Emotional Resilience In Traumatic Times (Carolyn Baker)

[Tace]

Apr. 15, 2011 (Speaking Truth To Power) -- While mainstream media have been encouraging collective dithering over a possible U.S. government shutdown, the chilling realities of off-the-chart levels of radiation from the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster, escalating upheavals throughout the Middle East, and surging oil prices have been simmering in the background, remaining the lethal environmental, geopolitical, and economic time bombs that they are.

Weeks ago, I was well aware that a government shutdown was highly unlikely but would be used to distract our attention from more urgent matters, and thus, I reported only one story about it in my Daily News Digest.

I recently returned from Northern California where residents there were profoundly anxious regarding the effects of radiation on the West Coast from Fukushima. How not, when on April 1, the San Francisco area newspaper, Bay Citizen, reported that “Radiation from Japan rained on Berkeley during recent storms at levels that exceeded drinking water standards by 181 times and has been detected in multiple milk samples, but the U.S. government has still not published any official data on nuclear fallout here from the Fukushima disaster”?

In typical American media fashion, out of sight, out of mind. Fewer and fewer stories of radiation realities in and issuing from Japan are being reported. An occasional comment surfaces, usually assuring us that we have nothing to fear. It’s all so benign. Apparently, we can now move on to “really important” stories like Obama’s 2012 campaign and the royal wedding.

And yet, whether explicitly stated or not, Americans and billions of other individuals throughout the world, are not only terrified about radiation but about their economic future—an economic future which will be inexorably more ruinous as a result of the Japan tragedy and its economic ripples globally. By that I do not mean that they feel mild anxiety about embellishing their stock portfolios, but rather, are feeling frightened about how they are going to feed their families, where they will live after losing their house in foreclosure, where they might find employment in a world where having a full-time job is becoming increasingly rare, how they will access healthcare without insurance or the money to pay out of pocket, or how they will make ends meet in forced or voluntary retirement.

more

http://worldnewstrust.com/all-content/emotional-resilience-in-traumatic-times-carolyn-baker.html

[Demeter]

1. Exactly So

Although what we would do with the information--besides make nuclear technology illegal and shut down all "peaceful" uses of the atom, aside from radiological medicine, I'm not sure.

It is to prevent the banning of nuclear power that we AREN'T getting any information about nuclear fallout from Fukushima. I'm sure they don't give a shit about panic in the streets.

[FirstLight]

2. to the greatest... very important article

very frustrating how the 'media' is more of a distraction engine now, rather than the watchdog and informative service it was originally meant to be...but we haven;t had that kind of media for decades now...

[Gregorian]

3. This is just what I needed right now.

Sadly, I recently had to travel through Santa Rosa. I hadn't been there in fifteen years, as I do not drive around much. But it was an emergency. I say this because I would love to be a part of these groups meniotned in the article. What I saw in Santa Rosa caused me great distress. I still haven't fully recovered half a year later. I now call it Satan Rosa. What was a beautiful place is now a sea of cars.

This is the kind of thing I feared as a child. That this society would grow more and more dependent upon the industrial benefits. And I'm distressed and disgusted by it. Yet I also am part of it. Only in a small way, though. But being part of something I also am disgusted by has created a tension in me that I am unable to escape. From roaring commercial jets coming out of the San Francisco area that pollute the skies of all of northern California, to the fact that there are zero elk in Elk, I am filled with anything but happiness and contentment. Priuses don't help.

I'm not really saying much here. I don't have a conclusion. I do think there must be likeminded people out there somewhere. I thank you for posting the article, because instead of doing this alone, I will begin searching for others for support.