mahiwaga

It’s interesting how Donald Trump calls for the registering and/or deportation of Muslims and Mexicans, the torture and killing of civilians whose family members are suspected of terrorism, more violence against protestors at his rallies and refuses to disavow white supremacist groups supporting him and people are quick to be apologists and say “He’s not Hitler!” while Bernie Sanders calls for universal health care, free higher education, and increased regulation of the financial sector and people seem to immediately jump to “He’s just like Stalin!”

Garry Kasparov: Hey, Bernie, Don’t Lecture Me About Socialism. I Lived Through It. • 2016 Mar 9 • Garry Kasparov • The Daily Beast

To his credit, Kasparov eventually admits that Sanders probably doesn’t want to create a totalitarian state.

Hitler vs. Stalin: Who Was Worse? • 2011 Jan 27 • Timothy Snyder • The New York Review of Books

It’s true that Donald Trump and his supporters (probably) haven’t killed anyone (yet) but neither had Hitler and the Nazis during the last days of the Weimar Republic. Are we really supposed to wait until they start doing so to make Hitler comparisons?

I’m not against nuclear power per se, but I’m thinking thorium reactors are the way to go. While, yeah, uranium and plutonium reactors are generally very safe, when there’s an accident (and there will always be accidents) it can be potentially unfathomably catastrophic and effectively permanent, at least as far as human timescales are concerned.¹

5 years later, Fukushima radiation continues to seep into the Pacific Ocean • 2016 Mar 9 • Ken Buesseler • PBS Newshour

Yes there are hundreds of uranium or plutonium nuclear power plants running for thousands of hours that don’t meltdown and/or release radioactive materials into the environment but it only takes like three or four that do to ruin things for literally hundreds and thousands of years.²

Fukushima’s ground zero: No place for man or robot • 2016 Mar 11 • Aaron Sheldrick and Minami Funakoshi • Reuters

In the shadow of Fukushima, a ghost town struggles back to life • 2016 Mar 11 • Jake Adelstein • Los Angeles Times

If you’re going to be a bank robber when you grow up, you still need to learn how to spell correctly.

How a hacker’s typo helped stop a billion dollar bank heist • 2016 Mar 10 • Serajul Quadir • Reuters