Does it matter to you what happens in Lahore? Or Dubai? Or Hong Kong? Damascus? Mogadishu? Tehran?
Yes it does.
Does it matter to you that the Amazon rainforest is disappearing, Ice caps melting, AC bill through the roof?
Does peak oil matter in your everyday life?
The fact that you pay more per gallon for bottled water than you do for gas?
Its all connected
Like it or not we are a Planet now.
We are no longer an
island bounded by by oceans and furriners who talk funny, we are no longer insulated from the consquences of our actions.
We can no longer pretend that we are, every day that we continue to pretend, brings us one day closer to catastrophe.
Climate change, war, economic ruin from debt. Perhaps all three. Wait, aren't there supoosed to be four?
9/11 taught us.
But we have chosen to learn the wrong lesson.
9/11 indeed showed that our oceans and majesty no longer protect us...but why is that? Why ARE there 12 million illegal immigrants (and 'potential terrorists') residing within our borders? Why are there billions and billions of refugees and displaced people and immgrants, both legal and illegal, around the world? Why are jobs and manufacturing being outsourced and internationalized? Why are international Corporations (even the ostensibly American ones) buying up resources, water rights, and taking steps to control worldwide food supllies? Because the world is no longer a bunch of countries ruled by a bunch of governments...not really, not anymore. There are too damn many of us now for that. We are over 6 and a half Billion people who need to eat, sleep, work eliminate waste and procreate. Borders and oceans can't stop that. Governments cant stop that. Can't direct it or regulate it. Can't even plan for it, rationally...that would be admitting that a huge problem...a SERIES of huge problems is rapidly approaching. Not popular with the people in your country...not the way to stay in power, not the way to raise money, not a big vote getter, not the way to get elected. (Gore 'not running' is brilliant, btw) Facing, addressing and attempting to solve the real challenges that are currently looming is a thankless and unpopular task. The complexity is overwhelming, the obstacles SEEM insurmountable, and there are no Tax Cuts to buy votes, no 'other' to villify, no patriotic slogans to make people feel warm and fuzzy and like things will all turn out OK.
But somebody has a plan!!! Our very own President and his advisors!!!
Unfortunately, their plan is for a Semi-mythical Divine being to come 'Down from Heaven' and save 'the good people.' After that (since they somehow assume they are 'the good people') they have no plan, they will be in Heaven and George Bush will be looking down at all of us sinners and chuckling in his disgusting, smug, superior way. This is the plan.
Um...
I think we need a back up plan.
I think we need leaders who are qualified, brilliant, innovative and diplomatic, NOT deluded by religion and unwilling to face the complex realities that are assaulting our planet.
I think we need to get rid of the people who are fostering war, destruction and death in the Middle East. The ones who think that killing children and civilians is the Road to Salvation. The ones who are counting on the most objectively insane chapter of a 2000 year old book to solve our problems. If we can't get rid of them, we need to shout to the rooftops, raise a stink, raise awareness, to try to call attention to the Path of Insanity that we are currently on.
Cause ya know...what happens if Jesus doesn't come? He hasn't yet, despite all the times that the 'Authorities' have told us he's coming on this or that date or time.
What happens if things keep going as they are?
What happens if we don't start taking immeadiate action to stop the killing of people in Israel, Lebanon and Gaza?
What happens if we don't pull our troops back in Iraq and the violence and civil war and the killing continue?
What happens if Iraq is partitioned, what happens to the populations of the Kurds, to the Sunnis, to the Southern Shiites?
What happens if Syria and Iran are drawn into the violence, as our Government seems eager to facillitate?
What happens if we...or Terrorists inflamed by our policies...use a Nuke in the Middle East
What happens if we don't deal with North Korea, if THEIR insane leader and OUR insane leader can't find a way to coexist?
What happens if China and India are further encouraged to pursue the West's model of raping the environment and unresrained, unplanned growth as their populations balloon and their people demand the unsustainable American standard of living? What happens, as is happening right now, when millions and millions of Americans take the slow slide from middle class to lower class, slide into poverty, homelessness, and starvation? Remember, please, that at LEAST 36 million Americans are currently living below the artfifcially low poverty line...with more joining them everyday, as the rich get richer. What happens if we become even more of a feudal society, with Aristocrats at the Top and serfs and peons struggling in poverty at the Bottom?
What happens if we don't IMMEADIATELY start mitigating the damage of Global Warming? When we have another city wiped out by a monster hurricane fed by Global Warming? What happens when we start losing coast line to rising ocean waters? When we start losing massive amounts of crops and livestock (see So.Cal) ...when crops won't grow in their traditional areas due to increased heat? What happens when our broken health care system can't handle the loads of boomers suffering from normal medical conditions and millions more Americans encounter the unaffordable medications and predatory practices by HMO's, Big Pharma, Insurance Companies, Pension Fund Managers, and the Bushco across the board budget cuts in Health and Human Services?
Africa
What happens if Bird Flu...remember Bird Flu? Or a similar pandemic breaks out?
These are just SOME of the complex, multi-faceted, and inter-related issues, problems....disasters that we as a nation, that we as a Planet, need to be concentrating on. THESE are the issues that will require the Planet to come together and cooperate in addressing, planning for, mitigating or solving.
How to care for and feed and protect the soon to be 7 Billion people on the Planet.
How to keep the planet we live on healthy and able to sustain YOUR life and the lives of your children, your grandchildren, and the generations to follow.
How to start WORKING TOGETHER AS HUMAN BEINGS to create a new paradigm, a new way of being on the planet. How to start Cooperating instead of Competing, how to take the hard path of Building, instead of the easy path of Destruction. You may say I'm a dreamer...but the alternative to THIS dream is a gauranteed nightmare. We need to be acting NOW.
What are the Powers That Be throughout the world doing to plan for a future of limtited resources, huge hungry and thirsty populations, and Climate Change?
Spending all of their time and attention on war. Spending all of their time and attention on securing resources for their own people ....and ways to buld figurative and actual walls to protect the resources they seize through force, economic bullying, and stealth. Spending all of their time and attention trying to convince everyone that everything is ok, and that we should continue to put our everyday work and effort into the current broken system, continue to consume and distract our selves with shiny objects and ridiculous entertainments.
While they are spending all of their time and attention lining their pockets, obscuring the truth....and killing.
We CANNOT make progress towards solving or dealing with the REAL problems facing us, facing our Planet while we are spending our time attention and resources on war. We CANNOT realize the potential for good and unity that the PEOPLE of the world desire and cry out for.... while we have men making decisions based on self interest and greed and attempting to foster a prophecy of the End Of The World.
The Rapture will Not Be Televised...because it aint gonna happen.
Even if it does....there will still be over Four Billion non-Christian Humans still on the planet, haha, still facing the same problems. If the Apocalypse is indeed upon us it will be through the works of men blinded by greed and power...not by divine fiat. We need leaders who see the REAL problems we are facing. Not terrorism, not gay marriage, not abortion, not flag burning.
WE need to deal with the real problems of the planet. WE need to do it now.
The first step is removing the Warmongers from Power.
For the sake of your children, your childrens children, and the next Seven Generations.
Keep working, keep thinking...and KEEP YELLING!!!