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Woman Kills Intruder While on Line to 911

Posted 21 minutes ago in Crime & Courts US
(Newser Summary) – An Oklahoma woman shot and killed an intruder while on the phone with a 911 dispatcher. 57-year-old Donna Jackson called 911, shotgun in hand, when she heard someone trying to break into her home last Friday—but before police could get there, the man, 53-year-old Billy Riley, hurled a patio table through her glass door. When Riley came in, Jackson took him out with a shotgun blast.
“I don’t want to have to kill this man, but I’ll kill him graveyard dead, ma’am,” Jackson had told the dispatcher shortly before Riley entered. The operator had told it her it was legal for her to defend herself, and local authorities say Jackson won’t be charged. CBS News has a link to the 911 call here.
Source: CBS News
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• The dot-com bubble burst in 2000, and the Bailout Bubble will bust in 2010.

• 9/11 terror ushered America into the decade, and terror will strike again before the decade ends.

• The decade long wars waged by US and NAT0 against Afghanistan and Iraq are leading the world to the first Great War of the 21^st Century.

• The 20^th century belonged to America, in 2010 Empire America will be breaking apart.  The signs are there for all to see.

Israel War to Ignite Terror, Threaten Global Economy and possibly Spark World War III, Trends Institute Warns

CAIRO, 14 January 2009 – Israel’s invasion of Gaza sets up the United States and any other nation supporting Israel as terror targets, predicts Gerald Celente.  The Trends Research Institute Director also warns that should Israel continue the invasion, or take the war beyond Gaza, the world risks both a 1973-style oil shock and global conflict.

“Regardless of whose side you take, what you believe in, who did what to whom and when … this is just the latest chapter of ‘Crusades 2000′,” said Celente, who coined the term in 1993 and has written about it extensively.  Yet, unlike preceding Crusades confined to the Holy Land, the trend seer says the current violence will spread globally. (See “Crusades 2000,” Trends Journal, Fall 1993; Trends 2000 Warner Books 1997; “Crusades 2000,” Trends Journal, Spring 2006.)

Armed and Dangerous

World news sources report a Middle East up-in-arms and seething at the lopsided Israeli massacre that has left over 1,000 Palestinians dead, thousands wounded, and Gaza in ruins.  In comparison, three Israeli civilians and less than a dozen Jewish soldiers have been killed; scant damage has been inflicted on Israel.

The incessant US media and government message focuses on Israel’s “right to defend itself” while minimizing or ignoring the long sequence of Israeli provocations leading up to its invasion while also failing to cite the real tally from the preceding mutual hostilities.  In the months prior to Israel’s December 27^th attack, homemade Hamas projectiles fired into Israel killed no one. (Over the past several years prior to the invasion, 13 Israelis were killed by rocket fire. Between 2005 and 2007 alone, the Israeli Defense Force killed 1,290 Palestinians in Gaza, including 222 children.)

Also largely absent from United States war coverage are the contributing factors Palestinians claim precipitated their primitive Qassam rocket launches into Israel.  Chief among them, Israel’s 18-month starvation blockade of 1.5 million impoverished Palestinians squeezed into densely populated Gaza (described by the Vatican as “a big concentration camp”) and Israel’s pre-invasion assassination of six Palestinian officials.

According to the Geneva Conventions, the United Nations, the Red Cross, Human Rights Watch and other government and NGOs, Israel’s response has been both disproportionate and illegal. Among the condemnations, Israel’s military has been accused of firing white phosphorus artillery packed shells on civilians.  The UN special envoy for human rights accused the Israeli army of “… committing a shocking series of atrocities by using modern weaponry against a defenseless population – attacking a population that has been enduring a severe blockade for many months.”

For its part, since the onset of hostilities, the United States had prevented approval of a UN Security Council statement calling for an immediate cease-fire.  And when the United Nations Security Council voted for a “durable and fully respected” cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, “leading to the full withdrawal” of Israel’s forces from the Palestinian territory, the US abstained from voting.  (The New York Times reported that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert “placed a phone call to President Bush” and that “Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice had been forced to abstain” from the UN resolution.)

“Major trends are brewing that if not quickly corrected or stanched, will lead to disaster,” Celente forecasts, citing fears among Israel’s neighbors that they could be the next victims.

“Throughout 2008, reports had been circulating that Israel was planning a military strike against Iran’s major nuclear complex at Natanz, and The New York Times all but confirmed it on January 11^th,” Celente said.  “While President Bush has made scores of disastrous foreign policy decisions during his reign, he should be congratulated for turning down Israel’s request for specialized bunker-busting bombs needed to take out the nuclear facility.”

An attack on Iran by either Israel or the US will spark the onset of World War III, predicts Celente.

“If oil producers sympathetic to the Palestinian cause cut the flow of oil, or if they cut supply in fear of being the next Israeli target, the world will go from a terrible recession immediately into the ‘Greatest Depression’,” Celente said.  (OPEC used the oil weapon in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, embargoing the US and other countries who sided with Israel.)

Beyond escalating economic dangers, Washington has placed itself in terror’s bulls-eye Celente said, pointing to last weeks US Senate and House passage offering “unwavering commitment” for Israel.   “Today, we reaffirm that Israel, like any nation, has a right to self-defense when under attack,” said House speaker Nancy Pelosi. “The rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza, which were increasing in frequency and range, constituted an unacceptable security threat to which Israel had a responsibility to respond.”

Should Washington continue its “unwavering commitment” to Israel while taking direct measures to destroy Palestinians, Americans should also be aware that those left standing will seek revenge, Celente said.   “News reports of US supplied ships bringing munitions to Israel to be used against Palestinians, and Israel’s claims that the UN school they shelled killing some 50 civilians was the fault of a US-supplied weapon malfunction will not be forgotten by those seeking revenge,” said Celente.

Trendpost: Stay abreast of ongoing Middle East developments.  Assess them by weighing the facts and gleaning the truth lurking behind the propaganda smokescreen.   Should an oil embargo ensue, product scarcities will cause frenzy buying of food and fuel.   Gold prices will spike, the dollar will crash and global panic will most likely break out.

Reporting from Cairo, Egypt: John Anthony West,  Executive Editor, the Trends Journal.

Publisher’s Note: To make accurate trend forecasts, we do our utmost to seek facts that are generally accepted as truth. The more reliable the data, the more accurate the forecasts.  The purpose of a trend forecast is to provide guidance on what to expect and how to plan for what may transpire.  We do not pass judgment on what is right or wrong, good or bad, what we want or hope … it’s just “what is.”

© MMIX The Trends Research Institute ®

coppenhagen treaty, world government exposed

President Obama is on a path toward establishing a one-world government. This is the warning of Christopher Monckton, a former major policy adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

In December, world leaders will descend upon Copenhagen to sign a United Nations climate change treaty that will succeed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which is aimed at reducing greenhouse gases and set to expire in 2012. An agreement has been drafted.

The goal of the Copenhagen treaty is to erect an international cap-and-trade regime to curb carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, said to be responsible for man-made global warming. Recently, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown warned of a “climate catastrophe” – a rising wave of floods, droughts and shrinking food crops – unless the treaty is signed. Mr. Brown even said global warming would inflict more damage than both world wars and the Great Depression combined; the world has only several weeks to save itself from impending doom.

“If we do not reach a deal at this time, let us be in no doubt: once the damage from unchecked emissions growth is done, no retrospective global agreement, in some future period, can undo that choice,” he said. Mr. Brown has thus outdone former Vice President Al Gore in fear-mongering and inciting public hysteria.

Global-warming alarmists are using the myth of climate change to impose an embryonic socialist world government. Following the collapse of communism, the West’s progressive elites desperately searched for a viable ideological alternative. They found it in environmentalism.

Although the Green movement wraps itself in the flag of empirical science, it represents the very opposite: a dogma that provides meaning and purpose to its rabid followers. The ideology justifies massive tax increases and government control of the economy; it seeks to cripple free enterprise and curtail market-driven growth. Many of today’s Greens are yesterday’s Reds.

Global warming is the greatest fraud of our time. The overwhelming scientific evidence shows that, rather than getting hotter, the Earth’s temperatures are cooling. Increasing numbers of leading scientists are challenging the flawed computer models used by eco-alarmists.

Mr. Gore and his supporters cannot answer several simple questions. If the Earth’s temperatures are no longer rising, then how can CO2 emissions be responsible for global warming? How could previous dramatic increases in global temperatures – such as the end of the Ice Age – have taken place without concentrations of CO2? The answer is obvious: Carbon emissions are not connected to fluctuations in global temperatures.

The mad drive for an international cap-and-trade system is really geared toward achieving the left’s long-sought goal: the destruction of democratic capitalism and national sovereignty. The Greens are poised to succeed where the Reds failed.

The Copenhagen treaty must still be negotiated. Final agreement is far from certain, especially from emerging industrial powers like China, India and Brazil. Yet the draft version is clear about the treaty’s essential elements.

It calls for a massive transfer of wealth from the developed world to the developing world. The United States would be forced to spend billions of dollars a year in foreign aid to pay for a so-called “climate debt” – a provision to punish wealthy countries for having historically emitted large amounts of CO2, while compensating poor ones for not contributing to greenhouse gases.

The Copenhagen treaty seeks to implement a bureaucratic redistributionist agenda; it is a way for Third World kleptocracies to extort enormous sums of money from America and other rich nations.

Moreover, Mr. Monckton points out that, in paragraph 38, Annex 1, the Copenhagen draft calls for a U.N.-created “government” responsible for taxation, enforcement and redistribution. In other words, the draft treaty explicitly demands that the world body erect an international mechanism with the power to impose emission-reduction targets for each country, determine acceptable levels of CO2 and levy global taxes.

The United States would lose control over its environmental policy. Also, it would sign its death warrant as a functioning democracy, enabling the United Nations to administer a fledgling world government possessing the authority to regulate and tax the American economy. The treaty is a sword aimed at the heart of our national sovereignty.

If Mr. Obama signs the Copenhagen treaty, he “will sign your freedom, your democracy, and your prosperity away forever,” Mr. Monckton recently told an audience in Minnesota. “I read that treaty and what it says is this: that a world government is going to be created.”

Yet the U.S. Senate can avoid this disastrous course. A supermajority of 67 votes is required to ratify the treaty. In 1997, the Senate in a 95-0 vote rejected the Kyoto Protocol, thereby preventing the United States from joining. Mr. Monckton believes that, in order to avoid defeat, Mr. Obama will try to circumvent the ratification process. If he does, he will spark a political revolt that will make the Tea Party protests look tame by comparison.

Mr. Obama has vowed to create a “green economy” based on “green-collar jobs” and “a green New Deal.” The Copenhagen treaty would enable him to accomplish his revolutionary ambitions. It would mark his Cultural Revolution – the permanent transformation of America.

Jeffrey T. Kuhner is a columnist at The Washington Times and president of the Edmund Burke Institute.

ARTICLE 2

Environmental alarmism is being exploited to chip away at national sovereignty. The latest threat to American liberties may be found in the innocuous sounding Copenhagen Climate Treaty, which will be discussed at the United Nations climate-change conference in mid-December. The alert was sounded on the treaty in a talk given by British commentator Lord Christopher Monckton at Bethel College in St. Paul, Minn., on Oct. 14. Video of the talk has become an Internet sensation.

The treaty’s text is not yet finalized but its principles are aimed at regulating all economic activity in the name of climate security, with a side effect that billions of dollars would be transferred from productive countries to the unproductive.

The control lever is the regulation of carbon emissions, which some purport are causing global warming. The treaty would establish a Carbon Market Regulatory Agency and “global carbon budget” for each country.

In effect, this would allow the treaty’s governing bodies to limit manufacturing, transportation, travel, agriculture, mining, energy production and anything else that emits carbon – like breathing.

Treaty supporters market the agreement through fear. Even though mean global temperatures have been on a downward spiral for several years after peaking in 1998, we are told that catastrophe is imminent. “The world has already crossed the threshold beyond which it is no longer possible to avoid negative impacts of anthropogenic climate change,” says proposed treaty language being circulated by Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund and other groups. It is critical that they cultivate a sense of impending doom to justify the sweeping restrictions and new powers enshrined in the treaty. The sky is falling and they want us to act now, act swiftly, act before it is too late – but don’t read the fine print.

The governing authority envisioned by the document reads like a bad George Orwell knockoff. The treaty establishes a body called the Conference of the Parties (COP), which is given ultimate authority over administering and enforcing the treaty. Its executive arm is something called the Adaptation Fund Board, under which is the Copenhagen Climate Facility, also known as “the Facility.” The Facility is necessary because in order to save the planet, “the way society is structured will need to change fundamentally.” This change would be impossible under the “fragmented set of existing institutions,” so the Facility will step in with “such legal capacity as is necessary for the exercise of its functions and the protection of its interests.” That’s the Facility’s interests, not yours.

The Facility will be run by an executive committee, the membership of which “may include representation from relevant intergovernmental and non-governmental stakeholders.” So left-wing pressure groups, animal rights fanatics, tree-huggers, Al Gore or any other part of the environmentalist fringe would be eligible for executive committee membership. Naturally, global-warming skeptics like Lord Monckton need not apply.

A “massive scaling up of financial resources” will be required to fund the COP’s activities. The United States and others will be required to transfer $800 billion over five years, with additional funding requirements assessed on an as-needed basis. The COP will have taxing authority “including, but not limited to, a levy on aviation and maritime transport.” The ability to tax aircraft and shipping is bad enough, but as careful readers of the elastic clauses of the U.S. Constitution know, the phrase “including but not limited to” authorizes any tax they can imagine.

Signatories of the treaty will be required to file reports to the Committee for Reporting and Review (“the Committee”), and if found not in compliance with the treaty’s terms, they may have to face “the Facilitative Branch.” If this branch finds that a country is violating the terms of the agreement, it will “undertake the measures necessary” to bring the country back into compliance.

The treaty language would be farcical but for the fanaticism of its proponents. The environmental movement is driven by a millenarian determination to save humanity from itself, regardless of its impact on real people. President Obama reportedly will skip the Copenhagen meeting unless the treaty language is finalized. We urge him to resist the urge to pander to the international community at the expense of the United States.

We look forward to headlines about record cold temperatures during the December climate summit, and to hearing desperate speeches about stopping irresistible global warming during the signing ceremony, held during a blizzard.

LINKS TO ARTICLES

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/oct/25/obamas-new-world-order/
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/oct/27/green-world-government/

Well for the longest time Toyota was the #1 car company in terms of reliability, quality and everything else, but I think times have been changing. This is drawing from my own observations, but I believe Toyota has significantly gone down hill in terms of the quality of cars they make.

My mom has a 01 camry with only 50k miles on it, but it was already having problems with the idling engine, and needed its battery replaced already, it felt like it was going to stall any second. Then my sister who had a 99 camry had to get that sucker put in the shop numerous times for its transmissions problems, naturally after 100k miles, but that’s not normal for Japanese cars. Then also hearing from my friend, her 08 Lexus IS250 felt like it was stalling when she turns on the air conditioning on her car, like how older built cars would react because they would lack the horsepower; but in a luxury car, that’s unheard of for something so new. Also in 2007 Toyota had dropped in their ranking in their JD power and associates to be outranked by Ford, although in 2008, Toyota came out on top again in awards, but it still doesn’t discount personal experience with people I know who own them. Toyota/Lexus have probably one of the most refined interior designs on the market, but they have just been dropping the ball in terms of the quality of the cars they make.

I think Honda/Acura & Nissan/Infiniti are soon surpassing the infallible Toyota. I have a 01 Civic with 125k miles on it already, but have not had any significant problems at all with this car. I just replaced the stock battery at 120k miles, and still have yet to replace the stock original clutch. Yes I know I got to get that done, but that’s not one of my priorities in my life right now.  I drive it just as hard as I did the first year I got it, as I do now 8 years later.  Most people I know who have Honda’s drive them seriously into the ground, not to say that people don’t do that with toyota’s, but the problems seem less.

From the very few people I know whom own Nissans; they have very few mechanical problems in the past with their car, and are brand loyal to them. There is one thing I have to say about Nissan/Infiniti, which has changed for the better.  From my opinion, Nissan/Infiniti had subpar interior quality, yes even the Infiniti’s lacked in the detail and refined sophistication of a Lexus dashboard, but after riding in two new 2008 G37, I must say they have definitely stepped it up a notch, and I think I maybe a convert to the new Infiniti’s from 2008 on. For some odd reason Infiniti’s have the worst resale value out of Toyota & Honda, but I guess that’s good for anyone who wants to buy a used Nissan.

Conclusions: Get a Honda or Nissan, they’re better made cars. In terms of ride quality, Toyota is too mushy, poor handling, Honda’s are a bit too stiff, great handling, and Nissans lands somewhere right in between, smooth ride, and decent handling.  My next ride, after I kill my civic, is a 2006 and up Acura TSX.

If your wondering, “Ron, where do you have the time to write such long opinionated useless blogs?” Well I’m unemployed and this is one of the things that I haven’t done in a while to fill up my day. Good day.

The great tragedy of our age is the fact, if one may dare to say it, that there are so many godless Christians – Christians, that is, whose religion is a matter of pure conformism and expediency.  Their “faith” is little more than a permanent evasion of reality – a compromise with life.  In order to avoid admitting the uncomfortable truth that they no longer have any real need for God or any vital faith in Him, they conform to the outward conduct of others like themselves.  And these “believers” cling together, offering one another an apparent justification for lives that are essentially the same as the lives of their materialistic neighbours whose horizons are purely those of the world and its transient values.

-Thomas Merton

 I had the day off, and i took a hike at griffith observatory. Here are some shots.

You can see the pacific ocean at the horizon.