For everyone’s convenience, I’ve shifted the reminders / explanations about
Sunday’s meditation-clearing
to this
post. I have a simplified blogiography of posts related to this work here,
a list of themes I have identified here,
and my changing the personality of oppressors post, which I am contemplating
expanding to include some key people to work on, is here.
Now,
the themes – short, medium and long term - that come to mind for my work this
week, after I review all this news, are (and no apologies if this repeats the
themes of any previous weeks – in fact, given the size of this task, that is to
be expected):
(a) never abuse power - and never make excuses or lie to oneself when doing so, whether it is nepotism, insider trading, using sex for control or using mundane power to mutilate (physically, emotionally or mentally), injure or kill: not only does it all come back on you literally, through the mechanism of karma, it scars one’s Soul - not irredeemably, but near enough;(b) BPLF whistleblowing is responsible USE of power, not abuse;(c) just as bystanders doing nothing about bullying or domestic violence are guilty of being an accessory, so too are groups and nations that fail to act against gross abuses occurring within the spheres of their existence. On the other hand, it is, at this stage of the world’s evolution, a cause for celebration when people, groups or nations do take responsible, proportionate and effective action;(d) people need to allow others to have the freedom to be free – to do otherwise is control, whether on a small scale, such as domestic violence or preventing others changing their religion, medium scale, such as counter-revolutions, or a large scale, such as the endemic abuse of women and other minority groups;(e) “May the world of commerce and business be recognised to be a servant, not a master, of the lives of people”. Where it is not, it is a classic case of “the tail wagging the dog”;
News and other matters from this week include
the following (opportunities/good
news are shown in green; comments are shown
in purple; WARNING: some of these links may contain triggers around issues such
as violence, sexual assault, discrimination,
etc). Incidentally, the purpose of reading these news links is not
only to inform: it is also to stimulate a connection to nonBPLF units that
need to be cleared and BPLF units that
need to be strengthened. That only works if you don’t let yourself be overwhelmed by this, so take it
in small chunks if you need to, but remember to actively clear and heal!
… including yourself.
- permanent issue: may all actual and potential BPLF [1] Leaders be kept BPLF safe, including keeping them undetectable to the nonBPLF and keeping all their Significant Others inviolable against being used for indirect psychic attack, all as is for the Highest Spiritual Good;
- with regard to the war in Yemen, there has been: a report that the Saudis are using cluster munitions, which cause terrible injuries later amongst civilians – particularly children; a critique of the term “proxy war”, which argues that it diminishes the seriousness of conflicts in Syria and Libya, and provides smokescreen over direct Saudi aggression and earlier Western culpability; a meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council and French President Francois Hollande; UN reports that aid providers have had difficulty providing medical services as result of the current security situation and continued airstrikes, and that food partners have reported they have had to suspend assistance due to lack of fuel; the UN Special Envoy on Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, is conducting intensive consultations aimed at getting the political process back on track); a good overview of the situation, including why the Saudis would have problems in a ground war; a report on concerns over the Saudi army’s apparent ineffectiveness, and the changes of leadership in the Saudi royal family; the Saudis have announced a five day ceasefire to allow humanitarian aid, but shelled Houthi areas after the announcement - after giving warnings to flee that few could respond to, owing to the lack of fuel; see here for an interview with a Yemeni Nobel laureate (Peace Prize) who has been called “the Mother of the(2011) Revolution”;
- with regard to the conflict in Syria, there have been: barrel bomb attacks on Yarmouk refugee camp in Syria have been reported, and Amnesty International is accusing government forces and rebels of abuses, and even crimes against humanity; closure of a crossing point on the Syrian-Jordanian border has cut off Lebanese exports; a review of President Obama’s actions which suggest they may lead to the removal of Assad without a resultant regional war; see here for a report that Jordan may be modifying its former support of the rebels, and the US has commenced training moderate Syrian rebels, in Jordan.(Also, the UN-backed Syria talks have commenced in Geneva, with the UN envoy seeking broad spectrum of views [the complex situation around these talks is reviewed here], and, for first time in two years, UNICEF has been able to deliver aid to families uprooted from Yarmouk refugee camp); Lebanon's Hezbollah vowed that it would clear militants from a region on the border with Syria;
- with regard to the conflict in Ukraine: the UN Secretary-General has met with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and participated with him in a commemoration of the end of World War II. Speaking to reporters there, the Secretary-General said Ukraine contributed and sacrificed immensely to the fight against Nazism. He said he was saddened to be in Ukraine amidst a debilitating conflict in the east and reaffirmed his support for a peaceful resolution, in a manner upholding Ukraine’s sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence;
- with regard to the earthquake in Nepal: the World Food Programme’s Executive Director, Ertharin Cousin, has concluded her visit to earthquake-affected regions of Nepal, and said that organisation and its partners are committed to working more efficiently and expeditiously, especially before the monsoon seasons starts. WFP has, so far, dispatched enough food for 250,000 people in some of the hardest-hit areas and more assistance is expected in the coming days. The UN Children’s Fund and the World Health Organization are working with government authorities to vaccinate more than half a million children against measles. The agencies warn that the lack of shelter and sanitation remain huge risk factors for the disease. The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says families are urgently in need of food medicine, tarpaulins and shelter repair tools as they continue to stay in the open. Landslides have challenged transportation of relief items to some areas. Many affected villages are without road access at all; The Hindu has continued to report the good and bad about the Nepal earthquake, including this editorial;
- with regard to media and freedom of expression, there has been: a warning that Mexico’s problems with freedom of expression are putting democracy at risk; a report on Burundi’s crushing of dissent (and the possibility of neighbouring nations taking action); a report that the UN's cultural body will award its annual press freedom prize to Mazen Darwish, a Syrian journalist and rights activist who has been jailed by his country’s government for more than three years; a report on the problems, including intimidation (and disappearances in Libya), faced by Tunisian journalists; a report that Qatar has arrested a team of German journalists who were working on a documentary investigating claims of corruption regarding Qatar’s hosting of the 2022 World Cup; a journalist has been killed in Iraq as a report claims that press freedom in Arab nations is now more curtailed than it was before the “Arab Spring”; ; an article on how the UAE crushes dissent; ; an article arguing that “selective state violence designed to punish and limit dissident capacity may be the very thing that can build up dissidents’ tactical and operational skills and allow them to return and fight another day”; a report on the crushing of dissent in Ethiopia; an opinion piece that RT, formerly Russia Today, launched in 2005 as a public diplomacy exercise in 2005, is now a tool of propaganda (I’ve seen RT used as a source by human rights people, but haven’t seen enough of the site to form a sensible opinion – but I do have some caution that some of the reaction may be ideological, some may be based on resentment about human rights stories, and some at least may well be true. According to Wikipedia, former RT journalists have accused it of bias, as have at least one industry regulator, so the claims appear to have credible support, but some of the critics are politically conservative, and thus may be guilty of the emotional bias I alluded to. It is possible that both those are for and against RT have valid points, and the truth is, not so much in-between, as a complex mixture of points all along that spectrum); the European Court of Human Rights has ruled that Azerbaijan had violated the rights of Emin Huseynov, a journalist, as he was reporting on a public gathering, but he has not been released;
- with regard to refugees, there has been: a report on actions to rescue refugees in the Mediterranean Sea, including by nongovernment vessels (and the Italian navy is – fortuitously – sceptical of attempts to promote Australia’s “turn back the boats” viciousness), and concerns about possible militia links in refugees in Algeria. The UN Refugee Agency has said that it is deeply concerned at this week’s discovery of dozens of bodies in smugglers’ camps in southern Thailand, and called on countries in the region to strengthen cooperation on counter-smuggling and counter-trafficking measures while ensuring the protection of victims. See here for a follow up on the stories of some refugees from concentration camps in World War Part Two); a report that a record 38 million people remain displaced inside their own countries through conflict and violence (that is 1 in every 200 people on this planet); the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has reported that 25,000 people have arrived in eastern Niger since 30th April, after being told to evacuate islands in Lake Chad due to planned military operations by coalition forces from Chad, Niger and Nigeria against Boko Haram. UNICEF has provided displaced families with 10,000 litres of water, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) is providing household kits for 5,000 people, and the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF are supporting health facilities, but the World Food Programme (WFP) has said that thousands of women and children in regions where Boko Haram violence has spilled across borders into Cameroon, Niger and Chad face a gruelling lean season and the prospects of malnutrition, the start of the lean season in June in Sudan will likely bring an increase in the number of people who are food insecure in Sudan from the current 3.5 million people to 4 million people. Toby Lanzer, the UN humanitarian coordinator in South Sudan, said that since the beginning of May, military activities south of Bentiu in Unity State have forced up to 100,000 people from their homes; a new report by UNHCR that says that despite the risks, some 25,000 Rohingya and Bangaldeshis boarded smugglers’ boats on the Bay of Bengal between January and March of this year – nearly double the number during the same time as last year;
- with regard to discrimination, there has been: a call for women to be included in talks with the Taliban in Afghanistan that President Ghani is planning (see also here); a call for US Secretary of State John Kerry to raise human rights when he visits Kenya; a report on a trailblazing single mother in the United Arab Emirates, women who are riding motorbikes in Dubai; a gay man is running for political office in Turkey, as Roma use education to fight racism and China is forcing Muslims to sell alcohol and tobacco, and Indonesia bans domestic workers from going to the Middle East; Mr kill-LGBTIQ-kids Putin needs to read this: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/127/5/896.short, and this, on the effect of media portrayals; some people are suggesting a new courtesy title (Mx) for the “one third of trans people who do not identify as a particular gender”. Apart from my experience indicating that the proportion of trans people who have that preference being MUCH lower (although it is probably correct, or low, for intersex people), I can see this leading to problems as bigots try to ram it down the throats of those trans people who do have a preferred gender, rather than accepting the trans person’s identification; a report on female taxi drivers, who use bikes and wear bright pink, in Liberia; Albania is taking some steps towards addressing homophobia;
- with regard to police and policing, there has been: a report of Greek police abusing marginalised people; ; a report that Ferguson has created a new group of leaders across the USA dedicated to civil rights and pushing back against police; a review of the recent protests in Baltimore (see here for a review of claims that police selectively use laws); an article on an appalling abuse of power by police - this sort of conduct is, in effect, sexual assault (as is this, and I note this as well); on the other hand, a police officer has received a bravery award for not shooting a man, despite being injured by knives he was wielding (incidentally, I have got on well with the police I’ve personally known - and an uncle from my adoptive family was a police officer); a report on signs of changes to US attitudes towards holding police accountable;
From the Daily Briefings of the United Nations (UN) (and
other sources):
- the UN Secretary-General has called for further solidarity between UN and regional organisations;
- the Bangui Forum has opened in the Central African Republic, bringing together national authorities, political parties, armed groups, civil society, including youth and women groups, as well as religious leaders, to discuss and determine the future of the country, and led to armed groups signing an agreement pledging to release all children associated to armed groups or armed forces and to stop the recruitment of children;
- aid agencies are seeking more than $1 billion to meet needs of 5.4 million people in need in Sudan;
- the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child welcomed South Sudan’s ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child;
- the UN Children’s Fund and the World Health Organization and their partners are supporting a national week-long polio and measles vaccination campaign in Liberia. The campaign, which got off today, had been scheduled for last year, but was suspended due to the Ebola outbreak. The agencies, together with the Ministry of Health, aim to vaccinate more than 683,000 children against polio and 603,000 against measles;
- the Secretary-General has strongly condemned the killing of two UN peacekeepers from the United Republic of Tanzania and the wounding of 13 others in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, which happened when a convoy of the UN Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo was ambushed by suspected Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) forces;
- the Kidal compound of the UN Mission in Mali was targeted by mortar fire, with no damage or injuries, but later two civilians were injured when their vehicle struck an improvised explosive device one kilometre north of the MINUSMA compound;
- the UN Human Rights Office has expressed its concern over the continued and increasing pressure by Serbian authorities, including members of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party, on Ombudsman Sasa Jankovic;
- this week there has been a signing, in Geneva, of an agreement between the Government of Honduras and the High Commissioner of Human Rights Office to open an office in Honduras;
- after meeting leaders of local communities, the UN Cyprus envoy has noted the optimism on finally achieving a settlement, after decades;
- the UN Deputy Secretary-General, Jan Eliasson, has opened the 11th Session of the UN Forum on Forests;
- a new guide was issued this week by the World Health Organization and the UN Refugee Agency on mental health in humanitarian emergencies;
From other sites:
- Human Rights Watch has: a call for the US to take the lead on banning autonomous weapons system (the so-called “killer robots”); a report on the stifling of Russia by Putin; a report on increased detentions and beatings in Sudan around the recent elections - including afterwards; a report on the appalling ordeal of a former child soldier from Afghanistan at the hands of US authorities; an unflattering comparison of US response to torture it committed to the responses of other nations who also used torture; a report on threats against human rights defenders in the Philippines;
- the Middle East Eye has:
a report that Da’esh have committed an attack on US soil, and another that Da’esh is threatening Iraq’s largest oil refinery, north of Baghdad;
claims, via Breaking the Silence, that Israeli soldiers were ordered to fire indiscriminately during their assault on Gaza last year, and a report on why the first female Muslim in Britain to become a cabinet minister resigned over the events of that war;
Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called for unity against racism after talks with Ethiopian Jews (how much of this is due to building the notion of racism as acceptable against Palestinians and others?), as pressure builds for Israel to be added to a “shame list” of serious violators of children’s rights in response to last year’s war in Gaza and protests are planned against G4S for aiding Israeli prisons;
a claim by Israel of an imminent attack against Jews in Tunisia;
a report that German police have raided the offices of a Turkish newspaper accused of promoting suicide bombings;
a report on Egypt’s “Executioner Judge” (see here for an opinion that the Egyotian judiciary is acting without influence from the government); a report that a tribal coalition in Egypt's north eastern Sinai Peninsula has offered a bounty for killing a senior leader of the most active militant group in the area;
a report on an Iraqi musician who is responding to violence with music;
a report that Qatar will abolish its controversial "kafala" system, which critics have likened to modern-day slavery, before the end of this year;
a report of rioting in a Kurdish town in Iran;
- the Nonviolent Conflict site has links to: an article on the power of fear in driving political change over the last few centuries; an article on China’s pressure on foreign NGOs a report that, since the arrest of her husband, opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, during widespread protests against the government last year, Lilian Tintori has become the accidental face of Venezuela’s beleaguered and often divided democracy movement; an article on “unarmed civilian protection” (see also nonviolent peacekeeping); a report on protests by Russian citizens a report that China is having an adverse effect on democracy beyond its borders criticism of Iran’s Foreign Minister for denying jailing people; as many as 15,000 mostly urban and middle-class Guatemalans have taken the streets to demand the resignations of President Otto Perez Molina and Vice President Roxana Baldetti, after the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala uncovered a sophisticated network of tax evasion used by middle- and high-ranking members of the government;
- the US-based and -centric “War on the Rocks” blog (which I have found may also have other articles that I have concerns with - and thus do not provide links to, unless I want you to think … :) ) has: an article on the challenges of the increased accessibility of the Arctic as ice melts, and the potential for this to lead to conflict; a call for an independent review of drone strikes; an article on the need for some police forces to be reformed;
- the Political Violence at a Glance blog has: a review of Russia’s “energy war” against Europe;
- the Institute for War and Peace Reporting has: links to an article claiming Russia is arming Armenia and Azerbaijan, and an article on signs of dissent in Uzbekistan;
- the International Crisis Group has: an analysis of the approaching “moment of truth” for the democratisation in the Democratic Republic of Congo; a report on the dangers of tensions over the South China Sea;
- The
Hindu has:
a report on the struggle against Da’esh on Twitter; a report on a terrorist attack in Bangladesh;
a report that Pakistani army commanders have accused India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) of “whipping up” terrorism in Pakistan;
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is heading for China next week on a visit which he hopes would leave a powerful impact on Asia, by pooling in strengths of the world’s two largest developing countries, as India seeks other ways to cooperate with Palestine – which may lead to Palestinian support for India’s bid for a place on the UN Security Council;
an editorial on India being one of the 10 countries in the world with the greatest survival divide between wealthy and poor urban children, another on the abuse of women in India, and what that says about bystanders, and a report on a controversial Bill that provides for trying juveniles aged between 16 and 18 years for heinous crimes under laws for adults;
- the BBC has: a report that the Peruvian government has sent indigenous culture specialists to help a community in the Amazon rainforest after a man was killed by a member of a reclusive tribe; a report that France has extended its surveillance powers in response to terrorism;
- a report on drug problems in China (on that, I’ve read many comments by people on the Indonesian execution of drug criminals that say executions must be for major crimes, such as murder: the problem is, as far as the Indonesians and many other people I know – in Australia – that drugs do kill – or destroy – people. The perception is not that drugs are a social or minor issue. I tend to agree with that, but I still consider the death penalty to be wrong – and I also consider abuse of alcohol to be as serious a problem);
- an article here questions whether removing the leaders of Mexico’s drug cartels makes a difference (some time ago I published a link to an article on extremist groups resorting more to violence when their leaders are removed, so I think this is worth thinking about);
- Pagans in Ukraine are working for peace, despite apparent bigotry from the Ukrainian government;
- an integrated, small scale (village level) approach to fighting extreme poverty is being promoted;
- an article on how Japan may be setting an example on the much-needed conversion of economic planning from growth to stasis;
- Russia and China have agreed to a $2 billion fund for agricultural investments in both countries;
- an article on the cooperation between Russia and the USA in space;
- the new government in Sri Lanka has been praised by the USA.
[2] Please
see here, here and my post "The
Death of Wikipedia" for the reasons
I now recommend caution when using Wikipedia. I'm also exploring use of h2g2,
although that doesn't appear to be as extensive (h2g2 is intended - rather
engagingly - to be the Earth edition of
"The
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy").
[3] I apologise for the formatting: it seems Blogger is
no longer as WYSIWYG as it used to be, and there are a lot of unwanted
changes to layout made upon publishing, so I often have to edit it immediately
after publishing to get the format as close to what I want as possible.
Love, light, hugs and blessings
(pronounced "new-MYTH-ear"; ... aka Bellatrix
Lux … aka Morinehtar … would-be drýicgan or maga
... )
My "blogiography" (list of all posts and guide as to how to best use this
site) is here, and my glossary/index is here.
I started this blog to cover karmic regression-rescue
(see here and here), and it grew ... See here for my group mind project, here and here for my "Pagans for Peace" project (and join me
for a few minutes at some time between 8 and 11 PM on Sunday, wherever you are,
to meditate-clear for peace), and here
for my bindrune kit-bag. I also strongly recommend
learning how to flame, ground
and shield, do alternate
nostril breathing, work
with colour, and see also here and be
flexible.
Tags: activism, discrimination, energy work, magick, meditation, nonviolence, peace, society, violence, war,
First published: Laugardagr, 9th May, 2015
Last edited (excluding fixing typo's
and other minor matters): Saturday, 9th May, 2015