Saturday 29 October 2016

Shattered Dreams: Limits To Growth Or Nightmares



What exactly is this thing nice-ly named "growth". It sounds wonder-full. Like a seed sprouting from the soil and bringing forth life to all.But that is the good type of growth.

Today, growth means more highways, more shopping malls, bigger box stores, bigger factory/prison farms [you know where the animals are literally/figuratively locked up inside and eating food that acidifies their stomachs leading to e-coli growth, etc.], more surveillance [i.e. less privacy], bigger houses [for the few who can afford them - for example: the average house in Toronto is going for $1,200,000 today!]. Shall I continue?

It's a big definition that is far from exhausted here. So what are the "costs". Well, less green-space, which means less clean air, water, soil. Forests being wiped out by the second with bigger machines [that employ less people!]...farms turning into deserts through industrial agriculture's rapist act-i-on-s....land being ripped up for resources such as oil, precious minerals to make i-phones and solar panels...Where can you go to hear "silence" or the absence of cars? Where can you go and see stars at night and darkness all around? Where can you go and be afraid of bears and cougars revealing some eco-systems still intact?

What happens to the workers? In the drive for higher profits, the workers lose rights, jobs, security. No longer does daddy have the same job his whole life. Women still don't get equal pay today! If you speak up you lose your job. Without any representation, be it a union or some form of collectivization, the worker is evermore a cog in the face-less machine. S/he doesn't matter. When the employer doesn't want you anymore, s/he will hire people to tell you to gather your stuff and leave - no notice - no face-to-face. Security guards will be there to assist you - especially in case you want to show some emotion, other than a smile.How dare you?!!!

With almost 9,000,000,000 arriving - the land, water, and air cannot sustain/survive. With most of the world living in cities now, where do people expect the land, water, air to come from? Who even wonders what happens to the exhaust from their car goes?  Does the investment holder care about the above being wiped out/polluted/taken from the peasants living there? And these are the ones called "ethical funds". 

Over 1,000,000,000 are starving right now. Yet we see food in the stores literally taken from their homelands to supply Europe and North America. Along with the food goes the labour, soil nutrients and water necessary to grow these. Banned chemicals are exported from the U.S. and applied by workers without any protective gear nor rights. The workers, the water, and the land are poisoned. And look at those huge grapes from Chile! The produce coming out of Mexico is huge - as are breasts of  little girls who have been poisoned by the chemicals. The chemicals alter the hormones of girls too young to grow breasts. So enjoy those avocados!

Isn't it time to end the nightmare? With  $100-170,000,000,000 in taxes not being paid in Canada alone, we see who is en-joy-ing the sweet dreams and who are living the night-mare [and don't forget the non-humans]! So what are you, us, all of us going to do?