Lammas 2007 Newsletter: Honoring Our Mother and Her Harvest
August 2, 2007

by Curtis Lang and Jane Sherry		print version
		print version (graphics)

Warm greetings from your Editors, Curtis Lang and Jane Sherry.

Dear friends – August 1 and 2 we celebrate the ancient Festival of the Wheat Harvest known as Lammas, or Loaf-Mass Day, the sacred cross quarter day between the Summer Solstice & Autumn Equinox when the Mother returns the first fruits of the year’s harvests to come.

The Celts celebrate this Summer Festival from sunset August 1 until sunset August 2 and call it “Lughnasad” after the God Lugh. This is the Festival commemorating the wake of Lugh, the Sun-King, whose light begins to dwindle after the summer solstice.

Here in the Hudson Valley where we live, the corn in our vegetable garden has tasseled and many varieties of tomatoes, small and large, golden and red, round and pear-shaped, striped or not, fill the air with their characteristic mouth-watering fruity aroma. It’s a challenge to find all the beans in our closely-packed bed of climbing German Black Beans. Golden banners are fluttering in the wind, fertile silks turn brown, and the beginning of the corn harvest is about to reach our tables. We give thanks for the sweet corn and for all our Mother’s bounty.

Lammas is the day to celebrate the Eternal Maiden, the Virgin Mother, the Corn Mother, the Great Earth Mother of Nourishment, our Mother of Abundance. Lammas is the day we express our gratitude that She feeds all our children. Celtic, Neo-Pagan and Christians alike light fires to celebrate the strength of summer’s incandescence and the promise the first fruits of harvest make for the community’s secure winter season.

Yet this year Lammas is a festival of mixed blessings and mixed emotions. Mother, we are grateful for our privileged lives and for the opportunities we often take for granted. Mother, we are sad and we mourn the many ways that human beings undermine their Mother’s most precious gifts of clean water, clean air, fertile soil, diverse vegetable, animal and bird brothers and sisters and the rest of the Mother’s web of creation -- the environment that has given birth to all of us and nurtures us from generation to generation. Mother, we celebrate our unity with the web of life, with your Holy Body, planet Earth.

Today we are on the brink of monumental climate change, brought about by the excesses of our industrial civilization and our excessive reliance upon a rational materialistic view of the Universe. We no longer act as humble caretakers of the Earthly garden.

We have set ourselves up as Lords of creation. We seek to control, dominate and subdue nature and measure our success by our ability to transform humanity’s shared environmental resources into wealth we seek to utterly consume in our own lifetimes without regard for the wellbeing of future generations.

We know that the sources of energy we use to fuel our global human civilization are destroying the environmental resources our children and grandchildren will depend upon for their survival. We know that we are rapidly depleting the most valuable of those resources in a global consumption binge that can only be compared in its severity and toxicity to the terminal stages of drug addiction.

We are depleting the soil, poisoning the air, polluting the oceans, and exterminating animal, bird and plant species by the thousands.

We are manufacturing new genetically modified plant species and introducing them into the environment without testing them to see if they are compatible with existing bio-systems.

We are creating cloned animals to be bred as sources of food for hungry humans without regard for the well-being of the animals, or the suitability of cloned meat for human consumption.

At the same time that the world is beset with conflicts between religious warriors representing many different spiritual traditions, including Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Hindus, there is also an increasing environmental awareness arising among practitioners of all faiths.

Even those who adhere to fundamentalist interpretations of sacred scriptures are finding common environmental ground with more tolerant and ecumenical spiritual practitioners who honor all the wisdom school traditions of all religions.

And spiritual environmental activists are finding common ground with their secular counterparts.

Today, Mother, we celebrate the ancient wisdom school teachings of East and West that speak of the web of life, and of humanity’s responsibility to maintain that web of life intact for future generations.

Buddhism, Islam and Hinduism all provide a treasure trove of spiritual teachings on the interdependence of all living things in a web of life. This month, we offer links to lengthy articles exploring the specifics of these teachings in the newsletter below in the section on “Top Spiritual Stories from Around the Web”.

All the major religions of the world agree that humanity bears a tremendous responsibility to the Earth, our Mother, and to the future generations of human beings, plants, animals, birds, and creeping, crawling creatures inhabiting this garden planet.

All the major religions of the world agree that humanity must temper its greed, curb its rampant consumption, extend a helping hand to the more than one billion people living in extreme poverty, and radically alter the industrial lifestyle we have come to accept as normal in the last two hundred years.

Mother, today, in celebration of the ancient wisdom teachings that honor you as the Divine One, the Source of all life, we ask your blessing and your help, that we may find our way back to the path of Spirit, and that we may find the courage and strength to walk that path again, all the way to the final goal – help us in our struggle to regain our equilibrium as individuals and as a people, wounded as we are with our religious wars, our greed, our self-centered lifestyles and our short-sightedness. Mother, help us to reconnect with the ancient wisdom teachings known to humanity since prehistoric times, and celebrated at the Seasonal Festivals held in your honor each year, marking the turning points on the great Seasonal Wheel of Time.

Mother, today we celebrate the unity of the human family.

Mother, we ask your forgiveness for our destructive ways. Mother,we seek today to learn to forgive one another. Help us, Mother, to learn to love you as the old ones loved you, so that we may heal ourselves and our environment.

Here is a Lammas Poem by Jane Sherry:

Lammas Poem

I am a fish.
I walk out of the water on four legs
then two.

I grow wings
and fly to the treetops
in my Paradise.

I am black
white yellow red
brown skinned.

I am a wise woman
child snake man
frog lion insect.

As I sit in the treetops
I remember the time
of Fires of Floods of Beginnings.

I remember the Future Earth
a place of Balance
Breath Harmony Water & Fire.

I am my country
your town
our grandchildren.

I am the cloud
that rains on desert,
the river that runs to sea.

I am the peace
that rules
at the Heart
of all things.

Top Satya Center Stories of the Week

In “Climate Change: Opening the Window of Opportunity”, new Satya Center contributor Elizabeth Sawin, director of the Sustainability Institute’s “Our Climates, Ourselves” program, offers some profound insights on the personal and political implications of global warming, and suggestions on what one person can do to help save the human-friendly environment we now enjoy on Earth.

Commenting on George Bush’s proposal to erect giant space mirrors to reflect excess sunshine as the ozone layer decays, Elizabeth says, “A giant sun-shield up in space wouldn’t do anything to lessen the impact of CO2 on ocean chemistry. Setting - and enforcing - limits on the amount of CO2 coming out of industries, homes, and tail-pipes, on the other hand, would help ameliorate both the warming of the planet and the acidification of the oceans.”

“Acting closer to the heart of the problem recognizes the interconnection of problems and increases the odds that the effort applied solves multiple problems simultaneously.”

“Excessive CO2 production may be closer to the heart of things, but it’s not THE heart, of course. There are deeper reasons, the reasons that cause us to produce so much greenhouse gas pollution in the first place.”

“If moving closer to the heart of things - moving from the symptom of rising temperature to its cause, CO2 pollution - produces the ability to solve multiple problems with a single solution, then what might be the power of reaching even deeper - into consumerism, into our sense that the Earth is ours to dominate, into the assumptions of the industrial age?”

“Impeach Now!” argues prize-winning author and Satya Center contributor Andrew Bard Schmookler in his new article, which offers the American peace movement a detailed roadmap for explicit action to impeach George Bush and Dick Cheney, including a list of first steps to take.

Schmookler has always been a principled opponent of the Bush administration who has sought common ground with American conservatives and opposed impeachment because of the tactical problems associated with this grave political step. Now, Schmookler has changed his mind about impeachment. Why now?

“There have been three important changes since last November’s election,” says Schmookler.

“First, in the first half year of this Congress, after years of virtually no congressional oversight, the investigative hearings conducted by the Democratic Congress have brought a whole stream of administration wrong-doing to the attention of the American people.”

“Second, and likely at least partially as a result of the first, the proportion of the American public now favoring movement toward impeachment has reached a stunning level. Almost half of the public (46%) favors the impeachment of the president, and more than half (54%) favors the impeachment of the vice president.”

“These are already numbers that greatly limit the political risk to the Democrats in pressing forward with impeachment. And it can be assumed that the actual impeachment process –if it is conducted with reasonable political and prosecutorial skill- would raise those numbers considerably.”

“It looks as though about 30% of the public will support Bush regardless of any facts presented about any high crimes he has committed, but there remains an additional quarter of the public whose support might still be won over to supporting impeachment.”

“Then there’s the third important change –and in some respects it might be the most important one. And that is that the Bushites –by their arrogance, their stonewalling, their imperial usurpations– have quite blatantly and publicly blocked every other recourse.”

In “Mike Gravel: Still Principled After All These Years”, Satya Center Contributor James Ridgeway, who is the Washington correspondent for “Mother Jones” magazine, gives a short report about the Democratic anti-war presidential contender who is giving the Establishment Democrats fits and attracting a crowd on You-Tube.

Former Senator Mike Gravel, who was instrumental in publicizing the explosive and revelatory Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War, says that George Bush lost the Iraq war the day he invaded Iraq on false pretenses.

During the Democratic Presidential debates on April 26, Gravel confronted the usual suspects, telling the audience that “Some of these people frighten me. When you have mainline candidates that turn around and say, ‘There’s nothing off the table with respect to Iran. That’s code for nukes. Nuclear devices. When I’m President of the United States there will be no pre-emptive wars with nuclear devices. In my mind it’s immoral, and it’s been immoral for the last fifty years as part of American foreign policy.”

“For a year the Democratic Party establishment ignored Gravel,” Ridgeway explains. Nobody knew who he was, and since he had no money, nobody cared. Then, at a sleepy Democratic debate in South Carolina Gravel hit the headlines. He challenged his rivals to end the Iraq war by legislative fiat and make it a ‘felony’ for the president to keep troops in Iraq.”

“Gravel was all over the TV. Visits to his website zoomed up, and YouTube clips of his debate remarks and even his campaign videos began drawing tens of thousands of views.”

In “Ascension Practices: The 144 Crystal Earthkeeper Grid”, Tyberonn, a new Satya Center contributor, traces the evolution of the Earth’s aura in terms of sacred geometry, and explains how the emergence of new forms within the Earth’s magnetic field has tremendous importance for our meditation practices and for human spiritual evolution.

“The Crystalline 144 grid is now emerging around planet Earth,” Tyberonn explains. “A 'seed-crystal' matrix, the double penta-dodecahedron,is being born. The evolved geometry is divinely fashioned to resonate a higher frequency for the new Earth.”

Tyberonn’s article also contains a lengthy channeled message from Archangel Metatron.

“All of you within the crystalline energy are extreme energy in motion, energy as desire expressing itself and so your work calls forth now a finer frequency,” explains Metatron. “Imagine that if you will take vitamins for your body they must be put so they can be absorbed by the body so they can be well used, they can generate wellness, well being, and health and so it is the same with frequencies and energies.”

“They must now surround you in ways that you can absorb them into your energy fields, transferring them, converting them, and amplifying them into your own work, into your desires, into your fulfillment and into all ways that touch brother, sister, humanity & all life kingdoms and such so these words are brought to you from the beginning from the center of your being, from the center of my being that they will touch energetically and so create themselves easily, fortuitously in the days and weeks that come.”

“Such it is with the grid you see, it too is a system that will allow you nurturing into a higher resonance, a higher more fulfilling resonance. For that that you call the Ascension is upon you, and in but a wink of the cosmic eye it will be done!”

In “Like the Water”, poet Jed Myers explores the mysterious intersection between the egoistic self and spirit realms which is the evanescent dwelling place of the human soul.

In “Herbal Pharmacy”, WiseWoman, author and herbalist Susun Weed argues that “Making your own medicines saves you money if you follow the Wise Woman Tradition of using local herbs, free for the taking.”

In this article Susun provides the basic information you need to begin foraging for herbs in your nearby field, woods or forest habitat and start working with herbs safely at home to improve hour health and well-being.

“Even one day's work in field, forest, and kitchen can provide you with many years' worth of medicines. When you make your own, you know for sure what's in it, where it came from, when and how it was harvested, and how fresh and potent it is.”

Top Spiritual Stories From Around the Web

[Ed. Note: These are excerpts from long articles Jane and I feel are exceptional messages of love and light, with important information for all Lightworkers. If you resonate with their energy, click on the links for more. . .]

Resurgence
THE POINT OF RETURN
By Satish Kumar, July-August 2007

It is ‘cool’ to be an optimist.

PESSIMISM IS IN fashion. Scientists, environmentalists and climatologists are claiming that collapse is around the corner and civilisation is coming to an end. Book after book tells us that we have passed the tipping point and have reached the point of no return. The skies are saturated with CO2 and the atmosphere is filled with greenhouse gases. We are told over and over that whatever we do, we cannot reverse the rise in temperature or prevent the sea from flooding London! What happened to New Orleans will happen to New York. Global warming is here to stay. The scenario of doom and gloom is expounded by experts and activists alike.

We do not underestimate the severity of the climate crisis. We respect the scientists who are predicting a catastrophic future for humanity. We agree that our present way of life, so dependent on the use of fossil fuel, is hanging on a cliff edge. If we go any further we will fall into the abyss. So the only thing we can do now is to take a step back; let’s call it “the point of return”. We need to return to a way of life that is free from damaging dependence on fossil fuel.

At present we burn billions of barrels of petroleum every day for our food, clothes, homes, heating, lighting, transport and entertainment. This way of life is not only wasteful and unsustainable, but also very dangerous. As Sir Crispin Tickell writes in his article, it took nature 200 million years to create the vast store of fossil energy that we have almost spent in 200 years. The speed with which we are exhausting fossil energy is incredible. Sir Crispin suggests a fundamental shift in values and a radical return to a holistic worldview.

There is a word in Sanskrit for the point of return: it is pratikraman. Its opposite is atikraman, which means stepping outside our natural limits. Atikraman happens when we break the universal law. Returning to the centre of one’s being or to the source of inner wisdom is pratikraman. These two Sanskrit words provide a useful approach to understanding the current human predicament and a possible way out. A profound introspection is needed to examine the state of our psyche; we need to ask, are we meeting our need or indulging our greed? Are we healing or wounding the Earth?

In the context of climate change and global warming, addiction to oil is atikraman and a return to the energy derived from air, water and sun is pratikraman. One way to begin our pratikraman is to stop and put a cap on consumerism. We need a moratorium on motorways and runways. No new homes without insulation. We need to put an immediate freeze on industrialised agriculture everywhere in the world. Once we have put such a complete freeze on the use of fossil fuel, we can start the reduction process and the return journey to renewable resources. If we plan and manage our return journey carefully we should be able to escape the projected meltdown. We were able to repair the hole in the ozone layer by reducing the use of CFCs; we should be able to mitigate the extreme consequences of global warming if we can put an immediate cap on the use of fossil fuel and prepare to make the return journey instantly.

To meet the challenge of global warming, we need to change from being consumers to being artists; we have to take refuge in the arts and crafts. As William Morris advocated long ago, arts and crafts ignite our imagination, stimulate our creativity and bring us a sense of fulfilment. Poetry, painting, pottery, music, meditation, gardening, sculpting and umpteen other forms of arts and crafts can meet all basic human needs; produce beautiful objects to use, which need not require the use of fossil fuel. Human happiness, true prosperity and joyful living can only emerge from a life of elegant simplicity.

We are at the point of return from gross to subtle, from glamorous to gracious, from hedonism to healing, from conquest of the Earth to conservation of Nature, and from quantities of possessions to quality of life. It is ‘cool’ to be an optimist.

Au Sabel Institute
Caring for Creation

Caring for Creation is everyone's business, everywhere. From individual homes to the household of the biosphere, every person and every institution is a steward of Creation, serving and being served by the creatures and processes that nurture and sustain us all. By serving creation and one another, we serve and glorify God.

Caring for Creation is not a matter of science alone, or ethics alone, or practical action alone. To be responsible and effective, it requires all three. Creation itself is a complex functioning whole of people, plants, animals, natural systems, physical processes, social structures, and more, all of which are sustained by God's love and ordered by God's wisdom. Thus, Au Sable brings together the full range of disciplines - from chemistry to economics to marine biology to theology - that we need if we are to be good stewards of God's household.

Finally, as earthkeepers we have Creation itself as a collaborator. God has provided humans with the capacity to learn from Creation, so that we may order our lives in harmony with God's purposes for Creation. And God has provided Creation as the great evangelist, awakening humility, awe and wonder at the divine power and majesty. In its beauty and integrity, Creation itself praises and points to the One in whom all things are held together, the One who calls us to serve and keep the garden.

asiantribune.com
A Newspaper Published by World Institute for Asian Studies. Vol. 7 No. 001
Buddhist contribution to environmental protection – Judge Weeramantry
Wed, 2007-06-20 02:22

Buddhism is replete with perspectives on the long-term future. It stresses at every stage the fleeting nature of the present and the transitory nature of present acquisitions.

With its uncompromising quest for justice, righteous conduct and non-violence and with the spirit of universalism which pervades it, Buddhism also offers a rich reservoir of conceptual materials on all aspects of the human condition.

It is to be noted that the Buddha after he attained enlightenment at the age of 35 was not a recluse living away from people and their problems but that he moved among them during the remaining 45 years of his life, teaching them how to address their day to day problems. Thus problems of government also engaged his attention. Among the Kings of the time who sought his advice were King Pasenadi of Kosala who along with his regional kings sought his counsel. King Bimbisara of Magadha and his son King Ajasatta are also among those who are recorded as turning to him for advice on governmental matters.

The Noble Eight Fold Path

The noble eight fold path consists of right vision, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right efforts, right mindfulness and right concentration. Treatises could be written on the relevance of each of these to the human future.

On right livelihood for example Buddhist teaching requires every person to consider the manner in which the performance of his duties as employee would impact on society and the future. Employment, for example, in the armaments industry, which imperils the human future, would be a violation of the path of right livelihood. Any employment which causes damage to the environment such as manufacturing of toxic substances, felling of forests and the adverse exploitation of marine resources would also be a violation of right livelihood. Any employment which involves damage to the environment such as working in the nuclear industry, manufacturing toxic substances, and the exploitation and depletion of marine resources would be included in this prohibition.

. . . Kutadanta Sutta Buddhism points out that it is the responsibility of the government to protect trees and other organic life. It is described in the Sutta on Buddhist polity named, ‘The Ten Duties of the King.’ (Dasarajadhamma). The Kutadanta Sutta points out that the government should take active measures to provide protection to flora and fauna.

Pupphavagga in Dhammapada, points out that one should live in the environment without causing any harm to it. It states: ‘As a bee that gathers honey from a flower and departs from it without injuring the flower or its colours or its fragrance, the sage dwells in his village.’ The flower moreover ensures the continuity of the species and the bee in taking pollen does not interfere with nature’s design.

Suttanipata - This contains a further expression of goodwill towards all forms of life
“Whatever breathing creatures there may be
No matter whether they are frail or firm,
With none excepted be they long or big
Or middle-sized, or be they short or small
Or whether they are dwelling far or near
Existing or yet seeking to exist
May beings all be of a blissful heart.”

Mahasukha Jataka contains a poetic description of the close interrelationship between the plant and animal kingdom.

Sakka: Whenever fruitful trees abound
A flock of hungry birds is found:
But should the trees all withered be.
Away at once the birds will flee.

Rejection of Anthropocentrism

Buddhism is completely averse to the notion that nature and all created things exist for the benefit of mankind. Mankind is part of the entire cosmic order but not in a position of dominance. Humans are just as much subject to the natural order of the universe as any other form of sentient existence. “Buddhism is ecocentric rather than anthropocentric since it views humans as an integral part of nature.

Unity of the Human Family

There is another aspect in which humanity is unique. The Buddha was perhaps the first to point out that whereas every living species on the planet, whether it be a plant or a worm or an insect or a bird or a mammal, has many sub-species within it, humans are all cast in one species.

This reflection is of immense importance on the unity of the human family and has major implications for our topic. This one species occupies one common home and it follows inevitably that it must do all it can to protect its environment and the species itself.

The interdependence of all things

Buddhism strongly emphasises the interdependence of all entities and events. There is no entity animate or inanimate and no event however trivial which is not in some way interconnected with every other. No entity or event is an island unto itself. The linkages and inter-linkages are all-pervasive and inextricable.

In the exposition of the Thai monk Buddhadasa Bikkhu, “the entire cosmos is a cooperative. The sun, the moon and the stars live together as a cooperative. The same is true for humans and animals, trees, and the earth. When we realise that the world is a mutual, interdependent, cooperative enterprise then we can build a noble environment.”

Coexistence rather than Conquest

The aim that Buddhism instils in every individual mind is emancipation from suffering. The route to that emancipation is not the pursuit of power and possessions but the very opposite – the rejection of the pursuit of those materialistic goals which are so greatly imperilling the human future.

Conquest of the natural environment, of other species or of other groups of the human family is hence the very reverse of the ideals which Buddhism teaches. Co-existence is vital and this requires a recognition and respect of those other species and groups and not an attempt at dominance.

State Duties towards the Environment

. . .According to Cakkavattisihanada Sutta the ideal king is expected to protect not only people but quadrupeds and birds.

King Asoka’s 5th Pillar Edict stating that he in fact placed various species of wild animals under protection is one of the earliest recorded instances of a specific governmental policy of conservation.

Also, in Sri Lanka, edicts were issued that not a drop of water was to be permitted to flow into the sea without first serving the needs of agriculture. There were also royal edicts prohibiting the felling of virgin forests.

asiantribune.com
A Newspaper Published by World Institute for Asian Studies. Vol. 7 No. 001
Islam, the environment and the human future
- Judge Weeramantry
Sat, 2007-07-07 04:26

Islam is of course based primarily on the Holy Qur’an, the revelation of God to the Prophet Mohammed. This is supplemented by teachings of the Prophet as recorded in thousands of traditions regarding what he said and did, as collected by his followers. In all of these there are numerous references to the human future and to the environment, it being continuously stressed that the environment is God’s creation and must therefore be treated with care and due attention.

. . .Just as in Hindu law there is a principle of good or righteous conduct which is described as conduct according to Dharma, so also in Islamic law, good personal conduct (which is known as Din) is a central part of Islamic teachings.

. . .Islam, as a way of life expects human beings to conserve the environment for several reasons. Its concern for the environment appears in many Qur’anic verses:

“Allah is he who raised The Heavens without any pillars that ye can see… He has subjected the sun and the moon! Each one runs (its course) for a term appointed. He doth regulate all affairs, explaining the Signs in detail… And it is He who spread out The Earth, and set thereon Mountains standing firm, and (flowing) rivers: and fruit of every kind He made in pairs, two and two: He draweth the Night as a veil O’er the day. Behold, verily in these things there are signs for those who consider”(Qur’an 13: 2-4) .

All this is God’s creation and Muslims should therefore seek to protect and preserve their environment. Moreover by so doing they protect God's creatures who are not merely objects but are believed to have a spirit and purpose of their own. They are in fact believed to pray to God and praise Him. Humankind might not be able to understand how these creatures praise God but this does not mean that they do not do so: “The seven heavens and the earth, And all beings therein, Declare His glory: There is not a thing But celebrates His praise; And yet ye understand not How they declare His Glory!” (Qur’an 17:4)

The Islamic attitude of duty towards the environment is not merely derived from the fact that God is its creator. There are other reasons as well.

One is that humans act as the agents of God on earth. This agency is not blind and mechanical but is creative in its own way and moreover it must be fulfilled by operating according to God's instructions.

Another reason why, in Islam, humans are expected to protect the environment is that no other creature is able to perform this task. Humans are the only beings that God has "entrusted" with the responsibility of looking after the earth. This trusteeship is seen by Islam to be so onerous and burdensome that no other creature could 'accept' it.

“Lo! We offered the trust Unto the heavens and the Earth and the hills, But they shrank from bearing it And were afraid of it And man assumed it” (Qur’an 33: 72). By this act of acceptance, humans accepted responsibility for the custody of the environment.

. . .The ultimate objective of life for a Muslim is salvation which is achieved through peace and harmony. "Salam, the Arabic root of the word "Islam," means "peace and harmony". Therefore, Islamic theologians argue that an "Islamic way of life entails living in peace and harmony" at individual and social as well as ecological levels (Hadith).

. . .There are direct teachings of the Prophet that the earth should not be over-exploited or abused. The earth itself had rights as indeed had the trees and wildlife. For the protection of the land, forests and wildlife, the Prophet created inviolable zones known as hima and haram. In these zones the natural resources were to be left untouched.

. . .It is impermissible in Islam to abuse one's rights as khalifa (agents or trustees), because the notion of acting in "good faith" underpins Islamic law. The planet was inherited by all humankind and "all its posterity from generation to generation.... Each generation is only the trustee. In other contexts, the concept of khalifa refers to the fact that waves of humanity will continuously succeed each other and inherit planet earth.

asiantribune.com
A Newspaper Published by World Institute for Asian Studies. Vol. 7 No. 001
Judge Weeramantry focuses on Hindu contribution to environment protection
Sat, 2007-06-09 04:25

There are several principles of importance to the human future that can be distilled from the teachings of Hinduism – principles relating to the inevitability of the consequences of one’s actions, the interconnectedness of all things, the linkage between past, present and future, the integrity of the human family, the harmony that is necessary between humanity and the natural order and many others.

Running through them all is the all-pervasiveness of the divinity, which is present in all things and a cosmic view of space and time which militates strongly against a short-term view of the consequences of one’s actions. This requires us to think, moreover, of the prevalence of the needs of the community over the egoism of the individual.

Hinduism, regarded by its adherents as Sanatana Dharma, or the Eternal Truth, contains perhaps the most ancient religious scripture known to the world. These texts contain the theology, philosophy and guidance for daily life that form the basis of the religion of over a billion people in the world today.

. . .It is clear that the most ancient texts on Hinduism demonstrate through the praise of the deities an ecological awareness and great respect for the natural world. There are many specific teachings on environmental matters contained in all these writings and ecological activists have drawn much inspiration from the text. A few examples are:

* “Do not cut trees, because they remove pollution.” (Rig Veda, 6:48:17)

* “Do not disturb the sky and do not pollute the atmosphere.” (Yajur Veda,5:43)

* Destruction of forests is taken as destruction of the state, and reforestation an act of rebuilding the state and advancing its welfare. Protection of animals is considered a sacred duty. (Charak Sanhita)

All of this is an enormous source of concepts, principles, traditions and practices which is of deep relevance to the study of the future of humanity and of the long-term perspectives which it is so essential to bring into the thought-frames of the present generation.

Among these concepts are the following:

2.The Presence of the Divinity in all Things

An important feature of the Hindu worldview is that the supreme deity resides in all things. This divinity is present in all things for as Sri Krishnan says in the Bhagavad-Gita:

“On me the Universe is strung

Like clustered pearls upon a thread

In water I am the flavour

In sun and moon the light”

We are told in the Upanishads that “after creating the Universe God entered into every object created.” Consequently his creations must be treated with respect.

This view of the relationship between God and creation inspires Hindus to maintain a harmonious relationship between human beings and nature.

3. The interconnectedness of all things

Hindu law and philosophy are set in a cosmic view of the universe with aeons of time spreading behind and before us. The present and even the centuries behind and before us are a microcosm of time in the infinite expanse of eternity.

Within that cosmic view there is also a view of the interconnectedness of all things. The nexus between things past, present and future is emphasised as is the causal relationship between them. All of this flows from the concept that God pervades all things. Since the divine presence is everywhere all things have an integral connection with all others.

4. The Integrity of Humanity, Past, Present and Future

It follows from what has been said before that Hinduism takes a holistic view of the human community. Past, present and future are one organic whole just as all of humanity is one organic whole.

In the words of Radhakrishnan “To the Hindu, human society is not an organisation. It is an organism. It is a living, growing thing.”

5. The Unity of the Human Family

We have referred already to the integrity of the human family, past present and future. It is one family occupying one small abode in space. As such their vision is not of a planet that is vast and limitless but of one which is small and limited. One family occupies it and must therefore share it, small though it be.

The One World/One Family concept has today become more urgent than ever, for whether through trade or communications or travel or the information revolution or the shortage of earth resources or pollution, we are increasingly realising that we survive or perish as one family.

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Top News Stories From Around the Web

[Ed. Note: These are excerpts from lengthy news stories that provide the analytical context, the intellectual framework, the historical analysis, that is so completely missing from most so-called news in the mainstream media. If you are interested in the topic, click on the link provided to read more. . .]

Financial Times
Globalisation backlash in rich nations
By Chris Giles in London
Published: July 22 2007 18:11 | Last updated: July 22 2007 18:11

A popular backlash against globalisation and the leaders of the world’s largest companies is sweeping all rich countries, an FT/Harris poll shows.

Large majorities of people in the US and in Europe want higher taxation for the rich and even pay caps for corporate executives to counter what they believe are unjustified rewards and the negative effects of globalisation.

Viewing globalisation as an overwhelmingly negative force, citizens of rich countries are looking to governments to cushion the blows they perceive have come from the liberalisation of their economies to trade with emerging countries.

Those polled in Britain, France, the US and Spain were about three times more likely to say globalisation was having a negative rather than a positive effect on their countries. The majority was smaller in Germany, with its large export base.

. . .Corporate leaders fared little better, with 5 per cent or fewer of those polled in the US and all large European economies (except Italy) saying they had a great deal of admiration for those who run large companies. In these countries, between a third and a half said they had no admiration at all for corporate bosses.

In response to fears of globalisation and rising inequality, the public in all the rich countries surveyed – the US, Germany, UK, France, Italy and Spain – want their governments to increase taxation on those with the highest incomes. In European countries, a large majority want governments to go further and to impose pay caps on the heads of companies.

AsiaTimesOnline
Jul 26, 2007
The life and times of the CIA
By Chalmers Johnson

(This essay is a review of Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner.)

The American people may not know it, but they have some severe problems with one of their official governmental entities, the Central Intelligence Agency. Because of the almost total secrecy surrounding its activities and the lack of cost accounting on how it spends the money covertly appropriated for it within the defense budget, it is impossible for citizens to know what the CIA's approximately 17,000 employees do with, or for, their share of the yearly US$44 billion to $48 billion or more spent on "intelligence". This inability to account for anything at the CIA is, however, only one problem with the agency, and hardly the most serious one, either.

There are currently at least two criminal trials under way, in Italy and Germany, against several dozen CIA officials for felonies committed in those countries, including kidnapping people with a legal right to be in Germany and Italy, illegally transporting them to countries such as Egypt and Jordan for torture, and causing them to "disappear" into secret foreign or CIA-run prisons outside the United States without any form of due process of law.

The possibility that CIA funds are simply being ripped off by insiders is also acute. The CIA's former No 3 official, its executive director and chief procurement officer, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, is under federal indictment in San Diego for corruptly funneling contracts for water, air services, and armored vehicles to a lifelong friend and defense contractor, Brent Wilkes, who was unqualified to perform the services being sought. In return, Wilkes allegedly treated Foggo to thousands of dollars' worth of vacation trips and dinners, and promised him a top job at his company when he retired from the CIA.

Thirty years ago, in a futile attempt to provide some check on endemic misbehavior by the CIA, the administration of Gerald Ford created the President's Intelligence Oversight Board. It was to be a civilian watchdog over the agency. A 1981 executive order by president Ronald Reagan made the board permanent and gave it the mission of identifying CIA violations of the law (while keeping them secret so as not to endanger national security). Through five subsequent administrations, members of the board - all civilians not employed by the government - actively reported on and investigated some of the CIA's most secret operations that seemed to breach legal limits.

However, on July 15, 2007, John Solomon of the Washington Post reported that, for the first five and a half years of the administration of President George W Bush, the Intelligence Oversight Board did nothing - no investigations, no reports, no questioning of CIA officials. It evidently found no reason to inquire into the interrogation methods agency operatives employed at secret prisons or the transfer of captives to countries that use torture, or domestic wiretapping not warranted by a federal court.

Who were the members of this non-oversight board of see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil monkeys? The board now in place is led by former Bush economic adviser Stephen Friedman. It includes Don Evans, a former commerce secretary and friend of the president, former Admiral David Jeremiah, and lawyer Arthur B Culvahouse. The only thing they accomplished was to express their contempt for a legal order by a president of the United States.

Corrupt and undemocratic practices by the CIA have prevailed since it was created in 1947. However, US citizens have now, for the first time, been given a striking range of critical information necessary to understand how this situation came about and why it has been impossible to remedy. We have a long, richly documented history of the CIA from its post-World War II origins to its failure to supply even the most elementary information about Iraq before the 2003 invasion of that country.

Declassified CIA records

Tim Weiner's book Legacy of Ashes is important for many reasons, but certainly one is that it brings back from the dead the possibility that journalism can actually help citizens perform elementary oversight on the US government.

Until Weiner's magnificent effort, I would have agreed with Seymour Hersh that, in the current crisis of US governance and foreign policy, the failure of the press has been almost complete. American journalists have generally not even tried to penetrate the layers of secrecy that the executive branch throws up to ward off scrutiny of its often illegal and incompetent activities. This is the first book I've read in a long time that documents its very important assertions in a way that goes well beyond asking readers merely to trust the reporter.

Weiner, a New York Times correspondent, has been working on Legacy of Ashes for 20 years. He has read more than 50,000 government documents, mostly from the CIA, the White House and the State Department. He was instrumental in causing the CIA Records Search Technology (CREST) program of the National Archives to declassify many of them, particularly in 2005 and 2006. He has read more than 2,000 oral histories of American intelligence officers, soldiers and diplomats and has himself conducted more than 300 on-the-record interviews with current and past CIA officers, including 10 former directors of central intelligence. Truly exceptional among authors of books on the CIA, he makes the following claim: "This book is on the record - no anonymous sources, no blind quotations, no hearsay."

. . . As an idea, if not an actual entity, the Central Intelligence Agency came into being as a result of December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. It functionally came to an end, as Weiner makes clear, on September 11, 2001, when operatives of al-Qaeda flew hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center towers in Manhattan and the Pentagon in Washington, DC. Both assaults were successful surprise attacks.

The Central Intelligence Agency itself was created during the administration of Harry Truman to prevent future surprise attacks like that on Pearl Harbor by uncovering planning for them and so forewarning against them. On September 11, 2001, the CIA was revealed to be a failure precisely because it had been unable to discover the al-Qaeda plot and sound the alarm against a surprise attack that would prove almost as devastating as Pearl Harbor. After September 11, the agency, having largely discredited itself, went into a steep decline and finished the job. Weiner concludes: "Under [CIA director George Tenet's] leadership, the agency produced the worst body of work in its long history: a special National Intelligence Estimate titled 'Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction'." It is axiomatic that, as political leaders lose faith in an intelligence agency and quit listening to it, its functional life is over, even if the people working there continue to report to their offices.

. . . The historical record is unequivocal. The United States is ham-handed and brutal in conceiving and executing clandestine operations, and it is simply no good at espionage; its operatives never have enough linguistic and cultural knowledge of target countries to recruit spies effectively. The CIA also appears to be one of the most easily penetrated espionage organizations on the planet. From the beginning, it repeatedly lost its assets to double agents.

. . . I believe that this is where we stand today: the CIA has failed badly, and it would be an important step toward a restoration of the checks and balances within the US political system simply to abolish it.

Counterpunch
July 23, 2007
The Kurdish Front
Turkish Prime Minister Threatens to Invade Northern Iraq
By PATRICK COCKBURN

Arbil.

Turkey's Prime Minister has threatened an invasion of northern Iraq if, following yesterday's Turkish election (apparently a resounding triumph for the ruling Justice and Development Party, the Islamic AKP,) talks fail with Iraq and the US on curbing the activities of Turkish Kurd guerrillas.

Turkish artillery has been firing increasingly heavy barrages at villages in the north of Iraqi Kurdistan. After three Turkish soldiers were killed and five wounded by a mine laid by PKK guerrillas last week, some 100 shells exploded around the border town of Zakho, forcing residents to flee.

The Prime Minister, Recep Tayyib Erdogan, said the PKK fighters had been using northern Iraq as a base to make attacks.

He said there would be a tripartite meeting with the US and Iraq after the election but if Turkish demands were not satisfied, an invasion was on the agenda. "Whatever is necessary could be done immediately," he said. "We are capable enough to do it." Mr Erdogan's hard line was geared to the Turkish election in which his Justice and Development Party (AKP) was -- seemingly unnecessarily -- fearful of losing votes because it was being portrayed as not acting firmly enough against PKK guerrillas. It wanted to stop the far-right Nationalist Party, which is demanding an incursion in Iraq, getting the 10 per cent of the vote that it needs to win seats in parliament.

The PKK has about 4,000 fighters hiding in the mountains of northern Iraq.

It has escalated its attacks in largely Kurdish south-east Turkey, but these are pinpricks as Turkey has an army of 250,000 men in the region. Nevertheless, the question of how to deal with the PKK became a central issue in the election.

The Iraqi government in Baghdad and the powerful and semi-independent Kurdistan Regional Government are taking Turkish threats seriously.

Published on Friday, July 13, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
After Iraq, Pakistan? Is Worrying About Pakistani Nukes Serving To Keep Us In Iraq?
by Charles Knight

The bloody assault by Pakistani troops on the Islamic militants occupying The Red Mosque in Islamabad just might mark the beginning of the end of the Musharraf regime and the beginning of a period of radical destabilization for Pakistan — a prospect that causes great consternation in the West where commentators remind us that Pakistan is nuclear-armed and bin Laden has remained at large in its untamed northern provinces.

Some Americans may feel reassured to know that national defense experts have already been imagining the scenario of the US military intervening in Pakistan to prevent nukes from getting into the hands of al Qaeda — scary scenes of terrorists stealing away with a few devices in the chaos that engulfs the country after Musharraf is ousted. Two such experts are Frederick Kagan, leading neo-con and fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and Michael O’Hanlon of Brookings and a likely under-secretary of Defense in the next Democratic administration. The Stanley Foundation has brought together a series of paired experts to “bridge the divide” between left and right in Washington and reestablish a stable bipartisan center.

. . . The paper discusses a number of threats and scenarios which might “require” the deployment of ten and hundreds of thousands of US troops abroad. The most demanding of these scenarios is the radical Islamic Pakistan scenario which is so fanciful and extraordinary that I have quoted that section in its entirety below. I comment briefly on it afterwards.

. . .“Should stabilization efforts be required, the scale of the undertaking could be breathtaking. Pakistan is a very large country. Its population is more than 150 million, or six times that of Iraq. Its land area is roughly twice that of Iraq; its perimeter is about 50 percent longer in total. Stabilizing a country of this size could easily require several times as many troops as the Iraq mission-a figure of up to one million is easy to imagine.

“Of course, any international force would have local help. Presumably some fraction of Pakistan’s security forces would remain intact, able, and willing to help defend the country. Pakistan’s military numbers 550,000 Army troops; 70,000 uniformed personnel in the Air Force and Navy; another 510,000 reservists; and almost 300,000 gendarmes and Interior Ministry troops. But if some substantial fraction of the military broke off from the main body, say a quarter to a third, and was assisted by extremist militias, the international community might need to deploy 100,000 to 200,000 troops to ensure a quick restoration of order. Given the need for rapid response, the United States’ share of this total would probably be over half-or as many as 50,000 to 100,000 ground forces-although this is almost the best of all the worst-case scenarios.

“Since no US government could simply decide to restrict its exposure in Pakistan if the international community proved unwilling or unable to provide numerous forces, or if the Pakistani collapse were deeper than outlined here, the United States might be compelled to produce significantly more forces to fend off the prospect of a nuclear Al Qaeda.”

There used to be a popular piece of strategic wisdom that said, “Never get involved in a land war in Asia.” Good advice… and, of course, we are now deep into Afghanistan and Iraq. It seems once you throw off restraint and reject wisdom you might as well plunge deeper into dangerous territory; at least that seems to be the preference of the nascent bipartisan center now trying to regain its footing after being tripped up in Iraq.

It is tempting to conclude that these guys are just nuts. Certainly they haven’t learned much from the adventure in Iraq which they both supported. But we shouldn’t dismiss them; there are some powerful forces in Washington that want this kind of thinking to be part of the “new center”.

Kagan and O’Hanlon greatly underestimate the troops needed to invade and stabilize (read ‘occupy’) Pakistan. Pakistanis are not fond of Americans and they won’t see us as liberators. They are likely to put up the same sort of fight that Iraqi Sunnis have against occupation. Hard evidence suggests that the pacification of Iraq would have required 500,000 troops (not the 150,000 that Rumsfeld insisted was sufficient.) Kagan and O’Hanlon point out that Pakistan is six times are large in population. So why do they say “a figure of up to one million is easy to imagine” when the Iraq experience indicates that up to three million would be needed in Pakistan? My guess is that they figured people would stop reading it they included a scenario that requires three million Americans deployed to Pakistan. So instead they offer a Rumsfeldian fantasy.

AsiaTimesOnline
Jul 31, 2007
For the markets, global chill
By Julian Delasantellis

The 1970s British Broadcasting Corp comedy show Monty Python's Flying Circus once did a skit about a new way that council flats - public housing - were being built near the town of Peterborough in England. Instead of building these 25-story towers through the conventional employment of construction workers, concrete and steel, this council was employing the services of El Mystico (Terry Jones), a magician in cape and top hat, along with his curvaceous assistant, in her sequined leotard, the Amazing Janet.

All it took for El Mystico and the Amazing Janet to put up a block of flats was a wave of his magic wand. According to a council spokesman, Ken Verybigliar, "Well, there is a considerable financial advantage in using the services of El Mystico. A block, like Mystico Point here, would normally cost in the region of 1.5 million pounds [US$3 million]. This was put up for 5 pounds, and 30 bob [shillings] for Janet."

These flats constructed with the black arts were just as reliable and sturdy as those conventionally constructed - with one exception. According to Clement Onan, identified as an architect to the council, "They are as strong, solid and as safe as any other building method in this country - provided, of course, people believe in them."

If tenants did start to doubt the actual existence of the buildings they were then living in, the building would fall down, until their faiths were restored, then the buildings would magically reassemble themselves.

Of course, unlike Monty Python's Britain, this sort of thing could not happen these days - because since the Margaret Thatcher/Ronald Reagan revolution of the late 1970s and early 1980s, neither the British nor the US government has done much investment in public housing, even with the dramatic cost advantages available with construction by El Mystico.

If you want a contemporaneous example of something held up only by the faith of its participants, take a look at the corporate debt markets of the past few years. And if you want an example of what happens when that faith evaporates, look at the world's stock markets last week. . .

Meditation Moment: The Road Home



The Road Home

An ant hurries along a threshing floor
with its wheat grain, moving between huge stacks
of wheat, not knowing the abundance
all around. It thinks its one grain
is all there is to love.

So we choose a tiny seed to be devoted to.
This body, one path or one teacher.
Look wider and farther.

The essence of every human being can see,
and what the essence-eye takes in,
the being becomes. Saturn. Solomon!

The ocean pours through a jar,
and you might say it swims inside
the fish! This mystery gives peace to
your longing and makes the road home home.

-- RUMI
(translated by Coleman Barks)

Photo Credits: All photos except the wheat are from Curtis & Jane's 2007 Summer Garden.