The gangbusting 2014 podcast Serial dropped the first episode of its second season Thursday morning, and fans of the first iteration can stop worrying: the soothing narrating voice of former Baltimore Sun reporter Sarah Koenig is back. Almost as importantly, so is MailChimp. An advertisement for the service, which allows businesses around the world to “send…
Cover Photo Credit: Casey Fiesler
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Former Wall Streeter Who Found Faith Says He Has Answer For Global Problems
By Clifford Michaels
We are in a time when the human spirit is being challenged.
The choices we make as a society will be felt for many years to come.
Our focus must change from self to each other, and this applies to the global community, as well.
This is a time for taking inventory of our purpose and what we want from life as individuals and a civilization…beyond material needs and what our egos perceive they need to feel satisfied.
It is a time to reach out and help others in need.
Whether we admit it or not, many of us need emotional healing in one form or another, and we need this healing from other people; money does not do this.
As we heal, our hearts naturally open more and become an empowering source of support for others.
This sets an example and becomes an opportunity for others to see and emulate the loving, unifying behavior.
All that matters is what is within your heart; this is what God sees.
If your life is filled with love, it doesn’t’ matter how many possessions you have. Love is true currency and something that can be shared and passed on to others.
As others receive your love, it shifts them closer to their purpose and enables the love to be passed on again and again, creating a chain that gains more strength with each link that is added.
Eventually, this chain can circle the world over and over again.
Many in the world, in the name of power and control, restrict human rights, even killing, torturing, and manipulating others for personal gain.
Not only does this prevent those being hurt from fulfilling their destiny, it is a great setback for those using power irresponsibly.
Nation upon nation rising with swords and, still worse, swords upon their own citizens spreads fear and hinders our ability to evolve as a civilization.
We as a global community have a responsibility to act together.
Too often it is the same countries that get involved, such as the United States acting alone or with just a few other partners.
All nations need to act in unison to stop the violence and bloodshed all over the planet, or it will keep popping up where it sees weakness.
Those who attain power are presented with an opportunity for personal growth, as well as having a larger-scale impact to guide history.
There are powerful leaders in countries throughout the world that can exercise their will, and their ego, and make decisions that impact millions of people.
Mikhail Gorbachev, the former prime minister of the Soviet Union, put his ego aside and set an example for humanity by granting freedom to millions of people who were imprisoned by the Iron Curtain.
Former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was on the opposite end of the spectrum, and he paid for it with his life.
Those who are leaders have the potential to further both individual and global evolution with the choices they make.
How they deal with that responsibility is what is at stake here on a personal as well as a soul level.
Often it is fear that causes people to do horrible things they otherwise could never conceive of.
Fear-motivated behavior goes on throughout the world and its used for justifying decisions, and these consequences affect many innocent people.
Since everything is energy, the darker emotions of fear, violence, hate, anger, and desire for revenge can be passed to others as well as can specific physical actions.
Once in power, even initially well-meaning people often fear giving up control. We see it in a variety of circumstances in business and politics.
We see it every day in larger settings with leaders of countries. The atrocities that have been discovered throughout history are hard to even grasp.
Too often, it appears that some leaders have focused upon themselves and lost the ability to feel empathy or compassion for the people.
In their greed to hold on to tor expand their power, they lose their human kindness and respect for life as if they are above it all.
The truth is that there is really nothing to fear, so all these fear-based actions are not necessary or productive.
Human existence is a temporary state for learning and not our eternal, continuous identity.
When we leave this material form, we return to the bigger part of who we really are. Fear fills us with a false identity; it takes over when we believe we are less than we are.
What you do and how you treat others is what you become – there is no escape.
You cannot kill another person for personal gain and think you are not affected by this.
You cannot just expect to arrive home, tuck your baby in to sleep, and kiss your wife goodnight as if nothing had happened – who you are and what you have done will be felt by all those around you.
Likewise, you cannot be a leader of a country making wholesale decisions to end others’ lives and destroying families you feel are a threat, and then show up at the United Nations with a smile and a handshake, then return again to your country to use lethal force everywhere you see fit.
In time, this behavior has its own repercussions.
These decisions will follow you beyond this life, and you will ultimately have to make amends to all you have wronged.
As Russell Crowe so well expressed in the role of Maximus Decimus Meridius, in the movie Gladiator, “What we do in life echoes in eternity.”
Too many fail to believe we are eternal beyond our physical existence.
Once we embrace this reality we will better understand the deeds we do in this life, and what is in our hearts, will follow us into the Hereafter.
Our lives are a learning exercise designed to help us evolve and to help develop our souls.
There is great power in unity should we choose to embrace it. Let us have more faith in each other to find peaceful solutions for solving our difficulties.
Clifford Michaels started his career as a Wall Street trader before moving into private practice. He has a B.S. in finance from Syracuse University and an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh. Following a reluctant journey of self-discovery, he developed the sensitivity to interact with the heavenly realm and now has one foot planted firmly in two worlds. Harnessing Heaven is Michaels’ first book.
Learn more and connect with the author at www.harnessingheaven.com, Twitter and Facebook.
RISE NEWS is a grassroots journalism news organization that is working to change the way young people become informed and engaged in public affairs. You can write for us.
Cover Photo Credit: m01229/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
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This Video Shows Why People Hate Local TV News Sometimes
Typically, I would take this space to write 300 meaningless words that you would probably skip because you clicked on this post to watch a video.
So I’m not going to waste any of your time and just post the link of a Cleveland TV station stalking Browns QB Johnny Manziel in the dumbest tv package we have seen in a long time.
Yep, that’s right. A great reporter was forced to wait out in front of Manziel’s home because he may or may not be an alcoholic. HAHAHAHAHA. Oh wait, that is literally none of our business.
Clearly the guy has some real issues going on right now in his life.
Who would wear a disguise and sneak away to Las Vegas less than 24 hours before his team played their last game of the season?
Someone with a real drinking problem would do that.
But let’s stand in his yard anyway because there is probably nothing else happening in Cleveland that is worth covering.
Cover Photo Credit: WEWS NewsChannel5/ Youtube (Screengrab)
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Never Forget What July 4th Is Really About
By Christopher Kelly
As we pause to celebrate the anniversary of our nation’s independence, it seems appropriate to consider the vital role played by the American military in the creation of our nation and its transformation of our world.
We are not a militaristic nation, but we are a nation that is deeply proud of its military. We are not a perfect people.
We have made many mistakes. We have not always lived up to our noble ideals.
It is important to remember what happened at Wounded Knee, My Lai, and Abu Ghraib. But it is also important to remember the amazing things that the US military has done in our world.
On April 19, 1775, British soldiers marched from Boston to Lexington and Concord to seize a cache of arms.
They were confronted on the Lexington Green by citizen soldiers who were farmers, merchants, and tradesmen.
The “shot heard round the world,” so named by Ralph Waldo Emerson in his poem “Concord Hymn,” was fired later that day on the Old North Bridge.
Liberty was not a gift of the English crown; she had to be taken by force by an armed rebel populace.
Later that year, American forces invaded British Canada.
My own ancestor, James Van Rensselaer, was a citizen soldier in the siege of Quebec, and his commanding officer was Benedict Arnold.
The American Revolution is often portrayed in rosy colors due to its remoteness and patriotic outcome.
Photo Credit: Vinoth Chandar/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
It was, in fact, a horrendously bloody conflict. Recent scholarship has placed the total number of Americans killed in the American Revolution at around 25,000, out of a total population of the thirteen colonies in 1775 of 2.4 million.
Thus, over one percent of the population was killed over the course of the war’s nearly eight and half years.
After the American Revolution, we would fight Britain again in the War of 1812. We also fought our way westward across the continent, engaging in many brutal wars against the Native Americans.
In 1846, President Polk launched a war against Mexico.
This was and remains a controversial chapter in American history.
Congressman Abraham Lincoln opposed the war. Henry David Thoreau refused to pay taxes to support the war and was briefly jailed.
Even Ulysses Grant, who fought in the war, condemned its prosecution in his memoirs.
But without the Mexican-American War, the states of California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and New Mexico would never have been added to the Union.
Without the Mexican-American War, the United States might never have become a coast-to-coast superpower.
Imagine for a moment what World War II might have been like had Polk not fought the Mexican-American War.
It is unlikely that an American naval base would have been built at Pearl Harbor without Polk.
If there had been a Pacific base, the Japanese would never have sunk the Arizona to start the war, because the state we call Arizona would have belonged to Mexico.
If there had not been Alamogordo in New Mexico where the atomic bomb could be tested, would we have been able to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, thereby ending the war?
Without Polk’s war in the nineteenth century, the United States might not have been strong enough to deal with the challenges of fascism and communism in the twentieth century.
Nearly a hundred years ago in 1917, America citizen soldiers went “Over There” with the American Expeditionary Force to fight the Central Powers in World War I.
By 1918, German Kaiser William II would abdicate.
In 1941, American citizens would get the call to combat Hitler and Imperial Japan.
Just over seventy-one years ago, American soldiers liberated the Nazi concentration camps, such as Buchenwald and Dachau, thereby helping to end the Holocaust.
Without American invasions at places like the beaches of Omaha and Anzio, the world would undoubtedly be a darker place.
After World War II, American forces remained engaged with Europe, joining NATO and garrisoning the nations of former adversaries during the Cold War. The Cold War was won without a shot being fired.
Today we face the threat of global terror networks that have perpetrated horrors in Brussels, Paris, San Bernardino, California, and, most recently, Orlando, Florida.
Our enemies must know that Americans do not love war for war’s sake. To do so is the definition of fascism. We are and always have been reluctant warriors. But when provoked, we know how to fight, and we will endure until victory and a lasting peace is won.
Thanks to the courage and sacrifice of those American patriots who have served in our military and those that serve today, we are able to celebrate the Fourth of July and to confront the challenges that face us around the world.
Christopher Kelly is the co-author of America Invades: How We’ve Invaded or Been Militarily Involved with almost Every Country on Earth and Italy Invades: How Italians Conquered the World. His newest book, An Adventure in 1914, will be published this fall. For more information, visit www.americainvades.com and www.italyinvades.com.
RISE NEWS is a grassroots journalism news organization that is working to change the way young people become informed and engaged in public affairs. You can write for us.
Cover Photo Credit: Kevin Muncie/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
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