::::::::
I wrote a anti-nuke power piece in opednews.com warning black folks last March at the height of world interest in the Japanese nuke crisis. It was a serious warning signaling that very, very little has been done to educate local black and other minority folks about our own possible nuke power related problems in the event of an unpredictable --- unprepared for --- occurrence.
It's been several rapidly receeding months and Japan is still reeling from the after-effects of their nuclear crisis. Given the over 200,000 year shelf life of radio-carbon isotopes and poisonous radioactivity, the Japanese will have to evacuate and permanently abandon millions of square miles of northern territory in the vicinity of the failed nuke plants. The people who have already been impacted, together with their future off-spring will experience much suffering for untold years to come.
Not much has been said about the radioactivity off the coast of Japan, in and beyond, the 12-20 mile limit of international waters. The world trade to and from Japan's northern ports just above Tokyo, the Japanese fishing and tourism industries will certainly have to be closely monitored (by whom is the question; will it be some toothless United Nations designated body or the untrustworthy Japanese themselves? who can we trust?). In Latin the question arises as to "quis custodiet ipsos custodes" or" who guards the guards", the authorative custodians of the prevailing social order?
It's on this issue of public trust that the Japanese governmental elites, technocrats and big business profiteers in nuclear energy resources have failed most miserably. In a nation known for its unbearably high educational standards and almost religious penchant for success in material advancement, the Japanese have become dismal moral midgets in a life and death matters that really calls for acts by moral giants. Via its nuke power lies, deceit and the misdirection of the public, the oft-heralded Japanese educational system (a system very much under the administrative and policy-making control of Japan's political rulers) has engaged in deliberate acts of moral duplicity, lack of virtuous sincerity and base dishonesty in the hoodwinking of its own people. For a people known for their tight homogeneity, purist exclusionary thinking about foreigners and communal assent to high "moral virtues", this nuke power thing has to be a huge psychological (as well as an internationally understood political) defeat for the Japanese. The Japanese have proved to themselves that their leaders are untrustworthy and that their educational system, designed and ruled by their elected leaders, is morally flawed, almost fatally.
Then to add another moral distractor ... if we remember well it was not long ago that the high minded and technologically efficient Japanese were officially reprimanded by the NAACP, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the black leadership establishment for their blatantly racist attitudes towards "backwards" black people. Could it be that this whole moral virtues bit about the Japanese has been a sad, sick joke all along --- from Pearl Harbor onward?
Recently, Camden City and South Jersey areas, along with most of the east-coast experienced a mild, "wake up folks" type earthquake. The status of the two South Jersey nuke plants at Oyster Creek, not far back from the Atlantic Ocean front and Salem (1and 2) are unclear at best relative to the recent quake. The Limerick plant in Montgomery County just outside Philadelphia is the nearest to Camden and its environs. The two South Jersey plants are within a 30 to 45 mile radius. Less than an hour's drive for all three.
All remains quiet as if no alarms have gone off.. Still waiting to hear about community educationals related to mass exodus, routes and means of escape, if any, planned for our immediate, racial majority populated areas in South Jersey. Should I dare mention that the same holds for white racial majority areas in South Jersey, or are we all resigned to "a nuked out fate" with no possibility for escape?
Hopefully, we in the Camden, South Jersey area can do better than Japanese power players and rise to what Dr. Martin L. King, Jr., called a higher standard of virtues-excellence or moral readiness relative to being truthful about the dangers of nuke energy power. We can speak truth to power and change our circumstance
Whither then, black survival in the nuclear energy loving age? Can we in the Camden area rise to a "higher standard of moral resolve" on the nuke power issue?
