Hats off to El Salvador as it has just become the first country in the world to ban the mining of metals. El Salvador has a population of 6.38 million living within 8,124 square miles, an area that consists of only 1.5% water. If I can compare this with Scotland we have a population of 5.3 million but occupying 30,090 square miles. As a result, it is very densely populated in comparison to Scotland. I don't know what percentage of Scotland contains water, but it must be a great deal higher than 1.5%. Loch Lomond itself is 27 miles long, and, as I am sure you will know, is only 4 miles longer than Loch Ness. Ness is 745 feet deep whilst Lomond is 620 feet at its deepest. That's a lot of water. If you consult a map of Scotland you will see that we have a great many other lochs as well, though not quite as big. What is important in this seemingly meaningless drivel is that El Salvador's water supplies are 90% undrinkable because of toxic contamination by mining chemicals, principally mercury and cyanide. El Salvador's principal river is apparently a bright orange. Thus, a rather densely populated nation with a limited water supply has been forced, by the imperatives of human survival, to ban the cause of their crisis regardless of the consequences for their economy.
This is the end product of the free market, the literal destruction of a nation. This is the result of deregulation and allowing corporations to pursue their own selfish interests. It makes a complete nonsense of the free market claims of self-regulation. It is a graphic example of the stupidity and inhumanity of free market economics, and of the global corporations that exploit the barbarity of an ideology that puts profits before human existence. I have stated in this blog since I first began that the greatest threat to human life is the free market. It is the greatest threat to civilisation and is the driving force behind terrorism, war, global warming, inequality and poverty. It is an ideology founded on an illusion and a set of absurd hypotheses. The concept of 'the market' is devoid of ethical and moral considerations and is championed by the most feral and loathsome people in existence. I am indebted to the Scottish newspaper The National for the following quote. Water and mining expert Andreas McKinley of Central American University in San Salvador told us that "Mining is an industry whose primary and first victim is water. We are talking about an issue that is a life-or-death issue for the country." Now, that is self-evident, human life cannot continue where there is no water, and yet, despite this, the government of El Salvador had to fight a seven year battle with the mining companies in the arbitration tribunal of the World Bank before the tribunal ruled in El Salvador's favour. The mining companies were prepared to see a whole nation literally die, rather than give up on their voracious pursuit of profit. None of the wealth extracted from El Salvador however, has ever been enjoyed by its people.
What El Salvador also reveals is the nature of the people who run our major capitalist companies. They are, in essence, no different from the Nazis. Oh they are civilised, family people, churchgoers who wear nice suits, are well-mannered and model citizens, but they are just as prepared to leave a nation as ruined as the Nazis did, or as Assad is doing in Syria, it will just take them longer, but the effects will be the same. You have to pause and consider the legal people who will go into a court on their behalf and swear allegiance to an oath in the name of their god and persistently lie through their teeth in order to protect their employer's right to kill people, livestock and a whole nation. These people have champions at the very top of government, people who will allow whole nations to perish, who will allow the environment to die because profit is God and must be obeyed. The worst offenders are in the pigsty and the White House. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
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