Thursday, February 28, 2013

Death for Preaching Christ in ‘Liberated’ Libya



February 22, 2013 By Raymond Ibrahim

Four foreign Christians—including one who holds American-Swedish citizenship—were arrested days ago in Libya. According to the Guardian, their crime is arousing “suspicion of being missionaries and distributing Christian literature, a charge that could carry the death penalty.”

Apparently the four Christians had “contracted a local printer to produce pamphlets explaining Christianity.” Proselytizing to Muslims—that is, preaching to them another religion—was banned even under the late Col. Muammar Gaddafi.


Libyans—strongly supported by U.S. President Obama in the name of “freedom”—got rid of Gaddafi but kept the distinctly anti-freedom law.

Discussing this case, Libyan security official Hussein Bin Hmeid, trying to justify the Islamic ban on free speech, observes: “Proselytizing is forbidden in Libya. We are a 100% Muslim country and this kind of action affects our national security.” Indeed, Muslim governments—most notably Iran’s—constantly suppress any talk of Christianity, claiming it threatens “our national security.” Such is the tribal mentality of Islam which everywhere declares: If you’re not one of us, you must be an enemy trying to subvert our way of life.

Is the flipside of this prevalent mentality also true—that if Muslims are not one of us, they must be trying to subvert our way of life?

Nor should the arrested Christians expect much sympathy from more “moderate” Libyans. According to Benghazi lawyer and “human rights activist” Bilal Bettamer, Christians should not offend Muslims by trying to share their faith: “It is disrespectful. If we had Christianity we could have dialogue, but you can’t just spread Christianity. The maximum penalty is the death penalty. It’s a dangerous thing to do.”

Indeed, like “blasphemy”—whether in the guise of Muhammad cartoons or movies—proselytizing to Muslims is one of the many forms of free speech to be specifically banned by Islamic Sharia. According to Muslim tradition, this ban goes back to the second “righteous” caliph, the 7th century Omar. After conquering a group of Christians, he stipulated any number of humiliating conditions for them to live by, including:

Not to produce a cross or [Christian] book in the markets of the Muslims….

Not to display any signs of polytheism, nor make our religion appealing, nor call or proselytize anyone to it.

As Muslims continue turning to Islam—all to Western praise and encouragement—expect the things of Islam to continue returning in big ways.


The Guardian report adds: “Libya, a conservative Muslim country, has no known Christian minority, and churches, the preserve of foreign residents, have seen few of the attacks seen in Egypt and Tunisia, where there have been church burnings.”

The Guardian reporter may have wanted to point out that, less than two months ago, on Sunday, December 30, an explosion rocked a Coptic Christian church near the western city of Misrata, in the very place where U.S. backed rebels hold a major checkpoint. The explosion killed two people and wounded two others.

And even though it is true that there are few church attacks in Libya, that is simply because there are few churches to attack in the first place—not because of some Libyan “tolerance” to churches. After all, one never hears of church attacks in Saudi Arabia. Yet that is not because Saudis are “tolerant,” but rather because they have nipped the church problem in the bud by not allowing a single church to exist on Saudi soil. Hence, no churches for Muslim mobs to attack, bomb or burn. Conversely, where there is a large Christian population, such as in Nigeria, which is roughly half Christian, Muslims are bombing churches on practically a weekly basis.

Finally, there is the rewriting of history that is foisted by Muslims everywhere, not to mention ignorant Westerners, as exemplified in this report. All of those quoted—including the writer—seem to think that Libya was born a Muslim country. Hence, in the words of Libyan “human rights” activist Bilal Bettamer, “you can’t just spread Christianity.”

What, then, do we do with real history? The fact is, although Libya is today practically entirely Muslim, it certainly wasn’t always so. In fact, before the 7thcentury Islamic invasions, Libya was predominantly Christian. The fact that Libya’s immediate neighbors to the west and east, Algeria and Egypt, were backbones of early Christianity—giving the world giants of theology like St. Augustine and St. Athanasius, to name but a few—certainly suggests that Libya was mostly a Christian nation, excluding some Berber tribes.

Yet Islam came and killed and converted them all to itself. And now, to keep them in line, it will kill any who try to proclaim a different message, especially the message of their conquered forefathers.


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Wednesday, February 27, 2013

'Behind The Scenes' At The Vatican: The Politics Of Picking A New Pope

Viking/Penguin Group
In his new book, The Vatican Diaries, John Thavis draws on his nearly 30 years of reporting on the Vatican.


John Thavis covered the Vatican from Rome for nearly 30 years while working for the Catholic News Service. In his new book, The Vatican Diaries, he describes a place much less organized and hierarchical than the public imagines.



Coming Up: Vatican correspondent John Thavis on Pope Benedict XVI's resignation, and his new book The Vatican Diaries, Wednesday on NPR's Fresh Air.


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Saudi Arabia Continues Crackdown on Private Christian Worship

Monday, 25 February 2013 17:33


Written by Dave Bohon







Officials in Saudi Arabia are notorious for their intolerance of outsiders observing the Christian faith within Saudi borders, and on February 8 the country's religious police re-enforced that reputation when they arrested 53 Ethiopian Christians involved in a private prayer service in the Saudi city of Dammam, shutting down the service and hauling the believers off to jail.

According to the World Evangelism Alliance, a total of 46 women and six men were arrested in the raid, and three of the Christians, identified as leaders of the private house church, were charged with trying to convert Muslims to the Christian faith.

In December 2011, the Saudi religious police, known as the mutaween, arrested 35 Ethiopian Christians, 29 of them women, on charges of “illicit mingling” after the authorities raided a private prayer meeting in Jeddah. According to Human Rights Watch, some of the Christians were tortured, and the women were subjected to arbitrary body cavity searches.

In September 2012, a Saudi Arabian girl who converted to Christianity fled to Dammam, a Saudi center for petroleum and natural gas production and a major seaport. The girl was eventually granted asylum in Sweden last month, according to Dammam's Al-Yaum newspaper.

In its 2012 annual report, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) noted that Saudi Arabia continues to oppress non-Muslim religious observers, with Christians taking a big share of the abuse. “The Saudi government persists in banning all forms of public religious expression other than that of the government's own interpretation of one school of Sunni Islam,” said the report. It also “prohibits churches, synagogues, temples, and other non-Muslim places of worship; uses in its schools and posts online state textbooks that continue to espouse intolerance and incite violence; and periodically interferes with private religious practice.”

The strict form of Sunni Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia is Wahhabism, which has been tied to many of the most notorious acts of terrorism across the Earth. Nineteen of the terrorists tied to the deadly 9/11 attacks in the United States were Wahhabi Muslims from Saudi Arabia.

Said the USCIRF report: “More than 10 years since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, the Saudi government has failed to implement a number of promised reforms related to promoting freedom of thought, conscience, and religion or belief.”

The report called Saudi Arabia a “country of particular concern” for its crackdown on religious freedom, linking it with such oppressive regimes as Iran, North Korea, China, and Sudan.

Dwight Bashir, the USCIRF's deputy director for policy, said that the crackdowns by the mutaween are coming even as the Saudi government does lip service to religious freedom. “During an official USCIRF visit to the Kingdom earlier this month,” recalled Bashir, “Saudi officials reiterated the government's long-standing policy that members of the Commission to Promote Virtue and Prevent Vice, also known as the religious police, should not interfere in private worship.” Nonetheless, Bashir reported, “the past year has seen an uptick of reports that private religious gatherings have been raided, resulting in arrests, harassment, and deportations of foreign expatriate workers.”

Bashir recommended that “the U.S. government and international community should demand that any expatriate worker detained and held without charge for private religious activity in the Kingdom be released immediately.”

Nina Shea, director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, told FoxNews.com that the latest arrests are part of Saudi Arabia's overall policy “to ban non-Muslim houses of worship and actually hunt down Christians in private homes.” Shea said that the nearly total silence on the part of the U.S. government over Saudi religious oppression has much to do with the strategic partnership between the two nations, charging that pressuring the Islamic government to change its behavior “has taken a backseat to oil and the war on terror. The Saudis are playing a double game — cooperating with the war on terror and working against the war on terror campaign.”

At least one U.S. lawmaker has sounded off on the behavior of the American ally. “Nations that wish to be a part of the responsible nations of the world must see the protection of religious freedom and the principles of reason as an essential part of the duty of the state,” said Representative Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.), who is a member of the the Caucus on Religious Minorities in the Middle East.

World Evangelism Alliance director Godfrey Yogarajah said his group is monitoring the situation in the Middle Eastern country closely, and called on Saudi officials to treat the latest detained Christians “with dignity and release them immediately as there is apparently no evidence for any offense against them. Arrest of believers for peacefully gathering for worship goes against the spirit of Saudi Arabia's promotion of inter-religious dialogue in international fora.”


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Google Extends Social Web Reach to Counter Facebook's Rise


Tuesday, 26 Feb 2013 02:47 PM


Google Inc transformed the Internet by cataloging the Web's countless pages. Now it wants to keep better track of the Web's multitude of users.

The Mountain View, California-based company said Tuesday it would begin encouraging websites and mobile apps to accept log-in credentials via Google+, its social network.

The integration with third-party sites and apps, which Google hopes will help it track users as they surf across the Internet, represents the search powerhouse's latest effort to establish a foothold in the all-important social Web arena, and beat back competition from Facebook Inc, the sector leader.

Sites that have so far agreed to accept Google's social sign-in include The Guardian and USA Today's websites, as well as Fancy, the shopping site, and Fitbit, the personal fitness-tracking service and app, Google said in a blog post Tuesday.

Since 2008, Facebook has been able to gather massive troves of information about its users' activities even if they are not on Facebook because many popular apps, such as Spotify's music streaming service, allow users to log in with their Facebook identity, which results in data funneled back to the social network.

In response to Facebook's rise, Google has made its social Web efforts a top priority in recent years. But results have been mixed under the leadership of Chief Executive Larry Page and Vic Gundotra, the influential senior vice president spearheading Google's social networking efforts.

Launched in 2011, Google+ still lags far behind Facebook: it had 100 million monthly active users in December, according to comScore, compared to well over 1 billion for Facebook. But Google officials have downplayed the lukewarm public reception, saying they view Google+ more as an invisible data "backbone" that tracks individual users across its various properties, and less as a consumer Internet destination.

Over the past year the company has made changes to the log-in process at its YouTube subsidiary, for instance, in order to nudge the video site's 800 million users to sign in and leave comments with their Google+ accounts rather than anonymous handles.

Dr. Ben Carson - On Point withTom Ashbrook



February 26, 2013 at 10:00 AM

Dr. Ben Carson

We’re talking to neurosurgeon, Obama health care critic and new darling of the American conservative movement, Dr. Ben Carson.



Dr. Ben Carson (carsonscholars.org)

Dr. Ben Carson is accomplished, conservative, and black. This month he stood up at the National Prayer Breakfast, one seat away from the President, and laid down a big political critique of the Age of Obama.

On taxes, on health care, on political correctness. Time for self-reliance, he said. Within twenty-four hours, the Wall Street Journal headlined its editorial “Ben Carson for President.”

Conservative media threw their arms around the big doctor. He’s still on a roll.

This hour, On Point: Dr. Ben Carson, conservative man of the moment, on America now.

-Tom Ashbrook
Guests

Dr. Benjamin Carson, neurosurgeon and the Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2008. (@realbencarson)


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Sergeant Hagel Secretary of Defense

U.S. Army G.I. Chuck Hagel  circa 1967
Photo (Courtesy: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/chuck-hagel-meet-obamas-top-defense-secretary-candidate/story?id=18151089)



Senate Confirms Hagel

It's official Senator Chuck Hagel is the new Secretary of Defense after an arduous process. This will be the first time in history that an enlisted man fills the top post at the Pentagon. 


Just who is Chuck Hagel?


Secretary of Defense: Who Is Chuck Hagel?

Born October 4, 1946, in North Platte, Nebraska, the son of Betty (née Dunn) and Charles Dean Hagel, he had three brothers, Thomas, Mike, and Jim, until Jim was killed in a car accident at the age of 16. .Chuck Hagel graduated from St. Bonaventure High School (now Scotus Central Catholic High School) in Columbus, Nebraska, in 1964, and the Brown Institute for Radio and Television in 1966. After a stint in the Army, Hagel earned a BA in History at the University of Nebraska at Omaha in 1971.

Read more

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Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Babylon is fallen


And there followed another angel, saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.

Revelation 14:8



And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.

Revelation 18:2

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Benedict XVI to Become 'Pope Emeritus'


Benedict XVI to Become 'Emeritus Pope'


Published February 26, 2013

Fox News Latino




An artist dressed as an angel poses for tourists in front of a huge Pope Benedict XVI poster in Cologne, Germany, on Tuesday, Feb.26,2013. The words on top read:'Thanks'. Pope Benedict XVI will resign on February 28th. The poster is used as advertisement for radio channel 'domradio'. .(AP Photo/Frank Augstein) (AP2013)


They both will wear white. They both will be known as pope. They both will be causing an unholy number of double takes.

Pope Benedict XVI will be known as "emeritus pope" in his retirement and will continue to wear a white cassock, the Vatican announced Tuesday, again fueling concerns about potential conflicts arising from having both a reigning and a retired pope.

The pope's title and what he would wear have been a major source of speculation ever since Benedict stunned the world and announced he would resign on Thursday, the first pontiff to do so in 600 years.

The Vatican spokesman, Rev. Federico Lombardi, said Benedict himself had made the decision in consultation with others, settling on "Your Holiness Benedict XVI" and either emeritus pope or emeritus Roman pontiff.

Lombardi said he didn't know why Benedict had decided to drop his other main title: bishop of Rome.

In the two weeks since Benedict's resignation announcement, Vatican officials had suggested that Benedict would likely resume wearing the traditional black garb of a cleric and would use the title "emeritus bishop of Rome" so as to not create confusion with the future pope.

Benedict's decision to call himself emeritus pope and to keep wearing white is sure to fan concern voiced privately by some cardinals about the awkward reality of having two popes, both living within the Vatican walls.

Adding to the concern is that Benedict's trusted secretary, Monsignor Georg Gaenswein, will be serving both pontiffs — living with Benedict at the monastery inside the Vatican and keeping his day job as prefect of the new pope's household.

Asked about the potential conflicts, Lombardi was defensive, saying the decisions had been clearly reasoned and were likely chosen for the sake of simplicity.

"I believe it was well thought out," he said.

Benedict himself has made clear he is retiring to a lifetime of prayer and meditation "hidden from the world." However, he still will be very present in the tiny Vatican city-state, where his new home is right next door to the Vatican Radio and has a lovely view of the dome of St. Peter's Basilica.

While he will no longer wear his trademark red shoes, Benedict has taken a liking to a pair of hand-crafted brown loafers made for him by artisans in Leon, Mexico, and given to him during his 2012 visit. He will wear those in retirement, Lombardi said.

Lombardi also elaborated on the College of Cardinals meetings that will take place after the papacy becomes vacant — crucial gatherings in which cardinals will discuss the problems facing the church and set a date for the start of the conclave to elect Benedict's successor.

The first meeting isn't now expected until Monday, Lombardi said, since the official convocation to cardinals to come to Rome will only go out on Friday — the first day of what's known as the "sede vacante," or the vacancy between papacies.

In all, 115 cardinals under the age of 80 are expected in Rome for the conclave to vote on who should become the next pope; two other eligible cardinals have already said they are not coming, one from Britain and another from Indonesia. Cardinals who are 80 and older can join the College meetings but won't participate in the conclave or vote.

Benedict on Monday gave the cardinals the go-ahead to move up the start date of the conclave — tossing out the traditional 15-day waiting period. But the cardinals won't actually set a date for the conclave until they begin meeting officially Monday.

Lombardi also further described Benedict's final 48 hours as pope: On Tuesday, he was packing, arranging for documents to be sent to the various archives at the Vatican and separating out the personal papers he will take with him into retirement.

On Wednesday, Benedict will hold his final public general audience in St. Peter's Square — an event that has already seen 50,000 ticket requests. He won't greet visiting prelates or VIPs as he normally does at the end but will greet some visiting leaders — from Slovakia, San Marino, Andorra and his native Bavaria — privately afterwards.

On Thursday, the pope meets with his cardinals in the morning and then flies by helicopter at 5 p.m. to Castel Gandolfo, the papal residence south of Rome. He will greet parishioners there from the palazzo's loggia (balcony) — his final public act as pope.

And at 8 p.m., the exact time at which his retirement becomes official, the Swiss Guards standing outside the doors of the palazzo at Castel Gandolfo will go off duty, their service protecting the head of the Catholic Church now finished.

Benedict's personal security will be assured by Vatican police, Lombardi said.

Based on reporting by The Associated Press.

“The Myth of Persecution”: Early Christians weren’t persecuted

SUNDAY, FEB 24, 2013 04:00 PM EST

The Romans did not target, hunt or massacre Jesus' followers, says a historian of the early church

BY LAURA MILLER




In the immediate aftermath of the Columbine High School massacre, a modern myth was born. A story went around that one of the two killers asked one of the victims, Cassie Bernall, if she believed in God. Bernall reportedly said “Yes” just before he shot her. Bernall’s mother wrote a memoir, titled “She Said Yes: The Unlikely Martyrdom of Cassie Bernall,” a tribute to her daughter’s courageous Christian faith. Then, just as the book was being published, a student who was hiding near Bernall told journalist Dave Cullen that the exchange never happened.

Although Candida Moss’ new book, “The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom,” is about the three centuries following the death of Jesus, she makes a point of citing this modern-day parallel. What Bernall truly said and did in the moments before her death absolutely matters, Moss asserts, if we are going to hold her up as a “martyr.” Yet misconceptions and misrepresentations can creep in so soon. The public can get the story wrong even in this highly mediated and thoroughly reported age — and do so despite the presence among us of living eyewitnesses. So what, then, to make of the third-hand, heavily revised, agenda-laden and anachronistic accounts of Christianity’s original martyrs?

Moss, professor of New Testament and early Christianity at the University of Notre Dame, challenges some of the most hallowed legends of the religion when she questions what she calls “the Sunday school narrative of a church of martyrs, of Christians huddled in catacombs out of fear, meeting in secret to avoid arrest and mercilessly thrown to lions merely for their religious beliefs.” None of that, she maintains, is true. In the 300 years between the death of Jesus and the conversion of the Emperor Constantine, there were maybe 10 or 12 scattered years during which Christians were singled out for supression by Rome’s imperial authorities, and even then the enforcement of such initiatives was haphazard — lackadaisical in many regions, although harsh in others. “Christians were never,” Moss writes, “the victims of sustained, targeted persecution.”


Much of the middle section of “The Myth of Persecution” is taken up with a close reading of the six “so-called authentic accounts” of the church’s first martyrs. They include Polycarp, a bishop in Smyrna during the second century who was burned at the stake, and Saint Perpetua, a well-born young mother executed in the arena at Carthage with her slave, Felicity, at the beginning of the third century. Moss carefully points out the inconsistencies between these tales and what we know about Roman society, the digs at heresies that didn’t even exist when the martyrs were killed and the references to martyrdom traditions that had yet to be established. There’s surely some kernel of truth to these stories, she explains, as well as to the first substantive history of the church written in 311 by a Palestinian named Eusebius. It’s just that it’s impossible to sort the truth from the colorful inventions, the ax-grinding and the attempts to reinforce the orthodoxies of a later age.

Moss also examines surviving Roman records. She notes that during the only concerted anti-Christian Roman campaign, under the emperor Diocletian between 303 and 306, Christians were expelled from public offices. Their churches, such as the one in Nicomedia, across the street from the imperial palace, were destroyed. Yet, as Moss points out, if the Christians were holding high offices in the first place and had built their church “in the emperor’s own front yard,” they could hardly have been in hiding away in catacombs before Diocletian issued his edicts against them.

This is not to deny that some Christians were executed in horrible ways under conditions we’d consider grotesquely unjust. But it’s important, Moss explains, to distinguish between “persecution” and “prosecution.” The Romans had no desire to support a prison population, so capital punishment was common for many seemingly minor offenses; you could be sentenced to be beaten to death for writing a slanderous song. Moss distinguishes between those cases in which Christians were prosecuted simply for being Christians and those in which they were condemned for engaging in what the Romans considered subversive or treasonous activity. Given the “everyday ideals and social structures” the Romans regarded as essential to the empire, such transgressions might include publicly denying the divine status of the emperor, rejecting military service or refusing to accept the authority of a court. In one of her most fascinating chapters, Moss tries to explain how baffling and annoying the Romans (for whom “pacifism didn’t exist as a concept”) found the Christians — when the Romans thought about them at all.

Christians wound up in Roman courts for any number of reasons, but when they got there, they were prone to announcing, as a believer named Liberian once did, “that he cannot be respectful to the emperor, that he can be respectful only to Christ.” Moss compares this to “modern defendants who say that they will not recognize the authority of the court or of the government, but recognize only the authority of God. For modern Americans, as for ancient Romans, this sounds either sinister or vaguely insane.” It didn’t help that early Christians developed a passion for martyrdom. Suffering demonstrated both the piety of the martyr and the authenticity of the religion itself, and besides, it earned you an immediate, first-class seat in heaven. (Ordinary Christians had to wait for Judgment Day.) There were reports of fanatics deliberately seeking out the opportunity to die for their faith, including a mob that turned up at the door of a Roman official in Asia Minor, demanding to be martyred, only to be turned away when he couldn’t be bothered to oblige them.

Moss cannot be called a natural or fluent writer, but she is thorough, strives for clarity and is genuinely fired up in her concern for the influence of the myth of martyrdom on Western societies. “The idea of the persecuted church is almost entirely the invention of the 4th century and later,” she writes. This was, significantly, a period during which the church had become “politically secure,” thanks to Constantine. Yet, instead of providing a truthful account of Christianity’s early years, the scholars and clerics of the fourth century cranked out tales of horrific, systemic violence. These stories were subtly (and not so subtly) used as propaganda against heretical ideas or sects. They also made appealingly gruesome entertainment for believers who were, personally, fairly safe; Moss likens this to contemporary suburbanites reveling in a horror film.

Today, polemicists continue to use the deeply ingrained belief in a persecuted — and therefore morally righteous — church as a political club to demonize their opponents. Moss sees a direct link between the valorization of martyrs and preposterous right-wing rhetoric about the “war on Christianity.” It’s a tactic that makes compromise impossible. “You cannot collaborate with someone who is persecuting you,” Moss astutely points out. “You have to defend yourself.”

Where she is less shrewd is in her belief that by exposing the “false history of persecution,” we can somehow purge this paranoid approach to political differences. One of the most enlightening aspects of “The Myth of Persecution” is Moss’ ability to find contemporary analogies that make the ancient world more intelligible to the average reader, such as the Cassie Bernall story. But that story has an additional lesson to offer, about the true believer’s imperviousness to unpalatable facts. Bernall’s family and church are unmoved by the schoolmates who were present at the shooting and who have debunked the “She said yes” legend. “You can say it didn’t happen that way,” the Bernalls’ pastor told one reporter, “but the church won’t accept it. To the church, Cassie will always say yes, period.”


Laura Miller

Laura Miller is a senior writer for Salon. She is the author of "The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia" and has a Web site, magiciansbook.com.


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Pope Benedict leaves amid a holy mess at the Vatican




Eric J. Lyman and Cathy Lynn Grossman, USA TODAY12:20a.m. EST February 26, 2013

Blunders, scandals and mismanagement are said to plague the Vatican, leaving the Catholic Church's next pope a challenge for the ages.


(Photo: AP)

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
A Scottish cardinal, denying allegations of 'inappropriate behavior' in British media, won't attend conclave
Some observers say church needs to modernize
Others see it returning to its roots and choosing an Italian successor to Benedict



VATICAN CITY — When Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger took the name Benedict XVI upon becoming pope, it was a nod to sixth-century St. Benedict of Nursia, who had lived for several years in a cave in Italy.

As Pope Benedict prepares to end his papacy this week, his critics say the challenges he'll leave to his successor are the result of him living in a cave of his own.

STORY: Pope changes conclave rules, allows earlier start

WATCH: Pope delivers final address

Benedict's intellect and successful role as a spiritual leader for the world's 1.1 billion Catholics is not in doubt, say Vatican experts and observers. But recent blunders and the poor handling of festering scandals indicate Benedict may have been far too immersed in scholarship and theology over his nearly eight-year tenure when what the church needed was a CEO.

"There was a time when the pope was a kind of king, and then, more recently, a spiritual leader," said Alistair Sear, a church historian in Rome. "Perhaps now we will see an age of the pope first and foremost as an administrator."

Just two weeks ago, Benedict, soon to turn 86, announced that he would be the first pope in 600 years to resign. In doing so, he departs a multibillion-dollar institution with hundreds of thousands of employees and a vast global network. Yet the Vatican has struggled through public relations crises over financial ineptitude, criminal allegations, bureaucratic fumbling and age-old interdepartmental conflicts.




Pope Benedict XVI leads the Ash Wednesday service at the St. Peter's Basilica on Feb.13.(Photo: Franco Origlia, Getty Images)



Among the latest developments challenging the church, and awaiting the next pontiff:

On Monday, Scottish Cardinal Keith O'Brien said he would not attend the March conclave to elect Benedict's successor as he denied charges of "inappropriate behavior" with priests. Benedict accepted O'Brien's resignation, though the Vatican said it was because the cardinal was nearing the retirement age of 75 and not because of the allegations in the British press.

On Friday, a German financier was named the new head of the scandal-plagued Vatican Bank, nine months after former president Ettore Gotti Tedeschi was ousted by the bank's board. The bank has been under investigation for years on allegations of money laundering, and on Jan. 1 Italy's central bank said it would no longer process ATM transactions on Vatican grounds.

Last week, Italian newspaper La Repubblica said unnamed sources leaked a secret Vatican report that among other things discussed a sex ring among gay priests in Rome. The Vatican denied the claim, but the report remains confidential. The Vatican confirmed that Benedict on Monday met with three cardinals about the report, but the press office said the contents would be sealed until the next pope is named. During the meeting, Benedict acknowledged that the investigation revealed the "limitations and imperfections" introduced by the "human factor" in "every institution."

The pope recently pardoned his personal butler, who was convicted of theft of papal documents by a Vatican tribunal in October and sentenced to serve 18 months in the Vatican police barracks. Paolo Gabriele, 46, said he gave the documents to an Italian journalist because he thought Benedict wasn't being informed of the "evil and corruption" in the Vatican and wanted it exposed.

Robert Mickens, the longtime Rome correspondent for The Tablet, a United Kingdom-based Catholic newspaper, sees many of the scandals and bureaucratic flubs as indications that the church must modernize itself.

"The church as it exists today is anachronistic," he said. "It's an absolute monarchy in the 21st century, with a bureaucracy with roots that date back to the fourth or fifth century. It must be thoroughly reformed."

Not only do the matters threaten to darken Benedict's legacy, but they dramatically increase the difficulties facing his successor.

"The recent spate of problems is going to leave the next pope with the greatest challenges since the reforms of the Second Vatican Council," Mickens said, referring to the three-year process undertaken in the mid-60s to update the way the church related to the world.

Today's Catholic Church

On Thursday at twilight, Pope Benedict XVI will board a helicopter and fly off into retirement, the first pope in centuries to relinquish the position. Within days, the cardinals of the church will huddle in the Sistine Chapel to search their own ranks for a successor in what is known as a conclave.

Benedict has dropped small hints about his successor, referring to the spiritual crisis in Europe and the need for the next pontiff to be "vigorous." But Andrea Monda, an author and frequent commentator on church affairs, said it is a mistake to think cardinals will elect a successor to Benedict based on the candidate's nationality or age.

"I think they will look at the man," Monda said. "There are all these challenges and issues, but I think when the cardinals pray about who to vote for they will consider the man and whether he is right for the job and not on some external factor and whatever message that might send."

Experts are split on how the recent developments will influence the conclave, which could start between a week and three weeks after Benedict leaves the Vatican for nearby Castel Gandolfo, home to the papal summer residence.

Before Polish native John Paul II was elected, and followed by the Bavarian Benedict, the previous 45 popes dating to Adrian VI in 1522 were Italians. Some experts suggest the church would benefit from a return to its roots.

Mickens says the Italians might be better equipped to overhaul the church's administrative apparatus, known as the powerful Roman curia, which was relatively unsupervised under Benedict. Italians dominate the curia in terms of membership numbers, and its administrative style, language and decision-making process is decidedly Italian.

"The curia can reflect the best and worst aspects of Italy, and there is a belief that it could take an Italian to understand it and reform it," Mickens says.

'Venting and vetting'

Thomas Wenski, the archbishop of Miami, insists that the 2,000-year-old church is "not a fossilized relic" and that some contemporary efficiency, maybe a few MBAs on board, wouldn't hurt.

David Gibson, author of a biography of Benedict and Vatican specialist for Religion News Service, says the Vatican appears to be in chaos, and the church crumbling, "because it's a rare time when no one is in charge."

Yet Gibson says the unusual transition might just be a blessing. Normally a pope dies in office and the cardinals have a long to-do list of funeral activities and mourning before they turn to choosing a successor. Now, however, "suddenly the pope is on his way out and people are freer to say things they couldn't say before. This is a time of open liberty to talk about where the church needs to go. It's a time of venting and vetting."

"It's high season for reporting chaos," says Terrence Tilley, chairman of the theology department for Fordham University in New York. "There have always been rumors about money, power and sex in the Vatican. The question is not whether but how much. There's a lot of smoke, right now. Is there a spark? Yes. If it's a fire, is it a small campfire or a five-alarm conflagration? No one knows."

The media, especially European newspapers, have often been accused by the church of fomenting scandal where it does not exist and giving voice to anonymous church-haters or clerics with axes to grind.

The Rev. Thomas Reese, a political scientist and senior fellow with the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University, discounts the Italian media reports as no more credible than unedited blogs. "Where's the beef? Where are the facts?"

Some Catholics, however, say the weight of recent scandals is simply too much.

"I left the church today," says real estate adviser Daniela Heimbach, 36, a native of the Bavarian city of Augsburg, in Benedict's native Germany. "I can no longer support it because of all the issues. The church is not a modern institution."

Italian Catholics say they are similarly disheartened. "I want to focus on my relationship with God, but these problems keep barging in," says Anna Maria Benevento, 51, a paralegal.

Back in the USA, one Iowa Catholic, when asked about the church, said it will weather this storm as it has others.

"I don't blame the media. This is news," says Billy Shears, 57, Iowa Catholic Radio program director in Des Moines. But "this is an institution that has survived the centuries."



Contributing: Jennifer Collins in Berlin; Jose Manuel Krogstad, The Des Moines Register. Grossman reported from McLean, Va.


Source

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Jesuits Reestablished in 1814



August 7, 2009 By patmcnamara




On this day in 1814, Pope Pius VII issued the papal bull Solicitudo omnium ecclesiarum, which reestablished the Society of Jesus on a worldwide basis. Back in 1773, Pope Clement XIV, bowing to political pressure from Europe’s Catholic monarchs, dissolved the Jesuits. However, the order stayed alive in Prussia and Russia thanks to Frederick the Great and Catherine the Great, who allowed the Jesuits to operate in their boundaries. Both monarchs contended that the Jesuits provided a public service through their schools, and since they weren’t Catholic, the decree didn’t apply to them. (Seen above is Fordham’s Jesuit community in 1859.)




Source
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Monday, February 25, 2013

Hillary Clinton Is Making More Money Than Her Husband





















http://www.aol.com/video/hillary-clinton-is-making-more-money-than-her-husband-bill/517683086/?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdaily-buzz3%7Csec4_lnk2%7C275312


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Study: Plant-Based Diets With Nuts And Virgin Olive Oil Can Reduce Risk Of Heart Disease By 30%


Monday, February 25, 2013


Landmark study released at International Congress on Vegetarian Nutrition held at Loma Linda University Health.


“This study is a prime example of the type of international research being shared at this conference of 800 academics, researchers, dieticians and others dedicated to advancing research about the benefits of plant-based diets,” says Dr. Joan Sabaté.



(PRWEB) February 25, 2013



People who eat a plant-based Mediterranean diet supplemented with nuts or virgin olive oil can enjoy long-term benefits that can include a 30 percent reduction in the risk of cardiovascular disease, according to a landmark global study released today at the sixth International Congress on Vegetarian Nutrition hosted by Loma Linda University Health.

The study, to appear in the New England Journal of Medicine, involved 7,447 individuals (55-80 years old) at high risk of cardiovascular disease but with no symptoms.

The results favor two Mediterranean diets (one supplemented with nuts, the other with virgin olive oil) over a low-fat diet for beneficial effects on intermediate outcomes that include body weight, blood pressure, insulin resistance, blood lipids, lipid oxidation and systemic inflammation.

The study, called “PREDIMED” for “PREvención con Dieta MEDiterránea” (Prevention with Mediterranean Diet) began in 2003 and was completed in 2011. Participants were followed for an average of 4.8 years.

“The aim of PREDIMED was to determine whether a plant-based Mediterranean diet, supplemented with either tree nuts such as walnuts, almonds and hazelnuts or virgin olive oil, when compared to a low-fat diet, can help prevent cardiovascular diseases such as cardiovascular death, heart attack and stroke,” said Dr. Miguel Angel Martinez of the University of Navarra, Spain, a lead investigator of the study, which was released simultaneously in Loma Linda and Spain.

“What we found was that a Mediterranean diet offers a preventive efficacy that was also assessed on secondary variables, including death from all causes, and incidence of diabetes and metabolic syndrome,” added Martinez, a physician, epidemiologist and nutrition researcher.

The Mediterranean diet is a pattern of eating similar to the traditional dietary habits of people living in the countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea. This includes fresh fruits and vegetables, seafood, whole grains and nutritious fats, including walnuts and olive oil.

PREDIMED is a parallel group, multi-center, single-blind, randomized clinical trial conducted by 16 research groups in seven communities in Spain. Participants were given dietetic support and quarterly education sessions to ensure compliance. Energy intake was not specifically restricted in any intervention group. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups:

Low-fat diet (control group)
Mediterranean diet supplemented with virgin olive oil (50 ml per day); or
Mediterranean diet supplemented with 30 g mixed nuts per day (15 g walnuts, 7.5 g almonds and 7.5 g hazelnuts).



“This study is a prime example of the type of international research being shared at this conference of 800 academics, researchers, dieticians and others dedicated to advancing research about the benefits of plant-based diets,” said Dr. Joan Sabaté, chair of the International Congress on Vegetarian Nutrition and chair of the Department of Nutrition at Loma Linda University’s School of Public Health.

Sabaté served as principal investigator in a nutrition research study that directly linked the consumption of walnuts to significant reductions in serum cholesterol. His findings were published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1993.

“Twenty years ago we released a study showing the health benefits of nuts,” Sabaté said. “Now, the results of a trial, also released at Loma Linda, further demonstrate that a plant-based diet, infused with nutritious unrefined plant fats, can have long-lasting effects for heart health and a productive and a productive life.”

The Congress on Vegetarian Nutrition, held every five years, also features the release of research on such topics as the link between diet and longevity, reducing the risk of osteoporosis and how vegetarian diets can reduce weight.

For details, please visit http://www.predimed.org or http://www.walnuts.org/med-diet.
Complete information on the Congress, including abstracts of the presentations, can be found athttp://www.VegetarianNutrition.org.


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Full Moon - Two Minute Universe




 ... ...

Insect Drones That Can Hover, Stalk And Even Kill Targets





hawkwarrior7

Published on Feb 25, 2013


Learn more at http://www.prophecynewswatch.com


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2013: The Year of America’s Financial Collapse

Sina, China





By Jia Pu Jing

If Congress is unable to find a solution, the U.S. national credit rating will be compromised, which could possibly even result in a financial meltdown

Translated By Chase Coulson

5 February 2013



Edited by Kyrstie Lane
China - Sina - Original Article (Chinese)

In a recent motion to raise the short-term debt ceiling, Congress voted to allow the U.S. Treasury to continue issuing debt to maintain the federal government's operations until May 19. This marks the second time in a month that both parties of Congress have extended the time limit in which to solve the national debt crisis.

The issue of the U.S. debt ceiling has been around for a while. As early as May 2011, when the national debt was already nearing $14.3 trillion, there was serious debate about the debt ceiling crisis. From May 2011 to May 2013, the Democratic and Republican Parties have continued to quarrel over the debt problem. Why can't they be straightforward about the issue? Why can’t they either raise the debt ceiling to a very high level or simply do away with the ceiling altogether?

Because, in a nutshell, what they are arguing about is how to apply the tax collected to pay the debt owed. If Congress is unable to find a solution, the U.S. national credit rating will be compromised, which could possibly even result in a financial meltdown.

The U.S. currently issues currency through the Federal Reserve's purchase of government bonds from the Department of the Treasury. From this, the Department of the Treasury acquires U.S. dollars and then by way of a finance payment scheme takes the dollars and circulates them through the general economy. The guarantee of yields brought in by the Treasury for its purchase of bonds is future taxes. That is to say, the foundation of the U.S. dollar is U.S. government bonds, and the foundation of the government bonds is future tax revenue. To increase the money supply, the U.S. often issues more government bonds, and the issuance of government bonds implies that taxes will increase in the future.

After the eruption of the financial crisis, the Federal Reserve began two rounds of quantitative easing in an effort to buy up the toxic assets that were clogging the financial system. Approximately $2.6 trillion was spent to accomplish this end, exhausting the entirety of the bonds available to be issued at that point. So after the 2011 debt ceiling crisis began, the biggest problem the U.S. faced was this: Continuing to increase the money supply would mean increasing future taxation. But one might say that the space for tax increases is nearing its limit. So what the two parties are arguing over now is, specifically, the section of society upon which to impose new taxes.

However, of the current U.S. population of 315 million people, only 115 million are employed full time, while 127 million people currently depend on some form of welfare assistance. Yet taxes cannot be raised on all 115 million full-time workers, because the yearly income of 6.1 million of these workers falls below the $20,000 poverty line. Add to this the calculations of former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Chris Cox, which take into account future health care, Social Security and retirement expenses and show that the budget deficit will exceed $86.8 trillion. To go about repaying such a debt while relying on tax increases on 56 million individuals, how much tax would each person have to pay?

A year and a half has gone by, and the reason the U.S. has been able to make ends meet up to this point is because it has been relying on a system in which there is no additional debt issued, by selling Treasury bills (short-term government debt) to replace equal amounts of Treasury bonds (long-term government debt). But if there is no new debt in circulation, eventually all the Treasury bills will sell out, which is an unsustainable measure.

Every time the two parties force the debt ceiling upward, the decision to “temporarily and slightly raise future taxation” is made under somewhat strenuous circumstances. But at this point, additional large-scale money printing is not a possibility, because the space no longer exists to substantially increase taxes.

However, there is a double-edged sword of Damocles hanging precariously over America’s head, namely the acquisition of toxic assets from the previous two rounds of quantitative easing. For the most part, most of this bad debt is akin to collateralized debt obligation. The term limit on these kinds of derivatives contracts is usually five years. In 2008, the last time there was an explosion of toxic assets, it forced the Federal Reserve to print $1.7 trillion to rescue the market. If at some point in the coming months of 2013 the contractual expiration of these toxic assets reaches its peak and the U.S. government is powerless to print currency to rescue the market, a financial collapse will very possibly occur.



CLICK HERE FOR ORIGINAL VERSION


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Easy Sweet Potato Veggie Burgers! With Avocado.


POSTED BY KATHY ON 2/21/2012




Crave a veggie burger. One with Panko-crusted edges - infused with tender sweet potato and creamy, rustic white beans. Tall stacked on a toasted grain bun - crisp romaine leaves sprawling out the sides. Lime green avocado. Dijon. Pepper. Zesty onion.

These Sweet Potato Tahini Bean Burgers are super easy to make. Satisfy your burger craving in a flash. And while you are stacking toppings, humming happy burger-eating music, sipping lemonade, ginger ale or iced tea, crunching baked french fries, tater tots or chips - basically feasting however you like - you can laugh at anyone who thinks a "real" burger can't be vegan.









Valentine's Day came and went just as it usually does. A nice meal, warm fuzzy feelings, flowers and chocolate. For our VDay meal we dined out at Real Food Daily in Santa Monica. They had a special menu that I simply couldn't pass up. Everything was delish. But the highlight of the meal for me: plump little balls of "goat cheese" - vegan of course...

"A salad of baby greens, roasted baby beets, tangerines, smoked almond crusted ‘goat cheese’ flirting with a creamy shallot dressing" -RFD menu

They were 'almond crusted' a slight smokiness to them. They were perched atop a light green salad. Some beets on the side and shallot dressing. When you smashed the side of your fork into these balls they burst open to reveal a tender silky interior. They were amazing. I need the recipe!

How was your VDay? Any disasters or wonderful moments to report?

And those tender crispy balls from RFD really inspired me to post one of my favorite easy veggie burger recipes.

So today, I woke up. Munched some blueberries. Played with the cat. And worked on this post as drizzly raindrops poured outside my window. Blustery trees swaying all morning and well into the evening.



Easy Burger. You simply take a baked sweet potato, some soft canned beans (I used cannellini white beans) add in a few accents, mash, saute and serve. You can also bake for a healthier preparation. And you could add in other whole food ingredients too like brown rice, finely chopped apple, hemp seeds - whatever! The sweet potato is such a nice binder - you can really get creative if you choose.

I pan-fry. More of a saute really. I use just a splash of safflower oil.

And I don't think I have to remind you how incredibly healthy sweet potatoes and beans are. Filled with good stuff. Vitamins, minerals, fiber, protein. Dig in.



The Patty. I was still feeling Valentine's Day-y..


I served the patties with tender sliced avocado, a crisp bed of romaine lettuce, a circle of onion, some Dijon mustard and some pepper and olive oil over top.




Sweet Potato Veggie Burgers
makes 7-8 large patties

2 cans cannellini white beans, drained
1 large sweet potato, baked/peeled/mashed (about 2 cups)
2 Tbsp tahini
2 tsp maple or agave syrup
1 tsp lemon pepper seasoning OR Cajun seasoning (or another fave spice!)
1/4 cup wheat flour
optional: additional seasoning (whatever you have on hand - I used a few dashes cayenne, black pepper and a scoop of nutritional yeast)
salt to taste if needed

plentiful Panko crumbs
safflower oil for pan

burgers: avocado, Dijon mustard, grain buns, romaine, onion, olive oil, pepper

Directions:

1. Bake sweet potato. Peel, place in large mixing bowl.
2. Add drained beans to mixing bowl. Mash beans and potato together.
3. Mash in seasoning, flour and any additional seasoning. Your mixture will be quite soft and moist. But you should be able to form a patty. Add more flour or a scoop of breadcrumbs - or dry rice to thicken the mixture if needed.
4. Heat 1 Tbsp safflower oil in a pan over high heat.
5. Form a patty from mixture and coat in Panko crumbs. Thick coating. Then drop the patty in the pan. Repeat until the pan is filled. Cook until browned on both sides. You could also bake. If baking, use less Panko.
6. Transfer cooked patties to paper towel. Cool for a few minutes.
7. Serve on toasted bun with lotsa toppings.

Note: yes this patty does fall kind of apart as you eat it. But that is OK because it tastes yummy.







My Book! If you loved that recipe, please check out my book / wellness guide "365 Vegan Smoothies" from Penguin / Avery - details here.


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R. C. Priest Benedict Groeschel Claims Teens Seduce Priests In Some Sex Abuse Cases





Scarsuna

Published on Aug 31, 2012


No description available.

,

Britain’s senior Catholic clergyman resigns after being implicated in sex scandal



Cardinal Keith O'Brien, Britain's most senior Roman Catholic clergyman

Mon Feb 25, 2013 3:59PM GMT


Britain's most senior Roman Catholic clergyman has stepped down after being implicated in possible sexual abuse scandals dating back 30 years ago, local media reported.

Cardinal Keith O'Brien, who had been reported to the Vatican by three priests and a former priest in Scotland over inappropriate behaviour, said that he would not attend the election of Pope Benedict's replacement, which will take place soon.

Keith O'Brien, an outspoken opponent of gay marriage who had condemned homosexuality as immoral, has been accused by the four of developing inappropriate relationship with them at the time and demanded his immediate resignation.

They complained to nuncio Antonio Mennini, the Vatican's ambassador to Britain, that they had fallen victim to O’Brien’s inappropriate behaviour at the time.

Their claims had been submitted to the nuncio’s office the week before Pope Benedict's resignation on 11 February, nurturing speculations that Benedict's shock move may be connected to further scandals to come. Allegations of sexual abuse by members of the church have dogged the papacy of Benedict XVI, who is to step down as pope at the end of this week.

The Vatican said the pope, who steps down on Thursday, had accepted O'Brien's resignation as archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh.

The cardinal, who last week advocated allowing Catholic priests to marry as many found it difficult to cope with celibacy, rejected the allegations and was seeking legal advice, his spokesman said.

"Looking back over my years of ministry: For any good I have been able to do, I thank God. For any failures, I apologise to all whom I have offended," O'Brien said in a statement, which made no reference to the recent allegations.

He said he would not attend the election next month of a new pope, saying: "I do not wish media attention in Rome to be focused on me - but rather on Pope Benedict XVI and on his successor."

MOL/JR/HE


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Homeschooling: A Fundamental Human Right?



February 19, 2013 By Thomas Kidd 17 Comments


A remarkable political asylum case has raised questions about whether the U.S. government should defend the right of families to homeschool. The case concerns the Romeike family of Germany, where homeschooling is illegal, and where families who attempt to homeschool their children can face heavy fines and even have their children taken from them. An American immigration judge granted the Romeikes political asylum in 2010, but the Obama Justice Department has been working to overturn their asylum status and have them returned to Germany. Administration lawyers say that the German law does not represent any kind of specific religious discrimination (which would warrant asylum), but only a general legal requirement that all children attend public or state-supervised schools. Thus, in the administration’s view, German authorities punish families like the Romeikes not because they are Christian homeschoolers, but because their children are not attending a governmentally-sanctioned school.



I understand that this issue is more complex than whether Attorney General Eric Holder likes homeschooling or not. And I very much hesitate to designate a political good as a “fundamental human right,” because such notions have become distended and overused in modern American politics. Furthermore, it is not “homeschooling,” per se, that is a fundamental human right. What is fundamental, however, is the right of parents to raise their children according to their consciences, without interference from the state. The Obama adminstration hopefully has no inclination to infringe upon this right in America, but in this case they obviously have more sympathy for Germany’s rigid education policy than the rights of parents, including parents of dissenting religious sensibilities.

The effect of Germany’s law (which, thankfully, is almost unique in western Europe) is to ban parents from taking primary responsibility for educating their children. The most common reason parents would want to do that is religious conviction. This is certainly the case with the Romeikes, so they deserve political asylum as refugees from religious persecution by the government of Germany. Other German Christian homeschoolers have already been fined, and even jailed, for acting according to their conscience with regard to schooling, and the Romeikes can reasonably expect similar treatment if the Obama administration forces them to return. Reasonable fear of such persecution is clear justification for political asylum.

For more coverage, see

Joseph Knippenberg, “Federal Government Tries to Block Homeschooling Refugees,” First Things

Mary Jackson, “Christian homeschoolers losing deportation fight,” WORLD Magazine

Napp Nazworth, “Homeschooling Not a Fundamental Right, Justice Dept. Argues,” Christian Post

Joe Carter, “Homeschooling Not a Fundamental Right Says Justice Department,” Acton Institute

Michael Farris, “Sobering Thoughts from the Romeike Case,” Home School Legal Defense Association, which is representing the Romeikes

Rod Dreher, “Romeikes as Canaries in Coal Mines,” American Conservative


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Shh! TSA Wants to Touch Your Kids

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alschultes

Published on Feb 16, 2013


...but you're not allowed to document it. Like your "special secret"with the "Inappropriate Uncle" division of the federal government, that you're not allowed to share with other grown-ups (they'd just accuse you of lying and trying to get attention anyway). I feel violated but it's obvious my daughter brought it on herself. I mean, look at her all dressing like a potential terrorist/drug trafficker. People who roll in on hot pink wheelchairs, wearing a gingerbread coat and clutching a stuffed baby lamb, are just begging to be harassed.


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Sunday, February 24, 2013

Cuba President Election: Parliament Gathers To Name Leader


By PETER ORSI 02/24/13 09:03 PM ET EST





HAVANA — Raul Castro announced Sunday that he will step down as Cuba's president in 2018 following a final five-year term, for the first time putting a date on the end of the Castro era. He tapped rising star Miguel Diaz-Canel as his top lieutenant and first in the line of succession.

The 81-year-old Castro also said he hopes to establish two-term limits and age caps for political offices including the presidency – an astonishing prospect for a nation led by Castro or his older brother Fidel since their 1959 revolution.

The 52-year-old Diaz-Canel is now a heartbeat from the presidency and has risen higher than any other Cuban official who didn't directly participate in the heady days of the revolution.

"This will be my last term," Castro said, his voice firm.

In his 35-minute speech, Castro hinted at other changes to the constitution, some so dramatic that they will have to be ratified by the Cuban people in a referendum. Still, he scotched any idea that the country would soon abandon socialism, saying he had not assumed the presidency in order to destroy Cuba's system.

"I was not chosen to be president to restore capitalism to Cuba," he said. "I was elected to defend, maintain and continue to perfect socialism, not destroy it."

Castro fueled interest in Sunday's legislative gathering after mentioning on Friday his possible retirement and suggesting lightheartedly that he had plans to resign at some point.

It's now clear that he was serious when he promised that Sunday's speech would have fireworks, and would touch on his future in leadership.

Cuba is at a moment of "historic transcendence," Castro told lawmakers in speaking of his decision to name Diaz-Canel to the No. 2 job, replacing the 81-year-old Jose Ramon Machado Ventura, who fought with the Castros in the Sierra Maestra.

Castro praised Machado Ventura and another aging revolutionary for offering to leave their positions so that younger leaders could move up.

Their selflessness is "a concrete demonstration of their genuine revolutionary fiber ... That is the essence of the founding generation of this revolution."

Castro said that Diaz-Canel's promotion "represents a definitive step in the configuration of the future leadership of the nation through the gradual and orderly transfer of key roles to new generations."

"Our greatest satisfaction is the tranquility and serene confidence we feel as we deliver to the new generations the responsibility to continue building socialism," he added.

On the streets of Havana, where people often express a jaded skepticism of all things political, there was genuine excitement.

"This is the start of a new era," said Roberto Delgado, a 68-year-old retiree walking down a street in the leafy Miramar neighborhood. "It will undoubtedly be a complicated and difficult process, but something important happened today."

"I'm mesmerized," added Regla Blanco, 48. "You thought that with all these old men, it would never end. I am very satisfied with what Raul said. He is keeping his promise."

Since taking over from Fidel in 2006, Castro has instituted a slate of important economic and social changes, expanding private enterprise, legalizing a real estate market and relaxing hated travel restrictions.

Still, the country remains ruled by the Communist Party and any opposition to it lacks legal recognition.

Castro has mentioned term limits before, but he has never said specifically when he would step down, and the concept has yet to be codified into Cuban law.

If he keeps his word, Castro will leave office no later than 2018. Cuban-American exiles in the United States have waited decades for the end of the Castro era, although they will likely be dismayed if it ends on the brothers' terms.

Nevertheless, the promise of a change at the top could have deep significance for U.S.-Cuba ties. The wording of Washington's 51-year economic embargo on the island specifies that it cannot be lifted while a Castro is in charge.

When Raul Castro hinted at his retirement plans on Friday, it earned a sharp response from Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Cuban-American Republican from Florida, who called it a ploy.

"If dictator Raul Castro states that he will retire in five years, there will still be no real change for the Cuban people so long as the Castro brothers remain in any form of leadership position, even behind the scenes," she said. "The U.S. should not change its policy of isolation of the Cuban regime."

Fidel Castro is 86 and retired, and has appeared increasingly frail in recent months. He made a surprise appearance at Sunday's gathering, receiving a thunderous ovation from lawmakers.

Some analysts have speculated that the Castros would push a younger member of their family into a top job, but there was no hint of that Sunday.

While few things are ever clear in Cuba's hermetically sealed news environment, rumblings that Diaz-Canel, an electrical engineer by training and ex-minister of higher education, might be in line for a senior post have grown.

In recent weeks, he has frequently been featured on state television news broadcasts in an apparent attempt to raise his profile.

He also traveled to Venezuela in January for the symbolic inauguration of Hugo Chavez, a key Cuban ally who had been re-elected president but was too ill to be sworn in.

The 612 lawmakers sworn in Sunday also named Esteban Lazo as the National Assembly's first new chief in 20 years, replacing Ricardo Alarcon.

Lazo, who turns 69 on Tuesday, is a vice president and member of the Communist Party's ruling political bureau. Parliament meets only twice a year and generally passes legislation unanimously without visible debate.

The legislature also named as vice presidents of the ruling Council Machado Ventura; comptroller general Gladys Bejerano; second Vice President Ramiro Valdes; Havana Communist Party secretary Lazara Mercedes Lopez Acea; and Salvador Valdes Mesa, head of Cuba's labor union.

___

Anne Marie-Garcia and Paul Haven contributed to this report.


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Theosophy

No longer contained within secret societies populated with select occultists, theosophy is not only out in the open -- its occult teachings are being promoted as a unifying global spirituality by UN leaders, globalist educators, and the U.S. educational establishment both at the state and national level. Perhaps only the top leaders realize that these teachings are based on occult messages received by medium (channeler) Alice Bailey from her "Tibetan" spirit guide Djwhal Khul (DK) and other "ascended masters" within the theosophical "angelic" hierarchy.


Read more
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'Day of Resistance' challenges Obama gun agenda - Video on ...


Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy















msnbc | Aired on February 23, 2013


‘Day of Resistance’ challenges Obama gun agenda MSNBC’s Mara Schiavocampo speaks with “Day of Resistance” organizer Dustin Stockton about why he would like people to unite in defiance of President Obama’s executive actions to reduce gun violence.




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Had enough Pistorius?




“Notorious Pistorius”



Have we had enough of the play by play coverage?

If you check the news every so often, I'm sure you have heard of the Pistorius Case.  
For the last few weeks this story has been at the top of the headlines without a doubt.
Since the Pistorius crime took place in South Africa...Why is this story receiving so much coverage? 

If you are like me you are fed up with this ongoing minute by minute, day by day coverage.
Have you had your fill of this hype?

The media produces these idols, and then they are mesmerized as these stars fall in disgrace.

Remember the Petraeus Affair?  
Remember how the General was lauded unceasingly during the early days of the Afghanistan - Iraq Invasions?  How eventually he was dismissed in shame for having had an inappropriate relationship? It was a salacious issue something the media relishes...

What do I see in common between Pistorius and Petraeus cases? 
Mostly, that the names sound Dutch to me.
Pistorius might be an Afrikaner, while Petraeus is of Dutch descent. 
Also, both men were heavily promoted by a media that grooms and idolizes certain people.

On a lighter note:
If you've had enough of Pistorius?
 Are you ready for the Pistolius rigmarole? 


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