Cristina Odone: Finally, Even Archbishop Rowan Williams Admits Christians Are Under Attack
THE TELEGRAPH – BLOG: It’s Easter and Christians have come out of hiding. In fact, they are very much in the limelight: the Archbishop of Canterbury was on Start the Week, Richard Harries is in The Times, Nicky Campbell presented a BBC documentary on the persecution of Christians in this country. In what is a startling departure, the claim by Christians that they are discriminated against, and often attacked, by virtue of their religion, has been investigated – and legitimised.

No one has been killed or tortured, Rowan Williams and Richard Harries remind us; no one could seriously claim that their lot compares with that of Christians in Iran or Nigeria. But finally even the clergy and the BBC acknowledge that Christians are a target of abuse from a relativist culture that thinks to distinguish between wicked and good is to be judgemental, and to believe in the One True Faith is to be smugly superior. Unless, that is, you are a Muslim and maybe a Jew. Read on and comment >>> Cristina Odone | Easter Monday, April 05, 2010

"Not Even Jesus Could Reverse the Decline in the US"

WIKI: F. William Engdahl >>>

“The US Economy Will Not Recover For At Least Another Decade” – Engdahl

RUSSIA TODAY: “The US economy will not recover for at least another decade” – Engdahl: American bankers see themselves as the gods of money, a class above mere mortals, and they can do what they wish, said renowned economic researcher and historian William Engdahl in an interview with RT. >>> | Easter Monday, April 05, 2010

WIKI: F. William Engdahl >>>

Peter Hitchens: Our Nice, Furry Archbishop... Lost in a Barbarous World
MAIL ONLINE: Do we have to wait until the hate-filled mobs storm into Canterbury Cathedral and drag him from the pulpit before the Archbishop of Canterbury grasps that Christianity is in danger in this country? Nice, furry, mild and useless, Dr Rowan Williams chose this Easter week not to protect his Church, but to rebuke several bishops who had rightly warned of the swelling rage against the Church.

No doubt he is right to point out that Christians elsewhere suffer more. I would like to hear more protests from 'human rights' campaigners against the nasty treatment of Christians in the Muslim world, not least under the rule of the Palestinian Authority which many leftist Christians idiotically admire.

But so what? In those rough neighbourhoods, under the grudging scowl of Muslim so-called 'tolerance', this has been the case for centuries. Here, things are and ought to be different. Dr Williams is the head of the Established Church in England. The laws of this country, the shape of its cities and countryside, its language, morals, literature, architecture, family structure and politics are all based upon Christianity.

Take it away and it will be like removing the mortar from a great building, leaving its bricks and stones loose and trembling in the storm to come. And yet there are many people who want to do this. In this Century of Selfishness, Christianity is an annoying obstacle, with its infuriating insistence on active unselfishness and its unalterable rules which say that there are some things you just cannot do, like for instance murder unborn babies and walk out on your marriage.

Last week, there was yet another case of someone being in trouble for being a Christian, in an officially Christian country. I collect these incidents: preachers arrested and fined; nurses disciplined for offering to pray for patients; registrars disciplined for declining to officiate at homosexual civil partnerships; adoption societies forced to close because they will not place children with same-sex couples. Just 30 years ago, they would have been unthinkable. Another few decades and Christianity will be against the law. >>> Peter Hitchens | Easter Monday, April 05, 2010

Stephen Robinson: Drunken Racist Buffoon Who Bewitched A Blonde Liberal
Photo: Mail Online
MAIL ONLINE: For the self-styled Boer warrior, this was the ultimate humiliation.

Death came to Eugene Terreblanche not with his boots on, rifle in hand, defending the volk from the heathen hordes, but tucked up in bed in his pyjamas, probably passed out with the drink, and bludgeoned to death by two of his own black staff.

His supporters must today be asking themselves how such an advanced student of South Africa's racial peril could have left himself so vulnerable to ambush.

More than 3,000 farmers have been murdered in South Africa in the past 16 years, and no real man of the soil would go to bed without a pistol under his pillow.

If you're a white farmer in South Africa these days you learn to spot black faces at your window with the easy facility of a bushman sensing a juicy kudu in the veld.

Perhaps we should not be surprised, for Eugene Terreblanche was always the mountebank neo-Nazi, posing as a descendant of the great Afrikaner heroes such as Piet Retief and Paul Kruger.

For those of us who reported from his rallies in South Africa's platteland during the dying days of apartheid in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the most striking thing about him was not his shabby anti-black or anti-Semitic bombast, but the fact he could barely ride a horse.

I have seen sacks of coal more elegantly mounted astride a black stallion, and one of the funniest images I hold in my mind from those old battles was of Terreblanche riding to a political meeting in Pretoria, and promptly falling off his horse on to his well-padded back-side.

'Ach man, he's not a farmer, he's just a drama student,' one neighbour explained, noting that Terreblanche's small-holding extended to no more than 80 acres, which in South African terms is equivalent to tending a few marrows and runner beans on a suburban allotment.

Terreblanche was a risible-figure to all but his inner coterie even before he struck up an extraordinary liaison in the late 1980s with a bottle blonde temptress from a liberal South African newspaper named Jani Allan.

Miss Allan was famous in South African journalism as the plain-speaking voice of reason. Sending her to interview him was like asking some lefty from the Guardian 
to stitch up Nick Griffin of the BNP.

But it did not turn out as her editors expected. Rather than denounce this racial separatist, Miss Allan fell for him like a neo-Nazi falling off his horse.

'Right now I've got to remind myself to breathe,' she wrote of their encounter. 'I'm impaled on the blue flames of his blowtorch eyes.' >>> Stephen Robinson | Easter Monday, April 05, 2010

CNN: Video: Eugene Terreblanche Killed >>> | Easter Sunday, April 04, 2010

Russie : Nouvel attentat-suicide dans une république instable du Caucase russe
LE POINT: L'insécurité s'installe dans le Caucase. Deux policiers ont été tués lundi dans un attentat perpétré par un kamikaze qui a déclenché sa ceinture d'explosifs devant un bâtiment de la police en Ingouchie, république instable du Caucase russe, a annoncé le comité d'enquête du parquet général russe. Cette attaque intervient après une série d'attentats meurtriers la semaine dernière en Russie (plus de 50 morts).

"Lundi matin à Karaboulak, un inconnu a déclenché sa ceinture d'explosifs au moment où des policiers en voiture entraient dans l'enceinte d'un bâtiment du ministère de l'Intérieur", a raconté le parquet dans un communiqué. "Le kamikaze a été tué sur place, deux policiers ont succombé à leurs blessures et trois ont été blessés", a-t-il ajouté. Moins d'une heure après l'attaque, la police a découvert une bombe dans un véhicule stationné à l'extérieur de l'enceinte de la police de Karaboulak (centre de l'Ingouchie) et l'a désamorcée, provoquant une explosion qui n'a pas fait de victime, a indiqué à l'AFP une source au sein des forces de sécurité. >>> LePoint.fr avec AFP | Lundi 05 Avril 2010

Hallelujah! Archbishop Speaks Up For Christians: This Bias Against Us Must Stop, Says Dr Rowan Williams
MAIL ONLINE: The Archbishop of Canterbury used his Easter sermon to launch an extraordinary pre-election attack on a 'sustained effort' to discriminate against Christians.

Dr Rowan Williams, who has faced criticism for his reluctance to defend traditional values, blamed ' wooden-headed bureaucratic silliness' for Christians being barred from wearing religious symbols at work.

He said there was now a 'strange mixture of contempt and fear' towards Christianity in Britain.

The Anglican leader's remarks came as senior churchmen mount a campaign to put Christian values at the heart of the election campaign.

Thirty-five religious leaders have unveiled a U.S.-style 'declaration of conscience' setting out policies that unite British churches, including opposition to assisted suicide and euthanasia.

They also appear to back Conservative proposals to support marriage in the tax system, which David Cameron is expected to give further details of this week.

While colleagues have been increasingly vocal in their protests, Dr Williams has up to now said little about discrimination against Christians.

But yesterday he highlighted the case of nurse Shirley Chaplin, who took the Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Trust to an employment tribunal claiming discrimination.

She refused to remove a necklace bearing a crucifix, saying it would undermine her faith. The trust claimed there were health and safety issues and a ruling is expected this week.

Addressing a congregation at Canterbury Cathedral, Dr Williams referred to 'yet another legal wrangle over the right to wear a cross in public while engaged in professional duties'.

He said: '[This is] one more small but significant mark of what many Christians feel is a sustained effort to discriminate against them and render their faith invisible and impotent in the public sphere.

'One more mark of the curious contemporary belief that Christians are both too unimportant for their convictions to be worth bothering with and too dangerous for them to be allowed to manifest those convictions. >>> James Chapman | Easter Monday, April 05, 2010

Islamic Terrorism: Second 'Black Widow' Moscow Metro Bomber Named as Maryam Magomedov
TIMES ONLINE: A 28-year-old computer science teacher has been identified by her family as the second of two female suicide bombers who killed dozens of people on the Moscow metro a week ago, a newspaper has reported.

Rasul Magomedov recognised his missing daughter Maryam after being shown photos of the remains of the unidentified suicide bomber, the novayagazeta.ru website said.

More than 50 people have been killed in suicide attacks in Russia over the past week, both in the Moscow metro by bombers Russian media have dubbed “black widows”, and in a town in the turbulent North Caucasus region of Dagestan.

Fears of a new bombing campaign against the Russian heartland increased after a double bomb attack on a railway line on Sunday which security forces said was linked to the earlier attacks.

“My wife and I immediately recognised our daughter Maryam. When my wife last saw our daughter she was wearing the same red scarf we saw in the pictures,” Mr Magomedov, a teacher from the village of Balakhany in Dagestan, told Novaya Gazeta.

Mr Magomedov said his daughter graduated with a degree in mathematics and psychology from the Dagestan Pedagogical University in 2005. She returned to her village, lived at home and taught computer science at a local school.

“I would really like the investigation to uncover the true picture of what happened. We cannot even suggest how Maryam could get to Moscow. Yes, she was religious. But she never expressed any radical beliefs,” he said. >>> Foreign Staff | Easter Monday, April 05, 2010

Atomstreit: Iran lädt zu Abrüstungskonferenz – China sagt zu
WELT ONLINE: China wird nach iranischen Angaben an einer Abrüstungskonferenz in Teheran teilnehmen. Der Iran hatte 60 Staaten zu dem Treffen unter dem Motto "Atomenergie für Jedermann – Atomwaffen für Niemanden" eingeladen. Auch Kuba und Venezuela haben ihr Kommen zugesichert. Die Konferenz findet wenige Tage nach Gipfel in Washington statt.

Der iranische Präsident: Mahmud Ahmadinedschad. Bild: Welt Online
Irans Präsident Mahmud Ahmadinedschad – den der Westen verdächtigt, heimlich an der Atombombe zu arbeiten – hat zu einer internationalen Abrüstungskonferenz eingeladen.

„Der Iran als ein Anwalt nuklearer Abrüstung wird die Konferenz abhalten, um alle Länder zum Vernichten ihrer nuklearen Arsenale aufzurufen“, sagte Chef-Atomunterhändler Said Dschalili der Nachrichtenagentur Irna. Bereits zugesagt hätten die Außenminister von Kuba, Venezuela, Syrien, Oman und Turkmenistan. Auch China wolle teilnehmen. Der Iran hatte 60 Staaten zu dem Treffen unter dem Motto "Atomenergie für Jedermann – Atomwaffen für Niemanden" eingeladen. >>> dpa/Reuters/fas | Montag, 05. April 2010

BNP 'Sacks' PR Accused of Coup Bid
YAHOO! NEWS: The British National Party has sacked its publicity chief after he was arrested on suspicion of threatening to kill its leader Nick Griffin, according to reports.

Party bosses also accused Mark Collett, 29, who appeared in a documentary called Young, Nazi and Proud while a student in Leeds, of trying to launch a "palace coup" against Mr Griffin.

Mr Collett was responsible for producing the far right group's publicity material and edited its newspaper.

A leaked copy of the BNP organisers bulletin stated the party had run "an extensive and long-running" investigation into financial irregularities.

It stated: "We are able to say that Mark Collett was conspiring with a small clique of other party officials to launch a 'palace coup' against our twice democratically elected party leader, Nick Griffin, and that in order to create the artificial climate of disillusionment necessary for this to stand any chance of success, lies and unfounded rumours have been spread, and were planned to be spread much further.

"Mr Collett has therefore been relieved of all positions within the party with immediate effect." >>> Press Association | Easter Sunday, April 04, 2010

”Petty Gossip” Indeed! This, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Is Anything But “Petty Gossip”!
THE TELEGRAPH: Cardinal tells Pope Benedict XVI not to be distracted by 'petty gossip': A senior Vatican cardinal used the Easter Mass to say the Catholic Church should not be distracted by "petty gossip" about child sex-abuse allegations. >>> Nick Squires in Rome | Easter Sunday, April 04, 2010

Sex Abuse Scandal Continues to Rock Catholic Church


Catholic Church: Sex Abuse Scandals


Victim of German Catholic Priest Sex Abuse Speaks Out

Meaning of Easter Symbols 'Confused' to Most
BBC: There is growing concern over the commercialisation of Easter and widespread confusion over the meaning of the symbols used to mark the holiday, a survey has found.

Research from Durham University also showed less than 60% of people could name more than three of the Ten Commandments, with most admitting their knowledge of the Bible comes from films.

Gerry Jackson reports. BBC video >>> | Easter Sunday, April 04, 2010

Queen Attends Easter Service at Windsor
BBC: The Queen, Prince Philip, and members of the Royal Family have attended the traditional Easter Sunday service at Windsor Castle.

Afterwards the monarch was handed flowers by young well wishers [sic]. BBC video >>> | Easter Sunday, April 04, 2010

Le pasteur qui ne croit pas en Dieu
LE TEMPS: Klaas Hendrikse est ministre de l’Eglise protestante des Pays-Bas. Son athéisme affiché attire les foules

Après la mort, il n’y a rien. La résurrection n’est qu’un mythe provenant d’antiques croyances liées au lever et au coucher de l’astre solaire. Jésus est certes une figure historique, il a sans doute été un personnage marquant, mais il n’a rien d’unique. Dieu n’existe pas, tout le démontre. Toutefois, il est possible de croire en un Dieu qui n’existe pas.

Le pasteur protestant qui professe ce credo sulfureux s’appelle Klaas Hendrikse. Agé de 63 ans, il est divorcé et père de deux enfants. Grand, mince, d’allure sportive, les cheveux blancs encadrant un visage bronzé – il revient d’Espagne où sa sœur a une maison –, c’est un homme posé et réfléchi. Ne craignant pas le potentiel explosif de l’oxymoron, il se définit comme un «croyant athée», et vit à Middelbourg, une charmante petite ville de 46 000 habitants, chef-lieu de la province de Zélande aux Pays-Bas. Depuis qu’il a fait son coming out mécréant dans un livre* publié en 2007, il est devenu un phénomène de société. Des journaux ont comparé sa situation à celle d’un boucher qui serait végétarien, ou d’un boulanger sans farine. On vient de tous les Pays-Bas, parfois par cars entiers, pour l’écouter prêcher à Middelbourg, ou à Zierikzee, l’autre paroisse dans laquelle il est actif.

La première édition de son livre s’est envolée en une journée. La treizième sera bientôt disponible. 34 000 exemplaires ont été vendus. Un succès considérable pour un ouvrage de théologie. >>> Patricia Briel | Dimanche 04 Avril 2010

Conversation avec Klaas Hendrikse en néerlandais (Gesprek met Klaas Hendrikse) >>>

Abus sexuels: mutisme du pape lors de la bénédiction pascale
La messe de Pâques était présidée par Benoît XVI. Photo: Le Temps
LE TEMPS: Benoît XVI est resté muet dimanche sur les cas d’abus sexuels au sein de l’Eglise catholique lors de sa traditionnelle bénédiction urbi et orbi à l’occasion de Pâques. Fait rarissime, le doyen du collège des cardinaux a pris publiquement la défense du pape

«Saint Père, le peuple de Dieu est avec vous et ne se laissera pas détourner de sa voie par les ragots sans importance du moment, par les épreuves qui frappent parfois la communauté des fidèles», a déclaré Mgr Angelo Sodano en s’adressant au souverain pontife.

Ancien secrétaire d’Etat et proche collaborateur de Jean Paul II, Mgr Sodano a salué en Benoît XVI un roc inébranlable sur lequel l’Eglise s’appuie fermement. «L’Eglise est avec vous», a-t-il dit au pape, sous les acclamations des milliers de fidèles massés sur la place Saint-Pierre.

C’est, a priori, la première fois dans l’histoire récente que le rituel presque immuable de la messe de Pâques est modifié de façon à permettre à quelqu’un de s’adresser au pape. Cette entorse au protocle dénote à quel point le Vatican est sur la défensive devant les accusations dont il fait l’objet depuis plusieurs semaines.

Aucune allusion

L’air las et fatigué, Benoît XVI n’a fait aucune allusion lors de sa bénédiction pascale à la vague de scandales qui déferlent sur l’Eglise, accusée de dissimulations, et semblent viser le pape lui-même, qui était cardinal en Allemagne au moment où des cas d’abus sexuels ont eu lieu dans ce pays.

Depuis le balcon de la basilique, le souverain pontife a évoqué dimanche la crise «profonde» que vit la planète. Le chef de l’Eglise catholique a affirmé que l’humanité a «besoin» d’une «conversion spirituelle et morale» et de «changements profonds, à commencer par celui de la conscience».

Dans un message prononcé en 65 langues, deux de plus que l’an dernier (islandais et kazakh), il a appelé à la paix au Moyen-Orient, notamment en Terre Sainte et en Irak, ainsi qu’en Afrique, particulièrement en République démocratique du Congo, en Guinée et au Nigeria. «Campagne de dénigrement» >>> ATS | Dimanche 04 Avril 2010

Pope Silent on Scandal

Eugene Terreblanche Killed


THE TELEGRAPH: Terreblanche murder is 'declaration of war' by blacks: South African President Jacob Zuma has called for calm as supporters of white supremacist leader Eugene Terreblanche said his murder was a "declaration of war" by blacks. >>> Sebastien Berger in Ventersdorp | Easter Sunday, April 04, 2010

Flight Attendants Pose Nude in Protest

Suicide Car Bombs Rock Baghdad


Blasts Target Embassies in Baghdad

The Uphill Battle for Health-Care

A Long Line for iPad


iPad More Than an Oversized iPod Touch