Personal diary of John Barnabas (aka Barney) Leith
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I’m still here…

by Barney

I have been so busy! Not a moment to write a proper blog post. The National Spiritual Assembly met over the weekend and I have a lot of things I just have to do, both for the National Spiritual Assembly and for other organizations I’m committed to.

Tomorrow I have meetings all day: the Equality and Diversity Forum in the morning, the Religion and Belief Consultative Group in the afternoon, and a meeting on behalf of the National Assembly in the evening.

And then I’m off to Birmingham early Thursday morning for an all-day conference on the theme of Making Rights Real

Making Rights Real: European Year of Equalities for All conference for the voluntary and community sector
15 November, International Convention Centre, Birmingham

The Government Equalities Office and the new Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) have joined forces and, with the support of the Equality and Diversity Forum and the British Institute of Human Rights, have arranged this dedicated event for voluntary and community sector (VCS) organisations. The conference is a unique opportunity for the VCS to hear from the EHRC and Government about progress on equality and human rights, to voice their concerns and to share experience and best practice.

You probably didn’t want to know any of this, but I’ve been feeling guilty about not writing in my blog for a while.

I do want to write a bit more about The Upside of Down by Thomas Homer Dixon, as reviewed here. I’ve now finished reading it and am really taken with the whole book. But I think his proposals for resolving the world crisis are on the weak side, less well developed than what he writes about how the world is heading for catastrophe. So this is where I turn to the Baha’i writings and the life of the Baha’i community to see what we can learn from them about building a better future for the planet. Homer Dixon has some of the principles, but little sense of how people would enact these principles.

While I’m on books that I’m reading, I’m now well into The New Atheists by Tina Beattie, a demolition of Dawkins et al from a Christian feminist perspective. I’ll write about that once I’ve finished it, but I do recommend it.

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Related posts:

  1. What I did on Human Rights Day
  2. Our world is collapsing. Why don’t we face reality?
  3. Phone call from a government minister
  4. Human Rights Day - a message from the UN Secretary-General
  5. Australian Bahá’í representative on radio

3 comments

1 Marco Oliveira { 11.13.07 at 21:12 }

And I started a series of posts about Sam Harris and his book “The End of Faith”.
:-)

2 Toby Doncaster { 11.14.07 at 17:25 }

Yuh, I knew blogging was just a passing fad with you Barney; that’s the problem with young people today, no commitment. :P

Thought you were no longer with the National Assembly? Did you get voted in again when I wasn’t looking?

3 Barney { 11.16.07 at 07:51 }

Toby I’ve been elected to the National Spiritual Assembly every year from 1993 onwards, so I am still serving on that body. However, I am no longer its Secretary for External Affairs (the Sec for EA, like the other officers, is elected by the National Assembly itself from amongst its members). Rob Weinberg was elected to that post. Initially this meant that I would no longer be serving in a paid post, but the National Assembly appointed me on a part-time basis as its Principal Representative, Diplomatic Relations.

Alles klar?

Marco, I haven’t yet read Sam Harris’s book. Dawkins is the best known militant atheist in the UK.

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