Indonesia executes six drug convicts, five of them foreigners

Indonesia executes six drug convicts, five of them foreigners
Widodo has pledged to bring reform to Indonesia

Ban appeals to Indonesia to stop death row executions

Ban appeals to Indonesia to stop death row executions
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has pleaded to Indonesia to stop the execution of prisoners on death row for drug crimes. AFP PHOTO

Pope: 'Death penalty represents failure' – no 'humane' way to kill a person

Pope: 'Death penalty represents failure' – no 'humane' way to kill a person
The pope wrote that the principle of legitimate personal defense isn’t adequate justification to execute someone. Photograph: Zuma/Rex

Obama becomes first president to visit US prison (US Justice Systems / Human Rights)

Obama becomes first president to visit US prison   (US Justice Systems / Human Rights)
US President Barack Obama speaks as he tours the El Reno Federal Correctional Institution in El Reno, Oklahoma, July 16, 2015 (AFP Photo/Saul Loeb)

US Death Penalty (Justice Systems / Human Rights)

US Death Penalty (Justice Systems / Human Rights)
Woman who spent 23 years on US death row cleared (Photo: dpa)



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"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. …

Sunday, January 19, 2020

Right fire for right future: how cultural burning can protect Australia from catastrophic blazes

The Guardian, Lorena Allam, Sat 18 Jan 2020

Traditional knowledge has already reduced bushfires and emissions in the top end, so why isn’t it used more widely?

Kija Rangers conduct prescribed burning in the East Kimberley in 2019.
Photograph: Supplied/Kimberley Land Council

Indigenous fire practitioners have warned that Australia’s bush will regenerate as a “time bomb” prone to catastrophic blazes, and issued a plea to put to use traditional knowledge which is already working across the top end to reduce bushfires and greenhouse gas emissions.

“This is a time bomb ticking now because all that canopy has been wiped out,” says Oliver Costello of the national Indigenous Firesticks Alliance.

“A lot of areas will end up regenerating really strongly, but they’ll return in the wrong way. We’ll end up with the wrong species compositions and balance.

 “That’s why we need to get Indigenous fire practices out into the landscape in the coming months, to start to read the country and look at areas that need restoration burning in the short term.”

As Australia comes to terms with this season’s catastrophic fires, Indigenous practitioners like Costello are advocating a return to “cultural burning”.

What is cultural burning?

Small-scale burns at the right times of year and in the right places can minimise the risk of big wildfires in drier times, and are important for the health and regeneration of particular plants and animals.

Different species relate to fire in different ways, Costello explains. Wombats, for example, dig burrows to escape, while koalas climb into the canopy.

“When you understand the fire relationships they have, their own fire culture, then you are really applying the right fire for that culture so that you’re supporting the identity of that place.

“When you do that, you get more productive landscapes, you get healthier plants and animals, you get regeneration, you discourage invasive elements, which are sometimes native species that might belong in the system next door.

“It’s so important to apply that right fire for right country, so you can maintain the right balance.”

Aboriginal rangers and traditional owners conduct burns in the Katiti-Petermann
 Indigenous Protected Area, in the remote desert country near the Western
Australia and Northern Territory border. Photograph: Helen Davidson/The Guardian

Dr David Bowman is a professor of pyrogeography and fire science at the University of Tasmania. Bowman describes Indigenous fire management as “little fires tending the earth affectionately”.

“The affectional is the opposite of mechanical. It’s with emotion. So it can be reverence, affection, fear, a whole range of emotions, but it’s an emotional relationship you have with land using fire to create mosaics and flammable habitat mosaics, which are really good for biodiversity and a really good way of managing fuel load.”

Where is it used in Australia?

In northern Australia, Indigenous land ownership is widespread. Caring for country and ranger programs in protected areas has delivered a degree of autonomy to traditional owners to walk the country, burning according to seasonal need and cultural knowledge.

Indigenous fire management involves “cool” fires in targeted areas during the early dry season, between March and July. The fires burn slowly and in patches.

In the Kimberley, the Land council holds community fire planning meetings throughout the early dry season to ensure the correct people are burning their country.

“Traditional owners are consulted and native title holders design burn lines and fire walk routes,” the KLC acting CEO Tyronne Garstone says.

“These burn lines are approved by the group and Indigenous rangers perform the on-ground work, backed up by modern technology with rangers taking constant weather readings and recording the conditions of the day.

“They work very well at combining the old people’s fire practices with modern techniques.”

Even so, climate change is affecting their ability to do “right way” fire management, Garstone says.

“These ‘right way’ fire days are getting fewer and fire behaviour is changing along the same lines as over east. Late season conditions are also driving more fires in unusual ways due to the climatic conditions we are currently facing.”

Kija Rangers conduct prescribed or ‘cool’ burning in the East Kimberley
in the dry season, 2019. Photograph: Supplied/Kimberley Land Council

How effective is it?

The Darwin centre for bushfire research at Charles Darwin University maps bushfires weekly. Since traditional burning was reintroduced on a large scale, the centre has collected enough data to show that the area of land destroyed by wildfires has more than halved, from 26.5m hectares in 2000, to just 11.5m hectares in 2019.

“We have annual fires up here,” the centre’s research fellow Andrew Edwards says. “Forty per cent of the top end could burn every year. So we had to do something about that.”

“We were originally much more interested in biodiversity, Aboriginal employment and getting people back on country to manage it properly, but when the carbon economy came along we saw a way to manage fire to abate greenhouse gas emissions.

“It was pretty bad before that happened,” Edwards says. “It was just fires running wild across huge tracts of north Australia that nobody was doing anything about.”

Edwards says the top end cooperative model can be adapted to southern conditions.

“That’s what needs to be looked at. Obviously there’s a lot more infrastructure to set up, but it’s collaboration and education.

“If we want to manage our natural environment properly, we need to be doing prescribed burning. There’s so much cultural knowledge out there still, and it’s being totally ignored. There’s hundreds of Indigenous rangers out there now doing this work.”

The Oriners and Sefton Savannah Burning Project creates carbon credits, using
strict scientific methodologies, approved through a rigorous accreditation process
with the Department of Environment, to store carbon in the natural landscape.
Photograph: Richard Wainwright/Caritas Australia

Will these practices be widely adopted?

In southern Australia, Oliver Costello says, Aboriginal knowledge systems are far less valued but hold important solutions.

The Coag national bushfire management policy includes a commitment to “promote Indigenous Australians’ use of fire”, but Indigenous fire groups like Firesticks Alliance say they need more resources to build capacity.

“There are a lot of policy settings at a high level that support us, but there’s nothing in between. There’re no resources,” Costello says.

“There’s no investment really outside of northern Australia Indigenous fire management of any significance, and they had to build a whole new economy to support it through carbon.

“There’s always investment going into future firefighting capacity, more trucks, more helicopters, more this, more that. What we need is people getting out into the landscape now, with the knowledge to start to heal it.

A small cool burn managed by Indigenous firesticks alliance.
Photograph: Firesticks Alliance Indigenous Corporation/PA

Professor Bowman says it is possible to “blend Aboriginal with European and modern scientific approaches to create an opportunity for all land users and land owners”.

He suggests small-scale local “Green fire” groups modelled on the Landcare program.

“I would like to see a crossover between Indigenous and mainstream fire management groups, where there can be exchange and recognition.

“Because in the end there’s two things which are important to [remember]: all humans have come from a fire management background in their cultures, it’s just that some cultures ended up obliterating that knowledge because of industrialisation.

“We should really prioritise employment of Aboriginal people. But when there’s a gap we could be filling that gap with community groups. And there’s a really good opportunity for Aboriginal people to be involved in training.

“We need to encourage and promote the philosophy of Aboriginal fire practice because that’s going to be a really important pathway for sustainable fire management and also for healing because so many communities have been traumatised and shocked by the scale of the burning.”

Costello says the areas that haven’t burned this time around are now even more vulnerable.

“They are critical parts of the landscape [that need] to be able to support the animals and plants that have survived. And so those areas are going to be under increasing pressure and they’re also at risk of a future fire.

“There was an economy before settlement that supported this, a resource economy based on people looking after the land and having all that they needed.

“Now in the modern society it revolves around money. So we need to build economies that support cultural practice and acknowledge traditional custodianship.

“There’s all this canopy that’s been burnt away. We’ve got knowledge and techniques that can help heal that country in the future. It’s going to take some time. We’ve got probably two or three years before we can really be effective in some of that country because it needs to recover. But if we don’t get in there after that, then we miss our chance.”


Related Articles:


(*)  Kryon explains what is going on with the Weather/Climate Change 
(**) Kryon gives Australia fire suggestions

Sunday, January 5, 2020

Thousands in shelters as Indonesia flood death toll hits 60

Yahoo – AFP, Haeril HALIM, Ganis Bungsu, January 4, 2020

Indonesian villagers use inner tubes to deliver supplies across a river at Banjar
Irigasi in Lebak, Banten province (AFP Photo/SAMMY)

Jakarta (AFP) - Indonesian rescue teams flew helicopters stuffed with food to remote flood-hit communities on Saturday as the death toll from the disaster jumped to 60 and fears grew about the possibility of more torrential rain.

Tens of thousands in Jakarta were still unable to return to their waterlogged homes after some of the deadliest flooding in years hit the enormous capital region, home to about 30 million.

In neighbouring Lebak, where half a dozen people died, police and military personnel dropped boxes of instant noodles and other supplies into remote communities inaccessible by road after bridges were destroyed.

"It's tough to get supplies in there... and there are about a dozen places hit by landslides," Tomsi Tohir -- the police chief of Banten province, where Lebak is located -- told AFP.

"That is why we're using helicopters although there aren't any landing spots."

Local health centre chief Suripto, who goes by one name, said injured residents were flowing into his clinic.

"Some of them were wounded after they were swept away by floods and hit with wood and rocks," he said.

Around Jakarta, more than 170,000 people took refuge in shelters across the massive urban conglomeration after whole neighbourhoods were submerged.

Map of Jakarta showing the areas affected by flooding (AFP Photo)

Torrential rains that started on New Year's Eve unleashed flash floods and landslides.

Indonesia’s disaster mitigation agency said on Saturday that two people were also killed after flash floods and landslides hit a village in North Sulawesi on Friday.

The agency said Saturday the total death toll had climbed to 60 with two people still missing.

"We've discovered more dead bodies," said National Disaster Mitigation Agency spokesman Agus Wibowo.

'Trauma healing'

Jakarta shelters filled up with refugees, including infants, resting on thin mats as food and drinking water ran low.

Some had been reduced to using floodwater for cleaning.

"We're cleaning ourselves in a nearby church but the time has been limited since it uses an electric generator for power," said Trima Kanti, 39, from one refuge in Jakarta's western edges.

In hard-hit Bekasi, on the eastern outskirts of Jakarta, swamped streets were littered with debris and crushed cars lying on top of each other -- with waterline marks reaching as high as the second floors of buildings.

People wait to get fresh water from a truck in their flood affected village in Bekasi, 
West Java (AFP Photo/REZAS)

On Friday, the government said it would start cloud seeding to the west of the capital -- inducing rain using chemicals sprayed from planes -- in the hope of preventing more rain reaching the city region.

Water has receded in many areas and power was being restored in hundreds of districts.

The health ministry has said it had deployed some 11,000 health workers and soldiers to distribute medicine, disinfectant hygiene kits and food in a bid to stave off outbreaks of Hepatitis A, mosquito-borne Dengue fever and other illnesses, including infections linked to contact with dead animals.

Visiting hard-hit Lebak, Coordinating Human Development and Culture Minister Muhadjir Effendy said the government would help rebuild destroyed schools and construct temporary bridges, while offering assistance to victims.

"We're also asking for NGOs (non-governmental organisations) to help with trauma healing," Muhadjir told reporters on Saturday.

Electrocution, drowning

Around Jakarta, a family -- including a four- and nine-year-old -- died of suspected gas poisoning from a portable power generator, while an eight-year-old boy was killed in a landslide.

Indonesia's disaster agency said the death toll from the heavy flooding had 
climbed to 60 (AFP Photo/BAY ISMOYO)

Others died from drowning or hypothermia, while one 16-year-old boy was electrocuted by a power line.

Jakarta is regularly hit by floods during the rainy season, which started in late November.

But this week marked Jakarta's deadliest flooding since 2013 when dozens were killed after the city was inundated by monsoon rains.

Urban planning experts said the disaster was partly due to record rainfall.

But Jakarta's myriad infrastructure problems, including poor drainage and rampant overdevelopment, have worsened the situation, they said.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo has announced a plan to move the country's capital to Borneo island to take pressure off Jakarta, which suffers from some of the world's worst traffic jams and is fast sinking due to excessive groundwater extraction.)

Thursday, January 2, 2020

Palau bans 'reef-toxic' sunscreen

Yahoo – AFP, Bernadette Carreon, January 1, 2020

Reefs all over the world are being affected by the toxins in sunscreens (AFP Photo/
DONALD MIRALLE)

Koror (Palau) (AFP) - Palau's pioneering ban on "reef-toxic" sunscreens took effect Wednesday as the tiny Pacific island nation introduced strict environmental measures that also include one of the world's largest marine sanctuaries.

"We have to live and respect the environment because the environment is the nest of life, and without it nobody in Palau can survive," President Tommy Remengesau told AFP as the new laws took effect.

Palau, which lies in the western Pacific about halfway between Australia and Japan, is renowned for its marine life and is regarded as one of the world's best diving destinations, but the government is concerned its popularity is coming at a cost.

Remengesau said there was scientific evidence that the chemicals found in most sunscreens were toxic to corals, even in minute doses.

With Palau's popular dive sites regularly packed with tourists there were concerns a build-up of these chemicals would irreparably harm the reefs.

From New Year's day, any reef-toxic sunscreen imported or sold in Palau will be confiscated and the owner will be fined US$1,000.

"When science tells us that a practice is damaging to coral reefs, to fish populations, or to the ocean itself, our people take note and our visitors do too," Remengesau said.

Map locating Palau. The tiny Pacific island nation's pioneering ban on 
"reef-toxic" sunscreens took effect on New Year's Day (AFP Photo/Gal ROMA)

"Toxic sunscreen chemicals have been found throughout Palau's critical habitats, and in the tissues of our most famous creatures.

"We don't mind being the first nation to ban these chemicals, and we will do our part to spread the word. With better education and awareness, more jurisdictions will have the confidence to take this necessary action.

"The science is clear, and once that message has spread, we will be the first of many."

Along with the sunscreen ban, Palau’s much-touted marine sanctuary came into effect on January 1, closing 80 percent of its exclusive economic zone (EEZ) to fishing and other marine activities including mining and shark finning.

"It is a very ambitious and worthy goal for Palau's future," Remengesau said. The marine sanctuary prohibits commercial fishing in about 500,000 square kilometres (190,000 square miles) of ocean.

The legislation also requires most foreign fleets working in the limited fishing area to land their catch in Palau and then pay an export tax.

Environment Minister Umiich Sengebau said the law ensures Palau has first rights to purchase fish caught in the area to satisfy the local demand before exports are allowed.

Remengesau said the ban was needed to "let the ocean heal" after years of mass commercial fishing in the Pacific that has seen stocks of some species such as bluefin tuna fall to critical levels.

It follows Palau's establishment of the world's first shark sanctuary in 2009 to prevent finning -- a practice that sees fish have their fins hacked off before they are thrown back into the sea to die.