SEVEN NEW DEADLY SINS. ARE YOU GUILTY?

Drug pushers, the obscenely rich, environmental polluters and “manipulative” genetic scientists beware - you may be in danger of losing your mortal soul unless you repent.
After 1,500 years the Vatican has brought the seven deadly sins up to date by adding seven new ones for the age of globalisation. The list, published 10 mARCH 2008 in L’Osserva-tore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, came as the Pope deplored the “decreasing sense of sin” in today’s “securalised world” and the falling numbers of Roman Catholics going to confession.

The Catholic Church divides sins into venial, or less serious, sins and mortal sins, which threaten the soul with eternal damnation unless absolved before death through confession and penitence.

It holds mortal sins to be “grave violations of the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes”, including murder, contraception, abortion, perjury, adultery and lust.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that “immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into Hell”.

Although there is no definitive list of mortal sins, many believers accept the broad seven deadly sins or capital vices laid down in the 6th century by Pope Gregory the Great and popularised in the Middle Ages by Dante in The Inferno: lust, gluttony, avarice, sloth, anger, envy and pride.

Christians are exhorted instead to adhere to the seven holy virtues: chastity, abstinence, temperance, diligence, patience, kindness and humility.

Bishop Gianfranco Girotti, head of the Apostolic Penitentiary, the Vatican body which oversees confessions and plenary indulgences, said after a week-long Lenten seminar for priests that surveys showed 60 per cent of Catholics in Italy no longer went to confession.

He said that priests must take account of “new sins which have appeared on the horizon of humanity as a corollary of the unstoppable process of globalisation”. Whereas sin in the past was thought of as an invididual matter it now had “social resonance”.

“You offend God not only by stealing, blaspheming or coveting your neighbour’s wife, but also by ruining the environment, carrying out morally debatable scientific experiments, or allowing genetic manipulations which alter DNA or compromise embryos,” he said.

Bishop Girotti said that mortal sins also included taking or dealing in drugs, and social injustice which caused poverty or “the excessive accumulation of wealth by a few”.

He said that two mortal sins which continued to preoccupy the Vatican were abortion, which offended “the dignity and rights of women”, and paedophilia, which had even infected the clergy itself and so had exposed the “human and institutional fragility of the Church”.
The mass media had “blown up” the issue “to discredit the Church”, but the Church itself was taking steps to deal with it.

Addressing the Apostolic Penitentiary seminar, the Pope said there was “a certain disaffection” with confession among the faithful. Priests had to show “divine tenderness for penitent sinners” and admit their own failings.

“Those who trust in themselves and in their own merits are, as it were, blinded by their own ‘I’, and their hearts harden in sin. Those who recognise themselves as weak and sinful entrust themselves to God, and from Him obtain grace and forgiveness.”

The Pope also complained that an increasing number of people in the secularised West were “making do without God”.

He said that hedonism and consumerism had even invaded “the bosom of the Church itself, deeply undermining the Christian faith from within, and undermining the lifestyle and daily behaviour of believers”.

The Eastern Catholic Church does not recognise the same distinction between mortal and venial sins as the Western or Latin Church, nor does it hold that those who die in a state of sin are condemned to automatic damnation.

The original offences and their punishments
Pride Broken on the wheel
Envy Put in freezing water
Gluttony Forced to eat rats, toads, and snakes
Lust Smothered in fire and brimstone
Anger Dismembered alive
Greed Put in cauldrons of boiling oil
Sloth Thrown in snake pits
Source: The Picture Book of Devils, Demons and Witchcraft; Ernst and Johanna Lehner

COME OUT OF HER, MY PEOPLE!

They Can Burn All The Books, But They Cannot Burn An Idea. Truth crushed to earth will rise again.

I was greatly disturbed by a story going around concerning the possible censorship of the alternative news; that is, the alternative news as published on internet Blogs. Blocking access to an internet Blog is equivalent to burning a book. It is censorship at its worst. In an enlightened age of rapid transmission of ideas and information, this is tantamount to attempts to extinguish the light of learning during the Dark Ages and to the Nazi book-burnings.

Who's afraid of a lone Blogger sitting at his home desk reducing his thoughts to writing? Can his ideas be so dangerous as to require a Citidel of Learning to take such Draconian Measures as to block access to his writings? I am aware that some in China think so; and many in Russia have always thought so. Even King George, whom we fought a war against to secure our Freedoms of speech and the Press, did not have such determined Mind Police.

It would appear that one man on the side of Truth is a formidable adversary. In the market place of ideas, an opinion cannot be eradicated by making it "off-limits" to a sizeable portion of the population.

"Blogging is the only true content which originates online", said Robert Lichter, president of the Center for Media and Public Affairs. He went on to say, "People will say it is convenient and immediate to get their news via the Internet".

As if to reinforce what Robert Lichter said, a Zogby Interactive poll released 27 February said that "news-hungry Americans are yielding to the siren call of cyberspace. Almost half of us say that the Internet is now our primary source of news and information, trumping television, radio, and newspapers." In the survey of 1,979 adults conducted online February 20 and 21, more than 67 percent of the adults agreed that "journalism is out of touch with what Americans want from their news".

The survey found that 48 percent of Americans went online for enlightenment. About 29 percent looked to television and 11 percent went to radio. With just 10 percent of the audience, newspapers were in last place. The Majority of those surveyed had praise for their online experience: 86 percent cited the Web as an "important source" of information. Over 77 percent said that so-called citizen journalism has a "vital role" in journalism's future.

With that as a backdrop, I was very dismayed when a reliable source reported that the Air Force Academy has decided to spit into the whirlwind of the public's thirst for information. Sadly, the Air Force academy does not intend to continue to fly high, wide and handsome. It has been said that the Air Force Academy has blocked all Blogs from its internal computer network systems.

On 27 Feb 2008 Noah Schachtman reported that "The Air Force is tightening restrictions on which blogs its troops can read, cutting off access to just about any independent site with the word "blog" in its web address. It's the latest move in a larger struggle within the military over the value -- and hazards -- of the sites. At least one senior Air Force official calls the squeeze so "utterly stupid, it makes me want to scream."
Until recently, each major command of the Air Force had some control over what sites their troops could visit, the Air Force Times reports. Then the Air Force Network Operations Center, under the service's new "Cyber Command," took over.

I weep at such news. I have always had the upmost respect for the Air Force Academy and the Air Force. Can it be that a once mighty corps of intellectual giants has been replaced by a cadre of sheep?

China built a Great Wall around itself to protect itself from the Mongol hordes, and to keep its innovative discoveries from being seen and stolen by the barbarians. However, while the Chinese were behind that Great Wall the world passed them by. When they finally were brave enough to come out from behind that Great Wall, they discovered something very shocking. They discovered that while they were hiding behind the Wall, the world had passed them by. They were no longer the head, but they had become the tail. They had lost The Mandate of Heaven. They were no longer the Middle Kingdom. They had allowed themselves to become a Third World power.

R. Clark, R. Hauschault, L. Steverson, Air Force cadet, H. Legwinn.


Cadet Kenny Little and Carole.

Ever since 1966 when I spent the entire summer touring with the Air Force Academy under a Coast Guard Academy/Air Force Academy summer Exchange Program. From my first glimpse of the aluminum spires of the Chapel at the Air Force Academy, to the Zero-gravity rides on the KC-135 out of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, to the T-33 Trainer flight at March Air Force Base, and the Ranger Orientation at Fort Benning, Georgia, I was completely captivated by the Air Force and the cadets that were enrolled at Colorado Springs.



During that summer I truly "Slipped the surly bonds of earth and danced the sky on laughter silvered wings". I flew planes; I experienced zero-G rides; I blacked-out at the pull of a 4-G force during a barrell roll in a T-33 executed by a crusty out Fighter Jock with mercury in his veins.

For the first time I began to appreciate what a classified security briefing was. We attended NORAD briefings. We were briefed on Early Warning procedures, B-52 responses, and first strike procedures. All these briefings were done inside super secure briefing rooms with big, burly, Air Police (AP) Security Guards standing guard armed with M-16s.

Air Force cadet Kenneth H. Little at USAFA.(1966)


Air Force Cadets like Cadet Kenneth H. Little were the most gung-ho and highly motivated cadets I had ever met. His esprit de corps was light years beyond anything I had experience before I was exposed to the Air Force cadets.



So far the Coast Guard Academy and Coast Guard access to the Internet has not been blocked, but rumblings inside Coast Guard Headquarters are disturbing. If the Coast Guard were to move toward prior censorship it would be a giant step backwards towards the Dark Ages, because Blogs uncover and report on what has been labeled the “ugly underbelly” of the Coast Guard.

As the Coast Guard tries to come to grips with its new and increased missions since 9/11/2001, along with its increased funding, there is much to report. From the still failing $27 billion acquisition portfolio to upgrading the Coast Guard’s aged and deteriorating fleet of ships and aircraft, to a base infrastructure that is largely made up of base hand-me-downs from the other services. The Coast Guard's $27 billion dollar acquisition portfolio is still being managed by an Admiral with ZERO professional acquisition training, qualifications or certifications.

The Webster Smith court-martial and the publicity generated by CAPT Doug Wisniewski and CWO French gave the world a rare glimpse of the inner workings and hidden mechanisms of the Coast Guard's senior white officer corps.

There was a time when "what happened at the Coast Guard Academy, stayed at the Coast Guard Academy". Those days are gone. The Genie has been let out of the bottle. It will be impossible to get the toothpaste back into the tube. People are now hungry for news of people and events within the Coast Guard. They want the Full Story, the real deal, not some diluted, bleached out, watered down version of a press release written by a warrant officer or an Ensign from the Academy or Officers' Candidate School with less than a year's experience in the service. Those people are still learning how to salute, how to pour the cold drink, and where the bath room is.

But thanks to the world of blogging, these stories are being told by people with the experience and the historical perspective to put the events and the official pronouncements in their proper perspective.

POWER TO THE PEOPLE!!
Civil rights elder statesman Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., Wednesday, 27 February 2008 switched his support to Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama.
In a written statement, Lewis said Barack Obama's campaign "represents the beginning of a new movement in American political history" and that he wants "to be on the side of the people."

"After taking some time for serious reflection on this issue, I have decided that when I cast my vote as a superdelegate at the Democratic convention, it is my duty . . . to express the will of the people," the statement said.

Lewis' endorsement had been a coveted prize thanks to his standing as one of the most prominent civil rights leaders of the 1960s.




"John Lewis is an American hero and a giant of the civil rights movement, and I am deeply honored to have his support," Obama said in a statement.

"I understand he's been under tremendous pressure," Hillary Clinton said. "He's been my friend. He will always be my friend. At the end of the day it's not about who is supporting us, it's about what we're presenting, what our positions are, what our experiences and qualifications are, and I think that voters are going to decide."

Lewis' announcement came on the same day as another superdelegate, Sen. Byron L. Dorgan of North Dakota, endorsed Obama, citing the presidential hopeful's record on trade.

Dorgan said Obama has supported key trade issues.

"He and I feel the same way," Dorgan said. "We both believe in trade and plenty of it. We just insist it that it be fair to our country -- the rules be fair."

The North American Free Trade Agreement is unpopular with blue-collar workers whose votes are considered crucial in the Democratic primary on 4 March in Ohio.




Lewis announced his Clinton endorsement in October and has appeared on the New York senator's behalf on television and at events across the country.

Clinton has frequently cited Lewis' support in trying to establish her credentials among minority voters, saying she saw her campaign as a continuation of his work.

But Lewis came under intense pressure to get behind Obama after his constituents supported the Illinois senator roughly 3 to 1 in Georgia's Feb. 5 primary, as did about 90% of Black voters statewide, according to exit polls.

Obama's support among Black voters nationwide mirrors Lewis' Georgia district.

His change of heart follows a similar move by Rep. David Scott, a Black Democrat who represents a neighboring district.

The decision also comes a week after the Rev. Markel Hutchins, a young Atlanta minister, announced he would challenge Lewis in the Democratic congressional primary this summer.

Hutchins, 30, has seized on Lewis' reversal in his presidential endorsement as evidence that the 68-year-old congressman is out of touch with his constituents.

"Today's announcement by Representative Lewis was clearly prompted by political expediency," Hutchins said Wednesday. "It is time for a change. It is time to send somebody to Congress who is actually willing to represent the district."

Congressman Lewis countered with "I think the candidacy of Senator Obama represents the beginning of a new movement in American political history that began in the hearts and minds of the people of this nation," he said. "And I want to be on the side of the people, on the side of the spirit of history."

National Syndicated colomnist, BOB HERBERT, had this to say about the Clintons in an OP-ED piece on 10 May 2008.
The Clintons have never understood how to exit the stage gracefully.
Their repertoire has always been deficient in grace and class. So there was Hillary Clinton cold-bloodedly asserting to USA Today that she was the candidate favored by “hard-working Americans, white Americans,” and that her opponent, Barack Obama, the black candidate, just can’t cut it with that crowd.
“There’s a pattern emerging here,” said Mrs. Clinton.
There is, indeed. There was a name for it when the Republicans were using that kind of lousy rhetoric to good effect: it was called the Southern strategy, although it was hardly limited to the South. Now the Clintons, in their desperation to find some way — any way — back to the White House, have leapt aboard that sorry train.
He can’t win! Don’t you understand? He’s Black! He’s Black!
The Clintons have been trying to embed that gruesomely destructive message in the brains of white voters and superdelegates for the longest time. It’s a grotesque insult to African-Americans, who have given so much support to both Bill and Hillary over the years.
(Representative Charles Rangel of New York, who is Black and has been an absolutely unwavering supporter of Senator Clinton’s White House quest, told The Daily News: “I can’t believe Senator Clinton would say anything that dumb.”)But it’s an insult to white voters as well, including white working-class voters. It’s true that there are some whites who will not vote for a Black candidate under any circumstance. But the United States is in a much better place now than it was when people like Richard Nixon, George Wallace and many others could make political hay by appealing to the very worst in people, using the kind of poisonous rhetoric that Senator Clinton is using now.
I don’t know if Senator Obama can win the White House. No one knows. But to deliberately convey the idea that most white people — or most working-class white people — are unwilling to give an African-American candidate a fair hearing in a presidential election is a slur against whites.
The last time the Clintons had to make a big exit was at the end of Bill Clinton’s second term as president — and they made a complete and utter hash of that historic moment. Having survived the Monica Lewinsky ordeal, you might have thought the Clintons would be on their best behavior.
Instead, a huge scandal erupted when it became known that Mrs. Clinton’s brothers, Tony and Hugh Rodham, had lobbied the president on behalf of criminals who then received presidential pardons or a sentence commutation from Mr. Clinton.
Tony Rodham helped get a pardon for a Tennessee couple that had hired him as a consultant and paid or loaned him hundreds of thousands of dollars. Over the protests of the Justice Department, President Clinton pardoned the couple, Edgar Allen Gregory Jr. and his wife, Vonna Jo, who had been convicted of bank fraud in Alabama.
Hugh Rodham was paid $400,000 to lobby for a pardon of Almon Glenn Braswell, who had been convicted of mail fraud and perjury, and for the release from prison of Carlos Vignali, a drug trafficker who was convicted and imprisoned for conspiring to sell 800 pounds of cocaine. Sure enough, in his last hours in office (when he issued a blizzard of pardons, many of them controversial), President Clinton agreed to the pardon for Braswell and the sentence commutation for Vignali.
Hugh Rodham reportedly returned the money after the scandal became public and was an enormous political liability for the Clintons.
Both Clintons professed to be ignorant of anything improper or untoward regarding the pardons. Once, when asked specifically if she had talked with a deputy White House counsel about pardons, Mrs. Clinton said: “People would hand me envelopes. I would just pass them on. You know, I would not have any reason to look into them.”
It wasn’t just the pardons that sullied the Clintons’ exit from the White House. They took furniture and rugs from the White House collection that had to be returned. And they received $86,000 in gifts during the president’s last year in office, including clothing (a pantsuit, a leather jacket), flatware, carpeting, and so on. In response to the outcry over that, they decided to repay the value of the gifts.
So class is not a Clinton forte.
But it’s one thing to lack class and a sense of grace, quite another to deliberately try and wreck the presidential prospects of your party’s likely nominee — and to do it in a way that has the potential to undermine the substantial racial progress that has been made in this country over many years.
The Clintons should be ashamed of themselves. But they long ago proved to the world that they have no shame.

Former President Harry Truman turned down an array of lucrative board memberships and speeches, declaring "the presidency is not for sale." Recent former presidents don't just sell it, they practically auction it off on eBay. Bill Clinton, in particular, has exercised poor judgment -- and, no judgment -- in the company he's kept. Not just his California jet-owning buddies, but some of the foreign leaders, like Kazakhstan's Nursultan Nazarbayev. It's one thing for former presidents to have dodgy business dealings at home. But interactions with foreign governments should be a big no-no, unless the former president is on an official mission. The people of Kazakhstan may not quite appreciate the distinction between Clinton as official representative of our nation and Clinton in full private citizen/cashing-in mode.


Not to be outdone, Helen Burleson, weighed in with this eye opener:

As indicated by voters in two states where Hillary Clinton won, a large percentage of those who voted for her said she attacked Barack Obama unfairly. It is apparent that Hillary is using both gender and race to undercut Barack's chances of winning the nomination. The fact that people are aware of what she is doing and still they vote for her speaks volumes about them, and the lingering effects of racism in this country.

Hillary appeals to females to vote for her because women have not gotten a fair break in our society. After Hillary gains their sympathy with her emotional swings, the women stop thinking rationally, and vote out of their anger, frustration and hostility about how men dominate in our society. Hillary knows that many White Americans are attempting to move beyond race; however, she conjures up their deep seated racist feelings, though somewhat dormant, her utterings bring these lingering subconscious feelings to the surface. Now race becomes the issue rather than the opportunity for change which is so sorely needed in our country. Her frequent references to the fact that she can get the White working class vote that Obama can't is nothing but deliberate racism. This operates on both the covert and overt levels of the human psyche.

Just as people voted for Bush twice which was not in their best interests, people are voting for Hillary for the same irrational reasons. This time the issue is race and gender. That is why I would NEVER vote for her should she somehow manage to manipulate and claw her way to the top.

She is an intelligent woman and states logical and common sense reasons why Florida and Michigan should have their votes counted; but why is she just now coming to this revelation? Why did she not challenge the DNC at the time the decision was being made? Why didn't she advance and proffer these reasons initially when the vote was being taken? Why did she vote for the exclusion of Florida and Michigan delegates because they violated DNC Party rules if she knew that it would disenfranchise them? IIf this disenfranchises them now, it did when she voted yes. Now she constantly states that Obama doesn't want their votes counted to create a bias in her favor and to discredit him. If the citizens of those states don't see the hypocriscy and duplicity of her wailing, then they deserve to be fooled by her charade. I will tell you why she did not object at that time. It was because she did not expect to be outdistanced by Barack Obama. She felt the nomination was hers on Super Tuesday because she was somehow entitled.

She is self-serving. She does not have the best interest of the Democratic Party or the interest of our democracy at heart. It's all about her. It's all about the entitlement that she feels because she remained with Bill Clinton despite her humiliation and embarrassment over the Monica Lewinsky scandal. It seems to me that she made a pact with Bill about her political future in exchange for her not kicking the bum out! She is dangerous. Anyone who is that power driven and willing to win at any cost is not fit to sit in the seat of the highest office of the land.

She has been caught over and over again with lies, distortions, and feeble excuses for her failings and yet the public continues to follow her blindly. It should not take anything as obvious as her lying about Bosnia and being in danger because of a barage of sniper fire, to make the public see what kind of person she is. She has no decency, no morals, no ethics and no integrity. She is a drama queen and a master manipulator. She is a pox on the American scene.