(...)
What has Iran said?

President Ahmadinejad said: "We have no secrecy." He said the facility was open for inspection by the IAEA and was 18 months away from completion. Iran acknowledged the plant in a letter to the IAEA four days before Mr Obama's announcement. It told the IAEA that the project was a pilot and would enrich uranium only to low levels. It later said there were no other plants.

Did Iran violate IAEA rules in not declaring this plant earlier?

President Ahmadinejad said it was being built in conformity with IAEA rules and that Iran had given much more notice of it than required.

However, there is a dispute between Iran and the IAEA over the notice that has to be given before a nuclear facility is made operational. Iran says that, under its safeguards agreement with the IAEA, it need only declare a facility 180 days before nuclear material is inserted into it and that in this case it had given about a year's notice.

However, the IAEA says that in 2003, after the main enrichment plant at Natanz was discovered, Iran agreed on what's called a Subsidiary Arrangement to its safeguards agreement, under which it would inform the IAEA of any new facility at the preliminary design stage. Iran later repudiated this arrangement, saying that it had not been ratified by its parliament but the IAEA says that no such unilateral repudiation is allowed.

So Western governments argue that Iran did violate the rules. The IAEA agrees. (...)

Why is Iran refusing to obey the Security Council resolutions?

Under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), a signatory state has the right to enrich uranium to be used as fuel for civil nuclear power. Such states have to remain under inspection from the IAEA. Iran is under such inspection. However, only those signatory states with nuclear weapons at the time of the treaty in 1968 are allowed to enrich to the much higher level needed for a nuclear weapon.

Iran says it is simply doing what it is allowed to do under the treaty and intends only to enrich to the level needed for nuclear power station fuel. It blames the Security Council resolutions on political pressure from the US and its allies. It argues that it needs nuclear power and wants to control the whole process itself.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly stressed that Iran will not yield to international pressure: "The Iranian nation will not succumb to bullying, invasion and the violation of its rights," he has said.

What does Iran say about developing nuclear weapons?

It says it will not break its obligations under the NPT and will not use the technology to make a nuclear bomb.

On 18 September 2009, President Ahmadinejad told NBC News: "We don't need nuclear weapons... it's not a part of our programmes and plans."

He said that nuclear-armed states should themselves give up their nuclear weapons.

Shortly afterwards Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who is reported to have issued a fatwa some time ago against nuclear weapons said: "We fundamentally reject nuclear weapons."(...)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/403...

Of all the 2012 prophecies I've heard, Atlantis rising is the one that strikes a chord with me.

A few nights ago I listened to this interview. It is a difficult listen due to Frank Joseph Hoff's speech patterns and his tendency to wander off rather than answer questions. You can even tell that George Noory was frustrated.

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=74...

The website is much more detailed:
Checklist:
http://www.atlan.org/articles/checklist /
Articles:
http://www.atlan.org/articles /
I haven't even begun to dig deep enough to analyze all this information. This researcher places Atlantis in the area of Indonesia.

This appears to be an organized over view of the theory:
http://www.lost-civilizations.net/atlantis...

Current events in the area:
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pac...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/...

That pesky (corporate owned) MSM.


http://www.inloughborough.com/news/096969/...
World-first swine-flu vaccine trial reveals one dose provides 'strong immune response'
Posted on 03/09/09
University of Leicester

Results from the first swine-flu vaccine trials taking place in Leicester reveal a strong immune response after just one dose.

The pilot study, run by the University of Leicester and Leicester Hospitals, was trialled with 100 healthy volunteers, aged between 18 and 50.

Dr Iain Stephenson, who led the trial at the Leicester Royal Infirmary, said: The clinical trial of Novartis MF59-adjuvanted cell-based A (H1N1) vaccine indicates that the swine flu vaccine elicits a strong immune response and is well-tolerated.


http://www.astrazeneca.com/media/latest-pr...
06 January 2009
MedImmune Submits Marketing Authorisation Application in European Union for Intranasal Vaccine to Prevent Seasonal Influenza
AstraZeneca

About LAIV
Each dose of LAIV is formulated to contain three live attenuated influenza virus strains, which are weakened as to not cause illness: Two Type A influenza strains (A/H1N1 and A/H3N2) and one Type B strain. The vaccine strains are selected annually by the World Health Organization (WHO) based on anticipated circulating influenza strains for the upcoming season. The vaccine is sprayed into the nose, rather than by injection as with other licensed influenza vaccines, where it induces protective immunity.

In the U.S., LAIV is marketed under the trade name FluMist® (Influenza Virus Vaccine Live, Intranasal). It was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2003. The vaccine included in the MAA has not been registered in the European Union and is not available outside of the United States.

Why propaganda trumps truth
By Paul Craig Roberts
Sep 21, 2009, 00:20

An article in the journal, Sociological Inquiry, (“There Must Be a Reason”: Osama, Saddam, and Inferred Justification, Vol. 79, No. 2. (2009), pp. 142-162. PDF) http://sociology.buffalo.edu/documents/hof... casts light on the effectiveness of propaganda. Researchers examined why big lies succeed where little lies fail. Governments can get away with mass deceptions, but politicians cannot get away with sexual affairs.

(...)
What the sociologists and Hitler are telling us is that by the time facts become clear, people are emotionally wedded to the beliefs planted by the propaganda and find it a wrenching experience to free themselves. It is more comfortable, instead, to denounce the truth-tellers than the liars whom the truth-tellers expose.

(...)
The staying power of the Big Lie is the barrier through which the 9/11 Truth Movement is finding it difficult to break. The assertion that the 9/11 Truth Movement consists of conspiracy theorists and crackpots is obviously untrue. The leaders of the movement are highly qualified professionals, such as demolition experts, physicists, structural architects, engineers, pilots, and former high officials in the government. Unlike their critics parroting the government’s line, they know what they are talking about.

Here is a link to a presentation by the architect, Richard Gage, to a Canadian university audience:
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context...
The video of the presentation is two hours long and seems to have been edited to shorten it down to two hours. Gage is low-key, but not a dazzling personality or a very articulate presenter. Perhaps that is because he is speaking to a university audience and takes for granted their familiarity with terms and concepts.

Those who believe the official 9/11 story and dismiss skeptics as kooks can test the validity of the sociologists’ findings and Hitler’s observation by watching the video and experiencing their reaction to evidence that challenges their beliefs. Are you able to watch the presentation without scoffing at someone who knows far more about it than you do? What is your response when you find that you cannot defend your beliefs against the evidence presented? Scoff some more? Become enraged?

(...)
People don’t even notice the contradictions. Recently, an international team of scientists, who studied for 18 months dust samples produced by the twin towers’ destruction collected from three separate sources, reported their finding of nano-thermite in the dust. The US government had scientists dependent on the US government to debunk the finding on the grounds that the authenticity of custody of the samples could not be verified. In other words, someone had tampered with the samples and added the nano-thermite. This is all it took to discredit the finding, despite the obvious fact that access to thermite is strictly controlled and NO ONE except the US military and possibly Israel has access to nano-thermite.

The physicist, Steven Jones, has produced overwhelming evidence that explosives were used to bring down the buildings. His evidence is not engaged, examined, tested, and refuted. It is simply ignored.

(...)
Naive people think that if the US government’s explanation of 9/11 was wrong, physicists and engineers would all speak up. Some have (see above). However, for most physicists and engineers this would be an act of suicide. Physicists owe their careers to government grants, and their departments are critically dependent on government funding. A physicist who speaks up essentially ends his university career. If he is a tenured professor, to appease Washington the university would buy out his tenure as BYU did in the case of the outspoken Steven Jones.

(...)
Democracy is based on the assumption that people are rational beings who factually examine arguments and are not easily manipulated. Studies are not finding this to be the case. In my own experience in scholarship, public policy, and journalism, I have learned that everyone from professors to high school dropouts has difficulty with facts and analyses that do not fit with what they already believe. The notion that “we are not afraid to follow the truth wherever it may lead” is an extremely romantic and idealistic notion. I have seldom experienced open minds even in academic discourse or in the highest levels of government. Among the public at large, the ability to follow the truth wherever it may lead is almost non-existent.

(...)
The most disturbing fact of all remains: The 9/11 event responsible for these adverse happenings has not been investigated.

MUCH MORE
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/ar...

There are usually a few of us out on the big boards who wage this information campaign every time the subject arises. There are plenty of reasons to quit (smelly/expensive). But the truth is, the perils are way over stated. Yes, smokers have died from diseases, just as non-smokers have died from horrible diseases. My personal anecdote is that three close family members have had cancer and non of them smoked or had been exposed to second hand smoke. Remember, not too long ago marijuana was demonized. All but the most rabid right winger now knows those are all bogus reports.

Doesn't it make sense than an ineffectual medical community might attempt to find a scapegoat to explain away its own inadequacies? If it is a scapegoat that is sure to never go away, people will always smoke no matter what, all the better! They can continue to blame this ONE habit for the increasing numbers of ill and dying people rather than accepting the true blame that they don't know what the hell they are doing.


About 50 years ago, a campaign began to blame smoking for cancer. Cancer had become such a terrifying disease that the word "cancer" was often alluded to rather than speaking the name aloud, even being referred to as the C disease. The American Cancer Society, having failed to produce significant results in fighting cancer, chose to erect smoking as a straw man to take heat off themselves. Since that beginning, one of the world's great frauds has proceeded, to demonize smoking to the point that most people believe there is unquestionable scientific evidence that smoking is a major killer. When even that level of fright didn't convince smokers to quit, the spectre of "secondhand" smoke was created out of thin air, to continue the campaign that was making so many organizations rich on donations and tax money in hopes of actually curing cancer. Deception, outright lies, and statistical trickery have been used to such a great and effective extent that "junk science" has spread to many other areas. (...)

http://smith.mn/smoking.html

snips

A new report based on research from the World Health Organization, reproduced in full. (color emphasis is mine)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Researchers said they were surprised and even embarrassed to find that smoking cigarettes apparently reduces the risk of breast cancer among women with an unusual gene mutation.

Researchers caution that the study does not mean women should smoke.

"The risks of smoking are so serious that there's absolutely no reason that any woman should consider smoking whether she is at high risk or low risk for breast cancer," said Dr. Lynn Schuchter, an oncologist at the University of Pennsylvania Cancer Center.

Smokers had half as many cancers (...)

"No statistically significant relationship was found in either community between smoking and coronary heart disease, hypertension or somatic complaints"

1477. University of Texas School of Allied Health Sciences. Philips, B.U., Jr.; Bruhn, J.G. "Smoking Habits and Reported Illness in Two Communities With Different Systems of Social Support." FUNDING: Univ. of Texas; National Institute of Mental Health. 1981-83.

Smoking improves human information processing.

Higher nicotine cigarettes produce greater improvements than low-nicotine cigarettes.
Nicotine tablets produce similar effects.
Nicotine can reverse the detrimental effects of scopolamine on performance
Smoking effects are accompanied by increases in EEG arousal and decreases in the latency of the late positive component of the evoked potential."

0574. University of Reading, Department of Psychology (England). Warburton., D.M.; Wesnes, K. "The Effects of Cigarette Smoking on Human Information Processing and the role of Nicotine in These Effects "

http://smith.mn/research.html


Nicotine studied as treatment for brain disorders

By Carey Goldberg, Globe Staff | November 12, 2003

Scientists reported yesterday that nicotine seems to diminish mental impairment stemming from stress or an underactive thyroid -- the latest in a growing body of evidence that the long vilified substance may help people with brain disorders ranging from Alzheimer's disease to schizophrenia.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles... /nicotine_studied_as_treatment_for_brain_disorders/

 


"Freepers": pejorative for members of "Free Republic" forum; and by extension any who hold those "values". We also have lurkers and troll behavior that pops up at DU from time to time when they attempt to infiltrate. Quite a lot of fun when one drops his mask and is pounced upon en masse. (Although it's against DU rules, new members with low post counts are often suspected of freeper under the radar.)

This will help:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/forum...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PotS7hPQZTU...

This is the complete Sphinx playlist .. except part 8 will not save to playlist correctly.

Sacred Egyptian texts:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/egy/index.htm

Michael Cremo's research is just a stepping stone on the path to discover antiquity.
It isn't the destination.

These are the great brain trusts we are expected to rely upon to define history for us:

Egyptologists:
"The pyramids, in general, are not very popular with the Egyptologists because I think they're too plentiful. There are about 100 of them. And also, I think they've acquired something of a bad name because they've attracted so many cranks."

"The Great Pyramid has this power over people. In my view it has the power to destroy common sense."

"Common sense" that tells us it is a coincidence that the ratio of the Pyramid's circumference to its height is exactly the same as the Earth's circumference to its radius from the poles.

The lack of interest of scientifically sanctioned experts :cough: must explain why fifteen years after the discovery of a doorway to an inner chamber, it remains closed and unexplored. Not "popular" enough.

Thank the Gods for these folks:

The Egypt Code:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=33...

Mystery of the Sphinx:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PotS7hPQZTU

I've reached a level of unique disgust with the scientific community.

Science was and still is one of my favorite subjects. However, one doesn't have to look very deep to discover that TSC has replaced
The Church as the modern day arbitrators of Truth.

As residents of this planet, we are entitled to honest investigations and access to the results. We have been denied our entitlement.

The so-called "scientists" (and their "faithful") are not about to allow honesty. What can we do? Start here...

Expect to be called ugly names by "rational" so-called "scientific minds". They do not like to be questioned. Remember that calling others ugly slurs negates any intellectual authority. Labeling a line of inquiry "pseudo-science" merely indicates an unwillingness to engage in scientific discovery.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owmYuv8rHiw...

Author and researcher Michael Cremo returned to discuss 'forbidden archeology,' ancient Sanskrit knowledge, and cosmic hierarchy. He shared evidence that humans existed on this planet millions of years ago. Examples included, a human skeleton found in Illinois under a thick layer of unbroken slate rock-- which was estimated to be around 300 million years old. And a probable shoe print (the 'Meister print') discovered in Antelope Spring, Utah in slate rock that also contained a trilobite fossil, dated back to 500 million years ago.

Consciousness: The Bridge Between Science and Spirit
Video Soundtrack

Growing up in England I thought I had no interest whatsoever in spirituality–I never thought I’d be speaking at places like this–or even an interest in consciousness. In my youth I was fascinated by mathematics, theoretical physics. I quit church when I was about 13, when I was brought up regular Anglican-Protestant. Which meant kind of going to church with my parents about once a month or so. That was considered enough to clear any sins we’d committed.

Then I went through the process of confirmation. First we were told the facts of life, which was wonderful. And then what we were meant to believe. I suddenly realize this thing I was chanting in church every Sunday morning, at least once a month or so, The Nicene Creed, I was actually meant to believe it. This was The Creed. This is what I actually meant to believe it. I just realized it didn’t go with what I was learning in physics. With all this stuff that had been laid down in 300 AD about what was meant to believe, the basics. And what physics was telling me about the universe–it wasn’t created about 4000 years ago, it was millions of years old and there wasn’t a heaven up there and all that stuff. So it was a choice. And I decided physics was my way, mathematics and physics. So I told my parents, "That’s it," I was quitting church. Fortunately, they were fine. They just said that’s great. And interestingly enough, when I gave an advanced copy of my new book, From Science to God, to my mother she said, "You know I never believed that stuff my self really."

So I went off to university and I was studying physics, well applied mass theoretical physics. I was actually fortunate enough to be in the same place as Stephen Hawking. He was actually my tutor for a while. He had just completed his own research. He could still walk and talk then. He had to have a stick. But his disease was only just beginning to come on and he hadn’t actually published any of his major work. It was just wonderful just sitting with him and working with him.

I had reached the stage where I could solve Shrödigner’s equation, which–for most of you unless you majored in physics–means absolutely nothing and I’m not going to try and explain it to you. But what it does signify though, which is just fascinating, is that just from pure mathematics you can start deducing the structure of the hydrogen atom, of any atom, and from that the universe starts to unfold. It’s like how mathematics underlies the universe. Then I realized there was a much more interesting question, which was ‘How come I could do that?’ Not how come I could do the mathematics, but how come there were beings in the universe that could actually begin to understand the universe and do the mathematics. I was studying hydrogen–the universe had started off from the simplest element, clear colorless gas. How did that evolve into all the other elements, into life and into beings such as myself who could actually stop and do the mathematics of hydrogen structures. So, to put it another way, ‘how had the universe become self-reflective?’, how had consciousness arisen? And how could I actually stop and ask that question and wonder how I could study hydrogen. So more and more I started getting interested in consciousness and what consciousness was doing in the universe, how it had emerged, because that was the really fascinating thing. I think Einstein had put it very wonderfully himself when he said, "The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible" –the fact that we can actually understand it, how it has arisen.

Science, then and pretty much still today, didn’t want to engage with consciousness. It didn’t know what to do with consciousness. And science has ignored it, for very good reasons for it’s own part. First you can’t measure consciousness. You can’t weigh it. You can’t put a ruler up against it. You can’t time it. It doesn’t fit into the things that science likes to get a hold of and measure. You can’t put numbers against consciousness. Also, science wants to be objective. It wants to look at the objective world. The very essence of consciousness is that it’s subjective. And science tries to get rid of all that subjectivity, which is so variable. You can’t control it. Thirdly, the universe according to modern science seems to work perfectly well with out any need for consciousness. It doesn’t need to engage it. It can understand atoms and living cells and what’s happening out in space. Everything works pretty well without having to explore consciousness.

So there seems to be no need for science to explore consciousness. And yet, this is the interesting thing, consciousness is the one thing of which we are absolutely certain. And we can doubt everything else. I mean right now, who knows, it could be your brain is plugged into some virtual reality machine, which is giving you this experience. We could all be sitting in the Matrix. But even if you’re sitting in the Matrix, you’re still a conscious being having a different experience.
(...)
http://www.peterrussell.com/SG/CVid/ConscV...

Michael Pollan: "Don't Buy Any Food You've Ever Seen Advertised"
By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!
Posted on May 15, 2009, Printed on May 15, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/140029 /

Amy Goodman: (...) Well, my next guest is one of the leading writers and thinkers in this country on food. Michael Pollan is a professor of science and environmental journalism at University of California, Berkeley, author of several books about food, including The Botany of Desire, The Omnivore’s Dilemma and his latest, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, which just came out in paperback. ... Let’s start with the latest news over the last month, swine flu. How is that connected to industrialized agriculture?

Michael Pollan: Well, we don’t know for sure yet. We’re still kind of investigating. But the best knowledge we have is that this outbreak came from a very large industrial pork operation, pork confinement operation, where, you know, tens of thousands of pigs live in filth and close contact. And this was in Mexico. (...)

Goodman: Explain how these animal operations work.

Pollan: Well, a pig confinement operation is a pretty hellish place. They are, you know, tens of thousands of animals, kept jammed together. The animals are so close together that they have to snip their tails off, because the animals are so neurotic—I mean, pigs are very intelligent; they’re smarter than dogs—that they will nip at each other’s tails. They’ve been weaned so early that they have this sucking desire, and so they take it out on the tails of the animal right in front of them. So they snip the tails off, not to stop the procedure, but to make it so painful that animals will avoid having their tails bitten, just to make them raw and painful. (...)

Pollan: (...) The other thing is that it’s very interesting that Monsanto should be arguing that it has the key to improving productivity. If indeed what we need to do is improve productivity, don’t look at genetically modified crops. They have never succeeded in raising productivity. That’s not what they do. If you look at the—the Union of Concerned Scientists just issued a report looking at the twenty-year history of these crops, and what they have found is that basically the real gains in yield for American crops, for world crops, has been through conventional breeding. Genetic modification has—with one tiny exception, Bt corn used in years of very high infestation of European corn borers—has not increased productivity at all. That’s not what they’re good at. What they’re good at is creating products that allow farmers to expand their monocultures, because it takes less management. So, if indeed we need to go where Monsanto says, there are better technologies than theirs.

Goodman: What about companies boasting that they use real sugar, like that’s a health claim.

Pollan: (...) So—and on the high-fructose corn syrup thing, now that you’ve got Snapple and soon-to-be Coca-Cola making a virtue of the fact that they contain real sugar, no high-fructose corn syrup, what that is is an implicit health claim for sugar. And that is an incredible achievement on the part of industry, to convince us that getting off of high-fructose corn syrup has made their products healthier. It has done no such thing. Biologically, there’s no difference between high-fructose corn syrup and sugar.

Goodman: Well, explain why you were going after high-fructose corn syrup.

Pollan: Well, my argument about high-fructose corn syrup and why you should avoid it is it is a marker of a highly processed food. I’m just trying to help people, when they’re going through the supermarket—the main thing you want to avoid is processing, you know, extreme processing. And high-fructose corn syrup—I mean, think about it. Do you know anyone who cooks with high-fructose corn syrup? It’s not a home—it’s not an ingredient you’ll find in a home pantry. It’s a tool of food science.

My problem with it is its ubiquity through the food system. You have high-fructose corn syrup showing up where sugar has never been—in bread, in pickles, in mayonnaise, in relish, in all these products—that they basically have found that if you sweeten anything, we will buy more of it. High-fructose corn syrup is a very convenient, cheap ingredient, because we subsidize the corn from which it’s made. (...)

So, I’ve had to update my rules. And with all this new marketing based on these ideas, my new suggestion is, if you want to avoid all this, simply don’t buy any food you’ve ever seen advertised. Ninety-four percent of ad budgets for food go to processed food. I mean, the broccoli growers don’t have money for ad budgets. So the real food is not being advertised. And that’s really all you need to know.

Much more (4 pages)

http://www.alternet.org/environment/140029...

Print version:
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversio...

a year before the Supreme Court banned it, I delivered a speech as a class assignment wherein I defended and supported Capital Punishment. Preparing for the speech was about the only thought ever given to the question. As a naive' teen, I still thought the world could be made 'right'. Once it was deemed unconstitutional, the point was moot.

Eleven years later, my opinion was changed forever after I saw the film, The Executioner's Song.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083909 /

Gary Mark Gilmore (December 4, 1940 — January 17, 1977) was an American criminal and spree killer who gained international notoriety for demanding that his death sentence be fulfilled following two murders he committed in Utah. He became the first person executed in the United States after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a new series of death penalty statutes in the 1976 decision Gregg v. Georgia (these new statutes avoiding the problems that had led earlier death penalty statutes to be deemed unconstitutional in Furman v. Georgia).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Gilmore

Consider the company we keep when we engage in the death penalty:

At least 3,000 people (and probably considerably more) were sentenced to death during 2007, and at the end of the year around 25,000 were on death row, with Pakistan and the USA accounting for about half this figure. (...)

Executions are known to have been carried out in the following countries in 2007:<30>

Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Belarus, Botswana, China, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Kuwait, Libya, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, USA, Vietnam, Yemen. (...)

USA is in the top six.

DPIC RESOURCES: Per Capita Executions by State
Posted: April 24, 2009

Although Texas leads the country by far with the most executions (436) since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976, it is second to Oklahoma in terms of executions as a fraction of the state's population. The other leading execution states on a per capita basis are Delaware, Virginia, Missouri, and Arkansas. The full ranking of executions per capita by state may be found here. In 2009, there have been 22 executions as of April 27, with 100% of them occurring in the South. Of the 22 executions, 13 have been in Texas. In 2008, 95% of the executions wee in the South.
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/home

The ACLU calls it "the ultimate denial of civil liberties".
http://www.aclu.org/capital/index.html

Amnesty International says it is "ultimate, irreversible denial of human rights".
http://www.amnestyusa.org/death-penalty/pa...

The field of psychiatry equates suicide and homicide as having the same clinical characteristics.
Suicide is illegal. State sanctioned, peer justified homicide is not. In the murders we are seeing these days, the homicidal unquestionably display suicidal tendencies. Since they are one and the same, Capital Punishment merely completes the crime.

Will the USA ever be willing to live the Constitution, with guarantees of liberty for all?

In an Address to the Diplomatic Corps at the Vatican on January 13, 2003, the Pope declared that “War is never just another means that one can choose to employ for settling differences between nations” and reiterated that “war cannot be decided upon . . . except as the very last option and in accordance with very strict conditions.”
http://catholicism.about.com/od/thechurchi...

New Antiwar Ad Launched
'Iraq Hasn't Wronged Us,' Bishop From Bush's Church Says
by Alan Cooperman

The National Council of Churches will begin airing a television commercial today in which a bishop of the United Methodist Church, President Bush's denomination, says going to war against Iraq "violates God's law and the teachings of Jesus Christ."

The 30-second ad, scheduled to appear several times a day over the next week on the CNN and Fox cable networks in New York and Washington, is part of an accelerating television, radio and print media campaign by Win Without War, a coalition of organizations opposed to invading Iraq.

The choice of a Methodist bishop as a spokesman is intended to emphasize the opposition to war from America's mainstream churches and to convey that the peace movement is middle-of-the-road and patriotic, according to Win Without War's national director, former representative Tom Andrews (D-Maine).
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/01...

Religious opposition

On September 13, 2002, US Catholic bishops signed a letter to President Bush stating that any "preemptive, unilateral use of military force to overthrow the government of Iraq" could not be justified at the time. They came to this position by evaluating whether an attack against Iraq would satisfy the criteria for a just war as defined by Catholic theology.

US civil-rights leader the Reverend Jesse Jackson condemned the planned invasion, saying in February 2003 that it was not too late to stop the war and that people "must march until there is a declaration of peace and reconciliation."<60>

The Vatican also spoke out against war in Iraq. Archbishop Renato Raffaele Martino, a former U.N. envoy and current prefect of the Council for Justice and Peace, told reporters that war against Iraq was a preventive war and constituted a "war of aggression", and thus did not constitute a just war. The foreign minister, Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, expressed concerns that a war in Iraq would inflame anti-Christian feelings in the Islamic world. On February 8, 2003, Pope John Paul II said "we should never resign ourselves, almost as if war is inevitable."<61> He spoke out again on March 22 2003, shortly after the invasion began, saying that violence and arms "can never resolve the problems of man."<62><63><64>

Both the outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, and his successor, Rowan Williams, spoke out against war with Iraq.

The executive committee of the World Council of Churches, an organization representing churches with a combined membership of between 350 million and 450 million Christians from over 100 countries,<65> issued a statement in opposition to war with Iraq, stating that "War against Iraq would be immoral, unwise, and in breach of the principles of the United Nations Charter."<66>

Jim Wallis of Sojourners Magazine has argued that, among both evangelical Christians and Catholics, "most major church bodies around the world" opposed the war.<67>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_to...

I can't top that story. It's an excellent representation.
This concept only started coming together for me in a meaningful way this past week; after two resources yielded additional information and started clicking.

I don't want to go all holy roller on you, but obviously our perspectives are going to differ as to what the Ultimate in Justice represents. That means that I don't believe we will ever have 'perfect justice' until time is done, but that we should strive for it all the same. So, I'm just going to share some pieces of an incomplete puzzle.

Tolstoy: "When will justice come? When those who are not injured are as indignant as those who are."

It's interesting that our brains seem to be hard wired for fairness.

The human brain responds to being treated fairly the same way it responds to winning money and eating chocolate, UCLA scientists report. Being treated fairly turns on the brain's reward circuitry.

"We may come to be wired to treat fairness as a reward," said study co-author Matthew D. Lieberman, UCLA associate professor of psychology and a founder of social cognitive neuroscience.
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/brain...

I think justice can also be viewed as the Ethic of Reciprocity. This should be the ideal of both individuals and society if we are to approach justice. It also has basis in our laws of physics.

But there is near unanimity of opinion among almost all religions, ethical systems and philosophies that each person should treat others in a decent manner.

In our opinion, the greatest failure of organized religion is its historical inability to convince their followers that the Ethic of Reciprocity applies to all humans, not merely to fellow believers. It is our belief that religions should stress that their membership use their Ethic of reciprocity when dealing with persons of other religions, the other gender, other races, other sexual orientations, etc. Only when this is accomplished will religiously-related oppression, mass murder and genocide cease.

http://www.religioustolerance.org/reciproc...

I especially like this one:
# Taoism:

* "Regard your neighbor's gain as your own gain, and your neighbor's loss as your own loss." T'ai Shang Kan Ying P'ien.
* "The sage has no interest of his own, but takes the interests of the people as his own. He is kind to the kind; he is also kind to the unkind: for Virtue is kind. He is faithful to the faithful; he is also faithful to the unfaithful: for Virtue is faithful." Tao Teh Ching, Chapter 49

If we want to be people of justice, we will follow those instructions. But, as we know, there are going to be plenty of other people around who are striving for justice only for themselves, not realizing that is impossible; and failing often in ourselves.

That's where the believer's faith comes in, trusting that when all the evidence has been presented, the law of justice will have been served. There is a caveat, in that as a Christian, I believe that our accounts have already been paid, in this time; but, will not be evident until the trial is completed.

Transcript:
http://www.aish.com/societyWork/sciencenat...

How long ago did the "beginning" occur? Was it, as the Bible might imply, 5700-plus years, or was it the 15 billions of years that's accepted by the scientific community?

The first thing we have to understand is the origin of the Biblical calendar. The Jewish year is figured by adding up the generations since Adam. Additionally, there are six days leading up to the creation to Adam. These six days are significant as well.

Now where do we make the zero point? On Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, upon blowing the shofar, the following sentence is said: "Hayom Harat Olam -- today is the birthday of the world."

Review:
http://www.geraldschroeder.com/gbb.html
Genesis and the Big Bang
Reviews
From Paul Adam Blanchard - Science Books & Films
Read this book. Read it with an open mind, or read it with skepticism, but read it. Above all, read it for thought, education, inspiration, and pleasure. You will be well rewarded. . . . I remain unconvinced {by the book}--but that is not the point. . . . (Schroeder's) tour of human knowledge, history, and culture is grand indeed, filled with scientific research at the forefront of knowledge, keen argument, and rich deposits of Jewish learning and wisdom.This book will not be the last of its type: these two great life currents--modern science and traditional religion--have yet to meet in the informed and skeptical mind. Schroeder's courageous work may mark a step toward that meeting.

Playlist:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=4A...

Ref:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Schroe...