By Jonathan Gallagher, Ph.D. – New York, NY, USA… [December 16, 2008] Representatives from the United Nations and religious leaders met together with non-government organizations in New York Tuesday to promote greater cooperation between the UN and religious groups worldwide. The intent in the words of the organizers is “to explore new ways and means to advance cooperation between the world’s religious communities and the United Nations.”
Category: International
Methodists and Wahhabis (Middle East Online)
Saudi Arabia and the United States are the Odd Couple of the twenty-first century. One a monarchy, the other a democracy. One founded on a restrictive faith, the other a beacon of religious freedom. One blessed by vast petroleum resources, the other cursed by a gargantuan appetite for oil. Their governments bound to each other by ties of money and armament, yet their populations distrustful of each other’s political designs, angry about violent deeds attributed to the other, and disdainful of their respective faiths.
OPINION: Does the World Need a Global Population Control Agency? (Catholic Online)
Overpopulation hysteria has real world consequences. One of these is a United Nations population control agency that goes by the name of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA).
VIDEO: 60th Anniversary – The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (HRAC)
On December 10, 1948 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights the full text of which appears in the following pages. Following this historic act the Assembly called upon all Member countries to publicize the text of the Declaration and “to cause it to be disseminated, displayed, read and expounded principally in schools and other educational institutions, without distinction based on the political status of countries or territories.”
International court to punish nations failing to prevent global warming (Telegraph)
Stephen Hockman QC is proposing a body similar to the International Court of Justice in The Hague to be the supreme legal authority on issues regarding the environment. The first role of the new body would be to enforce international agreements on cutting greenhouse gas emissions set to be agreed next year.
An idea lost on fanatics: Those behind the Mumbai attacks will never fathom religious liberty (LA Times)
By Tim Rutten – Los Angeles Times – The places the killers struck — luxury hotels, a railway station, a hospital for women and children, the Chabad Jewish center — are all powerfully linked in the popular mind with the modern world. As the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy has argued, the jihadis have linked anti-Americanism, anti-British sentiment (the assumption is that London is Washington’s lap dog) and anti-Semitic antagonism toward Zionism into a potent new ideology. To the extent it seems to find an increasingly sympathetic hearing in some fashionable sectors of the intellectual West, including the U.S., Levy correctly labels it “the socialism of imbeciles.”
São Paulo passes religious freedom charter (ANN)
Seventh-day Adventist Church leaders and religious freedom proponents in Brazil say the passage this month of the Brazilian Charter of Religious Liberty helps galvanize freedoms of belief already established by the country’s constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Barack Obama on Religious Tolerance and Persecution
Obama: Over time, what we are doing is setting up new norms and creating a universal principle that people’s faith and people’s beliefs have to be protected.
BREAKING NEWS – Russia Moves to Liquidate Fifty-Six Religious Groups
By Derek H. Davis – On October 15 the Russian Ministry of Justice took steps to begin liquidating 56 non-Russian Orthodox religious organizations. The groups face dissolution, Russian news sources reported, because they failed to file required annual reports on their activities. Those targeted include a range of non-Russian Orthodox organizations and churches but hardest hit were various Christian groups, both Protestant and Catholic. Baptist groups were prominent on the list, but Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Seventh-day Adventist and Pentecostal groups were also included. Well known humanitarian groups such as World Vision and Youth with a Mission were also named, as was the Russian branch of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Non-Christian organizations were also named, including Muslim and Buddhist associations.
Saudi King – World facing covert economic war (SaudiGazette.com.sa)
World leaders vowed Saturday in Beijing to overhaul the global financial system in the face of recession fears.