Saturday, August 21, 2010

Triskaidekaphobia, Religious Liberty, and other thoughts


Last Friday - August 13, 2010, POTUS held a Ramadan Dinner at the White House to commemorate the solemnity of the annual holy month - with many invited Islamic adherents. During this event the President stated that Muslims have religious liberty in the United States of America, as mandated under the Constitution (these aren't his words verbatim). During the Iftar Dinner, Mr. Obama said that their right to worship is guaranteed. The president was commenting about a Islamic Center that is planned to be built near ground-zero in NYC; Though he promptly attempted to back away (deny his own words) from his original statements, he began a series of discussions that have not ceased until today, a week and a day since his publicly recorded statements. The President's assertion that Muslims are as American as Johnny Appleseed has not 'resonated' well with most Americans. The defense of a relatively new (to the hemisphere and the country) religious group over the vast Christian majority has not 'impacted' the public favorably. Now, many are again beginning to question the president's religion? Is he, or isn't he Muslim?

First of all, the commotion is about a 13 story Islamic Center that will be built on property near where the World Trade Center stood until September 11, 2001. Most, non-Muslims find it insensitive to build a "Muslim" building near the site of buildings that were allegedly destroyed (with 3,000+ victims) by Terrorists of the Islamic persuasion. Now, what most have overlooked is that the new Islamic Information Center (supposedly like a YMCA) would stand "13" stories high. I wonder why 13 stories? I know that in most buildings in Lower Manhattan, many of the structures don't have a 13th Floor; When you ride an elevator you'll see the 12th, then a 14th floor. The 13th floor is often omitted because of superstition. This makes me wonder why this new Islamic center is planned to rise 13 stories above the New York City Skyline?
Why 13?

Secondly, the fear of thirteen, and more specifically Friday the 13, goes back to Medieval Times:

The "catastrophe" was the decimation of the Knights Templar, the legendary order of "warrior monks" formed during the Christian Crusades to combat Islam. Renowned as a fighting force for 200 years, by the 1300s the order had grown so pervasive and powerful it was perceived as a political threat by kings and popes alike and brought down by a church-state conspiracy, as recounted by Katharine Kurtz in Tales of the Knights Templar (Warner Books, 1995):

On October 13, 1307, a day so infamous that Friday the 13th would become a synonym for ill fortune, officers of King Philip IV of France carried out mass arrests in a well-coordinated dawn raid that left several thousand Templars — knights, sergeants, priests, and serving brethren — in chains, charged with heresy, blasphemy, various obscenities, and homosexual practices. None of these charges was ever proven, even in France — and the Order was found innocent elsewhere —but in the seven years following the arrests, hundreds of Templars suffered excruciating tortures intended to force "confessions," and more than a hundred died under torture or were executed by burning at the stake.1

What a coincidence that on Friday the 13 of August, 2010 (almost 700 years later), the President of the United States of America should proclaim religious liberty for Muslims in a land where Muslims have just recently made any significant contributions? Especially in the present situation when a man with a Muslim name is the commander in chief of the Armed Forces that is currently engaged in a war with a militant fundamental (most Islamic countries are fundamental) Islamic region of the world; From the Turkish border to the Khyber Pass.

How can such a proclamation of religious freedom be made for people that weren't part of the original framework of the U.S. Constitution? Which of the Muslim countries allow the reciprocal rights for other religions within their boundaries? Tunisia? Sudan? Bangladesh?

Can you proclaim religious rights from the bully pulpit to those that are intolerant of other religions; in the land of religious liberty secured by Christians fleeing tyrannical persecution ?

Let's now reexamine the connection between the Knights Templars, and the Crusades against the Muslims that controlled Jerusalem and the Levant, or Palestina as the Romans named it. The Templars had acquired hidden treasures, architectural secrets, and also lost gnostic beliefs in pseudo-sciences such as Alchemy;
According to popular history the Templars fought (for centuries) to secure control of the holy sites for the Roman Catholic Church. On the above mentioned Friday the 13th, the Templars were betrayed and disbanded. The Knights Templars at the time were rich with the booty (spoils of war...) they have reaped while battling the Islamic kingdoms they fought. In one swift sweep all the goods they had fought for were taken from them, and they were declared heretics and enemies of the church. They were now personna non gratta? What a betrayal?
What a Friday the 13th?
By the way there won't be any more Friday the 13's this year...


Back to construction of the Muslim Building in Manhattan -

'M' is the 13th letter in the alphabet, and the first letter in Muslim, Muhammad, and in Mosque.

Isn't it surprising? Isn't it amazing?

Muslim Mosque with 13 Floors in Manhattan?
Then, they say it's not a Mosque; It's a Muslim Information Center!

Well, if that's what it is, then build it on 5th Avenue, near St. Patrick's Cathedral and Central Park, and the other "touristy venues".
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But, not near the N.Y.Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange, The federal Reserve (N.Y.), Chase Plaza, or all the other world headquarters of American Finances? All these bastions of free enterprise, and sparkling examples of American Laissez-Faire and Protestant Work Ethic.

For the last few days I've heard several "noose reports" stating that President Obama is a christian, and he has been for 20 years, ever since he began attending Jeremiah Wright's Trinity Church....
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Today, I heard another "noose report" that said that the prez prays every day to Jesus. Yet, every prayer I heard during the inauguration left out the "in Jesus name" before the closing Amen.
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Wow, they are really going out on a limb, as they say... trying to clean up all the president's intentionally obvious statements. Why try to clean up something you said by using the controlled media; when instead you could have just said or did the opposite of what took place? Or, just done or said nothing?
If it don't come out in the wash, it comes out in the rinse...

Back to 13:
What timing for that Iftar speech about "religious liberty", and the intentions of the construction of that 13 Story--Islamic Center?
This couldn't have cause more friction if they had doused it with gasoline, then placed it in field of dry grass in the scorching August sun? I wonder if there's a method to this madness?
Of course there is!

BTW: That fellow Hegel had quite a technique, didn't he?

Religious Liberty, ummh? OK!

I still remember that day -- a few months ago, when a low flying Air Force One airplane approached Lower Manhattan..
Just a mistake..

The Proposition to try the Guantanamo terrorists (DETAINEES) in Manhattan courts..
Just a mistake.
Arsenio.
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Triskaidekaphobia is fear of 13.
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P.S.
I do acknowledge the Black Muslims have been part of the American experience for many years starting from the arrival of the first men and women from East and West Africa. Also, from the influence of Elijah Muhammad and his Nation Islam. These people have contributed extensively to our society. The exception that I express is of the many people of the Islamic world who have arrived upon the continent of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, in recent years; And consider Religious Liberty as something that they brought with them from their homeland, and should be demanded...

No such animal under Sharia Law, or Canon Law for that fact...

These FREEDOMS are all God (of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob) given rights allowed in a country founded by Christians with a capital letter.
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Worship with Candles


Robin Guidicy the Candle Wax: I had not intended to post this but because mentioning it got me labeled as slurring and attacking Robin I will post some of his article and comment on it.

The article came from:

'The Candle Wax' from Out of the Box Thoughts from Robin Guidicy




Note: in this review I quote historical data. For instance, the Catholic Encyclopedia does not claim any Biblical authority for candles or music but confesses that they lifted them from pagan cults to attact the pagans. The word "pagan" is used in that context. According to Webster's it simply means a rustic or THE OTHER. A non-Greek is a pagan to a Greek and therefore a non-Christian is a pagan to a Christian.

As the word "pagan" and the word "Christian" in the modern context are not much removed from one another, when we use the word it does not speak to you if you belong to The Pagan Church making you evil. And if we think of people being a "christian" it does not mean that they are a CHRISTIAN.

I was responding to an article which mentioned speaking in tongue's and Robin's charismatic style of song leading at Madison Church of Christ already plagued with "worship performers."

People with a secure relationship with Christ do not feel compelled to DO WORSHIP with symbols (idols) such as candles and music. The fact is that religious rituals are a dead give away that the "seeker" much like David had lost contact with God and was desperately seeking to find, arouse or awaken Him.

"The burning of candles is undoubtedly the result of fire worship that dates back to the beginning of time. It was found by early man that fire could drive away the feared beasts of prey, make his food taste good, and warm his body. Thus fire was found to be beneficial. Down through the ages man has discovered the mystical properties of candle burning, associated with various colors."

Cardinal Newman admits in his book that; the "temples, incense, oil lamps, votive offerings, holy water, Holidays, and seasons of devotion, processions, blessings of the fields, sacerdotal vestments, the tonsure (of priests, munks and nuns), images, and statues... are all of PAGAN ORIGIN." -The Development of the Christian Religion Cardinal Newman p.359

The Catholic Encyclopedia also confesses that they got MUSIC from all common PAGAN CULTS.

The justification for getting "out of the box" and having a candlelight service knowing that it will offend many is that we need to rise out of:

Robin Guidicy: Muddling through this life, refusing to grow spiritually, rejecting positive experiences, using or not using the crutch of tradition, you are filled with ignorance or fear, are afraid of the unknown, the unchartered, or the unseen. You live on milk or are reactionary to inconsequential things. Your reaction proves that you are guilty.

We will show that those who depend on the Bible and all of church history know that candles are for giving light or superstitiously used as a small fire to conduct fire worship of the S.U.N. god or Satan.

Therefore, the new revelations intend to use liberties with the Bible and all that happened before them. Those of use labeled by the listed judgmental terms depend on the Bible and how candles were used. Therefore, not using candles as mediators of a religious "moving experience" is based on the rational (spiritual) while superstition is based on ignorance.

However, we are looking at two Words, two Lords and two radically different ways of worshiping a Spirit God. Our God is worshiped in the spirit or mind, theirs is worshiped in the experience sensed in the nerve endings of the carnal body.

From another site notes that:

"Worship should be the mountaintop experience of the week and should leave the worshiper hungering for more. The worshiper should leave each service closer to God, uplifted, fulfilled, inspired, motivated to seek a closer relationship with God and one another.

That's simply not what Jesus or Paul taught. Paul said that he both worshiped and prayed IN THE SPIRIT. That does not mean inside of a God person but in his own mind as He gave heed to the Words of Christ. Worship does not produce a charismatic EXPERIENCE. The "new style worship" seeks to bring the worshipers into the presence with music, performance talent and other idols. However, Paul warned:

That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: Acts 17:27

For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring. Acts 17:28

Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and mans device. Acts 17:29

And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent: Acts 17:30

"Worship" produces a "FALL ON YOUR FACE EXPERIENCE" in my Bible. In a spiritual sense that falling or bowing is to "giving heed to that which is written."

Church is from Ekklesia which was a court to hear testimony and reach decisions. When people "gathered" as church a form of the word "synagogue" was used. The synagogue was a school of the Bible and not a worship center calculated to stimulate the nerve endings to have an experience and leave you hungry.

I wrote to Robin Guidicy more than a year ago but I am still waiting for a response. I will quote Robin in part and you can read the rest if you have good eyes.

The Concerned Members at Madison Church of Christ in Nashville have noted the Hegelian Dialectic as a way to first dissociate people by making them unhappy with the OLD so that they have instill a new VISION. While this may seen like a new process, it was well known by Satan in the garden of Eden and was well documented by Machiavelli and Hitler. It is not a sinister plot: it is also used by advertisers to get you to give away last year's automobile for the new and improved version.

The Y2K Syndrome. People were carefully conditioned to believe that TRUTH would fly away into a BLACK HOLE and do a time travel through a WORM HOLE. Therefore, "just now we don't know what truth is until we get the new message from God." Some believe that it will pop out of a "white hole." Because "white holes" in theory pop out in the past, it comes as no surprise that the new worship styles replacing the church as "school of the Bible" look amazingly like those in Babylon just after the flood.

Therefore, as usual, there is a need to ridicule everything as "traditionalism" to condemn the "old" in order to make way for the "new revelation." But, before you do I would remind you that Joseph Campbell, in Myths to Live By, notes that as people loose faith in their old religion they begin to "crack away" and "revert to the archaic" systems of religion.

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Friday, August 20, 2010

Sound the Note of Alarm


In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. Prov. 3:6.


In all our ways we should acknowledge God, and He will direct our paths. We should consult His Word with humble hearts, ask His counsel, and give up our will to His. We can do nothing without God.

There is the highest reason for us to prize the true Sabbath and stand in its defense, for it is the sign which distinguishes the people of God from the world. The commandment that the world makes void is the one to which, for this very reason, God's people will give greater honor. It is when the unbelieving cast contempt upon the Word of God that the faithful Calebs are called for. It is then that they will stand firm at the post of duty, without parade, and without swerving because of reproach. The unbelieving spies stood ready to destroy Caleb. He saw the stones in the hands of those who had brought a false report, but this did not deter him; he had a message, and he would bear it. The same spirit will be manifested today by those who are true to God.

The psalmist says, "They have made void thy law. Therefore I love thy commandments above gold; yea, above fine gold" (Ps. 119:126, 127). When men press close to the side of Jesus, when Christ is abiding in their hearts by faith, their love for the commandments of God grows stronger in proportion to the contempt which the world heaps upon His holy precepts. It is at this time that the true Sabbath must be brought before the people by both pen and voice. As the fourth commandment and those who observe it are ignored and despised, the faithful feel that it is the time not to hide their faith but to exalt the law of Jehovah by unfurling the banner on which is inscribed the message of the third angel, the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.

Let not those who have the truth as it is in Jesus give sanction, even by their silence, to the work of the mystery of iniquity. Let them never cease to sound the note of alarm. . . . The truth must not be hid, it must not be denied or disguised, but fully avowed, and boldly proclaimed.

Maranatha - P. 240
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Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Dr. Laura to end her radio show

By the CNN Wire Staff

August 17, 2010 10:04 p.m. EDT

Los Angeles, California (CNN) -- Embattled radio talk show host Dr. Laura Schlessinger announced Tuesday she will not renew her contract that is up at the end of the year, telling CNN's "Larry King Live" she wants to "regain my First Amendment rights."

Schlessinger, 63, has been under fire for using the n-word repeatedly during an on-air conversation with a caller last week.

In announcing her decision "not to do radio anymore" after being in the business for more than 30 years, Schlessinger said, "I want to be able to say what's on my mind and in my heart and what I think is helpful and useful without somebody getting angry or some special-interest group deciding this is a time to silence a voice of dissent."

National furor erupted when Schlessinger used the n-word 11 times in five minutes during a call August 10 with an African-American caller who was seeking advice on how to deal with racist comments from her white husband's friends and relatives. The conversation evolved into a discussion on whether it's appropriate to ever use the word, with Schlessinger arguing it's used on HBO and by black comedians.

Schlessinger apologized the following day, saying "I was attempting to make a philosophical point, and I articulated the n-word all the way out -- more than one time. And that was wrong. I'll say it again -- that was wrong."

While Schlessinger told King on Tuesday that she was still "regretful" over the incident, she said she feels her freedom of speech rights "have been usurped by angry, hateful groups who don't want to debate -- they want to eliminate."

"I decided it was time to move on to other venues where I could say my peace and not have to live in fear anymore," she said.

Schlessinger plans to expand her internet presence with her website.

"I'm not retiring. I'm not quitting," she said. "I feel energized actually, stronger and freer to say the things that I believe need to be said for people in this country."


Source: http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/celebrity.news.gossip/08/17/doctor.laura.ends.show/
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P.S.
Dr. Laura's regular saying: "I'm my kid's mom"...
Sure, right!
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'Israel has days to strike Bushehr'


Photo by: AP


By HILARY LEILA KRIEGER
08/17/2010 18:24


WASHINGTON – Israel has only mere days to launch an attack on Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor if Russia makes good on its plan to deliver fuel there this weekend, former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton warned Tuesday.

He said that once Russia has loaded the fuel into the reactor -- slated for Saturday – Israel would no longer be willing to strike for fear of triggering widespread radiation in an attack.

“This is a very, very big victory for Iran,” Bolton told The Jerusalem Post. “This is a huge threshold.”

Bolton, who also once oversaw US non-proliferation policy, said that when Russia announced the plans to load the fuel last Friday, “the element of surprise was essentially taken away” from Israeli calculations.

Bolton noted that he doesn’t “have a clue” as to whether Israel would actually attack, but he said, “If Israel was right to destroy the Osiraq reactor, is it right to allow this one to continue? You can’t have it both ways.”

Israel took out Iraq’s Osiraq reactor during a stealth mission in 1981. It is also believed to have conducted a similar strike on an alleged Syria nuclear site in 2007.

Russia signed a contract with Iran to construct the Bushehr reactor in 1995, but has several times delayed completion. In announcing the long-overdue fuel installation, which should make Bushehr operational in September, Russia did not indicate why it was going ahead with the final stages now.

In addition to Bushehr -- for which Russia says it has guarantees it will receive back the spent fuel, the material needed to make a nuclear bomb -- Iran has its own uranium enrichment facilities.

Iran expert Ilan Berman of the American Foreign Policy Council said that the uranium enrichment plants are the real backbone of Iranian efforts and expenditures to get a nuclear weapons capability, and he suspected that they, rather than Bushehr, would be Israel’s primary targets in any attack.

He suggested that Bolton was setting up a “straw man” by focusing on the fuel delivery to the Bushehr reactor.

“It’s not at all clear that Bushehr would be a high value target because it’s only tangentially related to any conceivable Iranian nuclear weapons program,” he said. “My suspicion is this isn’t a game changer. This isn’t going to give Iran enough fissile material for a bomb overnight.”

Berman added that since Bushehr is the most public Iranian nuclear facility, and therefore well monitored by international inspectors, it was also a less likely candidate for use by Iran to construct a bomb, though he nevertheless said if it became operational it would be “an enormous PR coup for the Iranians.”

Bolton dismissed the idea that international inspectors would contain the threat from the Bushehr reactor, pointing to instances inspectors had been kicked out.

He also said it was unlikely that Israel would attack Bushehr now and make another sortie against the enrichment facilities in later months because that would be a much more challenging task. For one thing, he point out that an attack on Bushehr would likely spur the Russians to transfer to Iran advanced missile defense systems it has agreed to sell Tehran but refrained from actually delivering.

Instead, Bolton indicated, if Israel were to attack now it would probably hit multiple targets.

Iran, for its part, dismissed talk of a possible Israel strike.

On Tuesday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast was quoted as saying that "these threats of attacks had become repetitive and lost their meaning." He also reportedly told correspondents in Tehran, "According to international law, installations which have real fuel cannot be attacked because of the humanitarian consequences.”

The rhetoric comes as the US increased sanctions on Iran as part of its ongoing efforts to ratchet up pressure on Tehran.

On Tuesday the US Treasury announced dozens of additional names of Iranian banks and individuals that fall under sanctions law.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.


Source: http://www.jpost.com/IranianThreat/News/Article.aspx?id=185060
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Katy Perry parties with 400 lesbians in Melbourne

Tuesday, 17 August 2010


Katy Perry is engaged to comedian Russell Brand


Katy Perry is making the most of single life before her marriage to Russell Brand.

In Australia to promote new album Teenage Dream, the singer, 25, gatecrashed a teen prom at Melbourne's Grand Hyatt hotel, then also invited herself to a girl-only Grouse party and danced with 400 lesbians.

‘Katy didn't mind being recognised. She was so sweet. Girls were pretty much lining up to meet or kiss her,' reveals one party-goer.

The I Kissed A Girl star was happy to mingle.

‘Katy proved herself to be very down to earth and gay-friendly,' organiser Lia Tilson tells the Sun. 'She was dancing on stage and getting up close and personal with lots of local lesbians.'

'I totes just crashed a prom,' Katy tweeted on her page after her eventful night last week.


Source: http://www.nowmagazine.co.uk/celebrity-news/496048/katy-perry-parties-with-400-lesbians-in-melbourne/1/
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Cuban Communist Dictator Fidel Castro, Trained by Jesuits

Cuba's President Fidel Castro decorates the 78th Grand Master of the Order of Malta, Prince Fra' Andrew Bertie, with the order of Jose Marti in Havana in a November 16, 1998 (wikicompany.org)

The influence of the Jesuits is even clearer with Fidel Castro, who became a dictator in a country that was traditionally Catholic and in which the Jesuits had already established quite a few educational facilities:

Fidel Castro was born in the village of Birán in Cuba on August 13, 1926 into a rich family, the son of Angel Castro, who was a Spanish immigrant, and his cook Lina Ruz Gonzalez. In his early life Fidel Castro went to Jesuit schools and from there he attended the Jesuit preparatory school Colegio Belen in Havana.

In 1945 Castro went to the university of Havana to study law, he graduated in 1950. From 1950 to 1952 Fidel Castro used his training in law in a small partnership. Castro was intending to stand for parliament in 1952, but didn’t due to a cancellation in the election, by General Flugencio Batista.
[...]
To the United States concern, Cuban Prime Minister, Fidel Castro and USSR Prime Minister became very close, and soon the USSR was sending great quantities on economic aid, as well as military aid from the USSR.

On April 17, 1961, the United States sent a force of Cuban exiles trained by the CIA to south Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. The CIA assumed that this invasion would spark some interest in an uprising against Fidel Castro. There was no uprising but instead Castro’s forces apprehended the Cuban invaders, because President Kennedy backed out of the invasion at the last moment, so the invaders lost their support.

On December 2 1961 Castro stated that Cuba was going to adopt Communism. Pope John XXIII excommunicated Castro. In October 1962 the Cuban missile crisis took place after the United States found that the Soviet Union was attempting to launch nuclear missiles in Cuba. After this short lived crisis the relationships between the United States and Cuba remained very mutual.
In 1976, the Prime Minister of Canada, Pierre Elliott Trudeau went to Cuba and hugged Castro. Pierre Elliott Trudeau gave Castro a $4 million gift, and loaned another $10 million. In Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s speech later that very day, Trudeau said “Long live Prime Minister and Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro. Long live Cuban-Canadian friendship.”

In 1991 the Soviet Union lost power and Cuba lost a great deal of its economy because the Soviet Union provided Cuba with so much. Cuba regained it’s economy shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union when it was listed as the second most popular tourist attraction in the Caribbean, after the Dominican Republic. wwwk.co.uk
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Excerpt of article @ http://1phil4everyill.wordpress.com/2009/11/27/appendix-b-the-relationship-between-the-roman-church-and-communism-2of3/#Castro
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Cuba: The Castros’ Ambiguous Relationship With the Catholic Church

Part 2 of 3
by VICTOR GAETAN, REGISTER CORRESPONDENT 08/02/2010




Signs of the revolution, including this image of Che Guevara, still dominate in Cuba, a place where faithful Catholics have held on for the past 50 years.



HAVANA — For a brutal revolutionary who has had no problem ordering executions on a whim, Fidel Castro seems to have a soft spot in his heart for that “opiate of the masses,” organized religion, especially Catholicism.

Undoubtedly, his willingness — even occasional eagerness — to fraternize with priests on the political left and his pious attitude while in the presence of Pope John Paul II can be traced to his childhood and youth: Castro’s mother was a Rosary-reciting, prayerful Catholic, and he attended Catholic primary school and high schools, including the prestigious Jesuit preparatory school Belen College in Havana.

Never mind that he closed these schools when he took power; Fidel Castro soaked up enough Catholic sensibility that it’s a world in which he seems to function comfortably.
In 1985, Fidel gave a long series of interviews to an activist Marxist Brazilian priest known as Frei Betto. Castro repeatedly insists that Christianity and his revolutionary goals, namely full socialism, are compatible.

Published around the world as Fidel and Religion, the book demonstrates Castro’s ambiguous stance toward the Church.

On the one hand, he applauds the Jesuits who “valued character, rectitude, honesty, courage and the ability to make sacrifices. …They contributed to my development and influenced my sense of justice.” Fidel has remained close to one of his teachers from Belen, Father Amando Llorente.

Father Llorente left Cuba, resettled in Miami and died in April. He told the Register by phone before he died that he continued to have a “relationship with Fidel until March 2010.”

On the other hand, Castro insists that most Cuban clerics were allied with the wealthy class and “imperialism,” which is why they were run out of Cuba when he took power.
To Frei Betto, Castro admitted admiration for the Church: “It’s true that the rock of St. Peter, on which the Catholic Church was built, is solid and lasting. Throughout history, that institution has demonstrated its experience, its wisdom and its capacity to adapt to reality.”

Castro’s younger brother, Raul, now president of Cuba, also attended Belen College, , but he was a less accomplished student than Fidel and did not graduate from there.

Yet Raul seems to have more genuine dialogue with current Church leaders. It was Raul who negotiated in May of this year with Cardinal Jaime Ortega of Havana, first gave permission for the Ladies in White to march each week on behalf of their jailed husbands, and then in June allowed the release of these men and their families to Spain.

Asked about his own beliefs, Raul once said, “I haven’t stayed in the Church, but I’ve kept the principles of Christ. I don’t renounce those principles. They give me the hope of salvation, and the revolution carries them out.”

Some see such statements as evidence of Raul’s torn conscience — and hope he will continue this search for salvation.

As The New York Times wrote when Raul assumed power, “Until recently, few people had imagined that Raul Castro could be seen as Cuba’s best hope for reform. Still fewer would have imagined that the U.S. would be secretly hoping he succeeds.”

His actions, to date, confirm this logic.

Victor Gaetan writes from Washington.
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The Man Who Knew Fidel Best

Fr. Armando Llorente, S.J. (1918-2010)
Photo (Courtesy) http://somehavehats.typepad.com/some_wear_clerics/2010/05/fr-armando-llorente-sj-rip.html



The Man Who Knew Fidel Best


There is probably no one alive today who knew the young Fidel Castro better than Father Amando Llorente, his Jesuit confidant during the mid 1940s. Father Llorente, who I first interviewed in Miami in February, 1986, shared penetrating insights with me about the teenage Castro he had known so well. Recently, I visited Father Llorente again to discuss the favorite student he remembered so well.

Father Llorente is now a vigorous 87 year old. He is as keen and articulate as I remembered him from twenty years earlier. He stands and strides like a man many years younger, exuding a charming sense of humor. He wore a black beret as he greeted me and a mutual friend in the courtyard of the Agrupacion Catolica retreat house, on Biscayne Bay in north Miami. He has lived there, doing many types of pastoral work, for a number of years, although he still manages to visit his native Leon, in northern Spain, with some frequency.

I included a remark of Llorente’s about Leon in my new book, After Fidel. He told me during our first meeting about the young Castro’s strangely distorted relationship with his Father, Angel Castro. Llorente explained then that he was still puzzled about why he had never met Angel. He could not recall Fidel’s father ever visiting Belen, the elite Jesuit preparatory school in Havana, where Llorente taught and where the young Castro spent the four happiest years of his life. The priest told me in 1986 that he could not understand Angel’s absence, and especially why he had failed to attend his son’s graduation in 1948.

“I would often say, Fidel, let me meet your father. We are both Spaniards. I am from Leon and he is a gallego. But he would always change the subject.”

When Llorente and I had that first discussion twenty years ago, neither of us was able to understand why Angel treated his son with such indifference. But in our second meeting this past March 30, we had both come to appreciate the powerful emotional disturbances that had strained the relationship between father and son in the mid-1940s. What has become clear just in the last few years is that Fidel was not legally recognized by his father until 1947, when he was seventeen years old. Although Angel was by then generously supporting his son, officially he was still illegitimate.

The young Fidel’s relationship with his father was psychologically labyrinthine and traumatic, one of key factors that shaped his adult character and personality. Growing up as a boy and teenager he bitterly resented Angel, feeling rejected and even abandoned, most painfully so during the time he lived in a foster home in Santiago de Cuba in the care of a poor Haitian family. Fidel was taunted and bullied. During those early formative years he was known by his mother’s surname; he was Fidel Ruz Gonzalez. And as the illegitimate son of a servant girl in Angel Castro’s household, he feared, and with good reason, that he might be consigned to the life of a peasant laborer.

Although his circumstances improved as Angel supported his education in a succession of elite Catholic schools, first in Santiago and then Havana, Fidel remained unsure of his prospects, and with scant contact with his father. It was at Belen that he first found emotional solace.

Father Llorente told me during our recent conversation that the fourteen or fifteen year old Castro told him:

“I have no family other than you,” meaning the Jesuit priests at Belen. But it was Llorente he drew closest to.

“I camped with him more than fifty-five times,” the priest remembered. It was during those group excursions into the Cuban countryside, when they were alone at night, gazing at the stars, that Fidel was most likely to confide in the priest and to reveal how emotionally tormented he was.

In 1986 Llorente told me that the young Castro, “often spoke of family problems, of not really having a family. He rarely spoke of his parents, but suffered considerably as a child... I gave him a lot of reassurance, I counseled him about trauma.”

I doubt that Castro has ever confided in anyone else as he did sixty years ago with Father Llorente, baring some of the psychological demons that he has otherwise always been at great pains to conceal. A search of the entire record of Castro’s oratory and interviews since 1959 may only reveal one acknowledgment that he suffered childhood traumas of the kind he described to Llorente. The lone exception was in a speech to students at the University of Havana last November.

During our second conversation, Father Llorente shared a story he had not felt free to discuss during our initial visit. He described his trip up into the Sierra Maestra in December 1958 to visit Castro, when it was evident that the Batista dictatorship could not survive much longer.

“I went because the Vatican needed to know what was happening. Was the revolution Fidel was leading nationalist, or Marxist, or what?”

At the time Llorente shared the fears of some of his superiors in Rome that Castro might persecute the Church, because, as he said of Castro, “I recognized that he would want all power in his own hands.”

“So I went to the Sierra Maestra on horseback, disguised as a guajiro (a Cuban peasant). I spent four days at Fidel’s headquarters. I asked him about Cuba’s future, especially regarding the Catholic Church. He professed to have no problem and said, for example, that he would need to keep the Catholic Saint Thomas University so that it could train the engineers that Cuba required so badly.”

With the sun low in the late afternoon on that recent day in Miami, casting long shadows in the courtyard where we sat around a simple metal table, Father Llorente concluded poignantly about the young Fidel:

“He used to always lie to me and make up elaborate stories to get away with things.

“It is my second nature,” the priest remembered Castro telling him.

And then Father Llorente added, “From childhood he needed to lie in order to survive.”


Source: http://ctp.iccas.miami.edu/Latell_Web/3The%20Latell%20Report%20April%202006.htm

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One Hundred Fears of Solitude

American children are even more plugged in to new technology than ours – and are paying the price as electronic gadgets prove more addictive than heroin, says Hal Crowther. Will this digital obsession destroy the creativity of future generations?

One Hundred Fears of Solitude by Hal Crowther: extract

By Hal Crowther
Published: 12:45PM BST 13 Aug 2010


Robbie Cooper, Immersion 1, 2010 Photo: Andrei Maynard, Bradley Bryant & Thomas Mcguire playing Call of Duty 4, 2008, Robbie Cooper, courtesy of National Media Museum, Bradford



The other day, I found myself reading the back-to-school edition of The New York Times’ Circuits section with my usual stunned incomprehension and a heightened sense of alarm. The electronic gadgets that have become standard equipment for a 21st-century undergraduate bear generic names, brand names, acronyms, model and serial numbers (DVP-CX995? PIXMA MP760?) that no doubt mean something to many, but nothing whatsoever to me. A Times reporter interviewed a Duke University undergraduate named Eddy Leal, who confessed to owning three laptops with multifarious accessories (“It’s like another world in my dorm room”) as well as, of course, a cellphone and a 500-song iPod which are, he says, “with me no matter where I am – I wouldn’t mind if I could have them implanted in my body”.

“I know, it’s kind of crazy,” said Leal of his three-computer installation, guessing that he was eccentrically overwired – but guessing wrong. Other students in this same article boasted even more bewildering batteries of personal hardware, far beyond my vocabulary to describe. Returning college students in the United States now spend more than $8 billion to rewire themselves, two thirds of what they’ll spend on textbooks, and of course each year the gap decreases.

The long-term implications of mechanised education are overwhelming, but first let’s deal with the subject of silence. I’m not ancient, yet my college education 40-plus years ago was pretechnological, by current lights antediluvian. Though telephones and television had been invented, none of us, not even the most affluent, had installed them in our rooms, far less on our bodies. My fraternity house contained one of each, a battered basement television set with a small clientele and a payphone next to which we waited for hours, playing cards and drinking beer and coffee, for our turns to call home or plead our cases with girls.

Cellphones and email had not yet made their appearance in science fiction. Ninety-eight per cent of communication was verbal and face-to-face. If you had an urgent message for someone, you stuffed a note in his box at the student union or trudged half a mile across an icebound campus and hoped you’d find him in. Only juniors and seniors were allowed to drive cars.

Winter or summer, that was a lonely walk, silent, a time to think without threat of interruption. Blessedly disconnected. “Alone with his thoughts”, now a literary anachronism, was a commonplace reality. Without that freedom to disconnect, then and now, I for one would have gone mad. And at this point most readers under 45 may disconnect. How could Eddy Leal understand that if a cellphone and an iPod were implanted in my body, I’d pay virtually any price to have them removed?

Computers and allied technologies have created the most intimidating generation gap in human history, one so wide and so rapidly created that I stand staring across the chasm like an aborigine watching Krakatoa split the sky.

Not long ago, it was generally accepted that humanity’s most creative achievements, from art and poetry to major scientific discoveries, were the precious fruits of solitude. But in a single heartbeat on history’s timeline, this sacred, fecund privacy has become the unpardonable social sin for the generation on which future creativity depends. I’ve tried to explain to young people that unspoilt privacy is the most important thing a person like me could ever ask from his life. Just so they know where I stand. Urgent warnings that technology is recklessly exposing our darkest secrets to every eager peeping Tom – official, corporate or criminal – fall on deaf (or at least numb and overtaxed) ears. The traditional concept of privacy, which anchors America’s Bill of Rights, is a tough sell to technophiliacs who spend half their waking hours on sites such as MySpace and YouTube, recklessly exposing themselves.

A recent US study (published in January 2010) found that eight to 18 year-olds log an average daily exposure of just under 11 hours of electronic media. An increase of two hours daily since 2004, it includes computers and social networks, cellphones, instant messaging, television, video games and iPods. Media consume nearly all their waking hours when they’re not in school. Privacy has deep, deep roots in Western civilisation, yet a few mediocre gadgets uprooted it in less than a decade. Who knew the young were so lonely, so susceptible, so desperate for connection? Who’s to blame for their loneliness, for their seduction and metamorphosis into electro-cyborgs who bear only a physical resemblance to their parents? What sort of lives were they leading before they were wired? It’s as if prisoners buried in the dungeons of the Chateau d’If, with no previous communication except tapping on the stone walls of their separate cells, were suddenly issued mobile phones with email. What else but a compulsive frenzy of messaging, no content required?

Digital products seemed harmless enough in the beginning, meeting obvious demands for faster, more efficient commercial communication. Business will have its way. But the personal computer and all its derivative technology were not so obvious, not to most of us now left behind. We were sure it was boring – to liberal arts majors of my vintage, most tools more complex than a hammer are invisible. We never dreamed it was more addictive than heroin. “I lost my cellphone once,” a 25-year- old woman with a master’s degree told a reporter. “I felt like my world had just ended. I had a breakdown on campus.”


Some of the wizards who fathered the digital revolution have had misgivings. The late Joseph Weizenbaum, an MIT mathematician and computer scientist who authored one of the first conversational computer programs, became a profound sceptic about technology’s influence on the human condition. Weizenbaum, who was a child in Nazi Germany, believed that obsessive reliance on technology was a moral failure in society and an invitation to fascism.

Weizenbaum’s scepticism was shared by American computer pioneer and mogul Max Palevsky, who died recently at 85. Palevsky, founder of the computer-chip giant Intel, told an interviewer in 2008, “I don’t own a computer. I don’t own a cellphone, I don’t own any electronics. I do own a radio.” Given decades to reflect on what they wrought, it’s eerie that many of the scientists who created our electronic cocoon sound like the scientists who worked on the atom bomb at Los Alamos.

The wailing of the wire-wary only aggravates the captive multitudes and widens the dreadful gap. But we can’t just fold our tents and quit the field, because we, the pre-wired generations, bear most of the blame. We betrayed them. We turned them over to habit-forming, mind-altering, behaviour-warping gizmos when they were helpless children. There was almost no resistance. Politicians, colleges, school boards, doomed publishers, libraries and media all welcomed these technologies uncritically, enthusiastically, like Stone Age savages fainting with wonder over a transistor radio. Americans have always been suckers for technology – our love affairs with automobiles, television and nuclear power haven’t turned out well either. But this was the most pitiful submission, and may prove the most fateful.

No one denies the impact of these new devices, or their usefulness. Who at my age, watching precious time fly, wouldn’t bless email for the pointless, time-consuming conversations it replaces? Who denies that Barack Obama’s epic rout of the Republicans would have been impossible without his mastery of internet communication? But with truly revolutionary technology no one stops to factor in the human cost.

Chronic, epidemic obesity among American children, along with unprecedented levels of juvenile diabetes and heart disease, coincides exactly with the advent of “personal technology”. An alarming study that followed 4,000 subjects for three decades indicates that 90 per cent of American men and 70 per cent of American women will eventually be fat.

Worse news is that the American mind is emulating its body – it’s turning to suet. A few years ago the educational benefits of the new technology were hyped hysterically, with futurists and investors predicting an intellectual renaissance anchored by computers.

The reality seems to be just the opposite. Though the educational potential of the internet is limitless, it’s becoming apparent that students use technology less to learn than to distract themselves from learning, and to take advantage of toxic short cuts such as research paper databases and essay-writing websites. Entrance exams administered by ACT Inc establish that half the students now entering college in the US lack the basic reading and comprehension skills to succeed in literature, history or sociology courses. Reading and writing skills among eighth graders decline each year, as internet penetration rises. Only three per cent now read at the level scored “advanced” and the state of Maine recently scrapped its eighth grade writing test because 78 per cent of the participants failed. Half the teenagers tested by the advocacy group Common Core could not place the Civil War in the second half of the 19th century, a quarter drew a blank on Adolf Hitler, a fifth failed to identify America’s enemies in the Second World War. A third of America’s high school students drop out – one every 26 seconds – and two thirds prove incapable of higher education.

Doubts are spreading, though perhaps too late. In the spring of 2007, Liverpool High School in upstate New York made national news when it abandoned its laptop programme as a failed experiment and went back to books. “After seven years there was literally no evidence it had any impact on student achievement – none,” said Mark Lawson, president of the Liverpool school board. While their test scores stagnated, Liverpool students used their laptops to cheat on exams, message friends, hack into local businesses, update Facebook profiles and download pornography.

“The teachers were telling us that when there’s a one-to-one relationship between the student and the laptop, the machine gets in the way,” Lawson concluded. “It’s a distraction to the educational process.”

There’s so much more to dislike about our cocoon woven of wires, our house built of chips. Thieves, grifters and predators of every description have flourished in the cyber-forest; the signature crime of the 21st century is identity theft. The internet is the greatest gift to the paedophile community since the Vatican stood its ground on celibate priests.

But if you think these are all quibbles compared with the joy and comfort your hardware provides, try out your polished indifference on the prospect of environmental apocalypse. “E-waste”, as it’s now called, is the sobering dark side to even the rosiest view of an all-wired future. In the US in 2005, more than 1.5 million tons of discarded electronic devices ended up in landfills, where hi-tech’s toxic metals, including lead, mercury, cadmium and beryllium, find their way into the soil, the water tables and the air.

In China, which produces a million tons of e-waste annually and imports, for profit, 70 per cent of the world’s lethal garbage (estimated at as much as 50 million tons), whistle-blowers are already blaming high rates of birth defects, infant mortality and blood diseases on e-waste. With their reliance on instant obsolescence and limited commitment to recycling, hardware manufacturers create an unmanageable flow of poisonous trash that the planet can’t possibly tolerate: Americans alone discard 100 million computers, cellphones and related devices every year, at a rate of 136,000 per day. Half a billion of the US’s old cellphones sit in drawers, dead but not buried. There is no place and no plan for all this stuff. Our world has been wired by wildly inefficient technology – it takes roughly 1.8 tons of raw materials (fossil fuels, water, metal ores) to manufacture one PC and its monitor, and mining the gold needed for the circuit board of a single cellphone generates 220lb of waste. These industries are self‑evidently unsustainable. They are not environmentally sane.

The case against technology is not a difficult one to make, not even for someone from a generation like mine, which chose to fry millions of healthy neurons with LSD, psilocybin, cannabis and cocaine. The walking wounded from that excess are still around, but most of us kicked our habits and descended safely from those treacherous highs.

High tech is a habit too new to boast any record of survivors, recovering addicts, successful rehabs. So far, no one’s coming back. In the words of recovery programmes, users have yet to acknowledge that they have a problem. Or that there is a problem. Staring for hours at glowing squares, gossiping with needy strangers, poking away at little keyboards, playing half-assed violent games – does this strike anyone as an interesting and honourable life, or even a preparation for one? And the answer, more often than not, would come back, “Sure, what’s your problem?”

With that last outburst, I probably sacrifice half the readers I have left. But if you’re offended or threatened, console yourself with the impotence and rapid extinction of my kind. We pose no threat to your habit.

Technology’s sceptics are ageing and thinning out. Soon, by conversion or attrition, they will vanish. Soon, when everyone is born wired into the hive, no more of them will appear. All the more reason to have our say, leave our protests on the record, exit cursing and fighting.


This is an edited extract from Hal Crowther’s One Hundred Fears of Solitude, first published in Granta 111: Going Back, available now for £12.99. For a special subscription offer to Granta, see www.granta.com/telcrow


'Immersion', the photographic series here is by Robbie Cooper. See a slideshow of the images

Info: http://www.robbiecooper.org/

The series can also be seen at a free exhibition at the National Media Museum, Bradford (http://www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/), until Sept 5
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WeAreChange San Francisco has a little chat with David Rothschild

'>http://

wearechangesf June 01, 2010

http://www.trueworldhistory.info/
http://www.wearechangesf.com/

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Uruguay: world’s leading consumer of beef with 58.2 kilos per capita per annum


Tuesday, August 17th 2010 - 08:58 UTC

Uruguayans eat an average of 58.2 kilos of beef which makes them the world’s leading consumers per capita, per annum according to the country’s president of the National Meats Institute, INAC, Alfredo Fratti.



The traditional Uruguayan barbeque


“The tendency has been steady in the last few years and for 2010 we anticipate a consumption increase of 6% per capita”, he said which means that by the end of the year “Uruguayans will have consumed almost 60 kilos of beef per capita”.

This is “a new record” for Uruguay and makes Uruguay “the main consumer of beef in the world”.

The privilege until not so long belonged to Argentina, with almost 60 kilos per capita but in the last few years it has been decreasing and currently stands at 55 kilos per capita per annum said Fratti.

Uruguay is famous for its livestock and organic beef, which is also one of the country’s main industries. The cattle herd currently stands at just over 11 million head which means four animals per capita.

Other countries with significant beef consumption include the United States, 43 kilos per capita, per year; Australia, 39 kilos; Brazil, 36 kilos; Paraguay, 32 and New Zealand, 26 kilos. Brazil is the world’s leading exporter of beef with interests in all continents.

In Uruguay consumption has been increasing steadily from an annual average of 47.2 kilos in 2004; 47.6 kilos in 2005 and 51.2 kilos in 2006. In 2007 it dropped slightly to 51 kilos but the following year was up again to 54.7 kilos and in 2009, it reached 58.2 kilos per capita.

Fratti said that the growing consumption tendency in Uruguay can be explained because of higher income and purchasing power and because prices in the domestic market have become more stable.
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Monday, August 16, 2010

The Hydra of Carnage


The following is an excerpt from a paper written by Craig Hulet titled:


The Hydra of Carnage
The Silk Road Strategy:

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The bellum justum Between
Empire and Revolt




No war is ever fought without political objectives. Even where there is an obvious act of war needing response, like the September 11 air attacks on America, other considerations have already been discussed for years or months before the act of war presented itself. Strategic planners, the analysts whose responsibility it is to achieve various political, economic, or social objectives of the state apparatuses are always “in” each and every decision needing to be taken. War is an especially popular rubric to operate under for achieving objectives long put on hold for whatever reason.

When Saddam Hussein seized Kuwait on August 2nd, 1990, after assurances from the American Ambassador, Mrs. April Glaspie, that “the United States does not get involved with nation-state’s border disputes,” he erred greatly. What other political objectives did then President George Bush (Sr.) bring to the table to accomplish, that war-making might provide an opportunity to achieve, where other political means precluded such maneuvers? There were several, although the President did not inform the public of these objectives; I, on the other hand, did inform the American people for the entire seven months prior to Bush’s launching the air bombardments. One political objective, which was outlined in a task force report transcribed and authored prior to the April, 1990 meeting at the White House, was to utilize the United Nation’s Security Council apparatus to disarm Iraq’s conventional, biological and nuclear military capability in the region. Hussein’s gullibility in believing Glaspie’s statement, then seizing Kuwait, gave the White House the opportunity to achieve a political objective (disarming Iraq) it had outlined months prior to Hussein’s blunder on August 2, 1990. Another political objective was to figure out how to convince the Saudi regime to accept a permanent U.S. military presence on Arab soil; something no Arab state could ever allow except under extraordinary circumstances. Hussein provided the circumstances to achieve an objective that could not be accomplished politically. I argued at the time that the U.S. military presence would not be allowed to stand; one year or ten, there would be a violent reaction I warned at the time.

There were other objectives. One always must look a the “why” your government does anything; who stands to gain; in whose interest is it to do this or that. as FDR said, “nothing happens in government by accident.“ This is also where the naive fall into the conspiracy theory trap; connecting the dots or the “ah-ha” theory as it has been called.

But even the paranoid often get their facts straight. It is their interpretation that trips them up. President Bush Sr. did not go to war with Iraq to achieve the political objectives outlined above (knowing these objectives beforehand is in the nature of politics itself) but in planning what to do at the time, these objectives were tabled for operational planning and implementation. Brutally Machiavellian, true, but perfectly understandable when looked at through adult eyes.

President George Bush Jr. has faced the same operational and strategic planning, many of the very same planners and analysts on tap, from his father’s reign, to set into motion any political objectives which have been on hold for various reasons regarding the region in question after the September 11, 2001 air attacks. I have been fortunate to have come into possession of a United States House of Representatives, Committee on International Relations, Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific, transcript of a hearing held on Thursday, February 12, 1998. The contents explain many questions I have had since the beginning of the targeting of Usamah bin Laden as the only apparent suspect in the attacks. I found it of incredible interest how this obscure little man, whose terrorist acts of the past he had always claimed credit for, was not even listed or mentioned in most CIA and State Department documents as late as 1998, never indicted or named in most documents regarding the World Trade Center bombing of 1993, never looked at as the most dangerous man in the world...until September 11, 2001?

Suddenly “all roads lead to bin laden” and we want him “dead or alive.” I remain convinced that even if some of bin Laden’s contacts/soldiers had made contact with some of the alleged, and do let us continue calling these dead men “alleged,” hijackers, there is still no supportable evidence that bin Laden masterminded the plot; Iraqi military intelligence agents had been meeting with these same individuals and many others in both Afghanistan and throughout Europe. But I have spoken to this issue elsewhere and shall let it stand...bin Laden had a hand in it. And maybe he did.

The question I had been unable to get any sufficient answer to (until now) was why has President Bush Jr. declared war on the Taleban (or Taliban) governing elite? International relations scholars in Britain and Europe have been arguing vigorously that going after bin Laden is one thing, it is a police function and nobody can deny America’s right to have him picked-up, arrested and brought to justice; even extraordinary means (a snatch-team) might be deployed “if” the evidence in fact points to him as masterminding these horrific deeds. But no scholar, with the exception of those under instructions by the American administration, has argued successfully that President Bush, and more to the point, the United States proper, has the right under international law, the United Nations, the World Court and 300 years of international norms (the normative relations between sovereign nation-states), to make removing the present seated government of a sovereign nation-state part of its effort to make war on terrorism.

No nation, not even one on a noble moral crusade, has the legitimate authority, the right that is to say, to intervene in any nation’s sovereign affairs. And bombing the regime into the stone age certainly qualifies as intervention into the affairs of Afghanistan.

So here is my point: What, then, is the political objective of the present Bush Administration in bombing and its declared intent to remove the Taliban ruling party from office and installing one more favorable (more favorable to “whom” being the rest of the question) to the international community? Or the Afghan people? Or more favorable in some one else’s interest? Below is the documentation which I now allegedly claim may be one of the other political objectives. (Later this is called coincidence when achieved or antecedent to the removal of the Taliban)



HEARING ON U. S. INTERESTS IN THE CENTRAL ASIAN REPUBLICS


February, 12 1998


I shall quote at length from the hearing and with as little commentary as possible; the words spoken by those I quote are far superior to whatever I might add as garnish. I shall begin at the best place, the beginning, and allow one Mr. Robert W. Gee, Assistant Secretary for Policy and International Affairs, Department of State, to ask his rhetorical question:

To begin, you may ask why is the United States active in the region? The United States has energy security, strategic, and commercial interests in promoting Caspian region energy development. We have an interest in strengthening global energy security through diversification, and the development of these new sources of supply. Caspian export routes would diversify rather than concentrate world energy supplies, while avoiding over-reliance on the Persian Gulf.



...We have strategic interests in supporting the independence, sovereignty, and prosperity of the Newly Independent States of the Caspian Basin. We want to assist the development of these States into democratic, sovereign members of the world community of nations, enjoying unfettered access to world markets without pressure or undue influence from regional powers.

...We also have an interest in maximizing commercial opportunities for U.S. firms and for U.S. and other foreign investment in the region's energy development. In short, our interests are rooted in achieving multiple objectives. Rapid development of the region's energy resources and trade linkages are critical to the independence, prosperity, democracy, and stability of all of the countries of that region.

This gives you some idea of reference what the hearing was meant to address. The testimony continues in this vein, outlining several areas of policy objectives:

While we recognize the influence regional politics will play on the development of export routes, we have always maintained that commercial considerations will principally determine the outcome. These massive infrastructure projects must be commercially competitive before the private sector and the international financial community can move forward. Our support of specific pipelines, such as the Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline and trans-Caspian oil and gas lines, is not driven by any desire to intervene in private commercial decisions. Rather, it derives from our conclusion that it is not in the commercial interest of companies operating in the Caspian States, nor in the strategic interests of those host States, to rely on a major competitor for transit rights.
...cooperating with Russia. Our Caspian policy is not intended to bypass or to thwart Russia. In fact, two key projects closest to fruition go through Russia, those of the Azerbaijan International Operating Company northern early pipeline, and the Caspian Pipeline Consortium from Kazakhstan through Russia to the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk....U.S. companies are working in partnership with Russian firms in the Caspian, and there will be future opportunities to expand that commercial cooperation.


...isolating Iran. Our policy on Iran is unchanged. The U.S. Government opposes pipelines through Iran. Development of Iran's oil and gas industry and pipelines from the Caspian Basin south through Iran will seriously undercut the development of east-west infrastructure, and give Iran improper leverage over the economies of the Caucasus and Central Asian States. Moreover, from an energy security standpoint, it makes no sense to move yet more energy resources through the Persian Gulf, a potential major hot spot or chokepoint. From an economic standpoint, Iran competes with Turkmenistan for the lucrative Turkish gas market. Turkmenistan could provide the gas to build the pipeline, only to see itself displaced ultimately by Iran's own gas exports.

...The United States has stressed the importance of achieving agreement on concrete project proposals among the relevant countries as early as possible. Along these lines, we have encouraged the regional governments to accelerate multilateral discussions with their neighboring States and with the private sector shippers through the establishment of national working groups. These groups have a critical role in resolving regulatory, legal, tariff, and other issues that will make the Eurasian corridor most commercially attractive

Thus we have the synopsis of the policy objectives of the United States government. Questioning Mr. Gee on his trip to Turkey, a key player in the region where the pipeline projects are being proposed, Congressman Bereuter asking what actions Turkey was prepared to take elicited this response.

They recognize that they need to take proper steps to reform some of their governmental infrastructure in order to make the environment much more commercially viable. Among other things, they are experiencing some difficulties in reforming some of their legal requirements relative to the privatization of the power generation market in order to allow private investment to come in, with the necessary guarantees of securing investment, to provide the gas market that would facilitate the transport of gas into Turkey.

...I did mention, without asking a question, the role of OPIC and of course the multilateral organization, MEGA. OPIC would facilitate American firms' participation. We would expect to see other countries do something similar in a worthy project. Is it essential to the Turkish Government that there be a multilateral investment guarantee agency or are they satisfied with simply the various developed countries that have such loan guarantee programs like OPIC, to provide them one by one under a competitive kind of environment?



When Mr. Gee was asked about Afghanistan he stated the following:

Perhaps the Unocal witness can give you more detail. I do understand that they do have an agreement with the government of Turkmenistan. They have also been in discussions with the various factions within Afghanistan through which that proposed pipeline would be routed.
...The U.S. Government's position is that we support multiple pipelines with the exception of the southern pipeline that would transit Iran. The Unocal pipeline is among those pipelines that would receive our support under that policy.


I would caution that while we do support the project, the U.S. Government has not at this point recognized any governing regime of the transit country, one of the transit countries, Afghanistan, through which that pipeline would be routed. But we do support the project.



Mr. Berman then asked him, “I am thinking of how Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan-is this a pipeline for their use or is this primarily for Caspian Sea oil? Mr. Gee responded “It would be a pipeline generally for production from Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, which is where most of the potential reserves are thought to be located. Mr. Bereuter questioned again, “There is an oil field in Kazakhstan, Tengiz, or something like that. Mr. Gee added, “The Tengiz oil field, yes.” Mr. Bereuter: “Reportedly the world's largest known untapped field. That may be subject to dispute. It began to be exploited apparently most recently about 1993, I am told. How much have U.S. firms invested? Have they received any substantial return on their investment at this point”? Mr. Gee, responded with this important additional information:


...I believe that the transit route for that field is still under development. I don't know whether there have actually been sales of production from the Tengiz field.
I am informed by our staff that there have been sales from that field. I can provide that information to you. We don't have it available today as to any specific volumes or monetary returns from that sale.


...According to our calculations, total foreign direct investment in Kazakhstan's oil and gas sector from 1991 through 1996 was approximately U.S. $2 billion. Total commitments for new, future direct investment in Kazakhstan's oil and gas development now stands at over U.S. $35 billion. The Tengiz field has estimated reserves of 24 billion barrels of crude oil and over 1800 billion cubic meters of associated natural gas. Oil production has slowly risen to its current level of approximately 160,000 barrels per day. Production is currently being hampered by limited access to export pipelines. Once the Caspian Pipeline Consortium pipeline is constructed, oil production from Tengiz is expected to increase to 750,000 barrels per day by 2010. Even at production of 160,000 barrels per day, the venture has been profitable. Tengizchevroil, the consortium producing the Tengiz field, reported profits of U.S. $80 million in 1996, up from only U.S. $1 million in 1995.

Professor S. Frederick Starr of Johns Hopkins University was the next to testify, stating with regard to the legislation put forward to implement the policy,...

In this progress toward formulating an American policy toward this region, it seems to me that the so-called Silk Road Strategy Act, H.R. 2867, goes further than any previous official act of the U.S. Government toward translating our principles with regard to this region into concrete action.


The next testimony is clearly the most important for any understanding as to why President Bush feels such urgent need to displace the Taliban governing party. (Keeping in mind that the only opposition to the Taliban is the Northern Alliance whose human rights and record of atrocities against the Afghan people makes the Taliban pale to insignificance).



STATEMENT OF JOHN J. MARESCA, VICE PRESIDENT OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, Unocal CORPORATION

Mr. John J. Maresca: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's nice to see you again. I am John Maresca, vice president for international relations of the Unocal Corporation. Unocal, as you know, is one of the world's leading energy resource and project development companies. I appreciate your invitation to speak here today. I believe these hearings are important and timely. I congratulate you for focusing on Central Asia oil and gas reserves and the role they play in shaping U.S. policy.
...I would like to focus today on three issues. First, the need for multiple pipeline routes for Central Asian oil and gas resources. Second, the need for U.S. support for international and regional efforts to achieve balanced and lasting political settlements to the conflicts in the region, including Afghanistan. Third, the need for structured assistance to encourage economic reforms and the development of appropriate investment climates in the region. In this regard, we specifically support repeal or removal of section 907 of the Freedom Support Act.

...Mr. Chairman, the Caspian region contains tremendous untapped hydrocarbon reserves. Just to give an idea of the scale, proven natural gas reserves equal more than 236 trillion cubic feet. The region's total oil reserves may well reach more than 60 billion barrels of oil. Some estimates are as high as 200 billion barrels. In 1995, the region was producing only 870,000 barrels per day. By 2010, western companies could increase production to about 4.5 million barrels a day, an increase of more than 500 percent in only 15 years. If this occurs, the region would represent about 5 percent of the world's total oil production.
...One major problem has yet to be resolved: how to get the region's vast energy resources to the markets where they are needed. Central Asia is isolated. Their natural resources are landlocked, both geographically and politically.

...The other project is sponsored by the Azerbaijan International Operating Company, a consortium of 11 foreign oil companies, including four American companies, Unocal, Amoco, Exxon and Pennzoil. This consortium conceives of two possible routes, one line would angle north and cross the north Caucasus to Novorossiysk. The other route would cross Georgia to a shipping terminal on the Black Sea. This second route could be extended west and south across Turkey to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.

...But even if both pipelines were built, they would not have enough total capacity to transport all the oil expected to flow from the region in the future. Nor would they have the capability to move it to the right markets. Other export pipelines must be built.
...The second option is to build a pipeline south from Central Asia to the Indian Ocean. One obvious route south would cross Iran, but this is foreclosed for American companies because of U.S. sanctions legislation. The only other possible route is across Afghanistan, which has of course its own unique challenges. The country has been involved in bitter warfare for almost two decades, and is still divided by civil war. From the outset, we have made it clear that construction of the pipeline we have proposed across Afghanistan could not begin until a recognized government is in place that has the confidence of governments, lenders, and our company. (my emphasis)


...Unocal foresees a pipeline which would become part of a regional system that will gather oil from existing pipeline infrastructure in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Russia. The 1,040-mile long oil pipeline would extend south through Afghanistan to an export terminal that would be constructed on the Pakistan coast. This 42-inch diameter pipeline will have a shipping capacity of one million barrels of oil per day. The estimated cost of the project, which is similar in scope to the trans-Alaska pipeline, is about $2.5 billion.


...Given the plentiful natural gas supplies of Central Asia, our aim is to link gas resources with the nearest viable markets. This is basic for the commercial viability of any gas project. But these projects also face geopolitical challenges. Unocal and the Turkish company Koc Holding are interested in bringing competitive gas supplies to Turkey. The proposed Eurasia natural gas pipeline would transport gas from Turkmenistan directly across the Caspian Sea through Azerbaijan and Georgia to Turkey. Of course the demarcation of the Caspian remains an issue.
...Last October, the Central Asia Gas Pipeline Consortium, called CentGas, in which Unocal holds an interest, was formed to develop a gas pipeline which will link Turkmenistan's vast Dauletabad gas field with markets in Pakistan and possibly India. The proposed 790-mile pipeline will open up new markets for this gas, traveling from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Multan in Pakistan. The proposed extension would move gas on to New Delhi, where it would connect with an existing pipeline. As with the proposed Central Asia oil pipeline, CentGas can not begin construction until an internationally recognized Afghanistan Government is in place.

...The Central Asia and Caspian region is blessed with abundant oil and gas that can enhance the lives of the region's residents, and provide energy for growth in both Europe and Asia. The impact of these resources on U.S. commercial interests and U.S. foreign policy is also significant. Without peaceful settlement of the conflicts in the region, cross-border oil and gas pipelines are not likely to be built. We urge the Administration and the Congress to give strong support to the U.N.-led peace process in Afghanistan. The U.S. Government should use its influence to help find solutions to all of the region's conflicts.



Congressman Bereuter then asked Mr. Maresca if, given the history of violence in Afghanistan, did he believe that a pipeline could be reasonably secured? Mr. Maresca said the following:

...First, on the question about Afghanistan, of course we're not in a phase where we are negotiating on a contract because there is no recognized government really to negotiate with. However, we have had talks and briefings with all the factions. It is clear that they all understand the significance for their country of this pipeline project, and they all support it, all of them. They all want it. They would like it to start tomorrow. All of the factions would like it to start tomorrow if we could do it...It's not going to be built until there is a single Afghan Government. That's the simple answer. We would not want to be in the situation where we became the target of the other faction. In any case, because of the financing situation, credits are not going to be available until there is a recognized government of Afghanistan.



Congressman Rohrabacher then added the following, “I am reminded of a joke where God is asked when peace will come to the Middle East. He says, ''Not in my lifetime.'' I am afraid that this may well be true of Afghanistan as well. In fact, I am more hopeful right now, having just returned from one trip to the Middle East and another trip to Central Asia that there is a greater chance for peace between Israel and its neighbors than there is for peace in Afghanistan. And I know Afghanistan probably better than anyone else in the Congress. I hate to tell you that. But let me ask a few questions. So there will be no pipeline until there is an internationally recognized government and a government that is recognized by the people of Afghanistan too, I would imagine that you wanted to put that caveat on it. Right? It's not just internationally recognized, but it has to be accepted by the people of the country. Right”? The following exchange took place and it is here that the parties make the point all too well:

Mr. MARESCA. It depends on who you mean by the people. I assume that no matter what government is put in place, there will be some people who are opposed to it.



Mr. ROHRABACHER. I found something here. There seems to be a little attachment onto there that may be a little more controversial than people understood when they first heard what you were saying. So the government doesn't necessarily have to be acceptable to the people of Afghanistan as long as it's internationally recognized? The current government of Afghanistan or the current group of people who hold Kabul, I guess is the best way to say that, and about 60 percent of the country are known as the Taliban. What type of relationship does your company have to the Taliban?

Mr. MARESCA. We have the same relationship as we have with the other factions, which is that we have talked with them, we have briefed them, we have invited them to our headquarters to see what our projects are.



Mr. ROHRABACHER. Right.



Mr. MARESCA. These are exactly the same things we have done with the other factions.



Mr. ROHRABACHER. However, the Taliban, who are now in control of 60 percent of Afghanistan, could you give me an estimate of where the opium that's being produced in Afghanistan is being produced? Is it in the Taliban areas or is it in the northern areas of Afghanistan? What about the haven for international terrorists? There is a Saudi terrorist who is infamous for financing terrorism around the world. Is he in the Taliban area or is he up there with the northern people?



Mr. MARESCA. If it is the person I am thinking of, he is there in the Taliban area.



Mr. ROHRABACHER. Right. And in the northern area as compared to the place where the Taliban are in control, would you say that one has a better human rights record toward women than the other?



Mr. MARESCA. With respect to women, yes. But I don't think either faction here has a very clean human rights record, to tell you the truth....I am not here to defend the Taliban. That is not my role. We are a company that is trying to build a pipeline across this country.



Mr. ROHRABACHER. I sympathize with that. By the way, you are right. All factions agree that the pipeline will be something that's good. But let me warn you that if the pipeline is constructed before there is a government that is acceptable at a general level to the population of Afghanistan and not just to international, other international entities, other governments, that your pipeline will be blown up. There is no doubt about that. I have been in and out of Afghanistan for 15 years. These are very brave, courageous people. If they think they are being stepped on, just like the Soviets found out, they are going to kick somebody back. They are not going to lay down and let somebody put the boot in their face. If the government that is receiving the funds that you are talking about is a government that is not accepted by a large number of people in Afghanistan, there will continue to be problems. You say you have had a positive relationship with all the factions. That is what you are presenting to us today.



Mr. MARESCA. We are hesitant too, Mr. Congressman. I appreciate the fact that you are a person well-read into these issues. I think you would agree with us that the international community needs to pay a lot more attention to this problem. We would like to see the international community focused hard on this problem and pushing for that kind of a peaceful resolution that you described.


Mr. ROHRABACHER. If I could just say just a couple more words. During the break, I did manage to take a swing through Central Asia that took me to Turkey and Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan. I, Mr. Chairman, agree with the witness. The most important thing we can do now is to try to get this region that's been isolated for so long into the global economy. There is so much potential there, wealth as well as the people there, are fine. They are the traders of ancient times. They could do very well in the global economy. I think Turkey is playing a very positive role there. It's not trying to dominate like it was before--earlier on they thought they might dominate the region. Instead, they are playing a very positive role economically and bringing those people into the world economic system. So the subject of this hearing was well chosen. I do hope that, and I don't know if anybody else is going to get involved in Afghanistan now, but I would hope that people of the world focus a little more on these poor people. They helped us end the cold war. If it wasn't for the courage and the bravery of the people of Afghanistan, we would still be in the middle of a cold war, spending $100 billion a year more trying to defend ourselves from the Russians. It was their strength and courage that broke the will of the Kremlin leaders. They decided that they could not stand up to this kind of resistance among the people of the world. So we owe them a lot. They are still suffering. This pipeline will help them, if we can ever get it built. But in the meantime, we owe it to them to help try to bring peace to Afghanistan. The rest of Central Asia depends on it. Thank you very much. (my emphasis)

End




Nobody will argue that bringing peace to the Afghan people is something that ought to be done. But bombing their country into the stone age in an effort to capture Usamah bin Laden, whether he was significantly involved in the commandeering of the four airliners or not, seems somewhat odd. Moreover, if one of the real political objectives is removal of the ruling Taliban party from power, to replace it with another regime which will act more favorably towards the Western and American multinational oil companies, then this is something else altogether. We know from Mr. Gee’s testimony above that this is without question what the policy objective is. We also know from the proposed legislation, The Silk Road Strategy bill. H.R. 2867, that the U.S. House of Representatives has been studying the problem and has also made this policy objective an issue. We know what Unocal, Exxon, Pennzoil and Amoco (and at least seven other foreign firms) want, and the testimony of Mr. Maresca couldn’t be plainer: they want the United States government to do something about the regime in Afghanistan which is holding up the construction of a trillion dollar pipedream.



Complete Paper (Word Document)
The Hydra of Carnage
The Silk Road Strategy

http://rosebusch.net/jeff/politics/hulet/Hydra.doc

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