Obama Lawyers Ask Supreme Court to Revive Immigration Plan

Greg Stohr

November 20, 2015 — 10:13 AM EST

Updated on November 20, 2015 — 11:15 AM EST

President Barack Obama answers a question during a town hall with Young Southeast Asia Leaders Initiative (YSEALI) at Taylor's University in Kuala Lumpur on Nov. 20, 2015.
Photographer: FRED DUFOUR/AFP/Getty Images

Appeal sets up possible showdown during 2016 presidential race
Administration plan seeks to shield millions from deportation.

President Barack Obama’s administration moved quickly to seek a U.S. Supreme Court hearing on his plan to shield as many as 5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation, setting up the prospect of a politically charged court battle next year.

Acting less than two weeks after a federal appeals court said Obama had overstepped his authority, government lawyers called on the justices to take up the case and issue a ruling that would shape the president’s legacy and the 2016 presidential race.

“The court of appeals’ judgment enjoins nationwide a federal policy of great importance to federal law enforcement, to many states, and to millions of families with longstanding and close connections with this country,” U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli argued in the appeal.


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Catholic Church Facilitates Foreign Invasion

Posted By Cliff Kincaid On November 19, 2015 @ 3:56 pm In AIM Column

In the face of President Obama’s veto threat, members of Congress may not be able to pass legislation suspending or upgrading the program permitting refugees from Syria, the Middle East and North Africa to settle in the U.S. But the Republican Congress certainly has the power to hold hearings into the millions of taxpayer dollars being funneled through Catholic and other church groups to bring them here. Many Catholics and non-Catholics alike would like to know how “religious compassion,” using federal money, is increasing the potential terrorist threat to America.

You may recall that Pope Francis promoted the Obama administration’s pro-immigration policies during his visit to the U.S. Left unsaid was the fact that the American branch of the Roman Catholic Church is getting millions of taxpayer dollars to settle refugees. According to their financial statement [1] for 2014, the latest year for which figures are available, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops received over $79 million in government grants to provide benefits to refugees.

Simply stated, Congress can expose how the money is being spent and cut it off.

Some of the refugees being settled are Catholics from Latin America who join the church in the U.S. But others are from the Middle East. Ironically, the Catholic Bishops are bringing Muslims in, while closing down Catholic churches inside the U.S.

Ann Corcoran’s Refugee Resettlement Watch website notes [2] that Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church in Syracuse, New York, was closed down by the Catholic Church and has been leased to an Islamic society which renamed it Mosque Of Jesus The Son Of Mary.

“There are slim copper crescents where, for 100 years, there had been crosses,” reports [3]Marnie Eisenstadt of the Syracuse Post-Standard and Syracuse.com. She adds, “The six crosses were removed and replaced at the end of June. Four of them were massive: 600 pounds of concrete each, and more than 4 feet tall. The step was the last, and most visible, in the building’s change from church to mosque.”

The situation is even worse in Europe, where Islam is replacing Christianity as the dominant religion.

The Catholic News Agency reports that only 2.9 percent of the French population actually practice the Catholic faith. That compares to 3.8 percent of the population that practice Islam.

It is reported that as many as 150 new mosques currently are under construction in France.

Nevertheless, in response to the recent wave of Muslims fleeing the Middle East, Pope Francis has appealed [4] to Europe’s Catholics, calling on “every” parish, religious community, monastery and sanctuary to take in one refugee family.

The Catholic Church in America would clearly prefer to bring immigrants into the U.S. from Latin America, where Catholicism is still strong, and have them join Catholic churches in the U.S. The Catholic Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate reports [5] that 40 percent of all growth in registered parishioners in Catholic parishes between 2005 and 2010 was from Hispanic or Latino Catholics.

But even with the massive immigration from Latin America, Catholic churches around the U.S. are still being closed down. A group called Future Church reports [6] that hundreds of parishes have been merged or closed in New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, Cleveland and many other urban and rural places.

“Recently,” the group reported, “the Archdiocese of New York merged or closed more than 70 parishes, often in the face of staunch opposition by committed parishioners. Pope Francis, during his U.S. visit, stopped at Our Lady Queen of Angels School in East Harlem, where the Archdiocese closed the parish in 2007.”

Corcoran has recorded a popular video [7], sponsored by the Center for Security Policy, explaining the history of resettlement refugee policies and their connections to Muslim groups and the United Nations.

James Simpson’s book, The Red-Green Axis: Refugees, Immigration and the Agenda to Erase America [8], notes that the Catholic Church has been a major component of the open borders movement.

Many Catholic groups are proud of the federal dollars they receive, for purposes that go far beyond refugee resettlement.

Overall, reports [9] Network, the self-described Catholic Social Justice Lobby, “…the Obama administration has actually increased funding for Catholic nonprofit organizations and programs. In fact, more than $1.5 billion went to Catholic organizations over the past two years.” These figures include an increase from just over $440 million (2008) to more than $554 million (2010) to Catholic Charities USA.

In addition to direct federal grants to help refugees, government at various levels provide subsidized housing, healthcare, food stamps, other cash assistance, and free education. There is also a cost to the criminal justice system of taking care of the criminals among them.

It’s the Catholic role, in collaboration with the federal government, in bringing refugees to the U.S. that caused Corcoran to leave the church. She told Accuracy in Media, “In 2002, having been raised in a protestant faith, I became a Catholic. For a few years I loved being a Catholic. All of that changed beginning in 2007 when I learned that another church group began resettling mostly Muslim refugees to my rural county in Western Maryland. I learned that the church group was largely funded and directed by the U.S. State Department to place the refugees in our county with no local input.”

She added, “But that is not everything I learned. My research led me to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ acceptance of over $70 million a year of taxpayer dollars to similarly resettle thousands of impoverished third-worlders, many from Muslim countries, in other unsuspecting towns and cities. Catholic Charities throughout the U.S. get many millions more to do the work as well.”

She says this kind of work by the Catholic and other churches is not Christian charity. “As harsh as it sounds,” she says, “I look on it as thievery when a supposedly non-profit ‘religious charity’ helps itself to the U.S. Treasury and then pats itself on the back for doing good works. And then lobbies Congress for more money for itself to boot!”

Corcoran said she has found reporters reluctant to investigate the federal dollars going to the Catholic Church. “When talking with a reporter recently I was told by the reporter that he would never even have dreamed to look into where the U.S. Bishops were getting their millions of dollars for their ‘migration fund,’ presuming it was from the personal charitable donations of good and generous Catholics in hundreds of parishes across the country,” she said. “I suspect all those good Catholics never think to ask the question either—where are the millions coming from?”

“Why aren’t more reporters exposing the U.S. Bishops deep pockets?” she asks. “And, why are our ‘leaders,’ even our budget hawks, in Washington not speaking up?”

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The Limits of The Panopticon

PARIS ATTACKS

By Nicholas Weaver 

Wednesday, November 18, 2015, 3:47 PM


The modern world is a virtual panopticon, a surveillance state which records huge quantities of data about our every action and provides an easily retrievable metadata record of our movements, our contacts, our purchases, and our activities. This panopticon has two potential functions: prospective and retrospective. The prospective function is to stop the bad guys before they do the bad thing. The retrospective function allows intelligence and law enforcement authorities to comb through data following an event and piece together what happened. The emotional resonance of the prospective function is highest following an event like the Paris terrorist attacks – it allows proponents of increased surveillance authorities to say “If only…”

Details are still emerging but we are now starting to get a picture of how the Paris attackers operated, and how, despite being known to authorities, they evaded detection. These attacks demonstrate that, whatever the investigative benefits of the retrospective panopticon, the prospective panopticon is inherently limited. Put simply, the prospective panopticon failed in Paris (as it fails in every successful terrorist attack), and the reasons why probably can’t be fixed.

To begin, consider the retrospective panopticon. This panopticon is so powerful that even the CIA can’t reliably evade it, with at least two operations attributed through cellphone metadata records. Once a suspect is identified, it is relatively straightforward to reconstruct movements, associates, patterns of activity, and many communications. This explains the incredible success of French and Belgian authorities in the aftermath of the attacks at quickly identifying suspects and known associates and mapping their movements.

But the success of this retrospective panopticon only highlights the failure of the prospective panopticon. If the individuals in Paris were known to authorities, why weren’t they stopped?

First, the sheer volume of “known radicals” –at least 5000—makes prospective monitoring impossible. How does one effectively monitor 5000 individuals and identify who among them will pose an actual threat? After all, most never will. It didn’t matter that Salah Abdeslam used his own name and credit card when booking his hotel room. Abdeslam was simply one of thousands identified as maybe or maybe not posing a threat.

Even reducing the volume of targets may be insufficient. Assuming the authorities were able to focus on 500 or 50 individuals instead of 5000, the communication patterns of a terrorist cell are remarkably similar to those of any family or group. Unless authorities are aware that an individual is actively (rather than potentially) dangerous, electronic monitoring may provide little prospective benefit, unless they can intercept the contents of a communication that makes a threat clear.

But the communication content of an even minimally proficient terrorist provides little value. Human codes are often employed. We now know that final coordination took place using unencrypted SMS, but unless one already has already identified the terrorist cell and at least some basic details of a plot, tracking an SMS that says "On est parti on commence" (which roughly translates to “Let’s go, we’re starting”) provides little actionable intelligence.

Which bring us to cryptography, or rather the lack thereof. The Paris attackers consisted of individuals who knew one another and lived in the same neighborhoods. Meeting in person was not only feasible but unsuspicious. You don’t need PGP when you have IRL (In Real Life). Afterall, low-tech methods –face-to-face meetings and using couriers—provide the best protection against electronic surveillance. And even if physically followed, it is not unusual for someone to meet a brother, friend, or cousin in a loud public space.

This is all to say, providing more electronic surveillance powers to the security services won’t fix the actual problem. Sure, it ups the power of the panopticon’s retrospective analysis but that wasn’t what failed here. To the contrary, the retrospective panopticon appears to be working quite well under current authorities. For example, data retention rules such as those proposed in the United Kingdom will not help prospective investigations; you still need to know who your suspect is to know which data to examine.

It would be a mistake to allow proponents of increased surveillance authority to use a failure of the prospective panopticon to argue for more power relevant to the retrospective panopticon. The limits of the prospective panopticon cannot be wished away by cryptographic backdoors and the like. These are inherent limitations of the system. Therefore, rather than using Paris as an argument for increasing surveillance authority, security services should look to where they can overcome the panopticon’s failings. For example, authorities should redouble their focus on human intelligence. Here, the relatively large cell size (perhaps 20 or more based on the number of arrests) made the conspiracy more vulnerable to infiltration, and the security services have all the necessary legal authorities to carry out this mission.

The electronic panopticon is attractive because it is often effective and inexpensive by design. But Paris presents an opportunity to acknowledge its limitations and recognize that making it “stronger” will not actually make it more effective.

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The Third Angel's Message

And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand,

The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb:

And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name.

Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.


Revelation 14:6-12

Cuban migrants paralyze Nicaragua-Costa Rica border

Yahoo News




Surge of Cuban migrants sends Costa Rica-Nicaragua ties plunging


1:45

AFP By Blanca Morel, Marco Sibaja, Ezequiel Becerra 6 hours ago



La Cruz (Costa Rica) (AFP) - A protest by desperate Cuban migrants stranded on their journey to the United States paralyzed a key border crossing between Costa Rica and Nicaragua Tuesday.

Long lines of buses and trucks formed on both sides of the frontier as the migrants refused to let traffic pass, authorities from the two countries said.

"The international transport of passengers and cargo remains paralyzed" at the Penas Blancas border post, the Nicaraguan government said, warning of disruptions to trade and transport "for the entire Central American region."

A spokesman for Costa Rica's immigration authority confirmed the blockage.

More than 2,000 Cubans are stuck at the border, penniless and without immigration papers.

Many were stranded when Costa Rica busted a human trafficking ring that was charging $7,000 to $15,000 (6,500 to 14,000 euros) to smuggle them into the United States.

They are part of a growing surge in Cubans trying to reach the United States since Washington and Havana announced a thaw in their Cold War-era standoff last December.

For Cubans looking to leave the communist island, the rapprochement has sparked fears that the US policy of granting asylum to Cuban arrivals may be near an end.

Rather than risk the trip by boat across the Florida Straits, where the US Coast Guard can send them back, many now fly to Ecuador, which does not require visas for Cuban nationals.

Then they work their way north, overland and by boat.

- Increasingly desperate -

In Santa Cruz, on the Costa Rican side of the border, the increasingly desperate Cubans are being housed in churches, community centers and gyms.

They pass the time sprawled on mattresses on the shelter floors or drinking coffee served from large green buckets by volunteers.

Many described being trapped in limbo, uncertain of their fate.

"I don't think Nicaragua is going to open its doors to us. We don't know what's going to happen to us. We could be here five days, 10 days, but I don't think we can take much more," said Yordani Garcia, 32.

He is determined not to go back. "Things in Cuba aren't getting any better. On the contrary, they're getting worse," he said.

Santa Cruz community leaders have mobilized to take in the stranded migrants with the help of government funds. But the Cubans are all too aware of the burden they pose.

"We don't know if we'll be able to stay much longer. It's a big expense for Costa Rica," said Dayana Gonzalez, 28, who is traveling with her eight-year-old daughter, her sister and two nieces, aged eight and 10.

- Surge of Cubans -

Costa Rica called for an urgent meeting of foreign ministers along the Cubans' route, from Ecuador to Mexico.

Foreign Minister Manuel Gonzalez said the countries need to establish a "humanitarian corridor" to prevent would-be migrants falling into the hands of human traffickers.

There was a 78-percent increase in Cubans arriving in the United States in the nine months to July 2015, to 27,296 people, according to the Pew Research Center, citing official US figures.

Two-thirds of them arrived through Laredo, Texas, on the Mexican border -- 66 percent more than last year.

The Cubans stranded in Central America have sparked a diplomatic row between Costa Rica and Nicaragua, which already have two border disputes pending at the International Court of Justice.

Costa Rica gave the Cubans temporary visas so they could continue their journey north, but Nicaragua irately sent them back, accusing its southern neighbor of "deliberately and irresponsibly" sparking a humanitarian crisis.

On Sunday, Nicaragua deported hundreds of Cubans it said had crossed the border "by force."

Costa Rica for its part criticized Nicaragua for using the army to expel the migrants with tear gas and rubber bullets.

Havana Tuesday said it was in "constant contact" with authorities in both Nicaragua and Costa Rica, "with the aim to find a swift and adequate solution, which takes the well-being of Cuban citizens into consideration."

It also emphasized that the Cubans were welcome to return home to the communist island.

However the situation also encompasses larger geopolitical considerations.

Costa Rica's government has long been close to the United States, while Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega is a staunch ally of Cuba dating back to 1979, when his Sandinista rebels overthrew Nicaragua's US-backed government.

Ortega, who was installed at the head of a junta government, stepped down in 1990. He has been back since 2007 as the country's elected president.

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Obama Tells CEOs Climate Change Offers Growth Opportunities

Angela Greiling Keane @agreilingkeane
Toluse Olorunnipa Toluse

November 17, 2015 — 10:29 PM EST

Updated on November 17, 2015 — 11:57 PM EST

Smog enveloping New Delhi, India.
Photographer: Money Sharma/AFP/Getty Images

Obama talks climate at APEC before UN meeting in Paris
Paris talks Nov. 30 may result in global targets for emissions

Speaking in a city where air pollution is often visible and palpable, U.S. President Barack Obama challenged governments and businesses in Asia-Pacific nations to keep up efforts to cut emissions that cause climate change.

The president’s call to action, delivered to executives from some of the world’s biggest companies at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Manila, was made in anticipation of talks in Paris starting late this month intended to deliver binding targets for each nation to cut carbon emissions.

“Few regions have more at stake in meeting this challenge,” Obama said at the summit, after a meeting earlier Wednesday with Philippine President Benigno Aquino.


APEC: Obama Says Now Is Time to Act on Climate Change

Obama argued that slowing or halting climate change will benefit corporate bottom lines by opening new avenues for investment in renewable energy and other green technology. He also framed the issue as a security concern for Pacific rim nations that face greater flooding, violent storms and drought under the effects of climate change.

Infrastructure Resiliency
That topic has been on the agenda at the summit. Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario on Tuesday said ministers from the 21 member countries of APEC are working on plans to increase the resiliency of energy infrastructure to natural disasters.

Obama used last year’s APEC summit as the backdrop for the U.S. and China to unveil a landmark agreement on cutting greenhouse-gas emissions. The U.S. and China, the world’s two biggest economies, account for more than a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, and their pledges gave added momentum toward an agreement at the United Nations climate talks on Nov. 30.

“An ambitious agreement in Paris will prompt investors to invest in clean energy technologies because they will understand that the world is committed” to a clean energy future, Obama said on Wednesday.

He praised Jack Ma, chairman and co-founder of Chinese online commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., for his commitment to acting on climate change and cited American companies Google Inc., Apple Inc. and Costco Wholesale Corp. as among the world largest users of renewable energy. The two shared the stage at the summit.

Resistance at Home
As he seeks to build a consensus on climate change among world leaders, Obama faces resistance back in the U.S.

Republicans, who control both chambers of Congress, are seeking to prevent the administration implementing limits on greenhouse gas pollution from power plants, which would force broad changes in the way electricity is produced and delivered and are central to Obama’s climate agenda. Hours before Obama spoke in Manila the Senate passed a resolution to block the rules. The president has vowed to veto the measure.

Obama is scheduled to meet for the first time this week with new Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The president announced earlier this month he was rejecting a permit to allow a Canadian crude oil pipeline to be built in the U.S. on the grounds the project would worsen climate change by encouraging the use of fossil fuels.

‘Dirty Oil’
Trudeau on Tuesday said Canada’s environmental record is in part to blame for Obama’s “dirty oil” rhetoric that he used when talking about the oil sands production that would have sent crude through the Keystone pipeline.

Climate change was raised by other leaders at APEC, including Aquino, whose country is often lashed by strong typhoons. Haiyan, the most powerful storm known to make landfall, killed more than 6,000 people in the Philippines and washed away parts of the city of Tacloban in November 2013.

“As a country highly vulnerable to climate and disaster risks, the Philippines underscores the importance of all countries contributing to the global effort to address the problem of climate change for the benefit of future generations,” Aquino said during a joint press conference with Obama. Indonesian Vice President Jusuf Kalla told APEC he hopes the Paris meetings make good progress.

Trade Pact

At the summit, Obama is also drumming up support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact, as all 12 nations that signed it now need to get approval from their respective parliaments. Obama has a tough process in the U.S. if he is to succeed, and he’s pressing other nations that signed the agreement to ratify it so it can take effect.

“There is not a trade deal that’s been done in modern American politics that has not been challenging, but I’m confident it’s going to get done,” Obama said after his meeting with Aquino.

Discussions at APEC were overshadowed by the attacks by Islamic State extremists last week in Paris that killed at least 129 people, as leaders grapple with how to battle extremism at home and abroad.

“We will not allow terrorism to threaten the fundamental values that underpin our free and open economies,” APEC leaders will say at the end of their summit on Thursday, according to a draft of their communique obtained by Bloomberg. “Economic growth, prosperity, and opportunity are among the most powerful tools to address the root causes of terrorism and radicalization. We stress the urgent need for increased international cooperation and solidarity in the fight against terrorism.”

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Gov. Kasich Proposes Government Agency to Promote Judeo-Christian Values Abroad

Daniel White @danielatlarge

Nov. 17, 2015

Win McNamee—Getty Images

Republican presidential candidate Gov. John Kasich (R-OH), speaks at the National Press Club November 17, 2015 in Washington, DC. Kasich outlined a new national security strategy during his remarks.
"We need to beam messages around the world" about the freedoms enjoyed by Americans


Republican presidential candidate and Ohio governor John Kasich on Tuesday proposed a forming a new government agency to promote Judeo-Christian values around the world as part of a broad foreign policy package to combat ISIS.
The proposed agency would advance the cause for a belief system based on Christian and Jewish traditions in China, Iran, Russia and the Middle East, NBC News reports.

“We need to beam messages around the world” about the freedoms enjoyed by Americans, Kasich told the network in an interview. “It means freedom, it means opportunity, it means respect for women, it means freedom to gather, it means so many things.”

Kasich also favors a U.S.-led military coalition, which involves troops fighting on the ground in Iraq and Syria, but with little involvement in the ongoing Syrian civil war.

The proposal comes amidst a sweeping push from Republican governors following the deadly terror attacks in Paris Friday to block efforts to move Syrian refugees into their states. ISIS has claimed responsibility for the Paris attacks.

Kasich, who sent a letter to the President expressing his opposition to hosting refugees in Ohio, admitted during a speech at the National Press Club in Washington that as a state governor “we don’t have the authority…we can only express our concerns” over the Obama-administration plan to relocate Syrian refugees.

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The Catholic Roots of Obama’s Activism

The New York Times
U.S.

When Barack Obama arrived in Chicago in 1985 as a community organizer, he held meetings in what was then Holy Rosary Church and is now New Day Ministries.
TAYLOR GLASCOCK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

By JASON HOROWITZ
MARCH 22, 2014


CHICAGO — In a meeting room under Holy Name Cathedral, a rapt group of black Roman Catholics listened as Barack Obama, a 25-year-old community organizer, trained them to lobby their fellow delegates to a national congress in Washington on issues like empowering lay leaders and attracting more believers.

“He so quickly got us,” said Andrew Lyke, a participant in the meeting who is now the director of the Chicago Archdiocese’s Office for Black Catholics. The group succeeded in inserting its priorities into the congress’s plan for churches, Mr. Lyke said, and “Barack Obama was key in helping us do that.”

By the time of that session in the spring of 1987, Mr. Obama — himself not Catholic — was already well known in Chicago’s black Catholic circles. He had arrived two years earlier to fill an organizing position paid for by a church grant, and had spent his first months here surrounded by Catholic pastors and congregations. In this often overlooked period of the president’s life, he had a desk in a South Side parish and became steeped in the social justice wing of the church, which played a powerful role in his political formation.

This Thursday, Mr. Obama will meet with Pope Francis at the Vatican after a three-decade divergence with the church. By the late 1980s, the Catholic hierarchy had taken a conservative turn that de-emphasized social engagement and elevated the culture wars that would eventually cast Mr. Obama as an abortion-supporting enemy. Mr. Obama, who went on to find his own faith with the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.’s Trinity United Church of Christ, drifted from his youthful, church-backed activism to become a pragmatic politician and the president with a terrorist “kill list.” The meeting this week is a potential point of confluence.



Mr. Obama's organizing job was paid for by a church grant, and he spent his first months in Chicago surrounded by Catholic pastors and congregations.

JOE WRINN / HARVARD UNIVERSITY, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS

A White House accustomed to archbishop antagonists hopes the president will find a strategic ally and kindred spirit in a pope who preaches a gospel of social justice and inclusion. Mr. Obama’s old friends in the priesthood pray that Francis will discover a president freed from concerns about re-election and willing to rededicate himself to the vulnerable.

But the Vatican — aware that Mr. Obama has far more to gain from the encounter than the pope does, and wary of being used for American political consumption — warns that this will hardly be like the 1982 meeting at which President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II agreed to fight Communism in Eastern Europe.

“We’re not in the old days of the great alliance,” said a senior Vatican official who was granted anonymity to speak frankly about the mind-set inside the Holy See. While Mr. Obama’s early work with the church is “not on the radar screen,” the official said, his recent arguments with American bishops over issues of religious freedom are: Catholic leaders have objected to a provision in the administration’s health care law that requires employers to cover contraception costs, and have sharply questioned the morality of the administration’s use of drones to fight terrorism.

As in many reunions, expectations, and the possibility for disappointment, run high.

Working in Holy Rosary Church, Mr. Obama would sneak smoking breaks on the roof with the Rev. William Stenzel.
TAYLOR GLASCOCK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

A Fast Learner

In 1967, as the modernizing changes of the Second Vatican Council began to transform the Catholic world, Ann Dunham, Mr. Obama’s mother, took her chubby 6-year-old son occasionally to Mass and enrolled him in a new Catholic elementary school in Jakarta, Indonesia, called Santo Fransiskus Asisi. At school, the future president began and ended his days with prayer. At home, his mother read him the Bible with an anthropologist’s eye.

Pious he was not. “When it came time to pray, I would pretend to close my eyes, then peek around the room,” Mr. Obama wrote in his memoir “Dreams From My Father.” “Nothing happened. No angels descended. Just a parched old nun and 30 brown children, muttering words.”

In 1969, Mr. Obama transferred to a more exclusive, state-run school with a mosque, but a development in the United States would have a greater impact on his future career. American Catholic bishops responded to the call of the Second Vatican Council to focus on the poor by creating what is now known as the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, an antipoverty and social justice program that became one of the country’s most influential supporters of grass-roots groups.

Mr. Obama had a small office on the ground floor of the church.

TAYLOR GLASCOCK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

By the early 1980s, when Mr. Obama was an undergraduate at Columbia University, the campaign was financing a project to help neighborhoods after the collapse of the steel mills near Chicago. The program’s leaders, eager to expand beyond Catholic parishes to the black Protestant churches where more of the affected community worshiped, sought an African-American for the task. In 1985, they found one in Mr. Obama, a fledgling community organizer in New York who answered a want ad for a job with the Developing Communities Project. The faith-based program aimed to unify South Side residents against unsafe streets, poor living conditions and political neglect. Mr. Obama’s salary was less than $10,000 a year.

The future president arrived in Chicago with little knowledge of Catholicism other than the Graham Greene novels and “Confessions” of St. Augustine he had read during a period of spiritual exploration at Columbia. But he fit seamlessly into a 1980s Catholic cityscape forged by the spirit of Vatican II, the influence of liberation theology and the progressivism of Cardinal Joseph L. Bernardin, the archbishop of Chicago, who called for a “consistent ethic of life” that wove life and social justice into a “seamless garment.”

On one of his first days on the job, Mr. Obama heard Cardinal Bernardin speak at an economic development meeting. He felt like a Catholic novice there, he wrote in his memoir, and later decided “not to ask what a catechism was.” But he was a quick study.

“He had to do a power analysis of each Catholic church,” said one of his mentors at the time, Gregory Galluzzo, a former Jesuit priest and disciple of the organizer Saul Alinsky. Mr. Obama, Mr. Galluzzo said, soon understood the chain of command and who had influence in individual parishes.



Cardinal Joseph L. Bernardin

SUE OGROCKI / REUTERS

Mr. Obama had a small office with two cloudy glass-block windows on the ground floor of Holy Rosary, a handsome red brick parish on the South Side, where he would pop down the hall to the office of the Rev. William Stenzel, raise a phantom cigarette to his lips and ask, “Want to go out for lunch?” Besides sneaking smoke breaks with the priest on the roof, Mr. Obama listened to him during Mass. “He was on an exposure curve to organized religion,” Father Stenzel said.

The future president’s education included evangelizing. Mr. Obama often plotted strategy with the recent Catholic convert who had hired him, Gerald Kellman, about how to bring people into the program and closer to the church. The effort to fill the pews “was what Bernardin really bought into,” Mr. Kellman said.

To expand congregations as well as the reach of his organizing program, Mr. Obama went to Holy Ghost Catholic Church in South Holland, Ill., to ask Wilton D. Gregory, an African-American bishop and a rising star in the hierarchy, for a grant for operating costs. Archbishop Gregory, who now leads the Archdiocese of Atlanta, recalled Mr. Obama as a persuasive man who “wanted to engage the people of the neighborhood.” He recommended that Cardinal Bernardin release the funds.

As the months went on, Mr. Obama became a familiar face in South Side black parishes. At Holy Angels Church, considered a center of black Catholic life, he talked to the pastor and the pastor’s adopted son about finding families willing to adopt troubled children. At Our Lady of the Gardens, he attended peace and black history Masses and conferred with the Rev. Dominic Carmon on programs to battle unemployment and violence. At the neo-Gothic St. Sabina, he struck up a friendship with the Rev. Michael L. Pfleger, the firebrand white pastor of one of the city’s largest black parishes. The two would huddle in a back room and commiserate about the liquor stores and payday loan businesses in the neighborhood.



Cardinal Francis George

ALESSANDRO BIANCHI / REUTERS

But even as Mr. Obama effectively proselytized for the church and its role in improving the community, and even as he opened meetings in the backs of churches with the Lord’s Prayer and showed a comfort with faith that put the people he hoped to organize at ease, Catholic doctrine did not tempt him. He was not baptized Catholic, priests said. But it was amid the trappings of Catholicism, according to his fellow organizers, that the future president began to express a spiritual thirst.

As Mr. Obama helped expand the program from Catholic parishes to megachurches and Protestant congregations, he felt that need slaked by the prevailing black liberation theology, inspired by the civil rights movement and preached by African-American ministers like Mr. Wright of Trinity. The notion that Jesus delivered salvation to communities that expressed faith through good deeds suited Mr. Obama’s instincts — and perhaps his interests.

For an ambitious black politician, Mr. Galluzzo said, “it was not politically advantageous to be in a Catholic church.”
Mr. Obama nevertheless maintained his Catholic connections, so much so that when he turned up in the basement of the Holy Name complex in 1987, “there was a need to clarify” that he was not a member of the flock, said the Rev. David Jones, who was at the meeting. And some members still tried to draw him in, in more ways than one.

Cynthia Norris, then the director of the Chicago Archdiocese’s black Catholics office, wrote Mr. Obama a Harvard Law School recommendation, and kept in touch during a trip to Europe in 1988.
GABRIELLA DEMCZUK / THE NEW YORK TIMES

“He was a man of integrity, very much to my disappointment,” joked Cynthia Norris, then the director of the Chicago Archdiocese’s black Catholics office, who found the young Mr. Obama appealing. The future president, who was dating another woman, did turn to Ms. Norris for a Harvard Law School recommendation, and kept in touch during a trip to Europe in 1988.

“I wander around Paris, the most beautiful, alluring, maddening city I’ve ever seen; one is tempted to chuck the whole organizing/political business and be a painter” on the banks of the Seine, Mr. Obama scribbled to Ms. Norris, along with “Love, Barack,” on one side of a postcard. On the other was a picture of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame.

A Partnership Falters

Mr. Obama entered Harvard in 1988, the same year he was baptized at Trinity, the power church of Chicago’s black professional class. Trinity served Mr. Obama well through his dizzying political ascent, which coincided with a period in which black Catholic churches in Chicago closed and the hierarchy shifted away from the progressive social engagement that had characterized Mr. Obama’s early years here.

Mr. Obama sent a postcard to Ms. Norris when he visited Paris in the summer of 1988.
GABRIELLA DEMCZUK / THE NEW YORK TIMES

In 1997, the year Mr. Obama was sworn in as an Illinois state senator, Cardinal Francis George succeeded Cardinal Bernardin as archbishop of Chicago. One of the church’s leading conservative intellectuals, called “Francis the Corrector” by local liberal priests, Cardinal George was emblematic of the bishops installed by John Paul II and his successor, Benedict XVI. Some of them looked with skepticism at the social justice wing that had financed Mr. Obama’s organizing efforts, and later sought to block his election as president by suggesting that Catholics could not in good conscience vote for a candidate who supported abortion rights.

Mr. Obama still won the Catholic vote in 2008. In his campaign, he had held out the goal of finding common ground between supporters and opponents of abortion rights, chiefly by reducing unintended pregnancies and increasing adoptions. Cardinal George quickly dashed those hopes. “The common good can never be adequately incarnated in any society when those waiting to be born can be legally killed at choice,” he said in November 2008 in his opening address as president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Mr. Obama, seeking to avoid confrontation with the church, invited Cardinal George to the White House in March 2009; said at a news conference that April that abortion rights were “not my highest legislative priority”; and told graduates at the University of Notre Dame in May, after some initial boos from the crowd, that Cardinal Bernardin had touched “my heart and mind.” He recalled his years in Chicago’s Catholic parishes and said that after branching out to work with other Christian denominations, “I found myself drawn not just to the work with the church; I was drawn to be in the church.”

Two months later, speaking to reporters from Catholic publications, he said again that the Campaign for Human Development and Cardinal Bernardin had inspired him. “I think that there have been times over the last decade or two where that more holistic tradition feels like it’s gotten buried under the abortion debate,” he said.

Church leaders were unimpressed. A week after his session with Catholic reporters, Mr. Obama met with Benedict, who pointedly offered him a Vatican document on bioethics that condemned abortion and stem cell research. The relationship deteriorated further during Mr. Obama’s push for health care reform, specifically the provision on contraception, which will be argued before the Supreme Court on Tuesday.

Still, Mr. Obama had not lost all his friends in the church. As the president’s relations with Catholic leaders reached their nadir, Father Stenzel, Mr. Obama’s old smoke-break friend, visited the White House. As they walked into the Oval Office, Mr. Obama joked to his staff that the priest had given him his first office in Chicago. Father Stenzel reminded him that his old surroundings were far humbler: “The office I gave you had two rows of glass-block windows!”

Pope Francis’ Impression

Mr. Obama’s parish days seemed far behind him when he won re-election in 2012 with a slimmer margin of Catholic votes. Not only did Catholic conservatives view him as a secularist forcing them to pay for contraceptives, but some of his old allies in the church’s left wing criticized his use of drones and lack of emphasis on the poor.

But the election of Pope Francis last March seemed to breathe new life into the Catholic Church and, potentially, into the relationship between Mr. Obama and the institution that gave him his start. While far from an ideological progressive, Francis does sometimes appear cloaked in Cardinal Bernardin’s “seamless garment.” His de-emphasis of issues like abortion and same-sex marriage and his championing of the poor and vulnerable — articulated in his mission statement, “The Joy of the Gospel” — have impressed a second-term president who argues that income inequality undermines human dignity.

“Whether you call that the ‘seamless garment’ or ‘the joy of the Gospel’ or what, I’ve said to the president I consider that a pretty Catholic way of looking at the world,” said Denis McDonough, the White House chief of staff, who is Roman Catholic. Mr. McDonough added that the community-organizer-turned-president had expressed admiration to him about “how important it is for the Holy Father to be so in the community.”

Last month, Catholic activists made their case for social justice on Capitol Hill. Afterward, relaxing over beers and a buffet in the Russell Senate Office Building, they discussed whether Cardinal George, who is retiring as archbishop of Chicago, would be replaced by Archbishop Gregory, who helped secure Mr. Obama’s church grant application in the 1980s. Among them was Mr. Lyke, the man who had received coaching from Mr. Obama years earlier in the basement of Holy Name Cathedral. He characterized Francis and Mr. Obama as a match made in heaven.

Mr. Lyke’s view is not universal. Vatican officials have made clear Mr. Obama will not get special treatment, and leaders of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, also gathered in the Russell Building, saw the coming papal audience as a chance for Mr. Obama to return to the church’s social justice values, not the other way around.

Dylan Corbett, one of the Campaign for Human Development leaders, said the president was “welcome to the conversation” that the pope was driving about income inequality and poverty. He added with a grin, “We’re happy to have him back, actually.”

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Vatican interrogates journalist over leaks

Agence France-Presse

Nov 17, 2015 @ 12:15 PM

Emiliano Fittipaldi, one of two Italian journalists facing a criminal probe over leaks from the Vatican, gives a press conference on Nov. 17, 2015 in Rome, a day after a hearing at the Vatican.
GABRIEL BOUYS AFP/Getty Images

One of the two Italian investigative journalists facing criminal proceedings for revealing Vatican secrets said Tuesday he had been quizzed by Holy See prosecutors.

Emiliano Fittipaldi said he had responded to a Vatican summons to face questioning "because I wanted to understand" the motivations for his prosecution over the contents of his recently published book "Avarice."

The book is largely based on classified documents which were leaked in breach of an anti-whistle-blowing law enacted by the Vatican in 2013 with the blessing of Pope Francis.

"The accusations are crazy," Fittpaldi said. "Such restrictive laws do not exist in any democratic state."

More from GlobalPost: South America has become a safe haven for the Catholic Church’s alleged child molesters

Fittipaldi said he had come away from his interrogation convinced the landmark case would end in a trial of a Spanish priest currently in detention on suspicion of leaking the documents.

"They want to create a precedent, to send a signal to people in the Vatican to ensure there are no other leaks in the future," Fittipaldi said.

His comments came a day after Gianluigi Nuzzi, the journalist who broke the 2012 Vatileaks scandal, said he would ignore a Vatican summons over the content of his latest book, "The Merchants in the Temple."

Accusing Pope Francis of presiding over inquisition-style proceedings, Nuzzi said he had decided not to appear as requested as Vatican law did not guarantee his right to publish news in the public interest while protecting his sources.

Nuzzi and Fittipaldi's books use classified documents to back up depictions of corruption, theft and uncontrolled spending at the Vatican.

They claim charity money was spent on refurbishing the houses of powerful cardinals and that the Vatican bank continues to shelter suspected criminals.

More from GlobalPost: Could the Vatican face racketeering charges for harboring abusive clergy?

Vatican officials have dismissed the content of the books as either inaccurate or out of date, insisting that reforms instigated by Pope Francis have addressed some, if not all, of the irregularities highlighted.

Angel Vallejo Baldo, a Spanish priest suspected of leaking the documents, is currently in detention in the Vatican pending the outcome of the investigation.

An alleged accomplice, Italian PR executive Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui, is also being investigated but was released from custody after saying she would cooperate with the authorities.

She has since insisted that Baldo acted alone and that the priest had been behind a secret recording of Francis railing against the chaotic state of Vatican finances he inherited on becoming Pope in 2013.

The anti-leaks legislation was adopted soon after Francis took power and was widely seen as a response to Vatileaks, a scandal which saw former pope Benedict XVI seriously undermined by revelations from his butler about intrigue and infighting in the upper echelons of the Church.

Watch GlobalPost's documentary "Fugitive Fathers: How the Vatican’s alleged sex abusers hide and preach in South America":


Fugitive Fathers - A GlobalPost investigation from GlobalPost on Vimeo.


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Film Shines A 'Spotlight' On Boston's Clergy Sex Abuse Scandal

OCTOBER 29, 2015 2:36 PM ET





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Rachel McAdams, Mark Ruffalo, Brian d'Arcy James, Michael Keaton and John Slattery play Boston Globe journalists in the film, Spotlight.
Kerry Hayes/Open Road Films


In 2001, a team of reporters at the Boston Globe began investigating reports of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests. The "Spotlight" team, as it was known, eventually revealed that the abuse had been happening for decades — and that church leaders in Boston had been aware of it and had been involved in covering it up.

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Veteran reporter and editor Walter Robinson, who led the Globe'sPulitzer Prize-winning Spotlight team, tells Fresh Air's Dave Davies: "These crimes were unimaginable, and that they could've been countenanced and enabled by such an iconic institution, it gave us so much energy to pursue the story and get the story and make it public."

Now, the new film, Spotlight, chronicles the investigation that brought the scandal to light. Tom McCarthy, who co-wrote and directed the film, says he was immediately drawn to the story.

"As I dug into the material, first just on my own, and then with my co-writer Josh Singer, we realized that the story operated on so many levels. ... It went well beyond the investigation itself," McCarthy says. "It was something we were immediately engrossed in."

McCarthy describes the battle between the Globe reporters and the leaders of the Catholic Church in Boston as a case of "Goliath versus Goliath."

"This was the best the Boston Globehad, the Spotlight team was the crown jewel of that institution," McCarthy says. "All over the country there were instances [of abuse] ... but this story, this reporting, it connected the dots, and that is what sort of blew the roof off of this crisis."

Interview Highlights

On deciding to pursue the story

Walter Robinson: It got started at the very end of July 2001. The Globegot a new editor, Marty Baron, who came to us from the Miami Herald, and that's important because in Florida virtually everything is public, and Marty got to Boston and he read a column by Eileen McNamara about a case, lawsuits against a priest allegedly involved in sexual abuse, in which the court records had been sealed by a judge so the personnel records of the priest were not available publicly, and in her column Eileen had written, "The truth may never be known." And to Marty Baron, that's like waving a red flag.

So in his very first news meeting in his first day at the Globe he asked, "Has the Globe considered going to court to get these records?" And, of course, nobody had. And he immediately launched an effort to do that, and later that same day he called myself and Ben Bradlee Jr., my superior, into his office and asked me as editor of the Spotlight team to have our team begin investigating the case of this one priest, Father John Geoghan. And we set out to do that and very quickly discovered that Father Geoghan was the tip of a quite large iceberg — that there were many, many other priests, we thought perhaps 15 or 20 at the time, who had done the same thing, yet the Archdiocese had covered up their crimes by making secret settlements. Eventually, as we learned, we got it up to 70 priests, and then 90 priests, and, in the end, it turned out to be almost 250 priests in Boston who had molested children over several decades.

On whether his Catholic upbringing made him reluctant to do the investigation

Robinson: I felt no resistance, nor did any of my colleagues, all of whom had also grown up Catholic. The benefit to that was that we understood the Catholic Church and how it worked and how much an important part of our lives it was when we were children and how trusting we were of the institution and the priests.

On the Catholic Church's influence in Boston

Robinson: There was always a pressure in Boston on the Globe,and every other institution, by the church. The church was the most important and politically powerful institution in Boston. As you may know, Boston is the most Catholic of the major archdioceses in the country, and the church had such power that if legislation it didn't like was before the Massachusetts Legislature, they could get it killed. And so there was always that sense that when you approach the church, you had to be very, very careful because of its power, and in this case it meant for us getting documents.

On the emotional toll of the investigation

It affected all of us emotionally and it actually helped drive us to get deeper and deeper into the story, because of this extraordinary injustice that had been done.

Walter Robinson

Robinson: It took a big toll on us emotionally. I mean, in preparing the initial stories we interviewed maybe 30 or 40 victims of abuse. We actually interviewed one or two priests, one of whom admitted to our reporter that he had abused children. And every one of these stories was emotionally wrenching for the reporter involved in it. Once the story broke open in early 2002, we received calls just in the Boston archdiocese from over 300 victims in just a month or two, and many, many of these people — all adults — who had years earlier suffered this abuse thought they were the only ones that this had ever happened to. For many of them, we were the first people they ever told that this had happened to them. ...

It affected all of us emotionally and it actually helped drive us to get deeper and deeper into the story, because of this extraordinary injustice that had been done.

On interviewing victims for the film

Tom McCarthy: It's a profoundly affecting experience, and I will say there are some interviews you go into when you're doing your research, some you're looking forward to and some you're not. And I have to be honest; I wasn't looking forward to it. They're dark waters, and it's so personal and so profoundly tragic, you really don't know what to expect, but both [the survivors we interviewed] were so courageous and forthright in sharing information, very deeply personal information. ... They really become the heartbeat of this movie, in a way.

On Robinson meeting Michael Keaton, who played him in the film



Actor Michael Keaton (left) portrays Globejournalist Walter Robinson (right) in Spotlight.
Alberto E. Rodriguez /Getty Images


Robinson: It was a little bit of role-reversal; I'm a reporter and I'm always grilling other people, and looking at their habits and their particular mannerisms to try and take stock of them, whether I'm writing about them or not, and here I went to New York, met Michael, and found out that he had spent several weeks watching old videotapes of appearances I had made on various cable news outlets, including a couple on NPR, and that he had been studying my voice. ...

It was a very odd experience because Michael spent the entire dinner studying me, and I felt like he was watching all of my movements, and then it turns out in the film he has my mannerisms down, all my facial movements, my hand movements, he even drops his voice an octave because my voice is a little bit deeper, when he delivers lines. These actors wereintent, because they were playing real people, on taking full advantage of the opportunity to get to know us and to play us as we were.

On how journalism is portrayed in the film

Robinson: Most films about journalism don't get it right. I'm just delighted, as are my colleagues, that this film just nailed it. What we actually did is so accurately and genuinely portrayed in this film, the reporting steps we took, how making the sausage isn't always a pleasant task to watch, how reporters disagree with one another, how we stumble around in the dark, how sometimes we find the most important things quite by accident. It's all there, how we make mistakes in our reporting and how we double back, but always, and certainly in this case, with the mind, "We have to get this story, and we have to get it out."

McCarthy: This is a ... great example of high-level investigative journalism, but at a local level. The Boston Globe is a local paper, this was a local story that started in the city of Boston and had national repercussions and then had global implications and is still going on today. ... Even today there's a little bit of a disconnect about how important journalism is to our society. Look, that institution, as most of us know, is in dire straits. In the last 15 years it's been brutal. Tens of thousands of reporters have lost jobs, metro dailies have been if not depleted, shuttered completely; it's tough to watch. But you see an example like this and you see the strength of this type of supported professional journalism, financially supported.


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Media Deception

shieldoftheson

Published on Jan 13, 2015

The nature of mainstream media.

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In aftermath of Paris attacks, how much security is enough?

Despite Friday's attacks that killed 129 people, many in Europe are hesitant to adopt a 'whatever it takes' mentality that could step on cherished freedoms.

By Sara Miller Llana, Staff writer, Colette Davidson, Correspondent / November 15, 2015

An armed French police officer stands guard at the Franco-Italian border to check vehicles and verify the identity of travelers in Menton, France, on Sunday, after a series of deadly attacks in Paris on Friday.

Eric Gaillard/Reuters

PARIS

An evacuated airport in London, spot inspections of vehicles in Belgium, semi-automatic rifles at top tourist sites: Europe has immediately stepped up security in the wake of the coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris that included suicide vests and the indiscriminate killing of 129 people.

As details emerge about who was behind the attacks at six locations in Paris Friday night, and how they were able to pull it off, governments are questioning holes in their own intelligence and whether more powers need to be granted to control potential suspects.

But the rampage in Paris, which stood out for its marauding nature and disparate targets, also raises an unsettling question. Can Europe command control of such an attack, amid geopolitical forces sweeping the Middle East. And if so, at what cost to the freedoms many on the Continent cherish?

Christian Mölling, senior resident fellow at The German Marshall Fund of the United States in Berlin, says Europe's response is being shaped at a delicate moment, where the potential for political polarization is clear, and is likely to color the debate on refugee policy and embolden the anti-immigrant far-right.

Praising French response thus far, Mr. Mölling says that increased security must not overshadow the larger goals. “This is not about protecting Europe as a territory, but protecting Europe as an idea and way of life.

“The immediate reaction of Parisians was to build groups, and say ‘I’m not afraid,’ ” he says. “It is a very good reminder of what Europe stands for. Because otherwise you declare defeat.”

Siege worries

Intelligence officials have been worried about a siege attack on European streets since the Mumbai attacks in 2008. There, a small band of fanatics was able to inflict mass damage in simultaneous action across a major metropolitan area.

The Metropolitan Police Service in London this summer carried out a mock operation based on such a scenario. But Sajjan Gohel, London-based international security director for the Asia-Pacific Foundation, says you can only prepare so much.

“It is very hard to deal with the threat once it’s unleashed," he says. "That is the very dangerous aspect of a marauding siege operation."

He says the most important security response is more coordination – between agencies in countries and between European nations.

France immediately called a state of emergency and put its military on maximum alert after Friday's attack.

Its neighbors in the region followed suit. The North Terminal at Gatwick airport outside London was evacuated after suspicion that a man of French nationality had disposed of what looked like a firearm. Metropolitan Police Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe told reporters that the “scale of the attacks and the range of weaponry used by the terrorists are a serious cause for concern.”

Italy raised its terror alert level, allowing it to rapidly deploy special forces if needed. Seven hundred soldiers were dispatched to heavily visited sites in Rome and beyond. Even Nordic countries sent officers with semi-automatic weapons to embassies or beefed up security at public gatherings like soccer matches.

Germany, in addition to strengthening border security, announced it was stepping up surveillance of its known extremists. "The situation is serious," Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière said Saturday. "We don't know whether the eight attackers we know of were all of them.”

It is unclear how coordinated the assault was across Europe and beyond. One of the attackers has been identified as French and known to security services. Another might have been a Syrian national who entered Europe along the migrant trail that is being used by, among others, those trying to escape the violence of the self-declared Islamic State.

An arrest along the German-Austrian border earlier this month, where authorities found explosives and firearms in a car, is now being investigated as linked to the Paris attack. Separately, Belgium announced three arrests on Saturday, including one suspect who is allegedly linked to a rental car in Paris tied to the attacks.

"Before and after the Charlie Hebdo attacks [in Paris in March], I have always said that not just single countries, but the whole West, including Germany, is in the crosshairs of international terrorism," Mr. de Maizière said.

Marc Hecker, a researcher on terrorism at the IFRI think tank in Paris, says he expects more announcements of tougher security, particularly ahead of big events like the climate conference in Paris that begins Nov. 30.

“From an EU standpoint, the threat is Europe-wide, especially in the UK, Germany, and Belgium. I think we can expect strengthened legislation especially for those countries who don’t have much right now,” he says.
Whatever it takes?

Residents of Paris, at least for now, say they welcome a bigger security apparatus. Outside the Petit Cambodge, one of the restaurants in the fire of the terrorists, Danielle Letourneur says she’ll accept “whatever it takes,” she says. “I am OK with more security, frisking, etc. We need to be safe.”

But François Huyghe, a cybersecurity specialist at the Paris-based think tank Iris, calls these measures symbolic, and more important as a form of “psychological support." In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January, France had already greatly expanded its security, both with on-the-ground force and surveillance measures that some have likened to a French “Patriot Act.

“France had already toughed up its security and surveillance laws. It’s created a system to allow the government to see anyone who might be a potential suspect, but there are 5,000 of them, he notes. “There aren’t enough police officers to follow behind each one.”

In the Charlie Hebdo case, as well as in thwarted attacks since – including the Thalys train incident, when American servicemen overpowered a gunman – many suspects have already been on the government's radar. Short of tougher intervention in Syria and Iraq, Dr. Gohel says, Europe must focus on pre-emption through intelligence. “We are seeing a lot of examples where individuals were already known to authorities.”

But some French worry about going too far, especially in the emotional days immediately after an attack.

Antoine Lippen, a regular customer of the bars and cafes that came under fire in central Paris Friday, is one.

“Not whatever it takes,” he says. “It would be too dangerous to block our own liberties when we know terrorist attacks are always cowardly attacks attacking at the place and time you least expect it, so there is always a breach in security, whatever is imposed.”

Karim Emile Bitar, a Paris-based professor of international relations at Lebanon's Université Saint-Joseph, says that massive surveillance not only risks undermining democracy but could ultimately hurt counter-terrorism strategies.

“What is needed is human intelligence, intimate knowledge of Middle Eastern societies. Like the 19th-century anarchists, Islamist terrorists today want to ‘sharpen the contradictions’ within Western societies," he says. "Overreactions and a rise of extreme rhetoric would play in their favor. Governments should not fall into that trap.”

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The Occult World Peace Plan | The United Nations | Lucis Trust

Prophetic Alert

Published on Oct 30, 2014


Proponents of world peace claim that humanity is moving into the New Age of Aquarius. The Age of Aquarius is allegedly and transition into a new era for society; a time of peace, joy and harmony among the citizens of the world.

This new age utopia includes the formation of a new religion - the religion of the New Age. But the new age religion is not a religion. It can best be described as spiritual humanism because it involves the creation of a spiritual system that does not worship the God of the Bible. Instead, the 'god' of the new age spiritual movement is Lucifer.

This new one world religion preaches tolerance. It is tolerant of every religion except Christianity. This video explains why that is and every Christian needs to know about the not so secret agenda of the peace movement.

This is compulsory viewing for any serious minded Christian who seeks to understand what is really happening behind the scenes.

For more information about the New Age religion and the Age of Aquarius, visithttp://www.aquarianconspiracy.com

YOU CAN BUY THIS VIDEO AT http://www.aquarianconspiracy.com/app...

AVAILABLE FOR WORLDWIDE DISTRIBUTION.

Visit PropheticAlert at http://propheticalert.net

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Barack Obama: ISIS being contained

President Obama Doesn't Think ISIS Is 'Gaining Strength'

ABC News

Published on Nov 13, 2015

ABC News' George Stephanopoulos sits down with the president.

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At Antalya Turkey G20 Meeting - President Obama Holds a Press Conference

President Obama Holds a Press Conference

The White House 

Streamed live on Nov 16, 2015

Live coverage of this event has concluded. Drag the counter along the timeline below the stream to replay. The full video will be posted to www.whitehouse.gov/videos momentarily.

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Jake Tapper: I'm ashamed by U.S. leaders' absence in Paris

Flashback to the Charlie Hebdo Attacks in January 2015

-----

By Jake Tapper, CNN


Updated 7:45 AM ET, Mon January 12, 2015

Story highlights

Jake Tapper: American leaders were conspicuously absent from historic Paris rally

The French are eager to see signs of U.S. support after terrorist attacks

Jake Tapper is anchor of CNN's "The Lead With Jake Tapper" and chief Washington correspondent.


Paris (CNN)"Thank you," said the man. I was standing outside of the offices of Charlie Hebdo covering the aftermath of the terrorist attacks for CNN. He was thanking me just for being here, just for covering the event and its aftermath, what Le Monde referred to as France's September 11. And his appreciation was echoed by French citizen after French citizen.

The rally Sunday for unity drew 1.5 million people in Paris and more than twice that nationwide; it was like nothing I've ever seen or covered. Our nation's oldest ally stood firm. A young Muslim Frenchwoman held a sign saying "Je suis Juif."

Jake Tapper

A man and his son came over to me holding a sign saying "I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it," beseeching me to share their message with the American people. And world leaders were standing together amidst a procession that included Francois Hollande of France, Angela Merkel of Germany, David Cameron of Great Britain, Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority and Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, along with the leaders of Mali, Jordan and Turkey.

It is no small thing for the king of Jordan, a direct descendent of the Prophet Mohammed, to march in a rally prompted by the murders of people who mocked Islam as well as of innocent Jews -- all of whom were killed by Islamic extremists.

The United States, which considers itself to be the most important nation in the world, was not represented in this march -- arguably one of the most important public demonstrations in Europe in the last generation -- except by U.S. Ambassador Jane Hartley, who may have been a few rows back. I didn't see her. Even Russia sent Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

I say this as an American -- not as a journalist, not as a representative of CNN -- but as an American: I was ashamed.

I certainly understand the security concerns when it comes to sending President Barack Obama, though I can't imagine they're necessarily any greater than sending the lineup of other world leaders, especially in aggregate.

But I find it hard to believe that collectively President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and Attorney General Eric Holder -- who was actually in France that day for a conference on counterterrorism -- just had no time in their schedules on Sunday. Holder had time to do the Sunday shows via satellite but not to show the world that he stood with the people of France?

There was higher-level Obama administration representation on this season's episodes of "The Good Wife" on CBS.

I get that the President visited the French Embassy in Washington and that Secretary of State John Kerry spoke in French, and I certainly understand that the American commitment to security in Europe rivals no other. But with all due respect, those are politicians spending money that they didn't earn and sending troops whom they don't know.

And this is not just a matter of the current occupant of the White House.

I find it hard to believe that Speaker of the House John Boehner and new Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had more worthy pursuits on Sunday than standing side-by-side with our French brothers and sisters as they came together in an inspirational way.

After September 11, the first world leader to visit the United States was France's Jacques Chirac, though the most forceful conversation about France in Congress that I can recall came a few years later during debate over whether to invade Iraq and revolved around renaming pommes frites in the U.S. House cafeteria.

And I'm frankly floored that not one of the people who is contemplating running for president in 2016 has yet to even tweet on the subject of the momentous demonstration in Paris, much less attend France's biggest rally in the history of the republic.

I imagine that Hillary Clinton and her husband are kicking themselves for not hopping on a corporate jet to get here. Can you picture Hillary and Bill walking in the front row, arm-in-arm with Netanyahu and Hollande?

Chris Christie, Scott Walker and Paul Ryan attended the Green Bay-Dallas football game Sunday and at least one of them sent his potential rivals mischievous tweets as if they were contemplating running for president of Beta Theta Pi.

And Jeb? Mitt? Crickets.

Why? I hope it's not American arrogance, a belief that everyone should express shock when something bad happens to us but that our presence at an international rally is worth less than a ticket to the Green Bay game when the victims speak in accents we don't understand.

I suppose there's always the risk that coming to an event like this as an American leader and getting stuck in the third row could be embarrassing or could lead to accusations that you're trying to capitalize on a tragedy.

But that's not how it would have been interpreted in France.

People here are happy that Americans care. They're eager and appreciative of any evidence of that. And I know it exists -- although American Twitter seemed much more focused on the Golden Globes than anything else Sunday night.

I only wish our leaders had done a better job of showing solidarity with the passion for the freedoms exemplified by the rally.

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