The Man Who Made Earthquakes
by C. L. Cook
 As the families and co-workers of six coal miners trapped hundreds of meters under the ground waited anxiously for news, the chairman of the company that owns the mine addressed the cameras.
Not one known for subtlety, Bob Murray used his fifteen minutes before the world's media as an opportunity to promote the coal industry, deny its contribution to global warming, and warn American pensioners that without the electricity emanating the "non-greenhouse gas producing" plants using his coal they were toast.
During the "briefing" Murray too harangued environmentalists - they
meant to deprive the nation of its economic power - before eventually finding time to
inform the anxious families and co-workers that the fate of their
comrades and loved ones trapped in his mine was in God's hands, whom he still claims is responsible, through the agency of one of His earthquakes,
for the mine collapse. This he maintains despite scientific evidence
to the contrary.
The US Geological Survey National Earthquake
Information Center says, the temblor they monitored as a 3.9 Richter
magnitude event did not reveal expected earthquake identifiers, but is consistent with mine collapses they've recorded in the past.
But
Robert Murray is not one to let either science, or truth stand in the
way of a good yarn. And, he's famous for his intractability. One of
George W. Bush's greatest supporters yet, Murray and the coal
industry have lobbed millions into the coffers of Bush and his party.
He's been a trusted "testifier" on Capitol Hill for regulation changes
workers and their unions say have degraded occupational safety
standards, and undermined their collective bargaining.
In a way,
Robert Murray is the Kenneth Lay of his day; only the days are a lot
harsher now than when Ken merely cornered and collapsed the other end
of the coal power tunnel, the electricity grid. Both the
privatization of the grid and broad slashing of labour, safety, and
environmental requirements for mine owners by a corporate controlled
America frames Murray's story, (its climax in this instance yet to be
written) making it emblematic of the country today.
Divers
are still searching the Mississippi, beneath the fallen I-35W highway
bridge for bodies still within smashed cars. Two more were reported
recovered today, nearly a week after the terrible rush hour collapse of
the St. Anthony Bridge. So far, seven are confirmed dead, with
six others believed missing. The wreckage of twisted iron, busted slabs
of concrete and strong river currents have slowed efforts, and the
priority now is protecting the safety of recovery workers.
As it has
been all week in Minneapolis, so it's proving for rescuers at the
Crandall Canyon mine collapse in Utah. Picking up the pieces of
disaster is proving a much greater human and financial reality than the
cost-benefit risk analyses conducted by the last administrations of government reckoned for. And, one gets the sense
this is just the beginning.
Combined as closely as they now are,
the running of the country has become more about the merry chase of
government servants playing courtier to Monied business interests, each riding a revolving door to deregulation and personal enrichment; living on the
fruits of the treasury once plowed back into the nation to build
bridges, highways, and pay for their maintenance and such is a debt come
due; but while those necessary public infrastructures aged and suffered
the predictable ravages of that process, the games at court continued
on as if there was no tomorrow: And today there is none.
It is
not just the thousands of bridges crossed by millions of Americans
everyday, bridges ominously sharing St. Anthony's "deficient" rating,
or the number of coal miners sacrificed in America every year through
the practice of "retreat mining," (as was in progress in the very shaft
collapsed at the time of the Crandall Canyon "earthquake") signaling
the capital "Dee" decline of the nascent American Empire, it is most
marked by the corrosion within the psyche of the populace.
The stench
of corruption and betrayal are spreading faster than the deserts eating
the heart out of the country's South West, the hopes of the people thinning faster than the topsoil of the Great Plains. The twin disasters of
the wars and occupations abroad, and the federal government's
abandonment of citizens in need both before and after Katrina the Great
made landfall has shaken to the core citizen faith in the government,
and tried their trust in the country's institutions.
Today
America is a nation experiencing unprecedented levels of personal and
official debasement. Run by maniacal characters, exemplified by
their almost cartoonish personal ambitions for world
domination, and occupied by an infantile population made docile through years of
thumb-sucking, easy debt, and low civic expectations, the looming prospect of a really
huge, "perfect storm" kind of economic, political, and environmental
disaster seems certain.
And if experiences of the recent past are any
indication, that storm's effects will be unprecedented. A horrifying
thought, considering the scope of the disasters we've seen in just the
last six years or so.
For those digging tonight for their
comrades buried below the earth under tons of coal and slag, and for
the families and friends waiting the fate of those men, the disaster is
now. Next will come the questions: Why continue a mining practice most
civilized authorities declaim as too dangerous? Why no unions? Why
immigrant labour?
Whether these questions, and others even more
pertinent concerning the mining industry, manage their way through the
media filter, forcing the Bush administration to act is itself an open
question, but what is clear is: Years of religious deregulation of
industry, and the determined effort of this administration to fulfill
Grover Norquist's famous dictum to "shrink government to a size small
enough to drown in a bathtub" is now paying awful dividends in and for
America.
But, no matter what I, or anyone else says, Bob Murray will still be pointing his finger heavenward.
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