The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, or OPCW, is the surprise winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. The Norwegian Nobel Committee made the award for the Hague-based group’s “extensive efforts to eliminate chemical weapons.”
Developing story: http://usat.ly/183HRWw
(Photo by Guus Schoonewille, epa)
I didn’t know men had uteruses, or is it uteri?
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- The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner. The Hague-based organization was established to enforce the 1997 Chemical Weapons convention and is currently overseeing the destruction of chemical weapons in Syria.
- According to Human Rights Watch, rebels in Syria were responsible for the massacre of 190 civilians in Latakia in August.
- Aleppo prepares for winter.
- Syrian forces took control of a key road into Aleppo, giving them back control of an important supply line.
- Turkish spy chief Hakan Fidan has become a force in the construction of Turkey’s regional security strategy.
- The US is suspending a significant portion of its $1.3bn in aid to Egypt.
- Mohammed Morsi will stand trial in November for inciting murder and violence.
- The US says that the Libyan government approved the commando raids that captured Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai in Tripoli.
- Libyan PM Ali Zeidan was kidnapped from his home on Thursday, later to be released.
- Roughly 60 have been killed so far in clashes in the Central African Republic.
- Former Liberian president Charles Taylor, sentenced to 50 years for crimes against humanity, will serve his time in a British jail.
- American Special Forces had to retreat during a raid in Somalia on Saturday, which officials say was the result of “imperfect intelligence.”
- Colum Lynch on the June 19 Al-Shabab raid on the UN in Mogadishu.
- Iraq hung 42 convicted of terrorism charges.
- Al Jazeera America breaks down where the real causes of concern are (and aren’t) in Iran’s nuclear program.
- A portrait of an Afghan assassin, a seventeen-year-old responsible for a green-on-blue attack that killed four Marines.
- Britain makes its final major deployment to Afghanistan.
- A day after being granted bail in a separate case, former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was arrested over a 2007 mosque raid.
- Russia is cracking down on the North Caucasus region ahead of the Winter Olympics.
- Pakistani army chief General Ashfaq Kayani says he’s retiring in November.
- China arrested 139 people in Xinjiang for spreading jihad.
- A special report by the Committee to Protect Journalists calls the Obama administration the most aggressive one since Nixon when it comes to controlling media and information.
- Kim Jong-un fired his top general, Kim Kyok-sik.
- The UN is being sued in US court over the cholera epidemic which has 8300 since October 2010. The Haitian government is seeking $2.2bn in compensation from the UN, saying the cholera was introduced by Nepalese peacekeeping forces and poor sanitation practice.s
- Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, known as the Republican Congressman who co-authored the Patriot Act, is going to introduce bipartisan legislation meant to curtail the domestic surveillance powers of government agencies.
- The CIA is shutting down access to the Open Source Center, which for more than half a century has operated as a publicly accessible source of unclassified global information compiled from media sources outside the US.
- Furloughed intelligence employees will begin returning to work.
- The Obama administration has begun reviewing the cases of dozens of Guantánamo inmates for possible release.
- The NSA’s FOIA request caseload is up 1054 percent since the Snowden leaks.
- Electrical issues are stalling the opening of the NSA’s $1.7bn data center in Utah.
- Congratulations to Gregory Johnsen on being Buzzfeed’s first Michael Hastings National Security Reporting Fellow.
Photo: Salaheddine neighborhood, Aleppo. Free Syrian Army fighters take up position against government forces in a firefight. Malek Alshemali/Reuters.
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And yet, I believe that if there is judgment coming (or being made manifest) from God due to abortion, it rests heaviest on the shoulders of those of us who are pro-life. We are the ones who have failed. We have been disobedient and our whole country is reaping the consequences.
The problem is the same one I have harped on many times; we reject the actual instructions of Jesus because they are naive, unrealistic and we don’t think they will work. Instead, we fall back on the ways of men – a will to power, anger, argument, control, guilt and condemnation. As is so often the case, we chose being right over being faithful. In doing so, we have both lost the fight and are bringing down judgment.
Jesus gave us specific instructions for dealing with our opponents. He said to love them. He said not to resist the evil man. He said that if someone won’t repent of their sin, we ought to let them go their own way. He ran off those who would condemn a sinner and then said, “neither do I condemn you. Go freely. Sin no more.” When faced with aggressive evil, he advocated for those doing it in the spiritual realm saying, “forgive them Father. They do not know what they are doing.”
Paul instructs us not to be argumentative. Like Jesus, he tells us to serve our enemies. Make sure they are cared for. He tells us that we are to do as Jesus did – give up our rights as an act of humillity. Read the book of Philemon; Paul says that he would be in his rights to demand that Philemon set his slave Onesimus free, but that he is choosing not to do that. Instead he offers no judgment or condemnation. Even when the life of a man he loves hangs in the balance, Paul follows Jesus’ example and gives up his rights in humility and makes an invitation to love.
I ask you in all seriousness, when have we Christian pro-lifers done any of these things? We haven’t. Instead, we responded to the evil of abortion exactly the same way men have always responded to not getting their way. We organized to gain political power. We sought control and influence. We stood outside clinics and threw stones – sometimes literally. We called people baby killers and put pictures of mutilated pre-born children in the trick or treat bags of small children. We offered condemnation and tried to guilt people into changing their minds about abortion. We tried to physically stop people from gaining entrance to clinics. Our tone has consistently been combative, angry and condemning.
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