“Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you.”
(Deuteronomy 4:2)

Ye Shall Not Add Unto The Word

Dear Friends,

Greetings! Because events occurring in the middle east are so prominent in the world today, we thought we would take some time to try and identify who we are dealing with since there is such a seemingly array of factions involved.

What we are doing is simply presenting material readily available to anyone from Wikipedia.

We have also presented material from Abraham Collier, a Karaite Jew, entitled “Do Not Equate Karaism with Zionism”.

You can decide what you think!

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Rabbinic Judaism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Rabbinic Judaism or Rabbinism (Hebrew: "Yahadut Rabanit" - יהדות רבנית) has been the mainstream form of Judaism since the 6th century CE, after the codification of the Babylonian Talmud. Growing out of Pharisaic Judaism, Rabbinic Judaism became the predominant stream within the Jewish diaspora between the 2nd and 6th centuries, with the redaction of the oral law and the Talmud as the authoritative interpretation of Jewish scripture and to encourage the practice of Judaism in the absence of Temple sacrifice and other practices no longer possible. Rabbinic Judaism is based on the belief that at Mount Sinai, Moses received directly from God the Torah (Pentateuch) as well as additional oral explanation of the revelation, the "oral law," that was transmitted by Moses to the people in oral form.

The basic form of the rabbi developed when learned teachers assembled to codify Judaism's written and oral laws.

Mainstream Rabbinic Judaism contrasts with Karaite Judaism (Hebrew: יהדות קראית), which does not recognize the oral law as a divine authority nor the Rabbinic procedures used to interpret Jewish scripture. Although there are now profound differences among Jewish denominations of Rabbinic Judaism with respect to the binding force of halakha and the willingness to challenge preceding interpretations, all identify themselves as coming from the tradition of the oral law and the Rabbinic method of analysis. It is this which distinguishes them as Rabbinic Jews, in comparison to Karaite Judaism.

Historically, the division of Jews in many Western countries into denominations, which in the United States in particular took the form of three large groups known as Orthodox, Conservative and Reform, can be traced to Jewish reaction to the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) and its aftermath, and to a certain extent the philosophies of these movements were shaped in reaction to one another. Several smaller movements have emerged in the years since. In more recent years, all of these movements have been shaped by the challenge of assimilation.

As of 2001, Orthodox Jews and Jews affiliated with an Orthodox synagogue, accounted for approximately 50% of Anglo Jewry (150,000), 25% of Israeli Jewry (1,500,000) and 13% of American Jewry (529,000).[4] (Among those affiliated to a synagogue body, Orthodox Jews represent 70% of British Jewry[5] and 27% of American Jewry).

Background

In keeping with the commandments of the Torah, Judaism had centered tightly on religious practice and sacrifices at the Temple in Jerusalem. However, after the destruction of the Temple, Jews were deprived of a central place of worship and religious activity and were unable to fulfill the Temple-related practices mandated in the Tanakh, and were scattered around the world.

Written and oral law

The feature that distinguishes Rabbinic Judaism is the belief in the Oral Law or Oral Torah. The authority for that position has been the tradition taught by the Rabbis that the oral law was transmitted to Moses at Mount Sinai at the same time as the Written Law and that the Oral Law has been transmitted from generation to generation since. The Talmud is said to be a codification of the Oral Law, and is thereby just as binding as the Torah itself. To demonstrate this position some point to the Exodus 18 and Numbers 11 of the Bible are cited to show that Moses appointed elders to govern with him and to judge disputes, imparting to them details and guidance of how to interpret the revelations from God while carrying out their duties. Additionally, all the laws in the Written Torah are recorded only as part of a narrative describing God telling these law to Moses and commanding him to transmit them orally to the Jewish nation. None of the laws in the Written Law are presented as instructions to the reader.

Development of Rabbinic Judaism

As the Rabbis were required to face a new reality—mainly Judaism without a Temple (to serve as the center of teaching and study) and Judea without autonomy—there was a flurry of legal discourse and the old system of oral scholarship could not be maintained. It is during this period that Rabbinic discourse began to be recorded in writing. The theory that the destruction of the Temple and subsequent upheaval led to the committing of Oral Law into writing was first explained in the Epistle of Sherira Gaon and often repeated.

The oral law was subsequently codified in the Mishnah and Gemara, and is interpreted in Rabbinic literature detailing subsequent rabbinic decisions and writings. Rabbinic Jewish literature is predicated on the belief that the Torah cannot be properly understood without recourse to the Oral Law. Indeed, it states that many commandments and stipulations contained in the Torah would be difficult, if not impossible, to keep without the Oral Law to define them — for example, the prohibition to do any "creative work" ("melakha") on the Sabbath, which is given no definition in the Torah, and only given practical meaning by the definition of what constitutes 'Melacha' provided by the Oral Law and passed down orally through the ages. Numerous examples exist of this general prohibitive language in the Torah (such as, "don't steal", without defining what is considered theft, or ownership and property laws), requiring — according to Rabbinic thought — a subsequent crystallization and definition through the Oral Law. Thus Rabbinic Judaism claims that almost all directives, both positive and negative, in the Torah are non-specific in nature and would therefore require the existence of either an Oral Law tradition to explain them, or some other method of defining their detail.[citation needed]

Much Rabbinic Jewish literature concerns specifying what behavior is sanctioned by the law; this body of interpretations is called halakha (the way).

Do Not Equate Karaism with Zionism

by Abraham Collier

01/09/08

It is of necessity to remind you that the Pharisees, who are the ancestors of the Rabbanites, were the enemies of all Judaism during the Second Temple Era. Once this is understood, you will see how Rabbanite Judaism is the true plague that maladies the Jews.

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The Pharisee and Sadducee Controversy

When one studies the Second Temple Era, they are usually overwhelmed by the contradictions, obscurities, and blatant bias that many historians, philosophers, clergymen and rabbis had towards the Jews at that time. Josephus, he is probably the best source for knowledge of this period, states:

"...while some men who were not concerned in the affairs themselves have gotten together vain and contradictory stories by hearsay, and have written them down after a sophistical manner; and while those that were there present have given false accounts of things, and this either out of a humor of flattery to the Romans, or of hatred towards the Jews..." (Josephus War. Preface 1 Ch Line 2)

People should take established legend and tradition with a grain of salt. For whosoever is the victor writes the history of the victim!

Contrary to popular opinion, the Pharisee sect was the main enemy of Judaism in the Second Temple era. The Sadducees comprised of the majority of all Jews. Additionally, there was a tiny Hellenistic Sadducee sect that controlled the priesthood and conspired with the Pharisees. The Pharisees and Hellenistic Sadducees also collaborated with the Roman Empire in order to obtain religious and political power over the Jews in Palestine at the time.

Regarding the Pharisees, the historian Josephus, himself a Pharisee, stated, 'What I would now explain is this, that the Pharisees have delivered to the people a great many observances by succession from their fathers (not by Yahweh, but by men), which are not written in the laws of Moses; and for that reason it is that the Sadducees reject them, and say that we are to esteem those observances to be obligatory which are in the written word, but are not to observe what are derived from the tradition of our forefathers.' (Josephus Ant. 13 Ch. 10 Par. 6)

The Pharisee sympathizer Queen Alexandra (76-67 b.c.e) was recorded to have done the following:

"So she (Alexandra) made Hyrcanus high priest, because he was the elder, but much more because he cared not to meddle with politics, and permitted the Pharisees to do every thing; to whom also she ordered the multitude to be obedient. She also restored again those practices which the Pharisees had introduced, according to the traditions of their forefathers, and which her father-in-law, Hyrkanos, had abrogated. So she had indeed the name of the regent, but the Pharisees had the authority; for it was they who restored such as had been banished, and set such as were prisoners at liberty, and, to say all at once, they differed in nothing from lords." (Josephus Ant. 13 Ch. 16 Par. 2)

At the time of the Idumean/Arab/Hellenistic puppet king Herod, Josephus writes how the king favoured the Pharisees because they supported his Roman sanctioned ruler ship:

"And since Herod had now the government of all Judea put into his hands, he promoted such of the private men in the city as had been of his party, but never left off avenging and punishing every day those that had chosen to be of the party of his enemies. But Pollio the Pharisee, and Sameas, a disciple of his, were honored by him above all the rest; for when Jerusalem was besieged, they advised the citizens to receive Herod, for which advice they were well requited." (Josephus Ant. 15 Ch. 1 Par. 1)

"So Aristobulus's party (Sadducees) was worsted, and retired into the temple, and cut off the communication between the temple and the city, by breaking down the bridge that joined them together, and prepared to make an opposition to the utmost (to the death!); but as the others (the Pharisees) had received the Romans into the city, and had delivered up the palace to him (Pompey)- he then disposed all things that were round about them so as might favor their attacks, as having Hyrcanus's (Sadducean Pharisee sympathizers) party very ready to afford them both counsel and assistance."

The Roman transfer of Jewish control to the Pharisees now Rabbanites was finalized after the final Jewish revolt by Bar Kokhba in 135 b.c.e. In doing so, the Rabbanites had full control of the writing (or re-writing if you will) of the crucial political and religious history of Palestine during Roman occupation. The Pharisees were free to reinterpret the history and facts about the Sadducees, Romans, Zealots, and Revolutionaries according to their own theology and political biases in retrospect and place them in the Talmud and commentaries. Having established seminaries and academies, training of a new generation of Pharisee rabbis, the canonization and writing down of the traditions of the fathers (Talmud), and the dictatorial imposing of their once tiny sect upon the rest of Judaism, the Pharisees now Rabbanites secured their longtime lust to control every aspect of Jewish life.

The results of a Pharisaic control of Judaism effectively produced "establishment Judaism" which we now call Orthodox Judaism. And to 99% of the world, this expression of Judaism, with its traditions and Talmud is what most consider to be Judaism. Thus "mainstream" or "true" Judaism for nearly 2000 years was, in the eyes of the majority, Orthodox Rabbanite Judaism.

Throughout history the Rabbanites knew that disclosure of their part in Jewish betrayal and Hellenic/Roman collaboration would leave their reputation and authority waning. Also, any attempt at a Messianic uprising would prove dangerous not just to the Jewish population, but to the rule of the Rabbanites themselves. And therefore one of the most powerful and long lasting implications of Pharisaic/Rabbanite control of Judaism was its ability to downplay and reject most forms of messianic/nationalistic hopes on part of the Jewish population.

To prevent any type of nationalism that could threaten Pharisee control, most messianic concepts were turned into a strange type of mysticism. Pharisee/Rabbanite methods of interpretation, called PaRDeS, advocated that mystical interpretations of Scripture were the text's most definite interpretation. To make things worse, many Rabbanites with mystical leaning claimed that their mystical texts even predated the Torah and were written by Adam or Abraham!

To prevent any hope of reestablishing an independent Jewish state, most energies for Messianic hope were transferred to the pursuit of mystical practices. Once these mystical pursuits became more the norm, a new aspect of Rabbanite Judaism emerged- that of the Qabbalah- or Rabbanite Jewish mystical tradition. The inclusion of certain Zoroastrian doctrines and concepts into the Talmud (such as astrology and angelic hierarchies) also allowed the influx of non-Jewish magical systems into the Qabbalah. The publication of allegedly "ancient" mystical texts such as Sefer Yetsirah and the Zohar occurred in the Medieval period as well as the erection of Qabbalistic schools in Europe and Palestine. Since the Medieval times, many non-Jewish occult schools emerged whose foundations were in the Qabbalah.

Maintenance of ignorance toward the Torah: To keep the Jewish mind busy and allied to Rabbanite thought, the Rabbanite establishment placed an enormous emphasis on studying Torah. In almost all cases when the Rabbanites say "Torah", they mean the Talmud and other commentaries. Constant study of Rabbanite thought and belief amongst the Jewish population assures the rabbis that all Jews will conform to Talmudic practice. When the Karaite sect emerged in the 8th century and maintained that the Jews should only practice and follow the Tanakh alone, the Rabbanites lashed out in violent protest. Luckily, the Islamic authorities allowed the Karaites to maintain a autonomy of their own without Rabbanite oppression.

Deuteronomy Chapter 4

1 And now, O Israel, hearken unto the statutes and unto the ordinances, which I teach you, to do them; that ye may live, and go in and possess the land which YHWH, the God of your fathers, giveth you.

2 Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish from it, that ye may keep the commandments of YHWH your God which I command you.

Deuteronomy Chapter 13

1 All this word which I command you, that shall ye observe to do; thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it.

Proverbs Chapter 30

5 Every word of God is tried; He is a shield unto them that take refuge in Him.

6 Add thou not unto His words, lest He reprove thee, and thou be found a liar.

The fact that there was no additional oral law given to Moses is quite clear. These are all before the Rabbanites but they choose not to see it. They still insist that the "written" Torah is incomplete without its oral accompaniment. Rabbanite dominance over all of Judaism allowed them to place the existence of the Talmud in the mouth of Moses in retrospect. The insistence of this lie combined with the influence to punish those who do not believe it creates a forced conformity that Rabbanite Jews are very proud of. "This conformity", they say, "is proof that we have the true Judaism." They like to point out that the Karaites are unorganized and that is why they remain in such small numbers today. Since when was conformity a criteria for righteousness? Or unyielding obedience to the words of Man equivalent to holiness? It is for this adherence to silly traditions which add to the Torah that the Conservative and Reform movements were established. But even these liberal Rabbanite groups have failed in that the result of their actions have caused their followers to reject the real Torah while retaining the customs of the Talmud. While they can't see it, its clear to us that the liberal movements take equally away from the Torah as the Orthodox have added to it. Strong allegiance to the Talmud of the rabbis have caused many Jews just to give up and become secular, self-hating Jews. These secularists have become the Jews' worst enemies. They have established the twisted ideas of Marxism and Zionism. They have participated in the murder of Jews around the world.

Refusal to use the Name of YHWH: The foolish precepts of the Rabbanites have prevented Jews from using the Name of God- YHWH. No matter what the Rabbanites say, Jews are to use God's name- it is a commandment. Though most Jews claim the name is forgotten, to the contrary, information on pronouncing the name is readily available. I pronounce the name Yahweh. The calling on the name YHWH is an important part of prophecy for those who call on the Name of YHWH will be saved.

Exodus Chapter 3

14 And God said unto Moses: 'I AM THAT I AM'; and He said: 'Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel: I AM hath sent me unto you.'

15 And God said moreover unto Moses: 'Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel: YHWH, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you; this is My name for ever, and this is My memorial unto all generations.

16 Go, and gather the elders of Israel together, and say unto them: YHWH, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, hath appeared unto me, saying: I have surely remembered you, and seen that which is done to you in Egypt.

And the name, YHWH, was commonly spoken by those in the Tanakh

Deuteronomy Chapter 31

25 that Moses commanded the Levites, that bore the ark of the covenant of YHWH, saying:

26 'Take this book of the law, and put it by the side of the ark of the covenant of YHWH your God, that it may be there for a witness against thee.

27 For I know thy rebellion, and thy stiff neck; behold, while I am yet alive with you this day, ye have been rebellious against YHWH; and how much more after my death?

Second Samuel Chapter 12

13 And David said unto Nathan: 'I have sinned against YHWH.' And Nathan said unto David: 'YHWH also hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die.

14 Howbeit, because by this deed thou hast greatly blasphemed the enemies of YHWH, the child also that is born unto thee shall surely die.'

Nehemiah Chapter 9

5 Then the Levites, Jeshua, and Kadmiel, Bani, Hashabneiah, Sherebiah, Hodiah, Shebaniah, and Pethahiah, said: 'Stand up and bless YHWH your God from everlasting to everlasting; and let them say: Blessed be Thy glorious Name, that is exalted above all blessing and praise.

Concerning why the name YHWH is not written, Rabbinical Jews point to the following verses as reason to protect YHWH's name from being erased; however, these verses describe an action of YHWH's. He blots out someone's name from heaven not someone blotting out YHWH's name. This effort to prevent YHWH's name from being blotted out has resulted in blotting out YHWH's name from almost everywhere including most interpretations of the Tanakh!

Deuteronomy Chapter 9

13 Furthermore YHWH spoke unto me, saying: 'I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people;

14 let Me alone, that I may destroy them, and blot out their name from under heaven; and I will make of thee a nation mightier and greater than they.'

Deuteronomy Chapter 29

19 YHWH will not be willing to pardon him, but then the anger of YHWH and His jealousy shall be kindled against that man, and all the curse that is written in this book shall lie upon him, and YHWH shall blot out his name from under heaven;

20 and YHWH shall separate him unto evil out of all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant that is written in this book of the law.

Jeremiah Chapter 23

25 I have heard what the prophets have said, that prophesy lies in My name, saying: 'I have dreamed, I have dreamed.'

26 How long shall this be? Is it in the heart of the prophets that prophesy lies, and the prophets of the deceit of their own heart?

27 That think to cause My people to forget My name by their dreams which they tell every man to his neighbour, as their fathers forgot My name for Baal.

The Conclusion

My opinion is that Rabbanite Judaism is the true plague. You may think this is harsh but you need to consider the bigger picture. I feel that Rabbanite Judaism is the cause of the Jews' hardships. Shabbatai Tsvi, the liberal Rabbanite movements, Zionism and Marxism are all the result of the sins of Rabbanite Judaism.

The Talmud states that the messiah will follow the Oral Law of the rabbis. The Talmud also states that Rabbanite authority is so powerful that even God must acquiesce to it. Additionally, the Talmud states that if any prophet were to arise (and the Talmud gives Elijah as an example) and contradict Rabbanite law, that prophet will die. I say that the Rabbanites do not want the Messiah to come. They do not want the Redemption to happen. Why? How could I say such a thing? Because of history. History shows that the Pharisees rejected Jewish independence and nationalism. History shows that the Pharisees wanted to establish their traditions at the cost of Jewish blood. History shows that the Pharisees wanted to maintain control at the cost of Jewish blood. History shows that the Rabbanites twisted Scripture and Jewish minds with their traditions.

If the Messiah were to come today and say "There is no oral law. There is only the Torah of Moses." The rabbis would agree that they have to kill the messiah. If Elijah returned today and stated, "Return to the Torah of Moses alone." The rabbis would have to kill Elijah. The rabbis have created a self-defeating cycle of hopelessness. They have enacted laws to prevent any type of true reformation in their religion. They have put so many fences around the Torah that they don't know what the Torah looks like any more or how to acquire it. Rabbanite Judaism is a self-perpetuating monster that cannot heal itself or deal with its own history. It is incapable of true reform. It is impervious to the Messiah. It is impervious to YHWH. It is impervious to the Prophets. For there to arise Elijah, the Prophets, and a Messiah would mean that the Rabbanite authority would have to relinquish all of their power and traditions. I know for a fact that they are not ready to do that. And because they maintain the power hungry lust of their ancestors the Pharisees, they will do all they can to maintain that power.

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For further details concerning the Pharisees look up Jesus' comments in the New Testament.

It would seem that the same “spirit” that was behind Phariseeism is the same “spirit” guiding Rabbinical Judaism.

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Who Is A Jew – from Judaism for Dummies by Rabbi Ted Falcon PhD and David Blatner p. 216

“The biggest issue in Judaism today – bigger than anti-Semitism, or the Palestinian conflict, or even interfaith marriage – is the friction emerging between ultra-observant and less-observant parts of the Jewish community.

Sadly, some reform and secular Jews consider the Ultra-Orthodox to be simply crazy, and many of these highly observant Jews consider their accusers to be deeply misguided and dangerous to Judaism as a whole.

While many people consider Judaism to be a spectrum – the Reform Jews on one side and the Ultra-Orthodox Jews on the other – to an observant Orthodox Jew, Judaism is more like a light switch: You're either doing it right or you're not. For example, a person in a Conservative or Reconstructionist congregation might be Jewish by birth, but many Orthodox Jews wouldn't consider him or her to be practicing an authentic Judaism. In fact, Ultra-Orthodox rabbis have gone so far as to declare the non-Orthodox “rabbis” as heretics and to prohibit Jews from saying “Amem” after liberal rabbis recite a blessing.”

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And just to add another twist to the story; one of the greatest men of God that ever lived who wrote much of the New Testament was a Pharisee, the Apostle Paul.

“But when Paul perceived that the one part were Sadducees, and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the council, Men and brethren, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee: of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question.” Acts 23:6

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Have a great week ahead.

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The New York Times

Poll Shows Major Shift in Identity of U.S. Jews

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

Published: October 1, 2013

The first major survey of American Jews in more than 10 years finds a significant rise in those who are not religious, marry outside the faith and are not raising their children Jewish — resulting in rapid assimilation that is sweeping through every branch of Judaism except the Orthodox.

The intermarriage rate, a bellwether statistic, has reached a high of 58 percent for all Jews, and 71 percent for non-Orthodox Jews — a huge change from before 1970 when only 17 percent of Jews married outside the faith. Two-thirds of Jews do not belong to a synagogue, one-fourth do not believe in God and one-third had a Christmas tree in their home last year.

“It’s a very grim portrait of the health of the American Jewish population in terms of their Jewish identification,” said Jack Wertheimer, a professor of American Jewish history at the Jewish Theological Seminary, in New York.

The survey, by the Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project, found that despite the declines in religious identity and participation, American Jews say they are proud to be Jewish and have a “strong sense of belonging to the Jewish people.”

While 69 percent say they feel an emotional attachment to Israel, and 40 percent believe that the land that is now Israel was “given to the Jewish people by God,” only 17 percent think that the continued building of settlements in the West Bank is helpful to Israel’s security.

Jews make up 2.2 percent of the American population, a percentage that has held steady for the past two decades. The survey estimates there are 5.3 million Jewish adults as well as 1.3 million children being raised at least partly Jewish.

The survey uses a wide definition of who is a Jew, a much-debated topic. The researchers included the 22 percent of Jews who describe themselves as having “no religion,” but who identify as Jewish because they have a Jewish parent or were raised Jewish, and feel Jewish by culture or ethnicity.

However, the percentage of “Jews of no religion” has grown with each successive generation, peaking with the millennials (those born after 1980), of whom 32 percent say they have no religion.

“It’s very stark,” Alan Cooperman, deputy director of the Pew religion project, said in an interview. “Older Jews are Jews by religion. Younger Jews are Jews of no religion.”

The trend toward secularism is also happening in the American population in general, with increasing proportions of each generation claiming no religious affiliation.

But Jews without religion tend not to raise their children Jewish, so this secular trend has serious consequences for what Jewish leaders call “Jewish continuity.” Of the “Jews of no religion” who have children at home, two-thirds are not raising their children Jewish in any way. This is in contrast to the “Jews with religion,” of whom 93 percent said they are raising their children to have a Jewish identity.

Reform Judaism remains the largest American Jewish movement, at 35 percent. Conservative Jews are 18 percent, Orthodox 10 percent, and groups such as Reconstructionist and Jewish Renewal make up 6 percent combined. Thirty percent of Jews do not identify with any denomination.

In a surprising finding, 34 percent said you could still be Jewish if you believe that Jesus was the Messiah.

When Jews leave the movements they grew up in, they tend to shift in the direction of less tradition, with Orthodox Jews becoming Conservative or Reform, and Conservative Jews becoming Reform. Most Reform Jews who leave become nonreligious. (Two percent of Jews are converts, the survey found.)

Jews from the former Soviet Union and their offspring make up about 10 percent of the American Jewish population.

While earlier generations of Orthodox Jews defected in large numbers, those in the younger generation are being retained. Several scholars attributed this to the Orthodox marrying young, having large families and sending their children to Jewish schools.

Steven M. Cohen, a sociologist of American Jewry at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, in New York, and a paid consultant on the poll, said the report foretold “a sharply declining non-Orthodox population in the second half of the 21st century, and a rising fraction of Jews who are Orthodox.”

The survey also portends “growing polarization” between religious and nonreligious Jews, said Laurence Kotler-Berkowitz, senior director of research and analysis at the Jewish Federations of North America.

The Jewish Federations has conducted major surveys of American Jews over many decades, but the last one in 2000 was mired in controversy over methodology. When the federations decided not to undertake another survey in 2010, Jane Eisner, editor in chief of The Jewish Daily Forward, urged the Pew researchers to jump in.

It was a multimillion-dollar effort to cull 3,475 respondents from a pool of 70,000. They were interviewed in English and Russian, on landlines and cellphones from Feb. 20 to June 13, 2013. The margin of error for the full sample is plus or minus three percentage points.

Ms. Eisner found the results “devastating” because, she said in an interview, “I thought there would be more American Jews who cared about religion.”

“This should serve as a wake-up call for all of us as Jews,” she said, “to think about what kind of community we’re going to be able to sustain if we have so much assimilation.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: October 2, 2013

A chart with an article on Tuesday about a poll that shows a major shift in the identity of Jews in the United States misstated one age range of adults surveyed. It was those born from 1946 to 1964, not 1946 to 1954.

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World Religious News

Study finds most European and Russian jews are descended from converts they are not bloodline jews.

October 11, 2013

Founding Mothers of Ashkenazi Jews May Be Converts, Study Finds

About 80 percent of Ashkenazi maternal ancestry comes from Europe, not the Near East, according to a study that suggests a mass conversion of women to Judaism may have occurred in Europe more than 2,000 years ago.

The findings come from studying mitochondrial DNA, which passes from mother to offspring, in about 3,500 people, the authors wrote in a paper in the journal Nature Communications. About 80 percent of the maternal linages of Ashkenazi Jews came from Europe, the scientists found.

The Ashkenazi are the most common Jewish ethnic division. Previous efforts to trace origins of Ashkenazi Jews have been spotty and controversial, the authors wrote. The latest research used a larger database than in previous attempts, allowing them to unravel the entire mitochondrial genomes.

“A detailed genealogical history for every maternal lineage in the Ashkenazim is now within reach,” wrote the authors, led by Gil Atzmon of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. “In fact, it should soon be possible to reconstruct the outlines of the entire dispersal history of each community.”

The four major female founders of the Ashkenazi show roots in Europe 10,000 to 20,000 years ago. So do most of the minor founders, the study found. Only 8 percent of the mitochondrial DNA shows signs of being from the Near East.

There had been some evidence of mass conversions, especially of women, to Judaism throughout the Mediterranean in the past, the authors wrote in the study. That resulted in about 6 million citizens, or a tenth of the Roman population, who were Jewish.

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The Times Of Israel

Attack on Jerusalem graves unnerves Christians

Over past three years, at least 17 Christian sites have reportedly been vandalized; activists say police not doing enough

BY DANIEL ESTRIN

October 10, 2013

AP — Christian leaders in Israel are up in arms over what they say is a string of relentless attacks on church properties and religious sites — most recently the desecration of a historic Protestant cemetery where vandals toppled stone crosses from graves and bludgeoned them to pieces.

The attack in the Protestant Cemetery of Mount Zion, one of Jerusalem’s most important historic graveyards, has struck a particularly sensitive nerve because some of the damaged graves belong to famous figures from the 19th and 20th centuries, a key period in Jerusalem’s history. Among them are a German diplomat, the founder of an orphanage who was a significant contributor to modernizing the city, and a relative of the owners of a prominent hotel.

Though members of the clergy say interfaith relations between top religious leaders have never been stronger, and police have been more responsive to such attacks in recent years, they say attacks continue unabated. Some activists say not enough is being done to stop them.

“We are striving so hard to promote dignity and respect among the living. And here we have our dead people … vandalized,” said the Very Rev. Hosam Naoum, caretaker of the Protestant cemetery. “No human would agree with this.”

Police arrested four young Israeli settlers from the West Bank last week, two of them minors, in connection with the cemetery attack, said police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld. But Rosenfeld said the four were subsequently released without charge until further questioning.

Two of the suspects had been banned from entering the West Bank because of their connections to the “hilltop youth,” a movement of young Jewish extremists blamed for a spate of attacks in recent years on mosques, Christian sites and Israeli army property to protest government policy.

The four suspects claimed they had entered the cemetery to immerse themselves in a ritual bath there, according to media reports. Rosenfeld could not immediately confirm the reports, and the record of the court session was sealed because minors were involved.

Naoum said the reported alibi was suspect. An ancient Jewish ritual bath was excavated on the premises but it contains no water, and an old well nearby has a narrow opening and would be dangerous to enter, he said.

Naoum said his staff saw religious Jewish youths breaking into the cemetery again on Tuesday and Wednesday, though no damage was reported. Israeli media have said two of the original suspects were students at a nearby Jewish seminary known for its ultranationalist views.

Naoum said he is reporting the events to the German and British embassies, which have representatives on the cemetery administration board, as well as to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The attack joins a list of high-profile Christian sites that have been vandalized within the past year. They include a Trappist monastery in Latrun, outside Jerusalem, where vandals burned a door and spray-painted “Jesus is a monkey” on the century-old building, a Baptist church in Jerusalem, and other monasteries. Clergymen often speak of being spat at by ultra-Orthodox religious students while walking around Jerusalem’s Old City wearing frocks and crosses.

Christian citizens of Israel, including Roman Catholic and Orthodox streams of Christianity, make up less than 2 percent of its nearly 8 million people. About three-quarters of them are Arabs, and the others arrived during a wave of immigration from former Soviet Union countries that began 20 years ago. Tens of thousands of Christian foreign workers and African migrants also live in Israel.

The population figures include Christians in Israel and east Jerusalem, the section of the city captured by Israel in 1967 and claimed by the Palestinians.

Over the past three years, 17 Christian sites in the Holy Land have been reported vandalized, according to Search for Common Ground, a nongovernmental group that monitors press reports of attacks on religious sites.

Researcher Kevin Merkelz said a police detective in charge of Christian affairs told the organization the numbers are actually higher, but Christian leaders chose not to report many attacks to the press.

“The Christians who are still here want to keep a low profile when attacked,” said Merkelz. He said the group does not include sites in the politically sensitive Old City of Jerusalem in its survey, because many sites are in dispute and the group does not want to be seen as taking sides.

Christian leaders are often afraid to complain to police because many clergymen reside in Israel on special visas and wish to keep good relations with authorities, said Hana Bendcowsky of the Jerusalem Center for Jewish-Christian Relations. “There is a very strong feeling that the police are not doing enough … and not doing work to prevent the phenomenon,” she said.

Rosenfeld, the police spokesman, said Israeli police recently set up a task force to combat “nationalistic” motivated crimes, and last week arrested 14 youths in connection with attacks on Arabs.

He said police are carrying out more patrols around holy sites and are considering installing security cameras to protect them. He also claimed the numbers of attacks against Christian sites remains relatively low.

“There is more awareness that holy areas have to be watched closer and protected better,” Rosenfeld said.

The Rev. Pierbattista Pizzaballa, one of the Roman Catholic church’s top officials in the Holy Land, said such attacks “have become routine and target not only Christians. They’re conducted by extremists and go against the spirit of tolerance. But it’s also true that they’re strongly condemned by the Jewish community, by people opposed to them.”

Naoum, the cemetery caretaker, said a group of 150 Jewish religious figures will be paying a solidarity visit to the cemetery this week.

In the oldest section of the Protestant Cemetery of Mount Zion, just outside the walls of Jerusalem’s ancient Old City, the tops of large stone monuments, many written in German, were bare, and the stone crosses that used to top them lay broken into a few pieces.

Graves damaged belong to a British Mandate policeman and important figureheads in the city.

The most notable of them is Johann Ludwig Schneller, founder of an orphanage and the most advanced printing press in 19th century Jerusalem. Also damaged was the grave of Edmund Schmidt, the German consul general at the beginning of the 20th century. The grave of Ferdinand Vester, who built the house where a branch of the U.S. Consulate General to Jerusalem is located today and who was related to the founders of the storied American Colony Hotel, was also damaged.

The cemetery is “a microcosm of Jerusalem history from the 1830s till the present,” said Amnon Ramon, an expert on Christianity at the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies.

Curiously, it is not the first time the Protestant cemetery has been attacked. About 100 years ago, the American consul to Jerusalem dug up graves in the cemetery belonging to members of the American Colony, a group of devout Christians from the U.S. whom the consul believed were involved in cult-like activities, said Israeli researcher Nirit Shalev-Khalifa. The group’s home later became the American Colony Hotel.

There has always been a religious fight surrounding cemeteries in Jerusalem, Shalev-Khalifa said.

“This is a battle over the celestial Jerusalem,” she said. “You can deal with the living, but sometimes it’s easier to deal with the dead.”

International Business Times

Here Are Two Of The Reasons Why The Ongoing Global Persecution Of Christians Is Not Trending

By Mike Obel

on October 04 2013

When a large group is subject to murder, robbery, rape and vandalism and also denied civil liberties, property rights, the ability to vote, as well as education, healthcare and access to legal redress, you’d think it might be trending … especially if it’s been going on for decades. But you’d be wrong. The fact is, in Egypt, Pakistan, Sudan, Somalia, Afghanistan, Cuba, Syria, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Malaysia, Indonesia, North Korea, Uzbekistan, China, Vietnam, and Lebanon (to name just a few places) it’s been open season on Christians for decades.

One reason it’s not trending is because of the silence of the victims’ natural allies. "Christians in the Middle East and Africa are being slaughtered, tortured, raped, kidnapped, beheaded and forced to flee the birthplace of Christianity,” Kirsten Powers wrote last week in the Daily Beast. “One would think this horror might be consuming the pulpits and pews of American churches. Not so. The silence has been nearly deafening."

At least as deafening, though, has been the silence of Western secular journalists. Sometimes, yes, reporters cover the murder of Christians, at least when the fatalities get into double or triple figures. But mostly there is just silence. There are at least two reasons the Fourth Estate ignores the global, chronic abuse of Christians.

First, it’s a matter of virtual religious faith that Christianity’s essential quality is its utility as a tool of the "white European oppressor." No journalist would ever say this in an editorial meeting, but it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if this vestige of colonialism ceased to taint any non-Western region where it has taken root. That same tacit “good riddance” sensibility permeates a field related to journalism. Writing last year in the New York Times, Paul Elie said, “Christian belief figures into literary fiction in our place and time, as something between a dead language and a hangover.”

Secondly, reporters tune this out because of who is doing the slaughtering. Perhaps it's a relic of the George W. Bush era, but Westerners feel (rightly so) that our government has the blood of hundreds of thousands of Muslims on its hands. Think Iraq, Afghanistan and wherever else our drones patrol and our cruise missiles cruise. As the guilty party, we must speak ever so gingerly about our government’s victims, even when -- or especially when – those victims behave badly. Thus, a videotaped torture and murder by Muslim insurgents of a Syrian Christian because he wouldn’t say “Allahu akbar” ["God is great"] barely registers in many Western newsrooms. That guilt also underlies journalism’s insistence on obscuring rather than illuminating news. When lots of people die in a Muslim suicide attack, the culprit is never described as a Muslim but rather as a "terrorist,” as if we might be dealing with a mob of angry Presbyterians. Given where the secularized West sees itself in this moral hierarchy, to use the "M" word in reference to a mass-murdering suicide bomber would smack of moral chauvinism or even Islamophobia, not serious journalism.

Of course, there are other reasons the media isn’t paying attention. But these two – seeing Christianity as essentially a tool of white colonialism for which penance or at least contrition is due and guilt over the slaughter of Muslims – need not in every situation hinder the press from its reportorial duty or force it into using euphemisms. Imagine if members of Greece's neo-fascist Golden Dawn Party started killing Greek Orthodox priests en masse. Is there any media outlet that would tip-toe around that? Of course not. And why not? Because Golden Dawn is beneath Western journalists in the secular world's moral hierarchy. Raking fascists – and you can bet that reporters would use the word “fascists” -- over the coals in public would be the opposite of moral chauvinism; it would be genuinely serious journalism.

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The Catholic World Report

The Surprising Spread and Cultural Impact of Transhumanism

The transhumanist movement is affecting our society in ways both subtle and profound.

Leslie Fain

October 03, 2013

“The moment you step into the world of facts, you step into a world of limits. You can free things from alien or accidental laws, but not from the laws of their own nature.” – G.K. Chesterton

If you could enhance your intelligence, significantly extend your lifespan, or overcome a moral flaw with the help of surgery or pharmaceuticals, would you do it?  What if you could make these same improvements in your children before they are even born?

Herein lies the question at the center of the growing movement known as transhumanism: if technology could enable you to enhance your life in some way, would you do it, even if it meant losing part of your humanity in the process?  

Transhumanism has been called everything from a cultural impulse to a formal school of thought by those who study it. “It is the desire to use technology to go beyond, to transcend, the current condition of humanity to give human beings greater intellectual, physical, and even moral powers,” said Michael Cook, editor of MercatorNet, an online magazine focused on bioethics and the dignity of the human person.

“In explaining this, its advocates sometimes say that we are all transhumanists,” said Cook. “We use glasses; we wear dentures; we take caffeine; we have pacemakers. This is true, but the nub of transhumanism is extending human capacities, not just repairing defects in the way we are now.”

“For instance, some transhumanists want to live for a thousand years. They believe that ageing is not inevitable. Some want…to be Olympic athletes, or Einsteins,” said Cook.

The means proposed to do this, typically, are surgery, drugs, and genetic engineering, with the last of these being the most dangerous, according to Cook. “If—and it’s a bit of an ‘if’—you can genetically engineer children for intelligence, strength, speed, and longevity, would they become a different species? Maybe,” he said. 

“Transhumanists, in general, aren’t too worried about this. Their future will divide homo sapiens into two sub-species, the gen-poor (genetically poor) and the gen-rich. To me, it’s a bit like the ghastly scenario envisaged by H.G. Wells in The Time Machine—a world divided into the Eloi and the Morlochs.”

The transhumanism narrative is becoming more mainstream. Pop culture references and commercials ( such as this one from Verizon) hyping men and women becoming “one” with their latest technological toys abound; last year an Italian transhumanist was elected to parliament.

“Human life is shaped by a balance of abilities and liabilities flowing from our given nature. We enter a world not of our own making, under conditions we did not choose, in circumstances over which we have little control,” said Dr. John Haldane, professor of philosophy at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. “These limit our options but they also make possible human virtue and through that, human happiness. Courage, fidelity, fortitude, generosity, hope, moderation, perseverance, are all cultivated in response to the limitations of circumstance and nature.”

“Transhumanists, however, urge us to reject these limitations using science and technology to go beyond our natures,” said Haldane. “But first, this may involve violating our deepest values; and second, the belief that it may free us to be happy is illusory for happiness only comes with wisdom, and wisdom involves living within limits.”  

When it comes to improving our lot in life, what is morally acceptable? “Things that are remedial for disease or [health] conditions [are morally acceptable]. We can use technology to make our lives more human,” said Father Edward Richard, a moral theologian and pastor of Our Lady of Prompt Succor in Sulphur, Louisiana. “We don’t want to serve technology; we want it to serve us. When we enter the realm of eugenics or trying to supplant or ignore God’s providential plan for humanity, we have clearly exceeded the limits of what is morally acceptable.”

“Tranhumanism falls essentially into the broader pattern of thinking…we call eugenics. Eugenics has been around over 100 years as a movement,” said Father Richard. “It was very strong in the US in the early 20th century, and led to the whole idea of a ‘super race’ in Germany.” Unlike old-school eugenics, however, transhumanism is able to take advantage of previously unimaginable technologies, he said.

Atheism, along with the blending of evolutionary theory and technology, is at the heart of transhumanism, Cook said. “The central idea of transhumanism is that the destiny of our species is completely, wholly, up to us,” he explained. “There is no sense of the divine providence, God looking after us, which is so characteristic of Christian thinking. So now that we have the technology, it is time to take responsibility for our evolution. Until now, the evolution of man has been random, but from now on, man can take responsibility for choosing what powers he can have.”

Everything old is new again

Is transhumanism a new idea?  Not at its core, according to Father Richard and Cook. “Transhumanism has a gnostic element to it,” said Father Richard. “It seems to have a contempt for our humanity as it is ‘confined’ in or limited to the present state of our corporeal existence. Our higher selves are being limited by the capacity of our bodies. There is a contempt for the flesh.” All of these ideas are characteristic of gnostic and Manichean thought, he said.

One idea that proponents of transhumanism recycle is as old as humanity itself. “[T]he phrase ‘ye shall be as gods’ springs to mind,” said Cook. “Take Ray Kurzweil [director of engineering for Google], for instance. He predicts that we will be able to upload our entire brains to computers within the next 32 years—an event known as [the] singularity. Eventually we will become immortal. Yes, it does sound familiar.”

Father Richard said one of the problems is that until you have specific proposals—such as attempting to make the consciousness of a person immortal, or replacing normal human reproduction with a technological process—it is difficult to say when a line has been crossed.  “However, transhumanism constitutes a rejection of the providence of God, so activities motivated by transhumanist goals will be considered immoral,” Father Richard explained. “If the only conceivable purpose of a particular act is transhumanist, no matter the intention, it would be intrinsically evil."

While living for hundreds of years or merging with a computer may sound crazy, there are plenty of intelligent, influential, and sometimes wealthy people who are proponents of transhumanism, according to Cook. “[A] leading transhumanist, Nick Bostrum, a Swede, teaches philosophy at Oxford University, a stronghold of transhumanist thinking. He heads up the Future of Humanity Institute there, which looks into our journey towards a new kind of humanity and preparing for global catastrophes,” he said. “There are a number of institutes and think-tanks which promote the study of transhumanist futures.”

“Peter Thiel, billionaire co-founder of PayPal, donates to transhumanist projects,” Cook continued. He also mentioned Ray Kurzweil. “[Kurzweil] is one of the best-known theorists of transhumanism. He was the subject of a recent mainstream documentary called Transcendent Man. He was recently hired by Google as a director of engineering precisely because of his ‘visionary’ ideas.”

Where is transhumanism taking us?

Just where have transhumanists taken us thus far, and how much has our own culture allowed them to achieve? “Cloning, immoral stem cell research, combining of human and animal genes” are all activities that complement transhumanism, according to Father Richard.

“Adult stem cell research is moral and useful,” Father Richard explained. “Things like cloning, though, or combining of genes in the laboratory—that [is where] transhumanism is going to take shape. Work like this is already being attempted.”

According to Haldane, “transhumanist thinking is guaranteed to produce discontent, but rather than respect limits, it seeks to remove them, so it will be ever-more denigrating of incapacity and disability, urging genetic engineering, preimplantation screening and selection—‘seeding and weeding’ and neo-eugenics.”

“Beware the phrase ‘No one would want to be born in such a state,’ for it is a moving standard and today’s normals will become tomorrow’s handicapped,” said Haldane. 

Others want to solve moral problems on a large, transhumanist scale. “For example, another Oxford professor, Julian Savulescu, is worried about original sin,” said Cook. “Of course he doesn’t call it that, but that’s what he means: our ineradicable tendency to screw things up, to be violent, predatory, and uncooperative. His solution is drugs in the water and genetic engineering. If people were to take his proposals seriously, society would suffer. People with defects, physical, intellectual or moral, would be regarded as sub-human.”

According to Father Richard, tranhumanism is presenting moral dilemmas for those in the scientific and medical fields. “I have gotten calls from medical students and researchers who are being challenged by the directions their fields are taking them,” he said. “What I always tell them is that the Church needs you, and needs you in these fields, so that the evangelizing can take place. Then, we try to work out as clearly as possible what morality will allow.”

Father Richard said it is important to have scientists who are faithful to the Church. “We see what can be used that is consistent with the Gospel, and what isn’t, we transform. By doing this we contribute to civilization.”

Transhumanism in its more subtle forms

Francis Fukuyama, political scientist and author, has called transhumanism “the world’s most dangerous idea.” “In theory, that’s probably true,” said Father Richard. “[It would mean] the end of the human race.”

Cook said he does not believe transhumanism is the world’s most dangerous idea, but that, as a cultural impulse, it has many perils.

“[I]t is dangerous because we have all absorbed a bit of transhumanist thinking,” said Cook. “It is widely believed that we need technology to make us normal and happy, and this is a deeply flawed and dangerous notion. For instance, how should we combat obesity? With drugs and bariatric surgery, or with willpower and exercise? How do you get kids to behave? Give them Ritalin. How do you solve the epidemic of teen pregnancies? With the morning-after pill. This kind of thinking is dangerous and deeply inhuman.”

We know what the Church teaches about the use of the morning-after pill, but is the use of Ritalin or bariatric surgery always immoral?  “This question is a bit more complicated than one might think,” said Father Richard. “Even if there is a moral issue involved, medical assistance is not thereby morally prohibited. If there is no valid medical reason that justifies the use of a drug or surgery, their use would be sinful, considering the possible harm that might come from the drug or the mutilation of the body in the surgery.”

“There have been all sorts of little things that take place in the culture, maybe somewhat subtle,” said Richard. “People who don’t possess certain characteristics or aren’t productive enough should receive the same kind of treatment as others.”

“I think that Western society is slowing losing its sense of community and its traditional, rich sense of humanity, based on centuries of the Judeo-Christian tradition,” said Cook.  “Transhumanism, in its weak and strong forms, attempts to supplement this. I think it is doomed to failure and obscurity as a footnote to history, but its solutions might seem plausible for a while and they will cause much suffering.”

Dr. Jose Perez Adan, a sociologist at the University of Valencia in Spain, believes that transhumanism should be of grave concern to Catholics and everyone else. We should be concerned “from a theological point of view because Christ, the measure of all things, was and is human, not transhuman,” said Adan.  “And from a secular point of view, [we should be concerned] because transhumanism implies the destruction of humanity. It is far worse than abortion, crime, war, and sectarian genocide put all together.”

Earlier this year in Madrid, Dr. Adan and other pro-life and pro-family supporters got together for the first congress to examine the global abuse of science and technology in transhumanist and futurist efforts.  Out of this congress came the Madrid Declaration, a document that upholds the sanctity of human life and the dignity of the human person. 

According to Adan, transhumanism and futurism present many long-term dangers. “From the moment we understand that every scientific experiment, project, patent, or discovery is good and positive if the intention is good…[if we] do not pay attention to long-term consequences, side-effects, or deontological reasons, we end up justifying the unjustifiable,” said Adan. “That was the very same ‘justification’ of the Holocaust, and that is why transhumanism is wrong: it has terrible consequences and side-effects for humanity and is deontologically unsound.”

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International Business Times

Pope Francis: ‘I Believe In God, Not In A Catholic God’

By Maria Vultaggio

on October 06 2013

Pope Francis has been making headlines ever since he was elected the Roman Catholic Church’s leader six months ago, and now he’s getting even more attention. “I believe in God, not in a Catholic God,” he said in an interview, essentially taking a dig at the Catholic Church hierarchy by condemning its “Vatican-centric view.”

“I believe in God, not in a Catholic God. There is no Catholic God, there is God and I believe in Jesus Christ, his incarnation,” the pope said in the interview with the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, as quoted by the Inquisitr. “Jesus is my teacher and my pastor, but God, the Father, Abba, is the light and the Creator. This is my Being. Do you think we are very far apart?”

The 76-year-old Argentinean pontiff added he does not agree with everything his religion stands for: “This Vatican-centric view neglects the world around us,” he said. “I do not share this view, and I’ll do everything I can to change it.”

Pope Francis plans to do so by being more involved with the community. He stated his plan: “The Church is or should go back to being a community of God’s people, and priests, pastors and bishops who have the care of souls, are at the service of the people of God.”

Eugenio Scalfari, the co-founder and former editor of La Repubblica, was surprised to get the exclusive interview with the pope in the first place, but even more suprised at the pope's comments.

“‘God is not Catholic,’” Scalfari quoted the pope as saying, according to NBC News. Confused, he asked Pope Francis to elaborate, and the pontiff reportedly replied, “‘God is universal, and we are Catholic in the sense of the way we worship him.’”

Pope Francis was reportedly taken aback when he was elected pope by the conclave in March. He briefly thought about refusing  but then accepted his role. “When in the conclave they elected me pope, I asked for some time alone before I accepted,” he said in the interview. “I was overwhelmed by great anxiety, then I closed my eyes and all thoughts, including the possibility of refusing, went away.”

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The Economic Collapse

World Bank Whistleblower Karen Hudes Reveals How The Global Elite Rule The World

By Michael Snyder

September 30th, 2013

Karen Hudes is a graduate of Yale Law School and she worked in the legal department of the World Bank for more than 20 years.  In fact, when she was fired for blowing the whistle on corruption inside the World Bank, she held the position of Senior Counsel.  She was in a unique position to see exactly how the global elite rule the world, and the information that she is now revealing to the public is absolutely stunning.  According to Hudes, the elite use a very tight core of financial institutions and mega-corporations to dominate the planet.  The goal is control.  They want all of us enslaved to debt, they want all of our governments enslaved to debt, and they want all of our politicians addicted to the huge financial contributions that they funnel into their campaigns.  Since the elite also own all of the big media companies, the mainstream media never lets us in on the secret that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way that our system works.

Remember, this is not some "conspiracy theorist" that is saying these things.  This is a Yale-educated attorney that worked inside the World Bank for more than two decades.  The following summary of her credentials comes directly from her website...

Karen Hudes studied law at Yale Law School and economics at the University of Amsterdam. She worked in the US Export Import Bank of the US from 1980-1985 and in the Legal Department of the World Bank from 1986-2007. She established the Non Governmental Organization Committee of the International Law Section of the American Bar Association and the Committee on Multilateralism and the Accountability of International Organizations of the American Branch of the International Law Association.

Today, Hudes is trying very hard to expose the corrupt financial system that the global elite are using to control the wealth of the world.  During an interview with the New American, she discussed how we are willingly allowing this group of elitists to totally dominate the resources of the planet...

A former insider at the World Bank, ex-Senior Counsel Karen Hudes, says the global financial system is dominated by a small group of corrupt, power-hungry figures centered around the privately owned U.S. Federal Reserve. The network has seized control of the media to cover up its crimes, too, she explained. In an interview with The New American, Hudes said that when she tried to blow the whistle on multiple problems at the World Bank, she was fired for her efforts. Now, along with a network of fellow whistleblowers, Hudes is determined to expose and end the corruption. And she is confident of success.

Citing an explosive 2011 Swiss study published in the PLOS ONE journal on the “network of global corporate control,” Hudes pointed out that a small group of entities — mostly financial institutions and especially central banks — exert a massive amount of influence over the international economy from behind the scenes. “What is really going on is that the world’s resources are being dominated by this group,” she explained, adding that the “corrupt power grabbers” have managed to dominate the media as well. “They’re being allowed to do it.”

Previously, I have written about the Swiss study that Hudes mentioned.  It was conducted by a team of researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland.  They studied the relationships between 37 million companies and investors worldwide, and what they discovered is that there is a "super-entity" of just 147 very tightly knit mega-corporations that controls 40 percent of the entire global economy...

When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a "super-entity" of 147 even more tightly knit companies - all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity - that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. "In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network," says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions. The top 20 included Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group.

But the global elite don't just control these mega-corporations.  According to Hudes, they also dominate the unelected, unaccountable organizations that control the finances of virtually every nation on the face of the planet.  The World Bank, the IMF and central banks such as the Federal Reserve literally control the creation and the flow of money worldwide.

At the apex of this system is the Bank for International Settlements.  It is the central bank of central banks, and posted below is a video where you can watch Hudes tell Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com the following...

"We don’t have to wait for anybody to fire the Fed or Bank for International Settlements . . . some states have already started to recognize silver and gold, the precious metals, as currency"

Most people have never even heard of the Bank for International Settlements, but it is an extremely important organization.  In a previous article, I described how this "central bank of the world" is literally immune to the laws of all national governments...

An immensely powerful international organization that most people have never even heard of secretly controls the money supply of the entire globe. It is called the Bank for International Settlements, and it is the central bank of central banks. It is located in Basel, Switzerland, but it also has branches in Hong Kong and Mexico City. It is essentially an unelected, unaccountable central bank of the world that has complete immunity from taxation and from national laws. Even Wikipedia admits that "it is not accountable to any single national government." The Bank for International Settlements was used to launder money for the Nazis during World War II, but these days the main purpose of the BIS is to guide and direct the centrally-planned global financial system.  Today, 58 global central banks belong to the BIS, and it has far more power over how the U.S. economy (or any other economy for that matter) will perform over the course of the next year than any politician does. Every two months, the central bankers of the world gather in Basel for another "Global Economy Meeting". During those meetings, decisions are made which affect every man, woman and child on the planet, and yet none of us have any say in what goes on. The Bank for International Settlements is an organization that was founded by the global elite and it operates for the benefit of the global elite, and it is intended to be one of the key cornerstones of the emerging one world economic system.

This system did not come into being by accident. In fact, the global elite have been developing this system for a very long time.  In a previous article entitled "Who Runs The World? Solid Proof That A Core Group Of Wealthy Elitists Is Pulling The Strings", I included a quote from Georgetown University history professor Carroll Quigley from a book that he authored all the way back in 1966 in which he discussed the big plans that the elite had for the Bank for International Settlements...

[T]he powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basle, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world’s central banks which were themselves private corporations.

And that is exactly what we have today.

We have a system of "neo-feudalism" in which all of us and our national governments are enslaved to debt.  This system is governed by the central banks and by the Bank for International Settlements, and it systematically transfers the wealth of the world out of our hands and into the hands of the global elite.

But most people have no idea that any of this is happening because the global elite also control what we see, hear and think about.  Today, there are just six giant media corporations that control more than 90 percent of the news and entertainment that you watch on your television in the United States.

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shtfplan.com

Swiss Army War-Games Economic Collapse and Refugee Invasion: “21st Century Threats”

Mac Slavo

October 2nd, 2013

Switzerland has revealed that they, like the US government, have been simulating collapse fall-out scenarios that could stem from widespread economic collapse, violent uprisings and mass refugee migrations.

Nigel Farage, the UK representative in the European Union, speaking at a conference that included Ron Paul as a guest, said earlier this year that the economic climate in Europe and the rest of the world could potentially lead to wholesale violent revolution resulting from a financial cataclysm.

The Swiss were paying attention, as evidenced by an exercise last month that included the invasion of their country by neighboring France.

The war game, referred to as an “outlandish army exercise” by the London Telegraph, may well be exactly what happens should the European Union dissolve and the French nation goes bankrupt:

Hordes of bankrupt French invade Switzerland to get their hands on their “stolen” money — such is the imaginary scenario cooked up by the Swiss military in simulations revealed over the weekend.

Carried out in August, the apparently outlandish army exercise was based on the premise of an attack by a financially stricken France split into warring regions, according to Matin Dimanche, the Lausanne-based daily.

One of these, “Saônia,” corresponding to the existing Jura region, was preparing attacks on Switzerland to retrieve money it had apparently swiped from France.

Operation “Duplex-Barbara” went as far as imagining a three-pronged invasion from points near Neufchâtel, Lausanne and Geneva, according to a map published in the Swiss newspaper.

…

“For its credibility, the Swiss army must work (to ward against) threats of the 21st century,” Antoine Vielliard, Hauate-Savoie councillor, told Matin Dimanche.

…

This is by no means the first imaginary scenario dreamed up by the Swiss army. Last year, it carried out an exercise based on the premise that a huge wave of refugees crossed into the country after the implosion of the European Single Currency and ensuing chaos across the continent.

“Stabilo Due” centered around a risk map created in 2010 and envisaged internal unrest between warring factions as well as the possibility of refugees from Greece, Spain, Italy, France, and Portugal.

Warning of an escalation of violence in Europe, defense minister Ueli Maurer said at the time: “I can’t exclude that in the coming years we may need the army.”

Switzerland, which has a standing conscripted army of 155,000 soldiers and allows their citizens to own military class firearms as a national defense measure, knows exactly what is happening.

While the scenarios are outliers, they are by no means imaginary, as the Telegraph would have us believe.

Switzerland is one of the world’s foremost banking capitals, and they understand that the economic system as it exists today is simply unsustainable. Moreover, they are keen on the fact that banks around the world have been gearing up for a major collapse of the financial system.

When it all comes crashing down, as Nigel Farage and others have warned, Europe will explode into another violent revolution, just as it has done numerous times over the last several centuries.

The Swiss aren’t taking any chances and they are preparing to literally lock their country down from the possibility of a mass invasion by a foreign military or rebel forces, as well as mass refugee migrations should the countries around them go bankrupt.

The United States government has simulated similar scenarios, including the threat of financial collapse and the civil unrest that would follow.

As we’ve noted before, the government knows what is coming, and they are putting the control grid into place to handle the blow-back.

The world is on the brink, and anyone who has been paying attention is likely doing the same thing as governments in the know – stockpiling food, firearms, supplies and implementing personal defense strategies should the hordes come their way looking for resources.

***

ENE News

Canada TV: New concerns about radiation levels in fish from Pacific — “These numbers are just staggering” — Contamination up considerably — “It’s a major event worldwide”

***

NaturalNews

Epic fail: 99% of Obamacare applications can't be processed, 'nightmare scenario' coming in January

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger

Sunday, October 06, 2013

(NaturalNews) Obamacare is going to crash and burn from technical issues more than political concerns, it seems. You've probably already heard that virtually no one can sign up using the online Obamacare exchanges. The web forms are broken. The code is buggy. The data integration is a jaw-dropping failure.

This is why, all over the country and across the media, no one can seem to locate anyone who has successfully signed up through Healthcare.gov. Even the one person the Obama administration rolled out as a "success case" turns out to be completely staged and fabricated.

But there's even more shocking news about Obamacare that could utterly destroy any credibility the system might have remaining: Of those applications who somehow make it through the broken online sign-up system, 99% can't be processed and will fail.

99% can't be processed

According to insurance industry insiders who spoke to CNBC, 99 out of 100 applications don't contain enough information to result in enrollment.

"...federal officials could face a situation in January in which relatively large numbers of people believe they have coverage starting that month, but whose enrollment applications are have not been processed," reports CNBC.

"We're getting incomplete data," says one source from the insurance industry who goes on to describe the data as "corrupted."

That's fitting, of course, as the entire Obama administration is also corrupted. And incompetent. The Obamacare socialism dream turns out to be one big job-destroying frag fest that deceived Americans on every level. Although called the Affordable Care Act, it isn't "affordable," the system doesn't CARE about you, and even when you want it, it's almost impossible to get the online applications to ACT properly.

Healthcare.gov tricks people into thinking they're enrolled

The problem is that the Healthcare.gov website doesn't ask users for sufficient information needed to process their enrollment. The website, in other words, is a joke. It's a public relations facade. Even when people think they've signed up, the system doesn't have enough information about them to actually complete the enrollment.

So between now and January, even those people who somehow make it through the broken Healthcare.gov website and think they have enrolled will find themselves without any health insurance when January rolls around. Somehow, federal workers are going to have to contact these individuals one at a time and ask them for additional information to process their enrollment.

That process, of course, is fraught with nightmarish scenarios of failure and incompetence. Why? For starters, because the masses of government workers needed to carry out such a follow-up program have never been hired! And that's because no one anticipated the Obamacare online exchanges would be such a nightmare of technical incompetence in the first place.

Secondly, even if you could hire all these people in the next few weeks, the simple fact of the matter is that support-level people who work for the federal government tend to be people who are really just there for the paycheck and who don't actually give a crap about whether they are effective in their jobs. This is going to be worse than DMV workers. It's going to be an office full of extremely unhealthy, over-paid, under-educated, "I-don't-give-a-s#@t!" workers whose only real mission is to log enough hours to collect a paycheck, not to actually solve problems with Obamacare enrollment. Think TSA workers sitting behind computers all day long...

Obamacare is the ultimate vaporware

More and more people are now realizing that Obamacare is D.O.A. (Dead On Arrival). Most Americans don't want it and most employers absolutely despise it. Even the few Americans who are interested in the program can't seem to sign up because the websites are broken (and will remain broken for months). Of those who somehow do manage to complete the enrollment process, 99% will NOT actually be enrolled due to a lack of required information.

This is headed for an absolute P.R. disaster for the Obama administration, which has so far been running on nothing but lies and vapor. Obamacare is, in fact, the ultimate "vaporware" because it makes promises the software simply can't deliver.

No wonder the Republicans are trying to delay it or defund it. The public cry for precisely such action is only going to gain strength from here forward, especially as January rolls around and potentially millions of people who think they have health insurance suddenly find out they have none whatsoever (even though they signed up and were told they had enrolled).

This is going to create a nightmare scenario with doctors and hospitals, where Obamacare enrollees show up demanding health care services but they don't actually have insurance. This mess is going to be dumped right in the laps of medical clinics and hospitals, both of which are already suffocating under a tar pit of health insurance paperwork. Add to that a failed, incompetent system of non-coverage courtesy of the Affordable Care Act, and you get a system infested with so many critical failures that it just can't function.

That's where Obamacare is headed: An epic fail at every level. Obamacare will long be remembered as the perfect example of what can go wrong when irrational Big Government worshippers shove complex socialist programs down everyone's throats. It also shows the danger of taking an industry which should be based on a free market and instead trying to force it into a Soviet-style centralized command system run by a corrupt, incompetent government dominated by tyrants and fools.

Defund Obamacare now!

***

MailOnline

PM Panics as Tories bid to quit EU next year: MPs hijack Commons vote to get 2014 referendum three years early

• Tory MP Adam Afriyie said people did not trust David Cameron to hold referendum in 2017

• He is set to force a vote on the issue in five weeks' time backed by Tory and Labour Eurosceptics

• If he wins, a referendum on Europe should be fast forwarded to next October

By SIMON WALTERS and GLEN OWEN

PUBLISHED: 16:00 EST, 5 October 2013

Downing Street was thrown into panic last night by a rebel Tory bid to force an early referendum on quitting the EU.

In a direct challenge to the Prime Minister’s authority, Conservative MP Adam Afriyie said people did not trust David Cameron’s pledge to hold a vote on Europe in 2017.

Backed by Tory and Labour Eurosceptics, he is set to force a Commons vote on the issue in five weeks’ time.

If he wins, it would mean Parliament had ruled that the referendum should be fast-forwarded to next October.

Panic: Conservative MP Adam Afriyie, left, has said that people do not trust a pledge made by David Cameron, right, to hold a vote on Europe in 2017

Mr Cameron reacted with fury when he learned of the proposal last night – and immediately vowed to stop it at all costs.

Downing Street made it clear the Prime Minister will refuse point-blank to accelerate the referendum.

In a defiant response, a No 10 spokesman said: ‘We will not allow this amendment to be passed under any circumstances. The PM will not let it stand.’

Aides would not say how the PM intended to veto the amendment but he is prepared to withdraw the entire legislation if Mr Afriyie wins.

And he may simply defy the parliamentary vote.

It sets the scene for an extraordinary confrontation when MPs vote on the issue on November 8.

Critics will contrast that stance with Mr Cameron’s compliance with the will of Parliament when it voted against him on military action in Syria.

Rebel: Mr Afriyie, who says Britain should cut its ties with Brussels unless key powers are returned, claims he has widespread support from Tory and Labour MPs

A senior Government source said: ‘This is a deliberate attempt to sabotage the Prime Minister’s referendum plan. It is simply not possible to renegotiate our membership of the EU in under 12 months.’

Windsor MP Mr Afriyie, who earlier this year was accused of plotting a Tory leadership bid, has even named the exact date he wants the referendum: October 23 – the anniversary of the Battle of El Alamein, the turning point in the Second World War.

Mr Afriyie, a self-made millionaire, will tomorrow table an amendment to the legislation which paves the way for the 2017 vote in an attempt to bring it forward to 2014.

The rebel, who says Britain should cut its ties with Brussels unless key powers are returned, claims he has ‘widespread support’ from Tory and Labour MPs.

End game: Mr Afriyie says his plan will end the row over Britain¿s place in Europe once and for all and kill off the threat UKIP¿s Nigel Farage (pictured) poses to the Tories

He says it will end the row over Britain’s place in Europe once and for all and kill off the threat UKIP’s Nigel Farage poses to the Tories.

However, when Downing Street found out about Mr Afriyie’s challenge, alarm bells rang.

If a referendum was held next year, the stakes could not be higher for Mr Cameron. He would almost certainly call for a pro-EU vote.

If the British people voted to go it alone, he could be forced to resign, triggering a Tory leadership contest seven months before the General Election due in May 2015.

But if the nation opted to stay in the EU, it could enhance Mr Cameron’s standing and pave the way for victory at the Election.

Mr Cameron’s allies last night dismissed Mr Afriyie’s plan as ‘fantasy politics’.

One said: ‘Afriyie has no real support and to suggest he is going to force us to bring the referendum to 2014 is absurd.’

Tory backbencher James Wharton, the Cameron loyalist who is sponsoring the 2017 EU Referendum Bill, vented his anger at Mr Afriyie, claiming his amendment could kill off the referendum completely.

The Stockton MP warned: ‘Adam’s proposal will not make the progress of the Bill more likely. In fact, it will make it significantly less likely.’

Mr Wharton backs Mr Cameron’s approach of renegotiating Britain’s membership terms with Brussels, and holding  an EU referendum after the next Election.

The Mail on Sunday revealed earlier this year how Mr Afriyie and other Tory MPs critical of Mr Cameron had met secretly.

He denied trying to undermine the Prime Minister, but he will face fresh claims  of disloyalty as a result of a provocative article in today’s Mail on Sunday in which he:

Says voters are ‘suspicious’ of the PM’s offer of a referendum four years from now and believe it is merely a ploy to put off the issue – possibly for ever.

Questions whether Mr Cameron can win the Election, and takes a sideswipe at his Tory conference rallying cry that he wants to make the UK ‘the land of opportunity’.

‘The Prime Minister says we are going to have an EU referendum in 2017,’ writes Mr Afriyie. ‘The British people .  .  . don’t understand why we can’t have one right away – and that makes them suspicious.

Memorable date: General Bernard Montgomery during the advance on El Alamein. Afriyie has picked October 23 for referendum ¿ the anniversary of the Battle of El Alamein, the turning point in the Second World War

'Many people think delaying the vote is just a tactic to allow all the political leaders to kick the can even further down the road.

'To achieve the land of opportunity .  .  . we must resolve our relationship with Europe and that should not wait until 2017.’

He said delays on the vote will drive large numbers of voters to UKIP, leading to ‘a distinct danger that Labour will gain a majority and we will never see a referendum at all’.

Mr Afriyie said opinion polls showed that the majority of people want a referendum before the next Election.

Linking the date with El Alamein echoes the decision by SNP leader Alex Salmond to hold next year’s Scottish independence referendum on the anniversary of Scotland’s victory at the Battle of Bannockburn.

Mr Afriyie claims that the choice of October 23 is a coincidence, and is the ‘only practical date’ for the vote next year.

His initiative also poses a headache for Ed Miliband.

So far the Labour leader has refused to back any referendum, but some of his MPs could use the amendment to rebel against him.

In a separate development, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg will this week launch an open attack on Mr Cameron for calling a referendum, claiming quitting the EU would be ‘economic suicide’ and  accusing Mr Cameron of ‘threatening to flounce out of Europe’.

***

MailOnline

The hornets of your nightmares: Swarms of massive insects kill more than 40 and injure 1,600 in China

At least 37 patients are in a critical or serious condition in hospitals

Many survivors are now nursing bullet-sized wounds

'The more you run, the more they chase you' victims say

Species are four times the size of British honeybees

By JILL REILLY

PUBLISHED: 3 October 2013

Swarms of deadly hornets have killed more than 40 people and injured more than 1,600 in northern China.

At least 37 patients are in a critical or serious condition in hospitals, according to Shaanxi provincial government.

Victims of the attack have been left with deep, dark craters in their skin the size of bullet wounds.

Scroll down for video

Swarms of deadly hornets have killed more than 40 people and injured more than 1,600 in northern China

Victims of the attack have been left with deep, dark craters in their skin the size of bullet wounds

Terrifying: One victim told local media that 'the more you run, the more they want to chase you'

Over the past three months the cities of Angkang, Hanzhong and Shangluo have been worst affected. 

The Chinese term for hornets is 'hu feng' and local experts believe the culprit is the Asian giant hornet or Vespa mandarinia, which grows up to 5cm long with a 6mm sting.

The insects' highly toxic stings can lead to anaphylactic shock and renal failure. 

Horror: Some victims described being chased about 200 metres (656 feet) by a swarm

One victim told local media that 'the more you run, the more they want to chase you' and some victims described being chased about 200 metres (656 feet) by the deadly insects.

Authorities have mobilised a special medic team and trained more medical personnel to treat victims.

An Ankang official told Xinhua that firefighters have been removing hornet nests. 

The provincial government said hornets are most aggressive in behaviour when they mate and migrate in September and October.

The dry and warm weather this year has contributed to the ferocity of attacks.

One of the victims, named only as Mu, said she has spent two months in a hospital undergoing 13 dialysis treatments.

She has 200 stitches, but still can not move her legs. 

She told Xinhua, the Chinese state-run news agency: 'The hornets were horrifying'.

'They hit right at my head and covered my legs. All of a sudden I was stung and I couldn't move.

'Even now, my legs are covered with sting holes.'

'Most of the deaths are due to allergies to the venom, said Shunichi Makino, director general of the Hokkaido Research Centre for Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute, told 
CNN.

'It's very difficult to prevent the attacks because hornet nests are usually in hidden sites,' he said.

'The venom of an Asian giant hornet is very special compared with other hornets or yellow jackets,' he warned.

'The neurotoxin -- especially to mammals including humans -- it's a special brand of venom.'

Meanwhile fears are growing that giant Asian hornets are headed for Britain.

The species is four times the size of our native honeybees and has decimated the bee population in France.

The dark invaders with yellow feet are thought to have arrive in France in a delivery of Chinese pottery from the Far East in late 2004.

The insects have colonised huge swathes of France, spreading along waterways, and with a few hornets capable of destroying 30,000 bees in a couple of hours, honey production has plummeted.

It has colonised 39 of France’s 100 administrative departments.

The hornets pick on honeybees as they leave their hive until the colony is so exhausted that the hornets can move in and ransack it.

Groups of Asian hornets hover in front of a beehive, picking off single honeybees, decapitating them and stripping off their wings and legs before making off with the 'meat ball' to feed their young.

It is a further problem for the British honeybee, which is struggling to cope with changes in farming and climate and already has one Far Eastern invader to contend with - the varroa mite, which feeds on the bees and makes their hives more vulnerable to disease.

(“And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power. And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads.

And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the torment a scorpion, when he striketh a man. And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them. And they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails: and their power was to hurt men five months.” Revelations 3-6,10)

***

BBC

Slum tourism: Patronising or social enlightenment?

By James Melik

Reporter, Business Daily, BBC World Service

There is a growing trend for tourists to seek out poverty-blighted neighbourhoods when they go on holiday, to get a sense of real life for the poorest communities there.

An increasing number of tourists are searching for something they cannot get at the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris or the foot of the Statue of Liberty in New York.

This controversial trend has been dubbed "slum tourism".

Six years ago in India, Krishna Pujari and his British friend Chris Way began Reality Tours and Travel, to organise tours in Dharavi - arguably Asia's biggest slum.

Sitting on one of Mumbai's prime sites, Dharavi is the city's underbelly, where squalor mixes with enterprise.

The area is dotted with small businesses and recycling units, sitting alongside residential enclaves.

It produces goods worth $1bn ($620m) and a lot of its products are exported and yet, most of its one million inhabitants are impoverished and live in what the outside world may call inhuman conditions.

Dharavi is essentially a magnet for migrants from poor rural areas in other parts of the country, who travel to Mumbai to earn a livelihood for themselves and often for their family back home.

They are mostly garbage pickers, taxi drivers, manual labourers - the nameless, faceless people who keep a largely thankless city afloat.

Diverse opinions

"If you think this is just poverty, you will see that only," says Mr Pujari, "but in the poverty there is much to be learnt."

He tries to show a positive side of the slum, to people who think slums are just about poverty, danger or begging.

The educated urban Indian is a tad sensitive about how certain attributes of Indian history, society and culture is portrayed in the western media”

He explains how his company is a social business with 80% of all profits given to its sister organisation - the charity Reality Gives.

"We do we do this because a large percentage of our income is generated through the Dharavi tours and we felt that it was right to put most of the money back," Mr Pujari asserts.

Tourists do not see the organised slum tour as an example of exploiting poverty.

Florence Martina, a tourist from France, is not apologetic about touring Dharavi.

"These people are fighting against poverty, they are active in building some commerce and trade," she says.

Meanwhile, Christian Hansen from San Francisco says: "The most interesting thing is the working conditions of the people. I didn't expect them to be so industrial."

But local people say they do not benefit from slum tours.

"It doesn't help me at all," says Prasad, who is a trader in Dharavi.

"We see foreigners several times a week. Sometimes they come and talk to us, some offer us a bit of cash, but we don't get anything from these tours," he laments.

Wrong message

Not everyone is happy about how their city is portrayed to the outside world.

"The educated urban Indian is a tad sensitive about how certain attributes of Indian history, society and culture are portrayed in the western media," says Mumbai resident Hemanth Gopinath.

"The Oscar-winning film Slum Dog Millionaire, for all its success, was not well received by certain sections of the popular press in India," he recalls.

"And more recently, Oprah Winfrey drew a lot of flak for how, many felt, she was insensitive in her exchanges with a family in Dharavi," he notes.

He maintains that any criticism against the tour company in question, is that they highlight a negative aspect of the country to foreign citizens and also possibly engage in profiteering at the expense of the underprivileged.

"However, if they can positively impact even a minuscule section of the population of Dharavi, I would support it," he says.

Fatal attraction

What is it about the slums that attracts hordes of tourists each year?

Dr Malte Steinbrink at the University of Osnabruck in Germany, says: "We are currently witnessing a tremendous growth in slum tourism worldwide, especially in the global south."

If we ask why slum tourism is on the rise at the moment, one could assume it is because there are more and more slums and more people who live in them ”

Dr Malte Steinbrink

University of Osnabruck

He notes that the trend started in Victorian London over 150 years ago, when people from the London upper class were curious to see what happened in the East End.

In the global south it is a quite recent phenomenon - starting at the beginning of the 1990s in South Africa after the end of apartheid, when Nelson Mandela was released from prison.

"Tourists came to South Africa and wanted to see the townships and places of the apartheid repression and Mandela's house - so it began as a niche tourism for tourists with a special political interest," says Dr Steinbrink.

About 300-400,000 tourists a year visit the townships - between one-fifth and one-quarter of all tourists who visit South Africa.

"If we ask why slum tourism is on the rise at the moment, one could assume it is because there are more and more slums and more people who live in them worldwide," he says.

According to the World Tourist Organisation, one billion people are expected to travel in 2012, so the increase in the number of travellers opting for slum tourism is likely to rise.

***

The Viral Post

What Happens To Your Body After Drinking Coca Cola

Posted on September 22, 2013 by Viral Post

Have you ever wondered what exactly Coca Cola is?

After 10 minutes

Ten tea spoons of sugar contained in a glass of Cola, cause devastating “strike” on the organism and the only cause, by reason of not vomiting, is the phosphoric acid which inhibits the action of sugar.

After 20 minutes

A leap of insulin levels in bloodstream occurs. The liver converts all the sugar into fat.

After 40 minutes

Ingestion of caffeine is finally completed. The eye pupils are expanding. Blood pressure rises, because the liver disposes more sugar into bloodstream. The adenosine receptors get blocked, thereby preventing drowsiness.

After 45 minutes

Body raises production of dopamine hormone, which stimulates the brain pleasure center. Heroin has the same principle of operation.

After 1 hour

Phosphoric acid binds calcium, magnesium and zinc in the gastrointestinal tract, which supercharges metabolism. Releasing of calcium through urine also rises.

After more than 1 hour

Diuretic effect of the drink enters in “the game”. The calcium, magnesium and zinc are removed out of the organism, which are a part of our bones, as well as sodium. At this time we have already become irritable or subdued. The whole quantity of water, contained in a coca cola, is removed by the urine.

Actually, when having a cold bottle of Coke and enjoying its undeniable freshness, do we know what chemical “cocktail” we pour into our throats?

The active ingredient of Coca-Cola is orthophosphoric acid. Due to its high acidity, cisterns used for transporting of the concentrate have to be equipped with special reservoirs designed for highly corrosive materials.

Let’s have a look at “the anatomy” of one of the most advertised products of “Coca-Cola Co.” – Coca-Cola Light without caffeine. This drink contains Aqua Carbonated, E150D, E952, E951, E338, E330, Aromas, E211.

Aqua Carbonated– this is sparkling water. It stirs gastric secretion, increases the acidity of the gastric juice and provokes flatulency – plenty evolution of gases. Furthermore, spring water is not used, but is used regular filtered water.

E150D– food coloring, obtained through the processing of sugar at specified temperatures, with or without addition of chemical reagents. In the case with coca-cola, ammonium sulfate is added.

E952 – Sodium Cyclamateis a sugar substitute. Cyclamate is a synthetic chemical, has sweet taste, which is 200 times sweeter than sugar, and is used as an artificial sweetener. In 1969 it was banned by FDA, since it as well as saccharin and aspartame, caused cancer in rats’ urinary bladder. In 1975, prohibition seized also Japan, South Korea and Singapore. In 1979, WHO (World Health Organization), “who knows why?” rehabilitated cyclamates and recognizing them as safe.

E950 – Acesulfame Potassium. 200 times sweeter than sugar, containing methyl ether, where it aggravates the operation of the cardiovascular system. Likewise, it contains asparaginic acid which can also cause excitant effect on our nervous system and in time it can lead to addiction. Acesulfame is badly dissolved and is not recommended for use by children and pregnant women.

E951 – Aspartame. A sugar substitute for diabetics and is chemically unstable: at elevated temperature it breaks down into methanol and phenylalanine. Methanol is very dangerous: 5-10ml can cause destruction of the optic nerve and irreversible blindness. In warm soft drinks, aspartame transforms into formaldehyde which is very strong carcinogen. Some number of cases with aspartame poisoning include: unconsciousness, headaches, fatigue, dizziness, nausea, palpitation, weight gain, irritability, anxiety, memory loss, blurry vision, fainting, joint pains, depression, fertility, hearing loss and etc. Aspartame can also provoke the following diseases: brain tumors, MS (Multiple Sclerosis), epilepsy, Graves’ disease, chronic fatigue, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, mental deficiency and tuberculosis.

E338 – Orthophosphoric Acid. This can cause irritation of skin and eyes. It is used for production of phosphoric acid salts of ammonia, sodium, calcium, aluminum and also in organic synthesis for production of charcoal and film tapes, for production of refractory materials, ceramics, glass, fertilizers, synthetic detergents, medicine, metalworking, and textile and oil industries. Food orthophosphoric acid is used in the production of carbonated water and for preparation of ingredients in pastry. It is known that orthophosphoric acid interfere with the absorption of calcium and iron from the body, which can cause weakening of bones and osteoporosis. Other side effects are thirst and skin rashes.

E330 – Citric Acid. It is widely spread in nature and is used in pharmaceutical and food industries. Salts of citric acid (citrates) are used in food industry as acids, preservatives, stabilizers, and in medical fields – for preserving blood.

Aromas– unknown aromatic additives

E211 – Sodium Benzoate. It is used in production of some food products, as an anti-bacterial and anti-fungal agent. These products refer to jams, fruit juices and fruit yoghurts. It’s not recommended for use by asthmatics and people who are sensitive to aspirin. A study conducted byPeter Piperat the Sheffield University in Britain, found that this compound causes significant damage to DNA. According to his words, sodium benzoate which is an active component in preservatives doesn’t destroy DNA, but deactivating it. This can lead to cirrhosis and degenerative diseases like Parkinson’s disease.

So, what turns out? Well, it turns out that “the secret recipe” of coca-cola is just one advertising play. What kind of secret may be there, when it’s well known to us that this is a weak solution of cocaine with preservatives, colorants, stabilizers and etc. I.e., this is legalized cocaine addiction plus pure poison. Diet Coke is even worse, because the aspartame in it, replaces sugar, becoming pure neurotoxic poison.

So, if you can’t imagine a life without coca-cola, take advantage of the following recommendations:

Many distributors of coca-cola in U.S use this drink for cleaning their truck engines.

Many police officers in U.S have bottles of coca-cola in their cars and when a car accident happens, they wash the blood out of the road with it.

Coca-Cola is a great tool for removing rusty stains on chrome surfaces of cars. To remove corrosion from car battery, pour it with Coke and the corrosion will disappear.

To unscrew a rusty screw, dip a cloth in coca-cola and wrap around it for several minutes.

To clean stains from clothes – pour coca-cola on dirty clothes, add washing powder and run the washing machine as usual. You will be surprised of the results.

In India, some farmers use coca-cola instead of pesticides for pest extermination, because it’s cheaper and the effect is completely satisfying.

So, coca-cola undeniably is a very useful product. The key is to be used for intended purposes, but not for drinking!

***

Until next week...keep on believing.
Almondtree Productions

“Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.”
(Colossians 2:8)

PS: Sometime back we presented the book “EARTHSHAKER” by our good friend and colleague John Benjamin. EARTHSHAKER has recently been completely updated with much additional information. If you are interested, you can purchase a copy on line from  Amazon, Barnes & Noble,  Christianbook, and most other reputable book sellers. The ebook is only $3.00.