By Staff
Our View
We live in a strange world. Take for instance the view one could have gotten Wednesday while going through Google News. While scrolling down the page, one could find several stories about the lovely Britney Spears and her trashy backup dancer husband being pregnant; the mother of the boy who is accusing Michael Jackson pleading the fifth about being a welfare cheat; and Apple computers releasing a new operating system.
Conspicuously at the bottom was a story about the outbreak of the Marburg Virus in Angola, a country on Africa's Atlantic coast, bordered by the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, and Namibia. The Marburg Virus is similar to the infamous Ebola Virus, which also had an outbreak in Africa ten years ago. Over 120 people had died as of Wednesday.
Conspicuously absent from Google News was any news about the War in Iraq.
We live in a society where garbage like this is consumed by the public, and we have a media who is more than happy to feed it to them.
Being saturated with bad news would obviously not make life very fun, but there is no reason to let news about celebrities trump real issues in our world.
Many people in this country became very concerned about the plight of the people of Iraq when the Bush administration chose to focus on it, but several countries throughout the world suffer a similar plight.
As the richest, most powerful nation in the world, we have an obligation to try to make the world a safer place for everyone to live, not just ourselves. What is being allowed to happen in Africa through AIDS and other infectious viruses is akin to criminal negligence, not just by the United States but by the entire world community.
There was a tremendous outpouring of support for the victims of the tsunami disaster throughout the world, and even many school groups here in Atmore worked with the Red Cross to contribute funds to those affected by the disaster. Why then does the continent of Africa remain largely ignored?
People are dying throughout this world every day, and many of these deaths are completely needless. Isn't it time we started caring about why it's happening?