We might as well put blood in our tanks

Destruction of virgin forest for ‘cheap’ cattle grazing and palm oil and soy plantations, horrific factory farms fed with the ‘cheap’ soy transported thousands of miles across the world, the collapse of fish stocks, global warming, the depletion of plankton and coral reefs dissolving because of increased carbon dioxide being absorbed into the oceans and turning them to acid, the effect of oil fields on ecosystems and the oil wars in Africa, Chechnya, Iraq and Afghanistan………These are all part of the prevalent, brutal and unsustainable type of globalisation and supermarket/car culture that capitalism has produced. Poverty, starvation and imprisonment is increasing globally whilst big business rakes in profits, or failing that, is bailed out or subsidised by taxpayer’s money.

In oil rich Nigeria, 70 percent of people live below the national poverty line. Millions live in squalid slums with few or no services and many thousands live on toxic rubbish dumps. Most of the rest seem to be driving somewhere. Trying to get out of it maybe - but ironically that is part of making it as it is. "Lagos is unbearable! People are living in traffic!" exclaimed one desperate inhabitant in a recent Internet posting. In a 2005 study by the Lagos Metropolitan Transport Authority (LAMATA), road traffic was identified as the main source of air pollution in Lagos State, having “catastrophic” health implications…………but as long as people are buying the oil – well, the profits are rolling in, so why change things?? And public services?......Well, let’s just say there are obviously other priorities.

The British, the U.S. and other powerful western and Russian business interests and governments have been trying by any means they can, and for many decades to control what happen to be mainly Muslim countries, because of the oil sourced from them, and/or running through them in pipe lines. The methods used include staging/supporting coups to get rid of democratically elected governments, installing puppet governments and, of course, war. Is it surprising that people have been radicalised by that? Non government terrorism is caused by government terrorism and the abusive business practices that it is used to impose. – And all this is done to supply profits and fuel for short term economic growth - bowing to the kingship of big business, and to please an uninformed western electorate by providing ‘cheap’ oil. And society has become set up so we are trapped in to buying cars and using the oil, and the oil is used in the ’planes and the lorries that take people on ‘cheap’ holidays and bring ‘cheap’ stuff ………that involves exploitation such as subsistence wages, child labour, animal cruelty, and is wrecking our environment………and environmental damage, particularly water stress, is increasingly another cause of war………