2008 July 22 « Rev. Danny Fisher

Race for Tibet

Via the great Phil Ryan over at the Tricycle Editors’ Blog: Sign the petition urging world leaders not to commit to attend the Olympics opening ceremony until real progress is made in Tibet here.

Ban All Torture

Tell Sen. John McCain to ban all forms of torture without exception here.

More Burma/ASEAN News

Here’s the latest on Burma and the annual summit meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)–all of it courtesy of the U.S. Campaign for Burma:

The Associated Press reports that Burma’s junta has indicated that it will oppose any effort by the proposed ASEAN human rights body to monitor or investigate human rights violations within their borders.

On the heels of news items like the one above, the Agence France-Presse reports that observers are saying that ASEAN talks tough, but does nothing to back up that talk with action. In addition, Time Magazine offers a story entitled “ASEAN Turns Blind Eye to Burma Rights”.

According to The Irrawaddy, Burmese parliamentarians who were elected in the 1990 general elections are asking UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the UN Security Council to declare that the junta’s new constitution is illegitimate.

The Irrawaddy also reports on Nobel Peace Prize winner Jody Williams’ speech in Chiang Mai at a symposium to promote dialogue between female Nobel laureates and women activists from Thailand and Burma. In the speech, she condemned the junta’s decision to extend fellow Nobel laureate and Prime Minister-elect Aung San Suu Kyi’s house arrest and expressed doubt that she would be released within six months (as intimated by Burma’s Foreign Minister Nyan Win at ASEAN).

July 22, 2008

Peter Coyote Weighs In On S.A.G.’s Struggle

Peter Coyote, the actor best known for his role as compassionate G-man “Keys” in Steven Spielberg’s E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, has written an open letter to Hollywood’s lead actors as tensions between studios and the Screen Actors Guild worsen–you can read it exclusively at Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood Daily.

In addition to his excellent work on stage and screen, Coyote is a longtime Buddhist practitioner and an ordained lay minister in the Zen lineage of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. You can read more about the ordination at David Chadwick’s Cuke.com website.

July 22, 2008

A Classic 60 Minutes Report

A classic, Emmy Award-winning 60 Minutes report on Darfur rebroadcast this week:

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