Post Tropical Cyclone Sandy - Alternative Media Spins with Establishment

by Scott Creighton

Several “alternative” news sites are out there cheer-leading for the disaster capitalists in one way or the other whereas I have shown that though the storm was a bad one, it hardly lived up to the “Frankenstorm of the Century” billing it received and is now being over-hyped by people who look to use this storm to pocket billions in cash for themselves and their crony capitalist friends, to push their “global warming’ agendas and to possibly even effect the upcoming election (jobs numbers probably won’t be out before the election next week)

No, it is not a popular position to take, but it’s the truth. Several readers here have left comments about how relatively normal things in New York city are right now and of course the NYC marathon is still on track for this weekend. For those with damaged homes or stuck in areas hard hit by the storm, our sympathies are with you. But your suffering is not justification to let disaster capitalist ambulance chasers turn this post tropical cyclone into a 100 billion dollar corporate handout.

Yesterday we covered how “alternative” news site Dandelion Salad is helping to spin the “global warming” angle of Hurricane Post Tropical Cyclone Sandy by breathlessly claiming it foretells the “riptides of climate change are beginning to tear at the fabric of our biosphere” in ways that were “previously unknown to human civilization”

I showed that even the global warming experts at the MET now have to admit there has been no significant warming in the past 16 years (and some could say that if they included the other 3,000 temperature monitoring stations that they dropped out of the sample set, the earth may in fact be cooling) and I showed that as far as the claim that this has been previously unknown to human civilization, the fact is, there have been periods in history, recorded history mind you, when there have been far more and larger hurricanes reported. So, on both counts, the article reposted by Dandelion Salad is dead wrong.

Well, unfortunately, they aren’t the only “alternative” site that is helping to promote the over-hyping of Post Tropical Cyclone Sandy (and yes, even the Village Voice admits it has been over-hyped.. they seem to think it’s a “good thing” though)

Over at the now ridiculous Prison Planet, in between bouts of selling his survival seeds, Tangy Tangerine and other homeopathic crap, AJ went off yesterday with some guy who purports that Sandy seems to be the result of a super secret weather weapon. Of course, he stated the disclaimer that “there needs to be more oversight” to make that determination (an odd thing for “small guberment” AJ to have on his site) but he still made the claim regardless.

Today, Prison Planet is certainly helping the likes of the neoliberal disaster capitalist Gov. Christies of the world by running an article claiming Sandy is a “hundred years” storm and that the damage will be in the $100 billion dollar range.

As I have already shown numbers of times now, Sandy is not even close to the damage and the size of multiple hurricanes, some within the same area within the past couple of decades much less 100 years.

Take a look at what is happening in Japan in the wake of their tsunami. I heard this morning on NPR that an accountability investigation in Japan has found that of the 10 billion dollars already spent in recovery funds, almost none of it, NONE OF IT went to actually reconstructing the damaged villages and areas that would benefit the people most hurt by the event.

In fact, the vast majority of the 10 billion went to projects that only a few could be “remotely connected” with helping the affected areas in any way shape or form. The majority had absolutely no effect on the improvement of the lives of the people harmed or the areas effected.

The same can certainly be said of the billions donated to help in the wake of the tragedy in Haiti. That money was hijacked and used to help businesses build plants in Haiti so they could take advantage of the .31 cents and hour minimum wage, the slave wage structure of the country.

Katrina? Same thing.

It’s called Disaster Capitalism folks.

Information Clearinghouse has run a few choice articles about the event. They don’t actually write these articles, but they push them to their massive readership apparently without question. See if you can pick up on the overall theme:

• We Are All from New Orleans Now: Climate Change, Hurricanes and the Fate of America’s Coastal Cities (from The Nation)
• Climate Change Feeds Hurricane Sandy
• Why “Frankenstorm” is Just Right for Hurricane Sandy

It’s good to know that serious alternative information sites are running with the same logic that Al Gore jumped up and posited on his blog yesterday: Global Warming is causing hurricanes like Sandy and we can expect more of the same unless we bend to such failed schemes as carbon tax credits and a global carbon governance system:

Hurricane Sandy is a disturbing sign of things to come. We must heed this warning and act quickly to solve the climate crisis. Dirty energy makes dirty weather.” Al Gore

Black Listed News ran with a piece from Michael Snyder of Economic Collapse titled “18 Startling Quotes About The Incredible Destruction Caused By Hurricane Sandy“. It’s nothing more than blovating quotes from people with a direct interest in hyping the storm to the point where they can get as much money as possible.

How many alternative sites are writing about this aspect of what is happening right now?