Saturday, June 11, 2011

Genuine Revivals


Revivals brought deep heart-searching and humility. They were characterized by solemn, earnest appeals to the sinner, by yearning compassion for the purchase of the blood of Christ. Men and women prayed and wrestled with God for the salvation of souls. The fruits of such revivals were seen in souls who shrank not at self-denial and sacrifice, but rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer reproach and trial for the sake of Christ. Men beheld a transformation in the lives of those who had professed the name of Jesus. The community was benefited by their influence. They gathered with Christ, and sowed to the Spirit, to reap life everlasting.

It could be said of them: "Ye sorrowed to repentance." "For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death. For behold this selfsame thing, that ye sorrowed after a godly sort, what carefulness it wrought in you, yea, what clearing of yourselves, yea, what indignation, yea, what fear, yea, what vehement desire, yea, what zeal, yea, what revenge! In all things ye have approved yourselves to be clear in this matter." 2 Corinthians 7:9-11.

This is the result of the work of the Spirit of God. There is no evidence of genuine repentance unless it works reformation. If he restore the pledge, give again that he had robbed, confess his sins, and love God and his fellow men, the sinner may be sure that he has found peace with God. Such were the effects that in former years followed seasons of religious awakening. Judged by their fruits, they were known to be blessed of God in the salvation of men and the uplifting of humanity.

But many of the revivals of modern times have presented a marked contrast to those manifestations of divine grace which in earlier days followed the labors of God's servants. It is true that a widespread interest is kindled, many profess conversion, and there are large accessions to the churches; nevertheless the results are not such as to warrant the belief that there has been a corresponding increase of real spiritual life. The light which flames up for a time soon dies out, leaving the darkness more dense than before.

Popular revivals are too often carried by appeals to the imagination, by exciting the emotions, by gratifying the love for what is new and startling. Converts thus gained have little desire to listen to Bible truth, little interest in the testimony of prophets and apostles. Unless a religious service has something of a sensational character, it has no attractions for them. A message which appeals to unimpassioned reason awakens no response. The plain warnings of God's word, relating directly to their eternal interests, are unheeded.

With every truly converted soul the relation to God and to eternal things will be the great topic of life. But where, in the popular churches of today, is the spirit of consecration to God? The converts do not renounce their pride and love of the world. They are no more willing to deny self, to take up the cross, and follow the meek and lowly Jesus, than before their conversion. Religion has become the sport of infidels and skeptics because so many who bear its name are ignorant of its principles. The power of godliness has well-nigh departed from many of the churches. Picnics, church theatricals, church fairs, fine houses, personal display, have banished thoughts of God. Lands and goods and worldly occupations engross the mind, and things of eternal interest receive hardly a passing notice.

Notwithstanding the widespread declension of faith and piety, there are true followers of Christ in these churches. Before the final visitation of God's judgments upon the earth there will be among the people of the Lord such a revival of primitive godliness as has not been witnessed since apostolic times. The Spirit and power of God will be poured out upon His children. At that time many will separate themselves from those churches in which the love of this world has supplanted love for God and His word. Many, both of ministers and people, will gladly accept those great truths which God has caused to be proclaimed at this time to prepare a people for the Lord's second coming. The enemy of souls desires to hinder this work; and before the time for such a movement shall come, he will endeavor to prevent it by introducing a counterfeit. In those churches which he can bring under his deceptive power he will make it appear that God's special blessing is poured out; there will be manifest what is thought to be great religious interest. Multitudes will exult that God is working marvelously for them, when the work is that of another spirit. Under a religious guise, Satan will seek to extend his influence over the Christian world.

In many of the revivals which have occurred during the last half century, the same influences have been at work, to a greater or less degree, that will be manifest in the more extensive movements of the future. There is an emotional excitement, a mingling of the true with the false, that is well adapted to mislead. Yet none need be deceived. In the light of God's word it is not difficult to determine the nature of these movements. Wherever men neglect the testimony of the Bible, turning away from those plain, soul-testing truths which require self-denial and renunciation of the world, there we may be sure that God's blessing is not bestowed.
And by the rule which Christ Himself has given, "Ye shall know them by their fruits" (Matthew 7:16), it is evident that these movements are not the work of the Spirit of God.

In the truths of His word, God has given to men a revelation of Himself; and to all who accept them they are a shield against the deceptions of Satan. It is a neglect of these truths that has opened the door to the evils which are now becoming so widespread in the religious world. The nature and the importance of the law of God have been, to a great extent, lost sight of. A wrong conception of the character, the perpetuity, and the obligation of the divine law has led to errors in relation to conversion and sanctification, and has resulted in lowering the standard of piety in the church. Here is to be found the secret of the lack of the Spirit and power of God in the revivals of our time.


The Great Controversy (1911), pp.462-465.
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Friday, June 10, 2011

TD JAKES AND THE DOCTRINE OF BAALAM.m4v



Uploaded by mdmissionary on Jun 5, 2011

TD Jakes at Oakwood University? Should Seventh-Day Adventist take a stand? Watch as Pastor JR Cofer preaches on the topic: TD Jakes and the Doctrine of Baalam! Share this video and start taking a stand for truth!!

No Call Out from SDA Church



Uploaded by garyzw on Mar 12, 2011

Walter Veith goes head to head with those who say we must Leave the SDA Church in order to be saved and exposes their error.

Thursday, June 09, 2011

Global corn supply tightens as U.S. grows less


Reuters Jun 9, 2011 – 1:40 PM ET


Global corn supplies will be much tighter next year than predicted a month ago, the U.S. government said on Thursday as it unexpectedly cut its estimate for the U.S. crop and forecast a jump in demand from China.

Chicago corn futures briefly spiked to an all-time high after the Agriculture Department said rains and floods prevented farmers from planting all the corn they had intended, cutting the likely size of the crop by 2 percent, an unusual revision just weeks ahead of its annual June survey.

That revision, in a monthly report that otherwise made few changes to the domestic crop view, reduced USDA’s forecast for U.S. ending stockpile as of September 2012 by 205 million bushels from the May report. The so-called carry-over stocks would edge near their tightest levels since the mid-1930s for a second year running.


Analysts had expected USDA to predict a smaller 129 million-bushel reduction in end stocks. By the end of next summer, the United States — which grows 40 percent of the world’s corn, more than a third of it used to make ethanol — would have less than a three-week supply on hand. The stocks-to-use ratio, a gauge of supplies, would be 5.2 percent. The lowest in modern times was 5 percent in 1995/96.

The global outlook grew even tighter due to a forecast 13 percent surge in Chinese consumption over this year and next, much more than earlier forecast. China will draw down its large inventories to meet the higher demand, the USDA said, cutting its estimate of China’s domestic stocks by 12 million tonnes. Corn is needed for livestock feed and to make industrial products like starch.

“What has impact on the world market is the U.S. drop” in production, projected for 5 million tonnes, said USDA analyst Jerry Norton. China was unlikely to import corn and, with a preference for large supplies, would not sell corn either.

Wheat, rice and feed (coarse) grains stockpiles are forecast to fall in the coming year at a time when rising crop prices are fueling inflation around the globe, and threatening to revive fears over world food security.

Although the USDA provided some relief on the outlook for wheat — with U.S. stockpiles expected to rise over the coming year by more than traders had anticipated — traders focused on corn, which has led price gains for most of the past year as relentless feed, fuel and food demand strains supply.

Chicago corn futures shot to a record high of $7.93 a bushel at the Chicago Board of Trade on Thursday. Prices later pared gains, but are still up 130 percent from a year ago. Wheat futures fell, and are down 15 percent from their peak in February and almost half their 2008 all-time high.

The USDA said corn plantings would fall 1.5 million acres below the 92.2 million acres planned by growers as heavy rainfall delayed sowing. The harvested area will drop even more sharply, by 2.2 percent, due to losses from floods along the Missouri River and the lower Ohio and Mississippi rivers.

“Planting delays through early June in the eastern Corn Belt and northern Plains are expected to reduce planted area, more than offsetting likely gains in the western Corn Belt and central Plains where planting was ahead of normal by mid-May,” said USDA.

While traders had already factored in some reduction in what was initially forecast to have been the second-highest corn plantings since 1944, it is rare for the USDA to adjust corn area early in the growing season.

The decision stands out all the more because USDA will report on June 30 on its annual survey crop planting, when it contacts 80,000 growers as well as making field surveys.

Besides plaguing the eastern Corn Belt, rains and floods have slashed the rice crop by 5.5 percent since May, USDA said. Drought in the Southwest would reduce the cotton crop by 1 million bales, or nearly 6 percent, to 17 million bales, and the rice crop, at 199.5 million hundredweight, would be the smallest in four years.

While USDA reduced its estimate of corn planting, it did not increase plantings for crops considered likely alternatives, such as soybeans. In the last couple of weeks, agricultural economists have debated if farmers could make more money by filing a prevented planting claim with crop insurers, which would mean leaving fields fallow, than plant a fall-back crop with a lower yield.

“USDA must feel comfortable we are going to lose acres, based on satellite (imagery),” said Jack Scoville, analyst for The Price Group. “We know we’re going to lose the acres; it just depends how much. They didn’t put them in beans.”

Joe Glauber, USDA chief economist, said the soybean planting season was still open.

USDA estimated the winter wheat crop at 1.45 billion bushels, up 2 percent from May. Traders expected a 2 percent drop. “Improved weather conditions during the past month in the upper Great Plains resulted in higher forecasted yields,” said USDA.

© Thomson Reuters 2011


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Roubini: Global Economy A Mixed Bag

By Carl Gaines


Roubini

NEW YORK CITY-In the packed Grand Ballroom yesterday at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, economist Nouriel Roubini delivered a lunchtime keynote speech at REIT Week 2011 that centered on the positives and negatives impacting the global economic recovery.

“The global economy is a glass that is half full and half empty,” Roubini, a professor of economics at New York University and the chairman and founder of Roubini Global Economics, told the crowd. The positives, he said, include a global economic recovery that is, in fact, becoming an expansion and a corporate sector that streamlined during the downturn. “There are many positive trends,” he said, “but there are also a number of downsides.”

Those downsides include sovereign risk that remains quite high globally, with large amounts of public debt. Also the Eurozone, though causing less concern this year than last, continues to be troublesome, particularly the smaller countries on the fringe of the union.

“If I were to ask myself what are the commonalities of these countries are , I would make the following observation: to different degrees, all of them have large deficits,” he said, adding that “many of the financial systems of these countries are damaged.”

As the government starts deleveraging and rolling back stimulus programs, Roubini said that he anticipates a similar deleveraging to occur in the housing sector. “One sector of the market that is already double-dipping is the housing market, residential real estate,” he said. Before all is said and done, Roubini--dubbed Dr. Doom for his spot-on prediction of the housing bust--told the audience that “almost 50% percent of houses are going to be in negative equity.”

Carl Gaines Carl Gaines, East Coast Editor for GlobeSt.com and Real Estate Forum, manages the coverage of commercial real estate along the east coast. His work has appeared in Crain's New York Business, Utne Reader, the NYTimes.com's the Local, the National Law Journal, the Village Voice and City Arts.


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Global Economic Crisis Deepening

Global Economic Crisis Deepening - by Stephen Lendman

In the 1960s, economist Arthur Okum began calculated America's Misery Index by adding the unemployment and inflation rates for a sense of public pain or lack of it in good times.

In May, it hit a record high exceeding 25, surpassing the earlier June 1980 21.98 top, based on how both measures were then calculated, not today's methodology, manipulated to hide painful truths.

At issue is:

-- over 22% unemployment, including discouraged workers and the so-called "birth-death model" estimate of net non-reported jobs from new businesses minus losses from ones no longer operating; during hard times, painful truths are hidden by creating non-existent jobs out of whole cloth instead of subtracting them to reflect fewer, not additional new businesses;

-- double digit inflation, including soaring food, energy, healthcare, college tuition, and other costs omitted or understated in core figures;

-- rising poverty, more than one in seven affected according to way understated Census Bureau figures, using threshold measures developed 40 years earlier;

-- record numbers on food stamps;

-- record measures of food insecurity - Feeding America.org reporting one in six American facing hunger;

-- predicted record 2011 numbers of home foreclosures, estimated at 1.2 million after one million lost last year;

-- record homelessness numbers up to 3.5 million on any given night, needing refuge wherever they can find it or face life on city streets; and

-- other measures of worsening conditions during a Main Street depression, affecting Europe, Japan and elsewhere like America.

Economic recovery? Explain how to millions unemployed or underemployed, foreclosed homeowners, bankrupt business owners, impoverished legions, and many others food insecure at a time US and European leaders enforce austerity when massive social stimulus is needed.

Across Europe, large deficits and public debt crises are spreading, an Economist April 29 article highlighting "a moment....when events spiral out of control. As panic sets in, bond yields lurch sickeningly upwards and fear spreads to shares and currencies."

It happened in September 2008, a decade earlier when Russia defaulted, and similar past events. "When the unthinkable becomes the inevitable," contagion and panic follow like a tsunami sweeping away everything in its path.

Numerous European countries are deeply troubled, notably Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain, entrapped in debt, locked in a Eurozone straightjacket. Perhaps heading for default, they've inflicted painful austerity on working households, rallying them en masse in protest.

On May 30, financial expert and investor safety advocate Martin Weiss said:

"Never before have I seen so many threats to your safety and wealth converging in one time and place," citing:

-- deteriorating bank safety, evident from increasing failures and other systemic risk measures;

-- a deepening housing market depression with no end in sight;

-- a worsening European sovereign debt crisis; and

-- most worrisome, the contagion spreading to America.

According to Weiss:

"If you thought the debt crisis of 2008-2009 was a harrowing experience, wait till you see what's coming next." Last time, corporations were affected. Sovereign states are getting hammered now, including America.

On May 16, the Global Europe Anticipation Bulletin (GEAB) headlined, "Global systemic crisis: Confirmation of a Major Alert for the second half of 2011 - Explosive fusion of world geopolitical dislocation and the global economic financial crisis," saying:

As it predicted in February 2008, GEAB again believes conditions now suggest a later in the year "explosive fusion....(a worldwide) geopolitical dislocation on the one hand and (a) global economic and financial crisis on the other."

Combined they show major economic trauma coming, extinguishing economic recovery hopes, notably in debt entrapped America, "represent(ing) the end of an era (in which the) dollar was the currency of the United States and the rest of the world's problem."

Ahead, it's becoming "the main threat weighing on the rest of the world" and America. Summer 2011 "will confirm that the Federal Reserve has lost its bet: the US economy has, in fact, never left the 'Very Great Depression which it entered in 2008 despite" massive money creation.

As a result, interest rates will rise. Government deficits will explode. Economic decline will intensify. Equity valuations will decline. The dollar will behave erratically "before suddenly losing 30% of its value" as earlier predicted.

At the same time, "Euroland," BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and "commodity producers will rapidly strengthen their cooperation while launching a final attempt to salvage" the remnants of Bretton Woods and a US/UK dominated world.

"(I)t's unrealistic to imagine (Obama) who has shown no major international stature so far, proving himself" statesmanlike enough to take risks ahead of the 2012 election cycle.

Under his leadership, America "is completely in dreamland. Whilst the country has reached unsustainable levels of debt, (its leaders) have made this topic an election issue."

Moreover, America today is seen as the "sick man of the world in which any sign of weakness or serious inconsistency can trigger uncontrolled panic."

In addition, the combination of "(c)razy central bankers, world leaders without a roadmap, economies at risk, inflation rising, currencies in trouble, frenzied commodities, uncontrolled Western debt, (high unemployment), (and) stressed societies" leaves little doubt about looming trouble ahead as early as second half 2011.

A Final Comment

In late May, Gerald Celente highlighted "the most trend-significant story" getting little or no coverage in Western media reports. The combination of weather, economic, and geopolitical events portend "far-reaching and disastrous" socioeconomic consequences.

"Farming, shipping, seafood, food supplies and petroleum refining will be among the foreseeable casualties, accompanied by massive population displacement. But the ensuing chain reaction (inflation, shortages, unemployment, etc.) will claim many other victims," so far unquantifiable.

Middle East and European protests "signaled a major turning point, (an unstoppable) "Off With Their Heads" mega-trend, America's media don't notice or explain.

Celente calls the European bailouts failures, creating higher unemployment, more debt, draconian austerity, and "a wholesale sell-off of valuable public resources," asset-stripping national wealth to enrich bankers, producing painful consequences.

As a result, "(e)conomic conditions will continue to deteriorate for most European nations. The worse they get, the louder and more heated the protests...." Repressive crackdowns will follow, producing greater protests this summer into 2012 and beyond as conditions worsen.

However, a potential wild card deserves watching - one or more terror strikes likely derailing angry protesters temporarily, uniting them behind national security issues, the way 9/11 worked.

More worrisome is a possible major false flag, even a nuclear one targeting a US and/or Western European city. If so, all bets are off short term, but sooner or later unmet needs will take precedence, perhaps when hungry people blame Washington for their misery and react angrily for help. It bears watching and may happen sooner than expected.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

posted by Steve Lendman @ 12:43 AM


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Inside Job... part 1 of 8



Uploaded by CODHVideos on Mar 18, 2011

Inside the financial crisis of 2008.

U.S. Is Intensifying a Secret Campaign of Yemen Airstrikes

By MARK MAZZETTI

Published: June 8, 2011

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has intensified the American covert war in Yemen, exploiting a growing power vacuum in the country to strike at militant suspects with armed drones and fighter jets, according to American officials.

The acceleration of the American campaign in recent weeks comes amid a violent conflict in Yemen that has left the government in Sana, a United States ally, struggling to cling to power. Yemeni troops that had been battling militants linked to Al Qaeda in the south have been pulled back to the capital, and American officials see the strikes as one of the few options to keep the militants from consolidating power.

On Friday, American jets killed Abu Ali al-Harithi, a midlevel Qaeda operative, and several other militant suspects in a strike in southern Yemen. According to witnesses, four civilians were also killed in the airstrike. Weeks earlier, drone aircraft fired missiles aimed at Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical American-born cleric who the United States government has tried to kill for more than a year. Mr. Awlaki survived.

The recent operations come after a nearly year-long pause in American airstrikes, which were halted amid concerns that poor intelligence had led to bungled missions and civilian deaths that were undercutting the goals of the secret campaign.

Officials in Washington said that the American and Saudi spy services had been receiving more information — from electronic eavesdropping and informants — about the possible locations of militants. But, they added, the outbreak of the wider conflict in Yemen created a new risk: that one faction might feed information to the Americans that could trigger air strikes against a rival group.

A senior Pentagon official, speaking only on condition of anonymity, said on Wednesday that using force against militants in Yemen was further complicated by the fact that Qaeda operatives have mingled with other rebels and antigovernment militants, making it harder for the United States to attack without the appearance of picking sides.

The American campaign in Yemen is led by the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command, and is closely coordinated with the Central Intelligence Agency. Teams of American military and intelligence operatives have a command post in Sana, the Yemeni capital, to track intelligence about militants in Yemen and plot future strikes.

Concerned that support for the campaign could wane if the government of Yemen’s authoritarian president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, were to fall, the United States ambassador in Yemen has met recently with leaders of the opposition, partly to make the case for continuing American operations. Officials in Washington said that opposition leaders have told the ambassador, Gerald M. Feierstein, that operations against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula should continue regardless of who wins the power struggle in Sana.

The extent of America’s war in Yemen has been among the Obama administration’s most closely guarded secrets, as officials worried that news of unilateral American operations could undermine Mr. Saleh’s tenuous grip on power. Mr. Saleh authorized American missions in Yemen in 2009, but placed limits on their scope and has said publicly that all military operations had been conducted by his own troops.

Mr. Saleh fled the country last week to seek medical treatment in Saudi Arabia after rebel shelling of the presidential compound, and more government troops have been brought back to Sana to bolster the government’s defense.

“We’ve seen the regime move its assets away from counterterrorism and toward its own survival,” said Christopher Boucek, a Yemen expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “But as things get more and more chaotic in Yemen, the space for the Americans to operate in gets bigger,” he said.

But Mr. Boucek and others warned of a backlash from the American airstrikes, which over the past two years have killed civilians and Yemeni government officials. The benefits of killing one or two Qaeda-linked militants, he said, could be entirely eroded if airstrikes kill civilians and lead dozens of others to jihad.

Edmund J. Hull, ambassador to Yemen from 2001 to 2004 and the author of “High-Value Target: Countering Al Qaeda in Yemen,” called airstrikes a “necessary tool” but said that the United States had to “avoid collateral casualties or we will turn the tribes against us.”

Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen is believed by the C.I.A. to pose the greatest immediate threat to the United States, more so than even Qaeda’s senior leadership believed to be hiding in Pakistan. The Yemen group has been linked to the attempt to blow up a transatlantic jetliner on Christmas Day 2009 and last year’s plot to blow up cargo planes with bombs hidden inside printer cartridges.

Mr. Harithi, the militant killed on Friday, was an important operational figure in Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and was believed to be one of those responsible for the group’s ascendance in recent years. According to people in Yemen close to the militant group, Mr. Harithi travelled to Iraq in 2003 and fought alongside Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian operative who led the Qaeda affiliate in Iraq until he was killed in an American strike in 2006. Mr. Harithi returned to Yemen in 2004, those close to the militants said, where he was captured, tried and imprisoned in 2006 but released three years later.

Even as senior administration officials worked behind the scenes with Saudi Arabia for a transitional government to take power in Yemen, a State Department spokesman on Wednesday called on the embattled government in Sana to remain focused on dealing with the rebellion and Qaeda militants.

“With Saleh’s departure for Saudi Arabia, where he continues to receive medical treatment, this isn’t a time for inaction,” said the spokesman, Mark Toner. “There is a government that remains in place there, and they need to seize the moment and move forward.”


Muhammad al-Ahmadi contributed reporting from Sana, Yemen, and Eric Schmitt and Scott Shane from Washington.


A version of this article appeared in print on June 9, 2011, on page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S. Is Intensifying A Secret Campaign Of Yemen Airstrikes.

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Panetta: Escalate Shadow Wars, Expand Black Ops

By Spencer Ackerman June 9, 2011 | 5:21 pm |


Icing Osama bin Laden? Just the beginning, once Leon Panetta makes it to the Pentagon.

At his Thursday confirmation hearing to become secretary of defense, CIA Director Panetta made a broad case for expanding the U.S.’ already extensive shadow wars. Now that bin Laden is dead, “we’ve got to keep the pressure up,” Panetta urged senators. Expect a lot of drone strikes and a lot of special ops raids — some conducted by future CIA Director David Petraeus. In a lot of places.

Panetta said he wants to hit al-Qaida’s “nodes” from Pakistan to North Africa, “develop[ing] operations in each of those areas,” so terrorists have “no place to escape.” That means working with the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), the elite commandos that executed the raid on bin Laden’s Abbotabad compound. And Panetta has some specific ideas about how that should work.


In his written responses to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Panetta endorsed a command scheme that would place select U.S. military personnel temporarily under the authority of the CIA director for the most sensitive counterterrorism operations. Panetta told the committee that it’s “appropriate for the head of such department or agency [read: CIA] to direct the operations of the element providing that military support while working with the Secretary of Defense.” A “significant advantage of doing so,” he continued, “is that it permits the robust operational capability of the U.S. Armed Forces to be applied when needed.”

That’s contentious: it would put the military in the territory of performing operations that the government can legally deny all knowledge of ordering, something obviously problematic for uniformed military personnel. ”A potential disadvantage,” Panetta conceded, “is that the department or agency
receiving the support may not be specifically organized or equipped to direct and control operations by
military forces.”

The U.S. reportedly employed that command structure in the highly exceptional case of the bin Laden raid, putting Navy SEALs under CIA Director Panetta’s command. Panetta is essentially talking about lowering the standards for which JSOC gets loaned out to CIA missions, in order to finish al-Qaida off in the post-bin Laden era.

That fits his pattern at the CIA: Panetta expanded the list of targets that Predator drones could hit far beyond the seniormost al-Qaida operatives. Already, the skies above Yemen are filled with armed planes hunting terrorists — a JSOC mission “closely coordinated” with the CIA, according to the New York Times.

With the U.S. growing weary of big land wars, that looks more like the counterterrorism model to expect in the coming years, with Panetta atop the Pentagon and his old CIA chair filled by Gen. David Petraeus. (Good thing Petraeus has some experience working with Special Operations Forces.) Indeed, Panetta told the committee that succeeding in Afghanistan “is dependent” on knocking out al-Qaida’s Pakistani safe havens — something U.S. officials have been loath to say, since it implies the Afghanistan war is focused on the wrong country. The “right country,” by Panetta’s logic, would be a place where the CIA and JSOC hunt.

And it’s not just Pakistan, nor just Yemen: al-Qaida’s “nodes” are in Somalia, “North Africa” and Iraq as well, Panetta said. He even claimed a whopping 1000 al-Qaida operatives are still at large in Iraq. That dwarfs the “more than 300″ al-Qaida operatives in Pakistan, according to an estimate last year from Michael Leiter, the outgoing director of the National Counterterrorism Center. No wonder Panetta thinks the U.S. should stay in Iraq after 2011.

Spencer Ackerman is Danger Room's senior reporter, based out of Washington, D.C., covering weapons of doom and the strategies they're used to implement.
Follow @attackerman and @dangerroom on Twitter.

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Kissinger: U.S.-China Ties Hold Promise And Peril

Listen to the Story
Talk of the Nation
[47 min 7 sec]


Jurgen Frank
Henry Kissinger served as national security advisor and secretary of state under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973.


June 8, 2011


In the early 1970s, Mao Zedong's communist China loomed as an implacable enemy of the United States. The world's most populous country, it was also one of its poorest, convulsed by changes instituted by the regime that had led to widespread persecution and the deaths of tens of millions of Chinese.

The United States and much of the world still recognized Taiwan, not the mainland, as the seat of China's legitimate government. But the much larger People's Republic of China regularly threatened to invade its island neighbor, while simultaneously launching a brutal crackdown on Tibet. Beijing was also supporting North Vietnam and communist forces in Laos and Cambodia, both fighting against the U.S. in a bloody war in Indochina.

Despite this fraught foreign policy backdrop, there proved to be one thing that could unite the two adversaries: a common rival, the Soviet Union.

Henry Kissinger, who went on to serve as secretary of state under presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, was Nixon's national security adviser in 1972. He tells NPR's Neal Conan and NPR commentator Ted Koppel that the Nixon administration quickly concluded that tensions between Mao and the U.S.S.R. provided a potential opening for U.S.-China cooperation.

"The two previous administrations ... argued that there was a unified communist conspiracy, moving from Moscow to Beijing to Hanoi, that was threatening American security," says Kissinger. "We concluded very quickly that this was not the ... correct interpretation."

In his book, On China, Kissinger describes the delicate diplomatic dance that ultimately took Nixon to the mainland in 1972 — the first public interaction between Chinese and U.S. leaders in three decades.

"In each country, certainly in ours ... there were elements who believed that the relationship between the two countries would be irreconcilably hostile," says Kissinger. "So each side had the problem of how to make an overture, without, at the same time, embarrassing itself by a rejection."

The result was a series of surreptitious exchanges orchestrated by Kissinger and his colleagues, including an almost comical attempt by the American to pass on a message to the Chinese at a Yugoslav fashion show in Warsaw.

"[We] instructed our ambassador in Poland, which was the only place where there was any contact, and the only place where the Chinese still had an ambassador ... to approach the Chinese diplomat at the next social function," says Kissinger. "Our diplomat ... went up to the Chinese. The Chinese [diplomat] ran away because he had no instructions, and didn't know what to do."

Despite the sometimes awkward lead-up to the Nixon visit, the historic meeting became a turning point in U.S.-China relations. And the U.S., says Kissinger, must continue to exert the same amount of effort in its relationship with the world's newest superpower today.

"We are going to be the two strongest societies in the world. We're going to impinge upon each other in every part of the world," Kissinger says. "There are many problems that have arisen that can only be dealt with on a global basis. So how this relationship will evolve will be of crucial importance."



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Getting by Without the Middle Class

By CHRYSTIA FREELAND REUTERS

Published: June 9, 2011


NEW YORK — The big mystery in the United States today is why the job crisis is not at the center of the political and economic debate. After all, the numbers — and the human tragedies they reflect — could not be bleaker.

Nearly 14 million Americans — 9.1 percent of the working population — are unemployed. That’s just a couple of a million shy of the populations of Greece and Ireland, Europe’s two problem children, combined. Another 8.5 million would like to work full time, but can only find part-time jobs. A further 2.2 million have been so discouraged by the grim labor market that they have given up looking for jobs altogether.

It is hard to blame them — those still actively looking for work have been unemployed for an average of 39.7 weeks. These are cruel numbers, and they depict an unemployment crisis that is deeper and more sustained than at any time since 1948, when records first started to be kept.

Yet the debate in Washington is focused on deficit reduction, rather than job creation. The news media are following the same playbook. A recent database analysis by The National Journal found that over the past two years, the leading newspapers in the United States had dramatically shifted their attention from unemployment to the deficit and were now publishing more than three times as many stories about the budget as they were about jobs.

Politicians and pundits on the left have begun warning that this relative indifference to joblessness is worse than a crime, it is a mistake. In a blog post this month, Robert Reich, the former labor secretary, said that “the economic burdens of America’s vast middle class may be catching up with the Street.” Unless more jobs are created soon, he warned, “American consumers will not have enough purchasing power to buy what the private sector can produce.”

But the reality may be even more chilling: Perhaps U.S. business is learning to get by just fine, thank you, without middle-class U.S. consumers. And while that may be good news for chief executives and shareholders, it could be the beginning of a new and socially wrenching political logic that leaves the great American middle behind.

Wall Street, which is paid for smarts, not sentiment, has this figured out. In a newspaper interview this month, Robert C. Doll, chief equity strategist at BlackRock, the largest money manager in the world, pointed out that the fortunes of U.S. companies and the fortunes of the country as a whole were diverging: “The U.S. stock market and the U.S. economy are increasingly different animals.”

Mr. Doll’s explanation for the shift was the increasing importance of international markets rather than the domestic one — of the rising middle class in emerging markets, rather than the stagnating one back home. He said that over the next five years, 70 percent of the incremental earnings of S.&P. 500 companies would come from outside the United States.

Among the most high-ranking executives, capitalizing on that shift has become standard operating practice. Speaking this week in Washington at an Ernst & Young conference on emerging markets (disclosure note: I moderated some sessions), Steve Taylor, a senior executive at the energy and water company Nalco, explained, “In most cases, it is dismantling something you have in mature markets to build in emerging markets. So you have to take that step. It is very painful, but you have to take that step.”

The move to consumers from emerging markets is just part of the story. Within the United States, the advertising agencies on Madison Avenue are discovering that the age of the American mass consumer may be drawing to an end. Instead, a new white paper by Ad Age, the industry’s trade journal, argues that growing income inequality means the only buyers who count are those at the top.

“Simply put, as the discrepancy between the rich and poor has become more and more stark, a small plutocracy of wealthy elites drives a larger and larger share of total consumer spending,” the paper concludes, citing research that shows the top 10 percent of U.S. households account for nearly 50 percent of all consumer spending. “It appears that mass affluence may be a thing of the past — and that luxury marketers should reconsider how their products appeal to elite consumers.”

It is hard to overemphasize the importance of this business shift from the U.S. middle class to the rich at home and the hundreds of millions graduating into the middle class in the emerging markets.

Twentieth-century American capitalism was built on what you might call the Henry Ford model — generously compensated workers (Ford paid double the existing rate) created a mass middle class that bought the products of the country’s entrepreneurs. That virtuous circle made the United States the world’s economic behemoth, and created a society and a political discourse defined by a proudly acquisitive middle class — the United States’ much admired and much maligned consumer culture.

But today, for the first time since the Industrial Revolution, that link between keeping up with the Joneses and the rising value of the Dow Jones industrial average may be breaking. Unemployment remains stuck above 9 percent, but since March 2009, when stocks hit their post-crisis bottom, the Dow has risen more than 85 percent.

When the chief of General Motors, Charles E. Wilson, told a Senate confirmation hearing in 1953 that he believed that what was good for the country was good for G.M. and vice versa, he took some flak for uttering such a self-serving line. But we all remember it because Mr. Wilson captured something axiomatic about the connection between the fortunes of U.S. business and the welfare of the country as a whole.

The creative destruction of 21st-century capitalism seems to be requiring U.S. companies to learn to prosper with fewer U.S. workers and with fewer U.S. middle-class consumers. We do not know yet how American democracy — where the middle class has the votes, but the business class has the money — will respond to this tough new economic logic.

Chrystia Freeland is global editor at large at Reuters.


A version of this article appeared in print on June 10, 2011, in The International Herald Tribune with the headline: Getting by Without the Middle Class.

Source

Wednesday, June 08, 2011

Catholic Power vs. American Freedom




Catholic Power vs. American Freedom 1/7




Uploaded on Sep 12, 2010


Millions of Christians died to get you this information...Do you think they died in vain????
The pope is the !!ANTICHRIST!! THE MARK OF THE BEAST IS SUNDAY WORSHIP
This video was uploaded to expose the catholic church for what it really is THE WHORE OF BABYLON


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Obama frets about slow pace of recovery

But not fearful of double-dip recession


President Obama, with his wife, Michelle, greeted Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and her husband, Joachim Sauer (right), at the White House last night for a state dinner at which Merkel was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

By Desmond Butler
Associated Press / June 8, 2011


WASHINGTON — After a spate of discouraging economic reports, President Obama insisted yesterday he is not afraid of the country slipping into a double-dip recession. But at the same time he displayed some impatience and said the pace of the recovery has got to accelerate.

“Obviously, we’re experiencing some headwinds,’’ Obama said at a joint news conference with visiting Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany. He said it was unclear whether the latest unemployment report, which showed a slowdown in job growth, was a one-month episode or part of a trend.

Obama said his administration is taking a range of steps to boost the economy and asserted the nation is on a path to long-term economic growth, but he acknowledged, “we’ve still got a lot to do.’’

The economy is the overarching issue as Obama heads into a reelection campaign, and a Washington Post-ABC News poll released yesterday found that disapproval with how Obama is handling the economy and the deficit has reached a new high.

Mindful of that sentiment, Obama tried to project both confidence and empathy for those still feeling economic pain: “I’m not concerned about a double-digit recession. I am concerned that the recovery that we’re on is not producing jobs as quickly as I want it to happen.’’

Merkel’s visit is her sixth trip to the United States since Obama took office. Later, Obama was to treat Merkel to a night of high pomp at the White House, awarding her the Presidential Medal of Freedom during a formal dinner. The gestures appear aimed at warming a relationship that has seemed more cordial than close.

Taking note of the economic turmoil that has roiled both sides of the Atlantic, Obama said: “Recovery from that kind of body blow takes time. Our task is to not panic, not overreact.’’

Obama sought to put to rest any suggestion that his relationship with Merkel was strained, praising the chancellor’s “pragmatic approach to complex issues’’ and saying that “it’s just fun to work together.’’

Merkel, likewise, depicted their ties as close, although she acknowledged that “sometimes there may be differences of opinion.’’

Obama and Merkel, for example, have had differences on Libya, after Germany abstained in the UN vote that authorized a no-fly zone over Libya and kept its troops out of the NATO-led operation to enforce it.

Obama, without mentioning that, said Germany’s deployment of resources in Afghanistan had allowed other NATO allies to increase support for the Libyans, and he stressed that both he and Merkel believe Libyan leader Moammar Khadafy has to step down.

On Afghanistan, where Germany has 5,000 troops stationed mostly in the volatile north, Merkel said the two leaders are committed to stabilizing the country not just militarily but also in terms of bolstering its civil society, adding, “We will not abandon them.’’

“We wish to go in together, out together,’’ she said of US and German troops. Both leaders face significant opposition to the war from their people at home.

The United States has roughly 100,000 troops in Afghanistan, and Obama renewed his pledge to begin a significant drawdown of US troops this summer. Germany hopes to start a gradual troop withdrawal by year’s end.
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Growth slowed in spring but didn't stall: Fed

Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke speaks at the International Monetary Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, June 7, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Tami Chappell


By Glenn Somerville

WASHINGTON Wed Jun 8, 2011 9:37pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Growth slowed in some U.S. regions during May as costlier food and energy as well as supply disruptions stemming from a major earthquake in Japan in March took a toll, the Federal Reserve said on Wednesday.

"Reports from the 12 Fed districts indicated that economic activity generally continued to expand since the last report, though a few districts indicated some deceleration," the U.S. central bank's periodic "Beige Book" summary said.

The report on coast-to-coast conditions, prepared by the New York regional Fed bank and based on conditions on or before May 27, will be used by Fed monetary policy-makers at their next session on June 21-22.

The Beige Book's conclusions fit with other signs from recent government reports showing consumers struggling with higher gasoline prices and reduced job opportunities. The Labor Department said on Friday that employers added only 54,000 jobs in May and the unemployment rate hit 9.1 percent.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke acknowledged on Tuesday that growth had slowed but held out hope it would pick up in the second half of the year. He said policymakers were closely watching labor markets.

Analyst Michael Gapen of Barclays Capital Research said the Beige Book summary was "a bit more optimistic than the incoming data flow in recent weeks" but agreed that growth is likely to pick up later in the year.

"We believe that the main factors constraining activity -- higher energy prices and supply chain disruptions -- will be transitory in nature and we continue to believe that activity will accelerate in the second half of the year," Gapen said.

SOME LAYOFFS COMING

The Beige Book said there was "gradual improvement in labor market conditions" but it wasn't universal as Minneapolis cited several examples of expected layoffs and St Louis said jobs were likely going to be lost in the services sector.

The Fed said that respondents in New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta and Chicago reported some easing in the overall pace of growth last month, though Dallas said it picked up.

Manufacturing was still expanding overall but a number of districts said it too was not growing as quickly as it was earlier in the year.

Consumers, whose purchases of goods and services provide the economy's driving force, were holding steady but showing some signs of sticker shock last month.

"Elevated food and energy prices, as well as unfavorable weather in some parts of the country, were ... weighing on consumers' propensity to spend," the summary said.

There are ample signs of consumer stress, including a report on Wednesday from fast-food giant McDonald's showing a reported a lower-than-expected rise in May sales at established restaurants.

Roughly 800 of McDonald's 14,000 U.S. restaurants are located by interstate highways and the company said high gasoline prices were a factor crimping spending by customers.

HOPES FOR SECOND-HALF PICKUP

The Fed said new-car sales were "fairly robust" in much of the country but the impact from disruptions that followed the devastating March 11 earthquake in Japan was apparent.

"Widespread supply disruptions -- primarily related to the disaster in Japan -- were reported to have substantially reduced the flow of new automobiles into dealers' inventories, which in turn held down sales in some districts," the Fed said.

The damage caused to Japanese factories and supply lines affected more than just the auto industry. High-tech firms in Boston and Dallas said their business also suffered because of shortages of Japanese-sourced parts.

New homebuilding and real estate sales showed "widespread weakness" although loan demand was steady or rose in the commercial and industrial sector and the Fed noted that was substantial improvement in credit quality.

Prices for agricultural commodities, petroleum-based products and industrial metals rose in May and fuel surcharges were increasingly common.

But wage pressures were described as "contained" and an abundance of workers was keeping wage growth down, the Fed said.

(Reporting by Glenn Somerville, Editing by James Dalgleish)

Source
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Sales of imported vehicles jump 22 pct in May

2011-06-07 11:49

SEOUL (Yonhap) -- Sales of imported vehicles in South Korea surged 22 percent last month from a year earlier on demand for new models and aggressive marketing strategies by local dealers, a trade association said Tuesday.

A total of 8,777 imported vehicles were sold here in May, compared with 7,193 units sold a year earlier, according to the Korea Automobile Importers and Distributors Association (KAIDA).

Sales in May also represent a 7 percent increase from a month earlier.

"Registration of new imported vehicles rose in May from April on growing demand for new vehicle models by several brands and their active promotional efforts," said Yoon Dae-sung, a KAIDA official.

Accumulated sales of imported vehicles in the first five months of the year rose 24.4 percent from a year earlier to 42,700 units, according to KAIDA, strongly supporting the organization's earlier forecast that sales of new imported vehicles here will top 100,000 units this year for the first time.

BMW was named the best selling brand for the fourth consecutive month since February with 2,014 units sold here last month, followed by Mercedes Benz with 1,449 units and Volkswagen with 1,331 units.

By size, vehicles with a 2.0-liter or smaller engine were most popular, taking up 45.2 percent of the market share.

By origin, European vehicles dominated the market with a combined 81 percent share of the market, followed by Japanese manufacturers with a 12.8 percent market share and U.S. automakers with 6.3 percent of the market.

Source



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

Meanwhile in the U.S. A. -- Guess who is increasing in sales?

Two hints, North Korean manufacturers.

Hyundai and Kia...

Photo (Courtesy) 1=22007">http://editorial.autos.msn.com/listarticle.aspx?cp-documentid=1182492&icid=autos_1800>1=22007

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Tuesday, June 07, 2011

Church Signs Come Down - Creation Seventh Day Adventist Church



Uploaded by SDAToday on May 14, 2011

This is a news regarding the SDA persecution to other that has its doctrine(original SDA material)
see how SDA persecute the Creation SDA church by tearing down the Signs and force to change its names, its doctrine, and its faith.


[Note] This actually took place last year in February 2010;
See related article: http://endrtimes.blogspot.com/2010/02/church-signs-come-down.html

Let every man, wherein he is called, therein abide with God


20Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called.

21Art thou called being a servant? care not for it: but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather.

22For he that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord's freeman: likewise also he that is called, being free, is Christ's servant.

23Ye are bought with a price; be not ye the servants of men.

24Brethren, let every man, wherein he is called, therein abide with God.

25Now concerning virgins I have no commandment of the Lord: yet I give my judgment, as one that hath obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful.

26I suppose therefore that this is good for the present distress, I say, that it is good for a man so to be.

27Art thou bound unto a wife? seek not to be loosed. Art thou loosed from a wife? seek not a wife.

28But and if thou marry, thou hast not sinned; and if a virgin marry, she hath not sinned. Nevertheless such shall have trouble in the flesh: but I spare you.

29But this I say, brethren, the time is short: it remaineth, that both they that have wives be as though they had none;

30And they that weep, as though they wept not; and they that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not; and they that buy, as though they possessed not;

31And they that use this world, as not abusing it: for the fashion of this world passeth away.

32But I would have you without carefulness. He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord:

33But he that is married careth for the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife.

34There is difference also between a wife and a virgin. The unmarried woman careth for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit: but she that is married careth for the things of the world, how she may please her husband.

35And this I speak for your own profit; not that I may cast a snare upon you, but for that which is comely, and that ye may attend upon the Lord without distraction.

36But if any man think that he behaveth himself uncomely toward his virgin, if she pass the flower of her age, and need so require, let him do what he will, he sinneth not: let them marry.

37Nevertheless he that standeth stedfast in his heart, having no necessity, but hath power over his own will, and hath so decreed in his heart that he will keep his virgin, doeth well.

38So then he that giveth her in marriage doeth well; but he that giveth her not in marriage doeth better.

39The wife is bound by the law as long as her husband liveth; but if her husband be dead, she is at liberty to be married to whom she will; only in the Lord.

40But she is happier if she so abide, after my judgment: and I think also that I have the Spirit of God.

1 Corinthians 7:20-40.
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A new way to measure human rights may revolutionize global advocacy

Change Agent


A new way to measure human rights may revolutionize global advocacy


The SERF index, a new way to measure human rights in a country, may provide a more accurate assessment of a country's human rights effort.



A small group of scholars based at The New School in New York City and the University of Connecticuthave created what they hope will be a more rigorous and globally applicable index of human rights, focusing on social and economic rights, called the SERF index.

Courtesy of Dowser.org


By Rachel Signer, Dowser.org / June 6, 2011


In 1948, the United Nations passed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the hopes of creating a world in which individuals lived without oppression. In the decades that have passed, human rights advocacy has grown into a worldwide community of organizations, academics, and think tanks.


But the task of protecting and improving human rights faces numerous challenges: the problem of using standardized indexes to measure rights in highly heterogeneous cultural and national contexts is one. And for many human rights scholars, the tendency to concentrate advocacy efforts on political and civic rights, like the right to vote or the right to a fair trial, rather than social and economic ones, like the right to education or health care, is another significant limitation.

A small group of scholars based at The New School in New York City and the University of Connecticut, with support from the Social Science Research Council, have created what they hope will be a more rigorous and globally applicable human rights index that focuses on social and economic rights, called the SERF index. The Economic and Social Rights Empowerment Initiative launched the index on May 13, in a public panel at New York University’s Institute for Public Knowledge.

GALLERY: World's worst human rights violators

The SERF index aims to break away from other rights indicators by accounting for not only the rights-bearers, but also duty-bearing state governments. Focusing on the “core rights” of adequate housing, education, food, healthy, work, and social security, SERF takes a substantive and contextual approach that asks, firstly, the extent to which a nation’s people are enjoying these rights and, secondly, the extent to which countries are feasibly obligated to fulfill these rights.

In order to deal with the immense variety of governments around the world, SERF is relying on GDP as a proxy for state capacity, something which New York University law professor Margaret Satterthwaite suggested may be problematic at the panel.

For an example of how the indicator works, the panel showed how Equatorial Guinea and Moldova measure nearly equal on the Human Development Index, but drastically different according to SERF. The gap is a result of accounting for how much a national government is measuring up to what it is capable of doing, given its economic situation.

Indicators define goalposts and policy objectives for human rights advocates. Therefore, in order for an indicator to be effective, it must be put into use by these activists, explained Larry Cox, the US director of Amnesty International. For an indicator to acquire authority it must be replicable, clear, and backed up by solid academic research – and, Mr. Cox said, this one certainly merits all three claims. Furthermore, Cox emphasized that the indicator’s methodology must be made comprehensible to larger civil society audiences.

Still, limitations exist for the SERF index. There are missing data sets that may be difficult to obtain in many cases, there is a need to address broader questions of moral imperatives and judgment in the face of cultural differences, and there is the challenge of bringing the indicator to activists who can use it to work toward policy reforms.

Nevertheless, the SERF index represents a new direction in the field of global justice by attempting to tackle significant problems that are a result of divergent histories and unequal power relations around the world.

Source
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Thousands flee their homes and flights are grounded as Chilean volcano sends plumes of ash showering down


By Daily Mail Reporter

Last updated at 7:56 AM on 7th June 2011

The Chilean volcano which erupted on Monday has sent a towering plume of ash across South America, forcing thousands from their homes, grounding airline flights in southern Argentina and coating ski resorts with a gritty layer of dust instead of snow.

Booming explosions echoed across the Andes as toxic gases belched up from a three-mile-long fissure in the Puyehue-Cordon Caulle volcanic complex - a ridge between two craters just west of the Chilean-Argentine border that began erupting Saturday.

Winds blew a six-mile high cloud of ash all the way to the Atlantic Ocean and even into southern Buenos Aires province, hundreds of miles to the north-east.

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Senior White House economic aide resigns

Top White House economist Austan Goolsbee has announced he is stepping down, marking the exit of one of President Barack Obama's closest aides at a time when new signs of weakness have emerged in the US economy.


White House Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Austan Goolsbee Photo: REUTERS


7:00AM BST 07 Jun 2011

Less than a year after he was named chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, Mr Goolsbee plans to return to his teaching job at the University of Chicago, the Obama administration said in a statement.


His departure leaves Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner as the sole remaining senior member of the original economic team.


Mr Goolsbee and Mr Obama got to know each other at the University of Chicago, where the president had been a lecturer in constitutional law. He advised Mr Obama's campaign for the US Senate in 2004 and his 2008 presidential campaign.


Mr Goolsbee has been one of the administration's more visible spokesmen on the economy and lately has emphasised his view that the recovery remains solidly on track, despite a report on Friday showing tepid jobs growth and a rise in the unemployment rate in May to 9.1 per cent from 9 per cent in April.


"He has helped steer our country out of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and although there is still much work ahead, his insights and counsel have helped lead us toward an economy that is growing and creating millions of jobs," Mr Obama said in a statement.


In addition to the jobs report, other data including reports on housing and manufacturing have suggested the recovery was losing momentum.

At the beginning of this year, Mr Goolsbee warned that a failure by the US Congress to raise the nation's borrowing limit could be "catastrophic" for the economy, a line the White House has repeated in the months since then as it negotiates with Republicans over legislation to lift the debt ceiling.


Source

Monday, June 06, 2011

When The SDA General Conference In Session is no Longer The Voice of God


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


There is a time when the voice of the General Conference, even in session, IS NOT to be considered as the voice of God. For decades SDA church officials have only partially quoted a portion of Ellen White's counsel on this important subject. They have always quoted the following part:

"God has ordained that the representatives of His church from all parts of the earth, when assembled in a General Conference, shall have authority." Testimonies, Vol. 9, 261.

Now let's look at the entire weight of evidence of the matter taking the statement in full context, letting each word have its bearing, and interpreting so that nothing contradicts or is given partiality treatment:

"I have often been instructed by the Lord that no man's judgment should be surrendered to the judgment of any other one man. Never should the mind of one man or the minds of a few men be regarded as sufficient in wisdom and power to control the work and to say what plans shall be followed. But when, in a General Conference, the judgment of the brethren assembled from all parts of the field is exercised, private independence and private judgment must not be stubbornly maintained, but surrendered. Never should a laborer regard as a virtue the persistent maintenance of his position of independence, contrary to the decision of the general body.
At times when a small group of men entrusted with the general management of the work have, in the name of the General Conference, sought to carry out unwise plans and to restrict God's work, I have said that I could no longer regard the voice of the General Conference, represented by these few men, as the voice of God. But this is not saying that the decisions of a General Conference composed of an assembly of duly appointed, representative men from all parts of the field should not be respected. God has ordained that the representatives of His church from all parts of the earth, when assembled in a General Conference, shall have authority. The error that some are in danger of committing is in giving to the mind and judgment of one man, or of a small group of men, the full measure of authority and influence that God has vested in His church in the judgment and voice of the General Conference assembled to plan for the prosperity and advancement of His work.
When this power, which God has placed in the church, is accredited wholly to one man, and he is invested with the authority to be judgment for other minds, then the true Bible order is changed. Satan's efforts upon such a man's mind would be most subtle and sometimes well-nigh overpowering, for the enemy would hope that through his mind he could affect many others. Let us give to the highest organized authority in the church that which we are prone to give to one man or to a small group of men E.G. White, Testimonies, vol. 9, 260, 261.

Sadly, the church has always been prone to give to one man or to a small group of men the power that should reside in a democratic vote of the General Conference in Session. A classic example of this one man or "small group of men" power was demonstrated in 1957, when a Korah, Dathan and Abiram type small group of men (All SDA leaders), violated the serious counsel of God in Isaiah 8:9-20, by assembling themselves into association, counsel, girding and finally confederacy with a small group of men representing what Seventh-day Adventists had historically regarded as the fallen churches of Babylon. That small group of men, consisting primarily of W.H. Reid, Roy Allen Anderson, and LeRoy Froom, versus Walter Martin and Donald Grey Barnhouse of Evangelical Christian fame, met together for a period of over two-years. Very early in their meeting appointments together, the three SDA representatives commenced to compromise fundamental pillar doctrines of Historic Seventh-day Adventism, such as the Human Nature of Christ, the Atonement, the Sanctuary doctrine, and the Investigative Judgement doctrine. All these doctrines are pivotal to one another and if one is toppled, they all crumble and fall. This occasion, along with the acceptance of worldly accreditation standards in the 1930's, was the beginning of the Omega of Apostasy in the professing Seventh-day Adventist church militant.

This small group of men sold every vestige of Historic Adventism down the drain, because even Sabbath-keeping is impossible after removing God and His sanctuary from the church militant by teaching the SDA church and the world a false gospel that is in utter betrayal to the commission of the Three Angels' Messages. Thus, a very small group of men led the church into the Omega of Apostasy. Did Ellen White warn us that this would be an easy course for church leaders to pursue? Notice:

"They [the leaders in 1888 have but little faith in me or the messages the Lord has given me. It would not take a very strong movement to have a state of things created as in the days of old, and Korah, Dathan, and Abiram would come to the point. I do not want to be left the least dependent upon these men. What care they for my feelings or my prosperity." E.G. White, The 1888 Materials, vol. 3, 989.

"The facts relative to Korah and his company, who rebelled against Moses and Aaron, and against Jehovah, are recorded for a warning to God's people, especially those who live upon the earth near the close of time. Satan has led persons to imitate the example of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, in raising insurrection among the people of God. Those who permit themselves to rise in opposition to the plain testimony, become self-deceived. Such have really thought that those upon whom God has laid the burden of his work were exalted above the people of God, and that their counsels and reproofs were uncalled for. They have risen in opposition to the plain testimony which God would have his servants bear in rebuking the wrongs among God's people. The testimonies borne against hurtful indulgences, as tea, coffee, snuff and tobacco, [and self-abuse] have irritated a certain class, because it would destroy their idols. Many for awhile were undecided whether to make an entire sacrifice of all these hurtful things, or reject the plain testimonies borne, and yield to the clamors of appetite. They occupied an unsettled position. There was a conflict between their convictions of truth and their self-indulgences. Their state of indecision made them weak, and, with many, appetite prevailed. Their sense of sacred things was perverted by the use of these slow poisons; and they at length fully decided, let the consequence by what it might, that they would not deny self. This fearful decision at once raised a wall of separation between them and those who were cleansing themselves, as God has commanded, from all filthiness of the flesh, and of the spirit, and were perfecting holiness in the fear of the Lord. The straight testimonies borne were in their way, and caused them great uneasiness; and they found relief in warring against them, and striving to make themselves and others believe that they were untrue. They said that the people were all right, but it was the reproving testimonies which made the trouble. And when the rebellious unfurl their banner, all the disaffected rally around the standard, ad all the spiritually defective, the lame, the halt, and the blind, unite their influence to scatter, and to sow discord.

Every advance of God's servants at the head of the work has been watched with suspicion by those who have had a spirit of insurrection, and all their actions have been misrepresented by the fault-finding, until honest souls have been drawn into the snare for want of correct knowledge. Those who lead them astray are so affected themselves by blind prejudice, and by rejecting the testimonies God has sent them, that they cannot see or hear aright. It is as difficult to undeceive some of these who have permitted themselves to be led into rebellion, as it was to convince the rebellious Israelites that they were wrong, and that Moses and Aaron were right. Even after God, in a miraculous manner, caused the earth to swallow up Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, the leaders in the rebellion, the people still would have it that Moses and Aaron were wrong, and that they had killed the people of the Lord. The Hebrews were not cured of their rebellion until fourteen thousand and seven hundred of the people who then, after all this, God in mercy condescended to perform a remarkable miracle upon the rod o Aaron, to settle their minds forever in regard to the priesthood." E.G. White, The Spirit of Prophecy, vol. 1, pp. 306-308, not to be confused with Testimonies, vol. 1, the Spirit of Prophecy series of four books is still available from Adventist Book Stores by special order.
Korah, Dathan and Abiram were official leaders in the camp of Israel. Korah was a Levite, and a cousin of Moses. Uninformed and spiritually undiscerning professing Seventh-day Adventists, often try to parallel true independent ministry leaders with Korah, Dathan and Abiram, but it was three leaders of the church who caused the insurrection that still plagues the professing SDA church today, and will plague that church henceforth until the day of judgment! It is the leaders of the church who secretly joined the church in association, council, girding and confederacy with fallen Babylon. It was the leaders of the church who compromised and substituted all the fundamental pillar doctrines of Historic Adventism, for the intellectual philosophies and traditions of men. Ellen White prophesied this act as part and parcel of The Omega of Apostasy:

"The enemy of souls has sought to bring in the supposition that a great reformation was to take place among Seventh-day Adventists, and that this reformation would consist in giving up the doctrines which stand as the pillars of our faith, and engaging in a process of reorganization. Were this reformation to take place, what would result? The principles of truth that God in His wisdom has given to the remnant church, would be discarded. Our religion would be changed. The fundamental principles that have sustained the work for the last fifty years would be accounted as error. A NEW ORGANIZATION would be established. Books of a new order would be written. A system of intellectual philosophy would be introduced. The founders of this system would go into the cities, and do a wonderful work. The Sabbath of course, would be lightly regarded, as also the God who created it. Nothing would be allowed to stand in the way of the NEW MOVEMENT. The leaders would teach that virtue is better than vice, but God being removed, they would place their dependence on human power, which, without God, is worthless. Their foundation would be built on the sand, and storm and tempest would sweep away the structure.
WHO HAS AUTHORITY TO BEGIN SUCH A [NEW] MOVEMENT? We have our Bibles. We have our experience, attested to by the miraculous working of the Holy Spirit. We have a truth that admits of no compromise. Shall we not repudiate everything that is not in harmony with this truth?"
E.G. White, Selected Messages, vol. 1, 204-205.

It is child's play to prove that every specification in the above statement has been abundantly fulfilled by the professing SDA church leadership. Ecumenical fraternity, and the 1957 selling out of pillar doctrines, alone, fulfill every specification of the statement!

The NEW MOVEMENT, NEW ORGANIZATION mentioned above, as being the Omega of Apostasy [in context with the chapter it appears as part of], is indeed so powerful that "Nothing would be allowed to stand in the way of the NEW MOVEMENT." There is no independent ministry that is so powerful that the SDA church could not stand in its way! But the NEW MOVEMENT SDA CHURCH is so powerful that no independent ministry will ever stand in the way of its apostasy, until it is destroyed by another literal manifestation of Ezekiel 9, according to Ellen White.

We were never to join ANY NEW MOVEMENT, and so Satan formed one within in a Trojan horse manner, and the sleeping virgins are non-the-wiser! The fact is, of course, that we cannot join ANY NEW MOVEMENT, even one that now comprises the professing Seventh-day Adventist Church. God can no longer use such a church.


"He will take his Holy Spirit from the church and Give it to OTHERS who will appreciate it." E. G. White, Review and Herald, Vol. 3, 272.

"The Lord Jesus will always have a chosen people to serve Him. When the Jewish people rejected Christ, the Prince of life, He took from them the kingdom of God and gave it unto the Gentiles. God will continue to work on this principle with every branch of His work. When a church proves unfaithful to the work of the Lord, whatever their position may be, however high and sacred their calling, the Lord can no longer work with them. Others are then chosen to bear important responsibilities. But, if these in turn do not purify their lives from every wrong action, if they do not establish pure and holy principles in all their borders, then the Lord will grievously afflict and humble them and, unless they repent, will remove them from their place and make them a reproach.

God is not 'worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed anything (Acts 17:25)." E.G. White, The Upward Look, 131.

It is clear from the above statement that the church could be discarded and given to others without the "others" constituting an eighth church! The seven churchs of Revelation 2 and 3, were eras of the church not literally only seven churches. For example, there were many churches comprising the Sardis era of the church, and folk came out of all those churches to form Philadelphia in 1844.


Conclusion
Any church can forfeit its high calling, no matter how high and sacred it once stood. When a church forms a new movement that removes God, that church can no longer be used of God. God then chooses others. At that point neither the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists is the voice of God, as neither are the various modern Sanhedrin Synagogues who were once the chosen of God!


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Second victim dies after home invasion

'Person of interest' in teens' deaths

Second victim dies after home invasion

Updated: Monday, 06 Jun 2011, 5:21 PM EDT
Published : Monday, 06 Jun 2011, 2:45 PM EDT



TAMPA - A second teenager has died following a Sunday morning home invasion, and now police have released the name of a 'person of interest' in the crime.

Kiara Brito, 16, was shot and killed at her West Van Buren Drive home when at least two suspects opened fire. Now, her 13-year-old brother Jeremi has been pronounced dead after spending a day on life support.

The teens were the only ones at home at the time of the shooting. Authorities say their mother, Judy, also lived at the home but they aren’t saying where she was when the home invasion occurred.

Authorities say this was not a random act but stopped short of saying whom the suspects may have been targeting.

Monday afternoon, Tampa police identified Charles Stephan Waits, 19, as a person of interest in the killings. He is also wanted on cocaine charges.

"Detectives believe that he has information directly related to the homicides," police spokeswoman Laura McElroy explained in a written statement.

Crime Stoppers is offering a $1,000 reward for information that leads to an arrest. You can call 1-800-873-8477 if you have any information.

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Related:

Two teens dead in home invasion



Published on Jun 6, 2011 by ABCActionNews

Detectives say a weekend home invasion that left 16-year-old Kiara Brito dead was not a random act. Her 13-year-old brother Jeremi passed away Monday after being taken off life support.

Sunday, June 05, 2011

Bilderberg 2011: All aboard the Bilderbus

Posted by Charlie Skelton
Friday 3 June 2011 18.21 BST
guardian.co.uk

As the Bilderberg conference heads towards Switzerland there's still time to book your seat on a minibus to St Moritz



St Moritz: Preparing to host Bilderberg. Photograph: Tom Jenkins for the Guardian


As Europe groans, and austerity bites, as defaulting looms, and once proud nations fall to their knees in debt, there's only one annual conference of bankers and industrialists that can step in and save us all…

Bilderberg!

Next week, in Switzerland, Henry Kissinger and his brave band of corporate CEOs, high-wealth individuals and heavyweight thinktankers will lock arms with Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands and David Rockefeller, and stand their ground against the economic contagion.

The last thing a bunch of bank bosses and multinational executives wants is for the nation-states of Europe to collapse, allowing their assets to be bought up on the cheap. Right?

Besides, if anyone can lay claim to fathering the EU, it's Bilderberg. Sixty years ago, Europe was a mere Bilderbaby, conceived in a solemn ceremony on Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands' mattress. It grew into a fine young Bilderboy, but the years have caught up with it, and now it seems its knees are creaking and its heart is weak.

Perhaps the clear mountain air of St Moritz will prove just the tonic. The Bilderberg Group is gathering there between 9-12 June, at the Hotel Suvretta House, described on its website thus: "Like a beautiful fairytale castle, our hotel is embedded in the fantastic alpine landscape of the Upper Engadine." No mention of the magical rooftop snipers or the fairytale ring of armed riot police, but maybe they'll be updating their website in time for the conference.
Josef Ackerman, CEO of Deutsche Bank, practises his backflips.


The hotel promises that the Privatsphäre of the guests will be utterly respektiert, which goes for the conference, as well: the press will be lucky to get a whiff of Kissinger's toast in the morning. It's a shame the attendees are still so phobic of attention, seeing as how this year there's shaping up to be more press interest than ever. People and the media have finally started noticing this quiet little conference at the centre of the storm. The last two countries to play host to the meeting were Greece and Spain, both of whom waved goodbye to Bilderberg and said hello to austerity and unrest. Happy Christmas, Switzerland.

This year, a bunch of less-than-happy Brits are heading out to St Moritz by minibus, to voice their concern at the policies being thrashed out at the conference. They've dubbed their fifteen-seater the Bilderbus, and it leaves Nottingham on Tuesday after work. There are still ten seats to fill: it's £95 return, and camping's cheap when you get there. And I can't stress this enough: it really is a sight to behold. (The conference, not the minibus).

There are two seats free on the bus, since Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Ken Clarke have both been forced to cancel. Which is good news for the chamber maids at the Suvretta House (because Ken is so very untidy – cigar stubs and Ornette Coleman CDs everywhere …)
The Bilderbus awaits you. Fully taxed and insured. Photograph: Charlie Skelton


If you'd like to book a place on the minibus, you can email the organisers at this address: bilderbus@hotmail.com. And if you're interested to see what crops up on the official Bilderberg agenda, then keep an eye on their website. Jockeying for position are the crisis in the eurozone, the Arab Spring, the Fukushima fallout (with Germany backing away from nuclear), and of course, what to do about the internet. That old chestnut.

Maybe this year they'll hold a press conference like, I don't know, grown-ups might. I won't be holding my breath. But I will be sniffing the air of St Moritz. If I find out one thing this year, it's going to be what Kissinger has for breakfast. Live eels snatched from a bucket? Or ducklings? Suddenly I'm imagining ducklings. And a mallet.

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The Jesuit Connection to the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln




by Kenneth M. Hoeck Nov.'99

As most Americans know, Abraham Lincoln was an American statesman and the 16th President of the United States (term 1861-1865). He was born in Hardin County, Kentucky and grew up in Indiana. In 1830 his family moved to Illinois, and in 1837, Abe began practicing law in Springfield. His upright moral character had earned him the nickname "Honest Abe." Abraham, an avid reader of the Scriptures who often cited Biblical passages, held no denominational alliances and developed a keen awareness of the dangers posed by the Catholic Church and its dreaded Jesuit Order.

Most Americans do not know about the Jesuit connection to the Lincoln assassination. People who were close to Lincoln, including Samuel Morse (inventor of the telegraph) and several American Ambassadors, knew of the Jesuit hatred toward him and warned him ever increasingly right up to the point of his murder. This article has been written to recover the truth of history which has been omitted and obscured from the public view by the American government, the Catholic influenced writers of history, and even publicly supressed by Lincoln himself, for reasons we will later see.

May all realize that a leopard does not change its spots...and this Romish predator just waits in the grasses for the prey to come unsuspectingly along. You may not see the danger now and when you finally do...it is too late. The modern Catholic Church and the Jesuit Order are outwardly very docile and seemingly benevolent. They have lured society into a deep sleep. As the writers of our history books and as teachers in our schools, they have all but erased the jaded, yea wicked, past which is a testimony to their true character. It is our hope that this publication will wake some from their learned ignorance of the truth.

Much of the quoted testimony against the Jesuit order that we will present here is from Charles Chiniquy, a catholic priest, who befriended Lincoln and warned him of the Jesuit plot to take his life. We will quote heavily from Chiniquy's book entitled "Fifty Years in the Church of Rome" (available as a free download in text format by clicking here). Chiniquy gives us a reason why he wrote his book exposing the wicked deeds of the Catholic Church, a reason which should be even more pertinent to us today:

"Because modern Protestants have not only forgotten what Rome was, what she is, and what she will for ever be; the most irreconcilable and powerful enemy of the Gospel of Christ; but they consider her almost as a branch of the church whose corner stone is Christ."~ Chas. Chiniquy- Fifty Years in the Church of Rome.


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