Archive for March 10th, 2009
Power: Not a Point of View
Posted by: adonis49 on: March 10, 2009
Power: Not a Point of View (March 9, 2009)
Iran is planning to build 20 atomic power sites to generate electricity.
Russia has aided finishing the first power station for a cost exceeding one billion dollars. Iran is not only the fourth exporter of oil but has also huge reserves in oil and gas. And yet, Iran spends enormous amount of hard cash money to import oil products and gasoline from overseas refineries.
The Iranians are building a second atomic power generator, almost alone and strong with the expertise they acquired. The Iranian officials said that oil is a precious commodity that should not be wasted to generating dirty power.
The developed nations have oil reserves but prefer to purchase oil at a reduced price in order to save their oil resources for their chemical and pharmaceutical industries for later generations. (Actually, chemical industries rely almost exclusively on oil products.)
The Arab Gulf States have established “sovereign funds” for the next generations but they all have vanished during the latest economic and financial recession. What is left are highways and built stones.
I am exaggerating on purpose. This piece is meant to be a wake-up call. It is time to invest of the human potentials, social institutions, and political reforms.
Lebanon used to export electricity to Syria and Jordan in the 30’s during the French mandate. Presently, and 80 years later, and 65 years after its “independence”, Lebanon import electricity from Syria, Jordan, and Egypt. The populations of all these States have quadrupled in 80 years while Lebanon barely doubled, due to massive immigration, and we could not even double our power production.
Our neighboring States have reached sort of power sufficiency and exporting surplus electricity to Lebanon. Lebanon has plenty of water and rivers but we failed to invest properly on our natural resources and hydraulic potentials.
Not only we have not enough electricity, and none of it is hydraulically generated, but we have no running water. We receive water twice a week for a few hours and we have to filtrate and purify what we receive.
The Lebanese family has to pay twice for electrical power and for water by supplementing their needs from the scalpers of private providers. The main culprits are those “Christian” Maronite political parties who claimed that the power of Lebanon resides in its military weakness. Implicitly, those sectarian political parties meant that Lebanon should not challenge the dicta of Israel regarding our planning of our water resources.
Mind you that Israel purpose is to divert all our rivers toward its own Zionist State.
Electricity is a kind of power and oil and gas are essentials for locomotion and mechanization and industries. Nevertheless, nations are judged developed according to the level of their research institutions.
You might start the “egg or chicken” priority of security and stability first, but this is not the case. When States invest on almost everything except knowledge base and research institutions, then you should not hope for stability and security.
Developed nations respect States that focus their energies and resources on knowledge, literacy, and technologies and are willing to protect them from neighboring bullies.
Developed nations respect States that generate highly educated and well trained citizens regardless of size, origin, and natural resources.
Power is the level and quality of education, an education targeting the needs of the population and neighboring markets.
Power is no longer a point of view.
I like this Girl
Posted by: adonis49 on: March 10, 2009
A Happy Meal (March 10, 2009)
This girl, I love. I like to give her pleasure. I feel like inviting her for lunch. I love to sit by her and look at her profile.
She said: “All right, but we go to MacDonald. It has been so long…” She craves nuggets dipped in ketchup.
If our relationship last, I will teach her many other things, many other kinds of fine meals. I won’t argue now: I know how girls are; they are just promising.
Along the way, I compliment her shoes. “Don’t tell me that’s the first time you noticed them. I got them in Christmas” she replied. I then compliment her socks. She berates my stupidity. She is the most beautiful girl on the street.
I feel a surge of disgust as I enter MacDonald. The women are ugly and fat people stays in line.
This girl is gently holding my hand and her little finger caresses the inside of my palm. My heart is in turmoil.
She changes her mind several times before settling for nuggets and a caramel sundae. I pick up the trays and she preceeds me and selects a quiet corner.
“You prefer a smoking section, don’t you? Yes, I do. know” she said.
Faces turn on her passage; she does not even notice them. She sits and slowly unties her scarf. She nods her head trice before I can see her slim neck. I am standing and waiting for her to invite me to sit down.
“Why don’t you sit down?” she said. I say: “I was looking at you”
“You will look at me later. The food is getting cold”. I said “You are right”
“I am always right” she said. She is right almost always.
She elegantly opens her magic box of nuggets. I contemplate her hands and fingers. She has a fresh coat of paints on her nails. She arranged her blonde hair with tiny “barrettes”. I can’t help but think that she has gone into so much trouble just for me. She dips her nuggets methodically in the ketchup. I said “You really like that?” “Yes, I love them a lot. They taste good” she said
She does not talk much but I am accustomed to her habits.
All sorts of people fascinate her. As she is engaged at looking around I take advantage studying the details of her beauty. I love the shape of her eye lashes, her tiny nose, and the lobes of her ears and then she noticed that I was scrutinizing her face.
She eats the tiny crunches of peanuts on her sundae and the caramel but does not touch the ice cream. I tell her to get a refill of caramel but she refuses saying “I know they won’t” I am thinking what we are to do next? Where shall I take her? Will she give me her hand? She wants to know where we might spend summer vacation. The best I can do is figuring out where to take her next after lunch.
She folds her napkin before cleaning her mouth. She smooths her skirt and readjust the collar of her shirt. She takes her bags and nudged her head to me in the direction where I should dump the plates. I open the door for her. She ties her scarf and takes her hair out of her jacket. She decided to take my arms.
This girl, I love. She is mine. She is seven of age.
Note: An abridged and slightly edited translation from French by the author Anna Gavalda. This story could have applied in its mechanics to the behavior of one of my nieces with minor modifications.
Rituals of Human Sacrifices
Posted by: adonis49 on: March 10, 2009
Rituals of Human Sacrifices, (March 10, 2009)
One of my lately recurring dreams is that a secret association (cultist sect), constituted of elites and former leaders of the superpower Nations, is planning to stage a yearly “ritual of human sacrifices“.
The sacrificial humans are selected from samples in the 6 continents in order to stave off the forecasted calamities.
The very few Primitive tribes, even now, and every year, launched their warriors to cut off heads of their enemies as sacrifice for better harvest. (I wish one of the conditions was that the bodies of the enemies were to be eaten so that the sick, elderly, disgusting looking, and dying enemies would be saved)
Rituals of human sacrifices are as old as history.
These rituals were practiced in almost all ancient civilizations, before man settled in towns and managed to plan ahead of time for basic necessities.
Most of these rituals were of the slow-death kinds of sacrifices, meant to generate profits, like during carnivals.
The sacerdotal castes, in every religion, instituted religious sex trades and enticed little virgins, by myths and by pressure, to sell their services in temples.
Most of these victims were to die prematurely, mostly of sexually transmitted diseases, after their youth had no value.
During the early Babylonian Empire, sexual diseases were diagnosed as transacted by “concubine priestesses“. I am not hot in theology or for the study of theology. I still have this distinct impression that among all prophets, or messiahs, or messengers, or predicators, Jesus is the unique one who fought the good fight against sacrifices in all shapes and forms, including animal sacrifices, that were practiced by the Jews.
Jesus’ disciples were well rooted in the Judaic customs and traditions and could not accept the new religion dissociated from the Judaic laws. They tried hard to force circumcision among the ‘gentiles” Christians, which is fundamentally a sacrificial ceremony of part of our body to “our creator” before a complementary health excuse was attached to it.
Only Saint Paul comprehended Jesus’ message and the need to remove the heavy burdens of daily laws, which govern and enslave the life of believers and rob them of happiness and hope.
Unfortunately, the Prophet Muhammad was very impressed by the customs and traditions of the early Christian-Jews sects, practiced around Damascus and he adopted the sacrificial ceremonies of animals.
Even today, there is this custom among most religious sects that, when even a third level leader visits a town or a village, for no important reason, the municipalities feel that it is appropriate to slaughter sheep in public and on the path of the “personality” coming to town. A totally disgusting and depressing custom that makes me believe that Jesus is already dead in the East.
Timorlank, the Turkish Central Asian conqueror from 1350 to1405, ransacked the prosperous city of Isfahan in Iran. This brutal commander divided his armies into sections of the city, with a quota of heads chopped off allocated to each soldier.
Since Timorlank and his army were recent converted Moslems, many soldiers were not into personally killing their coreligionists. Instead, they bought heads from other non scrupulous soldiers for 20 dinars the head in order to come up with the daily quota.
Soon, the men vanished from the city, but the soldiers were not instructed to kill women or children. Consequently, women were made to be shaved and then decapitated. The price per head dropped to only one dinar and the business was no longer worth pursuing and the city of Isfahan was salvaged after 70,000 of its citizens perished and the heads mounted on 45 minarets of human sculls.
The multinationals are performing live sacrifices on billion of people every day in slave shops and slave exploitation of all kinds, with the blessing of their superpower government… Those million of people dying of hunger and of curable diseases are the modern-day sacrificial entities on the alter of the less than 1% richest elite in every nation…
This Century of Islam
Posted by: adonis49 on: March 10, 2009
The Century of Islam, (March 11, 2009)
The 20th century was the communist century, particularly of the Soviet Union and China, as the nemesis for the liberal and capitalist world.
The 21st century was predicted to be the century of Liberal Capitalist America after the fall of the Berlin Wall: “Liberal capitalism” was advancing globalization and the free flow of capitals to national markets by international financial companies. The prediction of the end of “History” and the implementation of US-type of “democracy”quickly ended with the worst financial crisis of all time (2008), and the emergence of many players in world economics and politics.
After the September 9, 2001 Twin Towers attack, supposedly planned by al Qaeda, the Bush Jr. Administration spewed his venom for a decade on Islam, as the major enemy to democracy and a stable world order.
This century is showing the definite characteristics that it is of Islam.
The superpowers have targeted Islam to be the main nemesis for stable world order:
The superpowers need to create a focused enemy for its people.
Before I broach on current events and realities, a little history is in point. Islam was the world civilization for over 9 centuries. Three centuries of Eastern Arab Empire that was first located in Damascus and then in Baghdad. The Arab/Islam Empire shifted its center of gravity in the next two centuries to the west or the Maghreb Empire, and particularly in Spain or Andalusia.
Two centuries of Islamic domination were marshaled by the Ottoman Moslem Empire in Turkey in the 16th and 17th centuries; another two centuries of the Moslem Mogul Empire in India, and one century of the Islamic Safavid Empire in Iran in the 18th century.
These civilizations waned after Portugal and Spain circumnavigated the Oceans to bypass Egypt for direct trade with India and Far East Asia. In fact, the various Crusaders campaigns failed because they could not conquer Egypt, where the major trade routes intersected before reaching Europe, the main target and purpose of the crusaders financial backers. Christian Europe owes it to the Moslem Empires to be saved from the multitudes of invasions originated in Mongolia and Central Asia by the Mogul and Tatar hordes.
After the Indonesian dictator Suharto died, his successor Bahr el Din Habibi invested over one billion dollars to develop a small civilian airplane. The “Financial Times” mocked the new President for investing on airplanes that can be purchased with much higher quality and performance. The West was purposely belittling what they perceived as the new challenges coming from the largest Moslem Nation in matter of knowledge and technology. Habibi meant to build new generations of Moslems that can manufacture instead of being simple consumers. Habibi said “Money comes and goes. Human brains can be purchased but how can we secure loyalty to a nation and to citizens?”
The Ottoman Empire was later weakened by relying too heavily on its mercenaries the “Inkisharia” (soldiers raised from foreign slaves), the Arab Empire was destroyed from the interior by relying on foreign mercenaries.
Pakistan had to build the first Moslem atomic bomb in order to challenge India’s bomb. As Zhu Fikar Ali Bhutto said “we will have to build the atomic bomb even if we end up eating grass”. Actually, Bhutto was overthrown and put to death because he challenged the West for building the bomb.
Iran is facing constant pressure from the West for manufacturing its own arms, munitions, missiles, atomic power generators, and space satellites.
India has more Moslems than Pakistan, Indonesia, and Egypt combined. The middle classes of Indian Moslems and Chinese Moslems are nearly as large as the total USA population.
Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, and Nigeria are almost continents of their own in size and populations and they are acting and behaving as self-sufficient nations.
The West has to start trading knowledge and technologies without any pre-conditions if it seeks peace, security, stability, and prosperity. War is a losing option for both parties and no one can hope to emerge winner anyway
I have mentioned in several articles that the five nations in the UN with veto power are negotiating to partition Sudan for its huge raw materials, oil reserves, and water resources. This adventure is doomed to fail unless they negotiate a fair deal with the people in Sudan and the most populous Moslem nations in Africa such as Egypt, Nigeria, and Kenya in Africa.
Note 1: The “Arab Spring” revolts against dictators and absolute monarchies have set the tone for democratic systems in the Arabic States. The major underlying factor for this mass indignity is the realization that western governments encouraged dictator and absolute monarchy regimes for an entire century in order to maintaining the “Moslem” people subjugated and unable to grow and develop.
Note 2: Sudan had a referendum for partition, but it does not seem that problems will vanish any time soon in Sudan: The exploitation of oil and mineral resources will resume unabated, and turmoil in north and south Sudan will be enhanced even further.
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