Acceleration

Our world is changing rapidly. Climate and the environment in general, the debate about over-population and how to deal with it if it is an issue, geopolitics with its layers of deceit and wrangling, and an economy in global meltdown. Trying to keep a grasp on all that is happening must be done, but it is increasingly difficult.

I thought I`d note some troublesome headlines from today:

It seems that much of China is experiencing the worst drought seen in over 50 years. 50% of the wheat crop of 8 provinces are in danger of failure this year. Australia seems to be facing similar difficulties. Other recent articles, like this one, suggest that California will be following suit this spring/summer. While much of North America and Britain/Europe have had a hard winter with a good deal of precipitation, few people think about the fact that this extra precipitation has to come from somewhere. Perhaps China is now paying the toll for the Olympic Games weather manipulation.

On the geo-politicial front, the idea of Peter MacKay as the Secretary General of Nato just makes my skin crawl.

Speaking of the CONservatives, PM Harper is asking Canadians to stay the course presented in the recent budget. Now I am not suggesting that I think government should flail around in times of trouble like this, but this article shows, once more, just how out of touch is our ever-s0-emotive PM. Harper says we should not worry about the 129,000 Canadian jobs lost in January as the numbers in the US were so much greater, therefore the US "remains the epicentre of this particular crisis." Apparently he cannot fathom that the Canadian population is around 1/10th of the US, but our job loss numbers were about 1/6th that of the US. I think most 6th graders could see the problem there. Not only that, but this is the exact same language the mook used last fall when he was telling us not to be concerned as Canada was relatively safe from this crisis.

Thankfully, Canada remains rather quiet in the continued prodding of Iran. However, Germany and France took some time to add a few pokes of their own. One can`t help but wonder if these people perhaps WANT to start another war (as if there is little wondering left...). From where I sit, this seems exceedingly stupid when one considers the amount of resources (not to mention innocent lives) wasted in war. Perhaps they should have been listening to this weeks Financial Sense Newshour, where some discussion was given to the estimated amount of industrial resources left to certain countries (think an average of 25 years supply left for resources required for our current level of industrialization...not good).

So there`s my fast round up of some of today`s (and recent) headlines. There were some positive ones as well, which I could take time to mention, but there is too much attention spent on "feeling better about things", and not enough attention on really knowing what the hell is going on, so that work can begin on trying to have less things that NEED to be worried about.

Peace to all.