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...

Dreaming of Enlightened Governance!

ENTER, THE ENLIGHTENED NETA: Sunanda Mehta writes about R.V. Krishnan, who researched on “possible solutions” on how the country needs to be “set on the right track” and compiled them into a book - ‘Manifesto in Search of a Party’.

First, he waited "naively" for two years - "hoping something would happen of his book, someone would sit up and decide to do something about the solutions he had proposed for the country."

When nothing happened- he called 15 of his friends (on September 7, 2007) and had a "heated discussion" on the idea of a political party.

Thus, the Professionals Party of India was born in Pune. Their vision:

"Improve the Quality of Life of every Indian"

Last fortnight, PPI got an official acknowledgement from the Election Commission of India for its registration it as a political party.

Their Social Manifesto says:

Clean up and beautify the environment.Improve living conditions. Create a social environment where people live a happy, prosperous and peaceful life. Strife of any type shall become insignificant. Indians will be proud to be INDIAN.

How do they plan to win elections?

Their proposition:

India has an electorate of 671 million. A little over half of them voted in the last general elections. India is believed to have a “middle class” of about 250 million. But the percentage of those who actually vote or are able to vote, is abysmal. Roughly half of India was born after 1983.
...
You will find that if professional Indians stood and got elected to the Indian Parliament, they will bring new, enlightened governance to quickly improve our quality of life and win back our rightful place in the 21st century world, and the middle class has the requisite numbers to make this happen.
....
And even if that percentage of the middle class votes which is the national average, PPI can win elections.

Ready to vote?

Creative Capitalism to target the poorest!

Bill Gates is evangelizing Creative Capitalism: "an attempt to stretch the reach of market forces so that more companies can benefit from doing work that makes more people better off. "

He reminds us that while "Capitalism has improved the lives of billions of people, ......it has left out billions more..................One billion people live on less than a dollar a day. They don't have enough nutritious food, clean water or electricity. The amazing innovations that have made many lives so much better — like vaccines and microchips — have largely passed them by. "

He asserts "it is mainly corporations that have the skills to make technological innovations work for the poor" and thus we should find new ways to bring far more people into the capitalist system.

The fundamental question posed is:

How can we most effectively
spread the benefits of capitalism
and the huge improvements in quality of life it can provide
to people who have been left out?

His argument: "....improvements will happen faster and last longer if we can channel market forces, including innovation that's tailored to the needs of the poorest, to complement what governments and nonprofits do. We need a system that draws in innovators and businesses in a far better way than we do today."

His mission:

More than 30 years ago, Paul Allen and I started Microsoft because we wanted to be part of a movement to put a computer on every desk and in every home. Ten years ago, Melinda and I started our foundation because we want to be part of a different movement — this time, to help create a world where no one has to live on a dollar a day or die from a disease we know how to prevent. Creative capitalism can help make it happen. I hope more people will join the cause.

How do Socialists react to this?

Phil Hearse calls it "idle dreams":

But the main drawback in Gates’ proposal is that it is a schema, an idea though up in a Seattle ivory tower, that has precious little purchase on the real world. That’s why it’s so abstract, for example in its insistence that it’s ‘governments’ and ‘non-profits’ that have to solve the main problems of food, water and poverty. But which governments? Using which methods? Financed how? Paying for infrastructural development with which funds?

Bill talks about C.K. Prahalad, who says, in his book The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, there are markets all over the world that businesses have missed. A reference is made to one study that found that the poorest two-thirds of the world's population has some $5 trillion in purchasing power.


This is "ammunition" for Phil Hearse:

....the poorest two thirds of humanity wield $5 trillion worth of spending power, so the transnational corporations need to make new markets to exploit/benefit this sector. Well, that’s more than 4.2 billion people. If we do the sums, it’s easy. It’s saying the average annual spend of the poorest two thirds of humanity is $1,190 a year, a pathetic amount that comes to $3.2 a day. Within that there are probably millions who have $10 or $12 a day, many with $4-6 and a billion who have $1 – or less. The target group of ‘creative capitalism’ is never going to be that poorest billion who have virtually nothing at all.

Phil's recommendations?

The billions of the poor and the oppressed need something more practical than creative capitalism to change the structures of their exploitation. Like overthrowing the social relations of capitalist oppression at a local, national and international level.

The debate on Social Freedom goes on.....Which side are you on?

Corruption as a way of life:-(

The famous urban legend: A 'worldwide survey was conducted by the UN'. The only question asked was:

Would you please give your
honest opinion about
solutions to the
food shortage
in the rest of the world?'

The survey was a huge failure,

• In Africa they didn't know what 'food' meant,
• In India they didn't know what 'honest' meant,
• In Europe they didn't know what 'shortage' meant,
• In China they didn't know what 'opinion' meant,
• In the Middle East they didn't know what 'solution' meant,
• In South America they didn't know what 'please' meant,
• And In the USA they didn't know what 'the rest of the world' meant!!

India demonstrated this legend about an hour back!

Three Members of Parliament (from Bhartiya Janata Party) have alledged that about Rupees 3 crore each (India TV says 27 crores) has been offered to them to abstain from Nuclear Deal Voting!

Inside the Lok Sabha, one hour ago, these MPs, reached the Speaker's Table and deposited the 'advance money' of 3 crores under his table. Then they opened up the bags and one by one started showing 1000 rupee bundles, live on TV! It is claimed that a Television channel has recorded the bribe giving ceremony - the recording was submitted to the speaker on a CD.

This has to be ONE OF A KIND event in the history of the world! Certainly, first time in India's Parliament!

US has a 'fantastic' lobby system - their laws permit paying money to political parties to 'influence' policies. Time to introduce that in India?

Back nuke deal: Sri Sri Ravi Shankar to Opposition

Back nuke deal: Sri Sri Ravi Shankar to Opposition - ExpressIndia.Com

Here is some support to Dr. Manmohan Singh from Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, who feels that the nuclear deal is beneficial to India.

He has appealed to all Indian political parties to display ‘magnanimity’ and support the troubled Indo-US nuclear deal. He says:

At a time when the country is faced with severe energy shortage, the government has negotiated a nuclear deal with the US, which can augment sustainable energy sources.

An interesting combination of Spirituality, Military and Big Bucks!

Nayan Chanda writes:

According to the US-India Business Council, the expansion of India’s civilian nuclear-energy program would generate $150 billion in commercial opportunities for American companies over the next 30 years. As illustrated by Lockheed’s proposal to sell its brand-new F-35 fighter to India’s air force, US defense industries also anticipate selling billions of dollars worth of military hardware to their newest strategic partner in Asia.

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?