For afforestation programmes to be successful, surface water must be conserved. This can best be accomplished by increasing the water capacity of existing storage systems and building new systems. The cheapest and easiest method of creating new water storage systems is to construct small-scale ponds and lakes.
"....God has bound himself to man, and in that consists the greatest glory of human existence. In the spell of the wonderful rhythm of the finite he fetters himself at every step, and thus gives his love out in music in his most perfect lyrics of beauty. Beauty is his wooing of our hearts; it can have no other purpose. It tells us everywhere that the display of power is not the ultimate meaning of creation; wherever there is a bit of colour, a note of song, a grace of form, there comes the call for our love.
Hunger compels us to obey its behests, but hunger is not the last word for a man. There have been men who have deliberately defied its commands to show that the human soul is not to be led by the pressure of wants and threat of pain. In fact, to live the life of man we have to resist its demands every day, the least of us as well as the greatest. But, on the other hand, there is a beauty in the world which never insults our freedom, never raises even its little finger to make us acknowledge its sovereignty. We can absolutely ignore it and suffer no penalty in consequence. It is a call to us, but not a command. It seeks for love in us, and love can never be had by compulsion. Compulsion is not indeed the final appeal to man, but joy is.
And joy is everywhere; it is in the earth's green covering of grass; in the blue serenity of the sky; in the reckless exuberance of spring; in the severe abstinence of gray winter; in the living flesh that animates our bodily frame; in the perfect poise of the human figure, noble and upright; in living; in the exercise of all our powers; in the acquisition of knowledge; in fighting evils; in dying for gains we never can share. Joy is there everywhere; it is superfluous, unnecessary; nay, it very often contradicts the most peremptory behests of necessity. It exists to show that the bonds of law can only be explained by love; they are like body and soul. Joy is the realization of the truth of oneness, the oneness of our soul with the world and of the world-soul with the supreme lover."
Special Features of Farming Projects
All integrated farming projects and master units should endeavour to include some special features such as a wheat grinding machine to produce flour, a bakery to produce bread, a cheap seed distribution centre (sulabha biija vitaran'a kendra), a free plant distribution centre, sericulture, a bio-gas plant to utilize the waste of dairy cows, solar energy, apiculture and a school and children's home.
Citing labor abuses, Oslo disinvests in globalist monster
Norwegian Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen revealed Tuesday that two new stocks will be banned from the country's so-called "oil fund," which now is called the Norwegian Government Pension Fund - Global and currently is worth about $250 billion. It ranks as one of the biggest pension funds in the world.
The ministry reported that it's excluding Wal-Mart Stores Inc and Wal-Mart de México "in line with recommendations from the Council on Ethics for the Fund."
Powerful neighbour India was instrumental in the formation of an alliance last year between Nepal's mainstream political parties and Maoists, the rebel leader said in an interview published here.
Once former foes, seven political parties sidelined when King Gyanendra sacked the government in February 2005 entered a loose alliance with the Maoists last November.
"India played a positive role in reaching the 12-point understanding with the seven party alliance," Prachanda said in an interview in the latest edition of the weekly news magazine Nepal.
"[T]here is already a relatively significant installed capacity for production of ethanol in Central America, especially in Guatemala, El Salvador and Costa Rica."
By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Jun 23 (IPS) - The countries of Latin America are turning more and more to plans for the use and development of ethanol, or alcohol made from sugar cane, as they are feeling an ever-pressing need to diversify their sources of energy for economic and environmental reasons.
Colombia, one of the countries most advanced in this respect after Brazil, the region's undisputed leader, now produces between 900,000 and one million litres a day of ethanol. In 60 percent of the national territory, the petrol sold is a mandatory blend containing 10 percent ethanol.
"The idea is to extend that to the entire country," Julio Ce'sar Vera, director of hydrocarbons in the Colombian Ministry of Mines and Energy, told IPS. "We have already begun to carry out studies for raising the proportion of alcohol in petrol to 20 percent over the next five to 10 years."
Self-reliance is the main objective of our farming projects, hence they should be oriented towards production. They should not be dependent on outside resources. An integrated approach to farming should include such areas as agriculture, horticulture, floriculture, sericulture, lac culture, apiculture, dairy farming, animal husbandry, irrigation, pisciculture, pest control, the proper use of fertilizers, cottage industries, energy production, research centres and water conservation. This approach will help make farming projects self-reliant, and should be adopted.
"About one billion people worldwide live in slums, of whom 134 million are in Latin America and the Caribbean"
By Gustavo González
SANTIAGO, Jun 23 (IPS) - In Uruguay, 16,000 families have a proper home as a result of housing construction cooperatives, while in Bolivia people living in the ravines of La Paz have a system to deal with housing risks thanks to a non-governmental network.. And further south, in Chile, self-build social housing projects are mushrooming.
Improvement in urban living conditions, mainly ensuring basic sanitation, drinking water, security of tenure, adequate size and safety of location, is one of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) adopted by the United Nations in 2000. The world target is to achieve significant improvement in the living conditions of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020.
"If a flying bird is caged for long, it loses its ability to fly. If the door of its cage is unfastened accidentally, it thinks, 'What benefit will I derive from flying in the distant blue sky? Let me pick up seeds, sitting on the perch of my little cage.' Now, if people have been educated in a distorted manner and their minds crippled, they are unable to stand independently. If their minds have been molded by propaganda for a long period, they cannot utilize the opportunity [for freedom] even if it is presented to them. Common people have been taught for ages that they belong to a low caste or class. Even if you offer these downtrodden people a chair to sit by you, they would murmur, 'No sir, I am alright - let me sit on the ground.' That is to say, their minds cannot function properly, just as a bird's wings become totally inactive in a cage. People have been accustomed to such repressions for thousands of years - the exploiters have injected fear-complexes in their minds to control them."
"These critics on the left argue from a assumption that U.S. foreign policy has been monolithic since World War II, a coherent progression of decision-making directed unerringly at the advancement of U.S. imperial interests. All U.S. actions, these critics contend, are part of a clearly laid-out strategy that has rarely deviated no matter what the party in power. They believe that Israel has served throughout as a loyal agent of the U.S., carrying out the U.S. design faithfully and serving as a base from which the U.S. projects its power around the Middle East."
"Indeed, far from Israel functioning as the junior partner carrying out a U.S. plan, it is clear that the weight of pressure in 1967 was on the U.S. to go along with Israel's designs and that this pressure came from Israel and its agents in the U.S."
Quietly but systematically, the Bush Administration is advancing the plan to build a huge NAFTA Super Highway, four football-fields-wide, through the heart of the U.S. along Interstate 35, from the Mexican border at Laredo, Tex., to the Canadian border north of Duluth, Minn.
Full story: Bush Administration Quietly Plans NAFTA Super Highway
Village ladies are collecting water from a well in Ananda Nagar for their daily household needs. This is one of hundreds of water conservation projects which are serving the needs of the poor people of 55 villages around Ananda Nagar Master Unit (an all-round development project established by Shrii P. R. Sarkar) located at Baglata village of Purulia District, West Bengal - India. (please click on the image to enlarge)
Throughout the world today many groups of people are in urgent need of relief. They are suffering from physical, psychic and spiritual deprivation because the different socio-economic systems in vogue only pander to particular sections of society, neglecting those in need and society as a whole.
In Marxism, for example, the state is for the welfare of the Shudras or proletariate. The non-proletariate are suppressed or oppressed. This is the rule of the Shudras, but actually there cannot be any rule of the Shudras. The very concept of proletariate dictatorship is unrealistic, impractical and unscientific, hence Marxism is a utopian ideal having no roots in the soil of reality. In 1977 there was a great change in the constitution of the USSR and it gave up its stupid bogey of proletariate rule and declared itself a welfare state.
"Under current law, women are assigned half the value of a man. For example, four women must appear in court to fulfill the requirement of two witnesses."
Full story: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=33570
"Eliminating hunger and making sure all Brazilians are able to eat three square meals a day was one of Lula's main campaign pledges in 2002."
(IPS) - This decade will be marked by the reduction of inequality in Brazil, just as the 1990s brought currency stability and the universalisation of primary education, according to Marcelo Neri, the head of the Getulio Vargas Foundation's Centre for Social Policies.
Brazil has the most unequal distribution of income in Latin America, which is the most unequal region in the world.
But economic inequality in Brazil has been diminishing at a fast pace since 2001, with the per capita income of the poor growing "at a Chinese-style rate," which is expected to continue this year, Neri told IPS.
Full story: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=33655
Former prime minister Menachem Begin played a central role in a failed attempt to assassinate then-West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer, with the objective of sabotaging the reparations agreement in the works with Israel, according to the journal of Eliezer Sudit, one of the men who carried out the attempted hit.
Full story: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/726016.html
VIENNA (Reuters) - Austrian right-wing populist Joerg Haider called President Bush a war criminal on Saturday, days before Austria's government hosts Bush and European leaders in Vienna.
Full story:
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/washington/politics-austria-usa-haider.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
Editor's note: PROUT generally does not support mass immigration, but rather promotes local economic development and the more rational distribution of wealth as a means of removing the main incentive for emigration so that all flowers in the global garden can bloom. To the extent immigration is allowed, people should merge their socioeconomic interests with those of the local population, not try to set up a separate society with aims antagonistic to those of the local society. The book described below is a prime example of the promotion of a virulently egotistic antisocial agenda and contempt for local populations.
"Ramos is no friend of America, and certainly no friend of loyal Latino citizens and Latinos who want to be Americans. If immigrants from south of the border do not assimilate, they will replicate the Third World societies they fled-societies with a few "haves" on top and many "have nots" on the bottom. This many not be a problem for the well-heeled Mr. Ramos, but it should be a problem for all genuine Americans."
"The country's "feudal governance systems backed by the culture of the caste system have been very resistant to change," the researcher told an audience of more than 100 people at a local hotel. Even after the first 'people's movement' in 1990, "the government had gotten used to discussing gender discrimination...but they were still very hesitant to discuss caste and ethnic discrimination"."
KATHMANDU, Jun 11 (IPS) - In 1955 Nepal's revised civil code outlawed untouchability; in 2002 the government created the National Dalit Commission; and three years ago a new leadership pledged to lay charges against anyone accused of discriminating against untouchables, also known as dalits (the broken).
"Large Mexican corporations, which benefited from the privatizations and are strong supporters of the current government, also want Gomez out. In wage negotiations, Gomez demands that workers get a bigger share of currently record-level copper prices."
New America Media, Commentary/Analysis, David Bacon, Jun 09, 2006
Editor's Note: Mexican President Vicente Fox's refusal to recognize the leader of the country's miners' union has sparked strikes and demonstrations across Mexico. David Bacon is an associate editor at New America Media and author of "The Children of NAFTA" (University of California Press, 2004).
"Grandin's more distinctive contribution lies in documenting Latin America's role as a staging ground for the rise of militaristic idealists within the Republican Party."
"With its vivid depiction of neocon militarists, religious evangelicals, and neoliberal economists coming together, Empire's Workshop offers a cogent analysis of how past interventions in Latin America provide the Bush administration with a troubling model for present policy."
The ideology behind current US Middle Eastern policy was shaped close to home.
Empire's Workshop: Latin America and the Roots of U.S. Imperialism. By Greg Grandin. Henry Holt: Metropolitan Books, May 2006, 320 pp., $25,00
In October 2004, during his debate with John Edwards, Vice President Dick Cheney made a comparison that seemed surreal even by the standards of the present administration. He was looking for an example of past U.S. intervention that could be cited as a model for "democracy building" in Iraq and Afghanistan. Where did he turn? El Salvador.
"[N]one of the 30 or so working agendas makes any mention of submitting decisions to the U.S. Congress for review and approval. No new U.S. laws are contemplated for the Bush administration to submit to Congress. Instead, the plan is obviously to knit together the North American Union completely under the radar, through a process of regulations and directives issued by various U.S. government agencies."
"What we have underway here with the SPP could arguably be termed a bureaucratic coup d'etat."
In March 2005 at their summit meeting in Waco, Tex., President Bush, President Fox and Prime Minister Martin issued a joint statement announced the creation of the "Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America" (SPP). The creation of this new agreement was never submitted to Congress for debate and decision. Instead, the U.S. Department of Commerce merely created a new division under the same title to implement working groups to advance a North American Union working agenda in a wide range of areas, including: manufactured goods, movement of goods, energy, environment, e-commerce, financial services, business facilitation, food and agriculture, transportation, and health.
Full story:
http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?print=yes&id=15233
"India is the only country in the world where triple talaq divorce is legal; even stricter Islamic countries have abolished it. The Koran specifies that a waiting period of one month is required between each utterance of "talaq" -- allowing tempers to cool and consequences to be considered."
By Erica Lee Nelson
NEW DELHI -- In India's Islamic family law codes, a man can divorce his wife via e-mail, or from another city without her knowledge. By simply saying "talaq" (the Arabic word for divorce) three times, he can end his marriage in seconds and kick his wife out the same day.
Being so simple, divorce can happen accidentally, as in Aftab Ansari's case. After a nasty marital fight, Mr. Ansari unknowingly muttered the word three times in his sleep. A waking nightmare followed.
"In his Universal Fascism (1995), prominent neocon Michael Ledeen (widely accused of involvement in the Niger uranium forgery) wrote, "In order to achieve the most noble accomplishments, the leader may have to 'enter into evil.' This is the chilling insight that has made Machiavelli so feared, admired and challenging... [W]e [ordinary people] are rotten.... It's true that we can achieve greatness if, and only if, we are properly led." "
Now Introducing, the Office of Iranian Affairs (Formerly Doing Business as the Office of Special Plans)
By GARY LEUPP
According to Laura Rozen of the Los Angeles Times, the Office of Special Plans has been reincarnated as the Office of Iranian Affairs, apparently housed in the same Pentagon offices inhabited by its predecessor and involving some of the same slimy personnel. Notably, Abram Shulsky, who headed the OSP under Douglas Feith, is back. His crew will be reporting to none other than Elizabeth Cheney, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, and daughter of the Vice President. Dick Cheney is generally understood to be the strongest advocate for an attack on Iran in the administration. (He is also, by the way, architect of Bush's "signing statements" appended to laws entitling him to ignore them. He is the man behind the throne, surrounded by neocon acolytes.)
"The two-page document contradicts the official line of the George W. Bush administration that Iran is committed to the destruction of Israel and the sponsorship of terrorism in the region."
By Gareth Porter
(IPS) - Iran offered in 2003 to accept peace with Israel and cut off material assistance to Palestinian armed groups and to pressure them to halt terrorist attacks within Israel's 1967 borders, according to the secret Iranian proposal to the United States.
Full story:
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=33350
''Non-Muslims increasingly feel alien in their country of birth," said Tian Chua, a senior leader in the opposition Peoples Justice Party told IPS. "Unlike before, under Prime Minister Abdullah, there is an increasing tendency for Malays to rally around Islam -- it is a worrying trend."
"Chinese youths don't know that millions died in the 1950s, or that the CCP ordered a famine in Changchun [Jilin province] that caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, far more than died in Nanjing [a Japanese Army massacre]," says Wang Fei-ling, a Chinese-born historian now at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
"The report notes that Chinese naval officers began to 'discuss' aircraft carriers in the late 1970s. In 1998 and 2000, they bought two Soviet carriers. However, neither was turned into a weapons platform. Instead, they were used as (these are the report's words) 'floating military theme parks.' "
Staged military democracy drama sure to be a big hit with audiences everywhere!
Same thrills, familiar plot line, but with an all new cast!
"In "With All Our Might," scholars Larry Diamond and Michael McFaul - both Democrats - outline a comprehensive democracy-promotion program. For example, they imaginatively call for transplanting the 1975 Helsinki accords, which insisted upon human rights monitoring in the former Warsaw Pact nations, to the Middle East."
Neocons in the Democratic Party
Like Kennedy and Truman, Democratic neocons want to beef up the military and won't run from a fight.
By Jacob Heilbrunn
Jacob Heilbrunn, a former Times editorial writer, is writing a book on neoconservatism.
DON'T LOOK now, but neoconservatism is making a comeback - and not among the Republicans who have made it famous but in the Democratic Party.
"The nation-state is dying. Men have begun to transfer their allegiance, loyalty and love from the older nations both upward to the new transnational regimes that are arising and downward to the sub-nations whence they came, the true nations, united by blood and soil, language, literature, history, faith, tradition and memory."
by Patrick J. Buchanan
Full story:
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/patbuchanan/2006/05/23/198421.html
"Never mind that the privatisation of Bolivia's gas and oil in the 1990s was almost certainly illegal, as it took place without the consent of congress. Never mind that - until now - its natural wealth has only impoverished its people. Never mind that Morales had promised to regain national control of Bolivia's natural resources before he became president, and that the policy has massive support among Bolivians. It can't be long before Donald Rumsfeld calls him the new Hitler and Bush makes another speech about freedom and democracy being threatened by freedom and democracy."
The outcry over Bolivia's renationalisation and the silence over Chad's betrays the hypocrisy of the critics
By George Monbiot
The Guardian
Full story: http://www.guardian.co.uk/oil/story/0,,1775750,00.html
