I remember when I was a teenager and President Kennedy was assassinated. I was living in Cape Town at the time. I heard it on the news and wondered if there would be a nuclear war. Looking back on it, I am not sure why I would think that JFK dying would bring on a nuclear war. The Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis, maybe, but less likely that his assassination would.
In the last few weeks I have felt the same kind of despair about where the world is heading, and believe me, I am truly an eternal optimist.
I wonder what people are thinking who appear to be ignoring all the social, political and economic vectors of our age.
I feel for the woman I saw in the pharmacy earlier this evening who is due to have a baby in two days time. What kind of world is she bringing a child into?
This is serious stuff, people.
We have what is looking like a world war brewing in the Middle East. And like most things this may not be quite what it seems on the surface. Look at this report:
Here is an excerpt:
"The Israeli attack, called deliberate
by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, killed blue helmet peacekeepers from China,
Finland, Canada, and Austria. Israeli continued to attack the UN post even as
rescuers attempted to locate survivors in the rubble of the building."
Surely this is madness. A madness that only seems to serve the interests of the large oil companies. How weird is it that the war in Iraq that was sold to the American public at least partially as a war to secure energy for the future has achieved greater instability of energy supply and simultaneously has driven oil profits through the roof?And while the war rages species are being wiped out, people are dying of heat exhaustion in France and politicians are still in denial about Global Warming - and the hottest days of the Northern Summer are still ahead. Well they have to be don't they? If they accepted that it was real they would have to do something and it would be bad for the market too. If they keep denying it, they can establish their getaway in the mountains for themselves and prepare their escape before the rest of the sheep catch on...
"We are observing and
suffering the first effects of global warming," Hervé Le Treut,
meteorologist at the French Centre for Scientific Research told IPS.
"The emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, are leading to higher temperatures all over the world, but these are observed in an irregular manner across the continents," he said. "The global weather is clearly disturbed."
Record temperatures of well over 35 degrees Celsius were recorded all over Europe this week. On Jul. 20 Paris and Berlin registered 39 degrees. In Belgium, Jul. 19 was the hottest day ever in July, with 37 degrees.
The July maximum temperature record was also broken in Britain. The mercury reached 36.5 Celsius at the Royal Horticultural Society's gardens at Wisley in Surrey. The previous record for July, 36 degrees, was set in Epsom in 1911.
"The emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, are leading to higher temperatures all over the world, but these are observed in an irregular manner across the continents," he said. "The global weather is clearly disturbed."
Record temperatures of well over 35 degrees Celsius were recorded all over Europe this week. On Jul. 20 Paris and Berlin registered 39 degrees. In Belgium, Jul. 19 was the hottest day ever in July, with 37 degrees.
The July maximum temperature record was also broken in Britain. The mercury reached 36.5 Celsius at the Royal Horticultural Society's gardens at Wisley in Surrey. The previous record for July, 36 degrees, was set in Epsom in 1911.
And while that is happening in the US economic policy is creating more problems than it is solving according to Stephen Roach:
In the case of the United States
You have to wonder, don't you.....And in the background we have people in power politically in all the major Western Powers (the English speaking ones anyway) who appear to have lost their marbles!
When are people going to wake up!
