The deal, said to be for $660m (£324m), has yet to be approved by a judge. It would be the biggest compensation payment the Church has made since the sexual abuse scandal erupted in 2002. It would take the total paid out by the Church in the US to $2bn since 1950, with the LA diocese paying about one quarter of that.

The settlement figures have not yet been officially announced. The diocese is expected to sell property to raise the compensation funds. Ray Boucher, lead plaintiff lawyer in the case, said the settlement also called for the release of confidential priest personnel files. "Transparency is a critical part of this and of all resolutions," he said.

Since 2002 nearly 1,000 people have filed such claims against the Roman Catholic Church in California alone.

In February 2004, a report commissioned by the Church said more than 4,000 Roman Catholic priests in the US had faced sexual abuse allegations in the last 50 years.

The Pope sent that message to the participants in the first meeting of Christian Movements and Communities, held Saturday in Stuttgart with the theme "Together Pro-Europe." Archbishop Stanislaw Rylko, president of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, read the message to the participants. The meeting gathered 10,000 Catholics, evangelicals, Orthodox and Anglicans, and was linked to 158 European cities by satellite. The event in part celebrated the entry of 10 new countries into the European Union.

THE [PONTIFF] BEGAN HIS MESSAGE BY SAYING THAT THE STEPS THAT ARE BEING TAKEN IN THE PROCESS OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION ARE DUE TO THE COMMITMENT OF THE "FATHERS" OF EUROPE, the great majority of whom were Christians, who understood the need for reconciliation in the Old World in the wake of World War II.

However, the Pope added that the Christian faith is not something that forms part of the European past. "It also represents the present and the future of Europe," he said."In the commitment to bring about a more humane society, open to others and solidaristic in love, we must not cease to open our hearts to the Gospel," the Pope exhorted the movements and communities.

"Ecumenical dialogue contributes decisively to develop a European identity based on the Christian faith," he said. To this end, "thanks to a careful and respectful dialogue, the movements offer an important contribution to consolidate among Christians the Lord's commandment of love."

The papal message concluded: "The new evangelization gives a soul to Europe and helps the Continent not to continue living for itself, enclosed in its borders, but to build a more humane society that respects life, and to have a generous presence on the world scene."

So much so that scientists talk about the "Anthropocene" - the destructive Era Of Man. Our gases are polluting the atmosphere and warming the skies. Our chemicals taint the seas and the rivers; our farms and cities gobble up the landscape, pushing flora and fauna aside like sand before a bulldozer. Our green-and-blue world is still beautiful, but it is far from pristine.

In fact, the first things to happen after the disappearance of humanity would be very dramatic - and destructive. Within a week, the emergency fuel supply to the diesel generators that circulate cooling water around the world's 441 operating nuclear reactors would run out. After that, one by one, the reactors would overheat, burn, melt and in some cases explode. Several hundred Chernobyl disasters would play out, simultaneously, across the deserted world. Huge quantities of radioactive material would be released into the air, rivers and oceans.

But much to everyone's surprise, the flora and fauna around the Chernobyl disaster site has thrived. The ecologist James Lovelock, a pro-nuclear Green, argues that wildlife, by and large, does not notice radiation.
Certainly, from then on, planet Earth would probably give a sigh of relief at our passing, as a spectacular environmental recovery would begin to take place. Quickly, the oceans would cleanse themselves; similarly the air, the streams and the rivers. In a remarkably short time, Mother Nature would reassert herself over her old dominions.

In the new, human-free world, a few species would do badly - the rats, cockroaches and starlings that cling to our coat-tails would suffer. So would cows, sheep and other farm animals. The human head-louse would become extinct within a year, and HIV would vanish. In Africa, an orgy of feasting would take place as an exploding lion and leopard population guzzled its way through the continent's millions of cattle, no longer protected by the herdsmen's spears and guns.

Britain's farmlands would see the rapid growth of fescues and lupins, tangled swathes of grass and wild mustard. Within years, oak shoots would sprout from the former fields of wheat, barley and rye. After a couple of centuries, Britain would revert to a pre-medieval knot of forest and undergrowth, its ancient patchwork of fields and hedgerows gone for ever.

The big cities would crumble with remarkable ease. London or New York, like all large towns near the sea, would start to rot from their foundations up, as underground tunnels and conduits that carried trains and cables, roadways and sewage, started to fill up with water within days. The pumps that keep them dry would have simply ceased to operate. Within a few weeks, grass shoots would begin to shatter every road surface in the world.

Within 15 years, the M1 would look like one of those roads built in Africa in the 1960s and never since maintained. Within a decade, the combined onslaught of weeds, waterlogging from blocked drains and the freeze-thaw action of water seeping into cracks would combine to turn the foundations of the urban world to rubble.

Many buildings would start to fall apart within 20 years. Walls would groan and creak, roof tiles lift, joints between walls and roofs separate. Without central heating, with gutters permanently clogged and no maintenance, most of Britain's homes would be in ruins by 2040. America's cities, with their generally harsher climates, would fall apart even sooner.

"Don't be fooled," says David Olsen, an American materials scientist, "by massive steel buildings, steamrollers, tanks, railway tracks - without maintenance and painting - the steel fabric of our civilisation would soon crumble."

We live in the steel age, but we might also be said to live in the plastic age. Depressingly, it may be the plastic bag that proves to be one of mankind's most persistent legacies. Come back in ten thousand years, and most of them will still be there.

From the new book - "The World Without Us" by Alan Weisman, of Arizona University

Not that June should be presented as evidence that global warming isn't happening, or that we're causing it. Relying on such a tiny sample would be unscientific and wrong, even if it involves an entire continent's weather patterns throughout the course of a whole month. No such foolishness will be indulged in here.

SADLY, THOSE WHO BELIEVE IN GLOBAL WARMING - AND WHO WOULD COMPEL US ALSO TO BELIEVE - AREN'T SIMILARLY CONSTRAINED. A few hot days are all they ever need to get the global warming bandwagon rolling; evidently it's solar powered. Here, for example, is an Australian Associated Press report on May's weather, which in places was a little warmer than usual:

"CLIMATE CHANGE GAVE MUCH OF AUSTRALIA'S DROUGHT-STRICKEN EAST COAST ITS WARMEST MAY ON RECORD, weather experts say."Global warming and an absence of significant cold changes had driven temperatures well above the monthly average, said meteorologist Matt Pearce. According to Mr Pearce, May's temperatures were "yet another sign of the widespread climate change that we are seeing unfold across the globe."

IF THAT'S THE CASE, SHOULDN'T JUNE'S COLD WEATHER - COLDEST SINCE 1950, REMEMBER - BE A SIGN THAT WIDESPREAD CLIMATE CHANGE ISN'T UNFOLDING ACROSS THE GLOBE? We're using the same data here; one month's weather. And, in fact, the June sample is Australia-wide while May only highlights the east coast. FEAR THE DAWN OF A GREAT "COLDENING"!

The Independent's environment editor, Michael McCarthy, said in April:"The possibility is growing that Britain in 2007 may experience a summer of unheard-of high temperatures, with the thermometer even reaching 40C, or 104F, a level never recorded in history."This would be quite outside all historical experience, but entirely consistent with predictions of climate change."

AS WIMBLEDON WATCHERS WOULD BE AWARE, WHAT WITH THE RAINIEST TOURNAMENT SINCE JIMMY CONNORS DEFEATED JOHN MCENROE IN 1982,
THOSE UNHEARD-OF HIGH TEMPERATURES REMAIN UNHEARD-OF.
SOMEONE MIGHT CONCLUDE, THEREFORE, THAT THE NOT-HOT SUMMER IS NOT ENTIRELY CONSISTENT WITH PREDICTIONS OF CLIMATE CHANGE.

But climate change is like Michael Moore's tracksuit - it can fit anyone. In 2005, Greenpeace rep Steven Guilbeault helpfully explained: "GLOBAL WARMING CAN MEAN COLDER, IT CAN MEAN DRIER, IT CAN MEAN WETTER, THAT'S WHAT WE'RE DEALING WITH." What we're dealing with, apparently, is weather.

Other defining features of British life - screaming, inaccurate nonsense from the Guardian, for example - will never be farewelled. CUE WET WIMBLEDON, THE COLDEST DAY FOR TEST MATCH CRICKET (7.4C) IN ENGLISH HISTORY, AND THIS BBC ONLINE HEADLINE: "WHERE HAS THE UK'S SUMMER GONE?"

This year Queensland has gone frosty. Townsville's June was its coldest since 1940; June 24 saw the coldest Brisbane morning on record.Think of these little factoids the next time your read a report linking a hot day or month or year to global warming.

Iran wants yen-based transactions "for any/all of your forthcoming Iranian crude oil liftings," according to a letter sent to Japanese refiners that was signed by Ali A. Arshi, general manager of crude oil marketing and exports in Tehran at the National Iranian Oil Co. The request is for all shipments "effective immediately," according to the letter, dated July 10 and obtained by Bloomberg News.

The yen rose on speculation for an increase in demand for the currency, the result of Japan's annual 1.24 trillion yen ($10.1 billion) of oil imports from Iran. Central bankers in Venezuela, Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates have said they will invest less of their reserves in dollar assets because of the weakening currency.

"What else can Japan do but to accept the request, once the oil producer sent its wish?" said Hirofumi Kawachi, an analyst at Mizuho Investors Securities Co. in Tokyo. "The tensions between the U.S. and Iran are escalating, and it's Iran's measure to hedge risk." Iran is cutting its U.S. dollar reserves to less than 20 percent of total foreign currency holdings, and will buy more euros and yen as tensions with the U.S. increase, Central Bank Governor Ebrahim Sheibany said on March 27.

Iran isn't alone in wanting to drop the dollar for pricing oil. Russia has been examining plans to price the Urals oil export blend in rubles to curb currency risks. The nation plans to open the Energy Stock Exchange in St. Petersburg in the first half of next year to trade oil in rubles, UBS AG reported June 14.

Iran asked the refiners to use the yen exchange rate quoted at the Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ on the date oil cargoes are loaded. The use of yen-based letters of credit for oil "has finally been approved" by the Iranian central bank and the NIOC, according to the letter, titled "New payment mechanism for Iranian Crude Oil Cargoes."

The prospect that China can be a major economic power is feeding widespread paranoia in the United States. The fear is that developing nations, led by China and India, may out-compete the advanced nations for high-tech jobs while keeping the low-skill, labor-intensive manufacturing jobs they already own. China already is the world's biggest producer and exporter of consumer electronics and it is a matter of time before it becomes a major player in auto exports. Shipbuilding is now dominated by China and aircraft manufacturing will follow.

The US Navy is now dependent on Asia, and eventually China, to build its new ships, and eventually the economics of trade will force the US Air Force to procure planes made in Asia and assembled in China.
China has more than 1.3 billion people, a fifth of the world's population, and a workforce of 700 million as against a US workforce of 147 million. To avoid being overtaken by China in aggregate national income, US wages would have to maintain a gap of five times Chinese wages.

The US is waking up from its self-delusion to the reality that free trade never leads to balanced trade. Free trade always works against the weaker trading partner, even with the principle of comparative advantage.The US was happy to promote free trade when unbalanced trade was in favor of the stronger US economy. Balanced trade between unequal partners requires managed trade at the expense of the stronger partner, which is achieved by the weaker economy resorting to government interference for more favorable terms of trade.

In a neo-liberal free-trade regime, the US has a choice of losing jobs or losing economic dominance and geopolitical power to China. That is the key dilemma in US economic policy toward China. There is an economic basis behind militant US antagonism toward China. The United States won both previous world wars primarily by its wartime productive power. This fact has not been forgotten by US policy-planners. While the US manufacturing base has been seriously eroded by neo-liberal global trade in the past two decades, a shooting war with China would relocate much of the lost manufacturing back to the US in short order.

A war between the US and China can have no winners, particularly on the political front. Even if the US were to prevail militarily through its technological superiority, the political cost of military victory would be so severe that the US as it currently exists would not be recognizable after the conflict and the original geopolitical aim behind the conflict would remain elusive, as the Vietnam War and the Iraq war have demonstrated. By comparison, the Vietnam and Iraq conflicts, destructive as they have been to the US social fabric, are mere minor scrimmages compared with a war with China.

US policymakers have an option to make China a friend and partner in a peaceful world for the benefit of all nations. To do so, they must first recognize that the world can operate on the principle of plentitude and that prosperity is not something to be fought over by killing consumers in a world plagued with overcapacity.

The vast majority of Iraqis live by the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers or one of their many tributaries. The two rivers, which defined the ancient land of Mesopotamia (from the Greek "between the rivers"), join near Basra in the south to form the Shatt al-Arab river basin. Iraq is also gifted with high-quality groundwater resources; about a fifth of the territory is farmland.

"The water we have in Iraq is more than enough for our living needs," said chief engineer Adil Mahmood of the Irrigation Authority in Baghdad. "In fact we can export water to neighboring countries like Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Jordan - who manage shortages in water resources with good planning." But now Iraqi farmers struggle to get water to their crops. There is severe lack of electricity to run pumps and fuel to run generators.

"The water is there and the rivers have not dried up, but the problem lies in how to get it to our dying
plantations," said Jabbar Ahmed, a farmer from Latifiya south of Baghdad. "It is a shame that we, our animals and our plants are thirsty in a country that has the two great rivers." Iraq now imports most agricultural products because of lack of irrigation.

The average household in Iraq now gets two hours of electricity a day. About 70% of Iraqis have no access to safe drinking water, and only 19% have sewage access, according to the World Health Organization. Unemployment stands at more than 60%.

BEIJING - After weeks of watching the mercury soar, hardening the already cracked earth of their wilting orchards and farms, a group of farmers on the outskirts of Beijing gather in the Fragrant Hills that line the western fringe of China's capital city. Unlike their ancestors, they do not assemble to perform a rain dance or gather in a temple to pray to the Lord Buddha to bring the rain.

Instead, they grab rocket launchers and a 37-millimeter anti-aircraft gun and begin shooting into the sky. What they launch are not bullets or missiles but chemical pellets. Their targets are not enemy aggressors but wisps of passing cloud that they aim to "seed" with silver-iodide particles around which moisture can then collect and become heavy enough to fall.

According to Wang Guanghe, director of the Weather Modification Department under the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, each of China's more than 30 provinces and province-level municipalities today boast a weather-modification base, employing more than 32,000 people, 7,100 anti-aircraft guns, 4,991 special rocket launchers and 30-odd aircraft across the country.

"Ours is the largest artificial weather program in the world in terms of equipment, size and budget," Wang said, adding that the annual nationwide budget for weather modification is between US$60 million and $90 million.

It is no coincidence that the world's biggest such project is in China. The country's leadership has never been cautious about harnessing nature, taking on a slew of what were once thought impossible engineering challenges, such as the Three Gorges dam, the world's biggest hydroelectric project, and the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, the world's longest highland railroad.

For a largely agrarian country like China, the weather was thought of as far too important to be left to the whim of gods or nature. As a result, Chinese scientists began researching man-made rain as far back as 1958, using chemicals such as silver iodide or dry ice to facilitate condensation in moisture-laden clouds.

In the beginning, the idea was to ease drought and improve harvests for Chinese farmers, but over the decades other functions have evolved such as firefighting, prevention of hailstorms, and replenishment of river heads and reservoirs. Artificial rain has also been used by some provinces to combat drought and sandstorms. In 2004, Shanghai decided to induce rain simply to lower the temperature during a prolonged heat wave to bring relief to an increasingly hot and sweaty urban populace.

And now China's weather officials have been charged with another important task: ensuring clear skies for the Summer Olympic Games next year. Zhang Qiang, the top weather-modification bureaucrat in Beijing, said her office has been conducting experiments in cloud-busting for the past two years in preparation for the Games' opening ceremony on August 8, 2008.

She said that according to past meteorological data, there is a 50% chance of drizzle on that day. To ensure blue skies, the Beijing Weather Modification Office is busy researching the effects of various chemical activators on different sizes of cloud formations at different altitudes. The aim is to catch pregnant clouds early and induce rainfall ahead of the big day so that during the opening ceremony the sky is cloud-free.

Wang said similar efforts in the past have already helped to create good weather for a number of international events held in China, including the 1999 World Horti-Expo in Yunnan and the 1993 East Asian Games in Shanghai.

Conservationists and wild-fish interests say farmed fish can carry disease and affect the genes of wild species if they reproduce. Roger Brooks, chairman of the Rivers and Fisheries Trusts of Scotland, said, "In an average year there are ten escaped salmon in the sea for every wild fish returning to Scotland. That is appalling. They are contaminating the countryside, their genetics are mucking up wild fish when they cross breed and they are just a pest."

Scottish Executive figures show that between 2002 - when statutory reporting began - and 2006, the number of escapees totals 1.58 million. However, annual figures have dropped from 312,655 to 155,653 over that period.

The surprisingly-public message came after a speech by Douglas Alexander, the development secretary, that was seen by some in London and Washington as heralding a cooling in Transatlantic relations. Mr Alexander argued in his speech in Washington that other states should abide by international rules on the use of military force, and put more effort into "building" than "destroying".

His remarks were taken by both left-wing Labour MPs and right-wing allies of President George W Bush, as a coded criticism of the interventionist foreign policy pursued by Mr Bush and former prime minister Tony Blair.
"It was absolutely the right kind of critique to be making of where America and the world are at," said Tony Lloyd, a Labour MP and former foreign office minister.

"It's a very unhelpful speech" said Nile Gardner, an expert in US-UK relations at the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think-tank with close ties to the White House. "It is going to cause offence in parts of the Bush administration." However, Downing Street insisted there was no question of Mr Alexander signalling any change in UK policy. "To interpret this as saying anything at all about our relationship with the US is nonsense" said Mr Brown's spokesman.

Despite downplaying the row yesterday morning, Mr Brown later issued his very public reminder to his ministers, instructing his chief of staff, Tom Scholar, to write to the Cabinet emphasising the importance of the British-US relationship. Mr Alexander himself yesterday also insisted his speech had not altered UK foreign policy. He said: "Gordon Brown has made very clear that he regards a strong relationship with the US as being one of the fundamental bases of his foreign policy."

Further trying to emphasise Mr Brown's pro-Americanism, Downing Street also announced that Mr Brown will fly to Washington for talks with Mr Bush later this month. Robert Tuttle, the US ambassador in London, yesterday insisted he was not concerned about Mr Alexander's speech, which he described as "very straightforward" but "reported in a very exaggerated manner".

Why? Because Islam is an idea, a belief, a philosophy, a worldview, a religion that over a billion and a half people follow and live their daily lives by. Islam determines what Muslims think, hear, value, believe - even die for. Islam is what a billion and a half Muslims have banked their eternal destiny on and more than not will gladly give their lives to assure a Muslim world, as painfully witnessed recently in the terrorist bomb plots at London's West End and Scotland's Glasgow Airport where so far six of the eight suspects detained are respected, upper-class Muslim medical doctors.

WE MUST CHANGE PHILOSOPHY (RELIGION) BY PHILOSOPHY.

This isn't an original idea. Remember that the first thing the victorious Allies did after conquering Hitler and his Nazis during World War II was to institute a comprehensive "de-Nazification" program to change the thinking of all Germans away from Nazi fanaticism and anti-Semitism to a representative democracy, establishing a republic based on the legal/moral paradigm of the rule of law and a Constitution.

A similar program was enacted by Gen. Douglas MacArthur to convert the Japanese masses away from the maniacal fanaticism of Emperor Worship, which existed for over 1,000 years. Sixty years later, Japan stands as a faithful ally of America and a bulwark republic in an area rife with Communist dictatorships and growing Islamic hegemony.

LOOK AT WHAT MUSLIM COUNTRIES DO TO OUR JUDEO-CHRISTIAN BELIEFS. THERE IS AN EXPLICIT, UNIFIED AND PURPOSEFUL STRATEGY TO FORBID STRICTLY THE BIBLE, CHRISTIAN LITERATURE OR PROSELYTIZING OF ANY KIND IN VIRTUALLY ALL MUSLIM COUNTRIES AT PAINS OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT - THE MOST EGREGIOUS AND OVERT BEING SAUDI ARABIA, AMERICA'S SUPPOSED ALLY IN THE WAR ON TERROR. YET THE MUSLIMS CAN BUILD MOSQUES IN AMERICA AND IN THE WEST AS FAST AS SAUDI ARABIA, IRAN OR SOME OTHER MUSLIM COUNTRY, OR TERRORIST ORGANIZATION, SENDS THEM THE FUNDS.

The result: Genocidal Islam grows right here in America, while Judeo-Christianity dies a slow death on the vine due to 150 years of neglect and failure to use the world's greatest religion as a viable domestic and foreign policy strategy and geopolitical export to the nations of the world.

The crux of the argument is: Can a secular liberal democracy ever defeat genocidal Islamic jihad against the West? I answer no. The problem with the war on terror is that we are asking the wrong people for their expert opinion to deal with the West's vexing problems of worldwide terrorism.
Speaking as a philosopher, I am convinced that America's current military strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan is not only ineffective, but generates increasing numbers of fanatical Muslims championing jihad - something to die for.

Three thousand years ago, David, a future philosopher-king, was born. A young, anonymous Jewish boy on the back hills of Judea asked his king as the armies of Israel cowered in fear before the dreadful Philistine giant, Goliath, the simple but sublime question: "Is there not a cause?" That same teenage boy took a rag and a rock, ran onto the battlefield to confront this 9-foot-9-inch infidel giant, popped him in the head with his slingshot, killing him, and chopped off his head with Goliath's own sword.

Now, in my humble opinion, that boy was a real man! WOULD TO GOD THAT AMERICA, BRITAIN, ISRAEL AND ALL NATIONS OF GOOD WILL HAD A PHILOSOPHER-KING TO DELIVER US THIS DAY FROM OUR TWO GREATEST ENEMIES - LIBERALISM AND ISLAMIC HEGEMONY.

"People have to understand what we're talking about here. The president of the United States is an internationalist," said Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo. "He is going to do what he can to create a place where the idea of America is just that - it's an idea. It's not an actual place defined by borders. I mean this is where this guy is really going."

Tancredo lashed out at the White House's lack of action in securing U.S. borders, and said efforts to merge the U.S. with both Mexico and Canada is not a fantasy.

"I know this is dramatic - or maybe somebody would say overly dramatic - but I'm telling you, that everything I see leads me to believe that this whole idea of the North American Union, it's not something that just is written about by right-wing fringe kooks. It is something in the head of the president of the United States, the president of Mexico, I think the prime minister of Canada buys into it. ...

"And they would just tell you, 'Well, sure, it's a natural thing. It's part of the great globalization ... of the economy.' They assume it's a natural, evolutionary event that's going to occur here. I hope they're wrong and I'm going to try my best to make sure they're wrong. But I'm telling you the tide is great. The tide is moving in their direction. We have to say that."

It seems, given the dour mood of the country, that this would be a good time to market such a book. So, is America creaking and crumbling like a latter-day Rome? If it is, the word hasn't gotten to our financial markets. Stocks are booming, interest rates, inflation and unemployment are low, and companies are making money. Usually this is the formula for a happy electorate. But, for some reason, not now.

According to polls, less than a third of Americans are happy with their president, barely more than a fourth are happy with their Congress, and three-quarters feel the country is on the wrong track. A recent New York Times/CBS poll shows pessimism extending among our young people. In a survey of 17- to 29-year-olds, 70 percent said the nation is on the wrong track.

Certainly, there is unhappiness about the war in Iraq. We hear comparisons to Vietnam. But let's recall that the death toll in Vietnam, when the protests got most intense, was far beyond the 3,000-plus casualties we have experienced thus far in Iraq. By the time we exited Vietnam, we had lost more than 50,000 of our soldiers.

Here's one hypothesis about what may be affecting the general mood. People feel rattled when they feel a loss of control.

ONE THING AMERICANS HAVE DONE OVER THE YEARS IS TURN MORE AND MORE OF THEIR LIVES OVER TO OTHERS TO CONTROL. THIS IS REFLECTED IN THE GROWTH OF GOVERNMENT.

At the beginning of the last century, government took less than one dollar of every 10 produced by the nation's economy. By the 1950s, government was taking about one dollar of every four produced. Now it is taking almost a third. Along with the growth of government, there has been a dramatic shift from local and state control to the federal government.

AT THE BEGINNING OF THE LAST CENTURY, 70 PERCENT OF GOVERNMENT SPENDING WAS AT THE STATE AND LOCAL LEVEL. TODAY, ALMOST TWO-THIRDS OF GOVERNMENT SPENDING IS AT THE FEDERAL LEVEL.

All of this means two things. First, a large portion of our lives today is politicized and run inefficiently. One of the reasons our free economy works so well is that businesses change as times change. But once a government program starts, entrenched political interests make change almost impossible. Second, people feel impotent as their lives are increasingly controlled by distant bureaucrats and monolithic government programs.
So, is Rome and decline in the cards for us?

Think we'll be OK if we don't forget how we got successful and what drives failure. Our success has come from freedom and letting individuals take responsibility for their own lives. But failure comes when we lose the humility required of freedom and turn to prideful notions that we can design government programs that solve life's problems.

For guidance here, we must turn not to history but to Proverbs.
"Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall."

"Never discuss politics or religion." Right? If you want to avoid controversy, uncomfortable confrontation, or angry disagreement and argument, just don't even mention those two things. Of course.

But what if those two things have become inextricably intertwined, and the political choices we all must make - for our mutual safety and foreseeable futures as free peoples - boil down to a choice between two religions? Between two irreconcilable, terribly opposite worldviews and religious philosophies?

What do we do when it becomes starkly clear that at least 100 million people all over this planet believe, deeply and as a basic tenet of their devout religion, that all who disagree with them are infidels - and must either be converted, subjugated or put to death. And that their God will handsomely reward any and all who die, accomplishing this "conversion" of the world's population to their religion?

Do intelligent people just shrug these facts off, assuming "it'll all work out; those people don't really believe all that, and even if they do, they'll come to their senses in time"? Do we all just go about our business and pleasure, leaving the "working out" of these diabolically opposite worldviews to diplomats and politicians?

Do reasonable adults even subscribe to the growing notion that Israel is the basic cause of all the problems in the Middle East, and that we Americans should withdraw support for that troublesome, pugnacious little "thorn in our side" and let the Muslim extremists wipe it off the map - believing that all other nations can then breathe sighs of relief and enjoy a harmonious, peaceful world?

The crazed, irrational hatred of Israel is at least partly because of its historic contributions to the world. The thought of Israel's enemies is "Who made the Jews so special?" My answer is God did - that's who. Long ago, the God of Abraham promised, "I'll bless those who bless you, and I'll curse those who curse you. And in you all the nations of the world will be blessed."

Abraham had two sons, only one by his wife Sarah, so God repeated the promises to Isaac. He made other promises to Ishmael, but He also foretold of everlasting enmity between the descendants of the two sons. Now that enmity has taken on global proportions, and no diplomacy or political maneuvering or "friendly persuasion" is ever going to convince those who are committed to another idea of God that anyone who refuses to accept their religion is worthy to live!

There's no neutrality, no spiritual Switzerland here; the lines are drawn in the sand. This conflict, growing and festering and becoming more inflamed by the hour, is between two concepts of God: one "loving the world so much He gave His only Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life" - and the other decreeing that all who will not accept him and his domination must be put to death, now and forever.
It's time to choose, and every single human being must make a choice.

-Evangelicals burned the pope in effigy in the U.S.
-Catholic cathedrals were burned down in Europe.
-Catholic missionaries were attacked in Asia.
-Catholic Bibles were thrown on a bonfire in Africa.
-Protestants kidnapped priests and nuns in Latin America and held them for ransom.
-Threats on the life of the pope poured in from around the world.

YOU SAW ALL THIS ON THE NEWS, RIGHT? OH, YOU DIDN'T? YOU MEAN NON-CATHOLIC CHRISTIANS DID NOT RISE UP IN ANGER AND VIOLENCE WHEN INSULTED BY THE POPE?

WHY IS THAT?

AFTER ALL, LOOK AT WHAT HAPPENED IN THE ISLAMIC WORLD WHEN POPE BENEDICT EVER-SO-GENTLY CHIDED ITS HISTORY.

Last fall, Pope Benedict gave a speech at Regensburg in which he quoted from a 14th century text that denounced as "evil and inhumane" Muhammad's decree that Islam could be spread by the sword.
Within hours of the address, priests in Islamic countries were murdered and churches were burned. Muslims "protesting" the speech - because it insulted their "peaceful" religion - shot an African nun in the back. Threats were made against the life of the pope. When the pope traveled to Turkey two months later, he was met by tens of thousands of angry demonstrators.

With that recent experience with what we're told is "the religion of peace" in mind, should we not have expected the non-Catholic Christian world to ignite like a powder keg when insulted by Pope Benedict?

YET, IT DID NOT HAPPEN. WHY? IT'S QUITE SIMPLE.

Christians, generally speaking, though constantly criticized by non-believers as intolerant, are actually the most tolerant, peaceable people in the world. They believe in debate. They believe in dialogue. They believe in lively and free expression. They believe in permitting others to speak their minds - even when they profoundly disagree with what is said.

As an evangelical Christian, I was disappointed the pope would approve a document that characterized my faith as "defective" because I did not submit to his authority and the authority of priests but instead live only by the authority of God and His Word.

I disagree with the pope that the church Christ established on this Earth had anything to do with an institution run by men. The church Christ started was not a building. It was not a corporation. It was not a set of rules. It was and is a relationship between Creator and His creation.

Nevertheless, no matter how profoundly I disagree with the pope on this issue, I am not even slightly tempted to burn down Catholic churches or take nuns and priests hostage. I don't think many other non-Catholic Christians are either - as evidenced by the quietude we have experienced in the world since the pope's action.

There's a lesson here.
SOME NON-BELIEVERS LIKE TO PORTRAY CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALISTS AND ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISTS AS CUT FROM THE SAME CLOTH. I think the reaction to these two separate pronouncements from the Vatican illustrates just how profoundly ignorant, unenlightened and bigoted such conclusions are.

No heads were chopped off in the creation of this column.
No children were recruited into the suicide bomber profession in the creation of this column.
No women were stoned to death in the creation of this column.
And none of those things will happen as a result of the pope's difference of opinion with the non-Catholic Christian world.
No, I don't want to kill the pope because of his wrongful conclusions about me and my faith.