Sunday, December 25, 2016

8 Ways Microbes Can Save Us From Ourselves

8 Ways Microbes Can Save Us From Ourselves

8 Ways Microbes Can Save Us From Ourselves | microbes | Environment General Health Toxins
Could bacteria and related microbes, widely believed to be a primary cause of disease, explain how we are capable of surviving through the self-created chemical nightmare of industrialized society?
Environmental chemical exposures number in the tens of thousands among industrialized populations.  Our water, air, food, and now bodies, are saturated through with xenobiotic chemicals (compounds foreign to our biochemistry) most of which did not even exist on the planet before the industrial revolution of the late 19thcentury.
Remarkably, our bodies are equipped with detoxification systems (such as the cytochrome P450 superfamily of enzymes), whose intelligent design makes it possible to degrade chemicals that did not even exist at the time in the distant past that these elaborate enzyme systems evolved – as if we were predesigned to be able to survive the burgeoning, geometrically expanding chemical onslaught of the past century.
Eventually, however, our elaborate detoxification systems become overloaded, which naturally leads to the emergence of acute and chronic diseases – diseases that the conventional medical establishment often pretends do not have an environmental origin, and therefore are treated by suppressing symptoms of poisoning with new, patented poisons known as pharmaceuticals. This approach has resulted in our becoming the sickest organism ever known to inhabit the Earth.
Thankfully, we are not alone. We have helpers all around and within us. Friendly bacteria (and beneficial yeast), with which we co-evolved, and have formed symbiotic alliances with, outnumber our own cells 10 to 1, numbering in the trillions. It has been proposed that our very definition of self should be updated to include these “others,” and that humans are truly a “meta-organism.”  This is no metaphor, because if you take away these bacteria, we die.
In order to bring this relationship into clearer focus, let us look at a few things these bacteria do for us, that we aren’t very good at doing for ourselves:
Perchlorate Toxicity – perchlorate is an ingredient in jet fuel and fireworks that widely contaminates the environment and our food. It is now found in disturbing concentrations in breast milk and urine, and is a well-known endocrine disrupter capable of blocking the iodine receptor in the thyroid, resulting in hypothyroidism and concomitant neurological dysfunction.  A recent study found that the beneficial bacterial strain known as Bifidobacterium Bifidum is capable of degrading perchlorate, and that breast fed infants appear to have lower levels than infant formula fed babies due to the breast milk bacteria’s ability to degrade perchlorate through the perchlorate reductase pathway.[i]
Pesticide Toxicity – Lactic acid bacteria strains isolated from the fermented cabbage dish known in Korean culture as kimchi were shown capable of degrading four different organophosphorous insecticides using these poisons as a source of carbon and phosphorus.[ii] [iii]
Vaccine-Toxicity – As we have documented in depth in the past, the unintended adverse health effects of vaccines often far exceed their purported benefits. This is especially true for so-called “attenuated” live vaccines, such as oral polio vaccine, which have recently been linked to tens of thousands of cases of childhood vaccine-induced paralysis in countries like India.  Oral Saccharomyces boulardii, a beneficial form of yeast, has been found in an animal model to prevent oral polio vaccine-induced IgA nephropathy, a form of immune-mediated kidney damage. [iv]  Additionally, probiotic bacteria have been found to positively regulate the two poles of immunity (TH1/TH2), which vaccines often upset by inducing hypersensitization via over-activation of the adaptive/humoral (TH2) pole of immunity.[v]
Bisphenol-A Toxicity  Bisphenol A is an omnipresent petrochemically-derived toxicant with endocrine-disrupting properties. It has been shown to accumulate in the human body, and has been linked to a wide range of health problems. Bifidobacterium breve and Lactobacillus casei have been found in the animal model  to both reduce the intestinal absorption of BPA and facilitating its excretion.[vi]
Chemotherapy Toxicity – No chemical category is more fraught with life-threatening risks than chemotherapy – ironic, considering it is used to treat already terribly sick people.  Some chemo-agents, such as the nitrogen mustard class, are so toxic that they bear chemical weapons designations, and are banned by the Chemical Weapons Convention. There is evidence that the probiotic Bifidobacterium breve is capable of reducing the adverse effects on immune health induced by chemo-agents.[vii]
Aspirin Toxicity – Some chemicals we eat prophylactic ally, like aspirin, despite the fact that they cause small bowel injury and other serious adverse health effects. Even though aspirin’s adverse health effects far outweigh by number its purported health benefits, millions take it on a daily basis without full knowledge of how it is affecting them.  The bacteria known as Lactobacillus casei has been found to decrease the mucosal damage done by aspirin.[viii]
Sodium Nitrate Toxicity – Many foods today are preserved with nitrates, which may form DNA-damaging nitrosamines.  Lactic acid bacteria extracted from kimchi have been found to degrade sodium nitrate.[ix]
Gluten Toxicity – Wheat has increasingly been identified as a contributing factor in a wide range of health problems; research on 300 potential adverse health effects can be found in our Wheat Toxicity Database.  It has been known for some time that longer duration of breastfeeding (a plentiful source of probiotics) is associated with a delayed onset of celiac disease. It is possible that breast milk probiotics may have something to do with this.[x] Bifidobacteria may reduce the immuntoxic properties of gluten peptides by further degrading them into non-toxic peptides.[xi]  Interestingly, the oral cavity has recently been found to contain bacteria capable of degrading gluten, indicating there may be other gluten-degrading microorganisms within the upper gastro-intestinal tract, and that thoroughly chewing your food would reduce the potential antigenicity/immunotoxicity of wheat gluten peptides.[xii]
These are only a few examples of the health benefits of probiotics and related microbes, with special consideration towards reducing the adverse health effects of chemicals and toxins.  There are hundreds of additional health benefits of probiotics that we have indexed, now numbering over 200, with three dozen distinct beneficial mechanisms of action that have been characterized, e.g. anti-infective, anti-inflammatory, immunodulatory, etc.

Saturday, December 24, 2016

SuperMeat wants to grow real meat

SuperMeat wants to grow real meat, without harming animals

chickens
If SuperMeat's ambitious research succeeds, soon you'll be able to grow 3-D chicken parts that are biologically identical to the 'real' thing.
TreeHugger is a guest of Vibe Israel, a non-profit organization leading a tour called Vibe Eco Impact in December 2016 that explores various sustainability initiatives throughout Israel.
Meat, as we know it, is a bloody business. There’s a lot wrong with it, from the amount of land being deforested to make room for cattle ranches in the Amazon, to the excessive amount of water required to raise animals, to the vast number of antibiotics administered to livestock. The meat sold in stores isn’t even healthy, as much of it comes from sick animals. Eighty percent of antibiotics in the United States go to livestock, and 70 percent of supermarket chicken contains carcinogenic arsenic compounds that are used to speed growth.
Alternatives do exist. People could give up meat altogether, embracing veganism and plant-based eating. Others are moving toward insects as a source of safer, ecologically efficient protein. Both of these are entirely realistic, but they are hard sells. Dietary habits are deeply rooted in tradition and culture, and to break away from those habits takes determination that many people lack.
Shir Friedman believes there is another way in which to change people’s minds and halt the environmental and ethical disaster that is current industrial animal agriculture. Friedman works for SuperMeat, an Israeli company whose tagline is “REAL meat, without harming animals.” It sounds impossible, doesn’t it? That’s why I sat down with Friedman for a conversation at a (vegan) restaurant in Tel Aviv last week to learn more about what SuperMeat is trying to do – and has already done.
SuperMeat’s goal is to create cultured chicken meat, using cells taken from a single chicken who was not harmed in the process. It is different from other cultured meat companies because it wants to grow entire, recognizable, three-dimensional meat parts, i.e. chicken legs, thighs, breasts, bones and fat (even leather, eventually); whereas all other cultured meat research has focused on ground beef substitutes, like hamburger patties. These parts would be biologically identical to the ‘real’ thing, which means they would look, taste, smell, and feel like ordinary chicken.
Most interestingly, SuperMeat is the only company that has figured out a way to culture cells without having to feed them an animal serum made of cow’s blood. Friedman pointed out the obvious irony in needing a steady supply of blood in order to grow meat, which rather defeats the purpose of moving away from livestock consumption.

How is this possible?

The technology has already been developed by a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a biomedical engineer and tissue researcher named Yaakov Nahmias. Professor Nahmias has successfully grown a piece of fully functional human liver using a method called “human on a chip,” and SuperMeat has every reason to believe that the same process can be used to grow animal muscles.
SuperMeat process© SuperMeat
The details of the process are proprietary, but basically the cells would be grown in an environment that would replicate the animal’s body. Friedman told me, “Think of it as a womb, and you’re growing the tissue from scratch.” These ‘wombs’, in SuperMeat’s long-term vision, would exist everywhere. They could sit on your kitchen counter, in grocery stores or restaurants, and all you’d have to do is insert a protein capsule that would grow into a piece of meat for your dinner.
It sounds like something straight out of science fiction, but SuperMeat has been hugely successful so far. Its Indiegogo campaign raised $100,000 in a week, earlier this year. Now it is recruiting bigger investors, and expects to start research in full force within two to three months. It plans to have a prototype finished within 9 months, and a marketable product in 5 years.
SuperMeat solution
SuperMeat will cost around $5/kilogram at the beginning, but eventually that price (which is already significantly cheaper than supermarket chicken) will drop even more. Friedman argues it will be healthier, since people will be able to make changes to the meat to reflect their nutritional needs, such as fat, vitamin, and muscle content. These would be external changes, not genetic modification, as SuperMeat uses no genetic modification in its process. It would be safer, too, without risk of salmonella and antibiotic contamination.
I worry that Friedman and the folks at SuperMeat may have underestimated people’s willingness to eat cultured meat– like eating insects, many stubbornly refuse, simply because it’s uncomfortable – but the arguments for it are powerful, which is bound to sway opinions. A fraction of the land and resources used to create the exact same product? It sounds perfect. We’ll have to wait and see what happens, but if SuperMeat succeeds, I’ll be first in line to buy it.


 

Microwave ovens ‘fluke’ your heart while they ‘nuke’ your food


Microwave ovens ‘fluke’ your heart while they ‘nuke’ your food – alarming studies reveal microwave frequency radiation can affect heart and blood

(NaturalNews) Many health conscious consumers rarely, if ever, microwave their food anymore, but when they do, they probably do not realize that they’re not just destroying the nutritional value of the food, but the “nuker” is negatively impacting their hearts.
The typical microwave frequency radiation coming from “nukers” seen in the average American kitchen is more than enough to
 
screw with your heart rate and your heart rate variability. In fact, just 2.4 GHz, the average frequency produced by microwave ovens (and WiFi routers, by the way) can cause immediate and drastic changes to the human heart.
According to Dr. Magda Havas of Trent University, people exposed to radiation for just three minutes at 2.4-GHz can experience severe reactions in heart rate changes and altered heart rate variations, indicating an alarm response to stress, also called electrohypersensitivity (EHS) or rapid aging syndrome. This has been studied for decades. The response includes heart palpitations, clumping of red blood cells and fluctuations of the parasympathetic nervous system typical of a “fight-or-flight” response.
Dr. Havas also revealed that microwave ovens can lead to blood sugar spikes connected with diabetes. This usually happens when people stand within three feet of the oven while it’s running, like when anxious eaters park themselves directly in front of the microwave oven while waiting for those last few seconds to finish “nuking” their food or beverage.

Unequivocal evidence that microwave frequency radiation affects human heart

For years, bogus research and microwave oven fanatics have claimed that microwave ovens do not produce any immediate biological effects because the ordinary household level is far below federal guidelines. Most of those studies were conducted prior to the new millennium, but now environmental radiation is coming at us from multiple sources, including electromagnetic devices, laptops, WiFi and mobile phones.
Dr. Havas documented his peer-reviewed study and stated the following:
“This is the first study that documents immediate and dramatic changes in both heart rate and heart rate variability caused by an approved device that generates microwaves at levels well below (0.3 percent) federal guidelines in both Canada and the United States.”

Microwave sickness or the ‘microwave effect’ dates back to WWII

Microwave ovens are a form of electromagnetic radiation dating back to radar used during WWII. Microwave ovens emit radiation from high and low energy, and have a wavelength around 5 inches. These waves are generated by a magnetron (derived from magnet and electron), the same function that enabled airborne radar used during the second world war; that’s why microwave ovens were first called radar ranges. “Nukers” produce about 2.450 megaHertz (MHz), equivalent to 2.4 gigaHertz (GHz), causing dielectric heating, meaning the water molecules in the food vibrate violently at extremely high frequencies (millions of times per second), creating molecular friction, destroying nutrients and affecting the heart rate and variability of any person that stands near the oven. This is why it’s extremely dangerous to cook meat, because the blood is affected also, like the molecules in the water in food. Structures of those molecules are ripped apart and forcefully deformed. Some people call it “electric whiplash.”
In fact, microwaves are used in the field of gene altering to weaken cell membranes and to break cells apart. Those damaged cells in humans become targets for viruses, also known as the “microwave effect” or “microwave sickness.” Human tissues can experience the same violent deformations as your food that’s nuked.
Do you use a microwave oven often and also happen to experience unexplained headaches, nervousness, anxiety, dizziness, vertigo, impaired cognition, depression, nausea after eating, vision problems, tooth and jaw aching, or extreme and constant thirst? These are the “geno-toxic” effects of damaging your tissues and interfering with normal heart and brain activity.

The Nazis invented the first microwave cooking device

The Nazis created a device to provide mobile food support for their troops when they invaded the Soviet Union. It was all experimental. Then the Russians and the U.S. researched the “safety” of these devices after the war. The Russians later banned the ovens when they figured out how dangerous they were, but not the USA! The FDA approves nearly everything that makes Americans sick, because Big Pharma is there to “rescue” us with expensive drugs, heart surgery, pacemakers and chemotherapy. Go figure.

Highly-cited Swiss clinical study by Hans Hertel reveals destructive effects of microwave ovens on human blood

One of the first food scientists to study the effects of microwaves on the blood and physiology of human beings was Dr. Hans Ulrich Hertel, who along with his biochemistry expert partners, concluded that microwaves resulted in negative health effects, including increased cholesterol levels, decreased numbers of red blood cells, decreased hemoglobin levels (indicating possible anemia) and decreased numbers of leukocytes (white blood cells).
Bottom line? There’s much more to worry about than just the loss of nutrition when “nuking” your food. You may also be “nuking” your blood, damaging your brain and disturbing your heart rate. Easy solution? Use your toaster oven and wait the extra couple of minutes for your food to heat. It’s worth your health and sanity.
 
Time to THROW OUT the Microwave oven. 

Thursday, December 22, 2016

Kellogg’s, Nestle, Proctor & Gamble accused of profiting from child labor

Large food companies Kellogg’s, Nestle, Proctor & Gamble accused of profiting from child labor

Image: Large food companies Kellogg’s, Nestle, Proctor & Gamble accused of profiting from child labor
(NaturalNews) Palm oil is the world’s most popular vegetable oil, but it also happens to be one of the most destructive household ingredients on the planet. Today, palm oil and palm-based ingredients are used in around
 half of everyday consumer products. Ranging in everything from cooking oil, packaged bread and chocolate, to shampoo, lipstick and laundry detergent, palm oil seems to be everywhere we look.
This cheap and popular vegetable oil, however, comes at a high environmental cost. The palm oil industry has been found guilty of environmental, animal, child labor and human rights violations. Its rapid expansion has led to extensive deforestation, destruction of pristine rainforests and animal cruelty. Each hour, an area the size of 300 football fields of rainforest is cleared to make way for palm oil production, pushing many species to extinction.
For this reason, many corporations have become members of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), promising to source their palm oil from certified, sustainable sources.

Big brands continue to profit

A new report by Amnesty International, The great palm oil scandal: Labour abuses behind big brand names, found one of the world’s largest palm oil growers, Singapore-based agribusiness Wilmar, guilty of child labor, unethically low wages, worker exploitation and hazardous working conditions.
Nine global firms – AFAMSA, ADM, Colgate-Palmolive, Elevance, Kellogg’s, Nestlé, Procter & Gamble, Reckitt Benckiser and Unilever – all use palm oil produced by Wilmar in their products. As reported by Amnesty International, all but one of these companies are members of the RSPO. Even though these companies assure their customers that they use sustainable products, they do not deny that the abuses are taking place, nor are they acting to deal with child labor or exploitation issues in Wilmar’s operations.
Meghna Abraham, senior investigator at Amnesty International, said that there is something horribly wrong when nine companies are turning over a combined revenue of $325 billion while they are unable to do something about the barbaric treatment of palm oil workers earning a pittance.
“There is nothing sustainable about palm oil that is produced using child labour and forced labour. The abuses discovered within Wilmar’s palm oil operations are not isolated incidents but are systemic and a predictable result of the way Wilmar does business,” she said.

About the child labor and human rights abuses

Amnesty International spoke to 120 workers, including children, who work on palm plantations in Kalimantan and Sumatra in Indonesia. What they heard was just mind-boggling. Workers are forced to meet ridiculously high targets with more physical labor than the worker can bear. Often, they are told that they won’t get paid if they don’t meet their daily goal. Fearing the loss of their income, many children drop out of school to help their parents at work.
In the report, Amnesty International alleged that kids as young as 8 are forced to work without safety equipment, in an environment full of hazards including exposure to chemicals, toxic fire smoke and falling branches. Furthermore, these kids regularly have to carry sacks of palm fruit weighing up to 55 pounds (or 25 kg).
“I don’t go to school … I only pick up the loose fruit. The hardest thing is to gather the loose fruit because they are heavy. My hands hurt and my body aches,” said a 10-year-old boy.
Another 14-year old boy who harvests and carries palm fruits on a plantation told Amnesty that he had to quit school when he was 12 because his father was sick and unable to meet his work targets, adding that his 10- and 12-year-old siblings also work on the plantation after school to help meet his dad’s goals.
Furthermore, palm oil workers are regularly exposed to air pollution from forest fires, as well as toxic chemicals used in fertilizers, pesticides and weed killers. The report also highlights a discriminatory pattern of hiring women as casual daily laborers. These women are often threatened by foremen and are denied permanent employment or social security benefits such as health insurance.
Help stop these barbaric conditions and say no to palm oil. Read food labels and opt for coconut oil and organic cosmetics instead.
What are the Indonesian authorities doing about this great evil!  Time to boycott these products! Ans send a memo to the Indonesian govt. to take action against these evil-doers. 

Saturday, December 17, 2016

Wikileaks emails reveal Saudi and US govt funding the creation of ISIL

Wikileaks emails reveal Saudi and US government funding the creation of ISIL

Image: Wikileaks emails reveal Saudi and US government funding the creation of ISIL
There are some new WikiLeaks emails revealing that Mujahideen fighters helped develop ISIS with funding from Saudi Arabia and the United States. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says that definitive proof exists that the United States CIA is “essentially responsible for creating ISIS.” Assange pinpoints year 1979, where a series of events began that are ultimately responsible for the evolution of the terrorist organization.
The CIA and Saudi Arabian government funneled billions of dollars into creating the Mujahideen militant group, which went on to fight against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. It was a continuation of the constant proxy wars of the US and Soviet Union. The Mujahideen militant group later became known as ISIS.In the Middle East, the Iranian revolution, the Saudi Islamic uprising and the Egypt-Israel Camp David Accords led not only to the present regional power dynamic, but decisively changed the relationship between oil, militant Islam, and the world. The uprising at Mecca permanently shifted Saudi Arabia towards Wahhabism, leading to the transnational spread of Islamic fundamentalism and the US-Saudi destabilization of Afghanistan,” said Assange.
Saudi Arabia and the CIA funneled billions of dollars to the organization for the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan. The funding was part of Operation Cyclone, which fomented the rise of Al-Qaeda and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Islamification spread to Pakistan as a result of the 1979 events. This led to the US Embassy located in Pakistan being burnt to the ground, and the execution of Pakistan’s Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. The Iranian hostage crisis ended up fatally undermining the presidency of Jimmy Carter – which lead to Ronald Reagan’s election.
“The rise of Al-Qaeda eventually bore the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, enabling the US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and over a decade of war, leaving, at its end, the ideological, financial and geographic basis for ISIS,” said Assange.

Did Saudi Arabia help fund Hillary Clinton’s campaign?

Assange has mentioned Hillary’s involvement during interviews with Dartmouth Films and RT. It has been noted that Saudi Arabian and Qatari funds are coming from everywhere. This includes media institutions and “even the US government has mentioned or agreed with that some Saudi figures have been supporting ISIS” said Assange. He believes that the WikiLeaks show the same governments that funded Hillary Clinton’s campaign are simultaneously propping up radical groups in the area – including ISIS.
Leaked emails between Clinton and her campaign manager John Podesta show that Clinton’s military strategy to defeat ISIS was to utilize local allies. Podesta confirmed that Saudi Arabia and Qatar provide “clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL” according to the email.
See also;   Click on Link:
 

Sudanese Pastors Pressured to ‘Inform’ or Stand Trial

Sudanese Pastors Pressured to ‘Inform’ or Stand Trial

Jayson Casper | World Watch Monitor | Friday, December 16, 2016
Forty-eight-year-old father of three Rev. Yamane Abraha received an ultimatum in Khartoum following a trip to Ethiopia in the autumn of 2015.
“[Sudanese government] security threatened me, saying I would have to appear in court either as a witness, or an accused,” the Evangelical Baptist Church of Khartoum pastor told World Watch Monitor. “But my father was sick, so unlike others I couldn’t escape.”
Abraha was one of several Sudanese Christians gathered abroad to pray for their nation. Among them were Rev. Hassan Taour and Rev. Kuwa Shamal, Sudan Church of Christ pastors from the Nuba Mountains region.
Also attending was Czech Christian aid worker Petr Ja?ek. According to Christian advocacy group Middle East Concern, these three had helped facilitate financial assistance to pay for the medical treatment of a Darfurian university student who had suffered burn wounds when government security officials attacked a campus demonstration in Omdurman, north of the capital, Khartoum.
Sudanese at the meeting suspected there were spies around their Addis Ababa hotel. Then shortly after their return to Khartoum, the police arrested Taour, Shamal and Ja?ek, in December 2015. They have now been in detention for a year. Detained along with them is Abdulmonem Abdumawla, also from Darfur, who helped facilitate the medical treatment for the student.
The four are charged with waging war against the Sudanese state, espionage, conspiracy to carry out criminal acts, and undermining the authority of the state through violence. Trial proceedings finally begun in August have been postponed repeatedly in recent months. They could face the death penalty.
 
Delayed escape
Abraha was not arrested until three months after his colleagues, on 13 March, and then held for only one day. Security officials ordered him to report back daily, and on 24 March told him he would have to appear in court in the role of his choice: testify against the others, or be charged along with them.
On 26 March his father died.
Abraha gathered his family and travelled eight hours east by bus to bury him in their hometown of Kassala, on the border with Eritrea. And there he dropped off the radar, ditched his mobile phone, and waited.
Two weeks later, he returned to Khartoum and set his plan in motion. Nervously, he checked his surroundings before going to buy a ticket to Egypt.
With his wife, he exchanged notes on paper serviettes, which they soaked and discarded once read. Discreetly, they packed their children’s belongings, lest they tip off authorities at school.
Abraha then checked with a friendly security officer that his name was not on a watch list. And on 20 April, he told his children they would have a family picnic near the airport. Relatives – and kids – were surprised to learn they were saying goodbye.
In Egypt, Abraha is now involved in training for discipleship and church planting, and supervises 15 “house churches” among Sudanese refugees.
Over 31,000 Sudanese in Egypt are registered with the UN High Commission for Refugees, according to its August 2016 report. Unofficial estimates suggest there are well over one million.
Most have fled the ongoing violence in Darfur and the southern regions of Blue Nile and Nuba Mountains, bordering South Sudan.
 
Recurring pattern
But Abraha’s story is not unique.
Barnaba Timothous, who fled to Egypt three years earlier, had also been pressed to testify against Christian colleagues. Doing student campus ministry, he was accused of taking foreign money. 
“I was told that if I would cooperate, nothing would happen to me,” he told World Watch Monitor. “But if not, nothing would protect me from them.”
Some people criticised him for his decision to leave. He did so quickly, taking one bag and telling no-one in his family. And though he stated he was not personally involved in ministry among Muslims, he refused to betray those he knew.
“I will not be involved in issues that hurt the body of Christ and bring suffering to innocent people, just because they follow Christ as saviour,” he said.
“The Islamic government of Sudan is persecuting the leaders of churches and ministries. And now our students no longer trust each other, fearful someone might report them.”
Timothous, who has since been joined by his mother and sister, is now working amongst students at several university campuses in Egypt.
World Watch Monitor has spoken with other Christian leaders who tell similar stories.
 
Excuse for crackdown
“The [Sudan] government wants Sharia and is cracking down on the Church,” said Kamal Fahmi, head of the religious freedom advocacy group Set My People Free.
He recalled President Omar al-Bashir’s threat, on the eve of South Sudan independence in 2011, to make Sudan a fully Islamic state, the removal of foreign NGOs thereafter, and the expulsion of South Sudanese in 2013.
“Authorities felt Pastors Hassan and Kuwa were shaming them, bringing a bad report,” Fahmi told World Watch Monitor.
“In the rebel areas, the Church is doing humanitarian work and is not involved in the conflict, but it does expose the atrocities the Sudanese government is committing.
“It will find any excuse to accuse them.”
Pastors have been arrested, churches have been destroyed, and land has been confiscated, according to the US State Department’s 2015 Report on International Religious Freedom.
And on 6 Oct. the European Parliament passed a resolution against Sudan, specifically naming the four detainees.
Noting the EU partnership with Sudan towards “better migration management”, the resolution “reaffirms that freedom of religion, conscience or belief is a universal human right that needs to be protected everywhere and for everyone … especially in the case of apostasy”.
But in January 2015, Sudan expanded its apostasy laws to include criticism of Muhammad’s wives or early companions.
Fahmi, who recently penned an open letter to the UN with the Forum for Religious Freedom-Europe, links an oppressive religious climate to development issues, which, he says, “assaults the core of human nature”.
“Apostasy laws … have negative social and political consequences everywhere they are in force,” he wrote. “They create instability and inspire violence”.
“Without freedom to change beliefs, there is no religious freedom,” he told World Watch Monitor. “Going to paradise is not compulsory.”
 Courtesy: World Watch Monitor
What is wrong with these Muslim leaders nowadays?
Why can't they allow other religions esp. Christian to practice their religion in peace?
Why are they always so eager to accuse Christians of blaspheming their religion?
 
 

Nigeria: Christian lawyer receiving death threats for defending victims of Fulani attacks - Where are the Christian state leaders of the World to voice out for the BLOOD of their brethren!

  Nigeria: Christian lawyer in hiding after receiving death threats for defending victims of Fulani attacks Nigeria: Christian lawyer in hid...