You know it, you see it, you feel it! Too many people are not happy with the world as it is today. Eighty to ninety percent of the Earth’s population is living in sub-human conditions. What is the point of having so much so-called development, when practically the whole world is unhappy with the situation? What kind of development is that? Development for who? Unless, of-course, we all agree that the minuscule minority of two to five percent that controls everything is the way it is supposed to be, with a few rulers and the rest of the world as “their happy-slaves”. This is not an acceptable situation, don’t you agree?
The recent events that started in Tunisia, flared up in Egypt, and that have spread to a large part of North Africa and the Middle East – with shadows cast across China and even over the USA, shows clearly that the world’s peoples not only needs, but also wants, changes.
What kind of changes are we talking about?
For example, after Egypt’s Mubarak, if the military is going to rule and manipulate the next ruler, what is the purpose of all the struggles that people went through? If Libya is going to be in the hands of new dictators who will be subserviently friendly to the West, what is the point of all the efforts of the people and their aspirations?
No, we are talking of a comprehensive change!
For the first time in human history we have a world that is closely inter-connected, thanks to the Internet and education, we are in a situation of talking of a “Global Revolution”. For such fundamental change to take place, let us try to understand the conditions and requirements for that change to take place. What do we need for that change to take place in reality? Let us list these aspects:
First of all we need people who can think differently, with a new plan of life. These people need to be together and work out a platform of action. A platform that will have its contextual environment, where people can breathe democratically and without any fears.
This platform will need to have certain characteristics, such as:
To be open to all people without any discrimination;
To leave violence out of its methodology, under any conditions whatsoever. Violence cannot be a way out of any situation under any circumstance;
This platform needs to be transparent and not become a personal fiefdom of any person, group, family, industry, religion, country, region, race-caste, language, etc. The platform has to have an ideology that maintains the human being as the highest value. That is, everything in the new society needs to hold the human being in a central place and not place other things or notions first;
The platform needs to see the development of a new and responsible guidance, which may not necessarily lie with those who first developed the platform itself but rather with its proponents. This sensitive directive needs to be without the ego-isms, without that automatic hunger for power – rather there would be the aim of make “politics” as a higher form of selfless-social-work, not a career in a spiked system;
The platform needs to base itself on priorities of providing the highest quality of Education, Health Care, Employment, Housing to all, etc., so that the ninety percent of today’s ousted people can begin to lead a dignified life without pre-conditions;
The platform needs to spread the news of the need for that shift in the thinking-feeling-beingness of everyone in our world, starting with us first comers and those taking the responsibility, for our proposed sensible and sensitive guidance in such a way that we can jump from a Paradigm of War to a Paradigm of Peace;
The platform has to move people’s emotive identification with Borders, Flags, Names of Nation (with its corresponding ‘rival of those next door’), Language, Religion, Region, Color, etc., to that of, “the human being as the highest value”.
The platform has to be such that any honest, simple-living common person, from anywhere in the world, can join in with complete ease, without preconditions, without fear, without the need of an introduction or favor-seeking reflection, thus evoking affection and friendship instead of fear and enmity among peoples.
This platform needs to have an environment in which to develop and give opportunity for all people to develop into better human beings.
This platform will need to connect with people directly, as an honest and straightforward call to the hearts of all peoples, involving them in the work as equals, as participants, and not as mechanical followers.
So let’s do it, together, and discuss everything entailed. It’s just a case of getting on with it. It’s the moment. Actually, people are crying out for it, even if it is a silent cry of a majority.
As the Humanist Party of India, part of the Humanist Party International with almost thirty years experience in promoting, implementing and developing such a platform, we don’t have to start reinventing the wheel. A lot of work has already been done.
We can start based on what is already laid down.
This platform has a name – the Universal Humanist Manifesto – and is a clear ideology, a methodology and is in more than 100 countries of the world. This platform is sufficiently ready for the world to take it forward and localize its contents for immediate application.
The initial group need not declare itself as some “permanent leadership” holding the banner of the platform but rather seeks to reach out to you who are interested for its further development into the next stage, here and now.
This platform is timely because this is the first time in human history that the whole planet is so interestingly connected in a way linking people together which brings us all to a condition to produce this Global Social-Political-Cultural Revolution that infers a different mind set.
This platform is based on Universal Humanism and does not belong to any religion, region, language, minority or majority, country, race or caste, and is for each human being, enabling a life of guaranteed dignity.
Besides its worldly and social intent, this platform inheres a practice that helps us discover the human in us as we dive within themselves in works for-the-other to reach that profound experience of the deeper meaning of life and the human being, that changes everything.
Enough is enough. The human being has gone astray for too long into directions dominated by violence that has been proven wrong time and again. Many great souls have tried to remind us of the need of peace as the basis of the way forward.
What we see in the events across North Africa and in the Middle East is a demonstration of the power of non-violence and truth and we need to realize this power and find its connections within ourselves and our situations.
Universal Humanism, which some might call the Humanist Movement (www.humanistmovement.net), has been in development in the decades since the 1950s.
Starting from a remote place in Argentina, in South America, this ‘ambit of change’ has spread to all the continents, to over 150 countries, and all based on voluntary (meaning unpaid in cash or kind) actions of people who came forward to take this task in hand at its various stages. Despite being banned by violent regimes in different locations, the passion of its members took it forward and by today the Humanist Movement has developed various
organizations to enable people to express themselves in the field of the choice for their activities, these are:
Humanist Party – for socio-political expressions;
The Community for Human Development – for cultural and social expressions and studies;
Convergence of Cultures – For inter-cultural expressions and resolutions;
World Without Wars & Without Violence – for peace work activities and to highlight the paradigm shift from one of war to one of Peace, expressly dealing with conflicts;
World Center for Humanist Studies – for research into topics regarding the human being and human life and direction.
Apart from the above, this newly charged environment also counts on the birth of a new secular spirituality that helps the new human being to express itself spiritually, surpassing the limits of any particular religion, based on the ethos of Silo’s Message. With this important journey of over half a century, we have reached the stage where the Change can actually happen.
The world has the means, the technology, the resources and everything that is needed for this change to be made now. There is absolutely no need for anyone to be in poverty, to be illiterate, to be a beggar, to die due to lack of food, medicine, malnutrition or a roof. We do not need any more research to remove these ills that the vast majority of the human race faces today everywhere across the globe.
All we need is that human intention to work to provide dignity to all and the needed change can be made and seen. The whole process of change can be initiated without any delay. The Humanist Manifesto to form platforms of change has been prepared and is available for you to take forward.
Come, and together, let us change our world, fulfilling our dreams kept pending for such a long time. The time is Now, Today. Let us do it together and Change everything.
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He has been a radio producer (Earthstar Radio, San Francisco), organized and worked with the homeless, and is an advocate/activist in the nonviolent protest movement for safe energy, human rights, and peaceful solutions.
He is USA Vice President of the World Constitution and Parliament Association whose mission is to build a parallel world body to the United Nations, an emerging Earth Federation with a Provisional World Parliament under the Earth Constitution.
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">Roger Kotila PhD Dr Gary G Kohls MD[/caption]
is a retired physician who practiced holistic, non-drug, mental health care for the last decade of his forty year family practice career. He is a contributor to and an endorser of the efforts of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights and was a member of MindFreedom International, the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology, and the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.
While running his independent clinic, he published over 400 issues of his Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter, which was emailed to a variety of subscribers. (They have not been archived at any website.) In the early 2000s, Dr Kohls taught a graduate level psychology course at the University of Minnesota Duluth. It was titled “The Science and Psychology of the Mind-Body Connection”.
Since his retirement, Dr Kohls has been writing a weekly column (titled “Duty to Warn”) for the Duluth Reader, an alternative newsweekly published in Duluth, Minnesota. He offers teaching seminars to the public and to healthcare professionals.
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">Gary G Kohls George Monbiot[/caption]
Studied in Oxford University, columnist with The Guardian newspaper, also the author of the bestselling books The Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a New World Order and Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain, as well as the investigative travel books Poisoned Arrows, Amazon Watershed, No Man’s Land, How Did We Get into This Mess? Politics, Equality, Nature and other.
Prof Johan Galtung was born in Oslo. He earned the PhD degree in mathematics at the University of Oslo in 1956, and in 1957 a year later completed the PhD degree in sociology at the same university.
Prof Johan Galtung received nine honorary doctorates in the fields of Peace studies, Future studies, Social sciences, Buddhism, Sociology of law, Philosophy, Sociology and Law.
State Councilor of St. Petersburg, Russia. Founding President, Global Harmony Association (GHA) since 2005. Honorary President, GHA since 2016. Director: Tetrasociology Public Institute, Russia. Philosopher, Sociologist and Peacemaker from Harmony. Author of more than 400 scientific publications, including 18 books in 1-12 languages. Author of Tetrism as the unity of Tetraphilosophy and Tetrasociology – science of social harmony, global peace and harmonious civilisation. Director, GHA Web portal “Peace from Harmony”. Initiator, Manager, Coauthor and Editor in Chief of the book project “Global Peace Science” (GPS).
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">Leo M Semashko Robert C Koehler[/caption]
writes for the Huffington Post, Common Dreams, OpEd News and TruthOut. He considers himself a “peace journalist.” He has been an editor at Tribune Media Services and a reporter, columnist and copy desk chief at Lerner Newspapers, Chicago. Koehler launched his column in 1999. Robert Koehler has received numerous writing and journalism awards over a 30-year career in USA. He writes about values and meaning with reverence for life. He is praised as “blatantly relevant” and “a hero of democracy”.
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">Robert C Koehler Robert J Burrowes PhD[/caption]
has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?‘
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">Robert J BurrowesProf Richard Falk[/caption]
an international relations scholar, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, author, co-author or editor of 40 books, and a speaker and activist on world affairs.
Since 2002 he has lived in Santa Barbara, California, and taught at the local campus of the University of California in Global and International Studies, and since 2005 chaired the Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. His most recent book is Achieving Human Rights (2009).
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">Richard FalkDr Gray Corseri, PhD[/caption]
is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment. He has published and posted articles, fiction and poems at hundreds of venues, including, TMS, The New York Times, Village Voice, Redbook Magazine and Counterpunch.
He has published 2 novels and 2 collections of poetry, and his dramas have been produced on PBS-Atlanta and elsewhere. He has performed his poems at the Carter Presidential Library and Museum and has taught in universities in the US and Japan, and in US public schools and prisons.
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">Gary CorseriAntonio Carlos Silva Rosa, Editor, TMS[/caption]
born 1946, is the editor of the pioneering Peace Journalism website, TRANSCEND Media Service-TMS, an assistant to Prof. Johan Galtung, and Secretary of the International Board of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment.
He completed the required coursework for a Ph.D. in Political Science-Peace Studies (1994), has a Masters in Political Science-International Relations (1990), and a B.A. in Communication (1988) from the University of Hawai’i.
Originally from Brazil, he lives presently in Porto, Portugal. Antonio was educated in the USA where he lived for 20 years; in Europe/India since 1994.
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">Antonio Carlos Silva Rosa
John Scales Avery is a theoretical chemist, Associate Professor Emeritus, at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He is noted for his books and research publications in quantum chemistry, thermodynamics, evolution, and history of science. His 2003 book Information Theory and Evolution set forth the view that the phenomenon of life, including its origin, evolution, as well as human cultural evolution, has its background situated in the fields of thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and information theory.
He is an Indian citizen & permanent resident of Australia and a scholar, an author, a social-policy critic, a frequent social wayfarer, a social entrepreneur and a journalist;He has been exploring, understanding and implementing the ideas of social-economy, participatory local governance, education, citizen-media, ground-journalism, rural-journalism, freedom of expression, bureaucratic accountability, tribal development, village development, reliefs & rehabilitation, village revival and other.
For Ground Report India editions, Vivek had been organising national or semi-national tours for exploring ground realities covering 5000 to 15000 kilometres in one or two months to establish Ground Report India, a constructive ground journalism platform with social accountability.
He has written a book “मानसिक, सामाजिक, आर्थिक स्वराज्य की ओर”on various social issues, development community practices, water, agriculture, his ground works & efforts and conditioning of thoughts & mind. Reviewers say it is a practical book which answers “What” “Why” “How” practically for the development and social solution in India.
worked as a mediator for the church in Belfast; as faculty at The School of Peace Studies, University of Bradford, and as Executive Director, the Right Livelihood Award Foundation. He has founded several Indian NGOs, is an Officer of the Order of Canada, and a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment.
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">Vithal RajanRene Wadlow[/caption]
is the President of the Association of World Citizens, an international peace organization with consultative status with ECOSOC, the United Nations organ facilitating international cooperation on and problem-solving in economic and social issues.
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">Rene WadlowBaher Kamal[/caption]
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Baher Kamal
Egyptian-born, Spanish-national secular journalist. He is founder and publisher of Human Wrongs Watch. Kamal is a pro-peace, non-violence, human rights, coexistence defender, with more than 45 years of professional experience. With these issues in sight, he covered practically all professional posts, from correspondent to chief editor of dailies and international news agencies.
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Credits :
">Baher KamalRosa Dalmiglio with Lama Mongolia[/caption]
She is a member of the China Council Disabled People’s Performing Art Troupe (special art, culture and humanity), which touches the hearts of all people and portrays the strong willpower so encouraging to 60 million Chinese disabled persons.
Ms. Dalmiglio is Intermediary Agent of CICE, Centre International Cultural Exchange, a direct subsidiary of the Ministry of Culture, People’s Republic of China. CICE is a comprehensive institution engaged in cultural exchange programs, professional publication and presentation of cultural art works such as exhibits, receiving foreign art troupes and artists, holding international cultural research programs, and producing intercultural and interreligious documentary films.
She is a member of China Disabled Person’s Federation, CDPF. She is also a member of the International Women Federation, which is concerned with the financial ethics of women s enterprises in underdeveloped areas.
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credits:
">Rosa Dalmiglio
Director, Guru Arjan Dev Institute of Development Studies.
A recipient of Cultural Doctorate of Philosophy of Economics from USA. He is an active member of various professional bodies, namely -
He participated and presented papers in various International/national/regional seminars, conferences etc.. He remained member of the Academic Council of Punjab Technical University, Jalandhar. An unwearied researcher has about 200 research papers published in various international and national journals of repute and 15 research monographs to his kitty. Besides, he has authored/co-authored /edited 15 books which have been well received and highly acclaimed during his three decades of professional career. He was honoured by various national and international awards, namely, Guru Draunacharya Samman, Vijay Rattan Award and so on.
Dr Ron Paul served in U.S. House of Representatives three different periods: first from 1976 to 1977, after he won a special election, then from 1979 to 1985, and finally from 1997 to 2013.
During his first term as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Paul founded the Foundation for Rational Economics and Education (FREE), a non-profit think tank dedicated to promoting principles of limited government and free-market economics. In 1984, Paul became the first chairman of the Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE), a conservative political group founded by Charles Koch and David Koch 'to fight for less government, lower taxes, and less regulation.' CSE started a Tea Party protest against high taxes in 2002. In 2004, Citizens for a Sound Economy split into two new organizations, with Citizens for a Sound Economy being renamed as FreedomWorks, and Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation becoming Americans for Prosperity. The two organizations would become key players in the Tea Party movement from 2009 onward.
Dr Paul proposed term-limit legislation multiple times, while himself serving a few terms in the House of Representatives. In 1984, he decided to retire from the House in order to run for the U.S. Senate, complaining in his House farewell address that 'Special interests have replaced the concern that the Founders had for general welfare.... It's difficult for one who loves true liberty and utterly detests the power of the state to come to Washington for a period of time and not leave a true cynic.'
He is known nationally and internationally as a pioneer figure in the study of culture and psychopathology who challenged the ethnocentrism and racial biases of many assumptions, theories, and practices in psychology and psychiatry.
In more recent years, he has been writing and lecturing on peace and social justice. He has published 15 edited books, and more than 250 articles, chapters, book reviews, and popular pieces.
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Credits:
">Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D.Jason Hickel[/caption]
He is international consultant of the UN – FAO and international consultant for sustainable development and sustainable future of humankind of Universal State of the Earth - USE.
On 8th October 2016 he was appointed as The Chairman of the Humanity, Nature, Space and Environment protection Committee of the USE, the Supreme Council of Humanity - SCH from Athens, Greece and London, UK.
He is researcher working on: Nature; the Nature, Space and Environment protection; the Climate change system; System thinking; Globalization and global studies; Networking, Complexity and Swarm research: Sustainable Development and Sustainable Future of Humankind. He was among the pioneers researchers (1986 – 1994) to apply nature, space, and environment protection in a local community by activities we call today Local Agenda 21 Processes – a holistic program for survival of our civilization under new challenges of the third millennium.“Commencing from Local Community Sustainable Future and moving towards Sustainable Future of the Global Community of Humankind”.
He is independent researchers with many domestic and international publications and talks. Together with many researchers in co-operation worldwide within philosophy, operational research, global studies, case studies and complex problem solving research, system thinking, requisitely holism, networking and complexity, swarm research, integration and disintegration of matter and energy and universal upbringing, education and lifelong learning. He is contributing a systemic, requisitely holistic and a better understanding of the present. His latest research within the system theory, system thinking, networking, complexity and swarm research may provide a possible answer enabling people to better understand our world of humans.
During 2014 he completed 50 years of research work (1964 - 2014). This year he completed 50 years of been Dr. Vet. Med. Since 1986 he worked on the protection of Humanity, Nature, Space and Environment and completed 30 years of research.
For research on the climate change system and the book “System Thinking and Climate Change System (Against a big “Tragedy of Commons” of all of us), Ecimovic, Mayur, Mulej and co-authors, 2002, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize 2003. His work on “The Information Theory of Nature” was his second nomination for The Nobel Prize during 2007 in Physics. His third nomination for The Nobel Prize in Physics 2010 was for “The Environment Theory of the Nature”, published in the book “Three Applications of the System Thinking”, Ecimovic, 2010. Within last 10 years he has contributed trilogies: “The Nature”, “The Sustainable Future of Mankind” and “The Life 2017” – please see at: www.institut-climatechange.si
I grew up in Chile, got my medical degree there, began an academic career in 1970, and left for the USA due to the military coup in early 1974. My first job in the USA was working as a public nutrition professor in the international programme of Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee.
I started to travel to Africa in 1975, and worked a year in Cameroun in 1980 helping to prepare their five-year nutrition plan. I then moved to New Orleans, to Tulane University’s School of Public Health, and taught in the department of nutrition for ten years, before moving to Nairobi where I was an advisor in the Ministry of Health. Seven years there got me into extensive consulting in Africa, often on nutritional issues. In 1995 moved to Vietnam where I worked for two and a half years in the Ministry of Health as a senior primary health care advisor.
Many years of touching the reality on the ground, in Latin America, then the USA, then Africa and Asia, has made me understand that the real challenge is in the social and political determinants of malnutrition. I have devoted my writings and teaching to that. Over the years, I have found an important shift in my colleagues’ attitude and understanding towards acknowledging the basic causes of malnutrition. But yet I see little happening as a result. I submit that it is our guild’s lack of experience in the political arena that explains this dichotomy. I devote much of my energy to bridge this gap, and am a fervent advocate of empowering claim holders to demand needed changes from duty bearers. Nutrition is a perfect port of entry for that. Equity, social justice and people’s empowerment in a human rights sense is what really will make a difference.
There is no alternative but to deal with nutrition problems as indivisibly linked to social, political and environmental problems. We need to address them as such. The question is: are we all prepared to do that? The answer, in my view, decides whether we are part of the solution or part of the problem. Travelling and living in different parts of the world has reinforced my conviction that we need to get down from our academic ivory towers, and need to change the curricula of our young and upcoming colleagues, to give them the tools to act in such a context. To me, public health nutrition cannot be anything but that.
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">Claudio Schuftan Dr MDProf. Ram Puniyani[/caption]
