There’s all sorts of stories that get buried or never reported by the US corporate mediaopolies (yes, that’s my neologism of the day). Right now they are obsessed with the US economy (i.e., Wall Street and the stock markets), mortgage cramdowns, unemployment, Michelle Obama’s fashion sense, Rush Limbaugh, blind cat love (really!) any celebrity you can think of, and the latest in a long line of gun nuts (or is that nuts with guns?) who shot and killed a bunch of people (this time a mother and 4 kids). All terribly important news events to someone or other (indeed, some of the stories they are reporting about are important, like the health care reform).
However, here’s something that they aren’t reporting on their front pages, touting on the home pages of their websites or meditating upon (i.e., pundits screaming at each other) on our cable news shows. It’s the assessment of the British Foreign Secretary about the perilous condition of Pakistan, the Islamic country which actually has nuclear weapons that could fall into the hands of terrorists and religious extremists. Suffice it to say he’s a bit worried about what’s going on over there:
Pakistan is facing a “mortal threat” from internal militancy, UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband has said.
Mr Miliband told the BBC that politicians must unite to face a “very grave situation” that was worsening. […]
Mr Miliband told BBC Radio’s Today programme that Pakistan’s internal instability was “a grave situation and… it has got worse”.
He pointed to the fallout between President Asif Ali Zardari and former PM Nawaz Sharif, who was last week banned from elected office by the Supreme Court.
Mr Miliband urged politicians to unite, saying: “I think that the degree of political disunity that exists at the moment is only contributing to the problem.”
He added that country’s economic decline in the global credit crunch was also a major factor. […]
Secretary Millibrand’s comments come in the wake of a terrorist assault on Sri Lanka’s cricket team which was visiting Lahore for an international tournament.
Our Pentagon likes to sound the alarm bells about Iran, conflating the danger Iran represents to our security, because, after all, Iran is not one of our allies in the War on Terror. Yet Iran is still a long way from producing a nuclear weapon of any kind. Pakistan, whose military we generously funded for decades, has anywhere from 20 to over 100 nuclear devices (and delivery systems for said weapons), was the source of a well known effort to export its nuclear technology to other countries, and is the reputed home of Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders such as Osama Bin Ladin.
Not to mention the fact that it harbors a whole host of home grown extremists (e.g., Lashkar-e-Taiba) supported to varying degrees by elements of Pakistan’s influential and omnipresent Intelligence and Security Agency, the ISI, many of which have carried out terrorist attacks against India. The same ISI which the CIA helped establish, train and with which it still has many contacts. The same ISI which had close ties to the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the past, ties which more likely than not it still maintains. The same ISI alleged to have a connection to the September 11, 2001 attacks against our country
Which brings us back to the reason why this should be one of the top stories reported by the US media. Because Pakistan is a nuclear power, because Pakistan is filled to the gills with radical Islamic extremists both inside and outside its government, , because Pakistan is the home base for a multitude of Islamic based terrorist groups, and because Pakistan is dangerously unstable, we should be extremely worried and better informed about what is going within its borders. Indeed, our media should be reporting stories like this one on a daily basis:
Of all the security threats posed by Pakistan, the most worrying is the fate of the country’s nuclear arsenal.
Western governments are worried that if the state collapses, its nuclear weapons could fall into the hands of extremists, or simply out of control of any firm hands. Independent analysts are sceptical about official Pakistani assurances.
Well, “western governments ” may be concerned about Pakistan, its nuclear arsenal and its connection to terrorist extremists, but you’d never know about it from what the US media tells us. Which begs the question: Why don’t they care? This is a security threat of the first magnitude to the United States, Israel, India and Europe, but we hardly ever hear about Pakistan in our news unless a major political figure is assassinated (Benazir Bhutto) or a major terrorist attack is carried out against India. It’s beyond puzzling. It’s downright ludicrous that Americans are some of the least informed people on the planet when it comes to the rest of the world. But that’s the way our corporate media rolls. A tout on CNBC for stock and commodities markets goes off on a ridiculous rant and it’s headline news for days. Meanwhile Pakistan is near the boiling point and no one talks about it. No one in the US media, anyway.
