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The Christian right and the
Christian left are engaged in a debate over who 'owns' Jesus—and
whether Dubya is a force for good or evil.
When President George W. Bush was appointed by five Supreme Court
justices in 2000, right-wing Christians sang hosannas for the triumph
of God's will over the electorate's. "President Bush is God's
man at this hour," said Tim Goeglein, Bush's liaison to evangelicals.
Though the Methodist president dishonestly conceals the whole truth
about his apocalyptic religious beliefs, he has acted as an evangelist
in office.
As Esther Kaplan demonstrates in With God on Their Side: How Christian
Fundamentalists Trampled Science, Policy, and Democracy in George
W. Bush's White House, he's doled out millions to far-right Christian
groups, systematically crushed secular left and nonright mainstream
organizations from Head Start to the Audubon Society, and replaced
policy and scientific experts with comically ignorant yet politically
cunning fanatic provocateurs.
Out with the American Medical Association, in with the American Family
Association.
Before Bush, the Internal Revenue Service hounded the Christian Coalition;
now that Bush is, in extremist Gary Bauer's opinion, the de facto
leader of the Christian Coalition, the government selectively harasses
non-Christian groups, and a rightist apparatchik tried to sneak through
Congress a bill legitimizing the kinds of politically targeted IRS
abuses that would have made Richard M. Nixon proud.
Televangelist and onetime presidential candidate Pat Robertson once
rallied millions to lobby God for the deaths of liberal Supreme Court
justices, recommending prayers for coronaries and cancer. "We
ask for miracles!" preached Robertson. Today, the judiciary's
Clinton-era moderates haven't even a prayer against the Reagan/Bush
rightists.
Author Tim LaHaye, whose Left Behind thrillers based on the Bible's
"end times" stories are America's best-selling books for
adults, once helped destroy the Jack Kemp presidential campaign he
co-chaired by demanding 25 percent of government jobs for the Christian
right's 25 percent of the population. Today, no way does Bush's "Evangetaliban"—which
claims responsibility for winning Bush a second term in 2004—intend
to settle for less than 100 percent.
But not every follower of the Prince of Peace is shouting amen to
Bush/Robertson/Falwell's Killer Christians.
Granted, the fastest-growing churches are either evangelical—Bible
believers out to win your soul—or fundamentalists, out to bend your
soul to their bluenose will and so literal when it comes to the Bible
that some insist Christ's parables refer to actual people and events.
Fundies also incline to the authoritarianism of Oswald Chambers, the
19th-century Christian whose harsh sermonettes against rational analysis
and for a gut response to God Bush reads each morning (perhaps on
this Web site: www.gospelcom.net/rbc/utmost).
Yet the more love-thy-neighbor-advocating mainstream church is not
dead.
In The American Prospect magazine, Baptist Sunday school teacher
Jimmy Carter charges the fundamentalists with "the abandonment
of some of the basic principles of Christianity." And in his
brilliant 1997 book, Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity,
author Bruce Bawer accuses fundamentalism of replacing Christ's Church
of Love with a Church of Law, lamenting "the horrible monster
that 20th-century legalistic Christians have made out of their God
and Savior and the hateful institution that they have made out of
his church." He notes acidly that the movement got its biggest
boost in reaction not to the Supreme Court's 1963 school-prayer ban
but to the Carter-era IRS crackdown on segregated Christian schools.
"The Religious Right didn't grow out of a love of God and one's
neighbor—it grew out of racism, pure and simple."
"Kids growing up in Church of Law families nowadays think that
the only two sins, or at least the only two really, really important
ones, are having an abortion and having gay sex," Bawer told
Seattle Weekly. "The notion that love, tolerance, and inclusiveness
are moral values has been dropped down the memory hole."
A soldier in the U.S. Army e-mailed Seattle Weekly, "I'm just
a citizen who was raised in a Christian community and is tired of
having my values hijacked by a conservative movement that only applies
them selectively at home and hardly at all overseas." The soldier
asks to remain anonymous.
Perversion of Christian Faith?
"Bush is one of the key figures leading the church away from
Jesus," says Christian author Don Miller, who wrote the nonbluenose
Christian best seller Blue Like Jazz.
Miller is no pantywaist—he had the balls to run a ministry at Reed
College in Portland, Ore., which is so godless that its soccer team
is said in campus legend to have once staged a halftime crucifixion
in a game against a Christian school.
But he couldn't stomach it when, for instance, Texas Gov. Bush not
only allowed the execution of his fellow born-again Christian, the
penitent ax murderer Karla Faye Tucker, but made vicious fun of her
("Please don't kill me!" Bush said, mocking her prayerful
plea for God's mercy).
Miller classifies Bush Christians as modern Pharisees—the allegedly
proud, rigid, legalistic hypocrites John the Baptist called "a
generation of vipers."
"The worst condemnation that Jesus has for anybody, I mean the
worst, is for Pharisees," says Miller. "If you asked Jerry
Falwell who the Pharisees are in our society, they can't point anybody
out." There are no mirrors in Bush's church.
"People of faith—especially those whose moral values differ from
the values exploited this time around—need to figure out a way to
be figured into the political landscape," Philadelphia Presbyterian
minister Cynthia Jarvis editorialized in The New York Times. "Maybe
four years from now, when the number one issue cited by voters in
exit polls is again 'moral values,' those values will have something
to do with economic justice, racial equality and the peaceable kingdom
for which we all were made."
But few have preached harder against the Christian right's wrongs
than the Rev. Rich Lang of Seattle's Trinity United Methodist Church
in Ballard. "This administration is a culture of death, and so
is the religious right," says Lang.
In his Open Letter to George Bush, published in Real Change, Lang
thunders, "You claim Christ but act like Caesar. There is blood
all over your hands with the promise of even more blood to come. You
sit atop the nations like the Biblical Whore of Babylon openly fornicating
with the military men of might."
His sermon "George Bush and the Rise of Christian Fascism"
(posted like Luther's theses on the church Web site, www.tumseattle.org)
rails that "the power and seduction of this administration emerges
from its diabolical manipulation of Christian rhetoric . . . the
mirror opposite of what Jesus embodied. It is, indeed, the materialization
of the spirit of Antichrist: a perversion of Christian faith and practice."
Lang is not using "Antichrist" in a tone of bitter sarcasm,
as many do. Google "George Bush is the Antichrist," and
you'll get a startling list of Web sites that argue the case, but
with sardonic intent and whimsical 666-numerological riffs.
Unwhimsical pundit Robert Wright, who attended Calvary Baptist in
Bush's Midland, Texas, hometown, uses modern science to puzzle out
what may be God's plan in his bold book Nonzero: The Logic of Human
Destiny. When he notes in Slate magazine that he supported John Kerry
because "He's a long way from being the Messiah, but at least
he's not the anti-Christ," Wright says not to take this as gospel.
"Obviously, I was kidding—Bush isn't literally the Antichrist.
But I do think he could conceivably do some pretty cataclysmic damage
to the world. . . ."
Even
Christian Bush-basher Miller urgently distances himself from the Bush-as-
Antichrist meme that's sweeping the Web: "The last thing I want
is for someone to say, 'Don Miller thinks Bush is the Antichrist!'"
"He's not the Antichrist, he's just a cynical, callous politician,"
objects Stealing Jesus author Bawer. "I gather some liberal Christians
have gone off the rails." He refers to Lang's identification
of Bush with the "spirit of Antichrist" warned against in
the Bible's 1 John 4:3. "This kind of inane proof texting is
the province of the Church of Law types, the right-wing Darbyites,"
believers in Left Behind–style apocalyptic prophecy. "It's depressing
to see it practiced by liberal Christians, too."
Bawer is appalled by Bush's attempt, "in the name of Christianity,
to add to the Constitution what would be far and away its most un-Christian
amendment. But I'm also unsettled by the extreme way in which he's
been personally characterized by many people."
Granted, Bawer says the right "worships evil," and has "warped
Christianity into something ugly and hateful that has little or nothing
to do with love and everything to do with suspicion, superstition,
and sadism [and] denies the name of Christianity to followers of Jesus
who reject its barbaric theology." But "when people start
calling somebody the Antichrist, we're in right-wing fundamentalist,
Church of Law territory, and I don't like it one bit. . . . Demonizing
(literally) individuals in this way is ugly, scary. . . . "
Lang, though, stands his ground against his famous accuser, and insists
that he's missing some crucial distinctions. "This is not about
George Bush, this is about this whole administration. It's about Karl
Rove, it's about the neocons, some of whom are Christian, some who
aren't, but who are using Christian rhetoric. James Dobson [of Focus
on the Family] has direct access to the highest echelons of American
government. And Robertson and Falwell."
Still, Lang means what he says about Bush. "He has the spirit
of the Antichrist. Literally, break the word apart. It is a spirituality
that is anti-Christ."
Meet the Beast
So what's an Antichrist, anyhow?
The concept has evolved bewilderingly throughout biblical history.
As definitively explained in Bernard McGinn's Antichrist: 2,000 Years
of the Human Fascination With Evil and Robert Fuller's Naming the
Antichrist: The History of an American Obsession, the character can
be traced to Old Testament authors' horrified response to the oppression
of ancient colonizers. When Alexander the Great's conquests led to
a statue of Zeus in the Temple in Jerusalem, Jews envisioned a final
conflict story wherein the Syrian Greek tyrant Antiochus, reimagined
as a beast, got burned in God's "fiery stream" on Judgment
Day.
Early Christians grafted the Roman Emperor Nero onto the tradition
as the Beast from the Abyss in the Apocalypse, known to current Christians
as the book of Revelation, the Bible's astonishing finale about the
final days. Nero dressed in animal skins to ravage men's and women's
genitals, burned Christians in ghastly dramas, demanded to be worshiped
as a god, and was rumored to have disappeared to the East, threatening
to return one day to rule the world from Rome, or Jerusalem. Actually,
he killed himself, but he lives on in beastly legend. To this day,
the word for Antichrist in Armenian is "Nero."
Though the story of the Beast and various other biblical verses are
associated with the Antichrist, the word itself, "Antichrist,"
only appears four times in the Bible, in the letters of John.
Christians have eternally argued about the Antichrist.
Revelation
was nearly banned from the Bible, and permitted strictly on condition
it should never be used as it is by fundies today.
Church father Augustine ordered Christians to quit reading apocalyptic
Left Behind–style scenarios into scripture and think of the Antichrist
as anyone who denies Christ—and he said the first place to hunt for
him is in your own heart.
In my evangelical Lutheran childhood I often feared the Rapture had
left me behind, even though my church was liberal with Christ's love.
But now I'm with Augustine—and also with Robert Wright, who finds
in his book The Moral Animal a biological basis for original sin.
For a Darwinist Christian, the Beast is within: the lizard brain fighting
the higher mind for control of one's soul. As Darwin cried out to
heaven in his notebook: "The Devil under form of Baboon is our
grandfather!"
But people crave apocalyptic stories and an easy answer to spiritual
struggle.
As the narrator says of a character in Left Behind, "He wanted
to believe something that tied everything together and made it make
sense."
The most popular story today was concocted by an English law-student-turned-self-taught-theologian
named John Nelson Darby in the 1840s, and popularized by a Kansas
City lawyer named C.I. Scofield with his best-selling 1909 Scofield
Reference Bible. The Scofield Bible cross-referenced Old and New Testament
verses to illuminate the hidden figure in the bewildering carpet of
scripture, weaving the phantasmagoria of apocalyptic visions into
a single system—a magic carpet of narrative to whisk them safely out
of time and into heaven. Its systematic beauty was designed as a kind
of counterscience to rebuke and refute Darwinism and historical biblical
scholarship.
And man, is it a great story. It's not a literal interpretation, but
an imaginative deduction as breathtaking as Charles Kinbote's commentary
on John Shade in Nabokov's Pale Fire, or Charles Manson's prophetic
interpretation of the Beatles' White Album.
The Bible describes Christ's Second Coming and the Rapture of the
Saints—the whooshing of Christians bodily into heaven.
Anybody reading it for the first time would think these are supposed
to happen at the same time, at the end of time. But Darby hawked the
notion that the Rapture happens first. Exeunt Christians. Enter the
Beast/Antichrist, who perpetrates a hellish seven-year Great Tribulation.
Then Christ returns, kicks Beast butt, and reigns for 1,000 years—the
Millennium.
Fifty-one percent of Americans voted for Bush; 59 percent believe
Revelation will come true. Without one scrap of scriptural evidence,
almost one-quarter of Americans believe Revelation predicted 9/11.
The Independent newspaper called Revelation "that earliest of
airport novels." LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins' Left Behind dazzlingly
turns it into one. Planes and cars crash, deprived of pilots by the
Rapture. Even fetuses get Raptured, deflating their mamas' bellies.
The Antichrist becomes Nicolae Carpathia, People magazine's Sexiest
Man Alive, seizing control of the U.N. to impose one world government!
The faithful get saved! The secular humanists get what they deserve!
Since latter-day Darbyites believe end times scripture predicts and
mandates Israel's resurgence to usher in Christ's return and the Antichrist's
smackdown, they help drive Bush's rubber-stamp policy for Israel.
The real Middle East road map may be the Scofield Reference Bible.
"That's a completely foolish and erroneous interpretation of
the scriptures," snaps Jimmy Carter. "But this administration,
maybe extremely influenced by ill-advised theologians of the extreme
religious right, has pretty well abandoned any real effort that could
lead to a resolution of the problems between Israel and the Palestinians."
"It's deeply dismaying that millions of Americans who call themselves
Christians are believers in something that has virtually nothing to
do with the gospel message," mourns Bawer. "Darby, Scofield,
and company have been a disaster for Christianity in America. Millions
of people think they are adherents of 'traditional Christianity' when,
in fact, they have been roped into a newfangled religion based on
bizarre theological propositions that Jesus would never recognize."
"It's so ludicrous!" laments Lang. "Such a twisting
of scripture. That history is scripted is something that it seems
to me Christians ought to have an instinct to be repulsed against.
You follow a code, there's magical meanings in the text."
But Lang knows why people cling to millennial dreams—like Dubya's,
his life was saved by a fundamentalist church. "It attracted
me because I came out of chaos. Alcohol and drugs; 19 years old and
I was dyin'. I needed a strong fence around my life and people who
cared for me, and I got both. But after about a year of reading what
they taught me, I started to raise questions."
Further study convinced him that Augustine was on the right track,
after all, in reading apocalyptic literature as spiritual advice,
not a sneak preview of tomorrow's headlines. "Revelation is written
to the churches in its time, not to the churches in the 21st century.
It's written to seven churches in Turkey." As for the Antichrist
warnings in John, he reads them not as a literal prediction of Bush
but as a warning against the eternal danger of his hypocritical, Mammon-worshiping,
proudly elitist, heartless, narrowly legalistic spirit. "1 John
seems to be obsessed with language like this: 'How can you say you
love God, who you have not seen, if you do not love your brother and
sister, who you have seen?' Who are in need of food, clothing, shelter?
The implication of the doctrine of the Antichrist is that there is
an economic disparity in the community, and people are using their
religion, not practicing it."
Bush policy is based on what he told his Harvard Business School professor—
"Poor people are poor because they're lazy." Responds Lang,
"Again, anti-Christ. It's just the opposite [of Christ's teaching].
The thrust of right-wing Christianity—their solution to poverty is
to discipline the poor. Now, there's a lot to be said for that. I
mean, if people would clean up their negative habits. There's some
common ground where we can meet. But the right never addresses what
Jesus called 'that fox Herod'—the systematic problem that has given
rise to homelessness and poverty."
Bringing Back Heresy
Lang
argues that followers of Jesus, not Bush, should call an Antichrist
an Antichrist—or rather, its spirit. "The progressive church
should bring back—and this sounds so crazy—the word 'heresy.' The
end times theology and this other thing called Dominionism or Christian
Reconstruction—those are heresies."
Lang says not to believe Christian Coalition leader–turned–Whore
of Enron–turned Bush/Cheney campaign lieutenant Ralph Reed when he
claims the Christian right has no plans to upend the Constitution
and impose its religion on civic life. "He's a liar," says
Lang. "Dominionism is the notion that God has given the dominion,
the governance of the world, to the church. And so Christians literally
are born to rule, by force if necessary, to bring the Kingdom of God
on Earth. I believe that the theology that drives the Bush administration
affirms this." When Falwell preached, "We must take back
what is rightfully ours," his ambitions did not stop at U.S.
borders. This is a Church of a Law Unto Itself.
In the Greek, the word "anti" doesn't just mean "against."
It also contains the meanings "equivalent to" or "a
substitute for." Nero was anti-Christ because he falsely claimed
to be God.
The idea of deception is crucial. The Antichrist isn't the devil,
the opposite of God. He's an evil human masquerading as a golden god.
The Antichrist appears to humanity not as the hideous Beast but as
handsome Nicolae Carpathia, who resembles Robert Redford without the
facial erosion. "That could be our next Republican president,"
quips Lang.
In this sense, the Bush church is Antichristlike indeed. It is institutionalized
deception, anti-American ugliness with a beguiling face, a neocon
job. Only when necessary does it employ the perilous bald-faced lie,
the outrageously transparent duplicity—the political equivalent of
Robertson arguing that "Do unto others" indicates Christ's
support of capitalist selfishness. More often, a smoothly dissembling
surface is preferred.
Rove notoriously emulates Machiavelli; the Christian right is a stealth
movement, infiltrating school boards and mainstream churches and every
institution of democracy like a thief in the night—in order to undermine,
overthrow, and replace democracy with theocracy.
Bush is the father of lies.
The Union of Concerned Scientists proclaims Bush's lies about science
"unprecedented."
In With God on Their Side, Kaplan concludes, on mountainous evidence,
"The goal is not to engage your opponents in the public square,
but to kneecap them, or send them into exile."
"It is a conspiracy in the sense that they have not been public
and accountable to their ideology," says Lang.
"Follow the money! The same filthy-rich foundations that have
funded the rise of neocons are funding the rise of the religious right."
He suggests that you check out the exposé Web site www.yuricareport.com
for the terrifying particulars. [...]
Ultimately, despite his despair, Lang is a man of faith. "I really
do believe that we're in for several decades of a very dark time.
But that's not the end of the world." |
The above article states: "Revelation is written to the churches
in its time, not to the churches in the 21st century. It's written
to seven churches in Turkey."
I have researched this subject for many years and, while I agree that
the Apocalypse of John may have been written at a specific time, for
a specific reason, additional historical research shows us that history
is cyclical and repeating. Since this is the case, we may be able
to analyze our position on the historical circle by careful study
of the past. This is, of course, problematical since our history
has been composed mostly of lies, having been written by the “victors,”
most of whom are victorious due to deception and guile.
I would also suggest that Augustine's Christianity was as much a whitewash
of the original teachings of the man around whom the Jesus myth was
accreted as the theories of Darby.
Moreover, there are certain characteristics of the book of Revelation
that suggest it IS an "End Time" prophecy that is specific
to our time. One example would be from Revelation 13, where it
says:
13:11 And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he
had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon.
13:12 And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before
him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship
the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed.
13:13 And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come
down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men, 13:14 And deceiveth
them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which
he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that
dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast,
which had the wound by a sword, and did live.
13:15 And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast,
that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that
as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be
killed.
It is only in our present day that man has the power to make "fire
come down from heaven on earth in the sight of men" in the form
of modern military weapons. (Unless, of course, you wish to ascribe
a mystical or supernatural explanation for the above comment.) It
could even be said that the attack on the World Trade Center was an
exemplar of such activity due to its continued and repeated broadcast
via TV around the world for days on end.
It is certainly true that, as a result of this event, we are seeing
what is described in the following verses, an effort to bring the
entire world under the military dominance of the US as the Beast.
Keep in mind that "worshipping" does not have to take place
in an overt religious context. For example, valuing money over the
lives of other human beings, over peace, amounts to "worshipping
the Beast."
There is another passage in the Bible that interests us in the context
of the above article, from 2 Thessalonians, regarding the "Great
Apostasy" which certainly seems to describe those Christians
following the Bush Reich agenda:
2:1 Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus
Christ, and by our gathering together unto him, 2:2 That ye be
not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor
by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is
at hand.
2:3 Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not
come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of
sin be revealed, the son of perdition; 2:4 Who opposeth and exalteth
himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so
that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that
he is God.
2:5 Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you
these things? 2:6 And now ye know what withholdeth that he might
be revealed in his time. 2:7 For the mystery of iniquity doth
already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken
out of the way.
2:8 And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall
consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the
brightness of his coming: 2:9 Even him, whose coming is after
the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,
2:10 And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that
perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that
they might be saved.
2:11 And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion,
that they should believe a lie: 2:12 That they all might be damned
who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
Note that Paul declared that the "Mystery of Lawlessness",
or the antichrist, was present in the early days of the Church, and
he makes it clear that thise "Mystery of Lawlessness" related
specifically to "believing lies." Part of the above
passage has been interpreted by Darby and others as referring to
"The Rapture." The idea is that it is the Holy Spirit
that has "hindered the revealing of the Antichrist, and that
this Holy Spirit will "leave the planet" with the saved
Christians during the rapture. This event is supposed to leave
the rest of the world wide open to oppression and the beginning
of the Tribulation.
However, it is clear from the above passage that what is actually
"hindering," what is to be "taken out of the way,"
is the "strong delusion."
Paul (or pseudo Paul, according to some analysts) says at the beginning:
And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in
his time," followed by the description of exactly what he
is talking about: "shall that Wicked be revealed ... whose
coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs
and lying wonders ... all deceivableness of unrighteousness in
them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth.
... And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion,
that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned
who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
This is the foundational idea of Tribulation. The word "Tribulation"
comes from the word "tribulare," which means "to
thresh". This means that the useful parts of the wheat are
separated from the chaff. In the parable of the wheat and the tares,
it should be apparent what happens to whom. This parable is given
as a description of the end times. The farmer plants wheat and in
the night the enemy sows weeds which look like wheat in the field.
The workers come and ask the owner of the field what to do. He instructs
them to let all grow together and, at the time of the harvest,
pull up the weeds and burn them first, then gather the wheat
into the barn.
In other words, this idea contradicts completely the idea that
there will be any "Rapture."
Theologians have endlessly distorted the last part of Matthew 24
to support an unfounded myth of being "raptured" into
the sky. According to the proponents of this theory, only Christians
who meet certain criteria based upon any number variations in doctrine
are eligible.
The passage in Matthew reads:
As were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of
Man. For just as in those days before the flood they were eating
and drinking... until the day when Noah went into the ark, and
they did not know or understand until the flood came and swept
them all away; so will be the coming of the Son of Man.
At that time two men will be in the field; one will be taken
and one will be left...
To get the correct sense we must stop right here and rearrange
the sentence for our Western linear minds.
The coming of the Son of Man, like the flood of Noah, will be
sudden and unexpected, and will sweep away or take those who are
not prepared.
It is obvious, in the context, that those who are "taken" or "swept
away", are the very ones who have not watched and kept ready, and
that this is not a "Stealing away of the Saints to some Heaven like
city of God to wait out the disaster!"
Paul writes in I Thessalonians 5:2-03:
For you yourselves know perfectly well that the day of the Lord
will come as a thief in the night. When people are saying, All
is well and secure, and There is peace and safety, then in a moment
unforeseen destruction will come upon them as suddenly as labor
pains come upon a woman with child; and they shall by no means
escape, for there will be no escape.
This last passage makes it obvious that the "Thief" is unforeseen
destruction. Obviously, one who is ready and "guarding his clothes"
will not be looted by the thief nor would anyone expect a vigilant
householder to go with a thief?!
Paul also writes:
But you are not in darkness... for that day to overtake you by
surprise like a thief for God has not appointed us to wrath...
therefore let us be sober, and put on the breastplate of faith
and love and for a helmet the hope of salvation...
...which clearly associates the "thief effect" with wrath, NOT
salvation!
The word "thief" was used to emphasize the need to watch
and be prepared, not to indicate an absurdity called a "Stealing
Away." The idea of being raptured out of tribulation is, naturally,
attractive, but this is not supported by the Bible nor does it stand
to reason.
The idea of "enduring to the end," on the other hand,
is mentioned not less than 13 times in the New Testament. The doctrine
of the rapture is an assumption made by twisting scriptural references
and is, in truth, an example of the following:
And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion,
that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned
who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
There has long been a tradition of the "Secret Teachings"
of Jesus, and any astute reader of the Bible can immediately perceive
that much is alluded to which was either never recorded or was later
expunged. That is not surprising since Paul noted that the spirit
of Anti-Christ already existed in the early church. But, what is
apparent is that, since these things were hidden, they are the very
meat of the matter -- the foundational truths of Christianity!
In at least sixteen passages in the Gospels, Jesus is described
as "teaching", but the words he taught were never recorded.
Mark wrote in his Gospel, that Jesus taught the multitudes only
in parables and expounded and explained to his disciples only in
private. Precious few of these explanations were included in the
text.
Some theologians have supposed that these "Deeper" truths
are fully covered in the epistles, but a careful reading makes it
apparent that this is not the case. Social commentary, mundane advice,
allusions to deeper truths revealed in past conversations or promised
in future conversations; this is the primary composition of these
letters. And, as a result, most Christian denominations concern
themselves primarily with such matters, believing that this is sufficient
to ensure "salvation". But, we can determine that the
fact that deeper teachings exist is supported by the text of the
Bible itself, but that they are not contained within the Bible.
Getting back to the passage from 2 Thessalonians above, as the
analyst above noted, many of the "Rapture Christians"
firmly believe that Israel must be reconstituted and the Temple
in Jerusalem must be rebuilt to prepare the way for the return of
Christ. They base this also on the passage from 2 Thessalonians
quoted above, that the Antichrist proclaims himself to be god and
takes his seat in the temple in Jerusalem.
One of the keys to this prophecy is the word anthropes translated
as "man" of lawlessness. This is the same Greek word Timothy
uses in 3:17 "That the man of God may be perfect." It
is also used similarly to mean many people in Hebrews 2:6.
In I John, 2:18-22, the term "antichrist" is used to describe
many people -- not just those who deny Christ, but also those who
claim to be Christians but, in fact, deny the true teachings
of Christ.
Paul speaks of the temple of God. Many ignorant preachers and pseudo
theologians say that this refers to the Temple in Jerusalem. However,
Paul is addressing Christians about falling away from true Christian
teachings. If Paul is addressing Christians about Christian concepts,
the word "temple" must refer to the body of man. For example:
Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit
within you, which you have from God? (I Corinthians 6:19);
For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, I will
live in them and move among them, and I will be their God and
they will be my people. (II Corinthians 6:16);
In whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into
a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built into it
for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. (Ephesians 2:21-22)
The Greek word used for temple (Naos) in the scriptures
cited which refer to man as the temple of God is the same Greek
word used in II Thessalonians 2:4 for temple.
However, a completely different word is usually used when
referring to the Temple in Jerusalem, (Hieron).
Whether it was Paul or a later writer attempting to imitate Paul's
style, he was not speaking of the Temple in Jerusalem in II Thessalonians,
he was talking about mankind -- the temple of God's spirit. And,
though a man may claim to be following the standards of Christianity,
he may, in reality, have set himself up as his own god because he
exalts himself -- his own interpretations and preconceived notions
-- against every so-called god or object of worship as has George
W. Bush.
Lets organize this and look at it in the light of reason. We find
the following points:
1 A great many people are involved, not a single man; "son of
doom and Son of Perdition" must be seen as amplifying expletives
added to anthropes (plural=MEN) of lawlessness.
2 They profess to be Christians -- and, in fact, constitute the majority
of Christianity.
3 They are self-righteous in their belief that they possess the only
true knowledge -- this is shown by the fact that they place this human
judgment before all other evidence, assuming their view to be divinely
inspired - taking the seat in the Temple. In this way, they have taken
the authority of judgment from God and placed their own will in its
place -- thus "opposing and exalting themselves over God ...
taking God's seat in the temple (the body of many people - man of
lawlessness); in short, proclaiming themselves to be God!
For although they hold a form of piety they deny and reject and
are strangers to the power of it -- their conduct belies the genuineness
of their profession." (II Timothy 3:5)
4 The principle of lawlessness was already active in the early
church.
I have often wondered about the total absence of very early Christian
documents and manuscripts. It has been explained that the originals
were passed around until they were tattered, then copied and the
copies passed until they were worn out also. By the time the canon
was assembled, all that existed were copies of copies of copies
of copies. Considering the reverence and awe the early Christians
attached to relics and so forth, it seems far more likely that,
say, a manuscript written by Peter himself would have been carefully
preserved and copies taken from the original to be passed around.
However, if the early church leaders, anxious to strengthen their
control over the masses, saw to it that all originals were destroyed
and only carefully edited and altered copies remained, this would
explain both the activity of the Mystery of Lawlessness as well
as the loss of the Secret Teachings -- if they had ever been written
at all.
5 The word "restrain", (hinder in the KJV), is used in such
a way that it can only mean "hiding". What is being hidden
is the Mystery of Lawlessness, the Hidden Purpose of God, not the
identity of a pagan world ruler who craves to be worshipped! This
mystery is to remain hidden until just before the time of the end
and then the Lord Jesus will slay "the man (anthropes=MEN) of
sin" with the breath of His mouth.
From his mouth goes forth a sharp sword with which He can smite
the nations... and the beast was seized... and with him the false
prophet... both of the two were hurled into the lake of fire...
and the rest were killed with the sword that issues from the mouth
of Him Who is mounted on the horse... (Revelation 19)
Who gets slain by the "Breath" or "Sword" from
the mouth? Not the beast nor the false prophet, long identified as
"The Antichrist" and his high priest. No, the clarifying
sentence states that nations are slain!
Let's hear what Paul (or pseudo Paul) said one more time about the
"Mystery of Lawlessness":
...Now you know what is restraining him; it is so that he may
be manifested in his own time. For the mystery of lawlessness
-- that hidden principle of rebellion against constituted authority
-- is already at work in the world, restrained (hidden) only until
he who restrains (hides) is taken out of the way ...The coming
(of the apostasy) is through the activity and working of Satan...
and by unlimited seduction to evil and with all wicked deception
for those who are perishing because they did not welcome the Truth
but refused to love it that they might be saved. Therefore, God
sends upon them a misleading influence, a working of error and
strong delusion to make them believe what is false, in order that
all may be judged and condemned who did not believe...
Did you catch that?
What it clearly says first of all is that "the coming of apostasy"
is the work of Satan...UNLIMITED SEDUCTION TO EVIL... and in the very
next breath says that GOD SENDS UPON THEM A MISLEADING INFLUENCE,
A WORKING OF ERROR AND STRONG DELUSION TO MAKE THEM BELIEVE WHAT IS
FALSE...
Now, let's just take a deep breath here and think about this for a
minute. There are a couple of other passages in the Bible that are
comparable. The one that comes first to mind is the story of Job,
where it says:
Now there was a day when the sons [the angels] of God came to
present themselves before the Lord, so Satan - the adversary and
accuser - also came among them. And the Lord said to Satan, From
where did you come? Then Satan answered the Lord, From going to
and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it. And
the Lord said to Satan, Have you considered My servant Job, that
there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man,
one who fears God and abstains from and shuns evil. Then Satan
answered the Lord, Does Job fear God for nothing? Have You not
put a hedge about him and his house and all that he has, on every
side? You have conferred prosperity and happiness upon him in
the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the
land. But put forth Your hand now, and touch all that he has,
and he will curse You to Your face. And the Lord said to Satan,
Behold all that he has is in your power; only upon himself put
not forth your hand. [Job 1:6 - 12]
Curiously and significantly, Satan is described as one of the "sons
of God," and even as an "angel." Remembering also that
Paul stated that Satan can "appear as an Angel of LIGHT."
Then, the next significant thing is that when Satan suggests that
God "put forth your hand, and touch all that he has..."
God responds by saying: "Behold all that he has is in your power..."
which clearly implies that the "hand of God" in terms of
destruction and trials IS SATAN! Put it another way: Satan is an ASPECT
OF GOD, and therefore, NOT a rebellious angel who will be "destroyed"
at the day of judgment. Satan is simply the force of entropy.
The next interesting comparison is from I Kings and goes as follows:
And Micaiah said, Hear the word of the Lord: I saw the Lord sitting
on His throne, and all the host of Heaven standing by Him on His
right hand and on His left. And the Lord said, Who will entice
Ahab to go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead? One said this way, another
said that way. Then there came forth the spirit and stood before
the Lord, and said, I will entice him. The Lord said tohim, By
what means? And he said, I will go forth and be a lying spirit
in the mouth of all his prophets. The Lord said, You shall entice
him, and succeed also; go forth an do it. So the Lord has put
a lying spirit in the mouth of all these prophets and the Lord
has spoken evil conerning you. [I Kings 22:19-23]
Again, we have clear statements of the "manipulations" or
"testings" of God in a Biblical context. And we also have
evidence that "angels and spirits" are NOT necessarily all
"goodness and light" in their natures.
So, we find the "hindering" or "hiding" aspect
of the passage from Thessalonians to be, in effect, the "working
of God via Satan," or a "lying spirit" in the mouths
of teachers and prophets, in order to discover who REALLY loves truth.
And it is only when this "lying spirit," or "working
of Satan" in terms of deception is "removed" or taken
away, that truth is finally revealed. According to the texts of
the Bible, the removal of the hindrance, or the revealing of the
mystery of God is described as the breaking of the "seal"
on the prophetic truth -- the pouring out of the Spirit of God --
the Coming of the Spirit of Truth in the last days -- to overcome
the "misleading influence sent by God," which was in operation
from the early days of the church until just before the Day of the
Lord! This misleading influence, the "working of Satan",
sent by God, has been the spirit operating in all of the
Christian Churches as described by Paul!
The Hindrance is a delusion to error, a concealing of the truth
that began long ago. Thus, the traditions, the doctrines and dogma
as taught until the present, within the Christian denominations
themselves, are scripturally defined as predicated upon lies and
deception!
What event brings forth the Spirit of Truth?
Jesus is quoted as saying: Ye shall know the Truth, and the Truth
shall set you free.
In Revelation, this bringing forth of the Spirit of Truth is described
as the "Breaking of a Seal". We are here reminded of a
passage in the book of Daniel:
12:1 And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince
which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall
be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation
even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered,
every one that shall be found written in the book. 12:2 And many
of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some
to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.
12:3 And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the
firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars
for ever and ever. 12:4 But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words,
and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run
to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.
This suggests that the Truth will only be known at the time of
the End, when knowledge has been increased. That suggests that the
Bible isn't the whole cheese, for sure.
In any event, the end result of this analysis is this: the "removing
of the hindrance" CANNOT be the "Stealing Away of the
Saints" as interpreted by many denominations.
As an interesting aside, Nostradamus wrote:
The great force which will pass the mountains.
Saturn in Sagittarius Mars turning from the fish:
Poison hidden under the heads of salmon,
Their war-chief hung with cord. II.48
This astrological square is very rare. It last occurred in July, 1751
-- that is, until it occurred again on December 16, 1986. Within 25
years of its previous occurrence, the United States was at war with
Britain. The French Revolution followed soon after and the 1700's
was a period of great change and turmoil due to the repercussions
of the industrial revolution and the blossoming of Humanist philosophy.
Since no human army - or "great force" - of global import
passed over any mountain or breached any barrier at or around this
time, perhaps this quatrain has a cosmic significance. After all,
one might think that the breaking of a seal might include a "Great
Force" traveling our way? It is interesting to note that 25
years from December, 1986, happens to be December, 2011.
Getting back to our subject: being "antichrist or "lawless"
is equated with refusal to love, seek, and accept truth. As noted
before, truth is very often defined as that which pleases a given
individual or group.
6 The loss of true knowledge within the Christian church is foreordained
and planned -- for a purpose!
These clues, when properly understood, make clear that the "Antichrist"
is, in large part, the Christian Churches. It is not, as these many
fundamentalist churches teach, a world taken over by Satanists, among
whom they include everyone who doesn't believe as they do individually
and collectively.
Specifically defined in the very words of the Bible, this Antichrist
Society will consist of those who claim to be Christians or those
who act in the name of Christ.
Jesus' diatribe against the Scribes and Pharisees of His own time
is a prophetic injunction against the established churches of our
time:
But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, pretenders -- hypocrites!
Because you shut the kingdom of heaven in men's faces; for you
neither enter yourselves, nor do you allow those who are about
to go in to do so.
Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, pretenders -- hypocrites! For
you travel over sea and land to make a single proselyte and when
he becomes you make him doubly as much a child of Hell (Son of
Perdition) as you are.
Woe to you blind guides, who say, If anyone swears by the sanctuary
of the temple, it is nothing; but if he swears by the gold of
the sanctuary, he is a debtor, bound by his oath. You blind fools!
For which is greater the gold or the sanctuary?... You say, too,
that whoever swears by the altar is not duty bound, but whoever
swears by the offering on the altar, his oath is binding. You
blind men! Which is greater, the gift or the altar which makes
the gift sacred? So, whoever swears by the altar swears by it
and everything on it; and whoever swears by heaven, swears by
the throne of God and by Him Who sits upon it!" (Matthew
23:13-22)
When one considers the elements of the foregoing passage, the deeper
truth emerges. Christendom has been rabid in its persecutions and
attempts to convert "heathens" who are considered by the
Church to be unsaved and on the road to hell.
Jesus, the man, was the gift on the altar, the Christ spirit, representing
God on earth. Jesus was the first-fruit of a way of transmutation
or "resurrection" and was an exemplar of the pattern that
must be striven after in order to achieve this transmutation. The
Christ Spirit, the Word, exists as a template, and has existed
from the Beginning as the consciousness of the Cosmos, what we may
call God.
In today's Christianity, the worship of the man, Jesus, has replaced
the worship of God's Logos. Statements to the effect that Jesus is
the only name by which a man may be saved, and that acceptance of
this view is the key to God's plan of salvation, is the most grossly
misrepresented teaching ever to come out of the Christian church.
This amounts to worship of the offering while disregarding the altar.
For those of you who stumble over "Jesus as the only name by
which a man may be saved" I ask you to seriously consider the
fruits of this doctrine and the probable impetus for its propagation.
Just consider the Crusades -- in the name of Jesus only. Consider
the Inquisition -- in the name of Jesus only. Consider the annihilation
of the American Indians -- in the name of Jesus only. Consider of
the murder of over 65 million fellow human beings in our own time
-- in the name of Jesus only. In examining the expression of the
various religious beliefs around the world, the Christian faith
stands out as claiming to exclude all others on a fundamental point
of doctrine. The Christian faith holds that belief in Jesus as the
Son of God, a god himself, and Savior of the World and profession
of this belief is the key to salvation. Any person, regardless of
the conduct of their lives, is doomed to judgment (that is, some
sort of after-life punishment) if they do not make this confession.
Conversely, anyone who makes this confession, even on their deathbed
after a lifetime of "sinfulness," is saved instantaneously.
(George W. Bush, as the new arbiter of this form of Christianity
contradicted his theology when he executed Karla Faye Tucker, by
the way.)
The Epistle of James, in discussing faith versus works says:
You believe that God is one; you do well. So do the demons believe,
and shudder... (2:19)
The Gospel of John states:
assure you, most solemnly I tell you, the person whose ears
are open to My words and believes and trusts in Him Who Sent Me
has eternal life. And he does not come into judgment -- but he
has already passed over out of death into life." (5:24)
The latter statement was made by Christ prior to his crucifixion and
resurrection and clearly indicates that salvation is not hinged upon
a belief in the man Jesus. Jesus referred to himself repeatedly as
"The Son of Man," NOT the "son of God." It is
only men who have made him thus... swearing by the gold on the altar
and disregarding the altar itself.
On the other hand, there are numerous statements in the New Testament
which declare that salvation hinges solely upon believing in the name
of Jesus. Contradictory to this is Jesus' statement that
to every one who says to Me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom
of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father." (Matt.
7:21)
So, we have a fundamental doctrinal confusion and can easily see the
working of the Antichrist in the early Church in these conflicting
doctrines.
In describing false prophets, Jesus set up criteria for evaluation:
"By their fruits you shall know them." Since he was talking
about prophets and teachers who were described as performing miracles
and signs and wonders, we may assume that such are not to be considered
fruits.
What are fruits? A given plant or tree bears fruit after a period
of time known as the growing season, so we may assume that fruit becomes
evident after a period of time. Fruit also has the capability of propagating
other fruit after its own kind. Galatians 5:22 says:
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, gladness, peace, patience,
kindness, faithfulness; gentleness, self-control.
So, it might be said that, by the criteria established by Jesus, himself,
an individual who possesses these qualities or "bears these fruits"
must be "saved" regardless of his religious affiliation!
The fact that God can work in and through all kinds of people of all
faiths should be evidence that doctrines are creations of men and
God - the consciousness from which the Cosmos emerges - is the only
truth.
Yes, Jesus was an exemplar in the flesh -- the way, one of many -
yes he "bore our infirmities" in that he also was subjected
to the weaknesses of the flesh over which he triumphed; and, yes,
by his stripes and His sacrifice we are healed -- but this healing
is due to a change in understanding, thought patterns, knowledge of
our true inner capabilities, by discovering the TRUTH that will set
us free.
When Jesus said: "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, and no
man cometh unto the Father but by me," he spoke as the Christ,
and His words are true. The Christ spirit is present in all who manifest
the fruits of the Spirit. It doesn't matter who the messenger was,
or the specific doctrine followed. If we follow the pattern of the
life of Jesus - once we have waded through the lies and cover-up to
discover what that was - no matter who taught it to us, we have the
possibility for transformation. This inner knowledge, this following
of the pattern, is that which can change our lives and make all things
new. Through faith, as described in the Parable of the Talents - a
willingness to take risks, to exchange what we formerly believed for
something new and greater - we can align ourselves with the Word,
the Logos, the Christ -- and receive power to perceive, through psychic
potentials, truth relating to all those things necessary to pattern
our lives after the Master and thereby manifest our true nature as
Children of the King.
Jesus accused the Pharisees of shutting the door of the kingdom of
heaven in men's faces, and this is a clue to how the Christian churches
have accomplished their perversions of the truth. As noted, some of
the teachings of Jesus may well have been withheld from the masses
for fear of distortion. Others have, of a certainty, been expunged
to make the masses more compliant and dependent upon the Church hierarchy.
The true teachings of Christ have never been fully expounded to "all
the nations." This is due, primarily, to the "anti-Christ"
elements in the early church which sought to expunge all teachings
which would not lead to the masses' dependence upon the church hierarchy.
They destroyed those manuscripts they could, banned those they couldn't
destroy, and altered what was left. Fortunately the alterations were
neither expert nor consistent. In this way. the very contradictions
apparent in the Gospels and Epistles can lead us to a fuller understanding
of the truth. But only if we love truth sufficiently to read, search,
and analyse, the very dynamic described in the Parable of the Talents.
If the kingdom of heaven is within, as Jesus suggested, how can the
church leaders prevent one from entering? The only answer is that
the Church can do this by inducing seekers to believe lies.
The standard argument against new knowledge and added revelation is
based upon the last part of the Book of Revelation which states "If
any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues
that are written in this book," and is further amplified by the
standard doctrine that, "If an individual stands in opposition
to the entire evangelical Christian doctrine as espoused through Martin
Luther, he has to be without truth because the majority must be right."
Two points:
1. The Bible, as a book, did not exist at the time of the writing
of Revelation. John's curse cannot possibly be construed to extend
to the other documents assembled by very human hands some three hundred
years after Christ.
2. The Bible itself prophesies that, "The love of the great body
of people will grow cold, because of multiplied lawlessness and iniquity."
This can only be reference to those who formerly loved -- the Christian
Church -- a majority in error!
The apostate condition of the established churches is also shown in
the parable of the wheat and the tares. The common translations of
today have left out a very important key word. The question is asked
in the text: "Did you not sow good wheat in your field? Then
how does it have darnel shoots in it?" The original Greek translates:
"An enemy-man this did," but the Bible reads: "An enemy
has done this." and is generally interpreted and taught as referring
to Satan, losing the sense that the errors were initiated by men.
Jesus said "if you abide in my word -- hold fast to my teaching
and live in accordance with them -- you are truly my disciples. And
you will know the truth and the truth will set you free." (John
8:31)
But we must consider this statement in light of the fact that there
are literally hundreds of Christian sects espousing dozens of variations
on different doctrines, some of which are diametrically opposed to
each other. Each group believes that their own group has the one true
interpretation and are invariably convinced that all others are in
error.
Most sects base their interpretations upon "Revelation through
the Spirit" as described in John 16. "But when He, the Spirit
of Truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth -- the whole
full truth." The question arises: Among all these denominations
who claim to possess the truth received by them from the Holy Spirit,
who is telling the truth?
Some theologians admit to these problems explaining that many teachings
are just "ideas of men". These ideas however are taught
as doctrine and accepted as doctrine, or truth, by the masses of adherents
of any given group. If any one of them ever admits error to what was
supposed to have been divine inspiration, what must we see in the
spirit leading that group? I John 2:21 states:
...nothing false--no deception, no lie -- is of the truth."
Further, James says: "for wherever there is jealousy, and
contention, there will also be confusion and all sorts of evil
and vile practices. But the wisdom from above is first of all
pure; then it is peace loving, courteous, yields to reason, full
of compassion and good fruits. (3:16,17)
Do the evolved doctrines of Christianity demonstrate absence of confusion?
Purity of teaching? Peace? Courtesy? Yielding to reason? Compassion?
Good fruits?
I would like to say that the great confusion of doctrine is an indication
of the loss of purity which often leads to acts of discourtesy, absence
of peace, and lack of compassion. But what about yielding to reason?
James said that wisdom yields to reason. Wisdom is defined
as: "...the power of judging rightly and following the soundest
course of action based on knowledge, experience, and understanding."
In short, Knowledge is the only possible way out of the dilemma.
With greater knowledge, the seeker can read and weed through the
Bible, and many other sources, and discover truth. Only in this
way, with work and dedication can the individual demonstrate that
they are one of those who "Love the Truth." Only in this
way, can the "strong delusion to error" be overcome.
A general estimate tells us that 32.9% of the World's population
are professed Christians. Christians outnumber any other single religion
on earth. What is the HISTORY of this domination? What are the fruits
of this domination? What is the condition of the world TODAY under
the influence of the George W. Bush Theology?
The conclusion of this is that the antichrist is the spirit of perverse
Christianity which prevails in most churches in our day and the teachings
of most of them are the acts of men deciding what is true and thereby
taking the seat in the Temple, and that this misconstruction of the
Christian teachings began during the time of Paul and has continued
down to this very day.
This returns us to the foreordained and planned purpose of this lawlessness,
this delusion to error. The ultimate purpose of the "misleading
influence" is described within the pages of the Bible itself:
God sends upon them a misleading influence, a working of error
a strong delusion to make them believe what is false, in order
that they may look and look but not perceive, and may hear but
not grasp and comprehend; lest they should turn again, and it
should be forgiven them; in order that all may be judged and condemned
who did not believe -- who refused the truth, according to the
revelation of the mystery of the plan of redemption which was
kept in silence and secret for long ages,...which God devised
and decreed before the ages for our glorification... We shall
not all fall asleep in death; but we shall all be changed in a
moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the sound of the last trumpet
call. For a trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised imperishable
-- free and immune from decay, ...(at) the maturity of the times
and the climax of the ages to unify all things in heaven and things
on the earth, this mystery, which is Christ within and among
you, the hope of Glory. But when the days come that the trumpet
call of the seventh angel is about to be sounded, then God's mystery
-- His secret design, His hidden purpose -- as He announced the
glad tidings to His servants the prophets, should be fulfilled.
What is this Design? Metamorphosis -- The unity of spirit and
matter -- the ultimate alchemical event; matter vibrationally altered
by atomic interaction between the bodies of the solar system - The
WAVE.
The earth and mankind returned to the Garden of Eden, literally.
|
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A U.S. soldier pleaded guilty
at his court-martial Friday to killing a severely wounded 16-year-old
Iraqi male during fierce fighting in Baghdad's impoverished Sadr
City neighborhood, the military said.
Staff Sgt. Johnny M. Horne Jr., 30, of Winston-Salem, N.C., was
among several soldiers who had found the wounded teenager on Aug.
18 in a burning truck with severe abdominal wounds sustained during
the clashes. A criminal investigator had
said during an earlier hearing that the soldiers decided to kill
him to "put him out of his misery."
Sadr City was the scene of wild clashes earlier this year between
coalition forces and Shiite rebels allied to firebrand cleric Muqtada
al-Sadr, a loud opponent of the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq.
In a plea bargain, Horne, a member of Company C, 1st Battalion,
41st Infantry Regiment, from Fort Riley, Kan., pleaded guilty to
one count of unpremeditated murder and one count of soliciting another
soldier to commit unpremeditated murder. The charges are under Articles
118 and 81 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
"The convictions stemmed from Staff Sgt. Horne's murder of
a severely wounded Iraqi civilian in Baghdad's Sadr City district,"
a military statement said.
Lt. Col. James Hutton, a military spokesman, said Horne had originally
been charged with the more serious offenses of premeditated murder,
conspiracy to commit premeditated murder and solicitation of another
soldier to commit premeditated murder.
"He decided to plead guilty to the lesser charges presented
to him," Hutton said.
Hutton said Horne was expected to be sentenced later Friday.
Horne is one of six Fort Riley soldiers
charged with killings in recent months -- two for slayings in Kansas
and four for deaths in Iraq. Staff Sgt. Cardenas J. Alban,
29, of Inglewood, Calif., was charged along with Horne in the teenager's
killing and is awaiting a court-martial hearing.
Previous military court hearings have heard that several troops
had fired on a group of Iraqi men placing homemade bombs along a
road in Sadr City. Soldiers from the same battalion arrived on the
scene to find a burning truck and casualties around it.
According to accounts given by witnesses at previous hearings,
the soldiers, including Horne, tried to rescue an Iraqi casualty
from inside the vehicle. The victim had severe abdominal wounds
and burns and was thought by several of the witnesses to be beyond
medical help.
The criminal investigator had said that the U.S. soldiers had
decided that "the best course of action was to put (the victim)
out of his misery." [...]
Earlier this week in Germany, a U.S. tank company commander accused
of killing a critically injured Iraqi driver for al-Sadr was ordered
court-martialed.
Capt. Rogelio Maynulet, 29, of Chicago, will be tried on charges
of assault with intent to commit murder and dereliction of duty,
which carry a maximum combined sentence of 20 1/2 years, said military
spokesman Maj. Michael Indovina.
During Maynulet's Article 32 hearing, witnesses
testified that the driver had been shot in the head when Maynulet
saw him. A fellow officer said Maynulet told him he then shot the
man out of compassion. |
AL-QAEDA is using cashcard fraud to steal thousands
of pounds from bank accounts in Britain and the rest of Europe to
fund its activities across the world.
Jean-Louis Brugière, France’s top anti-terrorism
judge, said radical Islamic cells in Europe were using sophisticated
equipment to "clone" the card details of cash machine
users.
He said the terrorists were then creating fake cards and using
them to withdraw hundreds of thousands of pounds and euros a month.
"These are cards that I call clones," he said. "They
are very difficult to catch."
The judge said authorities uncovered the cash machine scheme two
years ago when investigators found an Islamic terrorist finance
cell operating in France.
Ten suspected Islamic militants were withdrawing more than £50,000
a month from cash machines in other European countries, where they
were arrested.
"The [Islamic] European networks finance themselves primarily
through microfinancing systems - criminal activity that is very
profitable," he said.
The claims come amid warnings that al-Qaeda
is preparing for an attack on a key maritime target in the next
12 months on the scale of the atrocities it unleashed in the United
States on 11 September, 2001. In March this year, the threat
to Europe was made clear when bombs planted by Islamic militants
on rush hour trains in Madrid killed 191 people. [...] |
London - Al-Qaeda could stage a seaborne attack
within the next 12 months, in a tactical strategy to drive maritime
shipping costs and travel times to record highs, a British private
defence firm said on Friday.
A waterborne attack would be "spectacular
- a big bang to get people's attention'" in an ideal
al-Qaeda plot, Aegis Defence Systems intelligence director Dominic
Armstrong said.
Aegis said there was a greater likelihood of such a strategy now
because al-Qaeda had promoted a maritime attack specialist as the
head of its operations in Saudi Arabia.
It said Saud bin Hamud al-Utaibi was thought to
be behind the 2000 attack on the USS Cole in the Yemeni port city
of Aden that killed 17 United States (US) sailors.
Saud bin Hamud al-Utaibi was thought to be behind the 2000 attack
on the USS Cole
Armstrong also said the Iraq conflict was training Islamic militants
from various countries in warfare, who would return to their home
countries trained and battle-hardened.
"Iraq is the equivalent for a new generation - an opportunity
for the ambitious Jihadist," he said.
Aegis Defence System, founded in 2003 by former SAS officer Tim
Spicer, won a 293-million-dollar US defense contract to coordinate
private security contractors in Iraq as well as to provide its own
security units.
One of its subsidiaries, Hudson Trident, is a maritime security
consultancy.
|
SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO—Prisoners at the
U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been beaten while
blindfolded and handcuffed, terrorized by dogs and forced to take
drugs, an Australian detainee said in an affidavit released yesterday.
David Hicks, 29, was one of the first prisoners to arrive at the
camp in January, 2002, accused of fighting for the Taliban. He is
one of only four terror suspects who have been formally charged
among 550 detainees accused of links to Afghanistan's ousted Taliban
regime or the Al Qaeda terrorist network.
"At one point, a group of detainees,
including myself, were subjected to being randomly hit over an eight-hour
session while handcuffed and blindfolded," Hicks said in an
affidavit sealed in August. "I have been struck with hands,
fists and other objects, including rifle butts. I have also been
kicked."
Hicks said he was forcibly injected with sedatives
and then struck. He said he watched members of a military squad
used to subdue problem detainees enter a man's cell, "brutalizing
him with an attack dog."
The U.S. government says prisoners are treated in accordance with
the Geneva Conventions. U.S. policy officially condemns and prohibits
torture.
Some allegations made by Hicks and others will be investigated,
a Pentagon spokesperson said. Hicks is to be tried in a military
commission in March. |
MIAMI - Even as federal judges review the Defense
Department's power to detain and try suspects in the war on terror,
the Pentagon is quietly planning for permanency at the U.S. detention
center at Guantanamo Bay.
Pentagon planners are now seeking $25 million to build a state-of-the-art
200-cell concrete building meant to eventually replace the rows
of rugged cells fashioned from shipping containers at Camp Delta.
At the same time, the Army is creating a full-time, professional
guard force - a 324-member Military Police Internment and Resettlement
Battalion that will replace a temporary, mostly reserve force at
Guantanamo.
A Department of Army memorandum to Congress obtained by The Miami
Herald envisions the new military police force being included in
the 2005 and 2006 budgets. "This action is part of a systematic
process to enhance Army's capabilities required to defend the Nation's
interests at home and abroad,'' says the undated memo from the Army's
legislative liaison office.
It gave two key dates: Oct. 16, 2004, to activate the battalion
headquarters and its first company, and Oct. 16, 2005, to activate
another company.
Not all 20 officers and 304 enlisted soldiers have been activated,
said Army Col. David McWilliams of the Southern Command. But an
advance team is already at the base preparing to take up guard duties
in the spring, he said.
A second Army memo to answer congressional queries about the new
unit says it "doctrinally supports a sensitive operational
requirement'' and "helps to mitigate the high operational tempo
of the military police force.''
Aside from the Marine force that set up the prison nearly three
years ago, many of the troops who guarded captives in Guantanamo
have been Army reservists mobilized from civilian law enforcement
duties in the U.S. Midwest.
The prison today has about 550 captives from 42 nations who have
been brought to Cuba from Afghanistan, the first front in the war
against terrorism. Only four have been charged with crimes, a trial
process now stalled in federal courts.
On Nov. 8, U.S. District Judge James Robertson in Washington, D.C.,
ruled unconstitutional a Military Commission's war crimes trial
for Osama bin Laden driver Salim Ahmed Hamdan, 34, of Yemen. The
Pentagon then suspended all war crimes trials while the Justice
Department appealed his decision.
Meanwhile, U.S. District Judge Joyce Hens Green is deciding on
habeas corpus petitions brought by civilian lawyers for 53 prisoners
alleging they are illegally detained.
"They're betting that the courts are going to, in the end,
find for the government, that they can keep these enemy combatants,
as they label them, indefinitely, as long as they have some kind
of an annual review process,'' said retired Army Col. Dan Smith,
a West Point graduate and Vietnam veteran who is now a senior military
affairs fellow at the Friends Committee on National Legislation,
a Quaker lobby.
"So Guantanamo becomes an extra-territorial - I don't want
to say gulag - a prison for anyone we want to put down there and
label an unlawful enemy combatant,'' Smith said.
Bush administration policy-makers describe any possible judicial
proceedings there as secondary to the prison's primary purpose of
holding and interrogating suspects for intelligence on how al-Qaida
works.
Commanders describe the guards' work at Guantanamo as at times
humiliating and testing soldiers' patience because some captives
have spewed insults and spit on guards.
That kind of contact would be reduced under the Pentagon plan
to replace Camp Delta, which was projected to last five years when
it opened in May 2002.
Built by Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Pentagon contractor
Halliburton, Delta's cells were welded from steel shipping containers
by laborers brought in from South Asia.
"Camp Delta is comprised of temporary facilities that are
rapidly reaching the end of their design life, and therefore a more
permanent facility is needed,'' said Army Lt. Col. Leon Sumpter,
a prison spokesman.
The new mortar-and-steel prison, called Camp 6, should cost $25
million. Commanders hope to consolidate most Camp Delta prisoners
into "these hardened facilities,'' he said.
Pentagon officials are still crunching the numbers on the prison
project's overall cost on a 2-month-old Miami Herald request, but
a Senate tally estimated building costs at $104 million until April
2003. Virtually all expenditures have come from post-Sept. 11 emergency
funding rather than line-item appropriations by Congress.
But a Pentagon spokesman said it was still unclear how the military
would pay for Camp 6. "There's a lot of unknowns about the
project,'' said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Alvin Plexico.
Begun as a short-term detention and interrogation solution to
relieve overwhelmed troops in Afghanistan, the prison on the Navy
base in southeastern Cuba has had a nearly nonstop three-year building
boom.
Besides the 1,000-cell Camp Delta, the Pentagon has also built
Camp 5, a 100-cell version of the new prison being proposed; a new
command center for the one-star general in charge; a trailer park
for troops; a laundry, fitness center, movie theater, and extensive
dining and recreation facilities - all sprawled across a once empty
field, called Radio Range, that overlooks the Caribbean.
Reporters got a glimpse of the future in November during a brief
tour of Camp 5, which commanders described as efficient, effective
and humane despite repeated allegations that U.S.-approved interrogation
techniques are tantamount to torture.
The designs for Camp 5 and 6 copy a medium-security prison in
Indiana, the Miami Correctional Facility at Bunker Hill, and have
central electronic locking systems, special interrogation rooms
and a closed-circuit monitoring system. |
For every American soldier killed in Iraq,
nine others have been wounded and survived — the highest rate
of any war in U.S. history.
It isn't that their injuries were less serious, a new report says.
In fact, many young soldiers have had faces,
arms and legs blown off and are now returning home badly maimed.
But they have survived thanks to armour-like
vests and fast treatment from doctors on the move with surgical
kits in backpacks.
"This is unprecedented. People who lose not just one but
two or three extremities are people who just have not survived in
the past," said Dr. Atul Gawande, a surgeon at Brigham and
Women's Hospital in Boston who researched military medicine and
wrote about it in today's New England Journal of Medicine.
The journal also published a five-page spread of 21 photographs
graphically depicting the horrific injuries and conditions under
which these modern-day MASH surgeons operate.
"We thought a lot about it," said the journal's editor,
Dr. Jeffrey Drazen, and ultimately decided the pictures told an
important story. "This war is producing unique injuries —
less lethal but more traumatic."
Kevlar helmets and vests are one reason.
"The critical core, your chest and your abdomen, are protected,"
said Dr. George Peoples, a Walter Reed Army Medical Center surgeon
who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. "Paradoxically, what we've
seen is devastating extremity injuries because people are surviving
wounds they otherwise wouldn't have."
A large number of blinding injuries also have occurred.
By mid-November, 10,369 American soldiers
had been wounded in battle in Afghanistan or Iraq, and 1,004 had
died — a survival rate of roughly 90 per cent. In the Vietnam
War, one in four wounded died, virtually all of them before they
could reach MASH units some distance from the fighting. [...]
The strategy is damage control, not definitive repair.
Field doctors limit surgery to two hours or less, often leaving
temporary closures and even plastic bags over wounds, and
send soldiers to one of several combat support hospitals in Iraq
with services like labs and X-rays.
"We basically work to save life over limb," said navy
Capt. Kenneth Kelleher, chief of the surgical company at the chief
U.S. Marine base near Falluja. "No frills, nothing complicated.
"What we do is put tags in the vessels if we can find them,
put in a shunt for a later definitive vascular surgery. If the injury
is not going to be salvageable, we do a rapid amputation. And there
have been a fair number of those."
As for the soldiers he took pictures of, Peoples had this to say:
"Every person depicted in those photos survived." |
1. 80% of all votes in America are counted
by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S.
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Lan...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diebold
2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight
of the U.S. voting machine industry.
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0916-04.htm
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804La...
3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are
brothers.
http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/private_company.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Lan...
4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer
and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping
Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sun...
http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1647886
5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S.
He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines.
http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/colum...
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/031004Fitr...
6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family,
was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate
Ethics Committee.
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.p...
http://www.hillnews.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx
http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/000896.php
7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice-presidential
candidates.
http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_28/b3689130.htm
http://theindependent.com/stories/052700/new_hagel27.html
8. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S.
and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes.
http://www.essvote.com/HTML/about/about.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Land...
9. Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail
of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data
coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put
in by voters.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm
http://www.itworld.com/Tech/2987/041020evote...
10. Diebold also makes ATMs, checkout scanners, and ticket machines,
all of which log each transaction and can generate a paper trail.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm
http://www.diebold.com/solutions/default.htm
11. Diebold is based in Ohio.
http://www.diebold.com/aboutus/ataglance/default.htm
12. Diebold employed 5 convicted felons as senior managers and developers
to help write the central compiler computer code that counted 50%
of the votes in 30 states.
http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,61640,00.html
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/10/301469.shtml
13. Jeff Dean, ">Diebold's Senior Vice-President and senior programmer
on Diebold's central compiler code, was convicted of 23 counts of
felony theft in the first degree.
http://www.chuckherrin.com/HackthevoteFAQ.htm#how
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf
14. Diebold Senior Vice-President Jeff Dean was convicted of planting
back doors in his software and using a "high degree of sophistication"
to evade detection over a period of 2 years.
http://www.chuckherrin.com/HackthevoteFAQ.htm#how
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf
15. None of the international election observers were allowed in the
polls in Ohio.
http://www.globalexchange.org/update/press/2638.html
http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/10/26/loc_elexoh.html
16. California banned the use of Diebold machines because the security
was so bad. Despite Diebold's claims that the audit logs could not
be hacked, a chimpanzee was able to do it! (See the movie here <http://blackboxvoting.org/baxter/baxterVPR.mov>
.)
http://wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,63298,00.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4874190
17. 30% of all U.S. votes are carried out on unverifiable touch screen
voting machines with no paper trail.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sund...
18. All -- not some -- but all the voting machine errors detected
and reported in Florida went in favor of Bush or Republican candidates.
http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65757,00.html
http://www.yuricareport.com/ElectionAftermat...
http://www.rise4news.net/extravotes.html
http://www.ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modloa...
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0411/S00227.htm
19. The governor of the state of Florida, Jeb Bush, is the President's
brother.
http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/ne...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articl...
20. Serious voting anomalies in Florida -- again always favoring Bush
-- have been mathematically demonstrated and experts are recommending
further investigation.
http://www.yuricareport.com/ElectionAftermath04/ThreeR....
http://www.computerworld.com/governmenttopics/governm....
http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/tens_of_thousands.html
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1106-30.htm
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/110904.html
http://uscountvotes.org/ |
Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov today reiterated
Russia may conduct preventive strikes against terrorists abroad,
saying it was a common US practice, but he ruled out the use of
nuclear weapons.
Ivanov said strikes could be conducted
anywhere in the world, and that the only limit would be the
use of nuclear weapons.
"All other methods, in my opinion, are good and acceptable
here," Ivanov told a group of military attaches from foreign
embassies after delivering an annual report on Russia’s defence
plans.
"I have already said many times that war has been declared
against us. And war is war," he said.
Russia was "by no means the only country
that has said it could use preventive strikes. We did not think
this up", he said, suggesting
the United States, but without mentioning any country by name.
"Secondly, we see in practice that such strikes are conducted
– in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in other regions of the world,"
he said, answering a question submitted at the meeting at the academy
of the Russian military’s general staff. "It
exists. It’s already a norm of life."
Ivanov said preventive strikes against terrorists – and
strikes meant to punish those who have carried out attacks –
were legally justified under a UN resolution passed after the hostage
raid on a school in Beslan, in southern Russia, which left
more than 330 people dead.
Ivanov and other top Russian officials have said recently Russia
reserved the right to conduct preventive strikes against terrorists
anywhere in the world. The air force commander said last week that
cruise missiles and strategic bombers could be used in such strikes.
|
Ukrainian opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko
has been admitted to an Austrian hospital for tests into a mystery
illness that has disfigured his face.
Doctors at Rudolfinerhaus clinic in Vienna will spend the weekend
assessing whether his illness was caused by poisoning.
"We will check the size and functioning of all his organs,
including his intestines, re-examine his blood and look again for
all possible causes of poisoning," Dr Michael Zimpfer, the
chief doctor at the Rudolfinerhaus clinic in Vienna told reporters.
"We will also carry out biopsies, including of his skin.
"He (Yushchenko) should leave the clinic the day after tomorrow
(Sunday) and the results of these new tests should be known at the
beginning of next week."
Upon arrival at the hospital, Mr Yushchenko told reporters he
was "feeling better" and expected to stay in Vienna for
two days.
"I'm in better health and the prognosis is good," he
said, as he handed over to doctors the results of a previous set
of blood tests for further analysis.
Mr Yushchenko, who was accompanied by his wife, the youngest of
his five children - a baby of a few months - and bodyguards, said
it was up to the doctors to comment on whether he had been poisoned
or not.
"I will accept their official conclusions and want them to
be made public immediately," he added.
Mr Yuschenko, who is seen as the likely winner of a December 26
re-run of a second round presidential election invalidated on grounds
of fraud, said he was confident of his success in the polls.
"The recent revolution (in Ukraine) has opened the eyes of
many civil servants who were implicated in (fraud) during the earlier
rounds," he said.
Mr Yushchenko, 50, fell ill on September 6 and four days later
was admitted to the Rudolfinerhaus clinic, where he remained until
September 19.
When he finally re-emerged weeks later, voters
in Ukraine were shocked to see a man who appeared to have aged by
at least a decade.
The cause of his ailment, which has left him disfigured, has never
been officially established but his campaign team have repeatedly
claimed that he was poisoned in the run-up to the election.
Before leaving for Austria, Mr Yushchenko repeated his charges
that the mysterious illness was a murder attempt.
"I believe now more and more that
what happened to me was an act of a settling of political scores,"
he said. "The aim was to kill
me."
Earlier in the day Nicolai Korpan, a Ukrainian doctor who treated
Mr Yushchenko in September, said that his blood tests were "partly
available" in Vienna where they were being analysed.
Ukrainian public prosecutors have opened an investigation and
said on October 22 that he was suffering from a fever caused by
a virus that affected his liver. |
TOKYO : Japan is to fingerprint all foreign visitors
and put air marshals on Japanese carriers' international flights to
prevent extremist attacks, taking a cue from
the United States. The government's anti-terrorism task
force said foreign visitors would also be photographed on arrival
and be required to present identity at hotels. The security measures
will be implemented in stages by March 2007.
"We must not make Japan an easy place for terrorists to carry
out their activities," said an administrative official for
the task force, which is headed by Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki
Hosoda.
"We will introduce the measures in ways that do not put too
much burden on those entering Japan," the official said.
Some permanent residents, such as ethnic Koreans born in Japan,
will be exempt from the fingerprinting and photographing, the official
said.
He said Japan would study the way security measures had been implemented
in the United States, where many foreigners
have complained of rude treatment by immigration authorities since
the September 11, 2001 attacks.
"Many people did not like it when the United States introduced
the US-VISIT scheme. I am sure Japan, too, would hear from those
who oppose the plan. We will spend a year to formulate good ways
to start the measures," he said.
He said some policemen would begin to be posted soon on Japanese
airlines' international routes, although details of the program
such as whether the air marshals would be armed are yet to be finalized.
Militants purporting to belong to Al-Qaeda have threatened to
attack Japan to protest its deployment of troops to Iraq. [...] |
WASHINGTON -- Federal officials are concerned
that terrorists could try to down aircraft by blinding pilots with
laser beams during landing approaches.
A memo sent to law enforcement agencies recently by the FBI and
the Homeland Security Department says there is evidence that terrorists
have explored using lasers as weapons.
"Although lasers are not proven methods of attack like improvised
explosive devices and hijackings, terrorist groups overseas have
expressed interest in using these devices against human sight,"
the memo said.
"In certain circumstances, if laser
weapons adversely affect the eyesight of both pilot and co-pilot
during a non-instrument approach,
there is a risk of airliner crash," the agencies said.
The federal authorities said there is no specific
intelligence indicating al-Qaida or other groups might use lasers
in the United States.
In September a pilot for Delta Air Lines reported an eye injury
from a laser beam shone into the cockpit during a landing approach
in Salt Lake City. The incident occurred about 5 miles from the
airport. The plane landed safely.
FBI and other federal officials are investigating. It is not clear
if a crime was committed or if the laser was directed into the cockpit
by accident.
Steve Luckey, a retired airline pilot who is chairman of the Air
Line Pilots Association's national security committee, said
pilots are concerned about a recent increase in laser incidents,
but do not know what to make of them. He
said he has learned of two or three cases in the past 90 days.
"The most recent incidents appear to be aimed at pilots in
the vicinity of airports," Luckey said. "A
few seem to be intentional, and we're wondering why and what's going
on."
Lasers can cause temporary blindness and severely damage the eye
by burning the retina. The bulletin notes they are "relatively
inexpensive, portable, easy to conceal and readily available on
the open market."
Lasers are commonly used in a number of industries and are featured
in outdoor light shows. A variety of more
powerful military-grade lasers are produced around the world, but
there is no evidence that terrorist groups have managed to obtain
one, according to federal officials.
The bulletin was sent late last month to law enforcement officials
and key government agencies and industries. A copy was obtained
Thursday by The Associated Press. |
PENSACOLA, Fla. -- A prison inmate who mailed
a letter laced with white powder pleaded guilty Friday to threatening
to send anthrax to President Bush, Gov. Jeb Bush and federal employees.
Tests indicated the substance was a harmless
body powder, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Len Register.
Roger V. Evans admitted he mailed the envelope in April from Washington
Correctional Institution in Chipley to the U.S. District Court clerk's
office.
He pleaded guilty to federal charges of
threatening to use a weapon of mass destruction
against federal property and mailing threatening communications.
He could face up to life in prison at sentencing March 9.
Evans was sentenced in 1982 to 50 years in prison for robbery
with a deadly weapon, and would complete that term before serving
a federal sentence. He had a previous robbery conviction in Miami-Dade
County. |
About 150 students and staff members
evacuated a private school in McDonough on Thursday morning after
a teacher found an "explosive device" in a backpack.
The GBI bomb squad safely detonated the device outside Lake Dow
Christian Academy. The backpack also held components to make a second
such device, said Henry County Public Safety Director Mike Turner.
Police questioned a juvenile about the backpack and went to the
house the youth shares with grandparents in Locust Grove. There,
Turner said, they found two more explosive devices.
Turner would not reveal details about the investigation, such
as how the juvenile was identified, the youth's age or even whether
the youth is a student at the school, northeast of McDonough. The
juvenile was in custody Thursday, and authorities will decide soon
whether to press charges, Turner said.
The juvenile in custody is "extremely contrite," Turner
said Thursday night. "I think he realizes, he has an inkling
now, of the level of problems he's caused for himself," Turner
said.
Authorities avoided using the word "bomb."
They would not characterize what kind of device was detonated or
how much damage it could have caused.
"Any explosive device is serious," said Gary Orchowski
of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
"An explosive device would be an accurate enough description."
The school will be open for classes today.
A teacher found the backpack containing the device in a classroom
about 8:43 a.m., Turner said. The teacher carried the backpack outside,
and school administrators called police. Students were evacuated,
and the GBI bomb squad detonated the device.
Police later searched the suspect's grandparents' house on Higgins
Road in Locust Grove, about 13 miles from the school. According
to county property records, the five-bedroom, split-level brick
house is owned by Mike D. Cosby, 51. Telephone messages left on
an answering machine were not returned Thursday night.
Concerned parents rushed to Heritage Park, a nearby recreation
center, to catch a shuttle bus to the nearby campus to retrieve
their children.
Erin Dahling, a transplant from Oklahoma, was shocked by the news.
Her 5-year-old triplets and 14-year-old niece are students at the
school.
"I figured it would be safer," Dahling said. "It's
nerve-racking. I've never experienced anything like it."
According to a school Web site, Lake
Dow Christian Academy was founded in 1977 to teach a fundamental,
Christian-centered program of reading,
writing and arithmetic. It has students in kindergarten through
grade 12.
|
Some likened it to noiseless thunder.
Others said they heard a boom, while still others suspected an
earthquake.
Whatever it was that shook Saginaw on Thursday afternoon left
many residents puzzled.
"I was on the phone with my uncle about 2 p.m. when I felt
the house kind of shake," said Beverly J. Nothelfer, 54, who
lives along Irving in Saginaw.
"It kind of felt like when thunder shakes the house, but
I didn't hear anything. It was like an explosion without the noise."
Employees at Princing & Ewend, a public relationbs and marketing
firm along Niagara next to the Holland Street Bridge in Saginaw,
also were left shaken.
"I heard a boom, but louder than normal," said Andrea
L. Fisher, 28, of Midland, president of the company.
"We're right next to the bridge and big trucks go over it
all the time, and the big ones can cause a kind of rattle here.
But this was louder than anything in the past. We heard it more
than felt it.
"Our creative director, Greg Branch, came over from the other
end of the building and asked, 'Did you guys feel
that?' "
"I felt a vibration," Branch said. "Occasionally
you get that if a double-trailer truck goes over the bridge and
hits a bump. I even looked out the window to see the truck, but
there wasn't any.
"I knew it wasn't an earthquake because of the noise."
Some folks old enough to remember sonic booms are wondering if
an errant aircraft pushed across the sky too fast.
Branch said he's starting to believe that's what caused the excitement.
"It sounded a lot like it, but then I thought, 'Nah, we don't
have (sonic booms) anymore.' "
Sonic booms result when objects move faster than the speed of
sound -- about 760 mph, depending on the altitude. Sonic booms were
known to break windows in homes and shake plaster loose. Congress
outlawed them over land in the 1970s.
Experts are ruling out a temblor.
"Michigan has not had an earthquake," Carolyn C. Bell,
spokeswoman for the U.S. Geological Survey headquarters in Reston,
Va., said Thursday.
The agency's nearest seismograph, at the University of Michigan
in Ann Arbor, is sensitive enough to detect tremors well into Canada,
she said. |
A fire that gutted a chemical plant in southwest
Houston Friday night sent shockwaves throughout the area and sent
local fire department units scurrying, trying to locate the explosion
that residents called in to report.
Despite being in the 14500 block of Minetta in Houston, the explosion
at the Marcus Oil and Chemical plant, which manufactures polyethylene
waxes for products such as paints and inks, sent giant plumes of
black smoke into the evening sky shortly after the facility caught
fire around 6 p.m.
According to Pearland Volunteer Fire Department Chief Paul Jamison,
the aftermath of the explosion had many residents on the west side
of Pearland wondering what happened.
"A lot of (the blast) was felt throughout the city,"
said Jamison. "The phone calls kept coming in but nobody was
really sure about a location."
After placing a call to the Houston Fire Department, he said,
firefighters finally found out that the blast was about 20 miles
away.
Residents as far away as Friendswood and Clear Lake reported to
various media outlets that they had heard the blast, described by
one earwitness as like a sonic boom in the distance.
To others, however, the explosion seemed like it was right on
top of them.
Rick Fernandez, who works for the Pearland Police Department,
said he was inside a Pearland store, right off of FM 518, when he
heard the blast.
"I heard a boom. I didn't know what the heck it was,"
said Fernandez. "I thought somebody hit the building."
Officials doubt that the fire produced any airborne toxins that
could be a threat to the area.
At the time of the fire, Jamison said, the winds were coming out
of the east and would have blown any hazardous materials away from
the city anyway.
No serious injuries were reported in the fire. |
Guwahati, : A series of moderate to heavy earthquakes
shook India's northeast this month, triggering panic among people
in the region but there have been no reports of casualties, officials
Friday said.
An official of the seismological centre in the Meghalaya capital
Shillong said a tremor measuring 4.7 on the Richter scale Thursday
jolted parts of the region with the epicentre plotted along the
Assam-Meghalaya border.
On Tuesday, an earthquake measuring 3.5 on the Richter scale shook
Meghalaya.
"Two micro tremors were felt on Dec 1 and 4 in Assam and
parts of the northeastern region bordering Bangladesh," A.C.
Lyngdoh, a seismologist at the centre, told IANS by telephone from
Shillong.
The eight northeastern states, considered by seismologists as
the sixth major earthquake prone belt in the world, experienced
India's worst jolts, measuring 8.7 on the Richter scale in 1897,
killing 1,600 people.
Assam had experienced a massive tremor measuring 8.5 on the Richter
scale on August 15, 1950 that claimed some 1,500 lives. |
The Marshall Islands has been warned of an
approaching tropical storm, which threatens to turn into a cyclone.
Sara Prior of the Guam Meteorological office says there is a good
chance it will develop by Monday.
"Guam residents are very familiar with the December typhoon
and taking the Christmas lights down before Christmas," she
said.
"So we're all going to be biting our nails." |
Crews cleared boulders the size of refrigerators
from Highway 36 near Triangle Lake on Thursday, allowing the road
to reopen a day after heavy rains caused a mudslide carrying an
estimated 100 yards of earth and rocks. Blachly schools were to
remain closed today because of the slide.
"We're just going to err on the side of safety," said
school secretary Linda Richardson. "Children are too valuable
to risk."
Winter storms continued throughout Western Oregon on Thursday,
bringing high surf and flood warnings to the coast and causing minor
flooding, rockslides and other weather-related problems in the Southern
Willamette Valley. [...] |
(South Carolina) - The predawn silence turned
violent Friday morning as thunder rumbled and winds tore through
an area near the Calhoun-Orangeburg County line along U.S. Highway
601.
Orangeburg County Emergency Services Director John Smith said
it is a miracle no one was killed or seriously hurt from what likely
will be declared a tornado by the National Weather Service.
The destruction left in the path of the storm was extensive:
- Union Chapel Baptist Church near Jamison was totally destroyed.
- The building at Tri-County Electric Cooperative sustained damage.
- Two mobile homes were completely destroyed, with one family inside
while the home was turning over. No one was seriously hurt.
- Nine other homes sustained damage. |
DUSON, Louisiana - A tornado ripped a 50-foot
path of damage across a five-mile area from Ridge to Scott just
after 1 a.m. Thursday, leaving the homes of two families in ruins.
For Roland Thibodeaux, if there was any consolation it was that
heís been through this before.
"It's not my first time starting over," he said, surveying
what was his home before an early morning storm destroyed it. "We
lost everything ... everything. It's all gone."
Thibodeaux said the tornado took one wall of his home in the middle
of the night Thursday, then threw him from his bed, took the other
wall and pushed it on top of him. Thankfully, he said, the wind
took that wall off him, or "I'd still be under there."
The high winds took a glass double door from Thibodeauxís
home and threw it into the home of Romero Odelon, about two doors
down.
" I felt the walls shake a little bit and went to my son's
room to wake him up, and the next thing I heard was - bam! - with
the door coming through the bedroom," Odelon said.
"It's unbelievable. We had just recovered from the hurricane
damage, and now this," he said. [...] |
SHELBY, N.C. (AP) Torrential rain and wind
pounded parts of North Carolina early Friday, killing at least one
person when flash flooding washed out a bridge.
Two other people were rescued clinging to trees after their vehicles
plunged into the rain-swollen creek in Cleveland County, west of
Charlotte.
The remains of Joey Hoyle, 40, were found about three-quarters
of a mile downstream from the Maple Springs Church Road bridge.
All three men apparently drove into the creek separately after
floodwaters washed out the bridge, said state trooper Christopher
McClelland, one of the first rescuers on the scene.
''This is a fairly unlit portion of the road,'' he said. ''The
drivers were unaware the bridge was washed out, and they basically
drove one after another into the swollen river.''
A resident who lived near the bridge called authorities around
3:15 a.m. to report the sounds of an apparent car crash, which may
have been the bridge collapsing.
The storms caused wind gusts up to 40 mph. Fog was so thick overnight
that rescuers had a hard time searching for other victims and had
to call off efforts for several hours before resuming early Friday
morning. |
|
Soaked:
Flood waters are still rising in New South Wales. (ABC TV) |
Emergency services have been cleaning up after heavy rain and severe
thunderstorms overnight caused flooding in many areas in the eastern
states of Australia.
Floodwaters are still rising in northern New South Wales.
The country town of Wee Waa is bracing itself for rising floodwaters
and a disaster recovery centre has been established at Narrabri.
The weather bureau is warning of moderate to major flooding at
Narrabri and downstream.
Ken McKenzie from the SES says helicopters are on standby for
food drops and evacuations.
Meanwhile the north-west division of the SES says rainfall has
eased around the Moree area.
However it is still expecting moderate to major flooding at Moree,
Pallamallawa, Yarraman and Gravesend.
In South Australia it took SES crews several hours and 800 sandbags
to get things back in order after homes were flooded in Murray Bridge.
Mount Gambier was also badly hit.
The Queensland SES received around 20 calls for help after minor
flooding on the Gold Coast.
And severe thunderstorms caused flash flooding in country areas
in central and western Victoria.
Senior forecaster Richard Carline says Geelong, the Little Desert
and around Horsham in the state's west bore the brunt of the storm
activity in Victoria overnight.
Melbourne did not experience forecast storms. |
The risk of flooding in the Thames estuary
is now greater because of climate change, the Government warned
today.
The forecast, from an MPs’ committee report on the problem,
underlines the fact that the Thames Barrier was designed in the
1970s with “conservative allowances” for climate change
and other factors.
Allowing for rising sea levels, it was thought that by 2030 there
was only a one in 1,000 chance of a flood severe enough to breach
these defences.
But the Government has now said that “taking account of
current estimates of climate change, this standard is likely to
be exceeded.
“In addition, it should be noted that the original design
allowed for some adaptation to cope with additional sea level rise,
and it is part of a relatively flexible control system, whose effectiveness
could be further enhanced by developments such as improved real-time
surge and river-flow modelling.”
The Government was responding to a report by the Commons Environment,
Food and Rural Affairs Committee into climate change, water security
and flooding. The MPs said that a Foresight report on future flooding
has alerted them to the possible magnitude of future flood risk.
[...] |
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