By David Brooks on February 22, 2023
meeting between residents and city council in East Palestine, Ohio, to answer questions about the derailment of a Norfolk Southern freight train carrying toxic substances.
There are explosions everywhere: toxic clouds, missiles, sabotage with explosives and news that should blow up, and balloons (yes, more balloons).
In a place called East Palestine, but not where explosions are very common, but in Ohio, a freight train derailed, leading to toxic chemical explosions and the evacuation of hundreds of residents, while water, land and air contamination continues to spread.
It was an accident foretold. Unions and other sectors have been warning that this type of accident was about to happen, while the profits of the seven railroad companies are increasing as they reduce the staff in charge of the (by almost a third) longer and longer trains (the one that derailed in Ohio had 151 cars).
In fact, more than 1,000 trains derail each year, and the number is rising along with profits, with companies lobbying to further loosen safety regulations.
The famous investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reports that it was the United States that committed the sabotage against the Nord Stream pipeline, built to transport natural gas from Russia to Europe. In September last year, the pipelines were severely damaged by a series of underwater explosions in the Baltic Sea, and the U.S. and European countries accused Russia of damaging its own construction site to make Europe suffer around the war in Ukraine (not to mention that it would benefit gas exports and transportation from Ukraine).
Hersh claims that the sabotage was carried out by the US Navy, which planted explosives during NATO military exercises last year, in collaboration with Norway, in an operation authorized by President Joe Biden. As usual, the White House denied Hersh and accused him of fabricating pure fiction, a response much like Hersh’s other reports – including the most famous one on the My Lai massacre in Vietnam – over several decades, which later had to be accepted as truth by the authorities.
Meanwhile, the balloon crisis continues -how times have changed, when we used to have missile crises. Well, but missiles at $400 000 each were used to shoot down the dangerous balloons, one of which seems to have been a toy, worth $12. As they like to say here: these are your tax dollars at work.
As if this were not enough, the United States, instead of promoting peace, continues to threaten its main geopolitical rival: China, not only accusing it of using balloons to spy on the United States and other countries (how dare they?), but warning Beijing not to support Moscow, while accusing Russia of crimes against humanity -the rhetoric of war in the name of peace, again-. Apparently, there are no mirrors in the halls of power in Washington.
At the same time, there were other things that should have provoked explosions of anger. For example, Senator Bernie Sanders’ report that the 15 hedge fund managers on Wall Street make more money in a year than all the kindergarten teachers in the United States combined, more than 120,000 educators. Or a story published in the Wall Street Journal with a recommendation: to save money, maybe you should skip breakfast. Perhaps the richest country in the world should adopt the slogan of one of Lula’s election campaigns, which was, quite simply, to declare three meals a day for everyone as a right.
The $400,000 missiles might be effective against balloons, but this country would be much safer if a little of that military budget, unmatched in the world at over $800 billion, were spent on its schools and teachers, safety and environmental protection in its transportation systems, its basic infrastructure, labor and migration reforms and a health system for all.
Source: La Jornada, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – US