Wednesday, May 28, 2008

hero. love this song. (if u ve been watching this blog for a long time u'd know i ve put up this song many times!) blind basker at simei mrt was singing it so beautifully. 
i can be your hero, baby
i can kiss away the pain
i will stand by you forever
you can take my breath away

non-heros need not apply.
FP - Wednesday, May 28
LONDON (AFP) - - Aid workers and peacekeepers are sexually abusing young children in war zones and disaster zones but their actions are largely going unpunished, a British charity said Tuesday.

"Children as young as six are trading sex with aid workers and peacekeepers in exchange for food, money, soap and, in very few cases, luxury items such as mobile phones," Save the Children said in a report.

It also highlighted instances of rape, verbal sexual abuse, child pornography and prostitution and trafficking of youngsters, many of whom are poor, displaced or orphaned by conflict.

The group said the scale of abuse was "significant". Its findings were based on work with hundreds of youngsters from Ivory Coast, southern Sudan and Haiti, said the charity's chief executive Jasmine Whitbread.

"This research exposes the despicable actions of a small number of perpetrators who are sexually abusing some of the most vulnerable children in the world, the very children they are meant to protect," she added.

"It is hard to imagine a more grotesque abuse of authority or flagrant violation of children's rights."
The charity said "endemic failures" in responding to the abuse that was officially reported were letting down the abused, and better reporting mechanisms should be introduced.

Fear of aid and assistance being withdrawn, being stigmatised by the local community, fear of reprisals, lack of faith in the response or simply ignorance about how to report abuse were also major factors, it added.

Whitbread said the United Nations, the wider world as well as humanitarian and aid agencies have made important commitments to tackle the problem in recent years.

But most had failed to turn their promises into action, she added, calling for all agencies working in emergencies, including her own, to "own up to the fact that they are vulnerable to this problem and tackle it head on".

The UN Department for Peacekeeping Operations was said to be the group most likely to be responsible for abuse. Save the Children said there had been 15 claims against its staff and partners last year, of which three were upheld.

UNPKO spokesman Nick Birnback said it was "entirely unacceptable" that those sent to help the most vulnerable are instead causing grievous harm.

"Clearly a lot more has to be done," he told BBC radio but he rejected allegations that the problem was widespread and those responsible were getting away with it.

"The vast majority of UN peacekeepers all over the world, of which we have over 100,000 now, serve with honour and courage in very difficult situations and don't engage in this unacceptable behaviour," he added.

The reputation of UN peacekeepers has been tarnished in the past by cases of sexual abuse against women, notably in Democratic Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast and Haiti.

In November last year, the UN said that more than 100 Sri Lankan soldiers were to be sent home over charges that they paid for sex while stationed in Haiti.

After turning a blind eye for decades to cases of abuse by its peacekeepers -- the world body recommended in 2005 that erring soldiers be punished, their salaries frozen and a fund set up to help any women or girls made pregnant.

The "zero tolerance" policy towards sexual misconduct includes a "non-fraternisation" rule barring them from sex with locals.

It was brought in after revelations in December 2004 that peacekeepers in DRC were involved in the sexual abuse of 13-year-old girls in exchange for eggs, milk or cash sums as low as one dollar.

YOU GIVE PEACE A BAD NAME

Sunday, May 18, 2008



gonna live my life, like everyday's the last...
for no reason why, i cant cry hard enough...
the truth does not alter with your inability to believe

the barrier between your life now and the life you've always wanted is YOU. 

the power to change does not come from you. 

there is no such thing as a self-made man. just because he is successful in his work, probably made more phenomenal by a rags to riches story, doesnt mean he made himself. what he did succeed in making is merely a name for himself. which, he probably likes more than the one given to him at birth. or maybe not. can u imagine calling a tiger, with 100% successful hunts/kills, a self-made tiger? i think "self-made man" is the most used, most delusive paradox. dun get it? think self created creature.




Friday, May 02, 2008

Bernard of Clairvaux(1091- 1153), Sermons on the Song of Songs:
We must not give to other what we have received for ourselves; nor must we keep for ourselves that which we have received to spend on others… You dissipate and lse what is your own, if without right intention and form some wrong motive, you hasten to outpour yourself on others when your own soul is only half-filled.

If you are wise therefore you will show yourself reservoir and not a canal. For a canal pours out as fast as it takes in; but a reservoir waits till it is full before it overflows, and so communicates its surplus… we have all too few such reservoirs in the Church at present, though we have canals in plenty… they [canals] desire to pour out when they themselves are not yet impoured; they are readier to speak than to listen, eager to teach that which they do not know, and most anxious to exercise authority on others, although they have not learnt to rule themselves… let the reservoir of which we spoke just now take pattern from the spring; for the spring does not form a stream or spread into a lake unti it is brimful… be filed thyself; then, but discreetly, mind, pour thy fullness out of thy fullness help me if thou canst; and if not, spare thyself.

Ole Hallesby(1879- 1961), Prayer:
Prayer and helplessness are inseparable. Only he who is helpless can truly pray.

Listen to this, you who are often so helpless that you do not know what to do. At times you do not even know how to pray. Your mind seems full of sin and impurity. Your mind is preoccupied with what the Bible calls the world. God and eternal and holy things seems so distant and foreign to you that you feel that you add sin to sin be desiring to approach God in such a state of mind. Now and then you must ask yourself the question, “Do I really desire to be set free from the lukewarmness of my heart and worldly life? Is not my Christian life always lukewarm and half-hearted for the simple reason that deep down in my heart I desire it that way?

Thus an honest soul struggles against the dishonesty of his own being. He feels himself so helplessly lost that his prayers freeze on his very lips.
Listen, my friend! Your helplessness is your best prayer. It calls from your heart to the heart of God with greater effect than all your uttered pleas. He hears it from the very moment that you are seized with helplessness, and He becomes actively engaged at once in hearing and answering the prayer of your helplessness.

Marva Dawn, The Sense of the Call:
If we lack prayerfulness, then the solution is not to hammer ourselves with guilt that we are so bad at it, but to engage in practices that help us know God. We receive grace best by watching it descend from God rather than focusing on our reception of it.