Mayor of town near stricken Japanese nuclear plant claims his people have been 'abandoned'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...#ixzz1Guz7xDit
Excerpt

Hours after the tsunami struck, Katsunobu Sakurai told me, he had sought advice from the government on whether to evacuate the 71,000 people in his city, which is just 12 miles downwind of the Fukushima nuclear plant.

At first ministerial officials simply ignored his calls. When he did manage to speak to them, they assured him there was no cause for concern; a message he accepted and dutifully relayed.

He had toed the line because that is what Japan's civic leaders invariably do. But yesterday, far too late, the mayor of Minamisoma finally realised that he had been deceived, at best, and perhaps even lied to. 'I was ignored and then badly misled, and as a result the people were abandoned here to die. But I was the one who told them it was safe to stay, and now I have decided that I must be the last person to leave this city. I have been in my office since last Friday, and I won't go until the last person has left safely.'

Even as foreign embassies urged their subjects to flee the country and international experts warned that Japan faces the world's worst nuclear disaster, the Tokyo cabinet blithely played down the crisis.

Yesterday, as the mayor finally woke up to the truth of his citizens' predicament and urged them to leave, they began abandoning the city by any available means.

By last night more than half the population had packed as much as they could carry and fled, jostling for places on buses sent not by the shamefaced government, of course, but by nearby local authorities.

'If anything good can come of this terrible time for Japan, it might be that people in big cities question their lifestyle, which relies so much on the electric power provided by nuclear plants in little places such as ours,' he said.

'I hope that it prompts the government to rethink its reliance on nuclear energy, too.'

And when, God willing, Japan emerges from these dark days, perhaps the government will learn that it pays to tell the truth.

[Note: And do you think our gov't is really telling the truth about radiation here in the W. Coast?]

The first instinct of government officials, when there is a crisis, or some dirt may come out about their institution, is to control the information, avoid having to take the fall, and manipulate the message to serve the needs of their bosses.

In a disaster scenario, avoiding panic is paramount. While there are good reasons for that, panic kills, shaping the information, and lying about the actual situation also serves the purposes listed above.

Red Cross Disaster Services training emphasizes rumor control and instructs volunteers to ONLY disseminate verified, reliable information. But the people who decide what is verified and reliable, are the top bureaucrats.

Top bureaucrats who didn't rise to their elevated positions of power, without having been vetted and showing themselves capable of the required skills of: downplaying the negative and embarrassing, controlling to whom and where information is provided, and performing the Happy Talk necessary to avoid facing uncomfortable realities. They must know how, and be talented, at "selling the lie", otherwise they won't get the good jobs.

I've seen this at work as a Census Processing Clerk, as the Admin Asst to the local Red Cross CEO (not the current one! by all reports he's great, and I've met him and he impressed me, he does his own Admin Assistance, he doesn't need or want a flunky to cover for him), as a high school teacher, as a correctional educator, as an activist in large non-profit organizations, and from observing the history of our times.

It happens over and over. It is an integral part of the way our society functions. One of the many reasons I work for social and economic change.

It's outrageously criminal, it shouldn't happen, but it's the way things work. We need better social management systems technology!

The central reason for wikileaks, is to make secret rule impossible. If they can't hide and massage and partially release the information, they can't lie. If they can't lie, they can't rule over us, and hang us out to dry like the people of Minamisoma. They'll be forced to be honest.

Nothing else is going to change that pattern. Transparency in government, and business for that matter, is a myth and part of the happy talk. But without corners to hide in, it could finally become a reality.