A few people died yesterday

As you probably could not avoid learning, two widely known people died yesterday. One from cardiac arrest, the other after a long fight with cancer. To my mind, an appropriate response includes concern for their families and loved ones, who are certainly hurting during such a time.

However, as the corporate media has surely not mentioned, more than just two people died on June 25, 2009.

At an average of 105 deaths per month in 2009 alone, between three and four Darfuries died yesterday. This, after most of the rest of the world has watched for more than five years and done almost nothing.

Almost 200 women died yesterday because they did not have access to legal and safe abortion.

Around 1,500 people died in the Congo, even though the war "ended" five years ago.

More than 4,000 died in Africa because of AIDS, in large part due to Vatican and Republican Party opposition to the distribution of, and education regarding, condoms.

Across the globe, more than 5,000 people died yesterday simply because they do not have access to clean water, while an estimated 16,000 children died because they do not have enough food. When was the last time you heard anybody in the corporate media talk about food or water shortages, in the context of global over-population?

When was the last time you heard a politician that you support speak to this issue, or any of the above issues?

It goes without saying that we could expand this list almost indefinitely. The point is that people are dying completely preventable deaths, every hour of every day, while most news outlets in the United States seem content to tell us all about the latest starlet fashion faux pas, who is getting paid too much to play sports, which American car company has a shitty plan to improve their sales figures, the summer fashion choices of a host of celebrities, and the latest manufactured reality-TV scandal. Oh, and if somebody died and they were famous, they will probably tell us all about that, too. But preventable (or U.S. foreign policy caused) deaths around the globe? There is little time to cover that.