LATIMES: "WHO'S TO BLAME FOR FUKUSHIMA?"

I'm pretty sure it's the earthquakes fault. Maybe we should figure out what to do now and not so much where to point our fingers. This event is a "WORLD CRIPPLER". We only see Japan so far, but economies are about to go out the window. So even if we do find a whipping boy to blame, incarcerating them or even killing them or fining some faceless corporation a dollar amount none of us can successfully imagine, will satisfy a need for a solution. And fuck the LA Times for planting the blame game seed. So stupid.

The Japanese government is to blame, in the same way that our government is to blame for our NUMEROUS; albeit hushed, nuclear disasters, gulf oil spill, collapsing bridges, and much more. Why? Because the people elected government, and have paid government, to inspect such issues and make sure that those are safe by meeting public safety standards, and government habitually neglects, or is paid to ignore, those safety standards. Those in Government who were individually responsible for malfeasance should be held accountable for manslaughter, involuntary or other wise. Only when we begin to hold individual government workers accountable for their actions, or lack of them, will these workers; ( which include politicians first and foremost ), take their jobs and responsibilities serious.

It is suggested that the people are responsible, for not taking action to prevent such tragedies from occurring. But, is not going to the ballot box taking action? However, now that it has become glaringly apparent; ( once again ), that individual government employees are either not doing their jobs, or are doing their jobs badly; (as defined by whether they acted in the public interest or not; such as George Bush did not when he rendered the EPA impotent), then the public must do what every responsible employer must do. We must discharge errant employees, hold those accountable for illegal activities; president or not, hire new employees, and most important, establish safe guards, policies, procedures, practices, laws, regulations, review and inspection processes and penalties for non compliance or malfeasance. As this is the safety and the welfare of the United States and the People of the United States that we are dealing with here, willful malfeasance must be construed as treason against the people, judged and punished accordingly.

Systemically, everyone on Earth. Ultimately, everyone who is not doing anything about it.

We are blindly driving our planet over a cliff... what is it about mankind that we have to destroy all that we cherish?

"Modern disasters are, in an important sense, man-made. " WTF? really? A massive earthquake plus tsunami = man made? And all this time I thought it was Bush's fault. Maybe it was racism to blame as many are so willing to throw that card.

I should be interesting to see how this plays out since the CEO of GE in one of Obama's Czars for employment yet doesn't like to pay taxes and who's networks at the time got him elected. Did I think that out loud?

"Who's to Blame???" Maybe the Japanese???? I didn't build their rediculous reactors. And what a Lame idea to begin with, right off the ocean shore.

All I can say about this is that the big corporations with their legions of lawyers usually escape the full brunt of financial responsiblity for their negligence. I like what Keith Olbermann had to say some weeks back. Here's his full post.

"Wikileaks: Japan Was Warned About Fukushima"
Posted on March 16, 2011
We are now at this stage in the life of our country and our world: WikiLeaks revealed that the Japanese Government was warned three years ago that earthquake preparedness at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant was dangerously insufficient.

Naturally, the leaders of the world are – or wish to start – prosecuting WikiLeaks, and not the Japanese Government.

The IAEA was saying in 2008 that Japan’s nuclear safety guidelines were dangerously out of date. A government whistleblower in that country was quoted in a cable to Washington the same year that a Japanese ministry was “covering up nuclear accidents, and obscuring the true costs and problems associated with the nuclear industry.”

And our government, in our name, continues both to seek ways to prosecute WikiLeaks, and to stick by the President’s ludicrous 2009 suggestion that we accelerate our national Nuclear Power program. The uncensored real oversight, and the truth about Japan’s irresponsibility, are both buried because the illusion of Japan as a successful safe nuclear nation is necessary to President Obama’s pitch, and President Obama’s pitch is necessary to some labyrinthine political calculation, and to the bottom lines of sundry international corporations.

We could say that the worsening news from Japan is coming by drips, except that the latest information from our own Nuclear Regulatory Commission suggests that there’s nothing to drip; that the water in the cooling system for Dai-Ichi Reactor 4 has evaporated and NHK broadcasts, late night our time, were filled with images of helicopters trying to douse the facility with seawater, as if it were a forest fire.

Most ominously are reports that read like the worst days of the dark, sick humor of the Bush Administration, when Americans were told to stock up on duct tape and plastic sheeting to protect their homes from radiation (and memorably one poor soul in Connecticut put it up on the wrong side of his windows). Why, truly, do you think people around Fukushima are being told to stay in their homes and offices? Because going outside somehow significantly reduces the chances they will be exposed to radiation? Because they’re safer indoors in the event the worst-case scenario develops and the thing spews out a kind of nuclear holocaust? Or is it because it’ll be easier to keep track of the victims of a best-case scenario if they stay where they are and don’t try to flee the area, and thus no effort will be required to see where they go and if they have taken radiation with them?

And the saddest story of them all: Gregory Jaczko, the head of our NRA stating this, bluntly, matter-of-factly, and even blandly:

We believe that around the reactor site there are high levels of radiation. It would be very difficult for emergency workers to get near the reactors. The doses they could experience would potentially be lethal doses in a very short period of time. This is a situation where people may be called in to sacrifice their lives. It’s very difficult for me to contemplate that, but it may have reached that point.

As you think of Japan, and you think of the aging nuclear plants in this country, and their nearness to our major metropolitan areas, remember that there are 180 human beings – our brothers and sisters – working around this Doomsday Machine that their government was warned about at least three years ago, about which it did nothing!

180 men and women, the same as any Americans, and very possibly the forerunners of any Americans, who are facing this reality: “This is a situation where people may be called in to sacrifice their lives.”