Mine Rescue and BP Spill -- Bookends

[Lightning Rod]

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Mine Rescue and BP Spill -- Bookends

The de-tombing of the Chilean miners is a welcome change from the usual story that commands the attention of the worldwide press. It usually takes large body count or widespread environmental catastrophe to glean such coverage but this is a happy story where the body-count concerns live bodies. The story has everything, disaster and peril, hope and miracles, endurance and heroism and a good ending. Plus, the event is the perfect bookend to go with the other Journey to the Center of the Earth blockbuster that started the season, the BP spill.

The miners hadn't been passed their first cigarettes before reality show pitches and TV movie scripts started landing on the desks of agents in Hollywood. At least we haven't been treated to tweats about the toilet habits of the internees, but we already know all 33 biographies and family histories complete with hobbies, habits and number of mistresses. All that's missing is phone and text voting to see which miner will leave the show next. Nevertheless they emerged like heros looking more like they were returning from an afternoon at the day-spa than a seventy day tour in hell.

We might ask ourselves, What makes the saving of these particular 33 lives so important and noteworthy when 20,000 people could be saved every day in this world by simple application of food and clean water? Why do we care more about the miners than all the others whose lives hang by a thread? There is something murky and sub-conscious about burial and entombment dramas. We are drawn to them because at least in our nightmares or imaginations or in the hum-drum of our everyday lives we know what it feels like to be buried alive. It's a primal fear, universal and poetic.

You know it's a big story when North Korea sends a TV crew. A couple of thousand members of the world press have gathered on the remote and arid mountain to document the saga. It was made for TV, a serial drama lasting long enough to build a brand but not too long so as to become tedious. And it's a chance for redemption for big industry whose embarrassment and helplessness at the two-month long picture of the nasty mud-colored oil bubbling into the Gulf still stings. This is a story of hope rather than futility and desperation. It shows how man's engineering skill and technology can be used to get us out of trouble as well as getting us into it.

It seems to be the perennial enterprise of Man to pillage this planet and we continually devise new ways to do it. The sophistication of our mineral extraction techniques has become nothing short of astounding. We drill miles into the crust and suck the juices from our globe, we scoop out whole mountains for coal to charge our iPods, and send men into its steamy bowels to pluck diamonds for our ladies' fingers. We will continue to rape rain-forest and create desert and fill the air with carbon dioxide. It's inevitable if we are going to keep adding new people and better lifestyles. The question remains whether or not we can use the same technology and ingenuity to devise ways to sustain and maintain an environment suitable for life on this planet. This is why the story of the emergence from the tomb of the Chilean miners is such a symbol of hope. It is a happy tale of Man using his ingenuity to extract himself from a bad situation created by his ingenuity.

The Poet's Eye has a teary gleam for the miners and their families. I'm glad for them and I'm glad that the world has a good story for a change, one that give us hope for the human spirit and the possibility of our survival, hope that our cleverness can save us from our cleverness.

Five o'clock in the mornin'
I'm all ready up and gone
Lord I am so tired
How long can this go on?

I'm workin' in a coal mine
Goin' down down down
Workin' in a coal mine
Whop! about to slip down
Workin' in a coal mine
Goin' down down down
Workin' in a coal mine
Whop! about to slip down
-----Allen Toussaint

[mnaz]

another good write. yes, that is the challenge, to live off the land without taxing it to death, without conceding too much to the few (robber?) barons who set the terms of your livelihood. the "Left" gets way out in left field on these issues, but the "Right" is just plain greedy. And both sides are bought off. And THAT, is some hard-core cynicism. Not bad, huh?

--- "It is a happy tale of Man using his ingenuity to extract himself from a bad situation created by his ingenuity." Well yes... and we'll need a lot more of that.

[mtmynd]

Another story that may be far more important is how 33 men buried a half mile deep in the earth came out intact with assurances among them that any monies to be had would be equally divided among them... no one person commanding the pot... thirty-three men who formed a collective amongst themselves sharing what ever they had equally during their ordeal.

Could or would this happen in our own country where fighting for the top place is so commonplace that the idea of sharing has become marginalized into something that is construed as 'socialist' or 'communist'... two words that strike such fear into our electorate that aiding and assisting our fellow man has been reduced to 'man up and get a job'. Imagine if that mentality were to arise among the 33 buried for 70 days...

[Arcadia]

l-rod: lovely elaboration!

Cecil: well, you never know..! The annonimous ingenio popular here elaborated this ( I recived it today as a FW sent by a friend...) :

LOS MINEROS ARGENTINOS

UN GRUPO DE 33 MINEROS ARGENTINOS HAN QUEDADO ATRAPADOS EN UNA MINA A 700 METROS DE PROFUNDIDAD.

1) Se crea una comisión para iniciar las tareas de rescate, integrada por 25 miembros del oficialismo y 19 de la oposición. Cada miembro contará a su vez con 5 asesores y dos secretarios. Las tareas se demoran por que no hay acuerdo para designar al presidente de la comisión.
2) No hay fondos para las tareas de rescate por lo que por única vez el gobierno va a cobrar un nuevo impuesto.
3) Los Chilenos nos prestan la grúa de rescate, pero esta no llega por que el túnel internacional está cortado por un grupo de andinistas que reclaman que se le cambie el nombre al Cerro Aconcagua.
4) Una vez liberado el paso internacional, la aduana luego de tres meses autoriza el ingreso de la grúa (previo pago de un canon especial al director de aduanas).
5) La grúa no puede llegar a la Mina por que el que la maneja pertenece al sindicato de peones de grúas. Moyano hijo le corta el ingreso con camiones aduciendo que la grúa tiene 4 ruedas y que por lo tanto el encargado de la grúa debe estar afiliado al sindicato de camioneros. Luego de intensas negociaciones el de la grúa es afiliado al sindicato de camioneros y a una de las novias de Moyanito se la pone primera en la lista para Senadora nacional por Buenos Aires en las próximas elecciones.
6) Mientras tanto Tinelli ya dio instrucciones a la producción para que traigan a uno de los Mineros a participar en Bailando. La noticia hace que Pachano se pelee con la Alfano.
7) Logran bajar una mini cámara de TV al fondo de la mina pero no logran ver a los mineros. La camarita solo transmite Tinelli y Fútbol para todos.
La grúa tarda otros dos meses en llegar por que todas las rutas están cortadas por piquetes de la Delía que quiere negociar un subsidio para los mineros.
9) Anibal Fernández anuncia que lo de los mineros es una sensación.
10) La Bonafini dijo que uno de los mineros es un cipayo hijo de puta porque en el 80 vivía al lado de un cabo de gendarmería y por lo tanto tiene bien merecido morirse enterrado.
11) Llega la grúa pero cuando bajan la cápsula, el cable se corta. Un Juez investiga irregularidades en la compra del material y descubre que se compró el de peor calidad pero se lo pagó a precio del que viene revestido en oro. La causa llega al Juez Oyarbide que urgente ordena el archivo de las actuaciones. El Consejo de la Magistratura dispone el archivo del pedido de destitución de dicho juez.
12) Llega una orden para que detengan el rescate hasta tanto lleguen las gorras y las remeras que tendrán que ponerse los mineros antes de salir a la superficie. Vienen con la leyenda "PRESIDENCIA CRISTINA KIRCHNER".
13) Finalmente y luego de dos años y medio rescatan al primer minero. Sorpresa mundial: es el único que había quedado atrapado por que los otros 32 eran ñoquis que jamás iban a laburar.
14) El minero rescatado lee el diario y al finalizar ruega que lo vuelvan a poner a 700 metros de profundidad. Teme ser una víctima más de la violencia.

I think it´s a tricky-easy read, very anti-government which I didn´t find specially funny but at the same time it´s maybe a good map of our fears, presupuestos & old-new dilemas in the last times, enjoy!

[mtmynd]

a very sarcastic piece you've found here... but quite humorous... is Peru considered a problem country in South America?

[Arcadia]

Cecil: Perú considered as a problem country...?? by whom?? , Peru-Chile-Colombia´s governments are simply more openly right-friendly than the rest at the moment, I guess that´s all!

[mtmynd]

Perú considered as a problem country...?? by whom??

my mistake, amiga mia... i meant "Chi, chi, chi... le,le,le!" How Peru got in the conversation, I don't know...