Cempaka Culture and Tourism: Turkish women defy deputy PM with laughter

"The Recalibration of Awareness – Apr 20/21, 2012 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Old Energy, Recalibration Lectures, God / Creator, Religions/Spiritual systems (Catholic Church, Priests/Nun’s, Worship, John Paul Pope, Women in the Church otherwise church will go, Current Pope won’t do it), Middle East, Jews, Governments will change (Internet, Media, Democracies, Dictators, North Korea, Nations voted at once), Integrity (Businesses, Tobacco Companies, Bankers/ Financial Institutes, Pharmaceutical company to collapse), Illuminati (Started in Greece, with Shipping, Financial markets, Stock markets, Pharmaceutical money (fund to build Africa, to develop)), Shift of Human Consciousness, (Old) Souls, Women, Masters to/already come back, Global Unity.... etc.) - (Text version)

“… The Shift in Human Nature

You're starting to see integrity change. Awareness recalibrates integrity, and the Human Being who would sit there and take advantage of another Human Being in an old energy would never do it in a new energy. The reason? It will become intuitive, so this is a shift in Human Nature as well, for in the past you have assumed that people take advantage of people first and integrity comes later. That's just ordinary Human nature.

In the past, Human nature expressed within governments worked like this: If you were stronger than the other one, you simply conquered them. If you were strong, it was an invitation to conquer. If you were weak, it was an invitation to be conquered. No one even thought about it. It was the way of things. The bigger you could have your armies, the better they would do when you sent them out to conquer. That's not how you think today. Did you notice?

Any country that thinks this way today will not survive, for humanity has discovered that the world goes far better by putting things together instead of tearing them apart. The new energy puts the weak and strong together in ways that make sense and that have integrity. Take a look at what happened to some of the businesses in this great land (USA). Up to 30 years ago, when you started realizing some of them didn't have integrity, you eliminated them. What happened to the tobacco companies when you realized they were knowingly addicting your children? Today, they still sell their products to less-aware countries, but that will also change.

What did you do a few years ago when you realized that your bankers were actually selling you homes that they knew you couldn't pay for later? They were walking away, smiling greedily, not thinking about the heartbreak that was to follow when a life's dream would be lost. Dear American, you are in a recession. However, this is like when you prune a tree and cut back the branches. When the tree grows back, you've got control and the branches will grow bigger and stronger than they were before, without the greed factor. Then, if you don't like the way it grows back, you'll prune it again! I tell you this because awareness is now in control of big money. It's right before your eyes, what you're doing. But fear often rules. …”

Thursday, July 31, 2014

Turkish women defy deputy PM with laughter

Bülent Arinç said women should not laugh in public, prompting backlash and highlighting state of women's rights in Turkey

The Guardian, Constanze Letsch in Istanbul, Wednesday 30 July 2014

Bülent Arinç, Turkey's deputy prime minister. Photograph: Adem
Altan/AFP/Getty Images

Twitter in Turkey broke into a collective grin on Wednesday as hundreds of women posted pictures of themselves laughing.

They weren't just happy. They were smiling in defiance of the deputy prime minister, Bülent Arinç, who in a speech to mark Eid al-Fitr on Monday said women should not laugh in public.

"Chastity is so important. It's not just a word, it's an ornament [for women]," Arinç told a crowd celebrating the end of Ramadan in the city of Bursa in an address that decried "moral corruption" in Turkey. "A woman should be chaste. She should know the difference between public and private. She should not laugh in public."

On Wednesday thousands of women posted pictures of themselves laughing out loud, with the hashtags #direnkahkaha (resist laughter) and #direnkadin (resist woman) trending on Twitter.

Turkish men also took to social media to express their solidarity. "The men of a country in which women are not allowed to laugh are cowards", tweeted one user.

Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the main opposition presidential candidate running against current prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in next Sunday's elections, joined a chorus of male voices criticising Bülent Arinç's comment, tweeting: "More than anything else, our country needs women to smile and to hear everybody's laughter."

Other opposition figures pointed out that Arinç's comments highlighted the dismal state of women's rights in Turkey. Calling on people to protest against massive violence towards women at a demonstration next week, Melda Onur, an Istanbul MP for the main opposition Republican People's party, wrote on Twitter: "We would have left Arinç to his fantasies and wouldn't even have laughed about it, but while so many murders are being committed he makes [women] a target by stressing the need for chastity."

A 2009 report commissioned by the Prime Ministry Directorate on the Status of Women found that more than 40% of Turkey's female population have suffered domestic violence. More than 120 have been killed since the beginning of this year alone, mostly by their partners or other family members.

Mehtap Dogan of the Socialist Feminist Collective – who was among the women who posted pictures of herself laughing – said that Arinç's statements were not an isolated incident of misogyny.

"His words perfectly illustrate his and the [ruling] AK party's attitude towards women," she said. "In their eyes, women should not have any rights, they treat us like a separate species."

It was certainly not the first time the government of Erdogan – infamous for his admission that he did not believe in equality between men and women – has provoked outrage with discriminatory remarks.

Dogan added: "Using moralism to hide behind, they defend violence, rape, and sexism."

In 2012, when the government tried to massively curb the right to abortion, Ankara mayor Melih Gökcek said on public television: "Why should the child die if the mother is raped? The mother should die instead."

When women in an Anatolian town approached the visiting forestry minister in 2009, asking for work, he replied: "Isn't your housework enough?"

Asked by journalists to comment on the social media backlash, Arinç said his comment had been taken "out of context".

"From one and a half hours of my speech, some only heard what I said about women laughing in the street. What a disgusting, ugly and unfounded fabrication."

But he also said "I stand by my words", in reference to his wider speech, which he described as an effort to shine a light on the "degeneration in society". In an attempt to distance himself from his earlier statement, he said someone who would want to ban women from laughing in public "would have to be an idiot".

He also accused "certain stars" of "fake laughter": "These are all artificial laughs. In reality laughter brings relief and makes people happy. I think we are in need of that everywhere, but your laughs are fake. You all had your moments of fame, but when that eluded you tried to attract attention with alcohol and such fake laughter."

Arinç went on to slam women who "despite being married with kids go on vacation with their boyfriends" and those who "never miss the chance to wrap themselves around a dancing pole".

Turkish media has speculated that the latter comment was directed at Asena Erkin, wife of the Turkish Fenerbahçe footballer Caner Erkin, who had recently shared an Instagram picture of herself dancing around a pole with the comment: "When I see a dancing pole, I never miss the chance [to use it]."

He did not have to wait long for a renewed wave of mockery on social media. "There are politicians who imagine Turkey to be one big open-air orgy", Turgay Ogur tweeted. "But I swear, my neighbourhood Atasehir is quite an orderly place."

But for Mehtap Dogan, Bülent Arinç's statements this week were not simply a laughing matter: "The AKP government denies women their rights. They are sexist. We were not surprised by what was said this week, but we are really angry."

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