lindseyandhaley: Venezuela

Showing posts with label Venezuela. Show all posts

Monday, 3 March 2014

Putin: "Crimea [river, cry me a sea!]" (video)

Amber Larson, Seven, Wisdom Quarterly; Sergei L. Loiko (LAT); Amy Goodman (DN!); FEMEN

Femen sexstremists spur Ukrainian Revolution with Tymoshenko braids (femen.org)

Authoritarian Russian KGB/President Vlad Putin faces off with young, topless FEMEN demonstrator as European leaders, including Germany's Angela Merkel, shrink and cower.

Who is provoking unrest in Ukraine? Role of USA (CIA) and Russia

Russia is vowing to keep its troops in the Ukrainian region of Crimea in what has become Moscow’s biggest confrontation with the West since the Cold War. Ukraine’s new prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, said Pres. Putin had effectively declared war on his country. Concern is growing that more of eastern Ukraine could soon fall to the Russians. Earlier today, Russian troops seized a Ukraine coast guard base in the Crimean city of Balaklava.

On Sunday, the new head of Ukraine’s navy defected to Russia. To talk more about the crisis in Ukraine, Democracy Now! spoke to Yale history professor Timothy Snyder. His latest article for The New York Review of Books is "Ukraine: The Haze of Propaganda." DN also spoke to retired CIA analyst Ray McGovern. He focused on Russian foreign policy for the first decade of his 27-year career with the agency and recently wrote an article titled "Ukraine: One 'Regime Change' Too Many?" More

Russians invading Crimea, Ukraine

Anti-Putin protests, EU consulate (FEMEN)

BAKHCHISARAI, Ukraine - The tense military standoff in Crimea continued today as Ukraine’s army and naval forces were blockaded by invading Russian troops and supporters, at some sites demanding that the Ukrainian units surrender their bases and swear allegiance to the Kremlin and Russia’s armed forces.

The demand represented an alarming sign that the fresh Russian forces had come here to stay, some analysts said.

Stop Putin. Ukraine must be free! (FEMEN)

“The fact that Russians openly demand that Ukrainian officers and soldiers in the Crimea take a military oath to Russia may mean one thing: The Kremlin intends to keep them here for a long time, if not for good,” said Kost Bondarenko, head of the Ukrainian Policy Institute, a think-tank based in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev.

“It means that Ukraine is steadily losing the Crimea to Russia, and it will be extremely difficult to get it back as the Ukrainian army is incapable of opposing Russia," he said. More

VENEZUELA: Tens of thousands march in anti-government protests

Sunday, 23 February 2014

Protests rage in Venezuela

Ashley Wells, CC Liu, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly; BBC.co.uk

Mr. Lopez's wife is calling for the release of her husband at marches attended by thousands.

Venezuela country profile (BBC)

Anti-government protesters in Venezuela have erected barricades in the capital, Caracas. They placed burning rubbish and furniture on main roads in an attempt to bar access to the city.

Opposition leader Henrique Capriles had earlier asked his supporters not to follow a call for a "national blockade" circulated on social media.

Nat'l hero led independence from Spain (AFP)

The blockades are the latest in a series of opposition protests in which 13 people have died. There have been reports of similar blockades in the cities of Maracaibo and Valencia.

Protesters also banged pots and pans in the early hours of the morning to show their opposition to the government of President Nicolas Maduro.

They say they will continue with their wave of protests, which started more than two weeks ago, until Mr. Maduro resigns. More than 130 people have been injured and an opposition leader, Leopoldo Lopez, has been arrested on charges of inciting violence. More

Anti-government protesters erect barricades in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas (AFP).

Thursday, 12 December 2013

Honoring the Virgin of Guadalupe (Kwan Yin)

Pfc. Sandoval, Pat Macpherson, CC Liu (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly; photographer Luis Sinco, Marc Martin, Los Angeles Times (latimes.com), Dec. 12, 2013

NeoPagan and Wiccan women in front of flower-strewn Virgin Mary/Kwan Yin, Buddhist temple facing the ocean and Queen Mary, Long Beach, LA County, formerly a Catholic nunnery (Temple of the Goddess).

Juan Diego and the Virgin (SF)

In an annual ritual that draws thousands of people, Catholic faithful of Mexican and Central American descent swarmed La Placita ["the Little Plaza"] Church and nearby Olvera Street Plaza [Los Angeles' oldest market square] to celebrate Dia De La Virgen De Guadalupe ["Day of the Virgin who appeared to a man in Guadalupe, Mexico"].

The crowded and colorful festivities are held in honor of the Virgin of Guadalupe -- the universal symbol for Mexican Catholics -- who is said to have appeared in a vision before Mexican peasant Juan Diego about 500 years ago.

Buddhist "Virg Yin," Goddess of Compassion

La Placita celebrations included unbroken strings of worship services as well as offerings of flowers and votive candles that illuminated the darkness outside the church and kept the throngs of people coming throughout the long, chilly night.

According to popular Mexican lore, Juan Diego saw the Virgin Mary on Tepeyac Hill in what is now Mexico City, on Dec. 9, 1531. The Virgin is said to have told him to ask the bishop to build a church on the hill. More

Day of the Divine Shepherdess
Siemprefeliz.com (Los Angeles); Wisdom Quarterly (translation)

Shepherdess Mother Mary, Goddess of Compassion, Virgen de Guadalupe (siemprefeliz.com)

January 14th is the [Venezuelan] day of the Divina Pastora, the procession of the "Divine Shepherdess," the spiritual patron of Venezuela. The celebration is one of the largest in Latin America, together with the activities in honor of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico.

It is a journey taken by more than 2,500,000 people performed in the church of Santa Rosa village, located between the Cathedral of Barquisimeto and Cabudare, a distance of about eight miles.

This route, with the virgin carried on the shoulders of her people, begins at noon and ends early in the evening about 367 kilometers from Caracas.

The pilgrimage is accompanied by songs, praise, and prayers from parishioners. Some walk barefoot, while others go down on hands and knees.

A miraculous virgin

Mother Goddess (metafisicamiami.com)

The pastor of the church of Santa Rosa, Paul Fidel Gonzalez, said: "Devotion to the Divine Shepherdess is growing year after year." He added that this is evidenced by the increasing number of pilgrims who visit the town of Santa Rosa, the Shrine of the Virgin, an invocation of the Virgin Mary.

Veneration increases proportional to the size of the religious image with its hat, cane, and sheep around a throne and a child on her lap representing the infant Jesus (St. Issa). She fulfills promises of health, peace, love, prosperity, and more which many consider Miriam miracles. More

A Buddhist "Mary"?
Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly

Kwan Yin, Yungang Grottoes, China (G-W-H)

It may be said that the real "Mary" in Buddhism would be Maya Devi, the great queen, the Buddha's biological mother.

In an interesting pre-Christian source for Mary's "virginity" (pure, unmarried status), the Bodhisattva (Buddha-to-be) looked down from the Tusita world and beheld a suitable woman who could give birth to him. She had refrained from sexual misconduct for seven generations back, so being "pure" in this sense. Abstaining from sexual misconduct is not the same as abstaining from sex. But that, too, entered the mythology by confusing Maya's dream of conception, seeing a pure white double tusk elephant entering her, with the future-Buddha's miraculous (but not technically immaculate) conception, attended by angels (devas).

See Buddhist Birth Stories (Jataka Tales) and the Story of the Lineage by Rhys Davids (trans.)

Kwan Yin, the One Who Looks Down from Heaven

She gave birth as commemorated in Brahmanism like a Sal tree dryad. But she quickly went from being an earthly devi (queen) to a heavenly female devi ("shining one") in the Space World of the Thirty-Three (Tavatimsa). She passed away a week after giving birth. The Buddha was raised by her sister, also his father the king's wife, named Maha Pajapati. She went on to become the first Buddhist nun in history and so achieved a greater distinction than Maya by attaining enlightenment in this very life.

However, Buddhists do not regard either sister as the "Goddess of Mercy and Compassion" who looks down from the heavens and hears the cries of the world. That distinction goes to the pre-Buddhist Avalokitatesvara (Sanskrit अवलोकितेश्वर), a deva (male) who metamorphosed into beloved Kwan Yin, the Chinese version of this ancient Indian deity. She is a manifestation of the divine feminine, a mother goddess, a source of comfort and inspiration to uncounted millions of Mahayana Buddhists, Hindus, and to a lesser extent Theravada Buddhists and Chinese atheists.