It won’t be war, politics or poverty that eventually wipes out humanity. According […]
Wednesday, January 20th, 2016
NEOnline/GK, - New Europe
Stephan: Just when I think the Catholic sexual child abuse scandal is finally over, another cultural IED blows up. This one is mind-boggling. Reading it I could only wonder if this was a factor in Pope Benedict resigning and retiring.
The take away is that whenever religions -- of whatever denomination or sect -- try to manipulate human sexuality, only damage, pathology, and pain results.
231 children, who participated in a choir led by Pope Benedict’s brother, were sexually and physically abused by priests.
The first allegations for the sexual and physical abuse of children in Domspatzen – which is the official choir for St. Peter’s Cathedral in Bavaria, Germany – made public in 2010 when well-known German composer, Franz Wittenbrink, told the German magazine Spiegel he had been abused while enrolled in the choir.
On Friday, a lawyer who is hired for investigating the case, announced that 231 children in the choir were abused physically and sexually between 1953 and 1992, many by the director of the affiliated Roman Catholic school in Regensburg. According to AFP news agency, the number of the victims is now three times more, compared with a previous church report.
The Domspatzen choir was led between 1964 and 1994 by Georg Ratzinger, brother of Pope Benedict XVI and lawyer-investigator Ulrich Weber, said that he “must assume” that Georg Ratzinger had at least some knowledge of the children’s abuse. However, Ratzinger is not accused of committing any of the alleged crimes.
According to Slate.com, Ratzinger now lives in retirement at the Vatican and his brother Pope Benedict was accused before and during his tenure as pope, of playing […]
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Tuesday, January 19th, 2016
Oliver Milman, - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: If you read SR regularly you know that I think a defining feature of climate change has been the collapse of the timeline. Things I wrote about in 1991, that were supposed to occur 500 years into the future are now 50 years in the future. Here is some more evidence of that
The world’s oceans are warming at a quickening rate, with the past 20 years accounting for half of the increase in ocean heat content that has occurred since pre-industrial times, a new study has found. (emphasis added)
US scientists discovered that much of the extra heat in the ocean is buried deep underwater, with 35% of the additional warmth found at depths below 700 meters. This means far more heat is present in the far reaches of the ocean than 20 years ago, when it contained just 20% of the extra heat produced from the release of greenhouse gases since the industrial revolution.
The paper, published in Nature Climate Change, sheds further light on the vast quantities of heat being absorbed by the world’s oceans.
Ocean water, which has a much higher heat capacity than air, has absorbed more than 90% of the excess heat and nearly 30% of the carbon dioxide generated by human consumption of fossil fuels. The vast Southern Ocean sucked up 1.2bn tonnes of carbon
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Tuesday, January 19th, 2016
Travis Gettys, - The Raw Story
Stephan: As I have said in these pages numerous times, the terrorists that concern me are White Christian Rightists. And I think it is clear by now that the neither the Federal nor state governments really know what do do about them. Because we did not deal with Bundy pere we are now dealing with Bundy fils, and because we are not dealing them yet more are emerging, as this report details. This is a very predictable trend line. It is going to get very nasty because these ignorant fanatics, just like their Muslim counterparts, crave martyrdom.
LaVoy Finicum
Two of the Oregon militants have been traveling out of state to meet with other groups who want the federal government to hand over public land to their control.
LaVoy Finicum said he left the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge last week and drove to Utah with one of the other armed militants, reported OPB.
He later identified his travel companion as Ryan Bundy, and he claimed they met with county officials eager to engage in a similar standoff with federal authorities over public land ownership.
Finicum said the occupied visitors center, which the militants have renamed the Harney County Resource Center, was a symbolic victory and inspiration to other anti-government extremists.
“We have occupied their fort, and we’re not giving it back, it goes to Harney County,” said Finicum, who has ignored local pleas to leave the area. “It does not go back to the federal government.”
Utah blogger Chris Zinda had his photo taken Wednesday with Finicum in Cedar City, where Ryan Bundy lives and owns a construction company.
Bundy […]
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Over five million jobs will be lost by 2020 as a result of developments in genetics, artificial intelligence, robotics and other technological change, according to World Economic Forum research. (emphasis added)
