by Chris Hedges
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Truthdig
March 7, 2011
I have walked through the barren remains of Babylon in Iraq and the ancient Roman city of Antioch, the capital of Roman Syria, which now lies buried in silt deposits. I have visited the marble ruins of Leptis Magna, once one of the most important agricultural centers in the Roman Empire, now isolated in the desolate drifts of sand southeast of Tripoli. I have climbed at dawn up the ancient temples in Tikal, while flocks of brightly colored toucans leapt through the jungle foliage below. I have stood amid the remains of the ancient Egyptian city of Luxor along the Nile, looking at the statue of the great Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II lying broken on the ground, with Percy Shelley’s poem “Ozymandias” running through my head:
[…]
via Truthdig
Copyright © 2011 Truthdig
Chris Hedges spent two decades as a foreign reporter covering wars in Latin America, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. He has written nine books, including Death of the Liberal Class, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle (2009) and War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (2003).
see
World On The Edge – How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse
Barry McGuire: I Am a Dead Man + Eve Of Destruction
It’s Well Past Time to Start Taking Peak Oil Seriously by Jeremy R. Hammond
Profit Pathology and Disposable Planet by Michael Parenti
Fight for a World Without Coal by Chris Hedges
Toby Hemenway: How Permaculture Can Save Humanity and the Earth, but Not Civilization
Pingback: Are cosmic rays causing global warming? « Dandelion Salad
Pingback: Derrick Jensen: How the West Has Won « Dandelion Salad
Pingback: Capitalism Is The Crisis with Chris Hedges, Derrick Jensen (2011) « Dandelion Salad
Pingback: Looting is ALWAYS Wrong, Right? by Ed Ciaccio « Dandelion Salad
Pingback: Noam Chomsky: Two Major Crises Looming: Nuclear War and Global Warming « Dandelion Salad
Pingback: Chris Hedges: Time for Civil Disobedience! « Dandelion Salad
Pingback: You Can’t Kill a Planet and Live on It, Too by Frank Joseph Smecker and Derrick Jensen « Dandelion Salad
Pingback: The Sky Really Is Falling by Chris Hedges « Dandelion Salad
Pingback: Chris Hedges: Injustices are Everywhere, So Resist! « Dandelion Salad
Similar to what Lester R. Brown is saying. The numbers are wrong. Sixty percent of 7.5 billion over four billion.
Pingback: Noam Chomsky: Obama is Worse « Dandelion Salad
One path to solution starts with a new budgeting plan, built on a simple rule, ‘Owe Nothing.’ i.e. Get what you can, and apportion that.
Used to be that when I heard “we’ve got a $X budget,” it meant ‘we have X-dollars to spend on this’ … lately, it means ‘we gonna spend X-dollars (no matter how much we have)’
Imaginary money deplete Real money’s power. I know eliminating Imaginary Money may not replenish Earth’s resources, but it WILL teach us to waste less.
Thanks Lo for posting… so many articles I never get to read! Mike
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorstein_Veblen
Veblen’s books/essays are still relevant; even if some conclusions are WRONG. Funny how Hedges is hitting the same theme; what used to be “civilized” was GREED, consumption, status (read: heirarchy), and the spiritual dystopian ideas that went with it.
It’s not just oil these trusts/cartels are after – it’s methane hydrate, for those who do not know.
Supposedly, the downfall of the Easter Island civilization was precipitated by deforestation…. Mostly for fuel.
Energy will be the downfall of our civilization too… unless we force those now profiting from the current energy paradigm to allow alternative technologies to reach market, to allow them to be even MENTIONED in the U.S. corporate-owned mainstream media.
The BP Gulf Disaster should be wake-up call to us all, that we can no longer allow the energy cartels to run our world; they are running it into the ground.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=55551307954
Eye opening article, one quibble, Green House Gas levels are now well above 350 ppm, at 390 ppm or so but who’s counting?