- And the ripping and tearing continues across the land
across the world. Local issues have citizens pitted, and railing against
one another over who will pay? Who will fund the education of children?
Classism really; through none dare voice it. Rich towns against the poorer
ones. Escalating costs in funding special education classes, with ever
more Draconian mandates from the marbled indifference of Washington; that
is far removed from the everyday trials and tribulations of the ordinary
citizen. Corporate robber barons go belly-up, leaving hundreds of thousands
jobless or destitute with pension funds of those who've worked a life time;
funding their mansions, multi-million dollar bonuses, tennis courts, pools,
designer clothes, opulent jewelry, Ivy league educations for their children;
with monies stolen, and now protected in layered legalese from Trusts to
Foundations and exceptions in carefully written state laws.
-
- Special Education? One might inquire as to how children
might thrive in areas inundated with toxic chemicals from various industries:
including coal companies, incinerators, and massive chemical plants and
refineries drenching playgrounds, schools, city and small town streets?
Industries, located far from the lakeside, mountaintop, or island retreats
of those who own them ! Far from the majesty of Wyoming elite retreats;
filled with Trophy Homes of those who've 'made it'; on the backs and lives
of those they refer to as; "human-resources, masses, the herd, breeders,
white trash, commoners, acceptable-risks, or simpletons." Over-crowded
inner city schools have children attending classes in hallways, stairwells
and bathrooms! Asphalt cracked playgrounds, in a fog of carbon monoxide,
is hardly a reprive from the decaying, crumbling structures called schools!
How is it that these children; or those in backwater impoverished, rusting
mill towns, or Appalachia's coal mining towns stand a chance at competing
in a society gone global? No lead, mercury, carcinogenic dioxin, arsenic
nor thousands of other as yet unknown chemicals are saturating the spacious,
meticulously kept hockey fields, pools, tennis courts, heliport pads; of
shaded lawns surrounding country private schools. Schools with computer
wings, leather bound libraries, photo-labs, and science buildings with
the best of equipment and the best of Mastered/Doctorate teachers!
-
- Lobbyists and armies of corporate lawyers attend to the
details of companies freed up from any and all liabilities and the nuisance
of paying any appreciable taxes. Legislation on the state or federal level
( Interstate Commerce Clause that identifies garbage as a commodity) sees
to it that the law protects and serves the business interests. Profits
over People. Public/Private Partnerships means the public pays; all upgrades,
mandates, taxes and upkeep. Pollution Trading Credits another layered bunch
of hogwash has industry permitted to continue polluting areas at 'high
risk'. All legal! Waters poisoned, farmlands saturated with dioxin/lead/mercury
etc., cancers, asthma, auto-immune diseases, warnings of not to eat the
fish and deformed frogs has industry with it's regiments of high paid attorney's
saying to the local farmers, truckers, policemen, firemen, teachers, Wal-Mart
greeter, produce manager, construction worker, logger, and small business
owners; "Prove it. Take us to court".
-
- Cities now clogged with the rotting refuse of the multitudes
has discovered that rural America, where people's were responsible stewards
of the land in their small villages, farms and woodlands, are now the
perfect dumping grounds for millions of tons of garbage and toxic incinerators!
Sites are located in mostly poor impoverished communities and never in
tourist or vacation enclaves. Places where people are having a daily struggle
in supporting their families with two or three jobs. Places, where industry
in concert with local and state officials; have decided far outside the
citizens knowledge; in smoke filled, whisky toasting, corporate boardrooms,
that some animals are less equal than others. Industry identifies these
areas as "Public Benefit Zones" and the people therein as "acceptable-risks
or sub-groups." Human suffering and lives is brought down to a mere
formula of so many 'acceptable deaths'. It's simply business with the messiness
of emotionalism, hysteria, outrage or anger simply not part of the equation.
-
- Bethlehem, NH is such a place; along with many rural
communities in Pennsylvania and Virginia to name a few. Bethlehem, a small
town in northern NH, once was a health resort with numerous old hotels
catering to those seeking relief from the cities smog. No more! Now in
the most majestic part of our state, many hike Mount Washington, or walk
the trails of the White Mountain National Forest oblivious or indifferent
to the fact that now upwards of two million tons of rotting refuse sits
at the edge. Two million tons shipped in from those living the 'good life'.
A small band of committed, responsible citizens has battled relentlessly
these past years for some semblance of justice of recognition. But the
odds aren't too good. Country folk up against the deep pockets of industry
who don't live where they defecate! A public hearing was finally agreed
to after 15years with the usual indifference of state regulators; supposedly
appointed to protect the health of the environment and the citizens. Despite
the testimony given that night some two years ago permitting went on unhindered.
-
- A tribunal table of disinterested lackeys from the Department
of Environmental Services, with their 'bottled water' sat emotionless and
bored as citizen after citizen spoke of the horrific stench, the rust colored
water, rats, and seagulls (yes seagulls defecating on mountain gardens).
The night droned on in this dimly lit school gym as those weary from a
day's work in their flannel shirts, coveralls and simple attire pleaded
for some recognition. Not familiar with the pretense of these so called
public hearings; citizens hoped against hope that finally the seriousness
of the situation would be tended to. As the evening drew to a close a voice
could be heard from the shadows. A young mother named Jody stepped up to
the mike. Jody in a shapeless red sweater crossed her arms over her chest
and said, "Look at me, look at me! My breasts are gone and my womb
removed. You did this to me." The powerless, puppet lackeys, listened
to the anguish of this dark haired mother of two with the same benign indifference
they'd exhibited all evening. When she finished they collected their bottled
water and useless papers and left. The garbage continues. Jody is Ohio,
Pennsylvania, Virginia, Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Mexico, Bhopal India,
and Chernobyl's genocide. She is the voice of the unmoneyed, the powerless
of all lands. "Look at me---wombless and breastless, you did this!!!"
-
- Government leaders are now meeting in Johannesburg or
the second Earth Summit. Why bother? The destruction of the world's environment
today is being done by multinational corporations which can simply move
operations if one government becomes too restrictive or difficult. They
are responsible to no-one! In India, 8000 people died in the first few
days as 40 tons of lethal gas spilled out from Union Carbide's pesticide
plant. Over 500,000 were expose to poisonous gasses with 150,000 chronically
ill. In the UK, British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. dumped 182 kilograms of plutonium
into the Irish Sea. Lobsters from the Irish Sea and Norwegian coast now
have tested positive for high levels of radioactive contamination. Environmentalists
and concerned citizens continue pleading and arguing with governments over
articles and clauses in 'treaties' which in the end will prove negligible!
Corporations hold the power. The World Trade Organization has supplanted
environmental treaties and regulations. Corporations have become accountable
only under the rules of free market, free trade, a free for all on human
rights and the irreparable damage to the environment! These corporations,
whether on the local or international level have opted for a 'voluntary'
approach! Kind of like having a OJ Simpson volunteering his services at
a domestic violence shelter! We have all observed how responsible corporations
have been in handling money! Are we to believe that they are anymore responsible
in protecting fragile ecosystems and the health of citizens? I think not.
Greed and perverse power of this magnitude apparently knows no bounds!
It is our responsibility to be responsible stewards of the earth's resources
and not give it over to those who would plunder, and rape, destroying rain
forests, oceans, rivers and lakes! What will we tell the children? We were
busy watching the Yankee game, golfing, out to the club, partying, bowling,
or shopping the world's malls. Marching for peace?
-
- If people would stop their ripping and tearing (purposed
to distract) at each other over their own special interests and realize
that if the lands, waters and air are irreparably poisoned we all lose;
most especially future generations being left with the mess. How do you
replant an ancient forest, a rainforest, a river's mercury-laden waters,
radiated ocean waters, stunted, toxified, learning disabled children? How
do you undo the blindness of the Bhopal people, the radiated Russian people,
the babies being born without brains on the massively polluted Mexican
border, the retarded, twisted children in rural Indian villages, veterans/civilians
poisoned by depleted uranium shells and lands in Columbia destroyed with
toxic defoliants? How? It's not Blacks against Whites, confederate flags,
a pledge of allegiance, prayer in schools, nailclippers on planes, Democrats
versus Republicans, Muslim against Christian, straights against gays,
restitution for slavery, medical care, prescription drugs, social security,
et al. It's not about some media-hype American dream with two or more cars,
the perfect lucrative paying job, a vacation home, trips hither and yon,
perfect kids educated in ivy league colleges, designer clothes and designer
homes! All symptomatic and many times encouraged to distract people from
the real issues. All TV cartoon-land stuff! 'Without vision the people
perish'. The vision resides individually in each man/woman's heart. Freedom,
liberty, equality, honor, valor, integrity and justice are not abstract
words on parchment paper. They are visions or ideals that all should seek
one for the other.
-
- It's about the human dream...the human vision. If we
bomb the entire planet into submission and lock up every dissenter, every
opposing opinion, every minority, every suspicious non-compliant other;
and set up road blocks at every intersection, what have we wrought? Four
billion imprisoned and six million new laws will not see peace, equality
nor love of neighbor; be he/she Black, white, Native American Indian, Arab,
Jewish, Spanish, Muslim, Chinese, Japanese, Catholic, fundamentalist, Protestant,
atheist, pagan or agnostic. As long as prejudice, rancor, hatred, bias,
jealousy, or indifference exists in first myself; then my community, we
will continue to have terrorism. It is simply a time for the majority of
people of good will to come forth and be present in responsibility and
peace right where they live and put an end to tyranny that has greed destroying
a fragile, wondrous, place we all call home. Planet Earth. One of a kind
and irreplaceable. One person and a righteous cause is a majority!
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