Essay from Christopher Bernard

Mass Murder Capitalism and the Infinity Trap

Author’s Note: I wrote this essay originally in the fall of 2020 and publish it here with a few cosmetic changes and updates. It seems even more relevant today, after the assassination of Brian Thompson, CEO of United Healthcare—a figure who was an example of a vicious healthcare system where it has finally been proven that when healthcare is driven by whatever “the market will bear” and the desire to increase “shareholder value” at whatever cost, the purveyors of that system will, at some point, irresistibly, ask the following question of their customers:

“How much is your health, your spouse’s health, or your children’s health, worth to you”?

And who will be surprised to hear the answer: “My health? My spouse’s health? My children’s health? Why, they are worth everything to me.”

And few will be shocked by the response from the boardrooms of the healthcare “industry”:

“Oh it is, is it? It’s worth everything to you? Really? Well then, good people—in that case, we’ll take everything from you! And thank you very, very much!”

It does not take long for the logic of this statement to become fully apparent when it leads to the next equally candid exchange, heard in the confines of many a winterized boardroom:

“We who are in the healthcare industry are in the business of making money—are we not?”


“Indeed we are.”

“And our job is to make even more money in every quarter than we did in the quarter before it, is it not?”


“Our shareholders will certainly let us know it if we do not!”

“And we have two ways, and only two ways, of making more money—we sell more of our product, or we decrease our expenses. Is this not so?”

“Never a truer word was spoken!”

“We can decrease our expenses by, for example, laying off workers.”

“And a good thing too!”

“Now, protecting the health of our customers costs money.”

“Indeed it does!”

“So—what, gentlemen, if we did not? After all, we can’t save everybody all the time even with every procedure under the sun, from aspirin to brain surgery. And we never pretended we could do so. Just read over our contracts!”

“You’re right there! And we’d save a lot of money!”

“We’d make a lot of money, you mean. But to ask the question is to answer it. Is it our problem if our customers, those innocent boobies, forgot to read the fine print in the policies they bought from us—the fine print that tells them we do not guarantee payment for all or indeed for any medical procedure we do not, in our infallible judgment, thoroughly and completely approve of? No! So, if we deny covering any given medical procedure, and they suffer, is it our fault?”

“Of course not!”

“If we deny covering any given medical procedure, and they go bankrupt, is it our fault?”

 “Never!”

“If we deny covering any given medical procedure, and they die, is it our fault!”

“What a perfectly ridiculous idea! (And anybody who claims otherwise we’ll sue to the ground for endangering our good name, our reputation, and, above all, our profits!)!”

“Exactly! They should have read their contract—and if they didn’t like it, they were FREE to go elsewhere—even though every healthcare insurance contract contains, by an extraordinary coincidence, exactly the same stipulations as ours does!”

(The board roars with laughter.)

One sentence below begins as follows: “We surveyed the death toll over the last half-dozen decades and more: from the tobacco industry to the opioid crisis, the fossil-fuel to the gun industry, arms manufacturers to social media….” I would now make a substantive change: “We surveyed the death toll over the last half-dozen decades and more: from the tobacco industry to the opioid crisis, the fossil-fuel to the gun industry, arms manufacturers, to social media, to our crippled, and crippling, healthcare system….”


*

A friend and I took a walk across downtown San Francisco that autumn day. We were wearing masks and keeping (at least most of the time) a medically correct six feet apart. After weeks of unbreathable air, stultifying heat, and an eerie day of pink burnt-orange skies, we could, finally, breathe cool, deep lungfuls of a briny marine breeze off the Pacific under a clear, almost tangibly blue sky.

The city was cautiously reopening: cafes and restaurants were allowed to serve at sidewalk tables or cheerful pavilions built on the streets and fenced about like little biergartens, stores could let in customers, masked and a handful at a time, and in a few weeks, museums would be allowed to reopen with safety precautions greenlighted by the city.

We had been spared the fates of many of our fellow Californians and others living in the Pacific northwest: the millions of acres of wildland burning, the conflagrations reducing towns to ashes, the thousand fleeing for their lives. It was only far south of us that the bodies of dead birds trying to migrate south for the winter were falling from the skies, littering the land by the hundreds, even thousands. The birds here, though sometimes confused by the long darkness of smoke-clogged skies and dawns that only end at sunset, were still flying, the crows that had begun to dominate neighborhoods like North Beach and Hayes Valley strutted cockily down the sidewalks.

Yet it was difficult to maintain one’s calm, even on a good day like this, when the world, even nature itself, seemed in the midst of a murderous rampage—despite the fact many of us saw it coming for decades, since humanity was its primary cause. So my friend and I both knew that our lovely walk through the perfect afternoon was only a pause in the terrifying year of 2020.

We talked about it—because what else was there to talk about? Disasters around us and a looming electoral catastrophe before us: Trump and the Republican Party had given ominous signals they were prepared to burn American democracy to the ground if they couldn’t claim victory in November. The climate crisis had been staring us in the face after two generations of denial by the powerful and their deluded followers. The economy was in a coma while billionaires became even more absurdly, obscenely, wealthy, and shareholders aspired to their condition of insouciant arrogance. There was a seemingly unstoppable run of racist police killings and, in response, increasingly violent eruptions of righteous fury. Social media were completely out of control, causing a tempest of despair in the young: loneliness, depression, bullying, suicides, at least one of these, goaded by some monster, live streamed to a shocked audience.

We surveyed the death toll over the last half-dozen decades and more: from the tobacco industry to the opioid crisis, the fossil-fuel to the gun industry, arms manufacturers to social media, and one of us suddenly came up with a truly horrifying thought: an entire layer of society is making money, deliberately, knowingly, purposely doing serious injury to people. Worse than that: they are making money from killing people . . .

There is a descriptive phrase for this that may seem on the surface sensationalist and hyperbolic. The phrase is “mass murder capitalism.” The Romans of the empire entertained the populace through, among other things, cheering on gladiators as they killed each other in the arena and applauding as Christians and other misfits were torched and crucified en masse. The modern world has learned how to kill people, when necessary to increase profits and drive up their share price. And people are killing themselves so that titans of social media can increase their stock price by a few points.

It is not altogether intentional (though one can make the argument that, in some cases, it is; how else describe the worst offenses of health insurance; of the fossil-fuel industry, which has been aware of the dangers of carbon-induced climate change since as long ago as the 1950s; or the tobacco industry, which has been murdering people for profit since the ’60s? If this is not “Auschwitz for profit,” what else might such a horrendous beast “look like”?

Yet the people who run the capitalist Juggernaut are hardly Nazis deliberately planning on murdering most of the human race so they alone can rule the earth. This catastrophic eventuality is merely part of a nefarious effect, an “unintended consequence,” of extractive capitalism. There is in fact a legal term one might use to describe it: manslaughter.

Voluntary manslaughter involves the intentional killing of another person in the heat of passion and response to provocation, whereas involuntary manslaughter is the negligent causing of the death of another person. Perhaps one might call the passionate pursuit of profits an instance of “heat of passion,” and the “provocation” leading to this crime passionel being the irritating habit of ordinary people not to get out of the way quite fast enough of the pursuit of the highest return on investment.  

Then there is involuntary manslaughter: killing people without realizing it, though one might, and indeed should, have known what you were doing could very well have such lethal effect.

But what do you call it when an “unintended consequence” has been revealed for all to see; when the fact that you are murdering people for the sake of ever-increasing returns is blatant, is even flaunted—and you keep on doing it anyway?

You would then be called a murderer. A first-degree murderer. And in America we have an array of specific punishments for that, from life in prison to the death penalty.

It may have been the tobacco industry that taught modern American capitalism that, as long as what an industry manufactures makes someone a great deal of money, it can get away with harming, even killing, in the long run, many, and even most, of its customers. The fossil-fuel industry was not far behind. Big pharma has been doing it more discreetly for years, to say nothing about what is sometimes suspected of for-profit hospitals. The arms industry has always done it for a living. The gun industry, with its front organization the NRA, is almost embarrassing in a hypocrisy that even its supporters don’t pretend to believe.

My friend and I dug around a little more. We were playing a mind experiment—what had we to lose? We might even develop one or two insights worth sharing with others more qualified and knowledgeable than ourselves, who might use them to have deeper, keener, and more valuable perceptions, genuine discoveries – something the rest of us can act on, even fight for.

There seemed to be something driving both the obsession with accumulating ever greater piles of cash that has no other purpose than acquiring more cash (money is useless for anything else, being inedible, ugly, and a hopelessly poor building material)—something called “hoarding” in other circumstances, and considered a medical condition requiring discreet but firm intervention, not celebration, social power, or political control by the syndrome’s victim—and, for example, the same thing that was driving some young girls to harm themselves, even kill themselves, as a result of the amoralism and cruelty found in social media.

They all share something we decided to call “the infinity complex” or infinity trap, depending on whether the internal compulsion or the outer effect is being emphasized – in either case, it is shorthand for a perverse fact about human psychology.

It is a well-known fact that we human beings feel less pleasure acquiring something we want than pain at losing something we have. There is also an addictive pattern to acquisition: the more we get, the less pleasure we often get from each equivalent addition, though this does not keep us from obsessively seeking the old thrill we remember from the good old days of our possessing minority.

Applied to the accumulation of money, cash, or “capital,” this translates into the wealthy becoming addicted to acquiring money without ever being able to attain satisfaction: they never have “enough”; they are always trying to add one more zero to the end of their financial balances, and to feel that little thrill that still comes with it. And avoid the pain of the loss of one, no matter how many zeros there already are in that quagmire of a financial account. And it is always possible, no matter how many zeros are already there, to add one more zero. Desire for money is infinite because the number series is infinite; thus, the infinity complex. And a wealthy man can never have enough once he is caught in the infinity trap.

Social media addictions have the same psychological source: a young girl (for example), who is naturally insecure and needs reinforcement from her peers to be reassured of her own value, gets a “like” on Facebook. All well and good. She gets more likes. Even better. She really likes getting likes, soon she becomes practically addicted to them—so much so that, at a certain point, when one of her posts, for some reason or for no reason, doesn’t get any likes at all, or even gets fewer than before, she feels a moment of panic . . .

Yet, no matter how many likes she gets, she becomes increasingly frightened she will not get as many of them next time. And what if she reaches the point of getting no likes at all? (Believe me, I know this can happen; more and more of my Facebook posts these days get no likes, and even I feel vaguely hurt and unsettled by this.)

Since most of this young girl’s social interactions happen online and not face to face, as a result her feelings about her own worth, which are insecure at best during these years, hang on the very thing that is making her miserable. She may easily spiral into feelings of despair, which she tries to cure by getting more likes on all her social media. But this makes her even more desperate. The addictive cycle has been secured; she too has fallen into the infinity trap.

For evidence of this, we learned that suicide rates of older teenage girls have doubled, and for younger teenage girls have tripled, since the first successful social media platform, Facebook, was introduced.

We have created an economy, a culture, and a society that exploit this weakness in human psychology to the hilt, all because it makes a small number of people a vast amount of money. It has reached the point where it is wreaking havoc on the young; it is destroying impoverished communities across the U.S. through opioid addiction; it has affected the health of several generations of people across the globe through tobacco addiction, and now is having a similar effect through vaping; it is ruining political and cultural discourse through a perpetual tsunami of misinformation inundating the internet—and most criminally and ultimately catastrophically, it is destroying the planetary ecosystem through global heating, destruction of natural habitats, and ripping to shreds the ecological network that makes human life on earth possible.

It is painful to admit this, and many will deny it or accuse me of exaggeration, but I believe the evidence has become too clear to remain silent. The core of world capitalism, which includes the fossil-fuel industry and all other industries connected to it, many internet companies, and big pharma, has become a global criminal syndicate, a Murder Inc. beyond the most violent and brutal dreams of any organized criminal network. And we have become addicted to an entire array of triggers that feed an insatiable human capacity: the drive never to be satisfied.

We must begin by ending the neoliberal project of global capitalism now. Not tomorrow. Not next year. Not in the next decade.

Or many more will die like the flocks of birds falling from the sky in their thousands over the southwestern states, like our fellow human beings, most of them innocent of creating this catastrophe, who are perishing from the heatwaves blanketing the world every summer and crushed beneath new forms of authoritarianism driven by a toxic blend of neoliberal ideology and information technology we have lost control of, to a conclusion in social psychosis and suicidal destruction.

____

Christopher Bernard is a novelist, poet, critic, and essayist. His book The Socialist’s Garden of Verses won a PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award in 2021.

Synchronized Chaos Mid-December 2024 Issue: A Literary Snow Globe

Evergreen trees within a stylized painting of a snow globe.
Image c/o Circe Denyer

Contributing poet Howard Debs’ work has been included in Chameleon Chimera: An Anthology of Florida Poets, which has just been released by Purple Ink Press, including work by U.S. inaugural poet Richard Blanco and notables such as Geoffrey Philp, Jen Karetnick, David Kirby and many others.

Also, contributor Peter J. Dellolio’s new novel The Confession has just been released from Cyberwit.

The Confession is the first-person account of a serial killer on the evening before his execution.  It is literary fiction, and somewhat similar to Naked Lunch by William Burroughs.  There is suspense in the narrative, as there is some speculation as to whether or not the narrator is really guilty.

Now for this issue: A Literary Snow Globe. As with a real snow globe, we watch delicate bits and pieces of creative thought descend and fall wherever they may on the landscape of our world. Each time we shake the globe and let it settle, each time we read these works, we take away something different and view a unique scene.

Daniel De Culla’s poem glories in the exuberance and diversity of human creative expression.

Salihu Muhammad describes stages in his development as a creative writer.

Ilhomova Mohichehra’s poetry probes the creative potential of liminal dream-states, how emotions and imagination can be strengthened when we approach sleep. Mark Young incorporates color, texture, and text into subconscious, surreal images he calls “geographies.”

Jim Leftwich’s poem incorporates vivid imagery and wordplay, referencing animals, landscapes, and celestial bodies. It also includes philosophical reflections on time, thought, and human experience. Catherine Zickgraf’s work explores time, mercy and judgment, spirituality, and gender. Maja Milojkovic revels in the beauty of the world while acknowledging everything’s impermanence.

Duane Vorhees’ poems explore themes of love, loss, sexual intimacy, nature, and self-discovery. Cheryl Snell’s fictional drabbles look at moments of connection, humor, and tenderness, between humans and each other and other species. Lilian Dipasupil Kunimasa affirms her acceptance of her entire life journey and her acknowledgement of the different parts of her personality and character. Linda Gunther’s short story depicts a woman who finds her identity by finding her calling in life.

Ilhomova Mohichehra ponders the dreary sufferings of life as she stares out at a rainstorm.

Dramatic painting of dark clouds and lightning and black birds over a storm whitecapped sea. A lighthouse on the right beacons with light.
Image c/o George Hodan

Mykyta Ryzhykh’s work offers a glimpse into a complex and troubled inner world through images of childhood, animals, fear, and death. Texas Fontanella’s poem expresses feelings of financial instability, frustration with societal expectations, and a desire for creative and personal freedom. He includes references to pop culture, politics, and literature, often in a fragmented and surreal manner. Mahbub Alam addresses humanity’s potential for great good or great evil and the need to make choices. Sayani Mukherjee speaks to the inner wilds: the vision, beauty, and danger we all carry within us.

Chuck Taylor’s poetry speculates on the nature of chaos, how it does not operate according to a holy book or an algorithm.

Nilufar Anvarova urges everyone to expand their horizons by reading. Kucharova Ugiloy celebrates the power of books and learning to expand one’s worldview.

Numonjonova Shahnozakhon reflects on how wonder and curiosity add color to life. David Sapp approaches outer and inner landscapes as a tourist and explorer, probing an office firing and the idea of his death with the same curiosity as he brings to Rome’s Trevi Fountain. Lawrence Winkler brings a sense of wonder to his trip to the Micronesian island of Pohnpei, exploring the history and culture of the place while witnessing his friends’ mishaps in international business. Santiago Burdon sketches a time and place in his Christmas tale from a rough Italian-American childhood.

Zarshid Qurbonov reads a book out in the grass on a sunny day and reflects on Uzbekistan’s literary heritage.

Farangiz Abduvohidova illuminates the work and life of Uzbek poet and magazine publisher Zulfiyakhanim, highlighting her qualities as a kind human being as well as her writing skill. Murodova Muslima Kadyrovna also honors the legacy of Uzbek woman poet Zulfiyakhanim.

Poster of a Central Asian woman in a colorful blouse with short dark hair. Words underneath her photo in Uzbek discuss her legacy and the years of her life are listed, 1915-1996.
Image c/o Savol Javob

Dilbar Koldoshova Nuraliyevna dreams of becoming a teacher or journalist so as to shape the minds of her fellow Uzbeks towards good. Gulsevar Xojamova highlights the Uzbek Youth Academy’s role in developing the creative potential of many young people.

Ibragimova Rushana outlines various techniques for teaching languages. Aziza Umurzoqova highlights the role of student-directed technology for language learning. Jonpolat Turgunov elucidates the history and value of the Ibrat Farzandlari Project, an online resource for learning foreign languages. Durdona Ibrahimova suggests possible innovative roles for technology and online apps and games in language instruction.

Abdumalikova Mushtariybegim celebrates the Internet but encourages balanced and moderate use of technology.

Fayzullayeva Gulasal outlines technical and financial problems within Uzbekistan’s industrial chemical industry.

Sarvinoz Quramboyeva conveys the daily determination of the Uzbek people to move their society forward. Shodiyeva Mexribon celebrates the hard work, hospitality, and honor of the Uzbek people. Ilhomova Mohichehra praises the kind and hardworking villagers of Uzbekistan. Sitora Otajonova honors the rule of law and social progress and community spirit of her native Uzbekistan. Mahzuna Habibova speaks to her native Uzbekistan as a friend, urging the land to hold onto its freedom and glory.

Farangiz Abduvohidova elucidates the history and culture of Uzbekistan’s Azim Bukhara region as Tuliyeva Sarvinoz describes the Uzbek historical castle monument of Tuproqkala. Ismailov Sanjar describes in detail the shrine of Sa’d Ibn Abu Waqqas in Uzbekistan. Through his photographs of an Afro-Caribbean festival in Boston, Jacques Fleury celebrates the region’s vibrant cultural diaspora while outlining the historical and psychological significance of the Caribbean rara celebrations.

Young Black woman in a sequined costume with a yellow mask and headdress dances in a city street.
Photo c/o Jacques Fleury

Sarvinoz Tuliyeva recollects her Uzbek childhood: fragrant trees on her street, parents baking bread in the oven, her father crying as she grows up too fast.

Alimbayeva Diana reflects on the constant care and provision of her father for her whole family. Zabuna Abduhakim writes a succinct verse of gratitude for her caring parents. Makhmasalayeva Parizoda Makhmashukurovna praises her father’s selfless love and sacrifice. Sobirjonova Rayhona honors her kind-hearted sister. Diyorbek Maxmudov praises her father’s tender love. Azimjon Toshpulatov’s verse honors the warmth and love of her mother. Ilhomova Mohichehra reflects on how blessed and lucky she is to have loyal and caring family members. Akmalova Zilolakhan Akobirkhan speaks to the consistent love and practical care most people receive from their parents. Faleeha Hassan speaks of children in the winter, nourished and warmed by caring parents. Muhammed Sinan offers up a tribute to the love, dedication, and integrity of his father.

Audrija Paul’s poetry reflects the determined patience of a lover as Jonborieva Muxlisa Rahmon reflects on the value of friendship and what you gain by being a good friend. Norova Zulfizar reflects on a love so joyful and nurturing it reminds her of spring’s flowering and her parents’ care. Mesfakus Salahin employs a variety of poetic images to convey a gentle and kind romance. Sobirjonova Rayhona urges her fellow young people to live happy lives and treat their parents with gratitude and respect.

Uzbek historical monument of Bukhara. Stone city plaza with doorways and stairs and a skyline.

Nurullayeva Mushtariy illustrates the heartache that comes when the younger generation does not have compassion for their parents. Shahnoza Ochildiyeva remembers how she began to empathize with and befriended some children who were originally annoying bullies, because she realized they lacked the care of loving parents.

J.J. Campbell reflects on having survived decades of broken dreams, troubled relationships, and abandonment. Yet, as he acknowledges, he has survived. Abigail George reflects on love, loss, mental health, family relationships, spirituality, and her artistic dreams in a prose poem formulated as a letter to her niece. Graciela Noemi Villaverde grieves the death of a husband with whom she shared a tender love.

Z.I. Mahmud explores masculinity and romance in D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers and how various social and psychological pressures drive the protagonist away from his fiancees. Eva Lianou Petropoulou’s poem, reviewed by Williamsji Maveli, explains how both psychological issues and societal problems such as discrimination and violence against women can interfere with loving relationships.

Somber closeup photo of a man in the shadows resting his head on his hand. He's of indeterminate race, we see him from the side.
Image c/o George Hodan

Kass’ piece explores themes of heartbreak, regret, and the lasting impact of a past relationship. Grant Guy’s poetry reflects on daily routine, loneliness, the lack of intimacy, and loss of identity within some relationships.

Chimezie Ihekuna elucidates the struggles of men in his native Nigeria and elsewhere in the world: being disrespected and viewed only as a source of money in an economy where decent jobs are hard to come by. Maftuna Rustamova also reflects on materialism and the tragedy of reducing human value to money. Don Bormon laments the suffering of the poor out in the cold during winter, while acknowledging the beauty and the harshness of nature during winter months.

Sandro Piedrahita’s short story dramatizes another tragedy, the Pinochet regime’s murder of singer and guitarist Victor Jara. Odera Chidume highlights the effects of war in Nigeria on everyday people through his story of remarkably resilient teenagers.

Vernon Frazer’s poems explore themes of wealth disparity, societal decay, and existentialism, often using vivid imagery and unconventional language. Howard Debs reflects on the human and ecological losses of 2024 and the changes many societies are experiencing.

Before we can fully take stock of 2024, though, there are the December holidays.

Pink, blue, yellow and green outlines of stars on a black background.
Image c/o Andrea Stockel

Taylor Dibbert recollects an awkward encounter with a stranger as Doug Hawley’s memorable anecdote recounts a Christmas filled with physical and relational peril.

Brian Barbeito’s poem illuminates the beauty of our world and highlights the importance of appreciating nature and loved ones, at the holidays and any time.

Bill Tope’s short story explores human compassion, connection, and perception. Another of his pieces depicts a kindly Jewish shopkeeper whose gift makes some young girls’ Hanukkah very special.

We hope that this issue will be a gift to you, and that as you read, the particles of snow in our literary globe will land in interesting ways that resonate with you.

Poetry from Numonjonova Shahnozakhon

Uzbek schoolgirl stands in front of a large white building in a headdress and long black braids and a blue coat over a white collared shirt and tie and black skirt. She's holding up photos of astronauts and spacecraft.
Colorless world

Who were we in a black and white world,
He saw black and white with his colored eyes.
We said that this whole being is unchanging,
Accustomed to the view stored in his mind.

Even if it is a thousand stars, this is a mortal world,
A brave man comes out to the big square.
As if trying to make a difference,
But the people have no business, they can't obey the decree.

He tried to be like them,
The opportunity he found paid off.
There was astonishment among the people,
Very nice, chosen side.

A thought suddenly came to his little mind,
"This world must remain like this."
In the eyes of the black and white world,
He returned to himself, day by day.

The world is filled with color and paint,
Everything changed immediately.
Every bit seems more beautiful to him,
There is nothing left in the black and white world.

Numonjonova Shahnozakhon. She was born on June 7, 2009 in Fergana region. Currently, she is studying at the creative school named after Erkin Vahidov organized by PIIMA. Her creative works have been published in several international magazines and has various international certificates. The creator's future goal is to become an international ambassador and receive a state award named after Zulfiya.

Story from Diyorbek Maxmudov

Central Asian teen girl with long dark hair, brown eyes, and a black, gray and pink floral top.

Dad, he is such a person who is an indescribable sun, an elusive diamond…

What more can I say!? 

Actually, I can say a lot, but when it comes to the point, sometimes my tongue starts rolling and my eyes start to tear…. I can hardly control myself even now.

A father is kind to his daughter in a different way, and so are girls

“Do you know what this is…!?

– When I returned home, my father’s shoes were in front of the door.

I agree with this opinion with all my heart, the reason is that you come home tired from studying, and when you come home, you see your father’s shoes, and you feel as if you forget all your fatigue for a moment, I don’t think that I am the only one who has this feeling… )

Fathers are ready for everything for their child  

“Thirty sons cannot be one father!

Fathers as humble as the earth, as huge as the blue

#From the poem

If this Mother is the one who will pick you up and put ointment on your wound when you fall…

And your father will fight with his whole body so that you do not fall

If you don’t love your father, who will you love…!?

Is it possible not to love such a person?

• Father, be there every moment for my happiness

Essay from Fayzullayeva Gulasal

Central Asian woman with a beaded headdress, pink scarf, and ruffled gray and white blouse.
Problems and reforms in the chemical industry 
                          Faizullayeva Gulasal
                            School 32, 8th grade
                           Student

  Abstract: This article provides detailed information about the chemical industry and its development problems and shortcomings, as well as reforms aimed at eliminating them. 


 Annotation: V dannoy state predstavlena podrobnaya information about chemical industry, problems and shortcomings in development, as well as reform, improvement and elimination.
  Keywords: chemical industry, planned projects and modern reforms, chemical research

     If we talk about the reforms of the chemical industry in our country;  On September 21, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev got acquainted with the presentation of the main indicators achieved in the chemical industry and the planned projects and made the necessary proposals.

    As a result of the reforms, the type of products in the chemical industry increased and profitability increased. More than 1 million tons of mineral fertilizers were produced in 8 months of this year. Exports increased almost twice and reached 330 million dollars. 

Speaking of the chemical industry, the chemical industry is one of the heavy industries, which produces a variety of chemical products.  types of mining and chemical raw materials, basic chemical products (NH 3 -ammonia, inorganic acids, alkalis, mineral fertilizers, simple chlorine and chlorine products, liquefied gases, etc.), plastic and synthetic resins, including caprolactam, cellulose acetates, chemical fibers and threads.  It produces plastic and glass-plastic materials and products, lacquer materials, synthetic paints, chemical reagents, photochemical products, household chemical goods, etc. 

The transformation of the chemical industry into an independent industrial network is connected with the industrial revolution.  Samarkand superphosphate factories were launched in 1963 and these factories served to meet the needs of the republic's agriculture for phosphorus fertilizers. With the launch of the gas field in the Bukhara region, the Fergana Nitrogen Fertilizer Plant was founded in 1963, and the Navoi chemical plant in 1964 started to work. 

Problems: the costs related to mineral fertilizers used in agriculture are not covered.  is going  Therefore, starting from 2018, the supply of mineral fertilizers to consumers is planned to be carried out through stock exchanges through the mediation of "YAGONA AGENT" organized under "ÕZKIMYO" JSC. These and many similar problems are causing great damage. These damages are being considered by our president.  and managed to find a solution. 

What measures have been taken or are being taken in this situation?  The ability of enterprises to form small working capital is completely limited, and they are solving the problem by attracting loans at 16-18%. Another problem that should be paid attention to is the obsolescence of the main technological equipment.  the equipment is not undergoing current and capital repairs. 

The head of state is also finding a solution for this and he emphasized the need to develop a network plan for the implementation of current and capital repair works, and this is very true.  we say thank you and we cannot help but recognize the high knowledge and potential of that person. Let's conclude by saying that each of us should contribute to our country, let's be thankful that we live in a bright country, in a beautiful life.
 
 References: 
 1 President's reforms
 2 Planned projects 
 3 Google sites 
 4. Decision of the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan on measures to further reform the chemical industry and increase its investment attractiveness

Fayzullayeva Gulasal was born in 2009 28th of January in Bukhara region Gijduvan district in ordinary family. Now, she is 9th class and she has succeeded lots of achievements. She is author of "Dadajonim orzusi" -" Dad's wish"and "Onajonim jannatim" My mother is my paradise". Additionally she has achieved many prizes in biology and chemistry subjects. English, mother tongue and literature are her favourite subjects too. Gulasal has attended in "Kitobxonlar festivali " - Literati festival " and won three day tour to Tashkent.
Three are 6 people in her family. Her father has passed away. She is very talented , intellectual and sussed girl. She has lots of plans and dreams in future so now Gulasal is trying to do her best for achieving them by learning biology and chemistry subjects. Her big dream is to study in abroad.

Essay from Norova Zulfizar

Every time it crosses my mind sharply,

Like the love of my mother and father.

Every time it passes through my heart slowly,

Like the first buds of spring.

My heart screams,

Noza says trees from spring.

Buds open and write letters,

My beautiful spring!

you are my word

You have such a beautiful heart. 

The earth always blooms,

I love your voice.

I’m eager for you to come

I miss you always.

If not, it’s spring in my country.

Young Uzbek teen girl with short black hair, brown eyes, and a short red and black floral ruffled top.

Norova is the daughter of Zulfizar Sanjar.

She was born in 2007. She studies in the 11th grade. She is in the 11th grade at a secondary school. Lives in Bukhara. Hobbies, learning foreign languages, reading psychological and artistic books, traveling. She knows English, Turkish, Uzbek languages perfectly.

Poetry from Ilhomova Mohichehra

Uzbek teen girl with long dark hair, a black ruffled blouse, and a single red flower.
Village people 

In the village, people only work,
They say: "The one who works, the one who bites."
That's why they don't stop working.
They are happy when they are happy.

Day and night never stops,
They do not know the feeling of fatigue.
People are always upset,
He does not wish to say bad words.

Ilhomova Mohichehra is a student of the 8th grade of the 9th general secondary school of Zarafshan city, Navoi region.