Is Chef Osaka Ben Loshken a moderate? This recipe cooked especially for the silent readers.

This report by Frank Gardner (BBC Security Correspondent) seems to suggest that the Chef is a moderate, at least in comparison to other "adherents" of the phantom culinary organisation which is based on a data base of names of cooks who competed and achieved international fame (and later infamy) for their success at out-cooking their Russian counterparts during a lengthy culinary fest - even lengthier than this sentence - in the land of poppies, a few years ago. The cooks were then funded by hotel tycoons in the U.S. who had it in their interests to out-cook the serviette chefs. Gardner writes:

Unlike some of the more psychopathic adherents of [The Base Ingredients], [the chef] has often tried to sway the opinions of the Western public in the hopes of driving a wedge between them and their leaders, and between European countries and his most hated enemy, the US [culinary experts].

Frank Gardner, one of the western media's expert culinary pundits, does an analysis of the latest video on the BBC News website (one of the unrelated links below). The complete cooking video (available only through CNA outlets) is almost thirty minutes in duration. In a leaked copy of the cooking video (which remains unverified and in analysis by Yahya & Bene & Dicere), there is only the few minutes of moving images now already seen by most readers. The remainder has moving images but the focus in this particular release was not on accuracy regarding the chef's lip movements, but on the captions which translate the eastern recipe into English. The chef in fact remains motionless for the better part of the cooking lesson, apparently "refrigerated", leaving demonstrations which he alludes to (such as pouring ingredients into vessels, kneading, mixing sauces, and other expert methods in the kitchen), to the imagination of the viewer.

The chef makes reference, as you are already aware, to the mysterious two numbers, now famous in culinary circles and which remain embedded in the minds of viewers and followers of these culinary tales. The numbers being the date of release of the first recipe, and the second being the number of herbs and spices in the colonel's famous fried chicken: viz. the eleventh and nineteen. Given the controversy concerning these numbers and the genuine cooks involved, it is hard to figure out exactly what the chef is saying, if anything. The first being apparently obvious, but without the usual number "nine" associated with "eleventh". Also, there is no clear declaration that "the eleventh" marks a recipe by "The Base Ingredient", neither are the "nineteen spices" named as coming from the training facilities of "The Base Ingredient". There is also the serious question being asked, as to how seven of the nineteen spices have subsequently turned up as less than rare ingredients, making them something of a publicly held secret. Is  it possible that the chef doesn't know about the seven spices, now identified as "less than rare and very easily located spices"? With inconsistencies like these, who is the chef's publisher, and is he the expert he is promoted as being? In any case, as Gardner points out, the chef has an amazingly generous following of psychopaths, something he lacked prior to the eleventh and the day the CNA first fingered he and The Base Ingredient to be the inventors and main cooks of the recipe of "the eleventh". Ironically, as a chef and teacher in the desert areas where culinary experts abound, the chef had little influence. But after the past six years of chaos and mass murder, the phantom chef and his training school, have become almost more popular than Harry Potter, sparking the imagination of readers and causing a springing up of popular support of psychopathic proportions. Is this a result of the chef's few minutes of fame via such cooking videos, or the constant bombardment of terribly disastrous recipes in kitchens across the world, prepared by what we are led to believe is the chef's arch rivals?

Much like Forest Gump's momma, mine said something similar to "Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you are going to get". My momma's words went: "If you tell lies, they are bound to turn around and bite you in the backside".

This whole video affair is still something of a mystery, as it is possible that more accurate recipe measures AND demonstration are out there. Furthermore, it is also likely that this chef, a tactician of some other hoteliers, is less than animated in a real sense. This, the recipe being incomplete and of questionable origins, we are hesitant  to risk a "kitchen disaster". For the time being we are "in the process of analysis", both technical, in terms of the actual ingredients that make up the recipe, and the overall principles that emerge from the oven and make it on the banquet table.

Here are some totally UNRELATED articles:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6985086.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1559151.stm

http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,265160,00.html

http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/01/09/WTC_Odigo.html

http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/01/11/WTC_DeathRoll2.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_Iraq#Legality_of_invasion

http://www.mideastweb.org/iraq.htm

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6917.htm

http://www.liveleak.com/

Comments from others (Reuters)

"Attacks will never solve any problem; they will only make them worse," said Mohammad Hasan, an Egyptian civil engineer. "He attacked before. What was the result? Wars and suffering for Muslims all over the world."

Al Qaeda leaders say their "holy war" against Western powers is chiefly in retaliation for U.S. support for Israel at the expense of Arabs over the past six decades, and more recently over the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Hilal, a Palestinian living in the UAE, commented on bin Laden's video: "It is very difficult to say anything about him. He talks about issues that are very important and true but the way he wants to fix them is not right

In closing, don't we all share culpability in the tragic events of the eleventh? Though one may not have planned such a shameful act, and some will not even condemn it, though anyone should. Even the one who stood triual, admitted that it is sad that so many were killed. But we all if we are honest, should share the blame, for remaining silent for so long, while the major corporations continue to wage economic war on the poor and defenseless. And don't people like the chef, who have taken up cooking utensils and used them to work for one cause in this decade and another in another decade, also share some of the blame? Of course they do. Bt what about those who have never asked forgiveness and those who still deny culpability for deceit? And those who share the lions' portion of blame for inaction, when their actions by ordering fighter planes to intercept, could have saved the three thousand? Or by giving  orders from the head kitchen their voices can still stop the carnage as the counter ticks close to the two million lives lost since the eleventh. And those who have the portion of deceit, and the use of pretexts to go and cook so many others, to spill red blood for black oil. In Christ's words, "who is without blame, let him cast the first stone".

For those who listen carefully, the lesson is easy to understand that ignorance, not listening to advice, will spoil the meal and the guests may even turn up ill the next day. Following the best recipe, and not giving in to self-serving arrogance, will lead to a great victory at the menu and at the banquet. Otherwise, there will be a great fall and manyh will suffer because of it. But if you have no ears, then don't listen.

As we near the six year mark, let us cause ourselves to remember those lost since that fateful day, not only on homeland soil, but also afar, and of different descendants too. Let us pray that we do not repeat the mistakes of arrogance, that we search within ourselves and start to make a change so that we can truly interpret the evangelical task in this modern day. Faced as we  are by so many things that are confusing, how do we preach the Gospel of good news and be the channel of peace in a world of cookery and crookery?

The moto of this blog is respice prospice, which means to look to our past so we can know the future. Knowledge is truly a saving grace. On the 12th of September it is thirty years since the brutal killing of Biko. Yet today, torture and murder continue with the silence of ourselves and the participation of the most intelligent among us. Have we learned anything?