ellenrr
ellenrr's Journaltv show references renowned Buddhist monk Kobo Daishi
You might be interested in this:
(WLIW is one of the pbs channels - "The World",
and altho this listing is for tonite at 10, they usually repeat shows, so if you are interested can probably find another showing.)
"Sacred Journeys with Bruce Feiler"
WLIW-DT3 - 132 Sun, 12/06, 10:00 PM 1 hr
"Shikoku"
12/16/2014, Religion, Profile, Topical, Cultural, Politics
Bruce follows a 750-mile pilgrimage route that is said to connect travelers to renowned Buddhist monk Kobo Daishi, talking to American walkers about why they are making the journey and learning about sacred ceremonies along the way.
‘If more good people had concealed-carry permits, then we could end those’ Islamist terrorists
so says Jerry Falwell, president of Liberty University.
way to go-- moron.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/12/05/liberty-university-president-if-more-good-people-had-concealed-guns-we-could-end-those-muslims/
Meditation aids psoriasis
This is an excerpt from a scholarly long article detailing Jon Kabot-Zinn's work with psoriasis patients. I give you the url, but am only posting the conclusion.
below that I give a link to a more popularized, easier to read version.
The skin has long been known as an organ system that responds to emotional stress and to psychological influences with both short- and long-lasting effects.
There is recent evidence connecting psychological stress (in caregivers of relatives with Alzheimer's Disease), rates of wound healing, and levels of the cytokine, interleukin, a potential immunological mediator of wound healing.
The present study sought to investigate the possible effect of a stress reduction intervention on rates of skin clearing in patients with psoriasis undergoing phototherapy as a potential model system for the study of psychological factors related to an observable healing process.
The results {of study} suggest that the rate of skin clearing in patients with moderate to severe psoriasis can be accelerated when subjects engage in an audiotape-guided, meditative stress reduction exercise during their treatment sessions.
file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Owner/My%20Documents/Downloads/625.pdf
~~~
To test his theories, Kabat-Zinn connected with dermatologists in the psoriasis phototherapy clinic at the University of Massachusetts School of Medicine.
In a pilot study and then a full trial with several dozen participants, psoriasis patients receiving ultraviolet light therapy were divided into two groups. One group listened to recordings of mindfulness instructions while receiving light therapy; another group went through the therapy without the recordings.
Patients who listened to the recordings saw their psoriasis clear significantly faster than those assigned to the group that did not hear the recordings. For example, patients undergoing PUVA [the light-sensitizing drug psoralen and ultraviolet light A phototherapy] while listening to recordings had 50 percent skin clearing in an average of 48.5 days, compared with 85 days for the group that did not listen to the tapes.
The study results were published in 1998 in the academic journal Psychosomatic Medicine.
Though the psoriasis studies were small by scientific standards, the results encouraged Kabat-Zinn to use the recordings as part of a program he was developing called Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction [MBSR].
Now in use at medical centers around the world, this stress-reduction program is increasingly seen as a litmus test of how meditation can affect medical outcomes.
https://www.psoriasis.org/advance/can-quieting-mind-quiet-psoriasis-mindfulness-meditation
Do Mass Killings Bother You?
We now know this. A young man who had successfully killed on a large scale went to his religious leader with doubts and was told that mass killing was part of God’s plan. The young man continued killing until he had participated in killing sprees that took 1,626 lives — men, women, and children.
I repeat: his death count was not the 16 or 9 or 22 lives that make top news stories, but 1,626 dead and mutilated bodies. Do such things bother you?
What if you learned that this young man’s name was Brandon Bryant, and that he killed as a drone pilot for the U.S. Air Force, and that he was presented with a certificate for his 1,626 kills and congratulated on a job well done by the United States of America? What if you learned that his religious leader was a Christian chaplain?
Do such things still bother you?
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/12/04/do-mass-killings-bother-you/
Gaza Farmers Give Back by Sharing with Those Less Fortunate
Ahmed Zoerob, a Gaza farmer, walks along a rutted road to a compound of tiny, prefab housing units that serve as temporary shelters for hundreds of families displaced by the 2014 war. He carries a box that says “From Poor Farmer to Poor Family” and it is full of beautiful, fresh produce from his farm.
Ahmed is one of 120 farmers in the Khan Younis area of Gaza participating in ANERA’s farmland restoration project, which is helping to bring war-damaged farms back to life. This is the farmers’ first full harvest after the war and it is bountiful for many of them. They are grateful for their good fortune and, though living very humbly themselves, the farmers know that things could be much worse. So they decided to pay it forward by providing some relief for Gaza families who have been less fortunate.
“We want to say thank you for what we have and share it – even if it’s not a lot – with families whose homes were destroyed during the [2014] war,” says Ahmed. He and his fellow farmers are aware that families and others left homeless by the war are grappling with another harsh winter in flimsy shelters.
- See more at: http://www.anera.org/stories/gaza-farmers-give-back-by-sharing-with-those-less-fortunate/#sthash.jINf7bii.dpuf
Australians visiting America should be warned of gun violence
so says an Australian politician.
After the hostage crisis in Sydney in 2014, the US issued a worldwide travel alert.
"Tim Fischer told ABC News the American attitude is unfair, considering how dangerous America itself is due to the level of gun violence and a lack of effort to change the situation."
Fischer said a person is 15 times more likely to be shot dead in the US than in Australia and that travel advice from the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) should reflect this, as it does for Mexico.
Fischer was at the forefront of a sweeping gun reform in Australia launched in the wake of a massacre in Port Arthur in Tasmania in 1996. Forty-six people were killed there, making it one of the world’s deadliest episodes of gun violence committed by a single perpetrator.
The reform pushed by the commonwealth government on Australian states outlawed semiautomatic rifles and restricted gun control regulations. A buyback program launched to compensate gun owners handing over their firearms resulted in over 1 million guns being destroyed.
Since the mid-1990s, Australia's firearm mortality rate has dropped from 2.6 per 100,000 people to just under 1 per 100,000, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. For comparison, the rate in the US is more than 10 per 100,000, according to the US National Vital Statistics Report.
There have been no mass shootings in Australia since the Port Arthur massacre.
https://www.rt.com/news/324839-australia-travel-warning-usa/
Four Louisiana Prison Officers Charged In Death Of Young Mother
Source: HuffPo
WASHINGTON -- A federal grand jury on Thursday indicted four corrections officers from Louisiana's St. Bernard Parish Prison on civil rights charges, alleging that they deliberately ignored the medical needs of a 19-year-old mother who died behind bars.
Nimali Henry was locked up for 10 days after being arrested on minor charges. Her family had been unable to afford the $25,000 bond. On April 1, 2014, she was found lying face down in an isolation cell just before 8 a.m. About two weeks earlier, Henry had been trying to see her 4-month-old daughter when she got into a dispute with another woman. Her daughter and her daughter's father were at this woman's house.
Henry was arrested for disturbing the peace, simple battery and unauthorized entry, and bond was set. But "nobody could come up with [the money]," said her sister, 20-year-old Deshawna Henry, according to a Times-Picayune report.
Family members said prison officials wouldn't listen when they said Nimali Henry required medication for a blood disorder. "I tried to let them know about how sick she was, and they wouldn't listen to me," Deshawna Henry said.
Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/nimali-henry-louisiana-jail-death_5660bc27e4b072e9d1c56c6c
Why are fossil fuel companies sponsoring the Paris climate talks?
...In particular, CAI’s (Corporate Accountability International) report calls out three COP21 sponsors: Engie, a European electric utility company that is the continent’s largest importer of natural gas; EDF, a French electric utility that operates several major coal-fired power plants; and BNP Paribas, a multinational bank with billions of dollars invested in coal mines and coal-fired power plants.
All three have massive greenhouse gas footprints, according to the report. CAI also points out that the utility companies have participated in lobbying organizations that promote the use of fossil fuels. Meanwhile, another activist group has taken aim at corporate greenwashing with a slate of billboard ads across Paris mocking energy and transportation companies that purport to be progressive, while continuing to pollute.
http://grist.org/climate-energy/why-are-fossil-fuel-companies-sponsoring-the-paris-climate-talks/?utm_content=buffer40394&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer
Syed Farook as American as apple pie
"Syed Farooq is an American: Let’s stop the Muslim vs. Christian debate and take a look at ourselves"
"His terrible deed does not spring from an unknowable foreign culture. It is violence endemic to the United States."
"Dear compatriots:
There’s a connection between the supposed deviance of Farooq’s shooting and your endless, adamant justification of U.S. bloodletting throughout the world.
To put it plainly: thinking about violent behavior as something innately foreign is a terrific rationale for delivering violence to foreign places.
...
Is it too difficult to recognize the many problems of a discourse that relies so heavily on demonization to generate support? The demagogue can enact violence only when his audience refuses to recognize the violent nature of demagoguery.
Politicians love nothing more than a frightened, uninformed citizenry. It’s how they convince us to cosign our dispossession. People who discern gray areas and have the ability to reason through propaganda are their most undesirable clients. The United States cannot be a functional democracy if we make ourselves so compliant.
...
Let’s explore these questions together. We’ll surely be surprised by what we learn through the simple act of listening. Before we do, though, I ask you to remember that I am proudly Arab but legally American, and I refuse to entertain the possibility that either category invalidates the other.
http://www.salon.com/2015/12/03/syed_farooq_is_an_american_lets_stop_the_muslim_vs_christian_debate_and_take_a_look_at_ourselves/
Why are gun and religious discussions allowed on GD, in spite of the "prohibition", but
any mention of Palestine
-- even when it does not refer to the conflict--
immediately gets the axe??
(at least posts by me do)
I am not opposed to the gun and religion discussions on GD, I am a big advocate of freedom of speech.
I'd like to some freedom of speech and end to censorship of any of my posts that say the word Palestine.
You can't make a people disappear by forbidding the utterance of the name.
Just wondering...
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Member since: Sun Feb 6, 2011, 09:14 AMNumber of posts: 3,864
