To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - Cyprus plans missile deployment: Turkey warns...
From: bpr-list@philologos.org(BPR)
Date: Sun, 6 Jun 1999 08:59:25 -0500
From: <owner-bpr@philologos.org>
Cyprus reportedly plans August missile deployment: Turkey warns of
response
June 5, 1999
12:13 a.m. EDT (0413 GMT)
ANKARA, Turkey (CNN) -- Turkey warns that it will respond with
"counter-measures" if Cyprus deploys additional short-range surface-
to-air missiles.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry said Cyprus reportedly planned to
deploy more Italian-made Aspide missiles in August.
Turkey will "take the necessary counter-measures," the Foreign
Ministry warned, if Cyprus deploys more surface-to-air missiles on the
divided island.
In December, Cyprus canceled plans to deploy long-range Russian S-
300 anti-aircraft missiles after Turkey threatened military action.
Tension with Greece
Greece has a defense agreement with Cyprus and the Turkish threat
raised tensions with Athens.
Cyprus has been divided since 1974 when Turkish troops invaded the
northern third following a short-lived coup by supporters of union
with Greece. Turkey maintains 35,000 troops on the northern part of
the island. A self-declared Turkish republic in the north is recognized
only by Ankara.
Turkey claimed the S-300 missiles not only endangered Turkish
Cypriots, but also Turkey itself. The missiles were deployed on the
Greek island of Crete instead.
Unlike the S-300, the Aspide would not threaten aircraft in Turkish
airspace and Cyprus already has Aspide missiles in its arsenal.
Last year, Italy reportedly refused to fulfill a contract for additional
Aspide missiles unless the deployment of the S-300 was canceled.
via: New Millennium <hblonde1@tampabay.rr.com>
--- BPR
BPR Web Site - http://philologos.org/bpr
========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - June 7, 1999 TV Programs
From: bpr-list@philologos.org(BPR)
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 1999 08:39:38 +0000
From: "Moza" <moza@butterfly.mv.com>
6:00 PM Eastern
HIST - HIGH POINTS IN HISTORY - Warhorse: A Beast for Heroes.
How did man turn a timid beast into a
weapon for war? For nearly 4,000 years the
horse has partnered man. From its evolution
to its first recorded historical battle at
Armageddon, we'll cover this partnership
and study ancient texts from Egypt, Greece,
and Rome. So, climb in the saddle for a
delightful historical ride! [TV G]
9:00
DISC - THE INVISIBLE FORCE - Constant gravitational pull
shapes, and may damage, the universe.(CC)(TVG)
10:00
HIST - PYRAMIDS: MAJESTY AND MYSTERY - Historians explore
the engineering masterpieces.(CC)(TVG)
TLC - MAVERICKS OF SCIENCE - Contemporary scientists
sometimes risk their reputations to make revolutionary
contributions to humanity.(CC)(TVPG)
PBS - JONAS SALK: PERSONALLY SPEAKING - The physician
develops a vaccine for polio.(CC)(TVG)
Tuesday, June 8, 1999
7:00 AM
A&E - ANCIENT MYSTERIES - Pompeii - Buried alive
========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - Time names 20th century heroes
From: bpr-list@philologos.org(BPR)
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 1999 08:49:49 +0000
From: "Moza" <moza@butterfly.mv.com>
04:40 PM ET 06/05/99
Time Names 20th Century Heroes
NEW YORK (AP) _ Time magazine's top 20 heroes and icons of the 20th
century run the gamut: a princess and a preacher, an aviator and an
alcoholic, a gay man and ``The Greatest.''
Alphabetically, they start with boxer Muhammad Ali and end with Alcoholics
Anonymous founder Bill W. The eclectic group includes activists Rosa Parks
and Harvey Milk, pioneer Charles Lindbergh and screen icons Marilyn Monroe
and Bruce Lee.
``We need our heroes,'' wrote assistant managing editor Howard Chua-Eoan,
``to give meaning to time.''
The list is the fifth and last in its top 100 people of the last 100
years. Previous lists included the top 20 leaders and revolutionaries,
artists and entertainers, builders and titans, and scientists and
thinkers.
The new list included one generic entry: the American G.I., from World War
I through the Kosovo conflict. And there was one family entry: the
Kennedys, cited as America's most powerful family of the century.
The rest of the list included Princess Diana, Nazi victim Anne Frank,
Billy Graham, Che Guevara, Helen Keller, Everest conquerors Edmund Hillary
and Tenzing Norgay, suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst, soccer great Pele,
baseball pioneer Jackie Robinson, dissident Andrei Sakharov and Mother
Teresa.
Each icon was profiled by another well known 20th century figure, from ex-
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on soccer great Pele to George Plimpton
on Ali.
The list was compiled by Time editors in consultation with CBS News and an
assortment of public figures, academics, journalists, political analysts
and other experts.
Infobeat News
========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - Y2K Headlines
From: bpr-list@philologos.org(BPR)
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 1999 09:17:53 +0000
From: "Moza" <moza@butterfly.mv.com>
CANADA FEARS Y2K DISASTER FOR NATO ALLIES
Link: http://www.globeandmail.com/gam/National/19990514/UGRIDN.html
FIRMS PREPARE Y2K CRISIS CENTERS
Link: http://www.techweb.com/se/directlink.cgi?INW19990531S0013
Link:
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/stories/990601/edm990601-64.html
FOUR AT-RISK AGENCIES CLAIM Y2K PROGRESS
Link: http://www.fcw.com/pubs/fcw/1999/0531/fcw-newsY2K-05-31-99.html
AUSTRALIAN UTILITY COMPANY CAN'T GUARANTEE POWER IN THE NEW YEAR
Link: http://www.afr.com.au/y2k/990531/inf/inf1.html
EUROPEAN AIRPORTS HEADING FOR MILLENNIUM COMPUTER CRASH
Link:
http://www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/99/05/23/stifgneur01008.html
?1 124027
OLYMPIC AGENCIES NOT PREPARED FOR Y2K
Link:
http://www.cnnsi.com/olympics/news/1999/05/15/sydney_y2k/index.html
Y2K SPENDING FALLS AS UK FIRMS FOCUS ON EURO WORK
Link:
http://www.computerweekly.co.uk/cwarchive/news/19990513/cwcontainer.as
p? name=C7.html
GOVERNORS ENTER REGIONAL Y2K COMPACT
Link: http://www.civic.com/news/1999/june/civ-governors-6-3-99.html
FOOD BANKS PREPARE FOR Y2K SHORTAGES
Link: http://www.oregonlive.com/news/99/06/st060211.html
SENATOR BENNETT STOCKING UP ON WATER
Link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-06/01/095l-060199-idx
.h tml
Y2K GLITCHES COULD SHUT DOWN OIL REFINERIES
Link: http://y2ktimebomb.com/Media/lcore9922.htm
WASHINGTON POST GETS BITTEN BY THE Y2K BUG
Link:
http://www.amcity.com/washington/stories/1999/05/31/newscolumn8.html?h
=y 2k
POLITICS DECIDED ACTION OVER Y2K SOFTWARE
Link:
http://www.scmp.com/news/template/HK-Template.idc?artid=19990512010937
01 0&top=hk&template=Default.htx&maxfieldsize=2135
ED YOURDON BIDS FAREWELL TO Y2K SCENE
Link: http://www.yourdon.com/articles/sayonaray2k.html
Link: http://www.y2ktimebomb.com/DSA/VP/vp9921.htm
Link: http://www.garynorth.com/y2k/detail_.cfm/4866
NAVAL WAR COLLEGE DOS AND DON'TS LIST FOR DEALING WITH Y2K
Link: http://www.nwc.navy.mil/dsd/y2ksited/y2kproj.htm
Y2K FACT AND FICTION
Link: http://www.y2knewswire.com/19990604.htm
LAS VEGAS NOT TAKING CHANCES ON Y2K GLITCHES
Link: http://www.latimes.com/CNS_DAYS/990523/t000046322.html
http://dispatch.mail-list.com/archives/nhnelist/
========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - Stratfor's Weekly Analysis
From: bpr-list@philologos.org(BPR)
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 1999 06:36:54 -0500
From: <owner-bpr@philologos.org>
STRATFOR's
Global Intelligence Update
Weekly Analysis June 7, 1999
http://www.stratfor.com
Of G-8, Rambouillet, Compromise and Surrender
Summary:
Things are becoming curious indeed. When Milosevic agreed to the
G-8 accords, we thought this meant he was agreeing to the terms
agreed to in Bonn: a UN peacekeeping force under UN command in
which some troops would be drawn from NATO, but many others
would be from non-NATO countries. NATO, it turned out very
quickly, had a different understanding of the Bonn G-8 agreements.
NATO was reading it as essentially the same as the Rambouillet
accords that Milosevic had rejected. Who had agreed to what is
emerging as a mystery of the first order?
Analysis:
We have argued for the past several weeks that the basic outlines of a
settlement are in place and that domestic politics have been holding
up a settlement. Neither NATO nor the Serbs could afford to let it
appear that they were defeated. Thus, a delicate ballet had to be acted
out in which a settlement could be portrayed by each side as a victory
or, at the very least, as something other than a defeat. That is why the
G-8 agreement hammered out in Bonn was so important. It was a
document that allowed both sides to claim that they had not been
defeated. For that to work, however, each side had to avoid being
greedy. Like a couple sharing a bed in a bad marriage, each had to
leave enough cover for the other. What happened this weekend seems
to be that NATO could not resist the temptation to take Milosevic's
cover away from him. Worse yet, NATO tried to steal Yeltsin's cover.
The result is a settlement in trouble, at least for now.
Let's begin by reviewing the core issue separating NATO and
Belgrade. Serbia had refused to sign at the Rambouillet agreements
because of two core issues, both having to do with the concept of
Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo. First, Serbia would not agree to the
withdrawal of all troops from Kosovo. Some troops, numbers
unspecified, had to remain. Second, Serbia was not prepared to allow
a heavily armed NATO force to occupy Kosovo. It was prepared to
allow a United Nations peacekeeping force into Kosovo. There were
other issues, but none were as central as these two. NATO told the
Serbs to take it or leave it. Serbia left it.
The Russians, essentially supporting the Serb position, entered the
discussions. After intense negotiations between primarily the
Germans and Russians, followed by broader discussions, the G-8
accords were established in Bonn (the text is available at
http://www.stratfor.com/crisis/kosovo/specialreports/special62.htm?
section=3 ) The G-8 accords constituted an agreement between NATO
and Russia. It was the price that Russia demanded in order to
attempt to negotiate a settlement with Belgrade. The G-8 accords
were a redefinition of the NATO demands into terms that Moscow felt
Belgrade would accept and which could fit into Russia's and
Belgrade's core concept of Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo. It was
never conceived of by anyone, at the time it was negotiated, as a
Serbian surrender. Rather, it was perceived as a center-point
between NATO and Serbian demands that would allow for a workable
settlement. Russia agreed that an armed force would occupy Kosovo.
NATO agreed that that force would be under United Nations and not
NATO command. The force was not defined but it was clearly
intended that the force would include large numbers of non-NATO
troops.
It should be remembered that the G-8 accords were pressed on the
Americans and British by the Italians and in particular by the
Germans. Fearful of an extended bombing campaign, completely
opposed to a ground war, and terrified of long-term Russian
hostility, the Germans and Italians were the architects of the G-8
agreement. They wanted that agreement in order to find some way
out of what appeared to be a hopeless deadlock. They were the
driving force behind the G-8 accords and they clearly saw them as a
compromise between the Serb position and Rambouillet.
The G-8 agreement accepted the principle of the return of Kosovo
Albanians to their homes and the creation of an autonomous Kosovo
under Serbian sovereignty. But the important price NATO paid in the
Bonn G-8 talks was the agreement that the United Nations and not
NATO would command and control troops moving into Kosovo. It
was not clear what the command structure would be beyond this, nor
was it clear what precisely the composition of the occupying force
would be. However, it was clear that it would be a United Nations
force with significant non-NATO presence. When the Russians first
brought the agreement to the Serbs, they focused on the composition
of the forces, demanding that no NATO country that had bombed
Serbia participate in the peacekeeping force. That is where the
negotiations stood before Chernomyrdin and Ahtisaari went to
Belgrade last week. On one side, there were the G-8 agreements; on
the other side were the Serb demands that only limited NATO forces
be admitted to Kosovo.
Thus, when Milosevic agreed to the G-8 agreement, he did not see
himself as surrendering to NATO or as agreeing to Rambouillet.
Rather, he was agreeing to the proposal negotiated by NATO with the
Russians in Bonn. He was agreeing to a substantial NATO presence,
but not to an exclusive NATO presence or to de facto NATO control
of the province. At least that is what anyone familiar with the
original G-8 agreements would have imagined him to be agreeing to.
It is not clear what went on at the meeting between Viktor
Chernomyrdin and EU representative Martti Ahtisaari in Belgrade
last week, but Milosevic's agreement to the G-8 terms was not
surprising or stunning. It appeared to us to be the logical result
of the Russian peace process, which seemed to have reached a
compromise between the Rambouillet position and the Serbian
position. We had been expecting a move by the Serbs to accept a
United Nations force containing large numbers of NATO troops.
It was, therefore, quite surprising to hear NATO officials and the
Western media talking about Milosevic's capitulation. It was also
surprising to hear the terms to which NATO thought Milosevic had
agreed. According to NATO's account of things, Milosevic had
simply surrendered. Apart from a purely formal nod to the United
Nations, it became clear that NATO saw itself as occupying Serbia.
Indeed, it was not clear that any non-NATO troops would be coming
in and if they were, whether they would be permitted outside of NATO
command. Thus, NATO's take on what Milosevic had agreed to was
pretty much the old Rambouillet terms. It was not surprising to us
that Milosevic had agreed to the G-8 agreements. We were very
surprised that he had, in effect, agreed to the Rambouillet accords.
What seems to have happened was that NATO reinterpreted the G-8
agreement into the Rambouillet agreement and Milosevic's acceptance
of the G-8 formula as his capitulation to the Rambouillet accords.
NATO was also making it clear that Russian participation, an essential
element of the G-8 agreements, was both of marginal importance and
only on NATO's terms. In other words, NATO was basically asserting
that there were no G-8 accords independent of the Rambouillet
formula.
That created a major crisis inside of Serbia over the weekend. Why
had Serbia endured two months of bombing simply in order to give in
to the original terms? The bombing was endurable and NATO was
not capable of invading. What was the point of this sacrifice if the
only outcome was to accept what could have been had without any
sacrifice? Indeed, that was extremely confusing. If Milosevic had in
fact agreed to the terms that NATO was now dictating, his behavior
was in fact inexplicable. Therefore, by Sunday, the real question was
this: just what had Milosevic agreed to during his meetings with
Chernomyrdin and Ahtisaari? If he had agreed to the G-8 proposals,
as all three participants had agreed, then how had the G-8 agreements
transmogrified into the settlement NATO was now trying to impose?
Was the Bonn G-8 formula simply a phantom of our imagination or
was it a substantially different formula than Rambouillet?
It seems to us that NATO deliberately chose to interpret Milosevic's
agreement to the G-8 proposal in the most extreme form imaginable-a
form not easily drawn from the G-8 proposal. Even the document
purportedly presented to Milosevic was not as extreme as NATO's
interpretation. NATO's motive in this conversion was, of course, to
demonstrate that Milosevic had not compromised but capitulated.
This was critical in order to demonstrate that the air campaign was
successful and that the war was not pointless. Clearly, NATO
believed Milosevic's decision to accept the G-8 was driven by the fact
that he was desperate and, being desperate, he would now accept any
interpretation of the G-8 accords that NATO placed on him. NATO
read Milosevic as too badly beaten to resist the reinterpretation.
More interestingly, NATO seemed to feel that the Russians would
accept the reinterpretation as well. Remember that the G-8 accords
were not negotiated between NATO and Serbia. They had nothing to
do with Serbia. They were negotiated between NATO and Russia,
and NATO's concessions were Russia's price for beginning the
mediation campaign. By turning G-8 into Rambouillet and the Russian
compromise solution into a Serbian surrender, NATO put the Russian
government into an incredibly difficult situation. As a result, political
pressure began to rise in Moscow against the agreement and the
treatment of Russia by NATO. Last week's compromise turned into
this weekend's surrender. By Sunday night, both Milosevic's
capitulation and the compromise were up in the air.
What in the world happened? There are several possible explanations.
* NATO's leaders, particularly Clinton and Blair, and also the Brussels
bureaucracy felt themselves under tremendous pressure to produce
what appeared to be a victory. They tried to "spin" the G-8 into a
Serbian surrender for domestic political purposes, either unaware of
the consequences in Belgrade and Moscow or convinced that they
could get Serb acceptance of NATO's reinterpretation of G-8. They
stole Milosevic's cover for their own use, gambling that he was too
badly beaten to reverse course.
* Chernomyrdin was telling different things to different sides in order
to get a settlement. The Russian role has been ambiguous at times. It
is possible that Chernomyrdin's transmission of the meaning of G-8 to
the various parties differed substantially. NATO may well have had a
private understanding that G-8 meant Rambouillet, with a wink and
nod to the UN. Milosevic may have had a private understanding from
Chernomyrdin that G-8 meant the UN with a wink and nod to NATO.
By the time everyone compared notes, they were on the Serb-
Macedonian border. It is particularly interesting to find out what
Chernomyrdin told the Russian leadership.
* Russia has sold out the Serbs. We predicted a crisis in Kosovo on
January 4, 1999 precisely because of Russo-American tensions. When
Primakov fell, we stated that this represented a major geopolitical
setback to Milosevic. We have always argued that the Russians made
possible Milosevic's position. The Russians began to weaken their
support for Milosevic when the IMF's $4.5 billion loan was made
available. Perhaps one of Strobe Talbott's missions in Moscow was to
negotiate a side deal with the Russians for delivering Milosevic to
NATO. If so, it is not clear what the quid pro quo is. It is also not
clear what the response in the Duma will be if it is revealed that Yeltsin
approved a sell-out of Milosevic for unspecified goodies later on.
What is certainly clear is that the G-8 agreements are not merely a
restatement of the Rambouillet accords. When Milosevic realized
NATO thought that they were, it appears that he balked. Now, if the
Russians have truly abandoned him, if the third possibility is really
what happened, then the Russians are now quietly telling him the
game is up and Serbia stands alone. Milosevic will really have no
choice but to capitulate. If, however, the first possibility is true, and
NATO has spun the agreement to make it appear to be a surrender
then NATO may well have sown the wind. If Serbia genuinely rejects
the G-8 reinterpretation and is backed by Russia, then American and
British spin-doctors will have to answer to NATO partners who are
sick of the war. If this is Chernomyrdin's ego or incompetence getting
in the way of the settlement, then we may be back to the beginning of
a long, miserable haul.
Whatever happened, the G-8 Ministers are going to meet tomorrow
and NATO will get a chance to explain to the Russians how they got
from here to there. Ahtisaari has postponed his trip to China and will
have an opportunity to explain what he thought Milosevic was
agreeing to when he said he accepted the G-8 agreements. All of the
strings can be untangled. It will be an interesting few days while they
are.
========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - jewishcalendar
From: bpr-list@philologos.org(BPR)
Date: Mon, 07 Jun 1999 06:40:12 -0500
From: "DEBRA &GREG" <tinbox@leaco.net>
Do you believe in the 6000 year theory? It seems to add up when you
use our present day calendar. Does the theory prove to be true when
the Jewish calendar is used? I was wondering if anyone could help me
answer this question.
thank you,
Debra Tindell
--- BPR
BPR Web Site - http://philologos.org/bpr
========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - Watch with built-in GPS
From: bpr-list@philologos.org(BPR)
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 1999 16:15:57 +0000
From: "Moza" <moza@butterfly.mv.com>
WORLD'S FIRST WATCH WITH BUILT-IN GPS HIGHLIGHTED AT JCK
Pathfinder PAT1GP-1 Displays the Latitude and
Longitude of Your Current Position
LAS VEGAS, NV., June 4-- Casio, Inc., will highlight the new PATHFINDER
PAT1GP-1, the world's first wristwatch with built-in GPS capabilities that
allow it to pick up transmissions from GPS satellites at the JCK Show here
in Las Vegas (June 4 - 8, 1999).
CASIO's own advanced chip and high-density mounting technology creates a
compact, lower-power positioning system capable of utilizing signals from
the GPS satellites that ring the globe. The concept of the CASIO Global
Positioning System Watch has held the attention of the entire world ever
since its prototype was developed in January.
The new PATHFINDER PAT1GP-1 packs advanced GPS capabilities into a
compact, lightweight watch configuration you can wear on your wrist. Its
wrist-worn configuration means that advanced GPS capabilities are always
available when enjoying mountain climbing, hiking, fishing, or just about
any other outdoor sport where position data readout and storage are vital.
Full story: http://www.casio.com/corporate/pressdetail.cfm?ID=51)
========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - Babylon: new web server
From: bpr-list@philologos.org(BPR)
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 1999 18:57:29 +0000
From: "Moza" <moza@butterfly.mv.com>
AT THE GATES OF BABYLON
Microsoft is working on an interoperability server that will
offer bidirectional integration between Microsoft's operating
systems and server applications and those of various mainframe,
minicomputer, and Unix interfaces; object models; and data
sources. Code-named Babylon, the server will ship 90 days after
the release of Windows 2000 and will be part of Microsoft's
BackOffice suite. The initiative is a sign that Microsoft is
bending to customer demands and realizing that some big corporate
customers cannot afford to throw out their legacy infrastructure. One
of the most interesting aspects of Babylon is that it could open up
Microsoft's DNA architecture to non-Microsoft sources, according to
John Harvey of Qualcomm's OmniTracs division. He says his customers
are not all Microsoft customers, meaning he must support AS/400,
RS/6000 and various other flavors of Unix. For the concept of DNA to
succeed, he says, there must be interoperability between competing
operating systems. Still, some experts are skeptical of Babylon's
ambitious goals, noting that it is extremely difficult to attain
anything other than the most basic interoperability between different
operating systems and data formats. (InfoWorld 05/31/99)
via: EDUCAUSE <EDUCAUSE@EDUCAUSE.EDU>
Edupage, 7 June 1999
========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - Internet reveals solar explosion's target
From: bpr-list@philologos.org(BPR)
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 1999 19:58:40 -0500
From: <owner-bpr@philologos.org>
Internet reveals solar explosion's target
Astronomers did not know if it was heading our way.
By BBC News Online Science Editor Dr David Whitehouse
A tremendous explosion took place on the surface of the Sun last
Tuesday and for a few very nervous hours astronomers did not know
whether it was heading for Earth.
The blast threw a jet of superheated plasma carrying magnetic energy
into space at speeds of 1,000 kilometres per second (600 miles per
second).
However, using the speed of the Internet, astronomers around the
world rapidly compared images and decided that a worldwide alert was
unnecessary.
"Planet-buster"
The Solar and Heliospheric Observer (SOHO) satellite observed the
solar explosion, which astronomers call a coronal mass ejection
(CME).
The explosive event was "a real planet-buster", according to Dr
Richard Fisher of Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Centre.
If the magnetic energy within the cloud of superhot gas had interacted
with the Earth's magnetic field it would have sparked spectacular
aurora at polar latitudes.
But more worryingly it could also induce power blackouts, block radio
communications and trigger phantom commands capable of sending
satellites spinning out of their proper orbits.
Cellular phones, global positioning signals and space-walking
astronauts were all at risk.
Hit or miss?
"When the coronal mass ejection was observed we were not sure
whether the mass ejection was moving toward the Earth or directly
away from the Earth" said Paal Brekke, SOHO Deputy Project
Scientist.
Astronomers were particularly concerned that the event was followed
by an increase in the flux of sub-atomic particles from the Sun.
So the scientists quickly downloaded Internet images of the Sun taken
by observatories in the USA, Austria, Australia, and Japan. They then
compared images the taken before and after the event.
"Because the data are so distributed and so accessible we were able to
identify and track this event," said one astronomer. "Even just a few
years ago, this kind of instant international collaboration would have
been impossible."
Fortunately, it was soon established that the CME was headed
directly away from the Earth - this time.
Preliminary analysis by Dr Simon Plunkett, of the Naval Research
Laboratory in the United States, shows that if the CME were travelling
towards the Earth, it would have arrived in just two and a half days.
The other Y2K problem
Solar activity waxes and wanes in an 11-year cycle, which is expected
to peak sometime early next year.
Astronomers point out that the solar menace comes at the same time
as computers around the world could struggle to cope with problems
caused by the Millennium or Year 2000 (Y2K) bug.
Some solar physicists have called the effects from the Sun "the other
Y2K problem".
"The SOHO satellite will play a key role in early detection of solar
storms, which is important for issuing warnings," added Dr Brekke.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_363000/363358.stm
========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - June 8, 1999 TV Programs
From: bpr-list@philologos.org(BPR)
Date: Tue, 8 Jun 1999 08:43:51 +0000
From: "Moza" <moza@butterfly.mv.com>
7:00 PM Eastern
HIST - 20th CENTURY - Are We Alone?
8:00
DISC - BIG BROTHER - Government and law enforcement agencies
gather volumes of informations on citizens.(CC)(TVG)
HIST - THE TRUTH ABOUT SCIENCE FICTION - Visionary
authors, historians and scientists reveal how fiction and
reality merge.(CC)(TVG)
9:00
PBS - A BILL MOYERS SPECIAL: FREE SPEECH FOR SALE -
Financial power provides corporations with political
control.(CC)
TLC - SECRET HISTORY OF SAN FRANCISCO - The city by the bay
becomes a haven for those searching for free
expression.(CC)(TVPG)
10:00
HIST - PLASTICS - Though ubiquitous, plastics are most
conspicuous in trash heaps.(CC)(TVG)
TLC - BODY BUGS: UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL - Special filming
technology lets researchers study micro-organisms that
inhabit a human's food and body.(CC)(TVG)
--- BPR
BPR Web Site - http://philologos.org/bpr
========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - 2 Infobeat News items on Israel's New Parliament
From: bpr-list@philologos.org(BPR)
Date: Tue, 8 Jun 1999 09:09:01 +0000
From: "Moza" <moza@butterfly.mv.com>
01:24 AM ET 06/08/99
Israel's New Parliament Sworn In
By JACK KATZENELL
Associated Press Writer
JERUSALEM (AP) _ The daughter of slain Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and a
former adviser to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat were both sworn in as
first-time Israeli lawmakers in a new parliament fraught with divisions
and bursting with personality.
Forty-one new legislators took their place in the 120-seat Knesset, which
opened Monday for the first time since elections May 17. This Knesset will
be home to more women and Arab legislators than any previous Israeli
parliament and, for the first time, an Arab woman legislator was sworn-in.
Parties supporting Prime Minister-elect Ehud Barak's peace policies with
the Palestinians and Syria won a majority in the house. But 15 different
factions are split along ethnic and religious lines.
Ahmed Tibi, an Israeli-Arab who resigned as Arafat's adviser to run for
parliament, was needled by a Jewish lawmaker from the extreme right when
he was sworn in Monday.
As Tibi pledged to uphold loyalty to the state of Israel, Rehavaam Zeevi
interrupted, shouting '' Do you intend to stand by this oath?''
Such rowdy exchanges are typical of Israel's parliament.
Yosef Lapid, a sharp-tongued former talk-show host and journalist who ran
on an anti-religious slate, found himself seated during the swearing-in
ceremony next to ultra-Orthodox lawmakers. Later, he agreed to shake hands
with Shlomo Ben Izri, a legislator from the powerful Shas party, which
Lapid has said should be excluded from Barak's government.
Another handshake effort came between Azmi Bishara, an Israeli-Arab who
supports Palestinian statehood and Michael Kleiner, a Jewish lawmaker who
has vowed to oppose such an entity. At the request of an Israeli TV
reporter, Bishara agreed to the handshake but then said ``I'm not one for
performances.''
Ayub Kara, a member of the Druse Arab sect was told his oath was invalid
because, against house rules, he added comments to his pledge. After he
repeated the official pledge ``I commit myself,'' he added ``to work for
the release of Azzam Azzam,'' a fellow Druze who was convicted and jailed
of spying in Egypt.
Kara was told he will have to take the oath again at a later date.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres was honored with the task of
presiding over the opening of the 15th Knesset. Peres, who has been in
politics since Israel was established 51 years ago, said he never tires of
parliament.
In his opening speech, the 75-year-old peace visionary who began historic
talks with the PLO in 1993, evoked the name of his predecessor and partner
Yitzhak Rabin who was murdered by another Jew in 1995 who opposed his
peace policies.
Rabin's daughter, Dalia Rabin-Philosof said it was the assassination that
led her into politics. ``I have no doubt that if (Rabin) had been there
today, I wouldn't have been,'' she said, accompanied by her husband, two
children and mother Leah.
Mrs. Rabin sat in the visitor's gallery next to Nava Barak, the wife of
Israel's next prime minister.
03:26 PM ET 06/07/99
Israeli Parliament Is More Diverse
By JACK KATZENELL
Associated Press Writer
JERUSALEM (AP) _ A new Israeli parliament convened Monday with a solid
majority sympathetic to Prime Minister-elect Ehud Barak's efforts to
resume the peace process _ although on other matters of state it was a
house divided.
As they pledged, one by one, to serve the country, the legislators
reflected an increasingly fractured society: ultra-Orthodox Jews and their
secular nemeses, dedicated capitalists and avid social reformers, hard-
line Jewish settlers and Arabs dedicated to the establishment of a
Palestinian state.
Israelis cast two separate ballots on May 17: one for prime minister and
one for the Knesset. Barak won a solid 56 percent majority on a platform
of reviving talks with the Syrians and Palestinians frozen during Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's rule.
At least 67 legislators of 120 belong to parties committed to reviving the
process, including 26 on Barak's One Israel slate.
The problem for Barak, working to establish a government by the July 9
deadline, is reconciling parties on other issues.
The stringently religious Shas party, with 17 seats, is at loggerheads
with Shinui and Meretz, two parties that ran ardently secular campaigns
and won 16 seats between them. All three parties back Barak on peace
issues.
Meretz and Shinui adamantly insist on leaving Shas out of the coalition,
saying that its years controlling powerful ministries allowed it to use
government funds to nurture support in religious schools and synagogues.
Barak colleagues say excluding Shas would be unreasonable.
``Four-hundred thousand voters cannot simply cancel out another 400,000
voters,'' said Shimon Peres, a former prime minister and the man likely to
lead peace talks after the formation of a government.
Shas, which draws its votes principally from Jews of Middle Eastern
background, also has tense relations with Israel B'Aliya, a party of
immigrants from the former Soviet Union. The communities compete for jobs
and housing.
Am Ehad, a party promoting workers' rights, is uncomfortable with the
policies of Shinui, which backs privatization and Thatcherite economics.
In all, there were 37 newcomers, including Ahmed Tibi, a former adviser to
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, and Dalia Rabin-Philosof, a lawyer and
daughter of the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
Peres, presiding over the Knesset's opening session, recalled his partner
Rabin, ``under whose leadership we began a revolutionary process of making
peace in the Middle East, a process that it is irreversible.''
Netanyahu was elected just nine months after an ultranationalist Jew
killed Rabin in what some said was an atmosphere of violence stoked by
Netanyahu's anti-peace process rhetoric. Netanyahu barely mentioned Rabin
in the weeks following his election, a silence that outraged Rabin's
family.
Rabin-Philosof, who says her father's assassination prompted her to enter
politics, welcomed the reference to his legacy as ``overdue.''
Rabin's murder has been blamed for sparking the deep divisions now
festering in Israel, and Peres made a point of appealing for unity.
``Democracy is not just a matter of respect for the rule of law but also
of respect for minorities,'' he said.
But some said the divisions may be difficult to eradicate. ``The main
impulse ... is resentment,'' said Shevah Weiss, a former speaker of
parliament and political science professor.
Hard-line legislators for a settler party heckled Tibi when he took the
pledge.
``Do you indeed intend to stand by this oath?'' Rehavaam Zeevi shouted.
Tibi made a show of not singing Hatikva, the national anthem. ``I'm not a
Jew, it speaks of a `Jewish heart beating,''' Tibi said. ``It's a pretty
melody, but the words mean nothing to me.''
Hussnia Jabara, the first Arab woman elected to parliament, took the oath
in a traditional Palestinian dress with intricate red and black
embroidery.
========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - Dismissal Upset Jordan Prince Hassan
From: bpr-list@philologos.org(BPR)
Date: Tue, 8 Jun 1999 09:11:39 +0000
From: "Moza" <moza@butterfly.mv.com>
02:38 PM ET 06/07/99
Dismissal Upset Jordan Prince Hassan
By JAMAL HALABY
Associated Press Writer
AMMAN, Jordan (AP) _ Prince Hassan has publicly acknowledged for the first
time that he was upset by the way his late brother, King Hussein, abruptly
dismissed him as heir to the Jordanian throne.
Twelve days before his Feb. 7 death from cancer, Hussein wrote a letter
accusing Hassan of power-grabbing by attempting to dismiss the king's
loyalists in the army. He also cited policy differences, and appointed his
eldest son, Abdullah, 37, as his successor.
Hussein refused to meet with Hassan afterward.
``What hurt me was not the change in the line of succession, but rather
the way it was carried out _ which was totally unjustified and simply
confined to an insult letter full of calumny,'' Hassan was quoted as
saying in an interview with Saudi-owned al-Majalla magazine.
``Maybe he did what he did as a result of the effects of his mortal
illness,'' said Hassan, 51, who had been crown prince for more than 34
years.
The dramatic shake-up has left a deep rift in the royal Hashemite family,
which claims ancestry to the Prophet Mohammed, Islam's founder.
In the interview, conducted two weeks ago and published this week in the
London-based Arabic-language magazine, Hassan also denied ever attempting
to dethrone Hussein. The Hashemites, he said, ``never witnessed any family
coups during their reign.''
Hassan said he never wanted to become crown prince, but accepted in 1965
because Abdullah was then only 3 years old and Hussein's other brother,
Mohammed, was not interested.
In 1991, Hussein contemplated abdicating in his favor, Hassan said. He
said his brother blamed himself for Jordan's international ostracism for
its perceived pro-Iraq leanings during the 1990-91 Persian Gulf crisis
over Kuwait.
Hassan made no reference to Abdullah, who will celebrate his accession to
the throne on Wednesday _ a date designated to separate the event from the
anniversary of Hussein's death.
Hassan did say, however, that ``it is time for the ruling regimes in the
Arab world to shoulder responsibility on a new generation.''
As for his future plans, Hassan said he wants to ``take a long vacation,
write my memoirs and continue playing an intellectual role in Arab and
international forums.''
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2559837149-9f7
========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - 'Paper' trees will cut pollution
From: bpr-list@philologos.org(BPR)
Date: Tue, 8 Jun 1999 09:14:18 +0000
From: "Moza" <moza@butterfly.mv.com>
http://www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/tim/99/06/08/timnwsnws01011.html
?999
'Paper' trees will cut pollution
BY NICK NUTTALL
TREES designed to cut the pollution caused by paper-making were
yesterday hailed as the latest advance of genetic modification. Given
the failure of the paperless office to live up to its name, scientists
said that the GM poplar would bring cleaner rivers by reducing the
need for chemicals in paper production.
The poplars have a weakened version of lignin, the strengthening agent
which has to be broken down in the traditional pulping process by
powerful chemicals. The pro-cess is also energy-intensive and adds to
the threat of global warming from the millions of tonnes of paper
being processed every year.
Professor Marc Van Montagu, of the University of Ghent in Belgium,
said yesterday that the GM trees promised to cut the chemical and
energy bill of paper-making by a fifth. "The technology means you can
separate the cellulose from the lignin much easier," he said.
However, the outcry in Europe against GM crops means companies
developing the poplar may grow it commercially only in Asia or the
Americas, the professor noted. This was despite there being no risk of
cross pollination, as the trees grown for pulp are all female.
Speaking at Phytosfere 99 in Rome, a European Commission-funded
conference where delegates have come from plant breeding centres and
universities across Europe, Professor Van Montagu said: "It is
becoming increasingly difficult to commercialise these developments
here. It will not be used in Europe because people are against
transgenic plants. So the trees will be planted in China or America.
We are in discussions with the Chinese."
The breakthrough, which researchers believe can also be used in other
species, including spruce, has been made with Zeneca, the British
biotechnology company.
via: isml@onelist.com
========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - Scientists near goal of gene mapping
From: bpr-list@philologos.org(BPR)
Date: Tue, 8 Jun 1999 09:15:46 +0000
From: "Moza" <moza@butterfly.mv.com>
http://www.businesstoday.com/topstories/dna03161999.htm
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Scientists near goal of gene mapping
by Eric Convey
Tuesday, March 16, 1999
The head of a leading genetics laboratory, Whitehead Institute for
Biomedical Research in Cambridge, predicted yesterday that most of the
human genome will be mapped by spring 2000 - nearly two years earlier
than previously estimated.
Scientists say that understanding the human genome - the entire
genetic map for an individual - will lead to major advances in
treating diseases like cancer and heart disease.
New technologies helped speed up the research, which has been ongoing
since the 1980s, said Whitehead director Eric Lander.
Yesterday he also announced a $35 million federal grant to use new
gene-mapping technology.
In addition to hastening the process, the new equipment involved is
considerably cheaper.
Whitehead was one of several laboratories to get federal grants
yesterday. Dr. Francis Collins, head of the government's Human Genome
Project, called it a ``major expansion'' of the drive to map the
genome.
via: isml@onelist.com
========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - Satellite 'Big Brother' eyes parolees
From: bpr-list@philologos.org(BPR)
Date: Tue, 8 Jun 1999 09:17:13 +0000
From: "Moza" <moza@butterfly.mv.com>
http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/cte834.htm
-
04/08/99- Updated 11:06 AM ET
Satellite 'Big Brother' eyes parolees
Technology is same as that used to guide nuclear missiles
By Gary Fields, USA TODAY
Military satellites designed to guide nuclear missiles are being used
to monitor prison parolees and probationers in a technological advance
designed to reduce the nation's skyrocketing prison population. But
critics say it also raises the specter of an Orwellian future.
The ComTrak monitoring system uses 24 Defense Department satellites
orbiting 12,500 miles above the Earth to track 100 people in nine
states. The people under surveillance range from sex offenders in
Chicago to juvenile delinquents in New Jersey. The cost of monitoring
each person is $12.50 per day.
It is a long way from a system originally designed by the Defense
Department to help guide nuclear missiles. The Pentagon began leasing
satellite time, allowing others to use the satellites, after the Cold
War ended. "It's bullets to plowshares,'' says Jack Lamb, president
and CEO of Advanced Business Sciences Inc., the Omaha-based company
that developed the ComTrak system.
The system has three main components: a bracelet the size of a
wristwatch, a 3-pound personal tracking unit that resembles a
walkie-talkie, and the battery charger/base that is kept at the
monitored person's house and transmits information by telephone
to a monitoring center. If the bracelet is broken or removed or the
wearer is more than 50 feet from the tracking unit, an alarm is sent
to the monitoring center.
The system is programmed to set up zones where a person monitored can
and cannot go, depending on the crime committed. For example, people
with drunken-driving convictions can be tracked to set off an alarm if
they enter local bars. Exclusion zones for a sexual predator can
include schools and parks in a designated area. And an abusive husband
can be tracked to ensure he stays clear of his wife's workplace, home
or places she visits. When a person being monitored enters an
exclusion zone, the tracking unit sends an automatic alert to
monitoring centers in Omaha. Law enforcement authorities are alerted
within minutes.
At night, the tracker is placed in the charger, which downloads all of
a person's movements that day -- right down to the precise route the
person took to work -- and sends the record of movements to the
monitoring center.
Lamb says the potential for growth is "phenomenal." There are nearly 4
million people under some form of supervision in the USA. Of those,
only about 11,000 are monitored electronically under the old system,
which is unable to track a person's movements once he or she has left
home. Some see the new system as a tool for judges grappling with a
prison and jail population of 1.8 million people at a cost of more
than $40 per day for each inmate.
Percy Luney Jr., president of the National Judicial College at the
University of Nevada, Reno, where judges receive training in such
issues as alternative sentencing, says the system "gives judges an
option for keeping people out of jail and away from all the negative
influences there. It's also a cost-saver for the taxpayer.''
Lamb says his system also is an improvement over older technology,
which can tell only if those being monitored leave home during
restricted hours. "The problem with the old system is once they leave
home, you have no idea where they are or what they are doing,'' Lamb
says.
Others involved in the prison industry, from defense lawyers to
probation and parole officers and judges, acknowledge that the
advanced monitoring system has potential. However, there are some
concerns about how far the use of such surveillance will go.
Paul Rothstein, a law professor at Georgetown University, says the
system has the potential "to change the face of law enforcement and
incarceration." But he also sees the "potential for creating a
monster.''
Rothstein is concerned that the advances in technology could result in
more and more people being subjected to electronic monitoring -- not
just those on parole .
"You could end up with the majority of the population under some kind
of surveillance by the government,'' he says.
Jack King, spokesman for the National Association of Criminal Defense
Lawyers, says his organization supports the electronic monitoring. He
sees it as especially helpful in the case of someone who should be out
on bail but is too destitute to pay it.
He says he is concerned about such technology being used to monitor
people who have served their sentences and paid their debts to
society.
"If it's to track someone who has done his full term, like a
registered sex offender or a formerly dangerous felon, then the use of
this technology becomes Orwellian with all the dangers to all our
freedoms that suggests,'' King says. "Who would they be tracking
next?''
via: isml@onelist.com
========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - Tomorrow's child
From: bpr-list@philologos.org(BPR)
Date: Tue, 8 Jun 1999 09:19:11 +0000
From: "Moza" <moza@butterfly.mv.com>
http://www.msnbc.com/news/271976.asp
-
Tomorrow's child
Making babies _ and new ethical dilemmas _ in the next millennium
The babies of the future will come to life in uncharted ethical
territory.
The next century will welcome some pretty unusual bundles of joy. Your
next child will come from the stork, but your great-grandchildren may
be engineered in a computer lab. Waiting in the wings of the 21st
century is a world of genetic testing, sextuplets, 63-year-old moms
and $50,000 egg donation.
VISION: IN YEARS to come, we will see human clones, babies with cyborg
implants and the combination of human and animal tissues for a variety
of purposes. Prediction: progress will come at the cost of today's
ideas about what a family means.
Tomorrow's idea of family may look a lot more like a hive.
BABIES OF THE FUTURE
There are lots of improvements we might wish for. Babies with
sweet-smelling diapers who sleep all night will be in great demand.
Children are incredibly vulnerable and what parent won't want a tiny,
implanted monitoring system to keep track of vital statistics and
growth? Today we "have" our babies, using a time honored method called
"sex." But couples who today choose designer sperm donors, sex
selection and big-bucks private school are paving the way for
tomorrow's child: a baby whose DNA is made from "the best" available
genes.
Remember the birds and the bees? History. Or rather, hobby.
Tomorrow's couples will have lots of reasons to separate sex from
making babies. Sex will always be, well, an enjoyable part of the
marital partnership. But tomorrow's "act of love" that relates to
making babies may feel more like negotiating over how to build a
house: blonde, or brunette? Tall or short? Poet's disposition or
quarterback's metabolism?
And you won't be the only one pushing for an improvement. It costs a
lot of money to be tall. Short is much more efficient. And for that
matter, wouldn't it be better if human beings could digest cellulose,
so we could eat lower on the food chain? Tomorrow's environmental
movement may be as much about reducing the local consumption of the
human body as about preserving the distant rain forest.
It is expensive to have hereditary predisposition to disease.
It
costs big bucks to have many children. Lots of our habits
might be better served by a more resilient heart, lungs, and brain.
And if you think your life is nothing but work today, imagine
implanting telecommunications, data transfer, and enhanced
entertainment directly into your brain. "Dad, can I install a Nintendo
10? I promise to think about my homework most of the time!"
All of these things and many more I cannot imagine will go from
science fiction to the laboratory before your great-grandchildren are
born.
POLITICS OF GENETICS
The politics of genetic modification is about fear, money and
religion. Fear is much more an issue for adults than kids. Today's
kids are fascinated by the idea of cloning and look expectantly to a
world they can help shape and improve.
What bioethicist Arthur Caplan calls the "yuck factor" is a
phenomenon of fear at times of transition from one kind of world to
another. Fear fades. Money motivates change in biomedicine and today
you have only to look at the geography of any leading health center to
see how much things are already moving ahead. See that new building at
the University? It's pretty much guaranteed that it says "GENETICS" on
the front door. We are investing in a future of genetic
decision-making and it would be folly to think that none of this
technology will reach parents. Money also motivates employers and even
employees when we pick our insurance and our medical care. If an HMO
decided to decline payment for a baby with a hereditary disease, the
nation would go nuts. But in the next century medical institutions
will certainly offer the reverse: discounts for families who take
high-tech precautions that result in a less expensive birth.
FAITH AND MORALITY
Finally, religion is changing, and changing fast. The politics of
"Leave it to Beaver" family values, for 20 years dominated by
right-wing religious action groups, simply will not hold up in a world
where the new options are so attractive to people of many faiths.
Moreover, the science of yesterday's battles is changing. The old
debates about abortion, for example, make assumptions about how babies
are made that just don't apply anymore. Cloned mammals aren't
conceived, and most of them don't make it to birth. Are they embryos?
The major religious groups just aren't sure yet.
I don't worry about designer babies forming armies and to take
over the world. I don't worry about dictators making clones to pilot
secret planes. And I am not terrified late at night that my offspring
will want to rid the world of imperfect people like me. What does
scare me is the total lack of social dialogue about genetic
improvement.
As the year 2000 approaches, it is time for town hall meetings
about genetics, reproduction, and the future of the family. It is time
to train clergy to think about these issues too. Most importantly, it
is time to start telling our children stories about the future, to
help them imagine a world that will be exciting, but challenging too.
MSNBC columnist Glenn McGee teaches at University of Pennsylvania's
Center for Bioethics in Philadelphia. He is the author of the recent
book, "The Perfect Baby."
via: isml@onelist.com
========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - Numbering the Host of Heaven
From: bpr-list@philologos.org(BPR)
Date: Tue, 8 Jun 1999 09:06:28 -0500
From: <owner-bpr@philologos.org>
(Gen 15:5) "And he brought him forth abroad, and said, Look
now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number
them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be."
(Jer 33:22) "As the host of heaven cannot be numbered, neither
the sand of the sea measured: so will I multiply the seed of David
my servant, and the Levites that minister unto me."
(Rev 7:9) "After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no
man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and
tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed
with white robes, and palms in their hands;"
"Astronomers estimate that there are at least 10 [to the 26th
power] stars (that is, a hundred-million-billion-billion stars),
which reflects the same order of magnitude as the number of
grains of sand on the earth. Truly, the stars cannot be numbered.
If one could count 10 numbers per second, it would take him at
least a thousand-million-billion years to count up to 10 [to the
26th power]." ("Science and the Bible," Henry M. Morris)
And yet....
(Psa 147:4) "He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all
by their names."
========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - (Fwd) THE MIRACULOUS -- SEEING MIRACLES by David Basch
From: bpr-list@philologos.org(BPR)
Date: Tue, 8 Jun 1999 11:52:25 -0500
From: owner-bpr@philologos.org
THE MIRACULOUS SEEING MIRACLES
by David Basch
Miracles don't happen every day. Even when they do happen, not
every one recognizes what has happened. But can it be denied that
mysterious things, miraculous things, do seem to happen, and they
puzzle the mind?
This point is what Shakespeare made in his play Hamlet when he
opened his story with guards atop the bafflements of Elsinore Castle
who have seen a ghost. Rational people will say this is impossible.
That is what the guards said too and that is why they felt they had to
show what had happened to a sensible person like Horatio, a scholar
and a skeptic.
Finally, Horatio and the guards have to check it out with Hamlet, who
too is astounded. Hamlet is so impressed by what he has seen that he
now tells Horatio that, apparently, "there are more things in heaven
and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy."
Shakespeare was describing a world, our world, in which there are
indeed things happening that are not explainable and which are
beyond the reach of rational, explanatory systems. Some persons have
faith that, eventually, all things will succumb to rational explanation.
But, then, this too is every bit a matter of faith as is the faith of those
who believe in the role of a Creator.
Apparently, the great Shakespeare agreed with those who accepted
the ultimate mystery of our universe. His towering intellect and
sensitivity told him that there will ever be things that will happen to
defy all causal odds and attempts at explanation. And this is the kind
of world within which he had his magnificent play Hamlet unfold.
So, have any of us seen miracles lately? And if we saw such a thing,
would we have known that it was a miracle? Was the event that
occurred about thirty years ago that we all know of a miracle? What
was it that happened then? It was not Israel's winning of the Six Day
War. This was not a miracle. Ask any Israeli rationalist about that.
(They are not hard to find since they crowd Israel's malls and
beaches.) Any of them will tell you of the good army that Israel had.
But will any of them tell about the event that surrounded the taking of
Jerusalem? Practically everyone will tell you that this date was June 7,
1967. But few will tell more than that.
In (Isaiah 52:8) Isaiah prophesied that all, even the nations of the
world, "shall see, eye to eye, the L-rd returning (b'shuv) to Zion." It
was on that day that the L-rd did indeed return to Zion to the eyes of
all the nations, except most did not see it.
What was unusual about the day? One only has to take note of the
date of the event to answer this question. This date given in the
summary form used in the West in the international calandar is 6/7/67.
Let us check again some of the details of what happened on that date.
It was on that date that Jerusalem, the site of the Holy Sanctuary of
the G-d that blessed the Seventh Day was retaken by Israel, the
descendants of the nation that "He," the L-rd, "had known" of all the
nations of the earth. The war was known as the Six Day War. The day
it was fought was on the seventh day of the [sixth month] in the year
67 of the 20th Century. Of all the days of the uncrowded calendar of
history, it was this day, so suggestive numerologically, that was the
day when this feat was accomplished, a day befitting the contrivance
of a G-d Who acts in history and Who can make that happen.
Let us look once more at Isaiah's remark, a remark that is said at every
Sabbath procession of the Torah, when the Torah is brought from the
ark to the reading table: "They shall see, eye to eye, the L-rd returning
to Zion." The phrase "eye to eye" is curious. What does it mean, "eye
to eye"? Will we look into G-d's eye? Will we look into the eye of the
incorporeal G-d? Or should we look deeper at the scriptural line?
The Jewish alphabet is a cipher alphabet, meaning it is an alphabet in
which its letters are also numbers. The number seven is the letter
Zayin. Another Hebrew letter that is a 7 is the letter "Ayin" which
represents the 7th of the units of tens, the 70, and which has the name
"Ayin," which also is the Hebrew for "eye." (Notice also, for example,
that there is an "ayin" in "Zayin.") Now let us look again at the date in
which Jerusalem was taken by the hand of the Jewish people:
6/7/67
Notice now that there are two "Ayins" in this date, the number 7's,
including the "eyes" that show in the configuration of each of the
number 6's (66). Notice the loop in the 6 that looks like an "eye," an
"Ayin." Are the Jewish people seeing their rendezvous with history in
this?
There are certain Jewish personality types who are determined to
prove that there was no miracle on June 7, 1967. They hope to prove it
by undoing what occurred on that date. What had occurred was
Israel's gaining of strategic territories that have made the nation all but
impregnable against the Arabs who wish, like those Israelis, to undo
the miracle of that day. The Arabs even wish to destroy the Jewish
State itself.
No rabbi of any stature before 1967 ever suggested that Israel go to
war to capture Jerusalem or any of the territories, nor was their any
planning for this. Yet, these fell to Israel like ripe plums. The territories
that were gained in 1967, though they were considered part of G-d's
promises in the Bible and part of the Mandate of Palestine as a
homeland for the Jewish people, like Jordan, had been relegated to
acquisition only in messianic times. Now, here they were in Israel's
possession and a surety that the Arabs would have a real tough time
undoing the Jewish nation.
As intolerable as this was for the Arabs, it has proven even more
intolerable for those Jews whose obsession it is to nullify the miracle
of the Six Day war. So obsessed are they to accomplish this, to
prevent forever that any Jew could claim that G-d had surrounded the
Jewish nation with miracles, they are willing to risk the existence of the
nation itself to accomplish that task. This is the leftist mentality in
action -- an irrational, secular religious obsession -- that works against
all logic and against self-survival for their religion that is dedicated to
eradicating all signs of a G-d active in the affairs of the world. But I
have bad news for them.
Even if these foolish Jews were to succeed in spitting back into G-d's
face His enormous gift to the Jewish people -- the gift of lands,
through which Israel will remain forever defensible against implacable
enemies -- they will not have have eliminated the miracle of the day
itself: 6/7/67.
In sum, G-d delivered on his promise to the Jewish people, placed
them on their land and with defensible borders yet, with Jerusalem. If
now some Jews want to throw this back in His face, that is their
unworthiness speaking. The L-rd did His part and we saw Him "eye to
eye" -- ayin be'ayin -- when He returned to Zion.
If Jews fail to choose life, to use this greatest of gifts given by such a
Friend of the Jewish people in a high place to guard their future
evermore and are willing to squander it on the chance that the enemies
who had forced five wars on Israel will henceforth live in peace when
they will have been greatly stengthened by again taking possession
of the strategic territories they used in their earlier wars, these Jews
will have to take the consequences of their actions on their own head.
But they must be made to realize that thirty-two years ago, to the day,
there was a great miracle there, even if some of His people want not to
heed it.
via : the Freeman Center URL: http://freeman.io.com
--- BPR
BPR Web Site - http://philologos.org/bpr
========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - June 9, 1999 TV Programs
From: bpr-list@philologos.org(BPR)
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 1999 08:25:16 +0000
From: "Moza" <moza@butterfly.mv.com>
8:00 PM Eastern
A&E - BIOGRAPHY - "George W. Bush: The Son Also Rises"
- Candid interviews describe Texas Gov. George W.
Bush.(CC)(TVG)
9:00
DISC - DISCOVER MAGAZINE - "Lost in Time" - The concept
of time; scientists attempt to understand/control time; time
travel; satellite-based timekeeping.(CC)
9:30
TBN - JACK VAN IMPE PRESENTS
10:00
DISC - WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO ADOLF HITLER - Russian
intelligence agents discuss the fate of the German dictator
and reveal the whereabouts of his remains.(CC)
TLC - BIG STUFF - "Land" - Earth movers; aviation
wind-tunnel; the Tsing-Ma Bridge connects Hong Kong with
China.(CC)(TVG)
========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - Weekend News Today items (6/8/99)
From: bpr-list@philologos.org(BPR)
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 1999 10:43:15 +0000
From: "Moza" <moza@butterfly.mv.com>
Holocaust survivors and family protest Pope's 'insensitivity'
Weekend News Today
By Andra Brack
Source: IsraelWire
Tue Jun 8,1999 -- Holocaust survivors, their descendants and
supporters staged a protest vigil at the Polish Consulate in
mid-Manhattan on Sunday. They directed their anger in three
directions: Pope John Paul, now on a 12-day pilgrimage to his native
Poland, the government in Warsaw, and some American Jewish
organizational leaders. The action was organized by Shalom
International and the Coalition for Jewish Concerns-Amcha. They said
they were incensed by the Pope's meeting on Saturday, within hours of
his arrival in Poland, with the notorious Catholic priest Henryk
Jankowski, who had been banned from his pulpit in 1997 for a year for
his anti-Jewish diatribes. The survivors said it was incomprehensible
to them that Pope John Paul, who lived under the Nazis, remains silent
to numerous calls for him to order the removal of the first and
largest cross at Auschwitz, and the Catholic church in Birkenau,
Auschwitz's killing grounds, atop and in front of which are large
crosses. The building was originally the Nazi SS commandant's
headquarters. Bob Kunst, Shalom International's founder, stated,
"Poland seeks to trivialize and commercialize Auschwitz, which is
almost similar to those who say the Holocaust never happened. What we
see here is historical revisionism. The Polish government is taking
the Nazi death camps, the world's largest Jewish cemeteries, and
making them into museums, saying it was largely Poles who died there,
not Jews. The new law under which over 300 crosses erected by
anti-Semites at Auschwitz were removed a week ago, also slashes by 90%
the former protected zone around Auschwitz."Rabbi Weiss declared: "The
issue is not your beliefs or crosses. The issue is that crosses and a
church at Auschwitz and Birkenau are as inappropriate as a synagogue
in Vatican Square." Rabbi Weiss concluded: "On July 14th, the tenth
anniversary of our protest at the Auschwitz convent, when seven of us
jumped its fence and were attacked by the nuns' workers, we will
return to Auschwitz to raise a voice of moral conscience. By this, we
will also be telling the American Jewish community: many were silent
when the Six Million were murdered. You cannot be silent when their
memory is being desecrated." Rabbi Avi Weiss, led six colleagues over
the fence surrounding the then-Carmelite convent at Auschwitz in 1989,
creating an international controversy which led to Pope John Paul's
order to the nuns to decamp four years later.
Wakf closes all gates to Temple Mount Tuesday morning
Weekend News Today
By Andra Brack
Source: IsraelWire
Tue Jun 8,1999 -- The Moslem Wakf on Tuesday morning has closed off
the Temple Mount in Jerusalem's Old City following an "incident"
involving a Jewish visitor. The Wakf officials reported that the
Jewish man wanted to pray on the site, the holiest site to the Jewish
people, prompting them to shutdown the Mount to all visitors. Police
on the scene moved in to maintain order, realizing what was taking
place. Wakf officials told police they consider any attempt by a Jew
to pray on the Mount as a "provocation" that will not be tolerate.
Israel liberated the Old City of Jerusalem in the June 1967 Six Day
War. Following the victory, the government decided to place control of
the Mount in the hands the Moslem Wakf, which until today have
prohibited Jews to pray on that location. Editor's note: Don't forget
that just a few weeks ago as reported on WeNT that the Israeli courts
ruled it is now legal for Jews to pray on the Mount.
========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - New evangelical statement
From: bpr-list@philologos.org(BPR)
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 1999 10:58:34 +0000
From: "Moza" <moza@butterfly.mv.com>
3 former SBC presidents among 129 endorsing new evangelical
statement
By Art Toalston
CHICAGO (BP)--A new evangelical statement on the doctrine of
justification -- saving faith in Jesus Christ -- includes the
signatures of three former Southern Baptist Convention
presidents, Adrian Rogers, Charles Stanley and Jim Henry, and the
president of the SBC's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, Richard
Land.
In all, 129 evangelicals, including Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson,
Chuck Colson, Promise Keepers founder Bill McCartney and theologians
J.I. Packer and R.C. Sproul, have signed the statement, titled, "The
Gospel of Jesus Christ: An Evangelical Celebration."
The statement will appear in Christianity Today's June 14 issue
and on the magazine's Internet site, www.christianity.net.
"Of the making of many statements, there is no end," acknowledges
David Neff, Christianity Today's executive editor, in an article
introducing the new statement.
Neff recounts, however, the thinking of two unnamed theologians:
"Wouldn't it be wonderful, they said, if evangelicals could
achieve a broad consensus on the gospel and join in a common
statement?"
Neff was among the 15 members of the statement's "drafting
committee," which also included Timothy George, a Southern
Baptist and dean of Samford University's Beeson Divinity School
in Birmingham, Ala., and John Ankerberg, host of an evangelical
TV show and member of a Southern Baptist congregation in
Chattanooga, Tenn.
Among other Southern Baptists signing the statement are Paul
Pressler, one of the key leaders of the conservative resurgence
in the SBC and a retired Texas appellate court judge; David S.
Dockery, president of Union University, Jackson, Tenn.; Beth
Moore, a popular author and Bible teacher and member of First
Baptist Church, Houston; Beverly LaHaye, founder of Concerned
Women for America, and her husband, Tim, a popular Christian
author; and Tom Nettles, professor of historical theology at
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Ky. Chuck
Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship, also has long been
identified as a Southern Baptist church member.
Apart from Land, no other SBC agency president was among the
statement's initial signers.
Among other evangelicals signing the statement are Wayne Grudem,
president of the Evangelical Theological Society and president of the
Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood; Campus Crusade for Christ
founder Bill Bright; World magazine publisher Joel Belz; popular
author Max Lucado; Bill Hybels, pastor of Willow Creek Community
Church in suburban Chicago; and D. James Kennedy, pastor of Coral
Ridge Presbyterian Church, Fort Lauderdale, Fla. . Neff, in his
article, notes "the need for a reference document for those engaged in
interchurch dialog, for theological students, for pastors, for
parachurch ministries, for itinerant evangelists, and for the rest of
us."
Timothy George, according to a Religion News Service report, said he
hopes the statement affirms Jesus' prayer "that they all may be one."
George told RNS, "When evangelicals themselves are so divided, as our
rhetoric has sometimes portrayed us to be, that's a bad witness for
the gospel."
John Ankerberg told RNS, "With our different organizations,
schools, parachurch ministries, we have needed a statement on
what the central message of the Christian faith is. ...This is
important, it's needed and it's wonderful to see the unity on
this message."
Ankerberg told RNS the statement eventually may become a global
affirmation of evangelical belief. "There is a lot of enthusiasm
among international evangelicals," he said.
The statement, which spans six pages in Christianity Today,
declares in part in a preamble: "This Gospel is the only Gospel:
there is no other; and to change its substance is to pervert and
indeed destroy it."
It notes: "Salvation is a Trinitarian reality, initiated by the
Father, implemented by the Son, and applied by the Holy Spirit.
It has a global dimension, for God's plan is to save believers
out of every tribe and tongue (Rev. 5:9) to be his church ... ."
Among other declarations in the statement:
-- "... all who do not receive Christ will be judged according to
their just deserts as measured by God's holy law, and face eternal
retributive punishment."
-- "Christians are commanded to love each other despite
differences of race, gender, privilege, and social, political,
and economic background (John 13:34-35; Gal. 3:28-29), and to be
of one mind wherever possible (John 17:20-21; Phil. 2:2; Rom.
14:1-15:13). We know that divisions among Christians hinder our
witness in the world, and we desire greater mutual understanding
and truth-speaking in love. We know too that as trustees of God's
revealed truth we cannot embrace any form of doctrinal indifferentism,
or relativism, or pluralism by which God's truth is sacrificed for a
false peace.
"Doctrinal disagreements call for debate. Dialogue for mutual
understanding and, if possible, narrowing of the differences is
valuable, doubly so when the avowed goal is unity in primary
things, with liberty in secondary things, and charity in all
things."
-- "We deny that anyone is saved in any other way than by Jesus
Christ and his Gospel. The Bible offers no hope that sincere
worshipers of other religions will be saved without personal
faith in Jesus Christ."
-- "We deny that anyone who rejects the humanity of Christ, his
incarnation, or his sinlessness, or who maintains that these
truths are not essential to the Gospel, will be saved (1 John
4:2-3)."
-- "We deny the validity of any so-called gospel that denies the
historical reality of the bodily resurrection of Christ."
A public celebration of the document will be held during the
international gathering of CBA, formerly the Christian
Booksellers Association, in July 2000 in New Orleans, RNS
reported.
R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Seminary, who was not
among the statement's signatories, issued comments June 8 on the new
document.
"I did not sign the document because I am concerned that
evangelicalism is now confused by the existence of several
statements purporting to deal with the gospel," Mohler said,
noting, however, various strengths in the new statement.
The confusion "is the direct result, though certainly unintended, of
the ECT statements and related public controversy," Mohler said in a
reference to "Evangelicals and Catholics Together" statements in 1994
and 1997 involving many of the latest statement's signers and various
Catholic notables. The ECT statements sparked strong controversy in
various Southern Baptist and other evangelical quarters.
"I believe that the ECT statements effectively confused the
nature of the gospel, even as the organizers sought to unify the
church," Mohler stated.
"I recognize that the drafters of 'The Gospel of Jesus Christ'
intend to clarify as well as to unify," Mohler said of the latest
statement. "Nevertheless, I remain unconvinced that an exchange of
such statements is now the best means of clarifying the vital
doctrinal issues involved," he said, acknowledging, "This is a
question of personal judgment and a matter of personal conviction."
Mohler added, "I prefer to stand upon the historic creeds and
confessions of the evangelical tradition, and upon the Abstract
of Principles and the Baptist Faith and Message statements which
frame our convictions as Baptists."
On the positive side, Mohler said, "This is a timely and powerful
document, rightly affirming the nature and character of the gospel as
accomplished by God and as revealed in the Scriptures. The strengths
of the statement are many, and the prose is often eloquent."
Among the strengths cited by Mohler: "its clear affirmation of
the exclusivity of the gospel and the necessity of a personal
relationship with Jesus Christ."
Mohler noted, "The fact that signatories and drafters included
representatives from both Reformed and Arminian churches
indicates a purpose to unite evangelicals behind this
'celebration' of the gospel. The statement affirms biblical
orthodoxy as understood by evangelicals, and roots these
convictions in the patristic consensus as well as the confessions of
the Reformation."
Commenting on plans by the new statement's organizers to hold a
major public event preceded by a year of discussion, Mohler said, "It
would have been helpful had the drafters followed the model of the
process which produced the 'Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy'
and held public discussion and debate during the drafting process."
Other SBC agency presidents were given opportunity to comment on
the statement, but none had responded by Baptist Press' deadline
June 8.
The churches led by the three former SBC presidents: Rogers,
Bellevue Baptist Church, Cordova, Tenn.; Stanley, First Baptist
Church, Atlanta; and Henry, First Baptist, Orlando.
Neff, in his introductory article about the statement, asserts,
"Today, classic theological liberalism is no longer the church's
main threat. As we enter a post-Christian world, one driven by
consumer culture and the entertainment industry, we face more
basic challenges, such as the radical devaluation of human life."
He also writes, "If some parts of this document sound like a
reprise of themes from the sixteenth century, it is because those
themes have grown faint for many. This is not merely a biblical study
of salvation, but a pastoral reminder of where we have come from, a
remembrance of a relevant past."
Other signers of the statement include publisher Stephen Strang
of the charismatic magazine Charisma; theologians John Stott and
D.A. Carson; international evangelist Luis Palau; Joni Eareckson
Tada; Brandt Gustavson, president of National Religious
Broadcasters, and David Clark, chairman of NRB's executive
committee and vice president, broadcast communications, for the
Southern Baptist North American Mission Board; and African
American evangelicals Tony Evans and Kay Coles James.
http://www.religiontoday.com
Baptist Press for Tuesday, June 8, 1999
========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - Clinton's new ambassador
From: bpr-list@philologos.org(BPR)
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 1999 11:02:11 +0000
From: "Moza" <moza@butterfly.mv.com>
Clinton's appointment of homosexual affront to process, citizens, Land
says
By Tom Strode
WASHINGTON (BP)--President Clinton's bypass of the Senate to name
James Hormel as the United States' first openly homosexual ambassador
is an affront to the confirmation process and to the desires of the
majority of Americans, said the head of the Southern Baptist
Convention's public-policy agency.
Faced with being stymied again in his nomination of Hormel,
Clinton recently used a constitutional provision permitting a
president to make appointments when Congress is in recess to
install Hormel as ambassador to Luxembourg. The president first
nominated Hormel for confirmation in 1997, but opponents
prevented a vote by the full Senate. Clinton renominated him in
January of this year, but no action had been taken.
Hormel, an heir to the meat fortune of the same name, has been an
active financial supporter of numerous homosexual causes.
"This is a circumvention of the constitutional process and
reveals a disdain for that process," said Richard Land, president of
the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. "The
majority of Americans do not want a self-acknowledged homosexual
living in a domestic partnership with another homosexual as his mate
who funds and advocates a radical homosexual rights agenda to be an
official representative of their government as an ambassador to
another nation."
Elizabeth Birch, executive director of the Human Rights Campaign,
called the Republicans' refusal to allow a vote on Hormel "nothing
more than anti-gay discrimination." HRC is the country's largest
homosexual political organization.
Hormel's homosexuality is not an issue in his nomination because
of his opponents, Land said.
Hormel "has made his homosexuality an issue by living in an open,
domestic, homosexual relationship and by both advocating and funding
radical homosexual rights causes," Land said. "Serving as an
ambassador of our nation is an honor and a privilege, not a right to
which people are entitled regardless of their personal behavior and
belief. The United States Senate does not have to vote to confirm
American citizens' rights. However, it is supposed to vote and confirm
honors and privileges conferred by our government."
Clinton's appointment of Hormel demonstrates his "cavalier
attitude towards marriage and widely held religious belief," the
Family Research Council's Robert Knight said in a written
release. "Clinton is using the presidential bully pulpit in a way that
suggests character doesn't count. But values matter -- and the
impression of American values this appointment sends around the world
does not serve our nation well."
Hormel, who lives in San Francisco, has provided financial
backing to several homosexual rights organizations and
enterprises. He is a sponsor of "It's Elementary," a video
documentary showing teachers discussing homosexuality with
elementary and junior-high students. The film will be broadcast
on at least 90 public broadcasting stations this month, The
Washington Post reported.
The chairman of Equidex Inc., Hormel served as a member of the
U.S. delegation to the United Nations Human Rights Commission in
1995. He formerly was dean of students at the University of
Chicago Law School.
Although the Senate Foreign Relations Committee easily approved
Hormel in the last Congress, some senators put a "hold" on his
nomination, citing his promotion of homosexual rights. Senate
Majority Leader Trent Lott, R.-Miss., resisted calls to bring
Hormel's nomination to the floor for a vote.
Clinton announced Hormel's appointment June 4, when Congress was
observing its Memorial Day recess.
The appointment of Hormel is the latest accomplishment for an
administration that has done far more than any previous one to
advance homosexual rights. Clinton sought and received the
support of homosexuals in both presidential election campaigns.
Only days after taking office in 1993, he announced an attempt to
overturn the ban on homosexuals in the military, but his effort was
thwarted. He appointed a liaison to the homosexual community and has
named several open homosexuals to posts in his administration. In
1997, he became the first president to speak at a homosexual rights
event, when he addressed HRC's national dinner.
In May 1998, Clinton issued a barrier-breaking executive order
adding "sexual orientation" to the list of categories, such as
race, gender and age, already protected against discrimination in the
federal civilian workforce. With Clinton as president, most federal
agencies and departments already had instituted policies providing job
protection for homosexuals. He also has repeatedly affirmed his
support for the Employment Non-discrimination Act, legislation that
would make discrimination on the basis of "sexual orientation" illegal
in both the public and private workforce.
Clinton is a member of a Southern Baptist Church, Immanuel
Baptist Church in Little Rock, Ark.
The SBC has repeatedly spoken in opposition to homosexuality as
an acceptable lifestyle through resolutions adopted at its annual
meetings. In 1993, the convention, responding to Clinton's support of
homosexual and abortion rights, passed a resolution separating itself
from his policies. At the 1998 meeting in Salt Lake City, messengers
approved a resolution decrying Clinton's executive order issued the
month before. The resolution opposed attempts to "provide government
endorsement, sanction, recognition, acceptance or civil rights
advantage on the basis of homosexuality."
http://www.religiontoday.com
Baptist Press for Tuesday, June 8, 1999
========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - As in the days of Noe...
From: bpr-list@philologos.org(BPR)
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 1999 18:57:23 +0000
From: "Moza" <moza@butterfly.mv.com>
SERMON
PREACHED IN CHALMERS MEMORIAL CHURCH, GRANGE, EDINBURGH,
ON THE MORNING OF SABBATH, 11TH SEPTEMBER 1887,
BY THE REV. HORATIUS BONAR, D.D., BEING HIS LAST SERMON.
"But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of
man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating
and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe
entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came, and took them
all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be."--Matthew
24:37-39.
He who is "the faithful and true witness," even the Son of God, who
came to bear witness to the truth, gave testimony here concerning our
world that most deeply concerns us all, and that more and more as the
ages roll away; and this testimony is for our warning. He selects two
eras, two epochs, two periods, specially. These two periods are "the
days of Noah," and "the days of the Son of man." He places them before
us, just as He did before the men of His day. Mark what these periods
are. They are not eras of light, but of darkness. They are eras of
judgment and of terror. He selects them for our warning. He speaks
this truth aloud in the ears of a careless world, which shuts its ears
against everything but business, vanity, and pleasure. He tells them
of what is yet before them, even the days of the Son of man. "In the
days of Noah,"--that is, the one hundred and twenty years during which
Noah preached, and warned, and besought in vain,--men listened,
perhaps were interested for a while, and yet, in the end, were utterly
heedless. Let us look at this; let us see what the Lord means to teach
us, what He means to teach the Church and the world, you and me.
Observe, there is one thing that runs through the whole; it is
comprised in that word rejection--rejection of what is Divine, of what
is supernatural,--rejection of the things of God: God and man come
face to face; and man says to God, I will have none of you,--"We will
not have this man to reign over us." It is a rejection which involves
divers points.
First. Here we have in both cases,--in the case of "the days of Noah,"
and in the case of "the days of the Son of man"--rejected truth. It
was by truth that God was working among the antediluvians in their mad
career of worldliness and corruption; not by the truth as they would
call it, but like the truth preached by Jonah,--"Yet forty days, and
Nineveh shall be overthrown." So with Noah,--"yet one hundred and
twenty years, and the world shall be overflowed with water." Here
again was rejected truth; and at all times we find it is Divine
truth,--supernatural, directly from God, not reasoned out by
man,--that is rejected. Men are willing enough to receive the
conjectures, philosophies, and sentiments of human device; but a
message directly from the lips of Him who made them, and who shall be
their judge, they will not receive. This is the world's condemnation.
The present is a lying age: the philosophy of this age is lying; the
literature of this age is lying. This age will receive anything that
professes to be truth, except what comes from God.
Second. It is not merely rejected truth, but rejected grace. The
message is not merely concerning judgment, it is "the exceeding riches
of the grace of God," which showed the Divine willingness to spare
even the world in spite of its wickedness. "Grace! grace!" The amount
of meaning contained in that word "grace"! It is by grace we are kept
even for a single hour out of hell. We little realize what "grace"
means. It is the source of whatever flows to us from God. "God so
loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever
believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." The
word "grace" is constantly on our lips, but is little understood,--if
not misunderstood, and abused for purposes of sin. "Grace! grace!"
"Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound." Amid all that mass
of antediluvian iniquity, there came up a voice from the lips of God's
own servant, proclaiming "Grace! grace!" That was rejected, and the
world went down at last in the flood.
Third. Not only truth and grace, but long-suffering was rejected. This
means more than grace--it means grace protracted, for, it may be,
months, and years, and ages. God is unwilling to leave the sinner
alone to perish. He is continually lifting up His voice in the midst
of this ungodly world. Yea, God sware by Himself--"As I live...I have
no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from
his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will
ye die, O house of Israel?" In the prospect of the coming flood Noah
would point to the ark he was building, giving repeated
warnings--"Turn ye! turn ye!" But turn they would not. They rejected
long-suffering. It was not simply righteousness that they rejected to
their destruction. They rejected long-suffering grace. This will be
the heaviest part of the sinner's eternal ruin; not because God would
not be reconciled to him, but because he would not be reconciled to
God. The sinner looked that long-suffering in the face, and said, "I
will have none of it."
But there is one thing which rises above all these,--comprising all,
but yet rising above them,--a rejected person. The messenger embodied
all these in his own person and message. Noah was the embodiment of
that grace in all its long-suffering. And the Son of man is still more
the embodiment of divine grace--of Divine long-suffering. The Jews
rejected Him. He stood as one full of compassion, and loving-kindness,
upon their own hill, looking down upon their own city, weeping--"O
Jerusalem, Jerusalem,...how often WOULD I have gathered thy children
together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye
WOULD NOT!" "I WOULD," but "YE WOULD NOT." To Jerusalem, to the world,
to us, "I WOULD"--"YE WOULD NOT." I blessed--you would not be blessed.
In both cases there is the rejection of a person. The rejection of an
ambassador of peace, a royal ambassador, is the most heinous of
national crimes. The heavenly ambassador rejected! Noah was only a
man; but He whom they saw, heard, and of whose hand they could take
hold, who entreated them to turn and live, and whom they rejected, was
the Lord--the Lord from heaven.
I do not doubt that in the case of those who were lost in the flood,
there was the stinging remembrance of Noah's words. Those words would
come back again, and again, and again in the ears of those lost
souls--O that we had listened to the message! In the case of those who
have rejected the Lord Jesus Christ, O think how, in that coming
eternity, thoughts of past sermons, warnings, invitations, and
messages of love, will come in upon the memory when too late!
All this is to come suddenly upon an unready world that shall get no
more warning than what it has had already. No second Sodom and
Gomorrah! no second destruction of Jerusalem! "Behold, I come as a
thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments." In an
hour when we think not, the Son of man cometh. Gird up your loins. You
are living far too like the world. "Make ready"; for sudden
destruction is coming upon an unready world. "In such an hour as ye
think not the Son of man cometh"!
========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - "It's Elementary" Hits the Airwaves
From: bpr-list@philologos.org(BPR)
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 1999 19:06:47 +0000
From: "Moza" <moza@butterfly.mv.com>
http://www.conservativenews.org/ViewCulture.asp?Page=\Culture\archive\
CUL199 90608a.html
"It's Elementary" Hits the Airwaves
By Justin Torres
CNS Senior Staff Writer
08 June, 1999
Emily: "My mothers mean so, so, so, so, so much to me. I have two
mothers. Two moms is pretty nice. Well, it's more than pretty nice,
it's really nice. You can't imagine. Although having two mothers is a
problem to others, I respect that that's the way they think, and I
can't do anything about it. I still think that those people think
stupidly. This once happened with a boy in my class who couldn't come
to my house because my parents were lesbians. One night I called their
house and their mother told me their version of the Bible. I stood up
for my mothers and knew that many kids in my class were supporting me
and calling me to see how I was. I am proud of my moms and enjoy
marching in the gay pride march every single year with my moms."
Teacher: "Wasn't that a nice essay? Shouldn't we give Emily a round of
applause?"
A scene from It's Elementary, featuring Emily, a first grader at
Public School 87 in New York City, reading her award-winning Mother's
Day essay.
(CNS) - Scenes like the one described above may be coming soon to a
school near you, if It's Elementary has the effect its producers hope
it will.
It's Elementary, a video aimed at advancing homosexuality through
public education curricula, is making its debut on public television
stations across the nation. It's receiving widespread applause from
educators and sharp criticism from conservative and family groups,
which see it as a taxpayer-subsidized assault on those who oppose
homosexuality based on millennia-old religious dogma.
The video, which is partially funded by the National Endowment for the
Arts, the homosexual foundation Nu Lambda Trust and James C. Hormel,
President Bill Clinton's nominee to serve as ambassador to Luxembourg,
features scenes from six schools across the nation in which students
are taught about homosexuality and bisexuality.
National campaigns to block the airing of the program on PBS have
sprouted up across the country, with many local PBS affiliates
refusing to air the video because of protests by parents.
According to producers of the film, It's Elementary is aimed at
exploring "what happens when experienced teachers talk about lesbians
and gay men with their students," said Deborah Chasnoff, the director
of the film, in its opening minutes.
"We found a cross-section of educators in six elementary and middle
schools, who found that despite today's political climate, there are
lots of reasons why students should find ways to discuss gay
communities," Chasnoff continued.
But even as the video attempts to dispel negative stereotypes about
homosexuality, its images promote stereotypes of people opposed to the
agenda of homosexuality, uniformly portraying people with religious
beliefs on the matter as angry and unyielding.
The video includes extensive scenes of students discussing
homosexuality and engaging in homosexual-themed activities, including:
* A group of students at Luther Burbank Middle School in San
Francisco, CA, in a question-and-answer session with a gay man and a
lesbian from the area. One student asks the pair, "How do you, like,
do it?" The man, Noe Gutierrez, answers, "We're not allowed to talk
about our personal sex lives. But I will say this - sex is not about a
single act. There's a lot more involved in it. There's feelings . . .
how two people feel about each other, and there's two minds involved."
Later, George Sloan, principal of the school, says about the visits,
"I think it should be mandatory, and I think that it's a healthy way
of teaching students to understand each other. . . . Academics are
definitely important, but we also want them to develop, to reach an
understanding that they can resolve crisises [sic] without exploding.
They need to understand that so they can move on to learning."
* A grade school photo and text exhibit, "Love Makes a Family," which
features pictures of homosexuals with adopted children in family
poses. The exhibit is on display at the Peabody Public School in
Peabody, MA, and the camera follows a group of fifth grade students
through the exhibit. Later, one of the fifth graders, in a discussion
about the exhibit, says that she "thinks that the exhibit should be
shown to younger kids too so that they grow up knowing that lesbians
and gays aren't bad."
* An exercise at the Manhattan Country School, an independent school
in New York City, in which eighth grade students are invited to
discuss at what grade level students should be introduced to
homosexuality. When one student says that she feels that some students
are too young to be taught about homosexuality because they might
"freak out," another student responds, "The reason they freak out is
because they have not seen those books, because they have not seen
homosexual relationships on TV and walking around, because maybe their
parents are biasing them [sic]. . . . You can't say, 'Oh, they're
going to get freaked out, and you can't just throw it at them.' The
reason that they're going to get freaked out is because it hasn't been
thrown at them."
The video suggests repeatedly that homosexual curricula are about
exposing students to homosexuality, and not about forcing them to draw
conclusions about the "gay lifestyle."
However, some critics have suggested that the line between
presentation and advocacy is blurred in the film - and that Christians
who object to homosexuality are shown in an unflattering light in an
effort to equate Christianity and its traditional strictures against
homosexuality as causes of violence and discrimination.
In the first ten minutes of the film, the only religious objection to
homosexuality is made through a film clip of the Ricki Lake Show, a
daytime talk show. At no point in the film is a religious objection to
homosexuality raised by a credible religious figure of any established
church and in some instances, religious opposition to homosexuality is
equated with the Holocaust and racism.
A later video collage shows angry protestors at a public hearing on
homosexual education, accompanied by ominous music. Many of the
protestors are singing "God Bless America" and holding Bibles. At no
point was a conservative critic of homosexuality interviewed for the
film.
At one point in the video, Principal Jane Hall of P.S. 87 in New York
City said that "everybody will stand behind the banner of no
discrimination and promoting tolerance, except that when you come to
an issue of gay and lesbianism, I think then people, because of their
religious, beliefs sometimes fall from behind that banner."
"But I have to say to them," continued Hall, "if I'm going to protect
your religious beliefs, if I'm going to respect them, then I'm asking
you to respect the stance we take in teaching about tolerance for
others."
While the video's pretense is to promote diversity, it shows scenes in
which teachers are refusing to allow for perspectives that disagree
with homosexuality.
One scene depicts a meeting of the faculty at Cambridge Friends
School, a Quaker school in Cambridge, MA. When one teacher remarks
that she hopes that any student who might feel that homosexuality "was
wrong" would have that belief respected, a teacher answers that "we
are asking kids to believe it's right. Not as a matter of moral
principle, but as a matter of - we're educating them and this is part
of what we consider to be a healthy education."
Another teacher picks up the conversation, saying, "What we're trying
to have people do is to understand that people are. And we have to
respect the right of all of us to just be, and be who we are, and we
do that in the classroom when we teach so that everyone can learn.
There isn't a right way, there isn't a wrong way, there isn't a good
way, there isn't a bad way."
Earlier, the principal of Cambridge Friends School said that he felt
that it was "not appropriate that values only be taught at home. There
are social values as well, there are community values. . . ."
For parents concerned about having public schools teaching their
children values that collide with their constitutionally protected
right to freely practice religion, the video closes with a song that
appears to preempt parental authority in child rearing:
Your children are not your children
They come through you, but they are not from you,
And though they are with you, they belong not to you
You can house their bodies but not their soul
For their souls dwell in a place of tomorrow
Which you cannot visit, you cannot visit, you cannot visit
Not even in your dreams.
via: bible_prophecy-news@onelist.com
========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - Infobeat News items (6/9/99)
From: bpr-list@philologos.org(BPR)
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 1999 19:14:39 +0000
From: "Moza" <moza@butterfly.mv.com>
*** Russia seeks close China ties
MOSCOW (AP) - Building close ties with China was one of Russia's top
foreign policy goals and the two nations want a strong strategic
partnership, Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin said Wednesday. Stepashin
made the remarks at the start of talks with a visiting Chinese
official, Zhang Wannian, deputy head of the Central Military
Commission. Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev also attended the
meeting, which focused on military cooperation. Russia and China have
been working to improve ties in recent years. Both nations resent what
they see as the global domination of the United States and favor some
form of alliance to counter Washington. See
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2559862373-5f1
*** Jordan celebrates king's ascension
AMMAN, Jordan (AP) - Jordanians swarmed the streets, waved flags and
danced in celebrations Wednesday marking the ascension of King
Abdullah II to the throne he inherited from his late father, King
Hussein, four months ago. Shopkeepers offered sweets and spiced coffee
to passers-by in Amman's bustling streets while crowds gathered to
chant slogans lauding the king just hours before the late afternoon
ceremony. Outside Amman's hilltop Raghadan Palace, Bedouin tribesmen
who form the bedrock of support for the ruling Hashemite dynasty
filled the streets carrying Abdullah's portraits and chanting. The
celebration, called Throne Day, is the first event of its kind in
Jordan. It is widely seen as a vote of confidence the 37-year-old. See
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2559860666-b76
*** Cosmonauts launch Mir fund-raiser
MOSCOW (AP) - In a desperate effort to save the pride of Russia's
once-mighty space program, Russian cosmonauts launched a fund-raiser
Wednesday to try to keep the Mir space station aloft. Two veterans of
the Soviet space program called on all Russians to contribute to a new
fund to save the Mir. Russian space officials have decided to leave
Mir unmanned after the crew leaves in August. If no money is found by
March, ground controllers will lower the station to burn up in the
atmosphere. See
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2559861915-450
*** Clintons join Judy Collins on stage
WASHINGTON (AP) - With a string arrangement of the Hungarian Rondo and
an accordion performance of the "Beer Barrel Polka" as her opening
act, singer Judy Collins had a White House audience singing along by
the time she wrapped up a state dinner honoring Hungarian President
Arpad Goncz. President Clinton and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton
joined Collins on stage Tuesday night and the trio led the 180 guests
assembled in the East Room for an a cappella rendition of "Amazing
Grace." See
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2559857762-703
*** Y2K prompts prepackaged meals sales
MULLINS, S.C. (AP) - The Y2K bug is no pest to a company that makes
MREs, those infamous prepackaged meals for soldiers. Sales have jumped
for MREs, with some people believing a programming glitch will cause
millions of computers to malfunction on Jan. 1, 2000, shutting down
power grids and slowing retail supply lines and disrupting commerce.
See http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2559853245-975
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