Under capitalism nuclear disaster.

It is not yet clear whether a melt down is taking place or has taken place in the nuclear reactors in Japan. People interviewed do not believe the government or the owners of the reactors. The main facility is owned by Tokyo Electric Power Company. They are assuring everybody that there is no melt down. However an official at Japan's Nuclear Safety Commission has said that a melt down is possibly taking place and this is being checked. There has been a huge explosion in one of the reactors. This is not a good sign. Tepco has been implicated in a series of cover ups over the years. The chairman and four executives resigned in 2006 over falsification of evidence and again there was falsification in 2006 and 2007.

The nuclear industry is a vicious profit addicted privately owned industry. Profits come first. Safety comes down the list. This is shown by where these reactors are built. Another reactor has been built on another fault line in Japan. Consider the madness of building reactors in earthquake prone california.

Capitalism is leading the world to disaster. Nuclear catastrophe either through nuclear accidents, the pollution of the planet by the unsafe storage of nuclear waste, nuclear war. These are the options under capitalism. As we argue continuously on this blog, none of the major problems facing society can be solved on the basis of capitalism. Only a democratic world socialist society can show a way out.

As I watch the catastrophe in Japan my heart breaks for the people there. I also have another feeling. I cannot forget that there was another nuclear catastrophe in Japan. This was when US imperialism dropped the bombs there obliterating hundreds of thousands of people. They did this to demonstrate to Stalinism that they had the bomb and they would use it. Now US imperialism are back in Japan posing as the good guys.

But there are a few beneficiaries of the catastrophe in Japan. Ghaddafi and the regimes in the Middle East and North Africa which are facing revolts. It has temporarily taken them off the front page and let them get on with their repression with the spotlight removed. And the US regime is better able to get away with its torture of Bradley Manning.

Sean.