Sunday, April 11, 2010

As for Ephraim, their glory shall fly away like a bird


Hosea 9


1Rejoice not, O Israel, for joy, as other people: for thou hast gone a whoring from thy God, thou hast loved a reward upon every cornfloor.

2The floor and the winepress shall not feed them, and the new wine shall fail in her.

3They shall not dwell in the LORD's land; but Ephraim shall return to Egypt, and they shall eat unclean things in Assyria.

4They shall not offer wine offerings to the LORD, neither shall they be pleasing unto him: their sacrifices shall be unto them as the bread of mourners; all that eat thereof shall be polluted: for their bread for their soul shall not come into the house of the LORD.

5What will ye do in the solemn day, and in the day of the feast of the LORD?

6For, lo, they are gone because of destruction: Egypt shall gather them up, Memphis shall bury them: the pleasant places for their silver, nettles shall possess them: thorns shall be in their tabernacles.

7The days of visitation are come, the days of recompence are come; Israel shall know it: the prophet is a fool, the spiritual man is mad, for the multitude of thine iniquity, and the great hatred.

8The watchman of Ephraim was with my God: but the prophet is a snare of a fowler in all his ways, and hatred in the house of his God.

9They have deeply corrupted themselves, as in the days of Gibeah: therefore he will remember their iniquity, he will visit their sins.

10I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness; I saw your fathers as the firstripe in the fig tree at her first time: but they went to Baalpeor, and separated themselves unto that shame; and their abominations were according as they loved.

11As for Ephraim, their glory shall fly away like a bird, from the birth, and from the womb, and from the conception.

12Though they bring up their children, yet will I bereave them, that there shall not be a man left: yea, woe also to them when I depart from them!

13Ephraim, as I saw Tyrus, is planted in a pleasant place: but Ephraim shall bring forth his children to the murderer.

14Give them, O LORD: what wilt thou give? give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts.

15All their wickedness is in Gilgal: for there I hated them: for the wickedness of their doings I will drive them out of mine house, I will love them no more: all their princes are revolters.

16Ephraim is smitten, their root is dried up, they shall bear no fruit: yea, though they bring forth, yet will I slay even the beloved fruit of their womb.

17My God will cast them away, because they did not hearken unto him: and they shall be wanderers among the nations.

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The sin of Ephraim


Hosea 9


Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Bible


(Excerpt)


Verses 11-17

In the foregoing verses we saw the sin of Israel derived from their fathers; here we see the punishment of Israel derived to their children; for, as death entered by sin at first, so it is still entailed with it. We may observe, in these verses,

I. The sin of Ephraim. Some expressions are here which describe that. 1. They did not hearken to God (v. 17); they did not give attention to the voice either of his word or of his rod; they did not believe what he said, nor would they be ruled by him. He told them their duty, their interest, their danger, but they regarded him not; all he said to them by his words and by his prophets was to them as a tale that is told; and then no wonder that we hear, 2. Of the wickedness of their doings (v. 15), the downright malice that was in their sins; they were not infirmities, but daring presumptions. How can those but do wickedly who will not hearken to the word of God, that would teach and persuade them to do well? And no wonder that there were wicked doings among them when, 3. Their worship was corrupt (v. 15): All their wickedness is in Gilgal, which was a place infamous for idolatry, as appears, ch. 4:15; 12:11; Amos 4:4; 5:5. It is probable that the idolaters chose that place for their head-quarters because it had been famous in other ages for solemn transactions between God and Israel, as Jos. 5:2, 10; 1 Sa. 10:8; 11:15. There, where the source of idolatry was, whence it spread through the kingdom, there it might be said that all their wickedness was, for all other wickedness owed its origin to that. Corruptions in worship make way for corruptions in morals. The mother of harlots is the mother of all other abominations, Rev. 17:5. The learned Grotius conjectures that there is a mystical sense here. Golgotha in Syriac is the same with Gilgal in Hebrew, and therefore he thinks this may have reference to the putting of Christ to death at Golgotha, which was the greatest sin of the Jewish nation, and of which it might truly be said, All their wickedness was summed up in that. And no wonder that the people did wickedly, both in worship and conversation, when 4. All their princes were revolters; the whole succession of the kings of the ten tribes did evil in the sight of the Lord, or all the set of judges and magistrates at this time were wicked; they turned aside to sinful ways and persisted in those ways.

II. The displeasure of God against Ephraim for sin. This is variously expressed here, to show what a provocation sin is to the pure eyes of his glory, and how odious it makes the sinner to him. 1. He departs from them, v. 12. When they revolt from him, and withdraw from their allegiance to him, how can they expect but that he should depart from them and withdraw both his protection and his bounty? And well may his threatening be enforced as it is, and made terrible: Woe also unto them when I depart from them! Note, Those are in a woeful condition indeed whom God has forsaken. Our weal or woe depends upon the gracious presence of God with us; and, if he goes, all weal goes with him and all woes come upon us. God has forsaken him; persecute and take him. Saul knew this when he laid such an emphasis upon this part of his complaint, The Philistines make war against me, and God has departed from me. Nay, he does not only depart from them, but, 2. He hates them. In Gilgal, where all their wickedness is, there I hated them. There, where the abominations of sin are committed, there God abominates the sinners. In Gilgal he had bestowed many tokens of his favour upon their ancestors, but now that is the place where he hates them for their base ingratitude. Nay, he not only hates them, but, 3. He will love them no more, will never take them into his favour again; the breach between God and Israel is wide as the sea, which cannot be healed. This agrees with what he had said, (ch. 1:6, 7), I will no more have mercy upon the house of Israel, the ten tribes. 4. He will discard them, and have no more to do with them: For the wickedness of their doings, I will drive them out of my house. He will no longer own them as his, or as belonging to his family in the world; he will turn them out of doors as unfaithful tenants that pay him no rent, as unprofitable servants that do him neither credit nor work. Note, Those that profane God's house can expect no other than to be expelled his house, and no longer suffered to be either lodgers in it or retainers to it. Nay, he will not only drive them out of his house, but, 5. He will drive them far enough (v. 17): My God will cast them away, not only out of his house, but out of his sight; he will quite abandon and reject them; they shall be cast-aways. God said that he would drive them out of his house, and here the prophet seconds it, as one that knew his Master's mind very well: My God will cast them away. See with what comfort and pleasure he calls God his God. Note, When others disown God, and are disowned by him, it is a very great satisfaction to good people that they can call God their God, can cheerfully own him and see themselves owned by him—all revolters, all ruined, yet God is my God.

III. The fruit of this displeasure, in the cutting off and abandoning of their posterity, which is the judgment here threatened again and again. Observe here,

1. How numerous Ephraim seemed likely to be. The name Ephraim is derived from fruitfulness, Gen. 41:51. Joseph is a fruitful bough, Gen. 49:22. And Moses's blessing foretold the ten thousands of Ephraim, Deu. 33:17. This was his glory, v. 11. For this he seemed designed by him that appoints the bounds of men's habitation; for Ephraim, as I saw Tyrus, is planted in a pleasant place, to encourage his increase, which one may expect as from a tree planted by the river's side. Ephraim is as strong and rich as ever Tyre was, and as proud and secure. The Chaldee paraphrase gives this sense of it, The congregation of Israel, while they observed the law, was like to Tyrus in prosperity and security.

2. How few Ephraim should be (v. 11): Their glory shall fly away like a bird; their children shall be taken away and the hopes of their families cut off. All their glory shall fly as an eagle towards heaven, swiftly and irrecoverably. Note, Worldly glory is glory that will fly away; but those that have their God their glory have in him an unfading everlasting glory. Ephraim has been as a fruitful tree. But now Ephraim is smitten, is blasted; their root is dried up; they shall bear no fruit, v. 16. If the root be dried, the branch must wither of course. Observe,

(1.) God's threatening this judgment of the destroying of their children. [1.] They shall perish of themselves by the immediate hand of God (v. 11): They shall fly away from the birth, and from the womb, and from the conception. Some of their children shall die as soon as they are born; the cradle shall be presently turned into a coffin. Others of them shall be still-born, or the womb shall be their grave, and their death there their mothers' death too. Of others their mothers shall miscarry almost as soon as they have conceived, and they shall be as untimely fruit. See how easily God can, and how justly we are sure he might, root out the whole race of mankind, that degenerate, guilty, obnoxious race, and blot out the name of it from under heaven; it is but doing as he does by Ephraim here, writing them all childless, making all their glory to fly away from the birth, the womb, and the conception, drying up their root, that they bear no fruit, and their business is done in a few years. [2.] They shall perish by the hand of their enemies; they shall die violent deaths (v. 12): "Though they bring up their children to some maturity, though they escape the diseases and deaths which the infant age is liable to, and are thought to be reared past danger, yet will I bereave them (v. 12), by one judgment or other, so that there shall not be a man left to build up their families and bear up their name." Again (v. 13), Ephraim shall bring forth his children to the murderer. The mothers shall travail with pain to bear their children, and a great deal of care, and pains, and cost shall be bestowed upon the nursing of them, and when a cruel enemy comes and puts all to the word, young and old, without mercy, then they seem but as lambs that were all this while fed for the slaughter. Note, It is a great alloy to the comfort parents have in their children that they know not what they have brought them forth and brought them up for, perhaps for the murderer, or, which is worse, to be themselves the plagues of their generation. It is threatened again (v. 16), Though they bring forth, yet will I slay even the beloved fruit of their womb, those children that they are most fond of. Note, The parents' love is no security to the children's lives; nay, sometimes death is commissioned to take the darlings of the family and leave the burdens of it. When sentence was passed upon Israel in the wilderness, that they should all perish there, this mercy was mixed with the wrath, that their children should nevertheless enter into that rest which they through unbelief could not enter into. But this is a total and final rejection; even their children shall be cut off, and the land shall escheat to the crown, ob defectum sanguinis—shall be lost for want of heirs. The Chaldee-paraphrase, and many of the rabbin, by the murderers to whom the children were brought forth, understand those that sacrificed their children to Moloch, a sin which was its own punishment, which showed the parents void of bowels and justly left them void of blessings. [3.] Those few that escape and remain shall be dispersed (v. 17): They shall be wanderers among the nations; so the remains of the Jews are at this day, and there is no place in the world where they are a distinct nation.

(2.) The prophet's prayer relating to it (v. 14): Give them, O Lord! what wilt thou give? What shall I ask for a people thus doomed to destruction? It is this; since the decree has gone forth, that they must either die from the womb or be brought forth for the murderer, of the two let them rather die from the womb. Rather let them have no children than have them to be made miserable; for the same reason, when a total ruin was coming on the Jewish nation, Christ said, Blessed is the womb that never bore and the paps that never gave suck, Lu. 23:29. "Give therefore a miscarrying womb and dry breasts; for it is better to fall into the hands of the Lord, whose mercies are great, than into the hands of man." Note, Those that are childless may with this reconcile themselves to the will of God herein, that the time may come when, if they were not so, they would wish they had been so.

Hosea 9

Concise..........Complete

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The distress to come upon Israel. (1-6)
The approach of the day of trouble. (7-10)
Judgments on Israel. (11-17)
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Source: http://www.ewordtoday.com/comments/hosea/mh/hosea9.htm
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Sympathy for Poland


My condolences for the loss of President Lech Kaczynski, his wife, and other officials of the Republic of Poland. My sympathies for the relatives and friends of the departed; Also, my prayers are with all those grieving. May God have mercy upon the land of Pulaski and Chopin.


GDY POKÓJ NIEBIESKI

Gdy pokój niebieski Bóg w duszę mi tchnie,
Choć burzy zagraża mi mi szał,
To jednak we wierze pieśń chwały Mu ślę:
„Błogo mi, w Panu mam wieczny dział!”
[:Błogo mi:], błogo mi, W Panu mam wieczny dział!

Gdy trwogą śmiertelną przejmuje mię wróg
I grozi mi wciąż jego strzał,
To wiem, że złośnika Zbawiciel już zmógł,
Że zupełne zwycięstwo mi dał.
[:Błogo mi:], błogo mi, W Panu mam wieczny dział!

Ciężary mych grzechów Pan rzucił już w dal,
Gdy za mnie przekleństwem się stał, O, chwal
Go, ma duszo, na wieki Go chwal,
Bo w żywocie zgotował ci dział.
[:Błogo mi:], błogo mi, W Panu mam wieczny dział!

Już żyję w Chrystusie, On gwiazdą jest mą,
W ciemności nie będę się bał;
Ni męki, ni burze zaszkodzić mi śmią,
W Nim pokoju wiecznego mam dział.
[:Błogo mi:], błogo mi, W Panu mam wieczny dział!


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tłumaczenie na jêzyk polski Pa­weł Si­ko­ra,
in Harfa Syjońska. Śpiewnik dla użytku misji wewnętrznej (Cieszyn: 1912).

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Adventist Muslim Relations Summit



4/1/10

COLLEGEDALE, TN—An Adventist Muslim Relations summit sponsored by the North American Division was held at Southern Adventist University March 12-13 in Lynn Wood Hall. Its purpose was to help facilitate Adventists in understanding Islam and connect with Muslims. Guest speakers from around the country included Lucila Reis, Rhoda Lapp, Heidi Guttschuss, Jarod Thomas, Ira and Esther Farley, Jeff Gates, Frank Strack, Justin Jones, Christen Cool and Luther Whiting.

Bryan Gallant, Director of North American Division Adventist Muslim Relations, invited the featured speaker for the event—former US Congressman and representative to the United Nations General Assembly, Mark Siljander, Ph.D. Siljander is also author of “A Deadly Misunderstanding.” He spoke about being a right-wing evangelical who turned his own misunderstandings of Muslims and Islam into deeper study of the Bible for answers. God's response began a personal, religious and political journey that changed his life, and brought him into contact with leaders in remote and volatile areas of the world. Using the example of Jesus, coupled with respect and humility, he told how God is using him to forge deep ties with these political and religious leaders and become a conduit for bringing peace and healing to these countries as well as helping heal the rift between these countries and the West.

The summit gave important information regarding how to connect with leaders in the area already involved in bridging the gap between Muslims and Christians, as well as providing resources in the form of books and DVD's. For more information, please visit http://www.amfaatlanta.com/.

By Jan Levin



Georgia-Cumberland Conference Mission for Shared Leadership :Following the apostolic model, pastors and teachers partner with each member, resourcing and developing spiritual leaders for effective ministry. .


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The Priesthood



Does the Bible teach that the Lord Jesus Christ instituted a special class of men in the church known as.priests who would be given the authority to reconcile men with God through the Mass and through confession,and penance? The answer to that question, as we shall see, is quite simply ‘no’.
First of all, as we noted in the previous chapter, the whole concept of continuing sacrifices is completely-contradictory to the teaching of the Word of God. The Lord Jesus did not commission or institute a human,priesthood, beginning with the apostles, who would continue the offering of sacrifices in a Mass. All sacrifices.have now been abolished because the ‘once of all’ sacrifice of Jesus Christ is complete. Since the sacrifices.have been abolished (Heb. 10) there is no longer any need for a priesthood. Whatever it was the Lord Jesus was.commissioning for his apostles to do, it was not to authorize them to become priests who would continue his.sacrifice in the offering of a Mass.


Read more of this revealing article @
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Pope Benedict Stalled Child Molestation Case, 1985 Letter Shows

GILLIAN FLACCUS 04/ 9/10 10:52 PM


LOS ANGELES — The future Pope Benedict XVI resisted pleas to defrock a California priest with a record of sexually molesting children, citing concerns including "the good of the universal church," according to a 1985 letter bearing his signature.

The correspondence, obtained by The Associated Press, is the strongest challenge yet to the Vatican's insistence that Benedict played no role in blocking the removal of pedophile priests during his years as head of the Catholic Church's doctrinal watchdog office.

The letter, signed by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was typed in Latin and is part of years of correspondence between the diocese of Oakland and the Vatican about the proposed defrocking of the Rev. Stephen Kiesle, who pleaded no contest to misdemeanors involving child molestation in 1978.

The Vatican confirmed Friday that it was Ratzinger's signature and said it was a typical form letter used in laicization cases. Attorney Jeffrey Lena said the matter proceeded "expeditiously, not by modern standards, but by those standards at the time," and that the bishop was to guard against further abuse.

Another spokesman, the Rev. Ciro Benedettini, said the letter showed no attempt at a cover-up. "The then-Cardinal Ratzinger didn't cover up the case, but as the letter clearly shows, made clear the need to study the case with more attention, taking into account the good of all involved."

The diocese recommended removing Kiesle (KEEZ'-lee) from the priesthood in 1981, the year Ratzinger was appointed to head the Vatican office that shared responsibility for disciplining abusive priests.

The case then languished for four years at the Vatican before Ratzinger finally wrote to Oakland Bishop John Cummins. It was two more years before Kiesle was removed; during that time he continued to do volunteer work with children through the church.

In the November 1985 letter, Ratzinger says the arguments for removing Kiesle were of "grave significance" but added that such actions required very careful review and more time. He also urged the bishop to provide Kiesle with "as much paternal care as possible" while awaiting the decision, according to a translation for AP by Professor Thomas Habinek, chairman of the University of Southern California Classics Department.

Lena, the Vatican attorney, said "paternal care" was a way of telling the bishop he was responsible for keeping Kiesle out of trouble. Lena said Kiesle was not accused of any child abuse in the 5 1/2 years it took for the Vatican to act on the laicization.


The future pope also noted that any decision to defrock Kiesle must take into account the "good of the universal church" and the "detriment that granting the dispensation can provoke within the community of Christ's faithful, particularly considering the young age." Kiesle was 38 at the time.

Kiesle had been sentenced in 1978 to three years' probation after pleading no contest to misdemeanor charges of lewd conduct for tying up and molesting two young boys in a San Francisco Bay area church rectory.

Cummins, his bishop, told the Vatican that the priest took a leave of absence and met with a therapist and his probation officer during the three years. It's not clear from the file where Kiesle lived during those years, but Cummins mentions temporary assignments in neighboring dioceses that never worked out.

As his probation ended in 1981, Kiesle asked to leave the priesthood and the diocese submitted papers to Rome to defrock him.

In his earliest letter to Ratzinger, Cummins warned that returning Kiesle to ministry would cause more of a scandal than stripping him of his priestly powers.

"It is my conviction that there would be no scandal if this petition were granted and that as a matter of fact, given the nature of the case, there might be greater scandal to the community if Father Kiesle were allowed to return to the active ministry," Cummins wrote in 1982.

While papers obtained by the AP include only one letter with Ratzinger's signature, correspondence and internal memos from the diocese refer to a letter dated Nov. 17, 1981, from the then-cardinal to the bishop. Ratzinger was appointed to head the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith a week later.

California church officials wrote to Ratzinger at least three times to check on the status of Kiesle's case and Cummins discussed the case with officials during a Vatican visit, according to correspondence. At one point, a Vatican official wrote to say the file may have been lost and suggested resubmitting materials.

Diocese officials considered writing Ratzinger again after they received his 1985 response to impress upon him that leaving Kiesle in the ministry would harm the church, Rev. George Mockel wrote in a memo to the Oakland bishop.

"My own reading of this letter is that basically they are going to sit on it until Steve gets quite a bit older," the memo said. "Despite his young age, the particular and unique circumstances of this case would seem to make it a greater scandal if he were not laicized."

As Kiesle's fate was being weighed in Rome, the priest returned to suburban Pinole to volunteer as a youth minister at St. Joseph Church, where he had been associate pastor from 1972-75.

Kiesle was ultimately laicized on Feb. 13, 1987, though the documents do not indicate how or why. They also don't say what role – if any – Ratzinger had in the decision.

Kiesle continued to volunteer with children, according to Maurine Behrend, who worked in the Oakland diocese's youth ministry office in the 1980s. After learning of his history, Behrend complained to church officials. When nothing was done she wrote a letter, which she showed to the AP.

"Obviously nothing has been done after EIGHT months of repeated notifications," she wrote. "How are we supposed to have confidence in the system when nothing is done? A simple phone call to the pastor from the bishop is all it would take."

She eventually confronted Cummins at a confirmation and Kiesle was gone a short time later, Behrend said.

Kiesle, who married after leaving the priesthood, was arrested and charged in 2002 with 13 counts of child molestation from the 1970s. All but two were thrown out after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional a California law extending the statute of limitations.

He pleaded no contest in 2004 to a felony for molesting a young girl in his Truckee home in 1995 and was sentenced to six years in state prison.

Kiesle, now 63 and a registered sex offender, lives in a Walnut Creek gated community, according to his address listed on the Megan's Law sex registry. An AP reporter was turned away when attempting to reach him for comment.

William Gagen, an attorney who represented Kiesle in 2002, did not return a call for comment.

More than a half-dozen victims reached a settlement in 2005 with the Oakland diocese alleging Kiesle had molested them as young children.

"He admitted molesting many children and bragged that he was the Pied Piper and said he tried to molest every child that sat on his lap," said Lewis VanBlois, an attorney for six Kiesle victims who interviewed the former priest in prison. "When asked how many children he had molested over the years, he said 'tons.'"

Cummins, 82 and now retired, initially told the AP he did not recall writing to Ratzinger about Kiesle, but he remembered when shown the letter with his signature on Friday. He said things had changed over the past quarter-century.

"When he (Ratzinger) took over I think he was following what was the practice of the time, that Pope John Paul was slowing these things down. You didn't just walk out of the priesthood then," Cummins said.

"These things were slow and their idea of thoroughness was a little more than ours. We were in a situation that was hands-on, with personal reaction."

Documents obtained by the AP last week revealed similar instances of Vatican stalling in cases involving two Arizona clergy.

In one case, the future pope took over the abuse case of the Rev. Michael Teta of Tucson, Ariz., then let it languish at the Vatican for years despite repeated pleas from the bishop for the man to be removed from the priesthood.

In the second, the bishop called Msgr. Robert Trupia a "major risk factor" in a letter to Ratzinger. There is no indication in those files that Ratzinger responded.

The Vatican has called the accusations "absolutely groundless" and said the facts were being misrepresented.

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Associated Press writers Brooke Donald in Oakland, Eric Gorski in Denver, John Mone in San Diego, Raquel Maria Dillon in Los Angeles and Victor L. Simpson in Rome contributed to this report.
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Scandal in the Catholic Church: Unholy Week


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OregonLive.com
The cover-up continued under Archbishop (now Cardinal) William Levada in the 1990s, until the archdiocese was finally forced to come clean under Archbishop ...



Huffington Post (blog)
Cardinal William J. Levada weighed in on Holy Thursday with praise for Ratzinger's handling of the rape crisis in the church. ...

Escape From the Black Hole by Ivor Myers Part 1

http://

His eye is on the sparrow


Why should I feel discouraged, why should the shadows come,
Why should my heart be lonely, and long for heaven and home,
When Jesus is my portion? My constant friend is He:
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.

Refrain

I sing because I’m happy,
I sing because I’m free,
For His eye is on the sparrow,
And I know He watches me.

“Let not your heart be troubled,” His tender word I hear,
And resting on His goodness, I lose my doubts and fears;
Though by the path He leadeth, but one step I may see;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.

Refrain

Whenever I am tempted, whenever clouds arise,
When songs give place to sighing, when hope within me dies,
I draw the closer to Him, from care He sets me free;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.

Refrain





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The world cannot hate you; but me it hateth, because I testify of it,..


1After these things Jesus walked in Galilee: for he would not walk in Jewry, because the Jews sought to kill him.

2Now the Jew's feast of tabernacles was at hand.

3His brethren therefore said unto him, Depart hence, and go into Judaea, that thy disciples also may see the works that thou doest.

4For there is no man that doeth any thing in secret, and he himself seeketh to be known openly. If thou do these things, shew thyself to the world.

5For neither did his brethren believe in him.

6Then Jesus said unto them, My time is not yet come: but your time is alway ready.

7The world cannot hate you; but me it hateth, because I testify of it, that the works thereof are evil.

8Go ye up unto this feast: I go not up yet unto this feast: for my time is not yet full come.

9When he had said these words unto them, he abode still in Galilee.

10But when his brethren were gone up, then went he also up unto the feast, not openly, but as it were in secret.

11Then the Jews sought him at the feast, and said, Where is he?

12And there was much murmuring among the people concerning him: for some said, He is a good man: others said, Nay; but he deceiveth the people.

13Howbeit no man spake openly of him for fear of the Jews.


John 7: 1-13.

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Polish president among 132 dead in jet crash


Plane goes down in Russia en route to commemoration of Stalin’s victims


msnbc.com news services
updated 8 minutes ago


SMOLENSK, Russia - Polish President Lech Kaczynski was killed when a plane carrying 132 people crashed in thick fog on its approach to a Russian airport on Saturday, killing everyone on board, officials said.

The governor of the Smolensk region, where the crash took place about 11 a.m. (3 a.m. ET), said no one survived.

"The Polish presidential plane did not make it to the runway while landing. Tentative findings indicate that it hit the treetops and fell apart," Sergei Anufriev said on state news channel Rossiya-24. "Nobody has survived the disaster."

Kaczynski's wife Maria, Central bank governor Slawomir Skrzypek and the chief of Poland's military Franciszek Gagor were among those on board the Tupolev Tu-154 plane, which came down as it neared the airport in western Russia.

Television pictures showed the burning fuselage and fragments of the plane scattered in a forest. The crash occurred about 1.3 miles from the airport.

"The plane caught fire after the crash. Teams began attempting to pull out passengers from the badly damaged airplane," said a Polish Foreign Ministry spokesman in Warsaw.

In the case of a president's death, the speaker of the lower chamber of parliament, Bronislaw Komorowski, takes over as head of state, Komorowski's assistant Jerzy Smolinski, told Reuters.

Katyn massacre

Kaczynski had been flying to Katyn, near Smolensk, to commemorate Russian and Polish victims of Soviet leader Josef Stalin.

Thousands of Polish prisoners of war and intellectuals were murdered at Katyn by Soviet forces in spring 1940 in an enduring symbol for Poles of their suffering under Soviet rule.

Families of those killed at Katyn were also on board the plane, the Polish government official at the airport said.




Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Friday, April 09, 2010

Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you


20And there were certain Greeks among them that came up to worship at the feast:

21The same came therefore to Philip, which was of Bethsaida of Galilee, and desired him, saying, Sir, we would see Jesus.

22Philip cometh and telleth Andrew: and again Andrew and Philip tell Jesus.

23And Jesus answered them, saying, The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified.

24Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.


25He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.


26If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be: if any man serve me, him will my Father honour.


27Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour.


28Father, glorify thy name. Then came there a voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.


29The people therefore, that stood by, and heard it, said that it thundered: others said, An angel spake to him.

30Jesus answered and said, This voice came not because of me, but for your sakes. 31Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out.

32And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.


33This he said, signifying what death he should die.

34The people answered him, We have heard out of the law that Christ abideth for ever: and how sayest thou, The Son of man must be lifted up? who is this Son of man?

35Then Jesus said unto them, Yet a little while is the light with you. Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you: for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth.

36While ye have light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of light. These things spake Jesus, and departed, and did hide himself from them.

37But though he had done so many miracles before them, yet they believed not on him:

John 12:20-37.
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Thursday, April 08, 2010

Lessons from Haiti’s Staggering Catastrophe · April 01, 2010


The catastrophic earthquake that rocked Haiti on January 12, 2010 was unprecedented in its destruction and the misery it caused. It has made a powerful impression on the minds of millions around the world, drawing sympathy and support. “Our hemisphere has seen its share of hardship,” said Hilary Clinton, U.S. Secretary of State, “but there are few precedents for the situation we’re facing in Port-au-Prince.” The images of destruction, death and misery have been shocking. The havoc reeked on Port-au-Prince and the cities and towns throughout that unfortunate country will take many years to restore to normalcy, if ever.
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Lot was told to leave the city of Sodom. He was told that he must go out or be destroyed with it. Do you think that this instruction that was given to Lot is given to us today? If we paid attention to what happened in the Bible story way back then, we would not need any other advice, but to follow what the angels told Lot to do. “Escape with thy life” he was told. God sends the same message to us. Though Lot was not given time to sell his house, his sheep and goats, or his other assets. He wasn’t even given time to collect his belongings. He was not given time to bid his children goodbye. He just had to get out, and get out right away! And not look back! There was no time to leave in an orderly and well managed fashion. You see, my friends, we don’t need the Spirit of Prophecy to tell us to “Get out of the large cities as fast as possible!” We just need the story of Lot. By the way, one such statement is found in Testimonies for the Church, vol. 6, p. 195.

But God has been far more merciful to us. He has given this instruction to us well in advance so that we have time to follow it in an orderly fashion. We can sell our assets. We can buy someplace to live in the country. He will help us, we are told. Moreover, we should do this now so that we can be out of the cities well in advance of the time of trouble that is coming upon the whole world. When the rest of the world is in a famine, you will be able to eat something because you can grow it in your garden.

Listen to this clear statement from Country Living, page 31. “‘Out of the cities; out of the cities!‘’—this is the message the Lord has been giving me. The earthquakes will come; the floods will come; and we are not to establish ourselves in the wicked cities, where the enemy is served in every way, and where God is so often forgotten. The Lord desires that we shall have clear spiritual eyesight.”

I wonder how many people actually believe that those statements apply to us today. Soon it will be impossible move out of the cities, and then they will be trapped.


Read the whole sermon @


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Slum disappears in Rio mudslide; 200 feared dead


Firefighters pull the body of a landslide victim out of the mud in the Morro do Bumba neighborhood of Niteroi near Rio de Janeiro, Thursday, April 8, 2010. At least 200 people were buried and feared dead under the latest landslide to hit a slum in Rio de Janeiro's metropolitan area, authorities said Thursday. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)


Slum disappears in Rio mudslide; 200 feared dead
By BRADLEY BROOKS (AP) – 7 hours ago

NITEROI, Brazil — They are all gone. The Evangelical church where worshippers were praying. A daycare center where kids were playing. The pizza parlor where a family was eating.

All were buried under a mountain of mud, garbage and stone when yet another landslide hit metropolitan Rio de Janeiro late Wednesday. This one swept through the Morro Bumba slum, engulfing as many as 200 people and 60 homes. Nothing was left behind but a massive crater of blackened, sodden earth and the remnants of flimsy brick shacks.

"I had just picked up my 10-year-old son from the day care. We walked down the hill to the street, and within 10 minutes, my community collapsed," said Patricia Faria, 28, crying as she watched heavy machinery dump the remains of her life into a waiting truck. "All I have left is what you see on me — and my son. Thank God, I have my son."

Rio state health secretary Sergio Cortes said it was hard to say how many people were buried in the latest slide. "A worse-case scenario is 200," he told The Associated Press. "We know that about 60 houses were buried."

Already 161 people have been confirmed dead in the heavy rains that began Monday in Rio, most of them swept away in landslides that roared through city slums built on steep, unstable hillsides.

The death toll surpasses that of flooding and mudslides in the southern state of Santa Catarina in 2008, which killed nearly 130 people and displaced about 80,000.

"In our experience, it's an instant death," Pedro Machado, undersecretary of Rio state's Civil Defense department, said of the victims buried by landslides.

Faria said she was certain people were buried inside the Morro Bumba slum's Assembly of God church, which collapsed during nightly services.

Clesio Araujo, 39, said he narrowly escaped the slide, leaving a pizza parlor just a few minutes before the earth gave way. He said a family was still inside.

The destruction was compounded because the slum is largely built atop an old garbage dump, making it especially unstable and vulnerable to the heavy rains, said Agostinho Guerreiro, president of Rio's main association of engineers and architects.

"It is very fragile soil. It couldn't hold. The houses came down, destroying the ones below them," Guerreiro told Globo TV. "It was a tragedy foretold."

The federal government announced an emergency fund of $114 million to help Rio state, where the slum is located, to deal with the mudslides and flooding.

But the money will be of little help to people who have no choice but to live in such precarious sections of the city, said Rosana Fernandes, 43, whose sister, brother-in-law and two young nieces were buried under the mud.

Holding a faded photo of the smiling family, she didn't bother holding back the tears as she explained what it is that leads families to live atop a landfill formed by decades of accumulated garbage.

"Yes, it was a dump. But people are desperate to have a home anywhere," she said. "What else were they going to do? Where else were they supposed to go? This is our reality. They knew the risks, but when you have no money, you have no choice," she said.

Rio officials said they are going to step up forced evictions of slum residents living in at-risk areas. Mayor Eduardo Paes announced that 1,500 families are going to be removed from their homes in at least two Rio slums, and that more evictions are likely.

Officials from Rio state's Civil Defense department said that at least 14,000 people were forced from their homes by the mudslides and that potential slides threatened at least 10,000 other houses in the city.

On Thursday, scores of rescue workers poked at the massive mountain of earth that slid down the hills of the Morro Bumba slum toward a paved road in Niteroi, Rio's sister city of 500,000 people across the Guanabara Bay.

Mounds of soil and garbage rose 40 feet (12 meters) high. A dozen dump trucks were lined up to carry off the debris. Hundreds of onlookers watched as firefighters carried at least four coffins out of the crater created by the slide.

Homeless residents sought shelter in two Evangelical churches just down the road from the slum, where water, food and clothing were handed out. Small children played and slept on dozens of mattresses laid out on church floors.

Niteroi recovery operations were moving slowly: The wet, steep terrain posed a continued threat to anyone trapped in the wreckage and to emergency crews as well, said lead firefighter Alves Souza.

"The work is very intense, given the fact that the volume of material we have here is very large," Souza said.

While it rained only lightly Thursday, the forecast was for heavier rains later in the day and throughout the weekend.

Associated Press Writer Tales Azzoni in Sao Paulo contributed to this report.
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Death toll rises to 25 in north China flooded mine, 13 still missing


English.news.cn 2010-04-09 12:08:33 FeedbackPrintRSS

XIANGNING, Shanxi, April 9 (Xinhua) -- The death toll in the flooded Wangjialing Coal Mine in north China's Shanxi Province rose to 25 Friday as another two miners were found dead by rescuers, rescue headquarters said.

Rescuers are still searching for another 13 unaccounted for, the headquarters said.

As of late Thursday, about 240,000 cubic meters of water had been pumped out, much more than the presumed 130,000 cubic meters.

Seven of nine working sections had been ruled out for any survivors and the targeted areas were narrowed down to two sections, he said.

A total of 261 miners were working below ground when the mine was flooded on March 28. Some 108 miners escaped unharmed while 153 were trapped underground.

On Monday, 115 miners were brought out of the mine alive after being trapped for more than a week.

Editor: Deng Shasha

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Is your browser spying on you?

Technology

Is your browser spying on you?

Microsoft claims Google's Chrome web browser is "stealing your privacy." Are they right?
posted on April 5, 2010, at 8:30 AM


Is your browser spying on you? Photo: Wikimedia commons


Best Opinion: TechNet Edge, Huff. Po. Ars Technica

In an apparent offensive move against Google, Microsoft released an online video this week on its TechNet Edge blog, claiming that Google's Chrome web browser "is stealing your privacy." Narrated by Peter LePage, product manager for the Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser, the video shows how Chrome "collects every keystroke you make," unlike Internet Explorer 8 (IE8), which "keeps your information private." Is this simply a smear by Microsoft, or do Chrome users have reasons for concern? Following, a concise guide to the web browser privacy issue:

How does Google Chrome track what users type?
By instantly sending whatever they enter into Chrome's combination search box-web address bar to Google. This means that, even if you don't intend to actually search for a certain term or visit a particular website, Google "knows" what you've typed, even if you don't hit the "enter" key. "The information is being sent so that the search provider can help the user choose a query right in their browser," says Emil Protalinski in Ars Technica.

How is Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser different?
According to Microsoft's LePage, Internet Explorer 8 doesn't have this privacy issue because it separates the web address bar and the search box. "By keeping these boxes separate," says LePage, "your privacy is better protected and the addresses of the sites you're visiting aren't automatically shared with Microsoft, or anyone else."

Are Microsoft's claims true?
Yes and no. While anything you type in Chrome's search-web address field is sent to Google, anything typed into Internet Explorer's search box — but not the separate web address bar — is also sent to Google, Bing or whatever search engine you've selected to use in your browser.

Is there any way to prevent this from happening?
Yes. Most web browsers have a "private mode," which blocks all search history or other personal information from being recorded, allowing you to surf the web without leaving a digital track. IE's privacy feature is called "InPrivate," Chrome's is dubbed "Incognito." (Firefox and Opera also have similar privacy modes.)

Source: Ars Technica, Huffington Post.
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Source: http://theweek.com/article/index/201526/Is_your_browser_spying_on_you
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50 years after his death, Teilhard de Chardin's spirit is alive

by Thierry Meynard, SJ, and Joe Orso

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ, is buried in Hyde Park, New York, on the grounds of a former Jesuit novitiate. At the cemetery there, in a field bordered by trees, 150 people gathered at his grave, 50 years to the day after his death on April 10, 1955.

A service at Teilhard's grave site was the culmination of a recent conference hosted by Fordham University's philosophy department.

Among them was Korean bishop Vincent Ri Pyung-ho, who has translated much of Teilhard's work from French into Korean. He paid respects to a man whose life has enlightened his own by kissing the earth in front of Teilhard's tomb. Neither Ri nor the others who had gathered had known Teilhard, but they had found in him a master, a prophet, and a poet.

From April 7 to 10, the French and American Chardin associations hosted events that drew about 2,000 people from five continents to Fordham University in New York to celebrate a man whose work continues to evolve.

Teilhard, a geologist, paleontologist, philosopher, and theologian, has inspired social and physical scientists alike to move beyond specializations. He solved many puzzles regarding the first humans by studying them not as an isolated phenomenon but in relation to the soil, vegetation, and other species. At the conference, scientists and others explained how Teilhard's holistic approach has helped them gather data from different disciplines into a coherent whole.

Lothar Schafer, professor of chemistry at the University of Arkansas, explained how Teilhard's thoughts about evolution mesh with new findings in quantum physics. Wangari Maathai, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004, spoke of how Teilhard had helped inspire her work as a government minister in Kenya to empower her countrywomen.

"The Eucharist is celebrated in order to offer on the altar of the whole earth the world's work and suffering in the beautiful words of Teilhard de Chardin," wrote Pope John Paul II in Gift and Mystery. He was referring to prayers in Teilhard's The Mass on the World, which the latter had said 80 years earlier in the Gobi Desert, when he had run out of bread and wine and made the whole earth his altar.

Teilhard continues to draw together scientists, artists, environmentalists, diplomats, and theologians. The fact reflects Teilhard's life, in which diverse interests converged towards the Omega, Christ, the unique mystery in which everything is accomplished.

Silenced by the Church, he had few friends when he died and was unknown by most scientists. Since his death, though, his ideas have animated the minds and hearts of many.

"Of all things the most difficult to contain is the expansion of an idea," Teilhard wrote. "It is enough for truth to appear just once, to a single mind. From that moment nothing can prevent its spreading until it lights up the world. For whatever is truer will come to light, and whatever is better will ultimately become reality."
Fr. Thierry Meynard, SJ, is a professor of philosophy at Fordham University in New York. Joe Orso, a freelance writer in St. Louis, graduated from Fordham University and Columbia University's school of journalism.
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Teilhard de Chardin


TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
1881 - 1955
By Anodea Judith

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a visionary French Jesuit, paleontologist, biologist, and philosopher, who spent the bulk of his life trying to integrate religious experience with natural science, most specifically Christian theology with theories of evolution. In this endeavor he became absolutely enthralled with the possibilities for humankind, which he saw as heading for an exciting convergence of systems, an "Omega point" where the coalescence of consciousness will lead us to a new state of peace and planetary unity. Long before ecology was fashionable, he saw this unity he saw as being based intrinsically upon the spirit of the Earth:
"The Age of Nations is past. The task before us now, if we would not perish, is to build the Earth."


Teilhard de Chardin passed away a full ten years before James Lovelock ever proposed the "Gaia Hypothesis" which suggests that the Earth is actually a living being, a collosal biological super-system. Yet Chardin's writings clearly reflect the sense of the Earth as having its own autonomous personality, and being the prime center and director of our future -- a strange attractor, if you will -- that will be the guiding force for the synthesis of humankind.

"The phrase 'Sense of the Earth' should be understood to mean the passionate concern for our common destiny which draws the thinking part of life ever further onward. The only truly natural and real human unity is the spirit of the Earth. . . .The sense of Earth is the irresistable pressure which will come at the right moment to unite them (humankind) in a common passion.

"We have reached a crossroads in human evolution where the only road which leads forward is towards a common passion. . . To continue to place our hopes in a social order achieved by external violence would simply amount to our giving up all hope of carrying the Spirit of the Earth to its limits."

To this end, he suggested that the Earth in its evolutionary unfolding, was growing a new organ of consciousness, called the noosphere. The noosphere is analogous on a planetary level to the evolution of the cerebral cortex in humans. The noosphere is a "planetary thinking network" -- an interlinked system of consciousness and information, a global net of self-awareness, instantaneous feedback, and planetary communication. At the time of his writing, computers of any merit were the size of a city block, and the Internet was, if anything, an element of speculative science fiction. Yet this evolution is indeed coming to pass, and with a rapidity, that in Gaia time, is but a mere passage of seconds. In these precious moments, the planet is developing her cerebral cortex, and emerging into self-conscious awakening. We are indeed approaching the Omega point that Teilhard de Chardin was so excited about.

This convergence however, though it was predicted to occur through a global information network, was not a convergence of merely minds or bodies -- but of heart, a point that he made most fervently.

"It is not our heads or our bodies which we must bring together, but our hearts. . . . Humanity. . . is building its composite brain beneath our eyes. May it not be that tomorrow, through the logical and biological deepening of the movement drawing it together, it will find its heart, without which the ultimate wholeness of its power of unification can never be achieved?"

In his productive lifetime, Teilhard de Chardin wrote many books, which include the following:
LET ME EXPLAIN
THE APPEARANCE OF MAN
THE DIVINE MILIEU
THE FUTURE OF MAN
HOW I BELIEVE
HYMN OF THE UNIVERSE
LETTERS FROM A TRAVELLER
LETTERS TO LEONTINE ZANTA
THE MAKING OF A MIND
MAN'S PLACE IN NATURE
THE PHENOMENON OF MAN
SCIENCE AND CHRIST
THE VISION OF THE PAST
WRITINGS IN TIME OF WAR
BUILDING THE EARTH


Most of these quotes were taken from Building the Earth, and The Phenomenon of Man, but as I no longer have a copy, but only old notes, I can't quote exact page numbers.

by Anodea Judith, Dec. 96.
SHAKTI7@aol.com
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National disaster exercises, called too costly and scripted, may be scaled back

By Spencer S. HsuFriday, April 2, 2010


The plan was to stage the nation's first live exercise that simulates a nuclear bomb being detonated by terrorists in an American city, with 10,000 emergency responders, U.S. troops and officials playing out their roles in the heart of Las Vegas.

But the Obama administration canceled the Nevada events set for next month after Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), backed by casino and business interests, said it would frighten away tourists and "unacceptably harm" the region's battered economy.

The federal government is also considering whether to scale back next year's National Level Exercise, the annual drill that for the past decade has been a cornerstone of the nation's efforts to prepare for a catastrophic terrorist attack or natural disaster. The 2011 exercise was envisioned by states as a five-day test in the Midwest for a 7.7-magnitude earthquake, but the Federal Emergency Management Agency might instead limit the event to three days and test for a milder earthquake, state and federal officials said.

The decisions are playing into a quiet debate about the future of the large-scale national exercises. Convinced that the drills are the best way to determine whether the nation is prepared for a disaster, some emergency planners and state officials say they fear that as the federal government cuts costs, it may dumb down the tests so participants will pass them more easily. Shying away from the toughest problems, they say, risks repeating the mistakes that were made after Hurricane Katrina, when an unprepared White House and Louisiana governor clashed over who was in charge, how to allocate resources and whether to send in the military.

White House officials and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano say they are trying to improve the national exercises, not undercut them. The drills have grown into unrealistic, costly and over-scripted productions, Napolitano has said, an "elaborate game" rather than opportunities for officials to work through problems.

Since 2005, FEMA has spent $218 million on national exercises, testing scenarios that include an outbreak of the pneumonic plague, chemical attacks and dirty bombs. After this year's nuclear scenario, which was to involve a 10-kiloton bomb, next year's would be the first to posit a natural disaster instead of a terrorist attack.

The Obama White House is also revisiting the broad homeland security system that President George W. Bush established in a series of directives in 2003, seeking to clear up confusion about who is in charge of managing the nation's preparedness and how to track progress.

That review, however, has created wide uncertainty about the administration's plans within the ranks at FEMA, the Pentagon and state emergency agencies, several officials said.

"They're wondering: What is the outcome of the review?" said Daniel J. Kaniewski, deputy director of George Washington University's Homeland Security Policy Institute and a White House homeland security official from 2005 to 2008. "Will they be changing or doing an about-face on exercises? . . . Nobody seems to know."

Some emergency planners at the state level and across federal agencies, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of antagonizing senior officials, said they are concerned that the White House might be easing off the effort.

"The fact that the central United States could face a catastrophic earthquake soon is scary enough, but the fact that FEMA and DHS appear overwhelmed by even doing an exercise on this scenario is very disturbing," said a federal official who has worked on the 2011 effort.

"The effort is regressing, not progressing," said another U.S. official familiar with homeland defense planning, saying some emergency managers expect that the White House could decide to make the exercises simpler, smaller and less frequent.

FEMA Administrator W. Craig Fugate acknowledged that the administration has concerns about whether the large-scale exercises need revamping, but said officials are committed to other kinds of drills, particularly those conducted without notice.

Although the administration is "in lock-step in our continued commitment" to NLEs, he said, "our exercises have to go beyond the large-scale, pre-planned events. We have to do a lot more exercises on a day-to-day basis."

National-level exercises date to 2000, when Congress mandated them to test top government officials' responses to a nuclear, biological or chemical attack. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Bush made the national live exercises the centerpiece of a series of "full-scale, full-system tests" involving 15 scenarios and a constellation of federal, military, state and local agencies.

After Hurricane Katrina, Bush overhauled the program again, increasing the number of exercises, adding a focus on natural disasters and demanding more rigorous follow-up.

Still, the program drew complaints of "exercise fatigue" from many state officials, including Napolitano, who was then the governor of Arizona. In a November 2007 letter to her DHS predecessor, Michael Chertoff, Napolitano said planning for that year's exercise -- which reportedly cost $20 million and involved 26,000 participants -- was "too expensive, too protracted and too removed from a real-world scenario."

Once in her current office, Napolitano talked about streamlining the drills and scaling them back to restore surprise. "When you have months to prepare for an exercise . . . a large part of the exercise's value is lost," she wrote.

In December, DHS abruptly shelved plans to conduct the $15 million exercise in Nevada, a simulated attack that initially had been set on the Las Vegas Strip.

In November, Reid, who faces a tough reelection bid, cited unanimous opposition from the Nevada Chamber of Commerce and lodging and tourism groups.

Two weeks later, FEMA announced it would scale back the exercise to focus on what could be done without state and local participation, settling on a largely Washington-based series of table-top drills and contingency operations. Reid thanked Napolitano for deciding "to cancel this exercise so quickly."

If that decision was related to specific economic and political sensitivities, the debate about next year's earthquake scenario has raised broader questions.

A $30 million planning effort led by FEMA has been based on a disaster that struck the country in the early 1800s: multiple quakes exceeding magnitudes of 7.0 that in rapid succession hit the so-called New Madrid Seismic Zone -- a 200,000-square-mile area over eight states centered around Memphis and St. Louis. A FEMA-funded study predicted that a similar event today would kill or injure 86,000 people, cause $300 billion in losses and cut the nation's "aorta" -- the bridges and pipelines that cross the Ohio and Mississippi rivers.

Kentucky Emergency Manager John W. Heltzel, who is chairman of the eight-state Central United States Earthquake Consortium, objected to FEMA proposals to scale back the exercise, writing to Fugate last month that states "unanimously agreed that we will proceed" with the five-day event.

State officials said the nation's response system must be tested to the breaking point.

"We need to be assured there's a . . . process whereby federal resources get allocated," Tennessee Emergency Management Agency Director James Bassham said in a recent planning conference. "We would hope it's a more businesslike approach than eight governors calling the president."

The Pentagon, which is required to test its disaster response in large exercises, is supporting the states, according to military officials and other emergency planners. When the Las Vegas drill was canceled, the military's Northern Command was forced to look elsewhere to meet its 2010 requirement, which envisioned thousands of troops responding to a terrorist attack.

Timothy Gress, managing director of the University of Illinois' Mid-America Earthquake Center, which produced the FEMA study, said that the passage of time has dimmed Washington's sense of urgency.

"When the project was initiated, Katrina was still very much fresh in their minds," he said. Now, after four years of work planning the earthquake drill, he said, "why wouldn't you want to exercise that plan?"


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/01/AR2010040103746.html
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Here we go again! A peace here, a peace there...

Speaking of similarities...

Today I was amazed when I heard on the radio, and then read on the Internet some words expressed by President Obama during a joint press conference with Russia's Dmitry Medvedev in Prague, Czech Republic; The tenor of the words used were reminiscent of Bush 43:


Obama said the United States and its allies "will not tolerate actions that flout the NPT," and called for "smart" and "strong" new UN Security Council sanctions against Iran.
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"Those nations that refuse to meet their obligations will be isolated, and denied the opportunity that comes with international integration," he said.
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I think this is President Obama's equivalent to former-president Bush's famous words at the U.N., "Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists."


All of the sudden the concepts of "change" and "hope" were invalidated when the new commander in chief turns out to be a card from the same deck, but, of a different suit.


In other words: Ain't nothing 'changed", but the party, y'all!

NWO

Arsenio.

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Wednesday, April 07, 2010

A Mine Is A Terrible Thing to Waste


First of all, I'd like to express my condolences to the families of the 25 people who died in Monday's Coal Mine explosion at Montcoal, W.Va. I know nothing about mining for coal, yet, I know that in W. Virginia, Kentucky, and Virginia many depend on coal mines for employment. A few years ago, I worked in Oil Refineries in Plaquemines and Jefferson Parish Louisiana, under extremely hazardous conditions; I did it because I was willing to exchange my services for a competitive wage; So, I can understand what a person has to do to earn a living in a dangerous work environment. Again, I can only guess what it's like to work in a mine. This fatal accident is a great loss to those that have lost their loved ones, and also to those that survived; Many survivors will continue to support their families from their work at the coal mines.

Could the coal mining industry be an endangered species? Could the possible (OSHA, EPA) legislation arising from this accident seal the fate of the business? Could the cost of mining for coal, and fulfilling all the "new" guidelines ensure that another industry will be shut down? Will we soon be buying our coal from abroad? When possibly 60% of our electricity is generated with coal; Can we afford to out-source coal mining, too? Will we also import coal from China? I'm just anticipating another death blow to American industry. Maybe I'm wrong? But, somehow I think I see an inkling of what may probably happen.


A mine is a terrible thing to waste.

My prayers are with the families of those still unaccounted for within the mine.


Arsenio.
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Man, who made me a judge or a divider over you?


13And one of the company said unto him, Master, speak to my brother, that he divide the inheritance with me.

14And he said unto him, Man, who made me a judge or a divider over you?

15And he said unto them, Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.
Luke 12:13-15.
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Tuesday, April 06, 2010

Vatican blasts anti-Catholic 'hate'


Pope Benedict XVI addresses the faithful on Easter Sunday.



THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published Wednesday April 7, 2010

Vatican blasts anti-Catholic 'hate'
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VATICAN CITY (AP) -- The Vatican heatedly defended Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday, saying accusations that he helped cover up the actions of pedophile priests are part of an anti-Catholic “hate” campaign targeting the pope for his opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage.

Vatican Radio broadcast comments by two senior cardinals explaining “the motive for these attacks” on the pope. The Vatican newspaper chipped in with spirited comments from another top cardinal.

“The pope defends life and the family, based on marriage between a man and a woman, in a world in which powerful lobbies would like to impose a completely different” agenda, Spanish Cardinal Julian Herranz, head of the disciplinary commission for Holy See officials, said on the radio.

Herranz didn't identify the lobbies but “defense of life” is Vatican shorthand for anti-abortion efforts.

Also arguing that Benedict's promotion of conservative family models had provoked the so-called attacks was the Vatican's dean of the College of Cardinals, Angelo Sodano.

“By now, it's a cultural contrast,” Sodano told the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano. “The pope embodies moral truths that aren't accepted, and so, the shortcomings and errors of priests are used as weapons against the church.”

Also rallying to Benedict's side was Italian Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo, who heads Vatican City's governing apparatus.

The pope “has done all that he could have” against sex abuse by clergy of minors, Lajolo said on Vatican radio, decrying what he described as a campaign of “hatred against the Catholic church.”

Rev. Rebecca Voelkel, a Minneapolis, Minnesota-based minister in the United Church of Christ who is faith work director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, described the cardinals' comments as “diversionary counterattacks” that are an affront both to the victims of clergy abuse and to gays and lesbians.

“It makes me heartsick,” she said.

Sex abuse allegations, as well as accusations of cover-ups by diocesan bishops and Vatican officials, have swept across Europe in recent weeks. Benedict has been criticized for not halting the actions of abusive priests when he was a Vatican cardinal and earlier while he was the archbishop of Munich in his native Germany.

The European scandals in Germany, Ireland, Italy, Austria, Denmark and Switzerland are erupting after decades of abuse cases in the United States, Canada, Australia and other areas.

Benedict has ignored victims' demands that he accept responsibility for what they say is his own personal and institutional responsibility for failing to swiftly kick abusive priests out of the priesthood, or at least keep them away from children.

But he has been protected by a vanguard of senior Vatican prelates who are fending off what they contend is an orchestrated attempt to attack the leader of the world's more than 1 billion Catholics.

The Vatican No. 2 official, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, rebuffed questions about the pontiff's silence on the topic, indicating that Benedict was standing firm.

“He's a strong pope,” he told reporters after arriving Tuesday in Chile. The Italian news agency ANSA quoted him as calling Benedict a “great prophet of the Third Millennium.”

Bertone, now the Holy See's secretary of state but formerly Benedict's deputy when the future pope headed the Vatican's morals office, has himself been swept up in the scandals.

During a May 1998 meeting at the Vatican, Bertone told Wisconsin bishops to halt a church trial against an ailing priest who was accused of sexually abusing 200 deaf children, according to a Vatican transcript. The priest died soon afterward.

“It's not true, it's not true! We have documented the opposite,” ANSA quoted Bertone as saying in Chile. “Let's not talk about this topic now, because otherwise we'll be here all day verifying precisely the action taken by me and by his eminence.”

Vatican Radio depicted the church as a victim.

“There are those who fear the media campaign of anti-Catholic hatred can degenerate,” it said.

The radio noted anti-Catholic graffiti on walls of a church outside Viterbo, a town near Rome, and reminded listeners that a bishop was attacked by a man during Easter Mass in Muenster, Germany. The bishop fought back with an incense bowl.

The radio likened the recent campaign to the persecution suffered by early Christian martyrs.

“The crowds, incited by the slanders of the powerful, would lynch the Christians,” the radio said.

In Munich, meanwhile, an independent lawyer hired by the Catholic Church wrapped up his investigation of abuse allegations at the southern Ettal monastery.

“The investigation clearly shows a system of abuse that lasted for decades,” Thomas Pfister said.

There were some cases of sexual abuse at Ettal, but most victims who came forward were physically abused and most cases took place before 1990, Pfister said in a telephone interview.


Source: http://www.omaha.com/article/20100407/NEWS/704079899

P.S. Two words: Plausible Deniability!
Booh Hooh, poor holy see priests and dignataries. 'Got their sensitivities hurt.
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Magnitude-7.7 quake rattles Indonesia


Buildings shake in Sumatra; no immediate reports of casualties




Another major earthquakes struck off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, Tuesday, not far from where a 2004 quake set off a massive tsunami. NBC's Brian Williams reports.




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New World Order or Chaos or What to come?


Host Name: Stephen Hand
Show Name: New World Order or Chaos or What to come?


Date / Length:
3/27/2010 10:30 AM- 1 hr 30 min

Description:h:47584 s:963338


Approx 90 Minute Recap of eventful News this week and Christian reflections. New World Order or Chaos to come? What is real and certain about this NWO and what is not? Obamacare. What happened? What does it mean? Guests: Phillip and Paul Collins, authors of The Ascendancy of the Scientific Dictatorship, will help makes sense of the long Utopian drive towards world collectivism and the possible implications. National Strike set for April 15-18. As always the focus is on challenges brought about by that transvaluation of all values, otherwise known as the New World Order.

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