Hampton Roads Publishing Company Blog

Friends,

An interesting analysis from Stratfor. (They encourage readers to send questions or comments to analysis@stratfor.com.) I am one of those who believe that this pope knew just what he was doing in making his remarks about faith and reason and jihads. So I am glad to pass on this analysis of his possible geopolitical reasons for doing so.

Faith, Reason and Politics: Parsing the Pope’s Remarks
By George Friedman

On Sept. 12, Pope Benedict XVI delivered a lecture on “Faith, Reason and the University” at the University of Regensburg. In his discussion (full text available on the Vatican Web site) the pope appeared to be trying to define a course between dogmatic faith and cultural relativism — making his personal contribution to the old debate about faith and reason. In the course of the lecture, he made reference to a “part of the dialogue carried on — perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara — by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both.”

Benedict went on to say — and it is important to read a long passage to understand his point — that:

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Saturday Sept. 24, 2005. If we could have found the road we were looking for, we wouldn’t have stopped at the little park in the middle of nowhere. You know how it is. You’re traveling and you have your mind set in one direction, and anything you pass looks less interesting than the thing you think you’re chasing.

We were on our way to Bend from Crater Lake, and although Bend was to the northeast, we would have to travel southwest down highway 62 in order to pick up 97 for the long trek back north. The map seemed to show a small road that would cut off some of the long dogleg, but even though we looked carefully, the only road that cut away seemed to be headed in the wrong direction. Okay, we figured that we must have passed it somehow. Next step: Find somebody and ask. The little sign by the small white building said Fort Klamath.

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This thoughtful article from the British newspaper The Independent misses the elephant in the living room, I suspect but cannot demonstrate. It concentrates on economic issues. My hunch is that Europe is about to be overwhelmed by a tidal wave from the right fueled by cultural issues of a depth and importance not seen since Europe had to fight the battle first against fascism then against communism and then against the Coca Cola culture. Now (I think, but cannot demonstrate) more and more it is going to be a question of Europe as an exlusive or inclusive culture.

A debate long overdue, and no one on earth can say which way it will turn out. But you can’t import millions of Muslims into the heart of what was a Christian (and now is largely a de facto atheist) culture, use them as “guest workers” over decades, and expect that things wll not change.

I suspect that this is the real issue that is beginning to be fought over.

The big question: Is Europe turning away from the social democrat model?

By Stephen Castle, Europe Correspondent

Published: 19 September 2006

Why are we asking?

Because Sweden’s voters have thrown out their Social Democratic government after 12 years in office, striking a blow to one of the most successful political parties in Europe. Sunday’s elections ended the 10-year premiership of Göran Persson and ushered in a new coalition of centre-right parties led by Fredrik Reinfeldt. The scale of Mr Reinfeldt’s achievement should not be underestimated; the Social Democrats have been in power for all but nine years since 1932 and created a welfare state which is the envy of much of Europe.

Does Sweden matter?

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I wrote this poem going on a year ago. Nothing that has happened since leads me to think I was being unnecessarily gloomy. Not a great poem, but clear sighted enough, I think.

Tired, Isolated Romans

Tired, Isolated Romans

They fell, finally, those old Romans,
surrounded by hostile foreigners
prodded by envy and memory,
appetite, hatred and contempt
for what these people had become.

Even their enemies remembered
the Republic they had learned to fear,
and also respect, as it brought law
and not just order; possibilities
besides continual disruption.

The simple republican virtues,
dismissed as myths of a simpler time,
had left those men free within the law
to tend their small farms and businesses,
raising small armies with small taxes.

When they had perfected their system
beyond hope of change or overthrow,
a few men owned every man and thing.
benefiting few, it found but few –
and those fools, at last — to die for it.

Of course, no possible analogy implied.

Isn’t it a lovely world?

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Monday Sept. 26, 2005. When I didn’t know what else I intended to see in Oregon, I knew Crater Lake and Mount Hood. Volcanoes are power spots - sacred spots, I now call them - and they offer opportunities not available elsewhere. Matching consciousness to the “vibration” of such an energy is something like grounding an electrical wire so that the current may flow.

Some years earlier, my friends Jim and Michael and I had climbed onto snow-covered Mount Shasta and had spent a couple of magical hours there. We had known to connect with the psychic energy that underlies it, and we had created a brief ceremony expressing who we were and what we hoped for. That mid-summer day’s tourists and skiers had been no distraction; we had enjoyed the day on many levels and I had not forgotten.

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Interesting that Oriana Fallaci chose just this moment to die, given the sudden heatng-up of conflict between Muslims and Christians in the wake of the pope’s recent statement.

Combative writer Oriana Fallaci dies

By ALESSANDRA RIZZO
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

ROME — Oriana Fallaci, the Italian writer and journalist best known for her abrasive interviews and provocative stances, has died, officials said Friday. She was 76.

Fallaci, who had been diagnosed with cancer years ago, died overnight in a private clinic in Florence, said Paolo Klun, an official with the RCS publishing group, which carried Fallaci’s work. Klun said Fallaci, who lived in New York, had come back to her hometown days ago as her condition worsened.

Fallaci, a former Resistance fighter and war correspondent, was rarely seen in public.

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Standing on the deck of the lightship Columbia in Astoria, Oregon, chatting with the caretaker, I had told him I was going to be driving down the coast, and asked him what he would recommend seeing. He mentioned two or three things, but the one that stuck was the air museum at Tillamook. I made a note, and the next day, there I was.

It’s huge. The top of that arch is something like 190 feet in the air. Eight full-sized blimps sheltered there during the war, and eight more in its companion building. The buildings were made entirely of wood, because during the war metal had to be reserved for building ships and trucks and tanks and artillery pieces and shells and communication wire and all the million other things needed in an all-out war effort. Each hangar comprised something like two million board-feet of timber, designed and slapped together as quickly as possible, because of the desperate need.

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[Interesting look at the other side of Texas, the progressive side that we see so seldom.]

Richards left a legacy of opportunity, inclusion

By Wayne Slater and Robert T. Garrett

The Dallas Morning News

AUSTIN, Texas - As a little girl, Ann Richards would lie in bed and listen through an open window as the men swapped stories and talked politics in the back yard.

She developed her father’s gift for storytelling and a passion for politics - and she used both to fashion a new politics in Texas that was no longer just a man’s game.

One of Richards’ lifelong goals, and ultimately one of the greatest legacies of the former governor who died Wednesday, was to open public service to groups that were historically underrepresented.

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Eris, Goddess of Strife, Joins Solar System Amid Raucous Debate

By Amir Alexander
14 September, 2006

2003 UB313, the giant Kuiper belt object (KBO) whose discovery shook the entire solar system, now has an official name. On September 13, 2006, the International Astronomical Union’s (IAU) working groups on planetary system nomenclature and small body nomenclature voted almost unanimously to accept the suggestion of the objects’ discoverers and name it Eris, after the Greek goddess of discord and strife.

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