ByKay MacDuffee/Country Roads
Have you had enough scandal and mayor bashing for now? I have.
CBC news bulletins every half hour repeating the same sordid stuff forced me to hit the ‘off’ button after almost two weeks of tawdriness. Call it news fatigue. I’ve had it, even if the story hasn’t.
The support that Toronto’s mayor still draws from “Ford Nation”, I find both puzzling and distressing. He and political leaders of his ilk are cheapening the values of a morally lazy electorate. In the words of journalist, Mitchell Anderson, Ford “makes it respectable to indulge our ugliest instincts”. Anderson calls it the dumbing down of democracy.
“Like a pair of drunks egging each other on, Ford and his die-hard supporters are enabling each other's bad behaviour that goes far beyond mere substance abuse.”
It doesn’t help that the city I love has become the laughing stock of the international news scene and juiciest of gossip for political satirists. Thank you Mr. Ford. And now would you please step down?
What disappoints me most is that there are so many issues that the media could and (in my estimation should) be covering other than this feeding frenzy on scandal that appeals to our lowest instincts.
BC and Alberta premiers made an announcement about moving tar sands oil between the provinces last Tuesday (Nov.5) while the media was on its ‘all Rob Ford all the time’ kick. Premiers Redford and Clark have apparently reached an agreement that makes Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline ‘a real possibility’.
I heard not a word about it on mainstream media, and the cynic in me believes that was intended timing.
But perhaps the most pressing and disturbing information that goes unreported is the urgency of Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant situation. 72,000 gallons (300 tons) of contaminated water are flowing out of this facility daily into the Pacific Ocean in this unfolding disaster.
While much of the world has continued with their lives forgetting about the Fukushima disaster, scientists from across the world who have been monitoring the radiation leaking out of Fukushima Plant, have found that the rate of flow has actually been increasing dramatically, causing a major global threat to all living flora and fauna.
The radiation in the surrounding area is 18 times greater than was reported. To put this into practical terms, you or I would last four hours before collapse.
The West coast of North America is already experiencing Fukushima radiation, according to CBS news. The Wall Street Journal is projecting that the disaster could take 40 years to clean up.
According to physician, Helen Caldicott who has been researching nuclear radiation for decades, we are in a nuclear crisis and have been since March 11, 2011.
TEPCO, the phenomenally corrupt and inept Tokyo Electric Power Co. that owns and manages the Fukushima plant ‘has no plan’ and ‘does not know what they are doing’, says American, Dale Klein, head of Nuclear Reform Monitoring Committee.
He, in fact, said this to Naomi Hirosi, head of TEPCO, face to face. And now Japan, always reluctant to request foreign help, has in desperation brought in some of the world’s nuclear experts to try to put out the fires – literally.
In the next few weeks, TEPCO is planning to remove some of the more than 1400 unfathomably dangerous and damaged fuel rods, and according to nuclear researcher Christina Consolo, “If one of those MOX fuel rods is exposed to the air, it will kill 2.89 billion people on the planet in a matter of weeks.”
I am always reluctant to spread bad news, but the truth must be told. I have read and researched the facts on this story from many sources and it keeps coming up the same. This, despite the fact that after each CBS news story reporting radioactivity signs on the US West Coast, the reporter adds with a cheery smile, “But you can still play and swim on the beaches here”. Or “But you may still eat (the contaminated) bluefin tuna.”
We wouldn’t want to interfere with ‘the market’.
I suggest that, at the very least, Japanese seafood products should be avoided. I plan to avoid any food stuffs imported from Japan.
As the world turns, we find more and more reasons to ‘eat local’ and stay informed.
And more and more often, mainstream media is not the best source of information.
I also suggest being proactive. Today we must take responsibility for our own lives – how we think, act, be, in the world has a ripple effect. Blaming doesn’t work. That is the victim mentality.
Being the peace, sending love and compassion out into the ether to every living thing on this planet is an act of grace . . . a gift for sender and receiver.
And it’s easy. Close your eyes. Breathe. See your heart getting bigger. Focus on love. Whoosh!
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