Pope Benedict's African Adventure

His Holiness is creating firestorms everywhere he puts his red loafered feet in Africa and that was before his rant against witchcraft and sorcery in Angola and his plea to get Catholics to help convert those who practiced such nonsense. Memo to Pope Benedict XVI: you are urging people to convert from sorcery to believe in a Man that was born of a Virgin, turned fishes and loaves of bread into enough to feed the masses and rose from the dead to walk the Earth before ascending into Heaven. The condescending approach may not be the best introduction to Catholicism while leaving out the Church's participation in the Crusades and the Inquisition, but it confirms the suspicion that this pope seems zone and tone deaf. I think he was still stunned by President's Biya's wife with her Mount Kilimanjaro of curled hair greeting him at the airport.

On Tuesday, Benedict’s visit began in Cameroon, where, among other issues, he dealt with the church’s competition for souls with Islam. On Friday, he moved to oil-rich Angola, his second and last stop, where he immediately spoke out against corruption and the disregard of the poor by the wealthy.

On Saturday, at St. Paul’s, he addressed the accommodations of faith bysome Africans who mix their Christianity with animism living “in fear of spirits, of malign and threatening powers.”

The pope asked rhetorically: “Why not leave them in peace? They have their truth, and we have ours.” He then answered that there was no injustice in presenting the ways of Christ to others, granting “them the opportunity of finding their truest and most authentic selves” and offering them “this possibility of attaining eternal life.”

Human rights groups may well appreciate Benedict’s decision to raise the issue of sorcery. In parts of Angola, Congo and the Congo Republic, thousands of children are accused of witchcraft and are cast out of their homes, blinded or killed, according to advocates for the youngsters. (Photo of Baka Pygmies)

Well, the Pope certainly isn't winning every friend and influencing everybody on the continent as he lists what is wrong with Africa at each stop. In many cases, he is being greeted warmly and does have parts of his message that emphasize Christian charity that people are their brother's keepers. Eradicate corruption was the Holy See's message of the day for war weary Angola, formerly colonized by the Portuguese, on Friday. His exhortations to give to the poor while speaking to large enthusiastic crowds of the impoverished living on roughly $2 per day while remaining undereducated is a bit depressing.

Pope Benedict is an ultra conservative celibate guy who told other people not to practice safe sex with condoms in sub-Saharan countries where AIDS is decimating families. That pronouncement to the press, flies directly in the face of common sense and buttresses the worst leaders in Africa who continue to deny the extent of the problems caused by AIDS. The pope's remarks were so intemperate that the Curia back in Rome watched in horror some of the condom pronouncements while wringing their prayer beads about whether this will cripple his four year old papacy. It is kind of odd that the one thing President Bush got right was his approach to Africa and providing the funds to back up AIDS activists among others. Meanwhile, other papal mistakes continue to fester. (Photos courtesy of NYT/Joäo Silva)

The pope has admitted making mistakes over the lifting of the excommunication of a holocaust-denying bishop, saying the church will make much greater use of the Internet in the future to help avoid such controversies.

In a letter to church leaders, Pope Benedict XVI says the church should have been aware of the views of Bishop Richard Williamson.

"I have been told that consulting the information available on the Internet would have made it possible to perceive the problem early on.

Some sort of edict on using teh Google is in the offing at the Vatican.


Putting Aretha Franklin's Inauguration chapeau to shame, the next morning on his first stop in Cameroon, the president's wife decided to embellish her lady bountiful lacquered red gold curls with a jaunty little pink and white ode to Christianity top hat atop matching ensemble that put all the other hats in the vicinity to shame. The Pope needed his Mega Pontiff hat he uses for Mass at the Basilica to reign supreme over this confection. The president and the pope are wearing virtually the same official ceremonial outfits as the day before. The pope did get a gift from Baka Pygmies of a turtle that promptly got a seat in first class with the entourage before leaving Cameroon. Unfortunately, moments of humour came to an abrupt halt as the trip moved on to Angola.


Saturday's horror was the stampede that left two people dead right before his Angola address as 30,000 people slammed against the closed gates trying to get into the Luanda stadium in a stifling heatwave. Sunday, a Papal Mass for a half million was prayed for a population that is regarded as almost 60% Catholic. The pope, distressed by the deaths, offered his prayers for the perished and his warm wishes for those recovering. He also mentioned the "clouds of evil" that hung over Africa. Angola, was the final stop in Africa before he and the popemobile head back to Rome where a discussion of how the trip went will be the topic as a trip is set for the Middle East in May. (AFP photo)



Personal testimonies are the means to reach the human heart. Included in this seminal book, 28: Stories of AIDS in Africa from Stephanie Nolen are the origins and pathology of the African AIDS epidemic and who is claimed by the disease that seems without end or mercy.

Darwin Invited to Church

Charles Darwin turns some people of faith into an evolutionary guide from humble worshipers to frothing at the mouth illogical ranters.  It is a sight to be hold and the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life studied the Darwin phenomenon.  Now many Churches are gathering in England to have a rational discussion on Darwin's thought leadership.  Be ever mindful that Darwin has creationist Islamic critics of natural selection as well. Enter Turkey's contribution, Harun Yahya.  It is interesting that the famed abolitionist and naturalist's birthday is the same as the 16th president of the United States born ina log cabin.  this religious confab in Oxford, England is a birthday celebration of sorts with 150 years having sped by since one of Darwin's seminal works, Origin of Species, hit the nineteenth century book world.

Science and religion have been combatants in every single arena. Science relies on the observable and proof of concept.  The fact that evolution remains a "theory" gave many a small opening to create such laughable oxymoronic constructs as intelligent design.  It took the Catholic Church 400 years to mumble out an apology to Galileo about the earth's orbit.  Darwin is now the central organizing theme for the Church to explore and appreciate a Darwinian perspective.  Lots of popcorn and lay off the salt, many people's blood pressure will rise just at the thought of this symposium.  Churches involved in this want to prove they are not strict members of the flat earth society, but more enlightened and willing to embrace discussion of Darwin's scientific genius. 

Reverend Tim Stead said: "It impacts on our entire understanding of the world."

"One of our aims in holding this conference is to go some way towards redressing the impression that some of the general public have that Christians are anti-science and anti-Darwin."

"This is a chance to set the record straight and to explore how it is possible for faith to sit alongside Darwin's views," he said.

The Church of England is figuring out how to put Darwin on thier official website after some less than flattering remarks through the decades form thier eminent leaders.  Unrepenatant atheists use Darwin as propaganda to promote their agenda that believers are deluded.  It doesn't help that literal-minded Creationists stubbornly stick to the mantra of the earth only being 6,000 years old.  Darwin considered himself agnostic after the soul destroying loss of his daughter Annie followed by another son lost to scarlet fever.

Charles Darwin was a prodigious writer of scholarly journals and a multitude of snail mail.  Few authors can claim that they have four books that are epics and mark epochs in scientific thought.  Here in one volume are the four stellar works of Darwin in From so Simple A Beginning: Darins Four Great Books: Voyage of the Beagle, The Origin of Species, the Descent of Man and The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals.

Romanovs Rehabilitated by Russian Supreme Court

Russia gave the literate world creative and human tales of woe that are art and parcel of the classics. The angst embedded in some of the heart shredding tales of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina or War and Peace, Federov Dostoevsky . Three centuries of the royal house of Romanov ruling Russia until the final R's did them in, Rasuptin & revolution. Now, history is being rewritten showing the family of Tsar Nicholas II did not get shot full of bullet holes and their remains placed in vats of acid for merely political showmanship on eradicating Russia of ruinous royalty. They were a royal family with vassals and serfs that received approbation under the new Russian historical standards removing any Russian Who's Who listing them as state criminals.

Bolsheviks lead the execution of the family with jewels of renown the world over. Coronations were lavish affairs. For ninety years Russia denied it was a Bolshevik operation at Impatiev House as just a few minions were involved. The 2008 Russian Supreme Court validated evidence of innocence of the crimes the family was accused of because while under house arrest, their benevolent servants left their posts with the family stashed in the basement on July 17, 1918, allowing the slaughter to take place. The children did not die at first because of the density and plentifulness of the jewels sewn into their garb. During his lifetime Nicholas II gave exquisite bejeweled Fabergé eggs to his wife and the family coffers contained a fair cache of other mint condition precious stones. The jewels allowed the kids to first withstand bullets then knives making some of the assassins get the heebie jeebies as it occurred to them some sort of Divine intervention was happening. After all, the family was directly descended from Ivan the Terrible who went rampaging bonkers when the Tsarina of his dreams died under suspicious circumstances making him suspect them of her poisoning.

The move does not presage any attempt by the Romanov family to reclaim their palaces or regain a foothold in the constitutional order of Russia. But they were delighted nonetheless.

“The protracted rehabilitation process has come to a successful conclusion,” German Lukyanov, the Romanov family lawyer, told the Interfax news agency. “Justice has triumphed.” The case has been fought largely by Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna, a senior member of the royal house.

The ruling may not change the lives of the family, but it does represent a milestone: it is the closest that any post-Soviet government has come to accepting the criminal nature of Bolshevik rule.

Westerners may see that as a truism. But present-day Russia is still in the thrall of the iconography of Lenin. His image is emblazoned on schools and underground stations; his embalmed body is still visited in Red Square, even if not by the thousands of Socialist pilgrims who turned up in the Soviet days.

The conspiracy theories surrounding this family are legendary. Church of the Blood is the structure built upon the killing place where the assassinations took place. For years, two bodies were missing leading to many claims they were the long lost prince or princess or their descendants. Another grave was found leading to DNA results aligning with the rest of the now St. Petersburg interred family. Current descendants wanted the stain on the family's reputation removed and the Court obliged. Little Prince Alexei was the great grandson of Queen Victoria reemphasizing the blood ties from all the crown heads of Europe due to all the intermarrying. The books on the Romanovs are fascinating and where Lenin plays in all of this will keep the playwrights, novelists and historians at it for centuries. To have died in a basement after living in the magnificence of the Winter Palace as serfs died in more menial conditions are what fills Russian literature with irony and angst of the human spirit.

To keep up with all the plot twists and their layers of intricacies, including the healing through prayer and mysticism of Alexei by Rasputin who later had horrible incantations against the Romanovs as other royal nobles attempted to murder him, takes a worthwhile book that covers the indelicacies. Author Lindsey Hughes does that quite well in the biographical The Romanovs: Ruling Russia 1613 - 1917.

Coming Soon: Mystery of the Black Hole

Dire predictions, nails bitten to the quick and nerd joy at the prospect of finding and proving some of physics deepest secrets will play out in on computers in a science red carpet moment. In a monster opening box office, September 10th looms large for Doomsday prognosticators, science watchers and CERN citizens will watch with bated breath as the curtain pulls back and a shaky finger pushes the go live button on the world's largest particle physics lab. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) fires up to smash atoms faster and harder in a cool horror flick kind of way while the search for making Earthly black holes climbs to a new level. There are some nervous nellies freaking out that the world will be instantly sucked into the vortex of a man-made black hole beyond the event horizon to save ourselves from becoming a tossed space particle salad. Somebody wanted to hold the nuts...

Battle of the Colliders

Much larger CERN versus the older Femilab - may the best atom slayer win....

But near Chicago, Illinois, the US Department of Energy's Fermilab is saying, look at us, we have the capacity with Tevatron's 170 giga electron-volts to find the God Particle too, if it exists, except, the European Organization for Nuclear Research or CERN is is the almost $4 billion USD Godzilla of the particle collider realm. Sequels already. It will be a notable international event about who and where the origins of life are found as atom guts are examined ad nauseum. Dark Matter will star as studies and dissertations do mortal combat to prove the existence of other dimensions tearing asunder current belief systems. The Higgs boson has captivated one man for nearly forty years and is one of the remaining theories that the atomic colliders are focused upon. CERN's LHC is brand new.

“We don’t know what we’ll find,” said Abra­ham Sei­den, di­rec­tor of the San­ta Cruz In­sti­tute for Par­t­i­cle Phys­ics at the Uni­ver­s­ity of Cal­i­for­nia, San­ta Cruz, a U.S. par­ti­ci­pant in the proj­ect. About half the U.S. ex­pe­ri­men­tal par­t­i­cle-phys­ics com­mun­ity has fo­cused its en­er­gy on the col­lider’s two larg­est par­t­i­cle de­tec­tors, called AT­LAS and CMS, ac­cord­ing to Sei­den.

LHC is huge in eve­ry way—its size, the en­er­gies to which it can ac­cel­er­ate par­t­i­cles, the amount of da­ta it would gener­ate, and the size of the in­terna­t­ional col­la­bora­t­ion in­volved in it. The pow­er­ful beams of par­ti­cles are to cir­cu­late around the 27-km (16.8-mile) un­der­ground tube at CERN, the Eu­ropean par­t­i­cle phys­ics lab based in Ge­ne­va. Af­ter some test­ing, the beams are to cross paths in­side the de­tec­tors to make the first col­li­sions.

Sci­en­tists say the de­bris from those crash­es—show­ers of sub­a­tom­ic par­t­i­cles—will rev­o­lu­tion­ize our un­der­stand­ing of na­ture. A key hoped-for mile­stone is disco­very of the Higgs bos­on, a hy­po­thet­i­cal par­t­i­cle that would fill a gap in the “s­tan­dard mod­el” of par­t­i­cle phys­ics by en­dow­ing fun­da­men­tal par­t­i­cles with mass. This should oc­cur by 2010, Sei­den said, if the Higgs ex­ists at all; na­ture may have found an­oth­er way to cre­ate mass. “I’m ac­tu­ally hop­ing we find some­thing un­ex­pect­ed,” he said.

Black holes are delicious Hollywood diva stories waiting for their closeup. The flying spaghetti monster is what nonbelievers called believer's God or Higher Power in the Universe and science is seeing what makes the noodles flop about in space. Touched by his noodly appendage What happens when one or an entire star like the sun is sucked into the stuff of cosmos conflict - only black holes are theorized at the creation/destruction of particle levels.

Dr. Hawkings, the as-yet non Nobel winning brilliant physicist has some strong feelings on the subject. In an interesting newly released book from Stanford professor Leonard Susskind, The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World safe for Quantum Mechanics details the intricacies of the arguments between the generalists and the string theory practitioners over the years culminating in verbal fisticuffs over what happens inside a black hole. Buy & Read the book first, the movies always screw it up.

Happiest of Birthday's CJ - the world of science will make many great things probable, but your Faith shall make all things possible!

Pakistan Powder Keg, Musharraf Impeachment Threat

Pakistan's ruling parliament made the I-word, impeachment, threat to former general President Musharraf implicit. Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi repeated, resign or watch us strip you of what's left of your coalition's power publicly in less than a week. Multi-tiered fascination abounds. Musharraf anointed himself president in a military coup, while the Pakistani army essentially says we do one coup per guy. Musharraf used his freebie already and the army is currently spouting noble words on how this is a civilian situation. Enfeebled President Pervez Musharraf who pinned on his general stars and knife edged ironed his army outfit for the last time six months ago for public consumption, is trying cut a deal with anybody who will listen as the ground erodes beneath his feet, Wyl E. Coyote style. No ability to use hard power renders Musharraf impotent in today's Pakistan, and for the worsening situation in Kashmir, even for protecting sporting events and their players. On cue, Al Qaeda's Zawahari utters his two cents.

However, Mills told The Press newspaper that nothing the taskforce or Lawson said had allayed the players' fears, adding that the situation in Pakistan was changing daily and had worsened even after the delegation had visited New Zealand.

He conceded the security plans were impressive on paper and some of the best he had seen.

"But the fact remains they are untested and we have doubts whether Pakistan could deliver on those plans," he said.

The foreign policy inept Bush Administration ensured the US government had all its chips in the "democratically" elected Musharraf's presidency. They doubled down on Musharraf being able to quell dissent like they did with a fake riot in Florida the US press hyped and hoped that if they just believed Musharraf would just muscle his way through this. The problem is, who exactly has control of Pakistan's nukes now and who exactly will have control after Musharraf has all his possessions eradicated from the halls of power. India and the US are both deeply concerned with a resurgence of al Qaeda in Pakistan, an up tick in religious violence in Kashmir from inside Indian controlled areas over a toilet installation at a sacred shrine and from the border, Afghanistan's paralysis of a surge of Taliban fighters and policies and Pakistan's adroit and powerful intelligence agency, ISI, getting even cozier with covered in US, India & China's money, an ascendant Saudi Arabia. Bush has no friends with real power or diplomatic network in place to work through the issues. Condi Rice gets State Department frequent flyer miles, not progress. (AP photo/Yasmin in Kashmir)

Bajaur, like other tribal district, is believed to provide sanctuaries for al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters launching cross-border attacks on US-led international forces in Afghanistan.

Let's see, Russia is busy slapping around upstart Georgia while Vladimir Putin spit in Bush's eye at every turn after Bush claimed to have seen Pooty-Poot's soul when gazing deeply into his eyes. Notice, Putin was at the Olympics, not the president, but Putin exited after the opening ceremonies to act as Russia's Commander in Chief. President Musharraf suffered a loss of his tattered prestige earlier this year with the assassination of popular political rival Benazir Bhutto, the spectacle of departing the former prime minister, the declaration of Martial law, the firing of the Pakistani Supreme Court and the jailing of dissidents while the middle class's power is out during a heat wave. The kicker is Musharraf was seen as a key voice of settling violence in the Kashmir region. How Bush like as other areas see rise in religious violence as Musharraf plans his next steps.

Local newspapers said that Taliban militants from the neighbouring North Waziristan tribal zone had entered Kurram to back the Sunni tribes involved in the fighting, now in its 12th day.

Residents said Sunni tribesmen torched three villages belonging to Shiite tribes and both sides used rockets, heavy machine guns and mortars in the fierce clashes.

"In today's and yesterday's clashes at least 23 people have been killed on both sides and 28 others were injured," a security official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Pakistan is a powder keg atop long range nuclear missiles with a shifting alliance three-way internal struggle between secular, fundamentalist religious forces and Sunni and Shi'a fighters for control of rural tribal villages. The fighting won't stop, even if Musharraf became the ex-president in the next five minutes, but somebody who is not a friend of the USA or India will have their hands on nuclear weapons while Bush frets about Iran & Iraq and Saudi Arabia, who don't yet have them. They have something else though, money to buy them or the technology.

Further critical reading can be found from a number of subject matter experts on the tangled ties between America, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and India. The Pakistani Army has never before been chronicled so well in Crossed Swords: Pakistan, Its Army and the Wars Within from the scholarly author, Shuja Nawaz.

Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of A Nation comes from the best selling author expert, Ahmed Rashid, as he painstakingly charts how a dangerous Bush focus in Iraq ignored the larger context in southeast Asia where the real problems exist.

God, Extra Terrestrials & The Vatican

An official announcement in the Pope's paper of record, world famous L'Osservatore Romano, has science fiction aficionados and fervent worshipers in God's universal Church not only in hyperdrive that UFO's are worthy of discussion, but mindwarping up to, if a life form is on board from deep in outer space, they too are the inspired Divine work of God. Heads are exploding all over the universe and in the Geek/Faith blogosphere. Alien implications in this throw open the doors to testing beliefs, examining Faith and unbinding an awesome God from just spending an emotional investment on the two legged praying monotheistic masses on the third rock from the Sun. Scientists already know there are hundreds of extrasolar planets or galaxies in the universe with the potential or the recently discovered elsewhere in space common molecule, methane, to replicate Earth's atmosphere and sustain forms of life. It never meant that development in those other areas followed anything near Earth's evolutionary path documented by Darwin.

It has also made for some lively discussions between liberal and
conservative theologians. Rev. Christopher Corbally, vice director of
the Vatican Observatory, said he has been bombarded with e-mail from
colleagues pondering whether God could have created more than one world
and whether other beings could be granted redemption via a Christ-like
savior.

If God created human beings in his own image, how could there be others
who don't look like us? Little green men, Corbally noted, certainly do
not fit the popular image of God.

"It's a fun way to catch people's imagination," he said jubilantly.
"How wonderful it would be to have other life beyond our own world,
because it would show how God's creation just flows out without abandon.

"We are always trying to restrict God's creativity, putting theological
difficulties in the way. But I don't think God bothers with theological
difficulties."

Gene Roddenberry, the originator of all things Star Trek, wrote and produced with the iron rule that alien forms must always walk upright on two legs, limiting imaginative ET species that may have other means of mobility or visages. He wanted the concept to tie in some measurable way to what was familiar on Earth. From the papal throne came edicts that led to Crusades, royal excommunications, burning of witches, the Inquisitions and the trials for heresy in denying the Catholic Churches belief system.

It took, a now enshrined outside the Uffizi in Italian marble, Galileo over 400 years to get his good name back on the bright side of the flat Earth believers and the Church after his trial for daring to mention the Earth's rotation was part of an orbit around the Sun, not the other way around. Now smash those two belief systems together in a particle accelerator and you have the Church is okey-dokey with alien life forms from another planet no matter what type of cosmic car they have souped up or the color of their beings as we all came from the same God. Top it off with the Vatican having its own Observatory with savvy scientist priests searching the Heavens and making scientific peer reviewed contributions. Science and the papacy making efforts and progress towards common cause after scientific Battles of the Millenniums is truly a new paradigm requiring its own field of study. Cue the Twilight Zone Music...

Now the Pope's Jesuit astronomer is the lead guy, Father Jose Gabriel Funes, with adamant conviction that science is utterly compatible with the Church. The kicker is that this observation and explanation have been part of the Church's opinions on ET phenomena for a good while. That next science panel at a Vatican conference on science and the cosmos ought to be a doozy worthy of must-see TV. Charles Darwin's seminal Origin of Species will celebrate 150 years of existence and the Vatican is hosting a Rome conference on evolutionary theory. Wrap your head around that one and get a serious supply of popcorn because the Church is re-looking at the challenges of evolutionary theory and some fundamental beliefs in creationism.

In his L’Osservatore interview, Fr. Funes echoed that, declaring that “As there exist many creatures on earth, so there could be other beings, also intelligent, created by God. This doesn’t contradict our faith because we cannot put limits on the creative freedom of God.”

In asking whether little green men might be guilty of original sin, we are obviously in the realm of “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.” But the theologian astronomers don’t blink. Fr. Funes said he was sure that, if aliens needed redemption, they “in some way, would have the chance to enjoy God’s mercy.” Consolmagno was more explicit: there’s no problem in getting the Son of God to every planet with ETs because, as Christians accept every Sunday during the Holy Eucharist, “Christ is truly, physically present in a million places, and sacrificed a million times, every day at every sacrifice of the Mass.”

There have been some world class donnybrooks over evolution. Trials of the twentieth Century and the absolute uproar over the unscientific intelligent design weirdness plus a notorious anti-science bent from the Catholic Church in the past. It is mindbogglingly interesting to see the Vatican tread with papal soft shoes where no Pope and the priests has gone before. It makes one really wonder what is buried in the Vatican Archives as Extra Terrestrials leaped into the discussions and collective consciousness of philosophers and the imaginative centuries ago. The Middle Ages was, in part, about making people conform or die to the autocratic patriarchal theology of the times while what is considered modern now marries space aliens to one of the largest Faith traditions on the planet. We do indeed, live in interesting times.

Get up to Earth speed on the bones of the evolutionary science and the opposition in these great books. For alien perspectives look to the best of Science Fiction. In paperback, The Origin of Species from Charles Darwin, the Pulitzer Prize winning Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion from Edward J. Larson, from Edward Humes, the highly praised Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion and the Battle for America's Soul plus from the Catholic perspective and a decade old respected treatise, Did Darwin Get it Right? Catholics and the Theory of Evolution from George S. Johnston.

Indian Soap Operas Outrage Certain Afghans

A culture clash that makes one wonder who has an irony deficiency and needs a freshly bloomed hypocrisy poppy. Indian soap operas are making specific Afghanis (more) nuts with the risque, the raunchy and the pseudo-reality. The spin is that the 5 private TV stations have children foregoing homework and their programs are the height of un-Islamic behavior which forces the government to save people from themselves before they burn in Hell on Earth or something more dire. Hence, banned foreign soap operas, Kum Kum or Life's Test are now all the rage.

Last year, certain Hindu fundamentalist Indians got their knickers stuck in permanent wedgies when Richard Gere did a sweeping public display of affection on the cheek of Bollywood co-star Shilpa Shetty, resulting in charges, apologies and high international melodrama during a press conference on HIV/AIDS. As Afghanistan hastens its return back to the Flintstone Age under Taliban culture crustaceans, it is amazing what happens to be verboten to the high ministers of mendacity versus what great returns certain Afghans make from their cut of selling the world's opiate of choice. Tolo TV is American Idol popular where television is accessible, especially Kabul. In March, during an awards ceremony mixed gender couples danced together on stage sending shivers of horror and the Victorian vapors through the country's über conservatives enough to have them invoke the Ulema Council. This is a group of legal scholars or Supreme Court of the land that arbitrate finality on Sharia law.

The ministry of culture ordered four TV stations to take five Indian soaps off the air by 14 April. Only Noorin TV suspended its soap, Waiting, so the ministry issued another deadline, which ended yesterday.

Ariana TV caved in, ending broadcasts of Kum Kum, a drama about a widow who is wooed by her childhood sweetheart but marries the brother of her late husband. The ministry is threatening legal action against the other networks, which have accused the government of trying to re-Talebanise Afghanistan.

"We think broadcasting Indian serials is in accordance with the law, so we will continue to broadcast them," said Saad Mohseni, the owner of Tolo TV. "Millions of people watch these shows every night."

The soaps have become prime-time favourites as private stations have flourished in the six years since the fall of the hardline Taleban regime, which had banned TV altogether.

(Reuters)

The official government of Afghanistan has set a deadline for compliance from private TV stations in India about the content saturating their airwaves in the form of the Indian version of soap operas. There is an order of magnitude much higher than the Indian soap opera. The Spanish language soap operas or novellas are the best and would not pass the Afghan TV test. The Resident Burqa Police, more commonly known as some emasculated Members of the Afghani parliament, are busy trying to build a coalition to strip personal freedoms from the People who can bear children by pontificating on the merits of banning jeans, long hair, chatting in public with a spouse and makeup with all due deliberate speed.

Haji Ahmad Shah Khan Achakzai, an MP in Kandahar province, said the law would boost moral and religious values for Afghan people. "Kabul has seen a wave of liberal, unwelcome influences of late," he said. "There are women dressed immodestly, prostitution can be found openly and even alcohol is available on the market. Our job is to protect the Afghan people from being exposed to this un-Islamic way of life and poor morals."

But more liberal MPs fear the loss of hard-fought freedoms. "I am worried there will be another Taliban era ahead of us. We have fought for many years to gain some freedom here and it is our responsibility not to let this happen again," said Najiba Sharif, deputy minister for women's affairs. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Hizzoner, The Mayor of Kabul, better known around the world as the president of Afghanistan, sides with the overzealous Burqua Inquisitors because an election is coming to an Afghan village near him in 2009. The government apparatus takes direction from the American educated and US backed head of state that is clearly siding with supporting the political regression taking place in Afghanistan.

The wonderfully written and hands on book by Deborah Rodriguez is all about restoring the esteem of women through sharing her gifts with others in Afghanistan. Kabul Beauty School: An American Goes Behind the Veil brings an American up close to Afghanistan. It earned its way as a New York Times bestseller and is deserving of lavish praise. Kiterunner and A Thousand Splendid Suns bring an Afghan point of view in excellent fiction from a doctor from Afghanistan.