Daily Archives: January 9, 2022

Veer Baal Diwas to be observed on 26th December to pay tribute to martyr sons of Guru Gobind Singh: PM Modi – OpIndia

Posted: January 9, 2022 at 4:38 pm

Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a big announcement on Sunday 9th January 2022, on the occasion of Guru Parv that is the birth anniversary of Guru Gobind Singh ji. He said that Veer Bal Diwas would be celebrated every year on 26th December from this year onwards. It will be a fitting tribute to the courage and pursuit of justice of the Sahibzadas.

PM Modi announced the celebration of Veer Bal Diwas on twitter. In his Tweet, he has said, Today, on the auspicious occasion of the Parkash Purab of Sri Guru Gobind Singh Ji, I am honoured to share that starting this year, 26th December shall be marked as Veer Baal Diwas. This is a fitting tribute to the courage of the Sahibzades and their quest for justice.

In a following tweet, PM Modi hailed the bravery of Mata Gujari, Guru Gobind Singh ji and his sons Sahibazades. Two of the four Sahibzades were torchered and killed by Mughals in 1705. The PM said in his tweet, The bravery and ideals of Mata Gujri, Sri Guru Gobind Singh Ji and the 4 Sahibzades give strength to millions of people. They never bowed to injustice. They envisioned a world that is inclusive and harmonious. It is the need of the hour for more people to know about them.

He further said, Veer Baal Diwas will be on the same day Sahibzada Zorawar Singh Ji and Sahibzada Fateh Singh Ji attained martyrdom after being sealed alive in a wall. These two greats preferred death instead of deviating from the noble principles of Dharma.

The four Sahibzade Khalsa warrior princes were the sons of Guru Gobind Singh ji. Guru Gobind Singh ji had four sons Sahibzada Ajit Singh, Sahibzada Jujhar Singh, Sahibzada Zorawar Singh and Sahibzada Fateh Singh. All four of his sons were initiated into the Khalsa and all were executed by Mughal forces before the age of 19. Sikhism honors the illustrious martyred sons of Guru Gobind Singh ji in the prayer of ardas for their valor and sacrifice as Char Sahibzade, that is the four princes of the Khalsa warrior order.

Ajit Singh was martyred at the age of 18, on December 7, 1705 CE at Chamkaur after he volunteered to leave the besieged fortress andface the enemy on the battlefield. Jujhar Singh was martyred at the age of 14, on December 7, 1705 CE at Chamkaur where he earned the reputation of being likened to a crocodile for his fierceness in battle, when he volunteered to leave the besieged fortress with five of the last Singhs standing, and all achieved immortality on the battlefield.

Zorawar Singh and his younger brother Fateh Singh were captured with their grandmother Mata Gujari, the mother of Guru Gobind Singh. They were imprisoned with their grandmother and put to death by cruel Mughals on the orders of Aurangzeb, who attempted to suffocate them inside a brick enclosure. At the time of martyrdom, the ages of Zorawar Singh and Fateh Singh were 9 years and 6 years respectively. This sacrifice is seen as the bravest sacrifice for Dharma by any young boys in the Indian history and this is why PM Modi has announced that the day of their martyrdom will be observed as Veer Baal Diwas.

Guru Gobind Singh was also killed by a Mughal assassin in 1708, a year after the death of Aurangzeb.

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In the 1960s, NASA Photographers Captured Glimpses of the Universe. Now, the Iconic Images Are Available on Artnet Auctions – artnet News

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As a result of the space race in the 1960s, NASA created some of the most iconic artworks of the 20th century in their quest to reach the moon. These ubiquitous images were printed on the covers of magazines and newspapers, featured on television, and even illustrated on postage stamps.

Now, The Final Frontier: NASA Photographs From the 1960s, live on Artnet Auctions through January 12, presents images that continue to spark curiosity and ignite our universal desire to explore the unknown. These rare to market, awe-inspiring photographs of space allude to scientific breakthroughs, the vastness of the universe, and the fragility of our own planet, while cementing their place in the history of both art and science.

It is impossible to view vintage NASA photography without acknowledging the intense political rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union that spurred the impressive technical innovation during the mid 20th century. The use of photography was crucial to NASAs missions into space and the U.S.s competition with the USSR. The technology for 70-millimeter film cameras, equivalent to the size of modern IMAX filming, was used by the department of defense to spy on the Soviet Union. For preparatory voyages into space, NASA eventually borrowed this technology to produce images of space.

In the early days of NASA, photography was minimally explored and underutilized. Given the weight requirements of traveling to and from Earth, camera equipment was viewed as unnecessary baggage, as the successful completion of a mission was prioritized over documentation or artistry. However, in the early 1960s, after the astronauts themselves advocated to allow cameras to accompany them into space, NASA appointed Richard Underwood as chief of photography. He became a staunch proponent of thoroughly photographing the lunar missions. Underwood taught the astronaut-turned-photographers how to frame their photographs and set exposures.

Your key to immortality is in the quality of your photographs and nothing else, he once told them.

Once NASA embraced the power of photography, the iconic Hasselblad camera became one of the most important tools onboard the lunar missions. In 1965, James McDivitt photographed fellow astronaut Ed White during the first spacewalk, with his camera at center stage in one of the most iconic images from the Gemini IV mission. The rigorous tests to become an astronaut, and to even be in the running for a spacewalk like Whites, are widely known, but few consider the benchmarks set for their cameras.

Ordinary cameras from the 1960s would have been ill-equipped to photograph in the extreme conditions of space with temperatures reaching 120C in the sun and plummeting to negative 65C in the shaded vacuum of outer space. NASA worked closely with the Swedish manufacturer Hasselblad to develop the lightest possible camera to accompany the astronauts into space. With no room for error or time to reshoot images, the Hasselblad Data Camera, fitted with a Zeiss lens specifically designed for NASA, traveled to the moon on Neil Armstrongs chest to capture some of the most well-known images of the Apollo missions. For the journey home, the film was removed from the camera, while its body was left behind to meet the strict weight requirements for travel back to Earth. In total, 12 abandoned camera bodies accumulated on the lunar surface after missions Apollo 11 to Apollo 17.

The images are much more than their impressive technical feats, though. Their carefully crafted compositions and technical skill cement their status as true works of art. The market for vintage NASA photography differs from the traditional fine art photography market due to the finite number of printed photographs. These works were not made to be sold to collectors or galleries: They werent always printed in standard sizes, nor were they editioned. Rather, the photographs were printed for specific purposes as individual works, meaning variations in print date led to variations in color.

Most were printed on eight-by-10-inch fiber paper bearing the A Kodak Paper watermark on the reverse. In 1972, around the same time as the final Apollo 17 mission, Kodak altered its watermarks to read This Paper Manufactured by Kodak. In the margins of vintage NASA photographs, red NASA numbers correspond to the image and are coded to indicate the mission.

In this auction, some of the lots also have purple NASA stamps on the reverse of the image with a description of the scene and NASA identification numbers. Larger versions of images were typically used for scientific presentations or political gifts and are much rarer to come to market. Artnet Auctionss sale The Final Frontier: NASA Photographs from the 1960sincludes several notable examples of this presentation size image, including the Blue Marble, as viewed from the Apollo 17 mission, and James Irwin saluting the American flag, taken by Apollo 15 Commander David R. Scott.

NASAs images of the Earth seen from the moon dramatically altered the way society viewed our planet and our relationship with the environment. When viewed from a distance, such as in the iconic Earthrise image from the Apollo 8 mission, our small blue planet appears beautiful in solitude. The desolation of the lunar surface in the foreground contrasts with the vibrancy of the Earths oceans and the energy of its swirling clouds, starkly represented against the unending blackness of space.

Recognizing the importance of this type of imagery, NASA released this Earthrise photograph after cropping the image and rotating it 90 degrees, making the Earth appear larger at a more recognizable angle.

Images like the Blue Marble from the Apollo 17 mission and the Earthrise shot, taken by Astronaut Bill Anders during the Apollo 8 mission, spurred environmentalist feelings across the globe as the fragility of our planet was affirmed through photography.

To me it was strange that we had worked and had come all the way to the moon to study the moon, Anders said during the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 8 mission, and what we really discovered was the Earth.

At the time of the Apollo missions in the 1960s and 1970s, as the U.S. was shaken by assassinations, civil rights protests, and the Vietnam War, the successes of these trips fulfilled the long-held hopes that man could reach the stars, uniting the nation toward a common goal. Looking at todays America and its deep divisions, our circumstances are not so differentour quest for understanding the world beyond our planet continues.

With this cultural backdrop and the renewed media spectacle surrounding space tourism by billionaire thrill seekers, the images presented in The Final Frontier: NASA Photographs from the 1960s are particularly relevant to todays collectors.

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Fact vs fiction weve both this Sunday – Boksburg Advertiser

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Uncensored. Uncut. Surviving the Beast the ugly truths about state capture and why they tried to kill me. Its all death, denial and deceit in Angelo Agrizzis latest book, the sequel to Inside the Belly of the Beast. He explores the failings of state capture and why so many big fish still swim free. The integration of QR codes in this book create an interactive experience for the reader, bringing to life key video evidence, articles, interviews, testimonials and documents from the Zondo State Capture Commission on Inquiry, as well as as-yet-unseen details, photographs and graphic accounts of relevant events. Truth Be Told Publishing.

State of Terror is the utterly readable thriller, which instantly jumped to the top of the New York Times Bestseller list. And why wouldnt it? Co-written by Hillary Rodham Clinton, the 67th secretary of state, and Louise Penny, a multiple award-winning novelist, you know therell be inside info and expertise, which always makes for an exciting read. Its all, obviously, American politics, with secret coded warnings, terrorist attacks, a race to develop nuclear weapons, the Russian mob and a burgeoning rogue terrorist organization. A thrill a minute. Simon and Schuster.

Good grief. Youll just need the one book this holiday if you choose Ken Folletts latest novel, Never. Its a whopping 846 pages a thrilling, action-packed drama from this author who knows how to deliver (and has sold more than 160-million copies of his books to prove it!). With drug-smuggling, human trafficking, terrorist attacks, illegal arms trading, it jumps from a stolen US army drone to a shrinking oasis in the Sahara desert, from a undercover spy working with jihadis to a Chinese spymaster to a US president fast paced, frantic and massively enjoyable.Pan Macmillan.

We were trained to permanently neutralise, ideas or people or institutions, on behalf of the government of the day. Confessions of a Stratcom Hitman is Paul Erasmuss searing, explosive account of his time as a security policeman during apartheid. In this book, in which Erasmus attempts to come to a reckoning with the atrocities he committed and was party to, he tells of the corruption and power mongering in the South African Police, names names, and ultimately asks himself how he could have done what did. His testimony before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was extensive, and allowed a view into the world of Stratcom. This book takes that testimony a step further. Jacana Media.

Dan Moyane was 10 years old when he lay on his back on a patch of grass at his parents home in White City Jabavu, Soweto, looking at the moon and thinking, I dont want to die unknown. The year was 1969, and Neil Armstrong and his team had recently achieved immortality by completing the first moon landing. It was the knowledge that the astronauts would be remembered as long as the world turned that made Dan realise that he, too, would like to be remembered by people outside of his immediate community; just as he would like to find out more about what lay beyond his horizon. In I Dont Want to Die Unknown, Moyane tell of how he achieved his goal from his days as a student at the apex of South Africas political turmoil, to his years in exile in Mozambique and his first job in media, and the trajectory of a career that would see him become one of South Africas most highly regarded and influential broadcasters. Described as part memoir, part legacy, the story provides the framework for his next significant question: How best to use his public profile to benefit his countrymen. Tracey MacDonald Publishers

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Three Reasons Georgia football gets revenge on Alabama – Dawn of the Dawg

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Stetson Bennett and Warren Ericson talk before the game against Michigan in the Capital One Orange Bowl for the College Football Playoff semifinal game. (Photo by Mark Brown/Getty Images)

They say revenge is a dish best served cold. Georgia football head coach Kirby Smart and his talented roster are angry and ready to serve this dish to Nick Saban and his Alabama Crimson Tide.

And lets not beat about the bush because Georgia wants to serve it cold freezing cold.

There is no doubting that Georgia and its fans are still hurting from that SEC Championship game, and rightly so. The Dawgs went into the SEC decider as overwhelming favorites, demonstrating the stoutest defense as the SEC and probably college football has ever seen.

But yet this defense did not live up to its hard-edged reputation and recorded zero sacks against Bryce Young.

While not the single most important statistic, it is helpful to compare that Auburn sacked Bryce Young seven times in the first half alone of the Iron Bowl. And this is a Georgia team that has recorded 45 sacks in the season so far. So instantly, it was evident that something was amiss with the Georgia defense.

So what and how does Georgia get revenge over that painful SEC Championship game?

The Bulldogs had momentum going into the SEC Championship game but did not use it to their advantage.

Momentum is everything in sports, giving teams confidence, team cohesion and a genuine belief in their ability to overcome the next challenge. How many times has one event during a game swung momentum in favor of the team that wins the game.

While the defeat to Alabama slowed momentum, there is no doubt that the impressive slaying of Michigan swings momentum back in favor of Georgia.

There isnt a better way to progress to the national championship game than by nullifying and dismantling the Wolverines, which was the hottest ticket in town and the name n everybodys lips going into the Orange Bowl. This Michigan team was on the crest of a wave led by Heisman finalist Aidan Hutchinson and a quarterback who finally lived up to the Big Blue hype, Cade McNamara.

Yet the Dawtgs contained both as Georgia ran out of Miami with a 34-11 victory. An impressive win and reminded the college football world that Georgia football is an excellent team.

Lets not underplay this the Georgia players and coaching staff are angry.

Angry at their performance in the SEC Championship game, mad at the level of criticism leveled at them, and mad that they succumbed to, of all teams the Crimson Tide.

If this anger can be corralled and harnessed correctly, there is no better mindset than being full-blown mad. Best of all? Georgia has almost an immediate opportunity to get revenge for that defeat.

How many times does a team have to wait a year to get their revenge? Not this time, Georgia had to wait a little over a month, and during that time, you can bet that Smart and company will be reminding his team just what they can achieve by doing what they should have done, what their talent should have allowed them to do in the SEC Championship game?

The opportunity to gain immortality in Athens is a compelling proposition. This factor is huge for the Dawgs massive.

Listen to any commentator of the game worth their salt, and they will all say how difficult it is to beat the same team twice in short succession. First, the teams have just met, so there is little time to create something new. And if you do miracle up a new play, are you going to use it in the key moments of a championship game? No, frankly.

Secondly, the SEC Championship game was a must-win situation for Alabama. In that game, Georgia had a safety net, and it showed. This time around, there is no net. Both teams have to go at it, knock out punch for knock out punch.

The 2018 National Championship game went into overtime, and it would not be surprising if this game were similarly close. Both teams will look to nullify the threats which hurt them most last time around. So history points us to a tighter game.

Tight in the fourth quarter, and it is anybodys game. Either coach would accept it being close going into the fourth quarter as they naturally have faith inter the teams abilities. Its time for Georgia football players to step up and take what is theirs.

Time will tell if Georgia can overcome the SEC Championship game defeat to secure the National Championship title. We will find out on Monday. But an angry Bulldog is not to be reckoned with, and the signs are that the Bulldogs can use this defeat to propel themselves to avenge against the Alabama Crimson Tide.

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Constraining the Multiverse: Stephen Hawkings Final Theory About the Big Bang – SciTechDaily

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Professor Stephen Hawkings final theory on the origin of the universe, which he worked on in collaboration with Professor Thomas Hertog from KU Leuven, was published in 2018 in the Journal of High Energy Physics.

The theory, which was submitted for publication before Hawkings death earlier in 2018, is based on string theory and predicts the universe is finite and far simpler than many current theories about the big bang say.

Professor Hertog, whose work has been supported by the European Research Council, first announced the new theory at a conference at the University of Cambridge in July of 2017, organized on the occasion of Professor Hawkings 75th birthday.

Modern theories of the big bang predict that our local universe came into existence with a brief burst of inflation in other words, a tiny fraction of a second after the big bang itself, the universe expanded at an exponential rate. It is widely believed, however, that once inflation starts, there are regions where it never stops. It is thought that quantum effects can keep inflation going forever in some regions of the universe so that globally, inflation is eternal. The observable part of our universe would then be just a hospitable pocket universe, a region in which inflation has ended and stars and galaxies formed.

The usual theory of eternal inflation predicts that globally our universe is like an infinite fractal, with a mosaic of different pocket universes, separated by an inflating ocean, said Hawking in an interview in 2017. The local laws of physics and chemistry can differ from one pocket universe to another, which together would form a multiverse. But I have never been a fan of the multiverse. If the scale of different universes in the multiverse is large or infinite the theory cant be tested.

In their paper, Hawking and Hertog say this account of eternal inflation as a theory of the big bang is wrong. The problem with the usual account of eternal inflation is that it assumes an existing background universe that evolves according to Einsteins theory of general relativity and treats the quantum effects as small fluctuations around this, said Hertog. However, the dynamics of eternal inflation wipes out the separation between classical and quantum physics. As a consequence, Einsteins theory breaks down in eternal inflation.

We predict that our universe, on the largest scales, is reasonably smooth and globally finite. So it is not a fractal structure, said Hawking.

The theory of eternal inflation that Hawking and Hertog put forward is based on string theory: a branch of theoretical physics that attempts to reconcile gravity and general relativity with quantum physics, in part by describing the fundamental constituents of the universe as tiny vibrating strings. Their approach uses the string theory concept of holography, which postulates that the universe is a large and complex hologram: physical reality in certain 3D spaces can be mathematically reduced to 2D projections on a surface.

Hawking and Hertog developed a variation of this concept of holography to project out the time dimension in eternal inflation. This enabled them to describe eternal inflation without having to rely on Einsteins theory. In the new theory, eternal inflation is reduced to a timeless state defined on a spatial surface at the beginning of time.

When we trace the evolution of our universe backwards in time, at some point we arrive at the threshold of eternal inflation, where our familiar notion of time ceases to have any meaning, said Hertog.

Hawkings earlier no boundary theory predicted that if you go back in time to the beginning of the universe, the universe shrinks and closes off like a sphere, but this new theory represents a step away from the earlier work. Now were saying that there is a boundary in our past, said Hertog.

Hertog and Hawking used their new theory to derive more reliable predictions about the global structure of the universe. They predicted the universe that emerges from eternal inflation on the past boundary is finite and far simpler than the infinite fractal structure predicted by the old theory of eternal inflation.

Their results, if confirmed by further work, would have far-reaching implications for the multiverse paradigm. We are not down to a single, unique universe, but our findings imply a significant reduction of the multiverse, to a much smaller range of possible universes, said Hawking.

This makes the theory more predictive and testable.

Hertog now plans to study the implications of the new theory on smaller scales that are within reach of our space telescopes. He believes that primordial gravitational waves ripples in spacetime generated at the exit from eternal inflation constitute the most promising smoking gun to test the model. The expansion of our universe since the beginning means such gravitational waves would have very long wavelengths, outside the range of the current LIGO detectors. But they might be heard by the planned European space-based gravitational wave observatory, LISA, or seen in future experiments measuring the cosmic microwave background.

Reference: A smooth exit from eternal inflation? by S. W. Hawking and Thomas Hertog, 27 April 2018, Journal of High Energy Physics.DOI: 10.1007/JHEP04(2018)147

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2022 will be a banner year for Unidentified Aerial Phenomena – The Portugal News

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At the beginning of 2021, my take on the UFO debate was in line with the rest of mainstream society.

Flying Saucers and aliens on Earth were interesting memes but couldnt possibly be true accounts. We haven't detected any signs of life so far. And since the universe is so mind-bogglingly large, and it is physically impossible to travel faster than light (FTL), we must be alone in the universe, end of story. Now, looking back, I am surprised how closed minded that line of thinking was.

I mean somehow, simultaneously, I believed that the universe was so vast, so large, so full of untold billions of mysteries, that we couldnt possibly hope to understand it, and yet at the same time I knew that nothing could go faster than the speed of light.

We find new information about the universe and our place in it DAILY. The only constant since the start of the industrial revolution has been mind-blowing progress and change. Newtonian physics revolutionised our understanding of nature. Quantum physics revolutionised our understanding of nature. The next physics will undoubtedly revolutionise our understanding of nature.

This has always been the case, why should I expect anything different? Because Im special? Basically. Yes.

No real certainty

And then 2021 happened. This past year the US Government not only admitted that the three leaked Navy videos were real, but also that encounters with Unidentified Aerial Phenomena were occurring almost daily off the Eastern US Coast. Many people in government are saying openly that extraterrestrial life cant be ruled out. This would mean many UFO sightings of the past were possibly real. What about Roswell? Rendlesham Forest? All the other hundreds of cases?

Going into 2022, the only real certainty is there are certainly many things we dont know. The only limitation to human endeavors appears to be our own imagination, or lack there-of. And to be honest I am much happier and optimistic for the future to be released of that closed minded way of thinking.

Consider dark energy and dark matter. Currently there is no such thing as dark energy or dark matter. These two hypothetical nouns are place-holders for observable evidence that our science doesnt yet understand. They are the Xs we are still trying to define.

This is how CERN describes dark matter and dark energy:

Galaxies in our universe seem to be achieving an impossible feat. They are rotating with such speed that the gravity generated by their observable matter could not possibly hold them together; they should have torn themselves apart long ago. The same is true of galaxies in clusters, which leads scientists to believe that something we cannot see is at work. They think something we have yet to detect directly is giving these galaxies extra mass, generating the extra gravity they need to stay intact. This strange and unknown matter was called dark matter since it is not visible. https://home.cern/science/physics/dark-matter

And by the way, this something we have yet to detect directly accounts for 95 percent of the observable universe. 95 percent! I would take those odds any day. Meaning everything we can detect right now is only 5 percent of what we are observing. I would not take those odds.

There is still so much we dont understand. Here is a final statement from Carl Sagan in the Rolling Stones review. He was asked how he approaches a field so riddled with unknowns and speculations: The only way is experimental. I just dont think you can sit down and think and get rid of all that accumulation of prejudices and fantasies. The way our minds think is the result of millions of years of evolution hunting and gathering food, shinnying up trees, mating, building fires and all the rest of it. The way we think hasnt been optimized for confronting intelligence elsewhere, because weve never had to. So I just dont expect that were going to make much progress by pure thought. The way we make the progress is to make the confrontation. Lets get the extraterrestrial message and then very carefully and very slowly try to come to grips with it.

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/carl-sagan-life-on-other-planets-162285/

Many people are saying that they are getting the message but no one believes them. Could this be possible? I would give it a 95 percent chance.

On my YouTube channel titled Chris Lehto. I have a video that presents a hypothesis that life is the missing 95 percent of the observable universe.

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What happened to the nonbelief channel at Patheos? – Religion News Service

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(RNS) Visitors to Patheos, the multifaith media platform that hosts commentary from writers in many of the worlds religions, may have noticed some changes lately.

Its nonreligious channel has become an empty hulk, bereft of most of the familiar names that once occupied the space, including its most popular blogger, Hemant Mehta, the Friendly Atheist.

Mehta and 14 other nonreligious bloggers, along with the channel manager, have decamped to a new site, OnlySky Media, set to launch later this month.

The changes come amid new surveys showing the number of people who are religiously unaffiliated has exploded in recent years, rising to 29% of the U.S. population, up from 19% in 2011. These nones, a catchall for a host of groups, including atheists, agnostics, humanists and just plain secularists, have established multiple service and advocacy organizations to serve this growing segment of the population. But there is no media platform solely dedicated to those who are not part of traditional religions.

RELATED: Poll: America growing more secular by the year

Efforts to reach Patheos management team were unsuccessful, but the departing bloggers and their channel manager, Dale McGowan, said that about a year ago, Patheos decided to change its editorial direction. Bloggers were advised they could stay at Patheos so long as they stopped writing negative or critical posts on religion or politics and instead focused on how to live a good life within their own worldview.

The writing on the wall was that unless youre prepared to say nice things about religion you need to find a new outlet, said Mehta, who has written for Patheos since 2011, often posting multiple times a day, with a special focus on stories about religious hypocrisy.

Some 20 bloggers left the site in the last days of 2021. On Tuesday (Jan. 4), the top story on the homepage read, Dont Stop Believing: Faith for the New Year.

Patheos is owned by BN Media, which last year created a new umbrella organization called Radiant. It includes Patheos, the lifestyle site Beliefnet and three other wellness and spirituality platforms with a mission of helping people live their most fulfilled lives.

Beliefnet, once a vigorous journalistic site, underwent a similar transformation after it was twice acquired, first by the Fox Entertainment Group in 2007 and later BN Media, where it became an inspirational site focusing on spirituality, health and wellness.

What they were asking of us was not compatible with the editorial tone we had taken until then, said Adam Lee, who wrote the Daylight Atheism blog for Patheos. Many of us felt this would require an editorial shift to such an extent as to make our blogs unrecognizable.

McGowan said he was told last March that Patheos wanted to rebrand.

This was a business decision to position themselves for the long term, said McGowan. It may have been hard for Patheos to attract advertising among religious businesses while at the same time providing a forum for atheists to criticize religion, he said.

McGowan, the author of 10 books about nonreligious life, including Parenting Beyond Belief, had already been talking with investors about creating a new platform for nonreligious people.

When Patheos announced this change in direction, we realized it was an opportunity to provide a soft landing for some of these bloggers, he said.

Fifteen Patheos bloggers agreed to join OnlySky, where McGowan is now chief content officer.

The new media platform is envisioned as a site that combines storytelling and commentary exploring the breadth of the human experience from a secular point of view, said Shawn Hardin, its founder and CEO.

A Bay Area entrepreneur who has created several media products for AOL, Yahoo and NBC, among others, Hardin said he envisions a space that explores a wide range of secular values.

We think the unaffiliated are a woefully underserved segment of the population, Hardin said. Were pretty optimistic about our opportunity to build a business that meets the interest of the audience and can invest in its own growth.

(The name of the new media venture was inspired by John Lennons song Imagine, which envisions a world without heaven or hell above us only sky.)

Author Hemant Mehta. Photo by Steve Greiner, courtesy of Mehta

A key will be creating a sense of community for a diverse set of people who are searching for meaning and want to connect with others on a similar path. Whether nonreligious Americans want community is not yet clear.

The Sunday Assembly movement, which tried to create local congregations for nonbelievers, had 70 congregations in the U.S. and the United Kingdom. About half have shut down or gone dormant.

Beyond polls indicating their growing numbers, little is known about the nonreligious or whether they want to engage on issues as a group.

There are people passionate about secularism, atheism and agnosticism, perhaps because they dont like what they see about religion in the news, said Diane Winston, professor of religion and media at the University of Southern California. But thats a small minority of the people who make up the unaffiliated or disaffiliated. A lot of those people dont care one way or another.

Mehta, however, said he had high hopes.

There arent any media outlets that cater specifically to atheists, he said. All the other atheist specific blogging networks are run by volunteers and people who are passionate about the subject but dont do business-savvy anything, so they falter and die. This one has digital expertise.

RELATED: The Sunday Assembly hopes to organize a godless future. Its not easy.

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Former ‘Atheists in Kenya’ Official Who Found Jesus Accused of Fraud – Mwakilishi.com

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The Atheists in Kenya Society (AIK) is accusing its former secretary Seth Mahiga of fraud.

Mahiga is alleged to have withdrawn an undisclosed amount of money from the societys bank account without the knowledge of the Executive Committee.

AIK President Nyende Mumia says members of the committee were shocked when they visited their bank on Friday, only to find a huge sum was missing from their account.

"The new executive committee, including myself, the incoming Treasurer Samson Mbavu and the incoming Secretary Mary Kamau had visited KCB today only to be informed that the former Secretary Seth Mahiga, had withdrawn funds from the Atheists In Kenya Society bank account without our authority," Mumia said in a statement.

Mahiga resigned from AIK in May last year, saying he was no longer interested in promoting atheism in Kenya as he had found Jesus Christ.

This evening, regretfully, our Secretary Mr. Seth Mahiga made the decision to resign from his position as Secretary of our society. Seth's reason for resigning is that he has found Jesus Christ and is no longer interested in promoting atheism in Kenya, Mumia announced in a press statement.

Until his resignation, Mahiga had served as the societys secretary for one and a half years. A video shared on social media showed Mahiga at church telling the congregation, Ive been going through some difficulties in life. Im so happy to be here.

AIK was registered as a society under the Societies Act, Cap 108 on February 17th, 2016.

The 2019 National Population Census placed the total number of atheists in Kenya at 755,750, representing about 2.5 percent of the countrys total population.

Kilifi County had the highest number of nonbelievers with 146,669, followed by Nakuru (67,640), Nairobi (54,841), Narok (45,617), Kiambu (30770), Kitui (23,778), Meru (20,985) and Mombasa (11,148).

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Former 'Atheists in Kenya' Official Who Found Jesus Accused of Fraud - Mwakilishi.com

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After Jan. 6, secularism is the crucial "guardrail" and it’s fatally weak in America – Salon

Posted: at 4:35 pm

The free exercise of religion or, more precisely, the free exercise of conservative Christian religions is increasingly assuming the cultural, and even legal, stature of an inalienable American right. In the name of "religious freedom,"county clerks,doctorsandbakersopenly discriminate against LGBTQ citizens. Our rightward-charging judiciary lets worshippers congregate during a pandemic; religious devotion, apparently, trumps public safety.

To understand where this free-exercise fundamentalism may lead us, we need look no further than theinsurrectionists of last January and their boundless sense of religious entitlement. Michael Sparks, who was among the first to breach the Capitol, enthusedon Facebook: "We're getting ready to live through something of biblical purportions [sic] be prayed up and be ready to defend your country and your family." Jacob Chansley, the so-called QAnon Shaman, intoneda prayer about the rebirth of America on the floor of the Senate, whose evacuation he and his co-rioters had just triggered.

On Jan.6, 2021, a mob filled with religious extremists, among others, nearly upended one of the world's oldest and stablest liberal democracies. Could any comparable display of free exercise have occurred in Franceor Canadaor Uruguayor India, or any country with clear constitutional guidelines about the relation between government and religion?

RELATED:How Christian nationalism drove the insurrection: A religious history of Jan. 6

This unfortunate instance of American exceptionalism has many explanations. I call attention to one: the weakness of secularism in the United States. "Secularism" is a term that has been so relentlessly maligned by its enemies that its meaning is difficult to discern. Having just written a primer on the subject, let me note that political secularism, at its core, is a philosophy of governance.

Far from being equivalent to atheism, as its critics allege, secularism's origins may be traced to medieval Christian disputes about the papacy's expanding powers. During the Protestant Reformation, the terms of the debate shifted. The dilemma no longer involved curtailing the authority of the church, but rather how a government could prevent unfathomable violence between churches. Enlightenment thinkers concluded that religions those force-multipliers of human passions needed to be governed.

In "A Letter Concerning Toleration"(1689), John Locke outlined secular protocols of governance. The state must let citizens believe anything they wish about the divine (this is known as "freedom of conscience"). It must never establish, favoror ally itself with one or more faiths(this is often referred to as "disestablishmentarianism" or "state neutrality''). It must treat all religions and religious citizens equally (I call this the "equality" principle).

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Naturally, a secular state must permit citizens the free exercise of their religious beliefs. Yet here Locke added one crucial caveat. The right to free exercise, he insisted, is not absolute. Free exercise cannot diminish or endanger the rights of others, or the security of the state.

This position was neither controversialnor original. It was common sense. The 1663 Charter of Carolina granted free exercise as long as persons "do not in any wise disturb the peace." After a similar grant, the 1776 constitution of North Carolina warned: "nothing herein contained shall be construed to exempt preachers of treasonable or seditious discourses, from legal trial and punishment."

Which brings us to the First Amendment, whose relevant clauses simply read: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Our Constitution fails to acknowledge what was abundantly clear to lawmakers a century earlier, not to mention almost every subsequent constitution in secular countries:Namely, there must be a limiton free exercise of religion.

Why James Madison omitted this obvious proviso is beyond my comprehension. I simply observe that his omission undercuts secularism's governing function. It thus leaves American democracy vulnerable to the types of ructions we witnessed last January.

American secularism must confront the poor hand dealt to it by the Constitution and chart a new legal course. Secularists might invoke the "equality" principle mentioned above. Letting the 14th Amendment interrogate the First, secularists could argue that unchecked free exercise deprives religious minorities of equal protection under the law.

Latter-day Saints were prohibited from practicing bigamy in the 1878 Reynoldscase. Native Americans' free-exercise right to ingest peyote was denied in the 1990 Smithdecision. As for "nones" those with no religious affiliation can they even possess free exercise rights?

For right-wing Protestants (and, increasingly, right-wing Catholics) free exercise has been a godsend. Via the Supreme Court, conservative Christian theological prerogatives are poised to shape every aspect of everyone else's life on issues ranging from reproductive freedomsto educationto gun legislation. Free exercise, as currently practiced, is a boon to the majority.

Secularists should steward a more sophisticated discussion of "religious freedom." Politiciansand assorted intellectuals lazily depict public expressions of faith as providing exponential benefits for the commonweal. Prayer circles at football games, candidates who do "God talk" on the campaign trail, Latin crosses on federal property all of it is assumed to make our nation stronger.

Perhaps, but the January insurrection reminds us of a craggy secular intuition: Religious passion has a dark side, a volatility that only the state can contain. Much is made of the condition of our democracy's "guardrails"; the time has come to recognize a functioning, re-energized secularism as a crucial defense against what happened lastJan.6.

Read more on the current state of America's religious wars:

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After Jan. 6, secularism is the crucial "guardrail" and it's fatally weak in America - Salon

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The 10 Most Widely Read Middle East Forum Articles of 2021 – Middle East Forum

Posted: at 4:35 pm

PHILADELPHIA January 6, 2022 Below are the ten most frequently viewed MEForum.org articles of 2021 in ascending order. Traffic to the original sites of publication, where applicable, is not counted.

The selections reflect heightened reader concerns about Turkish imperialism and the interplay between Islam and Christianity. All are worth a (re)read.

10. Turkey Creates a Humanitarian Catastrophe in Occupied Syria

Saraya Square in Afrin, Syria has been renamed after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoan

The 2018 Turkish takeover of the Afrin area in northern Syria led to the expulsion or flight of around 200,000 Kurds and the abduction of over 150 women. "Very grave violations of human rights are [still] taking place in the Afrin area, on a systematic basis. The situation remains largely ignored by both the global media and Western governments," writes Ginsburg/Milstein Writing Fellow Jonathan Spyer. This "large-scale forced movement of a population" is unique among the many atrocities in Syria's civil war in that it was "directed not by a pariah regime under Western sanctions, still less by an unaffiliated militia," but "rather was conducted by a NATO member state and US ally."

9. Daniel Pipes on Hamas vs. Israel: Will There Be a Fifth Round?

Assessing the outcome of the latest war between Israel and Hamas in May, Middle East Forum President Daniel Pipes disputes the widely held view that Hamas won politically. "The most important question is whether this fourth round of fighting will lead Israelis to make sure there is no fifth round. I think that is likely, in which case Hamas would be the big loser," he said in an interview with Global Review. Pipes called Hamas' much-touted success in inciting riots by Arab Israelis during the conflict a "positive," because it alerted Jewish Israelis "to the pending crisis on their hands with their Muslim compatriots ... which they have been unwilling to confront."

8. Western Islamists Welcome Taliban Takeover

Amid the Taliban's swift and brutal takeover of Afghanistan in August, Islamist Watch Director Sam Westrop maintained a running list of Islamists in the West who welcomed the murderous jihadists' proclamation of the "rebirth of the Islamic Emirate." It's surprising how unsurprising the quotations are.

7. Behind Dr. Oz's Curtain

Benjamin Baird, the Islamism in Politics (IIP) Coordinator for MEF's Islamist Watch, examines TV doctor and Senate candidate Mehmet Oz's troubling associations with Turkey's Islamist regime.

Since 2017 at least, the celebrity surgeon has served as the public face of Turkish Airlines, a state-owned company staffed by leading figures in Turkey's ruling Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) close to the family of President Recep Tayyip Erdoan. Oz has also been involved with known regime proxies in the United States, such as the Turkish American National Steering Committee (TASC) and the Diyanet Center of America (DCA). "Oz should renounce the AKP and fully divest from AKP-owned businesses and lobbies," Baird writes in conclusion.

6. "Godless Saracens Threatening Destruction": Modern Christian Responses to Islam and Muslims

Part II of Daniel Pipes' essay on Christian responses to Islam and Muslims. Whereas Part I discussed the "uniquely hostile nature of European views toward Muslims" during the pre-modern era, when the latter enjoyed military superiority or parity, Part II examines the period from roughly 1700 onward when the Europeans enjoyed primacy. This disparity (Europeans conquered nearly all Muslim-majority areas of the globe in one-and-a-half centuries), combined with a reduction in Christian religiosity, permitted "more varied and nuanced views" of Islam and Muslims to prevail. However, the emergence of Islamism as a global threat and the upsurge of Muslim immigration in recent years are leading some in the West to again see Islam as a civilizational threat.

5. The Word or the Sword? Christianity and Islam Meet in Hyde Park

The July 2021 stabbing of Christian street preacher Hatun Tash in London's Hyde Park is the latest violent altercation in an ancient proselytizing contest between Islam and Christianity, writes Middle East Forum writing fellow Mark Durie. He shows that the use of force to win this contest was sanctioned by Muhammad himself and is today embraced wholeheartedly by jihadis. "However, as Hatun Tash pointed out, to resort to violence can also be taken as a weakness, suggesting the failure of reason and argument to support Islam's claims."

4. Atheism among Muslims Is "Spreading Like Wildfire"

Daniel Pipes documents the growth of atheism in Muslim communities and explains why this represents a challenge to "Islam as practiced today." Atheism among Muslim-born populations has historically been minor and was "nearly undetectable" just a few decades ago. Open disbelief in God and the rejection of Muhammad's mission was "historically illegal and unspeakable" in Muslim societies. However, "repression of heterodox ideas and punishment of anyone who leaves the faith" makes Islam "singularly vulnerable to challenge" if adherents depart in large numbers anyway. The growing turn toward atheism in recent years means the "Islamic future [is] more precarious than its past," concludes Pipes.

3. Turkish Imperialism: Erdoan's "Second Conquest" of the Christians

Anne-Christine Hoff, an assistant professor of English at Jarvis Christian College in Hawkins, Texas, examines the impact of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoan's "systematic policy of Islamic supremacism" on the country's 175,000-strong Christian community, from the conversion of Istanbul's famous Hagia Sophia cathedral into a mosque to the grotesque anti-Christian incitement and hate speech on state-run media outlets. Turkey's Christians are faced with four "stark choices," she writes: "exile; continued acquiescence in their longstanding third-class status; fighting that status at the risk of being mercilessly crushed; or conversion, in the hope of full integration in Turkey's Islamic order of things."

2. Turkish Imperialism: When Will Turkey Annex Northern Syria?

Syrian journalist Rauf Baker demonstrates in great detail how Turkey is pursuing a "systematic Turkification policy in areas under its control in northern Syria." This takes several forms: demographic (pushing Kurds out, Turkmen and Sunni Arabs in), economic (heavy infrastructure investment, controlling the olive trade, making the Turkish lira the de facto currency, etc.), and educational (e.g., making Turkish language instruction mandatory in hundreds of schools). "The question is not whether the Turkish state is seeking to annex northern Syria," Baker concludes, "but rather when."

1. Give War a Chance: Arab Leaders Finesse Military Defeat

Daniel Pipes addresses one of the strangest anomalies of the modern Arab world: "[D]isaster on the battlefield can be politically useful ... [M]ilitary losses have hardly ever scathed Arabic-speaking rulers and sometimes benefited them."

Six factors help account for this anomaly: the importance of honor in Arab culture (such that "maintaining it can count more than what is actually achieved" on the battlefield in the eyes of a leader's subjects); widespread fatalism (such that subjects see military defeat as Allah's will and thus "do not blame the leader"); conspiracism (subjects imagine enemy capabilities and objectives to be so vast that merely surviving the war is considered a victory); the power of bombast in Arab political life ("causing leaders and followers alike to be captivated by the power of words even if unrelated to reality"); publicity (e.g. sympathetic global press coverage); and the confusion that prevails when subjects lack access to accurate information.

The Middle East Forum promotes American interests in the region and protects Western civilization from Islamism. It does so through a combination of original ideas, focused activism, and the funding of allies.

For immediate releaseFor more information, contact:Gregg Roman, Director+1 (215) 546 5406Roman@MEForum.org

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The 10 Most Widely Read Middle East Forum Articles of 2021 - Middle East Forum

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