13 February 2014 — Dissident Voice
Lena Headley lives in in Fayette County, Pennsylvania. She and her husband bought a small farm for their semi-retirement with the mineral rights but not the oil and gas rights. Over the last seven years five gas wells and a transmission pipeline have been put on their land. The effect has been devastating: Pollution of land and air together with destruction of fruit trees and the burning of 10 acres of ground by the gas drillers. Gas wells leak and a spring 200 feet from her house is so rich with gas it can be set on fire.
The complete irrationality of the capitalist ‘freemarket’ knows both tragedy and farce. On 17th January a group of young women, most if not all of whom are mothers, protested at the Labour-controlled Newham council to demand decent housing. At present they live with their children in ‘temporary’ accommodation, a run down hostel called Focus E15, where some of the woman have lived for several years, and can either tolerate the mould, rubbish and their fellow ‘lodgers’ – that is the rats and mice – or demand change.
The New Dark Age 