Cardinal Bertone on economic crisis: "The financial market is self-referential and unsustainable"
Cardinal Bertone on economic crisis: "The financial market is self-referential and unsustainable"
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USA & Canada: Catholic Church stole & abused 150,000 Native Children, placed in Residential Schools
USA & Canada: Catholic Church stole & abused 150,000 Native Children, placed in Residential Schools
Here the children were abused, tortured, starved, enslaved and many were even murdered at the hands of priests and nuns.
Other religions were involved as well included Presbyterian, Anglican, Church of England.
This video is the trailer for UNSEEN TEARS which is a documentary that tells this story of terror that children had to endure due to the Vatican's corrupt nature and its desire to profit, no matter the cost.
The Protect Your Children Foundation invites you to take a look at the organized crime schemes orchestrated by the Catholic Church worldwide:
English: http://jh.to/organizedcrime
Spanish: http://jh.to/crimenes
Portuguese: http://jh.to/casosdocrimeorganizado
Italian: http://jh.to/criminalita
Visit www.jh.to/lawsuits to learn of alarming amounts paid for sexual abuse cases and how much greater this total would be considering that
less than 10% of victims speak out, and of those, only 10% actually make it to court.
For more info, visit: www.vaticancrimes.us
or write to us at contact@vaticancrimes.us
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NEO Asteroid 2011 WP4 to Graze Earth on November 24, 2011 (Just Discovered Nov. 18)
NEO Asteroid 2011 WP4 to Graze Earth on November 24, 2011 (Just Discovered Nov. 18)
It's a pretty whimpy sized one but if it does enter our atmosphere, wouldn't that be cool to see it break up :D I'll be watching...
"NEO Advisory on Friday Nov 18 2011 NASA has located a very new Near Earth Object to pass very near to earth on NOV 24 2011.
This object was just discovered on Friday Nov 18 2011. Therefore NASA has had limited data to make orbit projections on 2011 WP4. The level of uncertainty is one level below maximum uncertainty. In layman's terms they have basically took an educated guess as to if it will miss earth or not."
article + NEO table:
http://50kview.blogspot.com/2011/11/nov-20-2011-attention-new-neo-asteroid.html
2011 WP4 Orbit Diagram (i tried all angles and it just looks like it is on top of Earth on the exact same spot that the Earth place marker is on Nov. 24? Was wondering if - and how much - higher or lower in orbit than us it might be....):
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=2011%20WP4;orb=1;cov=0;log=0;cad=1
NASA's Mars rover Curiosity launch postponed by one day:
http://spaceflightnow.com/atlas/av028/status.html
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Catholic Church sexual abuse in Curaçao, Netherlands - Victim speaks of the culture of silence here
A victim speaks of the culture of silence in the Netherlands. Preparing for her first comunion, around age 7 or 8, the priest began acts of abuse towards this victim. She thinks many other children at the time were also abused by the priest of St. Anna Church in Otrobanda.
Catholic Church sexual abuse in Curaçao, Netherlands - Victim speaks of the culture of silence here
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U.S.-Based Multinationals Added Jobs Abroad In 2000s, But Cut Jobs At Home
U.S.-Based Multinationals Added Jobs Abroad In 2000s, But Cut Jobs At Home
An Indonesian worker handles a package of a 3D television set at a factory run by South Korean LG Electronics in Cibitung, Indonesia, Thursday, Oct. 20, 2011. (AP)
In the last decade, U.S.-based multinational companies have been on a hiring spree, adding over 2 million new jobs. They're just not adding them in the United States.
In the last decade, U.S.-based multinational corporations cut nearly 864,000 jobs in the United States, according to a new report from the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis. At the same time, they added 2.87 million jobs outside the country, including 1.61 million jobs in Asia and the Pacific region.
Multinational companies are focusing their hiring largely in emerging markets, where economic growth has been faster than in other regions. China, which grew at an average 10.3 percent per year between 1999 and 2009, was the country that enjoyed the most job growth from U.S.-based multinational companies, with 691,100 jobs added, according to the report.
In India, where the economy grew an average 7.2 percent per year during that time frame, U.S.-based multinational corporations added 425,800 jobs. The U.S. economy, in contrast, grew an average 1.7 percent per year.
U.S.-based multinational corporations also added 532,300 jobs in Latin America, the study found. Economies in the region have been growing nearly four percent per year on average, according to the Conference Board.
"They're going abroad mainly to sell their products," said BEA economist Raymond Mataloni, who co-authored the report. "Most of the sales in these emerging markets are to local customers."
General Electric, one of the largest multinational corporations in the world, is one of the companies focusing its attention abroad. While GE has cut some 25,000 jobs in the U.S. since 2001, it has added 2,000 jobs abroad, according to data provided by GE. It's not just the company's labor force that's grown increasingly international. The company has become increasingly reliant on foreign sales in the last decade: GE's sales outside the U.S. grew from 35 percent of total revenue in 2001 to a projected 60 percent by the end of 2011.
And GE isn't the only American heavyweight with large international workforces. Microsoft, the computer hardware manufacturer, employs two-thirds more employees abroad than in the United States -- a difference of 36,000 employees -- according to its web site.
But the focus on hiring workers abroad may be detrimental to job creation at home, because job growth in the U.S. depends to a large extent on U.S.-based multinational corporations. These companies accounted for 19 percent of the U.S. private-sector workforce in 2007. And they've been even more important to U.S. economic growth, accounting for 41 percent of U.S. productivity gains since 1990 and 74 percent of the U.S.'s private-sector spending on research and development in 2007, according to a 2010 report by management consulting firm McKinsey & Company.
The McKinsey report said that multinational corporations' growing investments abroad may be "'the canary in the the coal mine' of the U.S. economy," warning of more international competition to come.
"The United States cannot rest on past success and assume it will win the intensifying global competition for corporate investment," the McKinsey report said. "It cannot take its multinationals ... for granted."
Debit Card Fee Debacle: Justice Department Reviewing Fees Over Possible Antitrust Violation
Debit Card Fee Debacle: Justice Department Reviewing Fees Over Possible Antitrust Violation
Big banks shouldn't rest easy, the debit fee debacle isn't over.
The Justice Department is reviewing claims by a lawmaker that banking industry officials colluded on boosting debit card fees, which would've violated antitrust laws, according to Reuters. Congressman Peter Welsh (D-Vt.) asked the Justice Department to investigate the banks last month after banking officials' public statements indicated that the banks may have cooperated to raise fees to make up for revenue lost because of a cap on debit card swipe fees that took effect on October 1.
Big banks, especially Bank of America, were hit with waves of criticism from consumers and lawmakers alike after announcing their plans to charge customers fees to use their debit cards for purchases. Banks and bank industry officials initially defended the fees, saying they were necessary to recoup revenue lost from new financial regulations. But some say the swipe fee cap didn't go far enough; the National Retail Federation and other retail groups are suing the Federal Reserve for buckling to bank industry lobbyists and capping the fee at 24 cents instead of the initial proposed amount of 12 cents.
Banks were initially defiant in their defense of the debit fees, with BofA CEO Brian Moynihan last month arguing the bank "has a right to make a profit." When the bank first announced the fee, a spokeswoman told Reuters that "the economics of offering a debit card have changed."
After President Obama criticized banks for charging the fee last month, American Banker Association president Frank Keating offered a similar criticism.
"It's disappointing and puzzling that the President would attack a private corporation for responding to government price fixing that has fundamentally altered the economics of offering a debit card," Keating said in a statement.
Though BofA and others ultimately backed away from the fees, it still may not be enough to undo the damage they already caused. More than 650,000 people opened up new credit union accounts between September 29 -- the day BofA announced the debit card fee -- and the first week of November, according to the Credit Union National Association. That's more than the 600,000 that joined credit unions in all of 2010.
Cg42, a firm that consults with banks, estimates that the top ten retail banks will lose $185 billion in deposits over the next year if they don't address consumer concerns.
In October, Visa and MasterCard were sued over allegedly fixing prices of ATM access fees, violating antitrust laws.
Russian News Presenter Tatiana Limanova Flips Off Obama
Obviously Remembers Socialism.
Russian News Presenter Flips Off Obama
Russian News Presenter Tatiana Limanova Obviously Remembers Socialism.
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Mystery of Dead Sea Scroll Authors Possibly Solved
Mystery of Dead Sea Scroll Authors Possibly Solved
The Dead Sea Scrolls may have been written, at least in part, by a sectarian group called the Essenes, according to nearly 200 textiles discovered in caves at Qumran, in the West Bank, where the religious texts had been stored.
Scholars are divided about who authored the Dead Sea Scrolls and how the texts got to Qumran, and so the new finding could help clear up this long-standing mystery.
The research reveals that all the textiles were made of linen, rather than wool, which was the preferred textile used in ancient Israel. Also they lack decoration, some actually being bleached white, even though fabrics from the period often have vivid colours. Altogether, researchers say these finds suggest that the Essenes, an ancient Jewish sect, "penned" some of the scrolls.
Not everyone agrees with this interpretation. An archaeologist who has excavated at Qumran told LiveScience that the linen could have come from people fleeing the Roman army after the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, and that they are in fact responsible for putting the scrolls into caves.
Iconic scrolls
The Dead Sea Scrolls consist of nearly 900 texts, the first batch of which were discovered by a Bedouin shepherd in 1947. They date from before A.D. 70, and some may go back to as early as the third century B.C. The scrolls contain a wide variety of writings including early copies of the Hebrew Bible, along with hymns, calendars and psalms, among other works. [Gallery of Dead Sea Scrolls]
Nearly 200 textiles were found in the same caves, along with a few examples from Qumran, the archaeological site close to the caves where the scrolls were hidden.
Orit Shamir, curator of organic materials at the Israel Antiquities Authority, and Naama Sukenik, a graduate student at Bar-Ilan University, compared the white-linen textiles found in the11 caves to examples found elsewhere in ancient Israel, publishing their results in the most recent issue of the journal Dead Sea Discoveries.
A breakthrough in studying these remains was made in 2007 when a team of archaeologists was able to ascertain that colorful wool textiles found at a site to the south of Qumran, known as the Christmas Cave, were not related to the inhabitants of the site. This meant that Shamir and Sukenik were able to focus on the 200 textiles found in the Dead Sea Scroll caves and at Qumran itself, knowing that these are the only surviving textiles related to the scrolls.
They discovered that every single one of these textiles was made of linen, even though wool was the most popular fabric at the time in Israel. They also found that most of the textiles would have originally been used as clothing, later being cut apart and re-used for other purposes such as bandages and for packing the scrolls into jars. [Photos of Dead Sea textiles]
Some of the textiles were bleached white and most of them lacked decoration, even though decoration is commonly seen in textiles from other sites in ancient Israel.
According to the researchers the finds suggest that the residents of Qumran dressed simply.
"They wanted to be different than the Roman world," Shamir told LiveScience in a telephone interview. "They were very humble, they didn't want to wear colorful textiles, they wanted to use very simple textiles."
The owners of the clothing likely were not poor, as only one of the textiles had a patch on it."This is very, very, important," Shamir said. "Patching is connected with [the] economic situation of the site."
Shamir pointed out that textiles found at sites where people were under stress, such as at the Cave of Letters, which was used in a revolt against the Romans, were often patched. On the other hand "if the site is in a very good economic situation, if it is a very rich site, the textiles will not be patched," she said. With Qumran, "I think [economically] they were in the middle, but I'm sure they were not poor."
Robert Cargill, a professor at the University of Iowa, has written extensively about Qumran and has developed a virtual model of it. He said that archaeological evidence from the site, including coins and glassware, also suggests the inhabitants were not poor.
"Far from being poor monastics, I think there was wealth at Qumran, at least some form of wealth," Cargill said, arguing that trade was important at the site. "I think they made their own pottery and sold some of it, I think they bred animals and sold them, I think they made honey and sold it."
Who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?
Scholars are divided about who authored the Dead Sea Scrolls and how the texts got to Qumran. Some argue that the scrolls were written at the site itself while others say they were written in Jerusalem or elsewhere in Israel.
Qumran itself was first excavated by Roland de Vaux in the 1950s. He came to the conclusion that the site was inhabited by a religious sect called the Essenes who wrote the scrolls and stored them in caves. Among the finds he made were water pools, which he believed were used for ritual bathing, and multiple inkwells found in a room that became known as the "scriptorium." Based on his excavations, scholars have estimated the population of the site at as high as 200.
More recent archaeological work, conducted by Yitzhak Magen and Yuval Peleg of the Israel Antiquities Authority, suggests that the site could not have supported more than a few dozen people and had nothing to do with the scrolls themselves. They believe that the scrolls were deposited in the caves by refugees fleeing the Roman army after Jerusalem was conquered in A.D. 70.
Magen and Peleg found that the site came into existence around 100 B.C. as a military outpost used by the Hasmoneans, a Jewish kingdom that flourished in the area. After the Romans took over Judaea in 63 B.C. the site was abandoned and eventually was taken over by civilians who used it for pottery production. They found that the pools de Vaux discovered include a fine layer of potters' clay.
There are other ideas as well. Cargill argues that while Qumran started out as a fort it was later occupied by a sectarian group whose members were deeply concerned with ritual purity. "Whether or not they are the Essenes, that's a different question," he said. This group, much smaller than earlier estimates of 200 people, would have written some of the scrolls, while collecting others, he argues.
Other groups, not part of the Qumran community, may also have been putting scrolls into the caves, Cargill said.
Can clothing solve the mystery?
The new clothing research may help to identify the writers of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Shamir told LiveScience that it is unlikely the scrolls were deposited in the caves by Roman refugees. If that were the case, the more-popular textile in ancient Israel, wool, would have been found in the caves along with other garments.
"If people run away from Jerusalem they would take all sorts of textiles with them, not only linen textiles," she said. "The people who ran away to the Cave of Letters, they took wool textiles with them."
Peleg, the archaeologist who co-led the recent archaeological work at Qumran, told LiveScience he disagrees with that assessment. He said he stands by the idea that there is no connection between Qumran and the scrolls stored in the caves.
"We must remember that almost all the textiles were found in the caves andnot at the site. The main question is the connection between the site and the scrolls," Peleg wrote in an email. "I can find alternative explanations for the fact that scrolls were found with linen."
For instance, linen could have been chosen as scroll wrapping for religious reasons or perhaps priests were responsible for storing the scrolls and they wore linen clothing. "The clothes of the priests were made from linen," Peleg wrote.
In their paper, Shamir and Sukenik say that the clothing found in the Dead Sea Scroll caves is similar to historical descriptions of the clothing of the Essenes, suggesting that they in fact lived at Qumran. They point to an ancient Jewish writer, Flavius Josephus, who wrote that the Essenes "make a point of keeping a dry skin and always being dressed in white." (However, Josephus never said anything about the clothing being made of linen, Peleg points out.)
Josephusalso wrote that the Essenes were very frugal when it came to clothing and shared goods with each other.
"In their dress and deportment they resemble children under rigorous discipline. They do not change their garments or shoes until they are torn to shreds or worn threadbare with age. There is no buying or selling among themselves, but each gives what he has to any in need and receives from him in exchange something useful to himself ..."
(Translation from "Jewish Life and Thought Among Greeks and Romans: Primary Readings," Louis Feldman and Meyer Reinhold, 1996.)
In their paper, Shamir and Sukenikalso point to another ancient writer, Philo of Alexandria, who wrote that the Essenes wore a common style of simple dress.
"And not only is their table in common but their clothes also. For in winter they have a stock of stout coats ready and in summer cheap vests, so that he who wishes may easily take any garment he likes, since what one has is held to belong to all and conversely what all have one has."
(Translation from the "Selected Writing of Philo of Alexandria," edited by Hans Lewy, 1965.)
Cargill said that the clothing is further evidence that there was a Jewish sectarian group living at Qumran.
"You do have evidence of a group that raised its own animals, pressed its own date honey, that appears to have worn distinctive clothes and made its own pottery, and followed its own calendar, at least a calendar different from the temple priesthood," he said. "Those are all signs of a sectarian group."
He also noted the presence of mikveh (ritual baths) at the site and the fact that the residents could make pottery that was ritually pure.
This group appears to have wanted to separate itself from the priests based at the temple in Jerusalem. "There is a congruency within many of the sectarian documents that appears to be consistent with a sectarian group that has separated itself from the temple priesthood in Jerusalem," Cargill said.
According to Cargill's theory, the people of Qumran would have written some of the scrolls, while collecting others. "Obviously they didn't write all of the scrolls," Cargill said. Dating indicates some of the scrolls were written before Qumran even existed. One unusual scroll, made of copper, may have been deposited after Qumran was abandoned in A.D. 70.
Cargill says it's possible that some of the scrolls may have been put in caves from people outside the community. If that's true, some of the textiles could also be from people outside of Qumran.
"[If] not all of the Dead Sea Scrolls are the responsibility of sectarians at Qumran then it would follow that not all of the textiles that are discovered in the caves are [the] product of a sect at Qumran," Cargill said.
Were there women at Qumran?
The new research may alsoshed light on who created the textiles.
The textiles are of high quality and, based on the archaeological finds at Qumran itself, where there is little evidence of spindle whorls or loom weights, the team thinks it's unlikely they would have been made at the site.
"This is very, very important, because this is connected to gender," Shamir said, "spinning is connected with women."
She explained that the textiles were likely created at another site in Israel, with women playing a key role in their production. This suggests that there were few women living at Qumran itself. "Weaving is connected with men and women, but spinning was only a production of women, [and] we don't find this item at Qumran."
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Cremation of Care: Searing the conscience with a hot iron
Just have a look at the Georgia Guidestones
The full ritual, as captured by Alex Jones in July 2000, is presented here in two parts with minimal editing.