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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
9/24/2015 11:26:12 AM

Nigeria bullish on Boko Haram but fear of attack lingers

AFP

A screen grab taken from a video posted on YouTube on June 2, 2015 by Boko Haram shows an alleged member delivering a speech at an undisclosed location (AFP Photo/)

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Maiduguri (Nigeria) (AFP) - Nigeria on Wednesday claimed Boko Haram's six-year insurgency was nearing an end, after the military said it had cleared rebel camps, rescued hundreds of women and children and arrested dozens of suspected militants.

But apparent government and military confidence in counter-insurgency operations was off-set by nearly 140 deaths in a series of bomb attacks and fears of more civilian bloodshed over the Eid al-Adha holiday.

President Muhammadu Buhari has given his new military high command until early November to end the rebellion, which has claimed at least 17,000 lives and made more than two million homeless since 2009.

Since the deadline was announced, the military has claimed successes against the Islamists and said troops had on Tuesday rescued 241 women and children near the town of Banki, close to the Cameroon border.

- 'Disarray' -

Army spokesman Sani Usman told AFP it was not immediately clear whether all those rescued had been kidnapped -- an established tactic in Boko Haram's quest for a hardline Islamic state in the region.

"Screening is ongoing to know their exact status. Some were being held, some belonged to their (the militants') families," he said.

Several hundred women and children were brought out of the group's Sambisa Forest stronghold in Borno state in May, while last month nearly 180 were freed south of the state capital, Maiduguri.

Usman said 43 suspected Boko Haram fighters were detained in Tuesday's operations in Jangurori and Bulatori villages, including a suspected regional commander or "emir".

There was no independent verification of the army's claims and the military has previously claimed gains, making observers cautious.

Boko Haram's leader Abubakar Shekau last weekend dismissed the military's repeated assertion the group was in disarray and a spent force as "lies".

- 'Days are numbered' -

Buhari on Thursday jets to the UN General Assembly in New York, where he will also attend a counter-terrorism summit hosted by US President Barack Obama.

Before he left, the Nigerian leader's spokesman Garba Shehu tweeted: "President Buhari assures all Nigerians that the days of Boko Haram are numbered.

"Boko Haram's reign of terror in parts of the country will be finally over very soon as the ongoing military onslaught against the terrorist sect will continue relentlessly until total victory is achieved."

The upbeat language is a far cry from 12 months ago, when a demoralised Nigerian army under Buhari's predecessor Goodluck Jonathan lost swathes of territory in the northeast to Boko Haram.

Since the turn of the year, troops -- assisted by counterparts from neighbouring Cameroon, Chad and Niger -- have clawed back captured towns and villages and apparently hit the rebels' capacity to fight.

There is still concern, including from Buhari, about an increase in guerrilla-style tactics such as hit and run raids, suicide and bomb attacks that have killed more than 1,100 in Nigeria since he took office in May.

Earlier this month, Boko Haram was blamed for bombing a camp in Yola, Adamawa state, for those who had fled the fighting, while there have been repeated attacks in Cameroon, Chad and Niger.

- Attack fears -

In Maiduguri on Sunday, at least 117 people were killed when improvised explosive devices and a suicide bomber killed worshippers at a mosque and football fans watching a televised match nearby.

Some 140 kilometres (87 miles) away in the garrison town of Monguno, more than 20 were killed when a bomb went off at a crowded evening market.

Nigeria's authorities have announced tight movement restrictions in Borno state for the Eid festival, which is being marked by two days of public holiday on Thursday and Friday.

Some 40,000 personnel are to be deployed across the country to ensure security, particularly at vulnerable locations such as markets, places of worships and bus stations.

In Maiduguri, some shops were shut, missing out on holiday custom, and locals were fearful about potential attacks.

"I am afraid. I am not going to any mosque to observe the Eid prayers because nobody is sure. Anything can happen," said Sanusi Modibbo.

"The prayer is mandatory. I will just remain at home and slaughter my ram at the appointed time."


"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
9/24/2015 4:26:05 PM

Austria says it has sent over 5,000 migrants back to other EU countries

Reuters 4 hours ago


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Migrants wait for transport at a transit camp in Gevgelija, Macedonia, after entering the country by crossing the border with Greece, September 24, 2015. REUTERS/Ognen Teofilovski

BAD STAFFELSTEIN, Germany (Reuters) - Austria has sent back more than 5,000 migrants to EU countries that they had crossed on their way to Austria, its interior minister said on Thursday.

Three weeks ago, Austria and Germany temporarily exempted people fleeing the Syrian war from EU rules requiring refugees to request asylum at the point where they enter the bloc. The move angered neighbors such as Hungary, who said it would merely encourage more migrants to come.

"If I remember rightly, we have sent more than 5,000 or 5,500 back from Austria, especially to Bulgaria and Romania among others," Johanna Mikl-Leitner told journalists at a meeting in Germany of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister party to Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives.

"For a functioning asylum system, you need an effective return policy, and there's still a lot of work to do on this, especially with regard to north African countries," she said.

Mikl-Leitner noted that hardly any applications for asylum were made in safe countries such as Croatia or Slovenia, which meant that migrants who passed through them were no longer seeking safety but rather wanted to choose the country with the most attractive economic situation.

"If refugees come from Slovenia and Croatia to Austria and apply for asylum in Austria ... then we'll take them back to Croatia and Slovenia."

Mikl-Leitner made no mention of Hungary, Austria's eastern neighbor and fellow EU member whose treatment of refugees Austria's chancellor has likened to Nazi deportations during the Holocaust.

She said Austria had imprisoned 545 people smugglers, and that there were likely to be about 2,000 trials of traffickers this year, twice last year's level.

(Reporting by Michelle Martin and Joern Poltz; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
9/24/2015 5:05:55 PM

Pope Francis FULL SPEECH to US Congress: Pope Delivers Historic Speech before US Congress 9/24/2015

Pope Francis Makes Passionate Speech on Capitol Hill. Pope Francis Address to Joint Meeting of Congress. Il discorso integrale di Papa Francesco al Congresso degli Stati Uniti. Dall’immigrazione alla pena di morte, tanti i temi affrontati dal Pontefice nel suo storico intervento. Pope Francis addressed a joint meeting of Congress, the first pontiff in history to address both chambers. Pope Francis speech puts Congress on defensive over immigration, climate and more. Pope Francis makes historic address to US Congress. Pope Francis has become the first pontiff to address a joint meeting of the US Congress, where he received a warm welcome from more than 500 lawmakers, justices and officials.

He was greeted at the US Capitol by Speaker of the House John Boehner, who is Catholic, and then entered the chamber to thunderous applause.

He began his speech by warning of the dangers of “ideological extremism”.

And he emphasised the importance of welcoming immigrants.

He said the world is facing a refugee crisis of a magnitude not seen since World War Two, and noted that thousands travel north into the US for a better life every year.
“We must not be taken aback by their numbers, but rather view them as persons, seeing their faces and listening to their stories, trying to respond as best we can to their situation,” he said.

Also in the speech:
◾he related the work of lawmakers to that of Moses, saying they had a responsibility to promote unity through “just legislation”
◾the world must be attentive to “fundamentalism, whether religious or of any other kind”
◾touched on economic inequality saying “even in the developed world, the effects of unjust structure and actions are all too apparent”
◾renewed calls for “the global abolition of the death penalty” saying criminals should be rehabilitated
◾he reaffirmed his “esteem and appreciation” to the indigenous people of the Americas who faced “turbulent and violent” contacts with colonising powers
◾noting that most Congress members were the descendents of migrants, he urged them to “treat others with the same passion and compassion with which we want to be treated”

After finishing with the words “God bless America”, he received a prolonged standing ovation.

Thousands of people have gathered on the West Lawn of the Capitol hoping to see the 78-year-old Argentine pontiff.
Sitting behind him was Vice President Joe Biden and Mr Boehner, the first and second in line to the presidency, who are both Roman Catholics.

Mr Boehner, a Republican, is a former altar boy who invited the Pope to speak after failing to persuade his two predecessors to do likewise. He has ruled out fears that Francis – who has a reputation for being politically engaged – will stir up controversy.

“The Pope transcends all of this,” Mr Boehner wrote in an online essay. “He appeals to our better angels and brings us back to our daily obligations. The best thing we can all do is listen, open our hearts to his message and reflect on his example.’

Catholics in America:
◾80 million baptised as Catholics
◾Six of the nine Supreme Court justices are Catholic
◾31% of the US Congress (22% general population)
◾One Catholic president (JFK) and one vice-president (Joe Biden)
◾Six Catholic Republicans running for president, the most ever

Later on Thursday the Pope is due to share a meal with homeless people.

On Wednesday, he upset some victims of clerical child abuse by offering sympathy to US bishops while saying little to address the suffering of the survivors, our correspondent says.

On his way to Washington from Cuba, Pope Francis told journalists that despite his criticism of capitalism he was not “a leftie”, as the media had sometimes painted him.



"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
9/24/2015 11:31:16 PM

Why Do We Care Whose Side the Pope Is On?

The unseemly left-right war over the pope's affections

By
(Submitted by J. Haines)


Pope Francis departs the Vatican's diplomatic mission in Washington, DC on September 23rd, 2015 Cliff Owen/Corbis


o the pope is here. His arrival has spawned a Drake/Meek Mill-style diss battle within the pundit class, pitting conservatives bemoaning the pope’s false prophecy against liberals swooning over his platitudinous anti-capitalism.

It’s like the Colts-Jets game from Monday night. I can’t decide which side I want to lose more.

It’s been a long time since the left and right in America have had had a real fight for primacy in the religious space. For almost a generation now liberals have mostly conceded the very word faith, letting Republicans smother and monopolize the term like overprotective parents.

Overt religiosity is the norm on the GOP side, with God-stalking nutballs like Michele Bachmann or Ben Carson perennially front and center. Meanwhile, the closest thing to a famed religious liberal that America has seen over the span of many decades was probably Susan Sarandon’s nun character in Dead Man Walking, an anti-capital punishment parable whose religious message wasn’t believable even though it was a true story.

But now the script has flipped. The Republican frontrunner is Donald Trump, a man who isworse at naming Bible verses than Sarah Palin is at naming Supreme Court cases. And this week’s arrival of the world’s most famous religious leader is being celebrated in the lefty press like the premiere of Fahrenheit 911.

Pope Francis won over urban liberals through writings like his 184-page encyclical on climate change, which described the earth as an “immense pile of filth.” Raised in Peronist Argentina, he also talks with varying degrees of vagueness about the “perverse” inequities of global capitalism, complaining for instance that a two-point drop in the stock market makes the news, while nobody notices when a homeless person dies of exposure.

This past weekend’s column by George Will perfectly expresses the sense of abject betrayal conservatives feel at a pope allowing himself to be appropriated by the global left, when he could be just railing against abortion and moral relativism like his recent predecessors.

You can always tell how mad George Will is by how much alliteration he uses. “Pope Francis’s Fact-Free Flamboyance” predictably seethes from the start:

“Pope Francis embodies sanctity but comes trailing clouds of sanctimony. With a convert’s indiscriminate zeal, he embraces ideas impeccably fashionable, demonstrably false, and deeply reactionary. They would devastate the poor on whose behalf he purports to speak…”

The notion that Will is upset with this pope on behalf of the poor is hilarious, but understandable. Conservatives loved the pre-Francis Catholic strategy for dealing with the poor. First, you create lots of cheap third-world factory labor by discouraging contraception. Then you give lip service to alleviating poverty by pushing a program of strictly voluntary charitable donations.

That Catholic Church has always been a great ally to the industrialist aristocrats George Will represents. So it’s not surprising he’s not feeling this whole “we need to reform capitalism” thing.

But conservatives feel betrayed on another level. Much in the way Mormons believe Jesus will ultimately return to earth and settle in Missouri, conservatives have long accepted that the pope should be a secret American who believes in free enterprise, cries during Band of Brothers and would build his home in the United States if he had it to do all over again.

Thus a lot of the criticism from the right this week implies that this pope is insufficiently worshipful of America and Americans. They think his lack of reverence for God’s chosen symbol of the miracle of capitalist production traitorous, and moreover they’re offended that he doesn’t seem to think Americans are the best and most generous people on earth. Pollution and greed aside, doesn’t this pope know that some of us claim hundreds of dollars a year in charitable deductions?

“Does this pope understand America?” moaned Brian Kilmeade on Fox and Friends. “He’s talking about the greed of America, but does he understand what the capital of America has done for charitable causes?”

Will put it best, noting that what the pope fails to recognize about us Americans is that our greed and selfishness are actually our best qualities.

“He stands against… the spontaneous creativity of open societies in which people and their desires are not problems but precious resources,” Will wrote. “Americans cannot simultaneously honor him and celebrate their nation’s premises.”

For his offenses, Pope Francis has earned himself a ticket onto the ever-expanding enemies list of the American political right, joining Black Lives Matter, Mexican immigrants, Muslims, feminists, Hollywood actors, college lit professors, Occupy Wall Street, whales, the French, Bill Maher, Canada,Sesame Street and other such undesirables.

“Pure Marxism,” cried Rush Limbaugh about the pope’s ideas.

“Hand-selected by the New World Order… The same people who gave us Obama gave us this pope,” cried Michael Savage.

“Part of the globalist plan to destroy the world,” chimed in Alex Jones.

But for all of the right’s sourpussing, the papal Beatlemania on the other side has been just as revealing.

The commercial media is of course doing its thing, making the pope’s arrival into the Biggest Live Coverage Event of all time. This whole-week Popetacular will be like a baby-down-a-well story times a Kursk rescue times a presidential inauguration. Atheists are advised to keep their TVs off.

Even Donald Trump will be a footnote to reporters while His Holiness is in the country. (Although, humorously, Trump’s biographer Michael D’Antonio squirmed into the headlines this week by comparing Trump to the pope. “They’re both completely authentic guys,” he said.)

But it’s the defenses of the pope by left-leaning media that are really striking. A spate of articles in traditionally liberal newspapers and websites has appeared, each praising the pope and appropriating him as one of their own.

Should you, the progressive, embrace the head of one of the most socially conservative organizations on earth? “Yes. Yes, you should,” says Jack Jenkins at ThinkProgress. “Especially if you want legislative action on immigration reform, climate change, or income inequality.”

Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon took particular issue with George Will’s broadside against Francis, which I get. But beyond that she went after Will for misrepresenting Catholic values, which may tilt blue-state:

“I find it interesting when conservative guys like Will lose their minds over the idea of someone with a fair degree of authority on the subject of Catholicism — like, say, a pope — pointing out the actual stated values of one of the richest and most powerful religions in the world. Values that include, uh oh, charity, humility and non-materialism.”

Suzy Khimm at the the New Republic pointed out several of the more transparent attempts to turn Francis into a Democratic-leaning hero. She cited the liberal-backed American Bridge project, which is releasing a report that will “reveal how the Republican Party is opposed and actively working against Pope Francis’s priorities on many issues.” This comes on the heels of another report arguing that the Koch Brothers are “on the wrong side of the Holy Father.”

All this stuff is a drag. The American left is always at its most unlikeable when it’s being pious. And that’s just the secular, hey-that-joke-isn’t-funny kind of piety. If we have to add actual religious piety to the equation, we’re suddenly taking a lot of the charm out of not being a Republican. Watching progressives fawn over a pope is depressing and makes me want to go watch a Cheech and Chong movie.

I was raised Catholic. To me the Church is just a giant evil transnational corporation operating on a dreary business model, one that nurtures debilitating guilt feelings in its followers and then offers to make them go away temporarily in exchange for donations. I realize the Church does some nice things with the money it raises and that other people have a different opinion, but this is my experience.

And this pope, for all his good qualities, is to me a modern version of an old religious scam. In Tsarist Russia you’d have some wizened starets show up at an aristocrat’s estate in rags and preach to the ladies of the house about the evils of wealth in exchange for wine, pastries and a few nights in a feather bed.

This version is a pope arriving in America with a gazillion-member entourage to reassure young professionals in New York how right they are about climate change and income inequality. He says a lot of very vague things about the wrongs of society that everyone is sure coincide with their own opinions. George Will is right when he says Francis speaks “in the intellectual tone of a fortune cookie,” saying things like, “People occasionally forgive, but nature never does.”

Meanwhile Francis chugs along as the head of one of the most socially regressive organizations on earth, doing nothing to take on the Church’s indefensible stances on things like birth control, gay rights, discrimination against women, celibacy and countless other issues. He claims the moral authority to reform global capitalism, but he’s somehow not ready to tell teenagers it’s OK to masturbate, which seems bizarre.

People have such impassioned political fights over the pope because everyone wants the endorsement of the guy closest to God. But what if he’s not closer to God, and is just a guy in a funny hat? Doesn’t that make all this fuss and controversy ridiculous? It seems strange that it’s the year 2015, and we still can’t say that out loud.

"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
9/25/2015 2:36:13 AM

Pope challenges Congress to be better; Congress continues as usual

September 24, 2015


Pope Francis, accompanied by members of Congress, waves to the crowd from the Speakers Balcony on Capitol Hill. (Photo: Doug Mills/The New York Times via AP)

It’s not often a senator is rendered speechless.

But Thursday morning, on an extraordinary day at the Capitol, Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska found herself standing in a narrow hallway before the first-ever address to Congress by a pope, her hands, full of rosaries, cupped by His Holiness.

The rules for the 20 or so congressional escorts who would walk Pope Francis into the House chamber were clear: No one was to move from his or her place, reach out or touch the pope.

But in a move true to the reputation he’s built as a benevolent and accessible church leader, Pope Francis spotted the colored beads in Murkowski’s hands and reached out to her.

“I had them in my hands, and as he came to where I was in the lineup, I just put my hands out and opened up the cup of my hands with the two rosaries in them, you know, this pocket of colored beads,” Murkowski said, a few hours after the exchange. “And he looked at me and he came over and he put his hand on top of the beads and then he took my other hand and he cupped it over the pile of beads and just kind of held it. And I couldn’t speak. So [Sen.] Susan Collins [R-Maine] did the speaking for me. And she welcomed him, which was really good because I couldn’t speak.”

The 58-year-old Murkowski was holding the jade rosary she received on her 25th birthday and another strand she received a few years ago for Christmas from her sister-in-law, who lives in Brazil.

Standing just outside the Senate chamber when asked about the moment by Yahoo News, Murkowski wanted to know if this reporter wanted to touch her hand for good luck. I did.

“It’s kind of cool,” she said, still giddy from a brief moment that clearly affected her.

On a sunny and crisp Washington fall day, Congress took a long break from acrimony and gridlock, passing the time with small and emotion-laden encounters with a world religious leader instead of empty quorum calls.

Pope Francis praised Speaker John Boehner’s green tie as a symbol of hope and blessed a weeks-old baby being held by her mother, Boehner’s director of scheduling, as he passed through National Statuary Hall en route to his speech.

image

Francis makes history as the first pontiff to address a joint meeting of Congress. (Photo: Evan Vucci/AP)

C-SPAN footage of the House chamber, where Francis became the first pope to address a joint meeting of Congress, showed multiple weeping members, Democrat and Republican (besides the prone-to-tears Boehner).

Pope Francis pointed to symbols housed within the House chamber itself, focusing on a frieze of Moses, to explain to lawmakers — 30 percent of whom are Catholic — that his likeness provides a “good synthesis” of their work. “You are asked to protect, by means of the law, the image and likeness fashioned by God on every human face,” the pope said.

But outside, the Capitol dome, covered in scaffolding, was also symbolic. The iconic-but-under-repair building was first image Pope Francis saw as he pulled up to America’s legislative seat of power in his trademark black Fiat.

For as much as the pope tried to focus on a hopeful message, of Congress striving for a common good, his visit took place six days before a possible government shutdown. The American political experience, which he praised but also gently prodded in his nearly hour-long speech, is currently mired in partisanship and dysfunction, exactly what he denounced.

“The challenges facing us today call for a renewal of that spirit of cooperation, which has accomplished so much good throughout the history of the United States,” the pope said in his speech. “The complexity, the gravity and the urgency of these challenges demand that we pool our resources and talents, and resolve to support one another, with respect for our differences and our convictions of conscience.”

Members awkwardly applauded, even though they were asked not to, in bipartisan concert: Democrats for impassioned calls on climate change, immigration reform and a global end to the death penalty; Republicans for lines on traditional marriage and against abortion.

Three hours after he left the Capitol, the Senate blocked legislation that would have kept the government open while defunding Planned Parenthood, a bill Republicans brought up just so it would fail.

The depressing reality and mundane nature of the rest of the congressional day stood in stark contrast to the lofty expectations Pope Francis outlined to politicians by reviewing great figures in American history and asking lawmakers to stand for those who are caught in the “cycle of poverty” or otherwise forgotten by government.

After his speech, Pope Francis emerged onto the Speakers Balcony, flanked by Vice President Joe Biden, who like Boehner is Catholic, and the congressional leadership team.

He met a crowd of thousands — dignitaries, celebrities, guests of Congress, reporters and the public — who had congregated on the sprawling terraces and lawns of the Capitol’s West Front to watch his remarks on giant television screens and in the hope of getting a quick glimpse of His Holiness.

Chants of “Papa! Papa!” rolled through the Mall, which, in addition to numerous Argentinian and Colombian flags, hinted at the large number of Hispanics who had come to D.C. to hear his words.

“Buenos dias,” Francis said, as everyone below waved in what was likely the heartiest “good morning” exchange Washington has seen in quite some time.

image

Inside the Capitol, Pope Francis and congressional leaders pause in front of a statue of Junipero Serra, the Spanish-born Franciscan friar known for establishing missions in California (Photo by Michael Reynolds-Pool/Getty Images).

After brief remarks, he disappeared back into the building, crossed to the East Front, and departed the Capitol complex in his motorcade. House members lined up on the Capitol steps hoping to get one last picture of Francis as his Fiat passed by.

With that, he was gone. But his challenge to Congress might reverberate in the marble halls of the Capitol for quite some time: “Each son or daughter of a given country has a mission, a personal and social responsibility. Your own responsibility as members of Congress is to enable this country, by your legislative activity, to grow as a nation. You are the face of its people, their representatives. You are called to defend and preserve the dignity of your fellow citizens in the tireless and demanding pursuit of the common good, for this is the chief aim of all politics. A political society endures when it seeks, as a vocation, to satisfy common needs by stimulating the growth of all its members, especially those in situations of greater vulnerability or risk. Legislative activity is always based on care for the people. To this you have been invited, called and convened by those who elected you.”



"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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