It’s time to start building the arks

 

God hath no fury like neoliberal plunder in taking out this planet. That flood story in Genesis is beginning to look something like a prophecy & we should maybe pull out the Old Testament to take some tips from Noah. It’s probably time to start building arks–before the logging companies finish off every last forest.

This fellow is battling floodwaters from the Acre River in the northern Bolivia/eastern Peru region at the edge of the Andes. The area shows considerable evidence of climate change on forests & on bird migration & is being studied by groups of scientists. Actually most of the forests have been long-since chopped down for export.

We’re sending out a red alert to find out if any part of the planet still has dry ground or high ground where we can paddle our canoe since there are no forests left here either. England has been submerged for weeks & word is Betty Windsor has nearly completed construction of the family ark so they can make their getaway. Without hiring a crew they aren’t going nowhere; there isn’t one among them who knows how to do a damn thing.

We’re not sorry to see the parliament go down but brothers & sisters in England, we’ll sure miss you. You’ve all been such a pleasure to know; your labor history so valuable; your left a cornucopia of cautionary tales. Let us know if you find high ground.

(Photo by Odair Leal/Reuters)

The war orphans of Afghanistan

And when all is said & done, after the last tweet & range of views on Islam, religious fundamentalism, the burqa, & the Taliban have been exorcised & the adrenalin has settled, there are these little Afghan girls made homeless by the US-NATO war.

Few reliable figures exist for the number of Afghan children orphaned by the war through loss or separation from parents. Nearly a decade ago, it was estimated at two million. That is, one out of seven children growing up on the streets scrounging to survive or in an orphanage. We don’t know if these little girls are orphaned; we do know they lost their home to bombing & live in makeshift refugee housing.

So it really doesn’t matter what we think of the burqa; what matters is what we do about the US-NATO bombing.

US-NATO out of Afghanistan! US out of Iraq!

(Photo by Massoud Hossaini/AP; Hossaini is an Afghan photojournalist who has long documented the story of Afghan’s orphaned children.)