Threat Matrix: Daily Terror Threat

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- This week's deadly train bombings in Spain will not lead to a rise in the U.S. color-coded terror threat alert system, a Department of Homeland Security spokesman said Friday.

"Based on the current intelligence, we have no specific indicators that terrorist groups are considering such an attack in the U.S. in the near term," said department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse.

You had a much more difficult situation. Dad needed to go to the hospital. He had difficulty breathing, a high fever and was getting disoriented. His oxygen levels were low, so they tried the cannula over the nose/ears. That was not only insufficient, but he was combative and pulling out his IV on Saturday night. By Sunday, the CPAP mask was in place with some sedation. His lungs continued to get more irritated. Increasing oxygen levels and rates still didn't work. By Tuesday he was intubated. His fever stayed high and each antibiotic attempted was not helping the fever or lung problems. On Dec 10th, the ventilator tube clogged with mucous. It wasn't noticed until dad had a cardiac arrest. It took 20 minutes to get his heart operational again. He was never reactive to voice or physical stimulus after that point. The doctors struggled with continuing loss of lung function, kidney function and brain function. The doctors detected a pulmonary embolism the morning of the 17th. My mom and sister stepped in at that point and reminded the medical staff of the written directive to not do any heroic actions if there was no hope of living a normal life. The docs agreed that he was way beyond any hope of fixing all the things that had gone bad. The respirator was turned down and additional sedation was applied to make him comfortable. He relaxed and faded off. My sister was in tears. I was in a Hardee's Drive-In somewhere around Birmingham, AL.

"Stephen L. Bening...Who is that? This name also appears there as the one having the vision."

Here's who he is:

I've been thinking about the Lord and how I got my start. I mean, how I got my God start! Then, sometime later, I realized, in reviewing my web site, that it contains nothing to give it my personality: there is no explanation of who I am and of how I came to be doing what I do. It is a rather remarkable story, or at least I think so. Perhaps someone else will agree.

Since I did not receive Jesus Christ as Lord until age 30, my early years, the first 24 which were spent in Illinois, are quickly described. The son of a wealthy man, growing up in small town Carbondale, Illinois, I majored in Accounting at Southern Illinois University and obtained my degree in 1978. Then, in 1981, I became a CPA, or certified public accountant and moved to Florida.

How does a young CPA at the age of 24 wind up doing what I do? That is the story here. Today, I help and advise 41 churches and ministries with financial matters as of July, 2000. I serve on six church and ministry boards of directors. God also called me as a prophet to the nations: at age 35. What happened?

In 1987, while doing accounting services at a large construction company in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the gospel was presented to me by the owner, who had recently experienced a dramatic conversion and deliverance from addiction to cocaine and sex. I attempted to persuade this man that he did not have to destroy his business by preaching this christian gospel with such tenacity. In the process, I attempted to disprove the bible: to prove that it was a work of man. What I proved to myself is that it is the word of God. During this whole time, my client paid me $100 per hour to listen to the gospel. I think that is quite unique, don't you?

I did a brief, 3 month detour through the Mormon Church, or Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I don't want to go into that here, but you can read about my experiences at Mormon Chronicles. I added this section on August 4, 2000, at the urging of the Holy Spirit. I know that someone who is reading this will need to hear what I have to say about Mormonism.

Now we fast forward to 1991. By this time, I had entered private industry, first as a CFO and by 1991, as a CEO of a billion dollar Florida real estate subsidiary of the financial empire of Charles Bronfman of Montreal. On September 29, 1991, I was terminated without warning and given sufficient funds that I was under no financial pressure. I began to pray and seek the Lord to see what he was doing in my life. Sometime during the next month, the words came into my spirit: FINANCIAL MINISTRY. This word was confirmed in writing, prior to my having received it, by another man in my church, Caldwell (Blitz) Robinson, who had received a vision, of which I played a major part. Blitz had written this vision down and had given it to our pastor. He saw me doing FINANCIAL MINISTRY before I was even fired! Amazing God!

Now we come to my birth as a prophet. I became convinced during my conversion in 1987 that the return of the Lord was near. These aspects of the bible greatly occupied my mind as I read the bible through over and over again, many times during those first years.

During 1990, I met a man named Art Cormier. Art was a butcher: a meat cutter in Fort Lauderdale. God was showing him some incredible things. He was having trouble getting people to pay attention to him, for he was receiving warnings about America's future. His english grammar was not very good, but I quickly saw the importance of what he was receiving and I felt called to help him, so, in a sense, I became his scribe. I began doing prophetic newsletters then, mainly filled with what Art was seeing. God led me to call them the "Gammadim Reports", after Ezekiel 27:11. This was still several years before I became aware of the internet, yet God knew even then that I would be the only watchman using the name "gammadim" in the whole world in the year 2000 and that anyone, doing a simple search anywhere on the internet, would be able to locate my web site. AMAZING GOD!

I recall one event that changed me forever. It was June 18, 1991. I had just visited the location of my previous employer at 666 71st Street. I had been showing a friend that place and laughing about the numerical address. I pulled my car into my office parking lot at 6 P.M.: the 18th hour of the 18th day of the 6th month of 1991---can you see all those sixes. Art Cormier was waiting for me. He handed me a revelation he had received that America was going to be destroyed by a Russian attack of SS18 nuclear missiles. Russia has named these missiles "SS18 Satan". Art had no idea where I had been---he had no idea that I had just come from 666 71st street. He had not even noticed the 18th hour of the day. He had not even noticed that it was 6/18, but I did immediately and I was changed forever.

About one year later, God spoke to me at about 9 P.M on June 24, 1992, calling me after the order of the prophet Jeremiah as a prophet to the nations.

Well, that is my story, well almost all. I recall now the words of my friend Roger Heim, who says that he has never written a book because he would have had to have included his failures along with the glorious stories. I have had my failures. I was dreadfully deceived and drawn into Mormonism in 1987 and did not get totally free of it until 1991. This humbled me. There have been other, later failures, that convince me that I still have need of a saviour. Double Double Marriage Trouble. My friends know that I should have used some of this prophetic discernment in my choice of a Christian wife. It hurts to hit the rocks of a reef and have the guts of your ship ripped out. How hard and prideful I was in 1991. How all of that has changed!

Ever since that time, I have been trying to do my best to serve my master. It has not been easy. I have suffered much and have lost everything I had. But like Paul, I consider everything I have lost to be dung in comparison to the riches that I have obtained in Christ Jesus my Lord. And God has been faithful to begin the process of restoration.

I raise my five children and assist my wife with raising her two boys. For the first time in many years, I have a little bit of extra money. It has not been an easy stretch of years, but I wouldn't trade the experience for anything. My roots are deep in Jesus Christ as a result.

Please pray for me that I continue to faithfully and boldly serve and obey our master, our Lord Jesus Christ. He is coming soon.

Stephen L. Bening

I just went outside and you're right.......now what? Do I put on my tinfoil hat or get in the bomb shelter...oh I don't have one. We're built on sand here. :-)

I was just researching Obadiah from the Kitty Hawk threat and got this.....plus add in post 4459 from Teri, back to the fire in the sky and the darkness (caves?)

c. Concerning Edom: Because of what this book says of Edom and Jerusalem, we can gather a date for Obadiah’s ministry. The only time markers we have in the book are the attack against Jerusalem (Obadiah 1:10-14) and the fact that this passage also seems to indicate that Edom was not under Judah’s rule at the time.

· 2 Chronicles 21:16-17 describes an attack against Jerusalem during the reign of Jehoram (848-841 b.c.) by the Philistines and the Arabians.

· 2 Kings 24 and 25 describe the attack of the Babylonians against Jerusalem in 586 b.c.

i. Probably the better choice is the earlier attack, because Obadiah 1:10-14 doesn’t seem to indicate that Jerusalem was totally destroyed, as it was under the Babylonian attack. If Obadiah’s prophecy considers this time period under Jehoram (848-841 b.c.), it makes him a contemporary of the prophet Elisha and also makes him the earliest of the prophets, probably beating Joel by a few years. It also means that this Prophet Obadiah may be the same man mentioned in 2 Chronicles 17:7.

http://www.calvarychapel.com/ccbcgermany/commentaries/3101.htm

After this I'm checking out for the night...........

Chicago, L.A. towers were next targets
Washington Times ^ | 3/30/04 | Paul Martin

LONDON — Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, al Qaeda's purported operations chief, has told U.S. interrogators that the group had been planning attacks on the Library Tower in Los Angeles and the Sears Tower in Chicago on the heels of the September 11, 2001, terror strikes.

Those plans were aborted mainly because of the decisive U.S. response to the New York and Washington attacks, which disrupted the terrorist organization's plans so thoroughly that it could not proceed, according to transcripts of his conversations with interrogators.

Mohammed told interrogators that he and Ramzi Yousuf, his nephew who was behind an earlier attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, had leafed through almanacs of American skyscrapers when planning the first operation.
"We were looking for symbols of economic might," he told his captors.

He specifically mentioned as potential targets the Library Tower in Los Angeles, which was "blown up" in the film "Independence Day," and the Sears Tower in Chicago.
A British newspaper over the weekend published a detailed account that it said was taken from transcripts of the interrogation of Mohammed, who was captured last year in Pakistan.

The transcripts are prefaced with a warning that Mohammed, the most senior al Qaeda member yet to be caught, "has been known to withhold information or deliberately mislead."

According to the transcript, Mohammed has maintained that Zacarias Moussaoui, the French-Moroccan facing trial in the United States as the "20th hijacker," had been sent to a flight school in Minnesota to train for a West Coast attack.

That would buttress Moussaoui's contention that he is improperly charged with participation in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, because he was preparing for a different al Qaeda operation.

The new transcripts confirm an earlier report by the Associated Press that al Qaeda originally had planned to crash hijacked airliners into targets on both coasts.
The London Sunday Times said the transcripts covered interrogations conducted during a period of four months after a bleary-eyed Mohammed was captured in a pre-dawn raid a little more than a year ago.

The confessions reveal that planning for the September 11 attacks started much earlier and was more elaborate than previously thought.

"The original plan was for a two-pronged attack with five targets on the East Coast of America and five on the West Coast," he told interrogators, according to the transcript.

"We talked about hitting California as it was America's richest state, and [al Qaeda leader Osama] bin Laden had talked about economic targets."

He is reported to have said that bin Laden, who like Mohammed had studied engineering, vetoed simultaneous coast-to-coast attacks, arguing that "it would be too difficult to synchronize."

Mohammed then decided to conduct two waves of attacks, hitting the East Coast first and following up with a second series of attacks.

"Osama had said the second wave should focus on the West Coast," he reportedly said.
But the terrorists seem to have been surprised by the strength of the American reaction to the September 11 attacks.

"Afterwards, we never got time to catch our breath, we were immediately on the run," Mohammed is quoted as saying.
Al Qaeda's communications network was severely disrupted, he said. Operatives could no longer use satellite phones and had to rely on couriers, although they continued to use Internet chat rooms.

"Before September 11, we could dispatch operatives with the expectation of follow-up contact, but after October 7 [when U.S. bombing started in Afghanistan], that changed 180 degrees. There was no longer a war room ... and operatives had more autonomy."

Mohammed told interrogators that he remained in Pakistan for 10 days after September 11, 2001, then went to Afghanistan to find bin Laden.
When he was captured in March last year in the home of a microbiologist in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, the 37-year-old was unshaven and wearing a baggy vest.

The interrogation reports also indicate that Mohammed had introduced bin Laden to Hambali, the Indonesian militant accused in the terror attack that killed more than 200 people in Bali, Indonesia, in October 2002.

More.............
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040330-120655-9785r.htm

New Blast in Uzbekistan, Wounded Reported

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A new explosion occurred outside the Uzbek capital on Tuesday followed by an exchange of gunfire involving police, the Russian news agency Itar-Tass said in a report from Tashkent.

Tass, quoting unnamed police sources, said some people had been wounded in the incident 15 km (10 miles) outside Tashkent.

Uzbek officials could not immediately be reached to confirm Tuesday's incident which Tass said involved police and "terrorists."

But a witness in Tashkent heard blasts followed by gunfire.

"We heard blasts, around 0815, then bursts of submachine gun fire, then single shots. We were all terribly scared -- our house was shaking," Lena, a 30-year-old housewife, told Reuters in Tashkent.

"My mother said she had heard four explosions. I myself heard five. Then an armored personnel carrier went chugging down the street," she said, adding that the blasts were in the northeast of the Uzbek capital.

On Monday several explosions in Tashkent and the ancient city of Bukhara killed 19 people and Uzbek officials blamed Islamic groups which it said were trying to split the U.S.-led anti-terror coalition.

In Washington, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the United States stood firmly behind its Central Asian ally.

"These attacks only strengthen our resolve to defeat terrorists wherever they hide and strike, working in close cooperation with Uzbekistan and our other partners in the global war on terror," he said.

Planetary quintet jazzes up the sky
Citizen Times March 29, 2004 10:55 p.m.

They might be millions of miles away, but for the next couple of weeks they'll seem almost like nighttime neighbors.

All five planets that are visible to the naked eye are currently making a nearly simultaneous appearance in the night sky, although you'll have to work pretty hard to see Mercury, the most elusive of them. The phenomenon has been going on for more than a week, but the optimum viewing time is occurring this week and next.

"It's just a pretty sight right now," said Michael Castelaz, director of astronomical studies at the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute in Rosman. "Mercury is visible only for a short time, though, maybe an hour or so. And it's very close to the horizon, so if you're going to see all five, you have to do it right at sunset."

The planets that are visible are literally millions of miles away from Earth - Mercury (57 million), Venus (26 million), Mars (35 million), Jupiter (393 million) and Saturn (812 million). To see the other planets, you need a telescope or other type of optics. Catch the show while you can

Opinions vary on just how often this phenomenon occurs.

"I guess it depends on how precisely you define it - as far as them being in the exact position they are now, that's extremely rare," said Paul Heckert, professor of physics and astronomy at Western Carolina University. "Just seeing five planets at once is not quite as rare."

John Frost, a former biology professor at UNC Asheville and the owner of Natural Selections nature shop and art gallery in Asheville, said the so-called "alignment" (which is not technically an alignment) is fairly rare.

Tips for seeing the five planets

The five "naked eye planets" are visible in the night sky into early April, about 45 to 90 minutes after sunset.
Because Mercury is low in the western sky near the sun, you'll need to gain some elevation to spot it. You'll also want to venture out away from town to get away from light pollution, possibly to the Blue Ridge Parkway or other places with a clear view.

The planets, in their order of appearance, from west-to- east:

Mercury: The most elusive of the naked-eye planets is much lower and less bright than brilliant Venus, but no star or planet low in the western evening sky competes with Mercury for brightness. The trick is finding it just after the sun sets, because Mercury follows the sun down quickly.
Venus: The brightest of all planets continues to grow more brilliant near the end of March. It's low in the western sky.

Mars: The red planet, although not nearly as bright as it was last summer, is visible a little above Venus.
Saturn: The ringed planet stands high in the sky, almost directly overhead. Small telescopes can provide a good view of its beautiful ring system.

Jupiter: The giant gas planet shines as a brilliant silvery "star" low in the eastern sky as dusk arrives. It is unmistakably the brightest star or planet in the region of sky it inhabits, although it's not quite as bright as Venus.

Sources: Space.com, Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute

"I've heard two different figures - it won't happen again until 2008, or it won't happen again for another 30 years," said Frost, who has taught astronomy at UNCA.

Whatever the case, Frost and other stargazers encourage people to enjoy the show while we can. The planets are visible to the naked eye, although for optimum viewing you'll want to get out of town.

"We set up our telescopes in the parking lot of the trailhead to Mount Pisgah," said Tim Barnwell, president of the Astronomy Club of Asheville, which took in the planets a week ago Friday. "You have to go out farther and farther now to get away from light pollution."

The club found the drive worth their time.

"It's great," Barnwell said. "The only one you have difficulty seeing is Mercury, which is right down on the horizon for about 30 to 45 minutes."

And in case you were wondering, with a little concentration and know-how, it's fairly easy to discern a planet from the stars. Venus in particular is unmistakably bright these days.

"To the naked eye they're brighter," Castelaz said. "The other way to tell the difference between the planets and stars is that the stars will twinkle, but planets will not."

With relatively low haze this time of year, it's a good time for planet viewing. What's it all mean?

For some, it's also a good time to ponder the astrological significance of so many of the planets being visible at once to the naked eye.

Of course, nothing is simple when it comes to interpreting what the movement of the planets may mean and the current visibility of five simultaneously, but Asheville astrologer Kelly Lee Phipps took a stab at summarizing it. Essentially, it goes back to May 2000 when Jupiter and Saturn aligned, he said.

"Whatever started in 2000 for people is now coming into form," said Phipps, an astrologer for 18 years. "Now is the time to start expanding what's important in your life based on what you started in 2000."

Jupiter's current lesson, as Phipps sees it, is to "focus on the details, and don't waste time criticizing yourself."

Castelaz takes away another lesson, albeit one that requires a telescope or binoculars.

"If you look closely at Jupiter, you can actually see its most prominent moons," he said. "And if it's a really clear night, you can see the cloud bands."

Contact Boyle at 232-5847 or JBoyle@CITIZEN-TIMES.com.

How to get started
The so-called naked eye planets are called that for an obvious reason: they're visible with the naked eye. But if you're interested in a closer look, here are a few tips on getting you or your children involved in astronomy:

Consider investing in a good pair of binoculars first. Among the local stores selling astronomy equipment are Ball Photo Supply, Compleat Naturalist, Crystal Camera Repair and Natural Selections.
Consider buying a "star finder," a small disc that diagrams the night sky, so you know where to look for what. They're usually less than $10.
Former UNC Asheville professor John Frost has written an introductory book to astronomy called "Nightwatch: A Practical Guide to Viewing the Universe." It's available for about $30 at his shop, Natural Selections, in the Grove Arcade (www.nsasheville.com or 252-4336). The store also offers free introductory classes on astronomy.
The Astronomy Club of Asheville meets twice monthly. For more information, visit www.astroasheville.org or call club president Tim Barnwell at 251-0040.
Consider a subscription to Astronomy Magazine (www.astronomy.com) or Sky Telecope (www.skyandtelescope.com), which are good, introductory magazines.
If you do buy a telescope, magnification capability is not necessarily the most important thing to look for. Getting the largest diameter mirror size is more important, because the image you get will be sharper.
Sources: Natural Selections shop; Paul Heckert, professor of physics and astronomy at Western Carolina University

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