crisis of spirit

in the interests of full disclosure- i have been feeling a bit off lately. ok, for a really long time. i truly don’t understand people. at all. i don’t belong within my own species. i suppose some of the ancients felt the same way as the end of their empires fell- fiddling on rooftops while cities burn kind of thing. i don’t know quite what to do about it- and that’s where i am at. my own species; my own neighbors; my own countrymen- disgust me.

i hate leaving my house and that’s the honest truth. everyday, i witness things that make me crazy- simple things in the grander scheme of things- but those little things add up to the impeachable and indictable behaviours at the very top of our country. it’s law here in new york state that you have to talk on your cell phone while driving- with a headset device. hands free- i believe it’s billed. it’s law, but i honestly believe that my husband is the only one who uses his. that’s one example.

my former neighbors are another- turning on each other and gossiping about each other behind backs- and calling code enforcement on people when angry. it’s a small step from code to homeland security. it’s a mind set. anyway, all of these little things swirl around in my mind putting themselves together eventually into a mosaic that shows me a picture.

and the picture is ugly. what the hell is wrong with us? what is wrong with the rich western nations that we believe that the world is our garbage dump? what is wrong with the governments of third world nations who believe that their people are just garbage? i look around and i see this time and again- and i want to know why? why is it so difficult to believe that we have effectively killed our planet? half of the world’s primates are expected to be in danger of extinction soon. half. do you know what we are? we-are-primates.

i wrote in my journal recently that i was terribly disillusioned with america. the land of my birth; the country that i believed in; that i believed stood for freedom and innovation- that land was an illusion. my country is greedy and grasping and bullying; my country is part of the western world cartel that thinks nothing of treating africa and other parts of the poor world- as throwaway. treats human beings as ‘collateral damage’ in their quest for profits. my neighbors are ’salt of the earth’ americans doncha know? blue collar- janitors, ibm workers, manufacturers, crossing guards, nurse’s aides- ‘real americans’- and they talk with disdain about people of color and homosexuals and anyone who doesn’t look like them or act like them and it disgusts me. these are the people who have lost america. these are the people who don’t think twice about where their big screen tvs go- or their old cell phones or their computers- if they even have one. they don’t think about where they came from or how they get to the stores- they just care that george bush would be a cool guy to have a beer with in the backyard bbq. because he’s from texas. except they are too stupid to realize that he’s not.

so, i ask again- why? who are we and why do we continue to let this go on? and isn’t it going to be lonely without a few billion people?

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E-waste, 20 million tons a year minimum.

Time has an interesting read up for folks that use electronic gear-which is basically all of us. From the article:

But the tech industry has a dirty little secret: it has toxic waste of its own. Phones and computers contain dangerous metals like lead, cadmium and mercury, which can contaminate the air and water when those products are dumped. It’s called electronic waste, or e-waste, and the world produces a lot of it: 20 to 50 million tons a year, according to the UN - enough to load a train that would stretch around the world. The U.S. is by far the world’s top producer of e-waste, but much of it ends up elsewhere - specifically, in developing nations like China, India and Nigeria, to which rich countries have been shipping garbage for years. There the poor, often including children, dismantle dumped PCs and phones, stripping the components for the valuable - and toxic - metals contained inside. In the cities like the southern Chinese town of Guiyu, they work with little protection, melting down components and breathing in poisonous fumes. What can’t be recycled is simply dumped, turning already poisoned rivers into toxic sludge. It’s all done in the hope of earning a few dollars from the detritus of the clean digital economy.

I just about shat myself when I read the above paragraph. I try to be a good world citizen-recycling all my plastics, glass, newspapers and never throwing away something that can or should be recycled. But I don’t think about electronic waste, it just never occurred to me until I read the Time writeup. I have never tossed out a computer or old cell phone however..I keep them and figure that eventually I will dispose of them correctly..but then, how does our government handle this waste that we carefully dispose of?

The US dumps this massive problem on third world countries. Our rich nation takes advantage of the poor nations without blinking an eye. Again, from the Time article:

The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal was established by the UN in 1989 to control the hazardous garbage flowing from rich countries to poor ones. The convention allows countries to unilaterally ban the import of waste, and requires exporters to get the consent of destination countries before they send trash abroad. But the United States, a prime source of e-waste and other toxic waste, never signed onto the treaty, leaving it weakened, and some of the destination nations - most prominently China - quietly allow the dumping to continue, for the money it brings in.

Why didn’t the US ratify this treaty? Why wouldn’t our government want to take part in this effort? Of the 170 parties to the Convention, only three countries have signed the Convention but have not yet ratified it. The treaty went into effect on May 5, 1992. The Reagan administration didn’t do shit towards ratification, and neither did the Bush41 administration.

God bless those fucking republican administrations. The map shows the countries in blue that have ratified the agreement. The cough..red countries have not. The red countries are: Afghanistan, Haiti, and the United States. Jesus, we are in such good company there aren’t we?

Crossposted at Leftwing Nutjob

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