Working Away

Human trafficking—————Speak out  My Friend…………………

UNITED NATIONS: A father of two from Nepal who thought he was going to America wound up in Iraq, forced to work at a US airbase. A 14-year-old Ugandan girl kidnapped by rebels spent nearly eight years in captivity as a sex slave and human shield. And a young Venezuelan woman lured to New York by the man she loved wound up in a brothel his family was running.

The three victims of human trafficking spoke on Thursday at an event organized by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay who said it was ‘pressing and urgent’ not only to listen to their stories of survival but to get their recommendations on how the international community can help end the growing global scourge.

‘In every part of the world, countless individuals are callously exploited for profit,’ Pillay said. ‘While trafficking may be a problem related to migration and to transnational crime, it is also – and fundamentally – an attack on the dignity and integrity of the individual.’

‘Trafficking involves practices prohibited in every country including slavery, debt, bondage, forced labor and sexual exploitation.’

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who opened the event, said the global economic crisis ‘is making the problem worse.’

He urged governments to heed his ‘call to action’ and step up efforts to prevent exploitation, protect victims and pursue traffickers whose conviction rates in most countries ‘are microscopic compared to the scope of the problem.’

The UN Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking estimated last year that annual profits from trafficked, forced labor is around $31.6 billion. Some experts say it is now the second-largest illicit business in the world after drugs.

Buddhi Gurung, who calls himself a poor Nepali man, described how he was unable to get a job to support his wife and two sons during fighting by Maoist rebels and the army in 2004. When an agent promised him a job in America for $500 a month, he said he borrowed about $2,800 to pay him – but instead of going to the United States, he was taken to Jordan via New Delhi.

After a month in Jordan, he said he was put in a van with 11 others and driven to Baghdad. Twelve Nepali friends in the van that left just before him were abducted, paraded on television and eventually beheaded. Gurung said he wound up at the US Al Asad Air Base where he was forced to work and paid less than the promised $500 a month.

‘We would hear bomb blasts nearby and we knew our life was at risk,’ Gurung said. ‘I always wanted to go back to Nepal but neither my passport was with me, nor did I have any money or knew any other way to go back. … Finally, after 15 months, I was permitted to go back to Nepal. This is how my life was saved.’

Gurung and the families of the 12 Nepali men have filed a US federal lawsuit accusing Houston-based defense contractor KBR Inc. and a Jordanian subcontractor, Daoud & Partners, of human trafficking.

Gurung urged the ‘big people’ at Thursday’s event ‘to develop a mechanism to save people like me from such traps of human trafficking.’

Charlotte Awino described how she and 138 other girls were abducted from a boarding school in 1996 by rebels from the Lords Resistance Army, marched for three months into southern Sudan, and used as human shields during fighting against Uganda soldiers.

‘As usual, we girls suffered more,’ she said. ‘We were distributed to rebel commanders, as objects without rights, and we were sexually abused. … I was given to a man who had 20 other abducted girls, and he was a brutal man. I had two children with him.’

Awino, who escaped in 2004 when the rebels went back to northern Uganda, urged the UN to ‘try to get back the children who have been trafficked through war, some as young as six.’

She also called for victims to be given counseling, health care and education, for countries to better protect their citizens during war, and for improved methods to track and trace missing people. She also urged understanding for the plight of victims.

‘One day I was at home. The next day I was among the rebels,’ Awino said. ‘Is everyone going to call us rebels or terrorists?’

Kikka Cerpa described falling in love with a man named Daniel while working at a hotel in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, when she was 17 years old. A few years later, she said, Daniel moved to New York and eventually she went to join him, only to discover that his family ran a sex trafficking ring.

Cerpa said her passport and money were taken, she was put in a basement and told she owed the family a lot of money, and the only way to pay it off was to work in a brothel.

‘The first night was the worst,’ she said, her voice quavering. ‘I have to service 90 men.’
Cerpa said she was trafficked from brothel to brothel over the next three years.

Sometimes police would raid the brothels, but ‘instead of rescuing us, they demand that we perform sexual services on them.

 I am around and kicking He!He!He!. .

As the whole world and the individuals that inhabit it get increasingly cocooned, it is critical that one spends time with one’s family.The family. We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another’s desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together.

Family is the first social unit for developing the qualities of the heart. A true family grows and moves through life together, inseparable in the heart. Whether a biological family or an extended family of people attracted to each other based on heart resonance and mutual support, the word "family" implies warmth, a place where the core feelings of the heart are nurtured. Family values represent the core values and guidelines that parents and family members hold in high regard for the well-being of the family. Sincere family feelings are core heart feelings. They are the basis for true family values. While we have differences, we remain "family" by virtue of our heart connection. Family provides necessary security and support, and acts as a buffer against external problems. A family made up of secure people generates a magnetic power that can get things done. They are the hope for real security in a stressful world.
The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other’s life.
No matter what you’ve done for yourself or for humanity, if you can’t look back on having given love and attention to your own family, what have you really accomplished?

There was this man who saw a scorpion floundering around in the water. He decided to save it by stretching out his finger, but the scorpion stung him. The man still tried to get the scorpion out of the water, but the scorpion stung him again.
A man nearby told him to stop saving the scorpion that kept stinging him.
But the men said: "It is the nature of the scorpion to sting. It is my nature to love. Why should I give up my nature to love just because it is the nature of the scorpion to sting?"

Don’t give up loving.
Don’t give up your goodness.
Even if people around you sting.

“Children make you want to start life over.” ~Muhammad Ali.

Give love without remembering and take without forgetting.
When a man begins to perceive the love of God in all its richness, he begins also to love his neighbor with spiritual perception.  This is the love of which all the scriptures speak.

Oh yes. Couldn’t have stated it better. We see children and we don’t want to grow up ever. A life so pure and innocent of all the thing that the world have become.. Of animals and plants, and dreams and super heroes.. and demons at night and calling out for mom.

Wishing you well my friend

Why is it so hard to forgive others ?

When someone you care about hurts you, you can hold on to anger, resentment and thoughts of revenge or embrace forgiveness and move forward.
Nearly everyone has been hurt by the actions or words of another. Your mother criticized your parenting skills. Your friend gossiped about you. Your partner had an affair. These wounds can leave you with lasting feelings of anger, bitterness and even vengeance.
But when you don’t practice forgiveness, you may be the one who pays most dearly. By embracing forgiveness, you embrace peace, hope, gratitude and joy.
To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover the prisoner was YOU………
As difficult as it seems, you can be sure of this: At the core of the heart, you have the power to move beyond the old issues that are still hindering your freedom. The hardest things—the ones that push you up against your limits—are the very things you need to address to make a quantum leap into a fresh inner and outer life.
In the long run, it’s not a question of whether they deserve to be forgiven. You’re not forgiving them for their sake. You’re doing it for yourself. For your own health and well-being, forgiveness is simply the most energy-efficient option. It frees you from the incredibly toxic, debilitating drain of holding a grudge. Don’t let these people live rent free in your head. If they hurt you before, why let them keep doing it year after year in your mind? It’s not worth it but it takes heart effort to stop it. You can muster that heart power to forgive them as a way of looking out for yourself. It’s one thing you can be totally selfish about.
Take it slowly. The deepest resentments are wrapped up in a lot of hurt and pain. We think we’re protecting ourselves by not forgiving. Acknowledge that and go easy on yourself. Forgiveness means that you’ve decided not to let it keep festering inside even if it only comes up once in awhile. Forgiveness is a powerful yet challenging tool that will support and honor you, even in the most extreme circumstances.
The incoherence that results from holding on to resentments and unforgiving attitudes keeps you from being aligned with your true self. It can block you from your next level of quality life experience. Metaphorically, it’s the curtain standing between the room you’re living in now and a new room, much larger and full of beautiful objects. The act of forgiveness removes the curtain. Clearing up your old accounts can free up so much energy that you jump right into a whole new house. Forgiving releases you from the punishment of a self-made prison where you are both the inmate and the jailer.
Put your best mental energies (perhaps first thing in the morning) into visualizing the new life you want. See yourself - in the future - as free of this pain and suffering.
Forgiveness is a choice. When you say, "I can’t forgive that person," what you’re really saying is, "I’m choosing not to forgive that person." If you say it the second way instead, you’ll find yourself forgiving soon.Remember two wrongs don’t make it right it makes it worse.
True forgiveness takes time. Realize that everyone heals in their own way and in their own time. It is ok for you to take time to forgive, but you must realize that you will only be free from the bondage of hurt,despair and rage if you let it go and truly forgive the hurt that is holding back the true you. The sooner you make the choice to forgive and apply it, the better.
Forgiveness is not a defensive action, but an offensive one. It actively demolishes strongholds that keep you and others in bondage to a hurtful situation. Be aware that you are in a spiritual battle through the act of forgiveness and may experience some resistance from the devil in this. Press forward towards victory anyway! It is the best gift you can give yourself!
Sincere forgiveness isn’t colored with expectations that the other person apologize or change. Don’t worry whether or not they finally understand you. Love them and release them. Life feeds back truth to people in its own way and time—just like it does for you and me.