The Sham of Homeland Security: A West Virginia Parable

[Wind Dancer]

by Pierre Tristam


The shamelessness of it. The sheer grubbing for it. Look around the nation’s front pages today: Celebration in cities that will get more "anti-terror" dollars, dismay in cities that won’t. Feasting or starving over terror’s pork tenderloins. You’d think cities should be grateful that they’re not considered high on the list of prospective bombings. But here’s the perversion of terror-age America: Cities are either jubilant that they’ve been designated high-risk targets of terrorism, because that means more dollars, more jobs, more shiny riot gear and charcoal-lined chemical suits for the day when they can be put to use. Or else they’re resentful that they’re lower-risk targets, because there’s fewer tenderloins in it for them. There must be a latent, obscene desire in there somewhere, among cities, for the sort of attacks that would give them a chance to shine in time of crisis, a chance to extract heroism out of the rubble, to have a go at another Ground Zero’s marketable potential. So to be downgraded in the lottery of risk, rather than elicit relief, provokes outrage — at least from the Chamber of Commerce types always foraging for the next quick boost to their city’s repute.

Perspective is a natural casualty of war. But this isn’t a war. It’s the constant reenactment of sham combat to the sound and fury of conventional trappings: Exaggerated fears, rabid patriotism, unquestioned submission to homeland security dogma. None of it rallies the nation’s resources (not when you’re cutting taxes every year of the so-called war). None of it ensure Americans’ safety (not when you’re starting yet another war unprovoked and giving terror’s recruiters more advantages than the Pentagon’s). It merely, richly expedites the profiteering. And isn’t that what running government as a business is all about? The answer — the proof — is not just in those headline over homeland security’s dole. It’s also and especially in the other headline of the day, in the 12 dead miners coming out of that mine in West Virginia.

In its crudest but truest terms, the West Virginia mining tragedy — not unlike the space shuttle program’s Challenger and Columbia catastrophes — is an example of corporate dividends at the expense of workers’ safety. As the Charleston Gazette’s Ken Ward reported, the mine in Sago, W.Va., was a documented disaster zone of safety infractions. Attention for now is focused on the human loss, as it should be. But aside from Ward’s piece, the link isn’t likely to be made between the cost of true safety in day-to-day, working America — in the workplace anywhere, in the mines, in the meat-packing plants, in the rail yards — and the cost of corporate corner-cutting in the name of shareholder demands. In all, 5,703 people were killed in job-related accidents in 2004 (58 of them in West Virginia). It takes money to pay for government inspectors of workplaces. It takes money and commitment to make the federal government’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) be more than a wrist-slapper. But the Bush administration despises regulatory agencies like OSHA and sister agencies like the Mine Safety and Health Administration (to say nothing of the Environmental Protection Agency). It starves them of money and authority, enabling companies working under them to snub their noses at them, to laugh at thousand-dollar fine after thousand-dollar fine for safety infractions the way millionaire baseball players laugh at thousand-dollar fines for saying "fuck" near a network mike.

In 2004 eight workers at the Sago mine in West Virginia were injured badly enough to be kept off the job for at least a year. The entire year, the company sustained $9,515 in fines — a few weeks’ pay for a single worker. They call that safety regulation. It’s as toothless as a dentured crash-test dummy. The bottom line isn’t safety. It isn’t keeping Americans secure in their job. It isn’t doing what it takes to hold employers accountable for workplace safety. The bottom line is the bottom line. A company’s management usually and easily survives the occasional worker’s death and the more than occasional worker’s injuries. It wouldn’t survive shareholders’ ire as effectively. In that sense, the West Virginia mining tragedy is a parable of Homeland Security America.

-more-

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0105-22.htm

[pretzel4gore]

1. it's ' BigBrotherland security'

homeland security suggests something noble, or warm and fuzzy, like bush's balls

[acmavm]

2. This article is great. Finally, a focus on what the real 'security' needs

are in this country, and how the sham Department of Home Security is a front for incompetence and intrusion into the lives of the American people.

What conditions and situations threaten the health and safety of this country the most? Workplace safety? Threats to the environment? Lack of available healthcare to millions? The utter disdain for the old, poor, homeless? The looting of the treasury for an unjust and immorral war? The continual outsourcing of American jobs overseas? A completely criminal government overrun by liars, thieves, facist thugs, and neocon traitors?

Those are what I worry about most.

[ladjf]

3. The miners were within 2,000 ft of breathable air and there

were no physical obstacles blocking their exit from the mine. (This morning's AJC). They could have simply walked out of the mine in minutes after the explosion.