You start with what salvageable scraps remained:
"Rescuers dig for survivors in India building ruins" Associated Press July 01, 2014
NEW DELHI — More than 100 rescuers carefully dug for survivors under a collapsed 11-story building in southern India on Monday, with hopes buoyed after six people were found alive two days after the tragedy.
The collapse Saturday killed at least 19 people and left an enormous pile of broken slabs, twisted iron girders, and concrete dust where the apartment building, still under construction, had stood in a suburb of Chennai, the south-coast capital of Tamil Nadu state.
Nearly 90 contract workers were believed to have been in the basement collecting wages.
Rescuers have pulled at least 41 people from the wreckage, even as seasonal monsoon rains impeded the search. Police said 30 other people may still be trapped.
Three backhoes were working to clear the area, but rescuers were having to work slowly and carefully to avoid upsetting the debris, which could settle further and crush anyone trapped below.
Instead, rescuers were listening for sounds from within the wreckage.
‘‘We heard voices coming from the debris’’ on Sunday, said S.P. Selvan of the National Disaster Response Force. ‘‘Following the voice . . . one lady was retrieved alive.’’
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Related: Indian Post Collapses
I kind of am, too, and I can see no one cares. I'm sorry.
In further upheavals, there is sex abuse in Australia (certain people must not be happy with the direction the Pope has taken) and the rebuilding of another empire:
"Several thousand people demonstrated to demand that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Cabinet scrap its plan, intended to allow the Japanese military to help defend other nations. Beating drums and carrying placards and banners, the protesters demanded Abe resign and protested that efforts were being made to change the constitution not by democratic process of referendum but by changing interpretation of it in a Cabinet meeting....
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Bless those good people. I certainly do not expect to see much more of them in my war paper.
Related: [Thanks to Obama and friends, Japanese Defense Forces now free to engage Chinese vessels in Spratley Island dispute.] -- Obama Succeeds In Having Japan Reverse Constitutional Pacifism
What i$ important to my war paper:
"Japan charts new course for economy" by Elaine Kurtenbach | Associated Press June 25, 2014
TOKYO — Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced a slew of measures Tuesday aimed at restoring Japan’s global competitiveness. Past governments have sought and failed to enact many of the reforms Abe and other leaders say are needed to revamp an outdated industrial model and sustain growth for decades to come.
Resource-scarce Japan needs exports and other overseas earnings to pay for imports of fuel and food to feed its 127 million people. Big icons of Japan Inc., like Sony Corp., are losing out to rivals like Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co.
Has a WWII feel to it, something I will have later as I tune into the American Heroes Channel -- formerly Military Channel -- for a World War II in Color (what has happened to me? I don't even know who I am anymore! All I know is I don't want to watch soccer or any of the other current corporate crap offered on all those dials, no more rotten movies by Jewish kids that failed out of college, never any news channels. Old 70s shows and war channels are all I am left with!).
What always surprises me is the subtle nuances thrown into the foreign documentaries; they clash with so much of what I have been taught and told about the country that saved the world in the 1940s.
But that was then and this is now and then is now and that was this:
But rather than a sweeping overhaul, the 230-point plan — dubbed the ‘‘third arrow’’ that Abe promised along with his first two arrows of monetary and fiscal stimulus — is an exhaustive list of potential regulatory changes that must overcome deep-rooted resistance from vested interests to succeed. Here are the basics:
■ Labor: Japan’s workforce is shrinking and aging. Abe is promising more childcare to enable more women to work. He wants to expand programs for migrant worker ‘‘trainees’’ to fill labor shortages in areas such as nursing, elder care, and construction, and encourage wider use of robots. But there is strong resistance to letting more foreigners settle in Japan.
■ Investment: Abe wants Japanese corporations to invest more and create more jobs, helping to support growth by creating demand and raising wages. To entice companies to spend a larger share of cash hoards that total some $2.2 trillion, he is promising to cut corporate taxes from over 35 percent to below 30 percent, while pushing for stronger governance rules. Since the small and medium-sized companies that employ seven in 10 of all Japanese tend not to pay corporate tax, it is unclear if that would encourage investment or improve profitability for companies struggling to compete.
■ Innovation: Support for research and development could drive growth of cutting-edge medical and biotechnology industries. Abe has also promised to dismantle many barriers to entrepreneurship, but the urge to innovate and up new businesses faces invisible barriers embedded in an educational, employment, social, and financial system that strongly discourages risk taking.
■ Globalization: Through the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a US-led trade pact, Abe hopes to boost access to fast-growing markets in Asia and attract more foreign investment.
■ Agriculture: The politically powerful farm lobby is resisting efforts to dismantle the agricultural cooperatives empire. Abe hopes to rezone farmland and shift toward more commercial, large-scale farming.
■ Medicine: Changes to health insurance rules could allow use of more types of treatment, but are strongly opposed by the medical lobby.
■ Energy: Deregulation of Japan’s electricity sector was decided on before Abe took office, but it is expected to spur more investment in renewable energy, though the government insists that Japan must restart its idled nuclear plants once they pass tightened safety checks to help trim costs for imported gas and oil.
You know what word I am looking for there, and I guess 300 tons of radioactive water leaking or getting dumped into the Pacific for three years running is no cause for concern -- or is.
■ Paying for it all: Japan’s public debt amounts to more than 240 percent of its gross domestic product, compared with 72 percent for the United States. After pumping trillions of dollars into the economy through public works and ultra-loose monetary policy, the Ministry of Finance needs to bring things back into balance. The sales tax was raised from 5 percent to 8 percent in April and is due to hit 10 percent next year. Japan needs higher tax revenues and is cutting pensions, welfare, and health insurance to counter soaring costs.
But they are going to expand the military budget!
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I'm looking for something, anything, with the word Fukushima in it every day and will rush it to you when I see it.
NEXT DAY UPDATES:
"More survivors found in building collapse" Associated Press July 02, 2014
NEW DELHI — Rescuers pulled seven more survivors from under the concrete ruins of a collapsed 11-story building on Tuesday, three days after it toppled and killed at least 29 people in southern India, officials said.
Already, 26 people have been rescued alive from under the enormous heap of broken slabs, twisted iron girders, and concrete dust where the apartment building was being constructed in a suburb of Chennai, the south-coast capital of Tamil Nadu state, according to the National Disaster Response Force.
Hundreds of rescue workers were likely to continue searching at least another day.
Three backhoes were working to clear the area, but rescuers were working carefully and slowly to avoid upsetting the debris, which could still shift and settle further — potentially crushing anyone still trapped.
Instead, they were listening for faint cries and thuds coming from the debris pile to guide their search, but by Tuesday evening no sounds were heard, a disaster response official said.
When the building collapsed on Saturday night, nearly 90 contract workers — most from neighboring Andhra Pradesh state — had been in the basement collecting wages.
Police have arrested six construction company officials for alleged criminal negligence and violation of building codes.
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"Japan expands role of its military; Self-defense limit broadened to helping allies" by Martin Fackler | New York Times July 02, 2014
TOKYO — Japan took a symbolically significant step toward playing a more active role in regional security Tuesday, when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced that his government would reinterpret the antiwar constitution to allow Japanese armed forces to come to the aid of friendly nations under attack.
The long-expected decision by Abe’s Cabinet changes a more than six-decades-old reading of the constitution, which had strictly limited Japan’s forces to acting solely in its own defense.
The new interpretation, known as “collective self-defense,” will allow Japan to use its large and technologically advanced military in ways that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, such as coming to the aid of a US ship under fire, or shooting down a ballistic missile aimed at the United States.
Abe had sought even broader leeway for his nation’s military but was forced to compromise after resistance from both within his governing Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner, a small Buddhist party.
In a sign of how potentially divisive the change could be among voters, some 10,000 demonstrators gathered in front of the prime minister’s residence the previous evening to protest the change.
I'm looking for that and Fukushima. How interesting that in a strange way my blog has come full circle; I'm back blogging about wars and threats to human life rather than endless diversionary crap. That is my brief glimmer of hope and truth from the war pri$m I call a paper today.
Still, most Japanese seemed to at least tentatively accept the change — a sign, analysts said, of the growing anxiety here over China’s rising military might, and its increasingly forceful claims to disputed islands now controlled by Japan.
The still is a sign of some stinky substance being shoveled at you. Quick, dodge!
They said these fears of China had made the public more willing to accept the more assertive security stance espoused by Abe, who has called for Japan to shed its postwar passivity and become a “normal” nation.
:-(
Thankfully, many of the Japanese are not having it.
They showed up outside his house?
“The growing pressure from China has changed the political debate within Japan,” said Kazuhisa Kawakami, a political expert at Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo.
What is it, like a war flute in Japan? I know it's drums over here.
“For the first time, Japanese are finding that they have to start thinking realistically about defending their own country.”
The new policy cannot go into effect until at least this autumn as Parliament must still clear legal barriers to broader military action by revising more than a dozen existing laws, experts and lawmakers said.
However, with Abe’s governing coalition enjoying a comfortable majority in both houses, the change seems all but certain to become reality.
Still, even under the new policy, the Japanese military, called the Self-Defense Forces, will face strict limits that will allow it to act only when there is a “clear danger” to Japan or its people, and to use only “the minimum level of force necessary,” according to the text of the Cabinet decision.
In a speech broadcast live on national television, Abe sought to allay opponents’ concerns by stating the new policy would not lead Japan down a slippery slope by dragging it into distant, US-led wars.
Ah, that never happens when assembling a coalition to, well, you know.
But he also said the new policy would forge closer ties with the United States, which stations 50,000 military personnel in Japan under a Cold War-era security treaty that obligates it to come to Japan’s defense.
The war paper makes it sound like the Japanese have no problem with the empire when the people -- think Okinawa, folks -- want us the hell out. Given the current times and what is leading my propaganda pre$$ World section, I can see how almost 70 years of occupation can get to them.
Seeing as we are coming up on the two most monstrous war crimes in the sense that they are a single act, I would just like to pass along my heartfelt apologies and deep regret and shame at what my nation dropped on yours twice in August 1945. I was not yet born and had nothing to do with it, but.... Japan was suing for peace way before, and Truman let them keep the emperor in the end. All that blood and death in the interim was for nothing, nothing. It was a demonstration to the Russians for the next phase of world combat -- the Cold War.
And much like World War I, it would draw in the regional powers.... man, I need to stop watching those WWII documentaries on the AHC.
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I find myself liking the picture more than the print in my newspaper these days. How sad.
