Thursday, June 28, 2007
Saturday, June 9, 2007
Friday, June 8, 2007
BBC NEWS | World | South Asia | Doubts over India's Aids figures
BBC NEWS World South Asia Doubts over India's Aids figures
Doubts over India's Aids figures
India has more HIV infections than any other country, the UN saysCurrent estimates for the number of people in India with the HIV/Aids figures could be greatly exaggerated, a leading Aids worker says.
The UN says 5.7 million people in India have the HIV virus, the highest number in the world.
But Ashok Alexander, of the anti-Aids Avahan organisation says figures due out soon could be "substantially lower", the Associated Press reports.
The BBC has learned that the figure could be as low as three million.
Experts say that the discrepancy between 5.7 million and three million could only be explained by errors in the methods of calculating the numbers of people with the HIV virus.
India is about to embark on a new and expanded phase of its Aids control programme, with increased funding from the government and from international donors.
'Substantially lower'
"The actual number we've come up with in aggregate is likely to be lower, and perhaps substantially lower," Ashok Alexander, director of Avahan, the Indian programme of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, said, the Associated Press news agency reports.
Officials say the virus is spreading to low-risk groups
Mr Alexander said the new estimates were likely to be more accurate because they came from pre-natal clinics, high risk groups and from the government's National Family Health Survey.
He said that this was a far more accurate way of collating the figures than previous estimates which only relied on details provided by pre-natal clinics.
Mr Alexander declined to speculate on what the new total would be, pointing out that data is still being assessed and exact details will not be available for a few more weeks.
Backward
Last week, India health officials said they were alarmed by the growing numbers of pregnant women infected with HIV/Aids in the northern states of Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Bihar.
They are among India's most backward, with huge populations but poor literacy and health services.
Officials say workers who migrate to cities in search of work bring the infection back to the states with them.
They said that unless the state governments got serious about tackling the disease, there could be an Aids epidemic.
Doubts over India's Aids figures
India has more HIV infections than any other country, the UN saysCurrent estimates for the number of people in India with the HIV/Aids figures could be greatly exaggerated, a leading Aids worker says.
The UN says 5.7 million people in India have the HIV virus, the highest number in the world.
But Ashok Alexander, of the anti-Aids Avahan organisation says figures due out soon could be "substantially lower", the Associated Press reports.
The BBC has learned that the figure could be as low as three million.
Experts say that the discrepancy between 5.7 million and three million could only be explained by errors in the methods of calculating the numbers of people with the HIV virus.
India is about to embark on a new and expanded phase of its Aids control programme, with increased funding from the government and from international donors.
'Substantially lower'
"The actual number we've come up with in aggregate is likely to be lower, and perhaps substantially lower," Ashok Alexander, director of Avahan, the Indian programme of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, said, the Associated Press news agency reports.
Officials say the virus is spreading to low-risk groups
Mr Alexander said the new estimates were likely to be more accurate because they came from pre-natal clinics, high risk groups and from the government's National Family Health Survey.
He said that this was a far more accurate way of collating the figures than previous estimates which only relied on details provided by pre-natal clinics.
Mr Alexander declined to speculate on what the new total would be, pointing out that data is still being assessed and exact details will not be available for a few more weeks.
Backward
Last week, India health officials said they were alarmed by the growing numbers of pregnant women infected with HIV/Aids in the northern states of Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Bihar.
They are among India's most backward, with huge populations but poor literacy and health services.
Officials say workers who migrate to cities in search of work bring the infection back to the states with them.
They said that unless the state governments got serious about tackling the disease, there could be an Aids epidemic.
Thursday, June 7, 2007
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
CPM blinks on Singur too, may return land - Yahoo! India News
CPM blinks on Singur too, may return land - Yahoo! India News
CPM blinks on Singur too, may return land
By IE
Wednesday June 6, 02:34 AM Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and the ruling CPI(M) indicated on Tuesday that the government is seriously considering Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee's demand of returning land at Singur to farmers who are not willing to sell their holdings for Tata Motors' small-car project.
After a statement at Writers' Buildings, Bhattacharjee and Commerce and Industries Minister Nirupam Sen called on Jyoti Basu at his residence in Salt Lake. Land and Land Reforms Minister Abdur Rezzak Mollah joined this meeting together with CPI(M) State Secretary Biman Bose.
Party sources said the CPI(M) as well as the government want an amicable solution to the lingering problems at Singur.
They said Mollah's presence indicated the government is seriously considering the demand of returning some land. "A partial return of land to unwilling farmers cannot be ruled out," a senior leader told The Indian Express.
Bhattacharjee, taking the cue from Monday's surprise meeting between Mamata and former Chief Minister Basu, told reporters at Writers' Buildings on Tuesday that the government is open to talks over realigning the land acquired to accommodate farmers who have refused to take their compensation cheques because they do not want to sell.
"The discussions with Mamata were good. I spoke to Basu this morning and will talk to him again," Bhattacharjee said. Asked if land would be returned, Bhattacharjee said this would be chalked out by Commerce and Industry Minister Nirupam Sen.
As for Mamata's demand that the government return around 300 acres to 400-odd farmers who have refused to accept their cheques, the Chief Minister said: "I cannot say now whether it is 300 acres or 200 acres, I need to know the details from Sen before I speak on this."
Although the government acquired around 997 acres for the project last year, some villagers are still holding out and organising sporadic protests.
Bhattacharjee said he would take the issue further after getting to know the details of the Basu-Mamata meeting and her specific demands.
He said the Singur move would also further the peace process at Nandigram, where violent opposition by farmers since January has forced the government to drop plans to acquire a much larger area of 10,000 acres for a chemical hub and a special economic zone (SEZ).
The Chief Minister stated that he was open to talks.
Meanwhile, in Kalighat, Mamata was keeping tabs on the fallout of her talks with Basu.
When contacted by The Indian Express, she said: "A process is under way and I shall not comment now. Wait till tomorrow."
CPM blinks on Singur too, may return land
By IE
Wednesday June 6, 02:34 AM Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and the ruling CPI(M) indicated on Tuesday that the government is seriously considering Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee's demand of returning land at Singur to farmers who are not willing to sell their holdings for Tata Motors' small-car project.
After a statement at Writers' Buildings, Bhattacharjee and Commerce and Industries Minister Nirupam Sen called on Jyoti Basu at his residence in Salt Lake. Land and Land Reforms Minister Abdur Rezzak Mollah joined this meeting together with CPI(M) State Secretary Biman Bose.
Party sources said the CPI(M) as well as the government want an amicable solution to the lingering problems at Singur.
They said Mollah's presence indicated the government is seriously considering the demand of returning some land. "A partial return of land to unwilling farmers cannot be ruled out," a senior leader told The Indian Express.
Bhattacharjee, taking the cue from Monday's surprise meeting between Mamata and former Chief Minister Basu, told reporters at Writers' Buildings on Tuesday that the government is open to talks over realigning the land acquired to accommodate farmers who have refused to take their compensation cheques because they do not want to sell.
"The discussions with Mamata were good. I spoke to Basu this morning and will talk to him again," Bhattacharjee said. Asked if land would be returned, Bhattacharjee said this would be chalked out by Commerce and Industry Minister Nirupam Sen.
As for Mamata's demand that the government return around 300 acres to 400-odd farmers who have refused to accept their cheques, the Chief Minister said: "I cannot say now whether it is 300 acres or 200 acres, I need to know the details from Sen before I speak on this."
Although the government acquired around 997 acres for the project last year, some villagers are still holding out and organising sporadic protests.
Bhattacharjee said he would take the issue further after getting to know the details of the Basu-Mamata meeting and her specific demands.
He said the Singur move would also further the peace process at Nandigram, where violent opposition by farmers since January has forced the government to drop plans to acquire a much larger area of 10,000 acres for a chemical hub and a special economic zone (SEZ).
The Chief Minister stated that he was open to talks.
Meanwhile, in Kalighat, Mamata was keeping tabs on the fallout of her talks with Basu.
When contacted by The Indian Express, she said: "A process is under way and I shall not comment now. Wait till tomorrow."
Welcome to ClubSymantec - Symantec Corp.
Welcome to ClubSymantec - Symantec Corp.
hishing scams are the easiest way for criminals to steal your identity and your confidential data. Learn to protect yourself with these easy steps..Phishing attacks are hugely popular amongst cyber-criminals. And it's easy to see why. They are the easiest and most effective way to fool internet users into handing over their identity details and other confidential data. Every day, thousands of new - fake - phishing websites come and go: it's a booming business! Fortunately, protection is readily available and close at hand.Phishing scams operate via e-mail and, more recently, instant messaging (IM). Whatever the means, the purpose is always the same: to make victims click on a link, believing that it’ll lead them to a legitimate website with whom they're doing business, like a bank, a retailer, a government agency, or a credit card company.Whether it arrived within an e-mail or instant message, the fake link actually leads to a fake website that looks just like the real one. When you get to that site, you are asked to divulge personal information for some made-up reason explained in the e-mail or IM you received (including alleged security or technical problems). Scammers usually ask for login account information, passwords and PIN numbers, etc...All this information, of course, is then stored on that fake server and used subsequently by phishing scammers to steal your identity and drain your bank account. Recently, a variety of phishing, spear phishing, has becoming increasingly sophisticated and common. Spear phishers target a specific group of people. They’ve even targeted MySpace, a social networking site. A spear-phishing message targets a smaller audience but works harder to make it look real. It looks as if it came from your employer, a co-worker, or a friend. Think about it. We’re more likely to be tricked by a phishing e-mail if it contains targeted information about us, like “Hey Tom, it’s Jake. We’re mates from High-school”. Or: “Welcome to our team Yolanda Juarez”. Or even just an e-mail, allegedly from the IT Department, urging you to “install these new updates by January 30”.
It’s Your Identity. Keep it safe.Don’t click on links within e-mails or IMs that ask you to provide personal information. If you follow the instructions, and enter your personal information on the website you’re led to, you’ll deliver that information directly into the hands of identity thieves. Always go directly to the official website by typing the address yourself, or by using a bookmark (although some Trojan horses have been known to change bookmarked addresses.)Beware of pharming. With pharming, when you type in the address of a legitimate website, you’re taken to a fake copy of the site without realizing it. It all takes place at the server level. The risks are the same as with phishing, but it’s up to your ISP or IT department to prevent pharming.Only open e-mail attachments if you’re expecting them and know what they contain. To be especially safe, use a good antispam filter to limit your exposure to spam e-mail from phishers.Know the sender's identity before you provide any personal information. Legitimate credit card issuers and other companies will never ask for your personal information in an e-mail. Ask for the sender's name, the name of the agency or company, the telephone number, and the address. Then find out if they’re legitimate. Don’t be afraid to make a phone call instead of answering an e-mail.Watch out for job seekers pretending to be potential employers, especially if they ask for your social security number or other personal information. If you think you've provided account numbers, PINs, or passwords to a phisher, notify the companies with whom you have these accounts immediately. To find out how to place a fraud alert, contact the Federal Trade Commission’s ID Theft Clearinghouse, www.consumer.gov/idtheft or call 877-438-4338, TDD 202-326-2502.
ConclusionThere is no need to be afraid of e-mail and IM! But knowing how they are used by scammers can help you to avoid falling prey to these phishers. It’s simple: never, ever, follow a link from an e-mail or IM to an “official” website to enter personal information. Just don’t do it, and you’ll be safe. Then, keep yourself informed of the latest trends in scamming, and consider using security tools like Norton Confidential and Norton Internet Security to reduce your risk and prevent personal information from leaving your PC
hishing scams are the easiest way for criminals to steal your identity and your confidential data. Learn to protect yourself with these easy steps..Phishing attacks are hugely popular amongst cyber-criminals. And it's easy to see why. They are the easiest and most effective way to fool internet users into handing over their identity details and other confidential data. Every day, thousands of new - fake - phishing websites come and go: it's a booming business! Fortunately, protection is readily available and close at hand.Phishing scams operate via e-mail and, more recently, instant messaging (IM). Whatever the means, the purpose is always the same: to make victims click on a link, believing that it’ll lead them to a legitimate website with whom they're doing business, like a bank, a retailer, a government agency, or a credit card company.Whether it arrived within an e-mail or instant message, the fake link actually leads to a fake website that looks just like the real one. When you get to that site, you are asked to divulge personal information for some made-up reason explained in the e-mail or IM you received (including alleged security or technical problems). Scammers usually ask for login account information, passwords and PIN numbers, etc...All this information, of course, is then stored on that fake server and used subsequently by phishing scammers to steal your identity and drain your bank account. Recently, a variety of phishing, spear phishing, has becoming increasingly sophisticated and common. Spear phishers target a specific group of people. They’ve even targeted MySpace, a social networking site. A spear-phishing message targets a smaller audience but works harder to make it look real. It looks as if it came from your employer, a co-worker, or a friend. Think about it. We’re more likely to be tricked by a phishing e-mail if it contains targeted information about us, like “Hey Tom, it’s Jake. We’re mates from High-school”. Or: “Welcome to our team Yolanda Juarez”. Or even just an e-mail, allegedly from the IT Department, urging you to “install these new updates by January 30”.
It’s Your Identity. Keep it safe.Don’t click on links within e-mails or IMs that ask you to provide personal information. If you follow the instructions, and enter your personal information on the website you’re led to, you’ll deliver that information directly into the hands of identity thieves. Always go directly to the official website by typing the address yourself, or by using a bookmark (although some Trojan horses have been known to change bookmarked addresses.)Beware of pharming. With pharming, when you type in the address of a legitimate website, you’re taken to a fake copy of the site without realizing it. It all takes place at the server level. The risks are the same as with phishing, but it’s up to your ISP or IT department to prevent pharming.Only open e-mail attachments if you’re expecting them and know what they contain. To be especially safe, use a good antispam filter to limit your exposure to spam e-mail from phishers.Know the sender's identity before you provide any personal information. Legitimate credit card issuers and other companies will never ask for your personal information in an e-mail. Ask for the sender's name, the name of the agency or company, the telephone number, and the address. Then find out if they’re legitimate. Don’t be afraid to make a phone call instead of answering an e-mail.Watch out for job seekers pretending to be potential employers, especially if they ask for your social security number or other personal information. If you think you've provided account numbers, PINs, or passwords to a phisher, notify the companies with whom you have these accounts immediately. To find out how to place a fraud alert, contact the Federal Trade Commission’s ID Theft Clearinghouse, www.consumer.gov/idtheft or call 877-438-4338, TDD 202-326-2502.
ConclusionThere is no need to be afraid of e-mail and IM! But knowing how they are used by scammers can help you to avoid falling prey to these phishers. It’s simple: never, ever, follow a link from an e-mail or IM to an “official” website to enter personal information. Just don’t do it, and you’ll be safe. Then, keep yourself informed of the latest trends in scamming, and consider using security tools like Norton Confidential and Norton Internet Security to reduce your risk and prevent personal information from leaving your PC
Monday, June 4, 2007
Mars Pictures Gallery - Pictures of Mars - The Red Planet
Mars Pictures Gallery - Pictures of Mars - The Red Planet
Named for the Roman god of War, Mars probably got this name due to its red color. It is sometimes referred to as the Red Planet. The name of the month March derives from Mars. Known since prehistoric times, Mars is still a favorite of choice for human exploration. The density of Mars is about 30 percent less than that of Earth (3.94 g/cm3 vs. 5.52 g/cm3). Its core is probably similar to Earth's, mostly iron, with small amounts of nickel, but spacecraft mapping of its gravity field seem to indicate that its iron-rich core and mantle are a smaller portion of its volume than on Earth. Also, its smaller magnetic field than Earth, indicates a solid, rather than liquid core.
Mars' atmosphere is 95 percent carbon dioxide, nearly 3 percent nitrogen, and nearly 2 percent argon with trace quantities of oxygen, carbon monoxide, water vapor, ozone, and other trace gases.
Graphic Index Text Index
Start Here
Named for the Roman god of War, Mars probably got this name due to its red color. It is sometimes referred to as the Red Planet. The name of the month March derives from Mars. Known since prehistoric times, Mars is still a favorite of choice for human exploration. The density of Mars is about 30 percent less than that of Earth (3.94 g/cm3 vs. 5.52 g/cm3). Its core is probably similar to Earth's, mostly iron, with small amounts of nickel, but spacecraft mapping of its gravity field seem to indicate that its iron-rich core and mantle are a smaller portion of its volume than on Earth. Also, its smaller magnetic field than Earth, indicates a solid, rather than liquid core.
Mars' atmosphere is 95 percent carbon dioxide, nearly 3 percent nitrogen, and nearly 2 percent argon with trace quantities of oxygen, carbon monoxide, water vapor, ozone, and other trace gases.
Graphic Index Text Index
Start Here
Device turns heat into sound, then electricity - Yahoo! India News
Device turns heat into sound, then electricity - Yahoo! India News
Device turns heat into sound, then electricity
By IANS
Monday June 4, 02:22 PM
Washington, June 4 (IANS) Physicists in US have developed a small device that they claim can turn heat into sound and then into electricity.
The device, developed by University of Utah physicists, may be used to cool electronics, harness solar energy in a new way, and conserve energy by changing waste heat into electric power.
The device could be used within two years as an alternative to photovoltaic cells for converting sunlight into electricity, reported Newswise wire.
The device could be used to cool laptop and other computers that generate more heat.
Email to friend Most emailed
Device turns heat into sound, then electricity
By IANS
Monday June 4, 02:22 PM
Washington, June 4 (IANS) Physicists in US have developed a small device that they claim can turn heat into sound and then into electricity.
The device, developed by University of Utah physicists, may be used to cool electronics, harness solar energy in a new way, and conserve energy by changing waste heat into electric power.
The device could be used within two years as an alternative to photovoltaic cells for converting sunlight into electricity, reported Newswise wire.
The device could be used to cool laptop and other computers that generate more heat.
Email to friend Most emailed
History
History The Origins of the Gujjars
It can be said that the furthest point in history that relates to Gujjars goes clear back to the days of Ishmail and Isaac, that is if you speak to a Gujjar of Himachal Pradesh, India. They will tell you of their legend that they are descendents of Isaac. This alone is interesting in that Muslims, and the vast majority of Gujjars are Muslims, trace their descendents to Ishmail. However, the story is related in this way.
Ishaque (Isaac) told his sons that the one who fed him kabobs from goat meat would succeed him as prophet. His son's, Ash and Yaqub, (Esau and Jacob) went their separate ways to find the goat meat for the kabobs.
While Ash went in to the forest in search for the goat Yaqub got some help from his mother who apparently had her own goats and helped her son prepare them. Having eaten the Kabobs prepared by Yaqub, Hazrat Ishaque blessed Yaqub and appointed him as his heir to the birth right. On his return, Ash found out that he had been cheated out of his birth right by Yaqub and his mother. Disappointed he returned to the forest. Where he rested and soon fell asleep. Allah spoke to him in a dream. He said to worship him with a pure heart and to spend his life in the forest. If he did so, he would attain an even higher status than Yaqub. Ash did just this and he later became a great saint. It is in the lineage of Ash that the Gujjars (of Himachal Pradesh) trace their lineage and this is the reason that even today you find the Gujjars in the forest where it is said they feel closer to God.
There is much confusion as to the origin of the Gujjar people. Most research goes around in circles. One author quotes another till no one know where the original source is anymore. W. Crooke, Castes and Tribes of North Western India, Vol. 2 seems to be a favorite as well. Vincient A. Smith, The Early History of India says that the Gujjars were early immigrants to the Indian Sub-continent. Possibly "allied in blood" to the Huns. The Huns were divided into two main groups, the Red Huns and the White Huns. The Red Huns invaded Europe while the White Huns went down in to the Oxus Valley and attacked the Kishan Kingdom of Kabul and then poured into India.
Another theory is that the Gujjars are related to the Rajputs and that Mughal Emperor Aurangzed made an agreement that if the Rajput lost in the wars with the Mughals that they would have a portion of them convert to Islam. The Rajupts did lose and the group that converted became known as Gujjars.
The first reference to a separate Gujjar Kingdom is around fifth century AD. There is mention of a Gujjar Kingdom in Rajasthan with Bhilmal as the Capital.
In his book "Geography of Jammu & Kashmir State" Majid Husain says that before their arrival in the sub-continent they were the inhabitants of Georgia (Gurjia) a territory situated between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea in the Soviet Union. They left that area and migrated through central Asia, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, crossed the Khyber Pass and entered the Sub-continent of India. In the Sub-continent, making a southward march through Baluchistan,- they reached Gujrat, most probably in the 5th and 6th century A.D. While in Gujrat they were plagued by a series of serious droughts so they moved out of the plains area and entered the green pastures of the Siwaliks and the Himalayas. Having their place of origin as Georgia and moving towards the Sub-continent of India they named several settlements after their name, e.g. Gujar (Central Asia), Juzrs (Gurjara), Gujrabad, Gujru, Gujristan, Gujrabas, Gujdar-Kotta, Gujar-Garh, Gujarkhan, Gujranwala in Iran, Afghanistan, Turkmenia, Pakistan and India. Cunningham (1970) is, however, of the opinion that the Gujjars are the descendents of Kusham and Yachi Tribes which are considered to be the tribes of Eastern Tartars (U.S.S.R.).
It can be said that the furthest point in history that relates to Gujjars goes clear back to the days of Ishmail and Isaac, that is if you speak to a Gujjar of Himachal Pradesh, India. They will tell you of their legend that they are descendents of Isaac. This alone is interesting in that Muslims, and the vast majority of Gujjars are Muslims, trace their descendents to Ishmail. However, the story is related in this way.
Ishaque (Isaac) told his sons that the one who fed him kabobs from goat meat would succeed him as prophet. His son's, Ash and Yaqub, (Esau and Jacob) went their separate ways to find the goat meat for the kabobs.
While Ash went in to the forest in search for the goat Yaqub got some help from his mother who apparently had her own goats and helped her son prepare them. Having eaten the Kabobs prepared by Yaqub, Hazrat Ishaque blessed Yaqub and appointed him as his heir to the birth right. On his return, Ash found out that he had been cheated out of his birth right by Yaqub and his mother. Disappointed he returned to the forest. Where he rested and soon fell asleep. Allah spoke to him in a dream. He said to worship him with a pure heart and to spend his life in the forest. If he did so, he would attain an even higher status than Yaqub. Ash did just this and he later became a great saint. It is in the lineage of Ash that the Gujjars (of Himachal Pradesh) trace their lineage and this is the reason that even today you find the Gujjars in the forest where it is said they feel closer to God.
There is much confusion as to the origin of the Gujjar people. Most research goes around in circles. One author quotes another till no one know where the original source is anymore. W. Crooke, Castes and Tribes of North Western India, Vol. 2 seems to be a favorite as well. Vincient A. Smith, The Early History of India says that the Gujjars were early immigrants to the Indian Sub-continent. Possibly "allied in blood" to the Huns. The Huns were divided into two main groups, the Red Huns and the White Huns. The Red Huns invaded Europe while the White Huns went down in to the Oxus Valley and attacked the Kishan Kingdom of Kabul and then poured into India.
Another theory is that the Gujjars are related to the Rajputs and that Mughal Emperor Aurangzed made an agreement that if the Rajput lost in the wars with the Mughals that they would have a portion of them convert to Islam. The Rajupts did lose and the group that converted became known as Gujjars.
The first reference to a separate Gujjar Kingdom is around fifth century AD. There is mention of a Gujjar Kingdom in Rajasthan with Bhilmal as the Capital.
In his book "Geography of Jammu & Kashmir State" Majid Husain says that before their arrival in the sub-continent they were the inhabitants of Georgia (Gurjia) a territory situated between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea in the Soviet Union. They left that area and migrated through central Asia, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, crossed the Khyber Pass and entered the Sub-continent of India. In the Sub-continent, making a southward march through Baluchistan,- they reached Gujrat, most probably in the 5th and 6th century A.D. While in Gujrat they were plagued by a series of serious droughts so they moved out of the plains area and entered the green pastures of the Siwaliks and the Himalayas. Having their place of origin as Georgia and moving towards the Sub-continent of India they named several settlements after their name, e.g. Gujar (Central Asia), Juzrs (Gurjara), Gujrabad, Gujru, Gujristan, Gujrabas, Gujdar-Kotta, Gujar-Garh, Gujarkhan, Gujranwala in Iran, Afghanistan, Turkmenia, Pakistan and India. Cunningham (1970) is, however, of the opinion that the Gujjars are the descendents of Kusham and Yachi Tribes which are considered to be the tribes of Eastern Tartars (U.S.S.R.).
Sunday, June 3, 2007
Saturday, June 2, 2007
Friday, June 1, 2007
The Telegraph - Indian Newspapers in English Language from Kolkatta (Calcutta) India.
The Telegraph - Indian Newspapers in English Language from Kolkatta (Calcutta) India.
House stunned by ‘starvation’ truth
SUBRAT DAS
In session
Bhubaneswar, June 1: The Orissa Assembly was thrown out of gear in the morning when Opposition members stormed the Well of the House, forcing several adjournments, over reports of villagers eating stones due to lack of food.
However, by late evening, before the budget was presented, the tables turned for the enraged Opposition, as revenue minister Manmohan Samal told a stunned Assembly of how two television journalists — Puturam Sunani and Meghnad Kharsel — belonging to a local channel had “tutored” the footage as well as the locals “to eat stones before camera”.
“The reports are totally false and motivated. The locals said the journalists told them to eat the stones, as those were ‘medically beneficial’ and like panacea for joint pains, headache and stomach-aches,” Samal told those gathered.
“The said villages are covered under Western Orissa Rural Livelihood Programme. The people there have vehemently denied the allegations that they eat stones as food. They stated (before our officials) that they eat rice, ragi and dal as food,” the minister added.
Samal further added that the revenue department officials checked the Antoday Anna Yojana card of Barusingh Pahadia, who was shown eating the stones. “The person received 70 kg of rice on March 17 and another 70 kg on May 5 this year,” he said.
Samal also added that a criminal case has been lodged against the reporters Puturam Sunani and Meghnad Kharsel of the TV channel at the Sinapali police station under Sections 124 (A), 417 and 34 of IPC.
The circle inspector of Khariar is investigating the case. “I welcome a probe by a Assembly committee into the ‘starvation’ issue, as well as an inquiry into the role of the media in this matter,” the minister fumed.
In the morning, as soon as the Question Hour began, leader of Opposition, J.B. Patnaik drew the House’s attention to the media reports, which said that people of Sinapali block of Nuapada were forced to “consume” stones when hungry.
He demanded that the matter be taken up for discussion, suspending all other businesses listed for the day. All bench members in the Opposition rose to support the demand.
However, Speaker Maheswar Mohanty expressed his inability to discuss the matter today, saying that he received the Opposition’s notice for it only this morning.
House stunned by ‘starvation’ truth
SUBRAT DAS
In session
Bhubaneswar, June 1: The Orissa Assembly was thrown out of gear in the morning when Opposition members stormed the Well of the House, forcing several adjournments, over reports of villagers eating stones due to lack of food.
However, by late evening, before the budget was presented, the tables turned for the enraged Opposition, as revenue minister Manmohan Samal told a stunned Assembly of how two television journalists — Puturam Sunani and Meghnad Kharsel — belonging to a local channel had “tutored” the footage as well as the locals “to eat stones before camera”.
“The reports are totally false and motivated. The locals said the journalists told them to eat the stones, as those were ‘medically beneficial’ and like panacea for joint pains, headache and stomach-aches,” Samal told those gathered.
“The said villages are covered under Western Orissa Rural Livelihood Programme. The people there have vehemently denied the allegations that they eat stones as food. They stated (before our officials) that they eat rice, ragi and dal as food,” the minister added.
Samal further added that the revenue department officials checked the Antoday Anna Yojana card of Barusingh Pahadia, who was shown eating the stones. “The person received 70 kg of rice on March 17 and another 70 kg on May 5 this year,” he said.
Samal also added that a criminal case has been lodged against the reporters Puturam Sunani and Meghnad Kharsel of the TV channel at the Sinapali police station under Sections 124 (A), 417 and 34 of IPC.
The circle inspector of Khariar is investigating the case. “I welcome a probe by a Assembly committee into the ‘starvation’ issue, as well as an inquiry into the role of the media in this matter,” the minister fumed.
In the morning, as soon as the Question Hour began, leader of Opposition, J.B. Patnaik drew the House’s attention to the media reports, which said that people of Sinapali block of Nuapada were forced to “consume” stones when hungry.
He demanded that the matter be taken up for discussion, suspending all other businesses listed for the day. All bench members in the Opposition rose to support the demand.
However, Speaker Maheswar Mohanty expressed his inability to discuss the matter today, saying that he received the Opposition’s notice for it only this morning.
The Hindu News Update Service
The Hindu News Update Service
India's richest man builds 60-storey high home
By Randeep Ramesh in New Delhi
Guardian News Service: GBP500m Mumbai tower for family of six and 600 staff - New era of high-rise and 'new vulgarity' dawns.
In the most conspicuous sign yet of India's unprecedented prosperity, the country's richest man, Mukesh Ambani, is building a new home in the financial hub of Mumbai: a 60-storey high palace with helipad, health club and six floors of car parking.
The building, named Antilla after a mythical island, will have a total floor area greater than Versailles and be home for Mr Ambani, his mother, wife, three children and 600 full-time staff.
Draped in hanging gardens, the building will have a floor for a home theatre, a glass-fronted apartment for guests, and a two-storey health club. As the ceilings are three times as high as a normal building's, the 173m tower will only have 27 floors.
With property prices rocketing, the building is already worth more than GBP500m. It is expected to be ready for the Ambanis to move in next year. The family currently live in a 14-storey building, Sea Wind.
Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Group is India's largest private company, with interests in oil, retail and biotechnology. The 50-year-old became the country's first rupee trillionaire this week, taking his net worth to GBP14bn.
The Indian economy is soaring: yesterday it posted annual growth of 9.4%. Friends of the Ambanis said that the billionaire's new home was "comparable to those owned by friends such as Lakshmi Mittal". The UK-based steel tycoon bought the most expensive house in London last year, paying GBP60m for a place in Kensington Palace Gardens.
Urban planners say Mr Mukesh's home is part of a global rush for tall buildings that has seen skyscrapers spring up in Dubai, Shanghai and Seoul. In India, planning rules and a historic antipathy to unrestrained materialism has meant that this race to touch the sky has largely bypassed the cities, which are more notable for their shantytowns and dilapidated housing. But experts say the next wave of skyscraper proposals could come in India.
"Our wealthiest citizens used to hide their money," said Hafeez Contractor, a Mumbai-based architect. "They would not drive their Mercedes, they lived in small apartments. Even Mr Ambani's father lived in a small block of flats. They were afraid of the taxman. But that attitude has gone; Mukesh has made his money, and good for him if he wants to flaunt it."
Mr Contractor said it is only a matter of time before Mumbai was littered with high-rises: "We have to find homes for people, and in a small area that means building skyscrapers."
While some idolise the riches and glamour of India's "Jazz Age", others are uncomfortable with the "new vulgarity". Only last week India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh, called on business leaders to "eschew conspicuous consumption" and "be role models of moderation".
Praful Bidwai, a newspaper columnist, said the divide between rich and poor was becoming obscene. "Mr Ambani is building an edifice to his own ego," he said.
"It will not go down well with the public and there is a growing tide of anger about such absurd spending."
India's richest man builds 60-storey high home
By Randeep Ramesh in New Delhi
Guardian News Service: GBP500m Mumbai tower for family of six and 600 staff - New era of high-rise and 'new vulgarity' dawns.
In the most conspicuous sign yet of India's unprecedented prosperity, the country's richest man, Mukesh Ambani, is building a new home in the financial hub of Mumbai: a 60-storey high palace with helipad, health club and six floors of car parking.
The building, named Antilla after a mythical island, will have a total floor area greater than Versailles and be home for Mr Ambani, his mother, wife, three children and 600 full-time staff.
Draped in hanging gardens, the building will have a floor for a home theatre, a glass-fronted apartment for guests, and a two-storey health club. As the ceilings are three times as high as a normal building's, the 173m tower will only have 27 floors.
With property prices rocketing, the building is already worth more than GBP500m. It is expected to be ready for the Ambanis to move in next year. The family currently live in a 14-storey building, Sea Wind.
Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Group is India's largest private company, with interests in oil, retail and biotechnology. The 50-year-old became the country's first rupee trillionaire this week, taking his net worth to GBP14bn.
The Indian economy is soaring: yesterday it posted annual growth of 9.4%. Friends of the Ambanis said that the billionaire's new home was "comparable to those owned by friends such as Lakshmi Mittal". The UK-based steel tycoon bought the most expensive house in London last year, paying GBP60m for a place in Kensington Palace Gardens.
Urban planners say Mr Mukesh's home is part of a global rush for tall buildings that has seen skyscrapers spring up in Dubai, Shanghai and Seoul. In India, planning rules and a historic antipathy to unrestrained materialism has meant that this race to touch the sky has largely bypassed the cities, which are more notable for their shantytowns and dilapidated housing. But experts say the next wave of skyscraper proposals could come in India.
"Our wealthiest citizens used to hide their money," said Hafeez Contractor, a Mumbai-based architect. "They would not drive their Mercedes, they lived in small apartments. Even Mr Ambani's father lived in a small block of flats. They were afraid of the taxman. But that attitude has gone; Mukesh has made his money, and good for him if he wants to flaunt it."
Mr Contractor said it is only a matter of time before Mumbai was littered with high-rises: "We have to find homes for people, and in a small area that means building skyscrapers."
While some idolise the riches and glamour of India's "Jazz Age", others are uncomfortable with the "new vulgarity". Only last week India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh, called on business leaders to "eschew conspicuous consumption" and "be role models of moderation".
Praful Bidwai, a newspaper columnist, said the divide between rich and poor was becoming obscene. "Mr Ambani is building an edifice to his own ego," he said.
"It will not go down well with the public and there is a growing tide of anger about such absurd spending."
The Hindu News Update Service
The Hindu News Update Service
NASA's FUSE satellite catches collision of titans
Using NASA's Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) satellite and ground-based telescopes, astronomers have determined, for the first time, the properties of a rare, extremely massive, and young binary star system.
According to Eurekalert, the news service of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the system, known as LH54-425, is located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. The binary consists of two O-stars, the most massive and luminous types of stars in the Universe.
Spectra obtained by Georgia State University astronomer Stephen Williams at the 1.5-meter (4.9 foot) telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile show that the two stars contain about 62 and 37 times the mass of our Sun. "The stars are so close to each other -- about one-sixth the average Earth-Sun distance -- that they orbit around a common center of mass every 2.25 days," says Williams' colleague Douglas Gies of Georgia State University, Atlanta. With a combined mass of about 100 suns, the system is one the most extreme binaries known. The stars are probably less than 3 million years old.
Each star blows off a powerful stellar wind, and FUSE's observations have provided the first details of what happens when the two supersonic winds collide. The wind collision zone wraps around the smaller star and produces a curved surface of superheated gases that emit X-rays and far-ultraviolet radiation. FUSE is ideal for these measurements because the lines that best indicate the properties of stellar winds show up in the far ultraviolet part of the spectrum, where FUSE is most sensitive.
FUSE project scientist George Sonneborn of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., is presenting these results today in a poster at the spring 2007 American Astronomical Society meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii.
The more massive star is shedding material at a rate of 500 trillion tons per second (about 400 times greater than the rate the sun loses mass through the solar wind), with a speed of 5.4 million miles per hour. The smaller star is ejecting mass at about one-tenth the rate of its sibling. The mass loss rate of both stars is consistent with other single stars having the same temperature and luminosity.
As the stars age and swell in size, they will begin to transfer substantial amounts of mass to each other. This process could begin in a million years. The stars are orbiting so close to each other that they are likely to merge as they evolve, producing a single extremely massive star like the more massive member of the Eta Carinae binary system. Eta Carinae is one of the most massive and luminous stars in the Milky Way Galaxy, with perhaps 100 solar masses.
"The merger of two massive stars to make a single super star of over 80 suns could lead to an object like Eta Carinae, which might have looked like LH54-425 one million years ago," says Sonneborn. "Finding stars this massive so early in their life is very rare. These results expand our understanding of the nature of very massive binaries, which was not well understood. The system will eventually produce a very energetic supernova."
"These stars are evolving in the blink of an eye compared to the sun, which has looked pretty much the same for over 4 billion years," adds Rosina Iping of the Catholic University, Washington and NASA Goddard, leader of the team that observed LH54-425 with FUSE. "But this binary looks totally different from Eta Carinae even though there is maybe only one million years difference in age. These massive stars zoom through their life cycle really fast. Will this binary system produce something like Eta Carinae" We don't know."
NASA's FUSE satellite catches collision of titans
Using NASA's Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) satellite and ground-based telescopes, astronomers have determined, for the first time, the properties of a rare, extremely massive, and young binary star system.
According to Eurekalert, the news service of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the system, known as LH54-425, is located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. The binary consists of two O-stars, the most massive and luminous types of stars in the Universe.
Spectra obtained by Georgia State University astronomer Stephen Williams at the 1.5-meter (4.9 foot) telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile show that the two stars contain about 62 and 37 times the mass of our Sun. "The stars are so close to each other -- about one-sixth the average Earth-Sun distance -- that they orbit around a common center of mass every 2.25 days," says Williams' colleague Douglas Gies of Georgia State University, Atlanta. With a combined mass of about 100 suns, the system is one the most extreme binaries known. The stars are probably less than 3 million years old.
Each star blows off a powerful stellar wind, and FUSE's observations have provided the first details of what happens when the two supersonic winds collide. The wind collision zone wraps around the smaller star and produces a curved surface of superheated gases that emit X-rays and far-ultraviolet radiation. FUSE is ideal for these measurements because the lines that best indicate the properties of stellar winds show up in the far ultraviolet part of the spectrum, where FUSE is most sensitive.
FUSE project scientist George Sonneborn of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., is presenting these results today in a poster at the spring 2007 American Astronomical Society meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii.
The more massive star is shedding material at a rate of 500 trillion tons per second (about 400 times greater than the rate the sun loses mass through the solar wind), with a speed of 5.4 million miles per hour. The smaller star is ejecting mass at about one-tenth the rate of its sibling. The mass loss rate of both stars is consistent with other single stars having the same temperature and luminosity.
As the stars age and swell in size, they will begin to transfer substantial amounts of mass to each other. This process could begin in a million years. The stars are orbiting so close to each other that they are likely to merge as they evolve, producing a single extremely massive star like the more massive member of the Eta Carinae binary system. Eta Carinae is one of the most massive and luminous stars in the Milky Way Galaxy, with perhaps 100 solar masses.
"The merger of two massive stars to make a single super star of over 80 suns could lead to an object like Eta Carinae, which might have looked like LH54-425 one million years ago," says Sonneborn. "Finding stars this massive so early in their life is very rare. These results expand our understanding of the nature of very massive binaries, which was not well understood. The system will eventually produce a very energetic supernova."
"These stars are evolving in the blink of an eye compared to the sun, which has looked pretty much the same for over 4 billion years," adds Rosina Iping of the Catholic University, Washington and NASA Goddard, leader of the team that observed LH54-425 with FUSE. "But this binary looks totally different from Eta Carinae even though there is maybe only one million years difference in age. These massive stars zoom through their life cycle really fast. Will this binary system produce something like Eta Carinae" We don't know."
Monday, May 28, 2007
BBC NEWS | Europe | Pope reinstates Islam department
BBC NEWS Europe Pope reinstates Islam department
Pope reinstates Islam department
The Pope has been repairing damaged relations with MuslimsPope Benedict XVI has reversed a controversial decision he took a year ago to downgrade the Vatican department which deals with the Islamic world.
The Council for Interreligious Dialogue will be restored to its former position as a department in its own right.
It is not clear if the department's former head, British archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, will also be reinstated.
His removal was seen as a sign the Pope was more interested in improving ties with other Christian denominations.
The BBC's David Willey in Rome says that by reversing his decision, which was interpreted negatively in the Muslim world, the Pope has tacitly admitted that this was a mistake.
The change highlights the importance of inter-religious dialogue
Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone
Relations between the Vatican and Muslims have deteriorated over the past year, particularly over remarks made by the pontiff during a visit to Germany last September, in which, some thought, he appeared to equate Islam with violence.
The Pope insisted his words had been taken out of context and that he meant no offence to the Muslim religion.
Merger reversal
In a rare about face, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone told the Italian newspaper, La Stampa, that the Council for Interreligious Dialogue would again become "a dicastery in its own right".
In March 2006, the Pope had downgraded the office by merging it with the Pontifical Council for Culture.
"The change highlights the importance of inter-religious dialogue," Cardinal Bertone said.
The cardinal did not, however, identify who would be asked to lead the council after its reinstatement.
The last president, Archbishop Fitzgerald, an expert on Islamic affairs, was appointed papal nuncio to Egypt and the Vatican's representative at the Arab League in Cairo.
Our correspondent says the archbishop, a fluent Arabic speaker, is much respected as a negotiator for the Vatican within the Muslim world.
Pope reinstates Islam department
The Pope has been repairing damaged relations with MuslimsPope Benedict XVI has reversed a controversial decision he took a year ago to downgrade the Vatican department which deals with the Islamic world.
The Council for Interreligious Dialogue will be restored to its former position as a department in its own right.
It is not clear if the department's former head, British archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, will also be reinstated.
His removal was seen as a sign the Pope was more interested in improving ties with other Christian denominations.
The BBC's David Willey in Rome says that by reversing his decision, which was interpreted negatively in the Muslim world, the Pope has tacitly admitted that this was a mistake.
The change highlights the importance of inter-religious dialogue
Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone
Relations between the Vatican and Muslims have deteriorated over the past year, particularly over remarks made by the pontiff during a visit to Germany last September, in which, some thought, he appeared to equate Islam with violence.
The Pope insisted his words had been taken out of context and that he meant no offence to the Muslim religion.
Merger reversal
In a rare about face, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone told the Italian newspaper, La Stampa, that the Council for Interreligious Dialogue would again become "a dicastery in its own right".
In March 2006, the Pope had downgraded the office by merging it with the Pontifical Council for Culture.
"The change highlights the importance of inter-religious dialogue," Cardinal Bertone said.
The cardinal did not, however, identify who would be asked to lead the council after its reinstatement.
The last president, Archbishop Fitzgerald, an expert on Islamic affairs, was appointed papal nuncio to Egypt and the Vatican's representative at the Arab League in Cairo.
Our correspondent says the archbishop, a fluent Arabic speaker, is much respected as a negotiator for the Vatican within the Muslim world.
BBC ON THIS DAY | 28 | 1959: Monkeys survive space mission
BBC ON THIS DAY 28 1959: Monkeys survive space mission
1959: Monkeys survive space missionTwo monkeys have become the first living creatures to survive a space flight.
Able, a seven-pound female rhesus monkey, and Baker, a one-pound female squirrel monkey, were fired 300 miles into space in the nose-cone of a Jupiter missile AM-18 from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
The flight, which reached speeds of up to 10,000 mph,(16,090kmh) lasted 15 minutes and the monkeys were recovered 1,500 miles (2,413km) away in the South Atlantic near Puerto Rico.
The pair, who were weightless for nine minutes, were monitored throughout the flight for changes in their heart beats, muscular reaction, pulse velocity, body temperature and rate of breathing.
A spokesman from the Medical Research and Development Command of the US Army said the monkeys were in "perfect condition" on their return. Data recorded throughout the flight will be analysed over the next two weeks.
'Scientific devilry'
Although regarded as a success by space experts, the mission has been heavily criticised by animal welfare groups.
The American Embassy in London received protests from the League Against Cruel Sports and the Conference of Anti-Vivisection Societies, which is made up of 29 animal welfare groups.
A statement from the League Against Cruel Sports read: "Such action as this falls within the category of scientific devilry rather than scientific research."
It added: "In the name of humanity we beg of you to drop these vile experiments."
The statement from the Conference of Anti-Vivisection Societies had the same tone. It read: "Cowardly acts such as this can never be justified on the grounds of expediency and all thinking people will be disgusted to learn of this latest misuse by scientists of defenceless animals."
Able and Baker are due to return to Washington from Puerto Rico in a military transport aircraft.
1959: Monkeys survive space missionTwo monkeys have become the first living creatures to survive a space flight.
Able, a seven-pound female rhesus monkey, and Baker, a one-pound female squirrel monkey, were fired 300 miles into space in the nose-cone of a Jupiter missile AM-18 from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
The flight, which reached speeds of up to 10,000 mph,(16,090kmh) lasted 15 minutes and the monkeys were recovered 1,500 miles (2,413km) away in the South Atlantic near Puerto Rico.
The pair, who were weightless for nine minutes, were monitored throughout the flight for changes in their heart beats, muscular reaction, pulse velocity, body temperature and rate of breathing.
A spokesman from the Medical Research and Development Command of the US Army said the monkeys were in "perfect condition" on their return. Data recorded throughout the flight will be analysed over the next two weeks.
'Scientific devilry'
Although regarded as a success by space experts, the mission has been heavily criticised by animal welfare groups.
The American Embassy in London received protests from the League Against Cruel Sports and the Conference of Anti-Vivisection Societies, which is made up of 29 animal welfare groups.
A statement from the League Against Cruel Sports read: "Such action as this falls within the category of scientific devilry rather than scientific research."
It added: "In the name of humanity we beg of you to drop these vile experiments."
The statement from the Conference of Anti-Vivisection Societies had the same tone. It read: "Cowardly acts such as this can never be justified on the grounds of expediency and all thinking people will be disgusted to learn of this latest misuse by scientists of defenceless animals."
Able and Baker are due to return to Washington from Puerto Rico in a military transport aircraft.
BBC NEWS | Americas | Canada Catholics 'ordain' women
BBC NEWS Americas Canada Catholics 'ordain' women
Canada Catholics 'ordain' women
By Lee Carter BBC News, Toronto
Bishop Patricia Fresen (right) led a similar ceremony in 2005An ordination ceremony that openly defies Roman Catholic doctrine has taken place in Toronto.
Five women and a married man, all Roman Catholics, have been ordained as priests and deacons by a female Catholic bishop.
However, the Vatican says it will not recognise either the ordinations or the group carrying them out.
The ordination ceremony was held at a Protestant church on the outskirts of Toronto known for its liberal views.
Priestly 'sacrament'
The building was packed with an enthusiastic congregation.
They watched as Bishop Patricia Fresen, one of the most well-known figures in the Roman Catholic Womenpriests movement, led the five women and one married man through a number of rituals to mark their ordination.
Bishop Fresen was herself ordained in a secret ceremony in Spain in 2003.
But the archdiocese of Toronto said that the organisation responsible for the ordinations had no affiliation or any dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church.
It said that ordaining men into the priesthood was a sacrament that cannot be changed.
But the bishops in the Womenpriests movement claim they are part of the Church's valid apostolic succession, because Catholic bishops in good standing ordained them secretly.
Canada Catholics 'ordain' women
By Lee Carter BBC News, Toronto
Bishop Patricia Fresen (right) led a similar ceremony in 2005An ordination ceremony that openly defies Roman Catholic doctrine has taken place in Toronto.
Five women and a married man, all Roman Catholics, have been ordained as priests and deacons by a female Catholic bishop.
However, the Vatican says it will not recognise either the ordinations or the group carrying them out.
The ordination ceremony was held at a Protestant church on the outskirts of Toronto known for its liberal views.
Priestly 'sacrament'
The building was packed with an enthusiastic congregation.
They watched as Bishop Patricia Fresen, one of the most well-known figures in the Roman Catholic Womenpriests movement, led the five women and one married man through a number of rituals to mark their ordination.
Bishop Fresen was herself ordained in a secret ceremony in Spain in 2003.
But the archdiocese of Toronto said that the organisation responsible for the ordinations had no affiliation or any dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church.
It said that ordaining men into the priesthood was a sacrament that cannot be changed.
But the bishops in the Womenpriests movement claim they are part of the Church's valid apostolic succession, because Catholic bishops in good standing ordained them secretly.
Kerala priests against 'government interference' in temple matters - Yahoo! India News
Kerala priests against 'government interference' in temple matters - Yahoo! India News
Kerala priests against 'government interference' in temple matters
By IANS
Monday May 28, 07:55 PM
Trissur (Kerala), May 28 (IANS) A panel of Hindu priests that met here Monday to discuss if there was a need to change rules that prevent non-Hindus from entering temples in Kerala, strongly protested the state government's move to frame guidelines on the issue.`
They were reacting to the statement of Devaswom Minister K. Sudhakaran who said the government will soon come out with guidelines after discussing the matter with Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan.
'We register our strong protest in what the minister has said and the government need not interfere in ritualistic matters of temples in Kerala,' Sreekumar Thamarapalli, president of the Yogakshema Sabha, told reporters here after the meeting.
The meeting of the Sabha, a body of temple priests and those associated with the affairs of the temples in the state, was held in the aftermath of recent controversies over entry restrictions at the famous Sree Krishna Temple in Guruvayoor.
'We have constituted a five-member 'achara parishad' which would discuss whether it is time for any changes in the tradition to keep up with the changing times. They have been given three months time,' added Thamarapalli.
Even as the Sabha meet was on, Sudhakaran told reporters in Thiruvananthapuram that he would soon discuss with Achuthanandan to see what can be done to open the doors of the temples to all believers.
His remarks only angered the priests.
A section of the Sabha reportedly proposed that a resolution should be passed that the minister in charge of Devaswoms - the body that looks after the administration of temples in all parts of the state except North Kerala - should be a 'devotee of God'.
The reference was obviously to Sudhakaran, who is a member of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M).
The proposal was dropped after a heated debate.
The famed Guruvayoor temple of late has run into controversies over and Sudhakaran was instrumental in igniting one when he wrote to the temple administrators to see that veteran singer K.J. Yesudas be allowed to sing inside its premises.
Last week, Guruvayoor priests performed a purification ritual after the naming ceremony of Minister for Overseas Indian Affairs Vayalar Ravi's grandson there. Ravi's wife is a Christian.
After the ritual at the temple, many progressive Hindus have argued for a change in entry rules to allow non-Hindus into temples.
Kerala priests against 'government interference' in temple matters
By IANS
Monday May 28, 07:55 PM
Trissur (Kerala), May 28 (IANS) A panel of Hindu priests that met here Monday to discuss if there was a need to change rules that prevent non-Hindus from entering temples in Kerala, strongly protested the state government's move to frame guidelines on the issue.`
They were reacting to the statement of Devaswom Minister K. Sudhakaran who said the government will soon come out with guidelines after discussing the matter with Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan.
'We register our strong protest in what the minister has said and the government need not interfere in ritualistic matters of temples in Kerala,' Sreekumar Thamarapalli, president of the Yogakshema Sabha, told reporters here after the meeting.
The meeting of the Sabha, a body of temple priests and those associated with the affairs of the temples in the state, was held in the aftermath of recent controversies over entry restrictions at the famous Sree Krishna Temple in Guruvayoor.
'We have constituted a five-member 'achara parishad' which would discuss whether it is time for any changes in the tradition to keep up with the changing times. They have been given three months time,' added Thamarapalli.
Even as the Sabha meet was on, Sudhakaran told reporters in Thiruvananthapuram that he would soon discuss with Achuthanandan to see what can be done to open the doors of the temples to all believers.
His remarks only angered the priests.
A section of the Sabha reportedly proposed that a resolution should be passed that the minister in charge of Devaswoms - the body that looks after the administration of temples in all parts of the state except North Kerala - should be a 'devotee of God'.
The reference was obviously to Sudhakaran, who is a member of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M).
The proposal was dropped after a heated debate.
The famed Guruvayoor temple of late has run into controversies over and Sudhakaran was instrumental in igniting one when he wrote to the temple administrators to see that veteran singer K.J. Yesudas be allowed to sing inside its premises.
Last week, Guruvayoor priests performed a purification ritual after the naming ceremony of Minister for Overseas Indian Affairs Vayalar Ravi's grandson there. Ravi's wife is a Christian.
After the ritual at the temple, many progressive Hindus have argued for a change in entry rules to allow non-Hindus into temples.
Sunday, May 27, 2007
When thousands took to Buddha's path
When thousands took to Buddha's path
When thousands took to Buddha's path
Vipin Vijayan in Mumbai
May 27, 2007 21:49 IST
Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of an unspiritual situation. It is the opium of the people.- Karl Marx.
The oppressed finally broke their shackles at the Mahalaxmi Race Course in Mumbai on Sunday. Dressed in white outfits and dark blue scarves, Dalits from across Maharashtra turned up in thousands to renounce Hinduism and walk the path of Buddhism.
Failing to find an identity in the caste-dominated Indian society even 60 years after independence, about 50,000 Dalits converted at the function, which also commemorated the 50th anniversary of Dr B R Ambedkar's conversion to Buddhism.
However, the Dalai Lama, who was supposed to preside over the ceremony, was conspicuous by his absence.
The new converts come from far-flung areas of Maharashtra like Nashik and Solapur. They have been ostracised and have faced the brunt of the caste-equations. Each of them has tales of atrocities, committed mostly by the upper caste and those in power, as reasons for converting to Buddhism.
"Hindus are committing atrocities on Hindus. No other religion treats its followers the way Hinduism does. We have no ration cards and no identity. By joining Buddhism, I feel we can change all this," says Nandakumar Pawar, a member of the Pardhi community, who came from Barsi village in Solapur. A majority of the converts belonged to this community.
"Then there is the issue of the police-politician nexus. Politicians eliminate their rivals and blame members of our community. We are helpless," he claims.
Sivaji Bhonsle, hailing from Baramati taluk in Songaon district, agrees with Pawar and alleges, "Boys who are aged between 15 and 18 years are picked up from the village for crimes they never committed. Whatever those with money and muscle-power say is gospel. Nobody listens to us."
"After joining Buddhism, things will change. We have been hearing about how our brethren have leading a normal life ever since they joined Buddhism. They are no longer ostracised. Jainism was another option before us but its rigid norms are difficult to follow," he said.
Others said the Buddhist principles of Samta (equality), Karuna (compassion) and Ahimsa (non-violence) was what drew them to Buddhism.
"Upper-caste Hindus created obstacles for us like not letting us attain education and did not give us the respect that a person deserves. In Buddhism, the individual is given more importance. Its principles are more unifying than the divisive ones of Hinduism," observes Yeshwant Sadashiv Mahate from Nashik.
"Dhamma (teachings of Buddha) is a thought that will help us in our upliftment and help us gain an identity. And obviously, it will save us from social stigma," he adds.
By Sunday afternoon, the race course was teeming with people, even as Buddhist monks made their way on to the stage.
During the prolonged wait for the ceremony to begin, chants of Jai Bhim rent the air. Speeches, recitations and folk dances built the momentum for the evening.
One by one, leaders like Revolutionary Party of India president and parliamentarian Ramdas Athavale and tribal leader Laxman Mane made their way to the stage amid tumultuous applause. Soon, the head priest initiated the conversion ceremony, called upon the mammoth gathering to join him in prayer. The ceremony lasted about 15 minutes.
Once again the air around the famous Race Course reverberated with chants praising Lord Buddha, Ambedkar and the leaders who showed them the way to emancipation from Hinduism.
Welcoming the new recruits, Athavale said, "We are here to strengthen India. We are not challenging Hinduism. For many years, we have been part of Huinduism. But all these years, our heart has pained. Art of Living or Yoga alone cannot ease this pain, Buddhism can."
Athavale went to the extent of even taking a dig at US President George Bush.
"We have to tell the United States and George Bush that to fight terror, you don't have to bomb cities. Buddhist ideals are a one-off solution to combating terrorism," he said.
Also present on the occasion was Vipassana acharya S N Goenka, who later gave a discourse on Buddhist ideals to the gathering.
Interestingly, all through the proceedings of the evening, the person whose absence was not missed was state Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh. The chief minister was scheduled to inaugurate the proceedings, but had not turned up till the filing of this report.
Nevertheless, it was a historic day that saw thousands taking to the simple way of living, that preached by Lord Buddha. The converts stood tall, confident that this evening would change their lives forever.
When thousands took to Buddha's path
Vipin Vijayan in Mumbai
May 27, 2007 21:49 IST
Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of an unspiritual situation. It is the opium of the people.- Karl Marx.
The oppressed finally broke their shackles at the Mahalaxmi Race Course in Mumbai on Sunday. Dressed in white outfits and dark blue scarves, Dalits from across Maharashtra turned up in thousands to renounce Hinduism and walk the path of Buddhism.
Failing to find an identity in the caste-dominated Indian society even 60 years after independence, about 50,000 Dalits converted at the function, which also commemorated the 50th anniversary of Dr B R Ambedkar's conversion to Buddhism.
However, the Dalai Lama, who was supposed to preside over the ceremony, was conspicuous by his absence.
The new converts come from far-flung areas of Maharashtra like Nashik and Solapur. They have been ostracised and have faced the brunt of the caste-equations. Each of them has tales of atrocities, committed mostly by the upper caste and those in power, as reasons for converting to Buddhism.
"Hindus are committing atrocities on Hindus. No other religion treats its followers the way Hinduism does. We have no ration cards and no identity. By joining Buddhism, I feel we can change all this," says Nandakumar Pawar, a member of the Pardhi community, who came from Barsi village in Solapur. A majority of the converts belonged to this community.
"Then there is the issue of the police-politician nexus. Politicians eliminate their rivals and blame members of our community. We are helpless," he claims.
Sivaji Bhonsle, hailing from Baramati taluk in Songaon district, agrees with Pawar and alleges, "Boys who are aged between 15 and 18 years are picked up from the village for crimes they never committed. Whatever those with money and muscle-power say is gospel. Nobody listens to us."
"After joining Buddhism, things will change. We have been hearing about how our brethren have leading a normal life ever since they joined Buddhism. They are no longer ostracised. Jainism was another option before us but its rigid norms are difficult to follow," he said.
Others said the Buddhist principles of Samta (equality), Karuna (compassion) and Ahimsa (non-violence) was what drew them to Buddhism.
"Upper-caste Hindus created obstacles for us like not letting us attain education and did not give us the respect that a person deserves. In Buddhism, the individual is given more importance. Its principles are more unifying than the divisive ones of Hinduism," observes Yeshwant Sadashiv Mahate from Nashik.
"Dhamma (teachings of Buddha) is a thought that will help us in our upliftment and help us gain an identity. And obviously, it will save us from social stigma," he adds.
By Sunday afternoon, the race course was teeming with people, even as Buddhist monks made their way on to the stage.
During the prolonged wait for the ceremony to begin, chants of Jai Bhim rent the air. Speeches, recitations and folk dances built the momentum for the evening.
One by one, leaders like Revolutionary Party of India president and parliamentarian Ramdas Athavale and tribal leader Laxman Mane made their way to the stage amid tumultuous applause. Soon, the head priest initiated the conversion ceremony, called upon the mammoth gathering to join him in prayer. The ceremony lasted about 15 minutes.
Once again the air around the famous Race Course reverberated with chants praising Lord Buddha, Ambedkar and the leaders who showed them the way to emancipation from Hinduism.
Welcoming the new recruits, Athavale said, "We are here to strengthen India. We are not challenging Hinduism. For many years, we have been part of Huinduism. But all these years, our heart has pained. Art of Living or Yoga alone cannot ease this pain, Buddhism can."
Athavale went to the extent of even taking a dig at US President George Bush.
"We have to tell the United States and George Bush that to fight terror, you don't have to bomb cities. Buddhist ideals are a one-off solution to combating terrorism," he said.
Also present on the occasion was Vipassana acharya S N Goenka, who later gave a discourse on Buddhist ideals to the gathering.
Interestingly, all through the proceedings of the evening, the person whose absence was not missed was state Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh. The chief minister was scheduled to inaugurate the proceedings, but had not turned up till the filing of this report.
Nevertheless, it was a historic day that saw thousands taking to the simple way of living, that preached by Lord Buddha. The converts stood tall, confident that this evening would change their lives forever.
DNA - World - Bill wanted to split, Hillary said no - Daily News & Analysis
DNA - World - Bill wanted to split, Hillary said no - Daily News & Analysis
Two new biographies of Senator Hillary Clinton, including one by Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein, paint an unflattering picture of the life of one of the frontrunners in the US presidential elections.
According to Bernstein’s 640-page biography, A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Bill Clinton had sought a divorce in 1989 after he fell in love with Marilyn Jo Jenkins, an Arkansas Power and Light Co employee, when he was governor of Arkansas. Hillary refused, telling his gubernatorial chief of staff Betsey Wright that “there are worse things than infidelity”.
The second book Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton, says, Hillary went to great lengths to hide his adulterous lifestyle when his presidential ambitions grew.
Even after Bill Clinton became president and a barrage of accusations of extra-marital affairs followed, Hillary worked hard to counter his adultery.
During the 1992 presidential campaign when Gennifer Flowers went public with her affair with Bill, Hillary set up a team to undermine her “until she is destroyed”.
Bernstein says Hillary had turned to her best friend Diane Blair for advice during this tumultuous period. Hillary told Blair, the book says, that she will not leave her husband even though she wanted to, because she thought his sexual appetite would be tempered by the White House.
Advance copies of both books were received by The Washington Post, which published these snippets. The report said: “The Hillary Clinton who emerges from the pages of the books comes across as a complicated, sometimes compromised figure who tolerated Bill Clinton’s brazen infidelity, pursued her policy and political goals with methodical drive, and occasionally skirted along the edge of the truth along the way. The books portray her as alternately brilliant and controlling, ambitious and victimised.”
1 2 NEXT PAGE
Two new biographies of Senator Hillary Clinton, including one by Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein, paint an unflattering picture of the life of one of the frontrunners in the US presidential elections.
According to Bernstein’s 640-page biography, A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Bill Clinton had sought a divorce in 1989 after he fell in love with Marilyn Jo Jenkins, an Arkansas Power and Light Co employee, when he was governor of Arkansas. Hillary refused, telling his gubernatorial chief of staff Betsey Wright that “there are worse things than infidelity”.
The second book Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton, says, Hillary went to great lengths to hide his adulterous lifestyle when his presidential ambitions grew.
Even after Bill Clinton became president and a barrage of accusations of extra-marital affairs followed, Hillary worked hard to counter his adultery.
During the 1992 presidential campaign when Gennifer Flowers went public with her affair with Bill, Hillary set up a team to undermine her “until she is destroyed”.
Bernstein says Hillary had turned to her best friend Diane Blair for advice during this tumultuous period. Hillary told Blair, the book says, that she will not leave her husband even though she wanted to, because she thought his sexual appetite would be tempered by the White House.
Advance copies of both books were received by The Washington Post, which published these snippets. The report said: “The Hillary Clinton who emerges from the pages of the books comes across as a complicated, sometimes compromised figure who tolerated Bill Clinton’s brazen infidelity, pursued her policy and political goals with methodical drive, and occasionally skirted along the edge of the truth along the way. The books portray her as alternately brilliant and controlling, ambitious and victimised.”
1 2 NEXT PAGE
BBC ON THIS DAY | 27 | 1964: Light goes out in India as Nehru dies
BBC ON THIS DAY 27 1964: Light goes out in India as Nehru dies
1964: Light goes out in India as Nehru diesJawaharlal Nehru, founder of modern India and its current prime minister, has died suddenly at the age of 74.
He was taken ill in the early hours of this morning at his house in New Delhi. He had returned from holiday at a hill station near the capital the previous evening, apparently in reasonable health.
It is believed he suffered a heart attack, and although specialists fought to save him for much of the day, he passed away early this afternoon with his daughter, Indira Gandhi, by his side.
News of his death was broken to the lower house of parliament, the Lok Sabha, at 1400 local time (0830 GMT), by cabinet minister C Subramaniam.
In a broken voice, he told colleagues, "The prime minister is no more. The light is out."
People's tribute
Politicians openly wept as party leaders paid tribute to the man who has led India since independence from Britain 17 years ago.
The news spread quickly through the streets, and thousands of ordinary Indians began to converge on Mr Nehru's mansion in New Delhi.
Within two hours of the announcement, tens of thousands of people had gathered, and truckloads of police took up positions outside the grounds to control the rapidly growing crowd.
Mr Nehru's body was moved from his first-floor bedroom down to a makeshift bier in front of the house.
Then began a long procession which lasted through the rest of the evening and into the night, as nearly 250,000 men, women and children filed past to pay their respects.
Battle for succession
The Home Minister, Gulzarilal Nanda, was sworn in as interim prime minister at midnight, although it is being emphasised that the appointment is temporary.
Pandit Nehru had not indicated who he would prefer to succeed him.
When the subject was raised just five days ago at a news conference, he said that although he had given some thought to the suggestion that he should retire, "my lifetime is not ending so very soon."
The man thought most likely to succeed him is Lal Bahadur Shastri, a Minister without Portfolio in Mr Nehru's cabinet with a reputation for moderation. He was a close political confidant of Mr Nehru.
Other possible candidates are Mr Nehru's daughter, Indira Gandhi, and the former finance minister, Morarji Desai.
E-mail this story to a friend
In Context
Lal Shastri emerged as the compromise candidate to succeed Nehru after none of the other contenders could find enough support within the Congress Party.
He took office on 9 June 1964, but served for less than two years until he also died of a heart attack in office in January 1966.
Lal Shastri was succeeded by Pandit Nehru's daughter, Indira Gandhi.
This began the long Nehru-Gandhi dynasty which has dominated the top echelons of Indian politics to this day.
Jawaharlal Nehru, the son of a lawyer, was a key figure in the struggle for independence from Britain.
He was a confidant of Mahatma Gandhi, and was imprisoned several times.
Independence was finally granted to India in 1947, and Nehru became India's first prime minister.
Over the next 17 years he took India along a socialist path, although he refused to align the country to either the Soviet Union or the United States in the Cold War.
Although some of his policies have been discredited in recent years, he remains a legendary and much-loved figure in his country's early history, and is justifiably known as the architect of modern India.
1964: Light goes out in India as Nehru diesJawaharlal Nehru, founder of modern India and its current prime minister, has died suddenly at the age of 74.
He was taken ill in the early hours of this morning at his house in New Delhi. He had returned from holiday at a hill station near the capital the previous evening, apparently in reasonable health.
It is believed he suffered a heart attack, and although specialists fought to save him for much of the day, he passed away early this afternoon with his daughter, Indira Gandhi, by his side.
News of his death was broken to the lower house of parliament, the Lok Sabha, at 1400 local time (0830 GMT), by cabinet minister C Subramaniam.
In a broken voice, he told colleagues, "The prime minister is no more. The light is out."
People's tribute
Politicians openly wept as party leaders paid tribute to the man who has led India since independence from Britain 17 years ago.
The news spread quickly through the streets, and thousands of ordinary Indians began to converge on Mr Nehru's mansion in New Delhi.
Within two hours of the announcement, tens of thousands of people had gathered, and truckloads of police took up positions outside the grounds to control the rapidly growing crowd.
Mr Nehru's body was moved from his first-floor bedroom down to a makeshift bier in front of the house.
Then began a long procession which lasted through the rest of the evening and into the night, as nearly 250,000 men, women and children filed past to pay their respects.
Battle for succession
The Home Minister, Gulzarilal Nanda, was sworn in as interim prime minister at midnight, although it is being emphasised that the appointment is temporary.
Pandit Nehru had not indicated who he would prefer to succeed him.
When the subject was raised just five days ago at a news conference, he said that although he had given some thought to the suggestion that he should retire, "my lifetime is not ending so very soon."
The man thought most likely to succeed him is Lal Bahadur Shastri, a Minister without Portfolio in Mr Nehru's cabinet with a reputation for moderation. He was a close political confidant of Mr Nehru.
Other possible candidates are Mr Nehru's daughter, Indira Gandhi, and the former finance minister, Morarji Desai.
E-mail this story to a friend
In Context
Lal Shastri emerged as the compromise candidate to succeed Nehru after none of the other contenders could find enough support within the Congress Party.
He took office on 9 June 1964, but served for less than two years until he also died of a heart attack in office in January 1966.
Lal Shastri was succeeded by Pandit Nehru's daughter, Indira Gandhi.
This began the long Nehru-Gandhi dynasty which has dominated the top echelons of Indian politics to this day.
Jawaharlal Nehru, the son of a lawyer, was a key figure in the struggle for independence from Britain.
He was a confidant of Mahatma Gandhi, and was imprisoned several times.
Independence was finally granted to India in 1947, and Nehru became India's first prime minister.
Over the next 17 years he took India along a socialist path, although he refused to align the country to either the Soviet Union or the United States in the Cold War.
Although some of his policies have been discredited in recent years, he remains a legendary and much-loved figure in his country's early history, and is justifiably known as the architect of modern India.
BBC NEWS | South Asia | Mass Dalit conversions in Mumbai
BBC NEWS South Asia Mass Dalit conversions in Mumbai
Mass Dalit conversions in Mumbai
Buddhist monks blessed thousands of new convertsSeveral thousand tribal and Dalit Hindus in India have converted en masse to Buddhism at a ceremony in Mumbai.
The ceremony was billed as the largest religious conversion in modern India, but far fewer converted than had been predicted by the organisers.
The converts hope to escape the rigid caste system in which their status is the lowest.
Right-wing Hindus have often opposed conversion, pushing some Indian states to restrict legal changes of faith.
The ceremony, which was held to mark the 50th anniversary of a leading Dalit leader Bhimrao Ambedkar's conversion to Buddhism, was attended by delegates from several countries with large Buddhist communities, including Sri Lanka, Thailand and Japan.
Conversion controversies
"We estimate that close to 5,000 Dalits have chosen the path towards Buddhism by the end of the day," said Shravan Gaikwad, representative of the Samatha Sainik Dal, a Dalit group.
Dalits came to Mumbai's racecourse for the ceremony
Even though the number of people converted was much less than the 100,000 expected, the organisers said it sent out a strong message of an awakening among the Dalits, says the BBC's Zubair Ahmed.
"Whatever may have been your religion until now, from today you will take refuge in the teachings of the Lord Buddha," one of the monks conducting the ceremony told the crowd.
Once known as Untouchables, the Dalits hope the conversion will give them dignity and equal rights.
"Once they convert themselves to another religion, the minimum they will get is treatment as human beings," Arun Khote of the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights told the BBC.
About one-sixth of India's 1.1bn people are classed as low caste.
Commentators say that despite the reservation of jobs for the Dalit and tribal communities, their social status and economic conditions have not greatly improved.
They say that Dalits still face widespread prejudice and discrimination.
Conversion is a controversial subject in India, especially if it involves Hindus converting to Christianity or Islam.
Two weeks ago two Catholic priests were publicly beaten after being accused of trying to bring a group of local people into the Catholic faith.
But converting to Buddhism does not evoke much adverse reaction, as many in India believe Buddhism is an extension of Hinduism.
Even so, several Indian states, especially the ones governed by the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, BJP, have made laws severely restricting conversion.
Mass Dalit conversions in Mumbai
Buddhist monks blessed thousands of new convertsSeveral thousand tribal and Dalit Hindus in India have converted en masse to Buddhism at a ceremony in Mumbai.
The ceremony was billed as the largest religious conversion in modern India, but far fewer converted than had been predicted by the organisers.
The converts hope to escape the rigid caste system in which their status is the lowest.
Right-wing Hindus have often opposed conversion, pushing some Indian states to restrict legal changes of faith.
The ceremony, which was held to mark the 50th anniversary of a leading Dalit leader Bhimrao Ambedkar's conversion to Buddhism, was attended by delegates from several countries with large Buddhist communities, including Sri Lanka, Thailand and Japan.
Conversion controversies
"We estimate that close to 5,000 Dalits have chosen the path towards Buddhism by the end of the day," said Shravan Gaikwad, representative of the Samatha Sainik Dal, a Dalit group.
Dalits came to Mumbai's racecourse for the ceremony
Even though the number of people converted was much less than the 100,000 expected, the organisers said it sent out a strong message of an awakening among the Dalits, says the BBC's Zubair Ahmed.
"Whatever may have been your religion until now, from today you will take refuge in the teachings of the Lord Buddha," one of the monks conducting the ceremony told the crowd.
Once known as Untouchables, the Dalits hope the conversion will give them dignity and equal rights.
"Once they convert themselves to another religion, the minimum they will get is treatment as human beings," Arun Khote of the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights told the BBC.
About one-sixth of India's 1.1bn people are classed as low caste.
Commentators say that despite the reservation of jobs for the Dalit and tribal communities, their social status and economic conditions have not greatly improved.
They say that Dalits still face widespread prejudice and discrimination.
Conversion is a controversial subject in India, especially if it involves Hindus converting to Christianity or Islam.
Two weeks ago two Catholic priests were publicly beaten after being accused of trying to bring a group of local people into the Catholic faith.
But converting to Buddhism does not evoke much adverse reaction, as many in India believe Buddhism is an extension of Hinduism.
Even so, several Indian states, especially the ones governed by the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, BJP, have made laws severely restricting conversion.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
NDTV.com: Guruvayur priest on entry for non-Hindus
NDTV.com: Guruvayur priest on entry for non-Hindus
Guruvayur priest on entry for non-Hindus
Quote
“ Let the government say that punyaham ceremony is not needed. Let the government say this. ”
- Chennas Raman Namboothiri, Chief Priest of Guruvayur temple
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Gilvester
Saturday, May 26, 2007 (Guruvayur temple)
For the first time after it began purification rituals after Congress MP Vyalar Ravi's Christian wife entered its premises, Chief Priest of Guruvayur temple Chennas Raman Namboothiri has spoken to NDTV. The Chief Priest has for the first time spoken on the Purification ceremony controversy, the entry for non-Hindus into Guruvayur temple and other reforms in the temple practices. NDTV: What is the role of Thanthri in all these rituals?Namboothiri: All these rules are implemented by us so far. Thanthri is considered as father of the deity. He is the one who is the father of the deity, he has all the rights.In an exclusive interview to NDTV at the Thanthri Mutt in Guruvayur, the chief priest also said that he was ready to accept the change if the government brings in a rule.Namboothiri: Let the government say that punyaham ceremony is not needed. Let the government say this.NDTV: Do you think if there is a change in the rules you will accept. Are you open to a change?Namboothiri: Of course we are ready to but that must be done by the government not by us, or any other agency. Like they brought the temple entry proclamation for lower castes. The government should bring such a rule that non-Hindus can also enter the temple. They are not prepared for it that is the fact.NDTV: Why do you think they are not prepared for that?Namboothiri: I think so they want the votes. The question is how to get votes whether it will increase or decrease votes. It is because of this. I think so.NDTV: But you personally are not against reforms?Namboothiri: I am not against it. We came to this temple when the temple entry proclamation was implemented here. My forefathers came here. If they were not willing to that change they would not have come here.NDTV: That means your family is open to change or reform?Namboothiri: Yes but that has to be brought by the government.NDTV: So what kind of law should the government bring?Namboothiri: Only one. Non-Hindus have been debarred from entering temple since long. Earlier when lower castes used to enter, there used to be purification ceremony. Now the government should bring a law that non-Hindus can also enter the temple, then this problem will end.NDTV: Vayalar Ravi says he is a practicing Hindu. His son is a practicing Hindu?Namboothiri: What is a practicing Hindu ? His mother is a Christian - maternity is a reality. We look at the maternal side not paternal. We didn't do the purification because we have any personal enmity with Ravi. Earlier also the purification was done. We will do it again if the new rule is not framed. It is a fact. We are not insulting him. We have not insulted.NDTV: Some people in the priests and Thanthri community are holding discussions that change should be effected?Namboothiri: This change has to be brought by the government not by us. We are ready to follow this as long as they don't bring in the rule. We will continue this purification.After the chief priest's statement, now the ball is clearly in the court of Kerala Government. It will be interesting to see how they manage to bring this historic change.
Guruvayur priest on entry for non-Hindus
Quote
“ Let the government say that punyaham ceremony is not needed. Let the government say this. ”
- Chennas Raman Namboothiri, Chief Priest of Guruvayur temple
Rate the Story
canvote='Yes';
function PopWindowNoScroll(URL,height,width)
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SMS NDTV
For latest headlines SMS NEWS to 6388 (in India & UAE), to 63880(in UK)
Also Read
Islamic meet rejects terrorism
Summons issued to Narayana Murthy
DMK names Kanimozhi for Rajya Sabha
Ship sinks off Porbandar coast
Gilvester
Saturday, May 26, 2007 (Guruvayur temple)
For the first time after it began purification rituals after Congress MP Vyalar Ravi's Christian wife entered its premises, Chief Priest of Guruvayur temple Chennas Raman Namboothiri has spoken to NDTV. The Chief Priest has for the first time spoken on the Purification ceremony controversy, the entry for non-Hindus into Guruvayur temple and other reforms in the temple practices. NDTV: What is the role of Thanthri in all these rituals?Namboothiri: All these rules are implemented by us so far. Thanthri is considered as father of the deity. He is the one who is the father of the deity, he has all the rights.In an exclusive interview to NDTV at the Thanthri Mutt in Guruvayur, the chief priest also said that he was ready to accept the change if the government brings in a rule.Namboothiri: Let the government say that punyaham ceremony is not needed. Let the government say this.NDTV: Do you think if there is a change in the rules you will accept. Are you open to a change?Namboothiri: Of course we are ready to but that must be done by the government not by us, or any other agency. Like they brought the temple entry proclamation for lower castes. The government should bring such a rule that non-Hindus can also enter the temple. They are not prepared for it that is the fact.NDTV: Why do you think they are not prepared for that?Namboothiri: I think so they want the votes. The question is how to get votes whether it will increase or decrease votes. It is because of this. I think so.NDTV: But you personally are not against reforms?Namboothiri: I am not against it. We came to this temple when the temple entry proclamation was implemented here. My forefathers came here. If they were not willing to that change they would not have come here.NDTV: That means your family is open to change or reform?Namboothiri: Yes but that has to be brought by the government.NDTV: So what kind of law should the government bring?Namboothiri: Only one. Non-Hindus have been debarred from entering temple since long. Earlier when lower castes used to enter, there used to be purification ceremony. Now the government should bring a law that non-Hindus can also enter the temple, then this problem will end.NDTV: Vayalar Ravi says he is a practicing Hindu. His son is a practicing Hindu?Namboothiri: What is a practicing Hindu ? His mother is a Christian - maternity is a reality. We look at the maternal side not paternal. We didn't do the purification because we have any personal enmity with Ravi. Earlier also the purification was done. We will do it again if the new rule is not framed. It is a fact. We are not insulting him. We have not insulted.NDTV: Some people in the priests and Thanthri community are holding discussions that change should be effected?Namboothiri: This change has to be brought by the government not by us. We are ready to follow this as long as they don't bring in the rule. We will continue this purification.After the chief priest's statement, now the ball is clearly in the court of Kerala Government. It will be interesting to see how they manage to bring this historic change.
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | 'Living plugs' smooth ant journey
BBC NEWS Science/Nature 'Living plugs' smooth ant journey
'Living plugs' smooth ant journey
The ants plug gaps to smooth the trailA scientific study of the teamwork of army ants has discovered how they are prepared to let their fellow ants walk all over them to get the job done.
Scientists from the University of Bristol observed that, when ants were foraging on rough terrain, some of them used their own bodies to plug potholes.
They even chose which of them was the best fit to lie across each hole.
The flatter surface provided the rest of the group, which can number 200,000, a faster route between prey and nest.
The research, published in the journal of Animal Behaviour, said that the team first noticed the army ants' (Eciton burchellii) unusual behaviour in the insects' native rainforest home in Panama.
I think every road user who has ever inwardly cursed as their vehicle bounced across a pothole... will identify with this story.
Professor Nigel Franks
To investigate this further, the researchers inserted wooden planks, drilled with a variety of different sized holes, into the army ants' trails.
They found that the ants did indeed plug the holes, but the team also discovered that individuals would size-match themselves to a hole for the best fit.
Wobbling about
"The ants have a very large size range within their colony, measuring from 2mm up to 1cm (0.08-0.4in)," explained Dr Scott Powell, a biologist at the University of Bristol and an author of the paper.
"When the ants bump into a hole they cannot cross, they edge their way around it and then spread their legs and wobble back and forth to check their fit.
As the traffic diminishes, the ant pops out and heads home
"If they are too big, then they carry on and another ant will come along and measure itself in the same way. This carries on until an appropriately sized ant plugs the hole."
At this point, Dr Powell told the BBC News website, the ant becomes a "living surface" remaining in place for hours at a time while thousands of foragers walk back and forth across the trail.
"At the end of the day, when the traffic eventually diminishes, the ant that forms this motionless plug will detect that and pop out of the hole and run home," Dr Powell said.
The scientists found ant-plugged smoother surfaces speeded up the route from prey to nest and also increased the daily prey intake, which for army ants consists of other species of ants and other bugs.
Dr Powell said: "Broadly, our research demonstrates that a simple but highly specialised behaviour performed by a minority of ant workers can improve the performance of the majority, resulting in a clear benefit for the society as a whole."
Co-author Professor Nigel Franks, also from the University of Bristol, added: "I think every road user who has ever inwardly cursed as their vehicle bounced across a pothole - jarring every bone in their body - will identify with this story.
"When it comes to rapid road repairs, the ants have their own do-it-yourself highways agency."
'Living plugs' smooth ant journey
The ants plug gaps to smooth the trailA scientific study of the teamwork of army ants has discovered how they are prepared to let their fellow ants walk all over them to get the job done.
Scientists from the University of Bristol observed that, when ants were foraging on rough terrain, some of them used their own bodies to plug potholes.
They even chose which of them was the best fit to lie across each hole.
The flatter surface provided the rest of the group, which can number 200,000, a faster route between prey and nest.
The research, published in the journal of Animal Behaviour, said that the team first noticed the army ants' (Eciton burchellii) unusual behaviour in the insects' native rainforest home in Panama.
I think every road user who has ever inwardly cursed as their vehicle bounced across a pothole... will identify with this story.
Professor Nigel Franks
To investigate this further, the researchers inserted wooden planks, drilled with a variety of different sized holes, into the army ants' trails.
They found that the ants did indeed plug the holes, but the team also discovered that individuals would size-match themselves to a hole for the best fit.
Wobbling about
"The ants have a very large size range within their colony, measuring from 2mm up to 1cm (0.08-0.4in)," explained Dr Scott Powell, a biologist at the University of Bristol and an author of the paper.
"When the ants bump into a hole they cannot cross, they edge their way around it and then spread their legs and wobble back and forth to check their fit.
As the traffic diminishes, the ant pops out and heads home
"If they are too big, then they carry on and another ant will come along and measure itself in the same way. This carries on until an appropriately sized ant plugs the hole."
At this point, Dr Powell told the BBC News website, the ant becomes a "living surface" remaining in place for hours at a time while thousands of foragers walk back and forth across the trail.
"At the end of the day, when the traffic eventually diminishes, the ant that forms this motionless plug will detect that and pop out of the hole and run home," Dr Powell said.
The scientists found ant-plugged smoother surfaces speeded up the route from prey to nest and also increased the daily prey intake, which for army ants consists of other species of ants and other bugs.
Dr Powell said: "Broadly, our research demonstrates that a simple but highly specialised behaviour performed by a minority of ant workers can improve the performance of the majority, resulting in a clear benefit for the society as a whole."
Co-author Professor Nigel Franks, also from the University of Bristol, added: "I think every road user who has ever inwardly cursed as their vehicle bounced across a pothole - jarring every bone in their body - will identify with this story.
"When it comes to rapid road repairs, the ants have their own do-it-yourself highways agency."
BBC NEWS | South Asia | Low caste Indians set to convert
BBC NEWS South Asia Low caste Indians set to convert
Low caste Indians set to convert
By Zubair Ahmed BBC News, Mumbai
The conversion is expected to be the largest in modern timesThousands of tribal and Dalit Hindus in India are to embrace the Buddhist faith at a huge gathering in Mumbai.
The ceremony, which may be presided over by Tibet's exiled leader, the Dalai Lama, is billed as the largest religious conversion in modern India.
The converts hope to escape the rigid caste system in which their status is the lowest.
Right-wing Hindus have often opposed conversion, pushing some Indian states to restrict legal changes of faith.
The organisers say the number of people to convert in Sunday's ceremony could go up to 100,000, easily the biggest mass conversion in India's recent history.
Conversion controversies
The Dalits, once known as Untouchables, hope the conversion will give them dignity and equal rights.
Commentators say that despite the reservation of jobs for the Dalit and tribal communities, their social status and economic conditions have not greatly improved.
They say that Dalits still face widespread prejudice and discrimination.
Conversion is a controversial subject in India, especially if it involves Hindus converting to Christianity or Islam.
Two weeks ago two Catholic priests were publicly beaten after being accused of trying to bring a group of local people into the Catholic faith.
But converting to Buddhism does not evoke much adverse reaction, as most hardline Hindu leaders believe Buddhism is an extension of Hinduism.
Even so, several Indian states, especially the ones governed by the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, BJP, have made laws severely restricting conversion.
Low caste Indians set to convert
By Zubair Ahmed BBC News, Mumbai
The conversion is expected to be the largest in modern timesThousands of tribal and Dalit Hindus in India are to embrace the Buddhist faith at a huge gathering in Mumbai.
The ceremony, which may be presided over by Tibet's exiled leader, the Dalai Lama, is billed as the largest religious conversion in modern India.
The converts hope to escape the rigid caste system in which their status is the lowest.
Right-wing Hindus have often opposed conversion, pushing some Indian states to restrict legal changes of faith.
The organisers say the number of people to convert in Sunday's ceremony could go up to 100,000, easily the biggest mass conversion in India's recent history.
Conversion controversies
The Dalits, once known as Untouchables, hope the conversion will give them dignity and equal rights.
Commentators say that despite the reservation of jobs for the Dalit and tribal communities, their social status and economic conditions have not greatly improved.
They say that Dalits still face widespread prejudice and discrimination.
Conversion is a controversial subject in India, especially if it involves Hindus converting to Christianity or Islam.
Two weeks ago two Catholic priests were publicly beaten after being accused of trying to bring a group of local people into the Catholic faith.
But converting to Buddhism does not evoke much adverse reaction, as most hardline Hindu leaders believe Buddhism is an extension of Hinduism.
Even so, several Indian states, especially the ones governed by the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, BJP, have made laws severely restricting conversion.
CPI-M move only eyewash: former Communists
CPI-M move only eyewash: former Communists
Politics Saturday, May 26, 2007
CPI-M move only eyewash: former Communists
From correspondents in Kerala, India, 09:32 PM IST
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The suspension of Kerala Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan and state party secretary Pinnarayi Vijayan from the politburo of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) Saturday was termed by former communists here as an eyewash.
'This is nothing but an eyewash and a thing that is unheard of - in which party members are suspended but allowed to retain their posts,' former firebrand trade union leader V.B. Cherian, who was ousted from the CPI-M a decade back, told reporters here.
'This action is not going to solve the issues in the party which have crept up because of the deep-rooted factionalism,' said Cherian.
The party have removed the two senior leaders from the politburo after they continued to trade charges with each other in public.
The simmering feud between the two has been going from bad to worse since Achuthanandan was initially denied party ticket to contest the assembly polls in April-May 2006. He was later asked not only to contest the election but also lead the party.
Achuthanandan did so in style, as the party won 98 seats in the 140-member assembly.
However, Vijayan soon exerted pressure when it came to distributing portfolios to new ministers.
After a brief lull, infighting surfaced again - now over the demolition drive targeting illegal constructions in the tourist hub of Munnar this month.
Achuthanandan did not budge even as a party faction led by Vijayan wanted changes in the special task force formed by the chief minister for the purpose.
And trouble started again this week when the two leaders held separate press conferences pointing fingers at one another just two days before they left for Delhi to attend the politburo meeting.
Appukutan Vallikunnu, former editor of CPI-M publication Deshabhimani, said that only time will tell what impact Saturday's decision will have on the party cadre at the grassroots.
'These two leaders have breached the party discipline on numerous occasions, disheartening the grassroots worker of the party. This suspension could lead to the fissures deepening in the party,' said Vallikunnu, who was ousted from the party a few years back.
Political observers say the move is likely to affect Vijayan more than Achuthanandan as it remains to be seen if a suspended politburo member would be allowed to lead the party when it meets early next year to elect a new leader who would lead the organisation for the next three years.
Moreover, they see Achuthanandan as on a stronger ground as it would be difficult for the party to remove him from the chief ministership after his no-nonsense handling of the demolition drive in Munnar and the inking of the Smart City project on his own terms.
Meanwhile, the state's main opposition Congress was closely watching the developments.
'What happened today is an internal issue of the party and we will wait and see. We would react if the functioning of the government is affected on account of this,' Leader of Opposition and former chief minister Oommen Chandy told IANS.
Politics Saturday, May 26, 2007
CPI-M move only eyewash: former Communists
From correspondents in Kerala, India, 09:32 PM IST
Download PDF
Comments (0)
The suspension of Kerala Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan and state party secretary Pinnarayi Vijayan from the politburo of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) Saturday was termed by former communists here as an eyewash.
'This is nothing but an eyewash and a thing that is unheard of - in which party members are suspended but allowed to retain their posts,' former firebrand trade union leader V.B. Cherian, who was ousted from the CPI-M a decade back, told reporters here.
'This action is not going to solve the issues in the party which have crept up because of the deep-rooted factionalism,' said Cherian.
The party have removed the two senior leaders from the politburo after they continued to trade charges with each other in public.
The simmering feud between the two has been going from bad to worse since Achuthanandan was initially denied party ticket to contest the assembly polls in April-May 2006. He was later asked not only to contest the election but also lead the party.
Achuthanandan did so in style, as the party won 98 seats in the 140-member assembly.
However, Vijayan soon exerted pressure when it came to distributing portfolios to new ministers.
After a brief lull, infighting surfaced again - now over the demolition drive targeting illegal constructions in the tourist hub of Munnar this month.
Achuthanandan did not budge even as a party faction led by Vijayan wanted changes in the special task force formed by the chief minister for the purpose.
And trouble started again this week when the two leaders held separate press conferences pointing fingers at one another just two days before they left for Delhi to attend the politburo meeting.
Appukutan Vallikunnu, former editor of CPI-M publication Deshabhimani, said that only time will tell what impact Saturday's decision will have on the party cadre at the grassroots.
'These two leaders have breached the party discipline on numerous occasions, disheartening the grassroots worker of the party. This suspension could lead to the fissures deepening in the party,' said Vallikunnu, who was ousted from the party a few years back.
Political observers say the move is likely to affect Vijayan more than Achuthanandan as it remains to be seen if a suspended politburo member would be allowed to lead the party when it meets early next year to elect a new leader who would lead the organisation for the next three years.
Moreover, they see Achuthanandan as on a stronger ground as it would be difficult for the party to remove him from the chief ministership after his no-nonsense handling of the demolition drive in Munnar and the inking of the Smart City project on his own terms.
Meanwhile, the state's main opposition Congress was closely watching the developments.
'What happened today is an internal issue of the party and we will wait and see. We would react if the functioning of the government is affected on account of this,' Leader of Opposition and former chief minister Oommen Chandy told IANS.
Friday, May 25, 2007
Fertility, Faith, & the Future of the West - Books & Culture
Fertility, Faith, & the Future of the West - Books & Culture
the Future of the WestA conversation with Phillip Longman.Interview by W. Bradford Wilcox
Phillip Longman is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, where he studies health care policy and demography. A former editor at U. S. News & World Report, Longman is the winner of UCLA's Gerald Loeb Award, the top prize for investigative journalism from Investigative Reporters and Editors. His 2004 book The Empty Cradle (Basic Books) explores the impact of declining fertility rates on the social, economic, and political health of societies across the globe.
Since the 1960s, many in the West have been deeply concerned about the social and environmental consequences of population growth—witness, for instance, the popularity of Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb. In the United States, our population recently passed the 300-million mark. Should we in the West still be concerned about population growth at home and abroad?
World population is still increasing by some 77 million annually. That's equivalent to adding a whole new country the size of Egypt every year. Yet here is a curious fact few people know: the number of children under 5 in the world is actually smaller than in 1990.
How can this be? Mostly it is because of the massive global decline in birthrates. Now, in literally every region outside of sub-Saharan Africa, the average woman no longer bears enough children to replace the population. For now, world population continues to grow, though at a slower and slower rate, primarily because of the enormous increase in the numbers of elderly people. But many countries, such as Russia and Japan, are already shrinking in absolute size, and on current trends, global depopulation will occur within the lifetime of today's young adults.
Why should we be worried about falling birthrates in Europe and the United States? What are the social, economic, and political implications of this demographic phenomenon for the West?
For nations, as for people, there are many benefits to not having children, at least until you grow old. Many economists believe, for example, that falling birth rates helped make possible the economic boom that occurred first in Japan and then in many other Asian nations, beginning in the 1960s. As the relative number of children declined, so did the burden of their dependency, leaving more resources available for adults to invest and enjoy.
But over time, a falling birthrate means not just fewer children but also fewer workers, even as the population of dependent elders increases. That's the bind that grips more and more of the world today. There are fewer and fewer working-aged people to support each elder. This is true within the formal systems we use to provide support in old age, such as Social Security, Medicare, and private pension plans. And it is also true within the family. When you grow up with few or no siblings, as is now becoming the norm throughout much of the world, there is often no one else available to share in the burden of looking after one's ailing parents.
Ultimately, low fertility means population aging and population decline. This is not all bad. A population dominated by middle-aged and elderly people, for example, is probably less inclined to send its few children off to war. But our economy, particularly large sectors like housing and transportation, has always depended on population growth to sustain economic growth. Similarly, the government programs we use to create security in old age, like Social Security as currently structured, depend on an ever increasing supply of youth.
At best, all the major institutions of our society will have to be fundamentally reformed to deal with a world in which each new generation is smaller than the last. Refusing to face up to this means rising poverty, increased taxes, depleted savings, lower investment, and a very real risk that excessive government borrowing and pension debt will tank the world economy. All this could happen much sooner than most people realize. Today, for example, the United States has a fairly healthy birthrate compared to the rest of the industrialized world, but it has grown dependent on massive borrowing from rapidly aging nations. Germany, Japan, and China are growing so old that they will soon be drawing down their savings and repatriating their investments in U.S. debt. This implies a complete restructuring of the world economy—one that could well entail a prolonged global recession or depression.
You are a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, a progressive think tank. Why should progressives be concerned about fertility declines in the West? How do fertility declines specifically threaten progressive values and public policies?
It's fair to say that most self-described "progressives" don't agree with me that low fertility is a problem. Many environmentalists, for example, believe that fewer people means a cleaner environment. Other progressives suppose that a decline in population would increase the amount of food and other resources available to the poor. Many feminists, gays, and "childless by choice" people in general feel threatened by suggestions that society needs more children. And when it's pointed out that the lowest birthrates are generally found among the most "progressive" people, then the conversation gets really heated.
On all these counts, I believe progressives are in denial. Today in the United States, for example, we have far cleaner air and water than we did in the 1940s, when the population was just half its current size. That's no paradox. Population growth is a spur to more efficient and cleaner use of resources, so our cities are no longer choked with smoke from steam engines and our cars get far better mileage and are far less polluting. Similarly, population growth is what drove us as a society to find far more productive ways to grow food. Thanks to increased crop yields, per capita food production is higher than ever, even as world population surpasses 6 billion. At the same time, there is more forested land in the United States than in the 19th century because so much less acreage is needed for farmland.
Progressives also tend to forget that many of their positions on human reproduction, such as a "woman's right to choose," only won widespread support when fears of overpopulation began to pervade the culture in the 1960s and '70s. Until then, bans on abortion, birth control, and homosexuality, for example, were justified in many people's minds by fears of underpopulation, which left questions of human reproduction too important to be settled by individual "choice." They also forget that if progressives themselves "forget to have children" then the future belongs to people who have opposing values. Finally, progressives forget that without a growing population, such "crown jewels" of the welfare state as Social Security lose their financial sustainability.
How might dramatic population declines in Europe, and the severe economic and political challenges they pose to countries like Germany, which may soon see its pension system collapse under the weight of its own demographic decline, affect élite thinking about the family? Many scholars, public policy analysts, and journalists I'm familiar with tend to assume that the family is simply destined to grow ever weaker. Might dramatic demographic developments change élite thinking about the family? Might such developments also change the kinds of family-related public policies Western élites support?
During the 19th and especially the 20th century, the state gradually took over many of the functions once performed by the family—notably education and support in old age. Élites have generally cheered this process on. But more and more in the future, individuals will find that they cannot rely on the élites who govern them. They will see health and pension benefits cut, even as taxes rise. They will see funding for education squeezed by the ever growing burden of providing even minimal benefits to the dependent elderly. This implies that more and more people will be forced to rely again on the traditional, extended family. People will need to have children and raise them well if they hope to find security in old age. For the same reason, they will also have to sacrifice on behalf of their aging parents so that their own children grow up to see this as a moral duty.
Today, élites who are uncomfortable with this future are calling for the state to take over still more responsibilities from the family—for example, by offering subsidies for child care, greater family allowances, or even bonuses to parents, all of which are being tried in Europe and much of Asia. I'm not opposed to such measures on ideological grounds, but I'm doubtful about their potential to boost the birthrate for more than a short time unless very serious amounts of money are involved, and that creates huge political problems.
If you are going to pay people to have children, you're going to spend a lot on people who would have had them anyway. And meanwhile, people who currently see no reason to become parents are not going to be persuaded by the offer of even tens of thousands of dollars in benefits. In the United States, the direct cost of raising a middle-class child born this year through age 18, according to government estimates, exceeds $200,000—not including college. Meanwhile, in an age in which most women have the opportunity to join the paid workforce, the cost of motherhood—in lost wages and compromised careers—is often measured in the millions.
The huge bundle of benefits World War II veterans received under the G.I. Bill does seem to have contributed to that era's baby boom. But in those days, we didn't have to pay for Medicare, and Social Security was only a tiny percentage of federal spending. The median age of voters was also much lower then than now, and the feminist and environmental movements were still in the future. For all these reasons, I think élites are going to have a hard time selling pronatalism on a scale that's sufficient to the problem. In the end, I see élites simply losing their legitimacy because they cannot maintain, much less expand the welfare state in an aging society.
If the demographic predictions you make in The Empty Cradle come to pass, how might they affect the relative position of orthodox religions in the West? In other words, what role might Islam, evangelical Protestantism, or traditional Catholicism play in Western countries that have experienced subreplacement fertility for 40 to 50 years? How might their distinctive approaches to family life look to ordinary people? To élites?
On current trends, Europe's population just withers away. But I don't expect current trends to continue indefinitely in Europe or the West in general, for a special reason.
In Asian countries such as Japan, nearly everyone eventually marries and eventually has, almost without exception, one child. In Europe, and the West in general, by contrast, there is far more diversity in reproductive behavior. Among American baby boomers, for example, nearly a fifth of us never had children, and another 17 percent had only one.
The high incidence of childless and single-child families in the West has one big implication many overlook. It means a very large proportion of the children that are being born are being produced by a small subset of the current population. And who are the people who are still having large families today?
The stereotypical answer is poor people, or dumb people, or members of minority groups. But birth rates among American racial and ethnic minority groups are plummeting. The more accurate answer is deeply religious people.
To be sure, religious fundamentalists of all varieties are themselves having fewer children than in the past. But whether they be Mormons, Orthodox Jews, or Islamic or Christian fundamentalists, devout member of these Abrahamic religions have on average far larger families than do the secular elements within their society.
In Europe, for example, the fertility differential between believers and nonbelievers has recently been estimated at 15-20 percent. Though children born into religious families often do not become religious themselves, many do, especially if they themselves go on to have children. Meanwhile, of course, the childless stand no chance of passing along their values to their progeny.
The faithful thus begin to inherit society by default. The West's total population may fall or stagnate, perhaps for quite awhile; but those who remain will be disproportionately committed to God and family, whether they be Christians, Muslims, Jews, or members of new pro-natal faiths. Let us just hope that this new age of faith will also be an age of peace.
W. Bradford Wilcox, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Virginia and a fellow at the Witherspoon Institute, is the author of Soft Patriarchs, New Men: How Christianity Shapes Fathers and Husbands (Univ. of Chicago Press).
the Future of the WestA conversation with Phillip Longman.Interview by W. Bradford Wilcox
Phillip Longman is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, where he studies health care policy and demography. A former editor at U. S. News & World Report, Longman is the winner of UCLA's Gerald Loeb Award, the top prize for investigative journalism from Investigative Reporters and Editors. His 2004 book The Empty Cradle (Basic Books) explores the impact of declining fertility rates on the social, economic, and political health of societies across the globe.
Since the 1960s, many in the West have been deeply concerned about the social and environmental consequences of population growth—witness, for instance, the popularity of Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb. In the United States, our population recently passed the 300-million mark. Should we in the West still be concerned about population growth at home and abroad?
World population is still increasing by some 77 million annually. That's equivalent to adding a whole new country the size of Egypt every year. Yet here is a curious fact few people know: the number of children under 5 in the world is actually smaller than in 1990.
How can this be? Mostly it is because of the massive global decline in birthrates. Now, in literally every region outside of sub-Saharan Africa, the average woman no longer bears enough children to replace the population. For now, world population continues to grow, though at a slower and slower rate, primarily because of the enormous increase in the numbers of elderly people. But many countries, such as Russia and Japan, are already shrinking in absolute size, and on current trends, global depopulation will occur within the lifetime of today's young adults.
Why should we be worried about falling birthrates in Europe and the United States? What are the social, economic, and political implications of this demographic phenomenon for the West?
For nations, as for people, there are many benefits to not having children, at least until you grow old. Many economists believe, for example, that falling birth rates helped make possible the economic boom that occurred first in Japan and then in many other Asian nations, beginning in the 1960s. As the relative number of children declined, so did the burden of their dependency, leaving more resources available for adults to invest and enjoy.
But over time, a falling birthrate means not just fewer children but also fewer workers, even as the population of dependent elders increases. That's the bind that grips more and more of the world today. There are fewer and fewer working-aged people to support each elder. This is true within the formal systems we use to provide support in old age, such as Social Security, Medicare, and private pension plans. And it is also true within the family. When you grow up with few or no siblings, as is now becoming the norm throughout much of the world, there is often no one else available to share in the burden of looking after one's ailing parents.
Ultimately, low fertility means population aging and population decline. This is not all bad. A population dominated by middle-aged and elderly people, for example, is probably less inclined to send its few children off to war. But our economy, particularly large sectors like housing and transportation, has always depended on population growth to sustain economic growth. Similarly, the government programs we use to create security in old age, like Social Security as currently structured, depend on an ever increasing supply of youth.
At best, all the major institutions of our society will have to be fundamentally reformed to deal with a world in which each new generation is smaller than the last. Refusing to face up to this means rising poverty, increased taxes, depleted savings, lower investment, and a very real risk that excessive government borrowing and pension debt will tank the world economy. All this could happen much sooner than most people realize. Today, for example, the United States has a fairly healthy birthrate compared to the rest of the industrialized world, but it has grown dependent on massive borrowing from rapidly aging nations. Germany, Japan, and China are growing so old that they will soon be drawing down their savings and repatriating their investments in U.S. debt. This implies a complete restructuring of the world economy—one that could well entail a prolonged global recession or depression.
You are a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, a progressive think tank. Why should progressives be concerned about fertility declines in the West? How do fertility declines specifically threaten progressive values and public policies?
It's fair to say that most self-described "progressives" don't agree with me that low fertility is a problem. Many environmentalists, for example, believe that fewer people means a cleaner environment. Other progressives suppose that a decline in population would increase the amount of food and other resources available to the poor. Many feminists, gays, and "childless by choice" people in general feel threatened by suggestions that society needs more children. And when it's pointed out that the lowest birthrates are generally found among the most "progressive" people, then the conversation gets really heated.
On all these counts, I believe progressives are in denial. Today in the United States, for example, we have far cleaner air and water than we did in the 1940s, when the population was just half its current size. That's no paradox. Population growth is a spur to more efficient and cleaner use of resources, so our cities are no longer choked with smoke from steam engines and our cars get far better mileage and are far less polluting. Similarly, population growth is what drove us as a society to find far more productive ways to grow food. Thanks to increased crop yields, per capita food production is higher than ever, even as world population surpasses 6 billion. At the same time, there is more forested land in the United States than in the 19th century because so much less acreage is needed for farmland.
Progressives also tend to forget that many of their positions on human reproduction, such as a "woman's right to choose," only won widespread support when fears of overpopulation began to pervade the culture in the 1960s and '70s. Until then, bans on abortion, birth control, and homosexuality, for example, were justified in many people's minds by fears of underpopulation, which left questions of human reproduction too important to be settled by individual "choice." They also forget that if progressives themselves "forget to have children" then the future belongs to people who have opposing values. Finally, progressives forget that without a growing population, such "crown jewels" of the welfare state as Social Security lose their financial sustainability.
How might dramatic population declines in Europe, and the severe economic and political challenges they pose to countries like Germany, which may soon see its pension system collapse under the weight of its own demographic decline, affect élite thinking about the family? Many scholars, public policy analysts, and journalists I'm familiar with tend to assume that the family is simply destined to grow ever weaker. Might dramatic demographic developments change élite thinking about the family? Might such developments also change the kinds of family-related public policies Western élites support?
During the 19th and especially the 20th century, the state gradually took over many of the functions once performed by the family—notably education and support in old age. Élites have generally cheered this process on. But more and more in the future, individuals will find that they cannot rely on the élites who govern them. They will see health and pension benefits cut, even as taxes rise. They will see funding for education squeezed by the ever growing burden of providing even minimal benefits to the dependent elderly. This implies that more and more people will be forced to rely again on the traditional, extended family. People will need to have children and raise them well if they hope to find security in old age. For the same reason, they will also have to sacrifice on behalf of their aging parents so that their own children grow up to see this as a moral duty.
Today, élites who are uncomfortable with this future are calling for the state to take over still more responsibilities from the family—for example, by offering subsidies for child care, greater family allowances, or even bonuses to parents, all of which are being tried in Europe and much of Asia. I'm not opposed to such measures on ideological grounds, but I'm doubtful about their potential to boost the birthrate for more than a short time unless very serious amounts of money are involved, and that creates huge political problems.
If you are going to pay people to have children, you're going to spend a lot on people who would have had them anyway. And meanwhile, people who currently see no reason to become parents are not going to be persuaded by the offer of even tens of thousands of dollars in benefits. In the United States, the direct cost of raising a middle-class child born this year through age 18, according to government estimates, exceeds $200,000—not including college. Meanwhile, in an age in which most women have the opportunity to join the paid workforce, the cost of motherhood—in lost wages and compromised careers—is often measured in the millions.
The huge bundle of benefits World War II veterans received under the G.I. Bill does seem to have contributed to that era's baby boom. But in those days, we didn't have to pay for Medicare, and Social Security was only a tiny percentage of federal spending. The median age of voters was also much lower then than now, and the feminist and environmental movements were still in the future. For all these reasons, I think élites are going to have a hard time selling pronatalism on a scale that's sufficient to the problem. In the end, I see élites simply losing their legitimacy because they cannot maintain, much less expand the welfare state in an aging society.
If the demographic predictions you make in The Empty Cradle come to pass, how might they affect the relative position of orthodox religions in the West? In other words, what role might Islam, evangelical Protestantism, or traditional Catholicism play in Western countries that have experienced subreplacement fertility for 40 to 50 years? How might their distinctive approaches to family life look to ordinary people? To élites?
On current trends, Europe's population just withers away. But I don't expect current trends to continue indefinitely in Europe or the West in general, for a special reason.
In Asian countries such as Japan, nearly everyone eventually marries and eventually has, almost without exception, one child. In Europe, and the West in general, by contrast, there is far more diversity in reproductive behavior. Among American baby boomers, for example, nearly a fifth of us never had children, and another 17 percent had only one.
The high incidence of childless and single-child families in the West has one big implication many overlook. It means a very large proportion of the children that are being born are being produced by a small subset of the current population. And who are the people who are still having large families today?
The stereotypical answer is poor people, or dumb people, or members of minority groups. But birth rates among American racial and ethnic minority groups are plummeting. The more accurate answer is deeply religious people.
To be sure, religious fundamentalists of all varieties are themselves having fewer children than in the past. But whether they be Mormons, Orthodox Jews, or Islamic or Christian fundamentalists, devout member of these Abrahamic religions have on average far larger families than do the secular elements within their society.
In Europe, for example, the fertility differential between believers and nonbelievers has recently been estimated at 15-20 percent. Though children born into religious families often do not become religious themselves, many do, especially if they themselves go on to have children. Meanwhile, of course, the childless stand no chance of passing along their values to their progeny.
The faithful thus begin to inherit society by default. The West's total population may fall or stagnate, perhaps for quite awhile; but those who remain will be disproportionately committed to God and family, whether they be Christians, Muslims, Jews, or members of new pro-natal faiths. Let us just hope that this new age of faith will also be an age of peace.
W. Bradford Wilcox, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Virginia and a fellow at the Witherspoon Institute, is the author of Soft Patriarchs, New Men: How Christianity Shapes Fathers and Husbands (Univ. of Chicago Press).
Dera chaos lets radicals raise head
Dera chaos lets radicals raise head
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Dera chaos lets radicals raise head
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By IBNlive.com
Friday May 25, 09:56 AM Chandigarh: The Dera controversy has given Punjab's hardliners and dormant organisations an opportunity to move out from the shadows to occupy center stage. It has also turned into an opportunity for the Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee – SGPC to reassert itself.It's a passionate religious debate that the Dera Sacha Sauda has stoked in Punjab frighteningly familiar for those who battled years of militancy, but also highly enticing for others, who love fishing in troubled waters. “We want the Deras closed,” said Bhai Mohkam Singh, a hardliner.Hardliners like Mohkam Singh had been lying low since the end of militancy in the state. But with the Deras emerging as a powerful religious counterweight, radical Sikhs are making it clear they're out for a long battle. Here's the head of the organisation once headed by Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. “First it was the Nirnakaris, then the Dera Sacha Sauda and we also know who are the others who are not preaching the Guru's teachings in the right way – such as Ashutosh Maharaj and Baba Bhaniarawala,” said Head of Damdami Taksal Sant Harnam Singh Bhindranwale.Harnam Singh now heads the organisation (Damdami Taksal) once headed by Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, the radical supporter of Khalistan.Experts are warning against the growing influence of radicals on the SGPC and the Akal Takht “If it is a principled move on the part of the radicals and the Akal Takht to get Deras closed which is totally undemocratic,” said Pramod Kumar of Institute for Development Communications.“SGPC and Akal Takht…the need is they should send these radicals back to the barracks as early as possible,” Kumar added.The Government, however, says it is aware of the problem. “We are keeping a close watch on the situation,” said Punjab government Spokesperson H S Bains.The reason that the Dera-Sikh standoff turned into such a complex problem is also because hardliners have not let the opportunity to take center stage go by. The question is how long will this Dera controversy boost keep them going and will they continue to stoke the fires in Punjab?
TOP STORIES
Dera chaos lets radicals raise head
Enlarge Photo
By IBNlive.com
Friday May 25, 09:56 AM Chandigarh: The Dera controversy has given Punjab's hardliners and dormant organisations an opportunity to move out from the shadows to occupy center stage. It has also turned into an opportunity for the Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee – SGPC to reassert itself.It's a passionate religious debate that the Dera Sacha Sauda has stoked in Punjab frighteningly familiar for those who battled years of militancy, but also highly enticing for others, who love fishing in troubled waters. “We want the Deras closed,” said Bhai Mohkam Singh, a hardliner.Hardliners like Mohkam Singh had been lying low since the end of militancy in the state. But with the Deras emerging as a powerful religious counterweight, radical Sikhs are making it clear they're out for a long battle. Here's the head of the organisation once headed by Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. “First it was the Nirnakaris, then the Dera Sacha Sauda and we also know who are the others who are not preaching the Guru's teachings in the right way – such as Ashutosh Maharaj and Baba Bhaniarawala,” said Head of Damdami Taksal Sant Harnam Singh Bhindranwale.Harnam Singh now heads the organisation (Damdami Taksal) once headed by Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, the radical supporter of Khalistan.Experts are warning against the growing influence of radicals on the SGPC and the Akal Takht “If it is a principled move on the part of the radicals and the Akal Takht to get Deras closed which is totally undemocratic,” said Pramod Kumar of Institute for Development Communications.“SGPC and Akal Takht…the need is they should send these radicals back to the barracks as early as possible,” Kumar added.The Government, however, says it is aware of the problem. “We are keeping a close watch on the situation,” said Punjab government Spokesperson H S Bains.The reason that the Dera-Sikh standoff turned into such a complex problem is also because hardliners have not let the opportunity to take center stage go by. The question is how long will this Dera controversy boost keep them going and will they continue to stoke the fires in Punjab?
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Activists propose, apparatchiks oppose Somnath's president bid
Activists prTOP STORIES
Activists propose, apparatchiks oppose Somnath's president bid
By IANS
Friday May 25, 11:06 AM
New Delhi, May 25 (IANS) His supporters in the party want to see him in Rashtrapati Bhavan, although the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leadership is bitterly opposed to Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee pitching for the country's top post.
According to CPI-M sources, the party does not favour any of its leaders taking up crucial constitutional posts because it would have serious repercussions for the party that believes in ideological purity in this era of coalition politics.
The party says that if Chatterjee were to become the president now and if the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were to take power in 2009, the CPI-M leader would end speaking for the government before parliament's budget sessions and when he travels abroad.
'It will be extremely embarrassing for a person like Chatterjee to represent a rightwing government,' a CPI-M MP from West Bengal told IANS.
Party sources added that the CPI-M also did not want one of its men to become the president because it would entail taking support from the Congress, which is a frequent target of Marxist criticism.
'If a CPI-M man becomes the president as a UPA (United Progressive Alliance) candidate, people will laugh at us for attacking the government while taking their help to get into Rashtrapati Bhavan,' the MP argued.
However, those who want Chatterjee as the country's head of state say these arguments are not tenable.
'If the communists do not want to take up a constitutional post, why did they field Lakshmi Saigal against A.P.J. Abdul Kalam in 2002?' asked a leader of the party from southern India who did not want to be named.
To such criticism, politburo member Sitaram Yechury says that Saigal's candidacy was an act of protest against BJP's unwillingness to give former president K.R. Narayanan a second chance as president.
Chatterjee supporters also point out that the Left parties had campaigned for Narayanan, who was a Congress candidate in Marxist mould and that he had been in the post when the BJP ruled India.
In the process, the Left favourite did end up speaking for a BJP government. CPI-M sources say just as Narayanan stood up to BJP over the Gujarat violence of 2002, nothing prevents a Marxist president from opposing government actions.
'Why have you made Chatterjee the speaker of the Lok Sabha?' asked a party leader, reacting to the leadership arguments that it would like to shun constitutional posts.
A Lok Sabha speaker, this leader said, also has to work closely with the government, even if he is not in agreement with the government or its policies.
Determined to have their way, those backing Chatterjee have given their points of view in writing to the CPI-M politburo, which meets Friday and Saturday here to discuss several issues including upcoming presidential elections. opose, apparatchiks oppose Somnath's president bid
Activists propose, apparatchiks oppose Somnath's president bid
By IANS
Friday May 25, 11:06 AM
New Delhi, May 25 (IANS) His supporters in the party want to see him in Rashtrapati Bhavan, although the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leadership is bitterly opposed to Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee pitching for the country's top post.
According to CPI-M sources, the party does not favour any of its leaders taking up crucial constitutional posts because it would have serious repercussions for the party that believes in ideological purity in this era of coalition politics.
The party says that if Chatterjee were to become the president now and if the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were to take power in 2009, the CPI-M leader would end speaking for the government before parliament's budget sessions and when he travels abroad.
'It will be extremely embarrassing for a person like Chatterjee to represent a rightwing government,' a CPI-M MP from West Bengal told IANS.
Party sources added that the CPI-M also did not want one of its men to become the president because it would entail taking support from the Congress, which is a frequent target of Marxist criticism.
'If a CPI-M man becomes the president as a UPA (United Progressive Alliance) candidate, people will laugh at us for attacking the government while taking their help to get into Rashtrapati Bhavan,' the MP argued.
However, those who want Chatterjee as the country's head of state say these arguments are not tenable.
'If the communists do not want to take up a constitutional post, why did they field Lakshmi Saigal against A.P.J. Abdul Kalam in 2002?' asked a leader of the party from southern India who did not want to be named.
To such criticism, politburo member Sitaram Yechury says that Saigal's candidacy was an act of protest against BJP's unwillingness to give former president K.R. Narayanan a second chance as president.
Chatterjee supporters also point out that the Left parties had campaigned for Narayanan, who was a Congress candidate in Marxist mould and that he had been in the post when the BJP ruled India.
In the process, the Left favourite did end up speaking for a BJP government. CPI-M sources say just as Narayanan stood up to BJP over the Gujarat violence of 2002, nothing prevents a Marxist president from opposing government actions.
'Why have you made Chatterjee the speaker of the Lok Sabha?' asked a party leader, reacting to the leadership arguments that it would like to shun constitutional posts.
A Lok Sabha speaker, this leader said, also has to work closely with the government, even if he is not in agreement with the government or its policies.
Determined to have their way, those backing Chatterjee have given their points of view in writing to the CPI-M politburo, which meets Friday and Saturday here to discuss several issues including upcoming presidential elections. opose, apparatchiks oppose Somnath's president bid
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
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THE VISION OF THE WORLD IN GODBy Jurgen Moltmann
trans. Marc Batko & printed here with permission[These excerpts from Jurgen Moltmann's writings are translated fromthe German on the World Wide Web. Jurgen Moltmann, emeritus professorsystematic theology at the University of Tubingen, is the author of"Theology of Hope," "The Crucified God," "The Church in the Power ofthe Spirit" and "God in Creation."]Mysticism has been reproached again and again for contempt of theworld and hostility to the body. Ideas of neo-Platonic idealism andGnostic dualism can be easily found in the writings of mysticaltheologians. Surprisingly a pantheistic vision of the world in Godand God in the world is emphasized in many of these theologians. "Allis one and one is all," says the "Theologia Deutsch." For thepoet-monk Ernesto Cardenal, all nature is nothing but "God's tangiblematerialized love," a "reflection of God's beauty" that is full of"love letters to us."Mystical theologians certainly acknowledge the Old Testament doctrine of creation as in Barth's "Church Dogmatics." But they prefer the terms "pouring" and "flowing", "fountain" and "well," "sun" and "shining" for their vision of the world from God. For their vision of the world in God, they use the terms "homecoming, " "meditation, " "immersion," and "dissolution. "In the history of thought, this is the neo-Platonic language of the emanation of all things from the all-one and their re-emanation in the all-one. Understood theologically, this is the language ofpneumatology. Unlike creation and God's historical works," the HolySpirit is "poured out" on all flesh (Joel 2,28ff; Acts 2,16ff) and inour hearts (Rom 5,5). One is "born" again from the spirit (Joh 3,3).The gifts of the spirit are not created ex nihilo but originate fromthe Holy Spirit. They are divine powers. The spirit making alive"fills" creation with eternal life in that the spirit "comes" to allthings and "indwells" all things. In the history of the Holy Spirit,another presence of God is revealed than in the creation at thebeginning. People in their corporeality (1 Cor 6,13-20) and then thenew heaven and the new earth (Rev 21) become the "temple" indwelt byGod. That is the eternal Sabbath, the rest of God and the rest inGod. Therefore the history of the spirit aims at that perfectiondescribed by Paul with the pantheistic- sounding formula "God will beall in all" (1 Cor 15,28). With their neo-Platonic sounding doctrineof creation and redemption, the mystical theologians emphasized thishistory of the spirit poured out on all flesh and this new worldglorified in God.A new specifically Christian vision of reality is hidden in mystical theology that is marked by the believed incarnation of the Son and the experienced indwelling of God's spirit. The ecclesiastical repetition of the Yahwist and priestly doctrine of creation can not be seen as a creative achievement of Christian theology. This doctrine of creation can be Christian and non-Christian. In it, a distance of the Creator and the creature occurs that does not reflect the Christian experience of God. If the Israelite doctrine of creation is a reflection of Israel's exodus experience, the Christian doctrine of creation must be a reflection of Christendom' s experience of Christ and the spirit. Seen theologically, mystical "pantheism" is an unsuccessful step inthis direction. Gregor Palamas' doctrine of the energy of the HolySpirit leads here: "The world overflows with divine power, working andshining init."We come back to the substantiation of this pantheistic vision of the world in God.In the death on the cross, God takes evil, sin and rejection onhimself and transforms them to good, grace and election in thesacrifice of his infinite love. All evil, sin, suffering anddamnation are "in God." These dislocations are endured by him,annulled in him and transformed by him "to our benefit." Hissuffering is "the miracle of miracles of divine love" (Paul of theCross). Nothing can be excluded from that divine love. Thereforeeverything lives from the omnipotence of his suffering andinexhaustible love. There is no nothingness threatening creation anymore. The nothingness destroyed in God; intransitory life appears.On account of the divine cross, the creation lives from God and istransformed in God.Paul first sees this dissolved contradiction in the abolition of the opposition of life and death in Christ's rule: "If we live, we live to the Lord and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's" (Rom 14,7ff). According to 1 Cor 15,28, the future of Christ's presence – embracing the living and the dead is the presence of God himself filling all things.Without Christ's cross, this vision of God in the world would be pure illusion. The suffering of a single child would prove it an illusion. Without the knowledge of the suffering of God's inexhaustible love, no "pantheism" in this world of death could be endured. Pantheism would immediately become pan-nihilism.The knowledge of the crucified God gives foundation and duration to this vision of the world in God. In the rule of the crucified, theliving and dead come to eternal community. The sins and suffering ofthe whole world sink in the cross of the Resurrected. Therefore thevision of God in all things and all things in God arises under thecross. Whoever believes God in the God-abandonment of the crucifiedsees him everywhere and in all things as life is experienced moreintensively after an experience of death.This vision of God's world is alive in the experiences of thepersecuted and martyrs who feel God's presence in prison. This visionis alive with the mystics who find God's presence in the dark night ofthe soul. It shines in the piety of simple existence. God is presentin the darkness of the lived moment. "In him we live, move and haveour being" (Acts 17,28) because "from him, through him and to him areall things" (Rom 11,36). from: Jurgen Moltmann, Gotteserfahrungen: Hoffnung, Angst, Mystik, 1979GOD IS THE CRITIQUE OF THE PERSONThis thesis stands in opposition to the foundation of the modernanthropocentric view of the world where the person is God's criterion.The age of anthropology, the anthropocentric age, began with theRenaissance and the Enlightenment. Anthropology in the modernempathic sense presupposes theology at the mercy of anthropology asits heir. One of the central myths of the modern age is the myth:"God is dead! We have killed him!" (Nietzsche). The mystery oftheology was revealed as anthropology. The person is not God'slikeness. Persons are not God's creatures. The gods are thecreatures of human fear and longing. Ludwig Feuerbach underscoredthis suspicion of the modern person in his religion criticism.Feuerbach reversed subject and predicate and reduced all thepredicates of God to the human subject. Consciousness of the infiniteis nothing but the infinity of consciousness. The consciousness ofGod is nothing but the self-assurance of the person. God is a wishprojection of the person who breaks down with himself. God is thebetter self of the person, so to speak, who then worships himself.How can the person come to himself? Only in this way can heunderstand his religious ideals as his own projections, appropriatethem and withdraw in himself. Then he is no longer the divided personwho transports his better self into heaven. He is a person unitedwith himself who realizes his better self on earth. In his negation,Feuerbach criticized the religious pictures of human fear of oneself.In his criticism, he followed the Old Testament prohibition of images."You shall not make yourself a graven image or any likeness… youshall not bow down to them or serve them" (Ex 20,4). He took up theold tradition of negative theology: "We do not know what God is"(Thomas Aquinas). But in his perspective, he was religious again."With inclusion of nature, the new philosophy makes the person… thesole universal and highest theme of philosophy. Anthropology becomesthe universal science. "Person with person, the unity of I and you,is God." Thus Feuerbach believed in all God's predicates and onlytransferred them to the person. According to Feuerbach, the mysteryof theology is anthropology. The mystery of his anthropology isanthropo-theism (deification of the person). Therefore he concluded:"politics must become our religion. However that is only possiblewhen we have a Most High in our contemplation. " But what is themeaning of religion criticism when politics is made religion? If thede-divinization of the heaven of religion leads to the deification ofthe person on earth, what does anthropology mean?If God's dethronement makes the person into the god of himself, there is no sense speaking of anthropology. God is dead and should beburied. But if the heir takes God's place, the heir is god and not aperson any more, "a god in becoming" (R. Garaudy). The misery ofmodern anthropology on the ground of an inherited theology lies in itstheological and religious inheritance. The person must do what hecannot do as a total person, an ideal person, a possibility person ordecision-making person. Deification of the person makes the personmore inhuman, not more human. An anthropology inherited in the modernpost-Christian sense of theology loses sight of the real person andthe real God. Since this anthropology equates God and the person, itcannot speak clearly any more.The modern age makes the person into the iconoclastic word against God. An iconoclastic movement against religious pictures of God starts from human self-knowledge. However this is only sensible when the real God becomes the iconoclastic word against the person. An iconoclastic movement against images of man starts from the knowledge of God, in which the person looks at himself in a mirror, justifies, idolizes and worships himself. Knowledge of God and self-knowledge are connected. No knowledge of God is possible without self-knowledge (and without religion criticism) and no self-knowledge is possible without knowledge of God (and without self-criticism) . Anunderstanding of transcendence that humanizes without estranging oridolizing and an understanding of immanence making possible finitefreedom without resigning or tyrannizing only arise in the mutualiconoclasm of criticism.Anthropology in the empathic sense of the murder of God is no longer possible today. Anthropology must abandon its claimed anthropo-theism to speak more humanly about the person and not strainthe person with absolute demands that he can only disappoint.Auschwitz and Hiroshima must be forgotten to hold the person as adivine being. The person becomes more human when transposed in thesituation of leaving his self-deification, idolatry, profits andachievements. But what really transposes him into this situation?The critical task of theology is to withdraw the absolutetotalitarianism and legalism of salvation from anthropology. Theologyfirst comes to itself when it takes pleasure in anthropologicalreligion criticism and takes seriously the image prohibition.Conversely, anthropology first comes to the ground of reality when ittakes pleasure in critical theology and respects the wholly other inwhom all human self-knowledge becomes a finite fragment. Without thiswholly other, moral happiness and imperfect justice are unacceptable.Without the longing for the wholly other, the person loses thedignity of his dubiousness. Without trust in God, the protest againstinjustice and the struggle for justice grow weary.From: Jurgen Moltmann, Mensch: Christliche Anthropologie in denKonflikten der Gegenwert, 1979FAITH PRESSES TO POLITICAL ACTIONThis question has at least two traps. Firstly, one would like toknow more exactly what faith is really proclaimed. As everybodyknows, there are many forms of religious faith. There are ways offaith with strong inspirations and motives for political action whileother ways of faith dismiss political action because they are notinterested in the world of politics. Both ways of faith occur inChristianity.WHAT FAITH REQUIRES POLITICAL ACTION?Secondly, some would like to know in advance what political action is crucial. Welcoming a faith when it confirms our political views is all too human. But when a faith decries our political ideas and desires, we prefer faith not to meddle in political affairs. To what politics does faith press?We begin with essential doubt in a politics from faith as among many Christians and non-Christians. "What does this mean for theologians? " Axel Springer recently asked nervously. Springer is editor-in-chief of the Hamburg Abendblattes that published a series on "Rebels in Christ's Name." People turn away from God and churches bear responsibility, Axel Springer summarized. In the last decades, the state reduced its responsibility for alleviating poverty and distress. The churches and especially theologians have been on the lookout for other worldly tasks instead of worrying more intensively about pastoral care or spiritual welfare. The result was a loss in moral authority. The religious was repressive. The churches abandoned moral authority in part because they were too concerned about politics. Thus we help the modern person so he becomes capable again of learning to see transcendence and goodness in the world, AxelSpringer says. Let us help the churches in this time of apostasy fromGod so they become connecting links between people and the Most High.If the churches do not rightly fulfill this religious function ofspiritual welfare to the people, Springer's newspaper house willassume this pastoral commission out of responsibility in the Christianspirit as it has always exercised it in a relaxing and depoliticizingway in Germany since the war.Does faith press to political action? Certainly not, according to this interpretation, at least not directly. Here faith is something emotional, religious and very personal. Faith is sense fortranscendence and therefore should be far elevated above politicalquestions. If it affects politics, it is only in the sense ofmoderation toward political and religious radicalism.For this faith, good and evil are mixed in the world. The divine and the satanic wrestle with each other. The person is just and sinful at once. Faith stands in this ambiguous world and yet at the same time is above it. In the positive and negative, this may be the current picture of faith and of the role of churches in politics. Let us first find out what is positive and what is negative about this.Faith here is faith in God, in a higher being, in a governingProvidence. Faith is religious faith and not political faith in anidea, leader or party. For this faith, salvation does not come frompolitics. Therefore politics cannot bring disaster in an ultimatesense. This faith doubts the absolute and total meaning of politicalaction. For this faith, the political is something earthly,transitory and human, in any case something non-divine. Whoeverbelieves in God does not believe in Caesar any more.The positive of this faith lies in the disillusioning of politics. We cannot be forced to political action as though everything depended on it. It liberates to sober action for what is politically necessary. On the other side, the political meaning of such faith is doubted. Whoever calms himself that God will accomplish whatever happens politically is apolitical. He can come to terms with every injustice befalling him or others. Because he believes in a God and a kindly Providence, he does not need to be very worried about political fate. He has his eternal comfort in his God and therefore can feel relieved from world responsibility. This faith enervates political action, its critics say, and leads back to a childish responsibility. That is the negative.Faith can be hope in a heaven in the world to come of this worldhistory. The political becomes the penultimate for whoever sets hishope on the world to come. Paradise cannot be realized on earth. Onearth, everything is and remains ambiguous. Suffering and trouble arepart of this earth. The positive in this view is that it relativizesevery political standpoint and opposes all totalitarian claims ofpolitical parties. The negative is that this hope in a world to comeseduces to resignation in this life. A secret disinterest in allpolitical systems and campaigns is always the result.Whether monarchy, democracy, capitalism or socialism, all earthlyforms of society are equally near and far from God and the world tocome. One can console oneself about good and bad conditions. Theyoung Karl Marx found religion was the sigh of the oppressed creation,the heart of a heartless world and the spirit of spiritlessconditions, i.e. opium of the people. If this religious faith isannulled, the person is literally "forced" to political action. Thecriticism of religion disappoints the person so he thinks and actslike a person who comes to his senses.This faith is a heart faith. Whoever believes relies on himselfalone despite dependence on tradition and the community of the church.Faith leads into isolation. The positive is seen in the infiniteworth of the individual person before God. Whoever believes this wayis no longer determined in his innermost being by political interestsor class- and ethnic affiliations. He is free and critical towardsociety. While many praise this Christian subjectivism, the negativeconsequences must also be recognized. They lie in the politicalindifference of the heart. If one is unassailable in his innermostsoul through faith, all outward things become unimportant. Faithpreserves his purity of heart. Therefore he finds that politics isalways a "dirty business." As history shows, these believers leavepolitics to others, to those who promise the most peace and securityto them.Does "Christian" faith press to a certain political action? We have discussed two forms of faith that are called religious. They have nothing especially Christian in themselves apart from the fact that they are practiced by Christians. General faith in God, hope in a world to come and pious introspection do not need to be Christian.Christian faith in God is faith in the crucified Christ or as Luthersaid more sharply faith in the "crucified God."Does this faith press to political action? I think the answer isunequivocally yes. The cross is not a religious symbol but aninstrument of political execution. The cross was a politicalpunishment. If it is true that Jesus was condemned according toIsrael's law as a blasphemer, he did not endure the punishment forblasphemy at that time, namely stoning, that the Jews executed onStephen. Crucifixion was a Roman way of execution reserved to theRoman occupying power. According to Roman law, it was the punishmentfor political rebels and agitators against the Roman Empire. Jesuswas certainly not a Jewish freedom-fighter like the two zealotscrucified with him.Jesus was not an apolitical itinerant preacher, a "charmingcarpenter" who drew through the cheerful Galilean populace fromvillage to village on a gentle mule, as middle class romanticism (E.Renan) described him. He was also not a forerunner of Che Guevara asthe anti-bourgeois revolution stylized him. Nevertheless he waspolitically executed because he threatened the religious foundationsof the Roman Empire. Christians who believe God in the crucifiedshould be well aware of this since the starting point and standard fortheir political action lie in the political event of his crucifixion.We can only briefly describe the consequences. If the one desecrated by the state power with the cross is God's Christ, the lowest political idea is inverted to the highest. What the state defined as the basest degradation, the cross, has the highest dignity. God's glory rests on the suffering and dying of the humiliated, not on the crown of the powerful any more. If this crucified is the supreme authority for Christians, then all religious justification "from above" is denied political powers and principalities. Belief in political-religious authority ends for one who believes in the crucified. What results for political action? The resolute struggle against political idolatry, political cult of persons and their consequences in political tutelage, estrangement and apathy arises. No area of life is as filled with idols feared and loved above all things, alienation and underdevelopment as politics and the political religion of a people. Through Christ's cross, all justification "from above" is taken from political authorities for Christians. Political rule can only be justified "from below."A political iconoclastic movement starts from faith in the crucified. Submission under a visible image always exists in representative institutions. This is idolatry. The Puritans in England and America knew this. "Democracy has no monuments or medallions and imprints no head of a man on its coins. Iconoclasm is its true nature," declared John Quincy Adams, the fourth president of the US. However if the true nature of democracy is political iconoclasm and permanent revisionism of fortified institutions and customs, then democratic action fulfills the claim of the crucified on Christians. Liberation from the idolatry and passivity experienced by Christians in faith in the crucified God then changes into liberation from political religions and the political estrangements produced by those religions.The first effect of Christian faith on politics is exorcism,iconoclasm and the demythologization of the state. The second effectis democratization of public life. The crown rests on theconstitution of free citizens and no longer on the head of asovereign, the Puritans said. Free citizens have abolished the ruleof political castes- and classes and replaced that rule with theinternational treaty of free citizens. In their states, free citizenshave created many authorities for exercising political rule sopolitical rule is controlled by the public and set for a limited time.Democracy here does not mean a specific form of state raised to anideal. Democracy means a way and a political process of the commonwill in which as many groups and individuals as possible activelyparticipate in a society. Democracy is a society of open processesthat aims at a future of freedom and humanity involving allparticipants in its creation.God is politically present in the crucified below, according to the Christian faith, not above and a long way off. Liberation of politics from its idols and demons is a negative consequence. The democratic construction of a society from below is a positive consequence. If this freedom was won for Christians in the public event of Christ's crucifixion, this freedom must be publically responsible. This does not mean faith must accept Caesar's definition of politics that salvation comes from politics. Faith cooperates in the healing of politics, its liberation from superstition and gullibility and its activation by citizen participation in decision-making processes. Iconoclasm and democratization from below are the two most important tendencies to which faith presses in political action if it is Christian faith (p.140f).
THE VISION OF THE WORLD IN GODBy Jurgen Moltmann
trans. Marc Batko & printed here with permission[These excerpts from Jurgen Moltmann's writings are translated fromthe German on the World Wide Web. Jurgen Moltmann, emeritus professorsystematic theology at the University of Tubingen, is the author of"Theology of Hope," "The Crucified God," "The Church in the Power ofthe Spirit" and "God in Creation."]Mysticism has been reproached again and again for contempt of theworld and hostility to the body. Ideas of neo-Platonic idealism andGnostic dualism can be easily found in the writings of mysticaltheologians. Surprisingly a pantheistic vision of the world in Godand God in the world is emphasized in many of these theologians. "Allis one and one is all," says the "Theologia Deutsch." For thepoet-monk Ernesto Cardenal, all nature is nothing but "God's tangiblematerialized love," a "reflection of God's beauty" that is full of"love letters to us."Mystical theologians certainly acknowledge the Old Testament doctrine of creation as in Barth's "Church Dogmatics." But they prefer the terms "pouring" and "flowing", "fountain" and "well," "sun" and "shining" for their vision of the world from God. For their vision of the world in God, they use the terms "homecoming, " "meditation, " "immersion," and "dissolution. "In the history of thought, this is the neo-Platonic language of the emanation of all things from the all-one and their re-emanation in the all-one. Understood theologically, this is the language ofpneumatology. Unlike creation and God's historical works," the HolySpirit is "poured out" on all flesh (Joel 2,28ff; Acts 2,16ff) and inour hearts (Rom 5,5). One is "born" again from the spirit (Joh 3,3).The gifts of the spirit are not created ex nihilo but originate fromthe Holy Spirit. They are divine powers. The spirit making alive"fills" creation with eternal life in that the spirit "comes" to allthings and "indwells" all things. In the history of the Holy Spirit,another presence of God is revealed than in the creation at thebeginning. People in their corporeality (1 Cor 6,13-20) and then thenew heaven and the new earth (Rev 21) become the "temple" indwelt byGod. That is the eternal Sabbath, the rest of God and the rest inGod. Therefore the history of the spirit aims at that perfectiondescribed by Paul with the pantheistic- sounding formula "God will beall in all" (1 Cor 15,28). With their neo-Platonic sounding doctrineof creation and redemption, the mystical theologians emphasized thishistory of the spirit poured out on all flesh and this new worldglorified in God.A new specifically Christian vision of reality is hidden in mystical theology that is marked by the believed incarnation of the Son and the experienced indwelling of God's spirit. The ecclesiastical repetition of the Yahwist and priestly doctrine of creation can not be seen as a creative achievement of Christian theology. This doctrine of creation can be Christian and non-Christian. In it, a distance of the Creator and the creature occurs that does not reflect the Christian experience of God. If the Israelite doctrine of creation is a reflection of Israel's exodus experience, the Christian doctrine of creation must be a reflection of Christendom' s experience of Christ and the spirit. Seen theologically, mystical "pantheism" is an unsuccessful step inthis direction. Gregor Palamas' doctrine of the energy of the HolySpirit leads here: "The world overflows with divine power, working andshining init."We come back to the substantiation of this pantheistic vision of the world in God.In the death on the cross, God takes evil, sin and rejection onhimself and transforms them to good, grace and election in thesacrifice of his infinite love. All evil, sin, suffering anddamnation are "in God." These dislocations are endured by him,annulled in him and transformed by him "to our benefit." Hissuffering is "the miracle of miracles of divine love" (Paul of theCross). Nothing can be excluded from that divine love. Thereforeeverything lives from the omnipotence of his suffering andinexhaustible love. There is no nothingness threatening creation anymore. The nothingness destroyed in God; intransitory life appears.On account of the divine cross, the creation lives from God and istransformed in God.Paul first sees this dissolved contradiction in the abolition of the opposition of life and death in Christ's rule: "If we live, we live to the Lord and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's" (Rom 14,7ff). According to 1 Cor 15,28, the future of Christ's presence – embracing the living and the dead is the presence of God himself filling all things.Without Christ's cross, this vision of God in the world would be pure illusion. The suffering of a single child would prove it an illusion. Without the knowledge of the suffering of God's inexhaustible love, no "pantheism" in this world of death could be endured. Pantheism would immediately become pan-nihilism.The knowledge of the crucified God gives foundation and duration to this vision of the world in God. In the rule of the crucified, theliving and dead come to eternal community. The sins and suffering ofthe whole world sink in the cross of the Resurrected. Therefore thevision of God in all things and all things in God arises under thecross. Whoever believes God in the God-abandonment of the crucifiedsees him everywhere and in all things as life is experienced moreintensively after an experience of death.This vision of God's world is alive in the experiences of thepersecuted and martyrs who feel God's presence in prison. This visionis alive with the mystics who find God's presence in the dark night ofthe soul. It shines in the piety of simple existence. God is presentin the darkness of the lived moment. "In him we live, move and haveour being" (Acts 17,28) because "from him, through him and to him areall things" (Rom 11,36). from: Jurgen Moltmann, Gotteserfahrungen: Hoffnung, Angst, Mystik, 1979GOD IS THE CRITIQUE OF THE PERSONThis thesis stands in opposition to the foundation of the modernanthropocentric view of the world where the person is God's criterion.The age of anthropology, the anthropocentric age, began with theRenaissance and the Enlightenment. Anthropology in the modernempathic sense presupposes theology at the mercy of anthropology asits heir. One of the central myths of the modern age is the myth:"God is dead! We have killed him!" (Nietzsche). The mystery oftheology was revealed as anthropology. The person is not God'slikeness. Persons are not God's creatures. The gods are thecreatures of human fear and longing. Ludwig Feuerbach underscoredthis suspicion of the modern person in his religion criticism.Feuerbach reversed subject and predicate and reduced all thepredicates of God to the human subject. Consciousness of the infiniteis nothing but the infinity of consciousness. The consciousness ofGod is nothing but the self-assurance of the person. God is a wishprojection of the person who breaks down with himself. God is thebetter self of the person, so to speak, who then worships himself.How can the person come to himself? Only in this way can heunderstand his religious ideals as his own projections, appropriatethem and withdraw in himself. Then he is no longer the divided personwho transports his better self into heaven. He is a person unitedwith himself who realizes his better self on earth. In his negation,Feuerbach criticized the religious pictures of human fear of oneself.In his criticism, he followed the Old Testament prohibition of images."You shall not make yourself a graven image or any likeness… youshall not bow down to them or serve them" (Ex 20,4). He took up theold tradition of negative theology: "We do not know what God is"(Thomas Aquinas). But in his perspective, he was religious again."With inclusion of nature, the new philosophy makes the person… thesole universal and highest theme of philosophy. Anthropology becomesthe universal science. "Person with person, the unity of I and you,is God." Thus Feuerbach believed in all God's predicates and onlytransferred them to the person. According to Feuerbach, the mysteryof theology is anthropology. The mystery of his anthropology isanthropo-theism (deification of the person). Therefore he concluded:"politics must become our religion. However that is only possiblewhen we have a Most High in our contemplation. " But what is themeaning of religion criticism when politics is made religion? If thede-divinization of the heaven of religion leads to the deification ofthe person on earth, what does anthropology mean?If God's dethronement makes the person into the god of himself, there is no sense speaking of anthropology. God is dead and should beburied. But if the heir takes God's place, the heir is god and not aperson any more, "a god in becoming" (R. Garaudy). The misery ofmodern anthropology on the ground of an inherited theology lies in itstheological and religious inheritance. The person must do what hecannot do as a total person, an ideal person, a possibility person ordecision-making person. Deification of the person makes the personmore inhuman, not more human. An anthropology inherited in the modernpost-Christian sense of theology loses sight of the real person andthe real God. Since this anthropology equates God and the person, itcannot speak clearly any more.The modern age makes the person into the iconoclastic word against God. An iconoclastic movement against religious pictures of God starts from human self-knowledge. However this is only sensible when the real God becomes the iconoclastic word against the person. An iconoclastic movement against images of man starts from the knowledge of God, in which the person looks at himself in a mirror, justifies, idolizes and worships himself. Knowledge of God and self-knowledge are connected. No knowledge of God is possible without self-knowledge (and without religion criticism) and no self-knowledge is possible without knowledge of God (and without self-criticism) . Anunderstanding of transcendence that humanizes without estranging oridolizing and an understanding of immanence making possible finitefreedom without resigning or tyrannizing only arise in the mutualiconoclasm of criticism.Anthropology in the empathic sense of the murder of God is no longer possible today. Anthropology must abandon its claimed anthropo-theism to speak more humanly about the person and not strainthe person with absolute demands that he can only disappoint.Auschwitz and Hiroshima must be forgotten to hold the person as adivine being. The person becomes more human when transposed in thesituation of leaving his self-deification, idolatry, profits andachievements. But what really transposes him into this situation?The critical task of theology is to withdraw the absolutetotalitarianism and legalism of salvation from anthropology. Theologyfirst comes to itself when it takes pleasure in anthropologicalreligion criticism and takes seriously the image prohibition.Conversely, anthropology first comes to the ground of reality when ittakes pleasure in critical theology and respects the wholly other inwhom all human self-knowledge becomes a finite fragment. Without thiswholly other, moral happiness and imperfect justice are unacceptable.Without the longing for the wholly other, the person loses thedignity of his dubiousness. Without trust in God, the protest againstinjustice and the struggle for justice grow weary.From: Jurgen Moltmann, Mensch: Christliche Anthropologie in denKonflikten der Gegenwert, 1979FAITH PRESSES TO POLITICAL ACTIONThis question has at least two traps. Firstly, one would like toknow more exactly what faith is really proclaimed. As everybodyknows, there are many forms of religious faith. There are ways offaith with strong inspirations and motives for political action whileother ways of faith dismiss political action because they are notinterested in the world of politics. Both ways of faith occur inChristianity.WHAT FAITH REQUIRES POLITICAL ACTION?Secondly, some would like to know in advance what political action is crucial. Welcoming a faith when it confirms our political views is all too human. But when a faith decries our political ideas and desires, we prefer faith not to meddle in political affairs. To what politics does faith press?We begin with essential doubt in a politics from faith as among many Christians and non-Christians. "What does this mean for theologians? " Axel Springer recently asked nervously. Springer is editor-in-chief of the Hamburg Abendblattes that published a series on "Rebels in Christ's Name." People turn away from God and churches bear responsibility, Axel Springer summarized. In the last decades, the state reduced its responsibility for alleviating poverty and distress. The churches and especially theologians have been on the lookout for other worldly tasks instead of worrying more intensively about pastoral care or spiritual welfare. The result was a loss in moral authority. The religious was repressive. The churches abandoned moral authority in part because they were too concerned about politics. Thus we help the modern person so he becomes capable again of learning to see transcendence and goodness in the world, AxelSpringer says. Let us help the churches in this time of apostasy fromGod so they become connecting links between people and the Most High.If the churches do not rightly fulfill this religious function ofspiritual welfare to the people, Springer's newspaper house willassume this pastoral commission out of responsibility in the Christianspirit as it has always exercised it in a relaxing and depoliticizingway in Germany since the war.Does faith press to political action? Certainly not, according to this interpretation, at least not directly. Here faith is something emotional, religious and very personal. Faith is sense fortranscendence and therefore should be far elevated above politicalquestions. If it affects politics, it is only in the sense ofmoderation toward political and religious radicalism.For this faith, good and evil are mixed in the world. The divine and the satanic wrestle with each other. The person is just and sinful at once. Faith stands in this ambiguous world and yet at the same time is above it. In the positive and negative, this may be the current picture of faith and of the role of churches in politics. Let us first find out what is positive and what is negative about this.Faith here is faith in God, in a higher being, in a governingProvidence. Faith is religious faith and not political faith in anidea, leader or party. For this faith, salvation does not come frompolitics. Therefore politics cannot bring disaster in an ultimatesense. This faith doubts the absolute and total meaning of politicalaction. For this faith, the political is something earthly,transitory and human, in any case something non-divine. Whoeverbelieves in God does not believe in Caesar any more.The positive of this faith lies in the disillusioning of politics. We cannot be forced to political action as though everything depended on it. It liberates to sober action for what is politically necessary. On the other side, the political meaning of such faith is doubted. Whoever calms himself that God will accomplish whatever happens politically is apolitical. He can come to terms with every injustice befalling him or others. Because he believes in a God and a kindly Providence, he does not need to be very worried about political fate. He has his eternal comfort in his God and therefore can feel relieved from world responsibility. This faith enervates political action, its critics say, and leads back to a childish responsibility. That is the negative.Faith can be hope in a heaven in the world to come of this worldhistory. The political becomes the penultimate for whoever sets hishope on the world to come. Paradise cannot be realized on earth. Onearth, everything is and remains ambiguous. Suffering and trouble arepart of this earth. The positive in this view is that it relativizesevery political standpoint and opposes all totalitarian claims ofpolitical parties. The negative is that this hope in a world to comeseduces to resignation in this life. A secret disinterest in allpolitical systems and campaigns is always the result.Whether monarchy, democracy, capitalism or socialism, all earthlyforms of society are equally near and far from God and the world tocome. One can console oneself about good and bad conditions. Theyoung Karl Marx found religion was the sigh of the oppressed creation,the heart of a heartless world and the spirit of spiritlessconditions, i.e. opium of the people. If this religious faith isannulled, the person is literally "forced" to political action. Thecriticism of religion disappoints the person so he thinks and actslike a person who comes to his senses.This faith is a heart faith. Whoever believes relies on himselfalone despite dependence on tradition and the community of the church.Faith leads into isolation. The positive is seen in the infiniteworth of the individual person before God. Whoever believes this wayis no longer determined in his innermost being by political interestsor class- and ethnic affiliations. He is free and critical towardsociety. While many praise this Christian subjectivism, the negativeconsequences must also be recognized. They lie in the politicalindifference of the heart. If one is unassailable in his innermostsoul through faith, all outward things become unimportant. Faithpreserves his purity of heart. Therefore he finds that politics isalways a "dirty business." As history shows, these believers leavepolitics to others, to those who promise the most peace and securityto them.Does "Christian" faith press to a certain political action? We have discussed two forms of faith that are called religious. They have nothing especially Christian in themselves apart from the fact that they are practiced by Christians. General faith in God, hope in a world to come and pious introspection do not need to be Christian.Christian faith in God is faith in the crucified Christ or as Luthersaid more sharply faith in the "crucified God."Does this faith press to political action? I think the answer isunequivocally yes. The cross is not a religious symbol but aninstrument of political execution. The cross was a politicalpunishment. If it is true that Jesus was condemned according toIsrael's law as a blasphemer, he did not endure the punishment forblasphemy at that time, namely stoning, that the Jews executed onStephen. Crucifixion was a Roman way of execution reserved to theRoman occupying power. According to Roman law, it was the punishmentfor political rebels and agitators against the Roman Empire. Jesuswas certainly not a Jewish freedom-fighter like the two zealotscrucified with him.Jesus was not an apolitical itinerant preacher, a "charmingcarpenter" who drew through the cheerful Galilean populace fromvillage to village on a gentle mule, as middle class romanticism (E.Renan) described him. He was also not a forerunner of Che Guevara asthe anti-bourgeois revolution stylized him. Nevertheless he waspolitically executed because he threatened the religious foundationsof the Roman Empire. Christians who believe God in the crucifiedshould be well aware of this since the starting point and standard fortheir political action lie in the political event of his crucifixion.We can only briefly describe the consequences. If the one desecrated by the state power with the cross is God's Christ, the lowest political idea is inverted to the highest. What the state defined as the basest degradation, the cross, has the highest dignity. God's glory rests on the suffering and dying of the humiliated, not on the crown of the powerful any more. If this crucified is the supreme authority for Christians, then all religious justification "from above" is denied political powers and principalities. Belief in political-religious authority ends for one who believes in the crucified. What results for political action? The resolute struggle against political idolatry, political cult of persons and their consequences in political tutelage, estrangement and apathy arises. No area of life is as filled with idols feared and loved above all things, alienation and underdevelopment as politics and the political religion of a people. Through Christ's cross, all justification "from above" is taken from political authorities for Christians. Political rule can only be justified "from below."A political iconoclastic movement starts from faith in the crucified. Submission under a visible image always exists in representative institutions. This is idolatry. The Puritans in England and America knew this. "Democracy has no monuments or medallions and imprints no head of a man on its coins. Iconoclasm is its true nature," declared John Quincy Adams, the fourth president of the US. However if the true nature of democracy is political iconoclasm and permanent revisionism of fortified institutions and customs, then democratic action fulfills the claim of the crucified on Christians. Liberation from the idolatry and passivity experienced by Christians in faith in the crucified God then changes into liberation from political religions and the political estrangements produced by those religions.The first effect of Christian faith on politics is exorcism,iconoclasm and the demythologization of the state. The second effectis democratization of public life. The crown rests on theconstitution of free citizens and no longer on the head of asovereign, the Puritans said. Free citizens have abolished the ruleof political castes- and classes and replaced that rule with theinternational treaty of free citizens. In their states, free citizenshave created many authorities for exercising political rule sopolitical rule is controlled by the public and set for a limited time.Democracy here does not mean a specific form of state raised to anideal. Democracy means a way and a political process of the commonwill in which as many groups and individuals as possible activelyparticipate in a society. Democracy is a society of open processesthat aims at a future of freedom and humanity involving allparticipants in its creation.God is politically present in the crucified below, according to the Christian faith, not above and a long way off. Liberation of politics from its idols and demons is a negative consequence. The democratic construction of a society from below is a positive consequence. If this freedom was won for Christians in the public event of Christ's crucifixion, this freedom must be publically responsible. This does not mean faith must accept Caesar's definition of politics that salvation comes from politics. Faith cooperates in the healing of politics, its liberation from superstition and gullibility and its activation by citizen participation in decision-making processes. Iconoclasm and democratization from below are the two most important tendencies to which faith presses in political action if it is Christian faith (p.140f).
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