Category Archives: Viva!

Vipassana : Confessions of a Serial Meditator, Tales of the Mind, Vol 1: 2nd Edition (less typos)

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Title: Vipassana : Confessions of a Serial Meditator, Tales of the Mind, Vol 1: 2nd Edition (less typos)

Author: Anonymous

Publisher: Self Published

Volume: Volume 1

Language: English

Subjects: Non fiction., Philosophical biography., Meditation.

Collection: Philosophy

Description: One Man. Ten days. No talking.
One Centre. 102 meditators. No eye-contact.
One Course. 105 hours of meditation. No gestures.
One Law. One Truth. One Universe.

This story isn’t about me, it’s about you. It may read as if it’s about me, but if you’ve ever sought the Truth, then it’s about you too.

Surrender; it’s the only way to win the war, the one being fought within, deep down in the trenches of your mind. Wherever that may be . . .

Can I do it? And if so, what then?

We need global policy coherence in trade and investment to boost growth

Investment Forum

Gabriela Ramos, OECD Chief of Staff and Sherpa to the G20 @gabramosp

Mounting fears of another slowdown in the global economy call for bolder policy responses. Trade and investment are a case in point.

The latest WTO forecasts suggest 2015 will be the fourth year running that global trade volumes grow less than 3%, barely at—or below—the rate of GDP growth. Before the crisis, trade was growing faster than GDP. In addition, global flows of foreign direct investment (FDI) remain 40% below pre-crisis levels. If we are to achieve the ambitious Sustainable Development Goals agreed in New York in late-September, and underpin broad-based improvements in living standards, we need to reignite these twin engines of growth and we need to do it for the ultimate goal of improving people’s prospects and wellbeing.

Trade and investment have always been intertwined in business, but they have never quite come together in policymaking. In a world of Global Value Chains (GVCs), characterised by the fragmentation of production processes across countries, the interdependencies between trade and FDI are sharper. Technological improvements, reductions in transport and communications costs, and regulatory developments allow firms to combine multiple channels–- imports, FDI, movement of business personnel, licenses — to optimize their international business strategies. Businesses do not think in terms of trade or investment, but in terms of maximizing expected profitability. On the contrary, policymakers have long addressed trade and investment on separate tracks. In the face of new economic realities, policymakers need to up their game.

The symbiosis between trade and investment is more complex than ever before. Multinational enterprises (MNEs) play a key role in this relationship, with their activities driving a large share of world trade. The decision of a firm to invest in a foreign country is influenced by the ease with which it can sell its products, but also by how easy it is to source inputs from its affiliates (intra-firm trade) or independent suppliers (extra-firm trade) abroad. Hence, trade barriers become indirect barriers to investment. In addition, “world factories” make emerging trade patterns more complex, as not only goods and services cross borders, but capital, people, technology, and data do too. Without a transparent framework, it is also difficult to upgrade and upscale responsible business conduct.

Services are an increasingly critical node in the relationship between trade and investment. The WTO’s General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) explicitly recognizes this by defining FDI in services as one of the four ways in which services can be traded (mode 3, or ‘commercial presence’). This reflects how trade and investment interact with one another. Clearly, services will be central in any further efforts to liberalize investment and to improve the business environment. The OECD FDI Regulatory Restrictiveness Index shows that investment barriers are overwhelmingly in the services economy. Reforms in backbone services, notably digital services, transport, and logistics are key to unclogging GVCs. Domestic reforms to allow for more competition in the service sectors is also a source of growth and equality. Moreover, there is untapped potential in services value chains that could be realized if services markets were opened further. The OECD Services Trade Restrictiveness Index (STRI) provides a tool for identifying these barriers and measuring their costs, in order to prioritize and sequence reforms.

There is still no global set of rules governing investment and trade, however. Apart from GATS, two other WTO agreements—TRIMS and SCM–cover aspects of FDI, but they are not comprehensive. The OECD Codes are also a reference on capital flows, but does not address the link with the trade dynamics. The void has been filled with a complex network of nearly 3,000 bilateral investment treaties (BITs) of different quality and with different coverage.. Investors and States need certainty. A uniform regime would help, providing a consistent interpretation of the rules that apply to investment flows, taking into account the interest of all stakeholders. We urgently need a clear, coherent and coordinated approach at multilateral level. Multiplying the number of BITs further muddies the water and moves us further away from the multilateral ideal. A better way forward may be to start consolidating and replacing BITs on the road to a comprehensive multilateral framework. We also need to take a hard look at investment dispute settlement mechanisms, transparently addressing stakeholders’ legitimate concerns.

Replace BITs with what? Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) are already providing some closer policy linkages. Over 330 RTAs contain comprehensive investment chapters, reflecting more advanced thinking of how trade and FDI interact in the real economy. These agreements also cover ‘deep integration’ disciplines that are essential to investments, such as movement of capital, business persons, intellectual property rights, competition, state-owned enterprises, and anti-corruption. New generation RTAs are not perfect, but they are taking us several steps forward in addressing the services-trade-investment-technology nexus. Being regional, however, they are not applied uniformly at a global level, and create their own overlaps and incoherence. It would therefore be useful to create clearer rules for co-existence among RTAs and mega-regional blocs. Above all, it is important to foster information-sharing on emerging practices from these negotiations, so that good practices can be diffused more widely and uniformly, and provide a pathway for multilateral convergence. In this way, RTAs and mega-regionals can become the building blocks of an integrated and truly multilateral trade and investment regime.

We are at a critical juncture, both economically and politically. The global economy needs a helping hand for recovery from the global financial crisis and to give people the improvements they expect in their daily lives. At the same time, we have both an opportunity and obligation to upgrade the policy framework to meet the changing reality of how trade and investment are conducted across the world, to enhance policy coordination, and to ensure that both have a positive impact on people’s well-being. Mega-regional agreements like TTIP and TPP are on track to deliver new frameworks over the coming months. These can be stepping stones towards the future of global trade and investment rules. As these mega-regional deals approach the finish line, the 10th WTO Ministerial in Nairobi in December is an opportunity to break the current impasse in the Doha Round. Finally, all of this is taking place as we enter a new “Post-2015” era with the new SDGs, where trade and investment are expected to do more of the heavy-lifting in global development.

Against this backdrop, the G20-OECD Global Forum on International Investment (GFII), being held on 5 October 2015 in Istanbul, back-to-back with the meeting of G20 Trade Ministers, will bring together the trade and investment policy communities—along with the business community–to reflect on the main axes of a pragmatic strategy to enhance the international regime for investment, including through closer links with trade. The agenda cannot be delayed: trade and investment decisions must go hand-in-hand in policy, just as they do in global business.

Useful links

G20-OECD Global Forum on International Investment

OECD work on International Investment Law

OECD work on Regional Trade Agreements

OECD work on Global Value Chains

OECD work on Trade Facilitation

 

Oregon college shooting: Donald Trump invokes vigilante movie Death Wish

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  • GOP frontrunner says students and instructors should have been armed
  • Crowd chants title of Charles Bronson hit as Trump boasts of handgun permit

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Saturday channeled the 1970s action star Charles Bronson in defending second amendment rights in the aftermath of the shooting at an Oregon community college that left nine dead.

Related: Oregon college gunman killed himself as police approached, sheriff says

Continue reading…

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Mimi Writes…….

Here’s my challenge to you.As we previously announced here, our theme this year is Peace and The Power of Love.I challenge you to write down at least one loving act or thought each day and post it.  Copy the graphic at left and display it with your posts. That’s easy! We change the molecular atmosphere around us many times each day by giving away the best of who we are and keeping the energy positively charged around us. We all do much more than we give ourselves credit for. Being loving brings peace to our circumstances, peace within our relationships, peace in our neighborhoods, peace to the world. The Peace and The Power of Love Challenge ~ For the next 30 days from Oct 4 – Nov 4 ~ let’s be present for love.  Let’s consciously and with purpose and intent NOTICE the ways we express love to one another and then AFFIRM the peace it brings into our lives. Let’s record it. Write it down. And share our findings with each other. It may be in the way you cook a special meal for someone (or an ordinary everyday meal!), the way you play with your pets, starting your spouse’s car on a cold morning, really

Source: Mimi Writes…….

Take The 30 Days of Love Challenge ~ Sponsored by Blog4Peace

The 30 Day Countdown to BlogBlast 4 Peace begins! Blog4Peace 2015 is Nov 4!

Here’s my challenge to you.

As we previously announced here, our theme this year is Peace and The Power of Love.
30%2BDays%2Bof%2BLove%2BChallenge%2B2015I challenge you to write down at least one loving act or thought each day and post it.  Copy the graphic at left and display it with your posts. That’s easy!

 We change the molecular atmosphere around us many times each day by giving away the best of who we are and keeping the energy positively charged around us. We all do much more than we give ourselves credit for. Being loving brings peace to our circumstances, peace within our relationships, peace in our neighborhoods, peace to the world.

The Peace and The Power of Love Challenge ~ For the next 30 days from Oct 4 – Nov 4 ~ let’s be present for love.  Let’s consciously and with purpose and intent NOTICE the ways we express love to one another and then AFFIRM the peace it brings into our lives. Let’s record it. Write it down. And share our findings with each other. It may be in the way you cook a special meal for someone (or an ordinary everyday meal!), the way you play with your pets, starting your spouse’s car on a cold morning, really listening to someone’s problems, or simply saying a kind word to a stranger on the street.

 
 There are no small ways to love.
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  I’m willing to bet that if we consciously attend to those moments and record them in our minds (and on our pages, too) we’ll begin to understand more fully how acting on the love we feel for each other and our planet makes us more peaceful people. I’m willing to wager also that deliberate acts of love and kindness toward those we don’t get along with, will bring even more significant peaceful change to ourselves and our world.

Why do I believe this? 
Because after nine years of peace blogging, I know you. I believe in you. I believe in us. I believe in the collective power of positive intent within this community. You have shown time and again what lengths you are willing to go in order to manifest peace during peace season and all through the year. All you have to do is read the thousands of posts HERE on the Official Site to believe in peace globes. Once a peace blogger, always a peace blogger. The movement has changed me and how I look at the world. It is not what I did. It is what WE did. 
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Because we share a common thread of desire to become more peaceful people, we are becoming more peaceful and loving. I see it and feel it. 


I’m going to begin my peace blogging challenge this year by answering this question…..

Who is your person?
Who is the one person in my life who inspires me to love?
 Day 1 of the 30 Days of Love Challenge will be devoted to my grandfather.

Who is YOUR person?

 
Peace and Love are not just worn out hippie phrases. They work interchangeably.
They incorporate the powerful concept of forgiveness and grace. 

 Peace and love encompass and ignite the gift of mercy within us. They teach us to look intimately into each other – not at each other – with the eyes of humanity. For we are all human.  

Peace and love enlarge our relationships. If you can understand the motivations and intents of another, you can love them, forgive them, and be at peace with them. You will have no room for hatred, judgement, or malice. It’s not about how they react or reciprocate,, even whether they respond or not, but about how the change occurs within you

Peace and love call for a laying down of arms. If you can change your weaponry to an arsenal of compassion, you will walk with a new knowledge, forged from a new vision, and those who are not yet at peace with you will see it and feel it. Making peace with someone is the same thing as offering love.  
 Change will come in your life.  If enough of us see the need for this kind of inward focus and walk compassion instead of hate, change will come to all of us.
 Change will come to the planet.
So, this year I ask that you examine the way you interact with the people around you. Is it loving? Is it peaceful? Is it quiet? Is it meaningful? Is it for their good and yours? Is it fused with compassion? Are your motives pure? Does it serve the world? Are you happy and fulfilled in the circle where you abide? If not, what can you do or say to make it better? Take the 30 Day Love ChallengeGo!  
Please join us! Blog4Peace November 4 and everyday on our Facebook page Our Peace Store How To Blog4Peace ™ 1. Make a peace globe. Choose any graphic on this page. Save. Sign. Decorate 2. Send the finished peace globe to blog4peace@yahoo.com or TAG Mimi Lenox on Facebook 3. Post it anywhere online November 4 4. Title your post or status Dona Nobis Pacem (Latin for Grant us Peace) hashtag

Join us for BlogBlast For Peace Nov 4

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BlogBlast For Peace November 4 ~ Join us!
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