Some 500 villagers in China's Zhejiang province protested for a third day Sept. 17 at the factory of Zhejiang Jinko Solar, storming the compound, ransacking offices and overturning vehicles. Residents from the village of Hongxiao gathered outside the gates of the solar panel manufacturer in nearby Haining city to demand an explanation for the death of a large swath of fish in a river downstream from the plant last month. They grew angry after receiving no answer following a three-day vigil. The factory had earlier this year received a warning from Haining's environmental protection bureau for improper waste disposal. The company sells solar products around the world, maintaining offices in the US and Europe.

We recently noted China's aggressive embrace of the pathological, dystopian car culture first pioneered by the West. Now comes another sign of this cultural retrogression. From RTTNews, Sept. 16:

China Detains General's Teenage Son Over Road Rage Incident
The teenage son of a famous Chinese army general has been detained and sent to a government correctional facility for one year in connection with a road rage incident which sparked outrage across the country, state media reported Friday.

Hundreds of activists from throughout South Korea have gathered in force on Jeju Island, off the country's southern coast, to hold a "peace event" aimed at halting construction of a naval base slated to be used by US forces. The event, including a concert and cultural activities, opened Sept. 3—one day after riot police dispersed protesters at the island's Gangjeong village, who held a sit-in to block construction equipment. After the blockade was broken, and 38 arrested, work crew commenced construction of a perimeter fence around the construction site.

The amount of radioactive material being emitted from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has fallen to one-fifth that of a month ago and one-10 millionth the levels in mid-March, the Japanese government and Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) said Aug. 17. Maximum radiation levels near the plant measured since the beginning of August were put at 200 million becquerels per hour—but Goshi Hosono, the cabinet minister in charge of the nuclear crisis, cautioned the 200 million becquerel reading is an estimate, and promised to seek ways of making precise measurements. TEPCO and the government said there is no major change in their timetable for bringing the plant under control. Containment efforts include building a wall of steel plates in front of the existing sea walls for units 1 through 4 to keep contaminated groundwater from entering the ocean. (ENS, Aug. 17)

This seems utterly Orwellian, and has received frustratingly little media attention. In recent days, several seemingly less-than-reliable sites have headlined the story in lurid terms (Alexander Higgins Blog, Above Top Secret, Rumor Mill News, Examiner.com). They are mostly quoting each other and contradicting themselves, saying that Japan has "passed a law" (implying a vote of the Diet) or that the Japanese government has "issued an order" (implying mere bureaucratic promulgation) mandating "censorship" of "negative stories" about the Fukushima disaster. It all seems to go back to two short paragraphs toward the end of a May 16 story on the (reliable) website Japan Focus, which cites and links to a page (in Japanese) of Tokyo's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications:

Oil that spewed from an offshore drilling rig in the North China Sea (Yellow Sea) for more than two weeks last month spread 320 square miles, government officials acknowledged July 5, amid public outrage over why it took so long for fishermen and local residents to be informed of the spill. News of the spill emerged in late June on the microblogging site Sina Weibo and was not confirmed by the authorities until July 1. China's State Oceanic Administration (SOA) said July 5 that US energy giant ConocoPhillips is responsible for the spill. The leak took place at the Penglai 19-3 oilfield in Bohai Bay, a field being exploited by ConocoPhillips China under a joint development agreement with the China National Offshore Oil Corporation. (NYT, Xinhua, July 5)

Angry parents held a hundreds-strong march in Japan's Fukushima city June 26 to demand greater protection for their children from radiation more than three months after the start of the world's worst nuclear disaster in 25 years in the northern prefecture. The parents won a victory last month, when a protest campaign pressured the government to lower the limit for radiation exposure for children at schools, and to offer money for schools to remove topsoil in playgrounds with too much radiation. But also June 26, government officials met with local residents in a televised meeting at Saga, on Kyushu island, to try to convince them that it is safe to restart the prefecture's Genkai nuclear power plant. Since the Fukushima disaster, 35 of Japan's 54 nuclear reactors have been temporarily shut down. (Reuters, AFP, June 26; Asahi Shimbun, June 14)

From the Movement for Democratic Socialism (MDS), Tokyo, June 10:

It will soon be three months since the Eastern Japan catastrophic earthquake and tsunami broke out and the successive Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant disaster was triggered. We are grateful to all of you for the messages and largesse you have sent us from many parts of the world to encourage us in our efforts to gain democratic recovery from the disaster and the total abolishment of nuclear power plants. We, once again, express our profound gratitude. As for the donations, we are making full use of them in our activities to help reconstruct the disaster-stricken communities. Let us now turn to how we, MDS, are campaigning against nuclear power plants.