Into Eternity

Yesterday I saw a documentary on Al Jazeera. "Into Eternity" chronicles the attempts of Finland to bury its spent nuclear fuel in a permanent underground bunker -- one that's way, way underground.

The documentary, which is an hour long, is similar to the French documentary called "Waste: The Nuclear Nightmare", which I wrote about here. Both are essential viewing. If you think nuclear power is "clean power", watch these documentaries.

It's a frightening topic. Both docs focus on how to keep future generations away from the permanent storage site. This stuff has to be protected for at least 100,000 years! Think how long human civilization has existed. We're a small blip on a 100,000-year span. The builders of the bunker can't even rely on civilization existing for that long a time.

Perhaps written language will fall by the wayside. How, then, can we effectively warn future generations to keep away from the site of this dangerous radioactive product? Pictographs? And how will these people of the future react to our cautions? Will they think the signs that say "Keep Out" are a scam, and there's really a treasure down there? Will they dig to get to it? It's an insane problem.

And this site will only address Finland's spent fuel. What of the spent fuel that litters our global landscape? Electricity and workers are necessary to keep the fuel rods constantly bathed in cool water. Will we be around to maintain those sites for the next 100,000 years? Doubtful.

"Clean" nuclear power is a misnomer. It's the filthiest and most dangerous thing we produce on this Earth. And yet new nuclear plants are being commissioned every day. We're killing the future.

You can see the whole documentary at the above link. Do watch it. We can't ignore this problem. We have to phase out nuclear power now, and begin to move the existing spent fuel into permanent storage -- unless we don't care about future generations, that is. I know we used to care about such things, but such sentiment is no longer in vogue. More's the pity. Because if we ignore this (and climate change, BTW) we truly are lemmings.

Is Al Jazeera turning into Fox News?

Today, when Egyptians protest against President Mohammad Morsi and the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Jazeera is often critical of them, in the style of the old pro-government TV station. Conversely, according to ex-correspondent Suliman, Al-Jazeera executives have ordered that Morsi's decrees should be portrayed as pearls of wisdom. "Such a dictatorial approach would have been unthinkable before," he says. "In Egypt we have become the palace broadcaster for Morsi." 

I can't believe I'm reading this. According to an article at Der Spiegel, Al Jazeera has become a mouthpiece for the Foreign Ministry of Qatar, just as Fox in the US is the mouthpiece for the GOP.

A prominent correspondent who, until one year ago, used to report in Beirut for the network, says: "Al-Jazeera takes a clear position in every country from which it reports -- not based on journalistic priorities, but rather on the interests of the Foreign Ministry of Qatar," he says. "In order to maintain my integrity as a reporter, I had to quit."

When, for instance, mass protests were staged against the neighboring regime in Bahrain, a close ally of the emir, Al-Jazeera almost entirely ignored the situation. In Syria, on the other hand, where Qatar supports the Islamist-leaning opponents of President Bashar Assad with money and weapons, the network's journalists are extremely close to the rebels.

That's a page directly from the Fox News playbook. This is distressing because Al Jazeera has been a sterling, independent news source since its creation. What a terrible downfall for a formerly trusted news source. And I'm not the only one who thinks this.

The Arab TV network has recently suffered an exodus of prominent staff members. Reporters and anchors in cities like Paris, London, Moscow, Beirut and Cairo have left Al-Jazeera, despite what are seen as luxurious working conditions in centrally located offices.

It's just sad. Of all the things I thought Al Jazeera might turn into, Fox News wasn't on the list.

Hillary Clinton says what we watch is not news

You don't often hear American politicians say something that's, you know, true, but Hillary Clinton did today.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Wednesday that Al Jazeera is gaining more prominence in the U.S. because it offers "real news" -- something she said American media were falling far short of doing.

Clinton was speaking before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and she said the U.S. is losing the "information war" in the world. One of the reasons she cited for this was the quality of channels like Al Jazeera.

"Viewership of Al Jazeera is going up in the United States because it's real news," she said. "You may not agree with it, but you feel like you're getting real news around the clock instead of a million commercials and, you know, arguments between talking heads and the kind of stuff that we do on our news which, you know, is not particularly informative to us, let alone foreigners."

Now could someone please erase all our news stations and start over? It's easy: news, not tripe. Is that such a difficult formula to achieve? I sure wish I could get Al Jazeera on my teevee. But of course, I can't because that would allow real news to reach an American. Me.