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Radical Takeover Pt. 8 – A Seat for the Pope at King David’s Tomb

Israel seems to have sold Jerusalem to the Vatican.

An historic agreement has been drafted between Israel and the Vatican. The Israeli authorities have granted the Pope an official seat in the room where the Last Supper is believed to have taken place, on Mount Zion in Jerusalem, and where David and Solomon, Jewish kings of Judea, are considered by some researchers, to also be buried.It is the culmination of a long campaign by the Catholic Church to regain religious stewardship over the place where Jesus is supposed to have broken bread and drunk wine with his disciples on the eve of his crucifixion.

This is an enormous issue pushed through without any public debate.
According to our sources, the agreement, which is expected to be ratified next June, gives the Pope a “special authority” over the second floor of the building, so that Christian pilgrims will be able to celebrate religious functions like Pope John Paul did in 2000.

The agreement constitutes Israel’s capitulation to the Vatican’s efforts to “Christianize” the holy site, like when a Catholic convent was built in Auschwitz.
The Catholic Church has long wanted control over part of the area on Mt. Zion so as to turn it into an international religious center for Catholics. The blueprint of the agreement reads as follows: “The Vatican hands over this use of the Cenacle to the Custody of the Holy Land which will keep the Cenacle open from 6 AM to 8 AM for the celebration of the Holy Mass”.
In the long term, the gesture will increase tensions between Jews and the large assets of the Vatican. The Church has long been working to reduce Jewish rights in Jerusalem and in the Old City. Now, after the Muslim Waqf authority expelled the Christians from the Temple Mount and turned it into a mosque, it’s the turn of the Vatican to lay its hands on the Jewish Jerusalem.
The Custody of the Holy Land, the Franciscan order who, with Vatican approval, is in charge of the holy sites, campaigns with the Arabs against Israel.

As far back as May 2000, Yasser Arafat met Islamic and Christian clergymen at the presidential offices in Ramallah to back Palestinian Arab sovereignty over Jerusalem. Among the clergymen who attended the meeting, Diodoros I, patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church, Torkom II, patriarch of the Armenian Orthodox Church, Catholic Patriarch Michel Sabbah and officials from the Custody of the Holy Land.
“An official meeting took place in Ramallah, Palestine, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the State of Palestine”. This is the official note of the Vatican press office about the meeting between the Catholic officials and the PLO representatives which took place this week.
The Vatican is also asking that Israel hand over to the Vatican’s control dozens of sites, 19 in Judea and Samaria and 28 in Jerusalem. The Catholic Church want to discuss some properties on Mount of Olives, Har Hazeitim, which is the very history of the Jewish people. If you want to keep Jerusalem united, you have to keep Har Hazeitim. The Vatican knows that.
In 1989 charges were made by the Catholic authorities that Israel desecrated the Cenacle on Mount Zion. The charges, which appeared in the Italian bishops’ newspaper Avvenire, said that the Israelis put a memorial plaque on the roof of the Cenacle. The plaque was put in place after the 1948 War of Independence in memory of soldiers who fell in the Old City and whose burial place was unknown. Every year, the bereaved families cleaned the plaque.
Why did the Catholic authorities complain? Last year a similar charge was made from the Catholic authorities that Israel wants to “Judaize” Mount Zion.
Should the Vatican gain sovereignty over Mount of Zion, millions of Christian pilgrims will flock to the site, and this will threaten the Israeli presence in the Old City’s Jewish Quarter and Jewish access to the Western Wall.

The Vatican wants the Jews out of the Old City and apparently Israel’s government is agreeing with them. Turning the Cenacle into an active church is also a way of desecrating the holiness of the site known as the Tomb of David.
The Vatican and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation expressed a common position in the Basic Agreement of 15 February 2000, intended to support the recognition of a special statute for the City of Jerusalem. In the memorandum, signed by Vatican officials and the PLO, an organization dedicated to the mass deportation of Israel’s Jews, the Catholic Church wants Israel relinquishing sovereignty at the Western Wall and the Temple Mount. The Vatican-PLO agreement’s preamble on Jerusalem shows that the Vatican’s attitude on Israel’s capital is still stuck in the unforgivable anti-Semitic rhetoric of the 1940s.
Until 1948, Christian access to the Cenacle was severely limited, because it was used as a mosque. Since then, the State of Israel is committed to protecting the holy places of all religions, and guaranteeing the right of worship for all faiths.

But no Israeli government must tolerate any policy of division, “shared control” or “internationalization” that opens the door to a return to the Arab apartheid of Jordanian occupation between 1948 and 1967.

Jerusalem is not for sale. For thousands of years, the Cenacle area was almost always totally closed off to Jews.
Sovereignty over Mount Zion is politics, not only religion. The day after the Pope celebrated a mass on Mt. Zion in 2000, he went to Yasser Arafat headquarter to support the Palestinians’ right to return.

A few months later, the Oslo war began. And Jews were sacrified again on the altar of “peace”. It was their last supper.
This week, the Vatican in its official documents began referring to the “State of Palestine”.

USA’s Drones Attacks

journeymanpictures

They can move together in swarms, build towers, dance, throw and catch, assess targets and soon will even make their own decisions. Both in war and at home, drones are developing fast and gaining control.

The screens at a US air force base lock onto a civilian car driving along a road in New Mexico. “We don’t simulate or actually engage them, it is just training to follow a moving target.” The question, “with their permission?” is met with an embarrassed pause and the faltering reply, “we’re just following them with a camera”. Rapidly becoming acceptable practice, increasingly police are also using drones to survey civilian areas for criminals. The US air force are now training more ‘desk pilots’ than traditional pilots, raising concerns that war is becoming “just a big computer game”, allowing pilots to kill a few Taliban fighters and then go home for dinner. Nathan Wessler, a civil rights lawyer, strongly argues that the US using drones to kill targets in countries like Yemen despite not being in a state of war with them could lead to serious repercussions. “It is really a dangerous precedent. The technology of drones is not that complicated and there are dozens of nations developing it.” And these robots are advancing. Future drones will be able to independently find targets and decide to attack. As Iran lays its hands on a US spy drone, which experts in this report argue they are “perfectly capable of copying”, has an uncontrolled new arms race already begun?

To watch the documentary by Journey Man Pictures, click on the link entitled “Attack of the Drones – USA“.

Radical Takeover Pt. 6 – Rome’s Support of Occupy Wall Street & World Bank

Rome’s engineering of communism, and social justice, over the last 300 years, reveals the hidden agenda within its campaign for global governance. The popes desire to offer the world a peace & prosperity plan that appears to be for the common good of mankind, when it has nothing to do with peace, and common good, and everything to do with deception and tyranny. Rome’s approach to winning the confidence of the world is the “Hegelian dialectic”, which creates opposition, and chaos, so that it can offer a solution that appeals to both sides of the opposition; thus producing a third way, in which everyone agrees on a compromise that works in favor of Rome, which manipulated the conflict from the beginning.

Rome’s participation within economic conflict can be seen below:

WashingtonPost.Com –

Does the Vatican’s new document calling for a “central world bank” and a “supranational authority” to advance the common economic good mean that Pope Benedict supports the complaints behind the Occupy Wall Street movement?

“ ‘The basic sentiment’ behind the protests is in line with Catholic social teaching and the new document on global finance issued Oct. 24 by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace,” council President Cardinal Peter Turkson, said to the National Catholic Reporter.

But a debate over the authority of the document, and the requirement (or not) of Catholics to support it, is now being waged by some of America’s most prominent Catholic writers, scholars and activists.

You can read the full text of the document, Note on financial reform from the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, in the embed below. Among the findings are calls for:

The world’s peoples to adopt an ethic of solidarity as the animating core of their action

— A “world political authority” to manage “the growing interdependence between states and regions of the world becomes more and more obvious as well as the need for answers that are not just sectorial and isolated, but systematic and integrated, rich in solidarity and subsidiarity and geared to the universal common good”

— A “central world bank” that regulates the flow and system of monetary exchanges similar to the national central banks

NPR.Org –

Thomas J. Reese is a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University, and a former editor of America, the national Catholic weekly magazine.

The Vatican released a document on the world economy on Monday that will cause heartburn in the Tea Party, but will be cheered by the folks occupying Wall Street.

This will surprise most Americans who think the pope is a Republican because he opposes abortion and gay marriage. But when it comes to economic justice, Pope Benedict XVI is to the left of President Obama. Heck, he is even to the left of Nancy Pelosi.Those who read the pope’s 2009 encyclical “Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth)” will not be surprised by this new document. In that encyclical, the pope decried “corruption and illegality” among economic and political elites in both rich and poor countries. He told financiers they must rediscover the ethical foundation of their activity and stop abusing savers. He wants a radical rethinking of economics so that it is guided not simply by profits but by “an ethics which is people-centered.”

Benedict notes that economic “inequalities are on the increase” across the globe. He does not accept the trickle-down theory, which says that all boats will rise with the economic tide. Benedict condemns the “scandal of glaring inequalities” and sees a role for government in the redistribution of wealth.

Yes, you heard that right. The pope favors the redistribution of wealth. When was the last time you heard a liberal Democrat use those words?

The pope also disagrees with those who believe that the economy should be free of government regulation. An unregulated economy “shielded from ‘influences’ of a moral character has led man to abuse the economic process in a thoroughly destructive way,” he writes. This has “led to economic, social and political systems that trample upon personal and social freedom, and are therefore unable to deliver the justice that they promise.”

Critics have complained that the Occupy Wall Street movement has no program. The people in the movement could do a lot worse than to study what the pope has said about the economy. Sadly, few Catholics know of the church’s teaching on economic justice, which has been called the church’s best-kept secret.

The pope does not have a magic plan to restore economic prosperity, but he does focus on the values that a political and economic system must support. The priority, he says, must be “access to steady employment for everyone.” And that means not just here in the United States, but also in the developing world, where we must rescue “peoples, first and foremost, from hunger, deprivation, endemic diseases and illiteracy.”

So if you are having a tea party, don’t bother inviting the pope; he won’t come. But if you see a white, solar-powered car heading toward Wall Street, it might just be the popemobile.

CatholicNews.Com –

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The world authority envisioned by two popes as a way to ensure global peace and justice would not be a superpower, but primarily a moral force with limited jurisdiction, Pope Benedict XVI said.

The pope made his remarks Dec. 3 to a plenary session of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, which was scheduled to meet for three days to discuss the theme of “political authority and global governance.”

In his address, Pope Benedict recalled that Blessed John XXIII had called for the “construction of a world community, with a corresponding authority,” to serve the “common good of the human family.”

The pope also cited his own 2009 encyclical “Caritas in Veritate,” in which he called for a “true world political authority” to ensure international cooperation, peace and environmental protection.

The church offers “principles of reflection, criteria of judgment and practical guidelines” for such an organization, but no concrete legal or political recommendations, Pope Benedict said in his address.

Yet the pope stipulated that the proposed body would not be a “superpower, concentrated in the hands of a few, which would dominate all peoples, exploiting the weakest.” The authority in question, he said, “must be understood, first and foremost, as a moral force, a power to influence in accordance with reason, that is, a participatory authority, limited by law in its jurisdiction.”

The council’s president, Cardinal Peter Turkson, told Vatican Radio that the agenda for the plenary session would include the topic of global financial governance as a response to the world financial crisis.

In October 2011, the council called for establishment of a “central world bank” to regulate the global financial industry and the international money supply as a step toward the world authority envisioned by Blessed John and Pope Benedict.

Pope Benedict’s address also touched on threats to human dignity from different forms of materialism in contemporary culture.

“The man of today is considered primarily from a biological point of view, or as ‘human capital,’ a ‘resource,’ a cog in a productive and financial machine that dominates him,” the pope said.

“New ideologies — such as the hedonistic and egoistic one of sexual and reproductive rights, or that of a disorderly financial capitalism that transgresses politics and dismantles the real economy — contribute to make the employee and his work seem ‘minor’ goods and to undermine the natural foundations of society, especially the family,” he said.

END

The conflict is capitalism vs. communism, and the compromise/”third way”, which is Communitarianism, which is a merging of capitalism & communism. Communitarianism is consistent with “Rerum Novarum – Catholic Social Teaching“, because it takes away from the individualism of capitalism by stressing the importance of individuals being within, and contributing to the common good of the, community. The community that Rome has in mind is “the world”.

Radical Takeover Pt. 5 – Rome’s Social Justice & Communism

The oldest report of communism can be found in the writings of the Greek philosopher, Plato, and has been both implemented and perfected by the Jesuit order of the Roman Catholic church. The resurrection of communism took place in Paraguay of South America in the 17th, and 18th, century, in what is known as the Jesuit Reductions of Paraguay. The Jesuit Reductions were brought about because of Romes interest in making Catholicism the dominate religion of the indigenous region. At the same time, the Spanish colonies were enslaving the natives, and no conversions to Catholicism were taking place, nor were their any clergymen who spoke the language of the natives. To solve this problem, the Jesuits decided to employ radical conversion tactics to win over the natives to the religion of Rome, such as promising freedom from slavery, and equal status with Spaniard colonists, if they would agree to convert to Catholicism.

Within a short time, the number of converts numbered in the tens of thousands, and continued to grew exponentially. These converts lived in colonies controlled by Jesuits, who enforced communism as their form of governance. This fact is also affirmed by Roman Catholic history, as stated below:

NewAdvent.Org –

The economic system of the Reductions

The economic basis was a sort of communism, which, however differed materially from the modern system which bears the same name, and was essentially theocratic. “The Jesuits”, writes Gelpi y Ferro, “realized in their Christian commonwealth all that is good and nothing that is bad in the plans of modern Socialists and Communists.” The land and all that stood upon it was the property of the community. The land was apportioned among the caciques, who allotted it to the families under them. Agricultural instruments and draught-cattle were loaned from the common supply. No one was permitted to sell his plot of land or his house, called abamba, i.e. “own possession.”

The communist regime of the Jesuits has also been affirmed by the following author:

The Revolutionary Movement – A Diagnosis of World Disorders by J. Findlater (1933)

Giovanni Battista Nicolini’s History of the Jesuits (1854) P. 303 –

When once the Jesuits had raised up a generation so devoted and obedient, they then brought into operation their system of government, and made a successful attempt to realise that republic preconceived of old by Plato, and which, with perhaps more interested views is held out to us by the Socialists of our own day. In fact, their form of a republic was nothing else than that Communism which the famous Cabet is now trying to establish in nearly the same regions; the only difference being, that the Jesuits substituted themselves for the state or community.

In the 19th century, the Jesuit philosopher, Luigi Taparelli, who coined the term “social justice”, implemented the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas to be the voice of Rome in regards to the social changes that were taking place. Taparelli’s writings heavily influenced Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical, Rerum Novarum, which was an open letter that addressed the condition of the working classes, and amounted to the affirmation of socialism, as opposed to the traditional approach to communism, wherein private property is excluded. Out of this Catholic Socialist’s philosophy has come a theology of work, which is currently being taught to Roman Catholics in the West. For more information on Rerum Novarum, click on the link entitled “Rerum Novarum – Catholic Social Teaching“.

This teaching on social justice can also be seen in the 20th century with the rise of “Liberation Theology“, which was started by the Dominican Priest, Gustavo Gutiérrez Merino., who attempted to reinvent the gospel of salvation into a more earth-based, works based, salvation, which is not centered on salvation from the bandage to sin, and the wrath of God, but, instead, is centered in the troubles, and injustices, of the poor, wherein converts must work to save the world from the plight of poverty, and oppression.

Aspects of the “social justice” philosophy can be seen today, such as “The Collective Salvation of the Superior Group” mentality, which can be seen in fanatical religious groups, such as the New Apostolic Reformation, who have a strong emphasis on liberation theology, and even dominionism. Another would be IB’s “World Peace” Indoctrination, wherein student around the world are being taught how to be world citizens, who work together for world peace. Alice Bailey & The Christian World Servers are yet another example of this due to the fact that they claim to be working together for the good of mankind. In this way, All Roads Lead to Rome for the good of mankind, because all religions, and even Protestant leaders, are coming into union with Rome for this very purpose, and is building a dominate world church, which author, Brannon Hows calls a “Religious Trojan Horse“.

These radical views of communism, and “social justice” are rooted in Roman Catholic philosophers for the intentions of advancing the kingdom of Rome, and not the good of mankind. Though Rome promises peace, its goals are deception, and enslavement for the world, just as it enslaved the Holy Roman Empire. Those who are seducing, and deceived by its teachings, and false hope for world peace, will be greatly disappointed.

1Thessalonians 5

1   But concerning the times and the seasons, brethren, you have no need that I should write to you.
2   For you yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night.
3   For when they say, “Peace and safety!” then sudden destruction comes upon them, as labor pains upon a pregnant woman. And they shall not escape.

Daniel 9

27 Then he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week; But in the middle of the week He shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of abominations shall be one who makes desolate, Even until the consummation, which is determined, Is poured out on the desolate.”

Revelation 17

1   Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and talked with me, saying to me, “Come, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters,
2   with whom the kings of the earth committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth were made drunk with the wine of her fornication.”
3   So he carried me away in the Spirit into the wilderness. And I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast which was full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.
4   The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls, having in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the filthiness of her fornication.
5   And on her forehead a name was written: MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.
6   I saw the woman, drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. And when I saw her, I marveled with great amazement.
7   But the angel said to me, “Why did you marvel? I will tell you the mystery of the woman and of the beast that carries her, which has the seven heads and the ten horns.
8   The beast that you saw was, and is not, and will ascend out of the bottomless pit and go to perdition. And those who dwell on the earth will marvel, whose names are not written in the Book of Life from the foundation of the world, when they see the beast that was, and is not, and yet is.
9   “Here is the mind which has wisdom: The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits.
10   There are also seven kings. Five have fallen, one is, and the other has not yet come. And when he comes, he must continue a short time.
11   The beast that was, and is not, is himself also the eighth, and is of the seven, and is going to perdition.
12   “The ten horns which you saw are ten kings who have received no kingdom as yet, but they receive authority for one hour as kings with the beast.
13   These are of one mind, and they will give their power and authority to the beast.
14   These will make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb will overcome them, for He is Lord of lords and King of kings; and those who are with Him are called, chosen, and faithful.”
15   Then he said to me, “The waters which you saw, where the harlot sits, are peoples, multitudes, nations, and tongues.
16   And the ten horns which you saw on the beast, these will hate the harlot, make her desolate and naked, eat her flesh and burn her with fire.
17   For God has put it into their hearts to fulfill His purpose, to be of one mind, and to give their kingdom to the beast, until the words of God are fulfilled.
18   And the woman whom you saw is that great city which reigns over the kings of the earth.”

2Thessalonians 2

1   Now, brethren, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him, we ask you,
2   not to be soon shaken in mind or troubled, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as if from us, as though the day of Christ had come.
3   Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition,
4   who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.
5   Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things?
6   And now you know what is restraining, that he may be revealed in his own time.
7   For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way.
8   And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming.
9   The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders,
10   and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved.
11   And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie,
12   that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

Radical Takeover Pt. 4 – Rome’s Crusade of Genocide in Rwanda

Below is a documentary entitled “In the Name of God”. The film is about Rome’s crusade in Rwanda, which started with Rome’s priests teaching Catholicism to the Tutsis, who were the elite tribe in Rwanda. Rome then made the Tutsis the ruling class of the country. The Tutsis ruled according to the authority, and dictates of Rome’s priests, and bishops. In this way, Catholicism ruled over the country, until the Tutsis tribe liberated themselves from the rule of the Catholic Religion so that they could govern themselves. Rome’s retaliation toward the Tutsis’ rebellion was to convert the Hutus, which were oppressed by the Tutsis, and taught them to commit holy war against the Tutsis by killing everyone in the tribe; men women, and children, and to reestablish Roman Catholic rule over Rwanda; thus making the Hutus the ruling class. This crusade was led by Rome’s bishops, priests, and nuns, and killed more than 800,000 Tutsis over a 3 month period, in which the U.S, and the U.N., did nothing to stop it.

To learn more about this well documented case of genocide by the hands of Rome, click on the links entitled “Innocent Blood“, and “Genocide of the Tutsis – the Role of the Roman Catholic Church“.

The Guardian –

Martin Kimani is deputy director of the Ansari Africa centre at the Atlantic council in Washington DC and associate fellow at the conflict, security and development group at King’s College London. He is presently working on a book on religious belief and genocide in Rwanda

The Guardian –

For Rwandans, the pope’s apology must be unbearable

If you are an Irish Catholic, and have suffered sexual abuse at the hands of a priest, you were recently read a letter from Pope Benedict that tells you: “You have suffered grievously and I am truly sorry. I know that nothing can undo the wrong you have endured. Your trust has been betrayed and your dignity has been violated.”

For any practising Catholic in Rwanda, this letter must be unbearable. For it tells you how little you mean to the Vatican. Fifteen years ago, tens of thousands of Catholics were hacked to death inside churches. Sometimes priests and nuns led the slaughter. Sometimes they did nothing while it progressed. The incidents were not isolated. Nyamata, Ntarama, Nyarubuye, Cyahinda, Nyange, and Saint Famille were just a few of the churches that were sites of massacres.

To you, Catholic survivor of genocide in Rwanda, the Vatican says that those priests, those bishops, those nuns, those archbishops who planned and killed were not acting under the instruction of the church. But moral responsibility changes dramatically if you are a European or US Catholic. To the priests of the Irish church who abused children, the pope has this to say: “You must answer for it before almighty God and before properly constituted tribunals. You have forfeited the esteem of the people of Ireland and brought shame and dishonour upon your confreres.”

The losses of Rwanda had received no such consideration. Some of the nuns and priests who have been convicted by Belgian courts and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, respectively, enjoyed refuge in Catholic churches in Europe while on the run from prosecutors. One such is Father Athanase Seromba, who led the Nyange parish massacre and was sentenced to 15 years in jail by the tribunal. In April 1994, Seromba helped lure over 2,000 desperate men, women and children to his church, where they expected safety. But their shepherd turned out to be their hunter.

One evening Seromba entered the church and carried away the chalices of communion and other clerical vestments. When a refugee begged that they be left the Eucharist to enable them to at least hold a (final) mass, the priest refused and told them that the building was no longer a church. A witness at the ICTR trial remembered an exchange in which the priest’s mindset was revealed.

One of the refugees asked: “Father, can’t you pray for us?” Seromba replied: “Is the God of the Tutsis still alive?” Later, he would order a bulldozer to push down the church walls on those inside and then urge militias to invade the building and finish off the survivors.

At his trial, Seromba said: “A priest I am and a priest I will remain.” This, apparently, is the truth, since the Vatican has never taken back its statements defending him before his conviction.

In the last century, Catholic bishops have been deeply mired in Rwandan politics with the full knowledge of the Vatican. Take Archbishop Vincent Nsengiyumva. Until 1990, he had served as the chairman of the ruling party’s central committee for almost 15 years, championing the authoritarian government of Juvenal Habyarimana, which orchestrated the murder of almost a million people. Or Archbishop André Perraudin, the most senior representative of Rome in 1950s Rwanda. It was with his collusion and mentorship that the hateful, racist ideology known as Hutu Power was launched – often by priests and seminarians in good standing with the church. One such was Rwanda’s first president, Grégoire Kayibanda, a private secretary and protege of Perraudin, whose political power was unrivalled.

The support for Hutu Power was therefore not unknowing or naive. It was a strategy to maintain the church’s powerful political position in a decolonising Rwanda. The violence of the 1960s led inexorably to the 1994 attempt to exterminate Tutsis. These were violent expressions of a political sphere dominated by contentions that Hutu and Tutsi were separate and opposed racial categories. This, too, is one of the legacies of the Catholic missionary, whose schools and pulpits for decades kept up a drumbeat of false race theories.

This turning away from the Rwandan victims of genocide comes at a time when the Catholic church is increasingly peopled by black and brown believers. It is difficult not to conclude the church’s upper reaches are desperately holding on to a fast-vanishing racial patrimony.

Perhaps it is time Catholics forced the leaders of their church to deal with a history of institutional racism that endures, if the church is truly to live up to its fine words. Apologies are not sufficient, no matter how abject. What is demanded is an acknowledgment of the church’s political power and moral culpability, with all the material and legal implications that come with it.

The silence of the Vatican is contempt. Its failure to fully examine its central place in Rwandan genocide can only mean that it is fully aware that it will not be threatened if it buries its head in the sand. While it knows if it ignores the sexual abuse of European parishioners it will not survive the next few years, it can let those African bodies remain buried, dehumanised and unexamined.

This is a good political strategy. And a moral position whose duplicity and evil has been witnessed and documented. For, it turns out, many people, scholars, governments and institutions inside and outside Rwanda are excavating their own roles in the genocide. The Vatican stands as an exception, its moral place now even lower than that of the government of France for its enduring friendship with genocidaires.

Zechariah 11

15   And the LORD said to me, “Next, take for yourself the implements of a foolish shepherd.
16   For indeed I will raise up a shepherd in the land who will not care for those who are cut off, nor seek the young, nor heal those that are broken, nor feed those that still stand. But he will eat the flesh of the fat and tear their hooves in pieces.
17   ” Woe to the worthless shepherd, Who leaves the flock! A sword shall be against his arm And against his right eye; His arm shall completely wither, And his right eye shall be totally blinded.”

Radical Takeover Pt. 3 – Rome’s Extreme Liberal Stance on Gun Control

Rome presents itself to the world as representing the views of conservatives, yet there is an extreme liberal side to Rome that should be noted. One extreme liberal view of Rome is its stance on gun control, as stated below.

TheBlaze.Com –

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican praised President Barack Obama’s proposals for curbing gun violence, saying they are a “step in the right direction.”

The Vatican’s chief spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said Saturday that 47 religious leaders have appealed to members of the U.S. Congress “to limit firearms that are making society pay an unacceptable price in terms of massacres and senseless deaths.”

“I am with them,” Lombardi said, in an editorial carried on Vatican Radio, lining up the Vatican’s moral support in favor of firearm limits.

`’The initiatives announced by the American administration for limiting and controlling the spread and use of weapons are certainly a step in the right direction,” Lombardi said.

Lombardi renewed Vatican appeals for disarmament and encouragement for measures to fight “the production, commerce and contraband of all types of arms,” an industry fueled by `’enormous economic and power interests.”

Continue Reading…

USCatholic.Org –

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The Catholic Church’s position on gun control is not easy to find; there are dozens of speeches and talks and a few documents that call for much tighter regulation of the global arms trade, but what about private gun ownership?

The answer is resoundingly clear: Firearms in the hands of civilians should be strictly limited and eventually completely eliminated.

But you won’t find that statement in a headline or a document subheading. It’s almost hidden in a footnote in a document on crime by the U.S. bishops’ conference and it’s mentioned in passing in dozens of official Vatican texts on the global arms trade.

The most direct statement comes in the bishops’ “Responsibility, Rehabilitation and Restoration: A Catholic Perspective on Crime and Criminal Justice” from November 2000.

“As bishops, we support measures that control the sale and use of firearms and make them safer — especially efforts that prevent their unsupervised use by children or anyone other than the owner — and we reiterate our call for sensible regulation of handguns.”

That’s followed by a footnote that states: “However, we believe that in the long run and with few exceptions — i.e. police officers, military use — handguns should be eliminated from our society.”

That in turn reiterates a line in the bishops’ 1990 pastoral statement on substance abuse, which called “for effective and courageous action to control handguns, leading to their eventual elimination from our society.”

On the world stage, the Vatican has been pushing for decades for limitations not just on conventional weapons of warfare, such as tanks and missiles, but also for stricter limitations on the illegal and legal sale, trade and use of small firearms and weapons, said Tommaso Di Ruzza, the expert on disarmament and arms control at the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.

Di Ruzza told Catholic News Service that the Vatican is one of just a handful of states that would like to see small arms and weapons included in the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty, which would better regulate the flow of conventional arms.

He said while many countries are open to limits on larger weapons systems, most nations aren’t interested in regulating small arms even though they “cause more deaths than all other arms (conventional and non-conventional) together.”

The Vatican’s justice and peace council is working to update its 1994 document, “The International Arms Trade,” to further emphasize the importance of enacting concrete controls on handguns and light weapons, he said.

The current document calls on every nation and state “to impose a strict control on the sale of handguns and small arms. Limiting the purchase of such arms would certainly not infringe on the rights of anyone.”

The more weapons there are in circulation, the more likely terrorists and criminals will get their hands on them, the document said.

The Catholic Church recognizes that “states will need to be armed for reason of legitimate defense,” as Pope Benedict XVI said in a message to a Vatican-sponsored disarmament conference in April 2008.

However, armed defense is something appropriate for nations, not for all individual citizens in a state where rule of law is effective, said Di Ruzza.

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, individuals have a right and a duty to protect their own lives when in danger, and someone who “defends his life is not guilty of murder even if he is forced to deal his aggressor a lethal blow.”

How that “lethal blow” could be licitly wielded is unclear, but the catechism clarifies that repelling the aggressor must be done “with moderation” in order to be “lawful” in the eyes of the church; using “more than necessary violence” would be unlawful, it says.

According to the catechism, the right to use firearms to “repel aggressors” or render them harmless is specifically sanctioned for “those who legitimately hold authority” and have been given the duty of protecting the community.

Di Ruzza said that in “a democracy, where there is respect for institutions (of law), the citizen relinquishes his right to revenge onto the state,” which, through its law enforcement and courts system, aims to mete out a fair and just punishment.

“There is a sort of natural right to defend the common interest and the common good, and in 1791 (when the United States passed the Second Amendment), my right to have a weapon served the common good because there wasn’t an army; the democratic institutions were young and a little fragile, and I could have been useful in a time of war as a soldier,” said Di Ruzza.

But once a nation has a functioning army, police force and court system, “do I still serve the common good with my gun or do I put it at even greater danger?” and promote a lawless kind of “street justice where if you steal my car, I shoot you,” he asked.

The Vatican’s justice and peace council’s 1994 document said, “In a world marked by evil and sin, the right of legitimate defense by armed means exists,” but, Di Ruzza said, it wasn’t lauding the potential of weaponry as much as it was lamenting the existence of arms in an imperfect world.

Nations have a duty, the document said, to reduce if not eliminate the causes of violence.

And as Pope Benedict wrote in his message to the disarmament conference, no reduction or elimination of arms can happen without eliminating violence at its root.

Every person “is called to disarm his own heart and be a peacemaker everywhere,” the pope said.

AmericaMagazine.Org –

Why Gun Control is a Religious Issue by James Martin, SJ

These shootings would not have happened if the shooter did not have such easy access to firearms and ammunition. So religious people need to be invited to meditate on the connection between the more traditional “life issues” and the overdue need for stricter gun control. The oft-cited argument, “Guns don’t kill people, people do,” seems unconvincing. Of course people kill people; as people also procure abortions, decide on euthanasia and administer the death penalty. Human beings are agents in all these matters. The question is not so much how lives are ended, but how to make it more difficult to end lives.

Pro-life religious people need to consider how it might be made more difficult for people to procure weapons that are not designed for sport or hunting or self-defense. Why would anyone be opposed to firmer gun control, or, to put it more plainly, laws that would make it more difficult for mass murders to occur? If one protests against abortions clinics because they facilitate the taking of human life, why not protest against largely unregulated suppliers of firearms because they facilitate the taking of human life as well?

This stance will most likely be unpopular politically. Some on the political right will object my stance on firmer gun control. Some of the political left will object to my stance on abortion. But that doesn’t bother me, because I am not political. I am religious. And so I am for the sanctity of life. Therefore, I am for stricter gun-control laws that will protect lives, not end them.

Continue Reading…

Assasination Attempt on Bulgarian Politician Ahmed Dogan

SophiaGlobe.Com –

Ahmed Dogan, leader of Bulgaria’s Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) party, was assaulted on January 19 as he was delivering a speech to delegates at a party conference at the National Palace of Culture (NDK) in Sofia. The assailant held a gun to Dogan’s head but the gun appeared to be stuck and was unable to take a shot.

Dogan appeared to knock his assailant’s hand away before the two men fell to the ground. The assailant was subdued by security personnel and party delegates – footage by Bulgarian TV station showed that the man was attacked repeatedly by delegates and he appeared bloody when taken outside NDK to a nearby police station.

The Interior Ministry said in a statement that the 25-year-old assailant was from Bourgas, with two prior convictions for causing bodily harm in 2006 and drug possession in 2010. Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov, speaking to reporters outside NDK, later identified him as Oktai Enimehmedov, a Bulgarian national and ethnic Turk.

An investigation was underway, Tsvetanov said, with Sofia city prosecutor Nikolai Kokinov on site. Security also found a knife on the assailant.

Reports said that unlike previous occasions, there were no metal detectors in place outside the hall where the party congress was held – detectors were only put in place after the attack, but the party conference is yet to resume.

The Interior Ministry said that police officers provided security outside the building, but security in the hall itself and immediately outside was taken over by the National Protection Service (the government agency that provides security for all high-ranking officials in Bulgaria).

The assailant appeared to have an accreditation badge for the event and managed to go up the podium without being stopped. Tsvetanov said that the badge was from a previous MRF event and police was attempting to ascertain whether he was, possibly, a party member.

Dogan, who was jailed during the communist era for his resistance to the “revival process” (when the regime forcefully changed the names of ethnic Turks to sound more Bulgarian, deporting hundreds of thousands of people to Turkey), was one of the founders of MRF and has been its leader since 1989. He was later revealed to have been a collaborator of communist-era State Security).

He has often played the part of a kingmaker in Bulgarian politics, especially in the past decade, his party’s support instrumental to keep in power the cabinets of prime ministers Simeon Saxe-Coburg (2001/05) and Sergei Stanishev (2005/09).

On the eve of the party conference, reports in Bulgarian media said that Dogan planned to step down in favour of long-standing deputy Lyutfi Mestan. The Sofia Globe has established that the prepared text of Dogan’s speech included – towards the end – the announcement that he intended not to continue as leader of the party.

Child Sacrifice – Uganda

child sacrifice

JourneyManPictures –

Uganda is a developing country with a growing economy. Yet it struggles against a widespread belief in spirits and superstition – as demonstrated by the alarming rise in incidents of child sacrifice.

Considering the violence experienced by 10 year old Alan Ssemwanga, his survival is “miraculous”. Whilst searching for fruit in the forest, he was attacked by two men – beaten, castrated and left to die. Yet many Ugandans support these attacks, believing that child sacrifice, “leads to happiness and wealth”. Missing evidence, bribery, false statements and local police allowing suspects to skip bail all exacerbates the problem. “The law is weak”, one mother despairs.

To learn more, click on the link entitled “Child Sacrifice – Uganda“.

Slavery: A Global Investigation

slavery

The following link entitled “Slavery: A Global Investigation” is a documentary about an investigation of modern-day slavery throughout the world, including the United States. The film includes first-hand accounts of men, women, and children, who have been kidnapped, and forced to work as slaves.

Crackdown on Liberty Pt. 12 – Gun Control

Guncontrol

USAToday.Com –

The author of a report on Australia’s sweeping gun reform program that was instituted after a mass killing in 1996 says the United States would have many fewer deaths by dramatically decreasing the number of households with guns, the Sydney Morning-Herald reported.

The National Firearms Agreement — reached among the political parties less than two weeks after a gunman killed 35 people and injured 23 at a Tasmanian seaside resort — cut firearm homicide by 59% over the next two decades and firearms suicide by 74%, the report showed.

The law banned semiautomatic and automatic rifles and shotguns and put in place a mandatory buy-back program for newly banned weapons.

The buyback led to the destruction of 650,000 guns, the Sunshine Coast Daily reported.

In August, following the movie theater massacre in Aurora, Colo., former Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who instituted the NFA, wrote in the Melbourne daily The Age that the United States should follow in Australia’s footsteps.

“Australia is a safer country as a result of what was done in 1996,” he wrote. “It will be the continuing responsibility of current and future federal and state governments to ensure the effectiveness of those anti-gun laws is never weakened. The U.S. is a country for which I have much affection. There are many American traits which we Australians could well emulate to our great benefit. But when it comes to guns we have been right to take a radically different path.”

Andrew Leigh, as an academic at the Australian National University, published research in 2010 on the NFA and found that the gun buyback program lowered the proportion of Australian homes with guns from 15% to 8%.

”Our gun buyback took about a fifth of our guns out of circulation but it approximately halved the number of gun-owning households,” Leigh, who is also a Labor party MP, said, the Morning-Herald reported. ‘If the U.S. could dramatically decrease the number of households with guns, it would have many fewer deaths.”

Would the unarmed citizens of Australia agree with this assessment? To hear their opinions on this matter, click on the link entitled “Australia Protests Gun Ban Wake Up American Your Next“.

A 2011 study by the Harvard Injury Control Research Center of the Australian program noted that while 13 gun massacres (involving the death of 4 or more people at one time) occurred in Australia in the 18 years before the NFA, resulting in more than one hundred deaths, there had been no massacres since.

READ: The full report on the Australia gun buyback program

Leigh said that he does not foresee any retreat from the policy by major parties, although the Australian Party has vowed to fight for shooter’s rights if it gains seats in the Senate next year.

Australian native Rupert Murdoch, who is now a U.S. citizen, has strongly echoed the calls for new restrictions on automatic weapons, citing the Australian example.

After the Sandy Hook massacre on Friday, Murdoch wrote on Twitter: ”Terrible news today. When will politicians find courage to ban automatic weapons? As in Oz after similar tragedy.”

That, says the Morning Herald, prompted a none-too-subtle comment from Australian Liberal Malcolm Turnbull about Murdoch’s U.S. cable network. “I suspect they will find the courage when Fox News enthusiastically campaigns for it.”

In his 2010 report, Leigh wrote that there were several important factors in assessing the extent to which the result of the Australian gun buyback program could be extrapolated to other countries.

Among them:

Australian borders are more easily controlled than in countries that have land borders;
Australia’s government in general and its policing and customs services in particular are highly organized and effective;
The NFA had an extremely high degree of political support and was quite competently executed;
The buyback was accompanied by a uniform national system for licensing and registration of firearms.

FoxNews.Com –

President Obama on Wednesday tapped Vice President Biden to lead an administration-wide effort looking at gun control and other measures in the wake of the Connecticut school shooting last week.

“The fact that this problem is complex can no longer be an excuse for doing nothing,” Obama said.

The move marks the first concrete step by the White House toward crafting new firearms restrictions. The president did not announce any major policy decisions on Wednesday, but said the task force of Cabinet officials and outside organizations led by Biden would submit legislative proposals to him no later than January.

Some lawmakers, in the wake of the tragedy, have called for a broad-based response, looking at everything from mental health to school security to American culture. Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., in a call soon joined by others, proposed a national commission examining the entertainment industry and particularly video games.

Obama and top administration officials suggest the response to the Newtown, Conn., mass murder could include a range of recommendations. But the focus, given the debate that has accelerated on Capitol Hill in recent days, is likely to be gun control.

The president said Wednesday that he chose Biden to lead the task force in part because of his role in crafting the 1994 assault-weapons ban. Obama spoke favorably of the ban, as well as proposals to strengthen background checks and ban high-capacity magazines. The president tried to walk a line between assuring Americans that gun rights would largely be protected, while making the case for some new restrictions.

“The fact is the vast majority of gun owners in America are responsible,” he said. “But you know what — I am also betting that the majority, the vast majority of responsible law-abiding gun owners would be some of the first to say that we should be able to keep an irresponsible law-breaking few from buying a weapon of war.”

Obama said he would use “all the powers” of his office to prevent more tragedies. “We won’t prevent them all, but that can’t be an excuse not to try,” he said.

Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday that the administration will craft proposals for Congress to consider over the next few weeks. He said a “strong” Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is also important.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Tuesday that Obama is “actively supportive” of Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s, D-Calif., push to bring back the assault-weapons ban. He also said the president supports closing the so-called gun show loophole.

Gun-rights advocates have started to push back on the swift call for more firearms regulation. The National Rifle Association, after remaining silent in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, released its first — albeit brief — statement on Tuesday, and announced it would be holding a major press conference on Friday.

The White House sees some urgency in formulating a policy response to the shooting, even as Obama and his top aides are consumed with averting the looming fiscal crisis before tax hikes and spending cuts take effect in January.

As many pro-gun lawmakers have called for a greater focus on mental health issues and the impact of violent entertainment, aides say Obama also prefers a holistic approach.

“It’s a complex problem that requires more than one solution,” Carney said Tuesday. “It calls for not only re-examining our gun laws and how well we enforce them, but also for engaging mental health professionals, law-enforcement officials, educators, parents and communities to find those solutions.”

Still, much of the immediate focus after the shooting is on gun control, an issue that has been dormant in Washington for years. Obama expended little political capital on gun issues during his first term, despite several mass shootings, including a movie theater attack in Aurora, Colorado, in the midst of this year’s presidential campaign.

The White House has begun to signal that Obama may be more proactive on gun issues following the murders of the elementary school youngsters, ages 6 and 7.

The policy process Obama announced Wednesday was expected to include input from the departments of Justice, Education, and Health and Human Services. The heads of those agencies met with Obama at the White House on Monday.

To learn about the affect of stricter gun control laws in Washington D.C., click on the link entitled “Gun Control Made For Higher Crime Rates“.

To learn about the affect that banned firearms is having in South Africa, click on the link entitled “South Africa Gun Control And Crime Rates“.

Related article: “After Obama win, U.S. backs new U.N. arms treaty talks“