If it hasn't become apparent to you yet, let me make it clear our planet is dying. And with one single word I can tell you why Capitalism. This unfounded undemocratic belief that those with capital should be allowed to run roughshod over the human population. Every year, hundreds of millions of trees are harvested and processed into paper to create junk mail to be delivered by carbon emitting vehicles to millions of homes which are then thrown into the trash"immediately.
In South America, the rain forest is burned to create coke to manufacture steel. Is there a shortage of steel manufacturing? No, in fact there is an over abundance of steel manufacturing, so why do it? Simple"it's cheaper. In Canada, new port facilities are being built to take advantage of Arctic shipping routes to Asia. While Americans debate the causes and science of climate change, the capitalists wait anxiously for the ice to melt! Sure, climate change means millions will lose their homes and their way of life. Yeah, yeah, it means floods hurricanes, forest fires, starvation and death, but for capitalists it is also a money-making opportunity.
The People's Republic of China has become Earth's largest economy. The People's Republic of China is also becoming the most polluted place on planet earth. The Chinese have completed the Three Gorges Damn project across the Yangtze river Thirty billion dollars huge and grandiose, its water supplied by glaciers high in the Himalayas, glaciers which are shrinking due to climate change. Glaciers whose disappearance will some day make the Three Gorges damn as mysterious as the Sphinx. I'm not picking on China just because it is a Capitalist Disneyland. China operates under the policy "Two systems one China." A one-party police state which allows the exploitation of its people. A capitalist wet dream, if you dare attempt to organize, you're carted off to prison forever. Labor conditions so bad, some Chinese factories have catch nets around them to prevent workers for diving out windows to their deaths. But that's okay if it saves me five or ten dollars on my I-phone"right? I mean murderous ruling regimes which save us money on products of convenience are alright"aren't they?
But anyway, that is in backwards, third world China"isn't it? Here in this country the people are free. That's why Interstate highway overpasses have catch fences to discourage the struggling, the suffering and the starving from exercising their freedom to swan dive into the pavement. It is important to note; it is not that the Capitalist care that our people become so desperate as to take their own lives. They simply don't want traffic delayed making workers late and delaying freight shipments. They have no problem letting them freeze to death in abandoned buildings. To the capitalist the Opioid crises is the greatest thing since child labor.
Money has value"you don't. The old saw says the hamburger you receive doesn't look like the picture on the menu. This is a most accurate parable of Capitalism. You wanted to be a doctor because you want to help people and save the world. Very noble, you studied hard and worked your tail off. You've arrived in Capitalist's dream land, living in a fine house with a nice car and all the amenities. You watch people in poor health die due to obesity, cause by poor lifestyle choices encouraged by low incomes and lack of insurance. You are besieged with pharmaceutical representatives, promising trips and kick backs to peddle off label drugs. Your lawyer your banker and your stock broker are your steady companions. Everyone wants a piece of you because you're a great guy or gal. You've got money and if you didn't" you can go to hell.
Perhaps you are the stockbroker or a carpenter or the salesman in the supply business and all is lovely until it isn't. The stock market crashes and you are thrown out of work. You see, you are as disposable as a hamburger wrapper. But perhaps you can be retrained, all you need to do is sign this promissory note at the community college. In twelve to twenty-four weeks you begin your new career just as insecure as before only in more debt and in most cases at a lower salary. You pay the highest healthcare premiums in the world, but insurance or no, if you suffer a major illness you will be financially ruined. Even if you have a complete recovery and manage to pay all of your debts your employment possibilities are dimmed for life. How can a company hire you after a heart attack or a cancer scare? You are disposable, there is no quid pro que. Your forty or fifty years of service to the machine means nothing, your pension, your healthcare can evaporate like a puddle after a spring rain. Nothing is promised to you and nothing will be given to you, if there is any chance to take it away. The customer with the most money is always right.
As we debate the refugees coming to our southern border, once again it is Capitalism that displaced them and Capitalism which has brought them here. In 2009, Manuel Zelaya the lawfully elected President of Honduras was overthrown in a US back coup. Zelaya's crime was raising the country's minimum wage. Please take note of US duplicity.
[ U.S. President Barack Obama stated: "We believe that the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the president of Honduras, the democratically elected president there." He stated: "It would be a terrible precedent if we start moving backwards into the era in which we are seeing military coups as a means of political transition, rather than democratic elections." Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, however, equivocated, saying that "We do think that this has evolved into a coup" and noting that under U.S. law, officially declaring a coup would oblige the U.S. to cut off most foreign aid to Honduras." Cutting off aid was seen as a possibility in the days after the coup, and State Department Director of Policy Planning Anne-Marie Slaughter urged Clinton to "take bold action" and to "find that [the] coup was a 'military coup' under U.S. law." Nevertheless, Clinton did not do so, and the U.S. never formally declared that a coup had occurred. By November 2009, the U.S. "focused on pushing for elections" in the country. In September 2009, the Board of the U.S. Millennium Challenge Commission, headed by Clinton, cut off $11 million in aid to the Honduran government in the wake of the coup, and suspended another $4 million in planned contributions to a road project From 2009 to mid-2016, however, the U.S. provided about $200 million in military and police aid to Honduras, a controversial decision given the violence in Honduras and the government's human rights violations] Wikipedia
Cut off road funding add $200 million in military aid, see the pattern yet? Ah, the things you'll never hear about on Fox News or MSNBC for that matter. Benghazi, Uranium One, Pizza Gate! But not a word about turning Honduras into a brutal police state or destabilizing Venezuela after Hugo Chavez. So, these people seek to escape state sponsored violence, gang violence, poverty and crime what can they do? When you cannot live where you are, you must go somewhere else. The current occupant of the oval office wants to build a wall. Stop for a second, A real-estate developer wants to build a five-billion-dollar wall. Not unlike President oil man starting a war in Iraq.
These events are not isolated, the war in Afghanistan was about minerals. The war in Syria is geopolitical chess about who controls this square. The US has walled off the middle east and doesn't like interlopers muscling in. Brexit is about weakening the European Union, they once said the Euro could become the world's reserve currency, but the US won't let that happen.
The ice is melting, fish stocks are shrinking, carbon levels are rising, the storms fury increases. What is the plan Stan? How will we put Pandora back into her box? We have approximately ten years to figure this out.
(Article changed on January 2, 2019 at 18:10)
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