The Research Forum: Coins for Abbott: Indonesians rally to repay tsunami aid, call Australian PM ‘Shylock’.

Monday, 23 February 2015

Coins for Abbott: Indonesians rally to repay tsunami aid, call Australian PM ‘Shylock’.

Indonesians have mobilized in record numbers to collect cash for the Australian PM, who touched a raw nerve by bringing up Australia’s $1 bn in tsunami relief aid to Jakarta while making a clemency appeal for convicted drug traffickers.

Images of Australian Prime Minister Tonny Abbott with red tape crossed over his mouth can be seen all over Indonesia, particularly in Jakarata. Loads of silver coins are covering banners spread on the ground – all part of the “repay” protest campaign that has spread like a bushfire across the island nation.

As part of the international relief effort for the 2004 earthquake and tsunami off the west coast of Sumatra that killed more than 100,000 people, Australia was quick to offer $1 billion in aid relief.

Speaking this week, Abbott hinted that it is time for the Asian nation to repay its debt by freeing two members of the famous Bali Nine, currently on a death row. The Bali Nine was a name given to a group of nine Australians who were arrested in Bali in 2005 Bali for planning to smuggle 8.3 kg (18 lb) of heroin, valued at over $3 million, from Indonesia to Australia.

“Let's not forget that a few years ago when Indonesia was struck by the Indian Ocean tsunami, Australia sent a billion dollars worth of assistance,” Abbot said. “I would say to the Indonesian people and the Indonesian government: we in Australia are always there to help you and we hope that you might reciprocate in this way at this time,” the PM stated, referring to death-row Australian nationals Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran.

The plea sparked a fierce backlash, with Indonesians comparing Tony Abbott to Shakespeare’s Shylock, the moneylender in The Merchant of Venice who demanded a pound of flesh if his loans weren’t paid back.

In order to rebuff the Australian PM, the nation of 250 million is now collecting pocket change to repay the “loan” Australia had once provided.

"Australians need a prime minister, not a Shylock and drug dealer's cousin," read a banner during Sunday’s protest. A Twitter campaign using the hashtags #KoinuntukAustralia, #coinforAustralia and #coinforAbbott has also generated a lot of steam.

While on the diplomatic front, the country’s leadership seemed satisfied by the explanation offered by the Australians on Friday, many ordinary Indonesians remain enraged. During a protest on Sunday, thousands rallied to express their anger and continue to coin collection campaign.

The Pro-Indonesia Coalition, for example, organized a “Coin for Australia” movement during a car-free day at a roundabout near Hotel Indonesia. “Let us not let our dignity being bought by Tony Abbot,” action coordinator Andi Sinulingga said at the event.

Rian, one of the event organizers, told the Sydney Morning Herald that it was a joy delivering the coins to the Australian embassy, saying that if every person donates one coin, which has a population of 250 million, Indonesia could pay back the “small amount of money donated by Australia.”

“So, don't you ever mention something as tiny as $1 billion in relief for us,” Rian said. “We are a nation that refuses to be colonized, a nation that would like to tell other nations not to try to destroy this republic.”

Indonesia plans to execute 11 convicts on death row, including the drug convicts from Australia, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, whose clemency pleas had been rejected by President Joko Widodo. Earlier this week, however, the vice president's office said that the execution of two Australian smugglers had been delayed by up to one month.

Indonesia executed six drug offenders in January, including five foreigners, prompting Brazil and the Netherlands to recall their ambassadors. February 23, 2015 00:35. RT.

No comments:

About the Forum

The Forum initially started its work in December 1997 with the intention of promoting research culture and activities among doctoral candidates in one of the British universities in London. The Research Forum convened 8 sessions a year on humanities-related topics between 1997 and 2013.

The Forum now focuses on the production of self-taught courses, articles and commentary on some aspects of the news for students as well as the general public. The last meeting of the Forum took place in July 2015.

Mowlānā Jalāloddin Balkhi, known in Persia as Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī and in the West simply as Rumi, was born on September 30, 1207 C. E. in Balkh Province, Afghanistan, then on the eastern edge of the Persian Empire. Rumi descended from a long line of Islamic jurists, theologians, and mystics, including his father, who was known by followers of Rumi as “Sultan of the Scholars.” When Rumi was still a young man, his father led their family more than 2,000 miles west to avoid the invasion of Genghis Khan’s armies. They settled in present-day Turkey, where Rumi lived and wrote most of his life.

As a teenager, Rumi was recognized as a great spirit by the poet and teacher Fariduddin Attar, who gave him a copy of his own Ilahinama (The Book of God). When his father died in 1231, Rumi became head of the madrasah, or spiritual learning community. The school reportedly had over ten thousand students, including masons, grocers, weavers, hatmakers, carpenters, tailors, and bookbinders.

Rumi’s oldest son, Sultan Velad, managed to save 147 of Rumi’s intimate letters, which provide insights about the poet and how he lived. Rumi often involved himself in the lives of his community members, solving disputes and facilitating loans between nobles and students. The letters are described as having lines of poetry scattered throughout.

In 1244, Rumi met Shams Tabriz, a dervish “God-man” who had taken a vow of poverty. Their meeting is considered a central event in Rumi’s life. Though accounts of their meeting differ, one story claims that Rumi was teaching by a fountain, and Shams walked up through the crowd of students and pushed Rumi’s books into the water, including his father’s spiritual diary. “You must now live what you have been reading about," Shams told Rumi. Rumi believed both his real life and his real poetry began when he met Shams. “What I had thought of before as God," Rumi said, “I met today in a human being.”

Shams and Rumi were close friends for about four years. Over the course of that time, Shams was repeatedly driven away by Rumi’s jealous disciples, including one of Rumi’s sons, Ala al-Din. In December of 1248, Shams again disappeared; it is believed that he was either driven away or killed. Rumi left the madrasah in search of his friend, travelling to Damascus and elsewhere. Eventually, Rumi made peace with his loss, returning to his home believing Shams to be a part of him: “His essence speaks through me.”

Rumi’s mourning for the loss of his friend led to the outpouring of more than 40,000 lyric verses, including odes, eulogies, quatrains, and other styles of Eastern-Islamic poetry. The resulting collection, Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi or The Works of Shams Tabriz, is considered one of Rumi’s masterpieces and one of the greatest works of Persian literature.

In his introduction to his translation of Rumi’s The Shams, Coleman Barks has written: “Rumi is one of the great souls, and one of the great spiritual teachers. He shows us our glory. He wants us to be more alive, to wake up... He wants us to see our beauty, in the mirror and in each other.”

For the last twelve years of his life, beginning in 1262, Rumi dictated a single, six-volume poem to his scribe, Husam Chelebi. The resulting masterwork, the Masnavi-ye Ma’navi(Spiritual Verses), consists of sixty-four thousand lines, and is considered Rumi’s most personal work of spiritual teaching. Rumi described the Masnavi as “the roots of the roots of the roots of the (Islamic) Religion," and the text has come to be regarded by some Sufis as the Persian-language Koran.

In his introduction to an English edition of Spiritual Verses, translator Alan Williams wrote: “Rumi is both a poet and a mystic, but he is a teacher first, trying to communicate what he knows to his audience. Like all good teachers, he trusts that ultimately, when the means to go any further fail him and his voice falls silent, his students will have learnt to understand on their own.”

Rumi fell ill and died on December 17, 1273 C. E., in Konya, Turkey. His remains were interred adjacent to his father’s, and the Yeşil Türbe (Green Tomb) was erected above their final resting place. Now the Mevlâna museum, the site includes a mosque, dance hall, and dervish living quarters. Thousands of visitors, of all faiths, visit his tomb each month, honoring the poet of legendary spiritual understanding.

Source: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/jalal-al-din-rumi

Your Life Discourse!

It is soooo good when you realize that your life and every road you have taken made and makes sense... Even when you feel that the world will not applaud you for what you are doing, you find you have to do it yourself and clap your own hands. Later everything falls into place. In my doctoral thesis, I studied how the self-discourse is constructed along history. It is a fact that we describe our past like a coherent story. Even though we know that the discourse of our life is a construction, our life is actually built by roads and paths we accept, that come and go, and later make all sense because they are part of our own being. Once in a while we feel that our past is actually part of us.

Marcia Neme Buzalaf
marciabuzalaf@gmail.com.

Scholarship and Academia

Benedit Spinoza is one of the original thinkers among Western philosophers. When he was offered a Professorship of Philosophy at Heidelberg University at age of 31, he turned it down arguing that he wanted to be left alone to do his philosophising “in accordance with his own mind”. He proceeded to live a solitary life, earning his living by grinding and polishing lenses for spectacles, microscopes and telescopes – at the time a new profession.

Being a great philosopher and academic is a rare development: Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Marx, Mill or Nietzsche did not teach philosophy. The exceptions are Kant and Hegel.

Nothing much has changed since: academia is still not the right place for real scholars today. Mottos such as ‘publish or perish’ have mainly resulted in the production of shallow, regurgitated or ego-boosting publications. Universities are also no different from other corporate capitalist entities that seek to maximize their profit at the cost of quality service. They neither provide the scholar nor the student with a conducive environment for their development or self-fulfilment.

Thoughtful Sentences

Integrity: When the thoughts we think are the same as the words we speak, others will feel our integrity.

Enthusiasm: Those who are fired with an enthusiastic idea and who allow it to take hold and dominate their thoughts find that new worlds open for them. As long as enthusiasm holds out, so will new opportunities.

No Task Too Difficult: If you do everything with the feeling of happiness, there will be no task too difficult to perform.

A Long And Healthy Life: There are three ingredients for a long and healthy life: live with attention but without worry, use time in a worthwhile way, keep your thoughts pure, positive and filled with strength.

Monday, 23 February 2015

Coins for Abbott: Indonesians rally to repay tsunami aid, call Australian PM ‘Shylock’.

No comments:

Post a Comment