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Obama forces Christians to provide contraceptives
Evangelical and Catholic groups on Friday blasted the Obama administration over its decision not to expand religious exemption from the new health care law that will require them to provide insurance plans covering contraceptives, sterilization and some abortion-causing drugs.
Christian groups joined together in condemning “Obamacare” after the Health and Human Services announced its decision, which officials claimed was reached after reviewing more than 200,000 comments from interested parties and the public.
“Despite the fact that certain drugs and devices approved by the FDA can work after conception to destroy a newly developed baby, the Obama Administration mandate still forces all insurance plans to carry these drugs and devices even if employers are morally opposed,” Tom McClusky of Family Research Council Action said in a statement.
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said religious groups would have one additional year to comply with the mandate (until August 2013 rather than August 2012). “I believe this proposal strikes the appropriate balance between respecting religious freedom and increasing access to important preventive services.”
But McClusky said the one-year delay “does nothing to change the anti-religious, anti-conscience, and anti-life contraceptive mandate, rather it only postpones its implementation until after the presidential election.”
The new rule also mandates that religious groups with a one-year reprieve in the meantime be “forced to tell their employees where to obtain contraceptives,” FRC Action pointed out. “This completely violates the conscience rights of many Americans. As we approach the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade tomorrow may all voters who respect life take note of the Obama Administration’s ardent policies against life and religious liberty and vote accordingly in November.”
The National Association of Evangelicals also said it was “deeply disappointed” by the White House decision that was announced Friday. Freedom of conscience is a “sacred gift from God, not a grant from the state,” said Galen Carey, vice president for Government Relations at NAE. “No government has the right to compel its citizens to violate their conscience. The HHS rules trample on our most cherished freedoms and set a dangerous precedent.”
The HHS policy includes a thin exemption for religious organizations that focus only on religious services to their own members.
“The exemption leaves the vast majority of religious employers who serve the entire community unprotected,” the NAE stated. “If this narrow definition of ‘religious employer’ is adopted in other areas of law, it may lead to further erosion of the conscience protections Americans have historically held.”
FRC Action also contended that the mandate, issued in August, violates the principles of the Church Amendment which protects conscience rights for those who object to contraceptives and other services on moral or religious grounds,. “Additionally, the U.S. government already funds domestic family planning at a level of $1.9 billion annually.”
Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan of New York also lambasted the Obama administration’s health care law. “Never before has the federal government forced individuals and organizations to go out into the marketplace and buy a product that violates their conscience,” he said in a statement. “This shouldn’t happen in a land where free exercise of religion ranks first in the Bill of Rights.”
He encouraged his community to tell their elected leaders that “you want religious liberty and rights of conscience restored and that you want the administration’s contraceptive mandate rescinded.”
Religious groups are not likely to comply, the Washington-based Becket Fund for Religious Liberty has hinted.
Given the anger among religious groups, they might choose to pay fines rather than act against their conscience, some believe.
Obama’s next target after Libya, Israel?
Arab League chief on board that created doctrine used to bomb nation
TEL AVIV – Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa served on the committee that invented the military doctrine used by President Obama as the main justification for U.S. and international airstrikes against Libya, WND has learned.
The discovery is particularly pertinent because on Sunday Moussa announced during a special meeting in Cairo that the Arab League plans to press the U.N. to impose a no-fly zone over the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip similar to the one imposed now on Libya.
Moussa said he plans to present the proposal to the U.N. Security Council.
The call comes as Hamas has fired over 140 rockets into Jewish civilian population zones, prompting Israel to carry out anti-terror operations in Gaza aimed at diminishing Hamas’ rocketing capabilities.
As WND was first to report, billionaire philanthropist George Soros is a primary funder and key proponent of the Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect, the world’s leading organization pushing the military doctrine. Several of the doctrine’s main founders sit on multiple boards with Soros.
The doctrine and its founders, as WND reported, have been deeply tied to Obama aide Samantha Power, who reportedly heavily influenced Obama in consultations leading to the decision to bomb Libya. Power is the National Security Council special adviser to Obama on human rights.
Now it has emerged that Moussa served on the advisory board of the 2001 commission that originally founded Responsibility to Protect.
That commission is called the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. It invented the term “Responsibility to Protect,” while defining its guidelines.
On the 2001 commission board with Moussa, as WND first revealed, was Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi, a staunch denier of the Holocaust who long served as the deputy of late PLO leader Yasser Arafat.
Also on the commission board was the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, which was founded by White House aid Samantha Power.
Power was Carr’s founding executive director and headed the institute at the time it advised in the founding of Responsibility to Protect. She is the National Security Council special adviser to Obama on human rights.
She reportedly heavily influenced Obama in consultations leading to the decision to bomb Libya.
Read more: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=286093
Hackers could take over space station
‘Threat to computer networks is tangible and expanding in both scope and frequency’
Paul Martin, the NASA inspector general, is reporting NASA‘s computer network was so vulnerable to cyber attack that computer hackers could take control of a spacecraft while in flight, according to a report fromJoseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.
In part, the report states, “We found that computer servers on NASA’s agency-wide mission network had high-risk vulnerabilities that were exploitable from the Internet. Specifically, six computer servers associated with IT assets that control spacecraft and contain critical data had vulnerabilities that would allow a remote attacker to take control of or render them unavailable.”
These weaknesses could have a “catastrophic” effect on NASA operations, his report explains.
Read more: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=283409
Strategy to invade Israel posted on Facebook
Campaign states goal: ‘May the state of the sons of Zion fall’
Social-networking sites, specifically Facebook, are being used to promote a campaign that appears to target the very existence of Israel, with hundreds of thousands worldwide seeking to join in a plan to “return” to and take over the original homes of their families in “Palestine” on May 15.
According to an in-depth report by L. Barkan, a research fellow at the Middle East Media Research Institute, which monitors and analyzes media reports throughout the Middle East, the idea being circulated is “for millions of Palestinian refugees to march en masse in return to the original homes of their families in Israel.”
The movement’s plans call for this to be much more than just a visit, however.
“All the families of Jewish settlers in the Galilee area, including in the areas of Safed, Tiberias, and all the way down to Acre, must proceed to the port of Haifa and board ships back to their countries of origin in Europe,” explained one posting that is part of the campaign.
It provided instructions for others to report to other ports – all by the middle of March, a deadline long past.
“The message also warned that anyone trying to take ‘archeological artifacts [or anything belonging] to the Palestinian heritage, even a single ball of falafel, will be pursued and arrested by Interpol in his new place of residence,’” the report said.
One of the Facebook pages soliciting participants in what apparently would be an invasion and attempted overthrow of the region’s existing government has been removed by the Facebook administration, but not before collecting some 350,000 endorsements from readers. Other pages remain.
According to MEMRI, some of the Facebook pages “stress that the activities are meant to be peaceful and unarmed, while others hint at violence and armed resistance.”
“It also has gained the support of Palestinian officials, through the PLO Department of Expatriate Affairs … which has called on Palestinians living abroad to participate in the march and to publicize it among the Palestinian communities and organizations worldwide,” the MEMRI report said.
Timetables to coordinate the events have been posted by administrators who explain it is the moral and legal right of refugees to return to their homes.
One page, “The 2011 March of Return,” said, “The goal of [the Facebook] group … is to organize a march of millions, who, on May 15, 2011, will realize the Right of Return to Palestine in deed as well as in word.”
Read more: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=281293
Related Articles
Islamists Are Elated by Revolts in the Middle East
Anwar al-Awlaki, the Yemeni-American cleric who is a top propagandist for Al Qaeda, broke his silence on the uprisings in the Arab world on Wednesday, claiming that Islamist extremists had gleefully watched the success of protest movements against governments they had long despised.
“The mujahedeen around the world are going through a moment of elation,” Mr. Awlaki wrote in a new issue of the English-language Qaeda magazine Inspire, “and I wonder whether the West is aware of the upsurge of mujahedeen activity in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Arabia, Algeria and Morocco?”
Mr. Awlaki’s four-page essay, titled “The Tsunami of Change,” is among a handful of statements by Al Qaeda’s leaders countering the common view among Western analysts that the terrorist network looks irrelevant at a time of change unprecedented in the modern Middle East. In ousting the rulers of Tunisia and Egypt and threatening other Arab leaders, a core of secular-leaning demonstrators have called for democracy and generally avoided violence — all at odds with Al Qaeda’s creed as it tries to instill rigid Islamist rule across the world.
Mr. Awlaki asks, “Doesn’t the West realize how the jihadi work would just take off as soon as the regimes of the Gulf start crumbling?”
Read more
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/31/world/middleeast/31inspire.html?ref=world
US troops detained by Iran
Seven U.S troops are said to have been detained by Iran according to Reuters. No immediate information is available from the White House.
Recently the Iranian president requested the U.S government to release Iranian prisoners held by U.S especially the nuclear scientist who have fled to the U.S.
This can be seen as pressure exerted by the religious fanatic government in Iran to incite a war in the middle east and to derail the middle east peace process.
Iranian border guards detained seven U.S. troops as they tried to illegally enter the Islamic state, the semi-official Fars news agency reported on Sunday, without giving a source.
Iran on Tuesday freed one of three Americans held for over a year ago for alleged spying. Sara Shourd was detained near Iran’s border with Iraq in late July 2009 along with two male companions, Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal. Their families say the three were on a mountain hike in northern Iraq at the time.
Hamas chief on 9/11 mosque: ‘Islam must build everywhere’
Terror-group leader: Muslims in U.S., around world united in common cause
WND
Two days after President Obama came out in support of a plan to build an Islamic cultural center and mosque near Ground Zero, the controversial project has received yet another high-profile endorsement – this one from the chief of the terror group Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
“We have to build the mosque, as you are allowed to build the church and Israelis are building their holy places,” stated Mahmoud al-Zahar, a co-founder of Hamas who is regarded as the chief of the group in Gaza.
Zahar said that as Muslims, “We have to build everywhere.”
“In every area we have, [as Muslims] we have to pray, and this mosque is the only site of prayer, especially for the people when they are looking [to be] in the group, not an individual,” he said.
Zahar was speaking in a radio interview today with Aaron Klein, WND’s Jerusalem bureau chief and host of investigative show on New York’s WABC Radio.
Zahar told Klein he was speaking on the mosque issue with authority, claiming Hamas “is representing the vast majority of the Arabic and Islamic world, especially the Islamic side.”
Zahar said that Muslims around the world, including those in the U.S., are united in a common cause.
Stated the Hamas chieftain: “First of all, we have to address that we are different as people, as a nation totally different. We already are living under the tradition of Islam. … Islam is controlling every source of our life as regard to marriage, divorce, our commercial relationships. … Even the Islamic people or the Muslims in your country, they are living now in the tradition of Islam. They are fasting, they are praying.”
New York Islamic leader Faisal Abdul Rauf, president of the Cordoba Initiative, has caused a stir with his proposed 13-story, $100 million Islamic cultural center and mosque near the corner of Park Place and West Broadway – about two blocks from the site of the 9-11 terrorist attacks.
Rauf sparked controversy last month when he refused during a live interview on Klein’s WABC show to condemn violent jihad groups as terrorists. Rauf repeatedly refused on the air to affirm the U.S. designation of Hamas as a terrorist organization or call the Muslim Brotherhood extremists.
The Brotherhood openly seeks to spread Islam around the world, while Hamas is committed to Israel’s destruction and is responsible for scores of suicide bombings, shootings and rocket attacks aimed at Jewish civilian population centers.
During the interview, Klein also asked Rauf who he believes was responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks.
“There’s no doubt,” stated Rauf. “The general perception all over the world was it was created by people who were sympathetic to Osama bin Laden. Whether they were part of the killer group or not, these are details that need to be left to the law-enforcement experts.”
Rauf has been on record several times blaming U.S. policies for the Sept. 11 attacks. He has been quoted refusing to admit Muslims carried out the attacks.
Referring to the Sept. 11 attacks, Rauf told CNN, “U.S. policies were an accessory to the crime that happened. We (the U.S.) have been an accessory to a lot of innocent lives dying in the world. Osama bin Laden was made in the USA.”
Unknown Obama stepsister dies
WND
Raises question of whether president adopted by Indonesian stepfather
By Jerome R. Corsi
A previously unknown stepsister of Barack Obama died unexpectedly earlier this year.
Internet researchers made the link between the president and his previously undisclosed stepsister, Holiyah "Lia" Soetoro Sobah, after translating from obituaries published in Indonesia. She died Feb. 26.
The obituaries identified Lia as having been adopted by Lolo Soetoro, Obama’s stepfather, and Ann Dunham Obama Soetoro, the president’s mother.
The surfacing of Lia as an adopted child of Lolo Soetoro and Dunham raises the question of whether Barack Obama himself might have been adopted officially as Lolo Soetoro’s stepson while in Indonesia from 1967-1971.
Even though Obama makes no mention in "Dreams from My Father" of having had an Indonesian stepsister, the Indonesian obituaries make clear that Obama slept in the same room as his stepsister while the two of them grew up together in the Soetoro home in Jakarta.
According to the Indonesian obituaries, Barry Soetoro and Lia Soetoro were always together, playing, traveling on family vacations and even bathing.
Obama was in Indonesia from ages 6 to 10.
There is nothing on the public record to indicate that he sent any condolences or even acknowledged the death of his stepsister in February.
The Indonesian obituaries also state Lia was born in 1957 and that she had three children with her husband, Edi Sobah, with whom she lived in West Java, Indonesia.
A photograph of Lia shows her holding a monkey doll and wearing clothes given her by Madelyn Dunham, Obama’s maternal grandmother, when Lia visited Hawaii for three months. The visit apparently was in 1971, the year Obama left Indonesia permanently.
Obama also does not discuss in his autobiography "Dreams from My Father" any visits to Hawaii after he left Indonesia permanently in 1971 that were made by Lolo Soetoro or a Soetoro stepsister from Indonesia.
While Obama has not acknowledged having had a stepsister in Indonesia, he discussed at length in his autobiography his half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, who was born in Indonesia to Lolo Soetoro and Ann Dunham on Aug. 15, 1970.
WND has reported that in a passport amendment submitted Aug. 13, 1968, Obama’s mother identified her son with an Indonesian surname as Barack Obama II Soebarkah, and asked the State Department to drop him from her U.S. passport.
The transaction could have been part of an effort by Dunham to obtain Indonesian citizenship for her son.
WND also reported in August 2008 that the Associated Press published a photograph purportedly of Obama’s registration card at Indonesia’s Francis Assisi school. The card showed he was enrolled as "Barry Soetoro" and listed as an Indonesian citizen whose official religious identification was Muslim. An AP spokesman affirmed to WND that the photograph was authentic.
Iran ready to ‘support’ Lebanese army
Follows WND report of Tehran’s infiltration
By Aaron Klein
Iran yesterday offered support to Lebanon’s army a week after Beirut forces engaged in a deadly cross-border clash with Israel that prompted U.S. lawmakers to block funding to the Lebanese military.
Last week, WND quoted Egyptian and other Middle Eastern security officials stating Western, Israeli and Arab intelligence services have identified a growing penetration of Iranian Revolutionary Guard units into the Lebanese army.
Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon met yesterday with Lebanese army chief Jean Kahwaji, stating Tehran was ready to "cooperate with the Lebanese army in any area that would help the military in performing its national role in defending Lebanon."
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is expected to visit Beirut next month.
Earlier this week, two U.S. Democratic lawmakers said they were holding up a $100 million aid package that was approved for Lebanon’s army but not yet spent. A senior House Republican, Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, said future funding should be stopped, too, pending an inquiry into the clash.
Cantor said the lines between Hezbollah, the Lebanese military and the government had become "blurred."
But U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said President Obama was not planning to re-evaluate its military cooperation with Lebanon.
"It allows the government of Lebanon to expand its sovereignty. We think that is in the interest of both of our countries and regional stability as a whole," he said Monday.
Last week, WND quoted Egyptian and other Middle Eastern security officials who pointed specifically to the Division 9 Lebanese army border patrol as being heavily infiltrated by Iran and Hezbollah. That unit is suspected of carrying out last week’s attack on Israeli troop positions that resulted in the deaths of three Lebanese soldiers, one Lebanese reporter and an Israeli soldier.
The security officials said Iran has penetrated Lebanese army positions along the Israeli border, replacing Hezbollah inside the first lines of the Lebanese army.
The security officials said a committee of the Arab League that publicly asked Lebanon to inspect its army for Israeli agents was really mostly concerned about the growing role of Iran in the Lebanese army.
Egyptian security officials, meanwhile, have told WND they suspect last week’s rocket attacks on Eilat and the Jordanian port city of Aqaba were coordinated by Iranian agents, in particular an axis of the Iranian-backed Hamas and Hezbollah that works from the Egyptian Sinai desert.
The attack itself may have been carried out by cutouts, specifically Islamist organizations that operate under the umbrella of al-Qaida ideology, the officials said.
In the last two weeks, a series of border attacks have struck Israel. Two weeks ago rockets were launched from Gaza into nearby Jewish communities. One of the rockets smashed into a children’s hydrotherapy center in the populated town of Sderot. The center, normally bustling with more than 100 workers and children during working hours, was closed at the time of the strike.
One week ago, Grad-style rockets hit the Sinai, Aqaba and Eilat in coordinated attacks.
Last week also saw a series of deadly clashes along Israel’s northern border.
"Iran is sending a message that they are able also to bring any war into the Israeli land and not only in the Iranian field," said a Middle Eastern security official. "The message is also intended for Egypt and Jordan, which is accused of helping Israel train for a war with Iran."
"Iran is leading a huge campaign in the Middle East to counter military signs that Israel may strike. Iran is worried about what they view as an agreement that the Arab countries will remain silent if Israel attacks Iran," the security official said.
