By Sudha Ramachandran 

Asia Times

Over a quarter century after his book The Satanic Verses was banned in India, author Salman Rushdie is in the eye of a political storm here again.

An array of political parties and organizations are calling on the government not to grant a visa for Rushdie, who is due to participate in a literary festival in Jaipur that begins later this week.

“The Indian government should cancel his visa as Rushdie had annoyed the religious sentiments of Muslims in the past,” Darul Uloom Deoband, vice chancellor Maulana Abul Qasim Nomani, said last week. The Darul Uloom Deoband is India’s foremost Islamic seminary. It is based in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, where it has some following among Muslims.

Nomani was referring to the alleged blasphemous content of The Satanic Verses, which caused anger and outrage among Muslims worldwide, prompting Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayotollah Ruhollah Khomeini to issue a fatwa (edict) against Rushdie in February 1989. That fatwa forced the British-based novelist into hiding.

Fearing Muslim protests, India was the first country to ban the book, in February 1988, even before it became controversial. It

Although the fatwa on Rushdie was lifted in 1998 and the intensity of Muslim outrage worldwide has subsided somewhat, any honoring of the author kicks off a furor, as happened when he was knighted by Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II in 2007.

Rushdie, an Indian-born British citizen, has made several private visits to India, including one to Jaipur to attend the 2007 literary festival. None of these visits kicked up protests in the country.

The topic that Rushdie will speak at the upcoming Jaipur event is “Inglish, Amlish, Hinglish: The chutnification of English” – not a topic that would irk devout Muslims.

So why the fuss now?

Rushdie’s visit to India coincides with elections to five state assemblies in the country, most importantly in Uttar Pradesh. The largest state in India, Uttar Pradesh is also politically the most crucial.

The electoral battle in Uttar Pradesh is a multi-cornered one and the contest is close. Winning the Muslim vote is crucial as Muslims account for roughly 18% of the state’s population. In around 70 assembly seats Muslims constitute about 20% of the population and in another 36 they are between 30% and 45% of the population. Muslims will therefore determine the outcome in roughly 130 of the 403 electoral constituencies that are up for grabs in the state.

Several parties are therefore desperately wooing the Muslims. The Muslim vote is expected to be split this time between three parties – the Congress, the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party.

The raking up of the Rushdie controversy must be seen in this context. Parties are hoping to tap into Muslim anger by demanding the author’s visa be denied.

Several parties including the Samajwadi Party and the Congress’ ally the Rashtriya Lok Dal have fallen over each other to echo the Deoband seminary’s demand. Even the Hindu right wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has hopped on to the anti-Rushdie bandwagon. Its minority cell has demanded that Rushdie be kept out of the country.

The Darul Uloom Deoband is generally seen to be politically aligned with the Congress. But its call has put the party in a dilemma. Not responding to “Muslim sentiment” could antagonize the group, but bowing to the Deoband’s demand would leave it open to charges from other parties like the BJP that it is appeasing Muslims. Since Rushdie is an international figure, preventing him from coming to a literary event would certainly draw global flak.

The imam of Idgah in Lucknow, Maulana Khalid Rasheed Firangimahli, is among several clerics who have threatened the Congress with consequences. “Muslims have a genuine grudge against Rushdie and the Congress should heed our demand. Else, it may pay a heavy price in the coming assembly elections,” he warned.

There are organizations in other parts of the country that are adding fuel to the fire. The Mumbai-based Raza Academy, which has a following among Sunni Muslims, has offered a reward of 100,000 rupees (US$2,000) to anyone who throws a slipper at Rushdie, and is offering would-be assailants the promise of legal aid.

All eyes are on the Congress now. It heads India’s ruling coalition but has been out of power in Uttar Pradesh for a long time and is desperate to do well in the upcoming poll. The party’s units in Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan (where Jaipur is located) – it is in power in Rajasthan – are demanding that Rushdie not be allowed into the country.

Although the Congress claims to be secular, since the 1970s it has repeatedly acted in support of Muslim conservatism. It may be recalled that the ban on The Satanic Verses was imposed by a Congress government under prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. It was the same government that caved in to pressure from Muslim conservatives to enact legislation overturning a Supreme Court ruling that provided for maintenance money for Muslim women.

Yet on the issue of the Rushdie visit, the Congress is unlikely to prevent him from entering the country. For one thing, Rushdie does not need a visa.

The Indian-born author holds a Person of Indian Origin card which entitles him to visit this country without a visa. He is not required to apply to any authority of the government of India seeking permission for his proposed visit to Jaipur. “Those objecting to Rushdie’s visit could take up their complaints with the competent authority or the courts,” Federal Law Minister Salman Khursheed said.

Moreover, the Congress party has other tricks up its sleeve to woo the Muslim vote. An influential section within the Uttar Pradesh unit of the party is of the view that Muslim youth in the state, whom the Congress is courting, are not overly agitated over Rushdie. Their concerns are more basic – jobs, education, etc. And the party is seeking to draw them with promises on those issues.

On the eve of the announcement of election dates in the five states, the federal government passed a 4.5 % sub-quota for religious minorities within the 27% quota for Other Backward Classes. At an election rally at Farukhabad, Khursheed, who is also Minority Affairs Minister and heads the Congress’ election manifesto committee in Uttar Pradesh, went further, promising 9% of seats for minorities – read Muslims – within the other backward classes (OBC) quota if the Congress comes to power in Uttar Pradesh.

Not to be outdone, the Samajwadi Party has promised Muslims an 18% quota.

On the Rushdie issue, the Congress would be relieved if the author himself elects to stay away from India. Media reports suggest that the organizers of the festival are under pressure to persuade Rushdie not to come.

Meanwhile, Muslim organizations are planning and preparing for mass protests in Jaipur on January 20, the first day of the literary festival.

Rushdie was to attend the festival’s first session that day, “Midnight’s Child” (a reference to his novel set at the dawn of independence). That session has reportedly been shifted to January 24.

Suspense over Rushdie’s part in the festival is mounting. While Rushdie’s name figures in the list of speakers on the festival website, there is no mention of him in the daily program schedules.

It is believed that his participation will be “low-key”. He is expected to take part in the “Writers’ Ball”, an event that is exclusive and restricted to writers. Ordinary fans of Rushdie will not be able to meet or hear the author, thanks to needless controversy created by a handful of rabble-rousing organizations.

Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in Bangalore. 

January 09, 2012 – Jonathan Benson

http://www.naturalnews.com/ 

The nation of India is currently embroiled in a massive scandal involving the use of taxpayer dollars to fund research into genetically-modified organisms (GMO). The Coalition for a GM-Free India (CGMFI) is demanding an immediate end to public sector funding of GMO research after the Indian government and several research institutions were caught using Monsanto’s genetic traits in supposedly “indigenous” GM crops.

From all sides, India, the world’s ninth largest economy, has been continually bombarded by foreign interests pushing it to adopt GMO technologies. The World Bank, for example, set the stage for the hijacking of India’s agricultural system back in the late 1990s when it forced the country to globalize its seed economy. More recently, Monsanto and other key players in biotechnology have repeatedly pushed Indian farmers to adopt GMO technologies by lying to them about its alleged, but unfounded, agricultural benefits

Rather than fully capitulate to this political pressure, India decided to develop its own publicly-funded GMO research arm that would be tasked with developing indigenous GMOs not connected to any multinational corporation. But now it turns out that this program is a failure as well, as these so-called indigenous GMOs were exposed as containing patented Monsanto traits.

“The current fiasco proves once again that the Indian scientific community is not averse to scientific frauds, misleading the nation and the people,” said CGMFI. “We do not need this (GMO) technology force-fed to our farmers and consumers, we have sufficient workable and viable solutions for the agrarian crisis. We demand that the government and public sector institutions work on these solutions rather than fraudulently promote GM technology.”

CGMFI refers, of course, to methods that have already been proven to safely and effectively improve agriculture, such as non-GM hybridization, and various chemical- and pesticide-free crop management practices like crop rotation and polyculture. GMO crops have never been proven to improve crop yields, and have actually been shown time and time again to increasing reliance upon and use of toxic herbicides and pesticides

“All of this is ultimately experimentation happening at the expense of hapless Indian farmers and this is unconscionable,” added CGMFI about government-funded biotechnology research. “These scarce and valuable resources should be utilized for taking proven, safe, farmer-controlled technologies to the farmers.”

Sources for this article include:

http://gmwatch.eu/latest-listing/1-news-items/13579-stop-all-gm-research-in-the-public-sector

http://www.naturalnews.com/030913_Monsanto_suicides.html

http://www.naturalnews.com/033368_farmers_Monsanto.html

B. Raman - S.A.A.G

As President Obama nears the end of his first term and gets ready to seek a second term, he has sought to give a new focus to the US foreign policy towards Asia.  

2. This new focus is marked by two characteristics.  Firstly, an open and uninhibited expression of US concerns over China’s ever-increasing economic and military capabilities and its far from transparent intentions. Secondly, an open expression of the US determination to maintain and strengthen  its capabilities in the Asia-Pacific region in order to safeguard the strategic interests of not only the US, but also other like-minded countries which share the US concerns over China’s capabilities and intentions. Prominent among such like-minded countries are Japan, South Korea, Australia, the Philippines, Vietnam and India. 

3. While the first three years of Obama’s first term were marked by preoccupation with the threats emanating to the security of the US Homeland from the Af-Pak region and from the global terrorists operating from that region, the coming years of the Obama Presidency will be marked by a new preoccupation with likely  threats to the US economic, commercial and other strategic interests from the increasing capabilities and intentions of China and to the critical infrastructure —civilian as well as military– in the US Homeland from the well-concealed Chinese cyber war capabilities. 

4. The US does not anticipate a conventional war with China, but it does fear a major threat from China to its naval primacy in the Pacific and the Indian Ocean regions and to its commercial interests in the region marked by the passage of nearly US $ 1.2 trillion of its foreign trade every year through the South China Sea. The US also fears a major threat to its critical infrastructure in the US Homeland as well as overseas from the Chinese cyber war capabilities. 

5. The US nervousness is increased by the fact that while considerable information is available on China’s modernisation and expansion of its conventional, nuclear and space-related capabilities, very little information is available on China’s cyber war capabilities. Till recently, fears over likely threats to US nationals and interests from the attempts of Al Qaeda-led global terrorists to acquire weapons of mass destruction capabilities remained an important driving force of the US strategic doctrine. Since the beginning of last year, there are indications that fears over likely threats to the US critical infrastructure, in times of peace and war, from China’s cyber war capabilities have become an important driving force of the US strategic doctrine relating to the Asia-Pacific region. 

6. Since May last year, there have been reliable reports in sections of the US media about the examination of the outlines of a cyber war doctrine to meet the new needs of the expanding threat scenario. A significant element of the cyber war doctrine reportedly under contemplation is making explicit the US determination to use its military forces in response to a cyber attack if the gravity of the attack crosses a certain threshold. These reports of a cyber war doctrine under evolution and the recent decisions of the Obama Administration to maintain and strengthen its military capabilities in the Asia-Pacific region are meant to convey a carefully-disguised cautionary to China to behave itself not only in the high seas, but also in the cyber space. The US is determined to prevent China from acquiring an asymmetric advantage in cyber space by threatening China with a military response   against targets in its territory to neutralise its cyber war capabilities should it become necessary. 

7. The Pentagon’s strategic defence guidance document titled “Sustaining US Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense” released at a press conference attended by Obama on January 5,2012, says as follows: “Over the long term, China’s emergence as a regional power will have the potential to affect the U.S. economy  and our security in a variety of ways. Our two countries have a strong stake in peace and stability in East Asia and an interest in building a cooperative bilateral relationship. However, the growth of China’s military power must be accompanied by greater clarity of its strategic intentions in order to avoid causing friction in the region. The United States will continue to make the necessary investments to ensure that we maintain regional access and the ability to operate freely in keeping with our treaty obligations and with international law.  Working closely with our network of allies and partners, we will continue to promote a rules-based international order that ensures underlying stability and encourages the peaceful rise of new powers, economic dynamism, and constructive defense cooperation.” 

8. The focus in the Pentagon document released to the media is on China’s non-cyber capabilities, but there are reports that the US is equally concerned—if not more—over China’s cyber warfare capabilities and intentions.  

9. The US is still keen on strengthening a co-operative convergence with China to restore the health of the global economy, to deal with problems relating to climate and environment and to de-nuclearise Iran and North Korea. Nuclear non- proliferation will continue to be an important US foreign policy objective. For this, it needs the co-operation of China. At the same time, there are growing concerns in Washington DC that the USA’s benign strategic intentions and objectives might not be matched by equally benign Chinese intentions and objectives. It would, therefore, be necessary to reinforce the US presence and capabilities in the Asia-Pacific region. 

10. This objective is sought to be achieved by a unilateral revamp of the US presence and capabilities and through co-operation with other like-minded and equally concerned countries without giving an impression of an attempt to promote a new alliance to contain China. What the new Pentagon document talks of is not a new alliance, but a network of US allies and partners. Though not explicitly stated, the US obviously views Japan, South Korea and Australia as allies in this network and India, Vietnam, the Philippines and possibly other ASEAN countries as partners. These unilateral and multilateral efforts will be projected in the months to come not as an attempt to contain China, but as an exercise to bring China into the mainstream of Asian peace and security. 

11. The US is interested in India playing an activist role in this new exercise for a network of allies and partners, but does India reciprocate this interest? The answer to this is not clear. India has already been playing an activist role in relation to its strategic co-operation with Myanmar, Vietnam, Japan and South Korea. It has also been increasing its strategic co-operation with Singapore and Australia. Its relations with the US have improved in the fields of counter-terrorism and maritime security. But India is still inclined to view these relationships as without any linkages or networking which could trigger off alarm in Beijing. 

12. India and the other Asian countries with which India has established a one-to-one strategic partnership share the openly expressed US concerns over China’s capabilities, intentions and objectives, but they are not prepared to say so openly. They would want to promote a policy of mutual consultations and assistance in security matters, but not in a manner that could alarm China. 

13. India has its own unique concerns relating to China arising from the failure of the India-China border talks to make any progress and the growing strategic co-operation between China and Pakistan. It has to evolve its own strategy for dealing with China in a manner that would not make these two issues more complex and complicated than they are now. What would be in India’s interest is not a networked relationship, but a mutually assisted and reinforced relationship on a one-to-one basis with a gradually expanding basket of issues that could promote a strategic convergence. 

14. Two such issues in the Indo-US strategic basket relate to counter-terrorism and maritime security. The time has come to add cyber security not only against non-State actors, but also against common States of concern to this basket. China’s undetermined cyber warfare capabilities could pose as much of a threat to India as they do to the US. The time has also come for the US and Indian Navies to think of a graduated surge in their navy-to-navy co-operation by way of training, joint exercises, exchanges of visits, intelligence liaison etc.  source

(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com Twitter : @SORBONNE75) 

Germany betraying Britain – again

Gerald Flurry

On Dec. 9, 2011, British Prime Minister David Cameron shocked the world when he vetoed a Franco-German plan to fix Europe’s debt crisis.

Standing before a room full of European leaders determined to amend EU treaties to cede more power to the EU, Mr. Cameron defended British interests. “What is on offer is not in Britain’s interest, so I didn’t agree to it,” he stated flatly. “We will not be presenting this new treaty, when it’s agreed, to our parliament. It will not involve Britain.”

It is hard to overstate the significance of this event.

Many say that Dec. 9, 2011, will go down as the day Britain left the European Union!

There’s something misleading about that statement. Most of the media will tell you that Britain abandoned the EU. In fact, just the opposite happened. For years, the EU, under German leadership, has been taking power away from its member states, including Britain. If Britain agreed to the plan outlined on December 9, it basically would have had to hand control of its finances over to European leaders. By refusing the plan, Britain was simply protecting its fiscal sovereignty.

In other words, Europe created this conflict!

Why would it do that? Because it wants to push Britain out of the European Union!

What does this mean to you? This event is going to plague Britain for years to come—as well as America! Yes, it will hurt the United States far more than you can imagine. America’s financial troubles are about to get far worse.

A Tipping Point

The Guardian’s European editor, Ian Traynor, wrote this: “When the dust settles, Friday December 9 may be seen as a watershed, the beginning of the end for Britain in Europe. But more than that—the emergence for the first time of a cold new Europe in which Germany is the undisputed, preeminent powerimposing a decade of austerity on the eurozone as the price for its propping up the currency” (emphasis added throughout).

I will say that date absolutely will be seen as a watershed!

“For the first time in the history of the EU, the Germans are now in charge,” said Charles Grant, who directs a think tank called the Center for European Reform.

Germany is in charge, and everyone can see that now. This is the most authoritative step Germany has ever taken.

Did you know that we have been prophesying this very event for some 70 years? It is, in fact, prophesied in your Bible! And believe it or not, it is going to lead directly into the worst trouble this Earth has ever experienced!

The Bible prophesies that “ten kings” are going to unite themselves in Europe as the Holy Roman Empire (Revelation 17:12-13). Events today are moving quickly to fulfill that pivotal prophecy!

The EU is not a democratic union. Germany has gained so much strength today that it won’t have to worry about persuading people to join that 10-nation configuration: It can demand that they do! It is gaining that much financial and economic power—and also rapidly growing in military power. Germany has established real authority.

We have reached a tipping point that will begin to move events in Europe faster than ever. Britain was the real instrument in stopping Hitler in World War ii, at least in the beginning. It has been the biggest obstacle slowing Europe from moving forward with its plans. Getting Britain out of the way is like moving a boulder off the highway: Now Germany can move at lightning speed!

The idea that Britain decided to pull out of the EU is a big deceit. It was pushed into a situation where it was forced out. This has been plotted and planned for years.

What Herbert Armstrong Said

The prophecies in the Bible are sure. It was because of those prophecies that Herbert W. Armstrong foretold—decades in advance—exactly what we are seeing today!

Here is what he wrote in 1956—55 years ago. This is phenomenal! Speaking about the uniting of European nations, he wrote, “We Americans, with the British, gave them the idea. We’ve tried to organize the European nations together against Russia. They are going to unite against us! … The Germans are coming back from the destruction of World War ii in breathtaking manner. Germany is the economic and military heart of Europe. Probably Germany will lead and dominate the coming United States of Europe.

“But Britain will be no part of it!”

How did he know that? How do you explain that? Fifty-five years ago, he said not only that this European Union would come together and that Germany would dominate, but also that Britain would be ousted! Today it is being splashed across the headlines of news media around the world.

That ought to capture our attention. How could Mr. Armstrong possibly know? Because he understood Bible prophecy. This is what Scripture said would happen. It isn’t something you have to guess about: You can absolutely know.

The Bible is a coded book, and the only way we can decode it is to get help from God. One third of the Bible is prophecy, and 90 percent of it is for this end time. That prophecy is being fulfilled faster now than ever before!

In recent times, America and Britain have been friends to the Germans. But Mr. Armstrong said those European nations, led by Germany, would unite against our nations. That is about to happen!

The United States allied with Britain to provide the real power to conquer the Germans in World Wars i and ii. Today, both America and Britain aredrowning in debt. America has the most debt of any nation in history, and it seems people have no clue how deadly dangerous that is. Meanwhile, Germany has never been stronger financially and economically! Its power is destined to grow, and that will seriously impair America and Britain.

Understand: I am not putting the Germans down. The German people are a great people, and Bible prophecies explain that they will achieve marvelous things in the World Tomorrow, when Jesus Christ rules as King of kings.

However, if you look at the Germans’ past, the reality is that they have been the deadliest warring people in history! Even in recent times, they started both world wars. And prophecy says the worst is yet to come.

Double Cross

After defeating Germany in World War ii, America and Britain helped to build it back into a power. They helped it to reach where it is today.

This makes what Germany just did to Britain all the more heinous. Pushing the British out of the EU was a blatant double cross. Germany has a historyof double-crossing people. As Winston Churchill said, the Germans were very prone to betray their supposed friends and surprise and shock them by some sudden act. Prophecy reveals that they are going to double-cross America as well.

The Prophet Ezekiel foretold these events—and the good news he reveals is that all the suffering that is about to come from this, in the end, is going to help the whole world come to know God!

As I prove in my booklet Ezekiel—The End-Time Prophet (request a free copy), Ezekiel’s prophecy is only for this end time. Ezekiel wrote it when he was a prisoner; he couldn’t deliver the message. We must deliver it today, or he lived his life in vain.

Ezekiel 23 contains a prophecy about two women who committed immoral acts. Verse 4 reveals that these women, Aholah and Aholibah, represent Samaria and Jerusalem. This is an end-time prophecy, so who are Samaria (which represented the 10 tribes of Israel, anciently) and Jerusalem (which represented the ancient nation of Judah) today?

Prophetically, Aholah refers to the modern nations descended from Israel—primarily America and Britain—and Aholibah refers to the descendants of Judah, which today is the Jewish nation in the Middle East.

Verse 5 reads, “And Aholah played the harlot when she was mine; and she doted on her lovers, on the Assyrians her neighbours.”

Who are the Assyrians in end-time prophecy?

The Assyrians

Consider this: Virtually every historian draws attention to the war-like nature of the Assyrian people. James McCabe, author of History of the World, says the Assyrians were a “fierce, treacherous race, delighting in the dangers of the chase and in war. The Assyrian troops were notably among the most formidable of ancient warriors …. They never kept faith when it was to their interest to break treaties, and were regarded with suspicion by their neighbors in consequence of this characteristic …. In organization and equipment of their troops, and in their system of attack and defense and their method of reducing fortified places, the Assyrians manifested a superiority to the nations by which they were surrounded.”

Dr. Herman Hoeh, historian and author of Compendium of World History,wrote, “Ancient Assyria was the greatest war-making power in all history” (Plain Truth, January 1963).

James Hastings wrote, “The Assyrians of historic times were more robust, warlike, ‘fierce,’ than the mild industrial Babylonians. … The whole organization of the state was essentially military” (“Assyria and Babylonia,”Dictionary of the Bible).

Leonard Cottrell, in The Anvil of Civilization, made this amazing statement: “In all the annals of human conquest, it is difficult to find any people more dedicated to bloodshed and slaughter than the Assyrians. Their ferocity and cruelty have few parallels save in modern times.” It’s interesting that Cottrell can only compare their ferocity with those “in modern times.”

Only one nation has stood out that way in modern times, and that is Germany. That is obviously what he is referring to here.

The Assyrians in prophecy are the modern-day Germans. As Herbert Armstrong wrote, “Today the descendants of those Assyrians are known to us as the German people” (The United States and Britain in Prophecy). You can see more proof of this truth in our October/November 2010 edition. It is extremely important for you to prove to yourself if you are to truly understand what is happening in Europe!

The warlike nature of the ancient Assyrians is clearly visible in that of the German people in modern times.

“Not a single neighbor of the Germans,” wrote Emil Ludwig in 1941, “could ever trust the Germans to remain peaceable. No matter how happy their condition, their restless passion would urge them on to ever more extreme demands” (The Germans: Double History of a Nation). You could certainly see that trait on display before World War ii, when nations made several concessions to the Germans to try to appease them, yet Hitler always wanted more.

After World War ii, many voices warned about the dangers in rebuilding war-ravaged Germany. The April 1952 edition of the Plain Truth contained this headline: “Does America Dare Arm Germany?” The article said, “Our leading generals in Europe have adamantly warned that Germany is a calculated risk.” Still, our nations went ahead and built it back up. Through the Marshall Plan, we poured millions and millions of dollars into Germany.

There were even voices of warning once a unified Europe began to build.

Notice this remarkable statement from Herbert W. Armstrong in March 1973, writing about when Britain joined the European Community: “Britain is going to look back on Monday, Jan. 1, 1973, in all probability, as a most tragically historic date—a date fraught with ominous potentialities! For that date marked the United Kingdom’s entry into the European Community.”

In 1995, as the European project was gaining steam, Margaret Thatcher said this: “You have not anchored Germany to Europe,” which was the plan behind European unification. “You have anchored Europe to a newly dominant, unified Germany. In the end, my friends, you’ll find it will not work.” Mrs. Thatcher was absolutely correct!

Remember

Return now to Ezekiel’s prophecy. Verses 6-8 of chapter 23 go into greater detail about what is happening today: an illicit love affair between America, Britain and Germany!

America and Britain have convinced themselves that they have a wonderful friendship with the Germans. But is it true? If you see what just happened to Britain, you know it is not true!

Verse 9 reveals the terrifying outcome of this immoral relationship: “Wherefore I have delivered her [Aholah, representing America and Britain]into the hand of her lovers, into the hand of the Assyrians [Germany], upon whom she doted.”

In a small way, this has already happened to Britain. But you watch as this prophecy is fulfilled completely: It is about to get far, far worse.

In 1953, Mr. Armstrong wrote about the unifying of this European power, and concluded with the statement, “Definitely Britain will not be in it.” The reason he knew that is because Britain is going to be a victim of it!

In his 1978 book The Incredible Human Potential, Mr. Armstrong said again, “Britain will not be in that empire soon to come.” When he wroteMystery of the Ages in 1985, he repeated that statement.

In a co-worker letter dated June 10, 1980—nine years before the Berlin Wall fell—here is what he wrote, “It now looks entirely feasible that Yugoslavia may be included in this revived Roman empire. Also the pope’s native Poland and Romania, and possibly Hungary. Add Austria, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal and France. There will be a union of ten nations in the general area of the medieval Roman Empire in the new united Europe. Probably Holland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden will not be included. But Ireland may. Britain will not!”

An astounding statement! Mr. Armstrong could never have made such statements if he didn’t understand biblical prophecy.

The Bible is God’s Word. The living God prophesied all that, and He is bringing it to pass just like He said He would, in intricate detail! This is a warning from God to all of us—primarily America and Britain.

Verse 17 talks about the Babylonians. That is speaking of a modern-dayBabylon, which is actually a resurrection of the old Holy Roman Empire!

Watch the news out of Europe. Notice that the European Central Bank is now being run by a Jesuit-trained Roman Catholic, Mario Draghi. He is authoritatively implementing very strict fiscal policies among eurozone states. Notice that at the very summit in Brussels at which Britain was muscled out of Europe, leaders received news that Pope Benedict xvi was “praying to the Virgin Mary for the sake of Italy and Europe” (Economist, Dec. 9, 2011). Keep an eye on the headlines, and you will see more and more evidence of the Vatican and Germany working together. The Bible foretold it, and we have been warning about it for years: the emergence yet again of that church-state combine called the Holy Roman Empire.

Read Deuteronomy 28:49-52, which warns of God bringing a destructive nation against modern Israel. It says of this power, “he shall besiege thee in all thy gates.” That is talking about a trading blockade. It’s about finances and the economy. Somebody is going to damage America and Britain financially! Britain would absolutely starve to death shortly if it didn’t get its exports out and its imports in. The U.S. is going to suffer deeply as well.

“Britain will not be in that empire now building in Europe,” we wrote in the July 2004 Trumpet. “And when those headlines flash across the pages of newspapers worldwide proclaiming Britain’s exit from an otherwise united Europe, remember that one man and where you read it first.”

Remember what Herbert W. Armstrong said 50, 60, even 70 years ago! When you see those headlines—and they are right there to see—remember who told you that! He thundered that message for all those years, telling us everything that was coming. And we have continued to proclaim the same message.

Will you heed these warnings?

Good News in the End

In Ezekiel 23:36, God says He wants His loyal, faithful people to go to the modern nations of Israel and declare their abominations! God is deeply upset and disgusted with the sins and immorality saturating America and Britain today!

Terrible suffering is coming. The prophecies are sure—we are watching themunfold!

And what makes that so wonderful is that, if you follow those prophecies out, they directly lead to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ!

Look how the good news, the positive outcome, begins to be revealed in verses 48-49: “Thus will I cause lewdness to cease out of the land, that all women may be taught not to do after your lewdness. And they shall recompense your lewdness upon you, and ye shall bear the sins of your idols: and ye shall know that I am the Lord God.” After all the punishment God is going to put them through, they will get to know God. In the end, all that suffering is going to bring people to get to know God! Nothing could be more important than that. It is a very difficult way to learn this lesson, but what wonderful news!

Still, how terrible that they won’t listen to God’s Word now, and turn from their sin. They have to suffer unimaginably before they will turn to God and get to know Him.

Why won’t we listen now to God’s Word, heed what He says, and let Him protect us from all of this? God will do so. He has promised it in the Bible, and He cannot lie! But we must do our part as well: We have to respond to God, and obey Him and live as He commands.

Take a good look at Europe, especially at Germany, in light of God’s prophecies. God put those warnings in Scripture for a reason: because He wants to save us from that suffering!

Go back into recent history. Realize how many millions of people in World Wars i and ii fought and bled and died in order to prevent Germany from ruling over them! Yet now, Germany rules Europe once again! What does that portend for this world? Both history and prophecy loudly cry out the answer! There is no excuse for us not knowing that!

But here is the good news. It is all a sign leading directly into the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. The Messiah is about to return to rule this world, and bring it true prosperity and peace and joy!

http://worldmonitor.wordpress.com      China’s Satellite threatens Taiwan

thetrumpet.com

Andrew Miller

A Vatican-dominated Europe is about to take radical action against the threat of radical Islam and bring the specter of the Crusades to life once again.

A  33-year-old man made international news on December 14 when he unleashed a volley of bullets and grenades into a group of bystanders near a Christmas market in Liege, Belgium. The attacker, a Belgian of Moroccan descent, killed a toddler and two teenage boys in this onslaught before killing himself. Over 120 people were wounded, some reportedly being blinded by flying shrapnel.

The motive of the attacker is still under investigation, but the Karachi Post in Pakistan reports that the attack was linked to the sentencing of an Islamic family charged with killing Sadia Sheikh over her refusal to accept an arranged marriage. If true, this motive would make the attack the latest events in a gruesome string of Islamist violence stretching across Europe.

A mob of some 20 radical Islamists recently stormed a debate being held in Amsterdam, screaming “Allah Akbar” and demanding the execution of two prominent liberal Muslim scholars. This confrontation took place just days after a group of disgruntled Muslim youths threw rocks at a man dressed as Santa Claus in the southwestern Slotervaart neighborhood of Amsterdam.

A similar rock attack took place against Roman Catholics celebrating a religious event at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of the Virgin of Santa Cruz in the southern French city of Nimes.

The Danish Islamist group Kaldet til Islam (Call to Islam) has even dispatched a 24-hour vigilante “morals police” to enforce sharia law in parts of Copenhagen. These patrols target non-Muslims caught drinking, gambling, going to night clubs or engaging in other activities deemed to be contrary to Islam.

Such violent episodes are pushing more Europeans to believe that radical action needs to be taken against the threat of Islam. Xenophobic ideas that were once characteristic only of fascist radicals are now working themselves into the mainstream of European politics.

On the morning of June 4, Muslim worshipers in southern Denmark found their mosque defaced with drawings of the prophet Mohammad and slogans urging Muslims to go home. A few months later, a dismembered pig was found on the construction site of a planned mosque outside of Copenhagen. Both incidents were the work of the Danish Defense League, a far-right vigilante group founded for the express purpose of taking action against Muslims in Denmark.

The Bloc Identitaire movement—with a wild pig as its logo—is now emerging as a force on the French political scene. Like the Danish Defense League, it likens Muslim immigrants to invaders threatening European civilization. The English Defense League, the Norwegian Progress Party, the Dutch Party for Freedom, the Hungarian Jobbik Party, the Austrian Freedom Party and the Italian Northern League have similar views in other parts of Europe.

Perhaps the most shocking episode highlighting the rise of anti-Islamic sentiments in Europe was the July massacre of 77 people in an effort to incite an anti-Islamic revolution by self-described Christian fundamentalist Anders Behring Breivik. In a 1,500-page online manifesto titled 2083—A European Declaration of Independence, he railed against Islamic immigration and claimed that multiculturalism was sapping Europe of its Christian heritage.

According to the Telegraph, “Breivik has already become a heroic figure for sections of the ultra far right, much in the same way Timothy McVeigh became a hero for sections of the militia movement in the United States.” Two Italian parliamentarians of Italy’s Northern League Party publiclydefended the logic behind Breivik’s Oslo massacre, even if they did distance themselves from his violence methods.

In his online manifesto, Breivik argued that Europe has to get back to its Catholic roots if it is ever going to repel the threat of Islam. “Today’s Protestant church is a joke,” he wrote. “I am a supporter of an indirect collective conversion of the Protestant church back to the Catholic. … When a just and conservative pope mounts the chair of Peter, the tide will set strongly toward Rome. We will hear of conversions on every hand.”

There is definitely a radical element in both the Catholic and Islamic faiths! Even though most of the peoples of Europe currently stand aghast at the brutal murders committed by Anders Behring Breivik and those like him, many are starting to sympathize with his ideas about the need to take radical action against the “threat of Islam.” A Vatican-dominated Europe is about to take radical action against the threat of radical Islam and bring the specter of the Crusades to life once again.

When Love of Religion Leads to Hatred of Others

STEPHEN  HOLDEN

At the heart of Oren Jacoby’s screen adaptation of James Carroll’s book “Constantine’s Sword” lies a question to which each person of faith must his find own answer. When your core beliefs conflict with church doctrine, how far should your loyalty to the church extend? The same could be asked of loyalty to a government or a political party.

Mr. Carroll, a former Roman Catholic priest and an acclaimed author whose memoir, “An American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War That Came Between Us” won a 1996 National Book Award, vehemently disagrees with the church on many issues but still embraces Catholicism. A former anti-Vietnam War activist, now in his mid-60s, he is an eloquent screen presence who conveys the same searching moral gravity that characterized other Catholic war resisters during the Vietnam era.

At once enthralling and troubling, the film, whose title has been simplified from the book’s “Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews: A History,” does about as good a job as you could hope of distilling a 750-page historical examination of religious zealotry and power into 95 swift minutes. Because the book was published several months before 9/11, the film adaptation, which was written by Mr. Jacoby and Mr. Carroll and uses the voices of Liev Schreiber, Philip Bosco, Natasha Richardson and Eli Wallach, updates the book’s pessimistic vision of how religions demonize one another to include Christian and Islamic fundamentalism as well as anti-Semitism.

What must Middle Eastern Muslims feel, Mr. Carroll wonders, when George W. Bush throws around concepts like good and evil and uses the word crusade to describe the Iraq war? Mr. Carroll worries that we may be heading toward an all-out holy war between state-supported religious extremists.

The movie begins in Colorado Springs where Mikey Weinstein, an alumnus of the United States Air Force Academy, describes the harassment of his son, Casey, a Jewish cadet, by evangelical Christians who over several days blanketed the student cafeteria with fliers promoting the Mel Gibson film “The Passion of the Christ.” There is no doubt in his mind that the film promoted an inflammatory view of Jews as Christ killers. He sued the Air Force, but the case never made it to trial.

Aggressively arguing the evangelicals’ right to proselytize is Ted Haggard, the former pastor of the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, who was filmed for this movie before his fall from grace in a scandal involving a former male prostitute. Fiery-eyed and grinning maniacally, Mr. Haggard suggests a Paul Lynde caricature of a fire-and-brimstone preacher. The evangelical fervor in Colorado Springs is the somewhat tenuous topical hook on which the movie’s exploration of religion and power is hung.

Woven into the film is Mr. Carroll’s family history. Born Irish Catholic, he is the son of a former F.B.I. agent who became a three-star general and an enthusiastic prosecutor of the Vietnam War. When Mr. Carroll was a boy, his family had a private audience with the pope, and he recalls his feelings of awe. Years later he became an ardent opponent of the Vietnam War. His estrangement from his father began when, shortly after becoming a priest, he referred to napalm in a sermon.

The movie then dives into the distant past for Mr. Carroll’s alternative, shadow history of the Catholic Church. He dates the notion of Christian militancy to the early fourth century, when the future emperor Constantine I, on the eve of a battle for control of the Roman Empire, had a vision of the cross in the sky inscribed with words promising that under its sign he would conquer. After the battle, in which he led a victorious army wielding a sword in the shape of a cross, he legalized Christianity and the cross, previously a minor symbol, became synonymous with Christian might.

He traces the origins of Christian anti-Semitism to Constantine’s birthplace in Trier, Germany, where Crusaders sailing down the Rhine systematically destroyed Jewish communities, which the pope refused to protect unless the people converted. Centuries later Trier was the site of an agreement between the Catholic Church and Hitler, negotiated with the future Pope Pius XII, whose later refusal to speak out during the Holocaust Mr. Carroll considers to be a great shame of the church.

In the most moving segment Ms. Richardson is heard reading a letter written in 1933 to Pope Pius XI by Edith Stein urging him to speak out against Nazi persecution of the Jews. A Jewish convert to Catholicism and a Carmelite nun, Stein died in Auschwitz in 1942. The letter, which went unanswered, was made public in 2003, five years after she was canonized.

Above and beyond criticizing the church’s refusal to stand up to Hitler, “Constantine’s Sword” is a cri de coeur about the abuse of religion when aligned with the state. Jesus, “the prince of peace,” Mr. Carroll insists, was not an intolerant warmonger.

“If you think of religion as a great lake,” he warns, “it’s a lake of gasoline, and all it’s going to take is someone to drop a match into it for a terrible conflagration.”  Continued @ movies.nytimes.com/2008/04/18/movies/18swor.html

Also Read >>:  Religious Tolerance 

HOW U.S. BOTCHED Chances to Stop Him

November 22, 2011 – PROPUBLICA

- Sebatian Rotella

This story was co-published with PBS FRONTLINE

During a meeting overseas last summer, a senior U.S. official and Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the chief of Pakistan’s armed forces, discussed a threat that has strained the troubled U.S.-Pakistani relationship since the 2008 Mumbai attacks: the Lashkar-i-Taiba militant group.

The senior U.S. official expressed concern that Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, a terrorist chief arrested for the brutal attacks in India, was still directing Lashkar operations while in custody, according to a U.S. government memo viewed by ProPublica. Gen. Kayani responded that Pakistan’s spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), had told prison authorities to better control Lakhvi’s access to the outside world, the memo says. But Kayani rejected a U.S. request that authorities take away the cell phone Lakhvi was using in jail, according to the memo to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the National Security Council.

The meeting was emblematic of the lack of progress three years after Lashkar and the ISI allegedly teamed up to kill 166 people in Mumbai, the most sophisticated and spectacular terror strike since the September 11 attacks. The U.S. government filed unprecedented charges against an ISI officer in the deaths of six Americans. Yet, Pakistani authorities have not arrested him or other accused masterminds. The failure to crack down on the jailed Lakhvi, whose trial has stalled, raises fears of new attacks on India and the West, counterterror officials say.

“Lakhvi is still the military chief of Lashkar,” a U.S. counterterror official said in an interview. “He is in custody but has not been replaced. And he still has access and ability to be the military chief. Don’t assume a Western view of what custody is.”

In the United States, stubborn questions persist about the case’s star witness, David Coleman Headley, a confessed Lashkar operative and ISI spy. The Pakistani-American’s testimony at a trial in Chicago this year revealed the ISI’s role in the Mumbai attacks and a plot against Denmark. It was the strongest public evidence to date of ISI complicity in terrorism.

But the trial shed little light on Headley’s past as a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration informant and the failure of U.S. agencies to pursue repeated warnings over seven years that could have stopped his lethal odyssey sooner — and perhaps prevented the Mumbai attack.

U.S. officials say Headley simply slipped through the cracks. If that is true, his story is a trail of bureaucratic dysfunction. But if his ties to the U.S. government were more extensive than disclosed — as widely believed in India — an operative may have gone rogue with tragic results. Both scenarios reveal the kind of breakdowns that the government has spent billions to correct since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Obama administration has not discussed results of an internal review of the case conducted last year, or disclosed whether any officials have been held accountable.

During an interview in Delhi, former Indian Home Secretary G.K. Pillai asserted that U.S. authorities know more about Headley than they have publicly stated. Several senior Indian security officials said they believe that U.S. warnings provided to India before the Mumbai attacks came partly from knowledge of Headley’s activities. They believe he remained a U.S. operative.

“David Coleman Headley, in my opinion, was a double agent,” said Pillai, who served in the top security post until this past summer. “He was working for both the U.S. and for Lashkar and the ISI.”

The CIA, FBI and DEA deny such allegations.

File photos of Mumbai’s Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in November, 2004 (bottom) and on November 26, 2008 (top) as fire engulfs the top floor after a shootout with terrorists. (AFP PHOTO / PAL PILLAI (top) | AFP PHOTO/Getty Images/SEBASTIAN D’SOUZA (bottom))

An investigation by ProPublica and FRONTLINE during the past year did not find proof that Headley was working as a U.S. agent at the time of the attacks. But it did reveal new contradictions between the official version of events, Headley’s sworn testimony and detailed accounts of officials and others involved in the case. The reporting also turned up previously undisclosed opportunities for U.S. agencies to identify Headley as a terrorist threat, and new details about already-reported warnings.

U.S. and foreign officials say his role as an informant or ex-informant helped him elude detection as he was training in Pakistani terror camps and traveling back and forth to Mumbai to scout targets. And three counterterror sources say U.S. agencies learned enough about him to glean fragments of intelligence that contributed to the warnings to India about a developing plot against Mumbai.

In contrast, some U.S. officials say spotting a threat is harder than it seems. Glimmers of advance knowledge are part of the landscape of terrorism. In cases such as the Sept. 11 attacks and the 2004 Madrid train bombings, security forces had detected some of the suspects but not their plots.

“I just have to dispel some of these notions,” said Philip Mudd, a former top national security official at the FBI. “We look at a grain of sand and say … ‘why couldn’t you put together the whole conspiracy when you saw that grain of sand?’ Well, you got to reverse it. Every day coming into a threat brief, you’re not looking at a grain of sand and building a beach. You’re looking at a beach and trying to find a grain of sand.”

New information about the case comes partly from the DEA. After months of silence, DEA officials recently granted an interview with a ProPublica reporter and went over a timeline based on records about their former informant. The DEA officials said Headley’s relationship with the anti-drug agency was more limited than has been widely described.

The DEA officially deactivated Headley as a confidential source on March 27, 2002, according to a senior DEA official. That was weeks after he began training in Lashkar terror camps in Pakistan and six years before the Mumbai attacks. The senior official denied assertions that Headley had worked for the DEA in Pakistan while he trained with Lashkar in 2002 and beyond.

“The DEA did not send David Coleman Headley to Pakistan for the purpose of collecting post-9/11 information on terrorism or drugs,” the senior DEA official said.

The denial adds another version to a murky story. Officials at other U.S. agencies say Headley remained a DEA operative in some capacity until as late as 2005. Headley has testified that he did not stop working for the DEA until September 2002, when he had done two stints in the Lashkar camps.

Some U.S. officials and others involved say the government ended Headley’s probation for a drug conviction three years early in November 2001 to shift him from anti-drug work to gathering intelligence in Pakistan. They say the DEA discussed him with other agencies as a potential asset because of his links to Pakistan — including a supposed high-ranking relative in the ISI.

A senior European counterterror official who has investigated Headley in recent years thinks the American became an intelligence operative focused on terrorism.

“I don’t feel we got the whole story about Headley as an informant from the Americans,” the official said. “I think he was a drug informant and also some other kind of an informant.”

The transition from registered law enforcement source to secret counterterrorism operative would help explain the contradictory versions. But the duration and nature of intelligence work by Headley, if it was done, remain unknown.

Federal prosecutors and investigators declined to be interviewed on the record for this story. Pakistani officials, who also refused to be interviewed, have said they have cracked down on Lashkar and have denied that the ISI was involved in the Mumbai attacks.

Nonetheless, ProPublica and FRONTLINE talked to U.S. and foreign counterterror officials and other well-informed sources while reporting in the United States, India, Pakistan and Europe. A number of those officials and sources requested anonymity for their security or because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the sensitive case.

Headley was a wildly elusive figure who juggled allegiances with militant groups and security agencies, manipulating and betraying wives, friends and allies. He played a crucial role in an attack that had resounding international repercussions. And his unprecedented confessions opened a door into the secret world of terrorism and counterterrorism in South Asia — and closer to home.

Excerpt From Chapter 1:  [link to this chapter]

David Coleman Headley is not his original name. The 51-year-old was born Daood Gilani in Washington, D.C. His father, Syed Saleem Gilani, was a renowned Pakistani broadcaster. His mother, Serrill Headley, was a free spirit from a wealthy Philadelphia family. They moved to Pakistan when he was a baby, but the parents divorced and Serrill returned alone.

A man, whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II, owned a number of large industries and estates.

When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism.  

We are told again and again by ‘experts’ and ‘talking heads’ that Islam is the religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace.

Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant.

It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the spectra of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.

The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics, who bomb, behead, murder, or honor kills. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. It is the fanatics who teach their young to kill and to become suicide bombers.

The hard quantifiable fact is that the peaceful majority, the ‘silent majority,’ is cowed and extraneous.

Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant.

China’s huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people.

The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a war mongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet.

And, who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery. Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were ‘peace loving’?

History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points: Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence.

Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don’t speak up, because like my friend from Germany, they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.

Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late.

As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts; the fanatics who threaten our way of life.

Emanuel Tanay, M.D.

—————- RELATED STORIES ——————–

- Jessica Montgomery,West Virginia U.

Religious tolerance is an issue that has been brought to my attention in recent weeks.

It all started a few weeks ago when I was talking to a few younger girls at the horse stables.

They couldn’t have been older than 14 years old. For one reason or another, I mentioned the fact that I am a Buddhist. Their reactions, I can honestly say, made my head spin.

One girl asked me how it was possible that I did not believe in God.

Another asked me how exactly I planned to re-route my supposed trip to Hell.

The questions went on, each being more preposterous than the next. I asked if they believed in evolution.

One of the girls remarked, “Do you honestly believe we came from monkeys? Science is just here to test our faith.” Another girl chimed in and informed me that in Bible school they learned that Charles Darwin admitted “making up” evolution on his deathbed. And right now, I really wish I were making this up.

I am all for freedom of religion. In fact, lay it on thick. Those girls could possibly be right about the whole thing, but that was not the issue.

What I find disturbing about the aforementioned situation, however, is that today’s youth should be learning how to think critically and be open-minded.

Instead, in places where we should see children learning to embrace diversity of thought, we see religious indoctrination that will undoubtedly lead to intolerance and conflict. See the Middle East for examples.

If anyone has seen the 2006 documentary, “Jesus Camp,” they should be well aware of the religious indoctrination of this country’s youth.

In this documentary, pastor Becky Fisher attempts to train children into what she calls “God’s Army.” She likens her camp to Islamic extremist camps, and expresses her wish to see children in this country radically laying down their lives for the Gospel just as children are in countries such as Pakistan and Palestine. Why? Because Pastor Fisher exclaims, “We have the truth.”

In the United States, we are assured freedom of religion. But when children are brought up in environments where they are constantly and incessantly preached to about the need to form “God’s Army,” are they really free from religion?

I find no harm in bringing up a child to hold a certain faith. However, in the interests of forming a productive and successful generation of future leaders, children should be brought up learning tolerance of other ideologies.

It is sad to see what our world has come to. If one were to examine all major world religions, one would find that although the details may differ, the message is the same – be a good person. Although many religions define “good” in different ways, it isn’t hard to find the commonalities.

For example, killing is looked down upon in most religions. If religions would just stop bickering over the details of their theology and embrace the parallels that most of them hold, everyone would be better off.

I am not insisting that any one religion is any better or worse than any other. Certainly all religions have their positive and negative points.

Furthermore, one can pick out extremists in every religion.

When children are brought up in closed-minded environments where they are taught that their set of beliefs are the only ones that can possibly be true, it is sure to cause problems in the future.

All the Islamic suicide bombers in the world wouldn’t be able to convince Christian zealots to embrace Allah. Conversely, all the Jesus Camp pastors in the world wouldn’t be able to convince Islamic radicals to convert to Christianity.

It is counterproductive for people to try and impose their own religious faiths on others. Instead, people of all religions should work together to help solve the problems that exist in the world today as opposed to creating more.

http://media.www.bgnews.com/media/storage/paper883/news/2007/04/13/Opinion/Religious.Tolerance.Not.Conversion.Is.The.Answer-2839430-page2.shtml

Related stories:

Dinesh D’Souza’s Christianity @ http://www.thehumanist.org/humanist/Dinesh.html

In God they trust? @ http://www.telegraphindia.com/1080508/jsp/opinion/story_9238299.jsp

Ten Commandments @ http://atheism.about.com/od/tencommandments/a/commandment01.htm?nl=1

Chimney calling Kettle black @ http://www.ivarta.com/columns/OL_060523.htm

by Edward Hamala

In response to the letter by Roger Williams captioned “The Rig Veda does refer to caste” (07.07.23) I thought I might share a few points with your readers.

The Indian “caste system” that has so outraged Mr. Roger Williams, makes me wonder if he is equally outraged by the British “caste system” that is even more prevalent, although it is well hidden and “invisible” in the British and some European societies, where the nobility still exist, than it is in India today, where all noble titles have been abolished.

I would like to ask Mr. Williams when objecting to birthrights why has he failed to raise the same objection to the British Nobility and the Landed Gentry’s birthright, inheriting their title, social status while they are also guaranteed perpetual political power by inheriting a peer-ship and a seat in the British House of Lords, the highest legislative body of the land?

Few of us believe the existence of a truly egalitarian society in the west today or anywhere for that matter!When was the last time that Mr. Williams had a drink at the local pub with Lord Spencer? Or had tea with Prince Phillip?

Did you know that the English nobility are distinctly noticeable by their education and grooming in institutions such as Wetherby, Ludgrove, and Eton or the Royal Academy at Sandhurst? They even speak a different language, the King’s English, free from colloquialism and dialects distinctly separating them, and distinguishing them from ordinary commoners, as soon as they open their mouths. May I also remind you that the Indian Social Structure as it was depicted in the Vedas Millenniums ago, made it an edict to leave Tribals and Adivasis alone and not to impose Hindu religion, culture or values on them.The word “caste” my friend is an English word! The Sanskrit word for “caste” is “Varna” and it means vocation or occupation and does not mean “caste” as it does in the English interpretation or translation of the term!Likewise, “untouchable” meant not to go near them, don’t touch them, don’t intermarry with them and don’t corrupt their culture don’t try to conform them. Leave them alone!The unfortunate thing was that Mahatma Gandhi was also British educated, trained as a lawyer and had little or no knowledge about the ancient Vedic philosophy, history or culture. What little Gandhi knew about Vedic philosophy was mostly thought to him by Vinoba Bhave, an avid freedom fighter, a devoted supporter of the Mahatma who was a Hindu monk and a highly educated Brahman who among other things spoke 14 languages.It was Vinoba Bhave who connected Gandhi’s political views with Vedic values and philosophy that gained such a wide appeal and the support of the Indian masses. If Gandhi would have had a better grasp of Vedic Philosophy he would have been able to counter many of these British myths and instead of being an apologist he could have challenged and defeated the British, the most classist society, at their own game.Let me ask you, Mr. Williams, what modern country that you know of today still have primitive tribals living undisturbed, “uncivilized” and untouched by their society living around them? As they do in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands of India? Did you know that these islands are off limits to all Indian citizens, to protect these tribals?Is it done to discriminate against the tribals as “untouchables” or is it done to protect them?The State of Assam, was a similar tribal area until it got overran by zealous Christian Missionaries that have destroyed their social fibre and their culture.

This, Mr. Williams, has established an interesting value system in India, alien to the west! The most valuable asset was not money or power as it is today in the western value system! It was knowledge and wisdom that took decades to learn and a life time to acquire! And it was the society’s duty to support the Brahmans to afford their study providing food, clothing and shelter to them.

I am sure Mr. Williams is familiar with the existence of the “unwashed” wretched underclass in Dickens’s Britain or Victor Hugo’s France as it did exist in most of Europe……… Well, such a thing did not exist in India and these facts are well documented by historians all the way back to Alexander the Great’s visit to India and was minutely recorded by Greek Historians such as Arrian, Diodorus, Plutarch and Strabo, accompanying Alexander. One thing these historians also commented on, was the absence of slavery that was an integral part of Hellenic culture!

Today, most Indians are alienated and mostly ignorant about their culture, the Vedas and their history, and few understand the Vedic philosophy or its teachings or the highly advanced science it encompasses. They know little else about Hinduism, besides the ritualistic traditions. This Vedic social structure was put in place at the time when in the rest of the world slavery was rampant and pivotal to every European Empire!

Don’t forget slavery was widely practiced in the United States until the Civil War to the 1860’s and desegregation only started in the 1960’s and the prejudices still exist until today.

So I think, Mr. Williams your indignation is somewhat ill placed and perhaps it would serve a better purpose if you dealt with more dire social issues that you may be more knowledgeable about, and better qualified to deal with. http://hinduamerica.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=206&Itemid=9

1) Europe’s Civilising Mission @ http://www.neurope.eu/articles/87642.php

3 Invading the SACRED @ http://worldmonitor.wordpress.com/2007/08/13/invading-the-sacred/