Monthly Archives: March 2009

Dalai Lama Will Headline Peace Summit In Vancouver

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No way I can go, but you can bet I’ll be on top of the live streaming.
clipped from www.canada.com

Joining the Dalai Lama in Vancouver will be Bishop Desmond Tutu, who was awarded the Nobel peace prize for his work to end apartheid; tentatively environmental activist Dr. Wangari Maathai, the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize; former Irish president Mary Robinson; spiritual writer Eckhart Tolle; and educators, philanthropists and entertainers such as the Blue Man Group.
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Ashley Biden’s Alleged Cocaine Use, If True, Could Be Either Good Or Bad

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clipped from www.alternet.org
On one hand, I can envision Vice President Biden, realizing that drug use is so widespread that it even touches his daughter, would become more sympathetic to other people who use drugs. There are hundreds of thousands people behind bars serving long prison sentences on drug charges. The realization that other people’s kids are living in a cage for doing the same thing that his daughter did could be a transformative experience.
On the other hand, these experiences can cause people to move into another direction. When Jimmy Carter was president, his administration seriously considered marijuana decriminalization. There is even footage of Carter and others in his administration saying that the laws against marijuana are more harmful than the drug.
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The Dalai Lama and Me [Excellent Read]

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Buddhism: The Dalai Lama and me

It all began — as good stories often do — in a preposterous way. It was late 1971. Hong Kong-born Victor Chan, who now resides on Bowen Island, was chatting with two young Western women in a teahouse just off Kabul’s famous Chicken Street. It was the place every trans-Asian traveller stopped on the so-called Hippie Highway.

Two men sitting nearby invited the three foreigners to an Afghani banquet the following night and they naively accepted. The next evening, somewhere in the foothills of the Hindu Kush, a rifle was produced, rape discussed, and murder threatened, as the three captives rode with their kidnappers into the mountains. Days passed.

Under these circumstances, Chan, then 26, began a clandestine love affair with one of the women. Cheryl Crosby, a student of Buddhism in New York City, confided to him that she was on her way to India to visit the Dalai Lama. She had a letter of introduction.

Chan agreed that if they escaped their captors, he’d join her on her pilgrimage.

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“In the present circumstances, no one can afford to assume that someone else will solve their problems.  Every individual has a responsibility to help guide our global family in the right direction.  Good wishes are not sufficient; we must become actively engaged.”

– His Holiness the Dalai Lama, from “The Path to Tranquility:  Daily Wisdom” (Snow Lion Publications)

Chine To Reopen Tibet To Tourism

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clipped from www.nytimes.com

The Chinese government will reopen Tibet to foreign tourists on April 5 after a nearly six-week ban, according to the state-run news agency Xinhua.

Foreign tourists were barred from visiting Tibet in late February before the 50th anniversary of a failed rebellion against Chinese rule. Security was stepped up in the Tibet Autonomous Region and border areas. The anniversary passed on Saturday without serious unrest.
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The Unmaking of a Marine

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t r u t h o u t | Tyler E. Boudreau: “The Unmaking of A Marine”

…by relying heavily on numbers and press releases as a way of covering both conflicts, the public has been rendered incapable of experiencing or feeling any dramatic element associated with the devastation. It’s a sad truth that the average person is unable to accurately say how many U.S. soldiers have been killed and wounded since the wars began (4,257 U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq, more than 31,000 wounded, 320,000 diagnosed with brain injuries)[sic].

The Cost of Cuddly Carnivores

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clipped from www.nytimes.com
Ever since the Stanford economist Rosamond Naylor concluded in a 2000 paper in the journal Nature that it took three pounds of wild fish to provide enough food to grow one pound of farmed salmon, environmentalists have been apoplectic. They argue that the removal of wild “forage” fish threatens to starve whales, seals and other predators; that anchovies, mackerel and other “pelagic forage fish” should be used to feed humans; and that feed made from wild fish can give farm-raised fish higher levels of contaminants. As a result of all these issues, ocean preservationists have focused their ire on salmon farming. But in doing so they diverted attention from another problem of equal importance: the role played by those land-based creatures that also put their muzzles in the fish meal trough.
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