Jerome R. Corsi's Blog, page 310
February 19, 2013
Obama advances globalist '2-ocean' plan
NEW YORK – President Obama has revived George W. Bush’s Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America effort with a grandiose trade plan that transcends the continent to encompass both the Atlantic and Pacific spheres.
In his State of the Union address Feb. 12, Obama announced a two-ocean, globalist free-trade agenda.
“To boost American exports, support American jobs and level the playing field in the growing markets of Asia, we intend to complete negotiations on a Trans-Pacific Partnership,” he said. “And tonight, I am announcing that we will launch talks on a comprehensive Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with the European Union – because trade that is free and fair across the Atlantic supports millions of good-paying American jobs.”
For the first time, a decision by the U.S. Trade Representative within the White House to expand negotiations to create a free trade zone with Pacific Rim countries was made public, along with a similar initiative with EU countries.
Despite having demonized Republican challenger Mitt Romney as a “jobs outsourcer,” Obama in his SOTU address did not hesitate to sell the new globalist alliances to Congress and the American people as “partnerships” that would expand U.S. exports.
It’s the same premise all previous administrations have used to sell free-trade agreements such as NAFTA.
Jerome Corsi’s “America for Sale” is a resounding call to defend America’s sovereignty
Remarkably, the Trans-Pacific negotiations have received almost no publicity in establishment media, though they have concluded 15 rounds. Eleven nations are participating, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam.
The low-profile advancement of the TPP, now supplemented by the addition of the TAP, appears to have been accomplished by design.
The Obama administration is aware that under George W. Bush, concerns from the right about sovereignty and the left about infringement of U.S. environmental laws – with both sides fearing outsourcing of jobs – blocked greater North American political integration under the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America. Expansion of NAFTA was halted and, later, the inclusion of South America under the Free Trade Act of the Americas.
Obama’s open discussion of the two-oceans TPP and TAP free trade agendas during his recent SOTU attests to the persistence of globalists.
The president has found a way to revive the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, or SPP, through pushing the Trans-Pacific TPP agenda.
On March 23, 2005, at their summit meeting in Waco, Texas, President Bush, Mexican President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin issued a joint statement announcing the creation of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America.
With the announcement, the U.S., Mexico and Canada entered into an unprecedented arrangement in which bureaucrats from the three nations would be assigned to shadow government “working groups” charged with “integrating” and “harmonizing” administrative law and regulatory structures of the three nations in a broad range of public policy areas.
While much of the agreement was announced in Waco, Texas, there was virtually no explanation of whey the trilateral bureaucratic behind-the-scenes work was being initiated. Moreover, nothing was said about creating a North American Community or advancing toward a North American Union.
By the end of the Bush administration, the SPP meetings were dropped and the name was changed. All future tri-lateral meetings with Mexico and Canada were subsequently billed under the less threatening designation of “North American Leaders Summit Meetings.”
So far, the Obama administration has pursued the TPP not under the auspices of the Department of State, but through the offices of U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk.
On June 16, 2012, in a notice published on the U.S. Trade Representative website, Ambassador Kirk announced that Mexico had decided to join the TPP negotiations.
“We are delighted to invite Mexico, our neighbor and second largest export market, to join the TPP negotiations,” said Kirk. “Mexico’s interest in the TPP reflects its recognition that the TPP presents the most promising pathway to boosting trade across the Asia Pacific and to encouraging regional trade integration. We look forward to continuing consultations with the Congress and domestic stakeholders as we move forward.”
Three days later, on June 19, 2012, with similar language, the USTR announced Canada had decided to join the TPP negotiations:
“Inviting Canada to join the TPP negotiations presents a unique opportunity for the United States to build upon this already dynamic trading relationship. Through TPP, we are bringing the relationship with our largest trading partner into the 21st century,” said Kirk. “We look forward to continuing consultations with the Congress and domestic stakeholders regarding Canada’s entry into the TPP as we move closer to a broad-based, high-standard trade agreement in the Asia-Pacific region.”
To avoid mistakes made with the SPP, the USTR this time notified Congress of the intent to include both Mexico and Canada in the TPP negotiations, triggering a 90-day consultation period with Congress. A notice was published in the Federal Register seeking public comments.
By including Mexico and Canada, the U.S. government moved to revive the SPP union of North American nations in the larger regional context of a Pacific Rim union of nations.
The Trans-Atlantic Partnership
A Feb. 13 White House press release on the USTR website announced the Atlantic negotiations.
We, the leaders of the United States and the European Union, are pleased to announce that, based on recommendations from the U.S. – EU High Level Working Group on Jobs and Growth co-chaired by United States Trade Representative Kirk and European Trade Commissioner De Gucht, the United States and European Union will each initiate the internal procedures necessary to launch negotiations on a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.
The announcement suggests the new TAP stems from “working group” formed through U.S.-EU integration efforts begun long before Obama took office in 2008.
On May 8, 2007, WND reported President George W. Bush signed an agreement creating a “permanent body” that commits the U.S. to “deeper transatlantic economic integration,” without ratification by the Senate as a treaty or passage by Congress as a law.
On April 30, 2007, a “Transatlantic Economic Integration” agreement between the U.S. and the European Union was signed at the White House by Bush; Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, the current president of the European Council; and José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission.
The Transatlantic Economic Council created by the agreement was tasked with creating regulatory convergence between the U.S. and the EU on some 40 different public policy areas, including intellectual property rights, developing security standards for international trade, getting U.S. GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Practices) recognized in Europe, developing innovation and technology in health industries, implementing RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technologies, developing a science-based plan on bio-based products and establishing a “regular dialogue” to address obstacles to investment.
The April 2007 summit also involved coordinating the Transatlantic Economic Council with the work of the Transatlantic Policy Network, or TPN – a non-governmental organization headquartered in Washington and Brussels, chaired in 2007 by former Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah. It dates back to December 1995, when the United States and the EU signed what was then known as the “New Transatlantic Agenda,” a protocol contemplating a Transatlantic Common Market to be created between the U.S. and the EU by 2015.
More than a free trade agreement
The Transatlantic economic integration plan was originated in 1939 by a world government advocate who sought to create a Transatlantic Union as an international governing body.
Writing in the Fall 2007 issue of the Streit Council journal “Freedom and Union,” Rep. Jim Costa, D-Calif., a member of the TPN congressional policy advisory group, affirmed the TPN target date of 2015 for the creation of a Transatlantic Common Market.
Costa also argued the Transatlantic Economic Council is tasked with a common set of economic regulations, creating by bureaucratic action the required Transatlantic Common Market regulatory infrastructure, without seeking specific Congressional approval of a new Free-Trade Agreement, or FTA.
Writing in the same issue of the Streit Council publication, Sen. Bennett also confirmed that what has become known as the “Merkel initiative” would allow the Transatlantic Economic Council to integrate and harmonize administrative rules and regulations between the U.S. and the EU “in a very quiet way,” contemplated then to be accomplished without introducing a new FTA to Congress.
The Streit Council is named after Clarence K. Streit, whose 1939 book “Union Now” called for the creation of a Transatlantic Union to be formed as a step toward world government. It envisioned a new governmental federation with an international constitution governing the 15 democracies of the U.S., the United Kingdom, France, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and South Africa.
Ira Straus, former founder and U.S. coordinator of the Committee on Eastern Europe and Russia in NATO, or CEERN, a group dedicated to including Russia within NATO, credits Bennett with reviving Streit’s work “seven decades later.”
A globalist with leftist political leanings, Straus was a Fulbright professor of political science at Moscow State University and the Moscow State Institute of International Relations from 2001 to 2002.
The congruity of ideas between Bennett and Streit is clear when Bennett writes passages that echo precisely goals Streit stated in the same terms in 1939.
One such example is Bennett’s claim in his Streit Council article that creating a Transatlantic Common Market would combine markets that comprise 60 percent of world Gross Domestic Product (GDP) under a common regulatory standard that would become “the de facto world standard regardless of what any other parties say.”
Similarly, Streit wrote in “Union Now” that the economic power of the 15 democracies he sought to combine in a Transatlantic Union would be overwhelming in their economic power and a clear challenge to the authoritarian states then represented by Nazi Germany and the communist Soviet Union.
Also writing in the Fall 2007 issue of the Streit Council journal “Freedom and Union,” World Bank economist Domenec Ruiz Devesa acknowledged that “transatlantic economic integration, though important in itself, is not the end.”
“As understood by Jean Monnet,” he continued, “economic integration must and will lead to political integration, since an integrated market requires common institutions producing common rules to govern it.”
February 16, 2013
And the winner for best family film is ...
UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. – Hollywood celebrated faith and values films at the 21st annual Movieguide Awards Gala held on Friday, Feb. 15, 2013, honoring the best motion pictures in 2012 presenting uplifting and family-appropriate messages.
Hosted this year by Joe Mantegna, currently staring in the CBS television series “Criminal Minds,” and his daughter, Gia Mantegna, the Movieguide Awards dinner was attended by sold-out 450-person audience, including top studio heads and executives in Hollywood, prominent actresses and actors.
Two important awards were presented by noted philanthropists and patrons of faith and values films: Dr. Jack Templeton, president and chairman of the John Templeton Foundation, and Foster Freiss, head of the Freiss Family Foundation.
Out of this year’s semifinalists, 20th Century Fox and Walt Disney studios garnered the highest number of nominations in the Best Movies for Families category, with Fox having five semifinalists and Disney having four semifinalists. Magnolia Pictures’ documentary “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” was a surprise nomination, completing the list of family films along with New Line’s “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island” and DreamWorks’ “Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted” and “Rise of the Guardians.”
Movieguide Awards honors two categories of films: The Ten Best Movies for Families and the Ten Best Movies for Mature Audiences are awarded to films that exhibit moral values and/or a redemptive storyline. Any feature film can be nominated, regardless of box office gross or number of major stars. Movies rated G or PG are eligible for the “Family” category, while those rated PG-13 or R may be nominated in the “Mature” category.
The 2012 Movieguide Awards winners
The winner of the Best 2012 Movie for Families was “Ice Age: Continental Drift.”
Runners-up among the 10 Best 2012 Movies for Families included:
“Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted”
“The Odd Life of Timothy Green”
“Journey 2: They Mysterious Island”
“Wreck-It Ralph”
“Here Comes the Boom”
“Won’t Back Down”
“Chimpanzee”
“The Secret World of Arrietty”
“Jiro Dreams of Sushi”
The winner of the Best 2012 Movie for Mature Audiences was Marvel’s “The Avengers.”
Runners-up among the 10 Best 2012 Movies for Mature Audiences included:
“Les Misérables”
“The Dark Knight Rises”
“Snow White and the Huntsman”
“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey”
“Act of Valor”
“The Amazing Spider-Man”
“Men in Black 3″
“Skyfall”
“Red Dawn” (2012)
Dr. Ted Baehr and his wife Lili created Movieguide in 1985, holding the first Movieguide Awards in 1991, with a mission dedicated to promoting family movies with strong moral and Christian content.
Dr. Ted Baehr
“Most people want good to triumph over evil, and all over the world people are looking for love, peace, and joy,” Baehr, Movieguide president, told WND in an exclusive interview. “Movieguide has been able to demonstrate to the heads of the major movie studios in Hollywood that movies of faith and values are also successful money-making movies, typically at the top of the box office revenue list year after year.”
Dr. Templeton and Dr. Baehr presented the $100,000 Epiphany Prize for Most Inspiring Movie of 2012 to “Les Misérables,” and the $100,000 Epiphany Prize for Most Inspiring Television Program of 2012 to “The American Bible Challenge.”
Also nominated for the $100,000 Epiphany Prize for Most Inspiring Movie of 2012 were: “For Greater Glory,” “Snow White and the Huntsman,” “The Odd Life of Timothy Green” and “Lincoln.”
Also nominated for the $100,000 Epiphany Prize for Most Inspiring Television Show of 2012 were: “Blue Bloods: The Job,” “Tim Tebow’s Wild Rise,” “Raising Izzie” and “Married to Jonas: Prom Night with the In-Laws.”
Epiphany Awards are supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation and are presented for the movie and television program of the year that best helps people know and understand God.
Foster Freiss presented the $50,000 Freiss Free Enterprise Award for Movies to “Jiro Dreams of Sushi,” while also nominated were “The Dark Knight Rises,” “Here Comes the Boom,” “Won’t Back Down,” “Snow White and the Huntsman” and “The Odd Life of Timothy Green.”
Ace Young and Diana DiGarmo of "American Idol" fame
The Freiss Free Enterprise award is supported by a grant from the Freiss Family Foundation and is presented for the one movie of the year that, though fine craftsmanship and inspirational storytelling, does the most to encourage appreciation of free markets, ownership and stewardship.
Lynn and Foster Friess are well-known humanitarians, donating millions of dollars to aid organizations across the world.
The Grace Award for the Most Inspiring Movie Performance of 2012 went to Andy Garcia for his role in “For Greater Glory.” Also nominated were: Hugh Jackman, “Les Misérables”; Mauricio Kuri, “For Greater Glory”; Kristen Stewart, “Snow White and the Huntsman”; Kevin James, “Here Comes the Boom”; and Colm Wilkinson, “Les Misérables.”
The Grace Award for the Most Inspiring Television Performance of 2012 went to Kyla Kennedy, “Raising Izzie.” Also nominated were: Rockmond Dunbar, “Raising Izzie”; “Jeff Foxworthy, “The American Bible Challenge”; Tom Selleck, “Blue Bloods: The Job”; Paige Hemmis, “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition: Harris Family, Part 1 and 2″; and Cedrick the Entertainer, “Soul Man: Lost in the Move.”
Simon Swart, executive vice president and general manager of Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment and the John Templeton Fund, along with Movieguide presented the Kairos Prize for Spiritually Uplifting Screenplays, with cash awards honoring grand prize winner Randall Hahn of Miami, Fla., for “Gideon” ($25,000), 1st runner-up Romeo Ciolfi of Toronto, Ont., for “Play Ball” ($15,000) and 2nd runner-up James M. De Vince of Wallingford, Conn., for “The Basketball” ($10,000).
The Kairos Prizes for Spiritually Uplifting Screenplays by Beginning Screenwriters are supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation.
Special Guests at the Awards Gala included Alexey Komov, Movieguide’s representative in Russia and David Peters, the general director of Galilean International Films & Television Services.
The opening prayer was said by Dave Butts, chairman of America’s National Prayer Committee and president of Harvest Prayer Ministries; the closing benediction prayer was said by William J. Murray, chairman of the Washington, D.C.-based Religious Freedom Coalition and author of seven books, including “My Life Without God,” a WND Book that was included for each attendee in a gift package handed out at the end of the ceremony.
The program featured a musical presentation by the Carmelite Sisters of the Most Sacred Heart of Los Angeles, who received a standing ovation.
Reuben Studdard, the “American Idol” talent crowned 2003 winner after he pulled 24 million votes and became a household name, also was featured in a musical presentation at the awards ceremony.
Among the many actresses and actors making presentations on stage were Jerry Mathers, who played Theodore “Beaver” Cleaver in the 1957-1963 television sitcom series “Leave it to Beaver.”
Jerry and Rhonda Mathers
Also making presentations was Corbin Bernsen, known for his roles as divorce attorney Arnold Becker on the NBC television series “L. A. Law” and as retired police detective Henry Spencer on the USA Network comedy-drama series “Psych,” as well as for his movie role as Roger Dorn in the films “Major League” and “Major League II.”
“The Movieguide® Awards are one of the only places where the greats of Hollywood walk side-by-side with the entertainment industry’s youngest and most promising newcomers,” says Dr. Ted Baehr, publisher and founder of Movieguide.
In the week before the Gala, the two semifinalist lists were boiled down to 10 nominees each; at the Gala each of the nominees received a special award, and then one movie was be crowned as winner in each category.
The Movieguide Awards’ criteria make this the only show in Hollywood where many large-grossing popular movies have a chance at winning an award. However, smaller movies also have an equal chance. “Act of Valor” from Relativity Media and “Red Dawn” from Sony Pictures made less in the box office, for example, but are both semifinalists for a Movieguide Award.
WND asked Baehr what message he wanted to send to the movie industry with the 21st Annual Awards ceremony.
“We want to encourage moviemakers to open their eyes be committed to building faith and values in the next generation of children and grandchildren,” he said. “You will hear me encourage filmmakers that they are making movies for a purpose. We want people to make movies of faith and values that will last for an eternity.”
Faith and values films make money
At each year’s Movieguide Awards, Baehr releases to the movie industry a much-anticipated and widely read “Report to the Entertainment Industry,” examining with empirical evidence the economics of the movies made in the previous year, plus the changing demographics of moviegoers.
This year’s report documents the impact Movieguide has had on the film industry:
70 percent of the Top 10 movies made in the U.S. had strong or very strong Christian, redemptive, moral or biblical content or worldviews;
90 percent of the Top 10 movies overseas had strong or very strong Christian, redemptive, biblical, moral or heroic (good conquering evil) worldviews, with all the top five being Movieguide Award winners;
Nearly three-fourths, 72 percent of the Top 25 DVD sales in North America had strong or very strong Christian, biblical, moral and/or heroic content.
Movies released in 2012 with very strong Christian worldviews averaged nearly $90.78 million per movie by the end of 2012, while movies with very strong mixed, non-Christian or anti-Christian worldviews overall averaged $20.22 million.
Movies with very strong humanist or atheist worldviews did far worse, averaging only $2.4 million.
“We discovered that, once again, the most family-friendly movies and movies with the strongest positive redemptive content and worldviews make the most money, on average, of any other kind of movie,” Baehr wrote in the 2013 report. “Also, they made a ton more money than the worst films, the ones filled with graphic violence, explicit sex and nudity, sexual perversion and false, anti-Christian worldviews, including those that promote atheism and paganism.”
Movieguide has been analyzing movies in depth since 1985, using a comprehensive rating/scoring system that helps pinpoint which movies will succeed and why.
“To understand the economic viability of a movie, we look at its entertainment and artistic value and then beyond that at its production value, content, worldview, philosophy, theology, politics, economics, genre themes and characters,” Baehr notes. “Through its analysis, Movieguide has consistently chosen 25 percent to 40 percent of the winners at the box office, whereas other groups and critics have consistently chosen only zero to eight percent of the winners.”
This year’s Movieguide Award winners include 6 of the Top 10 movies in domestic box office: “Marvel’s The Avengers,” “The Amazing Spider-Man,” “The Dark Knight Rises,” “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” “Skyfall” and “Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted.”
By comparison, none of the 2012 Best Picture Academy Award Nominees are among the Top 10 movies in domestic box office.
Each year, Movieguide ranks all of the approximately 300 movies that gross more than $1 million in annual box office revenues, rating each movie at least 30 separate ways overall, including aesthetically, thematically, morally, biblically, cognitively, philosophically, politically and spiritually, in more than 150 different categories. Movie reviews are published on the Movieguide website.
Movieguide publishes an annual “Family Guide to Movies and Entertainment,” a donor-sponsored publication of the Christian Film & Television Commission.
And the winner for best family film is …
UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. – Hollywood celebrated faith and values films at the 21st annual Movieguide Awards Gala held on Friday, Feb. 15, 2013, honoring the best motion pictures in 2012 presenting uplifting and family-appropriate messages.
Hosted this year by Joe Mantegna, currently staring in the CBS television series “Criminal Minds,” and his daughter, Gia Mantegna, the Movieguide Awards dinner was attended by sold-out 450-person audience, including top studio heads and executives in Hollywood, prominent actresses and actors.
Two important awards were presented by noted philanthropists and patrons of faith and values films: Dr. Jack Templeton, president and chairman of the John Templeton Foundation, and Foster Freiss, head of the Freiss Family Foundation.
Out of this year’s semifinalists, 20th Century Fox and Walt Disney studios garnered the highest number of nominations in the Best Movies for Families category, with Fox having five semifinalists and Disney having four semifinalists. Magnolia Pictures’ documentary “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” was a surprise nomination, completing the list of family films along with New Line’s “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island” and DreamWorks’ “Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted” and “Rise of the Guardians.”
Movieguide Awards honors two categories of films: The Ten Best Movies for Families and the Ten Best Movies for Mature Audiences are awarded to films that exhibit moral values and/or a redemptive storyline. Any feature film can be nominated, regardless of box office gross or number of major stars. Movies rated G or PG are eligible for the “Family” category, while those rated PG-13 or R may be nominated in the “Mature” category.
The 2012 Movieguide Awards winners
The winner of the Best 2012 Movie for Families was “Ice Age: Continental Drift.”
Runner-ups among the 10 Best 2012 Movies for Families included:
“Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted”
“The Odd Life of Timothy Green”
“Journey 2: They Mysterious Island”
“Wreck-It Ralph”
“Here Comes the Boom”
“Won’t Back Down”
“Chimpanzee”
“The Secret World of Arrietty”
“Jiro Dreams of Sushi”
The winner of the Best 2012 Movie for Mature Audiences was Marvel’s “The Avengers.”
Runner-ups among the 10 Best 2012 Movies for Mature Audiences included:
“Les Misérables”
“The Dark Knight Rises”
“Snow White and the Huntsman”
“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey”
“Act of Valor”
“The Amazing Spider-Man”
“Men in Black 3″
“Skyfall”
“Red Dawn” (2012)
Dr. Ted Baehr and his wife Lili created Movieguide in 1985, holding the first Movieguide Awards in 1991, with a mission dedicated to promoting family movies with strong moral and Christian content.
Dr. Ted Baehr
“Most people want good to triumph over evil, and all over the world people are looking for love, peace, and joy,” Baehr, Movieguide president, told WND in an exclusive interview. “Movieguide has been able to demonstrate to the heads of the major movie studios in Hollywood that movies of faith and values are also successful money-making movies, typically at the top of the box office revenue list year after year.”
Dr. Templeton and Dr. Baehr presented the $100,000 Epiphany Prize for Most Inspiring Movie of 2012 to “Les Misérables,” and the $100,000 Epiphany Prize for Most Inspiring Television Program of 2012 to “The American Bible Challenge.”
Also nominated for the $100,000 Epiphany Prize for Most Inspiring Movie of 2012 were: “For Greater Glory,” “Snow White and the Huntsman,” “The Odd Life of Timothy Green” and “Lincoln.”
Also nominated for the $100,000 Epiphany Prize for Most Inspiring Television Show of 2012 were: “Blue Bloods: The Job,” “Tim Tebow’s Wild Rise,” “Raising Izzie” and “Married to Jonas: Prom Night with the In-Laws.”
Epiphany Awards are supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation and are presented for the movie and television program of the year that best helps people know and understand God.
Foster Freiss presented the $50,000 Freiss Free Enterprise Award for Movies to “Jiro Dreams of Sushi,” while also nominated were “The Dark Knight Rises,” “Here Comes the Boom,” “Won’t Back Down,” “Snow White and the Huntsman” and “The Odd Life of Timothy Green.”
Ace Young and Diana DiGarmo of "American Idol" fame
The Freiss Free Enterprise award is supported by a grant from the Freiss Family Foundation and is presented for the one movie of the year that, though fine craftsmanship and inspirational storytelling, does the most to encourage appreciation of free markets, ownership and stewardship.
Lynn and Foster Friess are well-known humanitarians, donating millions of dollars to aid organizations across the world.
The Grace Award for the Most Inspiring Movie Performance of 2012 went to Andy Garcia for his role in “For Greater Glory.” Also nominated were: Hugh Jackman, “Les Misérables”; Mauricio Kuri, “For Greater Glory”; Kristen Stewart, “Snow White and the Huntsman”; Kevin James, “Here Comes the Boom”; and Colm Wilkinson, “Les Misérables.”
The Grace Award for the Most Inspiring Television Performance of 2012 went to Kyla Kennedy, “Raising Izzie.” Also nominated were: Rockmond Dunbar, “Raising Izzie”; “Jeff Foxworthy, “The American Bible Challenge”; Tom Selleck, “Blue Bloods: The Job”; Paige Hemmis, “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition: Harris Family, Part 1 and 2″; and Cedrick the Entertainer, “Soul Man: Lost in the Move.”
Stewart R. Swart, executive vice president and general manager of Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment and the John Templeton Fund, along with Movieguide presented the Kairos Prize for Spiritually Uplifting Screenplays, with cash awards of $50,000 to aspiring screenplay writers Romeo Ciolfi for “Play Ball,” James M. De Vince for “The Basketball” and Randall Hahn for “Gideon.”
The $50,000 Kairos Prizes for Spiritually Uplifting Screenplays by Beginning Screenwriters is supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation.
Special Guests at the Awards Gala included Alexey Komov, Movieguide’s representative in Russia and David Peters, the general director of Galilean International Films & Television Services.
The opening prayer was said by Dave Butts, chairman of America’s National Prayer Committee and president of Harvest Prayer Ministries; the closing benediction prayer was said by William J. Murray, chairman of the Washington, D.C.-based Religious Freedom Coalition and author of seven books, including “My Life Without God,” a WND Book that was included for each attendee in a gift package handed out at the end of the ceremony.
The program featured a musical presentation by the Carmelite Sisters of the Most Sacred Heart of Los Angeles, who received a standing ovation.
Reuben Studdard, the “American Idol” talent crowned 2003 winner after he pulled 24 million votes and became a household name, also was featured in a musical presentation at the awards ceremony.
Among the many actresses and actors making presentations on stage were Jerry Mathers, who played Theodore “Beaver” Cleaver in the 1957-1963 television sitcom series “Leave it to Beaver.”
Jerry and Rhonda Mathers
Also making presentations was Corbin Bernsen, known for his roles as divorce attorney Arnold Becker on the NBC television series “L. A. Law” and as retired police detective Henry Spencer on the USA Network comedy-drama series “Psych,” as well as for his movie role as Roger Dorn in the films “Major League” and “Major League II.”
“The Movieguide® Awards are one of the only places where the greats of Hollywood walk side-by-side with the entertainment industry’s youngest and most promising newcomers,” says Dr. Ted Baehr, publisher and founder of Movieguide.
In the week before the Gala, the two semifinalist lists were boiled down to 10 nominees each; at the Gala each of the nominees received a special award, and then one movie was be crowned as winner in each category.
The Movieguide Awards’ criteria make this the only show in Hollywood where many large-grossing popular movies have a chance at winning an award. However, smaller movies also have an equal chance. “Act of Valor” from Relativity Media and “Red Dawn” from Sony Pictures made less in the box office, for example, but are both semifinalists for a Movieguide Award.
WND asked Baehr what message he wanted to send to the movie industry with the 21st Annual Awards ceremony.
“We want to encourage moviemakers to open their eyes be committed to building faith and values in the next generation of children and grandchildren,” he said. “You will hear me encourage filmmakers that they are making movies for a purpose. We want people to make movies of faith and values that will last for an eternity.”
Faith and values films make money
At each year’s Movieguide Awards, Baehr releases to the movie industry a much-anticipated and widely read “Report to the Entertainment Industry,” examining with empirical evidence the economics of the movies made in the previous year, plus the changing demographics of moviegoers.
This year’s report documents the impact Movieguide has had on the film industry:
70 percent of the Top 10 movies made in the had strong or very strong Christian, redemptive, moral or biblical content or worldviews;
90 percent of the Top 10 movies overseas had strong or very strong Christian, redemptive, biblical, moral or heroic (good conquering evil) worldviews, with all the top five being Movieguide Award winners;
Nearly three-fourths, 72 percent of the Top 25 DVD sales in North America had strong or very strong Christian, biblical, moral and/or heroic content.
Movies released in 2012 with very strong Christian worldviews averaged nearly $90.78 million per movie by the end of 2012, while movies with very strong mixed, non-Christian or anti-Christian worldviews overall averaged $20.22 million.
Movies with very strong humanist or atheist worldviews did far worse, averaging only $2.4 million.
“We discovered that, once again, the most family-friendly movies and movies with the strongest positive redemptive content and worldviews make the most money, on average, of any other kind of movie,” Baehr wrote in the 2013 report. “Also, they made a ton more money than the worst films, the ones filled with graphic violence, explicit sex and nudity, sexual perversion and false, anti-Christian worldviews, including those that promote atheism and paganism.”
Movieguide has been analyzing movies in depth since 1985, using a comprehensive rating/scoring system that helps pinpoint which movies will succeed and why.
“To understand the economic viability of a movie, we look at its entertainment and artistic value and then beyond that at its production value, content, worldview, philosophy, theology, politics, economics, genre themes and characters,” Baehr notes. “Through its analysis, Movieguide has consistently chosen 25 percent to 40 percent of the winners at the box office, whereas other groups and critics have consistently chosen only zero to eight percent of the winners.”
This year’s Movieguide Award winners include 6 of the Top 10 movies in domestic box office: “Marvel’s The Avengers,” “The Amazing Spider-Man,” “The Dark Knight Rises,” “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” “Skyfall” and “Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted.”
By comparison, none of the 2012 Best Picture Academy Award Nominees are among the Top 10 movies in domestic box office.
Each year, Movieguide ranks all of the approximately 300 movies that gross more than $1 million in annual box office revenues, rating each movie at least 30 separate ways overall, including aesthetically, thematically, morally, biblically, cognitively, philosophically, politically and spiritually, in more than 150 different categories. Movie reviews are published on the Movieguide website.
Movieguide publishes an annual “Family Guide to Movies and Entertainment,” a donor-sponsored publication of the Christian Film & Television Commission.
Get Dr. Ted Baehr’s “How to Succeed in Hollywood (Without Losing Your Soul)” – autographed! – from the WND SuperStore.
February 15, 2013
Watch 'Faith & Values' stars on red carpet
UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. – The 21st annual Movieguide Awards will be presented tonight before an over-capacity, star-studded Faith and Values Awards Gala, with a WND live-stream beginning at 7:30 Eastern Time featuring red carpet arrivals and interviews.
Hosted this year by Joe Mantegna, starring in the CBS television series “Criminal Minds,” and his daughter, Gia Mantegna, the Movieguide Awards are attended yearly by the top studio heads and executives in Hollywood, honoring films with uplifting and family-appropriate messages.
Ted Baehr and his wife, Lili, created Movieguide in 1985, holding the first Movieguide Awards in 1991 with the aim of promoting family movies with strong moral and Christian content.
Sign up now to watch WND’s exclusive livestream coverage of the red carpet event.
“Most people want good to triumph over evil, and all over the world people are looking for love, peace, and joy,” Baehr told WND in an interview. “Movieguide has been able to demonstrate to the heads of the major movie studios in Hollywood that movies of faith and values are also successful money-making movies, typically at the top of the box office revenue list year after year.”
Of this year’s semifinalists, 20th Century Fox and Walt Disney studios garnered the highest number of nominations in the Best Movies for Families category, with Fox having five semifinalists and Disney four. Magnolia Pictures’ documentary “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” was a surprise nomination, completing the list of family films along with New Line’s “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island” and DreamWorks’ “Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted” and “Rise of the Guardians.”
The Movieguide Awards honors two categories, the Ten Best Movies for Families and the Ten Best Movies for Mature Audiences. Both must exhibit moral values and/or a redemptive storyline. Any feature film can be nominated, regardless of box office gross or number of major stars. Movies rated G or PG are eligible for the “Family” category, while those rated PG-13 or R may be nominated in the “Mature” category.
This year’s semifinalists in the “Mature” category contain a number of big blockbusters such as “Marvel’s The Avengers” and “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.” They’re lined up beside Academy Award nominees “Zero Dark Thirty” and “Les Misérables” and smaller-budget action films “Red Dawn,” “Red Tails” and “Act of Valor.”
“The Movieguide Awards are one of the only places where the greats of Hollywood walk side-by-side with the entertainment industry’s youngest and most promising newcomers,” said Baehr.
In the week before the gala, the two semifinalist lists are boiled down to 10 nominees each. Each of the nominees receives a special award, and one movie will be crowned as winner in each category.
The Movieguide Awards’ criteria make it the only show in Hollywood where many large-grossing, popular movies have a chance at winning an award. However, smaller movies have an equal chance. “Act of Valor” from Relativity Media and “Red Dawn” from Sony Pictures made less in the box office, but both are semifinalists for a Movieguide Award.
WND asked Baehr what message he wanted to send to the movie industry with the 21st Annual Awards ceremony.
“We want to encourage movie makers to open their eyes be committed to building faith and values in the next generation of children and grandchildren,” he said. “You will hear me encourage filmmakers that they are making movies for a purpose. We want people to make movies of faith and values that will last for an eternity.”
This year, Foster Friess and his wife, Lynn Friess, sponsor the Friess Free Enterprise Prize, an impressive addition to the Hollywood awards landscape.
Accompanied by $50,000, the Free Enterprise Prize awards the movie that “through fine craftsmanship and inspirational storytelling, does the most to encourage appreciation of free markets, ownership, and stewardship.”
Lynn and Foster Friess are well-known humanitarians, donating millions of dollars to aid organizations around the world.
Nominations for the Friess Free Enterprise Prize are “The Dark Knight Rises,” “Here Comes the Boom,” “Jiro Dreams of Sushi,” “The Odd Life of Timothy Green,” “Snow White and the Huntsman” and “Won’t Back Down.”
Faith & Values films make money
At each year’s Movieguide Awards, Baehr releases to the movie industry a much-anticipated and widely read “Report to the Entertainment Industry,” examining the economics of the movies made in the previous year, plus the changing demographics of movie-goers.
This year’s report documents the impact Movieguide has had on the film industry:
70 percent of the top 10 movies made in the year had strong or very strong Christian, redemptive, moral or biblical content or worldviews;
90 percent of the top 10 movies overseas had strong or very strong Christian, redemptive, biblical, moral or heroic (good conquering evil) worldviews, with all the top five being Movieguide Award winners;
Nearly three-fourths of the Top 25 DVD sales in North America had strong or very strong Christian, biblical, moral and/or heroic content.
Movies released in 2012 with very strong Christian worldviews averaged nearly $90.78 million per movie by the end of 2012, while movies with very strong mixed, non-Christian or anti-Christian worldviews overall averaged $20.22 million.
Movies with very strong humanist or atheist worldviews did far worse, averaging only $2.4 million.
“We discovered that, once again, the most family-friendly movies and movies with the strongest positive redemptive content and worldviews make the most money, on average, of any other kind of movie,” Baehr wrote in the 2013 report. “Also, they made a ton more money than the worst films, the ones filled with graphic violence, explicit sex and nudity, sexual perversion, and false, anti-Christian worldviews, including those that promote atheism, and paganism.”
Movieguide has been analyzing movies in depth since 1985, using a comprehensive rating/scoring system that helps pinpoint which movies will succeed and why.
“To understand the economic viability of a movie, we look at its entertainment and artistic value and then beyond that at its production value, content, worldview, philosophy, theology, politics, economics, genre themes, and characters,” Baehr noted. “Through its analysis, Movieguide® has consistently chosen 25 percent to 40 percent of the winners at the box office, whereas other groups and critics have consistently chosen only zero to eight percent of the winners.”
This year’s Movieguide Award nominees include six of the top 10 movies in domestic box office: “Marvel’s The Avengers,” “The Amazing Spider-Man,” “The Dark Knight Rises,” “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” “Skyfall” and “Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted.”
By comparison, none of the 2012 Best Picture Academy Award nominees is among the top 10 movies in domestic box office.
Movieguide’s semifinalists for Ten Best Movies for Families: “Chimpanzee,” “Cowgirls ‘N Angels,” “Chasing Mavericks,” “Frankenweenie,” “Here Comes the Boom,” “Ice Age: Continental Drift,” “Jiro Dreams of Sushi,” “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island,” “Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted,” “The Odd Life of Timothy Green,” “Parental Guidance,” “Rise of the Guardians,” “The Secret World of Arrietty,” “Won’t Back Down” and “Wreck-It Ralph.”
Semifinalists for Ten Best Movies for Mature Audiences: “Act of Valor,” “Argo,” “The Amazing Spider-Man,’ “The Dark Knight Rises,” “For Greater Glory,” “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” “Les Misérables,” “Lincoln,” “Marvel’s The Avengers,” “Men in Black 3,” “Red Dawn,” “Red Tails,” “Skyfall,” “Snow White and the Huntsman” and “Zero Dark Thirty.”
Movieguide ranks each movie produced every year in at least 30 separate ways overall, including aesthetically, thematically, morally, biblically, cognitively, philosophically, politically and spiritually, in more than 150 different categories. Movie reviews are published on the Movieguide Internet website, at no cost via email, and in a monthly magazine sent to subscribers.
February 12, 2013
'Final pope' already running Vatican?
Did Pope Benedict XVI line up his successor and then resign to fulfill a 900-year-old prophecy that the next leader of the Roman Catholic Church would be history’s “final pope.”
The idea was posed by Tom Horn, co-author of the book “Petrus Romanus: The Final Pope is Here.”
As WND reported, Horn and his co-author, Cris Putnam, accurately predicted Benedict would become the first pope in nearly 600 years to resign.
Horn believes the last pope, called “Petrus Romanus” in the prophecy by Irish Archbishop St. Malachy, could be the man who is set to take over interim leadership the moment Benedict resigns Feb. 28 at 8 p.m. local time, becoming the acting Vatican head of state.
The claim centers on Cardinal Tarcisio Pietro (Peter in English) Evasio Bertone, the current secretary of state for the Vatican, who Pope Benedict XVI appointed Camerlengo, or Chamberlain, of the Holy Roman Church April 4, 2007.
In the period known as “sede vacante,” when there is no sitting pope, Bertone will be called upon as Camerlengo to serve as the head of the Roman Catholic Church.
Get “Petrus Romanus: The Final Pope is Here” at the WND Superstore
He will be in charge until the College of Cardinals attending the upcoming Papal Conclave in the Sistine Chapel select a new pope.
Did Benedict choose his successor?
Benedict XVI has made decisions that indicate Bertone could be, or at least once was, his choice for successor, Horn told WND.
Working alongside Bertone, Benedict appeared to be “stacking the deck” in Bertone’s favor Jan. 6, 2012, when he named 22 new cardinals. Most are Europeans, primarily Italians, already holding key Vatican positions.
As a result, Europeans currently number over half of all cardinal-electors, 67 out of 125. Nearly a quarter of all voters in the conclave will be Italian.
“When he appointed these new cardinals,” Horn said, “Benedict seemed to put his definitive stamp on an Italian successor, stacking the College of Cardinals, those who could be called upon to give Bertone the so-called apostolic chair of St. Peter.”
Horn said the idea was not Benedict’s alone.
Most Vatican experts attribute the large number of Italian appointments to the influence of Bertone, he said.
WND sources in Rome close to the Vatican previously suggested Benedict may have resigned in part because he wanted to have a hand, even if indirect, in influencing the selection of his successor.
The sources further argue that by selecting “Benedict” as his papal name, Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, though not a priest of the Benedictine Order, sought to identify his papacy with Malachy’s prohecy that the next-to-last pope would be identified by the epithet Gloria olivae, translated as “Glory of the Olive,” knowing the Benedictine Order is associated by tradition with olives.
By setting up the College of Cardinals to elevate an Italian cardinal to the papacy, Pope Benedict XVI could help fulfill the Malachy prophecy, making Cardinal Bertone – “Peter of Romano” by virtue of one of his given names and his place of birth – the “final pope.”
On Tuesday, Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi told reporters at a Vatican briefing that Pope Benedict XVI would have no say in the selection of his successor, telling reporters the pope “will surely say absolutely nothing about the process of the election” for his successor.
Benedict “will not interfere in any way,” Lombardi insisted.
The Third Secret of Fatima
Horn suspects Cardinal Bertone is at the center of a Vatican cover-up to prevent the release of the complete version of what is known as the highly controversial “Third Secret of Fatima,” allegedly given by the Virgin Mary in an appearance to three shepherd children in Fatima, Portugal, July 13, 1917.
Bertone, who turned 78 in December, had a long history with Cardinal Ratzinger before he became Pope Benedict XVI.
From 1995 to 2002, Ratzinger worked with Bertone as his No. 2 at the influential Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in the Vatican.
A few months after he was elected pope, Benedict asked Bertone to take up the position of Vatican secretary of state, the position Bertone holds to this day.
In January 2010, when Bertone reached 75, the age of retirement for Curia cardinals, he presented a letter of resignation to the pope. Benedict was adamant he needed Bertone to stay on as Vatican head of state, because he wanted to maintain “their precious collaboration,” as reported by Andrea Tornielli in the Italian newspaper La Stampa.
Benedict has steadfastly supported Bertone through a series of crises that have called into question Bertone’s integrity and honesty, including a money-laundering scandal involving the Vatican Bank, formerly known as the Institute for Works of Religion, or IOR. The scandal resulted in the sacking of the bank’s head, Gotti Tedeschi, a highly respected Italian economist and banker, as well as Paolo Gabriele, the pope’s butler, who was criminally prosecuted for confiscating and photocopying more than 1,000 pages of sensitive Vatican documents over six years that he released to an Italian journalist for publication.
In their role of directing the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinals Ratzinger and Bertone released for the fist time to the public “The Third Secret of Fatima” at a press conference June 26, 2000.
In 2007, Bertone published a book, “The Last Secret of Fatima,” with a foreword authored by Benedict XVI, defending the publicly released text of “Third Secret” as the entire secret, arguing that in publishing the text, the Catholic Church had withheld nothing.
“The Third Secret of Fatima” involves a highly controversial End Times vision of an assassination attempt on a future pope that is occasioned by moral corruption and lack of faith among the clergy.
Pope John Paul II believed Our Lady of Fatima intervened to save his life in the assassination attempt in St. Peter’s Square at Vatican City on May 13, 1981, the anniversary of the first apparition of the Virgin Mary to the three children of Fatima.
The current controversy began when Italian journalist and television personality Antonio Socci and American attorney Christopher Ferrara began publishing the claim the Vatican had refused to publish a second part of “Third Secret” that contained the words of the Virgin as revealed to the children of Fatima.
Socci and Ferrara contend the hidden text predicts catastrophes for the Catholic Church and the world that involve End Days punishment by God, leading to Jesus Christ returning to earth for Judgment Day.
Did Benedict XVI plan to resign in 2009?
Celestine V was the last pope to resign, in 1294, after only five months in office. He was a hermit who was greatly revered for his sanctity and his miracles.
On April 28, 2009, in a visit to view Celestine’s remains in the badly damaged Santa Maria di Collemaggio after the disastrous 2009 L’Aquila earthquake, Pope Benedict XVI left the woolen pallium he wore during his papal inauguration in April 2005 on Clement’s glass casket as a gift.
To mark the 800th anniversary of Celestine’s birth, Benedict proclaimed the Celestine Year from Aug. 28, 2009, to Aug. 29, 2010.
Benedict was the only pope to visit Pope Celestine V’s tomb, a sign many have taken that he had contemplated resignation for some time before he made the announcement earlier this week.
On Dec. 13, 1294, on the Feast of Saint Lucy, Celestine V read the following statement to the cardinals who assembled to hear his news: “I, Celestine V, moved by valid reasons, that is, by humility, by desire for a better life, by a troubled conscience, troubles of body, a lack of knowledge, personal shortcomings, and so that I may then proceed to a life of greater humility, voluntarily and without compunction give up the papacy and renounce its position and dignity, burdens, and honors, with full freedom. I now instruct the Sacred College of cardinals to elect and provide, according to the cannons, a shepherd for the universal church.”
As recounted by John Sweeney in a 2012 book, “The Pope Who Quit,” Celestine V declared himself “useless,” stepped down from the papal throne and removed his ring, tiara and mantle, handing them to the cardinals who had elected him; he then sat down on the floor.
He put on the dress of the simplest of friars – the gray habit of a Celestine hermit – and secreted away from the crowd outside to return to the mountains.
What will be next for Pope Benedict XVI? Is there a spiritual connection between the hermit pope and the scholar?
Malachy’s predictions
St. Malachy, an Irish saint and the archbishop of Armagh, who lived from 1094 to 1l48, is attributed with a vision of the last 112 popes from which he created a prophetic list. He named with a descriptive epithet each pope in succession from Celestine II, who was pope from 1143-1144, to the present day.
Malachy described the last pope as “Petrus Romanus,” or “Peter the Roman,” writing: “In the final persecution of the Holy Roman Church there will reign Peter the Roman, who will feed his flock among many tribulations; after which the seven-hilled city will be destroyed and the dreadful Judge will judge the people.”
In 1880, M. J. O’Brien, a Catholic priest, published in Dublin a book providing a “historical and critical account” of the prophecy of St. Malachy regarding the succession of the popes.
O’Brien understood that Malachy’s prophecy was declaring that in the reign of the pope identified as Petrus Romanus the end of the world would come, culminating in Jesus Christ descending to earth for Judgment Day.
O’Brien said Malachy’s vision occurred while he was in Rome for a month, visiting and praying at the Eternal City’s many historical and holy sites.
“The sight of the ruins of Pagan Rome, the tombs of the Apostles, the thought of so many thousands of martyrs, the presence of [Pope] Innocent II, who had been obligated to wander so many years in France and elsewhere on account of the anti-pope Anaclete – all this, I say, filled the mind of St. Malachy with deep and sad reflections and he was forced to cry out in the words of the old prophets: ‘Usquequo, Domine non misereberis Sion?’ – ‘How long, O Lord! wilt Thou not have mercy on Sion?’”
O’Brien continued:
And God Answered: “Until the end of the world the Church will be both militant and triumphant. Until the end of time the sufferings of my passion and the mysteries of my cross must be continued on earth, and I shall be with you until the end of the world.” And then was unfolded before the gaze of the holy bishop of Armagh the long line of illustrious pilots who were to guide the storm-tossed bark of Peter until the end.
Malachy gave his manuscript to Innocent II, born Gregorio Papareschi, who was pope from 1130 to 1143. Innocent placed the manuscript in the Vatican archives, where the document remained unknown until its discovery in 1590.
Through the past 900 years, various critics have questioned the authenticity and the accuracy of St. Malachy’s prophecy, often arguing the methods employed by some of Malachy’s interpreters in applying his epithets to certain popes have been tortuous.
In a modern 1969 version of Malachy’s prophecies, Archbishop H. E. Cardinale, the apostolic nuncio to Belgium and Luxembourg, wrote “it is fair to say the vast majority of Malachy’s predictions about successive Popes is amazingly accurate – always remembering that he gives only a minimum of information.”
February 11, 2013
'Final pope' authors predicted Benedict would resign
Although a Roman Catholic pope had not stepped down in nearly 600 years, the startling resignation of Pope Benedict XVI was predicted by the co-authors of a book published last spring about a medieval prophecy that the next pontiff will be the last.
In “Petrus Romanus: The Final Pope is Here,” co-authors Tom Horn and Cris Putnam examine St. Malachy’s “Prophecy of the Popes,” said to be based on his prophetic vision of the next 112 popes, beginning with Pope Celestine II, who died in 1144. Malachy presented a description of each pope, culminating with the “final pope,” “Peter the Roman,” whose reign would end with the destruction of Rome and judgment.
Horn explained to WND in an interview today that his conclusion Benedict would resign rather than die in the papacy was based not only on St. Malachy but also on a host of historical and current information.
“We took ‘The Prophecy of the Popes,’ we took what was happening in Italian media, and we determined, based on a great deal of information, that Pope Benedict would likely step down, citing health reasons, in 2012 or 2013,” he said.
St. Malachy was an Irish saint and the archbishop of Armagh, who lived from 1094 to 1l48. Malacy described the penultimate pope, which Horn believes is Benedict, as “Gloria Olivae,” or “Glory of the Olive.”
Pope Benedict XVI was not a Benedictine priest, yet he chose the name of Benedict, the founder of the Order of Saint Benedict, which also is known as the Olivetans
The symbol of the Benedictine order includes an olive branch.
Benedict, speaking Monday morning in Latin to a small gathering of cardinals at the Vatican, said that after examining his conscience “before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise” of leading the Roman Catholic Church.
Peter the Roman
Horn and Putnam discuss the evidence pointing to a Benedict resignation on pages 74 and 486 of their April 2012 book, and Horn has made the prediction on a number of radio programs in recent months, including Jan. 13.
Malachy described the last Pope as “Petrus Romanus,” or “Peter the Roman,” writing: “In the final persecution of the Holy Roman Church there will reign Peter the Roman, who will feed his flock among many tribulations; after which the seven-hilled city will be destroyed and the dreadful Judge will judge the people.”
Horn and his co-author have created their own list of 10 candidates to succeed Benedict and become “Peter the Roman.”
Interestingly, a leading candidate is Cardinal Tarcisio Pietro Evasio Bertone, the Cardinal secretary of state, who was born in Romano, Italy. His name could, therefore, be rendered Peter the Roman.
Another Peter on the list is a black African, Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana, the current president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.
In any case, Horn noted, Catholics believe the pope inhabits the “Petrine office” as a successor of the apostle Peter.
Other candidates on Horn’s list are Francis Arinze, Angelo Scola, Gianfranco Ravasi, Leonardo Sandri, Ennio Antonelli, Jean-Louis Tauran, Christoph Schönborn and Marc Quellet.
In 1880, M. J. O’Brien, a Catholic priest, published in Dublin a book providing a “historical and critical account” of St. Malachy’s prophecies.
O’Brien believed Malachy was declaring that the reign of the pope identified as Petrus Romanus would culminate with the end of the world and the return of Jesus Christ.
O’Brien describes Malachy’s vision occurring while the saint was in Rome for a month, visiting and praying at the Eternal City’s many historical and holy sites.
The sight of the ruins of Pagan Rome, the tombs of the Apostles, the thought of so many thousands of martyrs, the presence of [Pope] Innocent II, who had been obligated to wander so many years in France and elsewhere on account of the anti-pope Anaclete – all this, I say, filled the mind of St. Malachy with deep and sad reflections and he was forced to cry out in the words of the old prophets: “Usquequo, Domine non misereberis Sion?” – “How long, O Lord! wilt Thou not have mercy on Sion?”
O’Brien continued:
And God answered: “Until the end of the world the Church will be both militant and triumphant. Until the end of time the sufferings of my passion and the mysteries of my cross must be continued on earth, and I shall be with you until the end of the world.” And then was unfolded before the gaze of the holy bishop of Armagh the long line of illustrious pilots who were to guide the storm-tossed bark of Peter until the end.
Malachy gave his manuscript to Innocent II, who was pontiff from 1130 to 1143. The document was placed in the Vatican archives, where it remained unknown until its discovery in 1590.
‘Amazingly accurate’
Through the past 900 years, various critics have questioned the authenticity and the accuracy of St. Malachy’s prophecies, often arguing the methods used by some of his interpreters to apply his epithets to certain popes have been tortuous.
Horn told WND he and Putnam took a critical view of “The Prophecy of the Popes” and determined that the first part of it, the first 70 or so predictions, probably was altered in the late 16th century.
“It appears that somebody had altered the original medieval document from 1590 backward to promote a particular cardinal to the College of Cardinals to be the fulfillment of what at that time was still a secret list of popes,” Horn explained.
An advocate for Cardinal Girolamo Simoncelli, Horn said, likely “tinkered with the document to make it look like it was pointing toward Simoncelli.”
In “Petrus Romanus,” Horn said, he and Putnam “disregard everything pre-1595, as partly or fully tainted.”
After 1595, however, “The Prophecy of the Popes” was open to public scrutiny.
A modern version of Malachy’s prophecies was published in 1969 by Archbishop H. E. Cardinale, the Apostolic Nuncio to Belgium and Luxembourg.
Cardinale wrote “it is fair to say the vast majority of Malachy’s predictions about successive Popes is amazingly accurate – always remembering that he gives only a minimum of information.”
Horn noted Benedict’s brother, Georg Ratzinger, also a priest, suggested last year that the pontiff might retire at age 85, arguing Catholic law would allow for him to step down if his health wouldn’t allow him to continue.
Benedict, himself, made a case for papal resignation in a book-length interview, “Light of the World.”
Asked if he thought it appropriate for a pope to retire, he said, “If a pope clearly realizes that he is no longer physically, psychologically and spiritually capable of handling the duties of his office, then he has a right and, under some circumstances, also an obligation to resign.”
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February 8, 2013
'Rove never worked for Reagan!'
Karl Rove’s claims that he worked in the 1980 Ronald Reagan election campaign – and subsequently played a role in the Reagan White House – are under attack by critics today who say they’re inaccurate.
“I was the director of the Texas campaign for Ronald Reagan in the fall of 1980 and was appointed to the White House Fellows selection panel,” Karl Rove claimed in an appearance on Bill O’Reilly’s show on Fox News yesterday. “I didn’t meet him [Reagan], he didn’t meet me. But he [Mark Levin] wanted to know where the heck I was then. That’s where I was.”
Rove’s comments were aimed at radio host Mark Levin, who said he did not remember Rove from the Reagan campaign, announcing on air, “As someone who was active in the Reagan campaign in ’76 and ’80, and served in his administration for eight years, I don’t remember Karl Rove.”
But the argument has been moved to a higher level now.
Fact-checkers have confirmed they have been unable to find any documentation Rove ever was in any Ronald Reagan election campaign or in the Reagan administration.
It’s just the latest red flag for members of the conservative wing of the GOP, who for some time have been suspicious of Rove’s organization, the Conservative Victory Project. It was created under the auspices of Rove’s American Crossroads Super PAC.
Their worry has been that Rove’s intent with the outreach is to solicit donations from top-dollar Republican Party contributors by suggesting he is promoting successful conservative candidates in primaries. They fear he actually wants to promote moderate Republican candidates acceptable to the GOP establishment.
In recent days, Rove explained he created the Conservative Victory Project to make sure the Republican Party runs in primary elections conservative candidates “who have a chance to win.”
In the 2012 general election, Rove attacked Richard Mourdoch, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Indiana, who compromised his chances for victory after claiming in an interview that pregnancies from rape may be something God intended to happen.
Rove, at a breakfast of campaign big-dollar donors on the final day of the Republican National Convention in Tampa, also joked: “We should sink Todd Akin. If he’s found mysteriously murdered, don’t look for my whereabouts!”
Akin, a Missouri Senate candidate, contributed a faux pas to the campaign with a comment about “legitimate” rape.
See Rove’s the comments:
Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly was outraged at the time.
She insisted it was not enough for Rove to telephone Akin to apologize, saying: “At the very least Rove should make a public apology. But even that can’t wipe out his gross political mistake. Rove has been calling on Todd Akin to resign, but the one who should resign because he made an embarrassing, malicious and downright stupid remark is Karl Rove.”
Accused of misrepresentation
Following Rove’s appearance on O’Reilly’s show, detailed fact-checking has allowed various conservatives to accuse Rove of misrepresenting his background, by implying that he worked in Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign organization when the truth is that in 1980 Rove worked as executive director in a office organized under the Texas state Republican Party to support in Texas Republican candidates on the Texas ballot.
Today, publicist Craig Shirley, author of the 2009 book “Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America,” a history of Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign, sent out a letter to thousands of conservative leaders and activists around the country charging Rove’s claims to have worked for Ronald Reagan were false.
“Last night on ‘The O’Reilly Factor,’ Karl Rove stated that he was the director of the Texas campaign for Ronald Reagan in 1980. Since then, I’ve received several inquiries on this matter,” Shirley wrote.
“In the course of my research for Rendezvous with Destiny about the 1980 campaign, at no time did I come across Mr. Rove’s name in association with the Reagan campaign. Indeed, according to sources, he was with the George H. W. Bush campaign until he was fired for leaking to the media.”
Shirley’s letter made the following additional claims:
In 1976, as chairman of the College Republicans, Rove supported Gerald Ford over Gov. Reagan, as did all members of the Republican National Committee at that time.
Ernie Angelo ran the 1980 Texas campaign for Ronald Reagan; Rick Shelby was field director; and in 1980, Gary Hoitsma ran the media for Reagan in Texas.
Rove’s own bio on his website says he was on Gov. Clements staff in 1980; Clements was not on board with Reagan until after Republican National Convention held that year in Detroit.
Rove defends himself
In response to a WND email requesting comment, Kristin Davison, chief of staff at Rove & Company, suggested WND consult Rove’s 2010 book “Courage and Consequence,” in which Rove explained he was executive director of the Texas Victory Committee for Reagan-Bush – an organization that turns out to have been a Texas state organization, not a part of the 1980 Reagan presidential campaign.
Conservative critics have reacted to Rove’s response negatively, suggesting that Rove intentionally misrepresented the facts to imply he was more closely associated with Reagan in 1980 than he truly was.
“Karl Rove said on O’Reilly last evening that he was the director of the Reagan campaign in Texas in the fall of 1980. He was not according to my research and my sources including the Reagan Library, which houses all the 1980 campaign documents,” Shirley told WND in an email.
On Pages 54-55 of “Courage and Consequence,” Rove recounts that in the summer of 1980, Texas Gov. Clements asked Rove to be the executive directors of a Victory Committee organized by the Texas state Republican Party, not by the Reagan presidential campaign organization or by the Republican National Committee.
“State parties could organize committees to spend money on volunteer-intensive activities in support of federal candidates as long as the money was raised under federal campaign limits,” Rove wrote on Page 54. “A victory committee could run phone banks, conduct registration drives, send mailings, hold rallies, send out surrogates, and do everything a presidential campaign could do, short of running television ads.”
Under the Victory Committee, Rove claims he assembled “a robust, statewide, grassroots organization in every county.”
Rove also noted, on Page 54, the Reagan campaign sent Texas Republican national committeeman Ernie Angelo, former mayor of Midland, Texas, to “look over our shoulders” in the Victory Committee.
“Angelo provided an invaluable link to the Reagan grassroots people, smoothing hurt feelings and helping glue all Republican volunteers into one massive effort,” Rove wrote.
After Reagan was elected, Clements named Rove his deputy chief of staff.
Then, in October 1981, the direct mail firm Rove and Company started business on Brazos Street in Austin, “with a staff of three and a bank of computerized printers,” Rove recounted on Page 56.
WND has confirmed the Victory Committee of which Rove was the executive director had no formal connection to Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential election campaign.
WND has not been able to confirm that Rove worked on the White House Fellows selection committee under President Ronald Reagan, as he claimed.
The American Spectator further reported Karl Rove is not listed in “The Reagan Alumni,” a directory that lists everyone who played a role in the Reagan campaigns or Reagan administration.
“Mr. Rove is nowhere to be found in directories for June of 1992, October of 1998, February of 2000 and February of 2001,” wrote Jeffrey Lord, a former Reagan aide and a current contributing editor to the American Spectator.
“Directories that contain thousands of names of those who worked for Reagan, all alphabetically listed along with positions held in a Reagan campaign or the Reagan administration or both. Mr. Shirley himself is listed in these directories, as is Rove critic Mark Levin. As am I.”
Seasoned candidates or moderates??
The controversy began Feb. 2 when Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times reported that Rove’s Super PAC, the American Crossroads Project, plans to finance a new organization aimed at recruiting “seasoned candidates” and protecting Senate incumbents from “challenge by far-right conservatives and tea party enthusiasts who Republican leaders worry could complicate the party’s efforts to win control of the Senate.”
Zeleny further reported Rove’s new organization, to be called the Conservative Victory Project, is intended to counter other organizations “that have helped defeat establishment Republican candidates” over the past two decades.
The controversy intensified when Jonathan Collegio, a colleague of Rove at American Crossroads, followed Brent Bozell on the WMAL-FM “Mornings on the Mall” radio show the next day and added fuel to the fire.
“Bozell is a hater and he has a long sordid history hating Karl Rove,” Collegio said on air. “He has weird personal axes to grind.”
Collegio’s on-air comments caused Shirley to write his first letter earlier this week to defend Bozell’s bona fides in the conservative movement.
Shirley, in his letter calling for Collegio to resign from American Crossroads, explained that Bozell is a “legacy” in he conservative movement, noting that Bozell’s father wrote “Conscience of a Conservative” for Barry Goldwater, that William F. Buckley was Bozell’s uncle, and that Ronald Reagan often saluted the Bozell family for contributions to the cause of American conservatism.
January 23, 2013
Did John Kerry act as an enemy agent?
Editor’s Note: This article draws heavily from an article Jerome Corsi previously co-authored with Scott Swett, founder of WinterSoldier.com, titled “John Kerry and the VVAW: Hanoi’s American Puppets,” published May 6, 2007.
NEW YORK – If the subject of Vietnam comes up at the Senate confirmation hearings for Sen. John Kerry’s nomination to be secretary of state, it’s likely that an attempt will be made to characterize Kerry’s participation in the radical group Vietnam Veterans Against the War as nothing more than a respectful disagreement by a loyal citizen concerned about peace and freedom.
What is unlikely to be probed is the extensive public record showing Kerry and his comrades with VVAW were engaged in working directly with the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese government, contrary to U.S. government war policy.
Kerry, while he was yet a Naval Reserve officer, met without official authorization in Paris with representatives of the Viet Cong and the Vietnamese government during the Paris Peace talks. He subsequently returned to the U.S. to implement specific anti-war protests as instructed by Hanoi in a disinformation plan designed to cause the U.S. government to lose the war in by eroding public support.
In June 1970, Kerry met with leaders of both delegations, the Viet Cong and the Vietnamese government, in Paris, in unauthorized discussions that included Madame Binh, the foreign minister of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam, also known as the Viet Cong. Publicly released FBI surveillance reports document that Kerry, then acting as a spokesman for the VVAW, returned to Paris to meet with the North Vietnamese delegation in August 1971 and planned a third trip in November 1971.
Undermining U.S. support for war
A document captured from the Vietnamese communists during the Vietnam War strongly suggests a close link existed between the Hanoi regime and VVAW while Kerry served as the group’s leading national spokesman. The document, a 1971 “circular” distributed by the Vietnamese communists within Vietnam, discusses strategies to coordinate a national propaganda effort with the activities in the United States undertaken by anti-war activists.
The 1971 circular read: “The spontaneous antiwar movement in the United States have received assistance and guidance from the friendly (Viet Cong/National Vietnamese Government) delegations at the Paris Peace talks.”
Prior to the discovery of the circular, there was no direct evidence that Hanoi was steering the U.S. anti-war movement’s activities by conveying Hanoi’s goals and wishes to movement leaders during their frequent visits to Paris, though many investigators had assumed that to be the case.
Further analysis of the document supports the contention that Madame Binh used her Paris meeting with Kerry to instruct him on how he and VVAW might best serve as Hanoi’s surrogates in the U.S. In the spring and summer of 1971, a key strategy of Hanoi was to advance what was known as Madame Binh’s Seven Point Peace Plan.
The plan was cleverly constructed to force President Nixon to set a date to end the Vietnam War and withdraw American troops.
According to the plan, the only barrier to Hanoi setting a date to release American prisoners of war was President Nixon’s unwillingness to set a specific date for military withdrawal.
Accepting the full terms of the plan would have amounted to a virtual surrender that included the payment of reparations to the Vietnam communists as an admission that America was the wrongful aggressor in an immoral war.
John Kerry representing Vietnamese Veterans Against the War at a protest in Washington, D.C., April 20-21, 1971 (Photo: Library of Congress, LC-U9-24273)
Late in 1970, a defecting Viet Cong organizer described a communist plan to use Viet Cong sympathizers in the U.S. to recruit family members of American POWs held captive in North Vietnam.
On July 22, 1971, John Kerry held a press conference in Washington, D.C., to call on President Nixon to accept Madame Binh’s 7-Point Peace Plan.
Kerry surrounded himself at the press conference with POW wives, parents and sisters who had been recruited to promote his message. The event was reported in the New York Times July 23, 1971, and in the communist newspaper Daily World July 24, 1971. Each article included a photograph of Kerry surrounded by POW family members.
Kerry’s use of POW families directly advanced the North Vietnamese communist agenda as described by enemy defectors and in the newly discovered circular, which suggests Madame Binh had recommended the same course of action to anti-war activists meeting with her in Paris.
A number of POW families were contacted by a “liaison” group headed by Cora Weiss, the daughter of Communist Party financier Samuel Rubin, with offers to provide mail and information about their husbands if the families agreed to publicly denounce the war.
Most POW family members refused to cooperate with this extortion, even when promised better treatment for their husbands or sons in Hanoi.
Four angry POW wives protested at Kerry’s July press conference, one of whom accused Kerry of “constantly using our own suffering and grief” to advance his political ambitions.
A puppet of Hanoi?
A second document captured by U.S. military forces in South Vietnam May 12, 1972, is a communist directive designed to motivate discussions within Vietnam about promoting the ongoing antiwar activities in the U.S.
The fifth paragraph of the document makes clear that the Vietnamese communists were utilizing for their propaganda purposes the activities of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
The protest described as occurring from April 19 through April 22, 1971, coincides directly with the dates of Dewey Canyon III, the Washington, D.C., protest led by Kerry, during which his testimony before Sen. J. William Fulbright’s Foreign Relations Committee was a televised centerpiece.
The description of the protest activities in the directive even include the “return their medals” ceremony in which Kerry and other VVAW members threw their medals and/or ribbons toward the steps of the U.S. Capitol, with several shouting threats of violence against their government.
The document makes clear the degree to which the Vietnamese communists were working in the U.S. with and through the People’s Coalition for Peace and Justice, known as PCPJ.
The House Internal Security Committee in its 1971 Annual Report described the PCPJ as an organization strongly controlled by U.S. communists: “There is no question but what members of the Communist Party have provided a very strong degree of influence, even a guiding influence, in the evolution and formation of policies of the Peoples’ Coalition for Peace and Justice.”
Publicly released FBI surveillance reports establish a strong link between Kerry, Al Hubbard, the VVAW, the PCPJ and their trips to Paris to meet with Madame Binh.
John Kerry, far left, on stage with Al Hubbard at the microphone at a Vietnam Veterans Against the War protest in Washington, D.C., April 20-21, 1971 (Photo: Library of Congress, LC-U9-24274)
Hubbard, the executive secretary of the VVAW and a hard-line radical with ties to the Black Panthers and the PCPJ, had directly recruited Kerry into VVAW’s Executive Committee, bypassing the organization’s election process.
Hubbard’s claim to have been a transport pilot wounded in combat was discredited when the Department of Defense released documents demonstrating that though he had been in the Air Force, he was neither a pilot nor an officer, had never served in Vietnam and had never been in combat.
Kerry shared the stage with Hubbard during the Dewey Canyon III protest in Washington, D.C., and he appeared together with Hubbard on NBC’s “Meet the Press” April 18, 1971.
Hubbard also signed the People’s Peace Treaty, a PCPJ document that reiterated the positions of North Vietnam and the Viet Cong on behalf of VVAW.
Al Hubbard at the microphone at a Vietnam Veterans Against the War protest in Washington, D.C., April 20-21, 1971. Photo: Library of Congress)
According to an FBI field surveillance report date-stamped Nov. 11, 1971, the FBI had learned at the Regional VVAW Convention in Norman, Okla., Nov. 5-7, 1971, that Kerry and Hubbard were planning to travel to Paris later that month to engage in talks with the Vietnamese communist peace delegations.
While the document is heavily redacted, other FBI reports make it clear that the Communist Party of the USA was paying for Hubbard’s trips to Paris.
A letter written by Hubbard April 20, 1971, leaves no doubt about the strong coordination between the Vietnam Veterans Against the War and the People’s Coalition for Peace and Justice.
Addressed from the offices of the VVAW in Washington, D.C., the letter is an appeal to VVAW members to provide assistance to the PCPJ. The letter authored by Hubbard outlined several ways in which the two organizations have worked closely together:
This is an appeal for help for the Peoples Coalition for Peace and Justice. Over the past months the Peoples Coalition has supported the Vietnam Vets Against the War in many ways. The Coalition has made office space available at no charge, and permitted the use of all necessary office equipment such as mimeograph machines, stencil-making machines, folders and typewriters. They have loaned us cars, bullhorns, and public address equipment. Their staff has taken messages for us and joined fraternally in building our progress. Now we can return this support.
Saturday, April 24, the Coalition needs help collecting money and selling buttons at the great march and rally. Collectors and sellers must be energetic and determined. There will be security problems in taking large amounts of money to banks. The Coalition needs people power, hundreds of workers.
I earnestly hope that you will come forward to support our friends in this emergency.
Two days after the letter was written, Kerry gave his famous testimony to Fulbright’s Foreign Relations Committee in which he likened the American military in Vietnam to the army of Genghis Khan.
The rally for which Hubbard was recruiting VVAW assistance was the PCPJ’s massive April 24 demonstration in Washington, which immediately followed VVAW’s week-long Dewey Canyon III protest.
The communist newspaper Daily World reported April 27, 1971, “Tributes were paid to the special role of the Vietnam Veterans” at the PCPJ rally, and went on to quote at length from Kerry’s speech at the event.
January 22, 2013
Top psychiatrist: Meds behind school massacres
NEW YORK – If lawmakers and authorities are truly concerned about stopping gun violence in schools, they need to take a close look at the prescription of psychotropic drugs for children and young people, says a leading psychiatrist.
In an exclusive in-person interview in New York City with WND, London-based Dr. David Healy criticized pharmaceutical companies that have made billions of dollars marketing Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors, known as SSRIs.
Psychotropic drugs “prescribed for school children cause violent behavior,” Healy stated.
The drugs are widely used in the U.S. as antidepressants by doctors working in the mental health field and increasingly by primary care doctors, he noted.
Healey insisted the problem today is that doctors working with schools to control the behavior of children are inclined to prescribe SSRI drugs without serious consideration of adverse consequences.
“The pharmaceutical companies made these drugs with the idea of making money,” he said. “There’s a wide range of problems when it comes to looking at these drugs for children. Very few children have serious problems that warrant treatment with pills that have the risks SSRI drugs have.”
The drugs can make children “aggressive and hostile,” he noted.
“Children taking SSRI drugs are more likely to harm or to injure other children at school,” said Healy. “The child may be made suicidal.
“We are giving drugs to children who are passing through critical development stages, and as a society we are really conducting a vast experiment and no one really knows what the outcome of that will be.”
Healey cautioned that there is a very high correlation between mass shootings and use of the drugs.
“When roughly nine out of every 10 cases in these school shootings and mass shootings involve these drugs being prescribed, then at least a significant proportion of these cases were either caused by the drugs or the drugs made a significant contribution to the problem,” he said.
President Obama, in a series of 23 presidential memoranda and proclamations signed last week, called for the Centers for Disease control to undertake research to examine gun violence and to explore medical means to control the problem.
WND contended that putting more mental illness screening into schools would actually increase the incidence of school shootings, not reduce the violence.
“You can draw a line between the number of child psychiatrists in the United States and the number of school shootings, and you will find that both have gone up in the same direction at the same time,” he said.
He sees a “propaganda campaign” being conducted in the U.S. in the wake of the Aurora, Colo., cinema shooting and the Newtown, Conn., school shooting asserting gun violence is being caused by mental illness and could be stopped by additional school programs that screen for it.
“If school children are screened for mental illness problems, this presumably will lead more medical doctors to put more students on more pills,” he said. “I would predict then the outcome of more school screenings for mental illness will be more mass killings, even if the guns are taken away and the mass killings are not done with guns.”
He cautioned shareholders of pharmaceutical companies to realize share prices can be adversely affected should judges and juries determine the companies bear legal liabilities. Law enforcement investigators could conclude one of the company’s medications was prescribed to a child who ended up perpetrating a school shooting.
Healy cautioned that medical doctors who prescribe pills do not necessarily cure mental illness problems.
Dr. David Healy
He argued that today medical doctors are inclined to solve a wide range of health problems by prescribing drugs. In previous generations, however, extended families were capable of providing a context of family history to understand behavioral problems and to identify a wide range of problem-solving treatments. The families understood the issue as a developmental problem better treated by family intervention than by medicine.
“Market research, for instance, has made pharmaceutical companies realize it is much harder to sell drugs for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, ADHD, in a home or a community where the child’s grandmother is likely to be present,” he explained. “Because, of course, the grandmother may say, ‘That kid doesn’t need pills. His father was just like him, and look, his father turned out alright.’ Medicine intervenes with pills when communities have lost their roots in families.”
Healy also expressed distress that information available to pharmaceutical companies exposing adverse side effects of SSRI medications is not made available to the public.
To solve this problem, Healy has created a website, RxISK.org, that allows the posting of personal experiences with SSRI drugs by people who have had personal experience or have had partners, parents, children or friends injured by them. These are people, the website says, “who have found themselves trapped in a Kafkaesque world when they have sought help from doctors, regulators, or others who seem to be there to help us”
The goal of RxISK.org is to create a database open to the public that provides a report a patient can take to a doctor or pharmacist to support and inform a conversation about the adverse sides of a particular SSRI drug.
Independently, a sortable database of 4,800 cases in which SSRI drugs have been associated with violent behavior in the U.S. and worldwide has been posted on the Internet, compiled from incidents that have appeared in the media, scientific journals and Federal Drug Administration testimony.
SSRI drugs covered in the sortable database include Prozac (fluoxetine), Zoloft (sertraline), Paxil (paroxetine), Celexa (citalopram), Lexapro (escitalopram) and Luvox (fluvoxamine).
January 21, 2013
Obama lets Chinese own U.S. energy resources
NEW YORK – The Obama administration is quietly allowing China to acquire major ownership interests in oil and natural gas resources across the U.S.
The decision to allow China to compete for U.S. oil and natural gas resources appears to stem from a need to keep Beijing economically interested in lending to the U.S. The Obama administration has run $1-trillion-plus annual federal budget deficits since taking office that likely will continue in the second term.
Allowing China to have equity interests in U.S. energy production is a reversal of the Bush administration’s policy. In 2005, the Bush administration blocked China on grounds of national security from an $18.4 billion deal to purchase California-based Unocal Corp.
As WND reported Monday, Beijing has been developing a proposal in which real estate on American soil owned by China would be set up as “development zones” to establish Chinese-owned businesses and bring in its citizens to the U.S. to work.
China leased first oil rights in Texas
China’s first major move into the U.S. oil and natural gas market can be traced to October 2009, when the state-owned Chinese energy giant CNOOC bought a multi-million dollar stake in 600,000 acres of South Texas oil and gas fields.
Reporting the story, Monica Hatcher of the Houston Chronicle suggested China was “testing the political waters for further energy expansion into U.S. energy reserves.”
China’s purchase of U.S. oil and natural gas rights will strike millions of Americans as paradoxical, since the U.S. continues to be a net importer of approximately 60 percent of the oil consumed in the U.S.
The Chronicle reported China paid $2.2 billion for a one-third stake in Chesapeake Energy assets, with CNOCC laying a claim to a share of energy resources in South Texas that could produce up to half a million barrels of oil per day.
The Houston paper reported that as part of the deal, CNOCC agreed to pay approximately $1.1 billion for a share of Chesapeake’s assets in the Eagle Ford, a broad oil and gas formation that runs southwest of San Antonio to the Mexican border.
The Chronicle also reported that the deal with China could create as many as 20,000 jobs in the U.S. and provide the capital Chesapeake needs to increase its rig count in South Texas from 10 to 42 by the end of 2012.
China’s oil interests
Along with CNOOC, which is 100-percent owned by the communist Chinese government, Sinopec Group also is purchasing energy interests in the U.S.
Sinopec Group is the largest shareholder of Sinopac Corporation, a state-owned investment company incorporated in 1998 largely to acquire and operate oil and natural gas interests worldwide.
The Wall Street Journal recently compileda state-by-state list of the $17 billion in oil and natural gas equity interests CNOOC and Sinopec have acquired in the U.S. and Canada since 2010.
Colorado: CNOOC gained a one-third stake in 800,000 acres in northeast Colorado and southwest Wyoming in a $1.27 billion pact with Chesapeake Energy Corporation.
Louisiana: Sinopec has a one-third interest in 265,000 acres in the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale after a broader $2.5 billion deal with Devon Energy.
Michigan: Sinopec gained a one-third interest in 350,000 acres in a larger $2.5 billion deal with Devon Energy.
Ohio: Sinopec acquired a one-third interest in Devon Energy’s 235,000 Utica Shale acres in a larger $2.5 billion deal.
Oklahoma: Sinopec has a one-third interest in 215,000 acres in a broader $2.5 billion deal with Devon Energy.
Texas: CNOOC acquired a one-third interest in Chesapeake Energy’s 600,000 acres in the Eagle Ford Shale in a $2.16-billion deal.
Wyoming: CNOOC has a one-third stake in northeast Colorado and southeast Wyoming after a $1.27 billion pact with Chesapeake Energy. Sinopec gained a one-third interest in Devon Energy’s 320,000 acres as part of a larger $2.5 billion deal.
The Wall Street Journal reported China’s strategy – implemented since 2010 by Fu Chengyu, who has served as chairman of both CNOOC and Sniopec – is to “seek minority stakes, play a passive role, and, in a nod to U.S. regulators, keep Chinese personnel at arm’s length from advanced U.S. technology.”
China moving into Gulf of Mexico
After a difficult political struggle, China received permission last month from the Canadian government to make its largest overseas acquisition of oil and natural gas interests outside China, acquiring Canadian energy producer Nexen Inc. for $15.5 billion. In the process, China acquired Nexen oil and natural gas operations in the Gulf of Mexico in U.S. waters.
Although the deal still requires approval from CIFUS, the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment, the acquisition of Nexen’s high-tech ultra-deepwater drilling resources in the Gulf of Mexico was a major reason China sought to acquire the company. CNOOC, a company that derives nearly all its domestic capacity from shallow waters, has announced a goal of producing 1 million barrels of oil per day from ultra-deepwater oil and natural gas facilities by 2020, more than doubling current capacity.
In 2010, China passed the U.S. to become the world’s largest energy consumer, according to the International Energy Agency. China consumed 2.252 billion tons of oil equivalent in 2009, approximately 4 percent more than the U.S.
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