Man, I hate sitting down to an empty screen early in the morning, nothing remotely interesting about that at all. Oh well, here is Tuesday’s riposte, for whatever it is worth. It occurs to me that I have not scratched the surface of toxic waste here lately, might take a shot at that this morning, being as it is such a nice day outside. Been awhile since I took a shot at the media, might give that a whirl while I am at it.
Like I said, “it has so far, been a slow day.”
Yesterday one of our readers pointed out to me “that things are not always the way they seem to be” (concerning media coverage of certain items) and she most certainly is right. Every now and then, someone drops by to wipe the window-panes of my world, and I can clearly see things that I could not see before, such is the case with yesterday’s mail.
Take for instance, the recent expose on CBS award winning broadcast, Sixty Minutes, on “Clean Coal” which neglected to show the rape and pillaging of the environment in West Virginia and the coal companies practice of mountain top mining (removing the top of mountains in order to get to the coal).
Clearly this media coverage of this event was one-sided at best. This is just one thing that she pointed out to me.
If you have never been in this particular area of America (West By-Gawd Virginia as the locals call it), you need to go and experience it, before it is gone. Not long ago, I remember a group of people in the same area and parts of Kentucky and Tennessee taking the coal companies to task and hauling them into court for the damages they were doing. They won a judgment and a cease and desist order from the state courts.
The coal companies however got the decision kicked up to the higher federal courts, who in turn then took the judgment, turned it over, reversed it in their favor, and business continued as usual.
So much for justice.
Perhaps they just thought we might not notice?
So having been stirred out of my “everything is just swell in my world” frame of mind, I started thinking about all this pirate hi-jinks in another part of the world. (By the way, I just hate it when that happens) Take for instance this pirate issue which has been in the news quite a bit here lately. When these boys in Somalia do what they have been doing, the entire world wants to declare judgment on them and declare in essence “a war on the pirates.”
Now a few of these so-called pirates are indeed just that, kidnappers who are only after ransom money, or what amounts to high sea gangsters stealing anything and everything, including humanitarian aid.
But did you ever stop to think that a lot of what is going on is by “legitimate Somalis” who have a very different and entirely legal reason for intercepting western shipping in the area? They are desperately trying to protect their country against illegal dumping of hospital sludge and in some cases, nuclear waste.
Of course, this is not reported, it is not newsworthy, it is not sensational.
The news media has a profound tendency to report news in this very fashion, if it doesn’t bleed, then it doesn’t lead. Ever hear of a story about a teenager in America, doing something nice? When native Indians in the Amazon, organized and tried their level best to stop the destruction of their land by the mining companies and lumber interests, they were declared “criminals” and in some cases hunted down and eliminated.
I rest my case.
Here is something that most folks do not consider or even are aware of. Once the government of Somalia collapsed in 1991, Europe began using the Horn of Africa as a garbage dump for hospital and factory waste including heavy metals and radioactive materials. The European companies have been contracting with the Italian Mafia to dispose of their waste as cheaply as possible.
For a very long time, the waste in Genoa and Naples, Italy was a very real problem for local officials. Personally having visited Naples, I can attest to this fact, “you can smell Naples a long time before you can see it from a ship at sea.”
No media attention is paid to the fact that European ships having routinely been looting the waters off of Somalia of their fish stocks. Tons of tuna, shrimp, and lobster are being illegally fished, while Somali fisherman find it ever harder to make a living or often, just bring in a decent catch.
Most of the boats now called “pirate ships” are in fact, Somali fishermen who are trying to prevent poaching and dumping on their waters.
So as our reader so aptly points out in her email, “things are not always as they appear to be” in this day and age, and for most part, I have to agree. Makes one wonder, “Just who are the real criminals in all this?”
On most days it is pretty hard to weed them out from all the rest.
OOO
