The Second Comedy of Errors

Once upon a time there was an inactive chief justice of a supreme court.
The guy who was actually very smart an aggressive had become inactive
because a stupid television jester had written him a letter but in his
stupidity had put a wrong address on the envelope. The letter somehow
reached the once dismissed general and somehow elected president (the
same person) and the hired temporarily from a bank and charitably elected
prime minister (a single entity). Neither of these men had the slightest
inkling of law or good manners. They had read the constitution and not
found the term contempt of court in it. So they had the chief justice
brought into their office and demanded his resignation because they
thought that someone else could be more useful to them in their pursuit
of greater power. Whether they had committed contempt of court or not is
a matter for the courts to decide, but they had certainly brought the
country into disrepute. The prime minister also ran out of the field not
having the courage to face the situation. If the matter was referred to
the ICC they would definitely get at least a three match ban or its
equivlent in politics, may be even a life ban if the rush of blood could
be related to a contraband substance. The lawyers came out in the streets
and stopped going to the courts. Some people saw history repeating
itself. When the army chief was dismissed and suspended in mid air, his
henchmen revolted and took control of the government, so the lawyers had the right to do the same in their turn. The turn of businessmen, doctors,
engineers, plumbers, coblers etc. would come in due course. Each could
work for period of ten years or so for the benefit of his own community.
But that did not happen. The president and the prime minister withdrew
the reference and tendered public and unconditional opology from the
chief justice who forgave them and everyone went back to his own
business.
Moral: Some stories can be quite boring.

Definitions - 2

Definitions - 2
By Naseem Mahnavi

Atom = Scientific belief in the unseen.
Beauty = Ability to cause favorable reaction beyond vocabulary.
Buenocracy = Domination by good people. (It doesn't exist anywhere.)
Capitalism = Domination by money and riches.
Christianity = Worship of the anointed one and belief in morality based on the parables in the Divine Books which originated in the Middle East.
Crime = An act whose committer deserves punishment.
Democracy = Universal equality of opinion and domination of majority opinion.
Democratic government = Domination by a group of people who have demonstrated their ability to manipulate public opinion better than others.
Duties = Basic building blocks of civilization – universal or circumstantial human obligations whose neglect is crime. (The UNO has not prepared a charter of human Duties.)
Engineering = Art and science of creating inorganic life.
Evil = Ability to harm or destroy.
Freedom = Ability to restrain oneself before being restrained by others.
General = One authorized to get soldiers killed.
God = The Singularity discovered thousands of years ago, but never defined scientifically.
Gravity = Inherent interconnection among bodies of matter.
Happiness = Disciplined pursuit of pleasure that does not result in regret.
Hindu = Black-skinned pre-Aryan people of ancient India. The Vedas were their religious books.
Islam = Surrender to reason and worship of a conceptual ideal Allah as taught by Muhammad.
Israelis = A minority ethnic group of ancient Egypt originating from the Union of an Arab named Abraham and his black African partner. The half breeds were treated badly by the natives and fled from Egypt under their leader Moses who was accused of wanton murder.
Jew = Believer in the earliest moral and religious traditions of the Middle East.
Judaism = Culture based on ancient Middle Eastern traditions, constituted by European money lenders to acquire the status of God’s chosen people.
Law = Limits of freedom.
Leader = One who knows the way better than others and stays in front.
Life = Ability to change others' perceptions.
Love = Urge to protect, nourish and share pleasures with, and willingness to make sacrifices for.
Marriage = License to share privacy.
Nation = A group of people who identify themselves with each other.
Nazism = Reaction of German Christians to Judaic claim of being the chosen race, asserting superiority over other people on account of undiluted Aryan descent.
Patriot = One willing to make sacrifices to defend the freedom of his or her homeland.
Peace = Absence of irritation.
Politics = Exploitation of the community's weaknesses.
Poverty = Absence of affluence.
Power = Ability to cause beneficial action.
Quality = Comparison with an established standard.
Religion = Fixed belief in the unknown.
Rights = Reward of fulfilling duties or obligations, whose denial or violation is a crime.
Science = Study of the nature and working of things and events; and belief in proven and verified facts.
Soldier = One trained to obey orders without questioning and to live constantly in peril.
Space = Occupied part of the void.
Spiritualism = Interaction of central nervous and autonomic systems.
Successful Person = One who learns his or her lessons early.
Terrorism = Tendency to achieve by violent intimidation rather than by asking, bargaining, creating, developing or earning.
Time = Differential element of age.
War = Legitimized crime.
Zero = Difference between equals.

The Truth about the Holocaust

A British historian is jailed in Austria for doubting the stories of the holocaust, the Iranian president threatens to deny the authenticity of the holocaust if he is denied the right to enrich uranium, and the Pope visits an ex-Nazi concentration camp to commemorate the holocaust. By any count, it must be something very important and deserves to be looked into.

It is now accepted by historians that between 5.6 and 5.9 million Jewish men women and children were brutally killed in Germany and elsewhere in Europe by the Nazis and their collaborators. Even if that number is divided by a hundred, it turns out to be a tragedy of great magnitude and one can not but commiserate with the survivors. It is also said that an equal number migrated from Germany and its occupied lands to other countries. The painful irony is that it all happened in the very cradle of Western civilization, arts, sciences, technology and philosophy; the lands of Gutenberg, Goethe, Hegel, Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Mahler, Einstein, Diesel, and Freud.

It is estimated that there were nearly four million Jews in the European territories conquered by the Nazis, out of which nearly three million were exterminated. The remaining three million Jews must have been massacred in Germany itself. This means that Germany lost nearly 10 percent of its most educated and affluent population during the early forties by slaughter and migration.

Under normal circumstances, if a country loses a tenth of its population within a few years, its economy and its social order would collapse. Yet in the case of Nazi Germany one finds that the opposite happened. The German economy and productivity grew and the country became so powerful that it was able to continue the war effort unabated.

It is claimed that nearly 450 tons of gold were collected from the gold fillings in the teeth of the Jews who were killed and destroyed, and the gold was melted and cast into coins in Italy. If you divide 450 million grams of gold by 6 million Jews killed it would appear that on average every European Jew had 75 grams (two and a half ounces) of gold in his or her teeth. It is simply an unbelievable proposition.

Holocaust historians claim that nearly two divisions of the Nazi German army were deputed under Eichman to the task of destroying Jews. It is against all logic that an army pressed hard on half a dozen different fronts would spare two divisions to carry out a massacre of innocent and harmless civilians.

It is obvious that there is a lot of exaggeration in the tales of the holocaust.

The Austrian law making the denial of the Holocaust a criminal offence is another anomaly. After the Second World War there were no Jews left in Austria to lobby for such a law, and most of the legislation was done under the dictation of the allied occupation forces. If the Austrians just wanted to forget the nightmare they would have made any discussion at all of the holocaust a crime.

It seems likely that the massive propaganda about the holocaust was invented by the American war machine to divert world public opinion from its own horrendous crimes such as the nuclear bombing of the Japanese cities. They made themselves look good by comparison to the Nazi war crimes. The cover up was ensured by whisking away a quarter million surviving European Jews to Palestine.

It is said that most of the Jews of Germany and its occupied territories who could not escape were arrested and placed in concentration camps manned by the military, and were executed in batches. It is quite possible that allied air forces (mainly American and British) may have mistakenly bombed some of the concentration camps or convoys of captive Jews and killed a few hundred thousand of them. It is also possible that the Nazis may have used large numbers of Jews as human shields in and around military installations hoping that influential Jews in USA would persuade the military to stop the incessant carpet bombings, but the trick failed and the human shields were obliterated along with the targets. The Nazis didn't have the face to publicize it, and the allies would rather hush it up when they discovered their mistake or mistakes. The subsequent propaganda and legislation against denying the holocaust may have been a part of the cover-up. In this way, the Allies were also able to put the blame and the responsibility for compensation on the Germans. It also explains why the Americans and the British often quite irrationally support those heinous actions of the Israelis that the entire civilized world condemns. Perhaps they are constantly being blackmailed by the Israelis who can prove that large numbers of Jews in Germany and its occupied lands were actually killed by the Americans and the British.

It is high time that those who have the facts about the accidental killings of Jews during the Second World War came out with the truth and put the record straight. It would certainly help to bring sanity to international politics and ensure a better future for mankind. There may be a temporary uproar and souring of relations, but it will come to pass.

The question now is, "Can there be another holocaust of Jews?" Unfortunately, the answer is "yes." The reasons are as follows.

The Nazi philosophy of Aryan purity versus Judaic abomination was a reaction to the Judaic claim of being God's chosen people with a birth right to dominate all other peoples of the world. Add to it the tyranny of the money-lending profession monopolized by the Judaic people of Europe and you get a perfect recipe for making hated outcasts. History has failed to record the many destitute and bankrupt people who must have been mercilessly killed or humiliated by the money lenders for not returning their loans. The opinion held by European Christians about the Jews during the past few centuries can be found in any history book and need not be repeated here.

"A life for a life" is the divine Jewish law of retribution. The Israelis have already accumulated a considerable debt of lives to the Palestinians as a result of the frequent massacres of helpless Palestinians in refugee camps and elsewhere. If they continue the massacres at the present rate, then by divine justice the grandsons of today's Israelis may have to return the debt of a few million lives in the form of another holocaust, at which no one would cry. The leaders of Israel and their supporters should pause and think objectively about the long-term risks in what they are doing today. The first thing they need to do is to win the trust of the people among whom they live, and it certainly can't be done by wanton massacres or high handed treatment of the weak. They should stop taking revenge of the sufferings of their ancestors by inflicting pain and misery on innocent people. They can overcome their worst fears of annihilation by the Muslims only by befriending them sincerely.

The New World

Any account of the history of struggle for freedom and democracy can not be complete without the mention of the relatively recent and apparently successful movement that took place in the North American continent. However, in order to understand the democratic fundamentalism and fascination for weapons so deeply entrenched in the people of that part of the world, especially the USAians, one must go back to the origins of civilization itself.

Anthropologists tell us that initially the human race consisted of hunters who had to compete with animals for survival. Gradually, humans learned and developed home-building and cultivation which enabled them to establish agricultural settlements. However, although farming fulfilled the needs for grains and vegetables, a section of the male population still had to go out hunting to provide meat. Thus the communities divided into two distinct categories, namely farmers and hunters. The farmers concentrated on growing crops, developing new techniques of agriculture and experimenting with new crops to increase their output to feed the growing population. The hunters, apart from killing animals in the jungle and bringing their carcasses home, tried to develop new tools, weapons and methods of hunting. Soon it was found that it was more convenient to catch or herd the cattle to their villages, pen them and kill them when needed – and get milk as a bonus.

Later when the art of animal husbandry was developed, the hunters found a new vocation in protecting the villages from wild animals and attacks from the hunters of other villages, resulting in the evolution of civil and martial factions within the villages. As time passed, new professions developed and artisans and traders also became part of the civilian community while the martial community organized itself into an army of sorts. It was also discovered that locating the animal pens in the centre of the villages reduced the chances of their loss to both human and animal predators.

Eventually, fortifications were built in the middle of the villages for safe-keeping of some of the crops and cattle, and most of the valuables of the villagers. Each fortification was, probably, manned by a respectable administrator, a team of record-keepers, and a group of armed hunters or soldiers led by the bravest individual in the village. As the population and prosperity grew, fortifications were built around the entire city and the central depositories were converted into royal palaces, thus creating city-states or capitals of kingdoms. At some stage in the ensuing history, greed and opportunism overcame the guardians of public assets. The custodians and the soldiers conspired and the custodians took control of all the wealth of the people, appointed a king from among themselves and began to rule with the help of the soldiers. The farmers and artisans were forced to pay a portion of their produce as taxes in return for protection from both internal and external predators. Frequent skirmishes were fought with neighboring villages to keep people in a state of insecurity. Naturally, the king and the soldiers were very unpopular among the people and ways had to be found to remove this feeling. The king sent his soldiers to plunder the nearby weaker villages and celebrated the victories with the civilians. After a few generations the original usurpation was forgotten and the king became the divine ruler and source of inspiration. The king's word became the law. It is interesting that even in those days the rulers had discovered the psychological principle that given a high enough state of stress caused by threat and insecurity the people would fantasize and persuade themselves to admire the person or group capable of protecting them, no matter how evil he might be or how much he debased them.

As time progressed, reformers in various parts of the world tried to undo the tyrannical dichotomy and create homogeneous societies, without much success. By the end of the fifteenth century, there were large numbers of people in Europe who were looking for a way out of the system. The accidental discovery of the American continent in 1492 by Christopher Columbus, who had actually set out to find India, was the answer to their prayers. They braved the mighty ocean in large numbers and landed in the areas of the 'new world' now called USA, and founded a more or less uniform community of farmer-cum-hunters who set enviable examples of courage and patience in their dual roles. The cowboy was the manifestation of the ideal of farmer-cum-hunter.

However, the American continents were not uninhabited when the Europeans arrived. There were well civilized and organized, though illiterate and sparsely distributed, tribes of copper colored people whom the Europeans mistook as Indians or called them Indians because they were nearly black to differentiate them from the African black people who were already dubbed Negros. The Native Americans quite rightly opposed the influx or illegal immigrants into their lands and took measures to stop them. But the European immigrants were already at the point of no return and with the help of their superior weaponry, massacred nearly the entire population of the continent. Whether the Native Americans were too proud and freedom loving to accept alien domination or the European intruders were plain sadistic psychopaths is difficult to ascertain. Some historians suggest that 90% of the natives died of diseases and epidemics brought by the European invaders who themselves had immunity to those diseases, which also explains why the natives considered them abominable and dangerous.

Dutch, English, French, Spanish and Swedish colonies were established on the eastern coast of North America beginning 1519, mainly for trading and contacts were established with the local population for the exchange of goods. Only the English established colonies of agricultural settlers, about 400,000 coming in the 17th century mainly due to religious persecution at home. In 1624 King James I of England made Virginia the first royal colony. White servants worked the farms until the late 17th century. But earlier in the century, English tobacco and sugar planters in the Caribbean had adopted African slavery, long the chief labor system in Portuguese and Spanish sugar colonies in those islands. By 1700 the English colonized islands were characterized by large plantations and by populations that were overwhelmingly African. These African slaves were victims of a particularly brutal and unhealthy plantation system that killed most of them. It was not a coincidence that these islands produced more wealth for England than its other colonies. By 1720, most of what is now the USA was part of the British Empire. The American war of independence started in 1775, independence was declared in 1776, the war ended in 1783 and the constitutional US government was established in 1787. The American Revolution, as some historians call it after the French Revolution, accomplished two noble objectives. First, the war achieved independence from Great Britain. Second, the newly created United States of America established a republican form of government, in which power resided with the people.

Meanwhile, democratic movements had started in Europe and elsewhere in the world and kings were forced to separate their administration and tax collection from the military. In some places, the kings had to delegate much of their powers to civilian leaders such as significant property owners and bankers. The French revolution established a civilian as a president and a body of law makers to formulate legislation, state policies and budgets. The military was restricted to its barracks. The uniqueness of the US constitution was that it was the first political instrument that defined the basic rights of its citizens and limitations of the government in clear terms.

The people of the USA succeeded in forming a relatively conscientious society based on justice for and social equality of white men which transcended European national and religious prejudices and received due recognition from intellectuals all over the world. They were also able to evolve a unique ethos of fidelity based on shared interests -- institutional or economic, rather than ethnic bond or theological obligation. The poetry of Mr. Wiggleworth which combined the Islamic concept of resurrection and Judgment day with Christian and Jewish religious beliefs may have played a significant part in the evolution of the conscientiousness. This secularly righteous attitude combined with the benefits of free slave labor abducted from Africa, Ferguson’s agricultural machinery and Eli Whitney's invention of mass-production, resulted in unprecedented progress and prosperity in a relatively short period of time. Some historians suggest that the African slaves were actually bought by the white Americans from black Africans, but one can still find people of real Indian origin in the Caribbean islands who remember how they were abducted by the British from the streets of Calcutta and Madras in the early 20^th century.

The new American philosophy of life also developed aberrations in due course. By the early 20^th century the American dream had turned into a nightmare with distinct social divisions, growing militarism and corruption far in excess of that in Europe. However, there were good leaders trying their best to reform the society. At one time even an attempt was made to prohibit the use of liquor which had to be given up after about fifteen years. However, the abundance of opportunities had attracted people of other inclinations as well and, before long, the American society was also split into two functional groups -- the farmer-cum-hunters and the fortune hunters -- resulting in what is called the Capitalist system. The two shades of gray are quite discernible today and Veblen's leisure class really seems to exist. The basic weakness of the Capitalist system is that the vast majority of the population is so comprehensively bound in mortgages and loans that most people actually own nothing and are economically insecure. Any increase in stress level due to increase in the feeling of insecurity makes them cross the rationality threshold and allows a crook to become a temporary hero. Yet, one can not deny the great scientific and technological accomplishments of the people of USA resulting in such wondrous achievements as the moon landing and internet.

The two World Wars played a significant role in the shaping of US politics and economy. Encarta has this to say about World War I:

"Since the outbreak of war in Europe, pacifists and reformers had deplored the drift toward conflict; financiers and industrialists, however, promoted patriotism, “preparedness,” and arms buildup." About World War II, it says:

"Most Americans of the 1930s recoiled from involvement in the European conflict; they favored U.S. isolationism, and many supported pacifism. Some believed that “merchants of death” (bankers and arms dealers) had lured the United States into World War I…….

In 1935 and 1936, Congress passed a group of neutrality acts to keep the United States out of Europe’s troubles. The first two acts banned arms sales or loans to nations at war. The third act, a response to the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), extended the ban to nations split by civil war……..

In September 1939 Roosevelt called Congress into special session to revise the neutrality acts. The president offered a plan known as cash-and-carry, which permitted Americans to sell munitions to nations able to pay for them in cash and able to carry them away in their own ships."

The American participation in the first and second World Wars resulted in the formulation of American national defense policy of maintaining a weapons and ammunition production capacity that would allow it to jump into a new World War at short notice. In order to keep the unnecessarily huge military hardware industry in working order, it must keep producing something all the time. But since there is a limit to the quantity and time period for which equipment and ammunition can be stored unused, they must find or contrive wars and keep selling or consuming the weapons and ammunition all the time. In the process, they also keep getting a lot of their own soldiers and citizens of other nations killed.

It is interesting to note that the Chinese, who feel militarily threatened by the USA, spend an amount nearly one fifth of the US military budget to maintain a defensive capability. The Indians, who feel threatened by the Chinese, spend an amount nearly a quarter of the Chinese military budget to maintain a viable defensive power. The Pakistanis, who have reasons to feel threatened by the Indian military might, spend an amount nearly a quarter of the Indian military budget to maintain a credible defensive posture.

The World would be a far better place to live in if the leaders of USA could be convinced that they can safely cut down on the defense production capability, arsenals and munitions stockpiles, and limit military production to only the quantities needed for training and exercises. The re-engineering of the US economy to make it a peace-time economy would bring unprecedented peace, security and prosperity to the American people and also the rest of the world. The problem is, ‘how to make it happen?’

Coincident Terrorism

The extremist Jewish regime of Israel is back to its favorite sport of killing innocent people, destroying their property and grabbing their land. Much of civilized humanity is acting as silent spectators because the bad boys of world politics have given Israel the license to kill at will. The excuse is that a group of poorly armed and informally trained Hezbollah adventurers raided a highly sophisticated and extremely well protected Israeli military establishment deep in Israeli territory, killed eight of their soldiers and returned to their own base unharmed with two prisoners of war.

The above story of fabulous bravery and efficiency of the Hezbollah soldiers seems very unlikely. It would be very difficult for the Hezbollah part-timers to penetrate the state of the art defenses of Israel armed to the teeth by the world’s only super power.

On the other hand, it would be very easy for an Israeli commander to send a platoon on a mission in which they would be certain to be killed or captured, providing an excuse for a premeditated carnage.

I say premeditated because a clear-cut pattern is emerging. In December of 2000, the large scale Israeli military onslaught on the Palestinians coincided with a terrorist attack on the Indian parliament in which a bunch of drunken men kept running and shooting in wrong directions until they all got killed; thus creating an international media and diplomatic diversion. In July of 2006, the Israeli attack on Lebanon coincided with a tragic terrorist attack in Bombay in which hundreds of innocent civilians lost their lives and limbs; again diverting world attention from the main event in the Middle East. The Indian leaders are busy spitting venom against Pakistan ignoring what is happening in Lebanon. Are the Indian leaders as naïve as their Pakistani counterparts that they don’t know what is happening in their own country, or are they working with the Israelis on a secret plan to establish world domination by two of the world’s most ancient religions and happily sacrificing their citizens for the ‘noble’ cause?

I sincerely hope that the world will wake up to the unsavory realities before it is too late.

Letter to President 2

Dear Mr. President,

My email to you dated 2^nd April, 2006 was never acknowledged, but from the actions of some government officials it is obvious that it was received in your office.

Today, I must acknowledge the usefulness of reforms introduced by you in the last election and would like to suggest the following additional reforms for the next election.

1. Candidates for National and Provincial assembly seats must be domiciled in the constituency from which they contest elections.

Reason: The representative of the people should be from amongst them.

2. The two candidates getting highest and second highest number of votes from each constituency should be declared winners. Readjustment in constituencies may be needed for this purpose.

Reason: The Assembly will have a larger mandate of public opinion.

3. Election commission should organize public meetings to be attended by all candidates of the constituency with due security, where the candidates will speak to the voters and answer their questions.

Reason: People should know who they are voting for and what he or she stands for.

4. Photographs, names and party affiliations of candidates should appear on the ballot paper instead of election symbols.

Reason: Voting for lamp-posts is a legacy of the colonial rule and must end.

5. There should be a ban on commercial advertising for or against any candidate. Reason: Candidates should not be sold to the public, or they will keep selling themselves.

With best wishes for you and the nation,

Big Bang Revisited

The Big bang does not refer to the abominable attitude that any problem can be solved with adequate quantity of gun powder. It is a well researched and mathematically supported scientific theory that speculates how the universe could have come into existence. Billions of dollars have been spent on research to prove this theory, may be as much as the particle theory that explains the ultimate nature and structure of things as they exist.

Every thing that exists has certain properties or characteristics that can either be observed and measured directly or indirectly, or may be assumed and verified. Both the creation of the universe and the ultimate nature of substances are topics that have formed the basis of dogmatic beliefs, and need to be correlated scientifically. Whereas a theoretical analysis requires assumptions, equations, boundary conditions and computers, to produce a tangible result you need resources, creativity, effort and medium in addition to yourself. There can be no doubt as to whether the brick was made first or the building. The correlation of various scientific and non-scientific theories gives the following picture.

At sometime in the very distant past, someone created a few very large spheres consisting of extremely dense and brittle material that floated in the great void. The creator also incorporated in the spheres, certain laws of behavior that would be complied with in all circumstances.

At a certain point in time, one of the smaller spheres collided with a much bigger sphere and intense vibration was set into it. The energy build-up was so gigantic that it heated up to a very high temperature and exploded. The explosion was so powerful that the ultra dense sphere disintegrated into a huge expanding ball of dust consisting of a dozen or so types of submicroscopic elementary particles. A huge amount of electromagnetic radiation was also emitted. The particles having highest velocities were at the outer surface of the ball while the slowest were at the inner surface of the partially hollow spherical cloud, the rest were in between the two.

The nascent elementary particles combined with each other to form larger particles, atoms and molecules of the natural elements, in the form of hot gases or plasma which was much colder than the elementary particles due to highly endothermic reactions that combined them into larger ones. As time passed, the gases cooled further by emitting infrared radiation. Since the sphere was hollow, it did not develop a central point of thermal concentration. However, its continuity was breached at numerous points and millions of very large gas clouds traveling away from the center of the Universe were formed. The gas clouds were so large, that on cooling to a certain degree, they collapsed under gravity, re-exploded and formed galaxies, stars and planets.

It is also possible that the whole original sphere did not pulverize into elementary particles, but broke up into a few billion chunks. Some of these chunks continued to disintegrate and formed the centers of galaxies and stars while the vibrations of most of them died out in time and they became black holes.

However, one thing is certain--- our earth is not at the center of the Universe. The stars and galaxies that are moving in the same direction as ours, appear to be receding slowly (difference of velocities) while those on the other side of the center of the universe that are traveling in the opposite direction seem to be moving fast (sum of velocities).

The Unsung Heroes of 20th Century

History doesn't tell us how people felt during the great moments of the past. Yet it is true that the course of history is always decided by how people feel. There are events that are reported in the press and recorded in history in a completely different light from how they influenced society. One such example is the heart transplant operations of 1969 and onwards.

Thanks to the poets, writers, philosophers and romantics of the past, the heart has come to be known as the yardstick of personality. Everyone knows what a chicken heart and a lion heart mean and only a generation ago black people were considered to have weak hearts compared to the white ones, and hence inferior. Women were regarded as the weaker and inferior sex almost all over the world. Their great intellectual achievements were totally ignored as accidental exceptions. Somehow their hearts were also to be blamed for that.

South Africa had somehow become the Vatican of racial prejudice or apartheid as they called it. The apartheid laws enacted in South Africa in the middle of the 20^th century imposed such indignities on the black and colored populations that the American law requiring a black person to vacate his or her seat in a bus in favor of a white person seemed like a blessing.

It was in this terrible country in 1969, that Dr. Christian Barnard and his team performed the first successful heart transplant operation in which the heart of a white woman was given to a white man, who survived for weeks with his new heart. Her kidney gave the gift of life to a colored boy. In the months and years to come, hearts were transplanted in al possible combinations of race and ethnicity -- and they all survived subject to medical limitations. The myth of racism was exposed. If hearts were interchangeable, all people were equal.

It is interesting that although the heart transplant received much publicity, the moral and intellectual implications were ignored. Although no leader made a statement and no editorials were written, the equality of hearts had proven the futility of racial and sexual prejudice. The truth had been expressed in action though not in words and it quietly sank into people's minds all over the world. Apartheid evaporated from South Africa and sexual and racial prejudice declined all over the world at a phenomenal rate. Today, one who considers women or blacks inferior would be considered abnormal.

The change can only be felt by someone who has seen society as it was in the mid-twentieth century and as it is today. I salute the heart transplant surgeons and so should all blacks and women.

The Tragedy of the Balkans

Nostradamus Century V, Quartain 70

Les regions suvjettes a la Balance

Feront trembler les monts par grande guerre

Captif tout sexe deu et toute Bizance

Qu'on criera a l'aube terre a terre

Translation

Of the regions subject to the Balance,

They will trouble the mountains with great war,

Captives the entire sex enthralled and all Byzantium,

So that at dawn they will spread the news from land to land.

Historic References

Most of the Balkan Peninsula is mountainous, with streams flowing in every direction. It comprises the countries of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro (formerly the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia), Albania, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, and European Turkey.

Byzantine Empire, eastern part of the Roman Empire (Roman Empire), which survived after the breakup of the Western Empire in the 5th century ad. Its capital was Constantinople (now İstanbul, Turkey). Constantinople became a capital of the Roman Empire in 330 after Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor, refounded the city of Byzantium and named it after himself. Only gradually did it develop into the true capital of the eastern Roman provinces—those areas of the empire in southeastern Europe, southwestern Asia, and the northeast corner of Africa, which included the present-day countries of the Balkan Peninsula, and Syria, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, Cyprus, Egypt, and the eastern part of Libya. Scholars have called the empire Byzantine after the ancient name of its capital, Byzantium, or the Eastern Roman Empire, but to contemporaries and in official terminology of the time, it was simply Roman, and its subjects were Romans (Rhomaioi).

Yugoslav Succession, Wars of: The first war occurred in Slovenia and lasted ten days in June and July 1991, producing few casualties. The second war was fought in Croatia from July to December 1991 and in the summer of 1995. The third war took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1992 to 1995. The second and third wars resulted in hundreds of thousands of mostly civilian casualties, massive property damage, and more than 2.5 million refugees. The fourth war, sometimes known as the Kosovo war, lasted from March to June 1999. It was an air war conducted by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY), a rump Yugoslavia consisting only of Serbia and Montenegro. (In February 2003 the FRY changed its name to Serbia and Montenegro.)

By the summer of 1992 the Serbs controlled about 70 percent of Bosnia. They laid siege to Sarajevo, Bosnia’s capital, with artillery and snipers and carried out ethnic cleansing, through massacres and expulsions of non-Serbs in territories they controlled. Reports of mass murder, organized mass rape, and torture became widespread. Tens of thousands of people, mostly Muslim males, were herded into concentration camps, where many died or were executed. These atrocities produced worldwide condemnation, but there was no international intervention except for the delivery of humanitarian aid under the protection of otherwise ineffective UNPROFOR troops in Bosnia in 1992. By 1994 they numbered 24,000.

© 1993-2003 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Interpretation

Erstwhile Yugoslavia situated in the Balkan Peninsula, was almost entirely located in ancient Byzantine also called the Eastern Holy Empire. Rome and Byzantine formed the two arms of the balance of Christianity. The use of artillery and aerial bombardment during the wars of succession would shake the mountainous terrain, men and women would equally be gripped by the frenzy or suffer horrendous misery. The whole world would be anguished by the news and pictures coming via satellites.

The Future of Iran

Century V, Quartain 25

Le prince Arabe, Mars, Sol, Venus, Lyon
Regne d'Eglise par mer succombera
Devers la Perse bien pres d'un million
Bisance, Egypte, ver. serp. invadera

Translation

The Arab Prince Mars, Sun, Venus, Leo,

The rule of the Church will succumb by sea:

Towards Persia very nearly a million men,

The verbose serpent will invade Byzantium and Egypt.

Interpretation

When the Iranian leaders make venomous speeches against Turkey and Egypt, they will join in a coalition with the Arab monarchies, the super power and its allies to attack Iran. The navies of the Christian powers in the Persian Gulf will fall back and a land invasion by an army of nearly a million will be planned.

Question

Will there be a war or will sanity prevail?