Allows Palestinian security control, asks Israel to forfeit Temple Mount

Posted: April 09, 2008 By Aaron Klein JERUSALEM – The United States, which has been mediating negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority here, has proposed a plan to divide Jerusalem, WND has learned.

The [...]]]> O Jerusalem! America drafts plan to cut in 2

Allows Palestinian security control, asks Israel to forfeit Temple Mount

Posted: April 09, 2008
By Aaron Klein
JERUSALEM – The United States, which has been mediating negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority here, has proposed a plan to divide Jerusalem, WND has learned.

The plan, divided into separate phases, among other things calls for Israel eventually to forfeit parts of the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site.

According to the first stage of the U.S. plan, which was obtained by WND, Israel would give the PA some municipal and security sovereignty over key Arab neighborhoods in eastern Jerusalem.

The PA would be allowed to open some official institutions in Jerusalem, could elect a mayor for the Palestinian side of the city and would deploy police forces to maintain law and order.

The initial stage also calls for the PA to operate Jerusalem municipal institutions, such as offices to oversee trash collection and maintenance of roads.

After five years, if both sides keep their certain commitments called for in a larger principal agreement, according to the U.S. plan the PA would be given full sovereignty over the eastern Jerusalem neighborhoods and also over sections of the Temple Mount. The plan doesn’t specify which parts of the Temple Mount would be forfeited to the Palestinians.

After the five year period, the PA could deploy official security forces in Jerusalem separate from a police force and could also open major governmental institutions, such as a president’s office, and offices for the finance and foreign ministries.

The U.S. plan leaves Israel and the PA to negotiate which Jerusalem neighborhoods would become Palestinian. According to diplomatic sources familiar with the plan, while specific neighborhoods were not officially listed, American officials recommended sections of Jerusalem’s Old City as well as certain largely Arab Jerusalem neighborhoods such as Jabal mukabar, Beit Hanina, Shoafat, Abu Dis and Abu Tur become part of the Palestinian side.

As WND reported previously, many of the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem, including all of Shoafat, a large Arab section, were constructed illegally on property owned by the Jewish National Fund, a Jewish nonprofit that purchases property using Jewish donors funds for the stated purpose of Jewish settlement.

According to diplomatic sources, the plan is being discussed by Israel and the PA but has not yet been accepted.

The sources said the plan was delivered earlier this month by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during her trip to the region to push Israeli-Palestinian negotiations started at last November’s U.S.-backed Annapolis summit, which aimed to create a Palestinian state before the end of the year.

Since Annapolis, negotiating teams including Israeli Foreign Minister Tzippy Livni and chief Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qureia have been meeting weekly while Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and PA President Mahmoud Abbas have been meeting biweekly.

The U.S. is “very deeply involved” in all aspects of the negotiations, according to a top diplomatic source.

To demonstrate the level of U.S. involvement, the source pointed to recent U.S. supervision of Israeli commitments to dismantle about 50 West Bank anti-terror roadblocks and to bulldoze what are called illegal outposts, or West Bank Jewish communities constructed without government permits.

“The U.S. oversaw the removal of each and every roadblock, making sure the roadblocks were actually removed,” said the source.

“Also, even though Israel prepared a report of all illegal outposts and handed it to the Americans, U.S. officials have been doing their own very specific independent investigating to find each and every illegal outpost and then oversee their dismantlement,” the source said.

Olmert’s government has hinted a number of times it will divide Jerusalem.

In December, Israeli Vice Premier Haim Ramon said the country “must” give up sections of Jerusalem for a future Palestinian state, even conceding the Palestinians can rename Jerusalem “to whatever they want.”

“We must come today and say, friends, the Jewish neighborhoods, including Har Homa, will remain under Israeli sovereignty, and the Arab neighborhoods will be the Palestinian capital, which they will call Jerusalem or whatever they want,” said Ramon during an interview.

Positions held by Ramon, a ranking member of Olmert’s Kadima party, are largely considered to be reflective of Israeli government policy.

Olmert himself recently questioned whether it was “really necessary” to retain Arab-majority eastern sections of Jerusalem.

Israel recaptured eastern Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount – Judaism’s holiest site – during the 1967 Six Day War. The Palestinians have claimed eastern Jerusalem as a future capital; the area has large Arab neighborhoods, a significant Jewish population and sites holy to Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

About 231,000 Arabs live in Jerusalem, mostly in eastern neighborhoods, and many reside in illegally constructed complexes. The city has an estimated total population of 724,000.

Source

06 Apr 2008

In Bagdad on Saturday (5 April 2008), another innocent Iraqi clergyman fell victim to the on-going persecution and ethnic cleansing of Christians in Iraq. Iraqi security sources announced that a group of unknown armed men gunned down Father Youssef Adel Aboudi, a Christian priest with Saint Peter’s Assyrian [...]]]> Elias Youssef Bejjani

06 Apr 2008

In Bagdad on Saturday (5 April 2008), another innocent Iraqi clergyman fell victim to the on-going persecution and ethnic cleansing of Christians in Iraq. Iraqi security sources announced that a group of unknown armed men gunned down Father Youssef Adel Aboudi, a Christian priest with Saint Peter’s Assyrian Orthodox Church. He was murdered while on his way to the church which is located in the centre of Baghdad.

It is worth mentioning that last month, the body of Paulos Faraj Rahho, Chaldean Catholic archbishop of the Iraqi city of Mosul, was found in a shallow grave in the northern suburb of the city, two weeks after he was kidnapped. During Rahho’s kidnapping by terrorists, three of his escorting deacons were murdered in cold blood. It is of great concern that Iraq’s Christians, with the Chaldean rite the largest community, which were said to number as many as 800,000 before the American Liberation of Iraq nearly five years ago, is believed to have dropped to half that figure.

The Muslim fundamentalists in an apparent and avert venomous scheme masterminded, financed, orchestrated and executed by the Axis of evil countries and their armed terrorist tools (Iran, Syria, Hezbollah), as well as by Al Qaeda global armed militias, are all adamant to force the exodus or eradication of the Iraqi Christians.

What is going on in Iraq is an organized and systematic ethnic cleaning, targeting its historic Christian communities while the whole world is silent and indifferent.

We repeat our urgent call that was made last month after the heinous murder of Archbishop Rahho and his deacons. We again call on all the free world countries, in particular the United States, moderate Arab countries, the European Union, Canada, Australia, and Russia, to end their shameful silence and come to the rescue of the Middle East Christian communities, especially the Iraqi Christian communities, before it is too late.

The United States and the rest of the world should know that elimination of Middle East Christian communities will put terrorist and fundamentalist criminals, with their savage anti-humanity plots and their sharpened swords of hatred, in complete control in those countries. If the West remains silent and indifferent while the Christians in Iraq, Sudan, Egypt, Lebanon and other middle East and Muslim countries are being eradicated from their own historic lands, the near future will bring many more days like September 11, 2001 in many Western countries.

The civilized communities of the world should understand that by defending and protecting the Christian communities of the Middle East, they will be defending and protecting their own national security. They should not sit idle, watching from a distance under the false belief that they are safe, while the education of death, suicide, hatred, intolerance and fanaticism is destroying the Middle East, and spreading. This kind of education, spearheaded by Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda and the other terrorist and fundamentalist groups, must be totally uprooted, while its sponsors, protectors, advocates, proponents and financiers are brought to justice and put on trial on charges of premeditated murder against civilization and humanity.

As far as Iraq is concerned, it has become more than necessary for the Iraqi government, the United States, Britain, moderate Arab neighbors and the United Nations to take full and  immediate action to end the horrible suffering of Iraqi Christians. Their safety and welfare is not a favor from anybody, but rather a holy duty and a national obligation that the whole world is ought to fulfill.

While we remind the world that the peace loving Lebanese people and their troubled country, Lebanon, are still the victims of this Iranian and Syrian satanic culture of death, fundamentalism and terrorism, we pray that Almighty God will grant the Iraqi Christian communities all the needed faith, hope and perseverance to enable them to endure with love and forgiveness this on-going nightmare that has been mercilessly targeting their peaceful people.

The Lebanese Canadian Coordinating Council, (LCCC) offers the Iraqi Christian Churches, communities, and father Aboud’s family and friends its warmest heartily felt condolences. We ask Almighty God to grant them all patience, solace, and courage to endure this great loss with a forgiving spirit and solid faith.

We pray that the Father Aboudi’s soul is now resting peacefully in heaven alongside all the other Saints and Angels.

Source

Tuesday 08 April 2008

No one is such a liar as the indignant man. - Friedrich Nietzsche

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice, along with a slew of administration underlings and a revolving-door cavalcade of brass hats from the Pentagon, have been making claims regarding [...]]]> By William Rivers Pitt

Tuesday 08 April 2008

No one is such a liar as the indignant man.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice, along with a slew of administration underlings and a revolving-door cavalcade of brass hats from the Pentagon, have been making claims regarding Iraq for many years now.

They claimed Iraq was in possession of 26,000 liters of anthrax, “enough to kill several million people,” according to a page on the White House web site titled Disarm Saddam Hussein.

They lied.

They claimed Iraq was in possession of 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin.

They lied.

They claimed Iraq was in possession of 500 tons, which equals 1,000,000 pounds, of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent.

They lied.

They claimed Iraq was in possession of nearly 30,000 munitions capable of delivering these agents.

They lied.

They claimed Iraq was in possession of several mobile biological weapons labs.

They lied.

They claimed Iraq was operating an “advanced” nuclear weapons program.

They lied.

They claimed Iraq had been seeking “significant quantities” of uranium from Africa for use in this “advanced” nuclear weapons program.

They lied.

They claimed Iraq attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes “suitable for nuclear weapons.”

They lied.

They claimed America needed to invade, overthrow and occupy Iraq in order to remove this menace from our world. “It would take just one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country,” went the White House line, “to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known.”

They lied.

“Simply stated,” said Dick Cheney in August of 2002, “there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.”

Liar.

“Right now,” said George W. Bush in September of 2002, “Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of nuclear weapons.”

Liar.

“We know for a fact,” said White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer in January of 2003, “that there are weapons there.”

Liar.

“We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction,” said Colin Powell in February of 2003, “is determined to make more.”

Liar.

“We know where they are,” said Donald Rumsfeld in March of 2003. “They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad, and east, south, west and north somewhat.”

Liar.

“The Iraqi people understand what this crisis is about,” said Paul Wolfowitz in March of 2003. “Like the people of France in the 1940s, they view us as their hoped-for liberator.”

Liar.

“No one ever said that we knew precisely where all of these agents were,” said Condoleezza Rice in June of 2003, “where they were stored.”

Liar.

“I have absolute confidence that there are weapons of mass destruction inside this country,” said Gen. Tommy Franks in April of 2003. “Whether we will turn out, at the end of the day, to find them in one of the 2,000 or 3,000 sites we already know about or whether contact with one of these officials who we may come in contact with will tell us, ‘Oh, well, there’s actually another site,’ and we’ll find it there, I’m not sure.”

Wrong.

“Before the war,” said Gen. Michael Hagee in May of 2003, “there’s no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical. I expected them to be found. I still expect them to be found.”

Wrong.

“Given time,” said Gen. Richard Myers in May of 2003, “given the number of prisoners now that we’re interrogating, I’m confident that we’re going to find weapons of mass destruction.”

Wrong.

“Do I think we’re going to find something? Yeah, I kind of do,” said Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton in May of 2003, “because I think there’s a lot of information out there.”

Wrong.

Gen. David Petraeus, commander of US forces in Iraq, is about to give testimony before the Senate regarding the current state of affairs in that battle-savaged country. He is a political general, one of many America has seen and heard over the last five years, one who would leap nude from the Capitol dome before telling the real truth about matters in Iraq … or who would speak using words fed to him by liars, and thus be wrong.

Remember: they lie. They all lie, from the top man down to the bottom. If their lips are moving, a lie is unfolding. If they say water is wet, get into the shower to make sure.

They lie.

Period.

End of file.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040808J.shtml

In George Lucas’ film THX 1138 (1970), the police in a futuristic state make citizens compliant by shocking them with “pain prods.” After seeing the movie, I remember thinking that if the police were ever allowed to use implements such as these, we would [...]]]> by John W. Whitehead
The Rutherford Institute
April 7, 2008

In George Lucas’ film THX 1138 (1970), the police in a futuristic state make citizens compliant by shocking them with “pain prods.” After seeing the movie, I remember thinking that if the police were ever allowed to use implements such as these, we would rapidly move into a police state. This has now happened with tasers.

Tasers are electro-shock weapons that are currently used by more than 11,000 law enforcement agencies in the United States. Designed to cause instant incapacitation by delivering a 50,000-volt shock, tasers are hand-held electronic stun guns that fire two barbed darts. The darts, which usually remain attached to the gun by wires, deliver a high voltage shock and can penetrate up to two inches of clothing or skin. The darts can strike the subject from a distance of up to 35 feet, or the taser can be applied directly to the skin. Although a taser shot is capable of jamming the central nervous system for up to 30 seconds, it can disable the subject for even longer. And because tasers can be aimed anywhere on the body, they can immobilize someone more easily than pepper spray, which must be sprayed in the face.

Taser manufacturers and police agencies insist that tasers are a safer alternative to many conventional weapons typically used to restrain dangerous individuals. This may be true in situations where tasers are used as an alternative to other impact weapons that can cause serious injury, such as batons or lethal force. However, research shows that in many police departments, officers routinely use tasers primarily as a substitute for low-level force weapons such as pepper spray or chemical spray. Tasers have become a prevalent force tool, often used against individuals who pose no serious danger to themselves, the officers or others.

Amnesty International reports that in instances where tasers are used, 80% of the time they are used on unarmed suspects. In 36% of the cases, they are used for verbal non-compliance, but only 3% of the time for cases involving “deadly assault.”

Since 2001, over 300 cases indicate that tasers exacerbate health issues and accelerate death. In November 2003, a mentally disabled man was tasered by Georgia police a total of six times for violating a home detention order. Hours later, he died in jail.

Incredibly, police officers have tasered pregnant women, even when they are fully aware of their pregnancies. In 2001, Cindy Grippi was tasered in the back for entering her house against the instructions of police officers, despite the fact that she was not engaging in any truly disruptive or criminal behavior. As a result, Grippi fell onto her stomach and recounts that she “felt a sharp pain in her abdomen as the taser struck her.” Hours later, doctors diagnosed Grippi with “fetal demise,” and she delivered a stillborn child. Tianesha Robinson was tasered by police officers in 2006 for resisting arrest during a traffic stop. Days later, she suffered a miscarriage.

In Colorado, a man was repeatedly tasered in the genitals for “resisting” after being handcuffed and placed in the back of a police car. In 2003, an imprisoned African-American woman was asked to remove all her jewelry. When she asked for a mirror to help remove her eyebrow ring, she was pepper sprayed and tasered. The tasering caused her to “fall to the ground and lose control of her bladder. While on the ground, a male officer forcibly removed her eyebrow ring with pliers. She was left in her urine for several hours without being given anything to clean herself with.” In August 2007, a man was tasered while holding an infant–causing him to drop the child on its head.

Police using tasers are supposedly trained to press the trigger lightly to guarantee that the shock lasts no longer than five seconds. However, there are numerous cases in which police officers have continued to press down on their triggers in hopes of elongating the shot and maximizing pain. In other cases, police officers have continued to shock individuals repeatedly, despite the fact that the first shock achieved their goal of thoroughly immobilizing the target. In 2003, an elderly blind woman, who was also extremely hard of hearing, was struck by a taser three times for failing to respond to police officers. As a result of the taser shocks to her back and the pepper spray to her face, the woman’s prosthetic right eye was ultimately dislodged from its socket.

The use of tasers by police raises a number of concerns for the protection of human rights. Portable and easy to use, with the capacity to inflict severe pain at the push of a button without leaving substantial marks, tasers are obviously open to abuse by officers. Their use often violates standards set out under the United Nations Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials, which requires that force be used as a last resort and that only the minimum amount necessary be used.

Taser International, the company that manufactures and sells the stun guns, has sold them primarily to law enforcement agencies. The company has sold several hundred thousand to such agencies nationwide. However, since 1994, slightly less powerful tasers have been sold to the general public.

This development is truly alarming. Silent and instantly crippling, the taser is an ideal weapon for criminals to assist them in robbery, rape, abduction, etc. An attacker can now carry his own personal victim-paralyzing device, powerful enough to instantly incapacitate the victim and give the attacker complete control.

Tasers are also ripe for sadistic use. For example, in January 2008, a man in Albany, N.Y., was sentenced to 46 months in prison and 24 months of probation for using a 30,000-volt stun gun on his 18-month-old son during a game of peek-a-boo. He claimed that he “wanted his child to be tough…to be the toughest cage fighter ever.” It is impossible to remain untroubled by these words, as well as the image of a father purposefully torturing his defenseless child. The Social Services caseworker who investigated the situation said, “The look in the child’s eyes will not easily be forgotten.”

Clearly, the use of tasers should be suspended immediately–or at least until a comprehensive medical study can be conducted proving they are safe to the general public when used by police officers. And the police must by law be severely restricted in their use. Otherwise, we are opening the door for rampant abuse and police state tactics.

SOURCE

Published April 7th, 2008 by Editor in General News, New Spirituality, Universalism Tony Blair creates the European version of Rick Warren’s PEACE plan…

In his first major speech on religion, Tony Blair said Thursday night that religion must be rescued from extremism and irrelevance and [...]]]> Tony Blair Calls For Interfaith Cooperation For New World

Published April 7th, 2008 by Editor in General News, New Spirituality, Universalism
Tony Blair creates the European version of Rick Warren’s PEACE plan…

In his first major speech on religion, Tony Blair said Thursday night that religion must be rescued from extremism and irrelevance and used as a force for good at a time of global turmoil…

…Blair declared his strong desire to “awaken the world’s conscience” to widespread poverty, illiteracy and poor health, and said that the Tony Blair Faith Foundation would set the Millennium Development Goals as one of its priority areas for engagement when it launches next month.

“…faith is not in decline…it is thriving. In an era of globalization…when the world is opening up…in this New World…how religious faith develops will have a profound impact…”

“…If people of faith reach out to one and another, learn to coexist, believing and respecting each other, they can play an important part…to have a powerful interfaith encounter because such an encounter symbolizes a world of coexistence and not exclusion…”

“What values will this daunting New World use to guide it? Since religious faith has such a historic influence on both the East and the West. It can help unify around common values…”

WATCH THE VIDEO HERE

by Beverly Eakman April 8, 2008

Somehow I missed this news item, and maybe you did, too. Then again, perhaps the mainstream media took pains to keep this one quiet, hoping the fire wouldn’t hit the fan.

When individuals feel they must display their private parts [...]]]> SCHOOLS PREPARE PUPILS TO ACCEPT A POLICE STATE

by Beverly Eakman
April 8, 2008

Somehow I missed this news item, and maybe you did, too. Then again, perhaps the mainstream media took pains to keep this one quiet, hoping the fire wouldn’t hit the fan.

When individuals feel they must display their private parts for fear of incurring the wrath of government officials (including school administrators), a police state is already in the offing. 

It seems that in 2003 an honor student in Arizona at Safford Middle School named Savana Redding, an eighth-grader with no disciplinary record, was strip-searched — and I mean really strip-searched, down to the crotch of her panties — in pursuit of nonprescription ibuprofen tablets. [See the end of this article for links to news stories.] Ibuprofen is the equivalent of the pain-relieving ingredient in Advil, Motrin, etc…, and never known to provide a “high” or to be addictive. Two such pills (the typical dosage) supposedly equal “prescription strength” — providing school authorities just enough wiggle room to go to extremes.

Today, under the absurd “no tolerance” drug policies in schools, no type of medication, from aspirin to Alka-Seltzer and Pepto-Bismol, is allowed unless it is given to the school nurse by a parent, and then dispensed by the nurse to the student. In other words, it is easier for a child to secure an abortion referral from a K-12 educational facility than it is to relieve a headache. Like the aggravations suffered by law-abiding passengers at airports in the name of terrorism, schoolchildren are deemed automatically guilty until proven innocent, and “probable cause” does not apply.

…it is easier for a child to secure an abortion referral from a K-12 educational facility than it is to relieve a headache

The strip-search story might have ended there, but for the fact that Savana’s case went to court (Redding v. Safford Unified School District) and two of the three-judge panel on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Los Angeles (the same “circus court” that ruled against California homeschoolers in March) decided that the degrading search did not violate the girl’s Fourth Amendment rights — even though Savana’s mother was not alerted, the pupil had a stellar record and the U.S. Supreme Court had already held that searching any student’s person is constitutional only if “justified at its inception” and “reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference….”

All the school had in this case was a flimsy allegation from another girl caught with such pills in her pocket (not her panties). Apparently, she was anxious to provide a source for the medication that did not include her buying them or bringing them from home. So, she offered another girl’s name, Savana Redding.

At stake now is a decision by the full court as to whether to overturn this ridiculous decision.

Given this court’s decade-long history of bizarre rulings, I wonder how many of the zealous judges were busy getting “high with a little help from their friends” during the flower-child era on 1960’s-era college campuses. Well, never mind. In an age when America’s top officials are caught up in prostitution rings (New York Governor Eliot Spitzer); adulterous affairs (New York Governor David A. Paterson, former President Bill Clinton); and illegal intoxicants (D.C. Mayor and Councilman-for-life Marion Barry); etc., some are clearly “more equal than others.”

Savana indicated she was not merely humiliated, but downright “scared” to object, because she feared worse if she didn’t comply. She said she kept her head down so they wouldn’t see her cry.

But here’s the clincher: The principal said he “didn’t think the strip search was a big deal”—because “they didn’t find anything.”

As most of us are aware since Columbine, kids with histories of troublemaking, outlandish dress, terrible classroom behavior and all sorts of offenses grace our nation’s classrooms, to the detriment of average students. Good parents hope that despite the education establishment’s ongoing tolerance of culture rot, anti-religion bias, and acquiescence on everything from gay clubs to “green” hysteria, their children will actually learn something.

What they are learning, however, is to accept and even endorse a police state. When individuals feel they must display their private parts for fear of incurring the wrath of government officials (including school administrators), a police state is already in the offing.

Schools disseminate intimate questionnaires with the expectation that pupils will divulge disparaging tidbits about their relatives. Some schools, as happened in Pennsylvania, give sixth-grade girls pro-forma genital exams in an effort to drum up “evidence” of pervasive sexual abuse by parents.

Whereas schools used to discourage “tattling,” today they encourage students to report on each other, even while denigrating the individual in favor of the collective. Surreptitious identification methods ensure that youngsters’ opinions are tracked and monitored over time for political correctness, then linked with other potentially damaging family information, should an occasion arise down the road when it becomes “necessary” to demean a troublesome individual once he or she reaches adulthood.

All this has been going on for some 25 years — so long that teachers, principals and superintendents under the age of 50 have little or no memory of a time when privacy actually was important and humiliation was unacceptable. While government agencies devise all manner of legislative tricks to mislead people into believing that their privacy really is guarded, the fact is these gestures are empty. Recent examples include the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (a.k.a. “the HIPAA law”); signing for every prescription upon pick-up; and standing so-many-feet behind the person ahead in a pharmacy or bank-teller line. It’s all for show.

…no memory of a time when privacy actually was important and humiliation was unacceptable.

News was made when celebrity talk show host Rush Limbaugh suffered though the chagrin of having his Viagra prescription inspected by overzealous carry-on handlers at an airport in 2007. The name on the prescription bottle was his doctor’s instead of himself precisely to avoid embarrassment, as he had recently experienced great difficulties overcoming the pain of unsuccessful back surgeries and subsequent near-deafness. But because he was a celebrity — and a conservative, to boot — no humiliation was deemed too great, and his prescription container made headlines. No one mentioned anything about “intoxicants” or “probable cause” then, either.

However, it didn’t even make the local newspaper when a nicely dressed, Caucasian, 50-something lady, with no history of confrontational behavior, was hauled out of a similar airport security line at the Dulles International Airport. Around her neck was a tiny cloth strap securing a drivers license and boarding pass visible through a thin, transparent pocket. The device is still sold expressly for airport security lines, so that important ID’s cannot be inadvertently dropped or lost. A female screener ordered her — not very politely — to take it off and place it in on the conveyer belt. The passenger respectfully explained that the ID holder was approved specifically for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), and she asked to keep it through the metal detector.

That was all it took. Immediately, the hapless passenger was submitted to a full-fledged pat-down (with the agent hitting her deliberately in the crotch with the wand). When the traveler expressed shock, she was told to “just shut up.”

Unfortunately, the lady couldn’t really hear the screener because her back was turned at that point, and her hearing aid was in the security bowl to avoid setting off the alarm! The lady’s husband had to intervene to facilitate communication, thereby delaying them both — for no reason other than the passenger was deemed non-compliant.

Incongruously, in the security line parallel to the one this couple was navigating, a Middle Eastern woman wearing the Muslim head-scarf was a TSA agent examining that line’s carry-on baggage!

Do we really want to live in a country whose officials deliberately harass and embarrass good citizens and humiliate honor students? If we do, then we must have learned a lot more from the Marxists who organized the protests of the 1960’s and ’70s than demonstrating, agitating and rioting.

Come to think of it, we’re not doing much of that sort of thing anymore. Where are the hordes of “conscientious objectors” rushing to the aid of Savana Redding? For that matter, where are the Republican conservatives and the libertarians?

For further information on the Savana Redding case, see:

1, “The School Crotch Inspector,” by Jacob Sullum, April 2, 2008.
2, “9th Circuit to Reexamine Student Strip-Search Case,” by Mark Walsh, Education Week,
3, “School strip search of girl, 13, goes to court,” Associated Press, March 27, 2008,
4, Or search Google by typing “Savana Redding+9th Circuit Court” for additional stories.

http://www.newswithviews.com/Eakman/beverly44.htm

April 8, 2008

“Wherefore, my dearly beloved, flee from idolatry.” (1 Corinthians 10:14 KJV)

This is a strange verse, is it not? After all, the Apostle Paul is addressing Christians. How can Christians be guilty of idolatry? I thought idolatry was something that only heathens could be guilty of committing. [...]]]> By Pastor Chuck Baldwin

April 8, 2008

“Wherefore, my dearly beloved, flee from idolatry.” (1 Corinthians 10:14 KJV)

This is a strange verse, is it not? After all, the Apostle Paul is addressing Christians. How can Christians be guilty of idolatry? I thought idolatry was something that only heathens could be guilty of committing. Yet, Paul plainly addressed believers when he said, “my dearly beloved.”

Christian idolatry: I submit it is more rampant than anyone wants to admit.

Simply put, idolatry is the sin of giving someone or something a place of preeminence above the Lord God. It is the violation of the First of the Ten Commandments. And, yes, Christians can be just as guilty of this sin as unbelievers.

In these United States, there is perhaps no area where the sin of idolatry is more universally practiced than in the area of government. Call it civil affairs, or politics, or affairs of state. Call it what you will, the result is the same: Christians by the millions have surrendered Christ’s authority and principles to humanism and pragmatism.

For one thing, a sizeable number of believers allowed President George W. Bush to redefine their Christian principles almost out of existence. They willingly looked the other way while Bush betrayed his word (not to mention the Constitution) and catapulted conservative principles into outer darkness. To the point, that they can now even support someone as liberal as John McCain and still call him a “conservative.”

I will say it straight out: any Christian or conservative who supports John McCain has no principles left worth defending!

Can anyone remember when George W. Bush ran for the White House in 2000, promising the American people that he would pursue a non-interventionist foreign policy? So much for that promise.

George W. Bush has orchestrated the most meddlesome, interventionist, and nation-building foreign policy of any President in modern memory. And Christians became his most vocal supporters. Now, John McCain gets in front of international television and jokes about bombing Iran, and once again, Christians stand up and cheer.

Christians have swallowed the Bush/McCain Kool-Aid as surely as did the followers of Jim Jones. They are drunk with denial and deception.

Bush promised the American people that he would promote less government spending. He then turned around and led the U.S. government to borrow and spend more taxpayer dollars than any President since Lyndon Johnson. And, again, Christians looked the other way.

President Bush promised the American people that he would preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. He promised to respect the Bill of Rights, including the Fourth Amendment.

Since becoming President, however, George W. Bush has ignored the Constitution and trampled the Bill of Rights, especially the Fourth Amendment, with utter abandonment. And what did Christians do? They either looked the other way or, in some cases, even lauded his unconstitutional conduct.

How could Christians sacrifice their principles and convictions so easily? How could they be so willing to surrender their loyalties–both to Christ as the organic Sovereign of this land, and to constitutional government, which is, itself, built on Biblical principles?

Some Christians would say they are supporting President Bush because he is “one of us.” Of course, this reasoning betrays logic. If George W. Bush is truly “one of us,” he should be held to a higher–not lower–standard. That we would be willing to look the other way because Bush is “one of us” is repulsive to true Christian principles. Plus, it brings Christianity as a whole into disrepute with unbelievers. And this is exactly what has happened. Instead of unbelievers being attracted to Christ and His Word, George W. Bush–and the Christians who follow him–have turned unbelievers away from Christ. Bush and Company have made it harder–not easier–to present Christ to a lost and dying world. And that goes for people in foreign countries as well as people in America.

However, I am convinced that the reason Christians support President Bush is not because he is a professing born-again Christian. I say that because these same people are now also supporting John McCain, a man who has never professed a born-again relationship with Jesus Christ. Oh, he claims to be a “Christian” in a general sense, but what politician doesn’t?

McCain is also a man who has consistently betrayed conservative principles throughout his political career. He has even lampooned and denigrated Christian people, calling them “agents of intolerance.” Yet, today Christians are supporting John McCain. Why? It is not because of his religious profession. It is not because of a conservative track record. Why are they supporting him, then? Why are they willing to surrender their convictions? There is only one reason: John McCain (like George W. Bush) is a REPUBLICAN.

There it is: countless millions of professing Christians will eagerly abandon their commitment to constitutional government and Biblical principles in order to accommodate a Republican Presidential candidate. In the minds of many Christians, the Republican Party is more important than the U.S. Constitution. It is more important than conservative principles or even Biblical injunctions. In essence, the Republican Party has become an IDOL in the hearts and minds of many professing believers.

So, how can we ask God to bless America when God’s children have set up the groves of idolatry in their hearts? How can we expect God to heal our land when Christian pastors, Sunday School teachers, deacons, ushers, and faithful church members place more loyalty and allegiance in a political party than they do in the very Word and principles of God?

As surely as the pagans of the Old Testament worshipped before the gods of Baal and Ashteroth, many Christians worship before the GOP. They are willing to sacrifice their children to the policies and practices of unscrupulous, evil politicians–as long as they have an “R” behind their names. They will turn their back on their pastors, their churches, their friends, and their commitments before they will turn their backs on the Republican Party.

To many Christians, God cannot work in America outside the Republican Party. God cannot bless America, except through the Republican Party. There is no success, no help, no assistance, and no redemption except through the Republican Party. If this is not idolatry, I do not know what is!

If Christians will support John McCain, they will support anyone. Support for John McCain means no principle is sacred; no conviction is secure.

It is one thing for radio and television talking heads to allow themselves to be Republican lackeys for profit. It is quite another thing for pastors and Christians to allow themselves to idolize the GOP for no good reason at all.

Why can Christians not see what their blind loyalty is doing to our country? Why can they not rise, as did Daniel and the Hebrew children, for truth and right? Do they not realize that God may want to use some other vehicle, some other source, some other instrument than the GOP to bring restoration and revival to America? And if He did, how would Christians today recognize or understand it? Has it not dawned on our brethren that the GOP may have become lost beyond redemption, and that they are being led as blind men–by blind men–into the ditch? And would they know it, if they were?

Oh, Christian friend, please open your eyes! Take a good, hard look at truth. Remember our history. Put your confidence in God and right, and throw off the fetters of blind loyalty to Republican compromise. Bind our civil magistrates down with the chains of the Constitution. If you do not, they will certainly bind us down with the chains of oppression (which they are already doing). If we, as Christians, cannot hold our civil leaders accountable to the Constitution, how in the name of common sense can we hold our churches and our children accountable to the Bible? It is no coincidence that we are losing constitutional government and Biblical practice simultaneously. They indeed go hand in hand.

When our Christian forebears fought our War for Independence, they had one motto: No King But Jesus. The day that our brethren reclaim that spirit and tear down the political altars they have erected to the GOP is the day God might begin to bring life and restoration back to America.

“Wherefore, my dearly beloved, flee from idolatry.”

Original Article Here

article 

It’s interesting to hear some of the RINOs (Republican in Name Only) attack the people’s enthusiam for Dr. Paul.  A [...]]]> It’s simply amazing…  If the conventions in Minnesota are any indication, then Ron Paul is without a doubt the people’s choice for President…  The news media is already starting up its smear campaign:

article 

It’s interesting to hear some of the RINOs (Republican in Name Only) attack the people’s enthusiam for Dr. Paul.  A lot is being revealed in this campaign, and the wheat is being separated from the chaff….

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UNBRAINWASH YOURSELF

by Alan Stang April 3, 2008

Again and again in these columns I have respectfully reminded you that the main reason this country [...]]]> (Note: Stang is a bit of a firebrand, but his talk is a needed antidote to the somnabulant speeches given by most so-called Conservatives on the scene today… )

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UNBRAINWASH YOURSELF

by Alan Stang
April 3, 2008

Again and again in these columns I have respectfully reminded you that the main reason this country is now on its knees is the communist government schools. We could not have arrived at the end of the plank had not those schools cooked our brains from the beginning. The communist media left and right – from the Communist Broadcasting System and the Communist News Network to Loopy Laura and Limbag – would not be enough. It could not have been done without the communist schools.

That is why the schools want ever younger victims. Consider that the most important time you hear about something is the first time, because the first time you have nothing to compare it to. You can’t criticize it; you can’t evaluate it. So what you hear the first time sinks into your mind and becomes the matrix, the mold. It becomes “true.” From then on, everything you hear about that particular subject is filtered through that matrix and you have no way of knowing if that matrix is faulty.

From then on, you will reject the truth because it will sound alien compared to what you “know.” So it all depends on who gets there first. If I am 40, or 50 or whatever years old, and you tell me something I don’t know, I compare it to what I do. If I am five years old, I believe whatever the nice lady my parents park me with says. If the only thing I hear for the next thirteen years is what she says – if I never hear anything else – I regard anything contradictory as crazy.

Thus, if I have heard for thirteen years, or seventeen years if I go to college, that the white man is responsible for every problem from asthma to xenophobia, and that anyone who says anything else is a “racist,” I tend to believe it when you show up and say that. If the only thing I’ve ever heard is that Lincoln was sent by God to save the Union and free the slaves, I consider you a nut when you say Lincoln was our first Communist President, that he destroyed the Union and that he wanted to send the nation’s blacks back to Africa.

The same thing applies to any assertion that the federal government is not here to help you, that the Fed arranged the Great Depression, that FDR arranged Pearl Harbor, that federal welfare destroyed the black family, that Washington colluded in Nine Eleven, and on and on. Of course, these things are intangibles. You can’t see the Great Depression; you must dig out the real history to see what really happened.

The real brainwashing hits when you are told that the truth is different from what you see every day, e.g., when you are told that men and women are the “same” (except that women should run things) and that sodomite buggery is “normal.” The purpose of the Communist media is to reinforce what you have been told, in case, despite these elaborate precautions, you accidentally blunder into the truth.

The Germans call what we are talking about the “zeitgeist,” the “spirit of the time,” but that doesn’t quite do the trick. For want of something better, I have elected to call it the Abasement Matrix. We don’t know it is there, but everything we experience – everything we do – is filtered through it, and it is the reason we are losing. It answers the question of how the conspiracy for world government gets away with such outrages, every one more egregious. The reason is we allow it; we allow it and applaud it.

Again, the obvious solution to all this is to remove your kiddos from the Communist government schools. You still can do this and as soon as you do it you will experience the thrill of an enormous victory. You have just saved another victim from the monster. You are a Twenty First Century Scarlet Pimpernel. As long as you leave a child in the clutches of the monster, anything you think you are doing to fight it is an ineffectual joke. Yes, I know it can be difficult. We home-schooled all five and as I write not one is in jail.

The reason all this again comes to mind is that as the Republican National Convention approaches, patriots are being told as usual how to behave. Make nice, we are told. Play fair. No cheating. Honor. Don’t try to change the rules. Do as you are told, our way. Elect Republicans. Any disunity could help Hillary and Hussein. And by the way, there is no such candidate as Dr. Ron No Such Candidate Paul. Who?

Except that the people who tell us this are the same people who changed the rules to steal the 1952 nomination for Eisenhower from Taft. Robert Taft was “Mr. Republican,” while Eisenhower only a few months earlier had confirmed that he was not a Democrat. They are the same people – putative Republicans – who sabotaged Barry Goldwater in 1964; who routinely squelch any “conservative” eruption.

Here is an ethical question: If a guy steps out of an alley and sticks a gun in your ribs, do ethics require you to treat him fairly? Here’s another: You are downstairs in the living room reading scripture, when someone breaks in and you realize he is the same man you just saw on television described as an escaped serial rapist. The man asks where your daughter is and she is upstairs. What do you tell him?

The answer is that, holding the Bible in both hands, you lie. You say your daughter is visiting her grandmother in Schenectady. You took her to the airport. You just got back. She won’t return for a couple of weeks, but he’s welcome to wait. You keep lying, and if you get the chance you rack the old Widow Maker in the corner and blow him away. Why do you do that?

One of the things the Founding Fathers explained is that the system of government they were leaving us could only work among a people mature enough, responsible enough, to obey the rules, the Christian rules. Immature, irresponsible people cancel the rules. If they do that, the mature, responsible people who remain no longer are required to obey.

Well, what kind of people are we talking about? What kind of people run the Republican Party? First, remember that they are the same kind of people who run the Democrats. They are part of the same totalitarian cabal at the top. They are “different” in the same way Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Al Capone, Mao Tse-tung and Meyer Lansky were “different.” I am not talking about the people you see at the local Republican Club. I am talking about the people you don’t see – or see only at a distance or on television – at the very top.

What have these people done? They have blithely tricked us into one war after another for more than a century, starting with Lincoln’s Communist War to Destroy the Union. They couldn’t care less who and how many are killed and maimed on whichever side. Indeed, they routinely finance and support both sides, to keep the wars going as long as they can, because the longer you fight, the more wealth and power they collect.

For instance, the more you know about World War I, and about the jejune European rulers who fomented it, the more you realize that Washington’s intervention was one of the most preposterous decisions every made. The conspirators created Soviet Russia, Hitler Germany, Red China, Castro Cuba and the Iran we are getting ready to bomb. Without their intervention, none of these things would ever have amounted to more than historical footnotes at the bottom of a page.

They extort and swindle and regulate and socialize, to collect more wealth and more power. It was Alan Greenscum’s Fed that got us into the present financial mess; now, el presidente Jorge W. Boosh proposes “solving” the mess by giving the Fed even more power, and Greenscum, still not in jail, is telling Middle East sheikhs to dump the dollar in favor of the Euro.

If you go to any U.S. Marine base, you will hear the name of Smedley Butler. There, Butler is as close to divine as a man can get without being God Himself. General Butler was awarded not one, but two Medals of Honor. Most Marines don’t know that Butler later wrote a book, War Is a Racket, in which he explained his new understanding that Washington had sent his beloved Marines around the world on behalf of huge international corporations.

Hugh Hewitt is a radio neo-con (man). Recently, thinking of that book, Blewitt actually said that General Butler became “un-American.” Wouldn’t you love to hear him say that at Pendleton? Americanism to Hugh Blewitt means militarism, means making imperial war on the world, poking our nose into everyone else’s business abroad and regimentation at home.

The Monsanto monster is poisoning your food. Big Pharma has almost succeeded in making vitamins illegal. In preparation for the discontent to come, Washington is imposing a fascist dictatorship here – rule by monster corporation – complete with concentration camps that would drive the torturers in Orwell’s 1984 livid with jealousy, furious that they did not have today’s technology that makes it possible. Soon, you will need a Real ID to go to the ladies’ room, while illegal aliens roam the nation unchecked. Remember that Boosh is running the invasion.

So, again, what kind of people are we talking about? They are psychopaths. A psychopath is distinguished from normal people in that he – or she – has no moral sense, no conscience. A psychopath is incapable of experiencing embarrassment or shame. You may never have met one because they are only a handful; if there were any more than a few, civilization would be impossible. It would be replaced by a landscape ruled by ravening wolves. They are paradoxically brilliant and immensely attractive, “magnetic” personalities.

The lawmen tell us we shall never know how many women utterly charming Ted Bundy killed. They nailed him for some thirty, but women disappear all the time and are never seen again. Undoubtedly, he did some of them, but he fried still not talking. Stalin is reputed to have said, maybe apocryphally, that the greatest joy in life is befriending a man until he trusts you completely, and then sticking a knife in his ribs.

Now look at Hillary Clinton, not at all in the spirit of partisanship. She is just a recent, good example. She lies all the time, even when she doesn’t need to. She is a compulsive liar. You can’t even believe her name. She lied about it, saying she was named for Sir Edmund Hillary. Remember? Recently, she clearly remembered running for cover under intense sniper fire in the Balkans, where Rapist-in-Chief Bill sent her because he always sent the First Feminoid where the danger was greatest.

You and I wouldn’t tell such a whopper to start with; but, if we had, we would be mortified when caught, eaten up with shame. Remember the First Feminoid’s response when this latest lie was exposed, this time on videotape by the correspondent who was there? Yeah, I misspoke. You caught me. Ha, ha. Well on to the next prevarication. Isn’t politics fun?

Wasn’t that in effect what she said? I am not the first observer to say that you can’t embarrass the Clintons. You couldn’t embarrass Hillary if you videotaped her naked straddling Janet Reno at a bull dyke convention. You couldn’t embarrass Bill if you caught him servicing a sow in a hog wallow. And Jorge W. Boosh likewise is apparently incapable of shame, enthusiastically talking patriotism while he leads the illegal alien invasion.

So, let’s see, while these traitors are robbing, swindling, killing, maiming, enslaving and betraying us, we are supposed to be well-behaved little boys and girls and make nice, because anything else would be rude. We are supposed to defer to the bull dyke revolution and confirm the feminization that is destroying our civilization. Do I understand?

Remember, I am not talking about ordinary venality, not about wanting the imagined prestige of political jobs. I’m talking about people who worship the Republican Party, who secretly imagine it will still be here when everything else collapses, when the Southwest is again Mexican, there is a mosque on every corner in New England and the United States has been dissolved. I’m talking about the people at the top, colder than absolute zero, who couldn’t care less about all this as long as the money rolls in.

Remember also that there is only one way to stop a striking rattler.
Source

GENEVA (AP) — The U.S. financial industry has been shedding jobs at a record clip, and some analysts predict the pace will only accelerate over the next year-and-a-half as banks cut costs [...]]]> Financial research firm says cuts will appear over 12 to 18 months as subprime crisis hits other areas of the banking industry.

GENEVA (AP) — The U.S. financial industry has been shedding jobs at a record clip, and some analysts predict the pace will only accelerate over the next year-and-a-half as banks cut costs in the face of the housing market slump and the weak economy.

Analysts at the financial research firm Celent LLC said in a report Tuesday that they expect the U.S. commercial banking industry – essentially, all companies that lend or collect deposits – to lose 200,000 of its two million jobs over the next 12 to 18 months.

An annual loss of 200,000 jobs at the nation’s commercial banks would be an unprecedented number.

In 2007, the entire financial services sector – which consists of mostly commercial banks – announced job cuts that totaled a record 153,000, according to the job placement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. More than half of those cuts were in the mortgage-lending business, and occurred all over the country, particularly in New York and California.

Octavio Marenzi, the head of Celent’s financial consultancy unit, said more layoffs are inevitable as the subprime crisis hits other parts of the banking industry and spreads beyond mortgages to mortgage-related products, such as home-equity loans, and other types of lending, such as credit cards.

“The banking industry over the past 40 years has never seen a downturn in its revenue growth,” Marenzi said. “In 2008, it looks like it will decrease for the first time in living memory. They’re going to have to respond with severe cost cutting. It’s not an environment they’re entirely used to.”

The credit crisis began in earnest last summer when the markets tightened up at the sight of spiking subprime mortgage defaults.

“There’s no horizon yet that anybody can see,” said John Challenger, who runs Challenger, Gray & Christmas. “New events keep rolling out … suggesting that there’s more to come.”

The investment bank Bear Stearns Cos. (BSC, Fortune 500) has 14,000 staffers, and JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM, Fortune 500)., the company buying the investment bank, has not yet announced how much of that staff it intends to keep. Meanwhile, Citigroup Inc. (C, Fortune 500) officially announced in January it was cutting 4,200 jobs globally, mostly in its investment banking business, but said there are more layoffs to come.

“What we haven’t seen are big mega-layoffs — tens of thousands of people in a large company,” Challenger said. “It just feels to me there are big ones coming.”

Article here

The world economy will expand 3.7 percent in 2008, the slowest pace since 2002, according [...]]]> April 2 (Bloomberg) — The International Monetary Fund cut its forecast for global growth this year and said there’s a 25 percent chance of a world recession, citing the worst financial crisis in the U.S. since the Great Depression.

The world economy will expand 3.7 percent in 2008, the slowest pace since 2002, according to a document obtained by Bloomberg News at a meeting of Southeast Asian deputy finance ministers and central bankers in Da Nang, Vietnam. In January the fund projected growth of 4.1 percent.

The reduction is the third by the Washington-based lender since last July, when it predicted the world economy would cope with the U.S. credit squeeze and grow 5.2 percent this year. Central banks will need to conduct policy “as flexibly” as the circumstances warrant, the statement said, adding that the European Central Bank has room to lower borrowing costs.

“The financial shock that originated in the U.S. subprime mortgage market in August 2007 has spread quickly, and in unanticipated ways, to inflict extensive damage on markets and institutions at the core of the financial system,” the statement said. “The global expansion is losing momentum in the face of what has become the largest financial crisis in the United States since the Great Depression.”

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