So it has been a long time since I had a chance to write about anything on here, it's been a busy time. So let's catch up a bit and go back to when we started to hear about Sudan. Before all the current stories you see there was a huge out cry in Sudan for voting to make a new country and split this country into two new nations. After the election everything there kinda went silent, a little odd if you ask me seeing that nothing has come of that situation in the news for some time. After that we moved to Egypt where in the news it was a similar state of affairs as Sudan in the sense that a new government was going to happen; in this case without the voting process and without George Clooney to back it.
The Egyptian government in the end was over thrown and now is busy piecing in self back together when another country decides it's government has been in power for far too long, about 30 years too long. The country is Lybia, and the leader Muammar Gaddafi who at one point was a military member. So, there is an uprising which ends up being very very bloody. The difference between Egypt and Lybia however is the fact that Egypt had a more peaceful uprising, but also the leader of that country wasn't brought into power through war. What you might not know about Muammar Gaddafi is that he has been a colonel in his country's military and that he staged a Cout D'etat against that government. The Cout removed the at the time king of Libya and began a 42 year rule that saw people jailed or killed for things like speaking another language or speaking out against the government.
Now when NATO is trying to enforce a now fly zone and stop protestors from being jailed or killed the world is shocked that this man has not given up power. The issue here is that Gaddafi came into power through war and will, as we have seen, leave through war so it is unlikely that he will simply hand back a government he has had for 42 years. Really what needs to happen here is to have NGO's go in and help where they can.
Now I know what your saying " isn't NATO doing that already?" the fact is that NATO is setting up no fly zones but nothing has stopped goods and services from leaving that country. Stopping goods and services and setting up screening areas around the country may seem drastic; however not that long ago it came out that Gadaffi was responsible for the PAM AM 103 bombing that happened over Lockerbie, Scotland in December of 1988. So it might be in the best interest of all concerned that we start making sure he doesn't get a bomb out of the country to "send a message" to the world.
Not that Gadaffi is the only worry right now but we have all seen what happens when you don't watch closely to a potential problem that may be brewing. I am referring of course to the problem of the Japan power plant that has gone from clean power generation to radioactive leaky kettle. The problem here was started naturally with a Tsunami off the coast of Japan which was sparked by an Earthquake somewhere between 8.9 and 9.1 in magnitude that shifted Japan 2.4 meters closer to the United States. So where do you start with the problems, the government of Japan that has insisted everything is fine and that the huge explosions are pressure releases so one of 6 or so cores doesn't explode? The same government that said everything was being done to make sure the people in the area where being taken care of? or should you blame aid workers for a lack of response to a critical situation that has lead to radio active water being leaked into the ocean?
The truth is that it's a combination of slow response from the government as well as organization that have been the issue here. The fact is the company that runs and maintains this plant is where the blame should start, and the blame could be spread as far out as NGO's that have moved slower than they should have to take care of people. Yes it sounds like the blame game, and it is really is, however this one has a point; most of the time when we send in NGO's they take care of things the government can't because there isn't a policy for it yet or the government lacks resources to implement such plans to protect it's citizens, hence NGO's are useful. When it came to the potential melt down, NGO's weren't prepared because this scenario happens so few times that really only one agency is suppose to know what happens...the power company. Seems kinda silly when you think about it but actually it is only the power plant that has scenario after scenario for this type of emergency.
So now comes the home front question, "what about our power plants?" Excellent question! If you know of the Pickering Ontario or Chalk River nuclear plants then you may have also heard of the CANDU reactor which has a number of safety systems that the Japanese plant did not and does not have. In short, if either of these plants had a failure the reactor is designed to deplete and drop power levels down to around 7% of it's total output. How does that help if the reactor fails? well it means that if the reactor starts to fail the system will not explode to the point that it would do much more than take out the plant, and even then that would be absolute worst case scenario, it also means that the plant is not likely to leak radio active material into an ocean or lake where nuclear plants are typically built. There is more technical breakdowns of this system, i am simplifying it a lot and any person who majors in this field may laugh a little at the explanation, however i am not an expert in the field so I can really only apply my laymens terms to such a detailed area.
So what does this all mean? is the whole 2012 scenario playing out? should we all build bunkers and run for our lives? First, the 2012 scenario is a whole other rant that at some point i'll get to but you should know that there isn't much to that myth. Also, if we all believe in doom and gloom to the point that we can't even see much more than the problems than most of us couldn't leave our beds in the morning. While there is a lot of things going on in the world we should also take what we see and learn from it. Humans are notorious for repeating history because we have boxed ourselves in and no longer, in a grand scale, posses the ability to critically think about the world around us. I am not saying this is true of everyone, or that we can't change that but i am saying we need to change it and now! If we are content to live in the box we have built for ourselves one day we will be jailed for speaking out against the things we see as wrong in the world. An entire nation stood up peacefully in Egypt and opened our eyes to all the wonder that could be, let's not waste that lesson and began a new day of discovery. Don't wait for someone else to tell you to ask, en quire, or change the way you think, do it now for yourself. If nothing else...try
