Pope Attacks Global Economics for Worshipping ‘God of Money’

Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

Pope Francis made one of his strongest attacks on the global economic system on Sunday, saying it could no longer be based on a “god called money” and urged the unemployed to fight for work.

Francis, at the start of a day-long trip to the Sardinian capital, Cagliari, put aside his prepared text at a meeting with unemployed workers, including miners in hard hats who told him of their situation, and improvised for nearly 20 minutes.

“I find suffering here … It weakens you and robs you of hope,” he said. “Excuse me if I use strong words, but where there is no work there is no dignity.”

He discarded his prepared speech after listening to Francesco Mattana, a 45-year-old married father of three who lost his job with an alternative energy company four years ago.

Mattana, his voice trembling, told the pope that unemployment “oppresses you and wears you out to the depths of your soul”.

Read more from this story HERE.

For Migrants, New Land of Opportunity Is Mexico

Photo Credit: Andrea Bruce

Photo Credit: Andrea Bruce

Mexico, whose economic woes have pushed millions of people north, is increasingly becoming an immigrant destination. The country’s documented foreign-born population nearly doubled between 2000 and 2010, and officials now say the pace is accelerating as broad changes in the global economy create new dynamics of migration.

Rising wages in China and higher transportation costs have made Mexican manufacturing highly competitive again, with some projections suggesting it is already cheaper than China for many industries serving the American market. Europe is sputtering, pushing workers away. And while Mexico’s economy is far from trouble free, its growth easily outpaced the giants of the hemisphere — the United States, Canada and Brazil — in 2011 and 2012, according to International Monetary Fund data, making the country more attractive to fortune seekers worldwide.

The new arrivals range in class from executives to laborers; Mexican officials said Friday that residency requests had grown by 10 percent since November, when a new law meant to streamline the process took effect. And they are coming from nearly everywhere.

Guillaume Pace saw his native France wilting economically, so with his new degree in finance, he moved to Mexico City.

Lee Hwan-hee made the same move from South Korea for an internship, while Spanish filmmakers, Japanese automotive executives and entrepreneurs from the United States and Latin America arrive practically daily — pursuing dreams, living well and frequently succeeding.

Read more from this story HERE.

Scores Are Killed by Suicide Bomb Attack at Historic Church in Pakistan

Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

A suicide attack on a historic church in northwestern Pakistan killed at least 78 people on Sunday in one of the deadliest attacks on the Christian minority in Pakistan in years.

The attack occurred as worshipers left All Saints Church in the old quarter of the regional capital, Peshawar, after a service on Sunday morning. Up to 600 people had attended and were leaving to receive free food being distributed on the lawn outside when two explosions ripped through the crowd. “As soon as the service finished and the food was being distributed, all of a sudden we heard one explosion, followed by another,” said Azim Ghori, a witness.

Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, who arrived in Peshawar on Sunday evening, said that 78 people had been killed, including 34 women and 7 children. “Such an attack on women and children is against humanity,” he said.Akhtar Ali Shah, the home secretary of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, said that more than 100 people had been wounded. Mr. Khan said that 37 of those were children.

The dead included two Muslim police officers who had been posted outside the church. Witnesses reported scenes of mayhem as rescue workers ferried victims from the church, which was scattered with body parts, shrapnel and bloodied clothing.

On Sunday afternoon, the bodies of 45 victims were placed in coffins and moved to the nearby St. John’s Church, the oldest church in the city. The coffins were placed in the church playground as dozens of grieving relatives and mourners gathered. A large contingent of police officers was deployed outside the church, and mourners were allowed to enter the compound after a thorough security check. Ambulances were allowed to enter the compound one by one as dead bodies were then placed in vehicles to take them to the morgue.

Read more from this story HERE.

Israel Demands Explanation After French Diplomat Punches Israeli Soldier in the Face (+video)

Photo Credit: Screenshot

Photo Credit: Screenshot

French diplomat Marion Fesneau-Castaing punched an Israeli soldier in the face at the weekend prompting Israel’s Foreign Ministry to demand “an explanation of this blatant violation of diplomatic codes of conduct,” according to reports from AFP and Israel Hayom on Sunday.

Israel Hayom published footage of Fesneau-Castaing striking a helmeted border policeman on the chin with her fist. The punch was thrown on Friday, when IDF troops arrived to disperse a group of European diplomats as they tried to hand out tents and other equipment to Bedouin in Khirbet al-Makhul.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry said, “Israel rejects the one-sided announcement which was published by the spokespersons of HR [Catherine] Ashton and Commissioner Georgieva regarding the events in the Northern Jordan Valley. This announcement ignores the European diplomats’ blunt violation of the law, their disregard to a ruling of the Israeli court and their unnecessary provocation under the alleged pretext of humanitarian aid.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Americans Injured in Deadly Kenya Mall Attack as Al Qaeda-Linked Somali Militant Group Claims Responsibility

Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

By Fox News.

The Al Qaeda-linked Somali militant group al-Shabab is claiming responsibility for a deadly attack targeting non-Muslims at an upscale mall in Kenya’s capital.

A statement from al-Shabab on its official Twitter feed Saturday says the attacks, which killed at least 39 and wounded 150, including American citizens, are retribution for military action by Kenya inside Somalia. The group said it was now shifting the battlefield to Kenya. Police say they are treating the assault as a “terrorist attack.”

Witnesses say the gunmen asked victims they had cornered if they were Muslim: If the answer was yes, several witnesses said, those people were free to go. The non-Muslims were not.

The group said its fighters entered Nairobi’s upscale Westgate Mall at around noon and were still inside more than nine hours later. Kenyan military special forces had entered the mall in an effort to end the standoff.

Officials fear the death toll could rise further. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office issued a statement confirming diplomat Annemarie Desloges died along with one other unidentified Canadian.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

Americans injured as Somali-based militants with ties to al-Qaeda claim responsibility for Kenyan shopping mall massacre in which at least 39 have died, some as young two-years-old, while terrorists brazenly live-tweeted the attack

By Ellie Buchdahl, Stuart Woledge and Ryan Gorman.

Americans were injured in a terror attack by as many as 10 gunmen at a Nairobi, Kenya, shopping center that has left 39 people dead and as many as 300 injured.

The US State Department has confirmed that Americans were hurt in the mass shooting Saturday in a statement issued from the US Embassy in Nairobi, but declined to give names or an exact number of Americans hurt. Americans are not believed to be among the dead at this time. The dead range in ages from two to 78-years-old, according to a Kenyan government official.

Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Somali-based militant group al-Shabaab has claimed responsibility for the atrocity in which men armed with guns and grenades stormed the mall and targeted non-Muslims – al-Shabaab is the Somali arm of al-Qaeda. Amazingly, terrorists live-tweeted the attack until their Twitter account was suspended.

‘We have reports of American citizens injured in the attack, and the U.S. Embassy is actively reaching out to provide assistance,’ Marie Harf, deputy spokesman for the State Department said in the statement.

Read more from this story HERE.

Israel at a Sea Change: Experiencing Second Zionist Revolution

Photo Credit: acroll

Photo Credit: acroll

In May, Dershowitz wrote in The Jerusalem Post and The Huffington Post: “I have now joined this distinguished company of people who get booed for advocating territorial compromise in the interest of peace. I was booed and jeered at the Jerusalem Post Conference on April 28, 2013 when I proposed an idea for restarting peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority … These same people cheered loudly when Glick, a right-wing opponent of any territorial compromise, announced that: ‘There are no competing narratives. There is only the truth.’ For her, the only truth lies in history and archeology.”

Briefly, here are four relevant voices today:

Dershowitz told Newsmax this week: “I think a lot of Israelis are today thinking — as many have thought in the past — that they can’t outsource the defense of their own people, that they have to make their own decisions, make their own judgments and take their own actions as they did when they destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981 and various Syrian reactors more recently.”

Glick wrote in a January blog: “Next week we’re going to vote and it is already clear that Israel is in the midst of the Second Zionist Revolution. The first Zionist revolution was a socialist revolution. The second Zionist revolution is Jewish. Israel is coming into its own. Judaism is flourishing, changing, living and breathing here like it never has anywhere since the destruction of the Second Commonwealth. The secular Left has been eclipsed by the Jewish Right. I don’t call it the religious Right because that is too limiting. What’s happening isn’t just about religion, it’s about everything and that is why non-observant hipsters in Tel Aviv are voting for the Jewish Home party. Non-observant and observant Jews are joining forces and the anti-religious are being left behind.”

Ted Cruz at the Conservative Political Action Conference in March, as reported by The Christian Post: “‘I commend everyone here for respecting the biblical admonition to stand with Israel,’” he said, praising their ‘commitment to speak the truth in an era when so many believe they know better than eternal truths. ‘The alliance between the United States and Israel must remain completely and entirely unshakeable.’”

Moshe Feiglin, Knesset member, wrote in his newsletter this week: “I demand, at the first stage, to close the Temple Mount to Moslems during the Sukkot holiday just as the Mount was closed to Jews for the month of Ramadan.”

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Bernie Quigley is a prize-winning magazine writer and has worked more than 30 years as a book and magazine editor, political commentator and book, movie, music and art reviewer. His essays on politics and world affairs have appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Philadelphia Daily News and other newspapers and magazines. He has published poetry in Painted Bride Quarterly and has written dozens of magazine articles. For 20 years he has been an amateur farmer, raising Tunis sheep and organic vegetables. He has written hundreds of columns for “Pundits Blog” in “The Hill” a political journal in Washington, D.C. He lives in the White Mountains with his wife and four children.

Chinese Military Capable of Jamming U.S. Communications System

Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

China’s military is using stolen U.S. military secrets obtained from a convicted spy to defeat a high-technology communications system used in joint warfighting, combined arms warfare, and missile defenses, according to U.S. officials.

The disclosure that China has the capability of jamming the Joint Tactical Information Distribution System, or JTIDS, was revealed in a Chinese military technical article published in July.

JTIDS is part of a group of military communications systems called Link 16 that gives U.S. military forces jam-resistant communications, a key strategic advantage used in joint warfighting, a specialty of the American military.

JTIDS allows for a nearly unlimited number of military commanders and operators to share information, such as precision location or position data, critical in tracking, monitoring, and targeting. It is also resistant to electronic warfare attacks by rapidly jumping to different frequencies.

The Chinese article reveals that the People’s Liberation Army is studying this feature and working to defeat it.

Read more from this story HERE.

Syrian Opposition says Christians Will Live as Dhimmis in Sharia State

Photo Credit: Jihad Watch

Photo Credit: Jihad Watch

“The commanders of the Islamist brigades, who have declared more than once that their project was to establish a caliphate, have repeatedly indicated that no one will persecute the Christians or drive them out of their homes because they are ‘people of the book’ and dhimmis (non-Muslim citizens of the Islamic state), so there are no problems with them, unlike the rest of the communities such as Shiites, Alawites and Druze.”

So apparently they want to subjugate the Christians, in accord with the cornerstone of the dhimmi system, Qur’an 9:29, which mandates that Muslims fight against the “People of the Book” until they “pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued” (9:29). And the Shiites, Alawites and Druze will evidently just be massacred.

“Syrian Opposition Fails To Reassure Christians,” by Tareq al Abed, translated from As-Safir (Lebanon) in Al-Monitor, September 11 (thanks to AINA):

Syrian Christians as a whole have not thrown their support behind either side in the Syrian war. Nevertheless, Christians in Syria have been subjected to a lot of pressure by both the regime and the opposition, which failed to give them (or any religious or ethnic Syrian component) any assurances or support.

Some armed groups have accused the church of supporting the regime. And many of the opposition’s statements and video clips do not reassure minorities that they will be participants in the new Syria.

The political opposition: failure without borders

Read more from this story HERE.

Pope Says Church Is ‘Obsessed’ With Gays, Abortion and Birth Control

Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Six months into his papacy, Pope Francis sent shock waves through the Roman Catholic church on Thursday with the publication of his remarks that the church had grown “obsessed” with abortion, gay marriage and contraception, and that he had chosen not to talk about those issues despite recriminations from critics.

His surprising comments came in a lengthy interview in which he criticized the church for putting dogma before love, and for prioritizing moral doctrines over serving the poor and marginalized. He articulated his vision of an inclusive church, a “home for all” — which is a striking contrast with his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, the doctrinal defender who envisioned a smaller, purer church.

Francis told the interviewer, a fellow Jesuit: “It is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time. The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent. The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently.

“We have to find a new balance,” the pope continued, “otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel.”

The pope’s interview did not change church doctrine or policies, but it instantly changed its tone. His words evoked gratitude and hope from many liberal Catholics who had felt left out in the cold during the papacies of Benedict and his predecessor, John Paul II, which together lasted 35 years. Some lapsed Catholics suggested on social media a return to the church, and leaders of gay rights and gay Catholic groups called on bishops to abandon their fight against gay marriage.

Read more from this story HERE.

Former Guantanamo Prisoner Killed in Syria after Joining Islamist Brigade

Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

A former prisoner at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. naval base died fighting for anti-government rebels in Syria, according to an Islamist opposition group which posted a video of his funeral on YouTube.

Moroccan-born Mohammed al Alami, who was released in 2006, is the first former Guantanamo detainee to die in battle in the Syrian civil war, analysts say.

The video, first reported by The Miami Herald, was posted by Harakat Sham al-Islam, one of the Islamist brigades fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. It showed the August 5 funeral in which Alami is praised by a rebel leader for enduring “the prison of the Americans in Guantanamo for five years … where he did not reform or change.”

U.S. Defense Department officials had no comment.

Aaron Zelin, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who monitors jihadi activities at the website Jihadology.net, said the video appeared to confirm rumors that had been circulating for several weeks about a former Guantanamo prisoner being killed in Syria.

“The sources seem to be legitimate,” he said, adding that the video was posted on a known jihadi website.

Alami fought in Afghanistan and was captured in Pakistan after the September 11 attacks.

Read more from this story HERE.