Monthly Archives: February 2011
Hundreds of Lebanese rally against sectarian regime. Used Facebook. “Holy Bible &..Quran..call 4 pea
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Hundreds of Lebanese rally against sectarian regime. Used Facebook. “Holy Bible &..Quran..call 4 peace & love.”
Feb 28, 2011 8:44pm by Mickel Adzema
Hundreds of Lebanese rally against sectarian regime. Used Facebook to organize. "I hold the Holy Bible & the Holy Quran these two books call for peace and love."
chanted "Revolution has arrived in Lebanon," hoping to capitalize the wave of pro-change fever sweeping the Arab world.
we want equality between the people,"
For the several groups that called for the march, and used Facebook to spread their message, the turnout for the first such protest was encouraging.
The organizers distributed a leaflet saying they demanded a "secular, civil, democratic, socially just and equal state" and called for an increase in the minimum wage and lower prices for basic goods.
"Leave religion to clergymen, and politics to politicians …We want to live."
"We are here to topple the sectarian system, I have been living in this country enough to realize that this system is useless" he said. "I hold the Holy Bible and the Holy Quran these two books call for peace and love."
The actual steps required to bring about the demonstrators’ goal might not be clear, but the end result is. "We want a secular system that ensures justice and freedom and democracy, and we want to be able to live a decent life," said one protester, who declined to give his name.
Demonstrators emphasized that they were independent people who want to make a change, affirming that they represented diverse political affiliations and different parts of the country. They said they set all of their differences aside in order to combine their efforts to try to change the system regime.
"For the first time ever, a demonstration this big takes place in the street, in this bad weather. We aren’t March 8 or March 14, we are Lebanese citizens who want to live and have social justice and equality," said Rawad Shami, on behalf one of the Facebook groups that mobilized people for Sunday’s march.
Amplify’d from http://www.uruknet.info
Hundreds of Lebanese rally against sectarian regime
By Van Meguerditchian and Ashraf Monzer
February 28, 2011
BEIRUT: Hundreds of people braved a cold, driving rain Sunday to march in support of toppling the country’s sectarian political system, which the demonstrators blame for corruption and impoverishing the public.
Protestors held banners reading "The people want to topple the sectarian regime," and chanted "Revolution has arrived in Lebanon," hoping to capitalize the wave of pro-change fever sweeping the Arab world.
"We no longer believe in a system that has not given us throughout the years except corruption and hate for each other, we are sick and tired of poverty and very few job opportunities, we want equality between the people," said Yara, a 20-year-old journalism student.
Lebanon is governed by a delicate power-sharing system to maintain the balance between the country’s many sects. By long-standing convention the president must be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim and the Parliament speaker a Shiite Muslim.
For the several groups that called for the march, and used Facebook to spread their message, the turnout for the first such protest was encouraging.
"I believe that what happened today is an achievement on the road to demolishing this sectarian system," said Nehmat Badreddine, the spokesperson for the demonstration organizers.
"We believe that things will improve. We haven’t yet decided when our next move is, but we will announce it soon."
The organizers distributed a leaflet saying they demanded a "secular, civil, democratic, socially just and equal state" and called for an increase in the minimum wage and lower prices for basic goods.
Although the effort was markedly critical of the March 14 and March 8 camps, the Future Movement fielded a small group of protestors, in a "symbolic" participation.
"We in the Future Movement are against this sectarian regime, although some sides in the country are trying to manipulate us in order to be involved in the sectarian game that is going on in the country," said Wissam Shibli, the general coordinator of Future’s youth section.
Protestors walked the distance from the Mar Mikhael Church in the southern suburb of Shiyyah to the Museum area in Beirut, a route that was a green line during the country’s 1975-90 Civil War.
While protesters chanted the now-popular refrain of "The people want to bring down the regime," other held banners that read: "Enough lies and politics, we want to eat," "You made us hate the month of March … We want to fight Israel and have a drink at night," "Leave religion to clergymen, and politics to politicians …We want to live."
"We come here today asking for the downfall of the sectarian regime which, along with the sectarian leaders, has been manipulating our future," said Walid Obeid, 40, employed in the banking sector.
For Nassib Lobani, 71, Lebanon’s sectarian regime has proven to be useless. "We are here to topple the sectarian system, I have been living in this country enough to realize that this system is useless" he said. "I hold the Holy Bible and the Holy Quran these two books call for peace and love."
The actual steps required to bring about the demonstrators’ goal might not be clear, but the end result is. "We want a secular system that ensures justice and freedom and democracy, and we want to be able to live a decent life," said one protester, who declined to give his name.
Demonstrators emphasized that they were independent people who want to make a change, affirming that they represented diverse political affiliations and different parts of the country. They said they set all of their differences aside in order to combine their efforts to try to change the system regime.
"For the first time ever, a demonstration this big takes place in the street, in this bad weather. We aren’t March 8 or March 14, we are Lebanese citizens who want to live and have social justice and equality," said Rawad Shami, on behalf one of the Facebook groups that mobilized people for Sunday’s march.
Read more at http://www.uruknet.info
Hundreds of Lebanese rally against sectarian regime. Used Facebook. “Holy Bible &..Quran..call 4 peace & love.”
India: past life regression therapy takes hold. Boomeranged back to the subcontinent from the United
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India: past life regression therapy takes hold. Boomeranged back to the subcontinent from the United States.
Feb 28, 2011 8:19pm by Mickel Adzema
even though the concept of past lives is a vital feature of India’s Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist religions, ironically, the therapy has boomeranged back to the subcontinent from the United States — where the new embrace of Eastern religions, yoga and "spirituality" has made regression more popular than ever.
Believe it or not, but Kohli says past life regression worked for her.
By dealing with that unresolved guilt, Kohli says, she came to terms with her present-day loss as well — which allowed her to stop taking antidepressants and sleeping pills.
today many professional psychologists and psychiatrists in the West offer past life regression therapy alongside the more traditional package of counseling and prescription drugs — often with the claim that regression can help patients access traumatic experiences and achieve healing catharsis within a single session instead of years of Sigmund Freud’s "talking cure."
"If there is an emotional catharsis — marked by physical reactions like shivering and crying — that toxic energy that is trapped with the story of the past life gets released."
"The belief comes later," said Dr. Sanjay Chugh, a Delhi-based psychiatrist who uses past life regression in his medical practice. "What I look for is the fact that it works. There is no one actually who has undergone past life regression here who has not felt helped where the symptoms are concerned."
Amplify’d from http://www.globalpost.com
India: past life regression therapy takes hold
Jason OverdorfFebruary 28, 2011 06:15
NEW DELHI, India — When Sumeet Kohli’s husband was killed in a traffic accident, the 37-year-old cineplex manager was devastated. But when psychiatric medicines failed to help her, her husband’s memory inspired her to make a decision she says changed her fate: She sought out a regression therapist who helped her dredge up memories of a past life.
"My life revolved around my husband, so it was very difficult for me to deal with that loss," Kohli said. "I was quite suicidal at that time. I had two small daughters, and I couldn’t put things back together for myself. I had too many questions and no answers."
With a deep belief in reincarnation founded in Hinduism, middle-class Indians are embracing past life regression as a form of psychotherapy — once more showing how ancient traditions are fueling "new age" spiritualism even among successful, educated pragmatists. But even though the concept of past lives is a vital feature of India’s Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist religions, ironically, the therapy has boomeranged back to the subcontinent from the United States — where the new embrace of Eastern religions, yoga and "spirituality" has made regression more popular than ever.
The website of a prominent new age magazine lists some 150 practitioners of the therapy across India. Practitioners in urban centers such as Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore say they have seen patient numbers double over the past five years. And last year a major TV channel pioneered a reality show, Raaz Pichhle Janam Ka (or The Secrets of Your Past Life), in which Mumbai-based psychologist Dr. Trupti Jayin supposedly helped ordinary people and celebrities access their past lives.
But are these gurus — some of whom charge upward of $300 per session — really qualified to treat clinical psychological and physical problems ranging from claustrophobia to peanut allergies? Or are they simply exploiting Hindu tradition and India’s anxieties about the mental health profession to make a quick buck?
"One can open a chamber [clinic] like a physician and practice their trade and make pots of money," said Sumitra Padmanavan, a member of the Kolkata-based Humanists’ Association. "Since the [political] leaders themselves are not sure about what exactly is meant by ‘scientific truth,’ the laws to curb these practices are not enforced."
Believe it or not, but Kohli says past life regression worked for her. She was popping antidepressants and sleeping pills like candy — to no avail — when she recalled that at the time of his death her husband had been reading "Many Lives, Many Masters," the bestselling book by American past life regression pioneer Brian Weiss. After a diligent search, Kohli discovered Roma Singh, a hypnotist and alternative healer based in the suburbs of Delhi, who, like Weiss, claimed she could help people overcome problems by aiding them in recalling their past lives.
Within five or six sessions, Kohli recalls, she had been reunited with her dead husband in five different incarnations, and finally discovered the source of her difficulties in dealing with her grief: In one of her past lives, her husband had been her son, and she had accidentally smothered him to death while breastfeeding. By dealing with that unresolved guilt, Kohli says, she came to terms with her present-day loss as well — which allowed her to stop taking antidepressants and sleeping pills.
"I felt an inner strength," she said. "I was more clear in my vision. My insecurity and fear had suddenly disappeared. I was always in fear all the time and I suddenly forgot all that."
When Weiss, a psychiatrist with a degree from Yale Medical School, first published "Many Lives, Many Masters" in 1988, he was criticized by other doctors for embracing superstition. But today many professional psychologists and psychiatrists in the West offer past life regression therapy alongside the more traditional package of counseling and prescription drugs — often with the claim that regression can help patients access traumatic experiences and achieve healing catharsis within a single session instead of years of Sigmund Freud’s "talking cure."
"If there is an emotional catharsis — marked by physical reactions like shivering and crying — that toxic energy that is trapped with the story of the past life gets released."
Skeptical scientists argue that neither the vividness of the experience nor the supposedly transformative effect of the catharsis proves that the person has tapped into an actual past life, however. Critics argue that memories are much more vivid under hypnosis, generally, and the subjects simply create the narrative of their past lives from subconscious memories, their imaginations and inadvertent suggestions from the therapist.
In some cases, studies have shown that the historical era "remembered" by the patient under hypnosis bears more similarity to Hollywood’s treatment of the time period than it does to historical fact. But researchers such as the late University of Virginia psychiatrist Ian Stevenson, who studied more than 2,500 such claims over his 40-year career, have claimed that they could find no other explanation for the skills, knowledge or behavior of many so-called "reincarnation children."
"The belief comes later," said Dr. Sanjay Chugh, a Delhi-based psychiatrist who uses past life regression in his medical practice. "What I look for is the fact that it works. There is no one actually who has undergone past life regression here who has not felt helped where the symptoms are concerned."
Hinduism’s emphasis on karma and past lives has contributed to "phenomenal" growth, said Jayin who is a practicing clinical psychologist when she’s not hypnotizing Bollywood stars on TV. Through the course of the first season of Raaz Pichhle Janam Ka, she says, NDTV Imagine, the channel that aired the show, received more than a million calls and emails from viewers who wanted help with their past lives, and in her private practice, Jayin now conducts an average of two regressions per day.
But it’s not only the TV hypnotist whose business is booming. Regression therapists with a grounding in alternative or spiritual therapies such as reiki as well as those with degrees in psychology and psychiatry report that they’re similarly overwhelmed — despite charging 10 to 20 times the cost of an average psychologist’s counseling session for a past life regression.
And they’re growing swiftly in number, according to Dr. Kondaveti Newton, a medical doctor who co-founded the Life Research Academy with his wife, Laxmi, in 2000. Over the past eight years, Newton said, the school has trained as many as 400 people to be past life regression therapists — while the country’s entire roster of psychiatrists numbers only about 4,000.
Regression therapists who are already psychiatrists or clinical psychologists — such as Delhi’s Dr. Chugh, who studied with Brian Weiss, or Mumbai’s Dr. Jayin, who attended Newton’s Hyderabad-based academy — have extensive training in counseling, psychological theory and the workings of the brain. Moreover, their practices (though not past life therapy, specifically) are also subject to oversight by regulatory boards like the Indian Medical Council.
But schools such as Newton’s Life Research Academy, Andy Tomlinson’s Past Life Regression Academy and Weiss’s Omega Institute for Holistic Studies teach regression therapy in programs as brief as five days.
And a quick scan of the past life regression therapists listed on Indian web portals suggests that qualified mental health professionals account for only a tiny minority of the people practicing the technique in India. Most of the others offer past life regression as part of a package of services that includes treatments that have even less scientific acceptance, such as reiki — a Japanese meditative technique that purports to heal illnesses through the power of thought.
Minal Arora, a 34-year-old IT executive, is one example. Talking fluently of reiki, Doreen Virtue’s Angel Therapy and something called Serenity Surrender, Arora said she sought out a past life regression course in Singapore when she was experiencing some personal problems. A math major without any formal training in psychology, she attended Tomlinson’s Past Life Regression Academy to help herself, but now she has a weekend past life regression therapy practice that’s booked solid months in advance.
"Initially, I did it just out of curiosity," she said. "But then I saw the kind of difference I could make in people’s lives."
Akshay Dwivedi, a 32-year-old specialist in risk management, went to Arora for help when he was suffering from vague feelings of inertia and depression, and trouble in his relationships with various people in his life. Again, the catalyst was Brian Weiss, whom Dwivedi was reading when he discovered on a trip to Haridwar — one of Hinduism’s holy sites — that he had a pathological fear of water. Under hypnosis, he believes that he discovered he was a farmer in a past life, and he drowned trying to save one of his family members from a flood. That failed rescue and his own grim fate, he says, lay at the root of his fear of water and his anxiety about close relationships. But Arora’s therapy helped cure him.
"She invoked the archangel Michael to cut the karmic cords between me and the person I could not save," Dwivedi said. "That’s why I was inviting insecure relationships around me. She said archangel Michael will cut the karmic cords with his sword, and I could see it happening."
Read more at http://www.globalpost.com
India: past life regression therapy takes hold. Boomeranged back to the subcontinent from the United States.
Gadhafi interviewed by Christiane Amanpour. Said to be delusional. (knew enuf not 2 wear the dorky h
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Gadhafi interviewed by Christiane Amanpour. Said to be delusional. (knew enuf not 2 wear the dorky hat this time)
Feb 28, 2011 7:14pm by Mickel Adzema
Gadhafi interviewed by Christiane Amanpour in Tripoli restaurant. Said to be delusional. (knew enough not to wear the dorky hat this time)
Amplify’d from http://www.uruknet.info
‘My People Love Me’: Moammar Gadhafi Denies Demonstrations Against Him Anywhere in Libya
U.S. Exclusive: Christiane Amanpour Sits Down for an Interview With Libya’s Embattled Leader
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR
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ABC, February 28, 2011
I interviewed Col. Moammar Gadhafi this evening, when he told me he could not step down because he is not a president or king, and denied there were demonstrations against him anywhere in Libya.
"They love me. Alll my people with me, they love me," he said. "They will die to protect me, my people."
We conducted the interview at a restaurant in the Corniche, a coastal road on Tripoli’s Mediterranean coast. Gadhafi, wearing sunglasses and dressed in a brown tribal dress, drove up in a small convoy of sedans, got out and greeted us. The longtime leader seemed not to be surrounded by huge amounts of security.
Gadhafi said he wanted to speak to the press to get the truth out, and he spent more than an hour with us trying to put forth his side of the story.
Libya’s longtime leader laughed when I asked him whether he would step down in response to calls against violence by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama. He invited the United Nations and any other organization to come to Libya and do a "fact finding mission" and questioned how they could freeze assets, impose sanctions and an arms embargo, and implement a travel ban based purely on media reports alone.
The current uprising is the most serious challenge posed to Gadhafi’s leadership since he came to power in 1969.
Gadhafi’s version of the truth seemed to be at odds with what people have been talking about and reporting here, and he does not seem to fully comprehend the drama and the magnitude of whats going on around him.
He said he would not be leaving Libya, and denied — in very strong terms — using any force against his people. I asked him several times about reports that aerial bombardments had been used against protesters, but Gadhafi said they did not happen and that they had only bombed military and ammunition depots.
Watch World News and Nightline for more on Christiane Amanpour’s interview with Moammar Gadhafi
He seemed to be in complete denial about the protests against him, and that other big cities in Libya, particularly those in the east, had been taken by his opponents.
He simply rejected the notion that any walls were closing in on him. He denied he was besieged in the capital and said he would survive the current situation.
Gadhafi reiterated his mantra, saying he’s not president and he’s not in a formal position. Libya is ruled by the people, and he is one of the people, he told ABC News.
Gadhafi instead blamed al Qaeda for encouraging young people to seize arms from military installations.
He said the people who have taken over Benghazi in eastern Libya are terrorists and al Qaeda operatives. He doesn’t believe people are demonstrating against him anywhere in Libya, and repeated the charge that those who are have been given hallucinogenic drugs — a claim he first made in his televised speech broadcast last week.
Gadhafi, who has ruled Libya for 41 years, said he felt betrayed by the United States.
"I’m surprised that we have an alliance with the West to fight al Qaeda, and now that we are fighting terrorists they have abandoned us," he said. "Perhaps they want to occupy Libya."
Libya gave up its weapons of mass destruction in 2003, after the invasion of Iraq, and the United States lifted sanctions and restarted business relations with Libya.
In 2008, then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Libya, marking the first such visit for an official of her position since 1953, and in 2009, Gadhafi visited the United States.
Libya’s longtime dictator called Obama a "good man" but said he might have been given "misinformation."
"The statements I have heard from him must have come from someone else," Gadhafi said. "America is not the international police of the world."
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice called Gadhafi’s assertion that the Libyan people are behind him "delusional."
"When he can laugh in talking to American and international journalists while he is slaughtering his own people, it only underscores how unfit he is to lead and how disconnected he is from reality," Rice said.
ABC conducted the interview with two other reporters from the BBC and the Sunday Times of London.
Gadhafi interviewed by Christiane Amanpour. Said to be delusional. (knew enuf not 2 wear the dorky hat this time)
Opposition movements..shunned 2 central tenets of al Qaeda: violence, fanaticism; Al Qaeda becoming
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Opposition movements..shunned 2 central tenets of al Qaeda: violence, fanaticism; Al Qaeda becoming irrelevant?
Feb 28, 2011 4:38pm by Mickel Adzema
people in country after country have risen to topple their leaders — and Al Qaeda has played absolutely no role.
the motley opposition movements that have appeared so suddenly and proved so powerful have shunned the two central tenets of the Qaeda credo: murderous violence and religious fanaticism. The demonstrators have used force defensively, treated Islam as an afterthought and embraced democracy, which is anathema to Osama bin Laden and his followers.
Will the terrorist network shrivel slowly to irrelevance?
For many specialists on terrorism and the Middle East, though not all, the past few weeks have the makings of an epochal disaster for Al Qaeda, making the jihadists look like ineffectual bystanders to history while offering young Muslims an appealing alternative to terrorism.
“Democracy is bad news for terrorists. The more peaceful channels people have to express grievances and pursue their goals, the less likely they are to turn to violence.”
over all, he said, developments in the Arab countries are a strategic defeat for violent jihadism.
“These uprisings have shown that the new generation is not terribly interested in Al Qaeda’s ideology,”
Opposition movements..shunned 2 central tenets of al Qaeda: violence, fanaticism; Al Qaeda becoming irrelevant?
The Great Reveal by SillyMickel & the PlanetMates 