Saint Augustine is crying and in complete turmoil. He throws himself on the grounds and begs for God’s assistance. In a state of weeping, bitter contrition Augustine hears a child’s voice from a nearby house say, in a sing-song way, “Take it and Read it” Augustine, taking it as a sign, opens the nearest book, which was Paul’s letter to the Romans and reads. Says Augustine, “it was as though my heart was filled with a light of confidence and all the shadows of my doubt were swept away.”
Monday, June 28, 2010
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Los 37 minutos que salvaron al mundo
“Cuenta hasta 100 antes de decir o hacer algo”
Es un consejo que todos, alguna vez, hemos recibido y, además, es muy sensato. Por el resultado final, parece que los rusos son fieles seguidores de esta reflexión. Los 37 minutos que salvaron el mundo se dividen en dos secuencias:
- 20 minutos: Casi una cuarta parte de un partido de fútbol, dos cuartos de uno de baloncesto, 1/3 de una hora… parece poco pero es el tiempo que tarda un misil balístico intercontinental estadounidense lanzado desde la base de Malmstrom (Montana, EEUU) en alcanzar suelo ruso. A las 00.14 del día 26 de setiembre de 1983, los satélites soviéticos detectaron el lanzamiento de 5, supuestos, misiles balísticos americanos. Stanislav Petrov, teniente coronel del ejército soviético, era el responsable de activar el protocolo de seguridad (“simplemente” lanzar sus misiles, Guerra Nuclear) y pensó, gracias a Dios, que no podía ser…
La gente no empieza una guerra nuclear con sólo cinco misiles
El llamado incidente del equinoccio de otoño fue provocado por una conjunción de fenómenos astronómicos entre la Tierra, el Sol, los satélites y el equinoccio de otoño, cuyo resultado fue una serie de señales térmicas que en los radares parecían misiles. Su “paciencia” y “buen hacer” salvaron el mundo de la ¿última guerra?. El gobierno soviético lo amonestó y degradó. Para saber qué fue de Stanislav Petrov podéis leerlo en cabovolo.
- 17 minutos: Este es el tiempo duró el mensaje televisado de J.F. Kennedy, el 22 de octubre de 1962, en el que anunciaba el bloqueo naval de Cuba para impedir que los soviéticos siguiesen instalando misiles nucleares en la isla. La respuesta de Nikita Kruschev, el 24 de octubre, no dejaba lugar a dudas:
…la URSS ve el bloqueo como una agresión y no desviará los barcos
El mundo temblaba pero llegado el momento los rusos, lo pensaron mejor, y cedieron. Desde aquel momento se creó el teléfono rojo entre EEUU y la URSS.

Espero que esta reflexión siga siendo una máxima para las autoridades en cualquier ámbito de actuación.
Los 37 minutos que salvaron al mundo escrito por Javier Sanz en: Historias de la Historia
Entradas relacionadas
- El cerdo que salvó a los marineros (41)
- Tonto, calzonazos y cornudo, ¿alguien da más? (43)
- La picaresca española falseó un estudio antropológico alemán (59)
- La noche que desaparecieron 7 millones de niños norteamericanos (63)
- La bacteria sionista (39)
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Friends of Israel Initiative
1. Israel is a Western country. With a liberal democratic political system operating under the rule of law, a flourishing market economy producing technological innovation to the benefit of the wider world, and a population as educated and cultured as anywhere in Europe or North America Israel is a normal Western country with a right to be treated as such in the community of nations.
2. Israel´s right to exist should not be questioned. In the face of a uniquely campaign of deligitimation, we remind all people of goodwill of the true historical context in which the State of Israel was re-established following United Nations Resolution 181 in 1947. We state emphatically that that decision to recognize the right of the Jewish people to national self-determination was not merely a gesture of compassion following the horrors that had befallen the Jewish people during the Holocaust. It was, above all, a recognition of the right of the Jewish people to establish a sovereign state on land in which they have had an enduring presence and to which they have had a historical claim for thousands of years.
3. Israel, as a sovereign country, has the right to self-defense. Israel is indeed a normal Western country, but it is one which faces unique threats and challenges. Israel is the only state in the world forced to fight one war after another to secure its very existence. Confronting some of the most violent and well equipped terrorist groups in the world it is also the only country whose right to self-defense is consistently and widely questioned. Today, Israel has been forced to fight on two fronts: one to defend its borders and another to defend its legitimacy. We stand with Israel, and demand that it be accorded the same legitimacy and the same right to defend itself as any other Western country. Human rights statutes designed to defend the dignity of people everywhere, laws on universal jurisdiction intended to be used against criminals and tyrants and international bodies established to secure justice, have been subverted, their guiding principles stood on their head, to wage war against Israeli democracy. The campaign against Israel is corroding the international system from within.
4. Israel is on our side. With this in mind, we must be clear in recognizing that Israel’s fight is our fight. Western democracy will not prevail unless we recognize and assume the Judeo-Christian cultural and moral heritage which first gave rise to those institutions and the values which initially inspired them, and strengthen them. The assault on Israel is itself an assault on Judeo-Christian values. Israel stands on the front line, but we are next in line. If Israel’s right to self defense is questioned in the Middle East, our right to self-defense will be questioned when fighting similar terrorist enemies in Afghanistan, and at home. If principles of human rights and universal jurisdiction are to be turned into weapons against Israeli democracy, what makes us so sure they will not one day be used against European and North American democracy? Israel’s future is our fate.
5. We believe in peace, but peace in the Middle East is not just about Israel and the Palestinians. The aspiration for an enduring peace in the Middle East is a noble one, and it is one we share. But outsiders, helpful as they can sometimes be, can only achieve so much. The parties involved should know how to reach a satisfactory solution themselves. Attempts to impose solutions from the outside will fail. The key to ending this conflict is for the Palestinian side to unequivocally recognize Israel as the legitimate national homeland of the Jewish people. Once that step has been taken, good faith negotiations have a chance of achieving success.
6. We share the same threats and challenges. There are two related threats which also imperil the region, and the wider world: the spread of Islamic fundamentalism and jihadism; and the prospect of a nuclear Iran. These threats are as existential for the state of Israel as for the rest of us: the jihad knows no boundaries and a nuclear Iran represents a strategic revolution of global dimensions. Israel cannot and should not face those threats alone. For the global jihad, Israel may be the first objective. But it will not be the last.
7. Believing that the continuous deligitimation of Israel has a great deal of responsibility in raising an aggressive and dangerous anti-semitism, in a spirit of solidarity with the State of Israel, and in recognition that we, the Western nations, must stand together lest we fall together, we therefore launch the Friends of Israel Initiative to do the following:
a) To combat the deligitimization of the State of Israel at home, abroad and inside the institutions of the international community.
b) To publicly show our solidarity with Israel’s democratic institutions – the legitimate expression of the Jewish people’s millennial aspiration to live in peace and freedom in its national homeland.
c) To support Israel’s inalienable right to secure borders unmolested by terrorists or tyrannical regimes so that its citizens can continue living with the same guarantees that our own societies enjoy.
d) To consistently and firmly oppose the prospect of a nuclear armed Iran.
e) To work to ensure that Israel is fully accepted as a normal Western country, an essential and indivisible part of the Western world to which we belong.
f) To reaffirm the value of the religious, moral, and cultural Judeo-Christian heritage as the main source of the liberal and democratic Western societies.
These convictions inspire this Friends of Israel Initiative. We invite all men and women of goodwill to join us.
«Vendería mi alma por que el extremeño cambiara su idiosincrasia»
Friday, June 25, 2010
Cumpleaños de Antonio Gaudí i Cornet
Hoy día de San Guillermo, confesor y peregrino, celebramos el cumpleaños de Antoni Gaudí i Cornet. Se piensa que Gaudí nació en Riudoms, en el Mas de la Calderera, el 25 de junio de 1852, o en Reus, ya que el mismo mantuvo cualquiera de los dos municipios como patria chica. Sin embargo la partida de bautismo se encuentra en la Iglesia parroquial de San Pedro de Reus, (26 de junio de 1852).
