DAILY NEWS -- AUGUST 27th, 2010
DATELINE: ADDING CRAP TO THE TAILINGS POND – It was announced this morning that The Gap, Walgreens, Levi Strauss and Timberland have decided to support a boycott of Canada’s ‘Dirty Oil’. This has been a debate I have been loath to wade into, because the tailing ponds and environmental issues involved with mining annoy me because of the fact that so much of the money that could be spent on improvements go into the pockets of those who really do not fucking need it. That fact notwithstanding though, I need to heat my house, i need to drive my car, and yes, i believe there is a responsibility on my shoulders to be responsible in what I purchase. So... yes, you hypocritical fucks, boycott Canadian oil. I would love to know what bullshit labels you are reading that specify the oil you are purchasing comes from our ‘dirty oil sands’, because the oil goes down there in one giant pipeline, all mixed up together, so how the fuck do you know. And what the hell are you hanging your clothes on, Mr. Strauss? And Walgreens... what are you going to put your damned pills in if you can’t use plastic bottles? Do you check to see where the oil used in all manufacturing is coming from? Mining, ALL mining, involves tailing ponds, so don’t pontificate on the fact that your tailing ponds are cleaner than ours. They all contain the same toxic cocktail of arsenic, barite, calcite, sulfur, cadmium, flourite, mercury and radioactive materials. Are you boycotting all the smelters down there? When you use all the electricity to run your plants and your stores, where the hell do you think THAT comes from? What the hell powers the turbines on your hydro dams (oh, wait... a lot of that electricity comes from this side of the line as well, and we use ‘dirty oil’ to run those turbines, so perhaps you should refuse our electricity as well.
But here is what pisses me off the absolute most. In your hyperactive knee-jerk desire to get on the hip bandwagon, have you fucking looked at your alternatives for oil? Other than Canada, from whom the US imports just shy of two-million barrels a day of crude and two-and-a-half million barrels a day of petroleum, the rest of the top four are Mexico, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia. So, instead of wanting our oil that is mined in a unique way because of the matrix surrounding the deposits, albeit a way that is used in pretty much every fucking mining operation in the world, you are going to instead support incredibly violent drug cartels and despot governments, places where human rights are a totally non-existent entity. Yes, that is one hell of a plan. Do I think the oil sands could do better? Absofuckinglutely. But I also believe that for any of these companies to tout some propoganda-laden hypocritical bullshit action that targets ONE out of literally thousands, is fucking asinine. So, if you don’t like our fucking oil, I would fully support our government taking a stand as well, and saying ‘fine. Have fun crawling in bed with your fucking terrorist-supporting Saudi bedmates, and with the likes of Hugo Chavez while YOUR oil companies do absolutely sweet fuck all to promote more green fuels and energy systems, and while you drive your fucking Hummers down billions of miles made with roads paved with oil. But please stop using us as a means of pretending to take the fucking ethical high road.
DATELINE: SPEAKING OF WHICH... -- L.P. Ariyawathie is a 49-year-old woman, a mother who lived in desperate poverty in Sri Lanka, who, through an employment agency, was sent to work as a maid in Saudi Arabia. She left her home in March this year. She left with the plan to work hard and eventually come home with enough money to provide a home for her family... that was all she wanted, and she wanted to work to get it herself. Instead, she came home with 23 nails that had been driven into her hands, arms, legs and head. She made the very grave mistake of commenting about being overworked in the Riyadh home that employed her. As a result, she was pinned to the ground by her empoloyer’s wife, while he heated up nails and drove them into her body. Lemme think... is it beyond the realm of possiblity that they were a tad abusive of their hired help? What the hell is it with these fucking assholes? Where does anyone get off thinking they have the right to do that, to torture someone for making a comment? If Ariyawathie had stood there calling them every fucking name in the book and bitching day and night about how she was overworked, it would still not be reason for them to do what they did. If they were not happy with the work she did, they should have arranged with the employment agency to have her replaced. The Ski Lankan Bureau of Foreign Employment will be helping Ariyawathie in taking legal action against her employers. To be honest, at this point in time I would suggest that the husband and wife spend the rest of their pathetic fucking lives cleaning toilets and mopping floors for about 20 hours a day. This crap makes me want to fucking puke.
DATELINE: IN A MASS GRAVE IN MEXICO – Among the seventy-two bodies found in a mass grave just across the border in Mexico, were those of people who were simply looking for a chance to live their fucking lives. They were not all looking for handouts, they were just looking to live their lives without having to worry every fucking minute of the day about being killed, tortured, trafficked, or terrorized by drug cartels who have managed to keep too many people living in destitute conditions. These people were murdered for being in the wrong place, for not giving in to extortion, for having families that did give in to extortion only to have their loved ones killed anyways, and this find is believed to be the tip of the iceberg. The issue of illegal drugs is something that requires consistent global action. They were just people looking for a life that allowed them to live. It happens in too many fucking countries.
DATELINE: WHERE HELL IS NOT ENOUGH, SO ENTER THE TALIBAN – The people of Pakistan have been through absolute hell. They have been forced to flee, many of them repeatedly, because of floods, rising rivers, broken levees, disease and now... the taliban. In an attempt to give some perspective, especially while we revisit the Hurricane Katrina events of five years ago, perhaps we can look at the events this way. I understand the timelines are different, that Katrina was a disaster that happened in short order while the Pakistan flooding has happened at a slower pace, but perhaps this will work. Imagine that New Orleans was one hundred times larger, affecting millions more people, with water that literally chased them hundreds of miles as they carried all their belongings on their backs and tried to help their family stay together. Imagine that aide was slow in coming (yeah, like THAT is a challenge, considering that the people whose lives were all but destroyed by Katrina are STILL, five years later, suffering). Now imagine that once aide started to arrive, the Ku Klux Klan arrived en force to threaten those offering help, terrorizing even more the people who are suffering, who have lost everything and are already in a living hell. The people of Pakistan are people; they are not terrorists. Are there some radicals among them? Of course, but 99% of the people fleeing the water and praying for their lives are just people who, like the rest of us in times of national crisis, are at the mercy of the governments we put in place.
DATELINE: TUCKED SAFELY IN A NICE WARM BED – All things are relative. For one man in Vancouver, a nice warm bed was a garbage dumpster. He was sleeping in one when the garbage truck came along, picked up the bin and dumped it into the back of his truck. He then proceeded to compress the garbage to make room for more, oblivious to the screams. The man lived, but is in hospital with extensive injuries and fractured bones. While a very sad story, even sadder still is that there are many in this country who will argue that a dumpster is a safe place to sleep, that it provides warmth, privacy and protection from both the elements and personal violence they would encounter sleeping in a doorway or on a park bench. As politicians, bankers, oil executives and celebrities rake in the millions of dollars they feel are more than justified for their incredibly valuable contribution to the way of life of the people of the world, they tend to actually overlook the way of life of the people of the world. People should not be sleeping in dumpsters. Babies should not be dying daily with bloatted bellies and empty stomachs. Cholera should NOT be epidemic in Nigeria where there is enough resource money to at least provide clean drinking water for the poor. As a global society, our priorities seem to suck some days.
