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It’s That Old ‘Head-In-The-Sand’ Syndrome

The media today is full of the spat between America and Israel; the falling out of two close friends who can’t quite agree on what’s right and what’s wrong.

In Britain, Finance Supremo Darling (yes, that truly is his name) sweats profusely over a budget that must grip the present economic crisis by the short and curlies, while wooing voters in a general election now only weeks away.

Here, in the land once known as ‘the colonies’, three babies suffocated last year while lying in faulty slings. A million of the products are now being recalled, as the media discovers the story and parents panic.

Still, it takes the heat off Toyota.

The ‘Healthcare Debate’ rumbles on, like a runaway hearse commandeered by a corpse refusing to lie down and be buried.

One matter not hitting the headlines in the media today is climate change. Since the ill-fated summit in Copenhagen, global warming is out of fashion. Humankind is way too involved in its own petty, irrelevant, problems to bother about such issues right now. Besides, it’s not like we’re being inundated by weather issues.

Climate change can wait until the Palestinians have their own state, the British economy is back on track, babies stop being suffocated, and Americans are all endowed with free healthcare.

There was, however, one climate change story to be discovered this morning, hidden well away at the back of the BBC website. It seems an island in the Bay of Bengal, approximately two miles square, has vanished.

South Talpetti Island, a couple of miles off the Bangladeshi/Indian coast, has fallen victim to rising global sea levels and no longer exists, except perhaps as a threat to navigation.[1]

Maybe, after all, global warming isn’t prepared to wait until human beings solve all their other issues. Like the Bengal tiger it silently stalks its oblivious prey, and one day our petty squabbles and introspection could prove our undoing.

[1] “Disputed Bay of Bengal island ‘vanishes’ say scientists” BBC, March 24th 2010

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2 Replies to “It’s That Old ‘Head-In-The-Sand’ Syndrome”

  1. What do you think about the Israeli diplomat being kicked out of Britain?

    There is an interesting story for you… Israelis used fake British passports to assassinate a Palestinian…. hmmm….

  2. Nevin – This whole story stinks politically. A nation casually murders an individual for being a member of an organization they happen to dislike; they clone the passports of their own citizens for the purpose, and not Israeli passports but those of dual nationals with British and Irish citizenship; then they arrogantly refuse to discuss whether it was them who did it, even when the evidence is overwhelming.

    Sadly, the British government (and I touched on this in my previous post) decided to protest by expelling a very minor Israeli diplomat, when, if they’d had any balls at all, the Ambassador should have been top of the list and the Israeli embassy closed until an abject apology was forthcoming from Netanyahu’s government.

    Of course, Gordon Brown was probably under orders from Washington not to react too strongly.

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