Archive For November 2009
Oh My God: What Is God?
on November 28, 2009 by Jude Emantsal in Other News, Comments (0)
For the past month, HuffPost has hosted an array of respondents — including spiritual leaders, world leaders, personalities and celebrities — who are asked to fill in the blank for the statement: God is…
The series led up to and accompanied the November 13 opening of the documentary Oh My God?
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God is a word we use to describe the Ultimate Reality. All language about God is metaphorical, given that, I agree with Ringo Star who says at the end of the film Oh My God? that “God is Love”. Now let me tell you what I mean by Divine Love.
I am convinced that built into our DNA is a moral law, and that law can best be described as love that goes out of itself to create. This moral law in us is remnant of our own creation. That creation occurred when what we call God went out of the God-self. This going out of Self to create something other than Self is what I call Divine Love.
God went out of God’s Self to create and the universe is the result. That creation continued from space to light to planets, like Earth, to beings to human beings. In the Christian tradition we believe that God went out of himself to come to us in history in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, in his person, gave us the exemplar of self-giving love and taught us how to be self-gift. Through Christ we learn that this giving of self is the core of what it is to be a human being.
Love is not a romantic feeling, love is more than the urge to procreate, however, procreation shows us the nature of the Law of Love. Two people go out of themselves to create another self. They make sacrifices to nurture that other self and so, the Law of Love is perpetuated.
In the Christian tradition the symbol of this going out of self in love is the cross of Jesus Christ. The ultimate gift of self is to give your life in service to others. Jesus, out of integrity to the truth of his relationship with the Ultimate Reality, refused to renounce this truth and the law of love at the heart of his truth. His fidelity got him killed but allowed a deeper truth to emerge: Love does not die.
An important expression of this self-gift we call love is compassion. When we deeply examine our humanity and our needs we become aware that we share that humanity and our needs with others. Our common humanity can touch the common humanity of another. We remember when we were hungry or cold or sick or trapped in a bad situation and we identify with someone who is in a similar situation. We don’t say of them, “Oh, that poor thing.” We say, “Oh, that poor person.” And we consider how we can help them and then we do something, we express our compassion with action. This is the Law of Love at work. To follow this law may require deep sacrifice but it also puts us in harmony with the deepest truth of our selves.
Dubai Has Always Been Bankrupt — Morally and Environmentally
on by Jude Emantsal in Other News, Comments (0)
Dubai is finally financially bankrupt – but it has
been morally bankrupt all along. The idea that Dubai is an oasis of
freedom on the Arabian peninsular is one of the great lies of our time. Yes,
it has Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts and the Gucci styles, but beneath
these accouterments, there is a dictatorship built by slaves.
If you go there with your eyes open – as I did
earlier this year – the truth is hidden in plain view. The tour books
and the bragging Emiratis will tell you the city was built by Sheikh
Mohammed, the country’s hereditary ruler.
It is
untrue. The people who really built the city can be seen in long
chain-gangs by the side of the road, or toiling all day at the top of
the tallest buildings in the world, in heat that Westerners are told
not to stay in for more than 10 minutes. They were conned into coming,
and trapped into staying.
In their home
country – Bangladesh or the Philippines or India – these workers are
told they can earn a fortune in Dubai if they pay a large upfront fee.
When they arrive, their passports are taken from them, and they are
told their wages are a tenth of the rate they were promised.
They
end up working in extremely dangerous conditions for years, just to pay
back their initial debt. They are ringed-off in filthy tent-cities
outside Dubai, where they sleep in weeping heat, next to open sewage.
They have no way to go home. And if they try to strike for better
conditions, they are beaten by the police.
I
met so many men in this position I stopped counting, just as the
embassies were told to stop counting how many workers die in these
conditions every year after they figured it topped more than 1,000
among the Indians alone.
Human Rights Watch
calls this system “slavery.” Yet the Westerners who have flocked to
Dubai brag that they “love” the city, because they don’t have to pay
any taxes, and they have domestic slaves to do all the hard work. They
train themselves not to see the pain.
But
Dubai’s bankruptcy does not end there: it is ecologically bust. This is
a city built in the burning desert, where everything shrivels up and
blows away if it is not kept artificially cold all the time. That’s why
it has the highest per capita carbon emissions on earth – some 250
percent higher even than America’s. The city has to ship in desalinated
water – which is more costly than oil. When it runs out of cash, it
will run out of water.
Today Dubai will be
bailed out by the United Arab Emirates, the oil-rich country of which
it is only one state. But the oil will not last forever. More
importantly, there is no Bank of Morality that could provide a bailout
for this sinister mirage in the desert.
To read Johann’s full report from Dubai, click here.
Johann hari is a writer for the Independent. To read more of his articles, click here.
Black Friday 2009: Will Consumers Show Up On Key Shopping Day?
on November 27, 2009 by Jude Emantsal in Other News, Comments (0)
2008 had the worst holiday shopping season in decades–will this year be any different? Retailers are hoping deep price cuts, social media specials, and early sales leaks will lure consumers in as the holiday shopping season kicks off.
Analysts predict a heavy turn out despite the recession, in part because there’s less competition (45 retailers have gone under since last year’s shopping season) and in part because of the promise of big bargains. But with unemployment in double digits will people buy or browse? Market research firm IBISWorld predicts retail sales will rise 2.8 percent over this weekend to $42.9 billion, while others give much bleaker estimates saying retail sales may DIP 1%. While this weekend does not always predict accurately spending for the next month, a weak Black Friday is a bad omen.
Even if consumers are on the hunt will lowered expectations from major retailers come back to bite them? Having failed to sell large parts of their supply last year some companies like J. Crew and the Gap have cut back between 10 and 20% on inventory, meaning popular items many not have a chance to become runaway successes. This hasn’t stopped retail giants from throwing open doors early with massive sales to lure consumers in starting as early as midnight, but it might affect the overall sales.
How Happy Is… Thanksgiving: Why You Want To Be A Connector
on November 26, 2009 by Jude Emantsal in Other News, Comments (0)
With Thanksgiving coming up and it being a time when we get together with family and friends, I wanted to give you a way in which you can easily make other people’s lives work and your own in the process. It is something that you might want to begin now and continue on a long-term basis, and that is to become a matchmaker. When I say ‘become a matchmaker’ I don’t solely mean in the sense of connecting people up who would make good love matches, although that might be part of it. I am also talking about putting people together who have work, hobbies and other aspects of their lives in common. In this way, you go from being a matchmaker, to becoming more of a connector. Indeed, you may be one already or you may know of one, two, or many for that matter.
So how do you personally become a connector? Well, the first criteria is that you have to want other people’s lives to work, regardless of whether yours is or isn’t. By giving out that sort of energy, you will get rewards back in spades and you’ll see, your life will automatically improve.
And the second criteria to becoming a connector, is that you cannot be the jealous type. You have to have the attitude that there is enough to go round for everyone. There is enough money, there is enough work, there are enough friends, there is enough love, and, by adopting that perspective, you will always have more than enough of all of the above.
So, with those two criteria in mind, think about whom in your life could benefit from connecting up with someone else in your life, whether it’s friends, family, work associates or anyone you enjoy meeting for that matter. How could one help the other? How could their meeting mutually benefit each other’s lives, regardless of it being love, work or friendship?
If there is something that you can easily do to make a difference this Thanksgiving, it is to start connecting people up who will benefit from the meeting, as one thing is for sure, without connectors we would all live very lonely lives.
Some of you may have noticed that I disappeared off the Huffington Post for a few months. I have now started to do regular ‘How Happy is’ television segments on the KTLA morning show and have completed my website which I would love you to visit at www.howhappyis.com, where you can read many more articles, watch videos, make contact with me, ask any questions and sign up for a monthly newsletter. Happy Thanksgiving. I look forward to hearing from you. Sophie x
Pirate Bay Founders Launch “DDoD” Attack Against Studios
on November 25, 2009 by Jude Emantsal in Breaking News, Comments (0)
The Pirate Bay, perhaps the world’s most popular BitTorrent tracking site, was recently dealt a serious blow in court, but that certainly hasn’t caused them to change their scurvy ways.
The founders of the Pirate Bay were fined $3.5 million when a Swedish court found that their site caused a loss of revenue for movie studios including Sony, Columbia Pictures, and Warner Bros.
However, those crazy Swedes have flatly stated that the movie studios won’t be getting a dime. Instead, they’ve hatched a plan that will actually cost the studios some money, and they’re calling it the “Distributed Denial of Dollars” attack.
The plan encourages all people who’re in support of their cause to donate a “internet-avgift” (Internet fee) of 13 cents, and send it to the Danowsky law firm, which represented the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) in the Pirate Bay trial.
Now here’s the rub: because the law firm only has 1,000 free money transfers, if enough Internet users send a fee to them, it will actually end up costing the Danowsky firm and other music companies to handle and process all the payments.
The result? The Pirate Bay doesn’t pay a dime, they set a precedent for all future corporations-vs-internet-innovations trials, and the entertainment industry gets laughed at while they foot the bill. That’s just chalk full of win.
Compassion vs. Consumption
on November 24, 2009 by Jude Emantsal in Other News, Comments (0)
I feel a strange sense of isolation when I’m on tour. During the part
of the day that I spend off-stage and off-air a gloomy detachment
begins to set in. I watch the towns fly by on the side of the road. I
call home from a new city day after day. I feel lonely and yet I want
to be alone for some reason. Sometimes I walk around a bit, find a
coffee shop and observe. I watch young couples in love, a man walking
his dog, people rushing through the traffic to get somewhere else. And
for these brief moments of stillness I become the old man on the park
bench watching life from the outside. During these quiet intervals of
reflection I often see pieces of myself in the folks around me.
Today I have a day-off in Albuquerque. That’s right, the town that
never looks like it’s spelled quite right. There’s a chill in the air
today. Allegedly it snowed a bit this morning. Even if the white stuff
didn’t stick, the styrofoam snowflakes are up in ribbons and bows to
decorate the local shopping center near the hotel where our bus is
parked. I sit in this caffeinated postmodern watering hole feeling
completely disconnected from the yuletide trappings, almost irritated
by the decor. Maybe my sentiment stems from my detached life on the
road. Or perhaps, I feel this way simply because it’s not even
Thanksgiving yet and Christmas is more than a month away. Either way,
as I sit here bracing myself for the pending shopping season. I read
that last sentence and start to feel downright Grinchy. I hate feeling
Grinchy…
From where I sit I can see a bearded man on the corner asking for
change with his hand-made cardboard sign, “homeless, please help.”
Other more elaborate cardboard signs inside the coffee shop are also
looking for my money — advertising a warm glass of Christmas cheer for
only a few bucks. The line moves briskly inside the coffee shop, full
of interesting human specimens, every one of them a story in process.
I try to read each one like a novel — full of intentions, hopes, fears,
dreams, and desires. The man outside on the corner has a story too.
Where are his parents? Does he have any kids? I can identify with this
bearded outcast more than than anyone in the coffee shop, but nobody
else seems all too interested.
Pelosi Sees Unrest Among Dems: ‘Can We Afford This War?’
on by Jude Emantsal in Other News, Comments (0)
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned Tuesday that every dollar President Obama decides to spend on the war in Afghanistan is one less that’s available to help bring about an economic recovery, improve the jobs situation and bank away political capital for Democrats leading up to the midterm elections.
“I think we have to look at that war with a green eyeshade on,” Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Tuesday on a conference call with financial reporters and economists who blog. “There is unrest in our caucus about: Can we afford this war?”
Pelosi qualified her remarks by noting that cost is not the top concern. “I think the American people believe that if it’s something that’s in our national security interest,” she said, then the investment is worth it.
But it still has to be paid for, she said. “Everything else has to be paid for. It must be fiscally sound. We have to hold it to the same standard, as well.”
Most Americans, however, do not believe that the war is worth waging any longer, according to polls. Under President Bush, wars and occupations were paid for with long-term debt; Obama campaigned under the principle that war should mean shared sacrifice.
House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wisc.) warned Obama recently that he would hold him to that promise.
“There ain’t going to be no money for nothing if we pour it all into Afghanistan,” he said. “If they ask for an increased troop commitment in Afghanistan, I am going to ask them to pay for it.”
Pelosi backed him up.
“As you know, the chairman of our appropriations committee, Mr. Obey, as well as Mr. Murtha, have both said the war must be paid for,” she said, referring to Rep. Jack Murtha (D-Pa.), a Pelosi ally who chairs the subcommittee overseeing war spending. “It is obviously part of the debate, as Mr. Obey insists that it be.”
In the 1960s, Democratic President Lyndon Johnson oversaw a full-scale war in Vietnam and, simultaneously, an expansive domestic project at home known as the Great Society — the so-called “Guns and Butter” approach.
The war took the lives of nearly 60,000 Americans and millions of Vietnamese. It also sapped enough government treasure and Democratic political capital that the Great Society foundered, Johnson resigned and Richard Nixon was elected, finally smashing the New Deal coalition that had dominated American politics for generations.
Even if Obama attempts to repeat history with a troop escalation in Afghanistan, Democrats in Congress, as Pelosi and Obey’s comments indicate, might be there to save him from himself by withholding funds.
The lesson from Johnson’s example was that Democrats can’t have guns and butter at the same time. Pelosi lamented the trillions of dollars wasted in the failed Iraq war and suggested the lesson should be remembered this time around.
As Washington Talks Iraq Withdrawal, the Pentagon Builds Up Bases in the Region
on November 22, 2009 by Jude Emantsal in Other News, Comments (0)
Despite recent large-scale insurgent suicide bombings that have killed scores of civilians and the fact that well over 100,000 U.S. troops are still deployed in that country, coverage of the U.S. war in Iraq has been largely replaced in the mainstream press by the (previously) “forgotten war” in Afghanistan. A major reason for this is the plan, developed at the end of the Bush years and confirmed by President Obama, to draw down U.S. troops in Iraq to 50,000 by August 2010 and withdraw most of the remaining forces by December 2011.
Getting out of Iraq, however, doesn’t mean getting out of the Middle East. For one thing, it’s likely that a sizeable contingent of U.S. forces will remain garrisoned on several large and remotely situated U.S. bases in Iraq well past December 2011. Still others will be stationed close by — on bases throughout the region where, with little media attention since the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, construction to harden, expand, and upgrade U.S. and allied facilities has gone on to this day.
Bernie Sanders Pushes Back On Public Option
on by Jude Emantsal in Other News, Comments (0)
While conservative members of the Democratic caucus threaten to block passage of health care reform if it includes a public health insurance option, a growing chorus of liberal lawmakers are making similar threats if the bill doesn’t have one.
Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont who caucuses with Democrats, said in a statement on Sunday that the bill must have a strong public option to win his vote.
“I strongly suspect that there are a number of senators, including myself, who would not support final passage without a strong public option,” he said. Not supporting final passage, however, is different than vowing to filibuster it and prevent it from even getting to a vote on final passage, as independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut is now doing, hoping to strip the public option.
But Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said on Saturday night that if the bill bends toward the conservatives, “You’ll lose people on the left.”
One of those could be Roland Burris (D-Ill.), who said Saturday he’d oppose any bill without a public option. “I won’t vote for it,” he said.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said on Saturday night, after the health care bill passed a major legislative hurdle by a party-line, landslide 60-39 vote, that Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Tom Carper (D-Del.) and Mary Landrieu (D-La.) are working on crafting a public option compromise that could garner 60 votes.
On Sunday, Schumer predicted that the public option would survive and wind up in the final bill that goes to the president’s desk.
Sanders, who self-identifies as a democratic socialist, said that democracy should triumph in the Senate. “The overwhelming majority of Americans want to be able to choose between a strong public option and a private insurance plan. Without that competition, there is very little in this bill that would keep health insurance premiums from escalating rapidly,” Sanders said. “This legislation cannot simply be a huge subsidy to private insurance companies that will get millions of new customers and be able to raise their rates as high as they want.”
What You Don’t Know About Osteoporosis — Part 3
on November 21, 2009 by Jude Emantsal in Other News, Comments (0)
In this, our final segment on Osteoporosis, let’s take a closer look at some of the myths and legends of the effects of eating meat, minerals and proteins and quaffing a pint or two. You can find the two previous segments here.
Vegetarians, Carnivores and Osteoporosis
While bone mineral density may be a tad or more low in vegetarians, the notable and well documented results are in: vegetarians do not have an increased risk of fractures. Their risk for busting a hip is no better, no worse than those of us who eat meats, even though the vegetarian’s diet is typically lower in calcium and some vitamins. We already know about calcium and its lack of relationship to osteoporosis except at extremely low levels. But the fact remains that a diet lower in protein from animal sources or one entirely devoid of all animal products still provides every bit of protection — or the lack thereof — that we see in other folks (1, 2).
Menopausal Chinese women maintain bone mineral density with soy intake – though significant loss of bone can occur in very elderly Chinese. Similarly, Caucasian women maintain or increase bone density by their consumption of soy protein. In fact, two glasses of soy milk a day prevents bone loss in the spine of menopausal women with osteoporosis (3).
But interestingly, if Progesterone is added to those drinking soy, bone loss will occur (at least in this study of 89 women).
Apparently, too much of a good thing. Progesterone by itself increased bone density. Soy milk by itself did the same. But apparently you can’t mix them together without cancelling all benefit.
And if you think that’s not fair, read this.
For a while we thought the more vegetable protein we ate, the stronger our bones would be. Or, to paraphrase, the more animal protein you ate, the more likely you were to break a bone (4). This was the theory that vegetable protein (an alkaline diet), was superior to animal protein (an acid or ash diet).
Then along came a study in May, 2009, which by the way was a rather rigorous one, that concluded high protein intake was just fine for bones, regardless of where the protein came from. High vegetable intake was not more helpful than high protein intake from eating meats (5).
So much for the supposed evils of being a carnivore.
Then to add insult to vegetarian injury, there was a theory that the more alkaline your diet is — a diet high in vegetables — the less likely you were to have bad things happen to your bones. The theory stated that eating meats, dairy and grains — sometimes called an “acid” or “ash” diet, high in phosphates — resulted in malevolent things happening to bones. Things like osteoporosis and fractures. But just this September that theory (demoted to a “hypothesis”) was all shot to heck in a major review of the evidence to date (6).