February 14, 2009 |
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Women’s rights are
human rights?
Stephen Henry Lewis,
United Nations’ envoy for HIV AIDS in Africa, 2006, said:
“[Women’s rights have] never been made real, and so long as men control the levers and bastions of power… it never will be real. The demeaning diminution of women is everywhere evident… where freedom from sexual violence, the right to sexual autonomy, to sexual and reproductive health, social and economic independence, and even the whiff of gender equality are barely approximated. It’s a ghastly, deadly business, this untrammeled oppression of women in so many countries on the planet.”
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On February 10, four days before this writing, satellites Iridium 33 and Kosmos-2251 collided over Siberia. “A large amount of debris” resulted from this first major collision between artificial satellites NASA stated. Refer Wikipedia
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Discipline and Direction
The absence of discipline and direction in our lives ultimately brings chaos. When we entrust those guiding factors to others, personal matters tend to get worse because we’re further removed from the reins we once held on our own behalf.
The past eight years’ political blunders are manifesting as lack, fear, and anger in individuals and nations. When, where, and how did things go wrong? The list is so long and intertwined that answers to those three questions could take years to figure out.
Wouldn’t our time be better spent in asking when and how we will fix the problems that make us afraid, hostile, and destitute?
NASA is a wonderful example of discipline and direction. The space program thrives on long-range planning for direction, and relies on intelligent decisions for discipline. If something doesn’t work, they fix it or scrap it, and move on to a solution that does work. Emotions and religious fervor for unworkability have no place in the space program.
My Rocket’s Bigger
NASA recently announced plans to build the biggest rocket ever to revisit our Moon, and to build habitation for humans there. Included in these long-range hopes and dreams is the construction of a 16 meter segmented optical ultraviolet telescope, called ATLAST—Advanced Technology Large-Aperture Space Telescope—which would be 2,000 times more sensitive than the Hubble Telescope.
One of the top-priority goals of scientists, astronomers, engineers, inventors, and theorists is the discovery of planets hospitable to life—and the fulfillment of that goal could be just around the corner so to speak if ATLAST becomes a reality and does its job as planned.
Why is it so important to find out if life can or does exist elsewhere in our galaxy? Our universe? Because Earth is finite and will not last forever as once we thought. Without our beloved current ‘home base,’ the human species will disappear along with all the knowledge and accomplishments we’ve amassed since the age of consciousness began.
Follow the Money
If this scientific quest for human habitat is so important, then why are we—the general public—allowing our leaders to consent to the destruction of our earthly home? The destruction of structures and systems and cultures that have served us over time? Why are NASA and other countries’ space program leaders not ranting and railing at the short-sightedness of political regimes around the world which insist on spending unbelievable fortunes to blow up people and things?
It seems to me, and hopefully to you, the stupidity and greed of the military industrial complex (in cahoots with politicos and religious fanatics) is a shameful waste of lives, resources, and most of all, time. We haven’t time to spare as evidenced by the millions of people dying from starvation and disease—all hastened by the disappearance of resources upon which we depend for life. Apparently, human intelligence is out to lunch.
But perhaps I am just being naïve or have been deceived in the purpose of NASA. Some say that it exists to ultimately control humanity from space—eyes in the sky invading our privacy, a cocoon of space junk that prohibits all but the most sophisticated government-approved launches, corporations fattening on the profits from rocket loads of poisonous nuclear fuel or weapons of mass destruction, panting entrepreneurs lined up to mine the resources of the cosmos, and other favored projects whose sole objectives are to produce tomorrow’s billionaires.
If this is the wayward direction of global space programs, then only disciplined citizens can be the vanguards of furthering our evolutionary journey. Perhaps thwarting an unwanted or non-beneficial direction is all that will save us from ourselves as we probe an expanding Universe in search of our new home.
War is murder. And the military preparations now being made for a potential major conflict are aimed at collective murder.
~ Alva (Reimer) Myrdal, January 1902–February 1986. Swedish sociologist and politician; supporter of disarmament; winner Nobel Peace Prize in 1982; wife and mother of three children. Refer Wikipedia.
#0055 Albeit Rantler
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