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HM Government.
HM Government, 2010.
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2010 English national drug strategy: "A fundamental difference [from] those that have gone before is that instead of focusing primarily on reducing the harms caused by drug misuse, [we will] go much further and offer every support for people to choose recovery as an achievable way out of dependency."
Summary The following text is taken largely from the Impact assessment for the drug strategy 2010.
Our coalition programme sets out the Government's ambition to bear down on the supply of illicit drugs, introduce a system of temporary bans on so called 'legal highs' and to build a recovery-led system to enable individuals to become free of drug or alcohol dependence and contribute to society. Therefore, the objective of introducing these policies is to deliver these commitments and build momentum to tackle drugs and drug-driven crime, whilst also enabling and supporting people to become free of their dependence.
The key policy objectives are:
• Reduce demand for illicit drugs by preventing use and restricting the supply of illicit drugs into the UK;
• Support those dependent on drugs and alcohol to recover, ensuring more people are tackling their dependence, recovering fully and contributing to society.
The Drug Strategy will be structured around three themes: Reducing Demand; Restricting Supply; and Building Recovery.
Creating an environment where the vast majority of people who have never taken drugs continue to resist any pressures to do so, and making it easier for those who do to stop.
• Families will be supported to give their children the best possible start in life.
• Family Nurse Partnerships will develop the parental capacity of mothers and fathers within potentially vulnerable families.
• A national campaign will focus on helping to turn around the lives of those families with the most complex needs. This will be supported by establishing Community Budgets for 16 local areas from April 2011.
• We will make sure school staff have the information, advice and the power to:
– provide accurate information on drugs and alcohol through drug education and targeted information via the FRANK service;
– tackle problem behaviour in schools, with wider powers of search and confiscation. We will make it easier for heads to take action against pupils who are found to be dealing drugs in school;
– work with local voluntary organisations, the police and others to prevent drug or alcohol misuse.
• All young people should be able to remain in education or training until the age of 18. As part of raising the participation age we will ensure financial support is available to the most disadvantaged young people, giving them the best start to adulthood and preparing them for employment or higher education.
• We will simplify funding to local authorities, including the creation of a single Early Intervention Grant, worth £2 billion by 2014–15.
• New funding arrangements for youth justice services will incentivise local authorities to find innovative ways to reduce the number of young people who commit crime, including tackling drug or alcohol misuse where this is part of the reason for their offending.
• Young people whose drug or alcohol misuse has already started to cause harm, or who are at risk of becoming dependent, will have rapid access to specialist support that tackles their drug and alcohol misuse alongside any wider issues they face.
We must make the UK an unattractive destination for drug traffickers by attacking their profits and driving up their risks.
• The introduction of Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs).
• The formation of new National Crime Agency (NCA).
• We will strengthen coordination between police and local partners.
• Integrated Offender Management (IOM) will reach out beyond traditional partners to other voluntary and private sector providers and engage the public in creating and delivering solutions.
• We will explore the potential of new technologies to disrupt drugs from entering and being traded within prisons.
• We will share intelligence across police forces, National Crime Agency, UK Border Agency and others to increase our understanding.
• Reduce the risk of harm from new psychoactive substances, so called 'legal highs', by introducing a system of temporary bans while the health issues are considered by independent experts.
• We will establish an effective forensic early warning system.
• We will introduce technology at the borders to assist with the identification of new drugs.
• Work with UK based internet providers to ensure they comply with the letter and spirit of UK law.
• We want to ramp up the use of money laundering prosecutions, and increasingly disrupt criminal finances through criminal and civil recovery and asset denial.
• We will develop a comprehensive approach to tackle the trade in drug precursors (chemicals frequently used in or for the illicit production of drugs) and cutting agents, working with production countries, the legitimate trade and international partners.
• We will continue to implement and regulate a national system of domestic control through the operation of an effective licensing and compliance regime.
For those who are dependent on drugs and alcohol, we will build on the huge investment in treatment to ensure more people are tackling their dependency and recovering fully.
• We will increase the focus within treatment on recovery, with the overarching aim of increasing numbers recovering from their dependence.
• We will continue to provide training for Jobcentre Plus advisers to give them the skills to recognise drug and alcohol dependence, and know where to refer people for assessment. Jobcentre Plus will also continue to work in close partnership with drug and alcohol services at a local level, and will offer face to face support, advice and guidance on benefits and employment, through outreach where practical and appropriate, to service users and the drug and alcohol professionals who support them.
• We will introduce six pilots to explore how payment by results can work for drugs recovery for adults, which will also provide evidence on affordability and value for money as part of the evaluation of these pilots.
• We will also support communities to build networks of 'recovery champions'.
• Development of a benefit system that promotes engagement with recovery services.
• We will explore building appropriate incentives into the universal credit system to encourage treatment take-up.
• Employment support will be funded on an outcomes basis, using benefit savings freed up when people engage with recovery services move into employment or full-time education.
Last revised 16 December 2010. First uploaded
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text: Today's post is the first part of a two-part story told to us by Dr. Greg Bradsher. Look for part two next week! In early July 1857, Captain John W. Phelps, commanding officer of Battery B, 4th Regiment of Artillery, at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, was acquiring horses for his battery for its planned expedition to … Continue reading The Tale of Tartar the War Horse

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Gift List
by Tricia Goyer
I've been thinking lately how hard it must be for Oprah to Christmas shop. I mean if you were on her "gift list" wouldn't you expect something really, really good? The woman gives away cars and trips to Australia on her television show for goodness sake! It seems by the end of Christmas Day her friends and family would look at the pile of presents and think, "Is that it?" I mean if you knew there was billions of dollars she could spend on you, would you ever feel satisfied?Sometimes I think we approach God the same way. We look around at our home, our family, our job, our free time and we still aren't satisfied. We wish our body looked better, our clothes were more in style, our husband was more considerate and our kids were more ... well, like the perfect little people we picture in our mind. Our careers don't excel as quickly as we think they should and people don't give us the attention we feel we deserve. We're tired and anxious and the to-do list seems to be tacked to our hearts for all the pain it causes.
Often, we look around and don't speak the words out loud, but think them just the same. "Is that it?" I mean, You're the God of the universe and You have all things in Your hands and under Your control. Couldn't you provide a little more money to help those bills disappear or make me a bit more content with the man I've chosen to spend my life with? And I thought Oprah had it tough.
Is there ever a time when God doesn't hear the murmurs? Again, not with our mouths but in our heart.
I've been guilty of this--of not being satisfied with the gifts I've been given. Yes, there will always be more to want, but today--at this moment--I'm satisfied. And I look to Him with a grateful heart and whisper, "Thank you, it is enough. More than enough."
A three strand pearl necklace will be given away on New Year's Day. All you need to do to have a chance of winning is {FILL OUT THIS QUICK ENTRY FORM}. The winner will be announced on the Pearl Girls Blog (http://margaretmcsweeney.blogspot.com) on New Years Day!
12 Pearls of Christmas Series and contest sponsored by Pearl Girls®. For more information, please visit www.pearlgirls.info


text:
Pëtr Kropotkin
Law and Authority
"When ignorance reigns in society and disorder in the minds of men, laws are multiplied, legislation is expected to do everything, and each fresh law being a fresh miscalculation, men are continually led to demand from it what can proceed only from themselves, from their own education and their own morality." It is no revolutionist who says this, nor even a reformer. It is the jurist, [Joseph] Dallois, author of the Collection of French law known as "Repertoire de la Legislation." And yet, though these lines were written by a man who was himself a maker and admirer of law, they perfectly represent the abnormal condition of our society.
In existing States a fresh law is looked upon as a remedy for evil. Instead of themselves altering what is bad, people begin by demanding a law to alter it. If the road between two villages is impassable, the peasant says: — "There should be a law about parish roads." If a park-keeper takes advantage of the want of spirit in those who follow him with servile observance and insults one of them, the insulted man says: — "There should be a law to enjoin more politeness upon park-keepers." If there is stagnation in agriculture or commerce, the husbandman, cattle-breeder, or corn speculator argues, "It is protective legislation that we require." Down to the old clothesman there is not one who does not demand a law to protect his own little trade. If the employer lowers wages or increases the hours of labour, the politician in embryo exclaims, "We must have a law to put all that to rights," instead of telling the workers that there are other, and much more effectual means of settling these things straight; namely, recovering from the employer the wealth of which he has been despoiling the workmen for generations. In short, a law everywhere and for everything! A law about fashions, a law about mad dogs, a law about virtue, a law to put a stop to all the vices and all the evils which result from human indolence and cowardice.
We are so perverted by an education which from infancy seeks to kill in us the spirit of revolt, and to develop that of submission to authority; we are so perverted by this existence under the rule of a law, which regulates every event in life — our birth, our education, our development, our love, our friendship — that, if this state of things continues, we shall lose all initiative, all habit of thinking for ourselves. Our society seems no longer able to understand that it is possible to exist otherwise than under the reign of Law, elaborated by a representative government and administered by a handful of rulers; and even when it has gone so far as to emancipate itself from the thraldom, its first care had been to reconstitute it immediately. "The Year I. of Liberty" has never lasted more than a day, for after proclaiming it men put themselves the very next morning under the yoke of Law and Authority.
Indeed, for some thousands of years, those who govern us have done nothing but ring the changes upon "Respect for law, obedience to authority." This is the moral atmosphere in which parents bring up their children, and school only serves to confirm the impression. Cleverly assorted scraps of spurious science are inculcated upon the children to prove necessity of law; obedience to the law is made a religion; moral goodness and the law of the masters are fused into one and the same divinity. The historical hero of the schoolroom is the man who obeys the law, and defends it against rebels.
Later, when we enter upon public life, society and literature, impressing us day by day and hour by hour, as the water-drop hollows the stone, continue to inculcate the same prejudice. Books of history, of political science, of social economy, are stuffed with this respect for law; even the physical sciences have been pressed into the service by introducing artificial modes of expression, borrowed from theology and arbitrary power, into knowledge which is purely the result of observation. Thus our intelligence is successfully befogged, and always to maintain our respect for law. The same work is done by newspapers. They have not an article which does not preach respect for law, even where the third page proves every day to demonstrate the imbecility of that law, and shows how it is dragged through every variety of mud and filth by those charged with its administration. Servility before the law has become a virtue, and I doubt if there was ever even a revolutionist who did not begin in his youth as the defender of law against what are generally called "abuses," although these last are inevitable consequences of the law itself.
Art pipes in unison with would-be science. The hero of the sculptor, the painter, the musician, shields Law beneath his buckler, and with flashing eyes and distended nostrils stands ever ready to strike down the man who would lay hands upon her. Temples are raised to her; revolutionists themselves hesitate to touch the high priests consecrated to her service, and when revolution is about to sweep away some ancient institution, it is still by law that it endeavours to sanctify the deed.
The confused mass of rules of conduct called Law, which has been bequeathed to us by slavery, serfdom, feudalism, and royalty, has taken the place of those stone monsters before whom human victims used to be immolated, and whom slavish savages dared not even touch lest they should be slain by the thunderbolts of heaven.
This new worship has been established with especial success since the rise to supreme power of the middle class — since the great French Revolution. Under the ancien regime, men spoke little of laws; unless, indeed, it were, with Montesquieu, Rousseau and Voltaire, to oppose them to royal caprice; obedience to the good pleasure of the king and his lackeys was compulsory on pain of hanging or imprisonment. But during and after the revolutions when the lawyers rose to power, they did their best to strengthen the principle upon which their ascendancy depended. The middle class at once accepted as a dyke to dam up the popular torrent. The priestly crew hastened to sanctify it, to save their bark from foundering amid the breakers. Finally the people received it as an improvement upon the arbitrary authority and violence of the past.
To understand this, we must transport ourselves in imagination into the eighteenth century. Our hearts must have ached at the story of the atrocities committed by the all-powerful nobles of that time upon the men and women of the people, before we can understand what must have been the magic influence upon the peasant's mind of the words, "Equality before the law, obedience to the law without distinction of birth or fortune." He, who until then, had been treated more cruelly than a beast, he who had never had any rights, he who had never obtained justice against the most revolting actions on the part of a noble, unless in revenge he killed him and was hanged — he saw himself recognized by this maxim, at least in theory, at least with regard to his personal rights, as the equal of his lord. Whatever this law might be, it promised to affect lord and peasant alike; it proclaimed the equality of rich and poor before the judge. The promise was a lie, and to-day we know it; but at that period it was an advance, a homage to justice, as hypocrisy is a homage rendered to truth. This is the reason that when the saviours of the menaced middle class (the Robespierres and the Dantons) took their stand upon the writings of the Rousseaus and the Voltaires, and proclaimed "respect for law, the same for every man," the people accepted the compromise; for their revolutionary impetus had already spent its force in the contest with a foe whose ranks drew closer day by day, they bowed their neck beneath the yoke of law to save themselves from the arbitrary power of their lords.
The Middle Class has ever since continued to make the most of this maxim, which with another principle, that of representative government, sums up the whole philosophy of the bourgeois age, the XIX century. It has preached this doctrine in its schools, it has propagated it in its writings, it has moulded its art and science to the same purpose, it has thrust its beliefs into every hole and corner — like a pious Englishwoman, who slips tracts under the door — and it has done all this so successfully that to-day we behold the issue in the detestable fact, that, at the very moment when the spirit of turbulent criticism is re-awakening, men who long for freedom begin the attempt to obtain it by entreating their masters to be kind enough to protect them by modifying the laws which these masters themselves have created!
But times and tempers are changed since a hundred years ago. Rebels are everywhere to be found, who no longer wish to obey the law without knowing whence it comes, what are its uses, and whither arises the obligation to submit to it, and the reverence with which it is encompassed. The rebels of our day are criticizing the very foundations of Society, which have hitherto been held sacred, and first and foremost amongst them that fetish, law. Just for this reason the upheaval which is at hand is no mere insurrection, it is a Revolution.
The critics analyse the sources of law, and find there either a god, product of the terrors of the savages, and stupid, paltry and malicious as the priests who vouch for its supernatural origin, or else, bloodshed, conquest by fire and sword. They study the characteristics of law, and instead of perpetual growth corresponding to that of the human race, they find its distinctive trait to be immobility, a tendency to crystallise what should be modified and developed day by day. They ask how law has been maintained, and in its service they see the atrocities of Byzantinism, the cruelties of the Inquisition, the tortures of the Middle Ages, living flesh torn by the lash of the executioner, chains, clubs, axes, the gloomy dungeons of prisons, agony, curses and tears. In our own days they see, as before, the axe, the cord, the rifle, the prison; on the one hand, the brutalised prisoner, reduced to the condition of a caged beast by the debasement of his whole moral being, and on the other hand, the judge, stripped of every feeling which does honour to human nature, living like a visionary in a world of legal fictions, reveling in the infliction of imprisonment and death, without even suspecting, in the cold malignity of his madness, the abyss of degradation into which he has himself fallen before the eyes of those whom he condemns.
They see a race of law-makers legislating without knowing what their laws are about; to-day voting a law on the sanitation of towns, without the faintest notion of hygiene, to-morrow making regulations for the armament of troops, without so much as understanding a gun; making laws about teaching and education without ever having given a lesson of any sort, or even an honest education to their own children; legislating in all directions, but never forgetting the penalties to be meted out to ragamuffins, the prison and the galleys, which are to be the portion of men a thousand times less immoral than these legislators themselves.
Finally, they see the gaoler on the way to lose all human feeling, the detective trained as a blood-hound, the police spy despising himself; "informing," metamorphosed into a virtue; corruption, erected into a system; all the vices, all the evil qualities of mankind countenanced and cultivated to insure the triumph of law.
All this we see, and, therefore, instead of inanely repeating the old formula, "Respect the law," we say, "Despise law and all its attributes!" In place of the cowardly phrase, "Obey the law," our cry is "Revolt against all laws!"
Only compare the misdeeds accomplished in the name of each law, with the good it has been able to effect, and weigh carefully both good and evil, and you will see if we are right.
Relatively speaking, law is a product of modern times. For ages and ages mankind lived without any written law, even that graved in symbols upon the entrance stones of a temple. During that period, human relations were simply regulated by customs, habits and usages, made sacred by constant repetition, and acquired by each person in childhood, exactly as he learned how to obtain his food by hunting, cattle-rearing, or agriculture.
All human societies have passed through this primitive phase, and to this day a large proportion of mankind have no written law. Every tribe has its own manners and customs; customary law, as the jurists say. It has social habits, and that suffices to maintain cordial relations between the inhabitants of the village, the members of the tribe or community. Even amongst ourselves — the "civilized" nations — when we leave large towns, and go into the country, we see that there the mutual relations of the inhabitants are still regulated according to ancient and generally accepted customs, and not according to the written law of the legislators. The peasants of Russia, Italy and Spain, and even of a large part of France and England, have no conception of written law. It only meddles with their lives to regulate their relations with the State. As to relations between themselves, though these are sometimes very complex, they are simply regulated according to ancient custom. Formerly, this was the case with mankind in general.
Two distinctly marked currents of custom are revealed by analysis of the usages of primitive people.
As man does not live in a solitary state, habits and feelings develop within him which are useful for the preservation of society and the propagation of the race. Without social feelings and usages, life in common would have been absolutely impossible. It is not law which has established them; they are anterior to all law. Neither is it religion which has ordained them; they are anterior to all religions. They are found amongst all animals living in society. They are spontaneously developed by the very nature of things, like those habits in animals which men call instinct. They spring from a process of evolution, which is useful, and, indeed, necessary, to keep society together in the struggle it is forced to maintain for existence. Savages end by no longer eating one another, because they find it in the long run more advantageous to devote themselves to some sort of cultivation, than to enjoy the pleasure of feasting upon the flesh of an aged relative once a year. Many travelers have depicted the manners of absolutely independent tribes, where laws and chiefs are unknown, but where the members of the tribe have given up stabbing one another in every dispute, because the habit of living in society has ended by developing certain feelings of fraternity and oneness of interest, and they prefer appealing to a third person to settle their differences. The hospitality of primitive peoples, respect for human life, the sense of reciprocal obligation, compassion for the weak, courage, extending even to the sacrifice of self for others, which is first learnt for the sake of children and friends, and later, for that of members of the same community — all these qualities are developed in man anterior to all law, independently of all religion, as in the case of the social animals. Such feelings and practices are the inevitable results of social life. Without being, as say priests and metaphysicians, inherent in man, such qualities are the consequence of life in common.
But side by side with these customs, necessary to the life of societies and the preservation of the race, other desires, other passions, and therefore other habits and customs, are evolved in human association. The desire to dominate others and impose one's own will upon them; the desire to seize upon the products of the labour of a neighbouring tribe; the desire to surround oneself with comforts without producing anything, whilst slaves provide their master with the means of procuring every sort of pleasure and luxury — these selfish, personal desires give rise to another current of habits and customs. The priest and the warrior, the charlatan who makes a profit out of superstition, and after freeing himself from the fear of the devil, cultivates it in others; and the bully, who procures the invasion and pillage of his neighbours, that he may return laden with booty, and followed by slaves; these two, hand in hand, have succeeded in imposing upon primitive society customs advantageous to both of them, but tending to perpetuate their domination of the masses. Profiting by the indolence, the fears, the inertia of the crowd, and thanks to the continual repetition of the same acts, they have permanently established customs which have become a solid basis for their own domination.
For this purpose, they would have made use, in the first place, of that tendency to run in a groove, so highly developed in mankind. In children and all savages it attains striking proportions, and it may also be observed in animals. Man, when he is at all superstitious, is always afraid to introduce any sort of change into existing conditions; he generally venerates what is ancient. "Our fathers did so and so; they got on pretty well; they brought you up; they were not unhappy; do the same!" the old say to the young, every time the latter wish to alter things. The unknown frightens them, they prefer to cling to the past, even when that past represents poverty, oppression and slavery. It may even be said that the more miserable a man is, the more he dreads every sort of change, lest it may make him more wretched still. Some ray of hope, a few scraps of comfort, must penetrate his gloomy abode before he can begin to desire better things, to criticise the old ways of living, and prepare to imperil them for the sake of bringing about a change. So long as he is not imbued with hope, so long as he is not freed from the tutelage of those who utilise his superstition and his fears, he prefers remaining in his former position. If the young desire any change, the old raise a cry of alarm against the innovators. Some savages would rather die than transgress the customs of their country, because they have been told from childhood that the least infraction of established routine would bring ill-luck, and ruin the whole tribe. Even in the present day, what numbers of politicians, economists, and would-be revolutionists act under the same impression, and cling to a vanishing past. How many care only to seek for precedents. How many fiery innovators are mere copyists of bygone revolutions.
The spirit of routine, originating in superstition, indolence, and cowardice, has in all times been the mainstay of oppression. In primitive human societies, it was cleverly turned to account by priests and military chiefs. They perpetuated customs useful only to themselves, and succeeded in imposing them on the whole tribe. So long as this conservative spirit could be exploited so as to assure the chief in his encroachments upon individual liberty, so long as the only inequalities between men were the work of nature, and these were not increased a hundred-fold by the concentration of power and wealth, there was no need for law, and the formidable paraphernalia of tribunals and ever-augmenting penalties to enforce it.
But as society became more and more divided into two hostile classes, one seeking to establish its domination, the other struggling to escape, the strife began. Now the conqueror was in a hurry to secure the results of his actions in a permanent form, he tried to place them beyond question, to make them holy and venerable by every means in his power. Law made its appearance under the sanction of the priest, and the warrior's club was placed at its service. Its office was to render immutable such customs as were to the advantage of the dominant minority. Military authority undertook to ensure obedience. This new function was a fresh guarantee to the power of the warrior; now he had not only mere brute force at his service; he was the defender of law.
If law, however, presented nothing but a collection of prescriptions serviceable to rulers, it would find some difficulty in insuring acceptance and obedience. Well, the legislators confounded in one code the two currents of custom, of which we have just been speaking, the maxims which represent principles of morality and social union wrought out as a result of life in common, and the mandates, which are meant to ensure external existence to inequality. Customs, absolutely essential to the very being of society, are, in the code, cleverly intermingled with usages imposed by the ruling caste, and both claim equal respect from the word. "Do not kill," says the code, and hastens to add, "And pay tithes to the priest." "Do not steal," says the code, and immediately after, "He who refuses to pay taxes, shall have his hand struck off."
Such was law; and it has maintained its two-fold character to this day. Its origin is the desire of the ruling class to give permanence to customs imposed by themselves for their own advantage. Its character is the skilful commingling of customs useful to society, customs which have no need of law to insure respect, with other customs useful only to rulers, injurious to the mass of the people, and maintained only by the fear of punishment.
Like individual capital, which was born of fraud and violence, and developed under the auspices of authority, law has no title to the respect of men. Born of violence and superstition, and established in the interests of consumer, priest and rich exploiter, it must be utterly destroyed on the day when the people desire to break their chains.
We shall be still better convinced of this when, in the next chapter, we have analysed the ulterior development of laws under the auspices of religion, authority and the existing parliamentary system.
We have seen in the previous chapter how law originated in established usage and custom, and how, from the beginning it has represented a skilful mixture of social habits, necessary to the preservation of the human race, with other customs, imposed by those who used popular superstition, as well as the right of the strongest for their own advantage. This double character of law has determined its own later development during the growth of political organisation. Whilst in the course of ages the nucleus of social custom inscribed in law has been subjected to but slight and gradual modifications, the other portion has been largely developed in defections indicated by the interests of the dominant classes, and to the injury of the classes they oppress. From time to time these dominant classes have allowed a law to be extorted from them which presented, or appeared to present, some guarantee for the disinherited. But then such laws have but repealed a previous law, made for the advantage of the ruling caste. "The best laws," says [Thomas Henry] Buckle, "were those which repealed the preceding ones." But what terrible efforts have been needed, what rivers of blood have been spilt, every time there has been a question of the repeal of one of these fundamental enactments serving to hold the people in fetters. Before she could abolish the vestiges of serfdom and feudal rights, and break up the power of the royal court, France was forced to pass through four years of revolution and twenty years of war. Decades of conflict are needful to repeal the least of the iniquitous laws, bequeathed us by the past, and even then they scarcely disappear except in periods of revolution.
The history of the genesis of capital has already been told by Socialists many times. They have described how it was born of war and pillage, of slavery and serfdom, of modern fraud and exploitation. They have shown how it is nourished by the blood of the worker, and how little by little it has conquered the whole world. The same story, concerning the genesis and development of law has yet to be told. As usual, the popular intelligence has stolen a march upon men of books. It has already put together the philosophy of this history, and is busy laying down its essential landmarks.
Law, in its quality of guarantee of the results of pillage, slavery and exploitation, has followed the same phrases of development as capital; twin brother and sister, they have advanced hand in hand, sustaining one another with the suffering of mankind. In every country in Europe their history is approximately the same. It has differed only in detail; the main facts are alike; and to glance at the development of law in France or Germany is to know its essential traits, its phases of development, in most of the European nations.
In the first instance, law was a national part of contract. Such a contract was agreed upon between the legions and people at the Champs de Mars,[1] a relic of the same period is preserved even yet in the Field of May of the primitive Swiss cantons despite the alterations effected by the interference of centralising and middle-class civilisation.
It is true that this contract was not always freely accepted. Even in those early days the rich and strong were imposing their will upon the rest. But at all events they encountered an obstacle to their encroachments in the mass of the people, who often made them feel their power in return.
But as the Church on one side and the nobles on the other, succeeded in enthralling the people, the right of law-making escaped from the hands of the nation and passed into those of the privileged orders. Fortified by the wealth accumulating in her coffers, the Church extended her authority; she tampered more and more with private life, and under pretext of saving souls, she seized upon the labour of her serfs, she gathered taxes from every class, she increased her jurisdiction, she multiplied penalties, and enriched herself in proportion to the number of offences committed, for the produce of every fine poured into her coffers. Laws had no longer any connection with the interest of the nation. "They might have been supposed to emanate rather from a council of religious fanatics than from legislators," observes an historian of French Law.
At the same time, as the baron likewise extended his authority over labourers in the fields and artisans in the towns, he, too, became legislator and judge. The few relics of national law dating from the tenth century are merely agreements regulating service, statute labour, and tribute due from serf and vassals to their lord. The legislators of that period were a handful of brigands organised for the plunder of a people daily becoming more peaceful, as they applied themselves to agricultural pursuits. These robbers exploited the feelings for justice inherent in the people, they posed as the administrators of that justice, made a source of revenue for themselves out of its fundamental principles and concocted laws to maintain their own dominations.
Later on, these laws collected and classified by jurists, formed the foundation of our modern codes. And are we to talk about respecting these codes, the legacy of baron and priest?
The first revolution, the revolt of the townships, was successful in abolishing a portion only of these laws, the charters of enfranchised towns are, for the most part, a mere compromise between baronial and episcopal legislation, and the new relations created within the free borough itself. Yet what a difference between these laws, and the laws we have now! The town did not take upon itself to imprison and execute citizens for reasons of State: it was content to expel anyone who plotted with the enemies of the city, and to raze his house to the ground. It confined itself to imposing fines for so-called "crimes and misdemeanours" and in the townships of the twelfth century may even be discerned the just principle to-day forgotten, which holds the whole community responsible for the misdoing of each of its members. The societies of that time looked upon crime as an accident or misfortune; a conception common amongst the Russian peasantry at this moment. Therefore, they did not admit of the principle of personal vengeance as preached by the Bible, but considered that the blame for each misdeed reverted to the whole society. It needed all the influence of the Bysantine Church, which imported into the West the refined cruelties of Eastern despotism, to introduce into the manners of Gauls and Germans the penalty of death, and the horrible fortunes afterwards inflicted on those regarded as criminals. Just in the same way, it needed all the influence of the Roman code, the product of the corruption of Imperial Rome, to introduce the notions as to absolute property in land, which have overthrown the communistic customs of primitive people.
As we know, the free townships were not able to hold their own. Torn by intestine dissensions between rich and poor, burgher and serf, they fell an easy prey to royalty. And as royalty acquired fresh strength, the right of legislation passed more and more into the hands of a clique of courtiers. Appeal to the nation, was made only to sanction the taxes demanded by the King. Parliament summoned at intervals of two centuries, according to the good pleasure or caprice of the Court, "Councils Extraordinary," Assemblies of Notables, Ministers, scarce heeding the "grievances of the King's subjects" — these are the legislators of France. Later still, when all power is concentrated in a single man, who can say "I am the State," edicts are concocted in the "secret counsels of the Prince," according to the whim of a minister, or of an imbecile King; and subjects must obey on pain of death. All judicial guarantees are abolished; the nation is the serf of royalty, and of a handful of courtiers. And at this period the most horrible penalties startle our gaze — the wheel, the stake, flaying alive, tortures of every description, invented by the sick fancy of monks and madmen, seeking delight in the sufferings of executed criminals.
The great Revolution began the demolition of this framework of law, bequeathed to us by feudalism and royalty. But after having demolished some portions of the ancient edifice, the Revolution delivered over the power of law-making to the bourgeoisie, who, in their turn, began to raise a fresh framework of laws, intended to maintain and perpetuate middle-class domination amongst the masses. Their Parliament makes laws right and left, and mountains of law accumulate with frightful rapidity. But what are all these laws at bottom?
The major portion have but one object — to protect private property, i.e., wealth acquired by the exploitation of man by man. Their aim is to open out to capital fresh fields for exploitation, and to sanction the new forms which that exploitation continually assumes, as capital swallows up another branch of human activity, railways, telegraphs, electric light, chemical industries, the expression of man's thought in literature and science, etc. The object of the rest of these laws is fundamentally the same. They exist to keep up the machinery of government, which serves to secure to capital the exploitation and monopoly of the wealth produced. Magistrature, police, army, public instruction, finance, all serve one God — capital; all have but one object — to facilitate the exploitation of the worker by the capitalist. Analyse all the laws passed for the last eighty years and you will find nothing but this. The protection of the person, which is put forward as the true mission of law occupies an imperceptible space amongst them, for, existing society, assaults upon the person, directly dictated by hatred and brutality, tend to disappear. Nowadays, if anyone is murdered, it is generally for the sake of robbing him; rarely from personal vengeance. But if this class of crimes and misdemeanours is continually diminishing, we certainly do not owe the change to legislation. It is due to the growth of humanitarianism in our societies, to our increasingly social habits rather than to the prescriptions of our laws. Repeal to-morrow every law dealing with the protection of the person, and to-morrow stop all proceedings for assault, and the number of attempts, dictated by personal vengeance and by brutality, would not be augmented by one single instance.
It will, perhaps, be objected that, during the last fifty years, a good many liberal laws have been enacted. But, if these laws are analysed, it will be discovered that this liberal legislation consists in the repeal of the laws bequeathed to us by the barbarism of preceding centuries. Every liberal law, every radical programme, may be summed up in these words, abolition of laws grown irksome to the middle-class itself, and as an extension to all citizens of liberties enjoyed by the townships of the twelfth century. The abolition of capital punishment, trial by jury for all "crimes" (there was a more liberal jury in the twelfth century), the election of magistrates, the right of bringing public officials to trial, the abolition of standing armies, free instruction, etc., everything that is pointed out as an invention of modern liberalism, is but a return to the freedom which existed before Church and King had laid hands upon every manifestation of human life.
Thus the protection of exploitation directly by laws on property, and indirectly by the maintenance of the State, is both the spirit and the substance of our modern codes, and the one function of our costly legislative machinery. But it is time we gave up being satisfied with mere phrases, and learned to appreciate their real signification. The law, which on its first appearance presented itself as a compendium of customs useful for the preservation of society, is now perceived to be nothing but an instrument for the maintenance of exploitation, and the domination of the toiling masses by rich idlers. At the present day its civilising mission is nil; it has but one object, to bolster up exploitation.
This is what is told us by history as to the development of law. Is it in virtue of this history that we are called upon to respect it? Certainly not. It has no more title to respect than capital; the fruit of pillage; and the first duty of the revolutionists of the nineteenth century will be to make a bonfire of all existing laws, as they will of all titles to property.
The millions of laws which exist for the regulation of humanity, appear upon investigation to be divided into three principal categories — protection of property, protection of persons, protection of government. And by analysing each of these three categories, we arrive at the same logical and necessary conclusion: the uselessness and hurtfulness of law.
Socialists know what is meant by protection of property. Laws on property are not made to guarantee either to the individual or to society the enjoyment of the produce of their own labour. On the contrary, they are made to rob the producer of a part of what he has created, and to secure to certain other people that portion of the produce which they have stolen either from the producer or from society as a whole. When, for example, the law establishes Mr. So-and-So's right to a house, it is not establishing his right to a cottage he has built for himself, or to a house he has erected with the help of some of his friends. In that case no one would have disputed his right. On the contrary, the law is establishing his right to a house which is not the product of his labour; first of all, because he has had it built for him by others to whom he has not paid the full value of their work; and next because that house represents a social value, which he could not have produced for himself. The law is establishing his right to what belongs to everybody in general to nobody in particular. The same house built in the midst of Siberia would not have the value it possesses in a large town, and, as we know, that value arises from the labour of something like fifty generations of men who have built the town, beautified it, supplied it with water and gas, fine promenades, colleges, theatres, shops, railways and roads leading in all directions. Thus, by recognising the right of Mr. So-and-So to a particular house in Paris, London or Rouen, the law is unjustly appropriating to him a certain portion of the produce of the labour of mankind in general. And it is precisely because this appropriation and all other forms of property, bearing the same character, are a crying injustice, that a whole arsenal of laws, and a whole army of soldiers, policemen and judges are needed to maintain it against the good sense and just feeling inherent in humanity.
Well, half our laws, the civil code in each country, serves no other purpose than to maintain this appropriation, this monopoly for the benefit of certain individuals, against the whole of mankind. Three-fourths of the causes decided by the tribunals are nothing but quarrels between monopolists — two robbers disputing over their booty. And a great many of our criminal laws have the same object in view, their end being to keep the workman in a subordinate position towards his employer, and thus afford security for exploitation.
As for guaranteeing the product of his labour to the producer, there are no laws which even attempt such a thing. It is so simple and natural, so much a part of the manners and customs of mankind; that law has not given it so much as a thought. Open brigandage, sword in hand, is no feature of our age. Neither does one workman ever come and dispute the produce of his labour with another. If they have a misunderstanding they settle it by calling in a third person, without having recourse to law. The only person who exacts from another what the other has produced, is the proprietor, who comes in and deducts the lion's share. As for humanity in general, it everywhere respects the right of each to what he has created, without the interposition of any special laws.
As all the laws about property, which make up thick volumes of codes, and are the delight of our lawyers, have no other object than to protect the unjust appropriating of human labour by certain monopolists, there is no reason for their existence, and, on the day of the Revolution, social revolutionists are thoroughly determined to put an end to them. Indeed, a bonfire might be made with perfect justice of all laws bearing upon the so-called "rights of property," all title-deeds, all registers, in a word, of all that is in any way connected with an institution which will soon be looked upon as a blot in the history of humanity, as humiliating as the slavery and serfdom of past ages.
The remarks just made upon laws concerning property are quite as applicable to the second category of laws; those for the maintenance of government, i.e., Constitutional Law.
It again is a complete arsenal of laws, decrees, ordinances, orders in council, and what not, all serving to protect the diverse forms of representative government, delegated or usurped, beneath which humanity is writhing. We know very well — Anarchists have often enough pointed out in their perpetual criticism of the various forms of government — that the mission of all governments, monarchical, constitutional, or republican, is to protect and maintain by force the privileges of the classes in possession, the aristocracy, clergy and traders. A good third of our laws — and each century possesses some tens of thousands of them — the fundamental laws on taxes, excise duties, the organisation of ministerial departments and their offices, of the army, the police, the Church, etc., have no other end than to maintain, patch up, and develop the administrative machine. And this machine in its turn serves almost entirely to protect the privileges of the possessing classes. Analyse all these laws, observe them in action day by day, and you will discover that not one is worth preserving.
About such laws there can be no two opinions. Not only Anarchists, but more or less revolutionary radicals also, are agreed that the only use to be made of laws concerning the organisation of government is to fling them into the fire.
The third category of law still remains to be considered, that relating to the protection of the person and the detection and prevention of "crime." This is the most important, because most prejudices attach to it; because, if law enjoys a certain amount of consideration, it is in consequence of the belief that this species of law is absolutely indispensable to the maintenance of security in our societies. These are laws developed from the nucleus of customs useful to human communities, which have been turned to account by rulers to sanctify their own domination. The authority of the chiefs of tribes, of rich families in towns, and of the king, depended upon their judicial functions, and even down to the present day, whenever the necessity of government is spoken of, its function as supreme judge is the thing implied. "Without a government men would tear one another to pieces," argues the village orator. "The ultimate end of all government is to secure twelve honest jurymen to every accused person," said Burke.
Well, in spite of all the prejudices existing on this subject, it is quite time that anarchists should boldly declare this category of laws as useless and injurious as the preceding ones.
First of all, as to so-called "crimes" — assaults upon persons — it is well-known that two-thirds, and often as many as three-fourths, of such "crimes" are instigated by the desire to obtain possession of someone's wealth. This immense class of so-called "crimes and misdemeanours" will disappear on the day on which private property ceases to exist. "But," it will be said, "there will always be brutes who will attempt the lives of their fellow citizens, who will lay their hands to a knife in every quarrel, and revenge the slightest offence by murder, if there are not laws to restrain and punishments to withhold them." This refrain is repeated every time the right of society to punish is called in question.
Yet there is one fact upon this head which at the present time, is thoroughly established; the severity of punishment does not diminish the amount of crime. Hang, and, if you like, quarter murderers, and the number of murders will not decrease by one. On the other hand, abolish the penalty of death, and there will not be one murder more; there will be fewer. Statistics prove it. But if the harvest is good, and bread cheap, and the weather fine, the number of murders immediately decreases. This again is proved by statistics. The amount of crime always augments and diminishes in proportion to the price of provisions and the states of the weather. Not that all murders are actuated by hunger. That is not the case. But when the harvest is good and provisions are at an obtainable price, and when the sun shines, men, lighter hearted and less miserable than usual, do not give way to gloomy passions, do not from trivial motives, plunge a knife into the bosom of a fellow creature.
Moreover, it is also a well-known fact that the fear of punishment has never stopped a single murderer. He who kills his neighbour from revenge or misery does not reason much about consequence; and there have been few murderers who were not firmly convinced that they should escape prosecution.
Without speaking of a society in which a man will receive a better education, in which the development of all his faculties, and the possibility of exercising them, will procure him so many enjoyments, that he will not seek to poison them by remorse — without speaking of the society of the future — even in our society, even with those sad products of misery, whom we see to-day in the public-houses of great cities — on the day when no punishment is inflicted upon murderers, the number of murders will not augment by a single case; and it is extremely probable that it will be, on the contrary, diminished by all those cases which are due at present to habitual criminals, who have been brutalised in prison.
We are continually being told of the benefits conferred by law, and the beneficial effect of penalties, but have the speakers ever attempted to strike a balance between the benefits attributed to laws and penalties, and the degrading effect of these penalties upon humanity? Only calculate all the evil passions awakened in mankind by the atrocious punishments formerly inflicted in our streets! Man is the cruelest animal upon earth; and who has pampered and developed the cruel instincts unknown, even amongst monkeys; is it is not the king, the judge, and the priests, armed with law, who caused flesh to be torn off in strips, boiling pitch to be poured into wounds, limbs to be dislocated, bones to be crushed, men to be sawn asunder to maintain their authority? Only estimate the torrent of depravity let loose in human society by the "informing" which is countenanced by judges, and paid in hard cash by governments, under pretext of assisting in the discovery of "crime." Only go into the gaols and study what man becomes when he is deprived of freedom and shut up with other depraved beings, steeped in the vice and corruption which oozes from the very walls of our existing prisons. Only remember that the more these prisons are reformed, the more detestable they become; our model modern penitentiaries are a hundred-fold more abominable than the dungeons of the middle ages. Finally, consider what corruption, depravity of mind, is kept up amongst men by the idea of obedience, the very essence of law; of chastisement; of authority having the right to punish, to judge irrespective of our conscience and the esteem of our friends; of the necessity for executioners, gaolers and informers — in a word, by all the attributes of law and authority. Consider all this, and you will assuredly agree with us in saying that a law inflicting penalties is an abomination which should cease to exist.
Peoples without political organisation, and therefore less depraved than ourselves, have perfectly understood that the man who is called "criminal" is simply unfortunate; that the remedy is not to flog him, to chain him up, or to kill him on the scaffold or in prison, but to relieve him by the most brotherly care, by treatment based on equality, by the usages of life amongst honest men. In the next revolution we hope that this cry will go forth:
"Burn the guillotine; demolish the prisons; drive away the judges, policemen and informers — the impurest race upon the face of the earth; treat as a brother the man who has been led by passion to do ill to his fellow; above all take from the ignoble products of middle-class idleness the possibility of displaying their vices in attractive colours; and be sure that but few crimes will mar our society."
The main supports of crime are idleness, law and authority; laws about property, about government, laws about penalties and misdemeanours; and authority, which takes upon itself to manufacture these laws and to apply them.
No more laws! No more judges! Liberty, equality, and practical human sympathy are the only effectual barriers we can oppose to the anti-social instincts of certain amongst us.
[1] The annual assembly of the early Franks, originally held in March, there the first month of the year.


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Spa Bundles with Gua Sha Stone
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The Venerable Ledi Sayadaw was born in 1846 in Saing-pyin village, Dipeyin township in the Shwebo district (currently Monywa district) of northern Burma (nowadays called Myanmar.) His childhood name was Maung Tet Khaung. (Maung is the Burmese title for boys and young men equivalent to "master." Tet means "climbing upward" and Khaung indicates "roof" or "summit.") It proved to be an appropriate name since young Maung Tet Khaung indeed climbed to the summit in all his endeavours.
In his village he attended the traditional monastery school where the bhikkhus (monks) taught the children to read and write in Burmese as well as how to recite many Pali texts: the Mangala Sutta, mettā Sutta, Jatakastories, and so on. Because of these ubiquitous monastery schools Myanmar has traditionally had a very high literacy rate.
At the age of eight, he began to study with his first teacher U Nanda-dhaja Sayadaw1, and he ordained as a samanera (novice) under the same Sayadaw at the age of fifteen. He took the name Nana-dhaja (the banner of knowledge). His monastic education included Pali grammar and various texts from the Pali canon with a specialty in Abhidhammattha-sangaha, a commentary which serves as a guide to the Abhidhamma2 section of the canon.
Later in his life he wrote a somewhat controversial commentary on Abhidhammattha-sangaha, called Paramattha-dipani (Manual of Ultimate Truth), in which he corrected certain mistakes he had found in the earlier (and then accepted) commentary on that work. His corrections were eventually accepted by the bhikkhus and his work became the standard reference.
During his days as a samanera, in the middle part of the nineteenth century (before modern lighting) he would routinely study the written texts during the day and join the bhikkhus and other samaneras in recitation from memory after dark. Working in this way he mastered the Abhidhamma texts.
When he was eighteen, Samanera Nana-dhaja briefly left the robes and returned to his life as a layman. He had become dissatisfied with his education, feeling it was too narrrowly restricted to the Tipitaka3. After about six months his first teacher and another influential teacher, Myinhtin Sayadaw, sent for him and tried to persuade him to return to the monastic life; but he refused.
Myinhtin Sayadaw suggested that he should at least continue with his education. The young Maung Tet Khaung was very bright and eager to learn, so he readily agreed to this suggestion.
"Would you be interested in learning the Vedas (ancient sacred writings of Hinduism)?" asked Myinhtin Sayadaw.
"Yes, venerable sir," answered Maung Tet Khaung.
"Well, then, you must become a samanera," the Sayadaw replied. "Otherwise Sayadaw U Gandhama, of Yeu village, will not take you as his student."
"I will become a samanera," he agreed. In this way, he returned to the life of a samanera, never to leave the robes of a monk again. Later on, he confided to one of his disciples, "At first I was hoping to earn a living with the knowledge of the Vedas by telling peoples' fortunes. But I was more fortunate in that I became a samaneraagain. My teachers were very wise; with their boundless love and compassion, they saved me."
The brilliant Samanera Nana-dhaja, under the care of Gandhama Sayadaw, mastered the Vedas in eight months and continued his study of the Tipitaka. At the age of twenty, on 20 April 1866, he took the higher ordination to become a bhikkhu under his old teacher U Nanda-dhaja Sayadaw, who became his preceptor (one who gives the precepts).
In 1867, just prior to the monsoon retreat, Bhikkhu Nana-dhaja left his preceptor and the Monywa district where he had grown up, in order to continue his studies in Mandalay.
Mandalay was the royal capital of Burma at that time, during the rule of King Min Don Min (who ruled 1853-1878), and was the most important centre of learning in the country. He studied there under several of the leading Sayadaws and learned lay scholars as well. He resided primarily in the Maha-Jotikarama monastery and studied with Ven. San-Kyaung Sayadaw, a teacher who is famous in Myanmar for translating the Visuddhimagga (Path of Purification) into Burmese.
During his time in Mandalay, King Min Don Min sponsored the fifth council, calling bhikkhus from far and wide to recite and purify the Tipitaka. It was held in Mandalay in 1871 and the authenticated texts were carved into 729 marble slabs that stand today (each slab housed under a small pagoda) surrounding the larger golden Kuthodaw Pagoda at the foot of Mandalay hill. At this council, Bhikkhu Nana-dhaja helped in the editing and translating of the Abhidhamma texts.
During the time of his studies in Mandalay, Ven. San-Kyaung Sayadaw gave an examination of twenty questions for two thousand students. Bhikkhu Nana-dhaja was the only one who was able to answer all the questions satisfactorily. These answers were later published in 1880, under the title Parami-Dipani (Manual of Perfections). This was the first of many books to be published in Pali and Burmese by Ven. Ledi Sayadaw.
After eight years as a bhikkhu, having passed all his examinations, Ven. Nana-dhaja was qualified as a beginning Pali teacher at the San-Kyaung monastery (also known as the Maha-Jotikarama monastery) where he had been studying.
For eight more years he remained there, teaching and continuing his own scholastic endeavours, until 1882 when he moved to Monywa. He was now thirty-six years old. At that time Monywa was a small district centre on the east bank of the Chindwin River, which was renowned as a place where the teaching method included the entire Tipitaka, rather than just selected portions.
While he was teaching Pali to the bhikkhus and samaneras at Monywa, his habit was to come to town during the day for his teaching duties. In the evening he would cross to the west bank of the Chindwin river and spend the nights in meditation in a small vihara (monastery) on the side of Lak-pan-taung mountain. Although we do not have any definitive information, it seems likely that this was the period when he began practicing Vipassana in the traditional Burmese fashion: with Anapana (respiration) and vedana (sensation).
The British conquered upper Burma in 1885 and sent the last king, Thibaw (who ruled from 1878-1885), into exile. The next year, 1886, Ven. Nana-dhaja went into retreat in Ledi forest, just to the north of Monywa. After a while many bhikkhus started coming to him there, requesting him to teach them. A monastery to house them was built and named Ledi-tawya monastery. From this monastery he took the name by which he is best known: Ledi Sayadaw.
It is said that one of the main reasons that Monywa grew to be a larger town, as it is today, was because so many people were attracted there to Ledi Sayadaw's monastery. While he taught many aspiring students at Ledi-tawya, he retained his practice of retiring to his small cottage vihara across the river for his own meditation.
When he had been in the Ledi forest monastery for over ten years his main scholastic works began to be published. The first was Paramattha-Dipani (Manual of Ultimate Truth), mentioned above, published in 1897. His second book of this period was Nirutta Dipani, a book on Pali grammar. Because of these books he gained the reputation as one of the most learned bhikkhus in Burma.
Though Ledi Sayadaw was based at the Ledi-tawya monastery, he travelled throughout Burma at times, teaching both meditation and scriptural courses. He is indeed a rare example of a bhikkhu who was able to excel in both pariyatti (the theory of Dhamma) as well as patipatti (the practice of Dhamma) in his life. It was during these trips up and down Burma that many of his published works were written. For example, he wrote the Paticca-samuppada Dipani in two days while travelling by boat from Mandalay to Prome. He had no reference books with him, but he had a thorough knowledge of the Tipitaka, so he needed none. In the Manuals of Buddhism there are seventy-six manuals (dipanis), commentaries, essays, and so on, listed under his authorship, but this is not a complete list of his works.
Later he also wrote many books on Dhamma in Burmese. He said he wanted to write in such a way that even a simple farmer could understand. Before his time, it was not usual to write on Dhamma subjects so that lay people could have access to them. Even while teaching orally, the bhikkhus would commonly recite long passages in Pali and then translate the passage literally, which was very hard for the ordinary person to understand. It must have been that the strength of Ledi Sayadaw's practical understanding and the resultant mettā (loving-kindness), overflowed in his desire to spread Dhamma to all levels of society. His Paramattha-sankhepa, a book of 2,000 Burmese verses which translates the Abhidhammattha-sangaha, was written for young people to learn and is still very popular today. His followers started many associations which promoted the learning of Abhidhamma by using this book.
In his travels around Burma Ledi Sayadaw also discouraged the use of cow meat. He wrote one book called Go-mamsa-matika which urged people not to kill cows for food and promoted a vegetarian diet in general.
It was during this period, just after the turn of the century, that the Ven. Ledi Sayadaw was first visited by U Po Thet who learned Vipassana from him and subsequently became one of the most well-known lay meditation teachers in Burma, and the teacher of Sayagyi U Ba Khin, Goenkaji's teacher.
By 1911 his reputation both as a scholar and meditation master had grown to such an extent that the British government of India, which also ruled Burma, conferred on him the title of Aggamaha-pandita (foremost great scholar). He was also awarded a Doctorate of Literature from the University of Rangoon. During the years 1913-1917 he had a correspondence with Mrs. Rhys-Davids of the Pali Text Society in London and translations of several of his discussions on points of Abhidhamma were published in the "Journal of the PaliText Society."
In the last years of his life Ven. Ledi Sayadaw's eyesight failed him because of the years he had spent reading, studying and writing, often with poor illumination. At the age of seventy-three he went blind and devoted the remaining years of his life exclusively to meditation and teaching meditation. He died in 1923 at the age of seventy-seven at Pyinmana, between Mandalay and Rangoon (now Yangon), in one of many monasteries that had been founded in his name as a result of his travels and teaching all over Burma.
The Venerable Ledi Sayadaw was perhaps the outstanding Buddhist figure of his age. All who have come into contact with the path of Dhamma in recent years owe a great debt of gratitude to this scholarly, saintly monk who was instrumental in re-enlivening the traditional practice of Vipassana, making it more available for renunciates and lay people alike. In addition to this most important aspect of his teaching his concise, clear and extensive scholarly work served to clarify the experiential aspect of Dhamma.


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Dean, KHO and Gray, R and Balls, P and Darrah, C and Swift, L and Clark, AB and Barton, GR and Morris, S and Butters, S and Bullough, A and Flaherty, H and Talbot, B and Sanders, M and Donell, ST (2018) Patient-directed self-management of pain (PaDSMaP) compared to treatment as usual following total knee replacement; a randomised controlled trial. BMC Health Services Research. ISSN 1472-6963 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-018-3146-2


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Container registries store container images to:
Make images accessible to others
Organize images into repositories that can include multiple versions of an image
Optionally limit access to images, based on different authentication methods, or make them publicly available
There are public container registries, such as Quay.io and Docker Hub where many people and organizations share their images. The Red Hat Registry offers supported Red Hat and partner images, while the Red Hat Ecosystem Catalog offers detailed descriptions and health checks for those images. To manage your own registry, you could purchase a container registry such as Red Hat Quay.
From a security standpoint, some registries provide special features to check and improve the health of your containers. For example, Red Hat Quay offers container vulnerability scanning with Clair security scanner, build triggers to automatically rebuild images when source code changes in GitHub and other locations, and the ability to use role-based access control (RBAC) to secure access to images.
There are tools you can use to scan and track the contents of your downloaded and deployed container images. However, there are many public sources of container images. When using public container registries, you can add a layer of protection by using trusted sources.
Consuming security updates is particularly important when managing immutable containers. Immutable containers are containers that will never be changed while running. When you deploy immutable containers, you do not step into the running container to replace one or more binaries. From an operational standpoint, you rebuild and redeploy an updated container image to replace a container instead of changing it.
Red Hat certified images are:
Free of known vulnerabilities in the platform components or layers
Compatible across the RHEL platforms, from bare metal to cloud
Supported by Red Hat
The list of known vulnerabilities is constantly evolving, so you must track the contents of your deployed container images, as well as newly downloaded images, over time. You can use Red Hat Security Advisories (RHSAs) to alert you to any newly discovered issues in Red Hat certified container images, and direct you to the updated image. Alternatively, you can go to the Red Hat Ecosystem Catalog to look up that and other security-related issues for each Red Hat image.
Red Hat lists certified container images for Red Hat products and partner offerings from the Container Images section of the Red Hat Ecosystem Catalog. From that catalog, you can see details of each image, including CVE, software packages listings, and health scores.
Red Hat images are actually stored in what is referred to as the Red Hat Registry,
which is represented by a public container registry (registry.access.redhat.com
and an authenticated registry (registry.redhat.io
Both include basically the same set of container images, with
including some additional images that require authentication
with Red Hat subscription credentials.
Container content is monitored for vulnerabilities by Red Hat and updated regularly. When Red Hat releases security updates, such as fixes to glibc, DROWN, or Dirty Cow, any affected container images are also rebuilt and pushed to the Red Hat Registry.
Red Hat uses a health index
to reflect the security risk for each container provided through
the Red Hat Ecosystem Catalog. Because containers consume software provided by Red
Hat and the errata process, old, stale containers are insecure whereas new,
fresh containers are more secure.
To illustrate the age of containers, the Red Hat Ecosystem Catalog uses a grading system. A freshness grade is a measure of the oldest and most severe security errata available for an image. "A" is more up to date than "F". See Container Health Index grades as used inside the Red Hat Ecosystem Catalog for more details on this grading system.
Refer to the Red Hat Product Security Center for details on security updates and vulnerabilities related to Red Hat software. Check out Red Hat Security Advisories to search for specific advisories and CVEs.
OpenShift Container Platform includes the OpenShift Container Registry, a private registry running as an integrated component of the platform that you can use to manage your container images. The OpenShift Container Registry provides role-based access controls that allow you to manage who can pull and push which container images.
OpenShift Container Platform also supports integration with other private registries that you might already be using, such as Red Hat Quay.
Red Hat Quay is an enterprise-quality container registry product from Red Hat. Development for Red Hat Quay is done through the upstream Project Quay. Red Hat Quay is available to deploy on-premise or through the hosted version of Red Hat Quay at Quay.io.
Security-related features of Red Hat Quay include:
Time machine: Allows images with older tags to expire after a set period of time or based on a user-selected expiration time.
Repository mirroring: Lets you mirror other registries for security reasons, such hosting a public repository on Red Hat Quay behind a company firewall, or for performance reasons, to keep registries closer to where they are used.
Action log storage: Save Red Hat Quay logging output to Elasticsearch storage to allow for later search and analysis.
Clair security scanning: Scan images against a variety of Linux vulnerability databases, based on the origins of each container image.
Internal authentication: Use the default local database to handle RBAC authentication to Red Hat Quay or choose from LDAP, Keystone (OpenStack), JWT Custom Authentication, or External Application Token authentication.
External authorization (OAuth): Allow authorization to Red Hat Quay from GitHub, GitHub Enterprise, or Google Authentication.
Access settings: Generate tokens to allow access to Red Hat Quay from docker, rkt, anonymous access, user-created accounts, encrypted client passwords, or prefix username autocompletion.
Ongoing integration of Red Hat Quay with OpenShift Container Platform continues, with several OpenShift Container Platform Operators of particular interest. The Quay Bridge Operator lets you replace the internal OpenShift Container Platform registry with Red Hat Quay. The Quay Red Hat Quay Container Security Operator lets you check vulnerabilities of images running in OpenShift Container Platform that were pulled from Red Hat Quay registries.


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Providing essential assistance to victims of natural disasters and helping our farmers at home with vital financing clearly fall in the category of needs that are urgent, unanticipated, and essential -- that is, emergency requirements. Therefore, they clearly deserve to be funded quickly, fully, and without requiring offsets that could force unacceptable reductions in important programs. We support the Committee's action of providing defense-related emergency funding in response to Hurricane Mitch without offsets and believe that consistent treatment should be applied to non-defense agencies performing similar emergency activities. The Administration would strongly oppose an amendment that may be offered that would require offsets for this defense-related emergency funding.
The Committee bill would rescind $875 million from international affairs accounts, with the largest portion being a rescission of $648 million in appropriations of callable capital from U.S. payments to the Asian Development Bank (ASDB), the World Bank and the InterAmerican Development Bank. Such rescissions would be extremely ill-advised. Rescinding the callable capital funding would send a dangerous signal to financial markets and could require the ASDB and other multilateral development banks (MDBs) to pay a higher premium on their borrowing, which could lead to the restriction of capital flows necessary to strengthen the global economy and expand U.S. exports. At a time when some of our emerging export markets in Asia and other developing economies are beginning to recover, this step would be highly unproductive.
In addition, this rescission of callable capital would call into question U.S. commitment to all multilateral development banks. This could have a detrimental effect on capital flows and economic growth globally, including in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. This unintended consequence would even more broadly delay economic recovery in markets vital to the United States, thereby hurting our own economy.
The other rescissions in the international affairs area would undermine a host of important objectives in many programs. For example, the rescissions would cut support for U.S. exports, undermining our efforts to penetrate foreign markets and provide jobs for American workers. At a time when the United States needs to promote its exports, this is a particularly misguided step. The rescissions would also undercut free market reform and democracy promotion in the New Independent States and in Eastern Europe, areas where it is manifestly in America's interests to encourage reform. The rescission of development assistance would set back efforts in the poorest countries, including possibly in those hit hardest by Hurricane Mitch.
Other rescissions would undermine our efforts to provide peacekeeping operations in troubled areas of the world. The rescission of Global Environment Facility funding would be highly detrimental to the cause of improving global environmental protection. Still other cuts would reduce our contributions to international organizations, where America's reputation as a contributor in good standing is already tarnished.
In addition, we are concerned with the $150 million cut in important nonproliferation programs to reduce stockpiles of excess weapons grade uranium and plutonium in Russia. Since the Department of Energy has already negotiated an agreement with Russia to purchase uranium for $325 million, the entire cut would have to come from the $200 million appropriated for plutonium. That would drastically undercut negotiations that are underway to dispose of 50 tons of weapons grade plutonium in Russia, enough for 15,000 nuclear weapons.
Taken together, these rescissions are so great that the supplemental as a whole would constitute a net reduction in U.S. foreign affairs spending -- a reduction that would seriously undermine America's capacity to pursue its foreign policy objectives and promote our economic security. The Administration strongly supports adoption of an amendment expected to be offered that would strike from the bill several of these objectionable rescissions.
Were the bill to be presented to the President with the offsets discussed above, the President's senior advisers would recommend that he veto the bill. We urge the House not to take actions that could result in gridlock and delay, and that would be detrimental both to our allies abroad and our citizens at home in their time of need. We urge the House not to add extraneous authorizations to the bill, particularly narrow, objectionable riders that would serve only to generate controversy, unnecessarily delaying the urgently needed emergency assistance contained in this bill.
Emergency Relief for Central America
The bill provides $962 million for Central America, $6 million more than the President's request. On February 16th, the President transmitted to the Congress a request for $956 million for International Assistance Programs, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Justice to provide assistance for emergency disaster and reconstruction assistance expenses arising from the consequences of the recent hurricanes in Central America and the Caribbean and the recent earthquake in Colombia. The Administration appreciates the full funding provided in the House bill for this request, which will provide relief from the effects of Hurricanes Mitch and Georges and restore hope to this devastated region.
Hurricane Mitch, the worst natural disaster in the history of the Western Hemisphere, left more than 9,000 dead and drove millions from their homes. Even today, hundred of thousands of Central Americans still cannot return to their homes. Schools, hospitals, businesses, farms and roads were destroyed, resulting in serious economic dislocation. Hurricane Mitch caused $8.5 billion in damages, and Hurricane Georges brings the total to $10 billion. The President's Central America package is urgent, unanticipated, and essential and should be funded as an emergency request.
Funds must be provided swiftly to prevent the spread of disease and to buy seed and plant crops in the fast-approaching Spring planting season, thereby providing food and jobs to many communities, and to demonstrate to Central Americans that they can find jobs and security in their own recovering economies. Much of the rural road system farmers and small merchants depend on for their livelihoods was destroyed. Water and sanitation systems have been disrupted, which can result in disease. Economic destruction and dislocation threaten to undermine the region's achievements of the past decade, as these nations have made tremendous strides toward settling conflicts, strengthening democracy, promoting human rights, opening economies and alleviating poverty. Emergency assistance for reconstruction aid will ensure that their transformation continues and that Central Americans will have cause to view their own futures in the region with hope.
The Administration appreciates the Committee's providing the full $100 million for Jordan, fully funding the FY 1999 request. These funds will provide financial support to help promote stability in Jordan and the region during the period of transition subsequent to King Hussein's death. While the administration appreciates the full funding of the $100 million FY request, we are disappointed that the $200 million requested for advance appropriations for FYs 2000 and 2001 has not been provided. In the context of promoting peace in the Middle East, the Administration will continue to press for these advance appropriations.
Department of Agriculture
On February 26th, the President submitted a request for $152 million for urgently needed emergency funds for the Department of Agriculture (USDA). The Administration appreciates the Committee's providing fully for this request. The Administration's request would provide an additional $1.1 billion in farm ownership, operating, and emergency direct and guaranteed loans to help farmers through the Spring planting season. This additional loan authority would provide vitally needed financing for the Nation's farmers in light of the significant increase in demand for USDA loans, due to projected continuing low commodity and livestock prices.
Department of the Interior
The Administration is pleased that the Committee provided a total of $21.8 million in supplemental funding for Interior's Indian trust fund management reforms. Of this amount, $6.8 million was included in the President's FY 2000 Budget and $15 million was transmitted by the President with offsets on March 10, 1999. Together these funds will allow the Department to carry out critical activities, including court-ordered requirements in the Cobell v. Babbitt lawsuit alleging past mismanagement of individual Indian money accounts, and continued progress on trust fund management improvements.


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Many people feel Berlin is now the cultural heart of Europe. Creative impulses come from Germany's capitol and spread from there. One of the quirkiest is the Buddy Bears.
The Buddy Bears creators were inspired by the cow parades in New York and Zurich. Eva and Klaus Herlitz of Berlin wanted to initiate a similar street art project. The bear is the icon of Berlin, and thus in 2001, the Herlitzes created the first bear with a sculptor named Roman Strobl.
Their projected expanded, and in 2002 it went international. They had a bear created for every country the UN acknowledges, all designed by artists native to each country. To date 148 2-meter high fiberglass United Buddy Bears have been painted. The bears have their arms raised as if they're holding hands. (This can also be described as the laughing Buddha pose.)
The first display took place in a circle around Berlin's Brandenburg Gate. One and a half million people saw the exhibit, always free of charge. The circle symbolizes the Art of Tolerance. Since then, they've toured 5 continents and stood in an alphabetical circle in the centers of 17 host cities.*
In 2008 the Buddy Bears came to the Schlossplatz in downtown Stuttgart. (Read my post The Year the World Came to Party about how the 2006 Soccer World Cup transformed Germany. The Schlossplatz is where Uwe and I went each night with friends to watch the games on big screens.)
The United Buddy Bears send a message about peace, understanding, love and tolerance among the world's nations, cultures and religions. Each bear is painted with images of the culture, history, landscape, economy, art and music of its country.
When new bears are commissioned, the older ones are auctioned off. All monies go to UNICEF and other childrens' charities. To date (December 2013), over 2 million Euros have been raised for charities such as Eva Herlitz's Buddy Bear Help!
Over 240 artists have been involved in the project, and more than 30 million visitors have seen the United Buddy Bears. A smaller circle of United Buddy Bears-The Minis (1 meter high) also tours.
The United Buddy Bears exhibitions are always opened by national and foreign dignitaries. They even have a Special Ambassador: the actress Dennenesch Zoudé. After he saw the bears in Berlin, actor Jackie Chan made sure the bears came to Hong Kong. UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Sir Peter Ustinov saw them and he insisted that Iraq be represented.
There is one very special grey and white bear, a polar bear. He has the image of Albert Einstein and the following quote: 'Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding'.
NOTE: * It's fascinating to consider that United Buddy Bears change their order as they travel. The circle is always organized in the language of the host country. Buddy Bears may suddenly hold hands with distant or hostile neighbors…
Selected Bibliography:
Herlitz, Eva & Klaus, United Buddy Bears — Die Kunst der Toleranz. Bostelmann & Siebenhaar Publishers, 2003. ISBN 3-936962-00-6.
Herlitz, Eva & Klaus, United Buddy Bears — World Tour. NeptunArt Publisher, 2006. ISBN 3-85820-189-8.
Herlitz, Eva & Klaus, United Buddy Bears — The Art of Tolerance. 384 pages, English/German, December 2009, ISBN 978-3-00-029417-4.
Photos Copyright © 2013 Jadi Campbell. (All photographs can be enlarged by simply clicking on the image.)


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Art: MFF070D
These gorgeous mugs have a wonderful painting by renowned artist Tamara Burnett on one side, and show three predominant traits of the breed on the other side. These mugs hold 15 ounces of your favorite beverage, are made of earthenware and are top rack dishwasher safe and microwaveable. They are printed in the U.S.A.


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LLC Agrotech produces and sells various spare parts for John Deere (Equivalent) machinery, for example, Pin A103634. In the spare parts catalogue on our website, you can choose and order a part for any John Deere (Equivalent) agricultural machinery.
Our car fleet allows organizing delivery of spare parts in the shortest possible time.


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Donations To CMRF
Financial Aid for Medical
Financial Aid for Natural Calamities And Un-Natural Deaths
List of Empanel Hospitals Under CMRF
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The Colombian Childrens Peace Movement
Part of Heeding the Call
Based on information from People Building Peace, Peace News, My Hero, and Sara Cameron's website.
Adults are usually regarded as the leaders in working for peace and—for good reason, as many have made a tremendous difference. Yet children can make a tremendous difference, too. Farliz Calle is one of those children. She is one of twenty-six children who organized an election in her home country of Colombia as it was being torn apart by violence. On October 25, 1996, 2.7 million children in Colombia cast their votes for 12 basic rights that included the right to love and family, the right to a clean environment, the right to justice, and the right to peace. With the aid of UNICEF (The United Nations Children's Emergency Fund) and adults from the community, the children of Colombia started a movement that created "peace zones" in schools and parks. One year later, 10 million adults also voted for peace in a national election.
On the day of the Children's Mandate there was peace in Colombia. If there can be one day of peace, why not a week, a month, a year, fifty years Why not fifty years of peace to make up for our fifty years of war? — Juan Elias, 16 years
Why was Columbia in need of peace? In 1948, civil war broke out in Colombia. A civil war is one where the opposing factions both live in the country. These wars can be particularly destructive and difficult to end.
Without equal education children who have nothing can never have the same opportunities as those who have everything. — Angelica, 13 years
Often civil wars have the appearance of being about two groups with different identities that cannot get along. However, scholars and researchers have determined that most civil wars are caused when one group tries to control resources, resulting in limited access to resources for other groups, who become frustrated and take up arms. This is one reason why war (and hence, peace) is a justice issue.
Another reason is because the toll of war generally falls heaviest on marginalized groups. This frequently means children. War hurts children by taking away their loved ones. It hurts children by filling their lives with fear and instability. It hurts children by forcing them to grow up too soon, often making them into soldiers even before reaching puberty.
Neither the children's vote nor the adult vote a year later ended the violence in Colombia. It continues to this day. Still, the children of Colombia did not give up. Supported again by UNICEF, they established the Retorno de la Alegria (Return to Happiness) initiative. This program trains youth to be peer counselors to youth and children suffering from the effects of war. Over 500 volunteers have been trained in counseling, therapy, peace-building and self-esteem building skills. They work with individuals and institutions, like schools, religious organizations, and government.
I work as a volunteer play therapist with children who have been forced to leave their homes because of the war. Some of the children have seen terrible things, like seeing their father be tortured and killed. They find it very difficult to understand what happened. We play together with the trucks, and boats and rag dolls and sometimes after that you can figure out what went on. Some of the children are very shy but I give them the parrot puppet and sometimes they tell him things. They often talk about the goats and chickens and cows they left behind when they left their homes. They worry about the animals. — Wilfrido, 16 years
Being a peace builder takes skills, and young people do not need to wait until they become adults to develop those skills.
Children are sweet and beautiful, but we want to show adults that the role of the child must be elevated; there are acute crises in countries when children have to make up part of the solution. You say children are the future. But we are the present, a present which we all have to build together. — Farliz Calle