Mois : avril 2006

Index April 2006

Kashi Nath Pandita – India

Linked to our presentations of Baharistan-i-Shahi – A Chronical of Mediaeval Kashmirby, and also of Books and articles of K.N.Pandita.

Born in Baramulla in 1929 in an ordinary Kashmiri Pandit family, Kashinath Pandita did graduation from St. Joseph’s College in Arts with English literature. The tribal raid of October 1947 destroyed his family like hundreds of other Pandit families in Baramulla.

After doing M.A. from Punjab University, he served as Lecturer in State Degree Colleges and in 1958 earned a scholarship from the Indian Ministry of Education for higher studies at the University of Teheran, Iran. Four years of study and research at the University of Teheran earned him a Ph.D. in Iranian Studies meaning history and civilization of Farsi speaking peoples.

He joined Kashmir University in 1963 and it’s Centre of Central Asian Studies in 1976. He rose to become Professor and Director of this Centre till his superannuation in 1987.

Kashi Nath Pandita – India

He is not only the first Kashmiri to obtain Ph.D. from Teheran University but is also the first to have worked in close collaboration with a number of Central Asian Academies of Science particularly the Tajik Academy. From 19976 till present day, he has been visiting and interacting with Central Asian academic community almost every year or two. His travelogue titled My Tajik Friends won him Sovietland Nehru Award 1987. This work has been translated in to Russian by the Tajik Academy and is considered a valuable contribution to Indo-Tajik friendship.

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Faith Bandler – Australia

Linked with our presentation of the Aboriginal-Australian Fellowship.

She is one of the 1000 women proposed fort the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

She says: « We can change anything. We can make a just and peaceful world. History has shown that a genuine people’s movement can move more than governments. It can move mountains. »

Faith Bandler – Australia

She works for the Aboriginal-Australian Fellowship,
for the Women’s Electoral Lobby (WEL),
and for the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders (FCAATSI).

Even as a child, Faith Bandler (86) showed the many qualities that blossomed in her later life. The abuse and exclusion she experienced as an indigenous schoolgirl in white Australia left a lasting impression on her, but she still exudes a serenity that belies her extraordinary energy for the cause of justice for indigenous peoples, for women, and for the peace movement. Indigenous Australians and Pacific Islanders have been the direct beneficiaries of her crusade. Her work for abolition of war and elimination of poverty has been of international significance, earning her several major awards.Faith Bandler (86) is best known for her leading role in the long campaign to win full citizenship rights for Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders in Australia. She has spent a lifetime campaigning for racial equality and women’s rights. Her work for abolition of war and elimination of poverty has been of national and international significance. In recognition of her efforts, Faith was awarded the Order of Australia in 1984. She received an honorary doctorate from Macquarie University for her lifetime achievements in 1994. The Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission awarded her a Human Rights Medal in 1997. Nelson Mandela presented her with an award on behalf of the Sydney Peace Foundation in 2000. Two years later, Allen and Unwin published Faith: Faith Bandler, Gentle Activist, a biography written by Professor Marilyn Lake of La Trobe University, Australia.

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Marjorie Prentice Saunders – Jamaica

She is one of the 1000 women proposed fort the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

She says: “The divine will grant women the precursory role in the fight for the peace.”

Marjorie Prentice Saunders – Jamaica

She works for the United Church.

When she was a child, she chose a great road: God. Under his guidance, she carried out marriages, funerals, baptisms, qualifying courses for women, and workshops for educating immigrants. Marjorie Prentice Saunders was the first Jamaican woman to be a Minister of the Presbyterian Church. Revolutionary in her perspective, she was never afraid of breaking traditions. She gave a lifetime of service to education and social work through community mobilization.Marjorie Prentice was born on February 25th, 1913, in Galina, St. Mary, Jamaica. One hour later, her parents took her by horse on a three mile long trip to attend the opening of the Synod of the Presbyterian Church. Since then, she has been near the Lord Jesus Christ.

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Eunice Nangueve Inacio – Angola

She is one of the 1000 women proposed fort the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

Goes with ‘Assuming Authority‘.

She says: « I wish to see women free of poverty and illiteracy, bringing peace and equitable development in Angola, to see women leaders prevent armed conflict and promote inclusive, just governance. »

Eunice Nangueve Inacio – Angola

She was born in Angola in 1948 into a religious protestant family. Her background and academic pursuits did not distance Eunice from local people. In 1985, she headed the welfare program in Ministry of Social Affairs, focusing on children and war-displaced people. In 1991, she became the national director for training social workers. Through her efforts today about 600 local peace promoters have been trained and work in 14 provinces. Approximately 120 communities have been supported with local peace initiative grants to provide shelter to thousands affected by war.Eunice Nangueve Inacio was born in Angola in 1948 into a religious protestant family. But her good background and academic pursuits did not distance her from local people.

In 1985, she headed the welfare program in Ministry of Social Affairs, focusing on children and war-displaced people. In 1991, she became the national director for training social workers.

When Huambo Province was occupied and fought over by three different liberation movements, Eunice returned to her home province of Huambo and worked for British Charity, Save the Children to help displaced children and orphans whose parents had died in the war.

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David Rieff – USA

Linked with our presentation of Cruel to be kind?.

He said: « It’s a very scary time. I think there was a lot of reason to be afraid that the post – Cold War world, the world of globalized, multinational capitalism, was going to be a lot less democratic anyway than what preceded it. And with terrorism, it seems to me the risk has now been ratcheted-up ».

He said also: « What’s happened is both on the right and the left has been a revival of this millenarian fantasy of American omnipotence. The human rights and humanitarian left thinks the United States can right all the wrongs in the world. And the hard Wilsonians, the right neoconservatives, think the United States can remake the world in its own image. Both of these things seem to me to fly in the face of history and reason. The United States is a great power, but no great power is omnipotent. That’s, again, why the human rights left scares me as much, if not more, than the Bush administration ». (Both on March 11, 2003 during the berkeley interview).

David Rieff – USA

He says about his book « Humanitarianism, the Human Rights Movement, and U.S. Foreign Policy »: … Humanitarian fills, as it were, an idealistic vacuum. Although it comes to prominence in the late sixties with the Biafran war, it really becomes an important idea in the eighties … In Europe, the great modern humanitarian movements — Doctors without Borders, Oxfam, and the like — are largely left-wing movements … and they are disenchanted. They are people who read Hannah Arendt and Solzhenitsyn. They are people for whom the God failed.

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Thakaraprambil Kochukuttan Omana – India / Kerala

Linked to our presentation of the Rural Agency for Social & Technological Advancement RASTA.

She is one of the 1000 women proposed fort the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

Starting her social work at an early age, T.K. Omana has made life better for hundreds of women, writes R. Madhavan Nair (Read on The Hindu).

Omana T K (India), Tilonia and Wayanad district are hundreds of miles and cultures apart. Yet, one informed the other to the extent that Omana took economic empowerment to one of India’s poorest districts.

Thakaraprambil Kochukuttan Omana – India

She works for the Rural Agency for Social and Technological Advancement.

When she was 18 years old, Omana T K (born 1959) ran away from home to work in an NGO in Rajasthan. Returning to Kerala eight years later, she sold off all her assets to set up the Rural Agency for Social and Technological Advancement in 1989. That was the start of a veritable revolution in the villages of the backward Wayanad district; today, it has several women’s self-help groups and sees active participation by women in village-level activities. She also established a highly successful rainwater-harvesting movement.

Omana T K (born 1959) comes from an impoverished farming family in Kerala’s Pathanamthitta district. The youngest of eight children, she grew up witness to the problems of peasant women. She did what she could at a very young age, including participating in the social forums in her neighborhood. What she was certain about was that social work was to be her life’s vocation.

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Nigel Warburton – England

He is designing and writing philosophy courses, he chairs the Start Writing programme which consists of six short online writing courses, including courses on writing fiction, plays and poetry. He is best known for his introductory Philosophy books: Philosophy: The Basics, Thinking from A to Z, Philosophy: The Classics, Philosophy: Basic Readings, Freedom: An Introduction with Readings, and The Art Question. His main research area is the aesthetics of photography, which was the subject of his PhD thesis (Cambridge, 1989) and of a number of articles.

Nigel Warburton – England

Nigel Warburton joined the Open University in 1994. He is currently working part time. He has given talks on his research in aesthetics, photography and architecture, to audiences in a wide range of institutions including Tate Modern (where he regularly teaches courses on aesthetics), Tate Britain, the Barbican Art Gallery, The Victoria and Albert Museum (Bill Brandt Centenary Conference), the Architectural Association (Ernö Goldfinger Centenary Conference), Birmingham Library, The Photographers’ Gallery and the Goldfinger House, as well as to various university Philosophy departments. He also regularly speaks to conferences of A level Philosophy and Religious students. (Read more on this article on Open Academy).

Some of Nigel Warburton’s lectures in Philosophy at the Open University:

THE BASICS OF ESSAY WRITING ROUTLEDGE (20 Jun 06), Everything you need to know;

PHILOSOPHY: THE TEXTBOOK ROUTLEDGE (Del Jun 06), Destined to be the market leader for the next generation of philosophy students;

PHILOSOPHY: THE CLASSICS (3RD EDITION) ROUTLEDGE (1 May 06). At the Open University.

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Ibn Warraq – another Muslim with a Fatwa

Linked with the presentation of Statement by IBN WARRAQ on the World Trade Center Atrocity, and linked with the presentation of Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society, and the article When Ibn Warraq met Edward Said.

Linked also with My comment to a new fatwa, and with Democracy or Islamocracy, and with WAFA SULTAN.

Ibn Warraq says: « How can we expect immigrants to integrate into western society when they are at the same time being taught that the west is decadent, a den of iniquity, the source of all evil, racist, imperialist and to be despised? »

Ibn Warraq – another Muslim with a Fatwa – book see here on Amazon.com.

News on Ibn Warraq on April 2006:

See on FrontPage Magazine on April 18, 2006: An even more stringent critique is provided by the pseudonymous Ibn Warraq in ‘Why I Am Not a Muslim’, which was published in 1995, but has gained renewed attention since 9/11.[15] Raised as Muslim in a Muslim country, but now a secular humanist who admires John Stuart Mill and Friedrich Hayek, Warraq wrote this book (its title inspired, of course, by Bertrand Russells ‘Why I Am Not a Christian’) in response to the 1989 Salman Rushdie fatwa. « It is rare in one’s life, » Warraq writes, « that one has an opportunity to show on what side of an important life and death issue one stands -the Rushdie issue and the rise of Islam are two such issues and this book is my stand. » He does not pull punches: « The horrendous behavior toward women, non-Muslims, heretics, and slaves manifested in Islamic civilization was a direct consequence of the principles laid down in the Koran and developed by the Islamic jurists. Islamic law is a totalitarian theoretical construct, intended to control every aspect of an individual’s life from birth to death. » He admits that the theory has not always been put into practice -that Islamic culture, in other words, has often been less severe than the Koran prescribes -but adds that sometimes, as in the case of female circumcision, it has been more severe. « What Esposito and all Western apologists of Islam are incapable of understanding, » Warraq insists, « is that Islam is a threat, and it is a threat to thousands of Muslims. »

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Zilda Arns Neumann – Brazil

Linked with our presentation of The ‘Pastoral’ of the Child / Pastoral da Criança – Brazil.

And linked with our presentation on Improving Children’s Environmental Health.

She is one of the 1000 women proposed fort the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

She says: “When I believe in something that could benefit humanity, I go to the end.”

Zilda Arns Neumann – Brazil

She works for the Pastoral da Criança (Pastoral of the Child)

Doctor Zilda Arns Neumann (born 1943) is a pediatric and sanitary doctor. Founder and national coordinator of Pastoral of the Child, an ecumenical organism of the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil (BNCB). She is also the president of the Intersectorial Commission of Indigenous Health. Recently, she took on the coordination of the elderly. Mother of five children, she is a collector of national and international prizes, granted in recognition to her work in Pastoral of the Child.Zilda Arns Neumann (1943), a pediatric and sanitary doctor, is the founder and national coordinator of the Pastoral of the Child, an ecumenical organism of the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil (BNCB). She is also president of the Inter-sectorial Commission of Indigenous Health. Recently, she took on the coordination of programs for the elderly. A mother of five children, she is a collector of national and international prizes, granted in recognition of her work in the Pastoral of the Child.

She was born in a small community in the state of Santa Catarina, in the South of Brazil. Forquilinha was so small that everyone knew each other. It was in her childhood that Zilda Arns had the inspiration for her future: “My mom studied homemade medicine in German books. She saw people and knew who needed to go to the hospital and who could be treated at home.”

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