I would like us to give serious consideration to alternative media in the USA. I know a lot of us watch/listen to NPR, Pacifica Radio, Link TV and Democracy now. I am sure quite a few are members of the organizations.
We are all cognizant of the fact that the so-called mainstream media are not mainstream in their out look.. They are owned lock, stock and barrel by the Global Capital. They project the interests of the Corporations, which show no discernible concern for the interests of humanity at large.
Conglomerates, of course, own Governments as well, so the legislatures, the executive and the judiciary will never countenance any measures not approved by the former. And I am not talking of the Governments of client states in the third world.
Corporate heads most likely take themselves for super human beings. If they were not so good at deluding themselves they would realise that they were behaving as retards.
We do not hear much of Global Warming which is leading to melting of arctic ice, which in turn is raising the sea level. By 2085 parts of Florida, New Orleans, Washington DC, London (England), all of Holland, Maldives, Karachi and Bombay, but above all lower Manhattan with Wall street will be drowned under water..
Climate change will lead to unpredictable periods of water deluges and interminable droughts, inundating some regions and desertifying others. Crops will fail, people will starve.
Toxic pollution of the atmosphere and water will cause unknown diseases. Nuclear waste and fallout have already caused proliferation of certain types of cancer.
Depletion of Wetlands has led to enormous enhancement of the destructive potency of Hurricanes. Oil spillages destroy aquatic life, fauna and flora.
Desolation of forests lead to mudslides, elevation of water levels in rivers and floods as there are no trees to hold rainwater. Hundreds of thousands lose their hearth, home and livelihood.
Depletion of Ozone has already caused numerous skin diseases and cancers. It will only increase.
Genetic meddling with agricultural products will lead to unknown consequences. The known effects range from mild allergy to shock to high blood pressure,strokes and stomach ailments.
Corporations bamboozle FDA(Federal Drug Agency of the US) into letting them evade proper labelling of foods as genetically modified. Ill considered food processing has had a tremendous impact on proclivity to obesity, heart/lung and other diseases.
Pesticides similar to Agent orange have been used in the USA with impunity. We are in line for genetic defects seen in South Vietnam Hospitals like no arms, legs or brain.
Paucity of preventive care leads to hemorrhage of resources in treating preventable diseases, which even a country as rich and which controls seventy five percent of the productivity of Humankind, as the USA, finds difficult to bear.
Thirty eight million working Americans can not make ends meet. Even after Obama Care Twenty five million Americans have no health
Insurance. 45 million have such poor insurance that hospitalization leads to loss of all assets.
Everything is privatised, even the jails where one hundred twenty thousand Americans are being, in terms of amenities, treated in-humanely.
Farmers and small businessmen in the third world and Latin America are being driven out of business as they can not compete with large corporations. The IMF and the World Banks call it restructuring. Governments there are little concerned with the fate of the people. They accept the dicta willingly.
Jobs in scores of millions are being out-sourced, leaving Americans unemployed. Scores of millions have to accept lower pay and loss of benefits, even loss of pension funds.
That is what Globalization is all about.
Every disaster, from the Tsunami in South Asia to the ones in New Orleans, Texas, Louisiana, and sabotage of oil pipelines in Iraq, is followed by price gouging and usurious increase in profits of oil companies.
There would be a lot of sickness and misery as people would not be able to afford home heating.
The oil company heads have the nerve to tell the US senate that the profits are in line with those of other businesses. The US Government keeps on giving them Tax breaks.
Elections were stolen in 2000, 2004 and 2016. Deliberate lies were told to justify invasion of Iraq. One high up has already been indicted. He has been most likely thrown to the wolves to spare the Don under whom he worked. ( Blair even thrives in spite of eighty five percent of the public against his Iraq policy, largely because the opposition there is equally culpable).
War in Iraq cost billions of dollars, over two thousand American dead, hundreds of thousand Iraqi casualties with not a barrel of oil to show for it.
Insurgents control all Iraq outside of major cities as they do Afghanistan, outside Kabul and Kandahar.
Trump was elected with 2 million votes less than his opponent did. He had no experience of any elected or appointed office and did not know what he talked about.
We are told to console ourselves with a constitution no Iraqi gives a tinker’s bell about, elections which no one believes in the legitimacy of, and a Government which an Arab intellectual called “Jackals wedding guests”. They stink!
Corporate heads and their bag holders in the Government do not give a God…. Their God ,in the most literal sense, is the Almighty Dollar. They feel secure in the knowledge that pain inflicted slowly and steadily does not result in a violent reaction, like the proverbial frog which jumped out of boiling water, but went blithely to its maker, when placed in water with a fire underneath. So the American workers “boiled” slowly and will not explode in a frenzy of protests, strikes or destruction of infra-structure.
All the extractable sources of energy will be exhausted in the next twenty five or so years. Yet little emphasis is placed on conservation measures or development of solar and other alternative sources of energy. At the current rate of progress in the field there would be a time lag of several decades between the last barrel of oil and the production of adequate amounts of alternate fuel.
From Manhattan to Queens NY,we will have to travel in a buggy. But that would not be the worst. Human kind has lost all skills and faculties of being able to survive without Electricity or Gasoline. We would have no food, heat, clothes,or medicines. We would not have any schools or hospitals. We would not be able to go anywhere. We would not have phones, TV, Books, Newspapers,Radio, Mail, Telegram and God forbid, an internet service.
Civilisation, as it is known today, will cease to exist.
Ironically, “primitive” and less developed societies, not so dependent on non-replenishable energy resources, will be able to withstand the loss much better.
But long before the last barrel of crude is extracted, oil wars will ensue.
The Iraq war is an ominous portent.
If Europe was able to get its act together, it would form, with the USA and China/India, a triad of combatants. But the EU is breaking up.
They may come to an accommodation to divide the supply among themselves or may get entangled in MAD, which will solve all energy problems. All other countries will get the short end of the stick.
This is not a fictional scenario. All the scientific evidence on hand supports the contention.
And the corporate mandarins think that they can buy their way out of exposure to Ozone, Nuclear pollution, rise in water level and climate change. They can leave millions for their progeny to do the same.
I sometimes feel that the part of their brains mediating common sense has atrophied.
For all their missionary zeal, integrity and dedication, independent media have a very narrow base.
I have undertaken informal surveys over a number of years in Bazaars, University campuses, social gatherings, among the Desis, ABCD’s, FOB’s, white and people of color-broad spectrum of Human denizens of the USA.
Mainstream media is literally in the pockets of a few billionaires and large corporations are not allowed to cover the unpalatable facts. They would not show the rotting bodies on the streets of Baghdad or the ones floating in New Orleans.
Very few listen to or watch Independent media. Not many are even aware of its existence. But that is the only game in town. They barely survive on the current level of support.
We the expatriates have a role to play. We have to support Independent media. We can do it effectively too.
We have come of age to take proprietary interest in the milieu we live in. We are doubly blessed in that a) we are now in sufficient numbers to have an impact and count among our numbers a vastly greater proportion of educated members, university graduates, professionals and academics, than the “older” Americans-those whose ancestors predated us in the country and b) we are affluent, and frugal as well.
We have a greater stake in rule of law than “older” Americans. However much we delude ourselves that we are the elite, we are the first target in any adversity. Muslims, because of 9/11 and other acts of the lunatic fringe, are very vulnerable (the post 9/11 harassment of Dr Javed Akhtar)..
The non-Muslims among us will only be burying their head in the sand, if they think they are invulnerable. All Indians, Pakistanis and Bangla -Deshis look more or less alike. A sikh was stabbed to death because he was mistaken for a Muslim cleric.
Arabs unless wearing their traditional garb look like Hispanics and whites. Some look like Indians too. People from the far East look Chinese to Western eyes.
A maniac does not inquire of your religion before dispatching you with a knife or a gun.
Blacks, Hispanics, Chinese, Japanese, Catholics, Mormons and Jews, having lived here for centuries, are still not immune to discrimination.
I am not advocating support of Independent media, because of altruistic reasons of fair play, justice, Democracy, empowerment of the poor, exposure of the chicanery of the power brokers, liberty, fraternity, an egalitarian society,or social services , all laudable causes in their own right, but because our very survival depends upon a greater audience of Independent media.
We have to take time out from chasing rainbows and moonbeams.. Agitating for Human Rights in the under developed countries, does salve our conscience, but does not a bit for victims of violence, trade in flesh or child trafficking.
Before worrying about dictatorship in Pakistan, there is actually not much to choose between civilian and Pakistani dispensations- they are all dictatorships of the feudal class- we should endeavor to deal with our electoral subversion.
A truly representative Government, with moral as well as physical authority, would have a much greater impact on the Governments in Kazakhstan, Indonesia or Saudi Arabia. An honest dispensation will want to set other houses in order.
Under the current system, and I would not distinguish between Democrats and Republicans- both equally servile to Capital- the Government only discriminates between “our son of a bitch” and others.
Short of launching a grassroots revolution, for which neither do we have the stomach nor deep enough
roots, we have no choice but to give consistent and generous support to Independent media.
Bio:
I was born in Dewa Sharif, UP, India in 1939.
I went to school from the fourth to eighth class in Gonda, UP and the 9th grade in Jhansi, UP, India.
We moved to Quetta, Pakistan and went to school for the 10th grade and intermediate college in the same town.
I was in Karachi University 1954-57, then Dow Medical College 1957-62. I Was in the National Students Federation from 1954 to 1962, trained in surgery in the Civil Hospital Karachi 1962-65, proceeded to England 1965 and trained in General surgery and orthopedic surgery till 73, when I left for Canada 1973-74, USA 1974-83, back to Karachi 1983 and built a hospital and went back to the USA in 1991, been in the USA since.
I retired from surgery in 2005.
I have worked in various HR and Socialist groups in the USA.
I have Published two books ,:”A Medical Doctor Examines Life on Three Continents,” and ,”God, Government and Globalization”, and am working on the third one, “An Analysis of the Sources and Derivation of Religions”.
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