Free Republic

"Shelley, I want you to meet the guy who has cracked the code on the Copper Scroll." With that intriguing introduction, I shook hands with Jim Barfield. We stood among the kiosks of Israeli goods during a lunch break at a Christian Zionist conference in Forth Worth, Texas. "Congratulations," I replied, "but what's the Copper Scroll?" "A treasure map," Barfield answered, "from the prophet Jeremiah." I gave Barfield and his companion a quick once over, trying to determine whether they were the well-intentioned kind of crazy or scary crazy. A small-town Oklahoma man with impressive posture, Barfield sported long (really...

Imagine for a moment, if you would, that each year the American president, vice president, Congress and the Senate gathered together to strategize with Christian leaders to discuss how to "introduce Jesus Christ to the world and pave the way for his return." As surreal as this may sound, this is in effect what happens each year in Iran. But instead of paving the way for Jesus, the Iranians are paving the way for both the Islamic "Mahdi" and Jesus. When the newly elected Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stood before the U.N. General Assembly in 2005, very few in attendance...

ROME – World leaders attending the Group of Eight summit opening Wednesday in Italy will each be presented with a gift from the past and one for the future. Handmade books portraying works by Neoclassical sculptor Antonio Canova, as well as gold coins representing an imaginary future world currency will be given to the participants at the opening of the three-day summit. There are 10 copies of the book, commissioned by Italy's Premier Silvio Berlusconi from the Bologna-based art publishing house Fondazione Marilena Ferrari, each with a personalized dedication for the leader who receives it. ...snip... The coins, made by...

ASTRONOMERS are claiming that Earth is witnessing the biggest and most powerful Sunspot ever seen and the sunspot is yet to peak in intensity. A sunspot is a magnetic storm on the surface of the sun and the area of the spot is colder than the normal surface. The normal surface is about 5000 degrees, the temperature of a sunspot is about 3000 degrees. The size of a sunspot varies, ranging from the size of the moon to 65 times larger than the size of earth and lasts for about a month then fades away. This newest sunspot is thought...

(CNN) -- A 6.7-magnitude earthquake hit near the Greek island of Crete on Wednesday, the U.S. Geological Survey said. It struck at 12:30 p.m. (5:30 a.m. ET), the USGS said. It was centered about 80 miles (130 kilometers) off the city of Iraklion on Crete, the USGS said. An earthquake with a 6.7 magnitude is capable of causing significant damage, especially in areas of poor construction. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries. A staff member at Iraklion Airport told CNN they didn't feel the earthquake. Similar reports came from staff members at hotels just outside Iraklion and...

Luxury ocean liners in Russia are offering pirate hunting cruises aboard armed private yachts off the Somali coast. Wealthy punters pay £3,500 per day to patrol the most dangerous waters in the world hoping to be attacked by raiders. When attacked, they retaliate with grenade launchers, machine guns and rocket launchers, reports Austrian business paper Wirtschaftsblatt. Passengers, who can pay an extra £5 a day for an AK-47 machine gun and £7 for 100 rounds of ammo, are also protected by a squad of ex special forces troops. The yachts travel from Djibouti in Somalia to Mombasa in Kenya. The...

Scientists at the University of Alberta have found that there are significant differences in the way our brains function depending on whether we're early risers or night owls. Neuroscientists in the Faculty of Physical Education and Recreation looked at two groups of people: those who wake up early and feel most productive in the morning, and those who were identified as evening people, those who typically felt livelier at night. Study participants were initially grouped after completing a standardized questionnaire about their habits. Using magnetic resonance imaging-guided brain stimulation, scientists tested muscle torque and the excitability of pathways through the...

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Espousing a dream of harmony that may stretch credibility among even the most fervent believers in dialogue among the great religions, clerics in Jerusalem launched a project on Thursday aimed at finding a way to share the city's holiest, and most fought over, site. Even the Jewish religious scholar promoting it acknowledges it might need divine intervention before a peaceful remapping of the area where Muslims built the 7th century Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque on the site of the biblical Jewish Temple. "We offer this vision for a long and deep discussion, and of...

National Level Exercise 2009 (NLE 09) National Level Exercise 2009 (NLE 09) is scheduled for July 27 through July 31, 2009. NLE 09 will be the first major exercise conducted by the United States government that will focus exclusively on terrorism prevention and protection, as opposed to incident response and recovery. NLE 09 is designated as a Tier I National Level Exercise. Tier I exercises (formerly known as the Top Officials exercise series or TOPOFF) are conducted annually in accordance with the National Exercise Program (NEP), which serves as the nation's overarching exercise program for planning, organizing, conducting and evaluating...

LIGHTNING SPLASH: On May 26th, photographers Francis Schaefers and Daniel Burger were chasing a thunderstorm along a beach in Vlissingen, the Netherlands, when "the storm turned around and came a little too close for comfort," says Schaefers. "We were able to photograph lightning hitting the water just 40 meters away." Here is the view through their Canon 400D: Look closely where the lightning meets the water. Tiny bolts appear to be dancing around the impact site. "Those are called 'upward streamers,'" says lightning expert Richard Blakeslee of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. "In a typical cloud-to-ground lightning strike, as...

DEBKAfile's military sources disclose that Sunday night, May 31, Hamas commanders in Damascus and Gaza ordered all West Bank cells to unleash a terrorist assault on the West Bank with bomb cars, roadside bombs, snipers and missiles. They were told to set their sights on all Palestinian Authority officials including Mahmoud Abbas as well as taking aim at Israeli cities north of Tel Aviv. Our sources quote the Hamas directive as saying: "From tonight, you must go into action without delay against every Palestinian/Israel target within reach, using all the resources prepared in recent months." The directive continues: "There are...

EIFFEL LIGHTNING BOLT: Believe it or not, bolts of lightning are shooting out of the Eiffel Tower. Photographer Hakim Atek caught it happening on May 25th: Photo Details: Nikon D80 + Nikkor 18-135mm, ISO 100, f/8, 30s, +2.0ev "I saw some lightning out the window of my home in Paris," says Atek. "So I set up a tripod and pointed my camera (a Nikon D80) at the Eiffel Tower. I never expected to get such an amazing picture." But did the Tower really make its own lightning? The surprising answer is "yes." "The upward branching in this photo shows that...

JERUSALEM – Christians in the Palestinian territories are being "watched," a spokesman for the Palestinian Authority admitted to WND. "We have been watching this Christian organization and for the moment there is nothing special in their activity," said Adnan Dmeire, spokesman for the PA's security organizations in West Bank. Dmeire was referring to the Association of the Holy Book, one of the main groups that attends to the needs of Christians in the Palestinian territories. The group has been accused by both the PA and Hamas of carrying out missionary activities. A Bible store the association sponsored in the Gaza...

About The SOPHIA Project -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The SOPHIA Project is being conducted under the direction of Gary E. Schwartz, PhD in the Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health. The first study in this project is the Entity Communications Study. Background and Rationale Numerous individuals in various cultures throughout history have reported an ability to communicate with non-human entities, deceased people, and other-worldly beings. Over the past few years, an increase in the reporting of these types of experiences has been seen in popular American culture including books, websites, and television shows. The rational scientific investigation of this topic is necessary...

Whose interest was President Obama serving when on March 30 he ordered Chrysler to either conclude a merger with Italian automaker Fiat within 30 days or lose federal bailout funds which would lead to its immediate demise? That untimely announcement placed Chrysler in the untenable position of accepting whatever Fiat offered, literally cutting the legs out from under the struggling American carmaker’s negotiating platform. Some financial analysts had already determined that what Fiat was offering was a very bad deal for Chrysler. “The steal of the century,” Forbes columnist Jerry Flint wrote of the deal back in January, “Fiat gets...

One of quantum physics' crazier notions is that two particles seem to communicate with each other instantly, even when they're billions of miles apart. Albert Einstein, arguing that nothing travels faster than light, dismissed this as impossible "spooky action at a distance." The great man may have been wrong. A series of recent mind-bending laboratory experiments has given scientists an unprecedented peek behind the quantum veil, confirming that this realm is as mysterious as imagined. Quantum physics is the study of the very small -- atoms, photons and other particles. Unlike the cause-and-effect of our everyday physical world, subatomic particles...

RGE Monitor has come up with an excellent analysis of the Shariah-Compliant Finance industry and has pretty much debunked all the misleading and flowery reports about Shariah-Compliance providing a safe haven against the current economic decline and financial downturn. It also reinforces another important aspect of Shariah-Compliant Finance that we’ve been writing about on SFW for months: Iran’s central and leading role in the spread of Shariah-Compliant Finance, as depicted in this pie chart: Iran has more Shariah-Compliant assets than Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and Kuwait combined. Unfortunately, while the RGE article points out the current and recent troubles with Shariah-Compliant...

Seventy five years ago is going to seem like yesterday here in just a second. Take a look at this cartoon published in the Chicago Tribune on April 21, 1934 titled, “PLANNED ECONOMY OR PLANNED DESTRUCTION?” It’s true for most that their sense of history usually extends into the past only about as far as the day they decided to start paying attention to what was going on around them. An old saying goes something like this: “History, it is said, repeats itself. Few but are reminded almost every day of something that has gone before.” Every “crisis” seems brand...

South African farmers suffered millions of dollars in lost income when 82,000 hectares of genetically-manipulated corn (maize) failed to produce hardly any seeds.The plants look lush and healthy from the outside. Monsanto has offered compensation. Monsanto blames the failure of the three varieties of corn planted on these farms, in three South African provinces,on alleged 'underfertilisation processes in the laboratory". Some 280 of the 1,000 farmers who planted the three varieties of Monsanto corn this year, have reported extensive seedless corn problems. Urgent investigation demanded However environmental activitist Marian Mayet, director of the Africa-centre for biosecurity in Johannesburg, demands an...