Politics

The original number of 20 Dutch police trainers was recently cut by half. The higher ranking officers would be given an eight-week follow-up course to basic training is also being suggested that Afghan police trainers could shadow their Dutch and German counterparts. Final decisions, will not be taken until after the Afghanistan Conference at the beginning of December.

Chile is facing new social mobilizations starting on Sunday to protest against the country´s institutionalism, inherited from the Pinochet military dictatorship.
A family march is announced for Sunday afternoon, starting in the Alameda of Santiago, to demand free and public education and a law-abiding plebiscite as an exercise of the will to face the country’s problems.

Among countries that have moved from the periphery to the core, China has acquired a place of pride in a world that is no longer steered by the industrialized states of yesteryear. President Hu Jintao surfaced from the G20 summit in Cannes, as sagacious leader of a country whose ascent to the status of a new superpower was speeded up after the financial crisis in 2008.

As the Canadian and the Irish two ships approach and are too close to reach the Gaza’s Harbor, Israel has begun a massive propaganda-offensive against the new “flotilla” which set sail from Turkey on last Wednesday, carrying medical supplies, medicines and humanitarian support for the impoverished people from Gaza Strip.

Israel navy boarded two Gaza-bound boats that were trying to break the blockade of the impoverished Gaza Strip.
The Irish Saoirse and the Canadian Tahrir boats were carrying 27 activists from 9 countries and a symbolic cargo of $30,000 in medication. They
have been intercepted and boarded about 35 kilometers north of the Gaza Strip, as activists announced Friday afternoon.

Evolution is through the path called ‘Imagination’. Not many centuries ago the end to slavery would have appeared as a utopia to a large number of people, until the moment when someone dared to imagine it. As Albert Einstein said: “Your imagination is your preview of life’s coming attractions.” World without Wars and without Violence makes a call to imagine a different world

Dr Rowan Williams said the levy would be one way of advancing the “moral agenda” of the protesters outside St Paul’s. The Cathedral has cancelled attempts to evict the campsite. The City of London Corporation has put on hold proceedings and expressed an intention to open negotiations. Will the G20 listen to the voices of common sense?

Yet, a different kind of protest. ‘Compassion is Revolutionary’. Flash mob Meditation and Multifaith Service at St Paul’s stairs. Active Nonviolence, humour, global democratic links and leaderless consensus seeking Assemblies. Three priests resign from high posts at St Paul’s over divided views. The City of London Corporation begins eviction moves, it may take months.

It sounds like utopia. But it is a “concrete utopia”, very much in the spirit of Ernst Bloch’s philosophy and also with Nichiren Buddhism.
Whereas the former visualises elimination of all forms of oppression and exploitation, the latter envisions transformation of the human spirit – which would enable culture of peace to prevail over culture of violence.

Pakistani humanists organized a forum for dialogue on the “Existing Political Situation and Alternatives in Pakistan”, on 22nd October, 2011. The event was held at Hamdard Hall, Lahore, where around 60 people from Lahore participated, that figure including several lawyers. The seeds of a new Humanist Party were planted!