Rastafari Today:

Today, the Rastafari Movement has spread through most of the world, especially to those sectors of society interested in Reggae music and who listen to the Jamaican singer Bob Marley. A survey revealed that there were 1 million of Rastafaris faithful worldwide by the year 1997. Another significant result was that 5 to 10 percent of Jamaicans admited themselves as Rastafaris. By claiming the Emperor of Ethiopia (Haile Selassie I) to be the messiah, the Rastafari movement may be seen as a new religious movement that has arisen from Judaism and Christianity.
This movement is not an organized religion but an ideology. Even many Rastas say that the Rastafarism is not a relagion “at all” but a way of life. Although it is not an organized religion it has many denominations. The most important ones nowadays are the Bobo Ashanti, The Nyahbinghis and The 12 tribes of Israel. In 1996, The Rastafari Movement was given consultative status by the United Nations.
Today Rastafaris are not only black Jamaican people. The movement has spread from its country of origin, Jamaica, to several other countries and among many ethnic groups. Some of its symbols has widely spred during the 1990s in Post-Soviet States. After the fall of the URSS, young people of Russia and Ukrania adopted many of the symbols of the Rastafari culture, especially honouring Bob Marley and Reggae music.
A devoted rasta community also developed in Japan in the late 1970s. Tokyo became full of rasta-shops selling natural food and Reggae records which still exist today. Each year, open-air Reggae concerts are held in Japan as well as in other cities around the world.

The Rastafari Movement

The Rastafari movement is a new religious movement that accepts Haile Selassie I, the former Emperor of Ethiopia, as God incarnate, called Jah Rastafari. This emperor’s pre-coronation name was Tafari Makonnen. He is also seen as the messiah promised in the Bible to return. The name Rastafari comes from Ras (literally "Head," an Ethiopian title equivalent to Duke), and Tafari Makonnen. People who believe and are part of this movement are known as Rastas or Rastafaris.
Other characteristic of the Rastafari movement is the teachings of Jamaican publicist, organiser, and black separatist Marcus Garvey (also often regarded as a prophet), whose political and cultural vision helped inspire a new world view.
The Rastafari movement’s birthplace is Jamaica. It developed among Jamaicans of African descent who felt they were oppressed and that society was apathetic to their problems. Rastas regard themselves as conforming to Afrocentric social and political aspirations. They claim the culture stolen from them when their ancestors were brought on slave ships to Jamaica.
The messages given by the Rastafaris promote love and respect for all living things and emphasize the paramount importance of human dignity and self-respect. They speak of spiritual, psychological and physical Freedom. They are againts slavery and oppression.
Rastafaris stress loyalty to Zion (the Promissed Land), and rejection of modern society, calling it Babylon, which they see as corrupt. The movement is difficult to categorize, because Rastafari is not a centralized organization. Individual Rastafaris work out their religion for themselves, resulting in a wide variety of doctrines.

Review: China Cannot Stop Smoking

Review: China Cannot Stop Smoking
Tittle of the Article: New Antismoking Signs are almost Visible through the Haze
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/23/world/asia/23smoking.html?ref=world
Author: ANDREW JACOBS
Date of Publication: July 23, 2008

Gabriela Garcia Fernandez

In China, where one in four people smoke, a decade of public campaigns against tobacco have gain very little succes. The most recognisible achivemnet in this fight is the ban against cigarrettes in school, railway stations and other public places, in Beijing due to the Olympic Games. Furthermore, Chinese athletes were not permitted to accept tobacco company sponsorship and cigarrettes advertising on billboards were restricted.
About 350 million of China’s 1.3 billion people are regular smokers, and eventhough 1.2 million people die each year from smoking-related causes, there is some widespread belife that cigarrettes hold some health benefits. Unlike cigarrettes in much of the world, Chinese brands carry no health warning on labels.
“Cigarrettes have an extra value in China that helps improve many social interactions”, said Tang Weidrang, a researcher at the China Tobacco Museum in Shangai, a pro-smoking institution finaced by China’s Tobacco Industry. We have to take into account that the nation’s lukeswarm efforts to curb smoking are complicated by the government’s control over the tobacco industry, which provides about $31 billion in taxes each year, about a 8% of the governmet’s revenue. China produces a third of the world’s tobacco. Zhang Baazhen, a vice director of the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration, warned that “without cigarrettes the country’s stability will be affected”.
Early this year, Beijing announced a ban on smoking in bars and restaurants, but the proposal quickly died. It does not help that cigarrettes are extremely cheap. Along with all the little succes in fighting against smoking, Chinese people have started to assumed that more than addicted they are dependant on cigarretes, and so does China’s government in supporting smoking as it does.

Insight to Reggae Music

Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s.While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady. Reggae is based on a rhythm style characterized by regular chops on the off-beat, known as the skank.
Reggae is often associated with the Rastafari movement, an influence on many prominent reggae musicians from its inception. Reggae song lyrics deal with many subjects, including faith, love, sexuality, relationships, poverty, injustice and other broad social issues.
Although strongly influenced by both traditional African and Caribbean music, as well as by American rhythm and blues, reggae owes its direct origins to the progressive development of ska and rocksteady in 1960s Jamaica.
Ska music first arose in the studios of Jamaica over the years 1959 and 1961, itself a development of the earlier mento genre. Aside from its massive popularity amidst the Jamaican rude boy fashion, ska had gained a large following among mods in Britain by 1964.
By the mid-1960s, many musicians had begun playing the tempo of ska slower, while emphasizing the walking bass and offbeats. The slower sound was named rocksteady, after a single by Alton Ellis. This phase of Jamaican music lasted only until 1968, when musicians began to slow the tempo of the music again, and added yet more effects. This led to the creation of reggae.
The Wailers, started by Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Bunny Wailer in 1963, are generally agreed to be the most easily recognised group worldwide that made the transition through all three stages — from ska hits like "Simmer Down", through slower rocksteady; and they are also among the significant pioneers who can be called the roots of reggae.
Reggae is noted for its tradition of social criticism, although many reggae songs discuss lighter, more personal subjects, such as love, sex and socializing. Some reggae lyrics attempt to raise the political consciousness of the audience, such as by criticizing materialism, or by informing the listener about controversial subjects such as Apartheid. There are many artists who utilize religious themes in their music — whether it be discussing a religious topic, or simply giving praise to the Rastafari God Jah. Other common socio-political topics in reggae songs include black nationalism, anti-racism, anti-colonialism, anti-capitalism, criticism of political systems and "Babylon", and promotion of caring for needs of the younger generation.