Service Projects for all Humanity

An International Online Service Community, by TOS-USA

BATTERY RECYCLING PROGRAM (THINK GREEN!)
Sponsored by
Theosophical Order of Service/USA

In an effort to increase environmental awareness, the Theosophical Order of Service /USA invites you to participate in our battery recycling program. Household batteries may be small and look harmless but these batteries can release toxic chemicals into the environment when thrown out with domestic waste that ends up in the landfill. This project provides a way for concerned citizens to safely dispose of used household batteries.  read more »

Dear Friends,

As you may recall, I wrote to you in June about ten young people held in prison in Austria since mid-May suspected of belonging to a Mafia-like organization supposedly perpetrating crimes in defense of animals.

I thought you might like to know that one of them was released in August and all the rest at the beginning of September. The media more or less ignored them for the more than three months they were in prison but now the journalists can’t get enough of them! One of them, Martin Balluch, has been invited by the Green Party to be one of its candidates in the forthcoming Austrian elections. He has been on TV and radio non-stop. He lost 20 kilos (around 40 pounds) in jail but his fire is returning. The affair is not over, however: the investigations are still going ahead and it could still come to a trial. No evidence linking the ten to any crimes has been found, even after 18 months of police surveillance but the accusation that the ten belong to a criminal organization has not been dropped. Human rights groups are therefore monitoring the situation closely. In the meantime, the ten are trying to pick up their lives and jobs….  read more »

People should consider eating less meat as a way of combating global warming, says the UN's top climate scientist. Rajendra Pachauri, who chairs the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), will make the call at a speech in London on Monday evening. UN figures suggest that meat production puts more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than transport.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7600005.stm

Life Source Teams with TOS for Blood Drive The Theosophical Order of Service will host a Life Source blood drive on Saturday, Oct. 18, 2008, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on the Theosophical Society campus. For more information about Life Source and donating blood, visit www.lifesource.org.

A Personal Request from Kalon Tripa
August 15, 2008
Dear Friends,

You might have seen the Appeal issued by the Tibetan Solidarity Committee to request all Tibetans, Tibet Support Groups and peace-loving people of the world to observe a 12-hour symbolic fasting and prayer on 30th August 2008 for world peace and, particularly, for the departed souls of the Tibetan people in recent months in Tibet. The appeal also re-commits ourselves to the path of non-violence. The objectives and how to observe the fasting are mentioned in detail in the appeal. If you have not received the appeal as yet, please visit our official website www.tibet.net and www.stoptibetcrisis.org.
   read more »

The Theosophical Order of Service (TOS) invites you to join us each month to discuss ways to increase service opportunities, as a group, or individually. The meetings are open to anyone who has a desire to get actively involved in service work.

The goal for the meetings will be to develop an ongoing TOS action group who can identify a few service-oriented projects, and take the necessary action to complete the task.

Some suggestions already received include:  read more »

ELP Information Bulletin (3rd of July 2008)

I suppose you will know by now that 43 days ago, Austrian police undertook 28 armed raids on homes of animal rights activist and on offices of 7 animal rights groups all over Austria. 10 people were put on remand, and still are, one of them being me. Because these police actions were completely out of any proportion and no well – founded reasons for the raids and arrests were forthcoming, I immediately went on hunger strike. I used my last means of protest against this unbelievable level of police terror and state repression.  read more »

by Elena F. Pisareva  (Wheaton: Quest Books, 2008, 113pp.)

The thirty years prior to the 1917 Russian Revolution were years filled with the discovery of Asian religious thought and practice including its more Westernized forms. In the 1870s, the Russian Tsarist empire started moving east to absorb what is today’s Central Asia. The Crimean War prevented Russia from moving toward the west, and British expansion in India made the Russians fearful of British control of Afghanistan and Central Asia. Russian troops started moving into Central Asia — the decisive battle of Tashkent was 1865. Along with troops, the Russian government sent scholars to study the way of life, and they started to write about Islam, the Sufi dervish movements, the Tibetan forms of Buddhism found in Mongolia and among other Central Asian peoples.

Along with government-sponsored scholars, there were independent individuals who went to Central Asia on a personal spiritual journey such as G.I. Gurdjieff. The reports of these finding created an interest in Asian thought among the educated elite.

At the same period, from the mid 1860s to the eve of the Revolution, wealthy Russians would spend the winter in Western Europe and sent their children to elite schools in Switzerland, Germany and France.  read more »

The TOS-USA currently has very high search engine rankings, meaning that any content placed on this site tends to come up very high in search engine ranking (a separate article on this is upcoming).  In short, TOS-USA is an excellent way for you to get your story or news to the attention of the world!  It is in fact the ONLY relatively high-profile TS/TOS site that accepts user-contributed content as well as comments, including comments from non-registered users.   You have a world audience for what you write here.   Take advantage!

We recognize that not everyone is able to use this site's content editor to compose a story (see howto here).  And the process of uploading an image file and inserting it into the article using the content editor might be particularly confusing for the computer-challenged!  read more »

Sicangu Sun Times  http://www.sicangusuntimes.com
 ROSEBUD — At no time in the history of the Rosebud Indian Reservation has it been more important to have a homegrown newspaper reporting on the reservation.  That is the way PR Gregg-Bear, publisher and editor of the Sicangu Sun Times, sees the picture.

“When you get right down to it, it’s a humanitarian project of the first order, because it deals with passing on and exchanging information,” says Gregg-Bear, a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe.

“What people say, what people think, what people know in any community becomes the soul of that community, and what they do with that information is how they chart a course for the future,” he says.

With seven successful teen suicides in the last three years, not to mention a myriad of attempts, Gregg-Bear said he believed the need for accurate information was even more imperative.  read more »

At a time when rising food prices have become a global concern and food riots are weakening governments, we need to look beyond short-term measures to deeper structural reforms. It is important to understand the political and cultural background of necessary changes, and it is appropriate to look at the contributions of earlier reformers. George Russell (1867-1935) helped create agricultural cooperatives in Ireland after Independence as part of a larger aim of spiritual awakening to a greater life.  read more »

The TOS has been supplying survival assistance in the form of blankets and winter clothes, as well as Christmas presents for the children, to Rosebud Indian Reservation for several years. Our desire now is to escalate that assistance in ways that will be self-perpetuating and will encourage internal development to improve the quality of life on the Reservation. For the reader to have an appreciation of the magnitude of the problem, please review this link to an article in the Rapid City Journal of September 12, 2006.  Read the story.

In April of this year we began to support the publishing of the tribal newspaper Sicangu Sun Times. The newspaper was in dire need of more modern computers to replace old and failing equipment.  As of early June the publisher has received two Apple PowerMac computers – G4 and G5 - for the work of graphics design and page layout, and more equipment is on the way. We consider the newspaper to be a major player in spreading ideas and encouragement for building businesses and farming projects to improve the quality of life.   read more »