Dec 15, 2011

Tuesdays with Morrie part 2. Culture & Dying

We put our values in the wrong things. It’s all part of the same problem. And it leads to very disillusioned lives. We’ve got a form of brainwashing going on. They repeat something over and over again. Owning things is good. More money is good. More property is good. More commercialism is good. More is good. More is good. We repeat it – and have it repeated to us – over and over until nobody bothers to even think otherwise. The average person is so fogged up by all this, he has no perspective on what’s really important anymore. Money is not a substitute for tenderness, and power is not a substitute for tenderness. When you most need it, neither money nor power will give you the feeling you’re looking for, no matter how much of them you have. There’s a big confusion over what we want versus what we need. You need food, you want a chocolate sundae. You have to be honest with yourself. You don’t need the new sports car, you don’t need the biggest house. The truth is, you don’t get satisfaction from those things. You know what really gives you satisfaction?

Offering others what you have to give. I mean your time. your concern. Your storytelling.

So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they’re busy doing things they think are important. This is because they are chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to certain something that gives you purpose and meaning.

People are only mean when they are threatened and that’s what our culture does. This is what our economy does. Even people who have jobs are threatened, because they worry about losing them. And when you get threatened, you start looking out only for yourself. You start making money a god. It’s all part of this culture. I don’t mean you disregard every rule of your community. The little things I can obey. But the thing is – how we think, what we value – those you must choose yourself. You can’t let anyone – or any society – determine those for you. The way to do it isn’t running away, every society has it’s own problems. No matter where you live the biggest defect we have is our shortsightedness. We don’t see what we could be. We should be looking at our potential, stretching ourselves into everything we can become. But if you’re surrounded by people who say I want mine now, you end up with a few people with everything and a military to keep the poor ones from rising up and stealing it. If we saw each other as more alike, we might be very eager to join in one big human family in this world, and to care about that family the way we care about our own.

We all have the same beginning and the same end. How different can we be? In the beginning of life, we need others to survive, right? And in the end of life, you need others to survive, right? In between we need others as well.

The culture doesn’t encourage you to think about such things until you’re about to die. We’re so wrapped up with egotistical things, career, family, having enough money, meeting the mortgage, getting a new car, fixing the radiator when it breaks – we’re involved in trillions of little acts just to keep going. So we don’t get into habit of standing back and looking at our lives and saying, is this all? Is this all I want? Is something missing? You need someone to probe you in that direction. It won’t just happen automatically. We all need teachers in our lives.

Everyone knows they’re going to die but nobody believes it. If we did, we would do things differently. To know you’re going to die, and to be prepared for it at any time. That’s better. That way you can actually be more involved in your life while you’re living. Have a little bird on your shoulder that asks, is today the day? am I ready? am I doing all I need to do? am I being the person I want to be? Once you learn how to die, you learn how to live. Why is it so hard to think about dying? Because most of us all walk around as if we’re sleepwalking. We really don’t experience the world fully, because we’re half-asleep, doing things we automatically think we have to do. When you realize you are going to die, you see everything much differently, you strip away all that stuff and you focus on the essentials. We are too involved in materialistic things, and they don’t satisfy us. The loving relationships we have, the universe around us, we take these things for granted.

Dying is only one thing to be sad over, living unhappily is something else. So many people are unhappy. Why? Well for one thing the culture we have does not make people feel good about themselves. We’re teaching the wrong things. And you have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn’t work, don’t buy it. Create your own. Most people can’t do it.

It’s natural to die. The fact that we make such a big hullabaloo over it is because we don’t see ourselves as part of nature. We think because we’re human we’re something above nature. We’re not. Everything that gets born, dies. As long as we can love each other, and remember the feeling of love we had, we can die without rally going away. All the love you created is still here. All the memories are still here. You live on – in the hearts of everyone you have touched and nurtured while you were here.

Death ends a life, not a relationship.

Tuesdays with Morrie part 1. Life & Love

The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love and to let it come in. Let it come in. We think we don’t deserve love, we think if we let it in we’ll become too soft. But a wise man named Levine said it right. Love is the only rational act.

Love is how you stay alive, even after you’re gone. Being fully present means you should be with the person you’re with. I am not thinking about something we said last week. I am not thinking of what’s coming up this Friday. I am not thinking about doing another show, I am not thinking about what medications I’m taking. I am talking to you. I am thinking about you. Part of the problem is that everyone is in such a hurry. People haven’t found meaning in their lives, so they’re running all the time looking for it. They think the next car, the next house, the next job. Then they find those things empty too and they keep running. Once you start running, it's hard to slow yourself down. It is so important to find loving relationship with someone because so much of the culture does not give you that.

There is no formula to relationships. They have to negotiated in loving ways, with room for both parties, what they want and what they need, what they can do and what their life is like. In business people negotiate to win. They negotiate to get what they want.

Love is different. Love is when you are concerned about someone elses’s situation as you are about your own.

Life is a series of pulls back and forth. You want to do one thing, but you are bound to do something else. Something hurts you, yet you know it shouldn’t. You take certain things for granted, even when you know you should never take anything for granted. A tension of opposites, like a pull on a rubber band. And most of us live somewhere in the middle.

Sometimes you cannot believe what you see, you have to believe what you feel. And if you are ever going to have other people trust you, you must feel that you can trust them, too – even when you’re in the dark.

Even when you’re falling.

Learn to detach. Don’t cling to things, because everything is impermanent. Detachment doesn’t mean you don’t let the experience penetrate you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate you fully. That’s how you are able to leave it. Take any emotion – love for a woman, or grief for a loved one, fear and pain from a deadly illness. If you hold back on the emotions – if you don’t allow yourself to go all the way through them – you can never get to being detached, you’re too busy being afraid. You’re afraid of the pain, you’re afraid of the grief. You’re afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails. But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what love is. You know what grief is. Wash yourself with the emotion. It won’t hurt you. It will only help. If you let the fear inside, if you pull it on like a familiar shirt, then you can say to yourself, all right, it’s just fear, I don’t have to let it control me. I see it for what it is.

Forgive yourself before you die. Then forgive others. You can’t get stuck on the regrets of what should’ve happened.

Oct 29, 2011

HappyPill Inc.

Big Bad Pharma by Doiden

Treating depression (and in fact any other illnesses) starts from medication prescriptions. Doctors give you at least two to four different medication on the very first meeting with them. Then they give you the option of going to therapy, which means you HAVE to take the meds in order to receive the chance to get to the line – and then you wait at least three to six months. By the time you get to the therapy, medication has made you so numb, unaware of your bad feelings and addicted to the medication, you don’t necessarily feel the need to talk. You just ask for more pills. Or they give you more without even asking when the tolerance is high enough for you to actually feel something again. If you are depressed enough (what might that even be, I don’t know) you can set your mind at ease in the hospital, where they pump the drugs straight to your veins. And of course, the right dosage or the right medication is when you live your head in the clouds not giving shit about anything.

In the beginning, the meds seem to be working, you feel absolutely fine and happy, but this is the biggest illusion and lie ever. Your brain is overloading with serotonin, and you feel like there’s no care in the world. Then your body gets used to it and you need a higher dosage or a different medication all together. Usually they just give you more and say “Hey kiddo, this did work for you right, let’s just put a bit more, this is normal in the beginning”. They leave out the fact that it’s not just the beginning, it’s coming back again because your body gets used to the unnatural levels of serotonin and stops producing it – so you end up even more depressed if you stop taking the meds or don’t have enough. Or then the side effects kick in and you can’t live with them – nausea, problems with sense of feeling, loss of hair, loss of consciousness, memory problems, insomnia, vomiting, nightmares, weight gain, fainting, heart problems, loss in bloods white cells, cramps, digestion problems, abnormal muscle cramps, epilepsy, coma, blood clog, hepatitis, shock, sudden death, depression, suicidal thoughts etc etc . . . What the doctors don’t tell you is that the side effects might kill you or stay with you for the rest of your life, even though you stop taking the pill. Worst of all side effects is that all psych meds change your personality; they take away who you really are and what you want to do with your life and leaves you with emptiness.

Doctors do everything they can to make you take the medication. They deny you from your benefits you might get when you are not able to work just because you are “not combining to the treatment” if you don’t want to screw your body over with meds on top of feeling shit. Or even send you to a hospital where you have to take the pill in order to get out. They pressure you so much you settle for trying the medication – leaving out that the “trial” lasts for a lifetime. So, here how it goes: You go to the doctors because you’ve been feeling down and sad for weeks. Dr. takes one quick look at you, asks if you feel depressed (if you are lucky enough to get this question) and you say “well, kinda yea.“Dr. writes you a prescription looks at the time “Oh, seven minutes up” opens the door for you and asks you to come back in two weeks. You go back in two weeks and the doctor looks at you again “You feeling better there missy?” and you say yes because your body is pumped up with medication. “Alrighty then, this seems to work, let’s keep up with this so you don’t start to feel sad anymore” and gives you the same piece of paper that tells you how many pink pills you need to take each day.

Drugs never correct imbalances. They never improve the brain. They "work" by impairing the brain and dampening feelings in various ways.

Withdrawal symptoms come along when you try to cut down and stop the medication. It’s like going to a drug rehab, wait… It’s not “like going” that’s actually what it is! Physical symptoms might be around for months and mental symptoms for years. All psychoactive substances have rebound and withdrawal-related problems. "Relapse" rates, in general, during withdrawal from psychiatric drugs, are about 10 times higher than would be expected if the drug had never been taken.

Why do doctors do this if – no sorry, WHEN – they know about the side effects, how easily your body gets adjusted to the drug, how it really is not good for you and how the drug is not the answer or the cure? Money. Greed. Not because they don’t have the resources, not because they don’t have enough staff, not because they would care but because they get paid every time by the BigPharma when they get you hooked on some pill. They want the pool, the big house and five cars on top of the Hollywood hill.

Also check out this documentary from YouTube;

Making a killing: Theuntold story of psychotropic drugging (pt. 1)
A tale of deception.
Psychotropic drugs. Its the story of big money—drugs that fuel a $33 billion psychiatric industry. Without a single cure. The cost in human terms is even greater—these drugs now kill an estimated 42,000 people every year. And the death count keeps rising.

Oct 19, 2011

McRip-Off

Let's talk about McDonald's for a second.

First are McDonald's Values in action

and then What really happens..

McCruelty

The Road to Sustainability

McDonald’s never stops working toward improving our environmental performance...and reaping “double green” benefits around the world.

McDonald’s supports the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. Much of the soy-based animal feed used to fatten fast-food chickens is grown in the Amazon. Grain is fed to cattle in South American countries to produce the meat in McDonald's hamburgers. Cattle consume 10 times the amount of grain and soy that humans do: one calorie of beef demands ten calories of grain. Of the 145 million tons of grain and so fed to livestock, only 21 million tons of meat and by-products are used. The waste is 124 million tons per year at a value of 20 billion US dollars. It has been calculated that this sum would feed, clothe and house the world's entire population fo one year. Every year an area of rainforest the size of Britain is cut down or defoliated, and burnt. Globally, one billion people depend on water flowing from these forests, which soak up rain and release it gradually. The disaster in Ethiopia and Sudan is at least partly due to uncontrolled deforestation. In Amazonia - where there are now about 100,000 beef ranches - torrential rains sweep down through the treeless valleys, eroding the land and washing away the soil. The bare earth, baked by the tropical sun, becoms useless for agriculture. McDonald's is one of the many US corporations using lethal poisons to destroy vast areas of Central American rainforest to create grazing pastures for cattle to be sent back to the States as burgers and pet food, and to provide fat-food packaging materials.

Amazon Rainforest after deforestation

Greener Than Ever

McDonald’s strives to provide eco-friendly workplaces and restaurants that reflect our sustainability goals and demonstrate environmental stewardship in the workplace.

In 2007, the employees of an Orlando-area McDonald’s were caught on camera pouring milk into the milkshake machine out of a bucket labeled “Soiled Towels Only.”

Recycle, Renew

We start with a three-pronged approach: reduce, reuse, and recycle; and we’re committed to diverting as much waste as possible from the solid waste stream.

McDonald's recycled paper: only a tiny per cent of it is. The truth is it takes 800 square miles of forest just to keep them supplied with paper for one year. Tons of this end up litteing the cities of 'developed' countries. And you can even take a look at their recycling bins at the restaurants - yes, there are separate sections for plastic, paper etc, but they all go into the same garbage bag... And next to the fries, there is a bin that says: "It's okay to waste fries!"

Animal Welfare

We consider our priorities for food safety, quality and costs - together with our ethical, environmental and economic responsibilities - when we make purchasing decisions and evaluate supplier performance. This includes animal welfare.

How many cows does it take to keep the world loaded with Big Macs? According to a brief video inside one of McDonald’s 6 meat processing plants, about 500,000 pounds of beef is processed per day, per plant. If an average beef cow weighs 1,150 pounds, that means 2609 cows a day are turned into burgers. That’s 952,285 cows per year. And that’s just in the United States.This means the constant slaughter, day by day, of animals born and bred solely to be turned into McDonald's products. Some of them - especially chickens and pigs - spend their lives in the entirely artificial conditions of huge factory farms, with no access to air or sunshine and no freedom of movement. Their deaths are bloody and barbaric. In the slaughterhouse, animals often struggle to escape. Cattle become frantic as they watch the animal before them in the killing-line being prodded, beaten, electrocuted, and knifed.

Chicken McNuggets everyone!!

It started with you. Moms and dads are trying hard to get their kids to be more nutrition-minded. We listened. That’s why our popular Happy Meals will have fewer calories and include a side of fruit. It’s why our Chicken McNuggets now have less sodium. And why our national communications to kids will champion their well-being. And that’s just the beginning. We’re committed to giving you more delicious choices to feel good about in the months and years to come. Because we all have the same goal: making sure the things your kids love are things you can feel good about.

Real food is perishable. With time, it begins to decay. It’s a natural process, it just happens. Beef will rot, bread will mold. But what about a McDonald’s burger? Karen Hanrahan saved a McDonald’s burger from 1996 and, oddly enough, it looks just as “appetizing” and “fresh” as a burger you might buy today. Is this real food? The processed fat in McDonald’s food (and other fast food) promotes endothelial dysfunction for up to 5 hours after eating the meal. Endothelial tissue is what lines the inside of blood vessels. Eating a McDonald’s chicken sandwich, it will give you about 2/3 of the recommended daily amount of sodium. And if you actually do have high blood pressure, that’s way more than you really need. To achieve the artificial conformity of food that looks and feels and tastes exactly the same in any outlet anywhere in the world, McDonald's require that their "fresh lettuce leaf", for example, is treated with twelve different chemicals just to keep it the right colour at the right crispness for th right length of time.

It might as well be a bit of plastic!

McDonald's food is so lacking in bulk it is hardly possible to chew it. Even their own figures show that a "quarter-pounder" is 48% water. This sort of fake food encourages over-eating, and the high sugar and sodium content can make people develop a kind of addiction - a 'craving'. That means more profit for McDonald's, but constipation, clogged arteries and heart attacks for many customers.

Oh, and one more thing... Take a look at the ingredients of the BicMac "Secret Sauce". (definitely a secret, i have no idea what half of those ingredients even are, do you know what you are eating?)

Soybean oil, pickle relish [diced pickles, high fructose corn syrup, sugar, vinegar, corn syrup, salt, calcium chloride, xanthan gum, potassium sorbate (preservative), spice extractives, polysorbate 80], distilled vinegar, water, egg yolks, high fructose corn syrup, onion powder, mustard seed, salt, spices, propylene glycol alginate, sodium benzoate (preservative), mustard bran, sugar, garlic powder, vegetable protein (hydrolyzed corn, soy and wheat), caramel color, extractives of paprika, soy lecithin, turmeric (color), calcium disodium EDTA (protect flavor).

Thank you for your cooperation?! Fuck You McDonald's

Oct 11, 2011

Enslaving People

Human trafficking around the world is reaching horrific proportions. With an estimated 12 million people worldwide living in slavery, human trafficking is the third most profitable criminal activity after drugs and arms trafficking. 80% of trafficking victims are women, and an estimated 2 million children are bought and sold each year. 80% of trafficking involves sexual exploitation of vulnerable women, usually under the age of 18. With $4 billion attributed to the brothel industry worldwide, sex trafficking is big business, with very few people ever arrested or convicted of trafficking. Under-reported and under-prosecuted, these girls and women are the silent victims of poverty and war. Many were living in horrific conditions and some were as young as five, depending on older children for their survival. Today, human trafficking is approximately a $31.6 billion global industry, making it the third most lucrative criminal activity in the world after illegal drugs and black-market guns. It's about time we opened our eyes to this grim reality. We are very far from an ideal world, and no one should ever be immune from justice.

In the U.S., as many as 40,000 kids are trafficked within their own borders each year.

******

Hundreds of human trafficking victims are estimated to pass through Finland annually. But for many victims, Finland is the final destination. However in Finland, a large number of suspected human trafficking victims are men who are used for labour. Finland is used as a transit point to other EU countries.

******

France is a destination country for women trafficked for the purposes of sexual exploitation and involuntary domestic servitude, primarily from Eastern and Central Europe and Africa. The government estimates that there are 10,000 to 12,000 trafficking victims in France, 3,000-8,000 of whom are children forced into prostitution and labor.

******

Over 5,000 women and children have been trafficked from the Philippines, Russia and Eastern Europe and are forced into prostitution in bars servicing the U.S. Military in South Korea.

******

British police estimate that up to 4,000 human trafficking victims, mostly women, are being exploited in the UK at any given time.

******

Trudie Styler (UNICEF UK) :

One of my most vivid memories is visiting a woman called Angelina, who was dedicating her life to helping the young girls who had been set to work on the streets as prostitutes. I went to meet many of the young girls myself, the oldest of whom was no more than 17. Nervous at first, each began their own personal account of what had happened to them -- and they had all thought they were coming to the city to earn money as domestic servants or waitresses, that they would be able to send an income back to their families in rural Ecuador, and that this was their chance of a lifetime. A trusted male family member or friend had in each case persuaded the families to hand over their children for the promise of a better life. Their freedom taken, these girls had entered a life of abuse far from home, kept to all intents and purposes as slaves.

"It wasn't too bad... as long as I brought in my quota every night."

"I mean, if I made $2,000 for my pimp he was happy."

If I didn't make that much... that's when he would start beating me."

Sharon was all alone, a 19-year-old runaway taking a trip to nowhere on a New York City subway when he approached. "You're pretty," he told her. "And I bet you're hungry. Let me buy you some food and some clean clothes." As the child of two drug-addicted parents... a child who was sent to live with her grandmother, only to be raped by her grandmother's boyfriend... a young woman who had spent way too many of her 19 years on the streets... this was the best offer she had heard in her brief, tragic life. "Then he took me to his apartment and beat me," she said.

Sharon's pimp enslaved her and forced her to sell her body in cities all across the United States.

"We would work the streets for about a week at a time in each city, until he thought he made as much as he could," Sharon said. "Then we moved on. One girl tried to escape. He beat her and we never saw her again."

Where is the outrage that our children are being bought and sold? Why isn't rescuing the thousands and thousands of children being enslaved a priority?

Aug 31, 2011

Food In The Belly

“It’s still six days for the expiry date but we are removing the yoghurts from sale. It says so in the rules and regulations of this supermarket chain. We can’t predict what and how much the customers want to buy. When a consumer sees, that the expiry date is approaching, they don’t want to buy the product because they are afraid of having to throw it away. It is better that we throw away those products in forehand”

Watch this documentary about the Food Industry...

(English/French/German, subs in Finnish)

In meat, fish, dairy and egg-products the expiry dates are more important than for example in vegetables, fruits, packaged food and so on but people have been brainwashed to the ultimate consumerism that if a can of pea soup expired two days ago it’s not edible (even though you can still eat it after six months time…) According to some explanation, giving out food for charity is not an option because of the approaching expiry date, the condition of the food doesn't matter. In supermarkets, perfectly good food is thrown away every day in large quantities. In Wien, about 45kg worth of edible and healthy food is thrown away each day, in France one of the biggest supermarkets throw away 600 tons of food each year, in Finland the amount is 65 million kilos a year. Big food chains even have regulations about the appearance of the food; is the cucumber straight enough, is the tomato red enough, is the potato round enough, they select and pick out the “perfect” ones and discard the rest. They even have these amazing computer programs to do that… This starts already at the fields though; the farmers in US leave about 5-10% of the crop on the ground to rot. In potato fields, nearly half of the potatoes are discarded for being too small, too big, too weird looking or it has a hole in it. About 20 % of all bakery breads are thrown away after a day on the sale. The most important aspect of food nowadays is that it needs to look good and be trendy! No matter how it tastes like, how nutritious it is or how much of an impact it has on the environment… In Paris wholesale market, 8 800kg of oranges was thrown away for being a bit too ripe. What is the point of shipping 8 800 kg’s of oranges from an area they would all be eaten to the area where they all are thrown away? Why is the food taken away from the ones who produce it for food and taken all the way around the world to be looked at and thrown away? And in most cases, the waste is not sorted into biodegradable etc waste so the waste piles just keep growing and growing. “Variety”. “Consumerism”. “Stupidity” – three words to think about, hand in hand. People are cutting down trees to have more land to put their crops and for what? To sell them to be thrown away? The world doesn’t need more places to grow food, we have more than enough to feed the people around us, we are just making wrong decisions, supporting the wrong methods and being absolutely blind for what is going on at the food trade. And don’t even think about dumpster diving, at least here in Finland the dumpsters are locked away behind the fence so that no one can get the food that is meant to be eaten.

Aug 22, 2011

The delusion that beauty is goodness.

“Why do you want to eat healthy?”

“So you don’t get fat,”

“How do you feel about people who are overweight?”

“I feel sad about them.”

These are answers from 5-8 year old girls. Five to eight. The number of eating disorder hospitalizations for kids under age 12 has more than doubled between 2000 and 2006, according to the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) and nearly half of the 3- to 6-year-old are worried about being fat. In the fact, we “allow” little girls being injected with Botox, being alright with the concept of 10-year-old girls made up to look like a sexy adults posing for cameras and in front of a live audience with their cute dresses. We are constantly making everything be about the way someone looks so where is the surprise that younger and younger kids turn out to feel sick with this society? Photographing a pre-pubescent girl topless with make-up and heels isn’t edgy. It’s wrong. When you learn from a very young age that sexiness is valued and best, this message is engrained in your brain for the long haul. Studies have demonstrated time and time again that viewing sexualized images can have a lasting effect on young girls.

The American Psychological Association found that viewing sexualized images promotes “appearance and physical attractiveness” as key values for young girls and was also linked to low self-esteem, eating disorders, and depression. That’s for viewing sexualized images. What if you’re the subject of the sexualized images? Girls should learn that their value comes from what’s on the inside rather than high heels, make-up, expensive clothes and the perfect sultry pout. They even have pole dancing classes for three year olds… Seriously, excuse me, but what the hell. What did I do when I was three? Definitely did not attend to pole dancing classes! I did what every kid did when we still had some sense in our heads. I ran around the fields and roads, took a peak under every rock and behind the trees, held butterflies in my hands, chased all kind of animals just to have a closer look, climbed to the trees and fell down, ate myself sick with candy and enjoyed being carefree when I had the chance. What went wrong in the last 20 years?

Why are we doing this to our children?

(Related articles from Care2, here, here and here)


: Do You REALLY want your 3 year old to do this? :

: Necessary? :

Aug 9, 2011

Diamonds are a girls best friend...

The military operation was known as "Operation Hakudzokwe", which translates as Operation "You Shall Never Return". This operation was a torture camp run by Zimbabwe's security forces in the country's rich Marange diamond fields in 2008. The soldiers, many racked with guilt over their own actions, told that the massacre was part of a full-scale military operation ordered from senior levels in Zimbabwe's military. Its purpose was to clear the diamond fields of freelance diamond diggers to pave the way for the military to take charge of the area. Military sources said that about 1,500 soldiers took part in the operation.

The massacre took place in late October 2008 when Zimbabwe was in the depths of economic crisis. Thousands of civilians had flocked to the diamond fields in the hope of finding gems. Among the victims were women and children, some working in a makeshift market which had sprung up to sell food and clothes to the miners. Unknown to them, several weeks before the killings began, the military had started laying a circular trap around the civilians. They laid strings of mines and ultimately stationed armoured vehicles, mounted soldiers and an infantry battalion in a circular pattern around the 2.5km area.

"In the end there was no way out"

Warning shots were initially fired, but soon after soldiers and paramilitary police began firing AK47's directly into those fleeing and people were gunned down.

"Twenty to 30 people would die every day. I am talking about the ones I saw with my own eyes,"

said one officer involved in the attacks.

"Even those that had been injured were being finished off"

Several people told of seeing groups of bodies left in shallow graves in the diamond fields.

Many civilians were severely mauled by trained dog units.

"Vumbai", a 27 year old mother of two, was dragged into a bush by a soldier.

"He then raped me. I could hear other people screaming and crying. They were being raped like me."

A mass grave, containing between 69 and 105 bodies, exists at Damgamvura Cemetery in Mutare, the main town near the diamond fields.

"The body parts were packed in black plastic bags. You could actually see the bones piercing through the plastic. Blood was dripping everywhere. It was disgusting."

Remember. This is not a movie. This is real. Real lives.

Read the news from BBC

Jul 31, 2011

Beauty and The Beast

About beauty, about real beauty

(Video by Doiden)

Taking it over to a sanitised laboratory bench, Dr Tamsin Decker supervises as solution is squirted into the defenceless animal’s eyes. She has done this many times before — and will watch as it’s done again until the rabbit shows some side-effects: pain, irritation, bleeding perhaps, and eventually, possibly, blindness.On other days, Dr Decker might be required to inject mice, birds or rats with toxins to see how long it takes them to die, or to record what happens to their foetuses.‘I felt numb — no, guilty,’ she admits afterwards. ‘It isn’t as if the end justified the means. We weren’t researching some cancer cure here. We were testing a well-known chemical that has been used in household products for more than 100 years...... "