Labels: human nature, relationships, religion, self-knowledge, world citizenship, world unity

# posted by SAM @ 26.3.07 1 comments

Labels: bahai, religion, travel

# posted by SAM @ 12.3.07 0 comments

After international pressure, the Islamic Government decided to stop the policy of asking for religion on the exams to enter Universities. This way, Bahá’í youth was able to apply and access the University.

Then, a new process started. Universities didn’t accept them, despite their marks being far superior to others. At the end, from the thousands accepted only approximately 100 got in.

And now? Seventy (after other seventy during this year) of them were expelled! According to the Povo of Bahá (a Portuguese blog), the Iranian Government has denied the allegation of religious grounds on the expulsion! Asked by Reuters (published on February, 28th), a member of the Iranian delegation in the United Nations affirmed: "No one in Iran is stopped of studying because of religion".

But, then again, we also find out information (written, printed, and signed information!) about Iranian Leaders. Issued on November, 2nd 2006 by the direction of the Payame Noor University you can read the following document:

Central Protection Office

Protection Office of Region 5

(Provinces of Fárs [Fars], Búshihr [Bushehr], KahKílúyih [Kahkiluyeh] and Buyr-A:mad

[Boyer Ahmad])

To the honourable directors of all the centres,

Greetings,

With respect, according to the ruling of the Cultural Revolutionary Council and the instructions of the Ministry of Information and the Head Protection Office of the Central Organization of Payám-i-Núr University, Bahá’ís cannot enrol in universities and higher education centres.

Therefore, such cases if encountered should be reported, their enrolment should be strictly avoided, and if they are already enrolled they should be expelled.

Confirmation comes from God alone.

[Signature illegible]

Central Protection Office of Payám-i-Núr University

Protection Officer of Payám-i-Núr University, region 5

[Signature]

(Provinces of Fárs, Búshihr, KahKílúyih and Buyr- A:mad)

[Stamp]

CONFIDENTIAL

Mu‘allim Square-Avval-i-Himmat-i-Junúbí

Samti chap-Payám-i-Núr University, region 5

Post Office Box: 1774

Telephone: (0711) 628323809

Fax: 6283727

The Bahá’í International Community Representative, Ms. Dugal makes the following remark, with which we must agree:

"In its public face, Iran claims that it has finally opened the doors to Baha'i students, after some 25 years of keeping them out of public and private universities in Iran. But, as evidenced by this confidential memorandum from the Payame Noor central office, the real policy is apparently to simply expel Baha'is as soon as they can be identified".

And… The questions lied ahead: What are we doing to stop this Educational Genocide?

Labels: blogs, human rights, reasons, religion, world citizenship

# posted by SAM @ 9.3.07 1 comments

Arriving at Rome and passing through her, anyone’s life could change. Having been in Italy, before, in the North, I am amazed with the difference and the beauty that Rome so proudly exhibits.

And I am not even talking about that pride in being pretty, but about that one pride that can lead an entire civilization to such a decline that converts it in the tale of the world. Lets look at history: what happened to the Macedonia of Alexander (the Great!!!)?, where is the Mongolia of Genghis Khan?, where did the Egypt of Ramses loose itself?, in which atrocious situation we can find the Persia of Cyrus, of Koorosh or of Darius?

The arrogance of the lords of power leads always to a fall, with the consequent difficulty in getting up. It is said, in physics, that all that goes up has to go down. I should disagree! We can rise and progresses, piano a piano, we can even toddle, walk, and even run, and go lontano. But we do not need to consider ourselves the holders of divine and absolute knowledge!

The extreme organization of Milan and the extreme chaos of Rome…

The taciturn monotony of the fashion city versus the joyful life of the capital of the Empire …

In Rome, people is capable to love and hate, simultaneously. They step on each other (literally) to get into a bus, they offend to demonstrate anger, they mock the unknown at the same time they appreciate differences.

The Rome of the Empire is today the lost Rome, the Rome in search of si stessa, looking for her place in the world. Fluctuant between lefts and rights as almost every European capitals, Rome symbolizes the world civilization, incapable in conceiving her origins in a past that melts cultures (how much of the Roman Apostolic Christianism, for instance, isn’t resulted from the Mithraism Zoroastrianism?), that looses herself in a present of high diplomats and sages at the same time that underestimates herself as the tale of Europe, struggling to go back being who she was not knowing who she is …

ROME, ROMA, the first letter of ROMANCE! ROME, city of Christianity. ROME, cradle of the old order. When shall you wake up, rise and strive to become the City you were once?

The city that can held the bridge towards new world order, where worldly dichotomies between nationals and foreigners, between northern independentists and southern nationalists, between poverty and wealth, between religious exclusivity and the impetus of integration nullify themselves and your citizens are converted in the heralds of a new world order?


When will your paúra be converted in an active force?
Let it be Let deeds, not words, be your adorning, oh sweet and long-missed Rome!

Labels: feelings, human nature, leadership, love, relationships, religion, travel, world citizenship, world unity

# posted by SAM @ 16.2.07 28 comments

Not even a month has passed and we are still analyzing 2006, the year that brought with it great challenges and appeased great torments. It was an year filled with the best and the worst of humankind, in the arts, in politics, in humanism. It was an year that made us be angels among demons and devils amongst saints.

2006 was the year that presented me to great creators of cinema like Oliver Sacks and George Romero and, made me find hope in the worse of circumstances in City of God and The Constant Gardener, of the Brazilian Fernando Meirelles, that allowed us to find beauty and serenity in corruption and peace in human vileness, being serene without being monotonous, sad without being piegas and realistic without taking our hope away!

On television Jack & Bobby (USA): a story of how, under circumstances of life, decisions may lead us to the highest heaven; and Sinhá Moça (Brazil): the unstopable struggle towards the unstopable equality between human beings.

2006 was also the year of the deaths of Milosevic (without certitude of the circumstances), of Saddam (without certitude of correctness), and of Pinochet (without certitude of justice), and the rebirth of Lula and Chavez, the sandinism in Nicaragua, and the doble victory in Mexico. It was the year that the governments of Iran and of Egypt used, once more, to tread the Bahá'ís; the year in which they put in cause the genocides perpetrated during the I World War and the the II World War. The year of the war in Syria and in Israel, of the fall of the republicans in the US, of the alleged fall of Blair... It was the year of the fall and of the elevation!

It was the year that permitted me assist the elevation of a formerly dream that was Psicologia Actual - the first divulgation magazine of Psychology in Portugal – and of the completion of my Master's final essay (with a change of subject and two months to work the new theme...). Three couple-friends elevated themselves to the ultimate commitment (marriage), and I, now, can add to the places I've visited the Basque Country (Spain/France) and Malaga (Spain), finding Positive Psychotherapy in Wiesbaden (Germany).

But the year that was just born shall be an even more complete year (after all, the sum of its numerals is 9, the most perfect and complete number, including within all the inferior numbers). It will be during 2007 that we shall refind Sudan and Chad and Somalya and Ethyopia on the headlines of the world; we shall see the Brazilian and the Venezuelan constitutions towards a change and the European constitution towards somewhere; we shall see if Yazdí continues with the thirst of elimination of all post-Islamism; if second generation occidentals will understand that they are the result of a beautiful trans-culturality, and if the natives open their arms to the embeautment of their mono-cultural gardens.

On my side... I have started to work on what I like and make what I want; see movies like The Transformers, The Spiderman 3 and Charlotte’s Web – cartoons that rested so much influence during my childhood – at the same time I expect do see great master pieces like Freedom Writers, East of Eden and Next.

I will try to see each and every movie that transmits me persons between two worlds: the world they always considered real, correct and just, and the world that is in fact the real one, the incorrect one, the unjust and the hypocrite one – and the decisions they'll have to take between one and the other realidaty... I shall see at the news how much it costs to save lives in Europe and in the Americas... Is it at the cost of the breeze of gardeners of lives that don’t know how to be constant? What’s the cost of the end of a war in Africa or in Asia, or the cost of the lives lost on those wars, the cost of the rebirth during the real life? These are the questions I want to see answered during 2007.

This shall be the year that I’ll be taken by life, in all of its dimensions and aspects and shapes. 2007 shall be the year in which I will read more and write more.

Miguel Garrido, the director of my Master course, used to say in our classes that university courses and academic titles were of few use if we didn’t read ten books per year. I went beyond that: during 2006 I've finished reading more than twenty books (many others shall walk by my side to be finished in 2007). There were three the genre and three were the authors that marked me this year, and most probably shall mark me during 2007: the pragmatic mysticism of'Abdu'l-Bahá in ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in London, the psychological humanism of Viktor Frankl in Will to Meaning and the pragmatic humanism of Orhan Pamuk in his The White Castle. From the Nobel prize Pamuk, I underline the following passage, in which I whish to leave you all a 2007 full of meaning:

Man must enjoy the life he has choosen, to the point that he ends up assuming it.

And you: which choices did you like to make in 2006, and how are we assuming them for 2007?

Labels: 'Abdu'l-Bahá, Frankl, human nature, human rights, leadership, Pamuk, religion, world unity

# posted by SAM @ 15.1.07 0 comments