Observer fears Islamic takeover of France imminent
A U.S. national defense expert and Pentagon advisor says that, even with the election of Nicolas Sarkozy as France's new president, it may already be too late to stop the eventual Islamic takeover of that country and much of Western Europe. Lt. Col. Bob McGinnis (U.S. Army-Ret.) has spent a great deal of time in Europe and has been concerned with the growing Islamic influence on the continent. Although with the election of Sarkozy the French people have turned to someone who plans tougher measures on immigration, Maginnis fears it already may be too late. "It probably is too late for Great Britain and France and maybe even the Netherlands and Germany," the military advisor contends. "They have very sizeable minorities that refuse to integrate, that impose Sharia law on the ghettos, and as a result have created what I think is a series of smaller countries within a country," he says. With a high Islamic fertility rate and "notoriously low" fertility rates among indigenous members of the population, these "little islands of ghettos of Islamic Sharia law" are going to continue to expand and eventually engulf the culture of the region, Maginnis asserts. "And that's what Sarkozy in France is concerned about," the retired Army officer says, "but I'm just not sure that they're going to be able to get everyone in the right direction to reverse this trend." Sarkozy has promised to deal with France's Islamic situation, but Maginnis is not optimistic the new president can turn things around.
| NAFTA superhighway lobbying moves north
The lobbying for NAFTA superhighway projects is moving north, but supporters of the mega-transportation corridors aren't finding an enthusiastic team of supporters in Minnesota, according to a report by WND columnist Jerome Corsi. U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman, a Republican, is distancing himself from the North American Super-Corridor Coalition, Inc., according to internal documents obtained under the Minnesota Data Practices Act. The documents also revealed NASCO had been reaching out to Coleman, seeking his support. Richard Arnebeck, a division director at the Minnesota Department of Transportation, told another highway department official in a January e-mail that real estate developer Bob Koens would be a good person to approach Coleman about his support. "Apparently, Bob has a lot of influential friends & contacts," Arnebeck wrote. "Bob's always looking out for NASCO and putting in a plug where he can." The project, according to NASCO, would connect the I-35 corridor, which now runs through Minnesota, to two Mexican ports on the Pacific Ocean.
| Qaeda warns of attacks 'worse than 9/11'
An American member of Al-Qaeda warned in an Internet video that US President George W. Bush should withdraw all his troops from Muslim land or face attacks worse than September 11. Adam Gadahn, a convert to Islam who has been indicted for treason by a US jury, issued a list of demands and warned they were not up for negotiation. "Your failure to heed our demands means that you and your people... will experience things that will make you forget all about the horrors of September 11, Afghanistan and Iraq, and Virginia Tech," he said in the video posted on Tuesday. "You're losing on all fronts and losing big time," said Gadahn, who is the English-language spokesman for Osama bin Laden's terror network. The tape entitled "Legitimate Demands" was produced by As-Sahab, a media outfit that specialises in Al-Qaeda online material. Gadahn -- sporting a headress, glasses and long beard -- said Bush had "embroiled his nation in a series of unwinable and bloody conflicts in the Islamic world." He also called on the United States to cease support for the "bastard state of Israel" and the "56-plus apostate regimes of the Muslim world" and to free all Muslims from its prisons.
| Emergency detention plan: 'This way to the camps!'
Halliburton's former engineering and construction subsidiary has a contingency contract with the Department of Homeland Security to construct detention facilities in the event of a national emergency, according to WND columnist Jerome Corsi. As Corsi reported last week, President Bush recently signed a little-reported National Security and Homeland Security Directive granting extraordinary powers to the president in the event of a declared national emergency, apparently without congressional approval or oversight. Houston-based KBR was awarded an initial $385 million contract in January 2006 for one year, with four one-year options extended into 2007. KBR held a previous emergency detention contract with ICE from 2000 to 2005. ICE spokeswoman Jamie Zuieback told Corsi the primary intent of the contract was to build temporary detention facilities that could be used in the event of a mass migration crisis, but she confirmed the facilities could be employed in national emergencies, including natural disasters.
| Secretive Bilderberg meeting set for Turkey
The super-secret Bilderberg Group, an organization of powerful international elites, is set to meet this week somewhere in Turkey – but even the precise location is a mystery. The meeting begins Thursday and continues through Sunday. Those expected to attend include Donald Graham, chairman and chief executive officer of the Washington Post, Richard N. Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Henry Kissinger, David Rockefeller, John Vinocur, senior correspondent of the International Herald Tribune, Paul Gigot, editor of the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, Nicholas Beytout, editor-in-chief of Le Figaro, George David, chairman of Coca-Cola, Martin Feldstein, president and chief executive officer of the National Bureau of Economic Research, Timothy F. Geithner, president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Vernon Jordan, senior managing director of Lazard Freres & Co., Anatole Kaletsky, editor at large of the Times of London and Gen. William Luti, special assistant to the president and senior director for defense policy and strategy for the National Security Council. According to reports from Turkey, Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions and global energy issues will be on the agenda – but only invitees know for sure. Welcome to the mysterious world of secret societies. Did someone say "secret societies"?
| Russian missile test adds to arms race fears
Russia yesterday threatened a new cold war-style arms race with the United States by announcing that it had successfully tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile capable of penetrating American defences. Russia's hawkish first deputy prime minister, Sergei Ivanov, said the country had tested both a new multiple-warhead intercontinental missile, the RS-24, and an improved version of its short-range Iskander missile. He said the missiles were capable of destroying enemy systems and added: "As of today Russia has new missiles that are capable of overcoming any existing or future missile defence systems. In terms of defence and security, Russia can look calmly to the country's future."
| Microsoft unveils revolutionary device
In the next year, Bill Gates will manage one of the highest-profile transitions in American business history — he’ll leave his day job as chairman at Microsoft, the $300 billion company he co-founded 32 years ago, and will move full time into philanthropy. But before he leaves, Gates has a few more high-tech projects to finish. Until this morning, one project — almost five years in the making and code-named 'Milan,’ — was top-secret. In a TODAY exclusive, I had a chance to talk with Gates at Microsoft’s Redmond, Wash., campus about a revolutionary new device Microsoft now calls “Surface.” (MSNBC.com is a Microsoft-NBC Universal joint venture.) | Anglican Church in a 'mess' over gay bishop row
A senior Anglican conservative witheringly described the state of the worldwide Church as "a mess" and "awful" yesterday as the Archbishop of Canterbury prepared to take a three-month break. The criticism will come as a blow to Dr Rowan Williams, who last week attempted to placate the Church's conservative wing by snubbing the Church's first openly gay bishop. Dr Williams announced that Bishop Gene Robinson will not be invited to next year's Lambeth Conference, the 10-yearly gathering of all the Church's 850-plus bishops in Canterbury. But conservative leaders remain unimpressed. At least a handful of them - who represent a huge swathe of the 70-million strong Church - are still proposing to boycott the conference. The Primate of the Southern Cone in South America, Archbishop Gregory Venables, told The Daily Telegraph: "It is a mess. Unless there is a major shift there are going to be significant absences from Lambeth." The conservative "Global South" primates, who are mostly from Africa and Asia, are furious because they believe Dr Williams has been unduly lenient with the liberal leadership of the American branch of Anglicanism. Many of them had expected that all the liberal American bishops would be excluded from the Lambeth Conference unless they reversed their unilateral pro-gay agenda. The US bishops were given until September 30 by the Anglican primates to declare a moratorium on the consecration of gay bishops and same-sex blessings and to approve a "parallel" Church scheme for American conservatives. So far the Americans have rejected the scheme and seem unlikely to fulfil the other requests. Dr Williams, who begins his extended leave on Friday, appeared to offer them unconditional invitations to the Lambeth Conference last week. | Iowa State Promotes Atheist Professor Who Equates Bible with Mein Kampf While Denying Tenure to ID Astronomer
While Iowa State University denied tenure this spring to gifted pro-ID astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, it turns out that it decided at the same time to promote to full professor outspoken atheist Hector Avalos, religious studies professor and faculty adviser to the ISU Atheist and Agnostic Society. Avalos has led the charge against Gonzalez and intelligent design on ISU's campus, helping to draft a 2005 petition denouncing intelligent design that ultimately was signed by more than 120 ISU faculty. Apparently ISU professors who are horrified by the supposed mixing of metaphysics and scholarship on the part of ID proponents have no qualms about supporting Avalos's explicit anti-religious propaganda, including his effort to equate the Bible with Hitler's Mein Kampf (for more on Avalos's view of the Bible, see below). It is worth pointing out that ISU issued a press release a few years ago boasting about Avalos's appointment as the executive director of a group affiliated with the Council for Secular Humanism that seeks to debunk religion. Avalos's promotion to full professor comes just in time for the publication of his new book on the Bible later this month. According to the publisher's description, Avalos argues in the book that our world is best served by leaving the Bible as a relic of an ancient civilization instead of the "living" document most religionist scholars believe it should be. He urges his colleagues to concentrate on educating the broader society to recognize the irrelevance and even violent effects of the Bible in modern life. Just how extreme Avalos's view of the Bible is can be seen in his previous book, Fighting Words: The Origins of Religious Violence (2005), in which he repeatedly equates the Bible with Hitler's Mein Kampf. Indeed, in a section of the book titled "Scripture: A Zero-Tolerance Argument," Avalos actually suggests that the Bible is worse than Mein Kampf: In fact, Mein Kampf does not contain a single explicit command for genocide equivalent to those found in the Hebrew Bible... Thus, if all of Mein Kampf is to be rejected simply for its implied genocidal policies, we should certainly reject all of the Bible for some of its explicit and blatant genocidal policies. [p. 363] At other points, Avalos appears to blame Jewish people for Hitler's attempt to exterminate them, locating the origins of the Holocaust in what he calls "Hebrew racism." Consider the following passages:
| China to catch up with US economy: world poll
WASHINGTON (AFP) - China is on course to catch up with the United States and join the front ranks of world economic powers, but that is little cause for concern even among Americans, a global survey said Monday. But the same poll showed there is generally as much distrust of the United States as there is of China to "act responsibly" in world affairs. Most respondents in 13 countries agreed it was "likely that someday China's economy will grow to be as large as the US economy," according to the opinion poll by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and WorldPublicOpinion.org. "What is particularly striking is that despite the tectonic significance of China catching up with the US, overall the world public's response is low key -- almost philosophical," said Steven Kull, editor of WorldPublicOpinion.org. In no country was there a majority who felt that China's economic rise would be mostly negative, but that was not because China is particularly trusted, the pollsters said. Majorities in 10 out of 15 countries said they did not trust China "to act responsibly in the world." But the same number also said they distrusted the United States. "Though people are not threatened by the rise of China, they do not appear to be assuming that it will be a new benign world leader," Kull said. "They seem to have a clear-eyed view that China is largely acting on its own interests." The Chinese themselves are among the more skeptical populations, with only half saying that their economy will catch up with the United States'. Among Americans, the percentage was 60 percent. Only in India and the Philippines did a plurality of respondents say the United States would always remain a bigger economy than China.
| Russia Says New ICBM Can Beat Any System
MOSCOW (AP) - Russia tested new missiles Tuesday that a Kremlin official boasted could penetrate any defense system, and President Vladimir Putin warned that U.S. plans for an anti-missile shield in Europe would turn the region into a "powder keg." First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said Russia tested an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of carrying multiple independent warheads, and it also successfully conducted a "preliminary" test of a tactical cruise missile that he said could fly farther than existing, similar weapons. "As of today, Russia has new tactical and strategic complexes that are capable of overcoming any existing or future missile defense systems," Ivanov said, according to the ITAR-Tass news agency. "So in terms of defense and security, Russians can look calmly to the country's future." Ivanov is a former defense minister seen as a potential Kremlin favorite to succeed Putin next year. Both he and Putin have said repeatedly that Russia would continue to improve its nuclear arsenals and respond to U.S. plans to deploy a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic - NATO nations that were in Moscow's front yard during the Cold War as Warsaw Pact members. Russia has bristled at the plans, dismissing U.S. assertions that the system would be aimed at blocking possible attacks by Iran and saying it would destroy the strategic balance of forces in Europe. "We consider it harmful and dangerous to turn Europe into a powder keg and to fill it with new kinds of weapons," Putin said at a news conference with visiting Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates. Russian arms control expert Alexander Pikayev said the new ICBMs appeared to be part of Russia's promised response to the missile defense plans and, more broadly, an effort to "strengthen the strategic nuclear triad - land-based, sea-based and air-based delivery systems for nuclear weapons - which suffered significant downsizing" amid financial troubles after the 1991 Soviet collapse.
| Hurricanes are back, world warned by experts
Hurricane forecasters have warned oilmen, insurers and coastal home-owners to brace themselves for a re-run of the $80bn (£40bn) catastrophe that cut a devastating swathe through the Gulf of Mexico two years ago. Weather watchers put the probability of an "above-normal" hurricane season this year at 75pc. Experts warned of dire consequences if the summer storms arrive as predicted. At the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, scientists said there would be between 13 and 17 named storms during the hurricane season, which officially begins on June 1 and runs until the end of November. They expect up to 10 of these to turn into hurricanes and perhaps half of these to be "major hurricanes" like Katrina, which caused extensive damage and loss of life in New Orleans in 2005. With oil and petrol prices already at elevated levels, a busy storm season could have serious economic as well as humanitarian consequences. More than 1,500 people lost their lives as a result of Hurricane Katrina, making it the third deadliest storm in US history. Around 2,500 died in Florida in 1928 and up to 12,000 in Galveston, Texas, in 1900. Katrina was easily the costliest hurricane ever, eclipsing the previous record-holder, Andrew, which caused $48bn of damage in 1992. Three of the 10 most costly hurricanes occurred in 2005, with Wilma ($21bn) and Rita ($12bn) contributing to a disastrous year for the insurance and oil industries. The jury is out on whether global warming is causing more frequent storms. Chuck Watson, a storm watcher for Kinetic Analysis in Maryland, told the Reuters news agency: "It is almost certain there is going to be significant production disruption in the Gulf of Mexico this year." He said the oil industry should ensure that stockpiles away from America's vulnerable south-eastern coast are high enough to prevent shortages in the event of storm damage. | American Christianity -- Laodicean church in the making, says Barna
More than 20 years of research, says The Barna Group, has revealed a disturbing trend among Americans' spiritual beliefs and behavior: their commitment to orthodox biblical perspectives is "slipping." The director of a recent Barna study says the findings reflect a "spiritual profile" among Americans similar to that of the early church at Laodicea -- a church which Jesus admonished for being "neither hot nor cold" and called to repentance. Every year, The Barna Group explores the "state of America's faith," examining such factors as people's spiritual activity, faith identity, commitment, and religious perspective. This year's poll of more than 1,000 adults (conducted in January) indicates that while Americans are remaining spiritually active, the percentage of those who hold orthodox biblical views has fallen to its lowest level in decades. "They've actually become less orthodox, less traditional," Barna's David Kinnaman tells Associated Press. "[M]any of their core biblical perspectives have changed." A report released by Barna summarizes this year's findings. Among them -- two-thirds (66%) of Americans believe that God is best described as "the all-powerful, all-knowing creator of the universe who rules the world today." That is down five percent from one year ago and represents the lowest percentage in more than 20 years of similar surveys, notes the report. In addition, says Kinnaman, "they are less likely to reject the notion that Jesus sinned (37%), and they're less likely to believe that Satan is a real spiritual entity (24%)." Both of those percentages are lower than last year and are among the lowest during the two decades Barna has tracked Americans' views in those areas. The research organization observes that such revelations call into question the sincerity of people's commitment to orthodox biblical perspectives. Kinnaman puts it this way: while millions of Americans feel personally committed to God, they are apparently "renegotiating" the definition of God.
| Hamas: Islam Will Rule the World, Destroy Israel and the Jews
(IsraelNN.com) The Hamas terrorist organization is conducting a simultaneous battle against Israel and its coalition partner, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah faction, but not without a “higher” purpose. According to the Palestinian Media Watch, the Hamas charter specifically mandates the murder of Jews in compliance with what it believes is Divine will. Violence and terror, which Hamas refers to as “resistance”, are considered legitimate tools to be used for this purpose. Hamas has worked hard to promote this ideology and to train the current and future generations toward this end, using a Mickey Mouse-like character to teach the precepts to PA Arab children and other TV and radio programs to reach the adults. The PA population has, for the most part, responded enthusiastically to this campaign. Others who are frightened by the fanaticism and culture of murder are doing their best to flee. Branch offices of foreign ministries from various Arab countries report they have been besieged with tens of thousands of applications by PA Arabs who are desperate to take their families out of the madness. Islamic clerics, meanwhile, exhort them to remain, resorting even to religious legal rulings that it is forbidden to leave the Palestinian Authority territories and abandon what they insist is their land.
| End EU constitution stalemate: Solana
AACHEN • European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana urged the bloc yesterday to resolve the two-year-old stalemate over its stalled constitution, arguing the deadlock was undermining EU’s influence in the world. Receiving a prestigious German peace prize in the border city of Aachen, Solana backed efforts by Chancellor Angela Merkel to launch a blueprint for reforms of EU structures that would be in place from mid-2009. “Just when we should be at our most alert, just when the world’s demand for Europe is at its highest, the Union has turned inwards, immersed in a sterile institutional crisis,” Solana said. “We cannot go on like this. This must be resolved as soon as possible, if possible in 2007,” he told an audience packed with past and present European dignitaries. The bloc’s 27 capitals disagree on how to revive a charter all but killed off in 2005 by rejections in Dutch and French referendums. Diplomats say some consensus is, however, emerging around a slimmed-down "mini treaty" proposed by new French President Nicolas Sarkozy. It is not clear how much will be salvaged of the original text, which would have streamlined EU voting structures, created a more permanent presidency and a single foreign minister. Spanish Socialist Solana would have been the first holder of such a post, giving him control over EU instruments such as its vast overseas aid budget. Yet with his mandate expiring in 2009, any attempt to restore the position come too late for him. “We can only develop a genuine foreign policy if we give ourselves the necessary structures,” said the 64-year-old former NATO secretary-general. “In the last few years, we have come a long way ... But today, we are very close to the limit of what can be achieved in this way.” Solana, who has mediated in conflicts from the Balkans to the Middle East, received the Charlemagne Award.
| Putin the Terrible, we love you
Two days after the Crown Prosecution Service announced that Andrei Lugovoi, the former KGB agent, should be charged with the murder of his old colleague Alexan-der Litvinenko and demanded that Russia extradite him to face trial in Britain, I bumped into a Russian friend: worldly, pro-western and a fluent English speaker who has travelled dozens of times abroad. I asked him who he thought had ordered the murder of Litvinenko, a fierce Kremlin critic who died of a massive polonium210 dose in London six months ago. My friend had no doubts. “Boris Berezovsky of course,” he said forcefully. It was the exiled oligarch and foe of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, who had smuggled polonium into Britain and ordered his protégé’s death. Why? To sully Russia’s image in the West. However absurd that seems, many Russians would agree. Even in exile Berezovsky, once one of Moscow’s most powerful political players, is regarded as a Machiavellian figure whose influence, they believe, knows no boundaries. Those who do not share that view, including Litvinenko’s first wife, believe he was instead killed by the CIA or MI5, enemies of Russia bent on weakening it just as it is becoming strong again. Few here suspect the FSB, as the KGB is now known, or the Kremlin. Too small a fish for them to get involved, they argue. The striking difference between public opinion in Russia and back in Britain could easily be overlooked if it concerned only Litvinenko’s cold-blooded killing. It is, however, just the latest example of divisions running between the Russians and the West which, 16 years after the collapse of communism, are set to become only deeper. Seven years after coming to power, Putin, who served a third of his life in the KGB, has few friends left in Europe and America. West of Moscow he is vilified as an authoritarian despot who has crushed opposition to his rule, turned independent media into a sycophantic tool of the Kremlin and jailed or chased his critics into exile.
| Woman minister re-appointed – as a man
A woman who has served as minister at St. John's United Methodist Church in Baltimore for five years has been re-appointed to the position – as a man, according to church officials. The announcement came at the Baltimore-Washington annual conference of the UMC, where the former Ann Gordon announced the change to Drew Phoenix, and talked of a "spiritual transformation" since the sex change procedure. The move was not without challenge. Some ministers asked for a "ruling of law," a move which automatically takes the issue to the church organization's highest court, the Judicial Council, which will be meeting next in October. The church denomination "officially" disapproves of homosexual behavior, but has no explicit policy regarding sexual identity changes or sex change operations, officials said. Gordon/Phoenix' congregation is among those that support what the members call the "reconciling" movement within the church, and campaigns to reject the church's traditional biblical teachings on marriage and sexual ethics.
| House rejects microchip implants for violent criminals
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Legislation that would authorize microchip implants in people convicted of violent crimes was sent back to a committee for more work Wednesday after state House members questioned whether the proposal would violate constitutional civil liberties. The measure, approved by the Senate, authorizes microchip implants for persons convicted of one or more of 19 violent offenses who have to serve at least 85 percent of their sentence, including murder, rape and some forms of robbery and burglary, while prohibiting government from requiring microchips implants in anyone else. The tiny electronic implants are commonly used to keep track of pets and livestock, but several House members questioned whether their forced use in people would be unconstitutionally invasive. “We are going down that slippery slope,” said Rep. Ed Cannaday, D-Porum. Lawmakers never voted on the measure. During debate, its author, Rep. Sue Tibbs, R-Tulsa, asked that it be sent back to a joint House-Senate conference committee where the exception for violent offenders was inserted. Cannaday and others said the measure may violate the Fourth, Fifth And Fourteenth amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, the Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment and the Fourteenth Amendment contains the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses.
| Attack of the cyber terrorists
At first it would be no more than a nuisance. No burning skyscrapers, no underground explosions, just a million electronic irritations up and down the land. Thousands of government web pages suddenly vanish to be replaced with the Internet's version of the Testcard - that dreaded screen '404 - Not Found' or, more amusingly, some pastiche or parody. Then the Labour website starts to promise a wholesale renationalisation of the railways. The popular response this generates turns to amusement then bemusement as everything from Jaguar to BT is, the sites claim, to be taken back into state hands. When conservatives.org.uk starts to promise compulsory repatriation and the return of capital punishment, bemusement turns to alarm.
| Can cyborg moths bring down terrorists?
At some point in the not too distant future, a moth will take flight in the hills of northern Pakistan, and flap towards a suspected terrorist training camp. But this will be no ordinary moth. Inside it will be a computer chip that was implanted when the creature was still a pupa, in the cocoon, meaning that the moth’s entire nervous system can be controlled remotely. The moth will thus be capable of landing in the camp without arousing suspicion, all the while beaming video and other information back to its masters via what its developers refer to as a “reliable tissue-machine interface.” The creation of insects whose flesh grows around computer parts – known from science fiction as ‘cyborgs’ – has been described as one of the most ambitious robotics projects ever conceived by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), the research and development arm of the US Department of Defense. Rod Brooks, director of the computer science and artificial intelligence lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which is involved with the research, said that robotics was increasingly at the forefront of US military research, and that the remote-controlled moths, described by DARPA as Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems, or MEMS, were one of a number of technologies soon to be deployed in combat zones. “This is going to happen," said Mr Brooks. "It’s not science like developing the nuclear bomb, which costs billions of dollars. It can be done relatively cheaply.” “Moths are creatures that need little food and can fly all kinds of places," he continued. "A bunch of experiments have been done over the past couple of years where simple animals, such as rats and cockroaches, have been operated on and driven by joysticks, but this is the first time where the chip has been injected in the pupa stage and ‘grown’ inside it. “Once the moth hatches, machine learning is used to control it.” Mr Brooks, who has worked on robotic technology for more than 30 years and whose company iRobot already supplies the US military with robots that defuse explosive devices laid by insurgents, said that the military would be increasingly reliant on ‘semi-autonomous’ devices, including ones which could fire.
| Can Centaurs and Talking Pigs Be Far Behind?
Nobel laureate and famed geneticist Sydney Brenner once delivered a somewhat tongue-in-cheek lecture to students at Cambridge University about how to nonsurgically create a centaur. He concluded that one day soon it might be possible to create such a six-limbed vertebrate. Mermaids and other mythical hybrids might be on the way, too, as well as human-dog drudges trained to cook omelets and happily perform useful tasks around the house, like changing the light bulbs. This day has not yet arrived, but it may be inching closer with a recent amendment to a bill in the British Parliament that would legalize human hybrids for research. This legislation, offered by the British Department of Health, is a U-turn from government ministers who said last December that they supported a ban on creating chimeras. Since then, a vigorous and sometimes contentious debate has raged in the United Kingdom between supporters of a ban--some religious, some not--and the scientific community, led by Ian Wilmut (Dolly the sheep) and others who insist that a ban would stifle research into stem-cell treatments. On March 28, a lengthy report by the Science and Technology Committee in the House of Commons endorsed chimerical research as part of the legislation reauthorizing the Human Fertilization and Embryology Act of 1990. Wilmut and the other United Kingdom scientists are not interested in making mermaids--or mermen, either. They want to use animal eggs to grow human stem cells by cleaning out 99.9 percent of the animal materials from the eggs and injecting them with human DNA. These hybrids would provide a solution to the severe shortage of pure human eggs needed for embryonic stem-cell research, which now depends on human volunteers to provide eggs.
| University OKs pagan festival, bans Christian event
Scotland's University of Edinburgh, after proposing a ban on Bibles and denying a Christian campus group the right to hold a conference on the immorality of homosexuality, has extended the welcome mat to the school's Pagan Society to hold its annual meeting on campus next month. The pagan conference will feature presentations on a variety of topics, including Magic and Witchcraft in the 21st Century, Pagan Parenting, Pagan Marriage, Pagan Symbolism and Practice and Ancient Greek magic. A workshop in tribal dance will be held at the university Student's Association. "It will be an opportunity for people to listen to talks on various aspects of modern paganism and socialize with like-minded people in a relaxed, tolerant atmosphere," said John Macintyre, presiding officer of Pagan Federation Scotland. "Most people now recognize that the old stereotypes about witches and witchcraft are way off the mark and there is nothing remotely sinister about it." "Remotely sinister," it seems, is reserved for Christians at Edinburgh. In 2005, WND reported plans to begin banning Bibles from Edinburgh student halls of residence due to concern they are the source of discrimination against students of other faiths. The ban was a response to student association protests as well as an agenda to equally support all faiths, a university spokesman told the Times of London. While a Gideon Bible had traditionally been placed in the room of all new students, officials decided they could be offensive to some. Removal, advocates said, was about "respecting diversity," not attacking Christianity.
| Militant atheists topping best-seller lists
The time for polite debate is over. Militant atheist writers are making an all-out assault on religious faith and reaching the top of the best-seller list, a sign of widespread resentment over the influence of religion in the world among nonbelievers. Christopher Hitchens' book, "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything," has sold briskly ever since it was published last month, and his debates with clergy are drawing crowds at every stop. Sam Harris was a little-known graduate student until he wrote the phenomenally successful "The End of Faith" and its follow-up, "Letter to a Christian Nation." Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion" and Daniel Dennett's "Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon" struck similar themes -- and sold. "There is something like a change in the zeitgeist," Mr. Hitchens said, noting that sales of his latest book far outnumber those for his earlier work that had challenged faith. "There are a lot of people, in this country in particular, who are fed up with endless lectures by bogus clerics and endless bullying." Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary, a prominent evangelical school in Pasadena, Calif., said the books' success reflect a new vehemence in the atheist critique. "I don't believe in conspiracy theories," Mr. Mouw said, "but it's almost like they all had a meeting and said, 'Let's counterattack.' " The war metaphor is apt. The writers see themselves in a battle for reason in a world crippled by superstition. In their view, Muslim extremists, Jewish settlers and Christian right activists are from the same mold, using fairy tales posing as divine scripture to justify their lust for power. Bad behavior in the name of religion is behind some of the most dangerous global conflicts and the terrorist attacks in the United States, London and Madrid, the atheists say. As Mr. Hitchens puts it: "Religion kills." The Rev. Douglas Wilson, senior fellow in theology at New Saint Andrews College, a Christian school in Moscow, Idaho, sees the books as a sign of secular panic. Nonbelievers are finally realizing, he says, that contrary to what they were taught in college, faith is not dead.
| Malaysian fights for right to become Christian
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- Lina Joy has been disowned by her family, shunned by friends and forced into hiding -- all because she renounced Islam and embraced Christianity in Muslim-majority Malaysia. Now, after a seven-year legal struggle, Malaysia's highest court will decide on Wednesday whether her constitutional right to choose her religion overrides an Islamic law that prohibits Malay Muslims from leaving Islam. Either way, the verdict will have profound implications on society in a country where Islam is increasingly conflicting with minority religions, challenging Malaysia's reputation as a moderate nation. Joy's case began in 1998 when, after converting, she applied for a name change on her government identity card. The National Registration Department obliged but refused to drop Muslim from the religion column. She appealed the decision to a civil court but was told she must take it to Islamic Shariah courts. But Joy, 42, has argued that she should not be bound by Shariah law because she is a Christian. About 60 percent of Malaysia's 26 million people are Malay Muslims, whose civil and family rights are decided by Shariah courts. The minorities -- the ethnic Chinese, Indians and other smaller communities -- are governed by civil courts. But the constitution does not say who has the final say in cases such as Joy's. ''Our country is at a crossroad,'' Joy's lawyer, Benjamin Dawson, said.
| Council on Foreign Relations Pushes for Three Regional Currencies in the World
Create a global lending institution that weakens the economy of wealthy nations, enslaves Third World countries, and prevents those nations from rising out of their impoverished conditions. Blame that institution for creating a plethora of global financial crises over the past fifty years. Then offer a solution of consolidating all of the economies of the world into three different regions, each of which will use one type of currency. Were that scenario to be played out in the latest issue of Mad Magazine, it might be good for a laugh or two. But when it is published by the most influential foreign policy journal in the world, it is cause for more than a little concern. Foreign Affairs is considered by many to be the "playbook" that our nation's leaders use in creating foreign policy. It unabashedly promotes the concept of "globalism," which is a softball term used to describe a utopian one world government. Regardless of the political party in power, our government has worked to implement the journal's agenda for many years. Benn Steil, the CFR's Director of International Economics, argues that the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) practice of "lending" money to poor countries causes them to give up a portion of their sovereignty. The IMF is funded by the wealthy nations of the world, the U.S., Britain and Japan, to name a few. However, since the dollar is the currency of choice for much of the world, the lion's share of funds in the IMF and World Bank are made up of U.S. dollars. The United States, having the fortunate position of possessing the money that the rest of the world has faith in, will then sell government bonds to foreign governments that have just borrowed from the IMF to offset the deficit spending (such as funding the IMF) that Congress approves. To use an analogy, it is like buying a suit from a tailor and then receiving that same money back the next day in the form of a loan. Because of this process, he rightly calls the dollar an absurdity supported only by blind (or stupid) faith in man's wisdom. The logical answer from the perspective of a free marketer is for the U.S. to return to the gold standard, which is what gave the dollar a worldwide prominence in the first place. Not according to Steil, who says: "A revived gold standard is out of the question. In the nineteenth century, governments spent less than ten percent of national income in a given year. Today, they routinely spend half or more, and so they would never subordinate spending to the stringent requirements of sustaining a commodity-based monetary system." There we have it. Since those governments have become more socialist in nature, they must be emancipated from the restraints a hard metal currency would place on them from spending us all into paradise. What does Steil propose as an alternative solution? He writes: "Since economic development outside the process of globalization is no longer possible, countries should abandon monetary nationalism. Governments should replace national currencies with the dollar or the euro or, in the case of Asia, collaborate to produce a new multinational currency over a comparably large and economically diversified area."
| Bilderberg 2007: Welcome to the Lunatic Fringe
In 1954, the most powerful men in the world met for the first time under the auspices of the Dutch royal crown and the Rockefeller family in the luxurious Hotel Bilderberg of the small Dutch town of Oosterbeck. For an entire weekend they debated the future of the world. When it was over, they decided to meet once every year to exchange ideas and analyze international affairs. They named themselves the Bilderberg Club. Since then, they have gathered yearly in a luxurious hotel somewhere in the world to decide the future of humanity. In more than fifty years of meetings that brings together unprecedented power and money in the same time and place, never has any information been leaked as to what subjects were debated during the Bilderberg Club meetings. Bilderberg, one of the world’s most powerful secret organizations is run out of an 18m2 offices, staffed by one person, using one telephone line and a single fax number. There is no web page and no brass name plate on the door. The independent press has never been allowed in, and no statements have ever been released on the attendees’ conclusions nor has any agenda for a Bilderberg meeting been made public. How, in God’s name, can this be possible when Bilderberg´s elite membership list includes all of the most powerful individuals who run the Planet? Leaders of the Bilderberg Club argue that this discretion is necessary to allow participants in the debates to speak freely without being on the record or reported publicly. Otherwise, Bilderbergers state, they would be forced to speak in the language of a press release. Doubtlessly, this discretion allows the Bilderberg Club to deliberate more freely, but that does not respond to the fundamental question: What do the world’s most powerful people talk about in these meetings? Any modern democratic system protects the right to privacy, but doesn’t the public have a right to know what their political leaders are talking about when they meet the wealthiest business leaders of their respective countries? | |
…He just could not stop talking about Jesus and told me, “I need to get baptized, because Jesus told me to do so!” 
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