Thursday, December 5, 2013

Homeless Non-Personhood

We're nearing the Winter Solstice and longest night of the year. I spent yesterday bringing in firewood, real wealth, and doing outdoor chores. I'm mercifully under roof; many are not.

Much of the US is now hunkered down in Winter Storm conditions. It's snowing, sleeting, blowing.

US mayors, including Bloomberg of NY, are doing clean sweeps of the homeless from doorways, benches, heat vents and subways, and providing one way tickets out of state. Problem/solution.

Riot police bust up church efforts to form soup kitchens to feed the homeless. With little food or hope of shelter, hypothermia becomes bone-ache, lung-ache real.

People who lose their jobs find themselves at an unimagined cliff's edge of maybe losing home, ability to eat well or at all, afford gas/petrol, pay utilities, or even bathe. Never mind poodle-grooming and restaurant meals.

News this week: A UK firm announced staff "redundancies," yet another euphemism for getting fired. Apparently tone-deaf, a Company Boss arrived at work the next day in a new £178,000 Ferrari.

When people are expendable, how scary can it get? Fukushima-scary, that's what.

A few investigative reporters still exist, amazingly, and put themselves at risk reporting the unthinkable. Reportage has become a criminal act in Japan, land of cover-up and obfuscation.

Down that rabbit-hole, people were advised to smile, as protection against any radiation exposure, should it ever occur.

Japan was too involved in saving face to accept counsel and can-do from the Chernobyl experience, or warn citizens of extreme hazard.

Meanwhile, not exactly jolly working conditions at the global disaster site. The gov/corp collusion has allegedly turned to their version of the Mafia, for help: 

"Japan's notorious Yakuza gangsters are forcing homeless people to join the desperate clear-up effort at the Fukushima nuclear plant before simply firing them when they suffer high doses of radiation, it has been claimed..."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2511308/Yakuza-forcing-homeless-people-work-Fukushima-nuclear-plant-clear-up.html
At the dark night of the year, yule fires, bonfires and candles are lit as a sign of light returning. During the first Great Depression, in blighted cities and Hooverville shacks and tents, people huddled around metal barrels burning trash for warmth.

Are people trash?

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