The Human Cost of Doing Business: Gulf Coast Fisherman Commits Suicide

[praxis1966]

As some of you are probably already aware, I'm from Florida so this issue is sort of personal to me. When I read the following article, I honestly began to tear up.

Full Story (http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/06/25/gulf.oil.disaster.suicide/index.html?hpt=C2)


Orange Beach, Alabama (CNN) -- On Thursday evening, a boat returned to its dock without its captain -- his vibrant personality and smile gone. On the dock was a wreath memorializing the Gulf fisherman known as "Rookie."

His family and friends say "Rookie," whose real name was Allen Kruse, was stressed beyond belief by the effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf. On Thursday, a coroner ruled his sudden, tragic death a suicide.

[The Red Next Door]

Someone said, that BP ceo's needed to be line up against the wall and cap. I can't help but to agree. This should be consider Murder.

[RED DAVE]

A prosecutor with guts (nonexistent in the capitalist world) would indict the bp ceo for criminally negligent homicide.

RED DAVE

[Barry Lyndon]

All revolutionaries need to read and hear about stories like this from time to time. They remind us that, whatever the sectarian differences we may have, we are all fighting the same monstrous system that throttles countless lives like this.

Even if we spend the rest of our lives fighting to topple capitalism, it will be worth it, to avenge the deaths of people like Allen Kruse, whose livelihood and life was destroyed by BP's greed, of 7-year old Aiyana Stanley-Jones murdered by pigs in Detroit, of the Chinese child laborer crushed to death in a paper factory, of the child in Gaza burned alive by white phosphorus, of the trade unionist assassinated by Colombian death squads, of the African child starving to death while a vulture waits.......and millions and millions more like them.

One day, they will all be avenged.

[Os Cangaceiros]

That is very sad.

It's only going to get worse, too. Most captains I know of live very much on a paycheck-to-paycheck basis...some have made their fortunes running boats, but most just get by. It's a hard life if you have a few bad trips, and what's happening in the Gulf now is essentially a game ender for them. I can't even imagine.

Fuck BP. Between the environmental impact and the amount of people in the fishing and oil industry that are out of work...those fuckers deserve to pay in a big way. :mad:

[Jimmie Higgins]

Lately on the national news they've been showing these meetings of people trying to get relif checks - it's gut-wrenching to see people so visibly worried like that. I mean, it's easy to see anywhere in the US with so much visible poverty and so many lives on the edge, but it's particularly sharp in the images from people down there because the stress is more intense and shared by many people at the same time and in the same places.

I don't think it's a coincidence that the national press has not shown much coverage of protests of angry middle-class tea-parties screaming about people getting government "handouts" and "entitlements" while this crisis has been going on.

If there can be any silver lining to this, I hope that is is another blow to the neo-liberal logic that is so dominant in this country. Any common apology for capitalism just looks absurd in the face of images from this disaster: "What's good for Business is Good for America" :blink: