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| "Investigate Courtney Love, yeah yeah yeah" |
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| Animal Liberation (P.S.) |
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| Give me safety over freedom! |
This is a simplified version of Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Second Economic Bill of Rights, proposed in 1944, which would solve a great many problems.
This is not a history of how banks and the military-industrial complex grabbed power and corrupted our democracy. This is something we can do to change it.What is the problem? The majority of Americans are steadily sinking economically as the nation’s wealth flows to the top. What led to it? Deregulation enacted by rank and file Republicans and conservative Democrats.
Is that all? No, it was also caused by an unprecedented Supreme Court decision that treats corporations like people (giving them personhood) and their money like speech. Corporations are not people, and their money is not free speech. These are rights the founders of this country intended only for individual human beings.
The Daily Kos
Here are some suggestions on what to do about it now:
Banks and corporations have become Too Big to Fail and Too Big to Bail. They threaten Americans' right to the pursuit of happiness, to liberty, and even to life. Let's rethink the whole concept of corporations as a way of doing business.
What is a "corporation" anyway? Ambrose Bierce defined it more than a century ago:
(DailyNews/AP) - Historically, marriage was the surest route to financial security for women. Nowadays it's men who are increasingly getting the biggest economic boost from tying the knot, according to a new analysis of census data. The changes, summarized in a Pew Research Center report being released Tuesday, reflect the proliferation of working wives over the past 40 years -- a period in which American women outpaced men in both education and earnings growth. (TheHappyMisogynist) Website: avoiceformen.com
The position and treatment of animals in Buddhism is important for the light it sheds on Buddhists' perception of their own relation to the natural world, on Buddhist humanitarian concerns in general, and on the relationship between theory and practice.
Animals are regarded in Buddhist thought as sentient (feeling) beings. They are different in intellectual ability but no less able to feel than humans. Animals are cycling through rebirth (Samsara) just as humans are. According to Mahayana Buddhism, animals possess "Buddha nature." In both cases, they possess the potential of becoming enlightened. 
Tibetan thangka representing the various states of existence in Samsara. The rudimentary depiction of the Animal Realm shows this plane collectively rather than attempting to depict its staggering complexity (bodhipaksa.com).
According to this doctrine of rebirth, humans (due to their karma or deeds/intentions) can be reborn in the animal world or other unfortunate destinations. The human world is regarded as the lowest "fortunate" destination. Animals, according to their store of past karma, may be reborn as humans or in worse worlds.
For instance, in one discourse (MN 57; PTS: M i 387) the Buddha cautions that Dog and Ox Duty Ascetics will, by their practice, gain rebirth among dogs and oxen. This accords with the general view that deeds -- that are willed, performed, and accumulated -- more associated with animals than humans result in rebirth in a plane or condition appropriate to experiencing the results. What are such deeds? Behaviors and habits that are slovenly, brutal, dull, vicious, base, lascivious, gluttonous, petty, cruel, and so on.
Like all living beings, animals are ceaselessly wandering on in Samsara. This goes on for so long that it is difficult to meet anyone we have not already been related to countless ways. In an unbounded series of lives, with beings interdependently related, it is from time to time possible to sense and experience the "oneness" of all -- the deep relationship or spiritual empathy (mudita) that sees no separation.
In cosmological terms, animals are believed to inhabit a distinct "world," separate from humans not by space but by state of mind. This realm is called Tiryagyoni (Sanskrit) or Tirac-chānayoni (in the exclusively Buddhist language, Pāli).
S/he is parched and comes across a nearly barren tree, and moving on comes across a shade tree, and moving on comes across an oasis, and so on. Each station represents, very generally, various rebirth destinations from the world of hungry ghosts to animals to humans to celestial beings, and so on for a total of 31 general planes of existence.
(VIDEO) NEW DELHI – India's gay community celebrated a land-mark court ruling Thursday that decriminalizes homosexuality — a decision that could end widespread police harassment and be a harbinger for gradual acceptance for homosexuals across this deeply conservative country. The Delhi High Court ruled that treating consensual gay sex between adults as a crime is a violation of fundamental rights protected by India's constitution. The ruling, the first of its kind in India, is not binding outside New Delhi. More>>
WASHINGTON – The new U.S. ambassador for glo-bal women's issues pledged on April 23, 2009 the Obama administration's "deep commitment" to a U.N. blueprint aimed at slowing the world's population explosion and empowering women. United Nations Foundation: thegirlfund.org
At the heart of the action plan adopted at a U.N. population conference in Cairo 15 years ago is a demand for women's equality through education, economic development, access to modern birth control, and the right to choose if and when to become pregnant.
