Current Events and Biblical Prophecy III

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Last Minute Rulemaking by Bush USDA Threatens Organic Farmers

Last update: 1:10 p.m. EST Dec. 3, 2008

CORNUCOPIA, Wis., Dec 03, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Consumers and Farmers Join Together to Promote Organic Integrity

Many media outlets, from the New York Times to the blogosphere, have tracked what's been dubbed the "corporate takeover" of organic farming. One of the hottest controversies in this rapidly growing $20 billion industry has been giant factory farms milking thousands of cows each in feedlots and masquerading as organic.

Since the organic community first appealed to the USDA for better clarification and enforcement of regulations requiring organic dairy producers to graze their cattle, nearly 9 years ago, the number of giant industrial dairy operations, with as many as 10,000 cows, has grown from two to approximately 15. Finally the USDA has responded with a proposed rule that they said would crack down on abuses.

"The birds have come home to roost," said Mark Kastel, Senior Farm Policy Analyst for The Cornucopia Institute. The Wisconsin-based farm policy research group estimates there are 35,000 to 45,000 cows on giant CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) operating in the United States producing as much as 40% of the nation's organic milk supply.

"These CAFOs are producing so much milk that they have depressed pricing and profit margins for organic family farmers. Now some are being forced out of business by this distressing situation," Kastel said.

The Cornucopia Institute has filed formal legal complaints with the USDA aimed at compelling the agency to enforce organic livestock and management rules. These actions have led to the shut down or penalizing of some of the "organic scofflaws."

The new USDA rule proposal totals 26 pages in the Federal Register. The draft rule complies with organic community requests to close specific loopholes but also represents the broadest rewrite of federal organic regulations in the $20 billion industry's history.

Some farm advocates believe that the new rules, if enacted, would put out of business the hundreds of ethical organic livestock farmers.

"At first we were delighted that the USDA had stopped their delaying tactics and published a rule cracking down on the large factory farms that have been 'scamming' organic consumers and placing ethical family farmers at a competitive disadvantage," stated Bill Welch, former chairman of the National Organic Standards Board and an Iowa livestock producer. "Many have spent the past weeks carefully examining this dense document, and it has become painfully clear that it would not only crack down on factory farm abuses, but it's also so restrictive that it would likely put the majority of family farmers producing organic milk and meat out of business."

"It's inexcusable," noted Ronnie Cummins, Director of the Organic Consumers Association, "that the USDA would allow, as part of this rule, that conventional cattle to be brought onto organic farms, and milked, on a continuous basis."

In response to the USDA's sweeping proposal, a consortium of organizations representing organic family farmers has crafted an "alternative" rule proposal. The revisions they have drafted would carry out what is said to be the will of the organic community, farmers and consumers.

For more, visit:
http://www.cornucopia.org/usda-propo...ivestock-rule/
SOURCE The Cornucopia Institute
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/Last-Minute-Rulemaking-Bush-USDA/story.aspx?guid={AE6A5E7F-4E23-491D-AFCE-35D413C0D08C}

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USDA memo mandates NAIS premises identification for 2009

http://www.wilsoncountynews.com/arti...ation-for-2009

“The memo not only calls for mandatory registrations, but for branding individuals as ‘dissenters,’” said Col. (Ret.) Randy Givens, a founder of the Liberty Ark Coalition, an alliance formed to fight the animal identification program. “The USDA’s document states that people who refuse to ‘voluntarily’ register their property will not only be involuntarily assigned a registration number, but will also be assigned a special code that designates their refusal to ‘volunteer,’” he said.

See USDA memo -

http://farmandranchfreedom.org/conte...ate_080922.pdf

And-

http://www.stepstowardthemark.com/id20.html

http://www.nonaiswa.org/wordpress/wp...edit&post=1869 This is proposed *regulation* that is being submitted under for comment during the holidays with an adoption date of January 2009.

FOIA/Public Disclosure Document revealing the mandatory date:

http://www.nonaiswa.org/wordpress/wp...edit&post=1627

[Aplomb]

http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charl...us-free-speech

War on Christmas attacks religious free speech


December 11, 12:42 PM
by Michael A. DeVine, Charlotte Law & Civil Rights Examiner


"You can't legislate morality."

"They want to impose their religious beliefs."


So go the arguments meant to persuade courts to ban voluntary prayer and Bible study in schools, ban nativity scenes and displays of the Ten Commandments on public property, and legalize same-sex marriage and abortion.


Judges shaped by the moral vision underlying such decisions have imposed them on an America whose revolutionary Founders were intent upon government by We the People, not by one king or five justices. The Constitution they ratified guarantees freedom of all speech, not just non-religious speech. Earlier this week we documented the actions of the educators of such judges that embrace a warped moral vision that bans Christmas trees as offensive but needs commissions to study whether offensive racial epithets deserve prominent display on "free speech" graffiti walls.


Happily, advocates of speech-squelching judicial activism have yet to muster sufficient popular support to see their religion-devoid vision ratified in even one of the 50 states. Indeed, they can't legislate their morality.


Not that they haven't tried.


Not so long ago my former S.C. Democratic Party tried to silence the "God talk" of Christians to avoid offending non-believers, then, amazingly, invoked the words of Jesus to justify high taxes and a turn-the-other-cheek U.S. approach to the Soviet Union.

Christians fled to GOP
Large swaths of the offended Christian demographic responded by retaining their free religious speech and creating a new political juggernaut called "Reagan Democrats."These former Democrats were aware that the Pilgrims came to the New World to flee persecution for religious speech and that the Founders were inspired by their Creator that their rights came from God and not man.


The abolitionists who opposed slavery, President Abraham "The Great Emancipator" Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. were all inspired by scripture. Franklin Roosevelt quoted the Bible to justify saving the world from fascism, as did John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan in opposing "godless" communism.


What kind of nation would we be, and what kind of world would we live in, absent those Americans inspired by religious free speech?


Yet too many do not want to hear religious speech in the public square and wish to relegate those who wish to speak within the confines of church walls and stained glass. Recently they even turned on one of their own, when Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi dared utter the name of Christ in public.


Since the 1970s, Washington Democrats have confirmed federal judges primed for discovering illegal "establishments" of religion where predecessors had not: nativity scenes on government property, invocations at high school football games, the reading of a Bible at recess.


But the Constitution seemed content to ban only established churches like the one from which the Framers themselves had fled -- state churches that fed off tax revenue and compelled worship attendance.


When President Reagan nominated the Constitution-fixated Robert Bork (pictured above), liberal U.S. senators crucified him upon a cross of political correctness and mischaracterizations of his record.



Bork conservatives find no right to not be offended by the speech of others in the Constitution.



Rather, they embrace its right to speak and vote against speech and laws they found offensive.

Look to the Bible
Last year Democrats in South Carolina opposed a bill that would require pregnant women seeking abortions to first view an ultrasound picture of the developing human being in their womb.


Would the words of Jeremiah that "before [God] formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee" be more persuasive than the Left's "It's my body"?


We need the wisdom and inspiration of religious speech. We don't have the luxury of the "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" monkeys of cartoon fame.


In his classic book "Witness," Whittaker Chambers describes the continuing choice of history to be as old as the Scriptures, where in Genesis the serpent invites Eve to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge so that "ye shall be as gods."


Man's choice to be his own god resulted not only in banishment from Paradise but in the slaughter of millions under the names of Nazism and communism in the 20th century.


The majority of Americans who believe in Judeo-Christian principles need to legislate some morality we believe in. America needs the wisdom of religious free speech. (portions originally published in The Charlotte Observer)


Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns


“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

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stop the government from tagging the ears of cattle with computer chips, chips that Mast and others say violate their religious freedom and may represent the biblical "mark of the beast", condemning those who comply to eternal damnation.


This is alarming. However, as I understand it, the mark of the beast is on the hand or the forehead. I don't really reckon the cows or their owners are sealed with a ticket to the lower depths. rfid's are useful- cheaper and easier than branding. Ear tags- hear me?

Any word on the search warrant?

[samizdat]

Was there a raid? ok

Swat there threatening kids?- anybody's guess
http://www.chroniclet.com/2008/12/09/state-investigates-lagrange-organic-food-business_122/

Was it about a license, or a family grudge over the estate.



Seems U.S. Forgot to Tell Navy Seabee Chad Stowers the Real War Is Being Fought Here...and He’s the Enemy

When officers from the Lorain County Sheriff’s Office in Ohio arrived last Monday at the Manna Storehouse food cooperative in LaGrange with weapons drawn and trained on Katie Stowers and her children, along with her in-laws, there was one member of the family missing.

Katie’s husband, Chad, is a U.S. Navy Seabee, helping in construction projects in the midst of combat in Iraq. He’s been there, separated from his family, for the last five months, supposedly protecting our rights from abuse—the sort of abuse that appears to be taking place on an ever-more-frequent basis at farms and food outlets around the country.

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Obama planning billion-dollar 'bailout' for abortion industry
Jim Brown - OneNewsNow - 12/18/2008 6:00:00 AM



A pro-life group in Washington has launched a campaign to oppose what it calls president-elect Barack Obama's planned $1.5 billion "bailout" of the abortion industry.

Last week, the Obama-Biden Transition Project posted a report on its website that calls for dramatic policy reversals on abortion, including $1 billion in taxpayer money for international abortion groups like Planned Parenthood. The report, titled "Advancing Reproductive Rights and Health in a New Administration," also calls for a 133-percent increase in funding for the Title X program, which funds Planned Parenthood clinics across the country.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, is hoping a Republican-led effort in the Senate will block Obama's plan to substantially increase taxpayer funding of the abortion industry.



"This billion-dollar bailout of the abortion industry comes at a time, number one, when the economy is suffering dramatically with true need. And number two, it communicates an incredible depth of arrogance, especially when you consider that the vast majority of Americans -- men and women, no matter who you talk to -- they don't believe that people who don't believe in abortion should be funding it," she contends. "Most Americans don't believe that we should be funding abortions, especially in a time of economic crisis."

The Susan B. Anthony List has started a "Stop the Abortion Bailout" campaign designed to recruit thousands of activists to send letters to their senators "with the goal of securing the 41 votes necessary to sustain a Senate filibuster of the abortion bailout."

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Results from our related poll
How do you think Barack Obama would react to
public outcry over increased funding for Planned Parenthood?

http://www.onenewsnow.com/Politics/D...aspx?id=356962

[samizdat]

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=84594

here's an update with a video on the swat coop raid. dirty sheet. I'd still like to see de soich warrant and de judge who signed it.

As 4 bama's snuff plans. He's toast. Exporting assets (labs) to Africa? People will wake up and neither he nor biden, hilarious or pelusa-lint head will prevail. Buttheads may glamour in their glory (shame), but man plans and God's law stands.

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The Apocalypse is Coming: What You Need to Pack

By Charlie Sorrel
December 31, 2008 | 9:00:33 AMCategories: Anxiety


Photo: Midnight-digital/Flickr

Crisis schmisis. It’s nothing more than a crisis of consumer confidence, and Wired.com Editor Dylan Tweney’s list of 12 Good Gadgets for Hard Times is a great way to spend some money to survive it.

But what happens in a real crisis, the kind where the world stops working, the electricity stops working and (gasp) the internet stops working? Every New Year’s Eve, some wacko predicts the End of Days. What might you need? Consulting my huge back catalog of post-apocalyptic science fiction, I came up with the following list of true essentials. Bonus points for spotting the Sci-Fi sources.

Still
In order to weather the End of the World, you’ll need a stiff drink. Once the supermarkets have been looted, you can become the most profitable member of your tribe by building a liquor still.

Finding one might be tricky, so the quickest way is to build your own. First, hit Wikipedia for the details and print them, right now (remember, there will be no internet). Then, you’ll need to ferment something starchy or sugary to get some alcohol. Then, it’s into the still.

A good vessel is a copper hot-water tank. It probably even has a heating element inside, but if you’re out of power you’ll need to light a fire. The trick is to take the temperature up enough to boil the alcohol, but leave the water behind. The vapor is then condensed back to liquid in a spiral pipe. Just be careful you leave the “top and tail” — the undesirable parts of fermentation at the beginning and end, including the poisonous alcohol, methanol.

You’re done. Now you just need an old barrel and five years of patience.
Stay out of the sauce and stay sharp, reserved for medicinal purposes.

Eyeglasses
Collect these if you can. Like Eldon Blaine in PKD’s Doctor Bloodmoney, you could make some cash off the former contact lens wearers. Better still, try to pick up some stronger lenses, or magnifying glasses.

With a lens you can use the sun to heat things, and set them on fire — you know, like you did to ants when you were a kid. Equally useful is the parabolic mirror, found in the wild in electric bar heaters but easily made with the right math and a shiny piece of metal. This can be used as a solar oven. Mmmm, barbecue. Now you just need to catch some critters, and for that you’ll need some…

Knives
Essential. The knife has so many uses it should be your first priority. You’ll also need more than one: your chef’s knife won’t be much good at chopping onions if you first use it to chop down the wood for cooking them.

We also recommend a machete, mainly because we’ve seen too many explorer movies where the machete is used as both weapon and jungle-clearer. When you loot your local Walmart, forget the iPods and grab one of these. Then grab the iPods.
This younger generation has no idea what ugly is if there's a serious break down in services. It won't be fun and games if the SHTF. They'll be fresh meat for the inner city gangs.

Electricity
Fire only goes so far. It’s great for cooking and keeping you warm, and especially for those romantic dinners with the boy or girl from the neighboring bunker, but after a while you’re going to need some juice. Fire can be turned into electricity, but it’s tricky and wasteful.

Better to use the wind and the sun. Solar panels are good, as are wind turbines. The latter can be made with a bicycle wheel, a few fence panels, some wire and some magnets. I know — I made one in art college. You won’t power the HDTV you just stole, but it should be enough for some light and to charge the iPod Touch.

iPod Touch
What? An iPod? Isn’t that a little frivolous? No, my future shocked friends, it’s an essential piece of kit, and if you preload it properly and make the generator above, it will serve you well.

First, music will stop you going crazy. Load the iPod with some classic tunes that won’t drive you mad after a year or two, and then head to the App Store. There you will find the whole of Wikipedia, ready for offline use. This could be the best 2GB you ever downloaded — even better than the Hi-Def “Two Girls One Cup” video you got via BitTorrent.

Having the Wikipedia in your pocket means you’ll be able to tackle any problem, ever. Well, almost. A quick pre-apocolyptic visit to pornhub should take care of the rest.
Great until the electricity vanishes or an EMP hits. Even if you have it hid in a faraday cage both will make it difficult to enjoy having to keep watch to stay alive after the lights go out.

More
There are other things you may need, but the list above will serve for survival, fun and profit. Of course, we welcome suggestions for our disaster kit, so leave them in the comments.

This is camping advice. If you want to keep your stuff and family safe they forgot one, firearms and the knowledge how to use them effectively. It might also help to know something about how to Survive, Evade, Resist and Escape.

[American Patriot]

[quote=vector7;30536]Where to start.... how about the beginning?

Crisis schmisis. It’s nothing more than a crisis of consumer confidence, and Wired.com Editor Dylan Tweney’s list of 12 Good Gadgets for Hard Times is a great way to spend some money to survive it.

Gadgets get you nothing but extra stuff to carry. Forget the gadgets. Get real and learn some freakin' skill.

But what happens in a real crisis, the kind where the world stops working, the electricity stops working and (gasp) the internet stops working? Every New Year’s Eve, some wacko predicts the End of Days. What might you need? Consulting my huge back catalog of post-apocalyptic science fiction, I came up with the following list of true essentials. Bonus points for spotting the Sci-Fi sources.

Every year some whacko DOES predict the end of the world. Well, I won't do that, since I'm not a whacko, but certainly since 99.99% of ALL SPECIES that has EVER LIVED ON EARTH is EXTINCT... I'd say there's pretty close to a rough estimate there's a 100% chance that "world as we know it" will cease to exist.

There's a 1 in 300 chance that a devastating asteroid is going to hit Earth in 2036, and there's a 1 in 280,000 chance you'll get hit by lightning. Figure the odds on the "end of the world".

Still

In order to weather the End of the World, you’ll need a stiff drink. Once the supermarkets have been looted, you can become the most profitable member of your tribe by building a liquor still.

Honey, water, yeast. Wait a few weeks, not five years. Mead. Wine. Makes a good strong drink, don't have to distill it, don't have to worry about poisonous alcohol.

Collect fruit. Mash into mush, add water, add yeast, ferment. Wait a few weeks. Wine. Forget the barrel.

You’re done. Now you just need an old barrel and five years of patience.

Beer is done in about 2 weeks. No waiting.

Eyeglasses
Collect these if you can. Like Eldon Blaine in PKD’s Doctor Bloodmoney, you could make some cash off the former contact lens wearers. Better still, try to pick up some stronger lenses, or magnifying glasses.

With a lens you can use the sun to heat things, and set them on fire — you know, like you did to ants when you were a kid. Equally useful is the parabolic mirror, found in the wild in electric bar heaters but easily made with the right math and a shiny piece of metal. This can be used as a solar oven. Mmmm, barbecue. Now you just need to catch some critters, and for that you’ll need some…

Only convex lenses can cause a fire. Concave and other odd, and distorted shapes can not. Thus, not all lenses are good for making fires.

Knives
Essential. The knife has so many uses it should be your first priority. You’ll also need more than one: your chef’s knife won’t be much good at chopping onions if you first use it to chop down the wood for cooking them.

Survivalists... those who know a damned thing, will tell you that you do NOT use your knife in a survival situation UNLESS you MUST. Save the edge for when you need it most. Use something else to do a job....

We also recommend a machete, mainly because we’ve seen too many explorer movies where the machete is used as both weapon and jungle-clearer. When you loot your local Walmart, forget the iPods and grab one of these. Then grab the iPods.

... like a machete or an ipod. Don't forget to grab a sharpening stone in the Dick's Sporting Goods next door to the Best Buy either....

Electricity
Fire only goes so far. It’s great for cooking and keeping you warm, and especially for those romantic dinners with the boy or girl from the neighboring bunker, but after a while you’re going to need some juice. Fire can be turned into electricity, but it’s tricky and wasteful.

Better to use the wind and the sun. Solar panels are good, as are wind turbines. The latter can be made with a bicycle wheel, a few fence panels, some wire and some magnets. I know — I made one in art college. You won’t power the HDTV you just stole, but it should be enough for some light and to charge the iPod Touch.

Take two, they aren't very powerful. On the other hand, you can't cook with 'em either.

iPod Touch

What? An iPod? Isn’t that a little frivolous? No, my future shocked friends, it’s an essential piece of kit, and if you preload it properly and make the generator above, it will serve you well.

First, music will stop you going crazy. Load the iPod with some classic tunes that won’t drive you mad after a year or two, and then head to the App Store. There you will find the whole of Wikipedia, ready for offline use. This could be the best 2GB you ever downloaded — even better than the Hi-Def “Two Girls One Cup” video you got via BitTorrent.

Having the Wikipedia in your pocket means you’ll be able to tackle any problem, ever. Well, almost. A quick pre-apocolyptic visit to pornhub should take care of the rest.

Take a laptop or two. They will do the same thing, if you have a solar panel. Oh, Bit Torrent won't be workin' then either.

More

There are other things you may need, but the list above will serve for survival, fun and profit. Of course, we welcome suggestions for our disaster kit, so leave them in the comments.

No thanks, I leave my comments here on this site, not yours.

The truth is, ladies and gentlemen, none of you have ever heard me predict the world is going to end. Never have, never will... ok well, with the possible exception of my remarks above.

In fact, the world will still be here a few million years from now. About 6 or 9 billion years from now (roughly the life it has lived thus far) it will be vaporised as the sun turns into a Red Giant.

That is the ultimate fate of the planet. What happens to the humans on it right now is up to the humans on the planet RIGHT NOW.

Whether they die from some kind of solar horror (that of an asteroid hitting the planet), Yellowstone blowup-redux, or a massive volcanic explosion - all depends on what fate holds for us. It's not about God destroying the planet, or us being good, or evil. It's about one thing - nature.

Nature WILL take its course and the weak will die, the strong will survive. Or as in the case of the dinosaurs, the STRONG will be obliterated.

Sixty-five million years from now another race of intelligent critters will stand on eight legs and look up at the sun with the eight eyes they were graced with, while casting a sticky net from her spinneret at fleeing felon, pinning him down, passing an immediate death sentence on the thief, and then carrying out the execution by injecting a poison from her fangs, then sucking the life out of the theif with then turn to her partner of 3.78 years and say to them, "What the hell is bright thing in the sky and why is it there making it so hard to see?"

The partner will simply eye the shriveled food... er fool, shrug and say, "I dunno" and dig in to eat her share as well.

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Amish farmer from Loyal charged for not registering animals

Emanuel Miller Jr., 28, of Loyal, has been charged with a civil forfeiture for failure to comply with the state livestock premises registration law. He faces a fine of up to $5,000.
The Country Today reports that state agricultural officials discovered about 54 unregistered livestock farms while dealing with an outbreak of pseudorabies at a pig farm near Greenwood in March 2007. They believe at least 44 of those farms were Amish.

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EPA 'Cow Tax' Could Charge $175 per Dairy Cow to Curb Greenhouse Gases
Farm Bureau warns just this one rule may increase milk production costs up to 8 cents a gallon.

By Jeff Poor
Business & Media Institute
12/30/2008 4:55:19 PM

Call this one of the newest and innovative the ways your government has come up with to battle greenhouse gas emissions.

Indirectly it could be considered a cheeseburger tax, but one of the suggestions offered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in its Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) for regulating greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act is to levy a tax on livestock.



The ANPR, released early this year, would give the EPA the authority to regulate greenhouse gas for not only greenhouse gas from manmade sources like transportation and industry, but also “stationary” sources which would include livestock.

The New York Farm Bureau assigned a price tag to the cost of greenhouse gas regulation by the EPA in a release last month.

“The tax for dairy cows could be $175 per cow, and $87.50 per head of beef cattle. The tax on hogs would upwards of $20 per hog,” the release said. “Any operation with more than 25 dairy cows, 50 beef cattle or 200 hogs would have to obtain permits.”

Kate Galbraith, correspondent for The New York Times, noted on the Times’ “Green Inc.” blog that such a “proposal is far from being enacted” and that the “hysteria may be premature.”

But Rick Krause, senior director of congressional relations for the American Farm Bureau, warned it’s certainly feasible – especially based on the rhetoric of President-elect Barack Obama and the use of the EPA to combat global warming. Such action by an Obama administration would take an act of Congress for livestock to be exempt.

“The new president has been on record as saying that he really supports regulating greenhouse gases out of the Clean Air Act,” Krause said to the Business & Media Institute. “So, we really have to keep an eye on it. Legislation would really be the only way to exempt it at this point – the cow tax.”

Krause said it is difficult to quantify the cost that might be passed directly to the consumer by farmers from the legislation, but predicted it would mean higher costs for dairy production.

“It’s hard to figure what it would do to consumer prices since farmers, unlike other industries, really can’t pass their cost along directly like utilities and things do,” “About the only thing we could realistically come up, in terms of any of this stuff – it would add between 7 and 8 cents per gallon of milk costs to farmers. So it would cost them 7 or 8 cents more to produce a gallon of milk.”

Even the Department of Agriculture warned the EPA that smaller farms and ranches would have difficulty with limits as much as 100 tons annually on emissions:

“If GHG emissions from agricultural sources are regulated under the CAA, numerous farming operations that currently are not subject to the costly and time-consuming Title V permitting process would, for the first time, become covered entities. Even very small agricultural operations would meet a 100-tons-per-year emissions threshold. For example, dairy facilities with over 25 cows, beef cattle operations of over 50 cattle, swine operations with over 200 hogs, and farms with over 500 acres of corn may need to get a Title V permit. It is neither efficient nor practical to require permitting and reporting of GHG emissions from farms of this size. Excluding only the 200,000 largest commercial farms, our agricultural landscape is comprised of 1.9 million farms with an average value of production of $25,589 on 271 acres. These operations simply could not bear the regulatory compliance costs that would be involved.”

<<<>>>
Yet ANOTHER extension of the Clean Air Act into our private lives. This is SO frustrating to watch, but also highly motivating. I'm reviewing my home economy plans with this in mind.

[American Patriot]

good god

[Toad]

Let's just tax alfalfa farmers for providing hay to dairy farmers too. Go straight to the source.

Oh, wait! A tax on any property owner who has dirt on their property. Because dirt holds the potential to grow vegetation which is the root of all carbon evil.

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Hell on earth: The rampaging super swarms of birds and insects invading suburbia

By Nigel Blundell
Last updated at 11:41 AM on 05th January 2009

At what looks like the mouth of hell, a terrifying swarm of locusts devastates crops, eating everything in its path. On the other side of the Atlantic, clouds of 'smoke' rise from Africa's Lake Victoria and hover over the water.

On closer inspection, these apparitions are a blinding, choking maelstrom of midges sparked into existence by the continent's wet season.

Great swarms are one of nature's most bewitching creations. Made up of millions or even billions of creatures, they possess an intelligence that is beyond scientific understanding and can also be startlingly beautiful.



Destructive: A swarm of mayflies has its own form of intelligence beyond scientific understanding

Now, a new BBC documentary explores the intelligence behind such mass invasions and reveals that, by communicating instinctively as one giant organism, swarms are able to accomplish far more than the sum of their parts.

'Nature has evolved two ways of creating intelligent behaviour,' says John Downer, the producer of the series Swarm. 'One is to develop large, sophisticated brains in individual organisms, such as humans, and the other is millions of smaller brains, which communicate with each other inside a colony - the superswarm.'

Downer is the award-winning creator of such acclaimed TV series as SuperNatural and Weird Nature. Now, he ventures into the very heart of the swarms, with incredible high-speed shots from inside the fantastic colonies, revealing just how the milling myriads view our world.

Locusts are perhaps the most destructive of all swarms. An average swarm contains billions of locusts, and the biggest outbreaks can infest half a continent. They invade one-fifth of the world's land surface, affecting one-tenth of the planet's population and leaving starvation in their wake. Little wonder that they were one of the ten plagues that descended on Egypt in the Bible.

A swarm of locusts is able to fly in perfect formation by keeping a set distance from each other - sometimes wingtip to wingtip and at other times, a foot apart - and by synchronising their wing beats to reduce turbulence. They even have anti-crash sensors, fine hairs on their heads, to avoid collisions and react six times faster than a human pilot to obstacles in their path.

They eat their own weight in food in a day, and a large swarm can get through 200,000 tonnes - enough to feed half a billion people.

On the other side of the world, in Africa, the rainy season triggers the biggest swarms of midges on Earth to rise from Lake Victoria. The locals make best use of this blight, however, by catching them in nets and turning them into nutritious fly-burgers - each one contains half a million flies and is packed with seven times more protein than a beef burger.



Buzz off: Professor Norman Gary engulfed by bees as he carries out research into the species which can be fatal if they form a swarm.

Unfortunately, urbanisation has confused some creatures, causing unforeseen problems for mankind. In the US, for instance, within a single night - often on Independence Day, 4 July - mayfly larvae hatch from the surface of America's lakes and waterways.

As soon as the temperature of the water reaches 63F, the larvae instinctively aim for the moon and then mate in mid-air, before falling back to earth to die. More than 20 trillion mayflies emerge in a single night.

The problem is that the mayflies cannot tell the difference between the moon and a streetlight, and, in the morning, some towns need to use snowploughs to shift the tons of tiny bodies from the streets.

Like something out of a horror movie, some swarms invade only once in a generation - in the case of so-called periodic cicadas, this is every 17 years. They live deep underground across vast areas of North America, and emerge to mate.

The theory is that they do this to confuse predators - no predator lives long enough to pass on the knowledge of the next emergence to their offspring. The latest alien invasion took place in the state of Ohio in July, when ten billion cicadas dug themselves to the surface overnight.

Sadly, many more found themselves entombed under the concrete of ever-expanding cities such as Cincinnati - and died before ensuring the continuation of the next generation.

Those that make it to the surface then get involved in a noisy courtship ritual. Because all the males vibrate a drum-like organ in their bodies, the combined racket reached 100 decibels - far louder than a jet flying overhead. Finally, having met and mated, the cicadas laid their eggs in tree bark and, job done, dropped dead in their millions.

Another massive clean-up for the residents of suburbia. But it's not just Americans who have such a huge operation on their hands after a swarm.

In Rome, which has inexplicably become the starling capital of the world, ten million of them flock together to create the most astonishing aerial display in nature. The mesmeric waves they form in the sky act as a beacon to others entering the city.

To create such perfect synchronicity - the flock contract, expand and even split, continuously changing density and structure - the birds must react 13 times faster than humans. And it has recently been proved that each starling maintains perfect formation by keeping exactly seven other birds in its sight at all times - and will stick to its chosen seven wing-mates irrespective of distance.

The downside of being able to witness this stunning aerial ballet, is starling droppings on a massive scale throughout central Rome.

It's not very often that a man will volunteer to be covered in bees, but Norman Gary, a Californian professor of entomology, agreed to do so for the documentary. The world's leading expert on bees, the professor developed a unique formula of queen bee pheromone that he uses to lead and control an entire swarm of hundreds of thousands of bees.

With this chemical - and an understanding of their behaviour - he can make an entire swarm cover his body like a living suit without suffering a single sting. The bees actually think he is their queen, so smother his body to protect him.
But even an expert such as professor Gary wouldn't tangle with killer bees, which were accidentally created in Brazil in 1957 by crossing honey bees with aggressive African bees. Since then, they have spread northwards as far as the southern states of America.

A killer bee's sting is no worse than that of a honey bee, but hundreds will sting at any one time - and it's this mass assault that makes them dangerous. Killer bees once halted an international football match in Costa Rica, sending players diving to the ground and spectators running for their lives.

Most of us don't even notice ants as we go about our daily lives, but we may soon find there's rather more of them around than before, as the UK is on the verge of an ant invasion.

The alien black ant, originally from south-east Europe, is set to push out our domestic black ant and start to 'farm' aphids in our own back gardens. Says John Downer, 'Ants are the perfect examples of the mysterious "swarm intelligence", since they act like a giant organism controlled by a single brain.

'Scientists have shown that ants have recognisable personalities. Each individual uses its own senses to react in different ways. Some are scared, some brave; other are busy or lazy, and these interpretations are fed back to others in the swarm via pheromones. Each ant can detect every other ant's pheromones, so the whole colony knows what's going on everywhere at once. The individual ants react in the same way as nerve cells in a brain - so combine their collective senses and a colony acts like a giant brain.'

So that's where the Star Trek producers got the idea for the Borg from.

• Swarm: Nature's Incredible Invasions begins Sunday 4th January on BBC1 at 9pm.

[vector7]

January 2, 2009
When Anti-Christ controls the internet
By Grant Swank

Already the United Nations has put out its bid to control the Internet. Other countries say that the US should not have front seat.

But within the US there is already the move to oust conservative, biblical posts and sites. Google search engine, the largest in the Internet, has now scooped out numerous sites giving forth truth about Islam, the Koran, Mohammed, and the inroad of Muslim implanting in nation after nation.

Google is run by pro-liberal Democrats. Fill in the blanks.

The day will come when the Anti-Christ political leader will snuff out all sane, Christian-moral based sites on the Internet. When the Book of Revelation speaks of the Anti-Christ prohibiting Christians from buying and selling, that could very well be interpreted as Christians "buying and selling" on the Internet as well as merchandising at the local mart.

The Anti-Christ, controlled solely by Satan, will attack all genuine believers, killing many. Now this is happening because of the "spirit of Anti-Christ" set loose, the latter predicted in John's three short letters in the New Testament. The "spirit of Anti-Christ" precedes the actual appearance of the demon-dominated mortal known in the Book of Revelation as the "beast" — the Anti-Christ in person.

Many of my posts on sites have dealt with Islam and its demonic presence. I have written openly about the biblical data supporting the truth that Islam is a killing cult, Mohammed being a false prophet, the Koran being satanic pornography, the Koran's deity — Allah — being the devil. I have detailed biblical chapter and verse in numerous posts while at the same time providing voluminous quotations directly from the Koran, the latter supporting the killing, maiming verses.

How interesting that in Islam the chief means of killing the enemy is beheading. How likewise interesting is the word "beheaded" mentioned when it comes to Christian martyrs detailed in the Book of Revelation. God's revealed prophecies speak specifically of the Christians being beheaded for their faith in the End Times. Is this coincidental wording? I don't think so.. I think the beheading passages point directly to the Islamic determination to rule the world by beheading all non-Muslims.

Thus far the Christian community has been pleased to have the Internet as a news feed for getting out the gospel. Will the day come when that will be cut out by the secular powers-that-be? Very well could happen.

What is occurring right now via Google is shocking to many site webmasters. They are up in arms. They are now sliced from the major search engine on the worldwide Internet. One webmaster explained to me that his readers have diminished from thousands per day to mere hundreds per day because Google cut him out of their search engine.

And what was in the Google letter explaining why they did what they did? Google stated they had received complaints against the site because it posted "hate speech." Now that which is truth is called "hate speech." That which is Judeo-Christian moored is referred to as "hate speech." Can Christians see clearly now what is ahead for their getting out the truth?

While typing this post, I wonder what sites will post it. There are sites that have heretofore been friendly to my submissions which now don't post such articles as this one. They simply refuse to print this kind of truth. Therefore, they are playing into Google's agenda and like trends to delete truth-telling via Christian writers.

Where will it end?

© Grant Swank

[vector7]

Obama's New Ride: Heavily-Armored 2009 Cadillac Limo

President-elect Barack Obama will ride in a new, heavily armored limousine during his Inaugural parade January 20th.

FOXNews.com
Tuesday, January 06, 2009

President-elect Barack Obama's new ride has arrived -- and it's a beast.
As first reported by FOXNews.com last November -- and Tuesday by The Detroit News -- a new model of a presidential limousine made by General Motors Corp. has been delivered to the Secret Service and will make its debut on Inauguration Day.


The vehicle, referred to by the Secret Service as "the beast," will reportedly feature heavy armor that is at least 5 inches thick and comes complete with run-flat tires, bulletproof glass and a completely sealed interior to ward off a chemical attack, among many other high-tech security features.

One news agency, noting its 8-inch-thick doors, said the limo can withstand a "direct hit from an asteroid." But GM spokeswoman Joanne K. Krell laughed off the comments.

The new limousine also includes larger windows and better visibility for the president, a spokesman for the automaker told the paper.

Cadillac has previously disclosed that the limo's interior is made of hand-stitched leather and includes a 10-disc CD player.

"The president is not riding in a medium-duty truck, nor he is riding in a sedan," a GM representative told the Detroit News, it is a "unique" vehicle.
The armored 2009 Cadillac Presidential Limousine will make its debut at Obama's Jan. 20 inauguration in Washington.

The Secret Service and GM say they'll reveal more about the custom vehicle's specifications next week after training with the new limousine at a facility near Washington.

Older-model presidential limos will remain in use for the vice president and traveling world leaders. The previous model, a modified Cadillac DTS, was introduced at President George W. Bush's second inauguration in 2005.

Click here to read more on "The Beast."

[Ryan Ruck]

Obama reportedly has a choice between two versions of the presidential limo. Not sure which one he will decide to go with...

[samizdat]

I like the red lac. Fit's with bama's profile. Also the black one looks too much like a hearse. Small detail about the red one. It appears to have vulnerable leaf springs.

[vector7]

Anointing the dear leader?

Annointing of Obama Inaugural Walkway "WITH OIL"

Thousands Join in Virtual Prayer and Annointing of Obama Inaugural Walkway

Thousands of people from across the United States and even around the world have used the Internet to join in the prayers and anointing service held on January 7, by Reverends Rob Schenck and Patrick J. Mahoney at the site of the impending Inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States.

The service, conducted by the two ministers along with Congressman Paul Broun of Georgia, was held at the interior threshold of the door Obama will pass through on his way out of the Capitol and onto the Inaugural stage where he will swear the Oath of Office on January 20. The group read scripture, offered prayers and used oil to anoint the doorposts of the arched walkway.

“This site will be a literal rite of passage for the new president,” said Rob Schenck, president of Faith and Action, a Christian mission to elected and appointed officials on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.

“The Bible commands us to pray for kings and all who are in authority. It should be our natural inclination to do so, and it can only do the new president and the country good to pray for him. I don’t care what your political sensibilities are, we all need prayer and we all need to pray.”

Schenck and Mahoney had initially been told by US Capitol police they could not conduct the service in the highly secure zone just a few feet from the balcony where the Chief Justice will administer the oath to Mr. Obama. When Congressman Broun signed onto the program, though, the police relented and allowed the group complete access.

“Congressman Broun is the boldest, most uncompromising Christian witness I’ve known in the Congress,” said Schenck. “He’s a humble and very courageous man.”

[American Patriot]

If he don't show up on Inauguration day wearin' a pink pimp hat, I'm going to be sorely disappointed.