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This is a series of well reasoned and historically accurate observations by learned or respected journalists on why and how the world has gone wrong. Like most such articles, largely from the Guardian, they excite in me, at first, the feeling "Oh at last someone understands!" but as I read on I become more and more depressed because they don't offer solutions, just analysis. Perhaps the biggest problem they expose is the "two sides to every coin" conundrum of life. No matter what the issue a thoughtful person can always find at least two ways of looking at it. I explore this in detail in my reflections section in Humans or Demons? You will see there a way out of the conundrum. The algebra of infinite justiceAs the US prepares to wage a new kind of war, Arundhati Roy challenges the instinct for vengeance in the Guardian Saturday September 29, 2001 This is an article which has made many Americans and others world-wide sit up and think. Like most articles I have collated here it is keenly observed yet... Yet it leaves us dissatisfied because it doesn't observe quite far enough. It isn't able to observe that science has found a field of complete unity underlying all the phenomena of existence and that this unified field is available for practical use in daily life. Practical use to bring harmony, peace and progress to the whole world. It uses history to help people understand why the attacks took place. Yet it doesn't know enough history to understand that a solution to terrorism and international strife has been demonstrated many times over the last twenty years. It also makes at least one telling mistake:
My emphasis. The point is that the ancient Vedic technologies as revived and systematised by Maharishi will both rid the world of evildoers and stock it with saints. Further, for anyone to suggest, as Arundhati Roy does, that the way out of terrorism and international strife is anything other than the development of individual life towards that of saintliness is living in a dreamland. It is sad that an Indian writer, based in the home of the Vedic technologies that have been proven to both eliminate terrorism and to create saints, should make such a shortsighted statement. That said, the article is clearly a classic and should be read by all, here. [As a complete aside: when I first read the article I was expecting, from the title, some background to the historical value of Islamic and Arabic cultures, algebra itself being an Arabic word. I was disappointed.] Threat of US strikes passed to Taliban weeks before NY attackJonathan Steele, Ewen MacAskill, Richard Norton-Taylor and Ed Harriman write in the Guardian Saturday September 22 2001 "Osama bin Laden and the Taliban received threats of possible American military strikes against them two months before the terrorist assaults on New York and Washington, which were allegedly masterminded by the Saudi-born fundamentalist." full article... My fragile hopeRabbi Tony Bayfield writes in the Guardian Saturday September 15, 2001 "... The western world calls one of the great historical conflicts the crusades, describing the battle between Christendom and Islam. This battle lasted for many centuries, and an overwhelming majority of the Jewish world became its hapless victims. The crusades brought death to many European Jews, infidels who were slaughtered on the way to taking on the infidels in the Holy Land. They heralded an enclosure and isolation of Jews. They disrupted Jewish life that had survived in the Holy Land and ended the golden age that Jews had enjoyed under Muslim rule in Spain..." full article... The need for dissentGeorge Monbiot writes in the Guardian Tuesday September 18, 2001 "If Osama bin Laden did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. For the past four years, his name has been invoked whenever a US president has sought to increase the defence budget or wriggle out of arms control treaties. He has been used to justify even President Bush's missile defence programme, though neither he nor his associates are known to possess anything approaching ballistic missile technology. Now he has become the personification of evil required to launch a crusade for good: the face behind the faceless terror..." full article... Blowback chroniclesGiles Foden in the Guardian Saturday September 15, 2001 Giles Foden reviews four books each looking at different aspects of the murky deals that fuelled international terrorism. Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism (Pluto Press, £12.99), the definitive account by ABC journalist John Cooley Jihad: The Secret War in Afghanistan (Mainstream, £7.99), by ex-SAS soldier Tom Carew Ghost Force: The Secret History of the SAS (Orion, £7.99) by Ken Connor The New Jackals: Ramzi Yousef, Osama bin Laden and the Future of Terrorism (Deutsch, £17.99) by Simon Reeve Giles Foden writes "Oil itself has long been a factor in the 'great game' of Asian geopolitics, one which brings the other big player in the blowback scenario, Russia, into the picture." In Reaping the Whirlwind: The Taliban Movement in Afghanistan (Pluto, £19.95) Afghan expert Michael Griffin says: "A trans-Afghan pipeline would undermine Russia's control of energy prices from Central Asia". full article... |
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