Quote of the Day

The Chinese failure (amended/updated)

First the Chinese gave us toys laced with lead and poison for our children to play with, be exposed to and quite likely harm.

Of course, part of that is our own fault for having the adult-child George W. Bush in the White House where he denuded our EPA which was supposed to protect us from such things but that's another story.

Then, the Chinese poisoned their own children because some greedy idiot put melamine in their infant's formula food.

Better them than us, right?

All this time, they're poisoning their own water and air, horribly, but, hey, they want to be a wealthy superpower fast.

And of course they have the worst mines and mining accidents on the planet.

Sure, I'd like to see them raise their people out of the abject poverty they've experienced for hundreds of years, sure, but not at any price. Not at the price of unbridled, poisoning capitalism and consumerism.

Next, they poisoned lots of Americans recently in the South with their drywall products which virtually immediately sickened the residents who were exposed to it.

"But it was a bargain!"

Sick.

Now, check this out--a Chinese freighter is sitting on the Great Barrier Reef, down in Australia, about to foul that incredible, unique, magnificent and fragile ecosytem.

You know what? The world needs to tell the Chinese "enough!" "We've had it. We aren't taking this crap any more."

But wait.

That's what they should tell us, the US, too, given our near-destruction of the world economy, given the banking and mortgage mess we inflicted on the world.

Never mind.

Update on the stranded tanker at the G.B. Reef: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100405/ts_nm/us_australia_ship;_ylt=AiOEm81ILnRvmW47WjbF48as0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTNscDhraDYxBGFzc2V0A25tLzIwMTAwNDA1L3VzX2F1c3RyYWxpYV9zaGlwBGNjb2RlA21vc3Rwb3B1bGFyBGNwb3MDNgRwb3MDMwRwdANob21lX2Nva2UEc2VjA3luX2hlYWRsaW5lX2xpc3QEc2xrA3N0cmFuZGVkc2hpcA--

We don't know our history

If you know anything of history--our history, anyone's history, really, the history of humans and humankind (I'm going to be "pc" here, live with it), you have to know that mankind has been built on the rich and wealthy--the very wealthy, frequently--taking advantage of and living on and because of, the poor and, frequently, the very poor.

If you study humankind's history, you will learn this.

Think of it--history as far back as we can go.

Go back to Egypt, Egyptians and the pyramids. Who do you think built those? We all know who did. The poor; slaves, likely.

If you've watched "The Tudors" on Showtime lately, you can see the wealthy--"Royalty"--living on and because of the poor, what we call "serfs". It still goes on today, as we all know.

Watch the series "We Shall Remain" on PBS and see if you don't see the materially and financially poor aborigines--Indigenous Americans--exploited and beaten down, killed, by people with more money and material goods.

If you've seen this other series, "Appalachia: A History of Mountains and People", you've seen how the poor were horribly expoited, again and again by corporations and the wealthy, frequently absentee owners.

Think of the Aborigines of Australia. It was the same situation. The financially poor, used, abused and thrown away by the newer, material society.

And we call that "success".

And yet we don't learn anything from this, either. We don't hold back the corporations; we don't keep the coal companies from their mountaintop removal; we don't conserve nature; we don't protect our waterways.

We don't learn that we don't need to have the wealthy continue to exploit all the rest of us, pollution or no pollution.

We don't learn.

I'll tell you, we'd better start. We'll all benefit from it.

Links:
http://www.wholeearth.com/issue/1120/book-review/270/night.comes.to.the.cumberlands
http://appalachiafilm.org/
http://www.sho.com/site/tudors/home.do