Kim’s Dream Orlan Ravanera
GAIA (Mother Earth) in Severe Pain, Now Dying
“The earth is already in the precipice of its 6th extinction, just one-minute before midnight.” Based on the studies of thousands of concerned scientists world-wide.
In the ‘90’s, a popular candidate for the US presidency named Bill Clinton coined a campaign cliché that clicked with the voters that catapulted him to presidency. “It’s the economy stupid,” a simple hash-tag reverberated throughout the land that somehow convinced the voters that what really mattered then was the economy and all the nitty-gritty of economic development, i.e., employment, income, infrastructure, and what have you, and discussing other issues was just plain STUPIDITY.
Yes, that kind of mindset thrives well in a country that has to perpetuate its stranglehold of economic power in the world where top eight billionaires have consolidated wealth which is equivalent to the total combined assets of 3.6 billion people on earth or half of the world’s population (based on an Oxfam Study). With economic power goes with it military might. I wasn’t surprised when I got an information that there was a time in recent history when the US was the one supplying armaments to both two warring factions in the Middle East War, after-all, war is good business whose stocks of powerful weapons can kill the people of the world forty-times over. In fact, there was a shocking disclosure in the recent US Congressional inquiry that uncovered who really killed US President John F. Kennedy in the 60;’s. The truth loomed that it was not Lee Harvey Oswald who assassinated Kenedy but the CIA and FBI in cohort with a US corporation manufacturing and supplying armaments during the Vietnam War that was then earning some five hundred billions dollars annually out of the Vietnam War which Pres. Kennedy wanted to stop then.
Yes, it’s the economy, stupid! Could that be the mindset of US corporations that have dumped excess production of milk and wheat to the sea every time there is over production so as not to affect the law of supply and demand as such will lower down their massive raking? I’ve learned this in a Canadian Library when I visited my doctor-Phd sister teaching in the University of Western Ontario in the 90’s. I was not even surprised upon knowing that a US Trans-National Corporation, Monsanto, was the one which supplied the US military with “yellow rain,” which was used against the Vietnamese guerillas during the Vietnam war. “Yellow rain” was the term used to toxic chemicals being poured-out like rains to kill the forest where the guerillas where hiding. The more I was not surprised when I knew that it is Monsanto that invented the genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) that have replaced our endemic natural crops (i.e. rice, corn, etc.) to so-called High Yielding Varieties (HYVs), which are subservient to the use of toxic chemicals that have already contaminated our water tables. Yes, everyone is profiting from farming i.e. fertilizer and chemical dealers, except the poor farmers.
Today, let us reflect deeply on the implication of that mindset that what is important is the economy. That money must be used to make more money is a flawed paradigm that is based on the growth-at-all-cost development strategy also known as the Neo-Liberal Capitalism, now called Corporate Globalization. Indeed, that growth-centered paradigm may have improved the economy but breeding so much poverty, social injustice and gross inequities, at the expense of the people and the environment as Mother Earth has been sacrificed to the altar of greed and profit.
The truth is, that paradigm is now being questioned world-wide especially by concerned citizens in the US who are initiating a world-shift. Even His Holiness Pope Francis, in His latest Encyclical, “Laudatu Si,” has questioned that money-must-grow principle. Yes money must be used not to make more money but to enhance the quality of life of the people. In fact, no less than the United Nations has issued the 17 Sustainable Development Goals to stop poverty, stop social injustices and inequities, protect the environment, etc. and to be transformative for people, planet, prosperity and peace during this most cataclysmic times when thousands of scientists world-wide have issued an urgent warning during the COP26 Global Summit on Climate Change in Glasglow Scotland in 2021 attended by some 200 world leaders. Stop the use of coals and fossil fuel as humanity now is already in the precipice of its 6th extinction, describing the earth as just “one minute before midnight.” But surprisingly, no positive action loomed as that Global Summit was just all BLAH, BLAH, BLAH. Never will corporate globalization allow even a reduction of the use of coal and fossil fuel. Don’t you know that the 19 Fossil Corporations are earning some 15 trillion dollars a year or 10 million dollars every minute. For corporate globalization, money is that important as they cannot moderate their greed. They even share their wealth to the mainstream media that is continuously disseminating gospel of lies especially on climate change. Yes, climate change, global warming, the extinction of the species , the non-stop melting of the386-meter high iceberg in Arctic, Antarctic and in the Himalayas (the third Pole) , the rising of the oceans and the depletion of the ozone layer are concrete proof and evidence that we are facing our extinction as ecological disasters are worsening world-wide.
Yes, the environment must now take precedence over the economy that promotes so much consumerism and unbridled materialism otherwise famine, pestilence, war and death as biblically revealed by Apostle John will be the order of the day. Our Indigenous Peoples are in fact correct when they said, “ANG KINAIYAHAN DILI LAMANG TINUBDAN SA KINABUHI KUNG DILI MAO GAYUD ANG KINABUHI!” Yes indeed, what happens to nature to GAIA, will come back to us. Kill Mother earth and we will all perish. Thus, heal the blighted land back to life – that is the call of the times! It is in this context that when we who have the clear understanding of the painful ecological realities besetting humanity, we can now aptly say, it is not the economy but IT’S THE ENVIRONMENT, STUPID!
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