Environmentalism In World News
Weekday mornings I get up at 6 AM and watch at least part of “Newsroom Tokyo,” a wonderful program distributed through PBS that presents the highlights of goings on, not only in Japan, but around the world. The first thing that Americans notice is that, to our shock, there are hundreds of news items every day that are interesting and important, but have nothing to do with the United States, and therefore are largely ignored by our mainstream media.
Some of these are important and pleasing breakthroughs in military actions, for example the upcoming peace talks between Afghanistan and Pakistan and the cease fire in the Syrian civil war.
Others, of course, have environmental import. This morning we learned of the plan to build a 50 km canal through the southern peninsula of Thailand. Though it would come at the cost of about one third of Thailand’s annual budget, the canal would shave three days off the journey for oil tankers from the Middle East that are bound for China and the West. It’s sad that the world continues to build its infrastructure for the delivery of oil.
Another story I found interesting is that the reports on Fukushima continue to pour in, and these people are surprisingly candid in discussing how TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company, owners of the facility) deliberately misreported the extent of damage to their reactors.
There are several news items that almost seem to be blacked out of American News:
– The ongoing Fukushima disaster, the migration of radiation out of containment areas, the amount of radiation continuing to leak from the plant, that there is no known solution and that radiation is not disbursing in the Pacific but has become a large underwater plume of radioactivity.
– our leaking natural gas pipes and southern California well leak that is only part of a much greater issue.
– the Indian point power plant major Radiation leak just north of NYC.
– We have a larger percentage of our population in prison than any country in recorded history and they are being used as a new form of slave labor.
– American education system has been essentially sold to corporations and is unable to compete in the world.
– There is an alternative to the presumed democratic front runner, and he is less than 7 points away in national polls.
And the major alternative energy efforts projects and technologies.
It is probably best to try and get sources of information from outside the country. From the time of 911, overseas friends were reporting that American news was simply not telling what was going on. It is not really a surprise when 5 corporations essentially control all the media in the US.
Access to information is essential for both free markets and a functioning democracy. It is not surprising that we seem to be experiencing issues in both of these areas.
It is “bread and circus” once again.