Italian man shot by vandal squad - Como Italy

April 12: GOOD NEWS UPDATE: Despite being declared brain dead, Rumesh has begun to recover. He's even awake now, although partly immobile and deeply injured. In the meantime, the vandal squad has been suspended until further notice.


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March 31: Airone sent this terrible news:

A young INNOCENT 19-year-old man, Rumesh Rajgama Achrige, has been killed by a vandal squad cop during a routine police check. 4 young kids (19 the oldest) were stopped in their car, and the vandal squad made them jump down and kicked them against a wall. While the kids were there, doing nothing and just waiting to be checked, Mr Marco Dainati, one of the cops, was pointing his gun at the kids when suddenly the gun fired. Rumesh was with his writer friends but he was not a writer himself.

The 19-year-old man is now in hospital, clinically dead, waiting for his organs to be harvested. The policeman was arrested at first but has already been released. This morning all the students of Como came down in the streets to protest. The Major of the city is still trying to protect the cop: this vandal squad was his own idea. Only a single newspaper is covering the story: elections are just around the corner...

For people able to read italian, it's possible to find extensive details here:

http://www.wildstylers.com/wstr/index.php

or here

Google translates Italian kind of.

Lessons in making a difference

Kevin Kelly is one of the more effective
activists and world changers I know of. His buddy Stewart Brand is no slacker either. Danny Hillis and these guys are part of the Long Bets and Long Now Foundation, an interesting idea. Free downloadable seminars on topics no one else is discussing.

Kevin recommends these interesting programs that can maximize your donations while changing the lives of people directly in ways that they can turn around and help those around them. All of these programs benefit women and improve the lives of their families.

Heifer.org/ gives animals and bees to people. Opportunity.org funds microloans to village entrepreneurs. Trickle Up provides "conditional seed capital and business training essential to the launch of a small business. Trickle Up has started over 135,000 businesses in more than 120 countries. "

And while I'm worshipping heroes, here's to one of the most human of beings, John Perry Barlow. His words never fail to inspire even when they are about things we don't want to hear about. Today's discovery, on his blog where he speaks of his friend Spalding Grey's suicide:

".. Making public the intimately personal is a revolutionary act in an atomized society where many feel compelled to play so close to the chest that they can't read their own cards. Being emotionally naked before strangers extends to them a permission for self-revelation they badly need if they are to loosen the shackles of their own quiet desperations. It is a blow against the pursuit of loneliness."

"...But death has become wild and obscene in this country. Its power threatens our national religion of control. To die in America is to fail. It is an act of weakness. The dead could have beaten it had they been tough enough. And suicide, of course, is even worse, whatever the unendurable torments or neurological malfunctions that might drive one to it. Believe me, he tried some truly medieval procedures to penetrate his horror."

"Merely to speak of death in plain terms is considered by many to be disrespectful and offensive. This is a peculiarly American sickness which is, among other things, wrecking our health care system - over 70% of America's total medical expenditures are devoted to extending the last few miserable weeks of life. Our pathology about death abstracts us from it and renders us far too capable of inflicting it on others without remorse. And, worst, it allows us to dwell in a kind of numbness to life that we would not permit ourselves if we did not make ourselves numb to death. To be in denial about death is to be in denial about life."

"Groundless hope, like unconditional love, is the only kind worth having."

Finally some good rain forest news

Rich guys buy big swathes of rain forest to save it. Money can be good if it's used wisely.

The rest of us will have to make do with Save An Acre (50 bucks each) and the click-per-day Rainforest site (free to you, just visit the site to raise funds from advertisers there that buy rainforest). Link it to your site too.