Ever since the dastardly act of people who wanted to become famous and give credence for their cause (who were responsible for 9-11 among some), Islam has received a ton of accusations as being the promoter of violence and death all over the world. Throw into the mix a little of the Communist ideals and you have a world that is in turmoil that could end at the press of a button somebody else made and designed for some utterly futile purpose (the end of all life on earth). Is this hatred well founded on fact, of is it another mere manifestation of the problems the US and the rest of the developed world has been suffering as their respective societies have become so confused about their national identity?
In the US, discrimination has been in existence ever since people started to flock there as the land of opportunity and promise. Where certain individuals foster hatred towards others who are not like them, them being physically and ideologically different from themselves. If that is the case, then discrimination has never left the land of the Free and the Brave as many incidents of racial discrimination has shown. China, another of the remaining Cold War super powers has been maintaining their control over their people to some extent whilst their gusto of the cash that flows from the West. Suppressing and controlling all and everything they choose as they have since they became a Communist state.
Iran has defied the world which is represented by their total defiance at efforts to bring their nuclear technology to standards and disclosure that is at par with widely accepted standards. With them acknowledging the fact that they have the ability to use their weapons should they be threatened or attacked fuels speculation that they have been working under the radar of world monitoring agencies with regards to their nuclear program.
Islam and Molsems are merely victims of a world in constant turmoil that makes itself visible as one under control. In truth, there is no single governing body that has control over anything and everyone that can say it has everything under control. So why do we claim and say that everything’s fine and normal? to give each other a sense of order and peace that is the arena which philosophy tends to fill in. The body of thought gives life a purpose and a reason to exist hence the need to study humanity and the ways by which it has survived past times. Its a very vague yet necessary task, to give the rest of us a sense of control and meaning that defies all other explanations, explaining the unexplained and unexplainable. Why does the rest of humanity hate something they do not understand? That’s the question and not the answer so start pondering.

Some students have been fighting for their ability/right to carry concealed guns in school (to date is only allowed in one state in all of the US) and they say this is necessitated by the utter inability of law to prevent violence in schools/colleges.
I’d beg to differ at that point and as a parent, that may be the craziest idea anyone can cite as a solution to the gun problem. A gun is a piece of metal which sadly has the ability to take another life, it’s the man who does the killing and not the gun and that being the case is a very very difficult point to explain. All the psychological exams in the world cannot say when and what causes a peaceful loving man to suddenly take a weapon designed to keep the peace and use it to kill somebody else.
Kids with guns are kids with uncontrollable rage and with all the open ends a gun is still a gun and a kid is still a kid (yes even you college students are kids as I was once one).
A school is a place for learning and not for self-defense! Whatever the constitution or law may state, guns all over is an invitation for violence and that’s a fact (what about kids who are related to gangs, should they be given guns too just because they passed a gun concealment training course? Or what about the psychologically unstable kid who seems all normal to everyone who turns nuts at some form of trigger causing violence tendencies to suddenly come alive as with the Virginia Tech incident!)

That is a question each and every parent asks every time their kids go to school, or do they. The recent gun related incidents in several US schools and elsewhere around the world, have prompted legislation that makes gun ownership a bit tad harder but there are always loopholes as the incidents themselves have shown. Guns have been in the blood of all Americans since the Constitution includes a phrase that states, each and every American had the right to bear arms and it was interpreted literally as is. Gun control which has been in place ever since crooks started to tote guns and so law enforcers had to catch up and started to carry their own (for protection). Does the world need guns? Ask yourself, and you’ll say no but get involved or have somebody you know involved in gun related incidents and you’ll suddenly have a change of heart (most probably).
All of us have been exposed to a society that has been made and shaped by weapons of all shapes and sizes and all of them were invented for self-preservation from other humans. Guns is a way of saying don’t mess with me or I’ll mess with you and it’s not a very comforting idea to see one in public for it always raises your blood pressure at mere sight. The US has had a long and hard history of gun related violence and so has the rest of the world but the basic and main idea of bearing arms has been lost in translation so to speak in all the violence and crime that has been related to and blamed on these weapons of choice. They are small, deadly and easy to carry so what else could you ask for in a personal protection measure, others carrying the same weapons! Paranoia is the game and if society cannot deal with the problem, then should we allow society to take care of itself by allowing everybody to carry guns? You be the Judge!

The mouse you use, the computer I used to make this post, all of these are wonders of modern technology that has made life way easier that it was a few years back but all of these stuff contain or involved the use of extremely toxic substances that all have to go somewhere (guess where)?
Developed countries have the might and will to engage and develop sustainable economic growth but what about the majority of people on earth who live in developing economies (wait they have uses, they receive the trash of others so we don’t have to worry about them).
Power is one of the most polluting industries the world over yet we consume lots and lots of electricity for we are addicted to it. That iPod, PSP, Cellular Phone, etc.; all of them consume tons upon tons of electricity (take the new iPhone and multiply the power consumed by one charge and multiply it by the number of units sold and you’d get the picture). We are way past the point of no return and we have to pay attention to the so-called “nuts/activists” you get mad at who caused the traffic jam on your way to work for what they are saying is true, life is getting harder and harder each and everyday. We humans are the only ones who have the ability to talk and communicate with each other and what about the millions of GOD’s other creatures we kill directly or indirectly through our actions, who’s listening to them?
Global warming is an old issue the real issue is that we are now faced with an inconvenient truth, WE HAVE TO LISTEN NOW, or else!!!!??????!!…..

There have been environmentalists till time immemorial or maybe ever since we found out that we were the only beings/living things on this planet that can have the ability to create and destroy almost everything we touch and even the ones we create. Global warming has been in the news for a long long time but people only took notice when the storms became fiercer and the damage they caused touched their lives, why? Well it didn’t matter to us in the past for we weren’t affected at all so why pay attention? The floods and strong storms haven’t caused enough damage, till now that is and they are getting worse.
When the tornadoes and storms became stronger and more frequent, people began to ask the question that were we responsible for the things that were happening all around us? Indeed we were and the choices we make everyday are to blame. The fridge that contains harmful CFC’s that eats away the Ozone layer, the old air conditioner you keep using that consumes more than half the amount of electricity new models with the same rating do. All these have an impact on the future of your world. The candy wrapper you throw away, multiplied by all the number of candy lovers around amounts to tons of plastic that would cover the world in a year if nothing was done. People say plastics are bad so turn to paper (not many countries have the ability for sustainable forest products) products that are more environmentally friendly (or are they?).

The situation is the same all over the world, when elections are in the air, the best is shown but the worst also seeps through. These two bodies of thought seem to go together, to showcase one as a figure of strength and patriotism and the aim is the same, for the good of all men. The problem is that it always seems to go the opposite way and people can’t seem to get over the fact that everybody has something to hide and that there is no safe place to hide them (except the grave that is).
Look for some controversial people and their best kept secrets have remained secrets only because they took them and the answers to the grave. All prominent celebrities and politicians have their own little dirty secrets that can come out at anytime, seemingly out of nowhere (most probably from an opponent’s camp) out into the mainstream and the public’s attention. How well the situation and information is handled would be the true test of will of one’s true aim and goal for serving the public. In most countries of the world, politics has some form of monetary gain whether it be for self, family or some other far off relative that is to benefit from the occasional nod from upstairs.
Why do people always look for the bad in things and not tend to take into account the good? Maybe because the bad always makes for a good story? Maybe because the good isn’t attention catching enough to earn profit. With information traveling at the speed of light, any amount of information that gets on the internet is made available to all, sometimes without even a hint of seeking for authenticity or validity of the information in question. This may be the true manifestation of greed (which is in all of us for self-preservation is after all one of the hard-coded basic instincts evolution has left us with) in all human beings. Time may have simply run out for good with the bad and the ugly on the agenda for now. Till when? The end of the world????????

Scientists have been telling us for a long long time that oil is a finite resource and that it is soon going to run out and when it does, we’d better be ready for the consequences. If that is the case, then why the hell are we all suffering so miserably with prices that have almost doubled in the past few years, profits. Who would want to nip the problem in the bud and provide all of us with an alternative power source when oil is getting them so much money. That has roots in the fundamental idea that man is almost if not always motivated by personal gain.
Why has everybody been caught off-guard by the current oil crisis? Because we were all too busy to hear and accept the warning signals which have been going off for quite some time. Remember the problem with the ozone layer? It was foreseen but still we manufactured millions of tons of the stuff that ate it all away CFC’s? The dangers of the mistakes of the past have haunted us again and again with commercial gains in front of environmental ones. Remember Chernobyl, the nuclear power plant that almost contaminated the whole world. Many think its a story that has long gone away yet the truth is that is is a continuing problem for all of us that billions is spent every year just to keep it contained and safe. Three-mile island in the US is another of the near misses with nuclear technology yet the US presidential race has the idea of getting more of them online to provide electricity for tomorrow which would not be a good idea mixed in with the terrorism plots and all.
There may never be a solution for the energy/oil crisis we are currently facing but one thing’s for sure, we’ll never learn in time to prevent such events from happening again and again. All these current events can be traced to past issues that more of us should have paid attention to. All of us should have realized that we are destroying the same planet we live on as we go on with our daily lives. Maybe when all the oil on this earth has long gone we’d have realized that it was not a very good source of energy in the first place. Maybe….. maybe…………

China’s having won the bid to host the 2008 Olympics was hard won for the communist country who was trying real hard to re-make it’s figure on the global scale. They won the bid and started to invest heavily on developing Olympic venues in the true grandeur of China yet after the billion of dollars spent on the several groundbreaking venues environmental issues abound that may spell disaster for the high expectations they have from the economic benefits of hosting the Olympics. Rivers and shore lines choked with algae due to an influx of pollution from the millions of Chinese who want to watch and take part in the Olympic events is threatening to choke off venues for water sports.
Air quality in Beijing is also deplorable and may cause problem for the many events that may require running outdoors and with many countries having reservations about participating due to possible health risks their problems just keeps on growing and growing. With the Olympic games just a few weeks out, many environmental issues are still being brought up. Even drinking water is an issue for many bottled Chinese products fail standards of some participating countries having them bring their own supplies for their athletes.
True that the Olympics is meant to bridge the differences of man yet China may have simply bitten off more that it could chew. The influx of problems so close to the opening ceremonies is giving people headaches all over and political issues are also being brought out with some countries even threatening to boycott the games altogether to stress their point. China may just have to learn from the lessons of the past that image is not the whole picture but part of the picture and that change must begin from within. The country and its resources are stretched to the limit due to the disasters that swept through the Sichuan Province that killed thousands due to shoddy construction of government schools and buildings.

The moves of scientists to decode and unravel the secrets of the human genome have long been debated for the ethical implications of such scientific actions aims to discredit some validity of the mystery of life. If you look at the religious explanation for life, it was created by a supreme being that deemed us as the dominant creature of this earth. Scientifically, they say that we are the result of millions of years of evolution whereby we have evolved from lesser creatures such as microbes who developed into ever complex organisms leading to us, Homo sapiens or the human race.
This is why Darwin was scorned by the church when he came up with the idea that people evolved from chimps and everybody knows that he was scorned then but praised now as one of the most prominent minds to ever grace this earth. If that were the case, then the separation between religion and science should always be defined and infinite meaning morality and other issues are not to influence the definition of either as time progresses. Philosophers know that people have the ability to bend the rules should a need for it be found and that does not say that the bending has been going on for as long as man has survived on this earth. Even the existence of God has been challenged again and again.
Then when does the poking and experimenting with genetics and the ability to add or subtract traits that allows plants to become more productive, animals to have better health and more. The promises of genetics are good indeed, growing organs from cells rather than transplants and the lifelong drugs to keep the immune system from rejecting the transplanted body part. But how far can we go before it becomes morally wrong, a whole human being? Life is filled with mysteries and it still is, that is the main driving force for such scientific research. Let us place this in simpler terms, would you rather have a flower opening and showing off its full glory and beauty or the opening and closing is due to molecular actions that results in a process that makes reproduction for plants to commence? You choose your rules, your world, and your life!

We all know Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister of the UK who was replaced by Gordon Brown at the helm of the UK government. He was loved by some and scorned by many, but we’d all have to agree that he played his part in our recent history. A staunch ally of the US when they invaded Iraq, he fought to bring justice to those killed in the London bombings that killed many people. Much so that he continues his work as the official envoy of the West to the Middle East as he continues to play his part in the world of politics which he has come to realize has been utterly changed by religion in one way or the other.
In his many years as the Prime Minister of the UK, he has suffered blow after blow as to why the UK got itself involved in one of recent history’s most devastating blunder, going to war after people who are motivated by religious beliefs and fundamentalism. Fundamentalism that has incorporated violence as part of their basic concepts and that without it, no victory would be possible. Many soldier’s lives were taken by such fundamentalists in Afghanistan and Iraq which the invading forces say would take a year or two to mop up. Now, five years after the initial invasion and long after the dictator Saddam has been executed as retribution for his crimes against humanity, the war rages on.