Christians can’t vote for Wilders, say vicars

European Council President Van Rompuy insulted in parliament: “Who are you, who voted for you?”

China extends position as world’s leading food producer

“Russia refuses to register NGO set up to help sexual minorities”

Multi-Site Churches Spreading in Post-Christian Europe

    Christian Post: ‘We drew a circle around a 30 minute travel distance from our central meeting place, and asked what would happen if we drew another 30 minute distance around the outside of that,’ ND Strupler, coach for ICF Team and
    Start-Up’s, says in the report. ‘Zurich is the biggest city in Switzerland, with not even 400,000 people, but if we plant seven campuses each 30 minutes travel distance from the centre we could reach a population of around 1.5 million people.’”


  • Posted: 02/24/2010
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  • Category: Global: Miscellaneous
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  • Source: www.christianpost.com

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“Children sexualized from an increasingly early age”

UK: Lap-dancing clubs increase while library numbers drop

EU Court Advisers at Odds Over Gambling Restrictions

Lisbon pact failing to lift the E.U. on global stage

David Cameron’s “secret plan to kill off party dinosaurs”

A new envoy to the United Nations of Islam

Greece loses EU voting power in blow to sovereignty

Catch 22 in the EU

    Paul Belien writing at Hudson New York: “With the euro in crisis, the British are currently counting their blessings while the Germans are trying to cut their losses. The near bankruptcy of Greece is dragging the euro down, but bailing out the Greeks is probably illegal under the EU Treaties, while ejecting Greece from the eurozone is illegal as well . . . Legally, however, it is impossible to eject a country from the eurozone without ejecting it from the EU altogether – which is legally impossible as well. This creates a catch 22 situation, which the Germans can only solve with a very radical solution: leaving the eurozone themselves. If Berlin were to do this, it would be able to create a new eurozone without the PIIGS countries – a euromarkzone of sorts, with France, the Benelux countries, Finland, Austria and Slovenia. Though no-one is admitting it in public, various economists do not rule out such a scenario.”


  • Posted: 02/17/2010
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  • Category: Global: Miscellaneous
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  • Source: www.hudsonny.org

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“Malawi: Police say man arrested in anti-gay sweep”

Law Review: Sexuality and Human Rights

    International Council on Human Rights Policy, ICHRP, Sexuality and Human Rights (2009). SEXUALITY AND HUMAN RIGHTS, ICHRP, Geneva, Switzerland, 2009. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1551221

    “In early 2008, the Council decided to begin work on the subject of sexuality and human rights. The theme is both vast and controversial, and the Council’s initial aim is to clarify the essential elements of a policy discussion of sexuality and sexual rights from a human rights perspective, and by doing so perhaps enable discussion to progress.”


  • Posted: 02/16/2010
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  • Category: Global: Miscellaneous
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  • Source: ssrn.com

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UK Evangelical Alliance says young Christians plan to vote

UK: Conservatives debate influence of party’s evangelical Christians

EU leaders mulling extra budget steps for Greece

Climategate academic admits he “lost track” of vital data

    Telegraph: “Prof Jones stepped down as director of the University of East Anglia’s climate change unit in December after leaked emails appeared to show academics were manipulating data to bolster claims that global warming is caused by humans. Now the academic has admitted he may have lost track of some of the data used to produce the famous ‘hockey stick’ graph, which uses climate readings from worldwide weather stations to show a sharp rise in global temperatures.”


  • Posted: 02/15/2010
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  • Category: Global: Miscellaneous
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  • Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

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China Alarmed by Security Threat From Internet

Church of England concerned by “religious TV cuts”

The EU’s horrible honeymoon

    Brussels Journal: “At this point Europe is not even halfway its 100-day political ‘honeymoon’ since the Treaty of Lisbon, which transformed the EU into a state in its own right, came into force. So far the honeymoon has been a nightmare. Since the beginning of the year, the EU’s currency, the euro, is on the brink of collapse; Greece has been placed under EU financial supervision to prevent it from going bankrupt. Now U.S. President Barack Obama has announced that he will not attend next May’s EU summit in Madrid. It was to have been Obama’s first visit to post-Lisbon Europe – the consecration of the new political order.”


  • Posted: 02/08/2010
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  • Category: Global: Miscellaneous
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  • Source: www.brusselsjournal.com

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Lech Walesa: World Has ‘Lost Hope’ of America’s Moral Leadership

“Cameron tells Rowan: Make your Church pro-gay”

Lawyer: Missionary leader to blame for kidnap case

Sweden defies EU directive to store users’ phone data

Suicide of the West: Will America follow Europe into anomie and atheism?

Haitian judge questions detained Americans

Malawi man arrested for “gay rights” posters

Idaho pastor defends church members held in Haiti

At Davos, Sarkozy Calls for Global Finance Rules

Will the Euro survive?

    Paul Belien writing at Hudson New York: “With Greece facing bankruptcy, the fears about Greece’s financial situation have led to a drop in value for the euro. Last week, the finance ministers of Germany and the Netherlands – the two eurozone countries which in pre-euro days had the strongest currencies in the EU: the German mark and the Dutch guilder – announced that they will not help Greece solve its problems . . . British Eurosceptics fear that if Greece, which represents 3% of EU GDP, is bailed out, other eurozone countries facing financial difficulties (Spain, Portugal, Italy) might claim the same treatment. This, they say, would saddle Britain with a bill of £50 billion to save a currency in which the Brits have never believed.”


  • Posted: 01/28/2010
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  • Category: Global: Miscellaneous
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  • Source: www.hudsonny.org

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Bankers unite against Barack Obama and Gordon Brown in call for world regulation

Law Review: Who Represents Whom and How in European Governance?

    Richard Bellamy and Dario Castiglione, Democracy by Delegation? Who Represents Whom and How in European Governance (January 25, 2010). Government and Opposition, Forthcoming. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1541843

    “The democratic legitimacy of European governance is often said to rest on its ‘output’. However, such arguments also make the implicit ‘input’ claim that the Community Method and New Modes of Governance offer a more participatory and deliberative style of democratic politics, that are best suited to ‘represent’ the European interest. We test such claims by analysing them from three different perspectives: functional, societal and delegative. We conclude that they are grounded on a ‘substantive’ conception of representation, in which the agents of European governance ‘stand’ or ‘act’ for the European public. However, such claims are empty without formal processes of authorisation and accountability that ensure European governance effectively promotes the democratic values of political equality and responsiveness.”


  • Posted: 01/28/2010
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  • Category: Global: Miscellaneous
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  • Source: ssrn.com

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Canada: The problem with “sext” ed

Hungry Haitians like animals, says UN peacekeeper

McDonald’s apologizes to Singapore for removing pig from Zodiac

Book Review: The gift of the West

    Robert Louis Wilken reviews The Forge of Christendom: The End of Days and the Epic Rise of the West by Tom Holland at First Things: “Although Gregory VII is not as well known as the reformers of the sixteenth century or the philosophes of the eighteenth century, a case can be made that Gregory’s studied rebuff of royal power in ecclesiastical affairs worked far greater changes in European political and religious life than did the upheavals of the Reformation or the Enlightenment . . . Holland’s central point is well taken. Something genuinely novel did come out of the medieval conflict between pope and king, and the initiative came from the Church’s leaders and thinkers, not Europe’s temporal rulers. Gregory VII was the bearer of a tradition that reached back to the gospels (‘Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s’), to Ambrose and Augustine, and to Pope Gelasius, who said that the ‘two principles’ that give order to the world—political authority and spiritual authority—were distinct.”


  • Posted: 01/25/2010
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  • Category: Miscellaneous
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  • Source: www.firstthings.com

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The Economist: “Leviathan stirs again”

    The Economist: “Today big government is back with a vengeance: not just as a brute fact, but as a vigorous ideology. Britain’s public spending is set to exceed 50% of GDP (see chart 1). America’s financial capital has shifted from New York to Washington, DC, and the government has been trying to extend its control over the health-care industry. Huge state-run companies such as Gazprom and PetroChina are on the march. Nicolas Sarkozy, having run for office as a French Margaret Thatcher, now argues that the main feature of the credit crisis is ‘the return of the state, the end of the ideology of public powerlessness.’”


  • Posted: 01/25/2010
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  • Category: Global: Miscellaneous
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  • Source: www.economist.com

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Scientists using selective temperature data, skeptics say

Canada: “Former sex worker challenges prostitution laws”

Berlusconi vs. Google: Will Italy censor YouTube?

    Time: “Hot on the heels of the Google vs. China censorship dispute, a new front in the showdown between state power and Internet freedom is opening in Italy. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s government is pushing through new measures that would give the state control over online video content and force anyone who regularly uploads videos to obtain a license from the Ministry of Communications. The move is seen as yet another challenge to Google — owner of YouTube — which says the new rules would in effect force Internet service providers to police their own content.”


  • Posted: 01/22/2010
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  • Category: Global: Miscellaneous
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  • Source: www.time.com

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“BBC to ask public about its portrayal of gay people”

Uganda anti-gay bill may change, says MP Bahati

Italy: Berlusconi law may ban daytime porn

Book Review: The rotten heart of the European Union

    Henrik Raeder Clausen reviews Marta Andreasen’s Brussels Laid Bare at The Brussels Journal: “Marta Andreasen was hired to put the required reforms into effect. However, she was dismissed after less than five months in office, a dismissal that led to a lengthy legal process, but no reform. This book is her account of what happened . . . The main upside of the book is that it provides a candid view of a world not frequently exposed to scrutiny or criticism, a view with a long sequence of disturbing events of neglect and miuse of power. This is not a healthy situation for the organisation that, more or less visibly, runs things throughout Europe.”


  • Posted: 01/21/2010
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  • Category: Global: Miscellaneous
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  • Source: www.brusselsjournal.com

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IOC recommends gender-test centers

Malta: Labour Party seeks review of definition of obscenities

The British media’s trouble with religion

    Alan Wilson writing in The Guardian: “[T]he fact that a whole range of religious leaders representing every major tradition in the UK feel chronically misunderstood must mean something . . . But it’s almost impossible for central figures in the media establishment to take such phenomena seriously, perhaps because when they were at public school many of them had religion all sewn up around about the fourth year. The kind of people they dine with just don’t do that sort of thing. It’s obvious that sneering is a suitable substitute for analysis. That’s all there is to it.”


  • Posted: 01/19/2010
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  • Category: Global: Miscellaneous
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  • Source: www.guardian.co.uk

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UK: Church to vote on greater rights for partners of “gay” clergy

Haiti’s voodoo priests object to mass burials

UK: “Parliament urged to encourage gay MPs”

Newt Gingrich and Andrew McCarthy: Obama elevated Interpol over U.S. law

Law Review: Is the EU a democracy without democracy?

    Richard Bellamy, Democracy Without Democracy? Can the EU’s Democratic ‘Outputs’ be Separated from the Democratic ‘Inputs’ Provided by Competitive Parties and Majority Rule? (January 11, 2010). Journal of European Public Policy, Vol. 17, pp. 2-19, 2010. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1534958

    “Various European Union (EU) analysts suggest that although a democratic deficit exists from the perspective of ‘input’ democracy, democratic processes such as competitive parties and majority rule are neither necessary nor suitable to secure democratic ‘outputs’ of the kind the EU delivers. This article disputes this claim. ‘Input’ arguments are vital to the legitimacy of decision-making in the EU’s policy areas, and the non- and counter-majoritarian mechanisms these analysts advocate have perverse rather than beneficial effects on the quality of ‘outputs’.”


  • Posted: 01/14/2010
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  • Category: Global: Miscellaneous
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  • Source: ssrn.com

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Turkey embraces role as Arab “big brother”

Google threatens to leave China after attacks on activists’ e-mail

UK police search powers illegal: human rights court

Croatian socialist wins presidential election

Pakistani couple kills baby in sacrificial ritual

China becomes biggest exporter, edging out Germany

China banks eclipse US rivals

China Ends U.S.’s Reign as Largest Auto Market

Interpol immunity

British radicalization studies

ATF is inviting Latin nations to boost role in tracking guns

    AZ Republic: “In a move to crack down on weapons from the U.S. that are funneled to drug cartels, police in Latin America will soon be able to track American gun sales in their own language, despite privacy concerns by gun-rights advocates . . . Springfield, Va.-based Gun Owners of America, noted that many Mexican police have been charged with passing other types of sensitive information to criminals in recent years.”


  • Posted: 01/07/2010
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  • Category: Global: Miscellaneous
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  • Source: www.azcentral.com

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Human sacrifices ‘on the rise in Uganda’ as witch doctors admit to rituals

    Telegraph: Moses Binoga, the assistant police commissioner who is head of the Ugandan anti-human sacrifice and trafficking task force, said there were 26 murders thought to be part of ritual sacrifice last year compared with three cases in 2007. ‘We also have about 120 children and adults reported missing whose fate we have not traced,’ he added. ‘From the experience of those whom we recovered, we cannot rule out that they may be victims of human sacrifice.’”


  • Posted: 01/07/2010
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  • Category: Global: Miscellaneous
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  • Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

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Canada: Kids will be exempt from airport scanners

Islamist march through British town draws massive opposition

UK: “Body scanners may break child porn laws”

South Africa: “Gay rights group angry at blood service rule on donors”

China says 5,394 arrested in Internet porn crackdown

Spain first EU leader after Lisbon Treaty

Obama gives Interpol free hand in U.S.

Billionth African born