"Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob's trouble, but he shall be saved out of it."
(Jeremiah 30:7)
None Is Like It
Dear Friends,
Greetings. The following article was written by L. A. Marzulli.
"There is a gathering storm. It is global in nature and it is coming to where you live. No one will escape it. This storm has been building for centuries. It has been crafted by dark forces, by the Mystery of Iniquity, by secret lawlessness that has been working behind the scenes. The storm is looming on the horizon and from my perspective it would appear that it will break soon, for it is supernatural in nature. When it does, life as we know it will change forever. Here are a few of the reasons why...
The war in the Middle East is coming and when it does it will be self-evident as to what prophecy is being fulfilled. We will see nukes go off, financial markets crash, cities go up in flames. Millions will be affected. Gas prices will skyrocket. What if the Katla volcano blows? What then? A nuclear winter?
The oil spill continues, basically unabated, as it has from day one. Millions of barrels of oil have polluted the gulf and it's starting to move. Computer models put it on the shores of Europe and then, because of the Gulf stream it will return here. This will cover about a third of the worlds oceans. I am reminded of the Book of Revelation, a third of the water became like blood...
Yesterday in Los Angeles a 5.4 earthquake rattled Southern California. This was predicted in one of the Torah Codes tables. There are supposed to be more of them on the way. We now have earthquakes that are over 6 points on a weekly basis. Is this normal?
There are large sinkholes that are appearing all over the globe, why now?
Lady Ga Ga is the most popular person on earth and is engaging in deliberate Babylonian, ritual, sex magic. Over 30 million people have downloaded her video, Alejandro. This pornographic priestess is at the height of her prowess and her slime is pumped into homes all across our nation. Have your children watched her?
Our southern border is still a war zone and while our president dawdles and threatens to sue Arizona, for wanting to control their border, people are being tortured and killed, drugs are pouring into this country, and illegals who have limited or no skills continue to affect our already fragile economy.
The threat of violent Jihad continues and people are murdered somewhere, in the name of the religion of peace, on a daily basis.
The United Nations is corrupt, enervated and powerless to stop the genocide that continues in Darfur.
The Afghan war drags on with hundreds dead in its wake. Russia has complained about the growing heroin trade and subsequent addicts that now plague parts of that country.
UFO's, crop circles, cattle and human mutilations, implants, abductions and the ongoing breeding program that will produce modern Nephilim are manifesting. The Fallen One will show these hybrids when the time is right. Demonically enhanced Nephilim will appear from three mile-wide ships that have come, "to save the day."
I realize that reading all of this would put me in the doom and gloom category, however I would be remiss if I didn't sound the clarion cry that we are moving, rapidly, into the time of Jacob's trouble, the last days, the end times. In closing today's post let me say that this storm is gathering momentum. It's not subsiding. It's not going away. The nations stand perplexed. Now is the time to understand and know that the prophecies that were written thousands of years ago are coming to pass in our time. Wake up! Know the Most High God and his son, Yashua, who is our blessed hope. Although there is a gathering storm, to those of us who look for His coming we can see past the darkness and know to look up, because our freedom, redemption is on the way...."L A. Marzulli
European Union Times
New Obama Law Warned Will Jail 500,000 Americans
Posted by Europe on May 31st, 2010
Foreign Ministry reports circulating in the Kremlin today are warning that an already explosive situation in the United States is about to get a whole lot worse as a new law put forth by President Obama is said capable of seeing up to 500,000 American citizens jailed for the crime of opposing their government.
Sparking the concern of Russian diplomats over the growing totalitarian bent of the Obama government is the planned reintroduction of what these reports call one of the most draconian laws ever introduced in a free society that is titled "The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act".
First introduced in the US Congress in 2007 by Democratic Representative Jane Harmon, this new law passed the US House of Representatives by a secretive voice vote, but failed to pass the US Senate, after which it was believed dead until this past week when it was embraced by Obama who became the first American President to name his own citizens as a threat to his Nations security.
In what is called the National Security Strategy document, that is required of US Presidents by their Congress, that embraces the dictatorial ideals of the "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act", Obama has ordered his Federal police and intelligence forces to begin targeting Americans opposed to him and his radical socialist polices.
Obama's top counter-terrorism advisor, John Brennan, in speaking to reporters about this new "strategy" says it makes the problem of home-grown terrorists a top priority because an increasing number of individuals in the US have become "captivated by extremist ideology or causes."
The Times of London is further reporting that Obama's new National Security Strategy "officially" ends America's "War on Terror" in what they call "a sweeping repudiation of the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive military strikes."
And as Obama begins re-focusing his forces from fighting America's foreign enemies, to those opposed to him in his own country, it is important to remember the warning about this new law given by the former CIA official, Philip Giraldi, who had previously warned of the Bush-Cheney plan to attack Iran with nuclear weapons, and who said:
"The mainstream media has made no effort to inform the public of the impending Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act. The Act, which was sponsored by Congresswoman Jane Harman of California, was passed in the House by an overwhelming 405 to 6 vote on October 24th and is now awaiting approval by the Senate Homeland Security Committee, which is headed by Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut.
Harman's bill contends that the United States will soon have to deal with home grown terrorists and that something must be done to anticipate and neutralize the problem. The act deals with the issue through the creation of a congressional commission that will be empowered to hold hearings, conduct investigations, and designate various groups as "homegrown terrorists."
The commission will be tasked to propose new legislation that will enable the government to take punitive action against both the groups and the individuals who are affiliated with them. Like Joe McCarthy and HUAC in the past, the commission will travel around the United States and hold hearings to find the terrorists and root them out.
Unlike inquiries in the past where the activity was carried out collectively, the act establishing the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Commission will empower all the members on the commission to arrange hearings, obtain testimony, and even to administer oaths to witnesses, meaning that multiple hearings could be running simultaneously in various parts of the country.
The ten commission members will be selected for their "expertise," though most will be appointed by Congress itself and will reflect the usual political interests. They will be paid for their duties at the senior executive pay scale level and will have staffs and consultants to assist them.
Harman's bill does not spell out terrorist behavior and leaves it up to the Commission itself to identify what is terrorism and what isn't.
Language inserted in the act does partially define "homegrown terrorism" as "planning" or "threatening" to use force to promote a political objective, meaning that just thinking about doing something could be enough to merit the terrorist label.
The act also describes "violent radicalization" as the promotion of an "extremist belief system" without attempting to define "extremist."
As an example of those American's Obama will be targeting, Giraldi further writes that The Simon Wiesenthal Center, in testifying before the US Congress in support of this new law, swore that an organization called "Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth" was an example of a homegrown terrorist organization, leading one Russian diplomat in this report to state "If 1,200 of America's top architectural and engineering professionals are deemed terrorists simply because they question their governments propaganda than truly no one is safe in the United States anymore".
As another example of how dictatorial the Obama regime has become, and as the Gulf of Mexico oil debacle has now become the worst ecological disaster our World has ever seen, the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, this past week slammed American reporters for "asking too many questions about BP". Leading one to ask that if Obama's regime can't be asked about this disaster, what can they be asked about?
The answer is apparently none, as Obama himself, just this past week, in announcing his signing of a new law called the Press Freedom Act refused to answer any reporters questions and abruptly left them standing in stupefaction over the irony an ordeal that shows how far America has fallen.
Another irony apparently lost upon the American people is that their President Obama, who has been dubbed "The Great Communicator", now holds the dubious distinction of having held less press conferences than any American President in modern history. And if yesterday's press conference, his first in nearly a year, was any example one can see why as incredulous press corps was left astounded that Obama had no knowledge of the firing/resignation of one of his top officials.
In all of these events one fact, beyond all others, stands out....in what was once called "The Land of the Free, And the Home of the Brave".....the United States today has become "The Land Of Slave, And the Home of the Coward"....and these Americans have only themselves to blame.
Natural News
First Amendment suspended in the Gulf of Mexico as spill cover-up goes Orwellian
Saturday, July 03, 2010
As CNN is now reporting, the U.S. government has issued a new rule that would make it a felony crime for any journalist, reporter, blogger or photographer to approach any oil cleanup operation, equipment or vessel in the Gulf of Mexico. Anyone caught is subject to arrest, a $40,000 fine and prosecution for a federal felony crime.
CNN reporter Anderson Cooper says, "A new law passed today, and back by the force of law and the threat of fines and felony charges, ... will prevent reporters and photographers from getting anywhere close to booms and oil-soaked wildlife just about any place we need to be. By now you're probably familiar with cleanup crews stiff-arming the media, private security blocking cameras, ordinary workers clamming up, some not even saying who they're working for because they're afraid of losing their jobs."
The rule, of course, is designed to restrict the media's access to cleanup operations in order to keep images of oil-covered seabirds off the nation's televisions. With this, the Gulf Coast cleanup operation has now entered a weird Orwellian reality where the news is shaped, censored and controlled by the government in order to prevent the public from learning the truth about what's really happening in the Gulf.
The war is on to control your mind
If all this sounds familiar, it's because the U.S. government uses this same tactic during every war. The first casualty of war, as they say, is the truth. There are lots of war images the government doesn't want you to see (like military helicopter pilots shooting up Reuters photographers while screaming "Yee-Haw!" over the comm radios), and there are other images they do want you to see ("surgical strike" explosions from "smart" bombs, which makes it seem like the military is doing something useful). So war reporting is carefully monopolized by the government to deliver precisely the images they want you to see while censoring everything else.
Now the same Big Brother approach is being used in the Gulf of Mexico: Criminalize journalists, censor the story and try to keep the American people ignorant of what's really happening. It's just the latest tactic from a government that no longer even recognizes the U.S. Constitution or its Bill of Rights. Because the very first right is Freedom of Speech, which absolutely includes the right to walk onto a public beach and take photographs of something happening out in the open, on public waters. It is one of the most basic rights of our citizens and our press.
But now the Obama administration has stripped away those rights, transforming journalists into criminals. Now, we might expect something like this from Chavez, or Castro or even the communist leaders of China, but here in the United States, we've all been promised we lived in "the land of the free." Obama apparently does not subscribe to that philosophy anymore (if he ever did).
So how does criminalizing journalists equate to "land of the free?" It doesn't, obviously. Forget freedom. (Your government already has.) This is about controlling your mind to make sure you don't visually see the truth of what the oil industry has done to your oceans, your shorelines and your beaches. This is all about keeping you ignorant with a total media blackout of the real story of what's happening in the Gulf.
The real story, you see, is just too ugly. And the government has fracked up the cleanup effort to such a ridiculous extent that instead of the "transparency" they once promised, they're now resorting to the threat of arrest for all journalists who try to get close enough to cover the story.
Yes, this is happening right now in America. This isn't a hoax. I know, it sounds more like something you might hear about in Saudi Arabia, or Venezuela or some other nation run by dictators. But now it's happening right here in the USA.
As Anderson Cooper reported on CNN:
"Now the government is getting in on the act. Despite what Admiral Thad Allen promised about transparency just nearly a month ago.
Thad Allen: "The media will have uninhibited access anywhere we're doing operations..."
Anderson Cooper: The Coast Guard today announced new rules keeping photographers, reporters and anyone else from coming with 65 feet of any response vessel or booms out on the water or on beaches. What this means is that oil-soaked birds on an island surrounded by a boom, you can't get close enough to take that picture. Shot of oil on beaches with booms? Stay 65 feet away. Pictures of oil-soaked booms uselessly laying in the water because they haven't been collected like they should? You can't get close enough to see that. Believe me, that is out there. But you only know that if you get close to it, and now you can't without permission. Violators could face a fine of $40,000 and Class D felony charges."
CBS News
TSA to Block "Controversial Opinion" on the Web
Posted by Pia Malbran
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is blocking certain websites from the federal agency's computers, including halting access by staffers to any Internet pages that contain a "controversial opinion," according to an internal email obtained by CBS News.
The email was sent to all TSA employees from the Office of Information Technology on Friday afternoon.
It states that as of July 1, TSA employees will no longer be allowed to access five categories of websites that have been deemed "inappropriate for government access."
The categories include:
Chat/Messaging
Controversial opinion
Criminal activity
Extreme violence (including cartoon violence) and gruesome content
Gaming
The email does not specify how the TSA will determine if a website expresses a "controversial opinion."
There is also no explanation as to why controversial opinions are being blocked, although the email stated that some of the restricted websites violate the Employee Responsibilities and Conduct policy.
The TSA did not return calls seeking comment by publication time.
aspendailynews
Historian warns of sudden collapse of American 'empire'
July 6, 2010
Harvard professor and prolific author Niall Ferguson opened the 2010 Aspen Ideas Festival Monday with a stark warning about the increasing prospect of the American "empire" suddenly collapsing due to the country's rising debt level. - - "I think this is a problem that is going to go live really soon," Ferguson said. "In that sense, I mean within the next two years. Because the whole thing, fiscally and other ways, is very near the edge of chaos. And we've seen already in Greece what happens when the bond market loses faith in your fiscal policy." - - Ferguson said empires -- such as the former Soviet Union and the Roman empire -- can collapse quite quickly and the tipping point is often when the cost of servicing an empire's debt is larger than the cost of its defense budget.
DailyFinance
Wall Street Apocalypse: The World of the Doomsday Investors
By BRUCE WATSON
07/04/10
Predictions of the end of civilization are nothing new, but the direst prognosticators have, traditionally, existed on the fringes of society, where their dark visions can be comfortably attributed to an excess of libertarianism or a shortage of Prozac.
In the last few years, however, something strange has happened. While there is no lack of survivalists stockpiling cat food and rifles, some of the direst thinkers are now working on Wall Street, where a combination of fear and foresight has many of the country's money men contemplating their escape routes.
Patron Saint of Dire Predictions
The patron saint of the Wall Street apocalypse society may be Barton Biggs. The leader of Traxis Partners, a multibillion-dollar hedge fund, Biggs has gained a reputation for his dire predictions, particularly those of his much-quoted 2008 analysis of World War II, Wealth, War and Wisdom. At the end of the book, Biggs offers his conclusions from his brief study of history, suggesting the likelihood of a future era in which "People with wealth" will face "another time of cholera when the Four Horsemen will ride again and the barbarians unexpectedly will be at their gate."
Biggs offers some interesting advice for hedging the apocalypse. In addition to prescribing a highly diversified portfolio heavily invested in equity instruments, Biggs also advises that his readers buy farms to which they can retreat when the hammer drops. The hedgie touts the joys of the natural life, noting that "landowners seem to find considerable psychic satisfaction just from the knowledge of possession. There are few things as fulfilling as having drink [sic] in the sunset and looking at your fields and cows."
This bucolic perspective seems to owe more to Little House on the Prairie than to any actual experience on Biggs's part. Although the author briefly worked as a schoolteacher and a semiprofessional soccer player, his New York-Yale-Wall Street career track doesn't seem to have left much time for tilling fields and milking cows.
Stock Essentials Like Food, Medicine, Wine...
But this doesn't stop Biggs from telling his readers what they need to do in order to wait out the end of the world: "Your safe haven ... should be well-stocked with seed, fertilizer, canned food, wine, medicine, clothes, etc. Think Swiss Family Robinson." He goes on to suggest that, when the post-apocalyptic hordes attack, the survivalist money man should shoot first and ask questions later: "A few rounds over the approaching brigands [sic] heads would probably be a compelling persuader that there are easier farms to pillage. Brigands tend to be cowards."
It's amusing to contemplate Biggsland, where starving gangs of "brigands" can be frightened away by a shot from his boom stick and precious food space can be taken up with wine. For that matter, while it isn't hard to imagine Barton gazing upon his fields and cows, the image of the soft-palmed money man slopping out stalls or picking cabbage stretches the imagination.
Ayn Rand and Jim Rogers
In Biggs's dark suggestion that wealthy people build rural fortresses, he references another popular Wall Street touchstone: Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. Towards the end of the book, as frightened mobs become feral, one of the "looters" runs away: "'[Chick Morrison] has a hideout all stocked for himself in Tennessee,' said Tinky Holloway reflectively, as if he, too, had taken a similar precaution and was now wondering whether the time had come." While Wall Street's objectivists don't see themselves as villains, many seem more than willing to follow the lessons of Rand's demonic bad guys.
Biggs isn't the only one offering visions of impending economic apocalypse. Every so often, Jim Rogers repeats his prediction that America will be rocked by "civil and social unrest" within the next three to five years. Then again, Rogers has long since abandoned his homeland. In 2007, the famed investor sold his New York mansion and relocated to Singapore, stating that "If you were smart in 1807 you moved to London, if you were smart in 1907 you moved to New York, if you were smart in 2007 you moved to Asia."
However, if Rogers was hoping to escape an impending American meltdown, it seems that he may not have gone far enough away. After a visit to India, he wrote, "India as we know it will not survive another 30 or 40 years. This of course does not have to end in disaster, but it probably will."
Invest in Farmland and Precious Metals
Marc Faber, another doom and gloom prognosticator, is also based in Asia. Famed for his dark perspective, the financial adviser recently suggested that fund managers should invest heavily in farmland and precious metals -- the first, because it provides a safe haven, and the second, because they are portable and liquid. A fan of dark humor, Faber previously advised spending stimulus cash on "prostitutes and beer, as these are the only products still produced in the U.S."
Jokes aside, Faber's prognostications don't seem to have protected him from making some questionable choices. After all, he built offices in Hong Kong and Thailand. The first place was subsequently handed over to Communist China, while the second has recently found itself embroiled in a coup, martial law and violent protests. Faber's followers may want to take his political and real estate advice with a grain of salt.
For some companies, predictions of apocalypse have been good for business: Post Peak Living and Transition United States have both used dark visions to build a compelling business model that can convince the gullible and frightened to fork over cash for useless advice.
As for Biggs and company, their fanciful vision of the future provides an interesting glimpse into the darker corners of the Wall Street id. Whether Biggs's dark predictions are a reflection of his deepest fears or fondest hopes, his unresolved guilt or continuing belief in his own exceptionalism, his advice suggests a world in which exploitative chickens truly come home to roost.
Your Money
A Market Forecast That Says ‘Take Cover’
By JEFF SOMMER
Published: July 2, 2010
WITH the stock market lurching again, plenty of investors are nervous, and some are downright bearish. Then there’s Robert Prechter, the market forecaster and social theorist, who is in another league entirely.
Tami Chappell for The New York Times
If Robert Prechter is right, one market analyst said, “we’ve basically got to go to the mountains with a gun and some soup cans.”
Mr. Prechter is convinced that we have entered a market decline of staggering proportions — perhaps the biggest of the last 300 years.
In a series of phone conversations and e-mail exchanges last week, he said that no other forecaster was likely to accept his reasoning, which is based on his version of the Elliott Wave theory — a technical approach to market analysis that he embraces with evangelical fervor.
Originating in the writings of Ralph Nelson Elliott, an obscure accountant who found repetitive patterns, or “fractals,” in the stock market of the 1930s and ’40s, the theory suggests that an epic downswing is under way, Mr. Prechter said. But he argued that even skeptical investors should take his advice seriously.
“I’m saying: ‘Winter is coming. Buy a coat,’ ” he said. “Other people are advising people to stay naked. If I’m wrong, you’re not hurt. If they’re wrong, you’re dead. It’s pretty benign advice to opt for safety for a while.”
His advice: individual investors should move completely out of the market and hold cash and cash equivalents, like Treasury bills, for years to come. (For traders with a fair amount of skill and willingness to embrace risk, he suggests other alternatives, like shorting the market or making bets on volatility.) But ultimately, “the decline will lead to one of the best investment opportunities ever,” he said.
Buy-and-hold stock investors will be devastated in a crash much worse than the declines of 2008 and early 2009 or the worst years of the Great Depression or the Panic of 1873, he predicted.
For a rough parallel, he said, go all the way back to England and the collapse of the South Sea Bubble in 1720, a crash that deterred people “from buying stocks for 100 years,” he said. This time, he said, “If I’m right, it will be such a shock that people will be telling their grandkids many years from now, ‘Don’t touch stocks.’ ”
The Dow, which now stands at 9,686.48, is likely to fall well below 1,000 over perhaps five or six years as a grand market cycle comes to an end, he said. That unraveling, combined with a depression and deflation, will make anyone holding cash “extremely grateful for their prudence.”
Mr. Prechter is hardly the only market hand to advocate prudence now, but nearly everyone else foresees a much rosier future, once current difficulties are past.
For example, Ralph J. Acampora, a market analyst with more than 40 years of experience, said he moved entirely out of stocks and into cash late last month. Now a partner at Alverita, a wealth management firm in New York, he said recent setbacks suggested that the market would drop another 10 or 15 percent, probably until September or October, before resuming another “meaningful rally.”
Over the next several years Mr. Acampora expects an “old normal market,” characterized by relatively short-lived swings that will provide many opportunities for smart investors — one that resembles the markets of the 1960s and 70s. “I’ve lived through it,” he said.
Like Mr. Prechter, he is a past president of the Market Technicians Association, the leading organization of technical market analysts, and he said that his colleague has done “some very good work.” But Mr. Acampora doesn’t agree with Mr. Prechter’s long-term theories, either intellectually or emotionally.
The “mathematics don’t work,” Mr. Acampora said, because such a big decline would imply that individual stocks would need to trade at unrealistically low levels. Furthermore, he said, “I don’t want to agree with him, because if he’s right, we’ve basically got to go to the mountains with a gun and some soup cans, because it’s all over.”
Still, on a “near-term” basis, he said, “We’re probably saying the same thing.”
Similarly, Larry Berman, who co-founded ETF Capital Management in Toronto and recently ended his term as the president of the technicians association, says he sees a “classic” short-term negative market trend developing now. But he doesn’t use the Elliott Wave theory, saying Mr. Prechter is trying to “measure the market in decades, which is too long a time frame for practical trading purposes or for risk management.”
Mr. Prechter, 61, lives in Gainesville, Ga., where he runs Elliott Wave International, a forecasting and publishing firm. He graduated from Yale as a psychology major in 1971, dabbled as a singer, drummer and songwriter in a rock band and became a technical analyst for Merrill Lynch.
He became fascinated by Mr. Elliott’s writings, which suggest that the market moves in predictable if complex patterns. Along with A. J. Frost, Mr. Prechter wrote “Elliott Wave Principle,” a 1978 book that predicted the emergence of a great bull market — a forecast that was largely fulfilled. By 1987, he was widely regarded as an expert in technical analysis. Articles in The New York Times said he was known as “the market’s leading technical guru” — and more. An article in October that year said he had “emerged as both prophet and deity, an adviser whose advice reaches so many investors that he tends to pull the market the way he has predicted it will move.”
He has far less day-to-day influence now, after years spent developing a theory he calls “socionomics,” which holds “social moods” as the cause not only of market cycles but also of economic and political events. A grand cycle is ending, he says, and the time for reckoning is near.
telegraph.co.uk
The Israel boycott - now the Methodists are joining in
By Julian Kossoff World
News that the Methodist Church had passed an "anti-Israel" motion caused me a heavy, sad sigh at this latest sign of the times.
Traditionally, the Methodists were the sort of Christians Jews could feel comfortable with. Like us, these non-conformists were for a long time outsiders, banished from the Establishment by the Anglican hegemony. We could relate to their simple unadorned churches, their Old Testament-inspired Protestantism, their commitment to social reform and education for all. Suffice to say the Methodists never organised a pogrom.
So the Methodist Church's latest move to heap criticism on Israel feels like being let down by a pleasant and respected neighbour. "How could Methodists act in such bad faith?" was the Jewish Chronicle's pained headline.
Actually, the recommendations were pretty tame: demanding a boycott of goods from "illegal" West Bank settlements and the end of the "siege of Gaza". But Jewish response has been (over?) heated. The normally restrained Board of Deputies of British Jews said the Methodists' annual conference should "hang its head in shame".
Part of the anger is directed at the distorted 54-page report that accompanied the new policy, but the deeper anxiety is the realisation that if a group as cuddly as the Methodists can call for a boycott of "Israel" (though the settlements officially reside outside Israel) anybody can. Today the Methodists, tomorrow the Women's Institute. The flotilla that is the Israel boycott and divestment movement has the wind in its sails and Israel's supporters are worried.
"[The Methodists'] decision cannot be ignored. We must prepare ourselves for similar, perhaps even worse, attacks - and fight back," declared the Jewish Chronicle leader.
Unfortunately, the "fight back" may be little more than Israel and her supporters hunkering down in the "Zion bunker", fingers firmly jammed in the ears while bellowing out the Hatikvah.
Meanwhile, Palestine has now irrefutably become a global cause. That is certainly inconvenient for Israel and maybe unfair; it is, however, the "fact on the ground".
As Daniel Levy, a leading dovish thinker and senior fellow at the New America and Century Foundations, explained: "It is true that there will almost certainly always be unjustified prejudice toward Israel. Whatever it does, some people will always be out to get us. But prejudice is not what motivates the vast majority of those mobilizing in solidarity with the Palestinians.
"The occupation is the oxygen of their campaign, and the vast majority seek an end to it - not to Israel itself. An Israel that fails to appreciate this and which sustains the occupation is the single most proximate cause of its own delegitimization.
"It is still in our power, however, to change all of this. We can genuinely end the 1967 occupation and live up to our declared democratic ideals."
Inside The Vatican Magazine
The Celestine Sign
Yesterday was the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, apostles of the beginnings of the Church -- one to the Jews, the other to the nations. But the times remind one of a man who took the name "Celestine" when he became Pope, a name never chosen again... -
By Robert Moynihan Inside the Vatican (reporting June 29)
"I resign the papacy out of the desire for humility, for a purer life, for a stainless conscience, the deficiencies of my own physical strength, my ignorance, the perverseness of the people, my longing for the tranquility of my former life." --Pope St. Celestine V (1209-1296), also known as Pietro da Marrone, the only Pope in history to resign the papacy, giving the reasons for his resignation on December 13, 1294 after only five months as Pope. He lived another year and a half, kept in prison by his successor, Boniface VIII (the quote above is slightly paraphrased to put it into the first person)
"I saw and recognized the shade of him who by his cowardice made the great refusal" --Dante, Inferno, III, 59 - 60; many scholars believe Dante is referring to Celestine V, placing him in Hell because Dante felt Celestine had acted in a cowardly way by resigning rather than facing and fighting the forces of evil in the Church)
A Mystery in Plain Sight
Today (reported June 29) in Rome, on the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, Pope Benedict XVI gave a remarkable homily in which he mentions the threats that will come against the Church in the "last days."
This homily must be read in part as Benedict's commentary on the sexual abuse crisis and the increasing pressure being placed on the Church by secular judicial and law enforcement authorities.
The homily thus provides a deep insight into Benedict's mind at this troubled moment in his pontificate.
The feast in Rome on June 29 each year is the feast in which the Pope places the "pallium," a cloth made of wool, upon the shoulders of archbishops from around the world chosen during the past year as a sign that they are "linked" or "yoked" to the universal Church, to Rome, and to the person of the Pope.
In his homily, the Pope speaks of the "liberty of the Church" and says this liberty is protected by the strength of the union between the bishops around the world and the bishop of Rome, the Pope.
A little more than a year ago, on April 29, 2009, Benedict did something unusual. He left his own "pallium," the sign of his episcopal authority and his connection to Christ, on a tomb in Aquila, Italy. The tomb held the remains of a relatively obscure medieval Pope named was Celestine V (1209-1296).
Why?
(Picture left: The Pope at the tomb of Pope Celestine V in April, 2009. The Pope now wears a pallium designed by Monsignor Guido Marini, a cross between the short pallium with black crosses worn by Metropolitan Archbishops and the longer ones with red crosses. This resembles the pallium worn by the the figure of Celestine in his shrine which is a short pallium with black crosses over an elaborate Roman chasuble.)
Celestine was a holy monk. His model was John the Baptist. His wore hair-cloth and a chain of iron. He fasted every day except Sunday and each year he kept four Lents on bread and water alone. Many kindred spirits gathered about him eager to imitate his rule of life, and before his death there were 36 monasteries, numbering 600 religious, bearing his papal name (Celestini).
But he was not just a monk.
He was elected Pope in 1294, a time of great corruption and contention in the Church, after a conclave deadlocked for more than two years. He was elected at about the age of 80 (Benedict was 78 when he was elected Pope in 2005).
At Celestine's election, some of the Spiritual Franciscans, who opposed the worldliness of the Church hierarchy, proclaimed that he was the first legitimate Pope in nearly 1,000 years, since Constantine had granted the Church huge territorial possessions in the 300s.
So the Church had a holy leader, and many devout Catholics at that time thought the Church would be reformed by this good man.
But the holy Celestine -- who pleaded with the cardinals not to choose him as the Pope -- could not manage to rule the powerful cardinals around him.
The cardinals of 700 years ago seem to have chosen Celestine almost humorously, as it were, not seriously, as if to say, "We can't agree on a serious 'Prince-Cardinal' for Pope, so we will choose this holy, quiet, learned monk to be Pope, and watch with a certain amusement as he struggles mightily but in vain to guide the ungovernable bark of Peter."
After five months, Celestine gave up, and resigned -- the only Pope who has ever done so.
He thought he would end his life in peace, but his successor, Boniface VIII, fearing his opponents might use Celestine as a rallying point, ordered him confined, and some allege (probably wrongly, since he was already approaching 90), executed.
All of Celestine's official acts were annulled by Boniface.
Now, Benedict is scheduled to travel this Sunday, on July 4, to Sulmona, not far from Rome. There, in the crypt of the cathedral, as the last act of his visit, he is scheduled to venerate relics of this same holy Pope, Celestine V.
So Sunday, the Pope will pray before Celestine's relics for the second time in 15 months.
I am not suggesting Pope Benedict XVI is thinking of following in the footsteps of the saintly Pope Celestine and resigning.
I am suggesting that the studious Pope Benedict and the studious monk-Pope are "connected" in a mysterious way.
I believe Benedict's decisions to leave his pallium in Aquila, where Celestine's tomb is located, and to schedule a prayer before his relics this coming Sunday, are not haphazard.
These decisions are indicators, ways of communicating truths through gestures. They contain a message the Pope cannot deliver any other way.
NWO Making Strides in Ireland
by JB
Since the EU Constitution was steamrolled through in 2009, through fear of economic ruin in the ballot box, just months after we voted no to the Lisbon Treaty the first time, the NWO is making rapid strides here.
Homosexual civil partnership was legalized last Thursday, the 1st July. The main stream media effectively ignored the debate in the lead up to the vote in the Dail (Irish Parliament). Our TDs (Congressmen) were not allowed a free vote on the issue. There were only block votes.
As I said there wasn't a whisper (that I could come across) in the MSM in the lead up, with exception of a token programme the night before the vote.
A lone Catholic priest trying to defend traditional Ireland was almost mocked out of the studio (see: http://www.tv3.ie/shows.php?request=tonightwithvincentbrowne&tv3_preview=&video=24263). Ray Kinsella, a university professor, by appearing in this debate is seriously jeopardizing his career.
Now that the Bill has been safely passed, RTE, Ireland's national broadcaster saw fit to have a debate about the traditional family being under attack. David Quinn defended the nuclear family valiantly. What was sickening was that most of the people arguing for all kinds of new family structures probably came from the traditional Irish two-parent, mother / father, family home and don't know what they are talking about.
The next segment in the show discusses the upcoming Children's Rights Referendum which will effectively give the Irish State a huge amount of control over children's upbringing, to the loss of their natural parents, in line with the Communist Manifesto idea of separating the kids from the parents.
Ireland has come a long way from the "Land of Saints and Scholars" and we are getting the leadership we deserve.
I feel sorry for Irish unmarried fathers, but wouldn't life be better for us all if we behaved the way God wants us to instead of having to adjust the legal system to accommodate our sins (dismantling our Godly Irish Constitution).
telegraph.co.uk
EU call for 'X Files' archive of UFO sightings
A European Union lawmaker has called on member governments to open their secret files on UFOs, saying people need to know about close encounters of the third kind.
Published: 06 Jul 2010
Unidentified flying objects in the skies over southern Campeche state filmed by Mexican Air Force pilots on March 5, 2004 Photo: AP
Mario Borghezio, an Italian member of the European Parliament, said that the EU needed its own "X Files" archive where anyone could see information on UFOs - including data gathered by the military.
Mr Borghezio said all European governments should go public and stop what he called a "systematic cover-up."
Opening the files is not unprecedented. Last year, Britain published 4,000 pages online on 800 alleged encounters with aliens during the 1980s and 1990s. And over the past three years the Ministry of Defence has been gradually releasing previously secret UFO papers after facing Freedom of Information demands.
Mr Borghezio also said it was essential to have a scientific centre to research unidentified flying objects. Its investigations could have "major scientific and technological spin-offs," he said.
"I think that, under the principle of transparency, the EU member states have a duty to make public and available to all scientific data on UFOs which today are partially or wholly withheld," he said.
He is seeking the support of other lawmakers from the 736-member assembly for a statement calling on governments to act.
So far, though, he's collected only 18 signatures.
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Flights diverted, delayed as UFO detected hovering.
An unidentified flying object (UFO) disrupted air traffic over Zhejiang's provincial capital Hangzhou late on Wednesday, the municipal government said on Thursday.
Xiaoshan Airport was closed after the UFO was detected at around 9 pm, and some flights were rerouted to airports in the cities of Ningbo and Wuxi , said an airport spokesman, who declined to be named.
Independent
Birthplace of 'drive-thru' turns its back on fast food
By Guy Adams in Los Angeles
6 July 2010
In 1948, an entrepreneur called Harry Snyder decided to open a new kind of fast-food outlet. It would cater to motorists who were too busy, or too lazy, to leave their car. Customers would drive to a speaker-phone outside a building, place their order and then proceed to a service hatch, where dinner would be handed to them in a paper bag. He called this revolutionary means for selling burgers, shakes and fries the "drive-thru" restaurant.
Six decades, and tens of thousands of drive-thrus later, Snyder's big idea has been shamelessly copied by McDonald's, Burger King, and almost every modern fast-food company, changing eating habits around the world. The small restaurant he opened in Baldwin Park, a blue-collar city just east of Los Angeles, became In-N-Out, one of the most popular burger chains in the American West.
But progress comes at a price. While residents of Baldwin Park have long celebrated their hometown's claim to fame as the semi-official birthplace of a culinary revolution, fast food has exacted a terrible toll on their waistbands. So terrible that the city's council has now taken the headline-grabbing decision to ban any new drive-thru restaurants from opening there.
In a bid to combat rampant obesity levels - almost half the town's 90,000 inhabitants are overweight and a third are classed as clinically obese - and decrease the traffic congestion and dangerous pollution being caused by long queues of cars idling outside burger and fried-chicken restaurants, the city's law-makers voted last month to impose a moratorium on new fast-food outlets. The ban, which took affect at the weekend, will initially last for nine months.
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Surprising Benefits of Sex
Leah Zerbe, Rodale.com, July 2010
Here are some surprising ways sex can boost your health.
1. It can boost your immune system. You've heard it a million times: Wash your hands often, cover your mouth when you sneeze. But how about this? Kick your immune system into high gear with biweekly sex sessions. Researchers at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, PA, found that having sex once or twice a week boosts the immune system. They found a 30 percent increase in immunoglobulin A (IgA) proteins in people who had sex once or twice a week, compared to those who didn't have sex. IgA proteins act as antibodies, binding to pathogens when they first enter the body and summoning the immune system to destroy them.
2. It's a must-have for a man's health. Men who have sex three or more times a week cut their risk of suffering heart attack and stroke in half, according to research out of Queens University in Belfast. Beyond that, having sex regularly may protect men against prostate cancer. A National Cancer Institute survey of 30,000 middle-aged men found that those who averaged 21 ejaculations a month showed a 33 percent lower risk of prostate cancer than those with 4 to 7 ejaculations a month.
3. It can melt away pain. As it turns out, enjoying an orgasm sends a shockwave of oxytocin, known as the love hormone, into your system. This sends an army of endorphins into your system, which can alleviate arthritis pain. Research has also shown sex can lessen the aches associated with menstrual cramps, while also helping to regulate a woman's monthly cycle.
4. It can make you look younger and live longer. Research released earlier this decade made big headlines after finding that having sex several times a week on a regular basis can make people look four to seven years younger. Other studies have shown it doesn't just appear to turn back the hands of time, but also can make you live longer. On top of that, it keeps your bod in top-notch shape. The average 30-minute tussle between the sheets burns about 200 calories, all the while chiseling your tummy and backside (or other muscles, depending on your position of choice).
5. It makes you $100,000 happier. Having sex regularly makes people happier than earning more money. In fact, a study done by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that marriages featuring frequent sex left couples feeling as happy as earning an extra $100,000 annually.
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If you do not feel you are prepared for the coming storm, receive Jesus today. Isaiah 25:4 says, "For thou hast been a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat, when the blast of the terrible ones is as a storm against the wall."
He has said that He will never leave us or forsake us even unto the end of the world. He is a very present help in time of trouble, and trouble is coming, Jacob's trouble.
God bless and keep you in the week ahead.
Almondtree Productions
"I would hasten my escape from the windy storm and tempest."
(Psalms 55:8)
