Plastic Pollution: Workers Needed, Not Hype

 Plastic pollution is an environmental disaster. It must be addressed in a number of ways. This includes finding alternatives to plastic, reducing the use of plastic, and more. It is critically important for there to be universal proper waste management so that billions of people dependent on plastic in developing countries have proper ways to dispose of plastic trash instead of dumping it or openly burning it, thereby contaminating the air, everything around and themselves. 

When it comes to removing plastic already in the environment, the focus has been on volunteerism and technology. Both have their limitations. In many developing countries, many people cannot afford to be volunteers. Technology is limited as to what it can achieve, including the kinds of habitats where it can actually work. Technology, for example, cannot remove plastic from mangroves, forests, many shorelines, and many other habitats. 

What has been missing in regards to removing plastic already in the environment is employing people to remove plastic trash. Poverty is widespread in the world. People need work and the environment needs to be cleaned. Putting the two together means helping disadvantaged people by employing them to remove plastic pollution. Employed labor must become an integral part of removing plastic trash already in the environment.

If things continue as they are and plastic pollution is manipulated to serve certain selfish interests, while nothing of any significance is done, the outcome will be disastrous. Having millions of pounds of plastic trash continue to pour into rivers and oceans daily is not sustainable.

No One Religion Owns God Or Truth

One person's religion is superstition to many others. Religion is not science. It is based on beliefs, not facts. Many people insist their religious beliefs are facts, but they are not. They are beliefs, true to them and superstitions and fables to many others. 

People need to decide what they value more, conformity or freedom. Religion too often demands conformity. Freedom demands questioning. Taking away the right to criticize, to reject, to mock religion is taking away freedom itself. 

No religious ideology has the right to spread by force or to force anyone to submit. Religious violence and aggression must be challenged and repudiated. 

Religious freedom is being hamstringed when it is needed most. 

God is not exclusive. What a remote tribe believes in the Amazon or Congo is no less valid than the beliefs of those that insist God's message can only be found in certain books given to people in specific geographic locations. Those that insist only their God is the right god, only their religion is the right religion, only their religion and beliefs are the truth, and that only their prophet or prophets are the right prophets, have not died and returned to earth with a knowledge no one else possesses.

No religion has the exclusive right to God or truth. Rejecting religion does not necessarily mean embracing atheism. People can have faith in God or a higher power and be free of religion. Religion is a set of beliefs, not all of which might be good or beneficial, and some of which might be harmful and cruel. In some instances, religion is used as a shield that evil people hide behind. God is different than religion, and does not require religion to be believed in. No one religion owns God or truth.

 

YouTube As An Anti-Israel, Anti-Jewish Platform. Gaza And The Love Affair for Jihadists

 YouTube is too often used as a platform for demonizing Israel and inciting hatred and violence against Israel and Jews.

There are those that do everything they can to make Israelis appear demonic, even at times by the use of actors and scripted situations. There is no other conflict so thoroughly covered by cameras and video.  The anti-Israel crowd wants Israelis to be depicted in the worst ways imaginable. It is easier to seek the destruction of a nation and of a people by dehumanizing and demonizing them.

The theme of Israelis behaving badly attracts an enormous YouTube audience eagerly seeking validation for their hatreds and anti-Jewish stereotypes.  All war is sad and a crime against humanity. When it comes to Gaza, the conflict is inflamed by the anti-Israel crowd that completely excuses the jihadists that want the war and killings. Israel does not operate in a vacuum. It is not a country free of responsibility. But to pretend that the jihadist organizations and nations, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Iran and its Lebanese occupation army Hezbollah, do not seek the murder of Israeli civilians and the complete destruction of Israel, and that they bear no responsibility for the wars and suffering of children and civilians in Gaza and elsewhere, is deceptive and dishonest. 

Demonizing Israel is used to unite people against a common enemy. Demonizing Israel is used by some in order to convert or keep people tied to a religion or hate group by focusing on the Jew as a figure to hate. 

Israel is used by every brutal, corrupt regime and organization on the planet to divert attention away from themselves, to unite people around an enemy to hate and despise, and to hide their own sins, crimes and evils by portraying Israel as the only source of what they themselves do. YouTube has made demonizing Israel and Jews readily available to billions of people worldwide in every language imaginable. In many places, people are taught to hate Jews, even when there are  no Jews in those countries. Few if any monitor the dissemination of hate and propaganda against Jews, especially when it is not in English and a few other languages.

Some people that do not want to appear anti-Jewish assert that they hate instead Zionists or Israelis, even though over a third of the world's Jewish population lives in Israel. They seek the same genocide, but pretend that because they use the word Zionist or Israeli instead of Jew, it makes the genocide they seek more acceptable. A tiny fringe group of anti-Israel orthodox Jews, disavowed by the vast majority of orthodox Jews and other Jews, believe only they are real Jews and that Israel must be destroyed. They are used by many people that hate Jews and that want Israel destroyed to legitimize their hatred and efforts to destroy Israel and slaughter Israeli Jews. 

YouTube selectively shields some against religious criticism, thereby legitimizing blasphemy and the suppression of religious freedom. When it comes to demonizing Israelis, actual people and not a religious belief, too often anything goes.

There are those that assert Israelis are not real Jews, as though they are not real human beings, and therefore are legitimate targets to attack. 

Others demonize Israel and Jews based on race, even though Jew is not a race. 

Others demonize Jews based on religion, falsely accusing Jews as being against God, another religions' prophets, or some other nonsense.

Many people are indoctrinated into believing killing Jews and driving them from the land is a religious obligation. This ensures endless bloodshed and no end to the conflict. War and more bloodshed has never been, and is not now the answer. Whether the answer is a one state or two state solution, or something else, is for Arab Palestinians and Israelis to decide. Whatever the answer might be, the one thing the answer is not is more war, killing and bloodshed.

No matter the murder, misery, corruption and atrocities committed by nations next to Israel or elsewhere, few care. If Israel is somehow not involved, few care about what happens in the world. This includes corruption, poverty, wars, slavery, terrible working conditions for millions, children recruited into violent jihadist organizations that help grown men rape and slaughter all over Africa and elsewhere, and much more. The conscience of the world rarely extends beyond its demonize Israel obsession. 

The world faces enormous environmental crises that threatens all human life. That is the only war that should be fought; to protect and save the environment and our future. Not the endless war against Israel and the Jews that achieves absolutely nothing good for humankind.

Instead, millions only care that Israel is destroyed. Demonizing and delegitimizing Israel helps achieve this genocidal dream that if realized would result in millions of people killed, Jew, Arab and others.

Those that provide a platform for hatred and demonization should be ashamed. But they are not. They are driven by greed. 

Those that purposely ignore, excuse, condone or justify the genocidal ambitions and actions of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Iran, Hezbollah and all of the other jihadists organizations and nations, (including Boko Haram, Abu Sayyaf, Al Qaeda, ISIS, Al Shabab and others), and that free them from all responsibility for the misery they create, are complicit in their crimes.