Sunday, March 20, 2011

Fareed Zakaria, a Voice of Reason.



Much respect to Fareed for making this clear and calm presentation in the wake of media madness surrounding the reactors in Japan.

From my understanding, the reactors survived one of the largest earthquakes on record, it was only the huge tsunami that raged across Japan knocking out the generators of the cooling system that caused the problem. That's pretty impressive to me, i mean at the same time, oil refineries in Japan were exploding into mushroom clouds and burning for days, no cries to end our dependence on petroleum, hell there was hardly any of that after the BP fuck up in the Gulf of Mexico.
Nuclear is a buzzword, one more powerful than terrorism it would seem, that the media wrung for every bit it could. i mean, people here on the west coast of America were panicking and buying Iodine tablets. Bottles were going for hundreds of dollars on eBay. Now, profiting from idiots will likely never be a crime, but spreading misinformation and lies through major media outlets should be.
Proof that we're living in an age of information however, is that i got news, straight from Japan, translated by a nerdy man named Katz.
http://yokosonews.com/live/
Katz broadcasted nearly nonstop for days after the incident, and seems to still be going strong, he deserves so much respect and honour for keeping cool and being so dedicated. Hell he even managed to make fun of America's panic in a few interviews with reporters state side, it was unbelievable.
In the meantime, all the major news outlets had interviews with experts, such as a gynecologist, and a theoretical physicist (Michio, i love you, but stop being a media whore) talking about how this was going to be doomsday.
Don't get me wrong, things were looking bad, and i was worried for a few days there, but at least i stayed informed enough to know things would never reach these doomsday wetdreams of the news.
The real tragedy here is all the focus was quickly moved to the reactors, the earthquake and wave were soon a nonissue with the news, despite so many Japanese people being homeless. Or "displaced" as the news would have it.



It's amazing living in a world of technology where events like this can be easily capture, because every video i've seen has been awesome, and awful. In the true sense of the words.

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