Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your
contribution is not tax-deductible.)
PayPal Acct: 
Feedback: 
Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):
| Tuesday, August 04, 01:30:40pm | [ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, [3], 4 ] |
| Subject: Kirk Douglas Birthday Message | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Monday, December 11, 09:55:20am  Saturday December 9, 9:00 am ET I have a message to convey to America's young people. A 90th birthday is special. In my case, this birthday is not only special but miraculous. I survived World War II, a helicopter crash, a stroke, and two new knees. It's a tradition that when a "birthday boy" stands over his cake he makes a silent wish for his life and then blows out the candles. I have followed that tradition for 89 years but on my 90th birthday, I have decided to rebel. Instead of making a silent wish for myself, I want to make a LOUD wish for THE WORLD. Let's face it: THE WORLD IS IN A MESS and you are inheriting it. Generation Y, you are on the cusp. You are the group facing many problems: abject poverty, global warming, genocide, AIDS, and suicide bombers to name a few. These problems exist, and the world is silent. We have done very little to solve these problems. Now, we leave it to you. You have to fix it because the situation is intolerable. You need to rebel, to speak up, write, vote, and care about people and the world you live in. We live in the best country in the world. I know. My parents were Russian immigrants. America is a country where EVERYONE, regardless of race, creed, or age has a chance. I had that chance. You are the generation that is most impacted and the generation that can make a difference. I love this country because I came from a life of poverty. I was able to work my way through college and go into acting, the field that I love. There is no guarantee in this country that you will be successful. But you always have a chance. Nothing should interfere with it. You have to make sure that nothing stands in the way. When I blow out my candles -- 90! ... it will take a long time ... but I'll be thinking of you. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Source: Kirk Douglas |
| Subject: Still more Princess Diana | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Monday, December 11, 09:46:30am  Last updated at 10:48am on 11th December 2006 American intelligence agencies were bugging Princess Diana's telephone over her relationship with a US billionaire, the Mail's sister paper has learned. Evening Standard reports that she was even forced to abandon a planned holiday with her sons in the US with tycoon Teddy Forstmann on advice from secret services, who passed on their concerns to their British counterparts. Both US and British intelligence then forced Diana to change her plans to stay with Mr Forstmann in the summer of 1997, saying it was too "dangerous" to take her sons there. Instead the princess took the fateful decision to take a summer break with Harrods owner Mohamed Fayed. This ultimately led to her going to Paris with his son Dodi, where they died in a car crash. The revelation from independent inquiries by the Evening Standard comes as it emerged that Princess Diana's phone was bugged by US intelligence agencies on the night she died without the permission of the British secret intelligence services. Authoritative leaks say the extraordinary revelations will be published this week by Lord Stevens and is bound to raise fresh questions about conspiracy theories. The US secret service was monitoring Diana's friendship with the controversial financier Mr Forstmann for some weeks. Mohamed Fayed has always insisted the princess and Dodi Fayed were murdered in a plot involving MI6 agents and US intelligence. The Standard has learned that Diana had agreed to a week's holiday with princes William and Harry in the US. She had accepted an invitation from her one-time American boyfriend Mr Forstmann to stay with him at his house in the Hamptons. But as she was travelling with the princes, she needed the trip to be cleared by the British security services. They surprisingly vetoed Diana's plans because of concerns about the security surrounding the billionaire's homes or perhaps a possible threat from elsewhere. The decision by the security services ultimately led to Diana striking up her friendship with Dodi and returning to the south of France to holiday with him. This led to her being in Paris on 31 August, the day of the crash. The Evening Standard also understands that US secret services have a number of secret files on Diana and her closest associates that are held by the national security agency. The files, which include reports from foreign intelligence - thought to include MI5 and MI6 - come under both top secret and secret categories.The reports cannot be released because of "exceptionally grave damage to the national security". The documents on the princess seem to have arisen because of the company she kept rather than through any attempt to target her. Diana enjoyed an intimate friendship with Mr Forstmann after her relationship with Prince Charles had broken down. Lord Stevens is expected to conclude on Thursday that Diana, Dodi Fayed, and their driver Henri Paul died in an accident caused by him driving too fast through the Pont de l'Alma underpass in Paris while under the influence of drink. Read article here |
| Subject: US bugged Diana night of her death | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Sunday, December 10, 01:31:22pm  Mark Townsend and Peter Allen in Paris Sunday December 10, 2006 The Observer The American secret service was bugging Princess Diana's telephone conversations without the approval of the British security services on the night she died, according to the most comprehensive report on her death, to be published this week. Among extraordinary details due to emerge in the report by former Metropolitan police commissioner Lord Stevens is the revelation that the US security service was bugging her calls in the hours before she was killed in a car crash in Paris. In a move that raises fresh questions over transatlantic agreements on intelligence-sharing, the surveillance arm of the US has admitted listening to her conversations as she stayed at the Ritz hotel, but failed to notify MI6. Stevens is understood to have been assured that the 39 classified documents detailing Diana's final conversations did not reveal anything sinister or contain material that might help explain her death. Scotland Yard's inquiry, published this Thursday, also throws up further intelligence links with the Princess of Wales on the night she died. The driver of the Mercedes, Henri Paul, was in the pay of the French equivalent of M15. Stevens traced £100,000 he had amassed in 14 French bank accounts though no payments have been linked to Diana's death. Stevens's conclusion is that Diana, her companion Dodi Fayed, and Paul himself died in an accident caused by Paul driving too fast through the Pont de l'Alma underpass in Paris while under the influence of drink. The car was being pursued by photographers at the time. Tests have confirmed that Paul was more than three times over the French drink-drive limit and was travelling at 'excessive' speed. The inquiry will quash a number of conspiracy theories that have circulated since 31 August 1997, among them that Diana was pregnant. It also found no evidence that the princess was planning to get engaged to Dodi, son of Mohamed Fayed. The Harrods tycoon believes that Paul's blood samples were swapped to portray him as a drunk in an elaborate cover-up by the establishment to stop Diana marrying Dodi, a Muslim. Stevens is expected to concede that while there was a mix-up it was an accident and that the original French post-mortem which found that Paul was three-times over the French drink-drive limit was correct. He is also expected to discount the role of the white Fiat Uno which struck Diana's car shortly before the crash, even though British police officers have failed to track down the vehicle which left paintwork on the black Mercedes. The inquiry will support the findings of the original French accident inquiry in criticising the paparazzi as a possible reason for encouraging Paul to speed. The 'bright light' theory - the claim that the driver was deliberately blinded by a beam immediately before the crash - is also dismissed by Stevens. |
| Subject: More Paltrow........ | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Tuesday, December 05, 02:44:14pm She likes the geeky roles, but not the low pay that goes with them. She loves England, but hates our drunk women. Gwyneth Paltrow explains herself to Emma Brockes  Emma Brockes Friday January 27, 2006 Guardian Gwyneth Paltrow divides her films into two categories: those she does for love and those she does for money, or "shite" as she calls them, tentatively road-testing the British vernacular. Into the former category goes Sylvia, which, she says, "because it's a movie about a poet who killed herself, [didn't] have a big audience", and The Royal Tenenbaums. Into the latter goes Shallow Hal, the Farrelly brothers film, and "this terrible movie called View From the Top that Harvey Weinstein talked me into doing". Her new film Proof, is, needless to say, a labour of love. It's quite a robust critique, given Paltrow's reputation for limpness. After her tearful performance at the Oscars eight years ago, she consolidated her image by marrying Chris Martin, lead singer of Coldplay, and moving to north London, where she pursues an aggressively detoxified lifestyle. They have an 18-month-old daughter, Apple, and Paltrow is pregnant with their second child. (The nearest I get to names is the suggestion that she might, "some way down the road", use "Paltrow" as a middle name; her husband suggested hyphenating Apple's surname, but she vetoed Paltrow-Martin because "Apple Blythe Alison Martin is just so lovely".) She looks radiantly healthy today, like a 1970s advert for suntan lotion, and is spirited and thoughtful, not at all like her wan public image - until the last two minutes of the interview, when she delivers a lecture on abstinence that makes even the PR look surprised. I ask if she and Martin are as dull as everyone imagines, and she winces and laughs: "There is this perception of us in this country, like, oh, they're quite boring. They do yoga and they stay home watching UK Gold." She is savvy enough to know that "boring" in this context refers to her husband's music and to her own adventures in macrobiotics. "I think we're happy. We're not looking for other things in life. We like our house. We like our kid. We like our friends." Paltrow sniffs. "I think it's sort of funny how you have to be doing coke off the ass of a stripper to be perceived as not boring these days." In Proof, written by David Auburn and based on his 2002 play, Paltrow is suitably unconventional. She plays Catherine, a socially malfunctioning maths genius, with Jake Gyllenhaal as her fellow geek and Anthony Hopkins as geek senior: Catherine's father and a man unhinged by his own intelligence. The film uses "craziness" as a proxy for "risk-taking" (tag line: "the biggest risk in life is not taking one"), and divides the world between far-out creative folk and tragic drudges who have never made a movie nor proved a maths theorem, nor had a poetic thought, nor risen to anything more creative in life than writing lists. Lists! Pathetic! Still, Paltrow is great in the role and a reminder that big stars can also be fine actors. She plays Catherine with the diffidence of a genuine misfit. "When I saw the play in New York, Jennifer Jason Leigh was doing it, and she's someone who can look really beautiful or really plain," she says. In defence of her own casting, she points out that the technical adviser, a real-life geek who taught them how to look natural while doing maths, "was stunning ... like a supermodel". "Of course, it's a little far-fetched that Jake Gyllenhaal is ..." A friendless weirdo too? "Yeah. But it's a movie. Harvey Weinstein was very keen that Jake be the guy. He was not really up for the quirky thing. And he was paying, so." Paltrow has now appeared in two versions of Proof, stage and screen, and they act as bookends to the past four years of her life. When she appeared in Auburn's play at the Donmar Warehouse in May 2002, she was, she says, having the best year she'd ever had. She was 29, living in London in a flat she'd just bought in Belgravia and her parents were over to visit. She was feeling, she says, "totally reinvigorated about being an actor and I made a pact with myself that I was never going to do anything to compromise myself again." After the run ended, she spent the summer travelling and visiting friends in Europe, ending up in Italy for her 30th birthday. "And I thought," she says, "this is the best weekend of my life." Three days later her father, Bruce, died. Paltrow is generally perceived as the face of New York Wasp culture, but her father descended from a Russian, rabbinical dynasty. "Like, 17 generations of rabbis - you see, I really am a Jewish princess!" Bruce Paltrow was a TV director and his daughter idolised him, so much so that on reading interviews with her I've often thought that references to her mother, the actor Blythe Danner, were notable by their absence. I ask if her relationship with her mother is more complicated than the one she had with her father. "Yes," she says. "I mean, it wasn't like Mommie Dearest, but definitely more complicated." When her father died it threw certain aspects of her relationship with her mother into relief. "Like what was fantastic and what was missing ... we've always been close but there's always been that element of friction. Me being a horrible teenager to her. Nothing really terrible or dark ... I think it's because women are more complicated than men, inherently, and relationships between them can be more complicated." Having Apple has brought them closer. "I thought, gosh, does she love me as much as I love my daughter? The my-mother-did-this, she-didn't-do-that, that adolescent stuff - it made me let go of it." Now Paltrow is more relaxed, she says, than she has ever been; she talks about "this incredible contentment, just to understand how beautiful and simple life is". As she sees it now, she spent her 20s working too hard, never saying no to anything and succumbing to "the bad side of American psychology". When she ditched university to become an actress, she was just so amazed to find work that she didn't stop working until she was "totally burned out". She first came to England in 1995 to make the film Emma, then returned for Sliding Doors, Shakespeare in Love and Possession. "I love the English way, which is not as capitalistic as it is in America. People don't talk about work and money; they talk about interesting things at dinner parties. I like living here because I don't tap into the bad side of American psychology, which is 'I'm not achieving enough, I'm not making enough, I'm not at the top of the pile.' It's just kind of like, I am." The irony is that to observers, Paltrow's old life looks a lot more relaxed than her present one. She used to smoke; she used to date Brad Pitt, who, if not exactly wild, has less of the air of the vicar about him than Martin. But rumours of her iron health regime are exaggerated, she says. She doesn't diet, because the minute she tells herself she can't have something, she wants it. She says she loses weight by exercising, although it's hard to imagine why she would need to. "I like to exercise and be healthy because it makes me feel good, not because I'm going to be the next Bond girl. I think it's really important to look after yourself. But I do it for myself. I don't do it because of external pressure." Has that always been the case? "Yeah. Except once when I was doing A Perfect Murder, I quit smoking and I had gained a few pounds. And the producer came and spoke to me about it. And I felt really humiliated. I had never been spoken to about something like that." It's a mark of the enduring parochialism in this country that the idea of faddy Hollywood lifestyles like Paltrow's and Madonna's being lived in London causes so much fascination and delight. Paltrow gave up her flat in Belgravia when she realised that she was "the only person there under 65. I love north London; it feels much more alive." Her daughter is showing signs of an English accent already. "Her A's are very English - she says 'war-ter' and 'war-lk'. She says mummy instead of mommy. I don't mind that. I will if she starts saying 'basil' and 'pasta' the English way, which really drives me nuts." For an actress of her depoliticised generation, Paltrow is surprisingly, and gratifyingly, strident about women in Hollywood. She hates the way intelligent actresses get shoehorned into generic parts, and thinks the only way to solve it is for more women to become directors. "Even actresses that you really admire, like Reese Witherspoon, you think, another romantic comedy? You know." She sighs. "You see her in something like Walk the Line and think, God, you're so great. And then you think, why is she doing these stupid romantic comedies? But of course it's for money and status. I just think, wouldn't it be great if all of those movies people went to see were about real women?" Paltrow has tried to be true to this with films such as Sylvia, which she thinks is her best work. As the face of Estée Lauder, she has also peddled a fantasy version of womanhood. I don't understand, I tell her, why an actor as successful as she is would bother with a dappy advertising campaign. "I'll tell you why," she says. "I basically stopped making money from acting in 2002. All the things I've done since then have been things I've really wanted to do, and I have not made money from them." The Estée Lauder gig pays for her art just as Calvin Klein, she says, pays for Scarlett Johansson to work with Woody Allen, "and never have to do a movie where they put her in a bikini and give her a gun". Oh, give me a break. Didn't she save any money from all that work she did in her 20s? "Good question." She laughs. "I spent it on shoes. No. Well, I had saved money, but I bought a house, and I never made Julia Roberts kind of money. I made really great money, but not the kind of money ..." She won't tell me the most she's ever been paid for a role. I say I read somewhere it was $2m. She looks mildly perturbed. Is that offensively low? "No, not at all," she says vaguely. "That's what you read? Well, it's more than that. But..." Paltrow intends to stay in Britain for the long term. "My husband's work is here." I wonder if she drinks more when she's in the UK than she does in the US. From the corner, the PR blurts out, "I do." Paltrow looks bemused. "I'm not really a drinker. Like the last time I got drunk was on holiday in Spain three years ago." Wow. That's a long time sober. What's that about? "I think it's gross. I really don't like drunk women; I think it is such a bad look. I think it's very inappropriate and I don't like it." Doesn't she feel boring at parties? "No. I think they're the idiot people and I'm the normal person. But I don't really go to parties where ... I don't really have drunk friends. My friends are kind of adult; they have a drink. But they hold their liquor. I think it's incredibly embarrassing when people are drunk. It just looks so ridiculous. I find it very degrading. I think, ooh, you're really degrading yourself right now, to be this pissed out in public." She looks startled by the strength of her own reaction and, recovering, smiles blamelessly and sweeps out of the room. · Proof is released on February 24 Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006 |
| Subject: Now she denies making remarks | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Tuesday, December 05, 10:44:38am  Posted on Monday, December 04, 2006 (EST) LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Oscar-winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow insisted on Monday that contrary to a recent article in a European newspaper, she feels "proud to be American" and would never compare her homeland unfavorably to Britain. In a statement issued through People magazine's Web site, Paltrow said she was "deeply upset" by remarks attributed to her by the Portuguese newspaper Diario de Noticias, which quoted the actress as saying: "The British are much more intelligent and civilized than the Americans." "I never, ever would have said that," said Paltrow, 34, who is married to British rock star Chris Martin, the lead singer of Coldplay, and resides part time with him and their two children in London. "I feel so lucky to be American," she said. "I feel so proud to be American." Paltrow denies giving an interview to the Portuguese daily, though she did speak at a news conference in Spanish, according to People. "This is what I said," Paltrow explained. "I said that Europe is a much older culture, and there's a difference. I always say in America, people live to work, and in Europe, people work to live. There are positives in both." She added: "Obviously, I need to go back to seventh-grade Spanish." Paltrow, who won an Academy Award in 1999 as best actress for her role in "Shakespeare in Love," was most recently in theaters in the film "Running with Scissors." |
| Subject: Paltrow in trouble | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Tuesday, December 05, 10:38:10am  LONDON, Dec. 4 (UPI) -- Comments made by Gwyneth Paltrow that put the United States in an unflattering light have brought down a storm of controversy upon the film actress. A U.S. native living in England for the last three years, Paltrow recently made comments to a European paper comparing the two nations that portrayed the United States negatively, statements that The Daily Mail reported have angered her U.S. brethren. "I like living here because I don't fit into the bad side of American psychology," the 34-year-old Oscar-winning actress had said. "The British are much more intelligent and civilized than the Americans." Such comments made by the "Shakespeare in Love" actress, who moved to Britain after marrying Coldplay singer Chris Martin, prompted several U.S. citizens to speak their opinions through various media. The Daily Mail said that the voiced consensus in her homeland portrayed Paltrow in an equally unflattering light and offered little support for her newfound views. |
| Subject: She's ticked a few people off | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Monday, December 04, 12:08:31pm  Last updated at 13:36pm on 4th December 2006 Once she complained about the British weather. Another time she complained about British men. But it seems American actress Gwyneth Paltrow is finally warming to life in London. She says dinner party chat here is far more interesting, intelligent and civilised than back at home. It's a declaration that has gone down rather badly in America. The 34-year-old Oscar winner, who has lived in London since marrying Coldplay frontman Chris Martin three years ago, said: 'I love the English lifestyle, it's not as capitalistic as America. 'People don’t talk about workand money, they talk about interesting things at dinner. 'I like living here because I don't fit into the bad side of American psychology. The British are much more intelligent and civilised than the Americans.' Last night, as her comments were reported in her homeland, Americans called chat shows and radio phone-ins to express their disgust at her 'betrayal'. 'If she feels that way we are far better off without her,' said one commentator. A disgruntled caller added: 'She sounds like she thinks she’s better than us. 'We are better off if she stays across the Atlantic. We don't need her here.' Miss Paltrow, who once complained at length about the British weather, was speaking to NS, the weekend magazine supplement of daily Portuguese newspaper Diario de Noticias. She said having another American – Madonna – living in London had been a great help to her. 'She's like an older sister,' said Miss Paltrow. 'Everything I have gone through, she went through ten times worse and ten times longer. She gives me good advice about how to say no and take care of myself.' Although Miss Paltrow did not specify what she was saying 'no' to, it is known she favours a strict macrobiotic diet. It means a large proportion of her diet is made up of wholegrains, vegetables and fish, and she is not allowed to consume meat, dairy products, processed foods, alcohol or caffeine. Miss Paltrow, who was born in Los Angeles, once found fault with British men, but a year later, married Chris Martin. And two years ago she told the U.S. edition of Marie Claire that the streets of London were dirty, customer service was ‘just rubbish’ and the weather was 'cold and depressing'. Despite this, Miss Paltrow and her husband have settled in North London with their daughter Apple, two, and son Moses, eight months. She will be pleased to know that not everyone in America was displeased with her latest comments. A British expatriate rang in to one programme to say: 'Quite frankly, she’s only stating the obvious, as anyone who has spent a long time in the United States can testify.' |
| Subject: Mel | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Saturday, December 02, 06:33:53pm  Dec 2, 8:13 PM (ET) By The Associated Press (AP) GOLDSBY, Okla. (AP) - Mel Gibson's effort to find an indigenous cast for his new movie "Apocalypto," which depicts the end of the Mayan civilization, is drawing praise from American Indian leaders. Gibson wanted an indigenous cast for the project, so the filmmakers found people from the Yucatan, Mexico City, Oaxaca, Xalapa, Veracruz and other spots. Two of the cast members are from the United States, three are from Canada and the rest hail from Central America. "It is very important to note that Mr. Gibson has gone to great lengths to cast indigenous people in this film," Chickasaw Nation Gov. Bill Anoatubby said. "This not only helps make the film more realistic, it serves as an inspiration to Native American actors who aspire to perform relevant roles in the film industry." Gibson screened the movie Friday for a sold-out audience at Chickasaw Nation's Riverwind Casino. Tickets were $55, proceeds going to American Indian health organizations and charities. Rudy Youngblood, who makes his acting debut as Jaguar Paw, and Raoul Trujillo, who portrays Zero Wolf, arrived in sports utility vehicles and stood on Riverwind's version of the red carpet - a black carpet that led into the theater - to pose for photographers. Youngblood, a powwow dancer, singer and artist, told reporters he was just there to enjoy the movie, which opens in theaters Dec. 8. |
| Subject: Today's Raspberry Award goes to.......... | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Saturday, December 02, 03:16:20pm  Oscar-winning US actress Gwyneth Paltrow feels dinner talk is far more interesting in her adopted homeland Britain than back in her native country. "I love the English lifestyle, it's not as capitalistic as America. People don't talk about work and money, they talk about interesting things at dinner," she told "NS," the weekend magazine supplement of daily Portuguese newspaper Diario de Noticias on Saturday. "I like living here because I don't fit into the bad side of American psychology. The British are much more intelligent and civilized than the Americans," the 34-year-old added. Paltrow, who won a best actress Oscar for 1998's "Shakespeare in Love," lives in London with British band Coldplay's frontman Chris Martin whom she wed in 2003. She said having US pop star Madonna, 48, who married British film director Guy Ritchie six years ago, nearby was another advantage to living in London. "She's like an older sister. Everything I have gone through, she went through ten times worse and ten times longer. She gives me good advice about how to say no and take care of myself," said Paltrow. |
| Subject: UFO crash in Siberia | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Friday, December 01, 12:01:28pm Created: 01.12.2006 11:10 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 11:10 MSK, 11 hours 41 minutes ago MosNews An unidentified flying object has crashed in Krasnoyarsk Region, Siberia, causing a forest fire, the RIA-Novosti news agency reported on Friday. The crash took place in the taiga between the towns of Yeniseisk and Lesosibirsk, the agency said quoting the local Interior Ministry directorate. The crash was reported by local villagers and traces of forest fire can be seen on the site. Air traffic officials said that no aircraft were scheduled to fly in the region at the time of the crash and no air vessels were missing. A group formed of police investigators, representatives of the Transport Prosecutors Service and representatives of the aircraft safety watchdog Rosavianadzor has started to the site of the crash from Krasnoyarsk. Local Emergencies Directorate has sent a helicopter to the site. Read about it Here |
| Subject: UFO crash in Russia | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Friday, December 01, 11:52:05am  To Divert Attention From Polonium UFO Reportedly Crashed in Russia Publication time: Today at 16:02 Djokhar time Russian officials said an unidentified flying object fell out of the sky and burned on impact Friday in the taiga of East Siberia, the news agency Interfax reported. Law enforcement authorities in the Krasnoyarsk region told Interfax residents had reported seeing a "flying apparatus" plunge from the sky at about 10 a.m. Residents of the remote area, some 260 kilometres north of the regional capital of Krasnoyarsk, said the surrounding area had been charred, showing signs of a fire. Authorities, however, said they had been unable to reach the scene due to inclement weather conditions. "Investigators and transport officials are now being sent from Krasnoyarsk to establish the reasons behind the crash," a police official said. Regional authorities have not speculated about what the object might have been, but they noted a helicopter had flown over the scene and that its crew had not seen any traces of fire. The vast Siberian taiga, an area of boundless forest, famously played host to an explosion known as the "Tunguska event" in June 1908 after an object, now thought to be an asteroid or comet, slammed into a remote area north of Lake Baikal. The blast, which felled an estimated 60 million trees over 2,000 square kilometers, was later calculated to have been the equivalent of 10 to 20 megatons of TNT, similar in force to that of the most powerful nuclear bomb ever detonated, the DPA reported. |
| Subject: Over exposure anyone?? | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Friday, December 01, 10:00:16am  Can anyone say OVER EXPOSURE?! Rachael Ray has gone from a cute, sweet, pleasure to watch on Food Network to a pain in the butt. Her TV show sucks, she is on the cover of every grocery store magazine.......and this is the real clencher for me.......they are selling a CHRISTMAS CD with her picture on it....Rachael Ray's favorite Christmas music!! Gimme a BREAK!! |
| Subject: Re: Barefoot Contessa | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Saturday, November 18, 04:05:23pm  Yes, Phoenix, I love the Barefoot Contessa, too and I know what you mean about wishing they'd make some new shows. But not that Paula Deen has her new show - Paula's Party or whatever its called and Rachel Ray has her new TV show, I don't think anyone has time to do the good old fashioned cooking shows anymore. I don't like Paula's new show at all. Just give me the COOKING shows. Thats all I want and I miss her old shows. And I absolutely cannot STAND her kitchen in her new house. It's ugly and cluttered and she has to cook out on the edge of her tiny counters and I keep thinking something is going to fall off in the floor! She looks tired now and even kind of unkempt. Oh.....and hey!! Do she and her husband "Michael Groover" (she ALWAYS calls him by his full name...lol...I don't know why)look like Mr. & Mrs. Santa Claus or what? I wish they hadn't all become Superstars and just stuck with the good old format they had before. |
| Subject: Barefoot Contessa | |
Author: Phoenix [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Wednesday, November 15, 09:59:00am  I love Ina Garten, too. Matter of fact, I love all the cooks you mentioned, but CRIMEINITLY....could they make some new episodes?? I mean they just show the same ones over and over and over again! Also, I used to really like Emeril but the last year or so he has changed and become so full of himself I can't stand him anymore. I've seen him show temper to people who work for him and I've seen him be rude to people in the audience. Once that happens, its all over for me. |
| Subject: Sandra and the other Foodnetwork Goddesses | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Tuesday, November 14, 10:02:24am   Rachael Ray is all over everything now. She's got her new talk show -- I saw it once and hated it -- but I still love to watch her on the Foodnetwork. But people try to crucify poor Sandra. They make fun of her boobs...are they real or aren't they, and the fact that she's obviously had some "work done" on her face...probably a face lift and collagen, but I still like her. My favorite to watch though is Ina Garten. I love her cooking and I love to watch her hubby Jeffrey when he's on the show. They are such a cute older couple. |
| Subject: LOL........Sandra Lee | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Tuesday, November 14, 09:48:40am  My seven-year-old grandson has developed a major thing for Sandra Lee. He says it's her great cookies and donuts she makes but I don't know.......could be something else he finds attractive about her. <3 |
| Subject: Interesting | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Saturday, November 11, 11:01:36am This has been going around in e-mail. I checked it out on Snopes.com and it is verified to have really been said by Ben Stein.  Ben Stein said: Herewith at this happy time of year, a few confessions from my beating heart: I have no freaking clue who Nick and Jessica are. I see them on the cover of People and Us constantly when I am buying my dog biscuits and kitty litter. I often ask the checkers at the grocery stores. They never know who Nick and Jessica are either. Who are they? Will it change my life if I know who they are and why they have broken up? Why are they so important? I don't know who Lindsay Lohan is, either, and I do not care at all about Tom Cruise's wife. Am I going to be called before a Senate committee and asked if I am a subversive? Maybe, but I just have no clue who Nick and Jessica are. Is this what it means to be no longer young. It's not so bad. Next confession: I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees Christmas trees. I don't feel threatened. I don't feel discriminated against. That's what they are: Christmas trees. It doesn't bother me a bit when people say, "Merry Christmas" to me. I don't think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn't bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu. If people want a creche, it's just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away. I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution and I don't like it being shoved down my throat. Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship Nick and Jessica and we aren't allowed to worship God as we understand Him? I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old, too. But there are a lot of us who are wondering where Nick and Jessica came from and where the America we knew went to. |
| Subject: Dan Rather defends report | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Wednesday, November 08, 05:47:16am  By MIKE BAKER RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - Former CBS anchor Dan Rather once again defended his discredited "60 Minutes Wednesday" report about President Bush's military service, insisting the story was accurate. Rather narrated the September 2004 report, which alleged that President Bush skirted some of his duties during his National Guard service and that a commander felt pressured to sugarcoat Bush's record. "The story was true," Rather, 75, told radio station WPTF-AM on Tuesday. "We were vulnerable on taking responsibility for it." An independent CBS review determined the story was neither fair nor accurate. CBS fired three news executives and a producer for airing it, and Rather was forced out of the anchor chair he had occupied for 24 years. "CBS News stands by the report the independent panel issued on this matter and to this day, no one has been able to authenticate the documents in question," CBS spokesman Kevin Tedesco said Tuesday in a statement to The Associated Press. The story relied on four documents, allegedly written by Bush's commander in the Texas Air National Guard, the late Lt. Col. Jerry Killian. Critics questioned the documents' authenticity and suggested they were forged. "I believed it to be true or I wouldn't have put it on the air," Rather said. "There's nothing wrong with asking the tough questions of the people in power, which is what we attempted to do." Pressed further on the authenticity of the report, Rather lashed out at radio host Donna Martinez, saying she had a political agenda. Rather stepped down as "CBS Evening News" anchor in March 2005, and the network cut all ties to him in June. He is scheduled to produce and host a weekly news program beginning Nov. 14 on HDNet, a small network aimed at owners of high-definition televisions. |
| Subject: This is so sad Anna Nicole Smith | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Thursday, September 21, 10:48:03am Last updated at 16:19pm on 19th September 2006  Anna Nicole Smith has sold the last pictures of her son alive Anna Nicole Smith's representatives have allegedly secured more than £318,000 for the last pictures of her dead son. The former Playmate posed with tragic Daniel and his new sister in a Bahamian maternity ward the night before he was found dead. Daniel, 20, was discovered slumped in a chair at the hospital on September 10. Authorities in the Caribbean have launched an inquiry into the sudden death of Daniel, who was known to be taking anti-depressants at the time. Smith's representatives and her photo agent Getty Images have reportedly been paid the cash by a US magazine and TV shows. In Touch magazine paid a reported £212,000 for the print exclusive. And the Paramount-produced television shows 'Entertainment Tonight' and 'The Insider' allegedly paid an estimated £132,000 for the TV rights. "There is an incredible amount of emotion attached to this story and the photos, and our story will be a tribute to Daniel's life as well as a celebration of it," an In Touch spokesman said. "I'm told that Anna Nicole has vague plans to use a portion of the money for a Daniel Smith memorial and it wasn't clear yesterday what percentage of the proceeds Getty is taking as a commission," a New York Daily News columnist wrote. Anna Nicole Smith has still not been seen publicly since the sudden death of her son. A spokesman for Paramount Television did not make a comment. article at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/showbiz/showbiznews.html?in_article_id=405962&in_page_id=1773 |
| Subject: Steve Centanni | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Wednesday, August 16, 12:16:41pm DIAA HADID Associated Press GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - The wife of a kidnapped Fox News cameraman made a public plea Wednesday to his kidnappers to release him and his fellow journalist. Palestinian officials said they have no firm leads on where the two men are being held. The cameraman, Olaf Wiig, 36, of New Zealand, and American reporter Steve Centanni, 60, were taken Monday from their TV van near the Palestinian security services headquarters. Major militant groups in Gaza have denied involvement and the kidnappers have yet to make any demands. Wiig's wife, Anita McNaught, appealed to the kidnappers to free her husband and Centanni. "The bottom line is, there is no good reason for these two men to be held," said McNaught, a freelance television journalist. "They are friends of the Palestinians. They are here telling the Palestinian story for weeks now, when the rest of the world's media has not been here." Directing her words to her husband in the on-camera interview and choking back tears, McNaught said: "It's going to be all right. You are going to come home to me." Many foreigners have been abducted in Gaza in recent years, most by gunmen with ties to the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a violent offshoot of Abbas' Fatah movement. The ruling Hamas movement has not played a prominent role in past kidnappings of foreigners. In June, however, Hamas-allied militants abducted an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, in a cross-border raid that triggered a major Israeli offensive in the coastal strip. In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Julie Reside said the U.S. is working with Palestinian officials and called for the journalists to be released immediately. "The U.S. government strongly condemns the kidnapping of these individuals," she said. Jan Henderson, New Zealand's ambassador to Israel and Turkey, met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Gaza to discuss the incident, and Palestinian lawmaker Saeb Erekat said Abbas reassured Henderson the ordeal would soon be over. "He is personally leading this effort, and every effort is being exerted to ensure their release," Erekat said. A Palestinian security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters, said efforts to locate the kidnappers and journalists were concentrated on the Gaza City area. Palestinian officials said it is unusual for kidnappers not to make any demands for two days. That has made it difficult to trace the abductors, or understand why they kidnapped the journalists, they said. McNaught said earlier that she was told by Palestinian officials that her husband's captors acted on their own, without support from militant groups. McNaught said the hardest part of waiting has been the silence on the part of the kidnappers: "It's difficult dealing with no information on how he is," she said. New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark has expressed her country's deep concern for Wiig's safety. © 2006 AP Wire and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved. http://www.sanluisobispo.com |
| Subject: More on Steve Centanni | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Tuesday, August 15, 07:34:19am FNCers Kidnapped In Gaza: Tight-Lipped Update: 11:21pm: Here is Jennifer Griffin's 10pm update: "Greta, as you know, we have been reporting today that two of our colleagues were kidnapped in Gaza earlier today. They were taken against their will from the vehicle they were driving in. Fox News at this time is doing everything within its power to get them safely returned back home and we will report more on that as we have details." Fox News Channel is carefully and wisely limiting coverage of its two kidnapped employees. Since 2pm, when TVNewser started monitoring FNC coverage, the net has aired four brief updates about the kidnapping by Jennifer Griffin. Apart from those, FNC hasn't mentioned the situation, preferring to handle it behind the scenes. When Nihad Awad of the Council on American Islamic Relations prefaced his appearance on The O'Reilly Factor with an expression of sympathy, Bill O'Reilly quickly responded: AWAD: Bill, thanks for having me and allow me first to share with you and your viewers that our organization CAIR has issued a statement demanding the release of the Fox crew who were abducted or kidnapped today in Gaza and we pray and hope for their safe return to do their job back to their families. O'REILLY: I just meant to tell everybody we are not going to have much more on that because we are, you know, in the process of trying to get that solved. As Jack Shafer noted in January, "it's an article of faith for some that no news is the best news when it comes to kidnappings." FNCers Kidnapped In Gaza: P.M. Update > 7:11pm: Here's an LA Times recap of the story. Centanni and Wiig "were in a parked television transmission van in the center of Gaza City, about to head to their usual live spot location when two vehicles blocked them in. A masked man held a gun to their bodyguard, forcing him to the ground, and kidnapped Centanni and Wiig, as well as their translator, who was later released..." > 7:03pm: FNC's Jennifer Griffin on the Fox Report: "No word yet on our colleagues that were kidnapped in Gaza earlier today but we are working with all of our sources in Gaza tonight to try to secure their safe release..." > 7:01pm: Fox News has provided Olaf Wiig's wife Anita McNaught with a driver and car to drive from Syria to Israel, the NZ Herald reports. "Fox, she said, had built up contacts throughout Gaza and would be working its contacts in the Palestinian Authority and the US Consul to ensure his release..." > Google wire: Fox + gaza Posted by brian | 07:05 PM | FNC | Email this post FNCers Kidnapped In Gaza: Gunmen Protesting American Aid To Israel? "Palestinian gunmen in the Gaza Strip today kidnapped two Fox News journalists, including reporter Steve Centanni, to protest America's 'involvement' in Israel's military campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon, leaders of the Al Aqsa Martys Brigades terror group" have told WorldNetDaily, a conversative online news site. The brigades sources said "independent Palestinian gunmen" carried out the kidnapping "completely on their own." (Via TCG) continued... Posted by brian | 06:59 PM | FNC | Email this post FNCers Kidnapped In Gaza: Cameraman Was Supposed To Come Home Soon Kidnapped FNC cameraman Olaf Wiig was about to come home. The New Zealand Herald reports: "Wiig had been expected to return to London this week." Wiig's father, the Reverend Roger Wiig, "said his 36-year-old son had been in Gaza for about a month, after spending time in Jerusalem and Haifa. He was experienced at reporting from the Middle East, and had previously worked in Iraq and Afghanistan." Wiig last heard from his son at the end of last week. He said he was enjoying his work, "He was basically shocked by what he was seeing, by the damage that Israel has done," Wiig said... Posted by brian | 05:03 PM | FNC | Email this post FNCers Kidnapped In Gaza: Updates > 5:12pm: FNC's Jennifer Griffin didn't share any new details in her 5pm update. She said: "...John, we also have some disturbing news from the Gaza Strip. Two of our colleagues were kidnapped today. Right now the network is trying to arrange their safe release." > 4:58pm: "Olaf has been a long time freelance photog for Fox and other news oulets," a tipster says. "He worked for Fox a tremendous amount in Iraq. He is a very careful guy. In fact, you might say he is sometimes too careful. Steve is also not someone who is a 'cowboy.' I guarantee they weren't taking any extra risks." > 4:50pm: Reuters: "Palestinian police stopped and searched cars. A spokesman for Hamas, the Islamic militant group that leads the Palestinian government, condemned the kidnapping." > 4:40pm: The Committee to Protect Journalists has released this statement: "We are gravely concerned about our colleagues' safety and call for their immediate and unconditional release. These are well established journalists who are not participants in the conflict. They should be treated accordingly and freed..." > 4:35pm: The AP adds new detail: "Major militant groups in Gaza denied any connection to the incident; there was no immediate word of any demands made. Security officials put police on alert across Gaza and set up roadblocks to find the gunmen and free the reporters, Interior Ministry spokesman Khaled Abu Hilal said. 'This is not acceptable at all,' he said." |
| Subject: Fox Network reporter and Cameraman kidnapped | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Tuesday, August 15, 07:22:38am  Palestinians Seek Abducted Journalists By DIAA HADID Associated Press Writer August 15, 2006 GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) -- Palestinian security forces hunted for two abducted Fox News journalists Tuesday, and the Palestinian president and prime minister were intervening in an attempt to gain their release. President Mahmoud Abbas and Ismail Haniyeh, the prime minister of the Hamas-led government, scheduled meetings with the news organization's Jerusalem bureau chief, Eli Fastman, and its chief correspondent in Israel, Jennifer Griffin. Investigators said the president's office was closely following the probe into the abduction. American reporter Steve Centanni, 60, and New Zealand cameraman Olaf Wiig, 36, were seized by masked gunmen Monday near the headquarters of the Palestinian security services. No one has claimed responsibility for kidnapping, and police said no demands have been made. Major militant groups denied any connection to the abduction. New Zealand's Prime Minister Helen Clark dispatched diplomats to Gaza to assist in any contacts for their release. She said she was "very concerned" about the kidnapping. Wiig's wife, Anita McNaught, said Fox representatives told her negotiations for their release were already under way. But officials in Gaza said no contact had been established with the kidnappers. Nabil Abu Rdeina, an Abbas aide, said the president ordered all security forces to work on tracking the two journalists. "This is an unacceptable act. We condemn this operation and hope we would succeed to find a peaceful solution very soon," he said. An investigator in the case, speaking on condition of anonymity so as not to jeopardize the investigation, said suspicions were focusing on a renegade group from an established Palestinian militant organization, but he declined to give further details. The car in which the journalists were taken has been identified, he said. Centanni was behind the wheel of the Fox vehicle, marked in large letters "TV," when the gunmen pulled up and stopped them, a Fox employee said. A Palestinian who was with them was forced onto the floor at gunpoint, and the two journalists were taken away. An official following the investigation said the getaway car was spotted driving south along the coastal road. Police and security forces were deployed at major intersections and roads in Gaza immediately after the kidnapping. Several foreigners have been kidnapped in Gaza by small groups seeking the release of relatives from jail, jobs or other personal favors. All have been freed within a few days without harm. |
| Subject: Re: Vexing Questions about my favorite Movies | |
Author: BananaBread [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Monday, August 14, 11:00:31am Hmmmm. Well, lets see. I don't know but I'll take a stab at it. Maverick and his dad ignored each other because they were working together to expose the commadore and bust him on the river boat robbery? Maybe. and on Love Comes Softly here is my guess. He took off on horseback to stop Marny from leaving on the wagon train. He got her off the wagon train and she waited there while he went back and got his wagon to load up her and the baby and there stuff. Then he took them home. Maybe. But you are right about the other things you mention. They are unrealistic for sure. |
| Subject: Vexing Questions about my favorite Movies | |
Author: Connie [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Saturday, August 12, 12:16:27pm Okay these may not be earth shattering questions but they bug me. 1) Anybody ever seen the movie Love Comes Softly? Anybody ever notice that at the end of the movie, Clark leaves on horseback to go get Marni and the baby but when he comes back with them, he's in a wagon? Anybody else wonder how he heard Missy banging that pot with a wooden spoon through a howling gale? Anybody else wonder why at the beginning of the movie, the Grahams go off and leave her alone in a wagon in the middle of the wilderness? 2) Anybody ever seen the movie Maverick with Mel Gibson? Ever wonder why Maverick and his dad pretended not to know each other throughout the whole movie? If you know, please splain it to little old me. :-/ These are the questions that plague my poor bored mind. |
| Subject: From Drudgereport | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Thursday, August 10, 05:54:20pm  88-year-old CBS journalist says Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a 'reasonable' man on Sean Hannity's ABC radio program... Points out Ahmadinejad not anti-Jewish... just anti-Zionist state. Says many Jews in Iranian Parliament, in great positions in Iranian life... Believes Ahmadinejad sincere in his hope for peaceful coexistence between Iran and West... Troubled by comparisons of leader to Hitler... Marvels at Ahmadinejad's civil engineering degree, 'intellect', 'savvy'... Asks viewers not to bring 'prejudices' to Sunday night '60 MINUTES' broadcast... Proclaims 'discussion' was sincere and not for propaganda purposes... Developing... from drudgereport.com |
| Subject: Great....Now we have Egyptian terrorists | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Tuesday, August 08, 06:31:10pm FBI hunting 11 exchange students who didn't show up at school WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Immigration agents and the FBI are looking for 11 Egyptian students who entered the United States on valid student visas, then failed to show up at a university in Montana, authorities said. The FBI on Saturday issued a nationwide alert to law enforcement agencies. Included were the students' names, ages, passport numbers and photographs. "At the present time there are no known associations to any terrorist groups. Approach with caution," the lookout bulletin states. (Watch Homeland Security work on the mystery -- 2:22) FBI and immigration officials confirmed there's no evidence pointing to criminal activity or a terrorist threat. However, The Associated Press quoted a law enforcement official as saying that the students could be sent home when found because they violated the terms of their visas. They were part of an all-male group of 17 students that landed July 29 at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. Six of them arrived later at Montana State University as part of an exchange program; the other 11 did not, prompting school officials to contact the government. A source with knowledge of the investigation said the men, who range in age from 17 to 22, may be staying in New York, visiting relatives and trying to find jobs. "We have run their names through the wringer," one Department of Homeland Security official said. U.S. authorities are working with foreign intelligence agencies to make sure there is nothing suspicious in the students' backgrounds, federal sources said. Those sources added that 20 students applied for student visas to go to Montana State, but three of the applicants were denied. "We do want to talk to them. But at this point there's no reason to believe they pose any criminal or terrorist threat," said Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Julie Myers, who heads Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The students were identified as: •El Sayed Ahmed Elsayed Ibrahim, 20 •Eslam Ibrahim Mohamed El Dessouki, 21 •Alaa Abd El Fattah Ali El Bahnasawi, 20 •Mohamed Ragab Mohamed Abd Alla, 22 •Ahmed Refaat Saad El Moghazi El Laket, 19 •Ahmed Mohamed Mohamed Abou El Ela, 21 •Mohamed Ibrahim Elsayed El Moghazy, 20 •Ebrahim Mabrouk Moustafa Abdou, 22 •Moustafa Wagdy Moustafa El Gafary, 18 •Mohamed Saleh Ahmed Maray, 20 •Mohamed Ibrahim Fouaad El Shenawy, 17 CNN's Jeanne Meserve, Kevin Bohn and Mike Ahlers contributed to this report. Find this article at: http://edition.cnn.com/2006/US/08/08/egyptian.students |
| Subject: Madonna to be excommunicated? | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Friday, August 04, 09:11:25am  Rome's Catholic, Muslim and Jewish leaders have united to condemn pop star Madonna's decision to stage a mock-crucifixion when she performs in the Italian capital on Sunday a stone's throw away from Vatican City. The lapsed-Catholic diva's latest irreverent performance sees her wearing a fake crown of thorns and descending on a suspended, glittery cross as part of her worldwide "Confessions Tour". Having already been criticised in the United States, Catholics priests from across the Eternal City have gone one further saying the act is blasphemy. Cardinal Ersilio Tonino, speaking with the approval of Pope Benedict XVI said: "This time the limits have really been pushed too far. "This concert is a blashphemous challenge to the faith and a profanation of the cross. She should be excommunicated." "It is disrespectful, in bad taste and provocative," Father Manfredo Leone from Rome's Santa Maria Liberatrice church said late on Wednesday about the star's latest stage stunt. "Being raised on a cross with a crown of thorns like a modern Christ is absurd. Doing it in the cradle of Christianity comes close to blasphemy." In an unusual show of religious solidarity, Muslim and Jewish leaders added their condemnation of the self-styled Queen of Pop, famous for peppering her concerts and videos with controversial religious and sexual imagery. "I think her idea is in the worst taste and she'd do better to go home," Mario Scialoja, head of Italy's Muslim League said. Riccardo Pacifici, spokesman and vice president of the Roman Jewish community, added Madonna should have pulled the routine considering where she was performing -- a stadium a mile from the gates of Vatican City. It is not the first time Madonna, who has a Catholic Italian-American father, has raised the ire of the Catholic Church. Catholic leaders condemned as blasphemous her controversial 1989 video for hit song "Like a Prayer", featuring burning crosses, statues crying blood and Madonna seducing a black Jesus. In 2004, a Vatican group warned that her latest religious belief "Kabbalah", a mystical form of Judaism, was a potential threat to the Roman Catholic faithful. Madonna, 47, has refused to kowtow to Italy's Catholic sensibilities, but in an interview published on Thursday she had nothing but praise for her Italian background. She told Italy's edition of Vanity Fair her "good Italian genes" were the reason for her staying in shape, famously allowing her to writhe in a leotard in a recent video. |
| Subject: More Mel | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Wednesday, August 02, 09:03:17pm Print this page  Mel Gibson: Has He Gone Too Far? The actor speaks about the Holocaust and defends his father. Posted August 2, 2006 When we interviewed Mel Gibson over two years ago for his controversial movie, The Passion of the Christ, we expected to make news. But we didn't know then that what Gibson had to say to us would be just as relevant today. Our interviewer, Peggy Noonan, asked Gibson about his father's rumored doubts about the scope of the Holocaust. Here's how Gibson responded: MEL GIBSON: My dad taught me my faith, and I believe what he taught me. The man never lied to me in his life. He was born in 1918. He lost his mother at two years of age. He lost his father at 15. He went through the Depression. He signed up for World War II, went off to Guadalcanal, got malaria and shot at, and didn't like it too much. [He] served his country fighting the forces of fascism, came back, worked very hard physically, raised a family, put a roof over my head, clothed me, fed me, taught me my faith, loved me, I love him back. And he did all that so some guy has the right to misrepresent him and say nasty things and paint him in a very bad light. And then other people said, 'Well, he's just an old kook.' He's not an old kook. He's very intelligent. He's in complete possession of all his mental faculties. And if he says something he has a reason why he says it and he can back it up. Mensa wanted this guy, okay? He's very intelligent. So I'll slug it out with anyone until my heart is black and blue if they say anything against him or ever try and hurt him in that way. Now, that said, you know, I pray for the guy who maligned him in that way and hope that he will one day apologize. NOONAN: You're going to have to go on the record. The Holocaust happened, right? MEL GIBSON: I have friends and parents of friends who have numbers on their arms. The guy who taught me Spanish was a Holocaust survivor. He worked in a concentration camp in France. Yes, of course. And my dad also knows that there were internment camps where many people died. Now, his whole thing was about the numbers. I mean atrocities happened. The thing with him [my father] was that he was talking about numbers. I mean when the war was over they said it was 12 million. Then it was six. Now it's four. I mean it's that kind of numbers game. I mean war is horrible. The Second World War killed tens of millions of people. Some of them were Jews in concentration camps. Many people lost their lives. In the Ukraine, several million people starved to death between 1932 and 1933. During the last century 20 million people died in the Soviet Union. Okay? It's horrible. Read our original March 2004 cover story. Last Updated: 2006-08-02 |
| Subject: Anti Semitism in Rome | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Wednesday, August 02, 08:53:02pm  Rome: Jewish shops defaced with swastikas About 20 shops owned by Jews vandalized in apparent neo-fascist attack linked to fighting in Middle East. Flyers signed by group calling itself Armed Revolutionary Fascists left at the shops denouncing 'Zionist economy,' including pro-Hizbullah slogans Associated Press Jewish shops across Rome were vandalized and defaced with swastikas in an apparent neo-fascist attack linked to fighting in the Middle East, officials said Wednesday. Owners of about 20 shops in the center and outskirts of the Italian capital reached their workplace Tuesday morning to find door locks filled with glue, shutters nailed closed and swastikas defacing nearby walls, said Riccardo Pacifici, a spokesman for Rome's Jewish Community. Hatred Abroad Australia: Jewish community center attacked / Ynet For second time in a week, Jewish institution attacked in Sydney when would-be arsonists target community center in city. Australian Jewish organizations: Incident related to conflict in Lebanon Full story Although not all the shops targeted were owned by Jews, the raid was apparently conducted in reaction to hostilities between Israel and Hizbullah, Pacifici said. Flyers signed by a group calling itself Armed Revolutionary Fascists were left at the shops denouncing "the Zionist economy" and including pro-Hizbullah slogans, Pacifici said. "There are still anti-Semites in Italy," Pacifici said. He told The Associated Press that Italian Jewish organizations have been flooded with dozens of e-mails blaming Jews for violence in the Middle East. Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni condemned the vandalism. "Rome and Romans are against any form of anti-Semitism," Veltroni, was quoted as saying by the Corriere della Sera daily. "I hope that the authors of these actions will soon answer for them in court." Police officials declined to comment on the investigation. Last month, swastikas were spray-painted on walls in the Old Ghetto - Rome's ancient Jewish neighborhood - while hundreds of thousands of soccer fans gathered in the nearby Circus Maximus to celebrate Italy's victory in the World Cup. |
| Subject: Rumors of Temple Mount Showdown | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Wednesday, August 02, 08:44:52pm  Islamic Movement: Prevent Jewish groups from visiting Temple Mount on Thursday By Yoav Stern, Haaretz Correspondent The Islamic Movement warned Wednesday against the possibility that Jewish groups would try to reach the Temple Mount on Thursday (The Ninth of Av) and damage the Al Aqsa Mosque. The group's warning follows a Supreme Court decision made earlier this week, ordering police to allow whoever wants to visit the Temple Mount during regular visiting hours on the Ninth of Av. Two MKs from the Islamic Movement, Sheikh Ibrahim Sarsur (Ra'am-Ta'al) and Sheikh Abbas Zkoor (Ra'am-Ta'al) sent an urgent letter to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, requesting that the government prevent members of the Temple Mount Faithful from reaching the area outside the Al Aqsa Mosque. "Extremist Jewish groups may damage the Al Aqsa Mosque. If this were to happen, heaven forbid, it would inflame the region," the MKs wrote. The Islamic Movement's Northern Branch also warned of what could take place Thursday in the vicinity of the Temple Mount. The head of the movement, Sheikh Raed Selah, said in a radio interview that the Supreme Court does not have the authority to rule on the matter. According to Selah, "The Supreme Court isn't worthy of deciding on matters pertaining to the Al Aqsa Mosque, because Israel does not have sovereignty over it. Selah called on Islamic Movement supporters to reach the Al Aqsa |
| Subject: More on Hutton Gibson | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Monday, July 31, 06:19:29pm  Hutton Gibson with holocaust denier Fredrick Töben at the 4th International Confernece on "Authentic History", "Real News" and the First Amendment From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Hutton Gibson (born August 26, 1918) is the father of actor Mel Gibson and a writer on religion. He was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of businessman John Hutton Gibson and Australian opera singer Eva Mylott. He currently resides in Summersville, West Virginia, after living many years in Texas. [1] Early life According to Wensley Clarkson's biography of Mel Gibson, Hutton spent time in a Catholic seminary during the late 1930s. According to one friend of the family, he left out of disgust with the Modernist doctrines taught there. Hutton Gibson served as a US Army Officer in the Pacific Theater during World War II after graduation from an OCS program. Following a victory on the Jeopardy! game show, he moved his family to Australia in 1968, reportedly out of a desire to protect his sons from being sent to the Vietnam War and because he believed that changes in American society were immoral. After the promulgation of the Novus Ordo, the Gibson family home in Sydney, Australia was used as a secret chapel where the Tridentine Mass was offered. Also, Hutton used the house to store statues and altar relics which were being discarded by Catholic parishes at the time. Notable beliefs Hutton Gibson is a Traditionalist Catholic. He goes further than many, however, embracing Sedevacantism. He has also stated that the Second Vatican Council was illegitimate and was the result of a secret anti-Catholic plot orchestrated by both Masons and Jews.[2] It has been incorrectly claimed that Hutton Gibson holds to the Siri Thesis. Gibson adheres to the theory that the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks were not carried out by Islamist terrorists aboard the planes, but rather by an unknown party using a "remote control," a view he has expressed on The Alex Jones Show.[3] Hutton Gibson with Holocaust denier Fredrick Töben, head of the Adelaide Institute, at the 2003 International Conference on Authentic History, Real News and the First AmendmentMany of Hutton Gibson's beliefs and actions, including his promulgation of Holocaust revisionist theories, his association with known Holocaust deniers and his contention that malevolent Jewish conspiracies exist within the Catholic Church and around the world, are consistent with traditional anti-Semitism. Echoing the claims of numerous other Holocaust deniers, he questions aspects of the Jewish Holocaust, especially the commonly accepted statistic that between five to seven million Jews were killed, arguing that it would have been impossible for the Nazis to have disposed of so many bodies.[4] He further claims that most of the Holocaust was "fiction," [4] that the thousands of Jews who disappeared from Poland during World War II "got up and left",[4] and that census statistics prove there were more Jews in Europe after World War II than before (a claim that is disputed by mainstream historians).[5] In support of his father, Mel Gibson claims that his father's beliefs do not amount to Holocaust denial. (Mel Gibson also says that he will not speak out publicly against his father.) Hutton Gibson publishes a quarterly newsletter called The War is Now! in which he details many of his views. |
| Subject: Like Father Like Son | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Monday, July 31, 05:05:22pm  Where Mad Max found faith February 16, 2004 An elderly man leapt off a Sydney ferry as it pulled into the Drummoyne wharf. Not for him the niceties of waiting for a rope to be tied and a ramp put down so that all could disembark safely. Other passengers smiled. Even the deckhand - notwithstanding the breach in regulations - was impressed. The octogenarian traveller was Hutton Gibson, father of Mel, who was paying a social call on this writer on one of his periodic visits to Sydney - he still has several family members in Australia - from his home in the United States. His son's film, The Passion of the Christ, about the death of Jesus, begins a world-wide run on Ash Wednesday, February 25. The father's view is that it "tells it like it is"; words very similar to those said to have been uttered by the Pope after his viewing. Such a concurrence of views is rare. Gibson senior's views on the Pope, whom he calls "garrulous Karolus", and on his immediate predecessors, are virtually unprintable. Except that he prints them with abandon in various self-published books and his own privately funded newsletter, appropriately titled The War Is Now! The newsletter, mailed to subscribers from India (where overseas postage is cheaper), has appeared at irregular intervals for some 25 years and is somewhat of a collector's item. It blends theological dissertations on the early church Fathers and obscure medieval clerics with sharp criticism of the "crowd now running the Vatican", many of whose positions and holy orders he considers not merely irregular but invalid. Church authorities, for their part, choose to ignore him. However, they have given him a nickname of his own, which is "Pope Hutton". We have known each other from about 1970 when Hutton, who then lived on Sydney's upper North Shore, led a campaign against changes to the Mass, being introduced in the wake of the Second Vatican Council (1962-66). Hutton had moved to Australia after winning the American TV quiz show Jeopardy in the late 1960s. He was worried that his sons would be drafted to fight in the Vietnam War and felt that his modest disability pension would go further in Australia. Mel, the sixth of his 11 children, was 12 when they got here. He recently described his father thus: "I doubt that I am as good an example to my kids as he was to us. He was a pretty fair guy, pretty easygoing, very calm, very measured and very smart." But to people outside his family, "Pope Hutton" was pretty strong meat. He resigned as secretary of the (conservative) Latin Mass Society, calling it "a mere nostalgia group". He formed instead an ultra-conservative group called the Alliance for Catholic Tradition. I once compared him in print to the Scottish Presbyterian minister who called Ian Paisley a "lily-livered liberal". "Pope Hutton", who sees the funny side of most things, took it as a compliment. It seems the police, if not the Australian Catholic hierarchy, listened carefully to Hutton Gibson's utterances. When the Pope visited Australia in 1986, he was advised that it might be in his best interests to be out of the country. (The fear was not that Hutton might assault the Pope, but that if an attack occurred he might be falsely singled out for blame.) He moved back to America soon afterwards and we did not meet again until last year. Mel Gibson has been influenced by his father in the past, to the extent of building and continuing to finance his own "pre-Vatican II" church near his California home. But while the father holds to certain conspiracy theories - including a belief that the Americans bombed the World Trade Centre - he has not to my knowledge espoused anti-Semitic views. His son, whom I first met when he was a schoolboy, has promoted racial (and by implication religious) harmony. Father Peter Malone, head of the Catholic Film Office, known as SIGNIS, was the first Australian to see the film. He said his own reaction was "very positive". A problem for biblical scholars is that the four Gospels differ in content and emphasis, with further arguments about the dates written and even the true identity of the writers. Filmmakers run the risk of producing "yet another version". Malone believes Gibson is aware of this trap, producing a coherent and theologically sound account, using extracts from all four. Malone says the crowd scenes when the mob call for Jesus' death are well handled and do not carry the view that the Jewish people, as a race, are guilty of deicide. He says the clash between Jesus and the Jewish religious leaders of his time was in reality "a clash within Judaism", and the film accurately reflected the politics of the period. Gibson may have achieved the difficult feat of pleasing both his father and mainstream Catholic scholars. Alan Gill was the Herald's religion writer for 23 years. This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/02/15/1076779837879.html |
| Subject: Mel, Mel, Mel.......I'm so disappointed | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Monday, July 31, 04:04:01pm  Like Father, Like Son? Mel Gibson's Anti-Semitic Tirade Renews Questions About Family Anti-Semitism By JAKE TAPPER July 31, 2006 — - Are a drunk man's words a sober man's thoughts, as the old proverb teaches? A police report filed over the weekend about an alcohol-fueled anti-Semitic tirade by actor Mel Gibson has renewed interest not only in the opinions of the famous filmmaker but also in those of his father. A Los Angeles Sheriff's Department report states that when Gibson was arrested early Friday morning for speeding with a .12 blood alcohol level, the 50-year-old actor lashed out at "f--ing Jews" and said that "the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." Gibson had asked a sheriff's deputy, "Are you a Jew?" After the story broke on Saturday, Gibson issued a statement apologizing for his behavior and for having "said things that I do not believe to be true and which are despicable," but none of those sentiments seem all that detached from the views of the actor's father. Hutton Gibson, 87, is a leading proponent of what is called Catholic traditionalism, a canon that rejects the changes to Catholicism made during the Second Vatican Council of 1962-1965, which the elder Gibson once called ''a Masonic plot backed by the Jews.'' Hutton Gibson is also outspoken in his views that the Holocaust never happened, or at least not to the degree that historians maintain. "Go and ask an undertaker or the guy who operates the crematorium what it takes to get rid of a dead body," he told the New York Times in 2003. "It takes one liter of petrol and 20 minutes. Now, 6 million?" Hutton Gibson has appeared at events sponsored by the anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denying Barnes Review (Click HERE to see a program from a 2003 seminar, which includes a photograph of Gibson with notorious Holocaust-denier Fredrick Töben) and is heralded on anti-Semitic Web sites around the world. In one radio interview in 2004, Hutton Gibson said that "most of " what historians say about the Holocaust is "fiction." He claimed that 6 million Jews weren't killed during World War II. Rather, he said, they moved. "They claimed that there were 6.2 million in Poland before the war, and they claimed after the war there were 200,000 -- therefore he must have killed 6 million of them," he said. "They simply got up and left! They were all over the Bronx and Brooklyn and Sydney, Australia, and Los Angeles." He said concentration camps were merely "work camps." Holocaust museums, he said, are "just a gimmick to collect money." For Jews, he said, "it's all about control. They're after one world religion and one world government. That's why they've attacked the Catholic Church so strongly, to ultimately take control over it by their doctrine." He added that "to a Jew a Christian commits idolatry every time he looks at a crucifix and says a prayer. You know they're in control and they're going to get in control the way things are going. Because they get all of our people." His son, he said, was happy about the controversy over "The Passion of the Christ." "Mel says he absolutely couldn't buy PR like this," Hutton Gibson said. He thanked the Anti Defamation League for ensuring that "everybody knows the line now: 'Let the blood be upon us and our children.'" Notably Mel Gibson has refused to say whether he agrees with his father's views. "My dad taught me my faith, and I believe what he taught me," Mel Gibson told Reader's Digest in 2003. "The man never lied to me in his life." Disputes Detractors' Agenda With news of his arrest, some Jewish activists do seem to believe that old proverb that a drunk man's words are a sober man's thoughts. (Or, alternatively, in vino, veritas.) "It appears that the combination of liquor and arrest has revealed his true character," said the national director of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai Brith, Abraham Foxman. "We believe there should be consequences to bigots and bigotry. One way to combat bigots is to put a price on bigotry. I would hope that if this is in fact true, that his colleagues condemn him and distance themselves from him." Gibson has a production deal with ABC Entertainment to make a miniseries about the Holocaust, and his latest film, "Apocalypto," is scheduled for release by the Walt Disney Company. (The Walt Disney Company is the parent company of ABC News.) In 2004, in the wake of criticism from some Jewish groups that his film "The Passion of the Christ" was anti-Semitic, Gibson was repeatedly asked about his father's views and his views on Jews. In every case, the movie star seemed to refuse to answer directly whether the Holocaust happened as historians affirm or whether it's been blown out of proportion or whether the Jews are responsible for the death of Jesus. Asked by ABC News' Diane Sawyer whether the Jews killed Jesus, Mel Gibson held that Jews essentially responsible, saying that anyone who disagrees with him is disputing the Bible. "There were Jews and Romans in Israel," Gibson said. "There were no Norwegians there. The Jewish Sanhedrin and those who they held sway over and the Romans were the material agents of his demise. You know, critics who have a problem with me don't really have a problem with me and this film, they have a problem with the four Gospels. That's what their problem is." As to what happened during the Holocaust, Gibson said, "Do I believe that there were concentration camps where defenseless and innocent Jews died cruelly under the Nazi regime? Of course I do, absolutely. It was an atrocity of monumental proportion." Were millions of Jews, 6 million Jews, killed? "Sure," Gibson said casually. "Their whole agenda here, my detractors, is to drive a wedge between me and my father," Gibson said. "And it's not going to happen. I love him. He's my father. … I'm tight with him. He's my father. Gotta leave it alone, Diane. Gotta leave it alone." But with news over the weekend that Gibson himself had made anti-Semitic slurs, it may be tough for the media to leave it alone. Copyright © 2006 ABC News Internet Ventures |
| Subject: Something pretty | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Saturday, July 29, 08:51:57am  |
| Subject: Mirror, Mirror on the Wall | |
Author: Phoenix [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Saturday, July 15, 02:15:15pm  |
| Subject: Hastening the apocalypse | |
Author: Phoenix [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Saturday, July 15, 02:03:14pm  Christians, Muslims and Jews nudge return of the messiah By Louis Sahagun Los Angeles Times Los Angeles Times Evangelist John C. Hagee speaks at Harvest Rock Church in Pasadena, Calif., asking local pastors to support Israel during the apocalypse. He has helped 12,000 Russian Jews move to Israel and donated millions to its hospitals and orphanages. For thousands of years, prophets have predicted the end of the world. Today, various religious groups, using the latest technology, are trying to hasten it. Their end game is to speed the promised arrival of a messiah. For some Christians this means laying the groundwork for Armageddon. With that goal in mind, mega-church pastors recently met in Inglewood, Calif., to polish strategies for using global communications and aircraft to transport missionaries to fulfill the Great Commission – to make every person on Earth aware of Jesus’ message. Doing so, they believe, will bring about the end, perhaps within two decades. In Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a far different vision. Ahmadinejad, who is defiantly pursuing a nuclear option, has suggested that the elimination of Israel would herald the return of a ninth-century Muslim cleric known as the Mahdi, the 12th Imam. He hopes to welcome that messiah to Tehran within two years. Conversely, some Jewish groups in Jerusalem hope to clear the path for their own messiah by rebuilding a temple on a site now occupied by one of Islam’s holiest shrines. Artisans have re-created priestly robes of white linen, gem-studded breastplates, silver trumpets and solid-gold menorahs to be used in the Holy Temple – along with two 6 1/2 -ton marble cornerstones for the building’s foundation. Then there is Clyde Lott, a Mississippi revivalist preacher and cattle rancher. He is trying to raise a unique herd of red heifers to satisfy an obscure injunction in the Book of Numbers: the sacrifice of a blemish-free red heifer for purification rituals needed to pave the way for the messiah. So far, only one of his cows has been verified by rabbis as worthy, meaning they couldn’t find even three white or black hairs on the animal’s body. Linking these efforts is a belief that modern technologies and global communications have made it possible to induce completion of God’s plan within this generation. While there are myriad interpretations of how it will play out, the basic Christian apocalyptic countdown – as described by Old Testament Scripture and the Book of Revelation in the New Testament – is as follows: Jews return to Israel after 2,000 years; the Holy Temple is rebuilt; billions of people perish during seven years of natural disasters and plagues; the Antichrist arises and rules the world; the battle of Armageddon erupts in the vicinity of Israel; Jesus returns to defeat Satan’s armies and preside over Judgment Day. Generations of Christians have hoped for the Second Coming of Jesus, said Eugen Weber, a historian at the University of California, Los Angeles, and author of the 1999 book “Apocalypses: Prophecies, Cults and Millennial Beliefs through the Ages.” “And it’s always been an ultimately bloody hope, a slaughterhouse hope,” he added with a sigh. “What we have now in this global age is a vaster and bloodier-than-ever Wagnerian version. But, then, we are a very imaginative race.” Apocalyptic movements are nothing new; even Christopher Columbus hoped to assist in the Great Commission by evangelizing New World inhabitants. Some religious scholars saw apocalyptic fever rise as the year 2000 approached, and they expected it to subside after the millennium arrived without a hitch. It didn’t. According to various polls, an estimated 40 percent of Americans believe that a sequence of events presaging the end times is under way. Among the believers are pastors of some of the largest evangelical churches in America, who converged at Faith Central Bible Church in Inglewood in February to finalize plans to start 5 million new churches worldwide in 10 years. “Jesus Christ commissioned his disciples to go to the ends of the Earth and tell everyone how they could achieve eternal life,” explained James Davis, president of the Global Pastors Network’s “Billion Souls Initiative,” one of an estimated 2,000 initiatives worldwide designed to boost the Christian population. “As we advance around the world,” Davis said, “we’ll be shortening the time needed to fulfill that Great Commission. Then, the Bible says, the end will come.” An opposing vision, invoked by Ahmadinejad in an address before the United Nations last year, suggests that the Imam Mahdi will soon emerge from a well to conquer the world and convert everyone to Islam. “O mighty Lord,” he said, “I pray to you to hasten the emergence of your last repository, the promised one, that perfect and pure human being, the one that will fill this world with justice and peace.” While mayor of Tehran in 2004, Ahmadinejad spent millions on improvements to make the city more welcoming to Imam Mahdi, according to a recent report by the American Foreign Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank. For Christians, the future of Israel is the key to any end-times scenario, and various groups are reaching out to Jews – or proselytizing among them – to advance the Second Coming. A growing number of fundamentalist Christians, mostly in Southern states, are adopting Jewish religious practices to align themselves with prophecies saying that Gentiles will stand as one with Jews when the end is near. Evangelist John C. Hagee of the 19,000-member Cornerstone Church in San Antonio has helped 12,000 Russian Jews move to Israel, and donated several million dollars to Israeli hospitals and orphanages. “We are the generation that will probably see the rapture of the church,” Hagee said, referring to a moment in advance of Jesus’ return when the world’s true believers will be lifted to heaven. “In Christian theology, the first thing that happens when Christ returns to Earth is the judgment of nations,” said Hagee, who wears a Jewish prayer shawl when he ministers. “It will have one criterion: How did you treat the Jewish people? Anyone who understands that will want to be on the right side of that question. Those who are anti-Semitic will go to eternal damnation.” On July 18, Hagee plans to lead a contingent of high-profile evangelists to Washington to make their concerns about Israel’s security known to congressional leaders. More than 1,200 evangelists are expected for the gathering. “Twenty-five years ago, I called a meeting of evangelists to discuss such an effort, and the conversation didn’t last an hour,” he said. “This time, I called and they all came and stayed. And when the meeting was over, they all agreed to speak up for Israel.” Underlining the sense of urgency is a belief that the end-times clock started ticking May 15, 1948, when the United Nations formally recognized Israel. “I’ll never forget that night,” Hagee said. “I was 8 years old at the time and in the kitchen with my father listening to the news about Israel’s rebirth on the radio. He said, ‘Son, this is the most important day in the 20th century.’ ” Given end-times scenarios saying that non-believers will die before Jesus returns – and that the Antichrist will rule from Jerusalem’s rebuilt Holy Temple – Jews have mixed feelings about the outpouring of support Israel has been getting from evangelical organizations. “I truly believe John Hagee is at once a daring, beautiful person – and quite dangerous,” said Orthodox Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, vice president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership in New York. © 2006 Journal Gazette and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved. http://www.fortwayne.com |
| Subject: facts | |
Author: nena [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Saturday, July 01, 03:38:59pm I need some facts on the Embassy Row/ Vice Presidential home |
| Subject: Manicure and Pedicure Kit | |
Author: ilovepot54 [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Sunday, June 04, 09:40:35pm http://search.ebay.ca/_W0QQsassZilovepot54QQhtZ-1 |
| Subject: Old article on Jeffs | |
Author: Keely [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Monday, May 15, 10:59:37am Khaleej Times/February 18, 2004 Colorado City, Arizona -- The world of Britney Spears and bare midriffs is kept at bay here by mountains and canyons - and the prophet. If local women venture onto the dusty streets at all, they sport ankle-length dresses, buttoned-up blouses and 1930s hairstyles with buns and pompadours. And they always defer to men. Men cast somber glances at strangers, derive their self worth from the number of wives they have and defer to the prophet. His name is Warren Jeffs. In the largest US community of open polygamists, the 48-year-old cleric is judge and jury, bank and police, and above all defender of the faith as head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. There is no area of local life that does not bear his imprint. "The prophet decides who marries whom and when," says Flora Jessop, a native of Colorado City who fled in 1986 after being forced to marry her cousin. "A lot of times, you only have a couple of hours' notice," she recalls. "They come in and say, "Get ready to be married. Here is your dress.' And off you go." If it has ever been different, few people remember. Mormon hardliners moved here at the end of the 19th century, after mainstream Mormons of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City, renounced polygamy in 1890 as a condition for Utah statehood. Sandwiched between the Grand Canyon and the red cliffs of southern Utah, the valley offers remoteness and seclusion, which makes Warren Jeffs the undisputed ruler. The Irony As Arizona Senators John McCain and Jon Kyl go on Sunday talk shows to argue for the rights of women in Iraq, Jeffs ascends the pulpit to tell his followers that a man must have at least three wives to secure a place in heaven, while a woman will get there only if invited by her man, local residents said. Still, it is the prophet's - not men's - paradise here on Earth. A young fellow with an eye on a local girl must court his holiness instead, several locals said. Getting a wife requires being useful, pliant and ready to serve. And forwarding entire paychecks - in addition to the regular tithe - to church coffers, said Pamela Black, who lives in Hildale, Utah, essentially a borough of Colorado City, and just across the state line from Arizona. Then, maybe his holiness will be kind enough to put the suitor on a list for getting his first or second or third wife. "I know of a man who never got a wife because he just doesn't have the right last name," Black recalled. Dating is prohibited, and women are discouraged from even talking to men outside their immediate families. The first kiss comes on orders from the prophet, who is rumored to have up to 80 "spiritual" wives in addition to one legal wife. If a married man falls out of favor, the prophet usually tells his wives and children to leave him, according to Black. Even on a weekday afternoon, the main commercial street is eerily empty and unkempt. Whatever grass there was is torn to shreds by bulldozer treads. Abandoned construction machinery litters many yards. No Mass Media Not a single newspaper or magazine can be found. A variety store displays about a dozen second-hand books, mostly on good housekeeping. No movie theatre, no video rental. The culture-averse prophet banned television years ago. Word of a stranger in town spreads like wildfire, and a burly man in an SUV becomes a permanent fixture in the rear-view mirror. His holiness is said to have a private security force called "The God Squad." In a town of approximately 7,000 residents, the public school has about 100 students, according to Deloy Bateman, the science teacher. About five years ago, church leaders ordered the faithful to take their offspring out because they had found the curriculum "wicked," says Bateman, whom Jeffs has declared "apostate." Youngsters are being "homeschooled," with predictable results. "Most of the children in this town aren't taught anything about the Revolutionary War, (George) Washington or (Abraham) Lincoln, or anything like that," Bateman explains. "They are taught priesthood history, which is their religious doctrine." Classics like "Gone with the Wind" and "Romeo and Juliet" are unthinkable because, Bateman says, "no teacher would dare bring those subjects up." Swimming is out of the question because girls may not appear in swimsuits. Since there is no courtship, there is no dancing. And no out-of-town baseball games: The prophet does not cotton to contact with the outside world. Now and then, residents are told to get rid of their cats and dogs - no explanation given. The last serious attempt at outside intervention dates back to 1953, when governor Howard Pyle arrested two-dozen local men and placed about 200 children in foster homes. But images of crying kids being torn away from their mothers had a boomerang effect: The governor lost his re-election bid after turning off mainstream Mormons, a powerful constituency in Arizona. Since then, the community has largely been left to its own devices - and those of the prophet. |
| Subject: Latest on Warren Jeffs | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Saturday, May 13, 06:11:52pm Deseret Morning News, Saturday, May 13, 2006 By Ben Winslow Deseret Morning News Warren Jeffs seemed to know that law enforcement was closing in on the Fundamentalist LDS Church.  Warren Jeffs "In the last moments ... the final preparation ... the storm clouds are gathering against us," he said in a secretly recorded priesthood sermon obtained by the Deseret Morning News. "Only the Lord can protect us from the trials ahead." In the Aug. 10, 2003, Sunday meeting recorded by a member shortly before the member was excommunicated, Jeffs railed against "sinners" within his flock. Later that day, Jeffs addressed his entire congregation in Hildale and cancelled church meetings. Within months, dozens were purged from FLDS ranks. In the priesthood sermon, Jeffs tells the men to choose sides. "There is only one side and that is the Lord's side," he said in a monotone voice. Law enforcement involved in the manhunt for the fugitive polygamist leader are hoping to capture him and avoid bloodshed. "That's the big question," said Gary Engels, an investigator in the Mohave County Attorney's Office assigned to look into the goings-on in the polygamous border towns of Hildale and Colorado City, Ariz. "We don't know how he'll go. If he'll go quietly or go out as a big martyr." Jeffs was placed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list last week, fueling a nationwide manhunt. A $100,000 reward is also being offered for information leading to his arrest. In Utah and Arizona, Jeffs is facing criminal charges accusing him of arranging child bride polygamous marriages. Federal prosecutors have filed unlawful flight to avoid prosecution charges against him. Just this past week, Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff told the Deseret Morning News that his office has been quietly conducting an organized crime investigation into Jeffs, the Fundamentalist LDS Church and the United Effort Plan (UEP) Trust. A federal grand jury in Arizona is also reportedly investigating Jeffs and the FLDS Church. "We do think that he certainly has the capacity for violence," said Ken Wallentine, the Utah attorney general's chief of law enforcement. "He travels with individuals who have that ability." Warren Jeffs attends party at Alta Academy in the late 1990s. The picture was provided by a source who asked to remain anonymous. The polygamist leader travels with a pack of armed bodyguards, nicknamed "The God Squad" by some in Hildale and Colorado City. "There's a chance they will fight to protect him, and that's what we don't want to have happen," Shurtleff said. "In my opinion, we take all necessary steps with our state and local partners to ensure that any apprehension is done in safe manner," FBI Special Agent-in-Charge Tim Fuhrman said last week. "Mr. Jeffs holds the key to this. He could turn himself and surrender." The FBI has been chasing numerous leads that have poured in across the country since placing Jeffs on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list. In the 2003 tape obtained by the Deseret Morning News, Jeffs calls upon his followers to repent to keep the outside forces at bay. "We need Heavenly Father's protection," he told priesthood holders of the FLDS Church. At the time, a polygamist police officer was facing criminal charges in St. George, and the Utah Attorney General's Office was looking more closely at the FLDS Church. In another 2003 sermon, former followers said that Jeffs compared himself to Joseph Smith, the founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who was killed by a mob in Illinois. The FLDS Church is a breakaway religion and not affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. "Joseph Smith turned himself in to lawful authorities. I promise I will place my name and my reputation on the security of Mr. Jeffs. He would not be a martyr in Purgatory," Washington County Sheriff Kirk Smith said, referring to the name of his county jail. A siege mentality has set in along the Utah-Arizona border in the polygamous towns of Hildale and Colorado City, with many observers saying FLDS faithful have become entrenched. Former FLDS lawyer Rod Parker said putting Jeffs on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list will only cause the faithful to rally around him. "I think from the standpoint of the people, it just reinforces how unfair and out of control this whole government approach to the church is right now," he told the Deseret Morning News. "They view the whole thing as a test of their faith." One place where Jeffs may be in hiding is at the FLDS Church's temple site in Eldorado, Texas. Construction continues on the YFZ Ranch. It stands for "Yearning for Zion," after a song Jeffs penned. A dairy is being built and just this past week, foundations were seen being poured on new homes. One of the largest homes on the compound is believed to belong to Jeffs. But there's no sign of the fugitive polygamist prophet, according to police. Law enforcement is reluctant to go onto the property without probable cause, hoping to avoid another high-profile confrontation in Texas. During the stand-off at a Branch Davidian sect compound in Waco, Texas, in 1993, more than 80 people — including two dozen children — died in a fiery siege with federal agents. "We do have the experience of Waco and law enforcement has been trained on that incident," Schleicher County Sheriff David Doran said. "There's no reason in getting in any big hurry and trying to push the envelope." Doran has maintained contact with FLDS members on the YFZ Ranch. When the first federal warrant was issued for Jeffs' arrest in 2005, Doran ventured onto the property in an attempt to negotiate a surrender. "I tried to get them to cut a deal and have him turn himself in," Doran told the Deseret Morning News. "As always, they didn't express one way or another where he was." Doran believes that by continuing a dialogue with FLDS members on the ranch, he's avoided a stand-off mentality. He continues to be allowed on the property when necessary. |
| Subject: Warren Jeffs - weird stuff | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Saturday, May 13, 05:56:15pm  By David Kelly and Gary Cohn, Times Staff Writers May 13, 2006 COLORADO CITY, Ariz. — There is nothing physically imposing about Warren Jeffs. He's tall and reedy with a quavering voice and, acquaintances say, an especially limp handshake. Family members describe the church leader as secretive, strict and "very militant about his religion." Jeffs, 50, grew up in a Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints compound in Salt Lake City, where he served first as a teacher and then principal of the sect's Alta Academy. "Warren was very reserved, very starchy," said his brother Ward. "He was an intelligent man, and my father always favored him." Warren Jeffs is accused of repeatedly raping his then-5-year-old nephew Brent while Jeffs was at the academy. In a lawsuit filed in 2004 by Brent Jeffs, who is now 23, the church leader is said to have a history of molesting children dating back to when he was 14. The suit said the church had received complaints for years that he was abusing children yet did nothing to stop him and instead made him school principal. Former students recall him talking graphically about sex to 5- and 6-year-old boys and constantly stressing absolute obedience — especially on the part of girls and women. In a transcript of a 1995 lecture to students, he said the only way for a woman to be happy was to "let her husband, a faithful man, rule over her." Jeffs became leader when his father, FLDS prophet Rulon Jeffs, died in 2002. The younger Jeffs declared that God had sent him a revelation making him prophet. No one disputed the claim. As prophet, Jeffs immediately made his presence felt. Striding about in his trademark long white shirt, tie and jacket, members said, he issued edicts left and right. Competitive sports were banned because they supposedly bred pride. Select "missionaries" were sent door to door to see whether people were engaged in forbidden acts such as listening to music or watching television. He closed the church building saying residents had "treated lightly the things of God." It has not reopened. Calls for money "to build up the kingdom" increased. Along with tithing 10% of their income, Jeffs asked for an additional $1,000 per month, per family, witnesses said. Wheelbarrows were parked at podiums during public meetings for residents to toss in cash donations. "I saw three of them filled with money at one time," said former member Brad Zitting. Jeffs routinely evicted people from their church-owned homes or gave the family of one man to another. He seldom provided explanations but insisted they write endless repentance letters confessing their sins, letters many believe he used for blackmail or to gather intelligence about his rivals. He expelled boys as young as 13 for wearing short-sleeved shirts, watching movies or talking to girls. In public speeches, Jeffs prophesized that a final showdown between the faithful and the outside world was coming. Sermons were full of racist invective. Blacks are cursed by God, he said, and interracial marriage bars entry into heaven. "The black race are the people through which the devil has always been able to bring evil unto the Earth," he has said. "Through the Negro race, the devil has kept evil alive." Such talk led the Southern Poverty Law Center to designate the FLDS a hate group. Jeffs often travels in convoys of SUVs with armed bodyguards. An enormous wall was erected around his Hildale, Utah, compound, with state-of-the-art surveillance equipment to watch and listen. Last month, prosecutors in Washington County, Utah, charged Jeffs with rape, as an accomplice, for allegedly encouraging a man to have sex with his underage wife without her consent. Rodney Parker, a lawyer for the FLDS since 1990, said Jeffs had been unfairly cast as the next Jim Jones or David Koresh, cult leaders who died with their followers after violent confrontations with authorities. "Warren is charismatic. He is intellectual. He is not crazy. He is not paranoid. He is very serious about his religion," Parker said. "He is trying to meet the expectations of God." |
| Subject: He didn't clone anybody | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Saturday, May 13, 04:51:17pm  May 12, 10:53 AM (ET) By JAE-SOON CHANG SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - South Korean prosecutors indicted disgraced cloning scientist Hwang Woo-suk Friday on charges of fraud, embezzlement and bioethics violations in a scandal over faked stem cell research that shook the scientific community. Five members of Hwang's research team were indicted on lesser charges, prosecution official Lee In-kyu said in a nationally televised news conference. The 52-year-old scientist faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted. The first hearing is expected in mid-June, said prosecutor Hong Man-pyo. The government apologized to once-hopeful patients and pledged better oversight. "There is no way to contain apologetic feelings to patients with hard-to-treat diseases and their family members who pinned big hopes on stem cell research achievements," the Science and Technology Ministry said in a statement. Hwang was hailed worldwide as a stem cell pioneer and treated as a national hero until investigations late last year showed that he had fabricated key data, which had given hope for breakthrough treatments to such diseases such as Alzheimer's. Hwang was charged with fraud for accepting $2 million in private donations based on the outcome of the falsified research and for allegedly embezzling nearly $900,000 in private and government research funds, Lee said. He also allegedly bought human eggs for research, a violation of the country's bioethics law. State prosecutors accepted Hwang's long-standing claim that a junior researcher deceived him into believing his lab successfully created patient-specific stem cells from cloned embryos, a centerpiece of his purported research breakthrough. But they said Hwang "fabricated most of the data" to exaggerate the scale of what he believed was a legitimate technology. Prosecutors decided against indicting him for that because "there has been no precedent in the world" of bringing criminal charges for faking academic papers, Lee said. Hwang, last seen in public when he appeared for questioning by prosecutors in early March, was not reachable for comment. Hwang's attorney Lee Geon-haeng did not return phone calls seek comment Friday. South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted Hwang as saying Thursday that he "feels tormented." Of the researchers, three were charged with fraud, one with tampering with research samples and one with bioethics violations. Lee said none of the six would be detained, but did not elaborate. The scientist had claimed that he created the world's first cloned human embryos and extracted stem cells from them. Those claims published in academic journals in 2004 and 2005 had offered hope of new treatments for millions of patients suffering from paralysis and debilitating diseases. Stem cells are basic human cells that can develop into nearly any kind of tissue. Creating patient-specific stem cells with a patient's own DNA would be a key breakthrough because they theoretically could be used for treatments to replace sick cells with the assurance that they would not be rejected by the body. Hwang acknowledged publicly that he inflated data, but accused other researchers of deceiving him with falsified research results. Junior researcher Kim Sun-jong, who was indicted for tampering, misled Hwang with the fake results "under psychological pressure" to accomplish his duties and "out of desire to succeed as a scholar," Lee said. It was unclear when Hwang became aware he had been deceived. Hwang maintains he has the technology to do what he claimed. But South Korea's Health Ministry withdrew his research license, preventing him from cloning human embryos or receiving eggs for such work. After the research was discredited, he was fired from his post as a professor at Seoul National University's veterinary department and the government conducted a probe into his finances. Auditors said in February that it was unclear how Hwang spent $2.6 million he received in government funds and private donations. Through last year, Hwang received $33 million in government funds for his research as well as $6.4 million in private donations, the audit board said. Outside the prosecutors' office in Seoul, about two dozen supporters called for Hwang to continue his research. |
| Subject: Can you believe this fool has a TV show?? Only in America... | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Saturday, May 13, 06:33:55am Fri May 12, 2:04 AM ET  In a scene from his new candid-camera program "Juiced," O.J. Simpson pulls a prank involving the infamous white Bronco, drawing criticism from the family of a man he was accused of killing. As part of the pay-per-view show, Simpson pretends to sell the Bronco at a used car lot and boasts to a prospective buyer that he made the vehicle famous, according to a segment aired Thursday on "Inside Edition." "It was good for me — it helped me get away," Simpson said, referring to the slow-speed, televised police chase that preceded his 1994 arrest on charges of murdering his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman. Goldman's father, Fred, told "Inside Edition" he found Simpson's comment "morally reprehensible." Simpson was acquitted of murder. A civil jury later held him liable for the deaths and ordered him to pay $33.5 million to the Brown and Goldman families. Much of that judgment remains unpaid. "Any money that he makes, I hope, will go to satisfy the multimillion dollar judgment made against him in the civil case," said Brown family attorney Gloria Allred. The hour-long program is airing on pay-per-view this month, and a DVD offering uncensored material will be made available soon, "Juiced" executive producer Rick Mahr told The Associated Press. Other practical jokes include Simpson disguised as an Elvis impersonator, a vagabond selling oranges for money and an elderly man leading a Bingo game. Simpson was not paid for the program, Mahr said. "Basically O.J. Simpson has decided to do this because he wants to do it, and he wanted to have fun with it," Mahr said. |
| Subject: More skullduggery | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Saturday, May 13, 06:24:04am Skullduggery Fri, May 12, 2006, 10:58 am PDT  Read this article here Geronimo Skull and Bones, the oldest and most notorious of Yale University's secret societies, stole the skull of the great Apache warrior Geronimo and hid it inside its clubhouse, or so the rumor went. But it was just that—a rumor—until Monday, when Yale Alumni Magazine's web site published excerpts of a 1918 letter that presents the tale as truth. Is it really true? Who knows? It's an old letter from one Bonesman to another. And the secrets buzz around this club like flies at a pigsty. We've also heard that Bonesmen smooch skulls, mud wrestle, and converse with the devil. Well, that last part was a lie, but we did read the kissing stuff—and, frankly, that's weird. Regardless, the spooky allure of Skull and Bones thrills the Buzz every time. Searches on "skull and bones society" vaulted into our top 10 movers, while "geronimo" leapt 307%. "Skull pictures," "skulls," and "yale university" also rose. Here's where the story gets even juicier. You know President Bush was a Bonesman. So was his father, his granddaddy Prescott Bush, and his 2004 presidential challenger John Kerry. Don't tell Karl Rove, but grandfather Bush is believed to be among the group of pillagers who stole away with Geronimo's cranium. Just when things are getting tough at work for the commander-in-chief, his relative is outed as a grave robber. Now that hurts. |
| Subject: Whose skull and bones | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Saturday, May 13, 06:16:20am  May/June 2006 by Kathrin Day Lassila '81 and Mark Alden Branch '86 Did Skull and Bones rob the grave of Geronimo during World War I? For decades, it has been the most controversial and sordid of all the mysteries surrounding Yale's best-known secret society. The story was widely rumored but, despite the efforts of reporters and historians and the public complaints of Apache leaders in the 1980s, never verified. An internal history of Skull and Bones, written in the 1930s and leaked to the Apache 50 years later, mentioned the theft. But Bones spokesmen have always dismissed the story as a hoax. "The skull of the worthy Geronimo the Terrible, exhumed from its tomb at Fort Sill by your club, is now safe inside the T --." A former senior editor of the Yale Alumni Magazine has now discovered the only known contemporary evidence: a reference in private correspondence from one senior Bonesman to another. The letter was written on June 7, 1918, by Winter Mead '19 to F. Trubee Davison '18. It announces that the remains dug up at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, by a group that included Charles C. Haffner Jr. '19 (a new member, or "Knight"), have been deposited in the society's headquarters (the "Tomb"): "The skull of the worthy Geronimo the Terrible, exhumed from its tomb at Fort Sill by your club & the K -- t [Knight] Haffner, is now safe inside the T -- [Tomb] together with his well worn femurs[,] bit & saddle horn." Mead was not at Fort Sill, so his letter is not proof. And if the Bonesmen did rob a grave, there's reason to think it may have been the wrong one. But the letter shows that the story was no after-the-fact rumor. Senior Bonesmen at the time believed it. "It adds to the seriousness of the belief [that the theft took place], certainly," says Judith Schiff, the chief research archivist at Sterling Memorial Library, who has written extensively on Yale history. "It has a very strong likelihood of being true, since it was written so close to the time." Members of a secret society, she points out, were required to be honest with each other about its affairs. Moreover, the yearbook entries for Haffner, Mead, and Davison confirm that they were all Bonesmen. (The membership of the societies was routinely published in newspapers and yearbooks until the 1970s.) Haffner's entry confirms that he was at the artillery school at Fort Sill some time between August 1917 and July 1918. Marc Wortman, a writer and former senior editor of this magazine, discovered the letter in the Sterling Memorial Library archives while researching Davison's war years for a book -- The Millionaires' Unit, released this month by PublicAffairs press -- about Yale's World War I aviators. The letter is preserved in a folder of 1918 correspondence in one of the 16 boxes of the F. Trubee Davison Papers. Mead's was one of many letters Davison received that year about Bones matters. With the war on, the Bonesmen were scattered around the United States and Europe, and society business like choosing new members had to be conducted by mail. "Lists of people to be tapped would come to Trubee and he would comment on them," says Wortman. Mead's letter also relays the news that Parker B. Allen '19 had been initiated as a member in Saumur, France, and Allen's yearbook entry confirms his membership in Bones and his posting to artillery school in Saumur. The Geronimo rumor first came to wide public attention in 1986. At the time, Ned Anderson, then chair of the San Carlos Apache Tribe in Arizona, was campaigning to have Geronimo's remains moved from Fort Sill -- where he died a prisoner of war in 1909 -- to Apache land in Arizona. Anderson received an anonymous letter from someone who claimed to be a member of Skull and Bones, alleging that the society had Geronimo's skull. The writer included a photograph of a skull in a display case and a copy of what is apparently a centennial history of Skull and Bones, written by the literary critic F. O. Matthiessen '23, a Skull and Bones member. In Matthiessen's account, which quotes a Skull and Bones log book from 1919, the skull had been unearthed by six Bonesmen -- identified by their Bones nicknames, including "Hellbender," who apparently was Haffner. Matthiessen mentions the real names of three of the robbers, all of whom were at Fort Sill in early 1918: Ellery James '17, Henry Neil Mallon '17, and Prescott Bush '17, the father and grandfather of the U.S. presidents. "My assumption is that they did dig up somebody at Fort Sill. It could have been an Indian, but it probably wasn't Geronimo." Anderson arranged a meeting with Bones alumni Jonathan Bush '53, a son of Prescott Bush; and Endicott Peabody Davison '45, a son of Trubee Davison. At the meeting, Anderson has told several journalists, the Bones representatives produced a display case like the one in the photo. But they told Anderson that the skull inside it was that of a ten-year-old boy. They offered the skull to Anderson, but he declined, as he believed it was not the same one in the photo. Some researchers have concluded that the Bonesmen could not have even found Geronimo's grave in 1918. David H. Miller, a history professor at Cameron University in Lawton, Oklahoma, cites historical accounts that the grave was unmarked and overgrown until a Fort Sill librarian persuaded local Apaches to identify the site for him in the 1920s. "My assumption is that they did dig up somebody at Fort Sill," says Miller. "It could have been an Indian, but it probably wasn't Geronimo." Mead's letter, written from one Bonesman to another just after the incident would have occurred, suggests that society members had robbed a grave and had a skull they believed was Geronimo's. It does not speak to whether Skull and Bones may still have such a skull today. Many have speculated that they do, but there is no direct evidence. Alexandra Robbins '98, who wrote the 2002 Bones expose Secrets of the Tomb, says she persuaded a number of Bones alumni to talk to her for her book. "Many talked about a skull in a glass case by the front door that they call Geronimo," Robbins told the alumni magazine. (Representatives of Skull and Bones did not return calls from the magazine by press time.) Skull and Bones and other Yale societies have a reputation for stealing, often from each other or from campus buildings. Society members reportedly call the practice "crooking" and strive to outdo each other's "crooks." And the club is also thought to use human remains in its rituals. In 2001, journalist Ron Rosenbaum '68 reported capturing on videotape what appeared to be an initiation ceremony in the society's courtyard, in which Bonesmen carried skulls and "femur-sized bones." It may have been easier for the Bonesmen to plunder an Apache's grave if they shared the racial attitudes typical of their era and social class. It may have been easier for the Bonesmen to plunder an Apache's grave if they shared the racial attitudes typical of their era and social class. At the time, says Gaddis Smith, Larned Professor of History emeritus, who is writing a history of Yale since 1900, "there was a racial consciousness and a sense of Anglo-Saxon superiority above all others." He notes that James Rowland Angell, who became president of Yale in 1921, "would say, very explicitly, that we must preserve Yale for the 'old stock.'" Smith adds, "The slogan of the first major fund-raising campaign for Yale, in 1926, was 'Keep Yale Yale.' The alumni knew exactly what it meant." At the same time, many of those complicit in what was apparently the desecration of a grave cherished ideals of service and fellowship, and had lived up to them by enlisting for the war voluntarily. A striking example is chronicled in Marc Wortman's book, The Millionaires' Unit, which began as an article for this magazine about a group of Yale undergraduates who took up the new sport of aviation in order to fight for the Allies ("Flight to Glory," November/December 2003). Trubee Davison was the co-founder and moving spirit of this project. Before the United States had even entered the war, he recruited two dozen elite and wealthy young Yalies of his set -- five of them Bonesmen -- to devote themselves to flying. Out of these efforts grew the first squadron in what is today the Naval Air Reserve. The letter might not have been discovered if Davison hadn't founded the aviation group. It might not even have been written if he hadn't endured great personal suffering for the war effort. Davison never made it overseas; he crashed during a training flight and was disabled for the rest of his life. It was while he was recuperating at home that his fellow Bonesmen wrote to him about candidates for membership, initiations abroad, and other society business. The Geronimo letter, with its matter-of-fact reports of troop units and its boast about a grave robbery, speaks to the complex and contradictory mores of the privileged class in early twentieth-century America. Copyright ©2006, Yale Alumni Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. Send comments or suggestions to Web editor. Yale Alumni Magazine, PO Box 1905, New Haven, CT 06509-1905, USA. yam@yale.edu |
| Subject: Gibson inspired | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Friday, May 12, 02:04:45pm May 12, 11:45 AM By WENN  Film star and director Mel Gibson has launched a scathing attack on US President George W Bush, comparing his leadership to the barbaric rulers of the Mayan civilisation in his new film Apocalypto. The epic, due for release later this year, captures the decline of the Maya kingdom and the slaughter of thousands of inhabitants as human sacrifices in a bid to save the nation from collapsing. Gibson reveals he used present day American politics as an inspiration, claiming the government callously plays on the nation's insecurities to maintain power. He tells British film magazine Hotdog, "The fear-mongering we depict in the film reminds me of President Bush and his guys". |
| Subject: Geronimo's skull? | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Tuesday, May 09, 04:28:09pm  Alec Russell / London Telegraph | May 9 2006 Comment: Once again evidence indicating that Skull and Bones, and offshoot organisations such as the Bohemian Club are not "frat boy clubs", they are elitist organisations intimately linked with the occult. One of America's great historical controversies intensifed yesterday with the publication of fresh evidence that members of an elite secret society may have dug up the remains of the Indian leader Geronimo and displayed his skull in their headquarters. Rumours that half a dozen members of the Skull & Bones society at Yale University - including President George W Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush - dug up the grave of the legendary Apache leader during the First World War have exercised historians for years. "Bonesmen", as senior members of the society are known, and the Bush family have long refused to comment on the claims. The society, founded in 1832 and famous for its strange rituals centred on symbols of death, has over the years been accused of obtaining the skulls of a range of famous figures, including the former president Martin Van Buren and Che Guevara. Its members include President Bush and his defeated rival in the last presidential election, Senator John Kerry. Now contemporary evidence has been unearthed backing the theory that a group of young Bonesmen, based at an artillery school at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, desecrated Geronimo's grave. The Apache leader had died while in custody at Fort Sill in 1909, 23 years after he finally surrendered to US troops. In a letter written in 1918, one society member tells another that Geronimo's skull had been exhumed and was being kept in the "Tomb" - the society's headquarters in New Haven, Connecticut. "The skull of the worthy Geronimo the Terrible, exhumed from its tomb at Fort Sill by your club... is now safe inside the T- [Tomb] together with his well-worn femurs, bit & saddle horn." The letter was unearthed in Yale University archives by a historian writing about First World War Yale pilots, and published in the Yale Alumni Magazine. The letter names only one member of the alleged raiding party, a Charles Haffner, and makes no mention of Prescott Bush, who become a senator and is seen as the founder of the Bush political dynasty. He was first linked to the saga in 1986, 14 years after his death, when documents from the society's archives were leaked purportedly showing that six Bonesmen - identifiable by their nicknames and including Prescott Bush - unearthed Geronimo's skull. Some historians insist that the grave was never disturbed and that if there is a skull in the Tomb it is not the Apache leader's. David Miller, a history professor from Cameron University, Oklahoma, said that until 1920 Geronimo's grave was unmarked. "My assumption is that they did dig up somebody at Fort Sill," he told the Yale Alumni Magazine. "But it probably wasn't Geronimo." But society members have long believed that they do have Geronimo's skull in their headquarters. "Many talked about a skull in a glass case by the front door that they call Geronimo," Alexandra Robbins, the author of Secrets of the Tomb, an exposé on the society, told the magazine. Apache leaders seized on the news yesterday as further evidence that America's elite treated Indian tribes as a subspecies into the 20th century. "Who in the hell would do such a thing?" asked Raleigh Thomson, a former branch leader who has campaigned to transfer Geronimo's remains to the tribe's Arizona reservation. He told the Wall St Journal: "I guess it's the way my elders used to explain to me that white people are." |
| Subject: True Cheney | |
Author: Crystal [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Wednesday, May 03, 08:04:23am  |
| Subject: 911 video | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Saturday, April 29, 04:38:05pm Watch and Decide... Watch video Here |
| Subject: Timeline for 911 | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Saturday, April 29, 04:31:38pm  Read about it Here |
| Subject: awwwww........what a surprise | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Friday, April 28, 04:28:32pm  WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (April 28) - Rush Limbaugh was arrested Friday on prescription drug charges, with his attorney saying he has reached a deal with prosecutors that will eventually see the charges dismissed if he continues treatment for drug addiction. Limbaugh turned himself in to authorities on a warrant issued by the State Attorney's Office, said Teri Barbera, a spokeswoman for the State Attorney's Office. The conservative radio commentator came into the jail at about 4 p.m. with his attorney Roy Black and left an hour later after posting $3,000 bail, Barbera said. The warrant was for fraud to conceal information to obtain prescriptions, Barbera said. Black said his client and prosecutors reached a settlement on a charge of doctor shopping filed Friday by the State Attorney, which Black said will be dismissed in 18 months if Limbaugh complies with court guidelines. As a primary condition of the dismissal, Limbaugh must continue to seek treatment from the doctor he has seen for the past 2 1/2 years, Black said. Limbaugh entered a plea of not guilty in court Friday on the charge and Black maintained his client's innocence. "Mr. Limbaugh and I have maintained from the start that there was no doctor shopping, and we continue to hold this position," Black said in an e-mailed statement. Prosecutors began investigating Limbaugh in 2003 after a tabloid newspaper reported that his housekeeper said he had used her to illegally buy painkillers. He soon took a five-week leave from his radio show to enter a rehabilitation program. Prosecutors seized Limbaugh's records after learning that he received about 2,000 painkillers, prescribed by four doctors in six months, at a pharmacy near his Palm Beach mansion. They contended that Limbaugh engaged in "doctor shopping," or illegally deceived multiple doctors to receive overlapping prescriptions. Limbaugh acknowledged he became addicted to pain medication, blaming it on severe back pain. According to Black, Limbaugh also has agreed to make a $30,000 payment to the state to defray the public cost of the investigation. The agreement also provides that he must refrain from violating the law during this 18 months, must pay $30 per month for the cost of supervision and comply with other similar provisions of the agreement. |
| Subject: Heal the Nation | |
Author: Tamera [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Thursday, April 20, 06:57:00pm |
| Subject: Re: Whats wrong with this picture? | |
Author: sripad [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Tuesday, April 11, 08:52:37am by suhas |
| Subject: This is all we need.....not. | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Friday, March 31, 04:39:03pm Mar 31, 6:04 AM (ET) By KATHLEEN HENNESSEY  LAS VEGAS (AP) - Plans for a Pentagon-led experiment that involves detonating 700 tons of explosives in the desert drew criticism from state leaders and a disarmament activist. The explosion scheduled for June 2 at the Nevada Test Site is part of an effort to design a weapon that can penetrate solid rock formations in which a country might store nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction. "I am concerned that tests of this magnitude have been planned without providing Nevadans with any information about the possible impact on their health or safety," said Demcratic Sen. Minority Leader Harry Reid in a statement Thursday. Nevada Test Site spokesman Darwin Morgan said the test will be conducted about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, near the center of the former nuclear testing site. The test, named "Divine Strake," will involve nearly 40 times the amount of commercial ammonium nitrate and fuel oil explosive set off in the largest open-air, non-nuclear blast at the site to date. In 2002, 18 tons of explosives were set off at the Nevada Test Site. "This is nothing that's out of the bounds for us. That's what our expertise is in," he said. Morgan said the site obtained the required state approvals and air quality permits in January. Officials from the National Nuclear Security Administration, which operates the site, alerted the state's congressional delegation and state government in December. The Nevada Department of Administration responded with a letter stating: "Your proposal is not in conflict with state plans, goals or objectives." No elected officials responded to the notice until Thursday, Morgan said. The test site is not required to seek public comment, he said. "Given the level of contamination in areas where nuclear tests were conducted, I have real concerns about the dust and other pollutants that will be released into the air as a result of this explosion," said U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley. Disarmament activist Pete Litster said tests at the site violate international law. Litster, executive director of the Shundahai Network, said the site belongs to the Western Shoshone Indian tribe. |
| Subject: da Vinci Code in paperback now | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Tuesday, March 28, 07:39:57pm  Mar 28, 11:14 AM (ET) By Claudia Parsons NEW YORK (Reuters) - A wave of religious books is coming to bookstores to cash in on "The Da Vinci Code" movie in May, including a book saying Jesus survived crucifixion and an Evangelical novel with a modern-day Mary Magdalene heroine. Americans are finally able to buy Dan Brown's best seller in paperback on Tuesday, three years after it was first published, and with "Da Vinci Code" fever as strong as ever, it's never been so profitable to write about Christianity. After Brown's book sold 40 million copies worldwide, books that once might have been released in a limited print run will be stacked at the front of bookstores this spring. Even Michael Baigent, who sued Brown in a London court this month for plagiarism, is riding on the "Code's" coattails, publishing his latest book, "The Jesus Papers," on Tuesday. Baigent's previous book examined the controversial idea Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, and had children -- a key plot element in "The Da Vinci Code." His new book suggests Jesus did not die on the cross and lived on for years. The new batch of "Da Vinci Code" spin-offs comes ahead of the May 19 release of the movie starring Tom Hanks. Ehud Sperling, publisher of Inner Traditions, already owes a lot to Brown, who credited several of the publisher's books as sources, fueling a jump in sales for unlikely titles. "The Gospel of Mary Magdalene," one of the so-called Gnostic Gospels not included in the New Testament, has sold more than 100,000 copies. "That's amazing for a translation from the Coptic," said Sperling, who has several new releases. DEFENDING THE FAITH Evangelical Christian publisher Tyndale wants to do more than sell books -- it aims to defend the faith. It has created a campaign titled "Da Vinci Didn't Convince Me" aimed at some 2,300 stores in the Christian Booksellers Association (CBA). "The church needs to equip itself to answer the questions that this movie will raise," said Les Dietzman of CBA member Berean Christian Stores, an Ohio-based chain of 17 bookstores. Erwin Lutzer's "The Da Vinci Deception" has sold some 300,000 copies. He likened the movie to a "spiritual tsunami." "'The Da Vinci Code' is the most serious assault against Christianity that I have ever witnessed," Lutzer said. Lutzer, an Evangelical minister in Chicago, has prepared discussion packs for churches in the Tyndale package. "The majority of people in our churches are going to see the movie and we're not telling them not to," he said, adding that he plans to see it so as to be able to discuss it. Karen Kingsbury, a Christian fiction writer whose books have sold more than 4 million copies, has written a new book called "Divine," a parable about a modern Magdalene figure. "There's different ways you can go after reading 'The Da Vinci Code.' You can just take it as entertainment and walk away or you may say 'I need to learn more about the history."' "But maybe even bigger is going to be that our society has a very strong curiosity about Mary Magdalene," Kingsbury said. Amy Welborn, the Catholic author of "De-Coding Da Vinci" who has written a new book about Magdalene, says she is wary of giving credence to a work of fiction by protesting too much. "What 'The Da Vinci Code' says about Jesus and Mary Magdalene is silly," she said. On the more academic side, Oxford University Press is publishing "Peter, Paul and Mary Magdalene," by Bart Ehrman. Ehrman, author of the 2004 book "Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code," said most such books were by Evangelical Christians or Catholics worried about defending the faith. "That wasn't my concern at all. I'm just interested in the historical issues that 'The Da Vinci Code' raised." Still he may be popular among such Christians because he says there is no evidence for the marriage of Jesus to Mary Magdalene and he dismisses the more controversial theories put forward by Baigent and others. "There's not a single scholar on the face of the Earth who buys any of it," Ehrman said. |
| Subject: Halliburton = Helliburton | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Tuesday, March 28, 07:21:04pm Mar 28, 7:30 PM (ET)  Halliburton's headquarters in Houston is seen in an undated file photo. Oil services company... By Andrea Shalal-Esa WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Halliburton Co., the world's second largest oil services company, repeatedly overcharged taxpayers and provided substandard cost reports under a $1.2 billion contract to restore Iraq's southern oil fields, according to a new report by U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman. Waxman, a California Democrat, said Democratic staff members of the House Committee on Government Reform examined a series of previously undisclosed government audits and correspondence that criticized Halliburton's performance under the "Restore Iraqi Oil 2" (RIO2) contract. The documents, which cover the period from January 2004 to July 2005, painted "an absolutely abysmal picture of Halliburton's RIO2 work" and cited profound systemic problems, misleading and distorted cost reports, he said. Halliburton, a Texas-based company formerly run by Vice President Dick Cheney, dismissed the committee report as partisan and said it focused on old issues with the two-year contract that have been resolved. "After two years and from thousands of miles away, it is easy to criticize decisions and actions that were based on urgent mission requirements and severe time constraints," the company said in a statement. Halliburton, the largest private contractor in Iraq, said the contract went through "countless changes" and review by at least 15 different government contracting officials. Waxman, who has introduced legislation to limit sole-source contracts in the future, said lawmakers did not know much about what had happened with the contract since July 2005, adding: "From what we can see, major problems remain." Halliburton said its engineering and construction arm KBR, which is gearing up for an initial public stock offering, had received 30 task orders under the contract to date, for a total current value of nearly $750 million and work was ongoing. The Democratic report said that, in addition to the RIO 2 contract, Halliburton was also paid $13.5 billion for providing troop support under a logistics contract with the U.S. Army, and $2.4 billion under the original RIO contract to import fuel into Iraq and rebuild Iraq oil infrastructure. The Pentagon's Project and Contracting Office (PCO) found that Halliburton repeatedly overcharged the government, Waxman said, citing the documents. PCO put KBR on notice in January 2005 that it could cancel the contract for cause. It lifted the notice six months later, saying KBR demonstrated "adequate" compliance. In January, it exercised one of three one-year options to extend the deal. In one case, the agency said Halliburton tried to inflate cost estimates by $26 million. In another, it said Halliburton claimed costs for laying concrete pads and footings that the Iraqi Oil Ministry had already installed. The report said the same agency reported Halliburton was "accruing exorbitant indirect costs at a rapid rate," while the Defense Contract Audit Agency challenged $45 million of $365 million in costs as unreasonable or unsupported. The PCO also cited "profound systemic problems" with Halliburton's cost reporting and said some documents were stripped of information that would allow tracking of details. It said Halliburton's work under RIO 2 was 50 percent late and officials refused to cooperate with oversight officials. Halliburton, run by Cheney from 1995-2000, has been under scrutiny for its contracts in Iraq. |
| Subject: dogs are chipped | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Tuesday, March 28, 05:30:58pm  TUESDAY , 28 MARCH 2006 By KENT ATKINSON The Government has snubbed farmers and their lobbyists by refusing to exempt farm dogs from rules that dogs first registered from July must be microchipped. Prime Minister Helen Clark told a press conference yesterday that Cabinet would not be changing the law, which it authorised yesterday. The law would be what the Associate Minister of Local Government Nanaia Mahuta, told parliament a couple of weeks ago, said Ms Clark: "One law for all dogs – it's very hard to make exceptions for some". Ms Mahuta said the success of a nationwide system for electronic dog identification relied on as many dogs as possible having a tiny microchip inserted under their skin. But at the same time, Agriculture Minister Jim Anderton – who holds a more senior ranking in Cabinet – told farmers he was prepared to have it look at the issue again. Ms Clark said yesterday he had honoured that commitment in cabinet. "He honoured that to the letter," she said. "It was raised again and discussed but the Cabinet wasn't of the mind to attempt to amend legislation which is coming into effect in three months time." The new requirement under the Dog Control Act – to allow instant identification after a dog attack – was framed after a series of dog attacks, including one on Carolina Anderson, then aged seven, who was severely mauled in a central Auckland park in 2003. Dogs already registered on July 1 do not need to be microchipped, but farmers have likened the cost of microchipping to the infamous "dog tax" which triggered armed confrontation between European authorities and the Hau Hau cult at Hokianga in April 1898. Maori who refused to pay a council dog tax triggered an evacuation of Rawene when they threatened to march on the council offices. Federated Farmers president Charlie Pedersen said the lobby argued against microchipping farm dogs on the grounds that they were well controlled and rarely left their farms. "Farm dogs don't bite members of the public, because farm dogs stay on their farms," he said. Urban dogs were different, because they had members of the public going past their front gate. Veterinarians lobbied against the farmers' stance, and their national association said that if "farmers got away with registering pet animals as exempted working dogs, then a lot of urban owners would be encouraged to do the same to avoid the cost of chipping. Veterinary Association chief executive Murray Gibb said the distinction between working and pet dogs on farms was blurred, and an exemption could mean 35 per cent or more of the canine population was exempt and microchipping as a means of identifying dogs would fail. Mr Gibb said that microchipping was a blunt tool to address a big social problem with "poorly socialised and poorly managed" dogs – often owned by people with a similar profile – and there society needed to change its attitude to such owners. Mr Pedersen, of Himatangi, said farmers would keep up their battle. "We just won't accept this," he said. "We are going to continue to lobby for the removal of our dogs being caught up in this ridiculous piece of legislation". But he ruled out carrying out the threat voiced during the lobbying by one regional representative, Taranaki Federated Farmers president Bryan Hocken, who said farmers might take their dogs to Parliament to protest. "Our dogs will piss on the steps to Parliament. . . and we won't clean anything up," said Mr Hocken, of Tarata in North Taranaki. "And if we end up in jail, then we'll take our dogs with us and they'll do their business on the floors there as well." Mr Pedersen said farmers would talk to Opposition MPs, but whatever the federation did would be in good taste. "Some people got a little too emotional and suggested dogs would be defiling the Parliament – we would never support that," he said. South Canterbury farmers have urged Federated Farmers' head office to mount a civil disobedience campaign and call on farmers to ignore the microchipping law. |
| Subject: Rawstory Charlie Sheen | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Monday, March 27, 06:10:58pm  03/23/2006 @ 6:17 am Filed by Ron Brynaert On Monday, Sheen, star of the CBS sitcom "Two and a Half Men" and the multiple Oscar-winning film Platoon, talked with GCN Radio Network's "The Alex Jones Show," and explained why he had trouble believing the "official 9/11 story" advanced by the Bush Administration and the 9/11 Commission (link). "It's like they want to pigeonhole all of us into conspiracy nutbags when we're not debating things that are related to UFO's bringing down the towers or Building 7 or the Pentagon and so its feels like there's things in there that we’re not the conspiracy theorists on this particular issue," said Sheen. "It seems to me like 19 amateurs with box cutters taking over four commercial airliners and hitting 75 percent of their targets: that feels like a conspiracy theory." CNN's Showbiz Tonight played extended segments from the Sheen interview Wednesday night (Windows Media video link), then followed it up with an extended discussion on some of the "unanswered questions" with a producer of a National Geographic documentary on 9/11 and the Media Coordinator of 911Truth.org. "I'm one of these people who believes that anyone who takes everything that has been spoonfed to us by the government, from wherever, about what happened on 9/11 is being naive," Showbiz Tonight anchor A.J. Hammer admitted during the broadcast. "When I say this to people sometimes, they look at me like I'm kind of nuts." Earlier Wednesday, Jones complained of a "mainstream media blackout" on the Sheen interview. "Despite a huge reaction amongst the alternative media to Charlie Sheen's comments on 9/11, in part due to a brief link on the Drudge Report which was mysteriously pulled after a few hours, newswires and entertainment outlets have actively sought to impose a blackout on the story," Jones and Paul Joseph Watson wrote at Prison Planet. According to Jones and Watson, a major wire service expressed interest in running an article, but Jeff Williams of the LA Associated Press office allegedly informed them "I know all about Charlie Sheen and I don't care what he says" before cutting off the phone call. The Sheen story ran at a few conservative Websites on Wednesday including Human Events Online and Red State, referring to Jones' radio show as "left wing" or "liberal." Sheen's interview has started to become fodder for the gossip columnists. Thursday's edition of the New York Post contains a Page Six item on Sheen (link), though The Defamer, an online gossip site based in Los Angeles, first wrote it up on Tuesday. "Charlie Sheen has joined the 9/11 gone-bonkers brigade," reads the Post. "The "Two and a Half Men" star gave a bizarre interview on GGN Radio Network's conspiracy-minded "The Alex Jones Show," in which he suggested that the federal government was covering up what "really" happened." Also on Thursday, the Boston Herald took note of the story, in its "Inside Track" section (link), calling Sheen the "estranged husband of Denise Richards, who is better known for his affinity for prostitutes and gambling than his Homeland Security credentials." Many outlets may be shying away from the interview due to fear of being associated with the controversial Alex Jones, who has written extensively about a purported plot by several governments to compose a "New World Order." According to Wikipedia, Jones rejects being labelled a "conspiracy theorist" and prefers to be known as an "independent investigative journalist." "Let me say that I've been a fan of yours for a long time," Sheen told Jones in the interview. "I've been a fan of your documentaries. Your research is tireless and it's interesting because a lot of these guys you sort of look behind their notes and you start to discover their inconsistencies in a lot of the claims they are making which torpedoes the credibility of most of their substance, but with you that is not the case." Additional excerpts from the Sheen interview taken from a transcript made by Human Events Online: "There was a feeling, it just didn't look any commercial jetliner I've flown on any time in my life and then when the buildings came down later on that day I said to my brother 'call me insane, but did it sorta look like those buildings came down in a controlled demolition'?" "Everybody is now familiar with the famous Andrew Card/Bush ear whisper at the elementary school, that whole incident is problematic to me. It was broadcast three days in advance -- his schedule. So conservatively, if that event was broadcast live, how many people in the state of Florida knew where he was at that specific point in time? If he was being informed -- the second plane hit, America was being attacked -- isn't he then putting everyone in his immediate circle at a great risk? It seems to me upon the revelation of that news that the secret service would grab the president and remove him as of he were on fire from that room." "Because strategies don't go together overnight for a major invasion, they are very well calculated and very well planned, at least in this government…in a statement that Bush made following, "What did you think when the first plane hit?" and he said he was watching it like everyone else." "I guess that’s one of the perks of being president, you get access to TV channels that don’t exist in the known universe." Read article here |
| Subject: Charlie Sheen issues challenge | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Monday, March 27, 05:45:26pm Challenges Press to Stop Slinging Mud, Confront The Science  Infowars.com | March 26, 2006 Alex Jones Comment on Sheen Statement and Challenge: Hundreds of positive and negative pieces have been written about actor Charlie Sheen's courageous stand for 9/11 truth. The pro-Sheen pieces are well written and are brimming with facts, studies and in-depth investigations by concerned, caring people who know that the official fable of Septmeber 11 is a patent fraud. Conversly, the snivelling hit-pieces are written at a snot-nosed 7th Grade level by jibbering establishment sychophants. These individuals refuse to challenge any of the facts that Charlie Sheen and others have raised concerning the 9/11 massacres. There's a reason for that: they can't. If they look into that painful place where 3,000 Americans died, the place where the death of our Republic began, the tomb where the spectre of totalitarianism rose, they will be looking into the eyes of their masters -- those who caried out the attacks and those who seek in vain to hide the truth from the people that they would have as slaves. Most people on the planet today know in their gut the truth about 9/11. Once you look at the facts, there is no denying the cold, hard data. So, try as you may, establishment, the truth about 9/11 is coming out. The majority of you out there who are fighting to supress the truth about 9/11 may not have taken part in it, but by defending those who did you all become accomplices. So before you dismiss us, you had better investigate. There are hundreds of prominent people in the US who have already gone public and there will be hundreds more. Charlie Sheen, no matter what mud you sling at him, is a hero for what he has done. He's the archetypal example of what a leader is. The founding fathers were wealthy, successful men at the highest level of the British colonial government. They put it all on the line so their descendants could live in liberty. They knew what tyranny was when they saw it. Do you? Charlie Sheen felt compelled to respond to one of many hit-pieces against him, a column written for the London Guardian and carried by British commonwealth newspapers worldwide. Sheen sent his statement to The Australian newspaper. This is his full statement minus a phone number to his manager so that the paper could confirm its authenticity. This is a direct challenge for them to debate the facts. Sheen Challenge to Media I dare you to print this email in it's entirety ... RELATED: Video From Charlie Sheen's brave first interview on the Alex Jones Show: Windows Media | Quicktime Or Listen to the Interview Here The mere fact that you did a cut and paste job of the slanderous and idiotic Marine Hyde London Journal piece, speaks volumes about your credibility as a major media entity. Like so many other mainstream outlets, domestically and abroad, no attention whatsoever is given to the questions I raise or the evidence that stimulated those very questions. Instead, low-brow idiotic hit pieces are spewed forth in an effort to sway the readers' opinion of the messenger while blatantly disregarding any of the potentially valuable content of the story. It's transparent sandbox propaganda as dated and cheap as the paper it's printed on. Do a little research on Building Seven. Building Seven lives at the epicenter of my entire debate. Prove yourself worthy of genuine investigative journalism. Look at the video evidence. Observe the same data I have. Submit a formal request to the Pentagon or the DOD to release video PROOF that flight 77 did exactly as they claim. You will be stonewalled. You will be dismissed unconditionally. If there is nothing to hide - why are they hiding it? To avoid any confusion - I reiterate: Building Seven - Pentagon video documentation. If any portion, or portions of this text is any way deleted or manipulated, you will only confirm what myself and countless others have suspected all along: Media complicity with no interest in the truth. A CNN poll at the time of this writing currently sits at 84 percent IN SUPPORT of my views. Say what you must about me - it means nothing. Yet, if you continue to overlook the hard questions and physical evidence regarding 9/11 - you only confirm what so many of us "Conspiracy Idiots" have suspected all along - The Official Report is, at best, an insulting work of FICTION. Respectfully, Charlie Sheen Read article here |
| Subject: Brain cells fused with computer chip? | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Monday, March 27, 05:28:16pm By Ker Than LiveScience Staff Writer  The line between living organisms and machines has just become a whole lot blurrier. European researchers have developed "neuro-chips" in which living brain cells and silicon circuits are coupled together. The achievement could one day enable the creation of sophisticated neural prostheses to treat neurological disorders or the development of organic computers that crunch numbers using living neurons. To create the neuro-chip, researchers squeezed more than 16,000 electronic transistors and hundreds of capacitors onto a silicon chip just 1 millimeter square in size. They used special proteins found in the brain to glue brain cells, called neurons, onto the chip. However, the proteins acted as more than just a simple adhesive. "They also provided the link between ionic channels of the neurons and semiconductor material in a way that neural electrical signals could be passed to the silicon chip," said study team member Stefano Vassanelli from the University of Padua in Italy. The proteins allowed the neuro-chip's electronic components and its living cells to communicate with each other. Electrical signals from neurons were recorded using the chip's transistors, while the chip's capacitors were used to stimulate the neurons. It could still be decades before the technology is advanced enough to treat neurological disorders or create living computers, the researchers say, but in the nearer term, the chips could provide an advanced method of screening drugs for the pharmaceutical industry. "Pharmaceutical companies could use the chip to test the effect of drugs on neurons, to quickly discover promising avenues of research," Vassanelli said. The researchers are now working on ways to avoid damaging the neurons during stimulation. The team is also exploring the possibility of using a neuron's genetic instructions to control the neuro-chip. |
| Subject: 82% Agree With Charlie Sheen | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Friday, March 24, 07:53:09pm Over four-fifths back his public stance on 9/11  Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones/Prison Planet.com | March 24 2006 Despite the best efforts of the now whimpering attack poodles of the mainstream media, an online CNN poll shows that over four-fifths, or 82 per cent, agree with actor Charlie Sheen that the U.S. government covered up the real events of the 9/11 attacks. Every establishment media mouthpiece aside from CNN tried to hang Sheen on his own words but it simply didn't work because those same questions are firing the synapses in the heads of millions upon millions of other taxpaying American citizens. We are now in the majority and the cynics are beginning to feel the breeze of fear as they desperately cling to ignorant dogmas spoon fed to them by an empire in descent, while in the back of their mind and in their soul knowing that they have sided with the wrong team and the wrong side of history. As of Friday morning you can still vote in the poll and I encourage you to do so by clicking here. A.J. Hammer and CNN Showbiz Tonight need to be given their due as the only mainstream television news show to give balanced coverage of serious 9/11 questions. This is a watershed moment in the struggle to create a powerful, educated and active contingent of individuals with no hierarchical structure but with a unified cause. Charlie Sheen is the forerunner of the third wave of 9/11 skeptics to go public. The first wave was concerned and informed American and worldwide citizens who educated themselves and formed action groups and organizations to inform others. The second wave was former government officials and people of high office risking their political reputation to voice their doubts on 9/11, people like Paul Craig Roberts, Professor Steven Jones, Michael Meacher and Andreas von Buelow. The third wave is high profile individuals who already have a substantial media platform from which to speak the truth, Hollywood stars and cultural icons. Charlie Sheen must be commended for risking his entire career for the sake of the truth and the future of America. The fourth and final wave will be people who were in government at the time of 9/11 or those employed by the Bush administration at the time of 9/11, such as secret service officials and others close to the administration, going public with what they know. By this I don't mean watered down shills like Richard Clarke but individuals with hardcore information that could be the catalyst for impeachment. At that point the call for a new independent investigation of 9/11 will be deafening and impossible to ignore any further. Our efforts in stalling these control freaks is really beginning to pay dividends. Our patience for freedom will outlast their lust for power and the human spirit will triumph over evil. Read article here |
| Subject: Agenda 21 - why we oppose | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Friday, March 24, 10:07:03am The official definition: Agenda 21 is a plan of action for the preservation of the Earth that was adopted at the UN conference on the environment and development at Rio de Janeiro in 1992.No fewer than 181 countries signed the document. Agenda 21 not only aims to solve environmental problems but also covers the economic and social injustice in the world.Democracy,equality and the fight against poverty play an important role.The Swedish Parliament has given local authorities the main responsibility for putting this into effect. A plan of action is based on the overriding environmental objectives that are to be broken down in each organisation and at each level into detailed targets and proposals for action.Each action is to have one person responsible,a calculation of the time and financial resources required as well as measurable values for following up and monitoring. Agenda 21 is a plan that was devised and presented to a meeting of world leaders by the United Nations. It is a plan to achieve one world government in the 21st Century. Globalization. The New World Order. It is not based on The Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution or the Bill of Rights. It is based on the Fabian Society principal, incorporates the Hegelian Dialect and seeks a world of socialism. Agenda 21 sets up a soviet system of councils; seeks to put 50% of the world’s land under government control; institutes socialist policy of redistribution of wealth; controls education and health care; inventories, tracks and controls all resources of the world, including the human kind; discourages belief systems that are based on the creation; introduces Mother Earth as the source of all things; and sells the package wrapped in a blanket of environmentalism to push your emotional buttons. 12/9/05 The infamous three “E”s of “Sustainable Development” Agenda 21: equity, economy, and environment. E = Equity demands no “disparities” among all people globally, among all people inter-generationally, and among all species of life and non-life: human, animal, plant, and inanimate rock. E = Economic equity. High technology is too expensive and inequitably distributed. Whatever everyone cannot have, no one shall have. E = Environment over all. Its “intrinsic value” is necessary for future generations on the globe. Read more here |
| Subject: Sustainable Development | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Friday, March 24, 07:31:19am SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT TEN YEARS LATER By Joan Veon It has been ten years since I have been writing and studying the now established environmental philosophy of sustainable development. I was first confronted with it at the United Nations Conference on Population and Development-UNCED in Cairo, Egypt in 1994. Sustainable development was a core philosophy behind the Programme of Action called “Agenda 21” at the 1992 United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development-UNCED, now dubbed the “Rio Earth Summit.” In Rio, conference Secretary-General Maurice Strong stated, Agenda 21 – still stands as the most comprehensive, most far-reaching and, if implemented, the most effective programme of international action ever sanctioned by the international community. It is not a final and complete action programme, but one which must continue to evolve. Sustainable development has continued to evolve as that of protecting the world’s resources while its true agenda is to control the world’s resources. Communism also has control at its core and it also is evolving. I remember asking former UN Secretary-General Boutros-Boutros Ghali what he meant by “change” and he told me that he was introducing “constant change” as a way to continue the evolutionary processes begun in Rio. Under the evolutionary process which Agenda 21 set in motion, sustainable development has become like a prism. Every time you turn it, you get a different “color.” The sustainable development prism includes the social, political, economic and environmental factors. Until Rio, the phrase sustainable development had not appeared in any prior UN documents, papers or reference books. It should be noted that Agenda 21 sets up the global infrastructure needed to manage, count, and control all of the world’s assets. Included are the forests, fresh water, agricultural lands, deserts, pastures, rangelands, farmers’ fields, oceans and inland waterways, marine environment, marine life, cities, housing, sewer and solid wastes, methods of production, air, pollution, biotechnology—every aspect of living—farming, production and manufacturing, research and medicine, etc., along with you and I. Today everything is sustainable: sustainable water, sustainable forests, sustainable markets, sustainable agriculture, etc. Through advanced technology such as the Geographic Information System (GIS), the control, count and management of the earth’s assets is being implemented. Scientists have told me that the GIS satellites can measure the quality of soil anywhere in the earth to a depth of three inches. Furthermore, it can tell you what kind of birds and insects are in which kind of tree. It can also see you and me sleeping in our beds and living in our houses—ever wonder why leaded paint was such a problem? The UN calls this transparency while you and I call it invasion of privacy. So how did the UN come up with this heinous agenda? It began in 1972 when the first Earth Summit was held in Stockholm, Sweden. Maurice Strong was the conference Secretary-General of that meeting also. As a result of its deliberations, in 1974 the UN General Assembly set up the UN Environment Program-UNEP, now a major player in sustainable development, interacting with corporations and a key partner in the United Nations Global Compact. It should be noted that hundreds, if not thousands of environmental NGO’s support and are helping to implement Agenda 21 worldwide. The United Nations has given them vast responsibilities to assist in the implementation of sustainable development. Furthermore, governments are recognizing their manpower as a free source of power to carry the message throughout the world. Two very powerful NGO’s that were part of the birthing of sustainable development are the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). In the fall of 1983, the 38th Session of the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 38/161, which called upon the secretary-general to appoint a commission “to propose long-term environmental strategies for achieving sustainable development to the year 2000 and beyond.” The individuals chosen for that commission included Gro Harlem Brundtland, former prime minister of Norway and vice-president of the Socialist International who just retired as Director-General of the World Health Organization. It was William Ruckleshaus from the U.S. who also served on this life-changing commission. The rest of the delegates were from other socialist, Marxist, or communist countries. While I could provide you with their definition of sustainable development which my research shows is based on the 1977 USSR constitution, let me paraphrase: The world has too many people, and if we do not reduce the number of people on planet Earth, they will use up all of the Earth’s resources so that future generations will be left without any resources. The United Nations is the best global body to monitor, manage and preserve the resources of the planet. As a community activist ten years ago, I could not understand why our kids were being pushed to use condoms, why the schools were educating in matters that did not involve them, why family planning classes were discussing sensitive matters in front of boys and girls or why homosexuality was becoming accepted (homosexuals don’t procreate—now they only adopt). Furthermore, the schools were assisting abortion clinics by aiding pregnant girls during school hours by providing school time for them to use their facilities, without parental consent. These are all methods to reduce the population. Euthanasia, the right to die with dignity, is for the elderly. Then there are wars, illnesses, and viruses. It should be noted that these same environmentalists feel that the population of the world has to be reduced by at least 66% in order for the earth to be sustainable. However, the brilliant research of Dr. Jacqueline Kasun from Hamboldt University has proven statistically that if you were to take all of the people in the world and put them into the State of Texas, they would have 1200 square feet of space each. Even before the people of the world understood the threat to world population, the Group of Seven, now the Group of Eight world leaders stated in their 1981 communique that they were “deeply concerned about the implication of world population growth.” In 1990, they commended the forthcoming 1992 Rio Earth Summit and in 1992, they wrote, “The Earth Summit has been a landmark in heightening the consciousness of the global environmental challenges and in creating a world-wide partnership on development and the environment.” It was at the 1992 UNCED conference that sustainable development was unveiled. Interestingly to note, there was a very strong and powerful corporate lobby that had come together to support this evil agenda of control. Called the World Business Council for Sustainable Development-WBCSD, they still exert great power and influence on the international level. The WBCSD has nurtured and expanded sustainable development—all the way to the ten year follow-up of UNCED in 2004 at the World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. In Johannesburg, sustainable development evolved to a much higher level. There many of the same people who were involved ten years previous were present, along with some new players which included Congressman Dennis Kuchinich and others, along with former governor of California Jerry Brown. The Bush Administration put forth a World Summit Vision Statement that said in part We believe sustainable development begins at home and is supported by effective domestic policies and international partnerships. We recognize poverty remains a global problem of huge proportions that demands our action. To fulfill its commitment, our government is spending $970 million over three years which will be used to leverage private monies to generate more than $1.6B for water-related and other activities globally. Projects included: Clean Energy, an Initiative to Cut Hunger, sustainable forest management and monies to help fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. The centerpiece of Johannesburg was the launching of “International Sustainable Development Law” that will govern the implementation and legal rights of sustainable development. This new discipline is based on poverty alleviation and the rights of the marginalized (socialistic transfer of wealth mechanisms). Over 150 environmental lawyers and those from other related disciplines met in Durban, South Africa a week before to discuss the integration of environmental, economic, and social laws into one new discipline. There were policy papers put forth which they hoped would be used as the framework for a Treaty on International Sustainable Development Law. Their actions reaffirmed Chapter 39 of Agenda 21 which recognizes the need to continue progressive development and codification of international law related to sustainable development. It should be noted that these laws will be incorporated into every local and national level of law worldwide. For those of us with Christian values, this is the anti-thesis of what we believe for sustainable development is pagan. It perverts Genesis 1, 2, and 3 in that it puts the earth as being dominant over man and not man as having dominance over the earth—hence, you and I have no value since we have been demoted to the same value as an animal or plant. So what do you think is the end result of international sustainable development law? Enslavement. Now who were THE players behind the birthing of sustainable development? To my surprise, it was Prince Charles. Not happy with the Christian faith, Charles turned to “para- psychology” which some define as “dabbling in the occult.” He was greatly influenced by the South African-born writer, explorer, and mystic Laurens van der Post who was a friend of his grandmother, the Queen Mother. The prince was also influenced by James Lovelock, a British scientist who formulated the “Gaia hypothesis, which today is known as the worship of the earth, a belief based on the Greek goddess Gaia, the Earth Mother. Charles concurs with the perversion of Genesis 1, 2, and 3. Most people will not find Prince Charles or his environmental activities in the headlines of major newspapers. Nor do his biographies really explain his involvement, as there is basically a blackout on what he is really doing worldwide. In April 1991, fourteen months before UNCED, the Prince held a private two day international conference aboard the royal yacht Britannia, moored off the coast of Brazil. His goal was to bring together key international figures in an attempt to achieve a degree of harmony between the various countries that would happen at the Rio Earth Summit. Then Senator Al Gore was present, along with senior officials from the World Bank, chief executives from companies such as Shell and British Petroleum, the key NGO’s, and other officials. Several years ago, I had the opportunity to interview Maurice Strong and specifically asked him about this meeting. He told me he was in London at a World Wildlife meeting hosted by Prince Philip and was asked by Prince Charles to accompany him to Rio for the April 1991 meeting. Furthermore, in 1990 when sustainable development had just been formulated by the Brundtland Commission, it was the prince who commended them for “bringing the term ‘sustainable development’ into everyone’s vocabulary.” As sustainable development has evolved to the point where the teaching of Agenda 21 is called “Earth Sciences” in schools, universities, and colleges, our government has instituted Agenda 21 through the Presidents Commission on Sustainable Development. Throughout the U.S., there are cities that have adopted Agenda 21 and there are those that are now sustainable, such as “Sustainable Racine.” We must remember Russia did not fall to the communists all at once—it was city by city. I wrote Prince Charles the Sustainable Prince in 1997 with major updates in 1998 and 2000. It is key and relevant for those who want to understand what is happening today. At every turn the Prince is still involved in the affairs of the United Nations, sustainable development, and public-private partnership. The Prince’s representatives are to be found at all the key global meetings, expounding and advancing this life changing philosophy. Perhaps we should wonder why the world still follows him and carries out his dictates. For ten years, various activists have been warning and educating about sustainable development. Who do we go to? The church has been silent. Major “conservatives” have been silent. No one has even questioned President Bush about his support for sustainable development. It is not even a key issue in this election. Read article here |
| Subject: Showbiz Tonight covers Charlie Sheen and 911 | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Thursday, March 23, 10:47:09am CNN Showbiz Tonight Covers Charlie Sheen and 9/11 Skepticism 911blogger | March 23, 2006 Tonight marks the first instance where those that question 9/11 were given a fair shake at voicing their opinions. While little can be said in just 10 minutes of coverage, it was at the very least a reasonable discussion and an important milestone for the 9/11 truth community. 911truth.org's media coordinator Mike Berger did a great job with the short time he was allotted while the host A.J. Hammer allowed for a good live discussion and avoided the all-to-familiar Bill O'Reilly style of 'news'. Despite the numerous questions surrounding 9/11 which have gone unmentioned by the mainstream media for the last 4+ years, and the growing number of respectable scholars, government officials, and family members demanding answers - this is the first time a major news station has covered 9/11 questions in any reasonable format, even if it was on a Hollywood celebrity show. If the mainstream media were to truly desire to cover 9/11 further I would hope in the future they might consider a longer format so that all of the news and facts they haven't bothered reporting over the last 4+ years might have a chance to finally be seen and heard. (Hey Showtime and HBO, are you listening?) I urge all of those who support 9/11 being further discussed by CNN and their affiliates to contact them via their feedback form here. Be sure to reference the host A.J. Hammer, and the show 'Showbiz Tonight'. Read article here |
| Subject: Now schools are getting ready | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Wednesday, March 22, 07:31:54am  Mar 22 7:48 AM US/Eastern By BEN FELLER AP Education Writer WASHINGTON The nation's schools, recognized incubators of respiratory diseases among children, are being told to plan for the possibility of an outbreak of bird flu. Federal health leaders say it is not alarmist or premature for schools to make preparations, such as finding ways to teach kids even if they've all been sent home. School boards and superintendents have gotten used to emergency planning for student violence, terrorism or severe weather. Pandemic preparation, though, is a new one. They have a lot to think over, top government officials said Tuesday. Who coordinates decisions on closing schools or quarantining kids? If classes shut down for weeks, how will a district keep kids from falling behind? Who will keep the payroll running, or ease the fear of parents, or provide food to children who count on school meals? "Those are the kinds of issues that I don't think people have spent a lot of time talking about yet," said Stephen Bounds, director of legal and policy services for the Maryland Association of School Boards. "But if New Orleans and Katrina taught us nothing else, it taught us you need to be thinking about things ahead of time _ and preparing for the worst," Bounds said. The urgency is about bird flu, the name for the deadly H5N1 strain of the avian flu. It remains primarily a contagious bird disease. Typically spread from direct contact with contaminated birds, it has infected more than 170 people and killed roughly 100. None of those cases occurred in the United States, but officials say bird flu is likely to arrive this year in birds. As outbreaks have hit Africa, Asia and Europe, officials have launched campaigns to educate the public. To help stop the spread of the disease, farmers have killed tens of millions of chickens and turkeys. Experts fear the virus could change into a form that passes easily among people. In North Carolina on Tuesday, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings joined Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt to encourage schools to prepare. Spellings said schools must be aware that they may have to close their buildings _ or that their schools may need to be used as makeshift hospitals, quarantine sites or vaccination centers. The government has created checklists on preparation and response steps, specialized for preschools, grade schools, high schools and colleges. The dominant theme is the need for coordination among local, state and federal officials. Some of the advice is common sense, like urging students to wash their hands and cover their mouths when they cough or sneeze to keep infection from spreading. Other steps would take schools considerable time to figure out, such as legal and communication issues. "I don't think that the issue of bird flu has resonated yet," said Reg Weaver, president of the National Education Association, which represents many of the country's teachers. Weaver praised the federal government for providing guidance that can be plugged into a school district's crisis plan. But the sudden urgency on bird flu, he said, should not steal attention from the daily struggles schools face, like trying to keep their classrooms safe. Children age 5 to 18 tend to be the biggest spreaders of flu viruses in the community, experts say. Schools may be ordered to close to prevent spreading the disease. In Massachusetts, school administrators are considering using an automated phone bank to announce homework assignments and update parents. Another plan would use the Internet for communication between students and their teachers. But those plans are limited, and many places have had budget cuts in technology, said Tom Scott, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents. "I don't think we're anywhere near having a systemic way of approaching this," he said. Any school closing may not be for only a day or two. A shutdown would probably have to last a month or longer to be effective, said flu specialist Ira Longini, a faculty member at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. "The school itself plays a big role," said Longini. "It's just a massive mixing ground for respiratory illness." At the college level, the American Council on Education, a higher education umbrella group, has alerted thousands of college presidents about the need to prepare for bird flu. Federal health leaders have advised each college to establish a pandemic response team and plan for outbreak scenarios that could close or quarantine their campuses. |
| Subject: Huge reaction to Sheen 9/11 story | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Tuesday, March 21, 09:23:24am Linked on Drudge, later removed  Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com | March 21 2006 Yesterday's Charlie Sheen story, in which the actor went public with his grave suspicions about the official story of 9/11, received widespread interest across the Internet and was even linked on the Drudge Report for a time, a news website that gets more traffic than the New York Times. Our observations will now center around the question of if any mainstream outlets will pick up the story or seek to interview Mr. Sheen regarding his comments. The story is obviously big enough to be of interest to a wide readership but its context may cause establishment controlled media to shy away in journalistic cowardice. Leading alternative website Rense.com carried the story as did many others but who will be the first aside from Drudge to give the issue mainstream spotlight? The story appeared on Drudge shortly after 6pm CST and our servers began receiving hits from millions of readers. A link from Drudge regularly overloads even medium sized mainstream websites and they go offline for hours. Despite a little slowdown, we managed to ride the wave fairly comfortably until Drudge mysteriously killed the link after 10pm CST. We had even replaced our usual format page with a bare bones printer-friendly style version to ensure maximum speed and delivery of the page, so it is unlikely Drudge (pictured below) removed the link because of bottlenecked traffic. We speculated that another webmaster had posted the link and Drudge personally removed it upon seeing it. Whatever the reason for the removal, the story still received huge traction and we expect it to again garner interest across the Internet today. The mainstream media pour over stories about Mr. Sheen's personal life whether real or manufactured yet will they remain silent when Sheen actually discusses something serious? Carlos Santana is all over the news today for criticizing George Bush and the Iraq war yet Charlie Sheen has gone much further, if the media ignores this story it is proof positive of a cover-up. In many ways a Hollywood celebrity stepping forward and making these comments receives more attention than a former government official or physics professor because the information is wrapped in a package that is instantly recognizable to a wide audience. The danger is that some are dangerously ill-informed, such as Madonna, who dismissed 9/11 as "ambiguous" yet focused all the attention on Hurricane Katrina and kept the argument firmly within a left-right paradigm prison. Charlie Sheen on the other hand took the time to educate himself thoroughly on the real issues of 9/11 before going public with his doubts about the official story. There are several very high profile actors and film producers who are well aware of the entire New World Order agenda and have directed their artistic talents into exposing that agenda through the guidance of popular culture. This is a real movement and it is growing, unlike the Madonna's and their ilk, who are simply riding a wave which will wash away as rapidly as their mock ego-driven political opinions when a Democrat gets back in the White House. Our hope is that Sheen's stance, which is by no means a rarity for him or his family who have been politically engaged for decades, will encourage other high profile celebrities to use their platform to educate America and the world on the serious issues that face us and the real perpetrators of global terrorism. Please feel free to contact us about this story at mediaonly@infowars.com http://prisonplanet.com/articles/march2006/210306hugereaction.htm |
| Subject: Charlie Sheen has questions about 911 story | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Tuesday, March 21, 09:14:15am Calls for truly independent investigation, joins growing ranks of prominent credible whistleblowers  Alex Jones & Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com | March 20 2006 Actor Charlie Sheen has joined a growing army of other highly credible public figures in questioning the official story of 9/11 and calling for a new independent investigation of the attack and the circumstances surrounding it. Over the past two years, scores of highly regarded individuals have gone public to express their serious doubts about 9/11. These include former presidential advisor and CIA analyst Ray McGovern, the father of Reaganomics and former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury Paul Craig Roberts, BYU physics Professor Steven Jones, former German defense minister Andreas von Buelow, former MI5 officer David Shayler, former Blair cabinet member Michael Meacher, former Chief Economist for the Department of Labor during President George W. Bush's first term Morgan Reynolds and many more. Speaking to The Alex Jones Show on the GCN Radio Network, the star of current hit comedy show Two and a Half Men and dozens of movies including Platoon and Young Guns, Sheen elaborated on why he had problems believing the government's version of events. Sheen agreed that the biggest conspiracy theory was put out by the government itself and prefaced his argument by quoting Theodore Roosevelt in stating, "That we are to stand by the President right or wrong is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." "We're not the conspiracy theorists on this particular issue," said Sheen. "It seems to me like 19 amateurs with box cutters taking over four commercial airliners and hitting 75% of their targets, that feels like a conspiracy theory. It raises a lot of questions." Sheen described the climate of acceptance for serious discussion about 9/11 as being far more fertile than it was a couple of years ago. "It feels like from the people I talk to in and around my circles, it seems like the worm is turning." Suspicious collapse of buildings Sheen described his immediate skepticism regarding the official reason for the collapse of the twin towers and building 7 on the day of 9/11. "I was up early and we were gonna do a pre-shoot on Spin City, the show I used to do, I was watching the news and the north tower was burning. I saw the south tower hit live, that famous wide shot where it disappears behind the building and then we see the tremendous fireball." "There was a feeling, it just didn't look any commercial jetliner I've flown on any time in my life and then when the buildings came down later on that day I said to my brother 'call me insane, but did it sorta look like those buildings came down in a controlled demolition'?" Sheen said that most people's gut instinct, that the buildings had been deliberately imploded, was washed away by the incessant flood of the official version of events from day one. Sheen questioned the plausibility of a fireballs traveling 110 feet down an elevator shaft and causing damage to the lobbies of the towers as seen in video footage, especially when contrasted with eyewitness accounts of bombs and explosions in the basement levels of the buildings. Regarding building 7, which wasn't hit by a plane, Sheen highlighted the use of the term "pull," a demolition industry term for pulling the outer walls of the building towards the center in an implosion, as was used by Larry Silverstein in a September 2002 PBS documentary when he said that the decision to "pull" building 7 was made before its collapse. This technique ensures the building collapses in its own footprint and can clearly be seen during the collapse of building 7 with the classic 'crimp' being visible. The highly suspicious collapse of building 7 and the twin towers has previously been put under the spotlight by physics Professor Steven Jones and Kevin Ryan of Underwriters Laboratories, the company that certified the steel components used in the construction of the World Trade Center towers. "The term 'pull' is as common to the demolition world as 'action and 'cut' are to the movie world," said Sheen. Sheen referenced firefighters in the buildings who were eyewitnesses to demolition style implosions and bombs. "This is not you or I watching the videos and speculating on what we saw, these are gentlemen inside the buildings at the very point of collapse." "If there's a problem with building 7 then there's a problem with the whole thing," said Sheen. Bush's behavior on 9/11 Sheen then questioned President Bush's actions on 9/11 and his location at the Booker Elementary School in Florida. Once Andy Card had whispered to Bush that America was under attack why didn't the secret service immediately whisk Bush away to a secret location? By remaining at a location where it was publicly known the President would be before 9/11, he was not only putting his own life in danger, but the lives of hundreds of schoolchildren. That is unless the government knew for sure what the targets were beforehand and that President Bush wasn't one of them. "It seems to me that upon the revelation of that news that the secret service would grab the President as if he was on fire and remove him from that room," said Sheen. The question of how Bush saw the first plane hit the north tower, when no live footage of that incident was carried, an assertion that Bush repeated twice, was also put under the spotlight. "I guess one of the perks of being President is that you get access to TV channels that don't exist in the known universe," said Sheen. "It might lead you to believe that he'd seen similar images in some type of rehearsal as it were, I don't know." The Pentagon incident Sheen outlined his disbelief that the official story of what happened at the Pentagon matched the physical evidence. "Show us this incredible maneuvering, just show it to us. Just show us how this particular plane pulled off these maneuvers. 270 degree turn at 500 miles and hour descending 7,000 feet in two and a half minutes, skimming across treetops the last 500 meters." We have not been able to confirm that a large commercial airliner hit the Pentagon because the government has seized and refused to release any footage that would show the impact. "I understand in the interest of national security that maybe not release the Pentagon cameras but what about the Sheraton, what about the gas station, what about the Department of Transportation freeway cam? What about all these shots that had this thing perfectly documented? Instead they put out five frames that they claim not to have authorized, it's really suspicious," said Sheen. Sheen also questioned how the plane basically disappeared into the Pentagon with next to no wreckage and no indication of what happened to the wing sections. Concerning how the Bush administration had finalized Afghanistan war plans two days before 9/11 with the massing of 44,000 US troops and 18,000 British troops in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, and in addition the call for "some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor," as outlined in the PNAC documents, Sheen stated, "you don't really put those strategies together overnight do you for a major invasion? Those are really well calculated and really well planned." "Coincidence? We think not," said Sheen and he called the PNAC quotes "emblematic of the arrogance of this administration." A real investigation Sheen joined others in calling for a revised and truly independent investigation of 9/11. Sheen said that "September 11 wasn't the Zapruder film, it was the Zapruder film festival," and that the inquiry had to be, "headed, if this is possible, by some neutral investigative committee. What if we used retired political foreign nationals? What if we used experts that don't have any ties whatsoever to this administration?" "It is up to us to reveal the truth. It is up to us because we owe it to the families, we owe it to the victims. We owe it to everybody's life who was drastically altered, horrifically that day and forever. We owe it to them to uncover what happened." Charlie Sheen joins the rest of his great family and notably his father Martin Sheen, who has lambasted for opposing the Iraq war before it had begun yet has now been proven right in triplicate, in using his prominent public platform to stand for truth and justice and we applaud and salute his brave efforts, remembering Mark Twain's quote. "In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man, brave, hated, and scorned. When his cause succeeds however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot." http://infowars.com/articles/sept11/sheen_questions_official_911_story.htm |
| Subject: Da Vinci Code | |
Author: Renee [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: Monday, March 20, 03:41:46pm Mar 20, 3:52 PM (ET)By DAVID STRINGER  (AP) Michael Baigent, one of the authors of "Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" book, arrives at London's... LONDON (AP) - Arguments closed in "The Da Vinci Code" copyright case with the lawyer for the men suing the publisher of the blockbuster novel suggesting that author Dan Brown's testimony was unreliable and questioning why his wife, who helped research the best seller, did not testify. Jonathan Rayner James, whose clients say Brown stole their ideas for his huge best seller, said Monday that the novelist's testimony should be treated with "deep suspicion." He also asked why Brown's wife, Blythe, who did much of the research for the book, was not called as a witness in the copyright-infringement case. Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh are suing "Da Vinci Code" publisher Random House, claiming Brown's book "appropriated the architecture" of their 1982 nonfiction book, "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail." Both books explore theories - dismissed by theologians - that Jesus married Mary Magdalene, the couple had a child and the bloodline survives. Judge Peter Smith said he would give his verdict in the case before the current court term ends on April 13. In a written statement handed to the court Monday, Rayner James said Brown had copied from "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail," but acknowledged he may have done so "unwittingly because of the research materials supplied by Blythe Brown." "His evidence should be approached with deep suspicion," the lawyer said. "He had almost no recollection of matters that related to timing. He would struggle to recall a year, was rarely able to recall a month. His general attitude in cross-examination was uncooperative," Rayner James said, referring to Brown's testimony during three days on the stand last week. Brown, who flew from his home in New Hampshire to testify, was not in court Monday. Rayner James said evidence from Blythe Brown would have been of "fundamental importance to this case." He claimed she would have been able to confirm the extent to which "The Da Vinci Code" relied on Baigent's and Leigh's work. Dan Brown knew "little about what she did," Rayner James said. "It remains the position that only she knows the extent of her involvement in the research and creation" of "The Da Vinci Code," he said. Brown has acknowledged that he and Blythe read "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" while researching "The Da Vinci Code," but said they also used 38 other books and hundreds of documents, and that the British authors' book was not crucial to their work. On Friday, Random House lawyer John Baldwin said that Brown's work gathered a number of incidents and put them together in a unique way. "The ideas are of too general a nature to be capable of copyright protection," Baldwin argued. "The claimants' claim relates to ideas at a high level of generality, which copyright does not protect." Under cross-examination by Baldwin earlier in the trial, Baigent conceded that several of the plaintiffs' key allegations were wrong, including the claim that Brown used "all the same historical conjecture" as "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail." Rayner James acknowledged that his client, Baigent, had been "a poor witness." "He was overawed by the circumstances and agreed almost without exception (with) anything said by the judge," the lawyer said. If Baigent and Leigh succeed in securing an injunction to bar the use of their material, they could hold up the scheduled May 19 film release of Ron Howard's "The Da Vinci Code," starring Tom Hanks. Sony Pictures says it plans to release the movie as scheduled. |
| [ Main index ] [ Archives: 1, 2, [3], 4 ] |
|
Forum timezone: GMT-8 VF Version: 3.00b, ConfDB: Before posting please read our privacy policy. VoyForums(tm) is a Free Service from Voyager Info-Systems. Copyright © 1998-2019 Voyager Info-Systems. All Rights Reserved. |