Posts Tagged ‘one’

Global Truce 2012

Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012

Involved in the military? Para-military? Maybe your a mercenary. Well, whatever role you play in warfare, be sure to leave your calender open this fall as September 21, 2012 will be the first ever Day of Global Truce!

That’s right, for a full 24 hours, there is to be no senseless violence, no pointless bloodshed, and no fruitless squandering of treasure and lives. Instead, the whole world will lay down their arms, taking time to reflect on alternatives to perpetual war.

It may seem like a lofty goal, but it’s not without precedence. In 2008, the September 21 Peace Day caused a  70% reduction in violent incidents in Afghanistan.  In 2007, the 1-day ceasefire allowed humanitarian organizations to provide 1.4 million children with life-saving polio vaccinations.

When it comes to building a peaceful planet – something we’ve never had before – we cannot understate the importance of having dreams. Without brave souls envisioning a greater future along with the path to get there, we’d never even know what potentials await us.

So don’t be afraid to have hope. Dare to dream, and when you do, dream big!

Poverty in the World’s Richest Country

Sunday, December 25th, 2011

The Grinch is alive and well in America. Only instead of stealing presents from under the tree, modern day Scrooges have been pilfering the pockets of entire populations.

In his latest article, Les Leopold unveils 6 sneaky ways corporate elites function as reverse Robin Hoods, stealing from the poor to give to the rich:

1 in 2, have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income. 1 in 5 American children live in poverty. What’s going on here? You would think we were a poor country.  But we’re not. We’re filthy rich, but the money is hidden away by the 1 percent while poverty rises all around.

Just how are the richest of the rich getting away with the greatest robbery of all time? Leopold breaks it down for us:

1. Productivity continues to rise but the 99 percent doesn’t share in the benefits. The productivity lines and wage lines have pulled apart so that trillions of dollars that once went to the average American are now going almost entirely to the super-rich.

2. Large corporations pay next to nothing in state and local taxes. A recent joint report reveals that 265 large corporations avoided $42.7 billion in taxes from 2008 to 2010.

3. Money that should go toward the common good pours into the pockets of the 1 percent. The overall tax rate for the super-rich has plummeted from 70% to less than what the average secretary pays.

4. The biggest corporations are sitting on a mountain of cash, yet they refuse to invest more than $1 trillion in cash because of the lack of consumer demand.

5. Hedge funds have over $1.917 trillion in misused investment capital. Most of this speculative capital serves no broader economic or social purpose, jumping in and out of the markets in nanoseconds using high-speed automatic trading techniques that extract hidden taxes from the rest of us.

6. Many of the 1 percent cheat on their taxes. The tax revenues lost in the U.S. are estimated to be $337 billion a year according to a November report by the Tax Justice Network.

So there you have it. While the rest of us are sipping our egg nog and enjoying the company of our friends and family, behemoth businesses are tirelessly enriching the wealthy few while systematically crushing the middle and lower classes.

Santa might be tempted to give these corporate fatcats a well-deserved lump of coal in their stockings, but they’d probably just use it as a tax write off.

Not All One Percenters Fear the Uprising

Sunday, December 11th, 2011

It can be easy to label every rich person as a tyrannical scrooge type pinching every penny, but it’s simply not true. Most multi-millionaires and billionaires don’t fear the Occupy movement or the impending redistribution of wealth. A lot of them, when asked, said they’d be willing to pay more in taxes. Some, like Warren Buffet, even go so far as to deliver eloquent speeches pleading for us to do so.

But there are a select few of the super-rich who tow the line for the rest of the financially fortunate. These individuals (and their cronies and paid-for politicians) are the ones responsible for a system-wide shift which has incrementally stripped entire populations of wealth and power.

It is this minority of the 1% – those with an insatiable greed – who must be reigned in. Not only do they need to be held accountable, steps must be taken to prevent others from doing the same. Whether it’s through public awareness or regulation, the processes by which today’s oligarchs have amassed their dangerous concentrations of power needs to be disrupted.

This won’t happen without a fight, which is why we have to rise up. But in the end, the majority of the super-rich will capitulate and cooperate without too much of a fight, so long as they get to remain amongst the wealthiest people on earth.

Embracing a Global Village Paradigm

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

As we move forward into a new age of world peace, where cooperation takes precedence over conflict, a small yet significant change will take place in the psyches of many people on earth. This change will be in our own personal identity… in the way that we perceive our role in the world.

Being part of One World, the Global Tribe, the World’s Community, means we’ve undergone an expansion to our own identity. We now view our selves as members of the Global Village. We see ourselves as part of the human species, one with all others sharing this giant ball of matter as it hurls through space.

As we grow to accept this global paradigm, being one of the world’s people becomes one more notch in our own personal identity. Along with all the other ways we may identify ourselves – our music taste, our hobbies, our sports interests or favorite sports teams, our heritage, our nationality, our fashion style, our occupation, our education – we also recognize the fact that we are human from planet earth.

While it is just a small step, just one more way of looking at ourselves, it has huge ramifications for our world. As we expand our identity to include being a member of the global village, something remarkable happens: every other human on earth inherently becomes, on some level, part of our own group, part of our own extended family, part of us. So, these people who were once strangers, who were once part of the “Out-group”, part of “them”, “they”, “the outsiders”, now shifts to be part of the “in-group”, part of “us”, “we”, our side.

Now, this doesn’t mean we need to immediately sacrifice ourselves for our new extended family, or really change our behavior dramatically. But what does happen is that number of outside threats, the number of enemies in the world, suddenly drops dramatically. The world isn’t so scary, anymore, as our common humanity reveals itself.

This way, we can move forward into a new age, building trust, building channels of communication, building stronger and larger communities… all of which will be instrumental in the formation of a world of peace.

If you are interested in learning more about the shift to a global village mentality, please look into the fine work of the Global Oneness Project, and their latest campaign about expanding identities.

Peace Day Today!

Monday, September 21st, 2009

Today is the International Day of Peace. WOOOOOOO PEACE!!!

Spread the word… peace IS coming, one day at a time.

2009 Peace One Day videos:

Peace One Day – September 21

Friday, September 18th, 2009

Peace One Day – The UN sanctioned International Day of Peace will be here on Monday, September 21.  It is a day for global cease fires… a day of non-violence to promote peace and ease humanitarian efforts.

Many big name people have been involved in this inspirational project: Kofi Annan, The Dalai Llama, Jude Law, Angelina Jolie to name a few.  All around the world, 100’s of millions of people will be celebrating this day… and the number is growing every year.  You should too.

Visist peaceoneday.org to see what events are going in your area that you can take part in.   Or, you can even organize your own event, even if it is just for friends and family.

Peace One Day

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

What are you doing September 21st?  How about joining the rest of the world in a day of peace?

Peace One Day is an organization dedicated to uniting the world, if only for one day, to show how much we can come together as a species. By “working to manifest an annual day of global unity; a day of intercultural cooperation on a scale that humanity has never known”, Peace One Day hopes to promote peace, as well as attain the awesome goal of reaching 3 billion people with the message of Peace One Day by 2012.

September 21 is a day to recognize just how powerful we can be, when we work together.  Studies have shown how group meditation – large groups concentrating on peace – can actually manifest peace in the world (see a link here).  In these studies, they had about 7000 people meditating for peace.  Imagine the peace we could create with a million, or how about the 3 Billion that Peace One Day aspires to…  it would be incredible!

Check out the following videos, which put forth a beautiful message of hope for peace.

You can visit Peace One Day on the net at http://www.peaceoneday.org, or join the Peace One Day social network at http://peaceoneday.ning.com/