West, Texas explosion: no accident |
by Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
I see that the market driven catastrophe the world knows as Fukushima got a small mention in the media last week. William Boardman writing for the left leaning, Reader Supported News points out that, “By official measurement, the water coming out of Fukushima is currently 90,000 times more radioactive than officially "safe" drinking water. “
I see that the market driven catastrophe the world knows as Fukushima got a small mention in the media last week. William Boardman writing for the left leaning, Reader Supported News points out that, “By official measurement, the water coming out of Fukushima is currently 90,000 times more radioactive than officially "safe" drinking water. “
It is not surprising that these developments are not
prominent in the mainstream media as the 1% would rather the issue go away. The
huge demonstrations and protests that are occurring throughout the world
against the savagery of the market are no competition for such important events
as actress Leah Remini’s
break with Scientology.
The effects of Fukushima, the BP oil spill and other “unnatural” disasters will be felt and
understood by those closest to the source of the crisis, the plants, animals
and human beings whose health will be aversely affected. The capitalist class is very short sighted,
some of the effects of such disasters will not be clearly understood for
centuries so best leave it alone and make some money while we can.
In April and the
following months, the US mass media was absorbed, as was US society, with
domestic terrorism as bombs exploded at the end of the Boston Marathon. Boston,
a major US city was put on lockdown as the authorities searched for the alleged
perpetrators. No doubt we will be very
well informed about the trial of one of the captives. There are some who
believe that the real perpetrators were right wing US terrorists as the bombing
occurred on April 15th, or Tax Day in the US when returns have to be
in to the IRS, but that’s another issue.
Two days after the Boston bombing an explosion at a fertilizer
plant in West, Texas, rocked that city.
The loss of life was far greater and the damage more extensive, 15
people were killed and more than 150 homes destroyed or damaged in a 37 block
area. A high school, middle school, apartment complex and a nursing home were
also destroyed in the April 17 blast. “Chunks
of concrete were fell from the sky like cartoon anvils…” writes Business
week.
As
I commented previously, this was no an accident but also an act of
terror. So far no one had been arrested
or imprisoned for this crime. But there
are plenty of culprits. As
Peter Dreier and Donald Cohen pointed out:
“The chemical industry
has been one of the most effective lobby groups in this regard. In the 1970s,
for example, the industry lobbied Congress to prohibit OSHA from regularly
inspecting workplaces with fewer than 10 employees in industries with low
reported injury rates. Fertilizer plants are included on the list of exempted
industries. This may be why OSHA hadn't inspected the West Fertilizer plant
since 1985. If they put profit before people, and allow greed or
indifference to put lives at risk, they should be punished”
I agree with these authors of course but we live in a
capitalist economic system where the means of production are privately owned
and profit is supposed to come before
people. In fact, profit has its source in the unpaid labor of workers who, as
part of the labor process produce more value than the sum of their wages. Capitalists set the productive process in
motion if it’s profitable first and foremost.
The production of food must be profitable and the production
and storage of fertilizers that can increase productivity is no different. Any
obstacle to profit and capital accumulation is cleared like brush fire,
regulation by the state, unions, community activists and organizations etc.
Billions are spent bribing the politicians of the 1% in to ensuring laws protecting
workers consumers and our communities are not enacted.
What happened at the West Fertilizer plant was some 28 to 34
tons of Ammonium nitrate, equivalent to 15,000 to 20,000 pounds of TNT, exploded,. The explosion left a crater 93 feet wide and
10 feet deep. West Fertilizer was a retail family plant owned by Adair
Grain. There are some 6000 retail plants
in the US, many of them owned by the giant agricultural outfits but “No one tracks the number of retail
facilities in operation” writes Bloomberg
Business Week.
The
explosion was horrific. Business Week
describes what it did to Robert Payne, one of the town’s residents who was
found by neighbors “The shock wave had
lifted him out of his boots and thrown him 35 feet through the air in to the
side of a large plastic tank of livestock feed.” Payne survived with the
help of his neighbors; he was one of the lucky ones.
As
I pointed out in an earlier blog, all sorts of reasons have been thrown out
there that can explain away this tragic event. The plant ”Fell Through the Cracks of Regulatory Oversight.”, said the New
York Times on April 24th adding that, there were “bureaucratic
cracks at the federal, state and local levels.”
But
why were there regulatory cracks, or bureaucratic cracks or any sort of cracks?
Why are one group of people allowed to prevent through bribery, laws that if
acted on, would protect workers and our communities? When they talk about big government and
slashing public services in the interests of economic growth and prosperity
sometime in the future, they are increasing the likelihood of further
catastrophe’s like West Texas. We have
seen many in the past period including mine explosions, refinery explosions and
tragedies of historical proportions like the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico and
the Fukushima disaster. Ask yourself
ordinary citizen; who would put a nuclear reactor on an earthquake fault in an
area of the planet known as the Ring of Fire due to its seismic activity and
next to the ocean in a land whose language gave us the word Tsunami?
“Experts” decided to do that, and that
decision was based primarily on profit.
In
the case of West Texas, politicians and business big shots decided that it was
OK to have a fertilizer plant surrounded by homes and a couple of schools. The nearest fire hydrant to the plant was 2500
feet from the burning building at the plant. Obama and his drone program can
blow a family to bits 3000 miles away yet a basic thing like a fire hydrant
can’t be placed in a area it might serve the public good here in the US.
Two
months after the blast the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) refused
the state’s request to declare West, Texas a major disaster site which meant
the town was denied some $17 million in aid although the federal government did
allot $25 million in aid but the decision by FEMA was not popular with local
resident, “Everybody expects you to work
and pay taxes..” West resident David Pratka told Business Week, “..and when it comes time to get help you
don’t get help.”
But
our taxes are needed for much more important areas of work like giving former
ruthless dictators like Mubarak $2 billion a year, or producing military
hardware for the Saudi thugs or another billion or two for the Zionist regime
to ensure that apartheid state maintains its brutal occupation of Palestinian
land. The bases in Afghanistan, Iraq, and all over the world cost money.
As
is always the case in these instances, lawsuits have been filed. West has filed
against Adair and its “deep pocketed”
supplier, CF industries and
individuals have filed against Adair Grain.
The town has argued that CF industries should have inspected the
plant. After the fact it is now recognized
many things could have been done to prevent the explosion, (it was recognized
before but why interfere with profit making.) including not surrounding the
place with homes and schools where we educate our children. The structures and plant facilities are now
recognized to have been lacking.
The
chairman of the US Chemical Safety Board testified to the US Senate in June
that their investigation, “has not
identified any US standards or guidance that prohibit or discourage many of the
factors t likely contributed to the West disaster.”. How many times have we heard these
excuses? Companies claim after workers
die or communities are poisoned by their toxic waste that the taxpayer has to
clean up, that “we complied with all the
relevant laws and regulations” and indeed they do. You can’t break rules
and regulations that protect the public when their politicians ensure that such
laws don’t exist. “It’s easy to say
you’re not in violation of any regulations if you don’t have any regulations”
on of the lawyers representing plaintiffs tells Business week.
The
mass media representing the economic interests of the 1% spouts propaganda
against big government, unions and regulation as anti-American and damaging to
the nation and its economy meaning all of us as if workers and capitalists have
the same economic interests. The reality is, the aspects of state intervention
they oppose are those that deny or limit their ability to rake in the dough at
the expense of workers, the middle class and the precious environment that we
depend on for human life. Their
propaganda and fear mongering about foreign terrorists and Muslims is a smoke
screen. The day after this act of terror in West, Texas Governor Rick Perry
made it clear more regulation wasn’t necessary even though there is no
regulation by any serious standards.
This is a character who wages war on the rights of women and says he is
pro-life as he supports the mass incarceration and murder of workers and the
poor by the state.
There
is one last aspect of this for me. Ammonium nitrate is a fertilizer and the
Business Week article from which much of the information in this commentary
originates, states that, “Without
synthetic nitrogen fertilizers it has been estimated that the earth could feed
only 3.5 billion people or half its current population…” We need to ask ourselves, “Whose estimation is this?” It is the estimates of scientists,
demographers, agronomists and all the experts in the employ of capitalism.
Willingly or not, they start from the position that the only way to produce
food is for profit and under the direction of private capital. The same people
using the same methods claim overpopulation and the poor having too many
children are behind the race to provide more food which means more fertilizers with
the environmental destruction that results; there are “too many people “ they argue.*
But
it is not too many people that is the problem. It is that food is a commodity
like anything else in a capitalist economy including human beings or water. The
problem is how we produce food. The
primary motive is profit and the entire industry is based on it. I do not intend to go in to that here but how
we produce food in a democratic socialist society would be entirely different
and not dominated by a few giant agricultural corporations.
And
while I wouldn’t argue against regulation in a capitalist economy, we know through
experience that they will not regulate themselves. They will always put profit
first and they will bribe their politicians to ensure that is so or regulators
will simply allow them to write their own rules as they did with the energy
industry with regard to deep water drilling which led to the deaths there and
the poisoning of the Gulf of Mexico.
Our
security and the fate of our children and the health of the planet on which we
live can only be assured when we control the economic and political decisions
that affect us, from the production of our food to the building of our cities
and the protection of our land and water. A genuine democratic socialist
society as part of a world federation of democratic socialist states is not a
dream, it’s a necessity.
*For
an excellent response to this false argument read: Too Many People by Ian Angus
and Simon Butler. You can purchase the book here
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