A World View Of Disaster

Perspective is a difficult concept for Americans. We tend to consider ourselves the center of the civilized world. Our perspective on world events is viewed through the prism of self-interest. When we witness the tragic mudslides in Guatemala, the horrific earthquake in Kashmir, or the Indian Ocean tsunami, our hearts reach out but our memories run short. Our empathy and bountiful generosity rarely last longer than the media allow.

The cameras are never there for the end of the story. We never learned, for example, that some 250,000 lives perished in the tsunami. We never heard what became of the countless masses that lost their homes, their communities, and their means of living. We only believe what we see and when the pictures are no longer before us, we move on. We delegate it to history, file it away in the far corner of our collective consciousness, and move on.

The death toll for the current disasters will continue to rise in the days ahead but the final tally will not be widely reported. Guatemala is a third world country and the scope of the tragedy (comparable to Hurricane Katrina) is not sufficient for widespread or sustained coverage. The Asian quake is monumental in its destructive force but it is centered in a hot zone, a contested land between nuclear powers where media is not welcome and western media even less so.

It is unfortunate that something so fundamental as empathy for our fellow beings is governed largely by media access but that is the reality we have inherited. It is not, however, written in stone nor in the constitution of any sovereign nation nor in the charter of the United Nations. The world is growing smaller by the hour and the world we inherit need not be the world we hand down to our successors.

It has become cliché, an overused slogan by politicians with little to say, but it has never been truer: We can do better.

The world is crying out in need yet when the current disasters struck, media could hardly break from their pre-programmed crisis of the week: the avian flu pandemic. It is ironic because a deadly flu pandemic is a classic worldwide threat yet the media instruct us to view it as a question of national preparedness. There could hardly be a more powerful case for international mobilization and cooperation yet all discussions center on the nation’s supply of vaccines and viral medicines, the possibilities of quarantine and martial law.

Not long ago, our president addressed a gathering of reporters to defend his war on terrorism while the city of New Orleans was still under water and besieged with strife. I was astonished that his view of the world was so limited that he could not alter his weekly planner in appreciation for a tragedy on our own soil.

I worry that we are already forgetting the people of the Gulf Coast. After contributing hundreds of millions to relief, where was the outcry when 3,000 employees of New Orleans were laid off for lack of funding? Where was the outcry at the suspension of prevailing wage regulations and the deliberate omission of assurances that the people of the affected areas would be hired for relief work?

Our government tapped a fall guy (FEMA Director Michael Brown), issued contracts to crony corporations, handed out miserly survivor checks with an unforgiving cut off date, set up trailer parks and otherwise instructed the dispossessed to fend for themselves.

I worry that a pandemic has already hit this country but there are no vaccines or medicines to cope with it. It is a pandemic of tunnel vision and pathologically short memories.

I refuse to believe that this disease has its source in the American heart. I rather believe that it is born in the corporate media that ceaselessly and relentlessly direct our conscious lives.

The media used New Orleans to reverse a staggering decline in credibility from their complicity in the Iraq war. By playing hardball with public officials, they hoped to reassert their independence while continuing a clear policy of distraction and neglect. While the war rages on and the situation disintegrates, media regard it as a sideshow and pretend that there is no legitimate debate on the immediate withdrawal of our soldiers or the dismantling of our monstrous military bases.

(For those who argue that we cannot withdraw because a bloodbath would follow, I would remind you that we and our mercenary forces remain the leading killers in that broken nation. We are not peacekeepers in Iraq; we are an aggressive fighting machine and a large portion of the insurgency would cease fighting without a foreign enemy.)

On 11 September 2001, nearly three thousand of our people lost their lives in a terrorist attack by a small group of fundamentalist Islamic militants. In retaliation, we have killed tens of thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of people who had nothing to do with that attack.

We declared a world at war, invaded two nations, and demanded that all others divide themselves into allies and enemies. We developed tactical nuclear weapons and announced our intention to use them preemptively.

The events of 11 September 2001 were tragic and horrifying to a nation that had grown accustomed to relative safety but they were not earth shattering. The world does not need to be at war. Rather, in a time of constant crisis and catastrophe, the world needs unity to track down and mitigate threats of every stripe, be they natural disasters, pandemics or militant extremists.

Jazz.

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). THE CHRONICLES HAVE BEEN POSTED ON DISSIDENT VOICE, THE ALBION MONITOR & COUNTERPUNCH.

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