Monthly Archives: October 2014
The Ugly Ebola Hysteria
Thanks again, CNN. It wasn’t enough that you spent several months reporting on the missing Malaysian Airlines flight with spooky tales of everything from UFOs to hijacking to terrorism.
Now, you’re doing the same with Ebola. Only this cacophony is much more dangerous and troubling as your noise goes a long way in misleading the public.
All for ratings.
More than 30,000 people die from gun violence every year (more than 70,000 survive from gun injuries).
Over 52,000 Americans died of the flu last year.
There have been three cases of Ebola identified and one death in the US.
But Ebola is so much more exotic, exciting, unfamiliar and therefore, fear inducing, is it not?
Between television ratings and damn politics, the unsuspecting American public has been treated to more fear mongering and scare tactics with Ebola than we have witnessed in a long time. Remember the early days of AIDS? And then swine flu, bird flu, H1N1…
This has been latest and one of the most irresponsible media circuses we have seen, and CNN sits at the top of this heap. It’s time for you to go away.
And let’s not even get into Chris Christie’s ridiculous quarantine policy that ends up treating health workers like criminals.
What’s ironic is that one of the more balanced reports on Ebola was recently shown on, of all places, Fox News! Who would’ve thought?
Watch it here or click the image below to watch….I highly recommend it.
And here are some Ebola facts [from the CDC], loud and clear:
Now these – these you can spread around all you want.
If we could simply educate ourselves on FACTS and if the World Health Organization and Western governments focused on deploying badly needed resources to countries like Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone where there really have been Ebola outbreaks this year due to their poor conditions, the world would be so much better of.
Now can we stop with the nutty hysteria, please?
:
:
Humbled By Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi
I don’t believe I was the only Indian or person of Indian origin who had never heard of Mr. Satyarthi until the Swedes kindly brought him to the forefront of the world a couple of weeks ago.
In fact, I’d wager that I was no exception and one of many who went out looking for information about this new Nobel laureate.

Expo at Nobel Peace Center
I am highly impressed and deeply humbled by what I have learned.
It begs the question – why is it that he was so inconspicuous before now? Especially in India and among Indians. I certainly knew a whole lot more about Malala!
One of the best sources of information that I found was in a 2012 PBS documentary narrated by Robert Redford on “New Heroes”.
It’s worth your 20 minutes to watch and get enriched as you learn how Kailash Satyarthi [please click on this link and read too!] is tenaciously and courageously fighting a battle every day to end child slavery in India.
:
Finally, I picked this congratulatory letter from many others to showcase. The Dalai Lama had this to say to and about this inspirational human being:
#Respect
:
:
Photo Credits:
Nobel Peace Center: By Jeblad (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons