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@Edano it reads like a poorly thought out attack from someone with an agenda and has not really thought about his stance but created it as a response to whatever new comes out.

in fact, both parts of germany had nuclear energy.

@lillymunster some people are damn angry with germany and that only because we abandon nuke power. so what ? this is our business. i see no reason to get angry about this, except you are a nuke lobbyist.

@lillymunster true. i can imagine a japanese nuke company hired a german extra for this opinion to make it appear serious, but it is really defaming. i can hardly believe that an austrian can be responsible for that, i honestly doubt that. there are cultural flaws in that writing.

I keep going back to your comment that Germany's energy changes do not impact other countries. They don't. The only "risk" they have is giving people the idea that they don't absolutely have to have nukes to survive and that is a very "dangerous" idea if your agenda is to keep people baffled with your BS.

It reminds me of the current power issues where I live. The major power company in the region insisted we needed this new coal plant. They also refused to agree to state law changes that would allow major wind generation in our state. This all continued until the coal plant was defeated with no hope of every happening. Bam a few months later we are hooked up to the big wind farm in MN and they are building high capacity transmission lines in SD. Our punishment, a $6 a month additional charge to pay for the new transmission systems. I can live with that. But it is an example of the outright lies power companies will pull on the public not because they are true but to manipulate people to get their way. This JT opinion piece reeks of power industry BS, they have a very limited bag of tricks.

yes, i read it again and again. it is a manipulated opinion. the author is japanese.

@lillymunster the name is invented, pure fantasy.

@MaryW good find on the relocation groups. I want to try to start cataloging resources and NPO's helping people in Japan.

this is my answer to JT:

"Japan Times should take care about its sources. as a German, i can say that this "opinion" is surely not written by an Austrian. We share the same culture and we don't use terms like "yellow peril" here in the German speaking part of Europe. Nobody here would claim that Angela Merkel "broke a law", this is nonsense. nobody would say "German children are indoctrinated to hate...". nobody with knowledge about Germany would write that. I am sure this writing is manipulated and stems from a japanese power company. You should be careful that you are not misused in this way. Don't forget the Kyushu affaires. Furthermore, this piece of writing is offensive and defaming. it contradicts itself several times and is absolutely badly written."

yep.

The JT article also completely avoids the impact Chernobyl had on Germany and other parts of Europe.

This is the letter I sent to Japan Times in response to Kolb's article:


The recent opinion piece from Andreas Kolb is quite disturbing in its gross misrepresentations, xenophobia and blatant racism, but also that Japan Times thought this was appropriate to print.
Even if the editorial staff doesn’t agree with Kolb’s statements there is some responsibility to not give a public platform to baseless accusations and defamatory comments.

Kolb’s accusation that “In Germany, children are indoctrinated to hate “ and claiming that "yellow peril" is somehow a reaction in Germany are completely inappropriate for any honest discussion of the issues. I can assure you that “yellow peril” is not from the common vernacular of Germany and it certainly isn’t of the current common vernacular in American English.

Kolb completely ignores the impact Chernobyl has on Germany. There are still foods and livestock in Europe that are not safe to eat some 25 years later. The Chernobyl disaster spawned citizens groups like Strahlentelex and CRMS to test food so people could find what was safe to eat. The more recent nuclear protests in Germany were against the transport of nuclear fuel across the countryside of Germany and France. Geiger counters were bought to check around the Castor nuclear fuel transport trains, not out of some lack of understanding of nuclear power. Germany comes from a very experienced place, not out of ignorance in their decision to move away from nuclear power.

Kolb also makes the very strange insinuation that Germany’s actions in changing their energy policy somehow impacts the rest of the world. The only factor outside of Germany that is impacted by these changes is the illusion that people must have nuclear power to survive as a modern society. Having other people see that renewable are a viable option is a very powerful and dangerous thing if you’re a nuclear energy company whose profits and future depend on keeping that illusion in place.

We know nothing about Kolb’s background or possible industry ties yet he has had two rather bizarre opinion pieces printed by the paper. The other one making a spurious claim that lowering the elevation of Fukushima Daiichi had nothing to do with the impact of the tsunami on the plant.

I would hope that Japan Times would post some sort of apology for printing Kolb’s offensive screed and possibly ask opinion writers to disclose any conflicts of interest they may have on the subjects they write about.

@lillymunster as to "yellow peril", i would have thought that this points to the economical and political power of china, but never to japan, at least not here in europe. i can imagine that it may in fact stem from ww2, but then it's sureley not used in this way in europe. in that time we had brown or red problems here, but most definitely no yellow ones. that's why i think it cannot be written by a european.

@Pedro Jesus yes, Wien is the german name for Vienna and be sure i know that. and yes, there are lots of andreas kolbs in wien, in germany as well, but none of them is in the journalistic or nuclear or east asian business or has made any comments that i could find on anything before outside of japan, so i would think it is rather strange to read a comment by him in a japanese newspaper. why in a japanese newspaper ? we have german forums on that. Pedro Jesus, i did not say that there exists no andreas kolb in vienna, i said that the writer of that comment is probably not the person he claims to be. he definitely seems to know more about japanese than german culture, and this is strange.

@Edano It doesn't fit into American vernacular either. It was something heard during WWII. You can find it in old movies, news reels etc. but you never hear people talking about Japan as some sort of threat or in a negative manner like that. It is very out of context.

in fact, it's a very subtile way to influence the japanese opinion, by using a german/austrian name, and referring to the (probably very popular) Japanese actor Taro Yamamoto who apparently visited germany during the castor transport. i can assure that this actor is not well known in germany, and i followed the castor events closely, i knew that there were japanese participants, but there was no news article that mentioned Taro Yamamoto.