New Year 2016 – Dare We Celebrate?
By James Donahue
Someday – if we are lucky – we may look back on this point in time and realize it was an important milestone; either we made a good decision and saved our planet and ourselves from an ugly destructive fate or we chose to blindly take the fabled route of the lemmings and jump into the abyss.
As people all over the world dig out their party hats, stock up on their favorite liquors, and prepare to launch a barrage of fireworks to welcome in the New Year, many of us shudder as we consider the issues facing us in the weeks and months ahead.
It is time for us to admit to ourselves that our planet is overpopulated, polluted, poisoned and dying; consequently threatening to take us all into mass extinction if we don’t do something drastic and stop the radical life style we have established for ourselves.
The air is laced with carbon monoxide and methane gasses that are trapping the heat of the sun and causing radical changes to the world’s climate. The air also is filled with toxic radioactive isotopes from about 1,000 operating nuclear energy plants and reactor meltdowns at Chernobyl and Fukushima that are slowly killing us.
Our seas also are polluted with radioactive debris, toxic crude oil spills and blowouts, farm chemicals and plastic. Sea life is dying which means the foundation of all life on the planet is threatened.
The corporate-owned and sold-out media is ignoring the above most important issues, and concentrating instead on political contests for power, the stock markets, terrorism, movie and television personalities and sports events. Big oil, big coal and big pharmaceuticals appear to be controlling the news from behind the veil.
In the United States we have just endured one full year of a silly presidential contest with most of the candidates that are making such foolish statements and actions that nobody should consider them as acceptable people to be allowed in the presidential office. What is frightening is that slick advertising financed by big corporate donations might just persuade the illiterate masses to elect one of the buffoons to the job. A lot of people say they won’t bother to vote next fall because they think the elections are rigged and they don’t believe the president is really running the country anymore anyway.
There has been a strong push by the Republican candidates to deny climate change issues, maintain the nation’s costly war machine and cut spending for important issues like rebuilding a crumbling infrastructure, giving our children a quality education that includes college, and feeding, housing and providing good medical care for the nation’s working class, poor and elderly.
Some conspiracy theorists are thinking there may be a concerted effort underway to kill off a few billion people in a last-ditch effort to save the rest. The problem is that they have let the state of the world deteriorate to a point where there may be no survivors. And the deciding end to it all is looming sooner than anybody might believe.
As long as they can have their beer and football on Saturday nights and get what they think is a clean breath of air in the morning, they are happy to pretend that all is well.
By James Donahue
Someday – if we are lucky – we may look back on this point in time and realize it was an important milestone; either we made a good decision and saved our planet and ourselves from an ugly destructive fate or we chose to blindly take the fabled route of the lemmings and jump into the abyss.
As people all over the world dig out their party hats, stock up on their favorite liquors, and prepare to launch a barrage of fireworks to welcome in the New Year, many of us shudder as we consider the issues facing us in the weeks and months ahead.
It is time for us to admit to ourselves that our planet is overpopulated, polluted, poisoned and dying; consequently threatening to take us all into mass extinction if we don’t do something drastic and stop the radical life style we have established for ourselves.
The air is laced with carbon monoxide and methane gasses that are trapping the heat of the sun and causing radical changes to the world’s climate. The air also is filled with toxic radioactive isotopes from about 1,000 operating nuclear energy plants and reactor meltdowns at Chernobyl and Fukushima that are slowly killing us.
Our seas also are polluted with radioactive debris, toxic crude oil spills and blowouts, farm chemicals and plastic. Sea life is dying which means the foundation of all life on the planet is threatened.
The corporate-owned and sold-out media is ignoring the above most important issues, and concentrating instead on political contests for power, the stock markets, terrorism, movie and television personalities and sports events. Big oil, big coal and big pharmaceuticals appear to be controlling the news from behind the veil.
In the United States we have just endured one full year of a silly presidential contest with most of the candidates that are making such foolish statements and actions that nobody should consider them as acceptable people to be allowed in the presidential office. What is frightening is that slick advertising financed by big corporate donations might just persuade the illiterate masses to elect one of the buffoons to the job. A lot of people say they won’t bother to vote next fall because they think the elections are rigged and they don’t believe the president is really running the country anymore anyway.
There has been a strong push by the Republican candidates to deny climate change issues, maintain the nation’s costly war machine and cut spending for important issues like rebuilding a crumbling infrastructure, giving our children a quality education that includes college, and feeding, housing and providing good medical care for the nation’s working class, poor and elderly.
Some conspiracy theorists are thinking there may be a concerted effort underway to kill off a few billion people in a last-ditch effort to save the rest. The problem is that they have let the state of the world deteriorate to a point where there may be no survivors. And the deciding end to it all is looming sooner than anybody might believe.
As long as they can have their beer and football on Saturday nights and get what they think is a clean breath of air in the morning, they are happy to pretend that all is well.