HA NOI – President of the Viet Nam Fatherland Front (VFF) Pham The Duyet highlighted the important role of Buddhism in Vietnamese society in a letter he sent to the Viet Nam Buddhist Sangha (VBS) on Thursday to mark Buddha’s 2551st birthday. … Viet Nam News
Despite the best efforts of the Chinese government (more precisely, the Chinese Communist Party that controls the government) to portray its control over Tibet as secure and stable, sometimes its true colors show through. Sometimes we see that over fifty years into the occupation, Tibet’s Chinese rulers remain insecure and afraid.
This happened recently on May 18, when the top Communist official in Tibet, the hard-line Zhang Qingli, gave a speech to Party members reported in the Chinese-language Tibet Daily:
We must have a more vigorous will to fight, a more tenacious style and do a more solid job of uniting and leading the region’s various ethnic groups and throwing ourselves into the struggle against splittism. From beginning to end we must deepen patriotic education at temples, comprehensively expose and denounce the Dalai Lama clique’s political reactionary nature and religious hypocrisy.
What is most interesting is how vehemently Comrade Zhang urges “a more vigorous will to fight.” Fundamentally, he is admitting that China hasn’t been able to erase Tibetans’ desire for independence, even after decades of repression, coercion, and terror… Tibet Will Be Free » Blog Archive » True Colors
The ancient capital of Tibet consisted of the Potala Palace, home of the Dalai Lama, and the Jokhang Temple, around which Tibet’s main tourist drag of Barkhor Street now runs (see pic of Barkhor above).
A photo I have of Lhasa in 1916 indicates these two buildings as the only things on the entire plain between the Himalayan ranges. Nowadays, the entire stretch of the city, from the Norbulingka Palace to beyond the Barkhor Area, is a predominantly Tibetan ‘old’ town.
This in itself is odd, given how Tibetans are traditionally semi-nomadic, following their yaks in semi-permanent tents for much of the year, often going on pilgrimages solo, spending time at sacred lakes or sites in contemplation and so on.
But there you go, Lhasa the city exists. But there is another Lhasa – the Chinese immigrant city best viewed from the back of the Potala. This is twice the size of the Tibetan city, and is, apart from its relative cleanliness, indistinguishable from any other Chinese city.
This end of town has the little kids in their sports tracksuit school uniforms, the Bank of China ATMs, the garish neon signs for cheap hotels or good Sichuan food, the travel agents, the shopping centres, the gated communities, the car showrooms.
This is the product, not only of sixty years of Chinese occupation, but also of the dozen flights and numerous trains daily arriving in Lhasa from China in recent years. Lhasa is a Chinese boomtown right now, and Chinese from all over the Middle Kingdom are arriving looking for work or to make a fortune out of foreign tourists. Read full blog post.
The conversions were lead by nomadic tribal writer and former legislator Lakshman Mane, who is known for his book Upara (Outsider) and other leaders like Eknath Awhad. Mane had himself converted to Buddhism in October 2006 at the Deekshabhoomi in Nagpur where Ambedkar had embraced Buddhism in 1956.
Mane observed how the nomadic and scheduled tribes had to bear the brunt of the caste system. … IndianExpress.com :: Conversion: No Dalai Lama, but Deshmukh attends
- QUOTATION OF THE DAY -
“I called 911, but nothing would come out of my mouth. I said ‘stroke’ in this long, horrible voice.”
- DIANA FITE, an emergency room doctor in Houston, recalling the stroke
she had after years of ignoring high blood pressure.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/28/health/28stroke.html?th&emc=th
The scholarship pays for tuition, fees, room and board for any undergraduate or graduate student who can prove membership in a state or federally recognized tribe or can prove direct descent from a member.
Members of recognized Canadian tribes are also eligible, though students from outside Maine must first live in the state for one year to establish residency. … http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/28/us/28maine.html?th&emc=th
Well, if your tribe doesn’t have gambling, there’s the bootstraps.
You can help. This program is not funded for recruitment outside the State of Maine. If you know a Native American who might be interested, why not copy this and send it along?
The fury aimed that these poor, hardworking people is comparable to the fury against the Italians, Poles and Irish a century ago. It is as useless now as it was then. And as evil.
Source: Irrational attacks on immigration :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Andrew Greeley
Riverbend and her family have finally decided they must do what they could have done all along — leave their home to the pack of wolves we unleashed upon it.
So we’ve been busy. Busy trying to decide what part of our lives to leave behind. Which memories are dispensable? We, like many Iraqis, are not the classic refugees – the ones with only the clothes on their backs and no choice. We are choosing to leave because the other option is simply a continuation of what has been one long nightmare – stay and wait and try to survive.
On the one hand, I know that leaving the country and starting a new life somewhere else- as yet unknown- is such a huge thing that it should dwarf every trivial concern. The funny thing is that it’s the trivial that seems to occupy our lives. We discuss whether to take photo albums or leave them behind. Can I bring along a stuffed animal I’ve had since the age of four? Is there room for E.’s guitar? What clothes do we take? Summer clothes? The winter clothes too? What about my books? What about the CDs, the baby pictures?
The problem is that we don’t even know if we’ll ever see this stuff again. We don’t know if whatever we leave, including the house, will be available when and if we come back. There are moments when the injustice of having to leave your country, simply because an imbecile got it into his head to invade it, is overwhelming. It is unfair that in order to survive and live normally, we have to leave our home and what remains of family and friends… And to what? … Baghdad Burning
Does our sense of right and wrong stem from principles we learn in our environment — at home, church, school and work? Or are moral intuitions “unconscious, involuntary, universal” — and hard-wired in our brains, as some neuroscientists believe?
When humans face moral dilemma, competing neural networks stage an internal fireworks display.
Source: Morality in the financial arena: Financial News – Yahoo! Finance
The FBI says police officers are about as likely to be killed in a vehicle crash as with a criminal’s gun. Cops drive in a high-threat, workload-intensive environment: blaring sirens, flashing computers, screaming radios, civilian drivers seemingly bent on kamikaze attacks, and, at their destination, angry bad guys who don’t particularly respect public servants. All reasons that cops take driving very seriously. With feedback from officers in the field, law enforcement driving instructors have compiled numerous tips to help their students avoid becoming a statistic. Here, we pass those along to you.
In Memoriam
By ADRIANA LINS de ALBUQUERQUE and ALICIA CHENG
As the number of casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq has
grown over the last four years, it has been easy for
Americans to at times lose track of the individual lives
that have been taken away.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/27/opinion/27intro.html?th&emc=th
War Without End
As disjointed as the Democrats have been, their approach
makes far more sense than President Bush’s denial of Iraq’s
civil war and his war-without-end against terror.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/27/opinion/27sun1.html?th&emc=th
Strife Foreseen in Iraq Exit, but Experts Split on Degree
By MICHAEL R. GORDON and ALISSA J. RUBIN
Many Iraqis fear a violent chain reaction should U.S.
troops withdraw, but they and American officials have many
different opinions on how bad things would get.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/27/world/middleeast/27withdraw.html?th&emc=th
Many Employers See Flaws as Immigration Bill Evolves
By ROBERT PEAR
High-tech companies and employers of lesser skilled workers
say their discontent with the bill shaping up in the Senate
has deepened.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/27/washington/27immig.html?th&emc=th
The Unintended Consequences of Hyperhydration
By JON MOOALLEM
Health-conscious Americans consume 30 billion
single-serving containers of bottled water a year.
Supporters of new bottle bills are trying to figure out
what to do with all the plastic.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/27/magazine/27Bottle-t.html?th&emc=th
Anyone for a Gathering of Introverts?
By TAMMY LA GORCE
The Web site Meetup.com helps people in suburbs form social
groups around anything they have in common.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/27/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/27Rmeetup.html?th&emc=th
MEDIA FRENZY
Why Hollywood Is Getting Serious About 3-D
By RICHARD SIKLOS
Several Hollywood bigwigs have new 3-D projects in the
works and are proclaiming the beginning of a bold new era
for cinema.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/27/business/yourmoney/27frenzy.html?th&emc=th
The Gross International Happiness Project (GIH) is based on the insight that conventional development concepts such as GNP and Per Capita Income do not properly reflect the general well being of the inhabitants of a nation.
In order to develop real progress and sustainability and to effectively combat trends which compromise the planet’s natural and human ecosystems, GIH aims to develop more appropriate and inclusive indicators which truly measure the quality of life within nations and organizations.
GIH is inspired by the concept of Gross National Happiness (GNH) proposed by the King of Bhutan, which puts the well being of individuals on top of the national development agenda.
Source: Gross International Happiness
PETERSBURG, Ky. — The entrance gates here are topped with metallic Stegosauruses. The grounds include a giant tyrannosaur standing amid the trees, and a stone-lined lobby sports varied sauropods. It could be like any other natural history museum, luring families with the promise of immense fossils and dinosaur adventures.
But step a little farther into the entrance hall, and you come upon a pastoral scene undreamt of by any natural history museum. Two prehistoric children play near a burbling waterfall, thoroughly at home in the natural world. Dinosaurs cavort nearby, their animatronic mechanisms turning them into alluring companions, their gaping mouths seeming not threatening, but almost welcoming, as an Apatosaurus munches on leaves a few yards away. …
…here at the $27 million Creation Museum, which opens on May 28 (just a short drive from the Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport), this pastoral scene is a glimpse of the world just after the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, in which dinosaurs are still apparently as herbivorous as humans, and all are enjoying a little calm in the days after the fall. …
And the shameful part is, they’ll make money hand over fist by spreading the ignorance.
