Changemakers

BBC News - 'Sex' drove fossil animal traits

2010-06-29T06:06:00.000-07:00

BBC News - 'Sex' drove fossil animal traits

Jimmy Carter's New Baptist Covenant message of racial reconciliation and cooperation on social issue

2009-02-02T15:50:00.000-08:00

Dalits Marginalized : Jimmy Carter's New Baptist Covenant message of racial reconciliation and cooperation on social issue

February 12, the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin

2009-02-02T06:11:00.000-08:00

Charles Darwin - a year of celebrations

By Robert Colvile
Last Updated: 11:52AM GMT 02 Feb 2009

This year marks the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, and the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species Photo: PA

....some sort of celebration of Charles Darwin will soon be in full swing to mark his anniversary year. Even if you just consider February 12, the biologist’s 200th birthday, there will be events in London, Newcastle, Bristol, Edinburgh, Hull, Shrewsbury, Cardiff, Elgin, Cambridge, Bath, Bolton, Ipswich and many other parts of the country.

The National History Museum will unveil a new artwork on its ceiling; Darwin’s alma mater – Christ’s College, Cambridge – will host a £5,000-a-head charity dinner, attended by the Duke of Edinburgh and Sir David Attenborough, to fund research links with the Galapagos Islands, where much of Darwin’s research was carried out; Richard Dawkins and Lord Harries, the former Bishop of Oxford, will debate each other at the Institute of Biology in London, in an echo of the famous battle over Darwinism between Bishop Wilberforce and Thomas Huxley; and there will even be a new set of commemorative stamps issued.

However, “Darwin Day” is only the start. The National History Museum will be continuing its blockbuster Darwin exhibition until April, with other shows at a dozen or so venues, most notably the British Library, the National Portrait Gallery, and Darwin’s former home, Down House in Kent. There will be a week-long festival in Cambridge, and the Wellcome Trust has collaborated with the Royal Botanic Gardens to send a free set of Darwin experiments and activities to every school in the country.

Worldwide, the British Council will also be organising activities to promote Darwin’s life and work. Read it all

Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

Admirers of Charles Darwin (1809-1882), known for his book, On The Origin Of Species,will be celebrating Darwin's 200th birthday.Charles Darwin's home is to be nominated as a World Heritage Site, as part of a celebration of the 200th anniversary of his birth.

Locally, there will be a celebration of Darwin's birthday on February 12, 2009 at noon in the Lobby-Atrium of building Science B at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. The event is free and the general public is invited. Attendees are invited to bring decorations for a "Darwin Tree of Life." HSU's Department of Biological Sciences will host the event, with a birthday cake and snacks, an exhibit of Darwin's many books and a Power Point illustrating milestones in the scientist's life.

Published in 1859, On the Origin of Species became the basis of modern evolutionary theory and a foundation of biological science. Darwin is also known for The Voyage of the Beagle, based on a nearly five-year, ocean-going expedition during which he collected zoological data about marine invertebrates. Link

Obama on Decision making in a Democratic Society - 2006 speech

2009-01-05T18:27:00.000-08:00

Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God's will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.

Now this is going to be difficult for some who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, as many evangelicals do. But in a pluralistic democracy, we have no choice. Politics depends on our ability to persuade each other of common aims based on a common reality. It involves the compromise, the art of what's possible. At some fundamental level, religion does not allow for compromise. It's the art of the impossible. If God has spoken, then followers are expected to live up to God's edicts, regardless of the consequences. To base one's life on such uncompromising commitments may be sublime, but to base our policy making on such commitments would be a dangerous thing. And if you doubt that, let me give you an example.

We all know the story of Abraham and Isaac. Abraham is ordered by God to offer up his only son, and without argument, he takes Isaac to the mountaintop, binds him to an altar, and raises his knife, prepared to act as God has commanded.

Of course, in the end God sends down an angel to intercede at the very last minute, and Abraham passes God's test of devotion.

But it's fair to say that if any of us leaving this church saw Abraham on a roof of a building raising his knife, we would, at the very least, call the police and expect the Department of Children and Family Services to take Isaac away from Abraham. We would do so because we do not hear what Abraham hears, do not see what Abraham sees, true as those experiences may be. So the best we can do is act in accordance with those things that we all see, and that we all hear, be it common laws or basic reason. read it all here

Che Guevara: Fifty years of Cuban Revolution

2009-01-04T02:22:00.000-08:00

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Che's spirit burns on in Latin America
Che's image crops in protests in Latin America and beyond

By Daniel Schweimler
BBC News, Buenos Aires

Fifty years ago saw the triumph of the Cuban revolution, led by Fidel Castro. A key figure in that success was Ernesto Che Guevara, who led rebel fighters into Havana on 2 January following the overthrow of Cuba's dictator Fulgencio Batista.
But Che Guevara's attempts to spread the revolution throughout the continent ended with his execution in a remote Bolivian school in 1967.
His image and ideology were suppressed in his native Argentina - and beyond - throughout the 1970s and much of the 1980s, a period that saw much of Latin America governed by right-wing or even military administrations.
Some in Latin America see Che as a failed revolutionary, while others say he was a misguided killer, a brutal man who ordered the execution of dozens of his opponents.
But what is clear is that Che Guevara's image and ideals have continued to resonate - and in some parts of 21st century Latin America now stronger than ever.
The reasons, for some observers, is that the region's institutions are generally weak. The people simply don't trust their governments, banks and judicial systems.
Their protests are often lost in a sea of bureaucracy or corruption, and so for many, the only way to be heard is by taking to the streets. more from BBC

Samuel Huntington, political scientist, dies at 81

2008-12-29T06:22:00.000-08:00

1 day ago
BOSTON (AP) — Samuel Huntington, a political scientist best known for his views on the clash of civilizations, died Wednesday on Martha's Vineyard, Harvard University announced Saturday. He was 81.
Huntington had retired from active teaching in 2007 after 58 years at Harvard. His research and teaching focused on American government, democratization, military politics, strategy, and civil-military relations.
He argued that in a post-Cold War world, violent conflict would come not from ideological friction between nations, but from cultural and religious differences among the world's major civilizations.
He identified those civilizations as Western (including the United States and Europe), Latin American, Islamic, African, Orthodox (with Russia as a core state), and Hindu, Japanese, and "Sinic" (including China, Korea, and Vietnam).
He made the argument in a 1993 article in the journal Foreign Affairs, and then expanded the thesis into a book, "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order," which was published in 1996. The book has been translated into 39 languages.
In all, Huntington wrote 17 books including "The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations," published in 1957 and inspired by President Harry Truman's firing of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, and "Political Power: USA-USSR," a study of Cold War dynamics, which he co-authored in 1964 with Zbigniew Brzezinski.
His 1969 book, "Political Order in Changing Societies," analyzed political and economic development in the Third World.
"Sam was the kind of scholar that made Harvard a great university," Huntington's friend of nearly six decades, economist Henry Rosovsky said in a statement released by the university.
Huntington was born on April 18, 1927, in New York City. He received his B.A. from Yale in 1946, served in the U.S. Army, earned an M.A. from the University of Chicago in 1948, and a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1951. source

Six Prominent American Freethinkers

2008-12-16T06:31:00.000-08:00

by James Farmelant and Mark Lindley

An article in the March 2008 issue of Aufklärung und Kritik¹described four "new atheists" in the USA (Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens); the present article describes some earlier prominent American freethinkers. We won't go back as far as the deists (Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Thomas Paine) among the leading 18th-century founding fathers of the USA, and we will leave aside (a) Mark Twain (the genial humorist, who merits an essay all to himself and whose atheism was not part of his publicpersona during his lifetime but became evident in writings published many years after his death), (b) Ralph Waldo Emerson (a freethinker in his own somewhat mystical way, but not clearly an agnostic, let alone an atheist) and (c) Henry David Thoreau (a radical whose ideas had, however, far less impact in the USA than upon Mahatma Gandhi in southern Africa). We will focus instead on the following six figures:

Col. Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899), in his day famous throughout the USA as an attorney, a top-level political figure, a great orator, a colorful writer and, most saliently, a public spokesman for agnosticism.

Felix Adler (1851-1933), who founded The Ethical Culture Society, a rationalistic, humanist, non-theist religion promoting ethical conduct as its central aim and sponsoring an historically important social-work NGO.

George Santayana (1863-1952), a sophisticated philosophy professor well known in the USA for a best-selling Bildungsroman and fairly well known also as an atheist, but also a lifelong admirer of Roman Catholicism.

John Dewey (1859-1952), an eminent pragmatist philosopher whose outlook was avowedly naturalistic and non-theist but who proposed to retain much of the traditional language of religion while redefining many of its traditional concepts to make them compatible with a scientific outlook.

Ayn Rand (1905-1982), an outspoken atheist who considered altruism and all other forms of social concern to be "anti-human" and whose advocacy of laissez-faire capitalism provided to her close personal disciple, Alan Greenspan, the ideological platform upon which he, as executive head of the central banking system in the USA from 1987 to 2006, played a leading role in pumping up the financial bubble which is currently in the process of bursting.

read the full article here

NOBEL LECTURE by MARTTI AHTISAARI

2008-12-13T23:02:00.000-08:00

NOBEL LECTURE

Peace Is A Question Of Will

Wars and conflicts are not inevitable. They are caused by human beings. There are always interests that are furthered by war. Therefore those who have power and influence can also stop them.

MARTTI AHTISAARI

Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Excellencies,
Distinguished members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Dear Friends and Colleagues around the world,

I feel both humility and gratitude at receiving this year's Nobel Peace Prize. It is the greatest recognition anybody working in this field can be given.

What I am feeling now can only be compared with the joy I have felt when seeing the changes that peace has brought to the lives of people. When people, who have endured wars and crises, begin to build their lives in an atmosphere of peace - When faith in the future returns.

I too was a child affected by a war. I was only two years old when, as a result of an agreement on spheres of interest between Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union, war broke out, forcing my family to leave soon thereafter the town of Viipuri. Like several hundred thousand fellow Karelians, we became refugees in our own country as great power politics caused the borders of Finland to be redrawn and left my home town as part of the Soviet Union. This childhood experience contributed to my commitment to working on the resolution of conflicts. read it all

Nation: V.P. Singh remembered by Kanchan Ialaiah

2008-12-09T23:01:00.000-08:00

V.P. Singh remembered by Kanchan Ialaiah

Death of a stateman: Indian Lincoln ignored

- Kanchan Ialaiah -

If someone, who stood by the oppressed, is ignored, even in death, the oppressed will treat that as their own humiliation.

On November 27, I was back home at around 3 pm. Prof Bhagya Naik, who once was a student leader in the Mandal movement, called me and said, "There is bad news amidst worse news of terrorism. VP Singh has died and an occasional scroll (news ticker) on NDTV is informing us of that."

All TVs were hooked on to the Taj, Oberoi and Nariman House. I tried to catch up with the news of the death of India's former Prime Minister. I went on looking for at least flash news, on any one of the English channels, which are considered to be "national channels". No ticker could be seen. After quite a long time one channel put out the news, "VP Singh dead". No details. No channel was showing his dead body, no discussion was being organised around his role as Prime Minister.

The next day I looked up several news papers. In almost all the publications, a small news item in a corner of the front page with a regular photo (not of his dead body) was published.

The electronic media has treated his death as inconsequential, at a time when they were protecting the nation, while broadcasting about what was happening minute to minute around the Taj and Oberoi. In fact, the police and military officials were saying that the round the clock TV cameras around those hotels had obstructed the operation of flushing out the terrorists. On those three days TV channels were competing to get top spot to make more advertising revenue. No one would pay to view that 'Mandal ghost's' dead body. The upper caste media had taken its revenge against a man who initiated a mini civil war in order to establish an egalitarian India.
VP Singh was the one who deployed a serious discourse of social justice and and worked out a method to make India caste free from the position of Prime Minister. In one sense he was comparable to Abraham Lincoln who initiated a major civil war to abolish slavery in America, in late nineteenth century. He was a white man who stood for the rights of the black people. VP Singh initiated a similar battle of social justice in a country of castes and brazen inequality in 20th century India while holding the position of Prime Minister.

He was a Kshatriya who stood by the lower castes who had been suffering inequality for centuries. Abraham Lincoln was killed by the whites. The upper caste anti-reservationists saw to it that VP Singh lost his power within just eleven months. His political life with any meaningful visibility had been murdered since then. Abraham Lincoln became a hero of the blacks and became a villain among racist whites.

Similarly VP Singh became a hero among Dalit-Bahujans (particularly OBCs) and a villain among the upper castes who claimed themselves to be anti-quota. These anti-reservation upper caste forces claimed that they wanted to save the nation from terrorists. But the forces that are working in the media must remember that a nation that promotes equality alone can checkmate terrorism that was working in full force on the day when VP Singh died.

The media and the UPA leaders, by treating him like dirt, even in his death, forgot a basic fact of human life. If someone, who stood by the oppressed, is ignored and humiliated, even in death, the oppressed will treat that as their own humiliation. If this is the attitude of the elite towards a man who sacrificed his Chief Ministership (Uttar Pradesh) on moral grounds, his Defence Ministerial position on the grounds of opposing corruption (Bofors case) and became Prime Minister of the nation on his own political movement's strength (transforming Jan Morcha into Janatha Dal) people know how to read the signs. Therefore such media cannot protect the nation from even the terrorists, as the oppressed majority do not believe in it at all.

VP Singh was a philosopher in his own right, a poet and painter. The media behaved as if he was nobody to this nation. He implemented the Mandal Commission Report, to which suicide attempts by upper caste youth were made. This was subsequently followed with a Kamadal Yatra of Advani, who then became a hero of the upper castes.
If Advani had died amidst the trauma of the Bombay terror attacks, would they have ignored his death as they did in the case of VP Singh? Certainly not, because there is big business in talking about him. Most of the people in the press claim to be secular but when it comes to business and caste communalism, they give it major coverage as it means big money. The media plays a major role in every thing, including arresting terrorism. But it must remember that if people come to disbelieve what they churn out, then even the terrorists would have be placed in safe havens in our civil society.

More than any other prime minister, VP Singh made Indian democracy transformative. But for his intervention from the position of Prime Minister even the survival of politicians like Mulayam Singh, Lalu Prasad, Kanshiram, Ram Vilas Paswan and Mayawati would have been difficult. Ironically, these leaders from backward communities also did not bother about him. But he was an icon who had a dream for social equality. Ever since he implemented 27 per cent reservation forCentral government jobs he never compromised on the philosophy of social justice and equality.

The media must have ignored him today but a man of his calibre, will be resurrected soon.

Nation:

Zapatista Army of National Liberation

2008-11-17T18:20:00.000-08:00

Zapatista Army of National Liberation

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The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, EZLN) is an armed revolutionary group based in Chiapas, one of the poorest states of Mexico. Their social base is mostly indigenous but they have some supporters in urban areas as well as an international web of support. Their spokesperson and military commander, although not their leader, is Subcomandante Marcos (currently a.k.a. Delegate Zero in relation to the "Other Campaign"). Unlike other Zapatista comandantes, Subcomandante Marcos is not an indigenous Mayan.

The group takes its name from Emiliano Zapata, a proponent of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920); The Zapatistas see themselves as his ideological heirs.

In 1994, they "declared war to the mexican state".

Some consider the Zapatista movement the first "post-modern" revolution: an armed revolutionary group that has abstained from using their weapons since their 1994 uprising was countered by the overpowering military might of the Mexican Army. The Zapatistas quickly adopted a new strategy by trying to garner the support of Mexican and international civil society. They try to achieve this by making use of the internet to disseminate their communiqués and to enlist the support of NGOs and solidarity groups. Outwardly, they portray themselves as part of the wider anti-globalization, anti-neoliberalism social movement while for their indigenous base the Zapatista struggle is all about control over their own resources, particularly the land they live on.

The EZLN opposes corporate globalization, orneoliberalism, arguing that it severely and negatively affects the peasant way of life of its indigenous support base.

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is an example of neoliberal policy that the EZLN is against. Apart from opening the Mexican market to cheap mass-produced US agricultural products it spells an end to Mexican crop subsidies and drastically reduces income and living standards of many southern Mexican farmers who cannot compete with the subsidized, artificially fertilized, mechanically harvested and genetically modified imports from the United States. The signing of NAFTA also resulted in the removal of Article 27 Section VII in the Mexican Constitution which previously had guaranteed land reparations to indigenous groups throughout Mexico.

Another key element of the Zapatista ideology is how they aspire to realize a new vision of politics: A truly participatory one that comes from the "bottom-up" instead of "top-down." The Zapatistas view the contemporary political system of Mexico as one that is inherently flawed due to what they claim is its purely representative nature and obvious disconnection from the people and their needs. The EZLN claims to, in contrast, reinforce the idea of participatory democracy by limiting public servants' terms to only two weeks a term, lacking visible organization leaders and constantly referring to the people they are governing for major decisions, strategies and conceptual visions. As Marcos reiterates time and time again, "my real commander is the people." In accordance with this principle, the Zapatistas are not a political party: they do not seek office throughout the state and wish to reconceptualize the entire Mexican political system rather than perpetuating it by attempting to gain power within its ranks.

.......

Ideology

Unusual for any revolutionary organization, documents released by the EZLN [1] (in Spanish) before the initial uprising in 1994 explicitly defined a right of the people to resist any unjust actions of the EZLN. However, it can be argued that this has been a right in a number of other rebellions and revolutions, particularly in the Anglo-Saxon tradition, such as the Glorious Revolution and Shays' Rebellion, as well as arguably being the view of the moderate majority of parliamentarians in the English Civil War. They also defined a right of the people to:

demand that the revolutionary armed forces not intervene in matters of civil order or the disposition of capital relating to agriculture, commerce, finances, and industry, as these are the exclusive domain of the civil authorities, elected freely and democratically". Furthermore, it added that the people should "acquire and possess arms to defend their persons, families and property, according to the laws of disposition of capital of farms, commerce, finance and industry, against the armed attacks committed by the revolutionary forces or those of the government.

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Rangzen: The Case for Independent Tibet

2008-11-13T06:29:00.000-08:00

Rangzen: The Case for Independent Tibet (2008 edition)-Jamyang Norbu

Phayul[Wednesday, November 12, 2008 23:45]

Displaying the old mountain and snowlion flag in Tibet is a “splittist” offence for which you could be shot on sight. In this year’s historic uprising, scores, even hundreds, of national flags were defiantly flown throughout Tibet to visually amplify, as it were, the clarion call of the protestors for independence.

There can be no doubt that the people of Tibet are calling for rangzen (freedom). In a real sense even their other demand for the Dalai Lama’s return is a declaration of independence since he is, above all else, the enduring symbol of a free Tibetan nation. Right now, throughout the land, people are holding fast to their dream of independence and the return of the Dalai Lama to Tibet — in spite of China’s brutal and all-out military crackdown.

An Australian journalist just returned from Lhasa claims that he “…witnessed a city creaking under the weight of the Chinese military.” In a detailed report (Nov.8) he writes: “In the ancient back alleys of Tibet’s capital, Lhasa, a grim military operation has played out this week, hidden from the eyes of the world. As night falls, hundreds of Chinese troops fan out across this rebellious city, armed with riot shields and assault rifles. They set up sentry posts on street corners and dispatch patrols that spend the night walking down the lanes of Lhasa’s Tibetan quarter, looking for any sign of dissent. When the sun rises, the soldiers do not melt away, but are replaced by a new rotation of troops. The military stranglehold on Lhasa by day is maintained with one chilling addition — snipers are installed on rooftops around the city’s most holy site, the Jokhang Temple, ready to train their guns on the hundreds of Tibetan pilgrims praying in Barkhor Square below.”

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Two Muslims to be honoured with Kabir Puraskar for saving Hindus from mob attack

2008-10-03T18:11:00.000-07:00

Two Muslims honoured for helping Hindus during riot, terror attack

Submitted by kashif on 3 October 2008 - 1:43pm.

Indian Muslim

New Delhi, Oct 2 (IANS) Two Muslims, one from Gujarat and the other from Jammu and Kashmir, will be honoured with the Kabir Purskar 2008 for saving lives of Hindus during violence.

While Abdul Gani Abdullabhai Qureishi, resident of Vadodara in Gujarat, saved two Hindu families from a rioting mob in 2006, Ghulam Ahmed Bhat from Jammu and Kashmir protected lives of several Kashmiri Pandits in a terror strike in 1997.

The Kabir Puraskar is a national award instituted by the central government in recognition of acts of physical or moral courage displayed by a member of a caste, community or ethnic group in saving the lives and properties of members of another caste, community or ethnic group during caste, community or ethnic violence.

The award carries a cash prize of Rs.50,000.

According to a home ministry statement Thursday, Qureishi saved lives of two Hindu families during communal violence in Vadodara May 1, 2006, following the demolition of a dargah.

"A large violent mob of Muslims had assembled there and two Hindu families in two vehicles passing through that area got caught in the mob fury. Qureishi without caring for his safety, displaying exemplary physical courage, entered the mob riding on his scooter," the press statement said here.

"Braving the stones pelted by the mob, Qureishi stood there firmly and valiantly rescued both the vehicles with their Hindu occupants from fury of the mob."

On May 26, Qureishi saved Kalpesh Madhusudan Pawar from another riotous mob. According to the statement, had he not barged into the rioting mob, Pawar would have been hacked to death.

Bhat also displayed exemplary courage. "In March 1997, militants attacked village Sangranpora, in Budgam district in Jammu and Kashmir, in which seven Pandits were killed. Bhat reached the spot even before the police and stood guard for whole of the night saving the rest of the family members."

"On the day following the massacre, Bhat cremated the deceased persons without caring for his own life. Bhat also helped their family members in completing legal formalities required for getting the compensation," the statement added. read

Thich Nhat Hanh visits India

2008-10-02T17:35:00.000-07:00

Thich Nhat Hanh (pronounced Tick-Naught-Han) is a Vietnamese Buddhist monk. During the war in Vietnam, he worked tirelessly for reconciliation between North and South Vietnam. His lifelong efforts to generate peace moved Martin Luther King, Jr. to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967. He lives in exile in a small community in France where he teaches, writes, gardens, and works to help refugees worldwide. He has conducted many mindfulness retreats in Europe and North America helping veterans, children, environmentalists, psychotherapists, artists and many thousands of individuals seeking peace in their hearts, and in their world. ...Thich Naht Hanh biography
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Order of Interbeing

One of the best known Buddhist teachers in the West,^[4]^[5] Thich Nhat Hanh's teachings and practices appeal to people from various religious, spiritual, and political backgrounds. He offers a practice of mindfulness adapted to Western sensibilities.^[6] He created the Order of Interbeing in 1966, and established monastic and practice centers around the world. As of 2007 his home is Plum Village Monastery in the Dordogne region in the South of France^[2] and he travels internationally giving retreats and talks. He coined the term Engaged Buddhismin his book Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire.^[7]

'Terrorists are victims who create more victims'

Times of India 2 Oct 2008, 0019 hrs IST,TNN

Midway through the news meeting on Wednesday, the grim news came in: Agartala had been rocked by serial blasts. All eyes immediately turned to Ven

TOI Guest Editor Thich Nhat Hanh. (TOI Photo)

erable Thich Nhat Hanh, the Guest Editor for our special Peace Edition. As journalists, what should we do on a day like this?

The Zen master, who has rebuilt bombed villages, set up schools and medical centres, resettled homeless families and for a lifetime advocated tirelessly the principles of non-violence and compassionate action, pondered for a while.

When he spoke, it was with great clarity, ''Report in a way that invites readers to take a look at why such things continue to happen and that they have their roots in anger, fear, hate and wrong perceptions. Prevent anger from becoming a collective energy. The only antidote for anger and violence is compassion. Terrorists are also victims, who create other victims of misunderstanding.''

This, remember, is the monk — now 82 years old — credited with a big role in turning American public opinion against the war in Vietnam — for which Martin Luther King Jr had nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967. And so, his words are not to be dismissed lightly. more from Wikipedia

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Sarvodaya: The Phoenix Settlement of Gandhiji in Durban

2008-10-01T20:50:00.000-07:00

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi's Phoenix Settlement 25 km outside Durban, South Africa, off the Kwa Mashu Highway, where Gandhi made his home in the 1890s amidst ‘undeveloped’ land and sugarcane plantations, is preserved as a historic site, formally opened as such by the erstwhile South African President Mbeki in February 2000. The Phoenix Settlement Trust Committee was established in 1969 to mark the 100th birth anniversary of Gandhi. This is the venue where Gandhi first thought out his philosophy of passive resistance to injustice. It is here in 1904 that Gandhi started the Indian newspaper — Opinion — disseminating his ideas. It was here that he lived those ideals by experimenting live, the model community life that he envisioned. As per his belief the settlement was to be run on a non-commercial basis with just enough for all with all, sharing in the work on the farms and the press.

Gandhi’s home there is remembered by the term ‘Sarvodaya’, which he coined himself. ‘Sarva’ meaning all, and ‘uday’ meaning upliftment, together conveying welfare for all. more

Gandhi’s Hinduism was a religion of humanity

2008-10-01T19:45:00.000-07:00

The Asian Age - Opinion

Jagmohan ( former governor of J&K and a former Union minister

On Gandhi’s birthday, instead of going round the Mahatma’s Samadhi and attending prayer meetings ritualistically, the ruling elite will do well to think how a strong and healthy India could be built on its spiritual traditions and how Hinduism, as viewed by Gandhiji, could be used to refertilise and revitalise that tradition. Dr S. Radhakrishnan, in connection with his study of religion, posed three questions to Mahatma Gandhi: "What is your religion? How are you led to it? What is its bearing on social life?"

Gandhi replied the first question thus: "My religion is Hinduism which, for me, is the religion of humanity and includes the best of all religions known to me." In response to the second question, Gandhi said: "I take it that the present tense in this question has been purposely used, instead of the past. I am led to my religion through truth and non-violence. I often describe my religion as religion of truth. Of late, instead of saying ‘God is Truth’, I have been saying ‘Truth is God’. We are all sparks of Truth. The sum total of these sparks is indescribable, as yet unknown Truth, which is God. I am daily led nearer to it by constant prayer."

To the third question, Gandhi replied: "The bearing of this religion on social life is, or has to be, seen in one’s daily social contact. To be true to such religion, one has to lose oneself in continuous and continuing service of all in life. Realisation of Truth is impossible without a complete merging of oneself in and identification with this limitless ocean of life. Hence, for me, there is no escape from social service; there is no happiness on earth beyond or apart from it. In this scheme, there is nothing low, nothing high. For all is one, though we seem to be many."

Gandhi elaborated: "The deeper I study Hinduism, the stronger becomes the belief in me that Hinduism is as broad as the universe. Something within me tells me that, for all the deep veneration I show to several religions, I am all the more a Hindu, nonetheless for it."

On the Mahatma’s birthday, it seems necessary to bring home these fundamentals, particularly to those who go on condemning Hinduism without even studying it and also to those members of the ruling elite whose attachment to fake and fraudulent "gods" have made the country a den of corruption, callousness, confusion and criminality.

Gandhi’s elucidation makes it clear that true Hinduism is nothing but spiritual secularism. To relegate such a religion and to follow a shallow and superficial secularism is one of the worst sins that the false prophets of contemporary India are committing. They call Gandhi the Father of the Nation. And yet in practice they do everything to negate all his beliefs.

Throughout human history, religion has remained a potent force, despite all the pounding it has received from thinkers like Marx who called it "opiate of the masses" and Freud who termed it as "a collective neurosis of the masses". It may be relevant to recall a talk between Cardinal Gonsalvic and Napoleon. The Cardinal was pleading the case for the Catholic Church. Napoleon got annoyed on some point and shouted at the Cardinal: "Your Eminence, are you not aware that I have the power to destroy the Catholic Church?" The Cardinal smiled and replied: "Your Majesty, we, the Catholic clergy, for the last 1,800 years, have done our level best to destroy the Catholic Church. We did not succeed. You will not succeed either." This conversation brings out in a telling manner the staying power of religion, notwithstanding its internal and external destroyers.

While religion has its influence in every country, it is more so in India. Swami Vivekananda, with his characteristic clarity and insight, has observed: "Each nation, like each individual, has one theme in its life, which is its centre, the principal note around which every other note comes to form the harmony. If any one attempts to throw off this central note, that is, its national vitality, the direction which has become its own through the transmission of centuries, that nation dies. In India, religious life forms the centre, the key-note of the whole music of national life. Take away religion from India; nothing would be left."

Power, in present day India, has become an end in itself. Justice is being buried deeper and deeper. Means, howsoever unscrupulous, are resorted to and then rationalised. Corruption in public life has attained alarming proportions. Most of our institutions have lost their underlying motivation of service and become effete and venal.

Why has this happened? Why have our State and society become soulless entities? Why have criminals enlarged their hold on politics? And why have power and pelf become everything, and justice and truth nothing?

The answer to these questions is that the ethical foundation of Hinduism, as seen by Gandhi, which could provide "an awakened conscience" to an individual and make him an honest, just and compassionate component of society, has been destroyed partly by the stink and slush of our past degeneration and partly by the type of spurious secularism which has been exploited in post-Independence India.

Hinduism, as made clear by Gandhi, sees all human beings as "sparks of truth/divinity". As such, it neither goes against any other religion, nor is it incompatible with the constitutional goals of equality, fraternity, liberty and justice. If the same divinity constitutes the core of all individuals, they cannot but be equal. Further, divinity in one person cannot in any way be unjust to the same divinity in another person. As the Gita puts it: "Seeing the same God equally present in everything, one does not injure the self by self; and goes to the highest goal".

In Hinduism, Gandhi saw a unique quality: "In it there is room for the worship of all the prophets of the world. It is not a missionary religion in the ordinary sense of the word". Gandhi underlined: "God is not encased in a safe to be approached only through a little hole in it, but He is open to be approached through billions of openings by those who are humble and pure of heart". source

Gandhi Jayanti 2008: “Alternative Nobel" recognizes Gandhian vision of Sarvodaya

2008-10-01T17:58:00.000-07:00

‘Alternative Nobels’ Shared by Four :

Amy Goodman, Monika Hauser, Asha Hagi, Krishnammal
Sarvodaya couple from Tamil Nadu share the honours

Amy GoodmanMonika HauserAsha Hagi Krishnammal

Krishnammal and Sankaralingam Jagannathan for their efforts to promote social justice through their non-profit organisation Land for the Tillers’ Freedom (Lafti).

The award recognizes life long work dedicated to realising in practice the Gandhian vision of social justice and sustainable human development.” -- the Sarvodaya

STOCKHOLM: An activist-couple from Tamil Nadu, an American journalist, a Swiss-born doctor and an activist from Somalia were named on Wednesday as this year’s winners of the Right Livelihood Award, also known as the “alternative Nobel.”

They will share a 2 million kronor (about Rs. 1.34 crore) cash award that will be split in four parts.

A Swedish-German philanthropist Jakob von Uexkull founded the awards in 1980 to recognise work he felt was being ignored by the Nobel Prizes.

American reporter Amy Goodman, founder and host of the syndicated radio and television programme Democracy Now!, was honoured for “truly independent political journalism that brings to millions of people the alternative voices that are often excluded by mainstream media,” the organisers said.

The programme works to provide listeners with independent reports from around the world to portray the effects of U.S. foreign policy, featuring artists, activists, academics and analysts.

Ms. Goodman, born in 1957, was also one of about 800 demonstrators and journalists arrested during protests at a Republican National Convention in the U.S. in mid-September.

The jury also honoured the founder of medica mondiale, gynaecologist Monika Hauser, for her work to help sexually abused women in world crisis zones.

The Swiss-born doctor holds an Italian passport and lives and works in Germany.

Organisers of the awards said Dr. Hauser and her colleagues have helped more than 70,000 traumatised women and girls in war and post-war areas.

Somali lawmaker Asha Hagi was honoured for her efforts to promote peace in her homeland by “continuing to lead at great personal risk the female participation in the peace and reconciliation process,” the organisers said.

Ms. Hagi is also chairwoman of Save Somali Women and Children, which helps women get involved in politics.

The last part of the prize was shared by Krishnammal and Sankaralingam Jagannathan for their efforts to promote social justice through their non-profit organisation Land for the Tillers’ Freedom (Lafti).

The group works to raise the social status of Dalits and by helping redistribute land to poor, landless families.

The Sarvodaya couple and Lafti receive the award “for two long lifetimes of work dedicated to realising in practice the Gandhian vision of social justice and sustainable human development.”

The organisers have referred to them as “India’s soul.”

The octogenarian Krishnnamal Jagannathan is a recipient of the Padma Shri and the Opus Prize 2008 given by Seattle University.

She started Lafti at Kuthur in Nagapattinam district in 1981.

Sankaralingam Jagannathan was an active participant of Vinoba Bhave’s Bhoodan Movement.

The awards will be presented in a ceremony at the Swedish Parliament on December 8, two days before the Nobel Prizes are handed out. Source

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IndianStampGhar.com

Gandhi stamps to go on show

http://www.asianimage.co.uk/display.var.2451714.0.gandhi_stamps_to_go_on_show.php

Asian Image - UK

A unique collection of stamps on Gandhi and Jainism (non-violence) is to be exhibited The Nehru Centre in London later this month.

In the 60th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi?s death, more than 300 individual stamps of Mahatma Gandhi, from over 60 countries, highlight how the world has honoured the father of India through philately.

The first ever stamps depicting Gandhi were issued in 1948 to mark the first anniversary of Indian independence and in 1961 the USA issued stamps with the great leader under the theme of ?Champions of Liberty?.

Over 100 countries throughout the world have followed suit with commemorative stamps and coins.

De-gendered loos in University of Manchester

2008-09-30T18:52:00.000-07:00

It’s the “battle of the bathroom” in Britain after the University of Manchester decided to “de-gender” its students’ union toilets.
Controversy erupted after signs of “ladies” were changed to “toilets”, while the “gents” were converted to “toilets with urinals”.

The changes are in response to an unspecified number of complaints from trans students who are uncomfortable using the men’s toilets, reports BBC News website.

A university newspaper criticised the move but the student union said it was needed to tackle transphobia. more

Frank McGarahan,of Barclays Wealth, while saving a couple from gang assault in UK

2008-09-29T20:30:00.000-07:00

City banker dies after trying to save couple from gang assault
Adam Bell
The Guardian,
Tuesday September 30 2008
Article history

A senior banking executive died of head injuries after he intervened in a street brawl.

Police said Frank McGarahan, 45, who was the chief operating officer , sustained a "fatal injury" early on Sunday morning after witnessing an assault in Norwich. Witnesses said the father-of-two intervened when a group of youths assaulted a young couple.

He was waiting with his one of his younger brothers and another relative when the incident occurred.

A member of Mr McGarahan's family told the Daily Mail: "They were at the back of the queue waiting quietly to go back to their hotel when they saw an assault taking place on a young man and his girlfriend by a mob of nine or 10 blokes in their early 20s. ....more

Yves Rossy flies over English Channel at a speed of 200km per hour

2008-09-26T15:16:00.000-07:00

Science and Religion: Indian American Mathew L. Thakur wins 2008 Benedict Cassen Prize for Nuclear Medicine

2008-09-17T19:42:00.000-07:00

Science and Religion: Indian American Mathew L. Thakur wins 2008 Benedict Cassen Prize for Nuclear Medicine

Ragpickers who saved Delhi

2008-09-16T04:35:00.000-07:00

Ragpickers who saved Delhi
Sidharth Pandey
Monday, September 15, 2008, (New Delhi)

Without them Delhi's serial blasts could have been a lot worse. Two ragpickers who found two live bombs in dustbins at Children's Park at India Gate and near Regal Cinema in Connaught Place and alerted the police are getting Rs 50,000 each as a reward.

A 12-year-old baloon seller and two young rag-pickers are the capital's latest heroes while one of the boys is helping the police narrow down on the men who may have carried out one of the blasts, the other two prevented two bombs from exploding by alerting the police in time.

However, NGOs say that this is a bitter irony as the capital's 1 lakh street children are often at the receiving end of the law.

Connaught Place, the heart of Delhi, also home to thousands of street-children who are its eyes and ears but go unnoticed, unheard.

It's been a long walk for Javed and Sunil, both in their teens, from broken families one from Bareily the other from Madhya Pradesh.

A year ago, they ran away from their homes and came to Delhi looking for work. But all they managed to do is this risky business especially after live bombs were found in dustbins on Saturday.

"We are scared as we pick garbage and especially from dustbins it could be bomb and something may happen but what to do, it's about survival," said Mohammad Javed, ragpicker.

The two walk over five kilometers each day, looking for stuff that can be sold to scrap dealers, 40-50 rupees is all they earn, life on the streets is not easy.

"The problem is that people keep beating us up, especially if something like this happens," Javed added.

There are lakhs of children like Javed and Sunil who form an virtual invisible army which work on the streets of most Indian cities and for years NGOs have been asking the police not to treat them as a problem but as a solution.

"It is important that the police be sensitised and that they realise that we have to include these kids in society," said Sunil Gupta, Chief Executive, Chetna, NGO.

A day after the serial blasts, it's business as usual for Javed and Sunil walking the same stretch where two bombs exploded only hours ago.

Keeping off work would mean no food, the daily struggle for survival continues.

Anglican Church's Apology to Darwin

2008-09-14T21:02:00.000-07:00

News Makers
Darwin to get apology from Anglican Church
The Asian Age Sept.15, 2008
By OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
London

BRITISH NATURALIST Charles Darwin, who is famous for his theory of evolution by natural selection, will get an official apology from the Church of England on Monday. Darwin, who died in 1882, introduced the theory about evolution by natural selection in his groundbreaking book The Origin of Species, in 1859.

The Church will apologise directly to Darwin almost 150 years after he propounded his theory and more than 125 years after his death. The Rev

Dr Malcolm Brown, the Church’s director of mission and public affairs of the Archbishops’ Council, will write in the apology that will be posted as an article on the church website, "Charles Darwin: 200 years from your birth, the Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still. We try to practise the old virtues of ‘faith seeking understanding’ and hope that makes some amends."

"But the struggle for your reputation is not over yet, and the problem is not just your religious opponents but those who falsely claim you in support of their own interests," according to the extracts from the apology, printed in the Mail on Sunday.

It further said, "People, and institutions, make mistakes and Christian people and Churches are no exception. When a big new idea emerges that changes the way people look at the world, it’s easy to feel that every old idea, every certainty, is under attack and then to do battle against the new insights. The Church made that mistake with Galileo’s astronomy and has since realised its mistake. Some Church people did it again in the 1860s with Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection. So it is important to think again about Darwin’s impact on religious thinking, then and now."

Link

William Temple

2008-08-24T04:32:00.000-07:00

Born into the Establishment, his father Frederick being Archbishop of Canterbury from 1896-1902, Temple was both a national and international figure.

Appointed Bishop of Manchester in 1921 at the age of 40 and then in 1929 Archbishop of York, Temple and his ministry came to epitomise the face of a renewed Church engaging with society in the midst of a nation in social and political turmoil, coping not only with the aftermath of one war but also another dangerously looming on the horizon.

A philosopher of deep spirituality with an insatiable appetite for hard work and ability to communicate with all classes, Temple’s Oxford University Mission addresses of 1931 entitled Christian Faith and Life to the packed University Church influenced a whole generation of future leaders: “People are always thinking that conduct is supremely important, and that because prayer helps it, therefore prayer is good. That is true as far as it goes; still truer is it to say that worship is of supreme importance and conduct tests it.”

Conscious of the deepening divisions within Europe, he was determined that if the Churches were to have any future credibility they should present a united front spiritually and socially. In 1942 he co-founded the Council of Christians and Jews. From the Edinburgh Missionary Conference of 1910 to the foundation of the World Council of Churches he helped to steer the ecumenical ship, and the success of the first General Assembly of the WCC in Amsterdam in 1948 was in no small part a credit to him.

Together with his keen interest in education and his collaboration with Rab Butler on the 1944 Education Act, Temple’s contribution was decisive in Labour’s landslide victory in 1945. A not uncritical supporter of the Labour Party and following in the Christian Socialist tradition of F. D. Maurice and Henry Scott Holland, it was Temple who coined the phrase “the Welfare State”.

Working with his Rugby contemporary R. H. Tawney, the seminal Labour thinker, and William Beveridge, the architect of the welfare reforms which sought to banish the five giants of want, idleness, squalor, ignorance and disease, Temple’s book Christianity and Social Order, published in 1942, provided a challenging theological gloss to this vision: “. . . there is no hope of establishing a more Christian social order except through the labour and sacrifice of those in whom the Spirit of Christ is active, and that the first necessity for progress is more and better Christians taking full responsibility as citizens for the political, social and economic system under which they and their fellows live.”
He died at the age of 63 after being Archbishop of Canterbury for only 30 months.

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Simple Church - Amish Church

2008-08-24T03:37:00.000-07:00

I heard a news story this week that really made me think about a simple church. I heard about a group of people bound by a similar faith. These people have no outreach program. These people do not practice evangelism. These people do no vacation Bible school. These people do no church camp or recovery groups or community Christmas programs. These people do not do world missions and have no "cooperative program." This ecclesiastical body must be shrinking and dying, you say? No, guess again. This group of people have doubled their population in sixteen years. They are growing much, much faster than Baptists and all other evangelical churches. Who are they? The Amish.

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Tips for Saving Money on Your Grocery Bill

2008-08-22T21:49:00.000-07:00

America's Cheapest Family' Offers Tips for Saving Money on Your Grocery Bill
The Economideses Share Deals, Discounts and How to Reduce Food Costs for Their Family
By MIKE VON FREMD
Aug. 22, 2008

At a time when many consumers' grocery bills are rising, the aptly named Economides family is able to feed itself inexpensively.
The cheapest family in America offers tips on how to save money.

The family of six spends only $350 monthly on groceries.

Annette Economides said she and her husband, Steve, see the search for great deals as thrilling entertainment.

"If your job is to stretch your dollars and you can do it and have success at it, wouldn't you?" she said.

The pair and self-proclaimed cheapest family are able to stock a lot of food for a little bit of money, thanks, in part, to coupons. They use them for almost every item. During one recent shopping venture, for instance, the Economides bought more than $140.58 worth of food for $53.01.

Read more

Maker of Film on Binayak Sen's Life Imprisoned for 90 days

2008-08-19T09:55:00.000-07:00

Ajay T G, who made a film on the life and work of Dr. Binayak Sen, was arrested under the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security (CSPS Act, 2005)on May 5, 2008, for “having links with the outlawed Communist Party of India (Maoist). Dr. Sen was also arrested on similar charges on 14 May 2007. Ajay has been serving as a state executive of the Peoples Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL) in Chattisgarh. When the police failed to find any evidence to support their charges within the mandatory 90 days period, Ajay was granted statutory bail on August 4. He was warned not to travel or speak to the press and the case against him has not been closed. This has been the case with Binayak Sen who is still in prison for more than one year. In this blog we have requested the readers' support to the efforts to free Binayak Sen.

Ajay and his wife, Shobha, attended Tuesday’s public meeting in Delhi organized by human rights activists and journalists, including Arundhati Roy, at their own risk.

Read it here

Chengara Land Struggle: Sign the Petition

2008-08-14T18:23:00.000-07:00

Aound 5000 landless families who are engaged in a struggle to claim land for a living in Chengara in Kerala State are facing violent reprisal from a bunch of goons with the connivance of the Government of Kerala. In order to show solidarity to the victims and to o put pressure on the Government of Kerala to act immediately and secure justice a petition addressed to the President of India by some concerned individuals and organisations are being circulated. You can also participate in this campaign by signing the petition. To sign click here.

The Chengara struggle is a movement by landless Dalits, Adivasis and other marginalised peoples to gain ownership of land that began on 4th August 2007 in the southern plantation belt of Pathanamthitta. It is a fight to re-claim ownership of land that has been part of a long standing promise of the Government. To this end about 5000 families totaling around 24,000 people from different parts of the region have moved on to the Harrison Malayalam Private Ltd estate, building tents with poles and plastic sheets to establish the struggle front. The impugned land was a part of a leasehold to Harrison Malayalam Ltd, which expired in 1985 and no rents have been paid to the State exchequer since. The struggle is also a statement against illegal encroachment of land that ought to belong to the people by a corporate entity for commercial purposes with the tacit support of the State machinery.

The Chengara Land struggle is being carried forward under the banner of Sadhujana Vimochana Samyuktha Vedi (SJVSV) and has the support and solidarity of various Civil Society groups, movements and citizens across the country. In order to show solidarity the people in struggle and to put pressure on the Government of Kerala to act immediately and secure justice for the landless people petition, addressed to the President of India is Constitutional authorities in this country, epeaceful protestors.

The State Government is yet to make any serious move to initiate negotiations with the protestors. The past feeble attempts at discussions were more a ploy to threaten the agitators with police action and subvert the agitation. The ruling party has resorted to a violent reprisal resorting to violent intimidation including rape, defamation and deliberate cutting off food and other lifeline supplies to the protesters for more than 10 days.

Beacons of hope in Ahmedabad's dark days of terror

2008-07-29T20:10:00.000-07:00

Manorama Online Home - Beacons of hope in Ahmedabad's dark days of terror

Tuesday,29 July 2008 17:10 hrs IST
Beacons of hope in Ahmedabad's dark days of terror
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Ahmedabad: Just like the proverbial silver lining behind every dark cloud are the stories of valour and compassion that come to the fore with every terror attack. And Ahmedabad was no different in the many instances of those who helped out without regard to life or limb as one bomb after another exploded with relentless regularity two evenings ago.

Dinesh Kumar, Ranjit Singh, Vishnu Thakore, Kamlesh Tank, Bhavesh Kabir, Paresh Panchal or Mukesh Lalani... just some names in the list of at least 50 dead and more than 200 injured when 21 blasts tore through the peace of this Gujarat city Saturday evening.

Some of them died even as they rushed to help or commiserate after the news of the first blasts came.

Their acts of goodness stood out like beacons of hope through the dark days following the terror strike.

Mukesh Lalani, 52, was one who lived to tell the tale. He had rushed to help the injured at the Civil Hospital when a bomb exploded just behind him and he was seriously wounded himself.

Two days later, the 52-year-old Lalani recounted with gratitude Monday: "I tried to help when the ambulance entered; god seems to have repaid my kindness."

"I had gone to the Civil Hospital where a friend was being discharged after being hurt in an accident. I had a word with him and was leaving a little while later when I saw an ambulance entering the hospital premises. It came to a screeching halt. On impulse, I decided to help even as a couple of paramedics approached the rear door," Lalani told IANS.

That's when all hell broke loose.

"There were only the injured all around me. And then, even as I was helping a stretcher out of an ambulance there was a loud explosion behind my back. I dived trying to reach under the ambulance even as the stretcher fell with a thud."

It will be some time before Lalani, who suffered serious shrapnel injury, walks again. But he at least managed to escape without any serious injuries to his chest or head.

Twenty-year-old Bhavesh Kabir ran towards the Civil Hospital -- in what is perhaps a first, the bomb at the Civil Hospital exploded just as injured from earlier blasts were being brought in -- as soon as he heard about the injured coming in.

Just as he was getting a trolley, a bomb exploded leaving Kabir with severe burns -- and his mother weeping helplessly.

"I only came to help, why this happen to me," he was quoted as murmuring from his hospital bed.

They were the luckier ones.

Paresh Patil, 38, went to the Civil Hospital to donate blood on hearing about blasts but never came back. His body was found Sunday morning but his 12-year-old son and 10-year-old were still waiting in hope.

As was perhaps the family of Dinesh Kumar Jain who was also caught in the blast in the hospital just as he was trying to help move the injured out of the ambulance. He was killed and his three friends were reportedly seriously injured.

Ranjit Singh, Vishnu Thakore and Kamlesh Tank, who along with Dinesh Kumar, were at the forefront when Gujarat was struck by a quake, and then the riots of 2002 a year later, are in hospital while their friend lies dead.

As Ahmedabad counts its dead and looks beyond, they are the ones who will help in the task of rebuilding lives shattered by terrorism.

Generate your own power, use it and sell it too

2008-07-29T20:01:00.000-07:00

Manorama Online Home - Generate your own power, use it and sell it too

Generate your own power, use it and sell it too
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Salzburg: The Indian government has placed solar energy development at the centre of its strategy for energy security and combating climate change. There is a town in Germany where most new buildings have solar power roofs that not only cater to all the energy requirements of homes, but also allow residents to sell power to the grid.

With more than half the world's population living in cities now, and the figure estimated to go up to 70-80 percent by 2025, the focus of planners dealing with climate change is shifting to making cities self-sustainable in renewable energy production.

Freiburg is a city in Germany that has perhaps moved more in this direction than any other. Its chief architect, Wulf Heinrich Daseking, explained exactly how this was being done at a recent session of the Salzburg Global Seminar on Combating Climate Change at Local and Regional Levels: Sustainable Strategies, Renewable Energy.

Planners and academics from around the world attended the session. IANS was the only media organisation from Asia to be invited.

A city of around 200,000 people near Frankfurt, Freiburg started with a basic disadvantage - it had no industry, so it was not a rich city. "That is an advantage in some ways," said Daseking. "When you don't have much money, you have to find the best way to use what you have."

The greening of Freiburg started with local opposition to a proposed nuclear power nearby. The locals won, "but then the question was: How do we keep the lights from going out?" Daseking said.

"Six to eight people got together and said, 'We have the city with the most sunshine hours in Germany, let us try to use that'. From that small start, we now have entire neighbourhoods with solar panels as their roofs."

Private entrepreneurs put in the roofs and take care of maintenance for the first three years as part of the contract. By that time, residents have already recovered the extra cost of putting in the solar power roofs because they do not have to pay any electricity bills.

What is more, the solar panels generate more electricity than the household can consume, so the residents sell it to the grid and have a perpetual source of income from their homes.

Apart from its solar-powered houses, Freiburg has a public transport system that makes it quite unnecessary to own a car. Be it trams, buses, local trains, intercity trains, cable cars, aircraft, private cars, or bicycles - all are interchangeable at one hub, the railway station.

"The trick is to integrate all the transport systems at one point," Daseking said. "The commuter obviously finds it most convenient. And the city also saves money."

A single ticket that costs 53 euros a month enables the commuter to use all these forms of transport as often as he or she wishes. On weekends, families can travel without paying anything extra. With dedicated lanes, travelling by tram or bus is faster than driving - and far more comfortable.

There are two dedicated bus lanes and tramlines, one going from the eastern end of the city to the western end, and the other from north to south. The city planners have placed as many offices and residential neighbourhoods close to these lanes as they can.

The result, there are parts of Freiburg where the number of cars per 1,000 residents has come down from 550 to 85, even as the per capita income is going up.

Of course, this has the major additional advantage of saving energy and thus reducing greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the Earth's atmosphere and leading to climate change.

"We must build up the density of population in a city, not reduce it," Daseking said. "Everyone lives together, as they did for so many centuries. That also reduces the overall energy used for transportation."

That was the way to go, in more senses than one, said one delegate at the end of Daseking's presentation.

Che Guevara Remembersed , on the occasion of his 80th birth anniversary JUNE 14, 2008

2008-06-21T22:54:00.000-07:00

Frontline
Volume 25 - Issue 13 :: Jun. 21-Jul. 04, 2008
INDIA'S NATIONAL MAGAZINE
from the publishers of THE HINDU • Contents

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WORLD AFFAIRS

An icon for all time

JOHN CHERIAN

The world remembers Che Guevara, the great revolutionary, on the occasion of his 80th birth anniversary.

ALBERTO KORDA/GAMMA

A 1959 photograph of Che Guevara playing golf, taken at Fidel Castro’s request, according to the photographer.

JUNE 14, 2008, the 80th birth anniversary of the revolutionary icon Ernesto “Che” Guevara, was celebrated in many cities of the world. In New Delhi, a photo exhibition highlighting his visit to India in 1959 was held at the India International Centre: Che was in India soon after the 1959 Cuban revolution and met Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and other senior Indian leaders. Also on display were rare pictures of Che’s diplomatic forays on behalf of Cuba’s revolutionary government in the late 1950s and the early 1960s to Asian countries such as Indonesia and China, Egypt and the United Nations headquarters in New York.

Until the cause of revolutionary internationalism beckoned him, Che held important portfolios in the Cuban government, including finance and foreign affairs.

Che was killed in action 40 years ago while fighting along with a guerilla army in the jungles of Bolivia. A Bolivian army unit trained by the Central Intelligence Agency captured Che and his band of guerillas after they ran out of ammunition. Che was then summarily executed on the CIA’s direct orders. Che and his highly motivated band of guerillas had hoped to ignite a popular revolution in Bolivia and, eventually, in the rest of Latin America.

Che’s 40th death anniversary was one of the most important events for Cubans last year. The top Cuban leadership assembled to pay homage to him in Santa Clara, the city he helped liberate during the struggle against the United States-backed dictatorship. Ramiro Valdes, one of Che’s comrades-in-arms and counted among the three senior leaders of the revolution, emphasised on the occasion that Che’s ideas and the legacy of his comrades would remain “a living element” among all Cubans.

Fidel Castro, paying tribute to his late comrade-in-arms, said that he bowed his “head with respect and gratitude to the exceptional combatant”. He described Che “as a flower yanked prematurely from its stem”. In an article that first appeared in the daily Granma, Castro also wrote that Che “was the mastermind of voluntary work; he accomplished honourable political missions abroad and served as messenger of militant internationalism in East Congo and Bolivia. He built a new awareness in our America and the world.” Castro concluded by reiterating that Che “still fights with us and for us”.

Che, as was evident from his writings and speeches, was inspired by the struggle of the Vietnamese against U.S. imperialism. In an undated message to the Organisation of Solidarity with the Peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America (OSPAL) and published in the Cuban magazine Tricontinental in 1966, Che wrote: “How close we could look into a bright future should two, three or many Vietnams flourish throughout the world with their share of deaths and their immense tragedies, their everyday heroism and their repeated blows against imperialism, impelled to disperse its force under the sudden attack and the increased hatred of all peoples of the world.” “One, two, three Vietnams” became one of Che’s famous slogans.

In that article Che also wrote that true revolutionaries need not fear death: “Wherever death may surprise us, let it be welcome, provided that this our battle cry may have reached some receptive ear and another hand may be extended to wield our weapons and other men be ready to intone the funeral dirge with the staccato singing of the machine guns and new battle cries for victory.”

Che’s death, in retrospect, was not at all in vain. His struggles in the jungles of Africa and Latin America were inspirations to guerilla struggles that followed. Ruthless U.S.-backed authoritarian regimes had only managed to stem the revolutionary upsurge temporarily.

Che, if he were alive, would have been happy to see the political map of Latin America today. The governments in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador and, importantly, Bolivia, the country in which he laid down his life, all have a left-wing orientation. In the capitals of all the four countries, Che’s death anniversary was observed in a big way. Bolivian President Evo Morales went to Vallegrande, 450 km from the capital La Paz, where Che’s remains were secretly buried, to pay his respects. Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez presided over a ceremony at Pico del Agila in western Venezuela, which Che visited 55 years ago.
Foray into Congo

Che’s foray into Congo with a band of revolutionaries was another interesting episode in his short but eventful life. The CIA, which had assassinated the left-wing Prime Minister of Congo, Patrice Lumumba, soon after the country gained independence, despatched more than a thousand mercenaries to counter the Congolese guerillas led by Che. Che’s ideas inspired other revolutionary movements on the continent.

Not many people know that Cuba played a key role in the revolutionary successes of the National Front of Algeria (FLN) in its struggle against French colonialism. Even more important was the role of Cuba in the victory of the Movimento Popular da Libertação de Angola (MPLA) in Angola and the triumph over apartheid in South Africa. The battle of Cueto Cuanavale in 1987-88 turned the tide against the racist South African government. A combined force of Cubans and Angolans defeated the South African army in that battle. White South Africa’s aura of invincibility was broken. After Nelson Mandela was sworn in as President, he was overheard telling Castro: “You made this [freedom] possible.”

Thousands of Cuban men and women, inspired by Che, had volunteered to fight in far-off African countries, such as Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde, against Portuguese colonialism. South African President Thabo Mbeki, in an article in the African National Congress (ANC) journal to commemorate Che’s death anniversary, paid lavish tributes to the revolutionary. Mbeki’s article quotes from official U.S. documents to prove Washington’s culpability in Che’s killing.

Che’s life was a testament to his commitment to the downtrodden. Che was born in a progressive Argentinean land-owning family in 1928. His early exposure to the profound inequalities in Latin America made him an avowed enemy of imperialism and the wealthy elite. He worked among the poor in many Latin American countries as a doctor. His stay in a colony of leprosy patients in Peru was documented in his travelogue Motor Cycle Diaries.

In 1954, when he was in Guatemala, he witnessed first hand the CIA-sponsored coup against the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz, and this had a big impact on his world view. In the same year, in Argentina the army overthrew the democratically elected government of Juan Peron, with the tacit support of the Americans. Che moved on to Mexico, where for the first time he came in contact with Castro in July 1955.

He was among the band of revolutionaries belonging to the July 26 Movement under the leadership of Castro, who boarded the Granma Yacht on November 25, 1956, to begin the struggle against the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista and restart the war of independence. Granma reached Cuba on December 2, 1956. Within a year, Castro, recognising Che’s potential as a fighter and a revolutionary, appointed him commander of Column No. 8 of the liberation army.

“He’d be the first for any mission. He was characterised by an extraordinary bravery, an absolute contempt for danger,” Castro told Ignacio Ramonnet (Castro’s recently released book My Life).

Che participated in many heroic battles, including the battle of Santa Clara of December 31, 1958, which was a turning point in the struggle. On January 1, 1959, Castro ordered Che and his troops to march to Havana after receiving news that Fulgencio Batista had run away from the country. On February 7, 1959, Che was formally given Cuban citizenship.

In My Life, Castro reminisces about the days when he first came into contact with Che, whom he describes as first and foremost an internationalist. Castro tells Ramonnet, who is the editor of the book, that Che had only one request when he enlisted for the struggle to liberate Cuba.

“The only thing I ask is that when the revolution triumphs in Cuba, you not forbid me, for reasons of the state, from going to Argentina to make a revolution there,” Che told Castro, who immediately agreed. The subject, according to Castro, was never broached again until Che decided to leave, not for his native Argentina but for Congo.

COURTESY: EMBASSY OF CUBA

Frontline
Volume 25 - Issue 13 :: Jun. 21-Jul. 04, 2008
INDIA'S NATIONAL MAGAZINE
from the publishers of THE HINDU • Contents

WORLD AFFAIRS

An icon for all time

JOHN CHERIAN

The world remembers Che Guevara, the great revolutionary, on the occasion of his 80th birth anniversary.

JUNE 14, 2008, the 80th birth anniversary of the revolutionary icon Ernesto “Che” Guevara, was celebrated in many cities of the world. In New Delhi, a photo exhibition highlighting his visit to India in 1959 was held at the India International Centre: Che was in India soon after the 1959 Cuban revolution and met Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and other senior Indian leaders. Also on display were rare pictures of Che’s diplomatic forays on behalf of Cuba’s revolutionary government in the late 1950s and the early 1960s to Asian countries such as Indonesia and China, Egypt and the United Nations headquarters in New York.

Until the cause of revolutionary internationalism beckoned him, Che held important portfolios in the Cuban government, including finance and foreign affairs.

Che was killed in action 40 years ago while fighting along with a guerilla army in the jungles of Bolivia. A Bolivian army unit trained by the Central Intelligence Agency captured Che and his band of guerillas after they ran out of ammunition. Che was then summarily executed on the CIA’s direct orders. Che and his highly motivated band of guerillas had hoped to ignite a popular revolution in Bolivia and, eventually, in the rest of Latin America.

Che’s 40th death anniversary was one of the most important events for Cubans last year. The top Cuban leadership assembled to pay homage to him in Santa Clara, the city he helped liberate during the struggle against the United States-backed dictatorship. Ramiro Valdes, one of Che’s comrades-in-arms and counted among the three senior leaders of the revolution, emphasised on the occasion that Che’s ideas and the legacy of his comrades would remain “a living element” among all Cubans.

Fidel Castro, paying tribute to his late comrade-in-arms, said that he bowed his “head with respect and gratitude to the exceptional combatant”. He described Che “as a flower yanked prematurely from its stem”. In an article that first appeared in the daily Granma, Castro also wrote that Che “was the mastermind of voluntary work; he accomplished honourable political missions abroad and served as messenger of militant internationalism in East Congo and Bolivia. He built a new awareness in our America and the world.” Castro concluded by reiterating that Che “still fights with us and for us”.

Che, as was evident from his writings and speeches, was inspired by the struggle of the Vietnamese against U.S. imperialism. In an undated message to the Organisation of Solidarity with the Peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America (OSPAL) and published in the Cuban magazine Tricontinental in 1966, Che wrote: “How close we could look into a bright future should two, three or many Vietnams flourish throughout the world with their share of deaths and their immense tragedies, their everyday heroism and their repeated blows against imperialism, impelled to disperse its force under the sudden attack and the increased hatred of all peoples of the world.” “One, two, three Vietnams” became one of Che’s famous slogans.

In that article Che also wrote that true revolutionaries need not fear death: “Wherever death may surprise us, let it be welcome, provided that this our battle cry may have reached some receptive ear and another hand may be extended to wield our weapons and other men be ready to intone the funeral dirge with the staccato singing of the machine guns and new battle cries for victory.”

Che’s death, in retrospect, was not at all in vain. His struggles in the jungles of Africa and Latin America were inspirations to guerilla struggles that followed. Ruthless U.S.-backed authoritarian regimes had only managed to stem the revolutionary upsurge temporarily.

Che, if he were alive, would have been happy to see the political map of Latin America today. The governments in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador and, importantly, Bolivia, the country in which he laid down his life, all have a left-wing orientation. In the capitals of all the four countries, Che’s death anniversary was observed in a big way. Bolivian President Evo Morales went to Vallegrande, 450 km from the capital La Paz, where Che’s remains were secretly buried, to pay his respects. Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez presided over a ceremony at Pico del Agila in western Venezuela, which Che visited 55 years ago.
Foray into Congo

Che’s foray into Congo with a band of revolutionaries was another interesting episode in his short but eventful life. The CIA, which had assassinated the left-wing Prime Minister of Congo, Patrice Lumumba, soon after the country gained independence, despatched more than a thousand mercenaries to counter the Congolese guerillas led by Che. Che’s ideas inspired other revolutionary movements on the continent.

Not many people know that Cuba played a key role in the revolutionary successes of the National Front of Algeria (FLN) in its struggle against French colonialism. Even more important was the role of Cuba in the victory of the Movimento Popular da Libertação de Angola (MPLA) in Angola and the triumph over apartheid in South Africa. The battle of Cueto Cuanavale in 1987-88 turned the tide against the racist South African government. A combined force of Cubans and Angolans defeated the South African army in that battle. White South Africa’s aura of invincibility was broken. After Nelson Mandela was sworn in as President, he was overheard telling Castro: “You made this [freedom] possible.”

Thousands of Cuban men and women, inspired by Che, had volunteered to fight in far-off African countries, such as Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde, against Portuguese colonialism. South African President Thabo Mbeki, in an article in the African National Congress (ANC) journal to commemorate Che’s death anniversary, paid lavish tributes to the revolutionary. Mbeki’s article quotes from official U.S. documents to prove Washington’s culpability in Che’s killing.

Che’s life was a testament to his commitment to the downtrodden. Che was born in a progressive Argentinean land-owning family in 1928. His early exposure to the profound inequalities in Latin America made him an avowed enemy of imperialism and the wealthy elite. He worked among the poor in many Latin American countries as a doctor. His stay in a colony of leprosy patients in Peru was documented in his travelogue Motor Cycle Diaries.

In 1954, when he was in Guatemala, he witnessed first hand the CIA-sponsored coup against the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz, and this had a big impact on his world view. In the same year, in Argentina the army overthrew the democratically elected government of Juan Peron, with the tacit support of the Americans. Che moved on to Mexico, where for the first time he came in contact with Castro in July 1955.

He was among the band of revolutionaries belonging to the July 26 Movement under the leadership of Castro, who boarded the Granma Yacht on November 25, 1956, to begin the struggle against the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista and restart the war of independence. Granma reached Cuba on December 2, 1956. Within a year, Castro, recognising Che’s potential as a fighter and a revolutionary, appointed him commander of Column No. 8 of the liberation army.

“He’d be the first for any mission. He was characterised by an extraordinary bravery, an absolute contempt for danger,” Castro told Ignacio Ramonnet (Castro’s recently released book My Life).

Che participated in many heroic battles, including the battle of Santa Clara of December 31, 1958, which was a turning point in the struggle. On January 1, 1959, Castro ordered Che and his troops to march to Havana after receiving news that Fulgencio Batista had run away from the country. On February 7, 1959, Che was formally given Cuban citizenship.

In My Life, Castro reminisces about the days when he first came into contact with Che, whom he describes as first and foremost an internationalist. Castro tells Ramonnet, who is the editor of the book, that Che had only one request when he enlisted for the struggle to liberate Cuba.

“The only thing I ask is that when the revolution triumphs in Cuba, you not forbid me, for reasons of the state, from going to Argentina to make a revolution there,” Che told Castro, who immediately agreed. The subject, according to Castro, was never broached again until Che decided to leave, not for his native Argentina but for Congo.

COURTESY: EMBASSY OF CUBA

Che visited India in 1959, soon after the revolution in Cuba.

Che went on to become one of Cuba’s central figures during the formative years of the revolution. In the initial years, he played a key role in bringing about agrarian reforms, eradicating illiteracy, and nationalising all American-owned property in the island. Before the revolution, Cuba was virtually a colony of the U.S. and a playground for the mafia and the rich and the famous of America.

As Cuba’s first Finance Minister, Che initiated radical reforms of the kind unheard of in Latin America and the Caribbean at the time. Though without any formal training in economics, Che had a fine grasp of the subject and presided over the liquidation of American capital in the island.

There is a story surrounding the circumstances of his appointment to the post. Immediately after the revolution, Castro, at a meeting, asked whether any of his comrades was an economist. Che was the first to raise his hand and was immediately appointed Governor of the Central Bank. He casually signed the new banknotes as “Che”. A couple of days later, Castro told Che: “I did not know you were an economist.” Che answered, “I thought that you were asking whether I was a Communist.”

Che’s sense of humour is exemplified by another story this correspondent heard in Havana. Che, who was asthmatic, was told by his doctor to restrict his smoking to one cigar a day. Che immediately agreed and from then on started smoking a cigar that was a foot long.

By 1964, Che was restless with his desk job. He had also become convinced that the Cuban revolution could only thrive if like-minded governments emerged in Latin America and other parts of the world. In his “farewell letter” to Castro, written on April 1, an emotional Che wrote: “I feel that I have fulfilled the part of my duty that tied me to the Cuban revolution in its territory, and I say farewell to you, to the comrades, to the people, who now are mine.”

Che was nostalgic about his relationship with Castro. “I have lived magnificent days, and at your side I felt the pride of belonging to our people in the brilliant yet sad days of the Caribbean Missile Crisis. Seldom has a statesman been as brilliant as you were in those days. I am also proud of having followed you without hesitation, of having identified with your ways of thinking and of seeing and appraising dangers and principles.”

After Che left on his mission to Africa and Latin America, there was feverish speculation in the Western media about alleged differences between Castro and Che. It was only after Che’s death that it became clear that his mission was undertaken with Castro’s full support and knowledge.

Che ended his last letter to Castro by emphasising his identification “with the foreign policy of our revolution. Wherever I am, I feel the responsibility of being a Cuban revolutionary, and I shall behave as such. I am not sorry that I leave nothing material to my wife and children; I am happy it is that way. I ask nothing for them, as the state will provide them with enough to live on and provide an education.”

In a speech delivered on Che’s 30th death anniversary, Castro said that as long as injustice, exploitation, poverty and hegemony continued to expand, Che’s image would only grow. Che, he said, was “a paradigm of a revolutionary and a communist”.

Copyright © 2008, Frontline.

Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited
without the written consent of Frontline

Che went on to become one of Cuba’s central figures during the formative years of the revolution. In the initial years, he played a key role in bringing about agrarian reforms, eradicating illiteracy, and nationalising all American-owned property in the island. Before the revolution, Cuba was virtually a colony of the U.S. and a playground for the mafia and the rich and the famous of America.

As Cuba’s first Finance Minister, Che initiated radical reforms of the kind unheard of in Latin America and the Caribbean at the time. Though without any formal training in economics, Che had a fine grasp of the subject and presided over the liquidation of American capital in the island.

There is a story surrounding the circumstances of his appointment to the post. Immediately after the revolution, Castro, at a meeting, asked whether any of his comrades was an economist. Che was the first to raise his hand and was immediately appointed Governor of the Central Bank. He casually signed the new banknotes as “Che”. A couple of days later, Castro told Che: “I did not know you were an economist.” Che answered, “I thought that you were asking whether I was a Communist.”

Che’s sense of humour is exemplified by another story this correspondent heard in Havana. Che, who was asthmatic, was told by his doctor to restrict his smoking to one cigar a day. Che immediately agreed and from then on started smoking a cigar that was a foot long.

By 1964, Che was restless with his desk job. He had also become convinced that the Cuban revolution could only thrive if like-minded governments emerged in Latin America and other parts of the world. In his “farewell letter” to Castro, written on April 1, an emotional Che wrote: “I feel that I have fulfilled the part of my duty that tied me to the Cuban revolution in its territory, and I say farewell to you, to the comrades, to the people, who now are mine.”

Che was nostalgic about his relationship with Castro. “I have lived magnificent days, and at your side I felt the pride of belonging to our people in the brilliant yet sad days of the Caribbean Missile Crisis. Seldom has a statesman been as brilliant as you were in those days. I am also proud of having followed you without hesitation, of having identified with your ways of thinking and of seeing and appraising dangers and principles.”

After Che left on his mission to Africa and Latin America, there was feverish speculation in the Western media about alleged differences between Castro and Che. It was only after Che’s death that it became clear that his mission was undertaken with Castro’s full support and knowledge.

Che ended his last letter to Castro by emphasising his identification “with the foreign policy of our revolution. Wherever I am, I feel the responsibility of being a Cuban revolutionary, and I shall behave as such. I am not sorry that I leave nothing material to my wife and children; I am happy it is that way. I ask nothing for them, as the state will provide them with enough to live on and provide an education.”

In a speech delivered on Che’s 30th death anniversary, Castro said that as long as injustice, exploitation, poverty and hegemony continued to expand, Che’s image would only grow. Che, he said, was “a paradigm of a revolutionary and a communist”.
Copyright © 2008, Frontline.

Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited
without the written consent of Frontline