PayPal to Start Accepting Bitcoin Payments

EBay Inc. (EBAY)’s PayPal service will start accepting bitcoins, opening up the world’s second-biggest Internet payment network to virtual currency transactions.

“We’re announcing PayPal’s first foray into bitcoin,” Bill Ready, the chief of EBay’s Braintree unit, said at Techcrunch’s Disrupt SF conference yesterday. “Over the coming months we’ll allow our merchants to accept bitcoin. On the consumer side it will be a sleek experience.”

EBay, as the world’s biggest Web marketplace and operator of a global payments service, is the most significant business to date that’s embraced bitcoin. The move could potentially enable PayPal’s 152 million registered accounts to transact using the virtual currency, spurring wider use and acceptance of bitcoin, according to Gil Luria, an analyst at Wedbush Securities Inc.

“PayPal integrating bitcoin into Braintree is a very substantial development,” Luria said. “Not only will it make it possible for some of the fastest-growing apps to integrate bitcoin seamlessly, it opens the door for PayPal to integrate bitcoin into its main wallet functionality. If that happens millions of retailers will de facto be accepting bitcoin overnight.”

Braintree provides payment capabilities on websites and in mobile apps such as mobile car-booking service Uber Technologies Inc. and Airbnb Inc., the short-term home rental service for travelers. EBay acquired Braintree for $800 million in cash last year to expand its mobile-transactions business. PayPal and Braintree will work with bitcoin payment-service provider Coinbase Inc. to enable payments in the virtual currency, Ready said.

Read more from Bloomberg

Meteors, Google and War

A meteor, Google and war conspiracy news report for those of you who enjoy a good con-spirit-cy.

Meteorite ’caused mysterious boom in Nicaragua’ – Asteroid fragment thought to have caused large crater and loud noise but uncertainty remains as no streak of light seen in sky (more…)

World Leaders Call For Ending Criminalization of Drug Use and Possession

New Report: World Leaders Call For Ending Criminalization of Drug Use and Possession and Responsible Legal Regulation of Psychoactive Substances

Former Presidents of Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Poland, Portugal and Switzerland Join With Kofi Annan, Richard Branson, George Shultz, Paul Volcker And Others To Make Bold, New Recommendations for Major Paradigm Shift in Global Drug Policy on the Road to UN Special Session on Drugs in 2016

Live-Stream of Press Conference: Tuesday, 9:45am NY time (1:45pm GMT) at www.globalcommissionondrugs.org

Today, the Global Commission on Drug Policy will release Taking Control: Pathways to Drug Policies that Work, a new, groundbreaking report at a press conference in New York City. The event will be live-streamed and speakers include former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, former Colombian President César Gaviria, former Swiss President Ruth Dreifuss, Richard Branson and others.

The Commissioners will then meet with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and UN Deputy Secretary General Jan Eliasson in the afternoon following the press conference.

The report reflects the evolution in the thinking of the Commissioners, who reiterate their demands for decriminalization, alternatives to incarceration, and greater emphasis on public health approaches and now also call for permitting the legal regulation of psychoactive substances. The Commission is the most distinguished group of high-level leaders to ever call for such far-reaching changes.

Read more from DrugPolicy.org

Nuns ask Pope to revoke doctrine that allows barbarous nations to be overthrown

The Bull stated that any land not inhabited by Christians was available to be “discovered,” claimed, and exploited by Christian rulers and declared that “the Catholic faith and the Christian religion be exalted and be everywhere increased and spread, that the health of souls be cared for and that barbarous nations be overthrown and brought to the faith itself.” This “Doctrine of Discovery” became the basis of all European claims in the Americas as well as the foundation for the United States’ western expansion.

Nuns to pope: Revoke 15th-century doctrine that allows Christians to seize native land

(Source: Washington Post) – In November, Sister Maureen Fiedler hand-delivered a letter to Pope Francis’ ambassador in Washington, D.C., urging the pontiff to renounce a series of 15th-century church documents that justify the colonization and oppression of indigenous peoples.

She doesn’t know if the letter made it to the Vatican. But she’s hopeful a recent resolution by the Leadership Conference of Women Religious will spur the pope to repudiate the centuries-old concept known as the “Doctrine of Discovery.”

“When I learned about it, I was horrified,” said Fiedler. As a member of the Loretto Community, a congregation of religious women and lay people, Fiedler first heard of the doctrine when her order marked its 200th anniversary by challenging “the papal sanctioning of Christian enslavement and power over non-Christians.”

Read more from the Washington Post

The Doctrine of Discovery, 1493

The Papal Bull “Inter Caetera,” issued by Pope Alexander VI on May 4, 1493, played a central role in the Spanish conquest of the New World. The document supported Spain’s strategy to ensure its exclusive right to the lands discovered by Columbus the previous year. It established a demarcation line one hundred leagues west of the Azores and Cape Verde Islands and assigned Spain the exclusive right to acquire territorial possessions and to trade in all lands west of that line. All others were forbidden to approach the lands west of the line without special license from the rulers of Spain. This effectively gave Spain a monopoly on the lands in the New World.

The Bull stated that any land not inhabited by Christians was available to be “discovered,” claimed, and exploited by Christian rulers and declared that “the Catholic faith and the Christian religion be exalted and be everywhere increased and spread, that the health of souls be cared for and that barbarous nations be overthrown and brought to the faith itself.” This “Doctrine of Discovery” became the basis of all European claims in the Americas as well as the foundation for the United States’ western expansion. In the US Supreme Court in the 1823 case Johnson v. McIntosh, Chief Justice John Marshall’s opinion in the unanimous decision held “that the principle of discovery gave European nations an absolute right to New World lands.” In essence, American Indians had only a right of occupancy, which could be abolished.

The Bull Inter Caetera made headlines again throughout the 1990s and in 2000, when many Catholics petitioned Pope John Paul II to formally revoke it and recognize the human rights of indigenous “non-Christian peoples.”

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Iran Supreme Leader Tells Country to Prepare for the ‘New World Order’

There has been a lot of New World Order news coming out in the past couple weeks. Just two weeks ago, Henry Kissinger had written an open-ed piece on the Assembly of a New World Order in the Wall Street Journal; and the following week, Hillary Clinton had wrote a rebuttal called Hillary Clinton reviews Henry Kissinger’s ‘World Order’ in the Washington Post. Now this week, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is warning that the “new world order is emerging”, and that “Iran will have a strong role in creating” it.

Ayatollah Khamenei urges Iran to prepare for ‘new world order’

In a meeting with the Assembly of Experts, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that the world is entering a “new order” as the West’s influence wanes and that officials in the Islamic Republic need to be aware of the changes and prepare to play a role in the new context.

After World War II, Western countries took over the management of the world, especially in countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, said Ayatollah Khamenei. They did this by promoting a specific type of cultural values and using military and political might. Khamenei said that both of these types of power have been challenged and are now uncertain.

Ayatollah Khamenei said that this “order was in the process of change,” and “When the world is changing, when global order is changing and a new order is being formed, naturally we have a more important duty.”

The first thing to be done is to understand the new world order correctly, Khamenei said. “The power of the West on their two foundations — values and thoughts and the political and military — have become shaky. We have to understand this” rather than submitting to the idea of Western superiority.

The second task is “to prepare ourselves to play a role in this new order.” He said that Iran needs to use all of its capabilities, both inside and outside the country. Externally, he said, Iran has strategic depth and interests via Islam, language and Shiism.

Ayatollah Khamenei added that Iran has influence in Asia and Latin America, and that officials should focus on science, the economy and culture.

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/09/khamenei-new-world-order.html

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