This year is starting out very much like the last one ended. Here are a few of the ways I’m thinking of.
Conflict in Syria. Juan Cole reports that 2013 may have been the bloodiest year thus far in Syria, with an estimated 73,000 killed in the ongoing civil war, and more than 130,000 since the conflict started. This ongoing disaster is, in many ways, a regional conflict with a Syrian focus, as one representative of the International Crisis Committee put it recently. The only solution, it seems, is for the warring parties to say “enough”, to agree to some means of saving what’s left of their country, even if it means Assad remains in power. That would be a hard pill for many to swallow, but what is the alternative? As Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United States put their ample resources into fighting a proxy war with Iran, the Syrian people are caught in the middle. Six million refugees and no end in sight. Time to push the extremists aside and sue for peace.
Energy refugees. While talking heads praise the fracking-fueled resurgence of America’s energy sector, people in places like Casselton ND are paying the price, driven from their homes in the middle of winter by the dramatic derailment and explosion of a sludge-oil train laden with fracking chemicals. This is the latest in a series of toxic spills as the country hurriedly ramps up production of the last-century fuels that are destroying our atmosphere in pursuit of short-sighted economic growth. Once again, it’s all about jobs, jobs, jobs … if by that we mean, profits, profits, profits for the oil and gas industries and the corporations that support them.
Unemployment. The long-term unemployed are playing without a net this new year, thanks to a useless Congress intent on blaming the victims in a financial crisis they helped create and have bent over backwards working to prolong. I’d say the chances are close to nil that the House will pass an extension when they return to what’s euphemistically referred to as “work” in their little world, but miracles happen … particularly if you call to complain.
I’ll continue this noxious list next week. Stay tuned.
luv u,
jp
Yeah, hey howdy. Welcome back to the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill in beautiful upstate New York, where the winters are cold and the derricks run day and night, pulverizing the shale that supports the very ground we walk on to squeeze every last iota of value out of the battered slag that is America. Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm, our once and future corporate overlords, are working this little piece of borrowed real estate like it’s Irian Jaya and they’re Freeport McMoran. But…. I digress. Always like to start on a bright note. Now on to more serious matters.
Things have been kind of noisy around the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, actually. Pretty hard to finish a podcast with all that clanging, drilling, truck traffic, occasional machine gun, etc. What, with Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm now using our adopted home as a platform for hydrofracking, I suppose I should expect as much. Some might think hydrofracking and music production aren’t necessarily compatible, but that’s …. well, that’s just plain ignorant and insensitive. To some people’s ears, the sound of extractive enterprise is melodious and enchanting. And the smell … just like flowers.
Make no mistake – this is not an authorless crime. In Iraq and Saudi Arabia, in the Congo, in Indonesia, and in many, many other places, we have used a heavy hand to maintain effective control over valuable resources. And our extractive industries – oil, gas, mining, etc. – have been an integral part of that process. So just understand, if these companies have an eye on all that shale gas, they will use every means available to get to it. I’m not suggesting military force, but everything short of that. They have deep enough pockets to buy politicians, propagandize on a massive scale, and pay off residents enough to divide communities.
Oh, well…. hi there. Just negotiating a small issue with a representative from Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm, Inc., the entertainment branch of the titanic multinational that has agreed to, once again, sponsor Big Green – take us under their cold steel wing, as it were – in exchange for mineral rights to the land upon which our adopted squat-house home, the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, now sits. What is it about these Hegemonic guys that even their A and R people wear full body armor? They seem a little, I don’t know, nervous. This guy I’m talking to has a very twitchy trigger finger. Wish to hell he’d put that Kalashnikov down.