The Little Stories that Can Kill You

In everyone’s life, while horror, terror and threats of the apocalypse dominate the headlines, it is your predicament, your environment, your family and your local government and economy that concern you most. Those rescue workers in Haiti have selflessly redirected their personal efforts toward this incredibly needful humanitarian effort, hoping that the world won’t soon forget the ongoing and long-term needs of this decimated island nation. But they are in competition with almost 7 billion agendas that are struggling with the “me first” (and “me only”) calamities that surround each of us.

I took at glance at some of those “other stories” drifting about the press these days, and thought of how many more individuals are struggling with personal difficulties every day. Here are some of those “little” stories, not always on page one of your local paper (if you have one anymore): Osama bin Laden, taking credit for the Christmas day crotch-bomber, is threatening the United States with many more attacks. Or this one from the Korean peninsula: “North Korea threatened South Korea with war [January 24^th] after Seoul warned it would launch a pre-emptive strike if the North was preparing a nuclear attack - the latest salvo in a battle of rhetoric despite signs of improved cooperation across the militarized frontier.” Washington Post, January 24^th.

Lest we think that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has gone away, there is this little tidbit in the January 24^th New York Times: “The Israeli military is completing a rebuttal to a United Nations report accusing it of grave violations of international and humanitarian law in its Gaza invasion a year ago. Its central aim is to dispel the report’s harsh conclusion — that the death of noncombatants and destruction of civilian infrastructure were part of an official plan to terrorize the Palestinian population.” But wait, there’s more….

Pakistan, thought to be providing safe harbor to the militants who are attacking U.S. forces in neighboring Afghanistan and may even be sheltering terrorists like Osama bin Laden himself, is rebuffing U.S. efforts to align American interests with a Pakistani struggle with Taliban militants of their own. Defense Secretary Robert Gates just traveled to Islamabad to ask for increased Pakistani cooperation in this anti-terrorist/militant effort. It was clear that ” Pakistanis, who are angry about the Central Intelligence Agency’s surge in missile strikes from drone aircraft on militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas, among other grievances, and showed no signs of feeling any love… At the same time, the Pakistani Army’s chief spokesman told American reporters at the army headquarters in Rawalpindi on Thursday that the military had no immediate plans to launch an offensive against extremists in the tribal region of North Waziristan, as American officials have repeatedly urged… And the spokesman, Maj. Gen Athar Abbas, rejected Mr. Gates’s assertion that Al Qaeda had links to militant groups on Pakistan’s border. Asked why the United States would have such a view, the spokesman, General Abbas, curtly replied, ‘Ask the United States.’” Gates has obviously struck out… with a nation that hold an estimated 60-70 nuclear weapo ns and the missile delivery system to make them work.

Speaking of nuclear radiation… If these stories are too distant and abstract to send shivers down your spine, how about this excerpt from a Times article examining the damage from the overuse and misuse of radiation in both medical diagnoses and treatments: “As Scott Jerome-Parks lay dying, he clung to this wish: that his fatal radiation overdose — which left him deaf, struggling to see, unable to swallow, burned, with his teeth falling out, with ulcers in his mouth and throat, nauseated, in severe pain and finally unable to breathe — be studied and talked about publicly so that others might not have to live his nightmare… A New York City hospital treating him for tongue cancer had failed to detect a computer error that directed a linear accelerator to blast his brain stem and neck with errant beams of radiation. Not once, but on three consecutive days.” Apparently, according to the Times, damage from radiation overdoses, being exceptionally difficult to detect, are growing by the thousands.

In the end, we are all human beings – at any given moment, one group is clearly having a lot better luck than another somewhere else. Throw in a 9/11 attack on the United States or a destructive California quake or a Louisiana hurricane, and the mass of personal tragedy swings back to our shores. For those who have lost their homes and their jobs, particularly older Americans with little hope to reclaim their future, they have their own personal headlines. But at our core, perhaps it is this infinite litany of personal tragedy that links us together on a planet that would self-destruct without efforts to try, at least, to help each other. Perhaps we would be living in a vastly worse place if we were unable to generate both empathy and sympathy for the losses of those “others” who share their time on earth together. “Me first” may be acceptable in many circumstances, but “me only” or “my way or the highway” can only make life worse for everyone body else.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I wonder how we really can help each other along the way.