Amnesty International meets US whistleblower Edward Snowden www.amnesty.org
Right of asylum wikipedia.org
Author: thomas
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The right to Privacy for All
Open letter to the Police State and its supporters,
The right to privacy is a basic human need – as is the right to mingle with others freely. This is at the very foundation of human life – and maybe life it self. I believe we call it it freedom in the human world.
Imagine a world where privacy is no longer possible. Whatever you do, whatever you say, where ever you go, with whom you are together is recorded and stored centrally by a National Security Agency in a Police State.
It is no longer possible to have a private conversation with a friend without the Police State listens in, record and store your conversation. And you even have to worry about friends backgrounds because your very association with them is on public record. Its no longer possible to help a friend, talk to your neighbor, do business in privacy because all is on public record.
Your hobbies, interests, readings, private life and political views is recorded, analyzed and stored. Your eating habits, your consumption of unhealthy foods, alcohol and drugs are recorded. Your childhood, adolescence, adult life and family history now also belongs to the Police State. Even your sexual preference is on public record for safety reasons. Your medical record, health history and genetic make up belongs to the archives in the Police State. And all your private property and significant belongings is under constant surveillance by the National Security Agency.
For public safety reasons in the Police State the National Security Agency pieces every imaginable sort of information it can collect about you together and fits it into a complete and auto updated profile on you. The Police State will hold such records for themselves on all citizens of the world.
Just imagine this!
Now realize that this scenario is very close to the reality we currently live in or at least realize that is a near likely future of the world.
To be able to spy on all citizens in the world in all aspects without limitation of any kind is the aspiration, hopes and dreams of almost every National Security Agency all over the world!
How can this kind of surveillance power only exist for the safety of the public when it belongs to the few in power?
This is ‘not something I’m willing to live under’!
I will rather live with uncertainty, insecurity and fear in a fragile democracy, than live in a certain, secure and peaceful surveillance Police State. I object to the idea of a Police State. And I will work against the realization of a world wide Police State.
Reference:Edward Snowden: US surveillance ‘not something I’m willing to live under’ Interview by Glenn Greenwald in theguardian, 8th. of July 2013
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights United Nations ( UN )
Articles:
Snowden made the right call when he fled the U.S. washingtonpost.com 8th. of July 2013 by Daniel Ellsberg
2011: A Brave New Dystopia by Chris Hedges truthdig.com 27. December 2010Online Privacy:
Internet Privacy wikipedia.org
The Tor Project – Web Online Anonymity
DuckDuckGo – Anonymous Searching of the Internet
Pretty Good Privacy – Protect your files and email with open source encryptionSupport Online Privacy Organizations:
Electronic Frontier Foundation eff.org
epic.org – Electronic Privacy Information Center
Internet Defense League internetdefenseleague.orgLitterature:
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley -
Looking for Wuji everywhere
Looking for Wuji everywhere,
In movement,
In stillness
Getting it, not getting it
I let go,
Finding Wuji.
I forgot all about it! -
Chineasy fun with visual Chinese
You can find more info about Shaolan Hsueh’s “Chineasy” free and creative visual learning of the Chinese written language on chineasy.org and on FB: www.facebook.com/ShaoLanChineasy
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Effective altruism
Peter Singer talks on TED about effective altruism
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Always Already Free
I sit here looking out, filled with an emptiness that spills over and keeps on spilling. There is no end to this boundlessness, this delicious thrill of Presence.
Nothing can contain it, for everything is contained within it. The good and the bad, the black and the white, the harsh and the gentle—all simply flavors of Its passage.
Here, here, always here. So simple, so immediate. This is always here. Call it whatever you will. In truth, This has no name.
Too exquisite to speak of, too delicate to touch, delicious, tender, yet so very solid, vast, fathomless.
All that exists comes out of This. All that exists returns to This.
No-one owns This, yet everyone belongs to This.Enza Vita
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A benevolent and just ruler
A ruler exercising benevolence and justice will surely win the support and help of most people; if he fails to do so, the people will be absolved of all loyalty to him.
Mecinus
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The teaching of a Sage
Someone who understands the teaching of sages is a sage. Someone who understands the teaching of mortals is a mortal. A mortal who can give up the teaching of mortals and follow the teaching of sages becomes a sage. But the fools of this world prefer to look for sages far away. They don’t believe that the wisdom of their own mind is the sage. The sutras say, “Among men of no understanding, don’t preach this sutra.” And the sutras say, “Mind is the teaching.” But people of no understanding don’t believe in their own mind or that by understanding this teaching they can become a sage. They prefer to look for distant knowledge and long for things in space, buddha—images, light, incense, and colors. They fall prey to falsehood and lose their minds to insanity.
The most essential method, which includes all other methods, is beholding the mind.
The mind is the root from which all things grow. If you can understand the mind, everything else is included. It’s like the root of a tree. All a tree’s fruit and flowers, branches and leaves depend on its root. If you nourish its root, a tree multiplies. If you cut its root, it dies. Those who understand the mind reach enlightenment with minimal effort. Those who don’t understand the mind practice in vain. Everything good and bad comes from your own mind. To find something beyond the mind is impossible.
When a great bodhisattva delves deeply into perfect wisdom he realizes that the four elements and five shades are devoid of a personal self. And he realizes that the activity of his mind has two aspects: pure and impure.” By their very nature, these two mental states are always present. They alternate as cause or effect depending on conditions, the pure mind delighting in good deeds, the impure mind thinking of evil. Those who aren’t affected by impurity are sages. They transcend suffering and experience the bliss of nirvana. All others, trapped by the impure mind and entangled by their own karma, are mortals. They drift through the three realms and suffer countless afflictions, and all because their impure mind obscures their real self.
If you can simply concentrate your mind’s inner light and behold its outer illumination, you’ll dispel the three poisons and drive away the six thieves once and for all. And without effort you’ll gain possession of an infinite number of virtues, perfections, and doors to the truth. Seeing through the mundane and witnessing the sublime is less than an eye-blink away. Realization is now. Why worry about gray hair? But the true door is hidden and can’t be revealed. I have only touched upon beholding the mind.
The Zen Teachings of Bodhidharma
Translated by Red Pine
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Caterpillars and Polliwogs
Caterpillars weave cocoons, polliwogs form from cells; eventually the cocoons break open to produce moths, the cells develop to produce frogs.
What I realize as I observe this is the Tao of liberative transformation of the spiritual embryo.
Those who cultivate reality assemble the five forces, join the hundred spirits, merge with the ultimate; one energy coalesces, whole and pure, not consciously cognized. Now the spiritual embryo has form, like when the caterpillar weaves its cocoon or the polliwog forms its cell.
Store the spirit and energy away in mystical darkness, and the bit of spiritual root will grow from faintness to clarity,
from softness to strength. When the process is complete, suddenly you will break through space to reveal the pure spiritual body, leaping beyond the worlds. This is like when the caterpillar, having transformed into a moth. Breaks out of its cocoon and flies away, or like when the polliwog becomes a frog and leaps. There is a body beyond the body, another world.Therefore the aftermath of accomplishment of the Way is sometimes referred to as developing the power of flight, and sometimes called shedding the shell and becoming real. These expressions mean that you reproduce a real body inside your physical body. This real body is inherent in everyone, but people are fooled by the objects of their senses, deluded by illusory appearances, so they do not recognize the real body, even though it is right there.
Anyone who can recognize the real body and earnestly cultivate it can produce substance where there was none, produce form where there was none, undergo liberative transformation and become an immortal with an indestructible body.
Awakening to the Tao
Liu I-Ming translated by Thomas Cleary p. 76-77
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The Crane and the Tortoise
The crane is good at nurturing the spirit, so it lives for a thousand years. The tortoise is good at nurturing energy, so it can survive a century without food.
What I realize as I observe this is the Tao of prolonging life. If people are able to humbly lower themselves, to be yielding, plain, and sincere, not wasting energy but always nurturing energy, then they will be full of energy. If people can be free from cogitation and rumination, have few desires and little ambition, not belabor their spirit but always maintain their spirit, then their spirit will be complete. When energy is full and the spirit is complete, the root is stable and the foundation is secure. Thus you can extend your life span, prolonging life without deterioration. The crane and the tortoise can live long, even though one only keeps its spirit complete and one only keeps its energy complete; how much the more so when both spirit and energy are kept complete – how could you fail to live long?
Awakening to the Tao
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Choice, happiness and spaghetti sauce
The author Malcolm Gladwell tell a wonderful story of new science.
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Flock Instinct
Links
Iain Couzin at Princeton icouzin.princeton.edu
Steven Strogatz on sync tedtalk -
I am like the clear blue sky
I am like the clear blue sky
Standing on the earth
I look up into the skySuspended in mid air
Time is of no importance
My mother is always nearResting in the clear blue sky
How can I loose heaven
When we never depart.
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