The fourth generation
Two-thirds of Iranians are under 30 – and blogging is more popular there than almost anywhere else. Nasrin Alavi has been listening to what they have to say.
By Nasrin Alavi, New Internationalist (March 2007).
"An Iranian blogger asks: ‘Has everyone noticed the spooky absence of graffiti in our public toilets since the arrival of weblogs?’ But unlike graffiti, Iran’s blogs are boundless and global. Approximately one in five Iranians have internet access, and Persian is one of the world’s most popular languages for keeping online journals. Yet as the Iranian blogosphere has grown, so has the Government’s interest in repressing the medium. Bloggers have been jailed and last September officials proudly announced that ‘more than 10 million websites were filtered’, or blocked, in Iran. Still, the internet has opened a new virtual space for free speech and large numbers of Iranians are willing to stand up for their rights and raise their voice in the debate about their country’s future. As one unwavering journalist blogger wrote after her release from prison: 'Being lazy, I did not take the upkeep of my blog very seriously. But prison taught me that you have to write in newspapers, in blogs and on websites, on walls and anywhere you can.' .... The country’s young people are described by the Iran-based philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo as the ‘fourth generation’ who are moving away from political Islam towards an ‘Iranian secularism’, based on Islamic traditions and Persian cultural history. It is this generation that will ultimately determine the future of Iran. Those who lived through the Iranian revolution of 1979 are now in the minority. In the post-revolution baby-boom, Iran’s population has more than doubled to almost 70 million, of whom over 65 per cent are under 30 years old. Literacy is well over 90 per cent, even in rural areas; and in 2005 more than 65 per cent of students entering university were women. The voices that come through most strongly in the Iranian blogosphere are those of this educated young generation.... Iranians have lived through a recent violent revolution and war; bleak years that they do not want to experience again. They are clearly still haunted by the futility of the eight-year war with Iraq that only ended in 1988. The roads, streets and narrow alleyways of Iran have been renamed after the hundreds and thousands of dead that the locals of these neighbourhoods still vividly and fondly remember as young boys. ‘Shargi’ perhaps sums up the views of many when she say in her weblog: ‘I hate war. I hate the liberating soldiers that trample your soil, home, young and old under their boots. Believe me, I love freedom. But I believe that you have to make yourself free. No-one else can free you.’ In a jibe against US sabre-rattling threats, another blogger writes: ‘God invented war so that Americans can learn geography.’.... Iranian Muslims may well be dismayed by xenophobic images of their prophet dressed as a terrorist, his turban a bomb with a lit fuse. But most did not take part in such a protest. Yet the Western news coverage would have had us believe that this 400-strong, officially backed mob, in a city populated by 12 million people, represented the mood of the Iranian street. Today a generational change threatens the survival of the hardliners. Ultimately this will force the regime to concede to the demands of a youthful population for amiable relations with the outside world and Iran’s integration into the global economy.... On 6 December 2006, despite the Government’s extraordinary crackdown on dissent, a sizeable crowd of students participated in Tehran in an event called ‘University is Alive’. They chanted ‘nothing to lose but our chains’, ‘death to dictators’, and ‘we want bread, not bombs’. At Amirkabir University students disrupted a speech by Ahmadinejad, setting fire to his picture and heckling him. There were many gatherings at other universities, including Shiraz, Mazandaran, Mashad, Allameh Tabatabai, Tabriz and Hamedan. But Westerners applauding such demonstrators for their bravery in standing up to the regime should not jump to the wrong conclusions. One of the student leaders of the Tehran protest was rapturously cheered by the crowd for saying: ‘Our struggle is twofold: against internal oppression and external foreign threats.’ These young people are not waiting to be liberated by invading soldiers, but would unite behind their oppressors in the face of foreign aggression." [Rest of the column]. Editorial Comment: Nasrin Alavi writes of the burgeoning internet free speech (about 64,000 blogs) of the Iranian youth in her book We Are Iran: The Persian Blogs (Portobello Books, 2006). This book provides excellent reasons why a genuine progressive and broad-minded love of freedom and democracy in the West should lead us to wisely dialogue rather than make war on Iran. A younger Iran is advancing toward a more democratic future.

Signed with an X
Noushin Ahmadi Khorasani is one of the organizers of a campaign to gain a million signatures in support of women’s rights. Here she describes one day spent going door to door in Tehran.
By Noushin Ahmadi Khorasani, New Internationalist (March 2007).
"I step into an alley in Nezamabad – my old neighbourhood in south Tehran, now full of working-class families and new migrants. I’m a tad hesitant, with a bitter, buried fear of something I haven’t yet done. It was in this neighbourhood that I was forbidden from riding my bicycle, aged 12. I look at the house in which I was born. A religious flag hangs from the frame of the door – the area has become more religious than it was 25 years ago. But there are still more old houses than newly built apartments, houses that retain the memory of the games of haft sang* we children used to play. I don’t have the nerve to ring the doorbells of the homes I once knew. I walk from one end of my old neighbourhood to the other. Though I am apprehensive I try to rid myself of the fear of The Other that is nurtured in all of us. Other people are not unlike me; they are happy or sad with the same old everyday problems. Our lives are consumed with fear. Fear of falling behind. Fear of a conservative government that wants to imprison us in our houses or flats or in cells. Fear of unhygienic food. Fear of ‘others’ who may want to cheat us. Fear of sanctions, fear of war... A fearful society relentlessly accrues new fears. We hurry towards darkness without ever having lived" [More of the story].

Deforestation: The hidden cause of global warming
In the next 24 hours, deforestation will release as much CO2 into the atmosphere as 8 million people flying from London to New York. Stopping the loggers is the fastest and cheapest solution to climate change. So why are global leaders turning a blind eye to this crisis?
By Daniel Howden, The Independent, UK (14 May 2007).
"The accelerating destruction of the rainforests that form a precious cooling band around the Earth's equator, is now being recognised as one of the main causes of climate change. Carbon emissions from deforestation far outstrip damage caused by planes and automobiles and factories. The rampant slashing and burning of tropical forests is second only to the energy sector as a source of greenhouses gases according to report published today by the Oxford-based Global Canopy Programme, an alliance of leading rainforest scientists." [More of the story].

Primary Forest Protection and Old-Growth Restoration Key to Solving Climate Change
By Dr. Glen Barry, Rainforest Portal, a project of Ecological Internet (15 May 2007).
"As a forest conservation activist for 18 years, who later also became a climate change advocate for the past 9 years, it is so gratifying to see recent widespread acceptance of what has become Ecological Internet's central message -- large, connected ancient primary and old-growth forests are a requirement for stopping climate change [more] and achieving global ecological sustainability. Global survival depends upon the Earth's last 20% of natural, primary forests remaining intact and totally protected as "global ecological reserves" with fair payments for avoided deforestation. Indeed, humanity has overshot the amount of natural forest ecosystem that can be developed while sustaining biogeochemical processes upon which all life depends and maintaining an operable atmosphere. Thus, we promote restoration ecology to expand ancient forests, 'rewilding' [search] remnant forests into old-growth habitat in a targeted manner." [More of the story].

Editorial introduction: Following are recent triumphs in preserving the planet, facilitated by Internet activism. There is another action to be taken in the next section.

Uganda Shelves Plan to Give Rainforest to Cane Farm
UGANDA: May 23, 2007
"KAMPALA - Uganda's cabinet has suspended a proposal to give away part of a rainforest to a sugarcane grower, the environment minister said on Tuesday, weeks after three people were killed in a protest against the plan. President Yoweri Museveni has faced vocal opposition over the plan to raze 7,100 hectares (17,540 acres) of Mabira Forest, a nature reserve since 1932, and give the land to the privately-owned Mehta Group's sugar estate. Environment minister Maria Mutagamba told Reuters the government had shelved it, pending a cabinet committee study. 'There is a suspension until the committee reports back," Mutagamba said. "It is an extensive process -- it is not going to be finished in a week or a month.' A protest to save Mabira last month turned violent, leaving three dead, including an Indian man stoned to death by rioters. Mehta is owned by an ethnic Indian family. Mutagamba said the lands ministry would draw up a map of land available to investors in Uganda for sectors such as coffee, sugar, manufacturing or tourism, to see if there was alternative land for Mehta's sugar. Critics say razing part of Mabira would destroy a fragile environment -- drying up rainfall, threatening a watershed for streams that feed Lake Victoria and removing a buffer against pollution of it from Uganda's two biggest industrial towns. It also threatened species like rare monkeys and the prized Tit Hylia bird -- found only in Mabira and surrounding forests." [News release].

PRESS RELEASE/VICTORY: Important Ugandan Protected Area Saved from "Deforestation Biofuels"
By Rainforest Portal, a project of Ecological Internet (27 May 2007).
"Uganda's government has scrapped plans to convert thousands of hectares of rainforest into a palm oil plantation. The government said it could not license Kenyan company Bidco to plant palm for biofuels in what is now a protected forest on Bugala island in Lake Victoria. Days earlier, the Ugandan government suspended for further study a separate proposal to give 7,000 ha of mainland Mabira forest reserve to a sugar grower. The Mabira victory was huge as the bulldozers were ready, and it is expected further study will kill the project. These two major rainforest conservation victories were made possible by an unprecedented national protest campaign to protect Uganda's dwindling forest reserves, buttressed by international protest facilitated exclusively by Ecological Internet. Over the past year President Yoweri Museveni has faced intense opposition, including peaceful protests sadly turned violent, over proposals to give private firms the right to bulldoze protected forests to create plantations. Ecological Internet alone generated some 1.8 million protest emails to the Ugandan parliament and Forest Authority. Uganda has long faced a deforestation crisis, with forests covering 20 percent of Uganda 40 years ago, but now just seven percent. Deforestation has been directly responsible for declining levels of waters in Lake Victoria and River Nile resulting in a scarcity of drinking water and reduction in hydroelectric energy production. Some one-third of Mabira Forest Reserve, about 7,000 hectares of an area which has been protected since 1932, was to lose its protection for sugar cane production by the Mehta Group. Mabira is a watershed for two rivers contributing to the Nile, an ecological stabiliser between two industrial towns and it protects Lake Victoria." [More of the press release].

VICTORY: Amerindians Force Samling to Stop Some Illegal Logging in Guyana
By Rainforest Portal, a project of Ecological Internet (31 May 2007).
"Yet another stunning victory for Ecological Internet's (EI) Earth Action Network and partners, as Amerindian Villages in Guyana where Barama/Samling has been logging illegally have thrown Samling out of those communities. Or depending upon how you spin it, Samling withdrew after being told in no uncertain terms that the residents and Council did not want the logging company there. If only every community with ancient forests undergoing logging on their lands (legal or illegal) that they do not desire were to be given the choice of just saying no. Most of the tropical timber industry would be shut down tomorrow, WWF and Greenpeace would be without a forest conservation program, and prospects for global forest and ecological sustainability would increase dramatically. The report below is from Bruno Manser Fonds, a Swiss rainforest group, and a Guyanese newspaper." [More of the press release].

For more recent victories for internet activists for a sustainable environment.

Update on 3ABN’s Supporting Ministry Status With General Conference: GC Issues a Formal Statement and Additional Information from the South Pacific Division
By Ervin Taylor, Atoday.com (10 June 2007).

On June 6, Adventist Today reported that a summary of the South Pacific Division Administrator’s Council and Institute of Public Evangelism Committee meeting, as reported by Dr. Denis Hankinson, the President of the Victorian Conference, contained the following statement:

“The General Conference has suspended 3ABN’s [Three Angels Broadcasting Network] Supportive Ministry status until some well-known issues in more than one area are sorted out. Basically, a lot of smoke doesn’t necessarily presume a fire, but it definitely needs investigation and caution.”

An initial request for additional information from the General Conference of SDA (GC) resulted in the following statement which was communicated to Adventist Today on June 5 by John Torres, Media Relations Coordinator, GC Communications Department: “There has been no change or review of the status of 3ABN as a supporting ministry by the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists.”

In a telephone conversion with Elder Laurie Evans, the President of the South Pacific Division of Seventh-day Adventists, Adventist Today asked which GC officer or officers, committee, or other organizational unit had made the suspension determination, Elder Evans suggested that Adventist Today contact Orville Parchment, Administrative Assistant to Dr. Jan Paulsen, the President of the General Conference of SDA.

A telephone call was placed to Orville Parchment by Adventist Today and this question was posed to him. His response was that the statement issued from the South Pacific Division office was “incorrect.” However, as a consequence of this report, a committee had just been convened at the General Conference and they had prepared a statement that would be issued out of the General Conference Communications Department. The membership of that committee was not disclosed.

On June 7, Rajmund Dabrowski, GC Communication Director, emailed to Adventist Today the following statement:

“The General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists has received a number of inquiries into the status of Three Angels Broadcasting Network (3ABN) as a supporting ministry of the Church. There has been no change or review of the status of 3ABN as a supporting ministry by the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Due to ongoing administrative issues at 3ABN, the General Conference administration has taken a position that until these matters have been addressed that the General Conference personnel not involve 3ABN for new program development and production. This approach does not reflect that the General Conference is taking any particular position in
issues which are under the purview of the Board of Directors of 3ABN, which is an independent supporting ministry. The GC's position applies to General Conference personnel.”

Adventist Today also received the following communication from Dr. Hankinson, the president of the Victorian Conference, whose communication had first reported a GC suspension action. Adventist Today appreciates Dr. Hankinson’s gracious response to our inquiry:

“Just a little clarification on my previous comment re 3ABN. This was a misunderstanding on my part, based on some recent discussion in Australia. I hope the following will help to clarify the situation as I understand it.

In the USA, most supporting ministries are under the umbrella of the ASI organization and 3ABN is a member of ASI in good and regular standing. The General Conference has taken a reserved position towards 3ABN until certain issues are resolved. Currently ASI, 3ABN and Amazing Facts are working to resolve these issues.

Let's continue to pray for a positive resolution.”

Adventist Today will continue to monitor developments in this ongoing story.

Study finds Great Lack Of Adventist Church Involvement in Community Organizing or Advocacy

Analysis by Paul Richardson, Center for Creative Ministry:.
"Only 7% of Seventh-day Adventist churches in the U.S. report that they are involved in community organizing projects or advocacy on social issues in the community. This is less than one third the rate for all religious congregations in America. Theologically conservative Christians, including Adventists, tend to believe in relief activities for people suffering from disasters, famine and even entrenched poverty, but they feel that efforts to change the social structures that maintain hunger and injustice are outside the scope of Christ’s mission. So this survey response is not surprising.Yet, considering the history of the Adventist movement, it is somewhat difficult to explain. The founders of the Adventist movement were social activists, deeply involved in anti-slavery advocacy, the temperance movement that led to a constitutional amendment and health reform, which was then as much about changing the practice of medicine and medical institutions as it was about diet and exercise. Ellen White’s 'The Ministry of Healing' includes chapters on 'Help for the Unemployed and the Homeless' and 'Liquor Traffic and Prohibition,' as well as 'Prayer for the Sick' and 'Flesh as Food.' She spoke on many occasions at political rallies in support of prohibition and urged Adventist young people to refuse joining the military during the Civil War. John Byington, the first president of the General Conference, engaged in civil disobedience against the Federal fugitive slave law. Part of the explanation for this shift over time is the increasingly middle class character of the Adventist Church membership in America. The prosperous middle class tends to favor a religion that avoids controversial public issues and supports the status quo, in part, because they have a stake in that status quo. The other part of the explanation is that Adventists have not succeeded well in communicating what we’re ‘for;’ we’ve been better at emphasizing what we’re ‘against.’ If we were to present benefits and tangible solution when networking with progressive decision-makers in the community, our influence on these issues might be greater." [Rest of the Story].

Further editorial comment: What has been largely lost is the progressive impulse in Adventist Christianity. In promoting dialogue across the spectrum, recovery and augmentation of the progressive wing of Adventist Christianity is a central part of the raison d'être of the ATNewsbreak.

Action Alert: Stop WWF's Betrayal of the Earth's Last Ancient Forests
WWF is the world's largest ancient forest logging apologist; actively promoting questionable "certified, sustainable" logging in Guyana, Russia and elsewhere -- and may be the World's greatest threat facing endangered ancient forests
By Rainforest Portal, a project of Ecological Internet (May 24, 2007).
"For many years the international conservation group WWF has supported Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification that first-time logging of ancient primary and old-growth forests is "sustainable". Millions of hectares of intact, large rainforest ecosystems have been and are being heavily industrially logged for the first time with WWF and FSC's stamp of approval. Ecological Internet (EI) recently reported upon Samling of Malaysia's activities in Guyana under the name of Barama (1.3 million ha/3.2 million acres), which received significant international bank financing based upon assurances provided by WWF and an FSC certificate of good forest management...." [For more information and to sign the petition].

Congo rainforest: The Congo Basin and the Earth's other large ancient forests must remain intact as ecological reserves for local, regional and global ecological sustainability.