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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: IS THE NEW AGE REALLY HERE?
9/28/2013 10:23:37 AM
Rouhani tweets about chat

Iranian President Rouhani takes to Twitter after phone chat with Obama


Recent Twitter messages from Iranian President Hassan Rouhani have increased hopes of positive dialogue between Iran and the U.S. (AFP)


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Describing his phone conversation with President Obama as “historic,” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani took to Twitter on Friday with a series of a fascinating messages that stunned and encouraged many foreign policy observers.

“In phone convo, President # Rouhani and President @ BarackObama expressed their mutual political # will to rapidly solve the # nuclear issue,” Rouhani wrote to his 64,000 plus followers.

In another tweet, Rouhani noted that he ended his conversation with Obama by saying, “Have a Nice Day!” and that the Obama responded by saying, “Thank you. Khodahafez.”

The phrase is a common way of saying goodbye in the Persian language and is literally translated as, “"May God be your Guardian.”

For its part, the White House used Twitter to publish an official photo of President Obama during his phone conversation with Rouhani. The caption to the photo reads, "Historic phone call in the Oval Office: Pres Obama talks w Iran Pres Hassan Rouhani this afternoon."

The tweets represent a pair of interesting historical marks for the two countries. First, is the more obvious significance being paid to the phone conversation itself – the first between a U.S. and Iranian president in more than 30 years.

However, it’s also noteworthy that Rouhani is on Twitter at all. Iranians had previously been banned from using the site but in September the bans on Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites were lifted without formal notice. For his part, Rouhani has shown himself to be prolific at composing his own messages and re-tweeting the messages of others.

For example, he re-tweeted a message from Twitter CEO Dick Costolo who wrote, “I feel like i'm witnessing a tectonic shift in the geo-political landscape reading @ HassanRouhani tweets. Fascinating.”

Rouhani has also been using the account to verify media reports on the progression of relations between the U.S. and Iran. For example, he re-tweeted a report that the two countries would appoint foreign ministers to arrange follow-up talks between officials after the conversation with Obama.

# Obama , # Rouhani agreed ground shud b prepared 4 solving of other issues, incl regional matters. FMs tasked w/ follow-up to expedite coop,” Rouhani tweeted in his most-recent message.

His Twitter account also arguably provides potential insights into Rouhani's online allegiances. For example, he only follow four accounts on Twitter, including Iran's Foreign Minister Javid Zarif and former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, a fellow moderate.

The excitement over Rouhani’s tweets has even led to a few false reports, including one news outlet that erroneously reported that the Iranian leader was using his account to lobby for a personal meeting with Obama during the recent U.N. summit in New York.



Rouhani tweets about phone call with Obama



The Iranian president posts a series of fascinating messages that stun and encourage many observers.
Obama: 'Thank you. Khodahafez.'




"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: IS THE NEW AGE REALLY HERE?
9/28/2013 10:38:34 AM
U.S.-Iran optimism

Optimism for US-Iran deal peaks: 5 things to watch for

A historic phone call today between Presidents Obama and Rouhani could signal a new chapter in US-Iran relations.

Christian Science Monitor

After 17 months of fruitless high-level nuclear talks with Iran, the nation's new president is raising hopes of big change, swiftly.

"Nuclear weapons ... have no place in Iran's security and defense doctrine," Hassan Rouhani told the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 24. But high hopes have been dashed before, sometimes sunk by an inability on both sides to deliver hard-liners. What will be necessary for success this time? What are the possible pitfalls?

1. The Iranians' endgame: What do they seek?

American diplomats complain that Iran has never laid out its vision for an acceptable solution at the negotiating table – echoing Iranian complaints that the P5+1 group (the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France, and Germany) has never stated that it will accept Iran's bottom-line demand to allow uranium enrichment on Iranian soil.

This disconnect created excruciating negotiating sessions in Baghdad, Moscow, and Almaty, Kazakhstan.

"There's nothing we seek to hide," Mr. Rouhani told American media editors in New York, noting that "40 countries are doing enrichment. We want nothing less, nothing more."

Rouhani said Iran's enrichment to 20 percent purity – a few technical steps from bomb-grade – and lower 5 percent purity for nuclear fuel "can be placed on the table and examined. The endgame is the removal of everyone's concerns, and the restoration of Iran's rights" to enrich uranium.

Still unclear is the fate of Iran's enrichment facility at Fordow – buried in a mountain to protect it from US and Israeli airstrikes – and how Iran will clear up concerns from the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency about past weapons-related work.

2. The challenge for the US: hard-liners.

Getting there won't be easy. The US Congress has imposed increasingly harsh sanctions on Iran, which today target the spectrum of its economy, from limiting oil exports – which have dropped in two years from 2.4 million barrels per day to below 1 million – to blocking central bank and financial transactions.

Analysts say Congress is "in love" with sanctions, a default policy that lawmakers believe will force Iran to capitulate. Iran has grated beneath this US carrot-and-stick approach, saying there are too many sticks, and carrots are fit only for "donkeys."

Some members of Congress "really don't want a deal with Iran," says Gary Sick, an Iran expert at Columbia University in New York who was the principal White House aide during Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution and subsequent American hostage crisis.

"What they want is to change the leadership of Iran," says Mr. Sick, "so they're prepared to argue against anything that would ease the pressure on Iran ... that would provide any hope of an outcome other than a bad one, because their interests – though they don't say it – are really for regime change."

3. The challenge in Iran: hard-liners.

Iran's politics are also full of hard-line elements that oppose any contact with the US, the "Great Satan," whose flag is often still burned at large public events. In Tehran during Friday prayers, believers still shout, "Death to America!"

Nasser Hadian-Jazy, who teaches international relations at Tehran University, expects relatively quick progress on a nuclear deal, but is less optimistic of a US-Iran breakthrough.

The reason? "A political structure exists in both countries which involves the hostile relationship," and many of those who benefit are in positions of power and will "create all sorts of impediments," says Professor Hadian-Jazy in an interview. "Just to see a US senator or congressman say something positive about Iran, he or she is going to pay a cost; but if they say negative things, they aren't going to pay a cost for it," he says. "It is exactly the same in Iran: If any member of the Iranian parliament says anything positive about the US ... he or she is going to pay a cost. But [not] if they say a negative thing."

4. 'Big for big': Will Iran give a lot – and get a lot in return?

Until now, the Obama administration has pursued a small-steps model, attempting to create mutual confidence-building measures that would eventually turn into a deal to forever cap Iran's nuclear program so that it could never produce a bomb.

"We have got to be a lot more creative than we have been prepared to be.... We have to go 'big for big,' " says George Perkovich, a nuclear expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

The baby-step model "is totally self-defeating at this point [because] the Iranians want to know where the road ends, not where it starts.... [I]s it a dark alley where they are going to get mugged halfway in it? Or does it actually lead to a place that is valued by them?" says Mr. Perkovich, addressing an Iran Project panel in New York.

5. The nuclear conundrum: Can a solution be found?

Iranian officials have stated flatly and repeatedly that they do not want nuclear weapons and that they adhere to a religious ruling by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei rejecting such arms.

"That's the key to the solution," says Perkovich.

The watchwords should be "distrust and verify," he says. "We know that the United States does not trust the Iranians, but what we don't generally perceive is that the Iranians distrust us about a thousand times more, and that the leader has reasons for it."

President Obama spoke of Mr. Khamenei's fatwa against nuclear arms as a "basis for a meaningful agreement," and added, when addressing the UN Sept. 24: "We are not seeking regime change, and we respect the right of the Iranian people to access peaceful nuclear energy."

For Iran, mastering the atomic fuel cycle "is as much about diversifying our energy resources as it is about who Iranians are as a nation, our demand for dignity and respect and our consequent place in the world," Rouhani wrote recently in The Washington Post.

"After 10 years of back-and-forth, what all sides don't want in relation to our nuclear file is clear," Rouhani wrote. "We all need to muster the courage to start conveying what we want – clearly, concisely and sincerely – and to back it up with the political will to take necessary action."

Related stories

Read this story at csmonitor.com

Become a part of the Monitor community

U.S.-Iran relations: 5 things to watch for


While tensions between the two nations seem to be easing, experts warn there are tough challenges ahead.
The nuclear conundrum




"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: IS THE NEW AGE REALLY HERE?
9/28/2013 10:49:12 AM
Harvard honors Malala

Pakistani girl shot by Taliban honored at Harvard


Malala Yousafzai, waves to onlookers after speaking at a news conference on the Harvard University campus in Cambridge, Mass. on Friday, Sept. 27, 2013. The Pakistani teenager, an advocate for education for girls, survived a Taliban assassination attempt in 2012 on her way home from school. (AP Photo/Jessica Rinaldi)
Associated Press

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) — A Pakistani girl who survived an assassination attempt by the Taliban has been honored as Harvard University's humanitarian of the year.

Malala Yousafzai, an outspoken proponent for girls' education, was at Harvard on Friday to accept the 2013 Peter J. Gomes Humanitarian Award. Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust said she was pleased to welcome Malala because of their shared interest in education.

Malala was shot in the head last October. Militants said she was attacked because she was critical of the Taliban, not because of her views on education.

The 16-year-old Malala said she hopes to become a politician because politicians can have influence on a broad scale.

She spoke nostalgically about her home region, the Swat Valley, and said she hopes to return someday. She called it a "paradise" but described a dangerous area where militants blew up dozens of schools and sought to discourage girls from going to school by snatching pens from their hands. Students, she said, reacted by hiding their books under their shawls so people wouldn't know they were going to school.

"The so-called Taliban were afraid of women's power and were afraid of the power of education," she told hundreds of students, faculty members and well-wishers who packed Harvard's ornate Sanders Theater for the award ceremony.

Malala highlighted the fact that very few people spoke out against what was happening in her home region.

"Although few people spoke, but the voice for peace and education was powerful," she said.

Malala also described waking up in a United Kingdom hospital, where she was taken for emergency treatment following the assassination attempt in Pakistan.

"And when I was in Birmingham, I didn't know where I was, I didn't know where my parents are, I didn't know who has shot me and I had no idea what was happening," she said. "But I thank God that I'm alive."

The chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize Committee, Thorbjorn Jagland, paid a special tribute to Malala in a message read publicly during her award ceremony.

"Your courage," Jagland said in the tribute, "is sending a strong message to women to stand up for their rights, which constitutes a precondition for peace."


Harvard honors girl shot by Taliban



The university names 16-year-old Pakistani Malala Yousafzai as its humanitarian of the year.
Sending a strong message





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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: IS THE NEW AGE REALLY HERE?
9/28/2013 1:26:13 PM
U.N. votes on Syria

UN resolution orders Syria chemical arms destroyed


Britain's Foreign Minister William Hague (L) and US Secretary of State John Kerry (R) vote to approve a resolution that will require Syria to give up its chemical weapons during a meeting September 27, 2013 at UN headquarters in New York. (AFP Photo/Stan Honda)
AFP


New York City (AFP) - The UN Security Council unanimously passed a landmark resolution Friday ordering the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons and condemning a murderous poison gas attack in Damascus.

The major powers overcame a prolonged deadlock to approve the first council resolution on the conflict, which is now 30 months old with more than 100,000 dead.

UN leader Ban Ki-moon, who called the resolution "the first hopeful news on Syria in a long time," said he hopes to convene a peace conference in mid-November.

Resolution 2118, the result of bruising negotiations between the United States and Russia, gives international binding force to a plan drawn up by the two to eliminate President Bashar al-Assad's chemical arms.

The plan calls for Syria's estimated 1,000 tonnes of chemical weapons to be put under international control by mid-2014.

International experts are expected to start work in Syria to meet the tight deadline next week. Britain and China offered to finance the disarmament operation.

"Should the regime fail to act, there will be consequences," US Secretary of State John Kerry warned the 15-member council after the vote sealing a US-Russian agreement.

But Kerry hailed the resolution.

"The Security Council has shown that when we put aside politics for the common good, we are still capable of doing big things," he said.

Human Rights Watch however was not impressed with the deal.

"This resolution fails to ensure justice for the gassing of hundreds of children and many other grave crimes," said the watchdog's UN director, Philippe Bolopion.

Efforts to destroy Syria's chemical weapons "do not address the reality that conventional weapons have killed the overwhelming majority of the estimated 100,000 people who have died in the conflict," Bolopion said.

"If the killing of civilians by conventional weapons continues unabated, the chemical weapons resolution will be remembered as an effort to draw red lines, not save civilian lives," he said.

Bolopion renewed HRW's call for the UN to "refer the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court (ICC), and adopt targeted sanctions against those responsible for mass killings."

No automatic punitive measures

Russia, Assad's main ally, has rejected any suggestion of sanctions or military force against Assad. It has already used its veto power as a permanent Security Council member to block three Western-drafted resolutions on Syria.

There are no immediate sanctions over a chemical weapons attack, but the resolution allows for a new vote on possible measures if the Russia-US plan is breached.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that the council would take "actions which are commensurate with the violations, which will have to be proven 100 percent."

The resolution also applies to the Syrian opposition, Lavrov said.

The resolution "condemns in the strongest terms any use of chemical weapons in the Syrian Arab Republic, in particular the attack on August 21, 2013, in violation of international law."

Washington has blamed Assad's government for that sarin gas assault on the Damascus suburb of Ghouta that US officials say killed more than 1,400 dead, and threatened a military strike over the attack.

Syria has denied responsibility.

Syria attacks must be 'accountable'

Should Syria not comply with the resolution, the Security Council agreed to "impose measures under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter."

The charter can authorize the use of sanctions or military force, but new action would require a new vote, said Russia which would likely oppose any use of force against its ally.

Russia also rebuffed calls by Britain and France for the Ghouta attack to be referred to the International Criminal Court.

The resolution expressed "strong conviction" that those responsible for chemical weapons attacks in Syria "should be held accountable."

It formally endorsed a decision taken hours earlier in The Hague by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to accept the Russia-US disarmament plan.

Ban said the resolution "will ensure that the elimination of the Syrian chemical weapons program happens as soon as possible and with the utmost transparency and accountability."

Ban also told the Security Council he wanted to hold a new Syria peace conference in mid-November, and said that the foreign ministers from Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States agreed to make sure that each side negotiate in "good faith."

A first peace conference was held in June 2012 but splits in the Syrian opposition and the international community have thwarted a follow-up.

Ban will start contacts with his Syria peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi next week on setting the firm date and who will attend the new meeting, diplomats said.

He also noted that the resolution was not "a license to kill" with conventional arms.

"A red light for one for one form of weapons does not mean a green light for others," Ban said.

The Security Council resolution gave backing to the 2012 conference declaration, which stated that there should be a transitional government in Syria with full executive powers.

It also determined that the new peace conference would be to decide how to implement the accord.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said after the resolution was adopted that the international community must step up efforts to help those caught up in a humanitarian crisis.

In Brussels, European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said the resolution represented "a major step towards a sustainable and unified international response" to the Syrian crisis.

"This decision should pave the way to the elimination of chemical weapons in Syria, and set a standard for the international community in responding to threats posed by weapons of mass destruction," Ashton said.

The EU would provide "forceful" support in the case of non-compliance, Ashton said in a statement.

Meanwhile in Syria, a car bomb north of Damascus detonated Friday, killing at least 30 people. Eleven more deaths were reported in a government air raid, highlighting the continued slaughter in Syria's long-running civil war.

U.N. makes landmark decision on Syria

The U.N. Security Council votes unanimously to secure and destroy Syria's chemical weapons stockpile.

'First hopeful news on Syria in a long time'




"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: IS THE NEW AGE REALLY HERE?
9/28/2013 5:29:09 PM
Dear friends, from Wes Annac's personal blog:

What is a New Paradigm? – Part 1

[28Sept2013]

063-small1.jpg

The following was written for The Aquarius Paradigm blog site.

What is a New Paradigm?

A new paradigm is essentially what the name suggests: breaking away from our old and instated ways of living and being, in favor of a societal standard that works for every person on this planet. The new paradigm is being brought about in various different ways, even as we speak.

Individuals are working to merge science and spirituality, laying rest to dogmatic religion and un-allowing evolution-based science.

Millions of people are awakening in every moment to the reality of deeper realms of consciousness beyond our physical understanding, and there are devoted people at the forefront of our collective helping show us the way and lead us into a successful future as a species.

A new paradigm is brought about with the active focus and intent of every person who grows to resonate with the ideals of exiting the societal norm.

Along with taking action in the realms of consciousness beyond our understanding to help bring a new paradigm about, which we’ll get into in Spiritual Evolution, it’ll be important for us to take action in our physical reality to help establish it.

In general, a new paradigm is termed as something that’s so outside of the established norm that it’s put into its own category. In this case, the new paradigm being referred to is one of changing the manners we’ve functioned as a society, and changing the divisive and hatred-driven ways of treating each other that haven’t been working for us.

Exiting the Societal Norm

The importance of changing the way we’ve run our world and the way we’ve treated each other couldn’t be expressed enough, in my opinion.

We’ve warred against each other for centuries, causing massive loss of life and division to be fed in our collective.

In this day and age, we play into a paradigm of keeping oneself and one’s family ahead and letting everyone else fend for themselves. We see starving children in poverty-stricken areas every day with no food or water, and yet, many of us waste the excess food or water we have.

We see people in every country genuinely struggle to get by, and we see people in certain countries who have to deal with tyrannical and despotic leaders, the majority of which we’re coming to learn have been employed by the same entities who have most of our governments in their pockets.

The old “survival of the fittest” paradigm has seen the masses starve and the few remain in positions of financial, political and spiritual influence, but now, people are stepping up all over the world and proclaiming their interest in a new way of living and being.

People are seeing the necessity to cease the old paradigm as we’ve known it and the old ways we’ve functioned as a society, and are embracing a new paradigm based in unity consciousness, helping one another and working together to build a future in alignment with the expressed ideals of each and every citizen.

Exiting our established societal norms will be a big part of establishing a new paradigm, as we’ve been conditioned by our culture to focus on materiality and things that satisfy the ego. Feeding into materiality for the sake of feeding the ego employs an old paradigm-mindset by distracting us from real problems other people on this world experience.

Of course, there are some who could care little for the fate of others, and who’d certainly never use any of their effort or abundance to help others out of difficult situations. This is why it’ll be important for us to spread abundance – financial and spiritual – all throughout our planet.

Equally-Shared Prosperity

The idea of “sharing the wealth” is usually given fearful nicknames or connotations such as “socialism”, and this has been done in part because there are interests that don’t want us to recognize the importance of sharing. In many cases, those very individuals have gotten to where they are by lying, cheating and stealing, and want to remain as far ahead of the middle and lower classes as possible.

If humanity comes together and recognizes the importance of sharing the world’s wealth and abundance, which can easily leave no person excluded, than those powerful individuals won’t be able to keep their amassed wealth or power.

The collective ruling body we can establish will be nothing if not fair, especially in regards to this issue, and people who’ve gained their wealth in honest ways wouldn’t be asked to hand it over; lest they wish to contribute to the new paradigm of sharing abundance.

I’d imagine there are some rich people who’d like to help the world and see everyone enjoy abundance and be able to get by, and it wouldn’t make sense for an honest person to be robbed of their abundance in the name of sharing prosperity.

It’s been said that the world’s wealth is more than enough to feed, shelter and clothe everyone on Earth, but the few have amassed the world’s wealth and instated themselves at the top of the financial pyramid by keeping others down.

This is why redistribution of the world’s wealth is necessary in my opinion, as individuals who’ve stolen and cheated to “get ahead” haven’t justly earned their abundance in any respect. Plenty of people who find themselves in difficult financial situations could have a lot to offer our planet and, if given the opportunity, would spread as much wealth and prosperity as possible.

Continued soon – head to “A New Paradigm” to read the full writing.



"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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