Friday, April 29, 2005

Islamic Democracy

When Napoleon Bonaparte proclaimed the French revolutionary slogans of Democracy and People Power when he conquered Egypt no one had a clue about what he was talking about. Not many do today either. Islamic fundamentalism has been changing slowly since then. Very slowly. To put things in perspective, let’s keep in mind that not one of the 22 Arab states represented at the Arab summit held in Beirut in 2002 had a democratically-elected government. Including those that walked out! Archaic totalitarian regimes govern one-fifth of the world’s population and control roughly a quarter of our energy resources.

However, there is hope in the New World Order. Reformist Islamic intellectuals are openly talking about new interpretations of the holy word. Political power, they argue, should rest with We the People. The clerics should not believe that they have a mission from God to run peoples’ affairs. Some even appear to question the Islamic republic’s most sacrosanct concepts -- and one has been put on trial in Iran for his audacity. But the rethinking has started. The phrase Islamic Reformation is now sometimes even heard in Iran. Reformasi has also been heard loudly and publicly in Muslim Indonesia and Malaysia. These non-Arab Muslim countries, with their Asian brothers and sisters in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, are Islam’s center of gravity. They are home to over 60 percent of the world’s Muslim population. A Muslim population that is moderate, tolerant and becoming democratic.

The Islam practiced by the Taleban was an extreme mixture of religion and politics recognized by only three Muslim countries. “The whole policy of the Taleban was opposed by the vast majority of Muslim and Arab countries,” Amr Moussa, Secretary-General of the Arab League, said, “so the cause of supporting bin-Laden and so forth by the Afghan regime was a strange cause…”

The tiny Arab state of Qatar adheres to the same Wahabbi strain of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia. Yet it has managed to modernize the practice. Alcohol is openly consumed, women drive, vote and run for office and its Al Jazeera TV station openly criticizes Arab leaders.

In the Muslim world, however, only 23 percent of countries are democratic. Eleven of the 47 countries that are predominantly Muslim are democratic. “Since the early 1970s, when the third major historical wave of democratization began, the Islamic world, and in particular its Arab core, have seen little evidence of improvements in political openness, respect for human rights and transparency,” concluded the Freedom House survey, Freedom in the World 2001-2002.

“In countries where there is an Islamic majority, there is just one free country, Mali, while 18 are rated partly free and 28 are not free,” the report said. The most democratic nations after Mali are Bangladesh, Indonesia, Jordan, Kuwait, Turkey and Morocco.

In the final years of the last millennium, 100 Arabs from 15 countries did meet, at great danger to themselves, to send a cry for Arab rights to the world, which eagerly avoided it, and to their own people, those who somehow get word despite censorship and the religious police.

The statement deals bravely with the “grim” truth that even the few scraps of liberties Arabs do hold are declining. Saudi Arabia and some Gulf States, it says, lack even the symbols of democracy -- no constitution, parliament or modern legal system. Countries that had made progress are back-pedalling -- Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Jordan. In Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Bahrain there are “massive and dangerous human rights violations”. Only Morocco got some praise for a “relative improvement” this past decade. A present for the host but a very conditional one.

The statement attacked armed Muslim groups for physical and intellectual terrorism. Going further, the signatories denounced regimes that used “Islam’s specificity” as an excuse to reject reform. This was an overt attack on fundamentalism.

Is it because of religion that Islam has so miserably failed to create democracy and tolerate human rights? The Crusaders and the Catholic Inquisition acted in a similar spirit, but this kind of fanaticism gradually became less fashionable in Europe as the Enlightenment and modern science began to undermine traditional religious certainties.

Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity and particularly Protestantism often overcame bigotry and the calls for eyeball-plucking in their own pasts and have produced representative government through debate as well as war. Isn’t it time Muslims, American-Muslims in particular, peacefully bridge the misperception of their fellow Muslims? Isn’t it time that they share their knowledge and benefits of balancing the best of Islam and other civilizations? Isn’t it time they actively engage in overcoming the propaganda of the extremists?

Saturday, April 23, 2005

Separation of Church and State

April 23, 2005 George W. Bush said Jesus Christ was the historical philosopher he admired most. Which one? The blonde version perpetuated by the Church for centuries or the real one with dark Semitic features? Al Gore has declared himself a born-again Christian. Senator Joe Lieberman says “miracles happen” when he accepted Gore’s invitation to be his running mate in a speech that took religious-political rhetoric to soaring new heights. At one point he invoked God’s name 13 times in 90 seconds!

Politicians have to separate their private beliefs from public duties, just as the Founding Fathers did. The “Magnificent Seven” were religious men. God-fearing praying Christians. Nevertheless, they separated their personal beliefs and practices from their vision of America. A country where religion and God had no role. The number of Americans belonging to churches during the American Revolution was only 17 percent! According to a 2002 Newsweek poll, 45 percent of American society defined the United States as “a secular nation”; only 29 percent of Americans view the United States as “a Christian nation” and only 16 percent as a “Biblical nation, defined by the Judeo-Christian tradition”. America is the Enlightment’s secular child.

The United States Supreme Court in the case of Board of Education v. Everson ruled that the non-establishment clause prohibits the State from setting up a church, passing laws which aid one religion, or all religions, or prefer one religion over another, and from participating openly or directly in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups and vice versa.

The “Star Spangled Banner” is what Americans sang until Irving Berlin, a Jewish immigrant from Russia who entered the United States at Ellis Island, wrote “God Bless America” in the 20th century. Irving Berlin was born Israel Baliner in 1888. He also wrote, “White Christmas” and “Easter Parade”.

The Anti-Defamation League of B’nai Brith was correct when it objected to Senator Joe Lieberman’s insistence that, “as a people we need to reaffirm our faith and renew the dedication of our nation and ourselves to God and God’s purpose.” This appeal to belief in God, the agency argued, is contrary to the First Amendment and to the American ideal. Nor did the agency agree with the senator’s belief that “morality cannot be maintained without religion”. American atheists, the ADL declared, “should not be made to feel inferior, or left out of the political process”.

It can be argued that atheism is also a religion. Madalyn Murray O’Hair, the atheist leader who played a key role in banning mandatory prayer in public schools in the 1960s, argued that one did not necessarily have to believe in any deity. That was an individual religious choice. For the state of Florida to label a personalized license plate with the word “Atheist” as obscene, 16 years after it was issued, is a dire warning of how far we have drifted from the fountain of the Founding Fathers’ vision.

George Dubya is a burning bush. He has scorched the Constitution and burned America economically and geopolitically. It is time We the Maids sweep out the ashes and Ashcroft-minded burning bush career politicians.

Jefferson rode horseback through all 13 colonies, the founding states, preaching the importance of the separation of church and state as the basic foundation of America. There was no room for religion in politics then and there is none today.

Shouldn’t we all be wrestling the Religious Right to separate church and state as the Founding Fathers intended? The devil and the occult aren’t just limited to The Exorcist. In 1986 there were only 20 church-appointed exorcists in Italy. Today there are about 300. How about using them to exorcise religion from politics in the 21st century?

It is time for a modern-day Enlightenment. An American Reformation. Freedom and equality for all religious beliefs, including atheism, the occult and devil worship. The pursuit of knowledge of other religions and a real separation of church and state as our Founding Fathers dictated must be foremost on our agenda in the 21st century.

Why do We the People pay lip service to religious extremists in America and allow them to dominate the country’s political process? That is not what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they consciously and deliberately separated church from state. Unfortunately, the original spirit and written gospel of the Founding Fathers -- like Muhammad’s -- has been hijacked by religious extremists.

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Breach of Faith

The passing of Pope John Paul focused the world’s attention on Rome and the Catholic Church. Many American Catholics felt betrayed by the breach of faith exhibited by the Church when they saw the former head of the Boston diocese who was forced to resign over the Boston sex scandals officiate at the Pope’s final mass. The breach of faith so cavalierly and arrogantly displayed by the church was a reminder of the Church’s repeated breaches of faith.

Religious slush funds serve a myriad of purposes. Monsignor Emilio Colaiovanni, who lives in Rome and has counseled Pope John Paul, was charged with fraud and conspiracy by U.S. federal prosecutors because he pledged $1 billion from the St. Francis of Assisi Foundation charitable foundation that he ran as collateral to Martin Frankel’s insurance scam. The Monsignor had his own slush fund set up with the $40,000 he received from Frankel as the down payment for the additional $5 million he was promised.

What about the suicide, murder and gay sex that belie the pomp and circumstance of the 500-year-old Swiss Guard? In their dated uniforms designed by Michelangelo, the private army is dedicated to ensuring the Pope’s personal safety. It arrived in Rome in 1506 to protect Pope Julius II from infidels. Today it is protecting itself from the events of May 4, 1998, when the bodies of the newly appointed commander of the guard, Alois Estermann, his Venezuelan wife and 23-year-old Vice-Corporal Cedric Tornay were found in the Estermanns’ Vatican flat.

The discovery of the body of Roberto Calvi, “God’s Banker”, found hanging on Blackfriars Bridge in London on June 15, 1982, has led investigators into the close-knit web of the Vatican’s criminal dealings with Italy’s prime ministers, bankers and mafia godfathers. The murdered body of Calvi, disguised to look like a suicide, led police investigators to the secretive right-wing Masonic lodge called Propaganda Due, or P2. Calvi was a member of P2 which has been linked with Nazism and by some theorists to the assassination of Prime Minister Aldo Moro and the unexpected death of Pope John Paul I, both in 1978.

Gone With the Wind in the Vatican is an account of intrigue, homosexuality, money smuggling and corruption within the Vatican bureaucracy. Written by Father Morinelli, who worked in the Vatican, the book and writer clashed head on with Vatican censors.

“The book does not question the sanctity of Jesus Christ, the Eucharist or the Catholic Church,” Morinelli said. “It just points out that the Vatican is made up of men, who, like me, are flawed.” So flawed that they even refused to admit that the Vatican radio antennae may have spread cancer faster than religion. The residents of Cesano, a suburb north of Rome, were subjected to emissions from Vatican Radio transmitters that broadcast Roman Catholic programs to five continents. The Vatican, invoking its status as a sovereign state, refused to comply with Italian safety regulations until the Italian government threatened to cut off power to the station.

If the flaws of the Catholic Church are to be remedied in the New World Order, American Catholics have to take the lead, just as they did in the pedophile sex scandals. The American Roman Catholic Church is the third largest in the world. It has over 63 million members. It is unlikely that an American will be elected Pope. It is therefore up to We the Maids to sweep the Vatican clean of feudal ideals in the 21st century.

Friday, April 15, 2005

The Trilogy

Hong Kong, April 15th. Religion, politics and sex are three subjects we are constantly admonished not to discuss because of the emotions and passion they each evoke. Why? Is it possible our religious leaders, career politicians and their enforcers have subconsciously conditioned us not to look closer at their malfeasance? I believe religion, politics and sex are the trilogy at the root and core of today’s dysfunctional world disorder that need to be examined in depth.

Human beings are the most self-abused and dysfunctional animals on earth. We are fundamentally flawed and a determined source of our own destruction. We are the victims of a conscious and deliberate multi-generational psychological political conditioning campaign to become absolutely submissive and politely accept and subject ourselves to the whims of religious and political leaders. If we don’t address our shortcomings and continue to blindly follow career politicians down the self-destructive speedway they’ve put us on, future species will study us the way we do dinosaurs. Our tendency of ignoring bad experiences has been seized upon by the houses of worship and political halls of power.

It is my hope that Americans will start to question the self defeating values the trilogy has inflicted on mankind, and will correct the misconceptions they have of themselves and Sino-Latino civilizations. By doing so, they will become patriotic citizens of the global village, capable of understanding their fellow villagers as they try to bridge their disagreements and misunderstandings. From that understanding, America can fuse and synthesize the benefits of free-wheeling Anglo-American capitalist and Chinese-Latino authority-conscious societies. A synergy that has been tested and proven to work in Hong Kong. That cross-pollination will enable us to create a roadmap for society to follow, arriving at a New World Order: a civilizational blending of religious, political, cultural, moral, ethical and economic harmony.

Monday, April 11, 2005

New World Disorder

Hong Kong, April 11. On September 11, 2001, a Hong Kong judge enjoined my wife from proceeding with her second divorce and custody proceeding in Shanghai. Later that day, terrorist kamikaze bombers tried to torpedo the freedoms of America and the Free World to the cheers and toasts of many mainland Chinese. They were happy even though Chinese nationals also died in the attack.

The acrid personal and Sino-American geopolitical parallels contain many lessons. America has to derail the tortured relationship and contribute to the demise of the cultural and political misunderstandings the two major Pacific powers have of each other as we embark on the 21st century. I’m talking of both people and governments. Good relations between America and China are indispensable for all humanity if terrorism is to be defeated. America and China both have a common enemy against whom they should join forces to fight together in the new millennium.

When I went to Ground Zero to see firsthand the jagged remains of the humbled smoldering Twin Towers, I felt I was witness to a temporarily crippled self-impaled America. The spiritual idea of the Founding Fathers is in agonizing pain. People grieved not just for the dead, injured and their families but for America.

Like the public-address system in the World Trade Center that announced it was safe for people to return to their offices, the public pronouncements of politicians are nothing but hypocritical misleading lies that we have been conditioned to believe and accept.

Government intelligence agencies failed to “protect” America and its citizens. Government commissions, committees and knowledgeable experts repeatedly warned the U.S. government of the imminent terrorist threats, corporate implosions, and the dangers they pose to America and its citizens. How much more do taxpayers have to pay for these commissions and committees whose recommendations are swept aside?
The government deliberately chose to ignore the warnings while America’s career politicians coddled and sun-bathed with their corrupt corporate campaign donors and the petro-dictators and monarchs who financed terror. The career politicians decided to create an artificial, easily identifiable enemy. Not a mysterious enemy hiding in the shadows among us. China fitted the bill perfectly.

China is the career politicians’ ideal enemy of the 21st century. A communist dictatorship that is easily identifiable. An illusory enemy with drastic fatal consequences to America. Corporate America’s domination of government and suicidal terrorists and the dictators and monarchies that oppress and suppress their families while financing their terror are the real threat to the New World Disorder.

Thursday, April 07, 2005

Custom Maid

Hong Kong, April 6th. The “American Century” and its “New World Order” ended with the passing of the 1990s. The American Dream, however, is for many just that. They keep waking up. For others it has become a nightmare that has to be confronted at the dawn of the new millennium. Those who think America is a sweet dream better wake up now! Otherwise they will also start waking up in a nightmarish cold sweat, or worse – not. Chaos is no longer just a theory. “Everything under heaven is chaos and the situation is excellent” is a timely ancient Chinese proverb. The identity of the 43rd president was left dangling in a constitutional, legal and political twilight zone in Florida in 2000. A political never-never land.

A prelude to the dangling steel girders of the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Both were the result of duopolistic bipartisan anarchy that includes the nation’s Supreme Court and nepotistic American political dynasties duking it out in Florida and Washington’s legal and political swamps. Security disparity between career politicians and working people is as wide as the income disparity. The widest it’s been since the crash of 1929, and it continues to grow. The ranks of the insecure and poor are growing. Fear and unemployment are on the rise. The poor feel more threatened and get poorer while the rich get safer and richer. The total net worth of the top one percent of Americans is now equal to the total net worth of the bottom ninety percent of the population. The sweeping language of the Patriot Act that became law in the wake of 9/11 swept away many hard fought-for civil liberties. A good reason to wake up and protect what is left. The New World Order America advocates and leads is a disorderly mess - thanks to career politicians. We the Apathetic People have to clean it up. The United States of Apathy desperately needs a maid. One that is custom made.

Globalization to many is the equivalent to Americanization. Whatever happens in America today has geopolitical ramifications. The diversity of the American mosaic society, thanks to the endless waves of immigrants that flood America, is making the country a congested two-way super highway with a wide off ramp for those kicked out – and a narrow on ramp for those let in.
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