'm rather worried that you're indulging in the tired western colonialist prejudice that Japan, like all these damned inscrutable oriental places, is actually a crypto-fascist state. That it's not actually a liberal democracy very much like your average western European country, but a devious, thought-controlled autocracy.

Or perhaps, like Brian, your anti-nuclear views are actually a kind of religious faith, such that you'll believe any old nonsense you read on the Internet so long as it bolsters that faith.

Re: Tohoku has been truly rent asunder for untold generations yet to be born

Sam Gilman — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 11:38:38 -0000

Johnny, you've just confirmed what I wrote. When I confront you with what seem to be contradictions and illogicalities in what you say, you don't address this, but try to distract attention with the bizarre idea that by clicking on your Disqus username, I'm "tracking your digital footprint".

But I'm sorry you felt that what i wrote was too long. I was taking you seriously.

Re: Rosy Fukushima health report faulted by experts

Sam Gilman — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 11:47:41 -0000

I think you've missed the point that Geoff was making. It's not about a choice between red meat and nuclear power, but about risk perception. The risk from the radiation is so low that it's actually equivalent to so many other risks that we take without thinking. Living in Tokyo carries a greater environmental risk of cancer from the environment than in pretty much most of the exclusion zone around Fukushima daiichi, as does the regular consumption of red meat. What we're now doing, which burning more gas, coal and oil, is a far, far greater risk to health.

I don't get this from the Japanese government. I do something that so many people who spread fear about the radiation don't seem to do. I cannot for the life of me understand why they don't do it too. I go look at science journals. When a journalist quotes a stat on radiation, I don't take it on trust. When a government or TEPCO official makes a statement, I don't take it on trust. I go to independent experts whose work has been scrutinised by their peers.

Toolongone on this page thinks it's odd to rely on "expertise and scientific credentials" for information about science. I don't.

Re: Radioactive cesium not detectable in 99% of Fukushima residents: study

Sam Gilman — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 12:20:24 -0000

Gio, the questions you've raised about this report have not been put honestly.

You suggest that all work coming out of Tokyo University is suspect because some people who graduated from there occupy executive positions in industry and government. But you’ve been living in Japan for a long time. You *know* that Tokyo University is the top university in the country, one of the top in Asia and in the world top 50 (and by the by, ranked 14th for physics). Just like Oxbridge and the Ivy League in the UK and US, it tends to produce graduates who go on to take leading roles in government and industry. Should we suspect all graduates of Yale of being folksy warmongers just because George Bush went there? Would you prefer that the investigation had been led by someone from a much lower quality university? What kind of sense would that make?

You also argue that Ryugo Hayano does not have the correct breadth of expertise, as if his expertise in atomic physics is the only expertise on the team. Was it beyond you to track down the other authors? It took me less than five minutes. They include a physician from Fukushima prefecture who has been involved in radiation assessments since the beginning of the crisis, as well as a radiation specialist at Fukushima Medical university and doctors from Hirata Central hospital. Your complaint that this hospital is not named is the fault of the Japan Times. Given your evident passion on the issue, is tracking down the abstract of a recently published, open access, newsworthy study really beyond you? Ironically, I found the link on Ryugo Hayano’s twitter feed.

Your figures for the amount of caesium-137 released appears to rely on you or someone else misreading a viral and really poor Russia Today report which itself manages to misread the TEPCO figures it tries to discuss, in particular failing to understand what peta- and tera- prefixes mean, and swapping atmospheric and oceanic releases. So they get the wrong Cs-137 figures, and they are then wrong by a factor of a hundred.

The thing is, we know that Russia Today is not a reliable source on Fukushima. (I thought everyone knew that. It gave pretend expert Arnie Gundersen loads of airtime). If you're relying on RT, or worse, on a website that recycled it, then you're not taking things seriously. We all know that there are people on all sides spouting rubbish about radiation. Instead of being happy to find sources that support your view, the more honest thing to do is base your views on what is reliable. Go to the source, and don't trust journalists. They get science wrong in simple ways all the time.

Lastly you reveal – for someone so convinced of the dangers of the releases – an astonishing ignorance of what medical symptoms radiation might produce. Radiation is not witchcraft, or a generator of all diseases. Radiation below very high levels (ie of the order of a whole Sievert that can cause acute radiation sickness) does not produce “sudden” symptoms. It results in things like cancers, often of very unusual kinds, such as thyroid cancers, that take years to develop. If you're honestly concerned about the health impacts of Fukushima, surely you would have found time to read up on this. Google search is free.

The thing is, when people turn up at the doctor’s, complaining of symptoms that look for all the world like stress and not a bit like cancer or any other radiogenic conditions, the doctors are quite right to say “this is not something that is caused by radiation”. They will be keen to minimize the stress because it can lead to depression, alcoholism, strains on families (with children picking up behavioral problems – all of which we can see already and has been reported on). They're not denying anyone's rights.

Given that all professionally scrutinized studies by respected, mainstream scientists are concluding – as established experts from around the world have been suggesting since the beginning of the crisis – that the ultimate risk to the population from the releases is likely to be very small, where is all this destructive stress coming from? Gio, I'm afraid it's from people like you. People who carelessly sow doubt and fear through social media without any thought of the consequences. Tweets are a better source of science than trained medical and radiological experts experts in the field? Twitter? What kind of silliness is that?

Please, please, if you want to engage in critical analysis of sources on this issue, do it honestly. Don't just settle on what you think you already know. That's not honest.

Re: Radioactive cesium not detectable in 99% of Fukushima residents: study

Sam Gilman — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 10:14:51 -0000

Gio,

I didn't get the figures from RT, but apparently the misinformation spiraled out from there. I'll be the first to admit there's a lot of BS on this issue spun by all sides, so thanks for pointing that out.

I have to shake my head in disbelief at this. If you're getting your information from sites that aggregate nonsense from places like Russia Today (or ENEnews or anywhere like that), then you're just not making a serious effort to get informed. On a subject like this, the answer is not to take an average of all Internet opinions. Do that and you'd believe that vaccines were a government conspiracy to conceal aliens warming the planet to kill JFK because he had the key to free energy (but that seven-foot shape-shifting lizards got to him first). The other thing to avoid is looking for material that confirms what you believe - are you sure you're not just doing that?)

If you want information on science and health, go to scientists and medical researchers working in the field who have the respect of their peers. For example:

the effect of low-level radiation exposure on health, cancer obviously is long-term, but you ignore the short-term symptoms entirely, I have indeed read plenty on the topic and all I know is that there is a great deal of debate over what levels are cause for immediate concern.

About immediate effects of low-level radiation? I'm sorry, but no, there isn't a great deal of debate. Not amongst publishing scientists. The only great debate over low-level radiation is long-term, and that is over whether it even has any effect at all. It's true that there are people posing as experts who claim serious effects of low-level radiation, such as Chris Busby, Arnie Gundersen and Helen Caldicott, but they have failed to get their ideas accepted by their peers. They're cranks, creating their own grand-sounding organisations (and in Busby's case, his very own "peer-reviewed journal") to make themselves look legitimate. I believe it's from New World Order conspiracy theorist Caldicott that you get this:

what studies are you citing? The WHO? That organization that has to run its findings by the IAEA --dedicated to the expansion of nuclear power -- before being allowed to publish them?

This is the second time this week a JT commenter has made this insane claim. It comes from quoting one part of a sentence in an inter-agency agreement. It goes like this: "...it is recognized by the World Health Organization that the International Atomic Energy Agency has the primary responsibility for encouraging, assisting and co-ordinating research and development and practical application of atomic energy for peaceful uses throughout the world..." What your conspiracy theory websites don't tell you is how the sentence finishes: "...without prejudice to the right of the World Health Organization to concern itself with promoting, developing, assisting and co-ordinating international health work, including research, in all its aspects." When your sources play fast and loose with the facts like this, can they be trusted at all?

It's also an insane claim because of how the WHO works and how its work is received by the scientific community. It doesn't control global health research. It pretty much reflects it. Your conspiracy theory that the IAEA controls everything it publishes appears in no scientific journal considering the WHO's work. Why not? Because it's just a conspiracy theory.

Organisations like the WHO are pretty much as sound as you can get in terms of health research - and certainly better than conspiracy websites. I think you're allowing your entirely justified hatred of TEPCO management to addle your thoughts. The actual extent to which the leaks from Fukushima are going to harm people is now independent of the fact that TEPCO's criminal negligence caused them to happen. Moral failings, no matter how outrageous, are not carcinogenic in themselves.

Re: Abe expresses condolences over Thatcher’s death

Sam Gilman — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 10:36:56 -0000

You don't know what the poll tax was, do you?

Re: Abe expresses condolences over Thatcher’s death

Sam Gilman — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 10:42:07 -0000

She didn't pull the country out of a slump. She put the UK into a slump by creating a recession (she put interest rates up to very high levels at the beginning of her term in office as part of a failed economic experiment), and then sowed the seeds for the next recession in the early 1990s. There were a few years of crazy growth that were simply a property bubble.

Re: Rosy Fukushima health report faulted by experts

Sam Gilman — Tue, 14 May 2013 10:14:21 -0000

Anna, as you're trying to broaden the discussion beyond whether or not Brian Victoria is relying on pseudoscience, and casting aspersions on me (am I really a supporter of the nuclear industry? After I wrote disparagingly of TEPCO executives?): I had a look at your other Disqus comments. You have an "interesting" relationship with science and evidence.

Where mainstream science supports your ideology, for example on global warming, you are happy to rely (as one should) on the mainstream view that we have a serious problem with regard to CO2 and other GHG emissions, and quite rightly highlight the documented corporate attempts to corrupt public debate. Yet where the same international network of research processes and institutions produces results that you don't like, such as with the safety of genetically modified crops or the health risks of radiation or what we can do with nuclear waste, you back away into the walled garden of green movement dogma. Like so many on both the left and right, you only turn to science when it suits your ideology.

Can we store nuclear waste safely? If you want absolute safety for all your energy sources, then you'd use no energy at all, so what does safe mean? Can we store it so that deaths from nuclear waste would not be higher than deaths from other acceptable energy sources? Yes, as near as certainly as makes no odds.Here's another question: Can we recycle the waste? Yes. The newest generation of reactors can do just that and reduce the amount of waste we'd need to store dramatically.

As for the leaks at Fukushima, of course, I don't know how long it will be until there are no more. But I do know they're at such a low level that to the best of our scientific knowledge, they do not present a meaningful danger to people outside the plant or to the environment, although it is important to keep monitoring the situation. Of course, Fukushima is not good. I've no illusions about that.

One could ask a series of provocative rhetorical questions about all other low-carbon energy sources - when will people stopped being poisoned by rare earth mining for solar and wind? How many people will die from hydropower accidents? Exactly how much CO2 emitting natural gas back-up is needed for the misnamed "renewables only" solutions of groups like Greenpeace? What is the true cost of a smart grid to accommodate intercontinental intermittent power sources? How much land needs to be taken up growing large scale biomass, and what will it do to food prices and how many famines will it create?

Asking these questions without taking an open-minded interest in the answers would be dishonest. I'm not against any of these technologies as being part of the energy solution (well, maybe biomass). We need to look at all sources of low-carbon energy by the same metric. Not pro-this tech or that tech, but, in David MacKay's words, "pro-arithmetic".

Unless you're prepared to be even-handed in looking at energy and unless you're committed to good scientific evidence (based on its quality, not on what you want it to say), you'll be part of the logjam preventing progress that also includes the fossil fuel industry as well as many major so-called "green" organisations.

Re: Police, media must consider plight of those caught in linguistic dragnet

Sam Gilman — Tue, 14 May 2013 10:33:45 -0000

This is just some old news mixed in with the author’s own subconscious problems with race.

The initial proposition is correct. Police reports that systematically neglect to mention the ethnicity of a suspect if they’re a member of the majority group lead to a highly exaggerated public impression of minority ethnicity involvement in crime. Of course, this is not a newly discovered problem, and it’s certainly not limited to Japan.

What is "new" is Debito’s suggestion that the police should never refer directly to a suspect’s ethnicity, but instead be encouraged to use insinuating phrases about distinguishing racial features - what he refers to as their "phenotype". So, we’d have a whole host of racialised codewords in police and media reports! I’m not sure he has thought this through. In many other countries that have addressed this issue, the solution has been to make sure ethnicity is always mentioned, even if the person is a member of the majority group, to avoid systematic bias or stereotyping.

It’s correct to say that race is not a genetic category, but again, this should not be a revelation. Race is a social category, as has been stated by geneticists for decades. Ironically, Debito doesn’t quite seem to grasp the whole of this. He scoffs that Hispanics are "lumped in" with "hakujin" in Japan. Of course, in the US the white/Hispanic distinction is currently considered important, just as white/Irish/Polish distinctions used to be, but these are not universal or objective categorizations. Barack Obama is considered "black" even though half his genetic origins are "white". That’s an illustration of what it means for race not to be genetic, or a biologically distinct "type", but a social category. Debito’s persistent use of the word "phenotype" (meaning your physical form, including your internal organs, limb count, and nervous system as determined by your genes and how they interact with the environment) where one would normally say "appearance" suggests he hasn’t fully understood this. And in general, he really needs to stop viewing America as the default universal "correct" condition for racial politics. It has its own particular history and warehouse of problems that don't always suit export elsewhere.

For this is one of the main problems with Debito Arudou’s columns on racial issues. The targets are often good ones, but he ruins his attacks by assuming that he, by virtue of his self-declared image as a crusading liberal outsider, is immune from prejudice. Alas, it seeps out of the corners of everything he writes. What does "garden-variety Asian" mean? Tame, ordinary, controllable? (unlike some ideal-type assertive westerner?) Why talk about them like a species of plant or animal? Why, in a list of ethnicities indicating greater recent sensitivity on the part of reporters and police to differences between people, does he apropos of nothing highlight Filipinos and Chinese as being suspects in organized crime and the sex trade? Isn’t this exactly the problem with what he says the police do? If reference to racial appearance and stereotype is so bad, why, in a previous column did Debito call his foreign critics “white-faced hornets”? Why did he feel confident enough as a wealthy-US-born majority ethnic individual to "satirically" label nikkei south American immigrants as "cockroaches" and Chinese as “wasps” with (get this) "yellow jackets", and in general compare East Asians to hive insects? The "satire" wasn’t welcomed by those it was supposed to defend.

A second major intellectual problem is that Debito never distinguishes between systemic and individual problems of racism. I’m sorry, but police naming a suspect’s ethnicity or nationality is not hate speech. It’s something the police may need to do if they want a suspect identified. The systemic, or institutional, racism comes in when police or media, neglect to mention a suspect’s ethnicity if they’re from the dominant group. Thus, no one individual need be assertively racist for a racially problematic situation to occur. The problem is at least in part systemic. Greater awareness and sensitivity – something the columnist himself could do with – is a large part of the answer. A failure to understand systemic issues of racism tends to result in the irony-failure of accusing an entire ethnic group of being racist, as some of Debito’s devotees have already managed to do in other replies to this column.

At the end of the day, I want to know if this particular problem of racial stereotyping in crime reports by police and media (one that is found all over the world) is currently getting better or worse in Japan. What are the data like? Curiously, despite his writing at length, that’s something that Debito failed to look at. Isn’t that rather a curious oversight, particularly in a newspaper?

Re: Korean man arrested for stabbing attack in Osaka / “I want to kill Japanese people”

Sam Gilman — Fri, 24 May 2013 12:20:05 -0000

Don't be so damned silly. If you think all Koreans approve of this kind of thing, you're part of the same lunatic fringe problem that resulted in this horrible incident.

Re: Major South Korean newspaper: Atomic bombings were divine retribution. / “God may feel that retaliation against Japan hasn’t been complete.”

Sam Gilman — Fri, 24 May 2013 12:27:11 -0000

If you're going to blame all Koreans for the actions of one right wing newspaper editorialist, then why not let then blame all of Japan for the actions of a rather larger number of Japanese seventy years ago?

The editorial writer gets the lessons that Europe learnt from WWII completely wrong. You are also getting those lessons wrong.

Re: Police, media must consider plight of those caught in linguistic dragnet

Sam Gilman — Fri, 24 May 2013 21:25:09 -0000

There's a difference between racial profiling, where the police target certain ethnic groups for increased surveillance (stop and search, car checks, etc.) - basically treating them as criminal risks - and what Debito is talking about here. Racial profiling doesn't work, and it's offensive too, and creates tension between police forces and minority communities the world over.

What Debito is talking about here is how to describe the perpetrator of a crime that has actually happened. If the suspect is caucasian, he thinks it is better for the distinguishing physical characteristics of the caucasian to be mentioned without the ethnicity. So in his eyes it's better to say "pale-skinned, fair hair, large nose" than "white". He would prefer "dark-skinned, flatter-nosed, with black tightly curly hair" to "afrika-kei". The police would still be associating skin colour with crime (the distinguishing feature of a Japanese criminal would not be their skin colour), and into the mix would be added extra ethnic features that people could also begin to associate with crime. It would be like going back to some Victorian theory linking face-shape and criminality. Which was a racially-driven theory. We might even get code words for Korean and Chinese.

The alternative, adopted by many places, is to always mention the ethnicity, even if the suspect is from the majority ethnic group. I'm really not sure why Debito has not considered this.