Bring the light of life everywhere and let it shine forever!!!

Bron: APS

AMSTERDAM, 6 december 2010 – De VN stelt op 10 december, de Internationale Dag van de Mensenrechten, de verdedigers van mensenrechten centraal. Om solidariteit te betuigen aan de mensenrechtenverdedigers in Tibet en China organiseren de Tibet Support Groep Nederland, de Tibetaanse Gemeenschap Nederland en International Campaign for Tibet Europe een vreedzame manifestatie bij de Chinese ambassade te Den Haag onder het motto: Speak up for the Tibetan heroes!

Het is bemoedigend voor mensenrechten-verdedigers wereldwijd dat dit jaar de Nobelprijs voor de Vrede aan Liu Xiaobo is toegekend. Hij vertegenwoordigt de groeiende stem onder het Chinese volk, die stelt dat het belangrijk is dat het Chinese leiderschap het Tibetaanse probleem oplost. Liu Xiaobo is mede-ondertekenaar van een brief aan de toenmalige Chinese president Jiang Zemin in september 1996. De brief onderschrijft het recht op Tibetaanse zelfbeschikking en het belang van een dialoog met de Dalai Lama. Een oplossing voor Tibet via dialoog is volgens Liu Xiaobo ook in het belang van het Chinese volk.

“In Tibet zijn veel mensenrechtenverdedigers die op internationaal niveau minder bekend zijn dan Liu Xiaobo, zoals Runggye Adak, Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche, Karma Samdrup, Dhondup Wangchen en Tsering Woeser”, vertelt Tsering Jampa, directeur van de International Campaign for Tibet Europe. “Velen van hen zitten lange gevangenisstraffen uit omdat zij zich uitspraken over de fundamentele rechten van het Tibetaanse volk. Zij zetten zich met groot persoonlijk risico in, zowel voor henzelf als hun families. Met deze manifestatie willen wij onze dankbaarheid tonen voor hun inzet en onze eer bewijzen aan deze Tibetaanse helden”.

China houdt Tibet al ruim 60 jaar bezet en vele duizenden Tibetanen kwamen om het leven. Tot op de dag van vandaag vinden er grove mensenrechtenschendingen plaats, zoals willekeurige detentie en marteling. Na de protesten in Tibet in het voorjaar van 2008, zitten er honderden politieke gevangenen vast of worden vermist. Met name het afgelopen jaar nam de systematische vervolging van Tibetaanse schrijvers, dichters, musici, filmmakers en andere kunstenaars in Tibet sterk toe.

Vandaag roepen wij, aan de hand van een memorandum, de Chinese regering op tot:
- de onvoorwaardelijke vrijlating van alle Tibetaanse politieke gevangenen
- rectificatie van het VN Convenant over Civiele en Politieke Rechten
- het invoeren van mensenrechtenhervormingen in Tibet
- het hervatten van de dialoog met de Dalai Lama en de Tibetaanse regering in ballingschap

http://www.savetibet.nl/

Niburu TV – De straat op… Tilburg from Ritchy Niburu on Vimeo.

Lorie Kramer – Houston, TX

Here we are again, in the midst of a media frenzy; ramped up emotions, statements by military officials, “church” figures, national and international drama. Entire groups of people are being lumped into neat little packages and judgement is passed accordingly, and loudly. All this because a pastor of a church with a congregation of about 50 in Florida threatens to burn a Koran if the proposed mosque near the site of 9-11 is not re-located. Veiled, and not so veiled threats are made if one side, or the other, doesn’t get their way. People all over the world are fussing about it.

This is the way the world solves problems anymore, apparently. No direct communication, no options for compromise. It goes straight to the hate, and the negative energy, and the implied violence, or outright violence. It’s disgusting. It’s almost like savages, barely humans, the way people treat each other anymore. But, what I find even more disgusting is how ignorant people are of the issues they are screaming about. I think the majority of the screamers in the US have read, at least part of, the Bible. The Rev. Jones’ group most certainly has. But, what about the Koran?

Pope John Paul II making nice with the Koran.

You don’t have to be Muslim to read it. You can even get it for your iPOD, these days….just like the Bible, and most other books of any importance. I have had a hard copy of the Koran for years. I am old fashioned – I like turning pages and knowing exactly what came off the press, before they get “Googleized”. As long as

you are reading that Koran or Bible in the United States, you are well within your right to do so; unlike being able to do the same with a Bible in other countries. In some other countries, you can’t even take a Bible in with you; without it being confiscated and burned, or confiscated and thrown in the trash. Seems like a double standard in a way, eh? Kind of like Mexico complaining about US immigration laws.

In general, I have respect for the “Holy Books” of any faith, I think that is only right. I’m a “Golden Rule” kind of girl. (Not “he who has the gold makes the rules”, the REAL one.) I don’t have to agree or believe in anyone’s God to be familiar with what their holy book says. I don’t allow myself to form opinions based on quotes taken here and there from things. I need the context.

Read the complete story

CERNOBBIO, Italy — Is the global economy out of the woods? Two years after near-meltdown, with the U.S. looking sluggish, equity markets groggy and Europeans fighting a debt crisis, experts gathered in Italy offered a generally gloomy outlook – especially for the United States and much of the industrialized world.

The doomsayers were led by New York University economist Nouriel Roubini, who warned in booming tones that “there is a significant risk of a double-dip recession in the United States” as well as in Japan and many European countries.

Some of the assembled experts and leaders at the annual Ambrosetti Forum on the shores of Lake Como were somewhat more upbeat: economist Edwin Truman, a senior fellow of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, predicted that “the most likely global outlook is subpar growth.”

But most appeared to agree on a sobering array of basic problems standing in the way of true recovery:

• Many of the growth drivers in place since the collapse of Lehman Brothers are winding up or have ended, including not only the massive stimulus spending but tax breaks, schemes such as the “cash for clunkers” program and – for some countries like Russia – high commodity prices.
• The stimulus deemed necessary to jump-start moribund economies soon causes deficits and debt, upsetting the markets enough to spur austerity – which undermines growth.
• Most of the world’s growth stems from a developing world led by China – which is so dependent on exports that it needs the West to continue to buy, and so will suffer if recovery in the rich world proves short-lived.
• Europe continues to lose competitiveness partly because of the euro, which – for all the fretting over its dip earlier this year at the height of the Greek debt crisis – remains high in purchasing price parity terms versus the U.S. dollar.
• The sector that is widely seen as the spark of the global recession – U.S. real estate – has not recovered, with house-buying flat and the mortgage market, with its related financial instruments, essentially still in ruins.
• The jobs picture is not improving and in parts of the developed world – such as Spain, with some 20 percent unemployment – it is disastrous.

The warnings come amid mixed news on indicators. The European Central Bank raised its growth projections Thursday and its president, Jean-Claude Trichet, said recession was “not in the cards.” But the bank said the situation remained uncertain and that it would keep measures to supply banks with additional credit in place until the end of the year.

The U.S. unemployment rate rose in August for the first time in four months as hiring by private employers proved insufficient to keep pace with a large increase in the number of people looking for work. The Labor Department said Friday that companies did add a net total 67,000 new jobs last month, down from July’s upwardly revised total of 107,000.

But more than a half-million Americans resumed their job searches, which drove up the jobless rate to 9.6 percent from 9.5 percent in July – a figure above the rate in Britain and Germany.

“I see a very weak labor market,” said Roubini, who gained celebrity for predicting the global collapse of 2008 when others were still celebrating the boom times. He noted noting unemployment is close to 10 percent and almost 17 percent when including discouraged workers or partially employed ones.

He puts the chance of recession at 40 percent or more – a position he has staked in recent weeks – and said even weak growth would still feel like a recession.

“The U.S. has to create 150,000 every month in the private sector just to stabilize the rate and prevent it from rising,” he said. “We’d have to create 300,000 jobs every month for the next three years just to bring back the level of employment to before this recession started,” Roubini said.

“Nobody … believes the U.S. is going to create any time any amount of jobs like that,” he said.

And even that wouldn’t be enough when taking into account the young people entering the labor market, he said.

Harvard University historian Niall Ferguson noted that since 2001 the United States has seen its debt-to-GDP ratio double to 66 percent and that it may well be headed toward the danger zone of 100 percent. “This is a completely unsustainable fiscal policy,” said Ferguson. “Pretty soon the U.S. will be spending more on debt service than national security. … That’s a tipping point for any global power.”

Americans “just have to go down in their living standards” after years in which their living standards soared in part based on foreign credit which is no longer there,” said University of Munich economics professor Hans-Werner Sinn. Jacob Frenkel, Chairman of JP Morgan Chase International, urged the United States to rein in entitlements as part of a “political deal” that recognizes reality.

Chairing a panel, CNBC anchor Maria Bartiromo drew laughs by challenging the scowling Roubini to come up with “any good news.”

He offered that “emerging economies have high potential growth.”

But even that comes with a caveat: Roubini warned that world growth leader China was too dependent on exports to the struggling West and predicted that within a year its economic growth will be overtaken by India, a huge nation much more reliant on its domestic market for development.

The leading Chinese delegate to the forum, Cheng Siwei, seemed to agree with the criticism. “We must change our investment pattern from investment driven to relying more on domestic consumption,” said Cheng, a former top Chinese official who chairs the China Soft-Science Research Society among other positions.

What about Greece, whose near-default four months ago rattled the nerves of investors around the globe?

“Greece will not make it,” said Sinn. He said the world can either subsidize Athens indefinitely, force a degree of austerity that actually risks “civil war,” or – in what he suggested was the least bad option – encourage Greece to restore its drachma currency despite the domestic banking collapse that could well result.

Sinn noted that bond spreads – the difference between the cost of borrowing for troubled countries such as Greece and solid ones such as Germany – have swiftly returned to the startling levels that preceded the Greek bailout in May.

Truman ended his remarks on a high note, noting that in recent quarters’ “U.S. productivity increase has been significant.” In the second recent quarter, productivity dropped 1.8 percent.

But higher productivity, while good for companies’ bottom lines, is also a reflection of the stagnant labor market and the shrinkage of payrolls as firms hope to produce as much as before with fewer and more productive staff.

In perhaps an illustration of that psychology, several hundred business leaders at the forum were asked for their projections on their own companies’ prospects. Voting electronically, some 70 percent predicted a rise in turnover by the end of 2010 and almost half predicted a rise in their firms’ investment.

But less than a third saw a chance for new hiring; almost half saw no change – and about a quarter predicted even more reductions.

SOURCE: huffingtonpost