Posts
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The movie "Stop Loss" (2007) outlines, in dramatic and personal ways, the cost of this obscene war in Iraq. This is not the economic cost, which is astronomical; it will take our children decades to pay it off, since the war has cost approximately three trillion (million million) dollars.
All this money was used to feed the greed of oil-executives and the politicians in their pockets. But the war went tragically wrong, and was a stupid idea in the first place. Nearly one million people have been killed in the Middle East-- all due to this war and its aftermath; and an astonishing number have been women and children. The movie, however, speaks to a higher cost of the war-- much higher. For its cost in terms of emotion are immense. And when a person has served his time in the army, and then, is expected to return to duty, the horrors are even deeper, and worse.
Lives, and entire families, are destroyed by this careless policy. And the lives of so many who survive the war are so irreversibly ruined that one might say that the "lucky" ones were those four thousand American girls and boys who so tragically and horrifyingly perished there. The movie also gives us a glimpse into the nightmare of some who survived, but might have wished that they had died.
This movie will move your heart; if you are a sensitive type, it will bring you to tears-- several times. The movie is a touching protest to a war that has killed thousands of American girls and boys and hundreds of thousands of Islamic people-- all to be laid at the door of careless American imperialism and greed for oil.
When are we finally going to drop the most expensive habit in the world-- that of relentless, incessant greed? It is far more dangerous, expensive, and harmful than any drug-habit. We would never consider electing anyone with a serious drug-habit to the White House. So, let us refuse also to elect anyone who has this more terrible habit-- that of unquenchable greed and obscene violence.
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Showing posts with label oil. Show all posts
Showing posts with label oil. Show all posts
Monday, September 15, 2008
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
RUNNIN' ON EMPTY: THE "POLITRICKS" OF ENERGY
RUNNIN' ON EMPTY: THE "POLITRICKS" OF ENERGY,
By a traveling visitor
***
During John McCain's very long political career, he has stood firmly against off-shore drilling; and now, he stands as strongly for it.
Drilling will not affect gas-prices for at least ten years. And then, it will lower the price two cents!
If it had not been for the dishonest financial manipulations from the corporate oil giants, their buddy Bush in their collective back pocket, we would all be driving clean electric vehicles. So, let's stop filling the planet with poisons, killing our children-- quite painfully and slowly-- for a fistful of dollars; it is time to take survival seriously, when earth is gasping her final pant due to relentless greed.
*******
By a traveling visitor
***
During John McCain's very long political career, he has stood firmly against off-shore drilling; and now, he stands as strongly for it.
Drilling will not affect gas-prices for at least ten years. And then, it will lower the price two cents!
If it had not been for the dishonest financial manipulations from the corporate oil giants, their buddy Bush in their collective back pocket, we would all be driving clean electric vehicles. So, let's stop filling the planet with poisons, killing our children-- quite painfully and slowly-- for a fistful of dollars; it is time to take survival seriously, when earth is gasping her final pant due to relentless greed.
*******
Monday, January 21, 2008
God, the U.S., and Forgiveness
*******
The "Ten Commandments" were never, and never meant to be, a "Christian" document. They are the ancient, primitive laws that guided a very old and archaic culture. They were not created to guide people of the twenty-first century, but groups of tribal savages living near the twenty-first century BC!
Not that they are not great and fine ideas for all people. They likely derived from the more ancient Code of Hammurabi of Babylonia. And it is a good idea not to kill, steal, and go after your neighbor's wife!:)
But most of the modern defenders of the Ten Commandments are also supporters of the noxious and obscene war for greed and oil in Iraq. So, they cannot be taken seriously as "defending" or "being on the side of" Jesus, in this or any other matter. For this sick and nightmarish war, they have trashed the most important of Commandments, "Thou shalt not kill."
It really doesn't impress a person of even moderate intelligence that they hang it up, with a kind of boastful superiority, on their walls, or in their courts. For they advocate and defend trashing this Commandment.
They support, often enthusiastically, the utter merciless slaughter of our Middle Eastern sisters and brothers. A high percentage of the nearly one million that have perished through the "shock and awe" of this ghastly bloody war have been women and children. This is the most ugly and insane behavior, and God does not approve of it, is never behind it.
The true God is Love and perfect forgiveness. He does not rain punishment upon his beloved children. The United States has some gigantic problems, at the top of which it is being run, and ruined, by a lawless, greedy, tyrannical regime controlled by a backwards incompetent.
But although the U.S. has many challenges, they are not, and can never be, the "punishment" of a petty, trivial god who is "offended" by human actions. Stupid human mistakes are not important, or potent, enough to "offend" the God of infinity. They are not even a blip on the "radar" of life!
Human beings who think that human mistakes are so terribly important base this on the assumption that their lives are the obsession of God. But God has a billion other planets, in a billion other galaxies, to run.
Our activities, including our mistakes, are simply not Number One on an endless, limitless agenda!
Earth is a school. A school is a place designed to make mistakes, for that is the only way that we ever learn anything. Only rightwing fanatics, without a particle of Love, compassion, or forgiveness in their hearts, try to present the beautiful Lord of Love in the violent, ignorant Jehovah-image of the Old Testament. This false "god" is always angry; he is violent, murderous, and completely unforgiving. He is a petty and trivial deity.
More advanced and sophisticated people realize that the sweet Infinite does not waste time with anger. We recognize this as a serious weakness among people; so why should we project it onto the immeasurable Mind of Love?
People who feel that the Ruler and Guide of the universe wastes time with unforgiveness and punishment, vengeance, and pettiness, are wrong. They betray that, although hyper-religious, they have absolutely zero knowing of the true God of profound wisdom and deeper Love. For the Love of God is infinite, and he is never petty. It simply does not matter to him whether we, on a planet so tiny as to be invisible, hang up the Ten Commandments in our courts, or put, "In God we trust" on our money. For, in the greater scope of eternity, none of these trivialities add up to a single molecule.
What is important is that we learn to love and to forgive. So, the person of wisdom does not waste time with hollow, superficial, and artificial public activities, so that she might be admired by microscopic people. She does not fight and argue about symbolic actions that are inconsequential, such as placing religious documents in public. Instead, every day, she works on the interior Self, renewing it in the healing Power of Love and compassion.
*******
The "Ten Commandments" were never, and never meant to be, a "Christian" document. They are the ancient, primitive laws that guided a very old and archaic culture. They were not created to guide people of the twenty-first century, but groups of tribal savages living near the twenty-first century BC!
Not that they are not great and fine ideas for all people. They likely derived from the more ancient Code of Hammurabi of Babylonia. And it is a good idea not to kill, steal, and go after your neighbor's wife!:)
But most of the modern defenders of the Ten Commandments are also supporters of the noxious and obscene war for greed and oil in Iraq. So, they cannot be taken seriously as "defending" or "being on the side of" Jesus, in this or any other matter. For this sick and nightmarish war, they have trashed the most important of Commandments, "Thou shalt not kill."
It really doesn't impress a person of even moderate intelligence that they hang it up, with a kind of boastful superiority, on their walls, or in their courts. For they advocate and defend trashing this Commandment.
They support, often enthusiastically, the utter merciless slaughter of our Middle Eastern sisters and brothers. A high percentage of the nearly one million that have perished through the "shock and awe" of this ghastly bloody war have been women and children. This is the most ugly and insane behavior, and God does not approve of it, is never behind it.
The true God is Love and perfect forgiveness. He does not rain punishment upon his beloved children. The United States has some gigantic problems, at the top of which it is being run, and ruined, by a lawless, greedy, tyrannical regime controlled by a backwards incompetent.
But although the U.S. has many challenges, they are not, and can never be, the "punishment" of a petty, trivial god who is "offended" by human actions. Stupid human mistakes are not important, or potent, enough to "offend" the God of infinity. They are not even a blip on the "radar" of life!
Human beings who think that human mistakes are so terribly important base this on the assumption that their lives are the obsession of God. But God has a billion other planets, in a billion other galaxies, to run.
Our activities, including our mistakes, are simply not Number One on an endless, limitless agenda!
Earth is a school. A school is a place designed to make mistakes, for that is the only way that we ever learn anything. Only rightwing fanatics, without a particle of Love, compassion, or forgiveness in their hearts, try to present the beautiful Lord of Love in the violent, ignorant Jehovah-image of the Old Testament. This false "god" is always angry; he is violent, murderous, and completely unforgiving. He is a petty and trivial deity.
More advanced and sophisticated people realize that the sweet Infinite does not waste time with anger. We recognize this as a serious weakness among people; so why should we project it onto the immeasurable Mind of Love?
People who feel that the Ruler and Guide of the universe wastes time with unforgiveness and punishment, vengeance, and pettiness, are wrong. They betray that, although hyper-religious, they have absolutely zero knowing of the true God of profound wisdom and deeper Love. For the Love of God is infinite, and he is never petty. It simply does not matter to him whether we, on a planet so tiny as to be invisible, hang up the Ten Commandments in our courts, or put, "In God we trust" on our money. For, in the greater scope of eternity, none of these trivialities add up to a single molecule.
What is important is that we learn to love and to forgive. So, the person of wisdom does not waste time with hollow, superficial, and artificial public activities, so that she might be admired by microscopic people. She does not fight and argue about symbolic actions that are inconsequential, such as placing religious documents in public. Instead, every day, she works on the interior Self, renewing it in the healing Power of Love and compassion.
*******
Friday, December 21, 2007
America the Beautiful and America the Terrible
*******
I grew up in America the Beautiful, a country that was part idealization.
But it was a system that respected international law and order. It was a massive, mighty, many say "blessed," country that would never, under any conditions, stoop to invading a third-world country whose "soldiers" are often twelve-year-olds. And it would never have engaged in this nightmare of mass-murder of women and children for the evils of oil and greed.
I love America. But I do not always love or embrace her behavior under the tyranny of ignorant and greedy men. I do not respond with "shock and awe" to the slaughter and massacre of hundreds of thousands of innocent women, children, and men in a single day. This is the evil twin of America the Beautiful; her name is America the Terrible.
In America the Terrible, it is a place where elections were fixed and dishonest. In both twenty hundred in Florida, and in twenty-oh-four in Ohio, hundreds of thousands of valid votes were disenfranchised-- mostly votes of native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, and Latino Americans. Huge boxes of their valid votes were simply thrown away.
Why? Because they did not want the government to be led by men who trashed personal rights and civil liberties. They were rejecting a government that practiced regular torture and mass-murder. They turned away from a government that spied on its own citizens, and took away civil rights and freedoms. In short, they insisted on a simple democracy, which the U.S. claimed to be exporting, while in reality, it was suppressing here at home.
The rulers of America the Terrible were the pygmy-puppets of corporate America. They stood by the greedy and destructive corporations while they ruined the environment, and defended their absolute greed even as they poisoned innocent citizens. And when opportunities arose to help people-- whether senior citizens, children, students, or the common person-- the leaders stood squarely opposed to programs that could assist. This was done not once, but over and over again. America the Terrible believed in war-- even in starting it, and in the defense of pollution; and "anything for a buck" was its guiding philosophy.
In America the Terrible, an unqualified man could, with the aid of his father, "buy" the highest position in the land, and end up in the White House even if the citizens did not want him there. He could buy his way to power by becoming a weak puppet of vast wealth, again, mostly corporate. He could then reverse laws that the wisest people had developed for decades. He could not only start a nightmarish war, but could threaten the beginning of another-- this time, nuclear. By simply ignoring the poor and supporting the rich, he could come dangerously close to eliminating the middle class-- the traditional strength of America the Beautiful. In sum, everything that could go wrong in America the Beautiful did go wrong in America the Terrible.
*******
I grew up in America the Beautiful, a country that was part idealization.
But it was a system that respected international law and order. It was a massive, mighty, many say "blessed," country that would never, under any conditions, stoop to invading a third-world country whose "soldiers" are often twelve-year-olds. And it would never have engaged in this nightmare of mass-murder of women and children for the evils of oil and greed.
I love America. But I do not always love or embrace her behavior under the tyranny of ignorant and greedy men. I do not respond with "shock and awe" to the slaughter and massacre of hundreds of thousands of innocent women, children, and men in a single day. This is the evil twin of America the Beautiful; her name is America the Terrible.
In America the Terrible, it is a place where elections were fixed and dishonest. In both twenty hundred in Florida, and in twenty-oh-four in Ohio, hundreds of thousands of valid votes were disenfranchised-- mostly votes of native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, and Latino Americans. Huge boxes of their valid votes were simply thrown away.
Why? Because they did not want the government to be led by men who trashed personal rights and civil liberties. They were rejecting a government that practiced regular torture and mass-murder. They turned away from a government that spied on its own citizens, and took away civil rights and freedoms. In short, they insisted on a simple democracy, which the U.S. claimed to be exporting, while in reality, it was suppressing here at home.
The rulers of America the Terrible were the pygmy-puppets of corporate America. They stood by the greedy and destructive corporations while they ruined the environment, and defended their absolute greed even as they poisoned innocent citizens. And when opportunities arose to help people-- whether senior citizens, children, students, or the common person-- the leaders stood squarely opposed to programs that could assist. This was done not once, but over and over again. America the Terrible believed in war-- even in starting it, and in the defense of pollution; and "anything for a buck" was its guiding philosophy.
In America the Terrible, an unqualified man could, with the aid of his father, "buy" the highest position in the land, and end up in the White House even if the citizens did not want him there. He could buy his way to power by becoming a weak puppet of vast wealth, again, mostly corporate. He could then reverse laws that the wisest people had developed for decades. He could not only start a nightmarish war, but could threaten the beginning of another-- this time, nuclear. By simply ignoring the poor and supporting the rich, he could come dangerously close to eliminating the middle class-- the traditional strength of America the Beautiful. In sum, everything that could go wrong in America the Beautiful did go wrong in America the Terrible.
*******
Monday, October 08, 2007
The Evil Clown
*******
If Dr. Frank Burns, the notorious dysfunctional doc of M*A*S*H*, combined personalities with Alfred E. Newman, of Mad magazine fame, the result would be hilarious! It would be a clown of immense, hysterical proportions! But this kind of caricature, guiding the world's most powerful and destructive army, is not funny!
As a caricature of incompetence, george bush has transformed the world's most beautiful experiment in democracy into a hideous nightmare bristling with murder, torture, and ghastly weapons, including nuclear. America, the hope of the world, has become the horror of the world. This transformation occurred because the world's greatest, and only, superpower offensively and violently attacked a third-world country whose "soldiers" are often twelve-year-old boys!
And why? Bush tried to lie, and say that it was all about terrorism. But the entire world saw through this transparent tissue of lies. Everyone now knows that the war was always about oil-- getting an ocean of free oil because the U.S. "owned" the land under which it lay.
This naive and simplistic notion had bush and billionaire-buddies laughing and lapping up all the free oil that they wanted, and then, selling it for huge profits. But this occurred only in twisted imaginations. Their great, greedy dream never materialized.
Also, another real reason for this despicable war is that bush's father had a price on his head, threatened by Saddam due to the previous war. To accomplish their dark, evil task, bush and buddies were willing to sell out the environment. And they did, ignoring sound ecological laws that went back decades, and even reversing them, giving us all a blacker and bleaker world.
Today, it is not as easy to breathe in the U.S. as it was in twenty hundred. And Americans are suffering from bronchitis, emphysema, and asthma in record numbers-- a bonanza for bush's buddies in the pharmacology industry! For bush's pocketbook, ecological Armageddon is a win-win!
For this incompetent and sociopathic man suffers from the belief that he is Caesar or Napoleon, when in actuality, a village in Texas is missing its resident idiot! This one regime has done more damage than any of America's enemies. His war has been solely and singly responsible for the death of over three thousand American girls and boys, and for an estimated over one million Middle Eastern men, women, and children. Many young Americans have died, and will never again give anything to their country-- or to their horrified husbands, wives, or kids, still, and permanently, shell-shocked!
His "Shock and Awe" campaign, which rained down fire and terror from the skies, had the surrealistic feeling of a video-game being played by a madman. One has the compelling intuition that these dead and ruined Americans are just numbers in the "score-card" of bush's calculating, frigid mind. He refused even to attend the sad funerals of most.
Bush seems personally untouched by the death of thousands, or by the ruination of tens of thousands of irreversibly ruined American lives. (These were survivors who lost eyes, brains, arms, and legs.)
It is time that, as a people, we worked to restore America as a shining land of peace-- not the world's greatest terrorist organization or bloodiest "empire." It is time that we called murderous greed to task, recognizing that unleashed greed has terrible --often, irreversible-- consequences. It has already irrevocably ruined lives; and it threatens to ruin our planet.
*******
If Dr. Frank Burns, the notorious dysfunctional doc of M*A*S*H*, combined personalities with Alfred E. Newman, of Mad magazine fame, the result would be hilarious! It would be a clown of immense, hysterical proportions! But this kind of caricature, guiding the world's most powerful and destructive army, is not funny!
As a caricature of incompetence, george bush has transformed the world's most beautiful experiment in democracy into a hideous nightmare bristling with murder, torture, and ghastly weapons, including nuclear. America, the hope of the world, has become the horror of the world. This transformation occurred because the world's greatest, and only, superpower offensively and violently attacked a third-world country whose "soldiers" are often twelve-year-old boys!
And why? Bush tried to lie, and say that it was all about terrorism. But the entire world saw through this transparent tissue of lies. Everyone now knows that the war was always about oil-- getting an ocean of free oil because the U.S. "owned" the land under which it lay.
This naive and simplistic notion had bush and billionaire-buddies laughing and lapping up all the free oil that they wanted, and then, selling it for huge profits. But this occurred only in twisted imaginations. Their great, greedy dream never materialized.
Also, another real reason for this despicable war is that bush's father had a price on his head, threatened by Saddam due to the previous war. To accomplish their dark, evil task, bush and buddies were willing to sell out the environment. And they did, ignoring sound ecological laws that went back decades, and even reversing them, giving us all a blacker and bleaker world.
Today, it is not as easy to breathe in the U.S. as it was in twenty hundred. And Americans are suffering from bronchitis, emphysema, and asthma in record numbers-- a bonanza for bush's buddies in the pharmacology industry! For bush's pocketbook, ecological Armageddon is a win-win!
For this incompetent and sociopathic man suffers from the belief that he is Caesar or Napoleon, when in actuality, a village in Texas is missing its resident idiot! This one regime has done more damage than any of America's enemies. His war has been solely and singly responsible for the death of over three thousand American girls and boys, and for an estimated over one million Middle Eastern men, women, and children. Many young Americans have died, and will never again give anything to their country-- or to their horrified husbands, wives, or kids, still, and permanently, shell-shocked!
His "Shock and Awe" campaign, which rained down fire and terror from the skies, had the surrealistic feeling of a video-game being played by a madman. One has the compelling intuition that these dead and ruined Americans are just numbers in the "score-card" of bush's calculating, frigid mind. He refused even to attend the sad funerals of most.
Bush seems personally untouched by the death of thousands, or by the ruination of tens of thousands of irreversibly ruined American lives. (These were survivors who lost eyes, brains, arms, and legs.)
It is time that, as a people, we worked to restore America as a shining land of peace-- not the world's greatest terrorist organization or bloodiest "empire." It is time that we called murderous greed to task, recognizing that unleashed greed has terrible --often, irreversible-- consequences. It has already irrevocably ruined lives; and it threatens to ruin our planet.
*******
Monday, April 02, 2007
Checking the Oil
A lot of folks can't understand how we came to have an oil shortage here in our country. Well, there's a very simple answer. Nobody bothered to check the oil.
We just didn't know we were getting low. The reason for that is purely geographical.
Our OIL is located in various states. But our dipsticks are in Washington, DC.
(Thanks to Karleen Sell.)
We just didn't know we were getting low. The reason for that is purely geographical.
Our OIL is located in various states. But our dipsticks are in Washington, DC.
(Thanks to Karleen Sell.)
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