United Nations Declaration (Articles 1 - 30):

Article 1: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 2: Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.

Incoming UN chief names three women to top posts

Incoming UN chief names three women to top posts
Nigerian Minister of the Environment Amina Mohammed, seen in 2015, will be the UN's number two official (AFP Photo/Mireya ACIERTO)

Sustainable Development
"A Summary" – Apr 2, 2011 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Religion, Shift of Human Consciousness, 2012, Intelligent/Benevolent Design, EU, South America, 5 Currencies, Water Cycle (Heat up, Mini Ice Ace, Oceans, Fish, Earthquakes ..), Middle East, Internet, Israel, Dictators, Palestine, US, Japan (Quake/Tsunami Disasters , People, Society ...), Nuclear Power Revealed, Hydro Power, Geothermal Power, Moon, Financial Institutes (Recession, Realign integrity values ..) , China, North Korea, Global Unity,..... etc.) -
"The Timing of the Great Shift" – Mar 21, 2009 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) - (Text version)

“ … Here is another one. A change in what Human nature will allow for government. "Careful, Kryon, don't talk about politics. You'll get in trouble." I won't get in trouble. I'm going to tell you to watch for leadership that cares about you. "You mean politics is going to change?" It already has. It's beginning. Watch for it. You're going to see a total phase-out of old energy dictatorships eventually. The potential is that you're going to see that before 2013. They're going to fall over, you know, because the energy of the population will not sustain an old energy leader ..."
"Update on Current Events" – Jul 23, 2011 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) - (Subjects: The Humanization of God, Gaia, Shift of Human Consciousness, 2012, Benevolent Design, Financial Institutes (Recession, System to Change ...), Water Cycle (Heat up, Mini Ice Ace, Oceans, Fish, Earthquakes ..), Nuclear Power Revealed, Geothermal Power, Hydro Power, Drinking Water from Seawater, No need for Oil as Much, Middle East in Peace, Persia/Iran Uprising, Muhammad, Israel, DNA, Two Dictators to fall soon, Africa, China, (Old) Souls, Species to go, Whales to Humans, Global Unity,..... etc.)
(Subjects: Who/What is Kryon ?, Egypt Uprising, Iran/Persia Uprising, Peace in Middle East without Israel actively involved, Muhammad, "Conceptual" Youth Revolution, "Conceptual" Managed Business, Internet, Social Media, News Media, Google, Bankers, Global Unity,..... etc.)


The Declaration of Human Freedom

Archangel Michael (Via Steve Beckow), Feb. 19, 2011

Every being is a divine and eternal soul living in a temporal body. Every being was alive before birth and will live after death.

Every soul enters into physical life for the purpose of experience and education, that it may, in the course of many lifetimes, learn its true identity as a fragment of the Divine.

Life itself is a constant process of spiritual evolution and unfoldment, based on free choice, that continues until such time as we realize our true nature and return to the Divine from which we came.

No soul enters life to serve another, except by choice, but to serve its own purpose and that of the Divine from which it came.

All life is governed by natural and universal laws which precede and outweigh the laws of humanity. These laws, such as the law of karma, the law of attraction, and the law of free will, are decreed by God to order existence and assist each person to achieve life’s purpose.

No government can or should survive that derives its existence from the enforced submission of its people or that denies its people their basic rights and freedoms.

Life is a movement from one existence to another, in varied venues throughout the universe and in other universes and dimensions of existence. We are not alone in the universe but share it with other civilizations, most of them peace-loving, many of whom are more advanced than we are, some of whom can be seen with our eyes and some of whom cannot.

The evidence of our five senses is not the final arbiter of existence. Humans are spiritual as well as physical entities and the spiritual side of life transcends the physical. God is a Spirit and the final touchstone of God’s Truth is not physical but spiritual. The Truth is to be found within.

God is one and, because of this, souls are one. They form a unity. They are meant to live in peace and harmony together in a “common unity” or community. The use of force to settle affairs runs contrary to natural law. Every person should have the right to conduct his or her own affairs without force, as long as his or her choices do not harm another.

No person shall be forced into marriage against his or her will. No woman shall be forced to bear or not bear children, against her will. No person shall be forced to hold or not hold views or worship in a manner contrary to his or her choice. Nothing vital to existence shall be withheld from another if it is within the community’s power to give.

Every person shall retain the ability to think, speak, and act as they choose, as long as they not harm another. Every person has the right to choose, study and practice the education and career of their choice without interference, provided they not harm another.

No one has the right to kill another. No one has the right to steal from another. No one has the right to force himself or herself upon another in any way.

Any government that harms its citizens, deprives them of their property or rights without their consent, or makes offensive war upon its neighbors, no matter how it misrepresents the situation, has lost its legitimacy. No government may govern without the consent of its people. All governments are tasked with seeing to the wellbeing of their citizens. Any government which forces its citizens to see to its own wellbeing without attending to theirs has lost its legitimacy.

Men and women are meant to live fulfilling lives, free of want, wherever they wish and under the conditions they desire, providing their choices do not harm another and are humanly attainable.

Children are meant to live lives under the beneficent protection of all, free of exploitation, with unhindered access to the necessities of life, education, and health care.

All forms of exploitation, oppression, and persecution run counter to universal and natural law. All disagreements are meant to be resolved amicably.

Any human law that runs counter to natural and universal law is invalid and should not survive. The enactment or enforcement of human law that runs counter to natural and universal law brings consequences that cannot be escaped, in this life or another. While one may escape temporal justice, one does not escape divine justice.

All outcomes are to the greater glory of God and to God do we look for the fulfillment of our needs and for love, peace, and wisdom. So let it be. Aum/Amen.


Pope Francis arrives for historic first US visit

Pope Francis arrives for historic first US visit
Pope Francis laughs alongside US President Barack Obama upon arrival at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, on September 22, 2015, on the start of a 3-day trip to Washington (AFP Photo/Saul Loeb)


Today's doodle in the U.S. celebrates Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech on its 50th anniversary (28 Aug 2013)

'Love is love': Obama lauds gay marriage activists in hailing 'a victory for America'

'Love is love': Obama lauds gay marriage activists in hailing 'a victory for America'
The White House released this image, of the building colored like the rainbow flag, on Facebook following the supreme court’s ruling. Photograph: Facebook

Same-sex marriage around the world

"The Recalibration of Awareness – Apr 20/21, 2012 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Old Energy, Recalibration Lectures, God / Creator, Religions/Spiritual systems (Catholic Church, Priests/Nun’s, Worship, John Paul Pope, Women in the Church otherwise church will go, Current Pope won’t do it), Middle East, Jews, Governments will change (Internet, Media, Democracies, Dictators, North Korea, Nations voted at once), Integrity (Businesses, Tobacco Companies, Bankers/ Financial Institutes, Pharmaceutical company to collapse), Illuminati (Started in Greece, with Shipping, Financial markets, Stock markets, Pharmaceutical money (fund to build Africa, to develop)), Shift of Human Consciousness, (Old) Souls, Women, Masters to/already come back, Global Unity.... etc.) - (Text version)

… The Shift in Human Nature

You're starting to see integrity change. Awareness recalibrates integrity, and the Human Being who would sit there and take advantage of another Human Being in an old energy would never do it in a new energy. The reason? It will become intuitive, so this is a shift in Human Nature as well, for in the past you have assumed that people take advantage of people first and integrity comes later. That's just ordinary Human nature.

In the past, Human nature expressed within governments worked like this: If you were stronger than the other one, you simply conquered them. If you were strong, it was an invitation to conquer. If you were weak, it was an invitation to be conquered. No one even thought about it. It was the way of things. The bigger you could have your armies, the better they would do when you sent them out to conquer. That's not how you think today. Did you notice?

Any country that thinks this way today will not survive, for humanity has discovered that the world goes far better by putting things together instead of tearing them apart. The new energy puts the weak and strong together in ways that make sense and that have integrity. Take a look at what happened to some of the businesses in this great land (USA). Up to 30 years ago, when you started realizing some of them didn't have integrity, you eliminated them. What happened to the tobacco companies when you realized they were knowingly addicting your children? Today, they still sell their products to less-aware countries, but that will also change.

What did you do a few years ago when you realized that your bankers were actually selling you homes that they knew you couldn't pay for later? They were walking away, smiling greedily, not thinking about the heartbreak that was to follow when a life's dream would be lost. Dear American, you are in a recession. However, this is like when you prune a tree and cut back the branches. When the tree grows back, you've got control and the branches will grow bigger and stronger than they were before, without the greed factor. Then, if you don't like the way it grows back, you'll prune it again! I tell you this because awareness is now in control of big money. It's right before your eyes, what you're doing. But fear often rules. …

Merkel says Turkey media crackdown 'highly alarming'

Merkel says Turkey media crackdown 'highly alarming'
Reporters Without Borders labels Erdogan as 'enemy of press freedom'

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Friday, June 5, 2015

American Red Cross squandered aid after Haiti earthquake, report alleges

Despite raising nearly half a billion dollars and allocating $170m to ‘shelter relief’, the aid organization built only six permanent homes, an investigation has found

The Guardian, Alan Yuhus, 4 June 2015

An undated American Red Cross handout photo of the aftermath of the earthquake
shows the devastation to homes in Haiti. Photograph: Matt Marek/American
Red Cross/PA

Despite collecting nearly half a billion dollars for Haiti earthquake relief, the American Red Cross has built only six permanent homes and seemingly squandered millions in the country, according to a new report.

A joint investigation by ProPublica and NPR uncovered rampant mismanagement, high overhead costs and deeply rooted acrimony from Haitians toward the aid organization. Among the investigation’s findings was that although the Red Cross apportioned about $170m to the category of “shelter” relief, and although it at first planned to build some 700 houses, it only constructed six permanent homes.

The report charges the Red Cross with consistent misrepresentation of its projects, especially in housing. The authors cite promotional materials that say the Red Cross provided more than 130,000 people with homes, and then note that that total includes people in “transitional shelters”, recipients of short-term rent assistance, and people who had been “trained in proper construction techniques”.

The Red Cross disputes the report and asserts it has “helped build and operate eight hospitals and clinics” and “move more than 100,000 people out of make-shift tents into safe and improved housing”. In a statement, the organization said it is “disappointed” by the “lack of balance, context and accuracy” on the part of ProPublica and NPR.

A major problem for the organization was leadership and staffing, according to the report. Integral positions, including experts for health and shelter, were left vacant for months and sometimes years. The positions that were staffed were predominantly held by expats or by people flown in from the United States, many of whom could not speak French or Creole.

In one 2011 document, Red Cross official Judith St Ford notes that there are “serious program delays caused by internal issues that go unaddressed”, including for cholera relief.

“There is a clear lack of foresight and planning,” she wrote, and “the lack of leadership ability has contributed to poor morale in the field.”

She also urged her superiors to hire more Haitians: “the implication that talented, smart, competent Haitians cannot be found in Haiti has to be dispelled.”

In its statement the Red Cross says 90% of its current staff are Haitians; the organization did not break down the hierarchy or positions of its staff.

“If they were an organization that had a real history in Haiti I think this would’ve gone a lot better,” said Justin Elliott, one of the journalists who co-wrote the report. “The entire Haiti reconstruction effort has been really problematic, but the outside groups that have done better have roots there, have Haitian people working at high levels, have people who speak the language.”

In one 2013 email published by ProPublica, CEO Gail McGovern admitted a project had failed and that she did not know what to do with a $20m remainder. “Now that the Northern project is going bust and we are still holding $20 million of contingency, any ideas on how to spend the rest of this?” she asked, before mentioning a mysterious “wonderful helicopter idea”.

Without Haitians in leadership positions, the Red Cross was particularly ill-prepared to deal with Haiti’s land tenure rules, a system so tangled and unforgiving that it has intimidated USAid and Vatican relief efforts.

Residents of the Jean-Marie Vincent camp for people displaced by the 2010
earthquake, wait for customers outside their tent where they have set up a
stand to sell rice, oil and canned goods in Port-au-Prince on 9 January 2013.
Photograph: Dieu Nalio Chery/AP

“Land tenure is probably the biggest stumbling block,” said Jonathan M Katz, a freelance journalist and author of a book about the earthquake, The Big Truck That Went By. The system has stymied aid organizations for years, and Katz said that for years aid organizations have “thrown up their collective hands and said ‘we don’t really want to deal with this.’”

The Red Cross entangled itself in a web of other organizations, often paying them to do relief work, themselves struggling in Haiti. This outsourcing is commonplace in the international aid industry, Katz said, and leads to inevitable but not necessarily unreasonable overhead costs. But eager to better solicit donations, organizations often try to downplay these costs.

The report notes that overhead charges by the Red Cross and its contractors undermine McGovern’s claim that “minus the nine cents overhead, 91 cents on the dollar will be going to Haiti.”

In one case, Elliott and his co-author, NPR’S Laura Sullivan, found that the International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC) exacted $1.56m in overhead from the American Red Cross’s payment of $6m, all to help give Haitians rental subsidies so they could leave tent camps. The IFRC said the costs were related to “administration, finance, human resources”.

In another case, the Red Cross commissioned Swiss and Spanish Red Cross societies to upgrade shelters, but still took 24% of the money for the project in additional overhead costs, according to the report.

Where exactly the $488m of the American Red Cross’s Haiti budget has gone is unclear, Elliott said, since “the whole international aid sector is pretty opaque in general. And the spending of the American Red Cross is incredible opaque. You can tell hardly anything from their disclosures.”

He said that the issue of money was particularly sensitive to Haitians who had coordinated with the Red Cross.

“They were furious basically over broken promises,” Elliott said. “About three years ago, the Red Cross told people they were going to build hundreds of new homes in this very hard-hit area, and this thing was just stalled. Over the next two years they had meetings with the community, handed out juice boxes and so on, and nothing happened for a long time.”

The Red Cross is now helping build a road and install solar lights in the area.

Katz said that the problems of the American Red Cross are “typical of the aid industry in general. The Red Cross is sort of the biggest kid on the block. Because they make way more money than anybody else, what they do is magnified.”

The interconnected NGOs and aid organizations of the world, ranging from the many satellites of the Red Cross to Doctors Without Borders to the Clinton Foundation, Katz said, should deserve more skepticism from the public. Reports have traced the 2011 cholera epidemic to United Nations relief efforts, he noted, adding that many organizations operate more like businesses than anything else.

“Even when an aid group is pulling off a project well,” he said, “if it isn’t going to be there forever, if it isn’t going to be accountable for successes and failures, if it isn’t leaving something behind that’s permanent, then it’s still capable of doing damage.”

Last year the Red Cross similarly took issue with another ProPublica report that said the organization had disastrously mismanaged aid relief after hurricane Sandy.

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