An earlier post based on information reported this morning on Democracy Now raised the question Can we trust the official story about the nuclear catastrophe in Japan? Basically there is a history of lying and downplaying the true severity of the situation. This happened before many times - people are referring to attempted coverups surrounding the Chernobyl accident but we can think of many other cases, such as the initial response to the SARS outbreak. It's understandable in a way, nobody likes to admit failure, especially in front of a world stage, and there are questions of liability. A company who admits to how serious is the damage from their actions can be held legally liable for huge compensation payments. For example during the oil spill disaster last year it was clear BP was downplaying the damage, and that way to keep the compensation payments lower.
The Guardian (London) is making a similar report (see link below). "Nuclear experts have thrown doubt on the accuracy of official information issued about the Fukushima nuclear accident, saying that it followed a pattern of secrecy and cover-ups employed in other nuclear accidents."
"They have evacuated 180,000 people but say there is no radiation." Meaning, the Japanese must know what's actually going on, and have evacuated that many people for good cause, hence we can only assume they're covering up?
They refer to a diplomatic cable coming from the recent WikiLeaks release saying that responsible Japanese government officials have been "covering up nuclear accidents and obscuring the true costs and problems associated with the nuclear industry".
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