Truth to power, baby

I hate when I have to sully myself with anything political these days, because I've been so disappointed, disillusioned, and disgusted with politics in the past. And I really used to believe that involvement could make a difference.

But it's hard not to notice, unless you live under a rock, the horrific toll being inflicted upon average ordinary people worldwide by those who deem themselves the Masters of the Universe, those privileged elite who are looting and pillaging the earth for wealth and power at the expense of everyone else.

Well, their megalomania is finally taking the whole damned planet down. They, Dick Cheney and his oil and gas industry spawn, are poisoning a critical necessity for life on Earth, our water supply. In the process of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) to release natural gas deposits,  presumably to deliver us from Middle Eastern oil and meet our energy needs with domestic resources (that's the cover story), they are causing catastrophic collateral damage and then absolving themselves of any responsibility for the consequences. Oh, they make a self-righteous show of claiming that they compensate people for damages by magnanimously replacing their undrinkable well water with a brand new hauled in supply. But it misses the bigger picture--that all of the water on Earth is connected, from groundwater to streams, rivers, lakes, and the oceans,  and if they keep adding toxic chemicals to the system, they are going to poison us all.  That toxicity doesn't go away. Livestock need water, plants need water...there are so many ways for the toxins to spread that we might as well be injected with a chemical cocktail of glycol ethers, benzene, hydrochloric acid, strontium, etc and speed up the process.


Or we can make it stop. But our government officials even at the most local level need to hear from their constituents about this issue--in fact, the local level may be the only place a citizen can expect any real action to take place anymore-- and those constituents need to be well informed.

There is plenty of information available on the internet, and anti-fracking groups are springing up in our area. An Anti-Frack organizing meeting will be on Tuesday, March 15, 2011 at the Barker Library in downtown Fredonia, N.Y. from 5:30 - 7:30 pm.

You can sign the petition to Gov. Cuomo for a statewide ban on fracking in New York here, but don't stop at that. This IS a matter of life and death, much more important to any of us than the latest news on Charlie Sheen.  (I do wish the media would stop exploiting this man's mental health crisis.)

The documentary GASLAND is a good introduction to what has been happening under the media radar for years. You may have seen this last year on HBO, but if not, it is available on DVD now (we got it from Netflix) and should be seen by everyone who cares about human well-being.  Some groups hold screenings followed by discussion. I understand that the filmmaker is available for talks as well. There is lots of information at the film website if you click on the link.

On a related subject (related in that people have to stop lying down and letting themselves be stomped into the ground by the rapacious psychopaths who are in charge these days), it really lifted my spirits to see Michael Moore in this YouTube video speaking truth to power in support of the Wisconsin protesters over the weekend. He can be outrageous, but, dear GAWD,  these were things that NEEDED to be said. If you all haven't figured out by now that we the ordinary peeps are never going to be part of the charmed inner circle that the rules don't apply to, then I don't know what to say to you, except...get over it.