Spencer Oneal
SOS Commodification Processes & Alternatives
Week #6 February 11th 2017
Like coffee, sugar played a key role in mercantile history. Sugar along with tobacco and tea, posits historian Sidney W. Mintz, “were the first objects within capitalism that conveyed with their use the complex idea that one could become different by consuming differently.” 16
(Newman 2013: 82)
Born of a doctrine of discovery paranoia us and people driven entitlement to think wish and destroy all that which was indigenous America was framed in the mantra of manifest destiny.
In May of 2011 federal pumps on the Sacramento River and some state facilities killed 4,400,073 split tail trout and 3600 salmon in just eight days.… and continued to kill 400,000 to 600,000 each day… The primary motivation is almonds… That is why the big ad interests of California look back to the damn and to the waters to solve their problems.
(LaDuke 2016: 61,65,)
The nation’s tallest dam, on Lake Oroville, for the first time the emergency spillway has been used in the reservoir’s nearly 50-year history… which releases over 100,000 cubic feet per second…Nearly 200,000 residents who live near America’s tallest dam have to evacuate the area as the spillway could fail at any moment…The cost of repairing the dam could approach $200 million, but they noted the estimate was an early, ballpark figure.
By MICHAEL BALSAMO AND RICH PEDRONCELLI, ASSOCIATED PRESS
OROVILLE, Calif. — Feb 11, 2017, 7:09 PM ET
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/water-flowing-emergency-spillway-tallest-us-dam-45426912
From the very beginning this country has been founded on principles of exploitation greed dominance as we relentlessly conqueror and destroy all that is good and natural. Degree of destruction and suffering we have caused is unimaginable an innumerable. The costs of these conquests in the forms of stealing and ravaging the land of its natural resources as well as that of the Indigenous peoples is incomprehensible, and that does not even being to account for the unquantifiable costs associated with the greater inherent values of such assets as sacred sites and spiritual ancestries.
I am continuously appalled at how inhumane we as a species have become we go to such lengths to harm and exploit all that is good and beautiful, all in the name of a false sense of power and control. This insatiable appetite and uncontrollable desire is equivalent to that of a toxic disease or cancer in which the foreign human bodies will consume ceaselessly at any cost to their host. How is it that we have devolved to a place of such complete and utter disregard for all life and become so ignorant of the consequences of our actions? As much as I may hope for and believe that we can recover from our atrocities, if we are to be judged as a species, I dare say we are not deserving of this life or being saved from our inevitable self-inflicted demise. In all actuality the world would most likely be a better place without us. However I do believe that there is an ultimate purpose for all of this suffering, something far greater than all of us, and if we can come to realize this we might just have a chance.