Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13

U.S. Seeks to Relaunch Mideast Peace Talks
Dec 29th, 2009
AFP
Categories: Today's Headlines

The United States is drafting two letters of guarantee for Israel and the Palestinians to serve as a basis for the relaunch of stalled Middle East peace talks, Arab and Western diplomats in Cairo said.

"US special envoy George Mitchell will present two draft letters of guarantee, one for Israel and one to the Palestinian Authority during his next visit to the region," one Arab diplomat told AFP.

"The United States are hoping that the two letters will serve as a basis for the relaunch of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations but we don't know if they will satisfy the Palestinians who want a complete freeze of settlement activity before talks resume," the diplomat said.

The United States is currently in talks with the Palestinians and Egypt -- a key US ally in the region -- over the letters, a Western diplomat said.

Washington is hoping that "the two letters will allow for the relaunch of negotiations," which have been suspended for almost a year, the diplomat said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is expected in Cairo on Tuesday, last month announced a 10-month moratorium on new housing starts in Jewish settlements in the West Bank in a move he said was aimed to helping to kick-start the peace talks suspended during the Gaza war at the turn of the year.

The moratorium does not include public buildings, construction under way and does not apply to occupied and annexed east Jerusalem, which Israelis consider part of their capital, but which the Palestinians want as the capital of their promised state.

The Palestinians have rejected the moratorium, saying it fell far short of their demand for a complete halt of settlement activity in the whole West Bank, including annexed east Jerusalem.

No more excuses  

"There's no more time for excuses. It time for action," Netanyahu said while meeting foreign diplomats at the Foreign Ministry. the prime minister expressed his hope that some progress would be made in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process in the coming weeks. The PA, he added, "is running low on excuses."

Netanyahu also said that Israel's most important challenge is Iran's attempt to get nuclear weapons, adding that Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and he have been warning about such a possibility for years.

The prime minister urges the foreign diplomats to cultivate what he called the "global alliance against the impending Iranian danger."

The day when the international community has to make a decision about Iran is approaching, he added, and global interests demand Iran's nuclear ambitions be curbed.

Sudan on Brink of Another Civil War, Says Gov't Official
Dec 29th, 2009
SudanBy Ethan Cole
Categories: Today's Headlines

An official of South Sudan’s government says Sudan is in danger of witnessing another civil war between the Muslim north and the Christian and animist south unless the international community intervenes.

The National Congress Party, headed by President Omar al-Bashir, has repeatedly broken the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which ended the country’s bloody two-decade-long civil war, reported Ezekiel Lol Gatkuoth, head of government of South Sudan Mission to the United States, to International Christian Concern.

As a result of the North’s failure, the delicate peace process is in danger of being derailed, he said.

“The role of the international community is to get in now and help us (the South and North Sudanese) to make sure that we work together to avoid war, to have peaceful disengagement and a fair election [and] put a lot of pressure on the NCP to end the war in Darfur,” Gatkuoth said.

Sudan is scheduled to hold its first national and presidential elections in April 2010. The elections will be the country’s first in 24 years. Then in January 2011, Sudan is slated to hold a referendum on whether South Sudan will secede from Sudan.

Gatkuoth said studies show that 98 percent of the people in Southern Sudan plan to vote for separation.

The elections and referendum are part of the 2005 Sudanese Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which ended one of Africa’s longest and bloodiest civil wars. The two-decade conflict between ethnic African southerners, who are mostly Christian and animist, and Sudan’s Arab-dominated government left an estimated two million people dead and tens of thousands of others displaced and wounded.

Hundreds of churches in Southern Sudan were also destroyed by Muslim militiamen from the north during the civil war.

In the five years that the CPA has existed, there has always been fear that the peace process would be derailed over disputes about the border between the north and south, the enactment of a national security law, and the April 2010 election, among other issues.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) last week noted that the NCP escalated the tension between the north and south by pushing through the National Assembly – a body the party controls – a Southern Sudan referendum bill with new language that the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement did not agree to. The SPLM is the primarily Christian political party that governs South Sudan.

And on Dec. 20, the National Assembly pushed through a revised National Security Act that the SPLM also objected to because it did not include any new measures to hold the security services accountable. Sudan’s security forces are widely known to abuse their power with impunity.

Earlier this month, USCIRF highlighted how government police and security personnel arrested and abused opposition members of Sudan’s National Assembly during their peaceful attempt to present a letter calling for human rights reform and other key legislations necessary to implement the CPA.

A USCIRF delegation was in Khartoum at the time and met with senior SPLM leaders who told delegation members about the arrests and showed them the bruises of an SPLM official who was beaten with batons and kicked repeatedly by security forces.

“The NCP’s latest actions imperil the CPA,” said Leonard Leo, USCIRF chair, in a statement. “An emboldened NCP needs to hear directly from the Secretary [of State] that its violations of human rights and repudiations of agreements it made long ago to implement the CPA will not stand.

Obama Gives Foreign Cops New Police Powers in U.S.
Dec 29th, 2009
WND
Categories: Today's Headlines

A little-discussed executive order from President Obama giving foreign cops new police powers in the United States by exempting them from such drudgery as compliance with the Freedom of Information Act is raising alarm among commentators who say INTERPOL already had most of the same privileges as diplomats.

At David Horowitz's Newsreal, Michael van der Galien said the issue is Obama's expansion of President Ronald Reagan's order from 1983 that originally granted those diplomatic privileges.

Reagan's order carried certain exemptions requiring that INTERPOL operations be subject to several U.S. laws such as the Freedom of Information Act. Obama, however, removed those restrictions in his Dec. 16 amendment to Executive Order 12425.

That means, van der Galien wrote today, "this foreign law enforcement organization can operate free of an important safeguard against government and abuse."

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"'Property and assets,' including the organization's records, cannot be searched or seized. Their physical locations are now immune from U.S. legal or investigative authorities," he wrote.

Obama's order said he was removing the Reagan limitations on INTERPOL:

"AMENDING EXECUTIVE ORDER 12425 DESIGNATING INTERPOL AS A PUBLIC INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION ENTITLED TO ENJOY CERTAIN PRIVILEGES, EXEMPTIONS, AND IMMUNITIES

"By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 1 of the International Organizations Immunities Act (22 U.S.C. 288), and in order to extend the appropriate privileges, exemptions, and immunities to the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL), it is hereby ordered that Executive Order 12425 of June 16, 1983, as amended, is further amended by deleting from the first sentence the words "except those provided by Section 2(c), Section 3, Section 4, Section 5, and Section 6 of that Act" and the semicolon that immediately precedes them," he wrote.

At the ThreatsWatch.org website, authors Steve Schippert and Clyde Middleton gave their interpretation of the result.

"In light of what we know and can observe, it is our logical conclusion that President Obama's Executive Order amending President Ronald Reagans' 1983 EO 12425 and placing INTERPOL above the United States Constitution and beyond the legal reach of our own top law enforcement is a precursor to more damaging moves," they wrote.

"When the paths on the road map converge – Iraq withdrawal, Guantánamo closure, perceived American image improved internationally, and an empowered INTERPOL in the United States – it is probable that President Barack Obama will once again make America a signatory to the International Criminal Court. It will be a move that surrenders American sovereignty to an international body whose INTERPOL enforcement arm has already been elevated above the Constitution and American domestic law enforcement," they said.

"For an added and disturbing wrinkle, INTERPOL's central operations office in the United States is within our own Justice Department offices. They are American law enforcement officers working under the aegis of INTERPOL within our own Justice Department. That they now operate with full diplomatic immunity and with 'inviolable archives' from within our own buildings should send red flags soaring into the clouds," they said.

"Ultimately, a detailed verbal explanation is due the American public from the President of the United States detailing why an international law enforcement arm assisting a court we are not a signatory to has been elevated above our Constitution upon our soil."

Records show that the original order designated INTERPOL as a public international organization. Reagan had extended "appropriate privileges, exemptions, and immunities," but kept it subject to searches and seizures under appropriate legal circumstances.

Obama's decision, analysts have concluded, exempted Interpol from all restrictions.

"This international law enforcement body now operates – now operates – on American soil beyond the reach of our own top law enforcement arm, the FBI, and is immune from Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) requests," ThreatsWatch reported.

At the Patriot Room, it was explained there is a reason for a certain level of immunity.

"Before we get our knickers in a bunch, there is logic to this immunity. While we like our Constitution and laws, other countries like their Constitution and laws. It doesn't matter if the concept of personal freedom is more expansive here. If we expect immunity in their country, we have to extend it to them here."

But with Obama's change, "It means that we have an international police force authorized to act within the United States that is no longer subject to 4th Amendment Search and Seizure."

Anthony Martin at the Examiner noted the international agency now can operate in the U.S. will "full immunity" from U.S. laws and "with complete independence from oversight from the FBI."

At National Review Andy McCarthy asked, "Why would we elevate an international police force above American law? Why would we immunize an international police force from the limitations that constrain the FBI and other American law-enforcement agencies? Why is it suddenly necessary to have, within the Justice Department, a repository for stashing government files which, therefore, will be beyond the ability of Congress, American law-enforcement, the media, and the American people to scrutinize?"

At UNDispatch, which is a blog on the United Nations, Mark Leon Goldberg, who explained he worked at Interpol's headquarters in France in 2002, said there isn't much danger of INTERPOL agents whisking Americans off to jail. But he confirmed, "As to the specific reason why the Obama administration would decide, last week, to extend to INTERPOL the same suite of diplomatic privileges that are typically accorded to international organizations? I don't have a good answer for that. My sense is that it probably has something to with the accessibility of INTERPOL's secure criminal databases (on things like stolen passports and the like)."

But the Obama critics at the Obamafile weren't convinced.

"By this EO, Obama has conferred diplomatic immunity upon INTERPOL, exemption from being subject to search and seizure by law enforcement, exemption from U.S. taxes, and immunity from FOIA requests, etc. … Does INTERPOL have a file on Obama – or his associations?"

Did Humans Evolve from 'ardi'?
Dec 29th, 2009
ICR - by Brian Thomas, M.S.
Categories: Today's Headlines;Creation - Evolution

Ardipithecus ramidus is an extinct primate whose fossilized remains were first found along the Awash River in Ethiopia about 15 years ago. Many fragments were collected, including shattered bones from a four-foot-tall female nicknamed “Ardi.” She was chosen to represent her kind, apparently because of the comparative completeness of her remains. Now Ardi’s discoverers believe they have collected enough data to reconstruct her history—but what does their data actually reveal?

Ardi was splashed onto the scientific scene with eleven technical articles in a special issue of Science, accompanied by depictions of the reconstructions of her bones. The reconstructions are based on CT scans of fossils, interpretative speculation in areas where there were no bones available, and more interpretation on how all the pieces fit together.

According to the researchers who found her, Ardi spent time as a human ancestor, based on their assumption that humans either evolved from her or some creature quite like her. “The Ar. ramidus fossils therefore provide novel insights into the anatomical structure of our elusive common ancestors with the African apes,” stated one of the Science papers, concluding that “Ar. ramidus implies that African apes are adaptive cul-de-sacs rather than stages in human emergence.”¹ Another paper viewed Ardi as the source of a new model of hominid evolution:

Referential models based on extant African apes have dominated reconstructions of early human evolution since Darwin’s time…. Ardipithecus essentially falsifies such models, because extant apes are highly derived relative to our last common ancestors.²

Yet none of these statements carry meaning without the presupposition of evolution in general, and unless Ardipithecus is presumed to be an ancestor to man.

To place Ardi into human ancestry, as these authors insisted, creates more problems than it solves. For example, Ardipithecus' body structure shows no objective or undisputable transition toward uniquely human features. The authors themselves listed some of these differences: Humans have unique and interdependent sexual organs and reproductive biochemistry, unique feet, ankles and musculature, unique hip structure, unique teeth and crania, totally unique cognitive abilities, a distinct “gut structure,” upright walking, unique vocal apparatus, a “precipitous reduction of olfactory receptors,” mammary glands that retain a stable size, unadvertised female proceptivity, and an “unusually energy-thirsty brain.”³

Speculation and evolutionary guesswork, not scientific observations, are offered to bridge these gaps. Consistent with this is the broad use of speculative verbiage on the part of the authors. In the eleven papers in Science, the word “probably” appeared about 78 times, and “suggest,” “suggesting,” “suggestive,” or “suggests” were used 117 times, among other terms that are associated with an unsubstantiated story rather than a scientific description.

If Ardi is presumed to be a human ancestor, then the century-long concept that has been taught as virtual fact—that humans evolved from a chimpanzee-like creature (based most recently on the strength of a supposed 99 percent agreement between their genome sequences)—must be discarded! This is because of Ardi’s unique features, which she does not share with African apes (or humans). In other words, arbitrarily placing Ardi at the foot of humanity’s evolutionary tree means that she negates the long-held concept of an African ape-like heritage. The chimpanzee, then, would have to have evolved on its own separate path.

Ardi’s foot structure presents another problem for her assigned role in human ancestry. A lone Ardipithecus foot bone was described in 2001, and “it also shows a mosaic morphology that has features of both apes and A. afarensis [a.k.a. Lucy].”⁴ The other bones of her feet present no exception to the concept that Ardi possessed a mosaic of features, characteristics shared with other creatures and yet integrated into a uniquely created primate. She had hands for feet, and the long, curved bones of her fingers and toes clearly show that Ardi was adept at living in trees.

The Ardipithecus foot has its big toe “thumb” projecting strikingly sideways, which is hardly human-like. Nor are its other foot bones like those of chimps and gorillas, which have specially flexible feet that enable them to climb vertical tree trunks. Ardi’s feet are like those of some of today’s monkeys, which have a stable platform from which to leap, along with a fully developed grasping structure. Though the authors insisted that this stable platform was adequate for walking, other experts already disagree with this assessment.⁵

Ardipithecus-as-ancestor promoters stated, “The foot of Ar. ramidus shows that none of these ape-like changes were present in the last common ancestor of African apes and humans.”⁶ However, Ar. ramidus only “shows” what was present in pre-human “hominids” if Ar. ramidus is presumed, a priori, to be an evolutionary antecedent of apes and humans. It looks instead like an extinct but unique animal, which the authors themselves hinted at when they stated that “the Ardipithecus foot was an odd mosaic.”⁶

Bipedality expert C. Owen Lovejoy wrote, “We can no longer rely on homologies with African apes for accounts of our origins and must turn instead to general evolutionary theory.”² Thus, setting aside evolution-inspired ideology, there is no scientific reason—or observed evidence—to believe that Ardi was an ancestor of mankind. In fact, there is every reason to believe it is solely an extinct primate, as uniquely created as any monkey still alive today.

References

1. Lovejoy, C. O. et al. 2009. The Great Divides: Ardipithecus ramidus Reveals the Postcrania of Our Last Common Ancestors with African Apes. Science. 326 (5949): 100, 104.
2. Lovejoy, C. O. 2009. Reexamining Human Origins in Light of Ardipithecus ramidus. Science. 326 (5949): 74e1.
3. Ibid, 74e7.
4. Harcourt-Smith, W. E. H., and Aiello, L. C. 2004. Fossils, feet and the evolution of human bipedal locomotion. Journal of Anatomy. 204: 404.
5. For instance, paleoanthropologist William Jungers, cited in Keim, B. Humanity Has New 4.4 Million-Year-Old Baby Mama. Wired Science. Posted on wired.com October 1, 2009, accessed October 1, 2009.
6. Lovejoy, C. O. et al. 2009. Combining Prehension and Propulsion: The Foot of Ardipithecus ramidus. Science. 326 (5949): 72.

Image adapted from Lovejoy, C. O. et al. 2009. Combining Prehension and Propulsion: The Foot of Ardipithecus ramidus. Science. 326 (5949): 72.

* Mr. Thomas is Science Writer at the Institute for Creation Research.