"U.S. Using Syrian Rebel Supply Lines" In Preparation To Send Arms

This update hits on three common prophetic themes for our generation: The Middle East, Pestilence and Persecution. 

This one comes from the Jerusalem Post:

U.S. Using Syrian Rebel Supply Lines As It Prepares To Send Arms

 The United States has quietly been testing the Syrian opposition's ability to deliver food rations, medical kits and money to rebel-held areas as Washington prepares to send arms to the rebel fighters.

US officials meet weekly in Turkey with Syrian opposition leaders to work out how best to keep supply lines open to rebel fighters and war-ravaged towns and districts.

Supplies are handed to officers of the moderate Free Syrian Army (FSA) at clandestine locations that cannot be divulged for security reasons.

"I sign the paperwork, and shake the hands of the FSA official," said a US State Department official involved in the effort. "I wish them well and walk away." The rebels take aid for their own units and also distribute some of it to schools, clinics and local councils.

The US Congress cleared the way earlier this month for Washington to give the rebels not just non-lethal and humanitarian aid but also weapons. Lawmakers have only approved limited funding for the arms operation, as they fear that US weapons and ammunition could end up in the hands of hardline Islamist militant groups.

Experts Raise Fears Of Antibiotic-Resistant Superbugs Spread Through Food Supply

Medical experts have raised fears of a new strain of antibiotic-resistant superbug spread through food and even drinking water.

He says food coming in from overseas is of primary concern.

But the medical profession is most concerned about the Indian subcontinent, with an estimated 95 per cent of Indians carrying a form of superbug.

Cardiff University researcher Professor Timothy Walsh has made a worrying discovery called NDM1, or New Delhi metallo-beta lactamase.

The enzyme makes healthy bacteria in the gut resistant to all but one old and highly toxic antibiotic, Colistin.

"The data that we now have coming out of some Indian hospitals would suggest that Colistin resistance is starting to rise rapidly and so we've actually moved from extreme drug resistance to into pan-drug resistance, ie, we've run out completely of antibiotics," Professor Walsh said.

Military Censors Christian Chaplain, Atheists Call For Punishment

[This one is worth reading in full]

A Christian chaplain in the military is being officially censored for engaging in free speech, and anti-Christian activists are demanding he be punished.  

Lt. Col. Kenneth Reyes is a Christian chaplain currently serving in the U.S. Air Force. He is stationed at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska. As an ordained clergyman whose duties are to provide religious instruction and spiritual counseling, he has a page on the base’s website called “Chaplain’s Corner.”

Reyes recently wrote an essay entitled, “No Atheists in Foxholes: Chaplains Gave All in World War II.” This common saying is attributed to a Catholic priest in World War II, made famous when President Dwight D. Eisenhower said during a 1954 speech: "I am delighted that our veterans are sponsoring a movement to increase our awareness of God in our daily lives. In battle, they learned a great truth that there are no atheists in the foxholes."

As reported by Fox News’s Todd Starnes, when Reyes referenced this famous line in his essay, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) contacted the base commander, Col. Brian Duffy, demanding he take action on Reyes’s “anti-secular diatribe.”

MRFF’s letter says that by Reyes’s “use of the bigoted, religious supremacist phrase, ‘no atheists in foxholes,’ he defiles the dignity of service members.” They accuse him of violating military regulations.

My legal research on this issue uncovered no regulation prohibiting Reyes’ speech, which looks like expression protected by the free speech and religious freedom provisions of the First Amendment. Military leaders did not respond to Fox’s inquiries asking the Air Force to identify any such rules.

Nonetheless, only five hours after MRFF’s complaint, the essay was removed from the website. Duffy has profusely apologized to MRFF for not stopping this religious leader from sharing religious thoughts.

But this response—which again appears to be a violation of Reyes’s First Amendment rights—is insufficient for MRFF. They said, “Faith based hate, is hate all the same,” and, “Lt. Col. Reyesmust be appropriately punished.” (Emphasis added).

So MRFF is saying that the coercive power of government must be used to punish a military officer, who is also an ordained Christian minister, for making ordinary religious references consistent with his faith.

Retired Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin of the Family Research Council—one of the leaders of a new religious liberty coalition for the military—responded, “A chaplain has been censored for expressing his beliefs about the role of faith in the lives of service members… Why do we have chaplains if they aren’t allowed to fulfill that purpose?”

MRFF is activist Mikey Weinstein’s organization. He calledobservant Christians “fundamentalist monsters” seeking to impose a “reign of theocratic terror,” and he described sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ in the military as an act of “spiritual rape” that makes believers “enemies of the Constitution” who are committing an act of “sedition and treason” against this nation.

The Obama-Hagel Defense Department and Air Force have met with Weinstein and MRFF over a period of four years and recentlytold Congress that there are no problems with suppressing religious speech in the military. However, because this growing wave of anti-Christian extremism has been exposed to the public, the U.S. House has inserted new religious liberty protections for military members in pending legislation.

President Obama threatens to veto the legislation. Reyes's story makes it more likely that Congress will stand its ground and fight to protect the religious liberty of him and countless others in the military, as those service members continue risking their lives to fight for all Americans.