WEEK 48 Nov 18th to 24th 2002

   JUST ANOTHER OIL-TANKER DISASTER

   The oil tanker Prestige broke in two and sank outside the northeastern coast of Spain Tuesday, initially loaded with 70000 tons of oil. At least 10000 tons of that have been released into the ocean and contaminated 200 kilometers of Spain's shore. The area, known for its abundant variety of life will most certainly be dead for years ahead. The fishermen says they will be unemployed for at least four years. If all the oil in the skip is released into the ocean there will be a disaster in a magnitude twice that caused by the Exxon Valdez calamity in Alaska some years ago. A lot of oil has already covered the surface on the spot where the wreck sank.
   Oil tankers have had a bad reputation for years and years. International freighter and shipping circles started bragging in the early eighties about how the business had received a clean bill of health after a series of accidents in the sixties and seventies. A claim obviously premature at best, since the endless row of ever-increasing scope and number of accidents has continued to this day.
   More radical environmental organizations, not mincing words have "rewarded" international shipping and freighter business with the award of "worst in the class" concerning safety and accident-preventing measures. Others, crying out with anger in their voice would go a step or two further.
   - This is what we're doing to life on Earth, spokesmen are saying. - Dead birds, dead animals, sick people, dead people, because of an ever-growing need for civilization to plunder the planet. Modern human society has been lethal to life for a long time, and is growing increasingly so, as the need for ever-more development, ever more destruction is progressing. This is what we've become. This is who we are now. Accident or not, there are spills, both at sea and on land all the time. It has become routine. Every time there is a major accident like this, politicians are screaming about the need for control, for putting brakes on life threatening activity, but nothing is ever done, nothing major, decisive, because the forces behind the governments don't want any action taken. They know perfectly well that they need this to keep their spot at the top. That is who they are. And the tailspin suicide run continues.

  

  

   NEWS IN BRIEF

   90 percent of the United States' population doesn't know where Iraq and Afghanistan are. They don't know the location and they can't point it out with a map in front of them. This according to a survey by National Geographic Society. A result not very surprising when a survey some years ago revealed that 25 percent of the United States' population didn't know where United States was...