Thursday, July 31, 2008

Joint Declaration of Benedict XVI and Rowan Williams

ZE06112305 - 2006-11-23
Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-18265?l=english

Joint Declaration of Benedict XVI and Rowan Williams



"Many Areas of Witness and Service in Which We Can Stand Together"



VATICAN CITY, NOV. 23, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Here is the Joint Declaration of the Anglican archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and Benedict XVI, which they signed today in the Vatican.

* * *

COMMON DECLARATION
of Pope Benedict XVI and the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams

Forty years ago, our predecessors, Pope Paul VI and Archbishop Michael Ramsey, met together in this city sanctified by the ministry and the blood of the Apostles Peter and Paul. They began a new journey of reconciliation based on the Gospels and the ancient common traditions. Centuries of estrangement between Anglicans and Catholics were replaced by a new desire for partnership and co-operation, as the real but incomplete communion we share was rediscovered and affirmed. Pope Paul VI and Archbishop Ramsey undertook at that time to establish a dialogue in which matters which had been divisive in the past might be addressed from a fresh perspective with truth and love.

Since that meeting, the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion have entered into a process of fruitful dialogue, which has been marked by the discovery of significant elements of shared faith and a desire to give expression, through joint prayer, witness and service, to that which we hold in common. Over thirty-five years, the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) has produced a number of important documents which seek to articulate the faith we share. In the ten years since the most recent Common Declaration was signed by the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury, the second phase of ARCIC has completed its mandate, with the publication of the documents "The Gift of Authority" (1999) and "Mary: Grace and Hope in Christ" (2005). We are grateful to the theologians who have prayed and worked together in the preparation of these texts, which await further study and reflection.

True ecumenism goes beyond theological dialogue; it touches our spiritual lives and our common witness. As our dialogue has developed, many Catholics and Anglicans have found in each other a love for Christ which invites us into practical co-operation and service. This fellowship in the service of Christ, experienced by many of our communities around the world, adds a further impetus to our relationship. The International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission (IARCCUM) has been engaged in an exploration of the appropriate ways in which our shared mission to proclaim new life in Christ to the world can be advanced and nurtured. Their report, which sets out both a summary of the central conclusions of ARCIC and makes proposals for growing together in mission and witness, has recently been completed and submitted for review to the Anglican Communion Office and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, and we express our gratitude for their work.

In this fraternal visit, we celebrate the good which has come from these four decades of dialogue. We are grateful to God for the gifts of grace which have accompanied them. At the same time, our long journey together makes it necessary to acknowledge publicly the challenge represented by new developments which, besides being divisive for Anglicans, present serious obstacles to our ecumenical progress. It is a matter of urgency, therefore, that in renewing our commitment to pursue the path towards full visible communion in the truth and love of Christ, we also commit ourselves in our continuing dialogue to address the important issues involved in the emerging ecclesiological and ethical factors making that journey more difficult and arduous.

As Christian leaders facing the challenges of the new millennium, we affirm again our public commitment to the revelation of divine life uniquely set forth by God in the divinity and humanity of Our Lord Jesus Christ. We believe that it is through Christ and the means of salvation found in him that healing and reconciliation are offered to us and to the world.

There are many areas of witness and service in which we can stand together, and which indeed call for closer co-operation between us: the pursuit of peace in the Holy Land and in other parts of the world marred by conflict and the threat of terrorism; promoting respect for life from conception until natural death; protecting the sanctity of marriage and the well-being of children in the context of healthy family life; outreach to the poor, oppressed and the most vulnerable, especially those who are persecuted for their faith; addressing the negative effects of materialism; and care for creation and for our environment. We also commit ourselves to inter-religious dialogue through which we can jointly reach out to our non-Christian brothers and sisters.

Mindful of our forty years of dialogue, and of the witness of the holy men and women common to our traditions, including Mary the Theotókos, Saints Peter and Paul, Benedict, Gregory the Great, and Augustine of Canterbury, we pledge ourselves to more fervent prayer and a more dedicated endeavor to welcome and live by that truth into which the Spirit of the Lord wishes to lead his disciples (cf. Jn 16:13). Confident of the apostolic hope "that he who has begun this good work in you will bring it to completion" (cf. Phil 1:6), we believe that if we can together be God's instruments in calling all Christians to a deeper obedience to our Lord, we will also draw closer to each other, finding in his will the fullness of unity and common life to which he invites us.

From the Vatican, 23 November 2006

[Original text: English]

Libreria Editrice Vaticana

Vatican Considering Union Request From Anglicans

ZE08073004 - 2008-07-30
Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-23376?l=english

Vatican Considering Union Request From Anglicans


Cardinal Says Congregation Giving Proposal "Serious Attention"


VATICAN CITY, JULY 30, 2008 (Zenit.org).- The Holy See is following with "serious attention" the request from the Traditional Anglican Communion for "full, corporate, sacramental union" with Rome.

This was affirmed by the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal William Levada, in a July 5 letter to the primate of the Anglican group, Archbishop John Hepworth.

The letter was written before the beginning of the Lambeth Conference, the once-a-decade gathering of Anglican leaders that is under way in England through Aug. 4. The Lambeth Conference is facing unprecedented controversy, and some bishops boycotted it altogether.

The conflict within the Communion has arisen over debate about the possibility of ordaining homosexual bishops and blessing homosexual marriages. A synod decision this summer to pave the way for the episcopal ordination of women has further alienated some Anglican leaders, many of whom were in disagreement with the Communion's decision to ordain women as priests.

According to Cardinal Levada's letter, "over the course of the past year, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has studied the proposals which you presented on behalf of the House of Bishops of the Traditional Anglican Communion during your visit to the offices of this dicastery on Oct. 9, 2007."

"As the summer months approach, I wish to assure you the serious attention which the congregation gives to the prospect of corporate unity raised in that letter," the cardinal added.

The Traditional Anglican Communion states that its aim is "to recall Anglicanism to its heritage, to heal divisions caused by departures from the faith, and to build a vibrant church for the future based on powerful local leadership." By some counts, it has about 400,000 faithful. If the request for "corporate union" is deemed possible, it would imply the entrance of entire parish communities into communion with Rome.

Cardinal Levada acknowledged that "the situation within the Anglican Communion in general has become markedly more complex" since the Traditional Anglican Communion's request was originally made.

He affirmed that "as soon as the congregation is in position to respond more definitely concerning the proposals you have sent, we will inform you."

The Anglican primate received the letter via the apostolic nuncio in Australia last Friday.

He immediately made public a note expressing his gratitude for the Vatican message.

"It is a letter of warmth and encouragement," he said. "I have responded, expressing my gratitude on behalf of 'my brother bishops,' reaffirming our determination to achieve the unity for which Jesus prayed with such intensity at the Last Supper, no matter what the personal cost this might mean in our discipleship."

"This letter should encourage our entire Communion, and those friends who have been assisting us," Archbishop Hepworth added. "It should also spur us to renewed prayer for the Holy Father, for Cardinal Levada and his staff at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and for all our clergy and people as we move to ever closer communion in Christ with the Holy See."

In Remembrance

In Remembrance (1917-2008)

Kenneth H. Wood, who served as Chairman of the Ellen G. White Estate Board of Trustees since 1980, died on May 25, 2008. He was 90 years old. A memorial service will be held at Spencerville Seventh-day Adventist Church, September 20, at 4PM. Read an online tribute to him from the Estate.



Source: http://www.whiteestate.org/

P.S. Green Highlights and bolds added for emphasis.

  • A Memorial 4 months after Bro. Wood's passing away; on a Sabbath afternoon?

Arsenio.

High Time to Awake!



High Time to Awake!

And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. Rom. 13:11, 12.


The great controversy is nearing its end. Every report of calamity by sea or land is a testimony to the fact that the end of all things is at hand. Wars and rumors of wars declare it. Is there a Christian whose pulse does not beat with quickened action as he anticipates the great events opening before us? The Lord is coming. We hear the footsteps of an approaching God. {Mar 220.1}

This knowledge of the nearness of Christ's coming should not be allowed to lose its force, and we become careless and inattentive, and fall into slumber--into an insensibility and indifference to realities. In slumber we are in an unreal world, and not sensible of the things which are taking place around us. . . . {Mar 220.2}

There are those who have the blazing light of truth shining all around them, and yet are insensible to it. They are enchanted by the enemy, held under a spell by his bewitching power. They are not preparing for that great day which is soon to come to our world. They seem utterly insensible to religious truth. {Mar 220.3}

Are there not some youth who are awake? Those who see that the night cometh, and also the morning, should work with untiring energy to arouse their sleeping associates. Can they not feel their peril, pray for them, and show them by their own life and character that they believe themselves that Christ is soon to come? . . . The rapidly diminishing space of time between us and eternity should more deeply impress us. Every day that passes makes one less left us to complete our work of perfecting character. . . . {Mar 220.4}

As long as there are many asleep, many sporting away the precious hours in careless indifference, as it were, upon the very brink of the eternal world, those who do believe must be sober, must be awake, must be earnest and diligent, and watch unto prayer. . . . {Mar 220.5}

Have you, dear youth, your lamps trimmed and burning? {Mar 220.6}

Maranatha, E. G. W., p.220.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

America's Subversion (The Enemy Within)

America's Subversion

The Enemy Within

author: Sonny René Stermole

Introduction

Chapter 1
Intrigue

Chapter 2
The Plan is Hatched

Chapter 3
System of Subversion

Chapter 4
Freemasonry's Occult, Evil Empire Exposed

Chapter 5
The Great Work - Whose Re-Incarnation ?

Chapter 6
The Trojan Horse - The Enemy Enters Within

Chapter 7
Under Another Name

Chapter 8
New Age Army Expose, Psychic Warrior Subversion Exposed

Chapter 9
Psychic Subversion, Freemasonry's New Age Telepathic Work

Chapter 10
New Age Expose, New Age Spirit Guide Incarnation Exposed

Chapter 11
The Clinton Mystery, Jean Houston's Demon Guides

Chapter 13
FBI & CIA Masonic-Mormon Spiritualism Expose, Mormonism Exposed

Treason
Chapter supplement: Middle-East Subversion, America's Subversion, Treason and World War Three

Source: http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/america_subversion_index.htm

Tell Me More About Albert Pike

Who was Albert Pike?

Tell Me More About Albert Pike

Albert Pike's Background

Jump to Albert Pike & Three World Wars.

Very few outsiders know about the intimate plans of Albert Pike and the architects of the New World Order. In the 19th Century Albert Pike established a framework for bringing about the One World Order. Based on a vision revealed to him, Albert Pike wrote a blueprint of events that would play themselves out in the 20th century, with even more of these events yet to come. It is this blueprint which we believe unseen leaders are following today, knowingly or not, to engineer the planned Third and Final World War.

About Albert Pike

Picture of Albert PikeAlbert Pike was born on December 29, 1809, in Boston, and was the oldest of six children born to Benjamin and Sarah Andrews Pike. He studied at Harvard, and later served as a Brigadier-General in the Confederate Army. After the Civil War, Pike was found guilty of treason and jailed, only to be pardoned by fellow Freemason President Andrew Johnson on April 22, 1866, who met with him the next day at the White House. On June 20, 1867, Scottish Rite officials conferred upon Johnson the 4th to 32nd Freemasonry degrees, and he later went to Boston to dedicate a Masonic Temple.

Pike was said to be a genius, able to read and write in 16 different languages, although I cannot find a record anywhere of what those languages were. In addition, he is widely accused of plagiarism, so take with a pinch of salt. At various stages of his life we was a poet, philosopher, frontiersman, soldier, humanitarian and philanthropist. A 33rd degree Mason, he was one of the founding fathers, and head of the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, being the Grand Commander of North American Freemasonry from 1859 and retained that position until his death in 1891. In 1869, he was a top leader in the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

Pike was said to be a Satanist, who indulged in the occult, and he apparently possessed a bracelet which he used to summon Lucifer, with whom he had constant communication. He was the Grand Master of a Luciferian group known as the Order of the Palladium (or Sovereign Council of Wisdom), which had been founded in Paris in 1737. Palladism had been brought to Greece from Egypt by Pythagoras in the fifth century, and it was this cult of Satan that was introduced to the inner circle of the Masonic lodges. It was aligned with the Palladium of the Templars. In 1801, Issac Long, a Jew, brought a statue of Baphomet (Satan) to Charleston, South Carolina, where he helped to establish the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. Long apparently chose Charleston because it was geographically located on the 33rd parallel of latitude (incidentally, so is Baghdad), and this council is considered to be the Mother Supreme Council of all Masonic Lodges of the World.

Pike was Long's successor, and he changed the name of the Order to the New and Reformed Palladian Rite (or Reformed Palladium). The Order contained two degrees:

  • Adelph (or Brother), and

  • Companion of Ulysses (or Companion of Penelope).

Pike's right-hand man was Phileas Walder, from Switzerland, who was a former Lutheran minister, a Masonic leader, occultist, and spiritualist. Pike also worked closely with Giusseppe Mazzini of Italy (1805-1872) who was a 33rd degree Mason, who became head of the Illuminati in 1834, and who founded the Mafia in 1860. Together with Mazzini, Lord Henry Palmerston of England (1784-1865, 33rd degree Mason), and Otto von Bismarck from Germany (1815-1898, 33rd degree Mason), Albert Pike intended to use the Palladian Rite to create a Satanic umbrella group that would tie all Masonic groups together.

Albert Pike died on April 2, 1891, and was buried in Oak Hill Cemetery, although the corpse of Pike currently lies in the headquarters of the Council of the 33rd degree of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry in Washington, D.C. (see The Deadly Deception, by Jim Shaw - former 33rd degree Mason and Past Master of all Scottish Rite bodies.)

The Albert Pike Monument

Albert Pike made his mark before the war in Arkansas as a lawyer and writer, but as a Confederate Brigadier General, he was, according to the Arkansas Democrat of July 31, 1978, a complete "WASH-OUT," not a hero. Yet, Gen. Albert Pike is the only Confederate general with a statue on federal property in Washington, DC. He was honoured, not as a commander or even as a lawyer, but as Southern regional leader of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry. The statue stands on a pedestal near the foot of Capitol Hill, between the Department of Labor building and the Municipal Building, between 3rd and 4th Streets, on D Street, NW. More detail about the monument, including a photo and map can be found here. Further background on the colorful history of the statue can be found at the Masonic Info website. During the 1992 presidential campaign, Lyndon H. LaRouche and his vice presidential running mate, the Reverend James Bevel, launched a mobilization to remove the statue of General Albert Pike from Washington, D.C.'s Judiciary Square. On February 1, the campaign drew an angry attack from freemasonic leader C. Fred Kleinknecht, who attempted to defend both Pike and the Ku Klux Klan from LaRouche and Bevel's attack. A speech given by LaRouche defending his actions can be found here (March 20, 1992). And a speech by Anton Chaitkin entitled 'Why Albert Pike's Statue Must Fall' can be found here (September 21, 1992).

The Illuminati and Albert Pike

Adam Weishaupt (1748 - 1811) formed the Order of Perfectibilists on May 1, 1776 (to this day celebrated as May Day throughout many western countries), which later became known as the Illuminati, a secret society whose name means "Enlightened Ones". Although the Order was founded to provide an opportunity for the free exchange of ideas, Weishaupt's background as a Jesuit seems to have influenced the actual character of the society, such that the express aim of this Order became to abolish Christianity, and overturn all civil government.

An Italian revolutionary leader, Giusseppe Mazzini (1805-1872), a 33rd degree Mason, was selected by the Illuminati to head their worldwide operations in 1834. (Mazzini also founded the Mafia in 1860). Because of Mazzini's revolutionary activities in Europe, the Bavarian government cracked down on the Illuminati and other secret societies for allegedly plotting a massive overthrow of Europe's monarchies. As the secrets of the Illuminati were revealed, they were persecuted and eventually disbanded, only to re-establish themselves in the depths of other organizations, of which Freemasonry was one.

During his leadership, Mazzini enticed Albert Pike into the (now formally disbanded, but still operating) Illuminati. Pike was fascinated by the idea of a one world government, and when asked by Mazzini, readily agreed to write a ritual tome that guided the transition from average high-ranking mason into a top-ranking Illuminati mason (33rd degree). Since Mazzini also wanted Pike to head the Illuminati's American chapter, he clearly felt Pike was worthy of such a task. Mazzini's intention was that once a mason had made his way up the Freemason ladder and proven himself worthy, the highest ranking members would offer membership to the secret 'society within a society'.

It is for this reason that most Freemasons vehemently deny the evil intentions of their fraternity. Since the vast majority never reach the 30th degree, they would not be aware of the real purpose behind Masonry. When instructing Pike how the tome should be developed, Mazzini wrote the following to Pike in a letter dated January 22, 1870. Remember that Freemasonry wasn't started by Pike - rather it was infiltrated by the Illuminati who were looking for a respectable forum in which to hide their clandestine activities:

"We must allow all the federations to continue just as they are, with their systems, their central authorities and their diverse modes of correspondence between high grades of the same rite, organized as they are at the present, but we must create a super rite, which will remain unknown, to which we will call those Masons of high degree whom we shall select. With regard to our brothers in Masonry, these men must be pledges to the strictest secrecy. Through this supreme rite, we will govern all Freemasonry which will become the one international center, the more powerful because its direction will be unknown." 1

In 1871, Pike published the 861 page Masonic handbook known as the Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry.

After Mazzini's death on March 11, 1872, Pike appointed Adriano Lemmi (1822-1896, 33rd degree Mason), a banker from Florence, Italy, to run their subversive activities in Europe. Lemmi was a supporter of patriot and revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi, and may have been active in the Luciferian Society founded by Pike. Lemmi, in turn, was succeeded by Lenin and Trotsky, then by Stalin. The revolutionary activities of all these men were financed by British, French, German, and American international bankers; all of them dominated by the House of Rothschild.

Between 1859 and 1871, Pike worked out a military blueprint for three world wars and various revolutions throughout the world which he considered would forward the conspiracy to its final stage in the 20th Century.

In addition to the Supreme Council in Charleston, South Carolina, Pike established Supreme Councils in Rome, Italy (led by Mazzini); London, England (led by Palmerston); and Berlin, Germany (led by Bismarck). He set up 23 subordinate councils in strategic places throughout the world, including five Grand Central Directories in Washington, DC (North America), Montevideo (South America), Naples (Europe), Calcutta (Asia), and Mauritius (Africa), which were used to gather information. All of these branches have been the secret headquarters for the Illuminati's activities ever since.

Next: More About Albert Pike

Previous: Introduction to Conspiratorial History

If you found this article interesting and want access to other carefully researched and well written articles, you might want to see what others are saying about the ThreeWorldWars newsletter.

Top of Page

You might be interested in the following external links:

Albert Pike Defense: Defenses of certain Pike assertions taken from Walter Lee Brown, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville and his book "A Life of Albert Pike," published by the U. of Arkansas press, 1997.

Freemasonry Inside Out:

This sensational new analysis of the Masonic brotherhood examines the basic question asked for almost 300 years by the general public and surprisingly by many masons themselves; ‘If Freemasonry is simply a fraternal and charitable organisation, why is there an almost fanatical obsession with secrecy and mysterious rituals?’ E-book.

Proof that Freemasonry is lying about Albert Pike 33° and the Ku Klux Klan

Evidence that Albert Pike was Chief Judiciary Officer of the Ku Klux Klan

A Collection of places named after Albert Pike (Schools, streets, towns, counties, temples, windows, paintings, medals, bronzes, rocks and river pools)

Layout of Washington D.C. and discussion of how President Andrew Johnson considered himself to be the subordinate to Albert Pike, the leader of North American Freemasonry.

Speech by Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche stating that World War III had already begun (October 25, 1992).

Looking for pictures of Albert Pike?

Footnotes

1. Lady Queensborough: Occult Theocracy, pp. 208-209.

2, 3, 4. Cmdr. William Guy Carr: Quoted in Satan: Prince of This World.


Source: http://www.threeworldwars.com/albert-pike.htm

The racist south has gone with the wind

From
July 27, 2008

The racist south has gone with the wind

Sarah Baxter returns to her US childhood home to find out how much racial attitudes have changed







Sarah Baxter revisits Montgomery Alabama

When Martin Luther King delivered his “I have a dream” speech, he was not thinking about me, but he might have been.

“I have a dream,” he said, “that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists . . . one day, right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.”

By an accident of history, Barack Obama is set to delivery his victory nomination speech at the Democratic National Convention on August 28, the 45th anniversary of the civil rights leader’s prophecy. If the timing has a special resonance for me, it was because I lived in Alabama as a young girl for three years in the late 1960s, the period when King was assassinated.

My father was an RAF officer stationed at Maxwell air force base in Montgomery, Alabama, the crucible of the civil rights movement. I lived the life of a privileged little white girl and attended an all-white school. A classmate was a cousin of Harper Lee, the author of To Kill a Mockingbird, the story of a white lawyer’s fight for a black man seen through the eyes of a girl.

I was six to nine years old, too young to be fully aware of the swirling currents of history and yet I felt their pull. My father used to speak contemptuously about George Wallace, the Alabama governor, and his links to the Ku Klux Klan, the hooded white supremacists, while my mother, an American from Ohio, said you could not trust the sweet smiles and sugary accent of southerners: underneath, they were mean.

These were golden years for me of perpetual summer, a childhood lived outdoors and at the swimming pool, and also the last time that my family lived together under one roof. We scattered in 1969. My mother returned to Ohio as a graduate student, like the narrator of the femi-nist classic The Women’s Room. I went to live for a year with my paternal grandmother in France, a formidable war widow with a scary glass eye, and my brother and sister went to boarding school in England. My father travelled around the world with the RAF; the military did not know where to place a senior officer whose marriage had collapsed.

Alabama was a paradise lost, but one where I knew the serpent of rac-ism lurked. Years later in my teens and early twenties, I reflected that Britain may be grey and damp, its cars small and its streets narrow, but it had not been scarred by slavery and segregation. It was a consoling thought.

Over time, I stopped being self-in-dulgently antiAmerican and came to admire the country’s capacity for reform and renewal. When I was a girl I heard a man of 104 speak on the radio about being born a slave. Who would have predicted then that the son of a white woman from Kansas and a black man from Kenya would be knocking on the door of the White House?

When I moved to Washington for The Sunday Times in 2001, I was struck by the words of Thomas Jefferson, one of America’s founding fathers and a slave owner, on the marble wall of his memorial. “Institutions must advance to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilised society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.”

Has America changed enough to elect its first African-American president? Last month I returned to the Alabama of my childhood to find out.

Today Montgomery is a small, sleepy town on the banks of the lazy Alabama River, with a large Hyundai car plant to provide employment. Most of the cotton fields have gone. I looked out for the tiny wooden cabins where the descendants of slaves and sharecroppers had lived and which had shocked me as a child, but I saw only one or two tumbledown remains.

The licence plates bearing the defiant “Heart of Dixie” have been replaced by “Stars Fell on Alabama”, a bland tribute to the song made famous by jazz singers Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. Some cars now bear the campaign bumper sticker “Al-O-bama”, although it remains a largely conservative state. Before his fame exploded, Obama used to joke that people garbled his name. “What are you called?” he would laugh. “Yo Mama? Alabama?”

Alabama has hit on an inspired way to market its troubled past as the state with the “rebellious streak”. Montgomery was the first capital of the confederacy during the civil war, while a century later Governor Wallace declared “segregation forever” and stood at the schoolhouse door in Tusca-loosa refusing entry to blacks. But Alabama is also where Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white person on a Montgomery bus, King preached about human dignity in a small church outside the statehouse and the Selma marchers stood their ground after being beaten by police with bull whips, clubs and tear gas on Bloody Sunday in 1965.

One of the first people I called before setting off on my journey was Kathleen Magnan, who was in my second grade class at the elite private school, Montgomery Academy, a year after the Selma marches. Her family had been part of the country club set. She was ecstatic about Obama’s victory in the Democratic primary campaign.

“I’m so wild about Barack and I think Michelle [his wife] is just fabulous,” she told me. “I was so thrilled when he won the Alabama primary. I thought: finally!”

However, Kathleen now lives in the far more liberal state of New Jersey: “My big fear is that people talk about how wonderful he is, but when the [voting booth] curtain closes they will say, ‘I just can’t bring myself to vote for a black man’.”

On my first day in Montgomery I went to see my old school. It was twice the size it used to be, but its graceful open-air porticos and walkways looked familiar enough for the memories to come flooding back.

There had been girls so pampered and wealthy that they never wore the same dress twice, whereas my wardrobe barely lasted the week. I later learnt from a delightfully gossipy friend that the richest girl, whom I remembered having seven televisions in her house including one in the bathroom, had joined a biker set and become a grungy country and western DJ.

The boy I liked, who teased me for my British accent, went on to become a top California heart surgeon and was voted one of the 10 most eligible bachelors in Los Angeles. Another good-looking boy, who was cocky and carefree, was killed at 11 by his older brother in a gun accident at home. It was a shock. For me, they had all been frozen in time aged nine in the glossy school yearbook I hauled back to Britain.

Archie Douglas, the current head-master, welcomed me back to the school. He said he had two sons, 16 and 18: “These kids don’t see colour. This is the generation that is going to change things and Obama is riding the crest of that wave.”

Douglas, a northerner, joined the school in 2001. “I wasn’t going to come down here unless I could make a difference,” he said.

“I have only once or twice run into an outright racist statement. Everybody understands that, even if you might feel it, you just can’t say it any more.”

Douglas has increased financial aid, introduced uniforms to level the disparities of wealth, and raised the proportion of ethnic minority children from 5% to 12%, but that includes Koreans from the Hyundai plant, Hindus and Muslims as well as African-Americans.

Kathleen recalled that the first black pupil to arrive in the 1970s was in her younger sister’s class. “She was as light-skinned as you could be and not be white,” she said. It is no surprise, perhaps, that the first African-American candidate with a serious chance of becoming president is half-white.

Another African-American student at the school was Alabama congressman Artur Davis, 40. He went on to study law at Harvard with Obama and is one of the Democratic candidate’s most prominent supporters. I went to see him in his office in Birmingham, the industrial city where police chief Eugene “Bull” Connor shocked America by turning dogs and fire hoses on peaceful black demonstrators.

Davis hopes to become the first black governor of the state in 2010. “There has been incalculable change in my lifetime,” he said. “When I was born, the Voting Rights Act was in its infancy. The idea of African-Americans voting in large numbers would have been a signal event.”

Just before Davis’s 10th birthday there was a spate of rapes in a nearby white community. A curfew was imposed on all black boys under 18 to get off the streets at dusk. He had wanted to buy a comic book but his mother would not let him out. “It was the first time I had been told I couldn’t do anything because of my race,” he said. “The order was blatantly unconstitutional.”

Davis believes Obama’s victory in the Democratic primary has lifted people’s spirits, regardless of their race. “It is a sign that the country is capable of great change in a relatively short space of time. Race has certainly reared its head in this campaign – anybody who doubts it should get on the internet and read around – but the genius of the American political character is that we are capable of healing in rapid order.”

Has the country really healed? If Obama succeeds in becoming president, Davis believes it will be in no small measure because of the example provided by two Republican secretaries of state, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice: “They have shown that black Americans can hold high office without the cosmos crashing.”

Yet in Alabama rumours are rife that Obama is a secret Muslim, a substitute form of prejudice. One perfectly sensible retired colonel told me that when Obama slipped up and referred to the “57 states” of America, he was thinking of the “57 Islamic states”, one of the web’s most ridiculous and persistent rumours. Davis has had similar exasperating experiences.

“I’m astounded the falsehood has gained so much traction,” he said. A woman lawyer solemnly told him that Obama must be a Muslim because he had changed his name from Barry to Barack as an adult. “It never occurred to her that Barry was short for Barack!”

Davis attended Montgomery Academy for only a couple of years as a teenager. He thinks that being a “supernerd” made him more uncomfortable there than being black. He went on to Clover-dale high school, a mile or two from my first home on Clover-dale Road.

It was an all-white neighbourhood then, full of modest bungalows and starter homes.

Today it is a predominantly black area. But when I went to my old home, an elderly white woman who had been living there since 1972 opened the door.

Her husband had been a navy pilot and, like us, they had rented the house (they later bought it). She courteously invited me in. “The old South still lives,” she smiled. The area was “not as safe as it used to be”, she said, but she was guardedly polite about her neighbours.

She was a Republican who did not like talking about politics. I got the impression that, like many white southerners, she thought it best to stay off the subject but I took the plunge anyway: “Is America ready for an African-American president?”

“I don’t know,” she replied. “I’d just like an honest one.” (President, that is.)

The following evening I was invited to dinner by Mark Harris, a genial classmate who is now a prosperous Montgomery stockbroker. I got the impression that he was not going to vote for Obama either, although he did not spell it out. His doubts were based on Obama’s inexperience, not colour. “My first choice for the first black president would probably be Colin Powell – he’s been tested in so many areas of his life,” he said.

Mark told me that when he was five, his father’s handyman, a tall, gentle African-American – “the finest, kindest person” – was thrown off a bridge by the Ku Klux Klan and left to drown: “He couldn’t swim but he managed to land in the marsh. He lived, but he would never talk about it. He knew who did it but he would never say.”

Mark’s parents first told him about the murder attempt in 1968, the year of King’s assassination. “It was then that ‘things’ really become recognised,” he said. The shock of King’s death revealed just how ugly the Deep South, which prided itself on its civility, had become. Under pressure from federal laws, it began to reform.

On my last day in Alabama I went to Maxwell air force base, home to the Air War College where my father taught military strategy. We lived there for two years.

I half-expected my old house would not be as lovely as I remembered, but if anything it was more beautiful – a gracious, five-bedroom, light-yellow colonial. It is still known today as the “Brit house” because so many group captains lived there over the years. My heart ached as I stepped through the door. My life there had not always been idyllic. I could remember the rows that led us to feel some relief when our parents separated, but it was our last proper home.

The memory of my childhood there had led me to want to live in America with my own husband and children. My daughter Billie, 10, and son Max, 8, are now much the same age as I was. Sitting on my father’s knee on the sofa, reciting the capitals of the world and listening to him talk about current affairs, gave me a lifelong love of history and politics.

I was taken to meet Jerome Ennels, the African-American former historian of the base. Military jets roared overhead. “We call it the sound of freedom,” the colonel accompanying us said.

In 1948 President Harry Truman desegregated the military, putting service-men in the peculiar position of having to obey segregation laws outside but not inside the base. “Occasionally white and black soldiers would defy the laws on the buses,” Ennels said. “They would sit together, but as soon as they got outside the gate, the bus driver would give them their money back and tell them to get off.”

Parks is believed to have worked at Maxwell as a domestic when she found it difficult to obtain work after her act of defiance. Legend has it that officers’ wives helped to drive black people to work during the bus boycotts that followed. My mother once got stopped for driving our maid home in the front seat of our car. The police officer asked rudely if she was “all right”.

By the early 1970s the Jim Crow laws had been shelved, but a popular restaurant still refused to serve Ennels and his wife. The waitress was busy, it was not her shift, they were at the wrong table – countless excuses were given. Eventually, their drinks arrived: “They looked like they had spit or dishwater in them.” He sued and received a $10,000 settlement out of court. “We got a car out of it,” he said.

In the 1980s the town’s reputation was still so awful that there was a sign on the highway saying, “Welcome to Montgomery. It’s better than you think”.

Today, Ennels said, “It’s great as far as I am concerned. I’m sure some prejudice and discrimination still exist, but I don’t see it. I’d put Montgomery in one of the top cities in America when it comes to race relations. It’s a fine place.”

The talk of the town is that Montgomery is poised to elect its first black mayor. Davis believes that in the years to come, the election of more African-American politicians will be “one of the gifts that Barack Obama will contribute to the political process”.

“It doesn’t mean that race will disappear as a factor, but it means that black candidates will have a chance to be judged on their assets and their liabilities,” Davis said.

“Go back to Alabama . . .” King had said. “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.”

I went back and I think that day is coming. I don’t know if Obama will win the election but, if he does, it is because he will have passed King’s character test for president.

Congress Apologizes for Slavery, Jim Crow

Congress Apologizes for Slavery, Jim Crow

Slaves

Statues in Stonetown, Zanzibar mark the center of the slave trade in East Africa. iStock


Tell Me More, July 30, 2008 · On Tuesday, the U.S. House of Representatives issued an unprecedented apology to black Americans for the institution of slavery, and the subsequent Jim Crows laws that for years discriminated against blacks as second-class citizens in American society.

Rep. Steve Cohen, a Democrat from Tennessee, drafted the resolution. Cohen explains the apology's long journey for Congressional approval and the significance of its timing.

Transcript: Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) Introduces U.S. Apology for Slavery, Jim Crow

July 29, 2008

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and Mr. Chairman. It is with pride that I introduce this resolution with 120 co-sponsors from both sides of the aisle. It is with pride that I serve as a member of this institution, in this building that was built with slave labor, and for which the new Visitors Gallery will be known as Emancipation Hall. It was a gentleman from this side of the aisle, the party of Lincoln, Representative Zach Wamp from my state, and this side of the aisle, Representative Jesse Jackson Jr., who eloquently spoke to a subcommittee of which I'm a member, urging the remembrance and recognition of the work of the slaves who helped construct this magnificent capitol building and have the entryway named Emancipation Hall.

This country had an institution of slavery for 246 years and followed it with Jim Crow laws that denied people equal opportunity under the law. There was segregation in the south and other places in this country, at least through the year 1965 when civil rights laws were passed. There were separate water fountains for people, marked white and colored, there were restaurants, there were separate hotels, there were job opportunities that were not available to African-Americans. There were theaters that were segregated.

It's hard to imagine, in 2008, that such a society existed and was sanctioned by law, that the laws of the nation provided for segregation and enforced slave fugitive slave laws. In fact, the history of slavery goes not just through the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to our constitution, but as so eloquently written, just yesterday, in "The Baltimore Sun" in an editorial by Mr. Leonard Pitts Jr., that slavery existed up until about World War II, but it was a form of slavery where people were bought and sold for debts, it was slavery by another name. In a book called Slavery By Another Name by Douglass Blackman, a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, when he talked about a convict leasing system in the south where in poor black men were routinely snatched up and tried on false petty or nonexistent charges by compliant courts, assessed some fine they could not afford, and then put into the servitude of an individual who bought them. This system continued up until World War II.

The fact is, slavery and Jim Crow are stains upon what is the greatest nation on the face of the earth and the greatest government ever conceived by man. But when we conceived this government and said all men were created equal we didn't in fact make all men equal, nor did we make women equal. We have worked to form a more perfect union, and part of forming a more perfect union is laws, and part of it is such as resolutions like we have before us today where we face up to our mistakes and we apologize, as anyone should apologize for things that were done in the past that were wrong. And we begin a dialogue that will hopefully lead us to a better understanding of where we are in America today and why certain conditions exist.

In 1997, President Clinton talked to the nation about the problem this country had with race. And he wanted a national dialogue. He considered an apology for slavery. I happened to run into President Clinton at that time, at the Amtrak station here in Washington and discussed with him having an apology for Jim Crow as well as slavery. I encompassed that in a letter dated July 2, 1997 that as a state Senator in Tennessee I wrote to President Clinton. In that letter, I urged him to have a slavery apology and a Jim Crow apology and to mark it on the 30th Anniversary of the Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, and that event tragically took place in April of 1968 in my city and that the appropriate time for President Clinton to have that apology would be on that 30th anniversary.

In going through my papers as I was elected to congress, I found this letter and I thought about it and I said to myself, you're a member of congress, you don't need to wait on a response from the President of the United States, which my friend, the president's office, failed to make a response. I can take action myself. So I introduced the resolution in February of 2007 with 120 sponsors joining me as time went on. It is important on this day that we admit our error, that we apologize. I've been in this body and voted with the rest of the body on unanimous voice vote to encourage, this past year, the Japanese Government to apologize for its use of Chinese women as "comfort women" during the war. And not a voice was raised questioning that resolution which passed unanimously on us calling on a foreign country to apologize for its use of "comfort women." Twenty years ago this congress passed a bill apologizing for the internment of Japanese citizens during World War II. In fact, subsequent to the consideration of this resolution, the distinguished lady from California, Ms. Matsui, has a resolution recognizing and celebrating the 20th anniversary of the passage of that bill.

This Congress did the right thing in apologizing for the imprisonment of Japanese-Americans during World War II and in encouraging the Japanese Government to apologize for the use of "comfort women." But the fact that this government has not apologized to its own citizens, African-Americans, for the institution of slavery and for the Jim Crow laws that followed and accepted that fact and encouraged changes in our dialogue and understanding in the actions of this country to rectify that is certainly a mistake. And today we rectify that mistake. This is a symbolic resolution but hopefully it will begin a dialogue where people will open their hearts and their minds to the problems that face this country, from racism that exists in this country on both sides and which must end if we're to go forward as the country that we were created to be and which we are destined to be. So it is with great honor that I speak on this resolution and urge the members of this body to pass this historic resolution, recognize our errors, but also recognize the greatness of this country, because only a great country can recognize and admit its mistakes and then travel forth to create indeed a more perfect union that works to bring people of all races, religions and creeds together in unity as Americans part of the United States of America. Mr. Speaker, I thank you for the time and I urge my colleagues to vote unanimously to pass this resolution today. Thank you.

.

Source: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93059465

China to Limit Web Access During Games


China to Limit Web Access During Games



By ANDREW JACOBS
Published: July 31, 2008
BEIJING — The Chinese government has confirmed what journalists arriving at the lavishly outfitted media center here have suspected: contrary to previous assurances by Olympic and government officials, the Internet will be censored during the upcoming Games.

Coverage of the 2008 Beijing Games from every angle — the politics, the arts, the culture and the competition.



The International Olympic Committee quietly agreed to some of the limitations, according to a press official, Kevin Gosper, the Reuters news agency reported. Mr. Gosper told Reuters on Wednesday that he had only just learned of the agreement. Sandrine Tonge, the I.O.C. media relations coordinator, said the organization would press the Chinese authorities to reconsider the limits.
Since the Olympic Village press center opened on Friday, reporters have been unable to access scores of Web pages — among them those that discuss Tibetan succession, Taiwanese independence, the violent crackdown of the protests in Tiananmen Square and the sites of Amnesty International, Radio Free Asia and several Hong Kong newspapers known for their freewheeling political discourse.
A government spokesman initially suggested the problems originated with the site hosts, but on Wednesday, he acknowledged that journalists would not have unfettered Internet use during the Games, which begin Aug. 8.
“It has been our policy to provide the media with convenient and sufficient access to the Internet,” said Sun Weide, the chief spokesman for the Beijing Olympics organizing committee. “I believe our policy will not affect reporters’ coverage of the Olympic Games.”
In the past, both the Chinese government and the International Olympic Committee have suggested that the 20,000 journalists covering the Games would have full Internet access. As recently as two weeks ago, Jacques Rogge, the International Olympic committee president, proclaimed to Agence France-Presse: “For the first time, foreign media will be able to report freely and publish their work freely in China. There will be no censorship on the Internet.”
The revelation that politically sensitive Web pages will be off limits to foreign reporters comes at a time of growing skepticism about other government’s commitment to pledges made when it won the right to stage the Games in 2001: that it would improve its record on human rights and provide athletes with clean air.
Despite a litany of measures that include restricting private vehicles and shuttering factories, Beijing’s skyline in recent days has been shrouded in a thick haze, prompting some hang-wringing over whether the government can deliver on its promise of a “blue skies” Olympics.
In recent months, human rights advocates have accused Beijing of stepping up the detention and surveillance of those it fears could disrupt the Games. On Tuesday, President Bush privately met with five Chinese dissidents at the White House to drive home his dissatisfaction with the pace of change. Mr. Bush, who leaves for the opening ceremony in just over a week, also pressed China’s foreign minister to ease political repression.
Concerns about free access to the Internet in Beijing had intensified Tuesday, when Western journalists working at the Main Press Center in Beijing said they could not get to Amnesty International’s Web site to see the group’s critical report on China’s failure to improve its human rights record ahead of the Olympics.
Jonathan Watts, president of The Foreign Correspondents Club of China, said he was disappointed that Beijing had failed to honor its agreement to temporarily remove the elaborate firewall that prevents ordinary Chinese from fully using the Internet. “Obviously if reporters can’t access all the sites they want to see, they can’t do their jobs,” he said. “Unfortunately such restrictions are normal for reporters in China but the Olympics were supposed to be different.”


Monday, July 28, 2008

Worried Banks Sharply Reduce Business Loans

Published: July 28, 2008
Steve Ruark for The New York Times

Drew Greenblatt of Marlin Steel Wire Products is having trouble getting a $300,000 loan to buy a robot for his Baltimore factory. “This is what a bank is supposed to do,” he said.

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Credit Difficulties




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Two vital forms of credit used by companies — commercial and industrial loans from banks, and short-term “commercial paper” not backed by collateral — collectively dropped almost 3 percent over the last year, to $3.27 trillion from $3.36 trillion, according to Federal Reserve data. That is the largest annual decline since the credit tightening that began with the last recession, in 2001.

The scarcity of credit has intensified the strains on the economy by withholding capital from many companies, just as joblessness grows and consumers pull back from spending in the face of high gas prices, plummeting home values and mounting debt.

“The second half of the year is shot,” said Michael T. Darda, chief economist at the trading firm MKM Partners in Greenwich, Conn., who was until recently optimistic that the economy would continue expanding. “Access to capital and credit is essential to growth. If that access is restrained or blocked, the economic system takes a hit.”

Companies that rely on credit are now delaying and canceling expansion plans as they struggle to secure finance.

Drew Greenblatt, president of Marlin Steel Wire Products, figured it would be easy to get a $300,000 bank loan to finance a new robot for his factory in Baltimore. His company, which makes parts for makers of home appliances, is growing and profitable, he said. His expansion would add three new jobs to an economy hungry for work.

But when Mr. Greenblatt called the local branch of Wachovia — the same bank that had been aggressively marketing loans to him for years — he was distressed by the response.

“The exact words were, ‘We’re saying no to almost everybody,’ ” Mr. Greenblatt recalled. “This is why God made banks, for this kind of transaction. This is going to slow down the American economy.”

Earlier this year, credit extended by banks to companies and consumers was still growing at double-digit rates compared with three months earlier, according to an analysis of Federal Reserve data by Goldman Sachs. By mid-June, bank credit was declining at an annualized pace of more than 6 percent.

That is a drop of nearly $150 billion, an amount much larger than the value of the tax rebates the government has sent to households this year in an effort to spur economic activity.

Financial industry executives say tighter credit from major banks represents a swing back to a realistic assessment of risk, after years of handing out money with abandon. Those practices produced a mortgage crisis whose losses could reach $1 trillion, by many estimates.

“Before, they wouldn’t verify income and they were loose on the valuations of collateral,” said John W. Kiefer, chief executive of First Capital, a private commercial lender. “Now they’re tightening down on the ability to repay. They go off the reservation, and now they come back to basics. It’s preservation for many of them at this point. It’s survival.”

But if the newfound caution of American banks is prudent in the long run, the immediate impact is amplifying the troubles with the economy. The Federal Reserve has been lowering interest rates aggressively to make money flow more loosely and to spur economic activity.

The financial system is not going along: As banks hold on to their dollars, mortgage rates are climbing. So are borrowing costs for corporations.

Some suggest that the banks, spooked by enormous losses, have replaced a disastrously indiscriminate willingness to hand out money with an equally arbitrary aversion to lend — even on industries that continue to grow.

“There’s been a lot of disruption in the credit market, and a lot of traditional lenders have really tightened up,” said Gregory Goldstein, president of Macquarie Equipment Finance, which leases computer gear and other technology to companies. “Before, some of the standards they lent on were weak, but we think they have overshot and gone too far on the other end.”

Such was Mr. Greenblatt’s reaction, as he learned that an infusion of credit for his Baltimore factory would not come easily. His company has been enjoying double-digit sales growth. This month, it received the two largest orders in its history, he said.

“It was jubilation,” he said. “I was doing the Funky Chicken.”

The initial call to Wachovia left him dismayed.

Revered by the Castros and Their Opponents

El Cobre Journal

By MARC LACEY
Published: July 28, 2008

EL COBRE, Cuba — The most bizarre offering that the Rev. Jorge Alejandro has witnessed at Cuba’s most cherished shrine came from the man who bent down and began clipping his toenails. One by one, the man deposited them at the altar, among the many other mementos left by the faithful for the Virgin of El Cobre, widely considered the mother and protector of Cubans.

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Jose Goitia for The New York Times

The Rev. Jorge Alejandro blessed the family of Overlandis Cobas Utria, center, at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Charity del Cobre.

Jose Goitia for The New York Times

Grateful for the assistance of the Virgin of El Cobre, Cuban athletes have left Olympic medals and other offerings at the church.

Jose Goitia for The New York Times

The church is less than 15 miles from Santiago de Cuba.

At this shrine in the foothills of the Sierra Maestra, Cubans leave the Virgin locks of hair, baby clothes, baseballs, diplomas, letters, candles and bouquets. They offer snapshots, trinkets, lockets and pendants as well.

Some have even left banners criticizing Cuba’s Socialist government, which might be unthinkable anywhere else on the island.

Lina Ruz, the late mother of Fidel and Raúl Castro, visited the Virgin in the late 1950s when her sons were fighting to topple the American-backed government of Fulgencio Batista. She left a metal figurine that is now kept under lock and key.

Ernest Hemingway donated the medallion from his 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature to the shrine. It was pilfered in 1986, but the police recovered it days later. The Virgin makes an appearance in Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea”; the fisherman at the center of the story pledged to visit the shrine if only he managed to catch his elusive fish.

In the case of the man trimming his nails, Father Alejandro, a priest at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Charity del Cobre, felt compelled to intervene, explaining that the man’s idea was noble but unnecessary.

“We humans relate to the body and to objects,” Father Alejandro said. “We like things to be concrete. But I try to explain that this is not a store where you give and then you get. It’s not important how beautiful the flowers are or how valuable the diamonds are that one leaves. What God wants is faith, and that’s the best offering you can give.”

It is not a message that sinks in easily. On a morning last week, a crowd of believers filed past him carrying offerings, known as ex votos, many of them sold by hawkers on the winding road leading up to the church.

Overlandis Cobas Utria brought flowers for the Virgin, whom he asked to help heal his infant daughter. The baby had a fever so high her forehead was hot to the touch. “The Virgin is everything for us,” he said, as his wife and mother-in-law nodded in agreement and his daughter let out a wail.

The shrine is packed with sports memorabilia left by Cuban athletes. There are signed baseballs thanking the Virgin for some clutch home run or essential out, as well as Olympic medals offered by athletes who believe their victory came about because of her intervention.

On this morning, offerings included pastry that a nun said was left by a follower of Santería, the Afro-Cuban religion that honors the Virgin — though not as a representation of the Virgin Mary, which is what Roman Catholics believe, but as Ochún, the goddess of love and femininity.

When Pope John Paul II visited Cuba in 1998, he did not make it to El Cobre. But from Santiago de Cuba, less than 15 miles away, he honored the Virgin, much to the delight of the local people.

In the years after the 1959 revolution, public processions venerating the Virgin of El Cobre were restricted by the government, which feared that any unsanctioned gathering could spin out of control. Only in the late 1990s were such displays allowed more regularly.

The Virgin, who was supposedly first spotted bobbing in the ocean off Cuba in 1611, has an undeniable political dimension. She has been adopted both by backers of the Castro brothers and by those who believe their rule has run the country into the ground.

Last week, several banners at the shrine called upon the government to release people jailed for speaking out against the leadership.

“Amnesty for Cuban Political Prisoners!” one said.

When Fidel Castro fell ill two years ago, his supporters from El Cobre, the area he has long represented in the National Assembly, visited the Virgin to ask for his recuperation. No doubt there were critics as well, quietly praying for change. Before Cubans flee the island on risky rafts, many come here to pray for a safe journey.

“People who are against the government bring their dreams and their suffering and their pain,” said Father Alejandro, an outspoken critic of the lack of freedom of expression in Cuba. “And those who support the government come here, too. The Virgin brings them together. She’s the mother of reconciliation.”

But she does not make them agree. Among the pilgrims who gathered at the shrine, opinions on the policies rolled out by Raúl Castro since February, when he officially took over the presidency from his older brother, ran the gamut.

Some credited Raúl Castro with keeping the country stable and being open to tweaking the system put in place by his brother. They pointed to his agricultural reforms, which will put unused arable land in the hands of private farms, as being a significant break with the policies of the past.

Others, including Father Alejandro, were unconvinced that the Virgin was guiding Mr. Castro to remake Cuba.

“What changes?” he asked. “Fundamentally, what has changed?” What Cuba needs, he argued, is room for political dissent outside the confines of the shrine.

.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/28/world/americas/28cuba.html

Sunday, July 27, 2008

2nd victim dies following Tenn. church attack

73-year-old woman succumbs to injuries; male victim, 60, called a hero


Video
Attack in church
July 27: A gunman burst into a Knoxville, Tenn., church and opened fire during a children’s production of “Annie,” killing one and wounding eight. NBC’s Michelle Kosinski reports.

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Video: Crime & courts
One dead in shooting at church
July 27: A gunman burst into a Knoxville, Tenn., church and opened fire during a children’s production of “Annie,” killing one and wounding eight. NBC’s Michelle Kosinski reports.


updated 2 hours, 42 minutes ago

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - A gunman opened fire at a church youth performance Sunday, injuring seven people and killing an elderly woman and a man who witnesses called a hero for shielding others from a shotgun blast.

Members of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church said they dove under pews or ran from the building when the shooting started. The gunman was tackled by congregants and eventually taken into police custody.

None of the children were injured. A hospital spokeswoman said several of the wounded were in critical condition. Two others were treated and released.

Jim D. Adkisson, 58, was charged with first-degree murder and was being held on $1 million bail, according to city spokesman Randy Kenner, who did not know if the suspect had retained an attorney. Authorities were searching Adkisson's home in the Knoxville bedroom community of Powell, Kenner said.

A 73-year-old woman injured in the attack died late Sunday, Kenner said.

The man slain was identified as Greg McKendry, 60, a longtime church member and usher. Church member Barbara Kemper told The Associated Press that McKendry "stood in the front of the gunman and took the blast to protect the rest of us."

Motive uncertain
The gunman's motive is not yet known. The church, like many other Unitarian Universalist churches, promotes progressive social work, such as desegregation and fighting for the rights of women and gays. The Knoxville congregation has provided sanctuary for political refugees, fed the homeless and founded a chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, according to its Web site.

Kemper said the gunman shouted before he opened fire.

"It was hateful words. He was saying hateful things," she said, but refused to elaborate.

The FBI was assisting in the case, Police Chief Sterling Owen said, in case it was a hate crime. Police cordoned off the church with yellow and red tape, and were taking statements and collecting video cameras from church members who taped the performance.

There were about 200 people watching the performance by 25 children when the shooting took place.

Church member Mark Harmon was in the first row. "It had barely begun when there was an incredibly loud bang," he said.

Harmon said he thought the noise was part of the play, then he heard a second loud bang. As he dove for cover, he realized a woman behind him was bleeding. She looked like she was in shock, touching her wound, he said.

"It seems so unreal," Harmon said. "You're sitting in church, you're watching a children's performance of a play and suddenly you hear a bang."

Shotgun in guitar case
Harmon said church members just behind him in the second and third rows were shot. He said his wife told him that she saw the gunman pull the shotgun out of a guitar case.

Witnesses reported hearing about three blasts from the .12-gauge shotgun, which spreads pellets out when the shot leaves the barrel. Witnesses said they did not recognize the gunman.

Friends of the slain victim said he was friendly with everyone.

"Greg McKendry was a very large gentlemen, one of those people you might describe as a refrigerator with a head," said member Schera Chadwick, whose husband, Ted Lollis, arrived at the church just after the shooting. "He looked like a football player. He did obviously stand up and put himself in between the shooter and the congregation."

McKendry and his wife had recently taken in a foster child.

The church's minister was on vacation in western North Carolina at the time of the shooting but returned Sunday afternoon.

"We've been touched by a horrible act of violence. We are in a process of healing and we ask everyone for your prayers," the Rev. Chris Buice said in a statement outside the church. "I will tell you we love Greg McKendry. We are grieving the loss of a wonderful man."

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25872864/