Top US hotels sued for failure to prevent sex trafficking
O Dhananjay! By attaining even behavior in all conditions who unattached himself from his entire Karma and his doubt has been ruined through Brahma-Knowledge, Karma is not bonded to such soul-form man. (Gita: 4/41)
The materials like body, nerves, mind, intelligence, etc which we have received and seems to be own, actually is God gifted and for the use of universal brotherhood and well-beings, we do not have right or authority over these materials. According to this vision when materials are considered or others and deployed for well-beings of world then flow of Karma and materials is towards world and man experiences auto-certified equal behavior in all conditions. These ways through yog (connection with even behavior) who have detached themselves from Karma are called “Yogsansaiastakarma”. Person who is unattached while indulged or not indulged in Karma is actually “Yogsansaiastakarma”.
In the previous stanzas Lord Krishna has clarified that through Brahma-Knowledge doubts are ruined and equal behavior in all conditions facilitate un-attachment from entire Karmas.
Person who is in disbelief think how one can be unattached while participating in Karma? How his well-beings will achieved without doing work for own? Brahma-Knowledge clarifies all these doubts. The relations does not sustain between soul-form immortal and mortal karma and its fruits. Own wellbeing is achieved through universal well beings and human dependent on worldly materials reduces.
{Practice Hong-Sau until you rise above breath awareness; then tune yourself to the cosmic vibration of Aum and with increasing intensity of will and highest devotion, concentrating at the point between the eyebrows, float the following convictions to the Cosmic Vibration with a prayer for conscious realization of them.
(For meditation tip please note sit calmly close you eye, upturn your black centre of both the eyes towards middle of both the eyebrows it will automatic facilitate your concentration on the mid of both eyebrows. By blinking eyes for few times you close your eyes and push your black middle part of both eyes upward focusing at the point between the eyebrows automatically your concentration will reach their and then start meditation. You will feel that energy is flowing upward towards your forehead and breading pattern is changing, thus you can understand that your meditation is effectively progressing in right direction and after some time/days while meditating you will start feeling heaviness in forehead that means you are entering into Samadhi through meditating. Practice repeatedly for attest 30 minutes daily.)
Way to liberation is to find all –desire-quenching/ satisfy/ reduce divine bliss in ecstatic meditation.
Cease creating and pursuing material desires which cannot be satisfied any-where except on the material plane.
As soon as the ripples of worldly desire cease to exist, then you will see clearly His mooned face. Meditation brings proof of the existence of God.
The joy that is already that is already within ourselves, we are seeking in possession, fame, name, money and position; and we don’t find it.
The essential to remember is that scientific meditation means the withdrawal of life current from the nerves. When you can do that, sensations cannot reach the brain to rouse perceptions and associated thoughts.
Please sit upright and practice the Hong-Sau Technique. By watching the breath you calm the heart, and when the heart is calm, the energy withdraws from the senses and your attention is then free and can be put on anything you desire to concentrate upon. By watching the breath, you attain breathlessness. By watching the breath you separate yourself from it. You realize that life is not dependent on it except in the state of body consciousness. Breath is the cord that ties the soul to the body, when you know to die daily-that is, to consciously release the energy from the body by untying the cord of breath-you are one with spirit. Yogoda Satsanga- Lessons in Self Realisation}
The various incidents can be appraised with Brahma Sovereignty and Karma.
Turkey's Diyanet Foundation opens elementary school in Syria's Idlib
DAILY SABAH WITH AA
ISTANBUL
Published11.12.201918:15
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Turkey's Diyanet Foundation (TDV) opened an elementary school in northwestern Syria's Idlib province Wednesday.
Sultan Abdul Hamid II Elementary School, established by the TDV with the support of Pakistan's Beyt es Selam foundation, will serve 500 students who have fled their homes due to the Assad regime's attacks in the region. They now are living in refugee camps in the Kah village of the province near the Turkish border.
Attending the opening ceremony, TDV executive ?hsan A??k said that they came to Idlib to attend the opening ceremony of the school and observe the foundation's humanitarian aid efforts in the field.
"We spend efforts to provide education to children from kindergarten to high school. This school was here for years, but used to operate in a tent," he told the Anadolu Agency.
He also said that they are planning to build 100 residences for the purpose of shelter for orphans and their families in Idlib until the spring and underlined that the foundation will continue its efforts to provide any humanitarian aid to those who need it in the region.
The TDV also has schools in Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Romania, Bulgaria, Somalia, Somaliland, Haiti, Pakistan, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Georgia, Mongolia and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC).
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Top US hotels sued for failure to prevent sex trafficking
REUTERS
NEW YORK
Published10.12.201920:44
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Reuters File Photo
Landmark U.S. legal action was filed on Monday accusing several major hotel groups of profiting from sex trafficking on behalf of 13 women who claimed they were sold for sex in hotel rooms.
Twelve hotel chains were named and accused of knowing and ignoring warning signs that women and children were sold as sex slaves on their premises, according to the filing, a consolidation of 13 existing cases, in U.S. federal court in Columbus, Ohio.
The filing marked the first time the hotel industry - which has long been accused of serving as a breeding ground for sexual exploitation of women and children - faced action as a group.
The case drew together 13 separate actions that had been filed in Ohio, Massachusetts, Georgia, Texas and New York.
Among those named in the 13 cases were Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc., Red Roof Inn, Intercontinental Hotels & Resorts, Best Western Hotels & Resorts and Wyndham Hotels and Resorts Inc.
A Hilton spokesman said in a statement the company "condemns all forms of human trafficking, including for sexual exploitation" and that it expected its business partners to help meet that commitment.
Representatives of the other hotel groups did not respond to requests for comment.
The milestone case was filed by the New York law firm Weitz & Luxenberg on behalf of 13 women, many of whom were minors when they said the trafficking occurred.
The hotels "derived profit" and "benefited financially" by "providing a marketplace for sex trafficking," the case said, citing "industry-wide failures."
"Such corporate malfeasance has led to a burgeoning of sex trafficking occurring in ... hotels that has reached the level of a nationwide epidemic," it said.
An estimated 400,000 people are believed trapped in modern slavery in the United States, from forced labor to sex trafficking, according to the Global Slavery Index, published by the human rights group Walk Free Foundation.
"This is not one bad apple that need to be dealt with," said Luis CdeBaca, former U.S. anti-trafficking ambassador-at-large.
"The entire barrel has a problem ... For years the hospitality industry has known that sex trafficking and especially child sex trafficking has occurred on their properties and yet it continues to happen."
One of the women in the complaint said she was held captive at age 26 at various locations of Wyndham Hotels for six weeks in 2012.
During her captivity, she said her nose was broken twice, her lip was permanently scarred and her face grew infected from repeated beatings.
"I just wish that people realize how much it really is here in the U.S.," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "It doesn't matter if it's a shady hotel or a nice hotel, it's going on in all of them."
Several hotel chains have launched initiatives in recent years to tackle trafficking, such as training staff to identify potential victims and raising awareness of the crime among guests.
"These changes have arrived far too late," said the court documents. "Profit motives, not adherence to the law, continues to drive their decision making."
The case seeks unspecified damages.
Weitz & Luxenberg has earned a reputation in personal injury and malpractice cases against companies that made or used asbestos, which has been linked to cancer.
"This is bringing that expertise from the multi-district litigation space to see if it could have the kind of impact in the trafficking world that it's had in other spaces," said Bridgette Carr, head of the University of Michigan's Human Trafficking Clinic.
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Muslim teacher in BHU Sanskrit faculty resigns
LUCKNOW, December 10, 2019 16:47 IST
Updated: December 10, 2019 16:47 IST
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File photo of student protest at Banaras Hindu University. | Photo Credit: PTI
LUCKNOW, December 10, 2019 16:47 IST
Updated: December 10, 2019 16:47 IST
Feroze Khan submitted his resignation on Monday and expressed his wish to teach in the Sanskrit department of the Arts faculty.
Feroze Khan, who was appointed as an assistant professor in the Sanskrit Vidya Dharma Vijnan (SVDV) of the Banaras Hindu University, finally buckled under pressure and resigned from the faculty.
Mr. Khan submitted his resignation on Monday and expressed his wish to teach in the Sanskrit department of the Arts faculty, said professor Kaushalendra Pandey.
Some students and members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the students wing of the RSS, have since November 7 opposed Mr. Khan's appointment, saying he was ineligible to teach in the faculty being a Muslim. While they had called off their dharna for 10 days, the students resumed the protest last week, even as the faculty remained shut since the protests and due to the scheduled examinations.
“Feroze Khanji has resigned from here. And expressing wish to teach in the Sanskrit department, he has resigned and join there,” Mr. Pandey said.
While Mr. Khan is himself yet to comment, speculation was rife over the change in his department as part of a compromise after he appeared in interviews held by the department of Samhita in the faculty of Ayurveda and the Sanskrit department of the Arts faculty.
“For some reasons, he could not join there [SVDV]. Incidentally, he got two more opportunities, a total of three opportunities. Among all three, he accepted the post he preferred the most. It is a good thing for him,” said Mr. Pandey.
The BHU is yet to issue a statement.
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EXCERPT | BOOKS
Why did the Brahmins become vegetarian? B.R. Ambedkar asks in this excerpt from ‘Beef, Brahmins and Broken Men'
DECEMBER 06, 2019 12:53 IST
UPDATED: DECEMBER 08, 2019 10:36 IST
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It was to get one step ahead of the Buddhists that the Brahmins gave up beef-eating, says B.R. Ambedkar. An extract from a new edition of a book Babasaheb wrote in 1948
B.R. Ambedkar’s 1948 work The Untouchables: Who Were They and Why They Became Untouchables? has been re-issued as Beef, Brahmins and Broken Men: An Annotated Critical Selection from The Untouchables, published by Navayana with an Introduction by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd. This excerpt is from the chapter that deals with the conflict between Brahmanism and Buddhism and how it led to the Brahmins first giving up eating beef, and then turning vegetarian.
For generations the Brahmins had been eating beef. Why did they give up beef-eating? Why did they, as an extreme step, give up meat eating altogether and become vegetarians? It is two revolutions rolled into one. As has been shown it has not been done as a result of the preachings of Manu, their Divine Law-maker. The revolution has taken place in spite of Manu and contrary to his directions. What made the Brahmins take this step? Was philosophy responsible for it? Or was it dictated by strategy? Two explanations are offered. One explanation is that this deification of the cow was a manifestation of the Advaita philosophy that one supreme entity pervaded the whole universe, that on that account all life, human as well as animal, was sacred. This explanation is obviously unsatisfactory. In the first place, it does not fit in with facts. The Vedanta Sutra which proclaims the doctrine of oneness of life does not prohibit the killing of animals for sacrificial purposes as is evident from II.1.28. In the second place, if the transformation was due to the desire to realize the ideal of Advaita then there is no reason why it should have stopped with the cow. It should have extended to all other animals.
Another explanation more ingenious than the first, is that this transformation in the life of the Brahmin was due to the rise of the doctrine of the Transmigration of the Soul. Even this explanation does not fit in with facts. The Brahadaranyaka Upanishad
upholds the doctrine of transmigration (VI.2) and yet recommends that if a man desires to have a learned son born to him he should prepare a mass of the flesh of the bull or ox or of other flesh with rice and ghee. Again, how is it that this doctrine which is propounded in the Upanishads did not have any effect on the Brahmins up to the time of the Manusmriti, a period of at least 400 years. Obviously, this explanation is no explanation. Thirdly, if Brahmins became vegetarians by reason of the doctrine of transmigration of the soul how is it that it did not make the non-Brahmins take to vegetarianism?
To my mind, it was strategy which made the Brahmins give up beef-eating and start worshipping the cow. The clue to the worship of the cow is to be found in the struggle between Buddhism and Brahmanism and the means adopted by Brahmanism to establish its supremacy over Buddhism. The strife between Buddhism and Brahmanism is a crucial fact in Indian history. Without the realization of this fact, it is impossible to explain some of the features of Hinduism. Unfortunately, students of Indian history have entirely missed the importance of this strife. They knew there was Brahmanism. But they seem to be entirely unaware of the struggle for supremacy in which these creeds were engaged and that their struggle which extended for 400 years has left some indelible marks on religion, society and politics of India.
This is not the place for describing the full story of the struggle. All one can do is to mention a few salient points. Buddhism was at one time the religion of the majority of the people of India. It continued to be the religion of the masses for hundreds of years. It attacked Brahmanism on all sides as no religion had done before.
Brahmanism was on the wane and if not on the wane, it was certainly on the defensive. As a result of the spread of Buddhism, the Brahmins had lost all power and prestige at the Royal Court and among the people. They were smarting under the defeat they had suffered at the hands of Buddhism and were making all possible efforts to regain their power and prestige. Buddhism had made so deep an impression on the minds of the masses and had taken such a hold of them that it was absolutely impossible for the Brahmins to fight the Buddhists except by accepting their ways and means and practising the Buddhist creed in its extreme form. After the death of Buddha his followers started setting up the images of the Buddha and building stupas. The Brahmins followed it. They, in their turn, built temples and installed in them images of Shiva, Vishnu and Ram and Krishna etc.— all with the object of drawing away the crowd that was attracted by the image worship of Buddha. That is how temples and images which had no place in Brahmanism came into Hinduism. The Buddhists rejected the Brahmanic religion which consisted of yajna and animal sacrifice, particularly of the cow. The objection to the sacrifice of the cow had taken a strong hold of the minds of the masses especially as they were an agricultural population and the cow was a very useful animal. The Brahmins in all probability had come to be hated as the killer of cows in the same way as the guest had come to be hated as Goghna, the killer of the cow by the householder, because whenever he came a cow had to be killed in his honour. That being the case, the Brahmins could do nothing to improve their position against the Buddhists except by giving up the Yajna as a form of worship and the sacrifice of the cow.
That the object of the Brahmins in giving up beef-eating was to snatch away from the Buddhist Bhikshus the supremacy they had acquired is evidenced by the adoption of vegetarianism by Brahmins. Why did the Brahmins become vegetarian? The answer is that without becoming vegetarian the Brahmins could not have recovered the ground they had lost to their rival namely Buddhism… That in an agricultural population there should be respect for Buddhism and revulsion against Brahmanism which involved slaughter of animals including cows and bullocks is only natural. What could the Brahmins do to recover the lost ground? To go one better than the Buddhist Bhikshus not only to give up meat-eating but to become vegetarians — which they did. That this was the object of the Brahmins in becoming vegetarians can be proved in various ways.
If the Brahmins had acted from conviction that animal sacrifice was bad, all that was necessary for them to do was to give up killing animals for sacrifice… That they did go in for vegetarianism makes it obvious that their motive was far-reaching. Secondly, it was unnecessary for them to become vegetarians. For the Buddhist Bhikshus were not vegetarians. This statement might surprise many people owing to the popular belief that the connection between Ahimsa and Buddhism was immediate and essential… This is an error. The fact is that the Buddhist Bhikshus were permitted to eat three kinds of flesh that were deemed pure…
As the Buddhist Bhikshus did eat meat the Brahmins had no reason to give it up. Why then did the Brahmins give up meat-eating and become vegetarians?
…The giving up of the yajna system and abandonment of the sacrifice of the cow could have had only a limited effect. At the most it would have put the Brahmins on the same footing as the Buddhists. The same would have been the case if they had followed the rules observed by the Buddhist Bhikshus in the matter of meat-eating. It could not have given the Brahmins the means of achieving supremacy over the Buddhists which was their ambition. They wanted to oust the Buddhists from the place of honour and respect which they had acquired in the minds of the masses by their opposition to the killing of the cow for sacrificial purposes. To achieve their purpose the Brahmins had to adopt the usual tactics of a reckless adventurer. It is to beat extremism by extremism. It is the strategy which all rightists use to overcome the leftists. The only way to beat the Buddhists was to go a step further and be vegetarians.
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