We gathered during the evening on 3-11-14 at the Tsunami Memorial in Wailoa State Park in Hilo, HI. I was hoping to do a floating lantern event on the nearby body of water but the wind was blowing the wrong way and they would not float off so we changed plans and decided the mosaic in the memorial would simulate water so we lit the lanterns and and held our light boards that spelled out the simple message, NO NUKES. after recording all this we gathered in a circle and talked story, with everything from past tsunamis in Hilo and the one in Japan being mentioned plus the effects of Fukushima on both humans and other lifeforms in the Pacific Ocean.
First of all I would like to thank everyone for being here and showing your concern for what is happening in the world today. We are here because an earthquake and tsunami occurred three years ago and killed upwards of 20,000 people and made many more homeless but at the same time it set off a sequence of events that resulted in the triple meltdown that we call Fukushima.
Fukushima is a prefecture inhabited by people and is not a nuclear power plant built by GE and operated by TEPCO, but that word somehow has come to represent the totality of this disaster.
While I struggle with this because the perpetrators get lost when we use this term, the truth is it may not be inclusive enough, maybe it should be called the Pacific disaster. Because of the vastness of the Pacific Ocean humanity seems to have no qualms about using it as a sewer but that could be a very bad mistake. There are trends happening that seem to indicate that there are tipping points happening for various ocean species and plenty of culprits to go around such as ocean acidification and pesticides, the breakdown of our plastic rubbish, plus man-made nuclear contamination is nothing new considering the nuclear testing programs post WWII, but now we have Fukushima and very little determination to really fix it’s ongoing problems. I could reel off a bunch of numbers to try to explain the scope of this but no matter how hard I tried I could not tell you any concrete data because all of it is based on unreliable information. That is the core problem of nuclear power, there is almost nothing we are told by those who support it that even approximates the truth.
To the people who try to justify nuclear power and nuclear weapons we are all just statistics and since we all aren’t going to die from radiation (and the dead can’t defend themselves) and we all won’t get cancer and other maladies they just come up with models that make it seem like nothing is changing dramatically. We are supposed to believe that cancer is just a consequence of modern living so we should get used to it and most of the time cause and effect don’t become part of the equation. They are so callous that when large numbers of the people stationed on the USS Reagan became sick or disabled after the ship sailed into the plume the official position is that radiation was not the cause so it is just coincidence that this happened to so many in the prime of their lives. The Japanese are at least willing to admit that more people have died from the effects of the triple meltdown in Fukushima than were killed by the Tsunami. When they set standards for radiation in our food, water, and air they come up with a number of people per 100,000 who will get cancer, come up with a figure they think is acceptable and extrapolate from there and they give very little credence to the fact that children and pregnant women are way more susceptible. If you disagree with this thinking you are standing in the way of progress and economic growth. People in general and the planet we depend on are secondary to these man-made concepts.
I can’t speak for everybody but I know in my heart the time has come to end Nuclear, both the weapons systems and power. They are both a ticking time bomb and a gun to our heads. None of us knows when events will happen that will unleash the destruction this technology is capable of and we can’t anticipate the results. We can’t move forward thinking this is a logical way for mankind to interact with God’s creation. We have to learn lessons from the experiences that we live through, there no longer is a village where we are because we figured out that the Ocean can sweep through here at any time with little warning. When it comes to Nuclear we are creating a mess that will exist into the future longer than man has roamed the Earth and our children don’t deserve to deal with this. We have truly clean technologies to replace this horrible mistake and even though it goes against prevailing wisdom that growth has to come at any cost we are getting smarter about runaway consumption. The situation in Japan is made worse because we can’t collectively be convincing enough that we all have had enough. The people who are behind Nuclear still think that there is a chance we will forget and in the meantime they are spreading their poisonous systems to poorer nations that are even less equipped to deal with calamity. Since they have been lying since day one and for the most part they get away with it they are doubling down and we need to raise our voices and show our faces like Megan Rice, Michael Walli, and Greg BoertjeObed, who will continue to be incarcerated for civil disobedience, and stop the destructive ways from happening over again. We can no longer continue to be Sheeple and pretend that the desecration of our surroundings is acceptable, we need to change our leaders and if that doesn’t work we need to change our systems because just sitting around waiting for the change to happen just won’t get us where we need to go. We are not on this planet to serve the needs of corporations and the wants of governments, they should be serving our needs and contributing to a better life and environment for all.
This talk was scheduled, but there was not enough time:
First of all I would like to thank everyone for being here and showing your concern for what is happening in the world today. We are here because an earthquake and tsunami occurred three years ago and killed upwards of 20,000 people and made many more homeless but at the same time it set off a sequence of events that resulted in the triple meltdown that we call Fukushima.
Fukushima is a prefecture inhabited by people and is not a nuclear power plant built by GE and operated by TEPCO, but that word somehow has come to represent the totality of this disaster.
While I struggle with this because the perpetrators get lost when we use this term, the truth is it may not be inclusive enough, maybe it should be called the Pacific disaster. Because of the vastness of the Pacific Ocean humanity seems to have no qualms about using it as a sewer but that could be a very bad mistake. There are trends happening that seem to indicate that there are tipping points happening for various ocean species and plenty of culprits to go around such as ocean acidification and pesticides, the breakdown of our plastic rubbish, plus man-made nuclear contamination is nothing new considering the nuclear testing programs post WWII, but now we have Fukushima and very little determination to really fix it’s ongoing problems. I could reel off a bunch of numbers to try to explain the scope of this but no matter how hard I tried I could not tell you any concrete data because all of it is based on unreliable information. That is the core problem of nuclear power, there is almost nothing we are told by those who support it that even approximates the truth.
To the people who try to justify nuclear power and nuclear weapons we are all just statistics and since we all aren’t going to die from radiation (and the dead can’t defend themselves) and we all won’t get cancer and other maladies they just come up with models that make it seem like nothing is changing dramatically. We are supposed to believe that cancer is just a consequence of modern living so we should get used to it and most of the time cause and effect don’t become part of the equation. They are so callous that when large numbers of the people stationed on the USS Reagan became sick or disabled after the ship sailed into the plume the official position is that radiation was not the cause so it is just coincidence that this happened to so many in the prime of their lives. The Japanese are at least willing to admit that more people have died from the effects of the triple meltdown in Fukushima than were killed by the Tsunami. When they set standards for radiation in our food, water, and air they come up with a number of people per 100,000 who will get cancer, come up with a figure they think is acceptable and extrapolate from there and they give very little credence to the fact that children and pregnant women are way more susceptible. If you disagree with this thinking you are standing in the way of progress and economic growth. People in general and the planet we depend on are secondary to these man-made concepts.
I can’t speak for everybody but I know in my heart the time has come to end Nuclear, both the weapons systems and power. They are both a ticking time bomb and a gun to our heads. None of us knows when events will happen that will unleash the destruction this technology is capable of and we can’t anticipate the results. We can’t move forward thinking this is a logical way for mankind to interact with God’s creation. We have to learn lessons from the experiences that we live through, there no longer is a village where we are because we figured out that the Ocean can sweep through here at any time with little warning. When it comes to Nuclear we are creating a mess that will exist into the future longer than man has roamed the Earth and our children don’t deserve to deal with this. We have truly clean technologies to replace this horrible mistake and even though it goes against prevailing wisdom that growth has to come at any cost we are getting smarter about runaway consumption. The situation in Japan is made worse because we can’t collectively be convincing enough that we all have had enough. The people who are behind Nuclear still think that there is a chance we will forget and in the meantime they are spreading their poisonous systems to poorer nations that are even less equipped to deal with calamity. Since they have been lying since day one and for the most part they get away with it they are doubling down and we need to raise our voices and show our faces like Megan Rice, Michael Walli, and Greg BoertjeObed, who will continue to be incarcerated for civil disobedience, and stop the destructive ways from happening over again. We can no longer continue to be Sheeple and pretend that the desecration of our surroundings is acceptable, we need to change our leaders and if that doesn’t work we need to change our systems because just sitting around waiting for the change to happen just won’t get us where we need to go. We are not on this planet to serve the needs of corporations and the wants of governments, they should be serving our needs and contributing to a better life and environment for all.
Geoff Shaw
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