Wisconsin Right to Life PAC Endorses Sen. John McCain
http://news.christiansunite.com/Religion_News/religion07131.shtml
The Wisconsin Right to Life Political Action Committee today announced its endorsement of Sen. John McCain in the 2008 presidential race.
Senator McCain has a stellar 100% voting record on protecting unborn children from abortion. He opposes the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion on demand in the United States and he voted to ban the gruesome partial-birth abortion procedure. He opposes taxpayer funding of abortion and supports legislation that would require parental notification prior to a minor's abortion.
Senator McCain opposes human cloning and the intentional creation of human embryos for research purposes. He has stated that he would nominate U.S. Supreme Court justices in the mold of Justices Roberts and Scalia.
Both Democratic presidential candidates, Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama have 0% right-to-life voting records.
Senator Clinton supports the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, is a co-sponsor of the so-called Freedom of Choice Act that would codify Roe v. Wade and invalidate most federal and state right-to-life laws. She supports the partial-birth abortion procedure and supports taxpayer funding of abortion. Sen. Clinton opposes legislation to require parental notification prior to a minor's abortion. She supports the cloning of human embryos for research purposes.
Senator Obama, like Sen. Clinton, is a co-sponsor of the so-called Freedom of Choice Act and supports taxpayer funding of abortion. He was not yet a U.S. Senator when the partial-birth abortion ban was voted on. Sen. Obama opposes laws requiring parental notification prior to a minor's abortion and supports the cloning of human embryos for research purposes.
"For those of us who believe the sanctity of human life is the bottom line issue in making our voting decisions, the choice could not be clearer" said Susan Armacost, WRTL/PAC Director.
Wisconsin Right to Life is the state's premier right- to-life organization and represents over one-half million Wisconsin households.
Thursday is the National Day of Prayer
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/366939.aspx
The first Thursday in May marks the National Day of Prayer. This annual observance invites people of all faiths to pray for our country.
This year's theme is Prayer! America's Strength and Shield and is based on a verse in Psalm 28 which reads: "The Lord is my strength and shield; my heart trusts him and I am helped."
Shirley Dobson, the chairman of the National Day of Prayer Task Force, was interviewed by Pat Robertson about the prayer observance on Wednesday's The 700 Club.
Christians who study Bible Prophecy - nuts?
http://www.omegaletter.com/articles/articles.asp?ArticleID=6269
If you are a Christian, and you believe that Bible prophecy is being fulfilled in this generation, then you are probably the oddball in your church.
In fact, scratch 'probably'. It is pretty much a dead-bang certainty that you are. It is fascinating to me that a person can be pro-choice, anti-Israel, pro-gay marriage, and be labeled a 'Christian progressive'.
But if you believe that God not only knows the future, but recorded it for us in advance, well, then you're a nut.
Most Christians are ok with the idea that God created the universe. Whether or not they accept it as a literal 'creation' or some kind of modified evolutionary scheme notwithstanding, few Christians would argue that creation is beyond God's power.
For reasons nobody has ever been able to logically articulate to me, Christians have no problem agreeing that the First Advent of Jesus Christ was prophesied.
But prophecies pointing to His Second Advent are merely symbolic and not to be taken literally. If YOU do, then you are a nut.
There are some churches, on the other hand, that are wholly given over to the study of Bible prophecy for the last days. If you are a member of a church like that, not only are YOU a nut, but you probably belong to a cult.
If you wanted to draw a cartoon in which you wanted one of the characters to be instantly recognized as being a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic, the most recognizable way would be to draw a guy with a long beard wearing a burnoose and brandishing a sign saying, "Repent! The end is near!"
And that's just the way the subject is treated by other Christians. To the world, if you study Bible prophecy, you are probably not just crazy, but dangerous.
If you believe Nostradamus knew the future, you're a harmless eccentric, if you believe the Mayans calculated The End of The World As We Know It (TEOTWAWKI) you are an historian. If you believe St Malachy, you are a Catholic theologian.
But if you believe that the God of the Universe has a Divine Plan that culminates with the judgment of mankind during the Tribulation Period, based entirely on a literal reading of His Word, then there's something wrong with you.
The Mayan Indians, whose culture died out 1400 years ago, developed a complex calendar system that continues to fascinate scientists to this day.
The Mayan Calendar divides the history of man into five distinct 'ages' and this present age is scheduled to end exactly at 11:11 am (Greenwich Mean Time), on 24 December, 2012. The Mayans believed that on that date and time, the world as we know it will end with the final destruction of mankind on the earth.
Nostradamus is credited with having predicted the 9/11 attacks as kicking off the end of days. According to one celebrated 'quatrain' a King of Terror wearing a blue turban will attack 'the "Great City", etc., etc.
Although his most famous quatrain makes reference to the 'King of Terror' "in the seventh month of 1999" and the 9/11 attacks took place in the 9th month of 2000, for Nostradamus fans, that was close enough.
An 12th-century Irish priest recorded a prophecy in which he allegedly named the rest of the Popes in human history, from Celestine II (1143-1144) to the last pope at the end of the world.
According to St. Malachy, there would be exactly 112 Popes. Malachy predicted the second last Pope would be called 'a Benedictine.' I wrote about St Malachy's 'Benedictine prophecy' in April, 2005, as the new Pope was being selected.
Cardinal Ratzinger chose, as his papal name, "Pope Benedict the XVI". According to St Malachy, the Benedictine's reign will be short, (Ratzinger is in his 80's) and he will be succeeded by the last Pope, "Peter the Great."
The various adherents of the Mayans, Nostradamus, St Malachy (and there are others) all share the same basic worldview that could be paraphrased thusly: let every man be true and God a liar.
All the various secular 'prophets' prove is that Satan knows his time is short. There is a singular difference between secular prophecies and Bible prophecy that reveals the source of the information.
Secular prophecies can only 'predict' events, not outcomes. Bible prophecy tells how they turn out. "I am God, and there is none like Me, Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done." (Isaiah 46:9b-10a)
Satan is the universe's master deceiver. His ultimate goal is to be received as God. Only God is capable of prophecy.
But Satan has a counterfeit plan of his own, and he has had six thousand years to develop it. Since he knows what he has planned, it is no trick to reveal the plan to some secular 'prophet'. Satan doesn't know how his plan will turn out, any more than any other created being, but he does know what he has in mind.
From our dimension of time, it seems like prophecy. Remove the element of time, and what seem now to be prophecy would no more than the outline of a plan.
Extra-Biblical prophecies, are part of that overall plan to counterfeit the miracles of God, so that, one day, " he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God." (2nd Thessalonians 2:4)
If one examines the extra-Biblical prophecies for the truth they contain, rather than looking for the sensational, what what learns is that it isn't just prophecy nuts who believe in Bible prophecy. Satan believes it, too, or he wouldn't be trying to counterfeit it.
What it does establish is that even Satan has an idea of the time of the end -- and Satan thinks it will be sometime around 2012.
We know that, of the day and hour, no man knoweth, but we are told we will know that it is 'near, even at the doors.' And from that time, Jesus tells us,
"Verily I say unto thee, this generation shall not pass, until all these things be fulfilled." (Matthew 24:34)
TEOTWAWKI on December 24, 2012? I don't think so. But soon?
No doubt about it.
The Jerry Falwell the Public Never Knew
http://news.christiansunite.com/Religion_News/religion07132.shtml
WEST MONROE, La. -- One year after his passing, Jerry Falwell's wife of forty-nine years, Macel Falwell, gives a candid and heartfelt look at the life of one of America's most influential religious and political leaders.
In Jerry Falwell: His Life and Legacy (Howard Books, May 2008), Mrs. Falwell describes Rev. Falwell in a way that the mainstream media never would. She details his unfailing optimism, his deep generosity, his vision as the founder of Liberty University and the Moral Majority and as a loving husband and father.
The book paints a portrait of a passionate man determined to spread the Gospel. We see the Falwells establish their Thomas Road Baptist Church in an old soda bottling plant in 1956. Rev. Falwell prayed for new members and went out and knocked on every door in town to invite his neighbors to Sunday services.
In addition, the book dispels the media-created myths that Rev. Falwell was a hatemonger, a greedy televangelist, or a hypocrite of the morals he preached. She also describes his unlikely friendships with Sen. Ted Kennedy and Hustler publisher Larry Flynt.
Rev. Falwell was also known for his boundless generosity. When he went knocking on doors to recruit new members for his church, one man said he would like to come to church but couldn't because he didn't have any shoes. Rev. Falwell gave him the shoes off his feet. The man came to church the following Sunday in Rev. Falwell's shoes. Rev. Falwell also gave innumerable scholarships to students at Liberty University--so many that the University at one time had more scholarship students than paying ones.
"In humility, innocence and an endearing gentleness of spirit," writes nationally syndicated radio host Sean Hannity in the Foreword, "Macel shares with us a man, a marriage and a family all fundamentally united and ordered on faith in God, a commitment to His service and service to one another."
Jerry Falwell: His Life and Legacy is the story of a man and his faith and the many hearts he touched. Mrs. Macel Falwell married Rev. Jerry Falwell in 1958. She stood by his side as he went from pastor of a small Baptist church to the major cultural figure he became during the last thirty years.
Are U.S. Churches Doing Enough to Fight Poverty in America
http://news.christiansunite.com/Religion_News/religion07129.shtml
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. -- Two-thirds of Americans surveyed in a new poll say their churches are doing enough to help the poor despite the latest United States Census Bureau statistics showing consistent year-to-year increases in the numbers of Americans living in poverty. This, combined with poverty indicators such as rising food stamp usage, points to increased demand for a complacent church to do more to help the poor.
Conducted by Faith in Action and Harris Interactive, the national survey polled more than 2,800 adults, and took place February 14-18, 2008. Sixty-seven percent of respondents "agreed" or "strongly agreed" with the statement, "My church already does enough to help the poor in my community." Yet current data provided by the U.S. Census Bureau reveals the national poverty level has increased from 11.7 percent in 2001 to 13.3 percent in 2005, or 38 million Americans.
Additionally, demand for food stamps between 2007- 08, a key economic indicator provided by the United States Department of Agriculture, is up significantly in 43 states, increasing the need for significant help among more than 28 million Americans.
"These results, when combined with current census and economic data, expose a discrepancy between Christians who believe they are doing enough and the reality that Christians are just scratching the surface in our communities," said Steve Haas, vice president for church relations at World Vision. "Faith in Action is designed to be a step toward alleviating the complacency that is afflicting churches across the country, and an effective call to action to follow Christ's example of compassion."
The study also reports that 60 percent of respondents "would support their church if it occasionally canceled traditional services in order to donate that time to help the poor in their community," indicating a willingness to participate in the bold premise at the center of Faith in Action.
The defining characteristic of this groundbreaking ministry is an invitation to Christians to close their church doors and mobilize on service projects within their communities. The program is led by three world- renowned Christian organizations, World Vision, Outreach and Zondervan, and culminates in Faith in Action Sunday, which takes place on April 27, 2008.
Faith in Action commissioned the national study to determine Christians' attitudes toward helping the poor in their communities. In addition, the program helps Christians invite members outside of their church to join in serving. In an expression of hope, two- thirds of respondents said they "wished their church partnered with a non-Christian organization to help the poor in my community."
More than 20,000 Christians at more than 200 churches have participated in a Faith in Action Sunday throughout the United States. The movement continues on April 27, 2008 when an additional 300 churches nationwide will close their doors and complete their Faith in Action programs with community-wide projects to help the poor and disadvantaged.
Many Christians who have participated in the Faith in Action campaign have fueled their endeavors with the Faith in Action Study Bible, published by Zondervan with commentary notes by World Vision. Additional information is available at www.putyourfaithinaction.org.
About Faith in Action Faith in Action is a resource developed by Christian humanitarian organization, World Vision, church communication resources provider, Outreach, Inc., and Christian communications company, Zondervan. Faith in Action features a campaign kit which includes a step-by-step approach to transforming a congregation and reaching the community.
Global food crisis sparks US survivalist resurgence
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/04/28/2228908.htm
So far the threat of a global food crisis has not affected Australia, but there are worrying signs appearing in the United States where some worried locals are beginning to hoard supplies.
Two bulk US retailers are rationing some sales of imported rice and that's been enough for some Americans to begin stocking up.
It has also rekindled America's survivalist movement.
One leading survivalist warning of lean and hungry times ahead is Jim Rawles, a former US intelligence officer and editor of a survivalist blog, who lives in California.
Mr Rawles says he thinks the food shortages being seen in the United States could soon become a matter of survival.
"I think that families should be prepared for times of crisis, whether it's a man-made disaster or a natural disaster, and I think it's wise and prudent to stock up on food," he said.
"I've encouraged my readers to do this for many years, and the ones that have are now in a situation where they can just spend charity to their neighbours if there are full-scale shortages."
He says there are thousands of people in the United States stocking up to prepare for the possibility of a food shortage.
"On a small scale, I'm sure there's hundreds of thousands. In terms of real serious survivalists, it's probably just in the tens of thousands that are actively preparing and the folks that are going to two, three or four-year supply of food," he said.
He says it is a major situation with food with other potential calamities that concern him as a survivalist.
"If you get into a situation where fuel supplies are disrupted or even if the power grid were to go down for short periods of time, people can work around that," he said.
"But you can't work around a lack of food - people starve, people panic and you end up with chaos in the streets."
Well prepared
Mr Rawles says he has been very well prepared for many years.
"We have more than a three-year supply food here at our ranch," he said.
"We've got quite a bit if wheat, rice, beans, honey, rolled oats, sugar, you name it. We've got large quantities salted away.
"Most of it is stored in five-gallon plastic food grade buckets."
He says that before this food issue came to light, he would normally be prepared for other types of civil unrest or disaster anyway.
"For earthquakes or flood, famine, whatever," he said.
"We anticipated a situation where there might be a disruption of food supplies, but we're more looking at a classic socio-economic collapse or even a nuclear war."
But Mr Rawles says he did not expect he would be preparing for a food shortage several years ago.
"Not per se, because we've been living in a land of plenty for many, many years," he said.
"We haven't had food rationing in the United States since World War II, so it wasn't very high on anyone's priority list."
He says the location of his survival ranch in the US is secret.
"We don't actually reveal our location, even at the state level," he said.
"All that I'm allowed to say is that we're somewhere west of the Rockies. We intentionally keep a very low profile.
"We just don't want a lot of people camping out on our doorstep the day after everything hits the fan."
Could Science Solve Global Food Crisis?
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,353422,00.html
Scientists are pondering a new "green revolution," half a century after the first one, to solve a growing food shortage that has reached crisis proportions in some countries.
American consumers are experiencing the trickle-down effects of the lack of food. People in Haiti, Mexico, Guinea, Mauritania, Morocco, Senegal, Uzbekistan, Yemen and other countries have taken to the streets in recent weeks and months to protest the rising costs of food.
An official with the World Food Program yesterday called it a "silent tsunami" of world hunger.
The causes are many, including rising fuel prices, the diversion of land to grow biofuel instead of food crops and droughts in Australia, one of the world's main producers of wheat.
Additionally, the global population is growing, notably in places such as India and China, where increasing prosperity has allowed more people to buy more and finer food.
Many people look to science to ease the pinch — after all, it worked once before.
Between the 1940s and 1970s, major advances in food technology — such as chemical fertilizers and pesticides, improved seed varieties, better irrigation and farm technology — led to huge gains in the amount of food the world's farmers were able to grow.
This "green revolution" caused crop yields in Mexico, Asia and other areas of the world to shoot up, protecting many people from starvation.
Although some of these technologies were found to have drawbacks — for example, chemical fertilizer can deplete the soil of nutrients and pollute water — the green revolution undeniably saved lives.
The question is: Can science do it again?
Another green revolution
"Absolutely, science is going to play a key role," said Kent Bradford, director of the Seed Biotechnology Center at the University of California, Davis. "The fact is that the reason we have been able to have food and [have] not had these shortages for the last 40 years is in fact the green revolution and the technologies that went with it. If we are really going to make a quantum leap, raise the yield thresholds significantly, then probably biotechnology is going to help."
Researchers around the world at sites like the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Mexico are studying how to improve crops and farming techniques to address worldwide hunger.
By breeding staple crops such as wheat, rice, maize, and soy to be more pest- and weed-resistant, more nutrient-rich and high-yielding, they hope to offer more nutrition per acre of farmed land.
Science can also provide new tools to increase crop production, such as an optical sensor to scan crops in order to customize fertilizer to plants' needs.
"I can't ask a plant how it feels, but I can sense it with optical sensors," said CIMMYT researcher Bram Govaerts. "This is a perfect example of how instead of throwing away the green revolution techniques, we can rationally apply them. That technology already exists."
Other tools, such as a multi-use, multi-crop machine, could also make a huge difference, Govaerts said. The technology allows farmers to plant many different crops under many different conditions.
The result would not only increase the variety of nutrients farmers eat, but would allow them to farm more sustainably, since land growing a single crop is more susceptible to disease and soil degradation than land on which different crops rotate.
In addition to new technologies, experts say simple changes in agricultural practices could also accomplish a lot.
"In my opinion, if we have another green revolution it's going to be because people very seriously address the issue of soil management," said Matthew Reynolds, a CIMMYT wheat physiologist. "That could really give a quantum leap in productivity."
Conventional farming techniques, such as plowing, which is traditionally used to disrupt the growth of weeds, break down soil's healthy structure and biological processes, he said.
By reducing plowing, and keeping the straw residue on fields after crops are harvested, the soil could support much larger yields.
Battle over biotechnology
Some scientists think the key to truly ending world hunger lies in genetically manipulating crops to provide boons that nature cannot match.
Already crops such as Bt corn, which produces its own insecticide, and Roundup Ready crops, which are resistant to the commonly-used herbicide Roundup, are sold by the U.S. company Monsanto on the domestic market, though they are banned in Europe.
Golden Rice is a type of rice engineered by Ingo Potrykus of the Institute of Plant Sciences at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and Peter Beyer of the University of Freiburg to produce beta-carotene, a source of vitamin A.
The scientists intended to distribute the rice seeds free to subsistence farmers in vitamin A-deficient areas, but this plan was opposed by critics of genetically-engineered crops such as Greenpeace. The crop is not yet available.
Proponents of genetically-modified (GM) organisms say that in order to solve the world's hunger issues, we must embrace these kinds of scientific interventions into nature.
"If we are really going to raise the yield thresholds significantly then probably biotechnology is going to help. For example, if we can make wheat and rice more like corn, the plants could be more productive," UC Davis's Bradford said. The photosynthesis process in corn allows the crop to thrive with less water. "It would be very complicated to do, but it may be possible."
Or, he suggested, scientists may be able to engineer plants so they are more nutritious for humans.
"Grain sorghum is a very important crop in Africa," Bradford said. "Unfortunately, its protein is relatively undigestible — the nutrient is inefficiently metabolized. There is work in trying to modify sorghum so the protein is more digestible. That would be a huge bonus."
But many people question the wisdom of dappling in complicated natural processes that we don't fully understand.
"I think using genetically-engineered crops would not only not solve the situation, but it would continue to put the food supply at risk," said Ryan Zinn, campaign coordinator for the Organic Consumers Association, a non-profit organization. "When you're messing with the crop's genome, you run the risk of opening Pandora's box. What people don't realize is that the FDA does not test these crops. They've been out on the market, they're not labeled, and they've got some potentially significant human health consequences."
These consequences may include a reduction in nutrients or inclusions of harmful pesticides, he said.
Defenders of GM crops say many of these fears are unfounded.
"Nobody can point to a single thing to say there's been unintended health consequences," Bradford told LiveScience. "While it's always possible, it's also possible that breeding crops could have unintended health consequences. It's a matter of balancing risks and benefits. The risks are exceedingly small, but the benefits are tangible."
Superfood
Even some of biotechnology's biggest fans are skeptical that scientists could ever create a superfood to cure all the world's hunger problems, such as a daily pill with all the nutrients a person needs.
"I don't really see getting your complete nutrition from some kind of single food," Bradford said. "Why would anybody want to? It would be boring to just eat a pill."
Science is closer than you may think to some radical solutions, though.
Researchers are hard at work on animal-free meat. Scientists, such as Henk Haagsman, a professor of meat science at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, are growing synthetic meat with the help of animal stem cells.
When fed with glucose, amino acids, minerals and growth factors, the stem cells can grow into muscle tissue, which the researchers say tastes a lot like ground meat.
Though it may sound far-fetched, proponents of so-called cultivated meat say this could be a key to solving world hunger problems.
"The benefits could be enormous," said Jason Matheny, the director of New Harvest, a non-profit organization that funds research on in vitro meat. "The demand for meat is increasing worldwide ... With a single cell, you could theoretically produce the world's annual meat supply. And you could do it in a way that's better for the environment and human health. In the long term, this is a very feasible idea."
Long-term solutions
This week United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced the formation of a U.N. task force to address the problem of mass hunger and food shortages.
The Secretary-General stressed the importance of economic aid in the short term to deal with the crisis, but discussed the need for scientific advances in the long term.
"Whatever the factors are, the overall amount of food consumption has gone up, relative to the amount of supply, and we need to find a way to deal with that," said Farhan Haq, a spokesperson for Ban Ki-moon. "What's needed is trade and investment being used to bring about a green revolution — technologies that can improve agricultural productivity, particularly across Africa, but in general as well."
Stronger Dollar Sinks Oil Prices
http://www.newsmax.com/money/Stronger_Dollar_Sinks_Oil/2008/04/30/92157.html
VIENNA, Austria -- Oil prices slipped Wednesday, adding to their steep slide of more than $3 a barrel in the previous session on a strengthening U.S. dollar and data showing a dramatic drop in American fuel demand.
Easing concerns about supplies also put a lower ceiling on prices.
Trading was cautious in Asia as market participants awaited the U.S. Federal Reserve's decision on interest rates later Wednesday.
Analysts believe a quarter percentage point rate cut is already factored into the oil market. A decision to hold rates steady could further strengthen the dollar, though, causing oil to continue its slide.
"The markets will now wait and see ... what's going to happen tonight, unless there's more news on the supply side," said David Moore, a commodity strategist with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia in Sydney.
Light, sweet crude for June delivery fell 67 cents to $114.96 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange by midafternoon in Singapore. The contract fell $3.12 to settle at $115.63 a barrel Tuesday after the release of a monthly report from the U.S. Energy Department.
The data showed demand for finished petroleum products dropped 8.5 percent in February from January, and demand for gasoline fell 6.2 percent. Some of that drop can be attributed to February's being a shorter month, but it still suggests high prices are cutting America's appetite for fuel.
At the same time, supply concerns in some places are easing. A British refinery strike that caused the shutdown of a 700,000-barrel-a-day pipeline system ended Tuesday. Listing other bullish factors, Vienna's JBC Energy noted "talks under way to end the six-day strike at an ExxonMobil site in Nigeria and production in the North Sea being ramped up after the recent short-term closures of the Forties Pipeline system."
In the U.S., the Energy Department's weekly inventory report on Wednesday was also expected to show domestic crude supplies rose, according to analysts surveyed by Platts, the energy research arm of McGraw-Hill Cos.
U.S. crude oil inventories were expected to have risen 1.6 million barrels last week, with crude imports continuing to grow as refiners ramp up production, the Platts survey said.
Analysts projected a decline of 800,000 barrels in gasoline stocks and a 150,000-barrel build in stocks of distillates, which include heating oil and diesel, the survey showed. Refinery utilization was expected to edge up 0.3 percentage points to 85.9 percent.
The oil market is also expected to keep an eye on other key information releases later this week such as the U.S. Labor Department's payroll report, Moore said.
"Those things are going to be very important to the direction of the U.S. dollar and also perceptions of the strength of the U.S. economy, and therefore very important to the oil price," he said.
Commodities such as oil are less effective hedges against inflation when the dollar is gaining ground, and a stronger greenback makes oil more expensive to investors overseas. Analysts believe oil's run from $65 a year ago to a record near $120 on Monday has been fueled in large part by the dollar's protracted decline.
In other Nymex trading, heating oil futures were nearly flat at $3.252 a gallon while gasoline prices fell more than a penny to $2.9253 a gallon. Natural gas futures fell by more than 2 cents to $10.8 per 1,000 cubic feet.
Brent crude futures slid 43 cents to $113 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange in London.
U.S. population to hit 1 billion by 2100
http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2008Apr28/0,4670,IsraelRoboticSoldier,00.html
If the USA seems too crowded and its roads too congested now, imagine future generations: The nation's population could more than triple to 1 billion as early as 2100.
That's the eye-popping projection that urban and rural planners, gathered today for their annual meeting in Las Vegas, are hearing from a land-use expert.
"What do we do now to start preparing for that?" asks Arthur Nelson, co-director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech, whose analysis projects that the USA will hit the 1 billion mark sometime between 2100 and 2120. "It's a realistic long-term challenge."
The nation currently has almost 304 million people and is the world's third most populous, behind China (1.3 billion) and India (1.1 billion). China passed the 1 billion mark in the early 1980s.
Nelson's projection assumes that current fertility rates remain constant but that longevity and immigration will continue to rise.
Jeff Soule, director of outreach for the American Planning Association, hopes it will be provocative enough to inspire planners who anticipate development patterns and infrastructure needs to look beyond their lifetimes and localities. "We have to be more aggressive about looking out at the long term," Soule says. "It may get people thinking beyond their jurisdictions. … It's clear we have to think about such issues as food, water and basic transportation infrastructure."
Nelson says China and India are accommodating billion-plus populations on less land area than the USA occupies.
"We have a surprising amount of space in existing urban areas," he says. "We can easily triple the population in our urbanized areas with much of that growth occurring on, of all things, parking lots."
Nelson advocates converting parking lots into commercial and residential buildings and extending light-rail lines and rapid transit to reduce dependence on cars.
"We could accommodate half or more of the new population on parking lots," he says. "For the other half, we need to figure out which parts of urban areas need to be redeveloped. We should start asking these larger questions now."
The population projection is provoking some skepticism.
Robert Lang, Nelson's co-director at the Virginia Tech institute, says he expects immigration to decline, largely because birth rates in other countries are declining.
"People are not going to have as many children, and their children won't have as many children, and there'll be fewer people to immigrate to the U.S.," Lang says. "I would rather focus on the near certainty that we will gain 100 million people by 2043. … No one plans for 100 years from now except to preserve a national park."
Population projections for most countries do not extend much beyond 2050. Carl Haub, senior demographer at the non-profit Population Reference Bureau, has estimated that India's population could reach 2 billion around 2075. That won't happen, however, if India's fertility rates decline at a faster rate than they have been, he says.
Nelson, who will become the founding director of the Center for the New Metropolis at the University of Utah this fall, says many events from disease to famine could throw his projections off course.
"We could certainly have a comet hit the planet and pulverize the atmosphere," he says. "But what if none of these things happen? … Do we plan on a calamity, do we assume that half the population's planet might be wiped out? I don't think that's very responsible."
New Web Site Establishes Safe Environment for Those Changed by Abortion
http://news.christiansunite.com/Religion_News/religion07130.shtml
SAN DIEGO -- Michaelene Fredenburg became pregnant at 18. "I thought abortion would erase the pregnancy," she says. "I thought I could move on with my life. I was wrong." With the help of a professional counselor and the support of family and friends she was able to begin a healthy grieving process.
During the grieving process Fredenburg discovered that her family had also been impacted by her decision to abort. Drawing from this experience, Fredenburg is breaking new ground with the launch of the Abortion Changes You(TM) outreach that connects those touched by abortion with support resources.
AbortionChangesYou.com is more than a Web site for people who have experienced abortion - it's a safe online environment where visitors can participate in interactive content, explore the experiences of others and type in a ZIP code to connect with local resources.
"Just as each person's story is unique, every person moves through the process of healing differently. The Web site allows visitors to privately explore the voices of men, women, grandparents, other family members and friends who have been touched by abortion. The Web site also offers suggestions about how to begin the healing process," Fredenburg says. For example, the section Healing Pathways offers interactive content such as how to build a support system, explore emotions, identify unhealthy behaviors, and space to anonymously share stories, artwork, poetry, and songs.
The outreach and Web site are non-political and non- religious. Ultimately, Abortion Changes You(TM) hopes to demonstrate to anyone touched by abortion - either their own or that of someone close to them - that they are not alone.
"It is my hope that this Web site will assist men and women as they seek to make sense of their abortion or the abortion of someone close to them," Fredenburg says.
Newborns' DNA targeted for state research, profiling
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=61984
The state of Minnesota has advanced a plan to own the DNA of newborns, preserving it in a warehouse for use in genetic research, experimentation, manipulation, and profiling, according to an advocacy organization seeking to protect the privacy of that individual information.
"Citizen DNA is citizen property. The government should be required to ask, not allowed to take," said Twila Brase, president of the Citizens' Council on Health Care, a Minnesota-based organization familiar with the progress in that state.
"If this bill becomes law, each year 73,000 newborn citizens will not be protected by the state genetic privacy law. The state will take their DNA and unless the parents figure it out, the government will keep it," she said.
"Children grow up. Eventually, every citizen will have their DNA owned by state government and available for government to engage in genetic research, experimentation, manipulation, and profiling," she warned. "What good is the state genetic privacy law if government warehousing and analysis of every child's DNA from birth is exempt from its informed consent protections?"
In Minnesota, the state's genetic privacy law was challenged by the Health Department, which lost a court battle over the issue. But now the legislation could give the state government by legislative activism what it could not obtain through the judiciary.
Brase said the state House voted this week to approve the plan forwarded by the state Senate. "If the Senate accepts the minor amendments adopted by the House without a conference committee, the bill could be sent directly to Gov. [Tim] Pawlenty for his signature."
The legislative specifically would exempt warehousing, use and analysis of newborn blood and DNA from the informed consent requirements of the 2006 Minnesota Genetic Privacy Law.
WND reported earlier on protests from Brase over the legislative plan.
"We now are considered guinea pigs, as opposed to human beings with rights," she said, warning such DNA databases could spark the next wave of demands for eugenics, the concept of improving the human race through the control of various inherited traits. Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, advocated eugenics to cull people she considered unfit from the population.
In 1921, she said eugenics is "the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political and social problems," and she later lamented "the ever increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all."
Minnesota already has stockpiled the DNA of more than 780,000 Minnesota children, and already has subjected the DNA of 42,210 children to research without their consent or knowledge, Brase told WND.
And she confirmed although her organization works with Minnesota issues, similar laws or rules and regulations already are in use across the nation.
The National Conference of State Legislatures, in fact, lists for all 50 states as well as the District of Columbia the various statutes or regulatory provisions under which newborns' DNA is being collected.
Such programs are offered as "screening" requirements to detect treatable illnesses. They vary as to exactly what tests are done, but the Health Resources and Services Administration has requested a report that would "include a recommendation for a uniform panel of conditions."
Further, Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., is on record proposing a plan that would turn the program into a consolidated nationwide effort.
"Fortunately," he said at the time, "some newborn screening occurs in every state but fewer than half of the states, including Connecticut, actually test for all disorders that are detectable. … This legislation will provide resources for states to expand their newborn screening programs…"
So what's the big deal about looking into DNA to hunt for various disease possibilities?
Nothing, said Brase, if that's where the hunt would end.
However, she said, "researchers already are looking for genes related to violence, crime and different behaviors."
"This isn't just about diabetes, asthma and cancer," she said. "It's also about behavioral issues."
"In England they decided they should have doctors looking for problem children, and have those children reported, and their DNA taken in case they would become criminals," she said.
In fact, published reports in the UK note that senior police forensics experts believe genetic samples should be studied, because it may be possible to identify potential criminals as young as age 5.
There, Chris Davis of the National Primary Headteachers' Association warned the move could be seen "as a step towards a police state."
Brase said such efforts to study traits and gene factors and classify people would be just the beginning. What could happen through subsequent programs to address such conditions, she wondered.
"Not all research is great," she said. Such classifying of people could lead to "discrimination and prejudice … People can look at data about you and make assessments ultimately of who you are."
The Heartland Regional Genetics and Newborn Screening is one of the organizations that advocates more screening and research.
It proclaims in its vision statement a desire to see newborns screened for 200 conditions. It also forecasts "every student … with an individual program for education based on confidential interpretation of their family medical history, their brain imaging, their genetic predictors of best learning methods…"
Further, every individual should share information about "personal and family health histories" as well as "gene tests for recessive conditions and drug metabolism" with the "other parent of their future children."
Still further, it seeks "ecogenetic research that could improve health, lessen disability, and lower costs for sickness."
"They want to test every child for 200 conditions, take the child's history and a brain image, and genetics, and come up with a plan for that child," Brase said. "They want to learn their weaknesses and defects.
"Nobody including and especially the government should be allowed to create such extensive profiles," she said.
The next step is obvious: The government, with information about potential health weaknesses, could say to couples, "We don't want your expensive children," Brase said.
"I think people have forgotten about eugenics. The fact of the matter is that the eugenicists have not gone away. Newborn genetic testing is the entry into the 21st Century version of eugenics," she said.
"This is in every state, but nobody is talking about it. Parents have no idea this is happening," she said.
United Methodists Engage in Transgender Talks
http://www.christianpost.com/article/20080426/32129_United_Methodists_Engage_in_Transgender_Talks_.htm
Hundreds of United Methodists have begun looking over some 1,500 petitions that have been proposed by those seeking change in church policies and structures, among other things, during the church's quadrennial gathering.
Much of the media spotlight, however, has fallen on two submitted petitions aimed at changing the United Methodist Church's current position on homosexuality. The church body holds that the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.
One petition would state that homosexuality is a subject about which Christians disagree and the other would define marriage as the union of two loving adults.
To support gay and transgender church members, young Methodists from the Mosaic Youth Network are holding a 24-hour "drumming and rally," which began Friday at noon, outside the Fort Worth Conference Center in Texas, where the United Methodist General Conference is taking place. Recent General Conferences have seen protests by gay-rights advocates, some of whom were arrested for disrupting proceedings.
Debates on whether gay Christians can be ordained as clergy have gone on for decades in the denomination and most recently, controversy has erupted over transgendered persons.
The Rev. Drew Phoenix, pastor of St. John's United Methodist Church in Baltimore, sparked debate when the transgender minister was allowed last year to remain pastor of the church. Phoenix, who previously led the church as the Rev. Ann Gordon, underwent surgery and hormone therapy to become male.
The ruling was made by the United Methodist Church's highest council, affirming a 2006 decision to reappoint Phoenix as pastor. The court agreed that while the denomination bars self-avowed practicing gay clergy from ordination and does not support gay unions, the United Methodist Book of Discipline says nothing about gender change.
The Rev. Karen Booth, executive director of Transforming Congregations, an organization she says ministers to “sexually confused, sinful and broken people," believes transgender people exhibit a “deep, psychological conflict,” according to the United Methodist News Service.
While the church should minister to them, she says, leadership should not be an option.
“We recognize that there are, in fact, people who are unfortunately born with a chromosomal blueprint that is ambiguous. That is a valid medical condition that needs to be addressed,” she said, as reported by UMNS. “Most of what we see is more of a psychological state where a person says, ‘I don’t feel like I’m in the right body.’ We believe that’s a blurring of the distinct way God created us as male and female.”
Phoenix argues that transgenderism is compatible with Christian teaching.
"It was in the context of my faith in Christ, led by the Spirit, that I made the transition (of gender)," Phoenix said. “We want to be known as the children God created us to be. That’s been my experience with my church, across the board."
"I can say that I have come home to the child that God created me to me, and I’m very joyful, whole and peaceful,” Phoenix said Thursday at a press conference sponsored by pro-gay group Affirmation during the General Conference in Fort Worth.
Booth, meanwhile, says it's ironic that "gays and lesbians say, 'God created me this way' whereas transgender people say, 'God made a mistake.'"
"There's a real inconsistency here," she said.
Booth submitted petitions to the General Conference for church policy to state that neither transgenderism nor transsexuality "reflects God's best intentions for humankind."
Pagans find a welcome home among many Quakers
http://religionnews.com/index.php?/rnstext/pagans_find_a_sometimes_uneasy_home_among_quakers/
When his partner died in 2004, Kevin-Douglas Olive reached a crossroads in his faith. Even though he had been a Quaker for almost two decades and put his trust in Jesus, he began to explore other ways of tapping into the divine.
"I had this experience of (my partner) after death, and he spoke to me and woke me up out of my sleep," Olive says. "It freaked me out, because I really didn't believe in that stuff; ... my faith in God had disappeared when my partner died."
He started to explore Wicca, a nature-based pagan religion, surrounding himself with pentacles, candles and incense. But that didn't stick. "It seemed like more make-believe on top of the Christian make-believe," he says. "I was rejecting one; I didn't want to bring in another."
Even after Olive found his way back to Jesus, he retained some elements of paganism. While he upholds the standard traditions of his local Quaker meeting hall, he privately incorporates pagan ritual into his prayer.
He's part of a small but growing movement of Quakers who also identify as pagan -- a trend that may or may not exist in other Christian traditions, but certainly not in such an organized, public fashion.
Across the board, the number of Quakers is dwindling, to roughly 100,000 in the U.S. But if Quakerism continues to catch on among the estimated half million pagans in the U.S., those who embrace both traditions predict that could reverse the Quakers' downward trend. Still, some Quakers worry about losing their own traditions through the process of accepting new ones.
In the last decade, this dual faith has sprung up around the country, including Quaker-pagan gatherings, seminars, an extensive presence on the Internet, and even explicitly Quaker-pagan congregations. There may be only several hundred Quaker pagans, but among American Quakers, their presence can be distinctly felt.
"It seems that now, in most liberal meetings at least, you can always find a few members that identify as pagan," says Stasa Morgan-Appel of Ann Arbor, Mich., who has facilitated a Quaker pagan interest group since 2002.
Quakers -- officially the Religious Society of Friends -- are divided into four main branches, three of which are explicitly Christian. Pagans have been generally joining the liberal fourth branch, the Friends General Conference, which counts 30,000 members in North America, including Morgan-Appel.
Liberal Quakers are less tied to the Christianity and instead hold established Quaker practices, such as unprogrammed pastor-less meetings, as the basis of their faith. Because of that flexibility, many liberal Quakers no longer see Jesus as divine, and some don't believe in God at all.
Paganism generally refers to nature-based religions. Think witches, druids, pentacles, Wicca -- but not Satanism. Carl McColman, author of "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Paganism," defined it this way: People Adoring Goddess And Nature.
It may seem strange that pagans would join the Quakers, which began in the 1600s with strong anti-pagan sentiment. Founder George Fox even altered the days of the week because of their pagan roots. To this day, Quakers refer to Sunday as First Day, Monday as Second Day and so on. On the other hand, the two traditions share many similarities. Both are non-hierarchical and place a strong emphasis on internal divinity. In fact, as modern paganism rose in popularity in the 1970s, many pagan groups looked to Quakers as a model of survival without a nucleus of control.
Morgan-Appel says many pagans openly embrace Quakerism, but Quakers who espouse pagan beliefs have long operated under the radar. That may be changing, however.
"People are really having the courage to be honest and truthful about the reality of their spiritual lives," she said. "If I'm standing out there at gathering, saying, `Hi, here we are, come be yourself with us,' that provides a safe space and a lot of momentum."
But it also carries a price. Due to the accommodation of non-Christian beliefs in many meetings, many Quakers report that Christian Friends feel slighted.
Witnessing about Jesus in Olive's meeting has become infrequent. "People here come from so many different places, spiritually," he says. "Meetings can be very quiet, as many people are afraid to voice views that others might not hold to be true. We talk about God, but we don't really put a name to him or her."
In an effort to reinforce his connection to Jesus, Olive holds a monthly Christian prayer group at his house after his Quaker meeting. Morgan-Appel says that such fears are common. She has seen tensions flare between the two groups, from pagan-influenced Quaker weddings to unfair fees charged to use meeting halls for Quaker-pagan gatherings.
"I think there's a myth that it's only Christians who feel like it makes people uncomfortable when they talk about Jesus," she said. "There are definitely times when I see that there are still knee-jerk reactions from people within the Society of Friends who don't know what paganism is."
Marshall Massey, a conservative Quaker in Omaha, Neb., and co-founder of Quaker Earthcare Witness, says removing Christianity undermines the stability of the Quaker faith.
"We are an easily acculturated movement," he says, explaining that Quakers' egalitarian, non-creedal tradition makes it very susceptible to outside influences. "But Quakerism has become, on the liberal end, an indefinable refuge for people who regard themselves as mystics or experientially religious and have problems with sources of authority."
Massey said losing Quakerism's Christian heritage cuts away at its unifying belief system and makes it prone to dissolution. Nevertheless, it would be un-Quakerly to try to halt the process.
"Christ is not the sort of person who would drive people away -- I don't know that it's our job to stop it," he said. "Our job is to seek to know the will of the living Christ and to obey it the best we can. When we humans try to fix one another, we just make things much, much worse."
Surprisingly, Cat Chapin-Bishop, author of the blog "Quaker Pagan Reflections," a bastion of Quaker-pagan thought, agrees with Massey on many counts.
She says many pagans find Quakerism attractive because it allows them to appear more mainstream. Still, she worries that if their commitment doesn't deepen, that could weaken Quaker beliefs.
"I see the pagan world waking up and saying, `Wow, there's Quakers, and maybe we could be Quakers and pagans -- cool!'" she said. "If it stays on that superficial level, that's not good news, and threatens Quakerism with real dilution. But if there are some leadings and people ... take in the wisdom that people have to teach us, then it's a wonderful thing for both pagans and the Society of Friends."
Comparison study of American/European religious practices
http://www.christianpost.com/article/20080429/32160_Poll%3A_U.S._More_Bible-Wired%2C_Prayful_than_Europe%5C%27s_Christian_Nations.htm
When compared to people living in Europe’s most Christian-populated nations, Americans are the most prayerful and most likely to be connected to the Bible, according to a new study released on Monday.
Three-quarters of American respondents said they had read a phrase from the Bible in the past 12 months, found the poll conducted by GFK-Eurisko research group.
In comparison, only 20 to 38 percent of respondents from the other eight countries surveyed – Britain, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Russia, Italy, Spain and Poland – replied they had read from the Bible in the past year.
Among the countries with the lowest Bible reading rate were Spain (20 percent), France (21 percent), Italy (27 percent), and Germany (28 percent).
Similar results were found when respondents were asked if they had read a book with a religious theme in the past 12 months.
More than half of Americans (58 percent) responded affirmatively, while Polish came in second with 50 percent. Other countries have between 22 and 35 percent.
In all countries, the majority of respondents said they believe the Bible was the direct word of God or inspired by God. But Germany and the Netherlands had the highest percentage of respondents that did not believe the Bible was divinely inspired, rather they consider it “an ancient book made up of legends, historical facts and teachings written by man.”
Nearly all Americans (93 percent) said they had a Bible at home, compared to the French who were the least likely to have a Bible at home (48 percent).
The average American household owns three Bibles, according to a 1993 Barna Research study.
A nationwide Harris Poll released earlier in April showed that the Bible was American’s favorite book of all time.
Americans also stood way above other countries when it came to prayer. Most Americans prayed (87 percent), while the French prayed the least (49 percent).
All the nationalities surveyed, except for Italians and French, said they prayed “with my own words.” Meanwhile, Italians and French more often recite memorized prayer.
Americans were also the most willing to donate money to spread the Bible message.
Poland, meanwhile, was found to have the highest percentage of regular religious service goers (91 percent), followed by the United States with 77 percent and Russia with 75 percent.
Top evangelical theologian leaves Anglican Church of Canada over it's "poisonous liberalism"
http://communities.canada.com/vancouversun/blogs/thesearch/archive/2008/04/26/top-evangelical-theologian-leaves-anglican-church-of-canada.aspx
One of the world's most famous evangelical theologians quit the Anglican Church of Canada this week because he believes many of its bishops are "arguably heretical" for adhering to "poisonous liberalism."
James (J.I.) Packer, whom Time magazine recently named as one of the planet's 25 most influential evangelicals, said he hesitated before using the harsh terms to describe the Anglican bishops, but believed he must do so in the name of truth.
Vancouver-based Packer, who has sold more than four million copies of his many books, said he and 10 other B.C. Anglican clergy left the national denomination this week to operate under the authority of a South American Anglican archbishop because they felt they were being "starved out and worn down."
Oxford-trained Packer was interviewed at a Friday gathering of about 300 members of the breakaway Anglican Network in Canada, which officially welcomed South American Anglican Primate Gregory Venables to Canada as their spiritual leader -- against the express wishes of Canada's top Anglican, Primate Fred Hiltz.
Packer, 81, said he can no longer serve under Vancouver-area Bishop Michael Ingham, who in 2002 sanctioned a diocesan vote that eventually permitted the blessing of same-sex couples at eight out of 67 parishes.
"He is a bishop who appears heretical," Packer said, comparing Ingham to high-profile progressive U.S. Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong and Scottish Episcopal Church Bishop Richard Holloway.
Packer is a long-time member of St. John's Shaughnessy Anglican Church in Vancouver, which in February left the 640,000-member Anglican Church of Canada to join with 14 other congregations from across the nation to operate under the authority of the South American prelate.
Known for the way he does not sugarcoat his conservative Christian beliefs despite his soft-spoken, gracious demeanour, Packer said the Bible is the "absolute" authority on divine truth, which clearly describes homosexuality as a grave sin.
Opening his English Standard Version of the Bible, of which he was chief editor, Packer read out passages from 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, in which the apostle Paul compares "men who lie with men" to drunkards, thieves, slanderers and adulterers, none of whom will enter the kingdom of heaven.
"That's a very solemn apostolic warning," said Packer, a self-described "Calvinist Anglican" who wrote the book, The Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life.
The priest at St. Mary's Anglican Church in Kerrisdale, which is seeking permission to bless same-sex relationships in the future, said Packer's decision to raise the concept of "heresy" to describe his theological opponents stunts dialogue and honest intellectual exploration.
"I think it's very unfair when any new insight that departs from an accepted position is labelled 'heretical'," said Rev. Kevin Dixon.
The priest called the Vancouver-area diocese's decision to bless same-sex relationships "a recognition of what's true in light of contemporary research in genetics and psychology."
Dixon said Packer is adopting a "literalistic" reading of the Bible when he takes Paul's 2,000-year-old words as proof for all time that the Supreme Being condemns homosexuality.
"It's important for people to understand that the holy scriptures is a very nuanced document. I think we need to allow people room to come to a new understanding," said Dixon.
"I have not always held the view that same-sex relationships are consistent with the gospel of Jesus Christ, but now I do."
Even though several Anglican dioceses have recently joined Vancouver in voting to allow same-sex blessings, the governing body of the national Anglican Church of Canada in 2007 narrowly defeated a motion approving the rites.
For his part, Packer described the blessings that many of Canada's Anglican bishops' are willing to give to active gays and lesbians, as well as the bishops' openness to diverse ways of interpreting the Bible, as "persistent unrepentant doctrinal disorder."
The author of the 1973 book, Knowing God, which alone has sold more than three million copies, said it is "utterly tragic" that some conservative Anglicans felt they had no option but to leave the Anglican Church of Canada.
Asking himself why God would allow "poisonous liberalism" and its views of God and homosexuality to grow and flourish in Europe and North America, Packer said it must be so the West would eventually realize how dangerous such ideas are -- "so the poison will be fully squeezed out."
Packer maintained it is top leaders of the Anglican Church of Canada, not he and more than 2,000 fellow conservatives in the Anglican Network in Canada, who have changed their interpretation of Christianity since he moved from Britain to Canada more than 29 years ago to teach at Vancouver's Regent College.
"I'm simply being an old-fashioned mainstream Anglican," Packer said.
The Bible teaches, he said, that people who feel erotic attractions to people of the same gender "are called by God to remain chaste," avoiding sexual relationships.
Packer urged Anglicans who are adamantly opposed to liberal developments in the Anglican church in Canada and the U.S. to remain "tough" as they re-align themselves under Archbishop Venables into a new non-geographically-based form of Anglicanism.
Christian Ministry Fined $23,000 in Gay Discrimination Case - employees forced to attend a homosexual oriented “human rights training program"
http://www.christianpost.com/article/20080429/32167_Christian_Ministry_Fined_%2423%2C000_in_Gay_Discrimination_Case_.htm
One of Canada’s largest Christian ministries dedicated to caring for the disabled was fined $23,000 recently by the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario for allegedly discriminating against a former homosexual employee.
Connie Heintz claimed discrimination against Christian Horizons after she said she was “subjected to a poisoned work environment” and pressured into quitting her job after she entered a homosexual relationship – which was in violation of her work contract back in 2000.
In line with its Christian foundation and principles, the ministry requires that all its employees sign “morality statements” vowing to abstain from immoral behavior, including pornography, pre-marital, extra-marital, and homosexual activity as a condition of employment.
In a recently made public ruling, Michael Gottheil, the single adjudicator representing the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, ruled against Christian Horizons, ordering the organization to pay Heintz $23,000 in fines plus two years wages and benefits.
Gottheil also ordered that the organization abandon its Christian principles barring homosexual behavior and issued mandates that it begin requiring all employees to attend a homosexual oriented “human rights training program.”
In a statement, Barbara Hall, the Chief Commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, wrote approvingly of the decision by the tribunal.
"This decision is important because it sets out that when faith-based and other organizations move beyond serving the interests of their particular community to serving the general public, the rights of others, including employees, must be respected,” she said.
The Family Research Council (FRC), however, criticized the recent ruling as yet another attack in the worldwide effort to stamp out Christianity.
“It sounds unfair, yet this is the same rationale that's fueling the U.S. Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) debate. ENDA would mandate employer tolerance of all forms of sexual orientation in hiring, firing, promotion, and many Christian-oriented businesses (such as bookstores and radio stations) may not be protected by the bill's limited religious exemption,” the FRC said in a statement.
John Jalsevac, of LifeSiteNews.com, also wrote incredulously of the ruling in a column.
"It is unreasonable for any tribunal to make a decision which assumes that faith and practice can be severed and in this case the capacity for practice in the type of ministry that Christian Horizons exhibits is dependent on a shared faith commitment amongst its staff."
“In the world of the Commissions, dogmatic Christians are by definition the bigots,” he added.
Rev. Royal Hamel, spokesman for Campaign Life Evangelical told LifeSiteNews.com that the situation was reminiscent of Orwell's novel '1984' where the 'Ministry of Truth' was used to indoctrinate citizens into believing the currently held lies of the state. "It's 2008 and we've finally reached 1984," he said.
Death Camp Dr. Tops Most Wanted List
http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/366790.aspx
BADEN-BADEN, Germany - Karl Lotter, a prisoner who worked in the hospital at Mauthausen concentration camp, had no trouble remembering the first time he watched SS doctor Aribert Heim kill a man.
It was 1941, and an 18-year-old Jew had been sent to the clinic with a foot inflammation. Heim asked him about himself and why he was so fit. The young man said he had been a soccer player and swimmer.
Then, instead of treating the prisoner's foot, Heim anesthetized him, cut him open, castrated him, took apart one kidney and removed the second, Lotter said. The victim's head was removed and the flesh boiled off so that Heim could keep it on display.
"He needed the head because of its perfect teeth," Lotter, a non-Jewish political prisoner, recalled in testimony eight years later, which was included in an Austrian warrant for Heim's arrest uncovered by The Associated Press. "Of all the camp doctors in Mauthausen, Dr. Heim was the most horrible."
Avoided Prosecution
But Heim managed to avoid prosecution, his American-held file in Germany mysteriously omitting his time at Mauthausen, and today he is the most-wanted suspected Nazi war criminal on a list of hundreds who the Simon Wiesenthal Center estimates are still free.
Heim would be 93 today and "we have good reason to believe he is still alive," said Efraim Zuroff, the Simon Wiesenthal Center's top Nazi hunter. He spoke in a telephone interview from Jerusalem ahead of the center's plans to release a most-wanted list Wednesday and to open a media campaign in South America this summer highlighting the $485,000 reward for Heim's arrest posted by the center along with Germany and Austria.
According to an advance copy of the list obtained by the AP, the most wanted, after Heim, are: John Demjanjuk, fighting deportation from the U.S., which says he was a guard at several death and forced labor camps; Sandor Kepiro, a Hungarian accused of involvement in the wartime killings of than 1,000 civilians in Serbia; Milivoj Asner, a wartime Croatian police chief now living in Austria and suspected of an active role in deporting hundreds of Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies to their death; and Soeren Kam, a former member of the SS wanted by Denmark for the assassination of a journalist in 1943. His extradition from Germany was blocked in 2007 by a Bavarian court that found insufficient evidence for murder charges.
The Hunt Goes Worldwide
The hunt for Heim has taken investigators from the German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg all around the world. Besides his home country of Austria and neighboring Germany where he settled after the war, tips have come from Uruguay in 1998, Spain, Switzerland and Chile in 2005, and Brazil in 2006, said Heinz Heister, presiding judge of the Baden-Baden state court, where Heim was indicted in absentia on hundreds of counts of murder in 1979.
Thousands of German war criminals were prosecuted in West Germany after World War II. In the 1970s Western democracies began a hunt in earnest for Eastern European collaborators who had fled West claiming to be refugees from communism, and the end of the Cold War gave access to a trove of communist files in the 1990s.
"All of a sudden there was pressure on countries like Latvia and Estonia to put these people on trial," Zuroff said. "So two times in the past 30 years we've been given a tremendous infusion of new energy and new possibilities."
The Wiesenthal Center's previous annual survey counted 1,019 investigations under way worldwide. The number is lower this year and inexact because not all countries responded, but new investigations were up from 63 to 202, Zuroff said.
Still, a lack of political will in many countries, and what Zuroff called the "misplaced-sympathy syndrome" -- reluctance to pursue aging suspects -- has meant that few people have been brought to trial and convicted.
Lotter, the witness to Heim's atrocity, was in Mauthausen because he fought with the communists in the Spanish Civil War. His statement from the 1950 arrest warrant was viewed by the AP at the National Archives in College Park, Md.
Can He Be Found?
Now that the necessary evidence is in place, numerous witness statements have been taken and Heim has been indicted, all that's left is to find him.
Born June 28, 1914 in Radkersburg, Austria, Heim joined the local Nazi party in 1935, three years before Austria was bloodlessly annexed by Germany.
He later joined the Waffen SS and was assigned to Mauthausen, a concentration camp near Linz, Austria, as a camp doctor in October and November 1941.
While there, witnesses told investigators, he worked closely with SS pharmacist Erich Wasicky on such gruesome experiments as injecting various solutions into Jewish prisoners' hearts to see which killed them the fastest.
But while Wasicky was brought to trial by an American Military Tribunal in 1946 and sentenced to death, along with other camp medical personnel and commanders, Heim, who was a POW in American custody, was not among them.
Heim's file in the Berlin Document Center, the then-U.S.-run depot for Nazi-era papers, was apparently altered to obliterate any mention of Mauthausen, according to his 1979 German indictment, obtained by the AP. Instead, for the period he was known to be at the concentration camp, he was listed as having a different SS assignment.
This "cannot be correct," the indictment says. "It is possible that through data manipulation the short assignment at the same time to the was concealed."
There is no indication who might have been responsible.
The U.S. Army Intelligence file on Heim, which could shed light on his wartime and postwar activities, is among hundreds of thousands transferred to the U.S. National Archives. But the Army's electronic format is such that staff have so far only been able to access about half of them, and these don't include the file requested by the AP.
Many Witnesses Still Alive
Heim was relatively well-known, however, having been a national hockey player in Austria before the war, and there were plenty of witnesses from his time at Mauthausen.
Austrian authorities sent the 1950 arrest warrant to American authorities in Germany who initially agreed to turn him over, then told the Austrians, in a December 21, 1950 letter obtained by the AP, that they couldn't trace him.
What happened next is unclear, but in 1958 Heim apparently felt comfortable enough to buy a 42-unit apartment block in Berlin, listing it in his own name with a home address in Mannheim, according to purchase documents obtained by the AP. He then moved to the nearby resort town of Baden-Baden and opened a gynecological clinic -- also under his own name, Heister said.
In 1961 German authorities were alerted and began an investigation, but when they finally went to arrest him in September 1962, they just missed him. He apparently had been tipped off.
Heim continued to live off the rents collected from the Berlin apartments until 1979, when the building was confiscated by German authorities.
Proof that he is alive may lie in the fact that no one has claimed his estate. Heim has two sons in Germany and a daughter who lived in Chile but whose current whereabouts are unknown.
In Frankfurt, Heim's lawyer said he still officially represents the fugitive, but has not heard from him for 20 years and has "no clue" to his whereabouts.
Asked in a telephone interview if Heim was dead, Fritz Steinacker said only: "I don't know."
Ruediger Heim, one of the sons, would not comment when telephoned at his Baden-Baden villa.
"All I can say is that it has been implied that I am in contact with my father, and that is absolutely false," he said. "The rest is speculation, and I can't enter into that."
Rising Euro-Muslim Tensions
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=26191
Perhaps the greatest secular gift to the world by Judeo-Christian civilization is its seminal concept of the individual, which it raises above the tribe or the collective. In Genesis, we are told that man is made in the image of God. Deuteronomy tells us that "each human by his own sin is to be judged" and "do not punish children for the sins of their fathers." And of course, the biblical life and teachings of Jesus reflect the deep importance of the individual. Thus was planted in the soil of the West our uniquely heightened respect for the individual.
It is impossible to imagine Western civilization -- and particularly America -- without the existence in our culture of the instinctive respect for the individual to offset the more general human instinct to be subordinated in the tribe or the group.
Conversely, there is no more dangerous incubus inserted into a Western nation than hostility or indifference to the inherent value and rights of the individual.
But radicalized Islam places little value on the individual, while holding up for supreme value the interests of the group, particularly their view of the group called Islam. And it is this aggressive, assertive insistence by radicalized Muslims in the West to subordinate our inherent rights to their collective demands that slowly and more or less quietly is forcing Westerners to take sides in the radicals' demands. The resolution of this developing conflict -- if not managed by the elites in Western countries on behalf of indigenous Western rights -- inevitably will result in unnecessary violence.
A recent example of such intimidation was reported in The Washington Times Monday: Muneer Fareed, head of the Islamic Society of North America, is "demanding" that Sen. John McCain stop using the word "Islamic" to describe terrorists who are radical Islamists. He insists that McCain (and all others) just call Islamic terrorists "criminals." "That is more acceptable to the Muslim community," Fareed said. McCain, being as tough as nails, has said he has no intention of submitting to Fareed's demand and will continue to use "Islamic" to describe Islamic terrorists. But it will be interesting to see what the two Democratic candidates for president choose to do about this demand.
Meanwhile, in Canada, Mark Steyn awaits trial before the Canadian Human Rights Commission and the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal for the crime of committing hate speech by writing a book and a magazine article that warned against the dangers of Islam overwhelming Europe (No. 1 best-seller in Canada; New York Times best-seller in the United States).
These charges were precipitated by demands for Steyn's prosecution by a band of students, who publicly marched to announce their demands. They claimed that as Muslims, they should have the chance to offer a rebuttal when people like Steyn talk about issues that relate directly to Muslims. "When people feel insulted, they should have recourse," Khaled Mouammar, president of the Canadian Arab Federation, said. Amazingly, the culturally feeble, intimidated Canadian officials promptly filed the criminal charges.
Similarly, a few months ago, the increasing British Muslim demands for Shariah law were answered in the positive by the archbishop of Canterbury. If the British government ever succumbs to that outrageous demand, not only will Muslim women lose their individual rights but also, pursuant to honor killing, principals could be murdered legally by their fathers, husbands or brothers. Already, non-Muslim British are being banned from public swimming pools during time reserved for Muslims. (No other group can reserve such times.)
Forty years ago last weekend, British classicist and politician Enoch Powell warned that if immigrants bringing alien values and customs into Britain are allowed to continue their immigration, a sense of alarm and resentment would develop in the indigenous British population. He was ejected from British politics for giving that warning.
But this week, the BBC published a poll taken precisely to measure public attitudes 40 years after Powell's famous warning (and after 40 years of the British ruling class ignoring the growing danger). Seventy percent think there is high tension between the races; 63 percent expect those tensions to result in violence between the races in Britain; and 60 percent think there are too many "immigrants" in Britain.
In a similar poll taken for the Davos World Economic Forum, stunning numbers of Europeans fear a "threat" from Muslims with whom they "interact": 79 percent of Danes, 67 percent of Italians, 68 percent of Spaniards, 65 percent of Swedes and 59 percent of Belgians.
In my book "The West's Last Chance," published in 2005, I warned that the European people would not be passive in the face of their culture being undercut. Unlike others who wrote on the subject, I did not think Europeans would fail to defend their nations and their cultures. I warned that broad European street violence could be avoided only if their governments took the threat seriously.
These disturbing polls from BBC and Davos should constitute another undeniable warning to the gutless, defeatist European leaders. Take action to protect your people and their cherished Western values, or the people will take matters into their own hands. And for us in America, impending European unrest should be seen as a cautionary tale.
Holocaust Remembrance Day
http://www.jnewswire.com/article/2432
Although never far from their collective and - in decreasing numbers individual - memories, the genocide of Europe's more than six million Jews was set to be revisited by Israel's 5.5 million sons and daughters of Abraham Wednesday, as the nation whose state was reborn out of the very ashes of Auschwitz prepared to commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day.
For 24 hours, until sunset Thursday, Israelis will saturate themselves with images, films, interviews, news reports, special gatherings and school assemblies, and a two-minute-long nationwide siren designed to pause them in memory how one out of every three of the world's Jews was murdered at Nazi hands.
About 250,000 Holocaust survivors are still alive in Israel today, according to The Jerusalem Post.
A torch-lighting ceremony at the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem will start the special day for this people which, more then any other in history, has been hated and targeted for destruction just because of who they are as a nation.
While the numbers crushed in Hitler's death machine were unprecedented, they were "only" the largest batch of victims who have fallen prey to Jew-hatred down the centuries.
Today's Israeli Jews know that the same hatred endures, seething in the hearts of tens of millions of Arabs and Muslims around and among them.
As Hitler sought to exterminate the Jews of Europe, and ultimately of the whole world, so Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the leaders and citizens in the Arab world dream and plan to exterminate the Jews in Israel.
Olmert makes surprise visit to Jordan
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1208870531762&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's surprise two-hour visit to Amman on Wednesday for talks with Jordan's King Abdullah II reflects an Israeli interest in keeping the monarch "in the loop" regarding negotiations with the Palestinians, government officials said.
It was no coincidence that Olmert flew to Jordan on Wednesday - the second time he has done so under a veil of secrecy this year - on the day that Hamas and Egypt seemed to conclude a cease-fire deal in Gaza, one official said.
"Olmert wanted to bear some good news," the official said, noting that Jerusalem's terse statement on the Egypt-Hamas deal indicated Israel would accept the deal, although it was unlikely to say so formally.
Abdullah is reportedly concerned about the ongoing crisis in Gaza, and fearful that the instability there could lead to a Hamas takeover of the West Bank, which would have negative implications for Jordan.
The Arab press reported that Abdullah had pressed US President George W. Bush during their meeting in Washington last week not to come to Israel in mid-May because of the lack of progress in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
The Prime Minister's Office, in a laconic statement issued after Wednesday's meeting, said the two leaders - who held a working session over lunch - discussed "the diplomatic process and ways to move forward the goals set out in the Annapolis Conference."
Jordan's Petra news agency, basing itself on a statement from the Jordanian Royal Palace, said the king stressed "the need for negotiations to lead to an agreement based on the two-state solution before the end of this year, as per commitments made by the parties at the Annapolis Conference in November 2007."
Abdullah said the deal should "address all final-status issues and result in the establishment of an independent Palestinian state," Petra reported.
"Olmert briefed King Abdullah on the negotiations and expressed appreciation for the king's efforts to ensure progress and achieve peace between the Palestinians and Israel," again according to the Jordanian news agency.
Jordan, according to sources in Jerusalem, can play an important role in supporting "positive developments in the process of Palestinian nation building" and in helping to strengthen Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
According to these sources, Olmert periodically meets with Abdullah because Israel "takes the relationship with Jordan very seriously" and sees Jordan as an integral element in the country's overall national security doctrine.
Olmert last met with Abdullah in January, when he flew secretly to his palace in Aqaba. That visit, like this one, took place days before a Bush visit.
Pressure on Israel to agree to Gaza 'ceasefire'
http://www.jnewswire.com/article/2430
Israel is under intense pressure to go along with a ploy disguised as a ceasefire whereby the IDF will stop taking out Arab terrorists in the Gaza Strip and the terror groups will be free to prepare for another round of terrorism.
Hamas, the Palestine Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committees, which have all been hammered by the Israeli military in recent weeks, have indicated they will agree to stop firing rockets and trying to kill Jews, for now.
In return the IDF must stop its anti-terrorism operations in Gaza and, eventually in Samaria and Judea too.
But the Israeli Cabinet, meeting Wednesday to discuss the Egyptian effort to broker an agreement between them and the terrorists, was mostly opposed to the idea.
According to Ynetnews the ministers believe any ceasefire on Israel's part will "only allow Hamas to regroup, rearm and recruit more operatives before it continues its attacks on Israel."
Washington, however, is reportedly turning the screws on Jerusalem to agree to the proposal in order to create an atmosphere that will benefit US President George W. Bush, who is due to arrive in Israel on May 13 to mark the 60th anniversary of the state's rebirth.
He will allegedly use the opportunity to try and push Israel and the Palestinian Authority towards a "peace" agreement, but wants an atmosphere more "conducive" to "success."
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is coming in a few days to prepare the way for her president.
Israeli Cabinet Objects to 'Truce'
http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/366862.aspx
JERUSALEM, Israel - At Wednesday's Security Cabinet meeting, the majority of ministers said a six-month cease-fire with Hamas would give Palestinian terror groups time to rearm and regroup.
Yuval Diskin, head of the Shin Bet (General Security Agency), told the ministers that Hamas is continuing to strengthen its hold on the Gaza Strip.
Public Security Minister Avi Dichter said accepting the Egyptian-brokered truce bestows legitimacy on the Hamas terror group.
"We have to reach a cease-fire from a state of deterrence, while ensuring we can increase the chances to free [captured Israel Defense Forces Corporal] Gilad Shalit," Dichter said.
"A problematic terror state has arisen, which is built on the Hezbollah model," he said.
"There is ongoing weapons smuggling of worrying quantity and quality from Egypt, and this terror state is gaining legitimacy from Egypt and maybe even more than that," he said, reminding ministers that Palestinians in Gaza had fired more than 900 rockets on Israel since the beginning of the year.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who was visiting Israel Defense Forces in training in the Golan Heights, did not attend the Security Cabinet meeting.
On Tuesday, while touring the security fence in Samaria, Barak said the time is not right for a truce.
"This is not the right time for a cease-fire with Hamas," Barak said, noting that more than 13 Kassam rockets and mortar shells were fired on southern Israeli communities that morning.
Barak said it is not time to talk about a cease-fire when Israel is in a "confrontation with Hamas."
Meanwhile Wednesday morning in Cairo, 12 Palestinian terror groups accepted the Egyptian-brokered cease-fire.
While each group had its own set of differing demands, they all agreed to accept Egypt's proposal.
And while leaders of Palestinian terror cells met in Cairo, there was no cessation of Kassam rocket attacks on Israel.
For the second time in two days, a Kassam exploded near a school in Sderot, but no one was hurt in the attack. On Tuesday, 16 rockets were fired in the area.
IDF denies charges leveled by Arabs, press
http://www.jnewswire.com/article/2431
The Israel Defense Forces says initial investigations show that the tank crew whose shell killed a "Palestinian" journalist on April 16 was unable to identify him as a journalist from where they opened fire, about a mile away.
Military officials Wednesday also rejected claims an Israeli missile killed a woman and her four children in Gaza on Monday.
Based on what has happened in the past, however, Israel's denials are likely to be dismissed by many.
Some members of the international press have already tried and convicted the IDF of deliberately killing Reuters News cameraman Fadal Shana in central Gaza.
Defense spokesman Avital Leibovitch said Monday that while the army had not yet completed its probe into Shana's death, "the initial investigation showed [that the journalist and those with him also killed and wounded in the tank strike] were not identified as members of the press."
Regarding the deaths of the Arab mother and her children - the IDF says a missile was fired at two terrorists positioned near their home. A secondary blast from explosives they were carrying is believed to have killed the family.
According to the Israeli daily Ha'aretz, the investigation into the tragedy is based "on two main sources of information: a video recording taken by a drone overflying the area, which is believed to show, albeit not very clearly, that after the missile strike another explosion ensued, probably from explosives carried by the gunmen; and the testimony of air force and Givati Brigade officers. The Givati officers, members of the brigade's reconnaissance battalion, were on the ground in proximity to the area where the blast occurred. They called in the air strike against the gunmen."
Whether or not this is provable, in the words of Israel's Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, the blame for all civilian deaths in Gaza lies with the "Palestinians" who wage their war from the midst of neighborhoods - from among their women and children.
Hizbollah builds up covert army for a new assault against Israel
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/27/israelandthepalestinians.lebanon
The dead of southern Lebanon watch the living from the sides of buildings and from lampposts, their faces staring out defiantly from posters, heads often superimposed on bodies of generic men in uniform. These are Hizbollah's martyrs: men killed fighting against Israel before it abandoned the occupation of the south in 2000 or in the numerous clashes since, including the bloody summer war of 2006.
The images are often the only public acknowledgement of the individuals who make up this most secretive of institutions: Hizbollah's military wing.
But an Observer investigation has discovered that this covert organisation is quietly but steadily replacing its dead and redoubling its recruitment efforts in anticipation of a new, and even more brutal, conflict. Hizbollah has embarked on a major expansion of its fighting capability and is now sending hundreds, if not thousands, of young men into intensive training camps in Lebanon, Syria and Iran to ready itself for war with Israel. 'It's not a matter of if,' says one fighter. 'It's a matter of when Sayed Hasan Nasrallah [Hizbollah chief] commands us.'
The group's policy of refusing to discuss military matters extends to the highest levels. In speeches and rare interviews, Nasrallah refuses to answer even the simplest questions about the military wing, never referring even to the fact that his eldest son, Hadi, was a fighter himself. Life as a Hizbollah fighter is anonymous until death. But meetings with fighters, activists, Lebanese security officials, the UN peacekeepers along the border and residents of south Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Beirut, where the group is most active, offered a glimpse inside the workings of a group rarely open to outsiders. None of the sources within the group can be named - Hizbollah has barred members from speaking with the Western media since the mysterious death of a top commander, Imad Mughniyeh, in a Damascus car bomb.
'The most important thing is to never talk,' says one fighter, who agreed to speak about the group without revealing his name or specific duties inside 'the Islamic Resistance of Lebanon', as the military wing of Hizbollah is known. 'From the moment we begin our training, we are told two things: never disobey an order and never talk about the resistance. Hizbollah is not a job, it is not a family. It is a mix of religion, honour, dignity and discipline. It is my life.'
But what is becoming more obvious, even as Hizbollah tries to hide it, is that the group has embarked on an unprecedented build-up of men, equipment and bunker-building in preparation for the war that almost everyone - Lebanese and Israeli - considers inevitable. 'The villages in the south are empty of men,' said one international official. 'They are all gone, training in Bekaa, Syria and Iran.'
A trip by The Observer through villages in the Hizbollah heartland confirmed a conspicuous lack of fighting-age men. Visible were several new martyr posters, but unlike the traditional ones they portrayed anonymous, fresh-faced youngsters without military garb. According to locals, these are boys who have been killed accidentally in the latest wave of training in Iran. In the city of Tyre, too, posters showing young men killed in training exercises are cropping up. One is of Ahmad Hashem, killed while instructing recruits in the use of rocket-propelled grenades.
The initial training and selection of recruits is done in Lebanon, with Iran preferred for training on specialities - use of certain weapons, RPGs and anti-tank missiles - that require firing live rounds. 'But mostly the training in Iran is in theoretical things: philosophy, religion. The best training for fighting is done here in Lebanon,' said a fighter. 'We are so close to Israel here that our training becomes real.'
Israeli official statements suggest the increasingly aggressive recruiting results from the heavy casualties suffered by the group in 2006, a notion dismissed by sources within Hizbollah and even by the US military. While Israel contends that between 500 and 700 Hizbollah fighters were killed, the group itself said that about 80 fighters had died. Hizbollah sources admit that the losses were double that figure, while the US military study decided the death toll was 184.
'How could they be lying so much?' asked one resident of the south. 'People would not tolerate not having a funeral or posters of their son or husband. If it were 700 dead fighters, we would all know. We'd know more people killed, we'd be hearing the complaints from the families. Where can you hide 700 dead bodies in south Lebanon? It's too small.'
Losses aside, before 2006 most observers also widely overestimated the size of the military group. Some analysts put it as high as 5,000 men with more than 10,000 reservists, including its allied Amal - meaning Hope - militia supporting them.
'Ridiculous,' says the Hizbollah member. 'Before 2006 there were not more than 1,000 professional fighters, guys who manned bunkers and conducted operations full-time. The rest are trained and armed but lead ordinary lives unless called upon.'
This assessment is supported by regional intelligence services and Lebanese Shias, but now signs of the militia's dramatic expansion are alarming Hizbollah's domestic and international enemies.
The US military study described Hizbollah's military wing as 'completely decentralised'. Its commanders famously exercised this independence when they refused orders by the top command to abandon Bint Jebel in 2006 - then under massive Israeli ground assault. The town did not fall and Hizbollah rank-and-file today laud the refusal of orders as one of the biggest victories in the war. Recruiters closely watch youngsters for this kind of nerve and self-motivation, selecting the most talented boys for advanced training when they reach adulthood.
Hizbollah fighters describe a series of units - built around specialities such as rocket teams, heavy weapons experts, infantry, scouts and or part-time basis. 'Some units will be sent for training or operations for one, even two, years. Others continue to work or go to school. But even if you work your life is still Hizbollah. They call and that's it - you go. Maybe you tell your boss or professors you're going to Qatar or something for family reasons. But you never tell anyone what you're really doing.'
The decision to expand both the military wing and the supporting militias stems not from the losses during the 2006 war but from Hizbollah's success as a conventional military force in that conflict, says a Lebanese army commander who has worked with the group, his view being confirmed by the US military study. 'They were guerrillas during the occupation but shocked Israel in the war by standing and fighting from fixed positions. Even badly outnumbered, they held territory with minimal losses even under assault from tank units,' he says. 'Now they want to expand to make sure they can stop the next invasion before the tanks reach the flat plains of the Bekaa, where Israel's armoured units will have the advantage.'
Another crisis driving the build-up is Lebanon's political conflict, which pits Hizbollah and its allies against a coalition of Sunni, Druze and Christians supporting the Western-backed government. Street fights between Sunnis and Shias are becoming commonplace but Hizbollah cannot afford to take its men away from the bunkers in the south to fight on the streets of Beirut, say members of Amal and the Lebanese army.
'They know they can't send their best fighters, or the Israelis could attack. Israel will always be their main focus. But they have access to many that are good enough to fight with rocks, sticks and maybe some guns. They're training those guys to fight the Sunnis in Beirut,' says the army officer.
One Hizbollah fighter says he hopes that the situation doesn't deteriorate into them taking up arms against other Lebanese groups, but admits it is possible. 'God willing, I will never fight a Lebanese, but I will if ordered.'
Syrian nukes were creeping up on Israel
http://www.jnewswire.com/article/2433
While Israeli leaders have been playing catch-me-if-you-can with Syrian President Bashar el-Assad, swearing publicly never to surrender the Golan while telling Damascus secretly it can get the Heights if it jumps high enough, the Syrians have been hard at work doing something secretive of their own.
Or at least they were until September 6 last year, when Israel Air Force fighter bombers came out of the sun and obliterated their nuclear reactor just weeks or, at the most, months before it went online.
Once hot, it would have taken just a year for Assad to get his hands on enough plutonium to make two atomic bombs, said CIA Director Michael Hayden in public statements Monday.
Last week, senior intelligence officials had told US President George W. Bush the Syrian facility was a plutonium reactor built with North Korean cooperation and intended to fuel a nuclear weapons program, according to Ynetnews.
Syria may, now and then, appear to be hinting at peace. But quietly, furiously, it continues to prepare for war. Assad's inheritance: The vision of Greater Syria and immortality to the leader who can help to bring it about by making the Middle East Israel-free.
That the Syrians could have advanced so far under cover, coming nearer than Iran - at least according to some intelligence estimates - to actually getting their unstable little fingers on the trigger of a nuclear weapon, raises all sorts of questions about just how effectively Israel, the United States, and the rest of the once-free world can prevent the atomic-arming of the Arab-Islamic states in this region.
America's confirmation of the true nature of the site bombed out of existence by Israel should galvanize Western nations to act, driving them to confront and forcefully brake the headlong Iranian and Arab rush towards nuclearizing the Middle East.
Instead, they continue to talk United Nations resolutions and the imposition of sanctions; not slowing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but encouraging him as Britain and France once encouraged Nazi Germany by restricting their response to Hitler's threats and trying to placate him with the Sudetenland.
They play this game at Israel's peril, and at their own.
The Shift Toward an Israeli-Syrian Agreement
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/shift_toward_israeli_syrian_agreement
The Middle East, already monstrously complex, grew more complex last week. First, there were strong indications that both Israel and Syria were prepared to engage in discussions on peace. That alone is startling enough. But with the indicators arising in the same week that the United States decided to reveal that the purpose behind Israel’s raid on Syria in September 2007 was to destroy a North Korean-supplied nuclear reactor, the situation becomes even more baffling.
But before we dive into the what-will-be, let us first explain how truly bizarre things have gotten. On April 8 we wrote about how a number of seemingly unconnected events were piecing themselves into a pattern that might indicate an imminent war, a sequel to the summer 2006 Lebanon conflict. This mystery in the Middle East has since matured greatly, but in an unexpected direction. Israeli-Syrian peace talks — serious Israeli-Syrian peace talks — are occurring.
First, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told the Israeli media that Israel had been talking to the Syrians, and then that “Very clearly we want peace with the Syrians and are taking all manners of action to this end. They know what we want from them, and I know full well what they want from us.” Then Syrian President Bashar al Assad publicly acknowledged that negotiations with Syria were taking place. Later, a Syrian minister appeared on Al Jazeera and said that, “Olmert is ready for peace with Syria on the grounds of international conditions, on the grounds of the return of the Golan Heights to Syria.” At almost exactly the same moment, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said that, “If Israel is serious and wants peace, nothing will stop the renewal of peace talks. What made this statement really interesting was that it was made in Tehran, standing next to Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, an ally of Syria whose government rejects the very concept of peace with Israel.
We would have expected the Syrians to choose another venue to make this statement, and we would have expected the Iranians to object. It didn’t happen. We waited for a blistering denial from Israel. Nothing came; all that happened was that Israeli spokesmen referred journalists to Olmert’s previous statement. Clearly something was on the table. The Turks had been pressing the Israelis to negotiate with the Syrians, and the Israelis might have been making a gesture to placate them, but the public exchanges clearly went beyond that point. This process could well fail, but it gave every appearance of being serious.
* According to the existing understanding of the region’s geopolitical structure, an Israeli-Syrian peace deal is impossible.The United States and Iran are locked into talks over the future of Iraq, and both regularly use their respective allies in Israel and Syria to shape those negotiations. An Israeli-Syrian peace would at the very least inconvenience American and Iranian plans.
* Any peace deal would require defanging Hezbollah. But Hezbollah is not simply a Syrian proxy with an independent streak, it is also an Iranian proxy. So long as Iran is Syria’s only real ally in the Muslim world, such a step seems inimical to Syrian interests.
* Hezbollah is also deeply entwined into the economic life of Lebanon — and in Lebanon’s drug production and distribution network — and threatening the relationship with Hezbollah would massively impact Damascus’ bottom line.
* From the other side, Syria cannot accept a peace that does not restore its control over the Golan Heights, captured during the 1967 war. Since this patch of ground overlooks some of Israel’s most densely populated regions, it seems unnatural that Israel ever would even consider such a trade.
Forget issues of Zionism or jihadism, or even simple bad blood; the reality is that any deal between Israel and Syria clashes with the strategic interests of both sides, making peace is impossible. Or is it? Talks are happening nonetheless, meaning one of two things is true: Either Olmert and Assad have lost it, or this view of reality is wrong.
Let’s reground this discussion away from what everyone — ourselves included — thinks they know and go back to the basics, namely, the geopolitical realities in which Israel and Syria exist.
Israel
Peace with Egypt and Jordan means Israel is secure on its eastern and southern frontiers. Its fundamental problem is counterinsurgency in Gaza and at times in the West Bank. Its ability to impose a military solution to this problem is limited, so it has settled for separating itself from the Palestinians and on efforts to break up the Palestinian movement into different factions. The split in the Palestinian community between Fatah in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza helped this strategy immensely, dividing the Palestinians geographically, ideologically, economically and politically. The deeper the intra-Palestinian conflict is, the less of a strategic threat to Israel the Palestinians can be. It is hardly a beautiful solution — and dividing the Palestinians does not reduce the security burden on Israel — but it is manageable.
Israel does not perceive Syria as a serious threat. Not only is the Syrian military a pale shadow of Israeli capability, Israel does not even consider sacrificing the Golan Heights to weakening the Israeli military meaningfully. The territory has become the pivot of public discussions, but losing it hasn’t been a real problem for Israel since the 1970s. In today’s battlefield environment, artillery on the heights would rapidly be destroyed by counter-battery fire, helicopter gunships or aircraft. Indeed, the main threat to Israel from Syria is missiles. Damascus now has one of the largest Scud missile and surface-to-surface missile arsenals in the region — and those can reach Israel from far beyond the Golan Heights regardless of where the Israeli-Syrian political border is located. Technological advances — even those from just the last decade — have minimized the need for a physical presence on that territory that was essential militarily decades ago .
The remaining threat to Israel is posed by Lebanon, where Hezbollah has a sufficient military capability to pose a limited threat to northern Israel, as was seen in the summer of 2006. Israel can engage and destroy a force in Lebanon, but the 1982-2002 Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon vividly demonstrated that the cost-benefit ratio to justify an ongoing presence simply does not make sense.
At the current time, Israel’s strategic interests are twofold. First, maintain and encourage the incipient civil war between Hamas and Fatah. The key to this is to leverage tensions between neighboring Arab states and the Palestinians. And this is easy. The Hashemite government of Jordan detests the West Bank Palestinians because more than three-quarters of the population of Jordan is Palestinian, but the Hashemite king rather likes being king. Egypt equally hates the Gaza Palestinians as Hamas’ ideological roots lie in the Muslim Brotherhood — a group whose ideology not only contributed to al Qaeda’s formation, but also that of groups who have exhibited a nasty habit of assassinating Egyptian presidents.
The second Israeli strategic interest is finding a means of neutralizing any threat from Lebanon without Israel being forced into war — or worse yet, into an occupation of Lebanon. The key to this strategy lies with the other player in this game.
Syria
Ultimately Syria only has its western border to worry about. To the east is the vast desert border with Iraq, an excellent barrier to attack for both nations. To the north are the Turks who, if they chose, could swallow Syria in a hard day’s work and be home in time for coffee. Managing that border is a political matter, not a military one.
That leaves the west. Syria does not worry too much about an Israeli invasion. It is not that Damascus thinks that Israel is incapable of such an operation — Israel would face only a slightly more complicated task of eliminating Syria than Turkey would — but that the al Assads know full well that Israel is happy with them in power. The al Assads and their fellow elites hail from the Alawite sect of Islam, an offshoot of Shiite Islam that the Sunnis consider apostate. Alawite rule in Syria essentially is secular, and the government has a historic fear of an uprising by the majority Sunnis.
The Israelis know that any overthrow of the al Assads would probably land Israel with a radical Sunni government on its northeastern frontier. From Israel’s point of view, it is far better to deal with a terrified and insecure Syrian government more concerned with maintaining internal control than a confident and popular Syrian government with the freedom to look outward.
Just as Syria’s defensive issues vis-Ã -vis Israel are not what they seem, neither are Syrian tools for dealing with Israel in an offensive manner as robust as most think.
Syria is not particularly comfortable with the entities that pose the largest security threats to Israel, namely, the main Palestinian factions. Damascus has never been friendly to the secular Fatah movement, with which it fought many battles in Lebanon; nor is it comfortable with the more fundamentalist Sunni Hamas. (Syria massacred its own fundamentalists during the 1980s.) So while the Syrians have dabbled in Palestinian politics, they have never favored a Palestinian state. In fact, it should be recalled that when Syria first invaded Lebanon in 1975, it was against the Palestinians and in support of Lebanese Christians.
That invasion — as well as most Syrian operations in Lebanon — was not about security, but about money. Lebanon, the descendent of Phoenicia, has always been a vibrant economic region (save when there is war). It is the terminus of trade routes from the east and south and the door to the Mediterranean basin. It is a trading and banking hub, with Beirut in particular as the economic engine of the region. Without Beirut and Lebanon, Syria is an isolated backwater. With it, Damascus is a major player.
As such, Syria’s closest ties among Israel’s foes are not with the two major indigenous Palestinian factions, but with the Shiite group Hezbollah. The Syrians have a somewhat tighter religious affinity with Hezbollah, as well as a generation of complex business dealings with the group’s leaders. But its support for Hezbollah is multifaceted, and anti-Israeli tendencies are only one aspect of the relationship. And Hezbollah is much more important to Syria as a tool for managing Damascus’ affairs in Lebanon.
The Basis of a Deal
Israel and Syria’s geopolitical interests diverge less than it might appear. By itself, Syria poses no conventional threat to Israel. Syria is dangerous only in the context of a coalition with Egypt. In 1973, fighting on two fronts, the Syrians were a threat. With Egypt neutralized now and behind the buffer in the Sinai, Syria poses no threat. As for unconventional weapons, the Israelis indicated with their bombing of the Syrian research facility in September 2007 that they know full well how — and are perfectly willing unilaterally — to take that option off Damascus’ table.
Since neither side wants a war with the other — Israel does not want to replace the Alawites, and the Alawites are not enamored of being replaced — the issue boils down to whether Israel and Syria can coordinate their interests in Lebanon. Israel has no real economic interests in Lebanon. Its primary interest is security — to make certain that forces hostile to Israel cannot use Lebanon as a base for launching attacks. Syria has no real security interests so long its economic primacy is guaranteed. And neither country wants to see an independent Palestinian state.
The issue boils down to Lebanon. In a sense, the Israelis had an accommodation with Syria over Lebanon when Israel withdrew. It ceded economic pre-eminence in Lebanon to the Syrians. In return, the Syrians controlled Hezbollah and in effect took responsibility for Israeli security in return for economic power. It was only after Syria withdrew from Lebanon under U.S. pressure that Hezbollah evolved into a threat to Israel, precipitating the 2006 conflict.
This was a point on which Israel and the United States didn’t agree. The United States, fighting in Iraq, wanted an additional lever with which to try to control Syrian support for militants fighting in Iraq. They saw Lebanon as a way to punish Syria for actions in Iraq. But the Israelis saw themselves as having to live with the consequences of that withdrawal. Israel understood that Syria’s withdrawal shifted the burden of controlling Hezbollah to Israel — something that could not be achieved without an occupation.
What appears to be under consideration between the supposed archrivals, therefore, is the restoration of the 2005 status quo in Lebanon. The Syrians would reclaim their position in Lebanon, unopposed by Israel. In return, the Syrians would control Hezbollah. For the Syrians, this has the added benefit that by controlling Hezbollah and restraining it in the south, Syria would have both additional strength on the ground in Lebanon, as well as closer economic collaboration — on more favorable terms — with Hezbollah. For Syria, Hezbollah is worth more as a puppet than as a heroic anti-Israeli force.
This is something Israel understands. In the last fight between Israel and Syria in Lebanon, there were different local allies: Israel had the South Lebanese Army. The Syrians were allied with the Christian Franjieh clan. In the end, both countries dumped their allies. Syria and Israel have permanent interests in Lebanon. They do not have permanent allies.
The Other Players
The big loser in this game, of course, would be the Lebanese. But that is more complicated than it appears. Many of the Lebanese factions — including most of the Christian clans — have close relations with the Syrians. Moreover, the period of informal Syrian occupation was a prosperous time. Lebanon is a country of businessmen and militia, sometimes the same. The stability the Syrians imposed was good for business.
The one faction that would clearly oppose this would be Hezbollah. It would be squeezed on all sides. Ideologically speaking, constrained from confronting Israel, its place in the Islamic sun would be undermined. Economically speaking, Hezbollah would be forced into less favorable economic relations with the Syrians than it enjoyed on its own. And politically speaking, Hezbollah would have the choice of fighting the Syrians (not an attractive option) or of becoming a Syrian tool. Either way, Hezbollah would have to do something in response to any rumors floating about of a Syrian deal with the Israelis. And given the quality of Syrian intelligence in these matters, key Hezbollah operatives opposed to such a deal might find themselves blown up. Perhaps they already have.
Iran will not be happy about all this. Tehran has invested a fair amount of resources in bulking up Hezbollah, and will not be pleased to see the militia shift from Syrian management to Syrian control. But in the end, what can Iran do? It cannot support Hezbollah directly, and even if it were to attempt to undermine Damascus, those Syrians most susceptible to Tehran’s Shiite-flavored entreaties are the Alawites themselves.
The other player that at the very least would be uneasy about all of this is the United States. The American view of Syria remains extremely negative, still driven by the sense that the Syrians continue to empower militants in Iraq. Certainly that aid — and that negative U.S. feeling — is not as intense as it was two years ago, but the Americans might not feel that this is the right time for such a deal. Thus, the release of the information on the Syrian reactor might well have been an attempt to throw a spoke in the wheel of the Israeli-Syrian negotiations.
That might not be necessary. Nothing disappears faster than Syrian-Israeli negotiations. In this case, however, both countries have fundamental geopolitical interests at stake. Israel wants to secure its northern frontier without committing its troops into Lebanon. The Syrians want to guarantee their access to the economic possibilities in Lebanon. Neither care about the Golan Heights. The Israelis don’t care what happens in Lebanon so long as it doesn’t explode in Israel. The Syrians don’t care what happens to the Palestinians so long as it doesn’t spread onto their turf.
Deals have been made on less. Israel and Syria are moving toward a deal that would leave a lot of players in the region — including Iran — quite unhappy. Given this deal has lots of uneasy observers, including Iran, the United States, Hezbollah, the Palestinians and others, it could blow apart with the best will in the world. And given that this is Syria and Israel, the best will isn’t exactly in abundant supply.
Mofaz: Israel will not accept a nuclear-armed Iran. All means of prevention legitimate
http://www.debka.com/headline.php?hid=5232
The Israeli transport minister Shaul Mofaz, speaking at Yale University Tuesday night, April 30, on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, warned Iran may attain command of enrichment technology before the end of this year. He said: “Israel will not tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran. This time, the Jewish people won’t let it happen. I would like to believe the world will not let it happen. To prevent this, all means are legitimate.”
Israel’s annual Holocaust remembrance ceremonies focused this year on the theme of courage displayed by Warsaw Ghetto Uprising leaders 65 years ago, knowing they were doomed. Israeli’s president and prime minister laid wreaths in their honor at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Institute in Jerusalem.
Israelis stood in silence as sirens wailed for two minutes in remembrance of the victims of Nazi World War II genocide, two-thirds of Europe’s nine million Jews. Cafes and places of entertainment were closed and TV and radio broadcast special programs.
In Sderot, memorial ceremonies took place in a new, fortified social center under relentless Palestinian missile fire from Gaza - nine by midday Thursday.
And in Poland, Israel’s chief of staff Lt. Gen. Gaby Ashkenazi led the March of Life from the gates of the former Auschwitz concentration camp to Birkenau. He was joined by 12,000 people from 52 countries. In a short speech, the general noted that the world had stood aside when the Nazis murdered the Jews of Europe.
Avram Grant, the British Chelsea football team’s Israeli coach, whose mother was a Holocaust survivor, joined the procession.
CIA Director Hayden Says Iran Wants Americans in Iraq Killed
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,353509,00.html
MANHATTAN, Kan. — CIA Director Michael Hayden said Wednesday that Iranian policy, at the highest government level, is to help kill Americans in Iraq, the boldest pronouncement of Iranian involvement by a U.S. official to date.
Hayden made the statement in response to a student question while delivering the Landon Lecture at Kansas State University.
"It is my opinion, it is the policy of the Iranian government, approved to highest level of that government, to facilitate the killing of Americans in Iraq," Hayden said. "Just make sure there's clarity on that."
In recent weeks, U.S. officials have ratcheted up their complaints that Iran is increasing its efforts to supply weapons and training to militants in Iraq.
Military commanders in Baghdad are expected to roll out evidence of that support soon, including date stamps on newly found weapons caches showing that recently made Iranian weapons are flowing into Iraq at a steadily increasing rate.
Another senior military official said the evidence will include mortars, rockets, small arms, roadside bombs and armor-piercing explosives — known as explosively formed penetrators or EFPs — that troops have discovered in caches in recent months. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the evidence has not yet been made public, said dates on some of the weapons were well after Tehran signaled late last year that it was scaling back aid to insurgents.
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said the U.S. prefers to resolve the issue through other pressures, but that it has the combat capability to strike Tehran, if necessary.
Hayden also said the recent Iraqi offensive in the southern Iraqi city of Basra should stand as a clear indication to Iraq's neighbors that it intends to be a credible force in the region. He added that such activities boost the credentials of the Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government.
During his 40 minute lecture, Hayden said China was likely to be a political and economic competitor by the middle of the century but should not be treated as an "inevitable enemy" of the United States.
He warned, however, that China likely would be viewed as an adversary if Beijing uses its growing global influence in support of its own narrow interests at the cost of peace and economic stability.
"If Beijing begins to accept greater responsibility for the health of the international system — as all global powers should — we will remain on a constructive, even if competitive, path. If not, the rise of China begins to look more adversarial," he said.
China's military buildup, which is intended both to counter U.S. military capabilities and to intimidate an independence-minded Taiwan, is as much about projecting an image of strength and "great power status" as it is to gain a tactical or strategic military advantage, he said.
"After two centuries of perceived Western hegemony, China is determined to flex its muscle," Hayden said.
He also predicted continued tension between the United States and Europe, an old alliance now strained by different views about terrorism.
"It is not yet clear when or if the United States and Europe will come to share the same views of 21st-century threats — as we did for the last half of the 20th century — and then forge a common approach to security," Hayden said.
The United States considers itself a nation at war, in pursuit of terrorists wherever they are, he said.
"In much of Europe, terrorism is seen differently: primarily as an internal, law enforcement problem, and solutions are focused more narrowly on securing the homeland," Hayden said.
Sharp population growth over the coming decades, particularly in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, will strain resources, increase immigration and could result in an increase in violent extremism and civil unrest, he said.
The populations of Afghanistan, Liberia, Niger and the Democratic Republic of Congo are expected to triple in 40 years, and those of Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Yemen will more than double, he said.
Demographic changes, a rising China, and the evolving trans-Atlantic alliance will shape American security and foreign policy through the middle of this century, Hayden said. He called on Americans to learn the languages and cultures needed to meet the new challenges, in the same way the United States developed its Soviet expertise during the Cold War.
"Large parts of the world — including those that will hold more sway in the future — do not share all of our ideas," Hayden said. "While we cherish and live our own values, we must know and appreciate those of others."
Evidence of Tehran's Destructive Meddling in Iraq Is Mounting
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,353466,00.html
On April 28, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations joined a chorus of other top officials warning of Iran’s subversive campaign. Ambassador Khalilzad told the U.N. Security Council that the Qods Force, the elite unit of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, "continues to arm, train, and fund illegal armed groups in Iraq." He cautioned that “this lethal aid poses a significant threat to Iraqi and multinational forces and to the stability and sovereignty of Iraq.”
Late last week, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pointed to the Qods Force for its “increasingly lethal and malign influence” in Iraq. Adm. Mullen added that evidence would be publicized in the coming days that newly made Iranian armaments are being smuggled into Iraq at an increasing rate.
These reports echo the information I revealed in February about the Qods Force’s new military/political infrastructure, designed to expand its operations inside Iraq. Why now? Simply put, the ayatollahs and their primary mover and shaker in Iraq, the Qods Force, are going for broke before they lose their “Iraq opportunity.”
To this end, the Qods Force has created a new command headquarters in the western Iranian city of Kermanshah, from where it directs three operational axes — northern, central and southern. A Qods Force top officer named Haj Amiri is the new HQ’s commander and many former and current commanders of the Badr Corps, the militia formed by Iran, which is now closely aligned with the Maliki government, are under his command.
The Northern Axis is perhaps the most vital to the ayatollahs' new terror build-up, which is why the HQ's commander Amiri is also in charge of this axis. The Northern Axis’s operations in Baghdad are handled by Abu-Jafar Al-Boka, previously with the Badr Corps. To effectively train would-be Iraqi terrorists, the new command HQ in Kermanshah utilizes several fully equipped and staffed training bases. Two bases in Kermanshah's Kenesht valley, the Jalil-Abad Hizbollah Base in Varamin near Tehran, and the Isfahan Training Base in central Iran are presently the primary sites.
Even before this strategic expansion, Iran had acquired significant intelligence and political assets in Iraq. When Iraq’s previous regime fell, Tehran’s intentions were largely ignored or misunderstood. The mullahs took advantage and launched what is essentially a proxy war against the United States. The ayatollahs’ regime, through the Qods Force, now owns nearly 3000 houses, properties, apartments, businesses, and hotels throughout Iraq; has set up more than 20 groups and parties; has as many as 40,000 Iraqis (many within Maliki’s government) on its payroll; has set up 100 libraries and runs 380 Koran study centers as well as video clubs, 7 TV and 3 radio stations, 30 publications, and an extensive network of mosques.
Thankfully, the news is not all bad. The U.S. military surge strategy has had positive results, and there have been impressive successes by the Iraqi Awakening Councils (also known as the Sons of Iraq) in pushing back the Sunni and mainly Tehran-controlled Iraqi Shiite terrorist groups. As evidenced by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s failed trip to Iraq in March, Tehran has had almost no success in developing any strategic popular traction among ordinary Iraqis, particularly Shiites, despite five years of non-stop meddling.
And Tehran’s political anchor within the Iraqi government, the ruling Shiite block United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), is plagued with internal divisions mostly over the allegiance toward Tehran of its two main pillars, Nuri al-Maliki’s Al-Dawa Party and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim’s Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council. Externally, the UIA is under tremendous pressure from the block of independent non-sectarian Iraqi politicians, who are demanding it stop kowtowing to Tehran and begin solving Iraq’s political, security, and economic problems.
As the date for the provincial elections approaches (they are scheduled for fall), the UIA, and by extension Tehran, are sensing that the honey moon in Iraq could be coming to an end. The ayatollahs and their Iraqi surrogates are visibly worried about the rise of an Iraqi counterforce. At the core of this counter force are Iraq’s political and tribal leaders who have consistently challenged the Iranian gains in their country. These leaders are allied with the democratic Iranian opposition, the People’s Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI/MEK). They insist that the MEK’s deep democratic Islamic and anti-fundamentalist roots make it an indispensable catalyst for their success.
The ayatollahs’ and their Iraqi surrogates have recognized that they must push full court before all the gains they have made in Iraq are reversed forever. Iraq’s independent secular leaders and their strategic allies, the Mojahedin, know that they, too, must push back to rid Iraq of Tehran’s malicious meddling. The U.S. cannot stand idly on the sidelines and hope for the best. America needs to throw its weight behind the anti-extremists, actively work to cut off the Qods Force’s influence in Iraq, and reach out to those Iraqis and Iranians who are committed to the goals of democracy and secularism.
Al Qaeda, Cohorts Remain Worst Terror Threat: U.S.
http://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/Al_Qaeda_terror_/2008/04/30/92268.html
WASHINGTON -- Nearly seven years after the September 11 attacks, al Qaeda remains the biggest terrorist threat to the United States and its allies, the U.S. State Department said in an annual report on Wednesday.
The country-by-country survey of terrorism trends and incidents in 2007 said al Qaeda had used tribal areas of Pakistan to reconstitute some operational capabilities, replace killed or captured fighters and rebuild its leadership.
Al Qaeda "utilizes terrorism, as well as subversion, propaganda, and open warfare; it seeks weapons of mass destruction in order to inflict the maximum possible damage on anyone who stands in its way, including other Muslims and/or elders, women and children," said the report.
The number of terrorism attacks worldwide fell slightly in 2007 to 14,499, from 14,570 in 2006. A total of 72,066 people were killed, injured or kidnapped in 2007, down from 75,211 in the previous year, data from the U.S. National Counter-terrorism Center showed.
In the two theaters of U.S.-led wars, terrorism incidents in Iraq fell to 6,212 last year from 6,628 in 2006, but in Afghanistan they rose to 1,127 from 969 in the previous year, data showed.
The report said Afghanistan had made progress fighting extremists, but "the Taliban-led insurgency remained strong and resilient in the South and East" with an undiminished ability to recruit foot soldiers from rural ethnic Pashtuns.
The list of designated state sponsors of terrorism -- Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Syria -- remained unchanged, despite efforts to remove North Korea from the blacklist through slow-moving nuclear disarmament negotiations with Pyongyang.
The report said Sudan continued to take significant steps to cooperate in anti-terrorism, but Cuba, Iran and Syria had not renounced terrorism or worked to combat terror groups.
"Iran and Syria routinely provided safe haven, substantial resources, and guidance to terrorist organizations," said the 312-page report.
Christian History Being Erased - The Last Church Standing in North Cyprus
http://www.christianpost.com/article/20080428/32154_The_Last_Church_Standing_in_North_Cyprus.htm
One lone church struggles to survive in a land where hundreds have been damaged or destroyed. But this is no ordinary land; it is the very ground where Apostle Paul took his first missionary journey to proclaim salvation through Jesus Christ to the Roman Empire.
Now 2,000 years later, the small Mediterranean island of Cyprus is divided into two with the northern third occupied by Turkey.
In the span of three decades under Turkish control, more than 530 churches and monasteries have been pillaged, vandalized, or destroyed in the northern area, according to The Republic of Cyprus.
“I cannot say that it (destruction of churches) is encouraged openly by the Turkish government,” said Cyprus’s Ambassador to the United States, Andreas Kakouris, to The Christian Post. “All I can say is that it is taking place in the area that is under direct control of the Turkish military and I leave you to make your own conclusions from that.”
Since its 1974 invasion, Turkey has controlled northern Cyprus which it calls the “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.” No international nation has ever recognized this entity except for Turkey. The United States has only recognized the Republic of Cyprus.
Starting in 2003, Greek-Cypriots again were allowed to cross the border between the Republic of Cyprus and the area under Turkish control. It was around this time that scholars and photographers were able to visit northern Cyprus to document the destruction of historic churches and artifacts.
St. Mamas Church in the northwest town of Morphou is the only notable church that is known to be semi-active in Turkey-controlled Cyprus, according to the New York-based Hellenic Times and the Embassy of The Republic of Cyprus in the United States.
Turkish officials who rule the area reportedly give permission twice a year for remaining residents – who were there before Turkish occupation – to worship in the church.
But other churches did not fare so well.
About 133 churches, chapels and monasteries have been converted to military storage facilities, stables and night-clubs. Seventy-eight churches have been converted to mosques, and dozens more are used as military facilities, medical storage facilities, or stockyards or hay barns, according to statistics from The Republic of Cyprus.
Agia Anastasia church in Lapithos was converted into a hotel and casino, while Sourp Magar Armenian monastery – founded in the medieval period – was converted into a cafeteria.
A Neolithic settlement at the Cape of Apostolos Andreas-Kastros in the occupied area of Rizokapraso – a site declared an ancient monument by the Republic of Cyprus – was bulldozed by the Turkish Army in order to plant two of its flagpoles on top of the historic hill.
Turkey, a constitutionally secular country, is made up of more than a 99 percent Muslim population, according to the CIA World Factbook. “I don’t think the Cyprus problem has ever been a religious issue between the Greek and Turkish Cypriots,” said Kakouris.
But he added that if the Turkish government hadn’t given the “green light” on the destruction of churches and artifacts, they have not given the “red light” either.
“So it is … either directly taking place or with their blind eye or whatever you want to call it. But they are responsible for what is taking place there,” says Kakouris.
It is estimated that more than 60,000 ancient artifacts have been illegally transferred to other countries, according to the Republic of Cyprus. Sadly, most of these artifacts were not recovered.
Cyprus has some of the finest collections of Byzantine art in the world, offering scholars and others the priceless study on the development of Byzantine wall-painting art from the 8th-9th century until the 18th century A.D.
The United States has recognized Cyprus’ endangered cultural heritage, and in 1999 and 2003 the U.S. Treasury Department issued emergency import restrictions on Byzantine Ecclesiastical and Ritual Ethnological Materials from Cyprus.
Kakouris commented that the Cyprus issue has been ignored for decades by the international community.
“There is only so much oxygen that exists from a journalistic point of view,” he said. “When one picks up the paper and looks at international issues what does one see? Either a bombing that took place in the Middle East or a bombing in Iraq or loss of life in Afghanistan – issues such as that.
He continued, “Although there are issues that appear to be more important than the Cyprus issue – because we don’t have that immediacy of seeing deaths or events on a daily basis in Cyprus, and thankfully – that does not make the continuing occupation by Turkey of the northern part of Cyprus any more acceptable.”
There were 20,000 Greek Cypriots in the Turkish-controlled area after 1974, but today there are about 450 Greek Cypriots remaining.
Over 80 percent of the Republic of Cyprus population is Christian. While the island population is only 800,000, it is a major tourist attraction, drawing over 2 million tourists each year.
Russia's De-Facto State Religion labels Protestant heretics
http://www.christianpost.com/article/20080424/32096_Russia%5C%27s_De-Facto_State_Religion_.htm
Former communist Russia now upholds freedom of religion on paper, but practices a different policy in real life.
Reports indicate that religious freedom is being squashed under President Vladimir V. Putin, whose government has in a sense tacitly endorsed the Russian Orthodox Church as the official state religion. Putin frequently appears with the Orthodox head, Patriarch Aleksei II, on television.
Other Christian denominations, however, are suppressed – proselytizing by Protestants is all but banned and harassment of Protestant worshippers is meant to discourage adherents, according to the New York Times.
Protestant groups are linked to the United States and the West, groups that both Putin and Aleksei often denounce in their effort to restore Russia’s power that was lost after the dissolve of the Soviet Union.
In Moscow, the city’s chief Russian Orthodox priest gave a sermon last month on local television with the theme of Protestant heretics.
“We deplore those who are led astray — those Baptists, evangelicals, Pentecostals and many others who cut Christ’s robes like bandits, who are like the soldiers who crucified Christ, who ripped apart Christ’s holy coat,” declared the priest, the Rev. Aleksei D. Zorin, according to the New York Times.
Protestant churches are required by law to register with the government if they do anything ore than pray in an apartment. But even when the churches register, the government usually finds fault with their paperwork and reject their application to be a legal body of worshippers
“They have made us into lepers to scare people away,” said the Rev. Vladimir Pakhomov, minister of a Methodist Church in Russia. “There is this climate that you can feel with your every cell: ‘It’s not ours, it’s American, it’s alien; since it’s alien we cannot expect anything good from it.’ It’s ignorance, all around.”
In some areas, officials accuse the American military intelligence of using Protestant “sects” to gain access to Russia.
Russian officials usually refer to Protestant churches using the term “sect.”
While church attendance remains low, Russians are embracing Russian Orthodoxy as part of their identity. A recent poll showed 71 percent of respondents consider themselves Russian Orthodox, up from 59 percent in 2003.
There are about 2 million Protestants out of Russia’s 142 million population.
The Russian Orthodox Church also has a tense relationship with the Vatican, accusing Catholics of trying to convert Russians.
Russia’s population is composed of about 15 to 20 percent Russian Orthodox, 10 to 15 percent Muslim, and only about two percent other Christians, according to the CIA World Factbook. A large population of Russia is non-practicing believers or non-believers, a result of the atheistic decades under Soviet rule.
A major study by the German think tank Bertelsmann Foundation found that Russia is the least religious country in Europe, with only 50 percent saying they are religious and only seven percent, highly religious.
Couple Charged For Distributing "Objectionable" Christian Material in Singapore
http://news.christiansunite.com/Religion_News/religion07133.shtml
On April 14, two charges were lodged against a married couple for distributing a Christian publication in Singapore in March and October of last year that allegedly cast Mohammed in a "negative light."
Ong Kian Cheong (49) and Dorothy Chan Hien Leng (44) are charged under the Sedition Act for "promot[ing] feelings of ill-will and hostility between different races or classes of the population of Singapore".
The two were also charged under the Undesirable Publications Act, which defines "objectionable" material as an item which depicts "race or religion in such a manner that the availability of the publication is likely to cause feelings of enmity, hatred, ill-will or hostility between different racial or religious groups".
The couple was alleged to have been distributing an evangelistic tract entitled "The Little Bride." Go to www.chick.com/reading/tracts/1054/1054_01.asp to view an English version of this material.
Pray that the charges against Ong and Dorothy will be dropped. Pray for the Holy Spirit to direct them as they respond to their accusers (Luke 2:11). Pray for continued opportunities for Christians in Singapore to share the truth of Christ.
Tanks, Rockets Roll Across Red Square in Soviet Parade Revival
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=awMuRdY.8ejo&refer=europe
More than 100 tanks, rocket launchers and armored vehicles, flanked by 8,000 soldiers, rattled across the tarmac, while sorties of jet fighters ripped through the sky as army generals saluted below.
The display wasn't in communist North Korea or China. It was a practice for a May 9 parade of Russian military hardware on Moscow's Red Square, the first since the Soviet era. The rehearsal took place at Alabino, 50 kilometers (31 miles) west of Moscow, on an overcast morning and accompanied by a recording of Kremlin chimes.
``When you are dealing with other countries, you should not look weak,'' says Konstantin Fedotov, 82, a retired colonel who took part in the first parade in June 1945 and is one of about 20 veterans watching the rehearsal. ``We have to show that we are not toothless and can react to events against us now.''
President Vladimir Putin has called the end of the Soviet Union a ``catastrophe,'' and when the army crunches the cobblestones in front of the Kremlin next month Muscovites will get another reminder of his efforts to restore Russian power and its symbols. Putin has endorsed a history book lauding Stalin and won popularity by facing up to the West with Cold War-style rhetoric.
The event will mark Victory Day, commemorating the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945. This year, it arrives two days after Putin hands over the presidency to chosen successor Dmitry Medvedev after eight years.
`Military Might'
The display helps the government to justify defense spending as 20 percent of Russians struggle below the poverty line, according to Yevgeny Volk, a Moscow-based analyst for the Heritage Foundation, a U.S. research group.
It also demonstrates Russia's strength while former Soviet republics such as Georgia forge ties with the West. Russia's $1.4 trillion economy has been growing at an annual average rate of more than 7 percent under Putin, driven by energy resources.
``This is a signal to the West that Russia is restoring its military might,'' says Volk. ``There is also a psychological factor, nostalgia among the current elite for Soviet times. It resembles a return to the old days.''
The last exhibition of military hardware on Red Square was on Nov. 7, 1990, the day the Soviets remembered the Bolshevik Revolution. Less than a year later, the Soviet Union collapsed as states like Estonia and Ukraine declared independence.
Next month, Muscovites will watch T-90 battle tanks, S-300 surface-to-air missile launchers and personnel carriers trundle past Lenin's mausoleum up to the multicolored onion domes of St. Basil's Cathedral. The generals and politicians will ride in ZIL limousines, the armored car of choice for Soviet leaders.
No Cold War
Putin says the parade is about pride and tradition, not saber-rattling. Russia increased defense spending 22 percent last year alone, to 835.6 billion rubles ($35.8 billion).
The site for the rehearsal was specially built to prepare for the parade, with makeshift podiums and a grandstand where veterans watched and saluted.
From there, troops and their equipment move next week to nighttime drills on the 23,100 square meters of Red Square, sandwiched between the Kremlin and the GUM shopping mall.
``This is beautiful. We have to know where taxpayers' money is going on buying weapons for the army,'' says Vladimir Bakin, the general in charge of the parade. ``If our army is strong, then our state is stable.''
Fedotov, the retired colonel, liked what he saw from his perch in Alabino. He worked in military reconnaissance during the Great Patriotic War, as Russians call World War II, and is keen to make sure the country doesn't get attacked again.
``Parades are a demonstration of power, a demonstration of the army's readiness,'' says Fedotov, in his red-and-gold-trimmed peaked army cap and white scarf to keep out the morning chill. ``The armed forces have to exist.''
Preparing for the coming energy wars - nations begin arms race for control of world's resources
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/04/27/rearming_the_world/?page=1
Last summer, as Americans focused on the surge in Iraq, most ignored a military exercise with a potentially more far-reaching impact. In a remote location in the Ural Mountains, Russia, China, and several Central Asian nations gathered for a massive war game, ironically dubbed "Peace Mission 2007."
Thousands of troops, armored vehicles, fighter-bombers, and attack helicopters stormed a town in a mock battle that was supposed to simulate fighting a terrorist takeover. Beneath its antiterror veneer, Peace Mission 2007 was a classic display of military readiness: When it was over, the troops paraded before their assembled defense chiefs, and the whole event laid the groundwork for a closer military alliance among the participating nations.
That such an exercise was held at all might seem shocking. Despite the global war on terrorism, and a steady drumbeat of civil conflicts, no war involving a major power like Russia has occurred in decades, and no external enemy threatens any of the Central Asian nations.
But the exercise highlighted an alarming new reality. With much less fanfare than the early days of the Cold War, the world is entering a new arms race, and with it, a dangerous new web of military relationships. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which tracks international armed forces spending, between 1997 and 2006 global military expenditures jumped by nearly 40 percent. Driven mainly by anxiety over oil and natural resources, countries are building their arsenals of conventional weapons at a rate not seen in decades, beefing up their armies and navies, and forging potential new alliances that could divide up the world in unpredictable ways.
Much of this new arms spending is concentrated among the world's biggest consumers of resources, which are trying to protect their access to energy, and the biggest producers of resources, which are taking advantage of their new wealth to build up their defenses at a rate that would have been unthinkable for a developing country until recently.
This power shift comes with enormous implications for the United States and its Western allies. With more military power in the hands of authoritarian and sometimes unstable states, the arms race creates a growing possibility for real state-to-state conflict - a prospect that would dwarf even a major terror attack in its power to disrupt the world's stability. It also will force the West to change, to make its own plans to shore up resources, and to get used to a world arsenal it can no longer dominate.
For much of the past six decades, the world hung in a kind of armed equilibrium, with major powers unchallenged in their military and economic preeminence. During the Cold War, it was ideology that occupied the foreground for strategic thinkers; and even more recently, the idea of a power struggle driven by resources seemed remote.
But this situation has changed dramatically in just the past decade. As easily accessible global stocks of oil dwindle, the world supply of oil and gas has been concentrated in a smaller and smaller number of hands over just the past decade. Some 80 percent of all reserves now are concentrated in fewer than 10 nations.
The biggest consumers desperately want to protect their secure flows of oil and gas from this handful of key suppliers, while simultaneously preventing their rivals from inking deals with resource-rich nations.
The result, in some cases, is alliances between consumers and producers; in others, it is new and unexpected links. Middle East specialist Flynt Leverett calls some of these new relationships the emerging "Axis of Oil," an informal alliance between oil producers like Venezuela, Kazakhstan, Iran, and Russia, which are increasing state control over their petroleum, and powerful authoritarian developing nations desperately short of resources.
The biggest of these nations is China, which will surpass the United States in its petroleum use within the next two decades. And, fittingly, it is China that is driving a great deal of the current arms race.
It has been increasing its defense budget by roughly 20 percent annually, and begun transforming the People's Liberation Army, historically an overpoliticized, undertrained force, into a leaner, truly modern fighting machine. "The pace and scope of China's military expansion are startling," says John Tkacik, a China analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a think tank in Washington.
Meanwhile, China has also been inking big military deals with new allies across the globe. In 2004, China signed a deal with Iran in which it will spend as much as $100 billion on future supplies of Iranian petroleum, and Iran has become one of China's biggest arms clients. To keep strong links with Sudan, which sends roughly half of all its oil to China, Beijing has provided weapons to the Khartoum regime, despite international pressure in the wake of the Darfur genocide.
Over the past decade, China has been building other types of alliances as well - training other countries' army officers, for instance, with the kind of education programs once dominated by the Pentagon. In the Philippines, where the military historically had deep ties to America and where China has inked a joint offshore oil exploration deal, one top defense official says many of his leading officers now head to China for short courses. "This is now considered relatively prestigious, to go to China," agrees Philippine defense analyst Rommel Banlaoi. "That wouldn't have been true a few years ago."
In oil-rich Venezuela, China has been training defense satellite technicians, elite forces, and other military personnel. China has also helped Hugo Chavez revamp his oil infrastructure, and Venezuela's president has vowed to roughly triple his shipments to Beijing in the coming years. In Central Asia, Chinese oil companies, aided by large loan and aid packages from Chinese state-linked banks, have helped leading petroleum producers in that region orient new pipelines toward China. And with Central Asian nations that themselves possess aging, post-Soviet armed forces, China has become a major military player.
China is only one of the drivers in the new global arms race. Playing off its role as both energy supplier and, in some cases, consumer, Russia has increased its arms sales to border nations in the Caspian region in order to further its energy links. In Central Asia, the Kremlin has stepped up training for local militaries, and in Indonesia, one of the world's largest gas producers, then-Russian President Vladimir Putin last summer signed a deal to sell some $6 billion in new weapons. Under Putin, the Kremlin also vowed to rebuild its navy. "It's clear that a new arms race is unfolding in the world," Putin declared just before leaving office.
India has been building its arsenal, too, launching a massive ballistic missile program. Singapore has vastly upgraded its forces, and in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia recently bought billions of dollars' worth of new fighter jets from Europe, new spending nearly matched by some of the other Gulf states.
In part to counter the efforts of Russia and China, Washington and other leading industrialized powers are building their own military links - and again, these have little to do with ideological agreement.
With Australia, Singapore, Japan, and India - three democracies and one essentially authoritarian state - Washington has started holding joint military exercises, including a vast war game last summer at virtually the same time as Peace Mission 2007. On a recent visit to India by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, another top defense official told reporters that the Pentagon was building ties to India "as a hedge" against China.
In the Caspian region, the United States is building its own military-energy ties. Over the past decade, it has boosted defense links to nations like Azerbaijan and Georgia critical to petroleum pipelines serving America, while simultaneously offering public White House meetings to Caspian leaders - even to Azeri President Ilham Aliyev, accused of massive fraud in the past election. Across oil-rich Central Asia, the Pentagon has negotiated deals to allow US forces to operate out of bases in many Central Asian states, and is now cultivating Turkmenistan - a major gas producer where, since the death of its long-ruling autocratic leader, the nation has taken some tentative steps to re-engage with the West.
In the Middle East, the United States is also building a new alliance to contain Iran's influence. Over the past year, the Bush administration aggressively pressured Congress to allow Washington to sell some $20 billion worth of arms to Saudi Arabia in order to build up a bulwark against Iran.
In many ways, these new deals echo the old "Great Game," the competition among Western powers for influence in Central Asia. But today the situation is far more complex: With so much money in the hands of resource-rich countries, the line is now much fuzzier between major powers and the developing nations whose resources they are sparring over.
It is also risky. Although this new arms race might produce nothing more than bigger toys for the Pentagon and the People's Liberation Army, many defense and energy experts think this is unlikely. The buildup could push opponents toward damaging standoffs, as in the Cold War, and even escalate into real clashes.
In some arenas, the new alliances already seem to be sparking conflict. With China's more sophisticated submarine fleet increasingly moving into seas claimed by Japan, and Japan's own self-defense forces becoming more aggressive, Japan publicly exposed Chinese sub incursions, leading to perhaps the worst downturn in Beijing-Tokyo relations in recent memory.
Not all foreign policy experts believe that the world is simply lining up for a future of resource-driven wars. Carnegie Endowment scholar Robert Kagan, who is releasing a new book on the topic, "The Return of History and the End of Dreams," argues that authoritarian nations like China and Russia are still driven by ideology in their alliances - specifically, their opposition to democracy. For Kagan, the political structure of these rising powers matters as much as the energy they seek: If they develop successfully, they could suggest to other countries that authoritarian rule can bring great economic growth.
Others doubt that the world is running out of oil and gas, and without that pressure, tensions are likely to be much less severe. Although many prominent oil experts have embraced the Peak Oil theory, the idea that world oil production has already passed its maximum capacity and is now in decline, others are not so sure. Cambridge Energy Research Associates, one of the world's leading energy forecasters, two years ago released a comprehensive analysis in which it estimated that global oil reserves actually were considerably higher than many Peak Oil analysts claim.
But even if CERA's claims are borne out, the arms race is already on. And as it metastasizes, the world is becoming a far different place than it was just a decade ago. By the time the next president takes office in 2009, he or she will have to reimagine how Washington sees the world. And by then, Peace Mission's impact may already have spread.
Return To Planet Of The Apes? Scientists look to breeding apes with humans
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/latestnews/Exclusive-Should-we-beware-the.4028970.jp
A leading scientist has warned a new species of "humanzee," created from breeding apes with humans, could become a reality unless the government acts to stop scientists experimenting.
In an interview with The Scotsman, Dr Calum MacKellar, director of research at the Scottish Council on Human Bioethics, warned the controversial draft Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill did not prevent human sperm being inseminated into animals.
He said if a female chimpanzee was inseminated with human sperm the two species would be closely enough related that a hybrid could be born.
He said scientists could possibly try to develop the new species to fill the demand for organ donors.
Leading scientists say there is no reason why the two species could not breed, although they question why anyone would want to try such a technique.
Other hybrid species already created include crossed tigers and lions and sheep and goats.
Dr MacKellar said he feared the consequences if scientists made a concerted effort to cross humans with chimpanzees. He said: "Nobody knows what they would get if they tried hard enough. The insemination of animals with human sperm should be prohibited.
"The Human Fertilisation and Embryo Bill prohibits the placement of animal sperm into a woman The reverse is not prohibited. It's not even mentioned. This should not be the case."
He said if the process was not banned, scientists would be "very likely" to try it, and it would be likely humans and chimps could successfully reproduce.
"If you put human sperm into a frog it would probably create an embryo, but it probably wouldn't go very far," he said.
"But if you do it with a non-human primate it's not beyond the realms of possibility that it could be born alive."
Dr MacKellar said the resulting creature could raise ethical dilemmas, such as whether it would be treated as human or animal, and what rights it would have.
"If it was never able to be self-aware or self-conscious it would probably be considered an animal," he said. "However, if there was a possibility of humanzees developing a conscience, you have a far more difficult dilemma on your hands."
He said fascination would be enough of a motive for scientists to try crossing the two species.
But he also said there was a small chance of scientists using the method to "humanise" organs for transplant into humans. "There's a desperate need for organs. One of the solutions that has been looked at is using animal organs, but because there's a very serious risk of rejection using animal organs in humans they are already trying to humanise these organs.
"If they could create these humanzees who are substantially human but are not considered as humans in law , we could have a large provision of organs."
He wrote to the Department of Health to ask that the gap in the draft legislation be addressed.
The department confirmed that the bill "does not cover the artificial insemination of an animal with human sperm".
It said: "Owing to the significant differences between human and animal genomes, they are incompatible and the development of a foetus or progeny is impossible.
"Therefore such activity would have no rational scientific justification, as there would be no measurable outcome."
Dr MacKellar disagrees. He said: "The chromosomal difference between a goat and a sheep is greater than between humans and chimpanzees."
Professor Bob Millar, director of the Medical Research Council Human Reproductive Sciences Unit, based in Edinburgh, agreed viable offspring would be possible. He said: "Donkeys can mate with horses and create infertile offspring; maybe that could happen with chimpanzees."
But he said he would oppose any such attempt. "It's unnecessary and ridiculous and no serious scientist would consider such a thing. Ethically, it's not appropriate.
"It's also completely impractical. Chimps would never be a source of organs for humans because of the viruses they carry and the low numbers."
Professor Hugh McLachlan, professor of applied philosophy at Glasgow Caledonian University's School of Law and Applied Sciences, said although the idea was "troublesome", he could see no ethical objections to the creation of humanzees.
"Any species came to be what it is now because of all sorts of interaction in the past," he said.
"If it turns out in the future there was fertilisation between a human animal and a non-human animal, it's an idea that is troublesome, but in terms of what particular ethical principle is breached it's not clear to me.
"I share their squeamishness and unease, but I'm not sure that unease can be expressed in terms of an ethical principle."
A Department of Health spokeswoman said: "It's just not a problem. If you inseminate an animal with human sperm, scientifically nothing happens. The species barriers are too great."
HYBRIDS ARE AT CROSS PURPOSES
Even though hybrids of humans and animals have never been created, many other creatures have been crossed successfully.
Lions and tigers have been bred to create ligers, the world's largest cats.
And there are also zorses (zebra and horse), wholphins (whale and dolphin), tigons (tiger and lion), lepjags (leopard and jaguar) and zonkeys (zebra and donkey).
As well as these hybrid mammals, there are also hybrid birds, fish, insects and plants.
Many hybrids, such as mules, are sterile, which prevents the movement of genes from one species to another, keeping both species distinct. However, some can reproduce and there are scientists who believe that grey wolves and coyotes mated thousands of years ago to create a new species, the red wolf.
More commonly, hybrids mate with one of their parent species, which can influence the genetic mix of what gets passed along to subsequent generations.
Hybrids can have desirable traits, often being fitter or larger than either parent.
Most hybrid animals have been bred in captivity, but there are examples of the process occurring in the wild.
This is far more common in plants than animals but in April 2006 a hunter in Canada's North-west Territories shot a polar bear whose fur had an orange tint.
Research showed that it had a grizzly bear father, and it became known as a pizzly.
In 2003, DNA analysis confirmed that five odd-looking felines found in Maine and Minnesota were bobcat-lynx hybrids, dubbed blynxes.
Study: Churches Slow to Adopt New Technology
http://www.christianpost.com/article/20080430/32173_Study%3A_Churches_Slow_to_Adopt_New_Technology.htm
New research shows that a majority of churches use some type of emerging technology in their services, but the pace of technology adoption has slowed in recent years.
Although 65 percent of Protestant churches now have a large screen projection system, that number is just slightly higher than in 2005 when 62 percent had such a system, according to The Barna Group. The use of large screens had jumped from the year 2000 when only 39 percent were using them.
Since 2005, there was only a 5 percent increase in the adoption of a large screen projection system.
The Barna study, released Monday, found that churches that say they are theologically conservative are more likely to have large screens (68 percent) than churches described by their pastor as having "liberal theology" (43 percent).
Smaller churches – ones that average less than 100 adults each week – are less likely to have big screens, with only 53 percent of them reportedly having one. Meanwhile, 76 percent of churches that draw 100 to 250 adults have a large screen and 88 percent of churches that draw more than 250 adults have it.
Over half the churches that have a big screen use it to show movie clips or other video segments during their services and events.
Along with the slower adoption of large screens, sending e-mail blasts have also not prevailed in the last couple of years.
Fifty-six percent of Protestant churches send email blasts to large groups or to the entire church body but that number has remained the same since 2005.
More churches have created an Internet presence since 2005. The latest study showed that 62 percent of Protestant churches have a church Web site, up from 57 percent in 2005. In 2000, only 34 percent had a Web site.
Larger churches are more likely to have an Internet presence. Nine out of 10 churches with more than 250 adults attending have a Web site while only 48 percent of churches with less than 100 adults have one.
"Many small churches seem to believe that new tools for ministry are outside of their budget range or may not be significant for a church of their size. It may be, though, that such thinking contributes to the continued small size of some of those churches," said George Barna, who directed the study.
Also connecting to the MySpace generation, 26 percent of Protestant churches have some presence on one or more social networking sites. Charismatic churches were more likely to use such sites (38 percent) than mainline or evangelical congregations.
Nearly half of large churches (more than 250 adults) have adopted podcasting. Only 16 percent of Protestant churches overall are utilizing podcast technology.
Blogging is also being picked up by more churches with 13 percent of Protestant churches now having blog sites or pages where people can interact with the thoughts posted by church leaders.
Churches meanwhile have still been slow to utilize satellite broadcasting. Only 8 percent of churches use such technology for receiving programming and training, a slight increase from the 7 percent in the year 2000.
"The fact that market penetration of digital technologies seems to top out around two-thirds of the market could easily change if the digital-resistant churches conceived ways of facilitating their vision through the deployment of such tools," Barna noted. "That is what made these tools so appealing to larger churches: being able to apply the tools to furthering their ministry goals."
Despite the slower adoption of emerging technology use, Barna stresses that the incorporation of digital technologies into church-based ministry is an important frontier for churches to master.
"The Internet has become one of the pivotal communications and community-building tools of our lifetime. Churches are well-advised to have an intelligent and foresighted Internet strategy in order to facilitate meaningful ministry," he said.
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