The Global Conversation

Category: Headline

  • FOOD FOR THOUGHT:
    SHOULD WHAT WE EAT
    BE TRANSPARENTLY LABELED?

    The question seems simple enough. Should foods containing genetically engineered ingredients be required to be clearly labeled as having been genetically modified?

    Simple or not, voters in California appear to be undecided, and so ballot Proposition 37 has no guarantee of passing when the votes are counted Tuesday night. If what would appear to be a “no-brainer” decision can’t be easily made by California residents, it may be in no small part the result of the “No on  37” campaign which has received funding in the multi-millions from some major food companies.

    “Top contributors to the anti-labeling campaign include biotech giants Monsanto, Dow, Bayer CropScience, Syngenta and BASF,” according to a news report from Erika Bolstad of McClatchy Newspapers, posted on the Internet. “Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Kraft Foods and Nestle all have donated more than $1 million” to oppose labeling, her report went on.

    The anti-label forces has raised around $45 million to get Californians to vote “No” on the measure, while the campaign to make labeling the law has had to work with only about $7 million, the McClatchy story said.

    At issue is whether consumers purchasing food at retail outlets should be told clearly, on labels, if foods have been modified from their original, organic form. Many products now labeled as “natural” would have to have that word removed from the label if the initiative passes.

    Those favoring Prop 37 say that the word “natural” on food causes people to be confused as to whether the product has been genetically modified or not. Some cynics among consumer groups go so far as to claim that this is, in fact, exactly why certain food manufacturers use the term “natural” on their labels, even though the food inside their packaging has been genetically modified, with their DNA altered.

    One typical form of alteration is to “re-engineer” a food crop with genes from other plants, or even by adding animal genes to plants, as well as certain viruses or bacteria. The purpose of such alteration is to maintain the growing life of a food (some bio-tech crops are modified to combat pests or to tolerate herbicides) or to prolong the shelf-life of the food product—or to produce both results.

    Pro-Prop 37 spokespersons say that what consumers want is not to eliminate or remove genetically modified foods from the marketplace, but simply to be able to make informed choices — to be able to “vote with our pocketbooks” whether they choose to eat food that has been engineered away from its organic form, as one person put it.

    The ballot measure is an effort to “increase the transparency of the American food system,” the McCatchy story quotes Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

    Why would anybody oppose the measure? And why would consumers be confused about whether to vote for it?

    Big Food sources have opposed the proposed labeling law on the basis of cost, they say, which would have to be passed on to families already stretching their food budget. It could cost the average family up to $400 a more per year, their argument declares.

    Opponent also say that the measure, if passed, would provide inconsistent information to consumers, since it applies only to food purchased in retail stores, and not to food found in restaurants, for instance. Nor would it apply to some meat products—even though many animals are raised on genetically modified grains. So, Big Food says, people wouldn’t be fully informed about which of the foods they are eating are engineered or not anyway.

    Supporters of the measure say that more information is better than less, and that just the forced removal of the word “natural” from food that is not “natural” at all, plus adding the words “genetically engineered,” or other words similar, would go a long way toward making it easier for the average shopper to make informed choices about which foods to buy and eat.

    Consumer protection groups allege that Big Food does not want such labels specifically because major food producers are afraid that consumers will then shy away from their products.

    On Tuesday, California voters will decide — and that decision could have major ramifications across the United States, persons on both sides of the issue say. If it passes, the new law in California would “bring one of the biggest consumer markets and food producers in the country in line with labeling laws in 61 other countries,” the McClatchy report from journalist Erika Bolstad said. And that, observers agree, might well force the issue in other U.S. states as well.

    The New Spirituality invites a new way of creating all of society, not simply its food industry, and that way is called Total Transparency. There can be no real reason in an enlightened society not to tell everyone everything about everything, such a model suggests.

    And your thoughts…?

  • WORLD WEALTH GAP AT
    HIGHEST LEVEL IN 20 YEARS

    A new study released by one of the world’s most respected international organizations shows that “global inequalities in wealth are at their highest level for 20 years and are growing, ” the BBC reported yesterday.

    The global study found “that in most of the 32 developing countries they looked at, the rich had increased their share of national income since the 1990s,” the BBC report said.

    Making matters worse is the fact that one reason the gap between the rich and the poor is widening is not necessarily because the rich are getting richer, but because the poor are getting poorer, the study shows. “In a fifth of the countries, the incomes of the poorest had fallen” over that same period since the 90’s, the BBC report said.

    The worldwide study was released by Save the Children, an international non-profit organization whose stated goal is to improve the lives of children everywhere.

    “The gap (between the wealthy and the poor) has become particularly pronounced among children, and affects their well-being,” the BBC report quoted the charity as saying.

    While neither the Save the Children study nor the BBC report regarding it made any mention of world attitudes around the so-called Global Wealth Gap, we will here.

    In the United States, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has been taking considerable heat from his political opponents in the Republican Party the past year for wanting to “redistribute wealth.”

    The Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, was famously caught by a hidden microphone at a GOP fundraiser last May talking about the “47% of Americans” who he said were going to “vote for this president no matter what” because they were “not paying taxes” and were dependent upon the government to get by.

    This 47%, Mr. Romney went on, were not willing to take responsibility for themselves. Mr. Romney told his campaign contributors, who paid many thousands of dollars per-plate to attend the fundraising dinner (served by white-gloved waiters), that it was not his job to be worried about that 47%.

    In the immediate aftermath of the release of the recording, when he was being criticized for his remarks, Mr. Romney stoutly defended what he had said. Only as the criticism grew overwhelming during the weeks that followed, threatening to derail his candidacy for his nation’s highest office, did Mr. Romney retract his remarks, repudiating them in full. “I was completely wrong,” he allowed.

    Startling, however, was the number of Americans who appeared to agree with his earlier-stated views. Public opinion surveys showed a remarkable number of members of his own Republican Party who supported his ideas. Presumably, after Mr. Romney repudiated his own statements, those Republicans repudiated theirs.

    Yet this is only the latest in a decades-long opinion trend — not only in America, but around the world — that now begs the question: Do people holding great, or even modest, wealth really care about the people holding none? Further, and perhaps more to the point, should they?

    Is it at some level the responsibility of those who “have” to be worried about (much less actually take care of) those who “have not”?

    This, of course, is not a small social issue; not an insignificant question. Human societies from the beginning of civilization have had to face it.

    Is it okay for such societies to “take from the rich and give to the poor” through taxes, levies, or by whatever legal means?

    Conversations with God is very clear on this subject. It says that in highly evolved societies of this future there will be no taxes, levies, or limitations on a person’s income whatsoever. It also says this would be so because in such societies people would voluntarily give a generous percentage of their income to a global fund for the poor.

    CWG also suggests that members of such societies would voluntarily place on themselves an upper limit on income…say, $25 million a year, as simply an example…and that everything above that amount would be freely sent to a global fund to help those living in poverty, but with the stipulation that those contributing the funds could specifically direct their use to the programs and charities of their choice — meaning they would still be in charge of where their money went.

    Such ideas are utopian, to be sure, but they do raise a continually nagging question: How much is ‘enough’? And, since the wealthy worked to produce their wealth (presumably), should they be required, even by social pressure, to share it with the less fortunate (or with, as Mr. Romney said in his now admittedly mistaken remarks, the 47% of people who will never “take responsibility for themselves”)?

    The question, of course, presumes an equality of opportunity for the poor to themselves become rich — an assumption that may or may not reflect the true state of the global marketplace.

    And your thoughts?

  • SANDY IS PART OF GOD
    ‘SYSTEMATICALLY DESTROYING AMERICA’

    God is punishing America “right before our eyes,” according to a Christian preacher, and Hurricane Sandy is part of God’s judgmental backlash.

    Author and chaplain John McTernan has declared that Hurricane Sandy is part of God’s plan of “systematically destroying America” as punishment for its wicked ways—part of which is exemplified, he said, by the fact that both U.S. presidential candidates Barack Obama and Mitt Romney “are pro-homosexual and are behind the homosexual agenda.”

    McTernan has posted a statement on his website saying that Sandy is ravaging the U.S. East Coast “21 years to the day” in October 1991 when “President George Bush Sr. initiated the Madrid Peace Process to divide the land of Israel, including Jerusalem. America has been under God’s judgment since this event.”

    Twenty-one years “breaks down to 7 x 3, which is a significant number with God,” the Christian preacher said, adding that “three is perfection as the Godhead is three in one, while seven is perfection.” Carrying his God-Is-Destroying-America theme forward, he said that “just last August, Hurricane Isaac hit New Orleans seven years later, on the exact day of Hurricane Katrina. Both hit during the week of the homosexual event called Southern Decadence in New Orleans!”

    McTernan’s website statement also said, “It appears that God gave America 21 years to repent of interfering with His prophetic plan for Israel; however, it has gotten worse under all the presidents and especially Obama. Obama is 100 percent behind the Muslim Brotherhood, which has vowed to destroy Israel and take Jerusalem.”

    In addition to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Sandy, “there was an incredible heatwave and drought that destroyed massive amounts of the crops” in America, McTernan’s statement notes. “This drought has not let up and now covers about 65 percent of the country.”

    The drought, he said, “triggered record forest fires in the West. If you add the area of the drought and now the hurricane together, it would be about 80 percent of the country! As I said, the Holy God of Israel is systematically destroying America right before our eyes.”

    The Christian preacher’s statement ends with a lament: “With all of this, there is almost zero repentance by the church: zero! The fear of God has disappeared from His people. The church in America is now EXACTLY like ancient Israel before the Babylonians destroyed them. Both ancient Israel and the modern American church completely lost the fear of God.”

    Can all of this be true? It probably is true that many millions of people have “lost the fear of God” — but is this bad? And can it be true that God is punishing human beings, systematically destroying an entire nation, for committing offenses against the Lord?

    This is exactly the opposite of what The New Spirituality, as represented in the message of the 9 texts in the Conversations with God cosmology, tells us. It is why I launched, with the creation of Humanity’s Team, a “civil rights movement for the Soul, freeing humanity at last from the oppression of its beliefs in a violent, angry, and vindictive God.”

    The challenge now facing humanity: thought is creative…and collective thought, all pointing in the same direction, is highly creative…leading to the intriguing question: What is creating the disasters befalling not just America, but the whole human race in these days and times? Is it a violent, angry, and vindictive God, or our belief in a violent, angry, and vindictive God?

    Are the billions of people who continue to persistently believe in a God of retribution producing a force field — a vortex, if you will — that is generating exactly the kind of negative and destructive energy that could create a self-fulfilling prophecy?

    If positive thinking is powerful and produces results, is negative thinking just as powerful?

    If Collective Consciousness produces Collective Experience, might it be time to change our Collective Consciousness?

  • DID GEN. POWELL ENDORSE OBAMA
    BECAUSE BOTH MEN ARE BLACK?

    Did former U.S. Secretary of State and retired four star Army general Colin L. Powell, a prominent Republican, just endorse Barack Obama for president of the United States because both men are black?

    A top surrogate for the campaign of Republican Mitt Romney said so Thursday, bringing race into the presidential contest just days before ballots are cast in America on Nov. 6.

    Former New Hampshire Governor John Sununu, who has spoken in support of the Romney campaign for over a year, suggested on CNN Thursday night that Mr. Powell’s announced objections to Mr. Romney’s proposals and policies were not the real reason that Mr. Powell has broken with his own party to openly endorse and support President Obama.

    “Frankly, when you take a look at Colin Powell, you have to wonder whether that’s an endorsement based on issues, or whether he’s got a slightly different reason for preferring President Obama,” Mr. Sununu told CNN’s Piers Morgan on Morgan’s nationally telecast interview program. Asked by Mr. Morgan what that “different reason” might be, the Romney campaign surrogate said:

    “Well, I think when you have somebody of your own race that you’re proud of being president of the United States, I applaud Colin for standing with him.”

    Facing an immediate backlash for calling Colin Powell’s endorsement essentially disingenuous, Mr. Sununu backtracked a few hours after the Morgan interview, releasing a statement directly contradicting his own earlier pronouncement. “Colin Powell,” Mr. Sununu said, “is a friend and I respect the endorsement decision he made, and I do not doubt that it was based on anything but his support of the president’s policies.”

    For his part, the Republican Powell made it crystal clear why he was not supporting Mitt Romney, his own party’s nominee. Appearing on the a.m. news program CBS This Morning, Mr. Powell said he had the “utmost respect” for Mitt Romney, but was concerned about what he termed Mr. Romney’s shifting foreign policies. “The governor who was speaking on Monday night at the debate was saying things that were quite different from what he’s said earlier, so I’m not quite sure what Governor Romney we would be getting with respect to foreign policy,” Mr. Powell said.

    Mr. Powell was Secretary of State from 2001 to 2005 during the administration of President George W. Bush, yet had no problem praising President Obama for his handling of the U.S. economy. “When he took over, the country was in very, very difficult straits, we were in one of the worst recessions we had seen in recent times, close to a depression,” Mr. Powell said. “We were in real trouble. I saw over the next several years stabilization come back in the financial community, housing is now starting to pick up after four years, it’s starting to pick up. Consumer confidence is rising. So I think generally we’ve come out of the dive and we’re starting to gain altitude.”

    The retired four-star general went on to call Obama’s actions to protect the U.S. from terrorist threats “very, very solid.”

    Was former Gov. Sununu’s remark on a widely televised interview concerning Mr. Powell’s endorsement of President Obama a last-minute attempt to “play the race card” a little over a week before a national election?

    Only Mr. Sununu knows the answer to that inquiry, but there is little question that the endorsement of Mr. Obama by a Republican as prominent as the former secretary of state (Mr. Powell was only a few years ago being encouraged by his party to run for President himself) had to have stung the Romney campaign, which would no doubt have preferred Mr. Powell to simply keep silent if he did not feel he could openly endorse Mr. Romney.

    Perhaps Romney supporters felt that the only way to mute the Powell endorsement of President Obama was to marginalize it as simply one black man assisting another. In the world of a New Spirituality, where fairness and transparency would be the hallmark, Mr. Sununu would return to the Piers Morgan program and make an apology to the same nationwide audience for his remark, and then say on national television what he put into a written statement released hours after the CNN program aired: “I respect the endorsement decision he (Colin Powell) made, and I do not doubt that it was based on anything but his support of the President’s policies.”

    Wouldn’t that have been refreshing? It would have been far better than saying something blatantly racist on nationwide TV, then issuing a corrective statement hours later–a statement that everyone knows is far less likely to be seen in print by as many millions as watch CNN.

    In some circles this is called Get-Away-With-It Politics, in which you do something outrageous Big, apologize for it Small, then say you did your best to correct yourself, while really doing very little to alter the original impression that you so powerfully created.

    This kind of political handiwork is usually done by political hacks known as “hatchet men.” Generally these are well known former political figures, now cronies who hang around on the edges of campaigns issuing supportive statements on behalf of the candidate, but without official portfolio, so they can get away with saying what the campaign itself cannot.

    In other words, people like former governor John Sununu. And if the Romney Campaign wanted to do something showing real class, it, too, would disavow Mr. Sununu’s racist remark about the Powell endorsement of President Obama.

    Don’t count on it.

     

    (Have a comment? Submit it below. Your opinion matters. — Editor)


  • IF YOU ARE PREGNANT FROM RAPE,
    IS IT WHAT GOD INTENDED?

    Running for the United States Senate in the state of Indiana, Republican candidate Richard Mourdock declared at a public debate with his opponent Tuesday night that God intends pregnancies that result from rape to occur.

    For this reason, Mr. Mourdock said, he opposes abortion even in the case of rape or incest, the cable news network CNN has reported.

    Mr. Mourdock joins Republican Congressman Todd Akin, who is seeking to advance to the U.S. Senate seat from Missouri, and Republican Congressman Joe Walsh, running for re-election to the U.S. House of Representatives in Illinois, in placing before the American public yet another statement regarding pregnancies and abortion that appear to be significantly in disharmony with the views held by the majority of American women.

    Taken together, those statements are these…

    From Mr. Akin: In cases of “legitimate rape,” a woman’s body automatically biologically rejects insemination and therefore, pregnancy rarely occurs in such cases.

    From Mr. Mourdock:  “I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something God intended to happen.” Mr. Mourdock said he would not oppose abortion if a mother’s life was in danger.

    From Mr. Walsh: Abortion as a life-saving procedures are not needed because “with modern technology and science, you can’t find one instance” in which an abortion would be needed to save the life of a mother. After a firestorm of objections for the next 24 hours, Mr. Walsh the next day amended his statement, acknowledging that there might be “very rare circumstances” where life-saving abortions might be required.

    All three candidates have had the stout support of the so-called tea party in the U.S., which has been seeking to move the Republican Party further to the right in setting the political agenda for America.

    And so, for the third time in three months and the second time in two weeks, the American people, and women in particular, have had their most basic and sacred spiritual beliefs placed on the line as they go into voting booths or mark their advance ballots in U.S. election just ahead.

    It has been said that politics are—or certainly should be—the civic-action outcome and the on-the-ground product of a person’s most sacred and important beliefs. If this is true, the American election could turn on the question of what God wants. Mr. Mourdock has made it clear in written statements to reporters following his debate on Tuesday that he was not in any way suggesting that God wants women to be raped. Yet if such a heinous thing should occur, he said, and it resulted in the woman becoming pregnant, that pregnancy would have to be considered what God intended.

    “Life is a gift from God,” Mr. Mourdock said, “and I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something God intended to happen.”

    The New Spirituality agrees with Mr. Mourdock. And it goes further. Everything that occurs in Life is intended by God, it declares. There is nothing that happens in the Universe that is somehow outside of God’s ability to control. A person could not so much as lift a little finger if God did not want it to happen. So if something has happened, it could not have happened against God’s Will. Such a thing would be impossible.

    If this is not true, then we really are “children of a lesser God.” We are moving through a life that is placing circumstances and situations before us at the whim and whimsy of “fate.” The whole experience is just a roll of the dice. Yet Conversations with God says that just the opposite is true. Not a sparrow falls without God’s knowledge, and not a thing occurs against God’s Will.

    Why, then—to stick with the present case—would it be God’s Will for a pregnancy to occur as a result of a rape? And, extending the logic of the New Spirituality, how could the rape itself occur if it were against God’s Will?

    The true test of any spiritual belief must be in how questions such as these are approached and answered. And people of courage are invited by Life to speak their answers into Life, bringing their most sacred beliefs into the arena of their experience.

    Mr. Mourdock did just that at the debate with his opponent on Tuesday, acknowledging with regard to the abortion question, and his position on it: “I struggled with it myself for a long time.” Members of the New Spirituality community may have opinions that differ from those of Mr. Mourdock on why it would not be against God’s Will for a pregnancy to occur as a result of a rape, and what “should” or “must” be done afterward, but they would be admiring of Mr. Mourdock for his bravery in so publicly announcing his beliefs.

    Indeed, a major tenet of the New Spirituality is that “ours is not a better way, ours is merely another way” to understand Life and its events. Where the New Spirituality would differ from Mr. Mourdock would be in his belief that if a woman becomes pregnant as a result of rape or incest, it is God’s Will that she have the child. The New Spirituality would say that it is God’s Will that she have a choice as to whether to have the child, not that she be without choice—and that the very opportunity to make this choice in an integral part of the larger purpose for the experience itself. Indeed, it is the reason for every situation, circumstance, or event in Life, which continually creates a contextual field within which humans have the opportunity to decide Who They Are, and Who They Now Choose To Be, CWG says.

    Life is not a series of random events, occurring without rhyme or reason, Conversations with God shares, but rather, an intricately designed and deliberately set into motion sequence of occurrences collaboratively and spontaneously created by all the Souls in existence for the purpose of giving that Collection of Souls a direct experience of Itself, both as a collection and as individuals within the collection. In other words, Life exists as a means by which that which we call God may know Itself experientially, through the expression in physicality of Its individual parts, within a realm of relativity.

    The New Spirituality says that we are here on Earth to do more than just live and die and make the best of the experience. We are also here to do more than simply find a way to “get back to heaven”—or, at least, avoid going to hell. Those are simplistic views of the reason and purpose for human existence.

    We are here, Conversations with God says, to advance a larger agenda. We are here to move forward an eternal evolutionary process in which our Soul is involved. It is a process through which each individual Soul experiences its True Identity fully, and by which Life Itself expands its expression to reflect the wonder of its ultimate and true nature.

    And just exactly what is the “True Identity” of the soul? CWG indicates that the soul is the individuated aspect of Divinity Itself, and that its purpose through physical life is to express and to experience Divinity at the next highest level, in a constantly escalating spiral.

    We don’t “have to” do it. Nothing is required of us in this or any other lifetime. Not the bringing to term of a pregnancy resulting from rape, nor any other thing in particular. We have an endless number of lifetimes, and nothing is specifically demanded, commanded, or required of us in any given passage through physical life. Our incarnations never end, with the soul moving from one physical expression to another on an eternal journey—and it is the eternality of Life Itself which makes it not necessary for a particular lifetime to produce a particular outcome.

    To allow your Mind to get a handle on this, imagine that after 40 years of going to a job every day, you have finally retired, are in wonderful health, have ample financial resources, and can now look forward to years of doing whatever you please. Would you feel required to play golf next Thursday, as opposed to Thursday a week later? Other than for the sheer joy of it, would there be any other reason to do a particular thing on a particular day in a particular way?

    The beauty of retirement, of course, is freedom—the joy and the freedom to do what you want, when you want, in the way that you want. You are said to have “earned it.”

    This is also the beauty of Life Itself. And this freedom, too, you have “earned.” By the very act of coming into physicality (not an insignificant decision) and living day-to-day in the Realm of Relativity (no small task), you have earned the freedom to do what you want, when you want, in the way that you want. Freedom is God’s prerogative—and you are nothing less than Divine.

    The Old Spirituality, of course, espouses a different view. First, it says (in most cases) that we do not have infinite lifetimes, but rather, only this one. Second, it says that while we have Free Will, we really do not, but are required or commanded to do certain things and not to do other things, and that violation of that command will “earn” us something alright—it will earn us eternal torment and unending suffering in the fires of hell. Finally, it says that God has told us exactly what our requirements are, and all we have to do is pick and listen to the Right Religion to know exactly what God wants and demands from us. If we pick the wrong religion—yes, even if we believe in God and try to serve God, but believe in God in the wrong way—we are likewise going straight to hell immediately after death.

    The New Spirituality tells us that Life on Earth is part and parcel of the ‘heaven’ you have been told about. The whole expression—the experience between physical lifetimes and the experience of each lifetime—is what “paradise” is all about. “Heaven” for the soul is the ability to know and to express Divinity in you, through you, as you…in the way and at the time that you wish.

    In truth, Divinity is expressed through you no matter what you do. It is impossible for you not to express Divinity, since Divinity is Who You Are. It is simply a matter of how you want to define Divinity in This Moment, Now.

    Put another way, God is what you say God is, by how you are being in any given situation or circumstance. As Conversations with God says, “Every act is an act of self-definition.” And Life Itself, throughout the multiple universes, is God in the act of defining Itself as it wishes to know Itself through the here-and-now expression of Itself.

    The greatest gift we have been given by God—or, to state it more accurately, that we have given ourselves—is Free Will. We can express our Selves in any way that we desire. The question is not, “How can the way human beings are be an expression of Divinity?” The question is, “Why would human beings choose for Divinity to be expressed in this way?” And, more transformatively, “What could cause us to define Who We Are, and Divinity Itself, in another way? A higher way? A grander way?”

    If we are in the act of defining God, would we want to do it any differently tomorrow than we have done today? That is the question. Our answer will determine the future of humanity, and so is, in both human terms and Divine terms, The Only Thing That Matters.

    UPDATE: October 25 — Reporter Wayne Drash writes in a copyrighted story on CNN’s website today that Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of the best-selling book When Bad Things Happen to Good People, said Mourdock’s remarks were off-base. Mr. Drash quotes Rabbi Kushner as saying that people “should have compassion for the person whose life is messed up by this and not make her an instrument for our idiosyncratic, theological commitment.

    “If you believe she has no right to terminate that pregnancy, you’re free to believe that,” Kushner is quoted. “But for you to write your preferences into law and compel another person to mess her life up because of what you believe, I think you’re going too far.”

    Mr. Drash ends his quotes from Mr. Kushner with this observation from the rabbi: “I continue to be bemused by the ultraconservative lawmakers who say they want smaller government and less government intrusion into people’s lives, except when it comes to who you can marry and how many children you should have.”

    In the same CNN story, Mr. Drash reported on a Protestant chaplain who said that he has consoled about 50 pregnant rape victims through the years — typically girls raped by their fathers — while working with the Phoenix Police Department. This leaves open the question: Would Mr. Mourdock say that victims of rape impregnated by their own fathers or brothers or grandfathers be told in no uncertain terms to have the baby, because it is God’s intention?

  • CONGRESSMAN SAID THERE’S NEVER
    MEDICAL REASON FOR ABORTION

    The GOP is in trouble again. Republican Congressmen Joe Walsh, representing Illinois’ 8th District, declared last Thursday night that there is never a single instance when there is a medical necessity to use abortion to save a woman’s life.

    The congressman’s remark came in a televised debate against his Democrat opponent, Tammy Duckworth, and was reported by writers Bob Secter and Deborah L. Shelton in a copyrighted stored in the Chicago Tribune.

    The Tribune article was picked up and widely distributed by the Washington Bureau of McClatchy News Service and can be found here.

    Asked about the statement after the debate, Mr. Walsh stood by his assertion in his response to reporters. “With modern technology and science, you can’t find one instance” in which an abortion would be needed to save the life of a mother, the Republican said.

    The Tribune story said that “medical experts sought to refute Walsh’s initial claim,” the newspaper reporting that “The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said 600 women die annually in the U.S. from pregnancy and child-birth related causes.”

    By the day after the debate, Mr. Walsh was retreating from his first remarks made both during the debate and afterward, the Tribune story said. “Those comments had created a firestorm,” the Tribune article said, and the paper reported that Mr. Walsh, who the newspaper described as “a tea party icon,” was “in damage control mode.”

    “At a hastily-called news conference, the rookie congressman backed off that sweeping assertion, slightly, acknowledging ‘very rare circumstances’ where life-saving abortions might be required,” the Tribune story said.

    The Chicago newspaper continued its report by quoting Dr. Erika Levi, an obstetrician-gynecologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. The Tribune story said that, according to Dr. Levi, life-threatening medical conditions that can lead to terminating a pregnancy include infections of the uterus or the amniotic sac surrounding the fetus, some heart conditions, and pre-eclampsia, a rapid rise in blood pressure that occurs during pregnancy and in the period right afterward.

    “All of these conditions can occur throughout the pregnancy,” the Tribune quoted Dr. Levi as continuing. “If these conditions occur prior to viability (of the fetus) then, at that point, abortion can become the only option to save the life of the mother.”

    The Tribune story also quoted Dr. David Grimes, a clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, who, the paper said, “added others to the list, including complications of diabetes, pulmonary hypertension, and cancer, which he said sometimes can require termination of the pregnancy before treatment can proceed. Cases severe enough to require abortions are rare, Grimes said, adding that he nonetheless sees several a year.”

    The paper said that “Grimes took issue with anti-abortion politicians, Walsh included, who view ‘women as some kind of Tupperware container that holds the fetus for nine months’.”

    “I am flabbergasted that he is that out of touch with science,” the Tribune quoted Walsh’s opponent, Ms. Duckworth, as saying. The Democrat supports abortion rights, the paper said.

    Rep. Walsh’s comments drew rapid comparison with the now widely repeated statements by Republican Congressman Todd Akin of Missouri, who is in a race against Democratic incumbent Claire McCaskill for a seat in the United States Senate. Mr. Akin, like Mr. Walsh a staunch opponent of abortion, proclaimed that a woman’s body would automatically stop her from becoming pregnant in a case of “legitimate rape.” The statement outraged both men and women inside and outside the political arena, and caused Akin to immediately lose funding and support.

    The ongoing statements from both Republicans, and other members of the GOP across the nation, on the abortion issue have led to stern words of protest from women across America, and have caused considerable trouble with the female voting block for GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Mr. Romney has sought to distance himself from extremists within his party by announcing repeatedly that his own opposition to abortion includes exceptions in the case of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother.

    GOP Congressman Walsh’s first statement that modern medical science has completely eliminated the last-case scenario, and his follow-up retreat that such a circumstance was, in fact, possible, but would be “very rare,” could be bringing a bit of election angst to Romney campaign headquarters, and to that of other Republican candidates for lower public office throughout the nation.

    The issue has become a political hot potato in the 2012 campaign season, as both citizens and their political leaders struggle to find a place for government, if any, in the highly personal circumstance of a woman facing the question of whether to have an abortion. There are those who argue that the decision is a matter of women’s rights, while others declare that abortion is akin to murder and should be made illegal in all cases by the government.

    Mr. Romney has flatly declared that if elected he will push to eliminate all funding for Planned Parenthood, and has indicated as well that he would appoint pro-life justices to the U.S. Supreme Court. Such a move, observers say, would no doubt tip the delicate judicial balance that has kept intake the Roe v Wade decision, which is the landmark Supreme Court case which struck down many state laws restricting abortion.

    Women, and those men who support women’s right to an abortion and their right to make that decision without government interference, fear that should Mr. Romney be elected president, Roe v Wade will be overturned with his appointees in place.

    Looking at how the New Spirituality might be overlaid on this issue, it is noted that Conversations with God says that freedom is a perfect description of the nature of Divinity. In a perfect society of highly evolved beings, CWG says, there would be no laws of any kind, and all behavior would be regulated individually by each member of such a society, automatically and without requirement bringing them into harmony with, and awareness of, the highest good of all concerned.

    The question for our Earthly society in the 21st Century becomes: To what degree is humanity ready and able to live with such freedom? Business owners, for instance, want freedom from government regulation, while at the same time many of them want government to regulate what a woman may legally decide about her own body. Human society is still trying to work out the contradictions.

    And your thoughts?

  • MANY VOTERS KNOW LITTLE ABOUT
    THEIR COUNTRY OR CANDIDATES

    The saddest aspect of the democratic process in America is that so many people don’t know—and don’t seem to care—about facts. It is not Truth that matters, it is ideology. And when Truth flies in the face of what a person believes, many people insist that the Truth is a lie, thus making it possible for them to stick with their beliefs no matter what.

    For instance, U.S. President Barack Obama recently said: “After a decade of decline, this country has created over half a million new manufacturing jobs.” The Truth: Since he took office, the country has lost about a million such jobs, and has regained more than half of them during the economic comeback. When a football team loses 15 yards of first down, then regains 8 yards on  second down, that is not exactly called progress.

    For instance, Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney said in the second debate: “We have fewer people working today than we had when the president took office.” The Truth: the economy was losing 800,000 jobs a month when Mr. Obama took office as a result of 8 years of President Bush’s administration—so holding Mr. Obama to a net job creation standard means he would have to have made up for massive losses that were out of his control entirely. AND….he has done it. The Bureau of Labor statistics show that across the four years of the Obama Administration there has been created a net positive 125,000 jobs.

    Item 1 above was taken from a fascinating article in Time magazine’s Oct 15 issue, titled Blue Truth/Red Truth. The second item came from a story by reporter George Nornick published Oct 17 by The Nation headlined Romney’s Seven Biggest Debate Lies. Here’s another…

    Mr. Romney said in the second debate: “I don’t believe employers should tell someone whether they could have contraceptive care or not. Every woman in America should have access to contraceptives.” But back in March, when Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri introduced a bill that would allow employers to deny contraceptive coverage to employees based on the employer’s religious beliefs, Mr. Romney said: “Of course I support the Blunt amendment.”

    Mr. Romney also said in that second debate: “As a matter of fact, oil production is down 14 percent this year on federal land.” And, reporter Nornick points out, it is true that drilling on public lands dropped 14 percent in 2011. But it went up 15 percent the year before. So overall, oil production on federal lands is up under Mr. Obama. Says The Nation article: “Romney is being extremely dishonest in singling out the one year that it dropped.”

    Meanwhile, the Time magazine article pointed out that Mr. Obama has asked on the campaign trail, “What rights would Romney deny (for gay couples)?” Then he has answered his own question: “Adopting children together.” The magazine points out that this is simply false. The article in Time corrects the record, pointing to the fact that Mr. Romney “supports adoption rights for same-sex couples.”

    But the problem is about more than what the candidates say. It’s about what the American public actually knows. In the Oct 17 issue of USA TODAY writer Katrina Trinko, a member of the paper’s Board of Contributors, reports that “only 34% of Americans can name even one Supreme Court justice,” citing an August survey by FindLaw.com. She also reports that in 2011 Newsweek magazine asked 1,000 Americans to take a citizenship test—and 38% failed.

    And a 2006 study by the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum “discovered that only 28% could identify even two of the First Amendments five freedoms,” Trinko continued.

    But it’s not only constitutional provisions or civic questions that too many voters know little about, it’s “what’s so” in American life itself. For instance, Trinko reports, “a 2011 CNN survey found that the median estimate for the percentage of the budget that was foreign aid was 10%. In reality, it was then under 1% of the total federal budget.”

    The writer says that “it’s the same story with public broadcasting,” touted by Mr. Romney in a debate as a place where he would cut expenditures, saying he “loves Big Bird,” but the cost of PBS had to go. The public’s median estimate of the PBS portion of the federal budget was 5%, “while actually it was 1/100th of 1%,” Ms. Trinko’s article said.

    It’s becoming sadly clear that many people don’t like it when “fact checkers” take the sting out of their candidate’s charge, or the lift out of their candidate’s claim.

    They like it when Mr. Romney says he wants to “keep our Pell Grant program growing,” allowing young people who might not otherwise be able to afford it to go to college, and they hate it when fact checkers like Mr. Nornick point out that the budget of Mr. Romney’s own running mate, Vice-Presidential Candidate Paul Ryan, would cut Pell Grants for up to one million students.

    They like it when Mr. Romney responds to a debate question about where he stands on equal pay for women by saying that he actively sought to bring more women into his cabinet when he took office as governor of Massachusetts, and they hate it when fact checkers point out that he actively and vocally opposed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act.

    (And they totally despise it when Mr. Nornick reports on a Boston Globe story revealing that there were no female partners at Bain Capital during the 1980s and 1990s—and that even today only four of forty-nine of the firm’s managing directors are women.)

    People like it when Mr. Obama’s campaign charges that the way Bain Capital reorganized “cost the government and the American taxpayers $10 million,” and they hate it when fact checkers at Time magazine point out that “Bain wrote off $10 million in debt to a failed bank at the expense of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (the FDIC)—which is funded by banks. Taxpayers paid nothing.”

    In just a few days now the people of American will decide: What part should Truth and Facts play in their decision regarding who shall be the next President of the United States? But the real question is, are there enough people with enough intelligence to even care?

    A few days ago, when Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers showed that the unemployment rate in America is now lower than it was when Mr. Obama took office, right wing Republicans ran around claiming on all the talk shows that the latest statistics where artificially skewed in a vast internal conspiracy within the Obama Administration. These are the same statistics that those same Republicans considered extremely reliable when for the 43 previous months they showed a high unemployment rate.

    The conclusion of the Far Right: When the numbers support us, embarrassing the President for 43 straight months, the Administration could do nothing to hide them or skew them, and so those numbers are reliable and you can stake your life on them. When the numbers oppose us, showing the President has made some gains on the problem, the Administration must have at last found a way to secretly pressure or force the Bureau of labor Statistics to report false numbers, and so the new stats are the result of a conspiracy.

    People believe what they want to believe. The New Spirituality calls for complete transparency in all matters, public and private. Will we ever see that in our political campaigns? Not in 2012, apparently. And worse yet, not enough people seem to care.

  • THE NEW POLITICS: YOUR VOTE
    MAY BE TIED TO YOUR PAY CHECK

    A Chicago-based magazine has just released the recording of a telephone conference call last June in which Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, speaking to a group of small business owners organized by the National Federation of Independent Businesses, urges employers to “make it very clear to your employees what you believe is in the best interest of your enterprise, and therefore their job and their future, in the upcoming elections.”

    The practice is perfectly legal, and employers should utilize it to influence the vote of their workers, Mr. Romney said. The GOP candidate presumably does not feel that this is another case of the intimidation of hourly-wage or salaried employees by their bosses.

    Mr. Romney’s remarks came at the end of a conference call in which he assailed President Obama’s policies as being not good for business, and Mr. Obama himself as being anti-business. “And whether you agree with me or you agree with President Obama, or whatever your political view, I hope—I hope you pass those along to your employees,” he told the business owners. Mr. Romney said he believes that what employers tell their employees “will figure into their election decision, their voting decision…”

    The recording of the conference call was reportedly published June 17 by In These Times, the Chicago magazine, and re-printed by online outlets, including The Huffington Post and ThinkProgress, according to a report on June 18 by The Slatest, a widely-read online news source. That story may be accessed here.

    Readers of The Global Conversion will recall that we pointed here to a widely circulated story a few days ago about the owner of a Florida time-share company who apparently took Romney’s advice, telling his estimated  7,000 employees in a memo from the front office to them all that if Mr. Obama was re-elected and then raised taxes on the super-rich as he had promised, he did not see how he could keep his business operating at its present level and that he would probably have to lay off some employees.

    The man, who a few years ago listed his net worth at over a billion dollars, was featured on a recent television program as now attempting to build the Biggest House in America, a 90,000-square-foot mansion depicted here.

    What all of this raises in terms of The New Spirituality is the perennial question: What, if anything, can Those Who Have More reasonably be asked to share with Those Who Have Less? Mr. Romney has already announced the income tax rate he pays is a fraction over 14%—which is much less than the rate that most Americans of 1/100th of his income pay. Warren Buffet, the multi-billionaire, likewise announced a few months ago that he pays a tax rate that is less than his secretary’s. Mr. Buffet said that this is patently unfair. Mr. Romney has indicted that there is nothing wrong with this.

    And you say…?

  • OUR OLDER PEOPLE: DO WE
    OWE THEM ANYTHING?

    The number of older Americans, defined as those over 65, is expected to increase from 43 million to 75 million in the next two decades. That is short—but not by much—of a doubling of that critical count. And why is it critical? Because it raises a critical question: Who shall take care of them?

    The question, of course, is not limited to the United States. As the standard of living increases everywhere, as advances in medical science and technology continue, with one disease after another being defeated, life has been made better for people everywhere. And not only better…but longer.

    And whether “longer” will continue to equate with “better” remains one of humanity’s biggest question marks. Were we better off, as a species, when we died younger? We have told ourselves, “No.” We have told ourselves that the longer we live (barring catastrophic and painful illness), the better. Yet if this is true, we face as a species that critical question: Who shall care for all the longer-living humans?

    Do all of us, as members of this species, love those who gave us life—and, by their labors, opened us to its bounty—enough to grant them the fruits of those labors until they die? Even if it takes them a long time to die?

    In essence, the question breaks down to this: To what—if anything—are older humans entitled?

    That word—ENTITLEMENT—is playing a big role today in American politics. And on Oct. 16—the day of the second Presidential Debate—a story ran on the American television network CNN announcing that the rise in Social Security benefits in the United States will rise by only 1.7% in 2013, which, the news report said, “won’t be quite enough to cover the increase in prices over the last year.”

    Still, the CNN report went on, “it’s better than the previous two years, when benefits did not rise at all.”

    The cost-of-living adjustment for Social Security is based on the Consumer Price Index, the government’s key inflation reading, the CNN report explained.  The September reading came out Tuesday and it showed overall prices up 2% compared to a year earlier, greatly due to higher prices for food, gasoline and medical care. The so-called core-CPI, which is closely watched by economists and investors because it strips out volatile food and energy prices, also rose 2% over the last 12 months.

    Yet even that index provides a wildly inaccurate picture of what senior citizens are really facing, its critics assert, because it does not truly account for the real increase of costs for older people. For instance, older people use much more medical care than most younger human beings—and the cost of medical care has increased by 4.4% in the latest CPI rating, according to the CNN report.

    Most seniors no longer pay income taxes in the U.S., and fall in what  Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney described in his now famous “47% speech” at a Republican fundraiser in the U.S. on May 17. Here is what Mr. Romney said:

    “There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That’s an entitlement. The government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…

    “These are people who pay no income tax…My job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives. What I have to do is convince the 5-10% in the center that are independants, that are thoughtful, that look at voting one way or the other depending upon in some cases emotion, whether they like the guy or not.”

    Mr. Romney, asked about his remarks immediately after a video of them became public, defended his observation vigorously, although he allowed as to how he stated them inelegantly. Two weeks later, he had changed his mind, saying that he was “completely wrong” in his comments. American voters were left to decide if this was simply an effort to regain votes he may have lost as a result of his earlier remarks and his defense of them.

    The larger question that Mr. Romney’s 47% Speech raises is this: Just what “entitlement” does humanity’s older population have a “right” to claim? Most cannot continue working, and thus producing their own income. Nor should they have to. Fifty-five years or more of “contributing to society” should be sufficient to earn them some time of rest toward the end of their lives if they desire it, no? And who says that a person who is retired is somehow a “non-contributing” member of our society? Must we work—even if we are healthy enough to do so—until we are 80 in order to be considered to be “contributing” to the whole?

    One point of view about older people is that their own family members should take care of them, not a government which taxes the income of all of its younger, wage-earning people in order to do so. Another point of view is that the entirety of young humans should take care of the entirety of older humans, as two groups whose lives are intrinsically intertwined.

    Within the understandings and the messages of The New Spirituality there is no question on this issue. The primary message of Conversations with God is stated in four words: We Are All One. Clearly, were humanity to adopt and embrace the concepts of CWG and The New Spirituality, there would be no discussion of how humanity as a whole would take care of those members within its species who could no longer take sole care of themselves.

    Younger people would do so, and would do so gladly, considering it an honor—even if they had to sacrifice in order to do so. Indeed, especially if they had to sacrifice would they consider it a way of honoring Those Who Have Gone Before.

  • GLOBAL NEWS MADE BY MAJOR
    REVOLUTIONARY DEVELOPMENT

    The High Court of Botswana has this Friday ruled, in a revolutionary decision, that women have the right to inherit property. The decision overturned an earlier verdict that had gone against three sisters who were living in their father’s home during the years between the father’s death and the time that the property was inherited by the sister’s nephew.

    The story is complicated, but deserves telling, because it marks another long overdue, major movement on this planet on behalf of female equality.

    It is difficult to believe that it has taken this long for something like this to happen. Yet is the clear that even now, in the second decade of the first quarter of the Twenty-first Century, there are cultures in place where human beings are still considered second-class citizens because they have a vagina and not a penis.

    What occurred Friday began in 2007, when the three sisters—all over the age of 65—sued their nephew for attempting to evict them from the home in which they had lived from the time of their father’s death.

    At that time, the house was willed to the father’s son, brother of the three sisters, who allowed the ladies to continue to live there. When the brother died, he could not will the home to his sisters, because the local laws did not allow females to inherit property. The brother’s will thus called for the home to be passed on to an older half-brother, who he knew would also allow the women to remain there.

    But when the half-brother died, leaving the home to his son—the sisters’ nephew—the younger man sought to evict the trio of aging ladies. In this case, instead of bowing to local custom, the ladies fought back, contesting the eviction in local court, claiming that they had paid for the home’s upkeep through the years they had lived there following their father’s death, and had also paid for an expansion project at the residence.

    The local court ruled against the women. In Botswana there is a dual legal system. There are civil courts run by the government, and so-called “customary courts,” functioning mostly in very rural outlying areas. Those courts have traditionally upheld the principle of “assumed male inheritance,” according to a story on this case authored on Wikipedia. That story can be found here.

    The women appealed the decision, but lost their appeal as well—also handled by a local court. Supported in their case by the Southern Africa Litigation Centre (SALC), the sisters took their case to the regular government civil courts, and it eventually reached Botswana’s High Court, the article written for Wikipedia said.

    “The sisters were opposed by Attorney General Athalis Molokomme. Representing the government of Botswana, Molokomme argued that though the inheritance law was discriminatory, the ‘public mood’ did not yet support its repeal,” the Wikipedia article went on.

    The judge in the case, Key Dingake, ruled for the High Court that the local customary laws prioritizing male inheritance were not in keeping with the promise of gender equality in the Constitution of Botswana, and awarded the home to the sisters, the article said.

    According to further reporting in the Wikipedia article, Dingake stated in his decision: “It seems to me that the time has now arisen for the justices of this court to assume the role of the judicial midwife and assist in the birth of a new world struggling to be born. Discrimination against gender has no place in our modern day society.”

    The nephew who lost the case is reported to have called it “a sad day,” stating that “people should learn to respect our culture.” The Wikipedia story said, “Regional human rights campaigners expressed hope that the case would not only be a landmark in Botswana, but also set a precedent for surrounding countries grappling with similar issues,” and the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa described the decision as “a huge boost to the struggle for gender equality,” while SALC’s deputy director said that the ruling “sends a very strong signal that women in Botswana cannot be discriminated against and that the days of women suffering from secondary status under the law in Botswana are drawing to an end.”

    Drawing to an end? That’s what the person said.

    All of which leads to the matter raised by the women’s nephew: Should people respect a culture’s values, no matter how patently unfair and discriminatory those values may be? And if the answer is no, on what basis can proposed laws permitting gay marriage be opposed in the United States?

    It seems to many people incomprehensible that in 2012 anybody at all on this earth could still be earnestly debating such issues. Yet the politically divisive and combative discussions go on. As an overall global culture, we just can’t seem to “get it.” So many members of the human race are still elementary in their understandings.

    What will it take for our species to “grow up?” To mature? To evolve to the point where, thousands of years after the birth of Christ, it still makes headline news when an entire culture is rattled to its bones by a simple decision to make it legal for a woman to inherit her father’s property?

    Or, for that matter, for a girl to receive an education—or to advocate for it without being shot in the head by males who would seek to preserve the backwards status quo, as was 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai in Pakistan the day before the court decision in Botswana.

    The Taliban publicly took “credit” for the shooting, announcing on Saturday that if the girl—whose “crime” was to write a blog calling for support of the right of girls to go to school—survives her wounds (she is in serious but stable condition in hospital), she would be attacked again, and this time, they would make sure that she was killed. And neither the government nor the people of Pakistan have sufficient will to stop the Taliban, and to say, “No more. Finally, at last, no more of this primitive, barbaric behavior masquerading as religious teachings and cultural ‘honor’.”

    When, oh human race, when will it be declared that enough is enough?