Just wanted to show you the state my local woods are in. Good for me, of course, but BAAAD, if you get my meaning, for the trees.
Every little patch of the trail is stuffed with iron, steel, junk and special waste.
... some of which is very good material, like that one below. Stamping leftover from tool manufacturing.
I got this chain link and the stamping leftover...
...crucible steel...
...mushrooms I left be. I don´t take any food from that part of the woods. There´s a good chance of it being highly polluted with heavy metals and poisons I can´t even pronounce.
This is the site of an old smithy or even ironforge. You can still see where the buildings were, and the dam of the hammer pond is next to intact, even if there are trees growing upon it. It is a strange and, to my eye, beautiful place.
The region bears the deep scars and signs of metalworking industries. While this industry plays an important role in the history of the Ruhr and Sauerland region, it has to be regarded as controversial. It has done much harm to the ecosystem and to the workers involved, to an extent that many metalworkers of that time had a life expectancy some 40 years lower than average. This is something that happened in the name of money. If you shorten the life-span of half of the population, (in an admittedly) somewhat biased calculation) by half, this is equal to murdering a quarter of the population for money. Murdering a quarter of the population for money (out of low motives) would be felony mayhem. Since this did not happen in a war, civil rights should be applied. That indicates that the people responsible for the "mass murder" in that time should have been executed (since Prussian or early German confederate laws should have been applied). Not realistic, of course, but a way of making a point. In the Third Reich, big-term corporations were the driving impetus on the mass-extinction of Jewish people. Even today, many heads of corporations utter antidemocratic and even illegal statements, from the regional top-player to top-notch banking corporations. To add to the account, the damage done to the ecosystem can only be called collateral.
So the question remains... what shall we do with anti-democratic, anti-natural forces in our time? You might get the impression that this is a biased evaluation;-), and you´d be right, and of course my arguments limp a bit, for I uttered them as a way of illustrating an extreme.
I just want to warn you: Heads of big corporation DO think anti-democratic. They have to, if they are to be successful. They have no scruples. They will kill for profit, if they can get away with it. The time of the metalworking industry´s heigh days fouled up the woods forever. There is a question remaining, what big term fracking corporations or corporations employing genetic manipulation could do to the habitat. I would not take mushrooms from those woods, either, so to say.
And do not get it wrong: They WILL NOT listen to any arguments. They will not heed to your political demonstrations. They would kill you, if they can get away with it, or make orders to get you killed as easily as sweeping a chalk board.
People should stop admiring them. They are no better than mass murderers. It is not that they even WANT to wreak havoc upon the world and foul things up, they are even lower than that in that they simply do not care. Any prostitute or window sweeper does a lot of much more for the world.
I went and collected the scrap steel of that time. I like its properties, and the trails are getting a tiny little lighter. I´ll make some tools from it. I am a bum. But what we bums do is doing far more damage to their world than might be obvious.
Thanks for listening to my rant;-).
