>
> Economic war against China
> http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=55619
> Lisandro Otero
> Rebelion
despite this, probably china should pay heed, especially in the context of
the three gorges dam, to these words:
"...In short, the animal merely uses external nature, and brings about
changes in it simply by his presence; man by his changes makes it serve his
ends, masters it. This is the final, essential distinction between man and
other animals, and once again it is *labour that brings about this
distinction*.
Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human
conquest over nature. For each such conquest takes its revenge on us. Each
of them, it is true, has in the first place the consequences on which we
counted, but in the second and third places it has quite different,
unforeseen effects which only too often cancel out the first. The people
who, in Mesopotamia, Greece, Asia Minor, and elsewhere, destroyed the
forests to obtain cultivable land, never dreamed that they were laying the
basis for the present devastated condition of these countries, by removing
along with the forests the collecting centres and reservoirs of moisture.
When, on the southern slopes of the mountains, the Italians of the Alps used
up the pine forests so carefully cherished on the northern slopes, they had
no inkling that by doing so they were ... thereby depriving their mountain
springs of water for the greater part of the year, with the effect that
these would be able to pour still more furious flood torrents on the plains
during the rainy seasons. Those who spread the potato in Europe were not
aware that they were at the same time spreading the disease of scrofula.
Thus at every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like
a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature --
but that we, *with flesh, blood, and brain, belong to nature, and exist in
its midst*, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have
the advantage over all other beings of being *able to know and correctly
apply its laws.*
And, in fact, with every day that passes we are learning to understand these
laws more correctly, and getting to know both the more immediate and the *more
remote consequences* of our* interference* with the *traditional course of
nature **. ... But the more this happens, the more will men not only feel, but
also know, their unity with nature, and thus the more impossible will become
the senseless and anti natural idea of a contradiction between mind and
matter, man and nature, soul and body. ...
But if it has already required the labour of thousands of years for us to
learn to some extent to calculate the more remote natural consequences of
our actions aiming at production, it has been still more difficult in regard
to the more remote social consequences of these actions. ... When afterwards
Columbus discovered America, he did not know that by doing so he was giving
new life to slavery, which in Europe had long ago been done away with, and
laying the basis for the Negro slave traffic. ... But even in this sphere, by
long and often cruel experience and by collecting and analyzing the
historical material, we are gradually learning to get a clear view of the
indirect, more remote, social effects of our productive activity, and so the
possibility is afforded us of mastering and controlling these effects as
well.
To carry out this control requires something more than mere knowledge. It
requires a complete revolution in our hitherto *existing mode of production,
* and with it of our whole* contemporary social order *."
- Engels in *Dialectics of Nature*
* (emphases added) *
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<<<<<>>>>>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
**
**
*** how prophetic indeed, as can be realised, from this:
*How the airport ate up Mithi river
*7 Aug 2005, 0101 hrs IST ,Vaishnavi C Sekhar, TNN
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1193563.cms
MUMBAI: When the Indian government began building the airport soon after
Independence, it could scarcely have imagined the havoc it would eventually
wreak on a very rainy day *50 years later*. The suburbs-Salsette, as it was
known-were then still full of marshlands and paddy fields so sparsely
populated that diverting a river was not considered risky for human life.
But the airport's historic and indiscriminate reclamation of low-lying land
around the Mithi river is now being held *partly responsible* for the annual
submergence of large parts of Kurla and Kalina, including Kranti Nagar and
Bail Bazar.
The first and main runway was built across the Mithi river. It crossed the
nadi on a bridge with a culvert underneath to allow the water to flow but
destroyed a talao in the process (which may account for the flooding in
Air-India colony, see map). Over the years, the airport's boundaries
expanded, *pushing the river off its natural course. *
In the process, it's the building of the second runway in the 1970s that
experts fault most. Cutting across from north-west to south-east, the runway
literally fell short of world standards in length, making it impossible for
use by heavier planes. So, over the decades, the airport authority kept
extending it into the river, say experts. "This meant squeezing the
river,"says conservationist Cyrus Guzder. "By pinching it, they added stress
to the southern side of the river as well as upstream to the north,"he
added.
In fact, it created a bend in the river. With slum encroachment and
industries crowded on the banks, and garbage and effluents slowing the flow
of the waters (one resident describes how stones thrown in don't sink but
skip the river surface), it was a disaster waiting to happen. And it
happens-every monsoon, the river floods slums like Kranti Nagar and Santosh
Nagar with up to seven feet of water.
"The river has been artificially diverted by the airport,"says retired
professor of geography B Arunachalam, adding that the walls built to protect
the airport, and indeed even industries that line the banks on the other
side, have also constricted the width of the river. Many of them have
collapsed in the recent deluge. The mesh barrier which marks the airport
land boundary in the river also blocks water as dirt clogs it up.
That's not all. A part of the airport itself has been built on the marshy
lands that surround the river, meaning that the rain water that would
normally be stored in those wetlands has no place to go. Ditto for the Air-
India colony which was completely flooded this time, and the slums that line
the banks from Jari Mari downwards.
However, airport authority director Sudhir Kumar says the two runways have
never created a flooding problem. "It's the wall near the Jari Mari area
that has been a problem in the monsoon,"he says.
But even in recent years, the airport has been reclaiming bits and pieces
of land near the river, in one case filling in a 50-metre wide stream
running into the river. The recent extension of the taxiway near the main
runway is another example of this (airport officials say it's not blocking
the river, but being built on a bridge to allow water to flow underneath).
"They acquire the land, fill it up and concretise it without providing
proper, wide enough drains,"says a local resident, who feels that flooding
in the area has increased over the years (one factory near the river now has
nine pumps to evacuate the water). Adds Kunal Mody, who has done a study on
the airport, "Mumbai's airport has never been done in a planned fashion, but
in a piecemeal manner, so randomly that the whole thing does not seem to
fit."
K R Datye, a hydraulic and geotechnical engineer who has worked with the
government, says he was called in to assess reclamation by the airport
authority for a court case. "It was indiscriminate and irrational, like the
reclamation in the rest of the city, and the airport authority didn't want
to listen to the city corporation,"he says, adding that if you develop
low-lying areas, you should at least build on stilts and make allowances for
natural water courses. "A single extension, like the recent taxiway, won't
make that much of a difference, but all the reclamation put together over a
period of time spells trouble."
In fact, in 1985, a committee headed by the chief secretary had warned the
government about the dangers of further reclamation in the city. "But no one
paid heed,"says Datye.
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