Catégorie : World People

Linked with Association for Solidarity with Jammu and Kashmir BASJAK, with JAMMU AND KASHMIR, A SMOULDERING CONFLICT, and with again Kashmir. Added later: linked also with Conclusions, with BASJAK’s report on Jammu and Kashmir, and with Meetings.

He says: (Excerpt):  » … Our Association urges the Governments of India and Pakistan to respect conscientiously the mutual commitments and to continue bilateral and meaningful negotiations over Jammu and Kashmir. India and Pakistan will not achieve real security until they find a way to resolve their tensions. We appeal to all parties concerned, including the Kashmir leadership, to respond to the desire of the common man for peace and a chance to earn his livelihood to restart his life. Responsibility must take the place for jingoism. The most compelling need of the hour is the protection of life in the homes and on the streets of Kashmir. The Kashmiris have the right to enjoy all their Human Rights, including economic, social and cultural rights …  » (full text: statement at Commission on Human Rights, 57th SESSION, GENEVA, 25 JULY – 12 AUGUST 2005).

Remark also the New Updated Photo Gallery, scroll down and click on one of the many links.

Paul Beersmans – Belgium

He works with the Belgian Association for Solidarity with Jammu and Kashmir BASJAK.

Bio:

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(Thai Version)

Linked with Wat Pa Luangta Bua Yannasampanno Forest Monastery (Tiger Temple).

Deep in the heart of the Kanchanaburi province in Western Thailand there lies a Buddhist temple with a difference. For not only is this temple home to monks who spend their time in prayer and meditation, over the last 7 years it has become a sanctuary for tigers. When villagers found an orphaned tiger cub, they went from place to place seeking help. Upon arrival at the monastery, the cub was welcomed out of compassion and saved from certain death. Since then many more orphaned tigers have found refuge under the abbots loving care. (text)

He says: « Why can’t we live together … afterall we all have the same blood … and it’s red », on the documentary filmed at Tiger Temple, in Dec.2003.

Read his poem ‘Compassion nurtures the world‘.

Abbot-Pra Acharn Phusit (Chan) Khantitharo – Thailand

He says also: “Buddhism belongs to the Lord Buddha. The Principal Buddha Image: we see is Phra Buddha Kanchanaphisek (Golden Jubilee Buddha Image). This is the Buddha Image built by His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej, our gracious king. The merits made by you all or any contributions to this monastery belong to those who make it. No one can take that away from you even when you die. The heart still enjoys the fruits of the action incessantly until attaining nirvana. So, as we were born, don’t waste the time. Make merit for yourself and others, as well as the beings. Don’t let defilement lead the heart to trouble”.

Key Areas of the Monastery.

Thai-Newspaper.

Beside teachings, Monks do not speak about themselves, but much about their work. So it is normal that the presentation of Abbot Pra Acharn Phusit tells mainly about his beloved tigers.

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Linked with Three Key Steps to Sustainability, and with Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability.

He says: ”Sustainability needs to be achieved in two time-frames. One is short-term and largely economic. We need to eat tonight. Employees have to be paid at the end of the week. Interest has to be paid at the end of the half-year. The second time-frame seems less urgent but is no less important. The natural environment has to be preserved. Capital equipment, buildings and infrastructure have to be kept up. Health has to be maintained. Knowledge and skills have to be preserved and passed on. And social structures such as families, friendships and neighbourhoods have to stay strong ». (full text).

Read: Short Circuit.

Download and read in pdf: the economy of money, by Richard Douthwaite.

Richard Douthwaite – Ireland

Link to some of his articles about sustainable energy.

Richard Douthwaite is an economist and writer with special interest in energy issues and local economic development. He was born in Sheffield in England. He worked as a Journalist, before studying economics at the University of Essex and the University of the West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica. He was a former economic advisor to the governments of Jamaca and Montserrat before moving to Westport in Co. Mayo in the early 1970’s. He has made a special study of rural sustainability and his book Short Circuit (1996) gives examples of currency, banking, energy and food production systems which communities can use to make themselves less dependent on the world economy. He was a founder of Feasta, the Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability, a registered charity which aims to establish the characteristics that an economic system would have to possess to be truly sustainable.

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Linked with CBNRM.Net.

First read: Iran, A War Is Coming, by John Pilger, February 3, 2007 – The United States is planning what will be a catastrophic attack on Iran … (full text).

John Pilger (born October 9, 1939) is an Australian journalist and documentary filmmaker from Sydney, primarily based in London, England. He told, in an address at Columbia University, on 14 April 2006: ”During the Cold War, a group of Russian journalists toured the United States. On the final day of their visit, they were asked by their hosts for their impressions. ‘I have to tell you,’ said their spokesman, ‘that we were astonished to find after reading all the newspapers and watching TV, that all the opinions on all the vital issues were by and large, the same. To get that result in our country, we imprison people, we tear out their fingernails. Here, you don’t have that. What’s the secret? How do you do it?’ « . (wikipedia).

John Pilger – Australia & England

Read: War with Iran is coming.

He says also: « what I wanted to do – and I’ve tried to do this in most of my films – is not just simply assault people’s emotions… you saw that… it’s not difficult to do, but when you start to make sense of something then you stray into what’s called the political area ». (full text).

Journalist John Pilger told the crowd of the majority of the white population of Australia would not be able to retain their nationhood until they recognised the Aboriginal nation as first in the country. He linked the Hickey case to the prosecution of a Queensland policeman charged over an Aboriginal death in custody on Palm island. Police made no arrests. (full text).

He has also written for various French, Italian, Scandinavian, Canadian and Japanese newspapers and periodicals, among others, and has contributed to the BBC’s news service. He is on the advisory board of UKWatch.

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Linked with Statements at the World Future Council, (Listen to his own statement there), and with .

He is President of EUROSOLAR, General Chairman of the World Council for Renewable Energy WCRE, President of the International Parliamentary Forum on Renewable Energies, Member of the German Bundestag (english, deutsch), Publicist and author. He is honoured with the Right Livelihood Award 1999, with the Solar World Prize 1998, the Alternative Nobel Prize 1999 (mentionned here), the World Prize on Bioenergy 2000 (mentionned here), and the World Wind Energy Award 2004.

His english Homepage, and his Homepage in german.

He says: « Renewable energies are inexhaustible. They do not destroy the environment. They are available everywhere. Their use facilitates solidarity with future generations. They secure the future of humankind ». And: « … in 100 years people will say: the work is done, we are living in the Solar Age. »

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Hermann Scheer – Germany

Listen to his 3 videos on Big Picture.

Next Events:

China Alternative Energy 2007 Conference, March 26th – 27th, 2007, Beijing. (full text). Registration, Newsletter.

Ukraine: Conference on Renewable Energy, organized by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, April 4th – 6th, 2007, Kiev/Ukraine. (full text). (In russian).

World Sustainable Energy Forum (Homepage), July 2nd – 6th, 2007, Lucerne/Switzerland, (Registration for the Lucerne FUEL CELL FORUM 2007).

9th EUROSOLAR Conference ‘The farmer as energy supplier’, April 16th-17th, 2007, Potsdam. (full text, select english or german).

Hermann Scheer was born in 1944 and has a Ph. D. in economics and social sciences … He believes that the continuation of current patterns of energy use will be environmentally catasrophic and the end of human civilisation.

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Kamal Nazer Yasin is a pseudonym for a freelance journalist specializing in Iranian affairs.

Undaunted Iran forges ahead with nuclear program: Iran presses forward with its nuclear program, brushing off threats of sanctions from the West and a possible airstrike on its facilities by Israel, as Iranian authorities gamble on their foes promising more bark than bite. By Kamal Nazer Yasin for EurasiaNet, Febr. 22, 2007, on Internat. Relations and Security Network ISN. (full text).

Read: IRAN, RAFSANJANI PRESSES POLITICAL OFFENSIVE AGAINST PRESIDENT, STRESSING MODERATION, by Kamal Nazer Yasin Febr. 21, 2007. Excerpt: … « This is the first time after the [presidential election] victory of the neo-conservatives over a year and a half ago that an individual from Iran’s political class has articulated a coherent set of policy statements in direct opposition to the present government, » noted a Tehran political scientist, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The political scientist added that opposition to Ahmadinejad’s policies had been rising, but, until now, presidential opponents lacked a figure around which they could rally. « Many people from elite circles are unhappy with the president’s stand on a range of topics – from Iran’s nuclear program to his denial of the Holocaust to his economic policy. What [Rafsanjani] has done is to tap into this sense of unease and use it to rally all the disaffected factions under his own leadership » … (full text). (same in russian).

FEAR OF ISOLATION PROMPTS IRANIAN SHI’AS TO REACH OUT TO SUNNIS, by Kamal Nazer Yasin Febr. 7, 2007. (full text). Same on: SperoNews, Febr. 12, 2007.

Read: FOES TAKE AIM AT AHMADINEJAD, by Kamal Nazer Yasin Jan. 30, 2007 (text).

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Sorry, no photo of Kamal Nazer Yasin (a pseudonym), also no bio nor any other personal information can be available.

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Linked with The Max-Neef Model of Human-Scale Development, with the Centre for Development Alternatives CEPAUR, Chile, with WHY ARE WE WHERE WE ARE? and with Statements at the World Future Council.

He classifies the fundamental human needs as: subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, recreation(in the sense of leisure, time to reflect, or idleness), creation, identity and freedom. Needs are also defined according to the existential categories of being, having, doing and interacting, and from these dimensions, a 36 cell matrix is developed which can be filled with examples of satisfiers for those needs. (full text, scroll down).

He says: « There are two separate languages now – the language of economics and the language of ecology, and they do not converge. The language of economics is attractive, and remains so, because it is politically appealing. It offers promises. It is precise, authoritative, aesthetically pleasing. Policy-makers apply the models, and if they don’t work there is a tendency to conclude that it is reality that is playing tricks. The assumption is not that the models are wrong but that they must be applied with greater rigour… While the many deficiencies and limitations of the theory that supports the old paradigm must be overcome (mechanistic interpretations and inadequate indicators of well-being, among others), a theoretical body for the new paradigm must still be constructed ». (text).

Listen to his 3 videos on Big-Picture.
Listen to his video on World Future Council.

Manfred Max-Neef – Chile

Read: The Barefoot Economist, transcript of the Broadcast on Saturday 9/03/2002.
Read: The Natural Step’s fourth Condition for Sustainability and Manfred Max-Neef’s basic Needs Analysis.
Read: The beat of a different drummer, same in spanish.
Read: Report: Transdisciplinarity in Progress.
Read: Economic growth versus genuine progress, an obsession with GDP growth could backfire.
Contemplate: Human Needs Graphic;
Read: Guest Lecture on Sustainable Wealth Creation.

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Linked with A Mad Dream.

He says: ”We should not confuse ideology with message, nor message with meaning. The message belongs in part – that of logic – to ideology, and in the other part – that of irreason – to meaning. The logical message is almost always evil, lying, hypocritical even when very sincere. Who could doubt my sincerity when I say that the message of Salò is the denunciation of the anarchy of power and the inexistence of history? Nonetheless put this way such a message is evil, lying, hypocritical, that is logical in the sense of that same logic which finds that power is not at all anarchic and which believes that history does exist. The part of the message which belongs to the meaning of the film is immensely more real because it also includes all that the author does not know, that is, the boundlessness of his own social, historical restrictions. But such a message can’t be delivered. It can only be left to silence and to the text. What finally now is the meaning of a work? It is its form. The message therefore is formalistic; and precisely for that reason, loaded infinitely with all possible content provided it is coherent – in the structural sense ». (full text).

Read: Oedipus Rex by Pier Paolo Pasolini.

Look at: Italian pictures show on pasolini.net.

Pier Paolo Pasolini – Italia (March 5, 1922 – November 2, 1975)

Restoring Pasolini: Thirty years later, new questions arise about who murdered the Italian cultural genius.
Pasolini death inquiry reopened.

Success and charges: In 1954 Pasolini, who now worked for the literature section of the Italian State radio, left his teaching job and moved to the Monteverde quarter and published La meglio gioventù, his first important collection of dialect poems. His first novel, Ragazzi di vita, was published in 1955.

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Linked with The Voice of the Turtle, with Reflections on an Emancipatory Labour Internationalism … , with Surpassing the binary opposition between reform and revolution.

He says (about Archaic left challenges … ): ”… It is a counter-hegemonic movement from the period of national-industrial-colonial capitalism. This was a machine-age capitalism, and it gave rise to mechanical interpretations of Marxism. MR belongs, more specifically, to the ‘Marxist-Leninist’ (Maoist) tendency and is linked (in more than a cyberspace sense) with the International League of Peoples Struggles, (ILPS) and the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). This movement considers discussion and analysis of the rights and wrongs of globalisation to be a derogation from a 100-year-old Leninist theory of imperialism. It is therefore suspicious of or hostile to the anti-globalisation movement. The only concession it will make to the new movement is that it has managed to capture a widespread and multifarious discontent internationally. It therefore becomes a suitable object for penetration and/or competition. This movement pursues a Marxism of binary opposition, a Manichean Marxism with oppositions … « . (full long text).

Read: Global Social Labour Movement, Updated June 30, 2006.

Peter Waterman – England

Read: From Decent Work to The Liberation of Time from Work.

Abstract: The traditional international union organisations are currently engaged in a series of ‘social partnership’ initiatives at global level. Prominent amongst these is that addressed to ‘global governance’. This project comes from outside and above the unions, is addressed to the existing hegemonic interstate instances, and is carried out primarily by lobbying.

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Linked with Fair Traide Certified (TransFairUSA), with ashoka, and with Fair Trade and Human Rights.

Paul Rice is President and CEO of TransFair USA, the only Fair Trade certifier in the United States. In 2000 he received the Ashoka Fellowship for his pioneering work in fair trade and in 2002 he was named by the Klaus Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship as one of the world’s top 40 Social Entrepreneurs. He has authored several publications including « Sustainable Coffee at the Crossroads. » Paul Rice talks about how fair trade can help align the interests of corporations and small farmers without sacrificing profitability. As companies look to reduce costs in an increasingly competitive world, the welfare of small producers can be marginalized. Rice describes how fair trade can empower poor farmers by giving them the opportunity to trade directly with buyers and earn a better price for their produce. Find the link to his video/audio on the same swebpage.

He says: ”That’s simple: we’re the only certifier of Fair Trade products in the US. In the coffee area, we have signed agreements with almost 300 coffee companies, including Starbucks, Sara Lee and Green Mountain ». (full text).

Paul Rice – USA

He works for Fair Traide Certified (TransFairUSA).

See Paul Rice, on heroes.net, on Schwab Foundation, on ashhoka.org.

Click on this web page for his 7 minutes audio.

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