Saturday, March 30, 2013
NEWS: "Internet cable-cutters caught by Egypt" -The Times of Israel
Internet cable-cutters caught by Egypt signal new terror threat
Two bids within days to sabotage a major cable off the coast of Alexandria raise the specter of a new kind of ‘hacking,’ says Israeli expert
March 29, 2013, 10:11 am Updated: March 29, 2013, 11:29 am
Internet cables that run through the Middle East (Photo credit: Courtesy)
While the world worried on Wednesday about the implications of what may be the largest denial of service, or DDOS, attack ever — as two European groups feuded over what does and does not constitute spam — a much more serious Internet threat was averted when Egyptian police apprehended three individuals found hacking away at undersea Internet cables in an apparent attempt to cut off communications between Asia, Africa, and Europe.
According to Dr. Tal Pavel, CEO of MiddleEastNet, which catalogs intelligence about events affecting the Internet in the region, the chances that the three are affiliated with a terrorist group are “very high.”
Pavel referred to a recounting of the incident on the Facebook page of the Egyptian Navy, which described how sailors were called in to investigate suspicious activity off the coast of Alexandria. Divers were seen entering the water from a fishing boat about 750 meters off the coast — right atop the nexus of several Internet communication cables that connect India, the Middle East, and Europe. Sailors raided the ship and found cutting equipment and other proof that the divers were working to disrupt Internet service — with further evidence coming from the damage caused to the SEA-ME-WE-4 cable.
The three had apparently been at the hack job for a while, said Pavel; Egyptian officials reported a significant slowdown in Internet speed on Wednesday. The original complaint was filed by Egypt Telecom, responsible for Internet connections in Egypt, and responsible for the segment of the cable that passes through Egyptian territory.
Wednesday’s cable hacking attack was the second one off the Egyptian coast in a week. Days before, the SEACOM cable, which connects Africa and Europe, was partially damaged, causing a 60% reduction in Internet cable communications in Egypt, Pavel said.
It’s not clear if there is a connection between the damage to SEACOM and SEA-ME-WE-4, but Egyptian officials are investigating.
So far, there is no information as to the identity of the vandals, but Pavel said that it is very likely that they will turn out to be terrorists, affiliated with al-Qaeda or other radical Islamist groups. The attacks may be a new attempt by Islamists to cut off Internet access so as to prevent reports of increasing protests against the Egyptian government from getting out to the rest of the world.
That view was confirmed by Internet security expert Daniel Nisman, Middle East and North Africa Intelligence Manager for Max Security Solutions in Tel Aviv. Writing in the Huffington Post, Nisman said that “Anyone familiar with Egypt’s explosive post-revolution politics could easily point out a number of actors who would be more than ecstatic to cut off the country’s 80 million residents from the outside world. The most obvious candidate would be the Muslim Brotherhood, which has come under immense criticism from just about every corner of the political spectrum for the failings of the Morsi administration, whom it supports.
“At a time of growing political violence, police brutality, and economic doldrums, there are likely more than a few Brotherhood members would like to hinder their opposition’s proliferation of politically-damaging content over the Internet. It is also worth mentioning, that if anyone in Egypt knew the location of the country’s fiber optic cables, it would be the now Brotherhood-dominated Communications Ministry,” Nisman added.
According to Pavel, “Damage to any major undersea cable is very serious, as it is a one-time event that could significantly disrupt Internet communications for hundreds of millions of people.”
“The Internet includes a large number of such cables, some of which are redundant in order to provide backups in case of damage.” But the system is vulnerable, he said. “Many of the world’s most important cables crisscross at major intersections around the world, and the area of the Suez Canal near Alexandria is one such area.”
Thus, terrorists could cause a great deal of damage in a relatively short amount of time if they target a sensitive area, Pavel said.
“These two damage incidents illustrate the ease with which interested parties could impact negatively on the smooth running of the Internet, perhaps shutting the Internet down partially or even fully in a large part of the world,” said Pavel. “Taken with the news of the major DDOS attack that has been ongoing, it is clear that the there are many threats to the Internet, and that new security strategies to deal with these threats are needed.”
NEWS: "Natural gas starts flowing to Ashdod" -The Times of Israel
In first use of Israel’s offshore finds, natural gas starts flowing to Ashdod
Four years after its discovery, pumping from Tamar field begins Israel potential transformation from energy importer to exporter
Natural gas from the offshore Tamar field was pumped to Israeli shores for the first time Saturday, four years after its discovery, in preparation for its first use in the Israeli energy market — a move that could transform the Israeli economy.
The Tamar deposit, discovered in 2009, some 90 kilometers west of Haifa, holds an estimated 8.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
On Saturday, natural gas from the field was being pumped hundreds of kilometers south to a processing plant in Ashdod, where it was set to arrive on Sunday. From there, it will flow into the Israeli market. These newly harnessed resources promise to be a major boon to both the country’s public and private energy needs.
The Tamar deposit, and especially the heftier Leviathan, which was discovered in 2010, are expected to provide Israel enough natural gas for decades and transform the country, famously empty of natural resources, into an energy exporter.
Leviathan, which boasts an estimated 16 to 18 trillion cubic feet of gas, is expected to go online in 2016, the approximate time when exports are expected to begin.
Selling this gas overseas will require Israel to navigate a geopolitical quagmire that risks angering allies and enemies alike, however. Amid this uncertainty, Israel still has not formulated an export policy.
“Instead of being an ingredient which serves to calm the tensions of the eastern Mediterranean, (the discoveries) provide instead another impetus for rivalry,” said Simon Henderson, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “There is a reason this is often called diplomatically trapped gas.”
The discoveries are just a portion of the huge reserves in the Levant Basin, which the United States Geological Survey estimated in 2010 holds some 122 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas.
While Israel’s finds are minimal compared to gas giants Russia, Iran or Qatar, they are more than enough for the country’s domestic needs and would enable the country to reduce its reliance on costlier and dirtier oil and coal. Nearby Cyprus has also become newly resource-rich, and Israel’s other neighbors, including enemies, may discover their own deposits.
In all, Israel has just the world’s 46th largest supply of proven natural gas reserves, according to the CIA Factbook. But the country’s proximity to Middle Eastern and European markets could make it an important regional player. For oil companies hoping to profit from the new wealth, the biggest hurdle remains the lack of an export policy.
NEWS: "Pope's foot-wash a final straw for traditionalists"
Pope's foot-wash a final straw for traditionalists
By | Associated Press – 11 hrs ago- Associated Press/Gregorio Borgia - Pope Francis, right, looks up to the Crucifix during the Passion of Christ Mass inside St. Peter's Basilica, at the Vatican, Friday, March 29, 2013. Pope Francis began the
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis has won over many hearts and minds with his simple style and focus on serving the world's poorest, but he has devastated traditionalist Catholics who adored his predecessor, Benedict XVI, for restoring much of the traditional pomp to the papacy.
Francis' decision to disregard church law and wash the feet of two girls — a Serbian Muslim and an Italian Catholic — during a Holy Thursday ritual has become something of the final straw, evidence that Francis has little or no interest in one of the key priorities of Benedict's papacy: reviving the pre-Vatican II traditions of the Catholic Church.
One of the most-read traditionalist blogs, "Rorate Caeli," reacted to the foot-washing ceremony by declaring the death of Benedict's eight-year project to correct what he considered the botched interpretations of the Second Vatican Council's modernizing reforms.
"The official end of the reform of the reform — by example," ''Rorate Caeli" lamented in its report on Francis' Holy Thursday ritual.
A like-minded commentator in Francis' native Argentina, Marcelo Gonzalez at International Catholic Panorama, reacted to Francis' election with this phrase: "The Horror." Gonzalez's beef? While serving as the archbishop of Buenos Aires, the then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio's efforts to revive the old Latin Mass so dear to Benedict and traditionalists were "non-existent."
Virtually everything he has done since being elected pope, every gesture, every decision, has rankled traditionalists in one way or another.
The night he was chosen pope, March 13, Francis emerged from the loggia of St. Peter's Basilica without the ermine-rimmed red velvet cape, or mozzetta, used by popes past for official duties, wearing instead the simple white cassock of the papacy. The cape has since come to symbolize his rejection of the trappings of the papacy and to some degree the pontificate of Benedict XVI, since the German pontiff relished in resurrecting many of the liturgical vestments of his predecessors.
Francis also received the cardinals' pledges of obedience after his election not from a chair on a pedestal as popes normally do but rather standing, on their same level. For traditionalists who fondly recall the days when popes were carried on a sedan chair, that may have stung. In the days since, he has called for "intensified" dialogue with Islam — a gesture that rubs traditionalists the wrong way because they view such a heavy focus on interfaith dialogue as a sign of religious relativism.
Francis may have rubbed salt into the wounds with his comments at the Good Friday procession at Rome's Colosseum, which re-enacts Jesus Christ's crucifixion, praising "the friendship of our Muslim brothers and sisters" during a prayer ceremony that recalled the suffering of Christians in the Middle East.
Francis also raised traditional eyebrows when he refused the golden pectoral cross offered to him right after his election by Monsignor Guido Marini, the Vatican's liturgy guru who under Benedict became the symbol of Benedict's effort to restore the Gregorian chant and heavy silk brocaded vestments of the pre-Vatican II liturgy to papal Masses.
Marini has gamely stayed by Francis' side as the new pope puts his own stamp on Vatican Masses with no-nonsense vestments and easy off-the-cuff homilies. But there is widespread expectation that Francis will soon name a new master of liturgical ceremonies more in line with his priorities of bringing the church and its message of love and service to ordinary people without the "high church" trappings of his predecessor.
There were certainly none of those trappings on display Thursday at the Casal del Marmo juvenile detention facility in Rome, where the 76-year-old Francis got down on his knees to wash and kiss the feet of 12 inmates, two of them women. The rite re-enacts Jesus' washing of the feet of his 12 apostles during the Last Supper before his crucifixion, a sign of his love and service to them.
The church's liturgical law holds that only men can participate in the rite, given that Jesus' apostles were all male. Priests and bishops have routinely petitioned for exemptions to include women, but the law is clear.
Francis, however, is the church's chief lawmaker, so in theory he can do whatever he wants.
"The pope does not need anybody's permission to make exceptions to how ecclesiastical law relates to him," noted conservative columnist Jimmy Akin in the National Catholic Register. But Akin echoed concerns raised by canon lawyer Edward Peters, an adviser to the Vatican's high court, that Francis was setting a "questionable example" by simply ignoring the church's own rules.
"People naturally imitate their leader. That's the whole point behind Jesus washing the disciples' feet. He was explicitly and intentionally setting an example for them," he said. "Pope Francis knows that he is setting an example."
The inclusion of women in the rite is problematic for some because it could be seen as an opening of sorts to women's ordination. The Catholic Church restricts the priesthood to men, arguing that Jesus and his 12 apostles were male.
Francis is clearly opposed to women's ordination. But by washing the feet of women, he jolted traditionalists who for years have been unbending in insisting that the ritual is for men only and proudly holding up as evidence documentation from the Vatican's liturgy office saying so.
"If someone is washing the feet of any females ... he is in violation of the Holy Thursday rubrics," Peters wrote in a 2006 article that he reposted earlier this month on his blog.
In the face of the pope doing that very thing, Peters and many conservative and traditionalist commentators have found themselves trying to put the best face on a situation they clearly don't like yet can't do much about lest they be openly voicing dissent with the pope.
By Thursday evening, Peters was saying that Francis had merely "disregarded" the law — not violated it.
The Rev. John Zuhlsdorf, a traditionalist blogger who has never shied from picking fights with priests, bishops or cardinals when liturgical abuses are concerned, had to measure his comments when the purported abuser was the pope himself.
"Before liberals and traditionalists both have a spittle-flecked nutty, each for their own reasons, try to figure out what he is trying to do," Zuhlsdorf wrote in a conciliatory piece.
But, in characteristic form, he added: "What liberals forget in their present crowing is that even as Francis makes himself — and the church — more popular by projecting (a) compassionate image, he will simultaneously make it harder for them to criticize him when he reaffirms the doctrinal points they want him to overturn."
One of the key barometers of how traditionalists view Francis concerns his take on the pre-Vatican II Latin Mass. The Second Vatican Council, the 1962-65 meetings that brought the church into the modern world, allowed the celebration of the Mass in the vernacular rather than Latin. In the decades that followed, the so-called Tridentine Rite fell out of use almost entirely.
Traditionalist Catholics who were attached to the old rite blame many of the ills afflicting the Catholic Church today — a drop in priestly vocations, empty pews in Europe and beyond — on the liturgical abuses that they say have proliferated with the celebration of the new form of Mass.
In a bid to reach out to them, Benedict in 2007 relaxed restrictions on celebrating the old Latin Mass. The move was aimed also at reconciling with a group of schismatic traditionalists, the Society of St. Pius X, who split from Rome precisely over the Vatican II reforms, in particular its call for Mass in the vernacular and outreach to other religions, especially Judaism and Islam.
Benedict took extraordinary measures to bring the society back under Rome's wing during his pontificate, but negotiations stalled.
The society has understandably reacted coolly to Francis' election, reminding the pope that his namesake, St. Francis of Assisi, was told by Christ to go and "rebuild my church." For the society, that means rebuilding it in its own, pre-Vatican II vision.
The head of the society for South America, the Rev. Christian Bouchacourt, was less than generous in his assessment of Francis.
"He cultivates a militant humility, but can prove humiliating for the church," Bouchacourt said in a recent article, criticizing the "dilapidated" state of the clergy in Buenos Aires and the "disaster" of its seminary. "With him, we risk to see once again the Masses of Paul VI's pontificate, a far cry from Benedict XVI's efforts to restore to their honor the worthy liturgical ceremonies."
___
Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield
Gil Amelio: The Face Of Christ
Gil Amelio: The Face Of Christ
Watch as gifted sculptor Gil Amelio recreates the final moments of Jesus' life and the sacrifice that changed eternity. Read Transcript
Christ in the Passover -Jews for Jesus
CHRIST IN THE PASSOVER
Christ in the Passover shows the link between the ancient Festival of Redemption and Christ as the Lamb of God—your church members will never forget it! This sermonic demonstration is visual, so the congregation will actually see a table set with traditional Passover items.
The missionary uses Scripture as well as the visual items to walk through a Jewish Passover seder, weaving the story of the Exodus together with the life, death and resurrection of Christ.
The words He spoke in the upper room come alive as each Hebraic item is carefully explained. Many churches finish this powerful presentation by celebrating communion, and most who have tell us that Christ in the Passover has deepened their church's communion experience.
Friday, March 29, 2013
Is Anything in Life Free Anymore? -Will Graham
By Will Graham
Billy Graham Evangelistic Association
Is Anything In Life Free Anymore?
The Easter Sunrise Service has always been one of my favorite services to preach. There’s something so special and unique about gathering to worship the risen Savior on Easter morning. It’s a time when we can focus most on the sacrifice and glorious resurrection of Jesus, which gives us hope and removes the sting of death. I love it!
I remember several years ago when I was in college and dating the beautiful woman who would one day be my bride, Kendra. I took her with me to visit my grandfather, Billy Graham, for Easter in Montreat, N.C.
On our way back to Liberty University that afternoon, we drove up to Boone, N.C., to see my parents. We pulled into a little gas station on the south side of U.S. Route 70 to fuel up and be on our way. I vividly remember standing in line while the people in front of me made friendly conversation with the clerk behind the counter.
“Nothing’s free anymore!” the man chuckled as he handed over the money to pay for his gasoline purchase.
At that moment God told me to speak. My heart cried out to share the Gospel with these people: “Yes, God’s gift of Salvation is free! That’s what Easter is all about! God paid the debt for you through His Son, Jesus!”
My friends, that’s what I should have said.
Sadly, I kept that proclamation to myself. I regret it to this day. God gave me the words to say and wanted me to share His hope on that glorious Easter day with people who likely needed to hear it, but I disobeyed him and kept it silently in my heart. Frankly, I chickened out.
I made a covenant with God that day that if I ever felt Him speaking through me again, I would share it boldly and not hold back. Who knows? Sharing the words He gives us may be the difference between someone spending an eternity in Heaven or in Hell; the difference between a life of hope and a life of discouragement and despair.
As we celebrate Christ’s resurrection this year, I encourage you to listen to God as He speaks to you, and be His mouthpiece as He speaks through you. Easter is what it’s all about, and we need to take every opportunity available to us to share His saving message.
Has God laid on your heart the names of friends and loved ones who need to know Him? Visitwww.MyHopeWithBillyGraham.org to learn how you and your church can be a part of a major nationwide proclamation of the Gospel culminating this November. Join the movement today.
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