Some good advice about BDSM

This was posted on an S&M dating website. Don't ask me how I got it. ;)

"As a submissive, i do not get much email from other submissives or many submissives viewing my page. However, if you are a submissive and you come across this, read on, because there are some things to beware of in the S&M scene that have recently come to my attention.

"BDSM is supposed to be Safe, Sane, and Consensual. That means first and foremost, no matter HOW BADLY you want your punishment, whatever it may be, it must NOT do things to you that CANNOT BE REPEATED because they CANNOT BE HEALED. ANY situation that requires medical expertise to carry out, for instance, MUST only be carried out by licensed medical personnel. That includes any kind of amputation, castration, surgery, or other forms of extreme injurious procedure with PERMANENT results. Other examples of extremely dangerous play you should not entrust to ANYONE without knowing them, knowing they have expertise, and having an ongoing and established Safe Sane Consensual relationship with them first include: Asphyxiation, Hanging, Branding, Burning, Knife play, Crucifixion, Ice Bath, Starvation, Cattle Prods, or any other play that obviously draws blood, stops breathing for over 30 seconds, or subjects the body to extreme temperature, extreme trauma or a current of electricity. These things are DANGEROUS and can END YOUR LIFE if done improperly or by persons with MALICE towards you!!!

Remember it is up to you first to save your own life. If you entrust your life to some person you met in a bar because you were horny and itching to play, you can wind up DEAD or WORSE. Remember your rights as a person -- you ALWAYS have the RIGHT to say no, and at the first sign that someone you don't know won't respect your rights, GET AWAY FROM THAT PERSON. You do not want to wind up in a situation where you will have to be rescued by your friends or the police from some black hole where they can't even find you. IT DOES HAPPEN. Play it safe!!!

Remember, Safe means Play with concern for and preservation of your Well-Being, Sane means Play that is Reasonable and within tolerances and Limits of the Submissive as well as the Dominant, and Consensual means both Submissive and Dominant are in a CONTINUAL state of mutual agreement AND understanding about the play scene and the relationship. Remember also that the less you know the other person, the less likely you will have a Safe, Sane, Consensual or even Pleasurable Scene."

Evidence Validating the Gospels: An Overview of Sources

I was asked the following question by "Noor," who commented on my Mark 9:1 post:

"I really want to know why you believe that God had become a man and died for our sins ...every time I've asked this question ..people explain how it's supposed to work..saying 'God is pure and we are sinners so someone has to die for our sins.' They fail to understand that this is an explanation and not a proof. I understand how it's supposed to work but what I want to know is why do you believe that God has to die for our sins ..the question is Why and not How..if you know what I mean."

The best I can do if I understand the question correctly is refer to those authors who have established the case for the resurrection of Christ, which is the culmination of His saving mission on Earth and the verification of his own stated claims that he is the son of God, son of man and Messiah. (If I blog about the Resurrection myself, I would only be duplicating their work.)

The book I'm most familiar with that proves this was written by Dr. Gene Scott, "Jesus Christ, Super Nut or Super Natural!" There is a condensed version of his case for the Resurrection and Godhood of Jesus, preached as a sermon on an Easter Sunday, at http://www.gospeloutreach.net/resurrection.html. Other classics in this vein include "Who Moved the Stone" by Frank Morrison, Fairbain's "Christ in Modern Theology," D.W. Forrest's studies on Christ, Sherlock's "Trial of the Witnesses," Paley's "Evidences for the Christian Faith," Nathaniel Lardner's studies of ancient history linking verifying evidence to the Gospels, and C.S. Lewis's "Mere Christianity." And no, I haven't read all of them, Dr. Scott's persuasion was adequate for me, even though I did read "Mere Christianity."

I'm told there is an author named Lee Strobel who wrote a book called "The Case for Christ." I've never read it, but it's one of the latest in a panoply of books that have been written that prove that Jesus Christ said things about himself impossible to believe or credit unless he backed it up with miracles only God could work, and then further prove that he did those works (including being raised from a death by Roman crucifixion after 3 days dead in a guarded sepulcher and ascending into a cloud 40 days later) and thereby proved he is God in the flesh.

There is also an article in the New Advent Encyclopedia that outlines the pagan and Jewish sources that confirm the validity of the Gospel sources for the life of Christ, found at http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08375a.htm. And not to be forgotten, as background evidence to support the antiquity and authenticity of the New Testament, there is F.F. Bruce's classic study "The New Testament Documents: Are They Genuine?" And I'm sure there are many others that one can find out there.

My only point here is that I believe in Jesus Christ because he was proven to me to be the Lord God, not because of a feeling or a rhetoric laden, emotionally evocative Sunday morning harangue, but because there really is findable historical evidence that logically validates the Gospels' story about him. You don't have to cut the top of your head off or suspend belief in science or good scholarship to be a Christian, and at least some of these authors, including Gene Scott, started out as skeptics and were convinced along the way by the evidence.

British school puts tracking chips in school uniforms

This is copied and reposted here from http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/devlin/17027 just in case someone gets a notion to delete this story in the future:

RFID Chips in School Uniforms Track Students
Fri Oct 26, 2007 8:16AM EDT
See Comments (1043)
How would feel about this: Tracking chips in kids' school clothing so that school officials can know their whereabouts during the school day?
Oh, it's happening. Ten students in a secondary school in the United Kingdom are being tracked through RFID implants in their school uniforms in a pilot program. Information Week reports that the kids attend Hungerhill School for ages 11-16 in Edenthorpe, England.
Add the RFID chips to increased video surveillance and fingerprinting of kids, and this is a heavily tracked generation—for safety's sake.
That extra peace of mind for adults comes with a heavy loss of privacy for kids. Do you agree with David Clouter, a parent and founder of the children's advocacy group Leave Them Kids Alone, who says taking all these precautions has the effect of treating kids like criminals? Or do you agree with the parents who have OKed the pilot program who do not find it egregiously intrusive?
One possible side effect: Uniform sales may pick up as kids try to procure extra non-RFID-tagged clothing. As security expert Bruce Schneier writes on his blog: "So now it's easy to cut class; just ask someone to carry your shirt around the building while you're elsewhere."
LINK: U.K. Kids Get RFID Chips in School Uniforms [Information Week]

See the story and comment on it on its original page at http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/devlin/17027.

Ice age weather? See how much ice buried the high altitude tropical city of Bogota, Colombia today on November 4, 2007. Paste this into your browser to view: javascript:void(window.open('http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/ynews;_ylt=Ahl_gFTDChF4ETCJ5Z5_HdD9xg8F?ch=4226714&cl=4854979&lang=en','playerWindow','width=793,height=608,scrollbars=no'));

A Simpler Solution to the Energy Crunch

First, Double Nickels.

We need to institute what was done by Congress under President Nixon: impose a national speed limit that maximizes highway mileage, which is 55 miles per hour. This measure, when it was adopted the first time, not only cut consumption of gasoline and diesel fuel by several percentage points, adding 2 to 3 miles per gallon to the nation's average highway fuel economy, but also saved thousands of lives per year by reducing highway traffic accidents, and the best part of it was that no one hadto retool car manufacturing, revamp gasoline formulations, spend money on alternative energy schemes, some of which remain dubious in cost recovery, or impose punitive taxation to limit consumption at the pump to achieve the same benefits. Even a 1 or 2 percent reduction of gasoline consumption would add many thousands of barrels of fuel a day, in effect, to the nation's fuel supply.

Second, Sixty-Eight/Seventy-Five.

We need to pass a law requiring business establishments and government offices nationwide to set their heating thermostats no higher than 68 degrees Fahrenheit during colder weather, and air conditioning no lower than 75 degrees for summer weather. This should include EVERY business, no exceptions. In addition to this, advertising should be funded strongly encouraging private homeowners and renters to conserve energy by setting their thermostats to the same limits, 68 degrees maximum for heat, 75 degrees minimum for air conditioning. Besides conserving energy this would also encourage healthier living, because heat that is set too high fosters the multiplication of viruses and bacteria indoors, and A/C set too low tends to encourage the spread of mold and mildew, as well as impacting the immune system through excessive exposure to chill in the warm season. These factors are probably responsible for literally millions of respiratory illnesses every year that take enormous amounts of man-hours out of the economy and seriously impact our already beleaguered health care system.Let's do this now, since they would be easy to implement (compared to other measures) and with oil prices nearing $100 a barrel, both measures would be very timely and would put downward pressure on the price spiral that has been taking place.

Debt Collection Agency Rudeness to PAYING CUSTOMER

The following was posted on http://www.pissedconsumer.com/ recently.

First, background. I loaned my name to a friend of mine so that she could have a phone with Verizon. Shortly after she got the phone account she got into some trouble and was unable to pay the bill, and at the time neither was I. Time went by, Verizon sent notices to her address which was eventually vacated, and the account went into delinquency... after it did she tried to make a payment or two on it but gave up as she was also supporting a family and trying to keep a cell phone going with a different company. Two years go by... and I get a notice from this debt collection service called Allied Interstate. I'm wondering who these people are, and I call Verizon, and they verify that this is an agency that collects money for them and that indeed this old debt was valid.

So, I call Allied Interstate, a rather pleasant woman answers the phone and in the discussion she proposes these payment options which didn't at all fit with what my friend might be capable of paying all at once. I settled on $10 a month which would have incurred an extra charge of $6.95. The bill was over $250 total, and I thought about it, and though I'm unemployed I did actually have just enough to pay it by check. So, I repent of the $10 a month idea that my friend wanted to do and decided, "I just want this thing off my back." Mailed in a check for the whole amount.

The next day Allied Interstate leaves a message saying to call them. I'm like "what are they wanting now?" and it's 8 pm and my dad's in the shower and this isn't something I want to be his business. I talk to this male person, and he is abrupt and rude, the more so after I tell him I've changed my plans and am paying the whole amount up front. He starts treating me like I'm lying, and asks me these stupid questions like am I voluntarily doing this, and saying basically that AI won't accept the check unless I have a phone number to be reached at. His tone just gets more aggravating by the minute, he cuts me off when I try to tell him I don't really want to be called here, and he just acts like I screwed up by paying it all up front instead of letting them own me for two years on this stupid phone bill.

I was so angry after this, because of the verbal treatment of me doing the best thing I could do which is pay it all and have done with it, that I had to pray to God and you don't even want to know what it was I was praying for. All I can say is they better take the payment and leave me the hell alone or the next time I get a call and that asshole is on the phone taking the answer call, I'll file with the state attorney and have him up on stalking charges. Of course if there is also a class action pending or proposed that I hear about, I'll be signing up for that.

Nostradamus and the Last Days overview

I watched the Nostradamus "lost book" program on the History Channel last night. One of the predictions, interpreted by the scholars looking at the book of illustrations, and at the original quatrains, comes out roughly depicting this present Middle Eastern war lasting through two "nobles" or presidents, both with long terms. So, if that is correct, we're only midway through the "War on Terror" and if Iraq is winding down quickly as seems to be the case, then another front on this war is about to open that will last probably well into the second term of the next president, with an interruption due to the pre-Antichrist calm if the man of sin is to be revealed in 2012. Again, I say, if.

Also, the Nostradamus program pointed up the astronomical significance -- in Earth-Sun-Galaxy alignments -- of the year 2012. Apparently an alignment of the Sun in between the constellations Ophiuchus, Scorpio, and Sagittarius will center it exactly over the Galactic Center for the first time in 13,000 years in that year, as the ecliptic (Earth's orbital plane, path of the Sun in the sky) exactly intersects the center of the Milky Way as seen from Earth. What that actually means, who knows, but it's interesting. Anyway, coincident with that astronomical alignment is a repeat fulfillment (based on illustrations from the "lost book of Nostradamus") of Noah's Ark, or a sign of something similar happening. The interesting thing for me was that the Ark was depicted in the air, not on water. A sign of an aerial catching away, perhaps?

Another program on Nostradamus that I watched prior to the "lost book" program gives us a name for the evil ruler in the last days, MABUS. The experts were saying this is probably an anagram, but they combine the names Osama-Bush -- i.e., O.S.A.MABUS.H. However, my own opinion of this is neither Osama nor Bush are the Antichrist, even if their actions are bringing about the coming of this ruler. Being an anagram I think it is more likely a clue to the actual name of the ruler as "Hister" was to Hitler. If we rearrange the letters we probably get a lot closer to the name... such as Musab which is a name of one of the earliest and most famous disciples of Muhammed (as well as a moniker of Al Zarkawi, the recently killed Al Qaida figure in Iraq), and is pretty much the only Arab name with widespread references I can get out of it. If you think of others let me know.

This is a link -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mus%60ab_ibn_%60Umair to the original Mu'sab of history, as seen through the eyes of an obvious Muslim admirer... note the similarities between his character and career as a proselytizer and those of the apostles of Christ in Acts. We should probably expect a "man of peace" to look very much like this, until the time of war comes and he shows his true colors.

By the way, none of this should be taken to mean that any Biblical fulfillments taught on by Gene Scott or some others that I've elaborated on are negated by these scenarios.... I may not know how it all fits together yet, and Dr. Scott was probably the only one who did. So I am not by any means negating the future Ten Toes; one should include portions of Europe in it, into the Balkan nations, Turkey, the central Arab states, Egypt, and it will also include Iran, which technically is not an Arab nation and is also an ally of Russia as Turkey may soon become. In any case the union of ten is the last step of pre-Rapture fulfillment OR the very first thing that happens after the general church Rapture. When you see that, "look up, for your redemption is nigh."

I believe the Arab or rather Middle Eastern-Southeast European ten toes union comes after a US-Iran war if there is going to be a US-Iran war. Neither the present Iraq war nor a near-future Iran war is the Antichrist war, that's not yet. It's my firm but considered belief that a period of peace must intervene for Antichrist to come on the scene, probably a short period of calm following exhaustion due to war in the region. Let's not also forget that Egypt is to be a troubler in the last day, so there must be a regime in place there which is hostile to the US and hostile to peace with Israel, which means Mubarak and his supporters are out of the scene by then. (He is well into his 70s now.) And, Turkey is to wind up in the Russian sphere of influence to fulfill Ezekiel 37 in the last days, and the Kurdish troubles may spark that separation from the US toward Russia in the coming year or two. I'm already rather amazed at how fast the Iranian-Russian alliance beginning the fulfillment of Ezekiel 37 has progressed so far, after America blew opportunity after opportunity to win Iran over in recent years. Turkey appears to be next to gravitate into the Russian orbit, so watch that country, and also watch Egypt and its radical movements.

Is the Rapture in the fall of 2011???

This was originally a letter I wrote to a Bible study group about one year ago:

Offered as food for thought:

Dr. Gene Scott always warned against date-setting, as the history of eschatology is strewn with the rubble of denominations that have set dates and then not seen anything come to pass -- later on it could always be shown where the date setter erred. If he did mention something about 2001, it might have been a first blush impression he had gathered from the evidence of something important about that year, but to take it to his meaning the beginning of the Tribulations might be going a bit far. In any case I don't think it was mentioned again, 2001 came and went with the horror of an attack on the United States (it has been attacked before) and Dr. Scott didn't proclaim that it was the beginning of the Great Tribulations. And, it wasn't.

That having been said as a caveat up front, I have done some calculations with the aid of online calendars to determine which MIGHT be the best years prophetically to fulfill the conditions of the last chapter of Daniel (that the days of the Tribulations be shortened) and the conditions of Matthew 24, where Jesus taught the fig tree parable, which we know from Doc's teaching is the revival of Israel. First thing that should be established, and again, I'm relying on Gene Scott for these numbers, is the lengths of the years of a generation. There are four likely numbers -- 40 years, 70 years, 100 years, and 120 years. There are also numbers that could be given in Jewish prophetic years (360 days long) and regular solar years (365.2422 or whatever they are -- and we even have three very slightly different versions of those.)

Now that we have some idea of the generational period length, we go to the dates of when Israel was established, revived, or rescued from the hand of the Gentile. First one is when General Allenby marches into Jerusalem, capturing it from the Turks -- December 9-11, 1917. Second one, the day of independence of the state of Israel -- May 14, 1948. Third, the end of the War of Independence for Israel in 1949 -- well, four dates for that one, depending on which armistice was signed -- February 24, March 23, April 3, and July 20, all in 1949. The actual large scale fighting seems to have ended by March 10, 1949.

So, generally, we are probably talking about December 10, 1917, May 14, 1948, and March 10, 1949 as starting points for what is either a 40, 70, 100, or 120 year countdown in what are likely to be either Jewish prophetic short years or modern solar years. Due to the imprecision of determining either the exact date of the liberation of Jerusalem from Turkey or the actual end of the 1948-9 war, exactly how many days each of these numbers is after computing short years may be somewhat off.

For December 10, 1917, in solar years, we arrive at December 1957, December 1987, December 2017, and December 2037 as final monthly dates of the Tribulations. Presumably we back up 7 years to arrive at their beginning dates, which I will deal with later, but for right now, based on the Gene Scott teaching on Thessalonians and the Feast of Trumpets-Yom Kippur holidays, we probably need to subsume that they begin in around September or October of, not 1950, 1980, 2010, or 2030, but the year after -- which would be quite a shortening. Since two of those dates have gone by already, the Yom Kippurs of 2011 (October 8) and 2031 (September 27) become the first two annual possibilities for the beginning date of the Tribulations.

For May 14, 1948, count 70 solar years, and we come to May 14, 2018 as a possible end date of the Tribulation. (I have omitted 40, that date is long past.) Count 100, it goes to May 14, 2048, and 120, May 14, 2068. In these scenarios, the years would again be shortened by backing the beginnings up to Yom Kippur - October 8, 2011, October 5, 2041, and September 24, 2061 respectively.

For March 10, 1949, 70 years brings us to March 2019, 100 years to March 2049, and 120 years to March 2069. A set of beginning dates representing less than 7 years Tribulation would thus be September 26, 2012, September 24, 2042, and October 14, 2062 respectively. These beginning dates would hold true no matter which end date of the 1948-9 Israeli war we picked.

Now the hard part -- to redo all this again in JEWISH prophetic years. Fortunately I have a calculator to do the nasty part. For December 10, 1917, we plug in 100 Jewish years, it comes out to July 4, 2016. Beginning date, Yom Kippur, September 28, 2009. Plug in 120 years, we come out to about March 21, 2036. Beginning date would be September 19, 2029.

For May 14, 1948 the end dates are as follows: 70 Jewish years, May 13, 2017, beginning date, Yom Kippur, September 18, 2010. 100 Jewish years brings us to December 7, 2046, and back that up less than 7 years, we come to September 17, 2040. Add 120 Jewish years, the end Trib date would be August 24, 2066. If God picks this one, He isn't being as merciful with time as with the other dates. 6 years and 11 months back brings the beginning date to September 17, 2059.

And last, we consider March 10, 1949... Add 70 Jewish prophetic years to that, it brings us to March 8, 2018, and back up less than 6 1/2 years to the first Yom Kippur within that 7 years, we arrive back at the fall of 2011, on October 8. Which is the third time we have hit that date, and all the other beginning dates have only been hit once apiece. What, you may ask, is so interesting about Yom Kippur in the year 2011? But first let's finish dealing with the other generation periods -- 100 Jewish years brings us to October 2, 2047 -- and the world gets NO book of Daniel shortening break here because (jumping ahead to Yom Kippur calculations) Yom Kippur in 2040 is September 26, and in 2047 is October 9! And to finish, using the 120 Jewish years calculation, we come to June 19, 2067, with the Tribulations beginning in October 4, 2060.

Now to answer the question about Yom Kippur, 2011 -- October 8, 2011 or Tishri 10, 5772. When's Rosh Hashanah that year? That's easy, just subtract 9 days and you come to Tishri 1, 5772, which is September 29, 2011. September 29 is already interesting for other reasons, as students of Gene Scott and astronomy regarding the birth of a certain personage already know. (Parenthetically, in the year 2009 I have found ANOTHER personage with the same birthday... see my blog page Mabus and Mousavi.)

Now, to measure a shortening of days on the LUNAR calendar, I won't bore you with all the details, but I came up with several best candidates for shortening of the seven year week of Danielic eschatology with beginning and ending dates landing on their respective Yom Kippurs or Rosh Hashanahs (doesn't matter which one you use as long as it's the same day on the Hebrew calendar.) Now, the seven year week that started with 9-11-2001 -- or actually, with 9-27-01 Yom Kippur -- ends on 10-09-08, so it's a lengthened seven years, not a shortened one. 12 days longer to be precise. Not a good candidate. So we could pick any seven years, but the best (shortest) seven year periods over the next 70 years are as follows, with a shortening of at least 17 days between Yom Kippurs seven years apart, in mm-dd-yy format for brevity, and number of days shortened:

10-09-00 to 09-22-07 -17
10-06-03 to 09-18-10 -18
10-13-05 to 09-26-12 -17
10-02-06 to 09-14-13 -18
10-08-11 to 09-19-18 -19
10-04-14 to 09-16-21 -18
10-12-16 to 09-25-23 -17
10-09-19 to 09-21-26 -18
10-02-25 to 09-15-32 -17
10-07-30 to 09-19-37 -18
10-13-35 to 09-24-42 -19
10-09-38 to 09-21-45 -18
10-05-41 to 09-17-48 -18
10-14-43 to 09-26-50 -18
10-10-46 to 09-22-53 -18
10-12-54 to 09-24-61 -18
10-08-57 to 09-20-64 -18
10-14-62 to 09-25-69 -19
10-03-63 to 09-15-70 -18
10-10-65 to 09-22-72 -18
10-06-68 to 09-19-75 -17

The three "sevens" that managed the maximum shortening of 19 days are bolded. But, for repetition's sake (and other people's email formats) here they are:


10-08-11 to 09-19-18 -19
10-13-35 to 09-24-42 -19
10-14-62 to 09-25-69 -19

And there is 10-08-11 again -- Yom Kippur, October 8, 2011, preceded by Rosh Hashanah, September 29, 2011. That makes four times we have seen that date, and it is followed by the maximum shortening for seven consecutive lunar years.

Coincidence?

And, is it also a coincidence that Rosh Hashanah, September 29, 2011 AD happens to be exactly 2,012 SOLAR years after Rosh Hashanah, September 29, 2 BC, the day Jesus Christ was born? That's the fifth coincidence or synchronicity we have found for this date.

(Sixth synchronicity.... an Iranian politician was born Sept 29, 1941 (see Mir Hossein Mousavi's OFFICIAL profile) ... and will be exactly 70 solar years old on Rosh Hashanah, 2011 AD. 1941 is also interesting (the year itself) because of an Islamic tradition that exactly 1,000 years before, in 941 AD, the "occultation" or going into seclusion of the Mahdi, the Twelfth Imam, in a well near Qum took place. The politician with this September 29 birthday in 1941 started his recent presidential campaign in Qum, but was defeated in 2009 officially.)

So, does that mean the Rapture of the Body of Christ is on that date?

I DON'T KNOW!

But the parable of the ten virgins follows this end time prophecy in Matthew 25, where the five wise virgins keep watch and the five foolish virgins let their wicks go out. It happens to be five years before September 29, 2011, and I discovered this only recently [date for the emailing of the first version of this blog was in the fall of 2006.]

You never know. :)

Addendum:

Who is Mir Hossain Moussavi?

Is he Mabus whom Nostradamus predicted? Is he the Little Horn? The Beast in Revelation? The Antichrist himself?

Could he be the Mahdi expected by a significant portion of those in the Islamic faith?

See my blog on Mabus and Mousavi.

This is what some bars really think of musicians

What do you think?

I asked a nearby booker at a local venue the following, admittedly pointed question after seeing on their booking website that they don't book metal bands OR cover bands. This is a venue that I've gone to many times to see metal bands, and never knew they were only there because they were on tours and this club exempts tours from their rules. And lately I'm seeing those tours play to a nearly empty house.

******************************************************

Wondering if you have open mic nights.... and your booking restrictions scare me. No death/thrash/progressive metal bands unless they're in a promotion? And... what about tribute bands? I think if I were you guys (my opinion is flying loose here, I can't help it) I would be looking for as many acts as possible, even some of the national acts -- and GOOD acts -- you've been booking have had dead nights over there because nobody hears about them, and that ain't just the band. You cannot expect bands to do all the promotion for you, is the flip side of that promotion coin. Remember you're competing for much of the same audience as the State, the Brass Mug, Fast Eddie's and Bourbon Street to name a few. Anyway write back if you have an open mic night and if you book tributes, and what the procedure is.

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Here was the real answer the booking guy at that venue gave me, I swear to God I didn't make this up, it's the whole quote with only the identifying details omitted:

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Umm, no, no, and no. And who cares. Why don't you concentrate on your business, and not ours. *** has been around for *** years, and we are aware what the problems are. My (flying loose) opinion is the music scene is getting infected with a lot of jaded, greedy musicians that think the clubs exist only for them or that think the clubs owe them something more than they did 20 years or even 10 years ago! WE are not a bands promotion tool, and we do not do a band's promotion for them! This is a concert venue, not a nightclub with a built-in crowd. If we wanted a built-in crowd, then we would have covers and tributes.So please, keep your opinions to yourself because I have a lot more counter opinions myself and I don't feel like justifying any of them to you. I don't know you, nor have I ever even heard of you anywhere else. If you want to toss your opinions at the club then call and ask to speak to the manager or owner, because they won't see this. Good luck with that.

********************************************************

There are people in this business not looking out for musicians OR fans and don't care about anything except whether your act draws a crowd and that it's THEIR kind of crowd. "The customer is always right" apparently means zilch. Let me know what your feelings are on the matter if you read this, maybe those musicians, fans, promoters, bookers, owners and others with much more experience than I have some light to shed.

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A footnote: The same place recently posted a shoutout to any bands at all who could be booked in the next two weeks. They'd had a booking snafu and you know whose fault that was. :)

Foreigners get equality under the law, or we are hypocrites as a nation.

If foreigners do not deserve the same rights as Americans, then any war we are fighting to "liberate" anyone in the world is based on a lie. This nation is supposed to be set apart from the jungle by its values of rights of people and constitutional rule of law, and here we are supposedly fighting for the rights of other people whose rights we decided not to honor any more in our own court system. That turns American altruism into hypocrisy.

Now, it isn't that I'm advocating aliens get the right to vote, they should have that in their own countries, but all persons under the Stars and Stripes are subject to constitutional due process of law and equal treatment under the law... and habeas corpus should NOT be denied in the absence of an invasion or insurrection, not because it is convenient for us but because it is REQUIRED BY THE CONSTITUTION. We do NOT have an invasion just because somebody is threatening to blow up a building or two, which they haven't done in years. And, we certainly don't have an insurrection... my blog is probably among the closest things to having that. So, where are Gitmo's writs of habeas corpus???

The adjudication of a captured terrorist's rights, if any, should occur under due process of law as demanded by the Bill of Rights -- OR -- he should be detained as a prisoner of war under treaties the United States has signed and committed itself to honoring. By not honoring those treaties and its own Constitution that the Founders worked so hard to craft together, and by not honoring all the blood, sweat, tears, and souls poured into the amendments that enshrine our rights, this government is nothing more than a nascent fascist system on the horizon with nothing to distinguish it except moral depravity at its worst -- the kind that cloaks itself in hypocritical guise as the guardian of the so-called Free World while using every excuse to sabotage freedom and rule of law at home. If this situation continues -- mark my words -- we will lose our freedom to a fascist dictatorship. My honest opinion is, because of the laxity of the people and their loss of vigilance, they don't deserve to have the Constitution any more. That we still have it at all is thanks to the grace of God. I would suggest we stop taxing His patience -- the Constitution is the rightful King of the United States and the fact that it is here means God appointed it ruler of this land, according to Romans 13:

Rom 13:1
¶
Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.

Rom 13:2
Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.

Rom 13:3
For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same:

Rom 13:4
For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to [execute] wrath upon him that doeth evil.

Rom 13:5
Wherefore [ye] must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake.

Heed also the warning to the people of Israel for demanding that God replace His appointed judges with a king such as every other nation had:

1Sa 8:4
Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together, and came to Samuel unto Ramah,

1Sa 8:5
And said unto him, Behold, thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways: now make us a king to judge us like all the nations.

In other words the Constitution just doesn't get the job done, the system is corrupt, those weak minded judges and juries will acquit terrorists so give up on it and get us a stronger executive branch, like France or Russia....

1Sa 8:6
¶
But the thing displeased Samuel, when they said, Give us a king to judge us. And Samuel prayed unto the LORD.

1Sa 8:7
And the LORD said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them.

See that? Reject the rule of the proper legal authorities and you reject God, and HE TAKES OFFENSE. So how did God handle this bunch of fascism-loving rebels 3,000 years ago? We read on that first God warns them:

1Sa 8:10
¶
And Samuel told all the words of the LORD unto the people that asked of him a king.

1Sa 8:11
And he said, This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: He will take your sons, and appoint [them] for himself, for his chariots, and [to be] his horsemen; and [some] shall run before his chariots.

1Sa 8:12
And he will appoint him captains over thousands, and captains over fifties; and [will set them] to ear his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots.

1Sa 8:13
And he will take your daughters [to be] confectionaries, and [to be] cooks, and [to be] bakers.

1Sa 8:14
And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, [even] the best [of them], and give [them] to his servants.

1Sa 8:15
And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers, and to his servants.

1Sa 8:16
And he will take your menservants, and your maidservants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put [them] to his work.

1Sa 8:17
He will take the tenth of your sheep: and ye shall be his servants.

1Sa 8:18
And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the LORD will not hear you in that day.

God issues the same warning that I and others have been screaming about -- if you reject the Constitutional rule of law, you embrace fascism and you are headed for tyranny. God said it 3,000 years ago!!! But here's Israel's response, and God's answer to their insistence:

1Sa 8:19
¶
Nevertheless the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel; and they said, Nay; but we will have a king over us;

1Sa 8:20
That we also may be like all the nations; and that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles.

Right, a stronger President will be able to fight the War On Terror and win it without having his hands tied behind his back. Sound familiar?

1Sa 8:21
And Samuel heard all the words of the people, and he rehearsed them in the ears of the LORD.

1Sa 8:22
And the LORD said to Samuel, Hearken unto their voice, and make them a king. And Samuel said unto the men of Israel, Go ye every man unto his city.

And the rest of the story in 1 Samuel 9, he makes Saul of Kish king, the people love him, and in future chapters God rejects him two years later as he doesn't listen to the prophets of God and then becomes a tyrant, seeking out David and the prophets to destroy them.

So God gave them what they wanted, and I'm making this warning on Biblical grounds -- if this abuse of the Constitution continues and makes plain that the people no longer want or care about it, God will take it away and put something evil in its place. Then when all of you are complaining that the government took away all your freedom and is exacting whatever it wants at every turn, you're not going to get any sympathy from God about it; you'll be stuck with fascism permanently, or until Jesus comes. MARK MY WORDS.

Speculation on whether Bush and Ahmedinejad planned the next war

I see a way for the Iran war to happen without a terrorist (false flag op) on American soil. (I think the Bush boys know the American public is getting wise to that.) No, what I foresee happening, if the conspiracy theory holds true about the Iraqi war being related to shale oil, and price regulation to push America into world energy dominance, is this:

Following the meeting between Bush and Ahmedinejad that may have taken place in the UN Assembly building in New York City recently, both nations begin ratcheting up tensions and sending signals out that they are becoming more aggressive. Simultaneously the arms and funding to the insurgents in Iraq are closed off as Iran diverts its attention to the coming war and the US prepares with a buildup of military assets in the region. (Anyone notice the Iraq combat deaths in October are running half of what they were last month and only a third of August?) So, conveniently, the scenario to keep oil prices high is contracted between Iran and the United States, in order to have a showdown between the two countries amid the background of the US being able to claim it won the war against the insurgents in Iraq. Of course it did, it was the US who funded most of the insurgency in the first place... just cut the funds and the insurgency stops.

So here's the rest of the scenario as I see it playing out, if there is a real conspiracy between Bush and Ahmedinejad: Iran launches a major invasion of Iraq's northern regions -- Kurdistan -- and Turkey sends in forces of its own. Rather than withdraw, the US and Iraqi forces counterattack (with a Congressional mandate in Bush's hands -- always gotta respond to naked aggression, after all) and that counterattack send both nations across their borders again. That ends the war for Turkey, since it's a NATO ally and it's facing its own ally on the battle lines, but drives it into the camp of Russia from then on, fulfilling Ezekiel 37 in part. As for Iran, that war becomes open-ended and both Iraqi and US forces are from then on engaged with Iran for years to come, ensuring that oil prices stay high and shale's development proceeds until the US becomes a net exporter of oil. After that happens energy prices drop and the situation in the Middle East calms down.... because energy prices dropped (somewhat) and the funding for arms and terror runs low again. Quite possibly, by that time the world is crying "peace, prosperity, safety" and following that..... the Great Tribulations.

If Bush and Ahmedinejad are not in cahoots, then I very much doubt there will be a US-Iranian war. I don't see most Iranians being that enthusiastic about invading Iraq, on their own volition. I think it would have to happen only because it was a conspiracy's idea to do it to inflate energy prices. The whole reason, by the way, that Iran wants nuclear reactors? They have seen the end of liquid crude oil on the horizon as an economically viable staple. Cold nuclear fusion research is slowly making its way in several parts of the world, though being subjected to pressure to suppress in the United States by big oil. Those in control of America want us permanently hooked on oil, and the world hooked on what will be American shale oil, for as long as possible before the cold fusion wave hits and ends all dependence on fossil fuels. And, I do not think the conspiracy will completely succeed -- that house of cards will topple long before they are ready for it to.

Aliens don't get to have America's rights? And we fight for what, exactly...?

Senator Mel Martinez (R, Florida) wrote to me, in part:

"The strength of America depends on the preservation of our values. Terrorists who are detained in this war, and subsequently prosecuted, should be afforded an appropriate legal process; however, these detainees simply cannot and should not be afforded the same rights and process that our citizens enjoy in our courts."

I asked him in reply, "So you're saying aliens should not have the same rights as Americans? OK. What exactly are we fighting for in the Middle East then?"

My choices for President and Vice President

I once endorsed Ron Paul, a Republican Congressman from Texas, for President, and retired Gen. Wesley Clark, a former Democratic presidential candidate, as my choices for President and Vice President of the United States. I believed the two of them were the best choices because neither one seemed to be "owned" by any corporate interests, both were opposed to the war in Iraq, one is a veteran with loads of experience in defense matters, and both seemed to be quite interested in restoring Constitutional government and making it work for the people.

However, I found some problems with Paul's arch-conservative stances against abortion, against equal rights for people of alternative lifestyles, and for doctrinaire laissez-faire capitalism which I think has harmed the United States when it has been let run unchecked. Therefore I'm withdrawing my support of Ron Paul, and for now I am only endorsing Gen. Clark for President. I think I may write in Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf for Vice President pending a study of issues and causes he supports.

The United States is utterly unprepared for FAMINE.

See this link http://www.iceagenow.com/US_Food_Supplies.htm. If a severe drought hits the Midwest on a scale like that of the 1930s, there is no slack in the food supplies and no storage to draw upon because dumbass politicians decided that taxpayers shouldn't fund the storage of grain and agribusinesses that do 99 percent of the farming with 1 percent of the population do not CARE.

Gene Scott vs. the FCC -- The Beat Goes On

The FCC from 1977 to around 1983 conducted a fraud investigation of my pastor Dr. Gene Scott, now deceased, on allegations from anonymous sources that he had been misusing funds raised from donors. It had decided, in its interpretation of Congressional will concerning fraud, that it had a mission to regulate and examine the financial operations of religious broadcasters owning TV stations in the US, and pursuant to that they began a campaign of fraud investigations targeting religious broadcasters that began with Gene Scott's Faith Center and with another church called the Crystal Cathedral, both located in California. At the time Dr. Scott was preaching from three on-air television stations located in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Hartford. In the process of the investigation a raid was conducted on the offices and sanctuary of Faith Center in which something like 8,000 of hours of videotapes of Gene Scott's teaching were seized valued at $250,000 at the time. The church was broken into in the middle of the night for this, doing damage to its entranceway, and no warrant was issued or served by a Federal judge authorizing this illegal entry.

In the course of this investigation the FCC demanded from Dr. Scott the names and addresses of every donor who had given anything from a penny upwards to the ministry. Scott refused, citing a First Amendment right to keep the names of the donors secret, in keeping with scripture from Matthew 6 which says that giving is to be kept secret. After he repeatedly refused to cooperate with the investigation while bitterly protesting its violations of Constitutional law, the FCC ordered him to shut down the three stations that were owned by the church, and he pulled the plug at midnight May 23, 1983.

Now, Dr. Gene Scott had always taught (and the ministry under his successor Melissa Scott to this day still teaches) that giving is an ileomasonry activity, meaning all giving is to a general fund to be designated however the pastor sees fit. In addition to this, since Gene Scott's unanimous election as pastor in 1975, donors to this ministry have never been allowed by the pastor to take tax deductions for their donations, in order to honor Matthew 6 which says to give in secret, because God rewards openly what He sees in secret. So, defrauding the donors is impossible, the donors already expect that the money they give, which is voluntary tuition to the teacher-pastor, is no longer theirs any more than the money you pay a restaurant bill with is still yours. (It's called stealing if you don't pay for your food already eaten.) Everyone who listened to the teaching long enough, whether in person or via electronic means, learned that giving is in response to the teaching of the word of God already heard, not for any other reason, and the pastor is responsible to God, not to man, to account for how it is spent just as the congregation is accountable to God for paying tithes. Everyone listening long enough who becomes motivated to give already knows this. If some moron protests that their donations are being misused, the money gets returned to him, and he loses his membership for lying about having listened to the teaching -- especially the part where it is no longer "their" money, it's God's money, Scripture orders it to be given to the priest for his living, and the priest is accountable only to God for how it is spent.

So, when the FCC broke those doors down, without a warrant, using the excuse of "compelling state interest" and violating the Fourth Amendment against warrantless, unreasonable searches and seizures, they were on a fishing expedition to try to determine that the pastor had defrauded the donors by spending "their" money on things the donors didn't authorize. 8,000 hours of teaching on the video evidence included all of the stipulations on giving, but that didn't alter the bureaucrats' course a whit; they had decided the pastor was defrauding, despite 8,000 hours of teaching they stole and never bothered to listen to, which stipulated what the money was for and ruled out the possibility of fraud.

The legal conflict with the FCC lasted from 1977 to 1989, as Gene Scott filed a lawsuit for damages against the FCC and its officers amounting to $77,777,777.77. Scott pursued it through the system to higher and higher levels until a Federal District Court judge finally told the defendants, the FCC investigators and their bosses, that they were eligible to face full civil liability under the US Code enforcing civil rights -- which meant they could be sued to the skivvies for every penny they had to their individual names. They were quick to settle out of court after that, although a friend of mine is trying to tell me Gene Scott lost this series of lawsuits. No, he appealed upstairs repeatedly and forced a settlement. That isn't a loss. But the entire episode really burned into us the reality of the ruthlessness of the Federal Government and what it is truly capable of.

Now, in case anyone is still unclear on the main issue, the FCC's demand for donor records was a violation of the First Amendment, and it's not an attempted violation, the demand ITSELF was the first violation. As a Christian church that has a policy of members giving in secret, which follows a directive of Jesus Christ, Faith Center never forwarded donor names to the IRS for tax deductions or to government agencies for any other purpose, and giving in secret is established as a eucharist and a worship activity, per Matthew 6, Galatians 6, the book of Philippians, and many other Biblical passages. When Gene Scott refused to bow to this demand, the agency punished him with financial audits that forced the church to account for every screw, nail, and light bulb that got inserted in any orifice (except inside those of bureaucrats), and when it was still unsatisfied to find no evidence of fraud, since they could not substantiate its source of income -- secret donors -- it refused to renew Faith Center's broadcast licenses for the three stations it owned, a step that is usually reserved for station owners who are convicted of a crime or of actual civil violations of broadcasting regulations. No violations of FCC regulations by Gene Scott were ever proved. It even accused Dr. Scott of "bad faith negotiations" while it practiced extremely bad faith as constitutional officers. That's what they called his protecting the donors' First Amendment rights as worshipers and worship includes GIVING, it's a contraction of worth-ship. The FCC called protecting that "bad faith negotiation." They remind me of poo-flinging monkeys in a zoo judging chickens for crapping in a hutch!

Someone raised a point with me stating, "Often when someone’s free speech is violated, they wind up in jail and/or killed for what they say or do. Dr Scott was not locked up, gagged, censored, nor prevented from speaking out or teaching any of his work, he simply had a license non-renewed and was thus forced to move to cable where the FCC no longer had jurisdiction over his fundraising." Well, there were instances where several members of our church who were outed to government agencies, like the IRS, were severely harassed by several government agencies and some were jailed on trumped up charges such as tax evasion. In addition to this Gene Scott used to receive numerous death threats in his mail from anonymous parties -- as anonymous as the parties that incited the FCC investigation. So what, now we wait for jailing and killing for a case to be made that rights are being violated?

"Well," you might say, "that doesn't prove he wasn't defrauding the givers!" Out of what? The teaching already given? "Well," you might assert, "he ought not to have been living the wealthy lifestyle he had on the backs of the givers." First of all, that was his apostolic right, to make a living by his teaching. Scripture says "Muzzle not the ox that treads out the grain" and "Let him who is taught share materially with the one that taught him." Luther said "the law was not made for cattle." "Well," you say, "he might get rich!" So what? The Pope is rich, and the media fawn all over him whenever he comes to town. One difference between him and Gene Scott was, Gene Scott was rich before he was ever elected pastor of Faith Center.

When he came to town in 1975 he found Faith Center owing $3 million with only $19,000 cash to pay in 30 days. The church wanted him to solve this problem, and they were so desperate they unanimously (while hiding a small handful of "no" ballots) gave him a blank check granting him 15 terms of service, and he made the church take steps to solve it, because that's the responsibility of the flock, to pay the tuition and expenses of the church and its pastor, while he conducts his pastoral mission, meaning one of a shepherd, and beats the wolves off of the flock, which he did by filing against creditors from out of state for violating California laws about debt collection. And here's the second shoe dropping: The money raised from the flock mainly paid church-related expenses, even though the pastor has the literally God-given Apostolic right to spend it any way he pleases because every penny is stipulated to be tuition. Dr. Scott's salary for pastoring was one dollar a year plus expenses; when he died the church was solvent, and still is, because it is self-sufficient.

I never saw the FCC try to shut down a Catholic owned TV station even with investigations against the Vatican Bank over a money laundering scheme that netted a BILLION dollars, with one cardinal hiding in the Vatican city-state to avoid prosecution for fraud! Know why? The Pope already undid one superpower -- the Soviet Union -- and he can undo another one. Don't even try to tell me the resistance of the people made that happen... It would not have been possible if the Catholic Church didn't have the capacity to reach and motivate billions around the world, or if the Pope had chosen not to speak out against Communism, as previous popes had not. It took a leader with guts, vision, and power. Especially -- POWER. I only wish there was a Protestant church with enough power to do the same thing. It'll never happen if this trinket-happy, materialistic, mentally warped society that worships the dollar, but won't do more than lip service to God, keeps being allowed to dictate to a church what a right financial relationship with God comprises. I would rather have a pastor that has the guts to tell the world to f--- off and mind its own business, and the guts to tell the world that neither the FCC nor any other non-elected government agency full of decrepit, moronic tyrants in embryo, who can't keep their private parts in their pants let alone obey the Constitution, has any business dictating what a church's rights are, or any business defining what comprises fraud or any other moral turpitude on the part of a minister of God!

Who should be President?

To tell you the truth, I do not have fixed in my mind yet who I should vote for to be the next President. Obama seems to be the freshest candidate, yet there are some questions about his background, probably unfair ones, but the majority of information about his early years seems to come from his autobiography, and is fairly often seen quite differently by the people he grew up with. Hillary Clinton is the most experienced Democratic candidate, having advised a previous President (Bill) through eight years and with access to his advisors, but also having compromised on her original vision of single-payer health care.... and while I would really like to see nationalized health care, I also fear that it would lead to another loss of privacy as the government becomes as heavily involved in our private health concerns the way insurance companies already are. This nation seems to increasingly lack discretion about the records of its citizens, and instead of compartmentalizing information to protect us, it only does that to protect itself, while opening our records applying to private matters, like medical care and addiction treatment, to examination by agencies across the spectrum of government, such as tax agencies that you have to justify exemptions for health care to, or law enforcement which this country has seen fit to involve so deeply in the matter of addiction treatment.

As for the GOP field I could dispense with them in one sentence, just about. Too conservative, too law-and-order, too ready to sell our rights down the river for the sake of order and security. Not that the Democrats are not almost fatally flawed in this respect -- their utter disregard for the Second Amendment is well known, and as a Christian I feel I have some cause to worry how well people like me would be respected in our First Amendment rights. Churches already have had their lobbying rights threatened by campaign finance reform.

And now in Florida we have the spectacle of our state being disqualified from voting at the Democratic Convention because the Republican-dominated state legislature moved the primary dates back to January. A deliberate act of sabotage that the Democrats on the national level saw fit to ignore for the sake of following party rules, instead of making an exception because of the utter unfairness of having that decision made for them by Republicans! Why not, if you're a Democrat, do more to disenfranchise your own voters and plan to lose ANOTHER Presidential race!

Of course, if the dissolution of the Posse Comitatus Act results in a coup d'etat none of this will matter anyway, the struggle for just government will be far more basic -- it will be about overthrowing the fascists that stole our country. Good luck. I'll just be looking heavenward knowing my redemption is nigh -- maybe not nigh enough to avoid arrest and imprisonment for dissent, but nigh enough, maybe, to be caught up to see my Lord in the flesh without tasting death, and to be given power to ride with Him as He takes vengeance on the enemies of His people.

The Truth about Global Warming

http://mysite.verizon.net/mhieb/WVFossils/global_warming.html

More later on this.

Wiki article "Martial Law," in the United States

I'm posting the following from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martial_law and leaving it here for anyone to read:

"United States of America
See also: Suspension clause
The martial law concept in the U.S. is closely tied with the Writ of habeas corpus, which is in essence the right to a hearing on lawful imprisonment, or more broadly, the supervision of law enforcement by the judiciary. The ability to suspend habeas corpus is often equated with martial law. Article 1, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution states, "The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion, the public Safety may require it."
In United States law, martial law is limited by several court decisions that were handed down between the American Civil War and World War II. In 1878, Congress passed the Posse Comitatus Act, which forbids military involvement in domestic law enforcement without congressional approval.
The National Guard is an exception, since unless federalized, they are under the control of state governors. [5]. This has now changed. Public Law 109-364, or the "John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007" (H.R.5122), was signed by President Bush on October 17, 2006, and allows the President to declare a "public emergency" and station troops anywhere in America and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities. Title V, Subtitle B, Part II, Section 525(a) of the JWDAA of 2007 reads "The [military] Secretary [of the Army, Navy or Air Force] concerned may order a member of a reserve component under the Secretary's jurisdiction to active duty...The training or duty ordered to be performed...may include...support of operations or missions undertaken by the member's unit at the request of the President or Secretary of Defense." [6]"

Curtains and Shields Operations by the Feds

The following was sent to me through a friend, and I've withheld authorship because it came via email:

" October 15 to 20 our government will conduct Operation Vigilant Shield 08 and TOPOFF 4 where our military with Homeland Security and other government agencies as well as nongovernmental agencies( like BLACKWATER since used after Katrina to drag people off and confiscate their guns which later a court decision said violated our Constitutional rights ) will practice such things as MARTIAL LAW and coordination of activities in case of a terrorist attack or natural disaster. The clergy will be used to help convince us to submit to government control. When a similar exercise happened with similar government units we had 911.

"Are we about to get a false flag operation to justify a war with Iran and possibly to take us to the next level of the police state? Just a thought since we now have May 9 Presidential Directives making Bush a dictator under the right conditions; plus potential loss of any citizen's Habeas Corpus rights with the Military Commissions Act which means your Bill of Rights are gone; loss of Posse Comitatus and Insurrections Act in the John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 which somewhat protected us from mainstream military being used against us; new division of the Army USARNORTH mission ready to militarize the local police and dictate to the national guard related to loss of Posse Comitatus; several hundred FEMA detention camps built and more being built by KBR as well as civilian labor camps on military bases; loss of privacy by illegal spying by 52 agencies and near 200 programs; and a host of Presidential Executive Orders and Directives that establish such things as FEMA as the government agency to take over with the President and Congress goes home. Everything is in place. You can look up the facts just as I have them in hand.

"There is much more that ties all this together. Be concerned about this Operation and where the potential could lead. It also will involve the use of clergy to help convince people to submit to the martial law and the governments takeover. View that in video (2)

"(1) Long article but explains a lot with links.
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_2506.shtml


"(2) http://www.blacklistednews.com/view.asp?ID=4185"

Second note, from the same person:


"Operation Solid Curtain and Citadel Shield September 2007 already took place and ties into the email sent on Operation Vigilant Shield happening next week. This all adds up to something potentially dangerous. By the way the US went to DEFCON 2 one step away during this. In this article they mention the review of the nuclear missiles "accidentally" shipped across the US ; however, its interesting to note that 12 people associated with this accident have had "accidents" and died. What are the odds? What is the connection? Please read and come to own conclusions. [author withheld by me.]

"http://www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com/node/3511"

Back to Turtle talking -- I honestly don't know what to make of this, whether I should be worried or not. But, I wanted to get this posted because if these articles are correct we may suffer an enormous blow to our rights later this month. Forewarned is forearmed.

Addendum to Mark 9:1 exegesis

About tis, tines... tis is not an adverb, it is a pronoun whose genitive case is followed by repeated genitive cases of noun phrases (including a verb or two fronted by genitive noun determiners) in the Mark 9:1 and similar Matthew 16:28 and Luke 9:27 passages discussed. I don't know what possessed me -- :) -- to say it functions like an adverb; in those verses it functions like a genitive preposition when it's in the genitive case. Also, the German word während -- "during" -- is a genitive preposition: the nouns it applies to are put in genitive case. Wanted to clear that up because this passage's grammar is strange enough as it is without me inadvertently making it weirder.

Also, a friend of mine commented to me privately about the use of genitive case stating flatly that the genitive is only the possessive case. No, it is not. Go to this webpage -- http://www.ntgreek.org/learn_nt_greek/classify-genitive.htm -- and take a moment and read the headings (i.e., Genitive after certain prepositions, Genitive of Direct Object, Possessive Genitive, Genitive of Relationship, Partative Genitive, Attributive Genitive, and ad nauseum, there are 15 different usages including Genitive of Time.) If you read this page, you might not understand the Greek too much better, but you'll get an idea just how many different legitimate uses there are for the genitive case, and that it is NOT simply the "possessive case" of the Greek language.

Comments welcome

Comments are enabled for the public, so if you wish to comment feel free. Of course, if any comments are overly nasty or nutty I reserve the right to delete them.

The Context of Mark 9:1, Matthew 16:28, Luke 9:27

I am a Rapturist and I believe in multiple catchings away of certain of God's people, not just the usually emphasized one of the body of believers before times of wrath. And, I'm also a prophecy student and believer, not relying on any one isolated verse for interpretation but on a very large mosaic of scriptures linked by the Rules of Hillel that I may get into later on. And, I also believe in the Resurrection, and the grounding reasons for my believing it are from the study Dr. Gene Scott made of it. So those can be taken as exemplars of the frame of reference through which I see Mark 9:1.

In discussing Mark 8, Matthew 16, and Luke 9, I think it is valid to presume that after Jesus talked about his death and resurrection, that he would then talk about what comes after his resurrection. His speech goes from talking about the suffering of the son of man, then being killed, then being raised after three days. Nothing about the ascension per se. Then, after an interruption by Peter, Jesus talks about what faithers will go through -- the faith response to the resurrection, which is what the entire church age deals with, quoting part of it from Mark 8:34-5 in the KJV here:

"And when he had called the people [unto him] with his disciples also, he said unto them, Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it."

And then he moves into this speech in the KJV:

Mark 8:38: "Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh [is established] in [with, by means of, through] the glory of his Father with the holy angels." [Show me where that happened at the Ascension? Looks to me like He was LEAVING.]

So here we're already past the entire history of the church age at the end of days, he's already talking about his coming back in glory to establish his kingdom, setting up judgment, and makes a parenthetical note about the people of God escaping and establishing the kingdom in that time in Mark 9:1 (retranslated by me):

"And he said to them, Amen (trust in this), I tell you that there be a time when they have established (have escaped) under these circumstances: Whosoever may not taste of death for themselves, till they may see God's kingdom has come (been established) through (the) power of hosts."

And there the speech ends -- at the end.

Since the ascension is actually not mentioned in Mark 8 (or Luke 9, or Matthew 16; I dare you to try to find it there), it's just not the point of this speech. I think the end of the speech continues the thoughts begun in the previous verse about the coming of the son of man in his Father's glory with the angels, which students of Daniel and Revelation may take as the last days, when wrath comes on the world as God overthrows the world and sets up (establishes) His own kingdom. So, I believe the escape clause is written in 9:1 for people of that future time to escape that wrath, not because Jesus was so thrilled about the Ascension that He was daring people to show up for it -- we're talking about someone who walked on water; a little levitation and catching the divine equivalent of a taxi is nothing to the guy. The bigger events by far were the ones he did forecast in these passages -- his suffering, death, and resurrection after three days, followed by what he told faithers what their attitude needs to become -- everything the church is supposed to teach in a compressed nutshell. So what Jesus went to next in subject matter was the end of the church age and His second coming, including His kingdom coming in power with the angels.

Mark 9:1, Matthew 16:28, Luke 9:27

These passages have caused some controversy.... for one thing they have been used to beat on Christians about the fact that Jesus didn't come back within anyone's lifetime as the enthroned Son of Man coming with His kingdom with power. Now, it's undeniably true that, as read, all three verses in the King James pretty much say the same thing -- that some people standing there listening to Jesus preach this are not going to die until the Kingdom of God comes with power with the Son of Man coming in His Kingdom. That's in the King James as you can see here from http://www.blueletterbible.org/.

Mar 9:1
¶
And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.
Luk 9:27
¶
But I tell you of a truth, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the kingdom of God.

Mat 16:28
Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.

Now for the Greek versions -- of which Blueletter Bible presents two apiece for each verse using two authoritative Greek New Testaments, the Textus Receptus from Stephens and the Westcott-Hort text with NA variants. Here they are transliterated roughly into Latin characters for your perusal. I'll get to the translation issues after this.

Stephens' Textus Receptus, and Westcott-Hort
Luke 9:27

S- lego de umin alethos eisin tines ton ode estekoton oi ou me geusontai thanatou eos an idosin ten basileian tou theou

W- lego de umin alethos eisin tines ton autou estekoton oi ou me geusontai thanatou eos an idosin ten basileian tou theou

Matthew 16:28

S- amen lego umin eisin tines ton ode estekoton oitines ou me geusontai thanatou eos an idosin tou uion tou anthropou erchomenon en te basileia autou

W- amen lego umin hoti eisin tines ton ode estoton oitines ou me geusontai thanatou eos an idosin tou uion tou anthropou erchomenon en te basileia autou

Mark 9:1

S- kai elegen autois amen lego umin oti eisin tines ton ode estekoton oitines ou me geusontai thanatou eos an idosin ten basileian tou theou eleluthuian en dunamei

W- kai elegen autois amen lego umin oti eisin tines ode ton estekoton oitines ou me geusontai thanatou eos an idosin ten basileian tou theou eleluthuian en dunamei

Of the three texts and two versions of each, Mark seems to have the longest version of this verse, and in keeping with F.F. Bruce's ascribing to Mark the earliest version of the Gospel, I'll analyze Mark 9:1.

On first blush, there seems to be no significant difference between Stephens and Westcott except for the reversal of word order at tines ton ode estekoton which is rendered tines ode ton estekoton in Westcott. Is that important? We'll see. The strangest thing is there's no noun for ton to modify in either version. More on that later. Let's start with kai elegen autois -- pretty straightforward, it says "and he was saying to them." The verb lego, meaning "say, direct, teach, point out, call," etc., is in imperfect active indicative, simple direct past action that is ongoing. The pronoun autois is in dative case, meaning to them, they were indirect objects of the ongoing speech and teaching of Jesus. Not direct objects. That's interesting. Could it mean that what he was saying to them was not about them? We'll see.

The next word is amen. It's that old Hebrew word for faith, embodying the concept that what this sayer is saying, you can trust it, walk on it, live in it. It gets translated "Verily," but no one English word seems to adequately convey the full force of this word, and apparently no Greek word did either, since two of the Gospel writers who covered that part of Jesus's speech saw fit not to translate it, but just kept it as amen. Jesus says "Amen lego," and lego is the simple present active indicative, it means "Amen, I say" -- so what's coming next is very direct. The word umin looks like, not the dative, but the accusative of ou, "you," so when this gets put together it should read "Amen (you can walk on what I'm saying) I tell you." Next word is oti, which corresponds to "that" in English, creating a dependent clause relating what comes before to what comes after. It can also be translated "because" and "since" and would probably be better expressed as "that-because." Next word is estin, from eisi, to be. It's in the present indicative with no voice stated. It's used to simply state that something exists -- the King James uses "there be."

The next word is tines, and here's where things get mighty interesting. It's the genitive plural of the pronoun tis, which can mean a certain one, referring to no specific thing or person, or it can mean a certain time. The use of this word indicates that the speaker is talking about something that he either cannot or will not refer to more specifically, according to Thayer's Lexicon on tis. So, we have "there be" or just "be some(things, persons, times.)" So far the sentence Jesus is uttering does not force an application to any persons present in front of him at that time, or even to any persons or things in particular. Yet. We need context. What's the next word?

We got two -- and they are either ton ode or ode ton. Ton is the definite article, with a long o or omega -- indicating it is genitive plural. What it's referring to, in other words, reads "The blanks'...." Before I put that together we also need the verb in the dependent clause, estekoton. It's the perfect active participle of istemi, usually translated "to stand." Thus, a basic translation of eskoton would be "they have stood." Now, if you have followed Dr. Gene Scott or Melissa Scott on Greek grammar, you know that definite articles and possessives can do some strange things -- such as be applied to verbs and adjectives. estekoton stands at the fulcrum of a dependent clause introduced by what seems to be a possessive noun phrase. It's like saying "This plural verb estekoton is genitive and specific!" Now, why on earth would it be genitive? And why specify it with a noun determiner? That calls special attention to estekoton, doesn't it?

So we have ton ode estekoton.... one of those strange cases of a determiner referring to a verb, ton estekoton.... "of the have stood." And we have found that estekoton, "they have stood," is genitive. But we didn't really cover the full definitions of histemi. And, it's also odd that the verb is in perfect tense, which is the past tense. It doesn't mean "they are standing," but "they have stood," or more fully literal, "of the finished act by them of standing" or "of the (they) have stood." Completed act. Now, those of you who have studied Biblical eschatology (prophecy) know that in Hebrew there is no future tense, the past tense is used to refer to the future. It's long been a reasonable assumption that Jesus spoke Aramaic to his disciples, a close relative of Hebrew, and hence he would not have had to be bound to refer to future events in a future tense, so we can also have "the (they) will stand."

Now, getting back to ton estekoton, one of the uses of the genitive case, according to Corey Keating at http://www.ntgreek.org/learn_nt_greek/classify-syntax-intro.htm is genitive of time. Basically this means that tines can mean "within some time" or "during some time." Rather than using "of" to communicate the genitive case of a verb, it seems to make more sense that when the genitive is referent to a verb, it should refer to time rather than possession or adjectival characteristic. (The use of genitive prepositions for time is not foreign to Indo-European linguistics; a German preposition of time, während, invokes the genitive noun case -- während des Tages, "during the day.")

Compare these examples:

"...Amen, I tell you that there be of some persons, those who have stood here, which shall not taste of death...."

"...Amen, I tell you that there be during some times, those who have stood here, which shall not taste of death...."

Simplified for us English speakers, "...Amen, I tell you that there be some time, those who have stood here, which shall not taste of death...."

Now we can see why the King James translators went for something like the first version of what I just posted. But they translated the verb tense which should be literally "which have stood here" as "which are standing here." "Have stood" is completed past, and the only legitimate alternative Biblical tense is "will stand." Jesus isn't even talking about the people in front of Him. It's completed action, already done, or if translated from Aramaic, it's completed action, possibly YET TO HAPPEN. But either way, He's not talking about the audience then standing in front of Him, because that requires a present participle, not a perfect participle, or it at least requires an imperfect participle. The action is finished in the Greek. The people standing in front of Christ did not finish standing in front of Christ before He uttered his speech. Otherwise, who would have taken it down?

So the grammar begins to force us to consider another way to translate this verse, as the perfect tense of completed action drives in the realization that Jesus was not talking about His audience present before Him, either in the present tense or in a tense indicating continued action (the imperfect.) The second version does leave us with a puzzle, because even though Jesus wasn't talking about His then-present audience, He was definitely talking about somebody... the question we have not yet dealt with is, did those people He talked about ever stand there where He was preaching, or do we need to take another look at the adverb ode and the verb istemi? Is there a reason istemi should actually be in the perfect tense even though referring to a future event, apart from an issue of translation from Aramaic?

Let's take a look at the adverb ode. As I said before, ode's original definition in Homeric Greek is "in this manner. It picked up the definition "in this place" some time later, but also developed more definitions similar to "in this manner" such as "in this state of things" and "under these circumstances," according to Thayer's Lexicon. Let's try an experiment and replace "here" with "in this manner," for the second version of the phrase (my version of it.)

"...Amen, I tell you, there be some time, those who have stood in this manner, which shall not taste of death...."

Or we can try "under these circumstances." "...Amen, I tell you, there be some time, those who have stood under these circumstances, which shall not taste of death...."

Now let's take a look at histemi. These are all the definitions given in Blueletter on this verb.

1) to cause or make to stand, to place, put, set
a) to bid to stand by, [set up]
1) in the presence of others, in the midst, before judges, before members of the Sanhedrin;
2) to place
b) to make firm, fix establish
1) to cause a person or a thing to keep his or its place
2) to stand, be kept intact (of family, a kingdom), to escape in safety
3) to establish a thing, cause it to stand
a) to uphold or sustain the authority or force of anything
c) to set or place in a balance
1) to weigh: money to one (because in very early times before the introduction of coinage, the metals used to be weighed)
2) to stand
a) to stand by or near
1) to stop, stand still, to stand immovable, stand firm
a) of the foundation of a building
b) to stand
1) continue safe and sound, stand unharmed, to stand ready or prepared
2) to be of a steadfast mind
3) of quality, one who does not hesitate, does not waiver

You'll probably notice that the use of the verb as "stand" in English, in which we normally mean, "there's someone who's on his feet, vertical and not laying down," doesn't occur until the second main definition. The first definition has to do with setting something up, causing it to be established, or in the case of setting up a kingdom, to both establish authority and to escape in safety. Those of you who follow medieval and ancient history know that in many cases the child of a king lived in danger every moment until he ascended to the throne... at any moment a jealous uncle or brother might kill him and take his place in the succession to the throne. Eastern monarchial successions were particularly Darwinian, as a monarch might have multiple wives, not necessarily having the status of queens, and many many sons, so sorting out a succession could be a very messy affair, usually fatal to all of the parties that lost out. Why am I pointing this sidebar out, you asked? Well, let's read the rest of the verse in the King James.

"...there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power."

The kingdom of God! A monarchial succession is the context, as this verse is at least partly about the crowning of Jesus Christ as king. That would logically dictate, or at least powerfully suggest, the use of histemi in the sense of establishing a kingdom, and escaping in safety to the throne. So let's try it out.

"...Amen, I tell you that there be some time, they who have established/been established/escaped to safety in this manner, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power." We could smooth that over for idiomatic reasons.

"...Amen, I tell you that there is a time when those who have established/been established/escaped to safety in this manner, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power."

"Which" now seems like a rather poor translation of oitines, probably better rendered "whosoever" or perhaps even "whosoever's" as that pronoun also appears to be genitive. geusontai appears as the aorist middle voice subjunctive tense of geuomai, to taste, to experience. Now what the heck is aorist middle voice subjunctive, you ask? These are several concepts not usually found in your English elementary grammar books, because English does not conjugate verbs without helper verbs and extra pronouns to convey the meaning expressed by this combination. Aorist expresses action without reference to time -- there is no past, present, or future tense here. The middle voice, Gene Scott's students are likely to be familiar with, this expresses action taken for oneself -- selfishly oriented action, and reflexive action. A child is using middle voice when he says "I can do it myself!" Subjunctive means the action may or may not happen, it's conditional on other circumstances. In English, we place the helper verb "may" with a verb in subjunctive case, "I may go there." A conditional clause would begin with "if," and adding it in, "If I have gas money, I may go there."

So, if we put together oitines ou me geusontai, we come up with "whosoever may not taste/experience oneself." More idiomatically we could render that, "Whoever it is may not taste for themselves." Next word, thanatou, means death, and it's in the genitive singular case, oddly enough. Here we go again with this genitive. It's a cue that the modification by tines is continuing through to this part of the sentence as every noun and pronoun from tines to thanatou is in genitive case, thereby forcing the English to render the string of material from tines to thanatou as a prepositional phrase of time. This is still "during some time," in other words. And now we know the action of "may not taste" has to be set in the future, because the subjunctive mode is inherently futuristic, dealing with possibilities, and the aorist tense doesn't tie that down, all while noun cases are remaining genitive through this clause.

So let's see how we're doing on this translation so far:

"...Amen, I tell you that there is a time when those who have established/been established/escaped to safety in this manner, whosoever/whoever it is may not themselves taste/experience death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power."

I prefer the future phrasing because of the subjunctive cast on "taste/experience" still within the genitive noun chain from "during some time,"

"...Amen, I tell you that there is a time when those who will establish/be established/escape to safety in this manner, whosoever/whoever it is may not themselves taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power."

There's no punctuation in the Greek and it looks to me like the comma between "in this manner, whosoever" needs to be a colon instead. So,

"...Amen, I tell you that there is a time when those who will establish/be established/escape to safety in this manner: Whosoever/whoever it is may not themselves taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power."

I can defend this usage because everyone who has been established already as of Jesus's time is dead. They all tasted death, so obviously this verse cannot apply to them or to the past. eos is a conjunction of time or circumstances where things reach a limit, so the limit is defined after it as "they have seen the kingdom of God come with power." So the action of the kingdom of God coming with power puts an end to tasting death, subjunctively, for the one who may or may not taste it. an is a particle reinforcing the subjunctive mood, the action of seeing may occur under certain conditions. The KJV attempts to translate this particle by adding "soever" to "who." And, not surprisingly, the verb idosin is eido in a subjunctive mood, and in aorist again... action not defined by time, so we are still continuing that "some-when" time that is not yet. So, the last part of the verse becomes "they may see the kingdom of God..." ten basileian is feminine accusative, "they may see the kingdom." "Kingdom" is the direct object, so they may look at it directly, in person. tou theou is masculine singular genitive -- now notice with the break to the direct object, that was actually the break from genitive that concludes with thanatou, death. tou theou is a new genitive noun phrase, and does not refer back to the genitive string of clauses that came before it... instead, it's genitive of possession, God's kingdom. Let's have another look at the translation:

"...Amen, I tell you that there is a time when those who will establish/be established/escape to safety in this manner/under these circumstances: Whosoever/whoever it is may not themselves taste of death, till they may see God's kingdom come with power." Idiomatically we could eliminate the second "may" without losing the subjunctive sense. eleluthuian is the second perfect active participle of erchomai, to come. Its definitions include "to appear" and "to be established," which is that denotation that goes along with the idea of a kingdom arriving on the scene. You can legitimately say "God's kingdom has been established with power." "Power," dunamei, is apparently in the dative case, and en, "with," is a dative preposition with about as many varieties of meaning as German "mit." I'll simply say here that the best meaning I seem to be able to get here for "with" would be "by means of" or "through" after examining the alternatives in Thayer's. God doesn't need power, He has it intrinsically, so this is extra power, the concept of khayil as it would be in the Hebrew. Dunamis contains this concept in its definitions -- power for performing miracles, power due to wealth and riches, power arising from numbers, and power of armies and forces. So, "God's kingdom has been established by means of power of hosts" would be best here, in my opinion, or "miraculous power" could also be used.

So, we're finished, and we can render some final versions of what this verse should probably read. Let's look at the entire Greek again and try a few:

kai elegen autois amen lego umin oti eisin tines ton ode estekoton oitines ou me geusontai thanatou eos an idosin ten basileian tou theou eleluthuian en dunamei.

"And he said to them, Amen, I tell you that there be a time when they have been established in this manner: Whoever (it is) may not themselves taste of death, till they see God's kingdom has come through (the) power of hosts."

"And he said to them, Amen, I tell you that there be a time when they will escape to safety under these circumstances: Whosoever may not themselves taste of death, till they see God's kingdom has come through miraculous power."

"And he said to them, Amen, I tell you that there be a time when they will be established under these circumstances: Whosoever may not taste of death for themselves, till they may see God's kingdom has come through (the) power of hosts."

I don't know what that says to most people, but to me it sounds an awful lot like another verse about the saints escaping wrath in times to come, as given in 1 Thessalonians 4:

1Th 4:13
¶
But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope.

1Th 4:14
For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.

1Th 4:15
For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive [and] remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.

1Th 4:16
For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:

1Th 4:17
Then we which are alive [and] remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

1Th 4:18
Wherefore comfort one another with these words.