Nepal asked to free 3000 children

Nepal: UN official calls for release of children in Maoist cantonments:

Radhika Coomaraswamy, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, has asked Nepal’s authorities and the country’s Maoist forces to "immediately free nearly 3,000 children who have still not been formally released from the Maoist cantonments".

Are you listening, Mr. Pushpa Kamal Dahal (Prime Minister)?

Pushpa means flower! Drop your adopted name of Prachanda, which translates as 'The Fierce One'.

Free the children...

Towards a Free Nation

In 1993, Richard O. Hammer asked:

"Imagine you are on a ship and there are no lifeboats. A hole breaks in the hull. Water gushes in. Many people bail. They yell to you, 'bail, bail!' But you can not tell if bailing will save the ship. You look around and see materials which might be made into crude lifeboats. Do you bail, or build?"

He goes on:

There have been several attempts to start small, libertarian countries. All have failed. A book, How to Start your own Country, by Erwin S. Strauss, tells about these attempts. It seems to me that none of these attempts had a significant chance. Not enough groundwork had been done before the flags were hoisted. The approach of the Free Nation Foundation differs. It proposes, for the time, to do nothing but groundwork. It would not suggest trying to obtain real estate till the force of a nation — people, assets, treaties — were in place. This is a "Front Door" approach. We would seek what we want openly, through negotiations in good faith, from a position of practical and financial strength.

For seven years Mr. Hammer worked full time to manage and lead Free Nation Foundation (FNF). It failed to sustain itself financially and Mr. Hammer withdrew "from full-time work in FNF to seek more remunerative work".

A daugther organization, The Libertarian Nation Foundation, was formed in 2001, which aims to:

To advance the day when coercive institutions of government can be replaced by voluntary institutions of civil mutual consent, by developing clear and believable descriptions of those voluntary institutions, and by building a community of people who share confidence in these descriptions.

An index of links to a large number of online articles is here (for example, Spontaneous Order). At the top, this page quotes:

The market in the broadest sense of the term is the process that encompasses all voluntary and spontaneous actions of men. It is the realm of human initiative and freedom and the soil upon which all human achievements thrive.
~Ludwig von Mises

A Free Nation, anyone?

Are You Living in a Free Country?

How much free are we in this world? Human Beings are supposed to be the "most intelligent" and the "strongest/most constructive species" on this planet, yet we are out to rip each other apart! Seeing the current state-of-affairs, Human Beings seem to be the "most stupid" and the "most destructive species" on this planet.

Since 1978, Freedom House has published 'Freedom in the World' (Freedom in the World, 2007 — Infoplease.com), an annual comparative assessment of the state of political rights and civil liberties around the world. The 600-page survey is considered a definitive report on freedom around the globe. The 2006 ratings reflect global events from Dec. 1, 2005, through Dec. 31, 2006. According to the survey:

• 90 countries are free - their 3.0 billion inhabitants (47% of the world's population) enjoy a broad range of rights.
• 58 countries with 1.1 billion people (30%) are considered partly free. Political rights and civil liberties are more limited in these countries, in which corruption, dominant ruling parties, or, in some cases, ethnic or religious strife is often the norm.
• 45 countries are not free. The 2.4 billion inhabitants (23%) of these countries, nearly one-half of whom live in China, are denied most basic political rights and civil liberties.
• The list features only independent countries. A separate list of territories indicates that four territories received the lowest possible : Chechnya (Russia), Kashmir (Pakistan Occupied), Tibet (China), and Western Sahara (Morocco); of those, Chechnya and Tibet also received the lowest possible civil liberties ratings."

So, there we are! Obviously, the listings can be "hotly" debated. But, whatever the errors in this report, it does give an indication of "HOW MUCH FREEDOM EXISTS IN THIS WORLD"! The task(s) for a "free world order" is "cut-out".

Now, WHAT is your plan?

Free World Order

Robin D.G. Kelley wrote, "Malcolm X has been called many things:

Pan-Africanist, father of Black Power, religious fanatic, closet conservative, incipient socialist, and a menace to society. The meaning of his public life — his politics and ideology — is contested in part because his entire body of work consists of a few dozen speeches and a collaborative autobiography whose veracity is challenged. Malcolm has become a sort of tabula rasa, or blank slate, on which people of different positions can write their own interpretations of his politics and legacy. Chuck D of the rap group Public Enemy and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas can both declare Malcolm X their hero."

He is supposed to have declared, "Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it."

So, should we fight for freedom?

Or, can we effortlessly move towards a Free World Order?

Daniel Quinn, Beyond Civilization: Humanity's Next Great Adventure, says:

Old minds think:
If it didn't work last year, let's do MORE of it this year.

New minds think:
If it didn't work last year, let's do something ELSE this year.

Old minds think:
How do we stop these bad things from happening?

New minds think:
How do we make things the way we want them to be?

The Free World Order , talks about BUILDING FREEDOM and challenges us to THINK AND DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT!

Probably, FREEDOM is simply about continually GROWING beyond our known (and hidden) constraints!

Unless you try to do something
beyond what you have already mastered,
you will never grow.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

So, what are your NEW THOUGHTS on Free World Order?

A Buddhist Greek & Tibetans in Greece

E-sangha, Buddhist Forum and Buddhism Forum: Tibetans in GreeceImage Source: AFP

A Buddhist Greek blogger has posted about Tibetans expressing themselves in Greece:

"Can I just mention how bizarre it was for me as a Greek person to see Greek police wrestling with Tibetans?"

The original report by AFP is here.

When will Tibet be free of this conflict?