Thursday, November 26, 2009

Two Million Muslims to Stone Devil at Hajj




AP
Nov. 26: Muslim pilgrims, seen from a helicopter, climb the Mountain of Mercy, a rocky hill on the Plain of Arafat, and pray for God's forgiveness.






Two million Muslims are headed to Muzdalifa, Saudi Arabia, to cast stones at the devil in the most dangerous part of the annual hajj pilgrimage, Reuters reported.

Once the Muslim pilgrims get there, they will collect pebbles to throw at walls of the Jamarat Bridge to symbolize the rejection of the devil's temptations.

Aisha Mennan, 63, came from Morocco with her family to take part in the hajj pilgrimage.

"Now I can die in peace," she told Reuters. "My two sons and three daughters have been saving for years to send me here and when the money was ready I had to wait another three years before I got picked by a ballot. I'm very lucky to be here."

According to Reuters, the bridge has been the scene of a number of deadly stampedes, including the incident in 2006 when 362 were crushed to death.

The hajj marks sites that Islamic tradition says Prophet Ibrahim visited in Mecca and that Prophet Mohammad established as a pilgrim route 14 centuries ago after removing pagan idols from Mecca.

Authorities have reported none of the problems that have plagued the hajj in previous years such as fires, hotel collapses and police clashes, according to Reuters.



.
P.S....Islam is comparable in numbers "only" to the Catholic Religion. While the Muslim Pilgrims stone the devil in Mecca, Saudi Arabia:


Saudi floods kill 77 while Muslims perform hajj
By HADEEL AL-SHALCHI (AP) – 9 hours ago

MOUNT ARAFAT, Saudi Arabia — Muslim pilgrims holding white umbrellas against the blazing sun clambered up a rocky desert hill for prayers Thursday during the annual hajj, following a day of torrential rains that killed at least 77 people.

Flooding from the unusually heavy downpours hit hardest in the Red Sea coastal city of Jiddah, about 40 miles (60 kilometers) away from the holy city of Mecca and its surrounding sacred sites where the 3 million Muslims from around the world were performing the rites of the pilgrimage.

Most of the deaths occured in Jiddah, where streets were swamped with water, some houses collapsed and mudslides took place, and in areas around the main highway to Mecca, Civil Defense officials said.

It did not immediately appear that any pilgrims were among the dead. Jiddah's civil defense chief Capt. Abdullah al-Amri said 21 of the victims were identified as Saudis and the rest were believed to be residents of Saudi Arabia.

Wednesday's downpours snarled the opening day of the hajj, drenching pilgrims and knocking out roads that caused epic traffic jams as the faithful tried to make their way to the holy sites. The rains, if they continue as meteorologists predict, could raise safety hazards — particularly the perennial danger of deadly stampedes, since a trip-up on slippery walkways could lead to people getting trampled in crowds.

But skies cleared for most of Thursday, and the heat rose. The umbrellas that protected pilgrims from the rain now were shades from the hot sun as they conducted their rituals in the desert plateau of Mount Arafat, about 12 miles (20 kilometers) east of Mecca.

The site is where Islam's Prophet Muhammad delivered his farewell sermon. The faithful climbed up the Mountain of Mercy, a rocky hill at Arafat, and prayed for God's forgiveness of their sins in what Muslims consider the spiritual high point of the pilgrimage.

Afterward, they prepared to head for the nearby plains of Muzdalifah, where they will pick stones for the next step in the hajj: Starting Friday, they will pelt stones at three walls representing the devil in a symbolic rejection of temptation. The stoning takes place for three days in the mountain valley of Mina, until the end of hajj on Sunday.

Saudi Arabia's biggest worry for months ahead of the hajj has been swine flu. The pilgrimage is one of the most crowded in the world, with the masses of Muslims from every corner of the globe packed shoulder to shoulder in prayers and rites — a perfect incubator for the virus, according to epidemiologists.

The Saudi government has been working with the United States' Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to set up clinics and take precautions to stem any outbreak.

It often rains in Mecca and Jiddah during the winter months, but Wednesday's downpour was the heaviest in years during the hajj. Jiddah was swamped with 7 centimeters (2.76 inches) of rain, more than it would normally get in an entire year, according to Dale Mohler, senior meteorologist at the Web site, AccuWeather.com.


Source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jzONYVoEPpfYIKnFrS3bg-WGHf3QD9C78UOG0

.

Ireland’s Christian Brothers to pay £146m to victims of child abuse

November 26, 2009






A Vatican tapestry depicts Edmund Ignatius Rice, the order's founder


The Christian Brothers religious order is to give €161 million (£146 million) in cash and property in reparation for its role in decades of child abuse in Ireland.

The Brothers said that €34 million in cash would be used to help victims of abuse, whose plight was identified in a government report in May. However, the move was criticised, with one victims’ group describing it as “mere smoke and mirrors”.

The Ryan report chronicled cases of tens of thousands of children who suffered systematic sexual, physical and mental abuse over decades at residential homes run by 18 congregations. It concluded that the Brothers order was responsible for most of the cases.

A transfer of €127 million in property will be used to “begin to repair trust with so many people in Ireland, who felt betrayed by the Brothers”, the order said in a statement. “We understand and regret that nothing we say or do can turn back the clock for those affected by abuse,” the statement said. “Our response reflects the moral obligation we collectively and individually feel.”


Related Links
'They owned you and they made sure you knew it'
Irish priests accused in child abuse report
Marchers silently condemn Catholic child abuse


One victims’ group called the announcement “an exercise in the art of sophistry by its supreme practitioners in Ireland”. Irish Survivors of Child Abuse said: “An Enigma machine is not needed to see through the smoke and mirrors delivered by the Christian Brothers today.

“The only ‘new money’ on the table appears to be €34 million — payable over a number of years.”

The Christian Brothers made their announcement on the eve of publication of another report, which is expected to shake the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland. A long-awaited interim report of the commission of investigation into clerical sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Dublin is expected to say today that the church hierarchy covered up allegations of sexual abuse by priests.

The report was discussed by the Cabinet on Tuesday. Publication has been repeatedly delayed over fears that it might prejudice further prosecutions. For this reason, some parts of the report will be withheld. The Brothers, which played a leading role in the education of Irish children and were Ireland’s largest male teaching order, said they were shamed and sorrowed at the extent of abuse of children in its care.

The pledge follows a wave of public anger. The order came in for devastating criticism in the Ryan report.

Its publication was delayed by several years after a lengthy legal battle waged by the Brothers to withhold the names of all its members, dead or alive. An agreement was eventually struck in 2004, allowing the Brothers’ institutions to be identified.

More than a thousand witnesses testified to abuse in 216 schools and residential settings between 1914 and 2000. More than 800 individuals were identified as physical or sexual abusers — an extraordinary number compared with the handful of prosecutions and convictions. Ninety per cent of witnesses reported physical abuse while half reported sexual abuse.

“Acute and chronic contact and non-contact sexual abuse was reported, including vaginal and anal rape, molestation and voyeurism in both isolated cases and on a regular basis over long periods of time,” the report said.

The commission found that the worst offender was the Brothers’ order, which ran most of the institutions for older boys, while the another Catholic order, the Sisters of Mercy, which was supposed to care for girls, also came in for heavy criticism.

The report said that cases were managed “with a view to minimising the risk of public disclosure and consequent damage to the institution and the Congregation”.

“A climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment, permeated most of the institutions and all those run for boys. Children lived with the daily terror of not knowing where the next beating was coming from,” it said.

Hundreds of pages detail the horrors of life at specific institutions. “It was a secret enclosed world, run on fear,” one Brother told the commission about St Joseph’s Industrial School in Tralee, Co Kerry.

Glin Industrial School, Co Limerick, was where “Brothers with a known propensity for sexual abuse were transferred, indicating a serious indifference to the safety of children”.

A chapter is devoted to a Christian Brother given the pseudonym of John Brander — real name Donal Dunne, who was convicted in 1999 of his crimes and given a two-year prison sentence — which describes his progress through six different schools where he physically terrorised and sexually abused children in his classroom.

The report says that his career, while shocking in itself, illustrated the ease with which sexual predators could operate within the educational system of the state without fear of disclosure or sanction.

Once a mighty institution which did much to form Ireland’s national identity, there are now just 250 Brothers in Ireland, with an average age of 74.

Today’s report into clerical abuse in Dublin Archdiocese will reveal that the Catholic hierarchy and state authorities failed to respond to allegations of clerical child abuse made against a sample of 46 priests.

“The Dublin Archdiocese behaved in a manner that was absolutely reprehensible. Over the space of 20 years, they moved the problem on, looked after their own financial interests, looked after their priests and not the victims. The Archdiocese is centre-stage. Once you read it, it jumps out at you,” a Government source told the Irish Independent newspaper.

The report contains 100 pages of findings and 500 pages of specific detail on cases of abuse by 46 priests. The compensation bill for the victims of child abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese is set to double to more than €20 million.

The Archdiocese has identified up to 450 suspected victims who were abused as children and 120 civil actions were taken against 35 Dublin priests, or priests who held positions in the diocese.


.
.
P.S. Roman Polanski is facing charges for having sex with an underage female, while priests have sex (customarily) with young girls, and with little boys unabated.
.

Sex scandals have decimated the Catholic church


Getty Images



By David McKittrick, Ireland correspondent


Thursday, 26 November 2009

A seemingly unending wave of sex scandals, many of them involving children, has decimated the once-proud standing of the Catholic church in Ireland and rendered its power a pale shadow of what it was.

The church was almost bound to lose influence over the last half-century, in common with a western world where the secular is generally prevailing against the religious. But in Ireland its fall from grace has been dramatic and drastic.

Church attendance is on the wane, with only a handful of people now come forward each year to train as priests or nuns - this in a country which for decades sent thousands of religious abroad.

In the archdiocese of Dublin there will soon be barely enough to have one priest for each of its 199 parishes. Clerical presence is not only contracting but ageing: in Dublin there are now ten times more priests over 70 than under 40.

The heart of the trouble lies in the mind of the flock, for even the most faithful have been shocked to the core by the relentless revelations. That shock has been all the greater because of the reverence which the church once commanded.

When what is now the Irish Republic came into being in the early 1920s, after Britain withdrew from the 26 southern counties, the new state was more than 90 per cent Catholic. From the start it depended heavily on the Catholic church to provide much of its basic infrastructure.

In many ways the church provided a service which tended to the faithful from the cradle to the grave but also at many points in-between, since it ran most of the schools and many of the hospitals and other services.

It set the tone for the entire state, since Catholic doctrine was built into many laws, including the Constitution. Abortion, divorce and contraception were banned and censorship was famously strict.

Ireland was famous for its writers but many of those frowned upon by the church, from James Joyce to Edna O'Brien, regarded the artistic atmosphere as stifling and left its shores.

For example, Elvis Presley's "most suggestive abdominal dancing" was cut out of movies while even a Cliff Richard film was thought too racy for the Irish. A scene in "On the Waterfront," in which a priest bought Marlon Brando a beer was cut since it was thought inappropriate for a priest to drink in public.

Today the irony is that some priests were in private engaging in activities which no film-maker or artist would dare depict.

In high politics few politicians ever took on the church head-on over important issues, many of them proclaiming that their first duty was to their church. Politicians, it was regularly said, feared "the belt of the crozier."

When rare clashes did occur the bishops almost invariably won the exchanges.

As late as 1969 Ireland was described as "the most Christian country in the world," but the sixties, as elsewhere, brought huge changes as education, television and travel eroded much of the old deference.

However the sex scandals, beginning in the early 1990s with the revelation that the Bishop of Galway had secretly fathered a child, have done more than anything to sap the authority of a once authoritarian church.
.
.

Men who do not fear to call sin by its right name


The greatest want of the world is the want of men-- men who will not be bought or sold, men who in their inmost souls are true and honest, men who do not fear to call sin by its right name, men whose conscience is as true to duty as the needle to the pole, men who will stand for the right though the heavens fall. {Ed 57.3}
.

US Tries to Break ‘Religious Defamation’ vs. Free Speech Deadlock at UN

Monday, October 05, 2009
By Patrick Goodenough, International Editor


The U.N. Human Rights Council met in Geneva from September 14 to October 2, with the U.S. for the first time taking part as a member. (U.N. Photo by Jess Hoffman)


(CNSNews.com) – Seeking to break a longstanding impasse between Western and Islamic nations over freedom of expression, the United States has piloted a finely-balanced resolution through the U.N.’s Human Rights Council which the two sides are choosing to interpret differently.

The resolution was adopted unanimously on Friday, the last day of a month-long session of the Geneva-based council which saw the U.S. actively participating as a member for the first time.

Free speech advocacy groups gave the move a cautious welcome, saying it marked an improvement but still posed difficulties.

The clash between freedom of expression and religious sensibilities, fueled by the furor over the newspaper cartoons satirizing Mohammed, has been one of the most consistently divisive issues in the HRC in its first three years of operation.

Critics have accused Islamic governments of trying to shield Islam from scrutiny and criticism in the non-Muslim world, in the same way as they do by enforcing blasphemy laws at home, often at the expense of Christians and other non-Muslim minorities.

The resolution stresses the importance of freedom of expression, calling it “one of the essential foundations of a democratic society” and urging countries to protect it.

It omits the controversial term “defamation of religion,” which the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) has successfully inserted into previous such measures at the U.N.

The resolution does, however, refer to “negative racial and religious stereotyping,” and condemns any advocacy of “religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence.” It urges governments to “address and combat such incidents,” in line with their obligations under international law.

Reflecting the fragile compromise, delegates from both sides of the debate made it clear in their statements that they interpreted the key paragraph of the resolution – the one referring to religion – differently.

Speaking on behalf of the European Union, French representative Jean-Baptiste Mattei said the language about stereotyping referred to the stereotyping of individuals, not religions, ideologies or abstract values.

Human rights laws do not and should not protect belief systems, he said, stressing that the E.U. continued to reject the concept of defamation of religion.

But Pakistan’s Zamir Akram, speaking for the OIC, used the terms “negative stereotyping” and “defamation of religions” interchangeably, and said the phenomenon affected not only individuals but also religions and belief systems.

The resolution was sponsored jointly by the U.S. and Egypt, and was seen as part of the Obama administration’s push to improve relations with the Islamic world. In a speech in Cairo last June, President Obama called for a “new beginning” after “years of distrust.”

Egypt is an active member of the OIC, a strong proponent of the religious “defamation” drive and a country frequently accused of violating free speech.

Article 19, a free speech organization, called the vote on the resolution a breakthrough, given the tensions that have marked discussions on the issue at the U.N.’s human rights bodies.

Executive director Agnes Callamard noted in particular the omission of the term “defamation of religion,” although she said “religious stereotyping” was a vague concept that suggested that religions and religious ideas and symbols, rather than religious adherents, may be protected by international human rights law.

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a leading opponent of the religious “defamation” push, said the resolution passed Friday was a step in the right direction but still contained problematic language.

“This resolution will be seen as a victory if it is the death knell for the concept of ‘defamation of religions,’” said advocacy officer L. Bennett Graham. “But if it continues to provide international cover for overbroad anti-blasphemy laws around the world, it will only exacerbate the problem.”

Angela C. Wu, the international law director at the Washington-based public interest law firm, said it was time the U.N. abandoned language suggesting that religions, rather than people, deserve protection.

“We are disappointed the new freedom of expression resolution does not make this more explicit,” she said.



Secretary of State Hillary Clinton meets with the secretary-general of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, in Washington on October 2, 2009. The 57-member OIC has spearheaded the campaign at the U.N. against the “defamation” of religion, particularly Islam. (Photo: State Department)



A decade of resolutions

“Defamation of religion” resolutions have passed at the HRC for the past three years, and at its predecessor, the Commission on Human Rights, every year from 1999 to 2005. The U.N. General Assembly has also passed one in each of the past four years.

The most recent resolution at the HRC passed last March by a 23-11 vote, with 13 countries abstaining.

Countries voting in favor included 15 OIC member along with their allies China, Russia, Cuba, South Africa, Angola, Nicaragua, Bolivia and the Philippines.

Canada, Chile and nine European countries voted against. (The U.S. was not yet a member.)

At the General Assembly, where the OIC has less clout than at the 47-member council, observers have seen an erosion of support for the notion of religious “defamation” in recent years, as free speech, religious liberty and humanist organizations have stepped up their advocacy against the OIC campaign.

The most recent resolution passed last December 86-53, with 42 countries abstaining. A year earlier, the vote had gone 108-51, with 25 abstentions.

Wu of The Becket Fund said that despite the concerns about Friday’s HRC resolution, the consensus vote for a freedom of expression measure was hopefully an indication that the tide has changed.

“All eyes should be on next month’s General Assembly vote on ‘defamation of religions,’” she said.
.
.
.

TEN MILLION LIES FROM THE CDC


TEN MILLION LIES FROM THE CDC

http://www.pandemicfluonline.com/?p=1489

October 23rd, 2009

By Jon Rappoport
http://www.nomorefakenews.com/


In an AP story posted on October 23, the CDC continues to spread the really important virus: propaganda.

First we have the headline itself:

“US swine flu deaths surpass 1,000.”

Now, how would the CDC know that? They admitted they stopped testing for Swine Flu in July. The real testing is going on in state labs. And CBS, yesterday, exposed that sham. Very small percentages of suspected Swine Flu samples have come back positive from those labs.

Then we have this claim:

“More Americans have been vaccinated against seasonal flu this fall than ever before by this time of year, federal health officials said Friday.

“Sixty million people have gotten the [ordinary non-Swine Flu] winter flu vaccine…”

I can’t prove this one is false. But it would mean that 1 out of 5 Americans­men, women, children, babies­have, amid the Swine Flu hysteria, seen their way clear to getting the other flu shot.

The CDC is desperate. They’re desperate after CBS exposed the overwhelming percentage of negative lab tests for Swine Flu yesterday, and they’re desperate about those polls showing at least half of groups questioned aren’t planning to get the Swine Flu shot.

So the CDC PR people smoked something strong and tossed out a preposterous 60-million figure.

Still later in the AP story (CDC press release), we get this one:

“Many millions” of Americans have had swine flu so far, according to an estimate he [the CDC director] gave at a Friday press conference. The government doesn’t test everyone to confirm swine flu so it doesn’t have an exact count.

No kidding. Many millions have had Swine Flu? Wow. Last I read, the (unsupported) estimate was in the thousands.

Next we’ll learn that half the country is in hospitals.

If the cases numbers are in the millions, I guess we’ve all come through okay, and now we’re immune and we don’t need the vaccine, right?

Finally, the AP story (fairy tale) comments on flu activity in the individual states:

“Forty-six states now have widespread flu activity. The only states without widespread flu are Connecticut, Hawaii, New Jersey and South Carolina. There are at least two different types of flu causing illnesses; tests from about 5,000 patients suggest that nearly all the flu cases are swine flu.”

This is a very interesting way to talk about statistics. For example, it could mean that most of the test samples of suspected cases of Swine Flu didn’t have ANY KIND OF FLU at all, and most of those that were flu were Swine Flu. Which adds up to a big yawn, and some serious questions about what doctors think flu symptoms look like.

And that’s what the facts reveal, at least in California.

CBS actually went to state labs and obtained the numbers. In California, 13,704 test samples from suspected Swine Flu patients were analyzed. 2% (!) turned out to be Swine Flu. Negative for ANY KIND of flu? 86%.

In Georgia, state labs analyzed 3,117 test samples. 2% were positive for Swine Flu.

In Alaska, 722 samples were tested. Swine Flu? 11%. Other Flu? 6%. Negative for any kind of flu? 83%.

In Florida, 8,853 test samples were analyzed. 17% were positive for Swine Flu.

It wouldn’t surprise me at all if these CDC whoppers today were a direct response to CBS’ piece yesterday. Somebody at CDC said, “We’re not going to take this crap lying down. Throw out some figures, guys, we’re hitting back hard. How many cases of Swine Flu should we say are in the US? A million? Hell, let’s call it many millions.”

Your CDC. Working for you. With tales even little children would laugh at.

Jon Rappoport
http://www.nomorefakenews.com/


WHO Advisors Paid by H1N1 Vaccine Makers Profiting on Fear? (Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHr90s4YeAA&feature=player_embeddedhttp://

Bulgarian Academy Scientists Reported to Be in Touch with Aliens

Society November 23, 2009, Monday



Scientists from the Space Research Institute of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS) have been reported to be in touch with extraterrestrial beings.

The Bulgarian Novinar Daily has reported that the Bulgarian scientists are currently working on deciphering pictograms which are said to have come in the form of the so called “crop circles” with which the aliens answered 30 questions posed by the BAS researchers.

“They are currently all around us, and are watching us all the time. They are not hostile towards us; rather, they want to help us but we have not grown enough in order to establish direct contact with them. They are ready to help us but we don’t know what to request from them in case of contact,” said Lachezar Filipov, Deputy Director of the Space Research Institute of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, as quoted by the Novinar Daily.

Filipov has said that even the Vatican had agreed that aliens existed. In his words, the humans are not going to be able to establish contact with the extraterrestrials through radio waves but through the power of thought.

He has stated that the human race was certainly going to have direct contact with the aliens in the next 10-15 years.

The deputy head of the Bulgarian Space Research Institute has also told the Novinar Daily that the extraterrestrials were critical of the people’s amoral behavior referring to the humans' interference in nature’s processes.

Filipov’s team is reported to be analyzing the 150 new crop circles which appeared around the globe in the past year.

The publication of the Novinar Daily about the BAS researchers communicating with aliens comes in the midst of a controversy over the role, feasibility, and reform of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, which last week even led to the exchange of offensive remarks between Bulgaria's Finance Minister, Simeon Djankov, and President Georgi Parvanov.


Source: http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=110282

.

Mass: We Pray the Video Game

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRMiRFJzIKA&feature=player_embeddedhttp://

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Meet the President of Europe


Herman Van Rompuy


Meet the President of Europe

From the desk of Paul Belien on Fri, 2009-11-20 09:32

Herman Van Rompuy. Get used to the name. He is the first President of the European Union, which with the ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon by all the 27 EU member states in early November was transformed into a genuine United States of Europe.

The President of Europe has not been elected; he was appointed in a secret meeting of the heads of government of the 27 EU member states. They chose one of their own. Herman Van Rompuy was the Prime Minister of Belgium. I knew him when he was just setting out, reluctantly, on his political career.

To understand Herman, one must know something about Belgium, a tiny country in Western Europe, and the prototype of the EU. Belgians do not exist as a nation. Belgium is an artificial state, constructed by the international powers in 1830 as a political compromise and experiment. The country consists of 6 million Dutch, living in Flanders, the northern half of the country, and 4 million French, living in Wallonia, the southern half. The Belgian Dutch, called Flemings, would have preferred to stay part of the Netherlands, as they were until 1830, while the Belgian French, called Walloons, would have preferred to join France. Instead, they were forced to live together in one state.

Belgians do not like their state. They despise it. They say it represents nothing. There are no Belgian patriots, because no-one is willing to die for a flag which does not represent anything. Because Belgium represents nothing, multicultural ideologues love Belgium. They say that without patriotism, there would be no wars and the world would be a better place. As John Lennon sang “Imagine there’s no countries, it isn’t hard to do, nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too.”

In 1957, Belgian politicians stood at the cradle of the European Union. Their aim was to turn the whole of Europe into a Greater Belgium, so that wars between the nations of Europe would no longer be possible as there would no longer be nations, the latter all having been incorporated into an artificial superstate.

A closer look at Belgium, the laboratory of Europe, shows, however, that the country lacks more than patriotism. It also lacks democracy, respect for the rule of law, and political morality. In 1985, in his book De Afwezige Meerderheid (The Absent Majority) the late Flemish philosopher Lode Claes (1913-1997) argued that without identity and a sense of genuine nationhood, there can also be no democracy and no morality.

One of the people who were deeply influenced by Dr. Claes’s thesis was a young politician named Herman Van Rompuy. In the mid-1980s, Van Rompuy, a conservative Catholic, born in 1947, was active in the youth section of the Flemish Christian-Democrat Party. He wrote books and articles about the importance of traditional values, the role of religion, the protection of the unborn life, the Christian roots of Europe and the need to preserve them. The undemocratic and immoral nature of Belgian politics repulsed him and led to a sort of crisis of conscience. Lode Claes, who was near to retiring, offered Herman the opportunity of succeeding him as the director of Trends, a Belgian financial-economic weekly magazine. It is in this context that I made Herman’s acquaintance. He invited me for lunch one day to ask whether, if he accepted the offer to enter journalism, I would be willing to join him. It was then that he told me that he was considering leaving politics and was weighing the options for the professional life he would pursue.

I am not sure what happened next, however. Maybe word had reached the leadership of the Christian Democrat Party that Herman, a brilliant economist and intellectual, was considering leaving politics; perhaps they made him an offer he could not refuse. Herman remained in politics. He was made a Senator and entered government as a junior minister. In 1988, he became the party leader of the governing Christian-Democrats.

Our paths crossed at intervals until 1990, when the Belgian Parliament voted a very liberal abortion bill. The Belgian King Baudouin (1930-1993), a devout Catholic who suffered from the fact that he and his wife could not have any children, had told friends that he would “rather abdicate than sign the bill.” The Belgian politicians, convinced that the King was bluffing, did not want the Belgian people to know about the King’s objections to the bill. I wrote about this on the op-ed pages of The Wall Street Journal and was subsequently reprimanded by the Belgian newspaper I worked for, following an angry telephone call from the then Belgian Prime Minister, a Christian-Democrat, to my editor, who was this Prime Minister’s former spokesman. I was no longer allowed to write about Belgian affairs for foreign newspapers.

In April 1990, the King did in fact abdicate over the abortion issue, and the Christian-Democrat Party, led by Herman Van Rompuy, who had always prided himself on being a good Catholic, had one of Europe’s most liberal abortion bills signed by the college of ministers, a procedure provided by the Belgian Constitution for situations when there is no King. Then they had the King voted back on the throne the following day. I wrote about the whole affair in a critical follow-up article for The Wall Street Journal and was subsequently fired by my newspaper “for grievous misconduct”. A few weeks later, I met Herman at the wedding of a mutual friend. I approached him for a chat. I could see he felt very uncomfortable. He avoided eye contact and broke off the conversation as soon as he could. We have not spoken since.

Herman’s political career continued. He became Belgium’s Budget Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, Speaker of the Chamber of Representatives and finally Prime Minister. He kept publishing intellectual and intelligent books, but instead of defending the concept of the good, he now defended the concept of “the lesser evil.” And he began to write haiku.

Two years ago, Belgium faced its deepest political crisis ever. The country was on the verge of collapse following a 2003 ruling by its Supreme Court that the existing electoral district of Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde (BHV), encompassing both the bilingual capital Brussels and the surrounding Dutch-speaking countryside of Halle-Vilvoorde, was unconstitutional and that Parliament should remedy the situation. The ruling came in response to a complaint that the BHV district was unconstitutional and should be divided into a bilingual electoral district Brussels and a Dutch-language electoral district Halle-Vilvoorde. This complaint had been lodged by… Herman Van Rompuy, a Flemish inhabitant of the Halle-Vilvoorde district.

In 2003, however, the Christian-Democrats were not in government and Herman was a leader of the opposition. His complaint was intended to cause political problems for Belgium’s Liberal government, which refused to divide the BHV district because the French-speaking parties in the government refused to accept the verdict of the Supreme Court. The Flemish Christian-Democrats went to the June 2007 general elections with as their major theme the promise that, once in government, they would split BHV. Herman campaigned on the issue, his party won the elections and became Flanders’ largest party.

Belgium’s political crisis dragged on from June until December 2007 because it proved impossible to put together a government consisting of sufficient Dutch-speaking (Flemish) and French-speaking (Walloon) politicians. The Flemings demanded that BHV be split, as instructed by the Supreme Court; the Walloons refused to do so. Ultimately, the Flemish Christian-Democrats gave in, reneged on their promise to their voters, and agreed to join a government without BHV being split. Worse still, the new government has more French-speaking than Dutch-speaking ministers, and does not have the support of the majority of the Flemings in Parliament, although the Flemings make up a 60% majority of the Belgian population. Herman became the Speaker of the Parliament. In this position he had to prevent Parliament, and the Flemish representatives there, from voting a bill to split BHV. He succeeded in this, by using all kinds of tricks. One day he even had the locks of the plenary meeting room changed so that Parliament could not convene to vote on the issue. On another occasion, he did not show up in his office for a whole week to avoid opening a letter demanding him to table the matter. His tactics worked. In December 2008, when the Belgian Prime Minister had to resign in the wake of a financial scandal, Herman became the new leader of the predominantly French-speaking government which does not represent the majority of Belgium’s ethnic majority group. During the past 11 months, he has skillfully managed to postpone any parliamentary vote on the BHV matter, thereby prolonging a situation which the Supreme Court, responding to Herman's own complaint in 2003, has ruled to be unconstitutional.

Now, Herman has moved on to lead Europe. Like Belgium, the European Union is an undemocratic institution, which needs shrewd leaders who are capable of renouncing everything they once believed in and who know how to impose decisions on the people against the will of the people. Never mind democracy, morality or the rule of law, our betters know what is good for us more than we do. And Herman is now one of our betters. He has come a long way since the days when he was disgusted with Belgian-style politics.

Herman is like Saruman, the wise wizard in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, who went over to the other side. He used to care about the things we cared about. But no longer. He has built himself a high tower from where he rules over all of us.
.
.
...
........
Meet Europe's new president
Posted at: 2009-11-21 16:00:48.0Author: Austen Ivereigh

Apart from his fondness for haikus, and his giggle-inducing name, it's hard to think of anything interesting to say about Herman Van Rompuy, the first president of the European Council. In fact, the whole point of the Belgian's election was the avoidance of color and interest: they were looking for a low-profile eurocrat with a record of patiently building relationships, one whose focus was internal rather than external. As the Economist points out: "For all his merits, Mr Van Rompuy’s main experience of an international dispute as prime minister is the Belgo-Dutch row over the dredging of the River Scheldt."
.
But one interesting thing about Mr Van Rompuy is his Catholicism, about which he makes no bones. He was educated (drumroll, s'il vous plaît) by Jesuits in Brussels, went onto the Catholic University of Leuven, and in the 1980s wrote a book about Christendom as a modern idea. He is, in short, a bearer of the torch first lit by the Catholic architects of European unity -- De Gasperi, Schuman, Adenauer -- who, like Van Rompuy, were all Christian Democrats for whom faith and Europe went together.

In 2004, when he was an opposition deputy, Van Rompuy objected to Turkey joining the EU in terms very similar to those used by the then Cardinal Ratzinger (h/t to Tom Heneghan at Reuters, who puts the two quotes side by side): namely that Turkey's Islamic character would dilute the Christian character of the EU.

That kind of talk makes me queasy. But I am impressed by a speech (in French) Van Rompuy gave on Caritas in Veritate which he carries on his website. It shows a sophisticated grasp of Catholic social doctrine.

Dull he may be, but I for one am delighted that at the heart of the European Union is a politician who can write (my trans):
According to [Catholic] social doctrine, the political community is at the service of the civil society from which it is born. Civil society represents the sum total of the goods, cultural or relational, which are relatively independent of politics and the economy. The state should make sure that the legal framework allows the social actors (societies, associations, organisations, and so on) to carry out their activities in total freedom; it should be ready to intervene, only if needed and in conformity with the principle of subsidiarity, in order that the interaction between freedom of association and the democratic way leads in the direction of the common good."
.
Herman Van Rompuy, we salute you.
.
.
.
P.S. Bolds and Highlights added; America Magazine is "the" Jesuit magazine in the U.S.
.

Women play a bigger role in Mexico's drug war

MEXICO UNDER SIEGE
Women play a bigger role in Mexico's drug war

Addiction, the economy and the lure of living well have sucked many into the narcotics underworld. The trend threatens the foundations of Mexican society.



Guillermina Castro Lopez, in the Culiacan prison in Mexico's Sinaloa state, got 15 years for helping a trafficker smuggle 2 pounds of heroin. The mother of three had been promised $770 and a bus ticket home. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times / September 25, 2009)



By Tracy Wilkinson

November 10, 2009


Reporting from Culiacan, Mexico - In the story making the rounds here in Mexico's drug capital, the setting is a beauty parlor. A woman with wealth obtained legally openly criticizes a younger patron who is married to a trafficker. The "narco-wife" orders the hairdresser to shave the first woman's head. Terrified, the hairdresser complies.

Urban legend or real? It almost doesn't matter; it's the sort of widely repeated account that both intimidates and titillates. And it highlights a disturbing trend: As drug violence seeps deeper into Mexican society, women are taking a more hands-on role.

In growing numbers, they are being recruited into the ranks of drug smugglers, dealers and foot soldiers. And in growing numbers, they are being jailed, and killed, for their efforts.

Here in Sinaloa, the nation's oldest drug-producing region and home to its most powerful cartel, the wives of drug lords were long viewed as trophies with rhinestone-studded fingernails and endless surgical enhancements.

Now wives -- and mothers and daughters -- are being used by male traffickers because women can more easily pass through the military checkpoints that have popped up along many drug-transport routes.

As Mexico has become a nation that also consumes drugs, women have become addicts, which sucks them into the narcotics underworld.

Mexico's worst economic crisis since World War II is also helping to fuel the trend; for desperate women, dealing and smuggling are often seen as a more "dignified" job than prostitution, said Pedro Cardenas, a Sinaloa state public security official in charge of prisons.

Drug violence that preys on women, in a patriarchal, macho society such as that of Sinaloa, has become an urgent problem in the last year, which has seen more killings than ever before, said Margarita Urias, head of the Sinaloa Institute for Women.

The trend could ultimately pose a threat to the stability of family structures in Mexico, a country where the woman is usually the glue holding a family together.

"It is a social cancer contaminating women who weren't touched before," Urias said.

"When we are so vulnerable, how do we educate and bring up our children? When insecurity overwhelms us, how do we inject values into our homes? How can we remain immune?"

He's free, she's not

Veronica Vasquez curses her drug-smuggling husband.

He wasn't at home the night the army came calling. She didn't have time to dispose of the bags of cocaine he had hidden in the bedroom. Now she's serving five years in the crowded prison in Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa, and he's still free.

"I am paying for his crime," said Vasquez, 32. "But I knew what he was doing."

Vasquez, who has two children, lost not just her freedom but all the trappings of the good life she enjoyed. The jewelry and designer handbags and fancy sunglasses, all within easy grasp without really having to work very hard.

"It is all gone," she said. As for her husband: "He is dead to me."

Carmen Elizalde was caught transporting 220 pounds of cocaine from Panama to Mexico. Nabbed on the Honduran border with Guatemala and sentenced to 18 years in prison, she says the deal was her husband's doing. She'd been duped, she said, into going along on what he portrayed as a vacation in Panama. But she didn't ask many questions either.

"Truth is, I didn't want to examine his activities," said Elizalde, 49, a mother of two with a smooth, plump face and perfectly arched eyebrows. "He was giving us a good life, and I didn't care where the money came from."

Mirna Cartagena blames no one but herself. She wanted the quick, easy money. For $1,000, all she had to do was put about 7 pounds of cocaine in her suitcase and board a bus from Culiacan to Mexicali, a city that sits on the border with California. Police pulled her from the bus about halfway along the route, and she was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

"It was a matter of necessity and ignorance, of not thinking of alternatives," Cartagena, 31, said with a toss of her long, curly hair, peering from behind sunglasses.

Nearly a quarter of the inmates in the Culiacan prison are female; nationally, it's 5%. The most dramatic change is the type of conviction. A decade ago, the vast majority of women in prison were there for theft or "crimes of passion," such as the killing of a spouse or lover.

Today the statistics have been turned upside down: The majority are incarcerated for crimes related to drug trafficking, Cardenas said, and 80% of first-time inmates are addicts or users.

In the bloody battles to dominate the drug trade, the traditional codes among traffickers that left families untouched have largely broken down. Being a narco-wife is not the armor it once was.

Golden sandals

Maria Jose Gonzalez seemed to have everything going for her. Her curvaceous looks won the crown at the Sun Festival beauty pageant. She had a budding career as a singer with hopes of a recording deal. And she must have had some smarts too, because she had studied law.

The 22-year-old's body was found dumped along a road on the southern edge of Culiacan last spring, near a sign that warns, "Don't throw trash." Nearby was the body of her husband, Omar Antonio Avila, a used-car salesman. She had been shot in the head; he was blindfolded and his hands handcuffed behind his back. Her eyes were open, staring skyward. She wore golden sandals.

The road where they were discovered is frequently used to dump the murder victims that haunt Culiacan. The road meanders into bushy countryside, winding around the back wall of an affluent residential community with its own man-made lake popular with people on jet skis. Wooden crosses and tiny shrines mark where bodies have appeared. The area is known as La Primavera. Springtime.

Authorities suspect that Gonzalez and her husband got mixed up with the Sinaloa cartel, members of which may have blamed them for the loss of 9 tons of marijuana in an army raid shortly before the couple were slain.

Zulema Hernandez ended up in prison on armed-robbery charges. There she met Mexico's most notorious drug lord, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, the head of the Sinaloa cartel, who was serving out a sentence until he famously escaped in 2001 by bribing guards and hiding in a bundle of outgoing laundry.

While the two were doing time in the Puente Grande maximum-security prison outside Guadalajara, Hernandez, in her early 20s, became Guzman's mistress.

"After the first time, he sent to my cell a bouquet of flowers and a bottle of whiskey," Hernandez told Mexican author Julio Scherer for a book he wrote on prisons. "I was his queen."

She told another reporter in 2002 that she became pregnant by El Chapo but miscarried after being beaten by guards.

By the time she was released in 2003, Hernandez had apparently picked up some of her lover's tricks of the trade: She was arrested less than a year later with 2 tons of cocaine.

Lawyers supplied by El Chapo helped her file a peculiarly Mexican injunction used to stop many a prosecution, and she was free again in 2006. She quickly became the Sinaloa cartel's agent in Mexico City, authorities said, transporting cocaine into the capital's neighborhoods -- relatively new terrain for the organization.

Last December, her body was found in the trunk of a car outside Mexico City. She had been shot in the head. Carved into her breasts, stomach and buttocks was the letter Z, symbol of the notorious gang of hit men called the Zetas, archenemies of El Chapo. She was 35.

A year earlier, the fugitive Guzman had married his third wife the day she turned 18: Emma Coronel, another beauty pageant winner, who is one-third her husband's age. At one point, she was reportedly seen around Culiacan, frequenting the hair and nail salons that cater to narco-wives and other young women who emulate the style: glamorous 'dos and fingernails longer than toes, bejeweled or painted with elaborate designs or pictures of cartoon characters. More recently, she was said to be in hiding.

On average in Sinaloa this year, a woman was killed every week in what authorities believe to be gangland hits.

Two women driving on a state highway last month were intercepted by two carloads of gunmen and pulled from their vehicle as their horrified children watched. Their bullet-scarred bodies, heads wrapped in plastic bags, were found a few hours later. One was believed to be a wife of one of the Sinaloa cartel's top kingpins, Victor Emilio Cazares.

The allure persists

Despite the risks, the drug world life continues to appeal to a subset of young women, generating its own lore, especially here in Sinaloa.

Two days before Christmas, federal police arrested Miss Sinaloa, the state's reigning beauty queen, and seven men, all of whom were paraded before television cameras and accused of trafficking cocaine. A cache of high-powered weapons and tens of thousands of dollars were seized from their vehicle.

Laura Zuñiga, 23, was never charged and went free after 38 days under a form of house arrest. Tagged "Miss Narco" by the Mexican media, Zuñiga acknowledged that her boyfriend was the brother of a big trafficker, but she said her beau was not involved in the business, although she wasn't sure what he did for a living.

She was stripped of a title she had won in an international contest. But she remains Miss Sinaloa.

For many women, joining this life is not a matter of choice. They are press-ganged, pushed by parents seeking wealth and influence, or don't know what they're getting into, said Urias, the women's institute official. And escape is rarely an option.

A few women have managed to flee drug-trafficking husbands, and have taken refuge in a shelter whose location is a tightly held secret.

Teresita tried for four years to get away from a husband who beat her, cheated on her and partied endlessly with his drug-dealing friends.

"He was high all the time," she said in an interview at the shelter. The Times agreed not to publish her last name.

She went to the police and the courts, but no one helped. After one particularly bad beating, she gathered up her two children and moved in with her sister.

But her husband followed her, threatened to burn the house down and shot out the outside lights. The goons who worked with him menaced Teresita and her family.

Teresita, a 28-year-old brunet with large, almond-shaped eyes, had known her husband since she was 16. Her sister had married his brother. But drugs and the business had changed him.

She finally became convinced that he would kill her and kidnap the children and found her way to the agency that runs the shelter. There she has remained with her children, trying to learn how to use a computer and other skills that will help her rebuild her life.

But most of the women who have left narco-husbands have to be transferred out of the state and sometimes out of the country to really be safe.

Teresita has a simple wish: "I just want to be in a place where I am not afraid to walk outside."

wilkinson@latimes.com


Related
PHOTOS: Drug war's new blood
In drug trafficking hub, artist is in demand
In Mexico, gruesome slayings add to Guerrero's toll

Stories
Traveling in Mexico despite drug violence, H1N1 flu
Mexico's 'narco-lawyers' risk everything

Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-narco-women10-2009nov10,0,4851048,full.story

Philippine clan leader held over poll-related massacre

Page last updated at 05:20 GMT, Thursday, 26 November 2009



Police have taken Andal Ampatuan Jr, right, to Manila for questioning


A powerful Philippine clan leader suspected of involvement in the massacre of 57 people has been taken into custody, officials said.

Andal Ampatuan Jr had surrendered to authorities, they said. He denies organising the killings, AFP reported.

Earlier, troops and police swooped on towns on the southern island of Mindanao run by the Ampatuan family.

The massacre took place on Monday as a convoy of vehicles used by a rival politician was ambushed.

The group, involved in activities for the 2010 elections, was taken to a remote hill region, shot at close range and their bodies dumped in shallow graves.

Taken by helicopter

Interior Secretary Ronaldo Puno said that Mr Ampatuan Jnr was taken by helicopter from his hometown in the restive Maguindanao province on Thursday morning to a nearby airport.

From there he was being flown to the capital Manila for questioning, Mr Puno said.

Police were reported to have rounded-up and disarmed a 200-member paramilitary force in Maguindanao on Thursday. They also made several arrests.



Officials named militiamen under the control of Mr Ampatuan Jr - the mayor of a town in Maguindanao - as suspects.

All police officers from one town are under investigation for the killing, AFP news agency reported, citing government officials.

Although prominent members of the Ampatuan family are allies of President Gloria Arroyo, they have been expelled from her party since the killings.

President Arroyo, who earlier declared a national day of mourning, has promised that the gunmen would not escape justice.

The BBC's Danny Vincent, in Manila, says the Ampatuans have been involved in a long-standing feud with a rival family who want to oppose them in the national and local elections.

Philippine politician Ismael Mangudadatu has claimed it was gunmen loyal to the Ampatuans who ambushed his supporters as they were travelling to register his name for the polls.

Among the dead were Mr Mangudadatu's wife, his two sisters and several key supporters, as well as at least 13 journalists who were travelling with them to witness his registration as an election candidate.

Analysts say the Ampatuans have effectively been in charge of Maguindanao for decades.

Andal Ampatuan Snr has served in the Philippines Congress and won the governorship of Maguindanao unopposed for several terms.

His son was reportedly planning a similarly unopposed run to replace his father but then Mr Mangudadatu decided to run as well.


Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8379990.stm

.

A year after, India remembers Mumbai attacks


Wed Nov 25, 2009 11:46pm EST



By Rina Chandran

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Mumbai's police paraded past some of the city's landmarks in a show of strength as India's financial hub marked the first anniversary of militant raids that killed 166 people and ratched up tensions with Pakistan.

Onlookers waved Indian flags and banners with slogans like "End The Violence" as police commandoes, showing off new weapons and armored vehicles, tracked the route of ten militants who disembarked in Mumbai a year ago to rampage through the city. Other residents lit candles outside a Jewish center, one of several sites from luxury hotels to the city's biggest railway station targeted by the Pakistan-based gunmen for three days.

"We just wanted to show our support and show that we care," said Subir Kumar Singh, who was leaving a written message on a banner outside the Leopold cafe, a popular tourist spot that still has bullet marks from the attacks.

The attacks highlighted the lack of preparedness of India to militant attacks and showed how regional tension in South Asia could undermine the stability of Asia's economic powerhouse as it emerges on the global stage.

Nine militants were killed by police in the attacks. The lone survivor, Mohammad Ajmal Kasab, is under trial and could face the gallows if found guilty.

Some local residents shouted "Hang Kasab" as they walked past the seafront Taj Mahal Hotel, where the militants guided by handlers in Pakistan by telephone, battled commandoes for nearly three days through a myriad of plush corridors.

India has broken off peace talks with Pakistan since the attacks.

New Delhi has sought to bring international pressure on Islamabad to act against militants operating from its soil, including the Pakistan-based group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) blamed for the masterminding the raids.

"The government of Pakistan could do more to bring to book people who are still roaming around the country freely, to dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism and I can only hope that there will be progress in that area," Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said this week in Washington.

In a move seen as trying to appease that frustration as well as deflect U.S. pressure to act, a Pakistani court indicted on Wednesday seven Pakistani suspects on terror charges in connection with the attacks.


.

Settlement reached in Diocese sexual abuse case



Christina Grande
Created: 11/24/2009 09:31:16 PM AKST

The Fairbanks Catholic Diocese has agreed to almost $10 million settlement with almost 300 victims of clergy abuse. The announcement was made in U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Nov. 24.

The first legal claim was filed more than 7 years ago but some of the victims say they have been waiting for almost 70 years, making today's news a long time coming.

"It validates the fact that people have been victimized," said victim's liaison, Elsie Boudreau. Bourdreau is also a victim survivor of clergy sexual abuse within the Fairbanks Catholic Diocese. She came forward with her story in 2003, filed a claim a year later and settled in 2005. Since then, Bourdreau has helped the nearly 300 victims who went through the same thing. "So many people talk about having black mark on their sole as a result of what happened," said Bourdreau.
Although today's settlement still needs court approval, some say it is a step in the right direction. "It establishes the framework for moving forward and taking the next step in this litigation," said victim's attorney, Ken Rossa.

According to Rossa, there could be more money on top of the settlement by pursuing the Bishops insurance, which could be up to $100 million. "We don't have any knowing right now what the timing will be on the second part of the compensation package," said Rossa.

As for how the settlement will be divided up. "We will actually have someone who will go through their files and look at what happened to them and how it affected their lives and try to come up with a fair way of calculating relative injury and using a formula how much each person should get of the limited amount of money available," said Rossa.

While some say the compensation is better than nothing, it does not make up for a scarred memory. "No amount of money is enough to make up for the loss childhood for the innocence stolen," said Bourdreau.

As this chapter closes, another will begin. "You want people to heal from this experience. They are coming forward and speaking their truth and hopefully they will be able to find a way to heal," said Bourdreau.

Mr. Rossa says if the Bankruptcy Court approves the amount victims could start seeing the money at the end of February of next year.



P.S. This is the same Roman Catholic Church whose U.S. Catholic Bishops coerce Healthcare Overhaul legislation with no shame of the impropriety that it poses. Hint: Separation of Church and State!
.

Climate gate: Has all the hype finally come to an end?

November 24, 9:12 PM



Baltimore Conservative ExaminerAl Ritter



This past week a reported break in at a renowned “Global warming” supporter site has now thrown the global warming crowd into doubt. Several international ly renowned man made global warming supporters, including Obama Science Czar John Holdren is directly involved in CRU’s unfolding Climate gate scandal. In fact, according to files released by a CEU hacker or whistleblower, Holdren is involved in what Canada Free Press (CFP) columnist Canadian climatologist Dr. Tim Ball terms “a truculent and nasty manner that provides a brief demonstration of his lack of understanding, commitment on faith and willingness to ridicule and bully people”.


The computer hacked site of CRU (University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit) an English support group for man-made global warming. In fact Alan Caruba states in his Facts Not Fantasy blogsite, “It means the Kyoto Climate Protocols that nations agreed to on December 11, 1997 and which entered into force on February 16 2005, and all subsequent agreements based on “global warming” have no validity, scientifically or as the basis for public action by any nation, state, province, city or town. It means that Al Gore’s pusillanimous “documentary” is a fraud along with just about every other statement uttered by any scientist, academician, or politician claiming that something, anything, should be done to avoid “global warming.”


Dr. Tim Ball and Judi McLeod said Tuesday, ““The files contain so much material that it is going to take some time t o put it all in context,” says Ball. “However, enough is already known to underscore their explosive nature. It is already clear the entire claims and positions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are based on falsified manipulated material and is therefore completely compromised. The fallout will be extensive as material continues to emerge. Reputations of the scientists involved are already destroyed, however fringe players will continue to be identified and their reputations destroyed or sullied.”


While the mainstream media is bending into pretzels to keep the scandal under the rug, Climate gate is already the biggest scientific scandal in history because of the global policy implications.


The IPCC is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, otherwise known as the UN group trying to force world-wide anti-pollution legislation on participating countries. The Kyoto Protocol is the existing treaty that the United States signed but was never ratified by Congress under the Clinton Administration. The upcoming Copenhagen Agreement is meant to replace the Kyoto Protocol in 2012, so this break in couldn’t come at a worse time for the Al Gore supporters.


The break in or computer hacking has exposed the movement’s most prominent players including Dr. Michael Mann, (the inventor of Al Gore’s long discredited hockey stick theory.) Exposed emails from other renowned global warming proponents show a conspiracy to produce fraudulent data to support the global warming scenario.


In light of the newest exposed information, and revelations of the largest corruption and conspiracy in modern history, right to the executive office of the United States of America, someone damn well needs to be indicted and prosecuted in the world wide hoax of man-made global warming starting with the past Vice President, Al Gore!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=429xoDtqS-A&feature=player_embeddedhttp://




To read more on the exposure of this computer hacked site


http://www.climatedepot.com/


To read the actual emails from co- conspirators


http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/19/breaking-news-story-hadley-cru-has-apparently-been-hacked-hundreds-of-files-released/

If you like the article you just read, please take the time to subscribe to Al’s personal subscription list, go here, MDpatriot@verizon.net and type “subscribe” in the subject box, Thanks!




Source: http://www.examiner.com/x-3678-Baltimore-Conservative-Examiner~y2009m11d24-Climate-gate-Has-all-the-hype-finally-come-to-an-end


.

Coincidence or Synchronism?


Coincidence or Synchronism?


In the light of all the events (listed below) that are occurring concurently; I wonder if there is any casuality here, or are they just a coincidence?

Also, keep in mind that Jesus said that the time prior to His day would be as the days of Noah.


===


Sikhism, a synthesis of Islamic and Hindu traditions -


(www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Sikhism/index.aspx)



India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is a Sikh:

Obama, Singh Strengthen Ties at First State Visit
SikhNN.com - ‎4 hours ago‎
WASHINGTON - In the first state visit of the first Sikh Indian prime minister with the first black American president, Manmohan Singh and Barack Obama ...

Nepal Hindu mass sacrifices* celebrated:

Festival of mass animal sacrifice begins in Nepal
The Associated Press - Gemunu Amarasinghe - ‎16 hours ago‎
"We were unable to stop the animal sacrifices this year but we will continue our campaign to stop killings during this festival," said Pramada Shah of the ...


The annual Muslim Pilgrimage the Hajj commences:

Some 2.5 Million Muslims Expected To Begin Hajj
RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty - ‎3 hours ago‎
MECCA, Saudi Arabia -- The hajj to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina begins today. An estimated 2.5 million Muslims have come to Mecca to perform the ...


But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

Matthew 24:36-38

,*And Noah builded an altar unto the LORD; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar...Genesis 8:20.

.AArsenio.
.
.

Q: When is a “state visit” not a state visit?


11:33 November 24th, 2009


Posted by: Andrew Quinn

Q: When is a “state visit” not a state visit?


A: When the visitor is not head of state.


The flags are out in Washington for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who is on what is widely billed as the first official state visit of the Obama administration.

That’s all fine for Singh, whose Congress party swept to victory in May elections, giving him a second term as powerful prime minister of the world’s most populous democracy.

The problem is, India has also a president — Pratibha Patil — who is the first woman to hold that largely ceremonial office and, technically, India’s head of state.

So what’s with all the D.C. pageantry?

A senior U.S. official said the White House had decided to elevate the status of the visit out of recognition of Singh’s friendship and the importance of Indo-U.S. ties, and that everything was set up for full state honors — with one exception.

Those listening to the artillery barrage that marked Singh’s official arrival may have mistaken it for a 21-gun salute, but it wasn’t.

It may have been 19 guns, or possibly 17, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

But definitely not 21. Only “real” state visitors get that.

For more Reuters political news, click here.

Photo credit: Reuters/Larry Downing (Obama and Singh at the White House)



.

Toasts by the President and the Prime Minister



Transcript
Toasts by the President and the Prime Minister



Published: November 24, 2009



Following is a transcript of toasts by President Obama and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India at the state dinner on Nov. 24, provided by the White House.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Good evening, everyone. On behalf of Michelle and myself, welcome to the White House. Aapka Swagat Hai. (Applause.)

Many of you were here when I was honored to become the first President to help celebrate Diwali -- the Festival of Lights. (Applause.) Some of you were here for the first White House celebration of the birth of the founder of Sikhism -- Guru Nanak. (Applause.) Tonight, we gather again, for the first state dinner of my presidency -- with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Mrs. Gursharan Kaur, as we celebrate the great and growing partnership between the United States and India.

As we all know, in India some of life's most treasured moments are often celebrated under the cover of a beautiful tent. It's a little like tonight. We have incredible food and music and are surrounded by great friends. For it's been said that "the most beautiful things in the universe are the starry heavens above us and the feeling of duty within us."

Mr. Prime Minister, today we worked to fulfill our duty --bring our countries closer together than ever before. Tonight, under the stars, we celebrate the spirit that will sustain our partnership -- the bonds of friendship between our people.

It's a bond that includes more than two million Indian Americans who enrich every corner of our great nation -- leaders in government, science, industry and the arts -- some of whom join us tonight. And it's the bond of friendship between a President and a Prime Minister who are bound by the same unshakable spirit of possibility and brotherhood that transformed both our nations -- a spirit that gave rise to movements led by giants like Gandhi and King, and which are the reason that both of us can stand here tonight.

And so, as we draw upon these ties that bind our common future together, I want to close with the words that your first Prime Minister spoke at that midnight hour on the eve of Indian independence, because Nehru's words speak to our hopes tonight: "The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the great triumphs and achievements that await us…The past is over and it is the future that beckons us now."

So I propose a toast to all of you.

Does the Prime Minister get a glass? Thank you.

Just logistically, we want to make sure the Prime Minister has a glass here. (Laughter.)

To the future that beckons all of us. Let us answer its call. And let our two great nations realize all the triumphs and achievements that await us.

Cheers.

(A toast is offered.)

PRIME MINISTER MANMOHAN SINGH: Mr. President; the First Lady, Mrs. Michelle Obama; distinguished guests. I feel privileged to be invited to this first state banquet, Mr. President, under your distinguished presidency. You do us and the people of India great honor by this wonderful gesture on your part. We are overwhelmed by the warmth of your hospitality, the courtesy you have extended to us personally, and the grace and charm of the First Lady. (Applause.)

Mr. President, your journey to the White House has captured the imagination of millions and millions of people in India. You are an inspiration to all those who cherish the values of democracy, diversity, and equal opportunity. (Applause.)

Mr. President, I can do no better than to describe your achievements in the words of Abraham Lincoln who said -- and I quote -- "In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It is the life in your years." (Applause.)

Mr. President, we warmly applaud the recognition by the Nobel Committee of the healing touch you have provided and the power of your idealism and your vision. (Applause.)

Mr. President, your leadership of this great nation of the United States coincides with a time of profound changes taking place in the world at large. We need to find new pathways of international cooperation that respond more effectively to the grave challenges caused by the growing interdependence of nations. As two leading democracies, India and the United States must play a leading role in building a shared destiny for all humankind.

Mr. President, a strong and sustained engagement between our two countries is good for our people and, equally, it is highly important for the world as a whole. We are embarking on a new phase of our partnership. We should build on our common values and interests to realize the enormous potential and promise of our partnership.

Our expanding cooperation in areas of social and human development, science and technology, energy, and other related areas will improve the quality of lives of millions of people in our country. The success of the nearly 2.7 million strong American community is a tribute to our common ethos. They have enriched and deepened our ties, and I thank them profoundly from the core of my heart. (Applause.)

Mr. President, I convey my very best wishes to you. Mr. President, as you lead this great nation, I look forward to working with you to renew and expand our strategic partnership. I wish you and the people of America a very, very happy Thanksgiving. (Applause.)

Ladies and gentlemen, I invite you to join me in a toast to the health and happiness of President Barack Obama and the First Lady, Mrs. Obama, the friendly people of the United States of America, and stronger and stronger friendship between India and the United States of America.

MR. OBAMA: Cheers.

(A toast is offered.)

MR. OBAMA: Thank you, everybody. Enjoy your evening. (Applause.)



Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/25/us/politics/25dinner-text.html
.

Vegetarian fare at White House save for the prawns

November 24th, 2009 SindhToday


Washington, Nov 25 (IANS) Save for an option of green curry prawns, President Barack Obama offered his guests an all-vegetarian fare at his first state dinner in honour of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who one newspaper had described as an “abstemious vegetarian.”

Dubbed by some as Washington’s most elite social event since his Jan 20 inauguration, the Tuesday dinner also featured fresh arugula from the White House garden and entertainment by Oscar winners A.R. Rahman and Jennifer Hudson.


The food and wines on the menu:


- Potato and eggplant salad
- White House arugula with onion seed vinaigrette
- 2008 sauvignon blanc, Modus Operandi, Napa Valley, Calif.
- Red lentil soup with fresh cheese
- 2006 Riesling, Brooks “Ara,” Willamette Valley, Ore.
- Roasted potato dumplings with tomato chutney, chick peas and okra or green curry prawns, caramelized salsify with smoked collard greens and coconut-aged basmati
- 2007 grenache, Beckmen Vineyards, Santa Ynez, Calif.
- Pumpkin pie tart, pear tatin, whipped cream and caramel sauce
- Sparkling chardonnay, Thibaut Janisson Brut, Monticello, Va.
- Petits fours and coffee
- Cashew brittle
- Pecan pralines
- Passion fruit and vanilla gelees
- Chocolate-dipped fruit [LM1]
.
.
FYI: Prawns = Shrimp.
.