Thanks for the advice Bush

Concerning the Turkish invasion into Iraq that began February 21, Bush has some novel and revolutionary words:

"The Turks need to move, move quickly, achieve their objective and get out."

Guess he hasn't learned his lesson even now.

I usually leave the politics to Mason, but I also wanted to draw attention to what is happening between Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador. Very sad, we need to pray for that area of the world. You can read all about it without me, but all I want to emphasize is that there is no easy solution down there, and Chavez won't make it any easier. Uribe's connections with the United States and the amount of money their military receives from us also complicates matters terribly.

One of 164 recent nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize is a Catholic Cuban. Here are some interesting comments about him:

Oswaldo Jose Paya Sardinas was born in Havana, Cuba, on February 29, 1952, and is one of the most well-known democratic activists in the country. He organized the Varela Project, which was an effort based on Cuba’s constitution to collect enough signatures to present a referendum for political change to the legislature.

According to Paya, these changes, if they had been accepted by the government and approved by popular vote, would have introduced freedom of association, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, free elections, freedom of business and amnesty for political prisoners.

Paya grew up in a Catholic family and was a child when the Cuban government began its repression of the Church. As a youth he refused to join the Communist Party of Cuba and its youth organizations. However, at the age of 16 he was drafted into the Cuban army.

While in the army, he was punished for refusing to participate in the transportation of a group of political prisoners and afterwards was condemned to forced labor on the Island of Pinos (known today as the Isle of Youth) for three years.

As a devout Christian, he attributes the cause of his punishment to his refusal to compromise his religious beliefs. Paya later became and engineer and now works as a manufacturer of anesthetic equipment. He is married and has three children.

Together with other lay Catholics he founded the Christian Liberation Movement in 1988, a political movement with no religious affiliation that seeks to advance the human and civil rights of Cubans.

I have intended to post on topics more related to my field, especially on Irigaray and John Paul II and some interesting interrelations between their theories of gender, and also on Jean-Luc Marion. I'll try to get to that soon, I've just been kind of busy lately.

Markel, SJ