Lonestar Iconoclast: Where Will All The Flowers Go?

[babylonsister]

http://www.lonestaricon.com/absolutenm/anmviewer.asp?a=1171&z=113

Where Will All The Flowers Go?

Honey bees are disappearing. Nobody seems to know why. Perhaps another casualty of pollution and global warming. With the latest gloomy report of environmental scientists, it appears we humans are short-listed for extinction on our doomed planet along with polar bears, whales, and the already vanquished do-do bird.

No doubt the first to go will be those who will be unable to afford to get to higher ground or pay what is certain to be a very high premium to live there. In other words, they will look a lot like the thousands left behind after Hurricane Katrina. Only, this time, they will number in the millions.

Already we’re finding out who can or cannot afford the basic necessities, not just food and running water, but heat in winter. Forget health care. Here in Texas, the rich oil man, T. Boone Pickens, is buying up acreage overlying the Ogallala aquifer. Basically, he plans to drain the aquifer needed by West Texas farmers and sell off the water at colossal profits. This will be the sunset of our brief sojourn here. The rich will continue to plunder and profiteer off the rest of us right up to the end – at which point, I suppose, there will be nobody left but them, clutching their purses as they breathe their last in a world that will barely sustain them or their spoiled offspring.

For the present, we are locked in mortal combat over the earth’s dwindling oil reserves, all under the guise of making the world – safe for Democracy. And millionaires. The proposed new oil law cooked up between the U.S. and the Iraqi government leaves no doubt what the real objective was for the Iraq War. Under the new law, Iraq’s oil will be handed over to foreign oil corporations, such as Exxon-Mobil, Shell, and British Petroleum.

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As for those honey bees, once they’re gone, I reckon we’ll have no more flowers. Which suggests a new line for Pete Seeger’s famous song. Well, you’ll still be able to get plastic ones – all you want. We’ll need oil to make them with, of course. Ah, thus may our wars acquire a whole new relevance – not only to quench the voracious thirst of our cars, but also to maintain a steady crop of flowers – albeit plastic ones – for soldiers’ graves.

[Vidar]

1. I love that gutsy little paper.