We know time changes. Time changes for the better and for the worse too. But some change strikes us very hard. And we feel aggrieved. The Socialist China has changed radically before our eyes. Let us talk briefly in what way it has changed.

Now we may ask the pertinant question is China yet a socialist country? This question is doing the rounds amongst the radical intelligentsia for the last two decades or so. From some reliable sources, we get the snippets which may substantiate the claim that China is no longer socialist :

1)China has developed many a SEZs where workers have to put in labour for staggering hours. They are provided with sub-standard food, dingy dormitories to live and they are ill-treated by the factory managers. Not only that, SEZs have become the bone of contention among the labouring class worldwide. And free market economy which is contrary to the socilistic principle has come to stay.

2)Farmers are charged with excessive taxes and they are not insured against bad crops. Large stretch of lands are forcibly acquisitioned to favour the developers and SEZs. Landless labour teem the countryside and being out of job they turn towards the cities with no guarantee of job and livlihood. Their number is as high as 200 millions.

3)48 million workers were laid off from the state enterprises 1n 1995-2000 alone and still more are in the offing. Their job security and livelihood has become uncertain like the farmers.

4)People's Communes in the countryside have been disbanded as a result of which public health system has collapsed in the countryside. SARS broke out epidemically in 2003 because of this callousness. Peasants are now selling their blood to survive which contributed to AIDS crisis. Earler communes were the backbones of Chinese society.

5)Free market economy has its bad impact on the rural economy. Rural schools are now being financed by tuition and other charges. The result is that poor villagers cannot afford to send their children to school. The principle for free education for all has come under enormous challenge.

6)Prostitution is rampant in cities. Female feticide has become a common practice. There is a burgeoning practice of intravenous drug use and sex industry. Pornography has spread among the youths. That is to say that culture of decadence now is ruling the roost.

7)Cities are fraught with pollution danger. Industrial wastes are pouring into the rivers. Forest cover is being depleted. Capitalist mode of production has become the modus operandi of Chinese economy. This mode of production is diametrically opposed to the basic principles of socialist economy.

Do these trends speak for the Red Star Over China. Actually that red star has drowned under the weightage of vast expansion of private economy. And where there is private economy, there cannot be a socialist society. That is the contentious issue of socialism.

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The bio-sphere is mainly consisted of air, soil and water. The bio-sphere which is the mainstay for the living beings and plants is under severe constrints resulting in a chatotic situations for both living beings and plants. And the existence has become at stake.

It is mainly due to ever increasing human activities and indiscriminate violation of the code of conducts meted out to the nature as a whole. This attitude is vitiating the earth's bio-sphere on an alarming scale. These can be traced from the following available datas :

1)The carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere has grown up by 25% in the last 200 years, with about half the increase having been accrued since 1950. The sources are internal combustion engines, furnaces. This results in global warming and Greenhouse Effect. 2)Nitrogen cycle is being disturbed. Increased use of nitrate fertiliser is at the root of this evil. Since nitrate is readily leached from the soil by water, the increased use of nitrogen fertiliser has caused nitrogen pollution in the lakes, rivers, streams, and ground water.

3)Human beings now use (take or transform) an estimated 25% of the net photosynthetic product (NPP) i.e. the plant mass fixed by photosynthesis. As human beings consume more of the primary productivity of the earth for themselves, less is left for other species.

4)The withdrawal of water from natural circulation has increased 35 times since the 17th. century. Now this is annually about 3,600 cubic km. per year. This is a grave concern for the watersphere of the earth.

5)Since the development of agriculture, deforestation is wildly rampant. It is about 8 million sq. km., an area almost equal to the continental United States. The extinction of forest-cover on this scale has caused alarming change in the bio-sphere.

All these features have viciously polluted the climate and that is gradually causing a lot of costraints and concerns for the life's existence in the world. Until and unless human beings can control their indifferent attitude towards the nature the whole thing will get out of the chances to stem the rot.

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Everything goes down the hill
Everything passes into the void of time
Leaving behind a pile of ashes and sands
Webs of life churn out nothing
Nothing but hallucination of hope and lies.
Someday everything fosters faith and belief
Someday everything belies everything.

All creatures will be burned
They will go down the ravages
All will go down the valley of non-existence
Nothing will remain in the smouldering heat of existence
Not a single creature breathes for the eternity.

All along the path of salvation
Everything will meet everything in the end
Everyone will walk a long way
Days will follow days again and again
Light after darkness will fade away
And all creatures will feel a sense of lost of identity
There will remain a sense of indiscriminate cruelty.

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It is more than pity that still so many people go to church to attend mass, to temple to offer puja and mosque to say namaj. Do these people know why they are performing religious services with so much enthusiasm? Or, why they follow religion so religiously? And that too keeping shy of other responsibilities in the process?

Some - most of them - are birds of the same feathers. By this I mean they follow the others by following their footsteps blindly without knowing much what all these things actually mean to them or whether these are going to stand in good stead in their lives. They do not know and they do not want to know either. Still they are participants of religious rites.

But the others are really devoted to religious feelings. They know what they are doing and why they are doing such and such things. They read religious scriptures and attend to the preachers and very much like to parrot their semblance of ideas to the public at large with a view to getting more followers along the lines. They are very much revered and devoted to religious activities. It is also that they are always not honest enough to their way of lives. Even they get corrupted and enjoy undue privileges.

But what do they know? And do they know that what they know as truth is economy of truth, very far from being truth. What they know is that they are serving the God by what they are doing by way of offering prayers, pujas etc. And they finally know that they are serving the God to attain salvation in life and to get the right to entry to the heaven in afterlife and to get their sins of offences condoned by the almighty.

Now we can raise some issues over some of their false conceptualisations very much related to religion and their ideas about religions : God, salvation, heaven, afterlife etc. What is or who is God? Is it not an imaginary entity created in their unsophisticated mind and not to be exclusively proved in reality? What is salvation? To them, salvation is getting respite from sin of evil doing and getting the conferring of eternal happiness in heaven which is also an imaginary creation of their own. So, they will commit sin in this life and by serving that imaginary Supreme Being they will get salvation in heaven in afterlife. What a marvelous idea to cuckold the gullible people!

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There are many religions in the world and there are many followers of different religions. Everyone feels and thinks that his religion is all too better than the other religions. But is there much difference between the different religions?

As I say, there is not much difference, it can be inferred that no religion is better than no religion. Is this categorisation of much help to come to any conclusion? They are almost same in form and content. Only their guises are different. Religion is not that much an important stuff to say whether it is good or bad.

It is blind faith that sustains religion in our everyday lives. Not only that, religion has caused more harm than good to human life and society. What on earth is religion here for? To serve what purpose and to what extent? It is very contentious. But what can be said for certain that it is nothing but blind superstition. There is no rationality and scientific temper in religious thought and ideas. It is just some blind faith and dogma that carry religion home.

Majority of the population all over the world are still under its dark influence. That influence has made the situation more worse than it can be imagined. With the salvation theory by its side as preached by the concerned proponents, one religion has waged violent war of jihad against the other.

Why so? Had the temper of religion been tolerant and humane, hundreds of such wars could have been averted. People can live by praying to God alone. It is their choice but no compulsion. It is all non-sense and narrow-mindedness, it is all fanaticism and violence in its contents. Still then religion is ruling the roost in people's everyday lives without any rhyme and reason. People all over the world are embroiled in religious faiths forsaking their senses of rationality and reason.

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Life is so beautiful
So close yet too far from me
The rumblings of violence thrash me days and nights
With a whip of devil's discontentment
I find solace only in you
You are my refuge, only refuge
You are the life in a lifeless world
In my ecstasy of joy I come back to you
In my distress of fortune you save me from disgrace
Like a winged bird picks up its chicks from agony.
Without cry of silence
I hear songs of your soul
I always look forward to you expecting of radiant joy.

I walk along the aisles of your existence
I breath life in your fresh air
You give me all the hopes and despair
You give me shelter like my mother in her lap
Life flows like a river into the valley
Clouds cover my my pains and agony
When you rain in my deep soul
I get refuge in my soul-searching solitude
You are my only refuge in my ecstasy of joy.

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