The growing catastrophe surrounding Japan’s tsunami-damaged nuclear power plants has some politicians around the world calling for an end to nuclear power. Germany has closed 7 plants, and the EU is reviewing all 195 plants in the EU. Some in the US are also calling for an end to nuclear power, but President Obama and most other leaders say that nuclear power can be pursued safely in the United States, away from coastal and earthquake-prone regions. Meanwhile, Bechtel has been to investigate a way to make smaller, more modular plants.

I then posted it on Facebook and it prompted this interesting discussion.

Ken Swartz It is certainly time to turn the lights out on building nuclear power plants on beaches in Tsunami prone areas!

Thursday at 1:34am · LikeUnlike · 1 personLoading…

Tricia McDonald Bell When these plants out way the risk to human lives with the resource that was the reasoning for there existence. How can we keep these open ? Look at what our earth has to work so hard to reclaim. Our mother earth seems very angry that this is a question.

Thursday at 4:22am · LikeUnlike

David Davies ‎”The Legacy of Chernobyl”
Zhores A. Medvedev PhD; Paperback
… But for most people its easier just to believe the rhetoric

Thursday at 7:34am · LikeUnlike

Irina Svirid Looks like the next generation will have more brain power (= people with two heads) to answer this question…

Thursday at 2:11pm · LikeUnlike

Michael Gale Brilliant!

Thursday at 9:32pm · LikeUnlike

Michael Gale now if you would all go vote in the poll and post these comments on the blog………….

Friday at 10:16pm · LikeUnlike

David Davies

if 7 days after 9-11 you created a “poll” asking people if the US should nuke Iran the result would probably be “yes” too.
if you’re just looking for knee jerk reactions, based on media hype and scaremongering in order to oppose Nuclear Ener…gy then now is absolutely the right time.
In a few months the actual impact will be known and people will be able to voice opinions based on real information.See More

Friday at 11:24pm · LikeUnlike

Michael Gale These polls have to go up immediatey. Interest wanes quickly! Its amazing how topical it all is. See how fired up y’all are

Yesterday at 12:20am · LikeUnlike

David Davies For those of you comfortable overseas, you can revel in your (to be short lived) propaganda victory against Nuclear Energy. For people here in Japan, we prefer to focus our concerns on victims of the Tsunami, which is a real disaster.

Yesterday at 12:30am · LikeUnlike

Ken Swartz They built the reactors to withstand a 7.0 earthquake and guard them with a 25 foot wall. The wave went right over it. Why hedge your bet? Build it to withstand a 9.5 earthquake (largest in recorded history) and a 50-100 foot wall. Or move it to higher ground. Just saying.

Yesterday at 1:15am · LikeUnlike

Ken Swartz And it goes without saying that we pray for the victims of this horrible disaster. Be safe.

Yesterday at 1:27am · LikeUnlike

David Davies

They did a LOT of things wrong, the implimentation was botched and they ignored warnings about the safety of the location.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-17/japan-s-nuclear-disaster-caps-decades-of-faked-safety-reports-accidents.html… Nowadays that’s the way things happen in Japan, it is not at all the same culture that made Japan the No 2 economy in the world. But the actual danger posed by the incident is blown out of all proportion by the media. The fact is, that despite everything that went wrong the nuclear incident is a trivial part of the real disaster, and the final impact will be minor.See More

Yesterday at 1:32am · LikeUnlike

David Davies

And 100 Million people still live here at very real risk of an aftershock or tsunami.
There are major aftershocks every day still, a week later. But instead of hearing news and information about the real threat, all we hear is news about… Fukushima which could never do comparible damage.
It sure must be more exciting for people outside of Japan, because its a hot topic of international debate, but it is extremely unhelpful to those of us still here, with friends here or for the 1000’s suffering from the original disaster.See More

Yesterday at 2:17am · LikeUnlike

Beverly Swartz Bul I don’t think “exciting” would be the term that comes to mind. Horror and disbelief might be. The Doctors without Borders in Virginia are being asked to sign on for 9 month commitments, so hopefully this will be considered helpful. Nothing but heartfelt condolences to you all.

Yesterday at 11:15am · LikeUnlike · 1 personLoading…

Ken Swartz Godspeed.

23 hours ago · LikeUnlike

Michael Gale You still in Tokyo David?

23 hours ago · LikeUnlike

David Davies

Yes, along with my wife and just few rational friends. Literally 1000’s of other foriegners have run away and selfishly diverted resources that should be focussed right now on helping people in the freezing Tsumani effected areas. The irr…ational panic over non-existant radiation in Tokyo is costing lives.
One ray of light is that BBC seem to have done an about face on their sensationalist stance as of this morning.See More

22 hours ago · LikeUnlike

Horace Lim Me thinks NEW nuclear power plants are on hold for another 20 years? Now let’s examine all the generation 1 nuclear plants built around earthquake faults…

22 hours ago · LikeUnlike

David Davies

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/world-asia-pacific-12785274
BBC seem to be the first news service to see reality and try to save face. All the others will either follow or be left looking stupid.
Those of us here in Japan will always reme…mber that at the time of a genuine disaster what the world cared about most was the anti Nuclear political agenda.See More

21 hours ago · LikeUnlike

Michael Gale Do you think its politics? Aren’t people just worried and the Japanese Govt giving mixed signals and not appearing open after all the past cover ups about safety breaches? People expect Govts to come clean when stuff happens and mixed messages look bad.

21 hours ago · LikeUnlike

David Davies

Nobody trusts the Japanese government or Corrupt officials at TEPCO. And if were were not in the middle of a REAL disaster with a clear and present danger of further quakes and tsunami’s then this Nuclear incident would be a great discussio…n and we would learn a lot from it. We can still do that LATER.
But right now it is a trivial distraction that diverts life saving resources away from where they should be.
I strongly support your right to voice your opinion and push a political agenda, but I wish people would do so at an appropriate time when there are not negative implications.See More

21 hours ago · LikeUnlike

Michael Gale

Challenging isn’t it. I of course don’t have an opinion at least not one I ever let on. I just keep promoting the web as a way to get global democracy and all my poll originators scan for what is getting political traction and then poll it.… The inappropriate timing issue comes up a lot. Another one is how a poll extends the life of an issue. Our “Is Obama an American Citizen?” gets a lot of criticism for giving credibility to what some say should not be a legitimate issue but we found that a third of GOP politicians have publicly stated he isn’t so it really is a legit political issue even if distasteful. This being an impartial platform is harder than I ever imagined!

Minxin Pei, a China specialist at Claremont McKenna College in California and a director at the Carnegie Endowment, makes the bearish case in an article for The Diplomat. He points to a large portion of the population living in poor villages, and further predicts that “the likelihood that China’s growth will slow down significantly in the next two decades is real and even substantial.” He points primarily to China as an ageing society, due to its one child per family policy.

China’s bulls point to an economy that has surged 90-fold since 1978, recently passed Japan’s to become the second largest in the world, and was recently projected to surpass the U.S. economy by 2020.

“It’s amazing to me the denial around the connection between inadequacy in our gun laws and gun crimes on the street. The legislature hasn’t connected those dots,” Adams said. “The absence of meaningful gun law changes must end. I’m intent on changing that.”

But establishing such gun laws is likely to be a tall order.

Advocates for firearms are always quick to challenge proposed laws that put limits on guns and some are already calling Adams’ effort “laughable” and a publicity stunt.

Click here for full article from The Oregonian…

What do you think? Vote! Click here for our Portland/Gun Control Poll…

France’s parliament is voting whether to ban burqa-like Muslim veils. France’s lower house of parliament will likely approve a ban on face-covering veils Tuesday, and the Senate will probably follow suit in September. Some say it violates France’s Constitution. Do you support it? Vote here.

The US’s highest court ruled by 5-4 that a ban on handgun ownership in Chicago was unconstitutional.

Justices said the US Constitution protected the right to keep and bear arms for the purpose of self-defence.

The ruling could potentially change laws on gun ownership in many of the US states.

The Second Amendment of the US Constitution guarantees “the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”.

Complete article at BBC NEWS – Click here

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The Gulf of Mexico oil spill is now the greatest environmental disaster from a single event to face the US and has attracted the biggest ever response. Some people lay the blame squarely with BP while others say the Obama administration has been slow and ineffective in its resposne. Others say the real blame lies with past administrations such as the George W Bush presidency for fast trackiing off-shore drilling with inadequate supervision. Who do you blame? Vote here.

For a link to a recent email from President Obama on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill click here.

VoteGlobal is a not for profit and apolitical site that’s all about spreading democracy globally online. VoteGlobal has been in soft launch while we test the system and get the bugs out. Our main promotion is our Twitter feed which was something we experimented with and found we got good traction in bringing people to vote. Currently we have about 3500 followers across our various Twitter accounts which is not earth shattering but a good start given the modest outreach. There are a few hundred members and we have processed about 18,000 votes.

We are now entering a period in which we want to expand our activity and support a tilt at some serious fund raising. The plan is to approach a number of Foundations that are active in the democracy and political space and seek funding to enable us to grow into a mainstream site and realize our vision. This funding will enable us to hire our editorial staff. In the meantime we are very keen to get more help with content creation (not just in English) and editing along with people to help manage and edit our twitter streams and develop out our other social media strategies.

PLEASE HELP IF YOU CAN – even a few hours here and there will make a big difference. Please email me if you are prepared to volunteer at mjgale@voteglobal.com

To date we have promoted the site to friends and family only and we have experimented with various social media. We have done a little bit with Facebook and do update our page there with new polls and we did some successful experiments with minor advertising on Facebook too. Mostly however we got wrapped up in running a Twitter feed which was something we experimented with and found we got good traction in bringing people to vote. Currently we have about 3200 followers across our various Twitter accounts which is not earth shattering but a good start given the modest outreach. There are a few hundred members and we have processed about 14,000 votes.

What comes next?

We are now entering a period in which we want to expand our activity and support a tilt at some serious fund raising. The plan is to approach a number of Foundations that are active in the democracy and political space and seek funding to enable us to grow into a mainstream site and realize our vision. We aim to raise enough funding that we can afford to complete all the feature development of the existing site and develop an iphone and other mobile apps but in particular we want to be able to beef up our content. To this end we are keen to hire a paid full time Editor in Chief who can really build out the depth of the site. We have an excellent candidate in mind and there are some great people out there. Over time we see funding the editorial process as a key function so that ultimately whilst we always draw from a strong array of volunteers we also have core full time editors covering each major region and language and specialists in different media channels. We also need to fund some straightforward marketing and buy advertising to promote hot polls.

Over the next 90 days we would like to draw on the generosity of our members to devote time as volunteers so that we can ramp up the activity at VoteGlobal and better demonstrate to potential funders just what a properly funded VoteGlobal could achieve. We are also going to start a press outreach campaign. So to this end we are very keen to get more help with content creation (not just in English) and editing along with people to help manage and edit our twitter streams and develop out our other social media strategies.

PLEASE HELP IF YOU CAN – even a few hours here and there will make a big difference. Please email me if you are prepared to volunteer at mjgale@voteglobal.com

Thank you

Polls show that there is a strong likelihood that no party will win a majority of Parliament seats in the May 6 U.K. general elections. This scenario, which has not occurred since 1974, opens up many possibilities as to which parties the control of the government and who becomes prime minister. Click here to read full article…