July 8, 2013 by IdealisticRebel

Modern Slavery or Human Trafficking

reality of slavery

The reality is that in 21 centuries of recorded history, slavery has been alive and well. It is still destroying families and lives. After gun running and drugs, it is the biggest money maker for those whose hearts are as hard and cold as stone.

Who finds themselves in slavery? It can happen to anyone. Following the rules doesn’t matter. You can just be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Slavery or trafficking usually ends the same way…in torture, fear, disease, death. It is the worst thing a human being can do to another human being. This is one of those events on the underbelly of life that we need to allow ourselves to see and to know and then to nurture ourselves after we have seen it. Knowing about slavery and turning away is the same as committing the act. When a child, a woman or a man is bought, if you know you have to do what you can to stop it.

The horrific statistics

Trafficking has a supply side, and it is made up of victims. Most efforts go into maintaining this lucrative supply side. We need to look at victims and realize they are the victims and not criminals. Don’t judge the victims. It is easy to stand and look at someone and say, “I wouldn’t let that happen to me.” Victims felt the same way. If you ever suspect someone is being held in a form of slavery, call the victimization hotline at 888-3737-888. You can also refer someone to social services.

Twenty seven million slaves in the world in 2013.

Why is there a demand for human slaves? There are millions of consumers for slaves to perform sex acts or provide labor. The labor no one else wants to do. If you or someone you know has ever forced someone into sex acts or coerced labor, you must stop now. What you are doing is a crime not a living. If you pay for sex with adults or children, stop it now. Stop going to adult book stores now. Stop using your money for voyeuristic shows, phone sex or any type of pornography. Make an effort to do some homework and find out which businesses use slaves and/or children.

Support local businesses or local artists, buy from fair trade businesses. If demand drops, it will save the lives of people who haven”t been kidnapped or duped into slavery.

A quote

You can use social media to get the word out about slavery. Facebook, MySpace or twitter would be a good place to start. You could also volunteer your services to agencies who directly offer services or money. You can care, and let it matter in your life. Education is very important. Children without an education or a very limited one will be more easily tricked into slavery. As caring human beings, we must oppose all forms of violence against women and children. Do not trivialize the horror and don’t leave it for someone else to take care of. There are millions of souls who are being bought and sold. They are hopeless and helpless. We have to care. They were made by the same Divinity that is within us and it is within them.

There is slavery in the twenty first century. We must stop it. We must decrease the demand.

If you meet someone who is at-risk, help them to get off of the streets. Hire workers and pay them equitably. Even if you just suspect a person might be a victim, call 1-888-3737-888. You may be able to save a life. Social unrest leads to many people and families becoming refugees and often then find themselves in slavery. Because women are considered inferior or second class in almost every country, this leaves them vulnerable to being bought and used. In many countries where the poverty is so severe, children, both women and boys are sold for money to keep the rest of the family alive with food or medications. So, please don’t turn away because this is scary and disgusting and evil. If you know anyone who is at-risk, refer them for assistance. Call the hotline number. Don’t see them as damaged victims. See them as what they really are…children of the Universe.

May 15, 2013 by IdealisticRebel

Slavery in 2013

Yes, there is slavery in America as well as in most other countries in the world. Why would people buy and sell other human beings? Greed, profit, gender discrimination, cheap labor force are some of the reasons.

In some parts of our country and other countries, a girl is more likely to be raped than to learn how to read. Every year, 60 million girls are sexually assaulted at or on their way to school. There is an estimated 800,000 people trafficked across national borders annually. Eighty per cent are girls and women.

Here in America, on any day in any month, someone may be sold into slavery. 100,000 to 300,000 people are trafficked annually. 83 % are being sold for sexual work. It is the fastest growing criminal industry in the world.

Public Broadcasting Stats

Worldwide, most trafficked persons are Asians. Up to 800,000 people, men, women, boys and girls are Trafficked across international borders. They account for up to 32 billion dollars in revenue. Most trafficking has to do with labor, including sexual labor, and children being sold to armies as soldiers. Can you imagine knowing that every day for the rest of your life, you will work for someone who oppresses human beings? You will never see a penny of the fruits of your labor, and they can do with you whatever they wish, including raping you or sending you to kill or die in a battle you will never live long enough to understand.

Help stop trafficking — learn more at www.enditmovement.com

Slavery is still real

May 10, 2013 by IdealisticRebel

All Mother’s on this Planet Have a Day Even if They Aren’t Aware of it.

One Woman, One World, One Family, unending love.

Mother’s Day is huge here in America .This is nice. Flowers, candy, going out to dinner, a new plant for the garden. These make up an American Mother’s Day. I would like to remind you that Mothers are in every country and being a Mother is quite different than it is here.

Mothers in other countries don’t have a day or even an hour where they feel especially loved and appreciated. Mother’s in other countries face tragedies we never even can imagine. Many mothers continue to die in childbirth, many mothers don’t have milk to feed their babies. Many mothers can’t dress their babies up really cute because there are only rags to dress them in. I guarantee you that some mothers, on the American holiday, will be watching their babies die of starvation and diseases such as Malaria.

Most of the mothers around the world will be required to leave a girl baby by the side of the road because of misogyny and some are trying to heal the faces of daughters whose boyfriend threw acid in their face because they turned down a marriage proposal. The boy throws acid in her face so no one else will want her. This is classic power and control. Some mothers will be assisting a medicine woman to hold down her daughter so genital mutilation can occur just like what was done to her. In some countries, if a girl has not had this done, no one will marry her.

Why is all of this happening? It is because women and girls are second class citizens and have no rights and no power to protect them legally in the system. They are owned, used, punished, tormented and often killed.
My request is that from now through Sunday you would all pray for the mothers around the world. Pray for them to be protected, pray for healing and food, pray for an end to human traffakking. Please pray that some day millions of women around the world will understand that mother is a term of love, support and pride. Pray that a year will come when all women will be able to hold their heads up and walk with pride and dignity.

National Organization of Women

Hug someone today and everyday

Mothers unite to help each other and the children. Make Mother’s Day really mean something to a mother somewhere in the world..

April 13, 2013 by IdealisticRebel

The Way of the World

Cleveland skyland from Huntington Beach, west of the city.Photograph cpoyrighted by Barbara Mattio 2013

Cleveland skyline from Huntington Beach, west of the city. Frozen Lake Erie. Photograph copyrighted by Barbara Mattio 2013

We are at a place in history where we have stood before. War, the worst of our mean, selfish, evil behaviour as human beings. Big countries start wars, small countries, a well aimed bullet ending the life of a king. Cultures will start wars. Religions start wars. Spirituality is different from religion, because spirituality is inclusive, not exclusive or demeaning to others who think differently, as many religions can be. Jihad is an excuse. The People of the Book love and follow the same God. Allah, Adonai, Christ – if you look at what they asked of the people of their world, it is similar. It is not supposed to take lives; lives that carry the exact same spark of Divinity. Now the people may suffer again under a new war and one that we may not survive.

We all feel the strong negative energy whirling around the world. We make sanctimonious noises about how good our country is, how right we are. Elsewhere, there is disease, famine, starvation, fear, Here, there is disease, fear, hunger, judgemental thinking, people say one thing and mean another. Trust is hard to find. People look at others and actually see a reflection of their inner selves. Mass shooting, mass stabbings, the ability to look away from the hungry child who can’t stay awake in school. We continue to look at children suffering as unfortunate. If we can, we look away or treat them like refuse which needs to be taken to the dump.

Love in the World

Every country in the world is experiencing pain, hunger, greed, oppression, in justice, hypocrisy, bullying, violence against women, racism and homophobia. It becomes a litany of woe. A list of the negativity people must live with.

What do we do? We are all on a journey and it is dark all around. We can’t see our feet through the whirling black negative energy. The answer is positive thoughts, positive actions. You can call them mitzvos of random acts of kindness. Or simply doing good. The name means nothing, the action is what produces the magic. The we find the source of some evil double the positive energy that will counteract the dark energies.

I have spoken with several masters who feel that the more positive energy we send in the world, the harder the darkness will fight. So we add more. Surround yourself and the troubled parts of the world with white light. Pray for leaders to have wisdom and the courage to act upon the wisdom.

” The bitter tear that flows into the sea

Dissolves into liquid unity

And in the sunlight rises up anew

To fall again as rain–sweet alchemy.

The seen of belief unfurls in faith , branches

out in experience, blossoms in realization, and bears fruit in service.

The goal of the journeyer is the Beloved.

The goal of the Beloved is the journey.”

—Pir Zia Inayat Khan

Babies are not born thinking others are different.

March 3, 2013 by IdealisticRebel

The Separation of Church and State

Separation of Church and State

I am wondering if any of you have been gnashing your teeth, and shout at the TV whenever you watch the news. There are a lot of negative issues. For instance, the United States now educater fewer scientists each year, we import more high-tech products, many Americans think that the answer for teen pregnancy is not education on birth control and safe sex, but abstinance. Don’t get me wrong I, in theory, believe that abstinance should be taught but there is a gap between theory and reality. Teens with raging hormones don’t always understand what parents and schools are trying to tell them.

My biggest frustration, however, is the people who are talking and insisting on the idea that this country was formed as a Christian Country. So, I am going to explain what is really has happened.

” Those who won our independence believed…that the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people,,,that it is hazardous to discourage thought, hope, and imagination; that fear breeds repression; that repression breeds hate; that hate menaces stable government…Fear cannot justify suppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.” ——by Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis.

Thomas Jefferson on separation of church and state

God is claimed by both sides in a war, and the Bible is used to defend the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, slavery, lynching, apartheid, racism, povery, violence against women, homophobia and a score of other human tragedies. The three largest Christian-right organizations call for “Crusaders” to pray that certain U.S. Supreme Court justices whose voting records they dislike will die. Televangelist Pat Robertson blames talk show host, Ellen Deganeres for the disaster of Hurricane Katrina. He also intimidated that God had sent the Hurricane to punish people. Robertson also declares that the attack on America on 9-11, was also God punishing America.

Did you know?

The Air Force Academy, has developed a “strident evangelicalism”. There have been fifty-five complaints of religious discrimination filed in the past few years. The Academy has also become a test tube of sexual harrassment. Female cadets filed charges that were ignored or overlooked. Faith-based prisons are apparently making money by reaping in the profits of spreading the Gospel to convicts. As taxpayers, we pay for proselytizing prisons without ever giving permission or voting for our money to be used in this manner. Inmates receive special priveleges if they follow all-day, all-week, Christian agendas. Prision ministries have as much as $46 million budgets.

Kennedy quote re: Church and State

The Constitution of the United States of America does not contain even one reference to a diety — on purpose. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft invoked the Founding Fathers of our country and he said, the Founding Fathers were a hodgepodge of freethinkers, Deists, agnostics, Christians, and Freemansons. Above all they were radicals.

“Question with boldness even the existence of a god.” —Thomas Jefferson

“Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind.” –James Madison

“I doubt of Revelation itself.” –Benjamin Franklin

” My own mind is my church” –Thomas Paine

George W. Bush added, “so help me God.” to his presidential oath of office.

Pat Robertson claims that “In God We Trust” was on our currency and “Under God” was the U.S. motto from 1776. These were not added until 1950.

John Adams declared, ” The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.”

Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison in 1789, ” No society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living genetation.”

We now take it for granted that churches, temples, mosques, and other religious institutions are tax exempt-but it was not always that way, nor was it the intent of the Founders. This policy was the fruit of a religious campaign.

So was “In God We Trust” getting stamped onto our coinage and the insertion of ” Under God” in our Pledge of Allegiance. The religious movement that we are living in is different. This time is the blatant political mobilization of extreme right religious forces, which seek to change the Constitutional mandate to keep Church and State separated. This mandate is why the Founding Fathers called their new country a Republic, not a Theocracy.

Ronald Reagan’s quote

I would like to be clear about one thing in this blog. I believe the Fathers built a wall between Church and State. I also believe in the Divinity of the Universe. I believe it dwells within each of us and all of life around us. The One wants us to love, support, accept, care for each other and all living things including our planet. He/she/It does not a government run. So think about what is really happening right now in our country.

Some excerpts taken from Fighting Words, by Robin Morgan

February 25, 2013 by IdealisticRebel

Just What Were the Founding Fathers Intending in This New Republic

Portraits of our Founding Fathers

The has been a lot of conversation and debate lately about our founding fathers. The heroic revolutionaries who deciced that these colonies must break away from England and become a Republic and there had to be freedom here. These men were very different from those who are in government today. They were actually willing, may I go so far as to say, they looked forward to fighting and gaining our independence. They were a brave and very diverse group of men.

America was imagined and created by men who were liberals and revolutionaries.

The original words of our founding fathers found in the Constitution, Bill of Rights show us a picture of men who were radicals for their day. The entire idea of what they wanted to create here was liberal and so very radical. The founders were a kind of motley crew. I say this with no disrespect meant. They were a group of rather unlikely idealists. They also were imperfect. Some were slave holders, Paine wrote anti-slavery pamphlets and Benjamin Franklin organized the first anti-slavery societies.

Women were never on their radar, even after the famous letter Abigail Adam’s wrote to her husband John Adams. “If particular care and attention are not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion and will not hold ourselves bound to obey any laws in which we have no voice or representation.” Despite Abiagail Adam’s efforts, our rights weren’t up for discussion.

The Founding Fathers were not uniformly Christian, they were freethinkers, agnostics, atheists, Christians, Freemasons, and Deists. A Deist professes belief in as-yet-unknown powers evinced in the natural, scientifically observed universe. But whether they were religious or not, they fought for a secular state and for freedom of belief.

The question of slavery was the only big issue they were unable to find a solution for. However, it ended up being left out of the Constitution and they agreed to leave it to later generations to solve this divisive problem. So, as you know, Lincoln was the man who picked up the gauntlet and freed the slaves and held this union together.

These Founding men were radical and liberal.

It is time to reclaim our nation and return it to its original “patriotic” values. These constitute our rightful inheritance and inspiration. The United States of America was the dream of these great men we revere so much. They considered it the great experiement. To this day, the reason the world wants to come here is not really for the big TV’s, fast foods, etc. The real reason the world wants to come here is still to be part of the remarkable experiment.

After the first Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin was asked what type of government the Founders had chosen. Franklin replied, “We have given you a republic—if you can keep it. I believe we must never give up.

Original sketch of the drawing up of our Constitution

Part of this blog has been excerpted from Fighting Words, by Robin Morgan.

February 15, 2013 by IdealisticRebel

Healing Humanity

There is nothing really for me to say. We are all made of star dust and we are all children of the Universe. The richness of life is the beauty of our differences.

May our differences bring joy, not fear,

May our differences make us stronger,

May we all turn from the need of power and control, from greed and jealousies.

May we all raise our voices in love to The One.

May we remember how to be compassionate and forgiving.

—By Barbara Mattio

Greatness is what you give.

January 31, 2013 by IdealisticRebel

Creation by Walt Whitman

The beauty of Creation

Laws For Creation

“Laws for creations,
For strong artists and leaders, for fresh broods of teachers and
perfect literats for America,
For noble savans and crooning musicians.

All must have reference to the ensemble of the world, and the compact truth of the world,
There shall be no subject too pronounced–all works shall
Illustrate the divine law of indirections.

What do you suppose creation is?
What do you suppose will satisfy the soul, except to walk free
and own no superior?
What do you suppose I would intimate to you in a hundred
ways, but that man or woman is as good as God?
And that there is no God any more divine than Yourself?
And that that is what the oldest and newest myths finally mean?
And that you or any one must approach creations through such laws?”

——Walt Whitman, Laws for Creation

I found that I am so upset that I had to rely on Whitman’s words because mine must not leave my lips. Not only was another child shot but there wasn’t hardly any news coverage. I guess the story didn’t bleed enough. It is just so wrong. I felt Whitman only could say the right words.

We must stop the shooting and the violence

December 15, 2012 by IdealisticRebel

America, we have had enough shooting

Prayer brings healing and love to people

There is a source of comfort in times of unbearable grief

We must end the anger and violence. We must look to helping each other to heal.

People of all faiths are praying together for healing and peace and an end to violence.

December 11, 2012 by IdealisticRebel

Peace is Possible in Our Everyday Lives

Working for Peace and Harmony in Our Time

It is difficult to think about ending the strife and war in the entire world. But it is possible for each of us to live in the present moment every day. There are countries building up munitions and creating super weapons. It is difficult to handle all of this and believe in the goodness and love of people.

What we can’t do is to live in the past, no matter what happened then, nothing can make it better. The events of the past must remain there or you will be living in the hurt and pain and perhaps even looking for revenge. We must let go. We must walk away from the past and then it looses its power over us. Then we can make our lives be what we wish them to be. The future is a siren who calls us, but it never arrives. Its song is enticing but futile. What we can do is live in the moment and help others to live in the moment.

The present is the beginning of peace. All around the world are people who have lived under oppression, have witnessed horrors, lost parents to violence, survived malnutrition or lived in refugee camps where they know they really aren’t wanted. They have watched friends killed in cold blood or seen a bomb destroy their home and all that they owned. The photos, their toys, their food and their hopes and dreams.

It is in the present that we can create our happiness. Each single moment, we have the opportunity to show by our actions that you love others. That what they are experiencing at that moment, matters to you. That they are not alone and someone cares that they are struggling in that moment.

We all have the right to be happy and peaceful. We have been created for this and happiness and peace only comes when we are in love with God. When you do an act which brings happiness to another, you create peace within yourself. Peace and joy pours into our hearts and we have more to give to the next person we come in contact with as we go about our lives.

We must all understand that happiness and joy come to us and so does suffering. Facing the suffering is not ever easy. It can make you feel as if you were being torn apart. Have we done something to deserve suffering. I don’t believe so. I believe that if we never suffer, we can’t understand another’s pain. We can’t appreciate the joy, love, peace and happiness that comes with the suffering. When someone has not ever suffered, they are only experiencing part of life. We are here to live life to its fullest.

If I suffer, then I can understand another’s pain, hunger or fear. If I love them with all the love I have and then love them some more, then I will be filled with more love. The qualification is that love is given without expecting anything in return.

“Knowledge of yourself produces humility, and knowledge of God produces love.” —-Mother Teresa

It isn’t how much we do to help others, it is how much love accompanies our acts of assistance that really counts. If you give to a charity because you need a tax deduction, it won’t have the energy of your love. It will help but not in the same way. Perform acts of kindness with love and they will lead us to peace.

Peace Plea

Please, protect my children and family.

Please protect the children of other Mothers.

Please give peace to other parents.

Please give this beautiful world peace.

Only you can give this peace to the world.

–Barbara Mattio