Editor,
I hope that after reading this, your day is no less bright or cheery:
• It was 366 days ago that the world’s worst environmental accident began. It dumped more than 4 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. BP has gone unprosecuted for human deaths associated with the corporation’s illegal use of the chemical dispersant Corexin and has hired a team of lawyers and lobbyists to reduce the estimated “number of gallons” dumped by more than 50 percent.
• More than 10,000 Libyans have died since February’s onset of anti-government revolutions.
• Bradley Manning, the hero responsible for Wikileaks’ release of American diplomatic cables, has spent 23 of 24 hours in solitary confinement for the last seven months (and counting) and has been forced to stand naked in front of other inmates.
• The amount of government and private student loans (more than $830 billion) now exceeds the American consumer balance on credit cards ($827 billion).
• If you had $1 in your pocket, you would have more money than the combined federal income tax paid last year by Citigroup, Bank of America, Exxon Mobil and General Electric (the world’s largest corporation).
• The U.S. is $14 trillion in debt, with China being the largest foreign holder of this debt. The International Monetary Fund estimates the U.S. economy will grow by 3.8 percent, as opposed to China’s estimated 9.3 percent.
• For one of its every 100 freedom-lovers, the U.S. has the highest documented percentage of incarcerated citizens of any country in the world. In the last 30 years, the number of inmates kept in prisons that are privatized (i.e., function as businesses) surged more than 4,000 percent. Arizona SB 1070 was drafted by these corporations’ lobbyists.
• The U.S. has been in a continual state of emergency since the Sept. 11 attacks — almost 10 years. The government’s execution, framing, and cover-up of attacks against its citizens opened the door for Bush’s “War on Terror” and left millions of TV-watching Americans blind and unaware of their leaders’ injustices.
That is all.
Austin Evans
UNM student
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