Thanks, John. A beautiful and authentic-sounding myth, probably from North America.

John's story: So when you look at the stars, remember my friends, those were tears for a life that had been taken at one time. They are to remind you that life is precious.

One Million post-invasion excess deaths

As we approach the Fourth Anniversary of the illegal US, UK, Australian and Coalition  invasion of Iraq, we must again ask the question what is the total number of post-invasion excess deaths (avoidable deaths, deaths that did not have to happen) after 4 years of violent US-Coalition occupation?

After 4 years of illegal, violent Occupation the post-invasion excess deaths in Occupied Iraq total ONE MILLION (UN Population Division and medical literature data).

Messier 13, a globular cluster containing roughly one million stars in the halo of the Milky Way.

Taken together with 1.7 million excess deaths in the 1990-2003 Sanctions War (UN Population Division) and 3.7 million Iraqi refugees (UNHCR), this constitutes an Iraqi Genocide (as defined by the UN Genocide Convention) and an Iraqi Holocaust in comparison with the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5 to 6 million victims). The Iraqi under-5 infant deaths (1990-2007) now total 1.8 million, 90% having been avoidable and due to Western war crimes. Total Iraqi excess deaths (1990-2007) total 2.7 million. The post-invasion excess deaths in Occupied Afghanistan now total 2.2 million (see MWC News: 5 ). Three quarters of the people of Occupied Iraq and Occupied Afghanistan  are Women and Children – the Bush War on Terror is in horrible reality a cowardly War on Women and Children, a War on Asian Women and Children and a War on Muslim Women and Children. 

Those who knowingly ignore, deny, minimize, obfuscate, excuse, advocate, support or effect carnage associated with the Iraqi Holocaust – or indeed the Afghan Holocaust or any other Holocaust -  are variously complicit in Holocaust Promotion, Holocaust Commission, Holocaust Ignoring, Passive Holocaust Denial and Holocaust Denial (see MWC News: 5 and 3  ).

Gideon Poyla
Media With Conscious

The stars once spoke to man.

In the future, man will speak to the stars.

All men are stars.

In the future, man will speak to man as star and in the context (in the constellation) of other stars.

Iraq is a devastation, life seems disposable. What effect will this have on those souls as they are catapaulted into the spiritual worlds - what is their experience there? I love it that Steiner said to read to souls in spirit. I love the prayers he prayed during WWI. Are they still appropriate today or has consciousness changed ....

The Destinies of Individuals and Nations
Berlin, 31 October 1914
 
Dear friends, once again our thoughts must first of all be for those who are at the front, having to meet the challenge of our time with their bodies and their whole being. Let us therefore direct our thoughts to the spirits who are protecting the men who are at the front.
 
Spirits of your souls, guardian guides,
On your wings let there be borne
The prayer of love from our souls
To those whom you guard here on earth.
Thus, united with your might,
A ray of help our prayer shall be
For the souls it seeks out there in love.
 
And for those who have already passed through the gate of death in the course of these events, we say:
 
Spirits of your souls, guardian guides,
On your wings let there be borne
The prayer of love from our souls
To those whom you guard here on earth.
Thus, united with your might,
A ray of help our prayer shall be
For the souls it seeks out there in love.
 
And the spirit we have sought in our endeavours for so many years, the spirit who went through the Mystery of Golgotha, the Christ spirit, the spirit of courage, the spirit of strength, the spirit of unity, the spirit of peace – may he rule over everything you are asked to do these days.

K

Whatever you think and write as a consequence of reading here, the genius that touched me in the story is active in your thinking.

Thank you all for listening to the genius that whispers through us all.

Dear Friends,

It is a well-known and puzzling fact that material science, which has reaped tremendous payoffs in fields such as physics and biology, has made no comparable advances in the social sciences. With the exception of economics, social science is can hardly be dignified by the label of science at all. Sociology, political science and anthropology are all disciplines that don't seem likely to achieve the success of the real, hard sciences. Why is this?

I think the answer has to do with the scale on which we think about the term "society." When the focus is on the scale of national demographics and international politics, no very precise control can be expected. However, if the focus is placed on the more microscopic, building-block scale of the conversation, and if there is a workable framework to explore new social phenomena like collective intelligence, then progress in social science seems possible.

I tend to think that a focus on something like the Iraq war is misplaced. The Iraq war represents large-scale historical forces that can't be affected by registering an opinion about them. They probably can't be affected by prayer. They simply outclass what the individual mind is able to encompass, unless the individual happens to be strategically placed with hands on the levers of power. But an individual like that is inevitably distorted inwardly and unable to develop esoterically.

Much better is to get serious about the scale on which social science really can be advanced. Much more intelligent is to get serious about conversation. If we do, those of us willing and able, it is conceivable that real progress will be visible after some time on problems like global warming, ethnic and religious division and perhaps even poverty.

I propose that this thread - that seems to have strayed beyond its relevance to astrosophy - decant itself into the new journal entry in the Anthroposophy group.