It’s a little hard to boil down everything that has taken place this week into a single blog entry, so I won’t even try. As has become my habit, I will take brief swings at a couple of topics and let the chips fall where they may.

Japan Agonistes. Something like a triplet of biblical plagues have settled upon Japan, and all three share a grim history with that unfortunate nation. They are no strangers to severe earthquakes and tsunamis, the latter of which, by no accident, is known around the globe by its Japanese name. Nuclear disaster is, of course, something we first introduced them to at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It bears reminding that the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was built on a design mapped out by General Electric – one long thought to be vulnerable to this kind of disaster. What possessed otherwise smart people to build such a plant on the coast of Japan is beyond me, particularly given Japan’s unique experience with the depredations of nuclear radiation.

Clearly no reactor is designed to withstand 9.0 earthquakes and colossal, history-making tsunamis – this one least of all, which at last look appeared from above like an ashtray at the end of an all-night poker game. One can only guess at what the long-term effects of this disaster will be. As one commentator recently put it, we all (those here since 1986, at least) have a piece of Chernobyl in us. Likely we will soon have some Fukushima Daiichi alongside it. (The knowledge that structurally similar plants are operating all over the U.S. is particularly sobering, as well.)

Cavalry Coming? The U.N. Security Council has approved 10-0 (with 5 abstentions) a resolution on Libya authorizing a no-fly zone and other measures as deemed necessary. Gaddafi has called a cease-fire in the wake of this decision, though reports from the country demonstrate that this is a hollow charade. I can’t say that I am overjoyed with the thought of the United States stumbling into this conflict. We seldom make things better; more often, much worse. (We also fuck it up when we do nothing – see Bahrain.) It’s hard, though, to listen to the voices of those people in Benghazi and not want to help. I just wonder how much help dropping bombs will prove to be. We would be “taking out” air defense installations. What are these? In essence, they are people – Libyan people with families, clan relations, etc.

Killing is never a simple matter.  The best thing we in the West might have done for these people is not to have sold their crackpot leader weapons in the first place.

luv u,

jp