I am old enough that I remember the Chinese Genocide. I read a lot and I thought a lot. But today I don’t want to scare anyone but to remind us all that men and women who run governments are capable of killing their own citizens for power, greed, and money. If you have listened to any of the American election rhetoric, you know candidates don’t always say what they mean but what they think think citizens want to hear. It is a concept as old as time.
The key to having power and money is not having people who are different. They should not look different or act different. They should not think for themselves. Citizens should not band together and create fraternal orders or unions. They should not be educated too much, just enough to do what is required of them. They should also have no or little to say in the government. It is the government of the leaders, and not the people.
With every life which is ended in Genocide, we, the human family, potentially lose great musicians, the cure for cancer, the next great art movement. We lose the scientist who may have been more intelligent than Einstein. We may loose the mathematician who invents flying cars or the biologist who figures out how to raise enough food to feed every person on the planet. We will never know what all the genocides have robbed from the family of man.
What is important now is to be informed. If the media isn’t discussing something, get a book, look it up on the internet or ask someone who does know. Ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance can lead to war and genocide and the marginalization of human beings. If you think you are being lied to by your government, investigate. George W. Bush told us we had to go to war with Iraq because they had weapons of mass destruction. Iraq did not. Bush started his Presidency in the black. We had extra money and he left the White House terribly in debt. A debt President Obama has been working to whittle down. Humans often try to change history to make certain acts and/or misdeeds more palatable. Be aware, look for the truth. Speak up when you know that the text books are not exactly telling the truth.
Namaste
Barbara
A chart of the genocides the world has endured and their severity
The Negroes are not the only people America has not treated as equals. The Native Americans were murdered by the thousands, their land was stolen, they were herded onto reservations and killed the Buffalo, a species key to the survival of many tribes and nations.
Now our government is trying to quietly pass a bill through congress too take more land away from the Utes in Utah. So we are now stealing more land from the Native Americans. Again.
The Native Americans are protesting the building of the Dakota pipeline through their sacred land. They care about what we are doing to Mother Earth. The state has been given permission to shoot protesters who do not leave.
What kind of world are we living in? President Obama you must stop the shooting of protesters. Peaceable protest is a First Amendment right. What is needed here at a minimum is to sit down together and negotiate and use diplomacy. These are America’s first people. They deserve to be treated with respect and honor.
Striking photos of America’s child laborers reveal what work was like a century ago
The bloody origins of Labor Day — a holiday carved out from the post-Civil War clashes between workers and employers — have largely faded from public memory.
The day off is still a good time relax, but it’s worth remembering the grueling conditions faced by workers before the arrival of protections we often take for granted, like weekends off or 40-hour workweeks.
The first Labor Day was Tuesday,September 5, 1882, in New York City.
The American labor force has continued to evolve since then, but one of the biggest differences may be who is doing the work.
Lewis Hine, a photographer forthe National Child Labor Committee, captured photos of some of the children who made up the US labor force between 1908 and 1924.
Hine traveled throughout the US, documenting children working in factories, fields, and at home insupport the NCLC’s mission to promote the “rights, awareness, dignity, well-being and education of children and youth as they relate to work and working.”
The photos below, compiled by the Library of Congress, are the result of Hine and the NCLC’s work.
The descriptions come from NCLC caption cards, edited for clarity and length.
A Glassworks at midnight, taken in Indiana in August 1908.
Jewel and Harold Walker, 6 and 5 years old, pick 20 to 25 pounds of cotton a day. Father said: “I promised ’em a little wagon if they’d pick steady, and now they have half a bagful in just a little while.” Location: Comanche County–[Geronimo], Oklahoma, October 1916.
Vance, a trapper Boy, 15 years old. He had trapped for several years in a West Virginia coal mine for $0.75 a day for 10 hours work. All he does is open and shut this door: Most of the time he sits here idle, waiting for the cars to come. On account of the intense darkness in the mine, the hieroglyphics on the door were not visible until plate was developed. Taken in September 1908.
Manuel, the young shrimp-picker, 5 years old and a mountain of child-labor oyster shells behind him. He worked the year before. Understands not a word of English. Dunbar, Lopez, Dukate Company. Location: Biloxi, Mississippi, February 1911.
Freddie Kafer, a very immature little newsie selling Saturday Evening Posts and newspapers at the entrance to the State Capitol. He did not know his age, nor much of anything else. He was said to be 5 or 6 years old. Nearby, Hine found Jack who said he was 8 years old, and who was carrying a bag full of Saturday Evening Posts, which weighed nearly 1/2 of his own weight. The bag weighed 24 pounds, and he weighed only 55 pounds. He carried this bag for several blocks to the car. Said he was taking them home. Sacramento, California, May 1915.
This little girl, like many others in this state, is so small she has to stand on a box to reach her machine. She is regularly employed as a knitter in a hosiery mill. Said she did not know how long she had worked there. Location: Loudon, Tennessee, December 1910.
Four-year-old Mary, who shucks two pots of oysters a day and tends the baby when not working. The boss said that next year Mary will work steady as the rest of them. The mother is the fastest shucker in the place. She earns $1.50 a day. Works part of the time with her sick baby in her arms. Dunbar, Louisiana, March 1911.
Little Fannie, 7 years old, 48 inches high, helps sister in Elk Mills. Her sister (in photo) said, “Yes, she he’ps me right smart. Not all day but all she can. Yes, she started with me at six this mornin’.” These two belong to a family of 19 children. Taken in Fayetteville, Tennessee, November 1910.
Young cigarmakers at Englahardt & Co., Tampa, Florida. These boys looked under 14. Work was slack and youngsters were not being employed much. Youngsters all smoke. Witness Sara R. Hine. Taken January 1909.
The interior of a tobacco shed, Hawthorn Farm. Girls in foreground are 8, 9, and 10 years old. The 10-year-old makes $0.50 a day. Twelve workers on this farm were 8 to 14 years old, and about 15 are over 15 years. Location: Hazardville, Connecticut, August 1917.
A spinner takes moment’s glimpse of the outer world. She said she was 10 years old and had been working over a year. Lincolnton, North Carolina, November 1908.
Nan de Gallant, 4 Clark Street, Eastport, Maine, a 9-year-old cartoner, Seacoast Canning Co., Factory No. 2. Packs some with her mother. Mother and two sisters work in factory. One sister has made $7 in one day. During the rush season, the women begin work at 7 a.m., and at times work until midnight. Brother works on boats. The family comes from Perry, Maine, just for the summer months. Work is very irregular. Nan is already a spoiled child. Location: Eastport, Maine, August 1911.
A “colored school” at Anthoston. Census 27, enrollment 12, attendance 7. Teacher expects 19 to be enrolled after work is over. “Tobacco keeps them out and they are short of hands.” Location: Henderson County, Kentucky, September 1913.
French police fire teargas at labor reform protesters
headlines.rivr.us· Reuters5 hours ago
By Brian Love
PARIS (Reuters) – Riot police fired teargas and water cannon at protesters marching on Thursday in France against labor reforms in what unions say will likely be the last demonstrations to try to overturn the law.
Scuffles broke out in Paris and the western city of Nantes. Hooded youths hurled bottles, beer cans and on occasion makeshift firebombs on the fringes of marches against the law that will make hiring and firing easier.
As turnout fades after six months of protests, the head of the Force Ouvriere union signaled that the focus of opposition would now shift to legal challenges against the application of the new law, and that street marches were at an end.
“We are lifting our foot off the pedal for now. We are not going to do this every week,” Jean-Claude Mailly told reporters at a rally in Paris’s Place de la Bastille square.
Seven months from a presidential election, Mailly said that the unions would not let Socialist President Francois Hollande and his government off the hook.
“This law will be the chewing gum that sticks to the soles of the government’s shoes,” he told France 2 public television.
Mailly and Philippe Martinez, head of the CGT union, said they hoped legal challenges would force the withdrawal of the new law. They intend to challenge application decrees that will spell out exactly how the law applies on the ground.
The new law, forced through parliament in July, is designed to make France’s protective labor laws more flexible, in part by allowing firms to tailor pay and work terms to their needs more easily.
Martinez said the law could be exploited by employers to trim overtime pay from a 25 percent markup to 10 percent.
At their peak, the street protests brought close to 400,000 people into the streets last March but turnout has waned over time and was in the low thousands in most cities on Thursday according to early readouts from police.
Police said between 12,500 and 13,500 marched in Paris. More than a dozen people were arrested. Police representatives said about five police were injured.
The government hopes the law will help lower a jobless rate stuck close to 10 percent.
Unions say it will undermine high standards of labor protection as well as their ability to represent workers, notably in small firms where it will give employers more muscle to strike lower-standard deals on issues such as overtime pay.
(Additional reporting by Simon Carraud, Claude Canellas and Jean-Francois Rosnoblet; Writing by Brian Love; Editing by Richard Lough and Alison Williams)
To the governments of the world: You must treat your laborers fairly or your corporations will come down around you. In any country, workers banning together can bring a government down. Walk away from the greed and the feeling that you are better than the human beings working for you. We all deserve a decent roof over our heads, clean food, clean water to drink. We deserve educations and time in our lives to be people, the people we were created to be.
It is not fair to look at workers just as a means to an end; the end being you get to live well, while the workers are still living below the poverty line. Every human being has a right to a decent life and to dream dreams. Have things improved? Yes. Do they need to improve more? Yes. Do workers have a right to protest? Yes. They do if no one is listening to their demands and requests. They do not deserve to be attacked by police. Workers need to be treated with respect. The 1% wouldn’t get far without the rest of us.
I had a blog planned for today. But the world has changed what I have to say right now. The negativity and darkness which has been lingering over the world is exploding much like the missiles exploding in the skies. So here we are once again and innocent people are being injured and killed. Children are losing their lives or their parents. We must learn to live without war and violence. When will human beings learn that violence produces nothing but more violence? Where are the clear thinking leaders of our world who should be talking to each other and doing what is best for all peoples of all countries? We are all the same. Our hearts beat to the same rhythm. Our legs move in the same way. We all have those we love and those we don’t know. Does that make the “other people” wrong or is it all right to kill them? The answer is a gigantic NO!
Whether you believe in God or not, whether you are a Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Zoroastrian, Sufi, Agnostic or Atheist, whether you believe in a Goddess or in Divine Energy or nothing at all, we are made from the same matter. We are star dust. We are killing each other once again. God is not supporting anyone in these wars. God does not belong to any one nationality. God doesn’t favor anyone more than another. God loves all of us, no matter who is participating in war, God loves everyone the same. There is only one God. Despite the fact that we have many religions and spiritual paths, there is only one God and all are loved. It is not my God against your God, there is only one God. Call it whatever you want, there is only one God.
A Malaysian airplane has been shut down over the Ukraine. Three hundred human beings, innocent human beings from a variety of countries have been taken down by surface to air missiles. Why? Which country took the airliner down? What did these people do wrong? Nothing. They bought a ticket and boarded an airliner that was shot out of the sky over the Ukraine. How can decent and reasonable people do this to the human beings on the plane? Were they involved in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia? Some of them, maybe, and but most were probably not. These were human beings who got up this morning and packed their suitcases to take with them on their flight and now they are dead. Maybe they were running late and forgot to say goodbye. Perhaps they were on their way to see someone they loved. Is there an excuse for these unnecessary deaths? There is not. No matter who shot it down, they killed innocent people for no reason. They committed murder. They must be punished, by law, but even this horrible act is not an excuse for war.
That war is not a solution is not a new concept. Edwin Starr put it very well:
Hate isn’t the answer
The problems between Palestine and Israel is not new. Iuntries believe that hate is the problem between these two peoples. I believe that both countries are in some ways right and in some ways wrong. So with hate in their hearts, they continue to war over a strip of land. It isn’t even a great piece of land. But the Palestinian people need a place to call home and to develop their lives. Israel needs to be safe from attacks and worry they will lose their country. There are non-Israelis living in Israel. Israeli hospitals have even treated Palestinians in their hospitals. So I am convinced if the leaders of both countries would stop their accusations, their selfishness and insensitivity to the pain of the other people, peaceful coexistence is possible.
The Israeli people need to allow the Palestinians to live unmolested in the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians need to have free access to the provisions they need and to get to jobs in Israel (which many Palestinians hold). Israelis need to be secure in their homes without fear of suicide bombers coming into their country from Gaza. They both need to forgive each other and show each other compassion and gentleness. God, whether called Allah nor Adonai or by any other name, does not want this horrific suffering.
Today, despite the prayers from people around the world, Israel has launched a ground attack. The only result will be the loss of more innocent people. I want to declare that innocent people are not collateral damage. They are human beings who have parents, siblings, loved ones, children and friends, just as we do. We all lose when war is unleashed upon our planet. There are no real winners. One side may be declared a winner and think it is done. But what is produced is more hatred and suffering and pain.
WAR MUST END! WE ARE GOING TO DESTROY OURSELVES AND OUR PLANET.
There are good, compassionate people living in both countries. There are nasty, thoughtless, mean people in both countries. We have had two World Wars. Innocent people are killed, tortured, imprisoned and suffer. Egos and greed are not reasons to take human lives. There is no reason to take human lives, If leaders could only remember that, we would have no more genocide, no more suicide bombings, and ultimately no more war.
So I hope many people are praying for peace today. I know I am. There is nothing that makes war worthwhile. Nothing that gives human beings back their lives and their futures. How many mathematicians, authors, artists, future Mozarts have we destroyed? What wonders could we have accomplished if war hadn’t ended their lives? Let us stop war now. Let us discuss peace, find a way to co-exist, and work together for the benefit of our planet and all human beings.
Fighting for the world stops a lot of problems that we deal with every day. When we are just looking at our countries or even our communities, the scope to too narrow. What one country does for its people may be fantastic and yet for their neighbors in a neighboring country, it may cause many trials and tribulations. This is why it is important to think of Mother Earth as what she is; a cohesive planet rotating around the sun like the other planets are doing.
We take that simple knowledge which has worked very well for millions of years and we have divided Mother Earth. This piece goes to America. This part is Russia, this is Syria. Here is Germany, and Greenland is over here. No not there that is Iceland. Iceland belongs to us…no it is its own country. So as the millenniums and the centuries have passed we have divided and put together parts of Mother Earth over and over. Many great rulers have come and gone. They have done much to destroy Mother Earth with divisions and wars and slavery and jealousy and greed.
There is a flag flying over every inch of our planet and we watch our boundaries closely. Some will never get in and some will never leave. Our planet has a big job. It is what we stand on. It gives us a variety of fuels, and gem stones. Because we aren’t taking care of Mother Earth, there is much harsher weather coming. There are tornadoes, cyclones, hurricanes, blizzards, sandstorms. Is she trying to tell us something? I know we all couldn’t even agree on that. But remember, we human beings are responsible for this planet. She will take care of us if we take care of her. So when you look at a world globe, remember the flags are not the most important part. The most important part is that we have this beautiful planet to use, to enjoy and to love. Don’t forget to do that and Planet Earth will be here rotating on her axis for a very long time.
Mensen maken de samenleving en nemen daarin een positie in. Deze website geeft toegang tot een diversiteit aan artikelen die gaan over 'samenleven', belicht vanuit verschillende perspectieven. De artikelen hebben gemeen dat er gezocht wordt naar wat 'mensen bindt, in plaats van wat hen scheidt'.
![Jewel and Harold Walker, 6 and 5 years old, pick 20 to 25 pounds of cotton a day. Father said: "I promised 'em a little wagon if they'd pick steady, and now they have half a bagful in just a little while." Location: Comanche County--[Geronimo], Oklahoma, October 1916.](https://i0.wp.com/static4.businessinsider.com/image/574f327f91058428008c6275-1200/jewel-and-harold-walker-6-and-5-years-old-pick-20-to-25-pounds-of-cotton-a-day-father-said-i-promised-em-a-little-wagon-if-theyd-pick-steady-and-now-they-have-half-a-bagful-in-just-a-little-while-location-comanche-county-geronimo-oklahoma-october-1916.jpg)
idealisticrebel 