Sting: Obama is ‘sent from God’

WND

Pop singer: ‘We are here to evolve as 1 family, and we can’t be separate anymore’

British recording artist Sting says President Obama could be the answer to the world’s problems – the divine answer.

“In many ways, he’s sent from God, because the world’s a mess,” he said in a new interview with the Associated Press.

The comments from The Police’s lead singer, whose real name is Gordon Sumner, are just the latest in a long series of statements suggesting Obama’s connection to the supernatural.

WND previously reported when an artist who planned to unveil a portrait of Obama in a Christ-like pose with a crown of thorns upon his brow canceled the event due to “overwhelming public outrage.”

Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan also was clear in a nearly religious adoration of Obama. As WND reported, Farrakhan declared last year that when Obama talks, “the Messiah is absolutely speaking.”

Addressing a large crowd behind a podium with a Nation of Islam Saviours’ Day 2008 sign, Farrakhan proclaimed, “You are the instruments that God is going to use to bring about universal change, and that is why Barack has captured the youth. And he has involved young people in a political process that they didn’t care anything about. That’s a sign. When the Messiah speaks, the youth will hear, and the Messiah is absolutely speaking.”

Farrakhan pointed out that the man Nation of Islam followers refer to as “the Saviour,” Fard Muhammad, had a black father and a white mother, just as Obama did.

“A black man with a white mother became a saviour to us,” he said. “A black man with a white mother could turn out to be one who can lift America from her fall.”

WND also previously reported a website called “Is Barack Obama the Messiah?” capturing the wave of euphoria that followed the Democratic senator’s remarkable rise.

The site was topped by an Obama quote strategically ripped from a Jan. 7 speech at Dartmouth College just before the New Hampshire Primary in which he told students, “A light will shine through that window, a beam of light will come down upon you, you will experience an epiphany, and you will suddenly realize that you must go to the polls and vote” for Obama.

The site includes this:

OBAMA BE THY NAME
THY CHANGE WILL COME
THY WILL BE DONE …

Sting said in the AP interview he has spent time with Obama and described the president as “very genuine, very present, clearly supersmart, and exactly what we need in the world.

“I can’t think of anyone better qualified because of his background, his education, particularly in regard to Islam,” he told the news agency.

The 58-year-old said, “My hope is that we can start talking about real issues and not caring about whether God cares about your hemline or your color. We are here to evolve as one family, and we can’t be separate anymore.”

Why the world will never run out of energy

WND

Oil, nuclear power remain abundantly available

Editor’s Note: The following report is excerpted from Jerome Corsi’s Red Alert, the premium online newsletter published by the current No. 1 best-selling author, WND staff writer and columnist. This week, he is including a Chapter Three excerpt from his book, “America for Sale.” Red Alert subscriptions are $99 a year or $9.95 per month for credit card users. Annual subscribers will receive a free autographed copy of “The Late Great USA,” a book about the careful deceptions of a powerful elite who want to undermine our nation’s sovereignty.

Oil remains so abundant that it is unlikely the world will ever run out, Jerome Corsi’s Red Alert reports.

Economist Julian Simon, former professor of business administration at the University of Maryland and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, was famous for taking a contrarian position on energy resources, arguing that our perception of scarcity was not validated by the current or historical factual record of energy abundance.

In an essay titled “When Will We Run Out of Oil? Never!” Simon argued against Malthusian fears that peak oil theorists were right and sooner or later the pumps would run dry, as environmental alarmist Paul Ehrlich frequently argued.

Simon traced fears of energy resource exhaustion back to an 1865 book published in London by W. Stanley Jevons, one of the 19th century’s greatest social scientists, titled “The Coal Question: An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of our Coal-mines.” Jevons argued that Great Britain’s industrial progress would grind to a halt because industry would soon use all available coal. Jevons further concluded that there was no chance oil would be an alternative resource able to solve the problem.

“What happened?” Simon asked.

His answer: “Because of the perceived future need for coal and because of the potential profit in meeting that need, prospectors searched out new deposits of coal, investors discovered better ways to get coal out of the earth, and transportation engineers developed cheaper ways to move the coal.”

Similarly, Simon traced the fears in the United States back to an 1885 U.S. geological survey that declared there was “little or no chance” oil would ever be found in California. In 1939, the U.S. Department of the Interior argued U.S. oil resources would be exhausted in 13 years. Then, when that prediction proved a false alarm, the Department of the Interior revised its estimate and declared that it was from 1951 that U.S. oil would be exhausted in 13 years.

Simon argued gloomy predictions about running out of oil, coal or any other energy resource including natural gas, were typically wrong for several reasons, including the following:

• Typically the energy resources exist on earth in quantities much larger than initially estimated;

• Advances in technology make exploration and recovery of previously difficult to develop energy resources more efficient and economically affordable;

• Improvements in productivity lead to more efficient use of energy resources over time;

• Alternative sources of energy are found, even while predominately used energy resources remain abundant.

• Previously dominant energy resources, such as coal, become less dominant as more efficient energy resources, such as oil, become more understood and utilized – a process Simon believed would continue as liquefied natural gas replaces oil applications, culminating in nuclear energy replacing many current applications of oil and natural gas.

“Simon’s energy resource analysis essentially maintains that we will be running automobiles with nuclear batteries long before we run out of oil,” Corsi wrote. “Another point consistent with Simon’s analysis is that technologies have been developed permitting the clean burning of coal, while coal resources in the United States yet remain among the most abundant on the earth. In the final analysis, nuclear power is the final inexhaustible energy resource.

“Moreover, the development of nuclear power plants to provide electricity to U.S. cities on a scale developed in nations such as France would serve the dual purpose of providing infrastructure jobs that conceivably could match the jobs created by President Eisenhower’s decision to build the interstate highway system, while providing cheap, safe and efficient energy to satisfy our municipal needs indefinitely.”

Today, the U.S. Navy runs ships around the world predominately on nuclear power, without a history of life- or environmental-threatening accidents.

Simon wrote: “Of course nuclear power can replace coal and oil entirely, which constitutes an increase in efficiency so great that it is beyond my powers to portray the entire process on a single graph based on physical units.”

Corsi noted that the one energy resource that is truly renewable and sufficiently robust to produce the energy required in the 21st century is nuclear power.

He said the example environmentalists and radical global warming alarmists typically neglect is France, a country that since the 1980s has built a network of modern nuclear power plants needed to power France’s major cities for the foreseeable future. Today, approximately 80 percent of France’s electricity is generated by 59 nuclear plants across the country that are at least a generation more advanced that the nuclear power plants operating today in the United States.

“As with the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the nightmare scenarios with nuclear power are now decades old,” Corsi wrote. “The Three Mile Island accident occurred in Pennsylvania in 1979, and the Chernobyl reactor meltdown occurred in the Soviet Union in 1986. The world has experienced no similar incidents with nuclear energy since then.”

Red Alert’s author, whose books “The Obama Nation” and “Unfit for Command” have topped the New York Times best-sellers list, received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in political science in 1972. For nearly 25 years, beginning in 1981, he worked with banks throughout the U.S. and around the world to develop financial services marketing companies to assist banks in establishing broker/dealers and insurance subsidiaries to provide financial planning products and services to their retail customers. In this career, Corsi developed three different third-party financial services marketing firms that reached gross sales levels of $1 billion in annuities and equal volume in mutual funds. In 1999, he began developing Internet-based financial marketing firms, also adapted to work in conjunction with banks.

In his 25-year financial services career, Corsi has been a noted financial services speaker and writer, publishing three books and numerous articles in professional financial services journals and magazines.

For financial guidance during difficult times, read Jerome Corsi’s Red Alert, the premium, online intelligence news source by  the WND staff writer, columnist and author of the New York Times No. 1 best-seller, “The Obama Nation.“

For full immediate access to Jerome Corsi’s Red Alert, subscribe now.

Subscribe to Jerome Corsi’s new weekly economic newsletter, Red Alert, for one year and, for a limited time get “The Late Great USA” free. (This offer applies only to annual subscriptions for $99.)

Prayer to Satan during MTV telecast

ONENEWSNOW

 

By James L. Lambert

During last month’s MTV music video awards ceremony, actor Jack Black urged the audience join hands and pray to “dear dark lord Satan.” In his prayer, the actor prayed that the musicians and nominees would have “continued success in the music industry.” The awards program was broadcasted on the MTV network (a subsidiary of the Viacom Corporation) throughout the country through cable and satellite television.

The Radio City Hall audience readily acquiesced to Black’s invitation to pray to the devil. In a video posted on YouTube, Black encouraged the large audience to join in by saying, “let me see those horns.” Black, dressed in a “muscle suit” continued by asking the awards ceremony audience to join hands during “the prayer.” He then held hands with actress Leighton Meester while he prayed aloud.

Black’s prayer went basically unnoticed among most conservative and Christian media circles — perhaps because they feel the comedian was simply joking as he displayed his contempt for Christianity with the prayer invocation. In fact, this would be in keeping with Black’s previous behavior.

In 2008 he participated in a video that mocked supporters of California’s marriage initiative, Proposition 8. In commenting on that video, the Culture and Media Institute (CMI) said Black “appears as Jesus rebuking the Proposition 8 supporters while munching on a shrimp cocktail and saying that the Bible condemns eating shellfish too. Then he [Black] reels off some scripture references without context to suggest that the Bible is self-contradictory and unreliable.” In their press release (December 4, 2008), CMI described Black as “an anti-Christian bigot.”

Others claim last month’s public “prayer” to Satan was just a publicity stunt to promote the new heavy metal video game, “Brutal Legend.”

But regardless how one looks at Black’s actions, it sets a dangerous precedent. Author and King’s College professor Paul McGuire labels Black’s prayer to Satan as “just the tip of the iceberg of what is happening in our nation and in the entertainment industry.” The conservative commentator contends that “although it is hidden, Satanism is one of the fastest growing religions in America.” He adds: “We can expect to see Satanists demanding and getting the same rights as any other religion.”

Former Hollywood actor Bob Turnbull says Black’s prayer to the “dark side” was “pathetic and sick,” which shows a “heartbreakingly sad” side of Hollywood’s culture. Turnbull, also known as the “Chaplain of Waikiki,” knows a little something about Hollywood. In the ’60s and ’70s, he appeared in a number of well-known movies (The Little People, Camelot, Tora Tora Tora) and television shows (Hawaii Five-0, Petticoat Junction, My Three Sons, Bob Hope Chrysler Theater, Another Life).

Phil Magnan, director of BFamilyAdvocates.com, chimes in, wondering if Black “really knows what he is invoking or has any idea how destructive Satanism really is.”

Radio talk-show host Jesse Lee Peterson has a different take on Black’s prayer. Peterson is instead at odds with MTV, the network that hosts the awards. He says it is “disturbing that MTV continues to promote the most degenerate and base programs on its network….[They] intentionally air programming designed to seduce and corrupt the minds and hearts of America’s youth” (like Sex…with Mom and Dad, among others).

Ultimately, McGuire believes there could be some encouraging signs to come. While he affirms his belief that the level of darkness will continue, the Christian author strongly believes that simultaneously Americans will “see a revival among the youth similar to the Jesus Movement in the ’70s.”

U.S. government is bankrupt

WND

‘It’s only a matter of time before the public realizes it’

Editor’s Note: The following report is excerpted from Jerome Corsi’s Red Alert, the premium online newsletter published by the current No. 1 best-selling author, WND staff writer and columnist. This week, he is including a Chapter One excerpt from his book, “America for Sale.”Red Alert subscriptions are $99 a year or $9.95 per month for credit card users. Annual subscribers will receive a free autographed copy of “The Late Great USA,” a book about the careful deceptions of a powerful elite who want to undermine our nation’s sovereignty.

The real 2008 federal budget deficit was $5.1 trillion, not the $455 billion previously reported by the Congressional Budget Office, according to the 2008 Financial Report of the United States Government released by the U.S. Department of Treasury, Jerome Corsi’s Red Alert reports.

The difference between the $455 billion “official” budget deficit numbers and the $5.1 trillion budget deficit based on data reported in the 2008 financial report is that the official budget deficit is calculated on a cash basis, where all tax receipts, including Social Security tax receipts, are used to pay government liabilities as they occur.

The calculations in the 2008 financial report are calculated on a GAAP basis (“Generally Accepted Accounting Practices”) that includes year-for-year changes in the net present value of unfunded liabilities in social insurance programs such as Social Security and Medicare. Under cash accounting, the government makes no provision for future Social Security and Medicare benefits in the year in which those benefits accrue.

Economist John Williams, who publishes the website Shadow Government Statistics, told Corsi, “As bad as 2008 was, the $455 billion budget deficit on a cash basis and the $5.1 trillion federal budget deficit on a GAAP accounting basis do not reflect any significant money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, which was approved after the close of the fiscal year.”

He continued, “For 2009, the Congressional Budget Office estimated the fiscal year 2009 budget deficit as being $1.2 trillion on a cash basis, and that was before taking into consideration the full costs of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, before the cost of the Obama nearly $800 billion economic stimulus plan, or the cost of the second $350 billion tranche in TARP funds, as well as all current bailouts being contemplated by the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve.”

Williams told Corsi the federal government’s deficit is hemorrhaging at a pace that threatens the viability of the financial system. He said the 2009 budget deficit will clearly exceed $2 trillion on a cash basis and the full amount must be funded by Treasury borrowing. He noted that it’s not likely to happen without the Federal Reserve acting as lender of last resort by buying Treasury debt and monetizing the debt.

Corsi explained, “‘Monetizing the debt’ is a term used to signify that the U.S. Treasury will ultimately be required to print cash to meet Treasury debt obligations, acting in this capacity only because the Treasury cannot sell the huge amount of debt elsewhere, possibly not even to the Federal Reserve.”

So far, the Treasury has been largely dependent upon foreign buyers, principally China and Japan and other major holders of U.S. dollar foreign exchange reserves, including Middle East oil-producing nations purchasing U.S. debt through their financial agents in London.

“The appetite of foreign buyers to purchase continued trillions of U.S. debt has become more questionable as the world has witnessed the rapid deterioration of the U.S. fiscal condition in the current financial crisis,” Williams noted.

Corsi wrote, “The sad reality is that the U.S. Treasury has not reserved any funds to cover the future Social Security and Medicare obligations we are incurring today.”

Williams said there are no funds held in reserve today for Social Security and Medicare obligations each year. He said it’s only a matter of time until the public realizes that the government is truly bankrupt.

Corsi wrote that if President Obama adds universal health care to list of entitlement payments the federal government is obligated to pay, the negative net worth of the United States government will only get worse.

Calculations from the 2008 Financial Report of the United States Government show that the GAAP negative net worth of the federal government has increased to $59.3 trillion, while the total federal obligations under GAAP accounting now total $65.5 trillion.

Williams explained the federal government is truly bankrupt and argued that in a post-Enron world, if the federal government were a corporation such as General Motors, “the president and senior Treasury officers would be in federal penitentiary.”

Red Alert’s author, whose books “The Obama Nation” and “Unfit for Command” have topped the New York Times best-sellers list, received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in political science in 1972. For nearly 25 years, beginning in 1981, he worked with banks throughout the U.S. and around the world to develop financial services marketing companies to assist banks in establishing broker/dealers and insurance subsidiaries to provide financial planning products and services to their retail customers. In this career, Corsi developed three different third-party financial services marketing firms that reached gross sales levels of $1 billion in annuities and equal volume in mutual funds. In 1999, he began developing Internet-based financial marketing firms, also adapted to work in conjunction with banks.

In his 25-year financial services career, Corsi has been a noted financial services speaker and writer, publishing three books and numerous articles in professional financial services journals and magazines.

For financial guidance during difficult times, read Jerome Corsi’s Red Alert, the premium, online intelligence news source by  the WND staff writer, columnist and author of the New York Times No. 1 best-seller, “The Obama Nation.“

For full immediate access to Jerome Corsi’s Red Alert, subscribe now.

Subscribe to Jerome Corsi’s new weekly economic newsletter, Red Alert, for one year and, for a limited time get “The Late Great USA” free. (This offer applies only to annual subscriptions for $99.)

Russia’s last independent TV stations to move into Kremlin-owned studios

CSMONITOR

Russia’s National Media Group cites economic motives in moving REN TV and the outspoken St. Petersburg Channel Five. But critics worry the partnering move with Russia Today may presage a loss of editorial freedom

Russia’s last two independent TV voices, citing financial distress, have announced a major “restructuring” that may involve partnering with state agencies, with what many liberal critics fear could be an inevitable loss of editorial freedom.

Officials of the National Media Group, which owns the independent REN TV and the outspoken St. Petersburg Channel Five, insist they’re just looking for economic efficiencies in the reported plans to move REN’s operations into a giant Moscow TV center run by the Kremlin’s pocket news agency, RIA-Novosti, and home to its 24-hour English-language satellite TV station Russia Today (RT). But liberals say they’ve seen this happen several times before, beginning with the Kremlin’s stealthy use of a commercial dispute to take over the only nonstate nationwide TV network, NTV, at the beginning of the Vladimir Putin era in 2001.

“These two small channels are the very last islands of media freedom in Russia, and if they are to be restructured in the ways we have seen, all too often in the past, they will become part of the official propaganda machine,” says Vladimir Ryzhkov, a former independent Duma deputy. “We are all watching this process with deep fears that, once again, economic optimization will actually lead to censorship. In Russia’s TV landscape today, there is basically no freedom.”

RUSSIA TODAY: TECHNICAL SUPPORT, EDITORIAL INFLUENCE?

In the past, the Kremlin’s chosen vehicle for taking over critical media assets was the state-owned natural-gas goliath, Gazprom, but today liberals are pointing their fingers at a surprising new culprit: Russia Today. Started up less than four years ago as a Kremlin project to counter Western “misperceptions” about Russia, RT has burgeoned under a lavish flow of state funding into a huge operation that now boasts an Arabic-language service and a soon-to-launch Spanish service. According to the station’s editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonyan, a new US branch of RT is set to begin broadcasting from studios in Washington, D.C., in January, and will be running special US-oriented programming, 24/7, within a year.

Ms. Simonyan says it’s logical that little stations like REN TV would want to partner with RT, because the English-language station now possesses one of the most modern and sophisticated broadcasting centers in the country.

“Because of this, we can support them technologically,” she says. “We are not going to interfere with their editorial content. That’s not the idea at all.”

That pledge is also offered by officials of the two beleaguered stations, who say they are forced to make radical changes due to sagging advertising revenues and rising shareholder demands to show a profit. “We need to find new premises for REN TV, and we may outsource some technical functions,” says Asya Pomeranets, a company public relations representative. “But the stations will retain their distinctive content.”

Simonyan argues that RT, which offers a variety of news, talk and documentary programming, itself enjoys “absolute editorial independence” from its main financial sponsor, the Kremlin. “What we do is offer a different view of the world, a list of stories you won’t see covered in the mainstream media,” she says. “Our goal is to do good journalism and increase our audience, and not to please someone up there.”

‘I NEVER THOUGHT I’D SEE THIS DAY’

Still, giant state-funded broadcasters like RT are thriving, while little independent outlets like REN are gasping for air, and that points to an inevitable outcome, some experts argue.

“What RT makes is a packaged propaganda product, which is bought and paid for by the Kremlin,” says Alexei Samokhvalov, a former director of REN TV who now heads the independent National TV and Radio Research Center in Moscow.

“In another country, it might seem normal for TV stations to share technical facilities while maintaining separate editorial lines, but in Russia it does not work that way,” Mr. Samokhvalov says.

“If REN TV moves into the RT’s headquarters, and becomes dependent upon them for its very existence, it will lose its independence. When I was director of REN TV, we prized our independence. I never thought I’d see this day,” he adds.

REN TV has grown from a tiny independent station into a nationwide TV network that now enjoys about 6 percent of Russia’s market share, a tiny blip compared with the three state-owned TV behemoths, but beloved to Russian liberals because of its relatively independent editorial stance.

“If you compare with the other media outlets, REN is by far the most liberal, most outspoken, and shows the greatest degree of independence,” says Vladimir Pozner, a leading Russian TV personality. “If it were to lose its independence, I would find that very disheartening.”

KREMLIN MEDIA CRACKDOWN

When Vladimir Putin came to power, nearly a decade ago, he began cracking down on Russia’s once diverse and combative media spectrum, using economic levers of influence rather than Soviet-style brute force to corral journalists, critics have long said. The state-backed takeover of NTV by Gazprom produced a chilling effect on TV broadcasters around the country. The Kremlin subsequently orchestrated the downfall of smaller TV networks that failed to come to heel, including TV-6 in 2002 and TVS the following year. Some public opinion services, which provide journalists with raw information, were also brought under state control, leaving only a handful of small-circulation outfits, such as the liberal Ekho Moskvi radio station, that some critics say are allowed to exist as political window-dressing.

“Very clearly, the government wants that kind of window to remain open, because it’s a way of saying ‘Hey, we have democracy in Russia,’ to the rest of the world,” says Mr. Pozner. “Maybe they see REN TV playing this kind of role, and perhaps that will save it.”

Russia’s beleaguered liberals, who have watched the political landscape turn into a Sovietesque one-party show under Putin and his successor, Dmitri Medvedev, say they hold out little hope for the survival of the last media holdouts.

“Unfortunately, everything that has happened on the TV media front since Putin became president in 2000 suggests that the last vestiges of independent television will be muzzled as well,” says Mr. Ryzhkov.

Top thieves of U.S. secrets

WND

Judicial Watch said Justice Department docs cite Iran, China WND

Counterespionage agents for the United States government are reporting that the nations cited most often as stealing – or trying to steal – U.S. military equipment and technology are China and Iran.

The report comes from Judicial Watch, the Washington public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption.

The organization says it filed a Freedom of Information Act request for Justice Department records concerning incidents of theft of sensitive U.S. military equipment and technology.

The documents from the Justice Department’s National Security Division included a report titled “Significant Export Control Cases Since September 2001″ which was written by the Counter Espionage Section and lists a series of cases.

Judicial Watch said the report, labeled “For Official Use Only,” reported Iran was cited for 31 cases between Sept. 29, 2001, just after the 9/11 terror attacks, and May 16, 2008.

China was cited for 20 cases.

Among the situations that were documented:

• “U.S. v. Eugene Hsu, et al.” (9/21/01): Eugene Hsu, David Chang and Wing Chang were charged with “Conspiracy and an attempt to export military encryption units to China through Singapore.” All received guilty verdicts however Wing Chang is still listed as a fugitive.
• “U.S. v. Avassapian” (12/03): Sherzhik Avassapian was a Tehran-based broker working for the Iranian Ministry of Defense when he attempted to “solicit and inspect F-14 fighter components, military helicopters and C-130 aircraft which he intended to ship to Iran via Italy.” Avassapian pleaded guilty to issuing false statements.
• “U.S. v. Kwonhwan Park” (11/04): Kwonhwan Park was charged with “Exporting Black Hawk engine parts and other military items to China.” Pleaded guilty and sentenced to 32 months in prison.
• “U.S. v. Ghassemi, et al.” (10/06): Iranian national Jamshid Ghassemi and Aurel Fratila were charged with “Conspiracy to export munition list items &emdash; including accelerometers and gyroscopes for missiles and spacecraft &emdash; to Iran without a license.” Ghassemi and Fratila are at large in Thailand and Romania respectively. Justice is currently seeking their deportation.

Judicial Watch said last October, the Department of Justice announced that criminal charges had been issued against more than 145 defendants in the previous fiscal year.

More than 40 percent of the cases involved weaponry, ammunition or other restricted technology intended for China or Iran, Judicial Watch said.

“These documents show that Iran and China have concerted efforts to obtain U.S. military technology in violation of our laws,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

“The Obama administration needs to maintain vigilance against the illegal efforts of enemies such as Iran to obtain our sensitive technologies,” he said.

His organization said items sought by Iran include missile guidance systems, Improvised Explosive Device components, military airplane parts, night vision systems and products desired by China have included rocket launch data, Space Shuttle technology, missile information, naval warship specifications and drone technology.

Plan to Islamize America hits top spot

WND

‘Only difference between guys in suits and guys with AK-47s is timing and tactics’

“Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That’s Conspiring to Islamize America” by Paul Sperry and P. David Gaubatz is poised to rattle Washington with its revelations about the history, the activities and the goals of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and now is the No. 1 best-seller at the WND Superstore.

The book is based on the work of an undercover volunteer who worked at CAIR operations and was able to obtain access to thousands of actual documents generated by the organization that lobbies on behalf of Muslims.

Among other revelations included in the book that cites CAIR’s links to the Muslim Brotherhood is a report from an FBI official in Washington who describes how the Brotherhood and al-Qaida share the same goals but use different methods to achieve them.

“The only difference between the guys in the suits and the guys with the AK-47s is timing and tactics,” the book quotes the official confirming.

Earlier this year, the FBI severed ties to CAIR, citing evidence the group’s leaders were participating in an “ongoing” conspiracy to support terrorists.

The book has all the elements of a top-flight mystery novel, but the situations and conversations are real. Its allegations, frightening to many readers, are supported by more than 12,000 pages of confidential, internal CAIR documents secretly extracted during the undercover operation.

The trail of information provided by the investigation and documented in the book reveals the “insidious and well-funded efforts of the seditious Muslim Brotherhood under the nonprofit guise of CAIR to fully support the international jihad against the United States.”

The goal, the book explains, is the transformation of American society from within.

The hope is, the book said, “to accomplish this through terrorist activities, fraud, and infiltration of our political and intelligence systems.”

The book reveals:

• Which politicians are given money by CAIR.
• How Capitol Hill staffers are strategically placed by CAIR.
• Why FBI bonuses are paid to agents who are nice to CAIR.
• Why our government is afraid to reveal what they really know about CAIR.
• How CAIR has compromised our intelligence systems.
• How CAIR is secretly working with government officials to ban the Patriot Act to make future attacks against our country even easier.

In second place is “America for Sale: Fighting the New World Order, Surviving a Global Depression, and Preserving USA Sovereignty” by Jerome Corsi.

He writes how between President George W. Bush‘s “new world order” and the unprecedented governmental growth and massive redistribution of wealth under President Barack Obama, the United States risks losing the greatest middle class ever created in the history of the world.

He blows the whistle on a movement to undercut the fundamental principles of limited government that our Founding Fathers fought for and died for trying to establish, describing how as policy-makers manipulate the current economic panic to advance a globalist agenda that threatens American sovereignty, citizens must protect their independence and self-governing nation.

The globalists’ plan to put America on the chopping block is explained.

“While the radical Left promotes socialism and the radical Right champions unbridled free trade, valuable jobs are being outsourced, national borders erased, and the dollar destroyed before our very eyes,” he warns.

In third place is the “RECYCLE CONGRESS” Magnetic Bumper Sticker, which states a goal for the coming 2010 mid-term congressional elections – and perhaps more in 2012.

Like other WND bumper stickers, this is magnetic and permanent yet removable.

It fits perfectly on a bumper, a file cabinet or a refrigerator – or any other magnetic surface.

Here are the Shop.WND.com, WND’s online Superstore, top sellers for Oct. 13-18.

1. “Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That’s Conspiring to Islamize America” – (Autographed) (Hardcover)
   By Paul Sperry and P. David Gaubatz
2. :”America for Sale: Fighting the New World Order, Surviving a Global Depression, and Preserving USA Sovereignty” – (Autographed) (Hardcover)
   By Jerome Corsi
3. “RECYCLE CONGRESS” Magnetic Bumper Sticker
4. “For The Record: I’M NOT CRAZY” – (DVD)
   By Molotov Mitchell
5. “SEND CONGRESS A PINK SLIP” Magnetic Bumper Sticker
6. The Annals of the World” (soft cover)
7. “YOU LIE!” Magnetic Bumper Sticker
8. “Where’s The Birth Certificate” Magnetic Bumper Sticker
9. “The Islamic Antichrist: The Shocking Truth about the Real Nature of the Beast” – (Autographed) (Hardcover)
   By Joel Richardson
10. “UNDOCUMENTED WORKER” Magnetic Bumper Sticker

This list does not include WND’s two sister publications – Whistleblower magazine and Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin – always among the best-selling products in Shop.WND.com. If you’re not subscribing to these two great companions to WND, you’re missing out on the best monthly magazine and the best weekly, online intelligence newsletter in the world.

In Russia, Putin’s democracy looking more like a facade

CSMONITOR

Former leader Mikhail Gorbachev and others are outraged after last week’s elections, which only 3 percent of Russians believed were fair, according to a poll.

MOSCOW – What can one single vote, confirmed missing, tell us about the current state of democracy in Russia?

A lot, says Sergei Mitrokhin, leader of the liberal Yabloko party. He says that the lost vote in question – his own – offers startling evidence to back widespread opposition claims that regional polls held across Russia last week were stage-managed to ensure the victory of pro-Kremlin forces.

The United Russia (UR) party, which is led by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, won about 80 percent of all contested positions in some 7,000 districts around the country. In the crucial center of Moscow, UR swept up 32 of the 35 city council seats.

Along with millions of other Russians, Mr. Mitrokhin went with his family to vote at their local polling station, No. 192, in Moscow’s tony Khamovniki district on election day. He knows for sure that he voted for his own party ticket.

But when the final official tally was released last weekend, it showed that zero votes for Yabloko were registered at polling station No. 192.

“We know there were massive falsifications in the vote counting, but really, not a single vote for Yabloko?” says Mitrokhin. “It’s almost as if they wanted to prove I don’t exist as a living being. It looks like the authorities are not even trying to pretend any longer that we are having real elections.”

Gorbachev: democratic system is ‘maimed’
A public opinion survey published this week by the daily Noviye Izvestia newspaper found that just 3 percent of respondents believe the elections were a fair and true democratic exercise. A third thought that UR’s victory was due to “massive falsifications” while a further 44 percent said the party benefited unduly from its command of “administrative resources,” meaning official influence, state media backing, and access to government funds.

Yabloko has documented multiple cases of what is says is official fraud, coercion, and other legal violations in the election campaign and subsequent voting, some of which has been translated and posted on the party’s English-language website (http://www.eng.yabloko.ru/).

But Mitrokhin’s outrage over what looks like the most seriously miscarried electoral exercise in Russia’s post-Soviet history has been increasingly echoed by independent commentators, including the father of Russia’s troubled democracy, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.

“In the eyes of everyone, elections have turned into a mockery of the people and people have great distrust over how their votes are used,” Mr. Gorbachev told the opposition weekly Novaya Gazeta, of which he is part owner, on Monday.

“What is democracy when the people don’t participate in it?” he said. “The electoral system has been utterly maimed. We need an alternative.”

‘Everyone knows the electoral process is dirty’
Last week, scores of opposition parliamentarians staged a walkout from the State Duma to dramatize their complaints about the elections, but by Monday all but a few deputies of the Communist Party had returned.

The chairman of Russia’s official Electoral Commission, Vladimir Churov, warned the protesting lawmakers that they might be breaking the law, and added if they had doubts about the process they could challenge them by “signing an official protocol” of complaint. If that doesn’t work, he added, they can “file a lawsuit.”

Lawsuits against electoral authorities in the past have almost always been dismissed by state-dominated courts.

“Everyone knows that the electoral process is dirty, and that UR basically controls the system,” says Alexei Mukhin, director of the independent Center for Political Technologies in Moscow. “In fact, the whole world sees this, and it’s causing serious damage to the image of the country’s top leaders. The Kremlin needs to take action to change this situation,” before the next cycle of elections in just over two years time, he says.

Since Mr. Putin came to power in 2000, Russia’s political system has been forcibly reshaped to eliminate pesky opposition parties and game elections to favor the giant and reliably pro-Kremlin UR. Mr. Putin’s party now controls the vast majority of regional legislatures, most big city councils, and a more than two-thirds majority in the State Duma, the lower house of parliament.

That system, dubbed “managed democracy,” reached a climax last year when Putin ushered his hand-picked successor Dmitri Medvedev into the Kremlin against virtually no opposition.

Kremlin facade of democracy
The Kremlin’s efforts to create a facade that looks like genuinely contested elections – while ruthlessly eliminating serious contenders – took on almost comical dimensions in polls to choose a new mayor for Sochi, the host of the 2014 Olympic Games, where Putin has invested about $12 billion of the state’s cash and much of his own personal credibility.

In the event last March, Putin’s candidate won with a 77 percent majority, while opposition candidates and democracy activists launched futile protests over what they called heavy-handed state manipulation at every stage of the process.

But experts say the wave of regional elections carried out last week make those polls look almost fair by comparison.

“As we have seen in the past, candidates who were unwanted by the authorities were simply disqualified early in the process,” says Andrei Buzin, chairman of the Interregional Association of Voters, a grassroots monitoring group. “As before, the police were often deployed to block opposition activities and meetings. But, unlike the past, when we didn’t see direct falsifications, there was a lot of falsification in the vote counting in these elections.”

Mr. Buzin says “the situation is getting worse, subjectively and objectively, much worse.”

Former Russian deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov, who faced huge obstacles in his bid to run for mayor of Sochi last April, says that this time around no candidate from his Solidarnost movement was allowed to run for city office in Moscow.

“Every single one of our candidates was disqualified, supposedly due to fraudulent signatures on their nomination forms,” says Mr. Nemtsov. Even Nemtsov’s own signature on one of the forms was declared invalid by officials, he says.

“It’s absolutely terrible, like an election in the German Democratic Republic [the former East Germany],” he says. “Forget about elections in this country. It’s just fraud, manipulation, and corruption. It’s a great big fiction.”

Suicide Blast in Iran Kills Top Revolutionary Guard Leaders

VOANEWS

 

By Elizabeth Arrott
Cairo

 

 

Deputy commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s ground force, Gen. Noor Ali Shooshtari is among those killed in the attack, Sunday, 18 Oct. 2009

Iranian state media report that a suicide bomber in the troubled southeast killed at least 30 people early Sunday, including six commanders of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard force. 

Iranian state media say the suicide bomb blast killed the deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guards ground forces and the commander of the Guards in the troubled Sistan Baluchistan region, which borders Pakistan.

The reports say the attacker targeted people gathering in the city of Pisheen for a reconciliation meeting between local Shi’ite and Sunni leaders.  Minority Sunni groups, in particular ethnic Baluchis, have long complained of discrimination in the Shi’ite dominated country.

The chief prosecutor in the region was quoted as saying the Sunni insurgent group Jundallah, or Soldiers of God, claimed responsibility for the attack.  There has been no direct word from the group, which has carried out anti-government attacks in the past.

Paul Ingram, co-director of the London-based  British-American Security Information Council, notes that similar attacks have been going on for years.  But he says this one stands out. "This is a very unusual attack in as much as it appears to be a successful attack upon the Revolutionary Guards at such a high level involving so many of the senior officers," he said.

Iran’s speaker of parliament, Ali Larijani, accused the United States of being behind the attacks.

The U.S. State Department condemned what it called "this act of terrorism" and mourned the loss of innocent lives.  It said allegations of U.S. involvement were "completely false."

Security analyst Paul Ingram says such allegations are problematic. "It is very difficult to really pin down and there have been these sorts of accusations from the Revolutionary Guards in the past," he said.

Ingram notes the Iranian government has an interest in deflecting blame to foreign elements.

Tehran is under pressure both at home, over the disputed presidential election in June, and abroad, for its controversial nuclear program, which the United States suspects could be aimed at developing nuclear weapons. 

Iran, which denies that charge, has recently agreed to allow western inspectors to look at a newly revealed uranium enrichment facility and has been holding talks with the United States and other western nations on ways to ease concerns about its nuclear program.

How to get paid $1,000 per second!

WND

Entrepreneur offering $20 grand to recite 10 Commandments

By Bob Unruh

The time is getting close for your opportunity to get paid $1,000 per second for reciting God’s laws to mankind.

It will be on Oct. 26 that self-made millionaire Darrel Rundus, a successful business operator in the marketing field, will start dialing telephone numbers of people who have signed up online on his Ten And Win website, giving each person, in the order they are randomly selected, an opportunity to recite the Ten Commandments in 20 seconds or less.

The first successful contestant gets the $20,000 prize.

“I will begin randomly calling those who entered and the first one I get on the phone who can list the law, in order and do it in 20 seconds or less, will win $20,000.00,” he told WND.

(The rules say the actual wording can be abbreviated, so “Do not lie” will qualify as a citation for the longer “Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor.”)

Rundus told WND he was distressed that Americans readily can tick off a list of 10 stores, 10 sports teams – even 10 beers, but there’s a collective “Uhmmm” when those same people are asked to cite the Ten Commandments.

He explains:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HzILRG41B4&feature=related

The project has drawn the support of Ray Comfort of Living Waters ministry and a partner with actor Kirk Cameron in The Way of the Master projects.

“Can you name the Ten Commandments?” Comfort’s newsletter asks. “If you can, you could win $20,000.00!!! On October 26th, 2009, our friend Darrel Rundus will randomly start drawing names and calling people who have registered to ‘Name Ten and win $20,000.00. The first qualifying person he gets on the phone who can list The Law, in order and do it in twenty seconds or less, will win $20,000.00″

The campaign has been launched on the Web at the Ten And Win site, and he’s even posted a video showing not only that it’s possible, but providing tips and hints on how to memorize the law:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aOxm1RCCNA&feature=related

Rundus said he and his wife are taking $20,000 of their own money and posting it as a prize that either will be dispatched via casher’s check or wire transfer to the first person who, on Monday, Oct. 26, answers his random telephone calls and can recite the Ten Commandments in order in 20 seconds or less.

“As a Christian I’m honestly and genuinely intrigued that by the approximate 85 percent of the people around the world today who say they believe in God, but when I asked hundreds of them to name the Ten Commandments, they couldn’t do it,” he said.

“You’re putting me on the spot,” was one of the responses he got.

From a child, it was, “We go to church every Sunday and I don’t know these.”

There’s a signup procedure on the Ten And Win website. Rundus said it will be from those who enter the competition via the website that names and telephone numbers will be selected randomly.

The calls will continue until there’s one winner, he said.

Rundus is founder and owner of the world’s largest circulation marketing firm and previously has worked with evangelist Ray Comfort and actor Kirk Cameron, who run The Way of the Master ministries.

Rundus said while the door remains open to running a future competition, for now there will be one challenge, one prize and one winner.

Rundus told WND his goal is very simple, to encourage people to learn the laws on which the United States was founded, and therefore be able knowledgeably to hold policymakers to those higher standards.