Ebola kills just shy of 1,000 people, and it's a global emergency.
Israel kills about 3,000 Palestinians, and no one notices or cares.
Kiev has killed somewhere around 1,000 good folks, and the only thing that gets people jumping are the 290 souls on MH17.
Just wanted to put that in perspective.
Looky here:
"CDC estimates that each year roughly 1 in 6 Americans (or 48 million people) gets sick, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die of foodborne diseases."
What's that? You mean that 2/3s more Americans die each year of food poisoning, than have died globally of ebola (to date, of course)? And (this is going to hurt) a thousand people out of 7.5 billion is what...less than 1% of the population? (you do the math) So, fewer people have died in the recent ebola outbreak than were killed by cars in North America in 1909?
You'll excuse me if I don't panic.
I have found that life is much healthier and less stressful when I completely ignore "authorities", "experts" and "media" (AEM). These people all makes livings off of scaring the shit out of large numbers of people, who then turn to the AEM for guidance and comfort. It's a huge bloody scam, folks. They are playing like Dustin Hoffman and Rene Russo in that silly little film called "Outbreak". Seriously, go watch it again and then read the AEM headlines. It's like a freakin' script!
Which brings us to ISIS (most of our fan mail centers on our uncanny ability to connect non sequiturs).
Here in Indonesia, the largest Muslim-majority nation on Earth, ISIS YouTube videos have been banned, the organization is being demonized and word on the street is that many of the recruiters for ISIS are Western Europeans - which tells you a lot about who is behind it.
At this point, you eyes are glazed over and your brain is trobbing as you try to find the link between ISIS, the Ukraine, ebola, Israeli war crimes, and car accidents. So I'll help you out. The link is "fear".
At the highest levels of the AEM, a bunch of morally bereft jerks are sitting in their posh Riviera flats, smoking cigars and laughing as the people of the world run around in a panic out of fear of manufactured boogymen. You've got a virus that was manufactured and patented, you've got an ostensible nation that was created by Western oligarchs (the Ukraine), you've got another nation that was destroyed by western oligarchs (Palestine), a terrorist organization created and funded by western oligarchs (ISIS), and a machine that was created by western oligarchs (the car). See the thread here?
Out of sheer panic, you will allow yourself to be rounded up (Outbreak) and inoculated with God-knows-what. Out of desperate fear, you will support more war in Iraq and back Israeli war crimes. In blind terror, you will ignore the geopolitical games in a country that doesn't really exist (the Ukraine). And in pure desperation, entire nations will behave exactly as the musty old bastards on the Riviera planned for us.
Yes, folks, it's time for us to tune out the AEM and take back our lives. We are being herded like ruminating animals, and if we stray too far in any direction, there are mental cattle-prods to coax us back into line.
Hell, most of this crap in the world is just the US doing a bit of Madison Ave. marketing. Problem-reaction-solution. Poor Ukraine gets pooped on by Russia - Uncle Sugar to the rescue. Poor Africa gets sick with (Daddy's) fear bug, Uncle Sugar to the rescue. Poor Israel gets scared of some righteously angry Palestinians - Uncle Sugar to the rescue. The Muslim world gets overrun by a mystery organization that didn't exist a few months ago - Uncle Sugar to the rescue.
It's the perfect image rehab plan, as any top-flight PR firm would script it. Take a weakness - in this case, Uncle Sugar's need to kill people - and turn it into a virtue - Uncle Sugar bombs the bad guys and cured diseases that he created with the "untested" secret cure that he tucked away for just such a moment as this.
In other words, folks, what you are witnessing is a massive campaign to rehabilitate Uncle Sugar's tarnished reputation. This is Public Relations/Spin Doctoring 101. Look it up.
Maybe I'm just weird. To me, this whole friggin' charade is so transparent. I guess that's what Obama meant when he said his time as emperor-du-jour would be the most transparent in history. But a lot of seeming intelligent folks have been sucked into this script without seeing the Big Picture. I won't publish the reader mail I've gotten on this topic, because I don't want to embarrass anyone, but honstely folks, it's all a bag of wool being pulled over your eyes.
Turn off the AEM and stop watching all those psycho-social training films (Outbreak). The proper film to watch at thsi point to properly open your brain synapes is "Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb". It's about as accurate a portrayal of who's really in charge here as I've ever seen.
If you feel yourself starting to panic, put a bag over your head, breathe deeply and steadily, and remember that in 2012, 33,561 people died in North America from cars. The Ukraine, ISIS, Israel, and ebola all put together are a mere fraction of that number.
Amazing how a little perspective clarifies things.