About the Book, ALPHA AND OMEGA This book concludes its chronicle of the daily events of the early years of the Cory Administration, including Henares' contention that the United States, with its slavery of the Negroes over 400 years, its genocide of the native Indians in mass concentration camps called Indian reservations, infecting them with cholera germs, and in a 30 year period of unremitting massacre of men, women and children, reducing the Indian population to one tenth of what it was before - comparable to what the Germans did to the Jews, the Poles and the Russians (who at least could fight back, unlike the American Indians) in the short period of World War II - is not a country to admire or to emulate. In the movies even today, the Russians, as were the Japanese, Chinese, Germans and Spaniards before them, are depicted as disciples of the devil, villains on the side of Satan. On the other hand, Americans are always shown to be on the side of angels, the chosen instruments of the Lord. Not any more, Henares says. In the seventh encyclical of his pontificate, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, "Social Concerns," Pope John Paul II condemns BOTH the liberal capitalism of the Americans and the Marxist collectivism of the Russians as "structures of sin" - "both concepts being imperfect and in need of radical correction," according to the Pope. What a wonderful encyclical this Sollicitudo is, developing the thoughts expressed in Pope Paul VI's Populorum Progressio of 1967, and giving lie to many abominations in vogue today, as Henares condemns them, in his books. -It repudiates the world view of the Moonies, Fundamentalists and Opus Dei aka Opus Diaboli that the world is divided into two irreconcilable camps: God's chosen and the damned, the free world and the communists, all leading to a final nuclear confrontation. "The world divided into blocs, sustained by rigid ideologies, and in which different forms of imperialism hold sway, can only be a world subject to structures of sin." -It supports preferential option for the poor, and Liberation Theology of Sister Mariani Dimaranan, Sister Christine Tan and Sister Soledad Perpinan against the determined attacks of Ray Orosa, Bernie Villegas and the princes of the church. "The Church feels called upon to take her stand beside the poor, to discern the justice of their requests, and to help satisfy them." -It rejects the free trade and free enterprise promoted by Winnie Monsod, Bernie Villegas' CRC and the Makati Business Club. "The international trade system frequently discriminates against the products of the young industries of the developing countries... low-cost products of certain countries are sold at considerable profit for companies which knows no frontiers." -It renounces the opulence of religious Youth Centers of the Opus Dei and schools for the very rich. "Faced by the need to relieve the misery of the suffering, it is obligatory to sell superfluous church ornaments and costly furnishings to provide food, drink, clothing and shelter for those who lack these things." In other words, in the world view of the Vatican, the West's greed is the moral equivalent of the East's power lust, and both are guilty of impoverishing the innocent and exploited Third World. The Pope is saying that we in poor countries were exploited by the imperialists, and deserve to have a share of what the developed world has taken for itself -- to share in the "common heritage" of mankind, or as the pope put it, "rightful access to the goods meant for all." The bottom line on the Pope's encyclical is this, as it is in Henares' books: -The standard CIA line that the Americans and the Free World are democracies, while the Russians and the Socialist World are dictatorships are outright lies -- there are just as many dictatorships among America's clients as there are among Russia's satellites. -(MORE INSIDE)