Ethics Forum

US Agents' Death Due to Auto Design

2012-02-18T05:45:00.000-08:00

MEXICO CITY — When U.S. special agent Jaime Zapata was shot dead one year ago on a notorious stretch of highway in central Mexico, he was driving a $160,000 armored Chevy Suburban, built to exacting government standards, designed to defeat high-velocity gunfire, fragmentation grenades and land mines.

But the vehicle had a basic, fatal flaw.

Forced off the road in a well-coordinated ambush, surrounded by drug cartel gunmen brandishing AK-47s, Zapata and his partner, Victor Avila, rolled to a stop. Zapata put the vehicle in park.

The door locks popped open.

That terrifying sound — a quiet click — set into motion events that remain under investigation. When Zapata needed it most, the Suburban’s elaborate armoring was rendered worthless by a consumer-friendly automatic setting useful for family vacations and hurried commuters but not for U.S. agents driving through a red zone in Mexico.

Read the full report here.

Moroccan Arrested in FBI Sting

2012-02-17T20:41:00.000-08:00

Federal authorities on Friday arrested a 29-year-old Moroccan man in an alleged plot to carry out a suicide bombing at the U.S. Capitol, the latest in a series of terrorism-related arrests resulting from undercover sting operations.

For more than a year, Amine El Khalifi, of Alexandria, considered attacking targets including a synagogue, an Alexandria building with military offices and a Washington restaurant frequented by military officials, authorities said. When arrested a few blocks from the Capitol around lunchtime on Friday, he was carrying what he believed to be a loaded automatic weapon and a suicide vest ready for detonation.

The gun and vest were provided not by al-Qaeda, as Khalifi had been told, but by undercover FBI agents who rendered them inoperable, authorities said.

They said Khalifi had been the subject of a lengthy investigation and never posed a threat to the public. On Friday afternoon, he made an initial court appearance in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, where he was charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction against federal property. He faces life in prison if convicted.

Khalifi “allegedly believed he was working with al-Qaeda,” said Neil H. MacBride, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Khalifi “devised the plot, the targets and the methods on his own.”

In several recent terrorism sting operations, critics have accused federal investigators of provoking suspects and, in some cases, suggesting possible targets or tactics. Legal experts say the FBI sometimes walks a fine line in such cases.

“You want to be very sure that the narrative is not substantially provided by the government,” said Karen Greenberg, director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law School, who studies terrorism sting operations. “There’s a lot of gray area in these cases.”

But officials said Friday that Khalifi, who allegedly conducted surveillance on the Capitol and engaged in methodical planning, was no unwitting victim.

Khalifi arrived in the United States when he was 16 and was living as an illegal immigrant in Northern Virginia, having overstayed his visitor’s visa for years, officials said. In 2010, he was evicted from an Arlington apartment after having failed to pay rent.

The landlord of that apartment, Frank Dynda, a retired patent lawyer, said, “He was getting mysterious packages labeled ‘books,’ but I didn’t think there were books in them.”

Dynda said he thought Khalifi was “suspicious and hostile,” and Dynda reported Khalifi to Arlington police. Two officers visited Dynda’s apartment building soon after the report but told him there was no reason to pursue the matter, he said.

It was unclear how Khalifi came to the attention of federal authorities. According to the criminal complaint filed in court Friday, a confidential source reported to the FBI in January 2011 that Khalifi had met at a residence in Arlington with individuals, one of whom produced what appeared to be an AK-47 assault rifle, two revolvers and ammunition.

Read the full report here.

"Well-Trained Terrorist" Attacked Israeli Diplomat

2012-02-15T15:48:00.000-08:00

Kurt Achin
New Delhi

Indian Home Minister P. Chidambaram says Monday evening's car blast was targeted at an Israeli diplomat's wife.

"It's quite clear that a very well-trained person has committed this attack," he said. "One has to proceed on the basis that it was a terrorist attack."

The attack was carried out in one of New Delhi's most secure districts -- only a few blocks from the residence of the prime minister himself.

"It appears that a motorcycle rider, a single person, came from behind and the person attached a device to the trunk's door of the Innova," he explained. "The explosion, according to the eyewitness...happened within seconds. And, we think it happened within about four to five seconds of the device being attached."

Police are carefully scrutinizing forensic evidence and closed circuit television footage from the vicinity of the explosion. Israeli intelligence is cooperating in the investigation. The Israeli diplomat's wife is described as in critical but stable condition and is recovering from shrapnel wounds and spinal injury.

Israel is openly blaming Iran for the attack. Iran denies involvement. And the official Iranian media quote a Foreign Ministry spokesman who accuses Israel of attacking its own embassies as part of a “psychological war” to tarnish relations against Iran.

Indian Home Minister Chidambaram was careful not to assign blame Monday, saying it is too early in the investigation.

"At the moment, I am not pointing a finger at any particular group or any particular organization. But whoever did it, we condemn it in the strongest terms," he said.

Separately, police in the former Soviet republic of Georgia defused a car bomb in an Israeli embassy vehicle, raising questions about whether the two attacks are connected.

There are apparent similarities between Monday's magnet bomb strike and attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists for which Iran blames Israel. Many Indians are now wondering whether their country will become a new front for a covert conflict between Israel and Iran because of the latter's nuclear program.

India has strong historical ties to Iran and depends heavily on it for imported fuel. India has resisted calls from Western nations to sanction the country for its nuclear program and is planning to send a massive trade delegation to Tehran later this month.

Western powers accuse Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons under cover of a civilian energy program, a charge Tehran denies.

Source: Global Security

Gilani: Drone Strikes Hinder US-Paki Relations

2012-02-13T21:25:00.000-08:00

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has said US drone strikes targeting Al Qaeda and Taliban militants are counter-productive and his government has not given permission for such attacks.

“First of all I want to inform you that we did not allow or give permission to fly drones from Pakistan,” Mr Gilani told Al Jazeera television.

“Drones are counter-productive and we have discussed it thoroughly with the US administration.”

He said the “collateral damage” from drone attacks was counter-productive because it undermined his government’s efforts to separate tribes from militants, and also violated Pakistan’s sovereignty.

Mr Gilani said former military ruler Pervez Musharraf had “some understanding” on drone attacks with the United States.

He said he had “good relations” with the military “at the moment”. That was a reference to tensions pitting the civilian government against the military over a memo sent to the Pentagon seeking US help in preventing a feared military coup after the US commando raid in Pakistan that killed Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Mr Gilani said Pakistan would support any Afghan-led peace initiative and did not back the Afghan Taliban to take over. “We are not supporting them. It’s not our job. Why should we support them?”

He said that India and Pakistan could not afford more conflict and were ready to discuss the issues that have long hampered the normalisation of relations

Source: Pakistan Dawn

Quote of the Week - G.K. Chesterton

2012-02-12T10:30:00.000-08:00

"What a man can believe depends upon his philosophy, not upon the clock or the century." --G.K. Chesterton

Related reading: "Saint" G.K. Chesterton?

RSF Urges Mirrors of Endangered News Sites

2012-02-12T08:07:00.000-08:00

(RSF/IFEX) - 8 February 2012 - Filtering, denial of service attacks, withdrawal of content - censors use many different methods to silence news websites. In addition to drawing attention to these acts of censorship and providing the victims with legal, material and financial help, Reporters Without Borders has now decided to provide them with technical assistance as well.

So that independent news websites that are targeted by cyber-attacks and government blocking can continue posting information online, Reporters Without Borders is going to start mirroring sites. The first sites to be mirrored are those of the Chechen magazine Dosh and the Sri Lankan online newspaper Lanka-e News. We urge Internet users all over the world to create more mirrors of these sites in an act of solidarity.

If a cyber-attack renders Doshdu.ru inaccessible again, as it was during last December's parliamentary elections in Russia, Internet users will be able to access the exact copy created by Reporters Without Borders, http://dosh.rsf.org . The mirror will be regularly and automatically updated.

Mirror sites can also be used to circumvent blocking by governments. For example, the Lanka-e-News site, http://lankaenews.com , has been blocked in Sri Lanka since October (by blocking the site domain name or the hosting server's IP address), but Internet users in Sri Lanka will be able to access the Reporters Without Borders mirror site, http://lankaenews.rsf.org , which is hosted on another server with another domain name.

If the mirror is itself later also blocked, the creation of further mirror sites together with a regularly updated list of these mirrors will continue to render the blocking ineffective in a Streisand effect.

Reporters Without Borders will soon create other mirrors and urges Internet users who want to help combat censorship and have the ability to host a site on a web server to follow suit. A list of the mirror sites will be updated on this page. If you want to participate, send the URL of the mirror site you have created to wefightcensorship [at] rsf.org. We will add it to the list below. The next mirroring operations launched by Reporters Without Borders will be reported on the @RSF_RWB and @RSFNet Twitter accounts with the #RSFmirror hashtag.

List of sites mirrored by Reporters Without Borders

doshdu.ru
Dosh, which covers politics and current affairs throughout the Russian Caucasus, received the Reporters Without Borders press freedom prize in 2009 for the courage and quality of its reporting. Despite frequent attempts to intimidate its staff, it is one of the very few independent sources of news about Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan, the victims of a low intensity civil war. Its website is often the target of DDoS attacks, the latest of which was during Russia's disputed parliamentary elections on 4 December 2011. The site's content and all of its files were completed deleted in 2010.

Mirror 1 : http://dosh.rsf.org/

lankaenews.com
Lanka-e-News is one of the few independent news outlets in Sri Lanka, where a government licence is needed to publish news online. As Lanka-e-News does not have a licence, the site has been blocked since October 2011. Its headquarters in a Colombo suburb were badly damaged by an arson attack in January 2011.

Mirror 1: http://lankaenews.rsf.org/

How to create a mirror site

To mirror one of the sites on the above list, you can:

Either install website copying software on your server and run it at regular intervals in order to have an updated version of the mirrored site (we recommend copying the content of the existing mirror rather than the original site in order not to overload the original)

Or download a compressed file of the mirrored site (available for all the Reporters Without Borders mirrors at http://mirroradress/archive.tar ), decompress it and use ftp to transfer all the files to your server.

For more information:

Reporters Without Borders
47, rue Vivienne
75002 Paris
France
rsf (@) rsf.org
Phone: +33 1 44 83 84 84
Fax: +33 1 45 23 11 51
http://www.rsf.org/

Obama's Attack on Religious Liberty

2012-02-11T08:41:00.000-08:00

The biggest bioethics story this week is President Obama's efforts to soften anger over his Administration's decision to force religious institutions to pay for insurance plans offering "free" contraception. The New York Times argued that this is "a phony crisis over 'religious liberty' engendered by the right."

Seeking to allay the concerns of Catholic leaders, the White House is planning to adjust its health-care rule requiring religious employers to provide women access to contraception, a senior administration official said.

The new policy would require insurance companies to directly offer free contraceptive services to employees at religious institutions that object to providing them, a senior administration official said.

Mr Obama apparently sees no rational reasons to oppose contraception, which includes the Pill, sterilizations, the abortion pill, and the morning-after pill. All have brought dramatic social change which have imposed huge costs on the economy, including a rise in STDs, an increase in teen pregnancies, a decrease in marriage rates, a fall in the birth rate, promiscuity, etc.

Obama does not see his contraceptive initiative as an ethical issue, nor does he see any medical reasons to restrict interventions that prevent or terminate life. However, the Presidential Policy Maker is neither an ethicist nor a medical practitioner.

Last year Obama's secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, told a pro-choice gathering, "We are in a war." The religiously conservative are trying to "roll back the last 50 years in progress women have made in comprehensive health care in America."

Now the religiously conservative must agree. "The religious truce is officially over," writes Dr Jennifer Roback Morse in MercatorNet. "The Established Church of Secular Hedonism has declared war on the rest of us, enlisting the might of the United States government on their side."

Dr Roback argues that hedonism has become America's official religion under President Obama. Yet another edict from the Obama administration has ended the American experiment in religious liberty. The President should take a lesson from history. Leaders who overthrow religious liberty and the sanctity of the conscience cause divisions that are rarely repaired.

FBI File on Steve Jobs

2012-02-10T03:43:00.000-08:00

The Mercury News website reports that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released a file today (February 9, 2012) that it kept on Apple cofounder Steve Jobs, in which interview subjects -- who were contacted for a background check on Jobs -- discussed his drug use and tendency to "twist the truth and distort reality in order to achieve his goals."

Several of the interview subjects told the FBI agents that Jobs' ethics could bend depending on the situation. One subject described Jobs as "a deceptive individual who is not completely forthright and honest; two former Apple employees said, "Jobs has integrity as long as he gets his way."

In an FBI interview with Jobs, he told agents that he "experimented with marijuana, hashish, and LSD" from 1970 to 1974.

The FBI released its documents on Jobs today because the Freedom of Information Act -- which allows the FBI to make its files public after a person's death -- was used by a reporter to gain access to Jobs' files.

Jobs died October 5, 2011 at the age of 56 as a result of a long battle with cancer.

From Theology and Society

Yemen's Crackdown in Taizz

2012-02-09T21:30:00.000-08:00

Human Rights Watch/IFEX) - New York, February 8, 2012 - Yemeni security forces stormed and shelled hospitals, evicted patients at gunpoint, and beat medics during an assault on Yemen's protest movement that killed at least 120 people in the flashpoint city of Taizz last year, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who is in the United States receiving medical treatment, received amnesty in Yemen for such attacks.

In the 75-page report, "'No Safe Places': Yemen's Crackdown on Protests in Taizz," Human Rights Watch called on the United States, the European Union, and Persian Gulf states to publicly acknowledge that the domestic immunity granted Saleh and his aides last month has no legal effect outside Yemen.

"President Saleh's forces killed and wounded hundreds of civilians, evicted hospital patients, and blocked war wounded from reaching care," said Letta Tayler, Yemen researcher at Human Rights Watch. "Saleh is entitled to medical treatment, but he and his aides have no right to immunity from prosecution for international crimes."

When Yemenis took to the streets in January 2011 to demand an end to Saleh's 33-year rule, Taizz, 250 kilometers south of the capital, Sanaa, became a center of both peaceful and armed resistance - and the scene of numerous human rights abuses and violations of the laws of war. "No Safe Places" is based on more than 170 interviews with protesters, doctors, human rights defenders, and other witnesses to attacks in Taizz by state security forces and pro-Saleh gangs from February to December 2011.

Click here to read the entire press release.

Yemen: Pre-Election Intimidation of Journalists

2012-02-09T15:33:00.000-08:00

(RSF/IFEX) - 8 February 2012 - Reporters Without Borders roundly condemns a recent surge in media freedom violations and attacks on journalists at a time of political tension in the run-up to the presidential election scheduled for 21 February.

Four journalists and activist bloggers are currently under threat from a fatwa issued at the start of February by senior clerics that explicitly calls for their deaths and for the closure of the newspapers and websites that carried their articles.

It was the appearance of an article headlined "First year of a revolution" by writer and journalist Bashra Al-Moqtari on the Al-Tagheer Net website on 11 January that aroused the anger of religious leaders and members of the Islamist party Al-Islah. In her article, Moqtari voiced the frustration and disappointment of a people that have seen their revolution stolen.

"The revolution's thieves have taken over the revolution of the Yemeni people," she wrote, urging them to take to the streets to continue their fight for freedom and to refuse "the tragedy of a slow death, a tragedy perpetrated by the political elites, religious leaders and soldiers."

The fatwa's three other targets are Fakri Qassam, an intellectual and editor of an independent newspaper in the southern city of Taiz, the satirical writer Mohssein Aeyd, and the Internet activist Sami Shamssan.

Reporters Without Borders strongly condemns this fatwa, which aims to silence journalists and activists who say the revolution has been confiscated and who reject the 23 November accord mediated by the Gulf Cooperation Council.

Many newspapers meanwhile continue to be the target of threats and attacks by the supporters of former President Ali Abdallah Saleh, who is currently in the United States for medical treatment. Armed demonstrators surrounded the Sanaa headquarters of the newspaper Al-Thawra on 2 February to protest against the removal of Saleh's photo from its front page.

They branded editor Yassin Al-Masroudi as a traitor and prevented journalists from entering the building. Saleh's supporters then stormed the building and supervised the preparation of the next day's issue. Reporters Without Borders deplores such practices, which were typical of the outgoing regime, but the Union of Journalists claimed that many journalists supported the action.

Armed Saleh supporters also surrounded the headquarters of the newspaper Al-Jomhuryah in the city of Taiz on 4 February, while security forces watched without intervening. Editor Samir Al-Yussoufi reportedly received threatening messages in which he was told that the newspaper's offices would be shelled. The day before, dozens of gunmen stormed the newspaper's bureau in Sanaa.

Reporters Without Borders stresses its support for the management and staff of both Al-Thawra and Al-Jomhuryah. Such practices constitute a serious obstacle to the ability of the media to operate in Yemen.

"The intimidatory practices and death threats to which journalists are currently exposed must stop," Reporters Without Borders said. "Freedom of expression and media freedom are essential conditions for change in a country that is trying to rebuild after years of authoritarian rule and a year of repression."

On 4 February, demonstrators also forced their way into the building that houses the Yemeni satellite TV station in order to prevent its chief from entering the building. The intervention of soldiers was needed for him to be able to get to his office. The protesters were demanding the removal of the heads of the three state-owned TV stations - Al-Yemen, Saba' and Al-Iman - and the restoration of the satellite station's former logo.

For more information:

Reporters Without Borders
47, rue Vivienne
75002 Paris
France
rsf (@) rsf.org
Phone: +33 1 44 83 84 84
Fax: +33 1 45 23 11 51
http://www.rsf.org/

65 Orthodox Bishops Resist Obama's Contraception Mandate

2012-02-07T21:45:00.000-08:00

NEW YORK, NY, February 6, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – The 65 canonical bishops of the Orthodox Church have asked President Barack Obama and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to repeal the mandate that religious institutions provide birth control, sterilization, and Plan B abortion drugs in their health care coverage.

The Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of North and Central America – which represents 12 Orthodox jurisdictions and three million Orthodox Christians in the United States – issued a press release last Thursday calling the HHS ruling a violation of religious conscience.

“The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees the free exercise of religion,” the statement says. “This freedom is transgressed when a religious institution is required to pay for ‘contraceptive services’ including abortion-inducing drugs and sterilization services that directly violate their religious convictions.”

“Providing such services should not be regarded as mandated medical care. We, the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops, call upon HHS Secretary Sebelius and the Obama Administration to rescind this unjust ruling and to respect the religious freedom guaranteed all Americans by the First Amendment.”

The bishops urged the faithful to take action. The statement calls upon “all the Orthodox Christian faithful to contact their elected representatives today to voice their concern in the face of this threat to the sanctity of the Church’s conscience.”

Influential leaders in the Orthodox Church expressed their appreciation that the bishops had spoken out. “The statement issued by the Orthodox bishops reflects a welcome voice in the public square that has too often been silent due to our unhappy divisions as American Orthodox Christians,” said Fr. Chad Hatfield, the president of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in Yonkers, New York, in a statement e-mailed to LifeSiteNews.com.

Fr. Peter-Michael Preble, an Orthodox priest and writer in Massachusetts agreed, “I don’t think we should shy about controversial topics.” Fr. Preble wrote an article in The Huffington Post asking the hierarchy of his church to publicly address the subject. “This seemed to be more of a national issue that the bishops as a whole had to say something about, and they weren’t, and I was afraid we were losing ground,” he told LifeSiteNews.com. “The Roman Catholic bishops were carrying the majority water on this issue and taking the brunt of the heat, and I just thought we had to do something.”

After reading the statement, Fr. Preble said, “I’m very pleased with the fact that [the bishops] did speak out, and I hope that this is the start of other statements that they will make about other issues, as well.”

The nation’s Orthodox Christians join a growing number of non-Catholics who had officially opposed the contraception mandate, which religious institutions will be required to observe by next August. Dr. Albert Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said on his daily podcast last Tuesday that any law requiring people of faith to violate their conscience “is not only a Catholic issue…our religious liberty is being similarly subverted and attacked.”

Late last year 60 religious leaders, mostly Protestants as well as two Orthodox Jewish spokesmen, signed a letter to President Obama, stating, “It is emphatically not only Catholics who deeply object to the requirement that health plans they purchase must provide coverage of contraceptives that include some that are abortifacients.”

The Orthodox Church is the second largest church in the world. The North American bishops posted their press release last Thursday, the date Orthodox Christians celebrate the presentation of the Christ Child in the Temple.

Metropolitan Jonah of the Orthodox Church in America was traveling and was not immediately available for comment.

The statement reads in full:

The Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of North and Central America, which is comprised of the 65 canonical Orthodox bishops in the United States, Canada and Mexico, join their voices with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and all those who adamantly protest the recent decision by the United States Department of Health and Human Services, and call upon all the Orthodox Christian faithful to contact their elected representatives today to voice their concern in the face of this threat to the sanctity of the Church’s conscience.

In this ruling by HHS, religious hospitals, educational institutions, and other organizations will be required to pay for the full cost of contraceptives (including some abortion-inducing drugs) and sterilizations for their employees, regardless of the religious convictions of the employers.

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees the free exercise of religion. This freedom is transgressed when a religious institution is required to pay for “contraceptive services” including abortion-inducing drugs and sterilization services that directly violate their religious convictions. Providing such services should not be regarded as mandated medical care. We, the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops, call upon HHS Secretary Sebelius and the Obama Administration to rescind this unjust ruling and to respect the religious freedom guaranteed all Americans by the First Amendment.

Contact Information:

The Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of North and Central America

Related reading: Evangelicals and Jews Unite Against Obama's Birth Control Mandate

Federal Appeals Panel Overthrows Prop 8

2012-02-07T16:31:00.000-08:00

A federal appeals panel in San Francisco ruled Tuesday that California’s ban on same-sex marriage violates the constitutional right to equal protection.

The panel overturned Proposition 8 by a 2 to 1 decision. Prop 8 was approved by 52 percent of the state’s voters in 2008 and amended the state’s constitution to limit marriage to a man and a woman. The U.S. Supreme Court could be the next stop for the measure.

Congressmen Steer Millions to Pet Projects

2012-02-07T10:08:00.000-08:00

Thirty-three members of Congress have steered more than $300 million in earmarks and other spending provisions to dozens of public projects that are next to or near the lawmakers' own property, according to a Washington Post investigation. Under the ethics rules Congress has written for itself, this is both legal and undisclosed.

In the first review of its kind, The Post analyzed public records on the holdings of all 535 members and compared them with earmarks members had sought for pet projects, most of them since 2008. The process uncovered appropriations for work in close proximity to commercial and residential real estate owned by the lawmakers or their family members. The review also found 16 lawmakers who sent tax dollars to companies, colleges or community programs where their spouses, children or parents work as salaried employees or serve on boards.

Read the full Washington Post report here.

Quote of the Week - Dorothy L. Sayers

2012-02-05T08:15:00.000-08:00

"Have you ever, in listening to a debate among adult and presumably responsible people, been fretted by the extraordinary inability of the average debater to speak to the question, or to meet and refute the arguments of speakers on the other side? Or have you ever pondered upon the extremely high incidence of irrelevant matter which crops up at committee meetings, and upon the very great rarity of persons capable of acting as chairmen of committees? And when you think of this, and think that most of our public affairs are settled by debates and committees, have you ever felt a certain sinking of the heart?" --Dorothy L. Sayers from "The Lost Tools of Learning"

USA: Education, Jobs and Family

2012-02-04T01:58:00.000-08:00

Digital textbooks. That is the latest idea from the White House for lifting the performance of American schools -- a strategy on which Korea and other countries are already ahead. Something certainly needs to be done; a new report from the Harvard Business School identifies the education system from kindergarten through to the end of high school (K-12) as one of the root causes of the country’s decline in business competitiveness.

Whether technology really is the solution, however, is in doubt. A must-read book published last week warns that America is coming apart culturally and not just economically. Marriage, the work ethic, respect for the law and religious practice are values increasingly absent from even white working class homes, while very much holding their own among the upper class, says author Charles Murray.

But without those supports it is difficult for children to benefit even from the best schools. And when they don’t, it is not only bad news for them but another nail in the coffin of US competitiveness.

In the 1980s US business was losing ground against Japan; today it’s the world, especially the developing economies where there is not only cheaper unskilled labour but also, according to 1700 Harvard Business School alumni personally involved in decisions about where to place business activities and jobs last year, “better access to skilled labour”.

Among those respondents, two-thirds of their decisions about placing business went against the US, say Michael E Porter and Jan W Rivkin, directors of the school’s US Competitiveness Project, in their report, Prosperity at Risk. Two thirds. “Facilities involving large numbers of jobs, high-end work [research, development and engineering], and groups of activities located together moved out of the US much faster than they moved in.”

When asked what they saw as the main problems with the US business environment the business leaders put the K-12 eduction system at the top of the list along with America’s tax code and political system. It was one of six weaknesses they viewed as getting worse.

What exactly they thought was wrong with education is not reported, but clearly the system is not turning out sufficiently skilled, productive and adaptable people. The businessmen themselves agree that they can and must be part of the solution -- by supporting educational institutions and investing in workforce sills, among other things. But to fully address these practical issues they need to look deeper.

As a number of academics and scholars have pointed out, America (and the West in general) has been running down its human and social capital for some decades now. Charles Murray is just the latest to point out that the effects have been distributed in a very lopsided way. He writes:

When Americans used to brag about "the American way of life"—a phrase still in common use in 1960—they were talking about a civic culture that swept an extremely large proportion of Americans of all classes into its embrace. It was a culture encompassing shared experiences of daily life and shared assumptions about central American values involving marriage, honesty, hard work and religiosity.

Over the past 50 years, that common civic culture has unraveled. We have developed a new upper class with advanced educations, often obtained at elite schools, sharing tastes and preferences that set them apart from mainstream America. At the same time, we have developed a new lower class, characterized not by poverty but by withdrawal from America's core cultural institutions.

The withdrawal of the working class from marriage (just 48 per cent of 30- to 49-year-old adults with only a high school education are now married), divorce, the rise of single-parenthood and cohabitation, the loss of community and moral support from church attendance and membership of other civic groups, combined with rising crime, unemployment and erosion of a work ethic -- all this has put a huge swathe of children at a disadvantage in the education system.

Murray’s work confirms the landmark 2010 study, When Marriage Disappears: The Retreat from Marriage in Middle America, by W Bradford Wilcox and colleagues. Their report sounded the alarm that the erosion of marriage had reached deep into American society, affecting the 58 per cent of the population that is moderately educated, threatening “the American Dream” of economic mobility and, in particular, the emotional and social welfare of children. They said:

“We know, for instance, that children who grow up in intact, married families are significantly more likely to graduate from high school, finish college, become gainfully employed, and enjoy a stable family life themselves, compared to their peers who grow up in non-intact families.”

By the late 2000s, they noted, non-marital childbirths accounted for a disturbing 44 percent of children born to moderately educated mothers -- up from 13 per cent in the early 1980s, and 54 percent of children born to the least-educated mothers, but only 6 percent of children born to highly educated mothers. Only 58 per cent of Middle American kids today will grow up with both their mom and dad to the age of 14.

This is the reality that business leaders and Harvard heavyweights need to come to grips with.

If children do not have a stable home, if their parents are not committed to one another, if they split up and a step-parent enters the scene, if the father is absent, the mother struggling alone or in successive relationships with boyfriends -- how much more difficult it will be for them to settle to homework, to get help with it, to focus on the world of learning and think in terms of a college or vocational degree. Chances are they will prefer to escape family tensions by immersing themselves in television or the internet.

(A recent study found that “students who have experienced repeated changes in their family structure status will be less successful academically” even when attending schools with a strong academic culture and support for students.)

And how much less likely children are to learn the virtues that will make them reliable and ambitious workers -- honesty, delayed gratification, industriousness -- when parents themselves do not have the traditional supports for morality, especially the church, or any replacement for them, and this at a time when unemployment, crime and the culturally corrosive power of the mass media are all against them.

Academics, as Wilcox has noted, have been reluctant to accept that the trends affecting family life in much of American society (as elsewhere) are a problem. Many hold to the line that the family is just changing, not declining.

This is not a mistake that business leaders or smart politicians should make. They should let the data talk. Today, 38 per cent of kids from intact families will continue their education and get a college degree compared with only 20 per cent from non-intact families. Children and adults who are not connected to an intact family, says Wilcox, are significantly less likely to strive to succeed and save.

The When Marriage Disappears report suggested that,

Given the current trends, it is not too far-fetched to imagine that the United States could be heading toward a 21st century version of a traditional Latin American model of family life, where only a comparatively small oligarchy enjoys a stable married and family life—and the economic and social fruits that flow from strong marriages. In this model, the middle and lower-middle classes would find it difficult to achieve the same goals for their families and would be bedeviled by family discord and economic insecurity.

That, combined with a North American model of the job market would seem to be the worst of all possible worlds for Middle America, and indeed, for the whole country. Not just America but any nation that wants to compete in the globalised economy will have to first look after the family. Then the family will produce the social capital that will make everything else work. There is no other way.

Carolyn Moynihan is deputy editor of MercatorNet.

Editor's Note: Every institution in our society has a self-serving agenda and/or ideology that has an impact on the education of students. I teach in a Christian school that is committed to Young Earth Creationism. This ideology, though not supported by the Bible, precludes the offering of courses such as astronomy and geology. In other words, the school is less committed to a well-rounded education for the students than to an ideology that the Bible itself debunks.

Related reading: American Higher Education Mimics China; Dorothy Sayers, The Lost Tools of Learning; Diane Ravitch, “The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn,”

Komen Foundation

2012-02-03T14:20:00.000-08:00

Austin Ruse

Planned Parenthood has unleashed the hounds of hell on the Komen Foundation and its Chairman and Founder Nancy Brinker. It is an assault, with the aggressive complicity of the media. Nancy Brinker is being crucified for her conscience-driven decision.

It appears that the Susan G. Komen Foundation has reversed the decision on funding of Planned Parenthood. While I do not believe they have reversed themselves, it may turn out to be the case. We do not know.

What happened this week was nothing short of a Mafia shakedown campaign by Planned Parenthood against the Susan G. Komen Foundation.

Planned Parenthood told the Komen Foundation 'either give us money or we will destroy you.' They were aided and abetted in this hostage taking by the mainstream media.

At this point, pro-lifers should cease their support of the Susan G. Komen Foundation. We should wait and see what happens. We know there are five more Komen grants to Planned Parenthood in the pipeline. If any more come up, we will know we have lost and Planned Parenthood has won.

I do not regret the work I did over the past days on this issue, neither should any pro-lifer. I only regret we could not have done more to make Komen strong and able to fight off the thuggish abortion giant, Planned Parenthood.

What the week has shown is that Planned Parenthood, an organization that is under criminal investigation all over this country, will stop at nothing to maintain their stranglehold on organizations like the Susan G. Komen Foundation.

We should continue to pray for Nancy Brinker and all of her colleagues at the Susan G. Komen Foundation.

Austin Ruse is president of C-FAM, a New York and Washington DC-based research institute working exclusively on International social policy.

General William G. Boykin Disinvited

2012-02-03T07:07:00.000-08:00

Michael Avramovich

On February 8, 2012, the U. S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, is holding a prayer breakfast. The invited speaker was to have been Lieutenant General William G. Boykin (retired), who served as the United States Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, and was a longtime commander of Special Operations forces. He has played a role in almost every recent major American military operation, including Grenada, Somalia, and Iraq. He is also a devout Christian believer. It is therefore fitting he would be invited to address those gathered to pray for our nation.

Well, not so fast. General Boykin also believes that radical Islam is a grave threat to the United States. The New York Times observed that General Boykin has “harshly anti-Muslim views.” Among the General’s views is that Islam is a “totalitarian way of life.”

Liberal veterans’ groups, purported civil liberties advocates (oh, wait, is there an irony here?), and Muslim organizations, including CAIR (the Council of American Islamic Relations), have objected to General Boykin’s attendance at the prayer breakfast. The Forum on the Military Chaplaincy (a liberal group of retired military chaplains), the Military Religious Freedom Foundation and CAIR have made public appeals to the Pentagon to cancel the General’s appearance. In a letter to West Point’s superintendent, one liberal veterans group demanded that the invitation be revoked, and wrote that General Boykin’s “incendiary rhetoric regarding Islam” was “incompatible with Army values” and would “put our troops in danger.” So, I suppose that according to that veterans’ group, the radical Islamists and Taliban would hate us especially a lot rather than merely a lot if General Boykin prays with the cadets and faculty at West Point.

General Boykin, after a conversation with senior West Point officials, has withdrawn his acceptable to speak at the prayer breakfast. By withdrawing, General Boykin has made the focus of the prayer breakfast on God, and not on him. In that, he has chosen to follow the biblical admonition of Hebrews 12:14: “Make every effort to live in peace with all men.”

If you wish to contact the West Point Superintendant, Lieutenant General David H. Huntoon, Jr., his office number is 1.845.938.4200. I already have let his office know that freedom of speech works both ways, and that West Point’s decision to disinvite General Boykin makes a mockery of and ridicules its time-honored motto of “Duty, Honor, Country.”

From here.

Gay Marriage Looks to be Legalized by Washington

2012-02-02T10:46:00.000-08:00

Source: The Slatest

A bill in Washington state that would legalize same-sex marriage cleared what was seen as its biggest legislative hurdle late Wednesday night, passing in the state Senate by seven votes, 28-21.

With both the state House and Gov. Christine Gregoire publicly backing the measure, it should have no trouble becoming law in the state. But after that, it'll face one more legal challenge, the Associated Press reports.

Although a referendum amendment didn't make it into the bill, opponents will have until June 6 to collect 120,577 signatures to force a vote on the November ballot. If they can't do that, couples will be able to marry this summer. If they're successful, same-sex couples will have to wait and see what happens in November, the AP notes.

Although Washington already offers domestic partnerships for same-sex couples, the bill's sponsor, state Sen. Ed Murray, argued for the importance of including same-sex couples under the umbrella of marriage, saying “marriage is how society says you are a family.” He also stated his intention to marry his longtime partner in the state: “Regardless of how you vote on this bill, an invitation [to the wedding] will be in the mail,” he said just before the vote.

The bill contains several protections for religious groups who oppose same-sex marriage, including one similar to that in the New York law which affirms that religious groups aren't required to marry or open their facilities to marrying same-sex couples, as the New York Times explains. Despite this, some opponents of the bill have expressed fears that they may now be the targets of discrimination. Sen. Dan Swecker, who voted against the bill, said he was "extremely concerned" that the bill doesn't do enough to prevent a "hostile environment for those of us who believe in traditional marriage."

The Roman Catholic Church and the National Organization for Marriage have already vowed to help oppose the bill, citing their faith as motivation.

A turning point for the bill's prospects in the senate came when Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen announced Monday that she would support the bill, giving it the number of votes it'd need to pass. Describing herself as having "strong Christian beliefs," her statement is an interesting articulation of the Christian argument for supporting same-sex marriage legislation: "For me personally, I have always believed in traditional marriage between a man and a woman. That is what I believe, to this day. “But this issue isn’t about just what I believe," she said. Her full statement is here.

Currently, same-sex marriage is legal in New York, Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and the District of Columbia.

No One is Laughing Now

2012-02-01T17:28:00.000-08:00

Addis Ababa, Jan 29, IRNA -- Islamic Republic of Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said that the 20-percent nuclear fuel sheet will be installed in Tehran research reactor facility next month. Salehi made the remarks to the reporters on the sidelines of the 18th African Union Summit in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa on Sunday, January 29.

'After our partners refrained from fulfilling their commitments with regard to procurement of fuel of Tehran research reactor, we attempted to enrich the required uranium to the level of 20 percent in accordance with our legal rights,' he added.

Salehi pointed out although our partners did not believe that IR Iran could achieve the technology of uranium enrichment to the level of 20 percent and converting it into fuel sheet, they will witness Iran’s installation of fuel sheets in Tehran research reactor within next month.

Peter Saunders is a Homosceptic

2012-01-31T16:57:00.000-08:00

Dr Peter Saunders is a former general surgeon and CEO of Christian Medical Fellowship, a UK-based organisation with 4,500 UK doctors and 1,000 medical students as members. The following article appeared at his blog, Christian Medical Comment and was cross published at MercatorNet.

Peter Saunders

Many people think that homosexuality is a biological characteristic like race or sex – biologically fixed and genetically determined. They think this because this is the view that has been successfully propagated by the gay rights lobby for decades in order to provide a justification for arguing that ‘homophobia’ is a form of discrimination akin to racism or sexism.

This belief has also been behind moves to treat discrimination against 'practising' homosexuals as a human rights issue by pretending that homosexuals are a biological category like 'women' or 'Asians' whose distinctive features are genetically determined rather than just a group who have simply made a certain life-style choice.

But in fact the strength and direction of erotic attraction, although relatively stable in some people, can be quite changeable in others – it is often not fixed at all.

Similarly, identical twins often have different sexual orientations proving that, although sexual orientation may have some genetic influences, it is not genetically determined. There is, in other words, no such thing as the gay gene.

Sexual orientation is much more accurately thought of in the category of a conditioned (and often variable) preference than a determined biological condition.

Most researchers now accept that sexual orientation (the predominant direction of sexual attraction one feels) is the result of a complex interaction in which nature, nurture and choice all play a part. But whether one acts on those feelings by having same sex relations is actually a matter of personal choice.

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) has stated, ‘some people believe that sexual orientation is innate and fixed; however, sexual orientation develops across a person's lifetime’. The APA also says that ‘for some the focus of sexual interest will shift at various points through the life span...’
A report from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health similarly states, ‘For some people, sexual orientation is continuous and fixed throughout their lives. For others, sexual orientation may be fluid and change over time’
And in a recent Huffington Post article, ‘Future Sex: Beyond Gay and Straight’, a leading British gay rights activist, Peter Tatchell, affirms the fluidity of sexual attraction.

First he affirms the reality of bisexuality:

‘We already know, thanks to a host of sex surveys, that bisexuality is an fact of life and that even in narrow-minded, homophobic cultures, many people have a sexuality that is, to varying degrees, capable of both heterosexual and homosexual attraction.’

Then he challenges the traditional view that gay and straight are distinct categories:

‘Research by Dr Alfred Kinsey in the USA during the 1940s was the first major statistical evidence that gay and straight are not watertight, irreconcilable and mutually exclusive sexual orientations. He found that human sexuality is, in fact, a continuum of desires and behaviours, ranging from exclusive heterosexuality to exclusive homosexuality. A substantial proportion of the population shares an amalgam of same-sex and opposite-sex feelings -- even if they do not act on them.’
He then goes on to quote Kinsey’s (grossly inflated) assessments of the incidence of homosexuality whilst acknowledging that they ‘have since been criticised as out-of-date, exaggerated and unrepresentative’.

Tatchell also acknowledges that ‘evidence from sociology and anthropology (shows) that the incidence and form of heterosexuality and homosexuality is not fixed and universal, and that the two sexual orientations are not mutually exclusive. There is a good deal of fluidity and overlap.’

‘What's more,’ he adds, ‘although scientific evidence shows that human sexuality is significantly affected by biological predispositions - such as genes and hormones - other influences appear to be cultural, including social expectations, peer pressure and the availability and opportunity for sexual release. These influences channel erotic impulses in certain directions and not others.’
In fact he even goes so far as to suggest that some homosexual identities are formed as a result of people reacting to perceived prejudice in others:

‘Gay and lesbian identities are largely the product of homophobic prejudice and repression. They are a self-defence mechanism against homophobia. Faced with persecution for having same-sex relations, the right to have those relationships has to be defended - hence gay identity and the gay rights movement.’

Tatchell, despite these admissions, grossly inflates the true incidence of exclusive homosexuality.

The best evidence (see references 1,2,3 below) actually suggests that only a very small percentage of men (1-2 percent) and women (0.5-1.5 percent) experience exclusive same-sex attraction throughout their life course. It appears that more men and women experience mixed patterns of sexual interest. This includes shifts of interest from one sex to another at various points in their lives or attractions to both sexes at the same time.

Tatchell is right though in saying that bisexuality appears to be more prevalent than exclusive gay/lesbian and if defined in terms of same sex behaviours in past year, may be as much as 5 percent in men and 11 percent in women aged 15-44.

Sexual attractions are therefore best understood as lying on a spectrum rather than in terms of a simple dichotomous binary categorisation. Survey data suggest that mixed patterns of sexual desire, including attraction to both sexes at the same time, appear to be more common than exclusive same-sex attraction, especially among women.

So what?

Well, like many, I am getting rather tired of the term ‘homophobic’ being used as an accusatory label to tar anyone who does not accept, approve and celebrate same-sex sexual relationships and believe that homosexual orientation is a biological characteristic like race or sex.

There are a large and growing number of people (I call them ‘homosceptics’) who neither hate nor fear ‘gay’ people but simply believe that sex outside a lifelong exclusive heterosexual marriage is morally wrong and the fact that we have certain feelings of sexual attraction does not mean that we should therefore act on them.

These people are also highly sceptical about the key presuppositions on which the gay rights movement has based its campaign, such as the beliefs that:

•Homosexuality is genetically determined

•Homosexual orientation is always fixed

•Sexual orientation is a biological characteristic like race, sex or skin colour

•Feelings of same sex attraction should be welcomed and acted upon

•Offering help to those who wish to resist or eradicate these feelings is always wrong

Tacthell’s arguments above, and the findings of recent research, confirm that these beliefs are actually more ‘ideology-driven’ than ‘evidence-based’. But Tatchell, by suggesting that gay and straight are not distinct categories at all, has also pulled the rug out from under the feet of the gay rights’ movement.

Of course if you accept these ‘key presuppositions’ in spite of the evidence to the contrary you may well believe that people who don’t are ignorant, bigoted, prejudiced or even immoral. You might even feel that such people should not hold public office, publicly express their views or hold any job which involves having to condone, promote or facilitate same-sex intimacy. And you might feel justified in branding everyone who does not share your views as 'homophobic'.

But if you have any sort of intellectual integrity, then you should accept that you have adopted these beliefs in the face of, in fact in spite of, the evidence.

And if so you should stop using divisive labels, and accept rather that there are some people who believe with good cause that to treat homosexual orientation as a fixed biological characteristic like race or sex is to confer upon it a status that it does not and should not have.

References

1. Dickson, N, C Paul, and P Herbison. ‘Same-Sex Attraction in a Birth Cohort: Prevalence and Persistence in Early Adulthood’.Social Science & Medicine 56, No. 8 (2003): 1607-15.

2. Laumann, Edward O., John H. Gagnon, Robert T. Michael, and Stuart Michaels. The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.

3. Savin-Williams, RC, and GL Ream. ‘Prevalence and Stability of Sexual Orientation Components During Adolescence and Young Adulthood’. Archives of Sexual Behavior 36 (2007): 385-94.

Iran Enriched Uranium Fuel Sheets at 20-percent

2012-01-31T16:37:00.000-08:00

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency, News Code: 30787319

Addis Ababa, Jan 29, IRNA -- Islamic Republic of Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said that the 20-percent nuclear fuel sheet will be installed in Tehran research reactor facility next month.

Salehi made the remarks to the reporters on the sidelines of the 18th African Union Summit in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa on Sunday.

'After our partners refrained from fulfilling their commitments with regard to procurement of fuel of Tehran research reactor, we attempted to enrich the required uranium to the level of 20 percent in accordance with our legal rights,' he added.

Salehi pointed out although our partners did not believe that IR Iran could achieve the technology of uranium enrichment to the level of 20 percent and converting it into fuel sheet, they will witness Iran’s installation of fuel sheets in Tehran research reactor within next month.

Asked about the security of the Strait of Hormuz, the foreign minister said that the security of Hormuz should be maintained in order to help everyone benefit from it.

“Strait of Hormuz is a strategic and important region not only for Iran and the regional countries, but also for countries of the world. Iran considers itself more responsible than any other country for maintaining security and stability of the region, especially Strait of Hormuz,” he added.

Salehi noted that Iran has proven that it is an important role-player in establishing security in the region.

“What I emphasize on is that the countries outside the Persian Gulf zone are not entitled to decide about the privileges and benefits of the Strait of Hormuz,” he added.

Salehi further said that the security of the Strait of Hormuz is beneficial to all and that is what Iran is looking for.

Asked whether the inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency are allowed to visit Iran’s nuclear sites, the foreign minister responded that they can visit any nuclear site that they ask for.

Gay Activists Muzzle Liberty, Conscience

2012-01-30T16:00:00.000-08:00

Those advocating the radical social innovation, which they label “same-sex or gay marriage,” typically claim that they are fighting for freedom, championing a basic liberty. “Freedom to Marry” is indeed the name of a national organization devoted to the advocacy of same-sex marriage. Established in 2003 by civil-rights advocate Evan Wolfson and headquartered in New York City, this group takes “We All Deserve the Freedom to Marry” as its slogan. So effective has it promulgated this perspective that even former First Lady Laura Bush endorsed homosexuals’ right to marry as a matter of basic freedom when she appeared on the Larry King Show in May 2010.

But those who advocate homosexual marriage as a way of enlarging the American sphere of liberty are profoundly—and deceptively—misrepresenting their aims. Their real aim came to light in the public controversy over remarks attributed to Queen Sophia of Spain in criticizing her country’s invention in 2005 of a homosexual right to “marry.” “If those people [homosexuals] want to live together,” commented the Spanish monarch, “dress up as bride and groom and get married they can do so, but that should not be called marriage because it is not.” Widely reported by the media, the furor over these remarks forced representatives of the Queen to issue a statement claiming that the published remarks “do not exactly match the opinions expressed by Her Majesty the Queen” and apologizing for the “ill-feeling and upset” her comments had caused. The pressures compelling this semi-retraction and apology prompted one media commentator to ponder the “interesting question” of whether on the issue of homosexual marriage, the Queen still had “the right... to express her opinion like any other citizen.”

This commentator had glimpsed the fundamental aim of those advocating homosexual marriage: it is not at all about giving homosexuals a new freedom to participate in ceremonies that they regard as weddings. It is entirely about denying freedom of public speech to anyone who would criticize such ceremonies or the sexual behaviors such ceremonies legitimize. The muzzle that homosexual activists tried (largely successfully) to put on an outspoken monarch represents only the beginning. Homosexual activists in this country deeply desire to place first thousands, and then millions, of even tighter muzzles on all who disagree with them about the nature of homosexual behavior. They well understand that enactment of laws authorizing homosexual marriage will give them sweeping powers to bind those muzzles very tightly on their fellow citizens.

Read it all here.

Quote of the Week - Mother Teresa

2012-01-30T08:30:00.000-08:00

"Only in heaven will we see how much we owe to the poor for helping us to love God better because of them." --Mother Teresa

African Wild Dogs Not Extinct

2012-01-29T15:50:00.000-08:00

In 1991, conservationists announced with dismay that endangered African wild dogs had gone extinct from the Serengeti-Mara region of east Africa. Now the latest genetic study reveals that this proclamation may have been premature – it turns out they almost certainly didn't go extinct at all.

African wild dogs.

A team of UK and US researchers genetically analysed a rare bounty of samples taken both from the dogs before their apparent extinction, and from new packs that naturally re-established in the area ten years later in 2001.

To their surprise, they found that almost all of the new dogs are genetically related to the original Serengeti-Mara population, meaning that some dogs must have persisted undetected in the region after 1991.

'The data suggest that there wasn't complete extinction in the region, which is encouraging,' says Dr Barbara Mable from the University of Glasgow, who led the study

Read more here.

Drug Test Welfare Recips AND Lawmakers

2012-01-29T11:51:00.000-08:00

A Republican member of the Indiana General Assembly withdrew his bill to create a pilot program for drug testing welfare applicants Friday after one of his Democratic colleagues amended the measure to require drug testing for lawmakers.

"There was an amendment offered today that required drug testing for legislators as well and it passed, which led me to have to then withdraw the bill," said Rep. Jud McMillin (R-Brookville), sponsor of the original welfare drug testing bill.

The Supreme Court ruled drug testing for political candidates unconstitutional in 1997, striking down a Georgia law. McMillin said he withdrew his bill so he could reintroduce it on Monday with a lawmaker drug testing provision that would pass constitutional muster.

Read it all here.

What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Judge Harms' Abortion, Sterilization Order Overruled

2012-01-29T04:30:00.000-08:00

It is difficult to imagine a case better scripted for a discussion of informed consent than Mary Moe's Massachusetts abortion.

When Mary Moe, a pseudonym for a 32-year-old woman with schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder, visited a hospital emergency room in October, it was discovered that she was pregnant. This meant that she could not take her psychiatric medication as it would harm the foetus. So the state Department of Mental Health applied to have the woman's parents named as guardians so they could give consent for an abortion.

However, Mary did not want to have an abortion. Unsurprisingly, she was not completely coherent, but she insisted that she was "very Catholic" and would never do such a thing. She knew what abortions were, as her first pregnancy had been aborted. (She subsequently gave birth to a son, whom her parents are caring for.)

The case went before Judge Christina Harms, a Harvard Law School graduate and a former lawyer in the State's welfare services. Judge Harms ordered Mary Moe to have an abortion. If she were intransigent, she could be "coaxed, bribed, or even enticed'' into the hospital. Furthermore, the judge wanted to put an end to these distressing pregnancies. She ordered Mary Moe to be sterilized "to avoid this painful situation from recurring in the future.'' Harms reasoned that Mary Moe was not competent to make a decision about an abortion, because of her "substantial delusional beliefs." But if she were competent, she would choose to abort the child.

In the event, Judge Harms was overruled. "The personal decision whether to bear or beget a child is a right so fundamental that it must be extended to all persons, including those who are incompetent,'' said the state appeals court. As for the sterilization, said one of the appeals judges, "The judge appears to have simply produced the requirement out of thin air."

The publicity given to this unusual case has led mental health advocates to wonder how often women are forcibly aborted and sterilised. "I didn't realize that forced sterilizations were going on anywhere," said Howard Trachtman of the National Alliance on Mental Illness Massachusetts, told the Boston Globe. "If a precedent were set for that, then you could see a whole slew of people filing for it, or trying to get judges to order it." "Simply having a diagnosis of schizophrenia or any other mental illness is not a basis for sterilization in and of itself. It's just sheer prejudice," Elyn Saks, of the University of Southern California, told the Boston Herald. ~ Boston Globe, Jan 18

Army Reduction about 100,000

2012-01-28T15:58:00.000-08:00

WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Jan. 27, 2012) -- The Army will draw down in size by as many as 80,000 Soldiers over the next six years. That reduction includes the elimination of at least eight brigade combat teams.

The Army expects an active force end strength reduction from 570,000 to 490,000, said Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, during a press briefing, Jan. 27, at the Pentagon.

The general said the time is "strategically right" to reduce the Army's force structure, but stressed that it would be done the right way.

"Even given a fiscally constrained environment our Army will accomplish our reductions in a responsible and controlled manner," Odierno said. "Secretary McHugh and I are committed to ensuring we walk down this hill at the ready, rather than running our nation's Army off a cliff."

Odierno said the Army would execute force reduction measures by following a "drawdown ramp that allows us to take care of Soldiers and families, while maintaining a ready and capable force to meet any requirements, including our current operations in Afghanistan."

Most of that force reduction, Odierno said, would come from attrition.

Read more here.

Hungary's Constitution Defends Marriage and Life

2012-01-26T22:01:00.000-08:00

By Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D.

New York, January 27 (C-FAM) Hungarian leaders have passed a law protecting the traditional family, defying ongoing criticism that their new constitution would curtail abortion and homosexuality.

The new law says the family, based upon marriage of a man and a woman whose mission is fulfilled by raising children, is an "autonomous community...established before the emergence of law and the State" and that the State must respect it as a matter of national survival. It says "Embryonic and foetal life shall be entitled to protection and respect from the moment of conception," and the state should encourage "homely circumstances" for child care. It obliges the media to respect marriage and parenting and assigns parents, rather than the State, primary responsibility for protecting the rights of the child. The law enumerates responsibilities for minors, including respect and care for elderly parents.

The purpose of the law is "to create a predictable and safe regulatory environment for family protection and the promotion of family welfare, and to enforce the Fundamental Law," the nation's new constitution, which came into force on January 1st and was passed by a vote of 262-44 last April.

The Fundamental Law nullified Hungary's communist-era constitution and dates its democracy from the revolution against the Soviet Union in 1956 and Soviet collapse in 1990. Hungary is the last Central European nation to pass a post-communist constitution.

The constitution calls for the protection of life from conception and bans torture, human trafficking, eugenics, and human cloning. It recognizes marriage as the "conjugal union of a man and a woman."

Amnesty International said the article protecting life from conception could "undermine the rights of women and girls" that are "enshrined in several treaties signed and ratified by the Republic of Hungary such as the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)." The group said the article defining marriage "may pave the way to the introduction of an explicit ban on same-sex marriages which contravenes international and European anti-discrimination standards...enshrined by Article 23 of the ICCPR [the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights]."

Human Rights Watch likewise invoked UN human rights treaties in a letter urging Hungary's president to "amend the constitution to ensure respect for women's reproductive rights." The human rights goliath expressed concern that the non-discrimination clause for "race, color, sex, disability, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, wealth, birth or any other circumstance whatsoever" excludes reference to sexual orientation or gender identity which they said was guaranteed in the ICCPR.

International legal experts have dismissed the claims of the human rights groups saying Hungary has the right to pass a constitution without interference. They point out that no UN treaty even mentions abortion, sexual orientation, or gender identity and that the UN General Assembly has never accepted such redefinitions.

European legal expert Roger Kiska sees the new Hungarian laws as part of a growing trend among European states to push back at such interpretations and protect human life and the family. Former US ambassador to Hungary Mark Palmer said the expulsion of Hungary from the EU is "now no longer unthinkable," but Hungarian analyst Julia Lakatos downplayed the controversy, telling CSMonitor, "Much of the criticism from abroad is exaggerated."

Obama and US influence abroad

2012-01-25T19:30:00.000-08:00

In his State of the Union address, President Obama claimed that the influence of the United States of America is greater now than in many years. He said:

“Anyone who tells you otherwise, anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned, doesn’t know what they’re talking about. That’s not the message we get from leaders around the world, all of whom are eager to work with us. That’s not how people feel from Tokyo to Berlin; from Cape Town to Rio; where opinions of America are higher than they’ve been in years.”

Glenn Kessler made this observation: "Obama’s self-congratulatory tone aside, the most striking thing about this list is that it does not include any cities in the Islamic world. Obama had made a high-profile speech in Cairo in 2009 designed to bolster the U.S. image; judging by recent polling, his effort has been a failure."

Czech Grave Robbers Apprehended

2012-01-25T15:00:00.000-08:00

The Prague Daily Monitor website reports that Czech police have arrested two men suspected of robbing more than 70 graves in northern Bohemia.

The two men -- aged 48 and 38 -- mainly targeted older tombs in the region in search of gold teeth, medals, jewelry, and other relics.

They were arrested last Saturday night at a cemetery in Usti nad Labem in the north of the country, where they were raiding tombs.

Police also took the equipment the men used, including face masks, crowbars and other tools, as well as a short folding ladder that they used to descend into the tombs.

Source: Theology and Society

Jessica Buchanan Rescued by Navy Seals

2012-01-25T11:41:00.000-08:00

The same Navy SEAL team responsible for killing Osama Bin Laden roughly seven months ago pulled off another successful mission Tuesday, rescuing two aid workers taken hostage in Somalia late last year. The mission reportedly occurred shortly before President Obama took to the podium to deliver his State of the Union address.

According to the BBC, neither the U.S. troops nor the hostages were injured in the rescue, but nine captors were killed. The captors were not identified as al-Shabab militants (al-Shabab is an Islamist group controlling much of southern Somalia), but rather as "criminals" by U.S. officials.

The two aid workers are Jessica Buchanan, an American, and Poul Hagen Thisted, from Denmark. They were taken captive at gunpoint by Somali pirates in October.

Read the full report here.

Enenche Godwin Akogwu Murdered in Kano

2012-01-23T21:30:00.000-08:00

23 January 2012 - Reporters Without Borders condemns TV reporter Enenche Godwin Akogwu's targeted murder while covering a series of deadly bombings by the militant Islamist sect Boko Haram on 20 January in the northern city of Kano, and urges the authorities to do everything possible to ensure that those responsible are identified and brought to justice.

"Akogwu's death is especially shocking as he was not a victim of the bombings but was gunned down shortly afterward while trying to cover them," Reporters Without Borders said. "He is the second journalist to be killed by Boko Haram, following Zakariya Isa, who was shot outside his home in another northern city on 22 October 2011.

"As well as attacking federal government buildings or churches, as it did on Christmas Day, Boko Haram has shown a new side to its violence with this targeted killing; it has shown itself to be an enemy of the media and journalists as well. We firmly condemn Akogwu's murder, offer our condolences to his family, colleagues and friends, and urge the authorities to quickly adopt measures to protect reporters."

Akogwu, 31, was the Kano correspondent of Channels TV. He was slain by an unidentified gunman while trying to interview victims outside Farm central police station on Justice Dahiru Musdapher Road, which was one of the targets of the suicide bombings.

Akogwu was from Aiodio, in the Otikpa district of Ogbadibo, in the southeastern state of Benue. After joining Channels TV in Abuja three years ago, he was sent to Kano. He had never been threatened and had just received an award from the station's chairman for the quality of his work. President Goodluck Jonathan, who has pledged to end Boko Haram's attacks, offered his condolences to Akogwu's family.

At least 166 people were killed in a total of about 20 explosions on 20 January at eight strategic locations in Kano, which included the police headquarters, an intelligence agency building, an immigration department building and the home of a senior police officer. The bombings were claimed by Boko Haram, which was almost certainly also responsible for Akogwu's murder. (For more on the Kano fatalities, read this.)

Mysterious death
The body of radio journalist, Nansok Sallah, was found on 19 January in a stream under a bridge on the Zaramagada-Rayfield road, 200 metres from a military checkpoint, in Jos (the capital of the central state of Plateau), where he worked for Highland FM.

As nothing of value was taken from him, his colleagues fear that he was the victim of a targeted murder, but the cause of death and possible motive are still unknown. From the Langtang North area in Plateau state, Sallah had worked for Highland FM for three years and hosted a programme called Highland Profile. He had not received any threats.

Reporters Without Borders urges the authorities to carry out a thorough investigation and to do their utmost to shed light on Sallah's death.

For more information:

Reporters Without Borders
47, rue Vivienne
75002 Paris
France
rsf (@) rsf.org
Phone: +33 1 44 83 84 84
Fax: +33 1 45 23 11 51
http://www.rsf.org/

Quote of the Week - Archbishop Nicholas Okoh

2012-01-23T10:15:00.000-08:00

"In the last few years the Church of Nigeria has been shunned and occasionally vilified for its orthodox stance on central matters of Christian faith and practice by those who are seeking 'progressive Africans' to work with on their social agenda. The Church's orthodox stance has been patronized as due not to any convictions about the truth of the Bible but the pressures of their Islamic context.

"We have no hatred for anybody in the UK, USA or Europe, nor for Muslims even when they kill and harm us. Our only desire is to live in peace and serve God. We do not think it right for anyone to harm anyone. It is not human to do that, not only ungodly." -- The Anglican Archbishop of Nigeria, Nicholas Okoh

Egypt Fundamentalists Gain Majority: How will Ethnic Christians Fare?

2012-01-22T20:30:00.000-08:00

Placard reads, "If it wasn't for the revolution, the National Democratic Party would still be there."
Credit: Maya Alleruzzo / Associated Press

REPORTING FROM CAIRO -- A new political era began in Egypt on Saturday as Islamist parties won nearly three-quarters of the seats in parliamentary elections to inherit a nation mired in economic crisis and desperate to move beyond military rule and the corrupt legacy of deposed President Hosni Mubarak.

The Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s dominate political and religious force, won 47% of the 498 seats in the lower house of parliament, according to official final results. The ultraconservative Salafi Islamist party Al Nour won nearly 25%, followed by the secular parties New Wafd and the Egyptian Bloc, with about 9% each.

The results confirm the dramatic transformation of the Brotherhood, which for decades was banned from politics and endured the mass arrests and torture of its members. The victory by the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party is a potent sign that political Islam is emerging from a year of uprisings to replace secular autocrats across the Middle East and North Africa.

A new parliament “would not have seen the light if it wasn't for the pure blood of the martyrs who triggered this revolution,” Freedom and Justice Party said in a statement. “The party believes that Egypt's renaissance and development demands participation of all sects of this nation to fulfill this great responsibility.”

The elections were a sobering lesson for young activists whose nascent parties were no match for the grassroots networks and entwined religious and political message of the Islamists. The liberal activists helped ignite the revolution that brought down Mubarak but, winning only seven seats, they have been surpassed by more formidable political powers.

Read more here.

For Egypt's Coptic Christians, the win of the Islamists at the ballot box was no surprise. Opinion is divided, however, on how to react: stay and fight for equal rights, or leave.

It is an understatement to say that 2011 has been a difficult year for Egypt’s exhausted Christians.

It began with the bombing of the Two Saints Church, only minutes after the New Year started, and culminated in the victory of Islamists with more than half of the parliament in the first phase of the elections.

Indeed, according to the latest results, the Muslim Brotherhood’s newly licensed Freedom and Justice Party won no less than 40 per cent of the seats, while the Salafist El-Nour Party won 20 per cent of the seats. And this is only the first phase, which covered nine of the country’s governorates. There are two more phases before a final picture of the first post-Mubarak regime can be drawn.

If the first phase results are anything to go by, Islamists will be the overwhelming majority in the next parliament. This outcome, which was expected, has still left the Coptic community reeling.

It has been a year where Coptic churches were burned by Salafist groups, where residents of the southern city of Qena demonstrated and blocked the city’s highways to protest the appointed of a Coptic governor, where Copts repeatedly took to the street to protest increasing discrimination and where deadly clashes between Coptic protesters and the army left at least 28 dead in what became known as the “Maspero massacre,” taking place in front of the State TV building in Maspero.

It’s also been a year where various Islamists speaking on TV shows called Christians kafirs (heretics) and insisted that they should pay the jizya (Islamic fine for non-Muslims), pushing Egypt’s Christians to spiral into an even more intense wave of panic.

Now, however, speaking to Ahram Online, various faces of Egypt’s Christian population talk about their fears, aspirations and predictions of how life under an Islamic dominated parliament will be for them.

Father Filopater Gameel, a Coptic priest, and a leading member of the Maspero Youth Union and eyewitness to the Maspero massacre.

"I am not surprised that the Islamists won the parliament majority. There were many hints in recent months that they were going to easily win many seats. The fact that they were insisting that the elections take place while all the other political forces were pleading that the elections be postponed hints that both the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists made a deal with the military council.

"The elections were filled with rigging and violations. The Supreme Electoral Committee (SEC) has already announced that many ballot boxes will be disregarded because concerns that they were rigged. We also saw violations in terms of niqabis (fully veiled women) entering the polling stations and refusing to identify themselves so that they can keep entering the station and vote more than once. We’ve also heard of cases were the Salafist El-Nour Party blocked the door to the polling stations, so that any voter going in would have to pass by them first, which is actually against the law that bans campaigning in front of polling stations.

Also, during the electoral process there was heavy usage of religious slogans and mosques were used for campaigns and to promote the Islamists.

"The Islamists were pushing for the elections even when the martyrs blood had not yet dried in Tahrir Square and Maspero. But we Copts now insist on continuing the electoral process until the end. The Copts are flexible and are able to adapt to any regime. We tasted bitter medicine during the Mubarak regime and we will probably face more of that under the rule of the Islamists.

"The Copts will be the voice in Egypt that will continue to call for freedom, equality and a civil state. We will remain here and continue the fight for the beautiful and ancient Egyptian civilisation.

Read more here.

Kano Death Toll at 250

2012-01-22T15:21:00.000-08:00

Nigeria’s second-largest city, Kano, is under a 24-hour curfew Saturday following a string of bombings and gunfights that claimed the lives of around 150 people late Friday night. The death toll varies according to the source: AP says at least 143, CNN hears 156 and AFP, 162. Exact number aside, it was undoubtedly the deadliest coordinated strike claimed by Islamist sect Boko Haram, notes Reuters, and hospitals are struggling to deal with the dead and injured.

The death toll in Nigeria’s northern city of Kano is bound to continue rising. Reuters hears word that at least 178 people were killed while one doctor tells the AFP that the final toll is likely to be around 250. On Sunday, aid workers continued the grim process of collecting bodies from the streets, reports the BBC. Meanwhile, there is increased speculation that the attack was launched as a way for Boko Haram to free some of its members from jail. Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan arrived in Kano Sunday to pay his condolences, reports the Associated Press.
Nigerian police said the attackers targeted eight government sites: five police buildings, two immigration offices and a local headquarters of the country’s secret police. The BBC hears word that the bombings may have been suicide attacks, but nothing seems certain yet as residents have been hiding in their homes, afraid of what could happen next. Nigeria also closed its borders with Cameroon and Niger Saturday, reports CNN.

Source: The Slatest

Patricia Mejia: Bad Apple in the Pro-Life Barrel

2012-01-22T14:00:00.000-08:00

By Timothy Herrmann

An international commission committed to the promotion and protection of human rights in the Americas recently published two reports that challenge laws protecting life from conception in both North and South America. One report published by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights denies physicians the right to conscientiously object to performing an abortion, while the other recommends national litigation to legalize abortion.

The reports were authored by one of the Commission’s predominant bureaucrats, Commissioner Luz Patricia Mejia, who serves as the Special Rapporteur to Women’s Rights for the Commission. According to Ligia de Jesus, Assistant Professor at the Ave Maria School of Law, the commissioner’s aggressive lobbying on behalf of the legalization of abortion has been a defining characteristic of her term as Special Rapporteur since her election in 2008.

Within the Inter-American system of human rights, both the commission and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights are meant to uphold the principles inscribed in the American Convention on Human Rights.

The convention is explicitly pro-life, stating “Every person has the right to have his life respected. This right shall be protected by law and, in general, from the moment of conception. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.”

Instead of upholding the human right to life guaranteed by the Convention, the reports reflect the personal opinions and influence of Commissioner Mejia who affirms her own agenda rather than protects the original intent of the convention.

In one report, titled “Access to Information on Reproductive Health from a Human Rights Perspective,” Mejia links the so-called right to abortion to the “right” to information by claiming that a woman’s right to access information on reproductive health services is jeopardized when a doctor refuses abortion services to a patient. She cites a Colombian Constitutional Court case that legalized abortion in 2008 to support her claim, and falsely asserts that the case confirms that preventing women access to abortion is the same as preventing women access to information on reproductive health services.

Although the Commission is only a quasi-judicial body whose reports and resolutions are non-binding in international law, the Commission has been petitioned in the past by organizations like the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) in the hope that the Commission will produce a report recommending the outright legalization of abortion in Latin America, according to Professor de Jesus.

One such case was brought by CRR before the Commission in 2002 on behalf of Paulina del Carmen Ramirez Jacinto who, at 14 years of age, received legal authorization for an abortion in Mexico given that the baby was conceived during sexual assault. CRR claimed, and the Commission agreed, that the pro-life counseling that she received and that led her to keep her baby “constituted an ‘undue interference’ with the pregnant child’s purported right to abortion.”

Reports like those published by Mejia seek to encourage the Commission to support efforts by groups like CRR to sanction an international right to abortion where none exists.

Source: Friday Fax

Obama's "Corrupting Foreign Policy"

2012-01-21T14:00:00.000-08:00

By Wendy Wright

NEW YORK, January 20 (C-FAM) The citizens of several countries are pushing back against President Obama’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender foreign policy imperative. Leaders in El Salvador launched a website on “Obama’s Corrupting Foreign Policy” and are asking the U.S. Senate to reject Obama's nominee for ambassador to their country.

President Obama announced in December that the promotion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) behavior is a top foreign policy priority, even for the U.S. military oversees. At the same time, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a high-profile speech at the UN equating LGBT status with religion. The State Department told ambassadors worldwide to recognize “gay pride month," and it released a list of “accomplishments” including the fact that a U.S. ambassador had published an OpEd promoting the LGBT agenda on behalf of the United States.

Mari Carmen Aponte, a temporary ambassador to El Salvador, published an essay conflating disapproval of homosexuality with “brutal hostility” and “aggression” by “those who promote hatred.” It is Salvadorans’ “responsibility” to become advocates for LGBT issues and “to inform our neighbors and friends about what it means to be lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender,” she wrote. The OpEd ran in a major Salvadoran newspaper in June, igniting a firestorm by offended citizens.

More than three-dozen leaders in Latin American countries rebuked the ambassador. In a declaration in a Salvadoran newspaper, they accused the U.S. representative of “disregarding our profound Christian values, rooted in natural law,” by trying to “impose . . . a new vision of foreign and bizarre values, completely alien to our moral fiber, intending to disguise this as ‘human rights’” with “an air of superiority.” The only thing they agreed with, they stated, is that violence should be repudiated “just the same as against skinny, fat, tall or short” people.

The leaders also sent a letter to U.S. Senators protesting Aponte’s appointment. At a congressional hearing in December, Senator Jim DeMint read their complaint and criticized Aponte’s “presuming to represent the views of all Americans” in her OpEd. “I would like to apologize to the Salvadoran people on behalf of the United States and reassure them that most Americans share their values," DeMint said.

Salvadorans perceived that the assault extended beyond Aponte and launched a website this week exposing “Obama's Corrupting Foreign Policies.” It chronicles the campaign by US officials to promote homosexuality, and the counter-campaign by Latin Americans.

The Washington Times, a major Washington, DC newspaper, published a letter from Latin American leaders warning that the aggressive promotion of homosexual rights constitutes a “war on religion.” The Obama administration has placed people in other countries “on the front lines,” the letter said, and is “demeaning our culture and insulting our values.” The leaders wrote, “We support the legitimate human rights of all our citizens. We do not support made up ‘homosexual rights’. We do not appreciate the ambassador from another country coming in and preaching to us. We intend to defend our moral values and preserve our families.”

In Pakistan, the US embassy hosted an LGBT “pride celebration” in June which provoked protests in several cities. A leader of one of the rallies said, “America has unleashed a storm of immoral values" and "we’ll resist at all costs.” The U.S. ambassador to Serbia promoted a homosexual rights march in that country last October which led to riots with an explicitly anti-Western tone.

Source: Friday Fax

US Embassy in Damascus Closing

2012-01-20T15:43:00.000-08:00

The Washington Post reports that the Obama administration is preparing to close the U.S. embassy in Damascus and evacuate all American personnel by the end of this month amid rapid deterioration of the security situation in Syria, senior administration officials said.

The embassy will be shuttered, officials said, unless embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad provides enhanced protection that he has so far been unwilling to authorize.

Acid Attack on Ugandan Bishop

2012-01-20T10:00:00.000-08:00

Burns threaten eyesight of church leader who opposed Islamic courts.

KAMPALA, Uganda — Islamic extremists threw acid on a church leader on Christmas Eve shortly after a seven-day revival at his church, leaving him with severe burns that have blinded one eye and threaten sight in the other.

Bishop Umar Mulinde, 37, a sheikh (Islamic teacher) before his conversion to Christianity, was attacked on Saturday night (Dec. 24) outside his Gospel Life Church International building in Namasuba, about 10 kilometers (six miles) outside of Kampala. From his hospital bed in Kampala, he told Compass that he was on his way back to the site for a party with the entire congregation and hundreds of new converts to Christianity when a man who claimed to be a Christian approached him.

“I heard him say in a loud voice, ‘Pastor, pastor,’ and as I made a turn and looked at him, he poured the liquid onto my face as others poured more liquid on my back and then fled away shouting, ‘Allahu akbar [God is greater],’” Mulinde said, still visibly traumatized two days after the assault.

A neighbor and church members rushed him to a hospital in the Mengo area of Kampala, and he was then transferred to International Hospital Kampala.

“I have to continue fighting this pain – it is too much,” Mulinde said. “My entire body is in pain. Most of the night I miss sleep.”

His face, neck and arms bore deep black scars from the acid, and his lips were swollen.

“The burn caused by the acid is so severe that there is an urgent need for specialized treatment,” said area Christian Musa Baluku Symutsangira. “I suggest that he be flown outside the country as soon as possible; otherwise Mulinde might lose both of his eyes, coupled with the spread of the burns. The burns seemed to spread and go very deep. He might need some plastic surgery.”

A doctor told Compass that acid burns cover about 30 percent of his face and has cost him sight in one eye.

“We are doing all we can to save his other remaining eye and to contain the acid from spreading to other parts of the body,” the doctor said.

Mulinde’s shirt, tie and suit were in tatters after the attack.

Mulinde said his father, Id Wasswa, was a local prayer leader or imam.

“I was born into a Muslim family, and although I decided to become a Christian, I have been financially assisting many Muslims, as well as my relatives who are Muslims,” he said. “I have been conducting a peaceful evangelism campaign.”

Mulinde said Muslim extremists opposed to his conversion from Islam and his outspoken opposition of sharia (Islamic law) courts in Uganda, known in East Africa as Kadhi courts, attacked him. On Oct. 15, area Muslim leaders declared a fatwa against him demanding his death.

“I have been receiving several threats for a long time, and this last one is the worst of all,” Mulinde said. “I have bore the marks of Jesus.”

Mulinde is known for debates locally and internationally in which he often challenges Muslims regarding their religion. His extensive knowledge and quotation of the Quran in his preaching has won him enemies and friends. Often criticizing Islam, he has relied on police protection during revival campaigns throughout Uganda.

“Mulinde poses a big threat to those who cannot take the challenge as he engages the Muslims in debate,” said Dr. Joseph Serwadda, an area church leader.

A church guard who was away on the day of the attack said he felt responsible.

“I feel bad,” he said. “I feel I have failed in my duty as a guard.”

Mulinde is married and has six children ages 14, 12, 8, 6 and twins who are 3.

Police have reportedly arrested one suspect, whom they have declined to name. A divisional commander at Katwa police station identified only as Kateebe would say only that an investigation was underway.

The hospital charges 350,000 Uganda shillings (US$140 dollars) per day, a steep amount in Uganda.

“We appeal for our brothers and sisters wherever they are to assist the life of Bishop Umar Mulinde,” said Symutsangira.

Read the full report here.

Stop SOPA and PIPA and Piracy?

2012-01-19T10:43:00.000-08:00

Wikipedia and Google joined hundreds of other websites on Wednesday in a sprawling online protest against legislation in the US Congress intended to crack down on Internet piracy.

Wikipedia shut down the English version of its online encyclopaedia for 24 hours to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa) introduced in the House of Representatives and the Senate version, the Protect IP Act (Pipa).

Google blotted out the celebrated logo on its US home page with a black banner and published an exhortation to users to “Tell Congress: Please don’t censor the Web!”

Like Wikipedia, social news site reddit also went dark, urging visitors to call their lawmaker or sign a petition opposing the House and Senate bills. “These bills provide overly broad mechanisms for enforcement of copyright which would restrict innovation and threaten the existence of websites with user-submitted content,” reddit said.

Culture and technology blog Boing Boing also took itself offline to protest what it called “legislation that would certainly kill us forever”.

Reporters Without Borders shut down its English-language website for 24 hours warning that the bills “would sacrifice online freedom of expression in the name of combating piracy”.

Blogging platform WordPress.com covered its home page with black banners with the word ‘censored’ as did technology magazine Wired.

The popular Cheezburger humour network posted messages of opposition to the bills on all of its 58 sites, which include icanhascheezburger.com, FAIL Blog and The Daily What.

The draft legislation has won the backing of Hollywood, the music industry, the National Association of Manufacturers and other groups.—AFP

Ireland's Big Abortion Debate

2012-01-18T09:04:00.000-08:00

Ireland has been pressured by the EU to comform to politically correct views on abortion as a woman's right. The largest party, Fine Gael, made an election promise not to legalise abortion, but appears unable to deliver onn that promise.

A special Commission chaired by Mr Justice Seán Ryan has to report to the Irish Government within six months with options on how to implement the judgment of the European Court.

Special Council for the group will be Mary O'Toole who acted to establish abortion as a right in the infamous 1992 X case. The X case was used in an attempt to overturn Ireland's pro-life constitutional provisions and introduce abortion.

The government appointed Dr Deirdre Madden, a UCC law lecturer, to the group. Madden previously wrote that "there are very strong reasons for believing the embryo is not yet a person."

The group also includes general practitioner Ailish Ní Riain who has written guidelines describing unborn children as 'contents of the uterus' and insists that doctors should refer mothers for abortion.

Pro-life advocates in Ireland stress three points:

Abortion is never medically necessary. Expert testimony has already been given to a government committee on this issue, where leading Irish experts confirmed that interventions for conditions such as ectopic pregnancy and cancer were not considered abortion by medical professionals since the intention was never to harm the child.

The European Court ruling places Ireland under no obligation to legalise abortion since the Irish Constitution confirms that it is the people, being sovereign, who will decide such matters. Successive opinion polls show that Ireland's ban on abortion enjoys the support of the majority of the people.

According to the United Nations, Ireland, without recourse to abortion, is the safest place in the world for a mother to have a baby. The expert group should also recognise the undeniable scientific evidence which shows abortion produces negative mental outcomes for women.

The Composition of Expert Group on Abortion is as follows:

The Group will be chaired by Mr. Justice Seán Ryan and consist of thirteen other members;
Dr Peter Boylan, Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist
Dr Mary Holohan, Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist
Dr Imelda Ryan, Psychiatrist,
Dr Ailish Ni Riain, General Practitioner
Dr Mark Walsh, General Practitioner
Ms Christine O'Rourke, Office of the Attorney General
Ms Mary O'Toole, Senior Counsel
Ms Joanelle O'Cleirigh, Solicitor
Ms Denise Kirwin, Solicitor
Dr. Deirdre Madden, Medical Council
Dr Maura Pidgeon, An Bord Altranais
Dr Tony Holohan, Chief Medical Officer, Department of Health
Mr Bernard Carey, Assistant Secretary, Department of Health

Related reading: Another UN Trojan Horse

Iran Sentences Canadian to Death

2012-01-17T15:42:00.000-08:00

(RSF/IFEX) - 17 January 2012 - Reporters Without Borders is shocked to learn that the supreme court has confirmed website designer Saeed Malekpour's death sentence. His family said the court took the decision under pressure from the Revolutionary Guards. A Canadian resident who was arrested on 4 October 2008 while visiting his family, Malekpour, 35, was sentenced to death in January 2011 on charges of anti-government agitation and insulting Islam.

Arrests of netizens are meanwhile continuing. Simien Nematollahi, a contributer to the pro-Sufi website Majzooban ( www.majzooban.org ), was arrested at her Tehran home by intelligence ministry officials on 11 January on a charge of anti-government propaganda. Several members of the website's staff were arrested on 7 and 8 September and were freed on bail on 4 October pending trial.

Mohammad Solimaninya, the head of u24, a social networking website for Iranian professionals, was arrested on 20 January after being summoned before a revolutionary tribunal in Karaj, a town 20 km north of Tehran, on 10 January. Plainclothes intelligence ministry officials searched his home the same day, confiscating his computer, hard disks and CDs. His family still does not know why he was arrested or where he is being held. As well as running u24, Solimaninya has created and hosts the websites of many civil society organizations, NGOs and Iranian intellectuals.

Reporters Without Borders is also concerned about Mohammad Reza Pourshajari, a blogger who has been held since 12 September 2010. He was tried by a revolutionary court in Karaj on 21 December 2011 on a charge of insulting the Prophet in articles posted on his blog and in letters sent to government officials while he was in prison.

His daughter said the trial lasted a quarter of an hour and took place without his lawyer being present. The charge of insulting the Prophet is very vaguely defined but it carries a possible death sentence and is often used by the authorities to silence critics who try to defy the government.

Reporters Without Borders wrote to United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay on 10 January voicing concern about the situation in Iran and requesting her urgent intercession.

For more information:

Reporters Without Borders
47, rue Vivienne
75002 Paris
France
rsf (@) rsf.org
Phone: +33 1 44 83 84 84
Fax: +33 1 45 23 11 51
http://www.rsf.org/

Quote of the Week - Charles Spurgeon

2012-01-17T03:20:00.000-08:00

"The sovereign arbiter of destiny holds in his own power all the issues of our life; we are not waifs and strays upon the ocean of fate, but are steered by infinite wisdom towards our desired haven."-- Charles Spurgeon,19th-century English cleric

Socially Responsible Investors Balance Values and Returns

2012-01-16T09:12:00.000-08:00

American Socially Responsible Investors Don't Want to Sacrifice Returns, Wharton Study. - "Investors interested in socially responsible investing do not necessarily expect to sacrifice a portion of their gains. Thus, to encourage socially responsible investing, its returns should be comparable to returns for conventional investing."

Fortunately, the conclusion generally drawn from the dozens of studies indicate that over the long term, socially responsible-ethical investors don't have to sacrifice returns. However, this study does contradict many surveys that show SR-ethical investors would tolerate lower returns if they are invested in industries and companies that relate to their values.

It could be that many newly converted SR-ethical investors, investing in green-sustainable companies, don't really share the same values of the more traditional SR-ethical investors.

Socially Responsible Investing, by Olivia S. Jung, January 12, 2012, Wharton, University of Pennsylvania, USA.

Reported by Ron Robins at Investing for the Soul

Syria on the Brink of Civil War

2012-01-14T15:41:00.000-08:00

VOA News

In-Depth Coverage The chief of the Arab League warned Friday that Syria may be heading towards a civil war as thousands of Syrians took to the streets in support of an armed rebel group.

Arab League head Nabil Elaraby made the comments in interviews with The Associated Press and and Egyptian television station while anti-government protesters voiced support for the Free Syrian Army, composed mainly of former soldiers.

Activists say 20,000 gathered in the town of Ariha in the northwest Idlib province. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says soldiers opened fire on protesters in the region, killing at least one person.

The 10-month crackdown on anti-government protests has turned more violent in recent months as defecting soldiers have taken up arms against the government.

Elaraby spoke after at least 11 members of the Arab League observer mission were injured by pro-Assad supporters earlier this week. Meanwhile, one observer quit the monitoring team, calling it a "farce," and activists say that 11 members are expected to quit the mission soon.

Foreign observers have been operating in Syria since December 26 to check President Bashar al-Assad's compliance with an Arab League plan to end his violent suppression of the uprising that began last year.

The United Nations and the United States say killings of protesters by Syrian security forces have intensified since the monitoring mission began. But on Friday Elaraby denied the charge in an interview with the Egyptian Al-Hayat television channel.

Meanwhile, Turkey's foreign minister said a Russian ship carrying "dangerous cargo" has arrived in Syria, after being temporarily held in Cyprus. Cypriot media reported on Wednesday that authorities had intercepted a vessel carrying ammunition from St. Petersburg in Russia to Syria during a fuel stop. Media reports said the ship was carrying up to 60 tons of ammunition and explosives.

The United Nations estimates at least 5,000 people have been killed in the uprising, many of them peaceful protesters attacked by Syrian security forces. Others have been killed in fighting between the Syrian military and the army defectors who have joined the rebellion in recent months.

Earlier this week, the first Western journalist was killed in Syria during a government-organized trip to Homs. Paris prosecutors said Friday that a preliminary investigation has been launched into the death of the France-2 Television journalist. Damascus has also said it will also investigate the death.

Some information for this Global Security report was provided by AP and AFP.

Matthew Kaminski's False Optimisim

2012-01-13T04:36:00.000-08:00

Robert Reilly

Last July Matthew Kaminski opined in the Wall Street Journal that the transition to democracy in the Middle East would be as easy as it was for the democracies that emerged after the fall of the Soviet empire. Alas, this was predictably not so, and has now been proven, as vote after vote has shown the strength of the Islamists, most particularly in Egypt, where they have won some 70 percent of the ballot. With his article on January 3, "Arab Democracy Is the Best Bet for a Muslim Reformation", Kaminski continues in this vein of false optimism, based upon his propensity to project Western conceptions and norms onto the Islamic world, where they are largely irrelevant.

Wishful thinking can be dangerous when it distorts reality. Here is a short list of misconceptions in his latest piece.

"The appeal of political Islam... grows when religiosity is repressed." Islamism is a reaction to modernity, not to repression. It would grow regardless. With the shackles off in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia, watch it grow even more. To think that it will diminish because it is not repressed is a dangerous fantasy. Thanks to the Arab Spring, it now has the opportunity to seize control, and most likely will do so. Democratic elections have simply revealed the strength of the view that "Islam is the answer."

"Calls for Sharia to become state law emerged only in the twentieth century, as a result of Islam's encounter with the West." Really? Sharia existed for many centuries before this encounter. The first call for state sharia enforcement came from Ibn Taymiyya in the late thirteenth century when he declared the Mongol rulers (converts to Islam) apostates because they continued to live by their tribal law, rather than by Sharia. Taymiyya laid the basis for requiring a ruler to enforce sharia if he wished to maintain his legitimacy, which is why Taymiyya is so popular among the Islamists today. The only recent sharia states have been Saudi Arabia, Taliban Afghanistan, and Sudan – those with the least amount of exposure to the West. In any case, the sharia enforcement issue emerges from the struggle within Islam, not from the encounter with West.

"The Quran is politically agnostic and says nothing about the preferable form of government." Not quite. In Surah 3:110, the Qur'an speaks of the regime in Medina as "the best community [or nation] ever raised for mankind." Since the Qur’an is understood by almost all Muslims as coexisting eternally with God, this statement means that the Medinan concept of the "best community" obtains forever. This is why the Salafists desire to emulate it exactly, and why every major effort of reform in Islam goes back, instead of forward. It may also help explain why democracy has never arisen indigenously in the Arab Middle East.

"Salafists... practice Osama bin Laden's creed of Islam." No, bin Laden's creed of Islam is not Salafist, but came directly from the Muslim Brotherhood and is infected with its ideology, which was partially obtained from Western totalitarianism. His teacher in Saudi Arabia was Mohammed al Banna, the brother of the founder of the Muslim brotherhood, Hassan al Banna. Salafism, on the other hand, is an ancient and integral part of Islam.

Kaminski calls for a Reformation in Islam, without seeming to realize that Islamism is that Reformation. Be careful of what you wish for. One reason that the Islamic world became calcified is that the "gates of ijtihad" were closed in the Middle Ages. This meant that the authority for making original interpretations of the Koran or the hadith had been withdrawn because the sharia had, by that time, covered every possible situation in human life with a specific ruling. The Islamists today have reclaimed the authority of individual interpretation in order to wipe out the Islamic jurisprudence that stands in their way, most particularly in their use of indiscriminate violence and terrorism.

In the place of "rigid Kemalist secularism" in Turkey, Kaminski claims that there "has emerged a more dynamic society, more tolerant of differences." The 97 members of the news media in prison, including journalists, publishers and distributors (according to the Turkish Journalists’ Union), and the generals jailed by the AKP might disagree, as might the persecuted businessman, who were funding media that expressed differences with the ruling party until they were charged with tax violations. The idea that a mild dose of Islamism leads to diversity is almost hilarious.

Kaminski several times quotes Iranian philosopher Dr Abdulkarim Soroush, who undoubtedly is one of the most eloquent advocates of free societies within Islam -- which may help explain his exile in the United States. However, Kaminski seems to be unaware of the most important issue that Soroush has raised regarding the relationship between theology and democracy. Soroush has said,

“You need some philosophical underpinning, even theological underpinning in order to have a real democratic system. Your God cannot be a despotic God anymore. A despotic God would not be compatible with a democratic rule, with the idea of rights. So you even have to change your idea of God.”

Without a different theology within Islam, can one have democracy? This is the real problem. Unfortunately, Sunni Islam gives no sign of abandoning its theology of God as pure will and power, which has been the foundation of so much despotism in Islamic history. Muslim theologians and philosophers who propose a God of rationality often find themselves, like Dr Soroush, in exile. This is what is subverting the opportunity for a transition to democracy in the Arab Spring.

Kaminski's most egregious error comes with his closing quote of former Polish dissident and writer, Adam Michnik, "If Judaism can co-exist with democracy, any religion can." By this Kaminski means to suggest that this should be no problem for Islam. Judaism, however, gave us Genesis, in which man is described as having been created in the image and likeness of God. This revelation is the basis of our civilization, as well as the foundation of democracy. The Qur'an, on the other hand, makes explicitly clear that man is not made in God's image and to suggest otherwise is blasphemy. Therefore, it may not be as easy as Mr. Kaminski thinks.

Robert Reilly has worked in foreign policy, the military, and the arts. His most recent book is The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis.

Syria: Arab League Observers Flee "Freedom Square"

2012-01-12T11:00:00.000-08:00

(Human Rights Watch/IFEX) - New York, January 12, 2012 - The Arab League should urgently condemn the Syrian security forces for shooting peaceful protesters who were attempting to reach its observers in the northern city of Jisr al-Shughur, Human Rights Watch said today. In light of these and other blatant violations of the agreement it brokered with the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad, the Arab League should report publicly on its findings and assess whether its mission should continue.

Two protesters who were wounded in Jisr al-Shughur and fled to southern Turkey told Human Rights Watch in face-to-face interviews that around 11 a.m. on January 10, 2012, they marched towards the Baath party square (re-named "Freedom Square" by the protesters) to meet with Arab League observers present there. According to the witnesses, when they approached a checkpoint on the way to the square, army personnel barred them from proceeding and, after the protesters refused to disperse, opened fire on the crowd, injuring at least nine protesters. The Arab League observers were in the Baath party square, but left in a car after the shooting began, the witnesses said. Despite several attempts, Human Rights Watch has not been able to contact the Arab League observers to confirm whether they witnessed the incident.

"Such incidents, and the ever rising death toll, clearly demonstrate that the presence of Arab League observers has done little to compel the Syrian authorities to stop their crimes," said Anna Neistat, associate emergencies director at Human Rights Watch. "As President Assad derides the Arab League in his speeches, his troops are making a mockery of its observers' mission on the ground."

"Abu-Ahmad," one of the protesters injured in the attack, told Human Rights Watch:

We were about 300-500 people, I walked in the front row. We carried olive branches and chanted "peaceful, peaceful." When we were some 100 meters away from the checkpoint, we shouted to the army that we just wanted to meet with the observers. But they opened fire at us - it seemed like they received the orders from the mukhabarat officers who stood behind them.

Soldiers placed three machine guns on the ground and pointed them toward us. I saw them firing from Kalashnikov and sniper rifles. One of them pointed a sniper rifle at me and then I felt I was hit in my right leg. Several people next to me were hit as well.

I could see the observers, and we were communicating with them on cell phones [to coordinate a meeting], but when the army opened fire they just got into their cars and left.

Another witness, "Mustafa," who was also injured, told Human Rights Watch that when the protesters started running away, the army chased them and continued to shoot. He was in the middle of the group and sustained two bullet wounds in his back and one in his left arm. According to him, five people were injured when the army first opened fire at the protesters, and four others, including him, were hurt as the people were trying to flee.

Another witness from Jisr al-Shughur, "Ali," told Human Rights Watch that over the past weeks the military had not withdrawn from the city as per the Arab League agreement, but rather had maintained a heavy presence in the city, controlling all entrances to the town and patrolling the streets along with mukhabarat (intelligence services) personnel and shabeeha (pro-government militias). He said that on January 8, from noon to midnight, the security forces raided mobile phone shops in Jisr al-Shughur and arrested approximately 30 owners. Ali said he witnessed one of these raids. According to him, the military blocked the street while mukhabarat agents entered the mobile phone shop and detained the owner, beating him with batons.

In the agreement it signed with the Arab League on December 19, the Syrian government pledged to end violence against peaceful protests, release detained protesters, withdraw armed elements from cities and residential areas, and allow Arab and international media unhindered access to all parts of Syria. Syria also pledged in the agreement to grant Arab League monitors unhindered and independent access to all individuals they wish to interview to verify Syria's implementation of these measures, including victims, detainees, and nongovernmental organizations. Syria guaranteed the safety of witnesses from reprisals.

Attacks by security forces against peaceful protests have been reported every day since the Arab League mission began. According to media reports, the United Nations has estimated that 400 people have been killed since the Arab League mission arrived in Syria on December 26.

Human Rights Watch has previously documented what seem to be efforts by the Syrian government to deceive the Arab League monitors by transferring hundreds of detainees to improvised holding centers at military sites that are off limits to Arab League observers. Authorities have also issued police identification cards to military officials apparently in order to give the impression that military forces have, under the agreement with the Arab League, withdrawn from civilian areas.

The mission's credibility had already been clouded by the appointment as its chief of Gen. Mohammed Ahmed al-Dabi, a former head of Sudan's military intelligence. Al-Dabi oversaw an intelligence agency well known for serious abuses in Sudan and is a close political ally of Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, against whom the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for crimes against humanity in Darfur.

"The time has come for the Arab League to call out the Syrian government on its failure to abide by the agreement," said Neistat. "Allowing the mission to continue without effective and clear efforts to protect the civilians will only lead to more deaths."

For more information:

Human Rights Watch
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Phone: +1 212 290 4700
Fax: +1 212 736 1300
http://www.hrw.org

Judge Randy Bellows' Ruling

2012-01-12T07:54:00.000-08:00

Word has just been received that Judge Randy Bellows of the Fairfax County (Virginia) Circuit Court has issued a 113-page letter opinion deciding the issues in the lengthy property trial last year completely in favor of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia and the national Church. The Judge's summary of his rulings is as follows:

In this Letter Opinion, the Court makes three princip[al] rulings:

1. TEC and the Diocese have a contractual and proprietary interest in each of the seven Episcopal churches that are the subjects of this litigation. Specifically, the Court finds for TEC and the Diocese in their Declaratory Judgment actions and, among other relief, orders that all real property conveyed by the 41 deeds, as well as all personal property acquired by the churches up to the filing date of the Declaratory Judgment actions (on or about January 31, 2007 or February 1, 2007) are to be promptly conveyed to the Diocese. (Additional instructions are provided at the conclusion of this Letter Opinion.)

2. The CANA Congregations‟ Amended Counterclaims are denied in their entirety. Specifically, the Court finds that the CANA Congregations, in that they are not Episcopal Congregations, do not possess either contractual or proprietary interests in the property of the seven Episcopal Churches at issue. They are, therefore, enjoined from further use or control of these properties and must promptly relinquish them to the Diocese. Moreover, the Court finds no merit in the CANA Congregations‟ claims for unjust enrichment,quantum meruit, and constructive trust and grants TEC‟s and the Diocese‟s motions to strike these claims.

3. The vestry empowered to elect directors to the Falls Church Endowment Fund is the vestry recognized by the Diocese as the Episcopal vestry of The Falls Church, that is to say, the Continuing Congregation.

The opinion then concludes (after 100 more pages):

It remains to determine the disposition of the personal property of the seven churches. Virginia Code §57-10 provides as follows:

When personal property shall be given or acquired for the benefit of an unincorporated church or religious body, to be used for its religious purposes, the same shall stand vested in the trustees having the legal title to the land, to be held by them as the land is held, and upon the same trusts or, if the church has created a corporation pursuant to §57-16.1, to be held by it as its land is held, and for the same purposes.

Thus, the disposition of the personal property of these churches follows the disposition of the real property of these churches, that is to say, it must also be turned over to the Diocese. There is a significant caveat to this, however, and it arises from the fact that there came a point in time when it was absolutely clear that a contribution or donation or the payment of membership dues to one of the seven congregations was not a contribution to an Episcopal congregation.

Therefore, the personal property acquired by the CANA congregations after this point in time should remain with the CANA congregations. There are four possible points in time which the Court has considered:

First, the Court has considered using as a point of demarcation the various points in time when the congregations made varying arrangements to withhold contributions from the Diocese.[FN 84]
________________
[FN 84]According to CANA, “all of the CANA Congregations curtailed or terminated their donations to the Diocese in response to the actions of the denomination at its 2003 General Convention.” (CANA Brief #1A at 159.) Congregants were given the opportunity to designate that no portion of their title should go to the Diocese; or the congregation stopped giving money to the Diocese entirely; or the congregation established a congregation only fund. Id. at fn. 120.
________________
Putting aside the accounting difficulties in applying these various dates to the various circumstances, and whether it would even be possible to account for the individual choices of parishioners where they were given the opportunity to designate, there is a much more dispositive objection to using this as the point of demarcation: Whatever may have been the level of discord and disenchantment with TEC and the Diocese, each of the seven churches in 2003, 2004, 2005, and through most of 2006 remained Episcopal churches, constituent members of the Diocese and TEC.

Second, the Court has considered using as the point of demarcation the date upon which each of the CANA Congregation voted to disaffiliate pursuant to §57-9(A)(December 2006-January 2007). (Alternatively, the Court could use the date when each congregation filed its §57-9(A) petition.) Here, too, there are significant problems: first, it has now been conclusively determined that §57-9(A) is inapplicable to these proceedings; second, it is not the act of taking a vote, or even the filing of a petition, that renders a decision to affiliate with a different denomination final and conclusive – rather it is the Court‟s approval of the petition. That did not come until January 8, 2009, and in any event was reversed by the Virginia Supreme Court.

Third, the Court has considered using as the point of demarcation the Diocese‟s January 22, 2007 Notice of Inhibition, or January 22, 2007 resolution determining the properties to have been abandoned, or the August 1, 2007 Notice of Removal. While arguments could be made in support of each of these dates, especially the January 22, 2007 resolution declaring the properties to be abandoned, they do not have the public notice character of the fourth possibility, which is the one this Court adopts.

This fourth possibility, which this Court adopts as the point of demarcation, is the filing date of the Declaratory Judgment actions by the Diocese against each congregation on either January 31, 2007 (involving five of the congregations) or February 1, 2007 (involving the two remaining congregations).

After this date, no contribution made, no donation made, no dues paid by a congregant, could reasonably have been made with the understanding that the money was going to Episcopal congregations. (While the seven churches, for the reasons stated in this opinion, never lost their character as Episcopal churches, the Court‟s focus here is on the actions taken by – and the Declaratory Judgment actions filed against – the CANA congregations.)

Therefore, the Court orders that all personal property acquired by the congregations before January 31, 2007 or February 1, 2007 (depending on the congregation) shall be conveyed to the Diocese and all liquid personal property (e.g., contributions and donations of money) acquired after these dates shall remain with the CANA Congregations. As to tangible personal property acquired by the CANA Congregations after these dates, they shall be conveyed to the Diocese unless the CANA Congregations can establish that they were purchased solely with funds acquired after these dates or were donated to the CANA Congregations after these dates.[FN 85]

______________________
[FN 85] As to the argument that the CANA Congregations should not have to convey to the Diocese funds on hand as of January 31, 2007 because such funds were used to maintain the church facilities since then, the Court would note the obvious fact that the CANA Congregation had the use of the property since that point in time as well.

______________________
TEC and the Diocese seek an accounting as part of their requested relief. To the extent an accounting is necessary to implement the Court‟s orders, an accounting is ordered.

TEC and the Diocese are to prepare and submit a proposed final order within 45 days of the issuance of this Letter Opinion, affording the CANA Congregations a reasonable opportunity to note their exceptions. If either party believes a hearing is necessary regarding the terms of the Final Order, they should communicate this to the Court, by letter, no later than 30 days from today.

The opinion is remarkable for its exhaustive consideration of every possible Virginia statute and previous case (including an unreported one) that could bear on the issues at stake. Along the way, it notably holds that the Dennis Canon (and its local diocesan equivalent) were ineffective per se to create a trust interest in favor of the diocese or national Church. But the bulk of the opinion appears (on a very quick first read) to be devoted to arriving at the same result (i.e., as if the Dennis Canon and its local equivalent had established a trust) by other means. It reaches its conclusion in favor of ECUSA and its diocese by drawing upon a minutely detailed analysis of the course of conduct between the parishes in question and the former entities over more than a hundred years (and in the case of Falls Church and a few others, for many more years than that -- but in the case of the Church of the Epiphany, on a course of conduct extending for just the first twenty of the last twenty-four years).

In doing so, however, the court ends up equating what it terms a "proprietary and contractual interest" of the diocese in individual parish property to the functional legal equivalent of an express or implied trust in favor of the diocese (and the national Church). And since it recognizes that Virginia law does not allow express or implied trusts in favor of denominations, the marvel is that Judge Bellows can still conclude, by drawing heavily upon his interpretation of a Virginia statute (§ 57-16.1), that the parishes effectively controlled their own properties only for so long as they remained constituent members of the Episcopal Church (USA) -- which is exactly what the Dennis Canon states, in haec verba.

The result is a carefully-crafted holding that appears (at first blush, at any rate) to be insulated against any federal constitutional grounds for overturning it -- unless it can be argued that the "proprietary and contractual interest" which the court found to be decisive is simply the inherent byproduct of being affiliated with what the Virginia Supreme Court already deemed (without any distinctions) to be a "hierarchical church." If that is the net effect of this decision, one has to wonder whether or not Judge Bellows has given the Episcopal Church (USA) an unassailable preference by the back door, and so thereby "established" it as a specially preferred type of church for purposes of resolving property disputes, in violation of the First Amendment.

It will take some time to analyze the opinion more carefully, because Judge Bellows is nothing if not painstaking and thorough. I also have to prepare for a court proceeding of my own tomorrow, and so it may be a day or two before I can publish a full assessment and analysis. Baby Blue has more background and first-person reportage at this post.

Prayers go out to all the congregations affected by this ruling.

Source: Anglican Ink

Related reading: The Cautious Jurisprudenace of Judge Randy Bellows

Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan Killed in Tehran

2012-01-11T10:31:00.000-08:00

Two assailants on a motorcycle attached a magnetic bomb to the car of an Iranian university professor working at a key nuclear facility, killing him and wounding two people on Wednesday, a semiofficial news agency reported.

The attack in Tehran bore a strong resemblance to earlier killings of scientists working on the Iranian nuclear program. It is certain to reinforce authorities' claims of widening clandestine operations by Western powers and allies to try to cripple nuclear advancements.

Read it all here.

Hekmati a Pawn in USA-Iran Relations

2012-01-10T05:38:00.000-08:00

Dan Robinson

The United States is pressing Iran to release an American man who has been sentenced to death by an Iranian court on charges of spying for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. This comes at a time of rising tensions between the United States and Iran.

The White House and State Department say allegations that Amir Mirza Hekmati - an Iranian American dual citizen - worked for or was sent to Iran by the CIA are false, adding that if reports of the death sentence are true, the United States strongly condemns it.

A U.S. statement says Iran's government "has a history of falsely accusing people of being spies, of eliciting forced confessions, and of holding innocent Americans for political reasons."

Iran's semi-official Fars news agency says Hekmati was sentenced for ties to the CIA and for cooperating with a “hostile country." Iran state TV has shown Hekmati making what was called a confession in Farsi and English.

At the White House, Press Secretary Jay Carney declined to say what options the Obama administration considering beyond working through Swiss intermediaries in Tehran.

"I don't want to speculate about that. I think that we take this matter very seriously and are addressing it in the appropriate manner," said Carney.

State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said this kind of behavior is typical for Iran.

"This is not a new tactic on the part of the Iranian government. I would simply say that these particular proceedings were conducted in secret, there was inadequate legal counsel. We obviously dismiss the accusations one way or the other; we believe that any confession he may have made was clearly coerced. So it is just par for the course in terms of the non-justice in the Iranian system," said Nuland.

All of this comes amid rising tensions between Iran, and the U.S. and international partners over Tehran's threats to close the Strait of Hormuz in response to new Western sanctions targeting Iran's oil exports.

Recently, Iran confirmed it has begun enriching uranium at a second underground facility. Tehran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes and that the new enrichment is taking place under International Atomic Energy Agency supervision.

Amnesty International issued a statement on Monday saying Hekmati, a 28-year-old former U.S. Marine Arabic translator, did not receive a fair trial and questioning what it called "the timing and political circumstances" of Hekmati's sentence.

The human rights monitoring group appealed to Iran not to execute Hekmati, noting that an appeal against his conviction would have to be filed within 20 days of his sentencing.

Source: Global Security

YouTube Project Parodies Damascus Censorship

2012-01-09T14:43:00.000-08:00

(RSF/IFEX) - 9 January 2011 - To draw public attention to media censorship in Syria, Reporters Without Borders and the JWT Paris ad agency have produced a short video inspired by parodies of Siri, the star app on the new iPhone 4S. It shows a man hunched over his iPhone failing to get any information from Siri about Syria except the weather forecast, the only news the government is not censoring.

The outside world is managing to get some limited information about the protests in Syria and the government's bloody crackdown, but the authorities have taken radical steps to prevent Syrians from reporting anything that strays from the official line. The local media are gagged and foreign reporters have been expelled. Would-be citizen journalists who try to use the Internet are arrested and mistreated.

In order to highlight these violations of freedom of information, JWT Paris had the idea of showing Siri, whose answers to queries are not always relevant, being completely stumped by questions about current events in Syria because of the government's news blackout.

Available for viewing on the Reporters Without Borders website and social networks including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, this video is the third joint project between Reporters Without Borders and JWT Paris.

We previously worked together on the campaign for the release of the two French journalists who were held hostage in Afghanistan, Stéphane Taponier and Hervé Ghesquière, and on the "Journalists Hunt" awareness campaign.

For more information:

Reporters Without Borders
47, rue Vivienne
75002 Paris
France
rsf (@) rsf.org
Phone: +33 1 44 83 84 84
Fax: +33 1 45 23 11 51
http://www.rsf.org/

American Colleges and Universities Mimic China

2012-01-08T05:56:00.000-08:00

Alice C. Linsley

China has seen an increase in the number of universities and the focus has been on increasing the nation's wealth and power through science, engineering, and business management.

In 2008, a Thousand Talents program began recruiting established scientists everywhere under age 55 with lucrative grants and salaries to work in China. This year, Chinese officials rolled out the Young Thousand Talents program, with generous offers to attract even younger scientists.

In the past 15 years the number of Chinese universities has grown, and the number of degrees in science and technology has soared. An estimated 1.5 million science and engineering students graduated in 2006. An official of the China Association for Science and Technology said recently, "The Chinese culture has a high respect for education, and families want their child to have a PhD, and will invest almost every coin they have in their child's education..."

One Chinese professor reports, "Among all the universities, only we have an anthropology department." There are about 20 students in that degree program and without government funding this program has little chance of survival.

The Humanities and Social Sciences have fallen on hard times in China. That trend has taken hold of American Universities and colleges also. Physical sciences, engineering, and business receive bulk of foundation and government grants, and qualified people enjoy top salaries in both the public and private sectors.

I've experienced this trend personally. For the past 10 years I have taught Philosophy, Ethics and World Religions at a women's college in central Kentucky. There are fewer and fewer courses for me to teach because the college has dedicated all resources to science, nursing, business, equestrian management and professional education degrees. Not a single course in Anthropology has been offered at the college in 10 years. Though I have been pioneering Biblical Anthropology for over 30 years and have over 600 publications in the field, I have not been asked to teach a single Anthropology class in 38 years of teaching.

This trend may be a conservative reaction to the more liberal and leftist tone of Humanities and Social Science professors, as well as a response to an economy that is not generating jobs. It is impossible to know what the effects of this trend will be for future generations of Americans, but it is certain that as a nation we will be less educated and more more vulnerable to government regimentation and propaganda. Is America following China's lead in education?

Related reading: Should China Be Our Model in Higher Education?

China Warns US about Militarism in Asia

2012-01-07T10:20:00.000-08:00

China's state media organization published an editorial Friday warning the United States on its plan to reshape and refocus its military. China's message: the U.S. shouldn't start "flexing its muscles" in the region.

The editorial in Xinhua takes issue with Obama's announcement that the military would be "strengthening" its presence in the Asia-Pacific region, even as it reduces its overall size and budget over the next 10 years. For more on the shifting focus of the U.S. military as announced yesterday, see this AP story.

The Xinhua editorial essentially tells the U.S. to play nice. Here's an excerpt:

The United States is welcome to make more contribution to peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region, but its possible militarism will cause a lot of ill will and meet with strong opposition in the world's most dynamic region.

Read more here.

Quote of the Week - Benjamin Franklin

2012-01-05T19:00:00.000-08:00

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." --Benjamin Franklin

American Youth: A Dazed and Confused Generation?

2012-01-05T05:27:00.000-08:00

The young people we know as Generation “Y” will soon overtake the rapidly retiring boomer generation in the workforce.

When that changing of the guard comes to full fruition, the young people of today will be expected to keep the country running by filling all of the jobs and running all of the organizations that their Boomer predecessors leave behind.

Dazed and Confused

In every generation, there are keeners; those amazingly talented, intelligent, resourceful people who know what they are good at, what they want, and how to go out and get it.

However, many of the young people who graduate from high school and make their way into the workforce every year are frankly, dazed and confused…they don’t know what to do and they are afraid of what the future holds.

Read it all here.

AMiA Crisis Meeting in Nairobi

2012-01-04T03:44:00.000-08:00

The leader of the Anglican Mission in America, Bishop Chuck Murphy, will meet with the Primate of Rwanda today to seek a resolution to the split that has seen nine AMiA bishops quit the province and the Anglican Communion.

The Archbishop of Kenya, Dr. Eliud Wabukhala will host the 4 Jan 2012 meeting between Bishop Murphy and Archbishop Onesphore Rwaje in Nairobi. Other African and North American church leaders are expected to attend the meeting as well.

Read more here.

Journalists Murdered by Syrian Forces

2012-01-03T14:57:00.000-08:00

Basil Al-Sayed, a 24-year-old citizen journalist based in the western city of Homs, was shot in the head on 29 December by security forces while filming the latest bloodbath in the Homs district of Bab Amr. He died while being taken to hospital.

Sources said Al-Sayed had been filming street protests and their dispersal by the security forces ever since the start of the uprising in Syria in March. He was one of the many Syrians who have taking considerable risks to cover the government's use of violence against demonstrators. Using a Samsung camera, he managed to film the security forces firing on protesters.

Al-Sayed is the second amateur journalist to be killed in Syria since the start of the uprising. The first was the photographer and video cameraman Ferzat Jarban, who was killed in Homs on 20 November. Citizen journalists have been playing a crucial role in providing information about developments in Syria as foreign journalists are banned from visiting the country.

The journalist Shukri Ahmed Ratib Abu Burghul died today in a Damascus hospital from the gunshot wound to the head that he received on 30 December while on his way home in the Damascus suburb of Darya after hosting his weekly programme on Radio Damascus.

According to reports, gunmen deliberately shot Burghul in the face, beneath the eye. He was rushed to hospital immediately after the shooting.

Born in 1956, Burghul began in 1980 to work for the government newspaper Al-Thawra, where he ended up being deputy director of its censorship department while hosting radio programmes on Radio Damascus.

Burghul's murder was preceded by the fatal shootings of photographer and video cameraman Ferzat Jarban in western city of Homs on 20 November, and citizen journalist Basil Al-Sayed in Homs on 29 December.

For more information:
Reporters Without Borders
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France
rsf (@) rsf.org
Phone: +33 1 44 83 84 84
Fax: +33 1 45 23 11 51
http://www.rsf.org/

China's Space Ambitions

2012-01-02T10:55:00.000-08:00

China is shooting for the moon in an effort to become a major player in the long-dormant space race.

A newly released five-year plan outlines Beijing's goals of developing new rockets, satellites, and embarking on deep-space navigation. Longer-term, the aim is to have a global satellite-positioning system in place, construct a space station, and eventually to put a man on the moon.

Clean-burning fuels will power its next-generation rockets, which will launch heavy cargos into space, according to details of the program released by the government this week.

China's space program has already made major breakthroughs in a relatively short time. In 2003, it became the third country to launch its own astronaut -- known as a "Taikonaut" -- into space, and five years later, completed a spacewalk.

Despite the advances, in terms of experience China lags far behind the United States and Russia, which engaged in a Cold War-era "Space Race" for decades.

But while the emphasis on space has waned in those countries, China has placed a premium on the development of its space industry, which is seen as a symbol of national prestige.

Wang Xuhui, a senior scientist at China's Institute of Aerospace System Science and Engineering, contributed to writing the report, known as a "white paper."

"It is a powerful policy. The new edition of the 'white paper' issued today reaffirms China's aim and principle of [the] peaceful use of outer space," Wang said.

"It helps people to fully understand our policy; [and thus] reduce misunderstandings and enhance mutual trust."

Some elements of China's program, notably the firing of a ground-based missile into one of its dead satellites four years ago, have alarmed U.S. officials and others, who fear the militarization of the space race.

That the program is run by the military has made the United States reluctant to cooperate with China in space, even though the latter insists its program is purely for peaceful ends.

Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/china_ reveals_space_plan/24438267.html

Karzai Welcomes Biden's Remark on Taliban

2012-01-01T12:35:00.000-08:00

KABUL, Dec 31: Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Saturday welcomed US Vice President Joe Biden`s remarks that the Taliban `per se is not our enemy`.

Mr Biden`s comments to Newsweek magazine last week caused uproar in the US, which has been fighting a 10-year war against the Taliban-led militancy, but reflected an increasing focus on finding a political settlement.

`We are very happy that America has announced that Taliban are not their enemy.

This will bring peace and stability to the people of Afghanistan,` President Karzai said during a ceremony in Kabul.

Mr Karzai has agreed that if the United States wants to set up a Taliban address in Qatar to enable peace talks he will not stand in the way, aslong as Afghanistan is involved in the process. The September assassination of Karzai`s peace envoy, former president Burhanuddin Rabbani, appeared to have derailed any prospects of progress in talks.

But recent unconfirmed reports suggest the US could be open to a deal which includes the transfer of Taliban prisoners from Guantanamo Bay. In the interview with Newsweek Biden emphasised the need for the Taliban to cut ties with Al Qaeda.

`We are in a position where if Afghanistan ceased and desisted from being a haven for people who do damage and have as a target the United States of America and their allies, that`s good enough,` he said.

As it pushes for a political settlement, the Afghan government has changed its tone towards the militants, referring to `terrorist` rather than `Taliban` attacks. Meanwhile, Nato troops on Saturday handed over responsibility for security in three districts of the embattled southern Helmand province to Afghan forces.

Helmand governor`s office said these included Marjah district the site of a major offensive by coalition forces last year. Coalition operations to rout the Taliban in February 2010 yielded slower than expected returns, but a troop buildup later in the year pushed militants out of the main centre of the district.

Nad Ali, which had been run by British troops, also transitioned from Nato to Afghan security control, a statement said.

Source: Pakistan Dawn

Scotland: A Case of Religious Discrimination?

2011-12-31T13:16:00.000-08:00

An independent college in Scotland, sponsored by the Dubai royal family and whose stated aim is to promote multiculturalism, has sacked its Principal - Professor Malory Nye, 47.

Nye and his wife, Isabel Campbell-Nye, 42 - the Head of the Al-Maktoum College of Higher Education's English Language Centre - alleged they were sacked for being white and Christians, according to a report by the Daily Mail. They have alleged discriminatory practices on grounds of racial and religious bias as the reason for their dismissal.

In the report by the Daily Mail, Nye claimed the patron of the college - Sheikh Hamdan Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum , the Deputy Ruler of Dubai - did not favor efforts by both Nye and his wife, to give the institution a more cosmopolitan feel. Additionally, Nye also claimed that both Abubaker, the Director of Operations, and Mirza al-Sayegh, Chairman of the Board of Directors and Private Secretary to the Sheikh, were against his wife and himself continuing their work at the college.

"It is clear to me that there is collusion between these two individuals that I should be removed from my position on the basis that I am not an Arab and not a Muslim and that the person who has the role of principal should be Arab and/or Muslim," Nye was quoted as saying by the Telegraph.

Malory and Isabel Nye at wedding ceremony held at the college

India Leases N-Sub from Russia

2011-12-31T07:30:00.000-08:00

MOSCOW: Russia has handed over the nuclear-powered attack submarine Nerpa to India following more than two years of delays, according to a senior naval official.

The signing ceremony happened yesterday at the Bolshoi Kamen shipbuilding facility in the (Far East) Primorye region where the Nerpa is now based, the official in the naval chief of staff told ITAR-TASS on Friday.

The report said an Indian crew would sail the Akula II class craft to its home base at the end of January after receiving it on a 10-year lease, in a deal that has angered Pakistan.

"All of the naval tests and performance checks have been completed, the Russian official said. The crew will begin making themselves feel at home on board the craft after New Year and start sailing it to India in the latter half of January.

The Nerpa will be the first nuclear powered submarine to be operated by India in nearly two decades after it decommissioned its last such Soviet built vessel in 1991.

India is currently completing the development of its own Arihant-class nuclear-powered ballistic submarines and the Nerpa`s delivery is expected to help crews train for the domestic boat`s introduction into service next year.

The Russian Pacific port ceremony was held on the same day a shipyard fire engulfed the Northern Fleet`s Yekaterinburg nuclear-powered strategic submarine in the Murmansk region on the opposite side of the country.

The Nerpa had initially been due tobe handed over to India in 2009 but experienced various problems during testing.

It suffered a mishap during trials in the Sea of Japan in November 2008 that killed 20 sailors when a fire extinguisher released a deadly chemical that was accidentally loaded into the system.

Media reports said that some of the vessel`s equipment malfunctioned during testing and that the weapons navigation system did not work to India`s specifications.

The 8,000-ton vessel can fire a range of torpedoes as well as Granat cruise missiles that can be nuclear-tipped.

India has promised not to arm the submarine with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles under its obligations to international treaties it adopted after conducting a series of atomic tests in the 1990s. But Pakistan is worried over the craft`s delivery.

"Rest assured, there will be no compromise in terms of maintaining the credibility of our deterrence", spokesman for Pakistan`s Foreign Office Abdul Basit was quoted as saying by The Asian Age newspaper this week.

The submarine is due to be commissioned as the INS Chakra in India under a 2004 agreement that had seen the South Asian country pay $650 million in construction costs.

Newspaper reports in India said New Delhi could end up paying as much as $900 million under the terms of the deal.

Russia supplies 70 per cent of India`s military hardware but New Delhi has been unhappy about delays to arms orders from Moscow and looked to other suppliers including Israel and the United States in recent years.-AFP

Source: Pakistan Dawn

Quote of the Week - Socrates

2011-12-30T03:38:00.000-08:00

"I teach them all the good I can, and recommend them to others from whom I think they will get some moral benefit. And the treasures that the wise men of old have left us in their writings I open and explore with my friends. If we come on any good thing, we extract it, and we set much store on being useful to one another." -- Socrates

Egypt: Virginity Testing Detained Women

2011-12-29T16:08:00.000-08:00

(EOHR/IFEX) - 29 December 2011 - The Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR) welcomes the 27 December decision of the Administrative Court of the State Council to ban the practice of subjecting detained women to virginity tests.

During protests on 9 March, Samira Ibrahim and 17 other girls were arrested and subsequently subjected to virginity testing. They all filed a lawsuit to overturn the decision of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) allowing the practice on detainees.

Mr. Hafez Abu Seada, the head of EOHR, emphasized that virginity testing on girls at military detention centers is a serious violation of personal privacy and does not comply with women's rights, either under Egyptian laws or international standards of human rights. The practice is considered an intimidation tactic that is used against Egyptian girls who participate in protests, although the right to peaceful assembly is guaranteed by all national and international standards of human rights. Both men and women achieved the Egyptian revolution together.

EOHR welcomes the decision of the Administrative Court of the State Council, viewing it as a victory for Egyptian women and part of the consolidation of their right to privacy. The SCAF should bring those who perpetrated the virginity testing to justice.

Afghanistan Operations Dec. 22-27

2011-12-28T06:00:00.000-08:00

Compiled from International Security Assistance Force Joint Command News Releases

WASHINGTON, Dec. 27, 2011 – An Afghan-led and coalition-supported security force captured a Taliban facilitator during an operation in the Pul-e ‘Alam district of Afghanistan’s Logar province today, military officials reported.

The facilitator moved weapons and explosives used in attacks against coalition forces. He also allegedly was involved in a car bomb attack in Logar province that killed one civilian and injured nine others.

One additional suspected insurgent was detained during the operation.

In other Afghanistan operations:

-- An Afghan-led force in Helmand province’s Garm Ser district captured a Taliban weapons facilitator who moved weapons throughout the province. No civilians were injured.

-- In the Zharay district of Kandahar province, an Afghan-led force detained two suspects while searching for a Taliban leader who moves supplies, emplaces roadside bombs and coordinates attacks against coalition forces.

In Afghanistan operations Dec. 26:

-- A coalition patrol discovered one anti-personnel mine, two rocket-propelled grenade warheads, two 82 mm mortar rounds, and homemade bomb-making components in Ghazni province’s Andar district.

-- A coalition patrol discovered four 82 mm mortars, one landmine and bomb components in the Now Zad district of Helmand province.

-- A combined force captured a Haqqani network facilitator and two other suspects in the Bak district of Khost province.

The facilitator supplied explosives to insurgents and conducted attacks against coalition forces.

-- A combined force in Baghlan province’s Baghlan-e Jadid district detained one suspect while searching for a Taliban leader who plans direct fire and roadside bomb attacks against Afghan forces.

In Afghanistan operations Dec. 25:

-- International Security Assistance Force Commander Marine Corps Gen. John R. Allen traveled across Afghanistan to wish troops a happy holiday. “I know we can’t be with our families on Christmas Day, but I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, if I can’t be with my family, than standing here with you and serving with you,” Allen told troops at Forward Operating Base Shindand in Herat province.

“It’s not every day you get to see a general come here, especially on Christmas Day, to tell everybody they are doing a good job,” Marine Corps Sgt. John Mohlenhoff said.

Allen also visited troops at Camp Stone and FOB Andraskan in Herat province, and Camp Marmal and Camp Spann near Mazar-e-Sharif in Balkh province. “In a very real sense, this is a family you’ll never forget because of the things that you have shared, things that you do, and the cause in which we’re all engaged,” Allen said. “For the rest of your lives, you will share this moment together -- a moment when you were a part of something bigger than yourselves. Every one of you here is contributing to the liberation of a country and giving Afghanistan hope.”

-- A coalition force discovered a drug cache containing more than 900 pounds of marijuana in the Panjwa’i district of Kandahar province. All of the drugs were destroyed.

-- A combined force killed two insurgents and seized bomb-making material and grenades during a search for a Taliban leader in the Baghlan-e Jadid district of Baghlan province. A third insurgent died after self-detonating a grenade. The leader trains insurgents to use roadside bombs and provides explosives for use in attacks against Afghan forces.

-- In the Nahr-e Saraj district of Helmand province, a combined force captured a Taliban leader and detained several other suspected insurgents. The insurgent leader provided equipment and trained fighters in the province.
-- A combined force in Kandahar province’s Zharay district detained two suspected insurgents and seized about five pounds of black tar heroin while searching for a Taliban facilitator who moves explosives and weapons throughout southern Afghanistan.
-- In the Nadir Shar Kot district of Khost province, a combined force captured a Haqqani network facilitator, detained one other suspect and seized multiple weapons. The facilitator moved and stored weapons throughout the area.

-- A combined force in Nangarhar province’s Pachir Wa Agam district captured a Taliban facilitator. who distributed weapons and munitions to insurgents for use in attacks in Jalalabad.

-- Allen, ISAF commander, condemned the suicide attack on a funeral ceremony in Takhar province that reportedly killed numerous civilians, including a member of the Afghan parliament, and wounded many others.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of those affected with the loss of life and injuries in today's barbaric attack," the general said. "These attackers are cowards, callously targeting and killing families and friends who had gathered to mourn a loved one. Those responsible for this shameful act must only be interested in destruction, alienating themselves from the Afghan people. They are neither Afghan nor are they true Muslims.”

In Dec. 24 Afghanistan operations:

--Allen extended his and his command’s sincere condolences to the Afghan families who lost loved ones in the Baghlan province mine tragedy.

"Our hearts go out to the families of this tragedy and we will, of course, stand ready to provide any additional assistance necessary if called upon by the Afghan government," the general said.

The collapse of the mine in Nahrin district claimed the lives of 13 Afghans and injured another 12 workers. Provincial Reconstruction Team Pul-E Khumri provided medical and humanitarian support.

-- Combined forces discovered two drug caches in Kandahar province. The first drug cache was found in the Spin Boldak district and contained 11 tons of hashish. All of the drugs were destroyed and one person was detained. The second cache was discovered in the Panjwa’i district and contained about 300 pounds of marijuana. The drugs were destroyed.

-- A combined force seized four rocket-propelled grenades and some small-arms ammunition in Uruzgan province’s Tarin Kot district.

In Dec. 23 Afghanistan operations:
-- Afghan soldiers with the 1st Brigade, 205th Afghan National Army Corps completed a week-long independent operation in the Panjwa'i, district of Kandahar province. Operation Hope Hero 58 was the first of its kind in Kandahar province where the Afghan National Army has taken the lead in an operation to include planning, coordinating and executing the mission separately from their U.S. partners. The Afghan army worked closely with Afghan police, Afghan National Civil Order Police and Afghan National Defense Services to conduct clearing operations in the Kenjekak and Zangabad villages of the Panjwa'i district of southern Kandahar province. During the six-day operation, more than 400 Afghan National Security Forces discovered multiple caches containing a large amount of bomb-making material to include ammunitions, more than 10 pressure plates, ignition systems and more than 1,000 pounds of homemade explosives -- enough material to make more than 60 homemade bombs.

In Dec. 22 Afghanistan operations:

-- A combined force seized a drug cache containing 910 pounds of marijuana in the Daman district of Kandahar province. The drugs were destroyed.

-- In the Zurmat district of Paktia province, a combined patrol found 20 anti-personnel mines and 60 blocks of explosives.

-- Also in Zurmat, a combined patrol found five RPGs, three 82 mm rockets, 440 rounds of small-arms ammunition and one radio-controlled receiver. Security forces destroyed all of the items.

Source: Global Security

Guidelines for British doctors asked to assist suicides

2011-12-27T07:00:00.000-08:00

The British body for regulating doctors, the General Medical Council, has announced that it is working on guidelines for telling doctors what they should do if a patient asks for help in committing suicide. There is an increasing number of Britons seeking to go to Switzerland to seek death at suicide clinics. There will be a public consultation early next year. Niall Dickson, the Chief Executive of the General Medical Council, said:

"The issue of assisted suicide is complex and sensitive. We already have clear guidance for doctors that they must always act within the law and assisting or encouraging suicide remains a criminal offence. This guidance will not in any way change the legal position for doctors. It is not our role to take a position on whether or not the law should be changed; that is a matter for the relevant legislature.

"We recognise however that there are a range of actions which could be considered as assisting in a suicide, such as providing information to a patient about suicide or providing practical assistance for someone to travel to a clinic such as Dignitas. Some of these actions may not lead to criminal charges but may still lead to complaints to us about a doctor's fitness to practise."

The guidance considers factors that might be relevant in determining the seriousness of each case, in the context of the different actions doctors may take in assisting patients who wish to end their lives. The new guidance will not cover euthanasia (in which a doctor's actions have directly led to a patient's death), as standards on this are clear.

The legal position of assisted suicide in England and Wales is unclear. It is clearly illegal, but there are doubts about whether charges would be brought against a doctor who assisted someone in a suicide. In 2010 Keir Starmer, the public prosecutor, issued liberalised guidelines which focused on the intention of the person assisting. There is a case currently in the courts which could raise the issue of whether doctors could help with impunity. ~ GMC, Dec 14, Guardian, Dec 15

"Season's Greetings" a Meaningless Slogan

2011-12-26T17:00:00.000-08:00

Don’t let Grinches steal your Christmas by substituting meaningless slogans.

Michael Cook

Let’s imagine for a moment that Christmas had never happened and that the Roman Emperor Aurelian had succeeded in establishing the feast of Sol Invictus on December 25 back in the year 274 AD.

Instead of Christmas, we would have had the Feast of the Unconquered Sun. At this time of year, just after the winter solstice, the lantern beaming light and heat hangs low in the sky; the days are dark and cold. But day by day it climbs back, infallibly reaching its fiery zenith at the summer solstice six months later. Yay! High fives all around! This god has got more belts than Manny Pacquiao!

Had this happened, the colourless salutation “Season’s Greetings” might have conveyed something vaguely meaningful, especially if you’re shivering in the northern hemisphere. Something like: gor blimey, I can’t handle this brass monkey weather, but let’s hang in there and may the gods grant us a good harvest.”

It’s a hopeful sentiment, but not an inspiring one, a bit like the experience of eating tofu for Christmas dinner instead of tucking into mince pies and roast turkey. The sun rises and the sun sets; seasons come and seasons go. Whatever good or evil men do, the sun shines on them all alike with a divine indifference. For devotees of Sol Invictus, “Season’s Greetings” would have been a token of our inevitable submission to fate. This was the popular wisdom of the ancient world – from which Christmas has rescued us.

Whether or not you accept the Christian theological beliefs which underpin the celebration of Christmas, they have transformed Western society and they are in the process of transforming nations far from Bethlehem. Christmas, that is, the celebration of the moment in which the all-powerful creator of the Universe took on human flesh and entered human history, sends powerful, if unspoken, messages. Here are seven which are implicitly conveyed when we wish friends a “Merry Christmas”.

God cares. “As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods, — They kill us for their sport.” This comes from King Lear, but it is the wisdom of paganism. Life’s a bitch, and then you die. What the Incarnation, as the theologians call the act of God becoming man, shows for all time is that the Creator cares about his creatures. As the carol says, “and he feeleth for our sadness, and he shareth in our gladness.” Jupiter, on the other hand, when presented with complaints about our sadness would probably say something like, “Yeah, whatever. Get over it. Stuff happens, you know.”

History matters. The ancients believed in the myth of the eternal recurrence, that history was not linear, but cyclic. Their cosmic fate was to live imprisoned in cycles which end in fire and then return in a new cycle, playing the same role over and over again. Its symbol is the dragon devouring its tail. But the implication of the Incarnation is that history is moving towards a climax which begins at Bethlehem. Our own participation in history makes a difference.

All men are fundamentally equal. We can get used to Christmas paintings of the manger, in which shepherds are rubbing shoulders with the Magi as they peer over Joseph’s shoulder. But the implications of this setting are immense. “With the poor, the scorned, the lowly, lived on earth our Saviour holy”: before the infant in the lowly cattle shed, distinctions of talent, rank and education are insignificant. All men are brothers.

Families are the cornerstone of society. Bethlehem suggested the ideal to which Christian families should aspire: a father and mother doting on their child, willing to make any sacrifice for his welfare. But the homely tenderness of this scene was virtually unknown in the ancient world. The Greeks and Romans were not strangers to domestic affection, but this was not the paradigm of their families. Without Christmas we would never have had the bubbly, loving warmth of the Cratchit family made famous in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

Women have dignity. No women appear in Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans. There are famous women in ancient history, but most of them are queens and empresses like Cleopatra and Zenobia. In Bethlehem, a simple village girl, Mary, is the central figure. Kings bow in homage to her and her child. In the Christian tradition, capacity for motherhood gives women an incomparable dignity. As Cristina Rossetti’s marvellous poem (and carol) says,

Angels and archangels
May have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim
Thronged the air,
But only His mother
In her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the Beloved
With a kiss.

Children are special. The ancient world defined children by their powerlessness; they were just underdeveloped adults. But Bethlehem suggests that we should treasure their innocence and dependence. “Once in Royal David’s City” is a Victorian carol, but it expresses it nicely:

For he is our childhood's pattern,
day by day like us he grew;
he was little, weak and helpless,
tears and smiles like us he knew.

The fact that a defenceless child is the centre of the Christmas story also means that men and women are not to be valued by how productive they are, but simply because they are with us and share in a common nature. In the Gospel account this is underscored by the sequel to the Nativity, the Massacre of the Innocents by the vicious tyrant Herod.

We should send more Christmas cards. Western art was born on Christmas Day. We take for granted the human drama depicted on Christmas cards. But in other cultures, art was meant to be a faint reflection of unchanging, inalterable divinity. That’s why statues of Buddha depict him in a few stylised postures. Even Greek and Roman art presented idealised figures and seldom depicted ordinary life.

But art of the Christian era is based upon an altogether different philosophy: that all of human life has dignity because the Child of Bethlehem is both God and Man. Since then, everything in human life carries within it a spark of divinity and becomes a worthy subject for an artist. What sort of greeting cards would we have if the cult of Sol Invictus had survived? Probably much like we have now: images of snow-bound homes or decorative calligraphy. But nothing human, affectionate and tender.

So there you have seven reasons to say “Merry Christmas” with greater gusto in 2011. Let’s defy miserabilist Grinches who want to banish it from public life.

In any case, all this has happened before. Oliver Cromwell’s Puritans banned the celebration of Christmas in England. In the 1640s the Long Parliament decreed that no holy days other than Sundays were to be celebrated. December 25 was to be observed with fasting and humiliation for the sins of countrymen who had turned the day into a feast, sinfully “giving liberty to carnal and sensual delights”. Shops and market were to be kept open for trading. Parliament was to meet for business on December 25. Christmas, said the Puritans, was a popish festival with no Biblical justification.

However, the Cromwell failed to convert Merrie England to miserabilism. As soon as Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660, the Christmas bans were swept away. Mirth, mistletoe and plum pudding returned and the Christmas fast vanished. Season’s Greeting was no more in Fair Albion.

Michael Cook is editor of MercatorNet. Reprinted from here.

British PM: "We are a Christian Country"

2011-12-25T06:30:00.000-08:00

The Bible has given Britain a set of values and morals which it should actively defend, says David Cameron.

The following is the prepared text of a speech by British Prime Minister David Cameron, delivered at Christ Church, Oxford, last weekend for the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James Version of the Bible. In it, Mr Cameron says the UK is Christian country and that when Christians are confident of their own identity it provides greater space for other religious faiths too.

It’s great to be here and to have this opportunity to come together today to mark the end of this very special 400th anniversary year for the King James Bible.

I know there are some who will question why I am giving this speech. And if they happen to know that I’m setting out my views today in a former home of the current Archbishop of Canterbury and in front of many great theologians and church leaders they really will think I have entered the lions’ den. But I am proud to stand here and celebrate the achievements of the King James Bible. Not as some great Christian on a mission to convert the world. But because, as Prime Minister, it is right to recognise the impact of a translation that is, I believe, one of this country’s greatest achievements.

The Bible is a book that has not just shaped our country, but shaped the world. And, with three Bibles sold or given away every second, a book that is not just important in understanding our past, but which will continue to have a profound impact in shaping our collective future.

In making this speech I claim no religious authority whatsoever. I am a committed – but I have to say vaguely practising – Church of England Christian, who will stand up for the values and principles of my faith but who is full of doubts and, like many, constantly grappling with the difficult questions when it comes to some of the big theological issues. But what I do believe is this. The King James Bible is as relevant today as at any point in its 400 year history. And none of us should be frightened of recognising this. Why? Put simply, three reasons.

First, the King James Bible has bequeathed a body of language that permeates every aspect of our culture and heritage from everyday phrases to our greatest works of literature, music and art. We live and breathe the language of the King James Bible, sometimes without even realising it. And it is right that we should acknowledge this – particularly in this anniversary year.

Second, just as our language and culture is steeped in the Bible, so too is our politics. From human rights and equality to our constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy, from the role of the church in the first forms of welfare provision, to the many modern day faith-led social action projects the Bible has been a spur to action for people of faith throughout history, and it remains so today.

Third, we are a Christian country. And we should not be afraid to say so. Let me be clear: I am not in any way saying that to have another faith – or no faith – is somehow wrong. I know and fully respect that many people in this country do not have a religion. And I am also incredibly proud that Britain is home to many different faith communities, who do so much to make our country stronger. But what I am saying is that the Bible has helped to give Britain a set of values and morals which make Britain what it is today. Values and morals we should actively stand up and defend. The alternative of moral neutrality should not be an option. You can’t fight something with nothing. Because if we don’t stand for something, we can’t stand against anything.

Let me take each of these points in turn.

First, language and culture.

Powerful language is incredibly evocative. It crystallises profound, sometimes complex, thoughts and suggests a depth of meaning far beyond the words on the page giving us something to share, to cherish, to celebrate. Part of the glue that can help to bind us together.

Along with Shakespeare, the King James Bible is a high point of the English language, creating arresting phrases that move, challenge and inspire. One of my favourites is the line “For now we see through a glass, darkly.” It is a brilliant summation of the profound sense that there is more to life, that we are imperfect, that we get things wrong, that we should strive to see beyond our own perspective. The key word is darkly – profoundly loaded, with many shades of meaning. I feel the power is lost in some more literal translations. The New International Version says: “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror” The Good News Bible: “What we see now is like a dim image in a mirror”. They feel not just a bit less special but dry and cold, and don’t quite have the same magic and meaning.

Like Shakespeare, the King James translation dates from a period when the written word was intended to be read aloud. And this helps to give it a poetic power and sheer resonance that in my view is not matched by any subsequent translation. It has also contributed immensely to the spread of spoken English around the world. Indeed, the language of the King James Bible is very much alive today.

I’ve already mentioned the lions’ den. Just think about some of the other things we all say. Phrases like: strength to strength, how the mighty are fallen, the skin of my teeth, the salt of the earth, nothing new under the sun. According to one recent study there are 257 of these phrases and idioms that come from the Bible. These phrases are all around us from court cases to TV sitcoms and from recipe books to pop music lyrics.

Of course, there is a healthy debate about the extent to which it was the King James version that originated the many phrases in our language today. And it’s right to recognise the impact of earlier versions like Tyndale, Wycliffe, Douai-Rheims, the Bishops and Geneva Bibles too. The King James Bible does exactly that, setting out with the stated aim of making a good translation better, or out of many good ones, to make “one principal good one”. But what is clear is that the King James Version gave the Bible’s many expressions a much more widespread public presence.

Much of that dissemination has come through our literature, through the great speeches we remember and the art and music we still enjoy today. From Milton to Morrison and Coleridge to Cormac McCarthy the Bible supports the plot, context, language and sometimes even the characters in some of our greatest literature. Tennyson makes over 400 Biblical references in his poems and makes allusions to 42 different books of the Bible.

The Bible has infused some of the greatest speeches from Martin Luther King’s dream that Isaiah’s prophecy would be fulfilled and that one day “every valley shall be exalted” to Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg address which employed not just Biblical words but cadence and rhythms borrowed from the King James Bible as well. When Lincoln said that his forefathers “brought forth” a new nation, he was imitating the way in which the Bible announced the birth of Jesus.

The Bible also runs through our art. From Giotto to El Greco and Michelangelo to Stanley Spencer. The paintings in Sandham Memorial Chapel in Berkshire are some of my favourite works of art. Those who died in Salonika rising to heaven is religious art in the modern age and, in my view, as powerful as some of what has come before.

And the Bible runs through our music too. From the great oratorios like J S Bach’s Matthew and John Passions and Handel’s Messiah to the wealth of music written across the ages for mass and evensong in great cathedrals like this one. The Biblical settings of composers from Tallis to Taverner are regularly celebrated here in this great cathedral and will sustain our great British tradition of choral music for generations to come.

It’s impossible to do justice in a short speech to the full scale of the cultural impact of the King James Bible. But what is clear is that four hundred years on, this book is still absolutely pivotal to our language and culture. And that’s one very good reason for us all to recognise it today.

A second reason is this.

Just as our language and culture is steeped in the Bible, so too is our politics. The Bible runs through our political history in a way that is often not properly recognised. The history and existence of a constitutional monarchy owes much to a Bible in which Kings were anointed and sanctified with the authority of God and in which there was a clear emphasis on the respect for Royal Power and the need to maintain political order. Jesus said: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

And yet at the same time, the Judeo-Christian roots of the Bible also provide the foundations for protest and for the evolution of our freedom and democracy. The Torah placed the first limits on Royal Power. And the knowledge that God created man in his own image was, if you like, a game changer for the cause of human dignity and equality.

In the ancient world this equity was inconceivable. In Athens, for example, full and equal rights were the preserve of adult, free born men. But when each and every individual is related to a power above all of us and when every human being is of equal and infinite importance, created in the very image of God we get the irrepressible foundation for equality and human rights -- a foundation that has seen the Bible at the forefront of the emergence of democracy, the abolition of slavery and the emancipation of women – even if not every church has always got the point!

Crucially the translation of the Bible into English made all this accessible to many who had previously been unable to comprehend the Latin versions. And this created an unrelenting desire for change. The Putney debates in the Church of St Mary the Virgin in 1647 saw the first call for One Man, One vote and the demand that authority be invested in the House of Commons rather than the King. Reading the Bible in English gave people equality with each other through God. And this led them to seek equality with each other through government.

In a similar way, the Bible provides a defining influence on the formation of the first welfare state. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus says that whatever people have done “unto one of the least of these my brethren” they have done unto him. Just as in the past it was the influence of the church that enabled hospitals to be built, charities created, the hungry fed, the sick nursed and the poor given shelter, so today faith based groups are at the heart of modern social action.

Organisations like the Church Urban Fund which has supported over 5,000 faith based projects in England’s poorest communities including the Near Neighbours Programme which Eric Pickles helped to launch last month. And St Ethelburga’s Centre for Reconciliation and Peace in London’s Bishopsgate a building once destroyed by an IRA bomb but now a centre where people divided by conflict, culture or religion can meet and listen to each other’s perspective.

In total, there are almost 30 thousand faith based charities in this country not to mention the thousands of people who step forward as individuals, as families, as communities, as organisations and yes, as churches and do extraordinary things to help build a bigger, richer, stronger, more prosperous and more generous society. And when it comes to the great humanitarian crises – like the famine in Horn of Africa – again you can count on faith-based organisations like Christian Aid, Tearfund, CAFOD, Jewish Care, Islamic Relief, and Muslim Aid to be at the forefront of the action to save lives.

So it’s right to recognise the huge contribution our faith communities make to our politics and to recognise the role of the Bible in inspiring many of their works.

People often say that politicians shouldn’t “do God.” If by that they mean we shouldn’t try to claim a direct line to God for one particular political party they could not be more right. But we shouldn’t let our caution about that stand in the way of recognising both what our faith communities bring to our country and also just how incredibly important faith is to so many people in Britain.

The Economist may have published the obituary of God in their Millennium issue. But in the past century, the proportion of people in the world who adhere to the four biggest religions has actually increased from around two-thirds to nearly three quarters and is forecast to continue rising.

For example, it is now thought there are at least 65 million protestants in China and 12 million Catholics – more Christians than there are members of the communist party. Official numbers indicate China has about 20 million Muslims – almost as many as in Saudi Arabia – and nearly twice as many as in the whole of the EU. And by 2050, some people think China could well be both the world’s biggest Christian nation and its biggest Muslim one too.

Here in Britain we only have to look at the reaction to the Pope’s visit last year, this year’s Royal Wedding or of course the festival of Christmas next week, to see that Christianity is alive and well in our country.

The key point is this. Societies do not necessarily become more secular with modernity but rather more plural, with a wider range of beliefs and commitments.

And that brings me to my third point.

The Bible has helped to shape the values which define our country. Indeed, as Margaret Thatcher once said, “we are a nation whose ideals are founded on the Bible.” Responsibility, hard work, charity, compassion, humility, self-sacrifice, love pride in working for the common good and honouring the social obligations we have to one another, to our families and our communities these are the values we treasure.

Yes, they are Christian values. And we should not be afraid to acknowledge that. But they are also values that speak to us all – to people of every faith and none. And I believe we should all stand up and defend them. Those who oppose this usually make the case for secular neutrality. They argue that by saying we are a Christian country and standing up for Christian values we are somehow doing down other faiths. And that the only way not to offend people is not to pass judgement on their behaviour.

I think these arguments are profoundly wrong. And being clear on this is absolutely fundamental to who we are as a people what we stand for and the kind of society we want to build.

First, those who say being a Christian country is doing down other faiths simply don’t understand that it is easier for people to believe and practise other faiths when Britain has confidence in its Christian identity. Many people tell me it is much easier to be Jewish or Muslim here in Britain than it is in a secular country like France.

Why? Because the tolerance that Christianity demands of our society provides greater space for other religious faiths too. And because many of the values of a Christian country are shared by people of all faiths and indeed by people of no faith at all.

Second, those who advocate secular neutrality in order to avoid passing judgement on the behaviour of others fail to grasp the consequences of that neutrality or the role that faith can play in helping people to have a moral code.

Let’s be clear. Faith is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for morality. There are Christians who don’t live by a moral code. And there are atheists and agnostics who do. But for people who do have a faith, their faith can be a helpful prod in the right direction. And whether inspired by faith or not – that direction, that moral code, matters.

Whether you look at the riots last summer, the financial crash and the expenses scandal, or the on-going terrorist threat from Islamist extremists around the world, one thing is clear: moral neutrality or passive tolerance just isn’t going to cut it anymore. Shying away from speaking the truth about behaviour, about morality has actually helped to cause some of the social problems that lie at the heart of the lawlessness we saw with the riots.

The absence of any real accountability, or moral code allowed some bankers and politicians to behave with scant regard for the rest of society. And when it comes to fighting violent extremism, the almost fearful passive tolerance of religious extremism that has allowed segregated communities to behave in ways that run completely counter to our values has not contained that extremism but allowed it to grow and prosper in the process blackening the good name of the great religions that these extremists abuse for their own purposes.

Put simply, for too long we have been unwilling to distinguish right from wrong. “Live and let live” has too often become “do what you please”. Bad choices have too often been defended as just different lifestyles. To be confident in saying something is wrong is not a sign of weakness, it’s a strength.

But we can’t fight something with nothing. As I’ve said, if we don’t stand for something, we can’t stand against anything. One of the biggest lessons of the riots last Summer is that we’ve got stand up for our values if we are to confront the slow-motion moral collapse that has taken place in parts of our country these past few generations.

The same is true of religious extremism. As President Obama wrote in the Audacity of Hope: “…in reaction to religious overreach we equate tolerance with secularism, and forfeit the moral language that would help infuse our politics with larger meaning.”

Frankly, we need a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and a much more active, muscular liberalism. A passively tolerant society says to its citizens, as long as you obey the law we will just leave you alone. It stands neutral between different values.

But I believe a genuinely liberal country does much more; it believes in certain values and actively promotes them. We need to stand up for these values. To have the confidence to say to people – this is what defines us as a society and that to belong here is to believe in these things.

I believe the church – and indeed all our religious leaders and their communities in Britain – have a vital role to play in helping to achieve this. I have never really understood the argument some people make about the church not getting involved in politics. To me, Christianity, faith, religion, the Church and the Bible are all inherently involved in politics because so many political questions are moral questions.

So I don’t think we should be shy or frightened of this. I certainly don’t object to the Archbishop of Canterbury expressing his views on politics. Religion has a moral basis and if he doesn’t agree with something he’s right to say so. But just as it is legitimate for religious leaders to make political comments, he shouldn’t be surprised when I respond.

Also it’s legitimate for political leaders to say something about religious institutions as they see them affecting our society, not least in the vital areas of equality and tolerance. I believe the Church of England has a unique opportunity to help shape the future of our communities. But to do so it must keep on the agenda that speaks to the whole country.

The future of our country is at a pivotal moment. The values we draw from the Bible go to the heart of what it means to belong in this country and you, as the Church of England, can help ensure that it stays that way.

How is religion measured in the UK?

Reprinted from here.

Let Peace Reign

2011-12-24T11:30:00.000-08:00

Alice C. Linsley

As a Christian, I find myself contemplating the meaning of Christmas beyond the commercial trappings. As an introvert, I have an aversion to crowded shopping malls, jammed parking lots, and holiday sales that attract aggressive shoppers. I'd rather be home enjoying a roaring fire and listening to Handel's Messiah. I find the holiday rush and hustle disconcerting. Where is the peace so boldly proclaimed on greeting cards? Is there no contentment with simple things: a star-strewn winter sky, the fragrance of cedar and pine logs?

I agree with C.S. Lewis that the best policy for keeping peace on earth is to mind one's business. That being the case, I refuse to judge the extroverts who thrive in this hectic season. They are free to pursue the fleeting glory of the season and I am free to avoid it as much as possible.

All would agree that peace on earth is a good thing, beneficial to all except those who run guns and drugs. The "little mafias" around the world who intimidate, torture and kill will never be content with peace. This year many children will have Christmas without their fathers because of these gangs of thugs. In many places the "officers of the peace" are bought servants. None will press charges because they know they will be killed.

To proclaim "peace on earth" in such a world seems futile. There is no peace. There is no agreement on what peace looks like. Yet as a Christian, I assert that Christmas is still one of the best holidays for those who seek peace. And as to how it looks, consider the Infant Christ, undisturbed in the arms of His pure and holy Mother. Contemplate this image well. He comes meek and lowly, the very icon of divine peace offered to the world. Receive Him and you receive peace on earth.

Related reading: Christians are Christmas People

A Roadmap for Moral Renewal in Europe

2011-12-23T10:30:00.000-08:00

Alejo José G. Sison (Reprinted from here.)

At this time of the year, walking from my apartment to the University, shop-windows would usually be all decked in Christmas finery. But instead, what I find are closing-down sales, “for rent” signs and locales completely boarded up. It has been like this for the past couple of years that it feels like the new normal. Living in Spain, where growth has been flat and unemployment sky-rocketing, nothing different could be expected. But what do we do now?

That’s when I remembered Benedict XVI’s address to the Bundestag last September. I have been discussing it with some friends, yet it never occurred to me until then that it could contain both a diagnosis and a remedy for the malaise that afflicts Europe. How could the Pope’s speech present Europe with a roadmap to recovery?

A “listening heart” for politicians

In the recent general elections in Spain, nothing weighed heavier in voters’ choices than the perceived ability of candidates to get the economy up and running. That’s what we want our politicians to deliver: wealth and prosperity, period. As for the rest, we could very well take care ourselves. Only a few cast their vote on the basis of the candidate’s “listening heart”, the ability to “discern between good and evil” (cf. 1 Kg 3:9), so this issue never really arises in campaigns. Yet, as Benedict suggests, this is “what should ultimately matter for a politician. His fundamental criterion and motivation […] must not be success, and certainly not material gain. Politics must be a striving for justice…”

Not to be misunderstood, the Pope explains that material success is necessary, because otherwise, there would be “no opportunity for effective political action at all. Yet success is subordinated to the criterion of justice, to the will to do what is right, and to the understanding of what is right.” Certainly, there is nothing quite as dangerous as political success without justice, power without law. In that case, as St. Augustine remarked, nothing would distinguish the State from a band of robbers, or worse, from an instrument of destruction that could threaten the whole world, as the German experience with Nazism has shown. “To serve right and to fight against the dominion of wrong is and remains the fundamental task of the politician,” Benedict unequivocally asserts.

Democracy alone is insufficient

Having been brought into power in Germany through a democratic process, the Nazi regime itself is proof that “for the fundamental issues of law, in which the dignity of man and of humanity is at stake, the majority principle is not enough”. Although in most matters subject to law -- as in a state’s decision to form part of the European Union or to adopt the euro, for instance -- majority rule is enough to provide legitimacy, this does not always apply. Instead, when unjust laws put basic human rights under threat, such as the right of parents to educate their children, citizens have a duty to struggle and resist.

In modern liberal democracies, it may be fairly simple to acknowledge that the State and, by extension, its laws are not always right -- hence the possibility of challenging the State and bringing it to court, whenever it becomes too much of a nuisance. But, what is to keep such conflicts between citizens and the State from becoming mere contests of money, power or influence? Is there anything else in our disputes beyond conflicts of self-interest? Granted that “what is right and may be given the force of law is in no way simply self-evident today”, could we still claim that something in itself is right and just? On what grounds?

Not religion, but nature and reason

Surprisingly, Benedict does not posit religion, not even Christianity, as a source of law for society and the State. Instead, he puts forward the interrelation of reason and nature as the basis of a universal “natural law”, in keeping with the teachings not only of the Stoïcs, Romans and medieval Schoolmen, but also of some legal scholars of the Enlightenment, all of whom influenced the “Founding Fathers” of the Declaration of Human Rights and the drafters of the German Basic Law. Behind this is the conviction that reason itself is capable of discovering in nature the principles of its proper functioning, even without the help of religion and revelation. Not that religion and revelation are useless; they aid reason in discerning the laws of nature, although in principle, reason alone can also do this by itself. Thus, reason acts as the moral conscience, “Solomon’s listening heart […] that is open to the language of being.”

How “natural law” got de-natured

It is quite unfortunate that the very idea of “natural law” has been all but lost, confined almost exclusively within Catholic circles. This is due to the widespread rejection of the so-called “naturalistic fallacy”, according to which “an ‘ought’ [a duty or obligation] can never follow from an ‘is’ [a statement of fact], because the two are situated on completely different planes.” The problem, however, is that this inference itself is based on a reductive and therefore false concept of nature: a purely positivist understanding which sees nature as merely “an aggregate of objective data linked together in terms of cause and effect” -- as we find, for example, in the legal philosopher Hans Kelsen.

Positivism also views reason as limited to the realm of empirical science, to what is verifiable or falsifiable, while everything else, such as ethics and religion, is exiled to the realm of feelings and sentiments. “This is a dramatic situation which affects everyone, and on which a public debate is necessary,” Benedict observes. Furthermore, he establishes as the “essential goal” of his address the “urgent invitation” to launch such a public and political debate on these matters.

Europe and the ecological awakening

The positivist view of nature and reason is incorrect not in what it affirms, thanks to which we have scaled such heights of achievement in the sciences, but in what it denies. “Where positivist reason considers itself the only sufficient culture and banishes all other cultural realities to the status of subcultures, it diminishes man, indeed it threatens his humanity.” Nowhere is this more evident than in present-day Europe, where positivism has been installed as the de facto common culture and grounds for legislation. At the same time, gravely disappointed with the results of integration, not least in the economic sphere, Europeans increasingly turn their backs on this culture of “culturelessness” and embrace extremist and radical ideologies. Thus, we have shut ourselves from the light and the air of God’s wide world and set ourselves on course to a slow death by suffocation, to follow Benedict’s metaphor.

Since a few decades back, however, there have been signs of an awakening, especially among the young, in the face of all this irrationality. The Pope has sensed it in the extraordinary appeal of the ecological movement in Germany. It rests on the realization that nature “is not just raw material for us to shape at will, but that the earth has a dignity of its own and that we must follow its directives.”

Benedict agrees, but challenges the green movement by pointing out that there is also an “ecology of man”: “Man too has a nature that he must respect and that he cannot manipulate at will. Man is not merely self-creating freedom. […] [H]e is also nature, and his will is rightly ordered if he respects his nature, listens to it and accepts himself for who he is […] In this way, and in no other, is true human freedom fulfilled.”

Human beings, therefore, no less than the world that surrounds them, are subject to laws and norms that do not come from their own will. Where, then, do these principles originate? In response to Kelsen, Benedict asks, “Is it really pointless to wonder whether the objective reason that manifests itself in nature does not presuppose a creative reason, a Creator Spiritus?”

Only after this question is seriously considered can Europe embark on a moral renewal, in many ways much more urgent than mere economic recovery. We ought to remember that Europe was born at the crossroads “between Jerusalem, Athens and Rome —from the encounter between Israel’s monotheism, the philosophical reason of the Greeks and Roman law.” From this cross-fertilization have issued “[t]he conviction that there is a Creator God [that] gave rise to the idea of human rights, the idea of the equality of all people before the law, the recognition of the inviolability of human dignity in every single person and the awareness of people’s responsibility for their actions.” Together, they form the cornerstone of law that today, more than ever, ought to be defended.

To sum up: after a careful reading of Benedict XVI’s speech at the German parliament, here are some guidelines for the renewal of Europe:

* We should not choose our political leaders solely on their promises to bring us material well-being, but above all, for their moral rectitude or “listening heart”.

* Democracy has to abide by certain principles exempt from the majority rule in order to function properly.

* These universal principles pertain to “natural law”: they are conclusions that human reason draws from an attentive study of nature.

Europe will recover only to the extent that it reconciles itself with its “natural law” tradition and abandons the tyranny of positivism. In this regard, the ecological movement has already shown the way.

Alejo José G. Sison is a philosophy professor who specializes in Business Ethics at the University of Navarre. He is also president of the European Business Ethics Network (EBEN).

Syrian Journalists Arrested,Tortured

2011-12-22T22:19:00.000-08:00

(IPI/IFEX) - Vienna, 21 December 2011 - To describe 2011 as a turbulent year for Syria would be an understatement. As other regimes in the Arab world have fallen, President Bashar al-Assad has ruthlessly clung to power. At every step, media attempts to shed light on developments have been thwarted. The government has cracked down on local journalists and denied access to most foreign ones.

According to Ghias Aljundi, an exiled Syrian activist, "after the beginning of the Syrian revolution on 15 March 2011, press freedom suffered additional restrictions and dozens of journalists and bloggers have been arrested and tortured for . . . writing pieces about what it is happening inside Syria." He added: "There are documented reports that the arrested journalists have been tortured and forced to write articles in which they had to deny that there were protests in the country. Opposition websites have been blocked or hacked by the state-backed Syrian Electronic Army."

On the one hand, the Syrian government controls the media and uses it to boost its own legitimacy, but the current level of protests and uprisings, and the avenues for information-sharing opened up by social media developments, have made it impossible to fully stifle the flow of news.

According to the United Nations, more than 5,000 people have been killed since the uprisings started in March in Syria. In a number of moves to bolster his legitimacy, President Assad has made various changes to laws regarding the press. In April 2011, Assad removed an emergency law which allowed the state to control the media. In June, a few select foreign journalists were allowed to enter Syria, after having applied for, and successfully obtained, a visa. IPI reported on the numerous challenges faced by these journalists. President Assad passed a law earlier in August easing the tight regulations for journalists, making it more difficult to arrest or ban them. In October, Assad claimed that fundamental freedoms of the media must be recognised and article 11 of the decree states: "Any attack on a journalist will be treated as an attack on a Syrian government official."

Whilst these reforms are designed to create the impression that journalists are free to report in Syria, the reality is grimly different. According to a report by the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression, entitled "Crackdown on Media Workers in Syria", 114 human rights violations took place against 99 journalists, bloggers and intellectuals between February and October 2011. The report details how journalists are intimidated and harassed because of their reports on the uprisings in Syria. It is unclear how many journalists and bloggers have been detained as many appear to have simply disappeared.

"Local journalists have been banned from moving within Syria and many of them have been interrogated or arrested for trying to visit other Syrian cities," activist Aljundi said. "The majority of Syrian journalists, who reported on the recent events in Syria, were exposed to a defamation campaign by the state-owned media or through pro-regime websites. As Syria is completely closed down to any reliable media or journalists, many of the Syrian journalists had to flee the country for their safety."

Even the few foreign journalists allowed to enter Syria have been restricted in terms of what they have been allowed to cover and where they have been allowed to go. For example, foreign journalists have been unable to cover the anti-government protests in Homs. Often, they were just given the state-sanctioned versions of stories.

With the lack of representative reporting in Syria and foreign media restricted, there has been a huge increase in blogs and so-called 'citizen reporting', but even amateur journalists are in danger. Security forces are targeting those with mobile phones at anti-government protests. They are also seeking to gather information about pro-democracy bloggers and protestors and flooding Facebook and Twitter pages of the opposition with pro-Assad messages.
(. . .)

Read the full report here.

For more information:

International Press Institute
Spiegelgasse 2/29
A-1010 Vienna
Austria
ipi@freemedia.at
Phone: +43 1 5129011
Fax: +43 1 5129014
http://www.freemedia.at/

Quote of the Week - Ron Paul

2011-12-22T11:20:00.000-08:00

"All of our children were raised in the Episcopal Church. Some [places] were fairly conservative but my wife and I thought the Episcopal Church advocated a position that we didn't endorse, so we left. And our children did not stay in the Episcopal Church either."--Texas Representative Ron Paul (Oct. 2011 Christianity Today interview)

More Euthanasia, Assisted-Suicide Propaganda

2011-12-21T14:00:00.000-08:00

Margaret Somerville (Reprinted from here.)

The Royal Society of Canada Expert Panel on End-of-Life Decision Making recently released its Report to much media attention. The parts of that report we can all agree on, for instance, the need for much better access to palliative care and pain management for terminally ill patients, was not the media’s focus. The panel’s recommendation that euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (PAS) should be legalized was.

It has generated many calls for a national debate in Canada on these latter issues – mainly, I would guess, if not entirely, from people advocating the legalization of euthanasia. In entering such a debate and deciding whether they agree with this recommendation, it’s important for Canadians to understand the weaknesses of the Report.

The Panel’s mandate included the following direction: “The public would… benefit greatly from having a careful, balanced review of various pros and cons of decriminalization of physician-assisted death from well-reasoned ethical and legal standpoints.” The Report comes nowhere near fulfilling this mandate. It’s a pro-euthanasia manifesto – to paraphrase an advocate for disabled people speaking in another context, it’s “thinly veiled euthanasia and assisted suicide propaganda disguised as an expert report”.

This is not surprising in view of who the authors are. Many are well-known pro-euthanasia advocates and, as the Report is unanimous, one can assume all agree with this stance. The people I know whom the Panel lists as consulting to them are, likewise, pro-euthanasia -- three of them world-leading advocates.

It’s important to understand this is not a Report of the Royal Society of Canada, as many have mistakenly assumed, as that gives it an unmerited credibility. It’s a Report of an expert panel (only one member of which is a fellow of the Royal Society) set up by the Royal Society. The fairness and wisdom of the Royal Society’s choice of panel members must, however, be questioned.

The Report is very far from being a “balanced review” or adequately comprehensive. The arguments against the legalization of euthanasia and PAS are almost entirely absent. Issues are considered almost entirely at the level of the individual. There is almost no discussion of the impact of legalizing euthanasia and PAS at the institutional level -- in particular, the impact on healthcare institutions and professions, and the law – or at the societal level, in particular, on important shared values, such as respect for life. In fact, this value is not discussed, an extraordinary omission considering the topic of the report.

Discussion of abuses is deficient and selective

The discussion of the practices in jurisdictions that have legalized or allow euthanasia and assisted-suicide are seriously deficient and very selective so as to minimize the Report’s coverage of abuses, expansions of justifications for the practices, and other problems or controversies.

For example, the Report indicates there has been one case of the use of euthanasia on disabled babies in the Netherlands. This is probably correct in the short time since the Groningen protocol allowing such euthanasia was formally accepted. But, prior to that, an article in the New England Journal of Medicine documents 22 cases of babies with spina bifida being euthanized, which is not mentioned. Such “pro-euthanasia presentations” of the facts are concerning and misleading. Likewise, the availability in the Netherlands of euthanasia for children is not mentioned. The combination of euthanasia and donation of organs for transplant in Belgium and the recent case in Flanders of “joint euthanasia” of a terminally ill man and his healthy wife are ignored. And a survey of Belgian physicians who had carried out euthanasia, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, which showed 32 percent of those physicians had carried out euthanasia without the patient’s request or consent is never mentioned.

The system set up under the Oregon Death with Dignity Act is presented as largely problem-free. The literature describing problems, for instance, articles and book chapters by renowned pain specialist and head of palliative care at Memorial Sloane Kettering, Dr Kathleen Foley, and Dr Herbert Hendin, a New York psychiatrist specializing in suicide prevention, is likewise totally ignored.

And although Canadian psychiatrist Dr Harvey Max Chochinov’s research is referenced, his ground-breaking work in the psychiatry of dying people, what helps them and what they want, is not discussed.

Through the lens of individual autonomy

The authors make an assumption that individual autonomy, implemented through “informed choice”, is always the prevailing value and construct their case for euthanasia and PAS from there. They do not consider that for many people some other value might prevail – for example, respect for human life which requires that we don’t kill each other, except when unavoidable to save life -- and what line of argument and decision outcomes that would result in.

In short, the authors have adopted a basic assumption, from which, as they state, everything else they accept and recommend flows, without adequately justifying doing so and not even mentioning the possible alternatives.

The essential difference between the pro and anti euthanasia positions is that the former gives priority to individual autonomy over respect for life, the latter does the opposite. We should keep in mind, here, that we are not just talking about the value of respect for each individual human life, important as that is, but also, respect for human life in general. The authors refer to the Charter as the primary source of our shared values: Apart from any other claims on behalf of the value of respect for life, it is one of the values enshrined in the Charter.

There is a strong emphasis in the Report on the burden and healthcare costs of an aging population and the Report gives the impression that euthanasia and PAS will help to resolve this “problem”. The authors note that euthanizing people “in advanced stages of dementia” will be an issue to be addressed in the future. In other words, they don’t reject the possibility that this might be acceptable.

The Report doesn’t mention survey results, such as those from an Environics poll, which last year (2010) asked over 2000 Canadians what the government priority should be - legalizing euthanasia or improving end-of-life care, or both. Seventy-one percent said improving end-of-life care and 19 percent said legalizing euthanasia, and 5 percent said both (the remainder were Did not know/Neither).

What about elder abuse?

Because the Report seems to have a special focus on aging, I note that the Environics polls also showed Canadians are very concerned about elder abuse if euthanasia or PAS is legalized. The 2011 poll expressly asked about "elder abuse" and 76 percent of respondents said they were concerned about it, if euthanasia were legalized. The 2010 poll did not expressly ask about "elder abuse", but did ask a question where 78 percent of respondents said they were concerned that elderly persons (disabled and sick persons too) would be euthanized without consent. To another 2010 question, 63 percent said they were concerned elderly persons could be pressured to accept euthanasia in order to reduce health care costs.

The authors recognize their position involves an inconsistency in that they champion individual autonomy as the prevailing value, but clearly will place limits on its exercise and not recognize the validity of the choice to die of all autonomous, competent adults.

But, if individual autonomy trumps all other considerations, then why is there a need for any other justification for euthanasia? Simply wanting to be dead and consenting to it should be sufficient: “Over 70 and tired of life”, as proposed in The Netherlands, would suffice. And why, even, does the person need to be “over 70”? What about the broken hearted 18-year-old whose first love has abandoned her; why can’t she exercise her autonomy to have assistance committing suicide?

And if there’s a right to commit suicide, then there is a duty not to interfere with people exercising that right. How then can we justify treating people brought to an emergency room who have attempted suicide?

The usual “confusions” used to promote the case for euthanasia are all present in the Report: equating all acts and omissions; arguing there is no difference between killing and allowing to die; conflating intention and motive in relation to desired and unwanted consequences of pain relief treatment; and so on. The opposite arguments are not presented. And the fact that courts and others rely on these distinctions daily in making legal and ethical decisions is ignored.

The section on dignity, which the authors recognize is a prominent concept in the euthanasia debate, is especially biased to the pro-euthanasia arguments and inadequate. In particular, a 2008 major and very comprehensive research report on the concept by the US President’s Commission on Bioethics is not even mentioned.

The above criticisms are not comprehensive, many more could be articulated. Fortunately, in my view, there is a wealth of grounds on which the Report can be easily dismissed.

Margaret Somerville is founding director of the Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law at McGill University.

Israel Releases 550 Palestinians

2011-12-20T08:00:00.000-08:00

Israel has released 550 Palestinian prisoners in the second stage of a deal with Hamas that brought home one Israeli soldier after five years of captivity in the Gaza Strip.

Among those released Sunday were 55 minors, aged 14 to 17.

Israel released 477 Palestinians in October in exchange for Israeli army Sergeant Gilad Shalit who was captured in 2006 during a cross-border raid from Gaza into southern Israel.

The Israeli Prison Service says unlike the prisoners exchanged in October, none of the second group has been convicted of killing Israelis.

Also Sunday, the Israeli Housing Ministry began seeking contractors to build some 1,000 homes in the occupied West Bank.

The homes are part of a settlement plan announced earlier in the year. Last month, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered construction to be sped up after the United Nations cultural agency UNESCO granted the Palestinians membership.

Israel opposes Palestinian efforts to join the U.N. in the absence of a negotiated peace deal.

Some information for this report was provided by AFP and AP.

Source: Global Security.org

Christmas Concert from Lebanon

2011-12-20T06:01:00.000-08:00

Not to be missed! Enjoy this delightful Christmas concert sponsored by The Lebanese National Higher Conservatory of Music

Choir: the Antonine University Choir, the NDU Choir and the Lebanese National Higher Conservatory Choir

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CA2vdo9eOk

USA Behind in ESG Investments

2011-12-19T13:00:00.000-08:00

The US is falling behind other countries and regions in integrating environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors into mainstream investment decisions, largely due to perceived legal or fiduciary risks, experts said.

“There’s no question in my mind that Northern Europe has got sustainable investing in its sights,” Roger Urwin, global head of investment content for consultancy firm Towers Watson, told attendees of the ESG USA 2011 conference in New York on December 13.

Australia and the UK look to be next to jump on the ESG bandwagon, but there are “big and very ugly roadblocks in the US” to sustainable investing, he said.

The issue of fiduciary duty is a major barrier to the incorporation of ESG factors in investment decision-making in the US, said Jay Youngdahl, trustee for a $650 million benefit fund and a partner at law firm Youngdahl & Citti in Houston, Texas. A fiduciary duty is an obligation to act in the best interest of another party, in this context, the investors in a fund.

“It is holding it back,” he said. “It is a refuge for people who do not want to see ESG put into investments. It does not need to be. This roadblock is an incorrect roadblock legally.”

Any time trustees want to do anything in the ESG space, lawyers tell them this would be a violation of their fiduciary duties, Youngdahl said. “That’s wrong generally speaking,” he said. “On fiduciary duty, there is an extraordinarily high level of intellectually sloppiness that is a major problem for lawyers who work in this area.”

But the Occupy movement in the US has provided a spur to rethink many things, including fiduciary duty as it relates to ESG investing, Youngdahl said. “But it takes courage,” he said. “The American legal establishment at this point does not have that courage.”

In August, investment manager Pimco signed up to the UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investment (UN PRI) and adopted ESG integration into its overall investment process. But more market-leading investment firms need to follow in Pimco’s footsteps and commit to the UN PRI to create momentum in the US and foster widespread adoption, said Michael Burns, Pimco’s executive vice-president.

The firm had extremely strong management support for this initiative, and pressure from and endorsement by clients around the world “definitely accelerated the process”, he said.

“We’ve had a number of Northern European investors help us to understand at an early stage the value of ESG factors in investment decision-making,” Burns said.

During a review, Pimco discovered it was already taking a number of steps that were ESG-related, such as imposing a rigorous standard in evaluating the governance structures of companies. “We were just terrible at communicating it to the broader investment community,” he said.

But there are potential impediments for investment managers considering adopting ESG integration, including the fiduciary duty issue and the need for firms to become comfortable with the legal representations they will make about incorporating ESG, Burns said. For example, when signing on to the UN PRI, a company is making a representation about what it will do and companies need to understand the ramifications and be sure they won't expose themselves to liability.

“I think the legal uncertainty is something that makes some firms step away,” he said.

Another key issue is managers’ lack of information about investors’ true interest in ESG integration, with some investors opposing such initiatives.

“Being able to speak to that audience is equally important as being able to speak to the audience that’s very supportive and I don’t think many investment managers are willing to have those tough conversations,” he said.

Incorporating ESG also requires significant time, resources and training. “It is a costly investment, but it’s one we think will pay off over time,” Burns said.

Source: Environmental Finance

H/T to Ron Robins MBA at Investing for the Soul. Ron has this to say: "In the US, the degree of scepticism about human induced climate change is much greater than it is in Europe. Just look at what the Republican presidential hopefuls say on this issue! Thus, such attitudes influence American's beliefs of the relevance of ESG issues.

Meanwhile, we all know that companies who lead in responding most effectively to ESG issues are generally 'best of sector,' both financially and in comparative stock performance."

430 Dead and Many Missing in Philippine Floods

2011-12-19T10:35:00.000-08:00

Women holding their dead children

Tens of thousands in the Philippines have fled to higher ground, several hundred have been killed and many more are missing after a tropical storm in the area resulted in huge flash floods.

“Massive flooding has been reported over the region, especially in Iligan City and Cagayan de Oro City,” national disaster rescue agency head Benito Ramos told the BBC.

Much of the flooding occurred during the night while residents of the region affected were sleeping. The latest reports say as many as 430 people have been brought to funeral parlors around the country, but officials say the numbers might rise because many are still missing.

As many as 10,000 soldiers are reportedly helping with rescue efforts.

“I can’t explain how these things happened,” Military Spokesman Colonel Leopoldo Galon told the BBC. “Entire villages were swept into the sea.”

Read the full report here.

Pope Benedict: First Human Right is to Life

2011-12-18T13:00:00.000-08:00

Pope Benedict XVI has sent a powerful message for life to the world at Christmas time. Lifesitenews reports that, speaking at his Angelus address to thousands of pilgrims gathered in St. Peter's square, the Holy Father acknowledged the 63rd anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and said "Dear friends, on the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, remember that the first of all rights is the right to life."

Pope Benedict from the beginning of his pontificate has used many opportunities to raise the right to life, demonstrating his primary concern for what he considers the most basic human right.

Shortly after becoming pope, Benedict XVI noted that attacks on preborn children, which include abortion and destructive research on embryos, are "today's gravest injustice." In the first book he published as pope, Benedict emphasized that the fight against abortion must continue. Significantly he wrote, "There is no such thing as 'small murders.'"

In March of 2006, the pope stressed that, "as far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus" for political involvement is around the "non-negotiable" matters of life, family and parental rights in education. And putting the principle into practice, while visiting both the U.S. president and the Canadian prime minister in 2009, the Holy Father gave the right to life priority in the discourse.

In recent years the pope has become increasingly insistent that the Catholic Church take up ever more strenuously the fight for the right to life. "Guaranteeing the right to life is a duty upon which the future of humanity depends," he said in 2007. Also that year he noted that the right to life "must be supported by everyone because it is fundamental with respect to other human rights."

His most striking move, according to LifeSite, was an unprecedented call to all Catholic churches worldwide to join him in a vigil for all 'nascent human life' on November 27 last year.

Source: Youth Defense

Red Cross May Advocate Abortion Rights

2011-12-17T06:52:00.000-08:00

By Stefano Gennarini, J.D., and Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D.

New York, December 16 (C-FAM) A recently issued report from the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent has caused concerns that the organization may start advocating for abortion rights.

In a section of the report on human rights IFRC quotes a widely criticized document issued by Anand Grover, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health, which said, "States must take measures to ensure that legal and safe abortion services are available, accessible, and of good quality." The IFRC report goes on to editorialize, "But the real challenge is to find out how many states will indeed change their policies accordingly.”

This may lead some to believe IFRC could eventually declare abortion a human right as Amnesty International did in 2007. Amid much controversy, Amnesty International simply announced that endorsing abortion as a right was a "natural" outgrowth of its 2-year campaign countering violence against women.

Initially an external relations manager at IFRC told the Friday Fax the organization “definitely” did not consider abortion a human right. Gabriel Pictet, the manager of IFRC’s community health unit said, "IFRC did not change its position on abortion as a human right. To my knowledge it never had one."

Pictet said IFRC quoted the highly controversial UN special rapporteur’s document "because the issue of safe abortion is relevant to public health, to health inequities and to human rights. By ensuring access to safe abortions, rather than making abortions illegal and thereby unsafe, the likelihood of reaching the Millennium Development Goal 5 [improve maternal health] increases.”

IFRC has adopted the same position as pro-abortion groups at the UN who equate "unsafe" with illegal abortion, and invoke international development agreements to promote legal abortion. In fact, abortion can cause maternal health problems and even death. Moreover, the world's lowest maternal mortality occurs in countries where abortion is illegal, such as Ireland and Chile.

What’s more, abortion is never mentioned in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). UN member states rejected the term "reproductive health" within the MDGs on every occasion it was debated, precisely to avoid interpretations that it might include abortion. While UN agencies began asserting in 2008 that MDG5 includes a target on reproductive health, they cannot publicly assert that the target includes abortion.

For now, IFRC’s Pictet says, "Because abortion is a matter of personal conscience, it does not make sense for an international membership organization like IFRC to go beyond raising the issue."

The Geneva-based IFRC is a separate organization from the 150 year-old International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Whereas ICRC works in conflict zones and adheres to the Geneva Conventions of 1949, IFRC is supposed to take the lead in post-conflict and non-conflict humanitarian emergencies.

Both IFRC and ICRC are part of the Red Cross Movement whose mission is "to alleviate human suffering, protect life and health, and uphold human dignity especially during armed conflicts and other emergencies."

Source: Friday Fax

Noted Atheist Dead at Age 62

2011-12-16T08:56:00.000-08:00

Christopher Hitchens is dead.

The prolific journalist, well-known public intellectual and noted contrarian, who is perhaps most famous in the eyes of many Americans for his best-selling exegesis against religion, passed away Thursday at the MD Anderson Cancer in Houston, Texas. He was 62.

Read more here.

Dr. William Witt has written an excellent piece on Hitchens. Read it here.

For information on Christians who have debated Hitchens, go here.

Obama's Foreign Policy Directive: Promote LGBT Rights

2011-12-16T05:47:00.000-08:00

By Wendy Wright

GENEVA, December 16 (C-FAM) All federal agencies dealing with U.S. diplomacy and foreign assistance must now promote lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights. This new priority puts U.S. foreign policy on a collision course with religious freedom.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced President Obama’s sweeping directive to UN diplomats in Geneva last week. Along with the full-force of the U.S. government, a Global Equality Fund will equip foreign LGBT groups to agitate within countries.

Every federal agency engaged overseas, and “other agencies as the President may designate,” is directed to “combat the criminalization of LGBT status or conduct abroad,” assist LGBT refugees and asylum seekers, leverage aid to advance LGBT nondiscrimination, respond swiftly to abuses of LGBT persons abroad, enlist international organizations “in the fight,” and report on progress.

A State Department official said, “We are not just having people . . . whose full-time job it is to occupy ourselves with concerns of human rights, but also people whose daily grind is, most of the time, spent on different things.”

This elevates LGBT above every other people group, including those persecuted for religious beliefs, promoting democracy and human rights, ethnic minorities, and women.

Asked by the Friday Fax if any other minority has this status, the State Department did not respond.

By one account, only nine countries do not discriminate in some way against LGBT individuals, such as donating blood or “higher age of consent laws.”

Obama’s directive comes as Nigeria debates a bill to protect marriage. The Catholic Medical Association of Nigeria denounced “the coordinated ferocity” by foreign governments and international groups “browbeating” legislators to adopt laws that are premised on “dubious science and ethical mischief.”

Reacting to Obama’s order, Oliver Kisaka with the National Council of Churches of Kenya told the CS Monitor, “God did not make a mistake; being gay is that person’s own perspective. Those who live as gays need help to live right and we should not be supporting them to live in a wrong reality.

“Society should reach out to gays and transgender people to help them out of their situation. They have not ceased to be God’s children and no one is a gone case.”

Clinton equated religious and cultural views on sexuality and gender identity with “violent practices toward women like honor killings, widow burning or female genital mutilation."

Tina Ramirez of the Washington DC–based Becket Fund for Religious Liberty told the Friday Fax, "The Administration is sticking its head in the sand when it comes to the conflict between gay rights and religious freedom. The failure of either the President or the Secretary of State to articulate how the international LGBT rights initiative will interact with religious conscientious objection is a recipe for conflict between the two. No one disagrees with Secretary Clinton's truism that religious freedom doesn't protect religiously-motivated violence against anyone. But the real issue, that neither the President nor Secretary Clinton talked about, is what happens when the LGBT initiative conflicts with sincere conscientious objection. Religious liberty is a fundamental human right protected in the United States Constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and countless other human rights instruments; the Administration seems to be treating it as an afterthought."

Source: Friday Fax

Congress Not Respected by Americans

2011-12-15T05:00:00.000-08:00

Congress Given Lowest Rating in Gallup History; Americans Rate Members' Ethics Low, Very Low

A record 64 percent of American adults -- surveyed by Gallup in a poll released yesterday (December 12, 2011) -- rated the honesty and ethical standards for members of Congress as "low" or "very low." Those numbers mark the lowest rating that Gallup has measured for any profession since it began polling the question in 1976, according to the Yahoo website.

The 64 percent rating ties members of Congress with the 64 percent low rating that lobbyists received in Gallup's 2008 survey.

The low ethics rating is in line with the overall low regard the American public has for its lawmakers.

Members of Congress, lobbyists, car salespeople, and telemarketers round out the bottom tier of professions ranked by public perceptions of their ethics in the Gallup survey. Professions earning high ethics marks in the poll were nurses, pharmacists, medical doctors, and high school teachers.

The November 28 to December 1, 2011 poll of adults had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Source: Theology and Society

Dutch Crazy about Euthanasia

2011-12-14T05:39:00.000-08:00

Straight from the “just when you thought it couldn’t possibly get any worse” files come reports that the Dutch Health Minister admitted in their parliament recently that her department is “considering” setting up mobile euthanasia death squads.

Minister Edith Schippers is quoted in the UK Telegraph as saying that mobile units "for patients who meet the criteria for euthanasia but whose doctors are unwilling to carry it out" was worthy of consideration.

Instantly, many will be reminded of the SS Einsatzgruppen death squads that moved through towns on the Eastern Front following the Nazi invasion of Russia in 1941. I hesitate to draw any further comparison with this dark and sinister period in European history, but this recent development is disturbing on a number of levels.

The suggestion that these mobile units would euthanase people where the local doctor was not willing to do the killing could constitute a serious breach of medical ethics. What if the doctor would not kill for sound medical reasons such as untreated depression or evidence of coercive pressure? Will his or her advice be sought and will his opinion and treatment plan prevail? It doesn’t seem that likely.

Already we have seen Dutch patients with Alzheimer’s being euthanased. But Dutch pro-euthanasia groups are known to want to expand the eligibility for euthanasia further; the UK Daily Mail reports the lobby as saying “that 80 per cent of people with dementia or mental illnesses were being ‘missed' by the country’s euthanasia laws’.” Missed? Is there a door-to-door search? Quick, hide Grandma in the cupboard!

Would the patient’s doctor even be told that the death squad was about to visit his patient? For the frail, elderly or those with depression or mental illness, the doctor may well also be the patient’s only advocate. Doctor shopping for a preferred diagnosis is one thing, but this is death as a door-to-door salesman!

A salesman it is. In Washington State, where assisted suicide is legal, advocates like the euphemistically titled “Compassion and Choices” provide advice to those seeking death in how to approach their doctor and what to do if he or she tries to talk the patient out of it or tries to defer the conversation. Their advice suggests that any answer other than supporting the provision of assisted suicide under their Dignity With Dying Act is unacceptable. But again, is it not a legitimate role of the doctor to avoid a direct answer on such a question with the aim of taking the time to conduct a proper medical and mental health assessment and the best outcome for the patient?

Of course, if you don’t get what you want, there’s always help at the other end of the phone: “... call Compassion; Choices of Washington and request a Client Support Volunteer who can help you achieve a peaceful, humane death.” One can easily imagine a similar line being adopted in Holland: “Your doctor said no. How terrible! Here, call the mobile hotline now!

Paul Russell is the Director of HOPE: Preventing Euthanasia & Assisted Suicide and is based in South Auustralia. He is also Vice Chair, International Euthanasia Prevention Coalition.
www.noeuthanasia.org.au

Quote of the Week - Charles Raven

2011-12-13T17:00:00.000-08:00

"It would be a great tragedy if the reframing of Anglicanism that we are seeing take hold in Africa and the Global South was to be subverted by Lambeth rebranding." --British columnist Charles Raven

Kiir's Daughter Marries Ethiopian, Ayok Reports and is Threatened

2011-12-13T14:05:00.000-08:00

SOURCE: Arabic Network for Human Rights Information/IFEX - 12 December 2011 - ANHRI expresses its concern about Sudanese journalist Dengdit Ayok, deputy editor of the English-language newspaper "Destiny", who received a death threat via email for publishing an article critical of the country's president, Salva Kiir.

In November, Ayok was detained for two weeks and "Destiny" was suspended after publishing its first two issues, after it reported on the marriage of the president's daughter to an Ethiopian. The authorities deemed the article as "unethical to the profession of journalism". One of the reasons given for the decision, which was signed by the director of the Internal Security Agency in Juba, Akol Koor Kuc, is that it is noted that on many occasions, the newspaper continued reporting on "isolated topics that should not be published for the public".

Although five months have passed since independence, journalists in Southern Sudan are working without any legislative instruments that regulate the press and publications, or any code that guarantees the rights of journalists and protects them from detention and fines. Hence, the ruling authorities have full power to assess what is professional and objective and what deserves to be sanctioned with a detention or brought to trial.

"The closure of a newspaper and death threats for a journalist are not the best start for the authorities in Southern Sudan when it comes to addressing journalistic freedoms. As a matter of fact, it is obliged to behave differently than Northern Sudan, in terms of newspapers being confiscated, websites being blocked, and the detention of journalists. It is quite unfortunate that this nascent state pursues the same infamous practices," said ANHRI.

"The authorities must introduce a law protecting press freedoms and guaranteeing freedom of opinion and expression in its peaceful form, so as not to drift to the list of restrictive anti-press states," added ANHRI.

For more information:

Arabic Network for Human Rights Information
10 Elwy Street
Apartment 5
Behind the Central Bank
Downtown Cairo
Egypt
info (@) anhri.net
Phone: +202 239 64058
Fax: +202 239 64058
http://www.anhri.net/

Tunisia: Radicals Target Schools

2011-12-13T10:01:00.000-08:00

(Human Rights Watch/IFEX) - Tunis, December 9, 2011 - The Tunisian authorities should protect individual and academic freedoms from acts of violence and other threats by religiously motivated groups acting on university campuses, Human Rights Watch said today. Both the university authorities and the state security forces will need to cooperate to protect the rights to security and education of students and faculty.

One university suspended classes on December 6, 2011, because of security concerns. Demonstrators have caused disruptions on the campuses of at least four universities since October, demanding imposition of their own interpretation of Islam in the curriculum and in campus life and dress. They have interrupted classes, prevented students from taking exams, confined deans in their offices, and intimidated women professors.

"Tunisian authorities should of course protect the right to protest peacefully but should show zero tolerance when groups of protesters disrupt campus learning with threats of violence," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. "The timing and location of some of these protests suggest that they were planned to cause maximum disruption by interfering with exams, thus depriving thousands of students of their rights."

The Higher Education Ministry, the supervisory authority for universities in Tunisia, has yet to take decisive action to deter disruptions of academic life and acts of aggression and intimidation by fundamentalist groups on campus.

Security forces have made no arrests in these incidents, although those who attacked or threatened the staff of public universities appear to have violated the law. Under article 116 of the penal code, it is a criminal offense for "anyone who uses or threatens to use violence on civil servants in order to force them to perform, or to prevent them from performing, their official duties."

The most sustained protests have occurred at the Faculty of Letters, Arts and Humanities of Manouba, a city near Tunis, the capital. Other incidents took place at the business school of the University of Manouba, the School of Arts and Humanities of Sousse, the Higher Institute of Arts and Crafts in Kairouan, and the Higher Institute of Theology of Tunis.

The principles of university autonomy and non-intervention on campus should not be used by the government as an excuse to relinquish its obligation to ensure security of students and professors, to deter outsiders from disrupting academic activities, and to see to it that demonstrations do not disproportionately impair the rights of others, Human Rights Watch said.

The Tunisian government should ensure swift intervention of security forces whenever requested by the faculty to prevent third parties from seriously disrupting academic life, Human Rights Watch said. Authorities should also put in place monitoring systems so that physical attacks and threats on schools, teachers, and students are tracked, to identify those responsible and to hold them accountable in conformity with the Tunisian penal code.

"Under President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisian campuses were stifled by enforced political uniformity," Whitson said. "Tunisian students and professors didn't help to oust Ben Ali only to see one form of repression on campus replaced by another."

Read the full report here.

For more information:
Human Rights Watch
350 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10118
USA
hrwnyc (@) hrw.org
Phone: +1 212 290 4700
Fax: +1 212 736 1300
http://www.hrw.org

UNIFIL Patrols Targeted. Syria Blamed

2011-12-10T06:46:00.000-08:00

By Jihad Siqlawi – TYRE

Defeat of ‘foreign plot’ against Syria begins from Lebanon

A roadside bomb wounded five French UN peacekeepers on patrol in southern Lebanon on Friday, in an attack the Lebanese president said was aimed at driving French troops out of the country.

The UN Security Council strongly condemned the third attack this year against the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).

The bomb targeted a French UNIFIL patrol on the southern outskirts of the coastal city of Tyre, a security official said. Five peacekeepers and two civilians were hurt, officials said.

A correspondent in Tyre saw three peacekeepers -- a woman and two men -- standing by their badly damaged white vehicle with bandages on their heads. One had a bloodied face. None had life-threatening injuries, officials said.

"This vile and despicable act not only aims to cause harm to the peacekeepers but also to undermine the stability and peace that have been prevailing in the south," UNIFIL commander Major-General Alberto Asarta Cuevas said in a statement.

"We will not be diverted from our tasks and we remain focused in our efforts to fulfill our mandate together with the Lebanese Armed Forces," he added.

The office of Lebanese President Michel Sleiman, who is on a visit to Armenia, issued a statement denouncing the attack.

"This terrorist attack is aimed at pressuring these (French) troops to leave Lebanon and to pave the way for (further) terrorist acts," Sleiman said.

"Lebanon's security agencies will do everything to find and arrest those responsible for the explosion and to prevent the repeat of such tragedies in the future," he added.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe strongly condemned the "cowardly" attack.

France is "determined to continue its involvement with UNIFIL (and) will not be intimidated by such vile acts," he said in a statement.

UN leader Ban Ki-moon and the UN Security Council both strongly condemned the attack.

"The secretary general expects that the perpetrators will be swiftly identified and brought to justice," said UN spokesman Martin Nesirky. Ban called the attack "deeply disturbing" and said the safety of peackeepers was of "paramount importance".

In a statement, the 15-nation Security Council noted Lebanon's commitment to find the attackers and protect UNIFIL. They "called for enhanced cooperation between the Lebanese Armed Forces and UNIFIL and for the rapid finalization of this investigation" and condemned all threats against security in Lebanon.

UNIFIL patrols have been the target of a string of unclaimed roadside bomb attacks in recent years, including two in 2011.

Friday's blast took place amid heightened tension over the revolt in Syria, with politicians and diplomats warning the unrest could spill into Lebanon, whose government is dominated by the pro-Syrian militant group Hezbollah.

The UNIFIL force stationed in the south of the country is considered an easy target if unrest did spread to Lebanon.

MP Marwan Hamadeh, a leading member of the Western-backed opposition in Lebanon, blamed Damascus for Friday's attack, saying it was orchestrated with the help of Hezbollah.

"It is clear that Syria was behind what happened today and the messenger was Hezbollah," Hamadeh, who narrowly avoided death in a car bombing in 2004, said. "Nothing happens in that region without Hezbollah's approval."

"The Syrians have accused France of being at the forefront of what they believe is a foreign plot to destabilise their country and everyone felt that something was bound to happen," Hamadeh added.

But Hezbollah in a statement denounced the roadside bombing. "We call on Lebanon's security services to do their utmost to stop such attacks," it said.

Spain currently commands the 12,100-strong UNIFIL force, which was founded in 1978 and expanded after a 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah.

France has one of the largest contingents with 1,300 soldiers.

In July, six French UNIFIL troops were wounded, one of them seriously, in the southern coastal town of Sidon, in an attack similar to Friday's. In May, six Italian peacekeepers were wounded in Sidon, also in a roadside bombing.

Three Spanish and three Colombian peacekeepers were killed in June 2007 when a booby-trapped car exploded as their patrol vehicle drove by.

Source Middle East Online

Journalists Face Global Challenges

2011-12-09T14:19:00.000-08:00

(ARTICLE 19/IFEX) - London, 8 December 2011 - Ahead of human rights day (10 December 2011), Thomas Hammarberg, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, launched the publication "Human rights and a changing media landscape" at a press conference in London, hosted by ARTICLE 19, on Thursday 8 December 2011.

"The defence of all human rights depends on media freedom and pluralism. This makes it urgent to counter government restrictions and monopoly tendencies," said Thomas Hammarberg at the launch.

"Journalists are murdered or threatened with violence, state authorities seek to control broadcast media and prevent access to government information. At the same time we have seen that unrestrained commercial ambitions can encourage a culture of illegal and unethical activity in the newsroom - as the News of the World phone hacking scandal demonstrated with shocking clarity."

The Commissioner invited eight experts to give their personal assessments of six topics and how they relate to human rights: social media; protection of journalists from violence; ethical journalism; access to official documents; public service media; and media pluralism.

"Together these contributions give an indication that there is a need for stronger protection of media freedom and freedom of expression in Europe today," said the Commissioner at the launch, which took place at Article 19 in London.

In his foreword Thomas Hammarberg highlights the role media plays in exposing human rights violations and in offering an arena for different voices to be heard in public discourse. He argues that public service broadcasting is important to ensure media pluralism and counteract monopolies. He also underlines that every case of violence or threats against a journalist must be promptly and seriously investigated - impunity encourages further murders and has a chilling effect on public debate.

The phenomenon of social media presents us with a range of fresh challenges. Blogs, video and social networking sites have become key forums for political debate and organisation - so much so that they have provoked counter-responses from some repressive states. While there is a need to ensure better protection of personal integrity in social media, the right to freedom of expression must not be undermined.

The traditional media have felt the pain of the global economic crisis. Thousands of jobs have been eliminated, leaving little space for research, checking and original investigation - and training. The term ethical journalism is highly relevant in this context. The media community needs to develop a system of effective self-regulation - based on an agreed code of ethics - and a mechanism to receive and respond to complaints.

"I hope this book will serve as a spotlight on current challenges. There is a strong need for a serious public debate on media developments and their impact on human rights", said the Commissioner.

For more information:

ARTICLE 19

Free Word Centre
60 Farringdon Road
London
EC1R 3GA
United Kingdom
info (@) article19.org
Phone: +44 20 7324 2517
Fax: +44 20 7490 0566
http://www.article19.org/

Icon Workshops

2011-12-08T10:39:00.000-08:00

Dear Friend of the Icon,

We are glad to announce the 2012schedule of HEXAEMERON sponsored courses in icon writing with Ksenia Pokrovsky, Marek Czarnecki and Anna Gouriev. This year we have expanded our reach from California to Brazil. Workshops are available also in North Carolina, Pennsylvannia and Kentucky.

For complete information on these workshops and registrationdetails, visit our website: http://www.hexaemeron.org

Also, see the newsletter at: http://hexaemeron.wordpress.com

Marriage Attacked in Australia

2011-12-07T06:36:00.000-08:00

A Mortal Threat to Marriage

Saturday, December 3, was a landmark day for Australia’s gays and lesbians. The nation moved a big step closer to the legalisation of same sex marriage. Delegates to the Australian Labor Party’s annual conference voted resoundingly to make gay marriage a plank in the party platform.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who had publicly opposed this, was politically humiliated, but managed to salvage some of her authority by allowing a conscience vote when it comes before Federal Parliament early next year. Although the ALP is the governing party, with the support of the Greens, the passage of a bill to “amend the Marriage Act to ensure equal access to marriage under statute for all adult couples irrespective of sex who have a mutual commitment to a shared life” is far from certain. But the vote will be close.

Marriage law is a Federal matter in Australia. The best that the states can do is to legalise civil unions. But the homosexual lobby will not settle for anything less than “full equality”. It craves the social recognition that marriage confers. As Peter Tatchell, a Melbourne-born UK gay rights advocate, says on the Marriage Equality website:

“Marriage is the internationally recognised system of relationship recognition. It is the global language of love. When we were young, most of us dreamed of one day getting married. We didn’t dream about having a civil partnership.”

“The global language of love.” That could have been a song from the 60s. In fact, what sympathetic politicians have in mind when they link the word “gay” to “marriage” is the syrupy hit by the Dixie Cups, “Going to the Chapel”:

Goin' to the chapel and we're
Gonna get married
Goin' to the chapel and we're
Gonna get married
Gee, I really love you and we're
Gonna get married
Goin' to the chapel of love

Bells will ring
The sun will shine
(whoa-whoa-whoa)
I'll be his and
He'll be mine
We'll love until
The end of time
And we'll never be lonely anymore.

“We’ll never be lonely anymore” – if only. Top of the pops are seldom good relationships handbooks.

What sort of recognition are gays and lesbians seeking to acquire through marriage? Let’s start with the amended 1961 Marriage Act: “the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life.” Thus marriage is a legally recognised, monogamous and heterosexual, and permanent union. No purpose is mentioned, but the common understanding (until fairly recently) was that that marriage is intrinsically connected with procreation.

The rewards of marriage flow from fulfilling these defining features. In an admirable marriage the partners are faithful to each other for their whole life. In an admirable marriage the commitment is permanent for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. In an admirable marriage new life comes into the world through the mutual love of the spouses. The virtues which give traditional marriage its well-deserved prestige are fidelity, fortitude and fruitfulness.

But legalised same sex marriage in a legal system where adultery is a crime and divorce is banned is inconceivable. In fact, the reason why same-sex marriage has become conceivable is that the prestige of heterosexual marriage has sunk so low that anyone can take it on. As Amanda Vanstone, a former minister in the Liberal (conservative) Howard government put it, “It is not convincing. It is a triumph of hope over reality. Marriage long ago stopped being to the exclusion of all others and for life. If we don't care about those two elements being disregarded by so many, why should we care about the ‘between a man and a woman’ part?”

In other words, the currency has become so debased that paupers can pretend they are millionaires. It’s all just make-believe.

What gays and lesbians want is marriage lite, not real marriage. This confers the right to do karaoke versions of “Going to the Chapel of Love” in public, but little more. Divorce is an ever-present possibility, fidelity is unnecessary and children are optional. Big deal.

What compelling reason is there for the state to support such an impoverished institution? Traditional marriages nurture children, who are the future of society and deserve protection. But why should the state get in the business of supporting what is little more than friendship with benefits?

Marriage is in a terrible state in our society. More and more couples are cohabiting; nearly half of all marriages end in divorce; children are treated as optional extras; extra-marital affairs are common; pornography is a scourge.

The absurdity is that gays and lesbians don’t regard this as a disaster at all. In their eyes these are precisely the conditions which make same-sex marriage an attractive option.

The whole thing has an alarming similarity to the Euro crisis. Basket cases like Greece joined the Eurozone in the hope of modernising their economies. Instead they are sucking strong economies dry and have brought the Euro to the brink of collapse. Same-sex marriage threatens to do the same thing to the global language of love.

Michael Cook is editor of MercatorNet.

Quote of the Week - Yemitom

2011-12-06T11:00:00.000-08:00

"From what I have read in the Bible, it seems that the Temple design included no accommodation for seats (pews). Worshippers stood and had room to prostrate in the presence of Our Father, unlike the design of many churches today. I wonder at times if we have perhaps today become lazy in worship." ---Yemitom (From here.)

Bonn II Conference

2011-12-06T05:15:00.000-08:00

December 05, 2011
by Charles Recknagel

BONN, Germany -- The message coming from Bonn was clear: the international community intends to support Afghanistan after foreign combat troops leave the country, and that means new training for Afghanistan's security forces and further development aid for its economy.

At least that's the message conveyed by the bevy of high-powered representatives of 85 countries and 16 international organizations gathered at the so-called Bonn II conference.

But if participants' focus was on committing to Afghanistan after foreign troops leave by the end of 2014, two key players made their presence felt by their absence: Pakistan and the Taliban.

"We would, of course, have benefited from Pakistan's contribution to this conference," U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton noted. "And to that end, nobody in this hall is more concerned than the United States is about getting an accurate picture of what occurred in the recent border incident."

Damage Control
Pakistan said it would not come after NATO accidentally attacked two of its border posts late last month, killing 24 Pakistani soldiers.

Pakistan is a key player in the Afghan crisis because it is on Pakistani soil that Afghan insurgents have their safe havens. Islamabad also is widely believed to wield such influence with some Taliban groups -- particularly the Haqqani faction -- that Islamabad's cooperation is needed to bring them into any Afghan peace process.

Islamabad's boycott left Kabul, which has difficult relations with its neighbor, in the awkward position of trying to do damage control.

Afghan Deputy Foreign Minister Jawed Ludin told RFE/RL that Afghanistan and Pakistan continued to talk bilaterally about security matters no matter what happened on the larger world stage.

"Well, Pakistan's support is absolutely crucial, but we are working with them on that on a bilateral basis," Ludin said. "That is a process that is ongoing, as I said. But their absence from this conference is not going to affect our bilateral relationship."

For it's part, the Taliban's absence only further underlined the challenges to peace in Pakistan. Afghan officials confirmed to RFE/RL that no active members of the Taliban, nor any prominent former members of the organization, were present in Bonn.

No Ignoring The Neighbors
Yet Pakistan's and the Taliban's absence was important for other reasons as well. One is the much-voiced hope in Bonn that peace in Afghanistan could help the entire region become more peaceful and prosperous.

As Afghan President Hamid Karzai told the conference: "A stable, secure, and developed Afghanistan is not just the noble desire of the Afghan people and our international friends. It is a necessity if the region is to achieve security and meaningful economic integration."

Kabul and the international community know that one day Afghanistan will have to stand on its own economic base, and that base can only come through trade with its immediate and extended neighbors.
Other Kabul officials brought this same message with them as they attended the conference.

Afghan Finance Minister Hazrat Omar Zakhilwal told RFE/RL that Kabul wanted good economic relations with all of its neighbors, even those like Iran that today give its Western backers cause for alarm.

"We don't get involved in the politics of the U.S. and others. We have kept the best of relationships with Pakistan. We have kept the best of relations with Iran. We want to keep the best of relations and the U.S. is supportive of this," Zakhilwal said.

"Again, they are keeping their bilateral politics with Iran and everybody else to themselves and do not make it part of their policy in Afghanistan," he noted. "And Afghans genuinely want their country to move toward stability and to become a genuine, active part of the region which includes Iran, which includes Pakistan, and which includes the north, China, and everyone else."

Because of its location, Afghanistan is a land bridge for transit, transportation, and connectivity within the region. Routes through Afghanistan could provide Central Asia with direct access to the booming markets of India, a prospect that interests gas-exporting Turkmenistan, to mention just one state.
This conference took place 10 years after the first Bonn conference sought to set out the foundations of a new Afghanistan following the toppling of the Taliban in 2001.

The conference did not focus on pledges of new dollar amounts for Afghanistan but on showing that the world's willingness to help the strife-torn country remains undiminished.

Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/pakistan_taliban_absence_felt_at_afghan_conference/24412372.html

Mexico Fails to Protect Wornat and Monroy

2011-12-05T15:46:00.000-08:00

(ARTICLE 19/IFEX) - Mexico City, December 3, 2011 - On November 18, ARTICLE 19 reported on threats against journalist Olga Wornat and her research assistant Edgar Monroy, as well as the reprehensible inaction of the Mexican state, particularly personnel at the Secretariat for Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Ministry of the Interior, who are responsible for coordinating the measures announced a year ago under a system that is supposedly in place to protect journalists. Effective protection and actions to stop the threats have been virtually nonexistent in this case.

The e-mailed death threats have continued, such that the targeted individuals are planning to add information on the new developments to a complaint submitted to the Mexican authorities, and ARTICLE 19 will submit a formal complaint before the appropriate regional and international authorities responsible for protecting human rights.

According to documentation based on the contents of the threats received by Wornat and Monroy, there are sufficient grounds to believe that they are aimed at uncovering further information and the identity of the sources for a journalistic investigation focusing on the administration of President Felipe Calderón.

ARTICLE 19 reiterates its concern over the high level of risk faced by both Wornat and Monroy, and at the same time alerts Mexican society and the international community to the danger presented by the illusion of protection that has been promoted by the federal government.

ARTICLE 19 sends a strong appeal to the Mexican state calling for an investigation into the death threats in order to identify and punish those who are behind them. The organisation also asks President Calderón to make a clear and strong statement against any attempts to limit freedom of expression and the free flow of ideas and opinions, even if it means questioning the results and performance of those who are in charge of governmental affairs under his leadership.

ARTICLE 19 believes the federal government should honour the commitments made in an October 27 hearing, in Washington, before the Inter American Commission on Human Rights on this very matter.

For more information:

ARTICLE 19
Free Word Centre
60 Farringdon Road
London
EC1R 3GA
United Kingdom
info (@) article19.org
Phone: +44 20 7324 2517
Fax: +44 20 7490 0566
http://www.article19.org/

Related reading: Mexican Journalists Murdered in Mexico City; Death Toll for Mexican Journalists; Taracena Murder Linked to Las Zetas; Cartel Named in Killing of Torre and Aides; Mexican Journalists Urged to Unite Against Organized Crime; Mexico Indifferent to Abuse of Journalists; Mexico Ignores Cases of Disappeared Journalists; Drug Lords Target Mexican Journalists

Praying in Captivity

2011-12-04T17:00:00.000-08:00

Sergeant Luis Alberto Erazo Mayo, the sole survivor of the recent massacre of four hostages by a Colombian rebel group, said he prayed for his kidnappers during his captivity.

“God exists,” Erazo told reporters, adding that the only hope that sustained him during his ordeal was prayer. Among the few items he brought home in the backpack he made in the jungle was a daily missal.

“I prayed even for the rebels,” he said.

Colombian newspaper El Tiempo reported that Erazo had been kidnapped for more than eleven years by the rebel group FARC, who injured him as he escaped on Nov. 26 during an attempted military rescue.

More than eleven years this man was held by FARC in the jungle. This is an amazing story.

Look carefully at the account of what happened in that attempted military rescue. He was shot, but kept running where instincts led him.

“The rebels told me that if there was any combat that we should run alongside of them because they were going to hand us over,” he added. “I forgot that and I ran towards the jungle. My companions went towards them however, and that is when they killed them at point blank.”

Despite his wounds, Erazo kept running as fast as he could and eventually hid in a tree trunk where he stayed for almost eight hours—until he was convinced that the voices he heard were those of Colombian soldiers.

“In a large field I saw some men in uniforms riding motorbikes. When I saw one guy with a helmet and night-vision goggles, I knew they were soldiers and I walked out. They hugged me and wouldn’t let go, they welcomed me back,” Erazo said in tears.

You can feel the human triumph of the moment, for everyone.

A joyful Erazo

Erazo has been able to see his two daughters in his hometown of Narino and learned that he is now a grandfather. His mother told him the parrot and geese he left behind are still alive and are waiting for him.

What a perfect ending. And a sweet beginning.

When I saw the headline of this story I instantly recalled the rescue of another group of hostages, and the faith and prayer of Ingrid Betancourt.

Lives Sacrificed to Sexual Ideology

2011-12-04T10:16:00.000-08:00

Every year since 1988 the joyful tidings of Christmas have been preceded by the increasingly upbeat message of World AIDS Day, December 1. This year’s theme of “Getting to zero” was launched last month by Hillary Clinton announcing that an “AIDS-free generation” was within grasp if the United States and countries around the world would team up on scientific advancements. President Obama threw an extra $50 million in that direction and he was joined by former presidents George W Bush and Bill Clinton in promising greater commitment to eradicating the disease. The catch-line, “beginning of the end”, was scripted in the White House. Bono, Elton John and Carla Bruni-Sarkozy leant their faces to the cause.

Unfortunately, the promotion seems to have fallen flat. Pleading financial crisis, the governments that are the mainstay of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria (US$21.7 billion pledged last year) have decided to cancel the next funding round and no new applications will be accepted until 2014. This certainly is tragic, since the Global Fund keeps alive nearly half (3.2 million) of the 6.6 million people living on life-saving antiretroviral (ARV) drugs, and efforts to prevent mother-to-child transmission are said to have some success. Progress has also been made against the other big epidemics. However, there are still 7.6 million people who need ARV treatment, and many of those are now unlikely to get it.

But even without the defection of the cash-strapped rich countries there was always going to be bad news to report. AIDS might be on the decline, thanks to treatment, but HIV infections are on the rise again after falling for several years. About 2.7 million people were infected last year, which is double the number brought into treatment, according to The Independent, and people are now becoming infected faster than they can be tested and treated. In Malawi, a small African country with a population of under 15 million, 70,000 new infections are expected next year.

The truth is that there can never be enough billions to “end” an epidemic driven by the sexual ideology of the same parties -- or their partners -- that are supposed to be curing it. This was rather sharply illustrated a couple of months ago with the publication of evidence linking the widespread use of progestin injections as birth control with HIV transmission in sub-Saharan Africa. But even without such a direct channel, the “sex positive” approach of the family planning networks in developing countries guarantees that the behaviour basically responsible for disease -- having multiple sex partners -- does not change.

It is no accident, then, that this week thousands of experts and acolytes are gathered in Senegal for the second International Conference on Family Planning to push forward the global family planning agenda. They too will be demanding billions from the first world’s governments and foundations. The director of the Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health, Dr Amy Tsui, who is also a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, is a lead conference organizer.

One of the things they are talking about at the ICFP conference is, according to one report, “the prevention of HIV through multi-prevention technologies (MPTs) that protect against HIV and act as contraceptives”. They don’t have these MPTs yet, you understand, but they are working on them -- for instance, a vaginal ring that releases both an ARV drug and a contraceptive hormone. What it would cost to provide such technology to African women is anybody’s guess. In the meantime what they have, mainly, is the contraceptive injection, and the condom. One seems to be contributing to the HIV epidemic and the other has never stopped it.

What has shown the potential to stop the epidemic is well known: behaviour change strategies used in Uganda and (less famously) in Zimbabwe. Uganda turned its epidemic around in the early 1990s with its ABC programme focusing on abstinence for the unmarried and “zero grazing” for the rest. This has since been undermined by aid organizations pushing condoms. Zimbabwe in the ten years to 2007 brought its HIV prevalence down from 27 per cent to 16 per cent -- mainly, according to researchers, through reductions in extramarital, commercial, and casual sexual relations”.

Edward Green, the Harvard researcher, who stumbled upon Uganda’s secret in 1993 has been trying ever since to get recognition for behavior change as the most effective means of dealing with the AIDS epidemic. In his recent book, Broken Promises: How the AIDS Establishment has Betrayed the Developing World (2011), he recounts how, at an AIDS conference in Washington in 2004 his presentation received muted applause. But, when a female college student came to the microphone and exclaimed, “I think people should be able to have as much sex as they want, with as many people as they want,” she received a thunderous, standing ovation.

That is what the people of Africa and elsewhere are up against: not only a deadly disease but an international community that has such an investment in its own doctrines about sex and population that it will use all its political and economic power to impose them where they are most destructive. Already in Africa alone more than 46 million people have been infected with HIV and 18 million have died.

The developed nations should be ashamed to stage another World AIDS Day, let alone project its end, until our responsibility for this avoidable epidemic is admitted.

Carolyn Moynihan is deputy editor of MercatorNet.

Hungary: Suspicious Hospital Deaths

2011-12-03T16:00:00.000-08:00

Hungarian police have launched an investigation into 70 suspicious deaths at a Budapest hospital following claims that patients were given lethal drug overdoses.

Police have interviewed doctors and nurses at the Uzsoki Hospital over deaths which took place between 2005 and 2007. They came to light after a former doctor at the hospital wrote an article for a medical journal in which he alleged that cancer patients had died from overdoses of morphine. The hospital has declined to comment.

According to a report in the London Telegraph, it is possible that patients were euthanased by giving them overdoses of morphine. Murder could be difficult to prove, as morphine may have been needed to control severe pain, rather than less potent drugs.

Euthanasia in Hungary is illegal. Istvan Eger, president of the Hungarian Hospital Association, said that any proven "misuse of drugs or euthanasia clearly constitutes a violation of ethics, and is a matter with criminal consequences". ~ London Telegraph, Nov 25

Pakistan Ponders Alignment with USA

2011-12-03T11:00:00.000-08:00

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani on Friday ordered review of the national security paradigm and relations with the United States and Nato, but at the same time admitted that remaining aligned with Washington was the best way to achieve peace in Afghanistan.

“We believe that the way forward is to make honest efforts to get clarity and develop coherence, especially between Pakistan, Afghanistan and the United States for instituting a credible process for a durable political settlement,” Mr Gilani said in his opening remarks at a meeting of the Parliamentary Committee on National Security (PCNS).

The session had been specially convened to discuss the Nov 26 Nato attacks on border posts and the government’s response.

The parliamentary committee will frame recommendations on how to conduct the complicated relationship with Washington.

The Director General of Military Operations, Maj Gen Ashfaq Nadeem Ahmed, gave a briefing to the committee on the strikes and their impact on relations with the US. Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar, Defence Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar and Interior Minister Rehman Malik attended the meeting.

This is perhaps the first time during the current cyclic trough, which has been marked by high-pitched rhetoric, that the prime minister underscored the importance of working with the US, albeit just for success of the intended political process in Afghanistan.

The prime minister, in keeping with the national mood, however, punctuated his remarks with the usual rhetoric: “Clearly, there is a limit to our patience. Cooperation cannot be a one-way street.”

It was interesting to note that despite Mr Gilani’s wise counsel about working closely with the US and Afghanistan, the committee upheld the decision on boycotting the Bonn conference on Afghanistan, which is regarded as one of the most important international initiatives for the future of Afghanistan.

Several members of PCNS, including Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao and Afrasayab Khattak, also opposed the boycott.

Foreign Minister Khar later apprised her British and German counterparts about the decision.

There is a consensus that absence of Pakistan from the negotiating table will render the outcome of the conference irrelevant.

Immediately after last Saturday’s incident, the civilian government and military leadership reacted by blocking Nato’s supply route and asking the US to vacate the Shamsi airbase in 15 days. Both retaliatory measures have a bearing on Afghanistan’s security.
Mr Gilani, nevertheless, tried to dispel an impression that Pakistan was stalling the Afghan peace process.

“I would like to avail myself of this opportunity to underscore, once again, that Pakistan, as a responsible state, is ready to make its indispensable contribution to regional peace and security, in particular to support an inclusive process of national reconciliation and peace in Afghanistan.

“We have repeatedly stated that stability and peace in Afghanistan is in Pakistan’s national interest. We have participated and supported initiatives for peace in Afghanistan and the concept of regional economic cooperation.”

He spelt out conditions for a rapprochement with the US, which included respect for the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity; a firm and categorical commitment on inviolability’ of Pakistan’s borders and an assurance that incidents like the one on Nov 26 would not be repeated.

“The terms of our engagement with the United States and Nato/Isaf (International Security Assistance Force) have to be revisited on the basis of sovereign equality, mutual interest and mutual respect,” he said.

“Our continued cooperation in this regard can only be premised on a partnership approach that is consistent with Pakistan’s national interests and scrupulous respect for its sovereignty, independence and absolutely zero tolerance for any transgression against Pakistan’s frontiers.”

REVIEW OF NATIONAL SECURITY: The prime minister used the occasion to order a review of the national security paradigm to deter recurrence of incidents like the weekend attack by Nato in which 24 Pakistani soldiers died.
“These dastardly attacks in the dead of night cannot but be construed as a grave infringement of Pakistan’s territorial frontiers by Nato/Isaf and definitely compel us to revisit our national security paradigm. These attacks also have serious implications for regional peace and security,” he noted.

The May 2 US raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound and the latest attack on a border post has raised questions about the efficacy of defence systems, which consume large sums of taxpayers money every year.

Army chief Gen Kayani, through a communiqué circulated among troops on Thursday, allowed soldiers posted on the Pak-Afghan border to respond to any future attack by US/Nato forces without waiting for instructions from the command.

Mr Gilani referred to Gen Kayani’s directive in his speech. “Instructions have been issued to all units of the Pakistan armed forces to respond, with full force, to any act of aggression and infringement of Pakistan’s territorial frontiers.”

It is expected that the Army may review the role of deployment along Pak-Afghan border. Additionally, response mechanisms may be updated to minimise reaction time.

The parliamentary committee will reconvene on Thursday ( Dec 8 ) to frame its recommendations on ties with US and national security policy. The proposals will be tabled in a joint session of parliament, which is expected to be summoned soon.

Source: Pakistan Dawn

Camp Victory Now Under Iraqi Control

2011-12-03T06:58:00.000-08:00

VOA News, Dec. 2
The base that once served as headquarters for the U.S. military in Iraq is now under Iraqi control.

A United States military spokesman said U.S. officials handed over Camp Victory to Iraq Friday, after officials from both countries signed the necessary paperwork. There was no formal handover ceremony.

About 13,000 U.S. troops remain in Iraq, but are scheduled to leave by the end of the month. The pullout will end a military presence that began with the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled former dictator Saddam Hussein.

Camp Victory Fast Facts
A look at the sprawling military complex near Baghdad, that served as hub of U.S. operations:

■U.S. military headquarters in Iraq since 2003

■Constructed around lavish palace complex built by Saddam Hussein

■Saddam was imprisoned here before his 2006 execution

■Top U.S. military officials lived in complex, encircled by 42 km of protective walls

■Iraqis considering several ideas for future of complex including possible use as military barracks, cultural center, five-star hotels

Camp Victory, a sprawling U.S. military compound on the outskirts of Baghdad, had served as the U.S. military headquarters in Iraq since 2003.

Top U.S. military officials lived at the site, which is encircled by 42 kilometers of protective walls.

At its height, the base was home to more than 40,000 troops and military-related personal.

The sprawling base was built on and around a lavish palace complex constructed by late Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Saddam was imprisoned at the compound before his trial and execution in 2006.

The Wall Street Journal says Iraqis are considering a number of ideas on the future use of the complex, including as a military barracks, a cultural center or five-star hotels.

Charles Ingabire Murdered in Uganda

2011-12-02T14:09:00.000-08:00

(HRNJ-Uganda/IFEX) - Kampala, 2 December 2011 - Charles Ingabire, the editor of Rwandan newspaper "Inyenyeri", was shot and killed by unidentified gunmen on 30 November.

Ingabire, 32, a vocal critic of President Paul Kagame, was reportedly shot at Makies 2 Bar in Bukesa, a Kampala suburb along Sir Apollo Kaggwa Road. Currently, his body is at Mulago National Referral Hospital mortuary.

"Inyenyeri" is a vernacular online news magazine: http://inyenyerinews.org/

Sources revealed to Human Rights Network for Journalists-Uganda (HRNJ-Uganda) that two people are in police custody at Old Kampala police station including Onzima David, a security guard, and Robinah Nabunnya, a waitress at Makies 2 Bar.

The sources added that the police have recovered five cartridges of sub machine gun bullets that are believed to have been used in the murder.

Kampala Metropolitan Police spokesperson Ibin Senkumbi confirmed Ingabire's murder to HRNJ-Uganda. However, he said that the body was recovered on the morning of 1 December 2011 and it was unknown that the deceased was a journalist until today, 2 December, when relatives went to police to complain.

"The journalist walked into the bar with an unidentified friend just a few minutes after midnight and he was shot dead within the bar gardens. We have recovered his phone, which is helping us with the investigations. We are also using information from the two suspects to understand what exactly happened."

Police are still holding onto the body of the deceased, saying investigations are underway. The relatives went to Mulago to get the body on the morning of 2 December but they were denied access to it.

Ingabire is the second Rwandan editor to be shot dead by unknown gunmen in less than two years. Jean-Leonard Rugambage, the 34-year-old editor for privately-owned tabloid Umuvugizi, was killed in 2010 in Kigali.

"It's unfortunate that attacks aiming to silence critical voices are spreading beyond Rwanda and the gunmen continue to be unknown. There's a need for a special and independent body to investigate all murders that have claimed journalists' lives because of their work, otherwise we shall continue losing journalists and other people who are killed in cold blood," said HRNJ-Uganda Programmes Coordinator Geoffrey Wokulira Ssebaggala.

HRNJ-Uganda extends its heartfelt condolences to the family of the deceased and the entire journalism profession in the region and beyond for the loss of such a brilliant professional.

HRNJ-Uganda calls upon the government of Uganda to consider inviting Interpol into the investigation for concern that Ugandan forces might fail to divulge the results of the findings to the public, as in previous investigations.

For more information:
Human Rights Network for Journalists - Uganda
Kivebulaya Road at Mengo - Bulange Kampala Opp. St. Marcelino Preparatory School
P.O.Box 71314 Clock Tower
Kampala, Uganda
Phone: +256 414 667627 / +256 701 810079

http://www.hrnjuganda.org/