Opinion: (Sufi Shaykh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani): “We as communities and people who love peace must always come to such meetings in order to find ourselves because when you share with each other then you can understand more about yourself and about the others. You can find your mistakes from the others when they advise you and they can find their mistakes when you advise them; and that’s what keeps everything in harmony. That is what Rumi meant when he said ‘I don’t know myself, I am a Zoroastrian or I am Muslim or I am Christian or I am Jew or I am this or I am that… I am everything.’ It means let us share, let us be together, let us mix together, let us mingle together, let us unite together in order that we can bring a happy musical life to humanity.

“I traveled mostly everywhere around the world. I met presidents, politicians, ministers, prime ministers, ambassadors, kings, princes, princesses, every kind of life, work of life, normal people, common people, and I found what Prophet (peace be upon him) said to be indeed the truth: ‘human beings are equal like the teeth of the comb.’ What would be the difference between a king and a normal, poor person? Nothing. Both of them are going to die one day. Both of them are going to be buried one day. What brings them together is that Love, if they love each other, if that relationship grows with each other. It keeps the memories, it keeps the reputation, and it keeps the good character. That is what’s left behind. There is nothing else left behind. And we all go where God wants us to go. And that is why Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him and peace be upon all other prophets, said: ‘there is no difference between human beings; they are equal as the teeth of the comb are equal.’ There is no difference except in righteousness, there are only different in righteousness, i.e., sincerity, piety or “taqwa” in Arabic.

“That is our message today and I hope that I was able to find myself through you because it awakens me up to look into my mistakes and try to correct myself. When I look at history I find all these interfaith events. Today they say we have to make interfaith, and interfaith is important. Of course it is important and it happened in many religions and in many beliefs before. It happened and integrated with every one… Let him or her be himself or herself but let us be together. Like these flowers, white and red [Shaykh Kabbani points at two flowers in front of him], they are together and thus give a nice flavor.”
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Opinion: (Vyacheslav Ivanov, professor University of California, Los Angeles, Moscow State Lomonosov University, Member of Russian Academy of Sciences, from mn.ru): “I am a supporter of the world government. I was invited as one of the experts of the UN.

“We called ourselves the Triglav International Society. …It includes people from many different countries, professors, politicians, and technology experts. We try to convince people that we need to unite. …Of, course, it does not mean to create the world government in the literal sense. But we need some kind of world union to address key issues collectively.

“I believe that humanity develops according to meaningful laws. Therefore, we will be moving towards a real union, which means that all the terrible conflicts that plague the world are negligibly small compared with these major tasks. These objectives are everyone’s concern—all people may all be killed. In order not to perish, we must finally establish a common operating structure.

“This will be the issue of the next decades, I think. There is nowhere to run from this. Other options are terrible.

“The salvation of humanity is the main task. I still believe that if the universe has spent so much effort to create us, it is unlikely that we will be allowed to destroy ourselves.”
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Opinion: (Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister of the Russian Federation): “Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has urged Europe’s leading states to help their more profligate eurozone partners, describing the persisting debt crisis as a ‘political problem.’

“‘So far the European debt problem is still a political problem, not purely an economic one,’ Putin was reported as saying during a visit to China on Tuesday.

“Although Greece is the eurozone’s worst-hit member, Putin pointed out, the country’s economic volume accounts for no more than 2 percent of Europe’s GDP.

“‘Some experts believe the scale of assistance in the European debt crisis is likely to reach 1 to 1.5 trillion euros. It’s not a small figure, but I believe the EU can afford it,’ Putin said according to reports in the local media.

“Big European nations must make a political decision to provide aid to their fragile peers, and this ‘demands political encouragement,’ Putin was quoted as saying.”
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When one reads about the disasters that happen to us in the newspapers, such as a person falls off the fifth floor of a building  or a gas tank blows up at someone’s house, he does not read about the laws that people fail to follow, but about their consequences. He fails to understand where everything is coming from.

Scientists learn that falling from the fifth floor happens according to the law of gravity, and moreover, the strength of the blow to the ground is enough to kill a person. When you put something flammable next to a gas tank, it can explode because it contains a certain gas, a certain system, and so on. In other words, if we study the laws, we will be able to prevent disasters.

So what are the newspapers writing about? They are writing about the consequences of my lack of knowledge of the laws of nature. People need education, upbringing. Then everything will be fine. Not only will I stop jumping off the fifth floor, touching bare electrical wires, or exploding gas tanks, I will see how I cause hurricanes, tsunamis, and so forth. I will stop cutting down trees just to make myself totally needless toys, and I will stop destroying the coral reefs that are essential for the ocean’s microflora.

If you explain to everyone that we must be in balance with nature, instead of going against its laws, and that this is the only way for us to win, you will become a practical means of mass education.
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From the Talk on Mutual Guarantee 9/25/2011

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Mass media is a means for “brainwashing,” for creating an absolutely programmed person. Psychological, sociological, and psychiatric studies confirm that mass media influences people’s behavior. It is not mass media, but a means for “mass manipulation.”

What we are doing is called a “means of mass education.” Education! It has to be able to give people a feeling of community and dependence. We are relying on regular healthy egoism, which will show people that they are completely dependent on everyone else. Moreover, we are not misleading them. We are simply showing them the actual picture that egoism conceals from them.

If I really depend on all the other people in the world, but I fail to take this into consideration and have no desire to do so, it’s only because my egoism misleads me on purpose. It gets in the way and forces me to feel bad, which makes me suffer.

A means of mass education raises the sensitivity of my dependence on others, and I begin to feel that I depend on everyone else. Just like we explain to a child who he should and should not play with and what he should be like, so do I, receiving this influence, become more sensitive towards my connections with others and begin to build them according to an entirely different system.

Then I will be able to enter a completely different financial and economic system and overcome the crisis. We will really be able to facilitate the unification of Europe, instead being in a situation where someone lends something to somebody else so that the latter could survive, although in the end, the collapse is inevitable.

I need to feel a greater dependence on one another, not a formal or imaginary one, but the real one that exists in nature and manifests to us as an increasingly greater connection every day. There is a big difference between the way we were connected one hundred, fifty, or even five years ago. We are constantly moving towards an even greater dependence.

I need to receive necessary information, influence from all sides, through all my senses, and actually instead of information and influence, it should be sensation and perception. We need to raise our sensitivity towards dependence on one another, and then we will build completely different social relations.
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From the Talk on Mutual Guarantee 9/25/2011

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Interconnection between people is based on first attaining a common homeostasis, a balance. What kind of balance? All of us will not consume more than we need. Then, half of the time that you now spend on work will free up. You will do work that people really need.

For example, if you produce refrigerators or washing machines, this is something necessary, good, and normal. If tomorrow we invent another system that consumes less energy, we will replace the old refrigerator model with a new one. In other words, everything must be aimed toward saving electric energy and materials.

All these things can only be calculated based on balance. We eliminate from our lives anything that disturbs balance and is unnecessary. This way, 50-60% of people will become unemployed, and that is great! After all, they are not doing anything good, and they benefit the rest of the people by not working.

So, how will they provide for themselves? It will be in the same way as everyone else. We will only procure the things that everyone needs. Today we procure twenty times more than we need. At the same time, half of humanity is starving. This way, we will procure the exact amount everyone needs to make sure that no one goes hungry.

You say it is not possible? Well, it is! What will everyone have? Half of their workday will free up. So, what will we do with this time? Will we end up killing each other? No, we will not. We will be doing a very simple thing: We will study a way to create balance between us and nature. This is where the methods of mass education will come in handy.
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From the Talk on Mutual Guarantee 9/25/2011

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Opinion: (Professor Tim Jackson, Author of Prosperity Without Growth – Economics for a Finite Planet): “Constant shocks to the world’s financial system over the past few years prompted the BBC World Service’s Business Daily programme to ask leading figures whether they thought Western capitalism had failed.

“This extraordinary ramping up of global economic activity is without historical precedent. It is totally at odds with the finite resource base and the fragile ecology on which we depend for survival.

“Most of the time, we avoid the stark reality of these numbers. Growth must go on, we insist. The reasons for this collective blindness are easy enough to find.

“Western capitalism is structurally reliant on growth for its stability. When growth falters – as it has done recently – politicians panic. Businesses struggle to survive. People lose their jobs and sometimes their homes.

“Questioning growth is deemed to be the act of lunatics, idealists and revolutionaries.

“Yet question it we must. The myth of growth has failed us. It has failed the two billion people who still live on less than $2 a day. It has failed the fragile ecological systems on which we depend for survival.”

My Comment: More and more sensible materials about the end of growth, billions of unemployed, and the reduction of production will encourage people to think about a new attitude towards life, general prosperity, and the other, non-material, fulfillment. After all, after simple calculations we see that the planet cannot provide for us.

This means that we should take a sober view of the future economy of reasonable consumption. Food, shelter, social security, and education and upbringing are to be provided for everyone in a reasonable quantity. The fulfillment of our egoism beyond the necessities should be transferred to other areas of contentment—cultural and spiritual, which require little material and energy. Let’s think and we will find a way.
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Opinion: (Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Adviser to President Jimmy Carter, political scientist): “Zbigniew Brzezinski…predict[ed] that middle class unrest caused by economic disenfranchisement would soon hit America.

“‘I don’t want to be a prophet of doom — and I don’t think we are approaching doom — but I think we’re going to slide into intensified social conflicts, social hostility, some forms of radicalism, there is just going to be a sense that this is not a just society,’ Brzezinski said, adding that civil unrest would begin when the lower middle class becomes severely affected by the economic fallout and rising unemployment.

“The former National Security Advisor predicted ‘really serious international turmoil’ as a result of the United States, Europe and Japan, the three traditional pillars of global economic strength, struggling with deep financial crises.

“However, this is certainly not the first time that Brzezinski has expressed concerns that a growing rage caused by economic and social disenfranchisement could threaten the existing power structure.

“Brzezinski… warned of a ‘global political awakening,’ mainly comprising of younger people in developing states, that threatened to topple the existing international order.

“‘For the first time in human history almost all of humanity is politically activated, politically conscious and politically interactive… The resulting global political activism is generating a surge in the quest for personal dignity, cultural respect and economic opportunity in a world painfully scarred by memories of centuries-long alien colonial or imperial domination,’ Brzezinski told fellow elitists.”

My Comment: Only the creation of the “round table” in each country, where all the pressing issues of society will be discussed openly with scientists, politicians, economists, and representatives of different sectors of society, when they all gather to solve common problems like family members, will help to reduce social pressure that threatens to grow into riots, a civil war, and beyond.
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In the News (from Latin Daily Financial News): “According to a report published in The Lancet, in Greece there are indicators that suggest that access to health services of the Greeks has worsened, especially in vulnerable groups. But it has also increased the number of people who believe that their health is ‘bad’. The reasons, yet to be analyzed, may be in budget cuts, among others.

“Another alarming statistic is the increase in the number of suicides, 17% in 2009 compared to 2007, and unofficial data raise the increase to 25% from 2009 to 2010. Other data from the Greek Ministry of Health talks about an increase of 40% in the first half of 2011, compared to the same period in 2010.

“There has also been an increase in the number of HIV infections in late 2010. Recent data suggest that new HIV infections will rise by 52% in 2011 (922 new cases compared to 605 in 2010). Half of these cases is attributable to infection among users of intravenous drugs, although there has been an increase in prostitution and the number of women with HIV. According to the Greek Observatory on Drugs, the prevalence of heroin use has increased by 20% in 2009.”
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Opinion: (Rachel Ziemba, Director for macroeconomic issues of Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa (CEEMEA), Roubini Global Economics, USA, from voanews.com): “‘The recession, which plunged the U.S. economy, is not a problem of one country.’

“‘This process will continue over the next five years and will affect all major countries around the world. China, India, Turkey, and Russia cannot escape the recession in the USA and the EU. …The world could experience problems with oil supplies from the Middle East countries, taken over by riots.’

“‘Recipe for economic salvation is simple: to bet on technologies, intensively develop the agricultural sector and inter-regional cooperation.’ …‘It already sounds like a constant mantra—to develop cooperation between countries….’”
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