The
United Nations Committee Against Torture issued a lengthy report today
assessing the performance of the 156 countries whose governments have ratified
the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment
or Punishment, which took effect two decades ago. The report subjected a major
country to a wide-ranging critique, indicting it for a long list of human
rights violations. It will not come as any surprise to readers of the WSWS that
the country named is not China ,
or Russia , or Iran , or some other target of the American
ruling class, but the US
The
language of the report is both cautious and bureaucratic, and there are
strained efforts to congratulate the Obama administration on alleged improvements,
compared to the Bush administration, on such practices as extraordinary
rendition and waterboarding. But the overall impact of this indictment is
damning. Nov.30 http://www.strategic-culture.org/pview/2014/11/30/un-report-documents-torture-police-violence-in-us.html
Solar
eclipses offer opportunity to redefine concepts of self and the roles we play
in the world, or how we articulate ourselves in life. They are about shifting
octaves in the nature of our self-perception and self-expression, and
addressing issues that keep us from doing so. They can invite a new beginning,
way of life, or new way of participating in life. [1]
Here we
will see how the solar eclipse of April 29, 2014 is, among other things, providing an opportunity to recognize our role
in the evil that we so strongly condemn. It is conjunct the asteroid Toro [9ta]
that is linked to bullying and intimidation. In our case here the word “torture” is more relevant.
In his
April Lunar Planner Nick Fiorenza explains the essence of this eclipse [1].
The April New Moon Eclipse in mid-sidereal Aries
conjoins Hamal of Aries; the stars of Triangulum; Schedar and Achird of
northern Cassiopeia.
Hamal reveals that the struggles we face in the
physical world are due to attempts to forcefully direct our lives or those of
others. Such attempts are generally based upon a separatist, judgmental, and
righteous me-against-them attitude, which often leads us deeper into the
initiatory fires of life in which we may already find ourselves.
Schedar, Alpha Cassiopeia, the head of the Queen,
tightly conjoining Hamal, impels somewhat of a prideful and arrogant tone,
often a head-trip of being lost in the glitter of power upon the human stage.
Immature challenge and boast can express here with ramifications only
accentuating the drama of the tightening jaws of fear-based collective
consciousness (Cetus) and the butting response provided by the head of the Ram.
Hamal and Schedar can express as power struggles amongst leaders or those who
are headstrong, with lessons about how arrogance creates struggle in the
material world; and how compassion opens the way through.
Achird of Cassiopeia asks us to realize that we
create and perpetuate the very things that we perceive as trying to detour or
devour us. Achird brings attention to the fact that the monsters and the
entrapments in which we find ourselves become manifest by our own righteous and
arrogant attitudes of self-importance.
Triangulum teaches us to see beyond the judgments
of fear-based dualistic mind and the dramatics it produces. Here is the
statement "let thine eye become single"--to see from unity
consciousness, which in turn makes it possible to rise above and beyond the
"controlling verses being controlled" mentality and its subsequent
entrapment.
Our New Moon eclipse inspires us to recognize,
perhaps through a reflection of events, conditions or people in our lives, that
any issues we have with them are made manifest by our inner resonance and
subsequent attitudes we hold. It inspires us to relinquish those attitudes that
keep us segregated into a me-against-the-world mentality.
Progressing
the eclipse chart to Nov.30, the date of the UN report, aligns the eclipse with
the descendant. Since the eclipse was anchored to Mars and Pluto in the Uranus-Pluto
Grand Cross that is linked to transformative changes we are seeing the UN – a body
that had lost its credibility with its support of US – now beginning to question unjustifiable US actions.
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