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November 30, 2006
Rustum Roy's Letter to the Editor, New York Times
Dear Friends,
This letter will be published in the New York Science Times in an edited form. Dr. Rustum Roy is an Evan Pugh
Professor of the Solid State Emeritus; Professor of Science, Technology and Society Emeritus; Professor of Geochemistry Emeritus at the Pennsylvania State University, Distinguished Professor in the Materials Program at Arizona State University, Visiting Professor of Medicine at the University of Arizona, a member of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States, Russia, Japan, Sweden, and India, author of more than 6 books; 700+ papers in science, 250+ papers in science and society-related papers; 20 patents and patents pending (www.rustumroy.com).
Love,
Deepak
Letter to the Editor, New York Times
Dear Sir:
Why the Science Times article, “A Free-for-All on Science and Religion,” rehashes the same old rantings of two tiny, tiny isolated fringe groups within science and within theology, is itself the real story. The self-appointed Ayatollah of Scientism Richard Dawkins absolutely does not speak for more than 0.1% of the worldwide community of basic and applied science, and ofengineering in which I have been immersed—and honored—for 50 years.Or, I ask you: do his opponents—pro-Templeton or otherwise—represent by any stretch of the wildest imagination the theology of Jesus, Moses, Buddha, Lao-tze?
But the most important point, from one who has been engaged at the point of the real “clash of the titans”—technology and religion—for decades is this: It is tech nology which has swept the world into its bosom, because it gave us the realities that our hearts desire. It is religion which governs what we do: followers of Jesus are to love the poor, feed the hungry, and forgive our enemies. (No possible conflict with evolution or string theory here!.) Get it? If the debaters, and the editors, do not even define their terms, confusing orthodoxy with orthopraxis, what can you expect?
Sincerely,
Rustum Roy
State College, PA
(go to : www.rustumroy.com)
Posted by Deepak Chopra at 02:51 PM | Comments (53)
$115 / night
Look what kind of hotel room you can get for $115-per-night in some parts of the world...
Normandy, France
Posted by Saira Mohan at 10:47 AM | Comments (7)
BA: 33,000 passgrs & 3,000 staff in Radiation Alert
British Airways is trying to contact 33,000 passengers and 3,000 staff after radioactive traces were found on two of its aircraft. A third aircraft, currently in Moscow, is to be flown back to the UK for tests. The low grade radiation was found by scientists investigating the death of ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko.
Dear ATCA Colleagues; dear IntentBloggers
[Please note that the views presented by individual contributors are not necessarily representative of the views of ATCA, which is neutral. ATCA conducts collective Socratic dialogue on global opportunities and threats.]
Re: The Radioactive Russian Connection Spreads: 33,000 British Airways passengers & 3,000 staff in complex Radiation Alert
British Airways is trying to contact 33,000 passengers and 3,000 staff after radioactive traces were found on two of its aircraft. A third aircraft, currently in Moscow, is to be flown back to the UK for tests. The low grade radiation was found by scientists investigating the death of ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko. The inquest into the death opens later today at St Pancras Coroner's Court in London. BA has named 221 affected flights on its website and passengers are urged to contact their medical health advisor or doctor. The health risk is thought to be low. Destinations affected include: Moscow, Barcelona, Düsseldorf, Athens, Larnaca, Stockholm, Vienna, Frankfurt, Istanbul and Madrid.
Alexander Litvinenko, an ex-KGB agent and a fierce critic of Russian president Vladimir Putin, died last week of radiation poisoning in London. Detectives are known to be tracing the movements of those who associated with Mr Litvinenko. Traces of radioactive Polonium-210 were discovered in his body and more traces of the substance were found at venues he visited in London on 1 November.
British Airways' Chief Executive Willie Walsh has said that the aircraft affected are all of the same type, and are being carefully examined. "Three specific aircraft were initially identified - three 767s," he said. "Two of those aircraft have been tested, and very low levels of radioactive traces have been discovered on the aircraft." Mr Walsh said that the aircraft had made a large number of flights since they were contaminated, carrying many thousands of passengers, and the company was trying to alert them all. This could indicate the radioactive traces were left by people bringing the material into the UK rather than by those who had been in contact with the ex-spy. A spokeswoman for BA said the airline had also been "proactively calling passengers" and hoped to have contacted the majority by the end of Thursday. The alert involves the 221 flights made by the three short-haul 767s in Europe between 25th October and 29th November, almost a quarter of which were between Moscow and London.
One of the two Russians who met Mr Litvinenko on the day he fell ill has told Russian newspaper Kommersant that he travelled on one of the planes involved on 3rd November. Former KGB bodyguard Andrei Lugovoi told the paper he had had nothing to do with the poisoning. He met the ex-spy after his meeting at a West End sushi restaurant with an Italian security consultant, at which Mr Litvinenko was already showing signs of radiation contamination.
The Chief Executive of Britain's Health Protection Agency, Prof Pat Troop, has said that if the source of the radiation was the same as that which killed Mr Litvinenko -- Polonium-210 -- the risk of serious contamination to passengers is small. "What we have heard is that it's either traces or very low levels and what we have learnt so far in our investigation... is that where we have got these areas of low level radiation it doesn't seem to pose a significant health threat," he said. Contact with carrier's sweat or urine can lead to exposure. But Polonium-210 must be ingested to cause damage. Radiation has very short range and cannot pass through skin. Washing eliminates traces. British Home Secretary John Reid is expected to make a statement to the UK Parliament concerning the investigation today.
[ENDS]
We look forward to your further thoughts, observations and views. Thank you.
Best wishes
For and on behalf of DK Matai
Chairman, Asymmetric Threats Contingency Alliance (ATCA)
____________________________________________________________________________
ATCA: The Asymmetric Threats Contingency Alliance is a philanthropic expert initiative founded in 2001 to resolve complex global challenges through collective Socratic dialogue and joint executive action to build a wisdom based global economy. Adhering to the doctrine of non-violence, ATCA addresses opportunities and threats arising from climate chaos, radical poverty, organised crime & extremism, advanced technologies -- bio, info, nano, robo & AI, demographic skews, pandemics and financial systems. Present membership of ATCA is by invitation only and has over 5,000 distinguished members from over 100 countries: including several from the House of Lords, House of Commons, EU Parliament, US Congress & Senate, G10's Senior Government officials and over 1,500 CEOs from financial institutions, scientific corporates and voluntary organisations as well as over 750 Professors from academic centres of excellence worldwide.
____________________________________________________________________________
Intelligence Unit | mi2g ATCA The Philanthropia Φ
Posted by ATCA at 02:35 AM | Comments (11)
Lord Howe: Re-creation of UK Foreign Policy
The re-creation of British foreign policy is no exaggeration of our need. This need springs from the serious damage done to most of its components -- as a consequence of the profoundly ill-judged Anglo-American invasion of Iraq -- and subsequent response to the onslaught on Lebanon.
Dear ATCA Colleagues; dear IntentBloggers
[Please note that the views presented by individual contributors are not necessarily representative of the views of ATCA, which is neutral. ATCA conducts collective Socratic dialogue on global opportunities and threats.]
We are grateful to The Lord Howe of Aberavon for his submission to ATCA from The Palace of Westminster, "The Re-creation of British Foreign Policy post the Serious Damage Done."
Baron Howe of Aberavon, (born 20th December 1926), usually known until 1992 as Sir Geoffrey Howe, is a senior British Conservative politician. He was Margaret Thatcher's longest-serving Cabinet minister, successively holding the posts of Chancellor of the Exchequer, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, and finally Leader of the House of Commons and Deputy Prime Minister. His resignation on November 1, 1990 is widely thought to have hastened Thatcher's own downfall three weeks later, in perhaps the most dramatic period of British Conservative politics in recent times. Geoffrey Howe was born in 1926 at Port Talbot in Wales. He was educated at Winchester College and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he read Law. He was called to the Bar in 1952 and was made a QC (Queen's Counsel) in 1965. He became chairman of the Bow Group, an internal Tory think tank of 'young modernisers' in the 1960s, and edited its magazine Crossbow.
In 1970 he was knighted and appointed Solicitor General in Edward Heath's government, and in 1972 became Minister of State at the Department of Trade and Industry, with a seat in the Cabinet, a post he held until Labour took power in March 1974. With Conservative victory in the 1979 general election, Howe became Chancellor of the Exchequer himself. His tenure was characterised by radical policies to correct the public finances, reduce inflation and liberalise the economy. The shift from direct to indirect taxation, the development of a Medium Term Financial Strategy, the abolition of exchange controls and the creation of tax-free enterprise zones were among important decisions of his Chancellorship. After the 1983 general election Thatcher appointed Howe Foreign Secretary, a post he held for six years. He became in effect the ambassador for a Britain whose international stature had been revived by the growing success of the 'Thatcher revolution', reaping the benefits of his own time as Chancellor. He played an important part in reasserting the role of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, and he developed a strong working relationship with US Secretary of State George Schultz, paralleling the Reagan-Thatcher duo. His tenure was made difficult, however, by growing behind-the-scenes tensions with the Prime Minister on a number of issues, first on South Africa and then on Britain's relations with the European Community.
Howe retired from the House of Commons in 1992 and was made a life peer. He published his memoirs "Conflict of Loyalty" (Macmillan, 1994) soon after. In the Lords, Howe has continued to speak on a wide range of foreign-policy and European issues, and more recently has led opposition to attempts to convert the second chamber into a wholly or partially elected body. Freed from the responsibilities of government, Howe took on a number of non-executive directorships in business and advisory posts in the law and academia, including as international political adviser to the major US law firm, Jones Day. His wife Elspeth Howe, a former Chairman of the Broadcasting Standards Commission, was made a life peer in 2001 as Baroness Howe of Idlicote. As a result of her husband having received a knighthood and later a peerage, and she herself then being made a peer in her own right, she has been referred to as "Lady, Lady, Lady Howe." He writes:
Dear DK and Colleagues
Re: The Re-creation of British Foreign Policy post the Serious Damage Done
The re-creation of British foreign policy is no exaggeration of our need. This need springs from the serious damage done to most of its components -- as a consequence of the profoundly ill-judged Anglo-American invasion of Iraq -- and subsequent response to the onslaught on Lebanon.
Just three days after the savage tragedy of what we have all come to know as 9/11, I spelled out, in the House of Lords debate, the four conditions which would, in my then view, need to be fulfilled, if America was to be justified in taking any military action against any target.
First, such action would have be justified on the basis of deterrent self-defence - and not, in any way, as retaliation or "response".
Second, there would need to be robust evidence - "as sure as one can be", I said - of the responsibility, for the 9/11 brutality, of the party so to be attacked. Without that, I stressed:
the third condition -- "maintenance of the long-term unity of international support, that would be essential to success" -- would not be fulfilled.
And fourth -- the most important proposition in today's circumstances - any such action "must be accompanied by a renewed commitment to tackle even-handedly both sides of the Middle East conflict. The USA, as the principal guarantor of Israel's very existence - and not only the United States -- needs to be seen as equally committed to support for the legitimate rights and expectations of the Palestinian people".
It is now as clear as crystal that, in relation to the Iraq war, not one of those four conditions has ever, or yet, been fulfilled. And, along with many others, I have to acknowledge my own responsibility for having failed, in the months and years which followed, to focus upon and underline that comprehensive absence of justification for going to war.
And what has been the result? I leave aside the hugely destructive consequences in and for Iraq itself. But, on the wider scene, the misguided and mistaken "war on terrorism", with predictably provoked counter-attacks, has spread and escalated across the world. The mutual confidence of NATO partners in each other is seriously damaged, as also, though to a less extent, the capacity of EU member states to formulate and apply a concerted and constructive foreign policy of the kind required.
And, worse almost than all that, the worldwide stock of sympathy and goodwill towards the United States has largely disappeared -- along with the earlier, long-standing respect for the wisdom of British policy towards the problems of the Middle East - which had once prevailed almost throughout that region.
And all this in a world where, as I have tried to illustrate, tense foreign policy threats and crises are more than likely to arise or persist -- from Teheran to Taiwan, from Tbilisi to Pyongyang -- and who knows where else?
Several propositions are almost bound to apply to the management and resolution of such problems. In the first place, they all need to be tackled and, if possible, resolved by means of diplomacy and not by force. As David Cameron said in his thoughtful speech a few weeks ago:
"There are more tools of statecraft than military power."
That diplomacy will almost always need to be multilateral. And, with a little less certainty, the United States is more than likely to be required to play a major part.
And what role for our own country? In contrast to the age when I was active on the foreign field, the great majority of purely "British problems" - mainly post-imperial - have largely, even if not entirely, passed away or at least diminished in importance. I mean no disrespect when I mention, for example; Hong Kong, Gibraltar and even, I dare to say, Northern Ireland as examples.
Certainly it is hard today, if not impossible, to identify any problem for which British foreign policy, on its own, can be expected to provide the answer. Our response would almost always need to be in partnership with one or more other countries. Our history, reputation and experience would still often offer a diverse choice of partners - the most often forgotten, perhaps, being those within the Commonwealth, whose value we all too often discount.
But more often than that, we are likely to find ourselves sharing interests with our partners and neighbours in the European Union. Acting alone, not one of us is likely to be able to make an effective input into global diplomacy. Europe divided is all too likely, as Iraq has plainly demonstrated, to emerge as Europe disregarded - Europe without influence.
This is far from being a novel thought. I remind myself that more than twenty years ago, in July 1984 as Margaret Thatcher's Foreign Secretary, and with her full authority, I circulated a document entitled:
EUROPE: THE FUTURE (UNITED KINGDOM MEMORANDUM)
"The Ten [then EC member states] have the weight and must show more political will to act together: concentrate their efforts where their leverage is greatest and their interests most directly touched eg in the Middle East and Africa; and recognise that influence does not last if not backed by the necessary resources ... The objective should be the progressive attainment of a common external policy."
If that was true in 1985, then it is of even greater importance at the present time.
And nowhere is the effective application of a common European policy more necessary today than in relation to the Middle East. That too was recognised by the leaders of the then European Community as long ago as 1980. Once again I draw attention to the policy then promoted by the United Kingdom (when Peter Carrington was Margaret Thatcher's Foreign Secretary) and endorsed by EC colleagues in the Venice Declaration (13th June 1980). Again I quote:
"The time has come to promote the ... implementation of the two principles universally accepted by the international community: the right to existence and to security of all the states in the region, including Israel, and justice for all the peoples, which implies the recognition of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people", including the right "to exercise fully its right to self-determination."
But would not a robust European stance on this issue risk damaging the long-standing transatlantic partnership, whose continuance remains of fundamental importance to world peace? Emphatically not - it would be in the interests of the United States as much as of the rest of the world for Europe (embracing, of course, the United Kingdom) to be making a more positive contribution to global peace and security.
The transatlantic partnership, if it is to be restored and maintained, certainly does need to be rebalanced - both ways, with Americans taking more account of the need for legitimacy, for partnership, for mobilising world opinion and for working within the United Nations.
And Europeans doing far more to pull their weight together and on the global stage - not just in the formulation of effective foreign policy but also in enhanced defence co-operation. In no way would that be intended to, or have the effect of, pitting Europe against the United States in some kind of challenge.
On the contrary, the framework for that kind of partnership in the Middle East already exists. As the International Crisis Group Declaration reminded us in early October this year, it is, of course, the Roadmap proposed in 2003 by the Quartet (UN, US, EU and Russia). I quote from the ICG document (of which I was one of 135 signatures),
"If the Arab-Israeli conflict, with all its terrible consequences, is ever to be resolved, there is a desperate need for fresh thinking and the injection of political will".
For our country to put its full weight behind this multilateral approach, would be to amplify and certainly not to subordinate, the impact of British foreign policy upon the world in which we live.
Geoffrey Howe
The submission to ATCA by Lord Howe is based on the keynote address he delivered in October at The Welsh Centre for International Affairs, Temple of Peace, Cardiff.
[ENDS]
We look forward to your further thoughts, observations and views. Thank you.
Best wishes
For and on behalf of DK Matai
Chairman, Asymmetric Threats Contingency Alliance (ATCA)
____________________________________________________________________________
ATCA: The Asymmetric Threats Contingency Alliance is a philanthropic expert initiative founded in 2001 to resolve complex global challenges through collective Socratic dialogue and joint executive action to build a wisdom based global economy. Adhering to the doctrine of non-violence, ATCA addresses opportunities and threats arising from climate chaos, radical poverty, organised crime & extremism, advanced technologies -- bio, info, nano, robo & AI, demographic skews, pandemics and financial systems. Present membership of ATCA is by invitation only and has over 5,000 distinguished members from over 100 countries: including several from the House of Lords, House of Commons, EU Parliament, US Congress & Senate, G10's Senior Government officials and over 1,500 CEOs from financial institutions, scientific corporates and voluntary organisations as well as over 750 Professors from academic centres of excellence worldwide.
____________________________________________________________________________
Intelligence Unit | mi2g ATCA The Philanthropia Φ
Posted by ATCA at 01:42 AM | Comments (3)
November 29, 2006
The Yellow Wiggle
Amidst today's headlines -- Bush snubbed by the Iraqi Prime Minister, the Iran Iraq alliance, the Iraq panel report, Britney Spears under the influence of Paris Hilton (I kid you not this was a headline on CNN today) -- the shocking news of the night is that Greg Page, the Yellow Wiggle, is retiring!!!
For those kindred parents who have suffered through the Wiggles like me, this is major news. News which will have to be broken carefully to our 2-5 year old kids. Greg, the lead Wiggle, has to step down because of a chronic condition causing dizziness, fatigue and nausea -- definitely of concern when you are performing songs like Fruit Salad for thousands of hyper active 4 year olds.
Lucky for Tara, me and my mom, we will always be able to say that we actually saw the original Yellow Wiggle in concert. (I have a feeling the new one is that very happy guy with a huge, unnatural smile who is a back up dancer. His moves to me are very exaggerated.) I will never forget that concert- at Universal Studios in a concert hall full of thousands, literally thousands, of screaming toddlers and parents who accosted the Wiggles when they stepped into the crowd, pushing their kids into the Australian mens arms.
I have to admit Greg was my favorite - he was the guy who seemed to run the show. Jeff sleeps too much, Anthony eats to much, and frankly I never really figured out Murray does...
I wish Greg good health and best wishes for his future. He will be dearly dearly missed by millions of kids around the world.
Posted by Mallika Chopra at 09:56 PM | Comments (3)
I would like everyone to share...
...something that you suspect is probably true regarding life, but that you cannot prove is true. I'll start:
"In order to become successful in your chosen vocation, you first need to become scared."
..feel free to share your thoughts...
Posted by Saira Mohan at 04:55 PM | Comments (33)
Fireworks of Silence
I miss the fireworks exploding in computer screen heavens, carrying messages of light and inspiration, with incandescent flight they burn in the atmosphere of my mind. They swirl within, finding the bloodstream that opens in anticipated blooms of premature spring, and sting as poison arrows my heart.
They speak of far yet we are all so near, they smell of spice and gender, and dance games divine in inspiration, revealing visions of subtle forests, dainty knees and transfigurations of words beyond everyday. They speak of life as they alight in the momentary skies of iridescence before my eyes.
Two souls were look