Archive for February, 2010
“Security experts believe Russia has adopted a secret policy for the possible use of first-strike nuclear weapons to deter “conventional aggression,” according to a report from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has signed into law a new Russian military doctrine, and while publicizing it, Deputy Chief of the General Staff Colonel-General Anatoly Nogovitsyn has made it known that the new doctrine has two parts.
Security experts believe the second part directly addresses the prospect of a nuclear “defense” against “conventional aggression” in large-scale and regional conflicts.
Nogovitsyn confirmed the public portion pertains more to military-political issues while the secret portion “will specifically depict the plans of usage of armed forces including nuclear weapons as an instrument of strategic deterrence.” …”
More: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=126343
“SANTIAGO, Chile — A massive 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck Chile early Saturday, killing at least 64 people, collapsing buildings and setting off a tsunami.
A huge wave reached a populated area in the Robinson Crusoe Islands, 410 miles (660 kilometers) off the Chilean coast, said President Michele Bachelet.
Tsunami warnings were issued over a wide area, including South America, Hawaii, Australia and New Zealand, Japan, the Philippines, Russia and many Pacific islands.
“It has been a devastating earthquake,” Interior Minister Edmundo Perez Yoma told reporters. He said at least 64 people have been killed, and “the death toll will continue rising.” …”
“Most of the American people oppose the government plan to take over healthcare. It costs too much; it borrows too much; it taxes too much; it’s inefficient; and it gives government bureaucrats the control of our personal medical decisions.
But aside from the obvious, it also goes far beyond the restraints set forth in the Constitution. The Constitution sets limits on what dictates of pain the federal government is allowed to inflict on the rest of us. The people decide what is best for themselves and our country, not the government.
When our forefathers set forth to create a free and democratic republic, they wanted to make sure that they created checks and balances within our government to prevent one party or one body of government from having absolute power over the people. Our leaders would be wise to remember this.
The American people are tired of having their voices ignored and their constitutional rights trampled on and set aside to further the political agenda of a few. The secret backroom deals, payoffs, paybacks, all reminiscent of the British Secret Star Chamber, were the final arrogant acts of a government out-of-control that caused the people from all over the political spectrum to act. …”
“LOS ANGELES, February 8 (CDN) – About 100 local officials, police and villagers put guns to the heads of Christians during their Sunday morning service in a village in Laos last month, forcing them from their worship and homes, according to an advocacy organization.
Human Rights Watch for Lao Religious Freedom (HRWLRF) reported that in Katin village of Ta-Oyl district, Saravan Province, Lao authorities including the village chief, a religious affairs’ official, three district police and a 15-man volunteer unit joined 15 village police officers to force all 48 Christian adults and children of the church to an open field.
Afterward, the officials confiscated all personal belongings from 11 homes of Christians and destroyed six of the 11 homes. They also confiscated a pig – equal to six weeks’ salary to the villagers – that belonged to one of the members of the congregation, according to HRWLRF.
Unable to cajole the Christians into renouncing Christ with the illegal use of arms, the officials forced them to walk six kilometers (nearly four miles) and then left them on the side of a road.
“While being forced with guns to their heads, the believers took only the personal belongings they could grab,” according to an HRWLRF statement.
Since then, officials have posted local police at the entrance of Katin village in order to keep the Christians from returning. The men, women and children of the church have been sleeping on the ground in the woods with hardly enough food supplies, equipment, or tools to survive, according to HRWLRF.
“They are without light, food and clean water, except for a small stream nearby,” the organization reported. …”
Read More: http://www.compassdirect.org/english/country/laos/15027/
“You are aware by now that a 12,000 pound killer whale at SeaWorld Orlando killed his trainer Dawn Brancheau yesterday by pulling her into a pool and dragging her around until she drowned, in front of a crowd of stunned guests.
According to the Orlando Sentinel, “SeaWorld Orlando has always know that Tillikum…could be a particularly dangerous killer whale…because of his ominous history.”
The Sentinel then recounts that Tilly, as he was affectionately known, had killed a trainer back in 1991 in front of spectators at a now defunct aquarium in Victoria, British Columbia.
Then in 1999 he killed a man who sneaked into SeaWorld to swim with the whales and was found the next morning draped dead across Tilly’s back. His body had been bit and the killer whale had torn off his swimming trunks after he had died.
What about the term “killer whale” do SeaWorld officials not understand?
If the counsel of the Judeo-Christian tradition had been followed, Tillikum would have been put out of everyone’s misery back in 1991 and would not have had the opportunity to claim two more human lives.
Says the ancient civil code of Israel, “When an ox gores a man or woman to death, the ox shall be stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten, but the owner shall not be liable.” (Exodus 21:28)
So, your animal kills somebody, your moral responsibility is to put that animal to death. You have no moral culpability in the death, because you didn’t know the animal was going to go postal on somebody.
But, the Scripture soberly warns, if one of your animals kills a second time because you didn’t kill it after it claimed its first human victim, this time you die right along with your animal. To use the example from Exodus, if your ox kills a second time, “the ox shall be stoned, and its owner also shall be put to death.” (Exodus 21:29) …”
More: http://action.afa.net/Blogs/BlogPost.aspx?id=2147492239
“An online image of a road sign ostensibly declaring Kenya to be the birthplace of Barack Obama is a hoax, according to the man who posted the original photograph on his website, before someone else apparently fudged it.
“I know that this picture is not taken in Kenya,” said Norway native Jan Krogh, speaking to WND from his current home in Vilnius, Lithuania. “It’s clear that there can be no doubt that it’s some joke or some hoax.”
The image, which has been showing up in e-mail inboxes across the U.S. in recent days, displays a green and white billboard with the message, “Welcome to Kenya, Birthplace of Barack Obama.” It also features some text in Arabic.
Some of the e-mails carrying the photo have written messages such as:
- “Sign on highway in Northern Kenya, near Sudan border.”
- “Just got back from a trip to Africa. One of the places we stopped for fuel was Kenya!!! Couldn’t resist not photographing this billboard.”
While WND has been unable to determine the identity of the prankster, Krogh, 45, said he’s certain the false image was based on his photograph of an actual welcome sign for the Middle East town of Madha, located in Oman on the Arabian Peninsula. …”
Read More: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=
“As I left the clinic, the doctor gave me the Jesus film and like all taxi drivers do, I put the film on my dashboard. Around two hours later I was driving and got myself into an illegal checkpoint where fanatic Shia Muslims were carrying guns, getting people out of the car and killing them instantly.
I was stuck, could not escape and started to panic. I saw people in front of me being murdered. And then it was my turn! The Shiite gunman looked into my car and his eye was on the Jesus film DVD on my dashboard. He said: “This is a filthy Christian, not Sunni, so we can let him go.” I went to my home, shaking and trembling from fear. I watched the film and I was saved by the testimony and story of Jesus Christ.
Because this Christian doctor did not flee and had the boldness to share his faith, Malo “a radical Muslim” has come to know Christ! …”
“Hi David, I’m afraid you’re mistaken about the evolution of the eye. While there are plenty of just-so stories about how various scientists think it might have happened, absolutely none of these are backed up by any statistical analysis or scientific predictive value when it comes to the odds that the Darwinian mechanism is likely to have done the job. All of these stories simply boil down to fanciful wishful thinking at best…
If you don’t have enough science or math background to understand my arguments here, then how on Earth are you so sure that I’m wrong? – or that you understand the issues involved with the creation/evolution debates? To be honest, you really don’t sound very well informed at all on the relevant sciences involved with this issue. If you don’t understand the statistics behind the mechanism of random mutations and natural selection, you really don’t understand the very basics of Darwinian evolution.
Yet, you go on to argue that the Bible has been rewritten and edited many many times over hundreds and even thousands of years and therefore is clearly not reliable as having any bearing on actual history much less physical sciences. In that, you are also quite mistaken. The Biblical texts have proven themselves time and again to be far more reliable than any other historical document. Without this reliability, the Bible would be of no more interest than are Grimm’s fairytales – and no more helpful when it comes to learning about a God that really exists and takes any personal interest in our individual lives.
“Kenneth Miller and most other modern scientists base a lot of their beliefs upon the notion of a very old history of life on Earth. Really then, the general understanding of the theory of evolution isn’t based so much on an understanding of the Darwinian mechanism of random mutations and natural selection, but is rather based on the assumption that life on this planet is truly ancient and has changed significantly over time through vast ages as are interpreted in the fossil record.
So, if everything really boils down to the interpretation of the geologic and fossil records, Darwinism really has very little to add to the picture. Mainstream scientists simply accept Darwinism, not because they understand the mechanism, but because they have no other viable option which seems palatable to them and which does not invoke the need for an intelligent creative Power.
As far as evidence that the Bible is one of the most reliable historical documents around, there are many examples of archaeologists claiming that various biblical accounts must simply be pure mythology, when later it was discovered that the Bible was right and the scientific critics were wrong. For example, for a long time it was argued that Nebuchadnezzar never existed, or if he did, he was only a minor regional king.
It was thought, for hundreds of years before Christ and after Christ that the Assyrian queen Semiramis was the actual ruler over the Babylonian region during the time of Daniel. It was only in modern times that the truth of the biblical account was actually discovered in the form of Nebuchadnezzar’s name being found on thousands of bricks in Babylon and a description of his reign on hundreds of cuneiform tablets consistent with the account of Daniel in the Bible.
Other examples of biblical accuracy in the face of higher criticism include the existence of Sodom and Gomorrah, and their destruction by fire. Until fairly recently, it was thought that these cities and the story of their destruction by fire was mythical. Now, their existence and their fiery destruction has been confirmed by archaeological evidence.
The same thing is true of the order of the reigns of various kings which were thought to be inconsistent with the biblical accounts for a long time – until more recent discoveries again supported the biblical accounts.
As far as archaeological support for the Exodus, recent discoveries have been quite interesting in this regard. While not all questions are answered, the biblical account of the Exodus certainly seems to be more supported than not by recent discoveries and is certainly not contradicted to any significant degree …”
“Chile’s president declared a state of catastrophe in the aftermath of a massive 8.8-magnitude earthquake Saturday that left bodies, crumbled buildings and outages in its wake.
Chile’s interior minister says at least 214 people had been found dead as of Saturday afternoon, and the pre-dawn quake, the most powerful quake to hit the country in a half century, also cut electricity, water and phone lines to many outlying areas, meaning there was no immediate word of death or damage there.
The quake also unleashed a tsunami across the ocean, putting much of the Pacific Rim on alert for potentially devastating waves.
In the town of Talca, 65 miles from the quake’s epicenter, its historic center, filled with buildings of adobe mud and straw, largely collapsed, though most of those were businesses that were not populated during the 3:34 a.m. quake. Neighbors pulled at least five people from the rubble while emergency workers, themselves disoriented, asked for information from reporters.
In the Chilean capital of Santiago, 200 miles northeast of the epicenter, a car dangled from a collapsed overpass, the national Fine Arts Museum was badly damaged and an apartment building’s two-story parking lot pancaked, smashing about 50 cars whose alarms rang incessantly.
The tsunami set off by the quake threatened every nation around the Pacific Ocean – roughly a quarter of the globe. Warnings were issued over a wide area, including South America, Hawaii, Australia and New Zealand, Japan, the Philippines, Russia and many Pacific islands.
A number of aftershocks continue to hit Chile, the largest one registering at magnitude 6.9, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. …”
“SILVER SPRING, Md. — Following a deadly 8.8-magnitude earthquake, one of the strongest ever recorded, the extent of the humanitarian crisis in some of the worse hit areas in south-central Chile is becoming apparent, reports the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA), which is coordinating with disaster response authorities to provide assistance.
The Chilean National Office of Emergencies and Information (ONEMI) has called ADRA to assist immediately with food and water distribution. Agency officials have already met with ONEMI to coordinate the aid. As a result, ADRA dispatched a truckload of water, which left Saturday afternoon from the capital Santiago on its way to Talca and Concepcion, two cities close to the quake’s epicenter. Mattresses, blankets, and other basic necessities are also being procured for distribution.
Meanwhile, residents in affected areas, including the cities of Curico, Chillan, Talca, Concepcion, and Los Angeles, remain jittery as aftershocks continue to occur. So far, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has recorded more than 105 aftershocks stronger than 5.0 magnitude since the quake happened Saturday at 3:34 a.m. local time (1:34 a.m. EST / 6:34 UTC).
According to ONEMI, which continues to survey the affected areas with the support of the Army and the National Police, the human death toll has risen to more than 700, an estimated 500,000 homes have been destroyed and 1.5 million others have suffered various degrees of damage.
The quake, ranked seventh in recorded history and the strongest since the 2004 quake that triggered the Asian tsunami, caused widespread fear among residents. It was the most powerful earthquake to strike Chile since the 9.5-magnitude 1960 earthquake. …”
More: http://www.adra.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=10819&news_iv_ctrl=1141
“An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had once failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Obama’s socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.
The professor then said, “OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama’s plan”.
All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A…
After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.
The second test average was a D! No one was happy.
When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.
As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.
All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.
Could not be any simpler than that.
Remember, there is a test coming up. The mid-term election in 2010!”
A New Book Examines the Allegedly Flawed Human Body.
“Evolutionists often point to apparent flaws in human design to ridicule the notion of “intelligent design.” Now, the author of a new book on “design flaws” in humans offers his perspective.
University of California-Irvine evolutionary biologist John Avise is author of Inside the Human Genome, which a press release touts as “explor[ing] the many deficiencies of human DNA while recapping recent findings about the human genome.” While opponents of intelligent design have used human anatomical flaws (real and imagined) to attack the case for design, Avise points to genetic deficiencies.
“We now know that the human genome is riddled with molecular defects of many sorts,” Avise explained in a syndicated interview. He then took aim at intelligent desig
- “Proponents of intelligent design understandably focus on the many beauties of life . . . [h]owever, natural selection in conjunction with genetic processes can also produce complex biological systems that usually function well. So both natural selection and intelligent design are consistent with the appearance of biological craftsmanship. Serious biological imperfections, on the other hand, can only logically be expected of nonsentient evolutionary processes . . . .”
Avise is partially right and partially wrong. While it’s true that, theoretically, both natural selection and intelligent design can explain complex systems, information-adding genetic mutations would be required for natural-selection-driven evolution to “create” features that appear to be designed. Such information-adding genetic mutations have never been observed, however.
Furthermore, biological imperfections are quite consistent with a “post-Fall” world. God created life perfectly, but the effects of the Curse–especially destructive genetic mutations and disease–have partially obscured the original perfect creation with “biological imperfections.” For these reasons, we contend that a combination of “intelligent design” plus a genuine, historical Fall can explain our impressive-but-imperfect biology. …”
Read More: http://www.onenewsnow.com/Perspectives/Default.aspx?id=908060
“SILVER SPRING, Md.�The possibility of an outbreak of deadly diseases in quake-affected Haiti is growing, making the need for clean water and basic sanitation even more critical, reported the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA).
The number of temporary shelters, already a staple in Haiti, has increased dramatically in the aftermath of the earthquake, resulting in internally displaced people (IDPs) clustering together in open spaces, creating IDP camps that have populations reaching into the tens of thousands.
“With so many people sleeping in the streets, and impromptu temporary camps, the threat of a possible epidemic increases daily,” said Ulrick Beaussejour, sanitation coordinator for ADRA Haiti. “ADRA is providing appropriate access to clean water, and basic hygiene and sanitation facilities, to constantly improve the living environment for survivors.”
On the campus of the Adventist University of Haiti, where an estimated 15,000 survivors are currently residing, ADRA has installed 60 bathing stations for personal hygiene and 80 latrines with hundreds more in process. Beneficiaries have also received training on how to keep latrines clean and operable, adding to the sustainability of the project.
ADRA is also running a trash collection campaign at the site of the IDP camp, implementing a cash-for-work program that utilizes local volunteers to clean up the campus grounds. The first phase of this project is funded by the Florida Adventist Community Services and the Florida Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, and will run for one month. Currently, ADRA expects to run the campaign for at least three months. …”
Read More: http://www.adra.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=10806&news_iv_ctrl=1141
There is an Email circulating through the Internet presenting a new method for surviving an earthquake. The alleged author, Doug Copp, who claims to be the Chief and Disaster Manager of the American Rescue Team International, states that the traditional practice which has been used for decades is in fact a recipe for disaster.
He proposes a new method identified as The Triangle of Life. I checked Snopes to see what they know about this and discovered that they do not seem to be convinced about Copp’s claim and do recommend following the advice of the Red Cross and that of FEMA. I will post all three below: