Terrorist or Capitalist?

A friend of mine sent me a link to a parody of the American Department of Homeland Security’s emergency preparedness web site (thanks Gillian!). I’d seen the parody page before, but the second look motivated me to have a look at the real government site.

The information is broken up into sections, like “Biological Threat”, “Chemical Threat”, “Nuclear Blast”, etc. There’s even a section for Natural Disasters, so you can check to see if you’re simply a victim of a disinterested God, and not an agenda-driven terrorist.

One thing I found very interesting was this description of a Chemical Attack:

A chemical attack is the deliberate release of a toxic gas, liquid or solid that can poison people and the environment.

Hmm. I’m bet there are dozens, if not hundreds, of corporations doing exactly that at this very moment. And I bet that much of it is overlooked, or even given legal justification by the government.

What this means is that we, as a society, have come to accept or reject an action based on its context, rather than its content. Dispersing a canister of aerosol anthrax on a subway: terrorism. Dumping tons of radioactive or toxic chemicals into public airspace and waterways: capitalism!

One graphic from the web site, shown above, is accompanied by the following suggestion:

Many sick or dead birds, fish or small animals are also cause for suspicion.

This is important information to have, because when I see lots of dead animals, that even other animals won’t eat, I normally think they must’ve just committed group suicide, in some kind of critter-Jonestown event.

Actually, I’m pretty sure every single dead fish or bird you find washed up on a shore is the result of corporate, or governmental terrorism… er, capitalism. So here’s the question: If we’re supposed to regard the appearance of dead birds and fish as serious enough to indicate a terrorist chemical attack, in the absence of said attack, what are these deaths indicating? And why aren’t we spending money and time on that?

Thankfully, my taxpayer dollars aren’t contributing to this travesty of a public service web site. My money is tied up in the 1 billion dollar Canadian gun registry. But don’t get me started about that.