Thursday, August 02, 2007

MINNESOTA BRIDGE COLLAPSE

LOOMING U.S. TERROR ATTACK


U.S. Terror Attack — 'Ninety Days at Most'
Published on Thursday, August 02, 2007.


Source: Fox News

Counterterrorism expert Juval Aviv spoke with FOX Fan Central about what Americans can do to protect themselves in case of a terror attack.

Do you believe another terrorist attack is likely on American soil?

I predict, based primarily on information that is floating in Europe and the Middle East, that an event is imminent and around the corner here in the United States. It could happen as soon as tomorrow, or it could happen in the next few months. Ninety days at the most.
What advice do you have for individuals that have the misfortune of finding themselves in the middle of a terror attack?

Since mass transportation is the next attack, when you travel to work have with you, a bottle of water, a small towel and a flashlight. What happened in London is exactly a point to look at. Those people who were close to the bombs died, then others were injured or died from inhaling the toxic fumes or getting trampled. The reason you take a bottle of water and a towel is that if you wet the towel and put it over your face, you can protect yourself against the fumes and get yourself out of there.

Don't be bashful. If your gut feeling tells you when you walk onto a bus there is something unusual or suspicious, get out and walk away. You may do it 10 times for no reason, but there will be one time that saves your life. Let your sixth sense direct you.
Try to break your routine. If you travel during rush hour every day, try to get up a little earlier and drive to work or take the train when it’s still not full. Don’t find yourself every day in the midst of rush hour. Terrorists are not going to waste a bomb on a half-empty train.

What portion of the American infrastructure do you believe is at the greatest risk for a terror attack?

We have put all of our emphasis, right or wrong, on the aviation area. What has happened, in the last two to three years, based on information we have, is the terrorists have realized that they cannot hijack a plane in America soon because the passengers are going to fight back. So they realize what they have been very successful with over the last 50 years in Madrid, London, Iraq, Israel: demoralizing the public when they go to work and when they come back from work.

What they’re going to do is hit six, seven or eight cities simultaneously to show sophistication and really hit the public. This time, which is the message of the day, it will not only be big cities. They’re going to try to hit rural America. They want to send a message to rural America: "You’re not protected. If you figured out that if you just move out of New York and move to Montana or to Pittsburgh, you’re not immune. We’re going [to] get you wherever we can and it’s easier there than in New York."

What more do you think the government can do to protect the public?

Number one, and this is the beef I’ve had with Homeland Security for the last four years, is educating the public on how to deal with those types of events. There’s no education. We’re raising the color code alert and that means nothing to anyone. Whether it’s green, yellow, pink, no one ever educated the public how to identify suspicious items or people. In Israel, so many of them [terrorists] have been apprehended just because people have phoned in. We don’t have that training on campuses, schools or kindergarten.

In Israel, it’s very popular right now [amongst terrorists] to put one device to explode and time another one for five minutes later when it’s all calm, people are getting up and the rescue teams have responded. You need to know all those things and think about those things. The government must pursue that. Law enforcement will never have enough people on the street to detect things. We don’t have that kind of manpower. That’s why the government must enlist the public.


Juval Aviv is a former Israeli Counterterrorism Intelligence Officer and President and CEO of Interfor, Inc. Mr. Aviv has also served as a special consultant to the U.S. Congress on issues of terrorism and security and is the author of “Staying Safe : The Complete Guide to Protecting Yourself, Your Family, and Your Business.”


NETNANNY: WORLDNETDAILY IS HATE

WND Exclusive
INTERNET NEWS
'NetNanny' labels WND site as 'hate'
Software filters still blocking Web access

Posted: August 2, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern


© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com

A government employee who loaded a filtering software onto his personal computer at home was surprised when NetNanny delivered the following warning about WorldNetDaily, the leading independent news site on the Internet:

"You are being blocked for viewing: www.WorldNetDaily.com/ For content of the following type(s) Hate/Violence


Warning delivered to NetNanny user trying to reach WorldNetDaily.com

"I just downloaded this from the Internet a couple days ago," Matthew Kroelinger told WND from his Virginia residence. "It does that every time."

Fans of WND have had their struggles with filtering programs in recent months, as they battle the cyber powers that occasionally block access to the day's top news and columnists including Ann Coulter, Joseph Farah, Chuck Norris, and Pat Boone.
The NetNanny software is from
ContentWatch.com, a significant operator in the filtering industry, about which WND readers have complained multiple times already.

After the first complaint, the company promised to reconfigure its algorithms that assessed content to be blocked, in order for WND to be accessed. When told of the second episode, spokesman Scott Cleghorn said he had checked, and his version of the NetNanny program allowed access to WND.

He said a possibility was that the software that was installed might not have had the most recent updates. He also said he was checking whether the algorithm corrections had been applied to both WND.com and WorldNetDaily.com addresses.

ContentWatch declined to return a telephone message about the newest problem, reported by Kroelinger.

He said he installed the software because a young relative was visiting, and he wanted to minimize the dangers the Internet would pose. He said he has to go into the administrative functions of the software in order to view WND, even though there's no such conflict for Fox News or CNN or a variety of other news sites.

"You guys are a major news wire," he said. "It's a little too odd sometimes."

A California reader, who asked to remain anonymous, earlier had told WND the same thing. He had been able to override the block with his administrative procedures in the program but he had been "shocked" by the designation of WND as "hate/violence."

"Newsmax wasn't affected, CCN wasn't affected that way, even Fox News did check out," he said.

The first reader to complain about NetNanny was from California, who said he bought the software for his home computer, and got the identical response as the one seen by Kroelinger.

WND has reported in the past on its extensive efforts to make sure filtering companies and others don't prevent WND fans from reading the news and commentary on the site.

It was earlier this year when WND finally resolved a blocking situation involving the military provider that makes Internet services available to U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine bases worldwide.

The U.S. Navy had launched an investigation into the issue of blocking WND's site at WND's request after the news site got a flood of e-mails from readers who saw various messages that the site was being blocked.

It eventually was determined that an undefined "security" issue between the web-hosting location that WND uses and the Navy computer existed, and later was resolved.

WND was launched 10 years ago by Joseph and Elizabeth Farah, and for more than 100 weeks in a row was listed as the No. 1 most popular website in the world by Global 100.

WND has also been consistently ranked by several major Internet ratings agencies as the "stickiest" news site on the Internet – meaning readers average more time on it than any other.

By WND's own traffic counts, the site attracts about 8 million "unique visitors" (meaning different people) every month. It attracts between 50 million and 70 million pageviews per month.
WND also was No. 5 in a new survey of the top "conservative" websites of 2007, a category headed by DrudgeReport. FoxNews.com, The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post followed.

While WND has never considered itself "conservative," it is currently ranked as the No. 1 conservative website by Alexa.com, the public rankings agency affiliated with Amazon.com.

WND is also ranked as the 861st biggest website of any kind in the U.S. and No. 1 in the Alexa category of News and Media.

WND was also the first content site on the Internet to begin a book-publishing imprint, WND Books, that has revolutionized the publishing industry in many ways. WND was the first Internet content site to launch a daily, nationally syndicated radio show, "Farah Live," based on that content. And WND was the first content site on the Net to launch columnists into weekly syndication, including David Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and Joseph Farah.

Source: http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=56961

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

THE "ADVENTISTBOMBER"


The “Adventistbomber”



By Hal Mayer


“The idea of flying planes into skyscrapers didn’t originate with al-Qaeda,” reported the Atlantic Monthly (May, 2004). World War II was going badly for the Germans. Hitler was getting desperate, and ordered his engineers to develop “Wunderwaffen” or “miracle weapons.” One of them was “Projekt A,” a huge plane for transatlantic missions that would release a smaller, much faster plane from its underbelly. This smaller plane had no landing gear or weapons systems and was not designed to be “recovered.” How else could this be used than for the suicide bombing of large buildings? Hitler called it the “Amerikabomber.”The Nazi’s were interested in suicide bombers. In fact, they trained and used 16 of them against the Russians in defending Berlin, April 16 and 17, 1945. Albert Speer, one of Hitler’s key military ministers wrote in his diary, “It was almost as if he was in a delirium when he described to us how New York would go up in flames. He imagined how the skyscrapers would turn into huge burning torches. How they would crumble while the reflection of the flames would light the skyline against the dark sky.” (Atlantic Monthly, May 2004). It’s a good thing Hitler didn’t have enough time isn't it?. As we near the end of the great controversy, Satan will be getting more desperate. He knows he has lost the war. But he is determined to do all he can to destroy his enemies – those that stand in the way of his religious totalitarianism. What measures will he use against the faithful? Already we have seen plenty, but certainly there will be more. I suggest that some people will get so passionate against those that stand for the truth that they will do anything to destroy them, even if it they are themselves ruined in the process. Perhaps you have already seen some of this kind spiritual suicide. Satan's primary concern is God’s remnant church. He is designing spiritual “Adventistbombers” and “Wunderwaffen” just for God’s faithful people. He will be permitted to use them too. (see Rev. 13:13-14). One of them is the proliferation of winds of doctrine that often effect those that are among the “conservatives.” Also, the current on-going attack on the Spirit of Prophecy is an important “Projekt” in Satan's arsenal. He has to disconnect you from your Spirit of Prophecy moorings, or he will not be successful in overthrowing you. Perhaps he will also enlist a squadron of your fellow church members to help him out. He wants the spiritual skyline to reflect the flames of your destroyed church. Are you ready? Do you have a work to do in defending the faith once delivered to the saints? Do you think we need to be alert to the devices Satan is developing to distract us from preparing for the last great struggle? God bless you as you prepare for it.


OBAMA TALKS TOUGH ON FOREIGN POLICY


Obama Talks Tough on Foreign Policy

By NEDRA PICKLER

08.01.07, 4:14 PM ET



WASHINGTON -
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama warned Pakistan Wednesday that he would use military force if necessary to root out terrorists, the second time in two weeks that he's staked out a dramatically different road for U.S. foreign policy.
The Illinois senator's tough talk against Pakistan comes after he pledged to meet with leaders of rogue nations who have been rebuffed by President Bush.
And while Bush has embraced Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf as a valued ally in the war on terror, Obama said he would take a harder line. He said Musharraf must do more to shut down terrorist operations along the Afghan border or risk a U.S. military attack against the foreign fighters and the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid.
"Let me make this clear," Obama said. "There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al-Qaida leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf will not act, we will."
Obama's stance against Pakistan comes after last week's dispute with top rival Hillary Rodham Clinton in which the New York senator accused him of being "irresponsible and naive" for saying he would meet with heads of states such as Cuba, North Korea, Syria and Iran without conditions.
This new policy is designed to show that Obama would be a tough commander in chief when times demand it, even though he opposed the Iraq war and wants to open a dialogue with foreign foes.
Obama's foreign policy ideas all have one thing in common - they stake ground on the flip side of current U.S. policy when many voters are dissatisfied with the country's direction in the world. The first-term Illinois senator is determined to show he can give diplomacy a fresh start.
"It's time to turn the page," Obama said four times in a 45-minute speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. The speech was written by Ben Rhodes, a longtime aide to Center president, Sept. 11 Commission Vice Chairman and former Indiana Rep. Lee Hamilton.
While he is rejecting Bush's approach, Obama is also trying to lump Clinton in with the administration. His speech also criticized Congress' approval of the Iraq war resolution four times.
"With that vote, Congress became co-author of a catastrophic war," Obama said. In 2002, Clinton vote for the resolution authorizing Bush to topple Saddam Hussein's regime.
Thousands of Taliban fighters are based in Pakistan's vast and jagged mountains, where they can pass into Afghanistan, train for suicide operations and find refuge from local tribesmen. Intelligence experts warn that al-Qaida could be rebuilding to mount another attack on the United States.
Analysts say U.S. military action could risk destabilizing Pakistan, breeding more militancy and undermining Musharraf. A military response also could be difficult, given Pakistan's hostile terrain and the suspicion of its warrior-minded tribesmen against uninvited outsiders.
Husain Haqqani, director of the center for international relations at Boston University and a former adviser to several Pakistani prime ministers, said Obama and other presidential candidates should be cautious about moving from Bush's stance of "putting all of the eggs in General Musharraf's broken basket to the other extreme of just talking too tough without listening to all the nuances."
"They should not look at the sledgehammer approach because the people of Pakistan are not America's enemies, and any lashing out may create more enemies of the United States there," Haqqani said.
Obama's speech opened him to new criticism from rivals for the presidential nomination. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said the United States should practice tough diplomacy with Musharraf, but "it is important not to unnecessarily inflame the Muslim world."
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden was harsher, saying Obama was showing inexperience in foreign policy.
"The way to deal with it is not to announce it, but to do it," the Delaware senator said. "The last thing you want to do is telegraph to the folks in Pakistan that we are about to violate their sovereignty, putting Musharraf in the position that makes it virtually impossible for him to do anything other than what he's done, basically cut a deal with the warlords on the border."
The Clinton campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
Bush spokesman Tony Snow defended the administration's policy toward Pakistan, without commenting directly on Obama's remarks.
"Our approach to Pakistan is one that not only respects the sovereignty of Pakistan as a sovereign government, but is also designed to work in a way where we are working in cooperation with the local government," he said.
Greg Craig, who served as an assistant to President Clinton and led his defense during impeachment, worked with Obama on the speech and said the senator would turn to Musharraf first before taking military action.
He pointed out that when Obama announced his opposition to an Iraq invasion in 2002, he said he wasn't opposed to all wars, just "dumb wars." Action in a state that is harboring terrorist groups is another matter, Craig said.
"This is an example where he is willing to have increased reliance on military options," Craig said.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Nedra Pickler covers presidential politics for The Associated Press.
Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed .

Source: http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/08/01/ap3977879.html
P.S. My question is (if his dream comes true); Will Obama catch Osama?

QUAKE ROCKS VANUATU IN THE PACIFIC


7.2-Magnitude Quake Rocks Vanuatu
POSTED: 1:03 pm CDT August 1, 2007
UPDATED: 1:49 pm CDT August 1, 2007


The U.S. Geological Survey has reported a 7.2-magnitude earthquake striking about 50 miles southeast of the island of Vanuatu in the Pacific Ocean.

The magnitude and location may be revised when additional data and further analysis results are available, the agency said.

No reports of damage or casualties have been received by USGS.


The quake hit at 4:08 a.m. local time. It did not trigger any tsunamis around the archipelago and little damage was expected because it originated 108 miles beneath the ocean's surface, said Waverly Person, a geophysicist with the USGS National Earthquake Information Center.

The Republic of Vanuatu is an archipelago of 83 islands located more than 1,000 miles east of Australia, and about 300 miles west of Fiji. It achieved independence from joint British-French control in 1980.

Vanuatu has a population of 221,506, made up of Melanesian natives, Europeans, Asians and other Pacific islanders. It's economy is based mainly on small-scale agriculture, which provides a living for 65 percent of the population. Fishing, offshore financial services, and tourism. The island had more than 60,000 visitors in 2005, according to Vanuatu official sources.

Refresh this page for updates.
Distributed by Internet Broadcasting Systems, Inc. The Associated Press contributed to this report. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.



Source: http://www.ketv.com/weather/13798968/detail.html?treets=oma&tml=oma_natlbreak&ts=T&tmi=oma_natlbreak_1_01080608012007

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

1/3 OF IRAQIS NEED EMERGENCY AID

1/3 of Iraqis Need Emergency Aid
07-30-2007

FMNN

Nearly a third of the population of Iraq is in need of immediate emergency aid, according to a new report from Oxfam and a coalition of Iraqi NGOs. The report said the government was failing to provide basics such as food and shelter for eight million people. It warned of a humanitarian crisis that had escalated since the 2003 invasion. Meanwhile, the US agency overseeing reconstruction in Iraq said economic mismanagement and corruption were equivalent to "a second insurgency". -BBC News (Britain)

Read Full Article Here




DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER ON M.I.C.

Military-Industrial Complex Speech, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Public Papers of the Presidents, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1960, p. 1035- 1040


My fellow Americans:

Three days from now, after half a century in the service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor.

This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.

Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor with him, Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all.

Our people expect their President and the Congress to find essential agreement on issues of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the Nation.

My own relations with the Congress, which began on a remote and tenuous basis when, long ago, a member of the Senate appointed me to West Point, have since ranged to the intimate during the war and immediate post-war period, and, finally, to the mutually interdependent during these past eight years.

In this final relationship, the Congress and the Administration have, on most vital issues, cooperated well, to serve the national good rather than mere partisanship, and so have assured that the business of the Nation should go forward. So, my official relationship with the Congress ends in a feeling, on my part, of gratitude that we have been able to do so much together.

II.

We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts America is today the strongest, the most influential and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.

III.

Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad.

Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology -- global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily the danger is poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle -- with liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.

Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defense; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research -- these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.

But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs -- balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage -- balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration.

The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well, in the face of stress and threat. But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. I mention two only.

IV.

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.

Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present

and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientifictechnological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system -- ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

V.

Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

VI.

Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.

Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war -- as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years -- I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.

Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But, so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.

VII.

So -- in this my last good night to you as your President -- I thank you for the many opportunities you have given me for public service in war and peace. I trust that in that service you find some things worthy; as for the rest of it, I know you will find ways to improve performance in the future.

You and I -- my fellow citizens -- need to be strong in our faith that all nations, under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of the Nation's great goals.

To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America's prayerful and continuing aspiration:

We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.

Source: http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/indust.html

SECOND STINT AS FIRST DAUGHTER?

Primed for a Second Stint as First Daughter
Haraz N. Ghanbari/Associated Press

Chelsea Clinton, with her mother, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, at the presentation last year of a portrait of Mrs. Clinton.


Published: July 31, 2007

Asked which parent Chelsea Clinton most resembles, friends tick through the mother-daughter similarities. There is the habit of pre-empting questions by asking lots of them. The passionate interest in health care. The tendency to sound a bit scripted when talking about policy, even in private. The way both borrowed on family contacts to establish post-White House careers, but won over skeptical colleagues with their diligence and enthusiasm.

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J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press

President Clinton, daughter Chelsea and the first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton, walked with their Labrador to board Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House in 1998.

The White House, via Cox Newspapers

Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton in 1984 with Chelsea, 4.

Danny Johnston/Associated Press

1986 At 6, with her father, who sought re-election as Arkansas governor.

Stephen Jaffe/Reuters

1996 With Marc Mezvinsky, who has since become a companion.

Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images

MARCH 2007 At 27, an investment analyst and ballet school board member.

Video

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And if her mother, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, manages to become the first female president of the United States, Chelsea Clinton could be in a historic, head-spinning position of her own: the first first child twice over.

She certainly brings experience to the job. At age 12, she appeared in Bill Clinton’s “Man From Hope” video, testifying to his fatherly virtues. (Mr. Clinton also told viewers of his daughter’s forgiving reaction to his admissions about marital transgressions.) During the Monica Lewinsky scandal six years later, she was photographed hand in hand with her parents, seemingly holding them together.

When Mrs. Clinton first ran for the Senate, her 20-year-old daughter crisscrossed New York State by her side. Now, at 27, Ms. Clinton is still clapping and beaming on her parents’ behalf, accompanying them on trips (recently, to Aspen, Colo., Germany and Israel), fund-raising ( she helped bring in more than $20 million for her father’s foundation this fall) and playing a more glamorous version of her lifelong role: model daughter.

“It’s ‘The Truman Show,’ ” said Jill Kargman, a friend of Ms. Clinton, citing the movie about a character whose entire life is a reality television program.

But like Truman, who eventually breaks free, Ms. Clinton now has her own life: a hedge fund job, a serious boyfriend, a tight circle of friends and a permanent place setting on the New York party circuit.

Lately, Ms. Clinton has been able to have her celebrity and control it, too, enjoying the perks but fewer of the drawbacks she used to suffer, like jokes about her looks and tabloid speculation about a canceled wedding or secret honeymoon. She retains a publicist, but mainly to fend off publicity; she and her parents turned down interview requests for this article, as they have for countless others on the subject.

Now Ms. Clinton must decide whether to surrender some of her privacy to help her mother, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. So far, Ms. Clinton is more a character than a presence in the campaign, which seeks to portray Senator Clinton as a strong yet nurturing force, a friend to women and children and a symbol of progress from one generation to the next. Voters hear stories about Chelsea Clinton’s childhood Christmas ornaments, her fondness for “Goodnight Moon,” even her crib. The campaign’s “Sopranos” parody video included a joke about parallel parking that compared her to Meadow, that television family’s loyal daughter.

Campaign officials would not say when — or even if — Ms. Clinton would appear on the trail. “Even though President and Senator Clinton are public figures, their daughter is not,” Howard Wolfson, the campaign spokesman, said in a statement. “While Chelsea Clinton has attended events for her mom and will be supporting her parents in their political and philanthropic endeavors, she will continue to focus on her own professional and personal interests as a private person.”

Those familiar with the Clintons envision Chelsea Clinton as a strategic resource, not an ever-present voice. “She’ll talk about what she knows about, meaning her mother,” said Donna E. Shalala, the former Clinton cabinet member who chaperoned Ms. Clinton’s Olympics trip in 2000. John A. Catsimatidis, a businessman and loyal Clinton supporter, who says he has seen Ms. Clinton at too many fund-raisers to name, agreed. “She’s a very talented girl, she’s very smart,” he said, “and people would rather see a member of a Clinton family at a fund-raiser than a surrogate.”

On Her Own

Ms. Clinton began college interested in medicine, which would have taken her away from her parents’ orbit, into long years of hospital training. Instead, after graduating with honors from Stanford University in June 2001, she enrolled at Oxford University, which her father had attended as a Rhodes scholar. She arrived just after Sept. 11, 2001, and quickly banded with other Americans traumatized by the attacks. Three decades earlier, Mr. Clinton and his Oxford friends had reckoned with the United States’ role in Vietnam; Ms. Clinton’s group struggled over what Sept. 11 meant for their generation.

Ms. Clinton shared her answer in an earnest essay a few months later in Talk magazine: “For most young Americans I know, ‘serving’ in the broadest sense now seems like the only thing to do,” she wrote. “Is banking what’s important right now?” Her words are reminiscent of the young Hillary Clinton, who, as the campaign frequently reminds voters, chose children’s advocacy over corporate work after law school.

But after Oxford, Chelsea Clinton signed up with McKinsey, a consulting company known as an elite business training corps. She was the youngest in her class, hired at the same rank as those with M.B.A. degrees. Her interview was more like a conversation, said D. Ronald Daniel, a senior partner. “That’s why she was a good consultant, because we are professional question-askers and professional listeners,” Mr. Daniel said.

Because clients often prefer McKinsey to remain invisible, the work was quiet, allowing Ms. Clinton and her peers to pretend that she was just another freshly hatched graduate.

“When she was at parties with us, she was one of the group,” said Gautam Mukunda, whose office was a few doors down from hers. “From what I know of her father, he has never been in any room in which he was not the center of attention, starting from before he became president. Chelsea has a deeply admirable ability to yield focus.”

Last fall, Ms. Clinton moved on, taking a job analyzing investments at Avenue Capital Group, a hedge fund run by Marc Lasry, a loyal donor to Democratic causes generally, and Clinton-related ones specifically. The company invests its $18 billion in the debt of troubled businesses.

Friends say financial independence is important to Ms. Clinton; she may improve on her low-six-figure McKinsey salary by hundreds of thousands of dollars at Avenue because of potential bonuses, industry headhunters say.

Colleagues from McKinsey and Avenue Capital give a uniform account of Ms. Clinton, saying that she came early, stayed late, showed sound judgment and asked no special favors. At a benefit last month for the School of American Ballet, on whose board she serves, Ms. Clinton seemed as hardworking as the other attendees did festive. Most of the women her age wore bright gowns and bare skin, but Ms. Clinton wore a dark pantsuit, her hair smoothed and fastened back into a strawberry-blond sheet. She slipped out before the performance ended, telling friends she had to return to her computer.

The ballet is Ms. Clinton’s chief civic endeavor — she took lessons for years — and it is an impeccable choice: moneyed but low on the paparazzi factor, apolitical and yet evocative of one of New York’s most famous ballet patrons, Jacqueline Kennedy. On benefit committees, Ms. Kargman said, Ms. Clinton is a down-to-earth presence, recently helping to win an argument to keep entry-level tickets to an event to $75.

Many interviews with Ms. Clinton’s friends followed the same pattern: requests not to be identified in the article, followed by warm descriptions of Ms. Clinton, then moments of anxiety that she would find out about the praise. Still, in more than a dozen interviews, a consensus portrait emerged, that of a sincere, serious woman who, consciously or not, has picked up a few politicianlike habits.

In the Public View

Often taking positions similar to those of her parents, Ms. Clinton discusses policy more than politics, and easily summons statistics — the number of uninsured in this category, the cost of expanding coverage in that one — to support her arguments.

Ms. Clinton seems acutely aware that others are always observing her; classmates at Stanford noticed that she was always in full makeup, as if she expected to be photographed at any moment. (More recently, she exercised with a personal trainer who specializes in pageant contestants.) At dinner parties and weddings, she seems wary of eavesdroppers and gawkers.

But when Ms. Clinton is introduced, she often comes across as an inquisitive student. Daniela Amini, a friend, recently watched her navigate a dinner table full of strangers by asking well-informed questions about subjects like Iranian history, antique carpets and Russian literature.

Leslie H. Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, has watched the deliberate way Ms. Clinton navigates the award-and-cocktail-party circuit. “She’s more than aware that she could be a week’s worth of headlines or a month’s worth of rumors,” Mr. Gelb said.

Ms. Clinton also appears patient with the strangers who constantly insert themselves into her day. “Way more than any actor, she would be entitled to the eye roll,” said Ms. Kargman, who recently tried to carry on a conversation with Ms. Clinton at a party as fan after fan interrupted to talk about her parents.

In her mother’s 2000 Senate race, Ms. Clinton took to voters “like a duck to water,” said William Dal Col, who managed the campaign of Rick A. Lazio, the Republican opponent. Still, she bridled at interview or public-speaking requests.

In “The Girls in the Van” (St. Martin’s Press, 2001), her book about covering the campaign for The Associated Press, Beth J. Harpaz described how, at one event at a home for the elderly, a moderator asked Ms. Clinton to let the audience hear her voice. She said one word — hello — and then backed away from the microphone, without so much as a glad-to-be-here.

Since then, Ms. Clinton has become a more assured speaker, appearing at a ballet benefit here, a United Nations ceremony there. She rarely says anything surprising. She does not have to; people seem delighted just to watch her lips move and hear sound emerge. In 2004, Ms. Clinton joined a last-minute blitz through Florida, campaigning with four other Democratic daughters and using lines like, “I knew I had to be here today because the stakes are too high.”

Ms. Clinton has also become an active participant in her family’s activities. Last fall, she was a co-chairwoman of a fund-raising weekend for her father’s foundation, billed as a post-60th-birthday celebration for him. Attending would “advance the work he has done throughout his life — solving problems, empowering people and even saving lives,” she told prospective donors, asking them for five- and six-figure contributions.

Terry McAuliffe, her co-chairman, stressed Ms. Clinton’s role in an interview at the time. “She and I have been very involved since Day 1,” he told a New York Times reporter.

Ms. Clinton’s friends call her devoted to her mother and her presidential run, if a bit leery of the accompanying madness of the race. Vanessa Kerry, whose father lost the 2004 election, explained the painful dilemma an adult child of a candidate faces: stay far from the campaign and maintain normalcy, or support the parent you love at the cost of your own privacy.

Ms. Kerry still feels bruised by the scrutiny she endured, the false rumors — one involved a fling with the actor Ben Affleck — and the attacks on her father, Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat. “My skin never thickened,” Ms. Kerry said.

As for Ms. Clinton, who is far more a focus of public fascination, Ms. Kerry said, “I can’t have any conception of what she goes through.”

This time around, Ms. Clinton, who never had a sibling to share or dilute the pressures on her, has a partner whose life is an uncanny mirror of her own. Marc Mezvinsky, who works at Goldman Sachs in New York, is also the child of two politician parents, Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky and Edward M. Mezvinsky, both former members of Congress. And Marc Mezvinsky survived a humiliating parental scandal, when his father pleaded guilty in 2002 to swindling dozens of investors out of $10 million.

As a confidence man, the elder Mr. Mezvinsky was the name-dropping type. “When he thought it would help, he would call and say, ‘I’m spending the weekend with the Clintons,’ ” said Robert A. Zauzmer, the prosecutor in the case in Pennsylvania. According to court documents, Mr. Mezvinsky bragged to his targets about an earlier friendship between his son and Ms. Clinton, and used his son’s bank account to transfer money undetected. The younger Mr. Mezvinsky, a bespectacled, mop-headed Stanford graduate known for his confidence and teasing sense of humor, “had no clue,” Mr. Zauzmer said.

Mr. Mezvinsky and his father, whose prison term is scheduled to end in November 2008, did not respond to requests for comment.

Ms. Clinton and Mr. Mezvinsky seem serious about a future together, according to friends, some of whom wonder about a White House wedding in the event of a Clinton electoral victory. Their bond is apparent; friends say at parties and other events, the couple are cuddly and affectionate. Ms. Clinton recently attended Sabbath dinner at the home of Ms. Amini’s parents with the hope of learning more about Judaism, Mr. Mezvinsky’s faith. (Ms. Clinton is a Christmas-cookie-baking, churchgoing Methodist.)

In the White House

Now that she is grown up “at least she won’t have to live in the White House” if her mother becomes president, Ms. Shalala said. However, Ms. Clinton may simply be too close with her parents, their lives too intertwined, to stay away.

During her father’s administration, Ms. Clinton was allowed, in classic only-child fashion, into some decidedly adult situations. According to her mother’s memoirs, Ms. Clinton was present when her father and his advisers debated how to acknowledge his affair with Ms. Lewinsky to the nation. During the marathon Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations at Camp David in 2000, Ms. Clinton helped break the tension by chatting with the delegations during breaks.

Dennis Ross, then the lead American negotiator, said “it was not uncommon” to see Ms. Clinton or her mother in briefings during the administration. The two women “could be great sounding boards for the president.” More recently, Senator Clinton has called her daughter one of her two “greatest advisers,” along with her husband.

If her mother becomes president, Chelsea Clinton’s role at the White House, or lack thereof, could be a clue to her own ambitions. She is biding her time, say friends, who toss out possibilities: A life in finance? The Clinton Foundation, which could pass from one generation to the next? Or, would Ms. Clinton run for office herself?

It is a topic of constant speculation in Ms. Clinton’s circles. When Ms. Kargman first heard her deliver a speech at a ballet benefit, a few years ago, she wondered if she was watching the future first female president. “She is going to go all the way,” she thought to herself.

To the public, Ms. Clinton has given just the barest hint of that sort of impulse. In her essay about Sept. 11, she wrote that she felt “a new urgency to play a part in America’s future.” She did not know where life would take her, she said, but one thing was certain. “I will somehow serve my country,” she promised.

NATIONAL SECURITY STUDY MEMORANDUM 200

NSSM 2000: blueprint for de-population

by Jean Guilfoyle

The population-control ideology and the means to achieve it can be found in a U.S. executive-level government document entitled National security study memorandum 200: Implications of worldwide population growth for U.S. security and overseas interests (NSSM 200), published in 1974 and declassified in 1989. Although this plan of action was to be activated in developing countries, it was designed as a two-edged sword that could be swung with equal determination in both developed and developing countries alike. The document was signed by Henry Kissinger and directed to the secretaries of defense, agriculture and central intelligence, the deputy secretary of state, and the administrator of the Agency for International Development, with a copy to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The focus of the study was the "international political and economic implications of population growth."

The study identified 13 "key countries" in which "special U.S. political and strategic interests" existed. The targeted nations were: India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria, Mexico, Indonesia, Brazil, the Philippines, Thailand, Egypt, Turkey, Ethiopia and Colombia.

Security interests

U.S. security interests were seen as threatened by demographic and political realities in lesser-developed countries (LDCs), and the age structure of high-fertility nations with large numbers of young people. Young people were considered a potential threat to multi-national corporations. Revolutionary actions and counter-revolutionary coups in countries with large populations were viewed as posing the danger of expropriation of foreign investments, and creating political or national security problems for the U.S. Also mentioned were racial, ethnic, cultural, and religious factors, where "differential rates of population growth (exists) among these groups."

A major U.S. security interest concerned access to "reserves of higher-grade ores of most minerals," and the terms for exploration and exploitation of those resources. The study advised that civil disturbances affecting the "smooth flow of needed materials" would be less likely to occur "under conditions of slow or zero population growth."

The expression of resistance to global population strategies at the World Population Conference in Bucharest, in August, 1974, created a need to "persuade" LDC leaders to assist in population reduction within the targeted countries. Those objections came from countries wanting to ensure that any "new international economic order" would respect national sovereignty. In addition, "There was general consternation ... when at the beginning of the conference the (World Population Plan of Action) was subjected to a slashing, five-pronged attack led by Algeria, with the backing of several African countries; Argentina, supported by Uruguay, Brazil, Peru, and ... some other Latin American countries; the Eastern European group, less Romania; the PRC and the Holy See" (86-87).

World-wide propaganda

The attack led eventually to a worldwide propaganda effort to "create demand" for population-control technologies, and extol the benefits of population reduction within the nations: "Development of a worldwide political and popular commitment to population stabilization is fundamental to any effective strategy. This requires the support and commitment of key LDC leaders. This will only take place if they clearly see the negative impact of unrestricted population growth and believe it is possible to deal with this question through governmental action" (100).

Sensitive to the charge of interference in the internal policies of nations, the document said, "We must take care that our activities should not give the appearance ... of an industrialized country policy directed against the LDCs." In light of this, the document called for "integrating population factors in national plans, particularly (within) health services, education, agricultural resources and development" while relating "population policies and family-planning programs to major sectors of development: health, nutrition, agriculture, education, social services, organized labor, women's activities, and community development" (21-2).

Sharpening this protective camouflage, the document recommended the integration of family planning with health programs: "Finally, providing integrated family planning and health services on a broad basis would help the U.S. contend with the ideological charge that the U.S. is more interested in curbing the numbers of LDC people than it is in their future and well-being" (117).

In the establishment of American-funded public policy, NSSM 200 suggested that population factors and population policies should be considered in all "Country Assistance Strategy Papers and Development Assistance Program multi-year papers.... Since population growth is a major determinant of increases in food demand," the document continued, "the allocation of scarce PL480 (food) resources should take account of what steps a country is taking in population control as well as food production."

Again, a cautionary warning accompanied the recommendation: "In these sensitive relationships, however, it is important in style as well as substance to avoid the appearance of coercion" (106-107). It was also recommended that other organizations, agencies, multilateral institutions and embassies participate in the establishment of population initiatives where resistance was prevalent. The use of satellite communications for propaganda was also recommended: "Beyond seeking to reach and influence national leaders, improved worldwide support for population-related efforts should be sought through increased emphasis on mass media and other population education and motivation programs by the UN, USIA (U.S. Information Agency) and USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development). We should give higher priorities in our information programs worldwide for this area and consider expansion of collaborative arrangements with multilateral institutions in population education programs" (117).

The role of the Department of State and USAID in the formation of "the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA) to generate a multilateral effort in population as complement to the bilateral actions of AID and other donor countries" was described (121). Acting through the UNFPA gave the additional benefit of avoiding "the danger that some LDC leaders will see developed-country pressures for family planning as a form of economic or racial imperialism; this could well create a serious backlash."

Imperialist motivation

"The U.S. can help to minimize charges of an imperialist motivation behind its support of population activities by repeatedly asserting that such support derives from a concern with: (a) the right of the individual to determine freely and responsibly their number and spacing of children ... and (b) the fundamental social and economic development of poor countries" (114-5).

Finally, an "alternative" view was presented, which maintained that "mandatory programs may be needed and that we should be considering these possibilities now." Here, it was asked whether food would be considered "an instrument of national power" (118-120).

NSSM 200 was a statement composed after the fact. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the U.S. had worked diligently behind the scenes to advance the population-control agenda at the United Nations, contributing the initial funding of $1 million.

A Department of State telegram, dated July 1969, reported the support of John D. Rockefeller III, among others, for the appointment of Rafael Salas of the Philippines as senior officer to co-ordinate and administer the UN population program. The administrator of the UN Development Program reported confidentially that he preferred someone such as Salas who had the "advantage of color, religion (Catholic) and conviction."

Why should this be a matter of interest to other countries? For two reasons. First, NSSM 200 describes the ideology and the methods for instituting population policies within sovereign nations. Second, in order to recognize the forceful determination of the program's propagators.

But there is another reason: look at us and learn. The people most seriously damaged by such a program will always be the people of the advocate nation itself. Former under-secretary for global affairs Timothy Wirth, when asked about the abortion issue by a reporter, responded lightly, "It's just another technology."

The U.S. has lost over 36 million children to abortion since 1973. It would be impossible to calculate the numbers lost through abortifacient drugs and devices. This much we do know: over 30 per cent of our youth between the ages of 15 and 25 are gone.



Copyright © 1998 Interim Publishing. Permission granted for reproduction when credit is given to The Interim newspaper.
"The Interim is published 12 times a year by Interim Publishing Company Limited,
53 Dundas St. E., Toronto, Ontario, M5B 1C6, (416) 368-0259, Fax (416) 368-8575.
Views of columnists and bylined feature writers as expressed are not necessarily those of the Interim."

Managing editor: Mike Mastromatteo

Source: http://www.theinterim.com/july98/20nssm.html

SATANIC VERSES


16 July 2007, 14:25

35 percent heavy metal songs have Satanist content - expert



Moscow, July 16, Interfax - Most heavy metal songs are about murder and suicide, the Serbsky State Research Center for Social and Forensic Psychiatry professor Fyodor Kondratyev opines.

‘Having researched 700 most popular heavy metal songs revealed that half of them is about murder, 7 percent is positive about suicide, and 35 percent preaches a variety of Satanist ideologies,’ Kondratyev said in his interview published in Rossiyskaya Gazeta daily on Monday.

He shared with the journalists that according to the American National Education Association every year near 6,000 young Americans kill themselves under the influence of music like that.

According to the expert, Satanism is popular among the teenagers from problematic families, who aim at ‘taking vengeance on the society’ and ‘look for the similarly-minded teens - so their stress mollifies and they start thinking they are better that the normal children.’

The professor said that according to the information he got during a forensic psychiatric examination of a criminal, in Moscow there were five strong Satanist groups with 1,000 members, while in Russia there over 100 groups like that.

The same criminal said that during the previous five years the Satanists had committed over 20 ritual murders, Kondratyev said.

However, he added, in today’s Russia it is hardly possible to put somebody into jail for on a ritual homicide accusation.

‘Good defenders and threatening of witnesses may destroy any process. I know it from my years of experience as legal expert,’ he added.


Source: http://www.interfax-religion.com/?act=news&div=3342

Monday, July 30, 2007

DECIDER GUY DEMANDS FURTHER EROSION...

Decider Guy Demands Further Erosion of the Fourth
Saturday July 28th 2007, 11:16 am

If Bush and the neocons have their way, your cell phone will be an official government surveillance device. Of course, your cell phone and computer connected to the internet are already surveillance devices, it is just that Bush and the neocons want to enshrine this fact in law.

“President Bush used his weekly radio address Saturday to urge Congress to modernize a law that governs the interception of communications between suspected terrorists abroad,” reports Voice of America, the official propaganda organ of the U.S. government. In other words, the NSA, CIA, and the Pentagon, through so-called modernization, will be able to legally monitor all “terrorist” communications, that is to say anybody who opposes the government. As we know, the NSA has done this for decades. Bush is simply advertising to make it all this incessant snooping legal and above board.

“Mr. Bush said the 30-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is badly out of date and needs to be updated to include new communication technologies including cell phones and the Internet…. The president said his administration is recommending changes to the law that will allow the government to collect intelligence about foreign targets in foreign locations without obtaining court orders…. He said the changes will facilitate intelligence efforts while protecting American civil liberties.”

FISA already provides the ability to “collect intelligence about foreign targets in foreign locations,” so this statement is, to say the least, disingenuous. Fact of the matter is, Bush—read: the neocons and their kissing cousins, the neoliberals—want to legalize snooping millions of Americans “without obtaining court orders,” that is to say Bush and crew want to further erode the Fourth Amendment. Naturally, in the parlance of Bushzarro world, this is considered “protecting American civil liberties,” when in fact it is the exact opposite.

Here is an excerpt from the commander and decider guy’s radio address earlier today:

To fix this problem, my Administration has proposed a bill that would modernize the FISA statute. This legislation is the product of months of discussion with members of both parties in the House and the Senate—and it includes four key reforms: First, it brings FISA up to date with the changes in communications technology that have taken place over the past three decades. Second, it seeks to restore FISA to its original focus on protecting the privacy interests of people inside the United States, so we don’t have to obtain court orders to effectively collect foreign intelligence about foreign targets located in foreign locations. Third, it allows the government to work more efficiently with private-sector entities like communications providers, whose help is essential. And fourth, it will streamline administrative processes so our intelligence community can gather foreign intelligence more quickly and more effectively, while protecting civil liberties.

Translation: future generations of cell phones will be outfitted with snoop technology, thus making it easy for the government to listen in on your next conversation with Osama, or rather the ghost of Osama—or maybe listen in on a conversation with your brother-in-law who complains a lot about the government. Changing FISA, itself a violation of the Fourth Amendment, assigning it the role of “protecting the privacy interests of people inside the United States,” is simply an effort to sweep the “FISA court” (when a normal court will not do) aside, as this will allow “the government to work more efficiently with private-sector entities like communications providers,” for instance the cozy relationship the government shares with AT&T, which is nothing new (the NSA has collaborated with AT&T and other carriers since the early 1950s to violate the civil liberties of Americans). Bush, or rather his puppet masters, simply want to codify all of this in law and slap a sticker on the package declaring it protects the privacy of all Americans.

Meanwhile, in a radio address Nancy Pelosi declared the “threat of terrorist violence against the United States is growing. al-Qaeda is gaining strength, and Osama bin Laden continues to elude capture. There is not a moment to spare to take the steps necessary to keep the American people safe,” or continue the destruction of the Bill of Rights, long ago put on the endangered list, as there is no “al-Qaeda” threat to the “homeland,” or maybe it should be das Vaterland, but simply a drumbeat marching us to tyranny and ultimately slavery, as our rulers are determined to reduce America to slave plantation based on the China model. In order to make that process more efficient, a Stasi- or KGB-like snoop state apparatus is mandatory.

Source: http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=939

POPE SURVEYS POST-VATICAN II TRIALS

Pope Surveys Post-Vatican II Trials

Aide Says He Gives Vision of Realism and Humility

VATICAN CITY, JULY 29, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI says he had great enthusiasm during the Second Vatican Council, but acknowledges the difficulties the Church has faced since those years.

Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi recounted the Pope's words during the most recent edition of the Vatican Television program "Octava Dies." The Vatican spokesman was commenting on the Holy Father's question-and-answer session last Tuesday with priests from two dioceses of northern Italy.

Father Lombardi recalled that the Bishop of Rome answered a priest who spoke of living through the Second Vatican Council, the hopes of "changing the world," and the difficulties of the succeeding years.

The Pontiff replied: "I also lived the time of the Council with great enthusiasm; it seemed that the Church and the world had met again. We had hoped a great deal -- but things showed themselves to be more difficult."

Father Lombardi affirmed that the question-and-answer session had a "relaxed climate of reciprocal confidence among those who have dedicated their lives to so many years of pastoral service in a difficult world that is in constant change."

In this context, "the Pope delineates with a few very effective sketches the Church's path of the last decades, profoundly interpreting it in the context of the contemporary world," the Vatican official added.

Real hope

Father Lombardi said Benedict XVI recalled "above all the cultural crisis of the West that exploded in '68, with the fascination for Marxism and the illusion of creating a new world, and the crumbling of the communist regimes in '89: the fall of the ideologies that did not give room to faith but rather to skepticism.

"The Christian proclamation has to come to terms with this context," the Vatican spokesman added. "And the Church faces it with realism and humility without ceding to the triumphalism of those who think that they have found the way to the new world.

"At the bottom of this is the humility of the Crucified, which will always be contrasted by the great powers of the world, but which generates a real hope that is manifested in the creative vitality of the Church: in her communities and her movements, in the new responsibility of the laity, in ecumenical relations, in liturgical and spiritual experiences.

"The Pope of great theological ideas and great cultural wealth is also the one who helps us to live the simultaneously humble and rich condition of the hope of the Church on its way, as he says: 'With our feet on the ground and our eyes turned toward heaven.'"


Source: http://www.zenit.org/article-20250?l=english

THE FAILED STATE AND YOU...

The Failed State and You: Iraq Offers a Preview of What’s Coming

Published on Sunday, July 29, 2007.



Source: Cryptogon
The people who write about post collapse community, from their urban apartments, are going to wind up being boiled up in large pots, along with rats and road kill.

If you are entertaining any touchy feely fantasies about collapse in large cities, please type “failed state” into Google and start reading. Once that sinks in, read about the standard practice of using children as the minions of warlords.

Do you live in or near any areas with “gang problems”? If you refuse to leave, you better be making friends with those gangs, and figuring out how you can make yourself useful to them, because those guys are going to be your new masters when state authority breaks down. If you’re thinking about what kind of gun to buy, instead of how you’re going to serve the warlord, you might as well consider yourself dead. You, alone, with your gun, will lose. Why? Because the local warlord will have lots of minions at his disposal.


Law enforcement, failed state style

Don’t get me wrong. Maybe the post collapse community theorists are especially hip and have enough advanced and worthless university degrees and fashionable iPod accessories to cocreate, rebirth and revision the future to the point where the realities experienced by the rest of the planet won’t apply to their upmarket, urban enclaves. When the hungry teenage boys show up with their assault rifles, what does the hold-hands-in-a-circle crowd suggest you do? I know: Make sure you have lots of organic hemp hacky sacks and fair trade coffee to go around for the consciousness building session. Be prepared to discuss your past lives, have your chakras realigned and your auras cleansed. Hold a focus group on pithy bumper sticker design…

The dumb, vaguely New Age talk about community only makes sense to people who are totally ignorant of basic, observable realities on the ground. The warlord phenomenon springs forth from any power vacuum, anywhere there are groups comprised of more than a few dozen people. It’s like the sun rising in the East each morning. You can count on it.

Now, what are your options, as collapse accelerates? I see three general categories.

Accepting Rule by the Local Warlord:

To increase your chances of having a favorable relationship with a warlord and his minions, it helps if you have some of the following in common with them: Language, race, religion and other common cultural referents. In the U.S. “common cultural referents” for the warlords likely to be encountered will mostly fall into two main categories:

Category 1: Urban Poor— Rap music, mongrel dogs, lowered cars, tattoos, etc.

Category 2: Messianic Christianity— Deeply deranged and heavily armed.

You will want to think of ways to get the warlord to see your existence as somehow useful to him. Your “costs of doing business” may be lower, meaning, you might be allowed to exist under less harsh conditions than someone who is outside the warlord’s gang/tribe.

If this option seems vaguely familiar, it is! Warlords behave just like governments in collapsing states, but at a substate or local level. You have probably noticed how the U.S. Government no longer bothers itself with even maintaining an appearance of following the law. It just does what it wants. This is de facto law, or law by gun. The main difference between the failing state and the failed state has to do with the number of lawless aspirants to power. Failed states are characterized by pitched intergang violence as turf boundaries are determined.

Maybe you want to become a local warlord yourself? Well, if you’re just thinking about that idea now, chances are, you’re too late. There’s probably a local gang near you that has already determined who’s running the show. Hint: It’s not going to be you.

Mutual Aid:

Semi autonomous villages and homesteads can form loose mutual defense arrangements. When any node is threatened, a militia, drawn from all nodes, comes to the aid of the threatened node. This is not too common in practice, but there are some examples.

Look at Switzerland and the way their military works. I don’t need to go into this in detail here, but it’s very interesting and salient to this discussion. The Swiss military is cross between a standing army and a militia. A few key points:

* No generals in peacetime; during war, the Parliament elects a general

* Small core of professional full-time officers, instructors and staff, while ALL ABLE-BODIED MEN AGED 19-31 SERVE IN THE MILITARY AND THEN BECOME PART OF A READY MILITARY RESERVE (MILITIA)

* Because of the point above, the population is heavily armed; military grade assault weapons and a ready supply of ammunition are kept in most Swiss homes

Why does this work in Switzerland?

The Swiss are all pretty much on the same page in terms of core cultural referents. This is the source of stability and the reason why no unitary warlord is necessary. If you think that the U.S. is having a hard time in Iraq, that is nothing compared to what an invader would face in Switzerland.

Farmers in South Africa are trying mutual aid arrangements as they are now routinely attacked and murdered by armed gangs. See: The Farmer Armies of South Africa:

Conserv Security assesses individual communities and draws up security plans for them. This includes rosters for community patrols, firearms training, rural survival skills and self-defence. The company serves about 3 000 landowners in the area.

Roberts said that in a three-month period, patrols by local armed landowners had helped bring down the crime rate in Muldersdrift from one attack every two-and-a-half days to one every 21 days. Police have slammed these local farmer patrols, saying they went against the laws of the country.

The unofficial farmer armies patrolling the Muldersdrift streets, many of them set up in response to the government’s decision to phase out military commandos in 2003, is illustrative of a growing trend around the country.

More and more farmers are organising themselves into rural protection units, and in many provinces have rejected the South African Police Service’s sector policing strategy as incompetent. The complaints range from police being involved in crime to a lack of vehicles and staff.

The initiative appears to be led by ex-military officials who, in the northern reaches of the country, lead military-style exercises against suspected criminals with names like Operation Clenched Fist.

Velskoen-and-firearm brigades have led to a significant drop in crime, according to Gideon Meiring, chairperson of the TAU’s safety and security committee.

Meiring, a former army colonel in charge of military intelligence, said candidly that his point of departure was that “it’s either us or them”.

Meiring was unapologetic about the security support groups he has helped to set up in provinces like Limpopo, North West and Mpumalanga, saying the police “are not part of the solution but part of the bloody problem”.

He has been involved in setting up what the TAU calls the Greenlight Police, an association of patrolling farmers with flashing green lights fixed to the top of their vehicles.

Meiring also runs frequent three-day self-defence courses. Men, women and children are taught first aid, how to use ordinary household items to protect themselves, and how to fire AK-47s, R-4s and pump-action rifles.

If you’re going to go with mutual aid, begin training early and often. Think of the Swiss, but expect a situation more like the one the South African farmers are facing.

Deep Isolation

It is said that no man is an island, but you’ll probably be left alone if you can figure out how to live in the Yukon or remote parts of Alaska. A place many miles from nowhere, coupled with extreme climatic conditions can work to your advantage.

Of course, this option is only viable for highly motivated individuals who don’t require much outside human interaction. (There aren’t many people like this, by the way.) Extreme weather conditions mean that you would have to focus a great deal of time, energy and money on the problem of simply surviving the elements. Anyone who goes with this option, however, understands the warlord issue.

This is truly an “Army of One,” or, “An Army of a Few.” There aren’t any warlords because there aren’t any minions. To be out in these places in the first place, even while states are up and running, is difficult. In a failed state situation, these areas will most likely be cut off from the starving hordes in the cities and the resulting chaos.

Now, for those of you reading in large cities, which is most of you, here’s a current example of what you have to look forward to if state authority breaks down.

Via: CNN:

The fight between U.S.-led forces and militants in and near Baghdad and the sectarian civil war raging in the capital has overshadowed another grim wartime reality — the factional strife in Iraq’s southern Shiite heartland.

Experts who study the region attribute the instability to turf battles among “warlords” and their fighters in an unstable political and social environment that is coming to resemble a failed state.

“Iraqi politicians are progressively turning into warlords,” Peter Harling, senior analyst with the Middle East Program of the Brussels, Belgium-based International Crisis Group. What has been unfolding in the south, he says, is a “very crude struggle over power and resources.”

“Violence has become the routine means of interacting with the local population,” Harling says of the militias, which have filled the power vacuum after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

“They see no interest in seeing a functional state emerge.”

Source: http://www.blacklistednews.com/view.asp?ID=3881