"From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed: lead me to the rock that is higher than I."
(Psalms 61:2)
Lead Me To The Rock That Is Higher Than I.
**
Living Without Stress
By Maria Fontaine
Stress is one of the big "joy killers" that the Lord wants to see us find freedom from. Stress lessens your anointing and usefulness, and can destroy your health and strength if you let it continue unchecked.
Stress is a cause of terrible unhappiness, illness, and death. A recent news article said that 75 to 90% of doctor visits in developed countries could be traced back to being a direct or indirect result of stress.
Faith is the antidote for stress, when it really comes down to it. Faith and trust in the Lord, that He has everything in His hands, that He is in control, that He will work everything out for good, automatically eliminates a lot of stress from our lives.
We trust the Lord about so many things, but there are always aspects of our lives that the Enemy tries to convince us that we need to worry about, or areas where he tries to convince us that it's our job to carry the burden instead of giving it to the Lord and letting Him take care of it. If you let those burdens settle on you--whether physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual--eventually they will cause you stress. And long-term stress can have devastating effects--in some cases on your health, in other cases on your spirit.
There are many aspects and manifestations of stress, and most of us have at least one or two areas where our lives have gotten out of balance, our perspectives have gotten skewed, because we've been carrying a load--physical, spiritual, or emotional--for too long, without the breaks, balance, and trust in the Lord that would make our burden light enough to bear. That's stress.
A common misconception is to equate stress with hard work, or to feel that some amount of stress is inevitable in a busy life. But that doesn't have to be true. You can be a very hard worker and not be stressed if:
You maintain a balanced life. Work when it's time to work, play when it's time to play, and above all, keep your time with the Lord sacred. If you go through a period that's extra busy and you have to cut corners on your relaxation and fellowship with others, make sure that things slow down again when that project or time period is over. Don't let it continue indefinitely, or keep stretching it out for "just a little longer." That can become an addiction to the fast pace, and is unhealthy.
* You let the Lord carry the burdens. You take action to do the job that the Lord asks of you, and you play your role, but you keep your role in perspective. Your role is not to solve all the problems and do everything; it's to let the Lord do the heavy lifting for you.
* You exercise faith and praise and trust in the Lord in difficult and stressful situations. Yes, there are situations that are stressful; there's no way around that. When one of your children is sick, it's stressful. When you're low on finances, it's stressful. When you have tight or unrealistic deadlines, it's stressful. But stressful circumstances don't mean that you have to be stressed. You still choose how you react to the circumstances.
* You know your limits and are obedient to the Lord in not trying to do more than is healthy. You are humble, or you learn humility, and resist pride and tactics that push you into stress.
* You learn to be realistic, and if you're not realistic, you listen to others who are, so that you don't wind up creating unnecessary stressful situations for yourself and those around you. When you have unrealistic expectations, it creates stress.
* You learn to make use of the spiritual tools of prayer and praise, so that you can have peace that you've done your part and have committed everything to the Lord's hands, and that it's all under His control.
* You sometimes take times to stop and step back from the work, and don't think about work, don't try to continue working and get "just a little more" done. During these times, you have fun, you rest physically, and you refill spiritually, and the Lord can renew your perspective. Any burden that you carry for too long will eventually cause stress. Learn to set your burdens down in spirit!
There are different causes and reasons for stress. A lot of stress comes from negative mindsets rather than actual work deadlines. For example, worry, fear, concerns, unrealistic expectations, self-imposed pressure, pride, self-centeredness; these and many other negative mindsets contribute to or create stress.
I'm not going to say that it will be easy for you to get rid of stress in your life. You will have to make some changes that will be difficult, because these kinds of habits and mindsets are difficult to break! I know it's difficult. All that passion and motivation and dedication in your heart is powerful. But the balance that will keep you on track is strong faith and trust in the Lord, an active effort to remember that He is in control and that His timing is the best timing, and determining how you can most effectively cast your burdens on to His strong shoulders and not carry the load yourself. You weren't meant to carry the burdens yourself.
You might not have realized before that you can actually be free of stress. You might have thought that it's part of your cross for the Lord, or part of the price you pay for being so busy, or having such a demanding job, or accepting your calling of discipleship. But that's not true. You can be all that the Lord wants you to be, and get done as much as He asks of you, without stress. We'll never attain to a once-and-for-all victory over stress, because we're human, and it's very natural to stress about things. But we can learn to overcome stress any time it comes around, and replace it with extra trust in the Lord, which brings faith and peace.
The Lord has promised, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."1
Originally published November 2006. Updated and republished
1 Matthew 11:28 - 30.
A Register (Edited from longer article)
VeriSign demands website takedown powers
No court order necessary
By Kevin Murphy
11th October 2011
Free whitepaper - ASCI uses 10 GbE grid computing and hi-def media streaming
VeriSign, which manages the database of all .com internet addresses, wants powers to shut down "non-legitimate" domain names when asked to by law enforcement.
The company said today it wants to be able to enforce the "denial, cancellation or transfer of any registration" in any of a laundry list of scenarios where a domain is deemed to be "abusive".
VeriSign should be able to shut down a .com or .net domain, and therefore its associated website and email, "to comply with any applicable court orders, laws, government rules or requirements, requests of law enforcement or other governmental or quasi-governmental agency, or any dispute resolution process", according to a document it filed today with domain name industry overseer ICANN.
The company has already helped law enforcement agencies in the US, such as the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, seize domains that were allegedly being used to sell counterfeit goods or facilitate online piracy, when the agency first obtained a court order.
That seizure process has come under fire because, in at least one fringe case, a seized .com domain's website had already been ruled legal by a court in its native Spain.
Senior ICE agents are on record saying that they believe all .com addresses fall under US jurisdiction.
But the new powers would be international and, according to VeriSign's filing, could enable it to shut down a domain also when it receives "requests from law enforcement", without a court order.
"Various law enforcement personnel, around the globe, have asked us to mitigate domain name abuse, and have validated our approach to rapid suspension of malicious domain names," VeriSign told ICANN, describing its system as "an integrated response to criminal activities that utilize Verisign-managed [top-level domains] and DNS infrastructure".
The company said it has already cooperated with US law enforcement, including the FBI, to craft the suspension policies, and that it intends to also work with police in Europe and elsewhere.
It's not yet clear how VeriSign would handle a request to suspend a .com domain that was hosting content legal in the US and Europe but illegal in, for example, Saudi Arabia or Uganda.
VeriSign made the request in a Registry Services Evaluation Process (RSEP) document filed today with ICANN. The RSEP is currently the primary mechanism that registries employ when they want to make significant changes to their contracts with ICANN.
VeriSign is already anticipating that there may be criticisms from internet users "concerned about an improper takedown of a legitimate website" and told ICANN it plans to implement a "protest" policy to challenge such decisions.
The company's move echoes policy development in the UK, where .uk registry Nominet is in the late stages of creating rules that would allow it to suspend domains allegedly involved in criminal activity at the behest of law enforcement.
The Independent
Robert Fisk: Jerusalem can do strange things to your sanity
Saturday, 8 October 2011
The Dome of the Rock mosque: green and gold are the colours of paradise
So there was this chap, a bearded guy, spectacles, a settler, asking for a lift from Hebron to Kiryat Arba.
And Kiryat Arba is quite a settlement, home to Baruch Goldstein who killed about 50 Palestinians before he himself was killed by the survivors, and Don, our man in Jerusalem - who was driving - said "Are you sure?" and my companion and I, anxious to hear "another point of view", said "Why not?" and this chap climbed in to the back seat next to me. And as we left Hebron, he pointed to us and said: "Jew? Jew? Jew?"
And I was a bit taken aback and let Don do the talking, and he said: "No." That kept our mate quiet for a bit. He had a gun in his belt, which I didn't really like. But armed Palestinians had killed Jewish settlers, so I kept my mouth shut. Then we reached Kiryat Arba and an enormous chap - with an even bigger beard - came to the car window with an equally enormous gun and said we could enter. And this settler beside me said: "The Land of Israel - for Israelis. Arabs. In London." Well, I see, we murmured. A bit like the Balfour Declaration in reverse, I suppose. "His Majesty's Government views with favour the establishment in Britain of a national home for the Arab people ..." Well there you have it, I suppose.
So then I called up from the King David Hotel - the best hotel in Jerusalem, I may add, whose Jewish and Arab staff are the best advertisement for a one-state solution, albeit that they may not agree with me! - and asked if the Waqf would permit me and my companion to visit the Haram al-Sharif, the Dome of the Rock, the Esplanade. And they called back and said yes, 9am sharp, Monday morning, and I could touch the footprint of the Prophet. I did - if indeed, it is his footprint, but this I cannot, alas, vouchsafe - and sure enough, I entered the great mosque which looks so like the Omayad mosque in Damascus and wondered at its beauty.
Gold and green are the colours of paradise, so I was told - I can believe it - and then, across the Esplanade, I was shown the Carrara marble aisles which that old trickster, Mussolini, gave to the holiest mosque in Palestine, and I remembered, of course, the Grand Mufti and his trip to Nazi Germany, and his visit to Hitler, and I recalled my student days, researching his speeches and his appeals to send the Jews of Europe to the East... Did he know?
And then I walked across the carpets and there was a plastic casket in which the Palestinians had boxed the cartridge cases of the Israelis who had fired tear gas at them in the 1990 killings here. "Saltsburg, Pennsylvania," it said. "For outdoor use only." Well, I can imagine. Saltsburg? Nice little town?
But then another question. What on earth, in this holy of holies, are these cartridge cases doing? Is this really their place? Should they be here, so close to Mohamed's footprint? Well, yes, I suppose they should, in one way. But I wonder. And then to a brunch at the Hamam el-Ein - the Bathhouse of the Well - which is being carefully restored close to the Esplanade and I talked to a fine Palestinian woman who described Israeli occupation in the language of Conrad. "Israeli occupation," she said to me. "They search everything on you; they go into your soul." That really is an "ouch".
And then we left Israel and the West Bank. "Please don't stamp our passports. Please don't stamp our passports," we pleaded. And the Israelis did not stamp our passports. And then, on the Jordanian side of the river, "Please don't stamp our passports. Please don't stamp our passports," we pleaded, and the Jordanians did not, although the Jordanian emigration officer at Amman airport did stamp our passports, thus allowing the Lebanese to see we had left Jordan but never entered it - but the Lebanese ignored the Jordanian stamp.
All of which makes me think that the Holy Land, Jerusalem, "Al-Quds", "Yerushalayim" - the Israelis print the Hebrew name of the city in Arabic script on Arabic road signs, I notice - is all a bit mad. I don't think I've ever been to a city where people go insane the nearer they get to it.
I once entered the Seven Arches Hotel above the Mount of Olives (and above the grave of one R Maxwell) - and do not ever, ever stay there, O reader - to find a group of Christians linking hands and praying and not prepared to let me through the lobby until they had finished praying. When I told them I was in a hurry one of the Christian men threatened to punch me in the face.
Funny place, Jerusalem. Funny place, Hebron. What on earth did God do to them?
Live News
Cousin of Queen Elizabeth II Says Abortion a Form of Eugenics
Steven Ertelt -
October 11, 2011
Lord Nicholas Windsor, the first cousin of Queen Elizabeth II, is creating a stir in England today with a new opinion piece in the London Telegraph newspaper calling abortion a form of eugenics.
Windsor said his commitment to opposing abortion originated in his realization that an abortion means the destruction of a human being, saying, "the cost [of abortion] is too high because the cost is paid in innocent human life." In a critique of the 1967 Abortion Act in The Daily Telegraph, he states, "It hit me in the stomach that terminating a pregnancy equaled none other than the destruction of a human being. It knocked the wind out of me the first time, as it does every single time I think about it."
"Abortion is perceived as a solution to a problem called unwanted pregnancy. A real problem, then. A real "solution", too. But it's not a just solution for all concerned. It leaves out of the picture the consequences for "the entity", about whose nature we've disagreed so passionately in the last decades," he writes.
"Look at it this way: I was born in 1970. My dear mother would have been within her rights to find it inconvenient to have me. Bad luck, she didn't. But my generation has had a close shave. Whether we were born depended on lots of factors: not just on a mother's decision, but also on the fathers' influence and that of the surrounding culture," he continued. " Others of my generation weren't that fortunate, and some of those were our siblings. That's why we take this thing seriously, if you want to know. We were the first generation that really were vulnerable in the womb. Surely, the womb should be the safest place in the world to be. Not any more."
"So, how many don't have those sisters and brothers whom the law, in my view, should have protected? And how many of those siblings didn't go on to compose the symphonies they should, by rights, have composed? How many didn't go on to give birth in their turn? This is eugenics, isn't it? Hell, that's another story," he added.
Windsor is also joining Lord Alton of Liverpool to publicly oppose what they call a "subversive" campaign to establish abortion as an international human right by bullying nations like Ireland and others where unborn children are protected.
"How many don't have those sisters and brothers whom the law, in my view, should have protected? And how many of those siblings didn't go on to compose the symphonies they should, by rights, have composed?" the pair ask. "How many didn't go on to give birth in their turn? This is eugenics, isn't it?"
The pair are supporting a new effort called the San Jose Articles, drawn up to counter international campaigns to push abortion.
"I see the San Jose Articles as an attempt to draw a line and fight back against a concerted movement which seeks to read a 'right to abortion' into standing international law. The latter is being manipulated in the effort to craft such a right," Windsor said. "The Articles aim to show that there is no 'right to abortion' to be found in international law that would oblige such countries to 'conform, or else'. This is in spite UN and other agencies' claims to the contrary. Frankly, officials and politicians in developing countries are being bullied into writing such a right to abortion into their domestic law. This project aims to help them to fight back."
Irish Central
Strict Irish abortion laws are under threat at UN
Six countries demand investigation of abortion restrictions
ByCATHY HAYES
October 6, 2011
The Irish Government will be called to account for Ireland’s almost total ban on abortion laws at the UN on Thursday. Ireland’s domestic human rights record will be examined under the UN review process. Six countries have already submitted questions on Ireland’s prohibitive abortion laws. The six are the UK, Netherlands, Norway, Finland, Slovenia, and Denmark. It is expected that on Thursday, Ireland’s Minister for Justice, Alan Shatter will be called upon to account for its laws. Currently abortion in Ireland is illegal unless the pregnancy endangers the life of the woman. Since 1980, some 150,000 women have traveled abroad to access abortion services. In December 2010, the European Court of Human Rights delivered its verdict in the case of A, B & C v Ireland − a landmark challenge to Ireland’s restrictive abortion laws. The Court unanimously found that Ireland’s failure to give effect to the existing constitutional right to an abortion when a woman’s life is at risk violates Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights We hope that the Minister for Justice will accept the genuine concern expressed by Ireland’s peers about our restrictive abortion laws and make a commitment to bring Irish abortion laws in line with international human rights standards”.
MailOnline
Why the euro bailout is the biggest Ponzi scheme in history
By Norman Lamont
12th October 2011
The recent decision by the Bank of England to pump another £75billion into the economy shows that Britain, far from recovering, remains on the edge of another dip.
But what happens to the British and world economy is, to a large extent, out of our hands. The greatest threat to our economic future is what is happening in the eurozone.
The scale of the euro crisis has made one thing abundantly plain: Europe, Britain and the rest of the world would be better off if the euro had never happened. It would be preferable if it were now dismantled in an orderly manner.
Contingency: Eurozone leaders are already drawing up plans to get round their national parliaments to increase funding if necessary
Yet leaders of eurozone countries appear determined to keep the show on the road, however much voters and their parliaments object to the project. - At the end of last month, Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel had to see off a rebellion from German MPs to win a vital vote in the German parliament to support the expanded 440billion European bailout fund.
Last night, the parliament of Slovakia, one of the poorest of the eurozone countries, cast still more doubt on the bailout project by voting against paying its share of the rescue fund.
Dubious
Never mind that the 440billion fund is already considered too little too late -- or that the European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso resorted yesterday to demanding Britain helps bail out Greece even though we're not a member of the eurozone.
It is clear that eurozone leaders are already drawing up contingency plans to get round their national parliaments to increase funding if necessary.
At the weekend, Mrs Merkel and France's President Nicolas Sarkozy claimed to have reached 'total accord' on a recapitalisation programme of hundreds of billions of euros to rescue ailing eurozone banks.
Agreement: Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel claimed to have reached 'total accord' on a recapitalisation programme
Their agreement came just before the Franco-Belgian bank Dexia collapsed, a clear sign that the contagion of Greek debt has spread from the southern fringes of the eurozone to its heart.
Merkel and Sarkozy failed to announce details of their programme. But if reports are correct, one plan is for Europe to use some highly dubious financial wizardry to increase the amount it can borrow -- injecting toxic assets directly into the bloodstream of the European financial system as it does so.
The latest idea is to get the European Central Bank (ECB) to lend up to five times the billion of the bailout fund, taking the total available to more than two trillion euros.
Why would Europe's leaders do it this way, rather than demanding higher contributions to a bailout fund from individual countries? Because if this new huge bailout is done through the ECB, they won't have to go back to their national parliaments.
Mrs Merkel has already been to the Bundestag twice to appeal for money to rescue the euro. She is unlikely to want to go a third time, particularly as increasing numbers of Germans feel they made a historic error in giving up the Deutschmark to subsidise less efficient countries in the south.
The same sentiment applies to each of the 17 other parliaments in the eurozone that would have to ratify a two-trillion bailout fund.
Euroscepticism is on the rise everywhere in Europe.
European politicians know well that fiscal and political union of eurozone countries, with an economic policy determined by Germany, is not going to be acceptable to the eurozone's voters. Citizens do not want decisions on taxes and spending determined outside their own nation.
Because of mounting opposition to the rescue plan, Mrs Merkel's policy at each stage has been to do the minimum necessary to keep the currency afloat.
But this has not restored confidence, and the Americans have become increasingly alarmed at the threat the euro poses to the world.
There are no easy answers. I feel sorry for Mrs Merkel, when the blame really lies with those pushing the euro in the early Nineties, none more so than the then German Chancellor Helmut Kohl.
Responsible: Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl pushed the euro in the early Nineties
I recall Mr Kohl at some crucial European summit meetings of those years, summits he dominated physically. Without his determination, the euro would never have happened.
I never thought monetary union would work. It needs a federal system of taxation and spending -- the same fiscal regime applied to every country. That is why John Major and I negotiated Britain's opt-out from the single currency.
Now, Germany and all the other countries that signed up to the project face having to fund huge increases in resources required to keep it going. And they know they could never get these huge sums approved through their national parliaments.
But the terrifying fact is that the alternative plan concocted by eurozone finance ministers would hold the world hostage by putting all the capital and reserves of the ECB at risk.
By providing most of the two trillion euros from the ECB, finance ministers will have perpetrated a constitutional outrage. EU leaders will again be doing everything they can to avoid having a democratic vote for their ill-fated project.
Risks
These are the same European politicians who have repeatedly ignored the 'no' votes in referendums on EU treaties in the past. But the latest wheeze to bypass elected parliaments in order to rescue the euro is the biggest affront to democracy so far.
The economic risks are considerable. Once the losses of the bailout fund went above a certain level, it would endanger the solvency of the ECB, which stands behind the eurozone and its banking system.
The bank is already in a parlous state with a weak balance sheet. It has purchased about €140 billion in bonds issued by beleaguered eurozone countries to keep Greece, Portugal, Ireland and others afloat. If these bonds were valued at market prices, there would be huge losses.
The European Central Bank, led by President Jean-Claude Trichet (pictured), is already in a parlous state with a weak balance sheet
In addition, the ECB has lent huge sums, possibly more than €400  billion to European banks that can't raise money themselves.
So who will bail out the ECB, if and when it gets into trouble?
The answer, ludicrously, is the eurozone countries that are themselves being rescued by the ECB!
It would be farcical if it were not so serious. Nineteen per cent of the ECB's capital is provided by Italy, a country whose debt levels have risen to 120 per cent of GDP (as opposed to 60 per cent in Britain).
Italy contributes a similar amount to the euro bailout fund. So countries in trouble, like Spain and Italy, guarantee their own 'rescue', and that of their banks.
This euro rescue strategy has already meant, for example, that Ireland and Portugal borrowed money to lend to Greece; then Portugal underwrote the bailout loan to Ireland, before requesting a bailout itself.
Bumper
It is no wonder that a distinguished Argentinian central banker has described the proposals for rescuing the euro as a gigantic Ponzi scheme -- an investment scam like the one used by the disgraced U.S. financier Bernie Madoff to defraud his clients of billions, whereby bumper rates promised on investments were funded by the deposits of new investors.
Ponzi scheme: How a distinguished Argentinian central banker has described the proposals for rescuing the euro
The ECB will also be charged with rescuing banks in France and Germany. Many of these banks shouldn't be rescued but should be put into administration or taken over by larger, stronger banks. But pouring money into these banks via the ECB could be a bottomless pit.
The uncomfortable truth is that, instead of rescuing it, it would probably have been better if Greece had been allowed to default.
That would have hurt French banks holding Greek bonds. But the problem would have been containable and it would have been far better to have got the crisis over with, than to allow it to fester while writing large cheques that are going to create as many problems as they solve.
There comes a point where the political costs of rescuing the euro are too high. As Winston Churchill once observed, if we do not face reality, reality will face us.
It would be better to recognise that the euro experiment has failed. -
WND
Is the New World Order unraveling?
Nationalism is winning out over multiculturalism and transnationalism
Pat Buchanan:
Posted: October 13, 2011
With Greece on the precipice of default and Portugal and Italy approaching the ledge, the European monetary union appears in peril.
Should it collapse, the European Union itself could be in danger, for economic nationalism is rising in Europe. Which raises a larger question.
Is the New World Order, the great 20th century project of Western transnational elites, unraveling?
The NWO dates back as far as Woodrow Wilson's League of Nations, which a Republican Senate refused to enter. FDR, seeking to succeed where his mentor had failed, oversaw the creation of a United Nations, an International Monetary Fund and a World Bank.
In 1951 came the European Coal and Steel Community, love child of Jean Monnet, which evolved into the European Economic Community, the European Community and the European Union. A European Central Bank and a new currency, the euro, followed.
The hidden ultimate goal of economic union was political union – a United States of Europe as model and core of the 21st-century world government.
Pat Buchanan's latest book -- the title says it all: "Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?"
With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the EU expanded to the east. And the New World Order, formally proclaimed by George H.W. Bush in 1991, was out in the open and seemingly the wave of the future.
Progress was swift.
A North American Free Trade Agreement, bringing the United States, Mexico and Canada into a common market that George W. Bush predicted would encompass the hemisphere from Patagonia to Prudhoe Bay, was signed in 1993.
A World Trade Organization was born in 1994. U.S. sovereignty was surrendered to a global body where America had the same single vote as Azerbaijan.
The Kyoto Protocol, brought home by Vice President Al Gore, set up a regime to control the worldwide emission of greenhouse gases.
An International Criminal Court, a permanent Nuremberg Tribunal to prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity, was created.
A doctrine of limited sovereignty had been asserted. Elites claimed a higher law than national sovereignty; "a responsibility to protect" enabled them to intervene in countries where human rights violations were egregious.
Serbia, bombed by Bill Clinton for 78 days for fighting to hold its ancient province of Kosovo, was the first victim.
Suddenly, however, the progression has stalled. Indeed, the New World Order seems to be unraveling.
Emerging powers like China, India and Brazil are demanding they be exempt from restrictions developed countries seek to impose. The follow-up summits to Kyoto – Copenhagen in 2009, Cancun in 2010 – ended in failure. The Doha round of world trade negotiations ended in failure.
China refuses to let her currency float lest she lose the trade surpluses that have enabled her to amass $3 trillion in cash reserves.
Protectionism is rising. Americans chafe at a new world economic order that has led to deindustrialization of their country. Congress is talking of defunding the U.N. as anti-Western and anti-Israel.
Why is the New World Order suddenly going in reverse?
A primary reason is the resurgence of nationalism. Nations are putting national interests ahead of any perceived global interests.
A second reason is the decline of a West whose project this was. We no longer dictate to the world, and the world no longer marches to our tune. The deficits and indebtedness of Western nations preclude more of the big wealth transfers in foreign aid that once bought us influence.
A third reason is demography. Not one European nation has a birth rate sufficient to replace its population. Europe's nations are aging, shrinking, dying. A depopulating Germany cannot carry forever the deficit-debtor nations of Club Med. The oldest nation, Japan, is on schedule to lose 25 million people by 2050, as is neighbor Russia.
Militarily, America remains the most powerful nation. But Iraq and Afghanistan have bled the country and left us without the certain attainment of our goals. Old allies like Turkey go their separate ways.
Ethno-nationalism also explains a disintegrating world order. Aspiring nations like Scotland, Catalonia, Padania, Flanders, Ingushetia, Dagestan, East Turkestan, Kurdistan and Baluchistan seek a place in the sun, free of the cloying embrace of the mother country.
The desire of peoples for nations all their own, where their own language, faith and culture predominate and their own kind rule to the exclusion of all others, is everywhere winning out over multiculturalism and transnationalism.
Through history there have been attempts to unite the world.
The Roman Empire. Catholicism. Islam. The West that ruled much of mankind from Columbus to the mid-20th century. Communism, which conquered half of Europe and Asia but arose and fell in a single century.
With the death of communism and the decline of the West – in relative population and power – Islam has become the largest religion, China the world's emerging superpower and Asia the continent of the future.
Could this still be the Second American Century?
Not the way we are going.
The Day America Died: The only Future for Americans is a Nightmare (Edited from much longer article.)
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts -
October 3, 2011
Some of us have watched this day approach and have warned of its coming, only to be greeted with boos and hisses from "patriots" who have come to regard the US Constitution as a device that coddles criminals and terrorists and gets in the way of the President who needs to act to keep us safe.
Readers ask me what they can do. Americans not only feel powerless, they are powerless. They cannot do anything. The highly concentrated, corporate-owned, government-subservient print and TV media are useless and no longer capable of performing the historic role of protecting our rights and holding government accountable. Even many antiwar Internet sites shield the government from 9/11 skepticism, and most defend the government's "righteous intent" in its war on terror. Acceptable criticism has to be couched in words such as "it doesn't serve our interests."
Voting has no effect. President "Change" is worse than Bush/Cheney. As Jonathan Turley suggests, Obama is "the most disastrous president in our history." Ron Paul is the only presidential candidate who stands up for the Constitution, but the majority of Americans are too unconcerned with the Constitution to appreciate him.
To expect salvation from an election is delusional. All you can do, if you are young enough, is to leave the country. The only future for Americans is a nightmare.
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is the father of Reaganomics and the former head of policy at the Department of Treasury. He is a columnist and was previously an editor for the Wall Street Journal. His latest book, "How the Economy Was Lost: The War of the Worlds," details why America is disintegrating.
BreakPoint
Science and Humility: Rewriting Physics?
Chuck Colson,
Oct. 6, 2011 - The expression "physics envy" refers to the way that the social sciences try to emulate the mathematical precision and certainty of physics.
It's easy to understand the envy: No one argues with Newton's Laws of Motion. Physics is authoritative in ways that economics and even biology can never hope to be. But authoritative isn't the same thing as omniscient--when it comes to studying creation, humility and an appreciation of mystery are indispensible.
Recently, scientists at the super collider at CERN in Geneva announced that subatomic particles called neutrinos, sent from CERN to Italy, arrived 60 billionths of a second faster than expected.
If the measurements are correct--a big if--this would mean they traveled faster than the speed of light. Any ninth-grade science student can tell you that shouldn't happen.
That's why the news was, as particle physicist Brian Cox put it, potentially "a very, very big deal." To understand why, you need to know that, in his theory of Special Relativity, Albert Einstein stated that no information or material object could travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum.
Among other reasons, as the object approaches the speed of light its inertia increases and the object will appear, to a non-accelerating observer, to be slowing down.
I know that's hard to grasp, but here's what you need to know: Einstein's theories of relativity are, as the Guardian newspaper put it, a "cornerstone of modern physics." Real-world applications of these theories include the GPS in your car and the atomic bomb.
That's why Cox says that, if the results at CERN stand up, the result will be a "complete rewriting of our understanding of the universe." The key phrase there is "our understanding of the universe." For all the greatness of men like Newton and Einstein, we don't "understand" the universe--we understand parts of it, and even that understanding is partial.
For example, only 17 percent of the matter of the universe can be accounted for by "our understanding of the universe." We can only infer the existence of the other 83 percent, known as "dark matter," from the speed at which galaxies rotate and the way that they cluster.
In other words, a huge chunk of the visible universe remains completely mysterious to us. And sub-atomic particles behave in ways completely alien to the physics that govern the visible world: For example, an electron can be in two places at the same time.
Nobody really knows how these two sets of laws go together, at least in ways that can be proven in any meaningful sense.
None of this means that Einstein was wrong about the speed of light. And it certainly doesn't mean that physics doesn't deserve the high regard in which it is held.
What it does mean that some humility and appreciation of mystery is in order. There is so much that we don't know and a lot of what we do know may be, as recent events have reminded us, wrong.
There is a healthy caution here for scientism--the worldview which says science is the ultimate authority with explanations for every phenomenon, including creation. Not quite so.
News Network Archaeology
Early Celtic 'Stonehenge' located in Black Forest
Posted by TANN
A huge early Celtic calendar construction has been discovered in the royal tomb of Magdalenenberg, nearby Villingen-Schwenningen in the Black Forest. This discovery was made by researchers at the Römisch-GermanischesPress Zentralmuseum at Mainz in Germany when they evaluated old excavation plans. The order of the burials around the central royal tomb fits exactly with the sky constellations of the Northern hemisphere.
General plan of the early Celtic burial mound with sky constellations [Credit: Image courtesy of Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum]
Whereas Stonehenge was orientated towards the sun, the more then 100 meter width burial mound of Magdalenenberg was focused towards the moon. The builders positioned long rows of wooden posts in the burial mound to be able to focus on the Lunar Standstills. These Lunar Standstills happen every 18,6 year and were the 'corner stones' of the Celtic calendar.
The position of the burials at Magdeleneberg represents a constellation pattern which can be seen between Midwinter and Midsummer. With the help of special computer programs, Dr. Allard Mees, researcher at the Römisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseum, could reconstruct the position of the sky constellations in the early Celtic period and following from that those which were visible at Midsummer. This archaeo-astronomic research resulted in a date of Midsummer 618 BC, which makes it the earliest and most complete example of a Celtic calendar focused on the moon.
Julius Caesar reported in his war commentaries about the moon based calendar of the Celtic culture. Following his conquest of Gaul and the destruction of the Gallic culture, these types of calendar were completely forgotten in Europe. With the Romans, a sun based calendar was adopted throughout Europe. The full dimensions of the lost Celtic calendar system have now come to light again in the monumental burial mound of Magdalenenberg.
Source: Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum [October 11, 2011]
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The Telegraph
Guava 'the ultimate superfood'
An apple a day may keep the doctor away but not for as long as a guava, mango or pomegranate, according to a new study.
Dr Sreeramulu said his team were surprised but delighted to discover one of India's cheapest fruits offered the greatest health benefits Photo: ALAMY
By Dean Nelson, New Delhi
12 Oct 2011
A series of tests on Indian fruits, including Himalayan apples and pomegranates, bananas from the south, grapes from Maharashtra, found the guava, exotic in Europe but a poor man's fruit in India, to be the ultimate superfood with the highest concentration of antioxidants which protects against cell damage which ages skin and can cause cancer.
Next after the guava, was the Indian plum, grown in orchards established by British planters in the Himalayan foothills, the custard apple and India's beloved mangoes, which make its scorching summers more bearable in June and July.
The scientists from India's National Institute in Hyderabad found antioxidant concentrations of just under 500 milligrams per 100 grams in guavas, 330mg in plums and 135mg in pomegranates. Apples have a quarter of the antioxidants in guavas, while bananas - the fruit of athletes - have just a tiny fraction with 30 mg per 100 grams.
Water melons and pineapples - a staple for low-carbers - offer the least protection for the body's fight against free radicals which can cause cell damage.
Mangoes, despite a high fructose content, have 170 mg of antioxidants, more than three times that of papaya, which is regarded as healthy for its enzymes which ease stomach upsets. Grapes, the study found, are three times more beneficial to the body than oranges.
Dr Sreeramulu, an endocrinologist, said the study, which was published in the Food Research International journal, will help consumers choose fruits which maximise their body's intake of antioxidants.
He said modern lifestyles encouraged the production of free radicals in the body which damage cell membranes and eventually kill the cells themselves.
"Today's lifestyle has increased exposure to synthetic foods, environmental pollution, and stress which cause generation of free radicals. Antioxidants help combat these free radicals which prevents the cellular damage which is responsible for causing cancers, ageing, and cardiovascular and degenerative diseases.
'So far, there is no study to suggest that antioxidants can help cure [these] but can definitely help or cut down the risk of cancers as they scavenge the free radicals responsible for the diseases," said Dr Sreeramulu.
He said his team were surprised but delighted to discover one of India's cheapest fruits offered the greatest health benefits.
"Guava is a rich source of antioxidants, a rich source of fibre. It's a poor mans fruit because they're quite cheap. A guava a day keeps a doctor away," he said.
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Until next week...
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"I will abide in thy tabernacle for ever: I will trust in the covert of thy wings. Selah."
(Psalms 61:4)
