The war in Afghanistan continues taking and destroying lives, both due to the direct consequences of violence and the war-induced breakdown of public health, security, and infrastructure. In 2004, life expectancy was measured at a mere 42 years; moreover, 25 percent of children did not reach the age of 5. The first half of 2011 saw the most intense fighting since the early part of the war and more lives have been lost as a result of war than when the Taliban was in control.
Civilians have been killed by crossfire, improvised explosive devices, assassination, bombing, and night raids into houses of suspected insurgents. Unexploded ordnance from previous wars and from US cluster bombs continue to kill even in the absence of fighting.
Hospitals in Afghanistan are also treating increasing numbers of war wounded, including amputees and burn patients. The war has also inflicted invisible wounds. In 2009, the Afghan Ministry of Public Health said fully two-thirds of Afghans suffer mental health problems.
http://costsofwar.org/article/afghan-civilians
The US military used DU-laden weaponry even more systematically and expansively during the 2003 invasion and throughout the occupation. In urban warfare, it was fired at vehicles and buildings in highly populated civilian areas. It was employed in “counter-insurgency operations,” such as the two battles of Fallujah in 2004.
For two decades, the use of DU and its effects have been a subject of political and scientific controversy. In the US, this controversy played out in scientific evidence of the links—and official denial of those links—between DU and the variety of inexplicable conditions that afflicted US veterans. These conditions, loosely termed the “Gulf War Syndrome,” affected up to one in four Gulf War veterans....
In 2004, the results of a five-year Pentagon-sponsored study insisted that DU was neither sufficiently toxic nor radioactive to cause health threats to soldiers...It was used during the 1999 NATO bombing of Kosovo and in the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. Concerns over the rise of cancer rates and other DU-related afflictions have also been on the rise in these countries. Israel also allegedly used DU weaponry in Operation Cast Lead in Gaza in 2008 – 2009, and its recent airstrike on targets in the Syrian capital Damascus.
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Thousands of Iraqi doctors and specialists have escaped the country to seek security and careers elsewhere. Since 2003, this exodus has increased due to ongoing violence that targets doctors directly. Hundreds, if not thousands, of doctors have been threatened, kidnapped for ransom, and/or assassinated. Some doctors have refused to perform surgical operations on patients for fear of retribution or demands for “blood money” from angry family members who might not accept unfavorable outcomes. The Iraqi Parliament recently passed a law allowing doctors to carry arms for their own protection.Anyway, they are Muslims who live in Iraq and Afghanistan. For them God or Allah gave a holy book, the Koran.
http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/13537/the-toxicity-of-everyday-survival-in-Iraq
"The day will come when this earth will be substituted with a new earth, and also the heavens, and everyone will be brought before GOD, the One, the Supreme" 14:48
"The Hour has come closer, and the moon has split" 54:1These sentences must mean that religions on the earth, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, should be nullified and a new comprehensive or meta religion would be given to mankind. And as evidence, the Islamic world should experience a great split through, for example, the US War on Islamic Terror and the Arab Spring.
Mar 16:1 And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him.What were they afraid of? What did they see except the stone rolled away, a young man sitting and clothed in a long white garment? Yes, this angel told the women to watch the place where they had laid him. And after watching it, they got so frightened. What was there?
Mar 16:2 And very early in the morning the first day of the week, they came unto the sepulchre at the rising of the sun.
Mar 16:3 And they said among themselves, Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre?
Mar 16:4 And when they looked, they saw that the stone was rolled away: for it was very great.
Mar 16:5 And entering into the sepulchre, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment; and they were affrighted.
Mar 16:6 And he saith unto them, Be not affrighted: Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he is risen; he is not here: behold the place where they laid him.
Mar 16:7 But go your way, tell his disciples and Peter that he goeth before you into Galilee: there shall ye see him, as he said unto you.
Mar 16:8 And they went out quickly, and fled from the sepulchre; for they trembled and were amazed: neither said they any thing to any man; for they were afraid.
The burial shroud purports to show the imprint of the face and body of a bearded man. The image also purportedly shows nail wounds at the man's wrist and pinpricks around his brow, consistent with the "crown of thorns" mockingly pressed onto Christ at the time of his crucifixion.
Many experts have stood by a 1988 carbon-14 dating of scraps of the cloth carried out by labs in Oxford, Zurich and Arizona that dated it from 1260 to 1390, which, of course, would rule out its used during the time of Christ.
The new test, by scientists at the University of Padua in northern Italy, used the same fibers from the 1988 tests but disputes the findings. The new examination dates the shroud to between 300 BC and 400 AD, which would put it in the era of Christ.
It determined that the earlier results may have been skewed by contamination from fibers used to repair the cloth when it was damaged by fire in the Middle Ages, the British newspaper reported. The cloth has been kept at the cathedral since 1578.
He also said his tests also supported earlier results claiming to have found traces of dust and pollen on that shroud that could only have come from the Holy Land.
The latest findings are contained in a new Italian-language book — Il Mistero Della Sindone or The Mystery of the Shroud, by Giulio Fanti, a professor of mechanical and thermal measurement at Padua University, and Saverio Gaeta, a journalist.
Fanti, a Catholic, used infra-red light and spectroscopy – the measurement of radiation intensity through wavelengths -- in his test. He said the results are the outcome of 15 years of research.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/03/30/shroud-turin-display/2038295/
The Vatican has tiptoed around just what the cloth is, calling it a powerful symbol of Christ's suffering while making no claim to its authenticity.
The 14-foot-long, 3.5-foot-wide (4.3-meter-long, 1 meter-wide) cloth is kept in a bulletproof, climate-controlled case in Turin's cathedral, but is only rarely open to the public. The last time was in 2010 when more than 2 million people lined up to pray before it and then-Pope Benedict XVI visited.
The latest display coincided with Holy Saturday, when Catholics mark the period between Christ's crucifixion on Good Friday and his resurrection on Easter Sunday. A few hundred people, many in wheelchairs, were invited inside the cathedral for the service, which was presided over by Turin's archbishop. It was only the second time the shroud has gone on display specifically for a TV audience; the first was in 1973 at the request of Pope Paul VI, the Vatican said.
The display also coincided with the release of a book based on new scientific tests on the shroud that researchers say date the cloth to the 1st century.
The research in "The Mystery of the Shroud," by Giulio Fanti of the University of Padua and journalist Saverio Gaeta, is based on chemical and mechanical tests on fibers of material extracted for the carbon-dating research. An article with the findings is expected to be submitted for peer-review, news reports say.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20130330/eu-vatican-shroud-of-turin/
Tests conducted on the Shroud of Turin by researchers at Italy's University of Padua indicate that the linen sheet believed by some to be Christ's burial cloth dates back to Jesus' lifetime.
The 14-foot-long cloth bearing the image of a man with wounds similar to those suffered by Christ was analyzed by university scientists using infrared light, according to The Daily Telegraph.
The research linking the shroud to between 280 B.C. and A.D. 220 was published in book by Giulio Fanti, a professor at Padua University, and journalist Saverio Gaeta.
Fanti, a Catholic, told the Telegraph that the results were based on 15 years of research on fibers taken from the cloth, which were subjected to radiation intensity tests.
Fanti told the paper he rejects the conclusion of carbon dating tests conducted in 1988 that bolstered the theory the shroud was made in the 13th or 14th century in a medieval forgery.
Those results, Fanti said, were "false" because of laboratory contamination, the Telegraph reported.Those women were shocked to see what they had expected to happen came true. So, it was not disappearance of Christ Jesus from the tomb that made them so frightened. Neither an angel was a big surprise as they were pious. But the image of Christ Jesus left on the shroud was against their faith in Judaism and Christ's teaching. It was something beyond their imagination. But where did the shroud later go? Who took it out of the tomb?
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/03/29/shroud-turin-dates-back-to-jesus-era-study-says/
First century Edessa, today known as Urfa in southeast Turkey, was the seat of a small buffer kingdom between the Parthians to the east and Romans in the west. It had a mixed population of Syriac, Greek, Armenian, and Arabic speaking peoples including a strong Jewish representation. By the 6th century it and the adjacent Assyrian region was home to a large, thriving Christian population. Most historians agree that Christianity was a growing force in Edessa late in the 2nd century under the famous ruler Abgar VIII (“The Great”), with a church sanctuary dated there in 201 (Segal 1970: 24). But when the Edessan Christians wrote their history in the 3rd century, they remembered that the Gospel originally came to them in the 1st century from a Jerusalem disciple named Addai and to a King Abgar V, a known historical figure contemporary with Christ. Eusebius included in his Ecclesiastical History a brief late 3rd century version, reporting a famous letter from Jesus still kept in the Edessan archives (Eusebius 1991: 43-47). But later in the 4th century (or possibly early in the 5th) a Syriac writer penned a much expanded text. Known as The Teaching of Addai (hereafter TA) one small passage has Abgar, who is corresponding with Jesus by way of a messenger Hanan, instructing him to make a picture of Jesus:
When Hanan the archivist saw that Jesus had spoken thus to him, he took and painted the portrait of Jesus with choice pigments, since he was the king’s artist, and brought it with him to his lord King Abgar. When King Abgar saw the portrait he received it with great joy and placed it with great honor in one of the buildings of his palaces (Howard 1981: 9 - 10).
Most modern scholars usually reject The TA as reliable history for a variety of reasons, but sometimes admit “a substratum of fact” (Segal 1970: 179–181). Wilson recognizes numerous “anachronisms and interpolations” more characteristic of Abgar VIII’s time than Abgar V’s but also concludes that many “elements of the story have an authentic period ring” (Wilson 1998: 165). As for the picture, this is the only certain place in antiquity that mentions the Edessa Image, and by itself would lead no one to dream that it was actually the NT sindon or Turin Shroud. Writers like the Edessan Church Father Ephrem in the 4th century show no knowledge of the picture, leading some scholars to believe there never was such an object in ancient Edessa (Drijvers 1998: 17). Others believe it was there, just not very famous (Drews 1984: 75). Historian Daniel Scavone opines that the story is “made up after the fact, when the real history was forgotten, to explain the presence of the Christ-picture in Edessa” (Scavone 1991: 180). What the TA may also suggest is that there was a distant memory in 4th century Edessa of a Christ picture coming to their city in an early evangelization, and if a lengthy history (like The TA) were to be written, contemporary readers might expect it to be included. However, because of persecution, it had to be hidden away and perhaps even lost, with only confused memories surviving by the 4th century (Wilson 1979: 129 – 130).
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This is of paramount importance in understanding the Holy Image of Edessa’s history, and why its identification with the Shroud of Turin is so apparently difficult; the cloth was almost always kept folded and hidden away from prying eyes, just as much as the Shroud during later centuries in Turin.
This concludes Part 1. In Part 2 we will trace the Image of Edessa to the great capital of Eastern Christendom, Constantinople, and find more reasons to connect it with our present Shroud of Turin.So, maybe a follower of Christ called Addai might bring the shroud those women had found in the tomb to Edessa. In addition, Addai might have been the young man sitting in the tomb when the women entered it. Anyway, a long story started up to Turin, today,
https://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/2013/03/14/The-Shroud-of-Turins-Earlier-History-Part-One-To-Edessa.aspx#Article
Presently a committee working for the Catholic Church has finished a five-year review of various proposals for more Shroud testing. Recommendations will go to the Vatican and, at some unspecified date, new tests (not necessarily C-14) will be conducted. Benford and Marino also have learned recently that Professor Piero Savarino, Cardinal Polleto’s current scientific adviser, had co-authored a booklet in 1998 declaring that “invisible mending” had been used on the Shroud in the past. The booklet admitted that if the C-14 sample came from such a mended area, the 1988 results would be invalid (Benford and Marino, 2005:2-3). The force of the patch theory appears strong and continues to attract support.
“Test everything; hold fast to what is good” (1 Thes. 5:21).Indeed, if it is scientifically proven that the shroud is true showing the image of Christ Jesus in the tomb, the Vatican would be blamed for its long negligence of the glory of their Lord, God.
http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/2006/04/19/Latest-Developments-on-the-Shroud-of-Turin-Part-II.aspx#.UrxIK_RdUuc
Yoshikazu Yasuhiko (1947- ) is a Japanese animator and manga artist in the anime industry.
Yasuhiko dropped out of Hirosaki University and was hired by Osamu Tezuka's Mushi Productions in 1970 as an animator. He later went freelance and worked on various animation productions for film and television. In 1981 he won the Seiun Award in Art category. He began working as a manga artist in 1988. In 1992 he won the Japan Cartoonists Association Award, and in 2000, an Excellence Prize in manga for Ōdō no Inu at the Japan Media Arts Festival. He is also known as a novelist and science fiction illustrator. Some of his most notable works as character designer and director are Brave Reideen, Combattler V, and Mobile Suit Gundam. Less well known is the fact that he was the original character designer for the Dirty Pair, long before their first anime or manga appearance, when he was illustrating the Haruka Takachiho short stories that became the 1980 fixup novel Great Adventures of the Dirty Pair.
In recent years he has branched out artistically, creating such works as Joan, a three-volume story of a young French girl living at the time of the Hundred Years' War, whose life parallels that of Joan of Arc; and Jesus, a two-volume biographical manga about the life of Jesus Christ.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoshikazu_Yasuhiko
Arab Spring
By December 2013 rulers had been forced from power in Tunisia,[1] Egypt (twice),[2] Libya,[3] and Yemen;[4] civil uprisings have erupted in Bahrain[5] and Syria;[6] major protests have broken out in Algeria,[7] Iraq,[8] Jordan,[9] Kuwait,[10] Morocco,[11] and Sudan;[12] and minor protests have occurred in Mauritania,[13] Oman,[14] Saudi Arabia,[15] Djibouti,[16] Western Sahara,[17] and the Palestinian Authority.Apart from whether God has caused Arab Spring for Israel, what would be a decisive incident for Israel? Can there be Hebrew or Jewish Spring?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring
