The News That Wasn't vs. The News That Was

India's First Mars Mission Lifts Off

I noticed three stories that happened or came out yesterday are subjects which the USMSM (a.k.a. McTell News) is not  in general very interested in.

That is most likely because those stories challenge the current exceptionalist world view of American exceptionalism (Exceptionalism In A Nutshell).

A world view which is constantly being hawked by the growing right wing elements and ideology in American Society, a world view that turns off the majority of people in the U.S. and in the world at large.

Before discussing them in depth, let me mention them by name or subject matter:

1) Million Mask March
2) India's Launch of a Mission To Mars
3) The Syria Chemical Weapons Diplomacy

The Million Mask March was in yesterday's Dredd Blog post (The Million Mask March).

The story about India launching a mission to the planet Mars was covered by Space dot Com (more about it below).

The Syria Chemical Weapons Diplomacy story was covered in the Washington Post.

In fairness to McTell News, I do realize that yesterday was an election day, and that today is "here is why So and So did or did not get elected" day.

Those election raps take precedence because the media is self-absorbed with the myth that elections in the U.S. still matter.

The myth that elections in the U.S. still matter in terms of the media's thinking that elections and their coverage of elections are part and parcel of changes that lead to improvements (Will Elections Cure The Disease?, When Accountability Is A Plague).

Yes, the myth that changes-for-the-better, which supposedly come with elections, are media events (The Elections of Pontius Pilots - 3).

The media have fostered another myth about space exploration as well, which is basically that the U.S. is the only one who can ever do meaningful space travel, even though we were not the first in space, and even though European Nations, China, Russia, and now India have conducted or are conducting space missions:

India's first-ever mission to Mars launched into space today (Nov. 5), beginning the country's first interplanetary mission to explore the solar system.

With a thunderous roar, India's Mars Orbiter Mission rocketed into space at 4:08 a.m. EST (0908 GMT) from the Indian Space Research Organisation's Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, where the local time will be 2:38 p.m. in the afternoon. An ISRO Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle launched the probe on its 300-day trek into orbit around the Red Planet.
...
If all goes well, India's first Mars orbiter — called Mangalyaan (Hindi for "Mars Craft") — will arrive at the Red Planet on Sept. 24, 2014, making India the fourth country to successfully deliver a spacecraft to Mars.

(Liftoff! India's First Mars Probe Launches Toward the Red Planet). The efforts at space exploration and global climate change would go much better, in terms of wasteful duplication of efforts and other deficiencies, if nations could work more effectively together.

This is made more obvious by the final matter, the so-far successful diplomacy between the U.S. the UN, Russia, and Syria:

Last week, buried beneath banner headlines blaring about Obamacare hearings, National Security Agency surveillance revelations and the Boston Red Sox’ World Series win, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) quietly reported that Syria “has completed the functional destruction of critical equipment for all of its declared chemical weapons production facilities and mixing/filling plants, rendering them inoperable.”

On the heels of winning the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize, the unglamorous but undeniably effective OPCW, using saws, sledgehammers and cutting torches in the middle of a war zone, defied predictions by meeting the Nov. 1 deadline to disable Syria’s chemical weapons program. The bombshell was that there was no bombshell — at least, not of the unconscionable chemical kind.

This wasn’t just a vindication of President Obama’s decision to work with Russia on a non-military solution to the Syrian weapons crisis (and a well-deserved slap in the face to neoconservatives like Bill Kristol, who compared the president of the United States to Groucho Marx, “doing farcical pratfalls as he followed down Neville Chamberlain’s tragic path.”) It was also a success for international organizations like the United Nations and the OPCW, and, indeed, for diplomacy itself.

(Strange Silence Regarding Syria). One would think that everyone could enjoy the fruits of nations working together more and more to avoid war, suffering, global warming, and disease.

And to work together to improve space exploration, in terms of efficiency and mutual rewards.

Like Russell Brand said at the Million Mask March, "we deserve more from our democratic system".

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It may seem extreme to say that if we do not change to renewable energy civilization as we know it will not be here in 100 years, but that is literally the case.

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