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Emily Spence is a progressive living in MA. She has spent many years involved with assorted types of human rights, environmental and social service efforts.
SHARE Monday, May 2, 2011 The Economic and Social Losses On The Way
What sorts of problems will exist in times ahead? What can we do to deal with them? A suggestion-find a quiet niche somewhere in which there's already a community in place whose members have the appropriate skills, constructive understandings, and a supportive intact surrounding environment in order to be able to create a largely self-reliant way of life.
(6 comments) SHARE Monday, April 12, 2010 After Peak Oil, Are We Heading Towards Social Collapse?
Recently, Glen Sweetnam, director of the International, Economic and Greenhouse Gas division of the Energy Information Administration at the DoE, announced that worldwide oil availability had reached a "plateau". How can we get ready for the inevitable oil and other fossil fuel deficits? Is it even possible to prepare without massive problems? What are the implications for modern civilization?
SHARE Tuesday, March 16, 2010 Charity CEO's Get Rich by Taking From the Poor
In the end, is it really just money that's a primary motivator for the people who plot, scheme, climb, and claw their way into the top positions in charitable organizations?
SHARE Monday, February 8, 2010 Mr. Obama, You Need to Forcefully Take the Lead
It is easy to understand that you are beholden to corporate interests in a number of diverse ways, which could limit your sense of options.
SHARE Tuesday, January 12, 2010 Congolese Women and Girls Suffering the Insufferable
Heavily armed militias are trying to increase the very same kinds of turmoil that charitable groups are striving to remedy. They are doing so in order to gain control of four main minerals: tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold that garner an estimated $180 million in revenues each year.
SHARE Tuesday, January 5, 2010 Wars "R" Us: Making the World Safe for American Domination
Wars are big business, most notably for investors and employees in the aerospace and defense industries. The related purposes, like the ones guiding most corporations, are hardly humanistic. Instead new sources of revenue, cheap resources from conquered lands, and new markets for products and services are the sine qua non.
SHARE Monday, December 28, 2009 Ever Expanding Wars: An Appalling New Year Certainty
We can be assured that eventually the ongoing military rampage will lead to a third world war if Russian or Chinese leaders, finally, reach a limit to the threats that can be endured from western imperial hubris. In fact, how can anyone anywhere embrace an increasingly extensive war trajectory?
SHARE Monday, December 21, 2009 On A Parent's Death And Minding Your Tongue In The U.S.A
I'll be quite frank. I'm never completely comfortable in discussing certain persons, such as Fidel Castro, on the phone, nor forwarding e-mail content concerning them, such as his "Reflections of Fidel: The moment of truth" about the recent Copenhagen events...
(5 comments) SHARE Monday, December 14, 2009 Resisting An Underlying Moral Vacuum
Is our species, overall, mentally ill in some way? How could this not be the case when we, continually, have, along with many constructive ones, the same sorts of unconscionable, dysfunctional and destructive behaviors happening again and again through the centuries?
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, November 21, 2009 Towards Resolving Thanksgiving Contradictions
Why not avoid cutesy repugnant myths concerning "Indians" and Pilgrims? Instead, one might consider the suffering that arose after the "New World" became seen as a land of opportunity -- a fresh spot to environmentally plunder while removing natives. One might, also, reflect on the debt that we, connected in myriad ways, owe to each other. Assuredly, it's especially obliged by people who have cornucopian bounty in their lives.
(16 comments) SHARE Saturday, November 14, 2009 The Choice Ahead: Entrenched Fossil Fuel Dependence Or Climate Change Management
Humanity needs to proactively come together to deal with climate change mitigation rather than remain separated along nationalistic lines to contentiously vie for control over the world's remaining fossil fuels. The rationale behind such a course of action is clear. Time is running out in terms of our surpassing climate change tipping points that would drastically alter life across the entire Earth for many centuries to come.
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, August 23, 2009 Running Out Of Fossil Fuels: A Cause For Glee?
John Muir stated, "Brought into right relationships with the wilderness, man would see that his appropriation of Earth's resources beyond his personal needs would only bring imbalance and begat ultimate loss and poverty by all." Unfortunately, humankind seems not yet to have discovered "right relationships" and time's running out to make amends.
(4 comments) SHARE Saturday, August 15, 2009 Why Won't Universal Healthcare Be Provided?
The heath-care debate is not about care at all. Instead, it's about the amount of profits that government, HMO and pharmaceutical leaders are personally willing to give up. Accordingly, it's clear that many Congressional representatives have no interest in evaluating even a few of the existing successful models of universal coverage. Instead, they are, typically, in collusion with big business to stymie any meaningful reforms.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, August 3, 2009 Chasing Terrorists VS. Chasing Swine Flu
Are inoculations and military enforcement the best techniques that the U.S. leadership can muster in response to worries erupting after the initial H1N1 outbreak? No, the innovative Chinese "plan" proves otherwise.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, July 10, 2009 The Continued Fleecing Of America And Its Citizens By The Financial Elites
Is the USA turning into a plutocratic, oligarchical or fascist nation? It seems likely the case as the country and its citizens are plundered by greedy lawmakers, banksters and entrepreneurs for personal gain. It would be well for them and us to note Justice Louis D. Brandeis's implicit warning that "we can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."
SHARE Saturday, June 27, 2009 The U.S. Federal Budget Pipeline: Where Do The Dollars Drain?
The ongoing U.S. financial mess provides signs that the USA will never gain back its former glory days that gave rise to both world dominance and a large middle class. As the country continues to lose jobs at a rate of roughly one every thirty seconds to either offshore company sites or business cutbacks, it can only sink further into destitution for an increasing number of Americans and the nation as a whole. Who's to blame?
(16 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 24, 2009 Who's A Low Level Terrorist? Are You?
When threatened, should we conform with lock-step in perverse obedience to the State's dictates, outlooks and agendas in an increasingly Orwellian milieu? If not, then we must constantly remind ourselves and each other of US Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas's vision: "Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us."
(7 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 22, 2009 Lies And Torture - When Policies And Words Diverge
If American government leaders cannot uphold the law and universally apply it across the board, then all of the underlying principles of our nation's founding fathers, our justice system, itself, and the ethical underpinnings that make our country truly great are without value. They are merely empty platitudes and nothing more.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 25, 2009 The Worsening U.S. Failure
By their refusal to prepare for the vastly harder times ahead, government officials show nothing short of gross ineptitude verging perhaps on criminality. Meanwhile they continue to loot the nation on behalf of Wall Street rather than address the critical issues facing average people. Yet, U.S. citizens are to blame for their leaders' dereliction of duty since the public has not sufficiently demanded accountability.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, February 7, 2009 The Passing of Juan Rafael Santos, Champion of Myriad Causes
One could relish all of his various forms of outreach as a consistent inspirational theme ran through every single one of them pointing to his immense love of the world, undeniable need to relentlessly "speak truth to power," persistent backing of just actions, and unswerving desire to improve the quality of life for all.