Lt. Col. Barry Wingard

During his 2008 campaign, President Obama promised the country “change we can believe in.” Yet, more than a year into his administration, he has delivered “more of the same” on issues pertaining to Guantanamo Bay. The island prison is still open, detainees still await trials, and officials have recommended the worst of George W. Bush’s policies — indefinite detention.

The Bush way of thinking seems to be the guiding force behind many of the administration’s decisions on terrorism and Guantanamo. Following the attempted Christmas Day bombing of a U.S. airliner, Obama administration officials decided to read the suspect his Miranda rights, claiming former President Bush would have done the same thing. I commend using our federal courts to try suspected terrorists, but I’m alarmed at how U.S. officials arrived at that decision.

If Obama’s invocation of Bush stopped there, I might cut him some slack. Unfortunately, the Bush mindset never left 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue along with its former inhabitant. Not long after taking office, Obama promptly revamped the conviction machine known as the military commissions, an alternative legal system that, as a presidential candidate, he had led us to believe he would abandon altogether in favor of federal trials.

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The Anti Press

This past week's Wikileaks release of footage showing the deaths of more than a dozen Iraqis in the summer of 2007 has generated a great deal of desperately needed public dialogue in regard to the reality of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as opposed to the perception of the wars presented to us by the corporate media.

For more than three months, another story has been unravelling, the implications of which are far more startling than the information uncovered by Wikileaks. True to form - the corporate media's coverage of this event has an inverse relationship to its apparent gravity, meaning the coverage has been about zero.

Since the last days of December, the details of this event have been coming into focus - and the emerging image strongly suggests that coalition death-squads have been operating in Afghanistan.

Specific to this case, a group of Special Operations Forces landed outside a village in the middle of the night after receiving reports from informants that improvised explosive devices (IEDs) were being manufactured there. After finding what appeared to be two groups of unarmed fighting age males sleeping in two rooms - the reports indicate that the force summarily executed all of them using silenced weapons. Unfortunately, it appears that the Special Ops team had not entered the sleeping quarters of an IED cell, but the dormitory of a private school for boys.

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Stephen Lendman

Occupied Palestinians and Israeli Arabs never had rights in a state affording them solely to Jews. Now even they're at risk as democratic freedoms fast erode on their way to extinction; to wit, free expression, a right without which all others are endangered. It includes free speech, a free press, freedom of thought, culture, intellectual inquiry, and the right to challenge government authority peacefully, especially in times of war and cases of injustice, lawlessness, incompetence, and abuses of power.

Israel has no constitution or specific laws guaranteeing equality or free expression. Yet its Basic Laws protect human dignity and liberty as fundamental democratic values, more rhetoric than fact given its persecution of journalist Anat Kam and Haaretz's national security reporter Uri Blau.

Kam (held under house arrest since December) will be tried in mid-April for passing confidential documents she removed while stationed in IDF General Yair Naveh's office during her mandatory military service. Blau, fearing assassination or a judicial lynching, is now hiding in London.

Two (internal security) Shin Bet gag orders (code name "Double-Take") were judicially implemented to silence press discussion, on October 8, 2009 and on January 1, 2010 for 90 days, now partially lifted.

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Rachel Tabachnick

While the nation is fixated on the racist statements and misspelled signs at Tea Party events, there is a simultaneous movement working to bring together a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-national, and even multi-religious coalition, in an aggressive effort to "reform" America to conform with their biblical worldview.

On April 15-16 the Freedom Federation, a recent coalition of Religious Right organizations, will be holding a conference at Liberty University titled The Awakening 2010. The event could be described as Religious Right activists - White, Hispanic, Asian, and African American, coming together to embrace a John Birch Society worldview to the tunes of Hebrew melodies. It may sound unlikely, but the "pro-Israel" agenda is the camouflage that provides cover for this explicitly Christian nationalist movement.

This gathering of Religious Right leaders features familiar faces and familiar themes such as opposition to gay rights and reproductive rights. But the overall theme of the organization is reforming American government. The Freedom Federation includes established Religious Right organizations including the Family Research Council, Traditional Values Coalition, Eagle Forum, Concerned Women of America, and Wallbuilders, but notable is the inclusion of many organizations from the independent charismatic wing of the Religious Right which has been organized and streamlined under the auspices of C. Peter Wagner's New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) and its apostles and prophets. These include Lou Engle's "The Call," Rick Joyner's MorningStar Ministries and Oak Initiative, Strang Communications, Cindy Jacobs' Generals International, and Che Ahn's Harvest International.

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Robert Ringer

In my article ”Saying Yes to the Party of No,” I commented on how pleased I’ve been to see Glenn Beck talking about a subject I’ve been writing about since the late seventies: a government-declared state of emergency leading to a ”temporary” dictatorship.

I have long believed that the mathematics of an insatiable entitlement society in the U.S. guarantees a runaway inflation, which likely would be followed by anarchy and chaos – a perfect excuse for government to resort to strong-armed totalitarian measures to ”restore order.” My model has always been Germany’s Weimar Republic in the 1920s, where runaway inflation brought Adolf Hitler to power.

I originally believed that the runaway-inflation scenario in the U.S. would play out in the early 1980s, but a combination of Ronald Reagan and an explosion in computers and electronic technology made possible by the remnants of our capitalist system headed it off.

Nevertheless, the threat of a runaway inflation has continued to increase over the years, even while our false-prosperity economy was booming. That’s because the underlying causes (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, insane union and government-employee wages and benefits, Social Security, Medicare, etc.) of our sick economy have never been addressed.

Unemployment is just a symptom; the disease is entitlements. Throughout the false-prosperity years, Social Security did not go away. It got bigger. Medicare did not go away. It got bigger. Virtually no other benefits went away. They only got bigger. So the underlying problem of entitlements not only has remained, but continued to grow.

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Jonathan Cook

Whistleblowing Israeli journalist treated as “fugitive felon”

An Israeli journalist who went into hiding after writing a series of reports showing lawbreaking approved by Israeli army commanders faces a lengthy jail term for espionage if caught, as Israeli security services warned at the weekend they would “remove the gloves” to track him down.

The Shin Bet, Israel’s secret police, said it was treating Uri Blau, a reporter with the liberal Haaretz daily newspaper who has gone underground in London, as a “fugitive felon” and that a warrant for his arrest had been issued.

Options being considered are an extradition request to the British authorities or, if that fails, a secret operation by Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, to smuggle him back, according to Maariv, a right-wing newspaper.

It was revealed yesterday that Mr Blau’s informant, Anat Kam, 23, a former conscript soldier who copied hundreds of classified documents during her military service, had confessed shortly after her arrest in December to doing so to expose “war crimes”.

The Shin Bet claims that Mr Blau is holding hundreds of classified documents, including some reported to relate to Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s attack on Gaza in winter 2008 in which the army is widely believed to have violated the rules of war.

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Stephen Lendman

"Along with the Infiltration Prevention Bill, potential mass Palestinian deportations and/or imprisonments takes Israel a step closer to full-blown fascism. It's already well along like its close Washington ally."

International law protects refugees and asylum seekers, Article I of the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees calling them:

"A person who owning to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of their nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail him/herself of the protection of that country."

Post-WW II, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was established to help them.

To gain legal protection, they must:

-- be outside their country of origin;
-- fear persecution;
-- be harmed or fear harm by their government or others;
-- fear persecution for at least one of the above cited reasons; and
-- pose no danger to others.

The Knesset's 1950 Law of Return grants every Jew worldwide the right to live in Israel as a citizen. Yet no refugee law exists, despite Israel being a signatory to the 1951 UN Convention. Instead, unpublished Ministry of Interior procedures and secret inter-ministerial determinations are made on a case-by-case basis.

As a result, Israel has the lowest percent of requests granted (for temporary, not permanent status) compared to western states - 1% in 2005, under 0.5% in 2006, and in 2007, 350 refugees got temporary protection, 805 others were denied, and 863 were under review, after which most were rejected.

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Gilad Atzmon

In case you didn’t know, in Britain the Holocaust is part of the National Curriculum. Thanks to the ‘The Holocaust Educational Trust’ our children are guaranteed to learn how bad the Nazis were. This is probably much easier for our kids to acknowledge than to look into the ways in which the embarrassing legacy of the British Empire reverberates throughout almost every contemporary disastrous conflict on this planet. It is deemed far easier for our kids to learn about Anne Frank than to absorb the fact that Britain is directly responsible for the robbery of Palestine and the Palestinian ordeal. Learning about Auschwitz is also far easier than accepting the devastating reality created by Britain’s latest illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a colossal crime which has cost more than 1.5 million innocent lives so far. Thanks to The Holocaust Educational Trust we can brush history and our current crimes aside. Learning about the bad Nazis is far easier on our children than learning about the complicity of Britain in the holocaust. I guess that toughening British immigration laws to stop Jews escaping to Britain in the 1930s is not a prominent chapter in our kids’ text books. The Holocaust Educational Trust was established in 1988 says their official website. “Our aim is to educate young people from every background about the Holocaust and the important lessons to be learned for today.”

Wonderful, I think to myself. My 9 year old son told me that a Shoaguru visited his school recently to talk about the holocaust. My son raised his hand, he wondered whether the lesson of the holocaust could be applied to the Palestinian ordeal. “We are not here to talk about politics” answered the ‘trusted’ trained Shoa mentor. For my son the message was clear: The Jewish people's suffering is universal, other people's suffering is ‘politics’.

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Marc W. Herold

KANDAHAR, Aug 5, 2009 : Villagers look at the bodies of three
children after they were killed in an airstrike by foreign troops in
Arghandab district of Kandahar, south of Kabul, on Wednesday.
Four local civilians including three children were killed in the last
night bombing. (Photo: PAN/Bashir Nadim)

What needs first to be clearly understood is that is that Obama’s Pentagon has been much more deadly for Afghan civilians than was Bush in comparable months of 2008.

Buried in the public relations blather of U.S. Marine legions “liberating” Helmand and Afghan (sham) “elections” as democracy-restored (1) is an unspoken trade-off over who disproportionately dies in America’s modern wars in the Third World. Under George W. Bush, U.S politico-military elites chose to fight the Afghan war with minimal regard for so-called collateral casualties. But the soaring toll of killed Afghan civilians swayed world public opinion and stoked the Afghan resistance as grieved Afghan family members sought revenge. Enter Barack Obama. Faced with the prospect of NATO forces being withdrawn as restless NATO country citizens mobilized against the war, the Obama war machine took the decision to trade-off (mostly) lower-class U.S. “volunteer” soldiers from rural America (2) for fewer rural Afghan civilians killed. The decision had nothing to do with valuing Afghan lives and everything to do with a careful political calculation. In outlying areas such as in the Pakistan borderlands or in isolated rural areas of Afghanistan, Obama’s war machine cavalierly slaughters innocent civilians with the same impunity and at the same rate as his maligned predecessor did as drone strikes in Pakistan and U.S air strikes in Farah and Logar have demonstrated.

What has also changed is the public face of the war as one might expect from a President skilled in diction and possessed with the persuasion skills of a well-trained lawyer. On the other hand, behind the soothing words, the rationales are identical: in Phoenix recently, Obama reiterated the Bush of September 2001,

"This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al-Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans. This is not only a war worth fighting. This is fundamental to the defense of our people.” (3)

So much for the current U.S. rationale for war. So much for “Change We Can Believe In.”

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Stephen Walt

If you would like to read a textbook example of a dust-kicking operation, please look at Robert Satloff's heated response to my recent post explaining the problems that can arise when top-level foreign policy officials have strong attachments to a foreign country. I seem to have struck a nerve.
There are only two important issues here, and Satloff ignores both of them. First, do some top U.S. officials -- and here we are obviously talking about Dennis Ross -- have a strong attachment to Israel? Second, might this situation be detrimental to the conduct of U.S. Middle East policy?

Regarding the first question, there is abundant evidence that Ross has a strong -- some might even say ardent -- attachment to Israel. These feelings are clearly on display in his memoir of the Oslo peace process, and they are confirmed by his decision to accept a top position at the Washington Institute of Near East Policy (WINEP) -- an influential organization in the Israel lobby-upon leaving government service in 2000. As Middle East historian Avi Shlaim put it in his own review of Ross's book:

Ross belongs fairly and squarely in the pro-Israel camp. His premises, position on the Middle East and policy preferences are identical to those of the Israel-first school. Indeed, it is difficult to think of an American official who is more quintessentially Israel-first in his outlook than Dennis Ross.

Furthermore, Ross served in recent years as chairman of the board of the Jewish People's Policy Planning Institute, a think-tank established by the Jewish Agency, which is headquartered in Jerusalem. Satloff does not mention this key fact, but the implications are unmistakable. Why would anyone take such a job if they did not have a deep-seated commitment to Israel?

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Chris Floyd

"And today [...] the brutalizing beat goes on. "Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, it's like it pounds in my brain," a U.S. soldier told the Los Angeles Times [...]. Another shrugged at the sight of freshly slaughtered bodies. "It doesn't bother me at all," he said. "I'm a warrior. My soldiers, they are all warriors. They have no problems. There's no place in this Army for men who aren't warriors." Said a third: "We talk about killing all the time. I never used to be this way…but it's like I can't stop. I'm worried what I'll be like when I get home.""

Penny Coleman at Alternet.com gives us a look at a new program designed to dull the moral sensibilities of American soldiers in combat on the imperial frontiers: Pentagon, Big Pharma: Drug Troops to Numb Them to Horrors of War.

But as we'll see below, this attempt to peddle magic pills to chase away the horrors of war is just one front in a long-term, wide-ranging "warfighter enhancement program" -- including the neurological and genetic re-engineering of soldiers' minds and bodies to create what the Pentagon calls "iron bodied and iron willed personnel": tireless, relentless, remorseless, unstoppable.

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Stephen Lendman

On October 21, 2008, for the first time in school history, the University of Ottawa (U of O) Faculty of Science, without cause, deregistered undergraduate Marc Kelly, an exemplary student, expelling him for the semester and preventing him from completing the final three courses he needed to graduate. The official email sent him read:

"The Faculty of Science has been asked to deregister you. (This) message is to notify you that you are no longer registered...."

The official reason was the Department of Physics' displeasure over the nature and methods of his valid, legitimate research, twice secretly rejecting it, then informing him through pro forma letters saying,

"It is common sense that (your research) has to use physics tools and physics knowledge."

Kelly was never contacted or questioned. When he tried approaching Physics Chair Bela Joos for an explanation, he refused to see him, suggesting this action wasn't over academic performance, but for publicly supporting tenured Professor Denis Rancourt, unfairly fired as explained below and in detail in an early April article titled, "Targeting Academic and Speech Freedoms: The Case of Canadian Professor Denis Rancourt."

In March 2009, it was for his political activism - specifically, courageously supporting oppressed Palestinians, criticizing the university's refusal to academically boycott Israel, and gallantly backing what U of O officials and President Allan Rock opposed - a former Canadian politician, UN ambassador, and staunch Israeli supporter.

Affected also was Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, student and former Fulcrum Publishing Society (FPS) Ombudsman (U of O's English-language student newspaper) until his March 2010 Board of Directors dismissal for supporting Rancourt, criticizing offensive FPS reports about him, refusing to stay quiet and go along, and confronting Business Manager Frank Appleyard's violation of FPS rules by simultaneously working for President Allan Rock and the FPS. His case was discussed in an April article titled, "Targeting Activist University of Ottawa Students."

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Edward S. Herman & David Peterson

"The United States defines what constitutes a "threat" to international peace and security, and as it demonizes the entity alleged to pose the "threat" the establishment media fall into line, help inflame passions about the "threat," and thus facilitate U.S. policy goals towards it, irrespective of the validity or the direction of any real threat. Thus, Israel may have a substantial nuclear arsenal and may have engaged in cross-border wars and threatened to attack Iran, and Iran may have no nuclear weapons, not engage in cross-border wars, and not threaten to attack the United States or Israel, but the ratio of media attention paid to Iran's and Israel's nuclear programs for the seven-year period we studied was 92-to-1 in the New York Times, and 114-to-1 in a very large sample of wire services and newspapers."

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Stephen Lendman

For millions worldwide, Lynne needs no introduction. For others: She worked selflessly, tirelessly, and heroically for 30 years as a human rights champion, defending America's poor, underprivileged, and unwanted - people never afforded due process and judicial fairness without an advocate like her. She knew the risks, yet took them until bogusly indicted on April 9, 2002 for:

-- "conspiring to defraud the United States;
-- conspiring to provide and conceal material support to terrorist activity;
-- providing and concealing material support to terrorist activity; and
-- two counts of making false statements."

The charges related to her alleged violation of Bureau of Prisons Special Administrative Measures (SAMS) that prohibit discussing topics the Justice Department rules outside "legal representation" - to inhibit a proper defense and obstruct justice for anyone DOJ wants to convict.

Her client was Sheik Abdel Rahman, a one-time CIA asset, convicted in 1995 and now serving a life sentence for "seditious conspiracy" for his alleged connection to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing despite convincing evidence of his innocence.

As an advocate for justice, Lynne was targeted, indicted, and after a seven month 2004 - 2005 show trial featuring the worst of McCarthy-like tactics, convicted on February 10, 2005 after 13 days of deliberation on all five counts. She was automatically disbarred, then sentenced on October 17, 2006 to 28 months imprisonment.

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Rick Rozoff

Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev was deposed five years after and in the same manner as he came to power, in a bloody uprising.

Elected president two months after the so-called Tulip Revolution of 2005 he helped engineer, he was since then head of state of the main transit nation for the U.S. and NATO war in Afghanistan.

The Pentagon secured the Manas Air Base (as of last year known as the Transit Center at Manas) in Kyrgyzstan shortly after its invasion of Afghanistan in October of 2001 and in the interim, according to a U.S. armed forces publication last June, "More than 170,000 coalition personnel passed through the base on their way in or out of Afghanistan, and Manas was the transit point for 5,000 tons of cargo, including spare parts and equipment, uniforms and various items to support personnel and mission needs.

"Currently, around 1,000 U.S. troops, along with a few hundred from Spain and France, are assigned to the base." [1]

The White House's Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke paid his first visit in his current position to Kyrgyzstan - and the three other former Soviet Central Asian republics which border it, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan - in February and said "35,000 US troops were transiting each month on their way in and out of Afghanistan." [2] At the rate he mentioned, 420,000 troops annually.

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Stephen Lendman

Mossawa means equality, the Mossawa Advocacy Center promoting it for Israel's Arab citizens - about 1.5 million, comprising 20% of the population. Established in 1997, it "strives to improve the social, economic and political status of (Israeli Arabs), while preserving their national and cultural rights as Palestinians." It also promotes gender equality "in all spheres of society."

Its September 29, 2009 press release headlined the "High Follow-up Committee for Arab citizens (an organization representing Israeli Arabs) call for a general" October 1 one-day work stoppage to protest deteriorating conditions they face, and Israel's failure "to bring justice to the families of the 13 Arab victims that were killed by security forces during the events of October 2000," the start of the second Intifada.

The Committee asked all Arab institutions, organizations and businesses to honor it in opposition to Triangle and Negev area home demolitions; Galilee and Triangle area settlement building; discrimination in allocating resources; police violence, intimidation, racial, and political incitement; and the right of Arab citizens "to exist and live in dignity in their historic homeland."

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John Mueller & Mark G. Stewart

An impressively large number of politicians, opinion makers, scholars, bureaucrats, and ordinary people hold that terrorism -- and al Qaeda in particular -- poses an existential threat to the United States. This alarming characterization, which was commonly employed by members of the George W. Bush administration, has also been used [3] by some Obama advisers, including the counter-terrorism specialist Bruce Riedel. Some officials, such as former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, have parsed the concept further, declaring [4] the struggle against terrorism to be a "significant existential" one.

Over the last several decades, academics, policymakers, and regulators worldwide have developed risk-assessment techniques to evaluate hazards to human life, such as pesticide use, pollution, and nuclear power plants. In the process, they have reached a substantial consensus about which risks are acceptable and which are unacceptable. When these techniques are applied to terrorism, it becomes clear that terrorism is far from an existential threat. Instead, it presents an acceptable risk, one so low that spending to further reduce its likelihood or consequences is scarcely justified.

An unacceptable risk is often called de manifestis, meaning of obvious or evident concern -- a risk so high that no "reasonable person" would deem it acceptable. A widely cited de manifestis risk assessment comes from a 1980 United States Supreme Court decision [5] regarding workers' risk from inhaling gasoline vapors. It concluded that an annual fatality risk -- the chance per year that a worker would die of inhalation -- of 1 in 40,000 is unacceptable. This is in line with standard practice in the regulatory world. Typically, risks considered unacceptable are those found likely to kill more than 1 in 10,000 or 1 in 100,000 per year.

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Philip Jones

"The most dangerous revolutions are not those which tear everything down, and cause the streets to run with blood, but those which leave everything standing, while cunningly emptying it of any significance". ~ The Danish philosopher `Kierkegaard`.

London's Evening Standard edition for 1st July 2008 reported in an article entitled `Happyland` that a recent opinion poll revealed that of all the peoples of the world, Danes were the happiest. This the poll stated was due to the country's peaceful atmosphere, Democracy and social equality.

In recent times, there have been several such surveys conducted, all of which asserted that Denmark is the happiest place on the planet. The question is of course, why do we need to keep being told this? What is the purpose, and is there an agenda? I am a British expat who has lived here 13 years and for the life of me, I cannot see Danes as being a happy people at all.

Denmark is, and has been for years, a `Test Zone` for the European Union in particular and the emerging New World Order in general. The constant reinforcing of this Danish `fairy tale` in the international media is contrived to convince people that the subtle mental prison that is Denmark is a highly desirable model that all should strive for.

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Stephen Lendman

Until his early March Board of Directors removal, Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya was Fulcrum Publishing Society (FPS) Ombudsman, the English-language student newspaper at Canada's University of Ottawa (U of O).

It resulted from his critical reports, including a preliminary February 23 one for FPS's editorial mistreatment of Professor Denis Rancourt, fired in March 2009 for his political activism - specifically his courageous stance on Occupied Palestine.

In 2007, after criticizing university opposition to academically boycotting Israel, repression against him intensified under new president Allen Rock, a former Canadian politician, UN ambassador, and staunch Israeli supporter.

Nazemroaya accused the Fulcrum of "publishing opinion pieces against Dr. Rancourt. (They've) strongly criticized him, his university classes, his position, and his brand of activism."

In his January 9 report, Nazemroaya cited illegal U of O "covert surveillance," adding that "The Fulcrum has a duty to cover all news concerning campus life in an unbiased way and to the best of its abilities," especially over denying a distinguished tenured professor academic freedom and firing him for his views - the way a police state silences dissent.

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Mark Owen

On the evening of Saturday April 2, 2005, after receiving the Rite of Extreme Unction, Pope John Paul II passed away. At this time his chamberlain would have gone to the papal hospital bed and asked the Bishop of Rome a question, “Are you dead?” There would be no reply from the Pope. The chamberlain would then pick up a silver hammer and strike the Pope on the head and repeat his question, “Are you dead?” Again there would be no reply. The chamberlain would then thrice call out the Pope’s baptismal name. He would then declare the Pope to be dead.

This is the way the Church has determined papal deaths for centuries. This is the way of the world’s oldest monarchy.

Since 1763 the august Almanach de Gotha has been the ultimate authority on the royal houses of Europe. Listed under ‘Reigning Sovereign Houses’ is the Holy See. Therein is stated, “the incumbent of the Holy See is considered by Christian sovereign families as the ‘Father of the Family of Kings,’ [and] his Holiness represents the OLDEST MONARCHY on earth”

The triple sovereignty of the Pope-Person, Holy See & Vatican City–is distinct in fact and in law. Internationally, he is not subject to any authority on earth. His Cardinals are considered to be Princes of the Church and peers of the sons of reigning monarchs. Each diocese is considered to be a royal fiefdom. The word ‘diocese’ originally signified an administrative unit devised by the Emperor Diocletian, a tyrant noted for his persecution of Christians.

Following are brief sketches of some of the more interesting holders of the title ‘Vicar of Christ’ (it should be noted that the Latin equivalent of the Greek ‘anti’ is ‘vicarius,’ from whence is derived the word ‘vicar’).

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