A couple of nights ago I was sitting at the bar in Atlantis: The Lost Bar, on Frankford Avenue in the Lower Kensington burough of Philadelphia quaffing a pint of Yards India Pale Ale & a shot of Wild Turkey Burbon while catching the late news, when the story broke about the 27 miners in Canada who survived a mine fire because they had set up safe places with adequate food & water to sustain themselves in the event of a disaster. I was astonished that another country so close to ours has such a better success rate with hazardous occupations when hazards occur. 12 Miners died in Alabama in 2001, & the company was fined $3,000. When a parent's child dies in Iraq fighting for our freedom, the family recieves $12,000 from the government to compensate for the loss of their pride & joy. Millions of viewers saw Janet Jackson's nipple & the Super Bowl had to pay $550,000.

If you look at this on a global standard, it still fares pretty well. Coal miners make out much better than Diamond Miners in Africa or Poppy Farmers in Afghanistan. Have you ever met a Diamond Miner? Diamonds. The word by itself conjures images of beauty, soft sunsets, thousands of dollars, & lasting love.  From what I have read in articles like this one by Jani Roberts & The Ultimate Field Guide to the U.S. Economy, most Diamond Miners live in shantytowns with 'no family/male only' rules & turn to sex workers hired by the company to meet their needs for companionship, All of them contract HIV/AIDS because of this. The sanitation of thier environment is jeapordized by the equipment used in the mines, so groundwater is polluted, & tillable soil is displaced. They make an average of $28 for working fifty hours a week bringing the precious stones to the surface. Once they leave the mines, more than half of the diamonds go to India, where they are cut and polished by bonded child laborers working to pay off a family debt. Heavens! To think if one of the workers ever escaped with some tiny gem of the millions that pass through their hands what a life they could build for themselves! Once cut & polished, the beautiful stones are sent to glimmering display cases in front of salespersons wearing nice suits & maybe a few Diamonds of their own to show off hanging from various appendages.

Now on to the Afghan Poppy Farmer. In an article by the PakTribune dated January 3. 2005 it was reported that a Poppy Farmer had to trade his daughter to pay off a debt of $1,000 he took to help his crop, which failed because of an anti-drug campaign that dusted his fields with poison. If the crop had survived he could have made about twice that much, & could have paid his debt. If that same field had been planted with high-yield wheat, he would have only made about $500 at market. The Opium from his poppy fields supplies the addictions of people who seem to be able to monetarily afford that kind of habit around the world, pumps lots of tax dollars into the anti-drug campaigns, fills cells in prisons, & even shoots our children on the street corners. It also funds terrorist organizations, robs our homes, our legacies, & divides our families. Yet, the government routinely allows these things across our borders because it keeps people specifically within the middle class spending money. The more money that is spent, the better the economy, right? It seems as though the middle class is consistently kept at arms length from the upper class, who imports the drugs, & the impoverished class, who uses them. The middle class perpetuates itself because of it's belief that the middle class built the ideals of American Society. In a nutshell, Be thankful you have enough, work hard so you can have more, & pity those less fortunate than yourself, but not so much that they get what you have.

"A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue, but moderation in principle is always a vice.
Thomas Paine, "The Rights of Man", 1792

The Price of our Freedom is the Freedom of Others. If they don't live like they do then we can't live like we do. There's the long & short of it.

That was the closing thought, here's the post script.

-Heard this morning on KYW 1060 AM News:
The United States of America, is the only country to have ever used its nuclear weapons against an aggressor in a time of war since nuclear weapons have ever been made.

This statement is a glaring fact that should be memorized & repeated from streetcorners until every American understands the price of their Freedom.

Cheers,

Abraham Chappelle,
Founder, Beer Drinkers Union