http://wikicompany.org/fs/empire/
Latest article is February 4- what gives?
Today's main article-
What Got Me Started
http://continuingcounterreformation.blogspot.com/2011/02/what-got-me-started.html
Saturday, February 26, 2011
What Got Me Started
South Capitol Mall Blog Post July 22, 2006
'Physical Reality- Conflict with St Vincent DePaul Roman Catholic Church at northeast quadrant of intersection with M Street SE.
http://wwwsouthcapitolstreet.blogspot.com/2006/07/physical-reality-only-structure-along_22.html
South Capitol Mall Blogger Ambushed August 5, 2006
http://wwwsouthcapitolstreet.blogspot.com/2006_10_01_archive.htmlINTRODUCTION: Continuing Counter Reformation
http://continuingcounterreformation.blogspot.com/2007/06/wlodimir-vladimir-ledochowski.html
Washington, D.C.'s Supreme BridgeBuilder [non builder]
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2010/09/washington-dcs-supreme-bridge-builder.html
Washington, D.C.'s Monumental Indicator
http://continuingcounterreformation.blogspot.com/2010/04/dcs-monumential-indicator.html
How JFK's D.C. B&O Route North Central Freeway Was Sabatoged
http://cos-mobile.blogspot.com/2009/12/how-jfks-dc-north-central-freeway-was.html
Washington, D.C. Freeway Planning Hegelian Dialectic
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2010/05/1960s-washington-dc-freeway-planning.html
What's Wrong With The Pentagon?
http://cos-mobile.blogspot.com/2011/02/what-is-wrong-with-pentagon.html
Concerning the Ancient Regime Vatican-Masonic Stranglehold Upon Transportation - 'New Rome' Washington, D.C.
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2011/02/feb-24-discussion-at-greater-greater.html
Friday, February 25, 2011
Transportation Subversion & Censorship By Our Jesuitical Pentagon
A reissue of an article in Cosmobile Cosmopolitan Transport regarding the strange dissapearence of the blog 'Commuter Outrage' -- pro transportation -- yet dissappears from the internet shortly after I suggested they start writing about the chocking of key transportation corridors, such as NYC's I-87 Deegan Expressway by misplaced 'new urbanist' development- plausibly being pushed by Jesuit Fordham University. Note that the article reproduces an article from 'Streetsblog' which was deleted within days- but is still reproduced here in accordance with the U.S. Constitution 1st Amendment- Douglas Willinger
---
Commuter Outrage R.I.P.
http://cos-mobile.blogspot.com/2009/12/commuter-outrage-rip.html
My take on the sudden disappearance of the blog Commuter Outrage, that I posted to the comments section of the Streetsblog article at:
http://www.streetsblog.org/2009/12/21/what-the-heck-was-commuteroutrage-com/#comments
Douglas Willinger
"So, that's it. That's the end of our story and, apparently, the end of CO.com as well. Sadly, we were unable to cobble together enough evidence to convince ourselves that CO.com was the product of an unholy alliance between the highway lobby and military intelligence and propaganda professionals."
If so, they were strangely silent about the incompleteness of the Washington, D.C. freeway system, and that in other areas, such as the lack of highway-railway tunnel connecting LI with Westchester County and New Jersey:
http://cos-mobile.blogspot.com/2008/07/homeland-security-goal-would-be-better.html
http://cos-mobile.blogspot.com/2007/10/whatever-happened-to-idea-of-additional.html
But then again, perhaps not so strange:
"So, we started poking around the Internet for a Pat xxxxxs and quickly found
him. According to a LinkedIn account that has since been deleted, Pxxxxx xxxxxxx
xxxxes graduated from Princeton in 200x. He studied at the University of Qatar
and earned a master's degree from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. He lived in a temporary corporate housing facility in Falls Church, Virginia and worked as a consultant for SAIC, Science Applications International Corporation. And in 2006, xxxxxxx xxxxxs was married in Loudon County, Virginia to xxxxxx xxxxx. "
Georgetown University through its law school (Georgetown Law Center) has been a prominent opponent of D.C.'s freeways for decades.
For instance see the story about D.C.'s most needed and least in displacement proposed freeway links -- the I-95 NE/NCF -- which was sabotaged politically with successive design additions to increase local opposition (most notably the 1964 NCF report's disregard of the 1962 JFK Administration proposal for the highway to strictly hug the existing B&O [Red Line] corridor; I have much at this on my blog "A Trip Within the Beltway" such as this:
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2007/05/1964-north-central-freeway-routing_08.html
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/search/label/highway%20routing%20mysteries
As with anything, just connect the dots with the most influential property owners along a given route...
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
December 21, 2009 at 9:55 pm Link # 29
As of 2AM, December 22, 2009, Streetsblog has allowed the appearance of additional 2 posts to this comments area, both dated later, while my comment above does not appear at all.
UPDATE:
As of the following afternoon, my comment appeared in the proper order of its submission as #29, followed by the earlier approved subsequent two submissions, plus those made later- having grown at this writing on December 23, 2009 to 45 comments.
The article, which is certainly a landmark at Streetsblog -- which was the target of much criticism from Commuter Outrage, and is reproduced below.
It provides a good overview of detective work, though I could not find how they got the photo of "xxxxxxx xxxxes: The face of CommuterOutrage"
Disturbingly, there is no word from xxxxxxx xxxxxs (the name in this Streetsblog article), or of Lewis Derkins, Judd Wiley and Alvin MacIntosh, the names that appeared in Commuter Outrage, nor from anyone knowing this individual or persons.
I thought the blog had great potential, but alas would veer off with silly things like attacking people for wearing tweeds while riding bicycles, while not dare to attack any of the lack of highway or railway links, nor any of the "chocks" of transportation corridors by misplaced, misguided 'new urbanist' real estate development.
Indeed, I left a comment at Commuter Outrage about the chocking of the N.Y. I-87 Major Deegan Expressway and of the Mott Have area in the South Bronx, by the thoughtless prioritization of a real estate development project to hem in the existing 6 lane elevated I-87 Major Deegan Expressway, placing some 10,000 new residents mere feet away from this exposed source of traffic pollution, and leaving less space to replace the freeway viaduct with a cut and cover tunnel equipped with exhaust filtration. There it remained, but I never saw any response. Should not a pro-highway entity care about such matters?
So "cute" how he Pentagon does not give a damn about improving our transportation network capacity, with "debate" crafted upon an axis of overly strict and hence socially destructive dogmas: aka we should ONLY build rail transit OR highways. It reflects for example from much of the "pro-highway" side of this "debate" for instance are those who spend far more time opposing seemingly any and all major rail transportation projects as a waste of money, while decrying the basic concept of transit oriented development with little discussion of context and even less discussion of design, yet failing to make a single specific highway proposal. It simultaneously reflects in the forms of such reflexes as groups opposed to any major transit investments in cities with many highways, and with such in reverse such as apologists for stopping planning for PEPCO/B&O Route D.C. I-95.
But such a silence is totally consistent with anything connected to our [Jesuit Order] Georgetown University possessed government with its ominous combination of no new highways but lots and lots of domestic surveillance supposedly making us safer.
Note Georgetown University's support for domestic surveillance -- it's where the PATRIOT Act was crafted -- and their opposition to highways near to them or other such major Vatican properties as Catholic University of America, where the B&O Route I-95 would have passed alongside.
See some of the history how this highway was politically sabotaged:
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2007/05/1964-north-central-freeway-routing_08.html
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/search/label/highway%20routing%20mysteries
And note note the line of work of the person[s] reportedly behind Commuter Outrage:
(excerpt from the Streetsblog article- below)
SAIC is one of those gigantic federal government mega-contractors that you ought
to know about but probably don't. With 44,000 employees and $8 billion a year in
revenue, SAIC has more individual government contracts than any other private
company in America. "No Washington contractor pursues government money with more ingenuity and perseverance than SAIC," investigative journalists Donald Bartlett and James Steele wrote in a 2007 Vanity Fair article. "SAIC currently holds some 9,000 active federal contracts in all. More than a hundred of them are worth
upwards of $10 million apiece. Two of them are worth more than $1 billion."
SAIC offers its federal patrons a long list of products and services related to energy, infrastructure and national security. But its big specialty is intelligence. Boasting "information dominance" as one of its areas of expertise, SAIC is one of the major players in the brave new world of government intelligence out-sourcing (Yasmin's employers, CSC and Booz Allen, are two of the others). SAIC is the National Security Agency's largest contractor, and the NSA is SAIC's single largest customer. By 2007, SAIC had "virtually replaced the National Security Agency as the primary collector of signals intelligence for the government," according to investigative journalist Tim Shorrock.
In addition to the spy-for-hire work, the government also turns to SAIC to develop
media and propaganda campaigns for the U.S. military. Prior to the invasion of
Iraq, the Pentagon selected SAIC to run its Rapid Reaction Media Team. After the
invasion, the Pentagon awarded SAIC an $82 million no-bid contract to establish
the Iraqi Media Network, which "quickly devolved into a mouthpiece for the
Pentagon," according to Bartlett and Steele.
It seemed completely far-fetched, but could it be that some member of the highway lobby had hired SAIC to run a domestic propaganda campaign around the upcoming federal transportation re-authorization and CO.com was the result? Was this what
"information dominance" looked like when applied to domestic transportation
policy? Preposterous! Yet CO.com's authors suggested that we sustainable
transport "weenies" had merely glimpsed the tip of the CO.com iceberg. "Trust
me," Judd Wiley wrote in a July 1 comment. "We've only just started. You clowns
have no idea what's coming your way."
----
Monday, December 21, 2009 45 Comments
What the Heck Was CommuterOutrage.com?
by Aaron Naparstek on December 21, 2009
xxxxxx xxxxes: The face of CommuterOutrage.Every rare once in a while we used to get e-mails from readers asking us if we saw what they're saying about Streetsblog over at CommuterOutrage.com. For the most part, we didn't. We had long since concluded that CO.com didn't have much of an agenda beyond trying to get Streetsblog's attention.
There was, however, a time in the summer of 2008 when these outraged commuters managed to do just that. That's when we noticed that a comment posted by one of their authors on Streetsblog originated from an IP address that traced back to the Pentagon's Office of the Secretary of Defense. We did a little bit of digging and, for a brief, thrilling moment we thought we might just have stumbled across a secretive new blogging division of the military-industrial-automobile-sprawl complex working down the hall from Donald Rumsfeld's old lair.
If you've never heard of CommuterOutrage.com then you probably want to go ahead and skip this story. But if you ever found your blood pressure rising as you slogged through a 3,000-word CO.com blog post filled with off-the-wall assumptions, cascading series of factual errors and childish personal attacks, then read on. The following 3,000 words were written for you.
* * * * *
CO.com popped up in the spring of 2008 pseudonymously authored by three guys calling themselves Lewis Derkins, Judd Wiley and Alvin MacIntosh. Their introductory "Rant" (still available in the purgatory of Google cache) announced that they were "fed up with the buffoonery" of the "lazy politicians and inept bureaucrats" who "say we should choose to live closer to the office or find alternative means of transportation." They were outraged over having to pay for tolls, gas taxes and short-term parking at the airport. They decried "entitlement spending" and "social engineering experiments" like congestion pricing and tax credits for hybrid vehicles (As for entitlements like free highways and social engineering experiments like exurban sprawl: No problem!) And they demanded that federal transportation dollars be spent on the "maintenance and expansion projects that benefit all of us."
If you've ever spent a bit of time in the right wing policy realm, a lot of that language will sound familiar. In the spring of 2008, lobbyists and advocates across the transportation policy realm were gearing up for the upcoming federal re-authorization. In transportation circles, the call to spend more on "maintenance and expansion" is often code for directing funds to roads and highways. You can't, after all, "expand and maintain" light rail and bus rapid systems, or walkable, bike-friendly communities or a national high speed rail system that don't yet exist.
CO.com was a little bit like Opposite Day Streetsblog. Day after day, its authors tried to make the case that Americans love and demand automobile sprawl, mass transit is filled with perverts and run by incompetent bureaucrats, and bike commuters are sociopathic anarchists who ought to be licensed. But more than anything, CO.com was about, well -- us. Lewis, Judd and Alvin were obsessed with Streetsblog, Transportation Alternatives and the livable streets movement. Though none of them seemed to live there, they were outraged by any effort to make New York City a more hospitable place for pedestrians, cyclists and transit riders. And they were intent on exposing livable streets advocates as frauds, liars and socialists.
While Streetsblog-types tend to argue in a wonky, policy-oriented style, Lewis, Judd and Alvin seemed to be schooled in the Karl Rovian Swift Boat style of political discourse. Calling themselves the "Streetsblog Truth Squad," they frequently called out individual advocates by name, published their photos online, and piled on the personal insults and schoolyard taunts. Referring to advocates as "weenies" was a favorite. Few Streetsblog items escaped their wrath. Even a funny, little throw-away Streetfilm on Portland, Oregon's new bike boxes merited a lengthy "debunking" by Lewis Derkins.
There were clearly some brains behind CO.com. The writing could be smart and funny. And they certainly knew how to get under the skin of livable streets advocates. Given the intensity and frequency that Lewis, Judd and Alvin were blogging when their site first launched, it seemed conceivable that CO.com was someone's day job. They aggressively promoted their links in the comments sections of other blogs and by May 2008 they started to get some traction in local New York City media, occasionally picking up links from blogs like Queens Crap, Village Voice, Gotham Gazette and even the New York Times' City Room.
For a time, Lewis, Judd and Alvin slugged it out in Streetsblog's comments section until they deemed our automated spam filter an infringement on their First Amendment rights. Likewise, Streetsblog readers did battle in the CO.com comments section until they realized that, aside from a renowned bike crank and the last of the urban highway advocates, Lewis and the gang didn't actually have much of a readership. Our server stats confirmed that. Despite the constant links, CO.com drove virtually zero traffic to Streetsblog.
Then it got interesting.
On July 22, 2008 we posted an item called "Highway Funding: The Last Bastion of Socialism in America." Not surprisingly, the article's hyperbolic title outraged Lewis and Alvin and they voiced their displeasure in the Streetsblog comments section. WordPress lets us see the IP addresses of our commenters and after Alvin MacIntosh published a comment during weekday work hours we clicked through to see if it might reveal his place of employment. It did. Alvin, apparently, worked here:
OrgName: The Pentagon
OrgID: THEPEN
Address: OPN-BM, Pentagon
Address: Rm BE884
City: Washington
StateProv: DC
PostalCode: 20310
Country: US
CO.com's "Alvin MacIntosh" was blogging out of The Pentagon!
Now, that was interesting. We already had this lurking, paranoid suspicion that CO.com was, perhaps, being funded by some highway lobby interest. Could it be that a top-secret section of the U.S. Department of Defense was publishing a pro-automobile, pro-suburban sprawl web site bent on the destruction of Streetsblog? In the waning days of the George W. Bush Administration did someone at The Pentagon consider the livable streets movement a threat to national security? How cool would that be?
Excited, we called a couple of our favorite tech geeks and asked if they might be able to help us dig up any more information on Lewis, Judd and Alvin. It was summer and work was kind of slow. So, a small group of us decided to spend some time taking a closer look at CO.com.
First, we looked at their domain name registration. It was purchased on April 4, 2008 by xxxxxx xxxxx. It looked like xxsmin initially tried to register the web site address anonymously but somehow wound up with her name on it. Though Google turned up a few xxxxxx xxxxx's, the one that stood out was a public relations professional at Booz Allen Hamilton. She graduated from Princeton in 2002 then got a masters degree in "strategic public relations" from the USC Annenberg School for Communications in 2004. Prior to Booz Allen, she worked for CSC, Computer Sciences Corporation.
Next, we took a look at CO.com's source code. There we found "xxxuxes" listed as the Client I.D. on an advertising widget embedded in the web site's sidebar. That was the clue that opened the floodgates. A Google blog search for "pxruxes" uncovered a set of April 9, 2008 test blog posts on CO.com, one of them titled "Test Pat." Though the test posts had been deleted from the live web site, they still showed up in Google's cache.
So, we started poking around the Internet for a xxx xxxxes and quickly found him.
According to a LinkedIn account that has since been deleted, xxxxs xxxxxxx xxxxes graduated from Princeton in 200x. He studied at the University of Qatar and earned a master's degree from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. He lived in a temporary corporate housing facility in Falls Church, Virginia and worked as a consultant for SAIC, Science Applications International Corporation. And in 2006, xxxxxxx xxxxes was married in Loudon County, Virginia to xxxxxx xxxxx.
CommuterOutrage.com, it seemed, was xxxxxxx xxxxes's web site. We had our man.
* * * * *
SAIC is one of those gigantic federal government mega-contractors that you ought to know about but probably don't. With 44,000 employees and $8 billion a year in revenue, SAIC has more individual government contracts than any other private company in America. "No Washington contractor pursues government money with more ingenuity and perseverance than SAIC," investigative journalists Donald Bartlett and James Steele wrote in a 2007 Vanity Fair article.
"SAIC currently holds some 9,000 active federal contracts in all. More than a
hundred of them are worth upwards of $10 million apiece. Two of them are worth
more than $1 billion."
SAIC offers its federal patrons a long list of products and services related to energy, infrastructure and national security. But its big specialty is intelligence. Boasting "information dominance" as one of its areas of expertise, SAIC is one of the major players in the brave new world of government intelligence out-sourcing (xxxmin's employers, CSC and Booz Allen, are two of the others). SAIC is the National Security Agency's largest contractor, and the NSA is SAIC's single largest customer. By 2007, SAIC had "virtually replaced the National Security Agency as the primary collector of signals intelligence for the government," according to investigative journalist Tim Shorrock.
In addition to the spy-for-hire work, the government also turns to SAIC to develop media and propaganda campaigns for the U.S. military. Prior to the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon selected SAIC to run its Rapid Reaction Media Team. After the invasion, the Pentagon awarded SAIC an $82 million no-bid contract to establish the Iraqi Media Network, which "quickly devolved into a mouthpiece for the Pentagon," according to Bartlett and Steele.
It seemed completely far-fetched, but could it be that some member of the highway lobby had hired SAIC to run a domestic propaganda campaign around the upcoming federal transportation re-authorization and CO.com was the result? Was this what "information dominance" looked like when applied to domestic transportation policy? Preposterous! Yet CO.com's authors suggested that we sustainable transport "weenies" had merely glimpsed the tip of the CO.com iceberg. "Trust me," Judd Wiley wrote in a July 1 comment. "We've only just started. You clowns have no idea what's coming your way."
So, we did some more digging.
* * * *
We found that in February 2008, xxxxrick xxxxes took a course with SPS Training at EEI Communications in Alexandria, Virginia so he could learn how to use PD2, a software application used for Defense Department procurement. In his paperwork, xxxxxxx listed his organization as "the Office of the Secretary Defense" and his email address as mailto:xxxrick.xxxxes.ctr@osd.mil.
CO.com frequently pulled photos, links and text from Transportation Alternatives' web site, so we asked T.A.'s tech guys if we could take a closer look at their server logs. We quickly noticed that someone with a Defense Department IP address often rummaged around T.A's web site in the hours prior to CO.com blog posts that used T.A. material. For example, we found that someone using a computer at this IP address: 214.16.41.245, dns1.bta.mil, had been doing Google image searches for "Wiley Norvell" just hours before Lewis Derkins published a blog post featuring a photo of T.A.'s Wiley Norvell on July 16, 2008.
BTA.MIL is the domain name for the Pentagon's Business Transformation Agency and we found that, among its thousands of federal government contracts, SAIC had a consulting team working for the Pentagon's Business Transformation Agency in Virginia. We also noticed that people who worked for the BTA often had osd.mil e-mail addresses, just like xxxxxxx xxxxes.
Was "Lewis Derkins" actually xxxxxxx xxxxes? Lots of evidence seemed to point that way. But the big question was whether CO.com was official Pentagon product or merely xatrick's hobby. If a Defense Department contractor with a specialty in "information dominance" were producing a right-wing, pro-autosprawl, climate change-denying, attack-blog bent on "exposing" the New York City livable streets movement, that was a pretty good story. If CO.com was just some bored Pentagon contractor's side-project, well, that wasn't exactly "60 Minutes" material.
Still, it was nice just to know the name of at least one of the anonymous authors behind CO.com. Even if CO.com was xxxrick's hobby, it was notable that a guy who proclaimed himself to be a watchdog over waste, fraud and ineptitude was using the Defense Department's computer network and your federal tax dollars to produce his personal blog. Likewise, it was also somewhat incredible that a guy who worked for one the nation's preeminent contractors of outsourced spy services wasn't competent enough to maintain the anonymity that he so clearly desired. If this were a CO.com story, they would probably say that xxxxxxx xxxxes was just another inept, money-wasting private contractor leeching off the American taxpayer.
* * * * *
While it was fun to imagine that such a thing as the military-industrial-automobile-sprawl complex existed and that it members were sitting around the Pentagon thinking about ways to counter the growing influence of Streetsblog and the livable streets movement, a number of clues piled up during our brief investigation that led us to believe that CO.com was, in the end, nothing more than a hobby for xxxxxxx xxxxes and some pals.
The first most obvious clue was the quality of the blog itself. If someone had hired CO.com's authors to advocate for more highway spending -- or anything, for that matter -- they didn't seem to be getting their money's worth. If SAIC, the nation's premier provider of private spy services was running CO.com, how were they making mistakes like the one that allowed us to grab that photograph of xxxxxxx xxxxes off their server? It didn't add up to a professional operation.
Lewis Derkins, in particular, came across as a desperate undergrad eager to show that he was the smartest kid in class by proving, quantitatively, how stupid everyone else was. Putting aside his inability to make an argument free of sophomoric personal attacks, Lewis's blog posts were so consistently filled with errors it would have taken a full-time fact-checker just to correct them.
We'll give you one example pulled randomly from the first post we chose. On July 2, 2008, Lewis Derkins wrote a 3,200-word term paper criticizing the "bizarre analysis" and "misinterpretation of facts" in Charles Komanoff's seminal work, "Killed by Automobile" [PDF]. Derkins wrote that from 1994 to 1997, "465 people were killed in fires in New York City. That's two and a half times more people killed in fires than all pedestrians and bicyclists killed in NYC by cars. Are we going to launch an initiative to ban ovens in kitchens to combat this menace next?"
As was often the case, if you were familiar with the subject matter that Lewis Derkins was writing about, then you noticed that his numbers were completely wrong. "Killed by Automobile" repeatedly states that 947 pedestrians and bicyclists were killed by cars between 1994 and 1997, nearly twice as many as the 465 that Derkins says were killed in fires. Lewis's assertion that fires killed two-and-a-half times more New Yorkers than cars was off by a factor of five. It's a small mistake. But CO.com blog posts were jam-packed with errors like these, one snowballing atop the next. Lewis Derkins often built entire arguments around these kinds of errors. CO.com was simply too amateurish to think that some corporate interest was paying for it.
There were other circumstantial clues suggesting that CO.com was probably just xxxrick's hobby. Our favorite was Hiss Kaag.
We noticed that, in the early days of CO.com, a character named "Hiss Kaag" often showed up in the blog's comments section. In his comments, Hiss came across as a kind of bureaucratic manager caricature, like the Pointy-Haired Boss in the Dilbert cartoon, but with an inexplicable obsession for the International House of Pancakes. A typical Hiss Kaag comment went like this:
Hiss Kaag May 15th, 2008, 8:55 am
Lewis,
Only one complaint about your posting: Too damn long! Who has time to read
all this poo at work? Myself, Hiss Kaag that is, will not allow any of my staff to experience joy, happiness or the general feeling that their work matters. I like making them change charts for no g-d damn reason, and spend my whole day
managing up and kicking down. That's the Hiss Kaag philosophy my friends. Use it
too and you'll end up a lonely shriveled up sad excuse for a man.G-d Bless.
SEE YOU AT IHOP.
Mr. Kaag
As we were clicking around through xxxxxxx xxxxes's LinkedIn profile we noticed that xxxrick was connected to a guy named Kris Haag working at the Pentagon's Business Transformation Agency. Haag's resume showed that he was older and more senior than xxxrick, he was a government employee, not a contractor or consultant, and he appeared to hold a management job at the BTA.
That's when it clicked: Maybe Haag was xxxrick's boss at work. Perhaps this Hiss Kaag character was xxxrick-and-friends way of mocking the pancake-eating federal bureaucrat who tasked them with making charts all day. Or perhaps Haag was in on the joke and was one of CO.com's other authors. (Or maybe Kris Haag has nothing to do with any of this, in which case, we apologize for mentioning your name here, Kris.) Either way, would this Hiss Kaag character be making appearances in the CO.com comments section if it were an official Pentagon product?
All in all, it seemed a lot more likely that the blog was being produced by one or more SAIC consultants slogging away in obscurity at a boring, bureaucratic job in the Pentagon.
* * * * *
Unlike CO.com, if we're going to write about you on Streetsblog, we generally like to call you first, check our facts, understand where you're coming from and give you an opportunity to tell your side. So, last week we did quite a bit of reporting on this story.
Calls to SAIC's switchboard confirmed that xxxxxxx xxxxes works in the company's Intelligence Security and Technology Group. But Melissa Koskovich, an SAIC spokesperson, insisted that CO.com is not produced by the company. "I can tell you right off the bat this is nothing we'd be involved with," she said. "We might have an employee blogging during work time."
Likewise, the Department of Defense said it is not responsible for CO.com. "By definition there's nothing that we do that is 'dot com.' We are either 'dot gov' or 'dot mil,'" Pentagon spokesperson Darryn James said. "The Pentagon is a small city. There are 25,000 people working here. So, this could be some contractor working in his off time."
We reached out to Kris Haag and xxxxxx xxxxx but never heard back from them. After a number of calls and e-mails, xxxxxxx xxxxes replied on Thursday to say that he had received our note and was open to a conversation. We have been unable to reach him for an interview since then. Also on Thursday, the CO.com web site was taken offline and obliterated.
So, that's it. That's the end of our story and, apparently, the end of CO.com as well. Sadly, we were unable to cobble together enough evidence to convince ourselves that CO.com was the product of an unholy alliance between the highway lobby and military intelligence and propaganda professionals. In the end, all we think we managed to do was put a name to CO.com. Though, after months of non-stop anonymous attacks, that's kind of satisfying.
CommuterOutrage.com was xxxxxxx xxxxes's blog. If nothing else, xxxrick is now free to come out of hiding and add his voice to the vigorous public debate over 21st century transportation policy and urban sustainability. May he now enjoy the same high standard of accountability that he seemed so eager to impose on others.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Wikipedia False Claims on Barry Chamish as 'Holocaust Denier'
Correction Attempts Thwarted
From Barry Chamish:
---
SAVING DEMOCRATIC JOURNALISM - HELP ME SUE WIKIPEDIA
Barry Chamish
The common consensus is that Wikipedia is "democratic journalism." Anyone can edit and update their "articles." My webmaster, Steven, tried to edit my "portrait" with his own corrections. He reported, "You're being blocked. No one can touch it." This is what he tried to submit as a balanced report:
What is slander? Simply, you try to prove your argument by using any reference that supports it, and only using material, often from allies, that does so. You can prove anything using this method. But in the journalism of the past, you would be quickly found out, and ideally, sued for slander. This is what Wikipedia did with me, and I'm positive, I'm not alone. In my case, their report insists that it used the Jerusalem Post for guidance. In fact, there were numerous reports in The Post that supported me, but all were ignored. Thus, it appears, that The Post supported the article.
Same with references. The article relies on the view of Daniel Pipes, of the Council On Foreign Relations (CFR). On a recent radio show, my host Dr. Stanley Monteith, congratulated me for being so significant that, "CFR prince of darkness, Daniel Pipes, found you important enough to try to bring you down." The problem is that some Jews believe he is pro-Israel and anti-Arab, thus an ally. In fact, as Dr. Monteith noted, he is nothing of the sort. He plays a role to fool the public and suppress any opposition using any slander he chooses without fear of repercussions. These are the rewards of toiling for the "establishment."
But if there is justice left in America, we can successfully sue Wikipedia. The roadblock, as usual, is legal costs. They can pay to keep any suit in court forever. Only someone with deep pockets can ever beat them in court.
First, read the actual Wikipedia report. A correspondent was furious when he perused it:
You heard him right. Wikipedia calls me a Holocaust denier. My readers know the exact opposite is the truth. Yet untold thousands have read the lie. Read the actual report and I'll trust you not to believe a word:
Will anyone try to stop this attack on basic freedom of speech? I seek an attorney who will challenge this so-called bastion of free thinking head on. We've got Wikipedia by their tender parts by calling me a Holocaust denier and refusing to delete, edit or offer counter arguments, though many have tried. This is years of career-affecting slander. Wikipedia is a multi-billion dollar operation and I need a brave attorney to fight them Pro Bono. Even Pro Bono, I'll have to pay filing, travel, and untold expenses. Who will be my partner in attacking Wikipedia for the good of true Free Speech? Who will join my legal team, professional or civilian?
end
Without contributions, this work of mine would come to a crashing halt. Off the top of my head, the following have made significant contributions:
Baruch, Tova, Steven, Marc, Aliza, Ron, Karen, Bernard, Herman, Ari, Cindy, Jim, Marilyn, Peter, Christie, David, Lynn, Fred, Howard, Michael, Brenda and more. Thanks to them I manage to squeeze by...barely. Some months it's close right to the last day of the month. I appreciate and remember each contributor. Without you, there wouldn't be me.
Barry Chamish
POB 840157
Saint Augustine, FL 32080 USA
Paypal: chamishba@gmail.com
I have a radio show with a good listening audience. If you have something newsworthy to tell the world, contact me and I'll bend over backwards to put you on the air.
Listen to my radio show:
http://wwfar.com/mp3s/BarryChamish/
BE SURE TO LISTEN TO BARRY CHAMISH
Live TUESDAYS at 3PM PT / 6PM ET ON:
www.FirstAmendmentRadio.com
My new book, THE conPROMISED LAND can be ordered direct from the publisher http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback_book/the_conpromised_land/6398777
---
I say help the man out!
From Barry Chamish:
---
SAVING DEMOCRATIC JOURNALISM - HELP ME SUE WIKIPEDIA
Barry Chamish
The common consensus is that Wikipedia is "democratic journalism." Anyone can edit and update their "articles." My webmaster, Steven, tried to edit my "portrait" with his own corrections. He reported, "You're being blocked. No one can touch it." This is what he tried to submit as a balanced report:
BARRY CHAMISHSteven is far from the only researcher who tried to update Wikipedia's slander. When the slander first appeared over 5 years ago, numerous correspondents reported that they added editions which were published, then within a day, all were deleted. I beseech my readers, try to edit my Wikipedia report. When you fail, report back to me. Your reports will be part of a legal suit against Wikipedia for slander.
Born - Winnipeg, Canada Jan. 13/52
Education - BA University of Manitoba, MA Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Military - Served in the regular Israel Defence Forces I979-81, saw active combat in the Lebanon War of 1982.
Family - Two children, Ariel and Sally, born in '91 and '92.
Early writing career- Chamish had four fiction books published in Canada between 1972-76; The Devil Wore An Angel's Suit; Keep Stillman-A Pun; Mack; and Alice In Newfoundland. Mack earned him a Canada Council Award, while Alice In Newfoundland won him a Manitoba Arts Council Award in 1976, when he had already moved to Israel. These books showed Chamish's unique comedic force in works noted for their stories of deeply felt frustration.
Middle career - Chamish viewed his likelihood of a successful writing career in Canada as dim. Zionist feelings arose during the Yom Kippur War of October, 1973 and he chose to move to Israel. In 1975, he entered the MA program at Hebrew University, while honing his writing in small press magazines in the UK and US. After his army service ended in '81, he embarked on a long period of commercial writing, writing for Jewish outlets, as well as trade magazines. He served as Israeli correspondent for numerous publications including Billboard,
The Hollywood Reporter, Television Business International, while succeeding in cracking mainstream publications such as Long Island Newsday, The New Republic, and Reason.
Chamish became the five time Israeli Scrabble champion which led to this period's triumph, a featured article in The Atlantic in 1987 entertainingly detailing the subtleties of the game. The article is credited by many involved in the game for greatly increasing sophisticated understanding of Scrabble.
Current career - Chamish's writing took a shocking turn in his 1992 book, The Fall Of Israel. (Canongate Books, Edinburgh, Scotland). Chamish continued his gift of making frustration entertaining as he detailed the deep financial and political corruption of Israel. The book changed Chamish's career. It was reviewed throughout the British media, in fact The Economist gave it its lead review, and Chamish appeared on the Israeli national media beginning with the country's most popular show, Dan Shilon Live. However, he topped the attention dramatically in 1997, when his lecture about the Rabin assassination at Hebrew University was sabotaged by Israel's Secret Service (Shabak) with a highly publicized riot against his work. Chamish handled a hostile media cleverly and he made allies within it. When his book Who Murdered Yitzhak Rabin was published a year later in Hebrew, it rose to the top of the Israeli bestseller lists. The success was greatly aided by Knesset Member Ophir Pines Paz banning the book's sale at Israeli bookstores. The book is considered a classic in "conspiracy" literature as Chamish proves how Rabin was really murdered, and by whom, with a skilled gathering of evidence and a lawyer's gift of persuasion. Who Murdered Yitzhak Rabin was soon translated to seven languages and succeeded by all polls, ie Maariv 2000, to have persuaded over half of religious Israelis and a third of secular that he was right and the government was lying about the assassination.
UFOs and Rabin - Always looking for a marketing niche, Chamish investigated the huge Israeli UFO wave of 1987-99. Using the same skills that made the Rabin book believable, or at least controversial in intelligent circles, Chamish gathered corroborating testimonies, physical evidence, photos and videotapes to create a most intriguing book called Return Of The Giants. His work became the basis of five episodes of the popular American program Sightings, while Fox TV broadcast a half hour of Chamish's work prime time. He now had two separate audiences who wanted to hear him in person, Jewish/Christian for Rabin, and New Age/unaffiliated for Giants. Chamish refused to give his Giants lecture in Israel, believing it would interfere with his Rabin study. Nonetheless, he was invited to present his Rabin lecture in Hebrew over 300 times in Israel, while the Rabin/Giants combination sent him lecturing worldwide, including in Australia, Hong Kong, Brazil, Mexico, England and Italy.
Today - Hurt that the coverup of Rabin's murder was more powerful than his obvious evidence, Chamish went looking for the reason Israel was run by a most unpleasant oligarchy. He has published numerous political books since 2000 including Save Israel; Israel Betrayed; Shabtai Tzvi, Labor Zionism And The Holocaust; The Last Days Of Israel; Bye Bye Gaza; and THE conPROMISED LAND. All are available by going to www.lulu.com and typing "chamish" in the search box. Though all the books are strong, the triumphant book is widely considered Shabtai Tzvi. Within is an expose of the atomic experiments of the '50s using Sephardic children as the guinea pigs. Again, as in all of Chamish's work, the proof is inarguable.
Chamish today resides in Florida. He can be reached at chamishba@gmail.com His website is www.barrychamish.com
What is slander? Simply, you try to prove your argument by using any reference that supports it, and only using material, often from allies, that does so. You can prove anything using this method. But in the journalism of the past, you would be quickly found out, and ideally, sued for slander. This is what Wikipedia did with me, and I'm positive, I'm not alone. In my case, their report insists that it used the Jerusalem Post for guidance. In fact, there were numerous reports in The Post that supported me, but all were ignored. Thus, it appears, that The Post supported the article.
Same with references. The article relies on the view of Daniel Pipes, of the Council On Foreign Relations (CFR). On a recent radio show, my host Dr. Stanley Monteith, congratulated me for being so significant that, "CFR prince of darkness, Daniel Pipes, found you important enough to try to bring you down." The problem is that some Jews believe he is pro-Israel and anti-Arab, thus an ally. In fact, as Dr. Monteith noted, he is nothing of the sort. He plays a role to fool the public and suppress any opposition using any slander he chooses without fear of repercussions. These are the rewards of toiling for the "establishment."
But if there is justice left in America, we can successfully sue Wikipedia. The roadblock, as usual, is legal costs. They can pay to keep any suit in court forever. Only someone with deep pockets can ever beat them in court.
First, read the actual Wikipedia report. A correspondent was furious when he perused it:
"I think most truthseekers would agree that although Wikipedia is relatively
accurate on mainstream topics, when it comes to sensitive geopolitical issues
and those who report on them, Wikipedia isn't to be trusted. However, for them
to label you a "Holocaust denier" [sic] is a low blow even by their standards. I
don't blame you at all for being upset. Although I don't know any lawyers
willing or able to work pro bono (my brother's a lawyer, but I don't think he's
in a position to take on any pro bono work), I certainly hope you can make those
Wikipedia liars retract their garbage! You served in the IDF, distribute Rabbi
Cywiak's memoir, and they try to slime you with this crap? Pathetic! Hang in
there my friend; if anything, Wikipedia's response to your work shows that
you're on the right track. (Not that their trespass should go unchallenged!)"
You heard him right. Wikipedia calls me a Holocaust denier. My readers know the exact opposite is the truth. Yet untold thousands have read the lie. Read the actual report and I'll trust you not to believe a word:
Did you notice the last sentence? People tried to edit this libel but not one, not even one, edition was published? Wikipedia chose not to balance this outrage and we ask why. Our guess is that Wikipedia is not what they claim to be and they present "facts", to be kind, with bias.WIKIPEDIA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Chamish
The chief critic of Barry Chamish is Little Stevie Pluat in the Jewish Press weekly[19] and the Jerusalem Post daily.[20] Daniel Pipes has also dismissed Chamish's work as "nonsense". The Americans for a Safe Israel newsletter described Chamish
thus: - "Chamish literally spouts conspiracy theories. Does the Israeli
government claim that Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi was murdered by Arab
terrorists? Chamish knows better. Prior to his death, writes Chamish, "Zeevi
went on the war path against Peres, which was not a wise strategy. Others have
tried and others have died." Chamish hints darkly at connections between Peres
and the French and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. He writes:
"It would have been no trouble for Peres and the French to order the PFLP to
knock off Zeevi. (There's unconscious humor for you. Chamish? Proof? A ramble
down free association lane is Chamish's notion of "proof.") Chamish promises
that the "answer, ultimately will lead to the same organization which murdered
Yitzhak Rabin." (Peres, needless to say, was behind that one too.)[21]
Barry Chamish (born 1952 in Winnipeg) is a Canadian-Israeli writer,
investigative journalist and public speaker, best known as a conspiracy theorist
and UFO investigator. He is also widely considered to be a Holocaust Denier
because he publishes hundreds of his pieces on Holocaust Denier web sites. He
has spoken before numerous conferences of Holocaust Deniers and is a columnist
for the Holocaust Denial rense.com web site.
He studied at the University of Manitoba and later moved to Israel. In 1975 he attended the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, receiving an MA in 1979. In 1981, Chamish founded a small press service and has contributed investigative reports to publications as diverse as National Review, Israel Business Today and New Internationalist.Chamish has written several books, most self-published, of which the
best-known is Who Murdered Yitzhak Rabin?, published in 1998. In this book,
Chamish blames the Rabin assassination on Shimon Peres, at that time Israel's
minister of Foreign Affairs, and on the Shin Bet instead of the convicted
assassin Yigal Amir.Chamish has also been a Scrabble champion in Israel and has written on the game for The Atlantic Monthly.[1]
Contents [hide]
1
Views
1.1 Ariel Sharon
1.2 Shimon Peres
1.3 Gaza Strip withdrawal
and Hurricane Katrina
1.4 UFOs
1.5 Miscellaneous theories
2
Criticism
3 See also
4 References
5 Bibliography
6 External
links
6.1 Websites and web-based articles
7 Trivia
7.1 Journal and
press articles
[edit]Views
[edit]Ariel Sharon
He has stated that
Sharon, in collusion with Peres and Henry Kissinger, deliberately perpetrated
the Sabra and Shatila massacre in order to destroy Begin's political reputation
and career.[2] Chamish maintains a very low opinion of Sharon based on a number
episodes in Sharon's public life.[3]
Chamish also described the drowning of
former Israeli minister Rafael Eitan, who reportedly was "swept away by a wave
while working on a dock in Ashdod", as a "hit" by Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon.[4] The police and media in Israel saw it as an accident.
[edit]Shimon Peres
Chamish claims that Yigal Amir did not shoot Rabin.
Members of Yigal Amir's family told Yedioth Ahronoth in January 2005 that "they
object to Chamish's ideas, and that [Barry Chamish and David Cohen] have no
right to publish such a website. They added the campaign angers Yigal Amir
himself."[5]
Chamish has also accused Peres of the death of former Utah
Congressman D. Wayne Owens the founder of the Center for Middle East Peace and
Economic Cooperation and head of the Middle East Peace Center because "he raised
congressional concern about Palestinian-sponsored terrorism...[to] the ire of
some Israeli [peace] activists" and because Owens uncovered supposedly fraud he
had put himself at risk:
Barely a fortnight before, Rep. Owens learned the
Ginosar scandal broke in Israel. He was either terrified or furious. It's a
tossup. If he was terrified, it was because it wouldn't be long before his
direct ties to Stephen Cohen would implicate him deeply in the scandals. If he
was furious, it was because he finally learned how badly he had been scammed by
Peres, Abraham, Masri and Cohen. Either way, he threatened to blow the whistle
on the Peres Peace Center. He was poisoned at dinner and dead on a beach by 9
PM. Rep. Owens is now another notch on Peres' gunbelt.[6]
In his explanation
for the "Sharon stroke mystery", Chamish explains that this was a murder attempt
by Shimon Peres and Yoram Rubin. While he gives no explanation why Peres and a
bodyguard would want to kill the Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, let alone
any evidence, Chamish tells us that before he fell into a coma, Sharon wanted to
appoint the Israeli president Moshe Katzav as his deputy and not his close
political affiliate Ehud Olmert. Also he explains that Sharon was about to allow
business people to build a casino in the dismantled Gush Katif settlement
block.[7] Typically no evidence is provided for such murder theories, apart from
sometimes loose associations between individuals.
Chamish also claims that Shimon Peres gave away Jerusalem to the Vatican in a secret clause of the Oslo Agreements and that this fact had been widely published in Israel.[8] Chamish claims that all Israeli politicians are secret followers of Shabbtai Zvi, a man whose movement of followers disappeared entirely 300 years ago.
See also:
Yitzhak Rabin assassination conspiracy theories
[edit]Gaza Strip withdrawal
and Hurricane Katrina
Barry Chamish connects the Israeli withdrawal from the
Gaza Strip with the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans, because Gush
(Katif) and Gulf start with GU and Katrina and (Gush) Katif start with KAT. He
points out that the remainder of the latter words, after subtracting KAT and
rearranging rina, is "if rain". Chamish told Aaron Klein, the Jerusalem reporter
of the World Net Daily: Simple human beings cannot fully understand what is
going on, but the events certainly must be connected. It's statistically
impossible to have two such great natural disasters like the recent tsunami in
Asia and Katrina right after each other. This is the hand of God. He is saying
something.[9] This view is also supported by some religious Jews who are not
conspiracy theorists.[10]
In addition to the letters, Chamish connects the
two occurrences also with numbers: "There are approximately 6 million people in
Israel. 10,000 divided by 6,000,000 equals 0.00167. Two weeks later, Hurricane
Katrina hit New Orleans in the southern United States, and laid waste and
complete desolation to the City of New Orleans. New Orleans has a population of
500,000. US News agencies are openly calling those displaced by the hurricane
'refugees.' There are approximately 300 million people in the United States.
500,000 divided by 300,000,000 equals 0.00167."[11]
[edit]UFOs
Chamish
has also written a book about UFO sightings in Israel. He continues to write
often about UFOs, although he still claims his analysis on UFOs to be true.[12]
[edit]Miscellaneous theories
In the Versailles banquet hall disaster,
where a floor collapsed during a wedding, 23 persons were killed and 300 more
injured. Chamish deducts that this was a sort of general rehearsal for the
American set-up of the 9/11 attacks on the United States, in which almost 3000
persons died.[13][14]
In 2005, Chamish broke the story of a large secret
military base being built in Israel by the US and published numerous pictures as
well.[15][16] Located nearRosh Ha'Ayin, the base was completed shortly
thereafter and turned over to the IDF.
Chamish also accuses Natan Sharansky
of being a "liar",[17] who hid his alleged role of KGB double-agent,[18] and not
a heroic refusenik as many believe.
[edit]Criticism
Will anyone try to stop this attack on basic freedom of speech? I seek an attorney who will challenge this so-called bastion of free thinking head on. We've got Wikipedia by their tender parts by calling me a Holocaust denier and refusing to delete, edit or offer counter arguments, though many have tried. This is years of career-affecting slander. Wikipedia is a multi-billion dollar operation and I need a brave attorney to fight them Pro Bono. Even Pro Bono, I'll have to pay filing, travel, and untold expenses. Who will be my partner in attacking Wikipedia for the good of true Free Speech? Who will join my legal team, professional or civilian?
end
Without contributions, this work of mine would come to a crashing halt. Off the top of my head, the following have made significant contributions:
Baruch, Tova, Steven, Marc, Aliza, Ron, Karen, Bernard, Herman, Ari, Cindy, Jim, Marilyn, Peter, Christie, David, Lynn, Fred, Howard, Michael, Brenda and more. Thanks to them I manage to squeeze by...barely. Some months it's close right to the last day of the month. I appreciate and remember each contributor. Without you, there wouldn't be me.
Barry Chamish
POB 840157
Saint Augustine, FL 32080 USA
Paypal: chamishba@gmail.com
I have a radio show with a good listening audience. If you have something newsworthy to tell the world, contact me and I'll bend over backwards to put you on the air.
Listen to my radio show:
http://wwfar.com/mp3s/BarryChamish/
BE SURE TO LISTEN TO BARRY CHAMISH
Live TUESDAYS at 3PM PT / 6PM ET ON:
www.FirstAmendmentRadio.com
My new book, THE conPROMISED LAND can be ordered direct from the publisher http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback_book/the_conpromised_land/6398777
---
I say help the man out!
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
That Familiar Twist
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2011/02/inter-county-connector-to-be-open.html
Rare new freeway link near Washington, D.C. to open with segment re-routed in under-reported move to put it away from the Roman Catholic Knights of Columbus at 17001 Overhill Road, Derwood, MD
Rare new freeway link near Washington, D.C. to open with segment re-routed in under-reported move to put it away from the Roman Catholic Knights of Columbus at 17001 Overhill Road, Derwood, MD
Sunday, February 13, 2011
YAF's Georgetown Agenda Neoconservatism
From stopping Iraqi 'weapons of mass destruction, to Iranian nuclear weapons
SMOM William F. Buckley created Young Americans for Freedom 'YAF' pushes "neoconservatism" via 'per curium' vote expelling:
1- question either war and be labeled 'delusional' 'fringe'
2- question the official 911 story and be labled a 'conspiracy theorist' despite the official tales many holes and the very real burning of the reicttag dymanics of surroending liberty for the appearance of safety/justice- defining latters as spending some $3 trillion and kill 300,000 people as revenge for the deaths of 3,000 and destruction of $30 billion.
This is what is commonly known as 'neoconservatism', buiding upon the 'rightwing' rebound following the defeat of the U.S. allied South Vietnam, and subsequently following the end of the old Soviet Union, for increased U.S. military interventionism abroad, not only in areas known for their reserves of petroleam, and, of course, as part of a great religious chessboard, but those as well without massive petroleum reserves.
Polices essentually dictated by that insitutution of higher education located in Washington, D.C. with its quite high percentage of people within the U.S. State Department, Georgetown University, with its School of Foreign Service run by the Jesuit Order.
Recall the push for war against Iraq under the guise of stopping Iraqi 'weapons of mass destruction'.
So what about this:
Christian Leaders Urge US Senate to Take Actions to Prevent Iran's Nuclear Weapons Program
Contact: Dave Mohel, 703-548-1160
WASHINGTON, Jan. 24, 2011 /Christian Newswire/ -- Christian Leaders for a Nuclear Free Iran, a coalition of religious and civic leaders sent a letter to the U.S. Senate urging members to enact tough sanctions against the Iranian regime that will intensify pressure on its leaders to halt their drive to build nuclear weapons.
A copy of the letter can be found at www.clnfi.org
In light of the meeting this weekend in Turkey during which the Iranian regime refused to seriously engage the six powers about its nuclear program, we urge you to support additional legislative efforts aimed squarely at compelling Iran to abandon its program to develop and deploy nuclear weapons.
The organization lays out a detailed list of actions that must be taken to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. Members fear a nuclear Iran will bring serious harm to the United States and its allies and further destabilize the Middle East.
Signers of the letter to the Senate include: Dr. Pat Robertson, Chairman and Founder of CBN and Regent University, Dr. Richard Land, President of Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Paul F. Crouch, Jr., Chief of Staff, TBN, Gary Bauer, President, American Values, John C. Hagee, Senior Pastor, Cornerstone Church, San Antonio, Texas, Tom McClusky, Sr., Vice President, Family Research Council Action, Stuart Epperson, Chairman of the Board, Salem Communications, Deal Hudson, President, Catholic Advocate, Washington, DC, Dr. Jim Garlow, Chairman, Renewing American Leadership, Dr. James Merritt, Senior Pastor, Cross Pointe Church, William Donohue, President, Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, Mark Williamson, Founder and President, Federal Intercessors, Jerry Newcombe, Author and TV Host, Jim Martin, Chairman, 60 Plus Association, Ken Timmerman, President and CEO, Foundation to Democracy in Iran, Micah Clark, Executive Director, American Family Association of Indiana, Mathew Staver, Founder and Chairman, Liberty Counsel, Mandi Campbell, Legal Director, Liberty Center for Law and Policy, Jordan Sekulow, Director of International Operations at American Center for Law and Justice, Dr. Robert E. Reccord, President, Total Life Impact Ministries, Richard W. C. Falknor, Chairman, Maryland Center-Right Coalition , Dr. Rusty Hayes, Pastor, First Free Church, Rockford IL, Dr. Mark A. Smith, President, Ohio Christian University, Dr. Barrett Duke, Vice President, Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, Al Kresta, President and CEO of Ave Maria Radio, Michael P. Jones, National Chairman, Young Americans for Freedom, Elmer F. Hansen, Jr., Director, Catholic Leadership Conference, William Haygood Shaker, President, RepublicanPac.com, C. Preston Noell, III, President of Tradition, Family, Property, Inc., Dr. Richard G. Lee, President, There's Hope America, Rev. Louis Sheldon, Chairman, Traditional Values Coalition, Michael D. Little, President and Chief Operating Officer, Christian Broadcasting Network, Dr. Jeffrey J. Karls, President of The College of Saint Mary Magdalen, Anthony Verdugo, Founder and Executive Director of Christian Family Coalition, Colin Hanna, President, Let Freedom Ring, Jonathan Youssef, International Director, Leading the Way, James Robison, President and Founder, Life Outreach International, Penny Nance, CEO, Concerned Women for America
Christian Leaders for a Nuclear-Free Iran, an ad hoc coalition of evangelical, Roman Catholic and other faith leaders who have come together as a united voice that is reaching out to policy makers and opinion leaders calling for urgent action to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. The coalition argues that Iran's nuclear weapons program will destabilize the Middle East, lead to an arms race in a volatile part of the world, and threaten the United States and its allies in Europe.
http://www.clnfi.org/
Conservative Christians Demand Action Against Iranian Nukes
By Mark D. Tooley, February 3, 2011
FrontPage Magazine
A coalition of primarily evangelical leaders, plus some Roman Catholics, is urging assertive U.S. actions against Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Their concerns contrast with the Religious Left, which seems mostly to prefer quiet acquiescence to a nuclear armed Iran.
The conservative Christians, operating as “Christian Leaders for a Nuclear Free Iran,” argue “Iran’s nuclear weapons program will destabilize the Middle East, lead to an arms race in a volatile part of the world, and threaten the United States and its allies in Europe.” These assertions are hardly controversial. Yet for some reason, it is left to conservative religionists to make these arguments. Shouldn’t religionists on the left, ostensibly so concerned about both theocracy and nukes, also be distressed about nuclear-armed Iranian mullahs?
The Left likes to target the end-times theology that purportedly guides some conservative Christians. But Iran’s clerics, and its president, have a very detailed, grisly and publicly expressed end-times scenario that nukes could actually help implement. Shouldn’t resistance to nukes for Iran’s theocracy be religiously broad-based and ecumenical? Instead, it is religious conservatives who are making the reasoned case. They are in some ways reminiscent of responsible religious liberals of the mid 20th century, guided by thinkers like Reinhold Neibuhr, who rigorously espoused deterrence of Nazi and Communist aggression.
“Christian Leaders for a Nuclear Free Iran” recently sent a letter to U.S. Senators that urged expanding the Iran Sanctions Act of 1996, increasing U.S. emphasis on Iran’s enormous human-rights violations, enhancing Voice of America’s Persian News Network’s support for the “pro-freedom movement in Iran,” transferring responsibility for pro-democracy funding in Iran from the State Department to the National Endowment for Democracy, aggressive identifying front companies of the Iran Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC), and applying pressure on firms paying Iran in advance for oil and gas.
The conservative Christian group cited Iran’s most recent refusal to negotiate over its nuclear program, along with Iran’s persistent denial of access to meaningful inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. They also cited diplomatic cables from Wikileaks that vividly illustrate the anxiety of Arab governments over a nuclear Iran. Coalition signers include Southern Baptist leader Richard Land, Penny Nance of Concerned Women for America, evangelist James Robison, broadcaster Pat Robertson, mega-church pastor John Hagee, and William Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, among others.
Although not specifically mentioned in their letter, the Christian Leaders for a Nuclear Iran are certainly aware of the Iranian theocracy’s persecution of their nation’s small but vibrant Christian minority, which numbers about 200,000. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) reported early last month that Iran had incarcerated as many as 70 Christians, both evangelical and Armenian, since Christmas. One Iranian official reportedly denounced them as “parasites” and claimed they were British agents.
Concerns about the Iranian mullahs’ persecution of fellow Christian believers do not typically excite distress by the Religious Left in America, much less the strategic threat that a nuclear Iran would pose to all its neighbors, including Iran, and ultimately the U.S. Several years ago, Jim Wallis’ Sojourners, along with the United Methodist lobby office, the Episcopal Church, and the National Council of Churches, organized a “Words Not War with Iran” campaign to forestall any decisive U.S. supported action to prevent Iranian nukes. “Words Not War with Iran” benignly portrayed the situation as a “conflict” between t he U.S. and Iran that potentially could be ameliorated through the mediation of noble pacifist religious groups like themselves. They simplistically portrayed the choices as U.S. initiated war on Iran versus “dialogue” and “direct engagement” with Iran’s supposedly reasonable theocrats. Although they briefly acknowledged that Iranian nuclear weapons would be undesirable, though not necessarily worse than U.S. nukes, they did not articulate nukes in the hands of crazed Shiite theocrats a uniquely disturbing. They did seem to admit that Iran supports terrorism but did not dwell on it as a major concern. And they did not elaborate on 32 years of police state oppression in Iran under the mullahs. Instead, they cited their own friendly visits to Iran as showcases of Iranian goodwill. They also urged supporters to light oil lamps in their homes in solidarity with the cause of peace with Iran.
This “Words Not War with Iran” coalition seems now mostly to be dormant, since the coalition was presumably less perturbed about the possibility of U.S. actions under the Obama Administration. But the coalition’s study materials helpfully remain on Jim Wallis’s Sojourners website. Presumably the coalition will reactivate when and if the current Administration is perceived to become overly bellicose towards the Iranian mullahs and their nuclear aspirations.
So “Christian Leaders for a Nuclear Free Iran” seems to be the only U.S. religious voice now willing to recognize Iran’s grim reality and urge meaningful action, hopefully making war unnecessary. Meanwhile, the Religious Left will remain mostly silent about Iran and its potential nukes until it becomes alarmed about possible U.S. actions.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ron Paul, the day he wins a CPAC straw poll for U.S. President, and only weeks after new ecumenical campaign against Iran having nukes- shades of the early 2000s campaign for war on Iraq in the name of stopping 'Weapons of Mass Destruction.for his 'delusional and delusional and disturbing alliance with the fringe Anti-War movement', being 'out of touch with America’s needs for national security'' 'laying the blaim on America for the unprovoked attacks of Sept. 11th" [and...failure to condemn] the 9/11 "Truther" conspiracy theorists that support him, and [for] repeatedly insist[ing], that the United States not bring justice to those who have murdered thousands of our civilians and soldiers at home and abroad..." [according to YAF Senior National Director Jordan Marks]
http://www.yaf.com/blog_post/show/57#comment_as:2:null:nullThe idea is to discredit not simply Paul, but rather certain ideas even if not endorsed by Paul but though by a signifient percentage of his supporters.
YAF Pack on February 12, 2011, 06:16 PM MEDIA REQUESTS: info@yaf.com
(202) 596-7923
(Washington DC - 2/12/11) The National Board of Young Americans for Freedom (YAF)—America's oldest conservative-libertarian activist group—has, per curium, voted to purge Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) from YAF’s National Advisory Board. YAF's concern with Rep. Paul stems from his delusional and disturbing alliance with the fringe Anti-War movement ...
1- question either war and be labeled 'delusional' 'fringe'
2- question the official 911 story and be labled a 'conspiracy theorist' despite the official tales many holes and the very real burning of the reicttag dymanics of surroending liberty for the appearance of safety/justice- defining latters as spending some $3 trillion and kill 300,000 people as revenge for the deaths of 3,000 and destruction of $30 billion.
This is what is commonly known as 'neoconservatism', buiding upon the 'rightwing' rebound following the defeat of the U.S. allied South Vietnam, and subsequently following the end of the old Soviet Union, for increased U.S. military interventionism abroad, not only in areas known for their reserves of petroleam, and, of course, as part of a great religious chessboard, but those as well without massive petroleum reserves.
Polices essentually dictated by that insitutution of higher education located in Washington, D.C. with its quite high percentage of people within the U.S. State Department, Georgetown University, with its School of Foreign Service run by the Jesuit Order.
Recall the push for war against Iraq under the guise of stopping Iraqi 'weapons of mass destruction'.
So what about this:
Christian Leaders Urge US Senate to Take Actions to Prevent Iran's Nuclear Weapons Program
Contact: Dave Mohel, 703-548-1160
WASHINGTON, Jan. 24, 2011 /Christian Newswire/ -- Christian Leaders for a Nuclear Free Iran, a coalition of religious and civic leaders sent a letter to the U.S. Senate urging members to enact tough sanctions against the Iranian regime that will intensify pressure on its leaders to halt their drive to build nuclear weapons.
A copy of the letter can be found at www.clnfi.org
In light of the meeting this weekend in Turkey during which the Iranian regime refused to seriously engage the six powers about its nuclear program, we urge you to support additional legislative efforts aimed squarely at compelling Iran to abandon its program to develop and deploy nuclear weapons.
The organization lays out a detailed list of actions that must be taken to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. Members fear a nuclear Iran will bring serious harm to the United States and its allies and further destabilize the Middle East.
Signers of the letter to the Senate include: Dr. Pat Robertson, Chairman and Founder of CBN and Regent University, Dr. Richard Land, President of Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Paul F. Crouch, Jr., Chief of Staff, TBN, Gary Bauer, President, American Values, John C. Hagee, Senior Pastor, Cornerstone Church, San Antonio, Texas, Tom McClusky, Sr., Vice President, Family Research Council Action, Stuart Epperson, Chairman of the Board, Salem Communications, Deal Hudson, President, Catholic Advocate, Washington, DC, Dr. Jim Garlow, Chairman, Renewing American Leadership, Dr. James Merritt, Senior Pastor, Cross Pointe Church, William Donohue, President, Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, Mark Williamson, Founder and President, Federal Intercessors, Jerry Newcombe, Author and TV Host, Jim Martin, Chairman, 60 Plus Association, Ken Timmerman, President and CEO, Foundation to Democracy in Iran, Micah Clark, Executive Director, American Family Association of Indiana, Mathew Staver, Founder and Chairman, Liberty Counsel, Mandi Campbell, Legal Director, Liberty Center for Law and Policy, Jordan Sekulow, Director of International Operations at American Center for Law and Justice, Dr. Robert E. Reccord, President, Total Life Impact Ministries, Richard W. C. Falknor, Chairman, Maryland Center-Right Coalition , Dr. Rusty Hayes, Pastor, First Free Church, Rockford IL, Dr. Mark A. Smith, President, Ohio Christian University, Dr. Barrett Duke, Vice President, Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, Al Kresta, President and CEO of Ave Maria Radio, Michael P. Jones, National Chairman, Young Americans for Freedom, Elmer F. Hansen, Jr., Director, Catholic Leadership Conference, William Haygood Shaker, President, RepublicanPac.com, C. Preston Noell, III, President of Tradition, Family, Property, Inc., Dr. Richard G. Lee, President, There's Hope America, Rev. Louis Sheldon, Chairman, Traditional Values Coalition, Michael D. Little, President and Chief Operating Officer, Christian Broadcasting Network, Dr. Jeffrey J. Karls, President of The College of Saint Mary Magdalen, Anthony Verdugo, Founder and Executive Director of Christian Family Coalition, Colin Hanna, President, Let Freedom Ring, Jonathan Youssef, International Director, Leading the Way, James Robison, President and Founder, Life Outreach International, Penny Nance, CEO, Concerned Women for America
Christian Leaders for a Nuclear-Free Iran, an ad hoc coalition of evangelical, Roman Catholic and other faith leaders who have come together as a united voice that is reaching out to policy makers and opinion leaders calling for urgent action to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. The coalition argues that Iran's nuclear weapons program will destabilize the Middle East, lead to an arms race in a volatile part of the world, and threaten the United States and its allies in Europe.
http://www.clnfi.org/
Conservative Christians Demand Action Against Iranian Nukes
By Mark D. Tooley, February 3, 2011
FrontPage Magazine
A coalition of primarily evangelical leaders, plus some Roman Catholics, is urging assertive U.S. actions against Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Their concerns contrast with the Religious Left, which seems mostly to prefer quiet acquiescence to a nuclear armed Iran.
The conservative Christians, operating as “Christian Leaders for a Nuclear Free Iran,” argue “Iran’s nuclear weapons program will destabilize the Middle East, lead to an arms race in a volatile part of the world, and threaten the United States and its allies in Europe.” These assertions are hardly controversial. Yet for some reason, it is left to conservative religionists to make these arguments. Shouldn’t religionists on the left, ostensibly so concerned about both theocracy and nukes, also be distressed about nuclear-armed Iranian mullahs?
The Left likes to target the end-times theology that purportedly guides some conservative Christians. But Iran’s clerics, and its president, have a very detailed, grisly and publicly expressed end-times scenario that nukes could actually help implement. Shouldn’t resistance to nukes for Iran’s theocracy be religiously broad-based and ecumenical? Instead, it is religious conservatives who are making the reasoned case. They are in some ways reminiscent of responsible religious liberals of the mid 20th century, guided by thinkers like Reinhold Neibuhr, who rigorously espoused deterrence of Nazi and Communist aggression.
“Christian Leaders for a Nuclear Free Iran” recently sent a letter to U.S. Senators that urged expanding the Iran Sanctions Act of 1996, increasing U.S. emphasis on Iran’s enormous human-rights violations, enhancing Voice of America’s Persian News Network’s support for the “pro-freedom movement in Iran,” transferring responsibility for pro-democracy funding in Iran from the State Department to the National Endowment for Democracy, aggressive identifying front companies of the Iran Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC), and applying pressure on firms paying Iran in advance for oil and gas.
The conservative Christian group cited Iran’s most recent refusal to negotiate over its nuclear program, along with Iran’s persistent denial of access to meaningful inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. They also cited diplomatic cables from Wikileaks that vividly illustrate the anxiety of Arab governments over a nuclear Iran. Coalition signers include Southern Baptist leader Richard Land, Penny Nance of Concerned Women for America, evangelist James Robison, broadcaster Pat Robertson, mega-church pastor John Hagee, and William Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, among others.
Although not specifically mentioned in their letter, the Christian Leaders for a Nuclear Iran are certainly aware of the Iranian theocracy’s persecution of their nation’s small but vibrant Christian minority, which numbers about 200,000. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) reported early last month that Iran had incarcerated as many as 70 Christians, both evangelical and Armenian, since Christmas. One Iranian official reportedly denounced them as “parasites” and claimed they were British agents.
Concerns about the Iranian mullahs’ persecution of fellow Christian believers do not typically excite distress by the Religious Left in America, much less the strategic threat that a nuclear Iran would pose to all its neighbors, including Iran, and ultimately the U.S. Several years ago, Jim Wallis’ Sojourners, along with the United Methodist lobby office, the Episcopal Church, and the National Council of Churches, organized a “Words Not War with Iran” campaign to forestall any decisive U.S. supported action to prevent Iranian nukes. “Words Not War with Iran” benignly portrayed the situation as a “conflict” between t he U.S. and Iran that potentially could be ameliorated through the mediation of noble pacifist religious groups like themselves. They simplistically portrayed the choices as U.S. initiated war on Iran versus “dialogue” and “direct engagement” with Iran’s supposedly reasonable theocrats. Although they briefly acknowledged that Iranian nuclear weapons would be undesirable, though not necessarily worse than U.S. nukes, they did not articulate nukes in the hands of crazed Shiite theocrats a uniquely disturbing. They did seem to admit that Iran supports terrorism but did not dwell on it as a major concern. And they did not elaborate on 32 years of police state oppression in Iran under the mullahs. Instead, they cited their own friendly visits to Iran as showcases of Iranian goodwill. They also urged supporters to light oil lamps in their homes in solidarity with the cause of peace with Iran.
This “Words Not War with Iran” coalition seems now mostly to be dormant, since the coalition was presumably less perturbed about the possibility of U.S. actions under the Obama Administration. But the coalition’s study materials helpfully remain on Jim Wallis’s Sojourners website. Presumably the coalition will reactivate when and if the current Administration is perceived to become overly bellicose towards the Iranian mullahs and their nuclear aspirations.
So “Christian Leaders for a Nuclear Free Iran” seems to be the only U.S. religious voice now willing to recognize Iran’s grim reality and urge meaningful action, hopefully making war unnecessary. Meanwhile, the Religious Left will remain mostly silent about Iran and its potential nukes until it becomes alarmed about possible U.S. actions.
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Saturday, February 12, 2011
Egypt's Revolution- Continuing The Criminal Agrilcultural Mercantilism- or?
for Rome's Pharmacratic market protectionism for Tobacco & Pharma
Police torture & murder of a citizen -- Khaled Said -- for posting a video of pharmacratic inquisition police corruption, sparks a revoluion that will do just what with the pharmacratic inquisition?
http://www.elshaheeed.co.uk/home-khaled-said-full-story-background-truth-what-happened-torture-in-egypt-by-egyptian-police/Now consider this observation:
Khaled [Said] has become the symbol for many Egyptians who dream to see their country free of brutality, torture and ill treatment. Many young Egyptians are now fed up with the inhuman treatment they face on a daily basis in streets, police stations and everywhere. Egyptians want to see an end to all violence committed by any Egyptian Policeman. Egyptians are aspiring to the day when Egypt has its freedom and dignity back, the day when the current 30 years long emergency martial law ends and when Egyptians can freely elect their true representatives.
According to Associated Press, Khaled was killed “after he posted a video on the Internet of officers sharing the spoils from a drug bust among themselves”. After Khaled was killed, the Police authorities refused to investigate in Khaled’s death saying that he died because he swallowed a pack of Marijuana. When many Egyptians started to ask questions, the Police issued few statements saying that Khaled was a drug user (as if it is ok to murder and torture to death all drug addicts! [sic- or that use = addiction] – And every one who knew khaled reject these claims completely). Another official statement said that Khaled is an army deserter (which was also proved to be false accusation after wards and his army service report is now published showing that he has fully completed this service). The authorities then refused any further investigation. After pressure mounted, and the European Union representatives in Egypt asked for an impartial investigation, the Egyptian authorities finally decided to question and arrest the two Policemen and they were charged with two counts: “using excessive force”!!! and “unjustified arrest”!! of Khaled Said.. No one was charged with murder!
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2011/feb/07/american_facing_death_penalty_eg#comments_area
All week I was wondering what will happen to cannabis laws in Egypt if protesters are successful in ousting Mubarak. If Egypt is one of the poorest countries on the planet, they could legalize all cannabis products and turn their economy around. Drug tourism and huge fields of hemp. It would be interesting to know if a majority of protesters are for legalization or not.
To that, Rome's Pharmacratic Inquisition as represented by the timeline, as with the instigation of cocaine demonification, including that by the U.S. State Department in deceiving other nations' governments, I would add, what also about the right to film police, which within the U.S. is opposed by the masonic Fraternal Order of Police, and the rights of whistleblowers?
The following case, and how it eventually plays out, could mark further developments in resistence or continued subserviance in Egypt to Rome's Pharmacratic Inquisition.
American Facing Death Penalty in Egypt for Non Psychoactive Hemp Oil
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2011/feb/07/american_facing_death_penalty_eg
Friday, February 11, 2011
10% U.S. Congress Openly Jesuit Educated
From Vox Populi- Georgetown's Blog of Record
http://fwix.com/dc/share/bfaf7bcb13/jesuit_college_alumni_make_up_one-tenth_of_us_congress
found at Good Jesuit, Bad Jesuit
http://goodjesuitbadjesuit.blogspot.com/2011/01/elected-leader-of-republican-party-is.html
Jesuit college alumni make up one-tenth of U.S. Congress
Geoffrey Bible
Despite there being only 28 Jesuits colleges and universities in the country, nearly one in every ten members of the 112th Congress has attended a Jesuit school for undergraduate or graduate studies.
A total of 53 members—41 in the House and 12 in the Senate—have attended a Jesuit secondary education institution.
In the House of Representatives leadership, the new Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer(D-MD) are both alumni of Jesuit universities, having attended Xavier and Georgetown, respectively. Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL), a Georgetown alumnus,remains as Assistant Majority Leader.
“With the many challenges facing our nation, we are happy that our Jesuit college and university alumni/ae continue to play important roles in Congress and the Administration. Their commitment to lead and to serve is in the best Jesuit tradition,” Fr. Charles Currie, S.J., president of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities said in a statement.
Of the Jesuit schools represented, Georgetown leads the pack with 18 alumni, followed by Boston College with 7 alumni, and the College of the Holy Cross with 4 alumni.
Of the significantly large number of new members in Congress, three are Georgetown alumni.
There are also more than 30 alumni serving in roles in the Obama administration.
http://fwix.com/dc/share/bfaf7bcb13/jesuit_college_alumni_make_up_one-tenth_of_us_congress
found at Good Jesuit, Bad Jesuit
http://goodjesuitbadjesuit.blogspot.com/2011/01/elected-leader-of-republican-party-is.html
Jesuit college alumni make up one-tenth of U.S. Congress
Geoffrey Bible
Despite there being only 28 Jesuits colleges and universities in the country, nearly one in every ten members of the 112th Congress has attended a Jesuit school for undergraduate or graduate studies.
A total of 53 members—41 in the House and 12 in the Senate—have attended a Jesuit secondary education institution.
In the House of Representatives leadership, the new Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer(D-MD) are both alumni of Jesuit universities, having attended Xavier and Georgetown, respectively. Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL), a Georgetown alumnus,remains as Assistant Majority Leader.
“With the many challenges facing our nation, we are happy that our Jesuit college and university alumni/ae continue to play important roles in Congress and the Administration. Their commitment to lead and to serve is in the best Jesuit tradition,” Fr. Charles Currie, S.J., president of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities said in a statement.
Of the Jesuit schools represented, Georgetown leads the pack with 18 alumni, followed by Boston College with 7 alumni, and the College of the Holy Cross with 4 alumni.
Of the significantly large number of new members in Congress, three are Georgetown alumni.
There are also more than 30 alumni serving in roles in the Obama administration.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
"White is Black, Black is White" Leader Visits U.S. Feb 13-19
from Endr Times:
The hand is quicker than the eye... .... As they say in the world of the Magicians.
So, while we are 'engrossed' with the minute to minute developments in Egypt:
Father General
Visit to America. Father General will take part in the meeting of the Jesuit Conference USA and visit the Jesuits and Jesuit ministries of Jamaica (a dependent Region of New England) February 13-19. Every two years Father General attends a meeting of the Provincials to get first-hand information about the mission of the USA Assistancy and to present his perspective and vision regarding the universal Society. In addition to their usual and ongoing work for promoting the apostolic live lihood of the men and ministries of the USA Assistancy, the Provincials will discuss implementation of two parts of the Assistancy's strategic discernment plan: communications and vocation promotion. Father General's visit to the Jamaica Region will include an opportunity to visit some of the Society's ministries, meet about 100 of the Society's collaborators and benefactors, and join the Jesuits of Jamaica for an evening of prayer and conversation.
.
Related:
From the Curia
From January 31 - February 3, meeting at the Curia Offices in Rome were the members of the Permanent Interprovincial Commission, known as CIP, which advices on the government of the interprovincial Roman houses. Numerous themes were discussed and studied. Topics discussed included: the context of the Mission of the DIR (concerning the international houses in Rome), with the participation of rectors of the Pontifical Gregorian University, the Pontifical Biblical Institute and the Pontifical Oriental Institute; the community life of the Jesuit professors and scholastics of the Roman houses. The discussion was also attended by numerous
members of various communities in collaboration in the "Consortium" which includes the three above mentioned Papal institutions, as well as discussion, with the deans and faculty of the Pontifical Gregorian University, regarding research professors to replace the more senior members of the faculty, the move of these senior Jesuits to their respective Provinces, and other related topics. There were also many meetings with the communities of individual institutions and the exchange of ideas with professors and students.
Source
http://www.sjweb.info/news/index.cfm?LangTop=1&Publang=1&Tab=2
Posted by Arsenio A. Lembert Jr. at 8:08 AM 0 comments
Friday, February 4, 2011
About the 'White is Black, Black is White' Rule
from the blog Good Jesuit, Bad Jesuit
http://goodjesuitbadjesuit.blogspot.com/2011/02/i-could-not-accept-that-rule.html
Thursday, February 3, 2011
I Could Not Accept That Rule
Terrence W. Tilley, Ph.D. (page 4) said that he first encountered the 13th of 18 rules of the Rules for Thinking with the Church set forth in Loyola's Spiritual Exercises while attending Brophy College Preparatory School, a Jesuit institution in Phoenix. "Scholastics and ordained—sometimes subtly, sometimes not so subtly—recruited me and other promising classmates for the order," he said.
"But the scholastics told us [the 13th rule] bluntly—that if any of us thought some thing was white and the hierarchical church said it was black, we had to believe it was black". "Long before I accepted the philosophical dictum that our beliefs are mostly not under the direct control of our wills, I knew I could not accept that rule."
Tilley explained that he began to appreciate the importance of the mandate in 1993, when he read a talk that Dulles gave to Jesuits at a symposium in Mexico. He said that one reason for the rule may have been to attempt to ward off charges against Ignatius that accused him of being a member of the "Illuminati."
Link (here) to the full article at the Fordham Ram
Rule 13
That we may be altogether of the same mind and in conformity with the Church herself, if she shall have defined anything to be black which to our eyes appears to be white, we ought in like manner to pronounce it to be black. For we must undoubtedly believe, that the Spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Spirit of the Orthodox Church His Spouse, by which Spirit we are governed and directed to Salvation, is the same;…
Link (here)
Posted by Joseph Fromm at 1:00 AM Labels: Fordham University2 comments:
Anonymous said...
If he cannot accept that rule, then he does not accept the authority of the Magisterium, which means he does not accept Christ, who founded the Catholic Church and conferred upon its first bishops the authority to teach bindingly in his name. That is to say, if he cannot accept that rule, then he is not a good Catholic. That rule does not only bind Jesuits; a form of that rule binds all Catholics.
February 3, 2011
5:01 PM
TonyD said...
I enjoyed Dr. Tilley’s post. It reminded me of some of the lectures
we had in theology class.
As I recall, we spent quite a bit of time discussing the “disconnect” between Ignatius writings – such as the rule mentioned -- and his actual decisions and positions with respect to the Church.
In the end, I think most of the class agreed with Dr. Tilley’s point that Ignatius was writing for a particular audience, and, as Dr. Tilly says: “the rule may have been to attempt to ward off charges against Ignatius” as opposed to those who would interpret the rule as some sort of commandment that supersedes judgment.
February 3, 2011
11:50 PM