Our planet is collapsing into total darkness

[Politics_Guy25]

So, I just turned on an international newscast. What do they lead with? UN Coppenhagen talks deadlocked. No meaningful draft text agreed to. Protestors storming the meeting site fed up and not taking it anymore. What will they agree to? Something to save their political prestige I'm sure but nothing that will be meaningful. Meanwhile, climate change will continue to get worse. Many more species will go extinct. The polluters will continue to run rampant. And eventually this earth will become uninhabitable for it's 6 billion human occupants. The uninhabitable part will come after epic wars - perhaps even nuclear wars- when we fight over scarcity of resources such as water as the effects of climate change begin to truly resemble something out of a horror movie. That's the horror to come.

Let's deal with the horrors of today.

Then, we have the middle east. Jews fighting Arabs. Arabs blowing up Jews. No peace talks. Iran merrily going about building a nuclear weapon to one day threaten the Jewish state with I'm sure. At the same time, millions of Palestinians live under opression, corruption and occupation in their own lands while millions of Israelis live under the constant threat of violence whether it be from suicide bombings to kidnappings. Both the Israeli and Palestininan people continue to suffer.

Meanwhile, we have the brave citizens of Afghanistan and Iraq dealing with occupiers in their land. Not only that! They have brutal terrorist thugs who come to "fight" the occupiers while at the same time terrorize the people that they claim to be fighting for.

But oh noooo, when we're not busy thinking of ways to kill each other or our fellow creatures on Earth, we manage to destroy our economy with "banks that are too big to fail", corporations that have no regulations nor respect for their employees, governments that only cater to those corporate masters that provide them with their campaign cash. We see the middle class being destroyed. We see millions with no jobs. How will they support their families? How many millions/billions on this planet are unemployed or underemployed tonight? How many people are lying awake right now wondering how they will support their family How many moms and dads are thinking about how to explain to their chldren that there will be no Christmas this year because they can't afford anything? How many people, not just in the U.S. (HCR is a big issue in China as well with patients only getting what they can afford) will die because health care is too expensive for them? How many marriages are ending because there is no money coming in because they can't find a job? The suffering of the many caused by the greed of the few is unbearable. How many more will soon be unemployed and without hope? Isn't just 1 more 1 too many?

Then, we have the brutal drug wars in Mexico with whole cities being terrorized and whole families being murdered in one go because they ticked off the drug dealers that they were working with because it was the only way that they could support their family.

Oh yes, then there are those that plot to hijack planes, that plot to blow up buses, that plot attacks by sea against innocent civilians (Mumbai). Yet another way that we are destroying ourselves,

Then, of course, and lastly, there is Africa. The cradle of civilization. The birthplace of us all. Millions will die in Africa in the next decade of starvation, of war, of genocide, of AIDS (which it should be noted many African leaders deny even exists or claim miracle cures for)

Oh, and then there is the education gap. Billions left uneducated and easily suspectible to being brainwashed by evil ideologies (see Nazism and teabagerism as examples). Those that have caused so much destruction, so much suffering, so much evil, are exqusitely good in brainwashing the masses so that they fail to see it.

All that while the privileged few live a life high off the hog while the rest of us suffer.

THIS is the planet we live on. THIS is what humanity has contributed to planet earth. It's pathetic. We had better start SERIOUSLY trying to address these issues SOON or we will all be living in a world within 100-200 years that Steven King could not imagine in his worst nightmares.

I've always been an idealistic soul. With all that is going on, with all that has happened in this decade, it is no longer possible to be. I wish I could see hope. I cannot.

[BeHereNow]

1. yeah...prepare for the great "change."

Indigenous people have been warning us.
I don't know what else to say
www.taironatrust.org

“Up to now we have ignored the Younger Brother. We have not deigned even to give him a slap. But now we can no longer look after the world alone. The Younger Brother is doing too much damage. He must see, and understand, and assume responsibility. Now we will have to work together. Otherwise, the world will die.”
Kogi Mama

BHN

[BeHereNow]

2. Kicking for the masses...

AS in, you stand warned.
BHN

[Politics_Guy25]

6. This is a hell of a situation that we find ourselves in

The last time that we found ourselves in as much trouble (1930s) we had a catastrophic global war. Prepare indeed. Of course, there can be no victory against the forces of climate change other than our own actions to prevent it.

[BeHereNow]

3. READ it people.

It has become dire indeed.
Connect the dots if you dare.
BHN

[paulsby]

4. there has never been any time in the history of the world

when a person couldn't trot out a list of stuff like this .

it wasn't the end of the world then, and it aint the end of the world now.

[BeHereNow]

7. Hey, just wondering, did you read the link I posted from the Kogi?

Somehow, I doubt it.
BHN

[ArbustoBuster]

24. I did, and I wasn't impressed.

Why would I give credence to priests of some random people?

I have science to tell me the climate is headed in the wrong direction. If I want to know what the gods are saying, I'll ask a priest. If I want to know what direction the actual world is going in, I'll ask a scientist.

When a Tairona priest can cure cancer, predict the weather, or project the future melting of glaciers like science can, we'll talk. I'm sure the Tairona you linked to are nice, but on that website they're doing what priests always do - they're asking for money and offering nothing in return.

[jobycom]

14. A little yes, a little no.

You're right, every generation believes it is the last one, that the world is going to hell in their lifetime, and every generation has ironclad proof of whatever type they most trust (science, religion, Kogi Mamas, whatever). The world has been ending since I was born. I grew up in churches that looked out the windows every morning and evening to see if Jesus was striding across the horizon to take us all home, and as teenagers we all huddled around our D&D tables at night telling chilling tales of how our home town was on the first strike list of every nuclear power on Earth. Never happened.

On the other hand, the world has been destroyed quite often enough. The dinosaurs are gone somehow. The Ice Age happened during human existence and greatly changed human life. The Sahara Desert was once a lush land full of people, and maybe even lost civilizations under the sands. The Roman Empire--the previous period when the world reached something like the civilization we have now--collapsed because of internal and external causes, and it took a thousand years in the west to approach that level of culture again. Mayans, Incans, Anasazi, and various tribes and cultures that populated this land died out, and when the Europeans moved in were destroyed.

The world did end for all these cultures, and for millions of people.

I don't think we're any worse off than we were in the 70s, or the 50s. Maybe less bad, even--watch the nuclear anihilation movies of the 70s and 80s. We also feared the coming Ice Age, economic collapse from dropping the gold standard, war and problems in the Middle East, the loss of oil and the collapse of civilization because of energy shortages.

I don't whistle past the graveyard, either. We are changing the climate of our planet, we are running out of fuel, we are waging war for no good reason, and as always political alliances are forming and destabilizing and making the world dangerous. It's good to be aware of all of this, to do what we can to make the world better, and to respect the dangers out there.

Stock up on canned goods, but don't lock yourself in a bunker, I guess.

My own rambling. I wasn't trying to accuse anyone of whistling past graveyards, hunkering down in bunkers, or anything else. I'm just avoiding other tasks I should be doing, so it's fun to go all Mad Max on DU.

[TreasonousBastard]

16. The only difference now is...

we have the population and the technology to really screw up the planet.

In the past, it took an asteroid or major geological change to cause mass destruction, while we puny humans could only deforest or poison relatively small areas.

All that has changed, and for the first time one species, ours, can be blamed (or credited, if you will) for bringing an end to a geologic era.

[Hannah Bell]

21. I grew up practicing hiding under desks to be saved from the bomb the russkies were going to drop on

us.

[cutlassmama]

19. t h i s

[upi402]

5. The conservatives will bring Blade Runner to a grandchild near you

Coming soon!

I really HOPE there's a hell.

[dysfunctional press]

8. the only hell is the one we've created for ourselves here on earth.

too bad we didn't choose heaven. :shrug:

[Politics_Guy25]

9. If you're wondering where this came from BTW...

It came from the complete chaos at Coppenhagen. There is no world body that I trust more than the U.N. and I was counting on them to reach a deal to truly fight this grave danger.

To see their effort degenerate into this is a nightmare.

[JCMach1]

10. Your description of Afghanistan is too simplistic, but I agree overall

I would describe Afghanistan something like this:

Wannabe fundamentalist tribal narco-insurgency vs. overreaching superpower.

[Hannah Bell]

11. SEPTEMBER 1, 1939: W. H. Auden

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyskrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
'I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,'
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.



WASN'T THAT A TIME

Hays/Seeger/Gilbert/Brooks- Sanga Music, Inc. BMI


Our fathers bled at Valley Forge,
The snow was red with blood
Their faith was worn at Valley Forge,
Their faith was brotherhood.

Wasn't that a time, wasn't that a time?
A time to try the soul of men,
Wasn't that a terrible time?

Brave men who fought at Gettysburg now lie in soldier's graves
But there they stemmed the rebel tide
And there their faith was saved

Wasn't that a time, wasn't that a time?
A time to try the soul of men,
Wasn't that a terrible time?

The wars are long, the peace is frail,
The madmen come again.
There is no freedom in a land
Where fear and hate prevail.

Isn't this a time, isn't this a time?
A time to try the soul of men,
Isn't this a terrible time?

[Mojorabbit]

12. Someone posted this piece the other day

on this board and the author posits that perhaps we have a collective death wish.
An interesting read at any rate.
http://www.whatawaytogomovie.com/2009/12/09/thelma-louise-and-six-degrees/

[LoZoccolo]

13. And the Palin Democrats are going to stay home and make it worse. n/t

[jobycom]

15. Great. So we've got another DU nickname to divide us?

Will Rogers was right about this party. :rofl:

[1]

17. better to see the hdtv in. darkness. better football, better nature channels...

[WT Fuheck]

18. doomsday scenario--Crowding into the Behavioral Sink

Calhoun's rat overpopulation experiments


"Notable conditions in the behavioral sink include hyperaggression, failure to breed and nurture young normally, infant cannibalism, increased mortality at all ages, and abnormal sexual patterns. Often, population peaks, then crashes. Actual physical disease, mental illness, and psychosomatic disorders increase. There are eating disorders; in human populations, drug and alcohol use rises.

"The only known counter to the effect of the behavioral sink is to reduce the frequency and intensity of social interaction."

If we don't reduce our population, Gaia will.

[Jamastiene]

20. We have all died and gone to Hell without realizing it.

That is the only explanation I can muster. It really is THAT bad.

[Goldstein1984]

22. Past generations predicting the end of the world were

only dealing with local problems. They didn't have all of the global issues described above. They didn't have apocalyptic religions being used by terrorists who may get their hands on the tools to do the job.

Aboriginal cultures are keenly aware of the balance of nature. It's my politically incorrect opinion that the lose claim to the title, "aboriginal" when they lose that one fundamental value--balance with nature. Once that value is gone, they are assimilated.

With three grandchildren and one more on the way, it breaks my heart to day this, but I think they are going to see global, human-induced catastrophe in their lifetimes.

[Raster]

23. There is a VERY GOOD POSSIBILITY that the human race, as we know it, will

cease to exist within the next 500 years.