-Caveat Lector-
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Today's Lesson From A Critique of Religion and Philosophy
by
Walter Kaufmann
Most men are born into their religion and accept it without
investigation. A study of other religions is generally considered irrelevant,
and a knowledge of
one's own is rare. Most people know what they like without knowing
what they like.
One picks and chooses, discounts some parts of the tradition, and
emphasizes others. But all this is usually done erratically and rather
irresponsibly.
One inherits a religion like a house and makes some slight changes to
make it more comfortable. One keeps some old beliefs as one keeps old
pictures to
which one is used from childhood: one does not really like them but
they seem to belong there; one is hardly conscious of them, but if they were
removed
the house would no longer be our childhood home. But one also
believes, if only a little, without being at all sure in one's own mind what
these beliefs
might mean. At that point irresponsibility begins: a belief that is
believed, even if only half, is no longer a picture, and it compromises
honesty if we
treat it like a picture.
We are responsible for our beliefs. We are also responsible for our
loyalties, even if they do not involve us in beliefs. Adherence to a religion
may be the
choice of a vehicle for living, the acceptance of a tradition and a
way of life. But men who have left a lasting imprint on their religion are
rare indeed,
and even they were usually more influenced by the tradition than they
influenced it. In general, the great religions have molded man; and after his
childhood is over, a man is responsible for what he allows to mold
him.
=====
Russian Follies
Russian Spies Penetrate NATO's Eastern
Front
Files for
blackmailing politicians
POLISH counter-intelligence has arrested three army officers on
charges of spying for Russia, as evidence grows that Moscow has established
networks of agents on Nato's newly-created eastern front.
Reports in Warsaw suggest all three were colonels in military
counter-intelligence, the nerve centre of Poland's armed forces. They were
unmasked
by a Russian double agent "bought" by Polish intelligence.
The arrests were made in the past two weeks, even though the Polish
authorities were first informed of the officers' alleged spying activities in
the
early 1990s. The officers were left to continue in their jobs, but
were moved to less sensitive posts. Polish newspapers suggested that
intelligence
chiefs postponed the arrests to protect the identity of their
Russian source.
The military and the government have played down the significance
of the incident - the Prime Minister, Jerzy Buzek, last week claimed that two
of
those detained had retired, while the third held no post with
access to important information - but public accusations of spying will
deepen Poland's
longstanding enmity with Russia, still smarting from the expansion
of Nato into its former client states four months ago.
But a different story was emerging elsewhere. A
counter-intelligence officer said he was shocked by what the officers were
alleged to have handed
to Russia. He said: "It appears they would pass on everything they
knew, without hesitation." The chairman of parliament's secret service
committee described two of the arrested men as key officers with
access to top-secret papers.
The scandal is the most serious since communism's collapse 10 years
ago. Although there have been many accusations of treason in Poland, few
spies have been caught. Jozef Oleksy resigned as prime minister
three years ago after an "imprudent" friendship with a KGB agent, but was
never
prosecuted.
Until the current case, the worst proved incident was when Polish
agents swooped on Major Marek Zielenski, a secret policeman, as he handed
papers to a Russian military attach� in 1993. He was sentenced to
nine years.
According to government spokesmen, the officers worked for the
Soviet Union until its collapse after the 1991 coup and then, without pause,
for
Boris Yeltsin's new Russian state. All three were commissioned
during the communist era and were said to be motivated by pro-Russian
sentiment.
They are untypical. Most Poles remain anti-Russian, pro-Western
sentiment is strong and intelligence ties are close. One of America's
greatest spies
was the Polish Colonel Ryszard Kuklinski, who passed 300,000
classified documents to the CIA in the 1970s.
But the West has long feared that Russian intelligence, the SVR,
left high-quality espionage networks behind when it completed its withdrawal
from
central Europe in 1991. In intelligence terms, the pay-offs could
be enormous.
Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary joined Nato in March and now
constitute the alliance's eastern front. Officials in Warsaw acknowledge
that they are a prime target for Moscow's shrunken but still potent
spy machine.
According to Captain Robert Kowal of military counter-intelligence:
"As a new Nato member, we are an object of special interest for secret
services
from our eastern neighbours. We are now on the border of the
alliance and we are being watched very closely by the Russians."
Western intelligence agencies have been monitoring the revival of
Russian interest in central Europe for some time. Two years ago, diplomats
warned that Russian embassies and trade missions, which emptied of
KGB and military GRU agents when Moscow's eastern empire imploded, were
quickly filling up again.
But countering the Russian intelligence threat among Nato's new
members is extremely difficult. Predictably, Moscow's men are able to recruit
among former friends and colleagues in the secret police and armed
forces.
And they also have a vast store of intelligence material gathered
by communism's giant snooping apparatus during more than 40 years of Russian
occupation. The information is held in a top-secret archive, the
so-called Blackmailer's Treasurehouse. It holds sensitive details on the
private lives
of tens of thousands of citizens in Nato's new members. The worry
is that the archive is being used to blackmail politicians with a murky past.
The papers are largely copies of interior ministry documents from
the former Warsaw Pact states. Czechoslovak officials first revealed the
existence
of the archive after the 1989 revolution.
During the communist era, KGB liaison officers in Prague and other
east European capitals received copies of every single significant secret
police
document. Every week, a special plane took selected papers back to
KGB headquarters, where they remain today.
But communist secret policemen burnt the original archives during
the confusion of the 1989 revolutions. That leaves the central Europeans at a
massive disadvantage. They cannot judge who might be vulnerable.
The London Telegraph, July 11, 1999
The Carpet-Bagging Bitch
President Will Not Gag
Hillary
Hillary, however, will
be allowed to gag voters
PRESIDENT CLINTON has given his wife a free rein to say whatever
she needs to get elected in her US Senate campaign, regardless of the
embarrassment she may cause his administration.
He does not object to Hillary Clinton airing their disagreements
over key administration policies, White House officials said yesterday, so
long as
she makes clear that she is speaking as a potential candidate for
office, not as First Lady.
Mrs Clinton provoked a furore during a three-day tour of up-state
New York last week by declaring that she considered Jerusalem to be "the
eternal
and indivisible capital of Israel" and would press for the US
embassy to be moved there. Her comments, in a letter to Orthodox Jews,
contradicted
White House policy of maintaining the embassy in Tel Aviv until
Israel and the Palestinian Authority have resolved their dispute over the
status of
Jerusalem.
They came just days before the first official visit to Washington
by Ehud Barak, Israel's new prime minister, and were seized on by pro-Israeli
Republicans who want the US to recognise Jerusalem as the capital.
Ben Gilman, New York congressman and chairman of the House international
relations committee, called on Mrs Clinton to "convince her
husband" to move the US embassy.
Mrs Clinton's advisers were delighted with her performance last
week, which sharply raised her profile in parts of the state where she had
never
previously set foot, while also appealing to the Jewish voters, who
make up 10 per cent of its population. The First Lady was gambling that her
remarks on Israel would offset the damage done when she declared,
last year, that she favoured the creation of a Palestinian state.
But they allowed critics to highlight what they said were a series
of convenient "flip-flops" by Mrs Clinton, from declaring herself a fan of
the New
York Yankee baseball team after a lifetime supporting the Chicago
Cubs, to suddenly embracing Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the retiring senator whom
she hopes to succeed, as "probably the wisest New Yorker that we
can know of at this time". Senator Moynihan has been a harsh critic of the
Clinton administration.
The First Lady did her best to address the charge of
"carpet-bagging" levelled at her. She repeatedly said: "It's not where I'm
from, it's what I
stand for."
But her visit sparked a contest to see who would be tripped up
first, she or her likeliest Republican rival, by lack of local knowledge. In
the event,
it was New York City's Mayor Rudolph Giuliani: confusing the town
of Monroe, 40 miles to the north, with the county of Monroe, 270 miles away,
and putting out a press release with the location of the famous
waterfalls mis-spelled: "Niagra".
But Mrs Clinton also came under attack after reports that she was
refusing to switch the family's summer holiday from out-of-state Martha's
Vineyard to the up-state Adirondack mountain region because, so an
aide let slip, she and the President were worried about the flies.
Officially, Mrs Clinton has so far merely established an
"exploratory committee". Although her apparent intention to run has scared
all other
Democrat candidates off the field, the First Lady need not legally
commit herself to the contest until next summer. Meanwhile, if she finds
herself
losing ground and decides to withdraw, she will be free to do so.
But last week she attempted to quash Republican speculation that
she might be considering a run for the White House in 2004, insisting that if
elected to the Senate she would serve her full six-year term.
The London Telegraph, July 11, 1999
The Digital Society
Internet
Voting
Among others, Echelon
will record your vote
PEOPLE may be able to vote in general elections without even
leaving home under new plans to link polling stations to the Internet.
It is the latest idea from ministers to combat voter apathy
following the disastrously low turnouts in the recent local and European
elections.
Thousands of voters will take part in trials of the Internet plan
and a range of other reforms in local elections and by-elections next year.
The Government is determined to rush through permanent reforms in
time for the next general election, probably to be held in 2001, in the hope
of
achieving higher turnouts. On Tuesday George Howarth, the Home
Office minister responsible for election law, will discuss setting up pilot
schemes around the country when he chairs a working group of
electoral officers and representatives from the other main parties.
Under the Internet plan, voters would be able to log on to a
website dedicated to elections and call up a list of candidates standing in
their local
constituency or council ward. They would then key in a code to
prove their identity before placing a cross on an electronic ballot paper
shown on
the screen.
The system, described as "the ultimate in armchair politics", would
have to meet concerns about security since the Internet is notoriously
vulnerable
to hackers. Other ideas to reach reluctant or disadvantaged voters
include mobile polling stations that would park outside old people's homes,
where
residents were unable to walk to vote.
Voting booths could also be put up in supermarkets and at railway
stations. The tradition that elections are held on a Thursday may be replaced
with
weekend voting. Another pilot programme will test the idea of
conducting elections entirely by postal ballot or by telephone voting.
All the main political parties support the attempt to encourage
higher turnouts, although there will be intense scrutiny to ensure that the
plans do not
benefit one side more than another.
The London Telegraph, July 11, 1999
Middle East
Iranian Student Revolt Reveals Government
Split
Police beat
students and burn the Koran
PRO-DEMOCRACY Iranian students took to the streets yesterday to
protest at police violence that left three students dead and many injured
after
demonstrations against a crackdown on the media by hardline Islamic
clergy.
The higher education minister, Mostafa Moin, resigned, criticising
what he described as the "beating up of innocent students" by police. He
described it as "unacceptable under any basis or expediency" and
said the police were "paving the way for a national crisis". Teheran
University's
chancellor, Mehdi Khalili Araqi, also resigned and the university's
board of directors issued a statement threatening to quit unless the
authorities
acted.
In a statement reported by the official news agency, IRNA, the
board said: "We will not resume our activities until the honour and status of
our
students is restored, all arrested students are released and the
commander of the police force is dismissed. All students, professors and
university
staff, with all their power, will defend the sacred position and
dignity of students." The board also expressed its abhorrence of "the dirty
and wilful
move" of the police forces.
The Interior Ministry, which supports the country's reforming
moderate president Mohammad Khatami, also criticised the police action and
said all
the detained students would be released. The commander of the
national police, Hossein Lotfian, is a known hardliner.
More than 1,000 students staged a demonstration in Rasht in the
Caspian Sea province of Gilan, while students in the northwestern city of
Tabriz
planned to hold a campus sit-in. There was more violence yesterday
when hardline vigilantes armed with clubs attacked some 10,000 students
rallying outside the capital's university. The students retaliated
by burning the motorcycle of one of the vigilantes, who were identified as
members
of the Ansar-e Hezbollah, a conservative group with shadowy ties to
the Islamic establishment.
Yesterday's rally began as supporters of the president staged a
sit-in at the main campus, while many others marched from a dormitory complex
several miles away. Some of the marchers covered their faces in
black or wore traditional Arab headdresses to disguise their identities.
The Higher Education Ministry accused the police of assaulting
students, entering the hostel without permission, "breaking the doors and
destroying public and private properties, and even setting on fire
one of the rooms which resulted in the burning of a copy of the holy Koran .
. .
and ultimately firing gunshots.
"In this bitter incident . . . decencies were ignored and respect
disregarded," the ministry said and apologised to all students and academics.
It was
a rare accusation by one government ministry against another
government department, reflecting the depth of the crisis between the two
factions in
the government.
The trouble began on Thursday night, when about 200 students
demonstrated to protest at the brief banning of Salam newspaper, which has
backed
the president in his continuing struggle against the clergy. A
spokesman for the students, who was arrested and later released, told
reporters that he
and his classmates had been "physically and mentally tortured
during detention".
The London Telegraph, July 11, 1999
India vs. Pakistan
India Siezes North Korean Tools En Route to
Pakistan
From the Nodong
1 to the Ghauri
TENSIONS between India and Pakistan have intensified after Indian
customs agents seized components shipped from North Korea which they claim
were destined for Pakistan's top-secret missile programme.
Indian customs agents, acting on an intelligence tip-off, boarded a
North Korean ship when it arrived at an Indian port to offload a consignment
of
sugar. The ship was found to contain 177 wooden crates of precision
machine tools along with other components used in missile production.
Investigators believe that the components were central to
Islamabad's attempts to develop its weapons of mass destruction.
North Korea's support for Pakistan's weapons projects was disclosed
by The Sunday Telegraph last November when it reported the murder of Kim
Sinae, 54, wife of Kang Thae Yun, the economics counsellor at the
North Korean embassy in the Pakistani capital Islamabad, and a key figure in
the secret arms trade. It was believed she had been shot by other
North Koreans working at Pakistan's top-secret nuclear establishment who
suspected her of passing on valuable information about the arms
trade to Western diplomats.
The latest discovery came when the customs agents seized the Ku Wol
San, a North Korean freighter owned by the Puhung Trading Corporation, as
it docked at Kandla in Gujarat, on India's western coast, late last
month.
The ship had been scheduled to sail directly from Nampo in North
Korea to Malta, via Bangkok. But in what appeared to be a private business
deal,
the captain, Tae-Min Hun, took on an additional 13,000 tons of
sugar in Bangkok for delivery in India. After a first attempting to dock in
Bombay,
where his vessel was refused entry, he sailed south to Gujarat.
There his ship and cargo were impounded and he and his 44 North Korean crew
members were detained.
Scientists from India's Defence Research and Development
Organisation, who were called in by customs officials, are currently
examining the
ship's cargo. But they have confirmed that the vessel was carrying
177 tons of highly sophisticated weapons machinery and equipment.
These include heavy-duty machines used to make rocket motor casings
and missile nose cones, equipment for missile-guidance correction, and other
sophisticated technical devices. The ship's captain reportedly
admitted last week that his cargo was bound for Karachi. But North Korea's
ambassador to India, Myong Gu, has dismissed reports of the ship's
military consignment as "speculative, distorted and groundless".
Although Pyongyang's dealings with Islamabad are shrouded in
secrecy, Pakistan is known to have received considerable assistance with the
production of its Ghauri missile, believed to be modelled on the
North Korean Nodong 1. Shipments of missile components, including warhead
canisters for the Ghauri, have been sighted regularly. Last week
another Ilyushin- 76 transport plane flew into Islamabad's military airfield
from
Pyongyang.
A Western analyst. said: "We've known of North Korea's trade with
Pakistan for the past few years. But now India believes it has found the
smoking gun."
The disclosure could not have come at a more embarrassing time for
Islamabad. Last week Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan's prime minister, who had flown
to Washington to meet President Clinton over the current fighting
with India across the de facto border dividing Kashmir, was forced to release
a
joint statement promising to "take concrete steps for restoration
of the Line of Control".
The statement, which made no mention of the broader dispute of the
control of all of Kashmir that Pakistan had hoped to raise, tacitly
acknowledged
Islamabad's direct role in the conflict. It provided a diplomatic
success for New Delhi, which maintains that the alleged "Kashmiri freedom
fighters" in mountaintop bunkers on the Indian side of the Line of
Control are principally Pakistani soldiers.
As the international community waits for a de-escalation of the
undeclared war, evidence of Pakistan's dealings with North Korea - regarded
as one
of the world's most dangerous and unstable nations - is likely to
harden attitudes against Islamabad still further.
The London Telegraph, July 11, 1999
-----
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris
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