As bloody wars continue in Iraq, Afghanistan, Darfur and other places around the world, basically because our species is sliding into insanity, suicide bombing is gaining in popularity.

I consider suicide a private event. Let’s say you are dying of cancer and suffering excruciating pain and have no hope of recovering life as you once knew it, then suicide becomes euthanasia. I believe this is valid and courageous, a leap into the unknown from the what we know.

But when one commits suicide with the intent of taking other people with them, this is the ultimate act of cowardice. If you think committing suicide is glorious because of a perversion of a religious belief, then, by all means, take yourself out. But be brave. Go by yourself.

Just recently, in Baghdad, one of many suicide events took place at the funeral of a slain Fallujah leader, killing 30 people in the process. Also, just recently, the “martyr influence” has spread to Somalia, where a suicide bomber reportedly filmed his “trip to glory.” More likely a trip to gory.

This is cowardice at its ultimate. Also, the leaders of the people who encourage these acts of cowardice never do it themselves. What they do is brainwash others into making the “great sacrifice.”

When a species can reason, it is obvious that war is insane unless you are defending your turf, I guess, whatever that means. I’ll have to think about it.

But suicide bombing is not only a cowards act, it is the action of a sucker, a person who has been deluded into thinking he/she will go to glory by leaders who hide behind walls, inside caves, or the basements of castles. One has to ask, if suicide bombing is so great, why wasn’t Osama bin Laden on one of the planes?

Go ahead, strap yourself with dynamite and blow yourself and a bunch of others to pieces of inanimate meat. If you do, you are a coward and a sucker. Think before you waste your life. Religion should have nothing to do with it.

During the 20th Century over 120,000,000 people died as a direct or indirect result of war. World War 1, World War 2, the Korean War, the VietNam (American) War and all the other battles, skirmishes that continue to take place now. Now there is Darfur, Iraq, Afghanistan and why not include the United States of America because they are about 4% of the world’s population and they consume close to 50% of the world’s resources.

When I say they for the U.S. I should say WE because that’s where I live.

In 1968 the minimum wage kept a family 30% above the poverty level. To have the same buying power the minimum wage had in ’68, today it should be $14 an hour, at least.

Meanwhile the CEO’s of Hedge Funds, which is a type of investment, not a company, loot and pillage corporations, then pull out with fantastic sums in the billions of dollars while the working man and woman lose their jobs and pensions.

When the Iraqi war started, George W. Bush told the people of the U.S. to go shopping.

The Military Industrial Complex has become a juggernaut and we have entered the most dangerous era that humankind has ever been in.

As the super-rich get richer and the majority of the world struggle to make do and die in the wars created by the super-rich, the Earth is being raped and pillaged and soon, life as we know it, or knew it, will change radically.

Picking through the filth and residue of the most toxic garbage means, to me, to pick through the minds of the super-rich.

Greed is the watchword for our times. The weapon-makers are the United States of America. So drive your SUV while you can, the world, as we know it is about to crash down around us. Some people think food grows on shelves.

“We are in a perpetual state of frenzy — getting, spending, keeping and protecting.”

Our leaders are liars, incompetants who are driven by greed and they don’t care what happens to the rest of us. They don’t realize that when the ship goes down, they’re coming with us. We’re screwed and most of us just sit back and watch television. That’s how we fiddle while Rome burns.

Ethology is the science of the psychology of species behaviour.

When a species of animal becomes overpopulated or even just feels overpopulated, it begins to go insane. Experiments have been done with rats in the lab and with deer on an island. When the population reaches critical mass, behaviours change.

Even rats have courting rituals but when they are overpopulated and crammed into a small space, they engage in rat rape. Also the mothers disregard their young to engage in behaviours that are unusual in a normal rat society.

Normally the Alpha (dominant) rats mate while the Beta (submissive) rats don’t. Under stressed conditions the Beta rats form gangs and kill the Alpha rats and rape the female rats. Some of the female rats actually prefer the gang rats and help them kill their young.

Has the human species reached Critical Mass? Is that the reason the mass slaughters have been taking place and increasing in number?

Virginia Tech is another example of extremely aberrant behaviour. Do the principles of Ethology apply to the human animal? It would appear that they do.

I think for us to get American personnel involved in a civil war inside Iraq would literally be a quagmire. Once we got to Baghdad, what would we do? Who would we put in power? What kind of government would we have?—— Dick Cheney, ABC’s This Week, in 1991.

Well, I guess know we see what we’re doing and what we’ve got and it ain’t good.

I’m no fan of Don Imus but I find it ironic that he gets fired for racist comments (they were offensive) but George W. Bush doesn’t get fired for sending good men and women over to Iraq to get them killed because of his shadow agenda.

It’s too bad we just couldn’t pull his advertising and fire him and Dick Cheney.

In the meantime, Global Warming and climate upset all over the world because of our thoughtless pollution of the ecosphere we live in continues at an unabated pace.

This weekend, on April 14th is Step It Up day and there are individual marches all over to protest what we have become and to make more people aware that we can change our path. See stepitup2007.org to see what local actions are taking place in your area.

In Boston there will be a One Earth, One Climate Rally from 2pm to 4pm on April 14th. Marches from all over the area will congregate there, but if you can’t walk or bicycle, take the MBTA.

There are marches beginning at 11am in Jamaica Plain, a conference in Roxbury beginning at 8am at Roxbury Community College, a demonstration in Everett Square from 11am to 2pm, a bicycle tour starting at the Coolidge Corner Library in Brookline at 9am to 11am, and a massive Massachusetts Avenue March starting at 11am in Davis Square culminating at the Rally in Boston later.

This is what’s going on in my area. Please go to stepitup2007.org to see what is going on where you live.

And if there’s nothing happening, start something.

I’m doing a poetry reading at 12:40pm at the Boston Public Library and I’m going to dedicate it to the Step It Up folks. There’ll be poetry going on all day there, from 10pm to 5pm on Saturday, and on Sunday from 1pm to 5pm with an open mike sometime Sunday afternoon.

So if you want to start with poetry downtown and then shoot for the Rally on the Boston Common from 2pm to 4pm, you can have it all.

By the way, no matter what kind of weather you’ve been having, the fact is that this has been the warmest winter in the 125 years that we’ve been keeping records.

Step It Up was started by Bill McKibben, who is the author of The End of Nature. It all began where he teaches at the Middlebury College near Burlington Vermont.

According to the Boston Globe on Thursday, April 12, some of the effects of global warming will be the death of dolphins in the Mediterranean, the extinction of some plants in the Alps and a deluge of heat waves across the European continent. Do you remember reading about the heat wave in Europe in 2003 that killed tens of thousands and did immense crop damage? Just the beginning if we don’t do something about it.

We need to stop fighting and take a look around us. While we ravage each other because of whatever, the world we live in is degrading because of us.

I’d like to get to this blog more often and I cry your pardon, I’ll be trying.

Hope to see you folks somewhere on a healthy planet called Earth. Let’s make it happen.

In today’s world, warriors have a place to go. Blackwater. One person owns it. His name is Erik Prince and he is a “radical right-wing Christian mega-millionaire.

When L. Paul Bremer, who was Bush’s brainchild in Iraq until some time in 2004, was traveling around Baghdad he was protected by warriors from Blackwater.

These warriors are unhindered by laws. A decree called Order 17 protects them from prosecution for war crimes. Heck, it protects them from prosecution, period. They can literally do anything.

The American press calls them “civilian contractors” which makes them seem like benign workers, but that is far from the case. Erik Prince himself, when asked about his private army defined it like this — “When you ship overnight, do you use the postal service or do you use Fedex? Our corporate goal is to do for the national security apparatus what Fedex did to the postal service.”

When Blackwater searches for mercenaries, they do not discriminate. If you’re a warrior, someone who can kill excellently, efficiently and without a qualm, it doesn’t matter whether you’re black, white, oriental or Martian. It doesn’t matter what country you come from. The only thing that matters is your loyalty to your command.

Blackwater may be the most powerful army in the world; they don’t wear uniforms that make them stand out and they get the job done here in the U.S. and overseas, wherever they are needed.

The owner of Blackwater donates only to the Republican Party and knows what he wants. The question is — does he want what is best for our country — or the world for that matter.

What would it take to have a military coup in the United States? In any case, we might not need one; it could already be happening. Who does George W. Bush work for?

Prince says his forces are “accountable to our country.” Just what does that mean?

United States Representative Dennis Kucinich said, and I quote, “These private contractors can get away with murder . . . they do not appear to be subject to any laws at all and so therefore they have more of a license to be able to take the law into their own hands.”

Blackwater says they can do anything. They claim to be part of the U.S. Total Force and also claim immunity from civilian litigation in the United States.

The only thing I like about them is their name. Blackwater. It doesn’t sound like anything I’d want to drink.

In May of 2004, Blackwater opened a new division, called Greystone Limited and registered it as a “tax-exempt” corporate entity. Some of the countries recruits have come from are: the Philippines, Chile, Nepal, Columbia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, Panama, and Peru, all countries which have questionable human rights records.

Forget Iraq for a moment. When Katrina hit New Orleans, Blackwater picked up some contracts to work there — about $243,000 a day’s worth.

“Unlike police officers, they are not trained in protecting constitutional rights,” says CCR’s Michael Ratner. He also says, “These kind of paramilitary groups bring to mind Nazi Party brownshirts, functioning as an extrajudicial enforcement mechanism that can and does operate outside the law. The use of these paramilitary groups is an extremely dangerous threat to our rights.”

I want to close this column with the fact that over 1,000 journalists have died covering local stories in their home countries over the past ten years.

Since 2000 the toll has increased. 147 killed in 2005. In 2006, a record 168 journalists have been assassinated.

“The figures show that killing a journalist is virtually risk-free. Nine out of ten murderers in the past decade have never been prosecuted,” according to Richard Sambrook, the chairman of the special inquiry and global news director for the BBC world.

Two years ago the institute decided to create a central authority for keeping track of assassinations of journalists.

Just recently, a Russian reporter covering a political hotball story was warned off. In the beginning of this month Ivan Safronov, the journalist covering a story about Russia’s plans to sell top-shelf missiles to Syria and Iran, “fell” to his death from his apartment building from a stairwell window between the fourth and fifth floors.

I find it constantly amazing what humans are capable of. When I was a little boy playing hide and seek in the woods with some friends. Suddenly, three teenagers appeared and grabbed me. They were much bigger than us; I imagine we were about 8 and they were about 14 years old, and the two boys I was with became frightened and ran away.

I don’t know where this would have gone but they beat and tortured me for over an hour and suddenly I broke away and ran out of the woods. I was running down the street, literally afraid for my life with them hot on my trail when my father came up. My friends had gone to my house and told my parents.

He grabbed two of them and knocked their heads together. Nothing like this had ever happened to me and I remember asking, “Why did they do this? This is as crazy as war.”

I am still asking “Why do we do this? Are we a crazed species? Shouldn’t we know better by now? We are so intelligent. How can we be so stupid??”

War will be the end of us. While we fight and ignore global warming and the spread of different types of pollution in our world, the Earth is becoming diseased.

Soon, all there will be left is Blackwater, Blackwater, Blackwater, but none to drink.

After NAFTA was passed the corporate beasts from the US unloaded cheap corn into Mexico, some not fit for human consumption, and the Mexican farmers were driven out of business because they couldn’t compete. Some of them took out loans and went under; lost their land.

When some of the Genetically Modified corn was used as seed by the farmers, the pollen contaminated other farms, destroying corn strains that were over 10,000 years old.

They call this Genetic Drift. Once you let the genie out of the bottle, it won’t go back in.

Many young Oaxacans, driven from their lands, had to go work in sweat shops in Northern Mexico or in the fields, factories, warehouses, restaurants and hotels of the U.S.

Families that survived the invasion of the Aztec Empire are being destroyed.

The end results of this ecosystem rape has yet to be seen.

This news was taken from the Earth First! Journal. One can subscribe to them by sending a check made out to Earth First! to Earth First!, PO Box 3023, Tucson, AZ 85702.

They also have a website at www.earthfirstjournal.org

They are a wonderful magazine that prints the news that you won’t find anywhere else. Poetry also.

It’s only $25 a year and worth a hell of a lot more than that.

I. Lewis Scooter Libby has been convicted of outing CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson. That leads to Karl Rove, which leads to Dick Cheney, which leads to George W. Bush, which leads back to Dick Cheney which leads to the Iraq War.

In the meantime Bush is trying to cut $26 Billion from Medicaid, $159 million to Substance Abuse Treatment, $143 million to rural health care programs and that’s just the beginning.

And you’ve all heard about the abuse our wounded veterans have been going through at the Walter Reed Hospital due to unsanitary conditions.

He keeps asking for money for the war but wants to break the back of the American people.

He’s not a uniter; George W. Bush is a crook and a killer and a liar.

I’d tell you more but I have to go right now but you’ll be sure I’ll be back.

George Bush is like a Hagfish inside of a whale to our country. The Hagfish eats all the internal organs until the whale dies.

Peace, peace, peace now.

In Iqalit, Nunavit Territory, Simon Nattaq fell through the thinning Arctic ice due to rising Arctic temperatures.

Global warming? He thinks so. He lost both feet but managed to survive. He says, “Today I am here because the creator allowed it.”

According to an article in The Boston Globe, “the Arctic is the region of the globe hardest hit by rising temperatures.”

There is a report released February 2nd by a UN sponsored group of scientists that indicate “the Arctic’s late-summer sea ice will disappear almost entirely in the second half of this century.”

The Earth is changing. Are we the geological force moving the planet into global warming, which does not mean that all places will get warmer; it could trigger colder temperatures in areas that were warm. There is a giant current (one of many) called the Conveyer belt in the ocean which, if too much ice melts and drops fresh water into the ocean, could stop and reverse direction and, almost overnight, climates could change dramatically all over the Earth.

I studied this stuff in the late 60′s, early 70′s using a text by Odum and a great ecology teacher whose name has slipped out of my mind used to take us out to the Hudson River in slightly upper New York State, near Red Hook. He’d help us collect samples of small wildlife and study the ecosphere to show us how small changes can have major effects. This was while I was a student at Bard College. What freaks me out is that all the things he talked about as coming probabilities are starting to take place now.

I don’t know why people get all upset over second hand cigarette smoke when we walk around with giant exhaust pipes spewing trash out into the atmosphere. Which would you rather suck on — a cigarette or an exhaust pipe?

Just imagine, for a second, glueing all the exhaust pipes of every car and truck in the world together into one giant pipe. Think about it. How big would that pipe be?

Right now, that pipe is pushing carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, particulate matter, and other compounds into our fragile but powerful atmosphere.

When cars were first invented, no one thought about the magnitude of millions of vehicles running all over the world. It was a new concept then. We just take it for granted now.

I’m only 61 years old and I’ve seen major changes in our entire environment.

Have you ever read about Passenger Pigeons? They flew and nested in giant flocks in North America. Some flocks were over a mile wide and 150 miles long. That’s like the distance between Boston and the White Mountains in New Hampshire. It takes over three hours to make that trip by (ahem) automobile. Anyway, those birds would all land at once in some area and the trees would bend with the weight of them.

Humans would set up Gatling guns and bring other types of weapons out and slaughter the birds. I mean, the ground would be piled high with dead birds.

They’re extinct now. Not a one of them survives.

Just think of how many there were and twist your mind around the fact that they’re all gone.

We can change the world.

The Weston Priory is a monastery in Weston, Vermont and the Brothers there are wonderful. My wife and I just spent a few days, not staying at the priory itself, but at an inn, the Weston Inn (a beautiful friendly place) and went to the priory for Eucharist and prayer.

Nowadays, it seems as if the “in” phrase is “What would Jesus do?”

According to the Brothers, they ask, “What did Jesus do?”

You can find the answer if you look hard enough. I’m not really one of those extremely religious freaks but I think the above is truly the question.

Not really far from the above subject, of all the 21 richest nations in the world, the United States and Great Britain ranked last on child welfare. The Netherlands, followed by Sweden, Denmark, and Finland were at the top of the ratings.

Now, far from what we were just talking about, a squid which was 39 feet long was just pulled out of the Antarctic waters. It died, natch. If you made calimari rings out of the squid, they would be the size of tractor tires.

Dinner anyone?

This type of squid is called the Colassal Squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni) and descend to 6,500 feet in the ocean. I wonder how many are left.

800 gorillas, 6,000,000,000 humans.

Countdown to destruction.