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地震及其引发的海啸，不仅是冲击和荡涤人类的居住环境，也冲击和洗涤人类的心灵。这不，日本大地震及海啸让一些垃圾突然变得干净和纯洁，道德感和同情心如同神马般的突起一块浮云。干净了，纯净了，毕竟是好事；但什么事都要拔高，就很『文革』了，像什么『是人都知道：日本地震是人类共同灾难』这样的假大空口号，很容易让我想起那个时代的一些荒谬。
灾难就是灾难；日本的灾难就是日本的灾难。从人类的基本情感出发，大家都会为灾难中的死难者感到沉痛；而从道义或是高点说从人道主义的角度，国际社会也就是世界各国，一定会对灾难地区伸出援手。在当今世界，救灾就难已经成为惯例，无需更多的言语去对此演绎了。知道什么是惯例吗？
『是人都知道：日本地震是人类共同灾难』，这看上去有些声嘶力竭。难道不认为日本地震是人类共同灾难的人，就不是人了？刚才在看NBA，NBA照打，显然，并没有把日本地震当成是人类共同的灾难。日本地震对于美国人的影响，甚至还不如海地大地震。
如果日本地震是人类的共同灾难，那么这个人类包不包括中国？应该包括的吧，那么依次逻辑推论，就是中国的灾难了，那么，逢中必反的朋友，你们是沉痛还是幸灾乐祸？同样，说人类不包括中共，也说不过去。毕竟，中共政权是美国的战略合作伙伴；毕竟，美国与中共执政的中国的关系，是世界上最重要的双边关系。如果中共不属于人类，那么美国是在和魔鬼打交道？千万不要低估美国人的智慧。这样以来，日本地震是人类的共同灾难，也就是中共的灾难，那么，反共的朋友，你们是沉痛还是幸灾乐祸？
我说过，老毛的一个伟大之处很多人没有注意到，这就是在自觉或是不自觉中，把自己的敌人打造成和自己一样。我在前面说过，什么事都要拔高，就很『文革』，由此也自然想到当年的红卫兵小将的那种胸怀祖国、放眼世界的那什么。
灾难就是灾难，日本的灾难就是日本的灾难，从人类的基本情感出发看这样的灾难，足以！有人提出什么从『人类共同命运体』看日本大地震，这也同样是很大很空很假，这倒让我想起大东亚共荣这类的口号。我之所以说这样的口号很大很空很假是因为，首先，人类社会是否是一个命运共同体？当然，人类社会面临的灾难，对于不同的族裔、国家和个人是一样，但命运是共同的吗？当然不是！
利比亚难民如何与日本地震灾民同命运？基督教、伊斯兰教及佛教，能结成命运共同体吗？各自的神，是不会答应的。至少在目前，是不存在所谓的『人类共同命运体』的，这样的说法也根本不成立，最多算是一个愿望，还不知道是美好还是不美好。但是，当共同的灾难来临的时候，人类还是可以团结协作的，这是另外一个问题。中国是有风雨同舟和同舟共济这样的说法，而前提是大家同处于一条船上的时候；下船了，该掐，还是要掐的。在人类历史的长河中，大多数的情况还是千帆竞渡、百舸争流。
那么，是否存在人类共同的灾难？存在，一定会存在，比如，某小行星要撞击地球。现在，如果说存在人类的共同灾难，那一定是日本的核事故。日本核电站的问题，正在持续进行，也会有大量鲜为人知的问题不断被披露。可以有的基本结论是，日本地震海啸灾区的几个核电站的几个反应堆出事了，还发生了爆炸，核泄漏是确定的，已经有些人被核辐射了，正在扩散的核辐射云将到达美洲，等等。
在日本地震海啸发生后不久也就是美国时间3月11日，日本时代周刊（Japan Times Weekly）前编辑Yoichi Shimatsu为新美国媒体（New America Media）撰文：题目是『日本的海啸和核电站：人类而非自然制造了这次危机（Japan's Tsunami & Nuclear Plants: Humans, Not Nature, Made This Crisis）』，我把英文全文附后，作为本文的结束。相信读过此文后，对这次日本的灾难，会有新的思考。
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Japan's Tsunami & Nuclear Plants: Humans, Not Nature, Made This Crisis
New America Media, News Analysis, Yoichi Shimatsu, Posted: Mar 11, 2011
The Wave, reminiscent of Hokusai's masterful woodblock print, blew past Japan's shoreline defenses of harbor breakwaters and gigantic four-legged blocks called tetrapods, lifting ships to ram through seawalls and crash onto downtown parking lots. Seaside areas were soon emptied of cars and houses dragged up and back out to sea. Wave heights of up to10 meters (33 feet) are staggering, but before deeming these as unimaginable, consider the historical Sanriku tsunami that towered to 15 meters (nearly 50 feet) and killed 27,000 people in 1896.
Nature's terrifying power, however we may dread it, is only as great as the human-caused vulnerability of our civilization. Soon after Christmas 2004, I volunteered for the rescue operation on the day after the Indian Ocean tsunami and simultaneously did an on-site field study on the causes of fatalities in southern Thailand. The report , issued by Thammasat and Hong Kong universities, concluded that high water wasn't the sole cause of the massive death toll—230,000 people dead. No, it's buildings that kill—to be specific, badly designed structures without escape routes onto roofs or, in our greed for real estate, situated inside drained lagoons and riverbeds or on loose landfill. In today’s Tohoku disaster, an ultramodern Sendai Airport sat helplessly flooded on all sides while nearby a monstrous black torrent swept entire houses upstream.
Other threats are built into the vulnerabilities of our critical infrastructure and power systems. The balls of orange flames now churning out of huge gas storage tanks in Ichihara, in the prefecture of Chiba, might never have happened if technical precautions had been properly carried out.
Most people assume that the meticulous Japanese are among the world's most responsible citizens. As an investigative journalist who covered the Hanshin (Kobe) earthquake and the Tokyo subway Sarin gas attack, both in 1995, I beg to differ. Japan is better than elsewhere in organizing official cover-ups.
Hidden nuclear crisis
The recurrent tendency to deny systemic errors—"in order to avoid public panic"—is rooted in the determination of an entrenched bureaucracy to protect itself rather than in any stated purpose of serving the nation or its people. That's the unspoken rule of thumb in most governments, and Japan is no shining exception.
So what is being silenced after today’s 8.8-magnitude earthquake on orders from the Tokyo government? The official mantra is that all five nuclear power plants in the northeast are locked down, safe and not leaking. The cloaked reality is that at least one of those—Tepco's Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant—is under an emergency alert at a level indicative of a quake-caused internal rupture. The Fukushima powerhouse is one of the world's largest, with six boiling-water reactors.
Over the decades, the Japanese public has been reassured by the Tokyo Electric Power Company that its nuclear reactors are prepared for any eventuality. Yet the mystery in Fukushima is not the first unreported problem with nuclear power, only the most recent. Back in 1996, amid a reactor accident in Ibaraki province, the government never admitted that radioactive fallout had drifted over the northeastern suburbs of Tokyo. Reporters obtained confirmation from monitoring stations, but the press was under a blanket order not to run any alarming news, facts be damned. For a nation that has lived under the atomic cloud of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, total denial becomes possible because the finger on the button is our own.
People are the best defense
Despite the national addiction to nuclear power that keeps the neon lights bright over Shibuya's famous corner, Japan still remains the most prepared of all societies for earthquakes, tsunami, conflagrations and other disasters. Every work unit, large or small, has an emergency response plan. Today’s Tohoku quake hit on a workday afternoon, meaning the staff in every factory and office could act as a team to quell small fires, shut the gas lines, render first aid and restore communication systems. Even in most homes, residents have a rechargeable flashlight plugged into a socket and emergency bottles of water.
Northeast Japan is better prepared than other localities because, in the wake of the Kobe quake, the regional Keidanren, or federation of industrial organizations, sponsored a thorough risk-management and crisis-response study. Tohoku Keidanren staffers, who had known of my reporting on the San Francisco and Kobe quakes, asked me to write an article prioritizing disaster preparations.
First on my list was a people-based communications network, such as the citizen's band radio that enabled Northern Californians to self-organize after the 1989 quake despite power blackouts. That pointed directly led to the quick licensing of new mobile phone towers equipped with back-up batteries. Second was independent power generation inside all major factories so that these large facilities could recharge batteries, provide lighting and pump water for their neighborhoods and, if necessary, offer shelter, sanitation and medical care. These systems must be routinely used—at least on weekends— so that the equipment is regularly checked and the staff stays familiar with their operation.
Third, and most important, is the ability of individuals to rally as self-sustaining communities. In Kobe, society collapsed under a sense of personal defeat. In San Francisco, by contrast, neighbors reached out as friends and opened their doors, food stocks and hearts to victims and their kin. Without compassion, each of us is very much alone indeed.
As participants in communities who can suddenly find themselves naked before unthinkable hazards, we must act to defuse the deadly "bomb" that provides us lighting, energy for appliances and air-conditioning. Prevention of the next Chernobyl or Three Mile Island begins when we stop naively believing in the cost efficiency of uranium (and, for that matter, the cleanliness and healthiness of "clean" coal).
Japan has vast untapped reserves of offshore wind energy, the only practical alternative to nuclear power and fossil fuel. Yet the nuclear lobby, coal companies and oil majors have strong-armed the government and industry to stubbornly refuse to invest in advanced and efficient turbine engineering, including magnetic-levitation rotors that eliminate the need for energy-sapping bearings. At certain stages of societal evolution, there arrives an unmistakable message to leave behind our worn-out security blanket and surf the wave of the future. The tsunami is just such a signal arising from the ocean's depths to awaken Japan, as a global technology leader, to push much faster into a cleaner, greener and safer world.
Yoichi Shimatsu, former editor of the Japan Times Weekly, has covered the earthquakes in San Francisco and Kobe, participated in the rescue operation immediately after the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 and led the field research for an architectural report on structural design flaws that led to the tsunami death toll in Thailand.
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