Politics

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!

The tensions has increased in the Gaza Strip after an Israeli airstrike
killed at least 9 Palestinians and injured 11 others on Saturday evening.
Gaza Health Ministry spokesperson Adham Abu Salmia said, the first airstrike on Rafah, south Gaza killed five members of the Islamic Jihad movement, while the others were killed in a separate strike.

Here we publish the speech delivered by Dr. Edine von Herold Duarte to the General Assembly of PNND (Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament), in Bern, Switzerland.
The next day, Dra. Edine von Herold Duarte, former Parliamentary from Costa Rica, was reelected in her condition of PNND board member.

Despite the big Egyptian efforts and intensive contacts led by senior
Egyptian intelligence service officials to activate the truce agreement and reach an informal mutual cease-fire between Palestinian militants and Israel, israeli aircrafts launched an airstrike on Gaza Strip, killed two men and also injured another.

Ayyaantuu News Online reported October 28, 2011 that from mid-October, the Ethiopian army – under the control of the Ethiopian Prime Minster Meles Zenawihas – started forcefully relocating thousands of families in the rural areas around Obole in the restive Ogaden region in southeastern Ethiopia where government forces are engaged in fighting rebels of the ONLF

The winds of change are blowing across the globe. What triggers such change, and when it will strike, is something that no one can predict.

Last Jan. 18, a courageous young woman in Egypt took a dangerous step. Asmaa Mahfouz was 25 years old, part of the April 6 Youth Movement, with thousands of young people engaging online in debate on the future of their country.

Lunchtime at the HSBC building Central Hong Kong – gone was its strangely grimy sterility once only broken by smoothly ascending escalators that carry what appear to be robotised humans into its underbelly; the grey flagstone base now replete with a growing tent city, tables of foodstuff, sofas, gaudy banners, quietly disposed youngies at laptops or in small bands, talking.

The often violent response to the Occupy Wall Street campaign that is growing in the United States and elsewhere is affecting the freedom to inform. Reporters Without Borders [campaigning for press freedom] condemns the arrests of reporters in recent weeks, especially in New York where the police assume the right to decide who are journalists.

As Occupy London Stock Exchange celebrated a week of protest thousands gathered for a public assembly in the heart of London’s financial centre. The General Secretary of Britain’s largest trade union added his support. A second occupation was born in nearby Finsbury Sq. St Paul’s Cathedral closed its doors claiming health and safety issues and asking the camp to leave.