“A desperate disease requires a dangerous remedy.” Guy Fawkes
I think it would seem to anybody with any common sense that our thirst for crude oil is destroying not only our planet but our society as well.
In our own hemisphere, we have polluted and damaged the jungles of the Amazon, the gulf coast and all the way to Alaska. Through government deals with corrupt Middle Eastern Officials, supplying them with cash and weapons we have weakened our status with the common man throughout the world and inadvertently trained and sponsored terrorism. Greed and corruption are so rife in the oil business; our politicians in Washington turn a blind eye to our supposed friends, the Sheiks of Saudi Arabian, while they pour money into extremist Muslim organizations so their kingdoms are not attacked from within. If Saudi Arabia is such a good friend, then why were most of the high jackers from 9/11 and even Osama Bin Laden from Saudi Arabia?
I watched a very good movie called “Syriana” that raised a lot of questions in my mind. That led me to a book Called “Sleeping With The Devil” by x-CIA agent Robert Baer. He fully follows the money trail and greed from Washington to the Saudi king and princes’ to the terrorist themselves. There is no doubt in my mind (I know this is going to be very unpopular) that our government and elected officials, our thirst for oil is as much to blame for 9/11 as anyone else.
I don’t think there are any easy answers to wean ourselves from our thirst for crude oil. Both the movie and the book will show you that. I think we are going to have to look at multiple solutions. In my time in living in the west, I’m encouraged by the wind and solar farms that are springing up. In other areas we may have to look at geothermal options and natural gas or on our coast harnessing the power of the waves. I think one of the main ways we need to look at a change in our “Energy Policy” is to make it our patriotic duty not to support the use of crude oil.
We also need to realize that when it comes to the rest of the world we are not a very good police force. We supported Batista in Cuba, The Shah in Iran, we supported Saddam Hussein in his early years, after the French fought for ten years and got out we got embroiled in Vietnam, the CIA trained and armed Osama bin Laden against the Russians, and the list goes on.
We are the number one arms dealer in the world! A part of every dollar we spend on oil goes to funding terrorist groups. We spend more on health care than any other country. But yet we are 37th in performance, 50th in life expectancy and 38th in birth mortality rates. I can’t afford health insurance, I live in fear every time I get a cough, afraid it might turn into pneumonia, every time I go on a hike or scrambling up a hill side, in the back of my mind what if I fall and break a leg. When you go to a hospital, the first thing they ask is how are you going to pay. It would seem our government is more concerned about arming governments who are not popular with their own people then keeping our citizenry healthy.
I consider myself a patriot. I believe in the Constitution, the right to the pursuit of freedom and happiness. Our Government has lost sight of our basic freedoms and will run rough shod over everything and anyone that gets in the way of their thirst for greed and power. It’s our duty, our right as a free people to stand up for our rights, to write about the injustices that our government is involved in, to vote and continue voting until true change comes about. We need a major change! The time is ripe for a rational, third party that is for the people and by the people and not in bed with big corporations or has a religious agenda. But we as a people need to be involved all the time. We can’t vote someone in and then just go home. We need to be involved at the local level in our government, we need to vocalize and often, in order to be heard in Washington, only then will there be true change. We need to turn off the video games, quit thinking that “American Idol” is news and be involved in our government and our society at the local level in order to initiate true change, only then will there be true positive change in our society. It may already be too late, I’m not sure and I try to be positive, but if there is not a major change in the next few years in the way our government does business and that is truly what our government has become. We will go the way of Rome; we are already heading that way in a major way
No comments:
Post a Comment