Sunday, a Day of Rest and Prayer

October 29, 2020
Matthew D. O'Keefe


It can be so easy to view Church laws as simply arbitrary restrictions, and this is perhaps most noticeable in the rules regarding the Sabbath. The Church tells us we must go to Mass, we must refrain from engaging in work, and we must sanctify our Sundays by devoting time and care to our families and communities. But viewing these precepts as musts takes away from the beauty that a weekly day of rest really is.

Our Lord said it best when he reminded us that “the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.” Rather than a list of rules that Catholics must check off each week in order to meet the basic requirements, the rules were instituted to help us live the best lives we possibly can. Just as the Church requires her faithful to avoid laziness and to work diligently during the week, she recognizes that time must be set aside for family, prayer, and (dare I say it) fun.

Most people surely understand the need for rest in the abstract, but in practice, it can be very hard to set aside an entire day when midterms, papers, and requirements are piling up. This is why the Church asks us to be intentional about setting aside Sunday specifically for rest; when you build the Sabbath into your routine, it is far easier to not let due dates and overdue readings steal time away from prayer and recreation.

At college, it can seem harder than ever to rest for an entire Sunday. Weekend assignments often get forgotten as Friday and Saturday social events take precedence, and the workaholic attitude that often prevails at BC makes it hard to not use the extra day to get ahead. But God’s wisdom is infinite, and His command to take a regular break for peace and reflection is for our benefit.

But how exactly should we spend this day of rest? The first and foremost obligation we have is to God. Prayer is the most important activity in any person’s life, and “the Sunday Eucharist is the foundation and confirmation of all Christian practice,” according to the Catechism. Thus, our Sunday schedules should ultimately revolve around the Mass. Rather than running to catch the Mass that best fits our personal schedule, we should attend Mass with reverence and piety. Arriving to Mass early to give a confession or say a Rosary in preparation can help to offer your attention fully to God during the service.

The duties one has on Sunday do not, however, end after Mass. The Church writes that “Christians will also sanctify Sundays by devoting time and care to their families and relatives, often difficult to do on other days of the week.” Calling a parent or grandparent that you haven’t spoken with lately, making time for a sit-down dinner with your roommates or friends, or offering an act of service are great ways to serve those people with whom you touch in the midst of the busy week.

And finally, Christians have a duty to themselves on the Sabbath. Sundays are principally dedicated to celebrating the Resurrection, and the peace and joy of this mystery should extend to our weekly lives. An afternoon nap to catch up on lost sleep, a walk outside for fresh air, or even an afternoon spent watching football instead of cramming in the library are good for mental health, and remind us that the Christian life is not one of drudgery but instead of rejoicing in the blessings God has given us.

It can be hard to set aside daily stresses and anxieties and dedicate an entire day each week to worshipping of God and attending to loved ones who are too often neglected. But setting aside this day is integral to Christian life, and allows us to concentrate on God’s blessings over the day-to-day struggles of life.

Featured image courtesy of StockSnap via Pixabay

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Matthew D. O'Keefe

Catholicism 101 Writer
Matt is a senior majoring in the greatest subject of all time: philosophy. In his free time, he enjoys following BC football, drinking coffee, and reciting the Confiteor very quickly.

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Second coronavirus stockpiling wave may be coming — and it goes beyond toilet paper, cleaning supplies

Published 16 hours ago

64% percent of shoppers created a stockpile of products after COVID-19 onset

By Daniella Genovese

FOXBusiness

video


As winter encroaches, more than half of U.S. consumers are considering replenishing their assortment of goods and essential products that they had originally stockpiled during the onset of the coronavirus pandemic earlier this year, according to new research from data-driven technology-enabled services company Inmar Intelligence.

When the pandemic hit the U.S. in March, 64% percent of shoppers created a stockpile of products as a result, according to Inmar.

Now, roughly 57% of shoppers are considering restocking due to growing fears of a "potential second wave of COVID-19," which could lead to another round of bare store shelves.



An elderly shopper wears personal protective equipment as she browses the meat section of a grocery store, Saturday, April 18, 2020, in the Harlem neighborhood of the Manhattan borough of New York. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

Over a quarter of shoppers, roughly 27%, are considering revamping their winter stockpile due to concerns that certain products won't be in stock when they need them, the firm said. Meanwhile, another 27% are more concerned about the safety of in-store shopping if a second wave were to occur.

Hygiene products topped shoppers' stockpile lists again, with 67% grabbing toilet paper and 57% searching for hand sanitizer -- both of which were in high demand in the early stages of the pandemic, and left store shelves empty and online retailers charging sky-high prices.

Canned goods (54%), disinfecting wipes (53%) and paper towels (52%) are also products consumers have stocked up on or plan to stock up on for the upcoming season.

Unlike their first stockpile, however, 45% of shoppers plan to invest in new items such as frozen dinners, pasta, snacks and cleaning products.

A shopper picks over the few items remaining in the meat section at an Austin, Texas, grocery store on March 13, 2020. (Reuters/Brad Brooks)

Overall, about 55% percent of shoppers are planning to purchase goods in-store, "suggesting that brick and mortar retailers are still crucial for consumers when purchasing everyday items," the firm said.

Inmar CEO David Mounts said that during this time of heightened concern, "shoppers will look to their local retailers to deliver consistency and seamless customer service," especially as the busy shopping season arrives.

"It will be important for retailers not only to prepare for this new surge in demand but also deliver value to customers during this time of crisis in order to maintain heightened trust and customer loyalty," Mounts said.

But it’s not yet clear when — if ever — buying habits will get back to normal.

Even when the pandemic subsides, about 54% of shoppers plan to keep a stockpile of goods due to fear of another emergency, the firm said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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Egypt says freedom of expression 'stops' when Muslims offended

Author of the article:
Reuters

Publishing date:Oct 28, 2020 • Last Updated 10 hours ago • 1 minute read


CAIRO — Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi said on Wednesday freedom of expression should stop if it offends more than 1.5 billion people, following the display of images in France of the Prophet Mohammad that Muslims see as blasphemous.

Sisi also said he firmly rejects any form of violence or terrorism from anyone in the name of defending religion, religious symbols or icons.

“We also have rights. We have the right for our feelings not to be hurt and for our values not to be hurt,” he said during an address to commemorate the Prophet Mohammad’s birthday.

“And if some have the freedom to express what is in their thoughts I imagine that this stops when it comes to offending the feelings of more than 1.5 billion people,” he added in televised remarks.

The Grand Imam of Egypt’s al-Azhar university, one of the world’s most eminent seats of Sunni Muslim learning, also called on the international community to criminalize “anti-Muslim” actions.

Sheik Ahmed al-Tayeb, who sits at the head of the thousand-year-old institution, also said that al-Azhar strongly rejects the use of anti-Muslim sentiment to rally votes in elections.

Turkey’s leader Tayyip Erdogan has called for a boycott of French goods and Pakistan’s parliament passed a resolution urging the government to recall its envoy from Paris. (Reporting by Nadine Awadalla Writing by Ulf Laessing Editing by Catherine Evans, William Maclean).

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A volunteer disaster relief team with the Florida Baptist Convention removes a downed tree from a home in Silverhill, Ala., on Sept. 22, following Hurricane Sally. (Bob Smietana/Religion News Service)

By Bob Smietana
October 23, 2020 at 7:55 PM EDT


PENSACOLA, Fla. — Not long after Hurricane Sally made landfall in mid-September, an army composed of mostly senior citizens in yellow hats descended on the Gulf Coast.

Outside of Hillcrest Baptist Church in this town on the state’s panhandle, a dozen volunteers from the Florida Baptist Convention got to work in a mobile kitchen, preparing thousands of meals of Salisbury steaks with a side of vegetables for residents left without power or a place to live. Around the tent were stacks of warming containers, waiting to be filled with means and loaded in Salvation Army trucks to be distributed in the community.

Inside the church, another group of volunteers collected requests for off-site assistance and sent out teams armed with chain saws, hammers, buckets and other cleanup equipment — along with masks, gloves and other covid-19 protective gear — to help residents clean up.

A few miles from the church, in a neighborhood where lawns were piled high with furniture and tattered drywall, a team from Savannah, Ga., was already at work cleaning out the home of 74-year-old Karl Henderly.

Denise Young, 65, a volunteer chaplain, was cleaning up the house’s living room. She and her husband, Tom, started doing disaster relief four years ago after they retired. This is their 28th deployment. The two are trained in flood recovery, working in a kitchen and even working on a chain-saw crew.

In the entryway, Rich Zimenoff, one of the volunteers, was busy removing screws from bare studs. A former volunteer firefighter, the 68-year-old has volunteered for disaster relief for the past 11 years.

“I just serve the Lord and here I am,” he said.

The volunteer teams in Pensacola are among 70,000 Southern Baptists who’ve been trained in disaster relief, making them one of the largest volunteer disaster relief organizations in the country.

Their denomination, in turn, is among the 74 constituent groups of the National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster, a network of disaster relief nonprofits, of which more than half (40 in all) are faith organizations — Baptist and Buddhists, Catholics and Disciples of Christ, Methodist and Muslims, Lutherans and Latter-day Saints.

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Oct 22nd 2020 edition

Oct 22nd 2020


Within hours of the publication of a New York Post article on October 14th, Twitter users began receiving strange messages. If they tried to share the story—a dubious “exposé” of emails supposedly from the laptop of Hunter Biden, son of the Democratic presidential nominee—they were told that their tweet could not be sent, as the link had been identified as harmful. Many Facebook users were not seeing the story at all: the social network had demoted it in the news feed of its 2.7bn users while its fact-checkers reviewed it.

If the companies had hoped that by burying or blocking the story they would stop people from reading it, the bet did not pay off. The article ended up being the most-discussed story of the week on both platforms—and the second-most talked-about story was the fact that the social networks had tried to block it. The Post called it an act of modern totalitarianism, carried out “not [by] men in darkened cells driving screws under the fingernails of dissidents, but Silicon Valley dweebs.” Republican senators vowed to extract testimony on anticonservative bias from Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey, the dweebs-in-chief of, respectively, Facebook and Twitter.

The tale sums up the problem that social networks are encountering wherever they operate. They set out to be neutral platforms, letting users provide the content and keeping their hands off editorial decisions. Twitter executives used to joke that they were “the free-speech wing of the free-speech party”. Yet as they have become more active at algorithmically ranking the content that users upload, and moderating the undesirable stuff, they have edged towards being something more like publishers. Mr Zuckerberg says he does not want to be an “arbiter of truth”. The Post episode fed the suspicion of many that, willingly or not, that is precisely what he is becoming.

America’s fractious election campaign has only made more urgent the need to answer the unresolved questions about free expression online. What speech should be allowed? And who should decide? Rasmus Nielsen of the Reuters Institute at Oxford University describes this as a “constitutional moment” for how to regulate the private infrastructure that has come to support free expression around the world.

Annual Conference of the Secretaries of the Christian World Communions 2020

News » 2020 » 2020 10 23 Christian World Communions


23 Oct 2020


More than thirty participants attended the annual Conference of the Secretaries of Christian World Communions (CS/CWC) that took place online from 20–22 October 2020. The Catholic Church was represented by Bishop Brian Farrell, Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, assisted by Reverend Andrzej Choromanski, staff responsible for the multilateral relations.

The meeting was chaired by Reverend Gretchen Castle (Friends World Committee for Consultation), with Reverend Dr Ganoune Diop (General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists), acting as secretary. The conference opened with a prayer led by former Chair Reverend Dr Martin Junge (Lutheran World Federation), followed by a time of sharing from the participants on the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the life of churches. It was underlined that the anti-COVID-19 measures had created an unprecedented challenge for Christian communions worldwide, limiting the access of the faithful to the usual pastoral care and restraining ecumenical relations. At the same time, the crisis had necessitated the use of modern technologies, with churches developing new and enduring forms of pastoral ministry and ecumenical life.

Time was dedicated to reflection on the nature and identity of the CS/CWC. It was underlined that the Conference is not an organisation with programmatic aims and determined agenda but a fraternal forum of secretaries from diverse Christian communions as well as representatives of some global ecumenical organisations who meet annually to exchange information, learn from each other and nurture fraternal relationships among their churches.

The recent encyclical of Pope Francis Fratelli tutti was acknowledged as an important encouragement to all Christian communions to unite efforts in building a culture of encounter, solidarity and universal fraternity across political, social, and religious borders.


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Delta adds 460 passengers who refused masks to 'no-fly' list

Delta said wearing masks "is among the simplest and most effective actions we can take to reduce transmission" and banned 460 mask-refusing customers.

A ticketing agent for Delta Airlines hands a boarding pass to a passenger as he checks in for a flight in the main terminal of Denver International Airport in Denver on July 22, 2020.David Zalubowski / AP file


Oct. 23, 2020, 3:51 PM EDT

By Tim Fitzsimons

Over 400 passenger won't be flying Delta anytime soon as a result of their alleged refusal to wear face masks during flights, according to an internal memo obtained by NBC News.

In a letter to Delta employees Thursday, CEO Ed Bastian said that 460 customers who refused to wear face coverings amid the coronavirus pandemic were added to the airline's "no-fly list."

"Wearing a mask is among the simplest and most effective actions we can take to reduce transmission, which is why Delta has long required them for our customers and our people," Bastian wrote as he announced the bans, encouraging staff to view two internal videos about their effectiveness.

The Atlanta, Georgia-based airline — and many other U.S.-based carriers — began to require non-vented fabric face coverings during flights in May.

The pandemic has already taken a grave toll on Delta and other airlines across the country, many of which began furloughing workers earlier this month when emergency relief funding lapsed without any new congressional funding.

As COVID-19 cases jump across the country, Bastian wrote that reversing the airline's fortunes depends on fighting the coronavirus pandemic.

"With the cold-weather months approaching, stopping the spread will be crucial to our recovery from the pandemic and Delta’s return to growth and leadership within our industry," he wrote.

Tim Fitzsimons

Tim Fitzsimons reports on LGBTQ news for NBC Out.

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Francis becomes 1st pope to endorse same-sex civil unions

By NICOLE WINFIELD

October 21, 2020




ROME (AP) — Pope Francis became the first pontiff to endorse same-sex civil unions in comments for a documentary that premiered Wednesday, sparking cheers from gay Catholics and demands for clarification from conservatives, given the Vatican’s official teaching on the issue.

The papal thumbs-up came midway through the feature-length documentary “Francesco,” which premiered at the Rome Film Festival. The film, which features fresh interviews with the pope, delves into issues Francis cares about most, including the environment, poverty, migration, racial and income inequality, and the people most affected by discrimination.

“Homosexual people have the right to be in a family. They are children of God,” Francis said. “You can’t kick someone out of a family, nor make their life miserable for this. What we have to have is a civil union law; that way they are legally covered.”

While serving as archbishop of Buenos Aires, Francis endorsed civil unions for gay couples as an alternative to same-sex marriages. However, he had never come out publicly in favor of civil unions as pope, and no pontiff before him had, either.

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The Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit who has sought to build bridges with gay Catholics, praised the comments as “a major step forward in the church’s support for LGBT people.”

“The pope’s speaking positively about civil unions also sends a strong message to places where the church has opposed such laws,” Martin said in a statement.

However, conservative Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence, Rhode Island, called for clarification. “The pope’s statement clearly contradicts what has been the long-standing teaching of the church about same-sex unions,” he said in a statement. “The church cannot support the acceptance of objectively immoral relationships.”

And Ed Mechmann, director of public policy at the Archdiocese of New York, said in a blog post that the pope had simply “made a serious mistake.”

Catholic teaching holds that gay people must be treated with dignity and respect but that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered.” A 2003 document from the Vatican’s doctrine office stated the church’s respect for gay people “cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behavior or to legal recognition of homosexual unions.”

Doing so, the Vatican reasoned, would not only condone “deviant behavior,” but create an equivalence to marriage, which the church holds is an indissoluble union between man and woman.

That document was signed by the then-prefect of the office, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI and Francis’ predecessor.

Later Wednesday, questions arose about when Francis first made the remarks. The scene of his interview is identical to one from 2019 with Mexican broadcaster Televisa, but his comments about the need for legal protections for civil unions apparently never aired until the documentary.

Director Evgeny Afineevsky, who is gay, expressed surprise after the premiere that the pope’s comments had created such a firestorm, saying Francis wasn’t trying to change doctrine but was merely expressing his belief gay people should enjoy the same rights as heterosexuals. He insisted the pope made the comments to him directly, through a translator, but declined to say when.

“The world needs positivity right now, the world needs to care about climate change, care about refugees and migration, borders, walls, family separation,” Afineevsky said, urging attention to the main issues covered by the film.

One main character in the documentary is Juan Carlos Cruz, the Chilean survivor of clergy sexual abuse whom Francis initially discredited during a 2018 visit to Chile.

Cruz, who is gay, said that during his first meetings with the pope in May 2018 after they patched things up, Francis assured him that God made Cruz gay. Cruz tells his own story throughout the film, chronicling both Francis’ evolution on understanding sexual abuse as well as to document the pope’s views on gay people.

Afineevsky had remarkable access to cardinals, the Vatican television archives and the pope himself. He said he negotiated his way in through persistence, and deliveries of Argentine mate tea and Alfajores cookies that he got to the pope via well-connected Argentines in Rome.

“Listen, when you are in the Vatican, the only way to achieve something is to break the rule and then to say, ‘I’m sorry,’” Afineevsky said in an interview.

The director worked official and unofficial channels starting in 2018, and ended up so close to Francis by the end of the project that he showed him the movie on his iPad in August. The two recently exchanged Yom Kippur greetings; Afineevsky is a Russian-born, Israeli-raised Jew now based in Los Angeles. On Wednesday, Afineevsky’s 48th birthday, the director said Francis presented him with a birthday cake at the Vatican.

But “Francesco” is more than a biopic about the pope. Wim Wenders did that in the 2018 film “Pope Francis: A Man of His Word.”

“Francesco,” is more a visual survey of the world’s crises and tragedies, with audio from the pope providing possible solutions.

Afineevsky, who was nominated for an Oscar for his 2015 documentary “Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom,” traveled the world to document the film: at Cox’s Bazaar in Bangladesh, where Myanmar’s Rohingya sought refuge; the U.S.-Mexico border; and Francis’ native Argentina.

“The film tells the story of the pope by reversing the cameras,” said Vatican communications director Paolo Ruffini, one of Afineevsky’s closest Vatican-based collaborators.

Full Coverage: Religion

Ruffini said that when Afineevsky approached him about a documentary, he tried to tamp down his hopes for interviewing the pope. “I told him it wasn’t going to be easy,” he said.

But Ruffini suggested Afineevsky find the people who had been impacted by the pope, even after just a brief meeting: refugees, prisoners and gay people to whom he has ministered.

“I told him that many of those encounters had certainly been filmed by the Vatican cameras, and that there he would find a veritable gold mine of stories that told a story,” Ruffini said. “He would be able to tell story of the pope through the eyes of all and not just his own.”

Francis’ outreach dates to his first foreign trip in 2013, when he uttered the now-famous words “Who am I to judge,” when asked during an airborne news conference returning from Rio de Janiero about a purportedly gay priest.

Since then, he has ministered to gays and transsexual prostitutes, and welcomed people in gay partnerships into his inner circle. One of them was his former student, Yayo Grassi, who along with his partner visited Francis at the Vatican Embassy in Washington D.C., during a 2015 visit to the U.S.

The Vatican publicized that encounter, making video and photos of it available, after Francis was ambushed during that same visit by his then-ambassador, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, who invited the Kentucky anti-gay marriage activist Kim Davis to meet with the pope.

News of the Davis audience made headlines and was viewed by conservatives as a papal stamp of approval for Davis, who was jailed for refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses. The Vatican vigorously sought to downplay it, with a spokesman saying the meeting by no means indicated Francis’ support for her or her position on gay marriage.

Francis, the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, was fervently opposed to gay marriage when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires. Then, he launched what gay activists remember as a “war of God” against Argentina’s move to approve same-sex marriage.

The pope’s authorized biographer, Sergio Rubin, said at the time of his 2013 election that Bergoglio was politically wise enough to know the church couldn’t win a fight against gay marriage. Instead, Rubin said, Bergoglio urged his fellow bishops to lobby for gay civil unions.

It wasn’t until Bergoglio’s proposal was shot down by the conservative bishops’ conference that he publicly declared his opposition, and the church lost the issue altogether.

In the documentary, Francis essentially confirms Rubin’s account of what transpired. Of his belief in the need for legislation to protect gay couples in civil relationships, he said: “I stood up for that.”

Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, an organization of LGBT Catholics, praised Francis’ comments as a “historic” shift for a church that has a record of persecuting gays.

“At the same time, we urge Pope Francis to apply the same kind of reasoning to recognize and bless these same unions of love and support within the Catholic Church, too,” he said in a statement.

More conservative commentators sought to play down Francis’ words and said that while secular civil unions are one thing, a church blessing of them is quite another.

In a tweet, conservative U.S. author and commentator Ryan Anderson noted that he and some colleagues had gone on record a decade ago saying they would support federal civil unions for any two adults who commit to sharing domestic responsibilities. Such an arrangement, Anderson said, would leave churches the option of refusing to recognize these unions as marriage.

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The Blessed Hope

October 23


Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ. 

Titus 2:13.

Jesus said He would go away and prepare mansions for us, that where He is there we may be also. We shall ever dwell with and enjoy the light of His precious countenance. My heart leaps with joy at the cheering prospect. We are almost home. Heaven, sweet heaven! It is our eternal home. I am glad every moment that Jesus lives, and because He lives we shall live also. My soul says, Praise the Lord. There is a fullness in Jesus, a supply for each, for all, and why should we die for bread or starve in foreign lands?

I hunger, I thirst for salvation, for entire conformity to the will of God. We have a good hope through Jesus. It is sure and steadfast and entereth into that within the veil. It yields us consolation in affliction, it gives us joy amid anguish, disperses the gloom around us, and causes us to look through it all to immortality and eternal life.... Earthly treasures are no inducement to us, for while we have this hope it reaches clear above the treasures of earth that are passing away and takes hold of the immortal inheritance, the treasures that are durable, incorruptible, undefiled, and that fade not away....

Our mortal bodies may die and be laid away in the grave. Yet the blessed hope lives on until the resurrection, when the voice of Jesus calls forth the sleeping dust. We shall then enjoy the fullness of the blessed, glorious hope. We know in whom we have believed. We have not run in vain, neither labored in vain. A rich, a glorious reward is before us; it is the prize for which we run, and if we persevere with courage we shall surely obtain it....

There is salvation for us, and why do we stay away from the fountain? Why not come and drink that our souls may be refreshed, invigorated, and may flourish in God? Why do we cling so closely to earth? There is something better than earth for us to talk about and think of. We can be in a heavenly frame of mind. Oh, let us dwell upon Jesus’ lovely, spotless character, and by beholding we shall become changed to the same image. Be of good courage. Have faith in God.66In Heavenly Places, 352.


Maranatha, p. 304.

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Pope, Red Cross president discuss pandemic, war relief efforts

Junno Arocho Esteves

Oct 20, 2020CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE



Pope Francis meets with Peter Maurer, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, during a private meeting at the Vatican Oct. 19, 2020. (Credit: CNS photo/Vatican Media.)


ROME — The Catholic Church and the International Red Cross share the common goal of helping the poor and those displaced due to the pandemic and various conflicts around the world, said Peter Maurer, the president of the humanitarian organization.

After meeting with the pope Oct. 19, Maurer described it as “a very positive experience” in which the pontiff expressed “his support for what we are doing in the field for people affected by war and violence.”

Speaking with the pope was “a good moment very frankly because there are few visits I do around the world in which we have so much convergence of views, of values” and shared aspirations, Maurer said in English in an interview with Vatican News, published online Oct. 20.

Whether the current crises in the world are viewed from a perspective of religious belief or international law, he said, both sides, “at the end of the day, enshrine decades and centuries of values, of good behavior in society,” he said.

Among the issues discussed was the COVID-19 pandemic, which Maurer said has “accelerated and accentuated many of the problems” in the world today such as war, violence, climate change and unemployment and poverty.

“I think what is so tragic to see” are not only divisions, but also those who have profited from the pandemic while “the poor have become poorer and more excluded,” he said.

“I think that’s the big issue we are fighting,” Maurer said.

Commenting on the pope’s recent encyclical Fratelli Tutti, on Fraternity and Social Friendship, Maurer told Vatican News that the document’s message aligns with the Red Cross’ mission to fight against division and the consequences it has for “the most vulnerable, for the migrants, those displaced by war and violence, those affected by the weaponization of societies, those affected by climate change, by underdevelopment, by exclusion, by poverty, by injustice.”

“I think developing a counternarrative,” he said, “developing a vision of a society which is different, which is inclusive, which brings people together and which builds bridges” is at the center of the encyclical’s message, Maurer said.

“We certainly are very proud of (standing) next to the Vatican and next to the pope in his efforts,” he said.

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Worldwide Lockdown Agenda and Calendar Revealed

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

by Speak Project | Apr 29, 2020

By: Jo Ellen McManamon


Do you believe in crystal balls? Do you believe they can predict the future? The Rockefeller Foundation would sure like you to think so.

In 2010, the Rockefeller Foundation released a document entitled “Scenarios for the future of technology and international development.” The foundation employees work closely with the members of the World Health Organization (WHO), CDC and FEMA. This collective is responsible for shaping and dictating health care guidelines for all governments and that are now being imposed worldwide.

This scenario poses many conflicts of interest for the people who must adhere to them. Dr. Fauci, known to many as the mouthpiece for the WHO and CDC, has since reduced the contagion rate he first discussed and which mandated the lockdown of our country. The original model suggested over 2 million people would die from the coronavirus pandemic.

To date, the original numbers have been reduced to 80,000 then again to 60,000 thus putting the most recent numbers in line with deaths from a regular flu season. In 2017 and 2018, 80,000 people in the U.S. succumbed to the flu, this number is still below our current numbers. The numbers of current deaths due to coronavirus have been manipulated. A vast majority of the current deaths have been erroneously labeled as a result of the virus; if these numbers are so low, why the extreme government intervention? 

There are several reasons for this; to get an accurate picture why, we need to understand the term lockstep, which is in the 2010 document and its definition per the foundation is as follows: lockstep is a word meaning tighter top down government control and more authoritarian leadership with LIMITED innovation and limited growing citizen pushback. This will happen by accelerating the development of certain kinds of technologies eagerly driven by government and focused on issues of national security, health and safety shaped by government’s dual desire to control and to monitor their citizens.

“Lockstep is a word meaning tighter top down government control and more authoritarian leadership with LIMITED innovation and limited growing citizen pushback.“

Read that sentence again slowly: scanners to measure social distancing, drones, and vaccines with micro-tracking chips via state-of-the-art delivery systems. Does this sound familiar? These technologies have copyrights and trademarks owned by Fauci, Gates, the WHO as well as the CDC. Do you see who is profiting by this pandemic and who is benefiting? It is not the people; that is abundantly clear, no matter which political party you identify with. Many people today, myself included, believe this to be a spiritual war and they must tell you what is happening in a kind of sadomasochistic type of informed consent, if you will.

The evidence of this is currently playing out on the world stage in Germany, England, India, Dubai, Africa and the United States. Physical punishment, tear gas, fines, as well as imprisonment, are being implemented because of the desire to put into place the New World Order (NWO). In India for example, the current population is 1.3 billion. Of these, 500 have contracted mild cases of the coronavirus only, yet the country is forced into a complete lockdown. 

Do you see a pattern here? The percentage of individuals contracting the virus is literally .00000000038 percent. Numbers and empirical data are the truth-tellers here. Do not trust anything else; politicians lie; governments lie and it most certainly not for the benefit of the people. It is to their detriment.

This 2010 document is financially backed and researched by the Rockefeller Foundation. COVID-19 has legitimized its expansion of political authority over our civil liberties in the U.S. and around the world. The government does have the right to impose restrictions during a widespread and devastating pandemic to protect its people but not by inflating death rates, quarantining healthy citizens and imposing physical and financial punishment when the data completely shows otherwise.

Our way of life, our liberty, our autonomy is being threatened and literally torn from us. We must rise up and demand these tyrants cease and desist, we must defend our freedom with every breath and action because once it is taken from us it will never be returned. Political power is leading society tyrannically.

“Scanners to measure social distancing, drones, and vaccines with micro-tracking chips via state-of-the-art delivery systems.“

Dana Ashlie’s excellent video below echoes these concerns. The most compelling moment of the video occurs when an elderly woman from Berlin is being attacked mercilessly in the streets by police. This woman tries to plead her case visibly, holding back her emotion as she says, “We are lost if you destroy our basic rights. We have nothing, we go to the very bottom.”

Without question, this woman is old enough to remember Nazi Germany and knows in her heart and through her valuable experience, that those who do not know and learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

#WWG1WGAWorldwide

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Pope Francis says Earth can’t be ‘squeezed like an orange’

October 11, 2020

Pope Francis speaks in a recorded message for the TED event, "Countdown," in this still frame from a video released by the Vatican Oct. 10, 2020. The pope joined the global virtual event in support of solutions to climate change. (CNS photo/Vatican Press Office)


The predominant global economic system is "unsustainable," particularly in its impact on the environment, Pope Francis said.

"We are faced with the moral imperative -- and the practical urgency -- to rethink many things" about the economy: "how we produce, how we consume, our culture of waste, its short-term vision, the exploitation of the poor, indifference toward them, the increase of inequality and its dependence on harmful energy sources," the pope said Oct. 10 as part of the global TEDx Countdown on climate change.

“We have just a few years — scientists calculate roughly fewer than 30 — to drastically reduce the emissions of gas and the greenhouse effect in the atmosphere," the pope said, adding that the transition needs to take into account the impact on the poor, local populations and those who work in the energy sector.

He called on investors to exclude companies that do not take into account the environment, as have many faith-based organizations already have.

Pope Francis: “We are faced with the moral imperative—and the practical urgency—to rethink many things” about the economy: “how we produce, how we consume...the exploitation of the poor and its dependence on harmful energy sources.”
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"In fact, the earth must be taken care of, cultivated and protected; we cannot continue to squeeze it like an orange. And we can say this, taking care of the Earth is a human right," Francis said.

The six-hour Countdown Global Launch is TED's first-ever free conference, featuring as hosts such figures as Jane Fonda, Don Cheadle and Al Gore, with speakers including Prince William of Britain and Ursula von der Leyen, a leading European Union official.

The event, broadcast live on YouTube, featured more than 50 speakers from around the world presenting "actionable and research-backed ideas, cutting-edge science, and moments of wonder and inspiration," according to the program description.

With scientists, climate activists, actors, singers, poets, politicians and comedians, the program looked at the state of the environment, predictions about how little time is left to alleviate climate change and about the role of individuals, businesses and governments in taking action.

"As the term 'countdown' suggests, we must act urgently," Pope Francis said. "Each one of us can play a valuable role if we all set out today -- not tomorrow, today."

"Science tells us, every day more precisely, that we need to act urgently -- I am not exaggerating -- this is what science tells us, if we are to have any hope of avoiding radical and catastrophic climate change," he said. 

"This is a scientific fact."

As he did in his 2015 encyclical letter, "Laudato Si', on Care for Our Common Home," Pope Francis insisted in his TEDx talk that concern for the environment must go hand in hand with concern for the people who live on the Earth, especially the poor, who are most impacted by climate change and natural disasters.

People must make a choice "between what matters and what does not, a choice between continuing to ignore the suffering of the poorest and mistreating our common home, the Earth," he said, or "commit ourselves at every level to transforming the way we act."

While science insists on the need to change to protect the planet, he said, "our conscience tells us that we cannot be indifferent to the suffering of the poorest, to growing economic inequalities and social injustices."

Pope Francis asked his global audience to begin "a journey of transformation and action," one "made not so much of words, but above all of concrete actions that cannot be postponed."

"It will be necessary to go step by step," he said, "to help the weak, to persuade the doubtful, to imagine new solutions and to commit oneself to carrying them forward."

The pope explained that the "integral ecology" he has called for -- responding to the cry of the poor and the cry of the Earth -- requires seeing how "everything in the world is connected and that, as the pandemic has reminded us, we are interdependent on one another, and also dependent on our mother Earth."

Presenting a three-part action plan, the pope said change must begin with "education for the care of our common home, developing the understanding that environmental problems are linked to human needs -- we must understand this from the very beginning: Environmental problems are linked to human needs."

So, he said, education must include both scientific data and ethics.

Next, he said, priority should be given to water and food, ensuring access to safe drinking water and adequate food for all the world's people.

"The third proposal is that of energy transition: a progressive replacement, but without delay, of fossil fuels with clean energy sources," he said. "This transition must not only be rapid and capable of meeting present and future energy needs, but also must be attentive to its impact on the on the poor, on local populations and on those who work in the sector of energy production."

Socially responsible investing and stockholder activism, he said, can make companies see "the unavoidable need to commit themselves to the integral care of the common home."

The pope recommended divesting from stock in "companies that do not meet the criteria of integral ecology and rewarding those that are making concrete efforts in this transition phase to put at the center of their activities criteria such as sustainability, social justice and the promotion of the common good."

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Trump attacks Fauci amid campaign ad feud

The infectious disease expert is featured prominently in an advertisement for the president’s reelection effort.



Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. | Alex Edelman/Pool via AP


By QUINT FORGEY

10/13/2020 08:54 AM EDT

Updated: 10/13/2020 11:23 AM EDT

President Donald Trump attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci on Tuesday after the nation’s top infectious disease expert criticized the president’s reelection campaign for featuring him in a political advertisement.

In a tweet Tuesday morning, Trump wrote that “Tony’s pitching arm is far more accurate than his prognostications,” referring to Fauci’s bungled first pitch on Major League Baseball’s Opening Day in July.

“‘No problem, no masks’. WHO no longer likes Lockdowns - just came out against,” the president added. “Trump was right. We saved 2,000,000 USA lives!!!”

While it is true that administration officials did not endorse mask-wearing in the initial stage of the U.S. coronavirus outbreak, the CDC began recommending the use of cloth masks when outside the home by early April.

Fauci acknowledged in June that the administration was slow to encourage the mitigation measure because of concerns among the public health community regarding a shortage of personal protective equipment in the U.S.

Trump’s mention of the World Health Organization appears to refer to a statement made last week by a Covid-19 special envoy for the United Nations agency, who urged countries against using lockdowns as the “primary means of control of this virus.”

The U.S., however, implemented only a scattershot collection of lockdown orders earlier this year — with Trump declining to issue a nationwide mandate and leaving it to local and state leaders to announce their own restrictions.

Fauci himself told CNN in an interview Monday that officials “are not talking about shutting down” when advocating public health measures, saying: “Let’s get that off the table.”

Trump did announce a ban on travel from China in January. But his travel restrictions came after the coronavirus had already begun rampaging across China, and they did not accompany broader federal efforts to prepare the U.S. for the coming pandemic.

Additionally, Trump’s travel ban included exemptions that reportedly allowed nearly 40,000 people to enter the U.S. on direct flights from China.

As for Trump’s assertion that he saved 2 million Americans, British researchers reported in March that the coronavirus could result in the deaths of as many of 2.2 million people in the U.S.

But that model predicted the death toll would only reach such heights if the U.S. took no action whatsoever to halt the disease’s spread, an unrealistic scenario.

Trump has repeatedly touted the earlier, more dire forecast of coronavirus deaths to argue his administration’s response has been a success.

Trump’s latest broadside against Fauci represents yet another effort by the White House to cast doubt on the credibility of one of the administration’s most trusted public health officials.

But the tweet from the president also seemingly undermines the 30-second ad his campaign released Saturday, which prominently features Fauci assessing Trump’s handling of the coronavirus.

“I can’t imagine that … anybody could be doing more,” Fauci says in the ad — a quote he claimed Sunday was included “without my permission” and “taken out of context” from a broader statement about the federal pandemic response.

The Trump campaign has defended its decision to feature Fauci in the ad, as has the president, who tweeted Sunday: “They are indeed Dr. Fauci’s own words.”

Fauci has continued to express his displeasure with the ad this week, emphasizing Monday that he has never endorsed a political candidate during his more than three decades as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

“To take a completely out of context statement and put it in which is obviously a political campaign ad, I thought was really very disappointing,” he told CNN.

Trump’s feud with Fauci comes as the president’s reelection team is facing pushback for featuring his two highest-ranking Pentagon officials in another campaign ad online.

The ad uses an image of Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley — seated together in the Situation Room while watching the raid on ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi last October — to link to the campaign’s voter sign-up page.

The Trump campaign did not seek Milley’s approval to feature him in the ad, POLITICO reported Monday, and the military has strict rules against uniformed service members participating in political campaigns.

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As coronavirus surges across the US, only 2 states are trending in the right direction

By Madeline Holcombe, CNN

Updated 9:46 AM ET, Sun October 18, 2020



(CNN)There is nearly no place in America where Covid-19 case counts are trending in the right direction as the country heads into what health experts say will be the most challenging months of the pandemic.

The US is averaging more than 55,000 new cases a day -- up more than 60% since a mid-September dip -- and experts say the country is in the midst of the dreaded fall surge. On Friday, the US reported the most infections in a single day since July. As of Saturday, more than 8.1 million cases of the virus had been reported in the US and 219,286 people have died, according to Johns Hopkins University.

7 ways to stay healthy (and sane) during the fall coronavirus surge

Only Missouri and Vermont recorded a more than 10% improvement in the average number of reported cases over the past week, according to the university's data. Cases in Connecticut and Florida, on the other hand, increased by 50% or more.

Twenty-seven states saw spikes between 10% and 50%: Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

New cases are static in the remaining states.

"This really is a harrowing time, and people have to be careful," epidemiologist Dr. Abdul El-Sayed said.

'This surge has the potential to be way worse'

On Friday, 10 states reported their highest one-day counts: Colorado, Idaho, Indiana, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming, according to Johns Hopkins.

As infections rise, so, too, have hospitalizations. In New Mexico, hospitalizations have increased 101% this month, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said.

More hospitalizations will likely be followed by a rise in daily coronavirus deaths, said Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta debunks Trump's Covid-19 claims 

Though the average of 700 coronavirus deaths a day the US remains lower than the daily tolls of 1,000 in July and August, University of Washington researchers project more than 2,300 Americans could die daily by mid-January.

"When we saw this kind of transmission earlier on in the pandemic, in March and April, the virus hadn't seeded everywhere. ... This surge has the potential to be way worse than it was than either the spring or the summer," El-Sayed, Detroit's former health director, said.

State leaders push new restrictions

Americans can help get the virus under control, experts say, by heeding guidelines touted by officials for months: avoiding crowded settings, keeping a distance, keeping small gatherings outdoors and wearing a mask.

"This is a good moment for people to stop and ask themselves: 'What can I do to try to be sure that we limit the further infections that otherwise seem to be looming in front of us as cold weather is kicking in and people are indoors, and those curves are going upward, in the wrong direction?'" Collins said Friday.

CDC Thanksgiving guidelines: How to stay safe and coronavirus-free over the holiday
The upticks have prompted state leaders to push new restrictions, including mask enforcement and limits on gatherings, in hopes of curbing the spread.

Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts announced changes to the state's health measures, including requiring hospitals to reserve at least 10% of staffed general and ICU beds for Covid-19 patients.

In Kentucky, Gov. Andy Beshear said this month he instructed authorities to step up mask enforcement, and in New Mexico, the governor this week ordered new mass gathering limitations and a 10 p.m. closing time for establishments serving alcohol.

"Every New Mexican can and must do their part to stop the spread of COVID-19 by staying home, limiting their interactions with others, and wearing their masks," Grisham tweeted.

CNN's Christina Maxouris, Jason Hanna, Dave Alsup, Chuck Johnston, Andrea Diaz, Nakia McNabb, Samira Said, Nadia Kounang, Andy Rose and Shelby Lin Erdman contributed to this report.

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Experts predict second wave of COVID-19

Global Compact on Education. 15 October 2020 Meeting ~ Together to look b...

Wuhan, Former Pandemic Center, Emerges as Tourist Hot Spot

10/17/2020 7:00AM

Wuhan, the city at the center of the coronavirus pandemic, had the most tourists of any Chinese city during a public holiday in October. Wuhan is overcoming its pandemic past and benefiting from its hero-city status to become a top travel destination. Photo: Getty Images

NWO: Vatican’s sun worship or mark, upcoming dark winter, martial law & ...

Your Guide to the Great Reset

Event 201

The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in partnership with the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation hosted Event 201, a high-level pandemic exercise on October 18, 2019, in New York, NY. The exercise illustrated areas where public/private partnerships will be necessary during the response to a severe pandemic in order to diminish large-scale economic and societal consequences.

Statement about nCoV and our pandemic exercise

In recent years, the world has seen a growing number of epidemic events, amounting to approximately 200 events annually. These events are increasing, and they are disruptive to health, economies, and society. Managing these events already strains global capacity, even absent a pandemic threat. Experts agree that it is only a matter of time before one of these epidemics becomes global—a pandemic with potentially catastrophic consequences. A severe pandemic, which becomes “Event 201,” would require reliable cooperation among several industries, national governments, and key international institutions.

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Invention of the ‘Rapture’ idea

Invention of the ‘Rapture’ idea

Rapture-removal is not the historic teaching of the Church. One of the more astonishing facts in the history of eschatological thought, and one that most Christians are unaware of, is that the idea of “a secret pre-tribulation, Rapture removal from the earth of the Church” is a fairly recent theory in Church history. In theological circles, it’s a “Johnny come lately.” Even the historic creeds, conspicuously, don’t mention it. In fact, it was relatively unheard of and never taught until the early 19th century, and it didn’t become widespread until the 20th century. Since then, it has spread like wildfire. But the many failed predictions of its coming have made it an embarrassment.

The first known reference may have appeared in two obscure but contestable sentences from a 4th century A.D., 1500-word sermon written in Latin by someone called “Pseudo-Ephraem.” If so, this idea went essentially unknown and undeveloped for fourteen centuries. According to most researchers, the idea of a Rapture-removal from planet Earth prior to a “great tribulation” period began to surface in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Possible but only slight and vague mentions of it may have been published in the writings of a famous Calvinist theologian Dr. John Gill (1748), an early American Baptist pastor Morgan Edwards (1788), a Jesuit priest Emmanuel Lacunza (1812), and Edward Irving, who translated Lucunza’s book (1826).

Most scholars, however, agree that the secret Rapture theory was launched into prominence around 1830 by a group of people in Scotland who had become known as the Plymouth Brethren. Under the direction of John Nelson Darby (1800-1882) and others, they began to hold Prophetic Conferences. Supposedly, during one of those conferences, or from a sick bed during those conferences, a charismatic utterance came forth as a prophetic message from the Lord through a young, fifteen-year-old Scottish girl named Margaret Macdonald. While in a trance, she received a private vision and revelation that only a select group of believers would be removed from the earth before the days of the Antichrist. But she also saw other believers enduring the tribulation¾something most rapturists nowadays do not teach.

Soon thereafter, Darby coupled this highly questionable vision of a secret, pre-tribulation Rapture with another idea originated by the Jesuit priest, Francisco Ribera. In 1585 A.D., Ribera was the first to introduce the idea of interrupting Daniel’s 70-week, end-time prophecy and inserting a “gap” between the 69th and 70th weeks. This was done to deflect apocalyptic heat from the Reformers who were fueling reformation fervor by claiming the Pope was the Antichrist and the Catholic Church the beast of Revelation. Ribera surmised that the first 69 weeks (483 years) concluded at the baptism of Jesus in 27 A.D., but God had extended the 70th week into the future. Therefore, the Pope and the Catholic Church could not be so accused. Darby grabbed hold of Ribera’s severance idea, connected his “Rapture” to the beginning of that final week, and changed that week from a 7-year period of covenantal confirmation to one of tribulation¾big difference! (Notably, the Bible never mentions a future 7-year period of tribulation.) He then introduced this now fully developed, pre-tribulation Rapture view (theory) in Europe and later in America. It was popularized in American by inclusion in the notes of the Scofield Reference Bible in 1917 and by elaborate End Time event charts published in Clarence Larkin’s Dispensational Truth in 1918.

Of course, the relative newness of the “Rapture” theory in Church history (180 some years ago) neither proves nor disproves its biblical correctness. But it certainly shouldn’t be blindly accepted nor excluded from being questioned and tested (1 Thess. 5:21). Ultimately, the truth can only be found in the Scriptures. But what began as a result of one woman’s private vision and charismatic utterance became widely taught, accepted as the truth, and popularized in the thinking of millions. It has become so deeply entrenched that many pastors and Christian leaders assume it is an essential teaching of Church history extending back to apostolic times. It is not. What’s more, it is not believed by the majority in the Church today, and with good reasons.

Sources:

1 Shattering the ‘Left Behind’ Delusion by John Noe (out-of-print)

2 Unraveling the End by John Noe

3 End Times Fiction by Gary DeMar

4 Last Days Madness by Gary DeMar

5 The Rapture Plot by Dave MacPherson

6 Rapture Fever by Gary North

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Lucifer Rising

Walter Veith & Martin Smith - Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis Encyclical 20...

CNN:SDA Conspiracy Theorists. Pope's Sun Worship Coin. Papal Iron Teeth ...

He Was Mexico’s Defense Chief. The U.S. Says He’s a Drug Dealer

Max De Haldevang 2 hrs ago


He Was Mexico’s Defense Chief. The U.S. Says He’s a Drug Dealer



(Bloomberg) -- From the outside, General Salvador Cienfuegos, with his stern visage, ramrod salute and beribboned chest, presented the image of a front-line warrior against drug traffickers.


As Mexico’s defense chief from 2012 to 2018, he directed his forces to brutally corner cartel chiefs and stealthily move patrol vehicles in pursuit of heroin shipments. Under his watch, Mexican marines arrested infamous kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman twice in two years.

But Cienfuegos, who was arrested by U.S. officials as he landed at Los Angeles International Airport late Thursday, was, according to their indictment, wielding the vast power of his office and military not to interrupt drug traffic but to help a cartel known as H-2.

Prosecutors cite thousands of intercepted Blackberry messages to paint a picture of Cienfuegos, nicknamed “Padrino” or “Godfather,” as an all-powerful benefactor who made sure thousands of kilograms of methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin and marijuana made their way into U.S. cities, producing millions of dollars in illicit cash.

“The defendant prioritized his personal greed over his sworn duties as a public servant, and he assured the continued success and safety of one of Mexico’s most violent drug-trafficking organizations,” the prosecutors wrote in a letter accompanying his indictment.

He not only smashed rival gangs, prosecutors say. He stopped military operations against H-2, introduced the cartel to “other corrupt Mexican government officials,” arranged ships to move their supplies and helped them capture more territory. He warned H-2 when the U.S. was using witnesses to testify against them, leading to the murder of a cartel member, the documents say.

The cartel “committed countless acts of horrific violence, including torture and murder, in order to protect against challenges from rival drug-trafficking organizations, fight for territory and silence those who would cooperate with law enforcement,” the letter says.

The indictment dates from August 2019. Cienfuegos, 72, hadn’t set foot in the U.S. until now, when officials could nab him. It’s unclear why he saw no risk in visiting. Prosecutors are asking that he be held without bail and tried in New York City where, if convicted, he could face decades in prison.

© Bloomberg Pope Francis Meets Mexican President Pena Nieto

He made a brief appearance by video conference before a judge in Los Angeles Friday, speaking through a Spanish interpreter. Cienfuegos agreed to be held in a federal jail until a detention hearing Tuesday. His lawyer, Duane Lyons, said he will ask that his client be released on bail at that time. Lyons didn’t respond to a request for comment after the hearing.

His arrest comes 10 months after the U.S. charged Mexico's top police official with protecting a different drug gang in the 2000s. The pair of indictments speaks to a mind-boggling level of corruption and intermingling of Mexican crime and law enforcement.

The military has a central domestic role which has grown dramatically since then-President Felipe Calderon began using it to escalate the war against the cartels in the late 2000s.

Cienfuegos was a driving force behind that expansion, testifying to lawmakers that only the military could be trusted to fight organized crime. In 2017, he successfully pushed President Enrique Pena Nieto to codify the military’s role in the drug war into Mexican law.

Since President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador took office in 2018, the military has moved far beyond combat operations. Soldiers now do everything from protecting oil facilities and ports to undertaking public works including airports and even government bank branches.

Its reputation as one of the country’s more efficient and less corrupt institutions has been central to its expansion. Where local police forces have long been seen as working hand-in-hand with the narcos, the military can rotate troops and commanders around different regions to stop those relationships from forming -- and it has at least scored high-profile captures of major figures.

Its culture and framework may have left it open to abuse by a bad actor at the top.

“No one is going to question the secretary on what he does or doesn’t do,’’ said Craig Deare, a former assistant U.S. defense attache in Mexico City and author of a book on U.S.-Mexico military relations. “That’s a pretty strong characteristic of the Mexican army: Whatever the boss says, you do that.

”

© Photographer: Lujan Agusti/Bloomberg Salvador Cienfuegos

It’s clear from the indictment that Cienfuegos had collaborators at official levels, some witting and some perhaps unwitting.

“Whatever he did, he didn’t do alone,” said Athanasios Hristoulas, security expert and professor at ITAM, Mexico’s Autonomous Institute of Technology, a private university. “There’s undoubtedly a whole bunch of other people in the army that are at least somehow co-conspirators in this.”

There were signs that Cienfuegos, while in office, might have, as U.S. prosecutors wrote, “no respect for public authority or the rule of law.”

Human rights groups railed against disappearances and extra-judicial killings allegedly committed by the military under his tenure, most notoriously in the unsolved kidnapping and murder of 43 students. “There was just an egregious failure” to hold people accountable under his reign, said Vanda Felbab-Brown, an organized-crime expert at the Brookings Institution.

The prosecutors in New York say Cienfuegos wielded his considerable power to help not only the H-2 cartel, but other unnamed gangs. Witnesses testified to the cartel’s “regular employment of violence to further its drug trafficking, its use of bribery to ensure government protection, as well as the assistance of the defendant to the H-2 Cartel and other drug trafficking organizations,” they wrote.

Cienfuegos was allegedly involved with H-2 when the organization was headed by Juan Patron Sanchez, who died in a 2017 shootout with the Mexican military. H-2 Cartel is a successor to the Beltran Leyva Organization, which was once led by Hector Beltran Leyva and operated in the Mexican states Nayarit and Sinaloa.

Cienfuegos’s arrest has raised the question of how deep the alleged corruption goes in Mexico’s armed forces.

When Lopez Obrador appointed current Defense Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval in 2018, he thanked Cienfuegos for his “collaboration” in the decision-making. Cienfuegos soon lavished praise on Sandoval. At a press conference on Friday, Lopez Obrador said he had rejected all of Cienfuegos’s suggested candidates and that Sandoval was comprehensively vetted.

The president promised to remove anyone shown to be involved in the case, but gave little sign that he plans to rein in the armed forces’ power. The military and navy “are pillars of the Mexican state,” he said. “They are so strong that not even such lamentable matters as the involvement of a secretary of defense in narco-trafficking will weaken them.”

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

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A Discussion with Ganoune Diop, Director of the Public Affairs and Religious Liberty Department, Seventh-day Adventist Church

Georgetown University

Interviews

A Discussion with Ganoune Diop, Director of the Public Affairs and Religious Liberty Department, Seventh-day Adventist Church



With: Ganoune Diop

Berkley Center 

Profile

August 28, 2020


Background: Ganoune Diop is a leading intellectual within interfaith circles and has been part of the G20 Interfaith Forum since its inception in 2014, focusing on issues of religious freedom. He is currently leading the Association’s working group on religious dimensions of racism. He and Katherine Marshall spoke (by zoom) on July 27, to explore various dimensions of his path from Rufisque, Senegal to the Seventh Day Adventist headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland. This has involved a constant focus on freedom and a remarkable intellectual journey crossing multiple disciplines and topics.

“I realized a core in my calling in this world, which is human solidarity, a deep respect for other people's choices that leaves aside our differences. That is freedom of conscience: conscience to believe or not to believe. If I genuinely believe in that, then that means I must genuinely embrace others…I confident that, through my journey, God has placed me to be a person of reconciliation, a person bringing people together, a person genuinely respecting and embracing the humanity of others.”- Ganoune Diop


What was the heart of the work you are doing in several quite distinct roles at the Seventh Day Adventist Church?

Several doors have opened to me and, walking through them, I have realized a core in my calling in this world, which is human solidarity, a deep respect for other people's choices that leaves aside our differences. That is freedom of conscience: conscience to believe or not to believe. If I genuinely believe in that, then that means I must genuinely embrace others This, I think, is one of the reasons why, providentially, I'm positioned to be there as the secretary of one the largest Christian organizations, the Conference of Secretaries of Christian World Communions, entrusted with the privilege to meet the top leaders of all denominations, developing friendships, with genuine interest in all. I was also asked to be part of the board for the Global Christian Forum, that, again, brings together different Christian streams: Orthodox, Catholics, Anglicans and many other Christians. I believe that, through my journey, God has placed me to be a person of reconciliation, a person bringing people together, a person genuinely respecting and embracing the humanity of others.

The prerogative to choose what to believe and what not to believe, without being boxed into any allegiances, that can be more tribal or ethnic or this or that, has connected freedom of conscience and my own journey. My primary commitment is to God. I have also a deeper commitment to the whole human family. Commitment to God also materializes in the embrace of human beings to whom God shows solidarity. When I became the director of public affairs and religious liberty, I was also asked to be the secretary general of the International Religious Liberty Association. Cole Durham, for example, and many others of different faith traditions come to our meetings.

The core of who I am is connected to the belief in this sacredness of humans, human beings, whoever they are, whatever their journey or their life experiences. I deeply feel that is where I belong. I would betray my own being by not showing solidarity with the whole human family, and when I say with the human family, I mean without exception, anywhere. That is connected to the first theme of freedom, which is where, interestingly, my spiritual journey of conscience began. Therefore, the idea of freedom is constitutive to my spiritual journey. Now, as secretary general of the International Religious Freedom Association, my work is connected to the heart of my life trajectory.

I am interested to learn more about the Adventist church. There seem to be quite distinct silos: the church itself, ADRA, and the whole medical side. How do these relate, within the Adventist and the outside worlds?

Officially, from a theological or from an ecclesiological perspective, Adventists position ourselves as part of the continuation of the Reformation. That doesn't mean that this is the only church: absolutely not, but we are a continuation of the reformation. Most Christian denominations claim to champion some aspects of the Christian faith they consider core to their faith. The term “Seventh Day” or Sabbath, connects creation, human dignity, human rights, and equality and other principles. Adventists insist on God's sovereignty, to say that creation means that we are not just the result of chance. Nobody is an accident. The other part of the name, Adventist, reflects a focus on a Christian belief that most Christians share: the second coming of Jesus. This aspect is more about hope: things as they are right now in the world may look bad, but God promised that he will come back to restore God's sovereignty, his kingdom.

Among some Adventists, for example, you find people who insist on the signs of the times: that some terrible thing will happen. Some Adventists at the fringe of the mainstream faith may develop a rather sectarian understanding, that “we are the best”. To me, that is totally misconstrued, a misunderstanding. To a large degree, without diminishing the dignity of these people, I might say it's misinformation about God's purposes for the world. The gospel is the good news about God's first coming and good news about the second coming, meaning the coming of the savior to deliver people from the human predicament: suffering, disease and death.

The Offended Ones - A Message By: G. Craige Lewis of EX Ministries

The Greatest Transfer of Wealth in History

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Shadow Gate 2.0 - Full Movie The Fake News Industrial Complex

 

Full Documentary Below:

https://www.millennialmillie.com/?wix-vod-video-id=undefined&wix-vod-comp-id=comp-jx9p57yh

The first installment of Shadow Gate demonstrated that the shadow government consists of government contractors; defense, intelligence, security, and so on.

When the first trailer was aired, a little known Anonymizer project called ION 2 was scrapped.

On the day Shadow Gate had an early release, a well planned targeted smear campaign by media outlets and social media influencers was launched to distract away from the subtle panic the military industrial complex was going through in the background.

The websites of Dynology, Jones Group International, and ClearForce we’re removed, modified, and changed in what appears to be a cover-up.

The day the trailer for Shadow Gate 2.0 was launched, were Patrick Bergy revealed he was blowing the whistle on Leonie, an MIC PSYOPs contractor started pulling pages from their website.

After the second trailer for Shadow Gate 2.0 was launched, the LinkedIn page for Leonie was pulled.

But why? What was so dangerous about Shadow Gate and our whistleblowers that the documentary created such a knee-jerk reaction?

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