Scum

By David Glenn Cox

Who among us hasn’t been told to clean up our mess? Who among us doesn’t take responsibility for our actions? Who would dump garbage on their neighbors and then just ignore them when they complain? World Capitalist’s that’s who, far from the claims of growth and prosperity promised to us by global free trade we have heard not only the giant sucking sound of disappearing employment but the sound of giants sucking.

In Mexico the town of Tehuacan, blue jean washing factories have poisoned the once pure water supply leaving the residents unable to even subsistence farm for survival. The blue jeans manufactured under NAFTA are headed to the American market after poisoning the Mexican water supply. But where are the Mexicans to go? Now that their village is poisoned? The obvious answer is north to America to escape the American manufactured poverty.

The idea of free trade was to bring jobs to help eliminate Mexican immigration but instead we have exported poverty and death so huge corporations could profit from low wages and weak environmental standards.

In Columbia Occidental petroleum and Amoco were using open pit wastewater ponds to capture run off from their wells in the Orrinico fields. The ponds leached the equivalent of one 55gallon drum of petroleum every 24 hours into the river. The poisoned water made it almost impossible for the native tribes to live on their once clean river system. Open pit wastewater ponds in oil drilling have been outlawed in the United States for over 100 years so it’s not as if they didn’t know any better they just didn’t care. One gallon of petroleum will contaminate 1,000,000 gallons of fresh water.

In Kabwe Zambia in Africa, abandoned lead mines that were once owned by Anglo American corporations have poisoned drinking water. Mines in Kabwe were built and operated without health and safety concerns or environmental regulation. As a result, Zambia’s people are now facing the consequences. More than 100 people visit Kabwe’s main clinic complaining of sickness every day, but the town has no facilities to test for lead poisoning.

But hey who cares about those third world peoples dying when we are making a profit here? They have demanded that Anglo-American, the former owner of Kabwe’s mine, and the Zambian government gives financial compensation. Peter Sinkamba, from Citizens for a Better Environment, in Zambia, said: "We need in the tune of $28m to adequately address the problem of Kabwe. "But what is not correct, not morally correct, is for Anglo to run away from this problem which they created.

"They made their money from Kabwe where there is a huge, huge problem.’’ But it’s not going to happen Globalism isn’t about responsibility it’s about ducking responsibility.

In Argentina laborers living at subsistence levels cut down rain forests to make coke to produce raw steel products. The fires totally unregulated are visible from space as an ecosystem that took a millennium to evolve literally goes up in smoke. In India obsolete cargo ships are beached and cut up for scrap. The workers use cutting torches without any eye protection after all why should the company pay $5.00 dollars for eye protection when they can get another worker for free? If a worker falls or is injured the man at the gate yells next! The injured worker is taken off to die or recover on his own after all it wasn’t the company’s fault he fell now was it?

And what’s good enough for third world worker is good enough for you! Tainted cat food toothpaste, seafood and Fisher Price’s Chinese manufactured toys with lead based paint poison me Elmo. The original concept was to expand markets but in reality it was about cheap labor the average Chinese laborer makes the equivalent of Henry Ford’s 1925 wage of $5.00 a day.

Millions profit from free trade but hundreds of millions suffer because of it. China is rapidly becoming the most polluted country on the planet. It’s rapid growth has prompted the Chinese government to open one new coal fired electrical power plant a week fifty a year five hundred in ten years. Then there is the three gorges damn project to tame the Yang See river but the source of the water comes from the Himalayan snow cap and glaciers which are rapidly melting because of global warming. Perhaps future generations will scratch their heads in wonder “why did they build a huge damn for such a small river?” That is assuming there are future generations.

But what else does global free trade bring us? In a word war, the industrialization of the third world increases the demand for raw materials and natural resources. In Columbia, Nigeria the Philippines, Sierra Leone insurgents fight established governments over either raw materials or exploitation by foreign nationals seeking minerals. The United States has restarted the cold war with Russia by trying to lock her out of the energy market. Not to forget Venezuela whose government has shown the audacity to demand the same treatment given to the Arab sheiks in oil contracting.

Iraq is of course the most glaring example but the rape of Iraq will be remembered more for the precedent it set. That a war of aggression for raw materials is a legitimate national right. The destabilization of global principles reducing the world to pre WW1 power blocks and Empires. Those weak nations must align themselves with powerful nations or go nuclear for self-defense. What else can the inevitable outcome be? How else can this end but badly?

Recently John Howard Australia’s Prime Minister called anti globalism protestors who plan protests against this week’s APEC summit “hypocrites because the international meeting will help cut global poverty.” Just how stupid do we think you are? That’s the dumbest thing to come out of a leaders mouth since “The terrorist hate our freedom.”
Australia is already the driest continent on the planet and is suffering through a prolonged drought, which is threatening to become permanent.

In an attempt to rank himself amongst the stupidest leaders on Earth Howard continues,

"It’s not the fault of the American president, or the Chinese president or the Russian president, it’s not the fault of the NSW government or the federal government. It’s the fault of people who threaten violence.”

"That’s why you have to have heavy security. It’s got nothing to do with the luggage or the behavior of the people who are coming here as our guests.’’

"Stop and think for a moment. Are you really going to alleviate poverty by killing economic growth?" Howard said at a news conference in Sydney.

Right back at you PM, are you going to aid growth or alleviate poverty by killing the planet? You think these protestors are rough wait until you start to import drinking water or face thousands of your own thirsty citizens. The naivete that will force you to spend your national budget to provide what you once received free from the skies.

But those at the top who are benefiting from global free rape think it’s worth the cost of course they are the rapist’s and not the victims. They can believe if they wish that it’s not the fault of the American President or the Chinese slave master and they can call the protestor’s “hypocrites” just as long as you stay away from the mirror when you do.

Global free trade has a one fatal flaw outside of those already named, it values profits over people. It reduces humanity, it strips away the notions of fairness and magnanimity of collective bargaining or the value of human labor. Reducing the planet to peasants and serfs unworthy of life if it impedes profits. Humanity is all that we have to cling to if we lose it we are no better than the beasts of the field and we have not traveled through the wars and fields of time to win the title of Global Peasant.

There are no honest leaders that would lead their people to such a fate, only tyrants. Tyrants that build fences and arm police to protect against the violence of protestors forced to live stripped of humanity. Tyrants deserve only the pike no different from the days of castles in the dark ages to protect the king from the starving. Is that humanities fate? A new dark age? Is that our bright shining tomorrow?

If that is our fate why then should we go quietly? Either way we will suffer, if we do nothing our fate is sealed. Our lessons should come from the insurgencies around the world that would rather live as freedom fighters than under a boot heel and understand that Globalism isn’t the next chapter it’s the last chapter. Globalism produces scum at all levels of society but none worse than the scum who claim the diadem of leader.