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Capitalism Killing the Earth and its People

Hasbara Buster

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Capitalism Killing the Earth and its People

By Finian Cunningham

‘I see a bad moon rising

I see trouble on the way

I see earthquakes and lightning

I see hard times today’

John Fogerty, Bad Moon Rising (1969)

January 31, 2015 "ICH" - "Press TV" - John Fogerty’s classic rock song ‘Bad Moon Rising’, from the 1960s, could be the foreboding soundtrack for what is rumbling in America’s Midwest today.

Earthquakes have now become a daily occurrence in Oklahoma and other Midwest states. In the past, a baseline incidence of quakes was two or so a year. Now, the region is experiencing over 500 a year, according to official seismological records. So far, there hasn’t been “a big one”. Most of the quakes have registered around 3 to 5 on the Richter Scale. But it seems only a matter of time before the Earth lashes back with deadly force.

A report this week in the Washington Post tells of widespread structural damage and personal injuries from the “swarm of earthquakes” that residents in Oklahoma are having to endure. With trepidation, ordinary people are fearing that a final calamity is crescendoing.

“The earthquakes come nearly every day now, cracking drywall, popping floor tiles and rattling kitchen cabinets. On Monday, three quakes hit this historic land-rush town [Guthrie] in 24 hours, booming and rumbling like the end of the world,” reports Lori Montgomery for the Post.

“After a while, you can’t even tell what’s a pre-shock or an after-shock. The ground just keeps moving,” says one resident. “People are so frustrated and scared.”

The oil and gas industry will, of course, deny any link between the new geological phenomenon and its increased drilling activity. But self-serving capitalists are hardly a reliable source. They claim that the surge in seismological tremors across America’s Midwest is just part of a “natural cycle” of more frequent quakes.

That’s not much comfort to millions of people living in dense cities and towns, with their homes mortgaged to the hilt, or their workplaces nestled in high-rise buildings.

No matter what the industry capitalists and their bribed politicians may say, there seems little doubt that the Earth is quaking from the so-called enhanced recovery techniques of hydraulic fracturing. This is where chemical fluids are injected under extremely high pressure into subterranean wells to break up shale rock layers and release untapped reserves of natural gas or oil.

The injection-wells can penetrate the earth to a depth of 10,000 ft (3 kilometers) and the high-pressure fracking fluid contains hundreds of organic chemicals to punch out the raw fuel from the rock fissures.

Hydrocarbons and profits may be gushing anew for the American industry, but it is humans and the environment that are subsidizing the system by bearing the huge costs of collateral damage.

Fracking has become the new El Dorado for the oil and gas industry, promising lucrative profits and a revival of flagging economies. The US is a world leader in the practice, where rejuvenation of the oil and gas industry is touted as the savior of a stagnant capitalist economy and as a strategic lever for American global power.

The crisis in Ukraine, for example, is very much predicated on American ambitions to displace Russia as the main energy supplier to Europe. Fracking is thus the holy grail for Washington’s global ambitions.

But as with many best-laid plans, there is a snag. Actually, several potentially fatal snags. Not only is the proliferation of hydraulic fracturing in the US unleashing seismological spasms; the industrial activity is creating massive contamination of groundwater. Fracking fluid can contain up to 600 chemicals, such as mercury and ethylene glycol, some of which are known carcinogens.

Millions of barrels of chemical fluid have to be pumped into the Earth in order to retrieve the same number of barrels of gas or oil equivalent. These chemicals are seeping into freshwater aquifers and thence into drinking-water infrastructure. Also, the natural methane gas released from the fracking process is not always recovered by the industry. Instead, it finds its way into unintended fissures and eventually home water supplies, to the point where some households in America’s Midwest can now ignite water coming out of their kitchen taps.

There are now reckoned to be 500,000 of these injection-wells operating across the US, mainly in the Midwest states of Oklahoma, Texas, Ohio and Arkansas. So far, the oil and gas industry has enjoyed a boom in profits and stock market exuberance; and certainly several states have gained revenues and jobs as a result. But the steep human and environmental costs are looming, and, increasingly, are no longer hidden. Millions of people living in quaking homes and offices is a harbinger of even bigger “costs.”

That’s capitalism for you. The pursuit of private financial profit is the only objective that over-rules all other considerations. Poisoning water and people, destroying the Earth and natural ecosystems are all irrelevant where capitalism is concerned. Profit is the only decision-maker, no matter how absurd, unjust or calamitous.

The state of Oklahoma was reportedly hit with over 550 quakes in the past year. In the 1930s, the red-dirt state was clobbered with another ecological crisis, known as the “dust bowl era.” Millions of families were uprooted, dispossessed and displaced because new intensive farming practices in preceding years had ruined the soil structure, making it blow away in huge waves of dust. Farms were shuttered by banks foreclosing on bankrupt families. Industrial agriculture and the reckless pursuit of capitalist profit was the primary cause of the Dust Bowl.

In his classic novel, The Grapes of Wrath (1939), John Steinbeck wrote about the anguish and suffering of the droves of people from Oklahoma and other Midwest states, who during the Great Depression had to migrate to California to eke out a living as farm laborers. They endured heartrending poverty, sickness, hunger, death, and brutality from truncheon-wielding cops along the way.

Eight decades on, America still hasn’t learnt anything. Capitalism is killing the Earth and its people, again and again. How many calamities must be endured under this barbaric, irrational system? When will we finish with it, before it finishes us?

And it’s not just about oil and gas, or agriculture. Capitalism mandates imperialism, which in turn mandates conflict and war. Anyone must see that America’s collision course with Russia over the trumped-up Ukraine crisis is a direct function of US imperialism and its European vassals. Ultimately, this capitalist logic, unchecked, could lead to nuclear war, just as American imperialist-capitalist logic was behind the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Part of the reason for subjugating Eastern Ukraine is to make way for oil and gas fracking in Novorossiya by the company Burisma, whose executive board members include Hunter Biden, son of Joe Biden, the US vice president.

So there you have the complete circle. Killing people at home and around the world, and all for the making of tacky bits of paper called dollars. Surely human beings can do better than that.

Finian Cunningham (born 1963) has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. He is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism.


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Don't worry! Capitalism will find us a new planet to live. :enjoy:

what a callous statement to make.

it is the generally socialistic spacex and the reasonable "mars one" that is taking you to mars... how is capitalism taking you there??

on mars, capitalism would have no meaning... can you eat and breathe your dollars, riyals, rupees??

Capitalism for life :enjoy:

you live in india yet you make this statement?? of course, you are 16, you said... please stop being surrounded by school/college books and look at the sufferings of the real india around you.

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the system of money is unnatural yet it is constantly justified and legitimized by what can only be not deeply thinking people... why should anyone be in job only for the sake of bringing food on his plate... what has an mba or stock broker given to humanity except suffering... why is he not brought to trial before a world people's court... why are his masters constantly invading lands and removing former welfare systems and instead installing greedy corporations who don't cry when someone is unable to arrange a comfortable house so has to live in a ghetto filled with crime, filth, dogs, noise, religious fanatics and oppressiveness... they want money to give medical treatment else no treatment, they say... go and die quietly, they say... and i say that is murder, holding a patient to ransom... the doctor should treat the patient for free... life is sacred.

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this lady died because of capitalism... ( Woman working 4 jobs to make ends meet dies while napping in car between shifts — RT USA )...

maria-fernandes.si.jpg



they died and suffer because of capitalism... ( Death, hunger stalk Indian tea-estate workers )...

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undeniably, india is the most capitalist society in history... undeniably as consequence, "suicide capital of the world", that is india's new tag... worship of money is cultural here, filling from family level to government level... it is not respect for prosperity but worship of money... a typical mother of the older generation ( lower/middle class, of course ) will respect her son only if he is in job... no respect she will have for him even if he is technological real contributor... she says to him "show me the money... yes, show me the money"... she seeks respect from her fellow mothers through her son's money... a farmer in the dry lands of india will trust prayers, rituals, mysticisms and will find a loan to do the stupidest of things... arrange a daughter's wedding ( no divorce allowed ) in a huge way, send his aged parents to do some religious pilgrimage, arrange a festival feast... but his foolish belief in prayers fail and his crops fail and the money-lenders and banks harass him... they want the money, why should they bother with the troubles of the farmer... august in the main month for farmers to commit suicide every year... a bloody joke... a season for suicide... a filthy reason... students and job seekers commit suicide because their families decided to have fake vanity, wanting to show neighbors and relatives that they have some money... the student is pressurized to get high marks in india's useless and criminal "education" system... when he can't they pressurize him until he explodes with final misery and consumes floor-cleaning liquid... ta da... ta da... another mother has killed another son only because she wanted to have superiority in gossip sessions with her female neighbors... same case for people in jobs.

money, money, money... unnatural, filthy, regressive... yet continued.

"suicide capital of the world"... rejoice o indians... buy more western weapons standing on the suffered minds and self-killed bodies of your own citizens... rejoice... call yourself "economic power" without thinking for a second about insanity of your greedy traditions which makes hundreds of millions of your citizens suffer each day in small ways and big ways... what do you want your western bloc weapons to protect... prayer houses??

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@Hasbara Buster @Syrian Lion @vostok
 
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what a callous statement to make.

it is the generally socialistic spacex and the reasonable "mars one" that is taking you to mars... how is capitalism taking you there??

on mars, capitalism would have no meaning... can you eat and breathe your dollars, riyals, rupees??



you live in india yet you make this statement?? of course, you are 16, you said... please stop being surrounded by school/college books and look at the sufferings of the real india around you.

---------------------

the system of money is unnatural yet it is constantly justified and legitimized by what can only be not deeply thinking people... why should anyone be in job only for the sake of bringing food on his plate... what has an mba or stock broker given to humanity except suffering... why is he not brought to trial before a world people's court... why are his masters constantly invading lands and removing former welfare systems and instead installing greedy corporations who don't cry when someone is unable to arrange a comfortable house so has to live in a ghetto filled with crime, filth, dogs, noise, religious fanatics and oppressiveness... they want money to give medical treatment else no treatment, they say... go and die quietly, they say... and i say that is murder, holding a patient to ransom... the doctor should treat the patient for free... life is sacred.

-------

this lady died because of capitalism... ( )...

maria-fernandes.si.jpg



they died and suffer because of capitalism... ( )...

460x.jpg


-------

undeniably, india is the most capitalist society in history... undeniably as consequence, "suicide capital of the world", that is india's new tag... worship of money is cultural here, filling from family level to government level... it is not respect for prosperity but worship of money... a typical mother of the older generation ( lower/middle class, of course ) will respect her son only if he is in job... no respect she will have for him even if he is technological real contributor... she says to him "show me the money... yes, show me the money"... she seeks respect from her fellow mothers through her son's money... a farmer in the dry lands of india will trust prayers, rituals, mysticisms and will find a loan to do the stupidest of things... arrange a daughter's wedding ( no divorce allowed ) in a huge way, send his aged parents to do some religious pilgrimage, arrange a festival feast... but his foolish belief in prayers fail and his crops fail and the money-lenders and banks harass him... they want the money, why should they bother with the troubles of the farmer... august in the main month for farmers to commit suicide every year... a bloody joke... a season for suicide... a filthy reason... students and job seekers commit suicide because their families decided to have fake vanity, wanting to show neighbors and relatives that they have some money... the student is pressurized to get high marks in india's useless and criminal "education" system... when he can't they pressurize him until he explodes with final misery and consumes floor-cleaning liquid... ta da... ta da... another mother has killed another son only because she wanted to have superiority in gossip sessions with her female neighbors... same case for people in jobs.

money, money, money... unnatural, filthy, regressive... yet continued.

"suicide capital of the world"... rejoice o indians... buy more western weapons standing on the suffered minds and self-killed bodies of your own citizens... rejoice... call yourself "economic power" without thinking for a second about insanity of your greedy traditions which makes hundreds of millions of your citizens suffer each day in small ways and big ways... what do you want your western bloc weapons to protect... prayer houses??

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I, Just like others only live for my self and my family I don't give shit about others :)
India was pretty much socialist after independence, we are free market now look at our shining yet small economy and look at growth, look at our new high living standard.....
Just compare 1980's india with 2014's india and you will get your answers sir :)
Regards,
Crudept

Mumbai2--621x414.jpg
:smitten:
 
I, Just like others only live for my self and my family I don't give shit about others :)

that is a wrong attitude.

you know, if your father or uncle or older female relative ever worked in a bank or factory, ask them about the ideology that gave them "employees union"... somebody did give many shit for others. :coffee:

India was pretty much socialist after independence,

india was and is the most capitalist society ever... i as a socialist am telling you that.

we are free market now look at our shining yet small economy and look at growth, look at our new high living standard.....
Just compare 1980's india with 2014's india and you will get your answers sir :)
Regards,
Crudept

1980's india was stalled by bureaucracy, nothing to do with socialism... i was young in the 80's and 90's, i know.
 
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