CRIES OF THE HEART

This post is a message of faith, love, moral beauty & human rights. The concept of human rights has been spreading for centuries. We need to fathom the deep root problems & then see our wide range of choices. Never underestimate the opportunities to accomplish positive goals. No single person or agenda totally controls the future. It will be forged by the good & poor decisions of countless people. We live together on this planet, no person, organization or nation stands alone. We share a fragile web of life. Radiation knows no boundary or cultural difference; poisons & toxins don’t know skin color. (Did you know that toxins & cell phones change human DNA?) Respecting rights & human dignity & life is humane; being humane makes us human. The fire hydrant & telephone pole have no rights.

HUMAN RIGHTS. The Word says they come from God. The Declaration of Independence says that they come from nature’s laws & nature’s god. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (adopted by the U.N. nations in 1948) is based on human rights being the most pragmatic (practical) way of life. As the Universal Declaration is (at least in theory) what the nations believe in, it is worth reviewing its core: “All human beings are born free & equal in dignity & rights. They are endowed with reason & conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” Whether one realizes they come from God, or natural law, or are the most practical way of life, human dignity & rights are essential for us all.

THE WORLD OF BROKEN SYSTEMS. About 1 million Tutsi’s in Rwanda were genocided when Clinton was president, & nothing was done to stop it. When a nation fails to pay attention to human rights & international law, it makes it hard for that nation to take the moral high ground w/ other nations. Governments are kids playing catch w/ hand grenades. Bankers & businessmen calculate the human as a profit number. They refer to “human resources” as the core asset, but it is but words, not something they take care of. The young are items lost in neglect. Tyrants get away w/ murder. Flashpoints ignite new crises daily. Traditional power structures are being rejected & torched. The fire alarm of planet Earth wails! An atmosphere of mistrust & cynicism has enveloped the World.
I agree w/ Mr. Van Duyn when he told me, “Our world is ruled by economic psychopaths transferring all of the world’s assets to themselves, and fully supported by… free-market capitalists (enemies of the people!)….All psychopaths are fanatical supporters of inheritance, privilege, cronyism and nepotism. They despise merit because they know they stand no chance in a rational society where all of their tricks will be exposed.”

“VIRTUE IS OUR BEST SECURITY”. I also agree w/ these words of Samuel Adams, an Amer. revolutionary leader. Outrage can be unhealthy—wisdom must guide it! We have too much info, & too little wisdom. Another revolution? Shall we strike blindly? Shall we have another French or Russian revolution?? Is it not insanity to repeat something & expect something else? Let us think of the love of mothers. We all came from mothers. That is the empathetic love the World needs. If we plant love, we will certainly harvest love, and perhaps even more as love divinely generates other things. What the World needs now is love, sweet love, that is one thing it is short of. Why should I care about others? That other person could be me. When we allow other countries to ignore worker’s human rights, Amer. companies leave America to save the expense of honoring the worker, & employ the impoverished enslaved foreign worker. The political/military tension between Taiwan (Free China) & Red China is because the mainland ignores human rights. The pain of others has everything to do with each of us. A crime against one, is a crime against all. As Christ said, love your neighbor as yourself.

REFUSE THE UNACCEPTABLE…LET US QUIT DIGGING OUR OWN GRAVES. Change must come from the bottom up. Modern communication gives us a voice, don’t rely on the controlled media. Awareness is growing. I have been skeptical that some protests like Occupy Wall St. were originally grassroots.

The best example of a grassroots response to a broken system that I know about was in Tres Arroyos (Three Little Rivers), a city in Buenos Aires Province, Argentina. (The city has a sizable population of Dutch & Danish descent.) The people of Argentina have lost all faith in any govt. This uprising occurred during a “democratic” govt. which had replaced a military dictatorship. During the dictatorship, a man was “free” to have a beard…the catch was that all citizens had to carry ID, & your ID picture had to be beardless! Argentina had a close relationship w/ the Nazis during & after the war. This then was the nation of Tres Arroyos.

FROM ANGER TO ACTION. Frustrations need to be channeled in wise productive ways. Rather than callously yawning at the reports of human rights abuses worldwide, we need to empathize with the mistreatment of our fellow humans. Their interests overlap ours. Now to the totally spontaneous grassroots, leaderless Tres Arroyos protest: When 9 yr. old Nair Mustafa disappeared, her distraught mother asked the police for help, which they arrogantly turned down. The desperate mom then went on the local radio station & pled for help. Dozens of farmers came to help & soon located the body of her daughter which had been raped & strangled. Indignant & infuriated by the uncaring police, the peaceful farmers stormed the local police station, overturning police cars, setting fire to them, and smashing their windows. The police opened fire & wounded over 20. The outraged people put the police station under siege, & the provincial govt., in order to deal with the population, replaced the entire police force and let the locals pick who their new police chief would be. The Tres Arroyos uprising was then followed by spontaneous uprisings in 3 more towns against govt. corruption. In one of these, at San Vicente, they were protesting that the police would not investigate a crime, & hundreds protested in the streets until the authorities sacked the police chief & his 2 assistants!

FINAL THOUGHTS. Don’t throw away your humanness. If one genocide is allowed, others will follow. The future is emerging before our eyes…let’s realize that it won’t just automatically change for the better…it needs us to quit procrastinating & to do our part. I give thanks to those of you who have been doing just that. May God bless your efforts my friends!