Category Archives: Viva!

Death Penalty Focus : Pope Francis Condemns the Death Penalty

Capital punishment “is cruel, inhuman and degrading, as is the anxiety that precedes the moment of execution and the terrible wait between the sentence and the application of the punishment, a ‘torture’ which, in the name of a just process, usually lasts many years and, in awaiting death, leads to sickness and insanity.”

via Death Penalty Focus : Pope Francis Condemns the Death Penalty.

Bertha Benz Memorial Route – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bertha did it! She proved her husband’s work as first long distance driver and mechanic. Bertha Benz’s husband, Karl Benz, patented the first automobile designed to produce its own power in January 1886 (Reichspatent No. 37435).[3][4]

In early August 1888,[5] without her husband’s knowledge, Bertha Benz, with her sons Richard (aged 14) and Eugen (aged 15), drove in Benz’s newly constructed Patent Motorwagen No. 3 automobile, from Mannheim to her own birthplace, Pforzheim, becoming the first person to drive an automobile over more than a very short distance.[6] The distance was about 104 km (65 mi). Distances driven before this historic trip were short, being merely trials with mechanical assistants.[7][8]

via Bertha Benz Memorial Route – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Create a Personal Sacred Space in your Home –

For me, a sacred space must be alive. What I’ve observed from other people who share their altars online -don’t you love peeking at people’s lives?! I do!!!- is that their little constructions seem to be an inert space. They don’t sit at it to do anything. People just select a bunch of objects with the “right” colors and symbols, arrange it all to look pretty and then never interact with it. I can’t do such a thing. Why? Because I’m too pragmatic and hate collecting stuff. Everything I own, I must have an active relationship with it; everything must be alive and have a purpose. When I don’t have a relationship with that thing, its presence weighs on my mind; it’s clutter.

via Create a Personal Sacred Space in your Home –.

Finding Your Authentic Self Is A Lot Of Bloody Work. | Rebelle Society

Chip away at that deranged ego until you feel your authentic self breathe. Until you hear the voice of your body reverberate through your being with the power that only truth brings.

And if no one else tells you, I am here telling you now. It’s not over. Not even close. And you, in all your finery, in honor of your highest self, you chose this.

You chose not to be satiated by the status quo. You chose to have vision. You chose to write yourself the greatest narrative ever written and live up to it through the bare-knuckle grazes and the depths of existential despair.

You chose this because it’s worth it. It’s worth it to keep going through the best and the worst because in the end you emerge.

via Finding Your Authentic Self Is A Lot Of Bloody Work. | Rebelle Society.

With Plan to Walk Across DMZ, Women Aim for Peace in Korea – NYTimes.com

Suzy Kim, a professor of Korean history at Rutgers University who is another main organizer, said the group had yet to hear anything from the South Korean government side. South Korean officials declined to comment on the proposal Wednesday.

The group’s intent is to walk across the DMZ, from North to South, on May 24, International Women’s Day for Peace and Disarmament.

Ms. Kim credited the original idea to Ms. Ahn, who founded a group called Women De-Militarize the Zone a few years ago. “She had been thinking of how neglected the women’s role had been” in attempting to solve the Korean impasse, Ms. Kim said.

Ms. Ahn’s website, WomenCrossDMZ.org, said the planned walk was meant as a “symbolic act of peace.”

Thirty female peace activists from around the world are the core group of walkers. They include Ms. Steinem’s fellow honorary co-chairwoman, Mairead Corrigan Maguire, a 1976 Nobel Peace laureate from Northern Ireland, who helped organize enormous peace demonstrations, mostly of women, that crossed sectarian lines and helped end the bloodshed there.

Another organizer, Leymah Gbowee, shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 for her work in leading a women’s peace movement that brought an end to civil war in Liberia in 2003 and led to the eventual exile, and successful war-crimes prosecution, of President Charles G. Taylor.

Ms. Kim acknowledged that the currently high level of North-South hostility, coupled with the North’s regular denunciations of the United States, the South’s principal ally, was “not a climate to achieve an agreement” to replace the armistice.

“On the other hand, the kind of deadlock we’re in makes it all the more important and necessary in not being O.K. with the status quo,” she said.

via With Plan to Walk Across DMZ, Women Aim for Peace in Korea – NYTimes.com.

First Lady Michelle Obama greets recipients of the State Department 2015 International Women of Courage Award

First Lady Michelle Obama greets recipients of the State Department 2015 International Women of Courage Award recipients in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House March 7, 2015. From left: Nadia Sharmeen, Bangladesh; Arbana Xharra, Kosovo; May Sabe Phyu, Burma; Marie Claire Tchecola, Guinea; Tabassum Adnan, Pakistan; Sayaka Osakabe, Japan; Rosa Julieta Montano Salvatierra, Bolivia; Captain Niloofar Rahmani; Afghanistan; Majd Chourbaji, Syria.

via P030715CK-0067 | Flickr – Photo Sharing!.

SPIEGEL Interview with Greek Prime Minister Tsipras – SPIEGEL ONLINE

Tspiras: That is why we need to put these four months to good use. Europe is facing a dilemma: One either accepts the demands of the people in the south, who have suffered a lot under austerity, and correct the course — or one reacts arrogantly and punitively. If that were to happen, Greece would gradually suffocate. That, though, would no longer just present a financial danger, but also a political one.

SPIEGEL: For whom?

Tsipras: The growing civil movement for a change of course in the south would then become an anti-European current. By punishing Syriza in Greece, you do not slow the dynamic of Podemos in Spain — instead you compel it to become anti-European. By doing so, you strengthen Beppe Grillo in Italy, Marine Le Pen in France — and opponents of the European Union like Nigel Farage in Britain will be very, very pleased.

via SPIEGEL Interview with Greek Prime Minister Tsipras – SPIEGEL ONLINE.

Meryl Streep, Freida Pinto to Present U.S. Premiere of Banned Indian Rape Documentary – Hollywood Reporter

Meryl Streep and Freida Pinto will present the U.S. premiere of India’s Daughter by British filmmaker Leslee Udwin, which has been banned for telecast in India.

The controversial BBC documentary revolves around the horrific 2012 gang rape of a young woman on a bus in Delhi which sparked a national furore and massive street protests.

Co-produced by well-known Indian journalist Dibang, the film includes an interview with one of the four jailed attackers – Mukesh Singh – who said women were more responsible for rapes then men, igniting local and international outrage.

via Meryl Streep, Freida Pinto to Present U.S. Premiere of Banned Indian Rape Documentary – Hollywood Reporter.