Saturday, April 30, 2011
Syria’s siege of D
Friday, April 29, 2011
Flood may top 1927 r
Flood may top 1927 record | The News Star | thenewsstar.com
NEW ORLEANS — A surge of water not seen since the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 is forecast in coming days to test the enormous levees lining the Mississippi River on its course through the Deep South, adding another element of danger to a region already raked by deadly tornadoes and thunderstorms.
Mississippi's and Louisiana's governors issued flood warnings Thursday and declared states of emergency. Authorities along the swollen waterway in both states are warning nearby residents to brace for the possibility of any flooding. River boat casinos in Mississippi are closing and levee managers are readying sand bags and supplies — and the manpower to build the defenses — to fight the rising river along hundreds of levees in both states where the river crosses en route to the Gulf of Mexico.
"We're going to do everything we can to prepare for the worst-case scenario while we still are hoping for the best case," Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said, adding the state was prepared to withstand the test.
BlackBerry maker sla
Royal Wedding highli
BlackBerry maker slashes short-term sales forecast - BusinessWeek
Research In Motion Ltd., the maker of the BlackBerry, is cutting its sales and earnings forecasts for the current quarter, saying phone shipments are going to be fewer than expected.
The stock plunged 15 percent on the news.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Wal-Mart shoppers ru
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Storms kill 64 aroun
VIDEO: Tuscaloosa To
Donald Trump’s New
Death toll at 25 in
Death toll at 25 in latest bout of storms - chicagotribune.com
BIRMINGHAM, Ala (Reuters) - The death toll this week from tornadoes and severe storms pummeling the South rose to 25 people and the nasty weather is not yet over, emergency officials and weather forecasters said on Wednesday.Governors in Alabama, Arkansas and Tennessee each declared a state of emergency, and in Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour declared a state of emergency for 39 counties.
The latest casualties were in Louisiana and Tennessee.
A woman in Chattanooga, Tennessee, was killed at about 3:30 p.m. when a tree fell on her mobile home, said police Sergeant Jerri Weary.
White House Releases
BREAKING: White Hous
White House Releases Original Obama Birth Certificate - New Orleans News Story - WDSU New Orleans
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Obama administration is releasing President Barack Obama's long-form birth certificate, White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer announced Wednesday.Obama will discuss the decision to release the certificate Wednesday morning, the White House announced."This whole birther debate has been really bad for the Republican Party," Pfeiffer said. But the discussion is "crowding out the debate" on more important issues and is a distraction, he said.The so-called "birther" debate is "good politics" but "bad for the country," Pfeiffer added.Obama released a legally binding "certificate of live birth" in 2008, but many opponents of the president continue to assert he was born overseas and may be constitutionally ineligible to serve as president.Copyright CNN 2011
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
An Anti-War Candidat
Phoebe Snow has died
Phoebe Snow has died. Disabled daughter led singer to leave showbiz. - Music & Dance - Arts & Entertainment - Catholic Online
LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - At a time when many disabled children were sent to institutions, Snow decided to keep her daughter Valerie Rose at home and care for the child herself. Snow abandoned music for a while and entered into ill-fated business decisions in the quest to stay solvent enough to take care of Valerie.
High Risk For Severe
You Built What? A Mo
More twisters expect
Poplar Bluff, Mo. levee breached south of city Tuesday | Reuters
To prepare for expected flash flooding, about 1,000 people were evacuated Monday. A total of 59 people were rescued from homes and cars within a 90-minute period Monday night, said Poplar Bluff Police Captain Mike McClain.
McClain said the levee along the river has been sandbagged to plug overflows in the city limits.
The storms and flooding were the latest in the violent weather that has pummeled much of the mid-South this month, killing seven people in Arkansas Monday. Two weeks ago more than 47 people died as storms tore a wide path from Oklahoma all the way to North Carolina.
Flood warnings on Monday prompted evacuations of hundreds of people in Indiana, Kentucky and Missouri following days of rain that led to rivers cresting over the flood stage, according to forecasters.
More twisters expected after storm killed seven in Arkansas | Reuters
(Reuters) - Tornadoes and floods, which killed seven people in Arkansas and left thousands without power, threatened at least two more days of destruction, weather forecasters said on Tuesday.
"Tuesday and Wednesday will be particularly bad," warned Meteorologist Dan Kottlowski on AccuWeather.com.
Wealthy Leaving Las Vegas Mansions as Foreclosure Pain Spreads - Bloomberg
Nicolas Cage, the Oscar-winning star of “Leaving Las Vegas,” bought a seven-bedroom home with a panoramic view of the city’s casino-lined Strip in 2006 for $8.5 million. By January 2010, it was in foreclosure.
The next owner, who property records show paid $4.2 million, has put the house on the market for $7.9 million -- an “unrealistic” price, according to Zar Zanganeh, the broker handling the listing.
“It’s sad,” Zanganeh said, his high-heeled boots clacking on the marble floor as he gave a tour of the 14,000-square-foot (1,300-square-meter) mansion featuring a six-person steam shower and a closet the size of a small apartment. “There’s a lot of inventory, a lot of homes like this waiting for an owner.”
Monday, April 25, 2011
Barbour Says He Won�
Barbour Says He Won't Run For President In 2012 - Jackson News Story - WAPT Jackson
Republican Haley Barbour said on Monday that he won't be a presidential candidate in the 2012 election.For the last few months, Mississippi's governor had made several trips to speak to voters in the nation's early primary states.Barbour had said he was considering a run for president, but wouldn't make his final decision until after the legislative session, which ended earlier this month.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Sai Baba passes away
BBC News – Syria:
BBC News - Syria: Eyewitness accounts
The new deaths come days after the worst bloodshed since unrest began. At least 95 people were reported killed across Syria on Friday and a further 12 on Saturday, as mourners came under fire.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
William Eggleston’
William Eggleston's Stranded In Canton
William Eggleston’s 1974 film Stranded In Canton provides a rare behind the scenes look at the bohemian lifestyle of his circle of friends in Greenwood and Sumner, MS, Memphis, and New Orleans in the 1970’s. A Paris Review review article in 2010 tells about some of the people who were closest to Eggleston and are the subject of some of his most famous works..
US default could be
Yemeni president agr
120 dead after 2 day
Yemeni President Agr
Yemeni President Agrees To Step Down Within 30 Days - Jackson News Story - WAPT Jackson
SANAA, Yemen -- Yemen's embattled president agreed Saturday to a proposal by Gulf Arab mediators to step down within 30 days and hand power to his deputy in exchange for immunity from prosecution, a major about-face for the autocratic leader who has ruled for 32 years. The protest movement demanding President Ali Abdullah Saleh's immediate departure said Saturday that it also accepted the latest draft of the deal but with reservations. A day earlier, protesters staged the largest of two months of demonstrations, filling a five-lane boulevard across the capital with a sea of hundreds of thousands of people. A deadly crackdown by government forces and Saleh supporters has killed more than 130 people and prompted key allies to abandon the president and join the protesters. The six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, which includes powerful Saudi Arabia, has been seeking to broker an end to the crisis in the fragile and impoverished nation on the southern edge of the Arabian peninsula. The opposition movement, fed up with poverty and corruption under Saleh, said they object to an article in the GCC draft that gives parliament, which is dominated by Saleh's party, the right to reject the president's resignation. State TV reported that Yemen's foreign minister delivered the government's acceptance to mediators on Saturday. Protests continued Saturday and expanded to include a general strike. Schools, government offices and private companies shut their doors in response to the Yemeni opposition's call for a strike aimed at putting more pressure Saleh to step down. Thousands of protesters kept up sit-ins at city squares in at least five provinces, while Saleh accused the opposition of "dragging the country into a civil war" in a televised speech to a military academy. Saleh has over the past two months used violence to try to quell the unrest. He has also offered concessions, including a pledge not to run again for president when his term is up in 2013 or allow his son to succeed him, but to no avail.Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Orlando gas station
Orlando gas station charges $5.69 a gallon - Apr. 22, 2011
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Gas prices are on the rise nationwide, but one filling station in Florida has earned the dubious distinction of having the highest prices in the country.
Suncoast Energys, located near the Orlando International Airport, was charging $5.69 a gallon for regular gasoline on Friday. That's the highest of any gas retailer in the nation, according to price tracker gasbuddy.com.
11 mourners shot dead as Syrians bury their dead
At least 11 mourners were shot dead on Saturday as Syrians swarmed the streets to bury scores of demonstrators killed in massive protests and two MPs resigned in frustration at the bloodshed.
Activists said the death toll from Friday's nationwide protests could top 100, pending confirmation of a list of names, and expected fresh protests to form after the funerals.
Two independent MPs from the protest hub city of Daraa, Nasser al-Hariri and Khalil al-Rifai, on Saturday told Al-Jazeera television they were quitting parliament in frustration at not being able to protect their constituents.
Is an Amazon Tablet Inevitable? Yes! - PCWorld
At this point, all bets are on Amazon launching a cheap Android tablet with heaps of content. If the hardware is adequate, Amazon could shake up the tablet market overnight, and finally give Apple a single, legitimate threat.
Speculation on an Amazon tablet, of which there has been plenty, is slowly giving way to rumor. At Gdgt, Peter Rojas writes that the tablet is "something of an open secret" and that he's "99% certain they are having Samsung build one for them."
Illustration of Amazon's Jeff Bezos holding up a fake tablet. Aside from that little tidbit, Rojas' report touches on the same speculative arguments that other pundits have put forth: Profits from Amazon's music, video, books and apps businesses would allow the company to create a cheaper Android tablet than the competition. He expects similar aggressive pricing to Barnes & Noble's Nook Color, which sells for a mere $250 because the book seller hopes to make additional profits on e-book sales. Another option: Amazon could offer an ad-subsidized tablet, similar to the new Kindle with Special Offers.
Virtually every tech pundit assumes the Amazon tablet will run Android 3.0 Honeycomb, but how closely it'll resemble Google's stock operating system remains a mystery. Google has not yet released the source code for Honeycomb, and is reportedly enforcing "non-fragmentation clauses" to crack down on heavy modification of Android software. An Amazon tablet could be far from launching unless Amazon and Google are working closely together, and that seems unlikely with Amazon offering a competing app store to the Android Market.
In other words, the question of whether Amazon will release a tablet is becoming a matter of when, rather than if. It's about time we got some answers.
Follow Jared on Facebook and Twitter for even more tech news and commentary.
Friday, April 22, 2011
Bad Times Linger in Home Building as Economy Rises
Kim Meier’s spring promotion, which includes a $17,000 credit at a nearby General Motors dealer, has produced seven sales since the beginning of March, a veritable windfall of business for a builder who sold only 20 houses last year. “We needed to do something dramatic,” said Mr. Meier. “The market’s been soft.”
That is one way of putting it. The recession hurt a lot of industries, but it knocked the residential construction market to the mat and has kept it there, even as the broader economy has started to fitfully recover.
Sales of new single-family homes in February were down more than 80 percent from the 2005 peak, far exceeding the 28 percent drop in existing home sales. New single-family sales are now lower than at any point since the data was first collected in 1963, when the nation had 120 million fewer residents.
Builders and analysts say a long-term shift in behavior seems to be under way. Instead of wanting the biggest and the newest, even if it requires a long commute, buyers now demand something smaller, cheaper and, thanks to $4-a-gallon gas, as close to their jobs as possible. That often means buying a home out of foreclosure from a bank.
Four out of 10 sales of existing homes are foreclosures or otherwise distressed properties. Builders like Mr. Meier who specialize in putting up entire neighborhoods on a city’s outskirts — Richmond is some 50 miles northwest of downtown Chicago — cannot compete despite chopping prices.
Chicago was not an epicenter of the housing boom with the sort of overbuilding found in Arizona or Florida, but new-home sales in the metro area are down 90 percent. There are about 65 sales a week for a region of 10 million people.
Several factors have combined to make the Chicago market so weak. There were more subprime loans here, which meant more defaults, which in turn left more distressed homes for buyers to choose from.
Most of the construction here was done by private builders. Unlike the national firms, they did not have the resources to survive a prolonged downturn. “Some of the private builders just evaporated, and some said the hell with it,” said Tracy Cross, a consultant who tracks the local market. Only a few remain, including Mr. Meier’s KLM Builders.
Construction of new single-family homes usually surges after a recession because of lower rates and pent-up demand. But the Census Bureau said this week that while multi-unit construction had picked up strongly in the last year, single-family home construction fell 21 percent to an annual rate of 422,000. One consequence of the anemic pace: more than 1.4 million residential construction jobs have been lost in the last five years.
Robert Barycki is one of a handful of buyers keeping the market from drying up completely. He’s 30, a partner in a hardware store, and currently living with his parents. He was drawn by the new-car offer to the biggest of KLM’s four active developments, called Sunset Ridge Estates.
“My money was in the bank, collecting very little interest, so I thought I might as well take a little gamble,” said Mr. Barycki, who is paying $182,000 for a three-bedroom. “Eventually, home-owning will come back.”
Eventually, no doubt. But in the meantime, sentiment might still be souring. Executives at Equity LifeStyle Properties, a Chicago firm that sells properties in resort communities, said this week they were seeing “a psychological change”: potential customers wanted to preserve their capital rather than risk it in real estate.
Bill McBride, who runs the popular financial blog Calculated Risk, said this might be the moment when people decisively started to turn on home ownership. “I’m starting to feel the hate,” he wrote.
In such an atmosphere, every new home built and sold represents a victory. One of the few segments of the market that has shown signs of life is urban townhomes. Lennar, a national builder, has one of these developments under way in the upscale community of Arlington Heights, about 20 miles from downtown Chicago.
Then Pulte, another national builder, started construction on its own townhouse community a few miles away, even as it was recording a 2010 third-quarter loss of a billion dollars. In the meantime, Lennar cut its prices by another 10 percent, but sales in the fourth quarter barely budged.
Lennar says its sales have picked up and it is drawing customers from people who looked at Pulte’s project and passed. Pulte says the same thing about Lennar.
“It’s brutal out there,” said Mr. Cross, the consultant. “You have to put on your boxing gloves.”
Some victories may be brief. Builders say buyers have been acting ahead of a small rise in mortgage insurance premiums from the Federal Housing Administration, which backs many purchases. That mini-rush to lock in a deal might lift March sales figures for new homes, which are due out Monday, analysts say.
Mr. Meier, who has been building in this stretch near the Wisconsin border for 25 years, hopes the car promotion will put a floor under his market. In flush times, he would sell about 100 houses a year to a diverse group of buyers, from empty nesters to commuters.
Richmond bills itself as a “Village of Yesteryear,” which has come true in another way as house prices roll back to the mid-1990s. But some KLM buyers look for more, choosing to skip the car and put the $17,000 into the house instead.
That is what Wayne and Doris Powrozek, who are paying $193,000 for a three-bedroom, did. “If it’s free, it’s for me,” said Mr. Powrozek, who recently retired from AT&T.
The Powrozeks bought because they were worried prices were going up. Mr. Meier says he thinks they must — the cost of raw materials is rising. But with the price of existing homes continuing to fall, and the prospect of more foreclosures, he could again price himself out of the market.
Like nearly all those in real estate, Mr. Meier is determinedly optimistic. “Everybody wants in at the top, no one wants in at the bottom,” he said. “People are paralyzed by their fear.”
Last year, KLM told buyers it would match the government’s $8,000 tax credit. The car promotion more than doubles that. If the market still does not turn around, what could be their next promotion?
“Buy one, get one free,” his wife, Sally, suggested. They had a good laugh over that.
Storm Causes Injuries At St. Louis Airport - Jackson News Story - WAPT Jackson
ST. LOUIS -- Several people at Lambert Airport in St. Louis were injured Friday after an apparent tornado touched down, spewing debris over the airfield, bursting glass in the concourse and damaging cars atop a parking garage. The tornado was part of a series of strong storms that struck central and eastern Missouri. Unconfirmed tornadoes were reported in several counties in the St. Louis area. Lambert spokesman Jeff Lea said he did not immediately have information about how many people were hurt, or how badly. He said the injuries were believed to be from glass that shattered as the storm hit the airport. An Air National Guard facility at the airport was reportedly damaged. Lea said several cars parked at the airport were damaged. He didn't yet know if any planes were affected, or if any flights were delayed or canceled. Damage, possibly from a tornado, was also reported at several towns near the airport - Maryland Heights, Bridgeton, St. Ann, Ferguson and Florissant. Interstate 270 in that area was closed. Trees and power lines were down. A tractor-trailer was sitting on its end. Unconfirmed tornadoes were reported near New Melle and Dardenne Prairie in St. Charles County. St. Charles County Sheriff's Lt. Craig McGuire said there were early reports of at least 20 homes damaged in the county. "It was pretty wicked," he said. In downtown St. Louis, Busch Stadium officials hurriedly moved Cardinals fans to a safe area as tornado sirens blared. The game with the Cincinnati Reds was delayed for hours. The utility company Ameren Missouri reported more than 39,000 power outages.Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Lindsay Lohan Senten
Lindsay Lohan Sentenced to JAIL
booking.Lohan was also ordered to complete 480 hours of community service -- 360 of those hours must be performed at the Downtown Women's Center, so Lindsay can see how needy women have to live. The remaining 120 hours will be served at the L.A. County morgue.
Judge Sautner explained that Lindsay should have called the store and notified the owners about the necklace sooner. She waited several weeks and returned the necklace after finding out the cops were about to raid her house.
Sautner seemed influenced by the surveillance video, which she saw for the first time in court today. Sautner agreed with Danette Meyers, who argued Lindsay used her friend Patrick as a decoy to distract the clerk.
Holley said in court she would appeal the sentence.
Amazon failure takes
Amazon failure takes down sites across Internet
Amazon failure takes down sites across Internet(AP) – 31 minutes ago
NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon.com struggled Friday morning to restore computers used by other major websites such as Reddit as an outage stretched beyond 24 hours.
Though better known for selling books, DVDs and other consumer goods, Amazon also rents out space on huge computer servers that run many websites and other online services.
The problems began at an Amazon data center near Dulles Airport outside Washington early Thursday. On Friday morning, Amazon's status page said the recovery effort was making progress, but it couldn't say when all affected computers would be restored.
Most of the sites that were brought down by the outage on Thursday were back up on Friday, but news-sharing site Reddit was still in "emergency read-only mode," and smaller sites were still reporting trouble.
Location-sharing social network Foursquare and HootSuite, which lets users monitor Twitter and other social networks more easily, appeared to have recovered.
Many other companies that use Amazon Web Services, like Netflix Inc. and Zynga Inc., which runs Facebook games, were unscathed by the outage. Amazon has at least one other major U.S. data center that stayed up, in California.
It's not uncommon for Internet services to become inaccessible due to technical problems, sometimes for hours or even days. But the outage is notable because Amazon's servers are so commonly used, meaning many sites went down at once.
Amazon, which had not responded to requests for comment, has not revealed how many companies use its Web services or how many were affected by the outage.
No one knew for sure how many people were inconvenienced, but the services affected are used by millions.
Amazon Web Services provide "cloud" or utility-style computing in which customers pay only for the computing power and storage they need, on remote computers.
Seattle-based Amazon has big plans for AWS. Although it now makes up just a few percent of the company's revenue, CEO Jeff Bezos said last year that it could eventually be as large as Amazon's retail business. Competitors include Rackspace Hosting Inc. and Microsoft Corp.'s Azure platform.
Some people consider cloud computing more reliable than conventional hosting services in which a small company might rent a handful of computers in a data center.
If one of them malfunctions, the failure can take down a website. But "clouds" like AWS use vast banks of computers. If one fails, the tasks that it performs, such as running a website or a game, can immediately be taken over by others.
When a company needs more capacity, maybe because of a surge in visitors to its website, it only takes minutes to rent more computers from Amazon.
But cloud computing isn't immune to failure, either.
Lydia Leong, an analyst for the tech research firm Gartner, said that judging by details posted on Amazon's AWS status page, a network connection failed Thursday morning, triggering an automatic recovery mechanism that then also failed.
Amazon's computers are divided into groups that are supposed to be independent of each other. If one group fails, others should stay up. And customers are encouraged to spread the computers they rent over several groups to ensure reliable service. But Thursday's problem took out many groups simultaneously.
Outages with Amazon's services are rare but not unprecedented. In 2008, several companies lost access to their own files for about two hours when one of Amazon's data centers failed. The companies included DigitalChalk Inc., which delivers multimedia training over the Web.
In general, Amazon Web Services have been more reliable and, above all, cheaper than many other hosting systems, said Josh Cochrane, vice president of product development at Palo Alto Software in Eugene, Ore.
But the firm's websites and Web-based applications that create business plans were all brought down by Thursday's crash.
"It's a pretty vulnerable feeling," he said. "This is a really big message to us that we need to revisit our strategy."
That might include spreading the applications more widely over Amazon's network, so that problems at one data center won't bring down everything, he said.
Amazon engineers struggled throughout the day to rectify the problem. Leong said the problems are of a type that's not covered by Amazon's money-back guarantees.
Amazon shares rose $2.02, or 1.1 percent, to close Thursday at $185.89.
Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
AFP: Thai, Cambodian
AFP: Thai, Cambodian troops in new border clash
Thai, Cambodian troops in new border clash(AFP) – 1 hour ago
BANGKOK — Thai and Cambodian troops exchanged fire on their disputed border, officials said, the latest in a series of clashes between the neighbours.
The fighting broke out early Friday, at the border near Pa Nom Dong Rak district of Thailand's Surin province, Thai army spokesman Colonel Sunsern Kaewkumnerd said.
"I don't know the reason for the clash, which is still going on," he said.
A long-running dispute between the two countries over land near a 900-year-old temple erupted into four days of clashes in February, leaving at least 10 people dead and prompting a UN appeal for a lasting ceasefire.
Copyright © 2011 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
Reports: Sen. John E
Reports: Sen. John Ensign to resign from Congress - On Politics: Covering the US Congress, Governors, and the 2010 Election - USATODAY.com
Embattled Sen. John Ensign is reportedly going to resign from Congress as early as tomorrow, according to Politico and Roll Call.
The Nevada Republican, who already said he would not run for re-election next year, is being investigated by the Senate Ethics Committee for actions related to an extramartial affair with an aide.
Politico is quoting unnamed aides and Roll Call cites a "well-placed" source.
Ensign, once considered a rising GOP star, said last month he would not seek a third-term next year in part to spare his family from a wrenching campaign that would dredge up details of his affair with Cynthia Hampton.
iPhone Tracks Your E
Reddit, Quora, Fours
Grammy museum to be
Grammy museum to be built in Mississippi Delta - WLBT 3 - Jackson, MS:
JACKSON, MS (WLBT) -WLBT News has learned that a museum devoted to the history of the Grammy Awards will be built in Cleveland, Mississippi, over the next four years.
The first such museum of its kind outside Los Angeles, the 20,000-square-foot facility will be similar in size and scope to the new B.B. King Museum in Indianola, according to a source close to the project.
The museum is being announced at the Mississippi Economic Council's annual meeting at the Jackson Convention Complex. Governor Haley Barbour's office had said that a major tourism announcement would be made at the meeting.
The museum will be located near the campus of Delta State University, which offers courses on Mississippi music. It will feature a full history of the Grammy Awards, with special emphasis on Mississippians' contributions to the world's music.
Copyright 2011 WLBT. All rights reserved.
Reddit, Quora, Foursquare, Hootsuite Go Down Due To Amazon EC2 Cloud Service Troubles
Amazon's affordable cloud-based EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) Web hosting service has attracted many popular startups in the social media space, and technical issues this morning have taken down several popular services including Foursquare, Reddit, Quora, Hootsuite and Moby.
Amazon obviously has a huge online retail presence, but the company is also one of the world's leading cloud services providers -- startups are drawn to EC2's variable pricing model that lets them scale as they grow. Unfortunately, with these sites being hosted on a single service, a big outage has been able to take down a swath of the social Web.
Highlighting the double-edged sword of centralized cloud hosting, CNET writes that earlier this morning Quora's homepage noted, "We'll be back shortly, we hope. Sorry, it sucks for us too. We'd point fingers, but we wouldn't be where we are today without EC2."
Amazon says it's still working on the issue.
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CONTRIBUTETO THIS STORY
21 Homeless People D
21 Homeless People Die After Bird Flu Vaccine Experiment
(NaturalNews) According to an article by Matthew Day published in The Telegraph, a group of doctors recruited homeless people in Poland for a vaccine trial and paid them £1-2 (less than five dollars) to be tested with what they were told was a regular flu vaccine. What the unsuspecting, impoverished victims weren't told is that they were actually going to be given a bird flu vaccine. The director of a center for the homeless in Poland claimed that 21 people from his center died last year, when the usual number of deaths in a given year is about eight.The vaccine was apparently given to up to 350 poor and homeless people last year. The medical personnel are disputing the claim by the authorities that the homeless people weren't told that they were testing a bird flu vaccine. There is no information about the level of involvement of the pharmaceutical companies that commissioned the trials at this time.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Obama Is Likely to L
Central Florida comp
Obama Is Likely to Lose
What if everything we think we know about the president's political position is wrong? That's what I think became clear this week.
You know the conventional wisdom. It is that unemployment ticking down, plus the economy inching back, plus the power of the presidency to affect events, equals a likely Obama victory in 2012. Smart people, especially Republicans, believe this. But how about this for a thought: It's not true. It's all wrong. Barack Obama can be taken, and his adversaries haven't even noticed. In fact, he will likely lose in 2012. Only one thing can save him. More on that further down.
Let's start with the immediate and go to the overarching. The president is immersed in another stressed and unsuccessful spring after a series of losing seasons. Internationally, he's involved in a confused effort that involves bombing Libyan government troops and sometimes their rebel opponents, leaving the latter scattered and scurrying. Responsibility to protect is looking like tendency to deflect.
Domestically, the president's opponents seized the high ground on the great issue of the day, spending and debt, and held it after the president's speech this week. In last week's budget duel, the president was outgunned by Republicans in the House and outclassed by Paul Ryan, who offered seriousness and substance as a unique approach to solving our fiscal problems.
Main Street Columnist William McGurn analyzes Barack Obama's re-election strategy and previews the campaign.
In this week's polls: An Ipsos survey says 69% of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track, up five points since March. Zogby has only 38% of national respondents saying Mr. Obama deserves re-election, with 55% wanting someone new. Mr. Obama carried Pennsylvania in 2008 by double digits; a poll there this week shows only 42% approving of his leadership, with 52% disapproving. Gallup had the president's support slipping among blacks and Hispanics, with the latter's numbers dramatic: 73% supported him when he was inaugurated, 54% do now. Support among whites on Inauguration Day was 60%. Now it is 39%.
We're all so used to reporting the general trend of these polls that we fail to see their significance: The more that people experience his leadership, the less they like his leadership. There's no real reason to think upticks in this direction or that will seriously change this. Another way to say it is that there have been upticks that might have benefited the president, and so far they haven't.
At this point everyone mentions Mr. Obama's personal approval numbers, which are consistently higher than his leadership numbers. The RealClearPolitics average puts his personal approval at 47.6%, which doesn't sound bad.
But let me offer a hunch based on conversations with people from many walks of life and all regions the past 18 months. The president's personal numbers are probably lower than the polls report. Not that the polls are dishonest, but the American people don't want to not like Mr. Obama. They don't want to tell a young pollster that they don't like a man they elected two years ago, with excitement and hope, by a margin of 9.5 million votes. There are two things I have never heard, not once, in the past year: "I love this guy—I love Obama," and "If only John McCain were president, everything would be better."
I suspect, and it's only a suspicion, that there's a degree to which people tell pollsters they like Mr. Obama to take the sting out of the fact that they just told the pollster they don't approve of his leadership.
We all get stuck in the day-to-day and lose sight of the overarching, but the overarching fact of Mr. Obama's presidency is that he made a bad impression his first years in office and has never turned that impression around.
He spent his first 14 months moving on what he was thinking about—health care—and not what the public was thinking about: the economic crash, jobs, spending. He seemed not to be thinking like everyone else, which underscored the idea that he was unresponsive to the crises they were seeing. It's hard to get past that.
Chad CroweHis speech this week brought together all the strands of his flawed leadership. It was at moments clever, but merely clever, not up to the needs of the moment—and cleverness in a time of crisis comes as an affront. The speech seemed oblivious to recent history, as if the president had just discovered something no one knows about, a problem with spending, and has decided to alert us to the danger. He said other politicians attempt to cut by focusing on "waste and abuse," but he knows the real secret: The problem is entitlement spending. But addressing entitlements is all anyone serious has been talking about for years; it's what the Ryan plan is all about!
The speech was intellectually incoherent. An administration that spent two years saying, essentially, that high spending is good is suddenly insisting high spending is catastrophic. The president appealed for bipartisan efforts, but his manner and approach leave his appeals sounding like diktats. His attempts to seem above the fray leave him seeming distanced and unwilling to risk anything.
Most important, the speech signaled that the White House, after all this time, sees the question of spending as a partisan tool, a weapon to be deployed in an election, and not an actual crisis. This is disrespectful toward citizens who feel honest alarm.
Because of these flaws, the speech will have no afterlife, and a major speech with no afterlife might as well not have been given.
***
You would think Democratic professionals, who read the same numbers Republicans do and pick up similar trends, would be hanging their heads in despair.
They are not. They have hope. Their hope is that Republicans in the early caucus and primary states will go crazy.
They hope the GOP will nominate for the presidency someone strange, extreme or barely qualified. They hope that in a mood of antic cultural pique, or in a great acting out of disdain for elites, or to annoy the mainstream media, Republican voters will raise high candidates who are unacceptable to everyone else. Everyone else of course being the great and vital center, which hires and fires presidents. The Democrats' hope is that centrists will look at the Republican nominee and, holding their nose, choose the devil they know. Especially if the one they don't know seems to have little horns under his hair.
Republicans voting in recent presidential primaries have tended to pick the candidates who are viewed as the moderate in the race—Bob Dole in 1996, George W. Bush in 2000, John McCain in 2008. But in truth, there are some pretty antic candidates out there this year.
The great question of the coming year is not, "Will Obama reignite his base?" or, "Will the Democrats outraise and outspend the GOP?" It is: Will the GOP be serious? Will Republicans be equal to their history, their tradition and the moment? If they are—if they recruit and support candidates who can speak to the entire country, who have serious experience and accomplishments, who are grounded and credible, then they will win centrist support. And with it they will likely win the thing without which they cannot achieve the big changes they seek, and that is the presidency.
FBI opens online vault, revealing UFO, Roswell files | MNN - Mother Nature Network
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigated hundreds of UFO sightings in the 1940s and '50s, but the agency had a policy of destroying investigation records because they took up too much space.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Realtime Severe Weather Warnings
You can view all of the current realtime severe weather warnings in the United States at http://robwire.com The Active Warnings box on the right side constantly updates with the latest storm warnings.
Red Flags Popping Up All Over Bank of America - CNBC
The largest bank by deposits just lost its chief financial officer and just hired one of the most connected regulatory lawyers in the U.S.
Both events are alarming.
The bank says that Charles Noski requested to step aside due to family illness. There’s no doubt some truth in this: a family member is ill, and Noski probably volunteered his resignation. But it comes on the back of some very troubling developments:
- Earlier this month we learned that Bank of America’s announcement that the government had denied its insane request to raise its dividend had not been reviewed by Noski before it was made public. No one has offered a credible explanation for this lapse in internal controls.
- Bank of America recently announced that it was going to start charging some 5 percent of its credit card customers a brand new $59 annual fee. This is a breathtakingly obvious attempt to drive $180 million in profits through a loophole in Dodd-Frank—which prohibited interest rate increases unless customers were seriously delinquent, but left open the possibility of random fee hikes.
- Bank of America has been estimating for three quarters that it is more than two-thirds through the wave of repurchase requests on soured home loans, and that the total losses will not amount to more than $10 billion. This quarter it provided for just $1 billion in mortgage repurchase and litigation expenses—compared with $2.2 billion for JP Morgan Chase in the first quarter. Does anyone believe that the bank with exposure to Countrywide’s loans is better off than JP Morgan?
AppleInsider | Android fans accuse Apple of copying Samsung first
Immediately after Apple filed suit against Samsung over patent and trade dress infringements, Android enthusiasts have countered that it was Apple that actually copied Samsung from the beginning.The claim, distributed virally on message boards in the form of a graphic comparing the 2007 iPhone against the Samsung F700, is titled "LOL @ Apple: suing someone you stole the design from to being [sic] with," and portrays an early Samsung phone with a black front, rounded corners and grid of icons, all elements of the complaint by Apple which claims infringement upon its iPhone design by various Samsung products.
Republicans attack D
Yemen protester: ‘
BP's Secret Deepwater Blowout | Truthout
Only 17 months before BP's Deepwater Horizon rig suffered a deadly blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, another BP deepwater oil platform also blew out.
You've heard and seen much about the Gulf disaster that killed 11 BP workers. If you have not heard about the earlier blowout, it's because BP has kept the full story under wraps. Nor did BP inform Congress or US safety regulators, and BP, along with its oil industry partners, have preferred to keep it that way.
The earlier blowout occurred in September 2008 on BP's Central Azeri platform in the Caspian Sea.
As one memo marked "secret" puts it, "Given the explosive potential, BP was quite fortunate to have been able to evacuate everyone safely and to prevent any gas ignition." The Caspian oil platform was a spark away from exploding, but luck was with the 211 rig workers.
It was eerily similar to the Gulf catastrophe as it involved BP's controversial "quick set" drilling cement.
The question we have to ask: If BP had laid out the true and full facts to Congress and regulators about the earlier blowout, would those 11 Gulf workers be alive today - and the Gulf Coast spared oil-spill poisons?
The bigger question is, why is there no clear law to require disclosure? If you bump into another car on the Los Angeles freeway, you have to report it. But there seems no clear requirement on corporations to report a disaster in which knowledge of it could save lives.
Five months prior to the Deepwater Horizon explosion, BP's Chief of Exploration in the Gulf, David Rainey, testified before Congress against increased safety regulation of its deepwater drilling operation. Despite the company's knowledge of the Caspian blowout a year earlier, the oil company's man told the Senate Energy Committee that BP's methods are, "both safe and protective of the environment."
Really? BP's quick-dry cement saves money, but other drillers find it too risky in deepwater. It was a key factor in the Caspian blowout. Would US regulators or Congress have permitted BP to continue to use this cement had they known? Would they have investigated before issuing permits to drill?
This is not about BP the industry Bad Boy. This is about a system that condones silence, the withholding of life-and-death information.
Even BP's oil company partners, including Chevron and Exxon, were kept in the dark. It is only through WikiLeaks that my own investigations team was able to confirm insider tips I had received about the Caspian blowout. In that same confidential memo mentioned earlier, the US Embassy in Azerbaijan complained, "At least some of BP's [Caspian] partners are similarly upset with BP's performance in this episode, as they claim BP has sought to limit information flow about this event even to its [Caspian] partners."
In defense of its behavior, BP told me it did in fact report the "gas release" to the regulators of Azerbaijan. That's small comfort. This former Soviet republic is a police state dictatorship propped up by the BP group's oil royalties. A public investigation was out of the question.
In December, I traveled to Baku, Azerbaijan's capital, to investigate BP and the blowout for British television. I was arrested, though, as a foreign reporter, quickly released. But my eye witnesses got the message and all were too afraid tell their stories on camera.
BP has, in fact, never admitted a blowout occurred, though when confronted by my network, did not deny it. At the time, BP told curious press that the workers had merely been evacuated as a "precaution" due to gas bubbles "in the area of" the drilling platform, implying a benign natural gas leak from a crack in the sea floor, not a life-threatening system failure.
In its 2009 report to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), BP inched closer to the full truth. Though not mentioning "blowout" or "cement," the company placed the leak "under" the platform.
This points to a cruel irony: the SEC requires full disclosure of events that might cause harm to the performance of BP's financial securities. But reporting on events that might harm humans? That's not so clear.
However, the solution is clear as could be. International corporations should be required to disclose events that threaten people and the environment, not just the price of their stock.
As radiation wafts across the Pacific from Japan, it is clear that threats to health and safety do not respect national borders. What happens in Fukushima or Baku affects lives and property in the USA.
"Regulation" has become a dirty word in US politics. Corporations have convinced the public to fear little bureaucrats with thick rulebooks. But let us remember why government began to regulate these creatures. As Andrew Jackson said, "Corporations have neither bodies to kick nor souls to damn."
Kicking and damning have no effect, but rules do. And after all, when international regulation protects profits, as in the case of patents and copyrights, corporate America is all for it.
Our regulators of resource industries must impose an affirmative requirement to tell all, especially when people, not just song lyrics or stock offerings, are in mortal danger.
Yemen protester: 'They shot at us directly;' at least 3 dead - CNN.com
Sanaa, Yemen (CNN) -- Government forces in Taiz and Sanaa fired on crowds of people protesting the regime of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, leaving dozens wounded and at least three dead, eyewitnesses and medical sources said Tuesday.
Eyewitnesses described enormous demonstrations, numbering hundreds of thousands, in the two cities as the ongoing protests against Saleh's longtime rule of the country appeared to gain strength.
Is BlackBerry PlayBook Dead On Arrival? - PCWorld
The BlackBerry PlayBook tablet from Research In Motion goes on sale today, with what seems to be little consumer interest, mediocre reviews and few chances to match the success of Apple's iPad.
Starting at $499 for a 16GB WiFi model, the PlayBook will cost you $599 for the 32GB variant and $699 for the 64GB model. The tablet runs on a 1GHz dual-core processor, has a 7-inch display and dual cameras (5MP on the back and 3MP on the front).
Google’s ‘Map Maker’ Now Lets You Edit Google Maps In The United States
It’s hard to believe, but for the last few years Google Maps users in the United States have been missing out on a pretty important feature (though there’s a decent chance you’ve never heard of it). It’s not particularly sexy, and many of the people reading this post will probably never take advantage of it, but we’ll all reap the benefits over the coming months. Meet Google Map Maker.
Five hidden tools and tricks for Google Calendar | Topics | Working Mac | Macworld
Many of us would be lost without our calendars—they're where we schedule meetings, pencil in appointments and set project deadlines. And without the proper tools, managing a calendar can become a headache.
Governor vetoes birther, campus gun bills | Reuters
(Reuters) - Arizona's Republican Governor Jan Brewer on Monday vetoed two controversial bills, one mandating proof of U.S. citizenship to run for president, the other allowing guns on college campuses, in a clear setback for conservatives who control the state legislature.
Brewer, who grabbed headlines a year ago when she signed a get-tough state law cracking down on illegal immigrants, vetoed the bills in an announcement late on Monday.
The so-called "birther bill," would have made Arizona the first state in the nation to require presidential candidates prove U.S. citizenship by providing a long form birth certificate, and other forms of proof including baptismal or circumcision certificates, to be placed on the state ballot
Fidel Castro Says He Won’t Be Part of Communist Party Committee - The Washington Post
April 19 (Bloomberg) -- Former Cuban President Fidel Castro said that he won’t be part of the Communist Party’s Central Committee.
New Poll Shows Obama Falling, But Not Below GOP Contenders - Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Economic anxiety is driving President Obama’s approval rating to nearly its lowest level yet, a new Washington Post/ABC News poll shows, but he still edges out any possible GOP opponent for 2012.
The president’s 47 percent approval rating is down seven points from January, but he would get a majority of the vote against every potential Republican White House candidate except former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, whom he leads by a 49 to 45 percent margin.
Results prove a direct correlation between the faltering economy and Obama’s grade: “Despite signs of economic growth, 44 percent of Americans see the economy as getting worse,” the Post reported, and Americans demonstrate particular concern for rising gas prices; meanwhile, 57 percent disapprove of Obama’s handling of the issue.
Still, another factor at work could eclipse the economic punch, in Obama’s favor: a general dissatisfaction with the GOP field.
Romney and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee each trail Obama by only four and six points, respectively (all other contenders slack by double digits), but when Republicans and right-leaning independents were asked which candidate they would vote for in a primary or caucus, the only names volunteered were Romney, Huckabee, real estate mogul Donald Trump, and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin—the latter three of whom have not shown significant motion toward entering the race.
But it’s not all good news for the president. Among the independent base that largely carried him to his victory in 2008, poll numbers show that both Romney and Huckabee run “a touch higher” than Obama.
Monday, April 18, 2011
Julian Of Norwich And The Revelations Of Love
In the theology courses I have been taking, one of the prophets briefly mentioned was Julian of Norwich who is venerated in the Roman Catholic Church, Anglican Communion, and Lutheran Church. She was an anchoress who lived a life of contemplative prayer in a cell of the Church of St Julian in Norwich, England. When thought to be on her deathbed, she had a series of visions of Jesus Christ. After she recovered she wrote a narration of her visions which established her as one of the greatest English mystics.
Very little is known about her including her real name.
It was in 1373, when Julian was just over 30 years old and living with her mother that she received her visions. In her book she tells that she had desired 3 graces from God (i) to have the consistent recollection of Christ's Passion, (ii) to experience bodily sickness when she was 30 years old (the same age as Jesus when he began his ministry) and (iii) to have 3 wounds; true contrition, loving compassion and a longing for God. In her 30th year she became sick to the point of death. The priest came and prepared her for death and gave her the last rites. A few days later on the Third Sunday after Easter, May 8th, having again been visited by her priest, the pain suddenly left her and a series of wonderful 'Revelations' or 'Showings' began. During the next 12 or so hours she received 15 revelations of God's love centering on the cross of our Lord; then a 16th early on the Monday morning. It was this experience that convinced her that she had to devote her life totally to God. She decided not to go off and live in a convent as a nun, but to become an Anchoress. And it just so happened that the anchoress cell attached to S. Julian's Church on King Street was unoccupied at that time. So she became the Anchoress at S. Julian's and eventually wrote down two versions of her Revelations, in the Middle English of her day. The first was written soon after her arrival and a much longer text some years later after much prayer, contemplation and meditation. Her book is called THE REVELATIONS OF DIVINE LOVE: the first book to be written in English by a woman.
The subject of The Revelations is love - God's love for mankind shown in the Passion, suffering and death of Jesus Christ, and the response of man towards God, his Maker, Keeper and Preserver. This love creates all that exists; it sustains all and redeems all; it is unfailing even in times of sorrow or trial; it is unconditional; it is a love plenteous beyond imagining; it is all powerful and all embracing; and in this love there is no place for anger or wrath. God's whole purpose is to bring all into the bliss of heaven, so that 'All shall be well!'
The Catholic Encyclopedia thinks she may have been a Benedictine nun.
The original form of her name appears to have been Julian. She was probably a Benedictine nun, living as a recluse in an anchorage of which traces still remain in the east part of the churchyard of St. Julian in Norwich, which belonged to Carrow Priory.
Her writings influenced the church of her time to move toward a theology of love and mercy at a time when many were largely apocalyptic.
Although Julian lived in a time of turmoil, her theology was optimistic, speaking of God's love in terms of joy and compassion as opposed to law and duty. For Julian, suffering was not a punishment that God inflicted, as was the common understanding. She believed that God loved and wanted to save everyone. Popular theology, magnified by current events including the Black Death and a series of peasant revolts, asserted that God was punishing the wicked. In response, Julian suggested a more merciful theology, which some say leaned towards universal salvation. She believed that behind the reality of hell is a greater mystery of God's love. In modern times, she has been classified as a proto-universalist, although she did not claim more than hope that all might be saved.[9] Although Julian's views were not typical, local authorities did not challenge either her theology or her authority because of her status as an anchoress. The lack of references to her work during her own time may indicate that religious authorities did not count her worthy of refuting, since she did not have much power as a woman.[citation needed]
Julian's theology was unique in three aspects: her view of sin, her belief that God is all love and no wrath, and her view of Christ as mother.[citation needed] According to Julian, God is both our mother and our father. This idea was also developed by Francis of Assisi in the thirteenth century.Feminist theology in the 20th and 21st centuries has developed along similar lines.
Julian believed that sin was necessary in life because it brings one to self-knowledge, which leads to acceptance of the role of God in one's life.[10] Julian taught that humans sin because they are ignorant or naive, not because they are evil, which was the reason commonly given by the church for sin during the Middle Ages.[11] Julian believed that in order to learn, we must fail. Also, in order to fail, we must sin. The pain caused by sin is an earthly reminder of the pain of the passion of Christ. Therefore, as people suffer as Christ did, they will become closer to Him by their experiences.
Similarly, Julian saw no wrath in God. She believed wrath existed only in humans but that God forgives us for this. She writes, “For I saw no wrath except on man's side, and He forgives that in us, for wrath is nothing else but a perversity and an opposition to peace and to love”.[12]Julian believed that it was inaccurate to speak of God's granting forgiveness for sins because forgiving would mean that committing the sin was wrong. Julian preached that sin should be seen as a part of the learning process of life, not malice that needed forgiveness.
Some passages from her writings:
There were times when I wanted to look away from the Cross, but I dared not. For I knew that while I gazed on the Cross I was safe and sound, and I was not willingly going to imperil my soul.
I was filled full of everlasting assurance, powerfully secured without any pain or fear. This experience was so happy spiritually that I felt completely at peace and relaxed; there was nothing on earth that could have disturbed me. But this lasted only for a short time, and then I was changed and I began to act with a sense of loneliness and depression and the futility of life itself, so that I hardly had the patience to continue living. No comfort or relaxation now, just 'faith, hope and love', and truly I felt very little of this. And yet soon after this our blessed Lord gave me once again that comfort, so pleasant and sure, so delightful and powerful, that there was no fear, no sorrow, no pain, physical and spiritual that could bother me. And then again I felt the pain; then the joy and pleasure; now the one and now the other, again and again, I suppose about 20 times. In the time of joy I could have said with S. Paul: Nothing shall separate me from the love of Christ; and in my pain I could have said with S. Peter: Save me Lord, I am perishing. This vision was shown to teach me to understand that some souls profit by experiencing this, to be comforted at one time, and at another to be left to themselves. God wishes us to know however that he keeps us safe at all times, in sorrow and in joy.
I desired in many ways to know what was our Lord's meaning. And fifteen years after and more, I was answered in spiritual understanding, and it was said: What, do you wish to know your Lord's meaning in this thing? Know it well, love was his meaning. Who reveals it to you? Love. What did he reveal to you? Love. Why does he reveal it to you? For love. Remain in this, and you will know more of the same. But you will never know different, without end.
She described her visions in powerful terms.
- The Lord that sat stately in rest and in peace, I understood that He is God. The Servant that stood afore the Lord, I understood that it was shewed for Adam: that is to say, one man was shewed, that time, and his falling, to make it thereby understood how God beholdeth All-Man and his falling.
For in the sight of God all man is one man, and one man is all man. This man was hurt in his might and made full feeble; and he was stunned in his understanding so that he turned from the beholding of his Lord. But his will was kept whole in God’s sight; — for his will I saw our Lord commend and approve. But himself was letted and blinded from the knowing of this will; and this is to him great sorrow and grievous distress: for neither doth he see clearly his loving Lord, which is to him full meek and mild, nor doth he see truly what himself is in the sight of his loving Lord. And well I wot when these two are wisely and truly seen, we shall get rest and peace here in part, and the fulness of the bliss of Heaven, by His plenteous grace.
And this was a beginning of teaching which I saw in the same time, whereby I might come to know in what manner He beholdeth us in our sin. And then I saw that only Pain blameth and punisheth, and our courteous Lord comforteth and sorroweth; and ever He is to the soul in glad Cheer, loving, and longing to bring us to His bliss.
- The place that the Lord sat on was simple, on the earth, barren and desert, alone in wilderness; his clothing was ample and full seemly, as falleth to a Lord; the colour of his cloth was blue as azure, most sad and fair. his cheer was merciful; the colour of his face was fair-brown, — with full seemly features; his eyes were black, most fair and seemly, shewing full of lovely pity, and, within him, an high Regard, long and broad, all full of endless heavens. And the lovely looking wherewith He looked upon His Servant continually, — and especially in his falling, — methought it might melt our hearts for love and burst them in two for joy. The fair looking shewed of a seemly mingledness which was marvellous to behold: the one was Ruth and Pity, the other was Joy and Bliss. The Joy and Bliss passeth as far Ruth and Pity as Heaven is above earth: the Pity was earthly and the Bliss was heavenly.
- The Merciful Beholding of His Countenance of love fulfilled all earth and descended down with Adam into hell, with which continuant pity Adam was kept from endless death. And thus Mercy and Pity dwelleth with mankind unto the time we come up into Heaven.
- Man is blinded in this life and therefore we may not see our Father, God, as He is. And what time that He of His goodness willeth to shew Himself to man, He sheweth Himself homely, as man. Notwithstanding, I reason, in verity we ought to know and believe that the Father is not man.
- The blueness of the clothing betokeneth His steadfastness; the brownness of his fair face, with the seemly blackness of the eyes, was most accordant to shew His holy soberness. The length and breadth of his garments, which were fair, flaming about, betokeneth that He hath, beclosed in Him, all Heavens, and all Joy and Bliss: and this was shewed in a touch, where I have said: Mine understanding was led into the Lord; in which I saw Him highly rejoice for the worshipful restoring that He will and shall bring His servant to by His plenteous grace.
- There was a treasure in the earth which the Lord loved. I marvelled and thought what it might be, and I was answered in mine understanding: It is a food which is delectable and pleasant to the Lord.
- Yet I marvelled from whence the Servant came. For I saw in the Lord that HE hath within Himself endless life, and all manner of goodness, save that treasure that was in the earth. And that was grounded in the Lord in marvellous deepness of endless love, but it was not all to His worship till the Servant had thus nobly prepared it, and brought it before Him in himself present. And without the Lord was nothing but wilderness. And I understood not all what this example meant, and therefore I marvelled whence the Servant came.
- In the Servant is comprehended the Second Person in the Trinity; and in the Servant is comprehended Adam: that is to say, All-Man. And therefore when I say the Son, it meaneth the Godhead which is even with the Father; and when I say the Servant, it meaneth Christ’s Manhood, which is rightful Adam. By the nearness of the Servant is understood the Son, and by the standing on the left side is understood Adam. The Lord is the Father, God; the Servant is the Son, Christ Jesus; the Holy Ghost is Even Love which is in them both.
In all this our good Lord shewed His own Son and Adam but one Man. The virtue and the goodness that we have is of Jesus Christ, the feebleness and the blindness that we have is of Adam: which two were shewed in the Servant.
And thus hath our good Lord Jesus taken upon Him all our blame, and therefore our Father nor may nor will more blame assign to us than to His own Son, dearworthy Christ.
- For all mankind that shall be saved by the sweet Incarnation and blissful Passion of Christ, all is the Manhood of Christ: for He is the Head and we be His members. To which members the day and the time is unknown when every passing woe and sorrow shall have an end, and the everlasting joy and bliss shall be fulfilled; which day and time for to see, all the Company of Heaven longeth. And all that shall be under heaven that shall come thither, their way is by longing and desire.
- Also in this marvellous example I have teaching with me as it were the beginning of an A.B.C., whereby I have some understanding of our Lord’s meaning. For the secret things of the Revelation be hid therein; — notwithstanding that all the Shewings are full of secret things.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Julian_of_Norwich
Julian's positive, hopeful message is beloved by many and held in high esteem by Catholics and other Christians. Her teachings on sin, forgiveness, and the motherhood of God are unique in Catholic theology. Although she was never beatified she is called "Saint" Julian of Norwich. She is commemorated by the Roman Catholic Church on May 13, and by both the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America as a renewer of the Church and the AnglicanChurch on May 8.
