“Tepco Are Negligent Murderers - Salon”

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Tepco Are Negligent Murderers - Salon Posted: From the Wall Street Journal: The plant's operator—Tokyo Electric Power Co., or Tepco—considered using seawater from the nearby coast to cool one of its six reactors at least as early as last Saturday morning, the day after the quake struck. But it didn't do so until that evening, after the prime minister ordered it following an explosion at the facility. Tepco didn't begin using seawater at other reactors until Sunday. Tepco was reluctant to use seawater because it worried about hurting its long-term investment in the complex, say people involved with the efforts. Seawater, which can render a nuclear reactor permanently inoperable, now is at the center of efforts to keep the plant under control. Tepco "hesitated because it tried to protect its assets," said Akira Omoto, a former Tepco executive and a member of the Japan Atomic Energy Commission. Tepco prevented a measure which might have arrested this horrible situation earlier. We don't know if it would have stopped the current slow-motion disaster, but we'll never know if it wouldn't, either. But because of a corporation's wish to protect its property, how many are dying now and will die in days, months, years to come? How much cumulative damage will be done to Japan, and eastern Russia, and Korea, and China alone, not to mention the effect of those rads being vomited in a steady stream into our atmosphere? A little uranium twinkling in every lung. All because of a company's negligence, even leaving aside how we don't learn the lesson of not doing things we don't know how to fix when they go wrong. Things that, when they go wrong, go wrong all the way. Because of money. Because of profit. Not yours. The profit of the corporations, the legal fictions we have given the powers of God and the legal standing of human beings. But none of the same liability. Indeed, the whole purpose of corporations is evasion of individual liability. But it seems you cannot have your cake and eat it too. That has started to break down of late, with the Supreme Court's surprisingly intelligent decision(dissented by Thomas and Scalia, of course) against AT & T, declaring that the corporation did not have the same right to privacy as an individual does. There's a next logical step, though. Because corporations murder. They destroy lives, property, and resources. Before this, there was BP and the Gulf. Oil companies, for decades. Union Carbide in Bhopal. R.J. Reynolds and others. All engaged in irresponsible behavior that cost the lives of millions. That's not even including corporations such as ITT, DeBeers, or United Fruit that actively killed people and overthrew nations and governments. Some have paid fines. Occasionally executives have gone to jail. But mostly, the corporations remain and find new ways to commit the same crimes. And they usually don't really have to fix what they destroyed, or pay for it. The paying is usually left to the victims. Why should they have all the advantages of an individual with none of the responsibilities to the human race? Bad enough we can never hold God to account. But to actually create and tolerate such a malign force within our own world, created by our own laws, which protect it as it murders us? It seems to me that in some way, should a corporation commit murder and mass destruction, it should be imprisoned, even executed, as any individual might, as well. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php Five Filters featured article: Comment Is Free But Freedom Is Slavery - An Exchange With The Guardian's Economics Editor.

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