Madrid: 19 July
Dear & eminent colleagues:

I wish to bring you in picture about a truly historic meeting convened here on the invitation of the Saudi monarch. This conference had been convened for a most crucial dialogue between the three monotheistic faiths. Saudi King Abdullah appealed for “constructive dialogue” to end disputes between the world’s major religions as he opened an inter-faith conference in Madrid. In his inaugural speech on Wednesday, 16th July, to the three-day World Conference on Dialogue he observed:

“We all believe in one God. We are meeting here today to say that religions should be a means to iron out differences and not to lead to disputes.”

The conference had been organized on an initiative of King Abdullah (whom I have known since 2002-3 when I went to receive the King Faisal Memorial Award from him in Riyadh). Over 200 participants attended, including representatives of the world’s major religions. Among them were the secretary general of the World Jewish Congress, Michael Schneider, and Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, who is responsible for dialogue between the Vatican and Muslims.

After Wednesday’s inaugural session, four closed-door round tables were held before a final communiqué was issued on Friday, 18th July. In these sessions as a part of the experts drafting committee/panel, I did my best to have them include something about the Family.

The international Dialogue that just ended finally had something VERY POSITIVE to say which is fundamentally Good about Family. I will send you a detailed report later, but it may be useful to give you the quintessential phraseology used about this point.

The declaration issued at the end of the final Session on Friday by H.E.Abdulmohsin Al-Turki ( a Saudi Prince) in a press conference, inter alia, called for:

“observing peace, honoring agreements and respecting traditions of peoples and their right to security, freedom and self-determination that are the basis for building good relations among all the people of the world. Achieving this is a major objective of all religions and prominent cultures.”

The declaration however did highlight the:

“significance of religions and moral values as well as the need for human beings to revert to their Creator in the fight against crime, corruption, drugs and terrorism. We also call upon the people to preserve the institution of the family and protect societies from deviant behaviors.”

All major addresses given by the galaxy of pious people gathered there were really directed towards the anti-terrorism emphasis of all the great Faiths of Mankind (religious leaders belonging to Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism and Sikhism were gathered there). But in the drafting process I was able to have the language boldly supportive of our mutual struggles emerge in clear terms.

Since most of the talking was done by the Arabic speaking leaders in the context of the post 9/11 world, it was, I suppose, not easy to accomplish what I have articulated above. This matter is now going to the UN and, in the context of my earlier association with you, I shall do my best to keep you abreast of the future developments in this regard.

Best,
Farooq

Dr. Farooq Hassan, D.Phil.;
BA (Juris),MA,M. LiTT (OXON);
DCL (Columbia),DIA(Harvard);
Sen.Adv.Sup.Ct. (Pakistan),
Barrister at Law (UK),Attorney at Law(US).

By: Dr. Farooq Hassan, D.Phil.;
BA (Juris),MA,M. LiTT (OXON);
DCL (Columbia),DIA(Harvard);
Sen.Adv.Sup.Ct. (Pakistan),
Barrister at Law (UK),Attorney at Law(US).

Astute analysts on Pakistan are generally astonished that despite the lapse of four months since the February 18 elections, there is no substantive change in the federal governments outlook, image or composition. Indeed even major policies, both domestic and external, remain the same. The NYT in a recent powerful expose on Pakistan, dated June 24, says quite accurately that there is “a leaderless drift in Pakistan four months after the elections.”

To begin with, the country’s top officials are unchanged; attorney general, an arch supporter of the Musharraf dictatorial elements, is still there as have been the Governor Sindh and, until lately, of Punjab as well. All the premier Ambassadors of the country, like that at UN in New York and in Geneva, are still unchanged; indeed the former Ambassador in Washington has just moved a step closer to the seat of power in Islamabad by being made the National Security Advisor. With same faces, little can one expect of true index of a representative government in harness in Islamabad.

Politically, Nawaz and his PML-N, despite being a coalition partner of the PPP led government, has no clue about what is going on and admittedly is never consulted on any major issue. More recently, both the ANP and indeed the JUI said they were considering withdrawing from their participation in the coalition. Even the PPP does not really know what is going on. All the real and established PPP leadership did not have much rapport with the current supremo Zardari until the untimely passing away of Benazir thereby creating a strange kind of consequence. No one in the government, including the PM, really is in a position to take any decision since that prerogative ostensibly only vests in Zardari who is often abroad when crucial decisions are needed within Pakistan.

———- snip

Please read the full essay here.

Other Columns by DR FAROOQ HASSAN

NRO: Musharraf’s proxy war
Impeaching the president
Musharraf following Fujimori
NRO prevents judges restoration
Restoration resolution

Posted by: Jock Gill

When you really stop to think about it, Bush & Co. have spent over 1 trillion dollars in pursuit of a poison we know is killing us. They have squandered 1 trillion dollars seeking a poison that would be much better for the conditions of spaceship earth if it were left securely sequestered in the ground. Oil.

This is precisely why Bush can not admit to, much less act on, global warming. If he did, then he would have to face the fact that his Iraq strategy is tantamount to a strategy to poison the world by accelerating global climate disruption and reducing our ability to respond to it.

Imagine what we could have accomplished with respect to kicking the oil habit if we had invested that 1 trillion dollars replacing oil as the energy foundation of our economy?

This is Obama’s low hanging fruit. It is not, in the end, how we went to war and all of the lies told to get us there, it is the tragedy, the hubris, of blindly investing economy busting amounts in the pursuit of a poison that is killing us. This is the fundamental national security issue. If Obama had the courage to articulate this critique of Iraq, he would put McCain in a box.

George Bush will go down as a deeply tragic figure who was a world poisoner, not a “War President”. We also have to face the fact that we enabled him because we refused to accept the need to change our ways of life. Cheney’s infamous “The American [oil dependent] way of life is non-negotiable”, a reflection of his blind addiction to oil, is all to true for too many of us. When we come to see oil as the deadly poison it is, then we will know that we have developed a new world view and finally entered the 21st century.

The consequences of this trillion dollar missed opportunity will very likely be very bad indeed.

Towards a Distributed, Peer-to-Peer, Near Zero Net Energy Strategy

With today’s materials, tools, and crafts we can build houses in Vermont, and the rest of the North East, that do not need central heating systems. Should we encourage the building of such housing? There is no longer any excuse for building a house with a furnace. Such ‘traditional’ housing is simply a relic of the fossil fuel age we must move beyond.

Near Zero Net Energy Houses [NZNE] have 12 inch thick walls, triple glazed windows, no furnaces, and can be heated with just 1 ton of biomass fuel, or 100 gallons of oil, in a simple, small stove. Such a house is under construction today in Townsend, MA. Expected cost of construction for this project is about $120 per sq ft for a 1,200 sq ft house with 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, full basement, etc. These homes can, of course, be given any local ‘vernacular’ look desired. The designer, Ben Nickerson, is a friend from Woodstock, Vermont.

To generalize, we should adopt a goal of a NZNE society as a whole — across the entire board — if we are truly serious about mitigating the risks of global disruption. This would, of course, lead us away from centralized power plants to distributed Combined Heat and Power, photovoltaics, wind power, and all of the other forms of renewable power. This broadly distributed peer-to-peer power would naturally lead to the “Electranet” with its 7×24 real time market for power.
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Thanks to Tom Atlee, today I watched the Stroke of Insight video - a presentation at the 2008 TED conference. It is amazing. I hope you will watch it too. And then share it as you see fit

The “Stroke of Insight” video is deeply informative with respect to the limits we have placed upon ourselves: We are generally only using half our collective brain power: the left lobe, which is the sequential processing lobe. For the most part we have deeply impoverished our world views by largely ignoring the parallel processing lobe, the right lobe.

“Stroke of Insight” strongly suggests to me a deep flaw in those political and economic world views that only recognize the Me/I driving the far too narrow notion that humanity is singularly selfish. See, for example, Game Theory, The Chicago School of Economics, unregulated free market capitalism, et al, the bed rock of the Reagan Era cold war world view, as explicated by Adam Curtis’ in his BCC series “The Trap”.

Truly, a Peer-to-Peer future will have to start with treating both sides of our brian as co-equal peers. What will we call a world view that emerges from our fully integrated brains?

Very interesting indeed.