Friday, August 12, 2011

Counterfeit Sanctification



He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in him. 1 John 2:4, 5.

The sanctification now gaining prominence in the religious world carries with it a spirit of self-exaltation and a disregard for the law of God that mark it as foreign to the religion of the Bible. Its advocates teach that sanctification is an instantaneous work, by which, through faith alone, they attain to perfect holiness. “Only believe,” say they, “and the blessing is yours.” No further effort on the part of the receiver is supposed to be required. At the same time they deny the authority of the law of God, urging that they are released from obligation to keep the commandments. But is it possible for men to be holy, in accord with the will and character of God, without coming into harmony with the principles which are an expression of His nature and will ...?

The desire for an easy religion that requires no striving, no self-denial, no divorce from the follies of the world, has made the doctrine of faith, and faith only, a popular doctrine; but what saith the word of God? Says the apostle James: “What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him? ... Wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead? ...”

The testimony of the word of God is against this ensnaring doctrine of faith without works. It is not faith that claims the favor of Heaven without complying with the conditions upon which mercy is to be granted, it is presumption; for genuine faith has its foundation in the promises and provisions of the Scriptures.

Let none deceive themselves with the belief that they can become holy while willfully violating one of God’s requirements. The commission of a known sin silences the witnessing voice of the Spirit and separates the soul from God.... “He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected” (1 John 2:4, 5).

Maranatha, p. 232.
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Thursday, August 11, 2011

"PROGRAMMING THE NATION?" Official Theatrical Trailer 2011



Uploaded by IgniteTheMind on Jun 1, 2011

Are we all brainwashed? Or, have we lost our minds? Director, Jeff Warrick, leads this journey through the subconscious mind while exploring the alleged usage of subliminals in advertising, music, film, television, anti-theft devices, political propaganda, military psychological operations, and advanced weapons development, and determine if such tactics have succeeded in "PROGRAMMING THE NATION?"

President Obama Hosts an Iftar Dinner to Celebrate Ramadan

Posted by Nikki Sutton on August 11, 2011 at 12:14 PM EDT






Continuing a tradition at the White House, last night President Obama hosted his third Iftar dinner to celebrate Ramadan. The Iftar is the meal that breaks the day of fasting, when Muslim families and communities eat together after sunset. The President was joined in the State Dining Room by two Muslim American members of Congress, Keith Ellison and Andre Carson, members of the diplomatic corps, and Muslim American families and service members. During his remarks the President wished a blessed Ramadan to Muslim Americans and Muslims around the world:

To the millions of Muslim Americans across the United States and more -- the more than one billion Muslims around the world, Ramadan is a time of reflection and a time of devotion. It’s an occasion to join with family and friends in celebration of a faith known for its diversity and a commitment to justice and the dignity of all human beings. So to you and your families, Ramadan Kareem.

This evening reminds us of both the timeless teachings of a great religion and the enduring strengths of a great nation. Like so many faiths, Islam has always been part of our American family, and Muslim Americans have long contributed to the strength and character of our country, in all walks of life.

In one month, we will mark the 10th anniversary of those awful attacks that brought so much pain to our hearts. It will be a time to honor all those that we’ve lost, the families who carry on their legacy, the heroes who rushed to help that day and all who have served to keep us safe during a difficult decade. And tonight, it’s worth remembering that these Americans were of many faiths and backgrounds, including proud and patriotic Muslim Americans.

The President also reflected on the sacrifices Muslim Americans have made to our country and the diversity that defines us as a nation:

This year and every year, we must ask ourselves: How do we honor these patriots -- those who died and those who served? In this season of remembrance, the answer is the same as it was 10 Septembers ago. We must be the America they lived for and the America they died for, the America they sacrificed for.

An America that doesn’t simply tolerate people of different backgrounds and beliefs, but an America where we are enriched by our diversity. An America where we treat one another with respect and with dignity, remembering that here in the United States there is no “them” or “us;” it’s just us. An America where our fundamental freedoms and inalienable rights are not simply preserved, but continually renewed and refreshed -- among them the right of every person to worship as they choose. An America that stands up for dignity and the rights of people around the world, whether a young person demanding his or her freedom in the Middle East or North Africa, or a hungry child in the Horn of Africa, where we are working to save lives.

Put simply, we must be the America that goes forward as one family, like generations before us, pulling together in times of trial, staying true to our core values and emerging even stronger. This is who we are and this is who we must always be.


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Did Mark Cuban Predict The Market Crash?



Thursday, August 11, 2011 7:53 am

Written by: Eric Adelson

It's been a year of vindication for Mark Cuban. The owner of the Dallas Mavericks quieted a lot of the critics who said he was a loudmouth who didn't know how to run a basketball franchise. Now his team is the best in basketball.

But Cuban is also proving somewhat prophetic in a much more unsettling way. In the spring of last year, only three days after the harrowing May 6 "Flash Crash" that temporarily plunged the Dow Jones Industrial Average more than 1,000 points within minutes, he wrote a blog post that seems chilling today. He titled it, "What Business is Wall Street In?" And toward the end, he wrote in bold, "There will be another crash."

Granted, there are a lot of doomsayers out there. But Cuban is not that. He's a successful businessman -- he sold his Internet start-up in 1999 for $5.9 billion in Yahoo! stock -- and he says he's been involved in the stock market for the better part of a decade. But what makes his post stand out even more is that he named a specific reason for the predicted "crash" -- professional traders.

"The only people who know what business Wall Street is in are the traders," Cuban wrote on May 9, 2010. "They know what business Wall Street is in better than everyone else. To traders, whether day traders or high frequency or somewhere in between, Wall Street has nothing to do with creating capital for businesses, its original goal. Wall Street is a platform. It's a platform to be exploited by every technological and intellectual means possible."

And more than a year later, a lot of Wall Street experts are blaming high frequency trading for this month's extreme stock market volatility. The swings are wild, to the tune of hundreds of Dow points within minutes, and "the machines" profiled last year by 60 Minutes are getting a lot of the blame.

Cuban went on to make another point, about how entire nations are now bought and sold within seconds and even nanoseconds:

"It’s hard to believe," he wrote, "but evaluating countries as an investment is now easier than evaluating companies."

Lo and behold, the current malaise on Wall Street is tied not to the earnings of public companies -- which are largely strong -- but to the debt load of national economies.

But Cuban came back again to the traders, who he called "hackers" because, he said, they look for weaknesses in the system to exploit for short-term gain.

"The Government needs to create incentives for this business," he wrote, "and extract compensation from the traders/hackers for the systemic failure level of risk they introduce."

He concluded again in bold text with a scary forecast that, although not completely unique to him, now looks more and more accurate:

"There will be another crash, because there are too many players looking for the trillion dollar score."

As of this writing, the Dow Jones sits at 10,719, within 200 points of the 10,520 price at the close of trading on May 6, 2010, the day of the Flash Crash. The Dow has dropped almost exactly 2,000 points in the last month.

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Jesuits sell historic book to British Library for $14m


Photo (Courtesy) http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2011/07/the-st-cuthbert-gospel.html


The Jesuits have sold the historic St Cuthbert Gospel - believed the oldest intact book produced in Europe - to the British Library for A$14 million, reports the Catholic News Service.

The British Province of the Society of Jesus agreed to sell the late 7th-century Anglo-Saxon manuscript to raise funds to restore a historic church and pay for educational work in London and Glasgow, Scotland.

The book, a pocket-size Latin translation of the Gospel of St John, was found inside the coffin of St Cuthbert, bishop of Lindisfarne, when the saint's grave was opened in 1104.

Experts believe the manuscript was placed inside the casket within 10 years of the hermit's death in 687.

Jesuit Father Kevin Fox, spokesman for the British Province of the Society of Jesus, announced the sale of the Gospel in a statement in July.

"It has been our privilege to possess this book for nearly 250 years," he said. "Now, in order to answer more of the many demands on our resources, the province trustees have decided to sell."
He said that the British Library would ensure that the manuscript was available for people from around the world to view either directly or online.

FULL STORY

Jesuits sell historic 7th-century St. Cuthbert Gospel for $14.7 million (Catholic News Agency)

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Spanish priests join opposition to costly papal visit

12.08.11
Updated 01.14

Madrid group says €60m fee cannot be justified at time of state cuts, neither can choice of sponsors for World Youth Day




Pope Benedict is scheduled to hold a prayer vigil and mass as Cuatro Vientos airport outside Madrid, as part of the World Youth Day event. Photograph: Reuters


Stephen Burgen in Barcelona
guardian.co.uk, Tue 9 Aug 2011 14.48 BST

More than 100 priests from Madrid's poorest parishes have added their voices to the growing protest at the cost of Pope Benedict's visit to Madrid next week.

An umbrella group – the Priest's Forum – says the estimated €60m (£53m) cost of the papal visit, not counting security, cannot be justified at a time of massive public sector cuts and 20% unemployment in Spain.

Evaristo Villar, a 68-year-old member of the group, said he objected to the multinationals with which the Catholic church has had to ally itself to cover the costs of the "showmanship" of the event.

"The companies that are backing World Youth Day and the pope's visit leave much to be desired," he said. "They are the ones who, together with international capital, have caused the crisis. We are not against the pope's visit, we are against the way it is being staged."

The more than 100 corporate sponsors of the event include Coca-Cola, Telefónica and Santander. Opponents of the visit have set up a Facebook page calling for a boycott of the sponsors. Some 140 groups, among them the secular organisation Europa Laica (Secular Europe), are against the visit.

"Catholics can go wherever they like in Madrid but the freedom of movement of the rest of us is restricted," said Francisco Delgado, leader of Europa Laica, on discovering that the city had prohibited his group's proposed march.

Europa Laica plans to march under the slogans "Not a penny of my taxes for the pope" and "For a secular state". There is particular ire that the some 500,000 pilgrims expected in the city will get free transport. Madrid metro fares rose by 50% on Monday.

"With the economic crisis we are going through, we can't (can't ?) pay for this. The church should set the example," said a spokesman for the Indignados movement, which has staged high-profile protests in central Madrid. "They propose to spend €60m when the regional government has just cut €40m from the education budget."

Yago de la Cierva, the executive director of World Youth Day 2011, an event built around the papal visit, said: "We have made a huge effort to be moderate and economically responsible. The new generations – young people today – they like big events and the church uses all the tools that exist to present the message of Jesus Christ."

Interest in the Catholic church is on the wane among young people in Spain. A recent survey by the national statistics office showed that the number of believers aged 18 to 24 has fallen by 56% in the past 10 years.

The pope's visit to Barcelona last November was poorly received, with the popemobile forced to drive at top speed past small groups of the faithful along mainly deserted streets.

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Wednesday, August 10, 2011

The U.S. Constitution Is Over 95 Percent Destroyed!


From the Editor


From the August 2011 Trumpet Print Edition »

A fanatical statement? Our Founding Fathers prophesied it would happen if our “religion and private morality” grossly degenerated. That has happened. Still, almost nobody heeds the warning of the Founding Fathers. That lack of response reveals how little the Constitution means to us.

By Gerald Flurry

The U.S. Constitution is the supreme law of the land. When the people no longer keep that law, a crisis will hurl us into violent anarchy and destructive chaos, so prophesied our Founding Fathers. Unless our Constitution is based on biblical religion and biblical morality, it will not work, so stated the Founding Fathers.

Time magazine recently wrote a cover article about how the U.S. Constitution was under siege, but not in a crisis. I totally disagree. The Constitution is on its deathbed. But almost nobody understands or knows why.

Will we allow the Founding Fathers to tell us why?

Christianity today has become an empty ritual. What does America’s Christianity do to stop us from flooding the world with family-destroying pornography? No other nation even comes close to what we produce!

What does that say about our religion and private morality? Anybody who understands the Bible knows how it condemns such sick, moral depravity!

New York was the sixth state to approve homosexual “marriage.” Marriage is a type of the firstfruits marrying Jesus Christ (Revelation 19:7). That is the beginning of all mankind being led into the Family of God forever. That is also the gospel, the good news of the coming Family or Kingdom of God.

Those who promote homosexual “marriage” try to redefine what marriage and family are. It is an abominable attempt to destroy the heart of the biblical message of good news for all mankind! (Request our free booklets Why Marriage! Soon Obsolete? and The God Family Vision for more information.)

The main cause of homosexuality is the breakdown of the family. Instead of changing broken families, we approve of homosexual “marriages” and add to our heinous sins.

Where are the Christian leaders today who will even label homosexuality a sin? The Bible is Jesus Christ in print. A true Christian is one who follows Christ. The Bible labels homosexuality an abomination.

Where are our leaders who will speak out against family breakdown, pornography, U.S. drug usage and the crime it causes? Our drug addiction has turned Mexico into a war zone.

The Constitution won’t work for such biblically immoral people! Who is willing to hear what our own Founding Fathers prophesied? All political parties are guilty of rejecting their warning.

The War Against the Constitution

The Greek Empire tried to establish the rule of law. It failed and the empire collapsed. The Roman Empire also tried to build a society based on law. It was unable to do so, and it too fell. Many other empires experienced the same failure.

The famous British historian Paul Johnson wrote an article titled “No Law Without Order, No Freedom Without Law.” It was printed in the Sunday Telegraph, Dec. 26, 1999. In it he wrote, “The rule of law, as distinct from the rule of a person, or class or people, and as opposed to the rule of force, is an abstract, sophisticated concept. It is mighty difficult to achieve. But until it is achieved, and established in the public mind with such vehemence that masses of individuals are prepared to die to uphold it, no other form of progress can be regarded as secure. The Greeks had tried to establish the rule of law but failed. The Romans had succeeded under their republic but Caesar and his successors had destroyed it. The essence of the rule of law is its impersonality, omnipotence and ubiquity. It is the same law for everyone, everywhere—kings, emperors, high priests, the state itself, are subject to it. If exceptions are made, the rule of law begins to collapse—that was the grand lesson of antiquity” (emphasis added throughout).

Yes, “that was the grand lesson” of history. But have we learned that lesson? Failure to do so means we pay the supreme sacrifice: loss of our republic.

The continual problem of man has been his failure to learn from history.

Are “masses of individuals … prepared to die” to uphold America’s rule of law? Mr. Johnson states that this is our only security!

Do you feel secure?

Our Forefathers’ Goal

Early immigrants who came to this land were often persecuted in the countries they left. They usually lacked religious freedom.

“[B]oth in Virginia and in New England to the north, the colonists were determined, God-fearing men,” Mr. Johnson wrote, “often in search of a religious toleration denied them at home, who brought their families and were anxious to farm and establish permanent settlements. They put political and religious freedom before riches …. Thus took shape the economic dynamo that eventually became the United States—an experiment designed to establish the rule of God on Earth …” (ibid).

What a goal. They planned to establish the rule of God on Earth! That means they had the goal of each person keeping the Ten Commandments of God—the basis of all righteous law.

How many Americans are willing to face that reality? Not many. Because then we would have to admit that we often fight not to establish law, but to promote lawlessness!

Consider some statements from the Founding Fathers. In his first inaugural, President George Washington said, “The foundations of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality.” And in his famous Farewell Address, he said, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.” Without religion and morality, Washington knew the American experiment was doomed to fail. John Adams backed him up: “Statesmen may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand.” Religion and morality are firmly rooted in divine law.

In 1954, Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote, “I believe the entire Bill of Rights came into being because of the knowledge our forefathers had of the Bible and their belief in it.”

What political or religious leaders would make such statements as these men did? Even the politicians who established our republic were more spiritual than most of our religious leaders today!

The Constitution is the foundation of our republic. And the Ten Commandments were, in many ways, the foundation of the Constitution. Our forefathers believed that if we didn’t keep God’s Ten Commandments, our republic would collapse!

It was much harder for our Founding Fathers to spill streams of blood winning our freedom, and to create and establish our constitutional law, than it is for us just to maintain it! So we ought to respect our Founding Fathers above ourselves. But we are too vain and arrogant to see how profoundly strong they were and how pathetically shallow and weak we are.

Noble Constitution

The Constitution was based to a great extent on God’s law. That is why I believe it is the noblest document ever written by a government of this world.

What a rare document it is. Our forefathers had the awesome opportunity to establish the rule of God in the wealthiest country ever. So they established a Constitution to protect all of us from the extremes of human reason. Tyrants, unjust judges and biased leaders were controlled by this law.

Did our Founding Fathers know that the Bible interprets itself? To some extent, I believe they did. And they probably patterned the Constitution after the Bible, in that sense. The Constitution is a document that interprets itself probably better than any book or document, other than the Bible.

We see indescribable confusion about the Bible today. Why? Because people won’t let it interpret itself!

We received some foundational direction from Britain’s Magna Carta. But Britain has no constitution.

Our persecuted forefathers wanted their protection spelled out in detail. They had suffered intensely at the hands of tyrants. Such tribulation deepens a people’s understanding about the value of freedom.

Will we have to experience indescribable tribulation before we can appreciate our freedom, which is given to us by the rule of law?

Seeking Lawlessness

When Robert Bork was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Ronald Reagan, it created a firestorm in Congress, and he failed to get confirmed. Shortly thereafter, he wrote The Tempting of America, which I believe is the best book about constitutional law in a century—perhaps ever.

The founders of the Constitution put in place the walls, roof and beams of our Constitution, as Mr. Bork said. The judges’ purpose is to preserve the architectural features—adding only filigree or ornamental work. Instead, the lawyers and judges are changing the very structure of our representative democracy.

The Constitution is being altered dramatically. And it is the foundation of our republic! We are experiencing a constitutional earthquake, and most of our people don’t even know it—yet. Your future is being changed for you, and often you have no input.

This process is sure to lead to anarchy! That is why you and I should be deeply concerned.

Why did our Founding Fathers work so hard to establish the Constitution? Because it was to be the supreme law of the land.

“A well-known Harvard law professor,” Mr. Bork wrote, “turned to me with some exasperation and said, ‘Your notion that the Constitution is in some sense law must rest upon an obscure philosophic principle with which I am unfamiliar.’”

But notice what the Constitution itself states: “This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, any thing in the Constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.

“The senators and representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”

A Harvard law professor is actually stating that the Constitution is not even law! That view comes from our most prestigious university. The very fact that he would even make that statement shows that we are already getting into extreme lawlessness!

The majority of our leaders now agree with the Harvard law professor. He made a statement that shows we are failing to establish the rule of law. The real issue here is lawlessness.

Cal Thomas wrote in the March 8, 2000, Washington Times, “In the final Democratic debate before the Super Tuesday election, Vice President Al Gore responded to a question about the type of Supreme Court justices he as president would select: ‘I would look for justices of the Supreme Court who understand that our Constitution is a living and breathing document, that it was intended by our founders to be interpreted in the light of the constantly evolving experience of the American people.’ …

“Mr. Gore’s view of the Constitution, shared by most political liberals, is one of the most dangerous philosophies of our time. It establishes a class of philosopher kings who determine the rights of the people and shreds the Constitution as a document that conforms people to unchanging principles that promote their own and the general welfare.

“A ‘living’ Constitution, notes constitutional attorney John Whitehead, means the Constitution is ‘up for grabs,’ and it becomes whatever the justices decide, not the people through their elected representatives ….

“The founders never intended the courts to be supreme. Their intention was that the law, rooted in objective and unchanging truth, would be preeminent.”

Law scholars today don’t believe the Constitution was “rooted in objective and unchanging truth”—that is, they don’t believe our founders established the rule of law. But that’s just what the founders did. And now most lawyers and judges reject their foundational work.

Douglas Cox worked in the Office of Legal Counsel for Ronald Reagan and George Bush. Here is what he stated in the Wall Street Journal, Feb. 2, 1998: “The entire justice system is predicated on the theory that witnesses will tell the truth. Permitting a culture of lying to take root in the justice system would ultimately destroy the system.”

He believes a lying culture would ultimately destroy our justice system! (Or has it already?)

Our views today reflect a deadly degeneration into lawlessness!

Why Religion and Morality

In 1776, the year Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence, John Adams wrote to his cousin, “It is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand.” There it is again. Why did the Founding Fathers keep pointing back to these fundamental building blocks? Adams himself answered that question in 1798, while serving as president: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

There is the answer! They kept referring to religion and morality because, as Adams said, our Constitution was made only for moral and religious people! Now the question is, why? Why was the Constitution written only for moral and religious people? Why was it inadequate to the government of any other?

Alexis de Tocqueville’s 19th-century observations on the American republic answer this critical question. After touring America for two years in the early 1830s, he returned home to France and wrote his political classic, Democracy in America. Like the Founding Fathers, Tocqueville acknowledged that religion and morality were indispensable to the maintenance of the American republic. Why indispensable? He said that while the constitutional law of liberty allowed Americans complete freedom to do as they pleased, religion prevented them from doing that which was immoral and unjust. In short, Tocqueville surmised, liberty could not be governed apart from religious faith, lest there be anarchy.

Without the moral restrictions of a higher spiritual law, the liberty afforded Americans in the Constitution would be abused. George Washington knew that! So did the rest of the Founding Fathers. That’s why they kept harping on religion and morality. They did not want to see the United States of America self-destruct.

The success of our Constitution does not depend on which political party we belong to—it depends on how biblically spiritual we are!

America Today

Today, Americans have departed from the ideals of our forefathers. We reason that religion and morality are nice, but certainly not necessary for the overall wellbeing of the nation. We have been led to falsely assume that private morality and public duty are separate issues. George Washington would have been appalled by such reasoning. And he was the father of our nation.

Times have certainly changed in the United States of America. Imagine a fornicator or adulterer being publicly ridiculed because of his sin. For that matter, imagine a public official even calling those acts sinful. Does it seem old-fashioned? It wasn’t 200 years ago.

Let’s look at what our first two presidents believed about the family. “In short, the founders’ generation believed that men’s and women’s interests were complementary, and they saw marriage as the divinely ordained, naturally good way to organize life. George Washington had started his presidency by pointing out that public life must be grounded on private morality. His successor, John Adams, devoted husband of Abigail, was even more specific: the ‘foundation of national morality must be laid in private families.’ He went on to say that children learn the meaning of morality, religion, and respect for law from the habitual fidelity of their parents to one another” (Angelo Codevilla, The Character of Nations).

This is the only way to remove the sin of homosexuality!

When Americans go from proclaiming that a free society can only exist when founded on private morality to thinking that character just doesn’t matter, it is time to ask some hard questions about the future of this nation.

The American people’s response is a frightening portent of our nation’s future. If we fail to understand, that doesn’t make the bad news go away.

Are you willing to heed the dire prophecy of your own Founding Fathers? •

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Anarchy in the UK…and Philadelphia? Flash Mobs, Double-Edged Technology, and State Authority


Anarchy in the UK…and Philadelphia? Flash Mobs, Double-Edged Technology, and State Authority

by Robert Chesney


During the early months of the Arab Spring phenomenon, there was much discussion of the role that technology played in undermining the capacity of authoritarian regimes to suppress political dissent. Social media platforms and ubiquitous smart phones (or at least semi-smart phones) facilitated rapid assembly, rapid spread of news, and video and photographic documentation of abuses committed by security services (which could then be rapidly spread as well). The same technologies that gave us flash mobs performing line dances in Grand Central Station, it turned out, could be used to extraordinary political effect.

Technology, alas, is neutral as to the uses to which it is put. And now in the UK we are reminded of this quite forcefully, as the utility of social media and telecommunications for facilitating the rapid assembly of crowds again is demonstrated, this time for purposes of flat-out criminality. I’ll assume readers are familiar with the details of the riots in question, and of course it is not an entirely novel development that such circumstances can be facilitated by communications technology. But the UK riots are a nice illustration of how, as those technologies continue to improve, so too does the capacity of anyone to use them to mobilize rapidly and hence with less of an opportunity for the state to respond, whether in order to protest a dictator or to steal a bunch of clothes and electronics. But the story gets even more interesting once one looks a bit further into it.

First, not all flash-mob-facilitating technology is alike. It seems that much of the UK organizing has been done not via Facebook or the like, but rather through instant messaging via Blackberry. According to this interesting account, this presents a serious difficulty for police that might wish to monitor such communications either in hopes of getting real-time intelligence or at least to support after-the-fact prosecutions. The messages are not publicly-posted but rather are distributed to particular addressees or groups of addressees, and at least acording to that commentator, British law does not permit the police to seek Blackberry’s assistance to conduct any sort of generalized searching for key terms but must, instead, obtain target-specific court orders to get a particular person’s logs.

Second, there is an intersection here with cybersecurity and vigilantism, quite similar to what was seen when hacker groups assaulted various financial services companies for their decision to take steps against Wikileaks last year. This time, it is Blackberry that is under threat. According to this story, Blackberry’s homepage has already been defaced by a hacker collective in response to Blackberry’s decision to cooperate with the very UK laws I just described (regarding the provision of subscriber data in response to individualized court orders). The group claiming responsibility has threatened to go much further, including the posting of personal information about Blackberry employees.

Third, we also are seeing public-spirited and admirable uses of social media in response to all this, specifically to mobilize volunteers for clean-up efforts:

Earlier, Mr Cameron said: “We have seen the worst of Britain, but I also believe we have seen some of the best of Britain – the million people who have signed up on Facebook to support the police, coming together in the clean-up operations.

One can bet, too, that over the months ahead cell-phone photographs and videos (not to mention the UK’s ubiquitous closed-circuit cameras in public places) will also prove to be important in identifying and making cases against riot participants.

Finally, lest you think that criminal exploitation of these technologies is somehow a purely British phenomenon, take note of Philadelphia’s decision to impose a youth curfew this Friday night in response to a disturbing set of violent flash mob attacks in that city:

“What is making this unique today is the social media aspect,” Everett Gillison, Philadelphia’s deputy mayor for public safety, told the Associated Press news agency. “They can communicate and congregate at a moment’s notice,” he added.

So there we have it: an increasingly-familiar but also increasingly-important story of the impact of technological innovation on social order, state authority, volunteerism, and privacy. The innovation cuts in several directions simultaneously. It empowers the state in certain ways, the individual–and mobs–in others.

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Tahrir Square on the Thames?





Chilean students with unions support announce a new round of demonstrations

Wednesday, August 10th 2011 - 18:03 UTC

Chilean students organization with the support of unions have announced a new round of demonstrations while the conservative government of President Sebastián Piñera reported on Wednesday the arrest of over 400 hundred protesters as violence erupted on the streets of Chile's capital along with other cities, during marches demanding changes in public education.


Police reported 400 people arrested during the protests, 278 of them in Santiago (Photo AP)



Sporadic looting and at least two cars were set ablaze in downtown Santiago as police on horseback tried to drive protesters back. Police estimated around 60,000 people joined the protest, while student leaders said 100,000 people protested in the capital alone.

Battered by protests by students, environmentalists and miners in the world's top copper producer, billionaire Piñera is the least popular leader in two decades since Augusto Pinochet's 1973-1990 dictatorship, recent polls showed. The Chilean leader popularity has fallen to 26%.

The demand for education reform is hampering Piñera's agenda, potentially delaying the passage of capital market reforms. Piñera, a former airline and financial magnate, took power last year vowing to boost economic growth and improve state efficiency, staffing his cabinet with technocrats rather than politicians.

Piñera has called on students to find a solution with the government based on 21 proposals he presented, but no pact has been reached.

Protests spread to other Chilean cities, and some Chileans have been banging pots and pans, a popular form of protest in Latin America against dictatorships. Riot police used tear gas and water cannon to disperse the demonstrators.

Students in Chile want the national government to take over the public school system, where 90% of the country's 3.5 million students are educated. The students say the system is under-funded, elitist, discriminatory for families with low incomes and deeply inequitable.


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Surprise! Underwater volcano has erupted


Scientists going back to pick up monitoring equipment find a changed seafloor

Bill Chadwick, Oregon State University, © Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
The chain is all that is visible of an ocean-bottom hydrophone, an instrument that detects earthquakes, buried in about 6 feet of new lava produced by a recent eruption at the Axial Seamount.



By Andrea Mustain
OurAmazingPlanet

updated 8/9/2011 5:36:28 PM ET


An undersea volcano has erupted off the coast of Oregon, spewing forth a layer of lava more than 12 feet thick in some places, and opening up deep vents that belch forth a cloudy stew of hot water and microbes from deep inside the Earth.

Scientists uncovered evidence of the early April eruption on a routine expedition in late July to the Axial Seamount, an underwater volcano that stands 250 miles off the coast of Oregon.

The discovery came as a surprise, as researchers attempted to recover instruments they'd left behind to monitor the peak a year earlier. When the researchers hefted a seafaring robotic vehicle overboard to fetch the instruments, the feed from the onboard camera sent back images of an alien seafloor landscape.

"At first we were really confused, and thought we were in the wrong place," said Bill Chadwick, a geologist with Oregon State University. "Finally we figured out we were in the right place but the whole seafloor had changed, and that's why we couldn't recognize anything. All of a sudden it hit us that, wow, there had been an eruption. So it was very exciting."

In addition to producing hardened lakes of blobby lava, in places more than a mile across, the eruption changed the architecture of the region's seafloor hot springs.

"There are more vents, they're higher temperature, and there are microbes living in them that are usually deep in the crust that come up to the surface in these events," Chadwick told OurAmazingPlanet.

Eruption predicted
The Axial Volcano rises 3,000 feet above the seafloor, the most active of a string of volcanoes along the Juan de Fuca Ridge, a plate boundary where the seafloor is slowly pulling apart.

Chadwick and colleagues have been keeping tabs on the peak since it last erupted in 1998. Thanks to a monitoring system they developed to measure the mountain's minute movements, the team predicted the volcano was due for another eruption sometime between 2011 and 2014.

"So for me, it's a very exciting thing that this worked!" Chadwick said.

The instruments kept track of the movement of the seafloor, which very gradually inflates and deflates like a giant, magma-filled balloon, Chadwick said, collapsing suddenly after an eruption, and rising, in this case, by about 6 inches a year in the lead-up to an eruption.

First long-term picture
Scientists have long known about the existence of subsea volcanoes, but information on their behavior is relatively sparse. Eruptions were first observed in the 1990s, and, although technology has improved, getting to the underwater peaks to study them is difficult.

Data from the Axial Seamount's recent eruption will provide the first long-term picture of a subsea volcano from one eruption to the next.

Chadwick said scientists are still trying to figure out how seafloor volcanoes differ from their terrestrial counterparts.

It could be it's easier to predict ocean eruptions, Chadwick said. It's possible that because the crust is thinner there, and magma is in ready supply, the mountains' slow inflations provide a good analogue for knowing when eruptions will occur. However, he cautioned that a single successful prediction wasn’t enough to forecast what the future holds.

"At Axial, we've only seen this once, so we don't know for sure it's going to be reliable," Chadwick said. "So we'll certainly keep making these measurements, and hopefully be around to see what happens next."


Reach Andrea Mustain at amustain@techmedianetwork.com . Follow her on Twitter @AndreaMustain .



Bill Chadwick, Oregon State University, © Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Before the eruption: A spider crab sits atop a hydrophone, an instrument that detects earthquakes, at the Axial Seamount.


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Wicked Wednesday on Wall Street

Photo (Courtesy) http://nation.foxnews.com/dow/2011/08/10/fear-rushes-back-dow-plummets-520-points

As the old saying goes: "Here we go again."

This jobless recovery is looking more and more like the misnomer that it is. No jobs, no recovery!

Today, the Dow Jones Industrial dropped 520 points. The Dow had also dropped 635 points two days ago, on Monday; Previously, the Dow had also closed 513 points lower on Friday 8/5/11. That's a total of 1668 points loss within 4 days of trading on Wall Street.
I know that's a bunch of bad news for less that a week; But look at the bright side, at least we got Rahm Emanuel as Mayor of Chicago.

Here's the story:

US stocks plummet over 4pc

From correspondents in New York
From: AFP
August 11, 20117:09AM


US stocks plummeted over four per cent today, more than wiping out the gains of yesterday's rebound as European debt troubles and worries of a new US recession kept investors nervous.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 519.83 points (4.62 per cent) to 10,719.94 at closing, compared to its 430-point gain yesterday.

The broader S&P 500 fell 51.77 points (4.42 per cent) to 1120.76, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq lost 101.47 (4.09 per cent) to 2381.05.

The drop came after much steeper falls on European bourses, spurred by worries of possible problems with Greece's new bailout deal and a rumoured ratings downgrade of France and/or French banks.

Bank shares led the drop in the US markets, amid speculation that they faced more pressure to stop parking money with the central bank and begin lending.

Source
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Largest Solar Flare in Current Cycle Erupts on Sun


(Photo: NASA/SDO/GSFC)
This still from a video taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory shows the Aug. 8, 2011 solar flare as it appeared in the ultraviolet range of the light spectrum. The flare registered as an X6.9 class sun storm, the largest of the Solar Cycle 24.

By IB Times Staff Reporter | August 10, 2011 7:27 AM EDT

An extremely powerful solar flare, which is the largest in the current solar weather cycle, rocked the Sun on Tuesday, resulting in a coronal mass ejection (CME). But as the gigantic bursts of radiation occurred near the western limb of the Sun, it is unlikely to wreak any serious havoc on Earth.

The solar flare began at 3.48 am EDT and was recorded an X6.9 class on the three class scale used to measure the strength of solar flares. The recent solar flare is three times larger than the previous flare of this solar cycle -- the X2.2 that occurred on Feb. 15, 2011.

The weakest flares are rated C-class, medium sized flares are M-class while the strongest type of solar eruptions are rated X-class. Solar activity waxes and wanes over an 11-year sun weather cycle.

Solar flares occurred as a result of sun's magnetic field lines tangling up into knots. The knots build potential energy until they end up with a tipping point. After that the energy is converted into heat, light and the motion of charged particles, according to a Space.com report.

The solar flare ejects a cloud of plasma called a coronal mass ejection into space. The frequency of occurrence of solar flares varies, from several per day when the Sun is particularly "active" during the peak of solar cycle to less than one every week when the Sun is "quiet".

Scientists say the current solar cycle 24, which began in January 2008, is likely to last until around 2020. It is predicted that Solar Cycle 24 will peak in June 2013 with about 69 sunspots.

If the Tuesday eruption had taken place on the side of the sun facing Earth then it could have some serious consequences on Earth, like disrupting atmosphere, GPS and communications signals.

Though it cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to harm humans on the ground, however, it can cause some radio communication blackouts. It can also produce increased solar energetic proton radiation -- enough to affect humans in space if they do not protect themselves.

But the flare happened near the western limb of the sun which wasn't facing Earth, so it may not be fully directed towards our planet.

"It was a big flare," said Joe Kunches, a space scientist with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)'s Space Weather Prediction Center. "We lucked out because the site of the eruption at the sun was not facing the Earth, so we will probably feel no ill effects."

The X6.9 flare succeeds a M2.5 class flare that took place during late Monday and another M3.5 class flare which was reported on Monday afternoon. Both the M-class flares happened near the western limb of the sun and the same region where the X6.9 flare erupted, so it is unlikely to impact earth.

Meanwhile, the space weather prediction center of the NOAA, a federal agency that focuses on the condition of the oceans and atmosphere, said the activity happening around the same region of the sun is expected to gradually decrease as the region rotates around the western limb.

But the space weather prediction center said there is a slight change for an isolated X-class flare and/or proton event for Wednesday. As the sun is moving towards another solar maximum that is likely in 2013, NASA scientists are expecting more flares to be coming, some small and some big enough to send their radiation all the way to Earth.

NOAA's space prediction center anticipates the Earth's magnetic field, also called geomagnetic field, to feel some disturbance during Wednesday, Thursday and Friday as a weak remnant of the Aug. 8 solar flare comes towards the planet. The center also expects the magnetic field to return to quiet conditions on Thursday and Friday.

In addition, the center said solar wind speed at the ACE spacecraft was about 600 km/s for Monday and Tuesday. But the center estimates the initial plane-of-sky speed to be about 1000 km/s due to the coronal mass ejection, which is a massive burst of solar wind, from the sun.

The recent class X flares happened during the recent solar cycle 24 are: a class X2 flare happened on Feb. 15; an X1 flare on March 9; an X7 flare on Aug. 9. During the previous solar cycle, an X9 flare occurred on Dec. 14, 2006.

In a huge solar storm back in 1859, telegraph offices worldwide were hit, some telegraph operators reported electric shocks, the telegraph systems malfunctioned and even paper caught fire. It is the strongest solar storm on record and is called the “Carrington Event", which is named after Richard Carrington, who viewed and reported on the solar flare of Sept. 1, 1859


Source
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And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring;

Men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.

And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.

And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.

Luke 21:25-28.

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Tuesday, August 09, 2011

Fed to Hold Rates Exceptionally Low Through Mid-2013



The New York Times
Tuesday, August 9, 2011 -- 2:30 PM EDT
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Fed to Hold Rates Exceptionally Low Through Mid-2013

The Federal Reserve on Tuesday said that the risk of a downturn in the nation’s economy had increased, and that it was prepared to use additional policy tools, including extending its period of exceptionally low interest rates, until at least 2013.

The Fed’s announcement was eagerly awaited by investors who have responded to grim economic tidings in recent weeks by driving down global markets.

The economy grew only 0.8 percent during the first half of the year. The work force is shrinking. State and local governments are cutting back. And fiscal policy is immobilized by partisanship, leading Standard & Poor’s to remove the United States from its list of risk-free borrowers.

That has left investors to hope that the Fed would consider new steps to help the economy.

Read More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/10/business/economy/fed-to-hold-rates-exceptionally-low-through-mid-2013.html?emc=na
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TD Jakes Invitation Canceled



Uploaded by PresenttruthHD on Aug 8, 2011

Information regarding the canceling of inviting TD Jakes to speak at Oakwood for the Evangelism Council
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Decision to rescind Bishop Jakes' invitation to share presentation at PELC

Photo (Courtesy) http://www.fireandhammer.com/TD_Jakes_2.jpg



Regional_C​aucus_Form​al_Stateme​nt_2_.pdf

The Regional Conference Presidents, with full support of the Pastoral Evangelism and Leadership Conference (PELC) planning committee, has made a decision after much deliberation and prayer, to pull back on our invitation to Bishop Jakes to share a leadership presentation at this year’s PELC.

Our invitation to Bishop Jakes to speak at PELC is a continuation of the sixteen-year, successful outreach to ministers of other faith communities for the purpose of they’re having direct exposure to Seventh-day Adventist and our unique journey and mission.

The Lord has used these seasons of close contact to break down barriers and prejudices---providing greater understanding to those who have not always grasped the special calling of Seventh-day Adventist. Many, if not all, of our clergy colleagues of other faith communities have come away from their time in this unique setting among Adventist pastors with a greater appreciation and regard for our church. There is no doubt that God can and will in the future use strategically some of these contacts for His own purposes on behalf of our people.

While it should be noted that Ellen White directly encouraged reaching out in collegiality to “ministers and men of Influence,” unfortunately, there have been those who were sincerely unaware of the counsel that Ellen White provided relative to these endeavors. This clearly represents a time to inform as we move into the future.

But what’s been most disturbing has been those in the Adventist fellowship who were aware of the mission-driven strategy of PELC’s clergy outreach, but chose to mischaracterize and malign it by using tactics and methods that were clearly ungodly, notwithstanding their perspective.

There were inaccuracies put out that purported to speak with fact that Bishop Jakes was coming to teach evangelism at PELC, preach sermons to Oakwood University students, and even bring the Sabbath sermon at the University Church. None of this was remotely true, but some for their own purposes advanced this story.

There was one particular web site put up by a group of anonymous individuals that so mischaracterized this outreach to clergy, that people were emotionally caught up in these anonymous individual’s perspective without realizing that Mrs. White encouraged the exact opposite to what this website was espousing.

Our concerns heighten when misinformation strategies were deployed targeting Oakwood University students, and those anticipating attending Oakwood University.While Oakwood University is not linked to PELC at all, and has no purview over the speakers invited, we felt, given the impact on the University, that it was prudent not only to go in a different direction with our Non Adventist speaker this year, but to use this as a
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time to inform and dialogue about what it means in the 21st Century to reach out to clergy of other faith communities, in affirmation of Ellen White’s direct counsel in this regard.

We invite and encourage leaders on all levels of the church to speak strongly and decisively regarding ideological groups who use “attack” methodologies against their brothers and sisters to advance a point of view. This is ungodly behavior and must be termed as such. Silence in these regards only invites more of the same.

God is working in ways we don’t always immediately see, and thus our hope is that those who have been the most strident in advancing their views, will take time to reflect on the fact that we must take advantage of every opportunity to reach every one we can, even those who might on some points initially disagree with us.

The Pastoral Evangelism and Leadership Conference will continue to be firmly focused on evangelism and our passion in reaching everyone we can, as well as encouraging the same passion among our members: neighbors reaching neighbors, co-workers reaching co-workers, doctors reaching doctors, teachers reaching teachers, lawyers reaching lawyers, and pastors reaching pastors.

The Regional Conference Presidents’ Caucus
July 2011

(This is a html version of an original pdf document)

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=gmail&attid=0.1&thid=131a99da35d26987&mt=application/pdf&url=https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui%3D2%26ik%3D9fb291f630%26view%3Datt%26th%3D131a99da35d26987%26attid%3D0.1%26disp%3Dsafe%26realattid%3D1376581737252598958-1%26zw&sig=AHIEtbRbpORa4CQPYnfsKx6xYS3zNQFqcw
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Who will save the global economy this time?

Posted by Michael Schuman Tuesday, August 9, 2011 at 6:49 am

In 2008, as Lehman Brothers collapsed, stocks melted down, Wall Street buckled and finance and trade froze from Tokyo to Chicago, governments and central banks across the world stepped in to save the day. Yes, the Great Recession was terrible, the worst economic downturn since the 1930s, but it could have been much worse without such massive and concerted intervention by the world's policymakers.

Here we are, three years later, and facing a new period of financial turmoil. After another sickening day on Wall Street, stocks tumbled in Asia again, though they rebounded from a very dire opening. Tokyo closed down 1.7% and Hong Kong 5.7%. Seoul ended 3.6% lower, though it clawed back from an early 9.9% plunge. Fears are mounting that once again the U.S. could slip into recession, maybe taking the world with it. And in Europe, the debt crisis rages on.

But this time around, who can step in and stem the damage?

Not governments. In 2011, governments are the problem. Policymakers simply do not have the capability – financial or political – to act as the white knights, the cavalry racing to the rescue just in the nick of time, as they did in 2008. That has huge implications for what will happen to the world economy in coming months.

To see the difficulty we face, take a look at the causes of the current chaos compared to three years ago. In 2008, the turmoil was created by the financial sector – the hole left by the subprime mortgage fiasco and the housing bubble. Governments could step in with stimulus plans and liquidity injections to rescue banks, unfreeze credit, stabilize markets and create new sources of demand.

Now fast forward to today. The sources of the financial instability are the governments themselves. In the U.S., Washington gridlock, a disappointing fiscal reform plan and rising national debt led Standard & Poor's to strip America of its top credit rating. In Europe, governments in Spain and Italy are under pressure to control their debt and press forward with austerity programs and economic reform, while the euro zone's leaders continue to flail about for a solution that could save the monetary union. In other words, the renewed crisis in the world economy is being caused by a deterioration in the confidence of investors, and the public at large, in the political leaders of the West and their ability or willingness to tackle their financial problems.

So what does that mean? Fiscal policy as a tool to fight a possible economic downturn or recession is simply impossible. As the U.S. economy slows down, don't expect the government to step in with any more stimulus. The pressure will be on budget cutting and revenue raising, not spending. Ditto in Europe. With borrowing costs being driven upward by terrified investors, governments in Rome, Madrid and much of the rest of the continent have no other option but to control spending, whatever the conditions in the real economy may be. And don't forget the U.K. is also in budget slicing mode. And can Japan avoid the same? Probably not. That means the world's richest economies can't expect government spending to place a floor under growth. In fact, government may end up doing just the opposite – sinking growth further through budget cutting, removing demand from the economy and adding to unemployment.

On the monetary side, policymakers may also be out of ammunition. The usual tool used by central bankers to fight recessions – lowering interest rates – is useless today, since rates are already so low. The Fed has its key rate near zero. That's why there's already talk of QE3. In my opinion, though, central banks can do little. The problem we face today is not liquidity – there's lots of that splashing around – so more liquidity is not a solution. Perhaps some more easing could calm financial markets, but will it help spur on economic growth? It hasn't so far.

And not only Western governments are facing such constraints on policy. Take a look at the conundrum facing China. In 2008, Beijing unleashed a massive program of spending and easy credit to keep the economy humming through the Great Recession. The boost lifted much of Asia with it, softening the blow from the downturn in the entire Asian region. Can Beijing do it again? Hard to say. The Chinese government has witnessed its own debt escalate in recent years, and that may limit its ability to spend at will to hold up growth this time around. But more importantly, China has a major inflation problem. Despite consistently hiking interest rates and curtailing the banks' ability to lend, Beijing has been unable to control prices. On Tuesday, the government announced the consumer price index jumped more than expected in July – 6.5% from a year earlier. Flooding the economy with money while inflation is still high would run the risk of fueling it further. So Beijing may have some delicate balancing to do in coming months.

The bottom line here is that we are looking at a period of slow growth, or perhaps even another downturn or worse, without the hope of government policy alleviating some of the pain. This is something very new for the world economy. I hope we don't discover what happens.

Michael Schuman is a correspondent at TIME. Find him on Twitter at @MichaelSchuman You can also continue the discussion on TIME's Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.



Source: http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2011/08/09/who-will-save-the-global-economy-this-time/#ixzz1UYSdzIwr
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Global Economic Downturn: A Crisis of Political Economy


By George Friedman August 9, 2011

Classical political economists like Adam Smith or David Ricardo never used the term “economy” by itself. They always used the term “political economy.” For classical economists, it was impossible to understand politics without economics or economics without politics. The two fields are certainly different but they are also intimately linked. The use of the term “economy” by itself did not begin until the late 19th century. Smith understood that while an efficient market would emerge from individual choices, those choices were framed by the political system in which they were made, just as the political system was shaped by economic realities. For classical economists, the political and economic systems were intertwined, each dependent on the other for its existence.

The current economic crisis is best understood as a crisis of political economy. Moreover, it has to be understood as a global crisis enveloping the United States, Europe and China that has different details but one overriding theme: the relationship between the political order and economic life. On a global scale, or at least for most of the world’s major economies, there is a crisis of political economy. Let’s consider how it evolved. Read more »
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Israel UAV's protects gas fields

AUGUST 9, 2011 14:29h


JERUSALEM, Aug. 9 (UPI) -- A number of unmanned aerial vehicles are conducting surveillance and reconnaissance missions over Israel's gas fields in the Mediterranean Sea, officials said.

A decision to deploy the UAV's is mainly out of concern Hezbollah may try to target the gas fields, The Jerusalem Post reported Tuesday.

In July the cabinet approved the demarcation of Israel's northern maritime border with Lebanon to combat Lebanon's claims to offshore territories that Israel claims it owns, the newspaper said.

The move set the economic rights of the gas fields.

The army decided to deploy the drones and maintain a 24-hour presence over the gas field after Hezbollah deputy chief Naim Qassem recently warned it would protect Lebanon's maritime sovereignty to "regain its full rights," the paper said.

The Israel Navy has already drawn up operational plans to protect Israel's offshore gas fields.

In June last year the Leviathan offshore gas field in the Mediterranean sea, roughly 81 miles west of Haifa, was discovered and described as one of the world's largest offshore gas finds.

In 2009 the Tamar gas field, also in the Mediterranean some 50 miles west of Haifa, was discovered.

Source
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Monday, August 08, 2011

Black Helicopter Scare over Boston




Uploaded by N0LINKNEWS on Aug 5, 2011


More:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Un6K4zr7jC4

Rioting Widens in London on 3rd Night of Unrest

By RAVI SOMAIYA and JOHN F. BURNS

Published: August 8, 2011


Sang Tan/Associated Press
A shop was set on fire Monday in Croydon, south London. The home secretary said there had been hundreds of arrests.



LONDON — The rioting and looting that convulsed poorer sections of London over the weekend spread Monday to at least eight new districts in the metropolitan area and broke out for the first time in Britain’s second-largest city, Birmingham, in what was developing into the worst outbreak of social unrest in Britain in 25 years.

Unrest was also reported early Tuesday by the police in two other major cities, Manchester and Liverpool.

Prime Minister David Cameron, apparently caught off guard while on vacation with his family in Tuscany, reversed an earlier decision not to cut short his holiday in the face of plunging world financial markets and boarded a plane for home to lead a cabinet-level meeting on Tuesday to deal with the turmoil.

For Mr. Cameron’s government — indeed for Britain — the rapidly worsening situation presented a profound challenge on several fronts.

For a society already under severe economic strain, the rioting raised new questions about the political sustainability of the Cameron government’s spending cuts, particularly the deep cutbacks in social programs. These have hit the country’s poor especially hard, including large numbers of the minority youths who have been at the forefront of the unrest.

Together with the inevitable pressures to restore some of the spending cuts, Mr. Cameron and his colleagues have to confront the dark shadow that the rioting has cast on plans for the 2012 summer Olympic Games. That $15 billion extravaganza will have its centerpiece in a sprawling vista of new stadiums and an athletes’ village that lie only miles from the neighborhoods where much of the violence in the last three days has taken place. With the Games set to begin in barely 12 months, Britain will have to satisfy Olympic officials that there is no major risk of the games being disrupted, or ruined, by a replay of the rioting.

Beyond these challenges is the crisis that has enveloped London’s Metropolitan Police, popularly known as Scotland Yard, on which security for the Olympics, and the immediate hopes of quelling the rioting, depend.

Even before the outbreak of violence, the police have been deeply demoralized by the government’s plan to cut about 9,000 of its force of about 35,000 officers and by allegations that it badly mishandled protests against the government’s austerity program last winter and failed to properly investigate the newspaper phone-hacking scandal that has dominated the headlines here for much of the summer. The force now faces widespread allegations that it failed to act quickly and forcefully enough to quell the rioting at its outset over the weekend.

With huge fires burning into the night in several of the neighborhoods overrun by the rioters, Home Secretary Theresa May said she had issued instructions that officers do everything possible to restore order and arrest the principal culprits in the disorder. Striking a note that was common among community organizers in the neighborhoods where rioting has occurred, Ms. May said that social deprivation was no defense.

“There is no excuse for violence, no excuse for looting, no excuse for thuggery, and those who are responsible must know that they will be brought to justice,” she said. “I think this is about sheer criminality.”

Despite an additional build-up in the number of riot police officers, many of them rushed to London from areas around the country, gangs of hooded young people appeared to be outmaneuvering the police for the third successive night. Communicating via Blackberry instant-message technology that the police have struggled to monitor, as well as by social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, they repeatedly signaled fresh targets areas to those caught up in the mayhem.

They coupled their grasp of digital technology with the ability to race through London’s clogged traffic on bicycles and mopeds, creating what amounted to flying squads that switched from one scene to another in the London districts of Hackney, Lewisham, Clapham, Peckham, Croydon, Woolwich and even, late on Monday night, at least minor outbreaks in the mainly upscale neighborhood of Notting Hill and neighboring Camden.

The mayhem also spread for the first time beyond London to the city of Birmingham, 110 miles northwest of London, as well as to Manchester and Liverpool. The police said that at least 200 hooded youths massed near a shopping center in the middle of Birmingham, smashed shop and car windows, terrorized bus passengers and looted stores. The police said they had thrown a half-mile cordon around the city center and had arrested at least nine people, including some younger than 18.

In London, Ms. May, the home secretary, said there had been more than 200 arrests before nightfall, and the figure appeared to have risen sharply as the unrest metastasized in the evening hours, running broadly from north to south over a distance of about 15 miles on either side of the Thames.

Nothing remotely like it had been seen in London since 1985, when another eruption that occurred mainly among black youths led to violent running battles with the police. Known as the Broadwater Farm riots for the housing project where it began, the turmoil took place in the Tottenham district, where the current unrest started on Saturday. That grew from a protest outside a police station about the shooting last week by the police of Mark Duggan, 29, who lived in the housing project.This time, hundreds of young people, their faces covered in scarves or ski masks, looted; attacked police officers with wooden staves, gasoline bombs, broken bottles, pieces of masonry and even shopping carts; and set fire to police vehicles, private cars, trash bins and buildings.

Some large buildings burned deep into the night, as the police and television network helicopters circled overhead. Some of the rioters could be seen using BlackBerrys as they broke away from police cordons, slipping down side streets and opening new battlefronts. Hundreds of police officers followed them from riot scene to riot scene.

In some neighborhoods, officers appeared to allow the looting to go unchecked, concentrating instead on stopping new outbreaks of violence elsewhere.

At one point, two priests entered the Pembury Road housing project in Hackney, the scene of some of the worst violence, to gain permission from rioters to allow an ambulance to take an injured elderly lady to safety. In Camden Town, an affluent neighborhood in north London, a group of about 20 masked youths broke into a cellphone shop run by one of Britain’s biggest operators, O2. Chanting “O2, O2, O2”, they looted with extraordinary rapidity, to the sound of wailing alarms and smashing glass. Tim Godwin, the acting commissioner of Scotland Yard, appealed to people to help identify the rioters. Mr. Godwin conceded, obliquely, that the unrest was at least partly rooted in social deprivation, saying there was “a conversation to be had” about grievances among the youths committing the violence, but said that could come only after the unrest had ended.


Alan Cowell contributed reporting from London, and Rick Gladstone from New York.

Source


London Riots Continue



Obama discusses US credit downgrade

http://www.wral.com/news/video/9967386/

Obama discusses US credit downgrade

President Barack Obama says he's hopeful that the downgrading of U.S. credit rating will give urgency to solving the nation's debt problems.

Today - 2:09pm

White House denial

The debt downgrade:

Last Updated: 8:39 AM, August 8, 2011



AP
More turmoil: Wall Street traders (like this one reacting on Friday) can expect fresh grief today.


The White House narrative on how the country lost its triple-A rating and began a descent toward Third World status goes something like this:

Standard & Poors woke up Friday morning and out of the blue decided to downgrade Uncle Sam’s debt despite the administration’s best efforts to show the wrong-headedness of the S&P analysis.

Don't buy it.

Yes, last Friday saw lots of meetings in Washington with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner & Co. haranguing S&P executives with phony evidence that they’re getting a handle on the nation’s $14 trillion and rising debt, and the rotten economy that has squeezed tax revenues. But the fact remains, federal debt is set to grow for the foreseeable future, even with the spending cuts imposed in the recent debt-ceiling deal.

More important, the downgrade should hardly have been a surprise for the administration -- it was among the most telegraphed in the history of downgrades.

The Obama Treasury Department had been on thin ice with the ratings agencies -- companies that offer opinions to investors on the safety and soundness of debt both public and private -- for at least a year. And the failure of Obama’s near-$1 trillion stimulus package was among the chief culprits for the downgrade.

Without the job growth the president and his economic team had promised from the stimulus, tax revenues would remain weak -- and with Team Obama planning to keep on spending, the nation would have no choice but to add to its growing mountain of debt to make up the difference.

The ice got considerably thinner in the early spring when raters, in meetings with White House financial officials, found the Obama team unwilling to face the facts of the nation’s deteriorating finances. It got even thinner during the weeks of the debt-ceiling debate -- when S&P told anyone with a heartbeat on Capitol Hill and at Treasury the country's triple-A was in jeopardy.

So the final straw came Friday -- and only after the S&P spent the last week or so handwringing about what to do, factoring into its equation the much-heralded debt deal, which (the S&P wonks concluded) had done little to dent the feds’ massive-and-rising”Š-”Šas-far-as-the-eye-can-see debt load.

Coupled with the likely prospect of prolonged 9 percent unemployment and weak GDP growth -- that seemed to leave S&P no choice but to downgrade.

The decision certainly didn't come easy for the rating agency. I’m told there was a fierce internal debate: Since the other two rating agencies had maintained their triple-A assessments, S&P would be an outlier and a target for reprisals from the administration and its political allies. But in the end, the corporate bureaucrats at S&P decided their credibility was at stake.

In a sense, the company had boxed itself in, issuing statements during the debt-ceiling fight that it wouldn’t be satisfied unless $4 trillion was cut from the budget. If it backed down after the final deal far short of achieving those savings, why would traders and investors ever listen to anything the company ever said again?

It picked Friday as the day to alert the administration that the downgrade was coming as a favor: It gave the Obama crew one last chance to provide evidence they’re getting a handle on the deteriorating economy and gave the markets two full days to prepare for the downgrade’s potentially devastating impact.

But all Geithner & Co. could come up with was some bickering about math, claiming S&P’s analysis somehow overlooked $2 trillion in revenues. Right or wrong, that didn’t come close to touching the big-picture issues that were at the heart of the downgrade.

Wall Street is used to turmoil, and every major firm held meetings all weekend to get set for today’s opening. There’s no agreement on what to expect, beyond a sharp decline in stocks at the opening bell.

“The bottom line, no one really knows,” said William Heinzerling, head of fixed income at Stifel Nicolaus and a veteran bond trader. “We are in truly uncharted territory.”

Charles Gasparino is a Fox Business Network senior correspondent.


Source: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/white_house_denial_ZfOp2744oRbTRrG8dmgqjM#ixzz1UUS7cLYw

Dow falls 635 points in 6th-worst loss




The sell-off is prompted by S&P's downgrade of US debt and worries about Europe's financial system. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are downgraded as well. Gold finishes above $1,700; oil drops below $84. Bank of America falls 20%.

By Charley Blaine on Mon, Aug 8, 2011 12:28 PM

Updated: 6:20 p.m. ET

The Great Sell-Off of 2011 became the Great Rout of 2011 as worries about European debt problems and the impact of Standard & Poor's downgrade of U.S. debt on domestic and global growth combined to push stocks to their biggest one-day losses since December 2008.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average ($INDU) suffered a loss of 635 points, or 5.5%, to 10,810, its sixth-worst point loss ever. And that was actually a decent performance, relatively speaking.

The Standard & Poor's 500 Index ($INX) was off 6.7%, and the Nasdaq Composite Index ($COMPX) fell nearly 7%. Stocks in Asian and Europe also slumped.

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