Thursday, August 08, 2013

The Antichrist Unveiled





AramDaniel1

Uploaded on Jan 12, 2012


I believe the pope of Rome is Antichrist (Daniel 7:7-27,2Thessalonians 2:1-12,2Peter 2:1-22,1John 2:18-25, Revelation 13:1-9) and Rome 'Mystery Babylon the Great the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth' (Revelation 17:1-18).I urge every true Christian to come out of her.(Revelation 18:1-8) KJV Bible

During the Reformation this is what most Preachers taught regarding Antichrist
1522 Martin Luther,1536 Jean Calvin,1543 Phillip Melanchthon,1545 Andreas Osiander,1554 Nicolaus von Amsdorf,1558 Johann Funck,1560 Virgil Solis,1570 Georg Nigrinus,1572 David Chytraeus,1530 Johann Oecolampadius,1557 Heinrich Bullinger,1550 William Tyndale,1545 George Joye,1554 Nicholas Ridley,1553 Hugh Latimer,1582 Thomas Cranmer,1550 John Bale,1562 John Jewel,1587 John Foxe,1547 John Knox,1593 John Napier,1614 Thomas Brightman,1618 David Pareus :
-Antichrist,Man of Sin - Pope of Rome
-Book of Revelation Chapter 17 Harlot,Babylon - Roman Catholic Church
-Book of Daniel Chapter 7 the Little Horn -- Papacy

After the Reformation this is what most Preachers taught regarding Antichrist
1798 Richard Valpy,1798 Joseph Galloway,1798 Edward King,1797 David Simpson,1796 Christian Thube,1795 George Bell,1794 Joseph Priestly,1793 James Bicheno,1768 Johann Ph. Petri,1764 John Wesley,1758 John Gill,1754 Thomas Newton,1745 John Willison,1740 Johann Al. Bengel,1735 Thomas Pyle,1729 Th. Crinsox de Bionens,1727 Sir Isaac Newton,1720 Charles Daubux,1712 Heinrich Horch,1706 William Whiston,1703 Daniel Whitby,1701 Robert Fleming, Jr.,1701 Johannes Cocceius,1700 William Lowth
-Antichrist,Man of Sin - Pope of Rome
-Book of Revelation Chapter 17 Harlot,Babylon - Roman Catholic Church
-Book of Daniel Chapter 7 the Little Horn - Papacy
-Book of Revelation Chapter 13 Beast from the sea - Rome,Empire

Before the Reformation, this is what most Preachers taught regarding Antichrist
c. 1310 Dante Alighieri,c. 1331 Michael of Cesena,c. 1350 Francesco Petrarch,
c. 1367 John Milicz,c. 1379 John Wycliffe,c. 1390 John Purvey,c. 1412 John Huss,
c. 1497 Girolamo Savonarola
Book of Revelation 17 Harlot - Roman Church
Antichrist - Pope of Rome
Man of Sin , Abomination of Desolation -- Papacy

After the Reformation,this is what most Preachers taught regarding Antichrist
1689 Drue Cressener,1687 Pierre Jurieu,1685 Jacques Philippot,1684 Thomas Beverley,1681 Johann Alsted,1670 William Sherwin,1664 Henry More,1655 John Tillinghast,1654 Thomas Goodwin,1643 Johannes Gerhard,1631 Joseph Mede,1618 Daniel Cramer,1618 Matthias Hoe,1612 Andreas Helwig,1603 George Downame,1600 James I of England
-Antichrist,Man of Sin - Pope of Rome
-Book of Revelation Chapter 17 Harlot,Babylon - Roman Catholic Church
-Book of Daniel Chapter 7 the Little Horn - Papacy
-Book of Revelation Chapter 13 Beast from the sea -- Rome

Biblical Expositors of the Post-Reformation Era-America:
1639 John Cotton,1644 Roger Williams,1644 Ephraim Huit,1646 Thomas Parker,1653 John Davenport,1658 Edward Holyoke,1669 Increase Mather,1698 Nicholas Noyes,1702 Cotton Mather,1724 William Burnet,1739 Jonathan Edwards,1757? Ezekiel Cheever,1757 Aaron Burr, Sr.,1767 Isaac Backus,1774 Samuel Langdon,1788 Benjamin Gale,1793 Samuel Hopkins,1794 Samuel Osgood,1794 William Linn
-Book of Daniel Chapter 7 the Little Horn - Papacy
-Book of Revelation Chapter 13 Beast from the sea - Rome
-Antichrist,Man of Sin - Pope of Rome

Biblical Expositors of the Early Medieval Period
d. 430 Augustine of Hippo,6th century Andreas of Caesarea,d.735 Bede,12th century Waldensians,d.1105 Rashi,d.1164 Abraham ibn Ezra,c. 1178 Petrus Comestor
-Book of Daniel Chapter 7 the Four Beasts - 1Babylon,2Persia,3Greece,4Rome
-Book of Daniel Chapter 7 the Little Horn -- Antichrist

Biblical Expositors of the Early Church Period
c. 100 Josephus,c. 90 Yochanan ben Zakai,c. 61 Barnabas,c. 165 Justin Martyr,c. 202 Irenaeus,c. 236 Hippolytus of Rome,c. 240 Tertullian,c. 254 Origen,c.304 Victorinus of Pettau,c. 320 Lactantius,c. 339 Eusebius of Caesarea,373 Athanasius of Alexandria,c. 376 Cyril of Alexandria,c.? 407 John Chrysostom,c. 420 Jerome,449 Isidore of Pelusium,457 Theodoret of Cyrus
-Book of Daniel Chapter 7 the Little Horn - Antichrist
-Book of Daniel Chapter 7 the Four Beasts - 1Babylon,2Persia,3Greece,4Rome
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The King of the North - PART 2

At a time of International Strife (to avoid confusion) it is good imperative to repeat and reiterate what we believe...   
 
This video contains the subject matter that caused Prof. Walter Veith so much trouble in Germany; Where he was accused of Anti-Semitism, and finally cleared of charges this past June 2013.





273 - The King of the North - PART 2 / Repairing the Breach - Walter Veith



OfficialADTVChannel

Published on Dec 3, 2012

http://amazingdiscoveries.tv/media/11...

Part 2 is a study of the king of the south that pushes against Catholicism at the time of the end, but it also investigates the intrigues of setting up the conditions for the final victory of the king of the north. The secret intrigues of Napoleon, the setting up of a false system of worship, and a counterfeit theology regarding the antichrist, the dispensationalist view, and the creation of the Jewish state and Zionism are all discussed. Viewers will be surprised to discover the origin of the Jews and the state of Israel. This DVD concludes the study of Daniel 11 and prepares the way for the modern fulfillment of these prophecies.

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Others who identify the Antichrist



Author: Professor Walter J. Veith, PhD

Publish date: Jun 24, 2009

Summary: The apostle Paul, Martin Luther, and other fathers of the faith have identified the Roman Catholic system as the Antichrist.

Identifying the Antichrist Downloadable 135kB

Reformers Identify Antichrist 526kB




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It arose out of the fourth beast
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It was to make war on God's saints
It would think to change times and laws
The saints were to be handed over to it
It shall devour the whole earth
It shall reign until the Ancient of Days comes
Its dominion will be taken away
Others who identify the Antichrist
Others who identify the Antichrist 



Daniel 7 identifies the Papacy as the Antichrist. Throughout history, others have also stated that papal Rome is the Antichrist.

The Apostle Paul said that the "mystery of iniquity" was already working in his day, and would grow to full revelation before the Second Coming of the Lord.



John Calvin (1509-1564).

Public Domain.


The great French reformer, John Calvin, identified the Antichrist:

Daniel and Paul had predicted that Antichrist would sit in the temple of God...we affirm him to be the Pope…Some persons think us too severe and censorious when we call the Roman pontiff Antichrist. But those who are of this opinion do not consider that they bring the same charge of presumption against Paul himself, after whom we speak.i

I shall briefly show that (Paul's words in II Thess. 2) are not capable of any other interpretation than that which applies them to the Papacy.ii

Martin Luther also identified the Antichrist from his studies of Paul's epistle to the Thessalonians, and the prophetic books of Daniel and Revelation. In 1520, Luther wrote this:

I am practically cornered, and can hardly doubt any more, that the Pope is really the Antichrist... because everything so exactly corresponds to the way of his life, actions, words and commandments.iii

We here are of the conviction that the papacy is the seat of the true and real Antichrist...personally I declare that I owe the Pope no other obedience than that to Antichrist.iv

Already I feel greater liberty in my heart; for at last I know that the pope is antichrist, and that his throne is that of Satan himself.v

We are not the first who interpret the Papacy as the kingdom of Antichrist...He (John Purvey in 1390 AD) rightly and truly pronounces the Pope "Antichrist" as he is...a witness indeed, foreordained by God to confirm our doctrine.vi

Calvin and Luther were not the only church leaders to identify the Antichrist. A host of reformers identified the Antichrist as the Papacy, such as Thomas Cranmer ("Whereof it followeth Rome to be the seat of antichrist, and the pope to be very antichrist himself. I could prove the same by many other scriptures, old writers, and strong reasons"vii), John Knox ("Hitherto the pope has been antichrist"viii), John Wesley ("He is in an emphatical sense, the Man of Sin, as he increases all manner of sin above measure. And he is, too, properly styled the Son of Perdition, as he has caused the death of numberless multitudes, both of his opposers and followers"ix), John Wycliffe, John Huss, Jerome, and John Melanchthon.

The same papal power will reveal itself again in the closing stages of this earth's history, we need to be grounded in Scripture so that we are not swept away by the subtle workings of this power.
 

 
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i. L. Froom, Prophetic Faith of our Fathers Volume 2 (Washington D.C: Review and Herald, 1948): 437.

ii. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536).

iii. Martin Luther, Schriften volume 21a, column 234, as translated in George Waddington, A History of the Reformation on the continent volume 1 (1841).

iv. L. Froom, Prophetic Faith of our Fathers Volume 2 (Washington D.C: Review and Herald, 1948): 121.

v. Martin Luther, as quoted in D'Aubigné, book 6 chapter 9.

vi. Martin Luther, Commentarius in Apocalypsin (reprint).

vii. Thomas Cranmer, The Works of Thomas Cranmer Volume 1: 6-7.

viii. John Knox, The Zurich Letters: 199.

ix. John Wesley, as quoted in Albert Close, Antichrist and His Ten Kingdoms (London: Thynne and Co, 1917): 110.
 
 
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Obama Snubs, Russia Laughs, Putin Wins

 


Vladimir Putin was this close to caring that Barack Obama decided not to meet with him. Photographer: Jochen Eckel/Bloomberg
 
By Leonid Bershidsky Aug 7, 2013 12:53 PM ET





In the U.S., President Barack Obama's decision to cancel a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin for harboring fugitive Edward Snowden is seen as an important diplomatic demarche.

From the Russian perspective, it's a bit of a joke.

One freshly minted Russian witticism, picked up by the news site Gazeta.ru, portrayed the U.S. president as a jilted suitor: "Obama won't see Putin because Putin is already seeing Snowden."
The White House issued a statement saying Obama "looked forward to" the September G-20 summit in St. Petersburg, but that he had decided against a one-on-one meeting with Putin "given our lack of progress on issues such as missile defense and arms control, trade and commercial relations, global security issues, and human rights and civil society in the last 12 months." As regards the man wanted in the U.S. for leaking information on government surveillance, the White House said: "Russia’s disappointing decision to grant Edward Snowden temporary asylum was also a factor that we considered in assessing the current state of our bilateral relationship."

The fact that Obama stopped short of skipping the entire G-20 meeting was seen in the Putin camp as a sign of weakness. The dominant theory is that the U.S. president did not really want to make hostile moves against Russia, but domestic interests forced him to make a show of chastising Putin.

"Obama is under powerful pressure from the cold war lobby," political analyst Sergei Markov told the news agency Interfax.

"This is clearly a political defeat for Obama," pro-Putin newspaper editor Vitaly Tretyakov wrote on the social network Vkontakte. In an eerie echo of the White House statement, Tretyakov added: "Russia, strictly speaking, does not care. What could we expect from Obama's visit? A second reset? But the first one failed. A second detente? Who even remembers the first one?"

Putin's liberal opponents, for their part, could not sympathize with Obama's move. They saw better reasons than Snowden's asylum to chastise Putin.

"It's sad that Obama did not refuse to meet with Putin because of human rights violations in Russia but rather because of rights violations in the U.S.," blogger Oleg Kozyrev wrote on Twitter.

The two leaders did not have much to discuss, anyway.

Russia and the United States do not see eye to eye on most issues, from gay rights to the civil war in Syria. The differences have been starkly evident for at least a year, since Putin returned to the Kremlin after a four-year hiatus. Now a man wanted in the U.S. for espionage has found an apartment in Moscow, is looking for a job and sending out invitations to family in the U.S. If a meeting would not have changed anything, neither does its cancellation.

"Obama canceled his meeting with Putin," Russia's most popular anti-Putin politician Alexei Navalny, who is now running for mayor of Moscow, wrote on Twitter. "As for me, I held my meeting with the residents of Zyablikovo neighborhood as planned."

(Leonid Bershidsky, an editor and novelist, is a Bloomberg View contributor. Follow him on Twitter.)
 
 
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Wednesday, August 07, 2013

Remember that statement?

Remember that compromising video where President Obama whispered to Russian President Medvedev "After my election I have more flexibility"...  Remember?  


Well, now that the election is over, history, things done changed
Now, Obama won't rendezvous with Putin.  Now isn't that funny?


Snowden defected, now all bets are off.


From Washington Post/CBS Video:

Mon Mar 26 2012
 
In South Korea, President Obama may have been a little too honest with another world leader. CBS News senior White House correspondent
 
CBS News
II
....
. . .

Obama Canceled Russia Meeting In Part Over Putin’s War On Gays


by David Badash on August 7, 2013





President Barack Obama, as reported earlier today, has canceled his long-scheduled meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, citing tensions stemming from the imbroglio over granting asylum to whistleblower Edward Snowden, and “human rights” issues. But to the chagrin of some in the LGBT community, and despite the President’s chastising of Russia’s anti-gay laws last night on Leno, LGBT civil rights were not specified in the official statement, which the New Civil Rights Movement received via an email from the White House (below).

Now, blogger John Aravosis has determined that indeed LGBT civil rights played a part in Obama’s decision to cancel his meeting with his Russian counterpart.

“An Obama administration official just confirmed to me that today’s sudden cancellation of President Obama’s anticipated meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin during next month’s G20 meeting in Russia was in part due to the President’s concerns about the deteriorating gay rights situation in Russia,” Aravosis writes:

The official told me that among the concerns leading to the cancellation of the bilateral meeting with Putin was the worsening human rights situation in Russia, which specifically included the Russian government’s recent crackdown on the gay and trans community.
Aravosis acknowledges that “no one is claiming that gay rights is the sole, or even lead, reason that the President canceled the Putin meeting,” but notes, “it is hugely significant that the administration is acknowledging that Russia’s draconian crackdown on gay and trans people figured into the President’s calculus at all.”
Elections matter.



Via the White House:

 
 


THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

August 7, 2013
 




Statement by the Press Secretary on the President’s Travel to Russia


Following a careful review begun in July, we have reached the conclusion that there is not enough recent progress in our bilateral agenda withRussia to hold a U.S.-Russia Summit in early September. We value the achievements made with Russia in the President’s first term, including the New START Treaty, and cooperation on Afghanistan, Iran, and North Korea. However, given our lack of progress on issues such as missile defense and arms control, trade and commercial relations, global security issues, and human rights and civil society in the last twelve months, we have informed the Russian Government that we believe it would be more constructive to postpone the summit until we have more results from our shared agenda. Russia’s disappointing decision to grant Edward Snowden temporary asylum was also a factor that we considered in assessing the current state of our bilateral relationship. Our cooperation on these issues remains a priority for the United States, so on Friday, August 9, Secretaries Hagel and Kerry will meet with their Russian counterparts in a 2+2 format in Washington to discuss how we can best make progress moving forward on the full range of issues in our bilateral relationship.


The President still looks forward to traveling to St. Petersburg on September 5-6 to attend the G-20 Summit.

 
 


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Image: President Barack Obama and members of the American delegation, including National Security Advisor General Jim Jones, Under Secretary for Political Affairs Bill Burns, and NSC Senior Director for Russian Affairs Mike McFaul, meet with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin at his dacha outside Moscow, Russia, July 7, 2009. Official White House Photo by Pete Souza, via Flickr
 
 
 
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Egypt vows to remove protesters as mediation 'fails'

Posted: Wednesday 7 August, 2013 at 6:29 AM




Egypt's Vice President Mohamed ElBaradei talks with US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns in Cairo, August 3, 2013. Efforts by Western and Arab diplomats to mediate an end to Egypt's political deadlock between the interim government and Islamists have failed, the presidency said on Wednesday.


By: Samer al-Atrush, CAIRO (AFP)


NEWS SPONSORED BY: Caribbean Lottery C/o Gtech ( Tel: 246-435-8707 )




(Cairo, EGY) - Egypt's government vowed Wednesday to remove Islamist protest camps after it said foreign mediation failed, sparking fears of a violent end to the month-old standoff since president Mohamed Morsi's ouster.

"The cabinet affirms that the decision to disperse the Rabaa Adawiya and Nahda sit-ins is a final decision, on which all agree, and there is no going back on it," prime minister Hazem al-Beblawi said on state television.

Protesters have been camped out in the two Cairo squares and insist they will stay until the Muslim Brotherhood's Morsi is reinstated as president.

"We call on them now, anew, to quickly leave, and return to their homes and work, without being chased if their hands have not been soiled by blood," Beblawi said.

"The government's solicitude for the holy month of Ramadan... in which it hoped the crisis would be resolved without the intervention of security, did not mean the cabinet had gone back on its decision," he said, just hours before the end of the Muslim fasting month.

The presidency said earlier on Wednesday that Western and Arab efforts to mediate an end to Egypt's political deadlock had failed.

Its statement came hours after US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns left Cairo late Tuesday, without making headway in finding a compromise between the army-installed government and Morsi's supporters.

"The phase of diplomatic efforts has ended today," the presidency said, referring to mediation by Burns and EU envoy Bernardino Leon, who were among other diplomats who had travelled to Cairo.

"These efforts have not achieved the hoped for results."

The presidency said it "holds the Muslim Brotherhood completely responsible for the failure of these efforts, and for consequent events and developments relating to violations of the law and endangering public safety."

More than 250 people have been killed in clashes since Morsi's ouster by the military on July 3, following days of mass rallies demanding his resignation.

The government had already ordered police to end the sit-ins and protests, which it described as a "national security threat," but held off amid intense diplomatic efforts to find a peaceful resolution.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon urged the release of Morsi, who has been formally remanded in custody at an undisclosed location.

The government, which has faced intense domestic pressure to crack down on Morsi's supporters, lashed out on Tuesday against what it called excessive international pressure.

"Foreign pressure has exceeded international norms," the official MENA news agency quoted presidential spokesman Ahmed al-Muslimani as saying.

His statement came as US senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham outraged government supporters by describing Morsi's removal as a "coup."

"The people who are in charge were not elected, and the people who were elected are now in jail," Graham said.

The comments drew a harsh rebuke from the presidency, which described the comments as "clumsy."

Graham and McCain were later asked by CBS News if they were alarmed by events in Egypt.

"Oh my God," Graham responded. "I didn't know it was this bad. These people are just days or weeks away from all-out bloodshed."

Washington on Wednesday urged Egypt's military and political factions to resolve their differences through dialogue.

"We absolutely do not believe that the time for dialogue has passed. We will continue this conversation, and it certainly remains a priority of ours and obviously a priority of the EU and other officials around the world who've been involved," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

Western envoys had pressured the Brotherhood to end its sit-ins, according to Islamists who attended the talks. They also demanded that the government release jailed Islamist leaders as a confidence-building measure.

Morsi himself is being held on suspicion of having collaborated with Palestinian militants to kill policemen and stage jail breaks during an early 2011 uprising against strongman Hosni Mubarak, while Morsi was in prison.

The Brotherhood's supreme guide, Mohamed Badie, and his deputies are to stand trial later this month on charges of inciting the shootings of protesters outside their headquarters on June 30.

The government says it is up to the judiciary to release prisoners. The Islamists say their release is a precondition for further talks on finding a settlement, which could include symbolically reinstating Morsi, who would then call early elections.

Authorities have promised demonstrators a safe exit and said ending their protests would allow the Brotherhood's return to political life.

More than 80 protesters were killed in clashes with police at the main sit-in outside Cairo's Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque on June 27.

Over 50 people died in earlier clashes with soldiers outside an elite army base.



Source: http://www.sknvibes.com/news/newsdetails.cfm/77210

Did the Roman Catholic Church give us our Bible?



Did the Roman Catholic Church give us our Bible? (zkueker88)



zkueker88

Uploaded on Jun 9, 2008

Many Roman Catholics claim that the Roman Catholic Church (R.C.C.) produced the Bible (God's Word) to which they do not use very often...

The truth is that the Roman Catholic Church did not give us our Bible. Rather, we got our Bible from the Holy Spirit through the apostles before the Catholic Church was romanized.

Please see CARM
http://www.carm.org/catholic/church_s...

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Consulates and the Vatican in chaos as HSBC tells them to find another bank



By Joanne Hart, Financial Mail On Sunday

PUBLISHED: 16:42 EST, 3 August 2013 | UPDATED: 02:58 EST, 5 August 2013




Diplomats in London have been thrown into chaos after Britain’s biggest bank, HSBC, sacked them as customers and gave them 60 days to move their accounts.

Their situation has been made far worse because other banks have been closing ranks and refusing to take their business.

More than 40 embassies, consulates and High Commissions have been affected. Even the Vatican has been given its marching orders.



Havoc: HSBC's decision to sack embassies as customers has caused chaos also because other banks refused to take their business

The Pope’s representative office in Britain, the Apostolic Nunciature, has banked with HSBC for many years but was told to find another bank.

One diplomatic source said he believed HSBC feared being exposed to embassies after it was fined $2billion (£1.32billion) by US authorities last year.

It was blamed for alleged money-laundering activities said to have been conducted through its Latin American operations by drug cartels. HSBC admitted at the time that it had failed to effectively counter money laundering.

Bernard Silver, head of the Consular Corps, which represents consuls in the UK, said: ‘HSBC’s decision has created havoc. Embassies and consulates desperately need a bank, not just to take in money for visas and passports, but to pay staff wages, rent bills, even the congestion charge.’

Embassies also have to pay for ambassadorial accommodation and sometimes even school fees for diplomats’ children. None of these bills can be settled without a valid British bank account.

John Belavu, minister at the Papua New Guinea High Commission, said: ‘We’ve been banking with HSBC for 22 years and for them to throw us off in this way was a bombshell.’

Lawrence Landau, honorary consul of Benin, said: ‘We have been trying everyone, but all the UK banks are clamming up.’

Other embassies are equally fraught. One said: ‘HSBC did not give us any real explanation. They have only given us until the middle of August to find another bank. We can’t find one and we are going crazy.’



Marching orders: The Vatican's representative office in Britain has been told by HSBC to find another bank.
Banking sources said diplomatic missions are considered to be ‘politically exposed’, which means they are at risk of money laundering activities.
HSBC, however, claims its decision is part of an assessment of all business customers to see if they satisfy five criteria – ‘international connectivity, economic development, profitability, cost efficiency and liquidity’.

One diplomat said: ‘We don’t even know what these criteria mean.’

HSBC would not explain the requirements to The Mail on Sunday and merely said: ‘HSBC has been applying a rolling programme of “five filter” assessments to all its businesses since May 2011, and our services for embassies are no exception.’

The Foreign & Commonwealth Office said it was in contact with HSBC and had provided a number of diplomatic missions with letters of introduction ‘to help in opening a new bank account’.

The debacle comes as HSBC prepares to unveil its half-year profits tomorrow. The group is expected to report that it made $14.6billion (£9.6billion) in profits for the first six months of the year. It made $12.7billion in the same period last year.



Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/news/article-2384003/Consulates-Vatican-chaos-HSBC-tells-bank.html#ixzz2bFrqJzEn

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The Frightening Reality About How Easily Hackers Could Shut Down The US



Geoffrey Ingersoll Aug. 6, 2013, 9:22 AM 5,545 14





via NASA
Hacking into and shutting down industrial systems on which the U.S. relies is staggeringly easy, according to recent presentations from the Black Hat hacker conference.



Picture this: A few pump station operators along New York City's water tunnels fire up their computers to check the status of various water pressure readings.

But their networks have been hacked, and the readings they see on their computers are not the real readings. The adjustments they make cause the water pressure to skyrocket, blowing several mains, and cutting water to various part of the city, if not the entire city. Sure these systems have redundancies, but those redundancies are vulnerable too.




Flickr via altemark
Attacks require "significantly fewer resources and skill" than previously thought.


Simultaneously, in other parts of the Northeast U.S., hacked high voltage transformers spin out of control and explode. The blackout could cut as wide as the Tri-State area, and last for months, compounding any attempts to fix the water lines.

No water. No electricity. Pure mayhem.

Tim Simonite of MIT Tech Review recently talked to hackers at Black Hat about a vulnerability in a protocol called “Dbus” which leaves more than 90,000 industrial controls vulnerable.

Another vulnerability, this one in sensors “used to monitor oil, water, nuclear, and natural gas infrastructure” can be hacked into with “a relatively cheap 40-mile-range radio transmitter.” Those sensors could be “spoofed” to show false readings, hackers tell Simonite.

The Obama administration says it takes the threat seriously and has taken several steps — including an executive order — to try and improve network security. As Simonite points out, however, even though the information sharing program alerts companies to vulnerabilities, that doesn't mean the companies follow through with patches.

BlackHat attendees showed proof that the companies weren't doing all they could to protect their customers.

From Tech Review:

All the attacks to be mentioned today require significantly fewer resources and skill than what was required to employ the best-known attack on an industrial system, the U.S.-Israeli-backed Stuxnet operation against the Iranian nuclear program.

Previously, the Defense Science Board released a report that said viruses and exploits with Stuxnet-like results are incredibly complicated and likely require the backing of state-sponsored hacking units to perform. The Black Hat findings paint a completely different picture — it seems the idea of a few people in a basement causing cataclysmic damage is not really that far-fetched.




REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
Giant power transformers located seven stories below the main concourse in the power plant of Grand Central Terminal in New York



“We have demonstrated a few scenarios that will cause a catastrophic breakdown — a pipe to burst or tank to overflow — while sending a completely different view to the controller,” Brian Meixell of Texas security company Cimation, told Simonite.
Steve Stone, principle cyber threat intelligence analyst for Mandiant, the company that outed China's hacking unit to The New York Times told Business Insider that every Chinese hack for espionage includes the potential for kinetic actions — that is actual destruction of property.

“Typically we're talking about external attacks. An entity or individual from the outside uses a custom piece of code to break into cyber security systems,” explained Stone. “Once you’re a valid user, you're gaining all the capabilities a valid user can do.”

Right now, China's hackers are only intent on stealing information, Stone explained. They burrow into a network, increase their permissions, become a “valid user,” and then steal trade secrets.




YouTube/NTDTV
A Chinese hacking unit was exposed by Mandiant just this year.



That “valid user” can also increase or decrease water pressure, or make it look like water pressure has decreased, prompting an operator to try and increase it.

Mandiant's opinion, though, is that it's only nation states looking to do this sort of penetration, like Iran's recent spate of bank attacks — likely prompted by President Barack Obama's admission that Stuxnet was of American origin.

“I don't know exactly why the Obama admin started blabbing about that,” said Professor Peter Ludlow, an Internet culture expert and professor of philosophy at Northwestern.

Ludlow said the administration's big mistake was not making sure the defense was bolstered before first releasing a virus like Stuxnet, and then second going ahead and admitting to kinetic cyber operations.

“I think that this has actually been happening for quite some time now,” said Ludlow. “And basically if you start weaponizing the Internet, even kinetically, it's not just going to be for people like nation states.”

Ludlow watched the beginning of kinetic cyber operations, long before the U.S. Military was even aware of the possibility, in a massive multiplayer online roleplaying game called 2nd Life.

According to Ludlow, gamers developed code that first altered the game itself, but then eventually would hack into users' computers. Then kinetic operations came up.

“There was speculation even back then, could you come up with a [software] device that could fry your adversary's computer,” said Ludlow.




AP
NYC power outage following Hurricane Sandy.


Ludlow says the fault for potential exploits like the industrial systems hack falls on the shoulders of government and private agencies who are pressuring the community to find the exploits.

“Right now you have state actors in a bidding war for zero day exploits. Used to be that security people would get zero day exploits for a Tshirt or something, now it's a half mil, million dollars for zero days,” said Ludlow.

A zero-day is a software or network hack that the public is not yet aware of. So when a hacker finds one, it's incredibly lucrative. A state actor or even a private company could use one to conduct espionage, or worse yet, real damage.

The way Ludlow looks at it, the more government takes interest in hacker conventions like Black Hat, the more capable individuals are going to be at leveling potentially destructive cyber weapons.

The previous assertion of the Defense Science Board was that only state-sponsored hackers are capable of shutting down an electrical grid. In response, the Board's recommendation was to protect the nukes, both from network hacks and as a potential response to hacks that would disable the U.S. grid or water system — like a sort of nuclear deterrent akin to the mutually assured destruction of the Cold War.

Stone is skeptical of this approach.

“Equating it to an atomic bomb and mutually assured destruction doesn’t match what we see. It’s already happened,” said Stone.

He's talking about attacks like the one in Korea, which was timed to destroy massive amounts of data, or like Stuxnet, which destroyed pieces of Iran's nuclear facilities.

Ludlow seems to think there's no end to the rabbit hole, that the exploits will continue to get easier to execute and more destructive as time goes on, turning the Internet into a “Afghanistan-like war zone,” he said.

Worse yet, as these exploits evolve, the need for state-sponsorship to launch attacks dwindles because the technology ceases to be something that requires money and resources.

Experts tell Business Insider that China and Russia are capable of these attacks but choose not to execute them because the globe's superpowers depend on each other. If the U.S. economy tanks because of a catastrophic attack on New York City, then Russia and China both suffer.

On the other hand, the world is full of ideological psychos. From lone wolves to terrorist organizations — the ability to exact a catastrophic attack is becoming more and more accessible.



Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/hackers-could-shut-down-the-us-2013-8#ixzz2bFn891AA
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T.S.A. Expands Duties Beyond Airport Security

 

By RON NIXON


Published: August 5, 2013


WASHINGTON — As hundreds of commuters emerged from Amtrak and commuter trains at Union Station on a recent morning, an armed squad of men and women dressed in bulletproof vests made their way through the crowds.




T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York Times
A team of Transportation Security Administration officers, known as a VIPR squad, at Washington’s Union Station last month.


DOCUMENT: Beyond the Airport: The T.S.A.’s VIPR Team



The squad was not with the Washington police department or Amtrak’s police force, but was one of the Transportation Security Administration’s Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response squads — VIPR teams for short — assigned to perform random security sweeps to prevent terrorist attacks at transportation hubs across the United States.

“The T.S.A., huh,” said Donald Neubauer of Greenville, Ohio, as he walked past the squad. “I thought they were just at the airports.”

With little fanfare, the agency best known for airport screenings has vastly expanded its reach to sporting events, music festivals, rodeos, highway weigh stations and train terminals. Not everyone is happy.

T.S.A. and local law enforcement officials say the teams are a critical component of the nation’s counterterrorism efforts, but some members of Congress, auditors at the Department of Homeland Security and civil liberties groups are sounding alarms. The teams are also raising hackles among passengers who call them unnecessary and intrusive.

“Our mandate is to provide security and counterterrorism operations for all high-risk transportation targets, not just airports and aviation,” said John S. Pistole, the administrator of the agency. “The VIPR teams are a big part of that.”

Some in Congress, however, say the T.S.A. has not demonstrated that the teams are effective. Auditors at the Department of Homeland Security are asking questions about whether the teams are properly trained and deployed based on actual security threats.

Civil liberties groups say that the VIPR teams have little to do with the agency’s original mission to provide security screenings at airports and that in some cases their actions amount to warrantless searches in violation of constitutional protections.

“The problem with T.S.A. stopping and searching people in public places outside the airport is that there are no real legal standards, or probable cause,” said Khaliah Barnes, administrative law counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington. “It’s something that is easily abused because the reason that they are conducting the stops is shrouded in secrecy.”

T.S.A. officials respond that the random searches are “special needs” or “administrative searches” that are exempt from probable cause because they further the government’s need to prevent terrorist attacks.
Created in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the T.S.A. has grown to an agency of 56,000 people at 450 American airports. The VIPR teams were started in 2005, in part as a reaction to the Madrid train bombing in 2004 that killed 191 people.

The program now has a $100 million annual budget and is growing rapidly, increasing to several hundred people and 37 teams last year, up from 10 teams in 2008. T.S.A. records show that the teams ran more than 8,800 unannounced checkpoints and search operations with local law enforcement outside of airports last year, including those at the Indianapolis 500 and the Democratic and Republican national political conventions.

The teams, which are typically composed of federal air marshals, explosives experts and baggage inspectors, move through crowds with bomb-sniffing dogs, randomly stop passengers and ask security questions. There is usually a specially trained undercover plainclothes member who monitors crowds for suspicious behavior, said Kimberly F. Thompson, a T.S.A. spokeswoman. Some team members are former members of the military and police forces.

T.S.A. officials would not say if the VIPR teams had ever foiled a terrorist plot or thwarted any major threat to public safety, saying the information is classified. But they argue that the random searches and presence of armed officers serve as a deterrent that bolsters the public confidence.

Security experts give the agency high marks for creating the VIPR teams. “They introduce an unexpected element into situations where a terrorist might be planning an attack,” said Rafi Ron, the former chief of security for Ben-Gurion International Airport in Israel, who is now a transportation security consultant.

Local law enforcement officials also welcome the teams.

“We’ve found a lot of value in having these high-value security details,” said John Siqveland, a spokesman for Metro Transit, which operates buses and trains Minneapolis-St. Paul. He said that local transit police have worked with VIPR teams on security patrols on the Metro rail line, which serves the Minnesota Vikings stadium, the Mall of America and the airport.

Kimberly Woods, a spokeswoman for Amtrak, said the railroad has had good experiences with VIPR team members who work with the Amtrak police on random bag inspections during high-travel times. “They supplement our security measures,” she said.

But elsewhere, experiences with the teams have not been as positive.

In 2011, the VIPR teams were criticized for screening and patting down people after they got off an Amtrak train in Savannah, Ga. As a result, the Amtrak police chief briefly banned the teams from the railroad’s property, saying the searches were illegal.

In April 2012, during a joint operation with the Houston police and the local transit police, people boarding and leaving city buses complained that T.S.A. officers were stopping them and searching their bags. (Local law enforcement denied that the bags were searched.)

The operation resulted in several arrests by the local transit police, mostly for passengers with warrants for prostitution and minor drug possession. Afterward, dozens of angry residents packed a public meeting with Houston transit officials to object to what they saw as an unnecessary intrusion by the T.S.A.

“It was an incredible waste of taxpayers’ money,” said Robert Fickman, a local defense lawyer who attended the meeting. “Did we need to have T.S.A. in here for a couple of minor busts?”

Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and ranking member on the House Homeland Security Committee, which has oversight of the T.S.A., said he generally supports the VIPR teams but remains concerned about the warrantless searches and the use of behavior detection officers to profile individuals in crowds.

“This is a gray area,” he said. “I haven’t seen any good science that says that is what a terrorist looks like. Profiling can easily be abused.”

Mr. Thompson said he also had questions about the effectiveness of the program because of issues like those raised in Houston and Savannah.

“It’s hard to quantify the usefulness of these teams based on what we have seen so far,” he said.

An August 2012 report by the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security raised similar questions.

Some T.S.A. officials told auditors that they had concerns that deploying VIPR teams to train stations or other events was not always based on credible intelligence.

The auditors also said that VIPR teams might not have “the skills and information to perform successfully in the mass transit environment.”

Mr. Pistole said the agency is now retraining VIPR teams based on recommendations in the report and is working to increase the public’s knowledge about them.



A version of this article appeared in print on August 6, 2013, on page A11 of the New York edition with the headline: T.S.A. Expands Duties Beyond Airport Security.


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Tuesday, August 06, 2013

The Catholic Bible Deception





amy2x .


Uploaded on Apr 4, 2011


(PART 2 of 9 AT THIS LINK) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtUfgt... The New "Bible" Versions produced since 1881 (RV, ASV, NRSV, NIV, etc.) are Roman Catholic perversions.

The Catholic religion is composed of traditions which are NOT based upon the Word of God. Matthew 23:9 warns us not to reverence any man as "Father." Yet, this is exactly what the Catholic religion practices. 1st Timothy 4:1-3 warns us about the Catholic religion... "Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth." -1st Timothy 4:1-3
http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/False%...
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Video Courtesy of husky394xp http://www.youtube.com/user/husky394xp

http://www.kingjamesvideoministries.com/
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*Disclaimer-husky394xp provides no endorsement of the amy2x Channel or the opinions/viewpoints expressed by the amy2x Channel.
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It is very simple to be saved. Dear Jesus, I admit that I am a sinner, deserving of Hell. Please forgive me of my sins and take me to Heaven when I die. I now believe upon You alone, apart from all self-righteous works and religion, as my personal Savior. Thank you. Amen.

Just take God at His word and claim His salvation by faith. Believe, and you will be saved. No church, no lodge, no good works can save you. Remember, God does the saving. All of it!

God's simple plan of salvation is: You are a sinner. Therefore, unless you believe on Jesus Who died in your place, you will spend eternity in Hell. If you believe on Him as your crucified, buried, and risen Savior, you receive forgiveness for all of your sins and His gift of eternal salvation by faith.

Christ died for your sins. You are a sinner by nature and by choice. Jesus took your sins and charged them to His own record. He went to the cross and paid the penalty for your sins. He says if you're willing to receive Him in faith; He will transfer His payment to your debt, and His righteousness to your sins. He will impute to you His goodness, and impute to His own record your sin; if you in faith will trust Him as your Savior.

Further Info on Salvation at this Link: http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/how_to...
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FAIR USE NOTICE: This video may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes only. This constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law.

Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for fair use for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.


§ 107.Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phono records or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include — (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; (2) the nature of the copyrighted work; (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/

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Presidents and Congress on perpetual vacation


Policy & Issues

August 5, 2013
By: Armen Gabrielian
 
 
 
 

U.S. President Barack Obama makes a shot as he plays golf with some Senators May 6, 2013 at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland.
Credits:  Dennis Brack-Pool/Getty Images




Congress just started a summer vacation that will last five full weeks. President Obama also just started another "vacation" at Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts. He will be staying at a $7.6M mansion with 75 rooms booked for staff.

The cost to the tax payers for the Obama staff rooms will range in price from $225 to $345 per night. Considering the cost of the operation of Air Force One, one estimate for the total cost of the vacation is $2M. Other reports say that total cost will be $7.6M, when the figure represents the cost of the resort where he will be staying, a total misrepresentation.

A recent trip by President Obama and family to Africa was claimed to have cost about $100M. But, no one knows the actual cost. This trip in turn seems to have been dwarfed by multiple trips by President George Bush and First Lady Laura Bush's to Africa. President Bush went to Africa twice and Laura Bush took five trips to that continent during the Bush presidency. In her 2007 trip, Laura Bush took her daughters with her and they went on a safari.

By one estimate, President George Bush spent 32% of his presidency on vacation, the most among all presidents. His longest vacation was five weeks, the longest in 36 years.

Congress in turn seems to be on perpetual holiday. The number of bills passed by Congress last year was fewer than at any year since 1947. In fact congressmen are expected to get 239 "vacation days" in 2013.

It is even more depressing to learn about the bills that are actually passed by Congress or voted in the two houses without becoming the law. In particular, the House has voted to repeal Obamacare 40 times.

One thing that Congress excels in is in naming Post Office buildings after various historical figures. In fact, the Congressional Research Service, the nonpartisan research division of Congress, has found that about "20 percent of laws passed in recent years were for naming post offices."

The only other area where Congress has been productive has been in passing sanctions on other countries, specially Iran. Almost every week, a new sanctions bill is introduced and passed without any objection it seems. In fact, sanctions bills on Iran typically pass the Senate by a vote of 100-0.

There is only one conclusion that can be drawn by the constant vacations and mindless congressional voting practices. To pass the next jobs bill, President Obama should propose it as an amendment to a bill naming a Post Office building or a sanctions bill on Iran.
 
 
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Why would Congress take a five-week vacation with all the problems facing the country?


August 6th, 2012
03:59 PM ET



By CNN's Jack Cafferty:

Congress is on a five-week vacation. They work so hard. The fact is Congress has accomplished next to nothing, but they think they deserve a five-week break.

Millions of Americans are unemployed, and the average American worker only gets 13 paid days off the whole year. But these clowns think they deserve yet another vacation. It's disgraceful.

Meanwhile, the country's problems, which they left behind in Washington, are serious and many:
  • Our runaway national debt is nearing $16 trillion.
  • They've done nothing about the automatic spending cuts, including hundreds of billions of dollars to the Defense Department, set to kick in early next year.
  • The Bush tax cuts are set to expire at the end of this year. The payroll tax cut is set to expire, and estate taxes will rise dramatically as will capital gains taxes.

It's called the "fiscal cliff" for a reason. Unaddressed, these changes will be painful and dramatic. Congress has done nothing. This list still goes on:

  • They've also failed to address the issues of food stamps and farm subsidies as American farmers grapple with the worst drought in decades.
  • Also still on the table are must-pass spending bills to keep the government running, a cybersecurity bill and the post office bill, as the U.S. Postal Service faces default.

This Congress is one of the least productive in recent history - and you can thank a toxic, hyperpartisan atmosphere plus election year politicking

It's unlikely any of these things will be addressed until after the election is over. The American people deserve better than this, but we won't get it if we keep vote these same people into office.

On November 6, think "out-cumbent."

Here’s my question to you: Why would Congress take a five-week vacation with all the problems facing the country?

Interested to know which ones made it on air?

Bonnie in New Jersey:
What difference does it make? They're on vacation when they are at work. Can we do like the sports team owners and do a "lockout" when they come back?

Laura:
Because we as Americans let them, by voting them back in over and over and over again.

Susan in Ohio:
Maybe they just need a break from their gruesome 3-day work week - the pressures of the job and all. What a joke they are. But the polls show not too many of us are laughing.

Kevin in California:
Because they are back meeting their constituents and updating them on all the things Congress has accomplished ... yeah, yeah, that's the ticket.

Debbie on Facebook:
We need to fire them all. Who else gets to go on vacation with work left incomplete? The rest of us would be fired on the spot.

David in Springfield, Missouri:
Because the Congress could care less about the American people. It’s all about “me, me, me” and using the hard-working people's money to fund the good ole' boy system in waste beyond human imagination. How do you think a person making $169,000 a year becomes a multi multi millionaire X 10?

Ron in Palm Beach, Florida:
They read the schedule, they haven't been worried about the country in three in a half years.

Bob in Ohio:
They deserve a vacation. It’s got to be exhausting work naming post offices session after session with no end in sight.
 
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Senate confirms Hackett, retired CRS leader, as ambassador to Vatican




Ken Hackett, left, retired president of Catholic Relief Services, attends the 2012 consistory at the Vatican with Miguel Diaz, former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican. (CNS/Paul Haring)


Catholic News Service | Aug. 5, 2013

Ken Hackett, retired president of Catholic Relief Services, received Senate confirmation Thursday as U.S. ambassador to the Vatican.

"We are overjoyed that the country will be represented by a man who through his decades of service has demonstrated his commitment to the dignity and sanctity of life and fighting global poverty," said Carolyn Woo, current CRS president and chief executive officer, in a statement Friday. "We look forward to working with the new ambassador as he engages the Vatican and Pope Francis towards the common goal of advancing peace and justice in the world."

President Barack Obama nominated Hackett on June 14 for the position on the same day he announced nominees for ambassador posts in Brazil, Spain, Germany, Denmark and Ethiopia.

"It gives me great confidence that such dedicated and capable individuals have agreed to join this administration to serve the American people. I look forward to working with them in the months and years to come," the president said.

Hackett retired in December 2011 after 18 years as president of CRS, the U.S. bishops' overseas relief and development agency.

As U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, he succeeds Miguel Diaz, who left the post in late 2012. Diaz now is a professor of faith and culture at the University of Dayton, Ohio.

Hackett was appointed president of CRS in 1993. During his tenure, he established a division focusing on outreach to dioceses, parishes, Catholic organizations, and colleges and universities, and laypeople were first appointed to the CRS board of directors.

Catholic Relief Services now operates in more than 100 countries, with a global staff of nearly 5,000.

Born in West Roxbury, Mass., Hackett joined the Peace Corps shortly after his 1968 graduation from Boston College. Assigned to a Catholic mission in rural Ghana, he worked in an agricultural cooperative and saw "the actual impact of American food aid on the health and well-being of very poor kids in a very isolated part of a West African country," he said recently.

After completing his Peace Corps assignment, Hackett joined CRS, the U.S. Catholic relief and development agency, in 1972. He started his career in Sierra Leone, where he managed a nationwide leprosy program and a maternal and child health program.

Subsequent positions took him to various posts in Africa and Asia, as well as in CRS' Baltimore headquarters. As regional director for Africa, he managed the agency's response to the Ethiopian famine of 1984-85. He also supervised CRS operations in East Africa during the crisis in Somalia in the 1990s.

In February 2012, Hackett and Diaz represented the U.S. government at the consistory led by Pope Benedict XVI in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican ceremony. Pope Benedict XVI created 22 new cardinals from 13 countries -- including two from the United States and one from Canada.

In May of that year, he received the University of Notre Dame's Laetare Medal during commencement ceremonies. The medal has been given annually since 1883 to a Catholic "whose genius has ennobled the arts and sciences, illustrated the ideals of the church and enriched the heritage of humanity."

In announcing that honor, Holy Cross Father John Jenkins, Notre Dame's university president, said in a statement: "Ken Hackett has responded to a Gospel imperative with his entire career. His direction of the Catholic Church's outreach to the hungry, thirsty, naked, sick and unsheltered of the world has blended administrative acumen with genuine compassion in a unique and exemplary way."

Hackett is a former North American president of Caritas Internationalis, the confederation of humanitarian agencies of the Catholic Church and a former member of the board of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum at the Vatican. He also has been an adviser to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Hackett was on the board of the Millennium Challenge Corporation, the congressionally mandated independent development agency, from 2004 to 2010. He has received numerous honorary degrees.

After retiring from CRS, Hackett was named a consultant to the University of Notre Dame's Institute for Global Development.


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Do newly intercepted al Qaeda threats justify NSA snooping?




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A Bahraini armored personnel vehicle reinforces security outside the gated U.S. Embassy in Manama, Bahrain, on Aug. 4.


Keith Wagstaff 14 hours ago

Intelligence officials overheard terrorist "chatter," then closed 22 embassies. Good thing they were listening?

Last month, Keith Alexander, director of the NSA, defended his agency's electronic surveillance program by claiming that it had helped prevent "potential terrorist events" at least 50 times since 9/11.

Now, in the words of Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), come warnings of a potential attack that are "very reminiscent of what we saw pre-9/11." That threat has resulted in the closure of 22 embassies and consulates across the Middle East and North Africa, as well as a month-long security advisory for Americans traveling abroad.

As criticism of the NSA, fueled by the classified documents leaked by Edward Snowden, builds in the United States and overseas, the agency's supporters are pointing to intercepted intel on these possible attacks as Exhibit A in why the NSA's programs are vital to American security.

"Al Qaeda is on the rise in this part of the world and the NSA program is proving its worth yet again," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told CNN's State of the Union.

Chambliss agreed, telling NBC's Meet the Press:

This is a good indication of why they're so important. To the members of Congress who want to reform the NSA program — great. But if you want to gut it, you make us much less safe, and you're putting our nation at risk. We need to have policies in place that can deal with the threats that exist, and they are real, and they are growing. [NBC News] Critics of the NSA's surveillance program, however, were not convinced.

"If you look at the one that's most at issue here, and that's the bulk metadata program, there's no indication, unless I'm proved wrong later, that that program, which collects vast amounts of domestic data, domestic telephony data, contributed to information about this particular plot," Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said on CNN.

It's not entirely clear where information about this newest threat came from, though McClatchy cited an unnamed source who claims U.S. intelligence intercepted communications between al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri and Nasir al-Wuhayshi, head of the Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) argued on Fox News Sunday that it didn't even matter whether the NSA's domestic surveillance program contributed to this latest warning.

"It's precisely because we live in this dangerous world that we need protections like the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution," Amash said. "The framers of the Constitution put it in place precisely because they were worried you'd have national security justifications for violating people's rights."


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Three Things the New Terrorism Threat Does Not Prove


Terrorism



Every national security crisis is an opportunity (to push a political agenda).


By Michael Crowley @CrowleyTIME

Aug. 05, 2013




JIM HOLLANDER / EPA

A United States flag flies behind a tall fence at the United States Consulate General building in Jerusalem, Israel, 03 Aug. 2013.

The current alert over a suspected al Qaeda terror plot, thought to originate from Yemen, has populated the television airwaves with spokesmen for various political agendas, many of them making arguments that range from tenuous to specious. Here’s a quick crib sheet on some of the most dubious claims you’re likely hearing amid the speculative chatter about what sinister plans al Qaeda may have up its sleeve:

1. The NSA’s entire surveillance program is essential. The New York Times is reporting that the current alert is based on an intercepted electronic communication between Pakistan and Yemen. On Sunday said the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee that intercept was part of the NSA’s overseas activities permitted under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. But an Associated Press story Monday evening quotes an unnamed intelligence official saying that, in the AP’s words, “the controversial NSA programs that gather data on American phone calls or track Internet communications with suspected terrorists played no part in detecting the initial tip.”

Regardless, it seems clear that the agency’s bulk collection of telephone records for every call made within the United States did not play a role here. Even if the communication was a Section 702 intercept, it’s still might not have required the kind of vast overseas data collection the NSA conducts. For now, defenders of the NSA program should stick to arguing that this alert is a reminder that al Qaeda remains dangerous and that we need to maintain strong defenses, even at some cost to civil liberties.

2. Obama’s “weakness” has emboldened terrorists. Some conservatives have argued that Obama has effectively invited this latest terrorist stirring. Former GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum says Obama has appeared “timid,” “refused to confront radical Islam” and “won’t even use the word terror.” Santorum allowed that Obama is conducting drone strikes, “but that is not a comprehensive policy against radical Islam.” Former Republican Senator Jim DeMint struck a similar note on Sunday, saying that al Qaeda may be a greater threat than it was before 9/11, in part because Obama has sought to “placate” enemies like Iran and Russia. “The perception of weakness in the administration is encouraging this type of behavior,” DeMint added.

Doubtful. Obama’s foreign policy vision has drawn credible critics and left even some allies frustrated. But chances are slim that al Qaeda really cares whether Obama tried to “reset” relations with Moscow or extend a hand to Tehran. The group’s affiliates in northern Africa and the Middle East are thriving amid the chaos of the Arab Spring, and through a smart understanding that they can be more deadly as semi-autonomous splinter groups now that al Qaeda’s group’s core leadership in Pakistan has been decimated (thanks, by the way, to Obama’s approval of a relentless–and controversial–drone campaign).

3. Obama prematurely declared the war on terror over. After Obama’s broad counter-terrorism address in May, which included modest new restrictions on U.S. drone strikes, conservatives were dismayed: “He has now declared the war on terrorism over,” groused House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon. Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton charged that Obama had admitted “defeat” in the fight against al Qaeda.

No, he didn’t. Obama’s speech actually disappointed some liberals actually might like to see Obama declare an end to the terror war–not as a matter of defeatism, but as a step towards policies that rely less on killing and more on capture and prosecution in the criminal justice system.

Instead, Obama warned that the al Qaeda threat “has shifted and evolved from the one that came to our shores on 9/11.” As I noted on Friday, he went on to warn of more localized threats,” as he put it, “against Western diplomats, companies, and other soft targets.” In other words, exactly the kind of threat we facing today.

Perhaps overly inflated expectations with his frequent boasts during last year’s campaign about killing Osama bin Laden and putting al Qaeda “on the run.” But there’s very little sign he’s backed away from the fight against Islamic radicals. (Indeed, the U.S. carried out at least three drone strikes in Yemen late last month.) And why would he? Even if you suspect that Obama, in his gut, doesn’t like killing bad guys overseas, there’s almost nothing a rational president should fear more than presiding over a preventable terrorist attack. It’s silly for his critics to pretend otherwise.

Update: This item has been revised to reflect that the intercepted foreign communication was reportedly electronic and not a “call,” and some related language has been changed. It was further updated to reflect the AP’s subsequent reporting.


Source: http://swampland.time.com/2013/08/05/three-things-the-new-terrorism-threat-does-not-prove/#ixzz2b9O91guM
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