The world’s attention is fixed on Paris. France is tonight a police state. There is concern over ISIS infiltrating Syrian refugees. And of course, the big question, how will the world rid itself of the Islamic State?
But before you listen to one more politician tell you what we need to do, you need to know what politicians knew about ISIS three years ago and the actions they still took.
This is a Reality Check you won’t see anywhere else.
L. Ron Hubbard began Scientology’s “Project Celebrity” in 1955, offering a list of 63 high-profile targets and a “small plaque” as a reward to anyone who successfully brought the likes of Bob Hope and Ernest Hemingway into the church. “There are many to whom America and the world listens…” Scientology’s blustery founder wrote in a newsletter announcing the plan. “It is obvious what would happen to Scientology if prime communicators benefitting from it would mention it now and then.” Sixty years later, was Project Celebrity a success?
A three-day-old baby was thrown on a bonfire and burned to death in an horrific ritual because a cult leader had decided she was the antichrist and that the end of the world was near.
Police in Chile have arrested four people accused of taking part in the ritual in which the baby was placed on a board with her mouth taped before being thrown into the flames.
The baby was taken to a hill in the town of Colliguay near the Chilean port of Valparaiso on Nov. 21 where the ritual took place.
The baby’s mother, 25-year-old Natalia Guerra, had allegedly approved the sacrifice.
Miguel Ampuero, of the Police investigative Unit, Chile’s equivalent of the FBI, said: ‘The baby was naked.
‘They strapped tape around her mouth to keep her from screaming. Then they placed her on a board.
‘After calling on the spirits they threw her on the bonfire alive.’
Authorities said the 12-member sect was formed in 2005 and was led by Ramon Gustavo Castillo Gaete, 36, who remains at large.
Wanted: Chilean authorities said the 12-member sect was formed in 2005 and was led by Ramon Gustavo Castillo Gaete, 36, who remains at large
‘Everyone in this sect was a professional,’ Ampuero said. ‘We have someone who was a veterinarian and who worked as a flight attendant, we have a filmmaker, a draftsman. Everyone has a university degree.’
Police said Castillo Gaete, the ringleader, was last seen traveling to Peru to buy ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic brew plant that he used to control the members of the rite.
(InvestmentWatch) -Pope “quits” first time in 600 years.
Rockefellers flee to Fiji after they “stripped the US Federal Reserve System of all major assets, just as previously they had stripped Fort Knox of all deliverable, non-tungsten, gold.”
Congress leaves town for a quote “LONG WEEKEND” with no deal struck. Sequester hits the fan.
http://radio.foxnews.com/2013/02/28/congress-leaves-without-avoiding-sequester-video/
http://washingtonexaminer.com/congress-leaves-town-after-failing-to-stop-sequester/article/2522909
Head of DHS “quits” unexpectedly
“I extend my deepest appreciation to DHS Chief of Staff Noah Kroloff for his over four years of service to the Department of Homeland Security and his eight years of service to me while I served in Arizona as Governor and Attorney General. Noah has been a trusted advisor, a good friend, and a superb Chief of Staff to this department. Since January 2009, he has been instrumental in establishing and guiding many of the department’s key initiatives,” wrote Napolitano, according to the email obtained by Mike Allen. – See more at: http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/chief-staff-out-dhs_704981.html#sthash.xzXvmCcp.dpuf
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/chief-staff-out-dhs_704981.html
Queen Lizzy cancels all engagements.
Dutch Queen Beatrix announced that she will abdicate on April 30 after 33 years as head of state, clearing the way for her eldest son, Crown Prince Willem-Alexander, to become the nation’s first king in more than a century.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/01/28/dutch-queen-beatrix-abdication/1871275/
This CANNOT be ignored. The list keeps growing. Something IS up. Time to bring in the tomatoes.
- See more at: http://investmentwatchblog.com/are-the-elite-going-into-hiding-pope-quits-head-of-dhs-quits-rockefellers-flee-to-fiji-queen-cancels-engagements-more-list-growing-daily/#sthash.IqeWU8II.dpuf Read more at http://investmentwatchblog.com/are-the-elite-going-into-hiding-pope-quits-head-of-dhs-quits-rockefellers-flee-to-fiji-queen-cancels-engagements-more-list-growing-daily/#WGHJptdc0ezxqSCK.99
(ABC) -The Vatican praised President Barack Obama’s proposals for curbing gun violence, saying they are a “step in a right direction.”
The Vatican’s chief spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said Saturday that 47 religious leaders have appealed to members of the U.S. Congress “to limit firearms that are making society pay an unacceptable price in terms of massacres and senseless deaths.”
“I am with them,” Lombardi said, in an editorial carried on Vatican Radio, lining up the Vatican’s moral support in favor of firearm limits.
“The initiatives announced by the American administration for limiting and controlling the spread and use of weapons are certainly a step in the right direction,” Lombardi said.
Obama is trying to rally support for reinstating a ban on assault weapons and requiring background checks on all gun sales. He faces stiff opposition in the U.S. Congress and from powerful gun lobbies.
Considering that Americans possess “about 300 million firearms,” Lombardi said, “people cannot fool themselves that it is enough to limit the number and use (of guns) to impede in the future horrendous massacres like that of Newtown that shook the conscience of America
and world, as well as that of children and adults. ”
He was referring to the Newtown, Connecticut, elementary school where 20 children and six adults were killed by a sole attacker last month.
“But it would be worse to be satisfied with words” of condemnation alone, Lombardi said. And while massacres are “carried out by unbalanced or hate-driven persons, there is no doubt that they are carried out with firearms,” the Vatican spokesman said.
Lombardi renewed Vatican appeals for disarmament and encouragement for measures to fight “the production, commerce and contraband of all types of arms,” an industry fueled by “enormous economic and power interests.”
The radio chips track attendance, which in turn helps secure school funding.
But Andrea Hernandez, 15, stopped wearing the badge on religious grounds, saying it was the “mark of the beast”.
After John Jay High School suspended her, she went to court and won a temporary injunction to continue her studies at the school, without the tag.
The federal court ruling overturned that, saying if she was to stay at the school, she would be required to wear the badge. Otherwise, she would have to transfer to a new school.
The new identification policy at the Northside Independent School District (NISD) in San Antonio, Texas, began at the start of the 2012 school year.
John Jay High School is one of two schools piloting the programme, which eventually aims to equip all student badges across the district’s 112 schools with radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips.
The badges reveal each student’s location on their campus, giving the district more precise information on attendance.
The daily average of the attendance is related to how much funding each school receives.
But Miss Hernandez said the badge was the “mark of the beast”, as described in chapter 13 of the Book of Revelation in the Bible.
(MSN Now) Kyrsten Sinema was sworn into Congress Monday, but with a twist: She didn’t swear on a Bible.
The newly elected representative for Arizona’s 9th district swore her oath of office on a copy of the Constitution instead.
Sinema refuses to confirm she is an atheist, as many believe, saying merely that she is “not a member of a faith community” and that all Americans deserve both “freedom of religion and freedom from religion.”
Keith Ellison of Minnesota also bucked the Bible trend in 2007 when he decided, as the first Muslim elected a member of the House, to swear on Thomas Jefferson’s personal copy of the Quran. [Source]
Unlike the Catholic Church, Anglicans do not require celibacy of heterosexual clergy and many bishops and priests are married. The Episcopal Church, which is the Anglican denomination practiced in the Untied States, has ordained gay bishops and even allowed for the blessing of gay marriage where it is legal. However, the Anglican Church will still require celibacy of gay clerics, as well as atonement for past homosexual behavior.
The other snag with the new Anglican ruling is that despite removing the ban on gay clergy members over a decade ago, the chance of one of them actually reaching the status of bishop is basically zero. Only one openly gay cleric has ever been promoted to bishop in the Church of England, and he was forced to resign the post before he ever started, due to massive infighting among church members. An attempt to renominate him for Bishop of Southwark in 2010 was rejected outright.
So while today’s ruling basically confirms that a civil partnership won’t be an automatic block to becoming a bishop, sexual orientation remains a pretty high bar to get over in the Church. Reverend Colin Coward, who supports the inclusion of homosexual and transgender people in the Church said today, “I don’t believe that there is serious intent in the announcement and I won’t until the moment when somebody who is in a civil partnership is appointed as a bishop.”
Amid the ongoing uproar over the gang-rape of a student on a bus in New Delhi earlier this month, the latest case has again shone the spotlight on the police’s handling of sex crimes.
One police officer has been sacked and another suspended over their conduct after the assault during the festival of Diwali on November 13 in the Patiala region in the Punjab, according to officials.
The teenager was found dead on Wednesday night after swallowing poison.
Inspector General Paramjit Singh Gill said that the teenager had been “running from pillar to post to get her case registered” but officers failed to open a formal inquiry.
“One of the officers tried to convince her to withdraw the case,” Gill, the police chief for the area, told AFP.
Before her death, there had been no arrests over her case although three people were detained on Thursday. Two of them were her alleged male attackers and the third was a suspected woman accomplice.
The victim’s sister told Indian television that the teenager had been urged to either accept a cash settlement or marry one of her attackers.
“The police started pressuring her to either reach a financial settlement with her attackers or marry one of them,” her sister told the NDTV network.
Meanwhile, the Press Trust of India reported that a police officer has been suspended for allegedly refusing to register a rape complaint in the northern state of Chhattisgar.
The woman and her husband later brought the case to the attention of a more senior officer and a hunt has now been launched for her attacker, an auto rickshaw driver.
Official figures show that 228,650 of the total 256,329 violent crimes recorded last year in India were against women.
The real figure is thought to be much higher as so many women are reluctant to report attacks to the police.
During an address to the chief ministers of India’s states on Thursday, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pledged to bring in new laws to cover attacks on women.
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| Illustration showing Earth amageddon CREDIT: sdecoret | Shutterstock |
(LiveScience) Doomsday predictions seem as regular as the tides. UFO cults and evangelical preachers alike have claimed to know the true date of the end of the world. But the Mayan apocalypse is unlike most any doomsday to come before.
That’s because the Mayan apocalypse is an entirely grassroots doomsday, religion experts say. Most apocalyptic groups center around an apocalyptic leader, who passes along predictions, often claiming divine inspiration. The belief that the world will end on Dec. 21, 2012, on the other hand, has popped up almost entirely online, giving rise to a plethora of dueling predictions.
“This was almost an evolutionary process, in that certain ideas seem to stick for some reason, and many didn’t, but what you ended up with is the current 2012 phenomenon,” said Stephen Kent, a sociologist at the University
of Alberta who studies new religious movements.
Nevertheless, apocalypse experts say, the current doomsday predictions have much in common with previous versions in that they assume the world to be in hopeless decline and beyond saving. [Full Coverage: The Mayan Not-Apocalypse]
A brief history of the end of the world
Apocalyptic viewpoints are thousands of years old. In Western civilization, they get their start with the ancient Persians, said Allen Kerkeslager, a religious studies professor at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. The Persian religion, called Zoroastrianism, included beliefs in an epic struggle between good and evil that would culminate in the end of the world, Kerkeslager told LiveScience.
In 539 B.C., the Persians conquered the ancient Jews, whom they would rule for the next 200 years. Prior to coming under Persian rules, Jewish thinkers had given little attention to the apocalypse. But as the cultures collided, apocalyptic thinking began to percolate into their writings, including the Dead Sea Scrolls. These end-of-the-world stories would later get integrated into early Christianity.
“These end-of-the-world predictions, a lot of it Christianity gets directly from Judaism, and Judaism gets it really almost directly from Zoroastrianism,” Kerkeslager said.
Failed apocalypses occurred with regularity in the first millennium; unsurprisingly, nice round dates like A.D. 500 and A.D. 1000 attracted particular attention. At other times, doomsday predictors looked to the skies. For example, in 1524, astrologers predicted a planetary alignment would bring the end of the world. The failure of this prophecy resulted in a revised date to 1528 and then to 1624. [Oops! 11 Failed Doomsday Predictions]
Modern Doomsdays
In the modern era, many doomsday prophets continue to preach versions of the Christian doomsday, with its judgment and rapture. One prominent example is radio preacher Harold Camping, who captured nationwide attention in 2011 after buying up billboard space to warn of Judgment Day on May 21 of that year. The end of the world was expected to follow in October. (Camping is currently out of the business of predicting the end.)
Others have combined the Western cultural fascination of doomsday with new religious movements. In 1954, late Chicago housewife Dorothy Martin and a group of her followers predicted a global flood on Dec. 21 of that year. The cult believed that a UFO would come and rescue them, as true believers, on the night of the flood.
The case became famous thanks to sociologists embedded with the cult, who reported the group’s reaction as the flood and UFO failed to materialize in the book “When Prophecy Fails” (Harper-Torchbooks, 1956). The group rationalized the failure by explaining that they themselves had turned back God’s plans for doomsday with their faith.
The Mayan apocalypse
The Mayan apocalypse myths are similar to prophecies like Martins’ in that they take a non-Biblical view of the end of the world. Mayan apocalypse believers get their inspiration from the Mayan Long Count Calendar, which consists of 144,000-day-long cycles called b’ak’tuns. (There are also longer units of time, such as piktuns, which are made of 20 b’ak’tuns.) Dec. 21, 2012 marks the end of the 13th b’ak’tun, which would have been seen as a completed full cycle of creation by the ancient Maya. However, there were no apocalyptic predictions associated with this day.
The driving belief behind the Mayan apocalypse is likely the same as any other doomsday, said Lorenzo DiTommaso, a professor of religion at Concordia University in Montreal.
Believers are motivated by “a general dissatisfaction with the world and a sense that its problems cannot be overcome by human intellect and engineering,” DiTommaso told LiveScience.
However, unlike other doomsday predictions made by charismatic leaders, people come to the Mayan apocalypse for all sorts of different reasons, DiTommaso said.
“It’s in some ways a Rorschach test, because you impose as much on it as it imposes on you,” he said. “You’ve got a problem with the environment? Maybe it’s 2012, and the planet is trying to tell you something.”
(BelfastTelegraph) -Victims of clerical sex abuse have reacted furiously to Pope Benedict’s claim yesterday that paedophilia wasn’t considered an “absolute evil” as recently as the 1970s.
In his traditional Christmas address yesterday to cardinals and officials working in Rome, Pope Benedict XVI also claimed that child pornography was increasingly considered “normal” by society.
“In the 1970s, paedophilia was theorised as something fully in conformity with man and even with children,” the Pope said.
“It was maintained — even within the realm of Catholic theology — that there is no such thing as evil in itself or good in itself. There is only a ‘better than’ and a ‘worse than’. Nothing is good or bad in itself.”
The Pope said abuse revelations in 2010 reached “an unimaginable dimension” which brought “humiliation” on the Church.
Asking how abuse exploded within the Church, the Pontiff called on senior clerics “to repair as much as possible the injustices that occurred” and to help victims heal through a better presentation of the Christian message.
“We cannot remain silent about the context of these times in which these events have come to light,” he said, citing the growth of child pornography “that seems in some way to be considered more and more normal by society” he said.
But outraged Dublin victim Andrew Madden last night insisted that child abuse was not considered normal in the company he kept.
Mr Madden accused the Pope of not knowing that child pornography was the viewing of images of children being sexually abused, and should be named as such.
He said: “That is not normal. I don’t know what company the Pope has been keeping for the past 50 years.”
Pope Benedict also said sex tourism in the Third World was “threatening an entire generation”.
Angry abuse victims in America last night said that while some Church officials have blamed the liberalism of the 1960s for the Church’s sex abuse scandals and cover-up catastrophes, Pope Benedict had come up with a new theory of blaming the 1970s.
“Catholics should be embarrassed to hear their Pope talk again and again about abuse while doing little or nothing to stop it and to mischaracterise this heinous crisis,” said Barbara Blaine, the head of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests,
“It is fundamentally disturbing to watch a brilliant man so conveniently misdiagnose a horrific scandal,” she added.
“The Pope insists on talking about a vague ‘broader context’ he can’t control, while ignoring the clear ‘broader context’ he can influence — the long-standing and unhealthy culture of a rigid, secretive, all-male Church hierarchy fixated on self-preservation at all costs. This is the ‘context’ that matters.”
The latest controversy comes as the German magazine Der Spiegel continues to investigate the Pope’s role in allowing a known paedophile priest to work with children in the early 1980s.
A group of parents in Missoula, Mont. are upset over the religious nature of Christmas songs performed at a local elementary school – alleging the songs about the Baby Jesus is unconstitutional and a “form of bullying.”
The parents, who declined to be identified, are threatening to sue the Missoula County Public School District unless songs like “Joy to the World” and “Good Christian Men Rejoice” are replaced with secular tunes.
“Bullying is such a hot topic, yet that seems to be what is occurring here,” the parents wrote in a letter obtained by The Missoulian. “When the children are singing about the lord and savior Jesus Christ – public school is not the place.”
The complaint came from parents who have children attending Chief Charlo Elementary School. A number of students are Jewish, Buddhist, and Muslim.
They said they have no problem with Frosty the Snowman or Santa Claus – but the real reason for the Christmas season has no place in school concerts, they argued.
“One of the largest complaints last year was the young children singing about “their Lord,” they wrote.
Superintendent Alex Apostle told The Missoulian that he takes separation of church and state issues seriously.
“These are difficult waters sometimes, and I think we are moving forward in a respectful way,” he told the newspaper. “We as a school system, want our children to enjoy the holiday season. In the process, we are obviously respectful of the beliefs and cultures of all children and their families.
(ChristianPost) -A recently released Bible translation based off of the King James Bible boasts of being the first ever “Gay Bible” in the world.
Titled the Queen James Bible, its publishers argued in a statement that it accurately translates certain verses pertaining to homosexuality, which have been misunderstood by religious conservatives.
“Homosexuality was first overtly mentioned in the Bible in 1946 in the Revised Standard Version. There is no mention of or reference to homosexuality in any Bible prior to this – only interpretations have been made,” said the editors.
“The Queen James Bible addresses those controversial verses by editing them very slightly for interpretive clarity. The edits all confirm that the Bible does not condemn homosexuality, and therefore renders such interpretations impossible.”
Douglas J. Moo, Wessner Chair of Biblical Studies at Wheaton College and a professional Bible translator, told The Christian Post that the Queen James editors’ assessment of past translations is not entirely accurate.
“Few, if any English translations use the actual words ‘homosexuality’ or ‘homosexual.’ But the history of English translation shows that versions have consistently used other language to refer to what we would call homosexual relationships,” said Moo.
“For instance, the King James Version of Romans 1:27 refers to ‘men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly.’ It would be very difficult to deny that this language, and the language found in many other places in both the OT and the NT, refers to homosexuality.”
The Queen James has a mysterious background. On its official website, no specific publisher is mentioned nor any editors or translators listed by name. On its Amazon purchase page, the author is listed as God and the contributor as Jesus Christ. It also only contains two preview pages, the cover and the following page which simply has the title of the translation in small print.
In an interview with The Christian Post, an unnamed spokesman said that the translation was the result of the ongoing debate over same-sex marriage.
“The controversies surrounding gay marriage using faith as a basis led us to more closely examine what people were citing in the Bible,” said the spokesman.
Christopher Yuan, author of Out of a Far Country: A Gay Son’s Journey to God, A Broken Mother’s Search for Hope, who serves as an adjunct instructor of the Bible at Moody Bible Institute, told The Christian Post that the concept of the “Queen James” is not new.
“Revisionist interpretations which attempt to affirm homosexual sex and relationships have been around for decades. This is just another attempt to make these revisionist interpretations official or more mainline,” said Yuan.
“I do believe that this new Bible translation will only add to the confusion of these revisionist translations and interpretations which are based upon poor exegesis and selective contextual studies.”
The announcement of the planned protest did not sit well with members of Anonymous, prompting the launch of OpWestboro. The “operation” included a release of personal details of Westboro members, including home and work addresses, phone numbers and email addresses. A video was also released, informing the church that further action will be taken if they continue to “breed hate”.
In February 2011, Anonymous claimed Westboro faked a letter in which the hacker group “threatens” the church. During a televised radio talk show, a Westboro spokeswoman claimed the letter was from Anonymous and bragged about foiling the attack. During the show, several of the churches websites were hacked and taken down by another hacktivist Anonymous called “Jester”, surprising the church’s spokeswoman. During the interview, Anonymous claimed responsibility for hacking downloads.westborobaptistchurch.com while the interview was underway.
Plans for additional operations against Westboro have not been announced. However in the video message issued by Anonymous, they say they will:
“progressively dismantle your institution of deceitful pretext and extreme bias, and cease when your zealotry runs dry.”
They continue by saying:
“We will destroy you. We are coming deceitful. We are anonymous, we are legion. We do not forgive, we do not forget, expect us.”
(AP) — Worshippers hurriedly left a church Sunday, saying they were told there was a bomb threat not far from the elementary school where 20 children and six adults were massacred.
At least a dozen police in camouflage gear and carrying guns arrived at the St. Rose of Lima Church. An Associated Press photographer saw police leave carrying something in a red tarp.
Guns drawn, they surrounded the rectory across the parking lot from the main church building. A large crowd of parishioners gathered outside.
There was no official report from police about the threat or evacuation.
Shooter Adam Lanza, his mother and eight of the child victims attended St. Rose of Lima. It is a Roman Catholic Church with an adjacent school, which Lanza attended briefly.
It’s not clear if there actually was a threat or whether it was a hoax or the result of a community on edge.
The church hosted overflow crowds at all three morning Masses Sunday.
(DailyMail) - Comedian turned political commentator Victoria Jackson has caused outrage by apparently comparing the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School with abortion.
The former Saturday Night Live star, who is now an outspoken political conservative, posted a message on her Facebook account saying ‘this is what you get’ when you ‘forget the ten commandments.’
Jackson, no stranger to controversy, wrote: ‘My friend Jim Riley posted: “Wasn’t the Connecticut killer just doing what abortionists do every day? It’s a wonder we don’t have more 20 year old “dads” doing what women and doctors have been an accomplice to for years in America. When you forget the TEN COMMANDMENTS, people, THIS is what you get.”‘
Comedian turned political commentator Victoria Jackson has caused outrage by apparently comparing the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School with abortion
Victoria Jackson Facebook sparked outrage on her Facebook - but also received a lot of ‘likes’ for her comments
Outspoken: Jackson, a former Saturday Night Live cast member, is now an political conservative
The Sandy Hook massacre left 26 dead - including 20 young children - after a gunman opened fire at the school in Newtown, Connecticut.
It is the worst school massacre in American history.
The post - which has so far received more than 150 ‘likes’ - also quickly attracted angry comments, with one person suggesting that Jackson should have to ‘go before all of the families that lost loved ones and explain to them why “this is what they get”‘, the Huffington Post reports.
Another added: ‘You call yourself a christian? Your statements are about as far from Christ-like as I could possibly imagine.’
Not content with leaving it there, she added in a follow up post: ‘Obama dramatically wiped a tear as he said, “The majority of those who died today were children — beautiful little kids … They had their entire lives ahead of them — birthdays, graduations, weddings, kids of their own…”
‘YEAH OBAMA. SAME AS THE MILLION BABIES YOU HAD ABORTED THIS YEAR.
‘ARE YOU CRYING FOR THEM?!’
The Sandy Hook massacre left 26 dead, including 20 young children , after a gunman opened fire at the school in Newtown, Connecticut
Balloons, candles, flower, signs and stuffed toys make up part of the makeshift memorial outside a firehouse which was used as a staging area for families following the mass shooting
Eighteen children and six more adults were killed at the school and two more children died later after gunman Ryan Lanza, 20, opened fire at the school early on Friday morning
The former SNL star has courted controversy before. She made headlines throughout the presidential election, most notably for her response to Todd Akin’s legitimate rape controversy.
She reportedly said: ‘If I was raped, I would have the baby and think of it as God making a blessing out of something bad.’
And she also branded hit comedy Glee ‘sickening’ after it screened a gay kiss, unleashing her views in a homophobic rant for the conservative website WorldNetDaily.com.
She wrote: ‘Did you see Glee this week? Sickening!’
The devout Christian added: ‘And, besides shoving the gay thing down our throats, they made a mockery of Christians – again! I wonder what their agenda is?
‘Hey, producers of Glee – what’s your agenda? One-way tolerance?’
In the episode, two gay characters Kurt (Chris Colfer) and Blaine (Darren Criss) share a long-awaited kiss.
(The Age) -Social media users who use tweets and online posts to comment on a military operation could be regarded as legitimate military targets.
Australian army Land Warfare Studies Centre analyst Chloe Diggins on Thursday said a recent social media war between Israel and Hamas raised complex ethical questions about who was a combatant and therefore a legitimate military target.
A key question was whether such comments constituted an act of war.
“If that’s the case, this might mean that those using social media in support of military operations are now legitimate targets,” she wrote in a blog for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
The Geneva Convention defines legitimate military targets as objects “which by their nature, location, purpose or use make an effective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture or neutralisation, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage”.
The convention protects civilians unless they are taking a direct part in hostilities.
“So if social media operators or users engage in the conflict by uploading, downloading, sharing, or otherwise adding to content in any way, they then become actors contributing to hostilities,” Ms Diggins said.
“In doing so, civilian social media users lose their protected status and can become legitimate targets.”
Ms Diggins said if a country could declare war over Twitter - as Israel did when it announced the start of recent hostilities - who’s to say Twitter users could not “fight” in the information space of that war?
“Moreover, who’s to say they shouldn’t reasonably expect to become legitimate targets themselves?” she said.Ms Diggins stressed her views did not reflect those of the Australian Defence Force.
(irishcentral) Over one in five Irish who say they are Catholics do not believe in the resurrection, or that God created the universe, an Irish Times poll has shown.
It also showed that seven per cent of Irish Catholics do not even believe in God. 84 per cent believe priests should marry, while 80 per cent believe women should be priests.
The survey reveals ala carteCatholicism is very much in fashion in Ireland, with 78 per cent saying they do not follow church teaching but their own individual conscience on issues.
Meanwhile 45 per cent do not believe in hell and 18 per cent do not believe that God created man.
On some issues however they are traditional. 92 per cent believe in God, 82 per cent believe in heaven and 84 per cent believe Jesus was the son of God.
Read More: How Catholic are you? The five questions you must answer to qualify
Mass attendance is also under pressure with 34 per cent saying they go weekly and 16 per cent saying they very rarely attended. When that question was asked in 1998 the percentage of mass goers was 55 per cent.
90 per cent of the poll described themselves as Catholic and only 2 per cent Protestant.
