What is going on?

The Japanese catastrophe-that would be the ongoing nuclear reactor disaster, not the earthquake and tsunami that preceded it- has cast a very unpleasant specter over the planet. There seems to be a lot of confusion- if one is being charitable, and disinformation if one is not- about exactly what has happened, but, clearly, radiation of the sort that is dangerous to humans is now showing up in the U.S.

This all seems eerily reminiscent of The Gulf disaster from last year, except, I am afraid, worse. No one in their right mind should trust officialdom on these matters for the simple, yet ironclad, reason that-in their own eyes- government gains nothing by telling the truth when a lie will do just as well. After all, let's suppose that nuclear reactors in Japan are melting down and tens of millions of lives are at severe risk, but not necessarily in a way that will be readily apparent in the immediate future.

Put more crudely and directly, folks might not start getting demonstrably sick and dying in statistically eye raising numbers for a matter of months and possibly years. This gives government figures time to enact damage control, to engage in cover your ass maneuvers, and to just, plain, old, get out of town. Tell the truth now and you will absolutely have mayhem on your hands. That's how officialdom always justifies not telling it like it is, especially in the midst of disasters. After all, chaos means certain loss of control, and that is the one thing officialdom will do everything in its power to avoid. Cynical though it may sound, TPTB are far more interested in maintaining control than saving lives, but, because this stance is so monstrous, they tell themselves, and us, that their actions were taken on behalf of the greater good; that they concealed the truth and misinformed us for a, much hoped for, better outcome. As an alternative to the aforesaid dark explanation, there is always the incompetence argument, but, let's face it, that's really nothing less than a combination of an apology for power, and, an old fashioned cop out.

So, the plan is to try and attenuate the matter-no pun intended- and play for an outcome such that by the time the truth of the situation becomes impossible to deny, cover up, etc. etc. a lot of the folks who are, to some greater or lesser degree, responsible for allowing this catastrophe to intensify, will have quietly removed themselves from the scene. The other sinister aspect being relied on by the operators of the levers of power is that by the time things are obvious, most folks will be in no position to respond in a very forceful manner to what will, by then, be dire circumstances.

All that I have offered so far rests on the premise that it is simply impossible to make the case that the highest of the higher ups in Japan were not fully aware of the inevitability of a nuclear disaster of the sort that stood an excellent chance of acting as a monumental global game changer. None. Zero. Nada. Now consider the implications of that, and the reaction-again, no pun intended, merely noted-of our own government as the (so called) harmless fallout arrives on our shores.