combatting normality

THE MOST TERRIBLE EVENT

IN HISTORY

 

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is occurring now

 

as part of the Sixth Extinction of the planet

by Nature's hubris: humankind -

 

 

and almost nobody is noticing !

 

 

 

It is the flight from the countryside
of millions upon millions of people
into the cities,
from Tirana to Tasmania,
from Auckland to Arkhangelsk
from Phœnix to Canton
from Turin to Tehran
from Valparaiso to Paris
from Paramaribo to Pnomh Penh
from Capetown to Cairo,
from Lhasa to Lima,
all over the world (except the British Isles)
resulting in appalling world-wide pollution and environmental degradation,
child-prostitution, low-wage slavery,
racketeering and totalitarianisation,
universal anomie and rootlessness, poverty,
a world full of single, working mothers,
and animal cruelty unimaginable even to an omniscient god.

Just as the monocultures of the rich
are degrading the environment of the rich countries,
rural poverty is destroying the environment of the poor countries,
through over-grazing and the destruction of woodland.

The rural poor then move to the cities,
where they are either horribly exploited
or become urban gangsters (as for centuries in Sicily and Calabria)
and suicide-bombers.

If régimes collapse, people flee the cities and rampage
through the countryside (as in Congo-Zaïre and Somalia)
and burn down forests. All of Somalia's forests have been destroyed
and the people are starving, diseased and desperate.

Rural poverty is caused by urban riches
which depend on urban poverty (an underclass):
a vicious cycle which is the motor of capitalism
and globalisation.

The countryside
and manual work and subsistence have all been devalued.
Millions are told that dragooned, hierarchical Employment -
no matter how degrading - is the only progress from poverty.
Small farmers are being squeezed out by big retailers.
The countryside is perceived as the trashcan of progress
and history; it is regarded just as the Americans regard Europe:
a boring, backward place to flee from.
The only rurality that has status now
is the horrific AgrIndustry of the USA:
concentration-camps where a million pigs suffer unbelievable torture;
vast prairies where soy-beans and wheat and maize are grown
on an industrial scale so that the air is unbreathable with insecticide
and fungicide: capitalist biocide.

This event is just part of the agenda of turbo-capitalism,
also known as 'globalisation',
which aims to pack people tightly into cities
and 'encourage' them to buy goods and services.
This is best achieved by encouraging the collapse of rural economies
through ever-declining prices for produce,
so that small farmers are squeezed out.

Coffee, for example, now brings a lower return for the grower
than it did thirty years ago.
Bananas, oranges and other fruit cost almost nothing in the producer countries.
Farmers in the rich countries are subsidised,
while those in the poor countries are squeezed -
so that the rich countries can get food ever more cheaply,
while their supermarkets make greater and greater profits.
Manufacturing (except of armaments) in the rich countries is winding down,
because labour in the poor countries is cheap -
because people are coming in from the countryside
desperate to earn a pittance in sweatshops
and dangerous factories.

Cities are where the human heart is sick . William Wordsworth

 

Capitalism inherently favours the retailers, the value-adders and investors
while crushing the producers.
Capitalism is causing the Sixth Extinction of the planet
due to overpopulation (of the poor countries,
while the rich countries import cheap labour to offset the low birth-rates),
pollution (as the production of food is industrialised
and people are herded into super-cities),
global warming, the decline of land fit to farm
(Western Europe has lost half the topsoil off its agricultural land since 1950
and the world half its rural population),
destruction of forests, lakes, seas and wilderness,
and horrific reduction of almost all other species
(except viruses, retroviruses, bacilli, rats, cockroaches, certain insects, cereals and grotesquely man-engineered domestic animals & pets).

The more obsessively that people wash,
the more degraded they and the planet become.

Capitalism - the prostitution of the entire planet -
is the world's most successful religion,
and all religions (like all armies) are evil.

Be ashamed to be human.

 

 

but so what ?