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The International Criminal Court has started its first trial of the militia leader Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, especially for his use of child soldiers to commit murder and systematic rape. However, more important militia leaders from the Democratic Republic of Congo should also be in The Hague. The governing body of the ICC will be meeting at the UN in New York in a few days. The ICC needs to be able to move ahead in the Congo situation. Your support for effective action on the Congo is appreciated.

Laurent Nkunda to the ICC ?



Rene Wadlow



The Special Session of the Human Rights Council on the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on 28 November 2008 was the beginning of the end for self-proclaimed General Laurent Nkunda and his Congress for the Defense of the People (CNPD).



The Geneva-based Council had taken a long time in getting around to highlighting the human rights violations in the administrative provinces of North and South Kivu. The United Nations has some 17,000 peacemakers in Congo (MONUC), the UN’s largest peacekeeping mission, but their capacity is stretched to the limit. Their mission is to protect civilians, some 250,000 of which have been driven from their homes since the fighting intensified in late August 2008. Despite the MONUC troops, there have been large-scale occurrences of wilful violations of human rights and humanitarian law by all parties in the conflict, with massive displacement of populations, plundering of villages, systematic rape of women, summary executions and the use of child soldiers.



The eastern area of Congo is the scene of fighting at least since 1998 — in part as a result of the genocide in neighboring Rwanda in 1994. Efforts at reconciliation, reform and reconstruction have not been carried out in the eastern provinces. The illicit exploitation of natural resources, the inability to deal with land tenure and land use issues, the lack of social services and of socio-economic development have created the conditions which led to the current violence.



Systematic rape and the use of child soldiers are crimes which are covered by the mandate of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. Rape is a violation of international humanitarian law. Additional Protocol II to the Geneva Conventions prohibits “violence to life, health and physical or mental well-being of persons, in particular murder as well as cruel treatment such as torture…outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment, rape, enforced prostitution and any form of indecent assault, slavery..”



Laurent Nkunda’s CNDP, also the pro-government militias often called the ‘Mayi-Mayi’ as well as the regular army of the Democratic Republic of Congo recruited and used child soldiers in the ongoing conflict. Child soldiers who attempt to escape have been killed or tortured, at times in front of other child soldiers to discourage further escapes. Child soldiers are forced to commit crimes, including murder and rape. Such crimes are a major barrier to community reconciliation and to successful reintegration of demobilized children as communities and even families fear the return of such brutalized children, who are consequently shunned. The use of child soldiers is contrary to international conditions to which the Democratic Republic of Congo is a party.



The 28 November session of the Human Rights Council sent indirect signals to the Rwandan government that its support for Nkunda might be more costly than it was worth. Although the African governments, members of the Council, did everything they could to avoid criticizing anyone and even the European Union governments kept things very general, the talks in the hallways and over cups of coffee left no doubt that the situation could not continue. The Asian countries, such as India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, which provide the great bulk of the UN forces were getting tired of having their troops considered weak and largely useless, unable to fulfil their mandate of protecting the population. The Asians pushed behind the scenes for changes.



The warnings finally got back to Kigali, the Rwandan capital and to Joseph Kabila, President of RDC, and a deal may have been struck. What follows is logical but there is no proof: The number two of Laurent Nkunda’s CNDP, Jean Basco Ntaganda, his chief of staff, had an arrest warrant of the International Criminal Court out against him for war crimes committed earlier when he headed his own militia before joining forces with Nkunda. In December 2008, Ntaganda, known as ‘the Terminator’, switched sides, denounced Nkunda and said that he and his men would now work with the Congolese army. Virtually at the same time, there was an agreement between the Congolese military and the Rwandan military to stage a joint operation against the Hutu militias on the Rwanda-Congo frontier. It was during this operation that Rwandan forces “arrested” Nkunda and took him out of the Congo to Kigali.



The possible Rwanda-Congo deal is that the Congo would protect Jean Bosco Ntaganda against the warrant of the ICC in exchange for his changing sides, while Rwanda would protect Laurent Nkunda but get him out of the Congo as he was causing a backlash against Rwanda. It is said that Nkunda was helped by Rwandan businessmen and factions within the army. It is possible that the government of Rwanda turned a blind eye rather than actively helping Nkunda. The deal may be that both Nkunda and Ntaganda would keep out of sight until the world’s attention, never very focused on the Congo in any case, turned to other matters.



However, both Nkunda and Ntaganda merit trial by the ICC. The courts of both Rwanda and Congo are inadequate at best. Rwanda and Congo could indicate their inability to provide fair trials to the men and transfer them to The Hague for trial. I would not hold my breath waiting, but what happens in the two cases is a test of the effectiveness of international justice.



Meanwhile, there are dangers that fighting and human rights violations in eastern Congo will continue unless measures are taken to deal with root causes of the conflicts. The people in eastern Congo have lived together for many centuries and had developed techniques of conflict resolution, especially between the two chief agricultural lifestyles: that of agriculture and cattle herding. However, recent economic and political factors have overburdened the local techniques of conflict resolution and have opened the door to new, negative forces interested only in making money and gaining political power.



UN peace-keeping troops are effective when there is peace to keep. What is required today is eastern Congo is not so much more soldiers under UN command, than reconciliation bridge-builders, persons who are able to restore relations among the ethnic groups of the area. The United Nations, national governments, and non-governmental organizations need to develop bridge-building teams which can help to strengthen local efforts at conflict resolution and re-establishing community relations. In the Kivus, many of the problems arise from land tenure issues. With the large number of people displaced and villages destroyed, it may be possible to review completely land tenure and land use issues.



World Citizens were among those in the early 1950s who stressed the need to create UN peace-keeping forces with soldiers especially trained for such a task. Today, a new type of world civil servant is needed — those who in areas of tension and conflict can undertake the slow but important task of restoring confidence among peoples in conflict, establishing contacts and looking for ways to build upon common interests.



Rene Wadlow, Representative to the United Nations, Geneva, Association of World Citizens

Alice O. Howell
The Heavens Declare: Astrological Ages and the Evolution of Consciousness
(Wheaton, IL: Quest Books,2006, 281pp.)

There are a number of currents of thought which hold that humanity is coming to the end of an historical cycle and is entering into a new age with the start of the new millennium. The most widely spread of these currents of thought is a complex of ideas and practices known as the New Age or the Age of Aquarius. The contemporary New Age began as a movement based on astrological interpretations of history. Every two thousand years or so humanity moves into a new age in which civilization is predominately influenced by the qualities of the particular astrological sign that rules that age. As Alfred North Whitehead has written “In each age of the world distinguished by high activity, there will be found at its culmination some profound cosmological outlook, implicitly accepted, impressing its own type on the current springs of action.”

Thus the Age of Aquarius derives its name from western astrology which holds that each astrological age is determined by the passage of the Earth’s vernal equinox within a particular constellation. It is said that we are transiting from the Piscean period, which inaugurated the Christian era (symbolized by the fish sign used by the early Christians) to the Aquarian Age symbolized by the bearer of water. In this astrological tradition, the Piscean period was preceded by the Age of Aries and the Age of Taurus, of which the ram and the bull are the symbols — animals which are significant in earlier spiritual traditions.

The New Age is often seen as a movement toward self-discovery, a way to harmonize self-awareness with a consciousness of the totality of Nature. In addition to developing earlier forms of Western psychology, there is a growing interest in discovering the Higher Self drawn from Indian philosophy, with its emphasis on yoga, tantra, and the energy centers of the body (the charkas and the kundalini). The Tibetan forms of Buddhism, the Japanese school of Zen, Taoism and its techniques of acupuncture have also contributed much to New Age thought and techniques.

In the New Age there will be a realignment of the Yin and the Yang, the balance between feminine and masculine energies. This balance must be found within each person but also within society as a whole. The role and energies of women must be brought to the fore to balance again what has been a long dominance of the masculine, the patriarchal nature of our institutions. The ever-increasing role of women and women’s groups is a sign of this re-equilibrium.

The New Age draws much of its energy from its emphasis on synergy — the parts working for the common good. As the anthropologist Gregory Bateson has written, our task is to discover “the pattern that connects”, the wholeness underlying the diversity. This implies a New Age way of thinking in terms of patterns and wholeness, interconnections and reawakening.

At the end of each Age, a challenge appears that sets the stage for the coming age, our challenge is to see the unity of life. We are in a watershed period between two ages that requires a radical shift in how we understand human nature and our interdependent relationship with our environment. In this new planetary era, a harmonious future depends on our capacity to live beyond self-interest and to strive for the common good. Most significantly, New Age thought stresses that the common good is not just for the well-being of the human community but for all the kingdoms of life.

Alice Howell, influenced by the work of C.G. Jung and astrological analysis has written a useful guide to the start of the New Age.

Rene Wadlow

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2009 : The International Year of Reconciliation

Rene Wadlow



The United Nations General Assembly has proclaimed in Resolution A/61/L22, the year 2009 as the International Year of Reconciliation “recognizing that reconciliation processes are particularly necessary and urgent in countries and regions of the world which have suffered or are suffering situations of conflict that have affected and divided societies in their various internal, national, and international facets.” The Resolution was introduced by Nicaragua’s representative who stated that “reconciliation between those estranged by conflicts was the only way to confront today’s challenges and heal wherever fraternity and justice were absent from human relations.”



Yet we need to ask how can genuine reconciliation take place between people and groups with bitterly held beliefs and a violent history? How can the needs for national healing be reconciled with the demands for justice by the victims of terrible violence?



The General Assembly resolution gives a partial answer by stressing that “dialogue among opponents from positions of respect and tolerance is an essential element of peace and reconciliation.”



For there to be a respectful dialogue among opponents, certain barriers that prevent negotiations must be dismantled as a sign of a willingness to enter into a process of negotiations. Some barriers are physical, some psychological, others ideological. These barriers must be overcome if we are to progress on the long road to reconciliation. Let us, with the New Year, start now both as individuals and as members of movements in the spirit of the historian Howard Zinn’s “People are Practical”



They want change but feel powerless, alone,

do not want to be the blade of grass that

sticks up above the others and is cut down.

They wait for a sign from someone else

who will make the first move, or the second.

And at certain times in history

there are certain intrepid people who take the risk

that if they make that first move others will follow

quickly enough to prevent their being cut down.

And if we understand this, we

might make that first move.



…And if we do act, in however small a way,

we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future.

The future is an infinite succession of presents,

and to live now as we think human beings should live,

in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself

a marvellous victory.



Rene Wadlow, Representative to the UN, Geneva, Association of World Citizens

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> I would like to welcome everyone to the Spiritual Fasting Group starting on 11th of January for at least 21 days. Fasting is very powerful to bring forth things in your life that are positive and remove anything that is negative. Fasting purifies the spirit and enhance the mind and body to a healthier life. See below:
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> Know that all human hearts are welcome here, regardless of one's color, creed, condition or philosophy, because everyone is just like you and me--wanting happiness, and disliking suffering. In other words, seeking joy and freedom from suffering is the birthright of all living beings (not just us humans).
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> The word 'spiritual' has many connotations, but all of us who've done prolonged, skillful fasting know our mind is clearer, sharper and more efficient--a greater clarity of consciousness. By using this fasting-enhanced clarity, our journey into the human interior can reward us with many essential correctives to the extreme materialism of our external culture and its dominant sciences. Also, just as our own inner-mind becomes clearer, our own extrasensory instinct becomes keener. Thus, we find ourselves more in tune with the gentle voice of Nature and its Natural Laws. And so, the increase in energy prolonged fasting confers is our own reward for getting back in touch with these so-called Laws of Nature.
>
> World Peace and World Love

News: Wars and rumors of Wars around the world, Palestinians and Jews are being murdered, Poverty, Environment dying, Fla. woman likely jumped overboard (suicide), In Phila. 6 dead and 3 wounded (violence), Cheyenee, Wyo earthquakes 3 days straight, China border 3 tremors Dec. 27th and In May 80,000 people killed from earthquakes and more. It is imperative that we fast and ask for the relief of suffering around the world. What affects one affects all!!!!! If need advice on how to fast, please ask at anytime-we have a teacher to teach us.

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