Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Gold/Mining/Energy : ARAKIS: HIGH RISK OIL PLAY (AKSEF) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Zeev Hed who wrote (7285)	11/12/1997 7:04:00 AM
From: tmclyne	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9164

??>>OFF-TOPIC<<?? I visit this thread daily, like a stranger in a cafe filled with agreeable friends. The truly amazing thing about this stock is the complexity of its situation. The study of Arakis has caused me to study areas of history I never visited in earlier years; to learn about Islam and the congruence and valuable counterpoint the religion offers to the Western religions with which I am more familiar; and to deepen my knowledge of geography, geology and the process of oil and gas exploration, well development and production. Most of all, however, I have discovered a group of investors with superb technical knowledge and investment acumen who evidence integrity, wisdom and generosity of spirit. We repeatedly return to issues of religion here because the stock is so profoundly compromised by the religious war in the Sudan. IMO, religious principles in the Sudan have been used by both sides to justify the grossest inhumanities and the cruelest injustices. I don't wish to excite readers to offer up a tally sheet of which side is worst. Each side chooses to continue the war and to villify its neighbors and brothers and sisters. Zeev, your writing on the historic force of inflamatory religious practice is elloquent and true to my own mind's eye. Religion needs to be evaluated critically and coldly and not embraced, IMO. All of the world's wise teachers may excite our soul's need for ethics, delight, introspection, humor, intellect, solace and understanding. We should not be misled when organized religions appropriate this wisdom and claim it as their own. I write this on Veteran's Day to acknowledge the friends and family, known and unknown, bound by blood of the most ancient human origins who have suffered from the lustful decadence of the practitioners of war. I commend their earnest service to their leaders, while I condemn the leaders for being unworthy of such loyalty. I acknowledge that I write in the broadest of terms here. Noble blood of heroes has been spilled in just conflict with truly dangerous evil, but most warfare does not have that complexion. To the people of the Sudan, I acknowledge that I don't know your true suffering. The 1.3 million war dead (an immense number!) and the thousands of broken bodies are your own family, your friends, your neighbors, your perceived enemies, your actual enemies, your countrymen. Veterans of your Civil War. I extend the hope that soon you will find no new veterans, that the establishment of peace will allow your country to pursue a future of mutual appreciation and tolerance.

To: Zeev Hed who wrote (7285)	11/13/1997 12:38:00 AM
From: Douglas V. Fant	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 9164

Zeev, Be careful not to ascribe 20th century values to the 9th, 12th, or 16th centuries. And I'm glad that you brought up the example of medieval Spain and the Spanish Inquisition. Right now, over 700 years later a certain regime named the Islamic Republic of the Sudan, the country from whom your company Arakis was granted a concession routinely and systematically tortures and murders people (including publicly crucifying four young Nubian women last year for converting from Islam to Christianity) who choose not to follow the official state religion. So if you condemn medieval Spain in 1997, then you must also be upset by a government/country in 1997 which currently practices the identical intolerant theology/philosophy and also kidnaps young African children and sells them into slavery into Saudi Arabia and Mauretania, right? So quoting that old archaic religious leader from the Middle East: "Who here without sin will cast the first stone at the southern Sudanese???" And for the record John Garang de Mabior is a forward-looking secular Leader who wants a secular state, with freedom of religion. And I hardly call trying to protect your people from genocide and slavery megalomania.... (such as the peoples in the Provinces of Abyei, Southern Kordufan and Southern Blue Nile- expect them to receive the wrath of the religious/secret police now that the SPLA has identified these provinces as desirous of "revisiting" the current Sudanese political framework). Now as to the subject of AKSEF, note that the first round of peace negotiations did two things- first it clarified for the first time the positions of both parties; second it made clear that neither side believes that it has "lost" the civil war....That politically is a major step forward.... Allright Zeev my friend- enough political fol-du-rol. Come check out the "fire sale" on tech stocks now ongoing elsewhere on SI Threads. There will be plenty of time to catch the upside in AKSEF once that the civil war is resolved... Sincerely, Doug F.