Showing posts with label refugees. Show all posts
Showing posts with label refugees. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Refugees and the Growing Danger of Social Monocultures

Image result for dangers of monoculture farming


The Dangers of Monocultures (please keep reading)


Monocultures are large areas of land on which only one type of plant is grown. There are tree monocultures as well as crop monocultures. There are dangers associated with this approach to agriculture, especially environmental ones.

1. A monoculture is very vulnerable. It can be wiped out completely by one virus, fungus, destructive insect, or other disease. A farmer could lose his or her entire crop – and income – to one microbe.
2. Monocultures encourage more diseases, weeds, and destructive insects. These pests build resistance to the changeless nature of a monoculture, and their life cycles are never interrupted.
3. Because the natural resistance is so low in a monoculture, farmers must use greater and greater amounts of synthetic pesticides and fungicides to keep their crops alive and yielding. The environmental and health impacts of this kind of copious use of agrichemicals are significant.
4. Nutrients become depleted in soil that is used to grow only one type of crop year after year. Thus, farmers must step up the chemical fertilizers to keep getting crop yields.
5. The recent decline in honeybee populations has caused many to cast a critical eye on monocultures as a possible causal factor. Honeybees are prime pollinators, and only having one type of flower from which to gather pollen is completely unnatural (vast monocultures do not occur in nature).
( http://greenhealthreport.com/2010/07/the-dangers-of-monocultures/ )

What the hell does this have to do with refugees?

Societies around the globe have created social, political, and religious mono-cultures. As in agriculture, we have seen that this has caused the depletion of the human spirit, an increase in social disease, a vulnerability to thought viruses of hatred and mistrust, and the spread of mental poison to attempt to weed out the undesirable. 

Biodiversity is essential to a healthy environment. There are too many examples of biodiversity being lost and the collapse of ecosystems that follow. The same is true of human systems. Through the influx of many immigrants and cultures, America became the hotbed of new ideas, innovation, tolerance, and change. But when society no longer accepts diversity and mono-cultures its ideas and and socio-religious institutions, what follows is a nation of dogma, decay, and collapse. Innovation becomes stale as the new becomes rejected only because it is new. Looking back on our history, the nation grew the most when it experienced wave after wave of new people from foreign lands. Were there clashes? Yes. But while a few of the newcomers turned to crime, the majority was a net gain to our society. The diversity made us healthy and strong.

But now there are those who would make us all the same, in their image, with their religion, political ideology, and social biases. They have, in the name of religion and using fear propaganda, fed the mono-culture notion to those who have been to complacent in their ways. 

Like the honeybee, America used to be the prime pollinator of the world. However, it would appear that our current mono-culture of ideas is leading to colony collapse.

Alas poor America , we knew you well.

 

Thursday, September 10, 2015

Refugees

 Proud to Protect Refugees

We are sad because of your sorrow
We weep because of your tears
We hurt because of your pain
We are shamed because of your torment
We hunger because of your deprivations
We are parched because of your thirst
We shiver because you are cold
We sweat because you are hot
We hang our heads because of your abuse

Updated: Armenia Admits More Syrian Refugees Than France, Italy, the ...

Monday, November 10, 2008

BLOGGERS UNITE FOR REFUGEES!


We tend to think of refugees as people in some distant land with whom we may sympathize but for whom we can do little. Here are some things to consider. With global climate change, we are seeing refugees everywhere, even from Katrina in Louisiana. The destruction of thousands of homes from wildfires in the West, creates refugees. In a way, the massive unemployment numbers and mortgage foreclosures are creating refugees. You see, the issue is not just in remote places of the world. The issue is here, too. Perhaps one day you will need help. It is time to throw away the blinders and see and stop what is happening to those around the world and here at home with regard to human suffering. With the election of Obama, it is my hope that Americans will once again take the lead in caring for our brothers and sisters everywhere.
Here are just some of the places where you can help and learn more!
UK Refugee Services
http://www.redcross.org.uk/TLC.asp?id=81617

Lutheran Refugee Services
http://www.lirs.org/

Aotearoa-New Zealand Refugee Services
http://www.refugeeservices.org.nz/

United States Committee for Refugees and Immigrant Children
http://www.refugees.org/

Church World Service Immigrant & Refugee Program
http://www.churchworldservice.org/Immigration/index.html

Women's Commission for Refugee Women & Children
http://www.womenscommission.org/

Additional Links/Resources
http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/protect?id=3b8265c7a
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugees
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statelessness
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/world/2001/road_to_refuge/default.stm