September 30, 2008

Connections, Elections, The Common

From other news sources — “Human-caused stresses, including global warming and over fishing, are encouraging jellyfish surpluses in many tourist destinations and productive fisheries”—-National Science Foundation.

Some problem areas are off the coasts of Australia, the Gulf of Mexico, Hawaii, the Black Sea, Namibia, Britain, the Mediterranean, the Sea of Japan, and the Yangtze estuary.

Jellyfish thrive in areas that are compromised by pollution, but not in the increasing number of Dead Zones where nothing can live, and are dramatically increasing in number.

Dead Zones are waters that are so depleted of oxygen that they cannot support life and there are over 400 of them, that we know of, and they are increasing in size.

The world’s largest Dead Zone is in the Baltic Sea and it loses 1.3 million metric tons of food a year.

It sounds as if our oceans are becoming close relations to our currently disintegrating stock market. Many of the Dead Zones are caused by global run-off of agricultural fertilizers from our giant agri-farms and also, believe it or not, from polluted air. Everything is connected.

The Earth was not ready for our throw-away human way of life. It is imperative that the new leaders of all countries make themselves aware of what needs to be done to save the Earth from our dysfunctional ways of life.

War, fossil fuel misuse, over-population, greed. Our species feels entitled to whatever it can take from the Earth and disregards the cost to other species, the oceans, the air, and the fresh water ways that are being degraded by the garbage we pour into it.

When a civilization collapses, it isn’t pretty. Stock market crashes are just the tip of the iceberg. It takes more than one man leading a country to solve the problems we face.

If the United States were to elect Barack Obama, and it would be in our best interests to do so, we must lead him to a better way of life. Unfortunately, I believe that John McCain is more concerned with the art of war than in making our world a better place to live. Sarah Palin is just unaware. Period.

Our civilization is facing a crisis that is totally unique. When Rome was falling, another place was rising. When Greece was falling, another place was rising. In today’s times, all of our civilizations are linked together and what we are facing is a global collapse of our civilization.

If we let this happen, the survivors will live in a savage land ruled by the least of us. The barbarians will have won. The sounds of whips and chains will resound around the world for the humans that remain.

Right now, there is much more at stake than a stock market bail-out. So much more. We must rise from our complacency or pay the unimaginable price.

The Four Horsemen, Pestilence, Famine, War, and Death are riding our way. I will close with a poem that was written by an unknown author, unknown to me, in 1764, courtesy of Jose Gouvieaa of The Highway Poets –

English Folk Poem

They hang the man and flog the woman
That steal the goose from off the Common,
But let the greater villain loose
That steals the Common from the goose.

The law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own
But leaves the Lords and Ladies fine
Who take things that are yours and mine.

The poor and wretched don’t escape
If they conspire the law to break;
This must be so but they endure
Those who conspire to make the law.

The law locks up the man and woman
who steals the goose from off the Common,
And geese will still a Common lack
Till they go and steal it back.

fin—-

September 25, 2008

The Perfect Storm

The Perfect Storm
by Marc D. Goldfinger

No one is jumping from buildings
during this crash because of the
Bush parachute bail-out. The rich

get paid off with our tax dollars
while a poor woman from Boston
is put out on the street. The bank

is foreclosing on her. She will have
to move to one of those new tent
cities; they’ll call them Bushvilles

this time instead of Hoovervilles
like during the last depression.
The last depression. No one bailed

out the fat cats that time; everyone
went down except for a few
carpetbaggers and liquor dealers.

It’s the Perfect Storm this time; even
the weather is telling us we’re on the
wrong track. Hurricane Kristina, Gustave

and the war in Iraq; the greed of the CEO’s,
I’m a friend of George W. is the new
Greed Anonymous greeting. Bush

didn’t have the 7 billion dollars for child
health care but he’s got 700 billion dollars
for the cats on Wall Street; you can hear

them if you try; yowling on the top floors
in the sweet suites while the rest of us
get foreclosed and put out on the street.

September 22, 2008

Pre-Election Blues: The Perfect Storm

The hurricanes. The stock market crash. The Bush bail-outs.

Why is it that there is always enough money for war, to bail out the rich, but not enough money for healthcare and food for the poor?

Bushvilles are springing up all over the land as our country edges toward collapse. McCain doesn’t have a clue as to what to do; why is it that he is challenging Obama at the polls? Is anybody paying attention to what is real?

The human species is getting ready to take care of itself. The perfect storm is hurtling towards us. Well, the Earth will be better off in the long run.

Shock the vote! ! !

September 19, 2008

Pre-Election BluesII: Bushvilles Spring Up All Over The United States

“By the rivers of Babylon there we sat and wept . . .”—Psalm 137

In Reno, Nevada, a small group of tents populated by homeless people sprang up by the railroad tracks.  People with nowhere else to go.  Within a short time there were over 150 tents, so close to each other they could barely breathe, filled with people who had come to Reno to look for work. 

There was none.

This wasn’t only happening in Reno.  It was happening in Seattle, Washington, Athens, Ga., Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Cal., and Portland, Oregon.  Tent cities being born all over the U.S.A. as the foreclosure explosion took off and the hurricanes hit Texas and Mississippi and the stock market crashed.

This isn’t a recession — it’s a depression and these communities filled with homeless people are the result of the Bush administration’s greedy policies that protect the rich corporations and have no regard for the people.

In the 1930’s they were called Hoovervilles, named after the president of that era.  These new tent cities are Bushvilles, directly caused by the policies that have driven our country into 10,000,000,000,000,000 of debt.

Debt caused by the Iraqi War, the corporate bailouts, the sell-outs, the collapse of our infrastructure.

“It’s clear that poverty and homelessness have increased,” said Michael Stoops, acting Director of the National Coalition for the Homeless.

Between the wars, the hurricanes, the business practices of our current regime and the collapsing stock market, we now have The Perfect Storm creating Bushvilles all over the United States.

God help us because it appears that we are not helping ourselves.  Well, it seems that the corporate rich are helping themselves to everything and leaving the crumbs for us.

If Barack Obama doesn’t win the election for president, it will be the end of the United States of America.  We’ll all live in Bushvilles.