Iran lays out legal case for genocidal attack against ‘cancerous tumor’

Israel in the Last Days

“And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.”
—Genesis 12:3

“And they shall no more be a prey•Strongs 957: z;Ab baz; from 962; plunder:—booty, prey, spoil(-ed). to the heathen•Strongs 1471: ywø…g gowy, go´-ee; rarely (shortened) y…Og goy, go´-ee; apparently from the same root as 1465 (in the sense of massing); a foreign nation; hence, a Gentile; also (figuratively) a troop of animals, or a flight of locusts:—Gentile, heathen, nation, people., neither shall the beast of the land devour them; but they shall dwell safely•Strongs 983: betach, beh´takh; from 982; properly, a place of refuge; abstract, safety, both the fact (security) and the feeling (trust); often (adverb with or without preposition) safely:—assurance, boldly, (without) care(-less), confidence, hope, safe(-ly, -ty), secure, surely., and none shall make them afraid•Strongs 2729: charad, khaw-rad´; a primitive root; to shudder with terror; hence, to fear; also to hasten (with anxiety):—be (make) afraid, be careful, discomfit, fray (away), quake, tremble..”
— Ezekiel 34:28

The Iranian government, through a website proxy, has laid out the legal and religious justification for the destruction of Israel and the slaughter of its people.

The doctrine includes wiping out Israeli assets and Jewish people worldwide.

Calling Israel a danger to Islam, the conservative website Alef, with ties to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the opportunity must not be lost to remove “this corrupting material. It is a ‘jurisprudential justification” to kill all the Jews and annihilate Israel, and in that, the Islamic government of Iran must take the helm.”

The article, written by Alireza Forghani, a conservative analyst and a strategy specialist in Khamenei’s camp, now is being run on most state-owned conservative sites, including the Revolutionary Guards’ Fars News Agency, showing that the regime endorses this doctrine.

Because Israel is going to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, Iran is justified in launching a pre-emptive, cataclysmic attack against the Jewish state, the doctrine argues.

On Friday, in a major speech at prayers, Khamenei announced that Iran will support any nation or group that attacks the “cancerous tumor” of Israel. Though his statement was seen by some in the West as fluff, there is substance behind it.

Iran’s Defense Ministry announced this weekend that it test-fired an advanced two-stage, solid-fuel ballistic missile and boasted about successfully putting a new satellite into orbit, reminding the West that its engineers have mastered the technology for intercontinental ballistic missiles even as the Islamic state pushes its nuclear weapons program.

The commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Brig. Gen. Seyyed Mehdi Farahi, stated in August that the Safir missile, which is capable of transporting a satellite into space, can easily be launched parallel to the earth’s orbit, which will transform it into an intercontinental ballistic missile. Western analysts didn’t believe this would happen until 2015. Historically, orbiting a satellite is the criterion for crediting a nation with ICBM capability.

Forghani details the Islamic duty of jihad as laid out in the Quran for the sake of Allah and states that “primary jihad,” according to some Shiite jurists, can only occur when the Hidden Imam, the Shiites’ 12th Imam Mahdi, returns. Shiites believe Mahdi’’s return will usher in Armageddon.

In the absence of the hidden Imam, Forghani says, “defensive jihad” could certainly take place when Islam is threatened, and Muslims must defend Islam and kill their enemies. To justify such action, Alef quotes the Shiites’ first imam, Ali, who stated “Waging war against the enemies with whom war is inevitable and there is a strong possibility that in near future they will attack Muslims is a must and the duty of Muslims.”

The article then quotes the Quran (Albaghara 2:191-193): “And slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out, for persecution [of Muslims] is worse than slaughter [of non-believers] … and fight them until persecution is no more, and religion is for Allah.”

It is the duty for all Muslims to participate in this defensive jihad, Forghani says. A fatwa by the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini made it clear that any political domination by infidels over Muslims authorizes Muslims to defend Islam by all means. Iran now has the ICBM means to deliver destruction on Israel and soon will have nuclear warheads for those missiles.

In order to attack Iran, the article says, Israel needs the approval and assistance of America, and under the current passive climate in the United States, the opportunity must not be lost to wipe out Israel before it attacks Iran.

Under this pre-emptive defensive doctrine, several Ground Zero points of Israel must be destroyed and its people annihilated. Forghani cites the last census by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics that shows Israel has a population of 7.5 million citizens of which a majority of 5.7 million are Jewish. Then it breaks down the districts with the highest concentration of Jewish people, indicating that three cities, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa, contain over 60 percent of the Jewish population that Iran could target with its Shahab 3 ballistic missiles, killing all its inhabitants.

Forghani suggests that Iran’s Sejil missile, which is a two-stage rocket with a trajectory and speed that make it impossible to intercept, should target such Israeli facilities as: the Rafael nuclear plant, which is the main nuclear engineering center of Israel; the Eilun nuclear plant; another Israeli reactor in Nebrin; and the Dimona reactor in the nuclear research center in Neqeb, the most critical nuclear reactor in Israel because it produces 90 percent enriched uranium for Israel’s nuclear weapons.

Other targets, according to the article, include airports and air force bases such as the Sedot Mikha Air Base, which contains Jericho ballistic missiles and is located southwest of the Tel Nof Air Base, where aircraft equipped with nuclear weapons are based. Secondary targets include power plants, sewage treatment facilities, energy resources, and transportation and communication infrastructures.

Finally, Forghani says, Shahab 3 and Ghadr missiles can target urban settlements until the Israelis are wiped out.

Forghani claims that Israel could be destroyed in less than nine minutes and that Khamenei, as utmost authority, the Velayete Faghih (Islamic Jurist), also believes that Israel and America not only must be defeated but annihilated.

The radicals ruling Iran today not only posses over 1,000 ballistic missiles but are on the verge of ICBM delivery and have sufficient enriched uranium for six nuclear bombs even as they continue to highly enrich uranium despite four sets of U.N. sanctions.

The Iranian secret documentary “The Coming Is Upon Us” clearly indicates that these radicals believe the destruction of Israel will trigger the coming of the last Islamic Messiah and that even Jesus Christ, who will convert to Islam, will act as Mahdi’s deputy, praying to Allah as he stands behind the 12th Imam.

Says ‘evil hegemony’ soon will be defeated by power of Allah

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Moving Towards Ezekiel 38-39

“Persia, Ethiopia, and Libya with them; all of them with shield and helmet:”
—Ezekiel 38:5

Editors note about the word Persia•FYI: Persia in concert with Adolf Hitler, changed its name to Iran (Aryan Land) in May of 1935.

Amid crippling sanctions over its nuclear weapons program, Iran is continuing to prepare itself for war against the West, and now is warning of a coming great event.

“In light of the realization of the divine promise by almighty God, the Zionists and the Great Satan (America) will soon be defeated,” Ayatollah Khamenei, the Iranian supreme leader, is warning.

Khamenei, speaking to hundreds of youths from more than 70 countries attending a world conference on the Arab Spring just days ago, told a cheering crowd in Tehran that “Allah’s promises will be delivered and Islam will be victorious.”

The countries represented included Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Palestine and Tunisia, all of which have been involved in the Arab Spring.

In his remarks, Khamenei advised the youths to remain vigilant, stating that the Islamic awakening in the region has delivered several blows to the enemies of Islam and that all Muslims, despite their own historical and social differences, remain united in opposing the “evil hegemony of the Zionists and the Americans.”

Khamenei then claimed the current century as the century of Islam and promised that human history is on the verge of a great event and that soon the world will realize the power of Allah.

Many clerics in Iran have stated that Khamenei is the deputy of the last Islamic messiah on earth and that obedience to him is necessary for the final glorification of Islam.

Khamenei has been heard to say that the coming of the last Islamic Messiah, the Shiites’ 12th Imam Mahdi, is near and that specific actions need to be taken to protect the Islamic regime for upcoming events.

Mahdi, according to Shiite belief, will reappear at the time of Armageddon. Selected forces within the Revolutionary Guards and Basij reportedly have been trained under a task force called “Soldiers of Imam Mahdi” and they will bear the responsibility of security and protecting the regime against uprisings. Many in the Guards and Basij have been told that the 12th Imam is on earth, facilitated the victory of Hezbollah over Israel in the 2006 war and soon will announce publicly his presence after the needed environment is created.

Sources within Vali’eh Amr, the revolutionary forces in charge of the supreme leader’s protection, also recently revealed an assassination attempt on Khamenei that was thwarted just in time.

SepahOnline reports that last year during Khamenei’s visit to the port of Asalouyeh in southern Iran, Revolutionary Guards found pistols and hand grenades hidden by one individual dressed as a janitor in a barracks that Khamenei was set to attend. The supreme leader was then returned to Tehran immediately.

Other sources within the Guards report that following Barack Obama’s letter to the Iranian leader last month requesting negotiations, Khamenei ordered Iranian officials to speak positively about holding nuclear talks and giving hope to Obama and other Western leaders that a negotiated solution is possible.

This was apparent after a trip of U.N. nuclear inspectors to Iran this week, who called the talks positive.

At the same time, his directive to the Guards ordered a speedy completion of the Iranian nuclear bomb program in which Guards’ missiles can be armed with nuclear warheads. Khamenei believes once that’s achieved, Iran can test a nuclear bomb, letting the world know that Iran has joined the nuclear-armed club and that any confrontation will result in destruction of much of the Western world.

The Revolutionary Guards not only can hit all U.S. bases in the Middle East with their ballistic missiles but also reach most capital cities in Western Europe. The Guards, with the help of China and North Korea, are working on intercontinental ballistic missiles. But more dangerous to America, as reported last July, is the Guards action in arming their vessels with long-range ballistic missiles and their expansion of their mission into the Atlantic Ocean, right into the Gulf of Mexico.

Any Iranian military or commercial vessel easily could get right outside the U.S. coastline and in less than 60 seconds fire a ballistic missile armed with a nuclear payload and detonate it over U.S. skies in an electromagnetic attack that would plunge America back into the 18th century.

Studies show within just one year after such an attack, two-thirds of Americans would cease to exist and the rest would live under dire conditions.

The radicals ruling Iran not only have prepared for mass suppression of their own people as they get close to their confrontation with the West, but also have prepared to fuel unrest through their proxies in the Middle East and elsewhere.

SepahOnline, with sources within the Guards, reports that Afghanistan will soon witness an increase in terrorist activities against U.S. forces. The Guards not only are training Taliban fighters in Iran close to the Afghan border, but are shipping armaments to forces in Afghanistan with an order to create instability by harming U.S. forces and destabilizing the Afghan government.

Guards agents have also been ordered to do the same in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf counties.

The Guards also announced the imminent formation of a defensive unit to deal with possible radioactive contamination. Although they did not say why, they could be preparing for a nuclear exchange with the West once Iran becomes nuclear-armed.

WND previously has reported that the chieftains in Iran also are preparing to execute their own internal critics and opponents at the right time.

This was similar to action taken by the founder of the Islamic regime in 1988, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

In the book, “A Time to Betray,” the CIA spy in the revolutionary guards reveals the mindset of the Shi’ite clerics and how they aspire for the destruction of the world. They truly believe the end of time is here. As revealed last year, the Iranian secret documentary “The Coming is Upon Us” clearly indicates that the radicals ruling Iran believe the destruction of Israel will trigger the coming of last Islamic Messiah.

A cyber strike launched from outside the United States hit a public water system in the Midwestern state of Illinois, an infrastructure control systems expert said on Friday.

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Iniquity Abounding

“For the mystery•Strongs 3644: musterion, moos-tay´-ree-on; from a derivative of mu/w muo (to shut the mouth); a secret or “mystery” (through the idea of silence imposed by initiation into religious rites): — mystery. of iniquity•Strongs 458: anomia, an-om-ee´-ah; from 459; illegality, i.e. violation of law or (genitive case) wickedness:—iniquity, x transgress(-ion of) the law, unrighteousness.
•Strongs 459: anomos, an´-om-os; from 1 (as a negative particle) and 3551; lawless, i.e. (negatively) not subject to (the Jewish) law; (by implication, a Gentile), or (positively) wicked:—without law, lawless, transgressor, unlawful, wicked. doth already work: only he who now letteth•Strongs 2722: katecho, kat-ekh´-o; from 2596 and 2192; to hold down (fast), in various applications (literally or figuratively):—have, hold (fast), keep (in memory), let, x make toward, possess, retain, seize on, stay, take, withhold. will let, until he be taken out of the way.”
—2Thessalonians 2:7

“This is arguably the first case where we have had a hack of critical infrastructure from outside the United States that caused damage,” Applied Control Solutions managing partner Joseph Weiss told AFP.

“That is what is so big about this,” he continued. “They could have done anything because they had access to the master station.”

The Illinois Statewide Terrorism and Intelligence Center disclosed the cyber assault on a public water facility outside the city of Springfield last week but attackers gained access to the system months earlier, Weiss said.

The network breach was exposed after cyber intruders burned out a pump.

“No one realized the hackers were in there until they started turning on and off the pump,” according to Weiss.

The attack was reportedly traced to a computer in Russia and took advantage of account passwords stolen during a hack of a US company that makes Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) software.

There are about a dozen or so firms that make SCADA software, which is used around the world to control machines in industrial facilities ranging from factories and oil rigs to nuclear power and sewage plants.

Stealing passwords and account names from a SCADA software company was, in essence, swiping keys to networks of facilities using the programs to control operations.

“We don’t know how many other SCADA systems have been compromised because they don’t really have cyber forensics,” said Weiss, who is based in California.

The US Department of Homeland Security has downplayed the Illinois cyber attack in public reports, stating that it had seen no evidence indicating a threat to public safety but was investigating the situation.

Word also circulated on Friday that a water supply network in Texas might have been breached in a cyber attack, according to McAfee Labs security research director David Marcus.

“My gut tells me that there is greater targeting and wider compromise than we know about,” Marcus said in a blog post.

“Does this mean that I think it is cyber-Armageddon time?” Marcus continued. “No, but it is certainly prudent to evaluate our systems and ask some questions.”

The European Union’s failure to contain the Greek debt crisis is sending fresh shockwaves through currencies, money markets, equities and derivatives.

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Perplexity

“…upon the earth distress•Strongs 4928: sunoche, soon-okh-ay´; from 4912; restraint, i.e. (figuratively) anxiety: — anguish, distress. of nations, with perplexity•Strongs 640: aporia, ap-or-ee´-a; from the same as 639; a (state of) quandary:—perplexity.
•Strongs 639: aporeo, ap-or-eh´-o; from a compound of 1 (as a negative particle) and the base of 4198; to have no way out, i.e. be at a loss (mentally):— (stand in) doubt, be perplexed….”
—Luke 21:25

Root of All Evil

“For the love of money is the root •Strongs 4491: rhiza, hrid´-zah; apparently a primary word; a “root” (literally or figuratively):—root of all.of all evil•Strongs 2556: kakos, kak-os´; apparently a primary word; worthless (intrinsically, such; whereas 4190 properly refers to effects), i.e. (subjectively) depraved, or (objectively) injurious:—bad, evil, harm, ill, noisome, wicked. which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows•Strongs 3601: odune, od-oo´-nay; from 1416; grief (as dejecting): — sorrow..”
—1 Timothy 6:10

The euro lost more than 2 percent against the dollar in the past two days and the cost of protecting corporate bonds soared to the highest level since January, with credit-default swaps anticipating about a 78 percent chance that Greece won’t pay its debts. Equities declined around the world, while a measure of fear in fixed-income markets jumped the most since November.

Market moves suggest heightened concern that authorities won’t be able to keep Greece’s debt troubles from spreading after Moody’s Investors Service said it may downgrade BNP Paribas SA and two other big French banks because of their investments in the southern European nation. The collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in September 2008 caused credit markets worldwide to freeze as investors fled all but the safest government debt.

“The probability of a eurozone Lehman moment is increasing,” said Neil Mackinnon, an economist at VTB Capital in London and a former U.K. Treasury official. “The markets have moved from simply pricing in a high probability of a Greek debt default to looking at a scenario of it becoming disorderly and of contagion spreading to other economies like Portugal, like Ireland, and maybe Spain, Italy and Belgium.”

New Government

Lehman’s collapse contributed to $2 trillion in writedowns and losses at the world’s biggest financial institutions, data compiled by Bloomberg show, and central banks cut interest rates to record lows as economies slipped into recession.

Markets were roiled yesterday as Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou said he would name a new government and call a vote of confidence in Parliament as he seeks to pressure rebel lawmakers to back an austerity plan that would secure a new bailout. The MSCI World Index fell a further 1.1 percent today, while the Swiss franc rose to a record against the euro.

Papandreou needs to clinch a parliamentary vote on a 78 billion-euro ($110 billion) five-year package of budget cuts and asset sales by July to ensure the country receives a new EU aid package to avoid the euro-area’s first default.

“Our duty is to the nation, not to political parties,” Papandreou said in comments televised live on state-run NET TV. “I will form a new government and immediately afterwards seek a vote of confidence in Parliament. It is a time for responsibility.”

‘Armageddon Scenarios’

Papandreou’s options narrowed as his bid to garner support from the biggest opposition bloc failed, party allies turned against him and police deployed tear gas to break up anti- government protests in central Athens.

“This is by no means the end of the story, but based on current majority, such a motion should pass,” Charles Diebel, head of market strategy at Lloyds Bank Corporate Markets in London, wrote in a note to clients yesterday. “If not, then Armageddon scenarios come into play, which include default and potentially the whole contagion scenario plays out.”

Earlier this week, Standard & Poor’s slashed Greece to CCC from B, handing the nation the world’s lowest credit rating and noting it’s “increasingly likely” to face a debt restructuring.

Greece’s unemployment rate jumped to 15.9 percent in the first quarter from 14.2 percent in the last three months of 2010, the Hellenic Statistical Authority in Athens said today. The jobless rate, at a record 16.2 percent in March, has climbed faster than projected under last year’s 110 billion-euro bailout.

Sticking Point

The current sticking point is how to engage private investors in the next stage of rescuing Greece. European Central Bank authorities, including President Jean-Claude Trichet, have pushed back against German plans to lengthen the maturity of Greek bonds, leaving open only the option to persuade bondholders to voluntarily reinvest the proceeds of maturing debt into new securities.

“Keeping existing creditors engaged is far from trivial, as it involves a combination of incentives and penalties,” Francesco Garzarelli, a strategist at Goldman Sachs International in London, wrote in a report yesterday. “If the transactions are to be completed on a ‘voluntary’ basis in order not to trigger a default event, the ‘hold out’ problem is material” as persuading all lenders to move in lockstep is difficult, he wrote.

Moody’s placed the ratings of BNP Paribas, France’s biggest bank, and local rivals Societe Generale SA and Credit Agricole SA under reviews that will focus on their holdings of Greek public and private debt “and the potential for inconsistency between the impact of a possible Greek default or restructuring and current rating levels,” the firm said in a statement.

‘Ripple Effect’

“This is a ripple effect of the Greek crisis spilling into European banks,” said Sarah Hewin, a senior economist at Standard Chartered Bank in London. “Clearly, there would be an impact if there is an escalation” of the situation, she said.

German lenders were the biggest foreign owners of Greek government bonds with $22.7 billion in holdings last year, according to data compiled by the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland.

French banks, which led the group of Greek creditors with overall claims amounting to $56.7 billion, trailed their German peers on sovereign debt with $15 billion, according to the June report from the BIS. The figure for French banks was inflated by $39.6 billion in lending to companies and households, mainly because of Credit Agricole’s Greek unit, Emporiki Bank SA. German lenders have no major units in the country.

At the end of 2010, Greek government bonds held by banks in countries reporting to the BIS totaled $54.2 billion, of which 96 percent was owned by European lenders.

Swap Spreads

U.S. interest-rate swap spreads, used to gauge investor perceptions of credit risk, widened the most since November after the announcement about banks by Moody’s.

The difference between the U.S. two-year swap rate and the comparable-maturity Treasury note yield, known as the swap spread, widened 5.06 basis points to 25.15 basis points. That was the largest increase since Nov. 30, when the gap widened by 6.5 basis points. The spread is based in part on expectations for the London interbank offered rate, or Libor.

“There is some worry that with what is going on in Greece there will be downgrades and this will cause a problem in funding and result in a rise in Libor,” said Ira Jersey, an interest-rate strategist in New York at Credit Suisse Group AG. “Swap spreads are widening as direct result.”

The yield on two-year Greek notes rose to a record 28.85 percent and 10-year bond rates gained 14 basis points today to 17.86 percent. The cost of protecting Greece against default climbed 74 basis points yesterday to an all-time high of 1,844 basis points in London, prices compiled by CMA show.

Government Bonds

The contracts, which typically rise as investor confidence worsens and fall as it improves, pay the buyer face value if a borrower fails to meet its obligations, less the value of the defaulted debt. A basis point equals $1,000 annually on a contract protecting $10 million of debt.

Bonds across the euro region underperformed German debt, Europe’s benchmark government securities. The extra yield, or spread, investors demand to hold Greek 10-year securities instead of similar-maturity bunds climbed today to 1,493 basis points, or 14.93 percentage points, while Irish, Spanish and Italian spreads also widened.

The securities of so-called core members of the currency bloc also underperformed relative to German debt, with 10-year yield spreads between Austrian, French, Belgian and Dutch debt over bunds widening. The yield on the German bund dropped 3 basis points to a five-month low of 2.92 percent.

Euro, Swaps

The euro depreciated 0.5 percent today to $1.4109, the weakest in three weeks, while demand for options that protect against a drop in the euro versus the U.S. currency is at the highest level in a year as the EU struggles to contain the sovereign-debt crisis.

The premium for euro three-month put options granting the right to sell the currency against the greenback reached 2.54 percentage points yesterday over calls, which allow for purchases. That’s the most since June 2010 on an intraday basis.

In the corporate bond market, the Markit iTraxx Europe Index of 125 companies with investment-grade ratings rose 2.25 basis points to 114, the highest since Jan. 10, according to JPMorgan Chase Co. The gauge has risen from the low this year of 94.3 on April 8.

“Nervousness has intensified,” said Nick Stamenkovic, a fixed-income strategist at RIA Capital Markets Ltd. in Edinburgh. “The market is increasingly fretting that the components won’t be in place for a bailout package. You see signs of contagion spreading. Until we see a resolution with the situation in Greece, you’ll see a flight to quality.”

Nasa is considering plans to land a probe on an asteroid that is on a potential collision course for Earth.

Knowledge Increased

“And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.”
—Genesis 11:6

Asteroid 1999 RQ36, which has a one-in-1,000 chance of hitting the Earth before the year 2200, would cause an explosion equivalent to hundreds of nuclear bombs detonating at once.
An analysis of its orbit has predicted that it is most likely to hit us on September 24, 2182 but scientists want to collect a sample of the rock to help forecast its trajectory more accurately.

If Nasa gives the plan the green light, the spacecraft would blast off in 2106 to map out and collect rock samples from the asteroid, which is 1,800 feet-wide.
The planned mission, called OSIRIS-Rex, is one of two finalists in competition for funding as part of the cash-strapped US space agency’s New Frontiers program.
The other contender is a mission to land on Venus. The competing plans will come under discussion at a two-day Nasa workshop in Washington DC starting on today. The winner will be announced next year.
Nasa has officially classified RQ36 as a ‘potentially hazardous asteroid’ as it passes within about 280,000 miles of Earth. Its orbit, which brings it closer to Earth, makes it easier to reach than other asteroids.
Michael Drake, who would lead the OSIRIS-Rex team if the project was chosen, said: “Being one of the easiest targets to get to coincidentally means that it also can easily hit us, too.”
Clark Chapman, a planetary scientist at Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, said an impact from RQ36 would cause a catastrophic explosion.
“It would be an enormous impact, like hundreds of the biggest nuclear bombs ever built exploding at once, creating a crater maybe 10 kilometers across,” he told National Geographic magazine.
An expert panel appointed by Barack Obama, the US president, to assess Nasa’s future space programme last year recommended bypassing the Moon in favour of a mission to land on an unidentified asteroid.
The plan mirrors the plot of the 1998 Hollywood film Deep Impact, in which the White House sends a spaceship to land on an asteroid which is hurtling towards the Earth.
The European Space Agency announced in 2008 that it plans to select a small asteroid, less than 0.6 miles across, near Earth and send a spacecraft to drill for dust and rubble for analysis.

If China’s satellites and spies were working properly, there would have been a flood of unsettling intelligence flowing into the Beijing headquarters of the Chinese navy last week. A new class of U.S. superweapon had suddenly surfaced nearby. It was an Ohio-class submarine, which for decades carried only nuclear missiles targeted against the Soviet Union, and then Russia. But this one was different: for nearly three years, the U.S. Navy has been dispatching modified “boomers” to who knows where (they do travel underwater, after all). Four of the 18 ballistic-missile subs no longer carry nuclear-tipped Trident missiles. Instead, they hold up to 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles each, capable of hitting anything within 1,000 miles with non-nuclear warheads.

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Perplexity

“…upon the earth distress•Strongs 4928: sunoche, soon-okh-ay´; from 4912; restraint, i.e. (figuratively) anxiety: — anguish, distress. of nations, with perplexity•Strongs 640: aporia, ap-or-ee´-a; from the same as 639; a (state of) quandary:—perplexity.
•Strongs 639: aporeo, ap-or-eh´-o; from a compound of 1 (as a negative particle) and the base of 4198; to have no way out, i.e. be at a loss (mentally):— (stand in) doubt, be perplexed….”
—Luke 21:25

Their capability makes watching these particular submarines especially interesting. The 14 Trident-carrying subs are useful in the unlikely event of a nuclear Armageddon, and Russia remains their prime target. But the Tomahawk-outfitted quartet carries a weapon that the U.S. military has used repeatedly against targets in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Iraq and Sudan. (See pictures of the U.S. military in the Pacific.)
That’s why alarm bells would have sounded in Beijing on June 28 when the Tomahawk-laden 560-ft. U.S.S. Ohio popped up in the Philippines’ Subic Bay. More alarms were likely sounded when the U.S.S. Michigan arrived in Pusan, South Korea, on the same day. And the Klaxons would have maxed out as the U.S.S. Florida surfaced, also on the same day, at the joint U.S.-British naval base on Diego Garcia, a flyspeck of an island in the Indian Ocean. In all, the Chinese military awoke to find as many as 462 new Tomahawks deployed by the U.S. in its neighborhood. “There’s been a decision to bolster our forces in the Pacific,” says Bonnie Glaser, a China expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “There is no doubt that China will stand up and take notice.”
U.S. officials deny that any message is being directed at Beijing, saying the Tomahawk triple play was a coincidence. But they did make sure that news of the deployments appeared in the Hong Kong–based South China Morning Post – on July 4, no less. The Chinese took notice quietly. “At present, common aspirations of countries in the Asian and Pacific regions are seeking for peace, stability and regional security,” Wang Baodong, spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said on Wednesday. “We hope the relevant U.S. military activities will serve for the regional peace, stability and security, and not the contrary.” (See pictures of the most expensive military planes.)
Last month, the Navy announced that all four of the Tomahawk-carrying subs were operationally deployed away from their home ports for the first time. Each vessel packs “the firepower of multiple surface ships,” says Captain Tracy Howard of Submarine Squadron 16 in Kings Bay, Ga., and can “respond to diverse threats on short notice.”
The move forms part of a policy by the U.S. government to shift firepower from the Atlantic to the Pacific theater, which Washington sees as the military focus of the 21st century. Reduced tensions since the end of the Cold War have seen the U.S. scale back its deployment of nuclear weapons, allowing the Navy to reduce its Trident fleet from 18 to 14. (Why 14 subs, as well as bombers and land-based missiles carrying nuclear weapons, are still required to deal with the Russian threat is a topic for another day.) (See “Obama Shelves U.S. Missile Shield: The Winners and Losers.”)
Sure, the Navy could have retired the four additional subs and saved the Pentagon some money, but that’s not how bureaucracies operate. Instead, it spent about $4 billion replacing the Tridents with Tomahawks and making room for 60 special-ops troops to live aboard each sub and operate stealthily around the globe. “We’re there for weeks, we have the situational awareness of being there, of being part of the environment,” Navy Rear Admiral Mark Kenny explained after the first Tomahawk-carrying former Trident sub set sail in 2008. “We can detect, classify and locate targets and, if need be, hit them from the same platform.”(Comment on this story.)
The submarines aren’t the only new potential issue of concern for the Chinese. Two major military exercises involving the U.S. and its allies in the region are now under way. More than three dozen naval ships and subs began participating in the “Rim of the Pacific” war games off Hawaii on Wednesday. Some 20,000 personnel from 14 nations are involved in the biennial exercise, which includes missile drills and the sinking of three abandoned vessels playing the role of enemy ships. Nations joining the U.S. in what is billed as the world’s largest-ever naval war game are Australia, Canada, Chile, Colombia, France, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Peru, Singapore and Thailand. Closer to China, CARAT 2010 – for Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training – just got under way off Singapore. The operation involves 17,000 personnel and 73 ships from the U.S., Singapore, Bangladesh, Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand. (See “Hu’s Visit: Finding a Way Forward on U.S.-China Relations.”)
China is absent from both exercises, and that’s no oversight. Many nations in the eastern Pacific, including Australia, Japan, Indonesia, South Korea and Vietnam, have been encouraging the U.S. to push back against what they see as China’s increasingly aggressive actions in the South China Sea. And the U.S. military remains concerned over China’s growing missile force – now more than 1,000 – near the Taiwan Strait. The Tomahawks’ arrival “is part of a larger effort to bolster our capabilities in the region,” Glaser says. “It sends a signal that nobody should rule out our determination to be the balancer in the region that many countries there want us to be.” No doubt Beijing got the signal.

Some experts believe that World War III will start 100 years after the first one and will take lives of hundreds of millions of people. Some scientists think that the war is already going on, nareing the completion of its first stage.

Wars and Rumors of Wars

“And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon.”
—Revelation 16:16

“Proclaim ye this among the Gentiles; Prepare war, wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near; let them come up: Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruninghooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong. Assemble yourselves, and come, all ye heathen, and gather yourselves together round about: thither cause thy mighty ones to come down, O LORD. Let the heathen be wakened, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat: for there will I sit to judge all the heathen round about.”
—Joel 3:9-12

Konstantin Sivkov, first VP of the Academy for Geopolitical Issues, developed a scientific concept of the reasons, stages and timeframes of World War II. He shared his forecast with Svobodnaya Pressa.

Sivkov believes that planet Earth has experienced a global, civilized crisis. The crisis was caused by several disproportions, namely: 1) conflicts between growth of production/consumption and available resources 2) conflicts between “poor” developing countries and “rich” industrially developed countries, between nations and transnational elite; 3) conflicts between spiritless free market with the power of money and spiritual roots of various civilizations, including Orthodox, Muslim, Buddhist and others.

“The analysis of possible solutions of these misbalances and conflicts shows that they are of antagonistic nature, and the crisis cannot be solved without significant infringement of interests of some large geopolitical subjects. This means that participation of military forces is unavoidable. Considering the global nature of the crisis, we may assume that military participation will be global as well, “Sivkov believes.

He predicts that World War III will be of coalitional nature. Countries will form coalitions based on their loyalty to one of the two models of world order.

The first model is “the world of civilized hierarchy.” Select few brutally exploit the rest of humanity. The second model is “civilized mutual support” or “civilized harmony.”

“In other words, the war will be waged to define the spiritual basis of new world order. It will either be based on individualism, selfishness and suppression, or community, domination of mutual interest to survive and develop and support each other. This is the main difference between the war to come and previous wars that were fought for economic redistribution.”

Two coalitions already exist. The first one is the alliance of the so-called industrially developed countries represented by Western civilizations. Spiritual foundations of this coalition are based on individualism and material possessions generating power of money. The coalition’s military and political core is represented by the block NATO. The second coalition involves countries of orthodox, Islamic and other civilizations based on the domination of spiritual over material. This coalition is interested in multipolar world order. Yet, these countries have not realized that they have mutual geopolitical interests, let alone a necessity in a political or military unity.

“The countries that are not a part of Western civilization are not ready for military confrontation neither in terms of organization nor technical preparedness. On the other hand, this coalition has overwhelming majority of people and control over ample natural resources and territories. This greatly increases their chances to win a long war and provides favorable circumstances for fighting the aggressor during the initial stages of war. Another potential advantage is that simultaneous attacks in all directions are practically impossible. This creates a reserve of time for consolidation of countries into an anti-imperialistic coalition. There is a possibility of supporting the countries that will become the first victims of aggressors,” Sivkov says.

The scientist is convinced that the war is already going on. So far it is in a relatively peaceful stage.

“The first stage that we may call an “attempt of peaceful crisis resolution” is nearing its completion. 20G summits fighting in the battle field right now are obviously not bringing the results. Imedi and Helsingin Sanomat provocations mark the beginning of stage two, that we may call a “threat period before the beginning of world war.” During this stage Western civilization has commenced preparation for local wars and armed conflicts for resources.

The main actions at this stage are information operations and actions in economic area that may take various forms, from economic sanctions to terrorist attacks against industrial facilities, as well as different activities of Special Forces,” says Sivkov.

“In a few years, the third stage will commence, the stage of “limited wars,” that will later turn into a full scale world war with all types of weapons.

The only restricting factor at the moment is Russia ’ s nuclear potential . According to the forecast of the scientist, the West will try to take away Russia’s nuclear shield.

“Considering the situation in Russia, when the fifth column of the West significantly affects decisions in Russia’s defense sector, in particular, the direction Russia’s armed forces will take, we can expect the form of SNF contract that will deprive Russia of its nuclear shield. Of course, it will be presented with a beautiful wrapping of struggle for the world without nuclear weapons.

Russia may expect physical elimination of its nuclear potential during first stages of the world war (organized terrorist attacks, etc.) with further transition of neo-imperialistic coalition to unlimited use of nuclear weapons, which will bring it victory in the war,” Sivkov stated.

He believes that aggressors will not be stopped with a possibility of death of hundreds of millions of people.

“History shows that the elite of “selfish” civilization do not get stopped by human sacrifices if there is a guarantee they themselves will survive in bunkers. The analysis shows that if the new world war is waged, it will touch the majority of the world population, all continents, oceans and seas. Over 100 million people may participate in this war. Total demographic losses may exceed several hundred millions of people. Therefore, all honest people on Earth, including those who form the “selfish” coalition must do everything they can not to allow it to happen. To do this, we have to mitigate with the force of law or other methods, the greed of transnational and national

tycoons of the financial sector. We have to stop their ambitious, greedy, shameless and sometimes stupid politicians. This can only be done based on international consolidation efforts,” the expert summarized.

Graduates from Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton and other Ivy League schools have accelerated our nation and the world toward the final-day battle of Armageddon.

To view dictionary popup window put your cursor on the blue scripture words

The Falling Away

“Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away•Strongs 646: apostasia, ap-os-tas-ee´-ah; feminine of the same as 647; defection from truth (properly, the state) (“apostasy”):—falling away, forsake. first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;”
—2 Thessalonians 2:3

These schools with a Christian history (more below) are now bastions of secular humanism. They have produced leaders who are directly responsible for the debacles that we are facing — and which are threatening the very survival of America and the world, as we know it. These very bright and gifted people have left us with accelerating problems on many fronts.

The areas

Forty years of flawed Middle East policy is leading to the world’s final battles

The lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) agenda is legalizing immorality and leading to judgment

The financial derivatives collapse is a worldwide financial contagion

The financial collapse on Wall Street is leading to a one-world financial order and a one-world currency

Secular humanism has led to a godless, immoral world

Ecumenical meetings between the Protestant churches and Muslims are leading to a one-world religious order

Islam is being legitimized to insure the world’s oil flow

Islam’s Sharia finance system is being endorsed

The global warming hoax is an attempt at a one-world order

Violation of the U.S. Constitution is leading to one-world accountability and the federal government’s takeover of America

The ACLU’s excesses have targeted church and state issues

Ellis Washington, in his article “Harvard, the Ivy League and the forgotten Puritans,” wrote:

“How did the eight so-called ‘’Ivy League’ schools — Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Brown, University of Pennsylvania, Cornell and Dartmouth — go from being training grounds for Christian missionaries and ministers and respected citadels of higher education to what they are now — propaganda factories for every leftist, perverted, radical, tyrannical, failed ideology known to mankind? — Marxism, Darwinism, Freudianism, Higher Criticism, communism, multiculturalism, relativism, naturalism, positivism, socialism, liberalism, egalitarianism, feminist studies, gay studies, transgender studies, transvestite studies, outcome-based education, radical environmentalism, etc.”

Unbeknownst to them, all of these schools are rapidly producing leaders in our country that are leading us to the final days and Jesus Christ’s return to Jerusalem. America may not be predominant in final-day Scriptures, but no nation is a more significant catalyst to the final days than the United States of America under the leadership of academic elites whose god is secular humanism.

Ivy League colleges

Many Ivy League schools were opened as seminaries to train Christian pastors and missionaries to share Jesus Christ with the world. Today, these secular humanist schools of thought are behind the rapid movement of our nation away from God.

The following are excerpts directly from the Ivy League universities websites that show their Christian heritage:

Harvard University: Harvard, which celebrated its 350th anniversary in 1986, is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. Founded 16 years after the arrival of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. During its early years, the College offered a classic academic course based on the English university model but consistent with the prevailing Puritan philosophy of the first colonists.

Although many of its early graduates became ministers in Puritan congregations throughout New England, the College was never formally affiliated with a specific religious denomination. An early brochure, published in 1643, justified the College’s existence: “To advance Learning and perpetuate it to Posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate Ministry to the Churches.”

Yale University: Incorporated as the Collegiate School, the institution traces its roots to 17th-century clergymen who sought to establish a college to train clergy and political leaders for the colony. Yale was founded in 1701 nearby Saybrook as the Collegiate School to educate students for “Public employment both in Church & Civil State.”

In the over 300 years since its founding, Yale has worked to educate those who would become leaders and contributors to every sector of society. Yale graduates include five Presidents of the United States (including four of the last six), 45 Cabinet members, over 500 members of Congress, and too many other senior officials, judges, diplomats and military officers to name. (Yale Charter)

University of Pennsylvania: “It has long been regretted as a misfortune to the youth of this province that we have no academy in which they might receive the accomplishment of a regular education,” observed Benjamin Franklin in 1749.

Franklin’s associates in this college-creating endeavor included ten patriots who would go on to sign the Declaration of Independence and seven signers of the Constitution. The Academy of Philadelphia opened in 1751 in the building, which once housed George Whitfield’s charity tabernacle on Philadelphia’s Fourth Street, near Arch.

Princeton University: The College of New Jersey (as Princeton University was known until 1896) was a child of the Great Awakening, an institution born in opposition to the religious tenets that had ruled the colonial era. The principles on which Princeton University was founded may be traced to the Log College in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, founded by William Tennent in 1726.

Tennent was a Presbyterian minister who, along with fellow evangelists Theodorus Jacobus Frelinghuysen, Jonathan Edwards, Samuel Davies and George Whitefield of England, preached and taught an approach to religion and life that was the very essence of the Great Awakening period.

The seven founders of the College of New Jersey were all Presbyterians, with Ebenezer Pemberton, a minister and a graduate of Harvard, the only one of the seven who did not graduate from Yale. The remaining six included Jonathan Dickinson, Aaron Burr Sr. and John Pierson, who were ministers; William Smith, a lawyer; Peter Van Brugh Livingston, a merchant; and William Peartree Smith.

The aforementioned seven approached Gov. Lewis Morris in late 1745 or early 1746 seeking a charter for a college that would, in time, become Princeton University. Gov. Morris, an Anglican and a Loyalist, refused the charter because of the applicants’ anti-Anglican views and beliefs. Soon afterwards, Gov. Morris died and John Hamilton became Acting Governor of New Jersey. Hamilton was also an Anglican but more liberal-minded than his predecessor.

Columbia University: Controversy preceded the founding of the College, with various groups competing to determine its location and religious affiliation. Advocates of New York City met with success on the first point, while the Anglicans prevailed on the latter. However, all constituencies agreed to commit themselves to principles of religious liberty in establishing the policies of the College.

In July 1754, Samuel Johnson held the first classes in a new schoolhouse adjoining Trinity Church, located on what is now lower Broadway in Manhattan. There were eight students in the class. At King’s College, the future leaders of colonial society could receive an education designed to “enlarge the Mind, improve the Understanding, polish the whole Man, and qualify them to support the brightest Characters in all the elevated stations in life.”

The college reopened in 1784 with a new name — Columbia — that embodied the patriotic fervor that had inspired the nation’s quest for independence. The revitalized institution was recognizable as the descendant of its colonial ancestor, thanks to its inclination toward Anglicanism and the needs of an urban population, but there were important differences:

Brown University: As the third oldest college in New England and the seventh oldest in America, Brown was the Baptist answer to Congregationalist Yale and Harvard; Presbyterian Princeton; and Episcopalian Penn and Columbia. At the time, it was the only one that welcomed students of all religious persuasions (following the example of Roger Williams, who founded Rhode Island in 1636 on the same principle).

Brown has long since shed its Baptist affiliation, but it remains dedicated to diversity and intellectual freedom.

Dartmouth College: The Reverend Eleazar Wheelock, a Congregational minister from Connecticut, founded Dartmouth College in 1769. He had earlier established Moor’s Charity School in Lebanon, Connecticut, principally for the education of Native Americans.

Middle East affair — CFR members

The United States Middle East policy legacy has been 40 years of miscalculations and missed opportunities. American diplomats and presidents refuse to acknowledge that Arabs and members of Islam are like no other people in the world and must be handled differently.

Moreover, the CFR’s pressuring of Israel to divide her land has empowered the terror organizations that are threats to the world. The $1 trillion-and-climbing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq continue to take a major toll.

Henry Kissinger (Harvard) was Richard Nixon’s national security advisor and then secretary of state. He was one of the original participants in the land-for-peace efforts.

Zbigniew Brzezinski (Harvard and Columbia) served as national security advisor for Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981. He advises Obama and is not a friend of Israel.

George H.W. Bush (Yale) began the latest land-for-peace process in Madrid, Spain, in 1991.

Bill Clinton (Yale) was active for eight years in the Israeli-Palestinian talks.

G.W. Bush (Yale and Harvard) coined the term “Israel and Palestine, two democratic state living side-by-side in peace and security.” Bush’s aggressive war in Iraq and Afghanistan accelerated final-day events. His efforts to democratize former Soviet Union countries infuriated Russian President Vladimir Putin and increased his involvement in the Middle East and aligning with final-day countries; Iran, Turkey, Syria and others.

Hillary Clinton (Yale), Obama’s secretary of state, is active in the peace process in Israel.

Richard Haas (Harvard) is the president of the CFR who introduced the book Restoring the Balance: A Middle East Strategy for the Next President in the first week of December 2008. The book was the collaborative effort of 15 scholars.

LGBT

President Barack Obama (Columbia and Harvard) was the first president to endorse the Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay, Transgender agenda through proclamations, posting of his LGBT agenda and legislation.

Here’s how Harvard grads implemented the LGBT campaign:

Putting strategies to work: the homosexual propaganda campaign in America’s media:

http://www.article8.org/docs/gay_strategies/after_the_ball.htm

If you think that the radical changes in the minds of Americans — and in your own mind — about homosexuality in the last decade are an accident, you must read the section below. It’s taken from the 1989 book, After the Ball: How America will conquer its fear and hatred of gays in the 90s (Penguin Books) — which immediately became a beacon for the then-emerging homosexual movement.

Building on the basic strategies outlined in Marshall Kirk’s groundbreaking 1987 article, “The Overhauling of Straight America,” this book puts forth the very sophisticated psychological persuasion and propaganda mass media techniques that we’ve all seen and been affected by over the years — without understanding their purpose and impact.

Kirk is a researcher in neuropsychiatry. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1980, majoring in psychology, and writing his honors thesis on the testing of gifted children.

The book describes his co-author Hunter Madsen as having received a doctorate in politics from Harvard in 1985 and as an expert on public persuasion tactics and social marketing who has designed commercial advertising on Madison Avenue, served as a consultant to gay media campaigns across the country, and appears frequently on national media as an advocate for gay rights.

Of particular note is their tactical device throughout the book of referring to religious dissenters and other critics of homosexual behavior as “bigots.” Their language is purposefully crude to enhance that idea. Much like the “big lie” theory developed in the 1920s and 1930s by the Nazis, the constant repetition of this eventually has the desired psychological effect on masses of people.

As you read this, keep in mind that it was written in 1989 — and look around to see how far the homosexual movement has gotten using these techniques.

David Kupelian of WND.com wrote:

Kirk and Madsen’s “war goal,” explains marketing expert Paul E. Rondeau of Regent University, was to “force acceptance of homosexual culture into the mainstream, to silence opposition, and ultimately to convert American society.” In his comprehensive study, Selling Homosexuality to America, Rondeau writes:

President Obama (Columbia and Yale) selected Elena Kagan, the dean of the Harvard Law School, to be his Solicitor-General. She has been committed to the elimination of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

Cass Sunstien (Harvard) — the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. In a recent book, Sunstein proposes that government recognition of marriage be discontinued.

“Under our proposal, the word marriage would no longer appear in any laws, and marriage licenses would no longer be offered or recognized by any level of government,” argues Sunstein. He continues, “The only legal status states would confer on couples would be a civil union, which would be a domestic partnership agreement between any two people.”

Sen. Joe Lieberman (Yale): The current law, dubbed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” calls for service members to be discharged if they disclose that they are homosexual.

The law “is inconsistent with our most important national values and diminishes our military readiness,” one of the bill’s sponsors, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) told reporters.

“The record is now clear that the application of the current ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ policy has diminished America’s military readiness,” he said.

George W. Bush (Yale and Harvard) committed the U.S. to $50 billion in fighting AIDS. In search of a legacy, President George W. Bush committed $15 billion in funds over five years to battle AIDS in Africa.

Financial derivatives

The financial derivatives model was established at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It has cost American taxpayers $1 trillion and climbing. It was a major vehicle in the subprime fiasco and all other excesses on Wall Street.

Myron Scholes met Fischer Black (Harvard), and Robert C. Merton (Columbia), who joined MIT in 1970. For the following years, Scholes, Black and Merton undertook groundbreaking research in asset pricing, including the work on their famous option-pricing model.

The term Black–Scholes refers to three closely related concepts: The Black–Scholes model is a mathematical model of the market for an equity, in which the equity’s price is a stochastic process.

The Black–Scholes PDE is a partial differential equation which (in the model) must be satisfied by the price of a derivative on the equity. The Black–Scholes formula is the result obtained by solving the Black–Scholes PDE for a European call option.

The Guardian’s Julia Flinch: The worst economic turmoil since the Great Depression is not a natural phenomenon but a man-made disaster in which we all played a part.

The following is from “25 people at the heart of the meltdown”:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jan/26/road-ruin-recession-individuals-economy

Alan Greenspan, chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, 1987- 2006 (Columbia). He is viewed as one of those most culpable for the crisis. He is blamed for allowing the housing bubble to develop as a result of his low interest rates and lack of regulation in mortgage lending. He backed subprime lending and urged homebuyers to swap fixed-rate mortgages for variable rate deals, which left borrowers unable to pay when interest rates rose.

For many years, Greenspan also defended the booming derivatives business, which barely existed when he took over the Fed, but which mushroomed from $100 trillion in 2002 to more than $500 trillion five years later.

William Jefferson Clinton (Yale). President Clinton’s tenure was characterized by economic prosperity and financial deregulation, which in many ways set the stage for the excesses of recent years. Among his biggest strokes of free-wheeling capitalism was the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, a cornerstone of Depression-era regulation. He also signed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which exempted credit-default swaps from regulation.

In 1995, Clinton loosened housing rules by rewriting the Community Reinvestment Act, which put added pressure on banks to lend in low-income neighborhoods. It is the subject of heated political and scholarly debate whether any of these moves are to blame for our troubles, but they certainly played a role in creating a permissive lending environment.

G.W. Bush, U.S. President (Yale and Harvard). From the start, Bush embraced a governing philosophy of deregulation. That trickled down to federal oversight agencies, which in turn eased off on banks and mortgage brokers. Bush did push early on for tighter controls over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but he failed to move Congress.

Stan O’Neil, Merrill Lynch (Harvard). Merrill Lynch CEO for nearly six years (ending in 2007), O’Neil guided the firm from its familiar turf — fee businesses like asset management — into the lucrative game of creating collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), which were largely made of subprime mortgage bonds. To provide a steady supply of the bonds — the raw pork for his booming sausage business — O’Neal allowed Merrill to load up on the bonds and keep them on its books.

By June 2006, Merrill had amassed $41 billion in subprime CDOs and mortgage bonds, according to Fortune. As the subprime market unwound, Merrill went into crisis, and Bank of America swooped in to buy it.

Sandy Weil, Citicorp (Cornell). Who decided banks had to be all things to all customers? Weill did. Starting with a low-end lender in Baltimore, he cobbled together the first great financial supermarket, Citigroup. Along the way, Weill’s acquisitions (Smith Barney, Travelers, etc.) and persistent lobbying shattered Glass-Steagall — the law that limited the investing risks banks could take. Rivals followed Citi.

The swollen banks are now one of the country’s major economic problems. Every major financial firm seems too big to fail, leading the government to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to keep them afloat. The biggest problem bank is Weill’s Citigroup. The government has already spent $45 billion trying to fix it.

Frank Raines, Fannie Mae (Harvard). Raines, who was at the helm when things really went off course. A former Clinton Administration budget director, Raines was the first African-American CEO of a Fortune 500 company when he took the helm in 1999. He left in 2004 with the company embroiled in an accounting scandal just as it was beginning to make big investments in subprime mortgage securities that would later sour.

Fannie and rival Freddie Mac became wards of the U.S. government.

Robert Rubin (Harvard). In 1997, together with then-Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, Rubin strongly opposed the regulation of derivatives, when such regulation was proposed by then-head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Brooksley Born.

Overexposure to credit derivatives of mortgage-backed securities was a key reason for the failure of U.S. financial institutions Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, American International Group, and Washington Mutual in 2008. Rubin was highlighted in a Public Broadcasting Service “Frontline” report, “The Warning.”

Arthur Levitt Jr., a former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, has said in explaining Rubin’s strong opposition to the regulations proposed by Born that Greenspan and Rubin were “joined at the hip on this.” “They were certainly very fiercely opposed to this and persuaded me that this would cause chaos,” said Levitt.

Secular humanism

Humanist Manifesto II — Excerpt from the Preface

by Paul Kurtz (Columbia) and Edwin H. Wilson (1973)

As in 1933, humanists still believe that traditional theism, especially faith in the prayer-hearing God assumed to live and care for persons, to hear and understand their prayers, and to be able to do something about them, is an unproved and outmoded faith.

Salvationism, based on mere affirmation, still appears as harmful, diverting people with false hopes of heaven hereafter. Reasonable minds look to other means for survival.

New statements should be developed to supersede this, but for today it is our conviction that humanism offers an alternative that can serve present-day needs and guide humankind toward the future.

Secular humanism is a humanist philosophy that upholds reason, ethics and justice, and specifically rejects the supernatural and the spiritual as warrants of moral reflection and decision-making. Like other types of humanism, secular humanism is a life-stance focusing on the way human beings can lead good and happy lives.

From Harvard Magazine, December 2005, p. 33:

Paul Kurtz received his Master’s degree and Doctor of Philosophy degree from Columbia University. Many of his contemporaries attend Ivy League Schools.

Global warming hoax (Harvard)

Al Gore (Harvard) — Few people have been as vocal about the urgency of global warming and the need to reinvent the way the world produces and consumes energy as Mr. Gore.

Critics, mostly on the political right and among global warming skeptics, say Mr. Gore is poised to become the world’s first “carbon billionaire,” profiteering from government policies he supports that would direct billions of dollars to the business ventures he has invested in. (The Telegraph, UK)

Sharia finance (Harvard-sponsored meeting)

Islamic Finance Project. Through their Islamic Legal Studies Program at Harvard Law School, Harvard sponsored a Treasury Department seminar last week entitled ‘Islamic Finance 101.” The advertised purpose of the closed meeting was to provide Treasury regulators with objective information on Islamic Finance, a rapidly growing sector also known as Sharia-Compliant Finance (SCF). In reality, the seminar was little more than a government-sponsored promotion of the subversive Islamist agenda carried out under the guise of Sharia Finance. (Frank Gaffney Jr.)

Constitution (Yale Law School dean)

According to the past writings of Harold Koh, the former Yale Law School dean who is now the U.S. government’s top authority on international law and its application domestically, “norms” like the new Human Rights Council resolution should supersede U.S. laws and even the Constitution.

ACLU (Harvard)

The ACLU’s Crystal Eastman and Roger Baldwin. Baldwin received his bachelor’s and master’s from Harvard. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was founded in 1920 by a group of people who were concerned that the Bill of Rights was nothing but a “parchment barrier” to governmental misdeeds. The ACLU is a legal organization that provides attorneys and legal expertise in cases where Civil Rights are allegedly being violated.

(Note: Many religious groups oppose the ACLU because it actively works to over-indulge in “separation of church and state” issues. A majority of the members are far-left liberals. Jay Sekulow’s ACLJ opposes them continuously.)

One-world order (Princeton and Yale)

Princeton graduate John Foster Dulles, responsible for the convergence of one-world political order and one-world religious order.

World leaders gathered in New York to resolve global problems with former President Bill Clinton as he opened the fifth annual session of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI).

Obama gave the keynote speech, saying, “Bill Clinton has helped improve and save the lives of millions.” In the audience sat another 60 current and former heads of state along with the chief executives of Coca-Cola, Nissan, ExxonMobil and Goldman Sachs and some Hollywood stars.

Among its accomplishments, the CGI says, are commitments to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 60 million tons, treat 34 million people for tropical diseases, give 10 million children better education, and provide safe drinking water to three million people in Asia. (Agence France-Presse)

One-world religious order (Yale Divinity School)

Yale theology declaration that God and Allah are the same

An eight-day conference at Yale University that drew scores of prominent Muslim, Christian Protestant and Catholic leaders from around the world ended with a unanimously accepted declaration for mutual respect, understanding and further interfaith discussions.

“Let us learn to love each other. Let us learn to love all neighbors. And let us do that in the name of our common future and in the name of our one God,” Yale Divinity School professor Miroslav Volf, who co-hosted the event, told about 150 participants on the final day of the July 24-31 conference.

In the name of the Infinitely Good God whom we should love with all our Being …

When it comes to Iran, the U.S. may be facing a cataclysm.

To view dictionary popup window put your cursor on the blue scripture words.

Wars and Rumors of Wars

“And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon. ”
—Revelation 16:16

Time To Look Up

“And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption•Strongs 629: apolutrosis, ap-ol-oo´-tro-sis; from a compound of 575 and 3083; (the act) ransom in full, i.e. (figuratively) riddance, or (specially) Christian salvation: — deliverance, redemption.
•Strongs 575: apo, apo´; a primary particle; “off,” i.e. away (from something near), in various senses (of place, time, or relation; literal or figurative): — (x here-)after, ago, at, because of, before, by (the space of), for(-th), from, in, (out) of, off, (up-)on(-ce), since, with. In composition (as a prefix) it usually denotes separation, departure, cessation, completion, reversal, etc.
•Strongs 3083: lutron, loo´-tron; from 3089; something to loosen with, i.e. a redemption price (figuratively, atonement): — ransom. draweth nigh.”
—Luke 21:28

Victor Davis Hanson is a military historian; Robert Baer a former CIA field officer. Both have studied the Middle East for decades, traveled to the area repeatedly in recent years and written about the region extensively. And both have become convinced that we may be facing a cataclysm.

Hanson and Baer each presented his analysis during an interview this past week. Although they differ on certain matters, they agree on five observations. The first: If not already capable of doing so, Iran will be able to produce nuclear weapons in mere months.

Baer noted that Iran’s scientific and technical capacity is impressive. The country may very well be able to produce enough enriched uranium for several nuclear weapons on its own. If not, Iran can obtain enriched uranium in other ways. “The Iranians are very good at procuring banned materials very easily,” said Baer. “They are very close [to having what they need to produce weapons]. They could move very quickly.”

How quickly?

“Six months, a year.”

The second observation: The Iranians have no interest in running a bluff. Once able to produce nuclear weapons, they will almost certainly do so.

“We see Iran as the power in the region,” Hanson said. “But when Iran looks at the region, it sees danger everywhere.” In Iraq, a democratic government has achieved stability, which can only incite the dissident movement in Iran. In Lebanon, Hezbollah, Iran’s client, has failed in its attempt to capture control of the country, finding itself contained and marginalized instead. The Sunni states of Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt and the emirates look upon Iran, a Shia state, with sectarian hostility.

“The Iranians, think, ‘My gosh, we are in an unstable position,’ ” Hanson said. “‘Maybe a bomb or two will allow us to do what Pakistan has done. Maybe it will allow us to achieve some autonomy.’”

The third observation: As the Iranians scramble to produce nuclear weapons, the Obama administration appears too feckless, inexperienced or deluded to stop them.

Already, the administration has committed two errors. Last summer, when millions of Iranians took to the streets to protest their country’s corrupt presidential election, it failed to encourage the protesters, merely looking on. “Obama could have said to the Iranian people, ‘We support your legitimate concerns over constitutional government,’” Hanson argued. “Instead he was saying, ‘Let’s wait and see who wins.’ It did not look good.”

Then last month the Obama administration announced that the U.S. no longer planned to deploy anti-missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic. These emplacements, which the Bush administration had promised, would have protected Eastern Europe against long-range missiles from Iran. The Obama administration canceled the anti-missile defenses to please Russia, hoping that Russia would pressure Iran in return. “Russia is never going to help,” Hanson said. “Tension in the Gulf would raise oil prices, helping Russia. Anything that causes the United States problems, Putin is for.”

What options does the administration still possess? “We could get the Europeans to immediately stop exporting gas to Iran,” Hanson explained. “We could have some kind of blockade of the Persian Gulf. We are talking about very serious things. But they would put pressure on Iran, ostracizing it.” Will President Obama pursue such options? Does he possess the political will? Hanson and Baer doubted it. “We have a president who likes to be liked,” Hanson said.

The fourth observation: Israel cannot tolerate a nuclear Iran.

“The Israelis have some bunker busters,” Baer said. “They could take out some sites underground. They could set the Iranian nuclear program back years.” Would the Israelis be willing to accept the risks a military strike would entail? “This is just 65 years after the Holocaust,” Hanson said. “My God, we are talking about 6 million people who were executed while the world watched, and now we have a person [Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran] who is promising to do it again.”

What is the probability that Israel will strike Iran within the next six months?

“Forty-nine percent,” said Baer.

“I would say 50-50,” Hanson replied.

The final observation: Iran would retaliate.

“Iran’s deterrent doctrine is to strike back everywhere it can,” Baer explained. “We should expect the worst.” Iran would attack American supply lines in Iraq and command Hezbollah to start a civil war in Lebanon. It would fire surface-to-surface missiles at every oil facility within range, wreaking devastation in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states while removing millions of barrels of oil a day from the world markets. The economy of the entire globe would suffer a paroxysm. The Middle East could descend into chaos. The U.S. would experience the worst crisis in decades.

After the assassination 95 years ago of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the great powers of Europe engaged in meaningless diplomatic maneuvers. “Austria has sent a bullying and humiliating ultimatum to Serbia, who cannot possibly comply with it,” British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith confided in a letter. “[W]e are in measurable, or at least imaginable, distance of a real Armageddon.”

A big nation attempting to humiliate a small nation in a way the small nation simply cannot accept. Unseriousness among great powers. A gathering sense of impending catastrophe. Once again, it may be Armageddon time.

Peter Robinson, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a former White House speech writer, writes a weekly column for Forbes.

It’s business as before. Only this time with a hint of maniacal defiance

To view dictionary popup window put your cursor on the blue scripture words.

Days of Noah

“But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.”
—Matthew 24:37

Violence

“The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence•Strongs 2555:chamacç, khaw-mawce´; from 2554; violence; by implication, wrong; by meton. unjust gain:—cruel(-ty), damage, false, injustice, x oppressor, unrighteous, violence (against, done), violent (dealing), wrong
•Strongs 2554: chamacç, khaw-mas´; a primitive root; to be violent; by implication, to maltreat:—make bare, shake off, violate, do violence, take away violently, wrong, imagine wrongfully.
—Genesis 6:11

Perplexity

“…upon the earth distress•Strongs 4928: sunoche, soon-okh-ay´; from 4912; restraint, i.e. (figuratively) anxiety: — anguish, distress. of nations, with perplexity•Strongs 640: aporia, ap-or-ee´-a; from the same as 639; a (state of) quandary:—perplexity.
•Strongs 639: aporeo, ap-or-eh´-o; from a compound of 1 (as a negative particle) and the base of 4198; to have no way out, i.e. be at a loss (mentally):— (stand in) doubt, be perplexed….”
—Luke 21:25

More than a whiff of Armageddon in the air these last few days, what with Sydney Harbour turning blood red and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad repeating his Holocaust-was-a-lie libel at the United Nations, a denial carrying in its coat-tails the threat that it won’t be a lie the next time. As Simon Schama wrote in a wrathful article in the Financial Times, “Far from being some sort of antic sideshow to his regime’s ambition to acquire nuclear weapons, the obsession with annihilating Israel, it ought generally to be acknowledged, is the prime reason for it.”

Meanwhile, in this paper, Johann Hari was contemplating an apocalypse of another sort as our species succumbs to what he calls “planetary fever” – the South Pacific drowning, the Amazon rainforest burning down, the Arctic belching its warming gasses into the atmosphere. “If we despair and wait glumly for the meltdown,” he warned, “we will make it so.”

One way or another, though, Sydney looked rather beautiful shrouded in the desert dust – but then apocalypse haunts our imaginations precisely because it is beautiful – the prospects for humanity are not good. The thing Simon Schama says we ought to acknowledge I have a terrible fear we would rather not. It sits easier with our ideologies to call it scaremongering: Israel and its friends merely softening us up for more Zionist predation. And Johann Hari’s scenario the same. Though in the latter case it’s not ideology or glumness we have to worry about so much as derring-do insouciance. It’s not in our natures to despair. Eat, drink and be merry is more our style.

Have you tried to buy a Louis Vuitton handbag from Selfridge’s lately? I ask the question, not to lighten the tone, but because the summer-long buying frenzy at the Louis Vuitton concession at Selfridge’s, still going strong the last time I checked, proves our refusal to take catastrophe seriously. Reader, you would think from the queues, sometimes extending into Oxford Street, that a Louis Vuitton handbag is not only a reason for living but expresses the quintessence of life itself.

The concession itself is cordoned off. Two bouncers at one end, a sort of maître d’ at the other with a clipboard in her hand, showing you to a counter when one comes free and otherwise keeping you calm while you wait. In early summer the buyers were mainly from Saudi Arabia and Dubai. Now they are Chinese, with a few mistresses of Moscovite oligarchs thrown in.

So why the urgency? Even by the prevailing standards of handbag hideousness, Louis Vuittons are unlovely to look at. They appear to be made of brown linoleum on which the letters L and V are stamped, which might be an inducement if your name happens to be Larissa Vine, or Lexi Viagra – or Louis Vuitton, come to that – but otherwise what use a person has for someone else’s initials escapes me. What is more, the distinctive ugliness of Louis Vuitton bags makes them ludicrously easy to copy, which is why you come across African itinerants peddling them for flompence in every holiday resort in Europe. You know the scene. One minute the street is empty, the next upwards of a dozen Africans are rolling out bed sheets on which they display identical fake Louis Vuitton handbags until the Louis Vuitton police arrive, whereupon they have to roll up their bed sheets and disappear down an alley. The ludicrous re-enactment of this ritual, day after day, wherever there’s the faintest prospect of a tourist – a thousand, thousand copies of an object you wouldn’t think anyone would want were it genuine being rolled out of a bed sheet and then rolled back into it again – is suggestive of some deeper futility. Just don’t ask me what. Maybe it’s simply futility itself. The futility of our species.

“Recession! What recession?” – as the taxi driver dropping you off at the Ritz never fails to ask. The country is now full of recession bores, complaining that there isn’t one, which ought not to be, when you think about it, a matter of complaint at all; but our irritation masks a discomfort we aren’t certain how to express. For this is a recession that has divided more than ever those who have from those who don’t. Leave aside the odd sacrificial banker who’s had the decency to throw himself from a top-storey window, and the few more we’ve symbolically locked away, and this recession has barely scratched the rich. It is a recession of the poor. The poor lose their already miserably paid jobs while the rich queue patiently for their Louis Vuitton handbags which, let us not forget, are very far from being the most expensive handbags on the market.

Tell me this isn’t Armageddon Now! Narrow your eyes and tell me that what you see on the streets doesn’t resemble what you always imagined the last days of the Roman Empire would have been like – women costumed as though for an orgy that has lost its savour, hoisted on to shoes that make them walk like hobbled horses, parodies of themselves weighed down with gigantic party handbags costing more than an English teacher earns in a month and bearing someone else’s initials; while the men, worried for their jobs but still spending, spending, peer after them uncertain whether what they feel is desire or derision.

The party was supposed to be over. After the orgy the wake. No more glugging back the Krug. No more blackened cod on Caspian sevruga or Wagyu beef in pear soaked in dai gingo sake. If this recession was going to have an upside, we thought, it was that we wouldn’t have to book a table at our favourite restaurant two years before we wanted it. But it’s business as before. Only this time with a hint of maniacal defiance. It is irrational not to be a little superstitious. You have to be demented to put yourself on a waiting list for a Hermès Birkin handbag costing £15,000 – think of all the Louis Vuittons you could buy for that! – and not know that you are asking the gods to strike you down.

There can be only one explanation: we are half in love with Armageddon. Bring it on. And so, transfixed by Holocaust-denied turning into Holocaust-fulfilled, we give the murder-speaking Ahmadinejad the time of day. We warm the planet, needing the profits from our factories to keep our daughters hobbling on their stilettos and never mind that their daughters won’t have a street to hobble down. So beautiful, Sydney Harbour seen through the fiery red desert dust, like a city burning. So richly to be desired, the end of everything we love.