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This newsletter is available online by
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The News In Review newsletter is a service
provided
by Understand The Times that
is a compilation of the news articles
previously posted
on our site . Understand The Times does not
endorse these events but rather is
showing the church the current events.
The
purpose of posting these articles is to warn the church of deception from a
Biblical perspective.
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October 9 - 'Window for strike on Iran nuke facilities growing slimmer'
Article: Wars And Rumors Of Wars
Israeli-American scholar on nuclear proliferation tells 'Post' that
Iranian advances limiting Israeli ability to launch
effective attack.
The chance for a military strike to
succeed in stopping Iran's race toward a nuclear weapon is becoming "slimmer" as
Tehran continues to produce and disperse its enriched uranium and technology,
according to Prof. Avner Cohen, a premier Israeli-American scholar on nuclear
proliferation.
"I think we are moving to the point that the
chance of success for doing something effective militarily is getting slimmer,"
Cohen warned in an interview with The Jerusalem Post.
"The fact that the Iranian nuclear program is further
dispersed, that the time for Iran to reach a breakout capability gets shorter
and that material can be moved quickly from site to site, would
require a very dynamic intelligence capability to know where everything is,"
he said.
Furthermore, according to Cohen, even if Israel had all of
the intelligence it would still be impossible "to know that you know everything
important since you do not know what you do not know."
At the same time, he said that Iran's "salami approach" - dispersing its
enriched uranium to a number of facilities, its general policy of making only
small and invisible-like advances in its program, as well as its proven ability
to enrich uranium to 20 percent levels - showed
that "Iran is not only positioning itself on the bomb threshold, but it appears
to gear itself to slowly crossing the threshold and becoming a nuclear weapon
state."
US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta's visit to Israel last
week, Cohen said, was likely part of an American effort to
ensure that Israel is not planning any unilateral military steps that would not
be coordinated first with Washington.
"My gut sense is that something happened in recent weeks which was interpreted
as if Israel had made clear that the military option is alive and kicking, and
Panetta wanted to make sure that Israeli independent action will not happen,"
he said.
Read Full Article....
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October 7 - Real-life "Minority Report" program gets a try-out
Article: One World Government
An
internal U.S. Department of Homeland Security document indicates
that a controversial program
designed to predict whether a person will commit a crime is already
being tested on some members of the public voluntarily,
CNET has learned.
If this sounds a bit like the Tom Cruise movie called "Minority
Report," or the CBS drama "Person of Interest," it is. But where
"Minority Report" author Philip K. Dick enlisted psychics to predict
crimes, DHS is betting on
algorithms: it's building a "prototype screening facility" that it
hopes will use factors such as ethnicity, gender, breathing, and
heart rate to "detect cues indicative of mal-intent."
The latest developments, which reveal
efforts to "collect, process, or
retain information on" members of "the public,"
came to light through an internal DHS document obtained under
open-government laws by the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
DHS calls its
"pre-crime" system Future Attribute Screening Technology, or FAST.
It's unclear
why the June 2010 DHS document (PDF) specified that information is
currently collected or retained on members of "the public" as part
of FAST, and a department representative declined to answer
questions that CNET posed two days ago.
FAST is designed to
track and monitor, among other inputs, body movements, voice pitch
changes, prosody changes (alterations in the rhythm and intonation
of speech), eye movements, body heat changes, and breathing
patterns. Occupation and age are also considered. A government
source told CNET that blink rate and pupil variation are measured
too.
Although DHS has publicly
suggested that FAST could be used at airport checkpoints--the
Transportation Security Administration is part of the department,
after all--the government appears to have grander ambitions.
One internal DHS document (PDF) also obtained by EPIC through the
Freedom of Information Act says
a mobile version of FAST "could be
used at security checkpoints such as border crossings or at large
public events such as sporting events or conventions."
Read Full Article....
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October 11 - Assisi meeting will emphasize pilgrimage more than prayer
Article: Ecumenical Movement - Other Religions Uniting With Roman Catholics
This month's meeting of
world religious leaders in Assisi will
downplay prayer as a feature of the event and will not contain
inter-religious prayers.
"The emphasis this time is on
pilgrimage and not on prayer," said Cardinal Peter
Turkson, President of the Vatican's Council for Justice and Peace, to
EWTN News. He is also a key organizer of the Oct. 27 event in the
birthplace of St. Francis.
"In fact, from what I understand of the program, and it's still being
worked on, is that prayer is going to
be out, if not very minimal."
This year's Assisi gathering is entitled
"Pilgrims of Truth, Pilgrims of Peace,"
and is being convened to commemorate the 25th anniversary
of the first World Day for Peace, held by Pope John Paul II in 1986.
That summit came under fire from some Catholic
groups who claimed it unwittingly blurred the distinctions between
Catholicism and other religions.
This time there will
be no inter-religious prayer, the Vatican has already confirmed.
Instead, there will be a specifically Catholic prayer vigil in St.
Peter's Square in Rome the night before. "So the
praying is not going to happen there (in Assisi), it's going to happen
here (in Rome) and that's going to be the Pope amongst his people, other
Catholics," explained Cardinal Turkson.
The following
morning, participants will travel from Rome to Assisi on a special
chartered train that will depart from the Vatican's train station. Upon
arrival, speeches will be given and all will have lunch together. The
meal will be followed by a period of silence for individual reflection
and prayer. The group will then make a pilgrimage
to the Basilica of St. Francis, the saint's place of burial, where each
delegate will recommit to peace.
Cardinal Turkson also
explained why non-religious figures
from the world of culture and science - some who will be atheists and
agnostics - are being invited to join the Pope in Assisi. Peace,
he said, is "a preoccupation of both
believers and unbelievers," so that "those who do not practice any
faith, they also can contribute and have a part in this pilgrimage."
Read Full Article....
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October 9 - Pope Benedict: modern life needs silence
Article: Roman Catholic Church And The Last Days
The lack of silence in contemporary society is making many people's
lives "more agitated and at times convulsed," Pope Benedict XVI
has said. "Some people are no longer able to stay
long in silence," he told members of a silent Carthusian
monastery in the southern Italian region of Calabria on Oct. 9.
The monastery visit
was the Pope's last stop on a one-day trip to the south of Italy. Upon
his arrival in the town of Serra San Bruno, crowds of over 30,000
greeted the Pope as he made his way through the streets in the
popemobile. The local monastery was established over 900 years ago by
St. Bruno, a fellow German and founder of the Carthusian Order. The Pope
contrasted the silence of the order with the noise of modern life.
He called the Carthusian charism of silence "a
precious gift for the Church and the world," and one that contained "a
profound message for our life and for humanity."
"Retiring into silence and solitude, man, so to
speak, is 'exposed' to reality in his nakedness," said the Pope.
This allows man to experience "the
fullness, the presence of God, of the most real Reality that there is,
and that is beyond the dimension of the senses."
The Pope joined the
monks for Vespers, the evening prayer of the Church. Before entering the
monastery, he remarked that the ancient monastic life is a rebuke to a
certain modern mindset "that is not Christian, or even human, because it
is dominated by economic interests," or is only concerned with earthly
and not spiritual things.
A society based on
such a mindset, he said, "not only marginalizes God, but also our
neighbor, and we do not strive for the common good."
The monastery, though, is instead "a model of a
society that focuses on God and fraternal relationship." This is
something for which we have "so much need in our time,"
said the Pope.
He concluded
by telling the Carthusians that their
vocation is in "the heart of the Church" and puts "the pure blood of the
contemplation and love of God" into its veins.
Read Full Article....
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We hope the Weekly News In Review has been a
blessing to you.
Sincerely,
Roger Oakland
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