Social Cause 01 (Jul 08 - Jul 15)

[winston]

Fear is a Pornography We don’t Need by Stuart Wilde

We suffer under a pornography of fear, it’s a state sponsored religion, a “blackwash” driven by the agenda oriented bent media that seeks to manipulate people’s ideas and feelings.

Fear is how they attempt to subjugate you. We don’t need it infesting our minds and emotions. Most of what you see in the mainstream media’s news is propaganda designed for you to give up your power to the government and the ideals of the foreign infiltrators.

The word “pornography” comes from the Greek word “porneia” which can be translated as “fornication” or “immorality”. And fear mongering is an unwanted fornication, a form of rape, as it penetrates your mind and alters your emotions usually for no reason at all.

It is immoral to scare people for financial reasons or political gain and control. Refuse to be powerless or intimidated, stand your ground and turn the news off, but not before you write in large letters on your TV…. ”F… you and your little dog too.”

http://www.stuartwilde.com/2013/04/fear ... dont-need/

[winston]

Your world is pointing toward an insistence on conformity, which is causing you enormous grief.

It's what's at the heart of all of your religious battles, and religious battles are what are at the heart of all of your battles.

In other words, all of your wars and global irritation with one another are over your determination to promote sameness.

Your democracy insists that it's the only government that works. And every religion (it's interesting to note) proclaims that it is the only one that works.

---Abraham

Excerpted from the workshop in Kansas City, MO on September 15, 2004


www.abraham-hicks.com

[winston]

China Now Spends $125 Billion Per Year On Riot Gear And ‘Stability Maintenance’

Mannequins in riot gear, armoured cars and drones line a police equipment and “anti-terrorism technology” trade fair in Beijing as vendors seek to profit from China’s huge internal security budget.

The country is estimated to have more than 180,000 protests each year and the ruling Communist Party spends vast sums on ensuring order — more even than on its military, the largest in the world.

…

China’s domestic security budget across all levels of government is 769 billion yuan ($125 billion) this year, more than the country officially plans to spend on its armed forces, and an increase of more than 200 billion yuan since 2010.

Billions of the internal security budget, which also covers mundane items such as food safety and running courts, is earmarked for “stability maintenance”, a term used to justify arresting protesters and surveillance of dissidents.


Source: AFP

http://au.businessinsider.com/china-now ... nce-2013-5

[winston]

China trying to manage exposure of corruption online By Terril Yue Jones

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's Internet is brimming with disclosures of officials collecting bribes, homes and luxury accessories as casually as they do mistresses.

But while the government tolerates such anti-corruption vigilantism, it is also extremely leery of the threat the Internet can pose to Communist Party rule.

The Internet is the new tool in the fight against corruption - a cornerstone policy of new President Xi Jinping, who has pledged to tackle the problem head-on.

But while acknowledging that China's online world is helpful, authorities have also moved quickly to quash rumors that might fan protests that could escalate out of control, deleting microblog posts or even entire accounts.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/ ... ningdigest

[winston]

Spotlight grows on China's harsh labor camps

AFP - When she refused to sign a form renouncing her faith, Wang Chunying said she was handcuffed between two bunkbeds for 16 hours, deprived of food, water and sleep as she felt her wrists bleeding.

"The police would kick the beds apart to the point that my body couldn't stretch any further," she recalled of the time in a Chinese labor prison in late 2007.

"The pain that I had to endure was beyond words. The handcuffs already touched the bone and police still kept tightening them to make them hurt more."

Wang, who now lives in the United States, belongs to the Falungong, a spiritual movement banned in China in 1999. Practitioners have long spoken of abuse at "re-education-through-labor" camps as authorities try to stamp out the faith.


http://www.france24.com/en/20130526-spo ... abor-camps

[winston]

Showy officials slapped with building ban

China has introduced a five-year ban on construction of new government offices, state media reported, following public anger at reports of extravagant official buildings.

The move came as part of a publicity campaign led by President Xi Jinping, aimed at showing that the ruling Communist Party is cracking down on corruption and waste of public money.

The ban, ratified by the State Council, China's Cabinet, also covers expensive structures built as training centers or hotels, Xinhua News Agency reported.

Reports of extravagant public buildings - including a local government office in poverty-stricken Anhui province covering an area larger than the US Pentagon - and a government building in central Jiangxi province with a US$45 million (HK$351 million) mechanical clock tower, provoked anger online in recent years.

As well as being linked with official graft, the buildings were seen as signs of the ruling party's reliance on construction projects as a means of boosting unsustainable growth.


Source: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

[winston]

World abolishing death penalty, despite hiccups

AFP - The number of death penalties carried out worldwide dropped last year according to an annual report released Friday by an Italian non-governmental organisation.

The global number dropped from 5,004 in 2011 to 3,967 in 2012, while the number of countries that abolished capital punishment rose from 155 to 158 over the same period, the Italian NGO Hands off Cain said.

"The significant decrease in death penalties is to a great extent thanks to China, where they dropped from 4,000 to 3,000 in just a year," Italian Foreign Minister Emma Bonino said at a press conference to present the report.

In China, the number of death penalties has dropped 10 percent each year since 2007, when a new law meant death sentences had to go before the Supreme Court.

Despite the significant decrease, China remains the first country on the Hands off Cain blacklist, followed by Iran, which carried out 580 executions in 2012, and Iraq, where the number of death penalties almost doubled over the last year to 129.

Although 33 of the 40 countries that still have the death penalty are ruled by despots, some "liberal democracies" returned to capital punishment in 2012, the report said.

"While China seems to be progressively improving, some liberal democracies seem to be going the opposite way," said Sergio d'Elia, Hands off Cain secretary.

In 2011, of the "liberal democracies", just the United States and Taiwan carried out executions, while in 2012 Japan, Botswana and India began using capital punishment again after many years in which the practice was suspended.

This year, Indonesia joined them, carrying out its first death penalty for five years.

"Countries that are going backwards instead of going forwards are what worries us the most," Bonino said.

In the United States, abolitionists appear to be gaining ground: "In the last six years an American state has switched over to the right side every year," the NGO's president Marco Pannella said.

Bonino said she was disappointed that "we cannot call Europe a death penalty-free continent because of Belarus, where three executions took place in 2012".

http://www.france24.com/en/20130726-wor ... te-hiccups

[winston]

Child labour

AFP - Child labour affects 215 million youngsters worldwide.

Despite recent progress the international community remains a long way off meeting its target -- agreed in The Hague in 2010 -- of eliminating the worst forms of child labour by 2016.


Source: AFP

[winston]

$1 bn stolen in China low-cost housing programme

AFP - China's affordable housing programme lost nearly $1 billion to embezzlement last year, the national auditor reported on Friday, underscoring the obstacles to official efforts to fight graft.

About 5.8 billion yuan ($950 million) went towards "loan repayment, foreign investment, land requisition and house demolitions, office cash flow and other expenses not related to affordable-housing projects", the National Audit Office said on its website.

A total of 360 projects or organisations "embezzled" the funds, it said.

http://www.france24.com/en/20130809-1-b ... -programme

[winston]

A radical change in society

In bringing about a radical change in the human being, in you, you are naturally bringing about a radical change in the structure and the nature of society.

I think it must be very clearly understood that the human mind, with all its complexity, its intricate network, is part of this external world. The “you” is the world, and in bringing about a fundamental revolution—neither communist nor socialist, but a totally different kind of revolution, within the very structure and nature of the psyche, of yourself—you will bring about a social revolution.

It must begin, not outwardly but inwardly, because the outer is the result of our private, inner life.

When there is a radical revolution in the very nature of thought, feeling and action, then obviously there will be a change in the structure of society.

- Krishnamurti, Talks with American Students, p 8-9


Source: www.jkrishnamurti.com