In the night I wake up sharing middle-eastern peoples' pains. I hear Iraqi women crying over their husbands and children massacred and Iraqi men moaning over their families mutilated or missing. In a region which I might add is that where Jesus was martyred. Jerusalem isn’t this far from Baghdad—the distance between Paris and Nice—. There was no such religion as bloodthirsty Islam then, which the pope mentioned in Ratisbon. Jesus had not killed or threatened anybody, but he had preached some expectations of substituting love, forgiveness, peace and free intelligence for religion and government. Which the mighty have forever considered as an evil, an act of folly against "the nature of things", liable for a worse chastisement which, worse than the killing, is the deprivation of the rights of human justice—Just take a look at Guatanamo jails where among real murderers a few magnificient idealists are almost certainly rotting.
But something still worse than justice once denied a crucified man hastily executed may occur: The second killing that religion would administer on Jesus, three centuries later, by nailing him not to a cross, but to an enormous lie. Religion, though it was having a new look, the church, had been unsuccessful in blotting out the appalling bad memories of an iniquitous hideous crucifixion performed by religion. Some churchmen thought that they should make people believe, through an unprecedented tall story, that instead of the umpteenth triumph of evil Jesus’ passion had been quite the contrary the extreme good, the divine plan to save all of men, otherwise the people would end up fulfilling Jesus’ appeal for love and freedom and it would be the end of the dominators (27/9, 28/21, 29/2), their powers, treasures and privileges. The tall story, that halted the growing of real christianity, is that of God embodied and crucified so the world’s sin be atoned for once and for all, but a lot of similar tall stories, religious, political or cultural, have been rife all over the planet.
We have taken up the challenge not to begin a debate about that tall story, but simply to resume the achievement of christianity where the people had left off in the 4th century. We are still very small David facing still standing big Goliath, but our sling does not propel arguments or violence. It propels love, forgiveness, peace, freedom, the arms that, The Revelation of Ares reminds, give good instead of evil, Life instead of death.

In Paris the Ares Pilgrims' new mission.
Brother Didier Br. lets me know that the mission has begun. A picture is attached to his eMail: "Paris this afternoon, here's Brother Alain M. bearing the banner 'DIEU N'A PAS DE RELIGION', which is not that easy to translate. Maybe GOD BELONGS IN NO RELIGION or GOD HASN'T RETIRED INTO RELIGION."
"Alain has told me he'd already written off to you about the mission. The snapshot is by Brother Christophe M. A very interesting picture shot next to a "Grand Corps Malade" poster (Sick Big Body, a singer's name), which reminds us of every man as a 'big body' sick with sin...
Brother Didier."
Right from its introduction The Revelation of Ares reminds that religion never stands for God, "It is easy [for religion] to speak in My Name when distant from Me... but [I have never hired any go-between, and a] man, even a man who has never heard My Word... knows who I am whenever I speak to him [directly] (1/8-9). "And at a later point in the revelation, "I have not given myself a mask, I have not set up a row of princes... and their subservient doctors [religions and clergy] in front of me to conceal My Face (3/4). "And even farther in the book, "For ages men have not recognized me by the masks [religions] that I have been put on (28/3)." Etc., etc. Let's note in passing that The Revelation of Ares from end to end considers religion and its lay or atheistic mirror: politics, as of one and the same nature. So the mission could be based on the following slogan, "God belongs in no religion or politics," but it might be too strong. The Word says, "Do not disregard people's huge weakness (36/5), doesn't it?

As a result of my entry #0042 my mailbox has filled with harsh or supercilious eMails, personal reproaches rather than comments. This following answer is suitable for all of them, I think.
When I very promptly told the news of Benedict XVI's statement, made in Ratisbon, that Islam was blameworthy for its violence and that the Muslim world had already responded angrily, I only wanted my readers to be the first to hear it. My entry #0042 was indeed published late on September 15 night, on the day the pope gave the offending lecture, but for all that I did have some idea of it. In the daytime a Muslim brother had told me the event and Islam's first reactions; an English copy of the offending text was attached to his eMail — News travel very fast nowadays —. It was a lengthy theologico-philosophic lecture, in which somebody had underlined the few uncalled-for sentences.
The pope's lecture was on the perpetual dualism of faith and reason. I was aware of this on September 15, but today I take some time to say a few things about it — because I do not "take the convenient shortcuts the press usually takes, so I can spare myself the trouble of thinking." I think, please have no doubts about it, I think, but as far as this website is concerned, which is just a blog, but not a compendium of metaphysical thoughts, I've striven to keep level with everybody reads it. I exceptionally post this additional entry, though, to show those critical of me that I'm capable of having opinions.
The anxiety about reason raised by Benedict XVI in Ratisbon, I am of the opinion that traditional christiandom, whether based on the concepts of Nicea (325) or those of Rome or those of Jean Calvin, is going to need it some day (a day inexorably bound to come) in order to repeal some dogmas like the trinity — the God with three heads (Rev of Arès 23/7) — or the blood — vacuous (or empty) is the blood (Rev of Arès XXXII/9) — shed on the cross for the redeeming of the world's sins. Therefore, I like the state of anxiety for reason in all domains that Benedict XVI is in, so that his church and other churches may re-read the Scripture in its real plainness and reinterpret it.
What I find is to be regretted in Benedict XVI's lecture in Ratisbon is that he gave it as Professor Joseph Ratzinger — he had indeed been a professor in that university —, but not as a pope in charge of worldwide responsabilities. He should have remembered it and refrained from mentioning in his discussionon of reason another discussion dating back to 1390 or so, once held between a Muslim scholar and Byzantine emperor Manuel II, who, they say, had concluded it by, "...God dislikes the blood (shed by Muhammad, which) is not acting with reason, (so it is) contrary to God's nature." Had Benedict when preparing his lecture been innocent of any ulterior motive by selecting this quote? Hadn't he had the possibility of quoting something similar but concerning the blood plentifully shed by Christians in History? I don't want to judge Benedict XVI on mere intent, but I insist that he in Ratisbon was a perfectly adequate illustration of the straw and the big log metaphor in the Sermon on the Mount.
No, I never fell into line with the men that throughout Islam have taken advantage of the pope's statement and prompted Muslims to set fire to churches and even kill an innocent nun in Somalia. I said nothing but that Benedict XVI should have thought of the probability of his lecture bringing about and "justifying" misdeeds by islamist rioters in view of the awfully strained relations between Westerners and Easterners.

In Germany the pope castigates islam for its violence.
He has to fly back to Rome hurriedly under an international flurry of protests.
If he had castigated every violence: the violence of christianity and that of judaism (Israel) as well as that of islam, his speech would have displeased everybody, but referred each religion to its own sins. Benedict XVI instead has proved himself the perfect illustration of the famous verse in the Sermon on the Mount, Why do you observe the splinter in your brother's eye? What about the big log in your own? ... Hypocrite!
The Revelation of Ares reworks the warnings once launched by the Father in slightly different words, the weight of which is similar, though: But you shall not judge anyone either in public or in private; don't have the least judgement in the inmost recesses od you brain, because trapping a judgement is as impossible as trapping a flea; it will leap onto your tongue unawares (36/16).
The Ares Pilgrims are sinners among whole sinful mankind, but they, at least, are trying to love all of men, their brothers, trying to make their peace with them (Rev of Ares28/15), trying to refrain from violence, if only from verbal abuse, if only against their most violent disparagers: ADFI, MIVILUDES...and the Church, who ever since 1974 has blackened the Arès Pilgrims' name, especially their founder's name. I wish to hear that islam forgives the Church just as we forgive her. There is really no need to stir up grudges in the world.

Yesterday, September 2, the Pentagon, the US military leadership, issued an official report on Iraq. No more and no less than an admission of disaster.
Now there are more than 3,000 calsualties/month. Chaos, ruins and even extreme hunger are spreading.
There's no need to be a political scientist to understand that the USA and its allies in Iraq are a profounder evil than Saddam Hussein was. Shiites and sunnites are killing each other. Bombs and rockets are exploding everywhere. The black market is becoming rife. The Iraqi government "democratically elected" is not governing anything.
The Revelation of Ares's Call is proving forever justified.

New Orleans engulfed by the waves of sin (Rev of Ares 33/22), drowned like Noah's sons (2/7). Every one of us comes to the same end, no matter what sort of death, only much less trumpeted, and that's it. Atlantis was not reconstructed, but New Orleans will be. It's no big deal! Just a question of era and technics. What man has to do is rebuild himself good. New Orleans is bound to live on dangerously under sea level just as the whole world has lived dangerously under sin (Rév d'Arès 30/2).
On August 29, New Orleans mayor rang the bell that commemorates last year's leveebreach while Marlon Jordan blew the taps (photo) and then played for the thousands who had lost everything. These as always are the penniless who would have nothing to lose is they left and settled elsewhere in a place safer and even more beautiful, but very few are those that do not want to stay on. This is what I set about mulling over on August 29.
Why the global reluctance to change home like to change one's life (Rev of Ares 30/11)? Because for thousands of generations subjected to evil intelligence has dwindled to a dull candle end (Rev of Ares 32/5), the head has filled with the hot air from the system's bookish masters (doctors) (23/4), reason has fallen asleep, mankind has sinned so much and thereby grown so frail that it has ended up believing that misery and death are inevitable and the best life consists in living just as men have continuously lived. We Arès Pilgrims have to remind men that the Maker came back to Earth in 1974 and 1977 not to get incarnated and die on a cross, but to ask men to let Him blow into their blood and let their blood be running and running (Rev of Arès XVI/12) with penitence so as to rebuild good and happiness, which are worth thousand times as much as the most beautiful big city.
Why does man, who holds himself to be free, but who is not, behave like a big cat which at the time of going asleep turns around and around to find the best place, which ends up being virtually the same every night? That routine is like the cranky constancy of religion and of its offshoot politics. Unlike what religion and politics claim to be they are not the champions of the good in a continuous fight against antagonistic powers (which for their part claim to be so). They constitute nothing but a routine, but has anybody noticed it ever?
Unaware of the fact that they should look for the Good elsewhere, men fiercely maintain their religion—even atheists, counter to what they claim, do have a religion, the religion of their own ideas—, they maintain it so fiercely that our missionaries, who are liberators, find it incredibly hard to remind them they are badly in need of freeing themselves. Freeing themselves from evil, which has originated all of routines, especially religious routines which people regard as blocks to evil like secure strong citadels (Rev of Ares 13/7), whereas The Revelation of Arès regards the action to be taken as altogether different. It is not by taking up position, but it's by running like blood (Rev of Ares XVI/12) or the nimble foal (Rev of Ares 10/10) that men can set constructive faith and creative love going, which will conquer evil and misfortune, if men additionally put intelligence (32/5) into the action.
There is without question fodder for thought in the destruction of New Orleans and its reconstruction pending another destruction by the sea or any new fury of history or simply by time. New Orleans in which the whole world is mirrored, which has to be convinced of a single Truth: Change (Rev of Ares 28/7).

On one of the final Pilgrimage days, a pilgrim unknown to me approaches me under the belltower. I tell him in the nicest possible way: "I have to shun talking with brothers, except to meet service requirements. My cardiologist reckons that I can't help but talk passionately, so my heart is severely tested. "
He nods, but he speaks just the same, "We've never met... I'm just a temporary pilgrim. I wanted to see the place where The Revelation of Arès has awakened a very simple faith in the world. Faith in Good, the faith that leads you to God, even if you are not interested in God at the outset, like a simple bee ends up leading you to the the beehive. Also I wanted to pay my respects to you. You have thirty-two years without making concessions stood up for the simplicity that dissolves religion. What's more, what a hard sailing into the wind of dechristianization..."
I cut him off, "...and of despiritualization, which is even worse. I hope that by rediscovering the ideas that make up the Word in the very place quite simple where the Creator gave it again, you'll be more determined than ever to pursue the Good! This is a place where man like restores the children's capability and pleasure of unlimitedly listening to a tale he has already listened to a lot of times. "
He says, "The Revelation of Arès has an answer for everything. No need of disputable interpretations, no need for theology or dogmas. All you've got to do is read and achieve."
I say, "And yet I had to remind the readers of the true (Rev of Ares II/8-9, XX/2, XXXIV/1-4), that is, I had to write footnotes galore, because culture and thinking habits make the true cloudy or disguise it, but you might have been an atheist or agnostic, a man with no preconceived ideas. "
"No I was not. I'm a Jew." He looks up at the belltower. "For centuries the religions, those you call Abrahamic in your writings, have lived side by side with each other under a single belltower, or tabernacle, or minaret, oisinewithout ever worrying about what has got them dividednt or estranged. This I realized when I discovered The Revelation of Ares." He turns emphatic, "This is the murder, the deicide!" He widely gestures his weariness towards the East. He almost certainly thinks of Lebanon. His voice becomes softer, "However, the Quran is just an Arabic bible, just as the Christian bible is just the Jewish bible."
I reply, "The finality of faith doesn't lie in the Word. The Word is the Father's philosophy, the virtual. During the Pilgrimage pilgrims legitimately philosophize about salvation, happiness, the end of earthly worries and sufferings, life to be changed (Rev of Ares 30/11) and the world that has to change (28/7), but once the Pilgrimage is over, it's the real that has to be dealt with. You have to achieve it. This is really completing individuals' destiny by penitence and the world's destiny by multiplying the number of penitents. All of good men, even those who don't know the Father's Voice (Rev of Ares 28/12) and those who hate him (28/14) help change the world, help the final Truth to triumph (28/7). This belltower does not only conjure up the Abrahamic religions, it conjures up the whole world."

After one of the most fervent pilgrimages in Arès, without any trace of it in the papers, I am set on by news thick and fast like by fleas from the black dog (Rev of Ares XLIII/11, XLV/1):
In the Near East, as no basic problem is solved or about to be so, it's just a truce; well, that's something anyway. Mother Violence hates being bored, so it moves to Colombo, Sri Lanka; a mammoth brawl "for some unclear reason" between protesters for peace and Buddhistic monks; ragged yellow gowns; hundreds of people bashed up taken to the hospital. Qumran (where the Dead Sea biblical scrolls were found) was not an essenian or protochristian monastery, but an ancient tile factory or a public dump, quite simply. Right on the middle of the Pacific three castaways are found, Mexican fishermen who were drifting for months, their engine out of order, living on rain water and raw fish; it seems as if no one had given a damn about them, their disappearance had never been reported. A miracle at the chocolate shop Angiono, Fountain Valley, California: A "chocolate holy Mary" has miraculously formed under a cocoa vat; "That's just like the virgin of Lourdes", they say (see picture). Detroit, Michigan, a federal judge rules that phone-tapping ordered by President Bush is illegal even on antiterrorism grounds. London, the exact opposite of the previous piece of news: Interior ministers gather together to discuss nothing less than the blocking of "all of the websites favorable to terrorism."
I push the papers aside and close my eyes. It's clear to me that, just as all powers from time immemorial have controlled ideas and information, current politicians see terrorism as the excuse to screen the internet with a view to deleting from it whatever displeases them.
Five minutes ago my darn stupid old jeering humor, I admit, came back to the fore when I read the story of the chocolate virgin, but now that I read news of politicians being discussing repressive censorship of the web my lips freeze. How about that somewhat silly chocolate virgin turning into a martyr to liberty? If, as it has already occurred in history, some movement of opposition to the world's powers adopted Mary as an emblem? That chocolate Mary might be considered as dangerous and banned from the web. As the politicians in London state that "apart from any support for terrorism, no standard expression of conscience is to be banned on-line," but do not specify what they mean by that, you never know.
Ever since the internet started I have expected it to be censored. People used to tell me, "On the web it is technically impossible to take control of the spread of ideas. The spread of ideas is to stay forever free." I used to reply, "The powers have continously striven to control man's conscience. They will likewise be striving to control it on the internet. On this basic points just as on other basic points our mission is important. We have to show the paths to salvation and happiness through penitence and at the same time we have to remind men of the impossibility of reaching absolute good without first gaining absolutely free expression of conscience, which has to be set free from the harnesses that the system has always put on it (Rev of Ares 10/10).

If I've been a penitent good enough to have made myself a soul, my soul is suffering (Rev of Ares 4/5). This sail, which will take and keep me away from the shores of pain as long as my pounded bones (Rev of Ares 17/4, 18/4) are awaiting resurrection (Rév d'Arès 31/11), like a skin gets scratched by grief. Now I understand Jesus' feeling process better, every time that he looked unwell in front of me in 1974. Even though he had been resurrected and transfigured, his soul kept suffering, but it was suffering from love and nobleness sickened by the grime and the stale smell given off by my poor heart of a then selfsatisfied "christian".
That little soul of mine is much less gloriously suffering from remorse for having failed to harvest (Rev of Ares 6/2, 31/6) the number of penitents it would take to spare 34 children fear and death today in Qana, Lebanon. I too experienced fear during bombings in 1943 and 1944. I know the sort of horrible anxiety felt by everybody, even kids, under the roar of the unseen blind force just about to kill at random, kill no-one knows whom or when or where.
I wanted this blog to be often, say, every other entry, a joyful alternative to the sometimes too heavy seriousness of faith and worries given us by hard earthly realities, but what can I make it now? In the Middle East the compendium of pain and death in Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, the maelstrom of problems currently insolvable between mentalities still culturally incompatible, are tormenting my soul. When I created this blog I only sought to share my thoughts with my sisters and brothers, but not be a pain in the neck with cause for concern too much repeated, I just intended to stay ever present amid the assembly while leaving a window opened for chance strangers (Rev of Ares 25/3-4) to take a glance at me. I figured that, as the world has to change (Rev of Ares 28/7), I ought to let men take time to decide on that change, I should make sure that I never put them off by repeatedly reproaching them for their sins, I should feed their minds with moderation and gentleness (Rev of Ares 25/9) and should not forget to amuse them at times. Unfortunately, I can't. Today, July 30, Israel has bombed Qana, Lebanon, and in minutes has killed 54 fellow humans, 37 children among them. I have cried once more...
But even if I am grieving, I am not in dispair. I mend my sail, my soul, it swells with the wind of faith and reason. My soul will not grow three legs and three wings like the crane that can no longer run or fly — religion and politics, in short, Néro — (Rév d'Arès XXII/1-2). I've got a blog, a blog which defies distance, haven't I? My blogger soul flies and joins the bloggers who over there, in Lebanon and Israel, send each other messages, but no bombs, no missiles. All of those messages are not polite, but many of them are not negative, I'm told. Yes, indeed, bloggers in their forums and chats exchange hopeful messages all the way over the poor plastic-coasted cocoons that the Qana children have been made into (see picture). Hundreds of bloggers tell each other their expectation that they all will be some day living together on the land that the religious and the politicians are fighting over. Then, although I feel somewhat frustrated, because I cannot talk in Arabic and Hebrew with my fellow bloggers in the Orient, I am relieved to hear that they see the situation intelligently unlike their leaders.

Middle East: Acrid smells of gunpowder and distress! No hopes of enduring solution as long as the enemies do not make the slightest change in their perspectives. Fights in Lebanon and Palestine will leave everything unresolved, except (with no certainty, though,) Ehud Olmert's political position and Mahmoud Amahdi-Najad's, because their respective electorates still trust in violence.
On the Isreali side, Sharon, gone old and much less spurred by political ambition, might have avoided launching such an extensive attack. On the Muslim side, Ahmadi-Najad, whose letter sent to Bush (see #0026us) demonstrated that he was open to a moral, peaceful solution, provided the White House was willing to discuss it, can't help but support Muslims.
So the situation has returned to the insoluble point of the problem, that David Ben Gurion—who would be appointed prime minister in Israel 30 years later—was clearly aware of in 1919 while already campaigning for Israel's revival, "There's no solution! There is a gulf and nobody can bridge it... We jews as a nation want this country, and the [muslim] Arabs as a nation want this country." We can't help but think of the Father's words, the nations will move back to Me (Rev of Ares 28/21), that is, they will disappear as religious and political divisions and then make up a one people, My People. We can't but think of the single Path that the Father points to to all of men: penitence, in order that they can reach love, forgiveness, peace, intelligent solutions, which will drive evil out of the planet.
Evil originated from the personal project—the system—which Adam's people as free creatures contrived and since then have pitted against their Creator's plan (Rev of Ares 2/1-5). This is why man originally immortal altered for mortality (the grave, 2/1), although for a long time he was enjoying a remarkable life expectancy—Methuselah (Mathusalem) lived for 969 years (Genesis 5/27)—. Unfortunately, man did not take the opportunity of long life to return to Eden. His life expectancy was dwindling away as evil was growing more rampant, which resulted in man being unable to resolve in a single process the terrible problems evil has brought about. Which explains why four generation will not be sufficient (Rev of Ares 24/2) to find the way to Eden, the Path, the solution remaining possible notwithstanding. The near caricature of a show which evil and the hardships that go with it are currently making in the Middle East might help mankind to hear The Revelation of Arès and begin achieving it.
In 1988, during a great public meeting in Cirque d'Hiver (Winter Circus) in Paris, I launched the idea of fitting out a new "Exodus", a potential ship bound to the Middle East, not to found a nation which could raise big problems in the area, but quite the contrary to found harmony or understanding there between the antagonistic dwellers of the land. It was not yet completely hopeless calling on the Israeli and Palestinians to take heed of The Revelation of Ares, but the Ares Pilgrims did lack the means of undertaking the venture then. In 2006, everywhere everyone seethe with rage in the Middle East, madness it seems has turned overwhelming. From the sole of the foot to the head there is nothing healthy (Isaiah 1/6) and only extreme pain will make the enraged men see reason over there. If there's such a place on earth where man has to change, but has grown to the utmost unable to change, it's definitely that one. I'm crying.

Some messages in my mailbox say, "Tell us briefly about the soccer world championship, especially the finals..." Two mails add, "What about Zizou's head-butting?"
My maternal grand mother called that fotbal. As to the 'head-butting', she probably was unaware of what it is , but had she watched the scene, what would she see? By the end of the last match of a lengthy championship, some exhausted players—Tiredness deprives man of his mind (Rev of Ares 35/8)—A fotbaler in white whose head struck a fotbaler in blue's breastbone (not that brutally, anyway; I used to see much more efficient blows in my childhood's brawls) and the fotbaler in blue pretending to fall under the impact, his eyes with the fitting look (dazed, very photogenic). The referee saw nothing, but the tattletales, maybe crafty fellows of the provoker (well, fobal is a show!) saw everything. The referee in a dramatic demonstration, with his arm imperially stretched out, sent the fotbaler in white to stand in the corner. My grandmother with her timid little bird voice (but there was a Ma Dalton side to her) would have said, "Is that all? But if the big boy has abused the little one, he deserves to be knocked senseless ('to know or club senseless' was her word). As she belonged in a generation when people did not make a whole lot of fuss about a broom shaft blow or a dust-up, she would have added, "That's a real tonic," in a tone meaning, "That keeps you in good health." But minutes ago I heard that (victim) Materazzi had thrice insulted the women of (agressor) Zidane's family. My grandmother would had said then, "That Italian deserved to be three times knocked senseless." As you can see, I was very badly brought up.
Only, the Creator has rehabilitated me in Ares, but he has likewise badly rehabilited me, because I like something in Zidane's head-butting—something unlike what my grandma would have liked, however—. I'm not referring to the violence: Zizou would have been better off pricking up the other ear to Materazzi's insults just as one'd better turn the other cheek, but the violence was very moderate, anyway, he was not foaming with rage and the 'victim' did not look as if he was in great pain. I'm referring to that freed side to him, to the man that freely chose his destiny. By his head-butting Zidane meant, "After all, this is just fotbal... I don't give a damn for the rules." A champion so thinking, that's great, isn't it? That man could be a great penitent, whose task is to give up a lot of principles. Zidane, the discultured football player! Don't be that surprised, therefore, if I tell you there's nothing to make a fuss about that head-butting.
As fotbal is a show, anyway, fotbal players have developed all of the tricks of the comedy trade.

On July 1st, the Britons remembered the enormous cost in human lives paid over the Somme district on July 1st, 1916, and I found myself pondering the exorbitant price of our sociopolitical struggles.
90 years ago, in the early hours, 13 British infantry divisions leapt over their trench parapets to attack the German frontline. Out in the open. They were to pay the heaviest cost ever paid by an army, all of wars taken together, in a single daytime: 40.000 soldiers wounded and 20.000 dead among whom only 30 officers dead—A lot has been said about such a disproportion—. But the damage brought about by our ideological vainglories: patriotism here, socialism and capitalism there, christianity, judaism and islamism, etc., does not only enlarge graveyards, but it enlarges economic problems, legislative measures, the hold every administration has over people, disappointments.
How many vainglories, sources of pains and problems, in the name of ideologies in -ism, are we going to contrive again? Even though the "35-hour week law", the big French socialist attack on the "labour front" has not caused any loss of lives, it has in a similar ideological spirit damaged our production tool and the prospects of creativity, of jobs, therefore— "to beat the employers" just as we meant "to beat the huns" (1916), "to beat the aristos" (Russia, 1917), "to beat the rich" (Paris, 1936 ), "to beat the jews" (Germany, 1937) and "to beat the yanks" (New York, 2001). None of those vain displays of glory, in the brutality of weapons and iron laws, whenever it has not just induced misdeeds, has never had beneficial effects which could not be brought about later in peace. The only real glory (Rev of Ares 37/9) will be that of Eden revisited, but not revisited through endless revenge (Rev of Ares 27/9), but revisited through love, forgiveness, intelligence and, let's never forget them, moderation, patience (Rev of Ares 35/7) and work (37/8).
"Yes, but we don't want any free market economy planned between the rich," some people, possibly altermondialists, said to me lately. I answered, " If you're impatient, if you can't wait for the world to change—necessarily at a slow pace: it'll take more than four generations, 24/2 —and thus doing to make free market planned between accomplices naturally disappear, your struggles will keep costing much more than benefitting. What did the rioting youth in Paris and other big cities suburbs gain through violence in November, 2005? Nothing but a brief outlet given them by a short while of madness (I when a youth experienced the same). They could have got the CPE (job law, see #0014us & #0015us), which was especially designed for them, but other youths, the students, who have no need of the CPE to get jobs, had it abolished. Madness leads to more madness." I added, "Just as the system was having all means of killing 20,000 and send to hospital 40,000 British soldiers in a daytime, on July 1st, 1916, not to mention the thousands of German soldiers who died or were wounded on that day, the system (through the street as well as bureaucracy) will continue having all means to break every too bold-looking change. This is why the Father through The Revelation of Ares gives us unbreakable weapons. Weapons which are not forged in steelworks, and which are never dealt with by arm dealers, and which are never wielded by any riot police, and which no law can implement: love, mercy, peace, intelligence, absolute spiritual freedom, given to man only in return for efforts of penitence (Rev of Ares 28/25). The happy future is forged in man's heart." Those who had been listening to me looked at me like at an old baboon delousing itself, and then they left to continue wandering about the empty world, all the spiritual and even moral springs of which have been broken save their own springs, they thought. As to me, I guess that they will be given an opportunity of thinking over what I said to them.

These baghdadi citizens, a housewife, a teenager, still little adapted to democracy, senselessly, as if in a panic walk through Baghdad's traffic congestion, on July 1st. Are they unaware that democracy is sovereignty at last given to citizens? This is why every neighborhood of Baghdad is now handed over to a citizen who freely controls it, assisted by a legion (scoffing people call it a "mob", pooh!) of volunteers. That "emir" "dispenses justice" and "presides over prayer" in his neighborhood, decides "in everyone's interest" on the goods to be allowed to enter or pass via the neighborhood and the fees to be paid to him for them, on the persons allowed to cross the neighborhood, and on who may live here and who shall stop living here, etc. In the capital city, all the neighborhoods taken together, there are about 1,000 "sentences enforced" a month (scoffing people say "murders", bah!) let alone the "shelterings" (scoffing people call them "abductions", pooh!). No one knows what happens elsewhere in the country, for the circulation of news has been abolished so that the abolition of Saddam Hussein's censorship may be assured in full. The Iraqi government that the Americans have had voted for are useless, because a happy people have no need for government. The government have issued an offer of amnesty to every citizen who, because he had felt way too free to show his opinion, has "killed less than 2.500 people" (in reading this four-digit number I have sudden nervous mirth). So you are a murderer only with 2,501 or more corpses. Has any national community in History ever been able to boast such freedom and broadmindedness?
Fortunately, "bloodthirsty potentate" Saddam Hussein, who in his day had given rise to a "peace, but a tyrannical one," in the country until Zorro showed up and unshackled the nation's frustrated energy, will be sentenced and hanged. His more than suspect moderation—only a few hundreds of people placed under arrest and (on average) a few dozens of executions a year—brings the proof that a dangerous liberticide used to oppress Iraq, where all you want to do you do freely now, at last.
"Al-Bayyan Al-Jadidah", a Baghdad daily, "defeatist and undemocratic" (according to a US Army news bulletin), reports that que "The country is being on the verge of ruin and becoming rife with violence and assassination [...] Iraq is now a jungle where the weak have fallen prey of the strong and fraternity is disintegrating into sectarian fights [...] This is the result of the Americans and Britons' military intervention [...]"

Every year at Pilgrimage time, I do not restrict my piety to its essential purpose — which all of Arès Pilgrims (see 0017us) share: going back to the Word's roots on the place where the Creator in person replanted them —. I add to it a mortification (Rev of Arès 33/26+) for our deceased brothers and sisters, whom I can feel in attendance invisible on this place where they used to pray together with us. In 2006, I add on to it my alms to more dead people, a mortification for the Iraqi who ever since 2003 have died of war violence in loneliness without relatives or friends' weeping for them (33/34).
In the Baghdad morgue alone 49,137 people who had died a violent death (shot execution style, beaten to death, tortured, beheaded, etc.) were recorded from April 5 to June 1st, 2006. Let's note in passing that the number ought to be increased by the number, undisclosed, of the Iraqi military and police casualties. The province of Al-Anbar between Baghdad and Syria has been enduring disturbances (administration in a state of chaos, continual violence, telephone shortage) so that no statistics on war victims have been drawn up three years. Some Iraqi officials assess the Iraqi who have died of war violence at more than 100,000 since March 2003; other officials say the number may reach 200,000 or even more. In a 22-million population it is equivalent to 1%! In the same period 2,520 US troops were killed, which is significant, as it is, as regards an overequipped invader.
In short, while Saddam Hussein is currently taken to court over the execution of 148 Iraqi and likely to be condemned to death, we could, if we were not opponents of the death penalty and if we tended to have black humor, wonder what sort of punishment would be appropriate for the US administration, which ever since they attacked Iraq have been causing 1,000 times as many deaths as Saddam Hussein is being tried for.

Bebert (a diminutive for Albert), where have you got to? If, an angel playing its part, you happen to read this blog, remember the hot summer day in 1944 when we you and I lived the wild bliss of the freedom that lasts the time a liberation lasts. How about making the world enjoy the freedom of perpetual, spiritual bliss?
On that day it was around 02:00 pm in Suresnes, Paris suburbs, France, the alarm sirens were hooting, my mother and I we were running to the air raid shelters (I can't remember where my sister was). You Bebert were passing by, you shouted to me, "Michel, come with me! The Americans 've got at Chaville." My mother couldn't keep me by her, I followed you. We were running along the Seine River when, not far from Bleriot industry, we sighted something moving between trees across the river, in Bois de Boulogne (the Wood of Boulogne). At first it was a color. Barely perceptible, dark, a greenish khaki unlike the usual brownish German khaki. We were two 15-year-old young men, already matured by the war, but still agile like kids we threw ourselves into the tall grass on the river bank. The thing was slowly heading towards Suresnes Bridge, from which we had been coming.
And then the thing grew less indistinct: a tank, its shape as unfamiliar as its khaki. Our hearts started pounding hard. The tank was moving along in stunning silence — We didn't know that the armored vehicles made in USA had rubber caterpillars —. Suddenly, something loomed up visible on the tank side... I yell, yes, I yell and my eyes get wet with tears just writing it. This was, stencilled white, France in silhouette with the Lorraine cross in it and elsewhere on the armor plate three colors, blue, white and red... A tank of General Leclerc's Division was scouting ahead into Paris through Boulogne Wood. The US Army had stopped and given way to the 1st French Army, so that it might enter the capital city first. Whoever has never experienced such a historical time after four years of fear, destitution, misery, censorship and humiliation, cannot imagine the felicity of the liberation! All of a sudden we were aware that the prisoners in Mont Valerien, who every morning were shot in the fortress moats, would not be shot tomorrow, we were aware that the SS in black and the Gestapo had already been fleeing and we would no longer have to step off the sidewalk into the gutter to let them walk the surface of earth. Bebert, just recall the tank looking as wonderful as if it was adorned with Monet's nymphea and hovering over the ground like an angel. Its gun got pointed at us and kept so as long as the tank sergeant suspected us to be Germans in the tall grass across the river, but if it was archangel Michael drawing his blazing sword we would not be filled with more wonder. And then the turret swivelled and got back lined up with the tank, when the tank sergeant realized that we were just two boys both laughing and crying, wild, altogether wild with joy.
Jesus, I own up to feeling as intensely emotional, but far less blissful, on the night I saw you, on January 15, 1974. Because your corporeal presence suddenly made me feel my own obscurity, my shame (Rev of Ares 1/1) and my evil I was embodying just as every man of this generation embodies evil. August 1944's tank was setting me free, instead. For several moments we Bebert and I felt as if we were a one huge light, a one felicity, which nothing would exceed in importance and intensity in our lifetimes, ever. Nothing? But are we really unable to help the world exceed its scarce short felicities, by prompting it to change (Rev of Ares 28/7)?
Hey Bebert, Albert Dumur, where have you got to? We were atheistic, children of Paris red suburbs. Your father had died in 1943; my father in 1942. Today, do you belong among the millions of men that, after having observed the world 62 years , ever since 1944, have seen that even though religion and politics have tried to correct a lot of errors, nothing has altered — and even a lot of facts may have worsened — the whole picture of sin and of evil, which sin generates? Why? Because, as long as man constantly calls for the safeguard of politics, law and even religion at times, he is to remain irresponsible for himself and unable to change himself or the system. This is another way of saying what The Revelation of Ares says!
Bebert, when will we send our penitence tanks covered in flowers to liberate the world? When will we point at sin that has controlled it our weapons: love, forgiveness, peace, spiritual freedom, in short, intelligence (Rév d'Arès 32/5) reappearing at last ?