Thursday, May 19, 2011

An adult conversation?

Recently I've been amazed at the amount of ridiculous statements coming from the propaganda matrix, or what's better known as the powers that be. I've heard all types of childish expressions coming from the White House and from the spin masters at different levels of the military industrial congressional complex.

Here are a few of the infantile analogies we've heard disguised as news:
<ul>
  • We need to have an adult conversation.
  • Kicking the can down the road.
  • The low hanging fruit.
  • Spiking the football.
What are these guys on? Kool-Aid, maybe?

I thought that Tricks were for kids:

On Monday, May 16, 2011, Ali Khan (does this remind anyone of the IMF's Dominique Strauss - Kahn?) of the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), wrote a prank article on their official blog that was supposed to prepare the public for a ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE *.

Now who are these arrested development 'cases' playing these dirty little tricks on us ADULTS? And why would they "kid" around with a serious subject as Disaster Preparedness?

This has got to be the straw that breaks the camel's back.

I remember playing practical jokes and acting silly when I was young, but, that was a long time ago. However, I can see that Disney World and Nintendo have transformed our world into one big Romper Room. It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood!

...Won't you be my neighbor?


Arsenio.
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* Zombie Apocalypse: http://emergency.cdc.gov/socialmedia/zombies_blog.asp
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Social Media: Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse

Social Media: Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse

The following was originally posted on CDC Public Health Matters Blog May 16th, 2011 by Ali S. Khan.


There are all kinds of emergencies out there that we can prepare for. Take a zombie apocalypse for example. That’s right, I said z-o-m-b-i-e a-p-o-c-a-l-y-p-s-e. You may laugh now, but when it happens you’ll be happy you read this, and hey, maybe you’ll even learn a thing or two about how to prepare for a real emergency.

A Brief History of Zombies

We’ve all seen at least one movie about flesh-eating zombies taking over (my personal favorite is Resident Evil), but where do zombies come from and why do they love eating brains so much? The word zombie comes from Haitian and New Orleans voodoo origins. Although its meaning has changed slightly over the years, it refers to a human corpse mysteriously reanimated to serve the undead. Through ancient voodoo and folk-lore traditions, shows like the Walking Dead were born.







A couple dressed as zombies - Danny Zucco and Sandy Olsson from the movie Grease walking in the annual Toronto Zombie Walk.

In movies, shows, and literature, zombies are often depicted as being created by an infectious virus, which is passed on via bites and contact with bodily fluids. Harvard psychiatrist Steven Schoolman wrote a (fictional) medical paper on the zombies presented in Night of the Living Dead and refers to the condition as Ataxic Neurodegenerative Satiety Deficiency Syndrome caused by an infectious agent. The Zombie Survival Guide identifies the cause of zombies as a virus called solanum. Other zombie origins shown in films include radiation from a destroyed NASA Venus probe (as in Night of the Living Dead), as well as mutations of existing conditions such as prions, mad-cow disease, measles and rabies.

The rise of zombies in pop culture has given credence to the idea that a zombie apocalypse could happen. In such a scenario zombies would take over entire countries, roaming city streets eating anything living that got in their way. The proliferation of this idea has led many people to wonder “How do I prepare for a zombie apocalypse?”

Well, we’re here to answer that question for you, and hopefully share a few tips about preparing for real emergencies too!


Better Safe than Sorry







Some of the supplies for your emergency kit.


So what do you need to do before zombies…or hurricanes or pandemics for example, actually happen? First of all, you should have an emergency kit in your house. This includes things like water, food, and other supplies to get you through the first couple of days before you can locate a zombie-free refugee camp (or in the event of a natural disaster, it will buy you some time until you are able to make your way to an evacuation shelter or utility lines are restored). Below are a few items you should include in your kit, for a full list visit the CDC Emergency page.
•Water (1 gallon per person per day)
•Food (stock up on non-perishable items that you eat regularly)
•Medications (this includes prescription and non-prescription meds)
•Tools and Supplies (utility knife, duct tape, battery powered radio, etc.)
•Sanitation and Hygiene (household bleach, soap, towels, etc.)
•Clothing and Bedding (a change of clothes for each family member and blankets)
•Important documents (copies of your driver’s license, passport, and birth certificate to name a few)
•First Aid supplies (although you’re a goner if a zombie bites you, you can use these supplies to treat basic cuts and lacerations that you might get during a tornado or hurricane)

Once you’ve made your emergency kit, you should sit down with your family and come up with an emergency plan. This includes where you would go and who you would call if zombies started appearing outside your door step. You can also implement this plan if there is a flood, earthquake, or other emergency.




Family members meeting by their mailbox. You should pick two meeting places, one close to your home and one farther away.


1.Identify the types of emergencies that are possible in your area. Besides a zombie apocalypse, this may include floods, tornadoes, or earthquakes. If you are unsure contact your local Red Cross chapter for more information. Family members meeting by their mailbox. You should pick two meeting places, one close to your home and one farther away.

2.Pick a meeting place for your family to regroup in case zombies invade your home…or your town evacuates because of a hurricane. Pick one place right outside your home for sudden emergencies and one place outside of your neighborhood in case you are unable to return home right away.

3.Identify your emergency contacts. Make a list of local contacts like the police, fire department, and your local zombie response team. Also identify an out-of-state contact that you can call during an emergency to let the rest of your family know you are ok.

4.Plan your evacuation route. When zombies are hungry they won’t stop until they get food (i.e., brains), which means you need to get out of town fast! Plan where you would go and multiple routes you would take ahead of time so that the flesh eaters don’t have a chance! This is also helpful when natural disasters strike and you have to take shelter fast.



Never Fear – CDC is Ready



Get a Kit, Make a Plan, Be Prepared

If zombies did start roaming the streets, CDC would conduct an investigation much like any other disease outbreak. CDC would provide technical assistance to cities, states, or international partners dealing with a zombie infestation. This assistance might include consultation, lab testing and analysis, patient management and care, tracking of contacts, and infection control (including isolation and quarantine). It’s likely that an investigation of this scenario would seek to accomplish several goals: determine the cause of the illness, the source of the infection/virus/toxin, learn how it is transmitted and how readily it is spread, how to break the cycle of transmission and thus prevent further cases, and how patients can best be treated. Not only would scientists be working to identify the cause and cure of the zombie outbreak, but CDC and other federal agencies would send medical teams and first responders to help those in affected areas (I will be volunteering the young nameless disease detectives for the field work).

To learn more about what CDC does to prepare for and respond to emergencies of all kinds, visit:
http://emergency.cdc.gov/cdc/orgs_progs.asp

To learn more about how you can prepare for and stay safe during an emergency visit:
http://emergency.cdc.gov/

To download a badge like the one above that you can add to your social networking profile, blog, website, or email signature visit:
http://emergency.cdc.gov/socialmedia/zombies.asp
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Wednesday, May 18, 2011

RNS Exclusive: Report spreads blame for Catholic sex abuse



(RNS) U.S. Catholic bishops pray during their 2002 meeting in Dallas when they laid out new get-tough rules on sexual abuse. RNS file photo by Matt Rourke.


May 17, 2011

NEWS ANALYSIS

RNS Exclusive: Report spreads blame for Catholic sex abuse

By David Gibson


NEW YORK (RNS) Nearly a decade after revelations of widespread sexual abuse of minors rocked the Catholic Church in the U.S., a comprehensive report on the scandal is set for release on Wednesday (May 18), hoping to provide answers about a crisis that has raised myriad questions despite years of attention.

Was celibacy to blame for the abuse? Gays in the priesthood? The social revolution of the ‘60s, or the benighted seminary education of the repressive 1950s?

The truth turns out to be far more complex, according to a copy of the report by researchers at John Jay College of Criminal Justice that was provided by a church leader who believes the findings accurately reflect the causes of the church’s sexual abuse crisis, for good and for ill.

The findings will likely unsettle both liberal and conservative critics, as well as victims’ advocates.

The 300-page report, formally called “The Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950-2010,” upends a number of popular misconceptions. While some will challenge the report’s methodology—and note that U.S. bishops paid for half the estimated $1.8 million price tag—the “Causes and Context” study is clearly a landmark in the research of child sexual abuse.

The first myth challenged by the study is that priests tend to be pedophiles. Of nearly 6,000 priests accused of abuse over the past half century (about 5 percent of the total number of priests serving during that period), less than 4 percent could be considered pedophiles, the report notes—that is, men who prey on children.

“Priest-abusers were not `pedophile priests’,” the researchers state flatly.

Second, the researchers found no statistical evidence that gay priests were more likely than straight priests to abuse minors—a finding that undermines a favorite talking point of many conservative Catholics. The disproportionate number of adolescent male victims was about opportunity, not preference or pathology, the report states.

What’s more, researchers note that the rise in the number of gay priests from the late 1970s onward actually corresponded with “a decreased incidence of abuse—not an increased incidence of abuse.”

Similarly, celibacy remained a constant throughout peaks and valleys of abuse rates, and priests may be less likely to abuse children today than men in analogous professions. As a result, liberal Catholics who advocate a married priesthood, or those who are convinced that committing to a lifetime without sex must lead to perversion, may not have the abuse crisis to leverage their arguments.

Better preparation for a life of celibacy is key, however, and improved seminary training and education in the 1980s corresponds to a “sharp and sustained decline” in abuse since then—a dramatic improvement that has often been overlooked.

The huge spike in abuse cases in the 1960s and 1970s, the authors found, was essentially due to emotionally ill-equipped priests who were trained in earlier years and lost their way in the social cataclysm of the sexual revolution.

Indeed, the John Jay researchers write, “Individual characteristics do not predict that a priest will commit sexual abuse of a minor. Rather, vulnerabilities, in combination with situational stresses and opportunities, raise the risk of abuse.”

The “situational” nature of the abuse by clergy is comparable to that of police officers who brutalize people, the authors write. The stress of the work, the perils of isolation and a lack of oversight are factors that contribute to “deviant behavior.”

With fewer and fewer priests available to minister to growing numbers of American Catholics, the Catholic bishops will be forced to do a better job supporting priests and providing respites from their often grinding schedules. That would likely necessitate a larger role for the laity and women—an issue fraught with controversy.

The John Jay researchers take pains to credit the hierarchy for making important strides in combating child abuse—an assertion victim advocates will strenuously dispute—and they point out that society as a whole was only slowly coming to understand the nature of child abuse as U.S. dioceses were swamped with cases.

At the same time, however, researchers note the bishops’ abysmal track record in so many tragic instances, and say church leadership was reflexively defensive and self-protective—behavior that fits a well-defined pattern of crisis management in large institutions.

Indeed, the authors convincingly argue that the clerical culture that fostered and concealed deviance by priests is remarkably similar to the law enforcement culture that allows police brutality. The church, like the police, is a hierarchical organization that operates in a decentralized way, with each department (or diocese) an authority unto itself and not inclined to open itself to oversight.

On Monday, the Vatican told bishops around the world to establish clear policies for dealing with clergy abusers; they issued a number of “guidelines” to convince bishops to comply with civil laws of reporting abuse accusations—if there are any. But the new Vatican policies also reiterate that each bishop will have the final say in any process, and that each bishop remains ultimately answerable only to the pope.

That approach is not likely to convince a flock that has learned by hard experience to be skeptical of their bishops—most recently in the wake of a recent grand jury report in Philadelphia detailing appalling lapses in dealing with abuse allegations.

The doctrine of the undiluted authority of the bishop, combined with the hierarchy’s track record as a group of crisis managers concerned with protecting the institution, may be the central problem for the bishops revealed by the sex abuse crisis.

That’s certainly the main challenge put forth by authors of the new John Jay report, who argue that the American Catholic hierarchy must finally adopt uniform, secure policies characterized by genuine transparency and true accountability, especially for bishops.

Taking that difficult step is the only way the bishops can begin to show that the hierarchy is different from Wall Street financiers or a protective police bureaucracy. It’s also perhaps the quickest way for the bishops to restore the Catholic Church’s credibility as a compelling witness to the faith rather than just another suspect institution.
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Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Area 51 'Uncensored': Was It UFOs Or The USSR?

Listen to the Story
Fresh Air from WHYY
[46 min 37 sec]



U.S. Geological Survey
Area 51, seen from above, in 1968.

May 17, 2011

Seventy-five miles north of Las Vegas sits a land parcel in the middle of the desert. Called Area 51, the parcel is just outside of the abandoned Nevada Test and Training Range, where more than 100 atmospheric bomb tests were conducted in the 1950s. Officially, the U.S. government has never acknowledged the existence of Area 51. Unofficially, it has become a place associated with conspiracy theories, alien landings and tiny spaceships.

Journalist Annie Jacobsen tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross that the site has remained classified for many years — not because of aliens or spaceships, but because the government once used the site for top-secret nuclear testing and weapons development.

In Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base, Jacobsen details how several agencies — including the Atomic Energy Commission, the Department of Defense and the CIA — once used the site to conduct controversial and secretive research on aircraft and pilot-related projects, including planes that traveled three times faster than the speed of sound and nuclear-propelled, space-based missile launch systems.



Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base
By Annie Jacobsen
Hardcover, 544 pages
Little, Brown and Co.
List price: $27.99
Read An Excerpt

Operation Plumbbob


In the summer and fall of 1957, a series of atmospheric nuclear tests — called Operation Plumbbob — were conducted above ground at the Nevada testing and training range, located just outside of Area 51. Twenty-nine explosions were set off while tests were conducted on troop readiness, accidental detonations and the effects of flying debris on living targets, according to documents declassified by the Department of Energy that Jacobsen details in her book.

During the explosions, security officer Richard Mingus stood guard outside many of the weapons-testing sites, including one with the largest atmospheric bomb that has ever exploded in the United States.

"The bomb goes off. Richard Mingus is at ground zero, safe away in a bunker somewhere, and suddenly someone realizes, 'My God, Area 51 is unsecured,' " Jacobsen says. "And so they send Richard Mingus through ground zero, 45 minutes to an hour after this nuclear bomb has exploded, so that he can get to Area 51 to guard the gate."

Mingus survived, as did many other atomic veterans who stood close to ground zero during other Plumbbob tests.

"You can absolutely drive through an atmospheric bomb test and not be affected," Jacobsen says. "Richard Mingus also stood guard at a test at a subparcel of Area 51 ... [during] a dirty bomb test."

During the dirty bomb test, the Department of Defense and the Atomic Energy Commission simulated a plane crash where plutonium was dispersed on the ground, to see what would happen if an aircraft carrying a nuclear weapon were to crash on American soil. The resulting fallout and structural damage made much of the land uninhabitable.

"The area out at Area 51 that was part of the Operation Plumbbob test continues to be contaminated," she says. "It was not cleaned up until the '80s. And at that point, they sent in men in hazmat suits to scrape the land."

The nuclear tests at Area 51 gave the Department of Defense ideas about how the technology could be used to help the United States' newly minted space program. And during the space race with the Soviet Union in the 1950s, the Department of Defense proposed using space itself as a weapon, according to declassified documents that Jacobsen found. One of its ideas was to develop a nuclear-powered space-based missile launch system that would sit outside Earth's atmosphere and have the capability to launch missiles — from outer space — into the Soviet Union.

"This didn't end up happening, but it almost did," Jacobsen says. "They were testing the rocket to see whether it would actually work. And to do that meant spewing vast quantities of radiation into the air. It's very controversial [and] it was kept very top-secret."

After the U.S. ratified the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty, which prohibited nuclear testing in the atmosphere, the tests continued to take place.

"It comes right up to the edge of violating the treaty when an accident occurs," she says. "In one example, a 148-pound chunk of radioactive debris shoots up into the sky and lands, rending [a subparcel of Area 51] a place that no one could go, not even in a hazmat suit, for six weeks."

The Oxcart

In addition to testing nuclear weapons, Area 51 was often used as a training ground for overhead surveillance planes, says Jacobsen. One plane, called the Oxcart, was designed by the CIA to travel three times the speed of sound at 90,000 feet to spy on the Soviet Union and Cuba.

The Oxcart, in use from 1963 to 1968, worked beautifully, though it was never used over the Soviet Union or Cuba. Never once shot down, it was used in missions over North Vietnam and during the Pueblo Crisis with North Korea.

"It absolutely kept us safer and kept us out of nuclear war," Jacobsen says. "The idea that Area 51 was this test facility working to move science and technology faster and further than any other nation is true and is one of the great hallmarks of Area 51. There are other areas of the base that are controversial — but they both exist simultaneously — out there in the desert."


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


Michael Hiller/Hachette Book Group
Annie Jacobsen is a contributing editor at the Los Angeles Times Magazine.

Interview Highlights

The secrecy surrounding Area 51 has made it fertile ground for conspiracy theories, including one about a UFO cover-up and another about the moon landing having never happened. Jacobsen addresses these conspiracy theories in the book and speculates about what led to them. She says her book is based on interviews with 74 individuals with rare firsthand knowledge of the secret base. Thirty-two of the people she interviewed lived and worked at Area 51.

On flying discs and conspiracy theories

"The UFO craze began in the summer of 1947. Several months later, the G2 intelligence, which was the Army intelligence corps at the time, spent an enormous amount of time and treasure seeking out two former Third Reich aerospace designers named Walter and Reimar Horten who had allegedly created [a] flying disc. ... American intelligence agents fanned out across Europe seeking the Horton brothers to find out if, in fact, they had made this flying disc.

"The idea behind it remains, why? Why were they looking for a flying disc? And conspiracy theorists have had their hands on this declassified file for over a decade now, and they say it proves that this flying disc came from outer space. If you read the documents, the takeaway that I found fascinating was that at the end of it, the Army admits finding the Horten brothers, and that the Horten brothers admitted their contact with the Russians and that's where the file ends. Everything after that is classified."

On why Area 51 is actually classified, according to a source

"The Horten brothers were involved in the flying disc crash in New Mexico. And that is from a single source. ... There was an unusual moment where that source became very upset and told me things that were stunning that's almost impossible to believe at first read. And that is that a flying disc really did crash in New Mexico and it was transported to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, and then in 1951 it was transferred to Area 51, which is why the base is called Area 51. And the stunning part of the reveal is that my source, who I absolutely believe and worked with for 18 months on this, was one of the engineers who received the equipment and he also received the people who were in the craft.

"The people were, according to the source, were child-sized pilots, and there's a lot of debate about how old they were. He believes they were 13, although other people believe they may have been older. But this is a firsthand witness to this, and I made a decision to write about this in the very end of the book, after I take the traditional journalist form of telling you everything in the third person, I switch and I kind of lean into the reader and I say, 'Look, this is not why Area 51 is classified to the point where no one in the government will admit it exists. The reason is because what one man told me.' And then using the first person, I tell you what I was told. And there's no doubt that people are going to be upset, alarmed and skeptical of this information, but I absolutely believe the veracity of my source, and I believe it was important that I put this information out there because it is the tip of a very big iceberg."

On the Soviet human experiments her source told her about


"The child-sized aviators in this craft [that crashed in New Mexico] were the result of a Soviet human experimentation program, and they had been made to look like aliens a la Orson Welles' War of the Worlds, and it was a warning shot over President Truman's bow, so to speak. In 1947, when this would have originally happened, the Soviets did not yet have the nuclear bomb, and Stalin and Truman were locked in horns with one another, and Stalin couldn't compete in nuclear weaponry yet, but he certainly could compete in the world of black propaganda — and that was his aim, according to my source. ...

"What is firsthand information is that he worked with these bodies [of the pilots] and he was an eyewitness to the horror of seeing them and working with them. Where they actually came from is obviously the subject of debate. But if you look at the timeline with Josef Mengele, he left Auschwitz in January of 1945 and disappeared for a while, and the suggestion by the source is that Mengele had already cut his losses with the Third Reich at that point and was working with Stalin."

On why the Soviets would have undertaken such a hoax


"The plan, according to my source, was to create panic in the United States with this belief that a UFO had landed with aliens inside of it. And one of the most interesting documents is the second CIA director, Walter Bedell Smith, memos back and forth to the National Security Council talking about how the fear is that the Soviets could make a hoax against America involving a UFO and overload our early air-defense warning system, making America vulnerable to an attack."
Excerpt: 'Area 51'
by Annie Jacobsen


Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base
By Annie Jacobsen



Hardcover, 544 pages
Little, Brown and Co.
List price: $27.99
Prologue: The Secret City

This book is a work of nonfiction. The stories I tell in this narrative are real. None of the people are invented. Of the seventy-four individuals interviewed for this book with rare firsthand knowledge of the secret base, thirty-two of them lived and worked at Area 51.

Area 51 is the nation's most secret domestic military facility. It is located in the high desert of southern Nevada, seventy-five Miles north of Las Vegas. Its facilities have been constructed over the past sixty years around a flat, dry lake bed called Groom Lake. The U.S. government has never admitted it exists.

Key to understanding Area 51 is knowing that it sits inside the largest government-controlled land parcel in the United States, the Nevada Test and Training Range. Encompassing 4,687 square miles, this area is just a little smaller than the state of Connecticut — three times the size of Rhode Island, and more than twice as big as Delaware. Set inside this enormous expanse is a smaller parcel of land, 1,350 square miles, called the Nevada Test Site, the only facility like it in the continental United States. Beginning in 1951, on the orders of President Harry Truman, 105 nuclear weapons were exploded aboveground at the site and another 828 were exploded underground in tunnel chambers and deep, vertical shafts. The last nuclear weapons test on American soil occurred at the Nevada Test Site on September 23, 1992. The facility contains the largest amount of weapons-grade plutonium and uranium in the United States not secured inside a nuclear laboratory.

Area 51 sits just outside the Nevada Test Site, approximately five miles to the northeast of the northernmost corner, which places it inside the Nevada Test and Training Range. Because everything that goes on at Area 51, and most of what goes on at the Nevada Test and Training Range, is classified when it is happening, this is a book about secrets. Two early projects at Groom Lake have been declassified by the Central Intelligence Agency: the U‑2 spy plane, declassified in 1998, and the A‑12 Oxcart spy plane, declassified in 2007. And yet in thousands of pages of declassified memos and reports, the name Area 51 is always redacted, or blacked out. There are only two known exceptions, most likely mistakes.

This is a book about government projects and operations that have been hidden for decades, some for good reasons, others for arguably terrible ones, and one that should never have happened at all. These operations took place in the name of national security and they all involved cutting-edge science. The last published words of Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb, were "Science is not everything. But science is very beautiful." After reading this book, readers can decide what they think about what Oppenheimer said.

This is a book about black operations, government projects that are secret from Congress and secret from the people who make up the United States. To understand how black projects began, and how they continue to function today, one must start with the creation of the atomic bomb. The men who ran the Manhattan Project wrote the rules about black operations. The atomic bomb was the mother of all black projects and it is the parent from which all black operations have sprung.

Building the bomb was the single most expensive engineering project in the history of the United States. It began in 1942, and by the time the bomb was tested, inside the White Sands Proving Ground in the New Mexico high desert on July 16, 1945, the bomb's price tag, adjusted for inflation, was $28,000,000,000. The degree of secrecy maintained while building the bomb is almost inconceivable. When the world learned that America had dropped an atomic weapon on Hiroshima, no one was more surprised than the U.S. Congress, none of whose members had had any idea it was being developed. Vice President Harry Truman had been equally stunned to learn about the bomb when he became president of the United States, on April 12, 1945. Truman had been the chairman of the Senate Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program when he was vice president, meaning he was in charge of watching how money was spent during the war, yet he'd had no idea about the atomic bomb until he became president and the information was relayed to him by two men: Vannevar Bush, the president's science adviser, and Henry L. Stimson, the nation's secretary of war. Bush was in charge of the Manhattan Project, and Stimson was in charge of the war.

The Manhattan Project employed two hundred thousand people. It had eighty offices and dozens of production plants spread out all over the country, including a sixty-thousand-acre facility in rural Tennessee that pulled more power off the nation's electrical grid than New York City did on any given night. And no one knew the Manhattan Project was there. That is how powerful a black operation can be.

After the war ended, Congress — the legislators who had been so easily kept in the dark for two and a half years — was given stewardship of the bomb. It was now up to Congress to decide who would control its "unimaginable destructive power." With the passing of the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, a terrifying and unprecedented new system of secret-keeping emerged. The presidential system was governed by presidential executive orders regarding national security information. But the newly created Atomic Energy Commission, formerly known as the Manhattan Project, was now in charge of regulating the classification of all nuclear weapons information in a system that was totally separate from the president's system. In other words, for the first time in American history, a federal agency run by civilians, the Atomic Energy Commission, would maintain a body of secrets classified based on factors other than presidential executive orders. It is from the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 that the concept "born classified" came to be, and it was the Atomic Energy Commission that would oversee the building of seventy thousand nuclear bombs in sixty-five different sizes and styles. Atomic Energy was the first entity to control Area 51 — a fact previously undisclosed — and it did so with terrifying and unprecedented power. One simply cannot consider Area 51's uncensored history without addressing this cold, hard, and ultimately devastating truth.

The Atomic Energy Commission's Restricted Data classification was an even more terrifying anomaly, something that could originate outside the government through the "thinking and research of private parties." In other words, the Atomic Energy Commission could hire a private company to conduct research for the commission knowing that the company's thinking and research would be born classified and that even the president of the United States would not necessarily have a need‑to‑know about it. In 1994, for instance, when President Clinton created by executive order the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments to look into secrets kept by the Atomic Energy Commission, certain records involving certain programs inside and around Area 51 were kept from the president on the grounds that he did not have a need‑to‑know. Two of these programs, still classified, are revealed publicly for the first time in this book. One of the Atomic Energy Commission's former classifications officers, Donald Woodbridge, characterized the term born classified as something that "give[s] the professional classificationist unanswerable authority." Area 51 lives on as an example. Of the Atomic Energy Commission's many facilities across the nation — it is now called the Department of Energy — the single largest facility is, and always has been, the Nevada Test Site. Other parts of the Nevada Test and Training Range would be controlled by the Department of Defense. But there were gray areas, like Area 51 — craggy mountain ranges and flat, dry lake beds sitting just outside the official borders of the Nevada Test Site and not controlled by the Department of Defense. These areas are where the most secret projects were set up. No one had a need‑to‑know about them. And for decades, until this book was published, no one would.

Excerpted from Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base by Annie Jacobsen. Copyright 2011 by Annie Jacobsen. Excerpted by permission of Little, Brown and Co.
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Beating the war drums against Pakistan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00zQtNWFy6o&feature=player_embedded

7 Insane Conspiracies That Actually Happened


by Jonathan Elinoff
2011
from NewWorldOrderReport Website

...


Conspiracy theory is a term that originally was a neutral descriptor for any claim of civil, criminal or political conspiracy.

However, it has come almost exclusively to refer to any fringe theory which explains a historical or current event as the result of a secret plot by conspirators of almost superhuman power and cunning.

To conspire means, "to join in a secret agreement to do an unlawful or wrongful act or to use such means to accomplish a lawful end."

The term "conspiracy theory" is frequently used by scholars and in popular culture to identify secret military, banking, or political actions aimed at stealing power, money, or freedom, from "the people".

To many, conspiracy theories are just human nature. Not all people in this world are honest, hard working and forthcoming about their intentions. Certainly we can all agree on this.

So how did the term “conspiracy theory” get grouped in with fiction, fantasy and folklore? Maybe that’s a conspiracy, just kidding. Or am I?

Source
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Owner of FOX News, Rupert Murdoch, also owns almost all Australian media.


His press keeps Australia's dirty secret about its treatment of aboriginal people hidden from Australia's population



John Pilger

The illegal eavesdropping on famous people by the News of the World is said to be Rupert Murdoch’s Watergate. But is it the crime by which Murdoch ought to be known? In his native land, Australia, Murdoch controls 70 per cent of the capital city press. Australia is the world’s first murdochracy, in which smear by media is power.

The most enduring and insidious Murdoch campaign has been against the Aboriginal people, who were dispossessed by the arrival of the British in the late 18th century and have never been allowed to recover. “Nigger hunts” continued into the 1960s and beyond. The officially-inspired theft of children from Aboriginal families, justified by the racist theories of the eugenics movement, produced those known as the Stolen Generation and in 1997 was identified as genocide. Today, the first Australians have the shortest life expectancy of any of the world’s 90 indigenous peoples. Australia imprisons Aborigines at five times the rate South Africa during the apartheid years. In the state of Western Australia, the figure is eight times the apartheid rate.

Political power in Australia often rests in the control of resource-rich land. Most of the uranium, iron ore, gold, oil and natural gas is in Western Australia and Northern Territory – on Aboriginal land. Indeed, Aboriginal “progress” is all but defined by the mining industry and its political guardians in both Labor and coalition (conservative) governments. Their faithful, strident voice is the Murdoch press. The exceptional, reformist Labor government of Gough Whitlam in the 1970s set up a royal commission that made clear that social justice for Australia’s first people would only be achieved with universal land rights and a share the national wealth with dignity. In 1975, Whitlam was sacked by the governor-general in a “constitutional coup”. The Murdoch press had turned on Whitlam with such venom that rebellious journalists on The Australian burned their newspaper in the street.

In 1984, the Labor Party “solemnly pledged” to finish what Whitlam had begun and legislate Aboriginal land rights. This was opposed by the then Labor prime minister, Bob Hawke, a “mate” of Rupert Murdoch. Hawke blamed the public for being “less compassionate”; but a secret 64-page report to the party revealed that most Australians supported land rights. This was leaked to The Australian, whose front page declared, “Few support Aboriginal land rights”, the opposite of the truth, thus feeding an atmosphere of self-fulfilling distrust, “backlash” and rejection of rights that would distinguish Australia from South Africa. In 1988, an editorial in Murdoch’s London tabloid, the Sun, described “the Abos” as “treacherous and brutal”. This was condemned by the UK Press Council as “unacceptably racist”.

The Australian publishes long articles that present Aboriginal people not unsympathetically but as perennial victims of each other, “an entire culture committing suicide”, or as noble primitives requiring firm direction: the eugenicist’s view. It promotes Aboriginal “leaders” who, by blaming their own people for their poverty, tell the white elite what it wants to hear. The writer Michael Brull parodied this: “Oh White man, please save us. Take away our rights because we are so backward.”

This is also the government’s view. In railing against what it called the “black armband view” of Australia’s past, the conservative government of John Howard encouraged and absorbed the views of white supremacists -- that there was no genocide, no Stolen Generation, no racism; indeed, whites are the victims of “liberal racism”. A collection of far-right journalists, minor academics and hangers-on became the antipodean equivalent of David Irving Holocaust deniers. Their platform has been the Murdoch press.

Andrew Bolt, columnist on Murdoch’s Melbourne Herald-Sun tabloid, is currently the defendant in a racial vilification case brought by nine prominent Aborigines, including Larissa Behrendt, a professor of law and indigenous studies in Sydney. Behrendt has been an authoritative and outspoken opponent of Howard’s 2007 “emergency intervention” in the Northern Territory, which the Labor government of Julia Gillard has reinforced. The rationale to “intervene” was that child abuse among Aborigines was in “unthinkable numbers”. This was a fraud. Out of 7,433 Aboriginal children examined by doctors, four possible cases were identified – about the rate of child abuse in white Australia. What this covered was an old-fashioned colonial grab of mineral-rich land in the Northern Territory where Aboriginal land rights were granted in 1976.

The Murdoch press has been the most lurid and vociferous in its promotion of the “intervention”, which a United Nations special rapporteur has condemned for its racial discrimination. Once again, Australian politicians are dispossessing the first inhabitants, demanding leasehold of land in return for health and education rights that whites take for granted and driving them into “economically viable hubs” where they will be effectively detained -- a form of apartheid.

The outrage and despair of most Aboriginal people is not heard. For using her institutional voice and exposing the government’s black supporters, Larissa Behrendt has been subjected to a vicious campaign of innuendo in the Murdoch press, including the implication that she is not a “real” Aborigine. Using the language of its soulmate the London Sun, the Australian derides the “abstract debate” of “land rights, apologies, treaties” as a “moralizing mumbo-jumbo spreading like a virus”. The aim is to silence those who dare tell Australia’s dirty secret.
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Debt limit reached! 'Treasury's latest debt scam'


Geithner borrowing money from retirement accounts to leverage hike

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Posted: May 16, 2011
3:19 pm Eastern

© 2011 WorldNetDaily




WASHINGTON – With the $14.3 trillion debt limit reached today, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner began borrowing money from a new source – government worker retirement funds.

The organizer of a grass-roots campaign to persuade Congress to deny any hike in the debt limit sees the action by the administration as a trap – what he calls "Treasury's latest debt scam."

"The goal of Barack Obama and Geithner is to force Congress' hand to raise the debt limit," says Joseph Farah, who created the "No More Red Ink" campaign. "The latest trick by Obama and Geithner is to steal money from retirement accounts that must be repaid. They'll do anything not to curtail current and future spending levels. It's a shell game designed to coerce Congress to allow unlimited borrowing."

Farah explained the more Geithner is allowed to borrow, the more raising the debt limit is perceived as a necessity – if only to repay money confiscated from other funds.

"If Washington is given an unlimited credit card again, Congress' constitutional role in setting spending is thoroughly eroded," said Farah. "That's the goal. There is no need for Congress to pass tax increases, because skyrocketing debt will force responsibility for government's reckless spending on taxpayers through inflation and future tax increases. It is as if government has invented a new way to fund itself without being accountable to the people."

Farah says there is an answer – convincing House Republicans to take a stand through the "No More Red Ink" campaign.

"There is only one way to stop this abuse of the Constitution with certainty," said Farah. "That is to persuade Republicans in the House of Representatives to say no to any hike in the debt limit. Anything short of that just keeps the nation on this repeating cycle of binge spending and ever-escalating debt. We can't possibly borrow our way out of this economic morass. We can't solve a borrowing problem with more borrowing."


Source: http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=299653#ixzz1MfDyQNQ7
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IS IT THE SAME SPIRIT?

Photo (Courtesy) http://frjim123.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/charismatic-pentecostal-balance-and-a-warning/

The Roman Catholic Charismatic Renewal continues to grow at a rapid pace. All around the world, Roman Catholics are experiencing the Charismatic’s second baptism known as the ‘baptism of the Holy Spirit’. Statistics show that at least half the Charismatics in the world are also Roman Catholic. Many Roman Catholics are being ‘slain in the spirit’ and are ‘speaking in tongues’. Much of the Roman Catholic priesthood has embraced the ‘charismatic experience’ which, incidentally, has received the Pope’s official blessing. But what does all this mean? How can Roman Catholics be experiencing what has generally been thought to be experiences found exclusively within what is considered to be a Protestant movement? The question we will be addressing is: ‘Is the spirit that is granting Charismatics their experiences – ‘tongues’, the ‘slaying’ etc – the same spirit that Roman Catholics joyfully receive?’

Before we examine the question ‘Is it the same spirit?’, it is important that we look at what most people have presumed to be Protestant, namely the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements. This despite the fact that both abide in the doctrines of Arminianism which stem from Pelagianism, a fifth-century heresy that continues today, in which the Roman Catholic concept of salvation is rooted.

1971 was the year that saw the emergence of what became a very influential book. Entitled ‘The Pentecostal Movement in the (Roman) Catholic Church’, it was authored by a Roman Catholic priest named Edward D. O’Connor. The book became recognized as a classic and is still considered so by the Vatican and Roman Catholic activists. On page 23 of the book, O’Connor makes the following statement: "Although they derive from Protestant backgrounds, the Pentecostal churches are not typically Protestant in their belief, attitudes or practices. Many historians, as well as many of their own members, regard them as a ‘third force’ in the Christian world, between Protestantism and (Roman) Catholicism."

We also see in further quotes from this book the compatibility of Roman Catholicism and Charismaticism. "(Roman) Catholics who have accepted Pentecostal spirituality have found it to be fully in harmony with their traditional faith and life. They experience it not as a borrowing from an alien religion, but as a connatural—meaning to have a similar nature or origin—development of their own" (p.28).

"The spiritual experience of those who have been touched by the grace of the Holy Spirit in the Pentecostal movement is in profound harmony with the classical spirit of theology of the (Roman Catholic) Church" (p.183). And, "...the doctrine that is developing in the Pentecostal churches today, seems to be going through stages very similar to those which occurred in the early Middle Ages when the classical doctrine was taking shape" (p.193,194).

We learn from this the fact that the Roman Catholic Church sees no threat from the Charismatic movement, but has officially approved and embraced it, and is receptive to its ‘blessings’. However, Roman Catholic doctrine is NOT changing! Roman Catholics more than ever are remaining faithful to the use of the Rosary, prayers to Mary and other false Roman doctrines and practices.

For years many have believed that true revival has been occurring, firstly through the Pentecostal movement and later the Charismatic movement and that these two movements have seen the great move of God in these last days. And yet we see these ‘great movements’ now walking hand in hand with Romanism and other proponents of erroneous doctrine! They have become great friends. Some would even call it a family reunion. Roman Catholicism and the Charismatic Movement, specifically the Assemblies Of God churches, have played a major part in formulating the one-world church via the Ecumenical Movement.

Wilson Ewin, author of the book ‘The Pied Piper of the Pentecostal Movement’, says, "Untold millions of Catholic Pentecostals are now among the faithful of the Vatican. They are distinguished not only by the Pentecostal experience but also by their unswerving loyalty to the dogmas and teachings of the Roman Church. Medieval Catholicism as defined by the Council of Trent, remains intact in their hearts" (p.25). Ewin adds, "The very powers of classical Pentecostalism are now being shared with Roman Catholic Pentecostalists. And this of course, without conversion to Christ. The exploits of Oral Roberts, Kathryn Kuhlman, Rex Humbard, Aimee Semple McPherson, David Du Plessis and other mainline Pentecostal stars are even being outpaced by some Roman Catholic Pentecostalists" (p.26).

Throughout his book, Ewin tells of large meetings being held by Roman Catholics and Pentecostals. "Meetings have been carried on for many years between Vatican authorities and Pentecostal leaders. Cardinal Leon Suenens, usually involved in this, spoke at the 1977 Congress in Kansas City. He and ‘Thomas Zimmerman (Assemblies of God), J.O. Patterson (Church of God in Christ), and Archbishop Bill Burnett (Anglican) stood together before the vast multitude in an unprecedented demonstration of unity’" (p.34).

There still exists somewhat of a doctrinal gulf between Roman Catholics and Charismatics but these have been put to one side as they enjoy an experience-based unity. The Assemblies of God churches and the Vatican both agree that it is God’s Holy Spirit who is at work in both the Charismatic Movement and Roman Catholicism. And yet, when we examine the testimonies of Roman Catholics who have experienced charismatic phenomena such as ‘tongues’, the ‘slaying’ and the ‘baptism of the Holy Spirit’—a term not found in the Scriptures— we see that they are not, in turn, being led out of the errors of Romanism but deeper into them! One such testimony specifically records that the person began to pray the Rosary, "a practice" they said, "I have taken up since the baptism in the spirit" (Catholic Pentecostals, p.68). Another wrote of his renewed allegiance to Mary. A priest declared after his ‘baptism in the spirit’, "Never before had I such a sense of Mary’s role in leading me into the fullness of Christ and the Spirit" (The Charismatic Renewal and the Irish Experience, p.92). In fact, some nominal Roman Catholics who were not amongst those who prayed to Mary or prayed the Rosary or even attended Mass, now eagerly do so as a direct result of their charismatic experience!

E.N. Gross in his book ‘Miracles, Demons and Spiritual Warfare’ says, "The Charismatic Movement now embraces Roman Catholics with a total openness. Basic differences of doctrine no longer seem to matter. Huge Charismatic meetings feature Protestant and Roman Catholic speakers as if there were no difference between them. ‘Tongues’, ‘prophecies’, ‘healings’ abound in such meetings—all with loud united shouts of ‘amen’ and ‘praise Jesus’" (p.160).

If it is the Holy Spirit giving these experiences to Roman Catholics, how then are we to explain the fact that these people are not being led out of Romanism and renouncing her blasphemous teachings but are becoming more firmly entrenched in her heretical doctrines? The Bible says that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth and the Lord Jesus Christ further stated that "...when He, the Spirit of Truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth..." (Jn. 16:13). He would not confirm and establish Roman Catholics or any other followers of false doctrine in their error but would lead them out of it. And the Holy Spirit would certainly not lead God’s people to join hands with those who are steeped in deadly error, having embraced a false gospel. But wait, we need to ask these questions at this point: ‘How can the spirit that is active in both the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements be the Holy Spirit of God when this spirit has not led the followers of either of these movements to the Gospel of Christ but to a counterfeit and has fused these movements with the giant of doctrinal monsters, the Roman Catholic Church? How can it be the Holy Spirit leading these people when their unity is not over the doctrine of Christ but rather involves a disregard of doctrine?’ These movements have entered into an experience-based love affair with Roman Catholicism and even Mormonism through the Promise Keepers movement.

Jesus Christ said that the Holy Spirit, Whom He called "the Spirit of truth" three times in the Gospel of John, would guide all God’s chosen into all truth (Jn. 16:13). The spirit which is at work in the Charismatic Movement and Roman Catholicism IS the same spirit but is NOT the Holy Spirit, for this counterfeit spirit is not leading people into all truth. He is not leading them to the only Gospel of God which reveals the Righteousness of Christ and which declares that Christ’s death was for all those God gave Him, but is encouraging fellowship with error and leading people into a false unity—love and experiences—rather than Biblical unity (which God Almighty is the Author of) which is, and can only ever be, love and truth. Disciples of both groups need to be aware of the Scriptural truth that doctrine must never be laid aside, even because of an overwhelming desire to unite at any cost. Only those who believe the True Gospel can be of the same mind as the Scriptures when it comes to Who Christ is, what Christ has done and for whom He has done it.

The sight of the Charismatic Movement and the Roman Catholic Church merging ever closer by the minute and, although in disagreement over some doctrine, warmly welcoming the spirit which is leading them deeper into ecumenical bondage and doctrine which is at odds with the Scriptures, demonstrates conclusively that it IS one and the same spirit—but it is NOT the Holy Spirit of God, it is a foul counterfeit. A counterfeit which is titillating the senses and feeding an insatiable urge to see and feel and experience something out of the ordinary — to have a man-made unity now, based on experience and not Truth, rather than the true unity which only Jesus Christ brings to all those who abide in HIS doctrine (see 2 Jn. 9). God’s Holy Word states that the Christian’s walk is one of faith, not of sight (2 Cor. 5:7). God has chosen to speak to His people through the written Word and it is in the Holy Scriptures that you will find true experience with God, not in some flesh-pleasing titillation dripping with false doctrine.

In John’s First Letter, chapter 4 and verse 1, we see his instruction to "...believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world." Many today do not question, but merely accept at face value that if an experience is real and seemingly ‘beneficial’, it must be of God thus giving credibility to, in the minds of such thinkers, whatever movement one has had the experience in. It is clear that the spirit working within the Charismatic movement is leading it further into fellowship with darkness. This same spirit is not guiding Roman Catholics into all truth but deeper into the heresies of Romanism. Therefore this spirit cannot be the Holy Spirit of God but is the unholy spirit of Satan. God’s people—those among His elect currently a part of the Roman Catholic Church or the Pentecostal or Charismatic movements who do not yet believe the Gospel must do so—need to come out of the Roman Catholic Church and the Charismatic and Pentecostal movements according to Revelation 18:4, "...that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues." The line has been most distinctly marked out: will you follow the spirit of the Charismatic movement and the Roman Catholic Church or will you follow the Holy Spirit of God who guides people into all Truth?

The Spirit of God is the Spirit of Truth and He alone it is Who will guide people into His truth: the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We exhort Roman Catholics and Charismatics alike to study the Word of God and experience the TRUTH!


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Monday, May 16, 2011

Say hello to my little friend

Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago
Da Bears?
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Let not the solemn scenes which prophecy has revealed be left untouched





Uploaded by UfoTvOfficial on Apr 24, 2011

Wednesday, April 20, 2011, in the district of Yopougon in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, a strange event occurred, visible to thousands of people. The crowd roared, and all said they saw the Virgin Mary in heaven, Several people recorded on mobile phones, and this is one of the recordings. You can see something similar to a woman dressed in white with a blue blanket, floating near the trees. Project Bluebeam or Virgin Mary?

Project Blue Beam is a conspiracy theory that claims that NASA is attempting to implement a New Age religion with the Antichrist at its head and start a New World Order, via a technologically-simulated Second Coming.

The allegations were contained in an audio presentation in 1994 by Quebecois journalist turned conspiracy theorist Serge Monast and later published in his book Project Blue Beam (NASA). Proponents of the theory allege that Monast and another, unnamed, journalist, who both died of heart attacks in 1996, were in fact assassinated. In addition, the Canadian government allegedly kidnapped Monast's daughter in an effort to dissuade him from investigating Project Blue Beam.[1]

The project was apparently supposed to be implemented in 1983,[1] but was delayed. It was then set for implementation in 1995 and then 1996.[2] Monast thought Project Blue Beam would be brought to fruition by the year 2000,[3] really, definitely, for sure.

FOR MORE CLICK LINK:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Project_Blue_Beam

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As we near the close of time, there will be greater and still greater external parade of heathen power; heathen deities will manifest their signal power, and will exhibit themselves before the cities of the world; and this delineation has already begun to be fulfilled. By a variety of images the Lord Jesus represented to John the wicked character and seductive influence of those who have been distinguished for their persecution of God’s people. All need wisdom carefully to search out the mystery of iniquity that figures so largely in the winding up of this earth’s history.... In the very time in which we live, the Lord has called His people and has given them a message to bear. He has called them to expose the wickedness of the man of sin who has made the Sunday law a distinctive power, who has thought to change times and laws, and to oppress the people of God who stand firmly to honor Him by keeping the only true Sabbath, the Sabbath of creation, as holy unto the Lord.

The perils of the last days are upon us, and in our work we are to warn the people of the danger they are in. Let not the solemn scenes which prophecy has revealed be left untouched. If our people were half awake, if they realized the nearness of the events portrayed in the Revelation, a reformation would be wrought in our churches, and many more would believe the message. We have no time to lose; God calls upon us to watch for souls as they that must give an account. Advance new principles, and crowd in the clear-cut truth. It will be as a sword cutting both ways. But be not too ready to take a controversial attitude. There will be times when we must stand still and see the salvation of God. Let Daniel speak, let the Revelation speak, and tell what is truth. But whatever phase of the subject is presented, uplift Jesus as the center of all hope, “the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright and morning Star.”

Testimonies to Ministers and Gospel Workers, P.117-118
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The End is Near? The False Teaching of Harold Camping

The church is not to be arrogantly setting dates, but instead to be eagerly waiting for him. Of that we can be truly certain.




Monday, May 16, 2011


Harold Camping is now warning the world that the Day of Judgment will begin at about 6:00 p.m. on Saturday, May 21, 2011. The 89-year-old founder of Family Radio has made such pronouncements before, most recently in 1994. He now says that he simply miscalculated then, but he is absolutely certain that he has the right calculation now. You have been warned.

Actually, millions of people in America have been warned through Camping’s radio program and by means of the more than 1,200 billboards his ministry has put up across the nation. According to press reports, Family Radio has put up 2,000 billboards in other nations, as well.

Camping is no stranger to controversy, but this one has caught national and international attention. He was wrong before, but this time he is absolutely certain that he is right. As he told New York magazine:

“God has given sooo much information in the Bible about this, and so many proofs, and so many signs, that we know it is absolutely going to happen without any question at all. There’s nothing in the Bible that God has ever prophesied — there’s many things that he prophesied would happen and they always have happened — but there’s nothing in the Bible that holds a candle to the amount of information to this tremendous truth of the end of the world. I would be absolutely in rebellion against God if I thought anything other than it is absolutely going to happen without any question.”

If you know the Bible and this statement confuses you, you are in good company. Harold Camping believes that God has revealed to him the exact dates of biblical events and the timeline of the judgment. He says that God revealed some “exquisite proof” that enabled him to determine a “finished product” timeline that ends on May 21, this coming Saturday.

As Michael S. Rosenwald of The Washington Post explains, Camping “says he came up with the very precise date of May 21 through a mathematical calculation that would probably crash Google’s computers.” Further, Camping’s mathematical formula “involves, among other things, the dates of floods, the signals of numbers in the Bible, multiplication, addition and subtraction thereof.” As many have noted, the math seems to make sense only to Harold Camping.

Yet, in a strange way, this just serves to affirm Camping in his teaching. On his website he states:

However, it was not until a very few years ago that the accurate knowledge of the entire timeline of history was revealed to true believers by God from the Bible. This timeline extends all the way to the end of time. During these past several years God has been revealing a great many truths, which have been completely hidden in the Bible until this time when we are so near the end of the world.

These “true believers” turn out to be Harold Camping and his disciples. Others, even professing Christians, will be in big trouble when Saturday comes, he believes.

The Christian church has seen this kind of false teaching before. William Miller and his Adventist followers (known, surely enough, as Millerites) believed that Christ would return on March 21, 1844. In the 1970s, popular Christian preachers and writers predicted that Christ would return on various dates now long in the past. All this is embarrassing enough, but now we have the teachings of Harold Camping to deal with. Given the public controversy, many people are wondering how Christians should think about his claims.

First, Christ specifically admonished his disciples not to claim such knowledge. In Acts 1:7, Jesus said, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority.” In Matthew 24:36, Christ taught similarly: “But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.”

To state the case plainly, these two verses explicitly forbid Christians to claim the knowledge of such dates and times. Jesus clearly taught that the Father has not revealed such dates and timing, but has reserved that knowledge for himself. It is an act of incredible presumptuousness to claim that a human knows such a date, or has determined God’s timing by any means.

Second, the Bible does not contain hidden codes that we are to find and decipher. The Bible has been given to us in order that we might know the truth, and the truth is clearly revealed in its pages. We are not to look for hidden patterns of words, numbers, dates, or anything else. The Bible’s message is plain and requires no mathematical computation for its understanding. The claim that one has found a hidden code or system in the Bible is an insult to the Bible as the Word of God.

Third, Christians are indeed to be looking for Christ to return and seeking to be found faithful when Christ comes. We are not to draw a line in history and set a date, but we are to be about the Father’s business, sharing the Gospel and living faithful Christian lives. We are not to sit on rooftops like the Millerites, waiting for Christ’s return. We are to be busy doing what Christ has commanded us to do.

In Hebrews 9:28, we are taught that Christ will come a second time “to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.” That is the faithful Christian response to the New Testament teachings about Christ’s coming. The church is not to be arrogantly setting dates, but instead to be eagerly waiting for him. Of that we can be truly certain.


Source
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Australians oppose Malaysia boatpeople deal: poll


The Austrlian government is expected to begin sending boatpeople to Malaysia for processing as part of a new deal (AFP/File, William West)


(AFP) – 3 hours ago

SYDNEY — Nearly six in ten Australians oppose the government's plan to send asylum seekers to Malaysia, with many believing it will do little to stop the arrival of boatpeople, a poll showed Monday.

The Nielsen poll of 1,400 voters found 58 percent were against the deal, which will see Australia send 800 boatpeople to Malaysia in return for taking 4,000 of their refugees over four years, the Sydney Morning Herald said.

Asked about the proposal's impact, 58 percent said it would make no difference to boat arrivals, while 23 percent felt these would increase.

Only 16 percent thought the numbers of asylum seekers risking their lives to reach Australia via transit hubs such as Indonesia and Malaysia would fall as a result of the new policy.

"The electorate views everything the government does through a prism of suspicion -- 'Whatever you are doing, we don't like it'," Nielsen's John Stirton told the Herald.

The government is expected to begin sending boat arrivals to Malaysia for processing as soon as the deal is finalised, with Thailand and Papua New Guinea also indicating they could accept asylum seekers from Australia.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has said the first batch to be sent offshore for processing will be the 32 who arrived in Australia over the weekend -- despite no deal yet being finalised with another government.

Until then, they will be detained at an immigration detention facility on the Indian Ocean territory of Christmas Island, a site of recent violent unrest among frustrated asylum seekers.
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Gabrielle Giffords to see Endeavor's last liftoff

Seth Borenstein, Associated Press


Monday, May 16, 2011



Bruce Weaver / AFP/Getty Images
A gopher tortoise walks near the launchpad with the shuttle Endeavour at the Kennedy Space Center. The shuttle is due to begin its final mission today.


(05-16) 04:00 PDT Cape Canaveral --

With wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords on hand to watch, the space shuttle Endeavour is poised to give the workweek a roaring and historic start this morning, overcoming wiring problems that grounded it last month.

Giffords' arrival Sunday included a quick flyby of Endeavour on the launchpad, ready to go. The shuttle will be commanded by her husband, Mark Kelly.

"Gabrielle is excited for tomorrow's launch. Do you plan to see history in the making?" her staff tweeted.

NASA officials said conditions - from weather to technical issues - couldn't look much better for the scheduled 5:56 a.m. PDT launch.

Giffords, traveling on a NASA jet with the family of shuttle pilot Gregory Johnson, arrived shortly after the protective structure that surrounds Endeavour was moved out of the way - a milestone in launch preparations that allows fueling to begin.

Last month's launch attempt was scrubbed because of an electrical problem. NASA is expecting smaller crowds today - 400,000 people instead of 750,000 - for the second attempt.

The story of Giffords' recovery from the Jan. 8 mass shooting in her home district of Tucson, has drawn as much attention as the shuttle mission. She was shot in the head in an attack that killed six people.

Doctors cleared her to travel to see the launch. She came for the April attempt, flew back to Houston to resume her rehabilitation work and even had dinner out with her husband.

The main goal of Endeavour's 16-day mission is to haul a $2 billion astronomy and physics experiment to the International Space Station.

This is also the next-to-last flight for the 30-year-old space shuttle fleet. And it is the final flight of the shuttle Endeavour, which has flown 116.4 million miles in 24 previous flights.


Source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/05/15/MN5O1JGGIU.DTL#ixzz1MV3K6zqh
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Osama’s death could be "game changer" in Afghan war strategy

From ANI

Washington, May 16: US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has said Osama bin Laden’s death could end up being be a "game changer" in the war in Afghanistan, partly because the killed al Qaeda leader won't be around to obstruct a possible deal with the Taliban.

"If we keep the military pressure on and continue to hold what we seized over the last year and expand the security envelope, a change in the relationship between al Qaeda and the Taliban could, in fact, this fall or winter, create the circumstances where a reconciliation process could go forward," CBS News quoted Gates, as saying.

On being asked about his opinion about Americans who think that with bin Laden’s death, the US troops should be withdrawn from Afghanistan, he said: "I would say that we are getting the upper hand. We have over the last 18 months put in place, for the first time, the resources necessary to ensure that this threat does not rebuild, does not reemerge once we're gone. I think we could be in a position by the end of this year, where we have turned the corner in Afghanistan."

Gates praised President Barack Obama for making one of the ‘most courageous calls’ that he had seen during his tenure of over 30 years under eight presidents, by ordering the country’s Special Forces to track down bin Laden in his Abbottabad compound in Pakistan.

He also admired the way the operation was carried out with full coordination by the SEAL team despite the fact that they did not have ‘direct evidence’ whether bin Laden was actually present in the compound.

"It was a perfect fusion of intelligence collection, intelligence analysis, and military operations," he added.

Source
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US housing program squanders millions

Washington Post / May 16, 2011

WASHINGTON — The federal government’s largest housing construction program for the poor has squandered hundreds of millions of dollars on stalled or abandoned projects and routinely failed to crack down on delinquent developers or the local housing agencies that funded them.


Nationwide, nearly 700 projects that were awarded $400 million have been idling for years, a Washington Post investigation found. Some have languished for a decade or longer, even as much of the country struggles with record-high foreclosures and a dramatic loss of affordable housing.


The Department of Housing and Urban Development, which oversees the nation’s housing fund, does not track the pace of construction and often fails to spot defunct deals, instead trusting local agencies to police projects.


The result is a trail of failed developments. Fields where apartment complexes were promised are empty and neglected. Houses that were supposed to be renovated are boarded up and crumbling.


A yearlong Post investigation uncovered a dysfunctional system that delivers billions of dollars to local housing agencies with few rules, safeguards, or even a reliable way to track projects. The lapses have led to widespread misspending and delays in a two-decade-old program meant to deliver decent housing to the working poor.


The Post found breakdowns at every level:


■ Local housing agencies have awarded millions to troubled developers, including novice builders, fledgling nonprofits, and groups accused of fraud or shoddy work.


■ Checks were cut even when projects were still on the drawing boards, without land, financing, or permits to move forward. In at least 55 cases, developers drew HUD money but left behind only barren lots.


■ Over all, nearly one in seven projects shows signs of significant delay. Time and again, housing agencies failed to cancel bad deals or alert HUD when projects foundered.


Source: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2011/05/16/us_housing_program_squanders_millions/
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Higher Prices to Restrain U.S. Growth, Business Economists Say

Sunday, May 15, 2011
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May 16 (Bloomberg) -- The economy in the U.S. will grow less than previously estimated this year as rising commodity costs hurt consumers, a survey showed.

Gross domestic product in the world's largest economy will expand 2.8 percent in 2011, down from the 3.3 percent rate forecast in February, according to results of a survey by the National Association for Business Economics issued today in Washington. Consumer and business spending will also increase less than projected three months ago, while employment forecasts were revised up.

"The economy is facing a little more in the way of challenges," Richard Wobbekind, NABE president and associate dean of the University of Colorado's Leeds School of Business in Boulder, said in an interview. "The rise in commodity prices has added a bit more of a concern, but the economy is still on a path to strong and sustainable growth."

Climbing food and energy prices have tempered consumer spending in recent months, reducing the amount of income Americans have to spend on other goods and services. At the same time, NABE panelists forecast the acceleration in inflation caused by commodities will "be largely temporary."

The cost of living in the U.S. as measured by the consumer- price index will rise 2.8 percent in the 12-months ended in December, up from the 1.8 percent forecast in the last survey. The Federal Reserve's preferred inflation measure, which excludes food and energy, will advance 1.6 percent by the end of the year, compared with the previous estimate of 1.2 percent.

Crude Oil

Oil will average $105 per barrel in December, the survey showed. Prior forecasts showed the fuel at $93 per barrel.

Consumer spending, which accounts for about 70 percent of the economy, will increase 2.8 percent this year, down from the previous forecast of 3.2 percent, according to the survey.

The economists also lowered their estimates for business investment in equipment and software by 0.2 percentage point, forecasting it will expand 11.9 percent in the fourth-quarter from a year earlier. In that period, spending on nonresidential structures will drop 2.8 percent, down from a prior forecast for a 1.4 percent increase.

About 34 percent of respondents said the recovery will continue at a "moderate" pace with output growing at or slightly above potential, while about 29 percent are more optimistic about growth, the survey showed. Eleven percent characterized the expansion as "subpar."

"Even though there's a slight downward revision for growth, employment has picked up more rapidly," Wobbekind said. "The positives are more rapid hiring in the short run and a lower unemployment rate both this year and next."

Employers will add 190,300 workers to payrolls each month on average in 2011, 12,000 more than previously forecast, the survey showed. Unemployment will average 8.7 percent, 0.4 percentage point lower than projected in February.

Forty-one NABE members responded to the survey, conducted between April 13 and May 1. The National Association for Business Economics, founded in 1959, is the professional organization for people who use economics in their work.

--Editors: Carlos Torres, James Tyson


Source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/05/15/bloomberg1376-LL56BY07SXKX01-448NNS0I3D71QALROSNF02LH6O.DTL#ixzz1MUzZwVyF
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Airbus forced into emergency landing in Singapore

• Cathay Pacific plane suffers engine trouble on flight to Jakarta
• Firefighters douse jet, with no reporters of injuries

Associated Press
guardian.co.uk, Monday 16 May 2011 07.46 BST
Changi airport firefighters douse the engine of Cathay Pacific flight CX715, which made an emergency landing in Singapore after engine trouble. Photograph: Beawiharta/Reuters


The engine on a Cathay Pacific Airbus A330-300 has caught fire in mid-air, forcing the plane to make an emergency landing in Singapore. No one was injured in the incident.

Flight CX715 took off from Singapore heading to the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, at 1:12am on Monday, but soon turned around after engine trouble and landed at 1:57am, Singapore's Changi Airport said in a statement.

Firefighters extinguished the fire and normal flight operations resumed on the runway about an hour later, the airport said.

It was the second time in six months an Airbus had to make an emergency landing in Singapore because of engine problems. A Qantas A380 turned around shortly after takeoff on 4 November when one of its Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines disintegrated.

The airport would not say how many passengers were on board the flight or what kind of engines the plane used. A spokesman for Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific was not available for comment.
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Saturday, May 14, 2011

Boehner avoids mention of criticism surrounding appearance at Catholic University



May 14th, 2011

05:50 PMET

By Larry Lazo, CNN

WASHINGTON (CNN) - House Speaker John Boehner emphasized "humility, patience and faith" in his commencement speech Saturday at the Catholic University of America, steering clear of addressing concerns raised by dozens at the college over his role in passing the 2012 budget.

Boehner, a Catholic and a Republican, made no mention of a letter that was sent to him this week by a group of 70 people from Catholic University as well as other Catholic colleges across the country, criticizing the 2012 budget that Boehner helped guide through the House. The signatories included faculty, priests and nuns, among others.

The legislation called for spending cuts that could adversely affect a number of programs that help the poor and elderly.

The letter said Boehner's actions go against the Catholic doctrine.

"It is your moral duty as a legislator to put the needs of the poor and most vulnerable foremost in your considerations," the letter stated.

Stephen Schneck, a professor at Catholic University, was one of the dozens who signed the letter.

"Catholic social teachings have always emphasized the importance of preferencing the poor in regards to governance and policy-making. And if you look over the speaker's record, it doesn't seem as if he's been fulfilling that part of the deal," Schneck told CNN.

A day after receiving the letter, Boehner did not directly comment on the proposed cuts listed in the budget, but he did express his satisfaction with the system that's currently in place.

"I think America has a strong safety net for those who live near the bottom of our economy," he said.

But it's that safety net that Schneck and his colleagues say Boehner is targeting.

"In the 2012 budget there are a number of items that just seem to be quite frankly at odds with Catholic social teachings in this regard - the cuts that he makes to WIC [women, infants and children] programs, the 20% cuts in food stamps, cuts to maternal and infant grants. ... What happens to Medicare and Medicaid?" Schneck said.

A number of Christian groups have since formed what they call a "Circle of Protection" in the hopes of doing just that - protecting groups that are in danger of being heavily impacted by cuts to various food and nutrition programs as well as to Medicare and Medicaid.

Schneck issued an invitation to Boehner to join them.

Boehner said Thursday that he feels like there are people in every religion who lean more liberal or conservative, but he said he feels good about his track record.

"I believe that the actions that I've taken during my years in Congress uphold the values of my faith," he said.

In his commencement address Saturday, Boehner emphasized doing the right thing for the right reasons: "... humility, patience and faith - the raw material of hard work and sacrifice. They will take you as far as you want to go."

CNN's Eric Marrapodi contributed to this report
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Thousands Expected Today for David Wilkerson's Memorial Service

Sat, May. 14 2011 07:26 AM EDT


NEW YORK – Thousands in Manhattan and up to a million via webcast are expected to participate in a memorial service today honoring the Rev. David Wilkerson, the founding pastor of Times Square Church and founder of addiction recovery program Teen Challenge.

The memorial service is going "to celebrate his life and reflect upon his legacy of faith and trust in God. [It's] a cause to rejoice in the victory of Christ through the life of a man who finished the race well," Luly McCoy, director of communications at Times Square Church, told The Christian Post.

"We like to think of Pastor Dave as singing and dancing around the throne of God and we will share in his joy and rejoice with him," she said.

McCoy said 5,000 to 10,000 people will attend the 2 p.m. memorial service at Times Square Church at 51st street, between Broadway and Eighth Ave.

Family, closest friends, denominational leaders and dignitaries will be seated in the church's main sanctuary. The service will be open to the general public, which will be seated at the Education Annex of the church and in three overflow locations nearby.

Times Square Church will webcast the memorial service live on its website, www.tscny.org, beginning at 2 p.m. ET. Several translations will be available.


Anywhere from 10,000 to 1 million visitors are expected to watch the service online, according to McCoy.

"Pastor David was known and loved throughout the world. We have upgraded our bandwidth and streaming capacity to accommodate up to one million people viewing the service live," she said.

The service will be one hour to 1.5 hours in length and include videos and testimonials. The Times Square Church Adult and Youth Praise Choirs will lead in worship.

Wilkerson was laid to rest at private funeral last week at Rose Heights Church of God in Tyler, Texas. On April 27, he died at the age of 79 after his car fatally collided with a truck in East Texas. His wife, Gwendolyn Wilkerson, 70, survived the crash but soon after underwent surgery to repair a broken hip.

World Challenge Ministries reported Thursday that Mrs. Wilkerson is making "slow and steady improvement" after having been transferred from ICU to physical rehabilitation.

Wilkerson is also known for his bestselling book The Cross and the Switchblade, which chronicles how he began his ministry in New York City and his work with youths involved in drugs and gangs.

Many, including church and ministry leaders in New York City and around the world, are remembering Wilkerson as a "legend," "spiritual father," and devoted Christian leader.

Evangelist Nicky Cruz called Wilkerson a "true man of God" during his eulogy at the pastor's funeral.

"It was sudden and unexpected," McCoy said of Wilkerson's passing. "The tears come easily. Pastor Dave was our spiritual father. We loved him."

"We are experiencing overwhelming sadness but also overwhelming joy," she added. "He has gone ahead and we rejoice that he is finally face to face with his Beloved. We believe the Lord will honor him in death as he has honored him in life, and even through this memorial service, we will see great fruit. Many will get right with God, surrender their hearts because of his life. That is his legacy."

Pastor Wilkerson is survived by his wife, four children, and brothers Don Wilkerson and Jerry Wilkerson and sister Ruth Harris.

In lieu of flowers and gifts, the Wilkerson family has asked that donations be given to World Challenge’s Please Pass the Bread feeding program, Wilkerson’s last heartfelt endeavor to reach the poor.

Doors for the memorial service will open at 12 p.m. ET. Entrance for the general public will be at the Education Annex between 51st and 52nd Streets. Overflow locations will include the Equitable Auditorium at 787 Seventh Ave., Calvary Baptist Church at 123 West 57th St. and New World Stages at 340 West 50th St.

Seating will be on a first come, first serve basis.

On the Web: www.tscny.org
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