Business Clean Up

Capitalism at work.
This is what the nice, caring capitalists at Trafigura did:

dozens of damning internal Trafigura emails which have now come to light reveal how traders were told in advance that their planned chemical operation, a cheap and dirty process called "caustic washing", generated such dangerous wastes that it was widely outlawed in the west.

The documents reveal that the London-based traders hoped to make profits of $7m a time by buying up what they called "bloody cheap" cargoes of sulphur-contaminated Mexican gasoline. They decided to try to process the fuel on board a tanker anchored offshore, creating toxic waste they called "slops".

One trader wrote on 10 March 2006: "I don't know how we dispose of the slops and I don't imply we would dump them, but for sure, there must be some way to pay someone to take them." The resulting black, stinking, slurry was eventually dumped around landfills in Abidjan, after Trafigura paid an unqualified local man to take it away in tanker trucks at a cheap rate.

And

The UN human rights special rapporteur, Professor Okechukwu Ibeanu, criticised Trafigura ...

He wrote: "According to official estimates, there were 15 deaths, 69 persons hospitalised and more than 108,000 medical consultations … there seems to be strong prima facie evidence that the reported deaths and adverse health consequences are related to the dumping."

And that is life under capitalism for too many in this world.
As the man sang

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul

Amen.

Foreigners and what they do

What do foreigners do? Oh, foreigners support David Thomas.

Foreigner had a 1970's rock band.

And foreigners are responsible for poverty in Russia.

Statistics are collected and analyzed at a sedate rate and Russian statistics for the first quarter of 2009 are just in. Almost 25 million Russians were living in poverty (defined as "an adult income of less than 5,497 roubles, or £110, a month") in the first quarter of 2009 compared with 18.5 million at the end of 2008.

According to Natalia Zubarevich, a professor of economic geography at Moscow's state university, Russians are adept at dealing with crises; many grow vegetables in small kitchen gardens to survive, and others rely on a network of close relatives. Most willingly accept unpaid time off work, or reduced salaries, she added.

The rise in poverty levels did not pose a serious political challenge to the Kremlin, she said. "The (state-controlled) Russian media is quite clear who is responsible for the crisis. Foreigners are responsible, enemies are responsible and big business, especially, is responsible. But not Putin."

Ah, how easy politics would be if all problems could be blamed on foreigners. Ah, to fall into a Daily Express world where all problems are down to foreigners. If it weren't for those pesky foreigners...

It would never happen here. It's difficult to imagine an England with a newspaper and political party with an agenda of blaming everything on foreigners; seeing foreigners as responsible for every problem and never responsible for a solution. The liberal, xenophilic, anti-racist people of England would rise up and decry such a paper and party for being the small minded, xenophobic, nasty, curtain twitchers that they are. It would never happen here.

Oh, just had a phone call, it already has happened here. Thanks for treading on my dreams.