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- By Gus Leonisky at 29 Mar 2008 - 6:54am
- Gus Leonisky's blog
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turf war of words
ROME, Mar 29 (Reuters) A Muslim whose baptism by Pope Benedict over Easter sparked criticism from Muslim scholars has defended his conversion and accused critics of trying to manipulate the event to attack the pontiff.
The baptism of Magdi Allam, an outspoken journalist known in Italy for his stinging attacks on Islam, has put a spotlight on the pope's often tense relationship with Muslims and upset proponents of Christian-Muslim dialogue.
Allam, who has said Islam is ''physiologically violent'', rejected as ''groundless and malicious'' criticism of his Roman Catholic baptism at an Easter eve service in St Peter's Basilica.
''My conversion (...) has been manipulated by many sides to discredit me and accuse the Holy Father,'' Allam said in a letter published today in the Corriere della Sera daily, where he is deputy editor.
a coterie of global conspirators...
By Jonathan Duffy
BBC News Online Magazine
The Bilderberg group, an elite coterie of Western thinkers and power-brokers, has been accused of fixing the fate of the world behind closed doors. As the organisation marks its 50th anniversary, rumours are more rife than ever.
Given its reputation as perhaps the most powerful organisation in the world, the Bilderberg group doesn't go a bundle on its switchboard operations.
Telephone inquiries are met with an impersonal female voice - the Dutch equivalent of the BT Callminder woman - reciting back the number and inviting callers to "leave a message after the tone".
Anyone who accidentally dialled the number would probably think they had stumbled on just another residential answer machine.
On Thursday the Bilderberg group marks its 50th anniversary with the start of its yearly meeting.
For four days some of the West's chief political movers, business leaders, bankers, industrialists and strategic thinkers will hunker down in a five-star hotel in northern Italy to talk about global issues.
What sets Bilderberg apart from other high-powered get-togethers, such as the annual World Economic Forum (WEF), is its mystique.
faith for fun
From The Times
May 29, 2008
Churches must be 'entertainment' too
If clairvoyants must have warning signs, why not faith healers and others places of worship?
Matthew Parris
...
Another example of careless jurisprudence this week: on Monday a new law came into force requiring fortune-tellers, clairvoyants, astrologers and mediums to stipulate explicitly that their services are for “entertainment only”.
Well, trades descriptions legislation is anciently established; but in the realms of the spirit, prophecy, invisible worlds, ghosts and human souls, it has generally been felt that the whole thing is too cloudy for law. By bringing access to other spiritual dimensions into line with access to (say) a British Airways club class lounge, and by deeming in law - for that is what this measure does - that claims about worlds undreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio, are false, Parliament has taken a serious step in principle, even if the measure itself is trivial and most clairvoyants are only jokers anyway.
What, for instance, about the “faith” community? Perhaps it's there in the legislative small print already. There will have to be an exception in law for “religions”. Whereupon clairvoyants will presumably rename themselves spiritualists. And spiritualists will presumably claim the status of a religion. Whereupon lawmakers will stipulate that a “religion” has to centre around a deity. Whereupon Buddhism will cease to be a “religion”; and...
...Well you see the philosophical marsh into which this new principle leads. Is Parliament aware of any harder evidence for the efficacy of faith-healing than for the reliability of clairvoyance? I'd like to hear it. Otherwise, let the collecting boxes in church display a sign “for entertainment purposes only” and let Catholics buy candles to light “for entertainment purposes only”; and let trips to Lourdes be sold “for entertainment purposes only”. And let the raiment of the priest administering the Sacrament be embroidered likewise.
Imagine the churchyard billboard: the Power of Prayer (for entertainment purposes only).
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Gus: see toon at top...