Monday, February 13, 2012
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Monday, January 16, 2012
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Friday, October 22, 2010
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Monday, August 16, 2010
BBC News - German singer Nadja Benaissa apologises at HIV trial
Aids campaigners have been critical of the authorities' handling of Ms Benaissa's case, and warned against a rush to criminalise the transmission of HIV, the BBC's Tristana Moore reports from Berlin.
Edwin Bernard, a writer and advocate specialising in HIV prosecutions, believes that prosecutions and laws on HIV transmission may do more harm than good in terms of reducing the spread of infections."
Friday, August 13, 2010
Day of Protest on 10th August 2010, denouncing Indian Constitution’s Scheduled Caste Order 1950,
Rev. Raj Bharath Patta,Executive Secretary,NCCI -Commission on Dalits
reports:
The observance of the Day of Protest on 10th August 2010, denouncing paragraph 3 of the Constitution’s Scheduled Caste Order 1950, which discriminates, justice to Dalit Christians and Dalit Muslims, has been successfully observed across the country by the different Churches, organizations and Dalit movements. It was on 10th August 1950 the then President of India issued the ‘Constitution (Scheduled Caste Order 1950)’ specifying that caste be recognized as Scheduled Caste. The third paragraph of the Order however qualifies that ‘not withstanding anything contained in Para 2, no person who professes a religion different from Hinduism shall be a Dalit to be a member of the Scheduled Caste’."
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Back to the future - Manu comes back
However, to assume that Manusmriti is the sole authority on Hindu social and legal mores is wrong. There are other law books, which are less rigid. The text called Gautamsmriti concedes the need for social mobility when required. Hence, if the situation so demands, a Brahmin should adopt the vocation of a Kshatriya or Vaish, or, in a bigger crisis, do as he thinks right. Parasharsmriti considers agriculture the main vocation for Kaliyug, the present age. It is advised even for Brahmins. Scholars often cite Yagyavalkya and Mitakshara as having more relevance to Hindu society and legal transactions than Manu."
Friday, July 23, 2010
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Monday, July 12, 2010
Comparative Religion - The human condition in world religions
And surely, We created you (your father Adam) and then gave you shape (the noble shape of a human being), then We told the angels, 'Prostrate to Adam';, and they prostrated, except Iblis (Satan), he refused to be of those who prostrate. Allah said: 'What prevented you Iblis, that you did not prostrate, when I commanded you?' Iblis said: 'I am better than him (Adam), You created me from fire, and him You created from clay. Allah said: 'O, Iblis, get down from this (Paradise), it is not for you to be arrogant here. Get out, for you are of those humiliated and disgraced.' (Quran 7,11-13)"
What is the Human Condition?
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Haryana couple falls victim to alleged 'honour killing'
Two teenaged girls were murdered for having a romantic relationship with their cousin in Sonepat town. Three people, including a woman, were arrested.
In another case, a teenaged couple was murdered in a village in Bhiwani district by the girl's family as the boy and girl were from different gotra (sub-caste) and were planning to marry.
In March this year, a court in Karnal sentenced five people to death for killing a young couple who married in 2007 against the wishes of their community."More
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
South Korea legalizes castration
The bill was first introduced in 2008 in response to a high-profile case in which a 58-year-old man raped and assaulted an 8-year-old girl. The attack caused widespread revulsion and left the victim with lasting physical injuries"
Pair jailed over racist messages | News
The 'proud neo-Nazis' were unanimously cleared of soliciting murder at Liverpool Crown Court but Heaton was jailed on Friday for 30 months after being convicted of four counts of using threatening, abusive or insulting words likely to stir up racial hatred."
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Monday, June 28, 2010
Sunday, June 27, 2010
BBC News - Pope pins abuse scandal on Church 'sin'
Pope against Police raids on sex abusers
Pope Benedict has joined mounting Vatican criticism of raids by Belgian police investigating alleged child sex abuse, calling them "deplorable".
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Church in sex abuse scandel
Officials said they were searching for evidence of possible abuse Belgian authorities have raided the headquarters of the Belgian Catholic Church during an investigation into child sex abuse claims.
A spokesman for the Brussels prosecutors' office confirmed that the palace of the archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels had been sealed off.
Police also raided the home of retired Archbishop Godfried Danneels.
Belgium is one of several countries in which a stream of abuse claims have shaken the Church.
Brussels prosecutors were looking for material relating to allegations of sex abuse, a spokesman for the prosecutors' office said.
"This is a case that the Brussels prosecutors' office received recently, containing a statement of facts in relation to alleged sexual abuse of minors by a number of people within the Church," said Jean-Marc Meilleur.
"The object of the searches is to verify the declaration and eventually gather evidence about these declarations."
Tapping on boards
At the home of Archbishop Danneels in Mechelen, just north of Brussels, police did not question the cleric but took away his computer, according to his spokesman, Hans Geybels.
Continue reading the main story
The cardinal believes justice must run its normal course
Hans Geybels
Spokesman for Cardinal Godfried Danneels
Mr Geybels said police had also asked the archbishop to accompany them to the cathedral in Mechelen because they had heard that there might be files there.
He said the officers were tapping on boards and looking for hidden spaces but, as far as he was aware, they had not found anything.
He said Cardinal Danneels was co-operating fully: "The cardinal believes justice must run its normal course. He has nothing against that."
Separately, the offices of an independent commission set up to look into cases of sexual abuse were also raided.
An inquiry into child sex abuse in the Catholic Church in Belgium has been running for several years.
In April, the then-bishop of the city of Bruges, Roger Vangheluwe, resigned after admitting that he had sexually abused a boy earlier in his career.
At the time, Archbishop Andre-Joseph Leonard said the move showed that the Church wanted to "resolutely turn a page on a very painful" topic.
Papal pledge
In recent months, allegations of abuse levelled against Catholic priests have surfaced in many countries.
There have also been accusations that Church authorities in Europe and North and South America failed to deal with cases openly or properly.
Pope Benedict XVI himself has been accused of being part of a culture of secrecy, and of not taking strong enough steps against abusers when he had that responsibility as a cardinal in Rome.
However, his supporters say he has been the most pro-active pope yet in confronting abuse.
The Pope pledged in April to "bring to justice" Church officials responsible for abuse.
The Vatican also made it explicit that sex abuse cases should be reported to police if required by law.
...........................................
Spain faces abuse claims Pope pins scandal on Church 'sin' Pope promises 'action' on abuse Pope 'letter' reignites abuse row Pope 'failed to act' on sex abuse FEATURES AND ANALYSIS
'Holy Father, what shall we do?'
The problems facing priests in a changing world
Priesthood 'tarnished' Are priests more prone to abuse? How much did Pope know? Wisconsin's anguish Vatican ends 'wall of silence' BACKGROUND
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Thursday, February 19, 2009
Debbie Purdy loses her assisted suicide case
Debbie Purdy on the court ruling
A woman with multiple sclerosis has lost her Appeal Court case to clarify the law on assisted suicide.
Debbie Purdy, 45, from Bradford, is considering going to a Swiss clinic to end her life, but fears her husband may be charged on his return to the UK.
She wanted clarification of where her husband, Omar Puente would stand legally if he helped her in any way.
But Ms Purdy said after the ruling: "I feel that I have won my argument, despite having lost the appeal."
I'm not prepared for him to face the British justice system without me
Debbie Purdy
She was diagnosed with primary progressive MS in 1995 and is now losing strength in her upper body. She has been in a wheelchair since 2001. More
Monday, February 16, 2009
Child porn viewing Punishable with Five years jail and Rs. ten lakh fineh
New IT Act broadens list of offences
By Jayant Mishra in Mumbai @ Monday, February 16, 2009 9:11 AM
Browsing child pornography sites is to become an offence in India, along with the creation or transmission of child pornography.
The newly-proposed Information Technology bill, which is awaiting presidential assent, will punish anyone publishing, creating, exchanging, downloading or browsing any electronic depiction of children in an "obscene or indecent or sexually explicit manner". Offenders are liable to five years of imprisonment and a fine of Rs 1,000,000.
This is the first time in nine years that the bill has been revised. Other changes include bringing cyber terrorism, identity theft and violation of privacy into the domain of cyber crime. Critics of the bill say that it will enable the government to snoop into citizens’ computers while investigating "any offence".
Section 67 of the existing act deals with "publishing obscene information in electronic form", but does not specifically define "pornography" or make it an offence. Child pornography is not even mentioned. But the revised avatar, Section 67B, proposes specifically to punish involvement in sexually explicit content that depicts children. It will also be an offence to "cultivate, entice or induce children to online relationship with other children for a sexual act."
Cybercrime experts believe that once the bill is introduced it will have a huge positive impact. The only fear is that innocent users who accidentally open a site could be branded offenders. Source
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Marriage rates fall to 21.6 per 1000 men and to 19.7 for 1,000 women
Marriage is at its lowest level since records began nearly 150 years ago, new figures showed.
By Nick Allen
Last Updated: 1:15PM GMT 12 Feb 2009
Marriage: The levels for men and women were the lowest since records were first kept in 1862.
High profile divorce cases, the escalating cost of weddings, and the failure of the Government to support the institution of marriage were among the factors blamed.
It is now likely that married couples will be in the minority by next year as people increasingly choose to live together out of wedlock.
Latest figures from the Office for National Statistics, for the year 2007 in England and Wales, showed that 21.6 men out of every 1,000 men got married, down from 23 the previous year. The rate for women was 19.7 per 1,000, down from 20.7 in 2006.
The levels for men and women were the lowest since records were first kept in 1862.
There were a total of 231,450 marriages in 2007, an annual fall of 3.3 per cent, and the lowest number since 1895 when the population was little more than half its present level.
The figures pre-date the current financial crisis which is likely to have exacerbated the downward trend in marriage as couples put off their weddings because of the cost.
Average costs for a wedding have more than doubled over the last decade to more than £21,000.
The Government has been accused of fuelling the breakdown of marriage by introducing changes to the tax and benefits system that left married couples up to £5,000-a-year worse off than people who stay single. Mpre
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Niebuhr and Obama
Last year, Barack Obama cited Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971) as one of his favorite philosophers. The choice contrasted with George W. Bush's famous citation in 2000 of Jesus Christ as his favorite philosopher. Citing a deceased theologian with a German name seems sophisticated, and Jimmy Carter likewise often pointed to Niebuhr, and justifiably so. Niebuhr was probably the 20th century's finest ethicist in the liberal Protestant tradition.
Despite lay fans like Obama and Carter, who are themselves liberal Protestants, Niebuhr is today rarely embraced by the modern Religious Left, which prefers utopianism to Niebuhr's school of Christian realism. Niebuhr would appreciate the irony, because he himself was once a sort of utopian who shared the pacifism and socialism of Social Gospel enthusiasts after World War I. The rise of Nazism jolted Niebuhr back to the reality of transcendent evil, and he steadfastly endorsed World War II, even while criticizing the Allied bombing of German cities and questioning the atomic attacks on Japan. Later, he supported Western resistance to Soviet communism, though he opposed the Vietnam War almost from its start.
Niebuhr always remained left of center politically, endorsing the New Deal and welfare state, and heartily endorsing civil rights. A Lutheran, he taught for 30 years at Union Seminary in New York, which was then America's flagship liberal seminary. Today, like most once distinguished liberal seminaries, Union is a shadow of its former influence. But in Niebuhr's day it hosted some of America's great theological minds, including Niebuhr's colleague and close friend, Paul Tillich. Read it all here
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
In India one suicede in every 4 minutes 7000 baby girls killed every day
In addition, out of every three cases of suicides reported every 15 minutes in India, one is committed by a youth in the age group of 15 to 29. Even in Kerala, the country’s first fully literate state, some 32 people commit suicide in Kerala every day. Many questions arise about the education system, parenting, social system, govt actions and the current political situation which seems to be more of a dog fight to be fair. Politicians are at each other throats, using every dirty trick on the innocent common man in their fight. To be honest, it seems more like a jungle, where the fittest survives, and a common man, well, suicides.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Scientists see nothing wrong in cousins getting married
Published on December 26, 2008
London, United Kingdom, December 24: Even in the age of sexual liberation, both from a social and scientific perspective, marriage between cousins has been frowned upon.
An International team of scientists discovered that giving birth to children with genetic defects as a result of wed lock between cousins was no greater risk than in case of women becoming pregnant after 40 years.
Professor Diane Paul of Massachusetts University and Hamish Spencer of the University of Otago in New Zealand, leaders of the study, said "Women in their forties are not made to feel guilty about having babies and the same should apply to cousins who want to marry."
The scientists believe that the laws against cousin marriage are based on false fears. An over all review of the studies show that birth defects in children of cousins is significantly smaller than the general assumption.
Spencer clarified that, “Neither the scientific nor social assumptions behind such legislation stand up to close scrutiny. Such legislation reflects outmoded prejudices about immigrants and the rural poor and relies on over-simplified views of heredity. There is no scientific grounding for it."
Both the scientists reported that birth defects are 1.7 percent to 2 percent higher in children born to first cousins than the risk of congenital defects in the general population. Though, there is a 4.4 percent higher risk than the usual of dying in childhood, it still does not justify the ban. This was approximately, the same risk women take to bear children when in their forties and no one ever “suggests they should be prevented from reproducing.” more
Friday, December 19, 2008
British Social Services turned deaf ear to case of rape and incest
December 19, 2008
I reported incest of 'British Fritzl' a decade ago, says son
David Byers
The son of the man referred to as the 'British Fritzl,' who fathered nine children by raping his two daughters, disclosed today that he had reported the matter to police and social services more than a decade ago but no action was taken.
The man, who did not want to be identified, said that he had lived in terror because of the abuse he, his mother and his sisters faced when he was a child in Lincolnshire and South Yorkshire, claiming he still has 49 scars on his head from the beatings he suffered.
The father, 56, was last month sentenced to a life term for a total of 25 rapes and will serve 19 and a half years. Sheffield Crown Court heard that his rapes had caused his daughters to get pregnant a total of 19 times.
He held his daughters virtual prisoners for 25 years, the court was told, moving them around houses in South Yorkshire and Lincolnshire to avoid detection.
British Fritzl jailed for 30-year rape regime over daughters
Speaking for the first time about the ordeal on BBC Radio 5 Live, the son said that he had lived in terror of repeated beatings and torture until he left home at the age of 15.
However, he said did not know about his father's incestuous rapes with his sisters – and who fathered the children which resulted – until having a conversation with his mother, who at that stage had also left home, at the age of 18.
He said he told police, who reported the matter to social services – but nothing was done after he was interviewed by social workers.
"I thought it would all be taken care of – you know, when an allegation like that's put forward you'd think they'd investigate it, wouldn't you. But somehow nothing's ever got done," he said. more
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Surrogacy succour for gay couples
LESS THAN a year ago, Omer and Yonathan Gher dropped a rose in to the Arabian Sea with a silent prayer, just as a fortune teller had told them to do. The Israeli gay couple's prayers were answered on Monday as they boarded a flight home with a son in their arms - a month after he was born to a surrogate mother at Mumbai's Hiranandani Hospital.
"I couldn't believe my luck when the doctor called from India announcing that we were pregnant," said Yonathan, 30, a social activist. The gay couple had been living together for seven years and desperately wanted a child, but the laws in Israel did not allow them to adopt or beget one through a surrogate mother. more
Saturday, December 13, 2008
The ‘right to die’ or the Right to be Killed?
The ‘right to die’ is a fashionable nonsense
Vatican bans stemcell research
From left, Monsignor Rino Fisichella, Monsignor Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer, Rev. Federico Lombardi, Monsignor Elio Sgreccia and Professor Maria Luisa Di Pietro during a press conference on bioethics at the Vatican on Friday.
The Vatican issued its most authoritative and sweeping document on bioethical issues in more than 20 years on Friday, taking into account recent developments in biomedical technology and reinforcing the church’s opposition to in vitro fertilization, human cloning, genetic testing on embryos before implantation and embryonic stem cell research.The Vatican says these techniques violate the principles that every human life — even an embryo — is sacred, and that babies should be conceived only through intercourse by a married couple.
The 32-page instruction, titled “Dignitas Personae,” or “The Dignity of the Person,” was issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican’s doctrinal office, and carries the approval and the authority of Pope Benedict XVI. more
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Physician assisted suicide David Jeffrey's view point
Suicide 'shouldn't involve medics' | ||||||
Physician assisted suicide has been legal for a decade in the US state of Oregon. But palliative care specialist David Jeffrey says there are grave questions about whether people are being helped to die, when treatment for depression could be a highly successful alternative. In this week's Scrubbing Up column Dr Jeffrey, who is based at the University of Edinburgh, says a patient should be free to end their life - but doctors should not be involved.
A decade on, only one in 10 people requesting PAS proceed as far as picking up the medication.
And only half of those take the lethal drug. In 2007, official records show 85 prescriptions were written - the most since the law was introduce - but only 46 people took the medication. There were also three deaths in patients prescribed their drugs the previous year. In all, three people suffered complications. One patient took three days to die. | ||||||
Oregon's 1997 Death with Dignity Act legalised physician-assisted suicide (PAS) for patients in the last six months of a terminal illness.
The provision of end-of-life care in Oregon is so different to that in the UK that it cannot be claimed to be a valid basis for any change in existing UK law 
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Teen discussed suicide plan online 12 hours before webcam death
Posted in Music and Media, 22nd November 2008 08:08 GMT
Free Download - Security Web 2.0
The Florida teen whose lethal drug overdose was broadcast live over the net earlier this week began blogging about his intended suicide 12 hours before.
As reported by the AP, 19-year-old college student Abraham Briggs died Wednesday afternoon in his bed after ingesting a lethal mixture of drugs used to treat depression.
As early as 3am, he discussed his plan to commit suicide in a forum at the website bodybuilding.com, and he posted a link to Justin.tv, the site where his death was broadcast via webcam.
After blogging about his overdose, he could be seen lying in his bed for as long as 12 hours. Some watchers urged him to take more drugs. Others attempted to talk him out of it. Still others questioned whether the dose he took was enough to kill him.
At one point, a visitor to bodybuilding.com notified a site moderator of Briggs' intentions, and the police were called. When the police arrived at his home, he was dead. Among the last images captured: An officer with gun drawn enters the room and begins examining the body. Then the video lens is covered.
Briggs' father said his son had a history of depression and had been prescribed benzodiazepine to treat bipolar disorder. source
Friday, November 21, 2008
US bishops warn Obama on abortions
The US bishops last week fired their first shot across the bows of the incoming Obama administration, warning that "the unity desired by President-elect Obama and all Americans at this moment of crisis" would be impossible to achieve, if the administration's policies increase abortions.
In a statement on behalf of all US bishops at the end of their gathering in Baltimore, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, the bishops' conference president, said the Church looked forward to working with Mr Obama on issues including immigration reform, health care and economic justice, but said that a proposed bill, the Freedom of Choice Act (Foca), which Mr Obama has expressed support for, was "an evil law that would further divide our country".
If the act was brought forward in the form it was introduced in the last Congress, they said, it would outlaw any kind of interference with abortion on demand: "It would deprive the American people in all 50 states of the freedom they now have to enact modest restraints and regulations on the abortion industry." more
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Sex with trafficked prostitutes may soon be an offence in UK
Wed, Nov 19 03:45 PM
London, November 19 (ANI): Sex with prostitutes trafficked into the country, or who work for pimps or drug traffickers, may soon be a criminal offence in Britain.
According to plans set out to clamp down on prostitution, accused persons would not be able to take the defence of ignorance of the new law, or of a woman's circumstances.
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith says that tough action should be taken against those who pay for sex.
The proposed legislation will make it an offence to buy sex from anyone "controlled for another person's gain".
The only women who will not be covered by it will be those who would work for themselves. more
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Gay marriage gets court nod in Nepal
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Close on the heels of an international furore over the state of California’s decision to ban same-sex marriages, the apex court of nascent Himalayan republic Nepal has given its nod to such unions.
“My eyes were filled with tears when I read the Supreme Court decision,” said Sunil Babu Pant, Nepal’s first publicly gay lawmaker and a gay rights icon in South Asia.
Pant’s exultation came after the Supreme Court on Monday delivered full judgement regarding a ground-breaking verdict it had announced last year, recognising sexual minorities, who were among the most oppressed in conservative, patriarchal Nepali society, as being born such and entitled to all the rights and remedies all other Nepali citizens enjoyed.
Now, following up on the judgement, the top court has asked the Maoist government to form a seven-member committee to study same sex partnership/marriage acts in other countries and recommend a similar act to the Nepal government.
The court has also asked the government — that is scheduled to promulgate a new constitution by 2010 — to ensure that the language of the new statute does not discriminate against the sexual minorities.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Realistic Hope and Hopeful Realism: Martin Marty on Niebuhr's influence on Barack Obama
Martin Marty
Award-winning author and professor emeritus, University of Chicago
Martin E. Marty is Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago, where he taught religious history, chiefly in the Divinity School, for 35 years, and where the Martin Marty Center has been founded to promote “public religion” endeavors. For a decade prior to entering academia, the “On Faith” panelist served parishes in the west and northwest suburbs of Chicago as an ordained Lutheran pastor. Marty is the author of more than 50 booksincluding Righteous Empire: The Protestant Experience in America (1970), for which he won the National Book Award. His additional honors include the National Humanities Medal, the Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the University of Chicago Alumni Medal, the Distinguished Service Medal of the Association of Theological Schools, and the Order of Lincoln Medallion (Illinois’ top honor). Marty has served as president of the American Academy of Religion, the American Society of Church History, and the American Catholic Historical Association. He also has served on two U.S. Presidential Commissions and was director of the Fundamentalism Project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Public Religion Project at the University of Chicago. He is Senior Regent of St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. Close.
Martin Marty
Award-winning author and professor emeritus, University of Chicago
Martin E. Marty is Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago, where he taught religious history, chiefly in the Divinity School, for 35 years, and where the Martin Marty Center has been founded to promote “public religion” endeavors. more »
Main Page | Martin Marty Archives | On Faith Archives
Realistic Hope and Hopeful Realism
The election of Barack Obama says -- about America and to the world -- that it is open to "realistic hope" and "hopeful realism." Those two two-word phrases paraphrase themes from the mid-century theological great, Reinhold Niebuhr. I mention him because President-Elect Obama is influenced by him and quotes him (as did President Jimmy Carter, the other theologically literate president of our time). Niebuhr is a formidable and sometimes formidably difficult thinker, and some cynics suggest that when politicians quote him, they are just posing Columnist David Brooks checked up and found that Senator Obama could discourse intelligently and expansively about Niebuhr. It is clear to those who know Niebuhr and who read and observe Obama, that he has internalized some Niebuhrian motifs.
I am singling out the combinations of "hope" and "realism" because the nation and the world needs a dose of hope, and hope has been a main theme of Obama the author, who used the word in a book title, and who accurately sensed the need and a hunger for hope. This is as true of a demoralized nation as it is of much of "the world" as it looks on forlornly to a fornlorn America Those of us who have been visited with e-mails from around the world since Tuesday report to each other how consistently correspondents testify to and exemplify a quickening of hope once again.
If "hope" is so manifest also now, after the election, why burden it with the word "realistic?" Or, if you start out with the "realism" that candidate Obama always displayed and will do more so as he begins to come to terms with the presidency in a time whose problems do not need enumerating, though they do get listed by virtually all commenators? Answer: realism can be so realistic that it can breed cynicism, or, as one wag put it recentlry, we observe that "the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned out."
"Realistic hope" is a caution against utopianism, naive idealism, the claiming of bragging rights, or politically "not knowing to come in out of the rain." As author, community organizer, law school professor, state and U.S. senator, and presidential primary candidate, Senator Obama tirelessly invoked and promoted hope--and always coupled his invocation and promotion with cautions We hear it all the time: righting wrongs and charting new courses in a dangerous world and with a destroyed economy allows no chance to relax and sit back.
Niebuhr liked to quote Psalm 2:4, where the Psalmist witnesses to a God who sits in the heavens and laughs, and holds the pretentious and conniving powerful "in derision." Yet he kept reminding us that the same God held people responsible and did not dishonor human aspiration.
So: the election of the first African-American president, a choice that went beyond the wildest hopes of most of adult America is only a part of the "hope" package the nation will be opening in the months ahead. And the election of THIS African-American to the presidency means a turning to a leader who may be young, but wasn't "born yesterday." His reading of Niebuhr and his experience and observation of life as it is lived in complex times will show up in his "realistic" activity. Or am I too hopefully naive even to hope that this will be the case? Realistically: no.
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Posted by Martin Marty on November 5, 2008 4:38 PM
Teenager wins right to die at home
A terminally-ill teenager won a legal right to die at home after health bosses tried to force her to have a heart transplant against her wishes, her family revealed.
Child protection officers used a court order to try to take Hannah Jones, 13, from her family and make her have surgery. She had been warned that the transplant itself might result in death.
But health chiefs have now abandoned the High Court proceedings after speaking to the former leukaemia sufferer and her family and she will now spend her remaining time at home.
Hannah, from Marden near Hereford, told the Mirror: "They explained everything to me but I didn't want to go through any more operations. I'd had enough of hospitals and wanted to come home."
The teenager has a hole in her heart - meaning it can only pump a fraction of its normal capacity. The damage was caused by treatment for a rare form of leukaemia diagnosed when she was five.
Hannah had been previously warned that she had only six months to live and that the only potential long term solution was a heart transplant.
Her father Andrew, 43, told how he received a phone call one Friday night warning him that his daughter would be removed from the family unless they agreed to her having the transplant. But he persuaded the officials to speak to Hannah before taking any action, he said.
Mr Jones, who is an auditor, told the Mirror: "Hannah must have done a good job of convincing them because after consulting lawyers they said on Monday no further action would be taken. My wife and I agreed that whatever Hannah wanted to we would support her. Hannah knows she can change her mind at any time and go on the waiting list for a transplant."
Mr Jones said the family believed a locum GP raised concerns over Hannah with the child protection team. They are hoping she will live to see Christmas. more
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Towards a universal Civil code? The Law Commission’s 211st report
Opinion - Editorials
A worthwhile proposal
In 2006, the Supreme Court held that marriages of all Indian citizens should be compulsorily registered and asked the Centre and State governments to take the necessary steps to implement its direction (Seema vs Ashwini Kumar). The Law Commission’s 211st report, which recommends the enactment of a Marriage and Divorce Act, aims to consolidate and reform the existing laws on registering the same. Family matters are under the concurrent list of the Constitution and the diversity in legislation on the registration of marriages and divorces has been a source of confusion. A unified nationwide law will bring the administrative machinery for registering these under one system. At the same time, it will also help to check child marriages, bigamous and polygamous relationships, and strengthen the hands of women to enforce their rights — for example, their inheritance rights and their right to live in the house of their in-laws. more
Sex Workers
