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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
3/4/2013 5:43:53 PM
Pope's resignation, the greatest gamble in the papacy's 2,000-year history?

Catholic Writer John Cornwell: Why the Pope Really Quit

Benedict greeted crowds at the papal retreat Castel Gandolfo on Thursday evening before disappearing from public view ahead of his retirement

Benedict greeted crowds at the papal retreat Castel Gandolfo on Thursday evening before disappearing from public view ahead of his retirement

Catholic Writer John Cornwell: Why the Pope Really Quit

Stephen: I know we ran a story last month on the ‘secret gay priests’ link to the Pope’s February 11 resignation, but this article explores the broader picture in a far more detailed way. Thanks to Lindsey.

Although it comes from London’s somewhat sensationalist tabloid, The Daily Mail – a mainstream paper, no less – it was written by leading Catholic writer John Cornwell, the author of Hitler’s Popeand Newman’s Unquiet Grave: The Reluctant Saint.

It’s exactly the sort of shocking stuff Poof is talking about coming to light and shaking things up, below – http://goldenageofgaia.com/2013/03/poof-march-3-2013/ - and quite possibly why he included the link to Kay Griggs’ revelations in that same post.

Gay Sex Rings, ‘The Filth’ Corrupting the Vatican…and Why the Pope REALLY Quit

Sickened by moral corrosion in his own shadowy cabal, Benedict can only rid Rome of its malign influence by resigning… a leading Catholic writer’s explosive analysis

By John Cornwell – Published in The Daily Mail – March 2, 2013

The former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger wrung his hands above his head in triumph as he emerged as Pope on to the balcony of St Peter’s eight years ago. He had won!

He had longed to be Pope. He has loved being Pope. He expected to die as Pope.

Two weeks ago he announced in Latin he wasn’t up to it any more. Up to what? He spent most of his time writing and took time off to tinkle on the piano and stroke his cat.

He’s been waited on hand and foot. He has his handsome secretary Georg Ganswein to do his every bidding.

‘Benedict’s self-sacrifice is the biggest ever gamble in the Church’

There’s been talk of frailty, encroaching dementia, mortal illness. There’s been pious spin about a holy act of ‘humility’.

But one of his predecessors, sprightly Leo XIII, who died 110 years ago, went on until he was 93. Benedict knew from the start, aged 76, that he would grow old in office.

We’ve heard about the so-called papal ‘resignation’ almost 600 years ago. But there wasn’t one. There were three rival Popes back then, and one of them was a psychopath.

They were sacked by a council of all the bishops and cardinals to get back to one Pope at a time. Since then, every Pope has died in office.

Resignation isn’t in Benedict’s vocabulary. The real reason he has quit is far more spectacular.

It is to save the Catholic Church from ignominy: he has voluntarily delivered himself up as a sacrificial lamb to purge the Church of what he calls ‘The Filth’. And it must have taken courage.

Here is the remarkable thing you are seldom told about a papal death or resignation: every one of the senior office-holders in the Vatican – those at the highest level of its internal bureaucracy, called the Curia – loses his job.

A report Benedict himself commissioned into the state of the Curia landed on his desk in January. It revealed that ‘The Filth’ – or more specifically, the paedophile priest scandal – had entered the bureaucracy.

He resigned in early February. That report was a final straw. The Filth has been corroding the soul of the Catholic Church for years, and the reason is the power-grabbing ineptitude and secrecy of the Curia – which failed to deal with the perpetrators. Now the Curia itself stands accused of being part of The Filth.

Benedict realises the Curia must be reformed root and branch. He knows this is a mammoth task.

He is too old, and too implicated, to clean it up himself. He has resigned to make way for a younger, more dynamic successor, untainted by scandal – and a similarly recast Curia.

Benedict was not prepared to wait for his own death to sweep out the gang who run the place.

In one extraordinary gesture, by resigning, he gets rid of the lot of them. But what then?

The Curia are usually quickly reappointed. This time it may be different. It involves scores of departments, like the civil service of a middling-sized country.

It has a Home and Foreign Office called the Secretariat of State. There’s a department that watches out for heresy – the former Holy Inquisition which under Cardinal Ratzinger dealt with, or failed to deal with, paedophile priests.

And there is a Vatican Bank, the dubiously named Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), which was rocked by scandal in the early Eighties for links with the mafia.

The Curia is a big operation. It maintains contact with all the bishops of the world, more than 3,000, in 110 countries.

The Curia oversees the hundreds of thousands of priests who care for the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics. The flow of information, and money, in and out of the Vatican is prodigious.

What makes the bureaucrats different from normal executives is they don’t go home and have another life.

Unless you’re a full cardinal, with a nice flat and housekeeper, you go back on a bus to the microwave and TV in a Vatican-owned garret.

Rivalries between departments, vendettas between individuals, naked ambition, calumny, backstabbing and intrigues are endemic.

The former president of the Vatican Bank, Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, once told me that the Curia is a ‘village of washerwomen. They wash clothes, punch ’em, dance on ’em, squeezing all the old dirt out’.

But who was he to talk? In that same interview Marcinkus admitted he appropriated $250 million from the Vatican pension fund to pay a fine, levied by the Italian government, for financial misdemeanours. Amazingly, he saw nothing wrong with that.

Benedict realises the Curia must be reformed root and branch. He knows this is a mammoth task. Photo Reuters

Benedict realises the Curia must be reformed root and branch. He knows this is a mammoth task. Photo Reuters

Not surprisingly, some of the bureaucrats let off steam in unpriestly ways. Some are actively gay men who cannot normalise their lives with a partner because of Catholic teaching.

They frequent discreet bars, saunas and ‘safe houses’. On another level there are individuals known to have a weakness for sex with minors.

It appears the people who procure these sexual services have become greedy. They have been putting the squeeze on their priestly clients to launder cash through the Vatican. There is no suggestion that the bank has knowingly collaborated.

But in January, Italy’s central bank suspended credit-card activities inside Vatican City for ‘anti-money-laundering reasons’.

The Pope was already furious over the theft by his butler of private correspondence and top-secret papers last year. The thefts were probably an attempt to discover how much the Pope knew of malfeasance within the Curia.

Then news of a Vatican sex ring and money scams reached his ears late last year. Benedict should not have been surprised. Hints of a seamy Vatican underworld have been surfacing for years.

In March 2010, a 29-year-old chorister in St Peter’s was sacked for allegedly procuring male prostitutes, one of them a seminarian, for a papal gentleman-in-waiting who was also a senior adviser in the Curial department that oversees the church’s worldwide missionary activities.

Last autumn Benedict ordered three trusted high-ranking cardinals to investigate the state of the Curia. This was the report that was delivered to him just weeks ago.

It was meant for Benedict’s ‘eyes only’ but details of a sex ring and money-laundering scams last week reached the Italian weekly Panorama. Then the daily La Repubblica ran the story.

The timing of the report has coincided with fresh allegations of priestly sexual abuse in Germany.

Meanwhile, Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles and Cardinal Sean Brady of Ireland have been accused of covering up paedophile abuse.

Benedict has resigned to ensure that the whole ‘Filth’ from many countries of the world right up to the Vatican centre is cleansed. He has given up his job to kick out all the office-holders and start again.

While the college of cardinals appears to have been shocked by the resignation, Benedict’s drastic decision was both predicted and strongly recommended two years ago by an eminent American psychologist and former priest.

In 2011, Dr Richard Sipe, a greatly respected world expert on the priestly abuse scandal, declared that only the Pope’s resignation would resolve the paedophile priest crisis. Sipe charged that ‘along with other bishops, Benedict was complicit earlier in tolerating and covering up the crimes of the priests’.

This month a documentary film, Mea Maxima Culpa, is on release in the UK. It claims that Benedict, as Cardinal Ratzinger, refused to remove a paedophile priest called Father Murphy in the Nineties.

Sipe concluded that the Church’s only hope was a ‘courageous act’ on the part of the Pope. He could begin to heal the Church ‘by resigning from the papacy and calling for the resignation of all the other bishops, like him, who were complicit in the abuse scandal’.

So the Pope’s resignation could be just the beginning of a wave of resignations, and/or sackings, when the new Pope comes in.

With just three days left of his pontificate, Benedict accepted with lightning speed Cardinal Keith O’Brien’s resignation. O’Brien was not involved in covering up for paedophile priests – but allegations that he had made inappropriate advances towards priests in the Eighties were enough for Benedict to confirm that he was not to join the conclave.

On Tuesday, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, former head of the Catholic Church in England, declared that the Vatican must ‘put its own house in order’.

In a bold castigation of the papacy and the Curia, the cardinal said: ‘There is no doubt that today there needs to be renewal in the Church, reform in the Church, and especially of its government.’

The cardinal was referring to the decision made at an historic meeting of the world’s bishops in 1962, known as the Second Vatican Council, which called for devolution of power from Rome.

Bishops and lay Catholics throughout the world complain that the shift of authority away from Rome to the local churches has not happened. As a result, the absolute power of the Vatican has been corrupting absolutely.

The establishment of a large, over-powerful Curia is a quirk of history. When the Pope lost his papal territories, which stretched from Venice down to Naples, in the mid 19th Century, the civil service stayed on to run the Church from Rome.

The culture of a highly centralised Church government is now deeply entrenched. John Paul II, the energetic superstar Pope, seemed just the man to clean up the Curia.

But he bypassed it, preferring to spend his time travelling the world. Benedict might have made a start on it – but he retreated into bookish pursuits.

But even if a reformer gets in, he is going to have his work cut out to change an institution that has amassed such a centralised grip. Choosing a new team to be trusted may take just as long. There is every chance that the old ways will return.

But Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor may well be disappointed if a Pope in the mould of Benedict is elected. Benedict believes in strong central government. He has no time for devolution. And he may still have influence.

He has gone on record to assert that those who dissent from Catholic teaching should leave. He has said that he would be happier with a smaller, totally loyal and faithful Church.

Benedict’s favoured candidate would likely bring a puritanical pressure to bear on sexually active Catholics living together outside of marriage, or using contraception, or in gay relationships.

The coming conclave is set to be the most contentious for centuries. Whichever side wins – the conservatives, the reformers or the devolutionists – will create tensions and antagonism between Catholicism’s different pressure groups.

My guess is that we are going to get a younger Benedict. I believe that we will get a Pope who will remove any cardinal, bishop or priest who is in any way implicated in the paedophile scandal.

But he will also move to exclude Catholics, high and low, who are not prepared to follow the Church’s teachings on sexual morality as a whole.

Benedict’s stunning self-sacrifice constitutes, in my view, the greatest gamble in the papacy’s 2,000-year history.

If it works, the Church will begin to restore its besmirched reputation.

If it fails, we Catholics are headed for calamitous conflict and fragmentation.

"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?
3/4/2013 10:27:00 PM

Snowstorm hits north central U.S., heading toward mid-Atlantic



Associated Press/St. Joseph News-Press, Jessica Stewart - A lone vehicle travels along the Ashland Avenue Tuesday morning Feb. 26, 2013 in St. Joseph, Mo., as the snow storm continues to hit the area. This is the second winter storm that has hit the Midwest in a week. (AP Photo/St. Joseph News-Press, Jessica Stewart)

MINNEAPOLIS (Reuters) - A blizzard roared into North Dakota on Monday and was expected to dump up to a foot of snow in neighboring Minnesota before moving east over the mid-Atlantic states, where it could bury the Washington area with its biggest snowfall of the winter, the National Weather Service said.

Blowing snow and drifts up to 3 feet left parts of northeast Montana and the northwest North Dakota oil region with visibility at a quarter of mile under blizzard conditions that were expected to last into Monday afternoon, the weather service said.

Grand Forks, on the eastern border with Minnesota, reported 6 inches of snow on Monday morning and was expecting about 10 inches overall.

The North Dakota transportation department is recommending "no travel" on numerous roads across the northwestern part of the state where there is a blizzard, and a stretch of Interstate 94 from west of Fargo to east of Bismarck.

The state, known for winter blizzards, took the latest storm in stride.

"It's a normal late winter storm for us," said Adam Jones, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Bismarck, North Dakota.

The Minneapolis and St. Paul metropolitan area expected a couple of inches of snow Monday from a separate storm system and up to 10 inches of snow from the main winter storm, mostly overnight into Tuesday morning, the weather service said.

Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport had 98 flight cancellations on Monday morning and O'Hare International Airport 38, FlightAware.com reported.

Overall, the winter storm is expected to stretch across North Dakota, much of Minnesota, northern Iowa, western Wisconsin and then into northern Illinois later on Monday.

Northeastern Illinois, including Chicago, was forecast to receive 6 to 9 inches of snow overall, starting from Monday night and becoming more intense Tuesday, spanning the morning and evening rush hours, the weather service said.

The storm was forecast to move east, reaching the Ohio Valley, the mid-Atlantic states and the Washington area on Tuesday and Wednesday.

"This will be certainly the biggest snowstorm for the winter in this area," said National Weather Service forecaster Bruce Sullivan, who is in Maryland.

Forecasting models varied, but the system could dump anywhere from 12 to 20 inches of snow over northern Virginia and parts of Maryland, Sullivan said.

It will bring a cold, dry snow over the mountains of Virginia and a heavy, wet snow east of Washington, he said.

One of the more challenging aspects is predicting how much snow would fall on or east of heavily traveled Interstate 95 in Virginia and Maryland, forecasters said.

"We are into March now. It may start out as a little bit of rain and just how quickly it changes into snow will impact how much we get," Sullivan said.

(Additional reporting by Jane Sutton and Ian Simpson; Editing by Vicki Allen, Philip Barbara and Richard Chang)


"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?
3/4/2013 10:29:44 PM

48 Syrian soldiers killed in Iraq ambush


Associated Press/Shaam News Network via AP video - In this Sunday March 3, 2013 image taken from video obtained from the Shaam News Network, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, a Syrian rebel fighters displays an epaulette from a government soldier during a tour of the police academy complex in Khan al-Asal, in the province of Aleppo, Syria. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the rebels seized the police academy in Khan al-Asal after entering the sprawling government complex with captured tanks. The Observatory said the battle left at least 120 soldiers and 80 rebels dead. (AP Photo/Shaam News Network via AP video)

BAGHDAD (AP) — Dozens of Syrian soldiers who had crossed intoIraq for refuge were ambushed Monday with bombs, gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades in an attack that killed 48 of them and heightened concerns that the country could be drawn into Syria's civil war.

The fact that the soldiers were on Iraqi soil at all raises questions about Baghdad's apparent willingness to quietly aid the embattled regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The well-coordinated attack, which Iraqi officials blamed on al-Qaida's Iraq arm, also suggests possible coordination between the militant group and its ideological allies in Syria who rank among the rebels' most potent fighters.

Iraqi officials said the Syrians had sought refuge through the Rabiya border crossing in northern Iraq during recent clashes with rebels and were being escorted back home through a different crossing farther south when the ambush occurred. Their convoy was struck near Akashat, not far from the Syrian border.

Ali al-Moussawi, a spokesman for Iraq's prime minister, provided the death toll and said nine Iraqi soldiers were also killed. The Syrians had been disarmed and included some who were wounded, he told The Associated Press.

He said the soldiers had been allowed into Iraq only on humanitarian grounds and insisted thatBaghdad was not picking sides in the Syrian conflict.

"We do not want more soldiers to cross our borders and we do not want to be part of the problem," al-Moussawi said. "We do not support any group against the other in Syria."

The Iraqi Defense Ministry said 10 additional Syrians were wounded in the assault. In a statement, it warned all parties in the Syrian war against bringing the fight into Iraq, saying its response will be "firm and tough."

Iraqi officials who provided details of the attack described a carefully orchestrated assault on the Syrians' convoy, with a senior military intelligence official saying the attackers appeared to have been tipped off ahead of time.

He and another Iraqi official, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to release the information, said it was unlikely that Syrian rebels had managed to cross into Iraq to carry out the attack.

"This attack bears the hallmarks of the al-Qaida terrorist organization," said Jassim al-Halbousi, provincial council member in Anbar, the restive western region where the attack happened. "The borders should be secured at the highest level of alert."

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told the AP last week that he feared a victory for rebels in the Syrian civil war would create a new extremist haven and destabilize the wider Middle East, sparking sectarian wars in his own country and in Lebanon.

His comments reflect fears by many Shiite Muslims that Sunni Muslims would come to dominate Syria should Assad be toppled. Assad's regime is backed by Shiite powerhouse Iran, which has been building ties with the Shiite-led government in Baghdad in recent years.

The war in Syria has sharp sectarian overtones, with predominantly Sunni rebels fighting a regime dominated by Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Islam. Rebel groups have increasingly embraced radical Islamic ideologies, and some of their greatest battlefield successes have been carried out by Jabhat al-Nusra, a group that the U.S. has designated as a terrorist organization and that it claims has links to al-Qaida.

Iraq's government has faced more than two months of protests from Sunni Muslims angry over perceived discrimination. Anbar province has been the epicenter for the rallies.

Toby Dodge, a Middle East expert at the London School of Economics, said the fact that Syrian soldiers had been welcomed into Iraq at all is worrying.

"If this goes on, al-Maliki's government is aligning itself with Iran and the Assad regime against the rest of the Middle East and the will of the Syrian people," he said. "That is a huge gamble."

In Syria, rebels pushed government troops from most of the northern city of Raqqa, on the Euphrates River, setting off celebrations in a central square.

If rebels succeed in taking Raqqa, which has a population of about 500,000, it would be the first time an entire city had fallen into the hands of anti-Assad fighters.

Rebels already hold several neighborhoods in the cities of Aleppo, Homs and Deir el-Zour, as well as suburbs of the capital, Damascus. They also control large areas in the countryside, particularly in the north.

Their advances are a significant blow to Assad, although during the past week his forces have regained control of several villages and towns along a key highway near Aleppo International Airport.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said rebels are now in control of "large parts" of Raqqa, which flows through Syria into Iraq. A top police officer was killed and intelligence officers were detained, the group said.

Activists declared Raqqa "liberated" on opposition social media websites Monday. A photo posted on several pro-rebel Facebook pages showed people tearing down a huge poster of Assad and hitting it with their shoes. The activists said the picture was taken inside the feared air force intelligence headquarters in the city.

The Observatory said the leader of Jabhat al-Nusra in Raqqa was killed in the fighting.

Amateur video posted online showed a bronze statue of former President Hafez Assad, the current president's father and predecessor, being torn to the ground by a rope tied around the statue's neck. The video appeared consistent with AP reporting.

Amir, an activist in Raqqa, said via Skype that the mood was euphoric in the city when residents and rebels toppled the statue in the main square, but "then the shelling began and everyone fled."

Rebels have been making headway in Raqqa province for weeks, capturing the country's largest dam. On Sunday, anti-Assad fighters stormed the Raqqa central prison.

In Saudi Arabia, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal together warned Assad that they will boost support to rebels unless he steps down.

Saudi Arabia has been one of the region's harshest critics of Assad's regime. In his discussions with Kerry, Saud said he stressed the importance of enabling the population of Syria to exercise its "legitimate right to defend itself against the regime's killing machine."

Saud also complained that the Assad regime continues to get weapons from "third parties," a veiled reference to Russia and Iran.

Kerry criticized Iran, Hezbollah and Russia for giving weapons to Assad's forces.

The Syrian conflict started two years ago as a popular uprising against Assad's authoritarian rule. After the government cracked down on dissent, the rebels took up arms and the revolt turned into a full-blown civil war. The United Nations estimates that more than 70,000 people have been killed.

Assad maintains his troops are fighting "terrorists" and Islamic extremists seeking to destroy Syria, and he accuses the West and its Gulf Arab allies of supporting them.

___

Associated Press writers Bassem Mroue and Zeina Karam in Beirut, Matthew Lee in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and Sameer N. Yacoub in Baghdad contributed to this report.

___

Follow Adam Schreck on Twitter at http://twitter.com/adamschreck

"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?
3/4/2013 10:31:11 PM

Palestinian-only buses set off uproar in Israel

Uproar in Israel over Palestinian-only buses reflects messy situation in West Bank


Associated Press -

Palestinians laborers ride a Palestinian-only bus on route to the West Bank from working in Tel Aviv area, Israel, Monday, March 4, 2013. Israel's decision to launch a pair of "Palestinian-only" bus lines in the West Bank condemned by critics as racism and hailed by Israel as a goodwill gesture have shined a light on the messy situation created by 45 years of military occupation and Jewish settlements. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israel's decision to launch a pair of "Palestinian-only" bus lines in the West Bankon Monday — presented by the government as a goodwill gesture, assailed by critics as racism and welcomed by Palestinian riders — is shining a light on the messy situation created by 45 years of military occupation and Jewish settlements in the area.

While full and formal peace remains distant, the Jewish and Palestinian populations of the West Bank are so intertwined that daily routines are often shaped in mind-boggling ways. Military checkpoints, special permits and different sets of laws are all part of everyday life, and even steps that are well-intentioned, such as the new bus lines, can backfire and spark controversy.

Israeli peace activists condemned the bus lines as racist, while Palestinian riders seemed to like the arrangement. Israeli officials insisted that Palestinians could still ride regular buses if they choose — despite Palestinian claims they are hardly welcomed there by Jewish settlers.

Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war and has built a network of settlements throughout the territory that are now home to more than 300,000 Israelis. Yet another 200,000 live in adjacent east Jerusalem — occupied, annexed and expanded to include land that was once in the West Bank.

The Palestinians claim the West Bank and east Jerusalem as part of a future independent state and say the settlements are illegal obstacles to their dreams of statehood — a view that is widely shared by the international community.

Despite chilly relations, Jewish and Palestinian residents of the West Bank come into frequent contact. Israeli roads serving the settlements pass by Palestinian villages, tens of thousands of Palestinian laborers work in Jewish settlements and Israel proper, and the Israeli military finds itself serving as a de facto police force by maintaining checkpoints and other crossings to keep tabs on Palestinians.

Israel said it decided to launch the new bus lines to help make life easier for Palestinians permitted to work in Israel, where jobs are more abundant and better paying than in the West Bank. After several years of relative quiet, nearly 40,000 Palestinians are allowed to enter Israel to work each day, the highest level since the Palestinian uprising a decade ago.

Officials said the buses would ease the burden on Palestinian laborers, who must often take grueling, circuitous routes on Israeli public transportation or rely on pricey taxis to enter Israel. Israeli officials stressed that no one was forced to use the new lines and Palestinians were still permitted to ride on Israeli buses if they desired.

"This is a goodwill gesture," Uzi Itzhaki, director of the Transport Ministry, told Israel Radio. "These lines are intended to serve the Palestinian workers." He said Monday's launch was a test pilot and that there are plans to expand the service.

The buses departed from the Eyal military checkpoint, near the Palestinian town of Qalqiliya, to various destinations inside Israel. Palestinians use private Palestinian minibuses to get to the checkpoint.

Hundreds of laborers gathered at the Eyal checkpoint before dawn to take advantage of the new service. Outside of some overcrowding from heavier than expected demand, few problems were reported, and riders seemed pleased with the new arrangement.

Haroun Hamdan, a 44-year-old blacksmith from the Palestinian village of Salem, said riding buses with Jewish settlers has become so unpleasant that the Palestinians prefer to have their own buses.

He said settlers often complain when Palestinians enter their buses. Palestinians can be blocked from boarding, kicked off or subject to verbal abuse once on board, he said. "Riding with settlers is humiliating, and involves a lot of suffering," Hamdan said.

In one instance, Hamdan said a female Jewish settler tried to order him off a bus that had come from the large Israeli settlement of Ariel but the bus driver refused to stop. He said his friends have had to walk 10 kilometers, or six miles, after being kicked off Israeli buses.

"The new bus line is better, because we won't have to go through all of this," he said, adding that the buses were a cheaper alternative to the private minivans that shuttle Palestinians to work inside Israel. A bus ticket costs anywhere from $1 to $3, compared to $6 demanded by the private drivers.

Hosni Hanash, a 45-year-old construction worker from the village of Zeita, said he generally sets out from his village at 3:45 each morning, arrives in a taxi at the Eyal checkpoint at 4:30, and then spends an hour crossing through Eyal before heading in a private van to a full day of construction work.

He said the separation that began Monday relieved some of the stress of the long morning journey. "We are comfortable being by ourselves," he said.

Israeli officials acknowledged that the motives were not entirely altruistic. Jewish settlers have raised objections to Palestinians being on board buses that enter their communities, fearing attacks. West Bank settlers last year petitioned the army to sign an order banning Palestinians from riding buses servicing West Bank settlers.

"Passengers on the buses complain about unpleasant experiences, nuisances and fear," reads one online petition, which collected 1,380 signatories. "We want to continue to use these public transportation lines without fearing for our lives and the lives of our children."

Yariv Oppenheimer of the anti-settlement Peace Now organization said the new bus lines sent a bad message.

"Instead of fighting racism, this government is actually collaborating with the racist system and creates different buses for Palestinians and for Israeli settlers," he said. "In the West Bank, it's not a democracy. It's much closer to apartheid than to democracy."

Israel has come under growing international criticism for its policies in the West Bank. Although the territory is not part of Israel, Israeli citizens living there have the right to vote in Israel and can move in and out of the country freely on special roads built for them. Palestinians, meanwhile, cannot vote in Israel and are subject to restrictions on their movement. Many settlements are surrounded by gates, security guards and military bases to protect them.

Critics have warned that as the settlements continue to grow, it will become harder and harder to partition the land into separate Israeli and Palestinian states. With Arabs living under Israeli control expected to outnumber Jews in the coming years, that could spell the end of Israel as a Jewish and democratic country.

"We are heading toward segregation, not a two-state solution," said Palestinian activist Mustafa Barghouti. "That pushes us to demand one democratic state for two nations and equal rights."

Jewish settlements are at the heart of the current four-year impasse in Mideast peace efforts. The Palestinians have refused to negotiate with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu while settlement construction continues. Netanyahu says negotiations should resume without any preconditions.

The international community has shown growing impatience with Netanyahu. In November, the U.N. General Assembly voted overwhelmingly in favor of a Palestinian state that would include all of the West Bank, a decision seen as a resounding rejection of settlements. When Netanyahu responded by announcing new settlement plans, he came under heavy international criticism, even from his closest allies.

Netanyahu, who is in the process of forming a new government, has vowed to make a new push for peace in his next term.

___

Ian Deitch and Diaa Hadid in Jerusalem, and Dalia Nammari and Mohammed Daraghmeh in Ramallah, West Bank, contributed reporting.

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

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3/4/2013 10:32:55 PM

Gun rights supporters descend on Colorado Capitol

Associated Press/J. Scott Applewhite, File - FILE - In this Jan. 30, 2013 file photo, former former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who survived a gunshot to the head in 2011, during a mass shooting in Tucson, Ariz., sits ready with her husband, retired astronaut Mark Kelly, at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington to discuss legislation to curb gun violence. Giffords and Kelly are scheduled to be in Denver, Monday, March 4, 2013 to testify in support of at least one of the seven gun-control bills being considered by the Colorado Legislature. Eileen McCarron, president of the Colorado Ceasefire Capitol Fund, says Kelly will speak in support of a House bill that requires all private gun sales and transfers to be subject to a background check. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

DENVER (AP) — The battle over new firearm restrictions intensified in Colorado on Monday as hundreds of gun rights supporters crammed the state Capitol and circled the building with car horns blaring, while inside the husband of former U.S. Rep.Gabrielle Giffords urged lawmakers to pass universal background checks.

Colorado has become a focus point in the national debate over what new laws, if any, are needed to prevent gun violence in the wake of recent mass shootings, including an attack at a suburban Denver movie theater last summer — a massacre that brought to mind theColumbine High School shooting of 1999 for many in the state and across the nation.

Lawmakers in the politically moderate state are considering a package of gun control measures, including plans that would limit the size of ammunition magazines and expand background checks to include private sales and online purchases.

Retired astronaut and Navy captain Mark Kelly told lawmakers that he and his wife support the Second Amendment, but he said the right to bear arms shouldn't extend to criminals and the mentally ill.

"When dangerous people get guns, we are all vulnerable," Kelly said.

Kelly has testified before Congress in support of gun control measures. Giffords, a former Democratic congresswoman from Tucson, Ariz., was severely wounded in a mass shooting in January 2011 while meeting with constituents.

Gun control opponents say the proposals will not reduce violence. They say lawmakers should focus on strengthening access to mental health services for people who could be dangerous to communities.

The commotion at the Capitol underscored the attention the debate has generated nationally fromgun rights groups, such as the National Rifle Association, to victims' families and White House officials.

There were so many people at the statehouse that an audio speaker system was set up outside so dozens of gun rights supporters waiting to testify could follow the hearings.

Several bills before state senators already have cleared the House. And because Democrats control both chambers of the state Legislature, the proposals have a strong chance of passing. The state's Democratic governor, John Hickenlooper, supports magazine limits and expanded background checks. He hasn't indicated whether he supports a proposal that would hold sellers and owners of assault weapons liable for shootings by such firearms.

The package of bills is expected to keep lawmakers at work late into the night.

During a Senate hearing, Kelly compared the different background check requirements for private and retail sales to having two different lines at the airport, one with security and one without.

"Which one do you think the terrorist is going to choose?" he asked.

Gun rights supporters, meanwhile, arrived wearing stickers that read, "I Vote Pro-Gun." Several dozen people outside the Capitol waved American flags as light snow fell, and a small plane flew overhead carrying a banner with a message for the governor, "HICK: DO NOT TAKE OUR GUNS!"

One of the nation's largest producers of ammunition magazines, Colorado-based Magpul, has threatened to leave the state if lawmakers restrict the size of its products. Its founder said smaller magazines can be easily connected to each other and the company fears it would legally liable if people were to do that.

Victims who have lost relatives to gun violence say it's time for legislators to take action.

"It's for those who still have children and are going to be attending schools. It's for those who go to church on Sundays. It's for those who go to the mall," said Dave Hoover, the uncle of 18-year-old AJ Boik, one of 12 people killed in the Aurora, Colo., theater shooting.

Senate Republicans have gotten thousands of emails from supporters of the Second Amendment, urging them to vote no on the bills. In one email provided to The Associated Press, one woman wrote to a senator that she worried that lawmakers would be taking freedoms from her children.

"Please don't take even a tiny aspect of their freedom from them by passing legislation that in the end can't stop bad people from making bad decisions," the woman wrote.

Jane Dougherty, whose sister, Mary Sherlach, was a psychologist killed in the shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., has been lobbying Colorado lawmakers to pass new gun laws. She said she doesn't understand gun owners who worry the bills are putting a burden on their rights.

When you lose a loved one to gun violence, "your life is never the same," Dougherty said. "All these lives are changed by a gun in the wrong hands. That's the burden, and we can't lose sight of that."

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Associated Press writer Kristen Wyatt contributed.

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Ivan Moreno is on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/ivanjourno

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

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