Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Syria Crisis and Putin’s Return Chill U.S. Ties With Russia

By PETER BAKER
Published: June 13, 2012 51


WASHINGTON — Sitting beside President Obama this spring, the president of Russia gushed that “these were perhaps the best three years of relations between Russia and the United States over the last decade.” Two and a half months later, those halcyon days of friendship look like a distant memory.

Gone is Dmitri A. Medvedev, the optimistic president who collaborated with Mr. Obama and celebrated their partnership in March. In his place is Vladimir V. Putin, the grim former K.G.B. colonel whose return to the Kremlin has ushered in a frostier relationship freighted by an impasse over Syria and complicated by fractious domestic politics in both countries.

The tension over Syria has been exacerbated by an accusation by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday that Russia is supplying attack helicopters to the government of President Bashar al-Assad as it tries to crush an uprising. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, rejected the assertions on Wednesday, saying that Moscow was supplying only defensive weapons and countering that the United States was arming the region.

The back-and-forth underscored the limits of Mr. Obama’s ability to “reset” ties between the two countries, as he resolved to do when he arrived in office. He has signed an arms control treaty, expanded supply lines to Afghanistan through Russian territory, secured Moscow’s support for sanctions on Iran and helped bring Russia into the World Trade Organization. But officials in both capitals noted this week that the two countries still operated on fundamentally different sets of values and interests.

The souring relations come as Mr. Obama and Mr. Putin are preparing to meet for the first time as presidents next week on the sidelines of a summit meeting in Mexico. With Mr. Obama being accused by Mitt Romney, his Republican presidential opponent, of going soft on Russia and Mr. Putin turning to anti-American statements in response to street protests in Moscow, the Mexico meeting is being seen as a test of whether the reset has run its course.

“We were already at a place with the Russians where we were about to move to a new phase,” said Benjamin J. Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser to Mr. Obama. “A lot of this is can we continue to build on the initial steps we’ve taken with the Russians even as we’ve had differences emerge, most notably on Syria.”

Others see relations between the two countries more pessimistically. “There is a crisis in the Russian-American relationship,” said Aleksei K. Pushkov, the hawkish head of Russia’s parliamentary foreign affairs committee. “It is a crisis when the sides have to balance their interests but they cannot do so because their interests diverge. It is developing into some kind of long-term mistrust.”

The signs of that divergence have been there for a while but have seemed increasingly pronounced in recent months. Michael A. McFaul, a former Russia adviser to Mr. Obama, has been subjected to an unusual campaign of public harassment since arriving in Moscow as ambassador. A Russian general last month threatened pre-emptive strikes against American missile defense sites in Poland in the event of a crisis.

Reclaiming the presidency after a four-year interregnum wielding power as prime minister, Mr. Putin has responded to sustained demonstrations with a crackdown and accusations of American perfidy, singling out Mrs. Clinton. He snubbed Mr. Obama by skipping the annual Group of 8 summit meeting, hosted by the president at Camp David last month.

“The reset failed to change the underlying suspicion and distrust of America shared by a majority of Russians as well as Putin himself,” said Masha Lipman, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center. “America is seen as a threat, an agent seeking to undermine Russia, to weaken it, to do harm to it. Russia always has to be on the alert, on the defensive.”

Adding to the tension have been moves in Congress to impose visa and banking restrictions on Russian officials implicated in human rights abuses. The bipartisan legislation, named for Sergei L. Magnitsky, a lawyer whose corruption investigation led to his death in prison, passed a House committee last week and will be taken up by a Senate panel next week.

“I see this as part of an effort to make clear the expected international conduct as it relates to human rights,” said Senator Benjamin L. Cardin, a Maryland Democrat who has pushed the legislation. “This is what friends do. We point out when you need to do better.”

The Obama administration, seeking to avoid a rupture, opposes the legislation on the grounds that the State Department has already banned visas for Russians implicated in Mr. Magnitsky’s death.

Instead, the administration is highlighting separate legislation introduced on Tuesday by a bipartisan group, including Senators John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, that would repeal decades-old trade restrictions on Russia.

Hours after Mrs. Clinton lodged her helicopter allegations on Tuesday, she sent an under secretary of state, Wendy Sherman, to a Russia Day reception at the Russian Embassy in Washington, where she pointed to the proposed repeal of the Jackson-Vanik restrictions and talked about treating Moscow “with respect.”

The complication for Mr. Obama is that lawmakers like Mr. Cardin and Mr. McCain want to link the Jackson-Vanik repeal to the Magnitsky legislation, seeing it as the only way to win enough votes. Mr. Cardin said he agreed with an administration push to broaden the Magnitsky bill to cover all countries, not singling out Russia, but others in Congress oppose such a move.

Mr. Obama is focusing on enlisting Russia’s help on issues like stopping Iran from building nuclear weapons. The next round of talks between Iran and international powers open in Moscow next week, and the administration hopes that Russia’s role as host will prompt it to use its influence with Tehran to extract more concessions.

One of the biggest successes of the reset, however, has also made the United States more dependent on Russia. With Pakistan cutting off supply lines to Afghanistan, the so-called northern distribution network through Russia is the primary reinforcement route for America’s war on the Taliban.

“We need more from them than they need from us at the moment,” said Angela E. Stent, a former national intelligence officer on Russian affairs who now directs Russian studies at Georgetown University. The Russians are less invested than Mr. Obama in the notion of a reset. “They look at that as an American course correction. But it’s not their policy, it’s an American policy,” Dr. Stent said.

Publicly, the administration rejects any connection between Syria and the Afghan supply route. “We’re not linking the two,” said Capt. John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman. But, privately, officials worry that Russia will try to use the leverage provided by the supply route.

So far, Russian officials have reassured their American counterparts that they will not link the issues. If anything, Moscow worries that the United States is pulling out of Afghanistan too soon, recognizing that a collapse in security there would pose problems for Russia’s southern flank.

For Mr. Obama, who considers improved ties with Russia one of his signature accomplishments, the question is whether the current friction is temporary or is a sign that the reset has accomplished what it can. At some point, administration officials said, it was inevitable that the two countries would settle into a situation in which they cooperate in some areas and clash in others.

The coming meeting in Los Cabos, Mexico, on the sidelines of a Group of 20 gathering, could prove uncomfortable for Mr. Obama. The first time the two men met, in July 2009, when Mr. Putin was prime minister, Mr. Putin delivered an hourlong harangue about the United States.

Los Cabos may be no more congenial. “This should be an awkward meeting, because otherwise the president runs a risk of palling around with a guy who’s cracking down on the opposition, who’s selling attack helicopters to a murderous regime in Syria and is just going in the wrong direction,” said David J. Kramer, a Bush official who is now executive director of Freedom House, an advocacy organization.

“The president’s going to be yearning for the days of meetings with Dima,” Mr. Kramer added, using Mr. Medvedev’s nickname. “It probably won’t be a pretty meeting. And it shouldn’t be a pretty meeting.”


Ellen Barry contributed reporting from Moscow, and Thom Shanker from Washington.



US accuses Russia but needs its help in Syria



06-13) 13:47 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) --

Tensions between the U.S. and Russia flared Wednesday as the former Cold War foes traded blame for the violence in Syria just days before a planned meeting between President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton held to her explosive accusation that the "latest information" in U.S. hands is that Russia is sending attack helicopters to Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime at the risk of fomenting a dangerous civil war. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov fired back by alleging that the U.S. has sent military support to the region with the same result.

The public U.S.-Russian rift is occurring at a time that Obama administration had hoped to court Moscow's support for a transition plan to end the Assad regime. If nothing else, the dispute underlines the American government's continued difficulty in finding a strategy to pacify Syria after 15 months of brutal government crackdowns and armed rebellion.

A day after blasting Moscow for purportedly sending new helicopter gunships to Syria, Clinton lamented on Wednesday that repeated U.S. requests to the Russian government to suspend its military ties with Damascus had fallen on deaf ears.

"We have repeatedly urged the Russian government to cut these military ties completely and to suspend all further support and deliveries," Clinton told reporters. "We know, because they confirm, that they continue to deliver and we believe that the situation is spiraling toward civil war. It is now time for everyone in the international community, including Russia ... to speak to Assad in unified voice and insist that the violence stop."

Clinton questioned Russia's insistence that "it wants peace and stability restored" and that it is not wedded to Assad's remaining in power. "It also claims to have vital interests in the region and relationships that it wants to continue to keep," she said. "They put all of that at risk if they do not move more constructively right now."

In Tehran, Lavrov rejected the helicopter charge and blamed Washington for fueling the conflict. He said his government was completing earlier weapons contracts with Syria exclusively for air defense systems, which generally refers to surface-to-air missiles, radar and other such materiel. He didn't speak specifically about helicopters but insisted that nothing being delivered could be used against peaceful demonstrators.

Lavrov was widely quoted as accusing the U.S. of providing Syrian dissidents with weapons, but he only said the U.S. was supplying "special means" to the region, not the rebels.

"We are not supplying to Syria or anywhere else things that are used in fighting with peaceful demonstrators, in contrast to the United States, which is regularly sending such special means to countries in the region," he said. "For some reason, the Americans consider this to be in order. We are not delivering such means and are delivering only that which Syria requires in the event of an armed attack on it from outside."

Nevertheless, Clinton said Wednesday: "The United States has provided no military support to the opposition. None."

The U.S. has helped other countries vet potential recipients of military aid in the hope that none of the weapons heading into the region end up with al-Qaida or other terrorist groups.

Responding to Lavrov's dismissal of the U.S. helicopter claims, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said: "I would encourage him to check with his own authorities."

"Russian and Soviet-made helicopters form the base of the Syrian helicopter fleet," Nuland told reporters. "We are seeing these helicopters used all over Syria now against civilians. We are seeing gun mounts on these being used to fire on populations in Homs, in Hama, in Lattakia, in Idlib. We have seen the Russians resupply weapons they have sold to the Syrians as recently as January."

In making the initial charge on Tuesday, Clinton cited what she called the "latest information" the U.S. had about helicopters on the way from Russia to Syria. The remark appeared to catch many in the Obama administration unprepared, but two U.S. officials said that Clinton was repeating information contained in a classified intelligence briefing circulated Tuesday morning.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the classified material. Another official said the Syrians use both Mi-8/17 HIP and Mi-24/25 HIND helicopters. The HIP is a multi-purpose helicopter used primarily for transport but can be modified to carry hull-mounted weapons for air-to-ground strike missions. The HIND is an attack helicopter specifically designed for air-to-ground strikes using missiles, rockets and heavy machine guns.

At the White House, press secretary Jay Carney softened Clinton's accusation against Russia, calling it one element of a larger argument the U.S. is making that Russia should do more to spur political change in Syria. He would not say whether Obama and Putin would discuss arms sales on the sidelines of the meeting of the Group of 20 industrial and emerging market nations in Mexico next week.

"Our argument has been, to the Russians and others who have supported that regime in the past, that that it is the wrong thing to do to continue that support," Carney said.

Despite their disagreement, diplomatic hopes rest with Washington and Moscow agreeing on a transition plan that might end the four-decade Assad regime. Russia, along with China, has twice blocked the U.N. Security Council from setting world sanctions on Assad's regime, and Moscow has consistently rejected the use of outside forces to end the conflict or any international plan to force regime change in Damascus.

More than 13,000 people have died since March 2011, according to opposition groups, and the view of many in the international community is that the conflict could get worse still. Hoping for a plan that wins international unity and avoids the need for another U.S. military intervention in the Muslim world, the Obama administration has been trying to get Russia to join a widened diplomatic strategy for a structured end to the four-decade Assad dynasty.

One concession to Moscow is that Assad would be allowed to remain in power for the start of the transition. But Russia has up to now steadfastly backed its closest Middle East partner. Moscow and Damascus maintain long-standing military relations and the Arab country hosts Russia's only naval base in the Mediterranean Sea.

Nevertheless, U.N. mediator Kofi Annan is also banking on a Russian-American understanding on Syria, inviting both powers to a conference aimed at mapping out a transition planned for later this month in Geneva.

Carney expressed the administration's frustration.

"The window of opportunity to bring about a transition to a democratic future for Syria is closing and will close," he said. "And if it does, the chance for a broader and sectarian civil war will be enhanced greatly."

___

Associated Press writers Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations, Anne Gearan in Washington, James Heintz in Moscow and Ali Akbar Dareini in Tehran contributed to this report.



Source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2012/06/13/national/w134703D32.DTL&ao=all#ixzz1xiJUb1Pn


Vatican says US nuns must promote church teachings


VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican insisted after a high level meeting Tuesday that American nuns must faithfully promote age-old church teachings, after the women were accused by Rome of flouting core doctrine and taking an overly liberal "feminist" bent.

Sister Pat Farrell and Sister Janet Mock, respectively president and executive director of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) met with the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal William Levada and the American bishop tasked by the Vatican to overhaul the group which represents about 80 percent of American sisters.

Farrell and Mock came to Rome to present their concerns about the Vatican's April decision to reform the LCWR from the ground up. Levada's office had determined that the LCWR had strayed too far from church doctrine and was imposing certain "radical feminist themes" that were incompatible with Catholicism.

The LCWR had termed the Vatican assessment flawed and unsubstantiated, and said Tuesday that Farrell and Mock had brought those concerns directly to Levada and Archbishop Peter Sartain, who, along with two other bishops, will overhaul the group, rewrite its statutes and review its plans and programs.

"It was an open meeting and we were able to directly express our concerns to Cardinal Levada and Archbishop Sartain," Farrell said in a statement. Stopped by reporters outside Levada's office, Farrell said she was "grateful for the opportunity for open dialogue" and said she and Mock would now report back to the LCWR board "to decide how to proceed from here."

The Vatican said the meeting was conducted in an atmosphere of "openness and cordiality." But in its own statement, it stressed that the LCWR must promote church unity by stressing core church teachings.

It noted that the LCWR was created by the Vatican in 1956 and remains under its direction. The purpose of the Vatican's assessment, it said, "is to assist the LCWR in this important mission by promoting a vision of ecclesial communion founded on faith in Jesus Christ and the teachings of the church as faithfully taught through the ages under the guidance of the Magisterium."

The Vatican's crackdown on the nuns has prompted a remarkable outpouring of support from ordinary Catholics and clergy alike, who have touted the good work the sisters do in education, health care and tending to the poor. Mock told reporters such support has been "very affirming" for the sisters.

The dispute with the American sisters goes back decades.

Theological conservatives have long complained that in the years since the revolutionizing reforms of the 1960s Second Vatican Council, American sisters' congregations have become secular and political, while abandoning traditional prayer life and faith. The nuns insisted prayer and Christ were central to their work.

In 1992, the Vatican created another umbrella group of women's religious orders for sisters with a more traditional approach to religious life and church authority. That group, the Conference of Major Superiors of Women Religious, is significantly smaller than the LCWR. But a recent study found these smaller, more traditional religious orders are having greater success attracting new candidates.

Then, under the tradition-minded Pope Benedict XVI, the conflict reached a turning point.

Around 2008, the Vatican announced the doctrinal review of the LCWR and also launched an investigation of all U.S. women's congregations. That inquiry looked at quality of life, the response to dissent and "the soundness of doctrine held and taught" by the women. Results of the wider inquiry have not been released.

But for the next five years, the LCWR will effectively be under Vatican receivership.

___

Rachel Zoll contributed from New York.


Source

He shall sustain thee


“Cast thy burden upon the LORD, and he shall sustain thee: he shall never suffer the righteous to be moved.”
Psalm 55:22
(KJV)

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

MEN WHO HAVE ARISEN


LESSONS FROM THE PAST


From time to time, men have arisen in our ranks with a message. But there were earmarks in their conduct and/or in their message that were as red flags which should have been a warning. Other men arose whose deportment and message were both beneficial.

Yet, as we view the past century, we find that, repeatedly, each new generation of our people who has come onto the scene of action has not learned from the mistakes of the preceding one.

Let history teach you. He who will not be taught by the past is condemned to repeat it. Learn the lessons that others before you have failed to learn.

The following study will only be a brief survey. Anything more than that would quickly become too lengthy and involved. However, several of these brief biographies may be found in expanded form in earlier studies by the present writer. —vf

From time to time, men have arisen in our ranks with a message. But there were earmarks in their conduct and/or in their message which were as red flags, and should have warned the people to have nothing to do with them. Other men arose whose deportment and message were both beneficial.

Let history teach you. He who will not be taught by the past is condemned to repeat it. Learn the lessons that others before you have failed to learn.




Understanding cyberspace is key to defending against digital attacks

Monday, June 11, 2012

Family Net Worth Drops to Level of Early ’90s, Fed Says

By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

Published: June 11, 2012

WASHINGTON — The recent economic crisis left the median American family in 2010 with no more wealth than in the early 1990s, erasing almost two decades of accumulated prosperity, the Federal Reserve said Monday.


Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg News

A house for sale in Washington. Falling home prices accounted for three-quarters of the losses in net worth.


A hypothetical family richer than half the nation’s families and poorer than the other half had a net worth of $77,300 in 2010, compared with $126,400 in 2007, the Fed said. The crash of housing prices directly accounted for three-quarters of the loss.

Families’ income also continued to decline, a trend that predated the crisis but accelerated over the same period. Median family income fell to $45,800 in 2010 from $49,600 in 2007. All figures were adjusted for inflation.

The new data comes from the Fed’s much-anticipated release on Monday of its Survey of Consumer Finances, a report issued every three years that is one of the broadest and deepest sources of information about the financial health of American families.

While the numbers are already 18 months old, the survey illuminates problems that continue to slow the pace of the economic recovery. The Fed found that middle-class families had sustained the largest percentage losses in both wealth and income during the crisis, limiting their ability and willingness to spend.

“It fills in details to a picture that we already knew was quite ugly, and these details very much underscore that,” said Jared Bernstein, an economist at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities who served as an adviser to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. “It makes clear how devastating this has been for the middle class.”

Given the scale of those losses, consumer spending has remained surprisingly resilient. The survey also illuminates where the money is coming from: American families saved less and only slowly repaid debts.

The share of families saving anything over the previous year fell to 52 percent in 2010 from 56.4 percent in 2007. Other government statistics show that total savings have increased since 2007, suggesting that a smaller group of families is saving more money, while a growing number manage to save nothing.

The survey also found a shift in the reasons that families set aside money, underscoring the lack of confidence that is weighing on the economy. More families said they were saving money as a precautionary measure, to make sure they had enough liquidity to meet short-term needs. Fewer said they were saving for retirement, or for education, or for a down payment on a home.

The report underscored the limited progress that households had made in reducing the amounts that they owed to lenders. The share of households reporting any debt declined by 2.1 percentage points over the last three years, but 74.9 percent of households still owed something, and the median amount did not change.

The decline in reported incomes could have increased the weight of those debts, tying up a larger share of families’ take-home pay. But one of the rare benefits of the crisis, historically lower interest rates, has helped to offset that effect. Families also have been able to reduce debt payments by refinancing into mortgages with longer terms and deferring repayment of student loans and other obligations.

The survey also confirmed that Americans are shifting the kinds of debts they carry. The share of families with credit card debt declined by 6.7 percentage points to 39.4 percent, and the median balance fell 16.1 percent to $2,600.

Families also reduced the number of credit cards that they carried, and 32 percent of families said they had no cards, up from 27 percent in 2007.

Conversely, the share of families with education-related debt rose to 19.2 percent in 2010 from 15.2 percent in 2007. The Fed noted that education loans made up a larger share of the average family’s obligations than loans to buy automobiles for the first time in the history of the survey.

The cumulative statistics concealed large disparities in the impact of the crisis.

Families with incomes in the middle 60 percent of the population lost a larger share of their wealth over the three-year period than the wealthiest and poorest families.

One basic reason for this disproportion is that the wealth of the middle class is mostly in housing, and the median amount of home equity dropped to $75,000 in 2010 from $110,000 in 2007. And while other forms of wealth have recovered much of the value lost in the crisis, housing prices have hardly budged.

Those middle-income families also lost a larger share of their income. The earnings of the median family in the bottom 20 percent of the income distribution actually increased from 2007 to 2010, in part because of the expansion of government aid programs during therecession. Wealthier families, which derive more income from investments, were also cushioned against the recession.

The data does provide the latest indication, however, that the recession reduced income inequality in the United States, at least temporarily. The average income of the wealthiest families fell much more sharply than the median, indicating that some of those at the very top of the ladder slipped down at least a few rungs.

Ranking American families by income, the top 10 percent of households still earned an average of $349,000 in 2010.

The average net worth of the same families was $2.9 million
.




Source

North Korean film exposes Western propaganda



Published on May 18, 2012 by sabineprogram

'Propaganda' (95min) - Part 1
Chapters: Introduction & 'Creating Ideas & Illusions'

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Published on May 28, 2012 by sabineprogram


'Propaganda' (95min) - Part 2
Chapters: 'Fear' & 'Religion

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Darrell Issa Calls Hearing On Eric Holder's Conduct Following Fast & Furious Operation

By PETE YOST 06/11/12 02:00 PM ET

Darrell Issa


WASHINGTON — A House committee looking into a flawed gun-smuggling probe in Arizona announced Monday that it will consider holding Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress next week for failing to produce some documents the panel is seeking.

The committee has scheduled a contempt vote for June 20.

To date, the Justice Department has produced 7,600 pages of documents to the committee.

Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, says Congress needs to examine records regarding the Justice Department's conduct following public disclosures in early 2011 that hundreds of guns illicitly purchased at gun shops on the U.S. side of the border wound up in Mexico, many of them at crime scenes.

The Justice Department says many of the documents deal with open criminal investigations and prosecutions – matters relating to sensitive law enforcement activities that cannot be disclosed.

"The Justice Department is out of excuses," House Speaker John Boehner said Monday. "Congress has given Attorney General Holder more than enough time to fully cooperate with its investigation into Fast and Furious," the name of the flawed law enforcement operation.

Issa said Congress has an obligation "to investigate unanswered questions about attempts to smear whistleblowers, failures by Justice Department officials to be truthful and candid with the congressional investigation and the reasons for the significant delay in acknowledging reckless conduct in Operation Fast and Furious."

Sen. Chuck Grassley, whose investigation first turned up problems in Operation Fast and Furious, said the action by the House committee "is straightforward and necessary. Contempt is the only tool Congress has to enforce a subpoena."


Source


Sunday, June 10, 2012

Are Guillotines Next? 11 Examples That Show That Beheading Is On The Rise All Over The World

Are Guillotines Next? 11 Examples That Show That Beheading Is On The Rise All Over The World

Who ever thought that we would be talking about an epidemic of beheading early in the 21st century? Unfortunately, it appears that beheading is making a huge comeback and has become a favorite form of execution all over the world. Recently we have seen brutal beheadings in the Middle East, in Mexico, in Africa, in India and even in the United States. So what is next? Will guillotines make a comeback? This was a really difficult article to write. If you have a weak stomach you might not want to read it. I thought about not writing it, but I think it is important to expose what is really going on out there. Sometimes it is really easy to sit in our comfortable homes surrounded by people that we love and ignore the terrible evil that is happening out in our world today. Our planet is not a very nice place and tyranny is gaining more ground with each passing day. You might think that this is something that happens "on the other side of the world" and that you do not need to worry about it, but as tyranny spreads so will this kind of brutality. What would you do someday if you had a choice of either bowing down to tyranny or losing your head? What would you do someday if you were threatened with beheading if you did not renounce what you believe? You might want to think about how you would handle that type of situation. Our world is becoming a very evil place, and in the years ahead the pressure to submit to tyranny is only going to increase.

The following are 11 examples that show that beheading has become a favorite form of execution all over the world....

#1 Most people don't connect "beheadings" with North America, but the truth is that they happen very often down in Mexico in connection with the drug wars.

For example, just a few weeks ago 49 corpses without heads were found near the city of Monterrey, Mexico. It has become common practice for drug cartels to behead their enemies once they execute them.

In another shocking incident, 18 decapitated corpses were recently discovered near the city of Guadalajara, Mexico.

#2 You don't hear about it in the mainstream media, but it is quite common for Muslims that have converted to Christianity to be beheaded for their faith by gangs of vigilantes in many areas of the Middle East.

An absolutely brutal beheading that was recently shown on "Egypt Today" is getting a lot of attention. I thought about posting the video in this article, but I just couldn't. A lot of children read these articles, and children should definitely not watch this video.

I am writing about it because I think that it is important that people understand what is really going on out there.

The following is a description of what happens in the video from a recent article by Raymond Ibrahim....

A young man appears held down by masked men. His head is pulled back, with a knife to his throat. He does not struggle and appears resigned to his fate. Speaking in Arabic, the background speaker, or "narrator," chants a number of Muslim prayers and supplications, mostly condemning Christianity, which, because of the Trinity, is referred to as a polytheistic faith: "Let Allah be avenged on the polytheist apostate"; "Allah empower your religion, make it victorious against the polytheists"; "Allah, defeat the infidels at the hands of the Muslims," and "There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger."

Then, to cries of "Allahu Akbar!"— Allah is greater!"—the masked man holding the knife to the apostate's throat begins to slice away, severing the head completely after approximately one minute of graphic knife-carving, as the victim drowns in blood. Finally, the severed head is held aloft to more Islamic slogans of victory.

If you really want to watch the video, you can find it right here. YouTube has put an advisory on the video for good reason.

Once again, it is very hard to write about this, but the truth is that this kind of extreme tyranny needs to be exposed.

#3 A bizarre beheading also happened recently in India. In this case, a famous Indian actress was kidnapped and held for ransom. A recent article in the Telegraph detailed how the story played out....

Her mother paid 60,000 Rupees (£730) into her daughter’s account for her kidnappers to withdraw, but she was allegedly killed soon after. She was strangled to death, beheaded, and her body was dumped at two different sites as her killers made their way back to Mumbai. Her torso was dumped in a water tank and her head thrown out of the bus window in a bag on the road to Mumbai.

#4 Beheadings are becoming more common in Africa as well. For example, 40 men, women and children were beheaded in Nigeria recently when their village was attacked and burned to the ground.

#5 Beheadings happen in Europe as well. The following is a story from Germany that was reported in the Huffington Post on Monday....

A German man was seen atop his roof, a knife in one hand and his wife's head in the other this morning.

The unidentified 32-year-old man allegedly screamed "Allahu Akbar," which means "God is great" in Arabic, beforedecapitating his wife on the roof of his five-story apartment, according to a translation of the Berliner Morgenpost. Police described the suspect as mentally ill.

Neighbors said the man and his wife were arguing loudly before they were seen on the rooftop. The man reportedly sharpened his knife and then beheaded the victim while she was still alive.

#6 A really weird beheading took place up in Canada a while back. The following is an update on the story from CBS News....

Vince Li, the man who beheaded and cannibalized a fellow passenger on a Greyhound bus in Canada, has won the right to be allowed to leave the grounds of the mental hospital where he is being kept, a criminal review board ruled Thursday.

Does anyone else find it disturbing that he has been allowed to mix with the general public again so quickly?

#7 In Pakistan, beheadings are often done on enemies that are especially hated. The following example comes from a recent Fox News article....

Taliban fighters killed 14 Pakistani soldiers in a key militant sanctuary along the Afghan border, beheaded all but one of them and hung two of the heads from wooden poles in the center of town, officials said Monday.

#8 In Somalia, if you choose to become a Christian you might pay for it with your life. The following is how Open Doors described what happened to one young man who had turned to Christianity....

Juma Nuradin Kamil, a Christian convert from Islam, was kidnapped and later, on Sept 2, found decapitated on the outskirts of Hudur City in Bakool region, in southwestern Somalia. According to Compass News, a source in Mogadishu with ties to Somalia’s underground church, confirmed the murder of Kamil.

On Aug 21 Kamil was forced into a car by three suspected Islamic extremists from the al Shabaab terrorist group. Members of his community thoroughly combed the area looking for him. And finally, on Sept. 2, at 2 pm, Kamil’s body was found, dumped on a street. The kidnapping and subsequent manner of murder suggests that al Shabaab militants had been monitoring him, Christian leaders said.

#9 Even the presence of U.S. military forces in Afghanistan does not prevent local Christians from being abducted and beheaded. The following is how one magazine described the beheading of one Afghan man....

A video released in recent weeks, and made available to WORLD this week by two separate Afghan sources, shows four Afghan militants beheading a man believed to be a Christian in Herat Province.

The militants, who claim to be Taliban, captured the victim, a man in his 40s named Abdul Latif (according to Obaid Christ, who provided translation of the video), earlier this year from his village outside Enjeel, a town south of Herat.

In the two-minute video, the men, wearing explosive belts (or suicide vests) and kaffiya head scarves to cover their faces, recite verses from the Quran while forcing Latif to the ground and pinning him with their feet. “You who are joined with pagans . . . your sentence [is] to be beheaded,” read one of the militants in Farsi from what looked like a paper decree. “Whoever changes his religion should be executed.” The passages refer to Sura 8:12 (“I will instill terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers: smite ye above their necks . . .”) and the hadiths, or sayings of Mohammed.

As Latif fought his captors from the ground, one of the militants thrust a medium-sized blade into the side of his neck. With blood flowing onto the ground the militants shouted “Allahu Akhbar” or “God is great” over and over until Latif was fully beheaded and his head was placed on top of his chest.

#10 In Thailand, Islamic extremists slaughtered an entire family and beheaded a 9 year old boy because they would not submit to tyranny. Once again, please be very careful if you go to watch that video because it is extremely graphic.

#11 Beheadings even happen in the United States. Police say that a woman down in San Antonio recently beheaded her infant son and ate some of his body parts....

San Antonio police say a woman accused of beheading her 3-week-old infant son used a knife and two swords in the attack and ate some of the child's body parts.

San Antonio Police Chief William McManus told reporters Monday that Otty Sanchez's attack on her son, Scott Wesley Buchholtz-Sanchez, was "too heinous" to fully discuss.

But he says Sanchez ate part of the newborn's brain and bit off three of his toes before stabbing herself twice.

The goal of these examples is not to gross everyone out.

Rather, the goal is to get everyone to realize that large numbers of people are being brutally slaughtered all over the globe. Very often, they are being slaughtered because of what they believe.

And another goal of this article is to also get everyone thinking about what they would do in a similar situation.

If you were faced with either renouncing what you believe or losing your head, what would you choose?

Is what you believe worth dying for?

You won't hear about it much in the mainstream media, but the truth is that every single day large numbers of people are being brutally killed for what they believe all over the world.

Someday you may be forced to make a similar choice.

I hope that you are ready when that day arrives.



Source

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Saturday, June 09, 2012

The Jesuit Order &The Counter Reformation (Full Length)




Uploaded by kytekutter2 on Jan 15, 2012

Learn the history of the Roman Catholic Church and their militia the Jesuit Order not taught in school


[Please forgive the narrator's strange pronunciation; besides that minor issue everything else is important information.]



Behind the Door by James Arrabito



Behind the Door by James Arrabito - Jesuit infiltration of Christianity -HQ 480p


‘UFO’ over Middle East reportedly a Russian missile test


A mysterious light seen over several countries in the Middle East on Thursday night has been confirmed by multiple sources as a Russian intercontinental ballistic missile test. There had been speculation that the strange sight, which was seen over countries in the region including Syria, Israel and Iran, might have been some sort of unidentified aircraft.

The object was first seen when journalist Rob Stevens posted an image to his Twitter account. Stevens wrote, "Just Seen a strange UFO over Fheis. It hovered, and then made a swirl and disappeared."

Ynet News reports that the missile test resulted in hundreds of calls to Israeli police stations. The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed that the missile test originated in the Astrakhan region in central Russia and was spotted in several other countries along the way, including Armenia, Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.

"It most likely spun out of control and its remnants and the fuel was what people saw," Israeli Astronomical Association Chairman Dr. Yigal Pat-El told Ynet News. "It reached a height of 200-300 kilometers and that's why it was seen from so many locations."

The Jerusalem Post Yaakov Lappin also confirmed the test, tweeting: "Mysterious light explained. Russia announces it carried out successful inter-continental ballistic missile test."

You can view several other videos of the missile sighting taken from Syria and one allegedly shot in Iran.

Video game players may appreciate the observation of one particular YouTube commenter, who said of the video Alan Wake: "IN SPACE!_ Great flashlight."


Source


Friday, June 08, 2012

Why is Spacex Capsule a Dragon? And other synchronicity...

Why was the Spacex Space-Capsule named DRAGON?

It's has been an event filled week with several natural occurrences and planned activities taking place one after the other... It was a phenomenal and even historic week.

The SpaceX capsule arrived by barge at the Port of Los Angeles on Tuesday (6/5/12). The unmanned supply ship splashed into the Pacific, west of Baja California, last Thursday (5/31/12) following an unprecedented trip to the International Space Station.

...

SpaceX Dragon capsule back on solid ground after splashing into Pacific to end historic flight

























The so-called Strawberry Moon, based on Native American folklore, will pass behind the Earth on Monday, June 4th in what should be a very interesting partial lunar eclipse to observe. In addition, this full Moon will be the first lunar eclipse of 2012.

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...this past Tuesday's (6/5/12) transit of Venus is now history. Only eight times since the invention of the telescope in the early 17th century has Venus crossed the sun as seen from Earth, and since the first of these (in 1631) was missed, humans have thus only witnessed this type of event seven times in all of recorded history. Anyone who witnessed Tuesday's transit will almost certainly never witness another one, since the next one is over a century away, on Dec. 11, 2117.

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On Wednesday 6/6/12:




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Let me ask again: Why was the Spacex Space-Capsule named DRAGON?

One reason maybe to pay tribute to the Dragon a.k.a. (The prince of this world - John 14:3; the god of this world - 2 Cor. 4:3-4; the prince of the power of the air - Ephesians 2:2.)

Or perhaps, this may be partially why?

2012: Year of the Dragon -- Overview


Arsenio


Finally:

And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.
And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
- - Revelation 13:7,8.


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Thursday, June 07, 2012

Philadelphia trial revives Catholic church sex-abuse crisis

By Cathy Lynn Grossman, USA TODAY
Updated 46m ago

However they rule, the case carries symbolic freight far heavier than the grim details in the trial of Monsignor William Lynn, former secretary for the clergy in the archdiocese. It revives the breadth and depth of the abuse crisis, its extraordinary costs and unending frustrations.

Lynn's trial brings the ugly mess to mind "like it was yesterday," said Mary Jane Doerr, associate director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Office of Child and Youth Protection. "It's still shocking, the degree of damage a handful of priests have done. When will the numbers ever stop?"

The statistics are staggering:

•More than 6,100 accused priests since 1950, Doerr said. She draws the number from two reports: a 2011 analysis by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the latest annual report by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), which tracks U.S. Catholic statistics.

•More than 16,000 victims, chiefly teenage boys, since 1950. However, "since there is no national data base tracking clergy abuse, we may never really know how many victims there are across all the dioceses and across time," said Mary Gautier, senior researcher for CARA.

AP file photo

Former priest John Geoghan, left, is shown at his sex abuse trial in 2002.

•$2.5 billion in settlements and therapy bills for victims, attorneys fees, and costs to care for priests pulled out of ministry from 2004 to 2011, according to the CARA report released in April.

The Lynn trial brings up all the worst aspects of a scandal rooted decades before, when victims were ignored — or blamed — and accused priests were quietly shuffled to unsuspecting parishes across town or across the country.

During Lynn's 10-week trial on charges of child endangerment and conspiracy, prosecutors dialed back to 1994. That's when Lynn said he compiled a list of 35 then-active priests who had been either convicted or accused of sexual abuse of minors. But he buried the list after his boss, the late Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, a fierce traditionalist and canon lawyer, ordered it destroyed. Nothing was done and the priests remained in their posts.

If convicted, Lynn, 61, could face a sentence of 10 to 21 years.

The defense calls Lynn an obliging minor player, without the power to remove priests, who was cowed into silence by Bevilacqua.

It was a time when "there were no heroes," said political scientist Thomas Reese, a Jesuit priest and senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University.

"No one said to his bishop. 'No, you can't transfer this priest to another parish. If you do that, I resign. Get yourself another priest personnel director,' " Reese said.

2003 AP file photo

Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua died days before damning evidence was found at the Philadelphia archdiocese he led, and weeks before his top aide went on trial on child-endangerment charges.

In 1992, seven years after a multimillion dollar settlement in an Louisiana abuse case, the bishops issued voluntary guidelines for dealing with allegations of abuse. "Some bishops 'got it' faster than others. Some never did," Reese said.

The most glaring example of the latter was then-Archbishop of Boston Cardinal Bernard Law, who made Boston the epicenter of the scandal.

In January 2002, the Boston Globe began its coverage of defrocked priest John Geoghan, a serial abuser of 138 children who was on trial for molesting a 10-year-old boy. (Geoghan, who was convicted, was murdered in prison in 2003 by a fellow inmate.)

The Globe used his case to launch a large investigation into clergy sex-abuse cases and invited victims to come forward. Reaction was volcanic.

Within months of the Globe series, victims by the thousands were revealed in city after city.

The overwhelming majority of bishops who served between 1950 and 2002 have died or retired.

There's only Lynn, "a yes man at the bottom of the totem pole, left holding the bag for the church's collective sins," said Ralph Cipriano, a former Philadelphia Inquirer reporter and a critic of the archdiocese who is blogging the trial daily.

The monsignor testified he believed that the will of God works through the bishop in dealing with priests, according to Cipriano.

David Clohessy, executive director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), called Lynn's trial "one of the most significant and promising developments in the past decade … I just have to believe it has caused some number of chancery officials to tell their bishops, 'I won't lie for you any more.' " If not, Clohessy said, "we'll be having this same talk 20 years from now."

University of Santa Clara psychology professor Thomas Plante, who serves on the National Review Board, has co-authored a collection of essays on lessons learned — and goals still unmet — since 2002.

The Lynn trial, Plante said, "is enough to make even the most devout, daily-Mass-attending Catholics out there, throw up their hands and say, 'Why can't these guys get their act together?' "


Source