Acts of Kindness Benefit Everyone

Do you really want to be happy? Everyone says yes, but the gateway to happiness makes some of us frown. The gateway to happiness, is giving to others. Think about this: "If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion." - The Dalai Lama

Some of us may feel that, if we give too much, our generosity, will be taken advantage of by others. This is true, and a few very selfish individuals can possibly perceive your good intentions as weakness.

However, people who seek to take advantage are in the minority. To quote Gandhi, "We must be the change, we wish to see in the world." Think about it, change has to start somewhere, so why not start with you and me, right now?

You can donate anything randomly, without seeking reward, and anonymously, without telling anyone. This is good for you, the universe, and those who receive your acts of kindness. Every time you give, you will receive – even, if you are not looking for a reward.

Try it, and you will see, what some call, “karma,” the law of cause and effect. It works like this: For every action there is a reaction. Let’s make sure the reactions to our actions are good ones.

Danny Thomas said, "All of us are born for a reason, but all of us don't discover why. Success in life has nothing to do with what you gain in life or accomplish for yourself. It's what you do for others."

Share everything and you will achieve a legacy of kindness. Share nothing and people will, do their best, to forget you. When my life is over I will only leave memories, in the minds of others, and I want them all to be good ones.

So, how much should you give? It can start with, “heart felt”, kind words, a note, a card, or a flower. You will find that your gifts or donations won’t make you poor. As a result of this, you will see most people, naturally, return kindness to you.

You should also take the time to be polite to all of the people who perform services for you, every day. Many people do not bother to say hello to the maid, janitor, parking attendant, or service clerk.

Once you do, you may even learn their name, and you would be surprised how many of them will go out of their way to give you good service, just by addressing them by their first name.

If you establish sincerity and trust where ever you go, you will be loved by your fellow man. It is really that simple. As Mohammed said, "A person's true wealth is the good he or she does in the world."

The Quickest Way to Get is to Give

It’s true.  You can’t really get what you want in life until you have given it to others.  Doesn’t sound like it makes much sense, does it?  How can you give what you don’t have?  As you open your mind to the possibility and ask this question of yourself, you allow opportunity to come to you and knock at your door.  Then you will find a way that it is possible to give to others what you want, before receiving it yourself.

It almost sounds like a chain letter and in a way it is.  The chain letter is a facetious reference as so many of us have been exposed to them by now and know they are illegitimate scams.  Yet the basic principles are: you give before you receive, and you give with the faith and expectation of receiving.  A similar modern example can be seen in the film ‘Pay It Forward’.  By giving to others, you allow good things to happen to you.  And this all boils down to the simple law of attraction.

The law of attraction is like any other law of nature, like gravity.  And like gravity, it is not one that has been generally ‘discovered’ yet.  As a result, most of us are walking around thinking in a completely disordered paradigm.  

Disordered paradigms of thought are displayed over and over in history, and discoveries of natural laws and observations of reality have brought order to transform the mistaken beliefs that had been accepted for fact.  You can think of many examples, such as the belief that the world is flat, or the belief that we are at the center of the universe.  Or the great changes that resulted as a discovery of the force of electricity and harnessing its natural power.

In this same way, we are able to make a change in our own disordered thought patterns.  Right now 99% of us are probably dissatisfied.  Dissatisfaction means larger life is seeking to be expressed through us, and it is being blocked.  Self-sabotage is a very real process working in the invisible realms of the unconscious mind.

The good news is there are a lot of simple, small but powerful techniques you can use to reprogram that all powerful unconscious mind of yours, to order your own life as you want it.  Yes, there IS a way to eliminate the chaos in your life, and it starts within.  It starts by eliminating the often unseen chaos in your own mind.

The technique in this article is only one of a vast array that you can use on a daily basis to improve your life dramatically.  In this article you are learning how to use the law of attraction to attract to yourself what you want.

The law of attraction, like gravity, is undefiable.  You will attract what you are sending out.  Your thoughts are real in the world of attraction.

If your mind is resonating with patterns of anxiety, stress, anger, sadness, envy, grief, or any other negative emotion, you will be attracting more of the same in your life.

One step you can take to change this is to focus on giving to others before you receive yourself.  In this way you are changing your vibration and your focus.  And you open yourself to receive what you had been closing off before.

It is very simple to give.  Give of what you have, and everyone has something to give.  We all have innate value to offer the world.  An abiding philosophy in the law of attraction is to always offer an increase in value, to give back more in value than you receive in money.  In this way you continue to give more than you get and attract more and larger life back to yourself.

Take a moment to look within and find something, anything, no matter how small or simple, to give to anyone, friend or stranger.  Start the practice of giving, and you will take one step towards raising your level of vibration and enhancing the value of what you attract in your own life.  Give something selflessly today, knowing that you will receive it multiplied back in your life, tenfold.

The Business of Torture

On January 16, 2003, the European Court of Human Rights agreed - more than two years after the applications have been filed - to hear six cases filed by Chechens against Russia. The claimants accuse the Russian military of torture and indiscriminate killings. The Court has ruled in the past against the Russian Federation and awarded assorted plaintiffs thousands of euros per case in compensation.

As awareness of human rights increased, as their definition expanded and as new, often authoritarian polities, resorted to torture and repression - human rights advocates and non-governmental organizations proliferated. It has become a business in its own right: lawyers, consultants, psychologists, therapists, law enforcement agencies, scholars and pundits tirelessly peddle books, seminars, conferences, therapy sessions for victims, court appearances and other services.

Human rights activists target mainly countries and multinationals.

In June 2001, the International Labor Rights Fund filed a lawsuit on behalf of 11 villagers against the American oil behemoth, ExxonMobile, for "abetting" abuses in Aceh, Indonesia. They alleged that the company provided the army with equipment for digging mass graves and helped in the construction of interrogation and torture centers.

In November 2002, the law firm of Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll joined other American and South African law firms in filing a complaint that "seeks to hold businesses responsible for aiding and abetting the apartheid regime in South Africa ... forced labor, genocide, extrajudicial killing, torture, sexual assault, and unlawful detention".

Among the accused: "IBM and ICL which provided the computers that enabled South Africa to ... control the black South African population. Car manufacturers provided the armored vehicles that were used to patrol the townships. Arms manufacturers violated the embargoes on sales to South Africa, as did the oil companies. The banks provided the funding that enabled South Africa to expand its police and security apparatus."

Charges were leveled against Unocal in Myanmar and dozens of other multinationals. In September 2002, Berger & Montague filed a class action complaint against Royal Dutch Petroleum and Shell Transport. The oil giants are charged with "purchasing ammunition and using ... helicopters and boats and providing logistical support for 'Operation Restore Order in Ogoniland'" which was designed, according to the law firm, to "terrorize the civilian population into ending peaceful protests against Shell's environmentally unsound oil exploration and extraction activities".

The defendants in all these court cases strongly deny any wrongdoing.

But this is merely one facet of the torture business.

Torture implements are produced - mostly in the West - and sold openly, frequently to nasty regimes in developing countries and even through the Internet. Hi-tech devices abound: sophisticated electroconvulsive stun guns, painful restraints, truth serums, chemicals such as pepper gas. Export licensing is universally minimal and non-intrusive and completely ignores the technical specifications of the goods (for instance, whether they could be lethal, or merely inflict pain).

Amnesty International and the UK-based Omega Foundation, found more than 150 manufacturers of stun guns in the USA alone. They face tough competition from Germany (30 companies), Taiwan (19), France (14), South Korea (13), China (12), South Africa (nine), Israel (eight), Mexico (six), Poland (four), Russia (four), Brazil (three), Spain (three) and the Czech Republic (two).

Many torture implements pass through "off-shore" supply networks in Austria, Canada, Indonesia, Kuwait, Lebanon, Lithuania, Macedonia, Albania, Russia, Israel, the Philippines, Romania and Turkey. This helps European Union based companies circumvent legal bans at home. The US government has traditionally turned a blind eye to the international trading of such gadgets.

American high-voltage electro-shock stun shields turned up in Turkey, stun guns in Indonesia, and electro-shock batons and shields, and dart-firing taser guns in torture-prone Saudi Arabia. American firms are the dominant manufacturers of stun belts. Explains Dennis Kaufman, President of Stun Tech Inc, a US manufacturer of this innovation: ''Electricity speaks every language known to man. No translation necessary. Everybody is afraid of electricity, and rightfully so.'' (Quoted by Amnesty International).

The Omega Foundation and Amnesty claim that 49 US companies are also major suppliers of mechanical restraints, including leg-irons and thumbcuffs. But they are not alone. Other suppliers are found in Germany (8), France (5), China (3), Taiwan (3), South Africa (2), Spain (2), the UK (2) and South Korea (1).

Not surprisingly, the Commerce Department doesn't keep tab on this category of exports.

Nor is the money sloshing around negligible. Records kept under the export control commodity number A985 show that Saudi Arabia alone spent in the United States more than $1 million a year between 1997-2000 merely on stun guns. Venezuela's bill for shock batons and such reached $3.7 million in the same period. Other clients included Hong Kong, Taiwan, Mexico and - surprisingly - Bulgaria. Egypt's notoriously brutal services - already well-equipped - spent a mere $40,000.

The United States is not the only culprit. The European Commission, according to an Amnesty International report titled "Stopping the Torture Trade" and published in 2001:

"Gave a quality award to a Taiwanese electro-shock baton, but when challenged could not cite evidence as to independent safety tests for such a baton or whether member states of the European Union (EU) had been consulted. Most EU states have banned the use of such weapons at home, but French and German companies are still allowed to supply them to other countries."

Torture expertise is widely proffered by former soldiers, agents of the security services made redundant, retired policemen and even rogue medical doctors. China, Israel, South Africa, France, Russia, the United kingdom and the United States are founts of such useful knowledge and its propagators.

How rooted torture is was revealed in September 1996 when the US Department of Defense admitted that ''intelligence training manuals'' were used in the Federally sponsored School of the Americas - one of 150 such facilities - between 1982 and 1991.The manuals, written in Spanish and used to train thousands of Latin American security agents, "advocated execution, torture, beatings and blackmail", says Amnesty International.

Where there is demand there is supply. Rather than ignore the discomfiting subject, governments would do well to legalize and supervise it. Alan Dershowitz, a prominent American criminal defense attorney, proposed, in an op-ed article in the Los Angeles Times, published November 8, 2001, to legalize torture in extreme cases and to have judges issue "torture warrants". This may be a radical departure from the human rights tradition of the civilized world. But dispensing export carefully reviewed licenses for dual-use implements is a different matter altogether - and long overdue.