Saturday, March 18, 2006

ROUNDUP - SECULAR NEWS: Stuff from secular news sources

... with a particularly secular perspective which touches on the Kingdom.

ABORTION
The UN is at it again. I've been a believer just shy of 26 years and I can't remember a year the UN didn't try this Godless scam ... and I still can't understand the argument to stay the course with them.

UN Commission Drops Abortion Language in "status of women" report, the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-Fam) reports.
As the 50th session of the UN's Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) met for its closing ceremony last Friday, delegates were uncertain whether a set of "Agreed Conclusions" would be adopted.

The original draft of the "Agreed Conclusions'" section on women's health focused almost solely on "sexual and reproductive health services and rights." As the Friday Fax has reported in the past, pro-abortion advocates have tried to establish a so-called international human right to abortion on demand using this terminology.

The European Union, joined by Turkey, Canada, New Zealand, and Norway, fought to keep the focus on sexual and reproductive health by referencing the reported 500,000 maternal deaths every year. [...]

As negotiations wore on, many states expressed mounting frustration at the narrow focus on the sexual and reproductive health of women. Costa Rica, Egypt, the United States, Pakistan, El Salvador, Nigeria, Syria, and Sudan were among those countries calling for the Commission to address women's health in a more comprehensive way, bearing in mind the myriad of health concerns faced by women throughout the course of their lives.

Much to the consternation of delegates, the draft "Agreed Conclusions" contained no references to the top causes of death of women in the developing world, namely malaria and tuberculosis. [emphasis added]
Full story >>>>


BIG BANG
Christian Science Monitor is reporting on new evidence supporting the big bang theory of creation. I'd ask why it couldn't just as well support the "sudden" creation of the heavens and the earth by God?

Evidence of universe's first trillionth of a second
For a fleeting moment, the very fabric of the universe became a kind of hyperspeed spandex - stretching outward at perhaps 100 times the speed of light.

That concept, which describes the first trillionth of a second of the universe's beginnings, has gained wide acceptance among cosmologists. Now, scientists say they have discovered the first comprehensive, subtle signals from that cosmic growth spurt.

The discovery, announced Thursday, does not quite provide "smoking gun" confirmation of the concept, known as inflation. But scientists say they have detected wisps from the muzzle. With a few more years of data-gathering, they say they may be able to find the missing pieces that would clinch the case for a process widely held to have given the universe its initial "bang." [...]

The new evidence comes from NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), a satellite designed to study the final whisper of the Big Bang - the primordial burst of energy widely held to have given birth to the universe. This whisper, actually low-level radiation, is known as the cosmic microwave background. The concept of inflation predicts that this whisper should leave behind signals from that event. [...]

Inflation holds that the observable universe blossomed from a tiny spot in space so minute that only quantum physics can describe it. Then, in a trillionth of a second, it expanded at almost unimaginable speed. The concept, first proposed nearly 30 years ago, erased difficult mismatches between the "standard" Big Bang theory at the time and the universe astronomers observed as they traced much of its 13.7-billion-year evolution through their telescopes. It also solved conundrums particle physicists faced as they probed the world of the very small.
Won't they be surprised when they find the "smoking gun" and God is holding it!

Full story >>>>


CATHOLIC / HOMOSEXUALS
Anyone out there have a feel for how deeply protestant parachurch organizations are involved in the placement of children with homosexual and other deviant couples?

Denver Catholic Charities takes stand against homosexual adoptions
The Denver, Colorado office of Catholic Charities has adopted a strong stand against placing children for adoption by same-sex couples.

Although spokesman said that no homosexual couples had sought to adopt children through Catholic Charities in Denver, officials nevertheless set a clear policy in response to the controversies that have arisen in Boston and San Francisco, where Catholic Charities officials have been forced to reconsider policies allowing same-sex couples to adopt children.
I'm really in the mood to admire the Catholics stand on moral issues these days. What with all the PC (political c__p) pressure we all have to put up with, their public resistance is an item for respect.

Full story >>>>


FIRST CENTURY / GLADIATORS
Gladiators Played by the Rules, Skulls Suggest
Although their final outcomes may have been brutal, ancient Roman gladiators fought like gentlemen, according to new research.

GladiatorsForensic analysis of remains from a gladiator cemetery in Turkey indicates that gladiators followed a strict set of rules, never letting the fight descend into the type of mutilation common on battlefields of the day.

What's more, the new findings suggest, is that when a gladiator was close to death, he would be put out of his misery by a backstage executioner with one swift hammer strike to the side of the head.

Fabian Kanz from the Austrian Archaeological Institute and Karl Grosschmidt from the Medical University of Vienna, Austria, analyzed the injuries of 67 gladiators. All the men had been buried in a gladiator cemetery dating back to A.D. 2 in the ancient city of Ephesus in Turkey, which was then part of the Roman Empire.

Archaeologists first discovered the cemetery in 1993. Fighters depicted on the tombstones gave it away as a burial ground for gladiators.

Using microscope analysis and CT scans of bones, Kanz and Grosschmidt were able to determine how and when the gladiators received their wounds.

"Wounds that occur at or near the time of death are distinguished by lack of healing and [by] fracture margins characteristic of fresh bone breaks," Kanz said. By contrast, old battle scars in the bone have a more knitted-together appearance, because they had time to heal.
Makes one wonder if they showed the same compassion to the Christians?

Full story >>>>


JUDAISM
The 'Jewish' Con
Jewish chaplain Gary Friedman wasn't surprised when he learned that incarcerated neo-Nazi gang members were claiming to be Jews at the Clallam Bay Corrections Center on the Olympic Peninsula. In fact, the chairman of the Seattle-based Jewish Prisoner Services International had been expecting the news. Nationwide, "There is this amazing phenomenon of non-Jews claiming to be Jewish," says Friedman.

Across the country, prisoners of every ethnicity, faith, and political viewpoint, including neo-Nazis, latch onto Judaism for a variety of reasons. Of the 120 prisoners in this state who are granted a kosher diet, only a dozen are Jewish, Friedman says.
Full story >>>>

HT: Wren's Nest


SMUT
Fortune 500 siege on child-porn
Some of America's most powerful financial institutions have a new target - and it doesn't involve making money.

For the first time, titans such as American Express, Bank of America, and Citigroup will join forces to try to thwart the use of credit cards and other financial tools to buy child pornography. A group of 18 corporate giants intends to share information, issue cease-and-desist orders to offenders, and try to expand its reach to almost every financial institution that matters. The aim: to snuff out the commercial spread of the smut by 2008.

"People say it's crazy, but I don't think it is," says Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which will act as clearinghouse for the effort. "If we can eliminate the credit-card use, the third-party payments, or any of the illegal mechanisms, we can make it a whole lot harder."

By many estimates, child pornography has mushroomed into a giant business, attracting organized crime. At least 200,000 websites sell such images, according to Mr. Allen, and rake in from $20 billion to $30 billion a year.
Thank God some of these guys are beginning to see the huge cost to their future customer base and taking steps to be involved in the solution. My suggestion? Start with their advertizing agents who place their TV ads.

Full story >>>>


WICCAN
This is wrong, just flat wrong.

Sergeant's sacrifice unrecognized
Nevada National Guard Sgt. Patrick Stewart gave his life for his country when the Chinook helicopter he was in was shot down in Afghanistan in September.

But those wishing to honor Stewart, who should have his name on the memorial wall at the Northern Nevada Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Fernley, 34 miles east of Reno, would have a difficult time doing so.

The space reserved for Stewart, right next to Chief Warrant Officer John Flynn, his comrade from Sparks who also died in the attack as part of Operation Enduring Freedom, is vacant. Stewart was a follower of the Wiccan religion, which is not recognized by the Department of Veterans Affairs for use in its cemeteries.

Stewart's widow, Roberta, said she will wait until her family's religion -- and its five-pointed star enclosed in a circle, with one point facing skyward -- is recognized for use on memorials before Stewart's plaque is installed.

"It's completely blank," Roberta Stewart said, pointing to her husband's place on the memorial.
As much as we must detest the pagan way, we must respect a man's death and honor it. Besides, Jesus said there is no greater gift than a man gives his life for his friends (read countrymen; John 15:12-14).

Full story >>>>

HT: Wren's Nest


By at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)