Catégorie : World People

Linked with Bhagat Singh and the Revolutionary Movement, and with Why I am an Atheist?

March 23 is the death anniversary of one of the most heroic figures of the Indian freedom movement. Few people remembered it, though. Forget the rest of India, even the children of the village where he was born, do not know anything about him. And to think that the young man in question, Bhagat Singh, gave up his life for the ideal of a free and better India! Today, over 50 years after Independence, the people of his village still do not have access to drinking water and a tap, writes The Indian Express newspaper. (Read more on pitara.com, March 2001).

He stated: « I am not a terrorist and I never was, except perhaps in the beginning of my revolutionary career. And I am convinced that we cannot gain anything through these methods. One can easily judge it from the history of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association. All our activities were directed towards an aim, i.e., identifying ourselves with the great movement as its military wing. If anybody has misunderstood me, let him amend his ideas … « . (See on revolutionary democracy).

Bhagat Singh – Indian Freedom Fighter (1907 – 1931).

… While in jail, Bhagat Singh and other prisoners launched a hunger strike advocating for the rights of prisoners and undertrials. The reasons for the strike was that British murderers and thieves were treated better than Indian political prisoners, who, by law, were meant to be given better rights.

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Linked with An incomplete freedom, and with Genderlinks GL.

She is a board member of the Health-E News Agency and of M&G Publishing, and a BA graduate of the University of the Witwatersrand. She is a previous winner of the Sanlam financial journalism awards; was named as one of 10 Shoprite / Checkers women of the year in 2004 and was also named as one of The Media magazine¹s Top 10 women in media for the same year. Ferial is a judge for the annual Inter-Press Service global correspondent competition, the Vuka awards and the Mondi awards for magazine journalism.

She says: ”I love the energy and the changes of Joburg, and, it is where my family is ».

And: « With the ending of Ramadan recently there were immigrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh selling chicken and spices – it was quite special ».

Ferial Haffejee (or Haffajee) – South Africa

She works for M&G Publishing.

Johannesburg: A South African Indian woman has become the first woman editor of a national newspaper in this country. Twelve years ago, Ferial Haffajee started her journalistic career as an intern at the Weekly Mail. On February 1, she will take over from another intern at the time, Mondli Makhanya, as editor of the weekly now known as the Mail and Guardian. Makhanya will move to the weekly Sunday Times as editor … Outgoing editor Makhanya said Haffajee had one of the finest minds in journalism.

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She is Laureate for the Prize for Women’s Creativity in Rural Life 2006.

She says: « Non-violence subdues terror ».

María Brigada GONZALEZ de CARTAGENA – Colombia

She works for the San José de Apartadó Peace Community.

It takes an extraordinary measure of creativity, courage and faith to maintain a non-violent, environmentally friendly community in a region where state and guerrilla terrorism kill and maim daily, especially when your own child and spouse have died as victims of this terror. (Her beloved15 year old daughter was brutally murdered in December 2005 by a grenade thrown into a small group of members of the community accused by the army of being « terrorists »).

Maria Brigada (52), mother, artist, farmer and educator, is a leading member of the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado since 1996. Such peace communities are a new event in the 60 year Columbian Civil War, the oldest on the planet. It involves the civilian population deciding to have nothing more to do with any of the armed groups, and working together to build healthy, self-sufficient communities practicing the principles of sustainable development and non-violence. Such communities need international support as they are being deliberately targeted by the Columbian government and its paramilitaries, who do not want to see other models of social or economic development.

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He says: « It was a great opportunity for me to show people that using their minds and influencing their emotions have a direct effect on their biology. I hope to co-develop other products with Wild Divine that will help in the treatment of addictions, asthma, irritable bowels, migraines and other stress-related disorders. I see a time when, instead of giving a patient a pharmaceutical for a more common stress-related disorder, you actually ask the patient to play the Wild Divine game and see if the symptoms are eliminate ». (Interview on organic authority).

He says also: « The body must be credited with an immense fund of know-how ».

Deepak Chopra, M.D., (born October 22, 1946 in New Delhi, India) is a medical doctor and writer extensively on spirituality and diverse topics in mind-body medicine. His main influences are two: the teachings of Vedanta and the Bhagavad Gita from his native India and quantum physics. (wikipedia).

Deepak Chopra – India & USA

Listen to his 3 1/2 minutes video on Big Picture.
He explains how the environmental crisis directly challenges the way humanity perceives reality. Science has spent hundreds of years making distinctions that don’t really exist. As a result, we think of ourselves as separate from the environment. The reality, he explains, is that we humans are an integral part of the environment – and that the environment is part of us. As a physician, public speaker and best-selling author, Deepak Chopra is « undoubtedly one of the most lucid and inspired philosophers of our time » (quoting a citation from Mikhail Gorbachev). Having established himself as a world leader in the field of holistic health, Dr Chopra co-founded the « Chopra Center for Well Being » in 1995. Through the center he continues to revolutionize the way the world views physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and social wellness. Dr. Chopra is a prolific author of more than 35 books that have sold over 20 million copies worldwide. They include « Perfect Health: Ageless Body, Timeless Mind » (1993) « How to Know God » (2001) and « Peace is the Way » (2005). (On this Big-Picture link).

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Linked with Apnalaya, with Ankur, with SHACK, Slum Dwellers International SDI, with Women in Slums, an UN study, with W.O.M.E.N., with Hope in the slums: women’s work in Bangladesh, with Rethinking resettlement in Mumbai, with TERI The Energy and Resources Institute, with Nirbhay Bano Andolan, and with Mumbai pavement dwellers finally get their homes.

Also linked with Shanta Devi – India, and with Background-Report on Cities in Transition.

She says: “We lack political and economic will to make the necessary changes. Those in the ruling parties are apathetic because they personally never have to deal with the pds (Public Distribution System)” … “Many of the poorest people don’t even get cards because they don’t have documentation. And the government ensures that only Below Poverty Line (bpl) families rather than all poor people get free rations. Therefore, because we’ve drawn a faulty and unscientific poverty line, many poor people have to buy food at open-market prices. In the ration shops, the grain sold is adulterated and under-weighed; people don’t get their full quota; kerosene is diverted to the black market; and shopkeepers create bogus cards to keep this charade going. At every opportunity they tell cardholders that their quota hasn’t arrived.” (Tehelka).

List of Telefon numbers of NGOs working in Mumbai (August 20, 2006).

Read: Interview with Leena Joshi.

Leena Joshi – India

She works for Apnalaya (which has no direct own website, see this NGO through descriptions of other NGOs. See also some summary description on our NGO Blog).

Read: Report on Disaster Management Workshop on December 22, 2005, at the Times of India office in Mumbai. See here photos of this workshop.

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The problem: … Every day, 500 (new) migrant families come to the city, settling in areas like Andheri’s Ambedkar Nagar, Dharavi, Wadala’s slum pockets and South Mumbai’s Reay Road, all of which share the same basic features — makeshift houses, … (read the whole long article on Tehelka, August 05, 2006).

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Continuer la lecture de « Leena Joshi – India »

Linked with Policies for Cultural Creativity, and with The Future of the Privatization of Culture.

He says: ”… The thesis I propose here derives from the fact that when we speak of the privatization of culture today, this is not the same as the process of fifty or even twenty years ago. We can no longer speak of the dichotomy of the public and the private, or, to use the terms that frame that opposition, the State and the market. Nor can we characterize the issue before us as the conflict between the creativity of art and its commercialization, which gave rise to many of the agonies suffered by artists and writers from Balzac and Baudelaire to the happenings, performance, and installation artists working outside of commercial circuits, or who subvert commercialization through irreverence and other challenges. At this turn of the century, the debate on the privatization of culture is part of the struggle to shape the epochal transformation that the concept of modernity is undergoing » … (more on nyu.edu).

Go to his 20 books on amazon.

Nestor Garcia Canclini – Mexico

Néstor García Canclini is born in Argentina in 1939, he studied letters in 1975 in the National University of the Silver and, three years later, with a scholarship granted by the Conicet, doctor in the University of Paris. It exerted teaching in the University of the Silver (1966-1975). He is an anthropologist and head of the programme of studies in urban culture at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Mexico.

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Linked with Freedom Force International.

He says: « Reading another book or attending another seminar or sending carbon copies of letters or emails around to our friends – while that’s all very good and exhilarating, it still doesn’t change anything. So about two years ago, I began to change my orientation. Out of that came an organization which we call Freedom Force International. The purpose of this organization is to actually show people how they CAN do something to turn events around. How they can not just be complainers, but actually become ‘doers’ « . (Read the whole interview on WHALE).

Read: The War on Terrorism, The Future Is Calling (Part Four), © 2004 – 2005 by G. Edward Griffin, Revised December 15, 2006, 23 pages.

Go to Big Eyes text-archive with texts about The Federal Reserve System.

G. Edward Griffin – USA

Listen this Google video: G. Edward Griffin – Inflation, and this Google video: G. Edward Griffin – A World Without Cancer, The Story Of Vitamin B17.

Buy The Creature from Jekyll Island, A Second Look at the Federal Reserve. A « SUPERB ANALYSIS » OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE, says U.S. Congressman Ron Paul!

Try the book The Cultural Devastation of American Women for your Christmas gifts. Try the documentary America: From Freedom to Fascism by Aaron Russo. Try the book The Creature From Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin. Give gifts of truth rather than electronic tracking devices this holiday season. For once in your lives, buy wisely while you still can. (Read the whole on American Chronicle.com).

Go to the Editorial Opinions of G. Edward Griffin on Reality Zone.

Read: A Talk by Edward Griffin, Author of The Creature from Jekyll Island.

Continuer la lecture de « G. Edward Griffin – USA »

Linked with .

Symposium – Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and Arts, Hertogstraat 1, Brussels, February 23, 2007.

He says: ”…Cynicism is enlightened false consciousness. It is that modernized, unhappy consciousness, on which enlightenment has labored both successfully and in vain. It has learned its lessons in enlightenment, but it has not, and probably was not able to, put them into practice. Well-off and miserable at the same time, this consciousness no longer feels affected by any critique of ideology; its falseness is already reflexively buffered ». (more on autodidactproject.org).

He says also: “Where relationships are ‘international’ they are generally inter-megalomaniac too. In the context of a renewed effort to create a political psychology, we grasp the language of diplomacy as a therapeutic discourse in an open institution that is the political collective”. (See on Haus der Kulturen der Welt).

Peter Sloterdijk – Germany

Sloterdijk studied philosophy, Germanistics and history at the University of Munich. In 1975 he received his Ph.D. from the University of Hamburg. Since 1980 he has published many philosophical works, including the Critique of Cynical Reason. In 2001 he was named president of the State Academy of Design, part of the Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe.

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Linked with The War on Iraq and the Occupation, and with ECONOMIC JUSTICE.

She is a Green Party MEP (Member f the European Parliament), representing the UK’s South East region. She is also an Advisory Board Member of the ‘Protect the Local, Globally’ think-tank. She is a tireless environmental campaigner and has written extensively on trade issues, globalization, the aviation industry, nuclear disarmament and GM. Caroline Lucas talks about the energy options confronting us. She discusses her preference for clean renewable energy and why she thinks nuclear power has little future. She remarks on the many win-win policies that could precipitate a rapid shift towards efficient and sustainable energy supply, but acknowledges a lack in the political required to bring this change about. She talks about the new production and consumption patterns that need to be encouraged, expressing doubt that economic growth can be sustained globally at 3% per annum. (Listen to her 6 minutes video on Big-Picture, recorded in December 2004).

Caroline Lucas – England

Her work – both within the Parliament and in her constituency – includes peace and human rights, international trade and development, transport, planning and health issues and animal welfare. Caroline has also recently worked on the campaign against aviation expansion, worked with farmers affected by the Foot and Mouth crisis,
and campaigned against GMOs and in support of local food markets in the South-East. She is currently fighting against the GATS as a part of her work on globalisation/ localisation. See also her Homepage.

News around Caroline Lucas:

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Linked with Demos, with Background-Report on Cities in Transition, and with Geoff Mulgan’s Spring Conference 2006.

He says: ” … I want to focus this evening on the other face of the state: the idea of the state as servant, an idea associated with duty, care and guardianship; and with power as a gift, to be reciprocated and shared through service. If you examine the historical evidence this other face turns out to be almost as ubiquitous as that of the commanding master. As Weber pointed out most states aspire to legitimacy as the precondition for survival and loyalty. I want to argue that looking back at the evidence, states claims to legitimacy have followed a remarkably consistent pattern broadly fitting into a fourfold architecture of ethical claims and duties ». (LSE Lecture).

Geoff Mulgan – England

founder and director of the think-tank Demos, became director of the Young Foundation in September 2004. Between 1997 and 2004 he had various roles in government including director of the Government’s Strategy Unit and head of policy in the Prime Minister’s office. He has been a reporter for BBC TV and radio and a columnist for national newspapers including the Guardian and Independent.

Continuer la lecture de « Geoff Mulgan – England »