Two days ago, supposedly in an attempt to demonstrate how "contained" the radiation fallout from Fukushima was, an event was held in Tokyo to demonstrate the safety of the rice grown in the vicinity of the evacuated area around the exploded nuclear power plant according to the source, NHK. And since officials from Fukushima Prefecture said "no radioactive materials were detected in any of the harvested rice" a whopping 540 kilograms of the non-radioactive rice would be served in a government office complex in Tokyo for 9 days from Monday. We further learned that Senior Vice Environment Minister Shinji Inoue and Parliamentary Vice Environment Minister Tomoko Ukishima tasted rice balls made of the crop on the first day. Inoue said the rice tasted good especially when he thought about the great effort that went into cultivating the crop. A farmer from Kawamata Town said he will continue to cultivate rice now that he knows that it's possible to grow a tasty product if the paddy fields are properly decontaminated. He said he travelled from his temporary home to the paddy to tend the rice as it grew.

While we will avoid commenting on the "intelligence" behind this action, designed to demonstrate just how under control the Fukushima situation is (when even Tepco admitted it no longer is), especially since it takes years if not decades for radiation-induced illnesses to appear (although we do remind readers that the leader of the Fukushima explosion response team did die from Cancer in July, or just over two years after the disaster), we will note something curious.

A quick search for the original article on NHK, which we read when it came out, reveals a surprising finding: a 404 error.

This is ironic because a cached version of the same URL still exists, all the more so since the original story was picked up and syndicated by others include RT and Voice of Russia.

Which makes one wonder: is this the first instance of the government's brand new "secrecy" bill being implemented, and if so, why, of all places, in a story which is nothing but propaganda to telegraph that all is well in Fukushima and whose downside is at most the well-being (and life) of two lowly government apparatchiks.

In the meantime, if the US is importing any rice from Japan, it may want to give it the good old Geiger Counter test or two.