cryptogon.com

“I’m going to step down,” Hatoyama declared in a live broadcast on Japanese television NHK, while addressing party members of both the upper and lower houses of the Diet, Japan’s parliament.

“I have had many shortcomings, I have been allowed to lead all of you for the past eight months to today. I am extremely grateful for having been given this opportunity,” he said.

Eight months ago, Hatoyama’s Democratic Party of Japan won a sweeping victory, an outcome hailed by many as a revolution in Japanese politics.

With promises of a cleaner government, Hatoyama worked to shift the political dynamics in Japan by taking away power from the bureaucrats and granting more power to politicians and local governments.

In his first speech as Japan’s 92nd prime minister, Hatoyama made promises that he would conduct a clean and transparent government, launching a task force to monitor government spending.

But soon afterwards, allegations of illegal campaign financing tarnished his administration’s image. Some of his cabinet members were investigated for corruption.

His approval rating took further hits over his failed promise to move a major U.S. Marine base off Okinawa to ease the burden of the island, which hosts the majority of the United States military presence in Japan. Earlier this month, calling his decision “heartbreaking,” he announced that the base would remain on Okinawa, although relocated to a different part of the island.

Hatoyama’s critics claimed he gave in to U.S. pressure, and his government coalition broke up.

Hatoyama said that while he did lose public trust, he hopes future generations will remember his legacy.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I have often been dubbed as an alien and how I understand this is that I see not current Japan but always try to see future Japan,” he said.

“Local government, local communities should be the main actors,” said Hatoyama.

“In five or ten years people of Japan will understand what I am talking about.”

Parliamentary elections are scheduled to take place in July.

The DPJ will now elect a new leader of the party — most likely on Friday — who will be in line to be the next prime minister of Japan.

“It’s all lose, lose, lose here,” said Rick Steiner, a retired University of Alaska marine scientist who’s familiar with both the current Gulf oil spill and the Exxon Valdez disaster two decades ago.

“The failure of the top kill really magnified this disaster exponentially,” he said. “I think there’s a realistic probability that this enormous amount of oil will keep coming out for a couple months. This disaster just got enormously worse.”

As the federal government and BP try yet another strategy to curb the flow of oil from the blown well a mile below the surface of the Gulf – one that could increase the flow of oil by as much as 20 percent – scientists anticipate a range of disastrous effects, only some of which are well understood.

The damage to the shorelines of Gulf states such as Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida is literally only the surface of the problem: The damage to the sea floor could be extensive, and oil could also devastate marine life between the Gulf floor and its surface, as well as in coastal areas far from the leaking wellhead.

If none of the short-term solutions plugs the well, the only long-term fix – drilling two relief wells to stem the flow of oil – likely won’t be completed until late July or August. President Barack Obama on Saturday called the news about the latest failed attempt “as enraging as it is heartbreaking.”

“As I said yesterday, every day that this leak continues is an assault on the people of the Gulf Coast region, their livelihoods, and the natural bounty that belongs to all of us,” he said in a White House statement.

Larry Crowder, a professor of marine biology at Duke University, said if the spill continues for a couple more months, then oil almost certainly would get into the Loop Current that flows clockwise around the Gulf. It then would be a week to 10 days before it got to the Florida Keys, and a couple of weeks more before the Gulf Stream carried it to North Carolina.

If the leak had been stopped this weekend, the oil might have been diluted, but if there’s two to three times the current amount by August, he said: “It could go anywhere.”

“If you have enough oil, it can go a big distance,” and some 100 million gallons could be spilled by this summer. “There’s almost no place that’s off-limits,” Crowder said.

With summer approaching, hurricanes are the most obvious complication. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts an above-average hurricane season, and a hurricane getting into the Gulf and moving toward the Louisiana coast could force BP to halt its effort to drill the relief wells until the storm passed.

Hurricanes also could disperse the oil farther and wider – or roil the waters so oil at the surface plunges to great depths and poisons the deepwater ecosystem.

Any hurricane and its accompanying storm surge also could drive oil onto land, even into the rice and sugarcane fields that aren’t far from the coast in Louisiana, said James H. Cowan Jr., a biological oceanographer at Louisiana State University.

A Japanese government panel chaired by Katsuhiko Shirai, President of Waseda University, has developed a rough outline of the project. First, the robots, weighing about 660 pounds each, will begin by surveying the moon, taking images of the surface, collecting rocks, and returning the rocks to Earth via rocket for seismographic research. Later, robots will be sent to the moon to construct the lunar base for themselves.

Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), the service’s technology development arm, announced today that LaWS had “successfully tracked, engaged, and destroyed” a drone in flight, during an over-the-water engagement at San Nicholas Island, Calif.

It’s certainly not the first time lasers have shot down an unmanned aerial vehicle — last year, the Air Force zapped several drones with beam weapons in a series of tests at China Lake, Calif. — but this test brings an additional bit of realism — and an extra technical challenge. Laser beams can lose strength as they move through the moist, salty sea atmosphere above the sea, so the Navy needs directed-energy weapons that can work effectively on ships.

The same document explained that the Agency also wanted to put the same techniques to their own effective uses in the field offensively. Reads the document: “We need to also explore the ‘subtle’ means of making an individual say or do things he would normally not consider through the use of covertly administered drugs, ‘Black Psychiatry’*, hypnosis, and brain damaging processes. Dr. Chadwell feels these processes may be tried but they are ‘elaborate, impractical and unnecessary.'”[Italics added. Dr. Chadwell was H. Marshall Chadwell, the CIA’s director of Scientific Intelligence.]

A subsequent April 1954 Artichoke Conference meeting, attended by Frank Olson’s Fort Detrick superior, Col. Vincent Ruwet, explored the real nitty-gritty of Artichoke experimentation. Noted a CIA report on the meeting, “It was also recognized [by conference participants] that if Morse Allen and his group could produce bodies and if certain very rough, primitive, and ultimate tests could be carried out then a more accurate prediction could be made in connection with the ultimate goal of the group which is the running of selected foreign nationals back into Europe for specific work for this Agency.”

“Israel expresses sorrow for those killed in the takeover,” the Israeli Cabinet said in a statement, according to one Hebrew-language website.

Israeli television, citing foreign media reports, said the death toll could be as high as 16.

“The images are certainly not pleasant. I can only voice regret at all the fatalities,” Trade and Industry Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer told Israel’s Army Radio.

The Israeli military said its soldiers were attacked with knives, clubs and other objects when they boarded one of the vessels. A military spokesman said protesters grabbed a commando’s weapon and soldiers came under fire. But protest organizers insisted they were unarmed.

Protest organizers described a chaotic early-morning takeover in international waters.

A flotilla spokeswoman, Greta Berlin, told Israel Radio that the confrontation was broadcast live from a Turkish boat participating in the flotilla. The footage, she said, clearly showed Israeli soldiers landing on the deck and opening fire on civilians.

“The minute their feet hit the deck, they started to shoot,” Berlin said.

She added, “Something happened to your country to make it think it is all right” to shoot civilians.

Israel Defense Force sources told Ynet, a popular Hebrew-language website, that the “organizers were not innocent — they demonstrated violence against the soldiers. They were prepared for their arrival.”

Israeli radio military analyst Yoav Limor blamed the military for underestimating the resistance it would encounter. “There was serious violence” that forced the soldiers to open fire, he said.

Video images released by the protesters appeared to show passengers beating commandos with clubs as the soldiers rappelled onto the vessel’s deck. A live video feed, which showed bloodstains and injured people, was abruptly cut.

The Turkish government issued a statement that “strongly protested” Israel’s military action, according to Associated Press. The interception on the convoy is “unacceptable…. Israel will have to endure the consequences of this behavior,” the statement read.

Turkish media reported angry protesters shouting “Damn Israel!” outside the Israeli Consulate in Istanbul.

Israel put its security forces on alert in case of demonstrations by the nation’s Arab minority.

Flotilla organizers say they were carrying first-aid supplies and medical professionals in the event of casualties, but Adam Shapiro, the husband of one flotilla leader, said that “we thought that the possibility that Israeli soldiers would shoot” was remote.

Flotilla organizers said they carried no weapons.

Before they consider that option, they might want to watch this video of Dr. Gregory Ryskin, Professor of Chemical Engineering at Northwestern University. In the video, Dr. Ryskin explains how a prehistoric methane gas explosion could explain the Permian-Triassic Extinction Event, a mysterious period in Earth history where 95% of all species went extinct.