Category: Frontiers

The Accord states that this can only be achieved through major cuts in emissions from rich countries. There are no dates, or timelines, or sanctions for non-compliance. Efforts to stop global warming must not derail economic progress in emerging economies. The Accord provides money for adaptation initiatives in economically-poor countries which are likely to suffer heavily from climate change. Between now and 2012, the fund should provide $30 billion for such projects. This is to be scaled up to $100 billion by 2020. The Accord also makes money available to economically-poor nations to enable them to protect their forests from loggers. Finally, the Accord was ‘noted’ rather than ‘adopted’ by the assembly.  The fait accompli was presented to poor nations with the implied threat that, if they did not sign up to the deal, they might lose the Adaptation Fund which is an essential element in their ability to adapt to climate change. Naturally, people such as Yvo de Boer, the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, attempted to portray the failure to reach a FAB agreement as a temporary glitch which will be put right at COP 16 in Mexico in December 2010.  While politicians dithered about how to deal with this global challenge, the warnings from the scientific community become even more apocalyptic on two fronts. First of all, things are happening at a much faster pace than previously thought. On the evening of December 14, 2009, scientists from the Hadley Centre’s climate change division made a presentation at the Bella Centre. They said that, even if emissions peak in 2015, and decrease rapidly after that at about 3% per annum, there may only be a 50:50 chance of keeping global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius. More ominously, in terms of the inaction in Copenhagen at significantly reducing greenhouse gases, the Hadley document makes the point that every delay of 10 years in the peak emissions would add about a further 0.5 degree Celsius. In the light of this science, the commitment to preventing a temperature rise above 2 degrees Celsius, without putting any credible mechanisms in place to achieve it, is merely play acting.  In my mind, there were two positive outcomes from the Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change. The first was that so many heads of state came to Copenhagen. This is a clear recognition that almost every government around the world now accepts that climate change is happening, that it will have enormous impact on our planet, but especially on the poor. Implicitly, these leaders accept the scientists’ prognosis that climate change needs to be addressed urgently if the target of below-two-degree Celsius rise is to be achieved. Secondly, the Conference captured a huge amount of interest right across the globe. Millions more are now aware of the impact of climate change. It is to be hoped that they might bring the necessary pressure on politicians in powerful countries to reach an accord that will fend-off runaway climate change.

It’s a real challenge for true Christians and people of faith to reclaim the meaning of Christmas and to make it a real event as Jesus would want it. It’s a time to rededicate ourselves to the ideals He exemplified and brought into the world. We need to find again that path to spiritual renewal and the courage for unselfish living. “I came to serve and not to be served;” “They who lose their lives will save it;” “What you do to the poorest of My family, you do to Me;” “I came to give My life as an offering for many,” He taught us. Christmas is all about living a simple, non-luxurious life in the friendship of Jesus Christ putting the well-being of suffering and deprived humanity at the forefront of our concerns. The Christmas story is a challenge for all to leave behind a self-centered existence for a life of unselfish self-giving and sharing in solidarity with the poor, the abused, exploited and downtrodden. We will receive many ‘Happy Christmas” greetings this year, by e-mail, by text messages and millions of greeting cards will travel in the postal system. What do they really say, what happiness do they wish upon us, is to have a good dinner party, a bottle of wine? What is a Happy Christmas? My happy Christmas wish for you is that you may feel, all the more, compassion for the needy, the hungry, the refugees, the victims and the imprisoned children. That you will be strengthened in your commitment to the ideals of love and justice and dedication to saving people and the planet from injustice and harm. I wish that, together, we will be inspired, all the more, by the ideals that Jesus placed before us, may we all be motivated to act for justice and to change the world. It is these ideals that we ought to celebrate and promote at Christmas and to show to all that they really are important and that working to make them a reality is the way to true happiness and life fulfillment. If we read the Christmas story and look behind the traditional images of an idealized cute cooing Baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph in a movie-like setting, we will see that it was not the birth among the rich and powerful, but a hard, bitter and impoverished birth among the poor and the creatures of the planet. Despite the changes in 2,000 years, the world of Jesus is so much like the world today. King Herod, a cruel dictator, a lackey of the foreign powers that dominated Palestine, a malevolent tyrant ruling Palestine and planning and ordering a genocide, a massacre of innocent children, to prevent a rival from emerging from the ‘House of David” to challenge his rule. Today, we see worst tyrants and even more genocidal rulers in the Sudan, Darfur, Eastern Congo, and bloody suffering and conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and even Palestine and many more. Women and children are

There is a new Philippine president. Noynoy Aquino has stepped into the challenging role as “hope of the nation” and has selected his Cabinet that promises a corruption-free Philippines. It is particularly outstanding because of the presence of designated Department of Justice Secretary Leila de Lima, the former Human Rights Commissioner who bravely sought to uncover the bloody hands behind countless assassinations and murders of social activists, human rights workers and leaders of civil society. She had the courage to challenge the police and military that was blocking the Commission’s investigators who were finally stymied by the judge who would not issue a search warrant for the Commission’s investigators to search a killing field in Davao where body parts were uncovered, some of them of women and children.  With this promising start in the new administration of President Aquino, there is optimism that the protection of the most vulnerable in society will take priority and there will be an end to death squads, assassinations, and the rampant violation of human rights by those supposed to protect the citizens from such evils and injustices but are frequently the perpetrators themselves. Considering the impunity enjoyed by assassins and death squads around the country under the Arroyo administration, the government of President Noynoy Aquino has to question the training methods and strategies taught to Philippine troops and police by the US International Military Education & Training (IMET). Hundreds of police and military personnel are trained annually here and abroad and that training appears to inculcate excessive aggression, brutality and combative killing methods deployed with “extreme prejudice” against social activists, even priests and dissidents arbitrarily branded as “enemies of state.” The role of the police and military as protectors and enforcers of the rule of law for victims and law-abiding citizens seems to be lost. Respect for human rights apparently is not on the training agenda and this is what needs to be changed.  Secretary Leila de Lima has the most challenging of tasks. She has made her priorities clear by her past words backed by action and resolve. First of all, is the desire to promote those just and honest, intelligent prosecutors that love the rule of law and are people of integrity. These are the prosecutors that are dedicated to the protection of abused women and children, victims of human rights violations and heinous crimes and have compassion for the children in conflict with the law. Secretary of Justice de Lima will clean out the corrupt and incompetent prosecutors, the protectors of child rapists and who take the stuffed envelops and dismisses the complaints despite the most overwhelming of evidence. It is only with her planned overhaul of the Department that she will be able to dispel the cynicism and lack of trust of the people in the Department of Justice lost during the past decade. There are good people in the DOJ that must be given a chance to do good and not be overruled by the corrupt officials on the

A very good friend, of my young ages from the time of the Lycée Français, had an operation last week. When I visited her, I could not avoid the tears for the deep feelings of love and compassion for her in her suffering. I had come from the Jamat Khana; it was Friday and I really felt like praying. Among those remembered, Teresinha’s health was part of the humble request to God’s infinite mercy and generosity. I normally take the tasbih (the rosary for remembering the most beautiful names of God). She is Catholic, however, after all the years of shared experiences – some happier than others. I asked her to hold on to my tasbih. She tightened it in her cold hand. While I was leaving the room, I asked God one more time, that her suffering was lessened. Yes, because life is pain, and pain is part of living; the only thing we can ask for from Allah is that it is lessened, minimized.  She rang the next day. I had meetings and was late. She anxiously wanted me to see how well she looked and most importantly that the “thing” I had put in her hand made her feel at peace and more at ease with the experience. I gave it to her and said that she could use it to remember God’s most beautiful names. After all, Muslims have only 99 and, according to scholars, there are 999 names, spread across the Holy Scriptures; the last one is only known to God Himself. Thence, she had plenty to choose from. However, she wanted to learn what I say and how I say. Once more, we shared the unity of love and friendship which are above differences of religion, but close to our humanness, as women, as mothers, as spouses, as individuals who have similar kinds of fears, joys, and anxieties. Last night, my 6-year-old son expressed his before-sleep-concern: his best schoolmate wished he was Catholic, rather than Muslim; that way they could be more similar, closer in friendship. Because, he said: “Jesus is God; not Allah.” He did not know what to do; they love each other so dearly. I could only remember a couple of Quranic verses: “Had God wished, He would have made us one community; instead, he wanted us to exceed ourselves and among each other, according to our interpretations of the faith, in good deeds towards our societies and the world” (the word is taqwa, which by the way, comes some 200 times in the Holy Qur’an). Then, God also says in the Qur’an: “I have made You out of ONE SOUL ONLY, and from there, a multitude of peoples and societies, so that, in your differences, you could know each other.” A little later, my son was already profoundly asleep in the couch, next to us. I do not know what his dreams were; inshallah, they had something to do with the beauty of our common humanity, and especially because we