Hellenic Reporter

"Before we rush to condemn America we must remember that even today millions of poor and miserable people all across the world are lining up outside US embassies eager to come to America, not just to live here but to become an American. No Muslim country today, can claim that people of other nations and other faiths see it as a promise of hope, equality, dignity and prosperity." -- Muqtedar Khan, Ph.D. Association of Muslim Social Scientists, Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy

Saturday, December 02, 2006

Pope Benedict XVI performs a PR miracle

"Seen through Turkish eyes, the Pope was a charmer till the end.
He began his visit by proclaiming, "I love the Turks," and ended it yesterday with a rhetorical offering sure to fuel the gushing newspaper headlines. "A part of my heart remains in Istanbul"...

For a pontiff who sparked outrage in much of the Muslim world two months ago by linking Islam to violence, the transformation seemed nothing short of miraculous...the Grand Mufti of Istanbul, Mustafa Cagrici, was poetically optimistic.

"A single swallow can't bring spring, but many swallows will follow and we will enjoy a spring in this world," he told the Pope, after sharing a moment of prayer with him Thursday at the 17th-century Blue Mosque.

The Pope also praised Armenians for clinging to Christianity despite "the very tragic circumstances of the last century" — a reference to the slaughter of Armenians by Ottoman Turks in 1915. He didn't call it genocide — the Vatican's official position — but the mere mention of an event Turkey refuses to accept responsibility for no doubt strained sensitivities in Ankara.
Niyazi Oktem, a political philosopher at Istanbul's Bilge University, said the visit should act as an example to both sides in the so-called "clash of civilizations." Turkey showed other Muslim states the strength of its democracy by having a civilized dialogue with the leader of the world's 1.1 billion Roman Catholics. It also showed Europe how the Turkish model has kept fundamentalist Islam at bay, Oktem added." More.

Kandahar, Afghanistan ~ 10 November 2006: The Chief of Land Staff (CLS) Lieutenant General Andrew Leslie visits the training camp for the Afghan National Police (ANP) near the Kandahar Airfield. On the way to the ANP training camp the CLS acted as an air sentry.

Kandahar, Afghanistan ~ 10 November 2006: Members of the Tactical Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Troop from the 5e Régiment D'Artillerie Légère du Canada (5 RALC) prepare a platform for the next flight. The TUAV is used for both aerial reconnaissance and targeting over the battle space, and is able to perform these tasks without risking the life of a pilot. Bombarders Vezina, Letendre and Sergeant Normand placing the UAV on the launcher.

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Love one another. -- Jesus

Fanaticism is overcompensation for doubt. -- Robertson Davies, Canadian novelist

"We will not say thereafter that the Greeks fight like heroes, but that heroes fight like Greeks!" -- Sir Winston Churchill

...even though a large tract of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule. We shall not flag nor fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France and on the seas and oceans; we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our island whatever the cost may be; we shall fight on beaches, landing grounds, in fields, in streets and on the hills. We shall never surrender... -- Sir Winston Churchill

Maybe Love was more durable than Hate; even if Love changed, some shadow of it, some lasting shape, persisted. Hatred was perhaps like a finger-print upon the smooth glass of the sensitive soul; a mere grease-mark, which disappeared if left alone. -- Salman Rushdie, novelist

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. -- Albert Einstein

The central question for our time is not how you worship God or even whether you worship God. It's whether you believe in this life you can be in possesion of the absolute truth and you have the right to impose it on others. We need to remember that too... -- Bill Clinton (BBC Radio, Aug 16, 2006 in Toronto, Canada)

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight...is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. -- John Stuart Mill

In Italy for 30 years the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed. They produced Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace. And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. --Graham Greene

One day I want my children to say, "...my father chose to die in blood, rather than to live in shit."
-- Greek anti-Nazi resistance fighter slogan

"There will be peace with the Arabs when they will love their children more than they hate us." -- Golda Meir - Israel PM (1972)"

My experience has been that if you grab 'em by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow. -- General Creighton Abrams

Man, in his arrogance, thinks himself a great work worthy the interpretation of a deity. More humble, and I think truer, to consider him created from animals. -- Charles Darwin

You do what you have to do in life when you form a philosophy that you can't talk yourself out of.
-- Constantine Karamanlis

Our founding principles are "National Independence, Popular Sovereignty, Social Emancipation, Democratic Process."
-- Andreas Papandreou

"I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Depending on the breaks." -- General "Buck" Turgidson, from Stanley Kubrick's film 'Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb'

There are no accidents, only nature throwing her weight around. Even the bomb merely releases energy that nature has put there. Nuclear war would be just a spark in the grandeur of space. Nor can radiation "alter" nature: she will absorb it all. After the bomb, nature will pick up the cards we have spilled, shuffle them, and begin her game again. -- Camille Paglia

The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe. -- Albert Einstein

We may anticipate a state of affairs in which two Great Powers will each be in a position to put an end to the civilization and life of the other, though not without risking its own. We may be likened to two scorpions in a bottle, each capable of killing the other, but only at the risk of his own life. -- Robert Oppenheimer

Love all of God's creation, the whole of it and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light! Love the animals. Love the plants; love everything. If you love everything, you will soon perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love. -- Fyodor Doestoyevski

There is no proof that Muhammad attained perfection and the ability to perfect others as claimed...that is why, to this day we never see anyone converting to Islam unless in terror, or in quest of power, or to avoid heavy taxation, or to escape humiliation, or if taken prisoner, or because of infatuation with a Muslim woman, or for some similar reason. Nor do we see a respected, wealthy, and pious non-Muslim well versed in both his faith and that of Islam, going over to the Islamic faith without some of the aforementioned or similar motives -- philosopher Ibn Kammuna

The penalty for apostasy, in Islamic law, is death. Islam is conceived as a polity, not just as a religious community. It follows therefore that apostasy is treason. It is a withdrawal, a denial of allegiance as well as of religious belief and loyalty. Any sustained and principled opposition to the existing regime or order almost inevitably involves such a withdrawal -- Bernard Lewis