Attack on Iran Said To Be Imminent
In a sign that U.N. Security Council-based diplomacy is losing steam, a number of sources are reporting that a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities may be imminent. France and America also are pushing for tighter economic sanctions against Tehran, without U.N. approval.
Yesterday’s edition of Le Canard Enchaîné, a French weekly known for its investigative journalism, reported details of an alleged Israeli-American plan to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. The frontpage headline read: “A report sent to the Elysée — Putin tells Tehran: They’re going to bomb you!”
The Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, also expressed concerns to reporters in New York that an attack on Iran might be imminent.
Like most stories in the French paper, the article was based on unnamed sources who said that in order to reduce casualties, the attack against Iran is planned for October 15, the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Israel would bomb the first targets while America would orchestrate a second wave of strikes, the report said.
Arizona Boy Dies Of Rare Infection
A 14-year-old Lake Havasu boy has become the sixth victim to die nationwide this year of a microscopic organism that attacks the body through the nasal cavity, quickly eating its way to the brain.
Aaron Evans died Sept. 17 of Naegleria fowleri, an organism doctors said he probably picked up a week before while swimming in the balmy shallows of Lake Havasu.
According to the Centers For Disease Control, Naegleria infected 23 people from 1995 to 2004. This year health officials said they’ve noticed a spike in cases, with six Naegleria-related cases so far — all of them fatal.
Such attacks are extremely rare, though some health officials have put their communities on high alert, telling people to stay away from warm, standing water.
Though infections tend to be found in southern states, Naegleria has been found almost everywhere in lakes, hot springs, even some swimming pools. Still, the CDC knows of only several hundred cases worldwide since its discovery in Australia in the 1960s.
The amoeba typically live in lake bottoms, grazing off algae and bacteria in the sediment. Beach said people become infected when they wade through shallow water and stir up the bottom. If someone allows water to shoot up the nose say, by doing a cannonball off a cliff the amoeba can latch onto the person’s olfactory nerve.
The amoeba destroys tissue as it makes its way up to the brain.
People who are infected tend to complain of a stiff neck, headaches and fevers, Beach said. In the later stages, they’ll show signs of brain damage such as hallucinations and behavioral changes.
Once infected, most people have little chance of survival. Some drugs have been effective stopping the amoeba in lab experiments, but people who have been attacked rarely survive, Beach said.
“Usually, from initial exposure it’s fatal within two weeks,” Beach said.
Researchers still have much to learn about Naegleria, Beach said. For example, it seems that children are more likely to get infected, and boys are infected more often than girls. Experts don’t know why.
“Boys tend to have more boisterous activities (in water), but we’re not clear,” he said.
The Evans family lives within eyesight of Lake Havasu, a bulging strip of the Colorado River that separates Arizona from California. Temperatures hover in the triple digits all summer, and like almost everyone else, the Evans family looks to the lake to cool off.
On Sept. 8, he brought Aaron, his two other children and his parents to Lake Havasu to celebrate his birthday. They ate sandwiches and spent a few hours splashing around one of the beaches.
“For a week, everything was fine,” he said.
Then Aaron got the headache that wouldn’t go away. Evans took him to the hospital, and doctors thought his son was suffering from meningitis. Aaron was rushed to another hospital in Las Vegas.
Evans tried to reassure his son, but he had no idea what was wrong. On Sept. 17, Aaron stopped breathing as David held him in his arms.
“He was brain dead,” David said. Only later did doctors realize the boy had been infected with Naegleria.
“My kids won’t ever swim on Lake Havasu again.”
Video Shows Mock Industrial Hacker Attack On Power Grid
A government video shows the potential destruction caused by hackers seizing control of a crucial part of the U.S. electrical grid: an industrial turbine spinning wildly out of control until it becomes a smoking hulk and power shuts down.
The video, produced for the Homeland Security Department and obtained by The Associated Press on Wednesday, was marked “Official Use Only.” It shows commands quietly triggered by simulated hackers having such a violent reaction that the enormous turbine shudders as pieces fly apart and it belches black-and-white smoke.
The video was produced for top U.S. policy makers by the Idaho National Laboratory, which has studied the little-understood risks to the specialized electronic equipment that operates power, water and chemical plants. Vice President Dick Cheney is among those who have watched the video, said one U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity because this official was not authorized to publicly discuss such high-level briefings.
“They’ve taken a theoretical attack and they’ve shown in a very demonstrable way the impact you can have using cyber means and cyber techniques against this type of infrastructure,” said Amit Yoran, former U.S. cybersecurity chief for the Bush administration. Yoran is chief executive for NetWitness Corp., which sells sophisticated network monitoring software.
“It’s so graphic,” Yoran said. “Talking about bits and bytes doesn’t have the same impact as seeing something catch fire.”
The electrical attack never actually happened. The recorded demonstration, called the “Aurora Generator Test,” was conducted in March by government researchers investigating a dangerous vulnerability in computers at U.S. utility companies known as supervisory control and data acquisition systems. The programming flaw was quietly fixed, and equipment-makers urged utilities to take protective measures.
There was no evidence any U.S. utility company suffered damage from hackers or terrorists using this technique, U.S. officials said. But these officials cautioned that affected systems are not routinely monitored as closely as many modern corporate computer networks, so there would be little forensic evidence to study after such a break-in.
Industry experts cautioned that intruders would need specialized knowledge to carry out such attacks, including the ability to turn off warning systems.
“The video is not a realistic representation of how the power system would operate,” said Stan Johnson, a manager at the North American Electric Reliability Corp., the Princeton, N.J.-based organization charged with overseeing the power grid.
A top Homeland Security Department official, Robert Jamison, said companies are working to limit such attacks.
“Is this something we should be concerned about? Yes,” said Jamison, who oversees the department’s cybersecurity division. “But we’ve taken a lot of risk off the table.”
President Bush’s top telecommunications advisers concluded years ago that an organization such as a foreign intelligence service or a well-funded terror group “could conduct a structured attack on the electric power grid electronically, with a high degree of anonymity, and without having to set foot in the target nation.” Ominously, the Idaho National Laboratory – which produced the new video – has described the risk as “the invisible threat.”
Experts said the affected systems were not developed with security in mind.
Another New Low for Dollar
The dollar reached yet another low Thursday, its sixth consecutive trading day searching for, and finding, a new bottom against the euro.
The dollar made some gains later in the face of data showing that new U.S. home sales have tumbled.
The euro rose as high as $1.4189 — up from $1.4136 in New York late the previous day and above its previous peak of $1.4162, which it had reached early Wednesday.
However, it dropped back to $1.4146 in late-afternoon European trading.
The dollar has hit a series of new lows against the euro since the U.S. Federal Reserve cut interest rates by a larger-than-expected half percentage point last week. Disappointing U.S. economic data have underlined the possibility of more cuts.
Lower interest rates, used to jump-start an economy, can weaken a currency as investors transfer funds to countries where their deposits and fixed-income investments bring higher returns.
Russia Promises Retaliation If Weapons Deployed In Space
Russia is ready to take appropriate measures if weapons are deployed in space, the commander of the Russian Space Forces said Thursday.
“Should any country deploy weapons in space, then the laws of armed warfare are such that retaliatory weapons are certain to appear,” Col. Gen. Vladimir Popovkin said.
He said Russia and China have drafted an international declaration on the non-deployment of weapons in space and sent it to the UN.
“It is necessary to establish the rules of the game in space,” he said, adding that the deployment of weapons in space could have unpredictable consequences, since such weapons are “very complex systems.”
“A sizable war could break out,” the commander said.
He said space must not be the sphere of interests of any one country.
“We do not want to fight in space, and we do not want to call the shots there either, but we will not permit any other country to do so,” he said.
Popovkin also said that Russia has an integrated missile attack warning system, covering the countrys entire territory.
Abu Mazen: Olmert Agreed to Make Jerusalem Arab Capital
The chairman of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), met with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice last week and told her that Prime Minister Olmert agrees, finally, to turn eastern Jerusalem into the capital of a future state of Palestine. So reports the PA newspaper Al Hayat Al Jadeeda, quoting an unnamed “senior Palestinian source.”
Abbas reportedly told Rice that Olmert had agreed to the demand in an Olmert-Abbas meeting a couple of days before. Another Olmert-Abbas meeting is planned for next week, the paper reports.
Arutz-7’s Haggai Huberman reports on another PA media article. The Palestinian Press claims that Iran has given the order to Hamas and Islamic Jihad to reduce Kassam rocket attacks against Israel during the month of Ramadan, in order to reduce the suffering of Arab citizens in Gaza during this period. Hamas chief-in-exile Khaled Mashaal reportedly told Iran that though Hamas agrees to hold fire, Islamic Jihad does not.
Meanwhile, plans continue for U.S. President George Bush’s international Middle East summit, scheduled for this November in Washington. Secretary Rice announced Sunday night that Syria and Lebanon will also be invited to take part, though they will have to commit themselves to help find a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is not happy with the summit. “Without advance preparations and without an objective,” he said, “I don’t see what can come of it, and I don’t see any reason to convene the summit.”
High-level meetings of this nature are often accompanied by Arab violence and terrorism, and some fear that such violence this time will only intensify if the summit does not produce results favorable to the Arab side.
Ahmadinejad Tells UN His Vision of A World Without Israel
Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad used his speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday to unveil a vision of a world without Israel, in which America and Europe would be freed of what he said was Zionist oppression.
Culminating a concerted assault on what he described as the injustices and oppressions practiced by the “big powers” since World War II, he said that the ungodly era of lewdness and violence was coming to a close and that “the age of monotheism has commenced.”
The world was “nearing the sunset of the time of empires,” he said, and urged the dominant world powers to eschew their “obedience to Satan” and “submit to the will of god.” If they did so, “they will be saved.” If not, “calamities will befall them.”
But whether or not these powers chose to reform themselves, he said, the day was fast approaching when “occupied lands will be freed. Palestine and Iraq will be liberated from the domination of the occupiers.” And the people of America and Europe would be liberated from Zionist oppression. “This is the promise of god,” he said. “Therefore it will be fulfilled.”
Earlier in his address, the Iranian president insisted again that his country’s nuclear program was peaceful and transparent, and repeated and elaborated on the charges he had levelled at Columbia University on Monday against Israel – which he did not mention by name, but rather called “the illegal Zionist regime.”
He told the assembled world leaders that the people of Palestine had been punished for 60 years for what had happened in Europe. They had been held “under occupation of the illegal Zionist regime,” he said. “The Palestinian people have been displaced,” he went on, “incarcerated under abhorrent conditions.” They were being deprived of water and medicine “for the sin of asking for freedom.”
Ahmadinejad accused Israel of terrorism and castigated “the brutal Zionists” for carrying out targeted assassinations.
New TV Show Urges You To Be One of Satans Tools
September 26, 2007 by admin
Filed under Moral Decay
The devil is full of fun and hilarious hijinks on a new show debuting tonight on the CW Television Network that urges viewers to “be one of Satan’s tools.”
“Reaper,” airing at 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, revolves around a “20-something slacker” named Sam Oliver, played by Bret Harrison, who has an unexpected encounter with Satan while driving on a neighborhood street.
Sam then finds out from his father a deep, dark family secret, according to a trailer on CW’s website
“I probably should have told you this a long time ago,” his father says. “Your mom and I sold your soul to the devil.”
Sam learns of his new obligations after asking the devil, “Do I have to go to hell now?”
“You’re going to work for me here,” says Satan, played by Ray Wise. “You’re just going to bring escaped souls back to hell. You know, like a bounty hunter. That’s cool!”
San Francisco Street Fair Mocks ‘Last Supper’ With Sex-Toys Twist
September 26, 2007 by admin
Filed under Moral Decay
Organizers of San Francisco’s Folsom Street Fair, sponsored by Miller Brewing Co. have portrayed Christ and his disciples as half-naked homosexual sadomasochists in the event’s promotional advertisement, and the conservative group Concerned Women for America is complaining about the hypocrisy of it.
“The bread and wine representing Christ’s broken body and lifegiving blood are replaced with sadomasochistic sex toys in this twisted version of Da Vinci’s The Last Supper,” CWA said on its Web site.
Because of the offensive nature of the picture we have decided not to post it or provide a link.
“‘Gay’ activists disingenuously call Christians ‘haters’ and ‘homophobes’ for honoring the Bible, but then lash out in this hateful manner toward the very people they accuse,” said said Matt Barber, CWA’s policy director for cultural issues.
“In their version of The Last Supper, Christ, Who gave His life for our sins, is despicably replaced by sin itself as the object of worship.”
CWA is calling on California politicians — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sens. Feinstein and Boxer among them — to “publicly condemn this unprovoked attack against Christ and His followers.
“We further challenge the media to cover this affront to Christianity with the same vigor as recent stories about cartoon depictions of Mohammed and other items offensive to the Muslim community,” CWA said.
The Folsom Street Fair describes itself as “the world’s largest leather event.”
“We hope to see the fairgrounds filled with people in their most outrageous leather/rubber/fetish attire enjoying the worlds largest and best loved Leather fair,” the Web site says.
Concerned Women for America called it “shocking and offensive” that California taxpayers are forced to foot part of the bill for the Folsom Street Fair. The City of San Francisco sanctions the event by shutting down several city blocks and providing police for security.
The Folsom Street Fair Web site says young people are welcome: “While we don’t have any age restrictions at the gates we do inform attendees of the adult oriented nature of our events.” The fair organizers say beer and liquor age restrictions are strictly enforced.
Putin Turns His Face to Tehran, His Back to Bush and Sarkozy
Iran’s suspect nuclear program is further polarizing the big powers.
As American and European officials discussed a third round of UN Security Council sanctions, Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, more pugnacious than ever, addressed a military parade Sat. Sept. 22 marking the 27th anniversary of the onset of the Iraq-Iran war of the eighties.
“Those (countries) who assume that decaying methods such as psychological war, political propaganda and the so-called economic sanctions would work and prevent Iran’s fast drive towards progress are mistaken.”
“The Iranian nation is ready to bring any oppressive power to its knees,” read a slogan from supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, inscribed on a massive board on a truck as a new, improved long-range, 1,800-km range surface missile trundled by.
Other slogans called for “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.” Western military attaches, apparently warned in advance, boycotted the rally for the second year running.
But there is no escape: These are the messages Ahmadinejad takes with him this week to the UN General Assembly and Columbia University in New York.
The French president Nicolas Sarkozy meanwhile stands shoulder to shoulder with President George W. Bush. Friday, Sept. 21, he said: “Iran is trying to obtain an atomic bomb. That is unacceptable and I tell the French people it is unacceptable.”
A week ago, French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner warned that the world faced war if diplomacy and sanctions failed to curb Iran’s nuclear activities.
But Vladimir Putin pulled in the opposite direction from his two fellows in the UN Security Council when he decided to be the first Russian president to visit Tehran on Oct. 16. The visit, in the framework of the Caspian Asian Summit, is planned to encompass much more than state ceremonial and ritual photo-ops, although there will be plenty of that too.
Ahmadinejad Questions 9/11 and Holocaust During Columbia Talk
Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defended Holocaust deniers and raised questions about who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks in a tense showdown Monday at Columbia University where the school’s head introduced the visitor by calling him a “petty and cruel dictator.”
Ahmadinejad, appearing shaken by what he called “insults” from his host, sought to portray himself as an intellectual and argued that his regime had respect for reason and science. But the former engineering professor soon found himself drawn into the type of rhetoric that has alienated American audiences in the past.
He provoked derisive laughter by responding to a question about Iran’s execution of homosexuals by saying: “In Iran we don’t have homosexuals like in your country … I don’t know who’s told you that we have this.”
At times, however, he drew audience applause, such as when he bemoaned the plight of the Palestinians.
But his first stab was at Columbia’s president, Lee Bollinger, who said in his introduction of Ahmadinejad: “Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator.”
Ahmadinejad said Bollinger’s opening was “an insult to information and the knowledge of the audience here.”
“There were insults and claims that were incorrect, regretfully,” Ahmadinejad added, accusing Bollinger of falling under the influence of the hostile U.S. press and politicians.
Appearing agitated at times, Iran’s president often declined to offer the simple answers the audience sought, responding instead with his own questions or long discursions about history and justice.
Bollinger opened by aggressively taking on Ahmadinejad’s past statements about the Holocaust.
“In a December 2005 state television broadcast, you described the Holocaust as the fabricated legend,” he said. “One year later, you held a two-day conference of Holocaust deniers.”
Bollinger said that might fool the illiterate and ignorant.
“When you come to a place like this, it makes you simply ridiculous. The truth is that the Holocaust is the most documented event in human history,” he said.
Ahmadinejad denied he had questioned the existence of the Holocaust.
“Granted this happened, what does it have to do with the Palestinian people?” he said.
But Ahmadinejad went on to say that he was defending the rights of European scholars, an apparent reference to a small number who have been prosecuted under national laws for denying or minimizing the Holocaust.
“There’s nothing known as absolute,” he said.
Asked why he had asked to visit the World Trade Center site — a request denied by New York authorities — Ahmadinejad said he wanted to express sympathy for the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Then he appeared to question whether al-Qaida was responsible, saying more research was needed.
Ahmadinejad questions 9/11, Holocaust – Yahoo! News
Father of Columbine Victim – Sons Life Taken In Godless School
September 25, 2007 by admin
Filed under Moral Decay
The father of one of the victims in the 1999 Columbine school shooting in Colorado has triggered a battle of words with his choice of inscription for the newly completed memorial for the 13 students killed in that murderous rampage.
Brian Rohrbough, who now serves as president of Colorado Right to Life, submitted an inscription for the memorial in a park close to the school that blames the violence in today’s culture on the choice society makes to remove God from the equation.
The inscription, in honor of his son, Dan Rohrbough, one of students killed on that April 20 by suicide attackers Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, says:
Dad, I have a question. Why?
My son in a Nation that legalized the killing of innocent children in the womb; in a County where authorities would lie and cover up what they knew and what they did; in a Godless school system your life was taken … Dan I’m sorry.
Russia Defends Weapons Sales To Syria
Russia Monday rejected U.S. contentions weapons sales to Syria are further destabilizing the Middle East.
“We are doing exactly what many other arms producers are doing,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in New York.
Lavrov said Russia mainly supplies Syria with defensive weapons and then follows up with inspections to be sure the weapons are not resold, RIA Novosti reported.
“All of our sales are completely transparent and in line with both our international obligations and our national export control laws — some of the toughest in the world,” Lavrov said.
Lavrov said Russia stands willing to be investigated if evidence exists that Russia is upsetting the balance of power in the Middle East.
U.S. and Israeli authorities have accused Syria of supplying Lebanon-based Hezbollah militants with Russian-made anti-tank missile systems.
Atheism Services On The Rise At Colleges
To some people, God is one entity. To others, there are many gods — and still to others, there are simply none.
Across college campuses in Boston, student atheists and similar organizations are on the rise, but some of these groups have taken a different approach to their atheism. Both Harvard University and Tufts University have student clubs in the Secular Student Alliance, an umbrella group for atheists and nonbelievers that take their beliefs one step further and hold services for atheists.
Although Boston University has no alliance and its atheists do not congregate, Harvard Humanist Chaplain Greg Epstein said the idea of atheist services will catch on at other schools.
“Already there are a small group of schools that have humanist chaplains like Harvard,” Epstein said.
The new idea of bringing atheists together is an aspect Boston Atheists Director Zach Bos says is important.
“A congregation is just a group of people that come together,” said Bos, a Core curriculum administrative coordinator for the College of Arts and Sciences.
Atheist congregations can use the same methods churches do to draw nonbelievers together, Bos said.
“[Use] the aesthetic pleasure of song, the humane hunger to address questions of ultimate meaning and just remove from it all those things that religion comprises for the sake of its own perpetuation,” he said.
Even though there are no atheist groups on the Charles River Campus and there have not been any for several years, Bos said there were chapters of Campus Freethought Alliance and BU Religion of Nonbelievers in the 1990s, so a resurgence of the group is possible.
Marsh Chapel Dean Robert Hill said he is open to the idea of services being held for nonbelievers because he wants to provide services to everyone.
The services offered at Harvard range from weekly services, such as a the Humanist Passover Seder, to community-service congregations.
“Some of our events lately have been sold out while others have been a smaller group of 15 to 20 people,” Epstein said. “Some students might perceive it closely to a religious service and do not want to be a part of it. My main goal is to make this world which will never be perfect a better place.”
Boston Atheists’ activities includes group dinners, philosophical discussions and film screenings.
