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Subcontractor Tells Fukushima Workers To Hide Radiation Exposure
First time accepted submitter fredprado writes "Apparently at least one subcontractor hired to clean up the Fukushima site has been urging their workers to put their radiation detectors lined under lead shieldings.
A diagram can be seen here. The authorities decided not to prosecute him, even after one employee presenting them recordings of him trying to talk the said employee into it."
makes sense; those things are probably expensive and, I gather, are sensitive to radiation. Don't want to risk damaging them.
This is why we need more unions and more workers rights.
and they should be able to use contractors and subcontractors to get out being liable.
Is there a translation? This is quite a serious allegation if true.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
Three eyed fish are delicious.
the Japanese people will no longer blindly trust their government
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You know, it would be a lot easier to refute anti nuclear fears as being overly paranoid if we stopped giving them reasons to be just that. The situation would be have been under much better control and (slightly) less of a PR disaster if they would just stop with the lies.
Thyroid cysts or nodules are being found in 36% of 38,000 Fukushima children. A 2001 study in Nagasaki found an incidence of 0%. Thyroid is associated with iodine, as the substance is essential to its function. Iodine-131 was a considerable component of the contaminants released in the incident.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Um. No.
Here's the nice thing about the free market. If you don't like something your employer tells you to do, you don't have to work for them. In fact, with a free enough society, you can tell others what your employer tried to tell you to do which will either:
A) Cause the employer's customers not to support him and therefore he goes bust.
B) Cause the employees to all quit their job or demand higher pay to work.
C) Cause the employer to change his orders to prevent A or B from happening.
Don't like being told to hide radiation exposure? Don't work for the guy!
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
And how are they supposed to do that? Individual workers calling their Senators up on the phone, each one of them telling the Senator something slightly different from the last one? Senators don't take phone calls from workers. They take phone calls from executives.
Actually, they don't take phone calls from either. They take phone calls from lobbyists, people with whom they have a relationship and who have worked with them before. Corporate management has plenty of money to hire them. Individual workers don't.
They can, however, get together and pool their money to hire a lobbyist. We should make up a name for such a unified group of people.
Government coverup. Just like they lied about how much radiation there really was. (Turns out they cut their readings by 1/3rd.) Or how the government claimed the air quality at the burning WTC wreckage was "safe" even though it wasn't. Governments don't protect the people; they lie, inveigle, and deny.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Really. It doesn't. Globalism Breaks Capitalism. Period. It's that simple. You are completing on the global stage. Your employer is not. You can't win. You can't keep up. They will import desperate workers from impoverished countries. You will compete with them for food and shelter. Automation makes you disposable and obsolete. You can't work elsewhere, because there are very few jobs (automation) and there are lots of people to do those jobs (globalism).
Free market Capitalism is fundamentally broken. Adam Smith wasn't a futurist. He had no vision. Ayn Rand was just a little woman afraid of a nasty dictator. Get over your fear, and learn to face facts. Adam couldn't, Ayn couldn't. Can you?
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Unions can curb criminal behavior on the part of corporations. Of course, unions being organized power, are also susceptible to being abused as well. Arguing against having any watchmen at all is a bit silly, but we need to also consider who watches the watchmen.
Japan already has both.
What they also have, same as the USA, is government in the pockets of large corporations.
Unions can curb criminal behavior on the part of corporations. Of course, unions being organized power, are also susceptible to being abused as well. Arguing against having any watchmen at all is a bit silly, but we need to also consider who watches the watchmen.
The answer is not more levels of middlemen, who contribute nothing but another avenue for corruption. The answer, as suggested by others here, is support for workers rights codified by law. The fact that our current democratic process has been thoroughly subverted by the top 1% doesn't mean that adding more corrupt bureaucrats to the process is a good idea, much less the right solution.
-=Geoskd
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
This is why we need more unions and more workers rights.
and they should be able to use contractors and subcontractors to get out being liable.
Actually, in the US, this kind of ridiculously dangerous behavior would be covered by OSHA laws.
OSHA laws which only exist thanks to unions.
Illegal pooling of power? I guess you can make anything illegal, but from say a Rothbardian natural rights point of view (I'm guessing you're a libertarian) there is absolutely nothing wrong with banding together in contract negotiations (unless there are pre-existing contractual promises not to do so). Nor even stipulating in those negotiations that all employees have to be union ...
Now of course a lot of current employment law is not exactly Rothbardian, but that's an orthogonal issue.
I really have no problems with unions the abstract, but in practice I cannot support them due to the laws in the US. If workers are striking, the employer absolutely has the right to fire them. Just as every employee is different, so should their contract. Collective bargaining is an absolutely silly way to conduct business. Even though Joe, Bob and Frank all have the same job and the same experience, they each have their own wants, needs and ability levels. If Joe is much better than Bob and Frank at his job, Joe should get paid more. If Frank is a single young guy, having dental insurance is probably low on his priority list compared to Joe and Bob who both have growing families. Etc.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
In order to safely operate today's generation of nuclear fission reactors, you need the operators and regulators to be transparent and competent. The folks running this Fukushima travesty are neither transparent nor competent.
Therefore I am forced to conclude that the human race in 2012 does not have the moral credibility to be trusted to operate nuclear fission reactors.
You are talking about America. In most countries, what Americans call "lobbying" is called "corruption" ans is illegal.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
By that logic corporations should also be illegal.
Some lobbying takes the form of fundraising, but that goes into campaign coffers and the FEC tracks it closely to ensure that it doesn't end up in the candidates' personal accounts.
You mean that the FEC ensures that every penny that the candidate doesn't have to spend on his own campaign has to be disposed of some other way?
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This is actually pretty typical when technocrats are in charge. Because they have huge stockpiles of paid-for dosimeters that workers use every day, but which saturate at very low levels, they decide they're going to use those by putting them behind a shield and then adjusting the readings correspondingly. Makes sense, except they give absolutely no consideration to appearances. Ignorant journalists and nutty lefty conspiracy theorists then have a field day.
In the UK we have Health and Safety guys to enforce that kind of thing. It is their job to protect workers and nothing else. Their authority overrules other managers in most cases.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I'd rather outlaw the existence of corporate speech; they can no longer hire lobbyists
Lobbyists are simply people. Corporations are headed up by CEOs. Are you going to make it illegal for them to contact their reps?
The only problems with your ideas is that they would be gross violations of the first amendment, and are more dangerous than the issues they are trying to fix.
Oddly enough though (in spite of visual appearances from space), Japan is actually a part of North America, from perhaps an unusual point of view.
I'm not saying it's a perfect system, far from it. But it's not even close to the "legalized bribe" that most people who don't work in Washington imagine it is.
Having been a candidate for public office before, I will say it is hard to turn down campaign donations from groups that offer enough money to finance your campaign. And I've had offers from groups that I most certainly didn't agree with for money I could have desperately used in order to finance my campaign.
While the laws have changed somewhat since this practice was happening, there was in the past an option for federal office holders (Senate & U.S. House) to be able to pocket excess campaign donations after they were defeated in an election or went into retirement. This still is the case for some state and municipal office seekers (and certainly was in my case when running for municipal office). I had to report all of the donations of course and file formal reports on all of the income and expenses (which typically break even if you are being serious about a campaign), but if a "generous donation" was to fall in your lap, it certainly could end up being something very much like a legalized bribe.
I do agree though with the fact that lobbyists do much more than handing out huge piles of money. They do tend to be experts on the topics they advocate about and can be very useful in terms of being able to understand what a particular constituency group or industry group thinks about a particular piece of legislation. As long as you understand the bias that the bring to the table, they can also be useful for obtaining information about that particular topic they are advocating for as well.
America is also the name of the country
Yeah, if Sarah Palin taught you geography.
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
Precisely. Although Unions have their own problems that they bring to the table, the general effect is to improve the worker's conditions, safety, wages, etc. As long as they are watched as closely as the Corporations (and to be honest they watch each other), then some balance can be struck where everyone benefits. Without Unions, Corporations are free to abuse their workers without check.
Yes, as people will point out, the worker's are free to quit if they want to - and if they are aware of the problems in the first place - but that is not always a viable alternative in a society and economy where finding a job is practically like winning the lottery at times.
Left to themselves, I think most corporations *will* misuse and abuse their workers in the name of profit.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
Collective bargaining is an absolutely silly way to conduct business.
Of course it is. That's why Wal-Mart loses so much money and has no influence on its suppliers by buying in bulk.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
You must hate communicating.
Take off every 'sig' !!
People from the United States of Mexico are Mexicans. People from the United States of America are Americans. There is no other group that is called "Americans" (except by Spanish-speakers who deliberately speak English incorrectly). It's consistent and unambiguous. People from the USA are Americans.
Learn to love Alaska
You are insane. There is a continent called America and you are part of it, it is sometimes called Americas in English, but both forms are correct. The name "America" can refer to either US, North and South America individually or together. Any of these 4 uses is correct.
I am pretty fine with the way you chose to call your country, you can choose to be called as you wish imo, but your saying that there is no continent with such name only shows how badly US education has become.
Umm, he published more than one work. You're probably thinking of The Communist Manifesto which was written to inspire the working class to rise up. His economic theories are laid out in a work called "Das Capital" (IIRC).
You're right that it was abused, but I would argue that no country has ever implemented communism as Marx talked about it. IE it has never been tried.
Further, there is nothing about Marx's communism that necessarily requires keeping people in the dark in an authoritarian system. IIRC, he called for 'workers to own the means of production.' Kinda hard to be kept in the dark, when you own the damn the thing. It's also not authoritarian when you are the boss, albeit with others.
Now it has been a while since I read both works, but I don't recall anything that would conflict with open/transparent government and democracy. He did want a centrally planned economy, I guess it would have to be authoritarian in the sense that some group makes decisions on what happens; in his time period, I suppose you couldn't query the masses. I think it would be very interesting to see communism implemented again, ie a centrally planned economy, but instead of a small group/department of planners, poll the citizens?
And heck, if we still want to allow entrepreneurship, just make a law that says 51% of shares of any company are divided amongst all employees.
hopefully, when they measure high radiation in whales, they will finally stop eating them.
Wouldnt that be ironic.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.