Thich Nhat Hanh
Nestle and Water
In the village of Bhati Dilwan, Pakistan, the close proximity of a Nestlé factory extracting water from two deep wells has caused springs in the area to dry up. Citizens have been deprived of their own means of extracting water and rendered dependent on the bottled Pure Life brand for clean water.
In Nigeria, a country ranked relatively low in GDP per capita, Pure Life is sold to upper class consumers spending large portions of their incomes on bottled water. The cost of Pure Life is more expensive than the average daily income of a Nigerian citizen, and even pricier than 1L of petrol. In this scenario, citizens are faced with the unfair choice between health and poverty, becoming ill from drinking bad water but unable to afford Nestlé’s inflated prices.
Source: Urban Times.
Nestle sounds like an evil corporation using its power to gain rights to exploit water sources at the expense of local communities. This can only happen because communities do not have collective stewardship of natural resources and these can be sold off by governments that are essentially owned by the corporations. What we have is a failure in governance and communities need to empower themselves. Abby Martin gives a good summary of the issue:
Family and Feelings
The blog has become a way of expressing my feelings but there are some things that cannot be expressed in a public blog. They are part of us being human, about our relatives and relationships and not just our own story. There are a few such personal issues on my mind but the one that is most prominent is the matter of my mother’s Alzheimer’s which is becoming more difficult to manage. It is part of my life so I mention it here but I’m not going into details.
The picture was taken at a birthday lunch for my brother-in-law Alan.
On The Rebel Atrocities in Syria
This video is, as it warns, extremely graphic and violent. It shows members of the rebel forces executing people by throwing them off buildings, by beheading and by shooting. It shows small children being indoctrinated into an ideology of terrorism. It argues that the rebels are persecuting minorities in Syria and using rape as a weapon.
Everything I have read and seen on alternative media or non-western media sources convinces me that the rebels are worse than the Syrian government and its army, yet the US/UK mainstream media and politicians continue to push the line that while elements in the rebel forces have committed atrocities the government forces have done far worse. This is a dangerous lie and an increasingly obvious one and it is for this reason that I’m sharing this graphic and emotive video.
While I cannot endorse the Syrian government and the Syrian Arab Army, I am suspicious of any propaganda against them and their President Assad. And whatever the merits or otherwise of the government forces the fact that they are fighting against the brutal rebels means that attacks against them such as the illegal and unprovoked strikes by Israel support the rebels in their atrocities. There is a lot of evidence that the West and their regional allies are facilitating the rebels and are therefore at least indirectly responsible for these atrocities.
Privatisation
The poem in the video from this Scriptonite “Open Letter to the PM” says:
They sold off all our railways, and they gave away our trains
It made some folks a lot of cash, but we just felt the pains
They sold off schools and hospitals, now police stations too
Things once owned by all of us, now owned by the likes of you
Who should own/control the services and resources that are necessary for supporting society? Services and resources for the provision of health, energy, transport, food, water, communication, shelter? The options are ownership/control by private corporations, the government, community or some mixture of the three.
Government in a democracy is supposed to represent the will and interest of the community of citizens but the case can be made that government in the UK (by all three main parties) represents the interests of private corporations rather than those of the community. If we think that there is a collusion between government and big corporations then we must see privatisation as theft. This article from opendemocracy.net alerts us to a government intention to privatise the National Health Service:
Trade talks quietly taking place between the US and the EU could see England’s NHS tied into a privatised model semi-permanently. Yet this deeply concerning backdrop to the Coalition’s deplorable NHS privatisation has received scant media attention. People must act.
When we say that the NHS is being denationalised and privatised, it means several things are happening. At the top, the Health Secretary no longer has a legal duty to provide a universal healthcare system. Regionally, there will be Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs), which will have to offer contracts to any willing provider, namely private companies. And every hospital trust will need to attain Foundation Trust status, making it an independent organisation responsible for its own financial wellbeing[1].
The article says ‘people must act’ but ‘people’ are not well informed and are not organised so we are being defrauded.
Still Running
The map of my route looks quite impressive, even though I have run a lot further in the past. I missed tai-chi last night. It’s pre-paid so I almost never skip class but I didn’t feel good. This morning I woke a little after 5:00 and was tempted to put off running for another day but I resisted and also resisted the temptation to do the shorter run. The 2.76 miles felt more difficult than on my previous run, six days ago, but I completed the distance in a slightly shorter time, improving my mile-pace by 11 seconds.
Running opposes the lethargy and depression that I feel. A good run resets my week and motivation to some extent but I need to keep this going.
Autumn Running
This is an image from my running log. Whatever else I do, whatever else is going on in my life I must resolve to run and I must resolve to meditate. Some combination of running, yoga asanas, pranayama, tai-chi/qigong and meditation would seem good.
I completed this morning’s run in a little under 36 minutes, which is significantly slower than my best time of 30 minutes about a year ago. While running I mentally repeating the Ho’oponopono mantra: “I’m sorry, please forgive me, I love you and I thank you”.
My meditation was ‘japa’ meditation on my personal mantra using a mala. I followed this up with zhan zhuang or standing stake.
Heaven on Earth
http://bit.ly/1fiMrF6 links to the HEAVEN ON EARTH – THE FAILURE OF SOCIALISM (VIDEO SERIES). I’m looking at this now and splitting it up for upload to YouTube.