"Palestine"? --Bye Bye Oslo, Hullo Jordan and Egypthttp://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/11069#.Tv9vBHoVi- The reasons for Oslo's

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/11069#.Tv9vBHoVi-

The reasons for Oslo's demise are complex and reveal unbridgeable gaps betwen Israel and the PA.
From David Singer
Veteran Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk may have been a little premature when he said on 20 September:
It's over: the "peace process", the "road map", the "Oslo agreement"; the whole fandango is history.
Personally, I think "Palestine" is a fantasy state, impossible to create now that the Israelis have stolen so much of the Arabs' land for their colonial projects.
Fisk - in attributing this simplistic reason for signing Oslo's death certificate - totally ignored the two offers made by Israel in 2001 and 2008 to cede its claims under the Mandate for Palestine and the United Nations Charter in more than 90%  of the land won from Jordan in the 1967 Six Day War.

The real reasons for Oslo's demise are far deeper and more complex - revealing unbridgeable gaps between Israel and the PLO in reaching any agreement with regard to the following issues after failed on and off negotiations extending over the last 19 years:
Israel's demands that
1. Israel be recognized as the Jewish State
2. Any Palestinian State be demilitarized
3. The final borders determined between it and a Palestinian State be secure and recognized boundaries as stipulated by United Nations Security Council  Resolutions 242 and 338
The PLO's demands that
1. Israel cede its claims in 100% of the territory won from Jordan in the 1967 War - with possibly equivalent land swaps to negate some of the removal of Jews from their homes in the Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem
2. Israel agree to accept millions of Palestinian Arabs - and their descendants - who became refugees as a result of the 1948 War
Fisk's prediction has, however, been given added weight with the news this week that  Hamas has agreed to join the PLO.

If this was to  actually occur, Israel's Prime Minister made his government's position very clear when Israel Radio reportedly quoted him as saying that if Hamas joins the Palestinian government, he would refuse to conduct peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority.

Little comfort can be taken from the news that the Palestinian Authority might now be prepared to resume the long stalled peace negotiations with Israel if it released 100 prisoners. The parties can talk till the cows come in. But after 19 fruitless years - can the sides to come to an agreement on all their outstanding demands?
The Oslo Accords - and the Palestinian Authority - were born amid great enthusiasm  in 1993.

The Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee - Francis Sejersted - expressed  the following hopes of the Committee when awarding the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize jointly to Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzchak Rabin

"In the committee's view, the so-called Oslo Accords concluded last year between Israel and the PLO meant that developments in the Middle East had taken a new turning. What was revolutionary about them was the de facto mutual recognition by the two parties. Not least by virtue of that recognition, the accords opened up a possible way out of the vicious circle of violence breeding violence, and towards peaceful co-existence."
The Nobel Committee's optimism was misplaced.

Yasser Arafat had signed a side letter dated 9 September 1993 - nine days prior to signing the Declaration of Principles in which he assured Yitzchak Rabin:
The signing of the Declaration of Principles marks a new era...I would like to confirm the following PLO commitments: The PLO recognizes the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security. The PLO accepts United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338. The PLO commits itself...to a peaceful resolution of the conflict between the two sides and declares that all outstanding issues relating to permanent status will be resolved through negotiations...the PLO renounces the use of terrorism and other acts of violence and will assume responsibility over all PLO elements and personnel in order to assure their compliance, prevent violations and discipline violators...the PLO affirms that those articles of the Palestinian Covenant which deny Israel's right to exist, and the provisions of the Covenant which are inconsistent with the commitments of this letter are now inoperative and no longer valid. Consequently, the PLO undertakes to submit to the Palestinian National Council for formal approval the necessary changes in regard to the Palestinian Covenant.
In breach of those commitments:
The PLO Covenant still remains unchanged and unrevised in 2011.
1. The PLO has rejected the idea of Israel being entitled to secure and recognized borders as required under Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338
2. The PLO has unilaterally sought to gain statehood - not through negotiations - but by seeking recognition and admission to the United Nations and UNESCO. 
3. The PLO is demanding pre-conditions for resuming the stalled negotiations with Israel.
Indeed one would be unable to find any improvement in the relationship between Israel and the PLO in 2011 to that which existed in 1994 when Mr Serjested declared:
The situation is still full of tension, marked by violence, killings, and insecurity, and stability is still far to seek
The PLO has been given its opportunity for the last 19 years to create a second Arab state in former Palestine - in addition to Jordan - but quite frankly has missed the boat.
Martin Sherman has summed up the current situation in these terms:

"For almost two decades after the Oslo Accords – despite massive financial aid and political support – they have produced nothing but a deeply divided entity, crippled by corruption and cronyism.

The result is a dysfunctional polity unable to conduct even the semblance of timely elections, and a puny economy, comprising a minuscule private sector and a bloated public one, totally unsustainable without massive infusions of foreign funds".
Sherman's prescription to abandon Oslo and the two-state solution predicated by the Bush Roadmap is described by him as follows :

"Since the geography is immutable, the focus must be on the demography.

It is thus no more than “elementary” that the long-term preservation of the Jewish state must involve the relocation of the non-Israeli Arabs between the river and the sea. Any other option is self-deluded wishful thinking – or at least the burden of proof to show otherwise is on the proponents of such an option, especially in view of the post-Oslo/post-disengagement experiences."
I beg to differ.
Direct negotiations between Israel and Jordan (and possibly Egypt) and within the framework of  Security Council resolutions 242 and 338 and their existing peace treaties - will involve no-one - Arab or Jew - having to leave his current home unless he voluntarily wishes to do so.

This is not self-deluded wishful thinking - but It will need some pressure by the Quartet - America, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations - to be placed on Jordan and Egypt to sit down and negotiate with Israel if they refuse to do so voluntarily.

The alternative -continued  tension, violence, insecurity, killings and instability - cannot be allowed to deteriorate into an inevitable slide into open warfare.

To hope for anything else as we usher in 2012 is pure folly.

World Churches Against Israel

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/151192#.Tvy5S3oVi-U
UK Bishops Come Out Clearly Against Israel
"Good will to all men" in UK churches, but not, apparently, to Israelis.
Giulio Meotti
The head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales has offered the Palestinians a powerful tool of propaganda: the comparison with Jesus’ passion.
“We are to be freshly attentive to the needs of those who, like Jesus himself, are displaced and in discomfort”, Archbishop Vincent Nichols said during his Christmas Mass sermon at Westminster Cathedral. “A shadow falls particularly heavily on the town of Bethlehem tonight … We pray for them tonight”.
It would have been more in keeping with Nicholas’ mission to mention hundreds of Christians losing their lives to Islamic terrorism and oppressed by Palestinian Muslim dictatorship.
Nichols’ sermon has an historical value, because now the entire Christian hierarchy in the UK, Catholic and Protestant as well, is part of the global battle against Israel.
There is a virulent animosity towards the Jewish state in the established churches in Britain, which promulgate inflammatory libels against it.
Recently Barry Morgan, the Archbishop of Wales, compared Israel to apartheid in South Africa. “The situation resembles the apartheid system in South Africa because Gaza is next to one of the most sophisticated and modern countries in the world – Israel”, said Morgan.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, spiritual leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion, joined the Church of England’s General Synod, which voted to disinvest Church funds from “companies that make profits from Israel’s occupation”.
Archbishop Morgan said in a lecture on the relationship between religion and violence: “Messianic Zionism began a policy of cleansing the Promised Land of all Arabs and non-Jews rather than co-existing with them”.
But there has been no such “cleansing” at all in the disputed territories. The only attempt at “cleansing” has been the Palestinian attempt to kill as many Jews as possible.
According to Canon Andrew White, replacement theology is dominant and present in almost every church, fueling the venom against Israel.
The revised version of “Whose Promised Land?”, a highly influentiual book by the Anglican thinker Colin Chapman, recycles the worst Christian anti-Jewish theology. “When seen in the context of the whole Bible, however, both Old and New Testaments, the promise of the land to Abraham and his descendants does not give anyone a divine right to possess or to live in the land for all time because the coming of the kingdom of God through Jesus the messiah has transformed and reinterpreted all the promises and prophecies in the Old Testament”, writes Chapman camouflaging anti-Jewish replacement theology, which helped fuel burnings at stake and pogroms during the Middle Ages, as a dispassionate analysis of the conflict of Israel and the Palestinians.
According to Bishop John Gladwin, a separate Palestinian state would be merely a “first step”. “Ultimately, one shared land is the vision one would want to pursue”.
A Palestinian cleric, Naim Ateek, has an immense influence in contemporary British Christianity, not least through his Sabeel Centre in Jerusalem. Ateek’s denunciations of Israel include imagery linking the Jewish State to the charge of deicide that for centuries fueled anti-Jewish bloodshed.
For example, Ateek wrote about “modern-day Herods” in Israel, referring to the king who the New Testament says slaughtered the babies of Bethlehem in an attempt to murder the newborn Jesus.
At the beginning of the XIX century, the UK Christian clergy was a driving force behind the Zionist enterprise, inspired by a brave interpretation of the Bible. A century later, British Christianity is one of the major producers of blood libels against the Jews.
(The writer is an Italian journalist with Il Foglio who also writes for Arutz Sheva. He is the author of the book "A New Shoah", that researched the personal stories of Israel's terror victims, published by Encounter. His writing has appeared in publications, such as the Wall Street Journal, Frontpage and Commentary.)

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/11053#.Tvy44XoVi-U
The World Council of Churches' Anti-Israel Policies

Interview series: Christian Media analyst Dexter Van Zile: Only Israel is condemned, while Copts are killed in Egypt, Arab Christians persecuted in Muslim countries. WCC has two bodies working to end the "occupation".
From Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld
“The World Council of Churches, an umbrella organization for 349 Protestant and Orthodox churches founded in 1948, has been largely hostile to Israel, particularly during times of conflict. WCC institutions demonize Israel, use a double-standard to assess its actions and from time to time de-legitimize the Jewish state. They have also persistently denied the intent of Israel’s adversaries to deprive the Jewish people of their right to a sovereign state.
“The WCC’s use of double standards against Israel is frequent. When it condemns Israel, the WCC speaks loudly and unequivocally about the ‘terrible’ things done by the Jewish state. When one of Israel’s neighbors does something much worse, the WCC descends into pious incomprehensibility that leaves readers wondering exactly who did what to whom?”
Dexter Van Zile is Christian Media Analyst for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA). His writings have appeared in numerous American Jewish newspapers, as well as in the Jerusalem Post, Ecumenical Trends, and the Boston Globe.
Van Zile says that a few among many examples over the decades are representative of the WCC’s recurrent anti-Israelism: “The WCC’s response to events in Lebanon in the 1970’s and 1980’s was simple. In their declarations, the WCC failed to hold the PLO accountable for its actions, but vociferously condemned Israel. It offered vague and diffuse condemnations of massacres in Lebanon in those decades, failing to provide details about either the identity of the victims, or the identity and motives of the perpetrators. Yet when Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, WCC institutions forcefully condemned Israel, while attributing malign intent to it.
“The Middle East Council of Churches has prevailed upon the WCC to condemn Israel. On the other hand, the Russian Orthodox Church was able to prevent the WCC from condemning the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980’s.
“In 2005, the WCC’s Central Committee expressed support for the anti-Israeli divestment campaign in mainline American Protestant churches. After the Presbyterian Church (USA’s) General Assembly passed a divestment resolution which stated that Israel’s ‘occupation” was at the root of violence against innocents on both sides of the conflict – as if anti-Semitic incitement in Palestinian society had nothing to do with the conflict – the WCC’s Central Committee issued a “minute” lauding the decision. “This action is commendable in both method and manner, uses criteria rooted in faith, and calls on members to do the ‘things that make for peace’ (Luke 19:42).
“In June 2010, WCC General Secretary Olav Fykse Tveit issued a public statement lamenting the confrontation that took place between Israeli commandos and passengers on board the Mavi Marmara, part of the Free Gaza Movement’s flotilla, which attempted to bring Turkish-trained jihadists into the Gaza Strip using Western peace activists as cover.
“Tveit mischaracterized the events, writing: “We condemn the assault and killing of innocent people who were attempting to deliver humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza, who have been under a crippling Israeli blockade since 2007.” Tveit went on to denounce “the flagrant violation of international law by Israel in attacking and boarding a humanitarian convoy in international waters.” This was a lie, as international law permitted Israel to act as it did.  
“The WCC has even established two bodies – the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) and the Palestine Israel Ecumenical Forum (PIEF) – with the singular purpose of ending Israel’s ‘occupation’ of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. There is nothing similar concerning any other country.
“The WCC’s attitude on the persecution of Coptic Christians in their homeland of Egypt is radically different. Copts have been subjected to mob violence and their churches have been burned on a regular basis. They are demonized on television and the internet by Muslim extremists, accused of kidnapping Muslim women and forcing them to convert to Christianity when in fact Coptic women and girls have been raped and abducted and forced to convert to Islam by their neighbors.
“The WCC has expressed its worry about the situation of the Copts in Egypt. What is remarkable however, is the absence of any condemnation of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces – which governs Egypt – for failing to protect Coptic Christians. It also does not speak in a forthright manner about what is happening. Neither do the National Council of Churches in the U.S., nor any of the mainline Protestant churches in the U.S. that have assailed Israel so frequently and so vociferously in the past few years.
“One conclusion is inescapable: The WCC’s obsession with Israel, claiming that it is the source of all the troubles in the Middle East, has made it impossible for the organization to address an ongoing campaign of religious cleansing perpetrated by Muslim extremists against Christians in Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East and elsewhere. Consequently, these Muslims can engage in a slow, grinding campaign to eliminate Christianity from the Middle East without effective challenge from the World Council of Churches.”

Exploring Hitler's Mind

http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/12/25/62858494.html

Interview with James H. Felon, Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior and Professor Emeritus of Anatomy and Neurobiology at the University of California.
Professor, thank you very much for joining us. So, please tell me has anyone ever tried to explore something like a dictator’s mind?
Nobody really knows the brain of a dictator, we’ve really never been able to study them with the genetic. So, a lot of this has to be referred to what we know about people who behave very much like them, these are people who usually be called a psychopaths. It is a social personality disorder and if you break down a psychopath you’ll see some dictators falling into different groups. This what’s called a primary psychopath, these are people that, you know, they don’t respond to stress or disapproval, punishment and they can manipulate people but they don’t have a particular life plan. So, this wouldn’t be Hitler, Hitler had a life plan. They look like they can’t experience real emotion, empathy.
Then there is a whole other group of secondary psychopaths and these are people who are warriors, they feel guilt, they may get stressful, they take risks, they try to avoid pain and they can be very daring but they can be vulnerable just like the average person and this more would be like Hitler.
Now both of those groups, both primary and the secondary psychopaths or sociopaths. One group is called the distempered psychopaths – these are people inflame to a complete rage and they get very angry and see red much more easily than the average person and they really go crazy when they get mad and they are sexually very active. This does not seem to be for example the Hitler type.
Hitler type is the other type called the charismatic psychopaths and these are very, very charming and glib people, they are gifted in some way with communication, like Hitler was - in public speaking, and they can talk quite quickly and they can really persuade people to do what they want them to do. So, if we just look at the Hitler type he would be probably what we call a secondary psychopath who is also a charismatic psychopath. And so, if you take somebody like Idi Amin, he is seems to be more of a primary psychopaths and more of what would be distempered, inflame to a rage, he had a very, you know, unusual sex drive but he also was sadistic and which is different, not all dictators are sadistic.
So, if we look at those dictators that are psychopaths then they seem to fall into those two groups each of which are broken up into the same two groups if you will. This is different then, those people who are born into it, they are a part of a succession or line of people who are dictators, it could be quite normal people, they are just accepting their job, accepting a legacy or some sort of royal legacy if you will but they can also be psychopaths adventitious, psychopathology turn on in a family. So even separate those that are accepting a job, you know, of a social dictator and there are others that are really very dangerous people.
Is there any way to say that a person is going to develop this kind of behavior?
Sure, for those who are psychopaths, again many of dictators have these traits, and so look at the traits of a dictator, you know, a lot of them are glib, they are quite charming, they have a very grandiose sense of themselves, they are charismatic, they can lie very easily, they are manipulative, very cunning, they have a lack of guilt apparently and emotionally quite shallow, and they do not seem to have a certain type of empathy toward individual human beings that an average person has, they can have empathy for a whole group of people, like their own race, for example as in the case of Hitler it would have been pan-Germanism, in the case of Stalin it would have been pan-Slavism. And for the recent Norway killer who wanted to be a dictator it seems, he was into more of a pan-Christian, Nordic sort of attachment. So, there is an attachment, they do have empathy and connected this perhaps to their own tribe, with their own great sense of a tribe, but not to individual human beings, they are quite careless for those.
And another thing is that they tend to avoid responsibility for their own actions, they put it on another people, they have early sensual life, many of them. If you look at the lives of dictator and I wouldn’t tell about sixty of them, but what I could find even of the ancient ones, they have early poor behavior control, many of them have a very odd sexual life, they can be hypersexual or they can be asexual or be just ascetic if you will. So, they are always seem to be off-centered, they are impulsive and many even irresponsible but they can be very convincing.
These are some of the traits, now all of those traits that I’ve just mentioned happen to be, the same will you find for a type of social personality disorder which is psychopathology – the psychopaths. So, they really fitted very well, many of them, there has been just psychopaths which we know something about, they have some funny trait and I just to tell the truth, historically I noticed that many of them marry very well. They’ve seemed to marry poorly and did not have quite happy marriages, not all of them. They seem to have not a great taste in art for some reason and many were very short, many of them have dissociable appetites and some were sadistic or sexually deviant but surely not all because they can be quite focused on a grand plan.
And there is true thing that really warns us they are quite dangerous which is the thing of malignant narcissism, you know, this inflated sense of oneself, and malignant in this sense, it means that it’s getting worse and worse and worse, it grows like a cancer. And this is thought to be, but we don’t know again because none of this is really studied – deep biology of brains or genetics of this narcissism, but in the case of malignant narcissism which some people say that does not really exist, you know, other psychiatrists do, so there is an argument, but this is a kind of thing that gets worse and worse, it’s like an addiction.
There are some neuroscientists, some psychiatrists, psychologists who say that a need for power is like an addiction and this addiction like for an addict grows and grows because of the problem with medulla in the brain - that is you can never be satisfied. So, the need for power is getting worse and worse and worse and you can see that behavior but there is a still a question of whether there is really such a thing as an addiction to power.  Although we know some addictions- shopping, sex and drugs and alcohol gambling etc. But that’s really a question that’s still up in the air.
And some curious thing about them, they all seem to have excellent memories, they have tremendous memories and there is certain neurobiology, certain genetics to this which suggests that there are some genetic components, we still don’t know what they are, we do know some of the genetics of aggression and violence that there are some types, variants of genes that contribute to that and also there are about 15-20 genes variants right now that have to do with empathy, that is how well you bound and connect to the people.
And so, there is probably the way they will be studied, it’s really disappointing when every time, you know, a dictator is brought down, we never test them properly. Now this is something of question of public policy whether we can force people to have PAT scans and have MRI and have a DNA test, that would surely be great as a public service that they could do for society by allowing to be fully tested so we can find out really what makes them and check.
It’s very interesting because it actually creates a whole new paradigm of attitudes towards those people. I’ve been reading a book, in fact it was translated into Russian by one of the American psychiatrists and his name was Dr. Amen, so after he studied the brains of obviously psychiatric patients for a number of years his conclusion was that it was basically the impaired function of some kind of different parts of the brain, like you said and that those people were not exactly responsible for their illness which was basically their illness. Does that mean that instead of perhaps putting them on trial or executing those people, is there a way we could cure them?
I’m very aware of Dr. Daniel Amen’s work and I agree with that, that to the first point that it appears that even people like dictators who were psychopaths, that they do have early male formation. That could be due to development or an injury, for example being beaten by the farther while they’re young, or because of a combined extreme combination of genetics. They have their orbital cortex, that’s a part of prefrontal cortex above the eyes, that is turned off and that’s the part that has to deal with ethics and morality and impulse control too.
So, people who were just impulsive killers they can have their part damaged that they may not know what they are doing is wrong and they can’t quite help the urge. But turning to the psychopaths appear to have the other of the limbic or emotional brain that’s not formed and that especially include the medulla, what is called hippocampus, and so this whole limbic loop is seems to be under-functioning and therefore that is alter drives  many of which are much related in the medulla. They sometimes cannot be satisfied and they need more and more and more, so this is very in-vection part of this concern.
And they can also, you know, besides not being able to satisfy, they can be very strange desirers and likewise there is a balance that run the orbital cortex, that I’ve mentioned that has to do with ethics and morality, that doesn’t care about it correctly, it is seen as something of regulation.
Those two types of damage development that could have gone wrong before child’s birth or during or after child’s birth, we also really need to have some early abuse, pretty severe abuse, early in the first few years of life, in many times it is loss of, you know, primary parents or biological parents. So, those two things plus some genes, actually three things in total, seem to be necessary and sufficient, that’s a very purpose for psychopathology and therefore many for dictators.
Now, if you just have want you can’t look at a brain scans of these persons – dictator or killer or psychopath, although almost all the brains of killers, psychopaths I vote that do have that damage and they also do have the early abuse and other people found this of course, other researchers including Dr. Amen. And you really need several things occurring earlier, we talk about those people giving to the probability, you know, do they really know that what they are doing is wrong. It’s in some people where we know that they get early brain damaged, and that’s orbital cortex especially, let’s say it’s a 1,2 or 3 years old when they grow up they have no idea of what’s moral and ethical, they really have no idea what they are doing. And these people, I’d hardly imagine they can be really responsible for what they do because they don’t even know that it’s wrong.
Other people, and this can occur with later damage, after very early years, let’s say through puberty and early adolescence, that’s a kind of damage that leads to somebody who is very impulsive and so they know what is wrong, they know right from wrong, but they really ultimately can’t control it. And if you can think of it, if you think of a free will in this way like you really have to go to the bathroom, we surely have free will not to go right now but in two hours we not going to have a free will to do it.
If turn to psychopaths and look at them, they can go a fairly long time without doing anything like killing somebody or really doing something awful but after a while it really gets to them, they just driven by this urge, almost like, you know, an addiction. It finally gets to them and they go on in killing spree, or go on in a very abusive spree and you can see this in dictators too. And so, it seems to be when a damage is done that is do they really know right from wrong and even if they do know right from wrong is it so impulsive, they’re driven so much, is it something that they ultimately have a hard time but possible time controlling. So, that’s a kind of botulism, what is that.
Do you think that perhaps just to prevent more dictators from emerging in this world, do you think it could be worthwhile, I don’t know, making some psychological scans of a person who is supposed to get to a leading position in a state or having a psychology expert in his team? Do you think that such things could be done in a modern society?
I think it’s a great idea. Being a libertarian I had a hard time with, you know, these things they could be voluntary but if they don’t want to take them, then they don’t  have to work for office; so with their full psychological profile and even genetics and brain scans that just show you that this person does not have fundamental deviations, for example being a psychopath, either the behavior or the damage involved. That can lead to a problem because then the data starts being misinterpreted for anybody with a slightly odd brain scan or with combination of genes, normally bad genes, that certain combinations are almost suddenly they are demonized. That’s not a good thing, so somehow if one could look at really important leaders before they sworn in, if you will, that they have gone all through this as a part of just a physical psychiatric exam, I think that probably it would be very useful.
But to the point of whether people who are psychopaths, if we take dictators who are very well the psychopaths, whether they can be cured – I don’t think so. I used to think that it would be possible but I don’t think they are ever cured. Now there may be one or two examples, occasionally but they almost all go back to the same things they did before. So, I don’t think they can be cured and I also don’t think we should be cruel to them either, you know, and go for capital punishment and all. I don’t think that a real problem of psychopaths can ever be fixed.
Now, for that being a case, for its start date back earlier, the first couple of years of life there are some indications of a child who looks like he’ll be a real trouble in this way and if this intervention by the family and not so much society but by family, I mean not something we have to discuss, you know if the parents feel that there is some problem with the behavior, then in privacy they can consult a psychiatrist and ask what they can do because there are some indications that early, very early intervention can really inhibit the creation of this psychopathic parents but after a few years of patience does not seem to really work.
Do you keep any statistics that would perhaps illustrate the dynamics of the development of these conditions, I mean do we have more psychopaths and potential dictators with time or do their number remains more or less constant?
It’s not known because, you know, these numbers really have only past half century been looked at and one of the often cited statistics about 3% of males in a population and it doesn’t matter what society and about 1% of females are psychopaths. Now, we tend to want to use these categorical definitions but like many diseases psychiatric diseases like Schizophrenia, depression, addictions it seems to be on a sliding scale, it is a spectrum sort of problem.
So, there are people who borderline psychopaths. If you take Hare’s psychopathology test, there are 40 points and if you have zero that would be a normal person with none of these traits, if anything 30 or above as categorically we define as a psychopath but there are people who have 25, 20 – kind of borderline psychopaths, there is a lot more of these.
But you know, I think more perhaps to the point, interesting point we are making – one idea is that, and which I’ve argued for, is that since it is so it will be distributed between cultures and it maybe be a cultural and therefore it may have been around for a long time, for 50 000 – 100 000 years of human evolution, we don’t know. These psychopaths are important for us, that is they do our dirty work and those people who are, you know, really coldblooded killers you want these people on your side when you got to fight because they don’t hold back. And many times we say that – oh, in all this greed in Wall Street and CEOs, you know, there are always psychopaths. But really when you ask individual people, they want their investors to be coldblooded, they want them -go and get me money or, you know, I want my stuff to go up, you want your own people, your own CEO, you want investors, the personal protection militarily.
The question why you own one to be kind of psychopath because they are on your side is mostly because people do not want to do their own psychopathic work I think. Now probably a lot of people would really not accept that, but you know, the more you look at it, the more it seems clear this is just for high purposes, that we almost need psychopaths. So, they keep being found out in all cultures, so it makes one wonder how we use them and how we depend on them too, you know, it really saves us in many ways.
So, just to develop your idea “we need psychopaths” but we need them controlled.
You know, I always think I’m responsible for saying this, I mean this is what I really feel, that having borderline psychopaths, that is those that can turn off their emotions, is very important because they don’t let emotions get in a way of things because emotion slows you down and it could really make you a nice person and very empathetic connected person, it doesn’t make you very efficient.
You want to have for example temporary psychopaths, you want your soldiers at a time of kind of fight, you don’t want them thinking about all of this stuff about empathy. You don’t want you neurosurgeon doing surgery worrying about you, just  - oh my god, I really care about this patient, you want them to mechanical. But in way with psychopaths and dictators they’re mechanical and so it is both positive and negative thing.
So, like any sort of human behavior, you know, there are bad behaviors that are absolutely bad and only bad in context and so all things that psychopaths do, even killing, is what the humans do as a matter of fact. And all the aggressive sexuality, all these things are what humans and other primate animals do, it’s part of us. And all we ask of ourselves and others is like – just do it only under certain and right circumstances and in right context. So, in a way a society would say – look, give us psychopaths, but we are not able to turn them on and off and, right? And I don’t think so it only got to be that control so they could turn it on and off. So, one thing you want to have psychopathic tendencies in a really top fighting group, but when they come home you don’t want them to come back to the family and society as psychopaths, you want them to be normal people.
So, there are people that are at borderline who seem to be able to do this but full-blown psychopaths - they don’t, they stay very give in and very dangerous. So, that’s the thing like you said, you know, is there a way we need psychopaths – sure, it seems that but, you know, how we get them to control themselves which is against the whole idea of a psychopath. And then there are quite theory thoughts of ways how can we do this with very simple stimulation or snorting something, intranasal sort of treatment, you know, when they are not on the fire line, if you will, that somehow can we modify that behavior by just turning on these areas or turning them off temporarily.
So, that’s a kind of a brave new world when you are asking your warriors, your neurosurgeons, you investors and your leaders that they have to snort something every day, something that concerns with the orbital cortex that will temporally make them tough. This is seems to be very radical sort of thing to do for a society but it can be done but how does this spread into other parts of our life, then we can expect it becomes very dangerous quickly.
Professor, thank you very much. And just to remind you the guest of our program was a prominent American neuroscientist James H. Felon – Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior and Professor Emeritus of Anatomy and Neurobiology at the University of California. 

Latest from Israel Dec 25, 2011

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/151047#.TvebxHoVi-U

UNESCO Stops Funding PA-Hitlerism
UNESCO halts funding of a magazine promoting Hitler as a role model for the PA after it was exposed by PMW and Arutz Sheva.
Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
UNESCO has halted its funding of a magazine promoting Hitler as a role model for the PA. It expressed “shock” over the incitement – but only after it was exposed by Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) and Arutz Sheva and after the Simon Wiesenthal Center complained.
Zayzafuna, a magazine which ostensibly promotes democracy and tolerance, published an article by a ten-year-old Palestinian girl who said that in her dreams, Hitler told her, “Yes. I killed them [the Jews] so you would all know that they are a nation who spreads destruction all over the world.”  
"UNESCO is shocked and dismayed by the content of the February issue, and has requested more detailed information and clarification from the editors of the magazine and the Palestinian Authority,” the United Nations agency said. “UNESCO deplores and condemns the reproduction of such inflammatory statements in a magazine associated with UNESCO's name and mission and will not provide any further support to the publication in question."
The magazine is run by a body that is sponsored by a Palestinian Authority agency. The chairman of the PA is Mahmoud Abbas, whose doctorate thesis was on Holocaust denial.
The article on Hitler was published last February and stated that Hitler killed Jews “so you would all know that they are a nation who wreak havoc on Earth”.
UNESCO said that while it “upholds freedom of expression as an integral part of its mandate, the inclusion in this publication of a statement that may be interpreted as an apology of the Holocaust is contrary to UNESCO’s constitutional mandate and values. It is totally unacceptable.”
UNESCO supported the publication of three issues of the Zayzafuna Magazine six months after the February 2011 issue following an agreement with the editorial board that “they would focus on building greater appreciation amongst Palestinians for their heritage and culture,” UNESCO added.
Giulio Meotti noted in Arutz Sheva last week, “When the United Nations celebrated its 50th anniversary, UNESCO refused to mention the Shoah - the Holocaust - in its World War II resolution, intentionally ignoring Israel’s request to include a reference to the destruction of European Jewry.”
He added that the article in Zayzafouna “is not just another example of Palestinian incitement to hatred…. When the Palestinian National Authority came into being in 1993, it pledged to junk its controversial textbooks, some of which date as far back as the ‘40s, and replace them with updated versions, purged of the anti-Jew racism and incitement that permeate the texts imported from Arab countries, many of which are reportedly still in use in Jordan.
“In 1994, Palestinian officials launched a textbook-replacement program, with the financing and help of UNESCO. The problem is that the Palestinian textbooks were not amended so as to be rid of the anti-Jewish remarks.
“’Palestine’ is shown to encompass all the Jewish State, the Jewish holy sites (such as the Temple Mount) have been erased, and Arab ‘martyrdom’ is praised. In these texts, Jews are described as ‘cunning,’ ‘locusts’ and ‘wild animals.’
“UNESCO, in 2003, financed the renovation of the Alexandria library, where a copy of the anti-Semitic booklet “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” was soon prominently displayed.”


http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/11040#.Tveao3oVi-U
Palestinian Authority Hubris Spells Its Demise
Abbas blames Israel for the demise of "peace talks", but if he embraces Hamas, he is walking away from any chance at peace.
From Yonatan Silverman
The PA is essentially hoisting itself on its own petard. And this is the fate of those whose outlook is clouded by hubris.
The word hubris derives from the Greek and, among other things, means exaggerated self confidence. It also means extreme haughtiness, pride or arrogance. Hubris often indicates a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of one's own competence or capabilities, especially when the person exhibiting it is in a position of power. In the Greek tradition it often resulted in fatal retribution or Nemesis, ancient Greek for "ruin, folly, delusion.”  The action performed by the hero or heroine, usually because of his or her hubris, or great pride, ultimately leads to his or her death or downfall.
The Palestinian Authority's tradition of political attitudes about Israel is indelibly marked with hubris. If some classic Greek dramatist wrote a tragedy out of this tradition, it would surely conclude with their defeat and humiliation on account of the grievous sin of hubris. The literary and even the realpolitik tradition features numerous parallels.
The most recent example of this hubris is the objective of Mahmoud Abbas to include the Islamic terror gang Hamas in the ranks of the Palestinian Authority.
Prime Minister Netanyahu’s spokesman Mark Regev, recently said: “Hamas, is totally opposed to peace and reconciliation, believes that the Jewish state should be obliterated, and that terrorism against civilians is justified… Hamas is not a political organization that uses terrorism, Hamas is to its very core a genocidal terrorist organization."

This characterization of Hamas is totally opposed to the founding principles of the Palestinian Authority which are engraved in the 1993 Oslo Accords.
Among other things, the accords called for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from parts of the Gaza Strip and Judea and Samaria, and affirmed the Arab right of self-government within those areas through the creation of the Palestinian Authority. Major issues such as Jerusalem, refugees, Israeli settlements, and security and borders were to be decided at permanent status negotiations.
Along with the principles, the two groups signed Letters of Mutual Recognition - the Israeli government recognized the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian Arabs, while the PLO recognized the right of the state of Israel to exist and renounced terrorism as well as other violence, and its desire for the destruction of the Israeli state.
The aim of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations was to establish a Palestinian Interim Self-Government Authority, an elected Council, for the Palestinian Arabs in parts of Judea and Samaria  and the Gaza Strip, for a transitional period not exceeding five years, leading to a permanent settlement based on United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, and 338, an integral part of the whole peace process. The two sides viewed both areas as a single territorial unit.
In order that the Palestinians govern themselves according to democratic principles, free and general political elections would be held for the Council.
The five-year transitional period would commence with Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and Jericho area. Permanent status negotiations would begin as soon as possible between Israel and the Palestinians. The negotiations would cover remaining issues, including: Jerusalem, refugees, Israeli "settlements", security arrangements, borders, relations and cooperation with other neighbors, and other issues of common interest.
In fact, during the course of the negotiations with Israel, the Palestinian delegation requested that a "side letter" be attached to the agreement, the text of which would be agreed upon, whereby Israel would commit to restricting "settlement" construction in area C during the process of implementation of the agreement and the ensuing negotiations.
Several drafts of this "side letter" passed between the negotiating teams until Israel indeed agreed to a formulation restricting construction activities on the basis of a government decision that would be adopted for that purpose. Ultimately, the Palestinian leadership withdrew its request for a side letter.
The Hamas Charter on the other hand states explicitly
“Israel will rise and will remain erect until Islam eliminates it as it had eliminated its predecessors.
“Peace initiatives, the so-called peaceful solutions, and the international conferences to resolve the Palestinian problem, are all contrary to the beliefs of the Islamic Resistance Movement. For renouncing any part of Palestine means renouncing part of the religion; the nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its faith, the movement educates its members to adhere to its principles and to raise the banner of Allah over their homeland as they fight their Jihad: "Allah is the all-powerful."
“There is no solution to the Palestinian problem except by Jihad. The initiatives, proposals and International Conferences are but a waste of time, an exercise in futility.”
With such statements in their founding document, the Hamas leadership must be bending over backwards or just engaging in vile hypocrisy when they consider Abbas’s offer to join the Palestinian Authority now.
And Abbas’s offer does not only include Hamas.  His idea is to achieve "unit" with other Palestinian Islamic terrorist organizations under the Palestinian Authority umbrella – including Islamic Jihad.
Since its founding 24 years ago Hamas has refused to acknowledge the Palestinian Authority as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinians. What changed their minds? The plain truth is nothing changed their minds. Hamas, as Mark Regev stressed, is a genocidal terrorist gang to its core.
Abbas told the leaders of the Palestinian factions that while continuing the attempt to gain full membership in the UN, he wished to resume negotiations with Israel if it freezes construction and accepts the pre-1967 lines as the basis for a two-state solution.
Now who is bending over backwards and engaging in vile hypocrisy? Abbas’s claim of interest in bilateral negotiations with Israel is written in sand and contradicts all of the Palestinian Authority’s actions.
Mark Regev, Netanyahu’s spokesman also said 'If Abbas embraces Hamas, he is walking away from peace.'
The Palestinian Authority isn’t just walking away from peace if the organization integrates Hamas as a partner in its mission. It is walking away from itself and worse.
The 1993 Oslo Accords established the Palestinian Authority as the recognized representative for negotiating a viable settlement of outstanding political issues with the State of Israel.
Hamas was a renegade anti-Israel Islamic terrorist organization in 1993, and was the leader in suicide bombings during the tragic Second Intifada which caused the deaths of over 1000 innocent Israeli civilians. Killing Israelis and killing Israel is the Hamas raison d’etre. It is the objective inscribed in the Hamas Charter.  
Bilateral negotiations for a political settlement with Israel is the raison d’etre of the Oslo Accords that created the PA. But now that the PA seeks to integrate Hamas in its ranks it is swallowing a poison pill. The PA move for UN recognition is just an excuse for stabbing Israel in the back and will achieve nothing.
In the final analysis, the UN statehood gambit will gain the Palestinians nothing but a state of mind. A state that exists only inside the walls of the UN.
Integrating Hamas into the PA, however, is an act of suicide. The PA is essentially hoisting itself on its own petard. And this is the fate of figures whose outlook is clouded by hubris

Muslim Brotherhood global movement

http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/12/23/62762458.html
Interview with Valentina Colombo- expert in the geopolitics of the Islamic world and Professor at the European University in Rome, Italy.
If we look at the Muslim Brotherhood, which is a very interesting phenomenon, could you remind our listeners of how it all started?
 It all started in 1928 in Egypt with the person Hassan al-Banna who is the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. And the Muslim Brotherhood wasn’t born in Cairo, that’s it wasn’t born in a town, in a big center but it was born outside. So, it was started as an association, it all started as an association and Muslim association which wanted to prevent the expansion of Christian preachers in Egypt. And almost nobody knows this but the first idea was to stop a certain kind of preaching from the Christian point of view.
As soon as they were born they switched to a very social work, so the main aim of the association has always been to help people because of course the Christian preachers went to people. So, Hassan la-Banna decided that even Muslims had to have some kind of association working with and for people. Of course everything was based on Koranic teachings and so everything was founded on the Koranic preaching, it says that men have to help each other, to be solidary with each other and of course the most important thing was that Muslims have to help Muslims, that’s it.
So, it all started in a very simple way and another thing is that Hassan al-Banna left just a few very, very few writings. And all his followers know by heart his teachings, know by heart the Koran and all their life is around this two sources – the Koran and the teachings of Hassan al-Banna. And I think that we always have to bear in mind that in Europe we have his grandson Tariq Ramadan, he is Hassan al-Banna’s grandson, Tariq Ramadan who is known as a reformer inside Islam but we have to be very, very clear that he follows, not officially of course, but he follows the path of his grandfather. And even in Switzerland for instance we have Tariq Ramadan’s brother, working there and all the sons of Hassan al-Banna are working very well in Europe, in Egypt and of course now in all the Middle East.
But what kind of Islam is Muslim Brotherhood following?
It is a very strict Islam and we have to bear in mind that the main aim of the Muslim Brotherhood is to rebuild a unified Islamic state. So, this is very clear, this is their main aim, they write this, they say this. So, it is clear that to have a unified Islamic state, this unified Islamic state is to be build on pillars of Sharia, of Koran in an interpretation which is not a liberal interpretation but is a very conservative interpretation.
So, of course if you want an Islamic state, this state has to be build on Sharia, that is a divine law based on Koran and sayings of Mohammed. For instance, because of the Muslim Brotherhood influence in Egypt, that starting from 1980 in the Egyptian Constitution article 2 we have that Sharia is the main source of the law and it is very important because before it used to be – Sharia is one of the sources of the law that meant that there could be even secular sources, more other sources, not only the Sharia.
But after 1980 in Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood managed to have this article changed and it is the same until now, it is still alive, that Sharia is the main source of the law. And this is very important because this means that for instance in Egypt until now if you want to have your identity card you have to put your own religion but the problem is that your religion can only be Muslim, Christian or Jewish. If you are other, if you are atheist, if you are Buddhist, if you are a Baha’i you won’t get your identity card.
No?
Yes, it’s true. And this is the problem, this is the Sharia because the Sharia says that Islam of course is the definitive religion, is the last religion that is very good, the last one revelation. But at the same time it recognizes the other two among basic religions that is the Jewish and the Christian but at the same time they are the second class religions. So, they are put under the protection but at the same time they are recognized. If you are of other, I don’t want to say if you apostate from Islam and changed your religion, so you just have to be killed on the basis of Sharia law.
Oh, really?
Yes, but at the same time in Egypt, if you are not Christian, Jew or Muslim you cannot get your identity card unless you just tell a lie, you just declare that you are a Muslim when you are not a Muslim. And at the same time even though you can get your identity card and in your identity card it is written that you are a Christian, of course you will have some problems in your life because you are identified through your religion and your religion is not the best one that is the Muslim.
If you read Arab newspapers, articles written by Arab intellectuals, Arab people who of course, they perfectly know who the Muslim Brotherhood are, they are totally disappointed and they are totally scared about a victory of the Muslim Brotherhood. In Tunisia, they are really scared about their future after the victory of the Muslim Brotherhood in the elections.
And you know, it is very astounding because it is just enough to read the newspapers, Arabic newspapers, to know and to realize that there is something wrong about our – Western position. For instance, just to go back to Tunisia, Rachid Gannouchi who is the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Tunisia, all during the electorate campaign said – ok, we are not going to change anything that touches women, for instance in our country, we don’t want Tunisian women to go back since Tunisian women since 1956 they have a very secular personal code forbidding polygamy for instance. So, he declared – ok we are not going to touch this and after the elections said again – we are not going to touch this kind of things but at the same time he said – ok we would like to run the Ministry of Education.
 This is very, very typical of the Muslim Brotherhood. So, they have their aims, they want to change something but if they cannot do it straight that is now, they will do it in 10 years time if they get the Ministry of Education they will change programs, they will change new generations and of course in 10 years time it would be very natural to change what they want to change. They are very settled, they are very clever, they are perfect, really.
I wish they were liberals so organized but they aren’t, this is why the Muslim Brotherhood is even lucky because there are no other choices, all their opponents are really weak, they have no money, they are not organized and they are not so well introduced in the society as they are. So, and the problem is that they are very well introduced in the countries and now they have even the allowance coming from the West. So, it’s really their golden age now.
Where do they get their money from?
They get the money from mosques because we don’t have to forget that every Muslim, practicing Muslim has to pay zakat, this is a kind of yearly tax to the mosque and they pay it once to the mosque during the big festivals at the end of the month of Ramadan and they pay to the mosque. But at the same time it is proved that they get money even from Saudi Arabia. So, they have money, plenty of money and during the lasts Tunisian elections I was in touch with some liberal candidate and he said – ok, we can do everything but at the same time they have money, so they give bread to the people, they help people, they give some money to the people and people vote for them.
Who is their voting base?
The people voting for them?
Yes.
All kinds of people and especially middle low class, for instance in Egypt there are many generations who went to school in mosques. So, these are people who couldn’t afford private schools for their children, they send their children to the mosque, the mosque gave them instruction, bread and some pocket money and so these generations are all gained to the Muslim Brotherhood ideology. And there are people coming from the very low classes and of course they find help from the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Muslim Brotherhood was very, very clever especially in Egypt, they get where the government didn’t get. So, the government didn’t help people, it is the Muslim Brotherhood that help people. And from now everybody who got something from them they are going to vote them of course. So, in Egypt it would be very easy, I could even say that they are going to get at least 70% in the next elections.
70%, goodness!
Yes, they’ve managed to get almost 45% in Tunisia where they were really banned during the last years, especially in Ben-Ali period. In Egypt they were officially banned but at the same time they used to have their main office in the center of Cairo, everybody knew it, at the beginning of 2000 they got in Parliament as independent candidates and everybody knew that those 8 people came from the Muslim Brotherhood but not officially. They were banned but at the same time Sheikh Quaradawi’s books, this is the main reference from the religious point of view, the Sheikh of Aljazeera he is Egyptian, he was banned from Egypt but came back after the revolution, but during this time while he was in exile all his books were published by the main publisher in Egypt.
So, they were officially banned but at the same time tolerated and helped. So, in Egypt they really were there, they never left Egypt. So, they kept on working and it is very, very likely they will get the very, very big majority of the votes.
Valentine, tell me just how come they got so widespread in the region, I mean there is the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, in Jordan, there is Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, elsewhere. How come? Is it the one movement which has different branches or are they so different but in that case why are they named similarly?
No, they are all very similar and for instance when the Muslim Brotherhood started in Egypt, at a certain point they are banned in Egypt and so the Muslim Brotherhood start spreading outside. Many of them reached Syria, the other country which used to be their basis, their really main center. Then they were banned from Syria and they went to Europe but they spread all over the Middle East.
We don’t have to forget that Hamas is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. It’s stated if you read the Hamas Constitution, if I’m right it is article 2, it clearly says that Hamas is one of the Palestinian branches of the Muslim Brotherhood. So, you can realize that the Muslim Brotherhood hasn’t come to power for the first time in Tunisia last month but went to power with the Hamas some years ago. It is a global movement.
We don’t have to forget that the most of the Islamic associations in Europe are linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and what is really funny is that until some months ago most of these European Islamic associations linked to the Muslim Brotherhood denied to be linked to them. Now they start saying – yes, why not, we are linked to the Muslim Brotherhood because now they know that they are allowed to say that because now they are at power, they are going to win the elections in Egypt, and now they are a perfect partner for Western governments. So, they don’t need to hide anymore their true identity.
Another thing important to know about the Muslim Brotherhood is that they accept dissimilation, this is if you are in danger you can even say a lie, if your life is in danger, the Muslim Brotherhood is in danger you can be asked – do you belong to the Muslim Brotherhood? If you are in danger you may answer – of course not. And after a while when the situation is changed you can say the truth but you are allowed to dissimilate their positions and their beliefs in case of danger. So they are even called the masters of double speech.
So, what they write, if you have a look for instance to the Muslim Brotherhood website in English and the Muslim Brotherhood in Arabic it’s totally different, there are different views because the public is different. They perfectly know that with the West they have to speak and write in a certain way and with the Arab world they have to speak and write in another way.
But isn’t it strange that the West would be welcoming them because, well, of course we need to account for their, shall we say, political success in these days but from what you are saying it is absolutely obvious that these movements would be opposing all Western and US values in particular.
You are totally right, this is why it’s really astounding what’s happening now because one of the main ideas of the Muslim Brotherhood is their position against the West, against Israel, against the other in general. So, and it’s the basis of their thoughts, of course they are a political movement and so they know very well diplomacy, they know that now they have to be moderate. But you just need to have a look to their history and we don’t have to forget that Egyptians and Arabs, don’t forget that Sadat went in to terms with them and then he was killed by a member of Gama'at Islamiya which is a very strong radicalization of the movement of the Muslim Brotherhood.
So, if you get into terms with them you must be sure that something you will pay. But what is very strange is this position of the West, this position of the States, we’ll have a very bad consequence in the Arab world and in the Middle East, for instance the victory of the Muslim Brotherhood in Tunisia of course was welcomed by the West, was welcomed by the voters inside Tunisia but most of the people, that is the liberal people, intellectuals and whatever they just said – ok, this is another present by the West.
This means that you helped the Muslim Brotherhood to gain power, the Muslim Brotherhood which is very anti-Western ideology, at the same time you disappointed the other voters, the other people, the other side of the population and at the same time this population is getting more and more anti-Western, anti-US because they see that the West always helps the wrong people. So, I think that the West is really going to pay, very big mistake they are doing now.
But before that we’ll be witnessing like you said the golden age of Muslim Brotherhood in several countries, I suppose not only in Egypt. Is my understanding correct?
Yes, they started in Turkey with Erdogan, they started in Tunisia, now we’ll have of course Egypt. In November 25 we are going to have elections in Morocco for instance, there is a monarchy so there it’s not the case but I think they are going to win positions inside Morocco as well. In Libya, the Transitional Government is headed by the Muslim Brotherhood. Syria, whenever Assad will fall, the Muslim Brotherhood will have their win. Yemen, there is the Muslim Brotherhood already. In Jordan the monarchy is getting into terms with them trying to fight them back but they are very widespread. We don’t have to forget that most of the population in Jordan is Palestinian and so there are even members from Hamas, in Palestine we have Hamas.
So, it’s really global and now it’s legal. And what is really astounding as well of the behavior coming from the States is that movement like Hamas is in the list of terrorist movements in the States and Hamas is Muslim Brotherhood but at the same time the States will be pleased by the victory of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, but the basis is the same.
Absolutely astounding, it’s illogical!
It is astounding because it is illogical and it’s very clear, you don’t have to use a lot of brain because it’s their motto, their Constitution, their words, their writings, they said this, they’ve never denied this. And so the problem is that the West doesn’t want to see, doesn’t want to listen to their words and so we are going to have a very, very bad period and it’s very sad to say that if the Arab Spring turns into an Arab Winter it’s even thanks to the West.
Professor, thank you very much. 

Muslims Drive out Christians from PA Territories

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/11000#.TvTrhXoVi-U
Interview Series: International human rights lawyerJustus Reid Weiner: "They flee to almost any country that will issue them a visa."
From Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld
 
"The disputed territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have been administered by the Palestinian Authority (PA) and in more recent years, in part, by Hamas. Under these regimes, the resident Christian Arabs have been victims of frequent human rights abuses including intimidation, beatings, land theft, firebombing of churches and other Christian institutions, denial of employment, economic boycott, torture, kidnapping, forced marriage, sexual harassment, and extortion.
"Muslims who have converted to Christianity are the ones in the greatest in danger. They are often left defenseless against cruelty by Muslim fundamentalists. PA and Hamas officials are directly responsible for many of the human rights violations. Christian Arabs also fall victim to the semi-anarchy that typifies PA rule."
Justus Reid Weiner is an international human rights lawyer and a member of the Israel and New York Bar Associations. His professional publications have appeared in leading law journals and intellectual magazines. Weiner lectures widely abroad and in Israel and teaches international law and business courses at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
In Weiner's view, the crimes committed against Christian Arabs result from a way of thinking that dates back to the earliest days of Islam. "Traditionally, Christians and Jews were given an inferior social status known as dhimmitude in Islam. To this day, Muslim attitudes toward Christians and Jews are influenced by the concepts and prejudices that dhimmitude has spawned in Islamic society. The widespread persecution of Christians in various Muslim dominated lands brings many proofs of this.[1]
"Israel is the only exception in the Middle East where the Christian population since 1948 has increased. It has risen by more than 400 percent. This also includes non-Arab Christians, such as Russian Christians who have moved to Israel as spouses of Jews.
"As dhimmis, Christians living in Palestinian-controlled territories are subjected to debilitating legal, political, cultural, and religious restrictions. Muslim groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad have built a culture of hatred upon the age-old foundations of Islamic society. Moreover, the PA has adopted Islamic law into its draft constitution.
"In such an environment, Christian Arabs have found themselves victims of prejudice and hate crimes. Tens of thousands of Palestinian Christians have left their ancestral homes and emigrated. They flee to almost any country that will issue them a visa.
"The demographics in the Palestinian areas have changed drastically. In Bethlehem, the Christian population was an 80 percent majority in 1950. Today the population of Christian Arabs in Bethlehem is hovering at about 15 percent of the city's total population. Neither the Palestinian Christian leaders nor the PA want to reveal accurate statistics. That would mean the extent of the emigration would become publicly known. They would then have to face questions about the reasons for this decline."

Seventy percent of Christian Arabs who originally resided in the PA adminsitered areas now live abroad.
Weiner points out that Yasser Arafat determined the policy that led to this demographic shift. "After the PA gained control of Bethlehem, it redistricted the municipal boundaries of the city. Arafat also defied tradition by appointing a Muslim governor of the city. The Bethlehem City Council, which by Palestinian law must have a Christian majority, has been taken over by Muslims. Eight of the fifteen seats on the Council are still reserved for Christians, but Hamas controls the City Council with some Christian allies. Arafat crowned his efforts when he converted the Greek Orthodox monastery next to the Church of Nativity into his official Bethlehem residence.[2]
"The problems for Christians in Bethlehem are typical throughout the Middle East. As in Palestinian society, Christian Arabs have no voice and no protection. It is no wonder they have been leaving. Because of emigration – some of it dating back two or three generations – seventy percent of Christian Arabs who originally resided in the West Bank and Gaza now live abroad. Tens of thousands live in Sydney, Berlin, Santiago, Detroit, and Toronto. The emigration of Christian Arabs has multiplied over the last decade, with no end in sight.
"It is currently estimated that the number of Christians living in Gaza totals only 1,500-3,000 amid 1.2 million Muslims.[3] Probably less than fifty thousand Christians remain in all of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza together.” 
Weiner concludes: "The human rights crimes against the Christian Arabs in the disputed territories are committed by Muslims. Yet many Palestinian Christian leaders accuse Israel of these crimes rather than the actual perpetrators. These patriarchs and archbishops of Christian Arab denominations obfuscate the truth and put their own people in danger. This is often for personal benefit or due to intimidation. This motif has been adopted by a variety of Christian leaders in the Western world. Others who are aware of the human rights crimes choose to remain silent about them."
 


[1] Paul Marshall and Lela Gilbert, Their Blood Cries Out (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2007); Nina Shea, In the Lion's Den: A Shocking Account of Persecuted and Martyrdom of Christians Today and How We Should Respond (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 2007).
 [2] Aaron Klein, "Media's Two-Faced Christmas Coverage: Muslims Driving Christians out of Bethlehem, but Media Outlets Choose to Blame Israel," Ynetnews, 24 December 2007, www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3486144,00.html.
[3] Julie Stahl, "Gaza Bible Society Surprised by Bomb Attack," Cybercast News Service, 16 April 2007, www.cnsnews.com/ViewForeignBureaus.asp?Page=/ForeignBureaus/archive/200704/INT20070416e.html.

Secular Idolatry in American Jewish Leadership

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/11022#.TvOIdHoVi-U
Secular Idolatry in American Jewish Leadership
What allows the Daily Forward to write that Obama's Jewish financial supporters stayed faithful? The secular Jewish preoccupation with progressive politics has simply become a modern form of idolatry inconsistent with real Jewish principles.
From Matthew M. Hausman, Att'y
On any given day, the headlines are brimming with news of existential concern for Israel and the wider Jewish world.  From Islamist takeovers facilitated by the “Arab Spring” to anti-Jewish hate-speech on college campuses and in the Occupy Wall Street movement, there are daily reports in which anti-Semitism features prominently. 
Yet, responses from many quarters of the Jewish establishment have ranged from tepid and meek to apologetic and misdirected.  Rather than present a unified front against those who justify terrorism through moral equivalence, delegitimize Israel as a pariah state, or promote Sharia in the West, many secular Jewish leaders have been addled by their slavish devotion to an ideological agenda that in the name of tolerance has excused hateful rhetoric masquerading as political discourse – particularly when that rhetoric comes from the Left.  Clearly, the secular Jewish preoccupation with progressive politics has become a modern form of idolatry that is inconsistent with traditional Jewish beliefs and principles. 
The compulsion of many liberals to compare criticism of Sharia to antisemitism, their willingness to validate questionable Muslim advocacy groups, and their pathological embrace of a Palestinian narrative that repudiates Jewish national claims, all suggest ambivalence toward traditional Jewish priorities and an abdication of common sense.  Moreover, the constant promotion of progressive ideals as synonymous with Torah values betrays an ignorance of Jewish law, tradition and history. 
Whether it is interfaith cooperation between the nontraditional movements and Islamic advocacy groups, the reluctance to chastise a left-wing that blames Israel for the lack of Mideast peace, or the knee-jerk support for Barak Obama despite his disgraceful treatment of Israel, the behavior of many in positions of leadership actually threatens Jewish continuity and Israeli integrity.  These leaders often claim to be guided by universal ideals and the spirit of Jewish introspection, but their multicultural vision leaves little room for Jewish autonomy or self-interest, particularly when these are seen to conflict with liberal agendas or the Left’s intellectually dishonest endorsement of the Arab-Muslim worldview.
The tendency to treat progressive ideals as the embodiment of Jewish values – and to regard liberal social and political programs with holy reverence – begs the question of whether Jewish leaders who do so are engaging in secular idolatry.  And this is a fair question considering the innate, visceral aversion to any form of idolatry in traditional Jewish thought and practice.  As discussed by Maimonides in the Mishneh Torah (Hilchot Avodat Kochavim (Avoda Zarah), Chapter 1), even monotheists can descend into idolatry by using objects to assist in the worship of G-d, because material things, or even abstract concepts, have the propensity to become the focus of prayer or a substitute for real worship.  According to the traditional sources and as further elucidated by the Rambam, idolatry encompasses the act of worshipping through a manufactured thing, or of substituting philosophical precepts for Torah principles.  The Talmud in Tractate Avodah Zarah broadly defines idolatry as any practice or belief that interferes with or disrupts the Jew’s relationship with the Almighty. 
Does secular Jewish devotion to liberal principles constitute a form of idolatry?  One could certainly argue so when devotion to the secular interferes with traditional observance or contravenes Jewish self-interest.  The degree to which traditional values have been disrupted by secular concerns is evident from the popularization of tikkun olam as a liberal imperative and its transformation into a mitzvah that trumps all others – although it is not one of the 613 commandments enumerated in the Torah and, therefore, not a mitzvah at all.  
Tikkun olam is misconstrued as a commandment by secular progressives in order to elevate social and political platforms that they support, and is often regarded as more important than ritual observance by constituents of the nontraditional movements.  However, while Jews as political beings are certainly free to support whatever causes their consciences may dictate, they cannot claim the sanction of Jewish tradition regarding political choices that are inconsistent with Jewish law and history.  Secular priorities cannot be transformed into mitzvot under the umbrella of tikkun olam, which as a concept has been perverted beyond its mystical roots into a clearinghouse for any program that secular Jews wish to portray as intrinsically Jewish.
One of the areas in which secular leaders consistently trample Jewish priorities is in their apologetic approach to Islam and Islamism.  They routinely tout Islam for its supposed tolerance and peacefulness, despite its history of violence, subjugation and discrimination against those whom it considers “infidels.”  The information they feed their constituents is often drawn from the same revisionist repository used by Islamists and their left-wing allies for the purpose of dissimulation.  Their political connections to Muslim advocacy groups that have ingratiated themselves to liberal society undercut any incentive to research the veracity of Muslim claims of moderation, as was suggested by ADL National Director Abe Foxman’s condemnation of the anti-Sharia movement.
In an editorial published by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Foxman criticized the anti-Sharia movement as being driven by baseless paranoia.  Like many liberal Jewish leaders, Foxman seemed oblivious regarding the intolerant aspects of a totalitarian religious system that disparages Jews and Judaism as a matter of doctrine, and which rejects democratic values and the concept of permanent peace with a dhimmi nation.  In his Op-Ed, “Shouting Down the Sharia Myth Makers,” Foxman said among other things the following:
“It is true that Sharia is being used elsewhere around the world in dangerous ways...It raises more serious concerns when it comes to implementing Sharia law in its entirety, as can be seen with the examples of Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Taliban. But that certainly doesn’t apply to America, where concerns about a ‘creeping Sharia law’ are the stuff of pure paranoia. 
(JTA, August 10, 2011.) 
Foxman echoed the now familiar refrain of secular liberals, and many uninformed conservatives, who laud Islam as a religion of peace and tolerance in spite of its history of conquest and oppression. In spite of the disingenuous attempts to analogize Islamophobia to anti-Semitism, violence and bias crimes against Jews in the United States and Europe truly are on the rise, particularly within the Arab and Muslim communities that ironically claim to be targets of ethnic and religious bigotry – regardless of hard evidence to the contrary.  
And then there is Jewish Theological Seminary (“JTS”), which under the leadership of Chancellor Arnold Eisen sponsored an interfaith forum entitled, “Judaism and Islam in America Today: Assimilation and Authenticity.”  The forum’s panel was moderated by a representative of the Islamic Society of North America (“ISNA”).  This was troubling given ISNA’s inclusion on a list of “unindicted co-conspirators” in the U.S. v. Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development trial, a criminal prosecution of an Islamic charity found to have ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.   
The trial judge in the underlying proceedings had refused to strike the names of CAIR, ISNA and NAIT from the list, “[finding that their inclusion] on the List is appropriate in light of the evidence proffered by the Government.”  The court further found that “the government ha[d] produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR, ISNA, NAIT, with NAIT, the Islamic Association for Palestine, and with Hamas.”  On appeal, the Fifth Circuit declined to remove their names from list, finding only that the prosecution had erred procedurally in failing to file the list under seal, but had committed no error in “its decision to try to characterize the scope of the charged conspiracy.” 
Apparently, JTS was untroubled by its involvement with an organization that was found to have a connection to a charity determined by the government to be a front for Hamas, a terror organization whose reason for existence is to destroy Israel.  The effort to establish dialogue with such groups seems like an exercise in cognitive dissonance, particularly as the program’s announcement was greeted with criticism by some well-known authorities on Islam and interfaith relations, including Professor Richard Rubenstein, author of “Jihad and Genocide,” among other works.  
Consistent with the thinking that seemed to underlie the JTS forum, there is now a chorus of Conservative rabbis who, when speaking of Gentiles who saved Jews during the Holocaust, insist on presenting the efforts of Muslims as comparable to those of Christians.  However, of the 23,788 Gentiles honored as “righteous among the nations” at Yad Vashem, only 70 were Muslims – mostly from Albania.  It is difficult to reconcile this paltry showing with the vastly greater numbers who willingly assisted the Nazis, as in Bosnia where Muslim Waffen-SS Hanjar units personally recruited by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem assisted in exterminating most of Bosnian Jewry.  The uncomfortable fact remains that few Muslims acted to save Jews from the Nazis – or for that matter to protect them from the Mufti and other Arab leaders who collaborated with the Nazis on the Final Solution and who, according to documented plans, would have implemented genocide in the Mideast had Rommel not been defeated at El Alamein.
In trumpeting the saccharine myth of Islamic tolerance, these rabbis ignore the truly precarious history of Jews in Muslim society, where they were subjugated, often confined to ghettos, and generally denied most basic human rights.  Since the early Islamic period, when Jews were forced to wear distinctive badges and clothing and were often branded, they have been repressed, abused, and periodically subjected to forced conversions, pogroms and massacres.  Maimonides in his Epistle to Yemen in the Twelfth Century addressed the issue of Arab-Muslim persecution at a time when Yemenite Jewry was suffering horribly at the hands of the Arab host society.  This is the history that JTS should be discussing. However, the institution glosses over the grittier history of Muslim-Jewish relations, and thus abdicates any rightful claim to leadership.
By engaging in Muslim-Jewish apologetics, or jumping to dismiss the counter-jihad movement out of hand, or belittling Jewish activists who speak fluent Arabic and actually know the scriptural underpinnings of Islamic antisemitism, liberal Jewish leaders have largely followed the lead of the Obama Administration, which has demonstrated antipathy and animus toward Israel since the President’s inauguration.  They are certainly aware of the disrespect Obama has shown Israel, and how he has been an erstwhile proponent of the revisionist Palestinian narrative. 
Yet, rather than challenge Obama for consistently maligning America’s only stable ally in the Mideast, or castigating him for his dubious associations over the years with antisemites and Israel bashers, they seek to quell critical discussion of his record in order to prevent Jews from breaking with the Democratic Party in the upcoming presidential election.
Among those attempting to shore up Jewish Democratic ranks that have been shaken by Obama’s repeated attacks on Israeli sovereignty and integrity is Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D. Florida), who stated rather incredibly that, “[t]he president has a rock-solid record on Israel.” 
In light of Obama’s actual record of overbearing hostility, however, this statement is patently absurd.  Realizing that Obama’s documented conduct toward Israel undercuts the claims of Wasserman and others that his support is “rock-solid,” some establishment organizations have tried to take his record off the discussion table for the 2012 campaign.  
Perhaps most notably, the ADL and the American Jewish Committee jointly issued a “National Pledge for Unity on Israel” in October, which stated
The Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee have joined together in an effort to encourage other national organizations, elected officials, religious leaders, community groups and individuals to rally around bipartisan support for Israel while preventing the Jewish State from becoming a wedge issue in the upcoming campaign season. Join the ADL and AJC in taking the ‘National Pledge for Unity on Israel.
Considering the President’s horrendous record on Israel – including his demand that she cease all construction in Jerusalem, his collective identification of “settlements” as the stumbling block to peace, his failure to condemn Arab-Muslim rejectionism and incitement, and his refusal to acknowledge Jewish historical rights in Israel – the pledge would seem to be nothing more than an attempt to squelch legitimate criticism of a duplicitous foreign policy during the campaign season.  Despite strenuous attempts to present this pledge as somehow necessary for promoting bipartisan support for Israel, its real purpose seems to be to discourage debate of Obama’s shoddy record in and among voting populations for whom Israel is still a priority.  
Interestingly, those who would suppress criticism of Obama’s Israel policies are often the same people who strain to paint all conservatives as right-wing extremists, and to promote the image of all liberals as mainstream moderates despite national polls indicating that only 20% of Americans identify as liberal.  They routinely claim that conservatives promote class warfare and ethnic hatred, and persist in accusing the Tea Party of blanket racism – all the while ignoring the antisemitic vitriol on full display in signs, banners and comments seen and heard at many Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. 
Those who ignore antisemitism in political movements with which they otherwise find common cause cannot plausibly claim to be guided by Jewish values.  Rather, the elevation of secular political ideals (whether liberal or conservative) over traditional Jewish values fits the Rambam’s definition of idolatry; and those who promote such ideals to the exclusion of traditional beliefs have no moral claim to the mantle of leadership.
Community leaders lose all credibility when they advocate or excuse policies that compromise the safety of Israel or threaten Jewish survival.  Such figureheads cannot claim to be acting in accordance with Jewish values.  There is nothing within Jewish law or tradition that requires Jews to sacrifice their beliefs, to deny their history, or to accept as fact the national and religious myths of those who wish to subjugate and destroy them.  T
Those who claim otherwise are blinded by a secular, political idolatry that is inconsistent with traditional Jewish goals and aspirations.  Real leaders are those who recognize this and are willing (either to stay neutral as the Satmar rabbi suggested, ed.) to invoke the principles and beliefs that ensured the Jews’ survival in Diaspora, and which facilitated the rebirth of modern Israel in the ancient Jewish homeland.   

Catholics Against Beatification of Pope John paul II

http://www.remnantnewspaper.com/Archives/2011-0430-mjm-beatification.htm

Michael J. Matt POSTED: 5/2/11 Editor, The Remnant

(www.remnantnewspaper.com) Sounds pretty silly, doesn’t it?  But that’s the topsy-turvy way of the modern Catholic Church these days. Those still "hanging in there" are faced with little certainty, lots of question marks and endless novelty. One pope dramatically streamlines the process for beatification and canonization, and then his immediate successor and best friend in life beatifies him in record time.  Can we  blame Catholics in the pew for being a wee bit skeptical?  Some even question if the rush to beatify might have had less to do with heroic virtue than a certain ecclesial opportunism, capitalizing on the memory of an exceedingly charismatic figure.
Who knows. But what many of us would still like to know is: Why the rush? Pope John Paul was dead. His soul was either in heaven, purgatory, or (God forbid) hell, and it made no difference to him when he was beatified. So why not follow the rules and silence the critics?
Arguably, his soul may even have benefitted had the beatification followed the usual timeline. After all, when was the last time you prayed for a saint! By all accounts, his millions of fans were praying to John Paul immediately upon his death in 2005, prompting some to wonder how many remembered to pray for him, then or since.
My daughter, Isabella Marie, was just three years old when Pope John Paul died. Naturally, she insisted on praying for him that very night and every night since. I often wonder if the santo subito crowd might not regard such zeal as an insult.  He was, after all, John Paul “The Great”—the most famous man on earth. To pray for him now is to call into question his greatness as well as ours.
Ours? Yes, indeed! If a father is great in the eyes of the world surely his children can lay claim to some share of that greatness. And isn’t that what the santo subito fervor was all about, at least to some extent? Cafeteria Catholics proving their fidelity by shouting the accolades of a Pope the whole world loved? Santo subito became something of an absolution formula for a generation of Catholics famous for its dissent from Church teaching.  Shouted often enough and loud enough, it covered a multitude of our sins as well as the many failed policies of the pontificate. He was, after all, a superstar. As one commentator put it when John Paul visited Ireland in 1979:  “It was a rock concert with a pope!”
On the other hand, one cannot find fault with John Paul for our infatuation with his celebrity. We are behaving as narcissists typically do. It’s all about us and the moment. Ours was a pope without equal because we are a people without equal! Never mind the generations of Catholics to come that will have no emotional connection to John Paul and no particular reason to call any of us “great” after our generation and its leaders left them a legacy of spiritual desolation. They’ll no doubt have found their own heroes by then.
That’s just the way it is with heroes untested by time and history. In the minds of millions of Lady Gaga fans today, John Lennon—once “more popular than Jesus Christ”—might never have existed, so largely forgotten is he. And that’s the way this will be, once the TV cameras have turned away and the media move on to the next thing. No man is great until history judges him so, which is why the rush to beatify John Paul strikes many Catholics as an attempt to preemptively overrule history’s inevitable verdict against a problematic pontificate that left the human element of the Catholic Church in chaos.
For now, however, John Paul is great because we want him to be.  The vox populi, which more often than not these days is reduced to parroting the vox paparazzi, is final so long as we live and breathe. We want a hero. Bored with lives suspended by the rotting cords of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, we’ll sleep in sewers if it means a chance sighting of a royal—any royal!—be he politician, pop star or pope. And when we catch sight of one of our media-made gods, we might well burst into tears like those little girls did at Elvis Presley concerts years ago, convinced we’re in the presence of the Divine, incapable of distinguishing between raw fame and true greatness.  He’s ours. We were there. We heard his voice. He made us something. Beatify him! Beatify us!
With such a cult of personality at their disposal, it’s no surprise the Vatican wasted little time using John Paul’s incredible popularity with the world to try to shore up the Church’s beleaguered image, with some inside the Vatican no doubt recognizing a golden opportunity to beatify the Second Vatican Council by beatifying its most famous son. Never mind that the beatification fast track completely bypassed the unpleasant history of the last thirty years. Never mind that the cries of santo subito seem motivated less by an appreciation for fidelity to doctrine and more by a somewhat adolescent preoccupation with celebrity.  John Paul must be a saint!  We the people declared him so the moment he died. The Church followed our lead because we know best!
It took four hundred years to canonize Thomas More—a giant among men who gave up everything for the Church, and was left despised, imprisoned and  headless for his trouble.  The mob wasn’t on his side. Yet his heroic virtue withstood the test of time, and, after centuries of due process, was finally proclaimed by the Church—exactly as it should have been. To this day, no one doubts his greatness or his holiness. Why? Because the Church in her wisdom took her time and proceeded according to heaven’s timetable, leaving no room for doubts and question marks here on earth.
Given his flawed pontificate and the suspicious fast-tracking of his beatification, the same can never be said of Blessed John Paul. This is not fair to him, to those who loved him, or to the Church. This is political opportunism on the part of a Vatican reeling from bad press and endless scandal.  
But history will record that not all Catholics went chasing after the crowd. As of April 25, 5,000 Catholics from around the world had signed The Remnant’s Statement of Reservations Concerning the Impending Beatification of John Paul II, for example--a small and humble initiative that nevertheless garnered immediate support from all around the world. The vast majority of its signatories included prayer pledges similar to that of Mr. Hellner’s from Stockholm, Sweden, who wrote: ”I will pray for the soul of John Paul II who because of the infatuation of the people did not get the help and prayers that he, as Pope, deserved.”
The Statement was signed by Catholics on six  continents— by priests, professors, journalists, lawyers, working men, and housewives. It was translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Czech, Polish and German.
Curious about the very notion of a remnant in a day and age when only the majority matters, the secular press covered the modest Statement with a degree of professionalism not often seen anymore. It was referenced in newspaper and Internet articles on both sides of the Atlantic, in South America and in Africa and Australia. Word of it appeared in reports on ABC News, USA Today, the Associated Press, the Catholic Herald, the New York Times, etc. 
And when National Public Radio in Washington, D.C., the Associated Press in Rome, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation approached us for further comment on the fast-tracking of the beatification, to a man their reporters had no trouble understanding the reasons why loyal Catholics were raising alarums—because Catholics have always been rightfully proud of the Church’s chain-dragging approach to approving miracles and canonizing saints; because saints and miracles are by definition exceedingly rare and always exceptional; and because fast-tracking the process for anyone or any reason runs the risk of encouraging skepticism and undermining the Church’s credibility.
Why neo-Catholics have such difficulty grasping that which even secular journalists understand instinctively is anyone’s guess. And it’s not as if traditionalists were the only ones with reservations. A quick Google search reveals widespread opposition, both in the Church and out. The conservative founder of Ignatius Press, Fr. Joseph Fessio, SJ, though no traditionalist, also had concerns.  Just days before the beatification he told NPR: “The Vatican should take more time with the head of the Church. As the pope he’s an historic figure, and usually historic figures don’t take their place in history until after some history has gone by and they can be assessed from a longer distance.” (NPR’s All Things Considered, “John Paul’s Rise Toward Sainthood: Going to Fast?”, 4/28/11)
Nevertheless, there was no response from the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints, even weeks after the Statement had been sent to Angelo Cardinal Amato.  Apparently, the vox populi is taken into consideration only when it echoes the vox vaticanus. No matter. The Remnant's initiative had never presumed to try to harness the kind of firepower needed to stop the beatification. It was first and foremost about injecting more sober considerations into the discussion. The Holy Father’s jersey was to be retired at all costs; we knew that. 
Only time will tell if the Vatican will insist, even after so much opposition, on making a Hall of Fame bid by canonizing the pope who, despite his personal holiness, oversaw the greatest period of scandal and auto-destruction in the history of the Church. After all, the shouts of santo subito are already yesterday’s news and, unlike beatification, canonization involves papal infallibility. Surely, the Vatican realizes the Holy Ghost will not allow politics to stretch quite that far.  In the meantime, let us pray for the repose of the soul of Blessed John Paul II. MJM
http://www.remnantnewspaper.com/2011-0331-statement-of-reservations-beatification.htm

The impending beatification of Pope John Paul II on May 1, 2011 has aroused serious concern among not a few Catholics around the world, who are concerned about the condition of the Church and the scandals that have afflicted her in recent years—scandals that prompted the future Benedict XVI to exclaim on Good Friday 2005: “How much filth there is in the Church, even among those who, in the priesthood, should belong entirely to Him.” We give voice to our own concern in this public way in keeping with the law of the Church, which provides:
In accord with the knowledge, competence and preeminence which they possess, the Christian faithful have the right and even at times a duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church, and they have a right to make their opinion known to the other Christian faithful, with due regard for the integrity of faith and morals and reverence towards their pastors, and with consideration for the common good and the dignity of persons. [CIC (1983), Can. 212, § 3.]
We are compelled by what we believe in conscience to be the common good of the Church to express our reservations concerning this beatification. We do so on the following grounds, among others that could be brought forth.
The Real Question
We stress at the outset that we do not present these considerations as an argument against the personal piety or integrity of John Paul II, which ought to be presumed.  The question is not personal piety or integrity as such, but rather whether there is, objectively speaking, a basis for the claim that John Paul exhibited such heroic virtue in the exercise of his exalted office as Pope that he should be placed immediately on the road to sainthood as a Pope to be emulated by all his successors.
The Church has always recognized that the matter of heroic virtue involved in a beatification is inextricably bound up with whether the candidate performed heroically the duties of his station in life. As Pope Benedict XIV (1675-1758) explained in his teaching on beatification, the heroic performance of duties involves acts so difficult they are “above the common strength of man,” are “accomplished promptly, easily,” “with holy joy” and “quite frequently, when the occasion to do so presents itself.” [Cf. De servorum Dei beatificatione, Bk. III, chap. 21 in Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, The Three Ages of Interior Life, Vol. 2, p. 443].
Suppose the father of a large family were a candidate for beatification.  One would hardly expect his cause to advance if it were the case that, while pious, he consistently failed to discipline and properly form his children, who habitually disobeyed him and fomented disorder in the home, even openly opposing the Faith while living under his roof; or if, while attentive to his prayers and spiritual duties, he neglected the industrious support of his family and allowed his household to fall into disarray.
When the candidate for beatification is a Pope—the Holy Father of the universal Church—the question is not simply his personal piety and holiness, but also his care of the vast household of the Faith that God has entrusted to him, for which purpose God grants the Pope extraordinary graces of state. This is the real question: Did John Paul II perform heroically his duties as Supreme Pontiff in the manner of the sainted predecessors we will mention here: opposing error, swiftly and courageously defending the flock from the ravening wolves who spread it, and protecting the integrity of the Church’s doctrine and sacred worship? We fear that under the circumstances surrounding this “fast track” beatification the real question has not received the careful and unhurried consideration it deserves.
Undue Popular Pressure
Among the circumstances that concern us is the unseemly pressure of “popular demand” for this beatification as manifested by the slogan “Santo Subito!”—“Saint Immediately!”  It is precisely in order to avoid the influence of ephemeral popular sentiment, and to allow the perspective of a sober historical judgment to form, that the law of the Church wisely prescribes a five-year waiting period before a process for beatification can even begin. Yet in this case that prudent waiting period has been dispensed with. Thus a process that should barely have commenced by now is already nearly at an end, as if to provide immediate gratification of the popular will, even if that is not the intention.
We are aware of the role of popular acclamation even in the canonization of saints in exceptional cases. Pope Saint Gregory the Great, for example, was canonized by popular acclamation almost immediately after his death.  But that towering Roman Pontiff was nothing less than a builder of Christian civilization, laying down both spiritual and organizational foundations for the Church and Christendom that endured for century upon century.
Likewise, Pope Saint Nicholas I, the last of the Popes the Church has denominated “Great,” was instrumental in the reform of the Church during a great crisis of faith and discipline, afflicting especially the upper hierarchy whose corrupt members he fearlessly opposed, and is rightly regarded as a veritable savior of Christian civilization at a time when its very survival was in doubt.
Further, the popular acclamation of beati and saints belongs to a time when the people were overwhelmingly faithful and submissive to the Church.  We must ask: Of what value is popular demand for this beatification in an epoch when the vast majority of nominal Catholics simply reject any teaching on faith and morals they deem unacceptable—above all the infallible teaching of the Magisterium on marriage and procreation?
A Troubling Legacy
In all candor we are constrained to observe by way of comparison that, given the condition of the Church as he left it, the pontificate of John Paul II objectively does not warrant any role for popular acclaim in his beatification, much less the immediate sainthood for which the large crowds have clamored. An honest assessment of the facts compels the conclusion that John Paul’s pontificate was marked, not by the renewal and restoration we see during the pontificates of his most eminent predecessors, but rather, as the former Cardinal Ratzinger so famously remarked [Cf. L’Osservatore Romano, November 9, 1984], an acceleration of the “continuing process of decay,” above all in the traditionally Christian Western nations of Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific.
This objective reality is all the more apparent when one considers that the late Pope himself, very near the end of his pontificate, lamented the “silent apostasy” throughout a once-Christian Europe. [Cf. Ecclesia In Europa (2003), n. 9.] Moreover, his successor has since publicly decried the “process of secularization” that “has produced a grave crisis of the sense of the Christian faith and of belonging to the Church.” On this occasion Pope Benedict XVI announced the creation of a new pontifical council whose specific task will be “promoting a renewed evangelization in countries where the first proclamation of the faith already resounded... but which are going through a progressive secularization of society and a sort of ‘eclipse of the sense of God’...” [Cf. Vespers Homily, June 28, 2010].
The permeation of the human element of the Church itself by this “silent apostasy” has become ever more evident since the Second Vatican Council. Before the Council the world at large was in precipitous decline, as Pope after Pope had warned, but within the commonwealth of the Church the faith was still strong, the liturgy was intact, vocations were many, and families were large—until the great conciliar “opening to the world.”
Part of the diagnosis of the sudden onset of a post-conciliar ecclesial crisis without parallel was given by the currently reigning Roman Pontiff, writing as Cardinal Ratzinger in the very midst of the 27-year-long pontificate of his predecessor: “I am convinced that the ecclesiastical crisis in which we find ourselves today depends in a great part upon the collapse of the liturgy...” [La Mia Vita (1997), p. 113: “Sono convinto che la crisi ecclesiale in cui oggi ci troviamo dipende in gran parte dal crollo della liturgia...”]
It hardly needs to be demonstrated that a “collapse of the liturgy” is something the Church had absolutely never witnessed before Vatican II and the “reforms” undertaken in its name.  Only fifteen years after the Council, during the second year of his pontificate, John Paul II himself publicly asked forgiveness for the sudden and dramatic loss of Eucharistic faith and reverence following the “liturgical reforms” approved by Paul VI:
I would like to ask forgiveness—in my own name and in the name of all of you, venerable and dear brothers in the episcopate—for everything which, for whatever reason, through whatever human weakness, impatience or negligence, and also through the at times partial, one-sided and erroneous application of the directives of the Second Vatican Council, may have caused scandal and disturbance concerning the interpretation of the doctrine and the veneration due to this great sacrament. And I pray the Lord Jesus that in the future we may avoid in our manner of dealing with this sacred mystery anything which could weaken or disorient in any way the sense of reverence and love that exists in our faithful people. [Dominicae Cenae (1980), n.12]

But John Paul’s stunning apology was never followed by any decisive action to stem the continuing collapse of the liturgy over the next twenty-five years of his reign. Quite the contrary, in 1988, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Pope hailed the “reforms which it has made possible” as “the most visible fruit of the whole work of the Council,” noting that for “many people the message of the Second Vatican Council has been experienced principally through the liturgical reform.”  Indeed it has!  Concerning the self-evident collapse of the liturgy, however, the Pope merely made note of various abuses that occur “on occasion,” while insisting nonetheless that “the vast majority of the pastors and the Christian people have accepted the liturgical reform in a spirit of obedience and indeed joyful fervour.”  [Vicesimus Quintus Annus (1988), n. 12.]
Yet today the majority of the Christian people do not even believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist, which they receive in the hand from the unconsecrated hands of lay ministers as if it were a mere wafer of bread, which is exactly how they treat it. Moreover, in keeping with a nearly universal selective obedience to the Magisterium, the practice of contraception is widespread among Catholics, whose view on contraception differs little from that of Protestants, according to innumerable polls and surveys. This is also evidenced by the plummeting and now abysmally low birthrates among the Catholic populations of the Western world, which are not even producing enough children to replace themselves. Hence John Paul himself noted “the widespread fear of giving life to new children” in the midst of the “silent apostasy” he decried in Ecclesia in Europa.  In fact, it cannot be disputed that the highest rate of births in the Catholic world is seen among “traditionalists” who do not take part in the reformed liturgy or who, having no alternative, endure it with anything but “joyful fervor.”
Moreover, it is manifest that John Paul contributed to the liturgical collapse by his own acts. For the first time in her history the Church witnessed during his pontificate the scandalous novelty of “altar girls,” concerning which the Pope reversed his own prior decision forbidding the innovation as incompatible with the bimillennial tradition of the Church. Then there were the “inculturated” papal liturgies incorporating rock music and frankly pagan elements, including such shocking spectacles as a bare-breasted woman reading the Epistles in New Guinea, gyrating, feathered Aztec dancers shaking rattles and a “purification rite” in Mexico, and an aboriginal “Smoking Ceremony” replacing the prescribed penitential rite in Australia. The excuse that the Pope knew nothing of these liturgical aberrations beforehand is belied by his own choice and retention of their very author and orchestrator: Piero Marini, who served as John Paul’s Master of Pontifical Liturgical Celebrations for nearly twenty years, despite worldwide protests against his truly grotesque abuses of the Roman liturgy. Marini was finally, and mercifully, replaced by Pope Benedict in 2007.
Honesty compels one to admit that if the great preconciliar Popes had witnessed these papal liturgies of John Paul II, or indeed the general state of the Roman Rite throughout his pontificate, they would have reacted with a mixture of outrage and terrified incredulity.
But not only the liturgy was in a state of collapse by the end of the last pontificate.  As we noted at the beginning of this Statement, on Good Friday 2005, just before ascending to the Chair of Peter himself, the former Cardinal Ratzinger remarked: “How much filth there is in the Church, even among those who, in the priesthood, should belong entirely to Him.” [Cf. “Homily for Good Friday Mass,” 2005].  The “filth” to which the Cardinal referred was of course an unbelievable number of sexual scandals involving unspeakable acts by Catholic priests, erupting in nations around the globe—the harvest of decades of “conciliar renewal” in the seminaries.
Instead of disciplining the bishops who fostered this filth in their seminaries, covered it up by moving sexual predators from place to place, and then bankrupted their dioceses by paying civil settlements, John Paul II provided safe haven for several of the most egregiously negligent prelates. Perhaps the most notable example is Cardinal Bernard Law (see photo). Forced to testify before a grand jury concerning his gross negligence in failing to address rampant homosexual predation of young boys by priests in the Archdiocese of Boston, which resulted in $100 million in civil settlements to more than 500 victims, Law’s “punishment” by the Pope, after his disgraced resignation as Archbishop, was to be brought to Rome and awarded one of the city’s four magnificent patriarchal basilicas over which to preside as Archpriest.
And what of Archbishop Weakland, the notorious theological dissenter who admitted in a deposition that he deliberately returned homosexual predators in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee to active priestly ministry without warning parishioners or notifying the police of their crimes?  Having driven the Archdiocese into bankruptcy court on account of the resulting civil suits, Weakland ended his long career of undermining the integrity of faith and morals—to worldwide fawning publicity—only after the revelation that he misappropriated $450,000 in archdiocesan funds to pay off a man with whom he had had a homosexual affair. John Paul II allowed this thieving wolf of a bishop to retire with the full dignity of his high office in the Church, after which a Protestant publishing company published his memoirs: “A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church: Memoirs of a Catholic Archbishop.” An admiring reviewer writes that the book “portrays a man imbued with the values of the Second Vatican Council [who] had the courage to carry them forward both as Benedictine Abbot Primate and as Archbishop of Milwaukee.”
The “filth” that afflicted the Church during the last pontificate includes the long history of sexual predation by Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado (being blessed by Pope John Paul in photo to the left), founder of the “Legionaries of Christ,” supposedly the very exemplar of the “renewal” in action. John Paul II refused to initiate any investigation into Maciel’s conduct despite mounting evidence of abominable crimes which, thanks to worldwide publicity, are now the most notorious ever committed by a Catholic cleric. Paying no heed to the long-pending and widely known canonical charges against Maciel by eight of the Legionary seminarians he had sexually molested, John Paul lavishly honored him in a public ceremony at the Vatican in November 2004. Days later, however, then Cardinal Ratzinger “took it on himself to authorize an investigation of Maciel.” [Jason Berry, “Money Paved the Way for Maciel’s Influence in the Vatican,” National Catholic Reporter, April 6, 2010].
It was literally the case that John Paul had to die before Maciel could be disciplined. He was finally removed from active ministry and exiled to a monastery almost immediately after Cardinal Ratzinger became Pope Benedict. But this was only part of a pattern described by a prominent Catholic commentator: “[T]he high-flying John Paul let scandals spread beneath his feet, and the uncharismatic Ratzinger was left to clean them up.  This pattern extends to other fraught issues that the last Pope tended to avoid—the debasement of the Catholic liturgy, or the rise of Islam in a once-Christian Europe.” [Ross Douthat, “The Better Pope,” New York Times, April 11, 2010].
Another reason for reservation concerning this beatification is that throughout John Paul’s long pontificate faithful Catholics were bewildered and scandalized by numerous manifestly imprudent papal statements and gestures the likes of which the Church has never witnessed in 2000 years. To recall just a few of the more well-known examples:
·The numerous theologically dubious apologies for the presumed sins of Catholics in prior epochs of Church history.
Of course the world did not view the Pope’s unprecedented mea culpas as a great demonstration of the Church’s humility. Rather, quite predictably, they were construed as admissions of the Church’s historic guilt for all manner of offenses against humanity. With the exception of the apparently forgotten apology in Dominicae Cenae, however, there were no apologies for the catastrophic failure of living members of the hierarchy to preserve faith and discipline in the midst of the “continuing process of decay” and “silent apostasy.”
· The Assisi gatherings of October 1986 and January 2002.
During Assisi 2002, John Paul provided places in the very Convent of Saint Francis for the practitioners of “the great world religions,” from Animism to Zoroastrianism, to enact their assorted cultic rituals in that sacred Catholic shrine. Referring with emphasis to “the arranged places,” the Pope declared to a motley assembly that included practitioners of Voodoo: “we will pray in different ways, respecting one another’s religious traditions.” [Cf. “Address Of His Holiness Pope John Paul II to the Representatives of the World Religions,” January 24, 2002, and List of Participants, vatican.va].
The inevitable public impression left by the Assisi event, especially when filtered through the prism of the secular media, was that all religions are more or less pleasing to God—the very thesis rejected as false by Pope Pius XI in his 1928 Encyclical Mortalium Animos.  Why else would the Pope have summoned all their “representatives” to Assisi to offer their “prayers for peace”?  Can it honestly be denied that every single one of the Pope’s preconciliar predecessors would have condemned these spectacles?
·The Pope’s public kissing of the Koran during the 1999 visit to Rome of a group of Iraqi Christians and Muslims.
The Chaldean-rite Catholic Patriarch of Iraq hailed this act as a “gesture of respect” for a religion whose essence is a denial of the Trinity and the divinity of Christ and whose entire history is marked by the persecution of Christians, as we see at this very moment in Iraq and the Islamic “republics” of the Arabic world.
·The astonishing exclamation of March 21, 2000 in the Holy Land: “May St. John the Baptist protect Islam and all the people of Jordan...” [Cf. “Papal Homily in the Holy Land,” vatican.va].
Victory Mosques | PoliPundit.com
polipundit.com/?p=25538
Aug 14, 2010 – 43 thoughts on “Victory Mosques”. Louie Gohmert for POTUS on August 14, 2010 at 3:37 pm said: OK, I get the point. But, do you really think ...
1. Hamid: Ground Zero Mosque Islamic Victory Symbol
www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/groundzeromosquetawfik/.../36782...
Aug 18, 2010 – Islamic expert Tawfik Hamid tells Newsmax that many Muslims will view the construction of a mosque near ground zero as symbolizing a ...

What possible explanation could there be for this unprecedented prayer for the protection of a false religion itself (as distinct from its followers as human persons) during a papal sermon in the Holy Land – the very place liberated from Islam during the First Crusade?
· The bestowal of pectoral crosses – symbols of episcopal authority – on George Carey and Rowan Williams.
These Anglican so-called Archbishops of Canterbury, the validity of whose priestly and episcopal ordinations was definitively ruled out by Pope Leo XIII’s 1896 Bull Apostolicae Curae, do not even adhere to the teaching of the Catholic Church on matters of basic morality rooted in the divine and natural law. [Cf. John Allen, “Papal Deeds Speak Louder,” National Catholic Register, November 8, 2002]
· Pope John Paul’s active participation in pagan worship at a “sacred forest” in Togo.
http://www.jsofts.com/hbw/lofiversion/index.php?t404.html
(Babylonain Creation Myth File The Origin of Christianity)


This vision of a restored Hellenism and a true love of the gods guided Julian through numerous dangers and challenges. When he became Emperor of Rome he immediately sought to bring to life this vision of spiritual renewal,
a restoration of the balance between Hellenism and Romanitas that would bring peace and prosperity both to the state and to it's Citizens. As Plymnia Athanassiadi expressed it in her book, "Julian an Intellectual Biography", (See Julian and Neoplatonism File: the Origins


The Pope’s own newspaper reported how, upon his arrival at this place, “a sorcerer began to invoke the spirits: ‘Power of water, I invoke you. Ancestors, I invoke you.’” Following this invocation of “spirits,” the Pope was presented “with a receptacle full of water and flour. [He] first made a slight bow and then dispersed the mixture in all directions. In the morning he had performed the same action before Mass. That pagan rite [!] signifies that he who receives the water, symbol of prosperity, shares it with his ancestors by throwing it on the ground.” [L’Osservatore Romano, Italian edn., August 11, 1985, p. 5].
Shortly after his return to Rome, the Pope expressed satisfaction with his public participation in the prayer and ritual of animists: “The prayer meeting in the sanctuary at Lake Togo was particularly striking. There I prayed for the first time with animists.” [La Croix, August 23, 1985]. One would think that even this one instance—not only unrepented, but publicly vaunted—should be sufficient reason for terminating the cause for John Paul’s canonization. For by the Pope’s own admission, he “prayed . . . with animists.” And that kind of action – direct and formal participation in pagan worship – is something the Church has always judged to be objectively gravely sinful. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, pagan idolatry occurs not only when man worships false gods or idols as such, but also when he “honors and reveres a creature in place of God, whether this be gods or demons (for example, satanism), power, pleasure, race, ancestors... Idolatry rejects the unique Lordship of God; it is therefore incompatible with communion with God.” [CCC § 2113].
The Pagan gods were reclassified as evil spirits.

But this was only the most egregious (arguably) of many similar incidents during John Paul’s pontificate. It is instructive to note the Church’s posthumous verdict on the 4th-century Pope, Liberius, the first Bishop of Rome not to be declared a saint. Liberius earned this dubious distinction because—while in exile and under great duress from a persecuting emperor—he endorsed an ambiguous doctrinal statement favorable to Arianism and then excommunicated Athanasius, the champion of Trinitarian orthodoxy. Even though after his liberation and return to Rome he promptly retracted these lamentable actions and once again upheld orthodoxy for the rest of his pontificate, he was still denied canonization.
· The “ecumenical” vespers service in Saint Peter’s Basilica, the very heart of the visible Church, in which the Pope consented to pray together with Lutheran “bishops”, including women claiming to be successors of the Apostles.
This spectacle of course invited questions about whether the Pope was undermining his own teaching against women’s ordination. [Cf. Allen, loc. cit.]
In sum, by any objective assessment of the facts, John Paul II presided over and left behind a Church that remained in a state of crisis following the turmoil that erupted immediately after Vatican Council II. It is true that his pontificate included some decidedly positive achievements, including an admirable and forthright defense of human life in the face of the growing “culture of death,” valuable teaching in several weighty social encyclicals, an infallible pronouncement against any possibility of women’s ordination, and the motu proprio (Ecclesia Dei) that at least set the stage for the “liberation” of the traditional Latin Mass by Pope Benedict. Nor do we mean to question the personal piety and prayerfulness that were evident to those who knew him, and which we acknowledged at the beginning of this Statement.
Nevertheless, it can scarcely be denied that every one of John Paul’s predecessors would have been shocked and dismayed by the disastrously widespread disobedience, doctrinal dissent, liturgical decay, moral scandals, and declining Mass attendance that continued to the end of his pontificate – all exacerbated by frequently poor episcopal appointments and the sorts of highly questionable papal words and deeds we have recalled above. Even the reformist Paul VI, whose own ecumenical and interreligious initiatives were far more cautious than those of John Paul, would have been appalled by the state of the Church at the end of John Paul’s long reign.  And it was Pope Paul himself who described the already-developing postconciliar debacle with some of the most shocking words ever uttered by a Roman Pontiff:
By some fissure the smoke of Satan has entered into the temple of God: there is doubt, uncertainty, problems, unrest. Doubt has entered our consciences, and it has entered through the windows which were meant to have been opened to the light. This state of uncertainty reigns even in the Church. It was hoped that after the Council there would be a day of sunlight in the history of the Church. Instead, there came a day of clouds, of darkness, of groping, of uncertainty. How did this happen? We will confide Our thoughts to you: there has been interference from an adverse power: his name is the devil... [Paul VI, Insegnamenti, Ed. Vaticana, Vol. X, 1972, p. 707]

The multi-level crown of the high Pagan priest was first worn by old Babylonian gods in 1800BC. The horned tiara was carved atop Assyrian winged-bull cherubims as well. The Jewish Kabbalistic solar deity wore this very same tiara, as did Krishna.

The bronze tomb of Pope Sixtus depicts his dead body in bronze with this three ringed tiara on his head. On that tiara you can also see 6 serpents upon it. All the Popes have worn the tiara as a symbol of their authority as "gods of the earth, heaven, and hell." Hence, the "three rings" upon it. The Vatican has a solid gold tiara on display in the Vatican treasury at all times. This is the very crown the Pope will hand to Antichrist when he arrives to impersonate Jesus Christ in the days ahead.

The large evil eye can be found carved on a Roman sarcophagus in the National Archaeological Museum in Rome Italy. Masonic pendants have them as well. Hathor, the "eye of Osiris" can be found all over Egyptian temple. It was commonly used as protection against evil magic

This very same evil eye within the pyramid is found on Roman Catholic pulpits, ceilings, altars, doors, pendants, medals, etc. It is also on the back of the dollar bill of the USA on the left side floating above an unfinished pyramid.

Like John Paul after him, however, Paul failed to take any effective measures to address a debacle that the Pope—and only the Pope—could have prevented, or at least greatly curtailed.
Pope Paul’s devastating admissions were quoted by no less than Msgr. Guido Pozzo, Secretary of the Pontifical Commission “Ecclesia Dei,” in his address to the European priests of the Fraternity of St. Peter on July 2, 2010 at Wigratzbad.  As Msgr. Pozzo admitted on that occasion: “Unfortunately, the effects as enumerated by Paul VI have not disappeared. A foreign way of thinking has entered into the Catholic world, stirring up confusion, seducing many souls, and disorienting the faithful. There is a ‘spirit of self-demolition’ that pervades modernism...” The post-conciliar crisis, he observed, involves a “para-Conciliar ideology” that “proposes once more the idea of Modernism, condemned at the beginning of the 20th century by St. Pius X.”
But who, if not the last Pope—and the one before him—bears partial responsibility for the spread of this para-Conciliar, heterodox ideology throughout the Catholic world? Certainly, John Paul II, like Paul VI, promulgated a number of doctrinally traditional magisterial documents that were directed against such heterodoxy. But the question before us now is this: Was his witness strong enough, and consistent enough, to qualify him as an heroic defender of orthodox faith and morals? Or rather, did his own many questionable novelties in word and deed - together with his omissions and his lack of firm ecclesiastical governance - have the overall effect of taking away with his left hand much of what he gave with his right?
In this connection we note the supreme irony that while a resurgent Modernist heresy was causing chaos throughout the Church, John Paul II saw fit to announce personally the excommunication of only five persons during his twenty-seven years as Pope: the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and the four bishops he consecrated in 1988 for the Society of Saint Pius X, whose very aim (whether or not one agrees with their approach) was precisely to oppose the “para-Conciliar ideology” remarked by Msgr. Pozzo according to the program of the sainted Pope for whom their association is named. (Note: John Paul did not personally announce the excommunication of Tissa Balasuriya, who at any rate was “unexcommunicated” within a year.)
As the whole world knows, in early 2009 Pope Benedict revoked the excommunications of the four Society bishops.  He has since observed that “[f]rom the moment in which these four bishops recognized the Primacy of the Pope, juridically they had to be liberated from excommunication...” [Luce del Mondo, p. 43]  But they always had recognized the papal primacy, unlike the legions of Catholics—laity, priests, nuns, theologians, and even certain bishops—who effectively negated it with their open dissent from the most basic teachings of the Magisterium, while the Vatican did nothing or next to nothing for more than a quarter-century.
Likewise, the ill-starred Paul VI, in the midst of the mounting “self-demolition” of the Church he himself decried, reserved his harshest discipline for the Society and Archbishop Lefebvre, whom he publicly rebuked by name and then ordered suspended from the exercise of Holy Orders while theological and liturgical rebels were sacking the Church with impunity all over the world.
Today very few seriously propose the beatification of Paul VI, who rued the debacle over which he presided while not doing nearly enough about it. In fact, there was no process for Pope Paul’s beatification at all until John Paul II commenced it at the diocesan level in 1993.  It has not advanced since then, having apparently been stopped cold by grave objections not unlike some of those suggested here.  And so we must ask: Why the rush to beatify John Paul II, given that he persevered unswervingly in the imprudent reformist program of his predecessor, adding to it a long series of novelties not even Pope Paul, that supremely tragic figure, would have dared to venture? At least Paul had the candor to admit that he saw the smoke of Satan entering the Church, not a “new springtime of Christian life which will be revealed by the Great Jubilee, if Christians are docile to the action of the Holy Spirit.” [Tertio Millennio Adveniente (1994), n. 18]
For the sake of truth we must be frank in stating the obvious conclusion: No blessed or sainted Pope in Church history has a legacy as troubling as that of John Paul II, and perhaps no Pope at all aside from Paul VI.
A Miracle Open to Doubt
Finally, we cannot fail to note that the lone miracle on which the entire beatification is premised—the reported cure of a French nun, Sister Marie Simon-Pierre (see photo), said to be suffering from Parkinson’s disease—is open to question.
For one thing, the very diagnosis of Parkinson’s leaves room for doubt absent the only definitive test known to medical science: an autopsy of the brain. Other conditions subject to spontaneous remission can mimic Parkinson’s. For another, the nexus between the purported cure of the nun and a “night of prayers to John Paul II” seems dubious.  Did the prayers for this nun exclude the invocation of any and all recognized saints?
Compare the two miracles—it was John Paul himself who reduced the requirement to only one—that Pius XII deemed sufficient for the beatification of Pius X. The first involved a nun who had bone cancer and was cured instantaneously after a relic of Pius X was placed on her chest. The second involved a nun whose cancer disappeared when she touched a relic statue of Pius. No such indisputable connection exists between the purported cure in this case and any putative relic of John Paul II.
There is no question here of the infallible teaching authority of the Church; the assessment of this lone miracle is a judgment of medical fact subject to the possibility of error. Imagine the damage to the Church’s credibility should this nun eventually suffer a return of her symptoms. In fact, in March of last year the Rzeczpospolita daily, one of Poland’s most respected newspapers, reported that there had been some return of symptoms and that one of the two medical consultants had expressed doubts about the purported miracle. This report prompted the former head of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, to reveal to press that “It could be that one of the two medical consultants perhaps had some doubts. And this, unfortunately, leaked out.” Martins further revealed that “the doubts would require further investigation. In such cases, he said, the Congregation would ask more doctors to come in and offer an opinion.” [Nicole Winfield, Associated Press, “John Paul II ‘Miracle’ Further Scrutinized,” March 28, 2010]
One doctor doubted the miracle, and when his doubts “leaked out” unexpectedly other doctors were brought in—and this less than a year ago! Have we really been presented with the kind of indubitably miraculous cures recognized by Pius XII in the beatification of Pius X?
The Probable Consequences of this Act
Again, the real question concerning this beatification is not whether John Paul II was a good or holy man, but rather what his beatification would signify to the masses that will pay no heed to the distinction between beatification and canonization. It would signify that the Church views as a saint, and even great among Roman Pontiffs, a Pope whose stewardship of the Church cannot withstand the least comparison with the examples of his sainted and blessed predecessors.
Consider the next-to-last of the sainted Roman Pontiffs:  St. Pius V, a model of fortitude in his reform of the clergy according to the decrees of the Council of Trent, his stern measures against the spread of error in the Church, and his defense of all of Christendom against the threat of Islam—which John Paul II implored Saint John the Baptist to protect! Consider also the last Pope to be raised to the altars: St. Pius X, likewise remembered for his courageous governance of the Church in suppressing precisely that Modernist heresy which erupted anew after Vatican II and spread throughout the Catholic world during John Paul’s pontificate, as Msgr. Pozzo so candidly observed only a few months ago (but without seeming to consider any responsibility of the head of the Church for this catastrophe).
Does not this beatification, therefore, incur the risk of reducing beatification and even canonization to the level of a token of popular esteem bestowed upon a beloved figure in the Church, a kind of ecclesiastical Academy Award? Here we note that, in one of his many innovations, John Paul “streamlined” the process for both beatification and canonization, allowing him to conduct an incredible 1,338 beatifications and 482 canonizations—more than all of his predecessors combined. Is it prudent for the very Pope who put this “saint factory” into operation (a development widely belittled in the press) to be judged according to its relaxed standards?
We must also express our deep concern over the predictable exploitation of this beatification by the cunning forces of world opinion. We notice that they are observing a curious silence where one would expect clamorous opposition if this beatification really represented an offense to the prevailing liberal zeitgeist—as does the proposed beatification of Pius XII, which has been met with a relentless publicity campaign to stop it at all costs. It would appear that world opinion views the beatification of John Paul II with favor insofar as it would serve to validate the “reforms of Vatican II” the world has hailed as a long overdue accommodation of a hidebound Church to the “modern world” of “liberty” and “human rights.”
Yet we can be certain, should the beatification proceed as scheduled, that powerful sectors of the mass media will not waste a moment in holding it up as an example of the Church’s “hypocrisy,” ineptitude and cronyism in so honoring the Pope who presided over the pedophilia scandal and refused to discipline the evil founder of the Legionaries. On the latter subject there is already a book-length exposé and film: “Vows of Silence: The Abuse of Power in the Papacy of John Paul II,” which documents how Maciel was protected by the Pope’s key advisors, including Cardinal Sodano, Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Martínez, Prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, and Cardinal Dziwisz, now Archbishop of Cracow, who was John Paul’s secretary and closest confidant.
Conclusion
In the midst of what Sister Lucia of Fatima rightly called “diabolical disorientation” in the Church we are especially mindful that beatification is not at all within the charism of infallibility. It does not establish an obligatory cult but merely permission to venerate the beatus if one wishes. In this case, therefore, we face the real possibility of a grave error in prudential judgment provoked by contingent circumstances, including popularity and affection, that ought not to influence the essential process of careful investigation and deliberation—especially in the case of this beatification, with all its implications for the universal Church.
Again we ask: Why the haste?  Is there perhaps a fear that unless the act is performed immediately the more mature verdict of history might preclude beatification, as it surely did in the case of Paul VI?  If so, why not let the verdict be rendered in keeping with the long view the Church has generally taken in the matter of beatification or canonization?  If even a giant like Saint Pius V was not canonized until 140 years after his death, can we not wait at least a few more years in order to assess the pontifical legacy that ought to figure most prominently in the decision to beatify John Paul II? Can the Church not wait even the 37 years that elapsed between the death of Pius X and his beatification by Pius XII in 1951 (followed by the canonization of 1954)? Indeed, is it prudent to beatify now—without further assessment and on the basis of a lone miracle whose authenticity is open to doubt—a Pope whose legacy is admittedly marked by the rampant spread of the very evil St. Pius X heroically opposed and defeated in his time?
For all of these reasons, we believe it is just and appropriate to implore the Holy Father to defer the beatification of John Paul II to a time when the grounds for that solemn act may be assessed objectively and dispassionately in the light of history. The good of the Church can only be served by a prudent delay, whereas it can only be placed at risk by a hasty process not protected from error by the charism of the Church’s infallible Magisterium.
Our Lady, Queen of Wisdom, Virgo Prudentissima, pray for us!