Dispel the Illusion

People in Cali, Colombia, are shocked to see the bond between a large African lion and a woman who saved it from abuse, involving long, affectionate kisses and hugs between the pair. Ana Julia Torres, who runs the Villa Lorena animal shelter in Cali, fed and nursed Jupiter the African lion back to health years ago after it was found abused and emaciated in a traveling circus.

A school provoked fury last night by ordering a devout Catholic schoolgirl to remove her cross necklace because it posed a health and safety risk. Teachers demanded Samantha Devine remove her chain and tiny crucifix despite allowing Muslim and Sikh pupils to wear symbols of their religion. Her family have vowed to fight the decision "all the way" claiming it discriminates against Christians.

Digital tags are expected to be affixed to the U.S.'s 40 million farm animals to enable regulators to track and respond quickly to disease, bioterrorism, and other calamities. Opponents have many fears about this plan, among them that it could be the forerunner of a similar system for humans ... Well, all you conspiracy buffs, let me introduce you to Kevin McGrath and Scott Silverman. McGrath heads a small, growing company that makes RFID chips for animals … and people.

A shocking new report about a range of tactics used by the military regime in Burma to suppress Christianity is about to be released in London. Called “Carrying the Cross: The military regime’s campaign of restriction, discrimination and persecution against Christians in Burma” it cites a document, allegedly from the Ministry of Religious Affairs, which has been widely circulated in Rangoon with the headline “Programme to destroy the Christian religion in Burma.” It begins: “There shall be no home where the Christian religion is practised.”

Just seven years into the much-heralded creation of Canada's third territory, Nunavut is racked by violence, with rates of homicide, assault, robbery, rape and suicide stunningly above the national average. On Thursday, just days after the bodies were removed from the snowy street in Cambridge Bay, two young Inuit mothers hanged themselves within hours of each other in the capital, Iqaluit.

Thirty thousand people have gathered in the U.S. city of Las Vegas for the annual convention of the pornography industry. The scale of the Adult Entertainment Expo reflects the huge growth in a business which is said to be bigger than Hollywood and worth $57bn (£29bn). Estimates of its annual contribution to the US economy range from $12bn-$20bn.

NBC has plummeted to the level of CBS, with a late-night skit that blatantly mocks Christianity by portraying Jesus as a homosexual voyeur, a stunt that would have been instantly condemned nationwide if it had focused on any subject other than Christianity, according to a pro-life leader. The show, an episode of "Late Night With Conan O'Brien," was taped and aired this week, and featured a skit with a character called "the homophobic country western singer," according to Douglas R. Scott Jr., the president of Life Decisions International.

China will have 30 million more men of marriageable age than women by 2020, making it difficult for them to find wives, according to a national report. The gender imbalance could lead to social instability, the report by the State Population and Family Planning Commission warned. It found that around 118 boys were born to every 100 girls in 2005.

The Art Gallery of Ontario's latest acquisition -- a $50-million sculpture of the crucifixion by 17th-century artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini -- will be rushed onto display, with expectations it will boost attendance during the current renovations. "It's going to become a real destination place in the museum," said Matthew Teitelbaum, CEO of the gallery.

The CTF report notes that between 1982 and 2005, "Ottawa authorized $18.4 billion in grants and loans to various companies and organizations. Of this, only $7.1 billion is repayable. However, to date, less than $1.3 billion has been repaid to taxpayers." And the CTF found that almost $10 billion of the $18 billion paid out was basically free money - grants and contributions that never had to be repaid. That's scary enough, but the report notes that "these numbers do not include handouts and loans made through Ottawa's regional development agencies" such as Western Economic Diversification.

Visible-minority immigrants are slower to integrate into Canadian society than their white, European counterparts, and feel less Canadian, suggesting multiculturalism doesn't work as well for non-whites, according to a landmark report. The study, based on an analysis of 2002 Statistics Canada data, found that the children of visible-minority immigrants exhibited a more profound sense of exclusion than their parents. Visible-minority newcomers, and their offspring, identify themselves less as Canadians, trust their fellow citizens less and are less likely to vote than white immigrants from Europe.

Saddam Hussein's execution has inspired a gruesome cycle of revenge, with scores of Shia Muslims found hanged from lampposts in Baghdad. The residents of the city's Haifa Street will long remember the events of Sunday morning. As shop owners raised their shutters and stall holders set out their stock, three minibuses roared to a halt. Gunmen jumped out and pulled blindfolded prisoners on to the street. Ropes were tied to lampposts and electricity poles. Those hostages who resisted were shot. Others who were still alive had nooses tied around their necks and were then suspended in mid air to choke to death.

A well-known actor and filmmaker is speaking out on abortion, illegal immigration, radical Islam, and the New World Order. He says Progressives are destroying America. Golden Globe, Emmy, and Tony Award winning actor, writer, and musician as well as conservative patriot, Michael Moriarty recently announced his interest in running for President of the United States in 2008. He's doing it to take on Hollywood's liberal-left establishment and the Globalists.

America's children are being exposed to more dead bodies, fistfights and perverts than ever before, according to an analysis of violence on prime-time television released yesterday by the Parents Television Council. Violent content from 8 to 11 p.m. on weekdays jumped 75 percent from 1998 to 2006, largely because of popular crime-solving shows and medical dramas such as "Law and Order" and "CSI."

IT’S BEEN quite a reaction. Not long ago, I shared details of a scary late-night encounter I’d had with a hooded demon. I wrote about just how badly the incident had shaken me and how I’d sought comfort from a number of people, including a psychic-astrologer and a Jesuit priest. It wasn’t an easy thing to confess in print but the experience was so shatteringly real that I needed to talk about it. And so I did, bracing for the ridicule I expected to follow. And ridicule there was, although not as cruel as I’d feared.

Violence, terrorism and the Islamists' growing influence pose a threat to Christianity in the Middle East. In some countries, members of an unpopular Christian minority are already fighting for their survival - or fleeing for their lives. In New Baghdad, the driver of a minibus, a Shiite named Ali, set out at 7 a.m. on the last Sunday before Christmas. A few hours earlier he had received a call on his mobile phone with instructions to pick up five passengers for a long trip outside the city.

A pro-life organization that monitors corporations that donate money to Planned Parenthood has released a new list of companies that give money to the nation's largest abortion business. New corporations on the boycott list include jeweler Tiffany & Company and Blackjack Pizza restaurants ... Companies appearing on the boycott list for the first time also include AlphaGraphics, television broadcasting firm Arizona Lotus, BolchalkFReY Marketing, Kara-Line (Wild Carrots apparel), hotel and resort operator Lowe Enterprises, and Scolari's Food & Drug.

Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday reiterated his opposition to civil unions as Italy's government prepares to grant legal recognition to unmarried couples regardless of sexual orientation. "Plans to give legal recognition to other forms of union (than marriage) ... appear dangerous and counterproductive, because they will inevitably weaken and destabilize the legitimate family based on marriage," he told political leaders of Rome's Lazio region including Rome's left-wing Mayor Walter Veltroni.

In some quarters, French is thought of as the language of death; of those who killed and those who stayed to be murdered in the genocide of 1994. The young elite posing in the bustling cafes and night clubs of Rwanda's capital, Kigali, flaunt English as the language of the strong, of those who resisted the genocide, of the anti-French.

From its founding, Planned Parenthood has promoted sex not only for recreation but for social revolution. If man is an evolved animal, not made in the image of God, then treating others as sex objects and aborting the results would free people to evolve further, it could be argued. This ideology also turns Planned Parenthood a handsome profit for contraceptives, testing, treating sexually transmitted diseases and aborting babies.

Make no mistake about it: Pelosi's crowning will be one of the darkest days for freedom and liberty in this country and another gigantic step towards communism, fascism and further weaning the American people into total dependency on mother government.

Be especially leery of the smiling, glad-handing, all-things-to-all-people moderate type of candidate (for example, the media-ballyhooed and well-funded promotional appearances of U.S. Senator Barack Obama). Such a "middle of the roader" will often compromise on the key issues and still manage to get re-elected time and time again. He is the most dangerous of all politicians. The diabolical designs of the Rockefellers - their push for fascism-socialism at home and an international World Government must become the key issue of the next election.

The feminist movement was crafted by the one-world political initiative and invented to create and sustain global depopulation goals. That is and remains the primary mission of the feminist movement ... In today’s world, we have no choices as women, whatsoever, but to agree to the think tank morality written and coded by this global movement. The feminist movement is no different than the global environmental movement, the global healthcare movement, the global education movement, or the global economy movement. All are social re-engineering tactics used to forward the take over of all world governments, economies, and cultures, and to force all commoners into the custom-made livelihoods and service of corporate-based governors.

The Special Prosecutor appointed to the criminal case against late-term abortionist George R. Tiller was fired yesterday by Attorney General Paul Morrison, whose campaign for office was helped by an estimated $1 million in political mailers tied directly to Tiller.

Persecution continues to increase against Christians throughout India and in Communist China. Representatives of organizations that minister to and advocate for believers in those countries say government authorities in both nations are severely oppressing Christians and limiting their religious freedom. Late last month, Hindu extremists torched a church in the Indian state of Orissa after members had decorated and prepared the sanctuary for Christmas services.

Christian activists were submitting a petition to Queen Elizabeth II on Tuesday to protest against a new gay rights law they claim will force them to promote and condone gay sex. The activists, who say such laws violate Biblical teaching, also planned to hold a candlelit vigil outside Parliament as the upper house, the House of Lords, debated the new law.

Moves to clone and genetically modify farm livestock have opened the door to the creation of "Farmyard Freaks", experts have warned. News that the daughter of a US clone cow has been born on a British farm has moved the issue from science fiction to consumer reality. A former government adviser has painted a nightmarish picture of "zombie" and fast-growing supersize animals.

Swiss bishops are asking their federal government to account for the use and fate of frozen embryos. The bioethics commission of the Swiss episcopal conference reported gaps and omissions in the official statistics since 2001, and called on the federal office to provide the information lacking from 2001 to 2005. ... The commission wants to know where the 100 embryos came from which were used for stem cell research. To date, these embryos do not appear in the country's statistics.

Barely half the French population describe themselves as Catholic, according to a poll released yesterday, sparking a leading religious publication to declare France "no longer a Catholic country". A poll published in Le Monde des Religions yesterday showed the number of self-declared French Catholics had dropped from 80 per cent in the early 1990s and 67 per cent in 2000 and to 51 per cent today.

Internationally recognized biblical scholars are set to launch The Jesus Project, a new endeavour to examine the historical existence of Christ. The project is intended to pick up where the controversial Jesus Seminar left off in its research into the veracity of Jesus's words and deeds in the Bible.

We will have legalized polygamy in Canada very soon. This is thanks to a decision of the Ontario Appeals Court last week that so far no one has had the stomach to take higher - creating, in law, three parents for one child. But it was inevitable anyway, given the tastes and propensities of Canada's revolutionary courts, and the cliques in the law schools that are steering selected "hard cases" toward them for the express purpose of overturning the civilized norms of many centuries.

One of the top abortion activists in the United States has signed on to assist former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards as he undertakes a second campaign for president. Kate Michelman, who was the president of NARAL for almost 20 years, will serve as a senior campaign advisor ...Michelman endorsed Kerry's candidacy and was spotlighted in an infamous photo at a pro-abortion rally hugging the candidate.

Some now call London the "Muslim capital of Europe." No Western city has more mosques. And now London could be home to the largest Mosque outside of the Middle East.

WORRIED parents have blocked government plans to vaccinate girls as young as nine against a sexually-transmitted virus that can cause cervical cancer, Scotland on Sunday can reveal. Health chiefs have abandoned proposals to offer the jab against human papilloma virus (HPV) to primary school children after parents complained that it was inappropriate for girls of such a young age.

I could not say anything that would change your mind if you have already made up your mind. However, it is vital to realize that whether you have control over your tax dollars or not, your tax dollars have created the perpetual genocide in Afghanistan and in Iraq. To that end, and with hope, I'll let the following photographs speak to your conscience.

The nation's largest faith-based association of doctors today said that a Texas fertility clinic is violating ethical principles in "grading babies like meat in a supermarket" ... "This designer baby scheme crosses ethical and moral boundaries by turning babies into commodities," Dr. Stevens asserted ... "Do we really want to grade babies like meat in a supermarket?"

CAA learned from a reliable source, that recently Mr. Yie Xiaowen, the director of the Chinese State Administration for Religious Affairs, said in two internal meetings held in Beijing University and Chinese Academy of Social Science respectively, that the number of Christians in China has reached 130 million now, including 20 million Catholics. The Chinese government often underestimates the number of religious believers in its officially released figure.

A popular Chinese singer’s decision to give birth to a second child in her forties has set off a public debate about whether the rich and famous can circumvent China’s one-child policy ... Mao Amin, who has a two-year-old daughter, had a baby boy at a private hospital in Shanghai late last month. This happy news seems to have irritated some Communist party propaganda officials, who authorised commentaries in the state media pointing out that Mao did not appear to meet the official criteria for having two children.

Sexually active women are more likely to use "emergency contraception" (EC) pills if they can easily get them, but there is no evidence that widespread use of the pills lowers pregnancy or abortion rates, researchers say in a new report ... But predictions that easier access to EC would produce "a direct, substantial impact ... may have been overly optimistic," they wrote, calling for more research "to explain this finding."

The head of the Anglican Church says he fears a dispute over gay clergy is slipping out of his control. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, says he fears schism, not because it is the worst thing in the world but because it would be bad for the church at this particular time.

Priests are to work alongside Italian police officers to tackle a rising tide of crimes linked to devil worship ... "We estimate that there are at least 8,000 Satanic sects across the country with more than 600,000 members and the numbers are growing. That is why the Church is more than happy to help."

The Christian fish symbol is an ancient and sacred symbol for the persecuted Christians in the 1st century, as well as contemporary believers in Christ. But that symbol which showed that Christians identified with each other in their obedience to follow Christ is taking on a whole new meaning. The Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, as one of their ministries, ‘Ministry with Lesbians and Gay Catholics’ decided to make the sacred fish symbol into a rainbow fish symbol pin.

For the first time, researchers have used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to determine what parts of the brain are active when people consider whether to purchase a product and to predict whether or not they ultimately choose to buy the product ... This paper is the latest from the emerging field of neuroeconomics, which investigates the mental and neural processes that drive economic decision-making.

Starting Monday, patrons of the Dallas-based Pizza Patrón chain, which caters heavily to Latinos, will be able to purchase American pizzas with Mexican pesos. Restaurant experts and economists said they knew of no other food chain with locations so far from the Mexican border offering such a service.

STUDENTS at America's prestigious Ivy League universities are rebelling against their colleges' stuffy reputations, casting off society's norms along with their clothes to hold naked parties. The Pundits ... that president George Bush's daughter, Barbara, attended a naked party during her second year, in 2002. The White House has always declined to comment. But the naked parties are now fixtures among liberal students being primed to become the nation's elite.

Seven children are reported to have died worldwide after seeing video footage of the execution of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, many in "play" hangings that ended in tragedy ... The latest victim was a boy of 12, who hanged himself in northeast Saudi Arabia on Sunday, the daily Al-Hayat reported on Monday.

Information sheets that pharmacies hand out to educate customers about the drugs they are taking actually leave out key safety information in some cases, omissions that are prompting concern from federal regulators. Pamphlets distributed by two major retailers on attention-deficit medicines, for instance, fail to mention the government directive that patients with certain heart conditions avoid such drugs.

The conventional wisdom emanating from Canada's political chattering classes these days is that the NDP is at a crossroads in its history - or at worst in a "death spiral," as one commentator claimed. Those who follow the party, and those who are party members, agree high hurdles are on the horizon.

Nine priests were arrested in the diocese of Baoding, in the northern province of Hebei, China, reported AsiaNews. The group of priests had met to study on Dec. 27, the day of their arrest. AsiaNews explained that it is likely they were arrested because they were meeting for a time of prayer during the Christmas season in a place unknown to the government.

So was this what the Iraq war was fought for, after all? As the number of U.S. soldiers killed since the invasion rises past the 3,000 mark, and President George Bush gambles on sending in up to 30,000 more troops, The Independent on Sunday has learnt that the Iraqi government is about to push through a law giving Western oil companies the right to exploit the country's massive oil reserves. And Iraq's oil reserves, the third largest in the world, with an estimated 115 billion barrels waiting to be extracted, are a prize worth having. As Vice-President Dick Cheney noted in 1999, when he was still running Halliburton, an oil services company, the Middle East is the key to preventing the world running out of oil.

Pharmaceutical drugs kill, perhaps not as fast as a bullet in many cases – but just as effectively. Stay on them long enough and you’re almost assured of the deadly consequences. Do you really think for one minute that the pharmaceutical industry cares if their gun goes off? They’re making an absurd amount of money selling you sickness. The combined profits of pharmaceutical companies annually are in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

The more you observe the alarming behaviour of Canada's federally-appointed judges, the more you find yourself wondering: Are these people diabolically driven to destroy society, or are they merely stupid? Can they grasp the appalling consequence of what they are doing, or are they simply blind to it? In short, are we being ruled by demons or by morons?