Mild Hurricane Has Politicos Ranting—While Oil and Nuclear Disasters Are Ignored.

Lab tests confirm that BP's Macondo Well is again gushing. The area around Fukushima is uninhabitable—a no-go zone. And politicians foam at the mouth about a mild hurricane?

by Heidi Stevenson

27 August 2011

I watched in amazement at the madness of shutting down New York City's transit system. I gaped at the spectacle of a president referring to a large but otherwise piddling hurricane as "historic". And wondered why. Why should a relatively minor hurricane become such a political and media frenzy?

Then, when the hurricane's force dropped to a ho-hum level one on making landfall, the light dawned. This is all redirection from two far more significant stories. BP's Macondo Well, the Gulf Gusher, is spewing again and Fukushima is the worst nuclear disaster the world has ever seen.. The last thing they want is for those things to become headline news. It might interfere with the future of oceanic oil drilling and building more nuclear plants.

They desperately needed something else to focus interest on—and along came Irene.

As a result, there's no mainstream reporting on the oil that BP's Macondo Well is spouting again. And hardly a word about Fukushima, the worst nuclear disaster the world has ever seen—and worsening.

No, all attention is going to coverage on Irene, building the storm up to mythical proportions, telling people to run! Ordering evacuations. Closing public transit. Tracking the storm. Building stories of people harmed—as if there weren't storm injuries from just about any storm. Politicians posturing.

And now that Irene is borderline to a tropical storm? Well, FEMA administrator Craig Fugate rather limply said, "Some of our most devastating floods have occurred in tropical storms."

The Sky Is Falling in Japan and the Gulf of Mexico

And there's no coverage about lab tests proving that the oil fouling the Gulf of Mexico and Louisiana beaches is fresh and came from that well.

But not a single word about two truly epic disasters, Fukushima, which has already produced radiation that triples the output of the Hiroshima atomic bomb, and BP's Gulf Gusher, which has started gushing again.

The area 20 kilometers around the Fukushima plant has been made uninhabitable. Radiation is traveling around the world. Sea life and farm land are polluted by radiation. It will be months—if ever—before Fukushima's reactors will be under control. The amount of ¹³⁷cesium leaked so far is equal to 158 Hiroshimaa!

In the Gulf of Mexico, the Macondo Well is again spewing. There is now no question that the oil fouling Louisiana beaches and witnessed near the well is from BP's Gulf Gusher. Lab tests have confirmed it. Yet, BP's response is evasion. They say that they had personnel around the site on Thursday (25 August), but no oil was seen—in complete contrast to what scientists and reporters have witnessed and videoed.

So All Eyes Are on A Third-Rate Storm

Government response to these truly devastating disasters has been tepid, at best.

However, politicians and the news media have been full of inane commentary about Irene. Michael Bloomberg, New York's mayor, said, "No matter what the track is, no matter how much it weakens, this is a life-threatening storm." Gee—apparently that storm's dangerous even when it dissolves into a summer breeze.

A power outage is national news. The Red Cross's response is one of the biggest in their history. Irene will be a big blow to the economy. Of course, all estimates are based on assumptions far beyond the extent of the storm.

Deaths are blamed on the storm. The deaths blamed on it thus far include a man who died of heart attack, one who died trying to surf and one galavanting along the coast, a man who died because his car hydroplaned, and a couple who died from a tree limbs or trees falling. Of course, these deaths are unfortunate—but they happen in all kinds of storms—even the mildest ones.

We're still hearing about all the flooding that might happen. So far, it seems not to have occurred—and none of it could possibly compare with the flooding that's taken place along the Mississippi this year—but there was no massive hype about it.

But Irene is hyped as if it were the storm of the century, while world-wrecking destruction from Fukushima and BP's Gulf Gusher are passed by. These are on-going disasters, the likes of which the world has never before seen. But our leaders and press don't want you to focus on them. If we did, then we might demand changes—the sort that they don't want to make.

The last thing they want is to end their cash cows of nuclear and oil power. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is allowed to get in their way. The death of one of the richest and most beautiful oceanic and shoreline areas in the world, the Gulf of Mexico? Just look the other way and you won't see it. The coming misery and deaths of hundreds, thousands, possibly millions from Fukushima's radiation? Don't worry your little heads about it—we won't disturb you with that sort of thing.

Just be sure to pay attention to mainstream media. As the corporate power continues to throttle our hold on reality and expand their grasp on wealth, the news media will continue to draw attention away from their wanton destruction of the world.

Video of BP's Macondo Well leak:

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