This news report, from Democracy Now!, covers an event, a murder, from two years ago involving a pack of border patrol in an orgy of malignant brutality having their way with a man who dies at their hands from their violent soiree.
A new PBS documentary exposes the tasing and beating death of a Mexican immigrant by U.S. border agents in California and has renewed scrutiny of what critics call a culture of impunity.
In May 2010, 32-year-old Anastasio Hernández-Rojas was caught trying to enter the United States from Mexico near San Diego. He had previously lived in the United States for 25 years and was the father of five U.S.-born children. Instead of deportation, Hernández-Rojas’s detention ended in his death. A number of border officers were seen beating him, before one tasered him at least five times, resulting in his death.
The agents say they confronted Hernández-Rojas because he became hostile and resisted arrest. However, previously undisclosed videos recorded on cellphones by eyewitnesses on the scene show a different story.
"All eyewitnesses that we spoke to basically tell the same story of a man hogtied and handcuffed behind his back, not resisting, being beaten repeatedly by batons, by kicks, by punches, by the use of a taser, for almost 30 minutes until he died," says reporter John Carlos Frey, whose exposé aired in a national television special last Friday night as part of a joint investigation by the PBS broadcast, "Need to Know," and the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute.
Democracy Now! also spoke with Hernández-Rojas’s widow, María Puga. "My husband was tortured. He was severely beaten. And they’ve destroyed an entire family," says Puga, speaking through a Spanish-English translator. "All we want is justice. And we need your help to get that justice."
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PROUT
For a More Progressively Evolving Society
Showing posts with label morality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label morality. Show all posts
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Spiritual Humanism
Spiritual Humanism
PROUT is founded on the assumption that matter is not separate from consciousness but is rather a metamorphosed form of it. Similarly, consciousness, is not the result of mental activity but rather thought is also a form of consciousness. It is Consciousness that underlies psycho-physical reality and provides the inspiration for a rational view of life, moral integrity, and spiritual wisdom.
Spirituality and morality should not be equated with religious dogma and faith in God. All religions are frankly dualist systems that separate humans from their creator and the creation. The rationalist rebels against theology - Descartes, Leibnitz, and Kant - also failed to escape the vicious circle of dualism. To offer security, religion impressed upon people the need to submit before the imaginary will of God or a theological ethical code, sanctioned by the scriptures and defined by religious institutions. Morality in this sense, however, is the absence of freedom.
A philosophy based on spiritual and moral values, on the other hand, is able to explain human existence - including desire, emotion, instincts, intuition, will and reason - as an integrated framework and do so in a way that is accessible to human comprehension. Such a philosophy is required to build the new social organism and political institutions capable of fostering not only the harmonious relations of all races and cultural groups, but also the harmonious relation of human beings with all animate and inanimate objects.
Human existence is physical, mental and spiritual, with progress as an evolutionary continuum into higher consciousness and ultimately to the state of absolute freedom. Simultaneously, spiritual progress can only be attained on a firm physical and mental base. This physical and intellectual base has to be progressively adjusted to changing conditions of time and space. The natural human aspiration is to achieve freedom in all three spheres.
In our march towards freedom we cannot neglect other living beings. We have to develop a social system where all living beings can live securely, and where people can move towards emancipation by freeing their minds from superstition and dogma. This universalistic spirit is NeoHumanism or Spiritual Humanism. Human history thus far is a story of ruling classes trying to enhance their own social and material wealth at the cost of human values. This is why temples, churches, scriptures, laws, constitutions, corporations and international trade agreements have become more important than human beings. To confront this, PROUT maintains that a fundamental human philosophy is required to cement a new social system and not the changing social values based on self-interest embodied in contemporary ruling institutions.
Human values find their root in transpersonal essence, spirituality. Spirituality is not mystic speculation of life after death, but is realized in relation to the manifest universe. The philosophy of monism, which postulates the self to be in union with the rest of the universe and responsible for its well-being, is the essence of spiritual humanism. Sarkar wrote in his book Neo-Humanism in a Nutshell: Part 1: “What does the state stand for, what is the use of these regulations, and what is the march of civilization for, if human beings don't get a chance to build a good physical well-being, to invigorate their intelligence with knowledge, and to broaden their hearts with love and compassion? Instead of leading humanity to the goal of life, if the State stands in the way, then it cannot command loyalty, because humanity is superior to the State.”
You can always find this blog via http://PROUT.Shows.it/ and comment below each post. To discuss further in our forum and explore the subtleties of the Progressive Utilization Theory with others, go here: http://ProgressiveSustainMeetUp.has.it/
You can always find this blog via http://PROUT.Shows.it/ and comment below each post. To discuss further in our forum and explore the subtleties of the Progressive Utilization Theory with others, go here: http://ProgressiveSustainMeetUp.has.it/
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