Religious leaders of all faiths promotes global tolerance

By Jeremy Sharon

Jewish, Muslim clerics, Christian clergy and those of the Bahai and Hindu faiths, conference focuses on promoting peace and tolerance.

Religious leaders of all stripes, gowns and headgear gathered in Jerusalem’s Mishkenot Sha’ananim neighborhood Wednesday to attend the third annual Interfaith Ethics and Tolerance conference.

Bringing together Jewish and Muslim clerics, as well as clergy from numerous Christian denominations and those of the Bahai and Hindu faiths, the conference this year focused on the role of spiritual leaders in promoting peace and tolerance as well as the challenges of religious leadership in today’s globalized world

“Our organization has taken on the task of working to improve the ethical behavior of all peoples and all the adherents of all religions,” said Rabbi Yuval Cherlow of the Jerusalem Center for Ethics and head of the Petah Tikva Hesder yeshiva.

“Unfortunately, the world is full of religious leaders who are part of the problem at the moment, so we are looking for ways in which religious leaders can be part of the solution.”

The day of lectures, panel sessions and roundtable discussions, which included debate on the impact of the Internet on religion, ethical behavior of religious leaders and the challenges of globalization to religion, culminated with a ceremony at the Tolerance Park and Monument in Armon Hanatziv involving a troupe of saxophonists, a police band and an eclectic ethnic ensemble entreating the audience to embrace tolerance, humanity and peace.

A series of blessings was also intoned by the assembled clergy, followed by the release of dozens of white balloons into the azure blue sky, some of which didn’t get stuck in a nearby tree.

“The problems of tolerance and intolerance are universal,” said Father Aleksander Archdeacon of Poland and representative of the Polish Orthodox Church to the Patriarchate of Jerusalem.

“In general, religion had done more to promote intolerance, warfare and hatred throughout history than anything else,” he told The Jerusalem Post. “As a religious person, I have to ask myself ‘How do I not compromise myself and my faith while at the same time not be guilty, as others have in the past, of promoting intolerance.’” Rabbi Cherlow was more circumspect about the notion of an ethical world without religion when relating to the claims of modern secularists that religion has caused division and conflict in the modern world.

“Stalin, Hitler and Mao Tsetung, leaders with expressly anti-religious convictions, each killed tens of millions of people,” he argued. “Yes, religion can cause tension and war but I believe that it can also make this world a better place and guide us in all aspects of life.”

‘SAVE THE DOOMED EURO BY SETTING UP A NEW SUPER-STATE’

By Macer Hall, Political Editor

THE EU’s top bureaucrat yesterday claimed that only a fully-fledged super-state can save the euro.

Jose Manuel Barroso, the Commission’s President, said the deepening economic crisis in Europe was a “fight for integration”.

His outburst was seen by opponents of the march towards a federal Europe as exposing the ultimate ambitions of the Brussels bureaucracy.

Mr Barroso spoke out amid yet more desperate efforts to stop debt-ridden Greece going bust and wrecking the single currency.

“What we need now is a new, unifying impulse, a new federalist moment – let’s not be afraid to use the word,” Mr Barroso told the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

“We are confronted with the most serious challenge of a generation. This is a fight for the jobs and prosperity of families in all our member states.

“This is a fight for the economic and political future of Europe. This is a fight for what Europe represents in the world. This is a fight for European integration itself.”

But one critic, Tory MP Douglas Carswell, said: “This is a fight for Europe’s fat cats to cling on to their privileged positions and their taxpayer-funded fiefdom.

“It is not in the interests of the ­millions of people around Europe who have been oppressed by Barroso and his ilk’s currency scam.

“The sooner the euro breaks up, the better. People need a currency that works for them.

“And who voted for Barroso to lord it over us, anyway? He is an unelected bureaucrat who is overseeing a system that is falling apart.”

In his speech, Mr Barroso said: “The right way to stop the negative cycle and strengthen the euro is to deepen integration, mainly in the euro area. This is the way to go.”

Nigel Farage, of the UK Independence Party, told Mr Barroso in the ­parliament: “We all know that Greece is going to default.

“You can’t say you weren’t warned: You were all told that Greece should never have joined the euro.” He added: “Unless Greece is allowed to get out of this economic and political prison, you may well spark a revolution in that country.”

Many senior politicians fear a Greek debt default could destroy the euro.

As the crisis deepened yesterday, US President Barack Obama and China’s ­Premier Wen Jiabao both warned EU leaders to get a grip.

Poland’s finance minister went so far as to say: “If the eurozone were to collapse or to disappear, then the ­European Union itself might not survive, that is possible.” Mr Barroso was last night pressing for the issuing of “euro bonds” as a solution to the ­crisis. The measure would allow the 17 euro currency nations to collectively borrow cash.

But his plan was being opposed by Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel amid fears in her country that eurozone debt is spiralling out of control.

Instead, Mrs Merkel and French president Nicolas Sarkozy were ­offering the Athens government more bail out cash in return for a pledge to stick to its spending cuts.

Australian passports to now come with 3 gender options: male, female and indeterminate

By Associated Press

Australian passports will now have three gender options — male, female and indeterminate — under new guidelines to remove discrimination against transgender and intersex people, the government said Thursday.

Intersex people, who are biologically not entirely male or female, will be able to list their gender on passports as “X.”

Transgender people, whose perception of their own sex is at odds with their biology, will be able to pick whether they are male or female if their choice is supported by a doctor’s statement. Transgender people cannot pick “X.”

Previously, gender was a choice of only male or female, and people were not allowed to change their gender on their passport without having had a sex-change operation. The U.S. dropped the surgery prerequisite for transgender people’s passports last year.

Any country that complies with the International Civil Aviation Organization’s specifications for machine-readable passports can choose to introduce a gender “X.”

Australian Sen. Louise Pratt, whose partner was born female and is now identified as a man, said the reform was a major improvement for travelers who face questioning and detention at airports because their appearance does not match their gender status.

“’X’ is really quite important because there are people who are indeed genetically ambiguous and were probably arbitrarily assigned as one sex or the other at birth,” Pratt said. “It’s a really important recognition of people’s human rights that if they choose to have their sex as ‘indeterminate,’ that they can.”

Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd said the new guidelines removed discrimination on the grounds of gender identity and sexual orientation.

“This amendment makes life easier and significantly reduces the administrative burden for sex and gender diverse people who want a passport that reflects their gender and physical appearance,” Rudd said in a statement.

Attorney-General Robert McClelland said while the change would affect few Australians, it was important because it would allow them to travel free of discrimination.

Peter Hyndal, who negotiated with the government on the reforms on behalf of the human rights advocacy group A Gender Agenda, said the new guidelines were in line with more flexible approaches to gender issues in passports issued by the United States and Britain.

“It’s amazingly positive,” Hyndal said. “It’s the biggest single piece of law reform related to transgender and intersex issues at a commonwealth level ever in this country — mind-blowing.”

As many as 4 percent of people are affected by an intersex condition, but most never become aware of their minor chromosome abnormalities.

New emotion detector can see when we're lying

By Hamish Pritchard / Science Reporter, Bradford

A sophisticated new camera system can detect lies just by watching our faces as we talk, experts say.

The computerised system uses a simple video camera, a high-resolution thermal imaging sensor and a suite of algorithms.

Researchers say the system could be a powerful aid to security services.

It successfully discriminates between truth and lies in about two-thirds of cases, said lead researcher Professor Hassan Ugail from Bradford University.

The system, developed by a team from the universities of Bradford and Aberystwyth in conjunction with the UK Border Agency, was unveiled today at the British Science Festival in Bradford.

This new approach builds on years of research into how we all unconsciously, involuntarily reveal our emotions in subtle changes of expression and the flow of blood to our skin.

We give our emotions away in our eye movements, dilated pupils, biting or pressing together our lips, wrinkling our noses, breathing heavily, swallowing, blinking and facial asymmetry. And these are just the visible signs seen by the camera.

Even swelling blood vessels around our eyes betray us, and the thermal sensor spots them too.

Real-world test

Traditional lie detection depends on the venerable polygraph, first developed in 1921, a much more invasive apparatus with a set of wires attached to the skin. This new device promises non-invasive, even covert truth tests in real time.

"We bring together all this well-established work on expressions, these recent developments in thermal imaging, techniques for image tracking of subjects and our new algorithms into one operational system," said Professor Ugail.

So far, the team has only tested its lie detector on willing volunteers rather than in a real-life, high stakes situation. Later this year, though, they plan to deploy it in a UK airport, probably running alongside experienced immigration officers as they conduct security interviews. The algorithms can then be tested against the verdicts of these officers.

"In a real, high-stress situation, we might get an even higher success rate," noted Professor Ugail, who believes he'll eventually be able to detect around 90% of those who are lying, which is similar to the performance of the polygraph.

The researchers acknowledge, though, that these tests can never be 100% accurate.

What they detect are emotions, such as distress, fear or distrust, and not the act of lying itself. Fear can sometimes be the fear of not being believed rather than the fear of being caught.

Is China Planning a Surprise Missile Attack?

by Gordon G. Chang / Around Asia

A retired Chinese general recently revealed that his country might be planning a surprise missile attack on the United States. The public comment of Xu Guangyu came in response to WikiLeaks revelations that last year Washington had warned its allies beforehand of China’s test of a missile interceptor.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in a classified cable sent last January 9th, instructed American embassies in Australia, Britain, Canada, and New Zealand to notify those countries of upcoming Chinese launches two days later. The cable included details of the launch sites for the interceptor and the target, the models of the missiles, the purpose of the test, and the test date.

Yesterday, Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post carried comments from Xu, now at the China Arms Control and Disarmament Association, to the effect that American satellites would have detected activity at the launch sites but that some of the information in the cables—specifically the types of missiles and the day of the test—must have come from a source on the ground. WikiLeaks’s release of this cable, revealing one or more American spies in China’s strategic missile corps, is perhaps the website’s most significant compromise of US security to date.

The Hong Kong paper noted that Xu said that “if China could no longer keep secret its missile launches, it would not be able to launch a surprise attack on the US.”

Is China really in the process of planning to destroy the American homeland with a preemptive barrage of nuclear-tipped missiles? Xu’s comment, of course, is not proof, but it does reveal that Chinese flag officers are thinking about doing so.

Unfortunately, Xu’s hostile sentiment fits within a worrisome trend. Especially since the beginning of last year, there has been a series of belligerent comments from China’s generals, admirals, and colonels, some talking about war with the US in the near future. Last February, for instance, Colonel Meng Xianging said the People’s Liberation Army would “qualitatively upgrade” its capabilities to force a showdown on US policy toward Taiwan within the decade “when we’re strong enough for a hand-to-hand fight with the US.”

Given the belicose statements coming from some of China’s military brass—along with China’s well-documented aggressive behavior in the South China Sea and other peripheral waters—it is difficult to imagine how Western observers can deny China’s intentions and the clashes that lie ahead. Thank you, General Xu.