Climate and Planning: The Other Crisis Undermining Capitalism

By Deirdre Griswold
Published Jun 9, 2011 10:15 PM


Tuscaloosa, Ala., April 28.

The ink wasn’t even dry on last week’s Workers World article dealing with climate change when tornadoes swept through western Massachusetts on June 1, killing at least three people and devastating more than 20 communities.

Scientists can’t say if a particular storm or set of storms was caused by global warming. Massachusetts has experienced tornadoes before, although rarely. But what scientists are saying with certainty is that the planet is heating up, that warmer temperatures cause more precipitation in some areas and drought in others, and that the frequency and severity of storms has been increasing.

There is also no doubt that the rise in temperatures is due to human burning of fossil fuels, which causes greenhouse gases (GHGs) to collect in the atmosphere and trap heat that otherwise would radiate away from the earth.

Three decades of conferences

These facts have been known or suspected for decades. The First World Climate Conference was held in February 1979 in Geneva, sponsored by the World Meteorological Organization of the United Nations. Nine years later the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was set up to centralize data and issue reports to inform the public on what was happening.

That was followed in 1992 by the creation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change at what became known as the Earth Summit. In the almost two decades since then, the parties to the UNFCCC have held annual meetings. The data presented there have shown that the process of climate change is moving much faster than originally anticipated. But no binding agreement on reducing GHGs has been reached among the member nations.

The main obstacle has been the imperialist U.S. government. In March 2001, President George W. Bush rejected the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement that set very modest limits on GHGs and had been signed in 1992 by his father, the first President Bush.

When Barack Obama was elected in 2008, there was hope among climate activists that this would put the U.S. back on track to cooperate with a world agreement to reduce GHGs. But that was blown out of the water in 2009 at the 15th Climate Change Conference, held in Copenhagen, Denmark, a gathering that aroused great hope and was attended by ministers and officials from 192 countries. Obama himself went there and blocked the conference from issuing a binding resolution that world scientists had labored over for months and that would have taken effect after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.

Thus, it was with a sense of great frustration and even desperation that Bolivia in April 2010 hosted a World People’s Summit on Climate Change and Mother Earth Rights. It reaffirmed the damage being done to the environment, especially in countries oppressed by neocolonial capitalism, and called for respecting the rights of the earth. Some 15,000 people attended from all over.

It needs to be understood that even if GHG emissions were right now to be cut to nothing, the planet would continue to warm for quite a while because of the persistence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. And the chain effects of that would continue to be felt for centuries. (IPCC, “The Long-Term Perspective,” 2007)

There are two urgent needs, immediate and long-term: 1) to prepare for the consequences of sea-level rise and more extreme weather, both of which are sure to come, and 2) to reorganize human life and activity on this planet so GHGs can be reduced to a level where the earth’s temperature and climate can eventually recover some equilibrium.

The first reaction to such a daunting prospect is likely to be despair. If the huge inequities in the world can’t be righted, and are only getting worse, what hope is there that the governments of the rich imperialist countries, the ones responsible for the vast majority of the GHGs emitted over the last two centuries, will shoulder the burden of rectifying global warming and rebuild their societies accordingly?

No, there is no chance of that happening. The capitalist governments are already in chaos over the irrational workings of their economic system, and won’t even address the severe social problems of unemployment, ballooning health costs and the education crisis.

Prepare better shelters for when a deadly storm strikes? Build sturdy homes for the millions who live in flimsy trailers and substandard housing? Build a mass transit system that would reduce auto emissions? All these things — and much more — need to be done. And there are plenty of people looking for work who would love to do them. But that won’t happen — not under capitalism.

Think outside the box

This article is not meant to belittle the many struggles that environmentally conscious people are engaging in to ameliorate the effects of global warming. Rather, it is to get all of us to think outside the box.

The box is this profit system. It is self-perpetuating, even when it’s in crisis, until a force emerges strong enough to oust the super-rich class of property owners from their seats of economic and political power.

And that force is the working class and all those oppressed by capitalism. It is the only force able to paralyze the system just by withholding its labor — as seen recently in microcosm in Wisconsin and much bigger during the Great Depression of the 1930s, when the workers fought tooth and nail to build industrial unions and there was a great leap forward in progressive consciousness on all social questions.

The multinational working class, especially in the imperialist countries, is being walloped by the capitalist bosses and the state and is starting to fight back. It is in the process of painfully developing its own world view, one in solidarity with the workers and oppressed peoples of the planet. Internationalism of the workers is absolutely crucial in this time of a global network of exploitation created by the transnational banks and corporations.

The environmental movement is also being walloped. It needs to develop class consciousness, to identify clearly the root cause of this problem: capitalism. It needs to understand that the super-rich will never become its partners in facing up to the GHG crisis.

Private property divorces the owners of the means of production from the harmful consequences of their productive processes. When the factories, the mines and most of the infrastructure of society are owned and operated to produce maximum profits for a few, then “social responsibility” is just a charade, a cover-up, the spending of a few dollars on look-good projects to hide the fact that the major decisions are calculated to increase the bottom line. And that bottom line leaves out the costs to society. Global warming is one of those costs.

It is a huge problem and can only be truly solved by planning on a mass scale. For planning like that to happen, there will have to be a social revolution. The workers and their allies will have to take over the means of production and operate them on an entirely new basis: not to produce profits for the few, but to meet the needs of the many, including the need to have a sustainable, healthy world.

A tall order? Yes. But capitalism is in crisis and social revolution is more and more on people’s minds. The Bolivia conference showed that. It’s time for climate activists in the U.S. to think outside the box of capitalism.
Articles copyright 1995-2011 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

Japanese workers resist repression as economy slides into recession

By Gene Clancy
Published May 31, 2011 11:28 AM

As the Japanese economy reels from the combined effects of the recent tsunami and human-made nuclear disaster, Japanese workers are facing increased repression as they attempt to fight back against the economic effects of the calamity and expose the nuclear industry for the danger it poses.

On May 20 more than 50 people who were peacefully protesting were forcibly arrested and dragged out of the Tokyo High Court Building. This was an attempt to intimidate a movement of Japanese workers who have protested the unsafe use of nuclear power and the economic policies of the Japanese government and business class.

This latest incident is only the most recent in a campaign of intimidation which began shortly after a March 20 demonstration of more than 1,500 people in Tokyo. They were protesting the government’s handling of the Fukushima nuclear disaster and the general use of nuclear power in Japan.

In April, in the Suginami Ward in Tokyo, an incumbent City Council member who has been campaigning for re-election on an anti-nuclear-plant platform and his supporters were subjected to arbitrary arrests and harassment, despite the lack of any material evidence against them. Police also raided two offices of his election campaign and seized lists of supporters in order to intimidate them. (International Labor Solidarity Committee of Doro Chiba, the National Railway Workers Union of Chiba, April 9)

The workers of Japan also face a deepening economic crisis. The worldwide downturn had already weakened the Japanese economy. Now, following the tsunami and nuclear disasters, the economy has plunged back into recession.

Kaoru Yosano, minister for economic and fiscal policy, said earlier that the March 11 disaster had been the main reason for the fall in output and insisted that growth would soon return. “The Japanese economy has a great deal of resiliency,” Yosano said. (Financial Times, May 19)

However, the extent of the first-quarter fall — equivalent to a 3.7 percent decline on an annualized basis — underscores the scale of the disruption caused by the natural disaster and resulting nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant.

Not only in the disaster areas but also in whole regions of East Japan, workers face massive dismissals and unemployment. The earthquake and tsunami have hit and immobilized thousands of workplaces in Tohoku and Kanto areas. Many factories have had to stop operation all over Japan for lack of parts. This happened because major auto manufacturers and electric machinery corporations rely on outsourcing and their production depends on subcontractors or sub-subcontractors for parts.

When these subcontractors are located in the disaster area, as many are, needed parts don’t show up. Many workers with only irregular employment have been thrown out of daily work without any financial support.

“The number of possible jobless people is beyond assessment. No rescue measure has been offered or planned for those jobless workers. Japan is going to be a huge unemployment peninsula as a result of the earthquake.” (ILSC of Doro Chiba, April 9)

The May 19 Financial Times of London confirmed the economic impact of the human-made Japanese nuclear disaster: “Japan’s devastating tsunami and nuclear disaster pushed the economy much further into recession than expected, raising doubts about the prospects for the world’s third-largest economy. According to preliminary data released on Thursday [May 19], gross domestic product fell 0.9 percent in the first quarter of this year compared with the previous three months. That was nearly twice the decline forecast by economists. ... Japan’s economy has now contracted for two quarters in a row, meeting the most widely used definition of a recession.”

Frederic Neumann, economist at HSBC Global Research, put it succinctly in a May 19 report: “The ground is slipping.”

Japanese workers have been forced to fight back on two fronts. The first is to recover from the effects of a devastating natural disaster and the accompanying nuclear crisis caused by poor planning and disregard for safety on the part of the Japanese capitalists. Second, they are battling the attempts of the Japanese government and big business to force the workers to pay for the physical and economic damage which were mainly caused by the capitalists.

The Japanese workers’ struggle is our struggle. They need and deserve the support of poor, working and oppressed people around the world.
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Indigenous occupy shellmound to thwart bulldozers

Published May 27, 2011 11:36 AM
By Terri Kay
Vallejo, Calif.

Native peoples of California and many supporters are in their fourth week of a vigil and occupation at the Glen Cove Shellmound in Vallejo, Calif., known as Sogorea Te in Karkin Ohlone language.

Wounded Knee DeOcampo, a Miwok elder, explained to this reporter that the site dates back 3,500 years, to 1500 B.C. It was a sacred village, where many tribes in what is now known as California came to pray, trade, intermarry and bury their dead. Among the tribes known to have used the site were the Wappo, Coastal Me-Wauk, Bay Me-Wauks, Yokuts, Patwin, Wintu and Ohlone.

DeOcampo and others have been in a 12-year battle with the Greater Vallejo Recreation District and the city of Vallejo to prevent them from desecrating the site. DeOcampo says this is a crucial and critical time, as these public entities are now preparing to build a parking lot with night lights, a bathroom, trails and benches on the site. All tribes, spiritual leaders and elders are being called to protect Sogorea Te, known as Glen Cove.

DeOcampo further told how 13,000 human remains have been removed from this and other California sites and are being stored at the University of California-Berkeley in footlockers. The Native people want them reinterred to Mother Earth. Traditional ceremonies have always been held at Sogorea Te. DeOcampo says they are determined to protect this spiritual way for a better life as Indigenous people.

Fred Short, the American Indian Movement spiritual leader for the state of California, is also participating in the vigil at Sogorea Te. He happened to be celebrating his birthday on this day, as well. Short talked about how AIM has been involved since 1969 in struggles to end injustice against Indian people. He said they are determined to hold the line against any more development at the Glen Cove site.

Short said they are campaigning for the California State Assembly and President Barack Obama to sign the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights of Indigenous People. The U.S. and Australia have yet to sign. This declaration would protect all sacred sites.

Supporters can help by sending donations to cover court costs to wepay.com/donate/137138. They can sign the online petition at petitiononline.com/ssprit/petition.html. Supporters are encouraged to come by the site for a few hours or a few days to help maintain a strong presence at the vigil. Directions are available at protectglencove.org.
Articles copyright 1995-2011 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

U.S. Scientists Call China "Hope of the World"

By Deirdre Griswold
Published Jan 26, 2011 4:09 PM

A leading U.S. scientist who deals with global warming and climate change is calling the People’s Republic of China “the best hope” for turning around a looming disaster for the world and “stopping rule by fossil fuel interests.”

Dr. James Hansen, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, also wrote in the South China Morning Post on Nov. 3, “Fossil fuel interests reign in Washington and other capitals. Big money forces legislatures to hatch ineffectual schemes such as ‘cap-and-trade-with-offsets,’ a system designed by big banks and fossil fuel interests that assures continued fossil fuel addiction.” The South China Morning Post is an English-language daily published in Hong Kong.

China last year became the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases on an annual basis, exceeding the U.S. for the first time. So why is it the world’s “best hope”? Hansen says, “China leads the world in clean energy investments — nuclear, wind and solar power.”

China is also forging ahead with new technology to improve energy efficiency during the generation and transmission of electricity.

China’s biggest energy source — and biggest problem — is coal, which generates 80 percent of its electricity. Its abundance has fueled China’s industrial revolution. It has also contributed to air pollution inside China and to greenhouse gases in the world’s atmosphere.

However, since 2006 it has closed down many inefficient and dangerous small coal mines, cutting annual coal consumption by about 82 million tons and annual carbon dioxide emissions by some 165 million tons.

Most CO2 came from Britain

It takes many years for the impact of greenhouse gases to be felt. The blanket of CO2 and other greenhouse gases now warming Earth has been accumulating since the 19th century. Hansen says the largest portion of these gases was generated by Britain, where the industrial revolution in the West started. Germany is second. It is followed by the U.S., with responsibility for 27 percent, and China, with only 9.5 percent of the total.

Even looking just at current emissions, China, with its very large population, produces far fewer emissions per capita than any other industrialized country, even though it has now become the “factory to the world.”

Hansen first testified before Congress on global warming in 1988. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1996 and has received many prestigious awards for his scientific work. He first gained fame for having figured out which gases are in the atmosphere around Venus and creating a model based on that which correctly predicted the temperatures on the surface of that extremely hot planet. He then began using the same methods to study the composition of Earth’s atmosphere and its effects on global temperatures here.

Being a scientist with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Hansen has the benefit of examining data from all over the world collected by NASA’s satellites, including detailed information on the state of the polar ice caps and the mile-deep ice sheet covering Greenland, all of which are melting at an accelerating speed.

Dire predictions ignored

Hansen warned in his article for the South China Morning Post that, if all the fossil fuels now underground were to be consumed, sea levels would rise by about 75 feet, inundating whole countries and forcing the migration of hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people away from coastal areas.

He has been stymied by succeeding U.S. governments in his efforts to get a global agreement, like the one that President Barack Obama shot down in Copenhagen in 2009. Therefore, he is urging the Chinese leaders to do more about weaning their economy away from coal and is applauding the steps they have already taken in that direction.

Hansen is on a collision course with big capital and its politicians, who have gone from denying that global warming exists to coming up with schemes like “cap and trade.” This supposed solution, pushed by Al Gore, does nothing but shift around the responsibility for atmospheric pollution while creating a profitable market for the traders. By the way, the Gore family fortune, which got him into the Senate in the first place, comes from Occidental Petroleum.

China spends heavily on green infrastructure

After world markets dramatically imploded in 2008, China worked out a stimulus package of hundreds of billions of dollars to be spent mainly on upgrading its infrastructure. This was while the U.S. was spending its stimulus money mainly on propping up financial institutions and corporations that had been making big profits before the crash.

Since then, China has poured a lot of that money into incorporating green technologies in its development plans. For example, at the end of 2009, China budgeted $600 billion to upgrade its electricity grid, using sophisticated ultrahigh-voltage transmission, which substantially reduces energy loss. Today there is a labor shortage in much of China as these big projects transform the landscape.

China has shown that it takes global warming seriously by putting its money where its mouth is. That is why scientists like Hansen are encouraged.

Here’s the kicker: What is the U.S. government doing about all this?

In December, Washington filed a complaint against China with the World Trade Organization — for subsidizing its wind-power industry. Washington says that is a violation of “free trade.” By the end of 2010, China had the wind-power capacity to produce 31 gigawatts of electricity — three times its nuclear power capacity.

U.S. sues China

Come again? Yes, the U.S. is suing the Chinese government for putting money into its green industries. Moreover, even worse, this suit is supported by the Steelworkers union, on the ill-advised notion that forcing China to stop its subsidies will somehow create jobs here.

Is joining Washington in its rancorous anti-China campaign really going to convince the capitalist politicians, who have authorized trillions of dollars to rescue Wall Street firms and wage wars overseas for the oil companies, that this money should instead be going for a jobs program here?

While capitalism has been allowed to grow in China, widening the gap between rich and poor, the government and the Communist Party, both born out of revolution, still retain control over the economic levers that make large-scale, long-term planning possible. What has proven impossible in the corporate-ridden United States — the development of a plan, any plan, to move away from fossil fuels — is a reality in China today.

Workers’ organizations should focus on militantly combating the bosses, bankers and their politicians here and force them to create green jobs that could solve two daunting problems at the same time: the widespread unemployment that is grinding down workers of all ages and the environmental catastrophe that looms over the next generation.

E-mail: dgriswold@workers.org
Articles copyright 1995-2011 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

Marcellus Wastewater Dumped Into Waterways

By Betsey Piette
Published Jan 17, 2011 10:08 PM

Natural gas industry giant Cabot Oil & Gas Co. is at it again. In January it was reported that the company had illegally discharged 1.8 million gallons of wastewater into the Neshaminy Creek, part of the Delaware River watershed. This watershed is a source of drinking water for more than 300,000 residents in 17 communities outside Philadelphia.

In December Cabot agreed to set up a $4.1 million escrow account for rural Pennsylvanians who suffered health problems in areas where the company earlier had carried out hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” operations.

In other areas of the U.S. toxic wastewater from fracking is usually disposed of by injecting it down deep well shafts. Pennsylvania, which has become the center of the gas rush, remains the only state that allows fracking companies to use waterways as the primary disposal site for huge volumes of fluids.

Contaminated with chemicals, wastewater from fracking operations was being trucked from gas well sites in the northeastern part of the state to a private industrial treatment facility in Hatfield Township, a Philadelphia suburb, where some solids were removed before the wastewater was discharged into the creek. The wastewater was polluted with strontium and barium, which can cause high blood pressure if ingested. Fracking wastewater also contains radium, a naturally occurring radioactive substance.

In late 2010 the Delaware River Basin Commission ordered the facility to cease accepting the fluids. This acceptance constituted a blatant violation of DRBC’s rules and regulations. No fines, however, were levied against Cabot or PSC Environmental Services, the company that discharged the wastewater into the sewer system.

The Delaware River Basin supplies water for 15 million people in four states. Regulations that should have kept fracking wastewater out of the watershed were circumvented for months.

An Associated Press examination of the Department of Environmental Protection’s first annual report of waste produced by drilling in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale found that statewide “at least 150 million barrels of the waste were sent to treatment plants that empty into rivers during the 12 months ending June 30, 2010 — enough to cover a square mile with more than 8 1/2 inches of brine. More than 50 million gallons, about one-fifth of the total waste fluid, was unaccounted for because of a ‘weakness’ in the state’s reporting system.” (Jan. 3)

People in impacted towns were repeatedly told that the watershed was free of gas waste, even though their water contained contaminants known as trihalomethanes. While not found in drilling wastewater, trihalomethanes are created when chlorine used to purify drinking water reacts with bromide, which is found in the wastewater that is several times saltier than sea water.

The Environmental Protection Agency says people who drink water with elevated levels of trihalomethanes for many years have increased risks of cancer as well as potential problems with their liver, kidney and central nervous system.

Water in a municipal authority water treatment plant in Beaver Falls, 27 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, began flunking tests for trihalomethanes regularly in 2009. “Abnormally high salt levels in the Monongahela River in 2008 corroded machinery at a steel mill and a power plant that were drawing water from the river. The DEP suspected that drilling wastewater was the cause and ordered upstream treatment plants to reduce their output.” (ProPublica, Jan. 5)

Protest against Toxic Tom

Gas Truth-PA, which is organizing a statewide protest in Harrisburg on Jan. 18 at the inauguration of incoming governor Tom Corbett, stated that Corbett is so pro-drilling “he is failing to protect the Delaware River watershed or any other watershed from drilling.”

Natural gas companies in Pennsylvania contributed more than a million dollars to Corbett’s campaign. Corbett promised to rescind a recent gubernatorial executive order against leasing 800,000 more acres of state forest for drilling. He also opposes a tax on gas and backs legislation allowing companies to drill even when landowners refuse to signs leases.

Shortly after his election, “Toxic” Tom reassured the gas industry that he will protect their interests by appointing Christine Toretti, owner of SW Jack Drilling, to his transitional team.

In a press release calling for the Jan. 18 rally, Gas Truth-PA wrote, “People with few resources are left on their own to sue giant corporations, and our beautiful natural treasures are being stolen. We need to make it clear: Pennsylvanians don’t want gas drilling. Arrogant corporations should not be running this show. We want clean water and air — and we want it now!”
Articles copyright 1995-2011 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

BP Gets A Slap On The Wrist

By Gene Clancy
Published Jan 17, 2011 10:12 PM

On Jan. 6, a presidential commission released excerpts of a report on the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. This was good news for BP and one of its subcontractors, Transocean: The prices for their shares rose as investors bet that the report meant that the firms would avoid the massive costs of a gross negligence charge. (Reuters, Jan. 6)

It was bad news for working and poor people who are employed and/or live in the Gulf region, and for all who are concerned about the environment.

On April 20, an explosion aboard BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig killed 11 men and injured 17 others. Attempts to staunch the gusher failed, until a cap was finally deployed over the undersea well on July 15. By that time, 4.4 million barrels of oil had spilled into the Gulf of Mexico.

The oil spill, which now ranks as the largest offshore oil disaster in U.S. history, destroyed huge areas of sensitive wildlife and habitat, and paralyzed important segments of the Gulf Coast’s economy, including the seafood industry and tourism. The area still has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country.

The report’s 48-page excerpt says that “poor decisions” by BP; Transocean Ltd., the rig’s owner; and Halliburton Corp., a contractor on the rig, led to technical problems that contributed to the disaster. It stated that individual decisions made by each of those parties, while saving significant time and money, upped the risk that a catastrophic blowout would occur. (AP, Jan 6)

The report also warned that such a disaster could happen again, due to systemic problems within the offshore oil and gas industry, and among government regulators who oversee it.

Shortly after the catastrophe, President Barack Obama promised to hold BP completely accountable for all damages arising from the spill. He declared a six-month moratorium on deep sea drilling in the Gulf of Mexico until the reasons for the spill were investigated and determined. He appointed the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, which was to come up with its findings by Jan. 11. Unsurprisingly, the moratorium, although considered very short by environmental experts, was quickly aborted as the administration backed down in response to angry rants from the oil industry.

The Oil Pollution Act was passed, and a $20 billion fund was set up to compensate victims of the corporate-made disaster. Although $20 billion may appear large, it is a drop in the bucket when it comes to paying for the actual damages. On Jan. 9, Louisiana officials reported that large sections of the state’s coastline are still “highly oiled.” (CNN, Jan. 9) Huge plumes of oil remain far below the surface, while entire industries have been abandoned.

The government and BP have moved to limit big business liability in two ways. First, in direct violation of the Oil Pollution Act, the rules under which compensation is being paid greatly limit the amount that can be collected. “It will be difficult, if not impossible for claimants to get full compensation for their damages unless they have a crystal ball,” says Richard Shore, who worked hard to collect damages from the Exxon Valdez oil spill. (Huffington Post, Aug. 3)

The second method is more devious, and involves the recently released commission report. The study rightly concludes that BP’s misdeeds are not limited to them alone: “The blowout was not the product of a series of aberrational decisions made by a rogue industry or government officials that could not have been anticipated or expected to occur again. Rather, the root causes are systemic.” (AP, Jan.6)

However, the oil drillers are confident that they will never be held truly accountable as an industry. By blaming the oil drilling industry, the government has effectively taken the heat off BP, which the capitalist markets immediately recognized. Thus, the rise in BP stock.

The capitalist class is confident that their ruse to protect BP and other big polluters will work because they believe that they are invincible and that the government will never hold them accountable for their countless crimes against humanity and the planet itself. They can keep on raking in megaprofits and putting safety and concern for the environment last, with relative impunity, unless there is a struggle waged by working people, environmentalists and other progressive people to push them back.
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Hungary's Red Sludge: A Product of Capitalist Restructuring

By Heather Cottin
Published Oct 15, 2010 10:17 PM

Hungary has arrested Zoltan Bakonyi, managing director of MAL Aluminium, the privately owned company responsible for the country’s worst environmental disaster. Bakonyi is son of the company’s owner, Arlep Bakonyi, “a businessman who played a central role in the privatization of the country’s aluminum industry and is the largest shareholder of the company.” (New York Times, Oct. 11)

As of Oct. 11, 4,000 people were desperately working to reinforce the reservoir dam owned by MAL that had partially burst a week earlier.

Some 200 million gallons of toxic red sludge created by MAL’s aluminum processing plant in Ajka, Hungary, had flooded out of the reservoir, devastating the villages of Devecser, Somlovasarhely and Kolontar. Eight people died in the flood’s wake and hundreds were hospitalized with alkali burns.

The toxic flood killed all plant and animal life along the beautiful Marcal River. As the sludge flooded the water systems that feed into Europe’s second-longest river, the Danube, the aluminum company denied responsibility. It said the incident was a “natural catastrophe” and insisted on its website that, according to European Union safety standards, the sludge is not considered toxic. (BBC, Oct. 8)

The plant’s owners are Hungarian and own plants in Slovenia and Bosnia, as well — perks for them after a U.S. war destroyed the socialist republic of Yugoslavia and broke it up into competing mini-states.

According to the BBC report, when Hungary put its state assets on the sales block in 1995, three of the country’s richest men bought the aluminum plant in Ajka.

Capitalist structural adjustment

Even before the toxic sludge inundated Central Hungary, Hungarians were suffering.

The World Bank called Hungary’s privatization process the most comprehensive of any East-Central European country. The World Bank was deeply involved in restructuring the Hungarian economy.

Prices for Hungarian products fell 65 percent, killing family farms. The World Bank’s structural adjustment loans were conditioned on the elimination of low-cost housing loans. Residential subsidies also fell 80 percent, causing a housing crisis of huge proportions for the poor. Family subsidies, which included educational, social and medical support, fell 50 percent. Education, public health and government support for families became victims of repeated cuts.

The Hungarian government’s embrace of neoliberal economic reforms meant that the new owners could offer low wages, no limits on overtime, six- or seven-day workweeks, three-month contracts and low safety standards. An Employment Code instituted in 1992 weakened the rights of labor unions and safety standards. Most privatized firms have been unwilling to adhere to safety regulations or to adequately invest in plant improvements.

Meanwhile, automation and the loss of the Soviet market led to a 30-percent reduction in the country’s workforce. This forced wages down by 15 percent in the decade after 1990.

The CIA World Factbook admits that capitalist Hungary currently has an official unemployment rate of 10.8 percent, up 40 percent from 2009. In addition to the social and economic destabilization resulting from the destruction of socialist planning, wages have plummeted for the majority of workers.

A Law on Economic Partnership rewarded the directors of publicly owned companies with the productive assets of those companies, so the privatization process “managed to transfer public assets into the hands of a few, influential individuals.” (www.saprin.org) MAL Aluminium’s owners got very rich.

Red mud, environmental anarchy

A European Commission spokesman said the red sludge was regulated under European Union law but was not necessarily considered a hazardous waste. The factory received a permit from the Hungarian government for handling the sludge in 2006.

International and national environmental laws are written to assist the companies that run the world’s mines, farms, factories and processing plants. The owners of MAL Aluminium claim to have been dealing with the waste according to law. But the neoliberal adjustments the World Bank forced upon Hungary, among other countries, were written to make profits, not to protect people or the environment.

The volume of muck that escaped from the red mud reservoir in Hungary was almost as large as the oil spewed into the Gulf of Mexico after the recent BP well rupture. (Associated Press, Oct. 8)

Like the oil spill, there were warnings before the disaster.

“The wall [of the reservoir] did not disintegrate in a minute. This should have been detected,” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban told the BBC. (Oct. 8) A blogger noted that on Google Earth, a website offering satellite views, the wall of the containment reservoir was visibly cracked in a photo taken two weeks before the toxic flood. (Observer, Oct. 8)

Disaster management officials expect another huge wave of contaminants to break free of the damaged reservoir containment wall. Hungary’s environmental secretary, Zoltan Illes, said, “We don’t know whether it will last another day or another week.” (Xinhua, Oct. 10)

Illes confirmed that the sludge had a “high content of heavy metals,” including carcinogens. If the sludge dries out, he said, these toxins can be blown by the wind and wind up in the human respiratory system. (BBC, Oct. 8)

Greenpeace found levels of arsenic, mercury and chrome. The arsenic level was “double what is usually contained in such red sludge.” (BBC, Oct. 8) These heavy metals can cause birth defects. They affect the brain, liver, kidneys and, if they enter the soil, the entire food chain.

The Hungarian government has dumped tons of plaster into the rivers feeding into the Danube to neutralize the alkaline levels of the water, but the heavy metals from the toxic sludge threaten the fish and health of all who live along the rivers. Hungarians consider the company’s offer of 110,000 euros for compensation to the villagers an insult to the dead, the injured and those who had to evacuate their homes. (Observer [Britain], Oct. 8)

Capitalist transformation has brought nothing to Hungarian workers and farmers but hardship and devastation.
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Water All Around... Or Is There?

By Betsey Piette
Published Sep 10, 2010 9:22 PM

Much of the focus on the rapid expansion of natural gas extraction through hydrofracturing, or “fracking,” has centered on methane leaks and chemical contamination of residential water wells. In Dimock, Pa., more than 15 residents sued Cabot Oil and Gas Corp., charging permanent damage to their wells.

However, another concern is the impact of fracking on renewable sources of fresh water. Some fear that this drilling process may be draining valuable and irreplaceable water resources.

The process of hydrofracturing starts when a well is drilled thousands of feet down and horizontally to reach shale formations deep beneath the earth’s surface where natural gas is “trapped.” The gas is released when the shale is “fracked” — broken up by a mixture of water, sand and chemicals forced down the well. Anywhere from 1 million to 9 million gallons of water are used per frack. A well may be fracked more than once.

According to newsroom ProPublica, in July 2009 there were already 52,700 natural gas wells in Pennsylvania, second only to Texas’ 76,436. These numbers were compiled before a boom in new leases due to Pennsylvania’s lack of regulation. With the pace of drilling increasing, it is estimated that more than 30,000 new natural gas wells could be developed in the Upper Delaware River Basin in coming years.

To open the existing Pennsylvania wells required between 53 billion to 475 billion gallons of water. If all the estimated wells are drilled, another 30 billion to 150 billions of water would be needed.

Where does all this water come from? Trucking water to a well site is expensive. Drillers have found that it’s cheaper to run a fire hose from a local source, be it a river, stream, creek, lake or pond.

Regulations for drawing water vary from state to state. In Pennsylvania companies are required to seek permits that stipulate the volume, in millions of gallons of water, to be drawn each day from specific fresh water sources. Enforcement of these permits is sporadic. Four gas companies have already been caught withdrawing water from trout streams without permission.

A list of water sources approved for drillers provided by the Susquehanna River Basin Commission includes the Susquehanna River, the Chemung River, and numerous creeks, streams and ponds in 10 northeastern Pennsylvania counties. In Bradford County alone, more than 31 million gallons of water could potentially be removed from local water sources in one day’s time.

In early September, a subcontractor for Cabot Oil and Gas requested permits to withdraw water from the Susquehanna River where it runs near the entrance of a public, recreational park in Tunkhannock, Pa. The company offered a lease fee of $500 a year.

Impact on Earth’s fresh water resources

More than 70 percent of the earth’s surface is covered by water, but only 2.5 percent is fresh water. Much of it is frozen under polar icecaps, present as soil moisture or in deep underground aquifers not accessible for human use.

The less than 1 percent that is accessible is found in lakes, rivers, reservoirs and underground sources shallow enough to be tapped. While fresh water is a renewable resource, the world’s supply is steadily decreasing. During the 20th century more than half the world’s wetlands were lost to agriculture use and land development.

According to Wilma Subra, technical advisor for the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, “The withdrawal of large quantities of surface water could substantially impact the availability of the surface water resources downstream and damage the aquatic life in the surface water bodies. When groundwater resources are used in the fracturing process, the groundwater aquifers can be drawn down and result in water wells in the area going dry.” (http://leanweb.org/)

Writing in the Round River Blog, Brian Creek questioned the impact that demand for local water resources, in order to drill in the Michigan Antrim Shale region, could have on the Jordan, Michigan’s first wild and scenic river. He estimates that water needed for fracking 10,000 wells there would use more water than flows through the river in a year. (March 19)

Salt concentration build-up

On average, 25 percent of the fracturing fluid returns to the surface as “flowback” or “produced water.” This water goes to treatment plants, where metals are removed. The chemicals contained in the flowback water are toxic agents and a probable cause of cancers in humans.

The remaining fluid is salt brine, which is then diluted and discharged into the rivers. There is concern over potential environmental harm from salt levels, as the amount of water being released into fresh waters from shale gas operations grows from a trickle to a tidal wave. New, stringent treatment regulations for recycling-produced water in Pennsylvania won’t take effect until 2011.

Pennsylvania is not the only state facing this problem. In Arkansas, wastewater from shale wells was being spread over land farms. The state shut down 11 of the 13 operations when soil chloride concentrations exceeded permitted levels. While not allowed under permits issued, oil-based drilling fluids had also been applied at some sites. In an April 2009 report, the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality stated that some fields may have been “irreversibly damaged.”

In July, the House Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies approved $1 million for the U.S. Geological Survey to study the cumulative impact on water withdrawals for fracking in the Delaware River Basin.

Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) noted, “With over 15 million people relying on the Delaware River for clean drinking water, we simply cannot allow drilling to move forward without first giving full scrutiny to the cumulative effects on water resources throughout the region.”

“Hydraulic fracturing poses a possible health and environmental threat to the millions of people who make their home in the Delaware River watershed and the almost 10 percent of the nation’s population who rely on these waters for drinking, recreational and industrial use,” said Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ).

Problem is global

The use of hydraulic fracturing is going global. Halliburton, which developed the process, has operations in more than 70 countries. The impact of fracking on global fresh water resources has yet to be measured, but with scarce water resources in many parts of the globe, it is raising concerns.

A regulatory Global Gas Shale Initiative Conference was held in Washington in August involving representatives from 20 countries and 10 federal entities, as well as state and local regulators. The conference included representatives from the Groundwater Protection Council, an association of state regulators.

The conference addressed the future impact of gas drilling that could account for 30 percent of future gas supplies in the U.S., Canada and China, and a dramatic portion of future global gas supplies. Fresh water resources are already scarce in many parts of the world and have led to struggles against attempts to privatize water in Latin America and Asia.

David Goldwyn, the State Department’s coordinator for international energy affairs, at a State Department briefing on the conference, opined, “We have, in our country, an umbrella of laws and regulations that makes sure this is done safely and efficiently.” He confidently asserted, “We have safe drinking acts,” completely ignoring the fact that the Clean Water Act of 2006 specifically excludes oversight of hydraulic fracturing — the “Halliburton Clause.”

Articles copyright 1995-2010 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

Revolutionary Organization of Labor: "British Petroleum Spews Forth Capitalist Poison"

From: Marxist-Leninist Translations

“Drill, baby, drill!”
– Mob cheer led by Sarah Palin,
Vice-Presidential Candidate, 2008 Republican Party National Convention

BP’s Greed Unchecked by U.S. “Republicrat” Government

When the $600 million dollar Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, killing eleven workers, on April 20, 2010, the British Petroleum Corporation (“BP plc”), was unable to dodge its responsibility for the disaster. Unashamedly, however, BP, the United Kingdom’s largest company and the third largest energy company and the fourth largest company in the world (according to Wikipedia), deliberately concealed vital information; it covered up the extent of the damage to its well along with the true massive amount of oil and gas actually pouring out into the Gulf, and thus the potential extent of the catastrophe. In this way, BP sabotaged all early efforts to restrict, contain and mitigate the subsequent massive oil spill.

Despite a multimillion dollar public relations propaganda assault by BP, it is crystal clear that single-minded and shameless pursuit of maximum private profit, the very motivation which drove BP and its partners in crime, including Halliburton Inc., to “cut corners” on safety, to ignore “best industry practices,” etc. continued to dominate its conduct in the disaster’s aftermath. In its ruthless effort to minimize its criminal liability, BP continued (and still continues!!) to fuel the hellhole it had created.

Thus, when Texas Republican Congressman Joe Barton revealed his total subservience to his capitalist masters by “apologizing” to BP (!) for President Obama’s insistence that the thoroughly exposed BP fund a Gulf Coast relief effort, the outrage of the people of the Gulf Coast, in particular, forced Barton to apologize for his apology!

It is not surprising that it was another Texas Republican, President George W. Bush, who, in 2008, had lifted the two decades-old ban on offshore oil drilling which paved the way for London-based BP, whose U.S. headquarters are in Houston, to inflict the current catastrophe on us all. Nor is it surprising that “W.” would have the enthusiastic support of his Vice President, since Dick Cheney had come to the Bush II Administration from his job as CEO of Halliburton, Inc., which became BP’s corporate partner in crime in the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Subcontractor Halliburton’s job in BP’s Deepwater Horizon project was to seal the three plus miles of the initial drilling hole, the well casing, so that the four inch pipe was surrounded in concrete and protected from gas leaks. BP made decisions to cut costs, including the use of inadequate components and skipping tests of the integrity of the seal. Such decisions led Gordon Aaker, a failure analysis consultant with Engineering Services LLP in Houston to characterize one such decision as “unheard of,” calling BP “horribly negligent.” While BP rejected the recommendations of Halliburton, seriously reducing the safety of the job Halliburton did, Halliburton went along with BP and took the money. And the Department of the Interior’s Mineral Management Service (MMS), instead of being more strict in its enforcement of existing safety regulations in dealing with deepwater oil drilling, became even more lax the deeper the well!*

* Former Halliburton CEO and U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, one of the most outspoken promoters of the U.S. war against Iraq, certainly helped BP, still today the top energy supplier for the U.S. military under the Obama Regime. Indeed, despite the fact that BP’s responsibility for the Gulf Coast catastrophe is undeniable, it continues to retain its $2 billion plus dollars in annual contracts with the Pentagon uninterrupted. Of course, Halliburton itself has been the biggest recipient from the U.S. military of infrastructure contracts in Iraq, just as its current subsidiary, Kellogg Brown and Root had been during the period of the U.S. war in Vietnam. The BP/Halliburton corporate connection and the complicity of its U.S. government stooges in the Gulf Coast disaster underscore the deep truth contained in the phrase “the U.S. imperialist war at home and abroad.”

More surprising for those who retain illusions about the Democratic Party and/or about alleged U.S. “democracy” is the fact that the Democratic-controlled Congress did not extend its own ban of offshore oil drilling in 2008, when Bush-Cheney lifted the presidential moratorium. Such people will be even more surprised to learn that, in March 2010, President Barack Obama went a step further than Bush when he announced his readiness to consider leases for new deepwater oil exploration!

Even after the catastrophic BP oil rig disaster, despite Obama’s promise of better safeguards for offshore drilling, his Department of Interior’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) has signed off on at least five new offshore drilling projects since June 2, when the agency’s acting director announced tougher regulations for drilling in the Gulf. Three of the approved projects were provided the same “categorical exclusions,” exempting them from detailed studies of their environmental impact, just like the waiver given to BP for the well that has been poisoning the Gulf and beyond for the past two months. Furthermore, in mid June, environmental groups filed a lawsuit in Alabama challenging the MMS approval of 198 new deepwater leases in the central Gulf since the BP spill began!

Such lease sales, a step prior to the oil companies’ submission of their drilling plans, line the corporations up to immediately launch their projects when moratoria are lifted. Furthermore, the 198 new lease approvals have already made the U.S. taxpayers liable for compensation payment to the oil companies, in case the projects are ultimately blocked! So business-as-usual continues between the Obama Administration and BP which owns at least 10 of these 198 new leases.

Furthermore, the Democratic Party’s own strategist James Carville, CNN’s Anderson Cooper and other representatives of the monopoly capitalist ruling class have themselves expressed shock and outrage that, more than two months after the fact, the Obama/Biden Regime has continued to allow BP to remain in control of the clean-up effort of the disaster this profit-mad corporation created and which it has strong motivation to cover up rather than clean up!!

As we write these lines, Boston Globe columnist, Derrick Z. Jackson, an enlightened Afro-American writer, exposes President Obama’s duplicitous “two-faced” treatment of BP. (“The harder they should fall,” Boston Globe, 6-29-10) Jackson points out, “In his June 15 national address, President Obama declared BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to be ‘the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced’ ... The very next day, he … extracted a commitment of $20 billion from BP to settle damage claims. However, Obama also affirmed his confidence that ‘BP will be able to meet its obligations to the Gulf Coast and to the American people. BP is a strong and viable company and it is in all of our interests that it remains so.’” Jackson observes that “Obama’s advance blessing to BP… amounts to a political bailout.” (ROL emphasis)

Why is the Obama Administration so kind and deferential to BP? Remember that Obama/Biden and McCain/Palin, the candidates of the two monopoly capitalist and imperialist political parties in the USA, both received their largest campaign contributions from JPMorgan Chase and the other Wall Street giants. Accordingly, during the campaign, both Obama and McCain agreed with Republican President George W. Bush and his Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson as well as Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi on the initial $700 billion dollar bailout for the banking and financial giants of Wall Street. JPMorgan Chase was one of the bailout’s chief beneficiaries. JPMorgan Chase is the No. 1 holder of stock in BP. According to BP’s ownership stats, “Chase holds 27.74% of total ordinary issued shared capital.”

“Drill, baby, drill!” had been the loudest and most energetic rallying cry at the Republican Party’s 2008 National Convention. From the above, we can see that this “Republican” platform has been implemented by the current Democratic Administration.

Also, despite its markedly different rhetoric from that of the Bush/Cheney regime, the Obama/Biden Regime has continued its predecessor’s policies on most of the major issues of our time – from ongoing war in Iraq and expanded war in Afghanistan and Pakistan and increased militarization of the U.S. government, to diminished civil liberties and rights of U.S. citizens as well as immigrants; from protection of the bankrupt private corporate U.S. healthcare “system,” to the continual federal government bailout of the Wall Street and international finance capitalists principally responsible for the world capitalist economic crisis.

The “Republicrat Party” is clearly the two headed political representative of the U.S. monopoly capitalist and imperialist ruling class. So where can the people of the USA turn for political relief?

Sarah Palin and the Tea Party Movement

Sarah Palin emerged as a major political voice immediately upon her selection to be John McCain’s vice presidential running mate. And her first message of substance had been to promote the oil companies’ agenda for unchecked and widespread drilling for offshore oil all along the coastline of the USA. While the Republican duo of McCain/Palin lost the election, their campaign effort on behalf of the oil companies to unleash a new round of offshore oil drilling has been successfully realized with the Democratic Obama/Biden Administration.

It is not the U.S. government that has changed under Obama, only the perception about the government and its intentions. In the year and one-half since the election, the right-wing Tea Party Movement has emerged, with Sarah Palin as its political darling, as a key player in the effort to keep mass democratic illusions about the Obama/Biden Administration alive in the face of the overwhelming evidence that it represents merely a more clever and effective steward (than the Republicans) on behalf of the interests of U.S. monopoly capitalism and imperialism in the midst of this capitalist economic crisis. Even more importantly, Palin and the Tea Party movement provide a “safe” pro-imperialist, semi-fascist and white supremacist channel for the frustrations of a large sector of the U.S. population that is now experiencing a sharp decline in its standard of living and diminished prospects for the future.*

* The Tea Party Movement and the Republican Party are not identical. In fact, there has been a conscious effort by clever forces such as Karl Rove, George W. Bush’s chief presidential adviser, to keep a degree of separation between them. In this way each can support the other while providing each other the opportunity to advance without each other’s baggage.

With all the diverse streams of the tea party movement, Sarah Palin is one of a few people almost universally recognized as their leader. Palin’s outright lies and deceit cover up a lot. But “drill, baby, drill” is a classic example of where Palin is leading the masses of the people of the USA and the world, that is, to catastrophe.

In this light, the April 20th BP oil rig disaster on the Gulf Coast provides a strong context for evaluating other major pronouncements of Sarah Palin. In particular, Palin has repeatedly declared that “Obama is a Socialist,” and that “Now is no time to be experimenting with Socialism.”

Palin’s assertion that “Obama is a Socialist” taps into two cornerstones of U.S. imperialist culture: white supremacy and anti-communism. It is exposed as a “Big Lie” by Obama’s role as the savior of Wall Street, BP, the medical-industrial complex, etc., as the skillful chief helmsman of U.S. monopoly capitalism and imperialism at this time when the USA and the world capitalist system are in serious crisis. Nevertheless, Palin’s lie has proved effective thus far in building mass resistance to “socialism,” at a time when it would be logical for the people of the USA to demand socialism in health care, on Wall Street, etc.

Thus, Palin’s lie about Obama complements her other slogan: “Now is no time to be experimenting with Socialism.” With millions of workers forced into unemployment and millions of families losing their homes to bank foreclosure, while the banking industry itself has been bailed out by the capitalist government, using the tax monies of the working class, this entire period of acute capitalist economic crisis and collapse, cries out for “experimenting with socialism.” Now, the criminal conduct of BP and its CEO, Tony Hayward, with the criminal collaboration of the U.S. government, both in the lead-up to the oil rig disaster and in its aftermath, makes clear that “experimenting with (fighting for) Socialism” is an increasingly urgent task for the international working class to take up in defense of the survival of the human species!!

Revolutionary Strategy and Tactics in the Current U.S. Crisis

Strategically, the fight in the U.S. (North) is for socialism. However, tactically, the Revolutionary Organization of Labor (USA) and the proletarian revolutionary movement in the USA need to unite those who retain illusions about Obama and the Democratic Party with those who have no illusions about the current chieftain of U.S. imperialism to demand, in opposition to the government’s current conduct, that the Obama government meet the needs of the U.S. working people, including organized labor, and the Afro-American and documented and undocumented Latino masses. Such a tactical approach enables the proletarian revolutionary movement to win, on the basis of their own experience, these currently non-revolutionary masses away from the Obama/Democratic Party forces to the socialist banner.

This tactical approach also enables the proletarian revolutionary movement to win to the socialist banner some frustrated white working people, including a section of organized labor and others, away from the white supremacist, great nation chauvinist tea party movement, whose “Republicrat” leaders, including Sarah Palin, remain, along with the Obama/Biden Administration, an integral part of the strategic defense of the capitalist system in crisis in the USA.

The tactical demand for the Obama Administration to compel BP to fully indemnify all current and future victims of this massive oil spill and to nationalize all offshore oil wells is on the order of the day. As the oil spill continues to pour into the Gulf and despoil our land, let’s get behind this effort!

Capitalism and Climate Change

BP Oil Disaster: Profit System Pits Jobs vs. Environment

From: Workers World

Published Jun 10, 2010 12:49 PM

It is an unforgettable, heartbreaking image. A seabird from Grand Island, La., lies in a basket, covered with a thick brownish layer of oil, gasping for air and blinking its eyes as if in stunned amazement.

As BP announced that its latest “fix” had been partially successful, this and other images of devastation from around the Gulf of Mexico region have brought home the enormity of the crime which BP and its capitalist collaborators have perpetrated. The so-called containment cap which was lowered into place on June 4 has had limited success: only about a third of the 750,000 gallons per day gushing from the destroyed wellhead is being siphoned off.

Why is it that we are moved by images of dying birds? On an immediate level is the empathy we have for the life and suffering of other sentient beings with whom we share the planet. But in a more profound sense, it is because at some deep level we realize that the destruction of these birds and their habitats is also an attack on our own habitat, and on our own ability to survive and make a living, although the devastation may not be as immediately obvious.

When the Deepwater Horizon exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers, employees from at least 13 different companies were on board. Besides high-level engineers from Transocean, which operated the rig, and BP, which held the lease on it, the workers included welders, divers, rig roustabouts, cooks, tank washers and laundry workers employed by a medley of subcontracted companies. And for each exploration and production job, there are an estimated four supporting jobs in and around the region.

There are 5,000 offshore oil and gas platforms in Louisiana alone, many of which can be seen from the coast, in addition to 17 oil refineries, 74,000 miles of pipeline and 90 major chemical plants. The Louisiana port system is the largest in the world with six deepwater, eight coastal and 13 inland ports. Port Fourchon itself handles 90 percent of the traffic servicing the deep-water oil and gas industry in the Gulf. These facilities exist side by side with a commercial and sport fishing industry which brings in $2.5 billion annually. There is also a large tourism industry.

BP has released an ad campaign costing an estimated $50 million in which its CEO, Tony Hayward, promises to clean up the mess that BP caused. Of course, Hayward will do nothing — it is an army of thousands of workers who will actually perform the cleanup tasks.

On May 27, the U.S. Interior Department issued a six-month moratorium on deep-water drilling in the Gulf in order to “determine what went wrong and how to remedy safety deficiencies.” The moratorium most directly affects 17 oil companies, including multinational giants like BP, Exxon Mobil, Shell and Chevron, that were forced to shut down operations at 33 rigs.

Most environmental scientists have said that six months is woefully inadequate. However, the oil and gas industries of Louisiana, and the politicians associated with them, are already complaining. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who has been quite vocal in decrying the destruction of the environment along the Gulf Coast, was nevertheless very critical of the moratorium. “During one of the most challenging economic periods in decades, the last thing we need is to enact public policies that will certainly destroy thousands of existing jobs while preventing the creation of thousands more,” he said in a letter to President Barack Obama.


The environment versus jobs?

Whenever a capitalist corporation perceives a threat to its profits, it is quick to threaten the workers with the loss of jobs. Workers know from bitter experience that these are not idle threats. Capitalists like to portray themselves as benevolent demigods who bestow jobs on those who are “deserving.” But for most workers, their jobs are their only means of survival. When employers threaten workers with losing their jobs, they threaten workers’ very survival.

The workers in the Gulf region are in many ways similar to those in the coal mines of Appalachia. They perform difficult, dangerous jobs for companies that rape the environment and ruin nearby communities. Because they operate in economically depressed areas, the companies attempt to divide working people by pitting those most impacted by the destruction of the environment against those who actually work in the mines and on the drilling rigs.

A list of 100 of the “Most Popular Jobs Where the Majority of Workers Do Not Have College Educations” published for New Orleans, shows a preponderance of jobs related to the oil, gas, shipping and chemical industries. (CityTowninfo.com) Invariably these are also among the highest paying jobs. The bosses tell the workers that they must choose between not befouling and destroying their surroundings and a decent-paying (although often dirty and dangerous) job.

These bosses are not really concerned about saving workers’ jobs. Some environmentalists have noted that should the present oil slick migrate to areas where other drilling platforms are located, those rigs would be forced to shut down indefinitely anyway. The real concern of the Gulf-area capitalists is more related to globalization than to any modest moratorium on drilling. They don’t want rig owners and operators to cancel their contracts and move operations to the coastal areas of Africa or Brazil or elsewhere abroad.

Poor and working people should not be forced to choose between a clean habitat and a decent-paying job. Unlike the oil-soaked seabirds of the Gulf, workers and oppressed peoples have the consciousness and the power to fight the vicious capitalist system and ultimately create a society in which the contradictions between humans and the natural environment are at last resolved.

Articles copyright 1995-2010 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

Class War on Comedy Central: Stephen Colbert Kicks BP CEO's ASS!!!!!

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Oil's Well That Never Ends
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What is the Real Culprit? Climate Action Day Exposes Real Dangers

From the latest issue of : Left Hook, official FIST publication.

By Jennifer Waller

NYC FIST

On Oct. 24, International Climate Action Day, activists in 181 countries around the world participated in over 5,200 events in an attempt to raise awareness about the threats of climate change.

In New Brighton, Australia, a huge drawing in the sand included text that could be read from the sky — “There is no planet B.” In Mongolia men on horseback posed for a picture holding up a banner about climate change. In South Africa rock climbers hung banners on the side of a cliff reading, “[President Jacob] Zuma, climate proof our food and jobs.” An action was held underwater in the Maldive Islands to draw attention to the fact that the Maldives is seriously threatened by rising sea levels in the Indian Ocean.

International Climate Action Day was organized primarily by a U.S. organization named 350. The number 350 holds significance in the struggle against global warming because 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide is the limit that scientists have identified as safe for our atmosphere. Presently the number is 387 ppm.

Despite the fact that this analysis is scientific, and potentially difficult to fully understand, 350.org’s accessible website has given people all over the world a number to push for and greater understanding of the climate crisis. As a result, International Climate Action Day consisted of many groups around the world holding up 350 banners and standing in formations that from an aerial view read “350.” A group in the Philippines even grew plants into the formation of 350, and in Copenhagen the 350 emblem was mowed into a meadow.

Capitalism is to blame

Despite the ongoing grassroots efforts to raise awareness within the political arena, as well as with voters and consumers, people in the United States seem surprisingly unconcerned about the swift and imminent obliteration of planet Earth as a place that can sustain human life. A recent poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that only 57 percent of respondents believe there is real evidence that the world is getting warmer—down from 77 percent in 2006. The poll also reveals that just 35 percent of people in the U.S. regard global warming as a very serious problem. (people-press.org)

These alarming statistics come after years of grassroots and also mainstream efforts to get people to drive less, recycle more and bring reusable bags with them to the grocery store. Yet these efforts are not attacking the real problem. Often such “green” campaigns are run or sponsored by corporations such as Wal-Mart and Shell in an effort to implicate consumers in the destruction of our planet, while the globalized capitalist system is the real culprit.

The possibility of sustaining human, animal and plant life on this planet is only possible if this system is completely overhauled or, better yet, dismantled. Though the people of the United States are sleeping on this issue, the rest of the world is much more aware of the catastrophic effects the climate crisis will bring on all of us.

Unfortunately, reducing one’s carbon footprint by “buying green” will not save the planet. The people of the world must rise up against the corporate greed that has been killing the planet and its inhabitants for too long. Or we will all see the consequences far sooner than most of us can imagine.

Lesson #1 of BP Oil Spill: Capitalism Can't Protect the Environment

By Gene Clancy
Published May 20, 2010 9:42 PM

As millions of gallons of crude oil continue to spew into the Gulf of Mexico, the owner of the collapsed oil rig that caused the disaster is trying desperately to elude responsibility for what has already cost the lives of 11 workers and threatens to become the worst oil catastrophe in U.S. history.

In addition to the growing oil slick on the surface, scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet high in spots. This discovery is fresh evidence that the leak from the broken undersea well could be substantially worse than estimates given by the government and BP, formerly British Petroleum.

“There’s a shocking amount of oil in the deep water, relative to what you see in the surface water,” said Samantha Joye, a researcher at the University of Georgia who is involved in one of the first scientific missions to gather details about what is happening in the gulf. The plumes are depleting the oxygen dissolved in the Gulf, worrying scientists, who fear that the oxygen level could eventually fall so low as to kill off much of the nearby sea life.

Scientists studying video images of the gushing oil well have tentatively calculated a flow rate of 25,000 to 80,000 barrels of oil a day. But the government, working from satellite images of the ocean surface, has calculated a flow rate of only 5,000 barrels a day.

When asked about this discrepancy, BP officials replied that no one could accurately estimate oil flows from a video. However, BP has resisted entreaties from scientists that they be allowed to use sophisticated instruments at the ocean floor that would give a far more accurate picture of how much oil is really gushing from the well.

“The answer is no to that,” BP spokesperson Tom Mueller said on May 15. “We’re not going to take any extra efforts now to calculate flow there at this point. It’s not relevant to the response effort, and it might even detract from the response effort.” (!)

Calling knowledge of the oil flow “not relevant” is only the latest in a series of measures taken by the oil giant to escape responsibility. Last week BP asked the courts to limit its liability for the deaths of the 11 oil workers, and many more who were injured, to $27 million. BP rang up $6 billion in profit in just the first three months of 2010 -- almost 223 times what it wants to pay out in damages.

A BP executive repeatedly told a congressional hearing that BP would “pay all legitimate claims.” However, when pressed to define what “legitimate” meant, he replied: “uh ... substantiated ... I can’t really define the term.”

At the same hearing, CEOs from the three companies most directly involved in the disaster — BP, TransOceanic Leasing and Halliburton — tried desperately to shift the blame to each other.

Capitalism contradicts science

Behind the evasive maneuvers of BP and all big business lurk huge flaws in the capitalist system itself. Establishment economists like to sing the praises of capitalist markets, how they allegedly provide consumers with their needs and wants efficiently based on supply and demand. According to this model, businesses risk their capital, then organize and distribute production.

For these services the capitalists are supposed to deserve the profits generated in production. This is the mainspring for the entire system. Supposedly, consumers make choices and vote with their dollars: no dollars, no votes.

According to these high priests of capitalism, anything worthwhile must have a market price. Everything outside their system is essentially useless, since no profit can be made from it. Grass, trees, wildlife, the oceans, mountains, soil, even air and water are a distraction at best, a hindrance at worst — unless someone can find a way to profit from them.

But they go even further: To a capitalist, the vast masses of people, the workers and oppressed, are a commodity to be exploited, just like the oil buried deep beneath the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Anything that goes wrong in this system, according to these economists, is the result of an “externality,” something outside the markets. Floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions are all “externalities.” But so, too, is the destruction from wars, industrial pollution, even economic depressions.

The capitalist system and those who operate it pretend to be hermetically sealed against not only the rest of the natural world, but from their own mistakes. The capitalist system exists to enable the ruling classes to make money. If it does not make money for them, or if the masses of people rebel, or if the planet itself becomes inhabitable, the fault lies not with the system but with “externalities.”

Since World War II, some capitalist economists, pressured by environmental and social justice movements, have tried to inject ideas of social responsibility into capitalism. According to Karl William Kapp, a German-American economist, capitalists should break out of their self-serving isolation and take on responsibility for the social costs of their activities, especially when it comes to environmental degradation.

According to Kapp’s model, corporations should “give back” and be “good citizens.” They should be required to pay the true costs of their enterprises, including the prevention and cleanup of environmental and social disasters that they cause.

Many modern corporations, including BP, have given lip service to this idea. Despite an atrocious safety and environmental record, BP boasted about how “green” it was. Behind the slick ads, however, lay a grim truth. Markets don’t just run on greed; they also operate on fear.

A life-and-death struggle

BP is the world’s largest oil company. Despite its former name, more than 50 percent of its stock is owned by U.S. banks. If one looks at the creditors who hold its debt and finance its operations, U.S. institutions have an even bigger role. BP, as it exists today, is the product of a merger between the British Petroleum Company and AMOCO, the old Standard Oil of Indiana and part of the Rockefeller oil empire. It also includes the old Atlantic Richfield (ARCO).

BP did not get where it is by being “socially responsible.” When it was the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. during the 1950s, it and the CIA helped foment the coup that replaced a progressive government in Iran with the shah. BP’s long list of environmental and industrial accidents, for which it received only token fines, belies the company’s rhetoric about social responsibility.

Although the Barack Obama administration and many in the U.S. Congress have delivered scathing criticisms of BP and demanded that it pay for the cleanup, it is doubtful that, absent a determined struggle from below, there will be much accountability. Already, the government has announced that deep-sea drilling will continue in the Gulf. As usual, society at large — the working class — will end up paying the costs.

In 1949, an eminent scientist, Albert Einstein, noted the contradictions between nature and society on the one hand and big business on the other:

“Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands ... . The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital, the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society ... . The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population.” (“Why Socialism,” Monthly Review, 1949)

What is needed is an end to the capitalist system and its replacement with a new system, socialism, that is based on peoples’ needs instead of profits. Socialism cannot guarantee that there will never be natural disasters, or even human-made ones. But socialist planning, which takes responsibility for the entire society, represents the only hope for humanity to solve the enormous social and environmental problems the world faces today.
Articles copyright 1995-2010 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

Evo Morales: "Save Capitalism or Save Mother Earth?"

U.S.-Nato Occupiers Withdraw from Korengal

By Caleb T. Maupin
Published Apr 25, 2010 7:38 PM

In one remote region of Afghanistan, the Korengal Valley, the Pentagon has decided to close down its embattled outpost, seeing that its efforts are useless and that the people of this region will not submit to occupation.

Forty-two U.S. troops died there, most between 2006 and 2009, and hundreds more were injured. Many more Afghan troops were killed in fighting, probably because Afghans hired to enforce Western domination are routinely not provided with as much protection and body armor as their Western paymasters and counterparts.

More and more Afghans have joined the resistance and are fighting with the hope that the U.S. occupiers will be driven not just from this forested valley by the banks of the Pech River, but from their entire homeland.

Some historical background can help explain this resistance. After the 1979 revolution led by the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan, the mountains and valleys of the Afghan countryside became economically prosperous. Philip Bonosky, a reporter from the U.S. who resided in Afghanistan during that time, describes this in his book, “Afghanistan: Washington’s Secret War.”

At that time, the PDPA government worked to provide employment for the residents of the rural areas as part of its efforts to assist the people of the country, the majority of whom were peasants, along with a few low-paid industrial workers.

With Soviet material aid, the PDPA government provided employment for youth throughout the countryside, mobilized to teach them to read, and offered medical care and other necessities unknown to many Afghans during the preceding years of Western domination of the country’s government and economy.

Bonosky notes how much of Afghanistan’s great forests had been decimated through years of unregulated harvesting by foreign capitalists. However, young people organized under the leadership of the Marxist-Leninist Democratic Youth League attempted to reforest the countryside and heal the ecological damage the capitalists had inflicted in order to build a sustainable environment for the Afghan people.

The revolutionary regime carried out a massive Soviet-funded jobs program, which helped improve life for millions of Afghans who dwelled in the mountainous regions and had previously barely survived.

When U.S.-sponsored mercenaries defeated the PDPA government after a lengthy war, the victors sold off vast natural resources of Afghanistan to those who had collaborated with the West. Many of those who profited from the removal of the popular regime were not themselves even born in Afghanistan. Many had been hired with CIA funds to wage war against the democratic government and its Soviet defenders.

Class war in the countryside

Once the PDPA government was driven out in the 1980s, the Korengal Valley, like many other areas, was run by a class of Western-backed “timber lords,” capitalists in the lumber industry who often employ their own private armies. These lords rule without question in a totally “free market” where no government intervention exists and money is the only law. It was only in 2006 that government forces of any kind re-entered the region. (New York Times, Feb. 24, 2008)

The people of the Korengal Valley have shown they will not submit to Washington’s wishes. Many villagers live in houses embedded into the sides of mountains. They have loudly refused to recognize the pro-U.S. puppet regime in Kabul or to accept Western “aid” meant to buy their compliance. (New York Times, April 14)

Even after Oct. 20, 2007, when 2,000 pounds of bombs were dropped on the village of Yaka China in the valley, turning five innocent civilians into “collateral damage,” the will of the people to resist did not dry up. (uruknet.info)

Despite nine years of occupation, thousands of deaths, bombings and other brutality designed to force the Afghan population to submit, it seems that the U.S. has been unable to “stabilize” even this single wooded valley.

Articles copyright 1995-2010 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

Offshore drilling: new gift to Big Oil

By Kris Hamel
Published Apr 11, 2010 10:03 PM

President Barack Obama announced a new energy plan on March 31 that includes a huge new expansion of oil and natural gas drilling along the eastern, southern and Alaskan shores of the United States.

The announcement, made at Andrews Air Force Base in Washington, D.C., signaled the end of a longstanding moratorium on offshore drilling on the Eastern seaboard. Some 167 million acres of ocean, from Delaware to mid-Florida, will be opened up for exploration and gas and oil extraction.

Open for oil company exploration and drilling from 2011 to 2017 will be new areas of coastal Virginia and other parts of the mid-Atlantic region, and two-thirds of the eastern Gulf of Mexico and Alaska. The plan includes viability studies for drilling in Alaska’s Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. It will overturn a plan by former President George W. Bush to open for drilling Bristol Bay, Alaska — which provides about 40 percent of U.S. seafood. (latimes.com, March 31)

When shortly after Obama’s inauguration, his Interior Department retracted a Bush administration proposal for drilling from 2012 to 2017, this led to hope that the president was genuinely concerned about correcting serious environmental problems.

During his election campaign, however, Obama had several times publicly supported the “hard decision” to increase offshore drilling. And in his recent State of the Union address on Jan. 27, Obama said that weaning the country from imported oil would require “tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development.”

This decision grants the big and still highly profitable oil corporations one of the biggest items on their wish list: access to the vast regions of the outer continental shelf for drilling. But environmental and conservation advocates and activists, as well as many residents of affected states, have widely denounced the plan, contending it will lead to an increase in oil spills and the destruction of fragile ecosystems.

Drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico has already “been strongly opposed by officials from both political parties in Alabama and Florida, who fear damage to coastlines, fisheries, popular beaches and wildlife. Interior Department officials said no wells would be allowed within 125 miles of the Florida and Alabama coasts, making them invisible from shore.” (New York Times, March 30)

Administration defies widespread opposition

Despite widespread opposition to increased offshore drilling from rank-and-file environmentalists and even Republican Party politicians in the affected areas, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar developed the administration’s plan after conducting four public meetings over the past year in Alaska, California, Louisiana and New Jersey.

Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune noted that “the oil industry already has access to drilling on millions of acres of America’s public lands and water. We don’t need to hand over our last protected pristine coastal areas just so oil companies can break more profit records.”

Greenpeace executive director Phil Radford, stated: “Is this President Obama’s clean energy plan or Palin’s drill-baby-drill campaign? While China and Germany are winning the clean energy race, this act furthers [the U.S.’s] addiction to oil. Expanding offshore drilling in areas that have been protected for decades threatens our oceans and the coastal communities that depend on them with devastating oil spills, more pollution and climate change.” (Associated Press, April 1)

It appears that the exploitation of oceanic gas and oil reserves — despite the potential of increased environmental disaster and degradation — will yield only a limited supply of oil. While it may increase company profits in the short run, eventually “the wells dry up.”

Multibillionaire oil magnate T. Boone Pickens, the chair and CEO of PB Capital, said: “I heard some guy on TV said [the plan] accesses you to 14 billion barrels immediately. ... There’s not 14 billion barrels there to be accessed to. I would say that East Coast, Anwar [Alaska National Wildlife Reserve] and the eastern Gulf of Mexico, all added up, I would be surprised if you could get one to two million barrels a day out of it.

“ ... we’re importing daily 14 million barrels of oil and we’re producing seven in the United States. So, we’re importing two-thirds of what we use.

U.S. oil usage ‘unsustainable’

“And there’s 85 million barrels a day produced in the world every day, and we’re using 21 million barrels of that. So, we’re using 25 percent of all the oil with 4 percent of the population. I don’t think that’s sustainable.” (npr.org, April 3)

Environmental journalist David Roberts, the staff writer for grist.org, wrote, “According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, there likely won’t be any oil from these new offshore areas until 2017, and full production won’t ramp up until 2030. Even when it does, it will produce some 100,000 new barrels a day — about 1/1,000 of total global supply.” (roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com, March 31)

Nevertheless, Obama appears to be using expanded offshore exploration as a bargaining chip in his administration’s attempts to enact sweeping legislation to curb both oil imports and greenhouse gas emissions. The only beneficiary of this policy is Big Oil, which continues to dominate the U.S. economy and political establishment.

If the new energy plan proves anything, it’s that it doesn’t matter which individual or which of the two big-business-controlled political parties sits in the White House. Obama’s concession to Big Oil and the Pentagon — the largest consumer of fossil fuels — made during a speech in front of military leaders and personnel as well as members of Obama’s “green team” and other politicians, means these forces are still firmly in charge of civilian life in the U.S.

Only an anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist struggle can truly stop and reverse environmental degradation, provide clean and renewable sources of energy, and put people back to work. It is either “people and the environment before profits” or “profits first.” There is no middle ground or solution within the confines of the profit-driven capitalist system, which has as its motor force the imperative to “expand or die.”
Articles copyright 1995-2010 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

Architecture of the DPRK

Many true and false criticisms can be made of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, however "poor architecture" is not one of them. Below are images from: This Blog showing artistic beauty of the city.