Environmentalism, in the end, isn’t about saving the planet it’s about saving Humanity.
Category: world
Last Flight of the Discovery
February 24, 2011, was the last flight of the Shuttle Discovery. Endeavor’s last flight is scheduled for April 19, and Atlantis has a tentative final launch for the summer. After that the Nation and People who once broke the bonds of gravity and went into the stars will be again tethered to their blue planet.
There is hope that private space programs will be able to pick up where the Shuttle program ended. Mostly, the ferrying of people and materials from Earth into space and to the International Space Station. NASA has plans for a program to replace the shuttle program but, as of now, it remains unfunded. In the current political climate in Washington, D.C. I do not see that changing anytime soon.
In a climate where such helpful programs as WIC and funding to public radio and television are being gutted, yet funds for two disastrous, decade long foreign wars has remained steady I have little hope for NASA.
I find this terribly depressing without being able to explain why…
Don’t read this! Go watch history being made!
With so many momentous things going on I think there are better things you could be reading about today.
Al Jazeera’s coverage of the happenings in Egypt – Al Jazeera has been seeing a lot of traffic since the trouble in Egypt started. They have correspondents on the ground (most of the cable news networks and some of the major networks no longer do,) and they’ve given far more coverage to the events than American media has.
Tunisian Revolution – The secular uprising in country of Tunisia is what started the large scale rioting and demand for right throughout the Middle East.
Student Riots in Yemen – Have forced the country’s autocratic ruler to stop grooming his son to replace him. Students have larger goals too forcing out the autocrat entirely.
By the time this goes up I’m sure other people will have taken the initiative do demand their governments recognize their natural rights as well. I only wish our government was more supportive of such movements. The United States was founded by people who were tired of seeing their natural rights denied, but our government often asks against the words found in our Declaration of Independents:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.
For too long the United States government has actively worked to make a mockery of Mr. Jefferson’s word and their meaning. I encourage you to remind the President and your elected representatives of that fact in the hopes they will reconsider American policy towards Egypt and countries like it.