We're all about ISIS. God we hate ISIS. We fear ISIS. It's a threat to our very civilization, our way of life.
That, so long as by "we", you're referring to the First World, the affluent, developed world. We fear ISIS and we're quite prepared to send our jets to the other side of the world to bomb those guys. We have the luxury of fearing ISIS. It kind of feeds something inside us. Did I mention we get to bomb shit? If there's one thing we like, today's preferred instrument of foreign policy, it's bombing shit.
However.
If you're not of the flat-screen TV world, a Third Worlder for example, maybe ISIS isn't your biggest worry. So what is?
The barbaric acts and military gains of Islamic State have succeeded in sowing fear in Australia and other wealthy nations, with a new poll showing the extremist group is considered the biggest global threat in all but one advanced economy surveyed.
But poorer nations overwhelmingly rated climate change as the top menace to global security, according to a report from the Pew Global Research Centre.
Pew, a US-based research organisation, interviewed more than 45,000 people in 40 countries for the survey.
...Of the 40 countries surveyed, 19 rated climate change as their biggest worry.
Anxiety about global warming was particularly acute in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. Climate change also was the top issue of concern in half of Asian countries surveyed.
Respondents in Burkina Faso (79 per cent), Peru and Brazil (75 per cent), Uganda (74 per cent), Indian (73 per cent) and Ghana (71 per cent) rated the danger from warming world temperatures highest.
Here's the thing. We have the luxury of fretting over what ISIS might have in store for us. That's "might" as in maybe, perhaps, if they some day get around to it, or maybe not.
For the poorer and most vulnerable countries, "might" doesn't enter into the equation. Their biggest fear is real, not speculative, and they're already suffering and, in some cases, dying of it. Many of those who can are moving away, heading for a place where their kids might not have to die. Sometimes that means getting aboard leaky boats in hope of making the shores of southern Europe. Sometimes it means dying at the hands of raiders or succumbing to famine or floods or droughts. Sometimes it means migrants drowning in their hundreds out on the Mediterranean.
4 comments:
Mound, well put. It is like Gaza is a great threat to Israel. Palestinians' deadly weapon is small pieces of rocks which young Palestinians throw at Israeli army. Both U.S. and Canada agree that Gaza indeed poses a great threat to Israel, U.S. and other NATO countries. Long live the propaganda. Global warming can wait.
ISIS also gives an opportunity to Harper to show that he is the world leader. He has sent our young men and women on the front line in Iraq and also bombing Syria. Even U.S. has not done that. I suppose Emperor Harper thinks that Obama being a black man does not know what to do so he has stepped in. Global warming? Any action regarding that can wait.
Now he has also signed an agreement with Ukraine to provide lethal weapons.
"Even U.S. has not done that" I mean that U.S. has not put its soldiers on the front line.
The other factor that enables us to fret so much about ISIS, Mound, is the media complicity in exaggerating its threat. Journalism that reports and editorializes on the merely sensational is lazy journalism. Real reporting takes digging and hard work. Reporting too much on climate change threats also risks running afoul of the the corporate world which both runs and sponsors the media.
It is only religious fanatics who fear this sort of thing...like...ISIS.
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