'Arming' for Armageddon

Canadian Todd Bentley, who preached for months on end this year in Florida, is a general in Joel's Army.

Intelligence Report
Fall 2008
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'Arming' for Armageddon
Militant Joel's Army Followers Seek Theocracy
By Casey Sanchez
Photography by Lowell Handler

LAKELAND, Fla. — Todd Bentley has a long night ahead of him, resurrecting the dead, healing the blind, and exploding cancerous tumors. Since April 3, the 32-year-old, heavily tattooed, body-pierced, shaved-head Canadian preacher has been leading a continuous "supernatural healing revival" in central Florida. To contain the 10,000-plus crowds flocking from around the globe, Bentley has rented baseball stadiums, arenas and airport hangars at a cost of up to $15,000 a day. Many in attendance are church pastors themselves who believe Bentley to be a prophet and don't bat an eye when he tells them he's seen King David and spoken with the Apostle Paul in heaven. "He was looking very Jewish," Bentley notes.

Tattooed across his sternum are military dog tags that read "Joel's Army." They're evidence of Bentley's generalship in a rapidly growing apocalyptic movement that's gone largely unnoticed by watchdogs of the theocratic right. According to Bentley and a handful of other "hyper-charismatic" preachers advancing the same agenda, Joel's Army is prophesied to become an Armageddon-ready military force of young people with a divine mandate to physically impose Christian "dominion" on non-believers.

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"An end-time army has one common purpose — to aggressively take ground for the kingdom of God under the authority of Jesus Christ, the Dread Champion," Bentley declares on the website for his ministry school in British Columbia, Canada. "The trumpet is sounding, calling on-fire, revolutionary believers to enlist in Joel's Army. … Many are now ready to be mobilized to establish and advance God's kingdom on earth."

Joel's Army followers, many of them teenagers and young adults who believe they're members of the final generation to come of age before the end of the world, are breaking away in droves from mainline Pentecostal churches. Numbering in the tens of thousands, they base their beliefs on an esoteric reading of the second chapter of the Old Testament Book of Joel, in which an avenging swarm of locusts attacks Israel. In their view, the locusts are a metaphor for Joel's Army.

Despite their overt militancy, there's no evidence Joel's Army followers have committed any acts of violence. But critics warn that actual bloodletting may only be a matter of time for a movement that casts itself as God's avenging army.


This video was posted on YouTube by a detractor.

Those sounding the alarm about Joel's Army are not secular foes of the Christian Right, few of whom are even aware of the movement or how widespread it's become in the past decade. Instead, Joel's Army critics are mostly conservative Christians, either neo-Pentecostals who left the movement in disgust or evangelical Christians who fear that Joel's Army preachers are stealing their flocks, even sending spies to infiltrate their own congregations and sway their young people to heresy. And they say the movement is becoming frightening.

"The pitch and intensity of the military rhetoric of this branch of the global Dominionist movement has substantially increased since the beginning of 2008," writes The Discernment Research Group, a Christian watchdog group that tracks what they call heresies or cults within Christianity. "One can only wonder how long before this transforms into real warfare with actual warriors."

'Snorting Religion'
Joel's Army believers are hard-core Christian dominionists, meaning they believe that America, along with the rest of the world, should be governed by conservative Christians and a conservative Christian interpretation of biblical law. There is no room in their doctrine for democracy or pluralism.
Dominionism's original branch is Christian Reconstructionism, a grim, Calvinist call to theocracy that, as Reconstructionist writer Gary North describes, wants to "get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God."

Notorious for endorsing the public execution by stoning of homosexuals and adulterers, the Christian Reconstructionist movement is far better known in secular America than Joel's Army. That's largely because Reconstructionists have made several serious forays into mainstream politics and received a fair amount of negative publicity as a result. Joel's Army followers eschew the political system, believing the path to world domination lies in taking over churches, not election to public office.

Another key difference between the two branches of dominionism, which maintain a testy, arms-length relationship with one another, is Christian Reconstructionism's buttoned-down image and heavy emphasis on Bible study, which contrasts sharply with Joel's Army anti-intellectual distrust of biblical scholars and its unruly style.

"Some people snort cocaine, others snort religions," Joel's Army Pastor Roy said while ministering a morning program at Todd Bentley's Lakeland, Fla., revival in late May.

As this article went to press, Bentley's "Florida Outpouring" had been running for more than 100 days straight. Many attendees came in search of spontaneous physical healing and a desire to be part of a mystical community marked by dancing, shouting, gyrating, speaking in tongues and other forms of ecstatic release.

Snide jabs at traditional church services are fairly common at Bentley's revivals. In fact, what takes place onstage at the Florida Outpouring looks more like a pro wrestling extravaganza than church. On stage, Bentley and his team of pastors, yell, chant, and scream "Fire!" and "Bam!" while anointing followers.


"The Call," a 12-hour revival of up to 20,000 young people held in a different city each year, is led by Joel's Army pastor Lou Engle.
The audience members behave as if they are at a psychedelic counterculture festival. One couple jumps up and down twirling red and silver metallic flags. Dyed-haired teenagers pulled in by the revival's presence on Facebook and MySpace wander around looking dazed. Women lay facedown on the floor, convulsing and howling. Fathers wail in tongues as their confused children look on. Strangers lay hands on those who fail to produce tongues or gyrate wildly enough, pressuring them to "let it out."

Bentley is considered a prophet both by his followers and by other leaders of the Joel's Army movement, whose adherents claim to be reviving a "five-fold ministry" of prophets, apostles, elders, pastors and teachers, as outlined in the Book of Ephesians. Not every five-fold ministry is connected to the Joel's Army movement, but the movement has spurred an interest in modern-day apostles and prophets that's troubling to the Assemblies of God, the world's largest Pentecostal church, which has officially disavowed the Joel's Army movement.

In a 2001 position paper, Assemblies of God leaders wrote that they do not recognize modern-day apostles or prophets and worried that "such leaders prefer more authoritarian structures where their own word or decrees are unchallenged." They are right to worry. Joel's Army followers believe that once democratic institutions are overthrown, their hierarchy of apostles and prophets will rule over the earth, with one church per city.

Warrior Nation
According to Joel's Army doctrine, the enforcers of the five-fold ministry will be members of the final generation, for whom the landmark Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade constituted a new Passover.
"Everyone born after abortion's legalization can consider their birth a personal invitation to take part in this great army," writes John Crowder, another prominent Joel's Army pastor, who bills his 2006 book, The New Mystics: How to Become Part of the Supernatural Generation, as a literal how-to guide for joining Joel's Army.Both Bentley and Crowder are enormously popular on Elijah's List, an online watering hole for a broad spectrum of Joel's Army enlistees, from lightweight believers who merely share an affection for military rhetoric and pastors who dress in army camouflage (several Joel's Army pastors are addressed by their congregants as "commandant" or "commander") to hardliners who believe the church is called to have an active military role in end-times that have already begun. Elijah's List currently has more than 125,000 subscribers on its electronic mailing list.

Rick Joyner, a pastor whose books, The Harvest and The Call, helped popularize Joel's Army theology by selling more than a million copies each, goes the furthest on Elijah's List in pushing the hardliner approach. In 2006, he posted a sermon called "The Warrior Nation — The New Sound of the Church," in which he claimed that a last-day army is now gathering and called believers "freedom fighters."

"As the church begins to take on this resolve, they [Joel's Army churches] will start to be thought of more as military bases, and they will begin to take on the characteristics of military bases for training, equipping, and deploying effective spiritual forces," Joyner wrote. "In time, the church will actually be organized more as a military force with an army, navy, air force, etc."

In a sort of disclaimer, Joyner writes at one point that God's army "will bring love, peace and stability wherever they go." But several of his books narrate with glee what he describes as "a coming civil war within the church." In his 1997 book The Harvest he writes: "Some pastors and leaders who continue to resist this tide of unity will be removed from their place. Some will become so hardened they will become opposers and resist God to the end."

Two years later, in his book The Final Quest, Joyner described a vision (taken as prophecy in the Joel's Army world, where Joyner is considered an "apostle") of the coming Christian Civil War in which demon-possessed Christian soldiers enslave other, weaker Christians who resist them. He also describes how the hero of the novel — himself — ascends a "Holy Mountain" in order to learn new truths and to acquire new, magic weapons.

Kids on Fire
Bentley, who claims to be a supernatural healer, is no less over the top, playing his biker-punk appearance and heavy metal theatrics to the hilt. On YouTube, where clips of his most dramatic healings have been condensed into a three-minute highlight reel, Bentley describes God ordering him to kick an elderly lady in the face: "I am thinking, 'God, why is the power of God not moving?' And He said, 'It is because you haven't kicked that women in the face.' And there was, like, this older lady worshipping right in front of the platform and the Holy Spirit spoke to me and the gift of faith came on me. He said, 'Kick her in the face … with your biker boot.' I inched closer and I went like this [makes kicking motion]: Bam! And just as my boot made contact with her nose, she fell under the power of God."
The atmosphere is less charged with violence at "The Call," a 12-hour revival of up to 20,000 youths led by Joel's Army pastor Lou Engle and held every summer in a major American city (this year's event was scheduled for Washington, D.C. in August).

Attendees are called upon to fast and pray for 40 days and take up culture-war pledges to lead abstinent lives, reject pornography and fight abortion. They're further asked to perform "identificational repentance," lugging along family trees and genealogies to see where one of their ancestors may have enslaved or oppressed another so that they can make amends. (Many in the Joel's Army movement believe in generational curses that must be broken by the current generation).

As even his critics note, Engle is a sweet, humble and gentle man whose persona is difficult to reconcile with his belief in an end-time army of invincible young Christian warriors. Yet while Engle is careful to avoid deploying explicit Joel's Army rhetoric at high-profile events like The Call, when he's speaking in smaller hyper-charismatic circles to avowed Joel's Army followers, he can venture into bloodlust.

This March, at a "Passion for Jesus" conference in Kansas City sponsored by the International House of Prayer, or IHOP, a ministry for teenagers from the heavy metal, punk and goth scenes, Engle called on his audience for vengeance.

"I believe we're headed to an Elijah/Jezebel showdown on the Earth, not just in America but all over the globe, and the main warriors will be the prophets of Baal versus the prophets of God, and there will be no middle ground," said Engle. He was referring to the Baal of the Old Testament, a pagan idol whose followers were slaughtered under orders from the prophet Elijah.

"There's an Elijah generation that's going to be the forerunners for the coming of Jesus, a generation marked not by their niceness but by the intensity of their passion," Engle continued. "The kingdom of heaven suffers violence and the violent take it by force. Such force demands an equal response, and Jesus is going to make war on everything that hinders love, with his eyes blazing fire."

Although Joel's Army theology is mainly directed at people in their teens and early 20s via events like The Call and ministries like IHOP, sometimes the target audience is even younger. In some of the most arresting images in "Jesus Camp," a 2006 documentary about the Kids on Fire bible camp in North Dakota, grade school-aged kids dressed in army fatigues wield swords and conduct military field maneuvers. "A lot of people die for God and they're not afraid," one camper told ABC News reporters in a follow-up segment.

"We're kinda being trained to be warriors," added another, "only in a funner way."

Cain and the Intellectuals
Both Christian and secular critics assailed the makers of "Jesus Camp" for referring to the camp's extremist, militant Christianity as "evangelical." There is a name, however, that describes Kids on Fire's agenda, if you're familiar with their theology: Joel's Army. Pastor Becky Fischer, who runs the camp, said that a third of the kids at her camp were under 6 years old because they are "more in touch in the supernatural" and proclaimed them to be "soldiers for God's Army." Her camp's blend of end-times militancy and supernaturalism is perfectly emblematic of the Joel's Army movement, whose adherents believe their cause is prophesied in the Old Testament chapter titled "An Army of Locusts."
The stark, evocative passages of that chapter describe a locust swarm that lays waste to Israel (to this day, the region suffers periodic locust invasions): "Like dawn spreading across the mountains a large and mighty army comes, such as never was of old nor ever will be in ages to come." As remarkable as the language is, most biblical scholars agree that it is a literal description of a locust invasion and resulting famine that occurred sometime between the 9th and 5th centuries B.C.E.

In the Book of Joel, the locust invasion is described as an omen that an Assyrian army to the north may attack Israel if it fails to repent as a nation. But nowhere is the invasion described as an army of God. According to an Assemblies of God position paper: "It is a complete misinterpretation of Scripture to find in Joel's army of locusts a militant, victorious force attacking society and a non-cooperating Church to prepare the earth for Christ's millennial reign."

The story of how an ancient insect invasion came to be a rallying flag for 21st-century dominonists begins just after World War II in Canada. Out of a small town in Saskatchewan, a Pentecostal preacher named William Branham spearheaded a 1948 revival in which he claimed that his followers lived in a new biblical time of "Latter Rain."

The most sinless and ardent of his flock would be called "Manifest Sons of God." By the next year, the movement was so strong — and seemed so subversive to some — that the Assemblies of God banned it as a heretic cult. But Branham remained a controversial figure with a loyal following; many of his followers believed him to be the end-times prophet Elijah.

Michael Barkun, a leading scholar of radical religion, notes that in 1958, Branham began teaching "Serpent Seed" doctrine, the belief that Satan had sex with Eve, resulting in Cain and his descendants. "Through Cain came all the smart, educated people down to the antediluvian flood — the intellectuals, bible colleges," Branham wrote in the kind of anti-mainstream religion, anti-intellectual spirit that pervades the Joel's Army movement to this day. "They know all their creeds but know nothing about God."

The Gates of Hell
Branham was killed in a car accident in 1965, but his Manifest Sons of God movement, the direct predecessor of Joel's Army, lived on within a cluster of hyper-charismatic churches. In the 1980s, Branham's teachings took on new life at the Kansas City Fellowship (KCF), a group of popular self-styled apostles and prophets who used the Missouri church as a launching pad for national careers promoting outright Joel's Army theology.
The Joel's Army movement began with the 1940s preaching of William Branham, whose group was banned as heretical by the Assemblies of God.
Ernie Gruen, a local pastor who initially promoted and gave citywide credibility to KCF pastors in the early 1980s, cut his connections in 1990. Concerned about KCF's plans to push its teachings worldwide, Gruen published a 132-page insider's account, based on taped sermons and conversations and interviews with parents who had enrolled their kids in KCF's Dominion school.

According to Gruen's report, students at the school were taught that they were a "super-race" of the "elected seed" of all the best bloodlines of all generations — foreknown, predestined, and hand-selected from billions of others to be part of the "end-time Omega generation."

Though he'd once promoted these doctrines himself, Gruen became convinced that the movement was turning into an end-times cult, marked by what he summarized as "spiritual threats, fears, and warnings of death," "warning followers to beware of other Christians" and exhibiting "a 'super-race' mentality toward the training of their children."

When contacted by the Intelligence Report, Gruen's spokesman said that Gruen stands by everything he published in the report but no longer grants media interviews.

The Kansas City Fellowship remains in operation and has served as a farm team for many of the all-stars of the Joel's Army movement. Those larger-than-life figures include John Wimber, the founder of a California megachurch, The Vineyard, who, before his death in 1997, proclaimed that Joel's Army would not only conquer the earth but defeat death itself. Lou Engle founded The Call based on the Joel's Army visions that KCF "prophet" Bob Jones (not to be confused with Bob Jones III of Bob Jones University) received while at KCF. Mike Bickle, another KCF member, stayed in Kansas City to form the International House of Prayer.

IHOP members and other Joel's Army adherents are well aware of how their movement is perceived by other conservative Christians.

"Today, you can type 'Joel's Army' into a search engine and a thousand heresy hunter websites pop up, decrying the very mention of it," writes John Crowder in The New Mystics. Crowder doesn't exactly allay critic's fears. "This is truly warfare," he writes. "This battle is not a game. They [Joel's Army warriors] will not be on the defense; they will be on the offense — and the gates of hell will not be able to hold up against them."

So far, few members of the secular media have taken notice of Joel's Army, even as they report on Protestant dominionists like Pat Robertson or the more outrageous calls for the stoning of gays and lesbians emanating from Reconstructionist circles. There are exceptions, however. On the DailyKos, a well-read, politically liberal blog, a diarist has been blogging for two years about her experiences as a walkaway from a Joel's Army church. She writes under a pseudonym out of fear of physical reprisals.

She may have real cause for concern. As Wimber, the late founder of The Vineyard, put it in one of his most famous and fiery sermons, one that is still frequently cited by Joel's Army followers: "Those in this army will have His kind of power. … Anyone who wants to harm them must die."
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Source: http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=964

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Ash Wednesday around the world

(Getty Images/Win McNamee)

Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, 40 days (not counting Sundays) until Easter. So don't be alarmed if you see colleagues or neighbors with ashen crosses on their foreheads. Take a look at how Catholics around the world celebrated Ash Wednesday.
US Vice President Joe Biden attended the announcement of Gary Locke as the nominee for Secretary of Commerce with ashes on his forehead.
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Source:
http://www.boston.com/news/world/gallery/0225_ashwednesday/

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What's wrong with these pictures?

'Day of Reckoning' Speech

before a Joint Session of Congress Tuesday 2/24/09:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29289533/vp/29384471#29384471

Jindal on stimulus, Obama address

Feb. 25: TODAY’s Meredith Vieira talks to Gov. Bobby Jindal, R-La., who delivered the Republican response to President Obama’s address to Congress. Today show
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29374285/

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What's wrong with these pictures?

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Top photo:

Vice President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi applaud President Barack H. Obama during speech.

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Both Biden and Pelosi are Roman Catholics;

And President Obama may not be Catholic, but, is using Theistic euphemisms such as: " The Beginning of the End" & "Day of Reckoning"

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Bottom Photo:

Governor of Louisiana (Rep.), Bobby Jindal, a Roman Catholic convert from Hinduism is the "alternative" voice?

Is that considered a true difference in opinions? Is there really a choice between the President's Democrat Party, and the GOP?

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Our Protestant Constitutional Republic is being transformed minute by minute right before our eyes. We're seeing 'change' after 'change' taking place, and no one seems to notice. How can these people represent our land of the free and home of the brave principles? When their religious beliefs undermine our Constitution and our Separation of Church and State, and Religious Freedom traditions.

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We see another President that is going to push forward the Catholic Agenda here and abroad; Just listen to his ecumenical spiritual overtones, and notice those by his side; Then, observe who are his purported opponents (stabilizing factor). It's later than we think!

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Arsenio.

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P.S. Photo 1: Fat Tuesday speech (mardi gras)

Photo 2: Ash Wednesday response?

Biden Vows To "Follow The Money"

February 25, 2009 7:44 AM

Biden Vows To "Follow The Money"
Posted by Stephen W Smith

Video: VP Biden Defends Stimulus

The implementation of President Barack Obama's $787 billion stimulus plan will be transparent and vigilantly monitored to ensure the administration can effectively "follow the money," Vice President Joseph Biden told CBS' The Early Show Wednesday.

"This is a matter of discipline and getting it right," Biden said. "That's what we intend to do."

Biden said all information relating to the implementation of the package's dollars would be put "transparently on a Web site" – although he stumbled (watch video here) when asked to name the Web site – which is recovery.gov.

Anchor Maggie Rodriguez told the vice president that one woman who watched Mr. Obama's speech last night had to lay off most of her staff last year. She wanted to know exactly how the stimulus package is going to help small businesses.

Biden cited improvements in transportation, energy and cost of operations – and even suggested that the viewer call his office so he could "guide her as to what pieces of this package would be directly helpful to her."

When Mr. Obama explained Tuesday night why he chose Biden to oversee implementation of his stimulus plan, he said, "Nobody messes with Joe."

Biden said he has been busy getting a team together to orchestrate the unprecedented oversight effort.

"I called for a Cabinet meeting where I'll preside over it so we know exactly what each Cabinet member is doing, what resources available, how they will distribute those sources, how they will follow the money," Biden said. "I am meeting with governors and mayors. I'm meeting with private industry and private business. We want to make sure we don't do what the last administration did when it tried to help the banks."

Source: http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/02/25/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry4827236.shtml

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Stanford Had Links to a Fund Run by Bidens

FEBRUARY 24, 2009

Stanford Had Links to a Fund Run by Bidens

A fund of hedge funds run by two members of Vice President Joe Biden's family was marketed exclusively by companies controlled by Texas financier R. Allen Stanford, who is facing Securities and Exchange Commission accusations of engaging in an $8 billion fraud.

The $50 million fund was jointly branded between the Bidens' Paradigm Global Advisors LLC and a Stanford Financial Group entity and was known as the Paradigm Stanford Capital Management Core Alternative Fund. Stanford-related companies marketed the fund to investors and also invested about $2.7 million of their own money in the fund, according to a lawyer for Paradigm. ...

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Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123543815326954907.html

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Satan's Last Campaign

Satan's Last Campaign

Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time. 1 John 2:18.


The enemy is preparing for his last campaign against the church. He has so concealed himself from view that many can hardly believe that he exists, much less can they be convinced of his amazing activity and power. . . .

Man is Satan's captive and is naturally inclined to follow his suggestions and do his bidding. He has in himself no power to oppose effectual resistance to evil. It is only as Christ abides in him by living faith . . . that man may venture to face so terrible a foe. Every other means of defense is utterly vain. It is only through Christ that Satan's power is limited. This is a momentous truth that all should understand. Satan is busy every moment, going to and fro, walking up and down in the earth, seeking whom he may devour. But the earnest prayer of faith will baffle his strongest efforts. . . .

Satan hopes to involve the remnant people of God in the general ruin that is coming upon the earth. As the coming of Christ draws nigh, he will be more determined and decisive in his efforts to overthrow them. Men and women will arise professing to have some new light or some new revelation whose tendency is to unsettle faith in the old landmarks. Their doctrines will not bear the test of God's word, yet souls will be deceived. False reports will be circulated, and some will be taken in this snare. . . . We cannot be too watchful against every form of error, for Satan is constantly seeking to draw men from the truth. . . .

Some men have no firmness of character. They are like a ball of putty and can be pressed into any conceivable shape. . . . This weakness, indecision, and inefficiency must be overcome. There is an indomitableness about true Christian character which cannot be molded or subdued by adverse circumstances. Men must have moral backbone, an integrity which cannot be flattered, bribed, or terrified. . . .

God has set bounds that Satan cannot pass. Our most holy faith is this barrier; and if we build ourselves up in the faith, we shall be safe in the keeping of the Mighty One.

Maranatha, E. G. W., p. 64.

Crispus Attucks

1723?-1770

Introduction

Historian George W. Williams in History of the Negro Race in America described the Boston Massacre as "the bloody drama that opened the most eventful and thrilling chapter in American history." Neither a soldier nor a leading town citizen proved the hero of that pre-Revolutionary War struggle. Instead, the first of five men to die in the massacre was a runaway slave turned sailor, Crispus Attucks. His death has forever linked his name with the cause of freedom.

Narrative Essay

Historians know little about Attucks, and they have constructed accounts of his life more from speculation than facts. Most documents described his ancestry as African and American Indian. His father, Prince Yonger, is thought to have been a slave brought to America from Africa and that his mother, Nancy Attucks, was a Natick Indian. Researcher Bill Belton identified Attucks as a direct descendent of John Attucks, an Indian executed for treason in 1676 during the King Philip War. The family, which may have included an older sister named Phebe, lived in Framingham, Massachusetts.

Apparently, young Attucks developed a longing for freedom at an early age. According to The Black Presence in the Era of the American Revolution, historians believe that an advertisement placed in the Boston Gazette on October 2, 1750, referred to him: "Ran away from his Master William Brown from Framingham, on the 30th of Sept. last, a Molatto Fellow, about 27 Years of age, named Crispas, 6 Feet two Inches high, short curl'd Hair, his Knees nearer together than common: had on a light colour'd Bearskin Coat." The owner offered a reward of ten pounds for the return of the slave and warned ship captains against giving him refuge. George Washington Williams noted that the advertisement appeared again on November 13 and November 20. Biographers surveyed that Attucks escaped to Nantucket, Massachusetts, and sailed as a harpoonist on a whaling ship.

Historians definitely place Attucks in Boston in March of 1770. While in Boston, probably awaiting passage on a ship to the Carolinas, he found a job as a dockworker. Some writers proposed that he was using the name Michael Johnson. Assuming that the Boston Gazette advertisement did refer to him, he would have been about 47-years old.

Boston Massacre

By 1770 Boston had become "a storm center of brewing revolt," according to Benjamin Quarles in The Negro in the American Revolution. The British had stationed two regiments in the city following protests by the colonists against unfair taxes. Citizens welcomed neither the troops walking the streets nor the two canons aiming directly at the town hall. Describing the setting, historian John Fiske explained in Unpublished Orations that "the soldiers did many things that greatly annoyed the people. They led brawling, riotous lives, and made the quiet streets hideous by night with their drunken shouts. ... On Sundays the soldiers would race horses on the Common, or would play `Yankee Doodle' just outside the church-doors during the services."

As tensions mounted, the atmosphere grew ripe for confrontation. Fiske pointed out that during February of 1870, "an unusual number of personal encounters" had occurred, including the killing of a young boy. Regarding the evening of March 5, 1770, he explained, "Accounts of what happened are as disorderly and conflicting as the incidents which they try to relate." A barber's apprentice chided a British soldier for walking away without paying for his haircut. The soldier struck the boy, and news of the offense spread quickly. Groups of angry citizens gathered in various places around town. Someone rang the church bell and such a summons usually meant that a fire had broken out. This night, however, it presaged an explosive situation between the soldiers and the townspeople.

Captain Thomas Preston called his Twenty-ninth Regiment to duty. Townspeople began pelting the troops with snowballs. From the dock area, a group of men, led by the towering figure of Attucks, entered King Street, armed with clubs. Some accounts maintained that Attucks struck soldier Hugh Montgomery. Others, for example, John Fiske, stated that he was "leaning upon a stick" when the soldiers opened fire. However the incident occurred, Attucks lay dead, his body pierced by two bullets. Ropemaker Samuel Gray and sailor James Caldwell also died in the incident. Samuel Maverick, a 17-year-old joiner's apprentice, died the next day. Irish leather worker Patrick Carr died nine days later, and six others were wounded. Citizens immediately demanded the withdrawal of British troops. Fiske noted in Unpublished Orations that the deaths of these men "effected in a moment what 17 months of petition and discussion had failed to accomplish."

John Adams reluctantly agreed to defend the British soldiers, two of whom were charged with manslaughter and branded. At the trial, Adams focused on Attucks, portraying him as a rabble-rouser. Because of accounts given at the trial, some historians have questioned the motives of the massacred men. Fiske evaluated that although we cannot know their motives, "we may fairly suppose them to have been actuated by the same feelings toward the soldiery that animated Adams and Warren and the patriots of Boston in general."

Boston Honors

The town's response to the murders expressed the significance of the sacrifices these men made. The bodies of Attucks and Caldwell lay in state at Faneuil Hall; those of Gray and Maverick lay in their homes. For the funeral service, shops closed, bells rang, and thousands of citizens from all walks of life formed a long procession, six people deep, to the Old Granary Burial Ground where the bodies were committed to a common grave. Until the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Boston commemorated their deaths on March 5, "Crispus Attucks Day." According to Ted Stewart in Sepia, Boston abolitionist Wendell Phillips stated on the first such occasion, "I place...this Crispus Attucks in the foremost rank of the men that dared."

Through the years, people have remembered Attucks in a variety of ways. Paul Revere created a woodcut of the incident, and the National Archives housed a painting by noted New England artist Benjamin Champney depicting the event. Negro military companies took the name Attucks Guards. Poets dedicated works to his memory, and communities named schools after him.

In 1888 Boston erected a monument to the heroes of the massacre which James Neyland in Crispus Attucks called "the first ever to be paid for by public funds" in Massachusetts. City officials had rejected earlier petitions for such a monument. Even in 1888, various Boston factions heatedly debated the appropriateness of this gesture. At the unveiling, speaker John Fiske called the Boston Massacre "one of the most significant and impressive events in the noble struggle in which our forefathers succeeded in vindicating, for themselves and their posterity, the sacred right of self-government."

In his 1995 biography, James Neyland wrote about Attucks: "He is one of the most important figures in African-American history, not for what he did for his own race but for what he did for all oppressed people everywhere. He is a reminder that the African-American heritage is not only African but American and it is a heritage that begins with the beginning of America." Although obscure in life, Attucks played an important role in U.S. history through his death. Bill Belton in the Negro History Bulletin contended that the name of Crispus Attucks will stand "forever linked to the birth of this nation and its dream of freedom, justice, and equality."

Sources

Belton, Bill. "The Indian Heritage of Crispus Attucks." Negro History Bulletin 35 (November 1972): 149--52.
Fiske, John. Unpublished Orations. Boston: Bibliophile Society, 1909.

Kaplan, Sidney, and Emma Nogrady Kaplan. The Black Presence in the Era of the American Revolution. Revised edition. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1989.

Ryan, Dennis P. "The Crispus Attucks Monument Controversy of 1887." Negro History Bulletin 40 (January-February 1977): 656--57.

Stewart, Ted. "Boston Blacks in the Revolution." Sepia 25 (May 1976): 58--67.

Williams, George W. History of the Negro Race in America, 1619--1880. 2 vols. 1882. Reprint, New York: Arno Press and the New York Times, 1968.

Biography Resource Center

Source:http://www.africawithin.com/bios/crispus_attucks.htm
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How Many Rights Will You Give Up in the Name of Safety

How Many Rights Will You Give Up in the Name of Safety

January 15, 2008

by Antoinette McGowan

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We all want to live in a world where we feel safe from horrible acts of violence. We want to know that we are protected and that we can go about our daily lives with this knowledge. Freedom comes at a price and unfortunately so does safety. At some point, the measures taken to make us safe will take away our freedom. How far would you go and how much freedom would you give up to feel safe?

We have the Constitution; we have the Bill of Rights as part of the Constitution and an aptitude more laws that protect our rights as human beings. Two thirds of the Bill of Rights is designed to protect our rights. Would you willing give up the safe guards of the Bill of Rights to ensure safety for all?

Let us look at the IV Amendment that protects us from unlawful search and seizure. Would we give up that right to ensure that terrorist cannot harbor dangerous weapons in their homes and businesses that they will use to hurt us? After all how many terrorists have these weapons and yet without just cause no court will issue a warrant. Without a warrant these homes and businesses cannot be searched and the weapons obtained by the police. Therefore, do we allow the government to take the Right away with the promise it will be used to find and convict terrorists so that the innocent citizens are safe.

Think about it though, if the government takes that right away it does not matter if you are a terrorist or not. That right once taken away will apply to all of us. So are you willing to give it up for safety?

Amendment V protects us from Double Jeopardy. Now would you give that right up as well for safety? Say a pedophile is taken to trial, yet there was a lack of evidence on the part of the prosecutor, and he was ruled not guilty. Now this pedophile is back out on the streets and living in your neighborhood near your children. Now say more digging is done and the police find additional evidence that will ensure a guilty conviction but under double jeopardy, this man cannot be retried for the same crime. To protect yourself and your children would you allow the government to do away with the double jeopardy rule and retry this man with the new evidence?

Think for a second though about this because once Double Jeopardy is done away with then we are all prey to a prosecutor who will retry us and retry us until he gets want he wants and that is a guilty verdict. How many innocent people will be retried until they are found guilty if this Right is taken away?

So how far do we allow the government to invade our lives and take our freedom away all in the name of safety? Should innocent people lose their rights just so that we can ensure the guilty always pay for their crimes or to prevent a crime from happening? This is your country and your voice so let it be heard. How much will you give up?

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Source: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/535177/how_many_rights_will_you_give_up_in.html?singlepage=true&cat=17

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Barack Obama and the "Uh" Counter

Barack Obama and the "Uh" Counter

February 05, 2009 by
Antoinette McGowan

Barack Obama and his constant use of "Uh" has prompted people to jump on the bandwagon of counting his "Uh" moments. David Letterman featured an "Uh" counter on his show and since watching that episode I have noticed that there are more and more of this similar type thing on YouTube. Barack Obama and his constant "Uh" will provide laughs for a long time to come for many people.

One of the best ways to access videos on YouTube of Barack Obama and his "Uh" is just to simply type in Barack Obama Uh. I have turned up several this way and I have yet to watch all of them. One is even a mixture between Barack Obama and his "Uh" counter along with Beavis and Butthead.

Growing up my mother had taught me that to use "Uh" or "hmm" when speaking was a sign that a person did not fully know what he/she was talking about. In addition my mother had said that using the word "Uh" or "Hmm" while speaking made it look as if a person was trying to think up a quick lie. She told me instead to take my time and think my words over carefully before responding. I still hold to this aspect when listening to my own children speak. When asking them a direct question and their response is "Uh" I am quick to point out to them that they look like they are trying to think up a quick lie. The thing is though is that I am usually right, my boys are trying to think up a quick lie to get them out of trouble.

Does our president really understand the way he looks when he starts using that word? I am not sure it is even a word but more like a sound. Did not one around him think to point out to him the way he sounds when he does that? I am not yet sure of him as a president as it will take time for him to prove himself. That is the natural course of things with any new president and he will have his rough patches before settling in and show the world what type of president he really will be. Until that moment though he can continue to entertain the world on television and YouTube. After all Nixon had Watergate, Bill Clinton had Monica Lewinsky and Barack Obama will have "Uh".

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Source: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1417355/barack_obama_and_the_uh_counter.html?cat=75

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United Nations Millennium Declaration

Resolution adopted by the General Assembly

[without reference to a Main Committee (A/55/L.2)]

55/2. United Nations Millennium Declaration

The General Assembly

Adopts the following Declaration:

United Nations Millennium Declaration

I. Values and principles

1. We, heads of State and Government, have gathered at United Nations Headquarters in New York from 6 to 8 September 2000, at the dawn of a new millennium, to reaffirm our faith in the Organization and its Charter as indispensable foundations of a more peaceful, prosperous and just world.

2. We recognize that, in addition to our separate responsibilities to our individual societies, we have a collective responsibility to uphold the principles of human dignity, equality and equity at the global level. As leaders we have a duty therefore to all the world’s people, especially the most vulnerable and, in particular, the children of the world, to whom the future belongs.

3. We reaffirm our commitment to the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, which have proved timeless and universal. Indeed, their relevance and capacity to inspire have increased, as nations and peoples have become increasingly interconnected and interdependent.

4. We are determined to establish a just and lasting peace all over the world in accordance with the purposes and principles of the Charter. We rededicate ourselves to support all efforts to uphold the sovereign equality of all States, respect for their territorial integrity and political independence, resolution of disputes by peaceful means and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, the right to self-determination of peoples which remain under colonial domination and foreign occupation, non-interference in the internal affairs of States, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, respect for the equal rights of all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion and international cooperation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural or humanitarian character.

5. We believe that the central challenge we face today is to ensure that globalization becomes a positive force for all the world’s people. For while globalization offers great opportunities, at present its benefits are very unevenly shared, while its costs are unevenly distributed. We recognize that developing countries and countries with economies in transition face special difficulties in responding to this central challenge. Thus, only through broad and sustained efforts to create a shared future, based upon our common humanity in all its diversity, can globalization be made fully inclusive and equitable. These efforts must include policies and measures, at the global level, which correspond to the needs of developing countries and economies in transition and are formulated and implemented with their effective participation.

6. We consider certain fundamental values to be essential to international relations in the twenty-first century. These include:

• Freedom. Men and women have the right to live their lives and raise their children in dignity, free from hunger and from the fear of violence, oppression or injustice. Democratic and participatory governance based on the will of the people best assures these rights.

•. Equality. No individual and no nation must be denied the opportunity to benefit from development. The equal rights and opportunities of women and men must be assured.

• Solidarity. Global challenges must be managed in a way that distributes the costs and burdens fairly in accordance with basic principles of equity and social justice. Those who suffer or who benefit least deserve help from those who benefit most.

• Tolerance. Human beings must respect one other, in all their diversity of belief, culture and language. Differences within and between societies should be neither feared nor repressed, but cherished as a precious asset of humanity. A culture of peace and dialogue among all civilizations should be actively promoted.

• Respect for nature. Prudence must be shown in the management of all living species and natural resources, in accordance with the precepts of sustainable development. Only in this way can the immeasurable riches provided to us by nature be preserved and passed on to our descendants. The current unsustainable patterns of production and consumption must be changed in the interest of our future welfare and that of our descendants.

• Shared responsibility. Responsibility for managing worldwide economic and social development, as well as threats to international peace and security, must be shared among the nations of the world and should be exercised multilaterally. As the most universal and most representative organization in the world, the United Nations must play the central role.

7. In order to translate these shared values into actions, we have identified key objectives to which we assign special significance.

II. Peace, security and disarmament

8. We will spare no effort to free our peoples from the scourge of war, whether within or between States, which has claimed more than 5 million lives in the past decade. We will also seek to eliminate the dangers posed by weapons of mass destruction.

9. We resolve therefore:

• To strengthen respect for the rule of law in international as in national affairs and, in particular, to ensure compliance by Member States with the decisions of the International Court of Justice, in compliance with the Charter of the United Nations, in cases to which they are parties.

• To make the United Nations more effective in maintaining peace and security by giving it the resources and tools it needs for conflict prevention, peaceful resolution of disputes, peacekeeping, post-conflict peace-building and reconstruction. In this context, we take note of the report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations and request the General Assembly to consider its recommendations expeditiously.

• To strengthen cooperation between the United Nations and regional organizations, in accordance with the provisions of Chapter VIII of the Charter.

• To ensure the implementation, by States Parties, of treaties in areas such as arms control and disarmament and of international humanitarian law and human rights law, and call upon all States to consider signing and ratifying the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

• To take concerted action against international terrorism, and to accede as soon as possible to all the relevant international conventions.

• To redouble our efforts to implement our commitment to counter the world drug problem.

• To intensify our efforts to fight transnational crime in all its dimensions, including trafficking as well as smuggling in human beings and money laundering.

• To minimize the adverse effects of United Nations economic sanctions on innocent populations, to subject such sanctions regimes to regular reviews and to eliminate the adverse effects of sanctions on third parties.

• To strive for the elimination of weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons, and to keep all options open for achieving this aim, including the possibility of convening an international conference to identify ways of eliminating nuclear dangers.

• To take concerted action to end illicit traffic in small arms and light weapons, especially by making arms transfers more transparent and supporting regional disarmament measures, taking account of all the recommendations of the forthcoming United Nations Conference on Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons.

• To call on all States to consider acceding to the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-personnel Mines and on Their Destruction, as well as the amended mines protocol to the Convention on conventional weapons.

10. We urge Member States to observe the Olympic Truce, individually and collectively, now and in the future, and to support the International Olympic Committee in its efforts to promote peace and human understanding through sport and the Olympic Ideal.

III. Development and poverty eradication

11. We will spare no effort to free our fellow men, women and children from the abject and dehumanizing conditions of extreme poverty, to which more than a billion of them are currently subjected. We are committed to making the right to development a reality for everyone and to freeing the entire human race from want.

12. We resolve therefore to create an environment – at the national and global levels alike – which is conducive to development and to the elimination of poverty.

13. Success in meeting these objectives depends, inter alia, on good governance within each country. It also depends on good governance at the international level and on transparency in the financial, monetary and trading systems. We are committed to an open, equitable, rule-based, predictable and non-discriminatory multilateral trading and financial system.

14. We are concerned about the obstacles developing countries face in mobilizing the resources needed to finance their sustained development. We will therefore make every effort to ensure the success of the High-level International and Intergovernmental Event on Financing for Development, to be held in 2001.

15. We also undertake to address the special needs of the least developed countries. In this context, we welcome the Third United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries to be held in May 2001 and will endeavour to ensure its success. We call on the industrialized countries:

• To adopt, preferably by the time of that Conference, a policy of duty- and quota-free access for essentially all exports from the least developed countries;

• To implement the enhanced programme of debt relief for the heavily indebted poor countries without further delay and to agree to cancel all official bilateral debts of those countries in return for their making demonstrable commitments to poverty reduction; and

• To grant more generous development assistance, especially to countries that are genuinely making an effort to apply their resources to poverty reduction.

16. We are also determined to deal comprehensively and effectively with the debt problems of low- and middle-income developing countries, through various national and international measures designed to make their debt sustainable in the long term.

17. We also resolve to address the special needs of small island developing States, by implementing the Barbados Programme of Action and the outcome of the twenty-second special session of the General Assembly rapidly and in full. We urge the international community to ensure that, in the development of a vulnerability index, the special needs of small island developing States are taken into account.

18. We recognize the special needs and problems of the landlocked developing countries, and urge both bilateral and multilateral donors to increase financial and technical assistance to this group of countries to meet their special development needs and to help them overcome the impediments of geography by improving their transit transport systems.

19. We resolve further:

• To halve, by the year 2015, the proportion of the world’s people whose income is less than one dollar a day and the proportion of people who suffer from hunger and, by the same date, to halve the proportion of people who are unable to reach or to afford safe drinking water.

• To ensure that, by the same date, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling and that girls and boys will have equal access to all levels of education.

• By the same date, to have reduced maternal mortality by three quarters, and under-five child mortality by two thirds, of their current rates.

• To have, by then, halted, and begun to reverse, the spread of HIV/AIDS, the scourge of malaria and other major diseases that afflict humanity.

• To provide special assistance to children orphaned by HIV/AIDS.

• By 2020, to have achieved a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers as proposed in the "Cities Without Slums" initiative.

20. We also resolve:

• To promote gender equality and the empowerment of women as effective ways to combat poverty, hunger and disease and to stimulate development that is truly sustainable.

• To develop and implement strategies that give young people everywhere a real chance to find decent and productive work.

• To encourage the pharmaceutical industry to make essential drugs more widely available and affordable by all who need them in developing countries.

• To develop strong partnerships with the private sector and with civil society organizations in pursuit of development and poverty eradication.

• To ensure that the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communication technologies, in conformity with recommendations contained in the ECOSOC 2000 Ministerial Declaration, are available to all.

IV. Protecting our common environment

21. We must spare no effort to free all of humanity, and above all our children and grandchildren, from the threat of living on a planet irredeemably spoilt by human activities, and whose resources would no longer be sufficient for their needs.

22. We reaffirm our support for the principles of sustainable development, including those set out in Agenda 21, agreed upon at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development.

23. We resolve therefore to adopt in all our environmental actions a new ethic of conservation and stewardship and, as first steps, we resolve:

• To make every effort to ensure the entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol, preferably by the tenth anniversary of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 2002, and to embark on the required reduction in emissions of greenhouse gases.

• To intensify our collective efforts for the management, conservation and sustainable development of all types of forests.

• To press for the full implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Convention to Combat Desertification in those Countries Experiencing Serious Drought and/or Desertification, particularly in Africa.

• To stop the unsustainable exploitation of water resources by developing water management strategies at the regional, national and local levels, which promote both equitable access and adequate supplies.

• To intensify cooperation to reduce the number and effects of natural and man-made disasters.

• To ensure free access to information on the human genome sequence.

V. Human rights, democracy and good governance

24. We will spare no effort to promote democracy and strengthen the rule of law, as well as respect for all internationally recognized human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the right to development.

25. We resolve therefore:

• To respect fully and uphold the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

• To strive for the full protection and promotion in all our countries of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights for all.

• To strengthen the capacity of all our countries to implement the principles and practices of democracy and respect for human rights, including minority rights.

• To combat all forms of violence against women and to implement the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

• To take measures to ensure respect for and protection of the human rights of migrants, migrant workers and their families, to eliminate the increasing acts of racism and xenophobia in many societies and to promote greater harmony and tolerance in all societies.

• To work collectively for more inclusive political processes, allowing genuine participation by all citizens in all our countries.

• To ensure the freedom of the media to perform their essential role and the right of the public to have access to information.

VI. Protecting the vulnerable

26. We will spare no effort to ensure that children and all civilian populations that suffer disproportionately the consequences of natural disasters, genocide, armed conflicts and other humanitarian emergencies are given every assistance and protection so that they can resume normal life as soon as possible.

We resolve therefore:

• To expand and strengthen the protection of civilians in complex emergencies, in conformity with international humanitarian law.

• To strengthen international cooperation, including burden sharing in, and the coordination of humanitarian assistance to, countries hosting refugees and to help all refugees and displaced persons to return voluntarily to their homes, in safety and dignity and to be smoothly reintegrated into their societies.

• To encourage the ratification and full implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and its optional protocols on the involvement of children in armed conflict and on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography.

VII. Meeting the special needs of Africa

27. We will support the consolidation of democracy in Africa and assist Africans in their struggle for lasting peace, poverty eradication and sustainable development, thereby bringing Africa into the mainstream of the world economy.

28. We resolve therefore:

• To give full support to the political and institutional structures of emerging democracies in Africa.

• To encourage and sustain regional and subregional mechanisms for preventing conflict and promoting political stability, and to ensure a reliable flow of resources for peacekeeping operations on the continent.

• To take special measures to address the challenges of poverty eradication and sustainable development in Africa, including debt cancellation, improved market access, enhanced Official Development Assistance and increased flows of Foreign Direct Investment, as well as transfers of technology.

• To help Africa build up its capacity to tackle the spread of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and other infectious diseases.

VIII. Strengthening the United Nations

29. We will spare no effort to make the United Nations a more effective instrument for pursuing all of these priorities: the fight for development for all the peoples of the world, the fight against poverty, ignorance and disease; the fight against injustice; the fight against violence, terror and crime; and the fight against the degradation and destruction of our common home.

30. We resolve therefore:

• To reaffirm the central position of the General Assembly as the chief deliberative, policy-making and representative organ of the United Nations, and to enable it to play that role effectively.

• To intensify our efforts to achieve a comprehensive reform of the Security Council in all its aspects.

• To strengthen further the Economic and Social Council, building on its recent achievements, to help it fulfil the role ascribed to it in the Charter.

• To strengthen the International Court of Justice, in order to ensure justice and the rule of law in international affairs.

• To encourage regular consultations and coordination among the principal organs of the United Nations in pursuit of their functions.

• To ensure that the Organization is provided on a timely and predictable basis with the resources it needs to carry out its mandates.

• To urge the Secretariat to make the best use of those resources, in accordance with clear rules and procedures agreed by the General Assembly, in the interests of all Member States, by adopting the best management practices and technologies available and by concentrating on those tasks that reflect the agreed priorities of Member States.

• To promote adherence to the Convention on the Safety of United Nations and Associated Personnel.

• To ensure greater policy coherence and better cooperation between the United Nations, its agencies, the Bretton Woods Institutions and the World Trade Organization, as well as other multilateral bodies, with a view to achieving a fully coordinated approach to the problems of peace and development.

• To strengthen further cooperation between the United Nations and national parliaments through their world organization, the Inter-Parliamentary Union, in various fields, including peace and security, economic and social development, international law and human rights and democracy and gender issues.

• To give greater opportunities to the private sector, non-governmental organizations and civil society, in general, to contribute to the realization of the Organization’s goals and programmes.

31. We request the General Assembly to review on a regular basis the progress made in implementing the provisions of this Declaration, and ask the Secretary-General to issue periodic reports for consideration by the General Assembly and as a basis for further action.

32. We solemnly reaffirm, on this historic occasion, that the United Nations is the indispensable common house of the entire human family, through which we will seek to realize our universal aspirations for peace, cooperation and development. We therefore pledge our unstinting support for these common objectives and our determination to achieve them.

8th plenary meeting
8 September 2000

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Source:http://www.un.org/millennium/declaration/ares552e.htm

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P.S. This is fundamentally a Universal Bill of Rights.
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Will it supercede national borders, and supplant its jurisdiction?

Broken and Contrite Heart

Psalm 51

1Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.

2Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.

3For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me.

4Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight: that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest.

5Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.

6Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.

7Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

8Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.

9Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities.

10Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.

11Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me.

12Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit.

13Then will I teach transgressors thy ways; and sinners shall be converted unto thee.

14Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, thou God of my salvation: and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness.

15O Lord, open thou my lips; and my mouth shall shew forth thy praise.

16For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering.

17The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.

18Do good in thy good pleasure unto Zion: build thou the walls of Jerusalem.

19Then shalt thou be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness, with burnt offering and whole burnt offering: then shall they offer bullocks upon thine altar.

Obama, like Bush, is Throwing Public Money into a Black Hole

Friday, February 13, 2009

Obama, like Bush, is Throwing Public Money into a Black Hole

by Rodrigue Tremblay


“The [financial] crisis was not a failure of the free market system and the answer is not to try to reinvent that system. ...Government intervention is not a cure-all."

President George W. Bush, Thursday November 13, 2008

"There is no cause to worry. The high tide of prosperity will continue."

Andrew W. Mellon, Hoover's Secretary of the Treasury. September 1929

"While the crash only took place six months ago, I am convinced we have now passed the worst and with continued unity of effort we shall rapidly recover. There is one certainty of the future of a people of the resources, intelligence and character of the people of the United States - that is, prosperity."

President Herbert Hoover, May 1, 1930

Tuesday, February 10, may be the date when the U.S. economy officially entered into an economic depression. This was when President Obama's Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, announced that the Obama administration was about to expand Bush's Secretary Paulson's $700-billion plan to rescue large U.S. banks from insolvency, euphemistically called the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). The purpose now, as it was previously, is to use public capital, loans and guarantees to remove toxic financial assets from private banks' balance sheets and to transfer them to the Government and/or to willing private investors (hedge funds, private equity firms and other investors). One must keep in mind that Mr. Paulson and Mr. Geithner were the principal architects of last October's original plan. This was then, and it is now, a plan designed primarily to use hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to prevent banks from declaring bankruptcy, while in fact doing little to accomplish its presumed primary objective of getting banks to resume normal lending. Such a cure has failed in the past and is likely to fail now. Saving insolvent banks is not the same as fixing them and making them viable.

Indeed, when Mr. Geithner announced on Tuesday, February 10, that he was expanding the Paulson plan to make it a $1.5 trillion bailout plan, financial markets saw it as simply rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic, and they sold off. I believe the markets are right and the Obama-Geithner plan only makes the Bush-Paulsen plan worse. Both are misguided and do little to address the root cause of the financial crisis, which is a mountain of unsustainable bad debts that was allowed to expand recklessly over the last ten years, and which is now crumbling down, dragging the entire economy down with it.

With more public money thrown at the problem with little strings attached, large U.S. banks will only use the new cash to de-leverage themselves and pay off their debts, buyout smaller banks and find a way to reward their incompetent executives with large bonuses, but little will trickle down to the real economy. We are back to the discredited Reagan era's economic trickle-down theory, the rich helping themselves first and the poor getting the crumbs.

Let's look coldly at the situation. The ratio of total debt to the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is now higher than it was in 1933, when it reached the lofty and unsustainable level of 299.8 percent. It took nearly twenty years to bring down the debt/GDP ratio to below 140 in 1952. In the second quarter of 2008, all debt records were broken when the total debt ratio in the U.S. registered at 356,7 percent of GDP. If the same process of unwinding of excessive debt level plays itself out this time, this could translate into a debt deflation process lasting possibly until 2027!

It all depends on the problem being recognized for what it is, that is to say a mountain of unsustainable and insolvable debts and bets that have to be cancelled and erased from the books. Transferring such bad debts from the banks and other entities to the government will not solve the problem. It will only displace the it from one place to another and potentially create new and even more serious problems, such as horrendous future tax increases or an onset of hyperinflation down the road.

There exists a state of denial in Washington D.C. regarding the excessive debt problem, essentially because the same people who are responsible for creating the mess are in power. It doesn't matter whether a Republican or a Democratic administration is in place, they remain in charge and they rely on the same failed economic policies. The Geithner plan is the son of the Paulson plan. Both are destined to fail because they are based on a flawed diagnosis.

To deflate the mountain of bad debts and unclog the credit system in an orderly fashion, and to prevent a deflationary spiral from taking hold, the Obama administration should take the advice of L. William Seidman, chairman of the S&L Resolution Trust Corp. (RTC), the agency created in the 1990s to manage hundreds of insolvent thrifts. At that time, the RTC seized the assets of troubled savings and loans and resold them to bargain-seeking investors. The Obama administration should bite the bullet and create a similar Banking Restructuring Trust to temporarily take over the large insolvent American banks, streamline their operations, liquidate their bad debts and bets, and reorganize them on a firmer financial basis. I myself proposed such a restructuring trust last September. This would be more efficient and less costly than throwing trillions of dollars down a black hole without even solving the structural problem at hand.

The creation of such a Trust to unify government intervention has also been proposed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul A. Volcker and by former Treasury Secretary Nicholas F. Brady. This would entail, of course, that many of the banks' illiquid assets in CDOs ("Collateralized Debt Obligations") and in CDS (“Credit Default Swaps”) and other shaky assets, would have to be written off or cancelled in a chapter 11-like process. Such a process would cleanse the banks from the excesses accumulated in previous years and prepare them to meet credit demand as the economy recovers. But, above all, it would mark an end to incremental, complicated and improvised 'ad hoc' government interventions to solve the banking crisis. I would bet that there would be a powerful rally of financial markets if such a take-charge and decisive approach were to be adopted.

The Geithner bank bailout plan must not be confused with the close to $800 billion fiscal stimulus plan for the entire economy that Congress has adopted. The latter, contrary to the former, is designed to cushion the fall of real spending in the economy and is likely to have a net positive impact. Indeed, as households increase their savings rate and curtail their discretionary spending to compensate for the loss of housing and financial wealth, government spending has to take up the slack.

However, it should be realized that the multiplier effect on aggregate spending of each dollar of fresh public spending is not very high because national economies nowadays are globalized. Indeed, as domestic spending is being sustained, imports increase but exports may decline as world demand contracts. It is only if all governments adopt expansionary fiscal policies that all economic boats can be lifted. With European and Chinese economies weakening, this may take some time before world demand stops contracting.

All this is to say that while the Geithner bank rescue plan is misguided and should be reengineered, Obama's fiscal stimulus package is most likely too timid and should be enlarged, considering the scope of the problem at hand. All in all, let us hope that a prolonged economic depression can be avoided.

Source: http://www.TheNewAmericanEmpire.com/tremblay=1107

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Can You See The Handwriting On The Banks?

Today the Dow dropped to 1997 level; It's setting new lows daily.

It went down to 7149.91.

Citicorp and Bank Of America Stocks are down to barely $2 and $3, per share respectively.

What does all this mean?

What does it indicate?

Well, the Administration has been denying that it will 'nationalize' the banking giants. Yet, Citicorp is facing more government intervention. Something that could amount to the government owning up to 40% of Citicorp's stock value. If this doesn't equate to 'nationalizing' of the bank; I don't know what does?

And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. .Revelation 13:17.

(To get the full impact of this fact please read verses 11-18.)

What my Bible points out in Revelation 13, is that the conditions that we see before us have the potential of becoming the end time despotic regime that will impede God's Remnant faithful few from buying and selling; And, will begin this restrictive practice here in the USA, then to continue the Globalization process, impose the same standards worldwide.

The conditions are ripe. The fig tree is full of the 'ripe' fruit ready to be picked.

This can, and may possibly be the beginning of the end as President Obama, half-jokingly called the passing of his humongous Economic Stimulus Package.

Some may call me paranoid, or an alarmist; But, how can you call someone paranoid who's seeing all the pieces falling into place before their very eyes? Just like every other sober minded individual who is observing the times that match the prophecies in the Bible. The signs are all around us: failing financial institutions, a call for consolidation of governments, a call for tolerance for all religions (for now), escalation and preponderance of wars, earthquakes and volcanoes menacing, wicked natural disasters; We can see that a change is coming, but, not the one some expect.

If Citicorp is 'nationalized' that would mean the nation's largest bank would cease from being so; That would make the Federal Government the administrator of the nation's credit lines. Bank of America, the second largest would be the largest 'private bank'. From what I have come to know about Bank Of America, it is already controlled; not by our government, but, by the Jesuits who supposedly own 51% of the stocks of BOA. So, the situation is similar to a check mate in a chess game (I don't play Chess). The next move will be a strategic one. We wait, and watch, and pray. Come Lord, Amen!

Arsenio.

IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn warns second wave of countries will require bail-out

IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn warns second wave of countries will require bail-out

A "second wave" of countries will fall victim to the economic crisis and face being bailed out by the International Monetary Fund, its chief warned at the G7 summit in Rome.

Edmund Conway in Rome

Last Updated: 9:19PM GMT 15 Feb 2009

Dominique Strauss-Kahn's warning comes amid growing concern that at some point in the next year a major economy could have to seek support from the Fund. Mr Strauss-Kahn, who was yesterday attending the Group of Seven leading finance ministers' meeting in Rome, said: "I expect a second wave of countries to come knocking."

The IMF managing director also said the rich world was now in the midst of a "deep recession". It came as the G7 pledged to avoid slipping into protectionism and repeating the same political and economic mistakes as were made in the 1930s. Ministers also pledged to do more to support their banking systems, sparking speculation that a number of countries, including Germany and France, will unveil new bail-outs and possibly set up "bad banks" as they scramble to fight the crisis.

But with some countries' economies effectively dwarfed by the size of their banking sector and its financial liabilities, there are fears they could fall victim to balance of payments and currency crises, much as Iceland did before receiving emergency assistance from the IMF last year.

Some have speculated that the UK may have to seek IMF support if capital markets become frightened of the size of its foreign financial liabilities, which increasingly appear to have become supported by the state. But there are a swathe of Eastern European countries which appear particularly vulnerable and may need IMF support.

With the Fund's warchest expected to run dry later this year, the Japanese confirmed in Rome that they would supply an extra $200bn of capital to the Washington-based institution.

Mr Strauss-Kahn, who warned recently that his resources could run dry within six months, said: "This is the largest loan ever made in the history of humanity.

"The biggest concrete result of this summit is the loan by the Japanese... now I will continue with the objective of doubling the Fund's resources."

He added that it was now essential for countries to support their banking sectors.

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/4625430/IMF-chief-Dominique-Strauss-Kahn-warns-second-wave-of-countries-will-require-bail-out.html

Mexico: The Third War

Mexico: The Third War
February 18, 2009 1923 GMT


By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart

Mexico has pretty much always been a rough-and-tumble place. In recent years, however, the security environment has deteriorated rapidly, and parts of the country have become incredibly violent. It is now common to see military weaponry such as fragmentation grenades and assault rifles used almost daily in attacks.

In fact, just last week we noted two separate strings of grenade attacks directed against police in Durango and Michoacan states. In the Michoacan incident, police in Uruapan and Lazaro Cardenas were targeted by three grenade attacks during a 12-hour period. Then on Feb. 17, a major firefight occurred just across the border from the United States in Reynosa, when Mexican authorities attempted to apprehend several armed men seen riding in a vehicle. The men fled to a nearby residence and engaged the pursuing police with gunfire, hand grenades and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs). After the incident, in which five cartel gunmen were killed and several gunmen, cops, soldiers and civilians were wounded, authorities recovered a 60 mm mortar, five RPG rounds and two fragmentation grenades.

Make no mistake, considering the military weapons now being used in Mexico and the number of deaths involved, the country is in the middle of a war. In fact, there are actually three concurrent wars being waged in Mexico involving the Mexican drug cartels. The first is the battle being waged among the various Mexican drug cartels seeking control over lucrative smuggling corridors, called plazas. One such battleground is Ciudad Juarez, which provides access to the Interstate 10, Interstate 20 and Interstate 25 corridors inside the United States. The second battle is being fought between the various cartels and the Mexican government forces who are seeking to interrupt smuggling operations, curb violence and bring the cartel members to justice.

Then there is a third war being waged in Mexico, though because of its nature it is a bit more subdued. It does not get the same degree of international media attention generated by the running gun battles and grenade and RPG attacks. However, it is no less real, and in many ways it is more dangerous to innocent civilians (as well as foreign tourists and business travelers) than the pitched battles between the cartels and the Mexican government. This third war is the war being waged on the Mexican population by criminals who may or may not be involved with the cartels. Unlike the other battles, where cartel members or government forces are the primary targets and civilians are only killed as collateral damage, on this battlefront, civilians are squarely in the crosshairs.

The Criminal Front
There are many different shapes and sizes of criminal gangs in Mexico. While many of them are in some way related to the drug cartels, others have various types of connections to law enforcement — indeed, some criminal groups are composed of active and retired cops. These various types of criminal gangs target civilians in a number of ways, including, robbery, burglary, carjacking, extortion, fraud and counterfeiting. But of all the crimes committed by these gangs, perhaps the one that creates the most widespread psychological and emotional damage is kidnapping, which also is one of the most underreported crimes. There is no accurate figure for the number of kidnappings that occur in Mexico each year. All of the data regarding kidnapping is based on partial crime statistics and anecdotal accounts and, in the end, can produce only best-guess estimates. Despite this lack of hard data, however, there is little doubt — based even on the low end of these estimates — that Mexico has become the kidnapping capital of the world.

One of the difficult things about studying kidnapping in Mexico is that the crime not only is widespread, affecting almost every corner of the country, but also is executed by a wide range of actors who possess varying levels of professionalism — and very different motives. At one end of the spectrum are the high-end kidnapping gangs that abduct high-net-worth individuals and demand ransoms in the millions of dollars. Such groups employ teams of operatives who carry out specialized tasks such as collecting intelligence, conducting surveillance, snatching the target, negotiating with the victim’s family and establishing and guarding the safe houses.

At the other end of the spectrum are gangs that roam the streets and randomly kidnap targets of opportunity. These gangs are generally less professional than the high-end gangs and often will hold a victim for only a short time. In many instances, these groups hold the victim just long enough to use the victim’s ATM card to drain his or her checking account, or to receive a small ransom of perhaps several hundred or a few thousand dollars from the family. This type of opportunistic kidnapping is often referred to as an “express kidnapping”. Sometimes express kidnapping victims are held in the trunk of a car for the duration of their ordeal, which can sometimes last for days if the victim has a large amount in a checking account and a small daily ATM withdrawal limit. Other times, if an express kidnapping gang discovers it has grabbed a high-value target by accident, the gang will hold the victim longer and demand a much higher ransom. Occasionally, these express kidnapping groups will even “sell” a high-value victim to a more professional kidnapping gang.

Between these extremes there is a wide range of groups that fall somewhere in the middle. These are the groups that might target a bank vice president or branch manager rather than the bank’s CEO, or that might kidnap the owner of a restaurant or other small business rather than a wealthy industrialist. The presence of such a broad spectrum of kidnapping groups ensures that almost no segment of the population is immune from the kidnapping threat. In recent years, the sheer magnitude of the threat in Mexico and the fear it generates has led to a crime called virtual kidnapping. In a virtual kidnapping, the victim is not really kidnapped. Instead, the criminals seek to convince a target’s family that a kidnapping has occurred, and then use threats and psychological pressure to force the family to pay a quick ransom. Although virtual kidnapping has been around for several years, unwitting families continue to fall for the scam, which is a source of easy money. Some virtual kidnappings have even been conducted by criminals using telephones inside prisons.

As noted above, the motives for kidnapping vary. Many of the kidnappings that occur in Mexico are not conducted for ransom. Often the drug cartels will kidnap members of rival gangs or government officials in order to torture and execute them. This torture is conducted to extract information, intimidate rivals and, apparently in some cases, just to have a little fun. The bodies of such victims are frequently found beheaded or otherwise mutilated. Other times, cartel gunmen will kidnap drug dealers who are tardy in payments or who refuse to pay the “tax” required to operate in the cartel’s area of control.

Of course, cartel gunmen do not kidnap only their rivals or cops. As the cartel wars have heated up, and as drug revenues have dropped due to interference from rival cartels or the government, many cartels have resorted to kidnapping for ransom to supplement their cash flow. Perhaps the most widely known group that is engaging in this is the Arellano Felix Organization (AFO), also known as the Tijuana Cartel. The AFO has been reduced to a shadow of its former self, its smuggling operations dramatically impacted by the efforts of the U.S. and Mexican governments, as well as by attacks from other cartels and from an internal power struggle. Because of a steep decrease in smuggling revenues, the group has turned to kidnapping and extortion in order to raise the funds necessary to keep itself alive and to return to prominence as a smuggling organization.

In the Line of Fire
There is very little chance the Mexican government will be able to establish integrity in its law enforcement agencies, or bring law and order to large portions of the country, any time soon. Official corruption and ineptitude are endemic in Mexico, which means that Mexican citizens and visiting foreigners will have to face the threat of kidnapping for the foreseeable future. We believe that for civilians and visiting foreigners, the threat of kidnapping exceeds the threat of being hit by a stray bullet from a cartel firefight. Indeed, things are deteriorating so badly that even professional kidnapping negotiators, once seen as the key to a guaranteed payout, are now being kidnapped themselves. In an even more incredible twist of irony, anti-kidnapping authorities are being abducted and executed.

This environment — and the concerns it has sparked — has provided huge financial opportunities for the private security industry in Mexico. Armored car sales have gone through the roof, as have the number of uniformed guards and executive protection personnel. In fact, the demand for personnel is so acute that security companies are scrambling to find candidates. Such a scramble presents a host of obvious problems, ranging from lack of qualifications to insufficient vetting. In addition to old-fashioned security services, new security-technology companies are also cashing in on the environment of fear, but even high-tech tracking devices can have significant drawbacks and shortcomings.

For many people, armored cars and armed bodyguards can provide a false sense of security, and technology can become a deadly crutch that promotes complacency and actually increases vulnerability. Physical security measures are not enough. The presence of armed bodyguards — or armed guards combined with armored vehicles — does not provide absolute security. This is especially true in Mexico, where large teams of gunmen regularly conduct crimes using military ordnance. Frankly, there are very few executive protection details in the world that have the training and armament to withstand an assault by dozens of attackers armed with assault rifles and RPGs. Private security guards are frequently overwhelmed by Mexican criminals and either killed or forced to flee for their own safety. As we noted in May 2008 after the assassination of Edgar Millan Gomez, acting head of the Mexican Federal Police and the highest-ranking federal cop in Mexico, physical security measures must be supplemented by situational awareness, countersurveillance and protective intelligence.

Criminals look for and exploit vulnerabilities. Their chances for success increase greatly if they are allowed to conduct surveillance at will and are given the opportunity to thoroughly assess the protective security program. We have seen several cases in Mexico in which the criminals even chose to attack despite security measures. In such cases, criminals attack with adequate resources to overcome existing security. For example, if there are protective agents, the attackers will plan to neutralize them first. If there is an armored vehicle, they will find ways to defeat the armor or grab the target when he or she is outside the vehicle. Because of this, criminals must not be allowed to conduct surveillance at will.

Like many crimes, kidnapping is a process. There are certain steps that must be taken to conduct a kidnapping and certain times during the process when those executing it are vulnerable to detection. While these steps may be condensed and accomplished quite quickly in an ad hoc express kidnapping, they are nonetheless followed. In fact, because of the particular steps involved in conducting a kidnapping, the process is not unlike that followed to execute a terrorist attack. The common steps are target selection, planning, deployment, attack, escape and exploitation.

Like the perpetrators of a terrorist attack, those conducting a kidnapping are most vulnerable to detection when they are conducting surveillance — before they are ready to deploy and conduct their attack. As we’ve noted several times in past analyses, one of the secrets of countersurveillance is that most criminals are not very good at conducting surveillance. The primary reason they succeed is that no one is looking for them.

Of course, kidnappers are also very obvious once they launch their attack, pull their weapons and perhaps even begin to shoot. By this time, however, it might very well be too late to escape their attack. They will have selected their attack site and employed the forces they believe they need to complete the operation. While the kidnappers could botch their operation and the target could escape unscathed, it is simply not practical to pin one’s hopes on that possibility. It is clearly better to spot the kidnappers early and avoid their trap before it is sprung and the guns come out.

We have seen many instances of people in Mexico with armed security being kidnapped, and we believe we will likely see more cases of this in the coming months. This trend is due not only to the presence of highly armed and aggressive criminals and the low quality of some security personnel, but also to people placing their trust solely in reactive physical security. Ignoring the very real value of critical, proactive measures such as situational awareness, countersurveillance and protective intelligence can be a fatal mistake.

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Source:
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20090218_mexico_third_war