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I don't think this law is a bad thing. In New York we do not have irreconcilable diffrences (or incompatibilty) as a divorce option.
We have adultery, cruelty, abandonment and the conversion option. The conversion option takes a legal separation (no reason is needed) and converts its terms to a divorce after at least a year.
If an adult can make a commitment (or sign a contract) they should not be able to break it just becuase they don't feel like sticking to it.
If two people find that they are truly incompatible they always have the separation option (can they really not wait a year? - the only reason I can think of for not waiting is a shotgun marriage, in which case adultery works as a cause)
Divorce hurts women and children disproportionately. Protecting the majority of people affected by divorce is a reasonable governmental function.
Laws which cause people to consider their choices and commitments more carefully are, in my opinion , always a good thing.
-B.C. (married for 20 years after a short marriage which ended in a conversion divorce)
argh- to be honest, the turn in was a draft and I just thought I should back up my claim of our human systems not doing such a good job- so I think I will add this at the risk of now needing to strike other words to keep to the 1000 word limit:
Any feedback welcome!
Consider for example, The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Hunger Facts (2008) as re published at Bread.org international hunger facts: 16000 children die a day due to hunger, which is 5 children per second. Over one billion people in the world lack access to potable water and “over 2.6 billion people lack proper sanitation” (Snyder, 2009).
Instant Runoff Voting - but only so instant as afforded by hand counting paper ballots. Physically stuffing ballot boxes is possible but it is harder than doing it digitally...
IRV, IRV, IRV
Per Congressman Paul's comments on CIA drug connections, please review:
Obama and Afghanistan: America’s Drug-Corrupted War
by Prof Peter Dale Scott
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16713
Thank you Thom for continuing to build bridges on principals that span the political spectrum. Congressman Ron Paul seems like a kindred spirit in this regard. I appreciate his frank observation that Republican ties to big business are driving his party's obsession with war.
Here's a link to a ditty I posted last night that attempts to support the bridge-building effort.
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/w/a/watt_childress/2010/...
Regarding outlawing divorce, I believe criminalizing divorce is the wrong way to go. There are valid reasons for divorce, primarily abusive spouses. I think a better way to resolve this issue would be to eliminate the tax code benefits for divorced couples. Unless you are the victim of abuse, and are granted a divorce due to the abuse, you get to claim the tax benefits for your first marriage only.
In a “surprise” ruling on Tuesday, the 9th District Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the state of Washington’s denial of voting rights to convicted felons amounted to a violation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, citing a state judicial system “infected” with racial discrimination.
What? Isn’t Washington a “blue” state? A liberal, “progressive” state? Well, just because a state has a governor and two senators who are white females does necessarily mean it is liberal or progressive. Outside of Seattle, people can be downright bigoted; even in Seattle, many people mistake “progressive” for being a narcissistic, deluded superstar-in-their-own-mind type. This is a state that has in many ways not advanced much from the “McCabe and Mrs. Miller” days. This is a state that overwhelmingly voted for the anti-affirmative action Initiative 200. This is a state that allowed a self-promoting weasel like Tim Eyman to literally dictate to the state government its “priorities” by convincing enough lemmings to follow him off a fiscal cliff.
But in regard to the court decision (likely to be overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, knowing its contempt for individual rights), the state has always had a much lower percent of its population consisting of racial minorities (which is why many European immigrants come here), and now it has been found to be wanting as a social construct. Washington is a state that has difficulty in assimilating into its economic and social structure its (non-Asian) minorities; the state’s “good old boy” DOT, for example, is notorious for its discriminatory employment practices. Meanwhile, despite the fact that one local watchdog group asserts that blacks and whites in Seattle use “recreational” drugs fairly proportionately per their percentage of the population, blacks are arrested on drug charges at seven times the rate of whites, and this is a perfect example of why the activity such statistics are based upon should be a matter of public discussion—that is to say the reality of race-based policing.
There is an “alternative” weekly in town called “The Stranger,” and it has a “police beat” writer who apparently has a great deal of self-esteem and little sense of discernment. He once quoted a police report that stated that two officers sitting in an unmarked car observed a young black male carrying a backpack walking back and forth nervously in front of a club in North Seattle (the “white” section of town). Presently two young white males in a gold Cadillac arrived, driving slowly; the black male motioned to them into the parking lot, and then walked up to the driver and conversed with him. At that point the officers drove up behind the Cadillac, and while one officer kept the black male occupied, the other "interrogated" the white males, and then let them go. Marijuana was found inside the 17-year-old black male's backpack, and he was arrested. The writer for “The Stranger” praised the actions of the officers, observing that "What we want out of a (cop’s) day's work is this kind of purity."
If you ask me, this is about as far from "pure" as police work gets, short of killing unarmed “suspects.” This is race-based policing at its very core. Obviously the "buy" was set-up by the two white males in the gold Cadillac, doubtless from a wealthy household. Yet the police did not wait for the transaction to be completed—they intervened in time to prevent it, and allowed the white males (who doubtless made such purchases before) to get away scot-free. Their “upstanding” parents ought not be troubled by such embarrassing events. Doubtless the two white males--their hearts’ racing--thanked their God for their "good fortune" that the cops, at least in regard to drug crimes, are only interested in minorities.
Did someone say there would be a discussion regarding the AVATAR?
I just turned this into an online publisher last evening - what timing- I loved the movie and had Thom not said to have gone out to see it, I would not have.
January 6, 2010
AVATAR: Save the Planet! A Lesson in Biodiversity Conservation, Species Diversity, & Nature
AVATAR Save the Planet! Biodiversity conservation and species diversity create sustainable living systems for survival and beyond in Pandora. Why not on planet Earth?
Koyaanisqatsi
Mega movies such as AVATAR, and Fantasia, depict euphoric life in settings apart from industrial society to illicit passion for many of us dream our daily lives could be like. Documentaries such as Koyaanisqatsi, a native American Indian term meaning life out of balance http://bit.ly/6JMEor , seek to show us what most of us do not want to see. When biodiversity conservation and species diversity flourish; and the systems on the planet flow into each other in balance, this is environmental justice.
Conquer, Cease, Or Cooperate
In the movie AVATAR, there is a land known as Pandora for which the ecosystems do flourish and balance resulting in a peaceful and sustainable world. When these natural systems are conquered and dissected mechanistically however, as do the Sky People, there is an imbalance and a living beyond their means such that there is a permanent army dedicated to stealing the resources they have allowed themselves to run out of without considering alternative solutions.
The Pandorans cultivate and honor their natural environment by living sustainably within the laws of nature and are careful to live with the natural systems already present, for example, they communicate with pterodactyls for which then are allowed to board, negating the need for airplanes and airports.
The world of the tribes Cameron portrays in AVATAR are initially introduced to us as the ‘primitives’ who live in Pandora, yet whose live styles it pans out, illustrate a euphoric harmonic balance in which all creations are “joined in an highly interconnected electrochemical circuitry on a global network,” says Sigourney Weaver’s character Dr. Grace Augustine. Rather than choose the society of The Sky People’s ways for which are based upon the basis of ‘kill or be killed,’ the Pandorans have evolved into a fully integrated, cooperative civilization whose notion of life is to ‘help and be helped.’
Cameron’s production, shows us the real possibility of existing sustainably given natural means of food production, water filtration, waste removal and recycling systems, and protective clothing and habitat, all without living in an over controlled, cold, and industrialized world.
Costing Mother Nature’s Daily Works
Lissa Harris (2003), reports in her article, The Wealth of Nature: A Three part series profiling ecological economists that Robert Costanza, director and founder of the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics at the University of Vermont, and cofounder of the International Society for Ecological Economics published a study in 1997 in the British journal Nature, in which he estimated the annual net worth of the biosphere to be worth: $33 trillion, a figure far greater than the annual gross national products (GNP) of all the world's economies combined. See her article here: http://www.grist.org/article/what2
Environmentalist David Suzuki includes this same study in his groundbreaking ‘We are the Earth Serie’s video series. You can watch this classic fantastical series on You Tube. Look for part 4 of 5 parts called Interconnectedness.
Given this logical albeit cold calculation, it makes the case, that the systems of the Earth are yet doing more work than any of our current man made methods in terms of meeting the basic needs of civilization. Might as Leonardo Di Caprio conveys in his Eleventh Hour, we learn from nature’s superior models. For example, trees transport water with no electricity or even gravity feed. Could not our engineers learn to build our skyscrapers mimicking the efficiency of the xylem tissues of say a giant Redwood?
On Pandora, the pterodactyls are air travel, with one security check good for life! Their copper coils neck bands? Cell phones. Beds? Large pea pod hammocks slung form the mighty branches of Home Tree. Their place of healing and worship, the Tree of Souls. For defense, their wild dogs become soldiers, hammerhead charging rhinos ram the Sky People’s tanks and artillery fire, clearing the way for Mother Rhino to crush robotic invaders who served alongside the Pandorans.
Rather than conquer and destroy the very vital systems that were sustaining them as did the Sky People; instead, the Pandorans loved and cherished and literally joined the electrochemical circuit they had cultivated and nourished themselves in a seemingly fragile balance though stalwart foundation and framework of natural law.
Include the Cost on the Books
We must acknowledge the finiteness of resources, habitable concentrations of gases in the atmosphere, and purity of our food and water. Without budgeting for these powerful but fragile and limiting balances of nature upon which our physical daily state results in crisis to crisis management and a degradation of the very resources we need to survive. However, by factoring the above mentioned externalities into the actual spreadsheets we as a society as businesses, governments and organizations in general use to manage ourselves, we can run each organization in harmony as a microcosm of the macrocosm, striking the harmonic of balance and alignment with all of creation.
The Scales of Balance and Justice
Dr. Augustine on the science staff of the Sky People proclaimed to her people in a plea to stop plans for destruction of Pandora "The planet of the natives is worth so much more than the blue inobtanium.”
Al Gore contemplates this same cross road decision on stage in his Nobel Peace Prize winning An Inconvenient Truth as he paces in jest at the ease of choosing between bars of gold on one holder of the scales of balance and justice….and on the other….the entire planet.
To which the following old Ancient Cree Proverb be invoked here - "Only when the last stream has been poisoned and the last fish has died, will man realize he cannot eat money."
Want to further your interest in becoming an Avatar Angel? On Facebook:
Join real Avatar fans movement. Indigenous eco-warriors, planet Earth need help now! Be hero Go 2 FB http://tinyurl.com/avatarisnow #avatar
http://www.suite101.com/profile.cfm/karenhansen
6 Republicans and 2 Democrats leaving the senate.
Statistically that's 15% of the Republicans and 3% of the Democrats leaving the senate.
Gerald Socha,
I look forward to listening to the Wolff/Fraad talk. I feel so low right now (it's my birthday today (Jan. 7) and I don't know how much longer I can go on. I can't find work and my money will run out before I do, I think.
I support the recommendations of Roy Tuckman and Quark (Jan. 5) RE moveyourmoney.info as a source of information about local banks. The "Democracy Now" show on Monday 1/4 had an interview with Robert Johnson, former economist at the Senate Banking Committee, about this very subject.
"Democracy Now" is extremely informative about all kinds of topics not covered by mainstream media. It is on radio and TV stations around the country every weekday. I highly recommend it to all your listeners. Check website: democracynow.org
I just watched Richard Wolff's presentation on "Capitalism hits the fan." We are not in a financial crisis; we are in a capitalism crisis.
Do the CIA killings in Afghanistan signal defeat for the USA?
http://mindbodypolitic.com/2010/01/05/doug-valentine-cia-killings-spells...
Is the USA's presence in the Middle East creating more chaos and fear? Does the CIA's actions in Afghanistan mean defeat for the USA in that country?
http://mindbodypolitic.com/2010/01/05/doug-valentine-cia-killings-spells...
We now hear that Turkey has unrest. Are the people in the Middle East tired of our presence in the region? Since Obama's Cairo speech our image in the area has deteriorated drastically. We read that the USA will remain in the Middle East fighting wars for thirty years. Yemen opposes the USA sending trrops to their country.
It appears that the USA's foreign policies center on creating chaos and fear by her presence, nuclear proliferation, expansion of our military bases, fighting endless wars, and the hijacking of another country's natural resources.
Is the USA headed for defeat in Afghanistan?
http://mindbodypolitic.com/2010/01/05/doug-valentine-cia-killings-spells...
I thought I read that the USA is concerned about the instability in Turkey. Is the USA presence in the Middle East creating unrest in Middle Eastern countries? We hear that we will be in the Middle East fighting wars for thirty years. Are the USA's foreign policies to create chaos and fear wherever we place our presence?
The image of our presence in the Middle East has deteriorated drastically since Obama's Cairo speech. Will the USA's fall from grace in the Middle East continue well into the twenty-first century?
I forgot to link the talk by Wolff and Fraad. Here is the link.
http://www.rdwolff.com/content/psychology-and-economy-discussion-brecht-...
I enjoy reading Ray McGovern's articles. His recent article is five pages.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Counterterrorism-In-Shambl-by-Ray-McGov...
Today, January 6, 2010, was a glorious day for me. I receive Surveys from time to time from both the RNC and the DNC. Today, I received a DNC Survey. I unloaded both barrels. It is such a great feeling. I SAID THAT I DO NOT PLAN TO VOTE FOR OBAMA IN 2012. FOOL ME ONCE SHAME ON OBAMA; FOOL ME TWICE SHAME ON ME! I DID SAY THAT THE ONLY WAY I WOULD VOTE FOR OBAMA IS TO HAVE HIM JOIN THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT AT THE HAGUE, NETHERLANDS AND WE BECOME PART OF THE FAMILY OF NATIONS.
You are well aware by now that Paul Craig Roberts is one of my favorite writers.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Liberty-Has-Been-Lost-by-Paul-Craig-Rob...
Here is a good article by Tom Engelhardt and Nick Turse.
http://original.antiwar.com/engelhardt/2010/01/03/what-to-watch-for-in-2...
Here is a lengthy presentation by Wolff and Fraad. It is a four hour presentation to hear both part I and II. Some of Thom's ideas are hear without his name but Wolff adds some additional information. If you can find the time, please listen to "Psychology and the Economy" by Wolff and Fraad.
I would like to comment on Hour Three but if I use the f-word or the N-word, my post will receive a "Comment awaits moderation." My expressions and hands are tied.
Why Counter-Terrorism Is in Shambles
By Ray McGovern and Coleen Rowley
January 5, 2010
Editor’s Note: A blogger with the PBS’ NewsHour asked former CIA analyst Ray McGovern to respond to three questions regarding recent events involving the CIA, FBI, and the intelligence community in general.
A couple of other individuals were asked identical questions, queries that are typical of what radio/TV and blogger interviewers think to be the right ones. So there is merit in trying to answer them directly, such as they are, and then broadening the response to address the core problems confronting U.S. counter-terror strategies.
After drafting his answers, McGovern asked former FBI attorney/special agent Coleen Rowley, a colleague in Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, to review his response and add her own comments at the end. The resulting Q and A is below:
http://consortiumnews.com/2010/010510c.html
ALLAN NAIRN: Right. Well, you know, the issue is not the safety of Americans. The issue is the safety of people. All people. You have to count not just the American deaths and potential American deaths, but the deaths everywhere, since—you know, since everyone counts. And the best solution is the one that protects the maximum number of people. And if you happen to be the party that is committing the largest number of killings in the world, as the US is now, then the solution is easy: stop committing the killings.
Again from: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/6/obama_has_kept_the_machine_set
In this case, in the present moment in history, that would have the added side benefit of most likely making Americans safer, as well, because you would take away the main provocation. Tom Brokaw, on TV this weekend, made a very interesting comment. He described what the US was engaged in as the “war against Islamic rage.” That’s actually the most telling definition I’ve seen. I mean, think about it. In Afghanistan, Karzai, the US/UN-installed president, basically the man thought of as a US puppet, the man previously lionized by the US press before he started speaking out against the US aerial killings of civilians, Karzai started to get enraged after a series of bombings of wedding parties by the US and NATO forces. Think about it. Somebody bombs your wedding, a foreign air force bombs your wedding. How are you supposed to react? Are you supposed to be delighted? Rage is the normal human response. If you stop that, you lower the rage, and you probably get fewer attacks on Americans.
You know, there’s a man named Kilcullen, who’s Australian by origin, who’s now one of the main intellects behind the US counterinsurgency policy. He advises Secretary Gates, who of course was Bush’s Defense Secretary, as well. He said that if he were a Muslim today in a Middle Eastern country, he would probably be a jihadist. Robert Pape, the leading academic specialist on suicide bombings who studied the entire database of all the suicide bombers in recent years, said it’s a consequence primarily of occupation. So, you stop committing mass murder overseas, and you immediately, immediately, just by that action, achieve the main goal, which is minimizing the overall deaths of people, and you most likely get the side benefit of also minimizing the deaths of Americans—