A Traumatic Experience

Yesterday I had a very traumatic experience that left me shaking.  Really!  The unflappable me! What was it?  I had to listen to Fox News for about 10 minutes!!!

I needed a test at French Hospital (nothing serious).  I checked in quickly, but then had to wait for a while.  Bill got tired of waiting, and said he would dash to Farm Supply and would be back and would look for me in the same waiting room.  That sounded OK to me, and I continued to watch a home renovation channe.  So, I eventually had the test, came back to the waiting room, and there was a woman watching Fox News.  She turned to me and asked if I could hear it, to which I not very nicely responded that I would probably take out my hearing aids since I didn’t like Fox News.  She not only didn’t take the pretty overt hint, but said that she did like it.  So, there I was trying to convince myself that this would be a learning experience, and that I should just be quiet and treat it as such.

The first segment I came in the middle of, so don’t know what set them off, but there were two people talking about how Obama’s (no title) executive orders were unconstitutional, were thus illegal, and were his way or the highway.  Nothing about the 291 executive orders George W. Bush (W) signed, or what they contained.  Nothing, for example, about the executive order Bush signed on 10/08/2001 creating the Department of Homeland Security.  Nothing about what executive order President Obama had signed, though as I said I came in late, but only how awful President Obama is to be signing these orders.

The segment ended, and the next one included a Republican Congressman from some State back East (where I live everything is back East).  I think it was Ohio.  Anyway, the subject was voter fraud, and how it was very necessary to curtail voting in order to stop voter fraud.  In the discussion it left me with no doubt they were talking about stopping brown, black, young and old people from voting.  They did everything but blatantly say that it was necessary to keep “those people” from voting because they would not vote Republican, and any other vote was fraudulent.  And with Obama and the left-wing so awful it is absolutely necessary to make sure there is no voter fraud.  Nothing about how very important voting is – for everyone.

I could feel my blood pressure start to go up, but not to worry.  It is low anyway.

The next segment included John Bolton, former Bush appointee to the United Nations, and a very “interesting” person with a radical right-wing religious perspective discussing the recent events in Yemen.  There was nothing on what had led up to the problems; nothing about anything the Yemeni government had or had not done to prevent the problems.  Only that it was Obama’s fault; that he didn’t know what he was doing; if only he were someone else, and on, and on.

But the final straw started out with a sort of hysterical introduction that federal employees had been caught watching porn on their work computers.  Then came, “Federal employees watch porn on their work computers, and are wasting your tax dollars, etc…”  At that I came unglued.  The segment started out with the proper setting that federal employees had been caught, although it did not mention whether this was two or two hundred, or two thousand.  But by the time it got to inferring that all federal employees watch porn, I was livid.  It was another right wing attack on legitimate government.  There was no corresponding study done on how many private-business employees watch porn.  The study needn’t include Fox News employees because in my opinion they were spewing porn the whole time I was watching. 

At that point, I told the lady that I deeply resented the inference that all federal employees watch porn because my husband had been a federal employee, and I could assure her that neither he nor anyone else in his office had ever watched porn.  At that point I left the waiting room and went out into the hallway.  Fortunately Bill arrived about 2-3 minutes later, so didn’t have to stand there for any length of time.  When he realized how pissed off I was, we went to the cafeteria.  When in doubt, feed me!

It was so obvious to me in that 10 minutes that this is where the current divisiveness in our society is coming from.  It was hate and fear, hate and fear.  I was so angry to the point I was shaking because to me this was a form of evil.  I don’t use that word lightly, by the way.  A deliberate distortion of the truth for either personal or political aggrandizement is evil.

More Irrelevant Stuff

There is so much on the national level one could write about, but this week I will write about other stuff.  Like the fact we have had a tad over 3 inches of rain this week.  For those overseas readers, I live in the very, very darkest red of the red covering the drought area of California on the maps.  We have our own water supply so to celebrate the rain, I let the water run while I rinsed off the dishes!!!  Not for long – just enough to feel decadent.  We are so dry here that even after 3 inches there are no standing puddles.  It just soaks in, and in, and then in some more.  We are supposed to receive more rain about Feb. 17, but haven’t read whether that will be some or a whole lot of it.  Hope for the whole lot.

We have lived in our house for 35 years now.  When we were building it from 1977-1979, we lived in Fresno, CA.  For those two years, all but about 4 weekends, we would leave Fresno at 3:00PM, arrive here about 6:00 PM, work on the house all weekend, then leave here at 6:00 AM, and arrive back in Fresno by 9:00 AM.  A good friend of ours had a contractor’s license, so he would work on the house while we were in Fresno.  One weekend we arrived to find that he had decided to fit the ceilings to his height, which was about 6’9”.  He had always wanted a house where the ceiling was way above his head, so our ceilings are about 14’ in our living/dining room!  We have heated with wood, primarily, so after 35 years this room has really needed painting.  We did it last time, but no way could we do this again.  So, we have professional painters.  I’m looking forward to when they are finished.  They are not only going to do the walls, but will paint the bricks behind our wood stove.  The bricks are beige, but our friend thought I would like black grout with those, and they were done before I saw them.  So, finally, the bricks, and grout will all be one color to match the fireplace at the other end of the room.  Oh, joy!!!

While getting ready for the painters, however, taking stuff off of the walls, etc., I came to the conclusion that I have too much “stuff”.  Some of it I don’t want to throw away, so will get a plastic bin and pack pictures away.  Years ago a friend gave me a picture of a Japanese Madonna and Child which I really liked.  Then I inherited an Italian Madonna and Child.  When our adopted granddaughters arrived, since their fathers were from El Salvador, I found a Salvadoran Madonna and Child.  Over time people have given me others from Greece, Russia, Italy, and the United States.  But I don’t want to put them back up.  I think I want to keep my walls clear for a time, but neither do I want to throw them away.  So, into a bin they will go, along with about two dozen family pictures in frames. 

I’m glad that my “office” isn’t going to be painted this time because I have a bad habit (or not) of cutting out, or typing off quips or comments that I really like and taping them to the side of my antique wood file cabinet.  One I wrote myself.  At one time, Bill was involved in a discussion on the placement of nuclear waste in unlined trenches in Ward Valley, which is very near the border of California and Nevada, and the Colorado River.  It took some time, but Bill proved that Ward Valley drained into the Colorado River in five places.   There was a hearing in Needles, CA, which, of course, we drove over to.  If anyone has driven across California to Nevada, you know what a long trip it can be, with nothing for about 90 miles of it through the Mojave Desert.  So, to occupy my mind I wrote the following take off on the old cowboy song, Home On the Range.  I will complete my blog with this:

Oh, give me a home, where the isotopes roam,

And the children play, let’s mutate today.

Where the tortoises’ are so big

They could swallow a pig,

             And the vadose zone is wet all the way. 

Home, home on the range,

Where neither deer nor the antelope can play.

Where good values of old

Have been sold for some gold

And we wait for the river to glow.

 

 

Football and Greed

Some things just stick in my mind and will not go away.  These things are like the infamous melody that gets stuck in there and just goes on and on.  Once I had to go to a conference at Disney Land, and that song, It’s a Small, Small World, got stuck in my head for days.  I still don’t like it.

That’s why, after the Super Bowl yesterday, I decided I’d better get this thought out of my head before it gets stuck in there.  One needs to mention all of the hype and stuff prior to the game – deflategate –and how the Patriots quarterback, Tom Brady, would never do anything like that.  He is such an upstanding player, and on, and on.  I don’t know Tom Brady, so don’t know if he is all of the wonderful things people were saying about him, because when I watch professional sports, except for the SF Giants and ‘49ers, I simply root for the team closest to the West Coast.  On the other hand, the Seattle Seahawks attitude, so marvelously exemplified yesterday at the end of the game, made me not want to root for them yesterday.  So, as I watched, Russell Wilson seemed to me to be a pretty good quarterback as well, but Brady kept getting all of the hype, which I couldn’t understand since the Patriots were actually losing.  But the kicker at the end of the game, when the player, Butler, was a fantastic enough football player to grab that ball in a really split, split second, which won the game for the Patriots, I was annoyed no end when Brady got all of the credit for winning the game.  He didn’t win it, Butler did! 

Another thing has been stuck in my head for quite some time.  The radical right-wing Christians, regardless of denomination, for years and years have been and still are bitching and complaining about abortion and homosexuality.  I have known for quite some time that nowhere in the New Testament does Jesus mention either one.  There are some three references to some passages in the New Testament that have been interpreted to refer to homosexuality, but considering all of the translations that the Bible has undergone, one would need to be a First Century Greek academic to fully understand what the references actually mean.  After reading the supposed references to homosexuality, it occurred to me that the verses before and after the suspect ones also list many activities that should not be indulged in:  greed, gluttony, laziness, etc. 

So we get to greed.  There are 51 passages in the entire Bible that refer to greed, and some 28 in the New Testament.  I will only quote two: Matt. 6:24, Peterson, The Message Bible.  “You can’t worship two gods at once.  Loving one god, you’ll end up hating the other.  Adoration of one feeds contempt for the other.  You can’t worship God and Money both”.  I Tim 6:10, same cite, “But if it’s only money these leaders are after, they’ll self-destruct in no time.  Lust for money brings trouble and nothing but trouble.  Going down that path some lose their footing in the faith completely and live to regret it bitterly ever after.”  There is not too much to quibble about in those quotes.  One may not agree with them, but their meaning is quite clear.

So we have no references regarding abortion, 3 maybe about homosexuality, and 28 (if I counted correctly) about the dangers of greed.  We are not discussing here whether the Bible is true or not.  What we are discussing is the attitude of the radical right-wing Christians on Christian teachings, and one would assume that the Bible would be their foundation of belief and emphasis. 

I thought about the comment of what self-identified Catholic Christian, Paul Ryan said about President Obama’s new budget, that it is “envy economics”, with the poorer citizens wanting to take away what the poor oligarchs have.  He also said that now that the oligarchs have so much it is beginning to “trickle down” anyway.  Really?  And considering that it has been supposedly “trickling down” now for some 30 years, ever since Ronnie Baby introduced the theory of and established “trickle-down economics”, in what year does Ryan predict that it will reach the bottom 99%?  2075? 

Or is Reaganomics and his “trickle-down” the new false god of the radical religious-right?

 

 

Optimism and Justice

In explaining to one of our daughters, who is going to school in Florida, what I wanted to write about this time, she told me that I am probably a delusional optimist.  I would agree, since if there is life, there is hope, or, hope springs eternal.  I suppose there are many other clichés out there regarding hope, but those are the only two that pop into my memory at the moment.  And since I intend writing about terrorism, I need hope.

Somewhere in between CE 1 and CE 2000, the Western nations, such as they were, initiated several Crusades to overrun the Middle Eastern Muslim countries, and to convert Muslims to Christianity.  These Crusades were bloody, and not particularly successful.  What they did accomplish was to leave a particularly bad set of memories in those living in the Middle Eastern countries toward the Western European nations.

Fast forward to the end of World War I when England and France, without input from the Arab countries, drew the boundaries of Middle Eastern countries without any input from those living there, any regard to existing tribal and religious considerations. England and France took those arbitrarily written boundaries to the then League of Nations, where the boundaries were ratified, with the assent of the United States, and the intent that the Western nations had the right to tell the Arab nations what they should do.  And many of these countries were outright colonies of European nations. 

From the end of WWI to the present, Western diplomacy did not dwell overly long on what the desires of the Arab countries might be, but heavily emphasized what would be in the best interests of the Western countries – primarily oil.  The oil corporations, with the aiding and abetting of the United States government, would put leaders in power that would do the bidding of what we wanted – not what was the best for the people in these arbitrarily created nations. 

And then we had 9/11.  19 hijackers killed some 3,000 people in the attack.  The attackers were from Saudi Arabia.  In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Saudi businessmen, diplomats and their families were allowed to fly out of the US back to Saudi Arabia.  26 days after 9/11, the US began bombing Afghanistan, who actually had nothing to do with 9/11.  Then, as the Bush administration had been planning on doing anyway, the invasion of Iraq began 3/19/2003.  Since that time, it is estimated that nearly 4,000 American military were killed, 21,000 Afghan civilians, and nearly 100,000 Iraqis were killed, and that number is still growing with the ISIS uprising, and with our own drone attacks that kill hundreds of innocent Iraqi civilians whose only crime is to be in the vicinity of someone we have deemed an enemy.

The Western nations, and in particular the United States, has not acted in a just manner in the Middle East.  We have treated the people of that region as much less human as we are; we have plundered their natural resources – primarily oil – for our benefit, not theirs, and, in general, have been pretty rotten neighbors.

I do not believe that our actions in any way condone the rise of jihadist terrorism, nor do I believe that these terrorists are living the tenets of the Muslim religion.  They claim they are, but anyone can claim anything without making it so.   But reverse these actions we have taken against the Middle East.  Make it the United States that has had all of these actions taken against us.  Imagine Middle Eastern countries coming over here and redrawing the boundaries of our states without ever asking our opinions.  Imagine being invaded on spurious made up charges against our leaders when actually what they want is our copious natural resources.  Imagine being at a wedding reception with crazy Uncle Ralph who spouts all sorts of anti-Middle Eastern rhetoric, and having the reception being hit with a drone explosive with many killed along with crazy Uncle Ralph.  What would the reaction of our people be? 

It will take several generations to erase the agony in the hearts of Middle Easterners, but we need to start somewhere with a foreign policy based on justice, not oil.  Western nations need to realize that the Middle Easterners are just as capable of making their own decisions as we are.  Instead of sending more and more violence, we should start sending food, medical supplies, educational supplies, and any other humanitarian item we can think of.  As is cited in the Old Testament, “The sins of the fathers are visited unto the sixth and seventh generation.” 

I guess I am the perennial optimist, but we have to start somewhere.  Confucius has reportedly said, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”  It is time we started that thousand miles by walking in their shoes, carrying justice in our arms.

 

 

 

Free Speech and Violence

On the news last night, I think it was Chris Hayes but am too lazy to actually look it up, there was a comment that I cheered out loud over.  Researchers in Psychology, Sociology, and related fields of study have begun looking into the root causes of terrorism.  Why is it so attractive to some?  Where does it start?  Why does it continue?  Questions such as these have needed to be asked for a whale of a long time, going back to the Irish Republican Army, and the uprising in various countries under colonialism, including the Mau Mau insurrection in South Africa in the middle of the last century, and probably a long time before that.  Terrorism is nothing new. 

Often religion is used to justify the horrific actions that terrorists indulge in.  In Ireland, it was Catholic against Protestant.  In England it was Protestant against Catholic.  Now it is Islam against Christianity and Judaism.  The only thing is, none of these religions in their mainstream teachings espouse the use of violence.  It is a perversion of the religion that takes over the thinking of the adherents.  When the veneer of religion is scraped away, generally there is an underlying secular reason for the terrorism – generally power and/or greed.  After all, Mahatma Ghandi achieved freedom from English colonialism without violence, and our own black civil rights movement achieved more of its goals through the practice of non-violence.

And now we have these obscene terrorist acts in Africa and Europe.  At least 2,000 people were slaughtered by Boko Haram in Africa, and the spate of terrorism in Europe.  At the same time, there is much discussion about freedom of speech, and whether we should, or should not, curtail freedom of expression.  Since I was raised during the time when people were taught to be polite in their speech, not because you might offend someone, but that non-politeness was an indication you were not a “nice” person, this is a really a complex issue for me.  For one thing, when I saw a website that indicated it had the cartoons that Charlie Hebdo had been printing, I had to look and was terribly offended at one of the cartoons, and I’m not even a Muslim.  It was supposedly a depiction of Mohamed’s hairy butt!  That wasn’t even bad satire; it was just disgusting!!

I am a firm believer in our concept of freedom of speech.  I believe that I have every right to write whatever I want to on this blog, and I will certainly defend my right as firmly as I can.  But at the same time, I believe that if I choose to write something that is deeply offensive to someone else, then I must expect some sort of negative response.  It may be the loss of a good friend all the way to something very unpleasant.  In our insistence on our own right to say what we want, I believe that we have lost the fact that words can be as abusive and as hurtful as physically or sexually abusing that person.  There is a big difference between satirizing an idea or policy of a religion, and rudely, crudely and obnoxiously denigrating the very basis for that religion’s existence.

As an example of a really good cartoon satirizing my own church’s teaching on birth control was a Conrad cartoon of U.S. Senator Henry Hyde kneeling before an obviously poor (from her clothing) pregnant woman and patting her stomach, saying, “Ah, the miracle of life!”  The next square had the same mother with the now born toddler, and Henry Hyde saying, “Disgusting little welfare cheat!”  Now that was good satire. 

What we as a culture have forgotten is that actions and words have consequences.  If we are going to not only invade other countries for our own greed (oil), indiscriminately kill their people during the invasion, continue to kill their people with the use of drones after the invasion is supposedly over, and then after all of that , denigrate their religion in the most disgusting manner possible we have to assume there will be consequences.  Perhaps our academics studying the effects of what we have done can come up with some way we can walk back some of the horrific things we have done to the Arab states over time.  To make a great understatement, our Western world has not treated the Muslim states with any degree of respect whatsoever.  We are now reaping the violence and destruction that we have sown.

Probably there are some who will say that I am a Communist, terrorist sympathizer, pot-smoking lefty liberal.  But who would have thought that the author of the Book of Proverbs, written some 3,700 years ago was also a Communist, terrorist sympathizer, pot-smoking lefty liberal attempting to deny American their First Amendment rights of free speech.  Amazing, is it not?  Proverbs 15-1:  A mild answer calms wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” 

In short, actions and words have consequences.  We have the right to say what we want to.  But just because we can, should we?

The Tea Party and the Ship of State

Ever since the Tea Party was first formed one of their mantras has been “Take Our Country Back”.  Take it back from whom?  I hadn’t noticed any less ability to indulge in any activity, civil, religious, or otherwise in the recent past.  As far as I was concerned things were chugging along quite slowly economically, but otherwise pretty much the same.

I knew that ever since the Civil Rights legislation in the 1960’s, more and more black and brown people were on TV, in our colleges and universities, were doctors, lawyers, teachers, law enforcement and in  government, all of which I thought was a really good thing, but I was busy in my life, and didn’t give it too much thought.  When Barack Obama was a candidate in 2008 a friend of mine was hesitant to vote for him, but couldn’t tolerate Senator McCain. I convinced her to vote for Obama’s white half, which she did.  I was also aware that there was a real residual of racism in this country left over from our abominable history of slavery, and a fear and dislike of anything that was not like “us”.

Then when the Governor of Michigan, Rick Snyder, got the state legislature to allow him to set aside any lower government body he didn’t like and to appoint his own city manager in its place, he quickly decided to eliminate the duly elected City Council of Bel Haven, a predominately black community, because he thought they weren’t running the City the way he wanted it to be run. I was pretty disturbed because I had been an elected official, and took that responsibility pretty seriously.  It turned out that what the developers wanted was the City Park, the land for which had been donated years before for the exclusive use of the city residents.  It was lake front property.  Oh, yes.  I heard recently that the park had been sold to the developers, and is now a commercial development.  The black residents lost out.

Then the governor did the same thing to the City of Detroit.  What was wanted there was all of the art, etc. in the city museum, to be sold to the highest bidder to pay for redevelopment in the downtown area of Detroit.  Fortunately for the City, that proposal was blocked.  Detroit is a predominately black city.  When that ploy didn’t work, and the city really tanked under the appointed manager, the manager cut worker’s pensions, fired whoever they could, and then cut off water service to those who had trouble paying their water bills because they had been let go.

A great many of these states who had predominately Republican-led governments, after the last census gerrymandered congressional districts in their states so that Republicans could not be voted out of office, even though more Democrats voted in the total of the entire state.  Needless to say, the gerrymandered districts were predominately white, and the others were predominately black. 

At the same time, state after state was passing bills to disenfranchise minority voters using a variety of means.  Most of these bills were struck down by the federal courts, but the impression left was that minority, poor and senior votes counted far less than the votes of conservative evangelical Christian white people.  Those who used to be called WASPs.  That is, White Anglo-Saxon Protestants.  These lesser black and brown people ought not to be allowed to vote at all.

Then we had the rise of Rush Limbaugh and Fox News, along with Lou Dobbs and Glen Beck spewing their racial, sexist, and religious right views into the general public.  It was pretty obvious that this racial and sexist disparagement of the “other” was beginning to make further inroads into the unconscious minds of many of our citizens.  Not racial hatred, per se, but a distinct devaluing of the lives of those who are not “like us”, who do not have “our” values of respect for the law, who by nature are violent, and who need to be controlled by whatever means. 

I write this because it is my opinion, and I have no documentation or proof, that this devaluing of the lives of minorities has infiltrated some, and let me emphasize, only some of our law enforcement officers.  Particularly those who watch Fox News or listen to Rush Limbaugh. Thus, with these relatively few officers, considering the thousands out there, when they are confronted with a black or brown male whom they perceive, rightly or wrongly, to be questioning their police authority, the young male definitely needs to be controlled less he become violent, and the situation gets quickly out of control as a result.  It is wrong to assume that the officer “hates” the other person.  He, or she, probably does not hate anyone.  But fears the black or brown male?  Most definitely!  And since that black or brown male is already a danger by his simple existence, it is OK to shoot first and ask questions later.

It is incumbent, once again in my opinion, that the thoughtful, non-Fox News, white community needs to take an active role in fighting against this denigration of minorities, poor people, women and seniors.  We all, whatever our skin color, have a lot to lose.  Our safety nets like food stamps, Medicare, Social Security, medical care for women in all circumstances, health care, a healthy environment, healthy food and water, and decent schools for all of our kids.  Black lives matter, as do the lives of all poor people, women and seniors.  Death by shooting is a terrible thing.  But so is death by starvation, cold, or lack of proper medical care.  There used to be a poster during the 1960’s: God Doesn’t Make Junk.  That applies to all of us because we are all in this ship of state together.

An Ardent Wish for a Happy New Year

The following is my ardent wish for our world for this New Year.  Originally I was going to sort of pick and choose items from A Global Ethic to express this wish, but when I extracted this from my filing cabinet and began reading it, there is no way one can pick and choose.  So, I am sending the initial declaration verbatim.  The entire Global Ethic can be found by simply by googling the name.  All of the rest of this is a quote, taken from Churchwatch, October-November, 1993.  Only the initial Declaration will appear here.

"At the Parliament of the World’s Religions Aug. 28-Sept.5, 1993 in Chicago, 250 of the world’s religious leaders signed “An Initial Declaration Towards a Global Ethic”, developed by Father Hans Kung.  The 6,000-word-document is in two parts:  a one-page declaration, and an eight-page elaboration of principles.  The opening declaration is printed verbatim, followed by selected quotes from the lengthy principles.

The Declaration of a Global Ethic

The world is in agony.  The agony is so pervasive and urgent that we are compelled to name its manifestations so that the depth of this pain may be made clear.

Peace eludes us … the planet is being destroyed … neighbors live in fear … women and men are estranged from each other … children die!

This is abhorrent!

We condemn the abuses of the Earth’s ecosystems.  We condemn the poverty that stifles life’s potential; the hunger that weakens the human body; the economic disparities that threaten so many families with ruin.  We condemn the social disarray of the nations, the disregard for justice which pushes citizens to the margin; the anarchy overtaking our communities; and the insane death of children from violence.  In particular we condemn aggression and hatred in the name of religion.

But this agony need not be.

It need not be because the basis for an ethic already exists.  This ethic offers the possibility of a better individual and global order, and leads individuals away from chaos.  We are women and men who have embraced the precepts and practices of the world’s religions:

We affirm that a common set of core values is found in the teachings of the religions, and that these form the basis of a global ethic.

We affirm that this truth is already known, but yet to be lived in heart and action.

We affirm that there is an irrevocable, unconditional norm for all areas of life, for families and communities, for races, nations, and religions.  There already exist ancient guidelines for human behavior which are found in the teachings of the religions of the world and which are the condition for a sustainable world order.

We declare:

We are interdependent.  Each of us depends on the well-being of the whole, and so we have respect for the community of living beings, for people, animals, and plants, and for the preservation of Earth, the air, water and soil.

We take individual responsibility for all we do.  All our decisions, actions and failures to act have consequences.

We must treat others as we wish others to treat us.  We make a commitment to respect life and dignity, individuality and diversity, so that every person is treated humanely, without exception.  We must have patience and acceptance.  We must be able to forgive, learning from the past but never allowing ourselves to be enslaved by memories of hate.  Opening our hearts to one another, we must sink our narrow differences for the cause of the world community, practicing a culture of solidarity and relatedness.

We consider human kind our family.  We must strive to be kind and generous.  We must not live for ourselves alone, but should also serve others, never forgetting the children, the aged, the poor, the suffering, the disabled, the refugees, and the lonely.  No person should ever be considered or treated as a second-class citizen, or be exploited in any way whatsoever.  There should be equal partnership between men and women.  We must not commit any kind of sexual immorality.  We must put behind us all forms of domination and abuse.

We commit ourselves to a culture of non-violence, respect, justice, and peace.  We shall not oppress, injure, torture, or kill other human beings, forsaking violence as a means of settling differences.

We must strive for a just social and economic order, in which everyone has an equal chance to reach full potential as a human being.  We must speak and act truthfully and with compassion, dealing fairly with all, and avoiding prejudice and hatred.  We must not steal.  We must move beyond the dominance of greed for power, prestige, money and consumption to make a just and peaceful world.

Earth cannot be changed for the better unless the consciousness of individuals is changed first.  We pledge to increase our awareness by disciplining our minds, by meditation, by prayer, or by positive thinking.  Without risk and a readiness to sacrifice there can be no fundamental change in our situation.  Therefore we commit ourselves to this global ethic, to understanding one another, and to socially-beneficial, peace-fostering, and nature-friendly ways of life.

We invite all people, whether religious or not, to do the same."

(The four Principles of the Global Ethic follow, and may be found on the web site.) 

Wishing all people everywhere a very Happy, and Justice-filled New Year.