The White Man

2012-01-16T13:21:00.000-05:00

In my last post on Iran nearly two months ago, I wrote that "Things are heating up to the point that the next move is going to make world headlines." Well, there have been several headlines made since then, but actually the most significant events are still taking place behind the scenes. There is a reason for this, and I quote DEBKAfile in full:

US troops land in Israel. Aircraft carrier coming soonDEBKAfile Exclusive Report06 Jan. The first of 9,000 incoming US troops have arrived in Israel – not just for the joint Austere Challenge 12 exercise but for a longer stay. They are part of the joint US-Israel deployment ready for a military engagement with Iran and its possible escalation into a regional conflict. A US aircraft carrier will soon dock in Israel for joint missions with the Israeli Air Force. Most of the US arrivals are airmen, missile interceptor teams, marines, seamen, technicians and intelligence officers. The decision to bring them over now although the war game is scheduled for April was taken in consultations among US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and the two army chiefs, US Gen. Martin Dempsey and Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz.British Defense Minister Phillip Hammond, on a visit to Washington, was brought into the discussion.The handout circulated to US correspondents from Hammond's talks in the US capital affirmed that Britain stands ready to strike Iran if the Strait of Hormuz is closed.However, that phrase was omitted from the British minister's remarks at a news conference, following a last-minute request from Panetta, signifying the Obama administration's interest in keeping a low profile on plans for attacking Iran.

There you have it, folks. The US are committed to war, but don't want anyone to realise it.

Keep your gasoline tanks full, because energy prices are going to skyrocket.

The Curious Case of Kenneth Miller

2012-01-14T10:01:00.000-05:00

The White Man continues to get a lot of inquiries concerning the arrest of Kenneth Miller for aiding in the "kidnapping" of Isabella, Lisa Miller's biological daughter who remains with her mother against the full force and power of the U.S. federal government. That I have anything further to add to the knowledge about this case is only due to an FBI document that, most curiously, in unavailable on the World Wide web except on a couple of homosecksual advocacy sites.

It's an excerpt from Kenneth Miller's arrest affidavit, which, unlike in the case of Timothy Miller, has not published on the FBI website. It mostly refers to a communication between Kenneth and Timothy which had to be translated from Pennsylvania Dutch by "an FBI Contract Linguist."

Kenneth and Timothy made a mistake that has been made many times, many places: that is, assuming that by using their own native tongue to communicate, they were protecting the content of their communication from being read and understood by hostile parties. The problem is that the FBI pays between $60 and $100 an hour to its "contract linguists," and at those rates, it's possible to get just about any unencrypted text translated in a matter of hours.

Encrypting a text is very easy; fourth-graders do it all the time, just for the fun of it. Now, with few notable exceptions, every encrypted text ever confiscated by the government has eventually been deciphered. But encrypting a text in another language makes this up to a couple hundred times harder. You see, it wasn't very hard, even for the FBI, to identify the language that Ken and Timo were using. Timo was in Central America, and Ken was in Europe, but they were both American Mennonites, so it wasn't at all unlikely that the language they were using was the Mennonite dialect of German, known to those who speak it as Pennsylvania Deitsch (Pennsylvania Dutch in English). Then, all they had to do was contract a member of the Mennonite ethnic group to translate the text.

If, however, Ken and Timo had run their entire conversation through an encryption program, the FBI would have wasted a lot of time trying to decipher it on the assumption that the base language was English. Only after multiple attempts failed would they have started working on the assumption of another base language, and to do that they would have needed the services of a contract linguist for much longer. Much has been said about the money the litigant parties have spent on this case, but now it appears that the government has outspent either side in its relentless pursuit of of a nine-year old escapee.

Just as an example, here is some information on the case (AFAIK, not known to the FBI) that I have encrypted:

TDIASZOSTN ORRYYIBESX AHBODUTHQW SANIZMRANN YHOEXANATM ELQTFIMCOZ MANUYHGEXP LAWSQBNABM EWZMPILGLA UVYMHECXBF EQLWALNTFI NCZTMOYUGO GXTPOQWWAB NZTWEADION YNINRXPILE SSQHKADLLH ZISNDIIARN ANCYOBUATX THELQLFIFC INMZIUNYGF APXKWUNBTR JYQJNIBKAW RAPGUGAVUZ SMOYCHEFXF LLYTQPALAO NENZTROYIF ISRGHINDIA KXBKUTHQGS OFIERRMENN TOZMAANTYK KESLHXFHIC MQMATUZDGE PYAWIRBPOJ RTJXABNDWQ KPUFGFZUHE MYHCANFXSL OQJHETZNAOT OYANYBRULI XTSOQHREDE SKHZHINSDI IANRAYNFOO RXALOFNGMV QUBUGTZPJU WSTBYIPNXU TIMMECQTFH ETYZMSANYY AOKDAYGCXJ YOLUQKMAHY ZGGODDYAAN WXHREQYMAI KEPZIOTYUT OTXWEEDCDI BNQMANNYWX AYVZAZTYQR AGMEHRXVYO KOTCQBAIDA DITNGWVVPX

It took me less than an hour to compose, translate, and encrypt the information. Anyone with the key (which is easy to memorize) could decipher this message in ten minutes*. Then all they would have to do is translate it back into English. The FBI could definitely do it, should they put their full efforts into it. But I doubt they could do it for under $150,000. There are just too many possibilities to run through before they would hit on the solution.

By the way, I am so confident of the security of this encryption that I guarantee approval of any comment that gives the solution.

*once they take into account that this message, as is often the case, has some encoded mistakes.

Tracing Orthodox Corruption back through to the original text

2012-01-12T15:22:00.002-05:00

I've been working for a few days on an article over on the Nazaroo Zone, where I am a guest author. Unfortunately it's virtually impossible to find it there, as the blog owner himself has filled several web pages with images he calls "Demotivational Posters." Once I was finally ready to publish it, Blogspot kept my post back where I first started it, so only by paging down quite a ways from the home page will anyone be able to find it.

So, for the benefit of those of my readers interested in arcane theories of textual criticism and how they actually work out in real life, I provide this link to the article.

IRAN CAPTURES US SPY DRONE

2012-01-04T10:13:00.004-05:00

From David Dolan:

American government officials reluctantly admitted in early December that Iran had taken possession of a highly sophisticated US stealth drone aircraft that was apparently in the middle of an information gathering flight over Iranian territory when it was intercepted. The US initially claimed that the drone had fallen into Iranian hands due to a “technical malfunction” on board. However according to an Iranian engineer who was interviewed by the American Christian Science Monitor newspaper later in the month, Iran was able to hack into the spy drone’s GPS navigational system in order to redirect it to land at an Iranian air base. If so (and most experts said this was probably the case), an electronic interception would be an extremely serious development that demonstrated Iran might be a more formidable opponent than previously anticipated if a full blown war develops as a result of any attack upon Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Known as the RQ-170 Sentinel, the pilot-less aircraft was subsequently closely inspected by Iranian officials. US defense experts said it was highly likely that Iran will share whatever information it gleans from the inspections with its Chinese allies, and possibly also with Russia as well. The Sentinel drones have been heavily deployed in recent years in Afghanistan, Pakistan and in Iraq, which is now empty of US ground forces after the last American soldiers were pulled out in December.According to the report relayed by the Iranian engineer, Iranian specialists somehow figured out that the RQ-170 Sentinels weakest point is its GPS. They apparently acquired this vital information by examining previously downed American drones in September. "By putting noise (i.e. jamming) on the communications, you force the bird into auto-pilot. This is where the bird loses its brain," the engineer told the American newspaper. He maintained that the Iranian scientific team then simply programmed the drone to "land on its own where they wanted it to." American defense experts said the Pentagon has known since 2003 that the GPS system on the high flying drones is vulnerable to outside manipulation. The intercepted Sentinel’s base was reportedly in next door Afghanistan.

Earlier last year, an entire fleet of drones was infected by a computer virus, while two years ago, live drone video transmissions to American ground communications stations were successfully intercepted by Iraqi insurgents.Israeli media reports said that the captured drone was one of the subjects discussed between American President Barrack Obama and visiting Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak when they met at Camp David in Maryland the middle of December. However the main focus was said to be the evidence mentioned by the unnamed senior American source indicating Iran has actually begun to assemble a nuclear bomb, or is at least on the verge of doing so.

This is actually good news, in a way. It means that drones, which pose such a tremendous threat to an insurgent population, can be neutralized with a bit of technical know-how. Were the US military to ever loose armed drones upon its civilian population (so far they are only being used for unarmed surveillance), there is always the threat that a computer-savvy civilian will reprogram the drone to fire on its own controllers.

Another state kidnaping case

2011-12-21T11:36:00.001-05:00

A lot of my readers are not homeschoolers and therefore probably aren't aware of a child named Domenic who was torn from his parents' arms two years ago and held in state custody ever since. Their crime? Attempting to take him out of the country.
HSLDA has the story:

Family of State-napped Swedish Child Savors Small Victory

Christer and Annie Johansson have won a small but hopeful victory in their quest to regain custody of their nine-year-old son Domenic who was taken from them over 2 years ago in a dramatic raid while the family was seated on an airliner departing the Nordic country. Ruby Harrold-Claesson, the couple’s attorney, reported to HSLDA that the Gotland District Court ruled in favor of the Johanssons, allowing them to retain their parental rights of Domenic.“Gotland district court has ruled against the social workers and the social council and the Municipality of Gotland in their quest to terminate Annie’s and Christer’s parental rights for Domenic … I hope that this court decision is the beginning of the end of the gross violations of Human rights that Annie, Christer and Domenic have been subjected to at the hands of the social workers and the social council in Gotland,” said Christer Johansson’s attorney and President of the Nordic Human Rights Council Ruby Harrold-Claesson.Michael Donnelly, director of international relations at HSLDA, says this decision offers a glimmer of hope.

“I am hopeful that this is the beginning of the end to the horrific treatment these people have suffered at the hands of Swedish authorities over the past two and a half years,” states Donnelly. “The Johansson family has endured unspeakable tyranny over their decision to homeschool their child and then to attempt to leave Sweden. Sweden’s behavior in this case has been shocking.”The Swedish Social Services Committee first sought to terminate the parental rights of Annie and Christer Johansson in October 2011. The latest decision by the Gotland court against social services marks a significant departure from previous decisions in the Johansson’s case. Swedish courts had also previously removed Harrold-Claesson from the Johansson case.“The social services are afraid of me because I stand up to them,” said Harrold-Claesson. “There are few lawyers in Sweden who dare to. But in Jamaica where I grew up this kind of treatment of families is unheard of. Too many magistrates simply do the bidding of the all-powerful Swedish social services, and this case is no different from the scores I have litigated over the years.”

Magistrate Magnus Schultzberg dismissed Harrold-Claesson from the case in June after Gotland local authorities requested she be removed. The magistrate then appointed a public defender, Torsten Bäckstrand. However, under European human rights laws, defendants have a right to choose counsel.“I applaud Torsten Bäckstrand’s decision to resign after he was told by Christer that he wanted me to represent him,” said Harrold-Claesson. “The latest magistrate has recognized the family’s right to have me, and I applaud her decision to keep this family together, at least on paper, for now. We will continue this fight for justice until Domenic goes home.”The tragedy concerning the Johansson family began in June 2009, when then seven-year old Domenic was forcibly removed from his parents, Christer and Annie, while the family was on board an airplane bound for Annie’s homeland of India. Swedish police snatched Domenic without a warrant, placed him in state custody, and have not charged the Johanssons with a crime. Authorities have subsequently pointed to some minor dental problems and a spotty vaccination history as justification for continuing to hold Dominic in state custody.

HSLDA continues to work with the Alliance Defense Fund and Harrold-Claesson at the European Court of Human Rights representing the family in their lawsuit against Sweden. The case has not been provided any kind of schedule. The ECHR has the authority to order Sweden to pay monetary damages, as has happened in the past in similar cases, but could not enforce an order to have the child returned to his parents. The local court’s decision indicates a possible shift in the way the case is being handled and offers a breath of hope. One of the major reasons for the state-napping and continued seizure of the child was because the family homeschooled him.“Sweden’s government continues to go down a frightening path of educational tyranny as it implements harsh policies causing more and more homeschooling Swedes to flee the country. In the past several months, three families have relocated from Sweden to neighboring countries under pressure because educational officials have reported them to social authorities. The social authorities have virtually unlimited power to take children from families and cause great pain and suffering if they choose to,” Donnelly said.HSLDA has petitioned Swedish officials to reunite the Johansson family, condemning the continued separation of Domenic from his parents. As of October 2010, the Johansson’s case had been heard at the every level of the Swedish court system and the actions of social services upheld.

If you would like to send the family a note of encouragement, you may contact them at: Christer and Annie Johansson, c/o Rune Johansson, Alva Gudings 363, 623 46 Hemse, Sweden.

Revolt of the lesser magistrate: It's happening in Indiana

2011-12-16T09:21:00.002-05:00

Brad Rogers, a "stealth candidate" in the 2010 election, won a stunning upset primary victory for the open seat of county sheriff over his boss, the assistant sheriff. His first priority was "changing hearts and minds for inmates and transitioning them back to the community successfully, thereby reducing recidivism" at the Elkhart County Jail where he had been Commander. Time will tell if and when that goal is reached, but in the meantime, Brad Rogers has made a name for himself in patriotic circles as one of the first local government officials in his state to send federal agents packing.

Roger’s Sheriff’s Department told the FDA to back off:

He wrote two letters to the Justice Department warning it not to conduct inspections of Hochstetler’s [Amish dairy] farm without a warrant from a local judge. In the process, he got into a debate over the limits of federal power and the U.S. Constitution with the Justice Department’s Goldstein.

Earlier this month, Rogers emailed Goldstein that there had been “a number of inspections and attempted inspections on (Hochstetler’s) farm…” He warned that “any further attempts to inspect this farm without a warrant signed by a local judge, based on probable cause, will result in Federal inspectors’ removal or arrest for trespassing by my officers or I.”

Imagine that. A federal agent doing business as usual, arrested for trespassing by the local sheriff! It may not play on the state or national level, but in Elkhart County, Indiana, there is now someone who actually takes the Constitution seriously, and has the legal means to back it up.

And Brad Rogers appears to understand the Constitution better than any federal officer taking a vow to "uphold and defend it against all enemies, foreign and domestic."

The Goldstein letter prompted Rogers to reply, in a letter just being sent today, “When you assert that federal law trumps state law, it is a distortion of the intent, content and extent of the supreme law of the land–the U.S. Constitution-seen through a myopic and misunderstood view of Article VI, section 2 (The Supremacy Clause).”
He also asserted that “the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act could be deemed unconstitutional if and when challenged vis-a-vis the Tenth Amendment juxtaposed with The Commerce Clause.”
He added that “our form of government was based on the principle that all officials exist to secure ‘Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.’…Your ‘cosmetic’ regulations will never ‘trump’ those principles. The citizen in question is a good man and has committed no crime. He is an upstanding member of this community. He does not have to allow you access to his property for the FDA to conduct random inspections.”

Is the White Man a racist?

2011-12-10T13:44:00.001-05:00

The White man has written about race on this blog. Does that make him a racist? Well, no. Earlier on this blog (in a post which, among other things, gave Abe Lincoln's own words identifying him as one), racism was defined as follows:

The belief that one's own race is superior to all others, and that with that superiority come certain rights and privileges.

My own race, it should be obvious, is European. To specify further (which is not quite so obvious), I am of English extraction. This is my race, but I do not consider it superior to all others. There are those among my race who, however, do. These are adherents of British Israelitism, and they are convinced, from their interpretation of the Bible and history, that the English people, wherever in the world they may live, are God's chosen people--objects of His special favour. They are racists.

Do you see the problem? Their racism is part and parcel of their understanding of the Bible. But how can racism be biblical, when the Bible clearly shows that we are all part of the same human race?

Well, it all comes down to passages in the Bible like this one:

Genesis 27:22 And Jacob (also called Israel) went near unto Isaac his father . . .26 And his father Isaac said unto him . . . See, the smell of my son is as the smell of a field which the LORD hath blessed: 28 Therefore God give thee of the dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine: 29 Let people serve thee, and nations bow down to thee: be lord over thy brethren, and let thy mother's sons bow down to thee: cursed be every one that curseth thee, and blessed be he that blesseth thee.

Was Jacob a racist?

You see, on the most personal level, a racist believes that "I am superior to others, and that superiority entitles me to certain rights and privileges." Clearly Jacob believed this, and this belief was behind the scheming that ended up with him getting the rights and privileges away from his older brother Esau. But however he got them, he did get them. There's no denying the fact that in historical terms, Israel has fared better than Esau. Better than Ishmael. Better than Lot. Better than Nahor. Better, in short, than any of his other relatives in the earth. Why, for example, were half of the doctors in pre-WWII Hungary Jews? It certainly wasn't because Jews were half the population of Hungary. Why were such a huge percentage of the early nuclear physicists in Germany Jews? It certainly wasn't because Jews were a huge percentage of the population of Germany.

Wherever Jews have gone in the world, they have suffered persecution--even in the land of Israel, 60 years after independence, they are daily targeted for elimination. And yet, wherever Jews have gone in the world, they have prospered. In whatever country takes them in--on whatever terms--Jews rise to the top in fields too numerous to mention.

Is it merely because they believe that their race is superior to all others, and that they are thereby entitled to certain rights and privileges--certain blessings?

Or is it because God said that they actually are?

You see, the White Man is able to disclaim racism with a straight face for only one reason--because he himself is not a member of the favoured race, he doesn't qualify as a racist.

Now, there are only two responses to the realization that the agnate descendants of Jacob are uniquely the objects of God's favour--hatred toward them, or a love and respect. The former are the objects of God's curses, the latter the objects of hi blessing.

Take just one example: Adolph Hitler. There is no question that Germany would have had the atomic bomb before any other nation but for one thing: Hitler's oppression of the Jews mean that the top nuclear physicists in his nation--men like Albert Einstein--would be forced to flee to his enemies merely because they were Jews. He went ahead with his nuclear program anyway, but at such a delay that the Allies were able to send in special forces to take out his top nuclear facility before it had produced enough heavy hydrogen to make a bomb.

Hitler's single-minded hatred of Jews led him to invade Poland to start off WWII. There were two and a half million Jews in Poland, and Hitler managed to kill just about all of them. But he wasn't done; millions more were in Russia, his ally. So he turned his back on conquering the rest of Western Europe and launched a surprise attack on Russia--where his forces killed millions more Jews. But Russia, that great bear, merely retreated behind a bone-chilling curtain of frost, while Hitler's men froze to death by the thousands. Awakened, and armed by his unconquered enemies, Russian moved in on Germany itself, and--rather than send his last six tank divisions to defend his borders, Hitler ordered them moved into his last remaining ally in Europe, Hungary. Why? Because Hungary had a million Jews, and refused to give them up to the gas chambers. Hitler's forces were able to kill only half a million Hungarian Jews before the gates of Berlin fell to the Russians. Meanwhile, virtually every German woman along the Eastern Front was gang-raped by Russian soldiers (and, to my nation's shame, a large proportion along the Western Front suffered similar treatment): a heavy price indeed to pay for their loyalty to one who so hated God's favoured people.

In short, there are really only two kinds of racism: a racism that springs from an acceptance of the historical implications of God's promised blessings--and curses--; and a racism that springs from a rejection of them.

In that sense, everybody is a racist: either a realistic racist, or a rebellious one.

The White Man, if he must be called a racist, would definitely choose the former. As, for the most part, has his nation.

And may it ever be so.

Or else.

Timo Miller--it's complicated

2011-12-08T21:18:00.001-05:00

Well, Timo Miller will soon be safely back in Nicaragua, but yet another "not known to be related" Miller has been handcuffed in his place:

A Virginia man who federal prosecutors say helped a woman leave the country with her daughter so she wouldn't have to turn custody of the girl over to her former lesbian partner surrendered Tuesday to face charges he aided in international parental kidnapping.

A complaint unsealed Tuesday said Kenneth L. Miller, 46, of Stuarts Draft, Va., arranged passage for Lisa Miller to travel to Canada before flying with her daughter in September 2009 to Nicaragua, where she was sheltered for a time by a group of Mennonite missionaries.Kenneth Miller appeared in U.S. District Court in Burlington, Vt., on Tuesday and was released, said U.S. Attorney Tristram Coffin, who would provide no further information about the case.

The affidavit made public Tuesday indicated that Timothy Miller had helped provide the information that led to the charges against Kenneth Miller.The affidavit says Timothy Miller arranged passage for Lisa Miller and her daughter, paying for the tickets with his mother-in-law's credit card, but Kenneth Miller had told him he would be reimbursed for the price of the tickets.

So, it wasn't Lisa he was willing to rat on, but his alleged co-conspirator (and fellow Beachy minister). This man is much better prepared for the court battle he faces than was Timo, who was blindsided by the FBI. And the FBI isn't crowing about the arrest this time:

“The Office of the United States Attorney for the District of Vermont stated that Kenneth L. Miller, 46, of Stuarts Draft, Virginia, surrendered today to face charges stemming from his role in the international parental kidnapping by Lisa Miller of a child who has been the subject of a dispute of parental rights in Rutland, Vermont family court since 2004.

According to the complaint unsealed today, Kenneth L. Miller contacted associates in Nicaragua and Canada to request their support for Lisa Miller as she fled the United States with the daughter she shared with her civil union partner in 2009. The complaint alleges that at Kenneth Miller’s direction, the individuals purchased plane tickets for Lisa Miller and her child to fly from Canada to Nicaragua, and transported Miller and her child from a hotel in Canada to the airport for her flights. The complaint further indicates that Kenneth Miller maintained contact with two cellular telephones that appeared to travel from Virginia to Canada in advance of Lisa Miller’s departure from Canada. A grand jury has previously returned an indictment charging Lisa Miller with international parental kidnapping.

The United States Attorney emphasizes that the charges contained in the complaint are merely accusations and that the defendant is presumed innocent unless and until he is proven guilty. If he is convicted, Kenneth Miller faces a maximum possible sentence of up to three years in prison; however, the actual sentence in the event of a conviction will be determined in accordance with the federal sentencing guidelines and the sentencing factors of 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a). Mr. Miller is represented by Dennis Boyle of Boyle, Autry, and Murphy, Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, and local counsel Brooks G. McArthur of Jarvis, McArthur and Williams.

The United States Attorney commended the U.S. Marshals Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation for their hard work on this matter.”

I sense a cutback in the heated rhetoric that surrounded Timo's arrest. And that everybody is being more careful--even the FBI.

UPDATE: As in the case of Timo, there is a website set up for those interested in following Ken Miller's case:
www.millercase.org.

I should clarify my statement above, in which I used the colloquial expression "rat on." I don't believe that Timo at any point would be willing to disclose Isabella's location in exchange for his own freedom. He faced three years of detention at most; Isabella, almost ten. Nor was it so simple as a matter of him being released in exchange for "ratting on" Ken Miller. That statement was purely from the apparent perspective of the prosecution, who seem to have very little clue what this case is all about. Timo was out of the country when all of the alleged crimes were committed; thus the prosecution had a very weak case against him. However, since he was not physically in the States, they were able to proceed with the fiction that his crimes had been committed in Vermont.

Ken Miller, however, is an entirely case altogether. The man had already left the country when all this went down, thus has been out of reach of the FBI. Clearly, he returned to the U.S. knowing that he would be arrested once he reached American soil. He is not trying to run from what he did, but is quite willing to take whatever punishment is dished out, should he be found a criminal for what he did out of conscience. But since all of the activities in which the court is interested took place in Virginia, he will insist on being tried there. There is no validity to their claim that he did anything in the "Federal District of Vermont."

Should the Feds admit that Virginia is the place where the deeds were done, expect quite a few more arrests to follow. So far, they've only been biting at the very bottom of the food chain, and were quite a few people in the chain between Lisa and Ken.

A short post, for a change

2011-12-07T12:21:00.001-05:00

I wrote earlier about the government regulators running the Amish out of Nebraska. Now, not having any "Krauts" on which to wreak their vengeance, they've gone after the homeschoolers.

Now Syria

2011-12-03T01:46:00.001-05:00

Well, as predicted, there's nothing more to say on the Iran situation, but things are starting to heat up on the Syrian border. Interesting how the US is busy pulling itself out of 2 different war theatres at the same time it appears poised to enter two others.

Here are a number of possible scenarios:

1. The Saudis, who have as much to fear from the Shia theocracy in Iran as the US does, decide to launch an Arab League first strike on Iran, thus leaving it with no nuclear weapons OR justification for launching a counter-strike on Israel. Expect full cooperation from the US, and Israel to look the other way.

2. An Arab-League led invasion of Syria.

3. A 2- or 3-front attack on Israel by Egyptian Sunnis, Lebanese Shias, and Syrians hoping to divert attention from an impending civil war. This is the least likely scenario, but one that must keep Israeli commanders awake at night.

From DEBKA:

Egyptian-Israel gas pipeline sabotaged eighth time since February revolution.
Explosives were planted under the pipe some 60 km west of El Arish, N. Sinai. Flow resumed only this week after seventh attack two weeks ago.

First, Hizballah reported the unmasking of a CIA network in Lebanon. Then, Wednesday, Nov. 23, an Iranian lawmaker Parviz Sorouri, a member of the Iranian parliament's foreign affairs and defense committee, claimed the capture of 12 CIA spies allegedly targeting Iran's military and its nuclear program with the Mossad and regional agencies. Beirut and Tehran had clearly joined forces, DEBKAfile reports to prove they were on top of their security and had smashed dangerous US intelligence networks operating inside their armed forces.

26 Nov. The Syrian crisis assumed a big power dimension this week with the build-up of rival US and Russian naval air carrier armadas in Syrian waters – ranged against and in support of Bashar Assad, DEBKAfile's military sources report. The USS George H.W. Bush arrived Wednesday, Nov. 23, with 70 fighter-bombers and 8 guided missile cruisers and destroyers. Russia's only air carrier the Admiral Kuznetsov is due in mid-week to boost the three Russian warships already anchored off the Syrian port of Tartus.
27 Nov. Twenty-four hours before the Arab League Sunday, Nov. 27, clamped down sanctions on the Assad regime, the first ever against a member state, the armies of Syria's seven neighbors were scrambling for position on standby for acts of retaliation.
Military suspense mounted after the Arab League vote to cut off transactions with Syria's central bank, withdraw Arab funding from projects and other painful sanctions over Bashar Assad's refusal to halt his crackdown on protest. Military sources in the Gulf report 150 Iranian Revolutionary Guards specialists landed at a military airport south of Damascus on their way to Lebanon to join Hizballah which began bringing its rockets out of their hideouts. Russia is sending Bashar Assad siege-breaking missiles.

28 Nov. A group of military officers from NATO and Persian Gulf nations have quietly established a mixed operational command at Iskenderun in the Turkish Hatay province on the border of North Syria, DEBKAfile's military sources report. Hailing from the United States, France, Canada, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, with Turkish officers providing liaison, they are designated "monitors" tasked with establishing "humanitarian corridors" to serve the victims of Bashar Assad's crackdown. Commanded by ground, naval, air force and engineering officers, the task force in reality aims to take over most of northern Syria.

29 Nov. DEBKAfile reports that the Katyusha rocket volley from S. Lebanon which hit Galilee in northern Israel in the small hours of Tuesday, Nov. 29, was initiated by Hizballah commanders in South Lebanon, although claimed by the al Qaeda-linked Abdullah Azzam Brigades. Hizballah activated a Palestinian cell it controls in the Ain Hilwa refugee camp on behalf of its Damascus ally, arming the cell with the rockets and marking out their firing positions and targets in Israel's Galilee, after a group of NATO and Arab officers quietly established a command in Turkey for intervention in the Syrian crisis.

A record number of 2,667 infiltrators intercepted on Egyptian-Israeli border in November. A total of 13,500 caught this year. No figures released on the number who made it.

The link between missionary medicine and paedophilia

2011-11-30T13:04:00.001-05:00

In an earlier post, I revealed that Dr. Donn Ketcham, veteran ABWE medical missionary to Bangladesh, used his position as a means of practicising his favoured form of paedophila. This post has drawn a wide readership and was linked to another blog, one which takes a look at similar shortcomings in mission-board oversight at another mission hospital in Bangladesh, Baptist Mid Missions' Natore Hospital. Gary Anderson, president of BMM, has drawn his organisation into the fray by defending the track record of their Bangladesh field in a letter to supporters.

The only other blog still engaged in discussing the issue is the one where it all started, BangladeshMKsSpeak. I'd like to take a look at the report therein by Susan Beals that Dr. Ketcham used some sort of sedative to drug his victims before molesting them. By her description, I expect it was probably Lorazepam, normally used by doctors to 'prep' a patient for surgery. It's most effective when given by intravenous injection, so it would be interesting to see if any of these victims can remember the route by which they were administered the rape drug.

What's interesting to me is how willingly these victims allowed their doctor to find a vein and insert a needle into it, before injecting a harmful substance into their bodies. Why would they allow such a thing, and not bother to even report it to their parents afterward? Well, it has a lot to do, in my opinion, with growing up on a mission station.

Missionary children are jabbed with needles more than anyone else, with the possible exception of soldiers going into a combat zone. In addition to all the usual childhood inoculations, they must submit to some combination of yellow fever, cholera, smallpox, rabies, and tetanus jabs on a basis as frequently as every six months. They are further subject to injections to combat hepatitis or measles should an epidemic threaten. In short, a missionary child is so used to pulling up her sleeve--or pulling down his pants--to receive the needle that it would actually be nothing out of the ordinary, in the course of an office visit, for a child to be told that she needs yet another unspecified injection.

Well, the White Man has not raised his children this way. As do I, they look upon an injection as a form of assault with a deadly weapon, to which one submits only when there is no reasonable alternative. One will not find them readily consenting to some unspecified injection just because they are told by an authority figure that "they need it."

This could result in an unwelcome confrontation with armed representatives of a foreign government the next time they travel overseas--though I hope not. But it won't result in them being office-raped by their doctor--of that I'm quite sure.

The Unfathomable Value of One: Israel's Costly Gift

2011-11-28T12:52:00.001-05:00

The following article was originally written for the December Maoz Israel Report and passed on from an email.

The people of Israel rose at daybreak – from bed to the TV screen.Today was different. Israel doesn’t have 24/7 news yet, but by 6:00 a.m. all of Israel’s TV stations, (and for that matter, international media) were buzzing with reporters spread across the nation. Waiting. At the Gaza-Egyptian border. The Egyptian-Israeli border, and a small village in Galilee.Gilad Shalit was coming home. He was a 19-year-old soldier pulling guard duty with two other soldiers on Israel’s border, when nine Hamas terrorists appeared out of nowhere, killed the other soldiers, and then kidnapped Gilad, dragging him back through a three-kilometer tunnel they had dug under the Gaza-Israel border.

That was five years and four months ago.This day the tension was excruciating. Would Hamas blow up the deal to release Gilad at the last moment?It was also ironic. Though we stared at the TV, the whole nation had been instructed by our leaders that there would be no interviews. No one would ask him any questions. Not the press. Not the army. Not the prime minister. Not his parents. Not a single Israeli – including Israel’s famed Mossad – knew of his physical or mental condition, nor even where he had been hidden for 1,942 days. But the public was instructed over and over again by the government and military, by psychologists and therapists, that Gilad must have complete quiet – even though in his home village in Galilee there were thousands waiting to just get a glimpse of “their son.”Obviously the nation desperately wanted to hear what only Gilad could tell them. But former Israeli POW’s told his mother and father, “Just hug him and ask him what he wants to eat!” And because Gilad had become every Israeli family’s son, the nation truly wanted only the greatest good for Gilad – to be mentally and physically healthy.

Yet we had to see him! Gilad’s pictures on posters carried around for years by thousands – tens of thousands – of Israelis were five plus years old. How would he look now?Finally after what seemed an eternity, the Israeli news anchors announced with great excitement that the kidnapped soldier had just arrived in a small white pickup at the Gaza-Egyptian border crossing. At that instant came the first pictures of a pale thin figure wearing civilian clothes and a baseball cap. He was led out of the vehicle by Hamas gunmen.And then totally unexpected, the Egyptians whisked him off to a room to be interviewed by a famous Egyptian personality, Shahira Amin on their state TV. The interview had not been coordinated with Israel and delayed the schedule by an hour. The Israeli officials were furious.Meanwhile, all Israel stared at the reality show coming from Egypt. Stunned. Anxious.

Gilad, who was still in the hands of masked Hamas operatives together with the Egyptians, was clearly frightened. Breathing heavily throughout the 12-minute interview, he carefully chose his words.He was asked absurd questions such as, “During all that time of captivity, you did just one video to tell the world and your family that you’re alive,” Amin told the soldier. “Why just one? Why didn’t it happen again?” She forgot to ask, “Why didn’t the International Red Cross visit you even one time?" (Not allowing the ICRC to visit prisoners of war is against international law.)At that moment, Gilad’s Hamas minder who was translating his answers from Hebrew to English, stopped the interview and an argument broke out in Arabic on live TV between the Hamas translator and the journalist.Then Amin continued, “Gilad, you know what it’s like to be in captivity. There are more than 4,000 Palestinians still languishing in Israeli jails. Will you help campaign for their release?”

The Israeli nation could hardly breathe. What kind of question was that? After five years and four months of solitary confinement and malnutrition, he was being asked whether he would work to free Palestinian prisoners? Was Gilad emotionally strong enough to withstand the pressure to become an advocate for Palestinian murderers?After a few stunned seconds, an obviously exhausted Gilad spoke – in Hebrew for all Israel to hear: “I’d be very happy if they were released,” he replied very softly, “providing they don’t return to fight against Israel.”The Israeli TV anchors, hearing the live interview in Hebrew with the rest of us, nearly jumped out of their seats. This was the first sign that Gilad was clearly in control of his mental faculties. His response was the wisest and truest answer an Israeli could give.However, guess what? The Hamas interpreter translated Gilad’s answer like this: “I’d be very happy if they were released so they would all be freed and could return to their own families and their own land.”That was it. Somehow the phrase, “providing they don’t return to fight against Israel,” was lost in the Hamas translation, replaced by a new phrase.The blaring omission and addition was repeated by the BBC’s translator though he too was independently interpreting from Hebrew in real time. In fact all of the TV stations we listened to later in the day – CNN, Fox, France24 and of course the Russian stations and Al Jazeera, dutifully repeated Hamas’ version.I admit I was angry. Hamas? Of course they will lie. But why would journalists representing Western democratic values go along with a deliberate act of dishonest translation?

And then, the scene changed to Gilad walking from an Egyptian vehicle towards his own people. As we all waited, he underwent a medical check up, showered, and donned his army uniform. The army brought along three different sizes of army uniforms, unsure of his weight. It’s a good thing they did for he was a gaunt 110 pounds.He saluted Prime Minister Netanyahu, who then gave him a big hug. After several other officials greeted him with salutes and hugs, he was in the arms of his father.Gilad Shalit salutes Benjamin NetanyahuAsher Intrater, founder of Ahavat Yeshua Messianic Congregation in Jerusalem, expressed Gilad’s return like this: “In the 20 years I have lived in Israel, I have never seen the hearts of the people so touched, so softened, so unified. Gilad is certainly not the Savior. Yet there was something in his appearance and demeanor reminiscent of the image of the suffering servant of the Messiah Himself.The deep pain in his eyes; his broken body that struggled to stand erect; his need to grip the handrails as he came down only a few stairs… and yet the clarity of thoughts; the stature of elegance and nobility; the raising of his hand in a military salute when he met the Prime Minister… there was not a dry eye in the country.He was led out of captivity by Ahmed Jabari (head of the Hamas terror wing) and by Raad Atar (who engineered the kidnapping); he looked like a lamb who had been led to slaughter. And yet there was no hint of complaining. His brave and childlike little smile said to all, ‘I'm going to be all right.’"

Each morsel of information gleaned, either by the Egyptian interview or a few terse words from the medics were dissected and analyzed over and over again by the Israeli media.He had been locked in a windowless room – or dungeon – with very little human contact. He told the Egyptian journalist Shahira Amin that he was glad to be with people – with people to whom he could talk.The medical authorities who had given him a preliminary examination reiterated that Gilad "needs his time to transition after this very long period – almost five and a half years without sunlight," saying that he's suffering from a medical condition because of the lack of exposure to light.He had been without glasses for five years – which meant he had been unable to read anything.At some point he was allowed TV and radio, so he knew Benjamin Netanyahu was the Prime Minister of Israel. He told the Egyptian journalist he believed one day he would be freed, but he thought he might have to wait many more years.

The nation was captivated by this son of Israel, this amazing human being who had been redeemed at such an extravagant price.Prime Minister Netanyahu summed it up in his announcement that Gilad was back in his own country.“The State of Israel is different from its enemies,” Netanyahu said. “Here we do not celebrate the release of murderers. Here, we do not applaud those who took life. On the contrary, we believe in the sanctity of life. We sanctify life. This is the ancient tradition of the Jewish people.”Israelis, agreeing to release 1,027 terrorists, affirmed the sanctity of the life of a single soldier, a soldier who spoke so simply and eloquently of the Jewish people’s yearning for peace.

The contrast between the rejoicing of the Palestinians and Israelis was as far as the east is from the west. 1,027 terrorists had been released. The 1,027 terrorists had collectively killed more than 800 Israelis.They came back to their families as well-fed, robust and proud as ever. Many had received a college education while in prison. Some even had conjugal privileges with their wives. The International Red Cross had regularly visited the prisoners. They had access to amenities that many Israeli citizens do not have.They bragged to the jubilant crowds awaiting them that they were ready to return to fight Israel until she was destroyed. Reuters News reported on one Wafa al-Biss, a Gazan woman who had received permission to be treated for burns at an Israeli hospital, but was caught carrying 22 pounds of explosives in her underwear. She was planning on blowing herself up in the hospital.The day after her release Wafa was filmed telling cheering schoolchildren in the Gaza Strip that she hoped they would follow her example, and encouraged the children to be killers of Jews when they grow up.Hamas’ leaders promised there would be many more “Shalit” kidnappings – until every Palestinian prisoner was free.

Gilad’s parents had traveled the world seeking their son’s release. Then 15 months ago, Noam and Aviva Shalit decided to move to Jerusalem and live in a tent in front of the Prime Minister’s home. Noam said they would stay there until their son came home.They ate and slept in the tent through last year’s cold blustery winter, and through the heat of the summer. The people witnessed a father’s total dedication of his life to deliver his son from death.A blogger who was one of the thousands who visited the tent wrote: “He is a soft spoken man with a broken heart but full of inspiration and energy to protest his son's release day in and day out. I cannot imagine the amount of energy it would take to yearn for your child as well as protest for years on end and give up your life to sit in a tent all day and night; this is something truly powerful and heart-breaking at the same time.”Noam galvanized the nation behind him. Gilad became everyone’s son. And when that day came when Gilad stepped out of the Israeli military vehicle and into the hands of Israel’s Prime Minister and Defense Minister Barak, the nation wept.

Even young Arab bloggers saw the uniqueness of the people of the Book. They asked on Facebook how it was that Israel would give up so much for one soldier when their own leaders thought nothing of murdering their own citizens.The Jerusalem Post explained, “It’s not that we are insensitive to the feelings of past terrorist victims’ families and loved ones. Nor are we unaware that many, even most, of those who will be released will return to violent terrorism – and that by paying a ratio of 1 to 1,027 we are encouraging future kidnappings.“It’s just that none of these potential future dangers seems to be able to trump the fact that right now an IDF soldier’s life is being saved.”

Indeed, the Israeli people, the overwhelming majority agreeing with the exchange, in a way are offering themselves as a possible sacrifice for this one son of Israel.Yair Lapid’s analysis poignantly pointed out that in this affair the Israeli street had commandeered the leadership of the nation and demanded that this one soldier be brought home: “This role reversal between the people and its leaders may be very problematic, but at least on the Shalit front it entails a sense of poetic justice. After all, the one who shall pay the price of the deal is the very same street that demanded it.“The same street where signs were posted is where buses will be exploding. The same shopping malls where petitions were signed are where suicide bombers will enter. The echoes of the gunshots will be heard in the same squares where the protestors stood.”

Israeli Defense Minister Barak expressed the extreme complexity over such exchanges. He said that a "life-loving country cannot continue" to release over 1,000 prisoners for a soldier. "This slippery slope has to stop,” he said.Yet Barak could not help but repeat a foundational value of the Israeli Defense Forces. “We lived up to an unwritten code on protecting soldiers who went out on missions and find themselves kidnapped. We have a supreme obligation to them."

For now, Israel is basking in the joy of seeing a soul heading for death returned to life. How well we Messianic Jews of Israel understand that if one life in this world is so innately noble and precious, how great is the worth of one soul who inherits eternal life. For this reason, we give our lives to bring the Good News of Israel’s Messiah to our people.For your work shall be rewarded, says the Lord,And they shall come back from the land of the enemy.There is hope in your future, says the Lord,That your children shall come back to their own border. Jeremiah 31:16-17For this we press toward the mark for the prize, the ultimate prize of God’s high calling in Messiah Yeshua, Savior of Israel.

Iran--last update

2011-11-18T16:36:00.001-05:00

I think this will probably be my last post on the impending war with Iran. Things are heating up to the point that the next move is going to make world headlines. First, from DEBKAFile:

Brigadier Hassan Moghadam, head of Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) missile development and sections of its nuclear program, was killed in the consecutive explosions that hit two IRGC bases 46 kilometers west of Tehran Saturday, Nov. 12. The official fatality figure is 36. The bases are located in Malard, a town in the Shahryar district.Our sources report increasing evidence that the first explosion was caused by a failed effort to mount a nuclear warhead on a missile.It was powerful enough to shatter windows and damage shops in Tehran.

By April 2012 Iran will have five nuclear bombs or warheads, according to intelligence reaching US president Barack Obama and relayed to Jewish leaders at a closed meeting in New York Sunday, Nov. 13, DEBKAfile's sources report. The window of opportunity for stopping Iran attaining a nuclear weapon will slam shut in late March after which any military action would generate radioactive contamination across the Gulf oil region. Our sources refute claims that Saturday's Iranian base blasts were caused by the CIA or Mossad.
Obama said later Sunday that, while his strong preference was to resolve the Iran issue diplomatically, "We are not taking any options off the table. Iran with nuclear weapons would pose a threat not only to the region but also to the United States."

Defense Minister Ehud Barak told the PBS interviewer Charlie Rose Wednesday, Nov. 16 that none of the experiments Iran was conducting was based on a neutron source. "It's always simultaneous explosions on heavy metals and certain other activities which cannot be explained," he said.
DEBKAfile's military sources note his stress on the lack of evidence that Iran was trying to develop tactical neutron bombs. Tehran, he said, was experimenting with uranium- and plutonium- based explosives, meaning large nuclear bombs rather than small, tactical warheads. Barak warned that a nuclear-armed Iran would touch off a Middle East nuclear arms race drawing in Egypt and less responsible regimes headed by the Muslim Brotherhood. He did not believe sanctions would stop Iran in its nuclear tracks.

Britain has contingency plans "in the locker" should Iran's nuclear program or a deteriorating situation in Syria necessitate UK military action.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu informed the full Knesset plenum that "all options are on the table when it comes to Iran's nuclear program." This short statement which a minister read out to the Knesset Wednesday, Nov. 16, said: "The prime minister and the authorized bodies are acting to stop the nuclear armament of Iran. The efforts are ongoing and we will do everything possible to enlist states in the international community, "he continued "because the Iranian threat is a danger not only to the State of Israel but to world peace."

According to the briefing given to a closed meeting of Jewish leaders in New York Sunday, Nov. 13, the window of opportunity for stopping Iran from attaining a nuclear weapon is closing fast, debkafile’s sources report. It will shut down altogether after late March, 2012. The intelligence reaching U.S. President Barak Obama is that by April, Iran will already have five nuclear bombs or warheads and military action then would generate a dangerous level of radioactive contamination across the Gulf region, the main source of the world’s energy.

The Washington Post:

In a Republican debate Saturday, Bachmann warned that Iran’s attempt to develop a nuclear weapon is part of a regional push against Israel. She said Iran is working with countries like Syria and groups like Hamas to push its agenda. That means “the table is being set for worldwide nuclear war against Israel,” she said.

What lazy language. "Worldwide nuclear war" is more than just a bunch of nations at war, one of which has nuclear weapons and uses them. Lest we forget, this was the case in August of 1945.

We're pretty close, however, to that same situation again.

Presidential candidates on Iran

2011-11-17T17:33:00.001-05:00

First, from a speech Senator Santorum gave more than five years ago:

You said you would have voted for the war, but now you say you would vote against it.

You said we weren’t misled, but now you say that we were lied to.You are sleepwalking into a nightmare.

It’s time to wake up.

From everything I can see, Mr. Casey is unready, unqualified for the high office he seeks at a time when our survival as a free people is at stake.He is one of many Americans sleepwalking in this nightmare. These horrors no longer shock us as they did on 9/11. They have become part of the background noise of our world. Some even blame our own leaders rather than the savages who do the killing. But I believe that Pennsylvanians are awakening to this threat, and can send a message to the nation and our enemies.It’s time to stop dreaming and start acting.

We have to bring the fight to our enemies, and that means we have to do a lot more than respond to their attacks in Iraq. We must go after the regimes that recruit, pay, train and arm terrorists. I am not-NOT-talking about sending more American troops onto foreign battlefields, or even dropping precision bombs from safe altitudes. I am talking about political and economic warfare, to bring down the terror regimes in Tehran and Damascus.

The best way to do that is to support their own people, most of whom are eager for freedom.That is why I drafted legislation that commits America to support freedom in Iran. A free Iran will be our friend, not an implacable enemy. We know that is true, because public opinion polls taken by the regime itself show that more than seventy percent of Iranians want to choose their own system of government and elect their own leaders.And we know it is true because the Iranian regime is frantically trying to isolate the Iranian people from contact with the free world. Satellite dishes are torn down, dissidents are arrested, tortured and executed. High speed internet is banned. Surviving vestiges of a free press are shut down.

Those are the actions of a regime that fears its people, and knows that the desire for freedom can destroy the Islamic fascist tyranny.A free Iran will change the world, because it will deprive the terrorists of their single greatest source of support, and isolate the likes of Hugo Chavez and Kim Jong ‘il. Why is a free Iran and Iraq so essential? Because the United States nor any western country will be able on its own to defeat radical Islamic fascism. We must create an environment where moderate Islam – whether Sunni or Shi’ia or any other strain – combats and suppresses its radical elements. I believe the best way to accomplish this is through democratic self rule.

Senator Santorum may be right on the existential threat posed by Iran, but he's wrong about the solution; Iran already has democratic self rule. They deposed their Shah to get the democratic self rule that they now enjoy, and they voted to keep it in the last election.

It doesn't appear that either the current or any potential President are actually aware both of the danger America and Israel are in, and of any effective solution. The generals, however, are nonetheless putting the military option into action.

This from yesterday's The Daily Beast:

Israel also likely would exploit a vulnerability that U.S. officials detected two years ago in Iran's big-city electric grids, which are not “air-gapped”—meaning they are connected to the Internet and therefore vulnerable to a Stuxnet-style cyberattack—officials say. A highly secretive research lab attached to the U.S. joint staff and combatant commands, known as the Joint Warfare Analysis Center (JWAC), discovered the weakness in Iran’s electrical grid in 2009, according to one retired senior military intelligence officer. This source also said the Israelis have the capability to bring a denial-of-service attack to nodes of Iran’s command and control system that rely on the Internet.Tony Decarbo, the executive officer for JWAC, declined comment for this story. The likely delivery method for the electronic elements of this attack would be an unmanned aerial vehicle the size of a jumbo[sic] jet. An earlier version of the bird was called the Heron, the latest version is known as the Eitan. According to the Israeli press, the Eitan can fly for 20 straight hours and carry a payload of one ton. Another version of the drone, however, can fly up to 45 straight hours, according to U.S. and Israeli officials. Unmanned drones have been an integral part of U.S. wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, gathering intelligence and firing missiles at suspected insurgents. But Israel's fleet has been specially fitted for electronic warfare, according to officials.

From Governor Romney:
During the CBS/National Journal debate, he said, “It is unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon….If all else fails, if after all of the work we’ve done, there’s nothing else we could do besides take military action. Then of course you take military action.” He called for “crippling economic sanctions” against Iran and supported using covert action and supporting the dissidents in Iran who oppose the current regime. He also stated unequivocally, “One thing you can know — and that is if we reelect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon. And if we elect Mitt Romney, if you’d like me as the next president, they will not have a nuclear weapon.”

Romney doesn't seem to realise that "when all else fails" is when an Iranian nuclear device blows up over Isreal. Military action at that point will be rather futile. All of the efforts he supports are already at work, but they've only slowed, not stopped, Iran's nuclear progress. And deciding to take military action is, according to the Constitution, the job of Congress. Yet none of the former or present Congressmen presently running for election--or re-election--to the presidency have ever sponsored a declaration of war.

Finally, this from Representative Bachmann:

“With a President Bachmann, I can assure you, there would be no option in my cabinet that would be off the table,” the Congresswoman said on November 8. “I would use every possible military option there is to stop Iran from using a nuclear weapon.”

The problem with this sort of talk is that it is just that--talk. Imagine Hitler telling Germany that he "would use every possible military option there is to stop America from using a nuclear weapon.” Well, he did, and in the end none of them did a bit of good. The only thing that kept Germany from getting nuked was that they had something the Japanese lacked--a willingness to give up when they knew the war was over. Japan's insistence on defending their ground to the last man was a direct cause of America's choice to use weapons of mass destruction to force them to submit.

It's already too late to stop Iran from using a nuclear weapon. The only option now is to stop them from getting one, and that option is a decidedly military one, and one that, if it is to do any good, will have to be taken off the table and put into action--soon.

Geert Wilders on the Islamic conquest of Europe

2011-11-15T15:04:00.001-05:00

An email has been making the rounds allegedly containing a speech by Geert Wilders, a Dutch Member of Parliament. It's variously titled Report from Holland or Warning from Holland, and, according to Snopes, it's correctly attributed. Snopes also notes that Geert was finally acquitted just this past June (2011) of inciting racial hatred in his own country, the Netherlands. The actual address was given in 2008, in the USA, and has suffered from severe truncation and liturgical editing since then. I give it here, in its entirety, as it appears on EuropeNews.

Geert Wilders, chairman Party for Freedom, the NetherlandsSpeech at the Four Seasons, New YorkSeptember 25, 2008

Dear friends,

Thank you very much for inviting me. Great to be at the Four Seasons. I come from a country that has one season only: a rainy season that starts January 1st and ends December 31st. When we have three sunny days in a row, the government declares a national emergency. So Four Seasons, that’s new to me.

It’s great to be in New York. When I see the skyscrapers and office buildings, I think of what Ayn Rand said: “The sky over New York and the will of man made visible.” Of course. Without the Dutch you would have been nowhere, still figuring out how to buy this island from the Indians. But we are glad we did it for you. And, frankly, you did a far better job than we possibly could have done.

I come to America with a mission. All is not well in the old world. There is a tremendous danger looming, and it is very difficult to be optimistic. We might be in the final stages of the Islamization of Europe. This not only is a clear and present danger to the future of Europe itself, it is a threat to America and the sheer survival of the West. The danger I see looming is the scenario of America as the last man standing. The United States as the last bastion of Western civilization, facing an Islamic Europe. In a generation or two, the US will ask itself: who lost Europe? Patriots from around Europe risk their lives every day to prevent precisely this scenario form becoming a reality.

My short lecture consists of 4 parts.

First I will describe the situation on the ground in Europe. Then, I will say a few things about Islam. Thirdly, if you are still here, I will talk a little bit about the movie you just saw. To close I will tell you about a meeting in Jerusalem.

The Europe you know is changing. You have probably seen the landmarks. The Eiffel Tower and Trafalgar Square and Rome’s ancient buildings and maybe the canals of Amsterdam. They are still there. And they still look very much the same as they did a hundred years ago.

But in all of these cities, sometimes a few blocks away from your tourist destination, there is another world, a world very few visitors see – and one that does not appear in your tourist guidebook. It is the world of the parallel society created by Muslim mass-migration. All throughout Europe a new reality is rising: entire Muslim neighbourhoods where very few indigenous people reside or are even seen. And if they are, they might regret it. This goes for the police as well. It’s the world of head scarves, where women walk around in figureless tents, with baby strollers and a group of children. Their husbands, or slaveholders if you prefer, walk three steps ahead. With mosques on many street corner. The shops have signs you and I cannot read. You will be hard-pressed to find any economic activity. These are Muslim ghettos controlled by religious fanatics. These are Muslim neighbourhoods, and they are mushrooming in every city across Europe. These are the building-blocks for territorial control of increasingly larger portions of Europe, street by street, neighbourhood by neighbourhood, city by city.

There are now thousands of mosques throughout Europe. With larger congregations than there are in churches. And in every European city there are plans to build super-mosques that will dwarf every church in the region. Clearly, the signal is: we rule.

Many European cities are already one-quarter Muslim: just take Amsterdam, Marseille and Malmo in Sweden. In many cities the majority of the under-18 population is Muslim. Paris is now surrounded by a ring of Muslim neighbourhoods. Mohammed is the most popular name among boys in many cities. In some elementary schools in Amsterdam the farm can no longer be mentioned, because that would also mean mentioning the pig, and that would be an insult to Muslims. Many state schools in Belgium and Denmark only serve halal food to all pupils. In once-tolerant Amsterdam gays are beaten up almost exclusively by Muslims. Non-Muslim women routinely hear “whore, whore”. Satellite dishes are not pointed to local TV stations, but to stations in the country of origin. In France school teachers are advised to avoid authors deemed offensive to Muslims, including Voltaire and Diderot; the same is increasingly true of Darwin. The history of the Holocaust can in many cases no longer be taught because of Muslim sensitivity. In England sharia courts are now officially part of the British legal system. Many neighbourhoods in France are no-go areas for women without head scarves. Last week a man almost died after being beaten up by Muslims in Brussels, because he was drinking during the Ramadan. Jews are fleeing France in record numbers, on the run for the worst wave of anti-Semitism since World War II. French is now commonly spoken on the streets of Tel Aviv and Netanya, Israel. I could go on forever with stories like this. Stories about Islamization.

A total of fifty-four million Muslims now live in Europe. San Diego University recently calculated that a staggering 25 percent of the population in Europe will be Muslim just 12 years from now. Bernhard Lewis has predicted a Muslim majority by the end of this century.

Now these are just numbers. And the numbers would not be threatening if the Muslim-immigrants had a strong desire to assimilate. But there are few signs of that. The Pew Research Center reported that half of French Muslims see their loyalty to Islam as greater than their loyalty to France. One-third of French Muslims do not object to suicide attacks. The British Centre for Social Cohesion reported that one-third of British Muslim students are in favour of a worldwide caliphate. A Dutch study reported that half of Dutch Muslims admit they “understand” the 9/11 attacks.

Muslims demand what they call ‘respect’. And this is how we give them respect. Our elites are willing to give in. To give up. In my own country we have gone from calls by one cabinet member to turn Muslim holidays into official state holidays, to statements by another cabinet member, that Islam is part of Dutch culture, to an affirmation by the Christian-Democratic attorney general that he is willing to accept sharia in the Netherlands if there is a Muslim majority. We have cabinet members with passports from Morocco and Turkey.

Muslim demands are supported by unlawful behaviour, ranging from petty crimes and random violence, for example against ambulance workers and bus drivers, to small-scale riots. Paris has seen its uprising in the low-income suburbs, the banlieus. Some prefer to see these as isolated incidents, but I call it a Muslim intifada. I call the perpetrators “settlers”. Because that is what they are. They do not come to integrate into our societies, they come to integrate our society into their Dar-al-Islam. Therefore, they are settlers.

Much of this street violence I mentioned is directed exclusively against non-Muslims, forcing many native people to leave their neighbourhoods, their cities, their countries.

Politicians shy away from taking a stand against this creeping sharia. They believe in the equality of all cultures. Moreover, on a mundane level, Muslims are now a swing vote not to be ignored.

Our many problems with Islam cannot be explained by poverty, repression or the European colonial past, as the Left claims. Nor does it have anything to do with Palestinians or American troops in Iraq. The problem is Islam itself.

Allow me to give you a brief Islam 101. The first thing you need to know about Islam is the importance of the book of the Quran. The Quran is Allah’s personal word, revealed by an angel to Mohammed, the prophet. This is where the trouble starts. Every word in the Quran is Allah’s word and therefore not open to discussion or interpretation. It is valid for every Muslim and for all times. Therefore, there is no such a thing as moderate Islam. Sure, there are a lot of moderate Muslims. But a moderate Islam is non-existent.

The Quran calls for hatred, violence, submission, murder, and terrorism. The Quran calls for Muslims to kill non-Muslims, to terrorize non-Muslims and to fulfil their duty to wage war: violent jihad. Jihad is a duty for every Muslim, Islam is to rule the world – by the sword. The Quran is clearly anti-Semitic, describing Jews as monkeys and pigs.

The second thing you need to know is the importance of Mohammed the prophet. His behaviour is an example to all Muslims and cannot be criticized. Now, if Mohammed had been a man of peace, let us say like Ghandi and Mother Theresa wrapped in one, there would be no problem. But Mohammed was a warlord, a mass murderer, a pedophile, and had several marriages – at the same time. Islamic tradition tells us how he fought in battles, how he had his enemies murdered and even had prisoners of war executed. Mohammed himself slaughtered the Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayza. He advised on matters of slavery, but never advised to liberate slaves. Islam has no other morality than the advancement of Islam. If it is good for Islam, it is good. If it is bad for Islam, it is bad. There is no gray area or other side.

Quran as Allah’s own word and Mohammed as the perfect man are the two most important facets of Islam. Let no one fool you about Islam being a religion. Sure, it has a god, and a here-after, and 72 virgins. But in its essence Islam is a political ideology. It is a system that lays down detailed rules for society and the life of every person. Islam wants to dictate every aspect of life. Islam means ‘submission’. Islam is not compatible with freedom and democracy, because what it strives for is sharia. If you want to compare Islam to anything, compare it to communism or national-socialism, these are all totalitarian ideologies.

This is what you need to know about Islam, in order to understand what is going on in Europe. For millions of Muslims the Quran and the live of Mohammed are not 14 centuries old, but are an everyday reality, an ideal, that guide every aspect of their lives. Now you know why Winston Churchill called Islam “the most retrograde force in the world”, and why he compared Mein Kampf to the Quran.

Which brings me to my movie, Fitna.

I am a lawmaker, and not a movie maker. But I felt I had the moral duty to educate about Islam. The duty to make clear that the Quran stands at the heart of what some people call terrorism but is in reality jihad. I wanted to show that the problems of Islam are at the core of Islam, and do not belong to its fringes.

Now, from the day the plan for my movie was made public, it caused quite a stir, in the Netherlands and throughout Europe. First, there was a political storm, with government leaders, across the continent in sheer panic. The Netherlands was put under a heightened terror alert, because of possible attacks or a revolt by our Muslim population. The Dutch branch of the Islamic organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir declared that the Netherlands was due for an attack. Internationally, there was a series of incidents. The Taliban threatened to organize additional attacks against Dutch troops in Afghanistan, and a website linked to Al Qaeda published the message that I ought to be killed, while various muftis in the Middle East stated that I would be responsible for all the bloodshed after the screening of the movie. In Afghanistan and Pakistan the Dutch flag was burned on several occasions. Dolls representing me were also burned. The Indonesian President announced that I will never be admitted into Indonesia again, while the UN Secretary General and the European Union issued cowardly statements in the same vein as those made by the Dutch Government. I could go on and on. It was an absolute disgrace, a sell-out.

A plethora of legal troubles also followed, and have not ended yet. Currently the state of Jordan is litigating against me. Only last week there were renewed security agency reports about a heightened terror alert for the Netherlands because of Fitna.

Now, I would like to say a few things about Israel. Because, very soon, we will get together in its capitol. The best way for a politician in Europe to loose votes is to say something positive about Israel. The public has wholeheartedly accepted the Palestinian narrative, and sees Israel as the aggressor. I, however, will continue to speak up for Israel. I see defending Israel as a matter of principle. I have lived in this country and visited it dozens of times. I support Israel. First, because it is the Jewish homeland after two thousand years of exile up to and including Auschwitz, second because it is a democracy, and third because Israel is our first line of defense.

Samuel Huntington writes it so aptly: “Islam has bloody borders”. Israel is located precisely on that border. This tiny country is situated on the fault line of jihad, frustrating Islam’s territorial advance. Israel is facing the front lines of jihad, like Kashmir, Kosovo, the Philippines, Southern Thailand, Darfur in Sudan, Lebanon, and Aceh in Indonesia. Israel is simply in the way. The same way West-Berlin was during the Cold War.

The war against Israel is not a war against Israel. It is a war against the West. It is jihad. Israel is simply receiving the blows that are meant for all of us. If there would have been no Israel, Islamic imperialism would have found other venues to release its energy and its desire for conquest. Thanks to Israeli parents who send their children to the army and lay awake at night, parents in Europe and America can sleep well and dream, unaware of the dangers looming.

Many in Europe argue in favor of abandoning Israel in order to address the grievances of our Muslim minorities. But if Israel were, God forbid, to go down, it would not bring any solace to the West. It would not mean our Muslim minorities would all of a sudden change their behavior, and accept our values. On the contrary, the end of Israel would give enormous encouragement to the forces of Islam. They would, and rightly so, see the demise of Israel as proof that the West is weak, and doomed. The end of Israel would not mean the end of our problems with Islam, but only the beginning. It would mean the start of the final battle for world domination. If they can get Israel, they can get everything. Therefore, it is not that the West has a stake in Israel. It is Israel.

It is very difficult to be an optimist in the face of the growing Islamization of Europe. All the tides are against us. On all fronts we are losing. Demographically the momentum is with Islam. Muslim immigration is even a source of pride within ruling liberal parties. Academia, the arts, the media, trade unions, the churches, the business world, the entire political establishment have all converted to the suicidal theory of multiculturalism. So-called journalists volunteer to label any and all critics of Islamization as a ‘right-wing extremists’ or ‘racists’. The entire establishment has sided with our enemy. Leftists, liberals and Christian-Democrats are now all in bed with Islam.

This is the most painful thing to see: the betrayal by our elites. At this moment in Europe’s history, our elites are supposed to lead us. To stand up for centuries of civilization. To defend our heritage. To honour our eternal Judeo-Christian values that made Europe what it is today. But there are very few signs of hope to be seen at the governmental level. Sarkozy, Merkel, Brown, Berlusconi; in private, they probably know how grave the situation is. But when the little red light goes on, they stare into the camera and tell us that Islam is a religion of peace, and we should all try to get along nicely and sing Kumbaya. They willingly participate in, what President Reagan so aptly called: “the betrayal of our past, the squandering of our freedom.”

If there is hope in Europe, it comes from the people, not from the elites. Change can only come from a grass-roots level. It has to come from the citizens themselves. Yet these patriots will have to take on the entire political, legal and media establishment.

Over the past years there have been some small, but encouraging, signs of a rebirth of the original European spirit. Maybe the elites turn their backs on freedom, the public does not. In my country, the Netherlands, 60 percent of the population now sees the mass immigration of Muslims as the number one policy mistake since World War II. And another 60 percent sees Islam as the biggest threat to our national identity. I don’t think the public opinion in Holland is very different from other European countries.

Patriotic parties that oppose jihad are growing, against all odds. My own party debuted two years ago, with five percent of the vote. Now it stands at ten percent in the polls. The same is true of all smililary-minded parties in Europe. They are fighting the liberal establishment, and are gaining footholds on the political arena, one voter at the time.

Now, for the first time, these patriotic parties will come together and exchange experiences. It may be the start of something big. Something that might change the map of Europe for decades to come. It might also be Europe’s last chance.

This December a conference will take place in Jerusalem. Thanks to Professor Aryeh Eldad, a member of Knesset, we will be able to watch Fitna in the Knesset building and discuss the jihad. We are organizing this event in Israel to emphasize the fact that we are all in the same boat together, and that Israel is part of our common heritage. Those attending will be a select audience. No racist organizations will be allowed. And we will only admit parties that are solidly democratic.

This conference will be the start of an Alliance of European patriots. This Alliance will serve as the backbone for all organizations and political parties that oppose jihad and Islamization. For this Alliance I seek your support.

This endeavor may be crucial to America and to the West. America may hold fast to the dream that, thanks tot its location, it is safe from jihad and shaira. But seven years ago to the day, there was still smoke rising from ground zero, following the attacks that forever shattered that dream. Yet there is a danger even greater danger than terrorist attacks, the scenario of America as the last man standing. The lights may go out in Europe faster than you can imagine. An Islamic Europe means a Europe without freedom and democracy, an economic wasteland, an intellectual nightmare, and a loss of military might for America - as its allies will turn into enemies, enemies with atomic bombs. With an Islamic Europe, it would be up to America alone to preserve the heritage of Rome, Athens and Jerusalem.

Dear friends, liberty is the most precious of gifts. My generation never had to fight for this freedom, it was offered to us on a silver platter, by people who fought for it with their lives. All throughout Europe American cemeteries remind us of the young boys who never made it home, and whose memory we cherish. My generation does not own this freedom; we are merely its custodians. We can only hand over this hard won liberty to Europe’s children in the same state in which it was offered to us. We cannot strike a deal with mullahs and imams. Future generations would never forgive us. We cannot squander our liberties. We simply do not have the right to do so.

This is not the first time our civilization is under threat. We have seen dangers before. We have been betrayed by our elites before. They have sided with our enemies before. And yet, then, freedom prevailed.

These are not times in which to take lessons from appeasement, capitulation, giving away, giving up or giving in. These are not times in which to draw lessons from Mr. Chamberlain. These are times calling us to draw lessons from Mr. Churchill and the words he spoke in 1942:

“Never give in, never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy”.

Brothers in the hood: Racism in Romans 9:3-4. NIV

2011-11-14T15:46:00.001-05:00

I have earlier defined racism as:

The belief that one's own race is superior to all others, and that with that superiority come certain rights and privileges.

On the first read through the following paragraph in the King James Bible, Paul doesn't immediately strike one as a racist:

Romans 9:3-5King James Version
For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh: Who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; Whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen.

But what happens when you read it in the NIV?

New International Version 1973-84
For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption as sons; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ, who is God over all, forever praised![a] Amen.
a. Or Christ, who is over all. God be forever praised! Or Christ. God who is over all be forever praised!

Pauls "own race" definitely comes across as superior, with certain rights and privileges, even when the translation had been gone over to remove all language offensive to women--well, almost all:

New International Version (T/NIV) 2001-2011
For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race, the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption to sonship; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised![a] Amen.
a. Or Messiah, who is over all. God be forever praised! Or Messiah. God who is over all be forever praised!

The CBT started off the problem way back in the late 1960's or early 1970's when they decided not to bother translating the Greek words οἵτινές εἰσιν,"who are." They apparently thought the passage would flow better as "my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel." Fifty years ago, the usage of 'race' as synonymous with 'ethnic group' had not yet gone obsolete, especially in poetry. But this is a most singular translation of the Greek word συγγενής, which is usually translated 'relatives' in the NIV. Biblical uses of this word refer to those outside the immediate family but still in the extended family; in Luke 21:16 it is also used in an expanding list of relations, falling between 'brothers' and 'friends.' So how did it become 'race' here?

And how did 'brothers' fare in Luke 21:16? Ah, 'and sisters' of course had to be added, although the gender of the friends was still left unspecified. Whatever happened to the English word 'sibling?'

What's of even more concern is that even as recently as 2011, this 1960's reference to 'race' has been left intact. It's without question that the CBT revised the verse in 2001, when they applied a global search-and replace to make sure the word 'brothers' never appeared in the TNIV without 'and sisters' being tacked on to the end. But here they found that 'brothers and sisters' just didn't fit in an expanding list of relatives, especially in the context of 'sonship' and 'patriarchs.' When all else fails, the NNIV translates ἀδελφoι as 'people.' But it really doesn't make sense to keep 'race' in the verse, as it reads as a double redundancy, with 'people' now added twice to the text:

my people, those of my own race, the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption to sonship. . .

Where is Virginia Mollenkott when you need her?

On the brink of war

2011-11-11T22:03:00.002-05:00

British government ministers have been told to expect Israeli military action in the wake of the UN watchdog report "as early as Christmas or very early in the new year," the London Daily Mail reported Thursday, Nov. 10. They were told Israel would strike Iran's nuclear sites "sooner rather than later" – with "logistical support" from the US.

I know I've been beating the war drums for quite some time, but this is not going away. Iran is no longer 3 to 5 years out from getting The Bomb. It was six years ago, and the Stuxnet Virus, along with Israel's non-death penalty targeted execution program only delayed it a year or two. Iran NOW has enough fuel for four warheads, and NOW has the delivery, triggering, and targeting mechanisms to place them in Israel at any time.

President Obama is in a tight spot. He vowed that Iran would never be allowed to develop The Bomb. Netanyahu is still being told--at least openly--not to dare to attack Iran unilaterally. But NATO is gearing up for opening a third front in The War on Terror, just in time to re-deploy the troops being sent home from Iraq and Afghanistan--conveniently enough, the two countries that border Iran--along with Pakistan and three Turkish nations.

Who knows where things will go from here. But I can definitely predict:

1) No military drawdown for the US.
2) Higher oil prices.
3) A big drop in Christmas tours to Bethlehem.
4) Since both sides now have missiles capable of hitting the other, what Americans and Russians feared throughout the 50's and 60's is now a real possibility in the Mideast: simultaneous mutual nuclear missile strikes. Unlike in the Cold War, however, the first round will probably use up or degrade each country's total nuclear capacity, leaving each one vulnerable to conventional invasion. We are talking all-out but limited nuclear war, immediately followed by all-out regional conventional war. I can't predict it will happen, only that it is for the first time a real possibility.

Meanwhile, developers of Stuxnet 2.0 are working feverishly to accomplish the impossible--defeating a nuclear power with cyber warfare. The next step is probably an attempt to shut down Iran's electric grid to disrupt command and control.

What can we say? Peer reviewed journals, supervised PhD's--junk?

2011-11-07T12:52:00.000-05:00

Found online:

In one of the biggest cases of scientific fraud on record, a prominent psychologist has admitted fabricating data in dozens of studies.

Diederik Stapel, who was suspended from his post at Tilburg University in the Netherlands in September, was exceptionally productive. He was responsible for a succession of eye-catching studies on topics including stereotyping and discrimination, the effectiveness of advertising, and the circumstances in which people may perversely prefer negative feedback to praise.

Stapel was suspended after three junior researchers alleged scientific misconduct. But the extent of the problems became known only on Monday, when the university released an interim report concluding that dozens of papers, as well as 14 out of the 21 PhD theses Stapel had supervised, contain fabricated data.

"This is absolutely horrifying," says Laura King, a social psychologist at the University of Missouri in Columbia. "We are talking about research that has major impact in the field of social cognition." Social cognition is the field of psychology that investigates how our mental processes affect the way we relate to one another.

In terms of the sheer volume of research implicated, Stapel's is one of the worst cases of scientific misconduct on record. The chair of the committee that has examined Stapel's work at Tilburg University told Nature that some 30 papers have so far been found to contain fabricated data. If these are all withdrawn, they will exceed the toll of retractions of papers by Jan Hendrik Schön, whose groundbreaking work at Bell Labs, New Jersey, on electronic devices made from organic molecules was found in 2002 to contain widespread fabrication and manipulation of data.

The case leaves red-faced collaborators cursing themselves for being so trusting. "I was duped," admits Hart Blanton of the University of Connecticut in Storrs, who expects to have to retract two papers he published with Stapel examining how "priming" people by showing them a picture of Albert Einstein can make them feel less intelligent.

Some of Stapel's recent work was certainly provocative. A paper published in April in the journal Science claimed that disordered environments such as littered streets make people more prone to stereotyping and discrimination. Although the Tilburg inquiry has not yet identified the studies that contain fabricated data, Science has already published an expression of concern about this paper.

In a statement released to the Dutch media this week, Stapel admitted fabricating data and apologised for the damage done to his colleagues and the field of social psychology. "I have failed as a scientist," he said.

Countdown to Armageddon in Iran

2011-11-04T22:20:00.001-04:00

Well, it's been a while since I last reported on the impending Persio-American War. There have been several new developments to show that this war, while considerably postponed, is not going away. Remember, the rumblings of World War Two began at least two years before the commencement of actual hostilities. Once Mussolini got away with invading Ethiopia, and Tojo with invading Manchuria, and Hitler with militarising the Rhine, a global war was inevitable--it just wasn't yet immanent.

Will Iran get away with developing a nuclear weapon? It might yet, but at this point it still doesn't look like it. Consider:

1. The Stuxnet Virus was a qualified success, causing Iran to replace an entire 6-cascade network of 984 Siemens-controlled uranium centrifuges at Natanz. More evidence has come out, first of all implicating Israel in the testing of the virus, and secondly indicating that the project is still ongoing. Both American and Israeli officials have all but admitted to involvement in hatching the virus; apparently one designed the delivery package, and another the payload. Stuxnet itself has pretty much played out as a threat to Iran's nuclear program, but even this was anticipated: the virus has encoded within itself instructions to self-destruct on June 24, 2012.That sunset provision alone is almost certain evidence of an American hand behind the design of the virus.

2. Duqu is the name of a new virus, evidently designed by the same team that brought us Stuxnet. The scary thing about Duqu is that is capabilities have not yet been identified, but its very existence shows that the Cyber Warfare Command is still seeking to engage targets.

3. The International Atomic Energy Agency disclosed on Tuesday, Nov. 1, that a spinning factory built in the northeastern Syrian town of Hasaka in 2003 was in fact an enriched uranium site. DEBKAfile's intelligence sources report that Syria procured the enriched uranium and equipment for the plant in early March 2003 from Iraq when its ruler Saddam Hussein decided to dispose of the bulk of his nuclear plant and weapons of mass destruction by spiriting them out to Syria, then his closest ally.

4. The International Atomic Agency in Vienna is due to publish next Tuesday, November 8, a more revealing report than ever before on the advances the Islamic Republic has made toward producing a nuclear weapon.

5. On Wednesday, November 2, Israel carried out a successful test launch of a new intercontinental ballistic missile, Jericho 3, capable of carrying a nuclear warhead 7,000 kilometers; the IDF released photographs of Israeli Air Force squadron leaders on Italian air base runways reporting to the media on joint exercises in long-range maneuvers carried out with the Italian air force "and other NATO nations" to familiarize the IAF with NATO military tactics.

Putting all this together, it seems that the US, along with select NATO nations, are on board with Israel to keep Iran from going nuclear. At this point is appears to be all bark and no bite, in hopes that Iran will get the hint and back down. Alas, the Islamic Republic will do no such thing, and it looks like we are headed for an inevitable confrontation that will entail "suicide by cop" of the Persian throne.

The Puzzle begins to take shape: Barack Obama's African origin

2011-11-03T13:51:00.000-04:00

In this post, I wrote that recent evidence shows Barack Obama II's Kenyan birth certificate to have been a recent forgery. I just realized that there was one possibility I hadn't considered, and that is one of Stanley Obama traveling to Kenya to visit her in-laws before the precipitous birth of her son Barack Junior, but without the accompaniment of they boy's father, Barack Senior. This could account for four different pieces of evidence:

1) The birth date of the baby's father is rather vague, which would accord with him not being present. Barack Senior was known to give different dates for his birth, so it's quite possible that Stanley didn't know which date to give. His stepmother wouldn't be expected to have known a precise date either.

2) An unverified account places Stanley and her step-mother-in-law at the beach in Mombasa when she went into labour; no mention of Barack being present.

3) The aforementioned "Granny Sarah" reported being present at Barack Junior's birth in Mombasa.

4) From information in his NIS file, it's virtually impossible for Barack to have left the US in 1961.

Even today, it's common for a family to be split up for a trip when one member is free to travel internationally and another isn't. Barack may have not been able to get to Kenya and back on his student visa, so sent Stanley alone to meet his family, not expecting their child to be born before her return. Inasmuch as their child's birth in Kenya was unplanned, he went ahead and had his in-laws register the birth in Honolulu, as another piece of evidence, mentioned elsewhere on this blog, clearly indicates. This certificate was then altered before it was released in 2008-11, adding a now-dead obstetrician and deleting all evidence that Barack had in fact been born in Kenya.

Well, we still don't know where President Obama was born, but we can be sure of at least one thing: he has his reasons for keeping it that way.

BREAKING NEWS ON THE TIMO MILLER CASE

2011-10-28T22:20:00.000-04:00

The White Man has it on reliable authority that all federal charges against Timothy David Miller have been dropped, and he is free to return home to Nicaragua--older, wiser, and very thankful to God and country.

UPDATE 12 hours later: And judging by the every-few-minutes hits I'm getting on this topic from the first eight time zones west of Greenwich, a LOT of people have been following this case.

UPDATE OCT 31: I'm still getting hits every few minutes, and the news has finally started to spread on the web. The latest information is that Timo has agreed to "help" with the investigation, even to the point of returning from Nicaragua to testify if needed.

The usual interpretation of such a statement is that the charges were dropped in return for the accused turning on a co-defendant. If that is indeed the case, it means that Janet Jenkins did get what she wanted and this will result in the return of Lisa Miller for prosecution. This in turn would indicate that the US Attorney, Tristam Coffin, has an ace up his sleeve and may already have Lisa in custody awaiting extradition.

But I sincerely doubt all this. There's a lot going on behind the scenes that isn't getting reported. This case is part of a much bigger picture, and the best result for all concerned would be if Lisa and Janet are reconciled, to the point that custody of Isabella is no longer even an issue. That, I believe, is still the goal of the major players in this case, and we will stay turned for more developments to be reported.There will be no further updates to this post. I think.

Niggerhood in Iraq

2011-10-28T10:38:00.001-04:00

Imagine not being allowed to attend school with the other children in your neighborhood because of what your ID card says. Imagine being told that your rent is going to go up simply because of who you are. Imagine losing your job when your employer finds out that you're one of "those people."

As explained in an earlier post, I've appropriated the word "nigger"--no longer allowed to be used by outsiders to describe those of a particular race--for a new use, one for which no suitable word previously existed (one of the many ways languages evolve). A "nigger" is anyone who is discriminated against because he belongs to a suppressed class. Crucial to this discrimination is being able to identify "niggers." In Iraq, it's a matter of which word one has on his ID card under the heading "Religion."

Iraqi society is strictly segregated by race and religion. Until recently, the two were one and the same. Assyrians were Orthodox; Chaldeans were Catholic; Armenians were Apostolic; and other than a smattering of Zoroastrians and Yezidis, everyone else was Muslim. Much as the two groups were at each other's throats, no distinction was made between Shia and Sunni; both classes enjoyed, at least in name, the full benefits of citizenship. For the others, a certain level of second-class citizenship was readily available, and as long as one did not aspire to anything higher than two stars in the military or a cabinet level position in the government, he was free to advance as long as he kept to his proper place.

But, ah. The 'uppity' Muslim who tries to become a Christian! Instant niggerhood.

Arrest me once, shame on you--the continuing saga of Timo Miller

2011-10-27T13:43:00.000-04:00

Note: for earlier stories on this topic, search on the label 'agents'.

Well, I don't have any further updates on this story, just some comments.

It is clear from reading the FBI's affidavit that the prosecution's main evidence in this trial is going to come from Timothy Miller himself. The Judge will no doubt rule that the evidence admissible, however, due to the fact that Timo voluntarily provided it--in the form of private emails he sent his friends and associates during the time he was helping Lisa Miller and her daughter Isabella move to Nicaragua. This information was, at the time he sent it, liable to interception by the FBI--although it's apparent that they didn't begin tapping his emails until later. If Timo ends up doing time for his crime, it will largely be his own fault, for leaving such a vivid electronic trail from the scene of the crime directly to his own front door.

But, should that come about, the prosecution's victory will be bittersweet. After all, it isn't really Timo they want, but Lisa. And it's not even Lisa, but her daughter, that the FBI was originally tasked with kidnapping. "I am looking forward to having my daughter home safe with me very soon," said Janet Jenkins in a statement released by Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, her legal counsel.If she thinks that turning the screws on Timothy Miller will have anything to do with that, she can think again. Her ex-stepdaughter is already home safe--but with her real mother, and intends to keep it that way.

Arresting Timo when they did basically killed the goose that was laying the electronic golden eggs. Timo will sit through a long trial, maybe serve some time, and then go back home, while Isabella marches on toward eventual majority forever outside the clutches of her wicked stepmother. For, thanks to Timo's sudden arrest, it is now obvious to everyone involved that if you want to keep a fugitive hidden, you don't use your regular email account to broadcast the process into cyberspace! Wherever Lisa and Isabella went after fleeing Jinotega, their presence there is under an electronic blackout, and will continue to be so until the statute of limitations has expired.

The Mennonites in Nicaragua were babes in the woods when it came to carrying out their criminal activities undercover. And it is costing them--some more than others. But they're learning from this--and we can be sure that other innocents are learning from their experience.

Finally, I think Timo's lawyer has a definite case that even the black-and-white evidence that will be put before the jury does not sufficiently implicate Timothy David Miller in "Aiding in the removing of a child from the United States, and retaining a child (who has been in the United States) outside of the United States with intent to obstruct the lawful exercise of parental rights."

Aiding he did. Retaining he did. But the law is clear that for these actions to be criminal, criminal intent must be shown, and the only intent evident in Timo's many intercepted emails is one of giving shelter to widows and orphans. He must be shown to have been aware of Janet Jenkin's legal rights as a wicked stepmother, and to have had the intent that his actions in keeping Isabella in Nicaragua would deprive her of those legal rights. As a lifelong resident of Central America, he can hardly be expected to have kept up on the bewildering proliferation of lawful parental rights in the United States of late.

I have one more piece of advice for Timo: I suggest that he demand a Spanish translator for all further court proceedings. It will drive the point home that he was, as it were, snatched from a foreign country for this trial, for deeds done entirely on foreign soil. The FBI agents who arrested him were dispatched while the plane in which he landed was still in international airspace. His American citizenship was purely incidental to the alleged crime. This despite the affadavit's claim that his crime was committed "in the District of Vermont."

Think about it, folks. To the global enforcers of family law, Vermont isn't a state--it's a Federal District.

Murdoch the Octopus: The money trail behind the media smears of vaccine truthers

2011-10-19T13:08:00.000-04:00

It's been over a year since I posted an article on vaccines, and new information continues to come out, both from the US government and vaccine pushers on the one hand, and media investigators on the other. This article in the Vaccine Truth Newsletter reveals that there was corporate pressure directly behind the smearing in The London Times of Dr. Andrew Wakefield's research into effects from the MMR triple vaccine. It also reveals that vaccines now incorporate DNA in a way that suggests genetic modification of an entire populace through the mandatory vaccination of their children.

The medical side of the argument is highly controversial, but no one can deny what happens when you "follow the money." Summing up the article is this excerpt from near the bottom of the piece:

Now here’s where all the above ties up into a huge red bow: Rupert Murdoch has hefty financial interests and ties to the pharmaceutical industry, international banking connections, and stock market power brokers who hold the world’s financial interests in their ‘covetous’ hands. Newton says that Members of this group, along with George Soros-directed assets, virtually monopolized the genetics industry during the 1990s, culminating in the corporate privatization of the Human Genome Project. Of course, everyone knows that George Soros is a backer of U.S. President Barack Obama’s agenda.

Topping off all this is the fact that Rupert Murdoch’s son, James—heir apparent, according to Newton, oversees GlaxoSmithKline, another major H1N1 vaccine maker. Many more of Rupert Murdoch’s business associates sit as members of the boards of directors of Merck & Company; Kolberg, Kravitz, Robertz & Company (KKR); and even one of KKR’s top echelon personnel was one of the founders of the Coalition to Advance Healthcare Reform (CAHR) now known as “ObamaCare.”

It sounds like Rupert Murdoch is akin to an octopus with tentacles far reaching and some very deeply, especially in pharmaceuticals and the global media, i.e., radio, television, newspapers, and other print media. Let’s see how far the inquiry goes into the British cell hacking fiasco and if it will cross the pond into the United States. If what we are hearing about what went on at his newspapers multiplies, we can only imagine what has been going on behind closed doors in the world of pharmaceuticals.

And, I suppose that it is neither here nor there that Rupert Murdoch's publishing empire is also behind the latest edition of the NIV.

Coming up: 1000 more casualties of Death Penalty legislation

2011-10-18T14:21:00.001-04:00

Joel Rosenberg writes:

IDF soldier Gilad Shalit was released Tuesday in a deal brokered by Egypt. He had been held by Hamas for a horrifying 1,941 days after being captured on June 25, 2006 in an attack that triggered the Second Lebanon War. The deal is not without controversy, however. Israel has released 477 Palestinian prisoners in the first swap, and will ultimately release more than 1,000. Some have been involved in deadly attacks on Israeli citizens. Not a few Israelis are deeply concerned these terrorists will be back to capture, torture and kill more Israelis soon.

Many of these murderers have been in prison for decades, and now that they are able to do get back to doing what they do best, we can expect at least a thousand more Israelis to be murdered. All this, because Israelis, through their elected representatives in the Knesset, have chosen to eliminate the chance that any murderer will ever face execution for his crimes. And now that this system has proved to work so well, I can hardly imagine it will be another 25 years before the next Gilad Shalit is traded back on such lucrative terms.

This case also represents the fallacy of "life in prison without possibility of parole," the imparted sentence of these now-free murderers. There is at least on American still in prison who was sentenced to death for murder prior to 1967 (when the Supreme Court denied the right of states to execute their murderers), but I can't find evidence of any person still in prison who was sentenced in the decades prior to 1967 to "life in prison without possibility of parole." As far as I have been able to determine, all such cases did in fact lead to eventual release of the prisoner, if he didn't die young before they quite got around to releasing him.

The Missing Link in Child Abuse Cases

2011-10-14T19:53:00.002-04:00

I've added another blog to my list, TulipGirl. She commented on my latest post, which led me indirectly back to her blog. I see she has written on a wide variety of parenting subjects.

As a veteran parent myself, I thought her blog would well complement mine, since I seldom write on such topics myself (it probably has a lot to do with the fact that she's a mom and I'm not--sorry, egalitarians, but that's just the way it is).

Anyway, in tracking back TulipGirl's comment, I realized that the reason why I'm getting so many hits lately from Michael Pearl searches is that yet another child's death has been blamed indirectly on Micheal Pearl. The link in these three deaths is that in each case, the father and/or mother read the Pearls' book before punishing their adopted child to death.

Ah, yes. Adoption--it's the other link that seems to be missing in most discussions of this case. Michael doesn't talk much about it--perhaps he should--but when he's responsible for raising children that aren't his own he NEVER spanks them--especially not the ones he gets from overseas. Yet he's done very well in instilling both love and discipline into quite a few orphans and otherwise untrained children over the years.

Michael Pearl should probably put a warning on his TTUAC book that it is most effective for married couples training their own children. All others should consult his other book (yet to be written), To Train Up Another Parent's Child (TTUAPC).

I may come back and add a few UPDATES to this post, but I've probably said enough already that I should stop for now and let it sink in.

UPDATE: Well, here we are already. Thanks to TulipGirl, another story of a woman spanking her adopted son to death: but this was in 1996, a bit before the Pearls' TTUAC book had taken the nation by storm. Moral of the story: Parents determined to conquer the will of an adopted child are perfectly capable of killing him in the process, with or without any help from the Pearls. And the Pearls aren't offering any.

Michael Pearl, False Prophet?

2011-10-13T13:33:00.000-04:00

In a comment posted to my article on the death of Lydia Schatz, an anonymous reader stated the following, which I quote, interspersed with my response:

Regardless of a few "good" pointers and some Scripture verses, the Pearl philosophy is abusive towards women and children. Scripture is not even carefully applied and rightfully divided in many of their writings, especially Debi's writings.

Anyone can give a few pointers and quote some Scripture verses. Doing this doesn't make the Pearls any different than the hundreds of others who have written on the subject of child raising over the past 500 years.

Jesus said we will know a tree by the fruit it bears. Three dead children is enough to make any intelligent person question the Pearls' philosophy.

In that quote, Jesus was specifically warning about false teachers, and telling his listeners that false teaching inevitable reveals itself by bad results. However, three children isn't even remotely enough to qualify the Pearls as bad-fruit producers. Take any apple orchard with 100,000 apples as they come off the tree. Would you, as a fruit inspector, consign the whole harvest to the landfill because you found three bad apples in the lot? I hope not, because with you in charge, we'd all have to get our food at the dump. Only three dead children is a remarkable accomplishment; I doubt that any state social service agency can say that of the last 100,000 children that came through their system, less than three died while in state custody. [UPDATE: the latest figures I've come across indicate that over a THOUSAND American children die in foster care AFTER being taken away from their parent(s) 'for their own protection.'] And the Pearls' methods have been used on hundreds of thousands of children.

We need to pray for the Pearls, though, and hope that they stop publishing irresponsible documents that can be used by any parent who decides to pay for the book.

No doubt the Pearls need prayer, so I won't say anything to discourage that. But if Michael Pearl is a false prophet, three dead children out of half a million books sold don't serve as compelling evidence.

On Beyond Zebra: The NIV "spins" Acts 7:43

2011-10-12T08:37:00.000-04:00

In Acts 7:43, Stephen seems to misquote a verse of Amos which mentions Israel being exiled "beyond Damascus:"

You have taken up the tabernacle of Molek
and the star of your god Rephan,
the idols you made to worship.
Therefore I will send you into exile’^[a] beyond Babylon.

Footnotes:

Acts 7:43 Amos 5:25-27 (see Septuagint)

Thus the NNIV. The only change made in this most recent update was to add the reference to the Septuagint--as if this would solve the problem. But notice that they haven't changed the quote: they end it right before "beyond Babylon" when in fact the word 'beyond' most certainly is in the Amos passage. The problem is, the word 'Babylon' isn't--not even in the standard edition of the Septuagint.

We may ask how the NIV read before the TNIV. Well, actually, the ONIV had no changes going all the way back to the original 1973 edition, but it did read "Shrine of Moloch" instead of the TNIV's "Tabernacle of Moloch." But in every case, the quote stops at the end of "exile," implying that Stephen wasn't misquoting the Amos passage, just tacking on his own historical interpretation to the end of it.

This is ludicrous. Even in a worse case scenario, the quotation doesn't stop at 'exile,' but at 'beyond.' And if the CBT did find an ancient Greek manuscript with 'Babylon' in it, they should have moved the quotation mark all the way over to the end of the sentence.

But, in the interests of artificially maintaining biblical inerrancy, they kept it where it was.

There's another place that translators could have avoided a theological scuffle with a little creative use of quotation marks:

"The virgin 'will be with child'" --Matthew 1:23, quoting from Isaiah 7:14, where the NIV does use the word 'virgin' but other modern translations don't.

Getting paid to recite Muslim prayers

2011-10-08T14:32:00.000-04:00

Thirty-four Muslim car transporters were caught praying on the job. And they got in big trouble for it--but not because Hertz has anything against Muslims or anyone else praying while they work. The problem was that these workers weren't working while they prayed. And that wouldn't have been a problem, either, if they had managed to whip through their memorized prayers in 10 minutes or less each of the 5 times a day they recite them. The problem was that:

1. Hertz hired drivers who were observant Muslims.
2. The drivers asked that Hertz accommodate their religious need to quit work for a few minutes 5 times a day.
3. The Teamsters Union, which takes a cut out of the $9 or so an hour Hertz is paying the drivers to drive, demanded that Hertz comply, and pay them to pray every day instead of driving.
4. Some drivers took advantage of these paid prayer breaks and extended them past the allotted 10 minutes.
5. Hertz warned drivers who didn't drive when they were supposed to be that they couldn't work for Hertz.
6. The drivers still took over-long prayer breaks, expecting to get something out of their union dues.
7. Hertz suspended 34 drivers for breaking their agreement with Hertz.
8. The shocked drivers looked to Teamsters to get them reinstated with back pay.

You can see that Christians have a distinct advantage over Muslims and Jews when it comes to getting a driving job: Christians can, and often do, pray while on the road (with their eyes open of course). Muslims and Jews can't. This makes the Christians much more employable than the Muslims, and slightly more employable than Jews (who can typically get their prayers in while off the job).

The solution: either discriminate against employers who prefer to hire workers who actually work, or discriminate against the less employable workers by not employing them as fully.

There are no other options.

On being of many minds on striking Iran

2011-10-05T15:10:00.002-04:00

A few quotes to consider:

Israel should launch a pre-emptive strike to prevent arch-foe Iran from going nuclear, a former head of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency said on Monday."I am of the opinion that, since there is an ongoing war, since the threat is permanent, since the intention of the enemy in this case is to annihilate you, the right doctrine is one of pre-emption and not of retaliation," Ex-Mossad Chief Shabtai Shavit told a conference.

--From Newsmax, Tuesday, 22 Jun 2010

Senior Israeli officials often say that “all options are on the table” in respect to Iran’s nuclear program, yet former Mossad Director Meir Dagan presented a different thesis Friday. While Israel must not accept nuclear weapons in Iran’s hands, he said, “An aerial strike on the reactors is a dumb idea that has no benefit.” Dagan made the comments during a forum discussion at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University.

--From The Yeshiva World, Saturday, May 7th, 2011

Israel won’t withstand war in wake of strike on Iran, ex-Mossad chief says. Speaking at Tel Aviv conference, Meir Dagan says use of force should be Israel’s last option, adding that the IDF could not stop Tehran’s nuclear program, only delay it.

--From DETIR, Wednesday, 5 October 2011

A senior U.S. administration official flies to Tel Aviv to pressure the Israeli government not to launch a preemptive strike against Iran, despite the rapidly growing nuclear threat posed by the Ayatollah and the mullahs and the increasing possibility that Iran could unleash a Second Holocaust. "Under no circumstances can the president tolerate an Israeli first strike against Iran," warns the U.S. official. "I am here as a personal representative of the President of the United States to make it unequivocally clear that our government wholly, completely, and utterly opposes a preemptive strike by the State of Israel on the Islamic Republic of Iran."

Fact or fiction? The answer is both. The paragraph above comes from p. 173 of my forthcoming political thriller, "The Tehran Initiative."But this scenario is no longer fiction. Earlier this week, a senior U.S. official flew to Israel to apply this very same pressure, and do so in a surprisingly high profile manner. "U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta visited Israel Monday with a clear message from his boss in Washington: The United States opposes any Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities," reported the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. "The United States, he said, is 'very concerned, and we will work together to do whatever is necessary" to keep Iran from posing "a threat to this region.' But doing so 'depends on the countries working together,' he added. He repeated the word 'together' several times in this context."

--From Joel Rosenberg's blog

Another one-term president--but how?

2011-10-04T16:02:00.000-04:00

According to Snopes, Proctor & Gamble Former Executive Lou Pritchett really did write an open letter to the newly elected President Obama in which he stated the following:

You scare me because after months of exposure, I know nothing about you.

You scare me because I do not know how you paid for your expensive Ivy League education and your upscale lifestyle and housing with no visible signs of support.

You scare me because you did not spend the formative years of youth growing up in America and culturally you are not an American.

You scare me because you have never run a company or met a payroll.

You scare me because you have never had military experience, thus don't understand it at its core.

You scare me because you lack humility and 'class', always blaming others.

You scare me because for over half your life you have aligned yourself with radical extremists who hate America and you refuse to publicly denounce these radicals who wish to see America fail.

You scare me because you are a cheerleader for the 'blame America ' crowd and deliver this message abroad.

You scare me because you want to change America to a European style country where the government sector dominates instead of the private sector.

You scare me because you want to replace our health care system with a government controlled one.

You scare me because you prefer 'wind mills' to responsibly capitalizing on our own vast oil, coal and shale reserves.

You scare me because you want to kill the American capitalist goose that lays the golden egg which provides the highest standard of living in the world.

You scare me because you have begun to use 'extortion' tactics against certain banks and corporations.

You scare me because your own political party shrinks from challenging you on your wild and irresponsible spending proposals.

You scare me because you will not openly listen to or even consider opposing points of view from intelligent people.

You scare me because you falsely believe that you are both omnipotent and omniscient.

You scare me because the media gives you a free pass on everything you do.

You scare me because you demonize and want to silence the Limbaugh's, Hannitys, O'Reillys and Becks who offer opposing, conservative points of view.

You scare me because you prefer controlling over governing.

Finally, you scare me because if you serve a second term I will probably not feel safe in writing a similar letter in 8 years.

According to Pritchett, he "sent it to the NY Times but they never acknowledged or published it."

Well, the writing is on the wall: President Obama's chances of being re-elected are slim to none. Rather than let a Republican take over the White House, however, it appears that the Democratic National Committee has an ace up their sleeve: Hilary Clinton.

It's been over a decade since a Clinton lived in the White House, and there's still a lot of pent-up support for The First Woman President. Having already passed the milestone of The First Black President, there's little incentive in keeping Obama on retainer; and Hilary is likely to be too old to run if she waits another 4 years.

I will admit, the idea's not original with me, but I wouldn't be surprised to see Obama announce in the next couple months that he won't be running for re-election, but will instead throw all his support behind Hillary and get on with the job of running the country for the last year of his single term.

By the way, there is quite a precedent for such a move. The following presidents failed to be nominated by their parties to serve a second term:

John Tyler*
James Polk
Milliard Fillmore*
Franklin Pierce
James Buchanan
Andrew Johnson*
Rutherford Hayes
Chester Arthur*

*(these were former vice-presidents who took over upon the death of the former president, but were never nominated by their party to the presidency itself)

These former vice-presidents served more than one term as president, but failed to be nominated for a third, for which they were eligible:

Theodore Roosevelt
Calvin Coolidge
Harry Truman
Lyndon Johnson

And this president served two full terms in his own right, but was twice denied nomination to a third:

Ulysses S. Grant, who--as Obama is expected to do--successfully campaigned for the winner of his party's nomination.

2011-09-26T23:08:00.000-04:00

I wrote earlier about Senator Lugar seeing the writing on the wall. Well, it appears that he has--and is trying to erase it. Like his ex-fellow Hoosier senator Bayh, he's spending the last 2 years of his term sending out an increasing number of very conservative-sounding constituent emails.

2011-09-26T14:36:00.000-04:00

In this post, I addressed the question of whether a black father can produce an albino child. This is fast becoming my #2 most-visited post of all time, second only to the one on Arthur Blessit's divorce, which continues to pull in hits just about every day, 2 years after I posted it.

Today, for the benefit of my new readers, I address another question which pulls viewers to my blog:

Can albino parents have a black child?

This possibility is an interesting one. An albino woman can actually have an all-white or an all-black child, or several of both. There's a fifty-fifty chance that a black man with one albino gene and a "black" woman with two albino genes (i.e., an albino woman) will have one a child like the mother, or one like the father. Although I'm not aware of any specific cases, this is probably not all that uncommon in Tanzania, where the albino population is greater than anywhere else and many albino women have black (half-albino) children.

But even stranger things are possible. A white albino, for example, can marry a black albino, and have all albino children. These in turn will all carry the information for black skin, however unexpressed, and can themselves have brown children, even if their mates are white.

I'm really not all that interested in this myself. Albinism is a genetic defect I wouldn't wish on anyone, but it's a fact of life that is never likely to be eradicated--nor to I encourage anyone to try it. But as long as the question continues to draw people to my blog, I though I'd give them the information they're obviously seeking.

The NIV in Philippians 1:1--an inclusive translation?

2011-09-24T06:59:00.002-04:00

I earlier wrote a post on the O/NNIV's flipflop on women and children in Acts 21:5.My readers might have caught this (according to Blogspot, that post had 16 of them), but the CBT may well be right now after all (meaning they were wrong earlier). The Greek phrase is πάντων σὺν γυναιξὶ καὶ τέκνοις, "all with women/wives and children," which the TNIV now interprets as "all of them, including wives and children." While I do have a quibble with the English phrasing--I would speak rather of "women and children" (as in Matthew 14:21 O/NNIV)-- "including" is their translation of σὺν (sun or syn) here.

But let's draw our attention to another place where the CBT translated σὺν. It turns out that the O/NNIV in Philippians 1:1 translates "πᾶσιν τοῖς ἁγίοις ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ τοῖς οὖσιν ἐν Φιλίπποις σὺν ἐπισκόποις καὶ διακόνοις" as "all the saints/God's holy people . . .together with the overseers and deacons." NASB has "including the overseers and deacons." O/NKJV has "with the bishops and deacons."

Obviously, the overseers and ministers at Philippi were a subset of "all the saints" there. So "including" would be the most logical word to use to translate syn. And the example had already been set by the NASB. So why did the CBT retain "together with" in Philippians, but change "and" to "including" in Acts?

I might add that the NNIV, without explicitly recognizing the church leaders of Philippi as "God's holy people," explicitly turns the brethren of Rome into men and women preachers in vv. 14-17.

Priscillian and Leo on the Johannine Comma

2011-09-23T18:51:00.000-04:00

I have written earlier on the Johannine Comma, without mentioning Priscillian, who is thought by many to have been its author around 380. Leaving aside such speculation, I bring in Leo the Great, Bishop of Rome in the mid-fifth century. A great foe of Priscillianism, he quoted directly from 1 John 5:6-8 in his tenth epistle, and headed up the Council of Chalcedon which released a quotation of it in both Greek and Latin. It would be instructive to see how these read.

Priscillian (or a protégé of his in Liber Apologeticus):
Sicut Johannes ait: Tria sunt quae testimonium dicunt in terra: aqua caro et sanguis; et haec tria in unum sunt. Et tria sunt quae testimonium dicunt in coelo: pater, verbum et spiritus; et haec tria unum sunt in Christo Jesu.

Pope Leo the Great:
Et spiritus est qui testificatur quoniam Spiritus est veritas. Quia tres sunt qui testimonium dant spiritus et aqua et sanguis et hi tres unum sunt.

Council of Chalcedon:
Et spiritus est qui testificator quoniam Christus est veritas. Quia tres sunt qui testimonium dant spiritus aqua et sanguis et hi tres unum sunt.

Chalcedon Greek version:
. . .τρεις γαρ εισίν οι μαρτυρούντες, το πνεύμα και το ύδωρ και το αίμα, και οι τρεις εις το εν εισί.

The Greek version is significant, and differs from Leo's epistle, in retaining the reading in v. 6 as "the spirit is truth" rather than the Latin version, which typically reads "Christ is Truth." Thus it can be seen that both of these official reports followed the version current in their respective languages. The text, without the Comma, is exactly as it is in the majority of Greek copies--and the minority of Latin copes, respectively--that are extant today. The Comma appears to have either been unknown to Leo, or, at best, known but rejected as an intrusion of Priscillianism.

Furthermore, the Comma in Liber Apologeticus is significantly different that the version that eventually ended up in most Vulgate manuscripts--assuming that there even is a majority reading of the Comma. Note the variant caro (flesh) instead of spirit: this reading is also found in the earliest known copy of the Vulgate to contain the Heavenly Witnesses before the Earthly ones, the 11th century Paris Bibl. Maz. Lat. 7:
Quoniam tres sunt qui testimonium dant in coelo, pater verbum, et spiritus. Et tres sunt qui testimonium dant in terra, caro, sanguis et aqua; et hic tres in nobis unum sunt.

More action in the Timothy Miller kidnapping case

2011-09-14T09:37:00.000-04:00

Man charged in custody battle wants VT trial moved

LISA RATHKE, Associated PressUpdated 01:17 p.m., Monday, September 12, 2011

MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — A Nicaraguan missionary charged with helping a woman involved in a custody dispute with her former lesbian partner flee the United States with the child wants his trial moved from Vermont to Virginia.In a motion filed Thursday in federal court in Rutland, Vt., a lawyer for Timothy David "Timo" Miller also wants statements made to investigators in April dismissed, claiming that his client was not read his Miranda rights.

Miller, who is free on $25,000 bond and is awaiting trial, is accused of providing Lisa Miller and her 9-year-old daughter with travel assistance and a place to live outside the U.S. He pleaded not guilty to abetting an international parental kidnapping. Timothy Miller and Lisa Miller are not related.Lisa Miller and her child disappeared in September 2009 in the midst of a long-running custody dispute with her former partner, Janet Jenkins of Fair Haven, Vt., after a Vermont judge awarded Jenkins custody.The two women were joined in a civil union in Vermont in 2000 with Miller giving birth to Isabella two years later. But the couple split up the next year.Miller then renounced homosexuality and became an evangelical Christian. She was granted custody of the child; Jenkins had visitation rights.But Miller, who once lived in Forest, Va., has repeatedly failed to obey court orders and in November of 2009 a Vermont judge ordered her to surrender custody to Jenkins.

Miller failed to show up with the child on Jan. 1, 2010, and a federal warrant was issued for her arrest.A lawyer for Timothy Miller says the Christian pastor who was living in Managua, Nicaragua, was stopped April 18 by U.S. marshals and an FBI agent when he arrived at Reagan National Airport with his wife and four children to attend a wedding in Virginia.Miller was interviewed at the airport police department office, where he told investigators he had been contacted by another man to purchase airplane tickets for Lisa Miller, and used his mother-in-law's credit card to do so, according to the motion filed by Pennsylvania attorney Jeffrey A. Conrad.

Miller, who is described by the FBI as an Amish-Mennonite pastor from Tennessee, was arrested at the end of the interview, charged with international parental kidnapping.But Conrad argues the incriminating statements should be thrown out because Miller was the subject of an interrogation and was detained without having his rights read.He also says that the most appropriate place for the trial is in the Western District of Virginia. The alleged actions that constitute international parental kidnapping took place there and the defendant was in Nicaragua when the alleged crime occurred and has never traveled to Vermont or had contact with anyone in the state, Conrad said in the motion.

I'm not thrilled with this development at all. As much as I believe Timo Miller to be innocent of the charge of kidnapping, I'm disappointed that he's moved to suppress evidence that he himself provided.There is already sufficient evidence to convict him, even without his confession. And I'm not happy with the attempt to throw it out on Miranda grounds. For one thing, I think police officers ought to be able to question suspects, and information freely offered in such an interrogation should be admissible. Moreover, if his confession was true, what purpose is served by suppressing it, other than suppressing the truth? This case has to be won or lost on constitutional grounds, not slick legal tricks.

That said, it should be clear that the Vermont court has no jurisdiction in this case, Timo Miller never having set foot in the state prior to his arrest. Any jurisdiction they may have had over Lisa Miller's custody arrangement is of no consequence: it is Timo Miller who is on trial for deeds he is alleged to have done, none of which occurred in Vermont.

I only wish that the two motions had been made separately, or, better yet, that the first would have been dropped as an option before it was ever made. I hope it's overturned.

Lastly, this alleged wedding, originally located in Pennsylvania and now in Virginia, actually took place in Indiana.

And if any of the agents reading this post would like more information, I'll be willing to provide it once they publish the real name of Lisa Miller's husband.

UPDATE October 2nd: the U.S. Attorney responded to a motion to suppress statements made by Timothy Miller before his Miranda rights were read to him. In his response, Coffin said prosecutors didn’t plan to use the statements Conrad wanted to exclude.

When in doubt (or not), just call it "suicide"

2011-09-03T11:14:00.000-04:00

This article reports on the deaths of the son and girlfriend of a millionaire in his mansion. Coroners have ruled the deaths accidental and suicidal, respectively. I don't buy it; I say that in both cases, somebody is getting away with murder. One does not establish suicide by "DNA evidence," but by looking for a means, motive, and opportunity as with all homicides, and then ruling out everyone but the victim as a suspect in the killing.

Let the record show that the White Man had the opportunity to commit suicide in 1978, and chose not to. I will never take any action solely intended to end my life. It goes against my deepest beliefs. So if I ever turn up dead, count on it that it wasn't suicide.

There are two ways of looking at suicide. Those who consider it an option will, sooner or later, try it. Those who don't consider it an option never will. And there's a huge difference between saying "I just wish I could die" or 'I feel like ending it all" and actually planning a suicide. The former only speak that way when frustrated; the latter do so in the calmest frame of mind.If someone is distraught, but makes no mention of ending it all, and doesn't do anything in the way of saying goodbye, and is then found killed a few hours later, don't even suspect suicide. Make no mistake, it was a professional hit job. And depending on how highly placed was the person ordering the hit, you can count on the authorities to have already ruled it suicide before they even start the investigation.

There will come a time when the most recent post on this blog is three months old. When it does, don't expect any more--I don't go garver. It probably means I'm dead. And I can assure you, it won't be because I killed myself.

The uselessness of a post facto alibi when weighed against a proven character of deceit

2011-09-02T22:04:00.002-04:00

As reported in this blog, several people have come forward to testify, however informally, as having had direct knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Barack Hussein Obama II's birth. Inasmuch as no two of these stories agree, however, we are not constrained to believe a single one of them. The closest we can come to finding two or three witnesses is the clear evidence that within four days of August 2, 1961, the local birth of Barack Hussein Obama II was reported in two different Hawaiian newspapers. But where the birth actually took place: three different versions. And who actually delivered the baby: three different versions.

Clearly, it's an easy thing to get someone to claim that they were present at any given time and place, in which they witnessed a particular event. Take, for example, the multiple testimonies that Caryl Chessman amassed proving that he was somewhere else when the Red Light Bandit struck his victims:

Chessman called a woman named Winona Phillips, who testified that on January 13, at the time Rose Howell's 1946 Ford was being stolen in Pasadena, that Chessman was at her home "helping her edit" a novel she was writing. A good alibi, but Leavy punctured it easily enough. When he asked the witness when she first recalled the visit, she replied that Caryl had reminded her about it the previous evening when she had visited him in the county jail.

Harold Ostran, Chessman's parole officer, testified that Chessman had made an in-person report to him that same day, and that he noticed nothing unusual in the parolee's demeanor.

Harold Doty, who repaired radios as a part-time sideline, testified that at two significant times when Red Light crimes were being committed, he was at the home of Serl and Hallie Chessman, picking up or delivering a radio that needed repairing, and had observed Chessman there helping his father lay linoleum and sitting with his mother.

It was a dreadful scene when poor Hallie Chessman was brought into court on a portable hospital bed. Hallie was an ill reed of a woman by now, having been an invalid since her back was broken in the automobile accident 17 years earlier. For some time she had also suffered from cancer of the spine, which was spreading slowly but unabated throughout her paralyzed back. When she testified -- answering questions put to her by Al Matthews, because Chessman explained to Judge Fricke that he "could not bear to do it" -- Hallie's voice was soft but impassioned. This was her son, her only child, and she would do her best for him.

Hallie alibied Caryl for several Red Light crime time frames that had not been covered. He was home with her, or she had sent him on an errand, or she could hear him talking in the back yard, or she had spoken to a friend on the telephone and Caryl was there with the friend. Hallie was certain of the dates, days, times. Leavy asked her several token questions on cross, but quickly saw that he would not be able to shake her resolve to help her very troubled son -- nor did he have the inclination to torment the poor woman that way -- so he let her go. The stricken woman seemed on the verge of exhaustion when she was wheeled out of the courtroom.

Helen Denny, a friend of Chessman's, testified that he was with her in Bradley's Bar on Hollywood Boulevard at the exact time that one of the Red Light Bandit crimes was being committed. Another friend, Ollie Treon, substantiated the story, saying she had seen them there. William Callahan, a garage owner, testified that Chessman had brought in a 1946 Ford on January 21 to have a collapsed front spring fixed. He had left the car there overnight.

Lucille Green, a friend of Hallie's, said she saw Chessman at home during one of the questionable times, when she came over to get a chair that Hallie was giving her.

The last witness for the defense was the defendant himself, who stated his name as "Caryl W. Chessman." In preliminary questioning by Al Matthews, he gave his age as 26, height six feet, weight 190, and marital status as divorced. Then, very methodically, Chessman gave his own version of where he had been when each and every Red Light Bandit crime had been committed.

At various times, he testified, he had been at the Hall of Records, checking on some real estate ownership; at Sears Roebuck buying new curtains for his mother's room; with Winona Phillips at her home, "helping her write a book"; working in the back yard of his parents' home; in Hollywood seeing a movie called "The Swordsman"; at Bradley's Bar drinking with various friends at various times; sitting up all night with his invalid mother -- and so on. He had a clearly remembered alibi for every Red Light Bandit crime time frame.

And yet, the jury weighed all this testimony against the known and conceded fact that Chessman had been an habitual criminal ever since he was old enough to get behind the wheel of someone else's unattended car and drive off, and overruled every last alibi as a condemned man's desperate attempts to save his neck. Instead, they believed the victims, every one of whom positively identified him as The Bandit. He was found guilty on all counts and sentenced to death. Interestingly, the Red Light Bandit Crimes, which began shortly after he had been released on parole, ended with his arrest.

The problem for Caryl Chessman is that none of these alibis had been brought up until after he was arrested. That so many people could remember so many details of seeing and interacting with him was amazing, that much after the fact. The key, brought out under cross-examination, was that "Caryl had reminded her about it the previous evening." Thus the power of suggestion. Beginning with a vague memory involving a specific person in a specific place, the skilled interviewer was able to consolidate that memory around a specific time--which always coincided with one of the Bandit's attacks. Simply put, alibis that emerge during the investigation of a crime are not reliable, and wise jurors will take that into consideration.

What about a priori alibis, however? I was once arrested for a crime and there was no need to come up with an alibi; the officer who pressed the charges was fully aware that I was nowhere around the scene of the crime. Without any witness to my presence at the crime, there was no need to claim I had been elsewhere. I know of another case, in which cell phone records were produced at a trial to prove that the defendant could not have been at the scene of the crime; the testimony that placed him there was thrown out, and he was acquitted. The prosecutor was the laughingstock of the bar for trying a case in which his only witness could be proved a liar before the case even went to trial; the cell phone records pre-existed the arrest of the defendant, who had only to bring them out to show the futility of the charges.

Now we come to the case of the Obama Birth Certificates. There are three of them, and they all appear to have been based on the same original document. The only concrete differences are the place of birth and attending physician:

1. Kenyan archives hard copy: Coast Province General Hospital, Mombasa by James C. W. Ang'awa. Only testimony (after the fact): His grandmother Sarah Obama, as translated.
2. White House electronic image: Kapiolani Maternity Hospital, Hawaii by David A. Sinclair. NO ONE has come forward, either before or after it became an issue, to testify as the veracity of this account. Last digit of ID# 151 61 10641 is clearly falsified.
3. FactCheck.org electronic image: Brief information derived from #2. "Negro African" shortened to "African." ID# 151 1961 010641, originally blacked out, later released.

Now, the testimony of witness #1 is contradicted by Obama I's INS record, which states that II was born in Hawaii; the testimony of #2 is contradicted both by published reports that Barack was born at a different hospital, and by published testimony that he was delivered by a different doctor; both published after Obama became a national figure, but before the release of any of the above 3 certificates.
Witness #3, inasmuch as it provides no independent testimony, can be disregarded as being of any use to the defense.

Let's review the facts: There has been no legal testimony whatsoever as to Barack Obama's actual time, place, and manner of birth. He apparently has never been arrested, never undergone a security background check, never been the subject of a federal investigation. He has suppressed all sources that may shed light on his past. He appears on the scene in 1989, as if out of nowhere, a prominent and upcoming African-American. Facing Republican opponents in five consecutive elections, he wins every time. The only election he ever loses is a primary, while on two different ballots anyway.

And now for some speculation: Around 2004-2006 he decides to run for President. Having gotten away with everything so far, there's no reason to assume he will be caught now. But to continue the charade will require an extensive conspiracy:

- on the part of the Hawaiian Department of Health, to suppress the birth certificate until an altered copy could be come up with;
- on the part of the Secret Service, to alter the SSN on his draft registration;
- on the part of the Democratic Party, to lock step behind the legitimacy of his candidacy;
- on the part of the Supreme Court, to refuse to hear any challenges to it.

Caryl Chessman was a career criminal. He never held a job outside of reform school, prison, and his father's business. He was also an ideal prisoner. His behavior inside prison walls was as exemplary as his life outside them was abhorrent. In other words, while free he lived to steal as much as he could before he was caught again. While imprisoned, he behaved as well as possible so as to get back to his life of crime more quickly. He always told prison officers whatever he thought would get him released the fastest.

It would be expected, given his criminal profile, that Caryl Chessman would plead innocent to a crime he knew to be possibly capital. It would be expected that, once arrested, he would maintain his innocence to the end. He was that rare combination of career thief and brilliant strategist who, acting in his own defense, could win nine stays of execution and stretch out his time on Death Row to an incredible (for the time--routine now) twelve years. He was even able to convince thousands, perhaps millions, of his innocence (not of being a career criminal, of course--just of being a violent rapist). But looking at his profile, we expect all this of Caryl Chessman; it's how he worked--the man didn't have an honest bone in his body. It was only due to the waning morals of the day that he was even able to carry out his fight so long--and no American since him has ever been even accused, much less found guilty, of capital rape. The law was abolished before he was even executed.

What do we know about Barack Obama's criminal profile? Precious little, really. About all we can pin on him is that he fraudulently swore on his 1991 bar application that he had no aliases. Why would he say this, when there were years of documentation of him as Barry Soetoro? It points to a deliberate pattern of hiding his past in hopes that it would never be found out. Or that if it was, it wouldn't matter. Note that unlike Liar-in-Chief Bill Clinton, he hasn't been held to account for this perjury. Yet.

MEN at war

2011-09-01T16:13:00.001-04:00

"The Government of India have caused this tablet to be erected to the memory of the twenty one non-commissioned officers and men of the 36 Sikh Regiment of the Bengal Infantry whose names are engraved below as a perpetual record of the heroism shown by these gallant soldiers who died at their posts in the defence of the fort of Saragarhi, on the 12 September 1897, fighting against overwhelming numbers, thus proving their loyalty and devotion to their sovereign, the Queen Empress of India, and gloriously maintaining the reputation of the Sikhs for unflinching courage on the field of battle."

Thus reads the inscription commemorating The Battle of Saragarhi.

Notice that in 1897, the word "men" in a military context carried a very specific meaning. It was a subset of enlisted soldiers--those who were not of non-commissioned rank--just simple infantrymen.

There's that word again--"MEN." It just keeps coming up whenever people talk about soldiers, for the simple reason that soldiers historically were men. Thus we have infantryMEN in the Army, airMEN in the Air Force, seaMEN in the Navy, and just plain MEN in the Marines.

The push for inclusion of females in all branches of the Armed Forces, and eventually all MOSs, is making people increasingly uncomfortable with these labels.

There's one thing women have never done, though--other than go to the moon, which at least one of them most assuredly will do before men once again step foot thereupon--they have never made a last stand.

The sad but true case of Dr. Ketcham, missionary child molester

2011-08-23T16:46:00.005-04:00

This is not a gossip column, and The White Man certainly does not take any delight in the misfortunes of others. So it is with some trepidation that I now open up a can of worms regarding the charges of paedophilia against Donn Ketcham, M.D.

Before I start, I should say that I don't personally know any of the Ketcham family, or any of the alleged victims. While I'm certainly less than six degrees of separation removed from the persons and situations of which I now report, I'm far enough out to--I trust--render an impartial account. All the information that follows is from publicly available sources.

First, a bit of background. When Donn was born in June of 1930, his father was the pastor of a Baptist Church and a leader in the movement to purge the American Baptist Conference of modernism--an attempt that was ever met with failure. As Donn grew, his father rose to the forefront of the movement and, as pastor of Baptist churches in Ohio, Iowa, and Indiana, became the President of the separatist General Association of Regular Baptist Churches. An arch-rival for control of the separatists Baptists was J. Frank Norris of Dallas, TX, whose modus operandi was rumor, insinuation, and inflammatory rhetoric. He attacked, for example, Donn's half sister Lois for having "left the mission field" when she departed Brazil on the verge of death from vitamin deficiency and remained in the States for an extended recovery.

Little Donn was not yet ten at the time, but the event surely had an effect on him. His father, a founder of the Baptist Mid Missions agency under which Lois and her husband served, put out the call for missionary doctors, so that a tragedy like this could be averted. And in fact, when he was only twelve, Donn set his sights on becoming a missionary doctor. After biblical training that resulted in his ordination as a preacher of the gospel, he went on to receive top-notch medical training from the University Of Illinois. By 1960 he and his wife Kitty were ready for appiontment to East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) to serve at a new mission hospital being started by Viggo Olsen of the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism.

But there was one problem. Beneath the ideal-missionary exterior, Donn Ketcham kept a hidden secret: he was a serial adulterer, and he preferred virgins. He'd gotten his start while attending public high school in Waterloo, defrauding quite a number of coeds all while planning a missionary career. His father, often on the road and busy with the demands of leading the GARBC, paid little attention to any reports that may have come his way. As for Donn? Well, he was doing nothing illegal--nothing that any hot-blooded young man in his peer group wouldn't want to do anyway--right? And thus commenced a double life that was to continue for some fifty years.

By the time Donn met Viggo Olsen, he had already secretly cheated on Kitty several times--but still had his sights set on being a missionary doctor. With all his theological training, he had no problem passing the mission's rigourous examinations for acceptance. And as a developing surgeon, his skills would remain in top demand on the mission field. Donn and Kitty Ketcham were the first members of Wyoming's Newhall Baptist Church to be appointed as foreign missionaries. Off to East Pakistan they went.

There's something rather unique about being a doctor. Normally a woman would not think of taking off her clothes for anyone else, but will doff everything at a doctor's request. No part of her body is safe from his invasive reach--in fact, her most private parts are his special concern. And a doctor gets to touch, in his profession, parts of a young girl's body that her father will never see. So it takes a special kind of a man to be able to do all this without giving in to lust--and, to their eternal discredit, the fundamental Baptists at ABWE who so rigorously grilled their candidates on theology and ecclesiastical separation never took the trouble to find out whether or not Donn Ketcham was that kind of man. The truth is, he was exactly the opposite.

It's not that there weren't signs. No doubt Donn had a reputation as a Lothario from way back in high school. He was well known even at Bible school as a womanizer, and this did not stop when he married Kitty. Yet Don Ketcham seemed to have some sort of Teflon coating that kept him from ever getting in trouble for his picadillos, even when they resented in his sexual partners being expelled for immorality. This pattern was to continue right up into the 1980's, until Donn's proclivity for virgins finally got him in the kind of trouble that no one could overlook. Cover up, yes. But not overlook.

By 1989 Donn had been on the mission field for decades. His children were all grown, but his services were as much in need as ever. There was no reason, professionally, why he couldn't have continued to serve for decades more. But his long string of adulteries finally caught up with him when a 14-year-old girl with whom he'd been involved sexually for two years finally confessed her moral shortcomings to a youth counselor back in the States. When word of this confession made it back to ABWE headquarters, mission leaders realised that something would need to be done.

After interrogating the girl to determine that she wasn't making it all up, they flew her back to Bangladesh to confront Dr. Ketcham. To their relief, he confessed to everything--in writing. Now all they had to do was to implement the standard mission procedure for dealing with moral failure--something they were all too familiar with by then:

1. Send The Missionary Home. This was done as soon as bags could be packed and tickets bought. The sooner he was out of the Situation, the better. And the family of the Victim got the same treatment as that of the Offender.

2. Terminate His Membership in the Mission. This was done more slowly and methodically, to allow time for the Ketchams to find and settle into a new home and job before cutting off their financial support. As ironic as it may seem, no thought was taken of the possible danger to girls Back Home with Donn Ketcham now released from any direct accountability to the mission. They even left it up to him how to explain his release from the mission, using the vague term "moral failure" whenever the topic did come up. No attempt was made to notify the State Medical Board or Child Protective Services that a sexual predator had been turned loose in their state and was now their problem.

3. Damage Control. Missionaries in Bangladesh were told of the offense in similarly worded general terms, and cautioned, "for the good of the work," not to discuss it with anyone. Anyone who asked was just to be told that "the Ketchams had to leave the field." No attempt was made to discover or enumerate his many other victims.

This damage control continued unabated for over a decade. It wasn't until 2002 that anyone thought the matter worth looking into again, but after a few half-hearted attempts it was concluded that there was no sense in digging up the past, and it was put to rest once again, with a little more sugar coating over the rottenness.

It wasn't until this very year, 2011, that a group of rebuffed victims got together and started a blog, in which they identified Dr. Donn Ketcham by name as a paedophile. A few weeks into that, ABWE management were finally roused to life and started the long-neglected Phase II of damage control--actually doing something about the problem. It was too late to hold Donn accountable for his actions, though--by that time the statute of limitations had run out. Even the Michigan State Medical Board wasn't interested in hearing about alleged abuses that had taken place out of country.

But as more and more people went to the blog, there was a rising furor over ABWE's longtime mishandling of the affair. In the aftermath, president Michael Loftis was asked to resign, and ABWE leadership hired another lawyer to guide them through the minefield of liability that was filling up around them.

This brings us to the present. Donn Ketcham, age 81, is still practicing medicine part-time in Allendale, MI. He still receives a monthly pension check from ABWE. That much is known. What hasn't yet come to light are how many girls he's molested in the 22 years since ABWE sent him home; and how much liability ABWE may face for having turned him loose.

Will this case change how mission agencies screen prospective members, or who they deal with moral failures on the field? Probably. Will it be enough to keep any of this from ever happening again? Probably not. The reasons why will be enough to fill up another post.

A review of Benjamin Titus Robert's book "Ordaining Women"

2011-08-16T19:35:00.000-04:00

When a book released in 1891 is still in print almost 120 years later, one would expect it to offer timeless truths on the topic. Indeed, in the preface he states,

I have purposely avoided all appeals to sentiment and to "the spirit of the age," and based my arguments mainly on the Word of God.

But on the very next page, he starts out the first chapter by making a comparison between the philosophy that relegated entire classes of humans to a state of subjection in slavery, and the philosophy that relegates the entire class of womankind into a state of subjection in which she is not allowed to lead the church of Christ. In short, he makes the whole issue of the Biblical Role of Women one of prejudice. As for appeals to sentiment, he asks (all punctuation as in the original), "

. . . is it not possible that the current sentiment as to the position which WOMAN should be permitted to occupy in the Church of Christ may also be wrong? Reader, will you admit this possibility?

The book is also rather dated by the dire picture it paints in Chapter 2 of the legal state of woman's domestic situation--a situation that has been greatly ameliorated since then--without regard, I would propose, to the availability of ordination to women, and not one that has any direct bearing on what the Bible teaches on the subject.

The book is dated in other ways, which Bishop Roberts perhaps cannot be expected to have foreseen. He writes, for instance, "The mother who brings up her children to obey her is sometimes obliged to use the switch upon the refractory child." But as women have attained more and more influence, 'switching' refractory children has gone from being an obligation of dutiful parents to being grounds for removing a refractory child from the home, and landing the offending parent in jail. How ironic that the very women that Bishop Roberts lauded as being equal to the task of molding the laws and customs of this country should be at the forefront in making the switch.

I really should quote the entire section in which this sentence appears, as it shows how far Bishop Roberts had yet to come in removing sexist language from his vocabulary:

Words are arbitrary signs of ideas. And often the same word represents things which have no relation to each other. The mother who brings up her children to obey her is sometimes obliged to use the switch upon the refractory child. The railroad man, by turning the switch wrong, wrecked the train. The fashionable woman when she buys a switch is careful to have it match her own hair. The farmer cuts his wheat with a cradle. His wife rocks the baby in a cradle.

Note that although he sees child discipline to be an equal prerogative of the female parent, he doesn't envision a farmer having a husband who rocks their baby, nor a woman guiding a train.

We finally encounter in Chapter Four the eponymous topic of the book. While he earlier expressed an appreciation for the Quakers' acceptance of woman preachers, he here makes objection to their stopping short of ordaining their preachers, which practice he sees as clearly taught in the Scriptures. While he's at it, he takes the Quakers to task for every other area of theology in which he perceives them to be deficient. Clearly, he is not suggesting we emulate the Quakers any farther than their view on the Equal Role of Women. Chapter Four continues with a similar critique of the Roman view of ordination. Ironically, Bishop Roberts undercuts the doctrine of the very denomination which he founded--the Free Methodists--by pointing out that there is no biblical support for the supervisory office of ordained Bishop! And finally, by equating Ordination with any commissioning service for someone called to serve God in a specific way, he undercuts the whole thesis of his book, as women in this sense have been no doubt been ordained from the earliest days of the church. Whether they were ever ordained to the Bishopric, however, is another question entirely.

In Chapter Six, Bishop Roberts gives away his approach. Speaking of Gal. 3:28, he writes,

If this gives to men of all nations the right to become ministers of the gospel, it gives to women exactly the same right. Make this the KEY TEXT upon this subject, and give to other passages such a construction as will make them agree with it, and all is harmony. . . Why should not this be done?

Well, it should not be done for the simple reason that this is eisegesis, not exegesis. We need an understanding that will fit ALL passages on the subject, without hammering square pegs into round holes just because the hammer is round.

A rare candid pose shows a woman in a head covering

2011-08-13T16:22:00.001-04:00

Thanks to Roger Pearse for this image of a cast in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. It's called Butcher and Wife, and it's from the second century. I note two things:

1. The butcher is just in his tunic, but his wife is fully dressed to the toes. They both appear to be wearing slippers of some sort.
2. The wife is wearing a turban or hat that covers her bound hair.

The New Feminist People's Collective

2011-08-12T13:42:00.004-04:00

Who died in Afghanistan on August 12th, 2011? According to most news reports, it was "Eight NATO troops." A few news services referred to "8 service members" or even the "7 U.S. soldiers" who, along with a single unidentified European, made up the day's casualty list.

As recently as the mid-1980's, the U.S. Marines stationed in Lebanon were popularly referred to as "our boys in Beirut." At the time it was still common to speak of a nation's military by the number of "men in uniform." But times have changed, and one can no longer assume the sex of any military service member. Thus, the emergence of the strangely plural collective "troops." One never speaks of a single "troop," although such a military designation has existed at least since the thirtieth chapter of Genesis. But the awkward term "military service member," a more politically correct way of speaking of a soldier, is most often pluralized by "troops--" although clearly eight soldiers constitute a single troop at most.

It's an axiom of linguistics that the meanings of words change over time. How it works is that the connotation of a given word changes in frequency to the point that its old usage is subsumed into its new one. Inasmuch as soldiers have long since ceased to operate in troops, the old meaning lay pretty much unused. Whenever this happens, a new meaning typically attaches to the old word, and it goes on to a new life as a component in an ever-so-slightly evolved language. It's also axiomatic that some people resist such changes, yet they happen nonetheless.

Given that English has become so standardised in the past century, I guess I'm a little surprised that it continues to change nonetheless. But it's this sort of change that is the most common and the most widespread: the recycling of an old word whose primary meaning has yielded to a newer, more politically correct usage.

Musings on war

2011-08-11T18:51:00.001-04:00

Two thoughts have come to mind: first of all, the implications of the recent downing of a Chinook carrying members of Seal Team Six; secondly, the effect of misinformation on decision-making in the heat of the battle.

First of all, as most of my readers know by now, the Taliban managed to shoot down a troop transport helicopter carrying a unit of Seal Team Six into battle. Sending commandos in a reinforcements seems to me an unwise decision: commandos do what they do best when they control every aspect of the battle. Sending troops into an already ongoing firefight means that most of their special training and tactics are of no particular use to them. Even if their chopper hadn't been shot down, it was still stupid to use crack troops as cannon fodder in an infantry battle. Nonetheless, these Seals were soldiers under command, and the motto, "Ours is not to wonder why, ours is but to do and die" fit them exactly. And so they died.

Often decisions are made in the heat of the battle that are regretted later. And often, they are based on information that turns out not to be true ( a good example of this is Hitler's reluctance to assign troops to repulse the Normandy invasion, on his successful persuasal that the attack was only a feint). This is why the US war doctrine, at least in recent decades, has been to make nuclear weapons strictly strategic, rather than tactical. A tactical nuclear weapon could be fired by a commander on the ground in the heat of the battle; a strategic weapon, however, could only be fired on orders from the Commander in Chief himself.

But this only relocates the chance of deadly misinformation to a more reliable source. The President only gives the orders; he doesn't actually launch the missile. That job is done by the nuclear officers at the launch sites. Given that these men have moral codes of their own, what would it probably take to get them to actually pull the trigger? Probably news that an enemy had already launched a preemptive strike and that this launch would be in retaliation. It's a foregone conclusion, therefore, that any president ordering a first strike would lie and put out the word that the US was already under attack, in order to forestall any hesitancy on the part of the nuclear officers to instantly carry out his launch order.

The Just War--a Christian theory?

2011-08-10T18:18:00.003-04:00

It's not exactly front-page news, but the US Air Force has dropped an ethics course that's required for officers whose fingers will be on the nuclear trigger, due to a lawsuit brought by atheists.

The Air Force has suspended a course that was taught by chaplains for more than 20 years because the material included Bible passages.

The course, called “Christian Just War Theory” was taught by chaplains at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., and used Scripture from both the Old and New Testaments to show missile launch officers that it can be moral to go to war.

But the watchdog group, Military Religious Freedom Foundation, said the course violated the constitutional separation of church and state and filed a complaint last Wednesday on behalf of 31 missile launch officers – both instructors and students.

David Smith, the spokesman for the Air Force’s Air Education and Training Command, said the main purpose of the class was to help missile launch officers understand that “what they are embarking on is very difficult and you have to have a certain amount of ethics about what you are doing to do that job.”

He said the class was suspended the same day the complaint was filed.

The class is currently under review by Air Force officials who will determine whether or not to revise the material or end the class.

Apparently one the the big bugaboos was that the officers' class time was being wasted being taught how God ordered Israel to carry out genocide on the Canaanites.

There are several factors to consider here:

1) There are no just wars. All wars include killing nonbelligerent civilians, destroying public infrastructure, damaging the economy, and--even for the winning side--running a public deficit. At best, a war can have a just cause and a just conclusion. But in between there's a whole lot of just plain savagery.

2) These were nuclear officers, who therefore represent a special subset of soldiers. Nuclear weapons, by their very nature, are so horrible that they are only used as a last resort. Therefore a nuclear officer has to be, at the same time, both reluctant to resort to the nuclear option, yet decisive in exercising it the second it is truly required. He has to have settled in his own mind under what circumstances he would be willing to pull the trigger.

3) As unjust as war is in its nature, and as horrible as nuclear weapons are in their use, we are all better off if those in charge of wars--and especially the nuclear weapons that may be used in those wars--have strict moral guidelines to keep them from inflicting the full level of harm of which they are capable. Denying nuclear officers this training could only make the world a more dangerous place to be.

On the other hand, one unexpected consequence of banning chaplains from indoctrinating nuclear officers to kill can be seen in the case of the Navy, which apparently doesn't have such a course for its nuclear officers--just a questionnaire:

The question that changed Michael Izbicki’s life appeared on a psychological exam he took not long after graduating in 2008 near the top of his class at the United States Naval Academy: If given the order, would he launch a missile carrying a nuclear warhead?

Ensign Izbicki said he would not — and his reply set in motion a two-year personal journey and legal battle that ended on Tuesday, when the Navy confirmed that he had been discharged from the service as a conscientious objector.

Without an official chaplain to tell them that God approves of them launching a warhead that is guaranteed to kill thousands of civilians--men, women, and children--more nuclear officers can be expected to read the Bible for themselves--and come to a different conclusion.

Definition of Niggerhood

2011-08-09T13:07:00.000-04:00

Inasmuch as I have used a certain word a few times in this blog, I though I should stop and define it for the benefit of my readers who have most likely never encountered it the way I use it.

As a boy, I could have gotten my mouth washed out for using the word 'nigger'. During the era of Race Riots and forced desegregation, it was a word so charged with emotion that just using it could incite a riot. I myself thought of it as a pretty demeaning appellation, so I saw no reason to use it for several decades.

In recent years, however--especially reading the series of biohistorical novels by Mildred D. Taylor, I've come to realise that the word 'nigger' best encapsulates the experience of someone who is discriminated against because he belongs to a suppressed class. The word itself comes from the Southern English pronunciation of the pidgin word for black-skinned person, nigga. It has also been pronounced nigra, and originates in the latin word for black. All of this goes back to the fact that black-skinned people have throughout recorded history been taken as slaves in battle, and that this custom persisted centuries after the custom died out among the other races. In fact, it persists to this day, with the black slave trade curtailed but still active in the geographically diminished country of Sudan (which name, by the way, means 'black').

But being a nigger doesn't necessarily have anything to do with slavery. Niggerhood persisted by custom in the American South for many decades after slavery was abolished, and wherever the Police State raises its ugly head, niggerhood inevitably will be found as well. Niggerhood is simply the state of belonging to a class, the members of which are considered to be not worthy of the rights and privileges enjoyed by members of the ruling class. The recent rhetoric in Washington, for example, to the effect that members of the Tea Party ought to be "taken out and shot" for opposing Obama's debt-raising scheme, indicates that in the mind of the ruling class, even legally elected members of this newest class of Niggers don't really deserve to belong--nor, apparently, even to live. It is typical of the suppressing class to seek to kill members of the suppressed class who 'get uppity' and try to find a legal way to express their human rights--in fact, the whole notion of lynching is based on this characteristic.

So, my dear readers, be advised that I use the word "nigger" not in any specific racial sense whatsoever, but merely as shorthand for "member of a suppressed class" whether that suppression be political, economic, or social in nature. In fact, niggers will invariably encounter all of the above, should their identity become known.

How to run afoul of the Patriot Act by doing absolutely nothing for 20 years

2011-08-08T13:51:00.002-04:00

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — According to the federal government, two sisters in rural Kentucky do not exist.

Raechel Colleen Schultz and her sister, Stephanie Marie Schultz, were born at home in Kentucky and Alabama respectively. They were home-schooled and their parents never sought birth certificates, vaccination records or Social Security numbers for them.

Now, 29-year-old Raechel and 23-year-old Stephanie have sued the Social Security Administration in an effort to get Social Security numbers and cards, which will allow them to work legally. The suit, filed July 29 in U.S. District Court in London, Ky., is the latest legal battle for the women as they attempt to obtain legal recognition of their existence.

"No one has ever heard of anything like this before," said their attorney, Douglas Benge. "When the girls first came to see me, it's one of those things of, 'What do I do now?'"

Notice first of all that these women ('girls' seems to be unintentionally demeaning here) are not accused or even suspected of any crime. If anything, it was their parents who offended the law by failing to get them registered, but it is the girls who are now being punished for it. Without the ability to be recognized by the government, they have absolutely no rights as citizens--even though they have lived their entire lives in the United States. Furthermore, without being able to legally identify themselves, they are deprived of even basic civil rights, like the ability to use public transportation, drive, or even get out of jail on bail if unjustly arrested. In short, they are no better off than the niggers of 50 years ago--maybe worse. They not only can't sit in the front of the bus--they aren't even allowed on at all.

More misinformation from the vaccination front

2011-08-01T14:38:00.004-04:00

Parents who do not allow their children to be vaccinated against polio now risk jail time for defying a government order aimed at ensuring that the disease is eradicated from Africa's most populous nation, authorities said Friday.

Tajuddeen Gambo, the permanent secretary of the Kano state health ministry, told The Associated Press that Nigeria has a law that punishes parents who refuse their children access to health care.

"Polio immunization is part of health care," Gambo said.

Let's see if we can make sense of this. Giving a child drops of live but attenuated polio virus--something that can actually cause people to contract a crippling or fatal case of polio--is heath care. How, we wonder, would one define heath assault?

Alas, there appears to be no such legally defined category of crime or trespass. In fact, in the USA, medical malpractice laws specifically exempt inoculators. You can sue a doctor for giving you any treatment that turns out to be ineffective or harmful--unless it's a vaccination. In that case, he's immune from litigation. Why is that?

Let's continue the story:

Tommi Laulajainen, the UNICEF chief of communications for polio efforts in Nigeria, explains that it takes four rounds of drops for children to be completely out of danger.

Completely out of danger from what? Contracting polio, we suppose--although no one will guarantee in writing that an inoculation being given is 100% effective. But what about the first three rounds--what dangers might they hold?

We have to make sure we capture every single child," he said. "Because if one child is not protected against polio, he or she can get the virus and spread it very quickly to other children in the community."

This statement flies in the face of the previous quote. What possible danger could children who've received all four drops be in from their immunized fellows? Well, remember the four drops: children who've only received one, two, or three could contract polio from those who've received none at all--or from each other!

If you think about it, this argument falls short on its very claims. Polio could continue to be spread, indefinitely, among children who have not yet received the full round of shots, could it not?

He said a collaboration with religious leaders has been particularly fruitful over the years and that health workers have used a variety of communication tools such as drama, radio, street theater, town criers and strong visuals to remind parents that polio will keep lurking until it's wiped out.

But it will never be wiped out to the point that it's not lurking. Governments of the world will continued to hang on to the active virus as a potential biological weapon, while they continue to vaccinate their own troops against the possibility of the other side doing the same. No virus, under such circumstances, can ever be wiped out.

Nigeria's needle-wielding vaccinators are living in a dreamland.

Playing Monopoly with William: a lesson on The Federal Debt Limit

2011-07-29T14:10:00.006-04:00

As a boy, I had a friend named William whom I did a lot with. It wasn't always fun for me, though, because William--being over a year older than me and much more forceful in personality--seemed to always get his way. And it wasn't just that we always did what he wanted to do: he seemed to come out on top in whatever game we played.

Take Risk, for instance. No matter how I rolled the dice, I never won a game. I'd put 26 armies on the border of my continent, only to have him mass 56 armies against me. Then there was Monopoly. How he always ended up with 2 hotels on both Broadway and Park Place I could never figure out--nor could I avoid the inevitable landing on one or the other.

Since our Monopoly games tended to end as soon as this happened, William came up with an ingenious way to keep going: A Credit Line from the Bank. All I had to do was scribble "IOU $1200" on a piece of paper and put it in the bank (which didn't usually have enough cash on hand to handle the transaction otherwise). Boyd would then add the credit slip to his pile of cash and the game would go on. This was great! But those two hotels were still on each of the dark blue properties, and it was only a matter of time before I landed on them again. Around about the time I hit $18,000 in debt, I realized that I was only postponing the inevitable. I could continue to borrow imaginary money forever, but I could never win against William. I finally conceded the game--relieved that my debt, huge as it was, didn't really exist.

This is exactly the situation that the US Congress faces this week. Seventy-eight times in the past fifty-one years, they have signed off on yet another IOU and slipped it in the bank, only to forestall the inevitable default that comes from continuing to live beyond their means. Yet they keep coming around to land on Park Place after the next election, necessitating another round of funny money to keep the whole system afloat. They can keep on raising the debt ceiling for a while, but unlike my friend William, America's creditors aren't going to let the game go on forever. Sooner or later, they're going to call the game--and request payment in specie.

America's Day of Reckoning is coming--and the longer Congress puts off dealing with it, the more it's going to hurt when they finally do.

Indications of sudden death--or something else?

2011-07-28T12:25:00.005-04:00

In this article in the Biblical Archaeology Review, the remains of an ancient Palestinian are described as "a badly crushed human skeleton . . . sprawled on its back with limbs splayed, indicative of sudden death."

I ran a search on "indicative of sudden death" and found that all other references were to forensic investigations in the present. This was the only one in an archaeological setting. And there were no hits whatsoever for the two terms in juxtaposition, "limbs splayed", and "sudden burial."

Actually, it is sudden burial, not sudden death, which is most likely indicated by a crushed and splayed skeleton. Most people who die suddenly are subsequently laid to rest in a position of calm repose, with nothing to indicate how fast it took them to die.

I raise this issue because most vertebrate fossils are found sprawled and crushed, and often fragmentary; very indicative of sudden burial--and just as sudden contemporaneous death. Yet the classic view of fossilisation requires a long and gradual process of burial.

If archaeologists can clearly recognise the signs of sudden burial--whether or not they know what to properly call it--why can't paleontologists?

Sarah Palin's Views on Abstinence Lead to Second Grandchild?

2011-07-23T18:05:00.000-04:00

I just have to comment on this. Saying that abstinence education leads to pregnancy is like saying nutrition education leads to obesity; they're leaving out the actual cause, which is premarital sex and overeating, respectively.

In September 2008, Sarah's 17-year-old daughter Bristol announced that she was five months pregnant while her mother continued to support beliefs that obviously do not work within her own family. That year she also voted to cut funding to a program that helped support teen mothers, according to the Washington Post.
In the ultimate hypocrisy, Bristol went on to earn more than $260,000 in 2009 as an advocate against teen pregnancy while at the same time admitting that abstinence was not realistic.

More when I get to it . . .

Here's a very interesting link

2011-07-21T16:50:00.003-04:00

US Debt Clock in Real Time

here's another one:
Gas Price Map

I got these both from refdesk.com, a site run by the other Drudge, Bob.

One giant leap--for gender sensitivity?

2011-07-20T09:13:00.006-04:00

It's been forth-two years since Humanity went to the Moon. When the first human stepped off the Eagle onto the Sea of Tranquility, they said, "That's one small step for a person, one giant leap for Humankind."

Or at least, that's how it would read in the NNIV.

But the stubborn fact remains, only Men have ever been to the moon.

Slaves or souls: The NIV in Genesis 12:5

2011-07-18T14:54:00.001-04:00

For an exhaustive verse-by-verse and book-by-book comparison between the ONIV, TNIV, and NNIV, see this website.

Developing . . .

Genesis 12:5 KJV
And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran; and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan; and into the land of Canaan they came.

NIV
He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Harran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there.

Revelation 18:13 KJV
And cinnamon, and odours, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men (καὶ σωμάτων καὶ ψυχὰς ἀνθρώπων).

NIV
cargoes of cinnamon and spice, of incense, myrrh and frankincense, of wine and olive oil, of fine flour and wheat; cattle and sheep; horses and carriages; and (ONIV) bodies and souls of men /(NNIV) human beings sold as slaves.

The latter verse is the only place where the KJV has any form of the word 'slave.' The question is, does the KJV refer to slaves in the previous verse?

Rabbinic tradition holds that the reference to “souls that they had made in Haran” means converts to Judaism from Haran. This is clearly anachronistic.

The word itself is הַנֶּפֶשׁha-nefesh, which is typically translated as 'the soul.' It's used quite a bit in Genesis to refer to any living, breathing creature.

What to do it CPS/DHS/DCS takes away your children (except by then it's probably too late)

2011-07-14T12:28:00.000-04:00

As a result of this post, I'm getting a lot of hits from people wondering what happens when Big Brother makes good on his claim to their children.

I haven't had it happen to myself--not the whole process anyway--but I've seen it happen enough times to give you a pretty good idea. Let's go through the flow chart:

1. Are the children yours? If not, kiss them goodbye; you'll probably never see them again. They will join the long line of "lonely children waiting to be adopted." Two biological parents, married to each other, probably will get their own children back, if anything short of rape or attempted murder is alleged.

2. Is it Friday afternoon? Then this is probably a politically motivated stunt meant to scare you into submission. You can work on getting them back starting first thing Monday (or Tuesday) morning.

3. Have any criminal charges been filed? If not, then Big Brother will try to get you to sign something "for the good of the children." You do not have to sign anything, you do not have to let them in your house, you do not have to let them take your children. Short of a criminal investigation, they have no grounds to touch your kids.

If you already let them take your kids away before you read this, so sorry. Tell everyone you know not to let it happen to them.

Why you WILL need off-grid capability

2011-07-13T15:51:00.001-04:00

President Obama admits it--China has hacked into the nation's power grid and can turn it off at will.

You'd better have an alternate source of power, because sooner of later you WILL need to use it.

Standing by for the REAL Y2K.

How to make money by selling to your victims while someone else pays for it

2011-07-12T14:51:00.000-04:00

Here we go round the mulberry bush:

1) Pharmaceutical companies push for a new vaccine
2) The government mandates its use and subsidises it for low income families
3) Said company makes billions selling the vaccine to people who don't want it and can't afford it (what better marketing plan could anyone dream up?)
4) The vaccine causes autism in a given percentage of cases (even with a very low percentage, with universal inoculation we're talking many thousands of cases)
5) The Pharmaceutical company donates millions to foundations that push autism awareness
6) Said foundations get the government to underwrite treatment for autism
7) Pharmaceutical companies market autism-treatment drugs to gullible familes

and on and on it goes.

If you manage to get past the TSA, watch out for the Secret Service!

2011-07-11T20:17:00.001-04:00

Some random things the Secret Service has been handcuffing people for lately:

- Running your own mint making one-ounce sterling silver Presidential Dollars (of a future president)

- Running your own 'security camera' taking pictures of store customers (the security guard AND the customers approved)

Oh, and they confiscated all the dollars. And all the computers.

The stupidity of buying computers from a communist country

2011-07-08T18:32:00.000-04:00

So, China is loading the computers they sell us--both civilian and military--with the capability to at least spy on us, and perhaps take us over. Ah, free enterprise.

Dichotomy or Trichotomy: The NIV in Isaiah 57:16

2011-07-08T17:01:00.000-04:00

Does Isaiah 57:16 refer to spirits and souls, spirits, or just people?

KJV
For I will not contend for ever, neither will I be always wroth: for the spirit should fail before me, and the souls [which] I have made.

NIV
I will not accuse forever, nor will I always be angry, for then (ONIV) the spirit of man would grow faint before me—the breath of man that I have created /(NNIV) they would faint away because of me— the very people I have created.

Why NATO attacked Libya

2011-07-05T18:51:00.001-04:00

Obama says that the US needs to fight Ghadaffi because he's killing civilians. How about Bashir, then?

Over the past four weeks, Government of Sudan (GoS) troops and allied militia have carried out a vicious and murderous attack on the people of the Nuba Mountains in the Sudanese state of South Kordafan. This is the very same government that perpetrated genocide in Darfur and continues to carry out devastating attacks on the region. Tellingly, Sudan’s president, Omer Al-Bashir, is already wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity for the atrocities perpetrated in Darfur.

The real reason why NATO attacked Libya is that Ghadaffi was trying to take not only his country, but as many as would come with it, back to the gold standard. This was clearly unacceptable to the powers that be: hence, the billion-dollar-a-day military operation to remove him from power.

Are saggy pants really a threat to airline safety?

2011-06-24T20:21:00.002-04:00

A dispute that began after a passenger refused to pull up his sagging pants led to his arrest and removal from a plane at San Francisco International Airport on Wednesday, police said.

Deshon Marman, 20, a University of New Mexico football player . . . was being held at San Mateo County Jail on suspicion of trespassing, battery and resisting arrest.

Not to mention all the passengers that were ordered off the plane so he could be arrested in private.

Clearly, the War Against Terror, as it is waged by the TSA, is nothing but a war against individual liberty, with millions of innocent Americans as its victims.

Biographical Fiction and the Snakes of Vietnam

2011-06-22T15:33:00.002-04:00

The Land I Lost by Quang Nhuong Huynh has been read by many an elementary teacher to her students. Probably all accept its stories as gospel truth, because the author really did grow up in the mountains of Vietnam.

Likewise, for many decades teachers have read the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder to their students, assured that what they related must be true because Laura really did grow up where she said she did. Now, however, we know that the Little House books were highly fictionalized, with changes in names, ages, and family relationships of the characters, as well as both lapses and inversions in the chronology. Time compression and composite characters are other typical features of dramatized biography.

We need to recognize The Land I Lost for what it is--novelized dramatized biography. How much of the account is actually based on truth, we can only guess. But we certainly shouldn't go adding the Horse Snake (which can kill by both constriction and venom, and is mesmerised by burning the fat of a certain fish) and the Two Step Snake (which can kill just by breathing on its victim) to our Vietnamese Bestiary, just because both animals play prominent roles in the book. In fact, it appears that almost nothing in the book is zoologically accurate. The book should be filed not under Biography, but Mythology--not that educators have learned anything from The Education of Little Tree.

And yet the ACLU has no problem whatsoever that teachers not only read it as literature during instructional time, but expect their students to actually believe it.

Were the founders of Christianity Jews or not?

2011-06-15T10:27:00.000-04:00

"On the venerable day of the Sun let the magistrates and people residing in cities rest, and let all workshops be closed. In the country however persons engaged in agriculture may freely and lawfully continue their pursuits because it often happens that another day is not suitable for grain-sowing or vine planting; lest by neglecting the proper moment for such operations the bounty of heaven should be lost."

Thus decreed Constantine the Great in 321, marking the beginning of the 2-day weekend. It was only later that resting on the Sabbath was prohibited, thus making the practice of Messianic Judaism illegal.

Since the idea of religious freedom and a secular state was first proven in America, it has become possible--if not always practical--for Jews and Christians alike to observe the first day of the weekend as a day of rest.

Jake has a very provoking blog post on the deprecation of Jewish Christianity, in which he asks the question,
"Is there any other religion that paints its first adherents as people who never “got it,” never understood their own religion?"

Roman Catholics react to the loss of their New Testament

2011-06-09T13:14:00.003-04:00

During the 1970's it was a common misconception that the term "separation of church and state" was enshrined in the US Constitution. In fact, as someone pointed out, the phrase was found in the English version of the Soviet Constitution. It was as if the Communist creed being available in English could somehow overrule our native rights.

We see a similar situation in Roman Catholicism, in which, without any ruling from the college of cardinals or even a bull from the Pontiff himself, the orthodox version of the Latin Bible has been replaced, at least in the New Testament portion, by the Latin translation of a critical Greek text, resulting in the wholesale loss of portions of Scripture formerly held to be divinely inspired and authoritative.

***********************************************
Ron Conte Jr. this summer completed an evaluation of the UBS text and its negative impact on the NV (New Vulgate) Latin edition. He lists several key points online here:

"I was dismayed and appalled by the decisions of the editors of the Nova Vulgata, especially to abandon the Latin scriptural tradition approved by the Council of Trent, and adopt in its place the critical Greek text of Matthew by the (Protestant) United Bible Societies. The UBS text, and the NV as well, omits over one hundred words from the Gospel, found in the Latin Vulgate, includes at least a couple of whole verses."

Problems with the Nova Vulgata (NV):

1. the NV abandons the Latin scriptural tradition

2. the New Testament is simply a representation of the Protestant UBS (United Bible Societies) Greek text

3. the New Testament ignores all Latin and all Greek sources, other than the UBS text, which is mainly the work of Protestant scholars

4. the NV changes the wording in some verses out of political correctness, without any support in any manuscripts for those changes

5. the Latin scriptural tradition is supposed to be used by Bible scholars to settle any uncertain or disputed readings of the text in Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic. But since the NV does not represent the Latin scriptural tradition, but instead represents the Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic, it is not useful for that purpose

6. The Council of Trent declared that the Canon of Scripture includes all the parts of each book as found in the old Latin vulgate Bible (the Latin scriptural tradition). But the NV rejects the Latin scriptural tradition, and removes from the Canon very many words and phrases, as well as more than a few entire verses.

7. The NV relies on the Protestant Stuttgart Vulgate for its base text, ignoring the Pope Sixtus V and Pope Clement VIII Vulgate which was used by the Church for several hundred years as the official Latin Bible.

8. The only version of the NV contains hundreds of typographical errors.

9. The New Testament of the NV shows an appalling lack of editorial discretion. The Latin text is forced to conform to the Greek UBS text even when this makes the Latin text awkward or grammatically incorrect. Editorial decisions other than merely changing the Latin to conform lock step with the Greek are rare.

Breastfeeding fathers? The NIV and Numbers 11:12

2011-06-07T17:52:00.007-04:00

"Have I conceived all this people? have I begotten them, that thou shouldest say unto me, Carry them in thy bosom, as a nursing father beareth the sucking child, unto the land which thou swarest unto their fathers?" --KJV

Now, there's a problem with this. Has anyone ever heard of a nursing father? Yet the word is in the masculine gender. This is how the NASB has it:

"Was it I who conceived all this people? Was it I who brought them forth, that You should say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom as a nurse [Or foster-father] carries a nursing infant, to the land which You swore to their fathers’?" --NASB

Now, by 2010, 'nurse' still carried a female connotation, but much less so than it did 50 or even 25 years earlier, when a man who was a nurse was always referred to as "a male nurse."

So, let's give the CBT credit for making the best of the gender-specificity problem on the first try.

"Did I conceive all these people? Did I give them birth? Why do you tell me to carry them in my arms, as a nurse carries an infant, to the land you promised on oath to their forefathers?" --ONIV

But the New and Improved NIV couldn't resist getting rid of that last vestige of sexism, the word "forefathers:"

"Did I conceive all these people? Did I give them birth? Why do you tell me to carry them in my arms, as a nurse carries an infant, to the land you promised on oath to their ancestors?" --NNIV

The NLT clearly went too far trying to feminize the entire verse:

"Did I give birth to them? Did I bring them into the world? Why did you tell me to carry them in my arms like a mother carries a nursing baby? How can I carry them to the land you swore to give their ancestors?"

But focusing on gender only obscures a literal understanding of the passage. This is the situation: Moses is complaining to God that the people he gave him are too much to bear. Moses asks some rhetorical questions:

Why are you picking on me?
What have I done to deserve this?
Did I conceive these people?
Did I carry them in my womb?
Did I give birth to this people?
(implied answer: No)
Then why are you making me carry them at my breast all the way to the promised land?
How can I possibly feed them all? They are hollering for food.

This is obviously a metaphorical picture Moses is painting, of someone who has never been pregnant, much less given birth--and therefore can't lactate--being handed a baby and told to nurse it. S/he can't! Neither can Moses handle the burden of providing food for six hundred thousand men and their families.

God's answer?

"Okay, so you can't handle the responsibility for all these whiners. Send seventy men up on the mountain and I'll distribute your authority upon them so they can share the load of leading my people."

This is clearly the intended meaning of this passage. Interpreting it literally, ask the KJV does, offends the language; we don't have nursing fathers--at least not in the dialects of most English speakers. Interpreting it metaphorically, on the other hand, unpacks the literal meaning: Moses didn't think he could physically handle the job God had given him.

The NIV, more concerned with gender sensitivity than unpacking the meaning, obscures the literal meaning by translating ha-omen as "nurse." For one thing, it's not the usual Hebrew word for wet-nurse; look how the NIV translates its other occurrences in the Bible:

Ruth 4:16 Then Naomi took the child in her arms and cared for him.

Lamentations 4:5b Those brought up in royal purple now lie on ash heaps.

Isaiah 49:23 Kings will be your foster fathers, and their queens your nursing mothers.

Isaiah 60:4 Your sons come from afar, and your daughters are carried on the hip.

The word omen signifies, not a breastfeeding relationship, but one of caring for a nursing baby in other ways than breastfeeding. Moses uses it ironically: God is telling him to take a nursing baby, and care for it himself--without breastfeeding--all the way through the wilderness journey to the promised land! Clearly this is impossible, as Moses sees the situation. So let's see how we could allow this meaning, clear in Hebrew, to come across in English:

So Moses said to YHWH, "Why are You doing this to Your servant? What have I done to deserve You putting the burden of all these people on me? Did I conceive all these people, or give them birth, that You should say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom,’ as if I were a father carrying his nursing child all the way to the land which You swore to their forefathers? Where am I to get meat to give to all these people? For theirs is a constant whine in mine ears, saying, ‘Give us meat, that we may eat.’"

Can you have an albino child from a white mother and a black father?

2011-06-06T16:15:00.014-04:00

This was a question asked by one of my readers. In a word, Yes.

Albinism is an independently arising mutation which renders the body incapable of producing pigment. It is passed on as a recessive gene, so a black parent can have an unpigmented child. In fact, is is the usual state of things that an albino child will have parents who are not themselves albinos.

Now, there is more to the question than this. What if a white woman gives birth to a white child--is there any chance that the father was black? The answer to that question is also Yes, but with qualification.

A child carries genes from both of his parents, which in turn were inherited from the grandparents. A child with one white and one black grandfather, and one white and one black grandmother, can be anything from almost completely white to almost completely black. So, if a white woman gives birth to a white baby, there are three possible reasons:

1) The father was purely white (most common reason).
2) The father was partly white (next common reason).
3) The father and mother carry the albinism gene. If this is the case, the child will have some of its father's physical traits, but without his skin colour.

There is only one more question to answer: can an albino mother have a black baby? Yes, because the gene for expressing skin colour is dominant. Only if the father also has the recessive gene for albinism, and only if he passes it on to his offspring, will the offspring be albino--unless a mutation arises anew in that generation lacking the genetic capability of producing skin colour.

UPDATE JULY 11, 2011

I'm getting a lot of hits on this post, so I'll go into even further detail.

1) Q: What causes a baby to be born albino?
A: There are two basic reasons why a baby could be born albino:
1. The most common reason: Both his mother and his father carry the gene for albinism, and both of them passed that gene on to him. Such parents only have a 25% chance of having an albino child, a 50% chance of having a child who carries the albino gene, and a 25% chance of having a child without the gene for albinism. Such are the statistical chances; I've not seen any studies that show the numbers as actually observed. The odds drop to 1 in 16 for 2 albino children, and 1 in 64 for three; still, better odds than having twins, so it does happen.
2. The original reason: The first albino, way back in the mists of time, was the result of a mutation in his father's line that lost the ability to produce skin pigment, combined with a mutation in his mother's line that did the same thing. This did not need to happen in the same generation; the father could have been born with the defective gene and the mother's egg spontaneously lost its function, resulting in the first fully albino genotype. Or vice versa. This obviously happened in the past, so it could happen again, but because the human genome is designed to detect and correct errors before they are passed on, the chances are minuscule.

2) Q: Do albinos always have albino children?
A: No, only the children of two albinos will always come out albino. Children of an albino and an albinism carrier have a 50 per cent chance of being albino themselves. A couple in which both carry the albino gene may have all albino children, but that possibility becomes less and less likely the more children they have. If a person without the albino gene has children with an albino, all their children will carry the albino gene, but none will be albinos, except in the case of #2 above.

I know of families who had several albino children, so it can happen. But I don't know of any albinos who married each other--although one would expect that to eventually happen. It's possible to raise up a whole race of albinos--such as the Albino deer herd on an army base in New York. Or the albino rabbit. Such only happens, though, under special circumstances that make up for the survival advantages that all albinos lack.

3) Can someone be almost albino?

Not exactly; there are various degrees of albinism, but only three possible genetic states:

1. Both genes (one from the father, one from the mother) carry some information on pigmentation (it's actually a bit more complicated, in that there are about a dozen genes in all that have influence on skin colour). The dominant gene will be evidenced in the person's skin colour.

2. One gene contains information on pigmentation, whilst the other is an albino gene, unable to produce pigment. This person will still have skin colour based on the dominant gene, but will be able to pass on the defective gene. There's no way of telling by looking at a person if he carries the albino gene or not, as it is unexpressed.

3. Both genes (one from each parent) are albino genes, and the person is unable to manufacture any pigment. He has ruddy white skin, blond hair, and blue eyes (the default colours when no pigment is present). All he can pass on to his children are albino genes, so all of his children will be either #2 or #3.

Now, some people have genes that are just barely able to produce pigment, so they will resemble an albino in many ways: ruddy white skin, blond hair, blue eyes. But they are capable of producing some melanin, so they will be able to tan slowly (although they will burn very easily). But these people are not technically albinos and are usually not referred to as such, except in jest.

4) Can white people be albino?

Albinism is the inability to manufacture melanin, the main pigment in skin, hair, and the iris of the eye. Regardless of what other genetic information may be present for producing a particular colour of skin, hair, or eye, the albino is unable to use it. Thus albinos are all the same in this respect, regardless of whether they would otherwise be considered "black" or "white." This is also why someone with only one albino gene is totally normal in appearance; the gene from the other parent is able to facilitate the production of however much melanin is called for by the rest of the genetic code.

The myth of respectability

2011-06-02T13:06:00.000-04:00

About one hundred years ago, Bible Institutes began to crop up in the United States of America. The impetus for starting them was to provide pastors with a biblical foundation for ministry, now that the mainline universities had more or less all switched to teaching modernism in their seminaries. There was no thought of accrediting the institutes, their founders having seen all to well what happened when religion became respectable.

Fifty or more years passed, and the federal government began getting involved in education. As more and more federal money flowed into the coffers of Bible Institutes, they came under more and more pressure to obtain certification as bona fide institutions of higher learning. Bigger schools had already long since started on the route of Bible Institute -> Denominational Bible College -> Nondenominational Liberal Arts College -> University. The smaller schools had all folded or been forced to forgo federal funding by 1995.

So here were are, with ministry students once again being forced to choose between a formerly Christian University that teaches evolution and social Darwinism, or a small struggling unaccredited institute run out of a local church. So short has been the turnaround, yet most students at the Universities are unaware that their own school may have fit the latter description during the very lifetime of some of their professors.

But there is a lesson to be learned in all of this, and we need look no further than Sweden, where the government has been involved in education as long as there has been a State Church. The Örebro Theological Seminary never aspired to be a University, but did seek accreditation as soon as it became available. So respectable was their curriculum that the public schools sought for teachers of religion from among their graduates.

But all that started to change in 2009.

According to Christianity Today, “The Swedish National Agency for Higher Education reported in June that state-supported schools must favor religious studies over theological education.” The government agency is in charge of inspecting and promoting higher education in the Scandinavian country, evaluates universities and colleges, conducts quality assessments, and takes initiatives in updating teaching methods.

Higher education in Sweden is free of charge as the school system is largely financed by taxes. A result of the policy change is that “students could ultimately lose government allowances, a necessity in the Swedish system of higher education,” according to Christianity Today.

So, the power of the purse always comes in to play. The National Board of Higher Education in Sweden decided that the course of education at the Seminary was--of all things--too religious. No matter how we cut it, true religion just doesn't get respect. In order to keep the kroner coming, the Seminary had to bring in more classes on religious criticism and de-certify practical courses like Homiletics. So we are back full circle: the aspiring preacher must now take an unaccredited class in order to learn his trade. He may as well go to school in a Log Cabin. But he'd better hope it doesn't become the next Princeton University and Theological Seminary.

Lisa Miller updates

2011-06-01T15:19:00.003-04:00

The following information is from an interview Lisa Miller gave in 2008:

-Janet Jenkins did not think she would be able to bond with Isabella because she was not her own flesh.
-Lisa was a foster parent at the time she became pregnant with Isabella and had to give the child up.
Janet said of Isabella; "I don’t want to have any responsibility for her – she’s not my child but I just want to see her once in a while."
-Janet told Lisa she wanted to kill her. This was when Lisa left the relationship.
-Janet requested that their civil union be dissolved so she could file for bankruptcy.
-Lisa is the only one named on Isabella's birth certificate; there is no mention of Janet Jenkins.

And in further news:
During the last month the US detectives, the US embassy people and the local police have been harassing the Jinotega brethren. (They have also questioned Alvino and Edna and two of Timo’s brothers.) They are constantly watching and trailing the Jinotega brethren and again and again ask them a lot of questions. They have even said that if they do not help them find out where Lisa is, they could deport some of them, or put them in jail or do what the local police do here when they investigate. (And that is not nice. It's a vicious threat!) They are not very nice about the whole thing and almost force people to talk. This has been a very tiring time for the brethren there.

Toward the beginning of all this they had come to the Jinotega school/church house combination to pick Lisa up, but God had sent her away already. Later they brought in a bunch of Special Forces to invade the house she had been living in. But she was gone.

President Obama's fraudulent Social Security Number

2011-05-31T15:54:00.005-04:00

Normally the White Man would not give out the Social Security Number of a living person, due to the likelihood that it would be used for identity theft. Ironically, though, President Obama obtained his number 042-68-4425 in exactly that way: taking over the social security number of a Connecticut resident who was born in 1890 and obtained the number in March 1977. This was, as nearly as anyone can tell, after Barack had already begun working in Hawaii, using a Social Security number that he has managed to keep secret ever since, presumably by switching to another one sometime in the mid-'80's.

There is one document on which Barack probably did use his valid number, though: his Selective Service Registration, which he allegedly completed on July 30, 1980. But there's something fishy about that registration, implying that he's had the computer record altered to contain his 'new' social security number.
And look what happens if you try to run an incognito search on Barack Obama II's Selective Service File:
Error.
Sorry, your request cannot be processed at this time because you have exceeded the daily limit for the verification of these credentials.

It's unlikely that the truth about Obama's fabrications will come out during his political career. We may have to wait for a book from Sasha entitled "My Father was Dreaming," a report of her exhaustive attempts to find out just who her father really was.

Zero Tolerance: Another Case of Unintended Consequences

2011-05-27T18:10:00.000-04:00

It's yet another sign that America is descending into chaos, a would-be West Point Graduate was expelled from school for shooting spit wads, under Spotsylvania High's "Zero Tolerance Policy."

What these social architects don't seem to realise is that when the punishment is way disproportionate to the crime, it doesn't deter crime, but only encourages even greater crime the next time. As the old English saying goes, "In for a penny, in for a pound." Another way of putting it, more chillingly, is "The first you have to pay for. All the rest are free."

Fourth Amendment: RIP

2011-05-26T14:02:00.004-04:00

In what could easily become a weekly series of posts called "One More Step in the Descent to a Police State," I here note that the TSA has nullified a bill in the Texas legislature that would make it a felony for TSA workers to sexually molest travelers, by threatening to ban all flights to Texas if it were passed.

And the Indiana Supreme Court has already banned citizens from protecting themselves against such assault.

Obama said he'd bring change.

Barack Hussein Obama's birth certificate: still missing--and always will be

2011-05-25T13:11:00.013-04:00

In my previous post, I wrote that more information would be forthcoming on the contested birth date of Barack Hussein Obama. We can't ever expect to know exactly when he was born, as the tribal peoples of Kenya did not reckon time in that way back then. Nonetheless, in his interactions with the US government, Barack had to give a birth date. He finally settled on one, but as I show here, it took a while.

I have compiled a list of 40 entries from his INS file and arranged them chronologically. Much of that information has now been incorporated into this post. What I excerpt here are just those dated entries containing a field for his birth date:

2/19/1959 UH Certificate of Eligibility Date of Birth 1934
8/9/1959 Form I-94 Birthdate 18/6/1934 (British notation)
9/21/1959 UH Report of Registration June 18, 1934
1959 several forms: date left blank by Barack Hussein Obama
7/24/1960 UH Certificate of Eligibility 6/18/1934
7/28/1960 Visa extension application June 18, '34
8/18/1960 Alien Registration Fingerprint Card 6/18/1934
8/31/1961 Form I-539 Visa extension application 18 June 1934
6/27/1962 Form I-20B June 18, 1934
8/17/1962 Form I-20A June 18, 1936
9/26/1962 Form AR-11 Change of address card June 18, 1934
6/16/1963 Form I-539 Visa extension application June 18, 1936
4/21/1964 Form I-539 Visa extension application June 18, 1936
6/9/1964 Form I-530 Extension denial card 6/18/34
7/22/1964 INS Report of Investigation 6/18/36

Thus we see that the switch in Obama's birth date occurred sometime in the summer of 1962, with the new date not quite firmly fixed in Barack's mind by the end of September, and not reflected in the INS' internal records until two years later. While expressing bewilderment as to the exact number of his wives, INS officials never appear to have noticed the multiplicity of birth dates.

Note, moreover--and this is significant: The Long Form Certificate of Live Birth pseudofacsimile released by Barack Obama II gives his father's age as 25 on August 4, 1961, giving Barack The First a birth date in 1936--and this was a whole year before said father stopped telling the INS that he was born in 1934.

Furthermore, 1936 is also the date given for his birth on the Kenyan Birth Certificate of his son. Oh boy. This basically leaves us with the likelihood that EVERY known facsimile of Barack Hussein Obama II's birth certificate is fraudulent. And, as it turns out, one electrocodicologist has found damning evidence that they all came from the same source.

I can find no evidence whatsoever for the reason Barack Hussein Obama gave false information regarding his birth, but whatever it is, it appears to be hereditary.

The most pro-abortion President and his aborted sibling

2011-05-23T22:47:00.006-04:00

Barack Hussein Obama's Immigration File has been released following a request under the Freedom of Information Act. It contains some pretty damning information in and among such tidbits as:

- Barack Obama was deported from the US in 1964 after overstaying his student visa.
- He claimed to have been legally separated from his wife Ann in February 1964.
- He listed Barack II as a US citizen, even though no one disputes that he had Kenyan citizenship at the time.
- He was officially suspected of bigamy, as "no one could figure out how many wives he had."
- He alternately gave his birth date as June 18 in 1934 and 1936. See this post for details.
- He was considered "to be a slippery character."
- His Kenyan girlfriend flew to London in January 1964, presumably to have the child she was carrying for Barack legally killed. After this time, Barack "had money problems." Harvard was so disgusted with his behavior, they recommended he be deported.
- His address while at Harvard was The Koinonia Foundation. He also received stipends from the African American Institute, the Laubach Literacy Fund, and the Phelps-Stokes Fund--in addition to scholarships from the universities he attended.
- On some forms, he did not admit to being married. On one of these, he named his child as Roy Obama, with no wife listed.
- At the time his son Barack was born, he was in possession of a valid British passport.
- And, perhaps the most important of all: As far as the Immigration & Naturalization Service was concerned, Barack and his US citizen wife "Ann S. Dunham" had a child born in Honolulu on August 4, 1961. And they had been married since Feb 2, 1961.
- The INS considered deporting him as early as April 1961 for bigamy but he explained that he had verbally divorced his wife in Kenya before coming to the US, and planned to give up his then-unborn child for adoption. He was cautioned about "his playboy ways."
- His race upon entry to the US was listed as "Kenya."

We can tentatively draw some conclusions from this data:
1) Barack H. Obama I impregnated a girl while at Harvard and sent her off to London for an abortion. Due to his several sources of income, he was probably able to pay for it.
2) Ann Dunham was not the only girl Barack impregnated while at college, but apparently the only one who refused to have their child killed.
3) Barack, Ann, and Barry never lived together as a family. Barack was simply a baby-daddy and never supported Ann or Barry financially.
4) During the time period that his son Barry was born, Barack Obama I was not visiting Kenya, but working on a Dole pineapple plantation for $1.33 an hour (pretty good wages in 1961).
5) The INS has no record of Barack Obama leaving the US between his arrival in 1959 and his expulsion in 1964.

Finally:
Either President Obama's Kenyan Birth Certificate is a fraud, or someone has stolen information from his father's INS file regarding a trip back to Kenya in the summer of 1961. Given the two generations of slippery characters, either scenario is possible, although the latter is highly unlikely, given the information that remains in the file. But given the documented distance between Barack and Ann almost from the beginning of their relationship, it's highly unlikely he would have taken her back home for a visit right when she was expecting their illegitimate child.

In other words, it appears that Barack Hussein Obama II was born in America, after all. But that doesn't necessarily make him a Natural Born American Citizen, by his own definition as a presidential candidate.

Copasetic

2011-05-19T18:58:00.000-04:00

I first heard the word "Copasetic" used about 25 years ago. It was immediately clear from its context what the word meant: satisfactory. Linguists have puzzled for years, though, over where the word came from.

I would suggest that the word ultimately originated from the Greek phrase κομψός ἔχεις, which means 'getting along well'. There are several other Greek words with similar sounds and meaning, such as κοπάζω and especially its form κοπάσει.

One More Step toward a Police State

2011-05-18T18:13:00.003-04:00

The Indiana Supreme Court has today ruled 3-2 in Barnes v. Indiana that a homeowner has no right to resist the unlawful entry of someone claiming to be a policeman into his home.

"We believe however that a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence."
Shepard, C.J., and Sullivan, J., concur.
Dickson, J. dissents with a separate opinion.
Rucker, J. dissents with a separate opinion in which Dickson, J. concurs.

So there. The Fourth Amendment no longer applies in Indiana, if just over half the judges on the State Supreme Court say it doesn't.

And remember, in the case of a no-knock warrant, the police don't have to say anything at all before they burst through the door with guns blazing.

Four hundred thousand litres of wheat: The NIV and Luke 16:7

2011-05-18T12:27:00.000-04:00

Iver Larson writes in the Better Bibles Blog (apparently misquoting the actual figures):

I have seen an NIV that was obviously changed from imperial to metric with a quick search and replace, and any numeric references that didn’t have the unit afterwards were not converted. This turns the parable of the unjust steward in Luke 16 into something quite different:
“How much do you owe my master?” “3 kilolitres of wheat” “Well, take your bill and write 400″.

Consulting an imperial NIV showed that it was actually meant to go from 800 gallons to 400 gallons, which made some amount of sense.
I’d also add that we here at least would rarely use kilolitres in ordinary speech, and would probably say 3,000 litres of wheat (if we even measured wheat in litres). You may well use 3,000 and 1,500 in preference to 3 and 1.5 anyway.

Guess which Obama Birth certificate shows the most signs of forgery?

2011-05-17T21:45:00.005-04:00

Well, it's not the Kenyan one. Nor even the one released by the Obama campaign before the election.

This report by an electrocodicologist shows that Barack Hussein Obama II's long-form birth certificate is not a genuine copy; it has been electronically manipulated, with several different layers where information was replaced--including the signatures. And the registration number, which is out of chronological sequence, has also been tampered with. Furthermore, there's no raised seal certifying that it's genuine. Even the authenticating officer's stamp is altered, reading TXE instead of THE.

It gets curiouser and curiouser. At the rate the White House releases this sort of information, is it any wonder that those demanding he meet constitutional minimums for holding the nations' highest office are still not convinced that he does?

Update May 26: It appears that the Obama campaign pulled a trick from the illegal-identity handbook and altered a dead baby's birth certificate. It appears that Obama is only one senate election away from impeachment proceedings, on the grounds that he never qualified to be president in the first place, and used fraud to pretend that he did. Looks like Herman Cain might turn out to be America's first actual African-American president.

State take your kids? Submit to their oversight program, or they'll give them to somebody "more qualified."

2011-05-17T21:23:00.000-04:00

Stand by for the next "kidnapping" arrest: a Michigan couple who flee to Canada with their 7-year old son who is wanted by CPS for drinking the wrong kind of lemonade at a ball game.

Posted: 05/05/2011

(WXYZ) - All parents make mistakes, but in Michigan, one mistake could cost you your child. Critics say it’s happening all too often because we have one of the worst laws in the country when it comes to how and when the state can take your children.

“It was an unbelievable nightmare! Far worse than the death of my first child,” said Claire Zimmerman. Zimmerman’s son was taken from her for only three days but it was a harrowing experience her family will never forget.

It started as a night out with dad at a Tiger’s game and ended with their 7-year old boy in foster care.
“I felt totally helpless, I felt desperate,” Zimmerman told Action News Investigator Heather Catallo.
* * *
Experts say a child’s time in foster care is often prolonged because DHS requires the parents who are not even accused of abuse or neglect to comply with something called a “service plan” or “service agreement.” It’s a list of requirements that can include psychological evaluations and parenting classes, which often conflict with parents work hours. If you fail to follow the plan you may not get your kids back.

Steinberg and other lawyers say there’s another major flaw with the system: the state fails to place children with family even though Michigan law requires DHS to try to do that. In Leo’s case, Steinberg says DHS refused to release him to his aunts and even his own mom, who had nothing to do with what happened at the ballpark.

“What’s happening in Michigan is a pattern of kids being taken away from parents against whom no allegations are made, simply based on the other parent’s conduct,” said University of Michigan Law Professor Vivek Sankran. Sankran challenges DHS decisions in the court daily and he’s alarmed by what he calls the “guilt by association” problem. Sankran says both DHS and the courts are equally to blame for perfectly “fit” parents losing their children.

“We are one of two states in the country that have this type of doctrine. Most states have clear case law that unless you make allegations against a parent, that parent gets their kids back immediately,” said Sankran.

Sankran points to another troubling case. Bryson Stone’s mom abused drugs and willingly gave up the baby to his biological father, Milton Stone, right after Bryson was born.

“They said I would be able to take him home, and I was there at his birth,” said Stone.

Instead of allowing Milton to take his own son home, Wayne County DHS workers had Bryson put in foster care, even though Milton was never accused of abuse or neglect.

Milton is currently the foster parent to his cousin Antonio. This means Michigan DHS approved Milton to foster parent his cousin, but refuses to let him parent his own son.

Comments
Donita Sanders FOR 3 YEARS NOW I HAVE BEEN GOING THRU THE SAME THING..I AM THE AUNT OF NAPOLEON MOORE'S DAUGHTER...MY SISTER IS THERE MOTHER, AND BECAUSE MY AT THE TIME 7 YEARS OLD NIECE FATHER HAD SEXUALLY MOLESTED HER, SHE RIGHT ALONG WITH MY NEPHEWS WERE TAKING, I UNDERSTAND THAT THEY HAD TO INVESTIGATE..BUT WHAT I DON'T UNDERSTAND IS HOW THEY CAN JUST TAKE MY SISTERS RIGHT FROM HER 4 CHILDREN WHEN SHE WAS NEVER CONVICTED OR ACCUSED OF ANYTHING...THE MAN WHO DID IT WAS CONVICTED AND SENTENCED TO PRISON..THEY NEVER GAVE MY SISTER A CHANCE...THE TOOK HER NEW BORN CHILD WHO AT THE TIME WASN'T EVEN BORN..THEY TOOK MY NEPHEW WHEN AT THE TIME HE WAS OUT OF STATE VISITING HIS FATHER..AND TOOK MY OLDEST NEPHEW, WHEN HE WAS NEVER AROUND TO EVEN WITNESS ANY OF THIS HAPPENING...THE STATE CLAIMED THEY TOOK THE KIDS BECAUSE OF MY SISTER FAILURE TO PROTECT HER KIDS.

In related news . . .

In November of 1925, the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals affirmed the ruling of the Amherst County Circuit Court. A petition for certiorari was filed, briefs were submitted and on May 2, 1927, the United States Supreme Court upheld Virginia's eugenical sterilization law by a vote of 8 to 1 [274 U.S. 200 (1927)].

In his opinion, Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. relied on an earlier case, [Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1904)], which upheld a Massachusetts law requiring school children to be vaccinated against smallpox in support of the Court's decision. The assertions of the expert witnesses at Carrie Buck's original trial laid the groundwork for Chief Justice Holmes' resounding statement, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

On October 19, 1927, Carrie Buck was the first person in Virginia sterilized under the new law.

Heaven-sent lightning, then and now

2011-05-17T13:46:00.001-04:00

When James Otis died of a lightning strike in 1783, his eulogy ended with the following:

Yes, when the glorious work which he begun
Shall stand the most complete beneath the sun –
When peace shall come to crown the grand design,
His eyes shall live to see the work divine –
The heavens shall then his generous spirit claim,
In storms as loud as his immortal fame.
Hark! the deep thunders echo round the skies!
On wings of flame the eternal errand flies;
One chosen, charitable bolt is sped,
And Otis mingles with the glorious dead.

It had been several decades since Ben Franklin had proved that lightning was merely the discharge of electricity, but the centuries-old scientific theory, that lightning was specifically sent from heaven to a designated target, obviously still influenced the thinking of the educated class.

How far have we come in another 230 years?

Just last week, someone I know with an advanced degree joked about 'getting struck by lightning' for visiting church as an atheist.

Old ways of thinking die hard.

Kids--ever tempted to run away from home? Don't do it--just sue for an increase in allowance.

2011-05-09T22:16:00.000-04:00

Spanish courts recently have awarded several 20-something sloths hundreds of euros a month in child support--from their married parents.

Yes, that's right. You have a constitutional right to be supported financially by your parents as an adult, provided they're suckers enough to let you keep living with them.

What can I say.

Monowi, Nebraska: Requiem for the small town

2011-05-06T21:27:00.005-04:00

Monowi had always been a small town. But it contained, within living memory, a school, a church, and a general store. And a tavern, of course--the only business still operating. Elsie Eiler, the proprietor, is also the town's mayor. This gives her the unique privilege of renewing her own liquor licence every year.

You see, in addition to being Monowi's mayor, she's also the town treasurer and tax collector. As well as being the only resident taxpayer. She is, in short, the sole resident of Monowi, and has been ever since her husband died several years ago.

What happened to the thriving town of Monowi to shutter its store, its church, and its school? Why are all its streets overgrown with grass? Why have all of its houses been left to collapse, many of them still containing the possessions of their last inhabitants? And why is the only business still standing a tavern?

We can trace the demise of this town back to the excessive regulations that have gradually made everything in town unprofitable, except getting people drunk. And oh--by the way--state regulations make it so unprofitable to transfer Elsie's liquor licence that she's stuck with running the tavern herself until the day she dies. So when she dies, so dies the town. The irony is that her tavern has no lack of customers; they just, for one reason or another, don't happen to live in Monowi.

Nebraska can be a hard place to make a living--especially for farmers. The Amish who followed Yost Yoder from Juniata County, Pennsylvania out to Gosper County, Nebraska 130 years ago found that out. The dry plains just didn't yield the kind of harvests they were used to, and within 25 years they had all packed up and moved back to Pennsylvania, where even to this day their hard-working and simple-living descendants are known as "Nebraska Amish."

They were the first Amish to leave Nebraska, but they weren't the last.

More farmers moved into Nebraska in the years leading up to World War One. Railroads crisscrossed the state, making it possible for farmers to sell their harvests to consumers thousands of miles away. Those who could hang in there through the lean years would make it all back, and more, when they harvested a bumper crop with the latest machinery. But the War brought many changes to Nebraska, including the first in a series of regulations that drove hard-working farmers and merchants from the rural areas, and from the state as a whole.

It started with the decree from the Nebraska State Council of Defense that banned teaching foreign languages in all schools in the state. This draconian measure, unthinkable today, was intended to inspire patriotism in the populace. A year later, they even banned the use of foreign languages in churches.

The Amish had the unfortunate distinction of not only using German in their church services, but also teaching it in their schools (so that their children would know how to read their German Bibles). Despite the fact that they had come to America for the very reason of escaping service in the Kaiser's armies, they were now labeled--for purely linguistic reasons--as enemy sympathisers. When the government moved in to shut down their parochial schools, the peace-loving Amish had had enough. To a man, they left the state--and have never returned, except to visit the graves of their ancestors. No one noticed it at the time, but the depopulation of rural Nebraska had already begun.

The War was now over; the State Council of Defense disbanded--but the regulations, as they always do, continued to mount. With the Amish gone, tractors began moving in. Mechanization now made it possible for one man to do the work of dozens. Children were no longer indispensable farm hands, but liabilities. The country schools that the Amish had left the state to avoid attending withered and died for lack of students to fill them. And as the schools closed, it was no longer feasible for families to live in the rural areas. Commutes to school stretched out to fifty, sixty, even seventy miles.

Back in Washington, D.C., legislators were reaching deeper and deeper into the pockets of Americans across the country, but spending that money disproportionately in urban districts. At the same time, legislators in Lincoln continued, year after year, to add to the ever-burdening list of regulations that everyone in the state, urban or rural, had to follow. It just wasn't cost-effective anymore to operate small stores and groceries. Selling raw milk became illegal, putting small dairies and the farms that supplied them out of business. Before long there was hardly anything that could be done profitably in the sparsely settled rural areas, except for getting people drunk. The demand for that never went away--not even in the cities, where the growing populations depended more and more on the largesse of the population at large. Driven from downtown by the rising crime rate, business and employed citizens moved to the suburbs.

Such is the foreseeable end of the overregulated populace: abandoned towns and city centers, inhabited by hopeless drunks.

Where did all that water go? The NIV and Luke 14:1-4

2011-05-03T16:24:00.006-04:00

In John chapter two, we read of Jesus turning water into wine. In Luke chapter fourteen, we read of Jesus making water disappear into thin air. Or do we?

KJV, ERV
And, behold, there was a certain man before him which had the dropsy.

New American Standard Bible (©1995)
And there in front of Him was a man suffering from dropsy.

New International Version (©1984)
There in front of him was a man suffering from dropsy.

New Revised Standard Version (1995)
Just then, in front of him, there was a man who had dropsy.

Contemporary English Version (1995)
All of a sudden a man with swollen legs stood up in front of him.

New and Improved International Version (2001, 2004, 2011)
There in front of him was a man suffering from abnormal swelling of his body.

New Living Translation (©2007)
There was a man there whose arms and legs were swollen.

International Standard Version (©2008)
A man whose body was swollen with fluid suddenly appeared in front of him.

Although the versions disagree as to the extent of the swelling, they are all agreed that the person afflicted with swelling is a man--despite the use here of the Greek word anqrwpos, which carries no innate connotation of gender, even though it is in the masculine form grammatically. Something happened here to prevent the TNIV from effecting the global change from 'man' to 'person;' perhaps it was the use of masculine pronouns throughout the rest of this short account. At any rate, there is no more indication in the Greek that this was an adult than that it was a boy of five years. But 'man,' as they have used it here, excludes that meaning in contemporary English.

Now one thing for which I can commend the CBT is their belated removal of this singular use of the word 'dropsy;' it really has no business in an English Bible. Google Ngram shows that the word was replaced by 'swelling' as far back as 1700 (other than in Bible commentaries, which perpetuated the word for another 200 years past its obsolescence), both words yielding to 'edema' in a medical context by 1900. Yet, interestingly, although 'edema' finds current usage in commentaries on Luke, it has not yet found its way into the text itself, even as recently as the 2011 NIV.

So, this person, whoever he was, had edema. The Greek word `udrwpikos basically means 'watery-looking' and refers to the puffiness of retained lymphatic fluid. It is sheer speculation on the part of the translators and even commentators who tried to specify which parts of his body were retaining fluid--simply using 'edema' could have held such speculation in rein. Now let's look at verse four:

King James Bible
And they held their peace. And he took [him], and healed him, and let him go;

New Revised Standard Version (1995)
But they were silent. So Jesus [Gk he] took him and healed him, and sent him away.

New International Versions
But they remained silent. So taking hold of the man, he healed him and sent him away.

New Living Translation (©2007)
When they refused to answer, Jesus touched the sick man and healed him and sent him away.

. . . and so on. Once again, virtually all the modern versions add 'man' to the text; the KJV is the only one of the lot to allow for the age ambiguity of the Greek!

But one has to ask: from a medical perspective, what exactly happened? The medical treatment for edema is what are commonly called "water pills;" anti-edemics which release the extra fluid from the extremities into the bladder. This results, as you can imagine, in a copious flow of urine until the excess fluid is finally excreted. If Jesus immediately healed this person of his edema, one of two things must have happened:

1) The man left behind a huge puddle when he walked away.
2) Jesus caused all that extra fluid to disappear into thin air.

It would appear from the nonchalance with which Dr. Luke relates his account that the second is what occurred. But the NIV and virtually all other modern translations, in mistranslating `udrwpikos as some vague form of swelling, leave the reader unsuspecting of the true nature both of the disease, and of its cure.

Air France finds both of Flight 447's Black Boxes

2011-05-02T11:16:00.006-04:00

In related news, the Navy Seals find Osama bin Laden--and promptly bury him at sea. But will he stay buried? Obviously, no corner of the earth, sky, or sea is now safe from the prying eyes of anyone with enough time and money to spend looking.

I should add, before everyone forgets, that when this news first broke late in the evening of May 1, 2011, it was announced that Osama had been killed a week earlier, by a bomb, and had just now finally been identified. This was all a lie. He'd been killed that day, by a bullet, and they knew who he was when they shot him.

And of course, he was buried in full accordance with Islamic custom, which--ironically enough--requires burial within 24 hours. Since his native land refused to accept his remains, it was appropriate that he was laid to rest midway between the lands of his birth and his death, in the Arabian Sea of the Indian ocean.

Some random thoughts on Osama, while he's still in the news . . .
According to the FBI, Osama's complexion was "olive." Interestingly enough, Zeituni is a common Arabic name, and means "olivey."
According to the FBI, Osama's nationality is "Saudi Arabian." This is not a nationality, it is a political affiliation. It would be like saying my nationality is "Republican American."
His nationality is actually Yemeni.

Snopes still perpetuating conspiracy theory of Dr. West delivering Barack Obama II

2011-04-28T22:01:00.003-04:00

The birth certificate released by Barack Obama II names David A. Sinclair as the doctor who delivered him--not Rodney T. West. Oops.

One more reason not to believe "investigative reporters"

2011-04-28T13:11:00.003-04:00

In case the link dies, here's the story:

BAR 37:03, May/Jun 2011
First Person: The Lion and the Flea
By Hershel Shanks

J’accuse! I accuse the television program 60 Minutes of unethical and irresponsible reporting.

As BAR readers know, we have reported extensively on the so-called “forgery trial of the century” in Jerusalem and the artifacts alleged to be forgeries, including a bone box, or ossuary, inscribed “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus,” an ivory pomegranate that may have been a scepter from Solomon’s Temple, and the Yehoash Inscription, which, if authentic, would be the first Israelite royal inscription ever found.

On March 23, 2008, 60 Minutes devoted a segment of the program to the alleged forgeries, focusing on the rumor that an Egyptian jeweler named Marco, who was a friend of Israeli antiquities collector Oded Golan, a leading defendant in the case, had made forgeries for Golan, among them the Yehoash Inscription.

60 Minutes accurately described, in the words of the Israeli police major who was in charge of the investigation, rumors that were swirling about the case: “Golan was not working alone. He had help from academics, [antiquities] dealers and an Egyptian craftsman ... So Golan was the head of the operation, and he had an Egyptian who did the actual forgery.”

60 Minutes set out to confirm these rumors. It sent a team to the serpentine Khan Khalili bazaar in Cairo to find Marco. And they were successful! They found him in his little workshop where he made jewelry for some shops below, as well as for private customers. Like most jewelers in the bazaar, he made replicas of ancient Egyptian jewelry and other artifacts.

As the television program admitted, they operated “under cover”—that is, they did not identify themselves, recording and filming the interview without telling Marco. (This is obvious from the photographs of Marco.) Only at the end of the process did they inform Marco who they were.

But before that, they got what they wanted: After they showed Marco a picture of the Yehoash tablet, he confessed! In Marco’s own words, as he purportedly mouthed them for millions of television viewers:

“I inscribed several stone slabs that looked just like this for [Oded] Golan ... Golan brought me the text and I carved it onto the tablet.”

From BAR’s first look at the 60 Minutes segment, it aroused suspicion, not about Marco, but about the integrity of 60 Minutes. It seemed odd that Marco would simply confess to making a forgery. And, if you look carefully at the faint image of Marco in the background making his confession, his lips do not seem to match the words supposedly coming out of his mouth. (Was he speaking in Arabic or English?)

So we wrote to 60 Minutes and asked to see the complete transcript of the interview. The reply: “I am afraid it is the policy of CBS News not to release the unaired transcripts of interviews.” They refused to make their outtakes available. All we could do was complain that 60 Minutes was very good at asking questions but not so good at answering them. The issue sank like a stone.

Then in January 2011 we were in Cairo on other matters. As long as we were there, why not try to talk to Marco? If 60 Minutes could find Marco, maybe we could too. And we did. We located the 44-year-old Christian bachelor Semah Marco in his small third-floor walkup workshop deep in the heart of the dense Cairo bazaar.

Marco was very clear. He did not confess to forging the Yehoash tablet. He did not make any forgeries. He denied forging the Yehoash Inscription. He had never written a sentence in Hebrew letters, he said. He was very angry with 60 Minutes. He would like to sue them, but he cannot afford a lawyer, he said.

In the next breath, however, he said he would be afraid to sue them. He does not want to get involved. He had already been taken to the police station and interrogated by the police. He did not want any more trouble. (This was two weeks before the Egyptian protests erupted in Cairo. A few weeks before that, 20 Christian Copts had been killed and a hundred wounded in an Alexandria church. Egypt was a land of corruption—from the policeman on the street to the highest level of government—and fear of government was palpable.)

Marco speaks halting English at best. I spoke to him largely through an Arab interpreter. Did he admit that he made things “just like this for Golan” when shown a picture of the 15-line Yehoash tablet? Marco explained that he did not know who these people were when they came into his shop and talked to him; he thought they were potential customers, so, to sell his services, he told them, when shown a picture of the tablet, that he could make them something “just like this.”

60 Minutes has a recording of the interview, so it is possible to find out exactly what Marco said—and did not say—and in what context. Is the 60 Minutes text a translation of Marco’s Arabic? If so, is it accurate? Did they doctor it? Or did Marco speak English? We do know that 60 Minutes paid someone with a slight Arab accent to voice the words Marco supposedly said, thus giving the impression that we are hearing Marco himself in the background. But, as previously noted, the spoken words don’t match Marco’s lips.

What we also know is that Marco very clearly and firmly denies having told 60 Minutes that he forged the Yehoash tablet—or anything else—for Golan.
That is the only thing in question here: the integrity of 60 Minutes.

Let us be clear what this article is not about:
This article is not about whether the Yehoash Inscription (or the James Ossuary Inscription) is a forgery. It is not about whether Oded Golan forged these inscriptions himself or had them forged by someone else.

Nor is it about whether Golan’s Egyptian friend Semah Marco forged the Yehoash Inscription. It is not even about whether Marco lied when he denied forging the Yehoash Inscription.

The only thing this article is about is whether 60 Minutes accurately reported what Marco said. Did Marco say that he made things “just like this [the Yehoash Inscription] for Golan.” Or did he say only that he “could” make something just like this, if that’s what his customer wanted?

There is no question that Marco denied to me that he ever said he forged the Yehoash tablet. He was firm and clear, as was his anger at 60 Minutes.

Moreover, what he told me is consistent with his denial of having forged the Yehoash tablet. Before 60 Minutes interviewed Marco, he was interviewed by a team of Israeli police. In the Hebrew report they submitted following their trip to Cairo, they quote Marco as denying that he did anything wrong.

The largest circulation Hebrew newspaper (Israel haYom) also interviewed Marco. According to their article, Marco denies any connection with the forgeries.

Why, then, would Marco tell 60 Minutes that indeed he did forge the Yehoash tablet? Or did he deny forging the Yehoash tablet and 60 Minutes twisted his words—or their context—to make it seem that Marco was indeed confessing to forgery?

60 Minutes supports and demands transparency in government. It seems that 60 Minutes is in favor of transparency except when it comes to 60 Minutes.

Why did 60 Minutes twist its story to make Marco the forger of the Yehoash tablet? 60 Minutes had a lot of time and money in this story. It sent a crew to Egypt. If Marco denied making forgeries for Oded Golan, that would hardly be a story. Only if 60 Minutes could get a confession from the elusive Egyptian forger would it be a story—indeed, a blockbuster. So apparently 60 Minutes was determined to get the story—whether it was true or not.

Apparently, 60 Minutes had no concern for the effect of this charge on the life of a dinky little Egyptian jeweler—nor on the life of Israeli antiquities collector Oded Golan. The only question for 60 Minutes was whether it could get its story. And it was a story only if they could get a confession from Semah Marco.

The only remaining question is whether 60 Minutes will now release its interview with Marco. Or will this be another case of the flea biting the lion?

A flea went into a lion’s cage and bit that lion good

And then he stood on that lion’s mangy mane as a conquering hero should ...

Now concerning this flea, one sad thing must be written.

That lion didn’t even know that he’d been bitten.

From the 1957 Broadway musical “Archy and Mehitabel”

Hot news! Obama Birth Certificate released! But is it yet another forgery?

2011-04-27T14:45:00.011-04:00

We now have two entirely different birth certificates for Barack Hussein Obama II. Both are agreed on the essentials: parentage, date and time of birth, race. But one is from Kenya; the other from Hawaii. Obviously, one was created fraudulently. But which one?
I would be willing to bet a year's allowance that the doctor who signed this form is safely dead.
(I just checked. He is.) And his widow is a consultant to the Hawaiian Heath Department.

Okay, first of all, let me say that releasing this long form birth certificate was a carefully calculated political move. As President Obama himself said when he released it, this won't convince everyone that he's a natural born US Citizen, but he hopes it will convince most people. In other words, he's responding to polls that show a shocking majority of Americans don't believe he was born in the USA. As one of those people, I must admit that I'm still not convinced that he was. He could have settled this issue 2½ years ago by releasing his birth certificate, and stubbornly refused to. Whatever his reasons--whatever he had to hide--haven't changed. As Aesop famously pointed out in "The Boy Who Cried Wolf," nobody believes a liar, even when he's telling the truth.

Secondly, I will admit that I was duped. There is no reason now to believe that the short form COLB released in 2008 was a forgery, as I had been led to believe. The information on it is all backed up by the long form. Again, President Obama is responsible for my false belief by refusing to allow the media to actually see the COLB, thus fueling speculation that it was a Photoshop document.

BREAKING NEWS!!! May 17, 2011: This post contains links to sites showing that, when subjected to the same electronic scrutiny, the Long Form Obama Birth Certificate shows even more evidence of forgery than the Short Form. So I take back any concessions made in the previous paragraph: the long form was apparently based on the previously forged short form, so of course it had to contain the same forged information, and then some.

So, the evidence so far resolves into two roughly equal possibilities:

1) The Kenyan certificate is authentic; Stanley gave birth to Barack in Mombasa and traveled to Hawaii three days later, where the family conspired with Dr. Sinclair to file a fraudulent birth certificate form stating that Barack had been born at the Kapiolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital three days earlier, in order to guarantee him the U.S. citizenship for which they knew he didn't otherwise qualify.

2) The Hawaiian certificate is authentic; staffers at the Mombasa Hospital put together a forged birth certificate in 2008/9 to present to the highest bidder to come snooping around looking for it; Lucas Smith turned up at the right time, and took the bait.

Happily, the Kenyan birth certificate is very easy to prove fraudulent. It contains a clear imprint of a child's right foot. All President Obama has to do is get his right footprint taken on live TV at a press conference, and have the camera zoom in on the print as soon as he removes his foot from the paper. Anyone with a computer file of both images can then compare them and, should the Kenyan certificate not have been produced at Obama's birth, it will hopefully be clear that the prints don't match.

The other possibility, should the footprint remain inconclusive, is to produce birth or postnatal records from Hawaii. Any forgers in Kenya would have had to make up the bodily dimensions listed on the certificate they produced, so they can't be expected to match those on Barack Obama II's actual medical record. Any discrepancy would lead to the conclusion that a Kenyan stand-in provided the information and impression on Barack's alleged Kenyan birth certificate.

That, my friends, would bring my puzzlement to an end; I guarantee it. Obama would then be my own president.

Every bit of information brought out into the sunshine makes the picture clearer, so I thank President Obama and his political advisers for taking this important step. It should be obvious, however, that it's still too little, too late to convince me that he's a natural born American. He needs to do more, and I suggest he do it soon.

UPDATE DECEMBER 21, 2011
According to Gallup, a majority of Americans still aren't convinced that Barack Hussein Obama II was born in the United States. I remain one of that number. I really do want to know where my alleged President was born, but yet another forged birth certificate, added to the two already released, won't do anything more to convince me.

Kidnapping: a new task assigned to the FBI

2011-04-23T14:58:00.020-04:00

Back when the FBI was in its infancy, one of the federal crimes with which it was given jurisdiction over was transporting an abducted child across state lines. Now, less than 100 years later, one of the jobs being assigned to FBI agents is abducting children and transporting them across state lines. This is a very new role for them; ten years ago it was still being outsourced to private investigators.

We begin this particular story in 2002, when Lisa Miller gave birth to a daughter, Isabella. Before she was even born, the father had waived all parental rights, so he never enters the legal picture. The mother, however, did not waive any parental rights--and refuses to do so to this day, despite the FBI's attempts to arrest her for enjoying them.

This is how it happened. A woman named Janet Jenkins--no relation to either Lisa or her daughter, but who was living with them at the time--asked Lisa to move out in 2003. But Janet had become so attached to little baby Isabella that she insisted on being able to keep her, or at least have daily contact with her. Lisa, on the other hand, wanted nothing further to do with Janet. Janet pursued the case for the next 6 years, aided by donations from pro-homosexual people and organisations. By November 2009, she had been granted full custody of Isabella--a legalized kidnapping by every definition of the word. But by this point Lisa and Isabella left the country, and don't dare return until Isabella turns 18 in 2020.

Note: Lisa still had custody of Isabella at this point, and was not considered a fugitive until her custody ended in 2010, and her leaving the country in September became a crime retroactively, through demonstration of "intent to obstruct the lawful exercise of parental rights." This, even though the order to deny her the lawful exercise of her parental rights only dated to November 22nd.

Here's where the FBI entered the scene. Because Lisa did not hand over her daughter on January 1, 2010, she now was defined as the kidnapper of her own daughter, and the FBI was sent out to tear Isabella away from her mother and hand her over to Janet Jenkins--if they could find her.

The FBI hasn't managed to abduct the fugitive couple, but they are still hot on the case. This week they arrested Rev. Timothy Miller upon his entry into the United States (this was cheaper than tracking him down and extraditing him from where he lives in Nicaragua). He was charged with aiding and abetting in a kidnapping, due to evidence confiscated from numerous email and/or facebook accounts that he was involved in the disappearance of Lisa and Isabella. It looks like he is going to be in jail for a long time.

At least he won't have to spend the rest of his life registered on a watchlist. Giving shelter to a mother and her non-custodial daughter is not yet considered a violent crime.

The Miller Family

UPDATE April 25: I'm going to be following this case as it progresses. So I won't be making any more edits to the text above, but rather adding lines to the bottom. Latest news: Rev. Miller was released on $25,000 bond today, but restricted from leaving the state of Vermont, other than to travel to Pennsylvania. This could be rather difficult, as--last I checked--the state of New York intervenes between Vermont and Pennsylvania. If the order did not specify the state of New York as the only permissible thoroughfare, then I can think of many different routes that could be traveled between Vermont and Pennsylvania, including one through Ontario. He won't be able to cross that border, though, on his own passport; we can be sure of that.

Rev. Miller is also forbidden to discuss the case with his wife, as she is expected to be called to testify against him. If she refuses, we can expect one more person behind bars in this case--a mother of four young children. Yes, a judge will separate a married mother from her babies in order to coerce her to testify against her own husband in the case of a single mother being forcibly separated from her baby.

UPDATE April 26: The White Man's reporter on the scene states that the Vermont judge imposed a ban on travel outside of Pennsylvania, other than for traveling to and from court appearances in Vermont. This smacks of unconstitutionality, that a judge in one state could take jurisdiction over a defendant's presence in another state. Having released him from his own jurisdiction, he really has no control over Rev. Miller's presence or absence in any other state.

UPDATE May 4: Both hearings for tomorrow have been canceled. Mrs. Miller has claimed, and received, spousal privilege; she won't be required to testify against her husband. And by the way, Dana Kaegel didn't do her homework: she relied on Janet Jenkins for the name of Lisa Miller's husband--and got it wrong. It's a shame that our nation's defense is in the hands of such incompetents; ten minutes on the internet would have provided the right name, even quicker for an extra couple bucks.

UPDATE May 7: Rev. Miller was granted permission to leave the state to attend the wedding for which he had risked arrest by returning to the USA. The family sang a touching tribute to the bride and groom.
UPDATE May 12: Rev. Miller was indicted by grand jury for aiding in kidnapping Isabella Miller.

UPDATE May 17: The FBI have tracked down Lisa Miller in Jinotega, Nicaragua, but she was one step ahead of them and already fled to a new hideout. Nicaraguan police are threatening locals with torture to try to pry information out of them as to her new whereabouts.

UPDATE May 20: Sorry, please scratch the most recent update. Apparently it was all hearsay and rumour. If you've ever been to Jinotega, you know how remote that area is. Cell phone coverage is often only available up in a tree at the top of the hill. I'll hold off on future updates about the Nicaragua side of the story until I get independent confirmation. Since the FBI are covertly monitoring an unknown number of email accounts in Nicaragua, it makes it even harder to get a straight story out of the region. Agents are welcome to submit any information they have as comments.

UPDATE May 25: Rev. Miller tendered a "not guilty" plea today through one of his attorneys. It will be 3 months before the next hearing, and until the next update, unless Sarah and Lydia are brought to ground in Central America.

UPDATE July 31: During Tent Meetings held the past week in Lancaster County, PA, Timo was invited to speak. Pablo Yoder reports: "It was also encouraging to hear Timo and Joanna tell the story of the day of the arrest. Timo’s witnessing for hours with fellow prisoners during his stay in the prison really blessed me. Also, it was refreshing to hear how God used him to bring cheer into a sad house called: Jail.A picture that will ever be etched in my mind was when he told me how they took him and his new buddies to the courtroom. A chain was circled around each prisoner’s waist, their handcuffs linked to the chain in the front. They also shackled their feet in a chain. Bound hand and feet, it was hard for the whole row of men to walk. So they slowly hobbled to the courtroom, Timo, as a dangerous criminal like the rest. As the picture was drawn in my mind, I couldn’t help but think of the Apostle Paul. He was also treated like a criminal for the cause of Christ.”

UPDATE October 18: I went through and made a few corrections to this blog, having reviewed all information on the case. This post and this one contain the latest available updates.

Raisin' Cain, or Let Them Eat Cake: The NIV and the "wordplay" of Kir Hareseth

2011-04-21T18:36:00.014-04:00

Inasmuch as I can't seem to lay my hands on a 1978 NIV of the Old Testament, I'm going to have to assume, until further notice, that it reads the same as the 1984 [FURTHER NOTICE: SEE END OF POST].

The question is how to translate the Hebrew words `ashiysh and its feminine form `ashiyshah (plurals `ashiyshim and `ashiyshoth). It comes from a root word with the same spelling as ish and ishsha, the Hebrew words for 'man' and 'women' respectively. But it occurs most often in a context of food items. The word is found in all forms only five times in the OT. Here are the places, and the meanings assigned in each place by the earliest translators of the OT, the LXX:

Feminine singular:
2 Sam 6:19 and 1 Chron 16:3 (parallel passages)-- a fried cake

Feminine plural:
Song 2:5-- perfume

Masculine plural:
Isaiah 16:7-- them
Hosea 3:1-- cooked meats

Wow. It is clear that the LXX had no idea of the meaning of this word, except that it could refer to 'men' whenever the context wasn't one of it being eaten!

Had things cleared up any by 1611, when the KJV was released? Let's see:

Feminine singular:
2 Sam 6:19 and 1 Chron 16:3 (parallel passages)-- a flagon of wine

Feminine plural:
Song 2:5-- flagons

Masculine plural:
Isaiah 16:7-- foundations
Hosea 3:1-- flagons

So we see that although they were closing in on just two possible meanings for the word--still depending on whether it was obviously being eaten or not--the KJV translators did not distinguish any difference in meaning between the masculine and feminine forms of the word. Whenever the context was food, they consistently translated both words as 'flagon' with the implication that, by metonymy, wine was what was being talked about. But when the context wasn't food, they went with an entirely different meaning altogether (apparently from the masculine plural word's similarity to the feminine plural word `ashioth, the Qere for an hapax legomenon used in Jeremiah 50:15, which they also translated 'foundations').

Let's see if the NIV 197884 was any improvement:

Feminine singular:
2 Sam 6:19 and 1 Chron 16:3 (parallel passages)-- a cake of raisins

Feminine plural:
Song 2:5-- raisins
also, Jeremiah 50:15-- towers

Masculine plural:
Isaiah 16:7-- men
Hosea 3:1-- sacred raisin cakes

Huh. The NIV has consistently supplied a significantly different word than the KJV for all references to food, and yet another totally different word for the other reference, and a new term for the word used architecturally. In this we find them not much different than the 1901 ASV, which reads 'raisin/+cakes' for all four references, while allowing for the marginal possibility of 'foundations' in Isaiah, and reading 'bulwarks' in Jeremiah. Enough about the word in Jeremiah, though. Of modern versions, only the NKJV retains 'foundations' in both places.

So what is it about this word that it means "raisin cakes" whenever food is in the context, but something entirely different (no one is sure what) when it isn't?

Well, we get some sort of a clue from the NIV 197884 footnote, which reads:
a. Isaiah 16:7 Or “raisin cakes,” a wordplay

How 'raisin cakes' can refer to 'men', wordplay or no, is beyond me. It was obviously beyond the capacity of readers of British English, as the CBT deleted the footnote in the NIV-UK 1984. And of course it was beyond the ability of a third-grade reader to understand, so it wasn't in the NIrV 1996 edition either. But what was that pesky word 'men' doing in these two supposedly gender-neutral editions? It must have really irked a later generation of CBT members, who went through the OT with an electronic scalpel to remove every superfluous occurrence of the word. Voilà, no more wordplay:

"Lament and grieve for the raisin cakes of Kir Hareseth." --TNIV 2005, NIV 2011

Whew. To think that the word always meant "raisin cakes" all along. Who knew?

UPDATE May 27, 2011. I got my hands on a 1978 NIV, and there is a difference. Isaiah 16:7 just reads "raisin cakes," with no hyphen, modifier, or footnote; Hosea 3:1, on the other hand, reads "sacred raisin-cakes." So my final word stands.

Not getting paid to sleep???

2011-04-20T13:28:00.001-04:00

New Anti-Fatigue Rules for Air Traffic Controllers

Longer breaks between shifts for air traffic controllers are among the new anti-fatigue rules announced by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration following a series of incidents in which air traffic controllers fell asleep on the job.

Air traffic controllers will now have at least nine hours off between shifts instead of the current eight-hour minimum, under the new rules. In addition, controllers will not be allowed to switch shifts with another controller unless they have had at least nine hours off, and FAA managers will be working more late-night and early-morning shifts to better monitor controllers, USA Today reported.

But allowing controllers to have naps during a shift doesn't appear to be under consideration, even though some experts believe it's a good idea.

"On my watch, controllers will not be paid to take naps," Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said on Fox News Sunday, according to USA Today. "We want to make sure they're well rested. We want to make (sure) that in the workplace there's the ability for them to do their job, but we're not going to pay controllers to be napping. We're not going to do that."

I have a hard time commenting on this civilly. What Mr. LaHood isn't saying is that controllers are currently allowed to read, play video games, talk and text on their cell phones, and smoke cigarettes during their paid breaks--but not sleep. As if "being paid to sleep" is somehow worse than being paid to do any of the above--when research has shown over and over again that being allowed to sleep during a break makes for a much safer rest of the shift. Mr. LaHood, you're not at all interested in making sure that your controllers are well rested--you're only interested in covering your own assets.

I'm not at all impressed.