On the supremacy of the spiritual powers over the powers of states and statesmen - the Searches in the Philosophy of Religion - 12:39 AM 1/4/2020

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If Islam Is a Religion of Violence, So Is Christianity ...

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Веленью божию, о муза, будь послушна,
Обиды не страшась, не требуя венца,
Хвалу и клевету приемли равнодушно,
И не оспоривай глупца. 

Я памятник себе воздвиг нерукотворный...
Александр Сергеевич Пушкин (1799—1837)
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On the supremacy of the spiritual powers over the powers of states and statesmen - The Searches in the Philosophy of Religion - By Michael Novakhov


Contents

Introduction: The powers of the Divine compelled me to search for  answers

1. Christianity is Culture, and our modern Western Culture is Christianity


2. The Christendom is dead! 


3. Searches in the Philosophy of Religion 


4. The Supremacy of the Spiritual Powers

5. The Papal Supremacy


6. Other Related Searches

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On the supremacy of the spiritual powers over the powers of states and statesmen - the Searches in the Philosophy of Religion 
By Michael Novakhov


Image result for papal supremacy

Introduction: The powers of the Divine compelled me to search for  answers

To my opponents I should dedicate this little piece of thought: they should be viewed in the magic mirror of irony as the angelic part of my devilish Self. 

A man knocked on my door yesterday evening; he was sent by those in power; they are puzzled by me, and want to coopt me, forgiving kindly all the insults and the endless series of wrath that I hurled at their poor bold heads in my angry impatience, deservedly or not. 

"You look like a priest, pray for me", I told that man half-mockingly, and slammed the door in his face. And now I feel guilty about my rudeness. And this prompted me to compile this Search, as a note and the greeting to those who sent that nice man, and as my penitence, but without changing the substance of the response: there is no way, that this independent and rebellious Spirit of mine can be coopted by anything or anyone. The Island is an Island and forever an Island. And the Islands are always lonely; that's their nature, I guess.

I questioned the men in power, rather arrogantly, earlier: Where are your Theologians, I asked them, and what did they produce? And it was I, the absolute, laughing, teasing, condescending NON-BELIEVER!


And now the Powers of the Divine compelled me to search for  answers, as ironically as it sounds. 

See also: 

Organic or Organismic Theory 

Organic or Organismic Theory of Society
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On the 
over the 

By Michael Novakhov

1. Christianity is Culture, and our modern Western Culture is Christianity

Und why iz ziz zo? That'z zi Question! 

In brief, because the State Powers are concerned with the large social structures, their self-organisations, functioning, preservation, expansions, and perpetuation; just like the physical human bodies, their atomic units, are concerned with the same tasks and issues. 
Spirit governs these bodies, makes them alive and unique, and is ultimately endlessly and boundlessly free, and that is why it has the supreme power over them, and it practices and exercises these powers in the ways visible and invisible, fleeting and determined. This Spirit is Culture. 

Christianity is Culture, and our modern Western Culture is Christianity, first of all, and most of all, as its most defining component and element. 

2. The Christendom is dead! 

Pope Francis on the end of the Christendom

Pope Francis on the end of the Christendom - Google Search


Search Results





'Christendom no longer exists,' pope says, explaining need to revamp Curia 


As he has often done, Pope Francis quoted the 19th-century composer Gustav Mahler, who said, "Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire."

"Christendom no longer exists," he said. "Today we are not the only ones who produce culture, nor are we the first or the most listened to."
Christianity, "especially in Europe, but also in a large part of the West, is no longer an obvious premise of our common life, but rather it is often denied, derided, marginalized or ridiculed." 
"In all its being and acting, the church is called to promote the integral development of the human person in the light of the Gospel," he said.
The church does so, he continued, by "serving the weakest and most marginalized, in particularly forced migrants, who represent at this time a cry in the desert of our humanity" and are "the symbol of all those thrown away by our globalized society."
The church, he said, "is called to testify that for God no one is a 'stranger' or 'excluded.' It is called to awaken consciences numbed by indifference to the reality of the Mediterranean Sea, which has become for many, too many, a cemetery."

| National Catholic Reporter

Vatican
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As Robert Mickens wrote in a 2018 piece for La Croix, "Vatican Godfather," Sodano worked quietly to push cardinal electors behind Bergoglio.
"For some three decades he was the man in the Vatican no one dared to cross," wrote Mickens. "Even the popes he served were careful to gain his consent because of the loyalty he commanded from many key people at all levels of the Roman Curia."


NCRONLINE.ORG
A scene in "The Two Popes," the charming new Netflix movie, has Anthony Hopkins as a brooding, gentle Benedict XVI hearing the unprompted confession of Cardinal Jorge Borgoglio, played by Jonathan Pry...

M.N.: I wrote so many critical things about Cardinal Sodano, (and just like so many other reporters and writers, who at times were even more critical than I was), and I called him "Cardinal Satano", but if I were there at that moment, I would him a big bear hug, without any hesitations, and absolutely sincerely, so great is the mysterious power of this man. Even at his age of 92, he looks sharp, smart, wise (in many meanings, probably), fatherly, understanding, forgiving, priestly, grand, but with a certain devious tinge. 

Pope Francis greeting Cardinal Angelo Sodano.

Pope Francis greeting Cardinal Angelo Sodano.   (Vatican Media)

Things are complex, and the name callings do not solve the problems. I wish, he would tell us his story, and nothing but the truth. He definitely knows a lot, and definitely the stuff we all can learn from. And he can share it with us, if he so chooses. 

Image result for Cardinal Sodano

Do this, Bro - Fra, tell us. We do want to learn from you, good and bad, beautiful and ugly, the Godly, the Divine, and the Earthly and the Devilish. But the whole TRUTH. I know, if he tells his story, he will tell the whole truth, I would trust him with this. 

Do this, Bro. Do this, Grandpa. 

See also: Cardinal Sodano - Google Search

Image result for Cardinal Sodano
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Pope Francis made the huge, "epochal", historical announcement and the admission, which, was just the recognition, acceptance, and the official acknowledgement and statement of the obvious fact, formed and shaped naturally during the past century: 


The Christendom is dead! 
Long live the true and the renewed Christianity and the Great Western Culture and Civilization!

It took the extraordinary courage and the sense of historical responsibility to make this admission. The "Cristendom", this historically formed conglomeration of the Empires, Kingdoms, Czardoms, various Principalities, etc., etc., is no more! 

What is left, is pure and  purified, cleansed, transformed, renewed, revitalized, Divinely Cured in the Magnificent Halls of CURIA, the True CHRISTIANITY, which is the Empire and the Dominion of SPIRIT, unbound and free, at the long last. The Spirit Of Christianity shed away the vestiges of its service and subservience (if it ever was so) to the Earthly and State Powers. From now on, as it was declared, Christianity exists in the form of Culture, and the Western Civilization and Culture in their essence, in their hearts of hearts, is the Christianity. 
And the "WP": the Word Power, the Power of verbal self-expression, Religious Thought and Word, the Literature and the Humanities, in this new age of the Internet and the Social Media, have increased greatly, and became the new shaping social and political force to be reckoned with. 

The Papal Supremacy became truly supreme, omniscient and omnipresent, it became the renewed and the redefined Spiritual Supremacy, and in this Divine Transformation, paradoxically, if you will, it acquired more Powers, and more efficient, and more effective Powers, among them, the Powers to influence the peoples' hearts and minds, and therefore to influence and to shape the World events and developments. 

The Pope's authority became the ultimate Global Moral Authority and Power, reigning supreme over all the other Powers, and dictating and ruling over them. 

Mazel Tov, Pope Francis! And I am absolutely, 100% serious about this congratulation, and about everything I have described and interpreted so far. 

The new Epoch has truly started, and not just the New Year and the New Century, but the New Millennium! 
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3. Searches in the Philosophy of Religion

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Philosophy of Religion - Google Search


Philosophy of religion is the philosophical study of the meaning and nature of religion. It includes the analyses of religious concepts, beliefs, terms, arguments, and practices of religious adherents. The scope of much of the work done in philosophy of religion has been limited to the various theistic religions.
Philosophy of religion is "the philosophical examination of the central themes and concepts involved in religious traditions". Philosophical discussions on such ...
Philosophy of religion, discipline concerned with the philosophical appraisal of human religious attitudes and of the real or imaginary objects of those attitudes, ...
Philosophy is the most critical and comprehensive thought process developed by human beings. It is quite different from religion in that where Philosophy is both ...

A brief introduction to some of the issues discussed in the Philosophy of Religion and Natural Theology. 
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Philosophy of religion - WRITTEN BY: Paul Helm
Philosophy of religiondiscipline concerned with the philosophical appraisal of human religious attitudes and of the real or imaginary objects of those attitudes, God or the gods. The philosophy of religion is an integral part of philosophy as such and embraces central issues regarding the nature and extent of human knowledge, the ultimate character of reality, and the foundations of morality

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Mar 12, 2007 - Philosophy of religion is the philosophical examination of the themes and concepts involved in religious traditions as well as the broader ...


Philosophy of Religion

First published Mon Mar 12, 2007; substantive revision Tue Jan 8, 2019
Philosophy of religion is the philosophical examination of the themes and concepts involved in religious traditions as well as the broader philosophical task of reflecting on matters of religious significance including the nature of religion itself, alternative concepts of God or ultimate reality, and the religious significance of general features of the cosmos (e.g., the laws of nature, the emergence of consciousness) and of historical events (e.g., the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake, the Holocaust). Philosophy of religion also includes the investigation and assessment of worldviews (such as secular naturalism) that are alternatives to religious worldviews. Philosophy of religion involves all the main areas of philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology, value theory (including moral theory and applied ethics), philosophy of language, science, history, politics, art, and so on. Section 1 offers an overview of the field and its significance, with subsequent sections covering developments in the field since the mid-twentieth century. These sections address philosophy of religion as practiced primarily (but not exclusively) in departments of philosophy and religious studies that are in the broadly analytic tradition. The entry concludes with highlighting the increasing breadth of the field, as more traditions outside the Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) have become the focus of important philosophical work.

1. The Field and its Significance

Ideally, a guide to the nature and history of philosophy of religion would begin with an analysis or definition of religion. Unfortunately, there is no current consensus on a precise identification of the necessary and sufficient conditions of what counts as a religion. We therefore currently lack a decisive criterion that would enable clear rulings whether some movements should count as religions (e.g., Scientology or Cargo cults of the Pacific islands). But while consensus in precise details is elusive, the following general depiction of what counts as a religion may be helpful:
A religion involves a communal, transmittable body of teachings and prescribed practices about an ultimate, sacred reality or state of being that calls for reverence or awe, a body which guides its practitioners into what it describes as a saving, illuminating or emancipatory relationship to this reality through a personally transformative life of prayer, ritualized meditation, and/or moral practices like repentance and personal regeneration. [This is a slightly modified definition of the one for “Religion” in the Dictionary of Philosophy of Religion, Taliaferro & Marty 2010: 196–197; 2018, 240.]
This definition does not involve some obvious shortcomings such as only counting a tradition as religious if it involves belief in God or gods, as some recognized religions such as Buddhism (in its main forms) does not involve a belief in God or gods. Although controversial, the definition provides some reason for thinking Scientology and the Cargo cults are proto-religious insofar as these movements do not have a robust communal, transmittable body of teachings and meet the other conditions for being a religion. (So, while both examples are not decisively ruled out as religions, it is perhaps understandable that in Germany, Scientology is labeled a “sect”, whereas in France it is classified as “a cult”.) For a discussion of other definitions of religion, see Taliaferro 2009, chapter one, and for a recent, different analysis, see Graham Oppy 2018, chapter three. The topic of defining religion is re-engaged below in the section 4, “Religion and Science”. But rather than devoting more space to definitions at the outset, a pragmatic policy will be adopted: for the purpose of this entry, it will be assumed that those traditions that are widely recognized today as religions are, indeed, religions. It will be assumed, then, that religions include (at least) Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and those traditions that are like them. This way of delimiting a domain is sometimes described as employing a definition by examples (an ostensive definition) or making an appeal to a family resemblance between things. It will also be assumed that Greco-Roman views of gods, rituals, the afterlife, the soul, are broadly “religious” or “religiously significant”. Given the pragmatic, open-ended use of the term “religion” the hope is to avoid beginning our inquiry with a procrustean bed.
Given the above, broad perspective of what counts as religion, the roots of what we call philosophy of religion stretch back to the earliest forms of philosophy. From the outset, philosophers in Asia, the Near and Middle East, North Africa, and Europe reflected on the gods or God, duties to the divine, the origin and nature of the cosmos, an afterlife, the nature of happiness and obligations, whether there are sacred duties to family or rulers, and so on. As with each of what would come to be considered sub-fields of philosophy today (like philosophy of science, philosophy of art), philosophers in the Ancient world addressed religiously significant themes (just as they took up reflections on what we call science and art) in the course of their overall practice of philosophy. While from time to time in the Medieval era, some Jewish, Christian, and Islamic philosophers sought to demarcate philosophy from theology or religion, the evident role of philosophy of religion as a distinct field of philosophy does not seem apparent until the mid-twentieth century. A case can be made, however, that there is some hint of the emergence of philosophy of religion in the seventeenth century philosophical movement Cambridge Platonism. Ralph Cudworth (1617–1688), Henry More (1614–1687), and other members of this movement were the first philosophers to practice philosophy in English; they introduced in English many of the terms that are frequently employed in philosophy of religion today, including the term “philosophy of religion”, as well as “theism”, “consciousness”,and “materialism”. The Cambridge Platonists provided the first English versions of the cosmological, ontological, and teleological arguments, reflections on the relationship of faith and reason, and the case for tolerating different religions. While the Cambridge Platonists might have been the first explicit philosophers of religion, for the most part, their contemporaries and successors addressed religion as part of their overall work. There is reason, therefore, to believe that philosophy of religion only gradually emerged as a distinct sub-field of philosophy in the mid-twentieth century. (For an earlier date, see James Collins’ stress on Hume, Kant and Hegel in The Emergence of Philosophy of Religion, 1967.)
Today, philosophy of religion is one of the most vibrant areas of philosophy. Articles in philosophy of religion appear in virtually all the main philosophical journals, while some journals (such as the International Journal for Philosophy of ReligionReligious StudiesSophiaFaith and Philosophy, and others) are dedicated especially to philosophy of religion. Philosophy of religion is in evidence at institutional meetings of philosophers (such as the meetings of the American Philosophical Association and of the Royal Society of Philosophy). There are societies dedicated to the field such as the Society for Philosophy of Religion (USA) and the British Society for Philosophy of Religion and the field is supported by multiple centers such as the Center for Philosophy of Religion at the University of Notre Dame, the Rutgers Center for Philosophy of Religion, the Centre for the Philosophy of Religion at Glasgow University, The John Hick Centre for Philosophy of Religion at the University of Birmingham, and other sites (such as the University of Roehampton and Nottingham University). Oxford University Press published in 2009 The History of Western Philosophy of Religion in five volumes involving over 100 contributors (Oppy & Trakakis 2009), and the Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Religion in five volumes, with over 350 contributors from around the world, is scheduled for publication by 2021. What accounts for this vibrancy? Consider four possible reasons.
First: The religious nature of the world population. Most social research on religion supports the view that the majority of the world’s population is either part of a religion or influenced by religion (see the Pew Research Center online). To engage in philosophy of religion is therefore to engage in a subject that affects actual people, rather than only tangentially touching on matters of present social concern. Perhaps one of the reasons why philosophy of religion is often the first topic in textbook introductions to philosophy is that this is one way to propose to readers that philosophical study can impact what large numbers of people actually think about life and value. The role of philosophy of religion in engaging real life beliefs (and doubts) about religion is perhaps also evidenced by the current popularity of books for and against theism in the UK and USA.
One other aspect of religious populations that may motivate philosophy of religion is that philosophy is a tool that may be used when persons compare different religious traditions. Philosophy of religion can play an important role in helping persons understand and evaluate different religious traditions and their alternatives.
Second: Philosophy of religion as a field may be popular because of the overlapping interests found in both religious and philosophical traditions. Both religious and philosophical thinking raise many of the same, fascinating questions and possibilities about the nature of reality, the limits of reason, the meaning of life, and so on. Are there good reasons for believing in God? What is good and evil? What is the nature and scope of human knowledge? In Hinduism; A Contemporary Philosophical Investigation (2018), Shyam Ranganathan argues that in Asian thought philosophy and religion are almost inseparable such that interest in the one supports an interest in the other.
Third, studying the history of philosophy provides ample reasons to have some expertise in philosophy of religion. In the West, the majority of ancient, medieval, and modern philosophers philosophically reflected on matters of religious significance. Among these modern philosophers, it would be impossible to comprehensively engage their work without looking at their philosophical work on religious beliefs: René Descartes (1596–1650), Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), Anne Conway (1631–1679), Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677), Margaret Cavendish (1623–1673), Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716), John Locke (1632–1704), George Berkeley (1685–1753), David Hume (1711–1776), Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), and G.W.F. Hegel (1770–1831) (the list is partial). And in the twentieth century, one should make note of the important philosophical work by Continental philosophers on matters of religious significance: Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980), Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986), Albert Camus (1913–1960), Gabriel Marcel (1889–1973), Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929), Martin Buber (1878–1956), Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995), Simone Weil (1909–1943) and, more recently Jacques Derrida (1930–2004), Michel Foucault (1926–1984), and Luce Irigary (1930–). Evidence of philosophers taking religious matters seriously can also be found in cases of when thinkers who would not (normally) be classified as philosophers of religion have addressed religion, including A.N. Whitehead (1861–1947), Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), G.E. Moore (1873–1958), John Rawls (1921–2002), Bernard Williams (1929–2003), Hilary Putnam (1926–2016), Derek Parfit (1942–2017), Thomas Nagel (1937–), Jürgen Habermas (1929–), and others.
In Chinese and Indian philosophy there is an even greater challenge than in the West to distinguish important philosophical and religious sources of philosophy of religion. It would be difficult to classify Nagarjuna (150–250 CE) or Adi Shankara (788–820 CE) as exclusively philosophical or religious thinkers. Their work seems as equally important philosophically as it is religiously (see Ranganathan 2018).
Fourth, a comprehensive study of theology or religious studies also provides good reasons to have expertise in philosophy of religion. As just observed, Asian philosophy and religious thought are intertwined and so the questions engaged in philosophy of religion seem relevant: what is space and time? Are there many things or one reality? Might our empirically observable world be an illusion? Could the world be governed by Karma? Is reincarnation possible? In terms of the West, there is reason to think that even the sacred texts of the Abrahamic faith involve strong philosophical elements: In Judaism, Job is perhaps the most explicitly philosophical text in the Hebrew Bible. The wisdom tradition of each Abrahamic faith may reflect broader philosophical ways of thinking; the Christian New Testament seems to include or address Platonic themes (the Logos, the soul and body relationship). Much of Islamic thought includes critical reflection on Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, as well as independent philosophical work.
Let us now turn to the way philosophers have approached the meaning of religious beliefs. 
...
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4. The Supremacy of the Spiritual Powers

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The Supremacy of the Spiritual 

Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.—Zechariah 4:6.

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The Supremacy of the Spiritual Powers - Google Search
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5. The Papal Supremacy

Papal Supremacy


Papal supremacy is the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church that the Pope, by reason of his office as Vicar of Christ and as the visible foundation and source of unity, and as pastor of the entire Christian Church, has full, supreme, and universal power over the whole Church, a power which he can always exercise ... 


The Development of Papal Supremacy

M.N.: this is very good, informative article, read it in its entirety. 

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Pope Gregory I (c. 540–604) who established medieval themes in the church, in a painting by Carlo Saraceni, c. 1610, Rome.


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6. Other Related Searches

The moral authority of Pope and its nature

Church Powers as State Powers

Byzantinism and the concept of the Third Rome

The Christian Churches: conflicts and unities

The concepts and the practices of the Stately and the Divine in the Roman Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church

The Stately and the Divine in Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism

The Nature of Human Powers

The Nature of State Powers

State Powers as Oppression and Coercion

The Nature of Divine Powers

Divine Powers as the powers of Insight and Epiphanies

The Nature of Conflict between Human and Divine Powers 

The nature of Spirit, Hegel on evolution of Spirit 

Nature of Soul  

Spirit and Soul

Collective mind, collective spirit, and collective soul, and their roles in the regulation of social-political processes 

Group and Leader, Individual Spirit vs. Collective Spirit 

Institutions as Social Structure

Individual Institutional Leadership

Guiding Institutional Spirit

On the need to love, accept and incorporate your opponents as one of the cornerstones of Christian Teaching

Devil as the Fallen Angel

The Dichotomy and the Continuum of Sin and Virtue

Good and Evil

The Angelic and the Satanic

The Devil Worshiping and its place in the Religious Thought

The Unity Of the Angelic and the Satanic Powers

The legal perspectives on the Satanic rituals and Devil Worshiping 

Devil worshiping practices in the Middle East, Yasidis

The nature of human beliefs as opposed to Scientific Knowledge

Scientific Knowledge as the Belief System

Kuhn on the nature and development of the Paradigms

The ultimate unity of Belief  and Knowledge

Conclusions: Why the Spiritual and the Priestly powers have primacy over the Earthly powers and the powers of Force 

The Nature of the Divine 

Origins of Christianity, Judaism, other religions, and  Religion in general

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Islam spread through the Christian world via the bedroom
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To FBI: I would like to add two more names to the list of suspects in this conspiracy against the United States: Benjamin Netanyahu, and his chief of Mossad, Yossi Cohen. - M.N. - 11:38 AM 1/3/2020
The Wrath of Mal-Achi: Bu Mal-Achi kimi?! | English Standard Version: But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. | O-o-o-o-mph!!!
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Islam spread through the Christian world via the bedroom
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There are few transformations in world history more profound than the conversion of the peoples of the Middle East to Islam. Starting in the early Middle Ages, the process stretched across centuries and was influenced by factors as varied as conquest, diplomacy, conviction, self-interest and coercion. There is one factor, however, that is largely forgotten but which played a fundamental role in the emergence of a distinctively Islamic society: mixed unions between Muslims and non-Muslims.
For much of the early Islamic period, the mingling of Muslims and non-Muslims was largely predicated on a basic imbalance of power: Muslims formed an elite ruling minority, which tended to exploit the resources of the conquered peoples – reproductive and otherwise – to grow in size and put down roots within local populations. Seen in this light, forced conversion was far less a factor in long-term religious change than practices such as intermarriage and concubinage.
The rules governing religiously mixed families crystallised fairly early, at least on the Muslim side. The Quran allows Muslim men to marry up to four women, including ‘People of the Book’, that is, Jews and Christians. Muslim women, however, were not permitted to marry non-Muslim men and, judging from the historical evidence, this prohibition seems to have stuck. Underlying the injunction was the understanding that marriage was a form of female enslavement: if a woman was bound to her husband as a slave is to her master, she could not be subordinate to an infidel.

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Outside of marriage, the conquests of the seventh and eighth centuries saw massive numbers of slaves captured across North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. Female slaves of non-Muslim origin, at least, were often pressed into the sexual service of their Muslim masters, and many of these relationships produced children.
Since Muslim men were free to keep as many slaves as they wished, sex with Jewish and Christian women was considered licit, while sex with Zoroastrians and others outside the ‘People of the Book’ was technically forbidden. After all, they were regarded as pagans, lacking a valid divine scripture that was equivalent to the Torah or the Gospel. But since so many slaves in the early period came from these ‘forbidden’ communities, Muslim jurists developed convenient workarounds. Some writers of the ninth century, for example, argued that Zoroastrian women could be induced or even forced to convert, and thus become available for sex.
Whether issued via marriage or slavery, the children of religiously mixed unions were automatically considered Muslims. Sometimes Jewish or Christian men converted after already having started families: if their conversions occurred before their children attained the age of legal majority – seven or 10, depending on the school of Islamic law – they had to follow their fathers’ faith. If the conversions occurred after, the children were free to choose. Even as fathers and children changed religion, mothers could continue as Jews and Christians, as was their right under Sharia law.
Mixed marriage and concubinage allowed Muslims – who constituted a tiny percentage of the population at the start of Islamic history – to quickly integrate with their subjects, legitimising their rule over newly conquered territories, and helping them grow in number. It also ensured that non-Muslim religions would quickly disappear from family trees. Indeed, given the rules governing the religious identity of children, mixed kinship groups probably lasted no longer than a generation or two. It was precisely this prospect of disappearing that prompted non-Muslim leaders – Jewish rabbis, Christian bishops and Zoroastrian priests – to inveigh against mixed marriage and codify laws aimed at discouraging it. Because Muslims were members of the elite, who enjoyed greater access to economic resources than non-Muslims, their fertility rates were probably higher.
Of course, theory and reality did not always line up, and religiously mixed families sometimes flouted the rules set by jurists. One of the richest bodies of evidence for such families are the biographies of Christian martyrs from the early Islamic period, a little-known group who constitute the subject of my bookChristian Martyrs under Islam (2018). Many of these martyrs were executed for crimes such as apostasy and blasphemy, and not a small number of them came from religiously mixed unions.
A good example is Bacchus, a martyr killed in Palestine in 786 – about 150 years after the death of the Prophet Muhammad. Bacchus, whose biography was recorded in Greek, was born into a Christian family, but his father at some point converted to Islam, thereby changing his children’s status, too. This greatly distressed Bacchus’s mother, who prayed for her husband’s return, and in the meantime, seems to have exposed her Muslim children to Christian practices. Eventually, the father died, freeing Bacchus to become a Christian. He was then baptised and tonsured as a monk, enraging certain Muslim relatives who had him arrested and killed.
Similar examples come from Córdoba, the capital of Islamic Spain, where a group of 48 Christians were martyred between 850 and 859, and commemorated in a corpus of Latin texts. Several of the Córdoba martyrs were born into religiously mixed families, but with an interesting twist: a number of them lived publicly as Muslims but practised Christianity in secret. In most instances, this seems to have been done without the knowledge of their Muslim fathers, but in one unique case of two sisters, it allegedly occurred with the father’s consent. The idea that one would have a public legal identity as a Muslim but a private spiritual identity as a Christian produced a unique subculture of ‘crypto-Christianity’ in Córdoba. This seems to have spanned generations, fuelled by the tendency of some ‘crypto-Christians’ to seek out and marry others like them.
In the modern Middle East, intermarriage has become uncommon. One reason for this is the long-term success of Islamisation, such that there are simply fewer Jews and Christians around to marry. Another reason is that those Jewish and Christian communities that do exist today have survived partly by living in homogeneous environments without Muslims, or by establishing communal norms that strongly penalise marrying out. In contrast to today’s world, where the frontiers between communities can be sealed, the medieval Middle East was a world of surprisingly porous borders, especially when it came to the bedroom.
Christian Martyrs under Islam: Religious Violence and the Making of the Muslim World by Christian C Sahner is published via Princeton University Press.
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Key words:
Muslim, Jews, Christians, Interfaith relations, Qur’aninfo-iconByzantineinfo-icon, Monotheism, Sirainfo-icon, Ummayad, Ahl al-Kitabinfo-iconDhimmi, Ottoman, Sunnainfo-iconUmmainfo-icon, Constitution of Medina, history, al Azhar, Bayt al-Hikmainfo-icon, Safavid, Vatican, Roman Catholic Church, Aramaic, Coptic
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Table of Contents
  • Introduction
  • Muslims, Jews, and Christians: Relations and Interactions
  • The Foundational Period
  • The Early Centuries of Muslim History
  • The Medieval Period
  • The Modern Period
  • The Future
Introduction
Relations among Muslims, Jews, and Christians have been shaped not only by the theologies and beliefs of the three religions, but also, and often more strongly, by the historical circumstances in which they are found. As a result, history has become a foundation for religious understanding. In each historical phase, the definition of who was regarded as Muslim, Jewish, or Christian shifted, sometimes indicating only a religious identification, but more often indicating a particular so­cial, economic, or political group.
While the tendency to place linguistic behaviour, reli­gious identity, and cultural heritage under one, pure de­finition has existed for a very long time, our modern age with its ideology of nationalism is particularly prone to such a conflation. Ethnic identities have sometimes been conflated with religious identities by both outsiders and insiders, complicating the task of analyzing intergroup and intercommunal relations. For example, Muslims have often been equated with Arabs, effacing the existence of Christian and Jewish Arabs (i.e., members of those religions whose language is Arabic and who participate primarily in Arab culture), ignoring non-Arab Muslims who constitute the majority of Muslims in the world. In some instances, relations between Arabs and Israelis have been understood as Muslim-Jewish relations, ascribing aspects of Arab cul­ture to the religion of Islam and Israeli culture to Judaism. This is similar to what happened during the Crusades, during which Christian Arabs were often charged with being identical to Muslims by the invad­ing Europeans. While the cultures in which Islam pre­dominates do not necessarily make sharp distinctions between the religious and secular aspects of the cul­ture, such distinctions make the task of understanding the nature of relations among Muslims, Jews, and Christians easier, and therefore will be used as an ana­lytic tool in this chapter.
Another important tool for analyzing Muslim-­Jewish-Christian relations is the placement of ideas and behaviors in specific temporal and geographic con­texts. Visions of the past have had a strong influence on each of the religions, and none more strongly than Islam. Many Muslims have as keen an awareness of the events around the time of the Prophet as they do their own time. It is important for a practicing Muslim to know what the Prophet did in his relations with Jews and Christians as a means of shaping their own behav­ior toward them. The Qur’an and the sunna of the Prophet are key guides for a Muslim in dealing with Jews and Christians, as they are in all areas of conduct. This same historical consciousness is also present among Jews and Christians, as each group makes claims for positions and status in Islamic societies. What is important to remember is that the historical in­teractions of Muslims, Jews, and Christians have re­sulted in each constituency being shaped, affected, and transformed by the others, such that it is difficult to imagine how each religion would be as it is without the presence and influence of the others.
The Foundational Period
When Prophet Muhammad was born in 570 CE , Arabia was deeply involved in the political, religious, and eco­nomic rivalries between the Byzantine and Sassanian Persian empires. Arabia was an important trade route for goods coming from the Far East and Africa and was strategically important for each empire's defense. Arabs were recruited into the armies of both sides, pro­viding horse and camel cavalries, and each empire had maintained Arab client states as buffers and bases of operation. Around fifty years earlier, the last Jewish kingdom in southern Arabia allied with the Persians and was defeated and replaced by a Christian Monophysite army from Abyssinia allied with Byzantium. According to early Muslim historians, this army, led by a general named Abraha, tried to invade Mecca in the year of Muhammad’s birth because the pa­gan Arabs had defiled one of the Christian churches in southern Arabia. Abraha and his forces were, however, defeated. Because the Abyssinians used war elephants for their attempted invasion, many think that this is the elephant referred to in the surainfo-icon titled al-Fil in the Qur’an: 105.
There were numerous Christian settlements throughout the southern and eastern parts of Arabia, but few in the Hijazinfo-icon, the area of Muhammad’s birth. The Hijaz had numerous Jewish settlements, most of long standing, dating to at least the time of the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE. According to some schol­ars, the earliest Jewish presence in the Hijaz was at the time of Nabonidus, about 550 CE. The Jews in these settle­ments were merchants, farmers, vintners, smiths, and, in the desert, members of Bedouininfo-icon tribes. The most im­portant Jewish-dominated city was Yathrib, known later as Medina, which featured prominently in Muhammad’s career. The Jews of the Hijaz seem to have been mostly independent, but we find evidence of their being allied with both Byzantium and the Persians. Some made the claim to be “kings” of the Hijaz, most probably meaning tax collectors for the Persians, and, for a variety of reasons, more Jews were loyal to Persian interests against those of the Byzantine Empire. Jews, as well as Christians, seem to have been engaged in attempting to convert the Arabian popula­tion to their religious and political views, often with some success. The loyalties of the Jews and Christians to one or the other of the two empires meant that choosing either Judaism or Christianity meant also choosing to ally with a superpower interested in domi­nating Arabia.
Arab sources report that, at the time of Muhammad’s birth, some Meccans had abandoned Arabian polythe­ism and had chosen monotheism. In Arabic these indi­viduals were referred to as hanif in a Jewish, Christian, or nonsectarian form. From Qur’anic and other evi­dence, it is clear that Meccans were conversant with the general principles of Judaism and Christianity and knew many details of worship, practice, and belief. During Muhammad’s formative and early adult years, the character of his birth city, Mecca, was very cos­mopolitan.
When Muhammad had his first revelation in 610 CE, his wife Khadija sought the advice of her cousin, Waraqa ibn Nawfal, a hanif, learned in Jewish and Christian scriptures. Muhammad eventually declared that he was a continuation of the prophetic traditions of Judaism and Christianity, claiming that he had been foretold in Jewish and Christian scripture. A central doctrine of Islam places Muhammad at the end of a chain of prophets from God, starting with Adam and embracing the major prophetic figures of Judaism and Christianity, including Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. Denial of this central idea by Jews and Christians is said to be a result of the corruption of the sacred texts, either inadvertently or on purpose. This disparity of perspective underlies much of what Muslims believe about their Jewish and Christian forebears, and condi­tions Islamic triumphalist views about the validity of Islam against the partial falsity of the other two tradi­tions.
The Qur’an and the Sira (the traditional biography of Prophet Muhammad) present ambivalent attitudes toward Jews and Christians, reflecting the varied ex­perience of Muhammad and the early Muslim commu­nity with Jews and Christians in Arabia. Christians are said to be nearest to Muslims in “love” (Qur’an 5:82), and yet Muslims are not to take Jews or Christians as “close allies or leaders” (Qur’an 5:51). The Qur’an often makes a distinction between the “Children of Israel” (i.e., Jews mentioned in the Bible) and members of the Jewish tribes in Arabia during Muhammad’s time. This distinction is also present in the Sira and other histo­ries. Some Jews are represented as hostile to Muhammad and his mission, while others become allies with him. The Qur’anic revelations that Muhammad received in regard to Christians and Jews seemed to correspond to the degree of acceptance that he was awarded by these two communities. Initially, Muhammad sought their acceptance, but when the leaders of the Christian and Jewish communities re­jected him as a false prophet, he received revelations that commanded him to distance himself from them. In the “Constitution of Medina,” which Muhammad nego­tiated with the Ansarinfo-icon, the Muhajjirun, and the Jews of Medina, Jews were included in the Umma, the com­munity, and were allowed freedom of association and religion in return for the payment of an annual tax. This agreement and the subsequent treaties negotiated by Muhammad with the Jews of Tayma, and other cities in the Hijaz, establish the precedent of symboli­cally including “People of Scripture” (Ahl al-Kitab) in the Umma. As the armies of conquest encountered communities of Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians, the model of Muhammad’s accommodating behavior ex­tended the original notion to incorporate all these re­cipients of God’s revelation as Ahl al-Dhimma, or Dhimmi, protected peoples. There were fewer Christians in the Hijaz than Jews, so Christians are featured less prominently in the political history of the es­tablishment of the Muslim community. Nevertheless, Muhammad had frequent contact with Christians from the southern areas of Najran and Ethiopia, disputing with them as he had with the Jews over matters of religious belief and practice. The traditions surrounding the sending of the Muslims to Ethiopia represent the ruler as seeing little difference between Islam and Christianity. The Qur’anic presentation of the life of Jesus and Christian belief shows that Muhammad and the early Muslims understood eastern Mediterranean Christian belief and practice, particularly if one ac­knowledges the importance of the “infancy” Gospelsinfo-icon in Christian thought at the time. The Qur’an, however, de­nies the deity of Christ.
The death of Muhammad and the subsequent expan­sion of Islam out of Arabia brought about a definitive break with the Jewish and Christian Arab communities, so that subsequent relations were built on Jewish and Christian interactions with Muslims who knew the Prophet’s actions only as idealized history. During the first Islamic century, the period of the most rapid ex­pansion of Islam, social and religious structures were so fluid that it is hard to make generalisations. Jews and Christians were theoretically expelled from Arabia, or, at least, the Hijaz, but later evidence shows that Jews and Christians remained for centuries afterward. As late as the eighteenth century, for example, Jewish Bedouins roamed northwestern Arabia, and Christian Arabs were found in numerous settlements throughout Arabia.
The Early Centuries of Muslim History
The period of the first caliphs and the subsequent era of the Umayyadsinfo-icon was a time in which Muslims, Jews, and Christians negotiated the new power arrangements. The parameters of Dhimmi status were developed, and both head and land taxes were paid to the Muslim caliphs through representatives and not individually. For the Jews, the Resh Geluta or Exilarch was from the Rabbinic branch of Judaism, it became the dominant form, generally displacing other groups. Also, because Muslims expanded to include most of the world’s Jews in their polity, Rabbinic Judaism was able to develop its institutions within the context of the Islamic Umma. For the newly forming Islamic state, the loyalty of the Exilarch, and, by extension, the Jews, added legitimacy to Muslim claims to legitimate rule over its various non-Muslim populations. The interaction between Jews and Muslims thus produced profound effects on both Judaism and Islam.
Christians acted as physicians, architects, clerks, and advisors in the courts of the early caliphs. Greek and Coptic were the administrative languages for sev­eral centuries before Arabic became established enough to be the general medium of public discourse. Even the occasional uprisings against Muslim rule, as the Coptic uprisings of the early ninth century and the Jewish revolts against the Umayyads a century earlier, were local, over specific grievances, and not anti­-Islamic as such. In fact, the Jewish revolt against the Umayyads, driven, it seems, by messianic visions, was sympathetic to early Nature of the Divine - Google Search
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In traditional Christian theology, the concept and nature of divinity always has its source ultimately from God himself. It's the state or quality of being divine, and the term can denote Godly nature or character. ... Even angels in the Psalms are considered divine or elohim, as spirit beings, in God's form.
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An ultimate unity in knowledge is one to which a multiplicity of knowledge coherently relates, and beyond which there is no further knowledge. Thus, God is the ultimate unity in theo-logy, the Ultimate Premise is the ultimate unity in philosophy, and Energy is the ultimate unity in science.
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Ancient origins

Philosophical interest in religion may be said to have originated in the West with the ancient Greeks. Many of the enduring questions in the philosophy of religion were first addressed by them, and the claims and controversies they developed served as a framework for subsequent philosophizing for more than 1,500 years. Plato (427–347 bce), who developed the metaphysical theory of Forms (abstract entities corresponding to the properties of particular objects), was also one of the first thinkers to consider the idea of creation and to attempt to prove the existence of GodPlato’s student Aristotle (384–322 bce) developed his own metaphysical theory of the first, or unmoved, mover of the universe, which many of his interpreters have identified with God. Aristotle’s speculations began a tradition that later came to be known as natural theology—the attempt to provide a rational demonstration of the existence of God based on features of the natural world. The Stoicism of the Hellenistic Age (300 bce–300 ce) was characterized by philosophical naturalism, including the idea of natural law (a system of right or justice thought to be inherent in nature); meanwhile, thinkers such as Titus Lucretius Carus in the 1st century bce and Sextus Empiricus in the 3rd century ce taught a variety of skeptical doctrines. Although not an original work of philosophy, De natura deorum (44 bce; “The Nature of the Gods”), by the Roman statesman and scholar Marcus Tullius Cicero, is an invaluable source of information on ancient ideas about religion and the philosophical controversies they engendered.
In the Hellenistic Age philosophy was considered not so much a set of theoretical reflections on issues of abiding human interest but a way of addressing how a person should conduct his life in the face of corruption and death. It was natural, therefore, that the various positions of Hellenistic philosophers should both rival and offer support to religion. A vivid vignette of the nature of these overlapping and competing philosophies is to be found in the account of the Apostle Paul’s address at the Areopagitica in Athens, as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. Confronted by Stoics, Epicureans, and no doubt others, Paul attempted to identify their “unknown God” with the God and Father of Jesus Christ.
By the 3rd century, Christian thinkers had begun to adopt the ideas of Plato and of Neoplatonists such as Plotinus. The most influential of these figures, St. Augustine of Hippo (354–430), elucidated the doctrine of God in terms of Plato’s Forms. For Augustine, God, like the Forms, was eternal, incorruptible, and necessary. Yet Augustine also saw God as an agent of supreme power and the creator of the universe out of nothing. Augustine’s alteration of Platonic thought shows that such thinkers did not take over Greek ideas uncritically; indeed, they may be seen as using Greek ideas to elucidate and defend scriptural teaching against pagan attack. They borrowed key Greek terms, such as person (somapersona), nature (physisnatura), and substance (ousiasubstantia), in an effort to clarify their own doctrines.
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Medieval traditions

The Platonism of Augustine exercised lasting influence on Christian theologians and was given renewed expression in the writings of the theologian and archbishop Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109), whose ontological argument has remained at the centre of philosophical speculation about God’s existence (see below Epistemological issues).
In the 12th and 13th centuries the influence of Plato was gradually replaced by that of Aristotle, whose philosophical importance was most clearly demonstrated in the works of St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–74), the foremost philosopher of Scholasticism. Aquinas’s grand achievement was to wed Aristotelian methods and ideas with the Augustinian tradition of viewing philosophy as an ally rather than an opponent of religion, thus providing a new philosophical direction for Christian theology.
Aquinas, however, was only the first among many equals in philosophical reflection on the nature of religion in this period. The rediscovery of the philosophical writings of Aristotle by Islamic scholars ushered in a period of intense philosophical activity, not only in the schools of Islam but also among Jewish and Christian thinkers. From the late 9th to the early 14th century, philosophers as diverse as al-FārābīAvicennaal-GhazālīMoses Maimonides, and John Duns Scotus explored reason and revelation, creation and time, and the nature of divine and human action.
In the late Middle Ages the cooperation between philosophy and theology broke down. Later medieval theologians such as William of Ockham moved away from the Platonic and Aristotelian discourse that had dominated both philosophy and theology. Ockham and other nominalists of the period rejected the claim that the properties displayed by objects (e.g., redness and roundness) are universals that exist independently of the objects themselves. In addition, a strong theological voluntarism shifted the focus of theological discourse away from God’s intellect and the rationality of his creation and toward the absolute power and arbitrariness of God’s will.
Philosophers and theologians of the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation looked upon Scholasticism as a highly sophisticated but needlessly speculative welding of pagan philosophy and Christian theology that tended to obscure authentic Christian themes. Renaissance thinkers rejected the medieval tradition in favour of the pristine sources of Western philosophy in Classical civilization. The Reformers emphasized both the supremacy of Scripture and the relative inability of the unaided human mind to reason about God in a reliable fashion. But although both movements were critical of medieval thought, neither was free of its influence.
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'Christendom no longer exists,' pope says, explaining need to revamp Curia

Pope Francis on the end of the Christendom - Google Search
Sat, 04 Jan 2020 13:10:58 -0500
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Dec 21, 2019 - Pope Francis speaks during his annual audience to give Christmas greetings ... "Rigidity, which is born of the fear of change, ends up erecting ...
Nov 29, 2018 - Pope Francis turned his thoughts at Mass on Thursday to the end of the ... society that professes Christianity but lives like a pagan shall end.” ...
Oct 13, 2016 - Pope Francis at this morning's audience with a pilgrimage of Catholics ... Noting that he would go to Lund, Sweden, at the end of the month to ...
Dec 21, 2019 - Pope Francis greets cardinals on the occasion of his Christmas ... VATICAN CITY (RNS) — As the decade comes to an endPope Francis focused on change — of all sorts — during his Dec. ... “Christendom no longer exists!
Jun 20, 2019 - Unfortunately, the agreement has not ended the arrest and ... It is possible that Pope Francis believes that Christianity can purify the Marxist ...
Theology of Pope Francis focuses on what was most noted during his pontificate, including ..... On his visit to the United States, Francis decried: "A Christianity which 'does' little in practice, while incessantly ... This was seen by Jason Horowitz as the end of the "reform of the reform" movement that sought to overturn the ...
Sep 24, 2017 - Pope Francis has created a more inviting Catholic Church, but has he ... As Francis remodels the church for the modern world, he might end up ... of Christendom with emperors, popes demanded reverent obedience from all ...
Pope Francis represents many firsts for the Catholic Church, including the first pope from the Americas, the first from the Jesuit tradition, and the first to take the ...
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Pope Francis equates violence against women to profaning God ... VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis and the U.N. chief issued a joint year-end message ...
Dec 21, 2019 - Pope Francis warned that "rigidity" in living out the Christian faith is creating ... and misunderstanding in a world where Christianity is increasing ...
Sep 12, 2019 - Pope Francis does not aspire to fulfill his role as a theologian but as a pastor. ... classical Christianity or neo-Christianity dominates, and reactionary, ... comes from the Global South, from the end of the world; and that this lack ...
Feb 18, 2016 - Pope Francis questions US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's Christianity over his call to build a border wall with Mexico. ... Pope Francis made the comments at the end of a six-day trip to Mexico. "A person ...
supremacy of the spiritual powers - Google Search
Sat, 04 Jan 2020 12:58:53 -0500
Michael_Novakhov shared this story .

supremacy of the spiritual powers - Google Search
Sat, 04 Jan 2020 12:57:07 -0500
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Sat, 04 Jan 2020 12:50:28 -0500
Michael_Novakhov shared this story .

The Supremacy of the Spiritual
Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.—Zechariah 4:6.
1. The Lord, through the prophet Zechariah, addressed this message, under remarkable circumstances, to Zerubbabel, the prince and leader of the Jews, under whom the first company of the exiles, numbering about fifty thousand, returned from Babylon. On reaching Jerusalem, he with his fellow-exiles promptly set about building the second Temple. They laid the foundations with great rejoicing, in high hope of speedily completing the work. But seeing the smallness of their resources and the vastness of the undertaking, the large numbers who opposed and the fewness of those who helped, Zerubbabel and his people became discouraged, and ceased from their labours. For full fifteen years nothing was done. To arouse the leader and to stir up the people to resume and press forward the undertaking, the Lord by Zechariah addressed them, telling them that, though they were poor and weak in comparison with the builders of Solomons Temple, yet God would have them know that the work was not wholly theirs, but was emphatically His, and must therefore be accomplished. For their encouragement He promised that His favour and the aid of His Spirit would be given them, furnishing in ways of His own all that was needed to complete the building. This He taught them by the symbolic vision of the golden candlestick and two olive trees, which is recorded in the context preceding the text, and of which the text is the explanation. The prophet saw a candlestick of gold, having seven lamps on the tops of seven branches, all connected with the central stem and to the bowl above by a golden pipe. On the right side of the candlestick was a living olive tree, and on the left side a similar olive tree. These trees poured from themselves a plentiful and unfailing supply of oil into the central bowl of the candlestick. Then the prophet asked what the vision meant. The reply given was the words of the text—“This is the word of the Lord unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.”

2. Zechariah had shared in the prevailing despondency of his time. He did not see what good could be accomplished by men of so little pith as Zerubbabel and the rest. He had taken their measure, and he despaired of them as the root or beginning of any noble undertaking or any fruitful work. Such men can never shine as lights in the world. Such feeble, incompetent persons could only bring disgrace on religion. In the vision of the candlestick it was made clear to Zechariahs mind that he had been wrong, not perhaps in his judgment of his contemporaries, but in forgetting one contemporary of whom he had made no account. “Not by might, nor by power”—so far he was right, there was neither might nor power—“but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.” He was reminded of the source of the Churchs light, and it was revealed to him that the oil which fed this light—the Spirit, that is, which produces right and God-glorifying results in men—flows from an inexhaustible source beyond the light itself; so that we can never measure the light by looking at the wick, or at the amount of oil each bowl can contain, but only by looking at the source whence the oil is supplied. With immense significance the oil was seen to be derived from two 
living
 olive trees—obviously to teach that, though the bowls might be very small, the supply out of which they could be refilled was inexhaustibly large, a living fountain of oil.

Here the angel bears witness—that the power of God alone is sufficient to preserve the Church, and there is no need of other helps. For he sets the Spirit of God in opposition to all earthly aids; and thus he proves that God borrows no help for the preservation of His Church, because He abounds in all blessings to enrich it. Father, by the word Spirit we know is meant His power, as though He had said, “God designs to ascribe to Himself alone the safety of His Church; and though the Church may need many things there is no reason why it should turn its eyes here and there, or seek this or that help from men; for all abundance of blessings may be supplied by God alone.”

When therefore we now see things in a despairing condition, let this vision come to our minds—that God is sufficiently able by His own power to help us, when there is no aid from any other; for His Spirit will be to us for lamps, for pourers, and for olive trees, so that experience will at length show that we have been preserved in a wonderful manner by His hand alone.1 [Note: Calvin, Commentaries on the Twelve Minor Prophets, v. 109.]

I
1. The text teaches the central thought of religion—the supremacy of the spiritual over the material. There is no dispensing with the material, but the spiritual is supreme through the material. Here, in a single vision, is the relationship of life to organization, the relationship of the spiritual to the material; the material candlestick necessary to support the light, but the supply of the living flame coming, as it must come, from something which has life and continuance in itself, from the living olive trees.

The supremacy of the spiritual over the material—no truth is more difficult really to grasp as a practical belief than this. The world is so real, its forces are so powerful; not only the natural forces which we capture and tame and bend to our uses, the power of air and water and gravitation, the power of steam and electricity and explosives, but those other powers, the power of social position, the power of money, the power of combination, the power of custom, even the power of fact. We are so controlled by forces all around us that we are apt to forget that as Christians we walk by faith, not by sight. Religion consists in emancipation from the deadening slavery of things seen. It teaches us that behind this outward and visible framework there lives and moves a great spiritual Power with whom we may be united, that this universe which we see is but the clothing of God Himself, that the soul is a more wonderful thing than the body, that eating and drinking are not the chief concerns of the citizens of Gods Kingdom, but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost, that the mightiest machine in the world is not to be compared with the humblest flower that grows, that Christianity is above riches, that love is stronger than death. In a word, religion teaches us the supremacy of the spiritual over the material.

2. There is a remarkable fascination about mere might and power. The tramp of armed men makes the city thrill with pride; the display of wealth and resources makes the nation glory in its enterprise and industrial capacity. Some men never tire of looking at that mighty proof of power, the locomotive, as it tears its way at express speed from one end of the land to the other, bearing its heavy freight as lightly as if it were a plaything of the nursery. How our eyes follow the mighty ocean liner as it draws itself quickly out of sight, and is soon lost to view over the horizon! How imposing as an illustration of power is a great fleet of war ships! Lines upon lines of mighty vessels; a huge collection of engines of destruction; a great display of human resource and ingenuity; a splendid proof of a nations might and power upon the seas. All are attracted by these things. The dullest, the most self-centred, those with the smallest grasp of things secular and material, will be drawn out somewhat to the world of wonder and awe by the attractiveness of might and power.

Yet not a day passes but we see what a fitful and feeble thing at the best is human power. We cannot open a newspaper but we notice what veritable weaklings are mans mightiest works in the hands of the Creator. The wind rises in hurricane, and our strong creations are dashed in pieces like cockleshells. What of the ruined emblems of mans mightiest works in the hands of the Creator. The wind rises in hurricane, and our strong creations are dashed in pieces like cockleshells. What of the ruined emblems of mans power to be found in ancient Greece and Rome—stupendous works like the Pyramids and Sphinx of Egypt, the temples of Assyria and India? Where is the might of these mighty empires to-day? Once they held sway over the known world. Once Egypt and Assyria made every neighbouring nation tremble at the mention of their name. Once upon a time the eagles of Rome flew from the farthest east to the farthest west. But where is their might to-day? Who would have prophesied the time when their power should be shattered, and all that was left of them should be the ruins of temple and palace, fit theme for poet to sing about and moralist to discourse upon?

3. It is “not by 
might
.” That is a word of very comprehensive meaning. Sometimes it denotes an army, and is significant of brute force, of coercion, of sheer repression. In all Christian work force is no remedy. And sometimes it denotes wealth, and is significant of material substance, of buying power, bribing power, the carnal energies by which men are illicitly enticed and enslaved. Not by these means can the Kingdom be advanced. And sometimes it denotes valour, and is significant of the large energies of heart and will. And it is not by the unconfirmed courage of men that the work of the Lord is to be done. “Nor by 
power
.” This is surely suggestive of “capacity.” It is a word which is elsewhere translated “lizard,” probably as signifying stealth. It is also translated “chameleon,” denoting adaptability, smartness, sharpness, the “quick-change” type of character. It was to this particular class that our Lord referred when He said: “I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent.”

(1) The worship of 
physical force
 is anything but an obsolete idolatry. People of all classes in society crowd in admiration round the man with the strong arm. A war is the unfailing specific for all the worlds diseases. Is anything wrong anywhere? War will set it right. It is well for us, however, to remember that the man who declared that Providence was on the side of the big battalions died defeated, a prisoner and an exile. Think of the equipment of the early Church in the Upper Room. How it would have excited the ridicule of military men of the world! This unarmed, undrilled company going to lead an attack upon the powers of darkness! But which would really be the more absurd—the sneer of the soldier, or the faith of the Apostles?

In the course of a letter to a friend in Glasgow, a professor of the University of Copenhagen writes: “Indeed the war is terrible, but we understand that the mortal struggle cannot finish before the Germans have learned that physical force, as Professor T. A. Fleming says, is in the long run impotent unless backed by those spiritual forces which spring only from loyalty to the everlasting difference between right and wrong.”1 [Note: Glasgow Herald, Dec. 31, 1914.]

There are two opposite ways of trying to promote the triumph of good over evil. One way is that followed by the best men, from Buddha in India and Jesus in Palestine, down to the Non-Resisters of our own time. It is, to seek to see the truth of things clearly, to speak it out fearlessly, and to endeavour to act up to it, leaving it to influence others as the rain and sunshine act upon the plants. The influence of men who live in that way spreads from land to land and from age to age. But there is another plan, much more often tried, which consists in making up ones mind what 
other people
 should do, and then using physical violence if necessary to make them do it. People who act like that—Ahab, Attila, Cæsar, Napoleon, and the Governments and militarists of to-day—influence people as long as they can reach them, and even longer; but the effect that lives after them and spreads furthest, is a bad one, inflaming mens hearts with anger, with patriotism, and with malice. These two lines of conduct are contrary the one to the other, for you cannot persuade a man while he thinks you wish to hit or coerce him.1 [Note: A. Maude, The Life of Tolstoy: Later Years, 36.]

(2) Another modern symbol of power is 
money
. The worship of wealth was never such a popular faith as it is to-day. And the power of money in Christian work is not to be despised. All honour to the rich men who have given the Saviour their wealth because they had first given Him their hearts; who have remembered their duties as stewards responsible to an Almighty Master; who have spent their money in relieving the wants of the least of the Lords brethren, instead of wasting it on personal luxury, or hoarding it in useless avarice. Yet, after all, money is a broken reed in Christian work. Money may buy place and authority in religious organizations, but it cannot buy spiritual power.

If a thing was according to the need of man and the will of God, it had to be done, and Paton laughed at the idea that considerations of money should stand in the way of its accomplishment. “We must never lose the battle for lack of powder and shot,” he would say. But in itself money was nothing to him. It was kept in its proper place as means and not end. “Money I care not for,” he writes to Mr. Henry Ollard, “save as all influence and all agencies it can bring are used unreservedly and sacredly for the winning of the world to God and holiness.”2 [Note: John Brown Paton (1914), 507.]

We live in a world where visible and tangible things exist, to which, on the immaterial side, there are spiritual correspondences. One of these things is money. The higher order of people are apt to say there are better things than money; that there is the wealth of aspiration, of noble purpose, of generous and liberal sympathies, of good health and right feeling. And this is deeply true; and if one were to choose from financial riches on the one side, and spiritual riches on the other, he who would choose the former rather than the latter would be a madman rather than a rational human being. All the same, however, there is no truth in a sort of vague, traditional feeling that material poverty is necessarily synonymous with spiritual wealth, or that material wealth is synonymous with spiritual poverty. That this not unfrequently is true does not in the least argue that it is necessarily so, or that it is an ideal state of affairs. Still, when wealth is gained by a man giving himself over, body and soul, to material accumulation; when it is gained by grinding down the wages of employés, by the oppression and selfishness of all competitive industry, why, then, to amass financial wealth is at the fearful price of spiritual development.1 [Note: Lilian Whiting, The World Beautiful, 172.]

(3) Another thing much worshipped in these days is 
physical courage
. But a man may be physically brave yet morally a coward—as bold as a lion in one part of his nature and timid as a hare in others. A man may even lead a regiment into battle in face of the most fearful fire as stiff and unflinching as if he were made of steel; and yet when one talks to him one may find him timid in his opinions, always asking what others think and afraid to take any firm moral stand. To face danger boldly, to keep cool in trying circumstances may be the result of possessing a frame so truly strong that no nerve is exposed or sensitive. Physical courage, the mere meeting of pain or peril without quivering, by no means implies a similar endowment of moral courage.

The Greek virtue of courage, confined almost entirely to valour in battle, has but little correspondence to anything that is supremely important in modern life. The kind of fortitude which is required for valour in battle is, even in its most inward aspect, somewhat different from that fortitude which sustains the modern man of science, politician, scholar, or philanthropist. Hence this side of ethical study is one which each generation of writers requires almost to reconsider for itself. However instructive the great work of Aristotle may still remain on this point (and there is perhaps nothing more instructive in the whole range of ethical literature), it is yet not quite directly applicable to the conditions of modern life.2 [Note: J. S. Mackenzie, A Manual of Ethics, 353.]

We are not entitled to say that the Aristotelian ideal of fortitude has been either more or less 
pure
 than that which has been operative in Christendom; but there is no doubt that the latter has become far more comprehensive, and it has become so in correspondence with an enhanced fulness in our conception of the ends of living. Faculties, dispositions, occupations, persons, of which a Greek citizen would have taken no account, or taken account only to despise, are now recognized as having their place in the realization of the powers of the human soul, in the due evolution of the spiritual from the animal man. It is in consequence of this recognition that the will to endure even unto death for a worthy end has come to find worthy ends where the Greek saw nothing but ugliness and meanness, and to express itself in obscure labours of love as well as in the splendid heroism at which a world might wonder.1 [Note: T. H. Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, 280.]

II
1. Physical force, then, will not do the work that has to be done. Money will not do it. Courage will not do it. But if these are away, what is there left? If we tell men of the world that our desire cannot be accomplished by these things, they will reply, “Then you simply cannot do it at all.” And they are right. We cannot. But God can, and God will. “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.” Over against our weakness is set the almighty power of Jehovah. If we ask, “Who is sufficient for these things?” we have the answer, “Our sufficiency is of God.” We speak the truth when we say that without Christ we can do nothing; but not the whole truth until we add, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” Even earthen vessels may hold a treasure. Even in weakness strength may be made perfect.

It is by the operation of the Holy Spirit that the Church of Christ, and the Christian world in obedience to her authority, has condemned infanticide, slavery, cruelty, injustice, intemperance, impurity, and all the long catalogue of social evils in the world. The men and women who have fought these evils in Christs name have one and all professed that it was not they who won the victory of themselves—not they, but a power within them, stronger than themselves, inspiring and ene
The Development of Papal Supremacy
Sat, 04 Jan 2020 10:04:52 -0500
Michael_Novakhov shared this story .

Learning Objective

  • Explain the development of papal supremacy

Key Points

  • During the early history of Christianity, Rome became an increasingly important center of the faith, which gave the bishop of Rome (the pope) more power over the entire church, thereby ushering in the era of papal supremacy.
  • When Catholicism became the official religion of the Roman Empire in 380, the power of the pope increased, although he was still subordinate to the emperor.
  • After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the pope served as a source of authority and continuity; however, for several centuries afterward the Eastern Roman Emperor still maintained authority over the church.
  • From the late-6th to the late-8th century there was a turning of the papacy to the West and an escape from subordination to the authority of the Byzantine emperors of Constantinople.
  • When Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne as Roman Emperor in 800, he established the precedent that, in Western Europe, no man would be emperor without being crowned by a pope.
  • After a conflict known as the Investiture Controversy, as well as from the launching of the Crusades, the papacy increased its power in relation to the secular rulers of Europe.
  • Throughout the Middle Ages, popes struggled with monarchs over power.

Terms

Papal supremacy

The doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church that the pope, by reason of his office as Vicar of Christ and as pastor of the entire Christian Church, has full, supreme, and universal power over the whole church.

Investiture Controversy

The most significant conflict between church and state in medieval Europe, in which a series of popes challenged the authority of European monarchies.

Arianism

A Christian sect in late antiquity that asserts that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who was created by God the Father at a point in time, is distinct from the Father, and is therefore subordinate to the Father.

Byzantine Papacy

A period of Byzantine domination of the papacy from 537 to 752, when popes required the approval of the Byzantine Emperor for episcopal consecration.
Papal supremacy is the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church that the pope, by reason of his office as Vicar of Christ and as pastor of the entire Christian Church, has full, supreme, and universal power over the whole church, a power which he can always exercise unhindered—that, in brief, “the Pope enjoys, by divine institution, supreme, full, immediate, and universal power in the care of souls.”
The doctrine had the most significance in the relationship between the church and the temporal state, in matters such as ecclesiastic privileges, the actions of monarchs, and even successions. The creation of the term “papal supremacy” dates back to the 6th century, at the time of the fall of the Western Roman Empire, which was the beginning of the rise of the bishops of Rome to not just the position religious authority, but the power to be the ultimate ruler of the kingdoms within the Christian community (Christendom), which it has since retained.
In the early Christian era, Rome and a few other cities had claims on the leadership of the worldwide church. During the 1st century of the church (c. 30–130), the Roman capital became recognized as a Christian center of exceptional importance. In the late 2nd century CE, there were more manifestations of Roman authority over other churches. In 189, assertion of the primacy of the Church of Rome may be indicated in Irenaeus’s Against Heresies: “With [the Church of Rome], because of its superior origin, all the churches must agree … and it is in her that the faithful everywhere have maintained the apostolic tradition.” In 195 CE, Pope Victor I, in what is seen as an exercise of Roman authority over other churches, excommunicated the Quartodecimans for observing Easter on the 14th of Nisan, the date of the Jewish Passover. Celebration of Easter on a Sunday, as insisted on by the pope, is the system that has prevailed.
When Constantine became emperor of the Western Roman Empire in 312, he attributed his victory to the Christian God. Many soldiers in his army were Christians, and his army was his base of power. With Licinius (Eastern Roman emperor), he issued the Edict of Milan, which mandated toleration of all religions in the empire. Decisions made at the Council of Nicea (325) about the divinity of Christ led to a schism; the new religion, Arianism, flourished outside the Roman Empire. Partially to distinguish themselves from Arians, Catholic devotion to Mary became more prominent. This led to further schisms.
In 380, the Edict of Thessalonica declared Nicene Christianity, as opposed to Arianism, to be the state religion of the empire, with the name “Catholic Christians” reserved for those who accepted that faith. While the civil power in the Eastern Roman Empire controlled the church, and the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, the capital, wielded much power, in the Western Roman Empire the Bishops of Rome were able to consolidate the influence and power they already possessed. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, barbarian tribes were converted to Arian Christianity or Catholicism; Clovis I, king of the Franks, was the first important barbarian ruler to convert to Catholicism rather than Arianism, allying himself with the papacy. Other tribes, such as the Visigoths, later abandoned Arianism in favor of Catholicism.
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the pope served as a source of authority and continuity. Pope Gregory I (c. 540–604) administered the church with strict reform. Gregory was from an ancient senatorial family, and worked with the stern judgement and discipline typical of ancient Roman rule. Theologically, he represents the shift from the classical to the medieval outlook; his popular writings are full of dramatic miracles, potent relics, demons, angels, ghosts, and the approaching end of the world.
The Byzantine Papacy was a period of Byzantine domination of the papacy from 537 to 752, when popes required the approval of the Byzantine Emperor for episcopal consecration, and many popes were chosen from the apocrisiarii (liaisons from the pope to the emperor) or the inhabitants of Byzantine Greece, Byzantine Syria, or Byzantine Sicily. Justinian I conquered the Italian peninsula in the Gothic War (535–554) and appointed the next three popes, a practice that would be continued by his successors and later be delegated to the Exarchate of Ravenna. With the exception of Pope Martin I, no pope during this period questioned the authority of the Byzantine monarch to confirm the election of the bishop of Rome before consecration could occur.
From the late-6th to the late-8th century there was a turning of the papacy to the West and an escape from subordination to the authority of the Byzantine emperors of Constantinople. This phase has sometimes incorrectly been credited to Pope Gregory I (who reigned from 590 to 604 CE), who, like his predecessors, represented to the people of the Roman world a church that was still identified with the empire. Unlike some of those predecessors, Gregory was compelled to face the collapse of imperial authority in northern Italy. As the leading civil official of the empire in Rome, he was compelled to take over the civil administration of the cities and negotiate for the protection of Rome itself with the Lombard invaders threatening it. Another part of this phase occurred in the 8th century, after the rise of the new religion of Islam had weakened the Byzantine Empire and the Lombards had renewed their pressure in Italy. The popes finally sought support from the Frankish rulers of the West and received from the Frankish king Pepin The Short the first part of the Italian territories later known as the Papal States. With Pope Leo III’s coronation of Charlemagne, first of the Carolingian emperors, the papacy also gained the emperor’s protection; this action established the precedent that, in Western Europe, no man would be emperor without being crowned by a pope.
The second great phase in the process of papal supremacy’s rise to prominence extended from the mid-11th to the mid-13th century. It was distinguished, first, by Gregory VII’s bold attack after 1075 on the traditional practices whereby the emperor had controlled appointments to the higher church offices. This attack spawned the protracted civil and ecclesiastical strife in Germany and Italy known as the Investiture Controversy. At issue was who, the pope or the monarchs, had the authority to appoint (invest) local church officials such as bishops of cities and abbots of monasteries. The conflict ended in 1122, when Emperor Henry V and Pope Calixtus II agreed on the Concordat of Worms, which differentiated between the royal and spiritual powers and gave the emperors a limited role in selecting bishops. The outcome seemed mostly a victory for the pope and his claim that he was God’s chief representative in the world. However, the emperor did retain considerable power over the Church.
Papal supremacy was also increased by Urban II’s launching in 1095 of the Crusades, which, in an attempt to liberate the Holy Land from Muslim domination, marshaled under papal leadership the aggressive energies of the European nobility. Both these efforts, although ultimately unsuccessful, greatly enhanced papal prestige in the 12th and 13th centuries. Such powerful popes as Alexander III (r. 1159–81), Innocent III (r. 1198–1216), Gregory IX (r. 1227–41), and Innocent IV (r. 1243–54) wielded a primacy over the church that attempted to vindicate a jurisdictional supremacy over emperors and kings in temporal and spiritual affairs. Throughout the rest of the Middle Ages, popes struggled with monarchs over power.
A Dubious Official Story Masks the True Motives Behind the Soleimani Assassination
Fri, 03 Jan 2020 23:57:55 -0500
Michael_Novakhov shared this story from MintPress News.

BAGHDAD — The recent assassination of Iran’s most popular and well-known general, Qassem Soleimani, has stoked fears that a new war pitting the U.S. and its allies against Iran could soon become a devastating and deadly reality. The airstrike that killed Soleimani, conducted by the U.S. in Baghdad, was conducted without the authorization or even prior notification of the U.S. Congress and without the approval of Iraq’s government or military, making the attack flagrantly illegal on multiple levels. The attack also killed Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who was an advisor to Soleimani.
“The assassination of an Iraqi military commander who holds an official position is considered aggression on Iraq … and the liquidation of leading Iraqi figures or those from a brotherly country on Iraqi soil is a massive breach of sovereignty,” Iraq’s Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi said of the attack, adding that the assassination was “a dangerous escalation that will light the fuse of a destructive war in Iraq, the region, and the world.”
Notably, the assassination of Soleimani comes just a few months after an alleged Israeli attempt to kill the Iranian general failed and amid a well-documented and decades-long push by U.S. neoconservatives and Israeli officials for a U.S.-led war with Iran.




While the illegality of the assassination has been noted by many since news of the attack first spread, less attention has been given to the oddities of the Trump administration’s official reasoning and justification for the attack that has brought with it renewed tension to the Middle East. Per administration officials, the attack was aimed at “deterring future Iranian attack plans” as well as a response to a rocket attack at the K1 military base near Kirkuk, Iraq on December 27. That attack killed one U.S. military contractor and lightly wounded several U.S. soldiers and Iraqi military personnel.
Yet, the details of that attack — even per mainstream U.S. sources that often support U.S. militarism — are incredibly murky, and the name of the American killed and the identity of the company he or she was working for have not been released. Some media reports have referred to the contractor as a “Pentagon contractor” while others have used the term “civilian contractor,” leading some to speculate that the contractor might have been a private mercenary in the employ of the Pentagon.
In addition, no group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack and media reports have noted that the attack could just as easily have been conducted by remnants of the Islamic State as by the Iraqi Shia militia (Kataib Hezbollah) that was officially blamed by U.S. officials. An official investigation into the incident, being conducted by the Iraqi military, has yet to be concluded. Notably, the U.S. previously claimed it had compelling evidence to blame Iran for attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman last June, only to have staunch U.S. allies in the region claim that alleged U.S. evidence of Iranian involvement was insufficient.
Furthermore, the U.S. had already responded to the death of the contractor, launching five different attacks in Iraq and Syria in late December, killing an estimated 25 and motivating Iraqi protesters to storm the U.S. embassy in Baghdad as many of those killed by those airstrikes were Iraqis. The subsequent airstrike that killed Soleimani seems like overkill for the official justification of avenging the death of one American.
Given the above, the question then becomes — is the Trump administration basing its assassination of a top Iranian general in Iraqi sovereign territory in clear violation of international law on the death of a single individual that the government will not even name? Even when five strikes were already launched to allegedly avenge that same individual?
Risking a regional war to allegedly avenge the death of an individual who was already avenged raises questions, especially for a President standing for re-election. The United States claims that the assassination was also intended to act as a “deterrent” against potential, future Iranian attacks, yet it is hard to justify the murder of a top general of a foreign power on foreign soil as a preemptive and preventative measure as opposed to one that would invite escalation. This is particularly true given that those that have most often sought an escalation in tensions between Iran and the U.S. and its Middle Eastern allies do not live in Tehran and Baghdad, but instead in Washington D.C. and Tel Aviv.
Much has been written by MintPress and other outlets about the long-standing efforts by prominent neoconservatives in the U.S. as well as the Israel lobby and Israeli government to prod the U.S. into a major war with Iran. Neoconservative efforts at regime change in Iran have been decades in the making and the current presidential administration has several notable Iran hawks in prominent positions. Furthermore, both President Trump and his foremost ally in the Middle East, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, are facing domestic efforts aimed at removing them from office and are facing fresh elections, giving both leaders incentive to ratchet up tensions abroad to distract from their own domestic conflicts.
Iran SoleimaniA boy carries a portrait of Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Tehran, Iran, Jan. 3, 2020. Iran has vowed “harsh retaliation” for the assassination of Soleimani. Vahid Salemi | AP
Yet, the current pressure facing both Trump and Netanyahu in their respective policies is only the latest factor that has pushed both administrations into a renewed and increasingly desperate push to satisfy the decades-old effort of Iran hawks in both countries to stoke war and “reshape” the Middle East in favor of the U.S.-Israel axis.
Given the recent assassination of Soleimani, however, it is essential to point out that the U.S. airstrike targeting the Quds Force leader came just a few months after Israel tried but failed to assassinate the general. Indeed, the most recent of these failed attempts was slated to occur early last October and, per The Times of Israel,
The assassins planned to dig under a religious site associated with Soleimani’s father and set off an explosion under the building when he was inside, and then try to deflect blame so that it ignited an interfaction[al] religious war. The assassins prepared some 500 kilograms to use for the bomb.”
Israel’s government did not comment on the alleged plot, though it is notable that the plan to dig below a Muslim holy site and plant a bomb has been attempted by Israeli extremist groups in the past, groups which have a major foothold in Israel’s current government.
This alleged attempt by Israel to kill Soleimani came after claims that, in 2018, the Trump administration had given Israel a “green light” to assassinate the general. The report claimed that “there is an American-Israeli agreement” that Soleimani is a “threat to the two countries’ interests in the region” and was published by the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida, which is widely considered to be “an Israeli platform for conveying messages to other countries in the Middle East,” according to Israeli media.
Israel may have planned to assassinate the general as a means of provoking war with Iran, which Netanyahu was actively promoting last February. At the time, Newsweek reported that “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has expressed his desire to go to war with Iran, and said he was meeting with dozens of foreign envoys, including those from the Arab world, in order to push the initiative forward.” Yet, with Israel’s closest ally having done the deed, Israel has kept relatively quiet about the incident, though Iranian officials have claimed that the assassination of Soleimani was jointly conducted by the U.S. and Israel.
Though the official yet dubious justifications for the strike have been given, the most likely result of the death of Soleimani is that it will “light the fuse of war,” as recently stated by Iraq’s Prime Minister. Whether Soleimani’s death alone will be enough to push the U.S., Iran and their respective allies to war remains to be seen, but what is certain is that the Trump administration seems content to continue to escalate the situation in pursuit of both long-standing ambitions of career war hawks as well as a release for quickly building domestic pressure ahead of the 2020 election.
Feature photo | A photo shows the alleged site of a US airstrike that killed Iranian general Qasem Soleimani near Baghdad International Airport in Iraq, January 03, 2020. Photo | Iraqi Security Forces handout
Whitney Webb is a MintPress News journalist based in Chile. She has contributed to several independent media outlets including Global Research, EcoWatch, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has made several radio and television appearances and is the 2019 winner of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism.
ernst uhrlau - Google Search
Fri, 03 Jan 2020 20:11:58 -0500
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Reinhard Gehlen
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Reinhard Gehlen 1976 Image: Imago
Best connoisseur of the USSR? Spymaster? Reinhard Gehlen was neither. But because many believed it, the officer made a great career.
4 min.
In the spring of 2011, the "Independent Commission for Historians to Research the History of the Federal Intelligence Service 1945–1968 (UHK)" was established. It was given free access to the files of the BND and the Federal Chancellery as the superior authority. Intensive research enabled the first results to be published in 2016. The Gehlen biography is the preliminary climax.
It is unusual for an intelligence agency to open its archives, when disguise determines the service ethic. In the case of the BND, Ernst Uhrlau, President from 2005 to 2011, carried out the research contract to clarify the involvement of the personnel in National Socialism. This has been in vogue since the Federal Foreign Office and the Justice, Finance and Labor ministries were examined for their past. It was known that an unusually large number of responsible parties from the Third Reich gathered in the BND. The previous institution, the “Gehlen Organization”, appeared to a foreign observer in 1955 as a “ghostly Nazi shop in Pullach”. Shielded from the public, the BND, founded in 1956, employed SS personnel and Gestapo officials on a large scale in addition to numerous Wehrmacht officers until the late 1960s. The history of the Federal Intelligence Service highlights the appearance of the young Federal Republic, where old and new, friend and foe could hardly be distinguished in the picture of the occupation. The reconstruction of the country and the reconstruction of the western alliance come together here.
From the beginning, the service was tied to American supremacy. The “Gehlen Organization” was initially subordinate to the US Army and has been controlled by the CIA since 1949 After the BND was founded, control was retained - less noticeable, but no less efficient. The Americans knew who was doing everything there, and they saw that intelligence was not uncommon.
Rolf-Dieter Müller has taken up the challenge of researching the biography of the founding president. He is part of the UHK leadership group and, as an honorary professor and scientific director of the military history center of the Bundeswehr, is well-known for examining Gehlen's life story. It is the story of a soldier who has never been able or unwilling to break away from his character in the High Command of the Army.
Born in 1902, Gehlen joined the General Staff in 1937, took part in planning the attack on the Soviet Union and in 1942 became head of the Foreign Armies East (FHO) department, which was responsible for enemy reconnaissance. Müller portrays him as a pale figure, very intelligent, highly adaptable, a sneak, but at the same time a man of inner independence. Gehlen knew about the crimes of the annihilation war, but was always convinced of the honesty of the Wehrmacht. He was not an anti-Semite, but never took sides with the Jews. He knew the plans for the assassination, but stayed at a distance. FHO's enemy reconnaissance was not very efficient, and it could not have been with its technical and personnel options. The performance of the Red Army, especially the amount of supplies for the armored weapon, has always been underestimated. The predictions before the Battle of Stalingrad remained inadequate. When Gehlen realized that the war was lost, he made sure to keep the most important FHO documents about the USSR with him. In 1945 he had them transported to Bavaria in 50 steel boxes and buried. He sought contact with the Americans as soon as possible and recommended them as the supposedly best connoisseur of the USSR. There was hardly anyone else, judges Müller, who has considered the problem of "connection use" as consistently as Gehlen. He saw that after the Soviet occupation of East and Central Germany, the Americans would come into conflict with Stalin and need information about the Red Army. With the material of his 50 boxes, he was able to prove that he alone had the information
This history in the life of the BND President is the real story of Reinhard Gehlen. He remained the general staff with educational experience he was. Since the fall of 1945, he has provided the Americans with evidence and strategic analysis of the Soviet armed forces. In 1947 he came to Pullach and commissioned the US Army to set up the “Gehlen Organization” as an information service. He drew comrades from the Army High Command and the Waffen SS to himself and made sure that the American military approved it. They did so in order to be able to use Gehlen's "organization" as an auxiliary force in the Cold War even after the founding of the Federal Republic .
With skill and perseverance, Gehlen achieved his goal of bringing the intelligence service under the care of the federal government. From early on he sought contact with the head of the chancellery, Hans Globke, and through him also gained access to Konrad Adenauer. However, he was unable to report directly to the Chancellor. In need of validity, as he was, he had hoped to become a senior official in the government apparatus to become the news chief immediately behind the leadership, just as it had been in the General Staff of the Army at the time. But it got stuck in getting news. As FHO had not recognized the Russian plans against Stalingrad, Pullach was surprised by the popular uprising in the GDR on June 17, 1953. When the BND came into being in 1956 a false assessment of de-Stalinization in the Soviet Union followed on foot. The secret service only learned of the planned construction of the wall two days before, on August 11, 1961. In November 1961, Gehlen's close staff and Protegé, the former SS Obersturmführer
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Papst Franziskus rechnet ab | Politik
Das Oberhaupt der Katholiken geißelt in seiner Weihnachtsansprache Macht- und Karrierestreben der vatikanischen Kurie. Die Bürokratie des Vatikans hat aus Sicht des Pontifex mit vielen Problemen...
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Dec 27, 2019 - The day before the Vatican issued the pope's statement on Sodano, the Associated Press reported that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the ...
Dec 21, 2019 - Pope Francis, right, greets Cardinal Angelo Sodano at the Vatican, ... U.S., published a statement making allegations against some 32 Vatican ...
Message of Cardinal Angelo Sodano, in the Pope's name, on the occasion of the 27th Meeting for Friendship Among Peoples held in Rimini (August 21, 2006)
Dec 21, 2019 - Pope Francis greets Cardinal Angelo Sodano on Saturday. ... He struck a similar note only once in this year's speech, when warning against ...
Dec 21, 2019 - Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of the former Secretary of State and Dean of the College of Cardinals, Angelo Sodano, and with a ...
Missing: statement ‎| Must include: statement
Dec 21, 2019 - After accepting the resignation of 92-year-old Cardinal Angelo Sodano as dean of the College of Cardinals, Pope Francis changed the norms ...
Missing: statement ‎| Must include: statement
Dec 26, 2019 - McCarrick sent Pope John Paul II $90,000 from 2001 to 2005. ... In statements, Vatican clerics who received checks described them as customary gifts .... Cardinal Angelo Sodano, who until 2006 served as secretary of state, ...
In his address as Dean of the College of Cardinals to Pope Benedict XVI at Easter 2010, Sodano told him: "The people of God are with you and do not allow themselves to be impressed by the petty gossip of the moment, by the trials that sometimes assail the community of believers." Victims of clerical sex abuse ...
Created cardinal‎: ‎28 June 1991; by ‎Pope John ...
The last bull: Cardinal Sodano goes out
Fri, 03 Jan 2020 18:42:47 -0500
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Cardinal Angelo Sodano, now dean emeritus of the College of Cardinals, is assisted with his coat as he leaves Pope Francis' annual audience to give Christmas greetings to members of the Roman Curia at the Vatican Dec. 21, 2019. At left is Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state. The pope has accepted the resignation of Cardinal Sodano as the dean of the College of Cardinals. The pope changed the norms to specify that the dean would be elected to a five-year term, renewable once, instead of being elected for life or until choosing to resign. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)
A scene in "The Two Popes," the charming new Netflix movie, has Anthony Hopkins as a brooding, gentle Benedict XVI hearing the unprompted confession of Cardinal Jorge Borgoglio, played by Jonathan Pryce in an adroit balance of modesty and intellectual force. The Argentinian has gone to Rome seeking to retire at 75. Benedict rebuffs that. The tender plot distorts the reality of ecclesiastical ambition. Bergoglio reveals his agonizing struggle in the Dirty War as a young provincial, trying to protect a divided Jesuit community from the sadistic regime. Then, Benedict begins his confession, referencing "Fr. [Marcial] Maciel" – the notorious pedophile and Legion of Christ founder. At this point, director Fernando Meirelles cuts off the words: facial expressions convey Benedict's remorse, speeding the plot past clergy sexual abuse.
In real life, a menacing shadow to both popes belonged to Cardinal Angelo Sodano, a native of Piedmont in northern Italy. Sodano was the great protector of Maciel and other notorious predators. He was also a loyalist of Chile's dictator, Augusto Pinochet, during the 1980s as papal nuncio in Santiago. Sodano helped Maciel gain support of affluent Chileans in establishing Legion schools there. In 1991, Pope John Paul II, impressed with Sodano's anti-Communist credentials, made him Vatican Secretary of State. For nearly two decades he advanced the careers of most of the men who became Chilean bishops under John Paul and Benedict, along with many Vatican diplomats and officials in the Roman Curia who owed him allegiance.
Sodano, 92, was the church's most powerful cardinal of the last generation. On December 21, Pope Francis "accepted" his resignation as dean of the College of Cardinals, in which post he practiced Machiavellian politics on a breathtaking scale. Sodano swallowed his fate in a photo-op with a smiling Francis and one of those ornamentally-phrased Vatican documents when a big man gets sacked. The pope's motu proprio (on his own initiative) performs a verbal bow to Sodano, "whom I thank warmly for the high service rendered to the College of Cardinals in the nearly fifteen years of his mandate." The document stipulates a five-year term for future deans, renewable if a pope so desires.
News headlines were unkind. "Cardinal tainted by abuse scandal steps down as dean," trumpeted Crux. In 1998, Sodano blocked Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger from prosecuting Maciel after eight Legionaries filed a canonical grievance in his Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith tribunal. Maciel was dismissed from ministry in 2005 after Ratzinger became Benedict XVI. 
On Sodano, the Irish Times was harsher: "Cardinal (92) who 'sought deal' to bury sex abuse documents resigns." According to the veteran religion reporter Patsy McGarry, when the former president of Ireland, Mary McAleese, traveled to Rome in 2003, she met with Sodano who tried "to secure, through her, agreement that Ireland would not attempt to access church documents in Commissions of Inquiry surrounding the handling of allegations of clerical sex abuse." McAleese, who spurned the request, called it "one of the most devastating moments in my presidency."
Like a bull stampeding moral values, Sodano used his authority to protect the guilty, block reformers, and assist schemers trying to cash in on American dioceses selling church property, in part to satisfy legal claims in the abuse cases. This was done by his nephew, Andrea Sodano, a building engineer in Rome, in a buy-low, sell-high scheme targeting parishes in financially troubled dioceses. Cardinal Sodano promoted Andrea's partnership with the flashy Raffaello Follieri at a 2004 launch party in New York. The business crashed in 2009 when its CEO Follieri went to federal prison on fraud and money-laundering charges. He sent $365,000 via wires to Andrea Sodano in Rome for alleged structural engineering studies, according to documents provided to this writer under a Freedom of Information Act request. Beyond a subpoena's reach in Rome, Andrea refused to give testimony. Theodore Cacciopi, the FBI agent who built the case, called Andrea "an unindicted co-conspirator."
Nepotism comes from the Italian, nipote, meaning nephew.
At the time of McAleese's trip, Cardinal Sodano was also working hand-in-glove with Msgr. Stanislaw Dziwisz, John Paul's closest aide, to block the canonical process against Maciel, while neurological disease took its toll on the pope.
"Was it mere coincidence that on the day of Sodano's exit, the Legion of Christ, whose money he took and interests he long championed, announced an internal investigation of abuse with the order?"
As reported in NCR in 2010, Legion priests gave lavish financial gifts to Sodano and Dziwisz, the gatekeeper for attendance at private Masses in the apostolic palace. (After John Paul died, Benedict made Dziwisz a cardinal; he has since retired in Poland.) The funds channeled to those and other curial officials were, as one priest said, "an elegant way of giving a bribe."
The Legion gave Dziwisz $50,000 to secure a Mexican benefactor and his family seats at a private papal Mass. Dziwisz, who rarely speaks with reporters, refused my interview requests at the time; so did Sodano. The cardinal received separate gifts of $10,000 and $5,000 from the Legion, according to two of its former priests, who likened those gifts to the tip of an iceberg. In late 2004, five months before John Paul died, Ratzinger bolted from Sodano's control and ordered the investigation of Maciel that would culminate in his dismissal after the cardinal became pope. Even then, Sodano made sure the language of the papal decree singled out the Legion of Christ for praise without a word of consolation to victims.
On Dec. 26, the Washington Post reported that Sodano was among the prelates who received a check from former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, one of the many payments the disgraced cardinal sent to high-ranking church leaders responsible for managing clerics or handling sex-abuse allegations. Sodano "received $19,000 from 2002 to 2016, the records show," the Post stated.
"The Curia is a brotherhood," Sodano told the New York Times in 1992. In his 16 years as Secretary of State, the Vatican equivalent of a prime minister, Sodano kept an iron grip on the Roman Curia, or papal bureaucracy. He promoted the careers of many Vatican diplomats who maintained their loyalty.
In 1995 John Paul was silent on the accusations of sexual abuse by former seminarians against Cardinal Hans Hermann Groër who "retired" as archbishop of Vienna, provoking a huge scandal. On a 1998 visit to Rome, Groër's successor, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn and several Austrian bishops told Ratzinger they were "morally certain" of Groër's guilt. Sodano wanted silence, no questioning of the brotherhood which included cardinal-archbishops. At the time, he prevailed. Schöborn, who has met frequently with abuse victims, told reporters several years later that Sodano "literally said — to my face — 'Victims? That is what you say!' "
Benedict shared Sodano's notion of a brotherhood; he disliked seeing grievances made public. He summoned Schönborn to Rome for a 2010 meeting to smooth things over, prompting the NCR headline: "Kiss-and-make-up session won't end debate on Sodano."
The tide was turning against Sodano. Survivors in many countries, linked by the internet, intensified demands for justice that emboldened newsrooms, prosecutors, legislators and the courts. Today, bishops and cardinals face legal pressure they never remotely imagined, particularly in Mexico and Chile.
Benedict's failure to resolve the abuse crisis extended to his faltering control of the Curia. When the Vatileaks scandal exploded in 2012, and the discovery that his own butler had leaked sensitive papal documents, Benedict realized he lacked the power to engineer reform, and announced his historic retirement.
Ironically, Sodano, as Dean of the College of Cardinals, played a key role at the 2013 conclave to the benefit of Cardinal Bergoglio, who had finished second to Ratzinger in the voting in 2005. Though 84 by then, and well beyond the voting age of 75, Sodano controlled the agenda of the cardinals' meetings over several days before they entered the Sistine Chapel for the secret voting.
As Robert Mickens wrote in a 2018 piece for La Croix, "Vatican Godfather," Sodano worked quietly to push cardinal electors behind Bergoglio.
"For some three decades he was the man in the Vatican no one dared to cross," wrote Mickens. "Even the popes he served were careful to gain his consent because of the loyalty he commanded from many key people at all levels of the Roman Curia."
Pope Francis greets Cardinal Angelo Sodano, now dean emeritus of the College of Cardinals, during his annual audience to give Christmas greetings to members of the Roman Curia at the Vatican Dec. 21, 2019. The pope has accepted the resignation of Cardinal Sodano as dean of the College of Cardinals. The pope changed the norms to specify that the dean would be elected to a five-year term, renewable once, instead of being elected for life or until choosing to resign. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)
Perhaps that base support is why it took so long for a reform pope, engineering canon law changes to undercut de facto immunity of the brotherhood, to finally sack Sodano. Events in Chile were surely a factor. In 2015, Francis scoffed at the widespread criticism in Chile of Bishop Juan de la Cruz Barros, whom he appointed prelate of Osorno, despite Barros' well-known role as an inner circle protegeé of Fernando Karadima, a pedophile suspended from the priesthood after a Vatican investigation. Many years before, Sodano as nuncio socialized with Karadima, pastor of an affluent parish that Pinochet officials attended. Sodano vouched for Barros as bishop. On the day of his installation in Osorno, demonstrators cried, "Barros, get out of the city!" People inside the church as seen on TV reports were unruly, yelling protests from the pews. Sodano's idea of a high ecclesial brotherhood was being hammered in Chile.
After meeting with three of Karadima's victims in Rome, including Juan Carlos Cruz, a national figure in in Chile for his activism and a gripping memoir, Francis changed his mind, ordered an investigation by Archbishop Charles Scicluna, the canon lawyer who built the case against Maciel. Scicluna's voluminous report caused Francis to make an even sharper turn in his view of the Chilean church's swamp of scandals. The nation's 31 bishops tendered their resignations, something unheard of in modern church history. He has accepted nine to date, included Barros' notice.
Chile's scandal-mired bishops were a blow to Sodano's credibility, given his role in choosing many of them.
Angelo Sodano personified a fortress-church mentality eroding before our eyes. The day before the Vatican issued the pope's statement on Sodano, the Associated Press reported that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the office in which Carinal Ratzinger in 2001 consolidated responsibility for hearings to defrock pedophiles, had processed 6,000 cases. "At one point Francis lamented that it had a backlog of 2,000 cases," reported Nicole Winfield. "But the CDF now must cope with the globalization of the scandal that in 2001 seemed to be largely confined to the English-speaking world."
Was it mere coincidence that on the day of Sodano's exit, the Legion of Christ, whose money he took and interests he long championed, announced an internal investigation of abuse with the order? What impeccable timing. The Legion stated that 33 priests and 71 seminarians had sexually abused minors over the last 80 years. Maciel had 60 victims, said the Legion, seeking to cast itself in a self-reforming light.
In his native Mexico, Maciel was a celebrity with deep support among the nation's bishops until his reputation tanked. He died in 2010, at which point his three children by two women surfaced in the news. As Mexican abuse survivors in Mexico attacked the Legion report, Monterrey Archbishop Rogelio Cabrera called it "late, incomplete, and under a cloud of suspicion." Cabrera blamed Vatican authorities for defending Maciel over the years in "a very large criminal cover-up" and a "criminal silence."
And so with the legacy of His Eminence, Cardinal Angelo Sodano.
[Jason Berry's books include Render unto Rome: The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church.]
Trump-Russia Loan Documents - Google Search
Fri, 03 Jan 2020 16:03:11 -0500
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Forensic News Article 12.3 | Deutsche Bank
Fri, 03 Jan 2020 15:55:06 -0500
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The Russian state bank VTB underwrote loans to Donald Trump via Deutsche Bank. Over the course of Trump's relationship with DB, an inordinate amount of questionable, mismanaged & risky loans approved by Deutsche Bank to Trump required his Personal Guarantee which, over time, also lost its value.
Trump’s team at DB sought out creative ways to circumvent the varied protections DB’s
compliance team institutionally implemented, & whether by happenstance or
by design Trump’s loans became underwritten by Russia’s own VTB.
 I informed the FBI of this in 2019.
Val Broeksmit
For Val, much has changed over the past half-decade. As the frontman and founder in the indie  band Bikini Robot Army, Val never imagined spending his days combing through highly complex financial records of one of the world's largest banks. But after his father's passing, Val's life took a radical turn. Val's search for justice and answers, fueled by personal vengeance against the bank, motivated to him to dig through a cache of over 21,500 emails and other documents from his father's accounts. Inside, Val found thousands of emails between his father, Chief Risk Optimization Officer of Deutsche Bank, and other executives, along with attachments containing sensitive documents
about Deutsche Bank’s financial operations.
  Now, Val has decided to go on the record with
Forensic News
 to share exclusive details about what he told federal investigators. He says that a recent
 New York Times
Times
completely  fucked me over.
" Multiple characterizations of Val as a fame-seeking opioid-user who allegedly sought cash for the documents shocked and surprised him, given that he and Enrich collaborated for nearly five years deciphering Deutsche Bank's web. "
Shocked and surprised doesn't even begin to describe it. It felt like the rug was pulled out from under you and you fall, and fall, and  fall,"
Val said. Enrich stands by his reporting, saying, "
 I think the article portrayed Val accurately and fairly. I
know and feel badly that he didn’t like it, and I hope that he
has a more positive reaction to his
and his father’s prominent roles in my forthcoming book.
" An FBI source called that
 New York Times
 article "
not totally accurate,
" though the person declined to comment further.
Forensic News
 met with Val over a period of several months and obtained some of Val's documents and testimony.
Possible Trump-Russia Loan Documents Crash World Stage
Fri, 03 Jan 2020 15:33:19 -0500
Michael_Novakhov shared this story from PolitiZoom.

We were presumptuous in believing that Trump needed to distract us from “just” the impeachment proceedings unraveling at a rapid pace. No, Trump has what are perhaps even bigger issues, the indefensible ones, the ones we’ve been discussing for six months, the disclosure of financial documents, to also worry about.
I got the report off Twitter, and was so blown away that I had to both read the entire report myself, and also check with Mark Sumner over at our alma mater mothership, Daily Kos, to confirm that the reporting is reliable, real, and sufficiently wary, because earthshattering claims require earthshattering evidence.

According to the report in Forensic News, a Russian-backed bank called “VTB,” underwrote Trump’s Deutsche Bank loans in a highly complex transactional scheme that likely violates the 2014 sanctions against Russia and Russian-banking. It likely also represents a clear case of money laundering, if real. The FBI knows and is investigating. The report appeared in Forensic News, dated December 30, 2019 – days ago, and today the server crashed. However, the report is documented here:
Or here, if and when the server gets back-up.
Mark’s article on Daily Kos, here, examines both the wag the dog theory, and some of the financial elements.
My trust with my readers is everything, so I will tell you this. I do not have the financial literacy to really grasp or describe the essence of what Trump actually did, or how clear the legal case against him might be, if all the documents prove reliable.
What I can say is this: It is clear, that at a time when the globe was in a recession, and Trump was so toxic that no American bank would touch him, Trump was getting “unheard of” loans from Deutsche Bank. If the documentation is verified, the “unheard of” loans were issued because they were underwritten by VTB, a Russian bank subject to sanctions, and – obviously – under Putin’s control. Such an action only makes sense if the entire point was to launder money out of Russia.
The Russian bank essentially guaranteed Trump’s loans, according to the report, which is heavily documented, it is “forensic.” Forensic News is sure “enough” to go forward.
Of course, the biggest question is the reliability of the evidence. I have little doubt that some kind of economic relationship is real. We have always known that Trump had Russian financial backing, hell they told us that much. The question is the legality, the conflict of interest, and again, the reliability of the documentation. Reliability would have to be of the type that it could withstand the most contested criminal case in history. As Mark describes it:
The documents supposedly originated with the son of a former Deutsche Bank official who committed suicide, which is very much the kind of connection that raises concerns about the authenticity of the information. This only highlights the importance of efforts by Congress to gain access to information on these loans. The last appeals court ruling in the case instructed Deutsche Bank to turn over the information, but the Supreme Court stepped in to block the subpoena and hear the case.
So the concern runs both ways. There is concern about the reliability of the evidence, it may not be reliable, or at least sufficiently reliable, and – of course – if the evidence is reliable, how this country can even go forward with a completely conflicted president, one embroiled in an impeachment controversy, and who might’ve just started a war.
More is coming. Of that, we can be certain.
Oh, and we can also be certain that no major news media will run with this story until it can be confirmed with at least one of the following: the FBI discloses its findings, a major media organization does its own examination of the original documents, or a claim from Deutsche Bank itself. Any mainstream media organization that reports on this could incur near limitless liability were it to be wrong. They could bankrupt themselves.
They cannot do “if.”
I can.
****
Peace, y’all
Jason
<a href="mailto:jmiciak@yahoo.com">jmiciak@yahoo.com</a> and on Twitter @MiciakZoom
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Ilhan Omar Implies Trump Ordered Soleimani Killing as 'Distraction' from Impeachment
Fri, 03 Jan 2020 15:23:50 -0500
Michael_Novakhov shared this story from National Review.

Representative Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) implied on Thursday that President Trump may have ordered the killing of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani to distract the public from impeachment proceedings.
“So what if Trump wants war, knows this leads to war and needs the distraction?” Omar wrote on Twitter. “Real question is, will those with congressional authority step in and stop him? I know I will.”
Analysts from several news outlets echoed the assumption. CNN analyst Karen Finney wrote that “today’s air strike feels like attempt to create a distraction from impeachment and build support for Trump,” while MSNBC contributor Joyce Alene said it was “highly possible then timing of tonight’s attack was meant as a distraction.”
President Trump ordered an airstrike on a convoy near Baghdad International Airport carrying Soleimani on Thursday evening. As head of the Quds Force, a U.S.-designated terror group, Soleimani led intelligence and counterespionage efforts for the IRGC. Also killed in the strike was Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, an Iraqi militia leader who led a days-long siege against the U.S. embassy in Baghdad.
The U.S. State Department issued a warning to American citizens to leave Iraq in the wake of the attack.
“Due to heightened tensions in Iraq and the region, we urge U.S. citizens to depart Iraq immediately,” the agency wrote on Twitter. “Due to Iranian-backed militia attacks at the U.S. Embassy compound, all consular operations are suspended. U.S. citizens should not approach the Embassy.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on CNN on Friday that Trump had ordered the strike due to an “intelligence-based assessment” warning of an “imminent attack” by Iranian forces in the region.
NOW WATCH: 'U.S. Kills Iranian Quds Force Leader Qassim Soleimani in Baghdad Airstrike'
U.S. Kills Iranian Quds Force Leader Qassim Soleimani in Baghdad Airstrike
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Pelosi asks House Judiciary Committee to Proceed with Articles of Impeachment Against Trump
00:41
Fox Business host says we cannot impeach President Trump after he killed Qassim Suleimani
Fri, 03 Jan 2020 15:22:43 -0500
Michael_Novakhov shared this story from Salon.com.

The massive uproar over President Donald Trump’s decision to take out Iranian military leader Qassim Suleimani, and fears that Iran may retaliate in a series of escalations that could lead to all-out war, has pushed the impeachment proceedings out of the headlines for the time being.
But Fox Business host Stuart Varney went even further — according to him, the strike on Suleimani means that the impeachment shouldn’t go forward in the first place.
“Where does it leave impeachment?” asked Varney. “Are we now going to try to impeach and remove from office the commander-in-chief who’s just taken out one of the world’s leading terrorists? That’s quite a question, I suggest.”
You can watch more below via Twitter
Trump has found someone who is equally clueless about US history – Alternet.org
Fri, 03 Jan 2020 15:20:44 -0500
Michael_Novakhov shared this story from Alternet.org.

This week, former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich — who is serving a 14-year sentence in federal prison on corruption charges — has been mercilessly ridiculed on social media for an op-ed slamming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats for impeaching President Donald Trump. In his op-ed (which was published by the right-wing website Newsmax), Blagojevich even went so far as to compare Trump to President Abraham Lincoln and argued that Pelosi would have impeached Lincoln had she been around in the 19th Century. Journalist Dana Milbank, in his Washington Post column, humorously weighs in on Blagojevich’s op-ed and asserts that in Blagojevich, Trump might have found someone who is equally clueless about U.S. history.
Although Blagojevich is a Democrat, he has been a strident defender of Trump — first with the Russia investigation and the Mueller Report, now with the Ukraine scandal and Trump’s impeachment. And Milbank notes that Blagojevich has an ulterior motive for being so pro-Trump.
“Blagojevich has been angling for Trump to commute his sentence, a possibility Trump has floated,” Milbank explains. “Blagojevich’s wife has made appeals on Fox News, and Blagojevich recently appeared shirtless, Putin-style, in the prison yard. But this may not be exactly the endorsement Trump wants: the most extravagantly corrupt politician of recent years defending the man who is giving him a run for that title?”

Milbank interviewed historian David Greenberg (who teaches at Rutgers University) for his column, and Greenberg described Blagojevich’s description of historic events in his Newsmax op-ed as “sophomoric” and “nonsensical.”
“Blagojevich concludes that Democrats would have impeached Lincoln for emancipating the slaves, noting that ‘the Democrats of that day opposed it,’” Milbank observes. “Thus does Blago’s time machine skip 150 years of history in which the parties switched places on race.
Blagojevich, Milbank notes, “speculates that Lincoln would face impeachment for shenanigans at political conventions, ignoring the crucial distinction: he didn’t use his official powers for personal gain, as Blagojevich and Trump both did.”
Milbank concludes his column by joking that maybe Trump should give Blagojevich a commutation.
“Come to think of it, Trump should commute Blago’s sentence, and soon,” Milbank jokes. “With four more years in prison, there’s no telling how much more damage the former governor could do to U.S. history.”
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