“The Shot Heard Round the World”

When the bullet that began the American Revolution was fired at Concord, historians called the event “the shot heard round the world.” Autocratic rulers heard that shot, and things that had not been questioned for millennia were now open to challenge.

Today, many among “the intelligentsia,” as well as “political messiahs,” are doubtful about the American exceptionalism. They ask whether the United States has really been “exceptional.” You couldn’t be more exceptional in the 18th century, they say, than to create the Constitution of the United States—by opening with the momentous words, “We the people...” Hence articles such as the cover story in the July 4th issue of Time magazine, “a long and rambling essay” in which Time magazine editor Richard Stengel “manages to create a toxic blend of the irrelevant and the erroneous,” as Thomas Sowell rightly puts it. Stengel asks of the Constitution: “Does it still matter?” Simply, Sowell answers back, “if it doesn’t, then your Freedom doesn’t matter.” A must read as we approach another July 4th celebration.

Aung San Suu Kyi at Risk, Once Again

Dark clouds are gathering over pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Burma’s government has warned the Nobel peace prize laureate—who has remained in Rangoon since her release from house arrest, but she has said she soon plans to travel to the countryside to meet her supporters—to halt all political activities. The warning is extended to Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the NLD (National League for Democracy). As is usually the case, let’s hope for the best but prepare for the worst.

Top Blogs and Websites on Religious Studies

I’ve just received an email from Catherine Elson informing me about an article, titled “Top 15 Blogs on Religious Studies,” she just posted on The Divining Blog. I’m glad to pass the information along. Catherine firstly reminds readers that religious studies—which differ from theology in that they are usually conducted by a third party, while theologists are usually a believer in the religion they are studying—combine the varying religions to see the effects on the mind, lifestyle and beliefs. “Learn about religious studies at these top blogs and websites on the subject,” she says. “Regardless of your own religious background, learning about others will help you gain a more thorough understanding of the world and often, your own beliefs.”

Smith, Wesson and Me

What would you do if someone tried to kill you by shooting a kind of rocket at you? Of course I wish you not to face a similar situation, but then again, as you know, everything is possible in life. Therefore it’s important to be ready! That’s why, in my opinion, you should consider the kind of reaction shown in the video below (don’t try to do this at home!), provided that you have a .357 Magnum Smith & Wesson revolver, and that you are a veteran shooter... From the movie RED :

George & Emmylou

Emmylou Harris

Country music scholar Bill C. Malone writes, “For the two or three minutes consumed by a song, Jones immerses himself so completely in its lyrics, and in the mood it conveys, that the listener can scarcely avoid becoming similarly involved.” Never has anything more true been said regarding country music legend George Jones. Yet, however true this may be, what makes Jones the best living country music singer is, of course, his distinctive voice and phrasing. Once, when the great Johnny Cash was asked who his favorite singer was he replied, “You mean besides George Jones?” To say nothing about the fact that Frank Sinatra once called George Jones “the second best white male singer”—not too hard to guess who was the best in his opinion…

But if Jones is the king of country singers, 12-time Grammy Award winner Emmylou Harris—the greatest female singer since Ella Fitzgerald, according to Sir David Frederick Attenborough—is the reigning queen of American roots music. She is probably the female voice by which all others are measured. As Elvis Costello puts it, “Emmylou Harris is the greatest harmony singer on the face of the earth. There’s no question about that. She’s also a great solo singer and a great songwriter as well. (…) Emmylou has this great sense of poise, grace. These are the words that come to mind when you think of her singing.”

Two great country music artists… But I’m not going to write an essay on George’s and Emmylou’s immense musical talent, the above was only intended as a brief introduction to the video below: George Jones & Emmylou Harris singing “Here We Are,” a song written by Rodney Crowell. Enjoy it!

New Beginning

Claude Monet, Impression Sunrise

Everything in life is temporary. Everything has an end. Winter ends, snow melts, spring ends… But, as the old proverb goes, every end is a new beginning, and when spring ends summer starts. Or, if you prefer, as T.S. Eliot put it, “What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from” (this is also wonderfully expressed in “East Coker,” the second of Four Quartets). Why am I telling you this? Well, I’m referring to someone both you and I know and who is about to make a big change in his life—he’s almost retired from his previous career as a teacher…—and thought we could wish him a happy ending and a bright new beginning. May God always guide and bless him!

Pentecost on Mount Athos

Fresco in Koutloumoussiou Monastery
 Mount Athos

Mount Athos is not for everyone, at least it isn’t for women—the last authorized female pilgrim set foot there sixteen centuries ago, and her name was Galla Placidia, the daughter of  Theodosius, the Christian emperor of Rome (and Constantinople), but as soon as she entered one of Athos’s monasteries, an icon of the Virgin ordered her: “Halt!” and enjoined her to leave the mountain…

Yet, Mount Athos is a truly holy land that inspires fear of God, a place of free spirits and great charismatics, a place without time, unless it is that of the angelic spheres. On Athos “logos is wed to praxis,” word to deeds, says Eliseos, the igoumenos:

The monk has to show that the truths are reality. He has to live the Gospel in a perfect way. This is why his presence in the world is essential. Saint John Climakos wrote: “Angels are light for monks, monks are light for men.”

A voyage to the holy mountain of the Orthodox Church. First conducted and recounted in 1997. Meaning now, this year. “Because on Athos, earthly time is one and the same as the eternal today of heaven.”

Where Nothing Is Impossible

Yesterday, here in Italy, was the festival of the Republic, but the Italian Prime minister had few reasons to celebrate after his ruling center-right coalition was resoundingly beaten in runoff administrative elections last Monday. He lost Milan (44.9 percent to 55.1 percent), his home town, the city where he built his economic empire and where his political career started, and in Naples Luigi De Magistris—a former magistrate who was struck by politics on the way to Damascus—beat Berlusconi-backed Gianni Lettieri (65.3 percent to 34.7 percent). As it was not enough the center-left opposition’s candidates also won runoff votes in the northern cities of Mantua, Trieste, Gallarate and Novara, as well as Cagliari, the capital of Sardinia. In other words, a complete disaster. And, Ok, maybe it’s over for Berlusconi, the big loser, the bunga-bunga man, and so on.

But then again, as I pointed out a couple of weeks ago after the (equally catastrophic) first electoral round, both the results in Naples and in Milan, as well as those in Bologna, Turin, and many other places, show that the center left is in no better shape than the center right. One example for all: the results of Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement (almost 10% in Bologna, 10% in Ravenna, 15% in Rimini, 5% in Turin, 8% in Savona, and so on), whose goal is to demolish the credibility of the whole Italian political, economic and financial establishment, which, of course, according to Grillo (and many others), includes the Democratic Party, i.e. the biggest and most influential opposition party, and the heir of the defunct PCI (Partito Comunista Italiano). And, actually, this is how Grillo himself described in his blog what happened in Milan, Italy’s finance and business capital:

The System has won. The one that makes you come out into the street because it’s you that’s won, but in the end it’s always the system that wins. It transforms the voters into fans content that finally it’s the Left that’s won or alternatively it’s the Right that’s won. Someone said of the PDminusL that “It’s easy to win with the candidates of the others”. OK, but who are the others? Pisapia, who is De Benedetti’s lawyer and the bearer of the PDminusL’s membership card number ONE (that has for the Swiss engineer the same magical effects as Uncle Scrooge’s mythical coin), Fassino a deputy in Rome and the mayor of Turin who wants the militarisation of the Val di Susa? Vendola who builds incinerators together with Ms Marcegaglia, has earmarked 120 million euro of public money from the region of Apulia to Don Verzé’s San Raffaele foundation; Don Verzé the spiritual father of Berlusconi and he is keeping the management of water in private hands? The system has liquidated Berlusconi and it has to present new faces so as not to be swept away. If they’re old, they pass them off as new. If Pisapia at least puts a stop to the monstrous construction of EXPO 2015 together with that of City Life, closes down the incinerators, cuts the salaries of the town cabinet members by 75%, I will change my mind. Do you think he will do that?
On reading the newspapers it seems that the 5 Star MoVement has been deleted from politics, swept away by the new that is coming in. It’s the PDminusL that’s won, the same one that guaranteed for Berlusconi “a life that is never late”, that has allowed in the Fiscal Shield, that voted for the Great Pardon, that did not make it possible to group together the local elections and the referendum (one vote would have been enough, but absences included 10 PDminusL people, including Fassino, and 2 IDV, do you think it was just by chance?),that gifted three public national frequencies to Berlusconi asking in exchange just one per cent of the turnover, that did not do a law on the conflict of interests when it was in government and did not even modify Calderoli’s “legge porcata” {filthy law}.
The Confindustria is looking for new ways of maintaining its parasites. It woke up after Fukushima, when it understood that the cake of about 30 billion for nuclear power stations was vanishing, before that it was expecting the juicy bone and was keeping quiet. The Confindustria, together with the parties, will do everything possible to cause the failure of the referenda that would take away from it the management of water for ever. No one is talking about the referenda any more. Everyone’s out in the street celebrating. Everything changes so that nothing changes. They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

Well, Ok, he’s a comedian, not a normal politician, he’s a mad man and whatever you want, but there is little doubt that Grillo is right when he argues that they are cheating. Sometimes the truth, in politics, can make the difference.

Girolamo Savonarola's monument, Ferrara (Italy)

After all, it’s an old trick of the post-communist left to brand all of their political opponents—even the most upright of them—as “right wing extremists” and deeply dishonest people, and, at the same time, to strenuously defend their own “business agents” and to consider all of them as “honorable, ethical and virtuous people,” no matter what they really are. What I really like about Grillo, even though I often don’t agree with him, is that he doesn’t care whether you are right or left-wing, he only tries to fight political corruption (or what he regards as such) in whatever form and wherever it comes from. He may sounds more like a modern Savonarola (with Savonarola’s fanaticism but without his Christian faith) than a political leader, the opposite of a detached analyst, but he’s not a liar and a hypocrite. And he’s certainly honest.

On the other hand, if it is true that, as Stefano Folli put it in the economic daily newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, the electoral results “opened up the question of the leadership of the center-right,” it is also true that, as some other commentators cautioned, local wins would not automatically translate into an electoral victory at a national level. And this for many reasons. One is that the center-left coalition will have to face the challenge presented by Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement. And as the recent elections have shown, nothing is impossible here, in the Bel Paese.

Our Memorial Day

~ “LETTERS FROM AMERICA” - by The Metaphysical Peregrine ~

This Monday is a national day of remembrance for US military Soldiers, Marines, Airmen and Sailors that have given their lives in defense of this country and freedom. Memorial Day should have a sense of the sacred, but for most it’s the weekend of barbeques and beer, the weekend that officially kicks off summer, and the weekend of sales. I don’t know how many man in the street interviews I’ve seen that the interviewee has no idea what this holiday is about. This day, not to be chauvinist, is a day that anyone living in a free country should observe and honor the US Military.

The day itself started out as a commemoration of those that died in our Civil War, and was call ‘Decoration Day’. Since then over a million American servicemen have paid for defending freedom with their lives.

The kind of men these are was best summed up by General Douglas MacArthur at an address he gave in 1962 at the U.S. Military Academy:

"Their story is known to all of you. It is the story of the American man at arms. My estimate of him was formed on the battlefields many, many years ago and has never changed. I regarded him then, as I regard him now, as one of the world's noblest figures -- not only as one of the finest military characters, but also as one of the most stainless. His name and fame are the birthright of every American citizen. In his youth and strength, his love and loyalty, he gave all that mortality can give. He needs no eulogy from me, or from any other man. He has written his own history and written it in red on his enemy's breast."

 "In twenty campaigns, on a hundred battlefields, around a thousand campfires, I have witnessed that enduring fortitude, that patriotic self-abnegation and that invincible determination which have carved his statue in the hearts of his people. From one end of the world to the other, he has drained deep the chalice of courage. As I listened to those songs in memory's eye, I could see those staggering columns of the First World War, bending under soggy packs on many a weary march, from dripping dusk to drizzling dawn, slogging ankle deep through mire of shell-pocked roads; to form grimly for the attack, blue-lipped, covered with sludge and mud, chilled by the wind and rain, driving home to their objective, and for many, to the judgment seat of God. I do not know the dignity of their birth, but I do know the glory of their death. They died unquestioning, uncomplaining, with faith in their hearts, and on their lips the hope that we would go on to victory. Always for them: duty, honor, country. Always their blood, and sweat, and tears, as they saw the way and the light."

These are exceptional people, I knew them when I served, and saw them killed in firefights, and wept at their funerals. In those years we had the draft, and draftees served with the same commitment as those that volunteered. Now our military is all volunteers and are making the same incredible sacrifices. It deeply saddens me that so many in this country do not honor them, and so many, including our president, have contempt for them. (One piece of evidence, among many, of that statement about our president, is his refusal, so far, to participate in the traditional presidential Memorial Day ceremonies.)

Ronald Reagan on this day in 1962:

"I have no illusions about what little I can add now to the silent testimony of those who gave their lives willingly for their country. Words are even more feeble on this Memorial Day, for the sight before us is that of a strong and good nation that stands in silence and remembers those who were loved and who, in return, loved their countrymen enough to die for them. Yet, we must try to honor them not for their sakes alone, but for our own. And if words cannot repay the debt we owe these men, surely with our actions we must strive to keep faith with them and with the vision that led them to battle and to final sacrifice."

  "Our first obligation to them and ourselves is plain enough: The United States and the freedom for which it stands, the freedom for which they died, must endure and prosper. Their lives remind us that freedom is not bought cheaply. It has a cost; it imposes a burden. And just as they whom we commemorate were willing to sacrifice, so too must we -- in a less final, less heroic way -- be willing to give of ourselves. It is this, beyond the controversy and the congressional debate, beyond the blizzard of budget numbers and the complexity of modern weapons systems, that motivates us in our search for security and peace. ... The willingness of some to give their lives so that others might live never fails to evoke in us a sense of wonder and mystery. One gets that feeling here on this hallowed ground, and I have known that same poignant feeling as I looked out across the rows of white crosses and Stars of David in Europe, in the Philippines, and the military cemeteries here in our own land. Each one marks the resting place of an American hero and, in my lifetime, the heroes of World War I, the Doughboys, the GI's of World War II or Korea or Vietnam. They span several generations of young Americans, all different and yet all alike, like the markers above their resting places, all alike in a truly meaningful way."

 "As we honor their memory today, let us pledge that their lives, their sacrifices, their valor shall be justified and remembered for as long as God gives life to this nation. ... I can't claim to know the words of all the national anthems in the world, but I don't know of any other that ends with a question and a challenge as ours does: 'O! say does that star-spangled banner yet wave, O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?' That is what we must all ask."

This day, for me, I honor not only those million plus servicemen that have fallen protecting our freedoms, not only of America, but every nation now free, but the personal loss of those I knew, that fell.

"Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends."

John 15:12-14

We ask for the prayers, love and support of every American Serviceman now serving anywhere in the world, as well their families.

May 26: Saint Philip Neri

“ O God, who never cease to bestow the glory of holiness on the faithful servants you raise up for yourself, graciously grant that the Holy Spirit may kindle in us that fire with which he wonderfully filled the heart of Saint Philip Neri. ”

[Original Latin text: Deus, qui fideles tibi servos sanctitatis gloria sublimare non desistis, concede propitius, ut illo nos igne Spiritus Sanctus inflammet, quo beati Philippi cor mirabiliter penetravit.]

~ Missale Romanum 1975 editio typica altera (Via Fr. Z's Blog)

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, 
The Virgin Appearing to St Philip Neri
Museo Diocesano, Camerino 

Saint Philip Neri was the gracious, cheerful Rome’s apostle of the sixteenth century, but at the same time he is one of the glories of Florence, where he was born of an illustrious Christian family, in 1515. His peculiar charisma was a burning love of God, a love that imperceptibly communicated itself to all about him and that made him one of the most beloved saints in Christendom. I have to say I have always loved him since I was a little boy in Rome (where I grew up), because my Religion teacher, an old cheerful man, Father Contenti (which in Italian means “happy” in plural…), would often tell us kids stories and anecdotes about him—some of my most cherished memories ever!

What is not commonly known is that he was also a very good friend, admirer, counselor, and confessor for many years of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, the greatest composer of liturgical music of all time—it was in his arms that the great composer breathed his last. That’s why I think a good way to celebrate him is to listen to this sublime Alma Redemptoris Mater mottetto:

Welcome to the 21st-Century Food Wars

From the Middle East to Madagascar, high prices of food are spawning land grabs and ousting dictators. The food crisis of 2011—which is real and serious—may bring with it yet more bread riots cum political revolutions. What is worse, if until a few years ago sudden price surges were quickly followed by a return to the relatively low food prices that helped shape the political stability of the late 20th century across much of the globe, now both the causes and consequences are worryingly different... Welcome to the 21st-century food wars.

Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, in the May/June issue of Foreign Policy:

In the United States, when world wheat prices rise by 75 percent, as they have over the last year, it means the difference between a $2 loaf of bread and a loaf costing maybe $2.10. If, however, you live in New Delhi, those skyrocketing costs really matter: A doubling in the world price of wheat actually means that the wheat you carry home from the market to hand-grind into flour for chapatis costs twice as much. And the same is true with rice. If the world price of rice doubles, so does the price of rice in your neighborhood market in Jakarta. And so does the cost of the bowl of boiled rice on an Indonesian family's dinner table.

Welcome to the new food economics of 2011: Prices are climbing, but the impact is not at all being felt equally. For Americans, who spend less than one-tenth of their income in the supermarket, the soaring food prices we've seen so far this year are an annoyance, not a calamity. But for the planet's poorest 2 billion people, who spend 50 to 70 percent of their income on food, these soaring prices may mean going from two meals a day to one. Those who are barely hanging on to the lower rungs of the global economic ladder risk losing their grip entirely. This can contribute -- and it has -- to revolutions and upheaval.

Read the rest.

The Long Fall of Silvio Berlusconi

You may say that the round of Italian elections that closed Monday—which went badly for the center right ruling coalition—were only for local administrations, but Silvio Berlusconi emerged as the biggest loser as the outgoing mayor of Milan, Letizia Moratti, failed to avoid a runoff in her bid for re-election. In fact, it was he himself who had presented the local contest as a referendum on his government. He had staked his reputation in support of Moratti and had campaigned strenuously for her. But in spite of this, or maybe because of it, the left’s candidate for mayor, Giuliano Pisapia—a longtime independent member of parliament for the far-left Refounded Communist Party who had previously staged an upset by beating the mainstream center-left Democratic Party’s candidate in the Milan primaries—managed not just to secure a second round with Letizia Moratti but also to outdistance her by more than six percentage points (the two will face a runoff on May 29 and 30).

Add to this that Milan is politically significant in several respects, being a) Italy’s finance and business capital, b) Berlusconi’s native city, and c) the one from which he launched his political career. As it was not enough, Milan is also where Silvio Berlusconi is being tried on a string of charges, including the latest and most insidious one: the so-called “Rubygate”—even though, these days the Dominique Strauss-Kahn affair makes Berlusconi look like Benny Hill…

But then again, at least in the case of Milan, it wasn’t just Berlusconi’s fault. Ms Moratti bears part of the responsibility for the current disaster. I primarily refer to what she did in the final moments of a televised debate: she unexpectedly accused Pisapia of long ago stealing a car and association with left-wing terrorists, what she omitted to note was that Pisapia was acquitted on the charges 26 years ago. This jarred with the traditionally moderate style of Milanese people—and every rule of good taste, fair play and even common sense!

It is also to be said that the results in Naples show that the center left is in no better shape than the center right. In fact, a candidate for the small Italy of Values party ran against the choice of Italy’s biggest center left group, the Democratic Party (PD), and won more votes. To say nothing about the results of Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement (almost 10% in Bologna, 10% in Ravenna, 15% in Rimini, 5% in Turin, 8% in Savona, and so on), whose goal is to demolish the credibility of the whole Italian political and economic establishment, which, of course, includes the Democratic Party.

However, as I said above, there is no doubt that Berlusconi is the biggest loser. Yet, Roberto Formigoni, center right governor of the northern Lombardy region, is right when he advises against anyone giving up Berlusconi for dead: “People have been saying that for 20 years, and he is still very much alive,” he says. But, even though it’s not over yet, it will take a miracle to stop the decline and fall—a long and somewhat painful fall—of Silvio Berlusconi. Yes, it’s a hard time for the man who was able to forge a powerful and strategic alliance between the various sectors of the Italian political right, which in turn prevented the post-communist left from winning an otherwise inevitable long lasting victory. That’s a great credit to him, but as French mathematician Henri Poincaré put it, “There are people who think that the right to ingratitude is the most important freedom.”

Draghi Is in Poll Position

A former Goldman Sachs banker and the current Governor of the Banca d’Italia, Mario Draghi is now in pole position in the race for the European Central Bank’s presidency. In fact, besides having been already endorsed by French president Nicolas Sarkozy, he has been given an official blessing by German Chancellor Angela Merkel: “I know Mario Draghi,” she told Die Zeit newspaper, “he is a very interesting and experienced individual … Germany could support a candidacy from him for the office of the ECB president ... He stands very close to our agenda of stability and solid economics.”

However, three weeks ago Germany’s finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble was reported by The Wall Street Journal to have said that he was “open to Mr. Draghi for the post of ECB President.” And a few days later the German newspaper Bild defined him as the “most German of all remaining candidates.”Furthermore, back on February 13th, Wolfgang Münchau, associate editor of the Financial Times, endorsed Draghi as the best candidate for the job, and a few days later The Economist wrote that “the next president of the world’s second-most-important central bank should be Mario Draghi.”

Barclays Capital managing director Julian Callow told AFP that Merkel’s backing was indeed “the last box to check.” Draghi, he said, “has the intellect, the experience, the leadership, the judgement, the communication skills that (would) collectively make him an exceptional president of the ECB.”

Of course, we Europeans, all of us (especially here in Italy), hope all the above are right, even though all of them proved themselves anything but infallible—and we experienced this at first hand. Eurozone leaders are expected to agree in June as to who will follow Jean-Claude Trichet’s eight-year term.

Economic Survey of Italy 2011

From the OECD:

Italy’s economy has passed the deep recession triggered by the global crisis and seems set for a gradual recovery. The strength of this recovery is uncertain: it would be wise to plan for no more than the rather sluggish growth seen in the decade prior to the crisis. Hence, the priority remains structural reforms to increase growth potential, while maintaining a stable fiscal framework oriented towards consolidation, as appropriately pursued during the crisis. Such a policy can sustain confidence in Italian public finances in the face of the large stock of government debt, in turn helping to support the financial system whose health is crucial for the recovery.

Read an Overview of the Economic Survey of Italy and the Speech by Angel Gurría, OECD Secretary-General.

When a Cloud Covers the Sun

“My life,” says the Dalai Lama, “has not been an altogether happy one; I have had to pass through many difficult times.” Of course hard times include losing his country to Chinese Communist invaders, and trying to promote and  preserve Tibetan culture in exile. “Yet,” he continues, “I regard these difficult periods as among the most important times in my life. Through them, I have gained many new experiences and learned many new ideas.”

From His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s new book, How to Be Compassionate: A Handbook for Creating Inner Peace and a Happier World (translated from oral teachings and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins) :

Consider the so-called enemy this way:

1. Because this person’s mind is untamed, he or she engages in activities that are harmful to you.
2. If anger—the wish to harm—were part of the basic nature of this person, it could not be altered in any way, but […] hatred does not reside in the nature of a person.
3. Even if it were the nature of a person to hate, then, just as we cannot get angry at fire because it burns our hand (it is the very nature of fire to burn), so we should not get angry at a person expressing his or her nature.
4. This said, hatred is actually peripheral to a person’s nature. When a cloud covers the sun we do not get angry at the sun, so we should not get angry with the so-called enemy, but instead hold the person’s afflictive emotion responsible.
5. We ourselves sometimes engage in bad behavior, do we not? Still, most of us do not think of ourselves as completely bad. We should look on others the same way.
6. Therefore, the actual troublemaker is not the person, but his or her afflictive emotion.

When we lose our temper, we don’t hesitate to use harsh words, even to a close friend. Afterward, when we calm down, we feel embarrassed about what happened. This indicates that we, as persons, do not really want to use such harsh words, but because we were dominated by anger, we lost our self-control.
[...]
[W]e can learn to separate a corner of the mind from strong emotions like hatred and observe the mind from this vantage point; this indicates that the mind and hatred are not one, therefore the person and hatred are not one.

“Must’ve Been Drunk”

Merle Haggard & George Jones

This song reminds me of two old friends of mine years ago, when they met a young lady from Des Moines who made a great impression on them, in one way or another.

For lovers of country music only: two living legends in a very “relaxed” state of mind...

Why?

The cover of the May 4/10, 2011 issue of The Stranger

I have just learned that Al-Qaeda has confirmed the death of Osama Bin Laden. Well, I’m not what is usually referred to as a “conspiracy hunter,” but if I were, I suppose I couldn’t help asking why on earth they felt the need to do so. But  I just am not that kind of blogger. They must have become suddenly sincere and intellectually honest, despite their own (supposed) interests. Or maybe I’ve simply missed something… Who knows?

Weren't They a Bunch of Assassins?

Hypocrisy Watch: as everybody knows, Osama bin Laden was killed by SEAL Team Six, officially known as Naval Special Warfare Development Group or DevGru. Yet, when GW Bush was president the media called them “Cheney’s assassination squad.” Now that a Democratic President has employed them to take out Osama bin Laden a lot of things seem to have changed…

Via DDMHA and The PJ Tatler

A Man of God

Yesterday in Saint Peter’s Square the late Pope John Paul II was proclaimed Blessed—the next-to-last step before a Catholic is formally declared a saint—before one million and a half faithful. Yet another show of strength from an extraordinary man. But the event began the previous night, when a crowd of hundreds of thousands, mostly young people, flocked to the Circus Maximus oval to pray, sing and celebrate as they waited for the beatification ceremony. And that’s where and when John Paul’s long-time spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, told the crowd a simple truth: “The Church does not make saints, it just recognizes that a person lived a saintly life. John Paul was already a saint.”

 That’s what seems to me to be the great thing about the event. He was already a saint. Because of what he did? Well, he actually did many good things—amazing things!—for the world, but it was not mainly a matter of doing, it was a matter of being. You can’t measure it, you can’t manage it, you just know that he is blessed. You see him, you hear him speaking a few simple words and you immediately know that he is a man of God in the truest sense. A Man of God, is there a better synonym for sanctity, without any “ecclesiastical” rhetoric? His last days, his long, brave struggle with illness, his will to show us in his own flesh the Christ suffering... No, sorry, there are no words.

In a 1999 letter written to the world’s elderly he said: “It is wonderful to be able to give oneself to the very end for the sake of the kingdom of God. At the same time, I find great peace in thinking of the time when the Lord will call me: from life to life. And so I often find myself saying, with no trace of melancholy, a prayer recited by priests after the celebration of the Eucharist: ‘In hora mortis meae voca me, et iube me venire ad te’ (at the hour of my death, call me and bid me come to you). This is the prayer of Christian hope.”

Thus prayed the old man of God. And as an ancient Indian saying goes, “The Prayer of the man of God does not go in vain.”

Bombing Libya

 Credit: Reuters/Yannis Behrakis

Certainly it was quite unavoidable, but Italy’s decision to send its warplanes on missions to bomb Libya “has not been easy,” as Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi admitted during a joint press conference in Rome with French president Nicolas Sarkozy. Not by chance, in fact, for weeks Italy has resisted joining the air missions over Libya. The official reason for this reluctance was that, as the former colonial ruler in Libya, the political cost of causing casualties was too high. But the truth is that, first of all, Italy is the North African country’s biggest trading partner, and second of all, both many conservative members of the government and opinion leaders across the Country are doubtful about this whole thing. There is no substantial likelihood, according to them, that the rebels are better than Gaddafi—which is not to say that Gaddafi is a good guy, on the contrary, the fear is that the rebels are even worse than him.

Are they too pessimistic? Perhaps yes, perhaps no, it depends on too many variables—what do we really know about these rebels? Well, that’s the problem, at least in my humble opinion—but I would like to be optimistic, that’s for sure…

Be it as it may, what is certain is that Berlusconi will now have to calm tensions with his key Northern League coalition partner which has threatened to make the government collapse if Italy conducts lethal attacks on Libya.