Moral Volcano is the (now abandoned) web log of V. Subhash. It was started when the HUMOUR section of Virtual V. Subhash (www.vsubhash.com) started overflowing. The name Moral Volcano is from the short story Journalism in Tennessee written by the American writer Mark Twain.
Moral Volcano is not a real volcano; just the name for this website. This site has absolutely no information on morals or volcanoes. You need to improve your search skills. Select this link to find information about real volcanoes. If you were looking for ideas for a class project, then try How To Build a Volcano at About.com. For stories with a moral, visit the site maintained by Srinivas Padmanabhuni. Bye-bye.
MORAL VOLCANO IS UNSAFE FOR CHILDREN AND PREGNANT WOMEN. ADULTS MAY EXPERIENCE DISCOMFORT WHEN READING MORAL VOLCANO. SYMPTOMATIC TREATMENT IS RECOMMENDED.
Any good search engine will bring you here if you type in "moral volcano".
Think George W. is bad? Wait till you read about his father!
Inheritance of Nazi fortunes, financial scandals, coups, assassinations, links to drug trade, and coverups; - all make the former CIA Director and later U.S. Vice President and President George Bush Sr. an unmatchable piece of work.
Buy this book from Amazon.com .
Or, read the free online version at www.tarpley.net
In Jerzy Kosinski's novel Being There, a middle-aged man called Chance Gardener, who has the mental age and development of a six-year-old, goes on to become the President of United States with the help of a few powerful friends while he himself is blissfully unaware of the situation. Peter Sellers chose this novel to make his final film (his masterpiece). Both the novel and the movie were released years before George W. came to the White House. Read my review here.
Gobbledegook! All the time he talked gobbledegook! An' it's for sure a White man's world in America. Hell, I raised that boy since he was the size of a pissant an' I'll say right now he never learned to read an' write - no sir! Had no brains at all, was stuffed with rice puddin' between the ears! Short-changed by the Lord and dumb as a jackass an' look at him now! Yes, sir - all you gotta be is white in America an' you get whatever you want! Just listen to that boy - gobbledegook!
Guess Who Came
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Head For The Exit!A Nut Has Brought
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In 1983, Donald Rumsfeld went to Baghdad as Ronald Reagan's special envoy and met Saddam Hussein, despite evidence that Iraq possessed chemical weapons and had used it on civilians in Iraq and on soldiers in Iran. After his return, Rumsfeld successfully lobbied for financial and military aid for Iraq's war with Iran. Chemical and biological intermediaries and labs were provided by the US to Iraq. Other western countries followed suit. Predictably, Saddam used the weapons in the Kurdish north. In one instance, a set of Hughes helicopters provided by Ronald Reagan was used in a chemical attack that left 5000 dead in a Kurdish village called Halabja. Following this, the US Senate passed a Prevention of Genocide Act, which would have imposed sanctions on the Hussein regime but the Reagan White House blocked it.
Between 1983 and 1988, Saddam used chemical weapons 195 times against Iran killing about 50,000 of their soldiers. In 1987, an Iraqi Exocet missile hit an American destroyer, the USS Stark, in the Persian Gulf killing 37 crewmen. Incredibly, the United States excused Iraq for making an unintentional mistake and instead used the incident to accuse Iran of escalating the war in the gulf. The American tilt to Iraq then became more pronounced. U.S. commandos began blowing up Iranian oil platforms and attacking Iranian patrol boats. In 1988, an American warship in the gulf shot down an Iranian Airbus killing 290 civilians. Within a few weeks, Iran, fearing American intervention, gave up its war with Iraq.
George Bush Sr., as Vice President and later as President, used a number of covert and overt schemes to help with Baghdad's WMD programme. Strangely enough, Israel was one of the countries that helped in the transshipment of banned weapons. Saddam was so encouraged by this level of support that he thought he could get away with an invasion Kuwait. Sam Gejdenson, chairperson of a subcommittee in the US Congress investigating US exports to Iraq, disclosed that between 1985 and 1990 the US government approved 771 licenses for the export to Iraq of $1.5 billion worth of biological agents and high-tech equipment used for military applications.
To build the case for the war against Iraq, the Bush administration used the anthrax scare to frighten lawmakers into submission. The US Secretary of State Colin Powell, accompanied by CIA Directory George Tenet, even gave an anthrax demo in the UN Security Council. Interestingly, the anthrax found in Capitol Hill was found to be the same grade as those in the stocks of the US military.
US envoy Bill Richardson with Taliban leaders (circa 1998). See the BBC report for that day.Taliban played host to top US officials including former US assistant secretary of state for South Asia Robin Raphel, her successor Karl Inderfurth, deputy secretary for political affairs Thomas Pickering, and the then-US ambassador to the UN, Bill Richardson. Within hours of Taliban's capture of Kabul, Washington moved quickly to announce that it would establish diplomatic relations with the Taliban government. However, the rash statement was quickly retracted. Afghanistan continued to be officially represented at the UN by the defunct government headed by Banruddin Rabbani and the Taliban greatly resented this. Robin Raphael went to the UN to lobby the international community to ignore the extremist threat posed by the Taliban and recognise the government headed by the group. Contrary to popular belief, Afghanistan has significant oil and gas deposits. During the Soviets' decade-long occupation of Afghanistan, Moscow estimated Afghanistan's proven and probable natural gas reserves at around five trillion cubic feet and production reached 275 million cubic feet per day in the mid-1970s. Nonstop war since has prevent further exploitation, but that soon changes. According to the Houston Chronicle, the country may also have as much copper as Chile, the world's largest producer, and significant deposits of coal, emeralds, tungsten, lead, zinc, uranium ore and more. |
In 1989, the former Soviet Union was forced to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan after fighting a prolonged guerilla war with the Mujahideen. The Mujahideen grew opium, which was then marketed in Europe and North America. Law enforcement agencies in these countries also turned a blind eye to the trafficking business. Proceeds from the trade were then used to buy weapons for the Mujahideen. The Russians left behind a government headed by the former intelligence chief Najibullah. The breakup of the Soviet Union made Najibullah's position weaker and he offered to step down in March 1992. This news triggered a wave of defections by Uzbek and Tajik militias, which were allied to his government. In April 1992, a prominent Mujahideen commander Ahmed Shah Masood (Lion of Panjshir valley) moved into Kabul. Najibullah then took refuge in the UN compound in Kabul. Between 1992 and 1996, Afghanistan was in semi-anarchy, as the country was carved into individual fiefdoms by the warlords.
In 1996, Unocal of the U.S. and Delta Oil of Saudi Arabia became interested in mineral wealth of Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. The ideal route to bring oil from the Caspian sea and gas from the Daulatabad gas field (in Turkmenistan) would have been via Iran. Because of US policy of isolating Iran, Unocal and Delta oil thought of building a pipeline via Afghanistan.
Unfortunately for them, Afghanistan did not have a strong regime in place, which could guarantee security for the pipeline. For this purpose, Pakistan created the Taliban with funds from Saudi Arabia and UAE. They took into their rolls thousands of Pasthuns who had enrolled in madrasas adjoining Afghanistan. Because these men had never taken part in war, they were secretly trained and led by officers from the Pakistani army. Arms and ammunition including tanks, howitzers, and other military vehicles were provided Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. In 1996, The Taliban crossed the border into Afghanistan. Initially, they were dismissed as a joke but in September 1996, they had captured Kabul. (Also, see Amnesty International reports on Taleban atrocities.)
However, the Taliban could not occupy all of Afghanistan. (They did occupy 90% of it at one time.) At one point when the Taliban was overstretched and the Northern Alliance was poised to attack, the Clinton administration despatched UN envoy Bill Richardson and Assistant Secretary of State Karl Inderfurth to Afghanistan to broker a ceasefire and an arms embargo. While the Northern Alliance was being bamboozled, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan sent several planeloads of arms and ammunition to Kabul and managed to fully rearm the Taliban. Soon after, the ceasefire failed. This was six months before the US embassies in Africa were attacked and two months after al-Qaeda issued a declaration of jihad to "kill the Americans and their allies - civilian and military."
In 1998, the Al-Qaeda attacked U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Despite this, money continued to flow. Both the Clinton and the Bush administrations gave hundreds of millions of dollars to the Taliban under the guise of aid. As late as July 2001, Christina Rocca, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, met Taliban officials in Islamabad and announced $43 million in food and shelter aid, bringing to $124 million the U.S. contribution for that year alone. The U.S. government did not insist on knowing how the money was spent and the flow of dollars did not stop until the attacks on the World Trade Center occurred. It is quite possible that that American taxpayers' money was used to finance the attacks.
To save serious embarassment to the Bush administration, the U.S. media, led by the New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek and others, has created a notion that the Taliban fought Soviet forces in Afghanistan by tracing its origins to the Mujahideen. The truth however is that the Taliban was not in existence at that time. Taliban was created to fight the Mujahideen, not the Soviets. For more, read CIA and a Blowback World by Tom Engelhardt and Chalmers Johnson.
Interviewer: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?
Brzezinski: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
Interviewer: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?
Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
Interviewer: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentlaism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?
Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
After Libya revealed that it had sourced components and technology for its clandestine nuclear weapons program from a worldwide network of nuclear arms dealers, Dr. A. Q. Khan, the father of the Islamic nuclear bomb, was named as one of the prime movers in this network. On February 4, 2004, Khan confessed on Pakistan's national television that he had hawked Pakistan's nuclear weapons secrets to other countries and begged forgiveness. With American blessings, Gen. Musharraf wasted no time in granting a pardon for Khan. Gen. Mush also claimed that Mr. Khan acted alone and that no one else was involved in the transfer of the technology, which went to Iran, North Korea and Libya.
No action will be taken on Libya because the Bush administration has shown interest in oil wealth of the country. With the exception of Iraq, Libya is the only OPEC country with spare oil capacity. The two Libyan intelligence officials who were suspects in the Lockerbie bombing are under house arrest and not in prison.
Curiosly, a BBC Scotland news report says that a former Scottish police chief had come forward with the information that the key evidence in the Lockerbie bombing trial was fabricated and planted by the CIA. In another bizzare happening, the Amsterdam court that had tried Khan in absentia has claimed that it has "lost" the Khan case files. Before coming back to Pakistan, Khan worked as an engineer in the Netherlands at Urenco, an uranium enrichment plant in the 1970s from where he is suspected of stealing nuclear secrets.
As revealed by former premiers Benazir Bhutto and Nawas Sharif, the Pakistani military establishment including President Musharraf are part of the nuclear trade. North Korea made shipments of missile components to Pakistan in exchange for shipments of wheat from Pakistan. Similarly, China had made shipments of ring magnets and other nuclear eqiupment to Pakistan. But illegal trade in nuclear and missile technology and components is not limited to the Third world. During the Clinton years, US aerospace companies (Loral/Hughes) provided China with technologies that were originally banned for export. The clandestine Israeli nuclear weapons programme was aided by voluntary/involuntary transfer of men, material, and technology from the U.S., Britain, and several other European countries.
The prediction that when Nazism goes to America it will be wrapped in an American flag has become a reality. Nazis believed that if you kept on repeating the same lies again and again, the masses would eventually accept them as truth. Yet again, the Nazis have been proved right. The American people have accepted blatant falsehoods as the truth not because they have been presented with some really great evidence but because they have been repeatedly lied to. And the campaign by faux journalism and the resultant faux news is not limited to the U.S. It is being applied all over the world where phoney revolutions have been staged to put phoney democrats in power. From Lebanon to Ukraine to East Timor, falsehoods have won. The strategy may seem to have failed in Brazil, Venezuela and Bolivia but the setbacks are only temporary. In important countries like Mexico, elections are conducted by private American companies and the electoral rolls are also maintained by them. As there is no paper trail, it is easy to fix the elections.
American diplomats decide who should win elections in Eastern Europe and Third World countries. Western consultants manage everything on the ground - from running opinion/exit polls (so they can claim election fraud) to training volunteers, journalists, and more importantly "pro-democracy protestors" (vital for any regime change that does not involve the U.S. military). Billions of dollars of U.S. government funds are pouring into the coffers of opposition parties and local non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Their mandate is simple - bring down the current dispensation and put pro-Western stooges in power.
Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) such as Freedom House (run by billionaire George Soros) play an important role in all this. If U.S. media claims are to be believed, Soros is a philanthropist who "promotes democracy movements" in Eastern Europe. However, funds for these activities come from the American government - mainly from USAID (United States Aid for International Development). Perusing the USAID Yellowbook for 2001, one will be surprised to note that one of the many Ukraine contracts received by Freedom House is worth almost $2 billion. This is interesting because, among other things, USAID even refuses funds for AIDS treatment in Africa. Reason for this anomaly becomes clear if one reads USAID's mandate - to promote U.S. "stategic interests" worldwide.
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Apart from USAID, a wide range of semi-government and non-governmental institutions are involved to promote U.S. strategic interests - National Democratic Institute (NDI) of the Democratic Party, International Republican Institute (IRI) of the Republican Party, U.S. billionaire George Soros' outfits Open Society and Freedom House. The role of intelligence agencies and diplomatic corps requires no mention. The role of the media is curiousy naieve.
Politicians who have take money are identified as "liberals," while those who have not done so are simply called "hardliners." The result is that artificially created protests are considered by the outside world as spontaneous and indigenous. History then gets replaced by the faux news.
American officials openly ask the U.S. Congress for money to "promote democracy" in other countries. (This happens in between demands for huge budget cuts in social spending for American citizens.) No one in America seems to find it odd that democracy could be promoted with money from a foreign country. What is all the more ironical because it was an American who said democracy is by the people, for the people, and of the people.
During the Cold War, intelligence agencies were entrusted with the task of distributing money. Mark Almond, who describes himself as an old cold war swagman who carried tens of thousands of dollars to Soviet-bloc dissidents alongside much better respected academics, is nostalgic about how things have changed. In an article in Guardian he says:
Back in the 1980s, our media portrayed Prague dissidents as selfless academics who were reduced to poverty for their principles, when they were in fact receiving $600-monthly stipends. Now they sit in the front row of the new Euro-Atlantic ruling class. The dowdy do-gooder who seemed so devoted to making sure that every penny of her "charity" money got to a needy recipient is now a facilitator for investors in our old stamping grounds. The end of history was the birth of consultancy.
In many countries, it is not just the manipulation of elections; civil war is encouraged by exacerbating ethnic or religious divisions. One side is provided with with arms and ammunition and the other side is provoked into causing enormous casualities on civilians. Western government, NGOs and media then allege genocide. UN "peacekeepers" arrive, a referendum on secession is held, and a nation is born. What is not mentioned is that the new country is so weak financially that they can't even afford to open embassies in other countries. West-backed politicians who run the country prefer to listen to foreign investors than to their own people. In the end, "poor people" become more poor and less free. The application of "genocide revolutions" found great success in East Timor and is now being actively pursued in Darfur (Sudan) and several other places.
East Timorese people languish in extreme poverty because their government gets very little in revenue. The government has just one purpose - provide security to Western diplomatic corps and foreign investors (made up of solely oil companies). It has no money either for development or for providing essential services. East Timor, it must be noted, has huge reseverves of gas and oil. It could have easily become a rich country but foriegn oil companies have other plans. Australia has claimed that its maritime border extends for 85% of the 600-mile sea separating the two countries. Under international laws, the border should have been drawn halfway between the two countries, which would have given East Timor 100% of its petroleum resources including the oil-rich Greater Sunrise field. In March 2003, tiny East Timor was forced to cede 79.9 percent of the Greater Sunrise oil and gas field to big nieghbour Australia. The entire worth of the field was an estimated $50 billion.
Also, read
Back when I was in school, there was this program on TV called Race To Save The Planet. Every Sunday, it had this wonderful chick, clad in T-shirt and jeans, sitting on a tree stump with her arms around her knees, talking seriously about future climate change. Climate change? Well, it was supposed to take longer than a lifetime to notice any changes. Only future generations were going to be seriously affected. Unfortunately, climate change seems to have arrived earlier than expected. We have seen some very unprecedented floods induced by torrential floods in various parts of the country and even around the world. (circa 2005) The floods were also preceded by periods of unusually hot weather. My guess is that extreme weather conditions are going to be the norm in future but with increasing severity.
The rise in greenhouses gases in the atmosphere and the consequent rise in global temperatures was expected to cause a slow melting of the ice caps. But, scientists have noted that the area under permafrost around the Arctic circle is fast receding. When peat bogs under the permafrost gets exposed, they start releasing new amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. As this picks up momentum, global temperatures will not just rise but will attempt a high jump.
And, the transition from ice to water occurs over a few degrees. So, the ice cap will not just melt, it will break apart! Large sheets of ice will suddenly break off the North pole and swamp countries in its wake downstream. This ice will break off in such huge proportions that countries near the poles will experience doomsday-size floods that will last for several months. Worse, there will be several floods like that; some of them going on simultaneously. And, that means goodbye to countries like Canada and most of Europe. Large parts of the U.S. and Russia will also dissappear. Antartica will only melt because it is on land and does not float on water like the Arctic. Still, large portions of low-lying land in the southern hemisphere will be eaten away by the sea, leaving hundreds of millions without land under their feet.
Possible Solution: Jaime Pressly |
The treatment that our society gives to rape requires drastic change. Instead of considering rape as a form of physical assault, unnecessary emotional baggage is added to it. In our stupid feature films, if a woman is raped, she has to commit suicide. Or, worse, marry the rapist (if it is the hero guy). But real rape victims cannot commit suicide or marry the rapist! Sadly, our society places a high high value on a woman's character. Feminist propaganda does not help either. The lesbians want death sentence for rapists, making it incumbent on rapists to also kill their victims!
Women's activists portray rape as some kind of unbelievably horrible crime that is simply beyond human nature. Flawless as they are made up to be, women DO commit serious crimes! It has been reported that it is usually a woman who harrases her daughter-in-law for more dowry. Many a woman has handed over the matchbox when her son douses his wife with kerosene. And who do you think snuffs the life out newborn girl children? WOMEN!!!
And, they keep on asking when all women will be safe. It is an incredibly stupid question! Will households ever be safe from burglars? Burglaries will occur just as some marriages will end in divorces. Rapes will occur just as some murders are going to be committed. Deviancy is part of any society. It is an inescapable fact of life, unless of course your marooned on uninhabited island.
What can be done is placing necessary measures to ensure speedy justice; not just for rape but for all crimes. Instead, a fuss is created. Names are published. Photos are printed. In the end, the victim wishes she did not have to survive the trauma. Should not rape victims be able to recover from the incident like from a minor road accident? More than the actual crime itself, it is the way society receives the victim that seems to have a lasting effect.
| Trauma | Victim | Victim's Family |
| Road Accident | gets sympathy | finds social support |
| Sexual Assault | gets a stigma | loses social standing |
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Why is the U.S. very much against labelling GM food? In the U.S., we have a policy. If you have a final product that is a substantial equivalent to a conventional product, you need not have to label that it contains GMOs [genetically modified organisms] just because it is a product of GMO; it is a process involved. At the end of the day, it is considered equivalent to the conventional product and so we don't believe in labelling. On the other hand, if you have nutrient enhanced product or a product that contains allergens or toxin, then labelling is required. So we don't believe in process labelling and that is the difference between the U.S. and other countries.Same day as this interview was published in The Hindu, the newspaper's supplement Metro Plus carried the following information in Health Capsules (a syndicated American newspaper cartoon feature):
How do I know if my fish or shellfish is wild, not farm-raised? Beginning in April 2005, all retail fish and shellfish [in the U.S.] were required to be labelled farm-raised or wild-caught and with their country of origin.
A kid who hates freedom. |
"I am not even interested," said Charlie Chaplin when asked whether he was going to have his latest film shown in the U.S. Why, what was wrong? "There is nothing wrong with the American people. It is the top who decay and putrify!," Chaplin explained. Harsh words, no doubt but why? The movie A King In New York was set in New York and yet here was Chaplin (in London, circa 1956) refusing to release the movie in the United States. What made him feel so disgusted and angry? Welcome to the the land of the free.
What many people see of America is not really America; it is Hollywood. Not just foreigners, even Americans see America through the eyes of Hollywood. Take World War II. Many Americans think that it was they who saved the world! (It was actually Russia, led by like-it-or-not Stalin, which was the first to inflict a defeat on the Nazis, free a host of countries from occupation, enter Berlin and take charge of Hitler's bunker.)
Not many know that not until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, America had never entered the War on the side of Britain and France. Or, more correctly, they have absolutely no idea of the significance of this decision. Like the grandfather of George Bush, America was busy trading with Nazi Germany. Many, like Bush family patron William Farris (of Standard Oil, now Exxon), were making their fortunes off Nazi slave labour. The U.S. had also closed its gates to European Jews wanting to flee persecution; (forcing them to go to Palestine where they established Israel and have since remained in conflict with the original owners of the land and with their Arab neighbours.) Franklin Roosevelt spent much of his time assuring his nation that he would NEVER send "their children in harm's way" - certainly a poor foil alongside real heroes like Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle or even Josef Stalin. It was precisely this geographic and political isolation from the conflict, which drew people in the war zone like a magnet to the American continent.
"DO YOU WANT TO DENY YOURSELF THE RIGHT TO BE A MAN?" reads this psy-ops leaflet, dropped by Americans in Vietnam. You don't see RAMBO dropping leaflets like these! He he he! |
So, after sheep-faced Americans joined the war, films like Casablanca were released, which had Americans showing hitherto unseen courage and sparing no effort to save hapless Europeans from evil Nazis. Sure, these films helped sell a lot of "war bonds" to aid the war effort but "war films" continued to be made even after the real war was over - all of them showing Americans as the selfless saviours of the world; all of them conveniently ignoring the enormous sacrifices made by the Russians and the heavy losses made to bear on civilians in the Axis nations. During the War, American soldiers like good soldiers everywhere went about raping and pillaging when they were not busy fighting. In almost all of the war films, Americans GIs were models of good behaviour. It is this image that generations of Americans have believed in, rather than in what history books would have had to offer.
In his book Know Thine Enemy, Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA man who worked in the US consulate in Istanbul during the 1980s, provides an insight into how Freedom™ typically operates. Gerecht's job was to debrief would-be Iranian defectors:
"I'd let hundreds of desperate Iranians languish in Turkey. People who'd given me insights never found in books. I'd watched mothers with children drop to their knees and beg for my help... They didn't want money, just a little kindness, a visa out of their personal hell ... [they met] a sympathetic man waiting in a warm room full of food, coffee, tea, alcohol and cigarettes. A US official who'd politely strip them of all their memories and every corpuscle of information and then reopen the street-side door."
Rambo II, starring Sylvester Stallone, has Islamic fighters in Afghanistan portrayed as brave freedom fighters, quite in line with government policy at that time. By the time True Lies starring Arnold Schwarznegger was made, the "freedom fighters" had become "terrorists" both on screen and in the real world! Movies that romanticises military life (aiding recruitment, usually from poorer sections of the American society) such as Top Gun or Black Hawk Down get active cooperation (and under-publicised editorial input) from the U.S. military while others that question military postures have to rope in a foreign government for using their military hardware.
AVERAGE VOTER IN A DEMOCRATIC COUNTRY IS A MORON! |
In May 2003, an Iraqi boy who suffered burns all over his body, had his arms amputed above the elbow, and lost 20 members of his family after an American missile hit his home became subject of a media frenzy. Although the boy refused American offers of free medical treatment, Hollywoood went ahead and made a movie starring George Clooney with an expectedly different story ending. In the Balkans, American soldiers have been indicted of raping women and forcing them into prostitution but that did not stop Hollywood from making a movie, which showed the opposite - an American soldier killing another soldier to prevent a rape from happening! George Bush and 9/11 was also subject of a movie. However, it featured no pet goat. In sharp contrast, Micheal Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, which attempted to come to terms with truth, was received with unrepressed hostility.
With every war, the deception continues to grow. Even though the fall of the Saddam statue in the middle of Baghdad or the rapturous welcome given to Ahmed Chalabi on his return to Iraq or the daring rescue of Private Jessica Lynch are considered as classics among military psy-ops films, Hollywood remains unbeaten in their effort at perpetuating myths for the U.S. government.
FAKE NEWS = FREEDOM NEWS? |
Sure, Hollywood has no designs on the world and they are in it with the American war machine only because it is a mutually rewarding relationship. However, truth becomes a casualty - not just in war but also in peace. This blackout is made complete by sanitised coverage of world events by the American media.
In Iraq, for example, news reports are solely based on the version provided by the U.S. military spokesman. American journalists rarely leave the safe confines of the fortified "Green Zone" in Central Baghdad. However, to fool the American public, videos shot by Iraqi journalists are placed in the background. The American journalist wears a bullet-proof vest, stands in front of the camera and then files his "report." A white screen (not seen by viewers) placed behind this brave journalist allows video technicians in a New York or Washington D.C. studio to be able to seamlessly mix the two videos, creating the illusion of the journalist having actually visited the scene. With this kind of deception, the American military remains free to drop bombs on houses of innocent people.
Several decades ago, Jawaharlal Nehru remarked,
"They shoot and kill and destroy only for the good of the people shot down. The novel feature of the modern type of imperialism is its attempt to hide its terrorism and exploitation behind pious phrases."
His words remain true to this very day. And, "they" continue to do it with the approval of the American people. Yet, when a 911 happens, you will hear Americans asking, "Why do they hate us so much?"
THIS IS NOT A JOKE. There were actually two pages on the CIA website under the title Iraqi Rewards Program offering rewards for information regarding Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). One web page was in English (at http://www.cia.gov/cia/english_rewards.htm) and the other was in Arabic (at http://www.cia.gov/cia/arabic_rewards.htm, still present.) The CIA removed the English version after a short time. I had saved a copy of the English version, I put it up here and later moved it to www.vsubhash.com. I also added a timeline of the Iraqi Rewards Program.
In case you are wondering, rest assured that the cia.gov domain is used only to host their website. The domain ucia.gov (unclassified CIA) is used for other unclassified purposes. You can see their updates page for references to ucia.gov.
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On March 17, 2004, a US court presented the Indian Government with a unique opportunity to hold the Polluter - Dow/Carbide responsible for the clean-up of the Bhopal gas disaster site and its surrounding areas. The Court of Appeals ruled that Union Carbide (now owned by Dow) could be made to undertake and bear the costs of remediation of the factory site in Bhopal. Thousands of tons of toxic wastes dumped and abandoned by Carbide in and around the site in Bhopal continue to leach poisons (which include carcinogens and heavy metals) into the drinking water supply of at least 20,000 Bhopal residents while exacerbating the health impacts amongst the survivors.
The US court of Appeals has said that if the Government of India or Madhya Pradesh issues a letter to Judge Keenan stating they have no objection to Union Carbide cleaning up its toxic contamination to enable him to take appropriate action. The deadline for receipt of such a letter by the US Court is June 30, 2004.
Tell the Government of India and Madhya Pradesh to send this communication and ensure that justice is brought to Bhopal after 20 years.
Find out more about the Bhopal disaster:
Link to Moral Volcano's GreenPeace Alert: Justice for Bhopal
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Last month, I bought some webspace on a Windows 2000 server and the domain www.vsubhash.com - all for Rs. 870. Now, I have the ability to include pictures on the blog. I then moved my ASP scripts from the old site to the new domain.
Also last month, Google sent me an invitation to test their GMAIL èmail service (see screenshot. This was a surprise because I don't blog daily. Gmail, you might know, offers free 1 GB storage space, which means that you never have to delete a mail and your inbox never gets full. Later, GMAIL offered two free GMAIL invites that I could send to interested beta testers. I sent one to a friend who is the webmaster of Clif Notes. This site deals with reviewing and promoting freeware and free information on the web.
When I first moved my site to DomainDLX, I used to litter the pages with copyright (© - ©) and trademark symbols (™ - ™). One day, I put a trademark symbol in the title tag (<title>Virtual V. Subhash™</title>) of the pages so that you would see Virtual V. Subhash™. While Internet Explorer interpreted the HTML special character, search engines like Google did not. This made people wonder what I had to do with trade. So, I wrote to Google and after a month or two, the search results began to show the trademark symbol like I wanted. While this was a cause to celebrate, I was rather disappointed that Google did not provide an acknowledgement. Not only had I improved their search engine, I had in effect made a huge contribution to the Internet!
So, when I found a bug in the Google Toolbar, I promptly put a screenshot of it in the HUMOUR section of my site. When the toolbar was uninstalled, it used to put a page saying, Please this window instead of Please close this window. I put a caption saying that Google was not only the sexiest search engine, it was also the horniest one too!
UPDATE: I had two GMAIL invitations and they are all used up now. So, I have no spare invitations with me. If you absolutely need a free 1 GB account, go to www.spymac.com.
Link to Moral Volcano's www.vsubhash.com
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A Protestant priest visited a friend who was a Catholic priest. The Catholic priest was well provided by the Church and hence lived in relative luxury. When the Protestant drew attention to this, the Catholic priest said, "You have other halves. We have better quarters."
Catholic priests are not alone in leading the good life. The US Viceroy in Iraq Paul Bremer is reportedly drinking Saddam’s $2000 a bottle Napoleon-era brandy, smoking his expensive Davidoff cigars and he has even furnished his office with Saddam’s Napoleon-era furniture.
But this is nothing compared to the massive bank heist of about $10 billion that the International Currency Review has accused the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) of having pulled off in Iraq. It also accuses that the money was laundered through a number of CIA controlled accounts, including some held in the Discount Bank of Israel, Credit Suisse in Switzerland and the Dresdner Bank in Germany.
The Review cites whistleblower Nelda Rogers, a retired Navy Lt Commander and a debriefing officer with the DIA. She had claimed that the heist was part of a failed attempt to plant Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) in Iraq. While the Review claims the money was successfully taken out, other reports suggest Ms. Rogers having claimed that the CIA and DIA personnel had to scramble out of the area when regular US troops showed up.
All accounts agree on one thing. More than 100 intelligence and military personnel who had taken part in the operation died in what is being described as various incidents of friendly fire.
The Review claims that Rogers and a team of ten DIA operatives were financed through the U.S. Department of Agriculture. They were supported by CIA agents in Iraq. The Department of Agriculture of the U.S. is not audited by that country's auditor general and is therefore traditionally used to finance covert operations. The Review costs $475 a copy and is available to a small group of people in the world banking community interested in financial intelligence.
Also see:
Link to Moral Volcano's The Great Robbery of the Central Bank of Iraq
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Torture is not one of the methods that we're allowed to use and that we use. I mean, it's just not permitted by international law, and we don't use it.Which is why US has not signed the international agreement that would allow American soldiers to be prosecuted for war crimes. As the head of the US military, Gen. Myers knows and approves the use of torture. As the attorney for one of the soldiers said:
Do you really think a group of kids from rural Virginia decided to do this on their own? Decided that the best way to embarrass Arabs and make them talk was to have them walk around nude?If the accused soldiers are punished, then they have been made scapegoats. Also read, Seymour Hersh's investigative piece on TORTURE AT ABU GHRAIB.
breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.
Guess who visited Moral Volcano? US oil services firm and owner of defence contractor Kellog, Brown & Root (KBR) - Halliburton! That's who. Now, if something happens to me, who will take care of my wife, children, and mistress?
More trouble seems to be brewing. Someone (at Halliburton I guess) sent a mail to the American right-wing newspaper Washington Times and they typed moral volcano in Google to reach here.
Link to Moral Volcano's Strange Search Requests - V
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Here is a joke that all Indians except those from Bihar find as funny.
The Japanese Prime Minister comes to Bihar and meets Laloo Prasad Yadav (Jab Tak Samosa Mein Aaloo Hain, Tab Tak Bihar Mein Laloo Hain). The Premier says, If you give me Bihar for one year, I will make it look like Japan. To this, Laloo replies, If you give me Japan for one month, I will make it look like Bihar.
Isn't Laloo a great guy? I am sure he is. Which is why we should give him to Italy. So that he can be the Prime Minister of that country. I mean, if Italy gives us one of their own, shouldn't we step up and give one of our best in return? And who better than Laloo?
Despite the fact that Congress has been routed in many states and that it has not even achieved a simple majority on its own, by virtue of being the single largest party, it is going to claim that the people of India have given their seal of approval for Sonia's candidacy. Anti-incumbency factor had played against the BJP in states ruled by them or their allies.
Even though I did not like what the BJP did for the last 4-1/2 years, I was resigned to voting for it because I did not want a foreigner to become the Indian Prime Minister. But, for the majority of the two-fifths of voters, they simply wanted to bring down the BJP government at any cost. Also, Muslims and other minorities came out in large numbers to vote against the NDA.
My main concern was and is that Indian military and security-related secrets and decions will be handled by a foreigner. I could not compromise on that issue. But for the bulk of Indians who live in rural areas, such worries have little relevance to their day-to-day existence. In the 4-1/2 years, their lives has at best changed little. The India Shining campaign however highlighted the fact that certain sections of the society were making money and they had been left out.
A few months ago, Congress lost state elections in three out of four states due to anti-incumbency factor. Vajpayee misread this and decided to conduct parliamentary elections six months ahead. If he had not made that mistake, he would have still be in power and completed his 5-year term.
Things are not all bad though. According to Left parties, disinvestment in profit-making public sector units (PSU) like HPCL, BPCL, IOC, etc., will come to an end. Private companies in India are not big enough to buy the huge PSUs. The BJP government had been selling these companies at throwaway prices to cronies of the BJP leaders. Many people I have met in Bombay tell me that wife of former Communications Minister Pramod Mahajan had became suddenly very rich thanks to largesse provided by the Ambanis.
Interestingly, Anil Ambani is reported to have had a meeting with Sonia Gandhi at her residence on the day before results started coming out. The Ambanis were the ones whom the BJP government had gone to great lengths to protect. When Delhi Police recovered secret minutes of a cabinet meeting dealing with disinvestment from the office of a Reliance official, the BJP government told the court that since the documents did not deal with national security, the charges against Reliance be dropped.
In Andhra Pradesh, Chandrababu Naidu shut his laptop and went home. I had been telling anyone who would listen that this guy was a failure. But, everytime I was reminded how Naidu had made Hyderabad a great destination for software companies and how he leveraged the Internet to help farmers. Few people know that Chandrababu made huge amounts from the real estate deals with the land that was developed for software companies. And to my best knowledge, the Internet has no way of providing irrigation to crops or food for people. I am happy that he lost.
Now that the results are out, everyone's having a laugh at the expense of channels like NDTV, Aaj Tak, and Star News, which mixed with political news with wildly inaccurate opinion and exit polls. Actually, it is their owners like Prannoy Roy who are really laughing (all the way to bank) because they received plenty of advertising revenue for their election news.
Link to Moral Volcano's Make Laloo Prasad Yadav As Prime Minister Of Italy
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When John Major was the British Prime Minister, a hack said that if anyone saw a pin flying, they could expect to see John Major with a grenade in his mouth. The situation seems very much the case currently with U.S. President George Bush.
On CNN's Larry King Live, journalist Bob Woodward, the author of Plan of Attack, reported how Bush responded when questioned about consulting his father on the war. "When I asked about his father, he said, In terms of finding strength, I appeal to a higher father. Woodward also said that when he ordered war, he prayed. And he prayed that he be a good messenger of God's will.
This confirmed the fears of many people that the death and destruction brought up on Iraq and Afghanistan was the result of the delusions of a mentally sick person. Bush went to war on the premise that Iraq was hiding weapons and was also helping Al Qaeda. So far, that premise has been proved wrong. Yet, American officials claimed the US invasion would bring an end to tyranny and suffering. On the contrary, Iraqi death toll has risen since the war. Information on torture and murders by coalition forces have emerged. Never has American credibility been so low. Published reviews of the Woodward book suggest that Bush and members of his administration have been advised by their legal team not to attribute any implicating statements and to make it sound as though their decisions have been made entirely on misinterpreted body language.
Contrast this with when the Soviet Union was still there. American propaganda had hardly any trace of propaganda in it. It was slick, professionally made, and needed very little convincing. It was the envy of police states. Propaganda by the Soviet Union for instance was full of lies and peppered with words like bourgeois or counter-revolutionary. It went against common sense and few believed it.
Bush has been peppering his statements with the words freedom and terror but they couldn't sound more hollow. Today, Bush occupies an unenviable position along with Truman and Nixon as one of the worst American Presidents ever. All this despite the fact that he pursued two of the biggest mass murders of our time - Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden. And because Bush has bullied ordinary Americans into supporting him, he has also managed to make all his countrymen along with himself appear greedy and dishonest.
Link to Moral Volcano's They Don't Make'm Like They Used To
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As mentioned earlier, Christianity started as an obscure sect and went on to become the leading religious faith of the world through a series of curious turns in history. The first one among these was the purported conversion of Constantine the Great to Christianity. Christian lore says that when Constantine was leading an army across the Roman empire (in 312 C.E.), he saw the sign Χ-Ρ (Chi-Rho, the Greek monogram for Jesus Christ's name) in the heavens and promptly converted to Christianity. But historians believe that he did not convert till his death in 337 C.E. In 313 C.E., as the ruler of the Roman empire, he issued the Edict of Milan, which professed tolerance to all religions. He himself believed in the what Christian historians call the Pagan religion. (In the Bible, Pagans were referred as Gentiles. Christians came up with the term to demean Roman beliefs when they gained supremacy in the Roman empire.) The Pagan religion also ventured into monotheism and an universal god called Sol Indiges was established, which later became Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun God, encompassing Helios, Apollo, Mithras and Baal. In 321, Constantine made the day of Sol Invictus a holy day and a day of rest for the Christians — Sunday. (Before this, Christians rested on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath) When Constantine died, Bishop Eusebius* wrote a false and eulogistic Life of Constantine, which has since been used to distort history. Constantine united the worship of the Sun God and Christianity to strengthen his position. The concept of using the solar disc in the form of an halo became part of Christian iconography in his time.
At that time, Christians were a small but influential minority, very much like today's Jews. Constantine's mother Helena was a more enthusiastic Christian than her son. She went to Jerusalem, and found several sites that she claimed was associated with the death of Jesus Christ, including one where she found the cross and nails with which Jesus had been crucified. Because she was the mother of the emperor, her claims were accepted without question. Church thanked her by granting her sainthood and we know her as St. Helena.
In 326 C.E., Constantine got his wife, his illegitimate son, and a nephew murdered in the palace in Rome at the behest of his mother Helena. According to the Greek historian Zosimus, Constantine asked the Pagan priests for a purification in the temple of Jupiter but was refused. Christian priests however consented. Because of Rome at that time was overwhelmingly Pagan, Constantine was the butt of widespread scorn.
So, he made the old town of Byzantium in Asia Minor the new capital of the empire and called it Constantinople. Constantine then continued a policy of persecution for the old Pagan religion and massive generosity to the Christian Church. But Church historians have tried to imply that their religion's natural superiority supplanted other beliefs.
In 319 CE, Constantine issued an edict that outlawed Pagan religious officials from entering the residence of a citizen. In 330 CE, Constantinople was dedicated to Christianity. The near-conversion of the emperor caused the noble class to convert and Christians had the empire in their control. Christians were encouraged to attack Pagan temples. In 337, Constantine died. Emperors after him varied in their devotion to the new religion. Julius, a cousin of Constantitius, was declared an apostate. However, Constantine's son Constantius made Pagan rituals a capital offense. He also issued an edict that required the closing of all Pagan temples. Christian mobs then took to destroying Pagan temples. Practitioners of the old religion were accused of indulging in witchcraft. Spanish emperor Theodosius (379-395) outlawed Pagan sacrifices inside the Roman empire and anyone found practicing Pagan rituals would lose all claim to their property. Christians then took to robbing Pagans citing this and many Pagans began to convert to Christianity. In the middle of all this, the Church split into Catholic and Orthodox.
Pagan religion could not all be suppressed. Many gods were admitted to the church as saints - Dionysus as St. Denis of Paris; Diana Illythia as St. Illis of Dole. The statues of Jupiter and Apollo became statues of St. Peter and St. Paul.
The Romans celebrated the Winter Solstice on December 25th as a renewing of the sun every year. In many European countries, this is called Yuletide, meaning wheel time, the cycles of time. The Church tried to put an end to this festival but failed. So, in 354 CE Pope Liberus repackaged this Pagan festival as Christmas celebrating the birth of Jesus despite the fact there is no recorded date for the event. Another Pagan festival of the Romans was Lupercalia. Romans believed believed that the goddess Juno Februata inflicted her love fever on the young and unwary in the ides of of February. This festival was converted to St. Valentine's Day.
* - "The father of ecclesiastical history," as Eusebius of Caesarea is called, wrote his famous Ecclesiastical History some years before the death of Constantine; and it does not contain this very important miracle.
Link to Moral Volcano's Origins of Christianity, Jesus And The Bible - III
Your Comment
Jesus Christ is the central character of Christian mythology. The New Testament part of the Bible contains four books called Gospels. These Gospels are supposed to be accounts of Jesus' life by four different people - Mark, Luke, Matthew & John. According to the Gospels, Jesus was born to a virgin named Mary without any intervention by her husband Joseph. This would mean that Jesus was monoploid or having only one set of chromosomes. If scientists were to do a DNA test on the Shroud of Turin1, this could be checked out. If the blood specimen from the shroud returned as a normal diploid, then the other set of chromosomes must have been that of God himself! Howzthat? If he was monoploid, then that begats the question how Jesus Christ became a male without the all-important Y-chromosome!
In the beginning of the common era2, the Jewish regions of Israel and Judea were under the Roman Empire. Among these people, there were some men who pretended to be a messiah from God and tried attract a following of men. They impressed ordinary folk by performing paranormal activities or "miracles." These men were called Zealots and were mistrusted and hated by the majority of Jews. Yet, their feats inspired several folk tales that were passed from one generation to another. One such tale is the one about Jesus Christ. Scholars believe that the tale of Jesus Christ was just another one like that of Hercules or Superman, and over time, it came to be known as Christianity.
Even though the New Testament says that Jesus Christ was a Jew and a messiah of their God, most Jewish people did not believe this to be true. For 2000 years, Jewish people have refused to accept Christianity and maintain that the tale of Jesus Christ as an elaborate fake. The state of Israel that Jesus wanted to be the king of is today predominantly Jewish and not Christian! Jews' skeptism is not without reason. There is no real evidence that there ever was a guy named Jesus Christ. No eye-witness accounts exist. Both the Jewish people and the Roman empire left an extensive set of records none of which mention a Jesus Christ.
Even the Gospels are not authoritative accounts of a historical Jesus Christ. Nobody knows who wrote them and why they were written. The traditional Church view is that the Gospels were written by the Mark, Luke, Matthew & John. These men appear as characters in the Gospels. But scientific examination of these texts show that these men could not have written the books. Besides that, the four Gospels found in the Bible are not the only ones. In fact, there were many more2. Most of the other gospels (like Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Philip, Gospel of Peter, Gospel of Mary) were declared as heretic by the Church and destroyed.
The Gospels are supposed to be written after the death of Jesus. The authors of the Gospels do not claim to have seen a living Jesus. No original version of the Gospel exist today. Only copies of copies exist today. Researchers say that the earliest account of Jesus, the Gospel of Mark, was written not earlier than 70 CE3. The Gospel of John is believed to have been written not earlier than 90 CE. Since Jesus Christ is supposed to have been born in 4 CE and died in 37 CE, the Gospel of Mark must have been written 40 years after his death. Since people in the first century had a short lifespan, Mark would have been 70 years and John would have been 110 years when they wrote the Gospels if we were to assume they were born at the same time as Jesus Christ. By reading the Gospel of Matthew, it can deduced that the author was neither a follower of Jesus nor an eye witness. The author of Luke identifies himself that there were many tales about Jesus and he was only putting his own version of those tales.
NOTES
Also read
Link to Moral Volcano's Origins of Christianity, Jesus And The Bible - II
Your Comment
You may not know that you have a soul. Worse, you may not even care. Christian missionaries spend billions of dollars every day to snatch souls like yours. Every soul has a price. Many people in India give their souls up for something as trivial as a temp job in a garment factory. If you want to trade your soul, then ask for Rs. 10 lakhs; nothing less. DON'T GO DOWN CHEAP. Tell them your mother has cancer. But, if you believe in your soul and want to keep it, read the following. It is about the origins of Christianity, Jesus, and The Bible.
The Christian Bible contains two parts - the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament was created by the Jews1. Early Christians compiled the New Testament and added it to Old Testament and called the Bible.
Jews like to call their religion as monotheistic (one god only) but they actually have two gods. One is an all-powerful god called the Holy Father. The other one is called the Holy Spirit or the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost is more of a secretary than a deputy. The founders of Christian religion appended Jesus Christ as the Holy Son to the duo to form the Holy Trinity. Because this can cause problems, the Christian Church uses a concept called all are one and one is three. Still, the Church urges Christians to route all their devotions to the Holy Son (Jesus Christ) and simply ignore the other two (Jesus Christ will take care of their needs).
The Old Testament is a collection of several books. The first book of the Old Testament is the Genesis. It is in this book that you find the concept of Adam and Eve. It also says that entire universe was created in just six days. According to Genesis, life on earth did not evolve from micro-organisms over a long period of time but were simply delivered readymade like pizzas. The idea that human race started with Adam and Eve also comes from this book.
Genesis says that Adam and Eve had two sons - Kane and Abel. Abel was killed by Kane after some dispute. Kane then married a woman, whose identity is not mentioned.
4:16 And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden. 4:17 And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch: and he builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch.If the concept that everyone originated from Adam and Eve is to be believed then it has to be surmised that this wife of Cain must have been his sister!
The Old Testament says that the Pentateuch2 was dictated to Moses3 by God at Sinai. But people have found it strange that the books mention Moses in third person and that he describes his own death. This led to studies into the authorship4 of the Genesis.
If you read the Genesis, you will find that events mentioned one chapter is repeated again in another chapter. For example, the creation of the universe in six days is mentioned in Chapter 1 and then repeated again in Chapter 2. Thus, the book of Genesis was found to contain a set of doublelets. The two sets were so distinct that in some places they contradicted each other.
This led scholars to believe that the Genesis had two different authors, identified in academic circles as Y and E because Y referred to God as Yahweh and E referred God as Elohim. Later, a new writing style was identified, which did not match either Y's or E's. This author is referred as P because of his emphasis on law, sacrifices, and other topics of priestly interest. A fourth author D has been identified and he is supposed to the be the same as the author of the book of Deuternomy.
There are countless inconsistencies and absurdities in the Bible. For example, it says that the universe was created not so long ago - it started only in 4004 B.C. This age was calculated from the ages of all the descendants of Adam and Eve, which are mentioned in the Bible. Adam and Eve were supposed to have lived in a place called Aden. This place is yet to be found. The apple that Eve ate was called the Apple of Knowledge and consequently earned God's wrath! After Eve eats the apple, God puts a curse on all women that they should suffer pain during childbirth. This verse, Genesis 3:16, was used by the Church to oppose the use of anesthesia during childbirth. The Bible says that the Sun, Moon, and stars were like bulbs that were switched on and off in the sky. Because of this, for several centuries, people in the Western world thought that earth was flat, it was the center of the universe, and the sun, moon, and stars were like satellites of the earth. Many scientists who propounded contrary views were persecuted. Even today, most people in Christian countries think that Darwin's theory of evolution as false. Genesis says that every male child needs to be circumcised (surgical removal of the foreskin). Because of this, Jews continue to circumcise their babies even today. Thankfully for Christians, a circumcision without hands - a spiritual kind - has been described in the New Testament.
NOTES
Link to Moral Volcano's Origins of Christianity, Jesus And The Bible - I
Your Comment
When Pope John Paul II visited India in 1999, he complained to Mother Teresa that the Church's harvest of souls had been very poor. In New Delhi, he said:
... just as in the first millennium the cross was planted on the soil of Europe, and in the second on that of the Americas and Africa, we can pray that in the third Christian millennium a great harvest of faith will be reaped in this vast and vital continent...
It is indeed a mystery why the Savior of the world, born in Asia, has until now remained largely unknown to the people of the continent...
If the Church in Asia is to fulfill its providential destiny, evangelization as the joyful, patient and progressive preaching of the saving death and resurrection of Jesus Christ must be your absolute priority...
Asia is the earth’s largest continent and is home to nearly two-thirds of the world’s population, with China and India accounting for almost half the total population of the globe...
Asia is also the cradle of the world’s major religions — Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Hinduism. It is the birthplace of many other spiritual traditions such as Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Zoroastrianism, Jaimsm, Sikhism and Shintoism. Millions also espouse traditional or tribal religions, with varying degrees of structured ritual and formal religious teaching. The Church has the deepest respect for these traditions and seeks to engage in sincere dialogue with their followers. The religious values they teach await their fulfillment in Jesus Christ.
Read the last sentence carefully. It means that no matter how good or great a religion is, compared to Christianity, it is always imperfect. He summed up his intentions by saying:
Asia is thirsting for the living water that Jesus alone can give.
Link to Moral Volcano's Pope's Exhortation On Harvesting Souls
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