Showing posts with label poisoned environment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poisoned environment. Show all posts

Friday 2 May 2014

Murder With Intent.


        You walk through the air conditioned shopping mall and are surrounded by an array of colourful shiny shops, all displaying a kaleidescope of goods. They are all there, H&M, Gap, Adidas, and others, it all looks so innocent. However, a lot of the merchandise of these companies is manufacture in Indonesia, along the banks of the once beautiful River Citarum. A river that for centuries was the survival line for millions of people. They fished the river, they drank the water, it slaked the thirst of their animals, and it watered their fields of crops.
        Now thanks to the manufacturers of cheap goods for Western corporate names like the three mentioned above, the River Citarum is now a running sewer, as factories along its banks pour in a cocktail of toxic chemicals such as Mercury and other noxious poisons and waste. In spite of this the River Citarum, now among the dirtiest rivers in the world, is still drinking water to approximately 35 million people. Now the local trade has changed, instead of fishing, the local villages along its banks try to salvage rubbish from the river to sell, it's a living.

 

      Why should these people have to endure a range of horrific illness and the destruction of their way of life and livelihood, because corporations want to maximise their profits in the West? This is a form of slow mass murder, people will die from avoidable illnesses, others will live a life of poor and deteriorating health, all in the name of corporate profit. You kill somebody and steal their belongings, that's murder. You slowly kill thousands of people and steal their way of life, that's mass murder. It is not done through ignorance, these corporations are fully aware of the damage they are doing, fully aware of the consequences on the lives of those caught up in their greed driven quest for ever more profit. Not an impassioned murder, but cold blooded murder with intent.

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