Famed pastor predicts imminent catastrophe

"It will engulf the whole megaplex, including areas of New Jersey and Connecticut. Major cities all across America will experience riots and blazing fires – such as we saw in Watts, Los Angeles, years ago," he explains. "There will be riots and fires in cities worldwide. There will be looting – including Times Square, New York City. What we are experiencing now is not a recession, not even a depression. We are under God’s wrath. In Psalm 11 it is written, "If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?"

Jesus, this guy.

He's preying on people's fears and the current global economic crisis (which was a man-made crisis) and claiming this will be "God's wrath." I read on...

"God is judging the raging sins of America and the nations," claims Wilkerson. "He is destroying the secular foundations." Wilkerson urges everyone to stockpile a 30-day supply of food and other necessities to deal with the catastrophe he foresees.

"I do not know when these things will come to pass, but I know it is not far off," Wilkerson concluded in his message. "I have unburdened my soul to you. Do with the message as you choose."

Of course you don't "know when these things will come to pass". For some strange reason this "God" of yours is never able to disclose such details.

There's a pretty good chance that a disaster like this could happen, but that's just because of the crisis that a few humans have put the world in, not because your "God" is pissed off at America and other nations.

You're doing a little preemptive strike here. In case something like this does happen, then you will have many sheeple following you. Good move on your part, but "God" has nothing to do with it.

Read more, if you really want to, here.

Why Does the World Feel Wrong?

Those of us who want little more than peace and freedom don’t run the world.  Pursuing freedom contradicts controlling others, so we can reason that people who pursue power have some motivations separate from our own.

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Too often, I have assumed that the people working for the state take the jobs only because of the easy hours and good pay, benefits, and retirement.  For the predator, though, it offers all these things with the appetizing fringe benefit of satisfying their criminal urges without the risk of retribution.

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After considering the possibility that psychopaths have taken control of society, we find volumes of evidence to support the hypothesis.  Did Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot sympathize with their victims or have any sense of guilt?  More recently, among Bush, Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld, or Clinton , can we point to one who even exhibits a façade resembling normality?  Obviously not—these lists name one person after another who has zero accountability to a rational morality.  If people like this could make their way to the highest levels of power, what does that say about lower offices?

It suggests people like this have control over the levers of power everywhere.  We live at a time when the population at large cannot achieve its wants, yet few seem to know why.  As one example, polls consistently indicate that educational matters concern the public, yet decade after decade, schooling gets quantitatively worse.  What a mystery!  Evidently, if we believe our well-meaning masters, 2,000 years of Western civilization has not yet determined effective ways to transmit key knowledge to younger generations.   However, what happens if we suspend our belief in their benevolence for a moment and consider other possibilities?  If schools fail to achieve their stated goals over several decades, might some groups see this as a success?

Read the rest.

Two ex-Guantanamo inmates appear in Al-Qaeda video

One of the two former inmates, a Saudi man identified as Abu Sufyan al-Azdi al-Shahri, or prisoner number 372, has been elevated to the senior ranks of Al-Qaeda in Yemen, a US counter-terrorism official told AFP.

How convenient that this happens at, oh say, right after Obama orders Gitmo closed within a year.

Read more.

File Sharing Lawsuits at a Crossroads, After 5 Years of RIAA Litigation

Despite a fallow legal landscape, most defendants cannot afford attorneys and settle for a few thousand dollars rather than risk losing even more, Beckerman says. "There are still very few people fighting back as far as the litigation goes and they settle."

"It costs more to hire a lawyer to defend these cases than take the settlement," agrees Lory Lybeck, a Washington State attorney, who is leading a prospective class-action against the RIAA for engaging in what he says is "sham" litigation tactics. "That's an important part of what's going on. The recording industry is setting a price where you know they cannot hire lawyers. It's a pretty well-designed system whereby people are not allowed any effective participation in one of the three prongs in the federal government."

Settlement payments can be made on a website, where the funds are used to sue more defendants. None of the money is paid to artists.

Now, isn't that interesting? None of the settlement money goes to the artists. Zero. Zip. Nada. So, if none of that money is going to the artists (and remember, we're told that downloading songs only hurts the artists) does that mean that the RIAA is getting filthy rich off of other people's work? Oh, wait. Yes, it does. But you already knew that.

Nobody can credibly dispute that file sharing systems are a superhighway for pirated music. "There is no doubt that the volume of files on P2P is overwhelmingly infringing," says Eric Garland, president of Los Angeles research firm BigChampagne. But critics of the RIAA say it's time for the music industry to stop attacking fans, and start looking for alternatives. Fred von Lohmann, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says the lawsuits are simply not reducing the number of people trading music online.

"If the goal is to reduce file sharing," he says, "it's a failure."

It's difficult to admit that your business model is outdated when mega-fortunes have been made off of it for decades.

Read more.

Bigfoot Body Found Will Shock the World

DNA evidence and photo evidence of the creature will be presented in a press conference on Friday, August 15th from 12 Noon to 1:00pm at the Cabana Hotel-Palo Alto at 4290 El Camino Real in Palo Alto, California, 94306. The press conference will not be open to the public. It will only be open to credentialed members of the press.
Here are some of the vital statistics on the “Bigfoot” body:

Check out the stats and read the rest of the news release.

Five Signs the United States Is Withering Away

The United States has existed for only a little over two centuries, which is a paltry amount of time when you consider that many nations and city-states have lasted for thousands of years (hello, Rome). Now it's starting to look like this brief experiment with human government is going to fail, and soon. Science fiction writers from William Gibson to Lyda Morehouse have written about a future where the United States no longer exists, or has been so heavily reorganized that it isn't recognizable. And Stanford futurist Paul Saffo recently told the San Jose Mercury News, “The U.S. may not exist in any recognizable form in the middle of this century." Though he didn't offer a long list of reasons, we know exactly what he means. There are good reasons to believe that the U.S. is falling apart, and we've got five big ones for you to mull over as you watch this once-powerful twentieth century empire slowly drip down the drain.

Interesting read.

Read about the five signs here.

Mysterious Dent in Nose of Plane Appears During Flight

The passenger asked the pilot if he thought he hit anything, and the pilot reportedly said, "I don't think I hit anything" while covering up his name tag.

Read more and check out the picture here.

Flooding grows in upper Midwest; storms pound Michigan

Officials estimated that 100 blocks were underwater in Cedar Rapids, where several days of preparation could not hold back the rain-swollen river.

Read more.

Lanier plans to seal off rough ’hoods in latest effort to stop wave of violence

D.C. police will seal off entire neighborhoods, set up checkpoints and kick out strangers under a new program that D.C. officials hope will help them rescue the city from its out-of-control violence.

Under an executive order expected to be announced today, police Chief Cathy L. Lanier will have the authority to designate “Neighborhood Safety Zones.” At least six officers will man cordons around those zones and demand identification from people coming in and out of them. Anyone who doesn’t live there, work there or have “legitimate reason” to be there will be sent away or face arrest, documents obtained by The Examiner show.

Read more.

New rules for US make it tougher for travellers

New security measures requiring New Zealanders to register online before they go to the United States are expected to cause problems for last-minute business travellers and people flying there for funerals.

What bullshit.

From January next year, the US will require visitors from countries which now do not need a visa - including New Zealanders - to register online at least three days ahead.

No, really. What bullshit.

Read more.

Child Sex Tourism: Brazilian Teens Testify About Being Lured into Minor Prostitution for American Tourists

Imagine that you are a poor 13 year old Brazilian girl living with your poor family on your poor people’s land; the Indigenous Area AKA your reservation. A North American illegally enters the Indigenous Area, asking for your help on his tourist fishing boat, namely sweeping, laundry and cooking. You agree because your family needs the money. Your mother and step-father are scared because they have heard the stories about what has happened to “the others.” Against all hope, they wave and watch as you and nine other girls go off with this American stranger.

When you get to the boat, you learn that your real job is to drink whiskey and beer and have sex with the foreigners who are in your country on a fishing trip. After the foreigners have sex with you and go back home, you are left pregnant, not knowing who fathered your baby.

The world we live in.

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Isolated tribe spotted in Brazil

The Brazilian government says it took the images to prove the tribe exists and help protect its land.

The pictures, taken from an aeroplane, show red-painted tribe members brandishing bows and arrows.

Check out the pictures here.

Read the rest here.

Charity: Aid workers raping, abusing children

Humanitarian aid workers and United Nation peacekeepers are sexually abusing small children in war-ravaged countries, a leading European charity has said.

Children as young as 6 have been forced to have sex with aid workers and peacekeepers in return for food and money, Save the Children UK said in a report released Tuesday.

After interviewing hundreds of children, the charity said it found instances of rape, child prostitution, pornography, indecent sexual assault and trafficking of children for sex.

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Save the Children says almost as shocking as the abuse itself, is the "chronic under-reporting" of the abuses. It believes that thousands more children around the world could be suffering in silence.

Read more.

First In Nation 'Pollution Fee' Coming To SF

The group's board of directors voted 15-1 on unprecedented new rules that will impose fees on factories, power plants, oil refineries and other businesses that emit carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases.

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The modest fee -- 4.4 cents per ton of carbon dioxide -- probably won't be enough to force companies to reduce their emissions, but backers say it sets an important precedent in combating climate change and could serve as a model for regional air districts nationwide.

Read more.

Go Green -- Buy a Used Car. It's Better Than a Hybrid

As Matt Power notes in this month's issue of Wired, hybrids get great gas mileage but it takes 113 million BTUs of energy to make a Toyota Prius. Because there are about 113,000 BTUs of energy in a gallon of gasoline, the Prius has consumed the equivalent of 1,000 gallons of gasoline before it reaches the showroom. Think of it as a carbon debt -- one you won't pay off until the Prius has turned over 46,000 miles or so.

Hybrids are not the answer.

Read more.

Refitting the Presidency to the Constitution

The 44th president will assume office with powers greatly enlarged by his or her predecessor. Drawing on recent precedents, the next president could launch preemptive wars with only minor interference from Congress, ignore the ancient right of habeas corpus and imprison political enemies, spy on American citizens without serious legal restraint, use practically any federal agency for political purposes, manipulate the press in ways inconceivable prior to 2000, corrupt the federal justice system for political gain, destroy evidence in criminal cases, use the Justice Department to prosecute members of the opposing party, offer lucrative no-bid government contracts to friends, expand the creation of private security armies, use torture, create secret prisons, assassinate inconvenient foreign leaders, circumvent laws with signing statements, and a great deal more. Such things are now possible because the system of checks and balances carefully written into the Constitution and explained in great detail in the Federalist Papers were weakened as a result of historical circumstances of the 20th century, but systematically and with great forethought by the administration of George W. Bush.

Read more.

Robert Fisk: So just where does the madness end?

But being from the wrong religion is suddenly crucial again. Who your driver is, what is the religion of your landlord, is suddenly a matter of immense importance.

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Where does the madness end? Where do words lose their meaning? Al-Qa'ida is not being defeated. Hizbollah has just won a domestic war in Lebanon, as total as Hamas's war in Gaza. Afghanistan and Iraq and Lebanon and Gaza are hell disasters – I need no apology to quote Churchill's description of 1948 Palestine yet again – and this foolish, stupid, vicious man [Bush] is lying to the world yet again.

Read more.

Cops with rifles to hit streets this summer

Metropolitan Police Department officials said yesterday patrol officers will be issued assault rifles by the summer, after policies on their use are released this month.

The Washington Times reported Wednesday that the department is arming the officers with the rifles as part of a national trend to protect them from criminals with increasingly powerful weapons.

Read more.

Happy Mother's Day: Woman pregnant with 18th child

Michelle Duggar, 41, is due on New Year's Day, and the latest addition will join seven sisters and 10 brothers. There are two sets of twins.

Stop breeding.

No.

Really.

Stop fucking breeding.

Read more.

ABC News Shielding Cheney after DC Madam Hanging?

Among Palfrey's known clients were current Louisiana Senator Vitter, former AIDS Czar Randall Tobias, Dick Morris and military-industrial wonk Harlan Ullman, but Dick Cheney's McLean, VA phone number, reported earlier was summarily un-reported after a turnaround by ABC News.

ABC anchor Sam Donaldson has also been a rumored client, along with a law partner of Rudy Giuliani, associates of Jack Abramoff and many more Pentagon, DC and corporate insiders on a list of over 10,000 numbers.

According to early accounts, ABC News correspondent Brian Ross had the exclusive scoop because Palfrey turned over years-long call lists for his staff to verify. After Cheney turned up on the list, the story, already on the ABC website and poised to run on 20/20, suddenly went away.

Hmmm.

Read more.