“What’s important is that the action took place, when everybody believed it to be unthinkable. If it took place this time, it can happen again…”

Jean-Paul Sartre, 1968

Soaring gas prices, food shortages, earth quakes, cyclones, floods, fires, war on terror, global warming…. human toll mounting

Food riot, 1917

During World War I, wartime inflation severely taxed the limited budgets of working-class families. Although wages also rose during the war, they could not keep up with prices. On February 20, 1917, after confronting pushcart peddlers who were charging exorbitant rates for necessities, thousands of women marched to New York’s City Hall to demand relief. The “food riot” precipitated a boycott campaign that eventually forced pushcart prices down. Women in Boston and Philadelphia took similar action.

Food riots of the 21st century

US Food Prices Spike Upward

Sticker shock at the supermarket

Families struggling as bills begin to bite

Preparing for the end of food?

Food riots will spread – USA & the World will suffer similar pain. More families cannot afford the gas to drive to a store to buy inflated groceries. Although many will become creative to provide food and hygiene for their families, many more don’t have the resources to get by. In America, the nature of infrastructure, places families in the suburbs and several gallons of fuel away from safety. Urban populations can walk or bike to food, but that food will be expensive because transportation costs are over the top. Wages cannot keep up because the cost of doing business is also over the top. People may be forced to steal food … people may be forced to do unthinkable things just to survive.

Frustration and desperation does that to people. This places disconnected leaders at risk. No government can survive the desperation of its people without becoming totalitarian and deadly. Look at Myanmar, Darfur and Zimbabwe. These governments elect to suppress and disenfranchise rather than address the suffering of their populations. The Bush administration has prepared this country for a similar treatment … the constitution and people’s rights have been breached for fictitious justifications.

This is a spiral. The hot air filling the inflated human ego is leaking out, and the victims will fall back to earth, some may survive. Those survivors, not caught up in the blame game, will adapt and prolong their survival.

This is the human reality check! Modern humans have departed from the respect for nature that our ancestors held. Mother Earth has no regard for human politics, human dogma, or personal egos. Religion and politics have distracted the human race from the reality that we occupy a planet. This planet does what planets do, it changes and evolves. It does not care what religion you adhere to or what explanations you have accepted. Truth is what the natural progression of planets follow, putting the mask of religion on earthly events acts as a blindfold. The only truth remaining is that this planet is going through another cycle and humans are as clueless as the dinosaurs. You would think that human intellect would anticipate these events and prepare for survival … but NO! Humans are so self absorbed that their potential for planning is retarded by ego and selfishness. Learning to live with the earth’s natural processes appears to be beyond the human ego. Nearsightedness has guaranteed the infamous Armageddon that too many religious zealots are anticipating. Those seeking the Rapture have condemned the rest of humanity. They trash the planet and wait for GOD to reward them by relocating them into a heaven, fresh and clean, for them to trash all over again.

This planet, EARTH, will follow the evolution of planets and solar systems. Issac Assimov once described ENTROPY, in The Last Question by Isaac Asimov © 1956

“Will mankind one day without the net expenditure of energy be able to restore the sun to its full youthfulness even after it had died of old age?”

“Can entropy ever be reversed?”

The White House has demanded that Congress approve a bill strictly with war funding, but the Senate measure also includes a $52 billion, 10-year measure that would pay for higher-education benefits for military veterans, an $11 billion, 13-week extension of unemployment insurance, $1 billion for low-income heating assistance and billions more for Gulf Coast reconstruction. It’s unclear what bill will emerge from the House, but Democratic leaders have conceded that the price tag and domestic add-ons would need to be slashed in order to generate enough support from the conservative wing of their caucus, which is concerned about growing the budget deficit.

Bush said that if Congress does not act promptly, “critical accounts at the Department of Defense will soon run dry.” He added that civilian employees may face “temporary layoffs,” and the Pentagon would be forced to “close down a vital program that is getting potential insurgents off the streets and into jobs.” If the supplemental spending bill is not enacted after July, Bush said, the department would “no longer be able to pay our troops,” including ones in Iraq and Afghanistan.

U.S. President George Bush wants $178 billion more in military spending to help pay for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. VOA White House Correspondent Scott Stearns reports, opposition Democrats are adding domestic spending to that bill, and Mr. Bush says he will veto it if those programs are not removed.

What it means when the US goes to war

Hat Tip to this article by Chris Hedges - Troops, when they battle insurgent forces, as in Iraq, or Gaza or Vietnam, are placed in “atrocity producing situations”. Being surrounded by a hostile population makes simple acts, such as going to a store to buy a can of soda, dangerous. The fear and stress push troops to view everyone around them as the enemy. The hostility is compounded when the enemy, as in Iraq, is elusive, shadowy and hard to find. The rage soldiers feel after a roadside bomb explodes, killing or maiming their comrades, is one that is easily directed, over time, to innocent civilians who are seen to support the insurgents.

Civilians and combatants, in the eyes of the beleaguered troops, merge into one entity. These civilians, who rarely interact with soldiers or marines, are to most of the occupation troops in Iraq nameless, faceless and easily turned into abstractions of hate. They are dismissed as less than human. It is a short psychological leap, but a massive moral leap. It is a leap from killing - the shooting of someone who has the capacity to do you harm - to murder - the deadly assault against someone who cannot harm you. [See Entire Article]

This is not a game of Chess or Monopoly. This is not a board game with inanimate objects challenging other inanimate objects. Human flesh and human psyche is changed forever by the folly of disconnected leaders. Fairy tales abound warning us, from childhood, about good and evil leaders. Those fairy tales give us heroes who win, after a terrible cost in lives and property. Religions tell similar tales, trying to teach believers about consequences from their actions. The most glaring misinterpretation for some major religions appears to mix up earthly and heavenly rewards and consequences, with terrible results.

Politicians have responsibilities to those who elect them. But, they also have a responsibility to the world around them. Eight years of distortion and extortion have changed the world. The lessons have been tragic and harsh. The final acts of President Bush will determine how hard it will be for the world to recover from all the bad parts of this fairy tale. The only positive side from these years of torment are acute public awareness of the world itself. The Earth is changing under our very feet while global economic and political landscapes shift.

President Bush appears to be plodding along like nothing has changed …

Hat Tip to thedailyhypocrite for their revealing Bush comments.