Though it may seem an unlikely location to happen upon a conference on astrobiology, the Vatican recently held a “study week” of over 30 astronomers, biologists, geologists and religious leaders to discuss the question of the existence of extraterrestrials. This follows the statement made last year by the Pope's chief astronomer, Father Gabriel Funes, that the existence of extraterrestrials does not preclude a belief in God, and that it's a question to be explored by the Catholic Church. The event, put on by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, took place at the Casina Pio IV on the Vatican grounds from November 6-11. . . . . . . .
“Just like there is an abundance of creatures on earth, there could also be other beings, even intelligent ones, that were created by God. That doesn't contradict our faith, because we cannot put boundaries to God's creative freedom. As saint Francis would say, when we consider the earthly creatures to be our “brothers and sisters”, why couldn't we also talk about a “extraterrestrial brother”? He would still be part of creation.”
Phi Beta Iota: a 59 page memorandum is rocketing around the Internet, entitled Collateral Damage: U.S. Covert Operations and the Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001. Read the report, which includes very specific details and charts with head and shoulder photos. This material is substantiated not just by the sources cited in the endnotes, but by many other sources such as those reviewed at 9-11 Truth Books & DVDs (23) and (indirectly) at Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback (145).
In 1975, physicist Andrei Sakharov and a group of fellow Soviet academicians warned the Kremlin leadership that unless the nation’s ruinous defense spending was slashed and funds refocused on modernizing the nation’s decrepit, obsolete industrial base and its wretched state agriculture, the Soviet Union would collapse by 1990.
Their grim warning was prescient. Twenty years ago this week – 9 November, 1989 – boisterous German crowds forced open the hated Berlin Wall, Communist East Germany collapsed in black farce, and the once mighty Soviet Empire began to crumble.
This was one of modern history’s most dramatic and dangerous moments. No one knew if the dying Soviet Union would expire peacefully, or ignite World War III.
In November, 1989, the vast empire built by Stalin that stretched from East Berlin to Vladivostok was on its last legs. The USSR had 50,000 battle tanks and 30,000 nuclear warheads, but could not feed its people. Military spending consumed 20% of the economy. As I saw for myself while traveling around the Soviet Union in the late 1980’s, conditions were often primitive, even third world outside the big cities.
Who would have thought a year ago that most of the issues of conflict in America’s foreign relations would be made worse during the first year following Barack Obama’s election as U.S. president?
Even those disputes or differences that were appeased or quiet a year ago are now worse. On Iraq, the new president has faithfully followed the policy of George W. Bush, and now Iraq threatens breakdown. . . . . . . .
Put aside, for a moment, the military disaster that is now in the course of manufacture in the “Af-Pak” theater of unwinnable wars.
Look at the president’s other policy problems. The Korean affair continues, as we have just seen. There are tensions foreseeable in his visit to a new Japanese government at the end of this week. The old security conventions and connivances of past Japanese Liberal Democrat governments will be questioned.
Japan’s new government’s geopolitical view of East Asian security is not the passive and compliant one displayed for nearly 60 years by Liberal Democrat politicians who did as Washington suggested. In question today is the legal status under which 47,000 U.S. troops and a series of bases have quasi-permanently occupied the archipelago since 1945. Japanese naval forces were limited in number and mission, despite China’s rising military power.
China is developing a blue-water navy to support territorial claims in the region, while experiencing serious trade tensions with the U.S. On Nov. 5, the U.S. imposed 99 percent anti-dumping taxes on certain Chinese steel exports. Then there is the question of the American trade deficit with China, which suits the U.S. but not China, and the troublesome shadowing of the dollar by the Chinese renminbi.
In Latin America, the Obama people have already made trouble, demanding and getting a sizable new air base agreement in Colombia, whose significance, as the U.S. Air Force itself says, will be strategic. (Presumably to counter the “menace” of Russian ships off Venezuela.) Washington’s ambiguous conduct with respect to the Honduras military coup did not contribute to good pan-American relations.
Way cool–the usual suspects led by LtCol Nagle (now retired) unusually well-organized. Phi Beta Iota will cover this event and issue a trip report, but there is no substitute for being there if you can make it.
We have started on a new article or chapter addressing a topic that was shut out of both the Afghanistan and Iraq theater planning efforts: “You Broke It, Now Give It Back.” In the interim, in preparation for appreciating this event to its fullest, see the three itesm at HUMINT Trilogy.
What do the MICC, the Collapse of the Berlin Wall, and the Financial Meltdown Have in Common?
I strongly recommend that readers study carefully the attached article by Janine Wedel. She analyzes the emergence of self-organizing government – industry networks in the post communist states and then compares these structures to the very similar emergence of crony capitalism in the US.
My only quibble with her stunning analysis is that she may not reach back far enough in time to uncover the antecedents of this phenomenon. The structure she describes is very similar — indeed, I would say almost identical — to the emergent properties of the competing and cooperating “clan-based” informal networks of the Military -Industrial – Congressional Complex (MICC) in the United States during forty years in the hot petri dish of the Cold War, and perhaps those of its “distorted mirror” in the Soviet Union as well. A penchant for
shared ideology, authoritarianism, and indoctrination in powerful belief systems to maintain a common outlook;
secrecy, lack of accountability, and control of public information, including including that produced by the press;
privatization, including the practice of using contractors to displace government's management duties and obligations;
crony capitalism lubricated by the revolving door between government and industry;
and a structure of policy-legitimating government advisory boards made up of industry representatives, among other things,
