Liberation Audio17 Feb 2021

Texas infrastructure nears collapse, millions without power, water

A winter storm of historic proportions is causing critical infrastructure failures across the state of Texas, with another winter storm approaching tonight. The full weight of the devastation isn’t yet known, but initial reports from across the state are showing disturbing patterns. Four million or more Texans are without power. Outages that were initially called “rolling outages” are now lasting several days. The private non-profit corporation that oversees the electric grid is now admitting that they are “unable to predict” when conditions will stabilize. Millions of people are stranded in unheated homes, with no power and no way to move safely to shelter, in temperatures that are currently colder than parts of Alaska and Siberia. City, state, and private entities alike are deflecting blame, claiming that there was nothing they could have done. “You can’t predict the weather” and “We all need to conserve energy” are common refrains. But the weather was absolutely predictable, and experts and activists alike have been warning that Texas is in danger of exactly this kind of complete infrastructure collapse. However, major cities such as Austin, Houston, and Dallas have all found ways to keep empty office buildings and corporate HQs in their gentrified downtown areas lit. This week, Texans are facing a man-made, capitalism-crafted catastrophe that has left the whole state feeling quite literally powerless. Liberation News gathered reporting and analysis of this crisis from writers from across the state. Read the full article: https://www.liberationnews.org/texas-infrastructure-nears-complete-collapse-as-capitalist-neglect-meets-climate-change-driven-winter-storms/

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(364)

Overproduction: The absurdity of suffering amidst surpluses

A popular coal-miner’s riddle from the 1930s summarizes one of capitalism’s most visible and absurd contradictions. After a daughter asks her father why their home is so cold, he tells her they don’t ...

11 Jan 202517min

Thomas Sankara: Assessing the 3rd year of a revolutionary process

The eighth installment in Liberation School’s series of previously untranslated works by Thomas Sankara is published on the day Sankara was born in 1949. We would like to thank Bruno Jaffré and the ed...

3 Sep 202451min

The class struggle in every commodity: Use value and exchange value

Every year, Pew Research publishes a study on the U.S. population’s political priorities. Their 2024 report shows that, like the previous years, “no single issue stands out after the economy,” with al...

31 Jul 202415min

Capitalist contradictions and revolutionary struggle: An introduction

Hearing or reading about the “contradictions of capitalism” in an article or at a rally might be intimidating, like a foreign language or a term only a certain group can understand. While the contradi...

12 Apr 202419min

Capitalist urbanization, climate change, and the need for sponge cities

According to the United Nations Population Fund’s 2009 report, 2008 was the first time in history that over 50 percent of the world’s population resided in cities instead of rural areas. Because of th...

19 Des 202320min

Extradition of Alex Saab: U.S. takes effort to starve Venezuelans to new lows

Note: Following the original publication of this article, Alex Saab was extradited to Miami on October 16th 2021, and remains in prison awaiting an appeal. On March 18, The Cape Verde Supreme Court a...

18 Okt 20238min

From allies to comrades

Despite its association with sovereign nations involved in wartime alliances, the term “ally” has become influential in activist circles on the US left. Attention to debates over what it means to be a...

16 Sep 202326min

Liu Liangmo: China’s anti-imperialist, anti-racist, Christian revolutionary (pt. 2)

Liu Liangmo’s story is as remarkable as it is unknown. An anti-imperialist, pro-Communist Christian, with a significant relationship to the Black Liberation Movement and the Indian Freedom Struggle, L...

26 Aug 202324min