<font color='black' size='2' face='arial'><b style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px;">Godzilla
2014 </b><br>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px;"><span style="font-family:">In Majuro, Marshall Islands in the early 80s, I
witnessed a delayed radiation effect. An
under-40 male was walking down the street when he collapsed and the island
hospital pronounced him DOA. The
diagnosis was death by radiation where the story told me was that he ate a fish
carrying a dormant rogue atom that became active inside his body. The wild cavorting of radiated neutrons acted
like a beam that went slashing the poor man’s innards like a laser causing
terminal damage.</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px;"><span style="font-family:">I am no scientist. I had difficulty understanding, let alone,
accepting the explanation, but there was no debate on what killed the man. It came as an effect from one of the nuclear
bomb tests almost 30 years before in the Bikini atoll north of Majuro,
delivered by a fish!</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px;"><span style="font-family:">This week, a 2014 version of Godzilla debuts in
American cinemas. There are 28 films in
the franchise that began in 1954 when the movie <i>Godzilla </i>was first released. Considered a filmographic metaphor for the
United States that heartlessly delivered the A-bomb to hapless civilians in Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, it was also an allegory of nuclear weapons to Japan’s memory 60
years ago of the effect of a Bikini test on its fishermen fishing in the Marshalls. The winds rained atomic fallout on their boat,
scaling skin and shortening everyone’s breath, to put it mildly. </span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px;"><span style="font-family:">The early Godzilla (<i>Gojira,</i> in Nihonggo) films portrayed its character as a
frightening, nuclear monster. Japanese <i>Gojira </i>is actually a portmanteau of the
word for gorilla <i>(gorira)</i> and a whale
<i>(kujira).</i> Godzilla was described as a
cross between a gorilla and a whale, a prehistoric sea monster awakened by
nuclear fusion. The word G-O-D on the
first syllable of the English translation alludes to power, infinite and almighty! Save the first Godzilla was not of Mother
Nature but straight out of human invention, depravity’s <i>force majeure!</i></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px;"><span style="font-family:">We are the only nation that had used atomic power on
people. And with Russia, we hold the
capability to destroy life on planet earth seven times over, as if it makes a
difference after the first!</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px;"><span style="font-family:">If Godzilla is an allusion and a metaphor, ours in
2014 comes as climate change. Florida
Senator Rubio just came out recently claiming that humans do not contribute to
climate change. This was just a week
after the US Congress itself issued an 800-page report on climate change and
how our hydrocarbon emissions have contributed to its happenstance. This reminds me of the tobacco industry when
I lived in Virginia and North Carolina saying that there is no causality connecting
tobacco smoking and lung cancer!</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; color: rgb(28, 28, 28); vertical-align: baseline;">One only has to take a sweeping look at the
hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, droughts and floods occurring with </span><span style="color: rgb(28, 28, 28); vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="4">greater strength in unlikely places </font></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; color: rgb(28, 28, 28); vertical-align: baseline;">to realize that something dramatic has changed and with the amount of
hydrocarbons we have emitted into the atmosphere, existentially, at least, we
know in our bones that we did something amiss to the environment.</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px;"><span style="font-family:">Of course, our capacity for denial knows no end. Why, when two regions of Ukraine held a
referendum, Kiev not only ignored it; it claimed that the region was not
holding one, and if they did, they will just declare it “illegal”, in the same
way Crimea rejoining Russia is also “illegal”.
Duh! </span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; color: rgb(28, 28, 28); vertical-align: baseline;">We continue to rely on fossil fuel for energy when the
alternative (e.g., liquid hydrogen) is not only possible but cheaper. The cost we are paying for an economy based
on oil, natural gas, coal, and now, tar sands and other bituminous ingredients
is wasteful. Just look at all the war
zones and why they are that way. East
Timor uses the US dollar for its currency, for heaven’s sake! “In defense of freedom” was that war
fought? Nope! Natural gas, Matilda. Likewise, in Syria, Sudan, Iraq, Iran, the
Stans, Nigeria, Libya, Egypt, China’s continental shelf and the islands of South
China Sea (the 2012 Penguin World Map labels the Luzon Sea!), etc., are
literally fossil fuel aflame, polluting the air, but we continue because it
benefits the</span><span style="color: rgb(28, 28, 28); vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="4"> powerful</font></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; color: rgb(28, 28, 28); vertical-align: baseline;"> few!</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px;"><span style="font-family:">If Mark Rubio can honestly deny human contribution to
climate change, why can’t we deny the reality of anything we do not approve
of? Some “truthers” are now claiming
that the Sandy Hook shooting was contrived, and yes, made up in a TV studio as
a tactic to take away the constitutional right to bear arms. Right.</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px;"><span style="font-family:">Let the human touch click on almighty power, in the
way China committed its rapid rail technology to the Nairobi-Mombasa line in
Kenya, and possibly, a pan-African rail system.
Doable. Why, someone is actually figuring
the practics of connecting Shanghai to LA through Russia’s Far East, tunneling under
the Bering Strait into Alaska, to BC-Canada and down the west coast to CA. And why not a Hong Kong to Paris silk
rail? Not a flight of fancy. It’s grounded.
Montreal-to-Rio via Mexico and Santiago?
Check. Better and cheaper than
MH370s! The technology is in place to
make this visioning feasible, a Godzilla of a different pedigree.</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px;"><span style="font-family:">Time to make human technology user-friendly, I say,
even as I am sure to die of asthma in Dong Bei’s coal-loaded air!</span></div>
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<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; clear: both;"><i>j'aime la vie</i><br>
<a href="mailto:pinoypanda2031@aol.com">pinoypanda2031@aol.com</a><br>
<div><i>yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate!</i></div>
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