Creation Song
My Christian Witness in Science, Politics, Values, Culture
Alcohol-fueled Men Beat Wives in India
83 percent of married women are beaten by their husbands after the men have been drinking, according to the latest available official data.
Our youngest son, Micah, and is wife, Heather, spent much of a year in Bihar state in India. Their hearts are toward the people.
Because of grinding poverty and work, too many men drink alcohol excessively, and then they beat their spouses and family members.
Alcohol is too often a gateway to addiction, crime, violence, accidents, and reckless behavior. I personally advocate that people avoid use of alcohol. Even if a person “can handle it,” one can tempt another to abuse alcohol. There is a reason that alcohol is sometimes called “demon rum.”
See this link about the women in Bihar, India who are victims of alcohol.
Food Waste Makes up Half of Global Food System Emissions
Greenhouse gases resulting from rotted and otherwise wasted food accounts for around half of all global food system emissions, according to a new study.
Around one-third of all food produced is either lost or wasted each year, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). One of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals is to halve global food waste and reduce food losses in production and supply by 2030.
The study assesses the emissions of food loss and waste along every link in the supply chain—from the time the food is harvested to when it ends up in landfill or compost. It finds that, in 2017, global food waste resulted in 9.3bn tonnes of CO2-equivalent (GtCO2e) emissions—roughly the same as the total combined emissions of the US and the EU that same year. Alongside the carbon emissions, this is occurring at a time when more than 800 million people were impacted by hunger in 2021, according to the UN.
Africans Rally to Defend Against Big Agribiz
Across the continent, organizations representing hundreds of millions of African farmers strongly oppose this Green Revolution model of large-scale, monocrop production reliant on chemical fertilizers.
Today, agrochemical companies see Africa as the last expansion market. While an average 135kg of fertilizer is applied per agricultural hectare globally, that figure in sub-Sahara Africa is just 17kg. On the continent, smallholder farmers have been feeding hundreds of millions of people with little need for chemical fertilizers or so-called “improved” seeds. Entrenching a greater reliance on commercial inputs for African farmers is thus seen as a major opportunity for business growth.
The Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) and many other networks of farmers reject these programs and have urged governments and international institutions to instead support a move to sustainable and climate-friendly methods.
See this link for more on this issue.
Richest 1% Took 2/3rds of Global Wealth Since 2020 – Twice as Much as 99% of Population Earned
Wealth inequality continues to widen across the world. The ultra-rich control foreign and domestic policies, tax laws and enforcement, and install favorable government. This inequality, often resulting in exacerbated poverty, is harmful to participatory society.
Oxfam is an esteemed, reputable global charity that has released a report on this inequality. See this link for the Executive Summary. Then advocate for increased taxation on the wealthy.
U.S. War Machine Scams Taxpayers
The United States war machine runs amok over taxpayers, bloats the national deficit, and scams the American public pretending it is defending the nation and the “free” world. President Eisenhower’s farewell speech warned against a rampaging military-industrial complex. His warning is unheeded.
The U.S. military-industrial complex is America’s greatest enemy! And because the “Masters of War” need an enemy to terrify Americans through appeals to a faux patriotism, weapon manufacturers and career-puffing generals become masters of propaganda. This is evil. Wicked.
Following is an article on the unaccounted billions in spending by the war machine that always fails financial audits.
Stop this beast from devouring our nation, threatening the world, corrupting our government, and hoodwinking our citizens.
$400,000 per year Income and Couples are Frantically Trying to Make Ends Meet
Bret Stephens, a columnist at the New York Times, recently wrote that “a couple with a combined income of $400,000 a year doesn’t necessarily have a lifestyle we’d describe as “rich”: “They’re scrimping to send their kids to college, driving a Camry, if they have a car at all, and wondering why eggs have gotten so expensive.”
Ross Douthat, offers one answer: “These people are rich by any measure, and they are spending their money on things only rich people can afford, such as living in the best school districts and in or near amenity-rich megacities….many worry that their offspring will be downwardly mobile, which leads them to spend virtually all of their outsize disposable incomes on preparing the children to become star performers in the next round of competition.”
See Washington Post article for full story.