DISMANTLING UNCERTAIN, ECONOMIC DISASTER GUARANTEED

TRANSLATED FROM AN ARTICLE BY FRANCOIS LECLERC FROM PAUL JORION'S BLOG, 30/05/12

It’s already well established that Tepco, the operator of Fukushima, is in control of very little in the devastated nuclear plant. Not the ongoing, endemic contamination of the atmosphere and of the sea, not the status of nuclear fuel reduced to a state of three coriums which either can’t be localized or are stocked in pools from which they cannot be removed. Nor, even less so, the potential impact of new seismic shocks on the battered systems, including in the first instance that of Reactor N° 4’s cooling pool , a tremendous source of worry given the enormous mass of fuel it contains.

1535 fuel assemblies* are stocked 30 metres (110 feet) above the ground in a structure which has had to be consolidated and which is open to the air, representing 85 times the quantity of Cesium-137 released during the explosion of the Chernobyl reactor…..Enough to render the whole of Japan uninhabitable and beyond, for it is on this kind of scale that the potential danger can be measured.

KANT WAS RIGHT!

TRANSLATED FROM PAUL JORION'S BLOG, 25/06/12

I feel it is important to focus on the possibility as to whether any measures proposed can be generalized. It was Martin Wolf who pointed out in a Financial Times (*) column that the Germans (in spite of being Kant’s compatriots) seem to have lost sight of the Kantian Categorical Imperative when they ask the other Eurozone nations to become net exporters like Germany. An error of logic has been committed here: nations cannot all be net exporters; if some are net exporters, it follows logically that others must be net importers and that nobody can blame them for this.

THE WEST, ALL ALONE IN ITS LITTLE BUBBLE!

TRANSLATED FROM ENTREFILETS, 31/07/12

At the risk of seeming somewhat naive, we have to confess that here at entrefilets, we never cease to be amazed by the extent of the disinformation diffused by the Western Bloc on the subject of the Syrian and Iranian crises. And also, in more general terms, by the persistence of its astonishing need to put a virtuous gloss on even its most obvious machinations, and even its most outrageous acts of barbarism. It is a phenomenon which fascinates us because it signifies a total rupture with the reality that the rest of the world shares.

From Latin America to Asia, also taking in Africa and the Indies, there is a virtually unanimous rejection of this Atlantic claptrap, which bears witness to a vertiginous change in paradigm - the lies of the West no longer deceive anyone but the West itself. Its human-rights-narrative has fizzled out.

In fact, we are the very last ones, the only ones, who still believe in it.
Whether it’s a matter of Iraq or Afghanistan, or Libya, or Syria – and maybe Iran soon – the phony casus belli advanced by the West to justify their lucrative little attacks are now seen for what they really are.

LIBYA BEFORE AND AFTER