Harold Camping, the latest in a long line of men in suits (previously robes and togas) wielding Bibles telling us the end is nigh. They have been doing this for 2000 years. By the look of things, the end is nigh for Harold. He just can't bear the thought that the World will happily continue without him.

Friday Morning EDT/

Friday Evening Japan Time

End of the World Update

"But of that day and [that] hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father." Mark 13:32

"But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." - Mathew 6:6

"How many times has the end of the world been predicted? The same number of times, the prediction has proved false." - Hugh Downs

"Such things have often happened and still happen, and how can these be signs of the end of the world?" -Julian, Emperor of Rome 361-363

Judgement Day is tomorrow according to Harold Camping and his Family Radio Worldwide conglomerate. I notice his home page still has two buttons that allow contributors to make secure donations. 

I actually have been listening to the station this morning and Harold was taking calls. A distraught gentleman asked him if Judgement Day here in America could come on May 20 if it is May 21 somewhere else in the world.

Hal's short answer was yes. 

My guess is that Hal will explain the absence of Judgement Day with the argument that his warnings created so much prayer that God's mercy was invoked and we were spared.

As I write Family Radio is playing lots of sacred music which invokes the god Morpheus. 

I suppose Hal is taking a break for prayer or counting his money. 

But listen! 

Hark! Is it a trumpet? 

No. 

Here is an important announcement. 

Family Radio is still begging its listeners for money.

I enter into a closet and recite my prayer:

Please God take away from this planet and heal all of those sad and crazy people who can never be happy in your wonderful creation. 


"Christians are like a council of frogs in a marsh or a synod of worms on a dung-hill croaking and squeaking 'for our sakes was the world created.'"-Julian, Emperor of Rome 361-363

"He is a born again christian. The trouble is, he suffered brain damage during rebirth." -Lenny Bruce

This gray gloomy spring has made many cranky in the Northeast. I might welcome the end of the world if the cloud and rains and mist do not soon dissipate.

Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."
- Mark Twain's Own Autobiography: The Chapters from the North American Review, 

Twain was mistakenly attributing the quote to Disraeli instead of the more generally accepted Leonard Henry Courtney, Baron Courtney of Penwith (1832–1918)

The Catholic Church is blaming the sixties for the sudden rash of pedophile priests that has flourished under its protection for  the past several centuries.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops commissioned an independent "landmark" study by John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York titled The Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950-2010. 


In a nutshell, the study blames the liberality of the sixties for the influx of hippie pervert priest bad apples into the Holy Mother Church. They present charts showing peaks indicating the hippie priests of the sixties were the culprits. But 23.4% of the accused priests were ordained in the 50's, while 27.3% were ordained in the 60's. This is not a huge difference in a smallish sample cobbled together years later.

The Bishops' numbers also look a little skewed because their chart of "Decade of Ordination of Diocesan Priests  Later Accused of Sexual Abuse of Minors" shows a total of 2,832 priests charged with abuse through 2002. That number seems to represent gross under reporting which contradicts an earlier 2004 John Jay Report  which recorded 4,392 priests accused of engaging in sexual abuse of a minor between 1950 and 2002 alone.

I would propose, in contrast to the Church's conclusions, that the new openness of the sixties enabled many victims to finally come to terms with the fact that the priests who raped them were criminals. The freedom of the sixties gave them the courage to overcome the fear and shame conditioning of the Church to report the holy fiends and go public. This was not possible previously when the the Church could intimidate the victim, when police and government authorities seemed to think it was more necessary to protect the Church from the consequences of its own profound corruption than to enforce the law.

I suspect this study will be used as another justification for Pope Benedict to jettison the reforms of Vatican II. "The sixties" is often code for Vatican II in the lexicon of the reactionaries now running the Catholic Church.
This long study also reminds us that other religions and the Boy Scouts also have had their problems so why don't you just shut up about this already?

The Church is in the habit of playing the blame game for their pedophile predilection. Last year Giacomo Babini, 81, the emeritus bishop of Grosseto, blamed, you guessed it, the Zionists for the Pope getting so criticized for his minions' love of prepubescent lads.  He believed a “Zionist attack” was behind the criticism of the church, considering how “powerful and refined” the criticism was.

Sure, only the Jews could be crafty enough to make the Church look bad.

“They do not want the church, they are its natural enemies. Deep down, historically speaking, the Jews are God killers.” -Giacomo Babini
After taking heat he backed away from his statements saying: 
"Statements I have never made about our Jewish brothers have been attributed to me."
Giacomo was quoted  by the Catholic Pontifex website which stood by the quotes, claiming recordings of the interview.

The default setting of Europe and the Church is to hate Jews.

"Many psychologists and psychiatrists have shown that there is no link between celibacy and paedophilia but many others have shown, I have recently been told, that there is a relationship between homosexuality and paedophilia. This pathology is one that touches all categories of people, and priests to a lesser degree in percentage terms. The behaviour of the priests in this case, the negative behaviour, is very serious, is scandalous."-Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, April 2010

"We decree and order that from now on, AND FOR ALL TIME, Christians shall not eat or drink with Jews; nor admit them to feasts, nor cohabit with them, nor bathe with them. Christians shall not allow Jews to hold civil honors over Christians, or to exercise public office in the State. Jews cannot be merchants, Tax Collectors, or agents in the buying and selling of the produce and goods of Christians, nor their Procurators, Computers or Lawyers in matrimonial matters, nor Obstetricians; nor can they have association or partnership with Christians. No Christian can leave or bequeath anything in his last Will and testament to Jews or their congregations. Jews are prohibited from erecting new synogogues. They are obliged to pay annually a tenth part of their goods and holdings. Against them Christians can testify, but the testimony of Jews against Christians in no case is of any value. All and every single Jew, of whatever sex and age, must everywhere wear the distinct dress and known marks by which they can be evidently distinguished from Christians. They cannot live among Christians, but in a certain street, separated and segregated from Christians, and outside which they cannot under any pretext have houses"
-Pope Eugenius IV, A.D. 1442, Bull. Rom. Pont., V.67


In the Fukushima prefect we learn again that many livestock are being left to starve. Some farmers are making the heroic journey to evacuated areas to feed and water their stock, but it is difficult to determine if they can even market the meat.
Shingo Ito of AFP writes:

Katsurao, 25 kilometres (16 miles) northwest of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, is among the communities newly designated as no-go zones, meaning no one will be allowed in from as early as late May.
More than 10,000 cows -- prized for their marbled beef and rich milk -- have already been left behind in the scramble to escape Fukushima prefecture, many of them locked in sheds where they starved to death, farmers have said.
As the no-go zone spreads, ever more farmers are being forced to make agonising decisions over whether to move their livestock to safe areas and incur huge costs, slaughter their animals or -- perhaps the most unacceptable option -- leave them to their fate.

Accurate information about radiation levels remains are rare as a dragon's tooth. 

Charles Darwin, 1881, photograph by Herbert Rose Barraud

Wednesday Morning EDT/
Wednesday Evening Japan Time
Hell in a Handbasket Update

Presented with the assistance of Charles Darwin, 
12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882
He was a thoughtful, intelligent and conflicted man. 
He was not an ogre out to disestablish God. 
He sought truth as he found it in the study of Nature.
If you find an error in his work, 
And there are many, 
That doesn't mean you have proved that the Bible is inerrant.

To sum up, I believe that species come to be tolerably well-defined objects, and do not at any one period present an inextricable chaos of varying and intermediate links: firstly, because new varieties are very slowly formed, for variation is a very slow process, and natural selection can do nothing until favourable variations chance to occur, and until a place in the natural polity of the country can be better filled by some modification of some one or more of its inhabitants. And such new places will depend on slow changes of climate, or on the occasional immigration of new inhabitants, and, probably, in a still more important degree, on some of the old inhabitants becoming slowly modified, with the new forms thus produced and the old ones acting and reacting on each other. So that, in any one region and at any one time, we ought only to see a few species presenting slight modifications of structure in some degree permanent; and this assuredly we do see. - On The Origin Of Species

The Wall Street Journal has a summing up of the first day of the events at Fukushima Daiichi and tells us what readers of this blog already know. The cascading disaster at the nuclear plants was much worse than presented by the authorities and their failures of action and their lack of truthfulness were numerous. 

Some highlights:

-It was thought they were unneeded so there were no filters on the vent pipes to remove nuclear materials when high pressure radioactive gas filled the reactor buildings. This delayed venting to allow time for  evacuation and ultimately caused explosions. 

-The emergency cooling system at the melted down reactor one didn't operate properly, probably because of a combination of human error and battery failure after the loss of electrical power. 

-The emergency response center fifteen miles from the plant lost power and all (satellite, cell, landline) telephone communication. The emergency power plant failed. 

-Authorities mistakenly thought reactor 2 was the problem when it was reactor 1 all along. This mistake allowed the meltdown of reactor 1 to occur.  

The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic. -Autobiography

The nuclear industry in the UK through the good graces and soothing words of nuclear chief inspector, Mike Weightman, has convinced the government that what happened in Japan could never happen there according to the Guardian UK. 

"The extreme natural events that preceded the accident at Fukushima – the magnitude-9 earthquake and subsequent huge tsunami – are not credible in the UK.
"We are 1,000 miles from the nearest fault line and we have safeguards in place that protect against even very remote hazards.
"Our operating and proposed future reactor designs and technology are different from the type at the Fukushima plant.

As has been made clear, this is the same fallacious reasoning presented in the US to justify the continuation of the nuclear program. Each nuclear disaster is different. That is what is so dangerous about this kind of energy generation. It requires complicated and expensive systems that can fail in myriad ways, each of which a public relations flack could justifiably say: "That failure, well, it can't happen here."

In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God.  -Letter to John Fordyce, May 7 1879

 The New York Times says today that Fukushima Daiichi had recently installed the same new more powerful and modern GE venting systems which American plants claimed would prevent the problems which occurred in Japan. These systems  failed to react properly when workers finally tried to use them in Japan. The nuclear industry can't get prevarication (lies) out of their system.

[In conversation with the atheist Edward Aveling, 1881] Why should you be so aggressive? Is anything gained by trying to force these new ideas upon the mass of mankind? -from Edward Aveling, The religious views of Charles Darwin, 1883

The Christian Science Monitor reports that the corrupt Japanese government is now requesting their corrupt banks to assist the corrupt TEPCO by granting them loans which they probably never will repay without assistance extorted from the people by the corrupt government. 

This means the people of Japan, through taxes,  will be subsidizing a failed and criminal capitalist company which does not deserve to exist any longer. 

"The accident occurred on March 11. Accidents like this are factored into loans made prior to that. Naturally, I expect financial institutions to be asked for cooperation in light of Tokyo Electric's new financial standing," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told a regular news conference.

My theology is a simple muddle: I cannot look at the Universe as the result of blind chance, yet I can see no evidence of beneficent Design. - Letter to Joseph Hooker, July 12 1870

It is really funny that an establishment news outlet like NBC, which predictably mocks  all conspiracy theories, is giving a little credence to the notion that  Dominique Strauss-Kahn was set up. From The Wall Street Journal:

NBC touted the conspiracy theories surrounding the case as the news broke. On Monday's Today, Lauer talked to Newsweek's Paris bureau chief Christopher Dickey, and gave credibility to the bizarre claims: "Talk to me about the more conspiratorial aspect of this....there are some people speculating that this was more than just a chance encounter. That, in fact, Strauss-Kahn was set up. And some have even speculated...that Nicolas Sarkozy could have been behind something like this. Take me through it."
"Dickey went after Sarkozy: "He's seen as an absolutely ruthless, no-holds-barred politician. Some people even compare him to the gangster actor Joe Pesci, just in his manner. That's one of the reasons the French don't like him. They don't like his style." He then explained: "So the minute his main political rival falls into this bizarre situation, horrible situation, in New York and is accused of crimes and is taken on a perp walk, many people sort of automatically assume Sarkozy must have had something to do with this."


The Washington Post has posted a discussion with establishment conspiracy experts, the so very cautious and reasonable debunkers, Ilan Shrira and George Johnson on  the DSK affair and other myths today. An example: 


RE: DSK AND CONSPIRACY THEORY
"In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way."
Q: Was FDR, whose quotation this is, a conspiracy theorist? And, in light of the Bay of Tonkin, the US-condoned attack on the spy ship USS Liberty by Israel in the '67 war, Project Northwoods, MK-Ultra, Iran-Contra, the creation of the Federal Reserve (from Jekyll Island to its Christmas Eve 1913 Senate vote and Wilson's later lament, "I've ruined my country!" ), and a host of other thoroughly documented conspiracy facts, many quite horrific, why do you present this Q&A session regarding the DSK affair--about which surely FDR would have had some private words to share--as an opportunity to use a social psychologist and a slayer of conspiracy strawmen to further paint those who agree with our 32nd president as abberants?
May 17, 2011 1:13 PM
A.GEORGE JOHNSON :
I don't know the FDR quote, but I doubt that he meant that everything, down to the finest detail, is planned -- that nothing happens accidentally. (Some conspiracy theorists have actually called that view "accident theory.") And of course there are real conspiracies -- just not the overarching, almost supernatural ones that some people are so eager to invent and believe.
– May 17, 2011 1:43 PM
A.ILAN SHRIRA :
Can we really say that FDR was a conspiracy theorist just from this quote? Imagine if George W. Bush had said the same thing--Would you still interpret it as conspiracy-minded?
But you bring up a good point. That there have been conspiracies uncovered in US history (things that almost anyone would agree constitutes a conspiracy--something like the Tuskegee experiment). But just because they have happened in the past, this doesn't not necessarily lend credibility to conspiracy theorizing on any given issue.
– May 17, 2011 1:43 PM


The establishment would want us to take seriously the possibility that a rich privileged man like DSK could be the victim of a conspiracy with a Ghanaian maid at the center while we are expected to accept that John F. Kennedy, or his brother, or Martin Luther King, or George Wallace, or Malcolm X could never have been victims of  conspiracies of the rich and privileged who give orders to governments.

There can be no doubt that the difference between the mind of the lowest man and that of the highest animal is immense. An anthropomorphous ape, if he could take a dispassionate view of his own case, would admit that though he could form an artful plan to plunder a garden--though he could use stones for fighting or for breaking open nuts, yet that the thought of fashioning a stone into a tool was quite beyond his scope. Still less, as he would admit, could he follow out a train of metaphysical reasoning, or solve a mathematical problem, or reflect on God, or admire a grand natural scene. Some apes, however, would probably declare that they could and did admire the beauty of the coloured skin and fur of their partners in marriage. They would admit, that though they could make other apes understand by cries some of their perceptions and simpler wants, the notion of expressing definite ideas by definite sounds had never crossed their minds. They might insist that they were ready to aid their fellow-apes of the same troop in many ways, to risk their lives for them, and to take charge of their orphans; but they would be forced to acknowledge that disinterested love for all living creatures, the most noble attribute of man, was quite beyond their comprehension. - The Descent of Man

The Pharyngula blog posts today on the subject "Evolution is a Jewish Conspiracy" in which PZ Myers tells us  that Karl Marx did not dedicate Das Kapital to Charles Darwin as many creationists believe. He outlines some of the attempts by creationists to prove their point by linking evolution, Darwin, Communists, Karl Marx and Jews. [The guilt by association fallacy.]

With savages, for instance, the Australians, the women are the constant cause of war both between members of the same tribe and between distinct tribes. So no doubt it was in ancient times; "nam fuit ante Helenam mulier teterrima belli causa." [ Darwin has cleaned up the original of Horace: Nam fuit ante Helenam cunnus taeterrima belli causa. which can be translated roughly as: For even before Helen's time many a hideous cunt was the cause of war. -JB] With some of the North American Indians, the contest is reduced to a system. That excellent observer, Hearne (22. 'A Journey from Prince of Wales Fort,' 8vo. ed. Dublin, 1796, p. 104. Sir J. Lubbock ('Origin of Civilisation,' 1870, p. 69) gives other and similar cases in North America. For the Guanas of South America see Azara, 'Voyages,' etc. tom. ii. p. 94.), says:--"It has ever been the custom among these people for the men to wrestle for any woman to whom they are attached; and, of course, the strongest party always carries off the prize. A weak man, unless he be a good hunter, and well-beloved, is seldom permitted to keep a wife that a stronger man thinks worth his notice. This custom prevails throughout all the tribes, and causes a great spirit of emulation among their youth, who are upon all occasions, from their childhood, trying their strength and skill in wrestling." With the Guanas of South America, Azara states that the men rarely marry till twenty years old or more, as before that age they cannot conquer their rivals. - The Descent of Man

Dominique Strauss-Kahn with his American born wife Anne Sinclair, a TV journalist in France, Bob Edme AP photo

Monday Morning EDT/
Monday Evening Japan Time
Feet of Clay Update
Scandal! Scandal at the IMF!


"There is nothing safe about sex. There never will be."- Norman Mailer


"The dirty little secret is that both houses of Congress are irrelevant.... America's domestic policy is now being run by Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve, and America's foreign policy is now being run by the International Monetary Fund [IMF]. ...when the president decides to go to war, he no longer needs a declaration of war from Congress."- Robert Reich, 1999

IMF may mean insane mad .. oh, you get it. It is interesting to note managing director of the International Monetary Fund Dominique Strauss-Kahn's problem in New York. In case you hadn't noticed by now, he is accused of sexual assault on a female house staffer in his suite at the luxury hotel Sofitel New York in Times Square. He was arrested yesterday in first class on his plane at John F. Kennedy Airport. He must have been in a hurry since he left his cell phone and personal effects in his room. He is accused of forcing the woman to provide oral sex apparently thinking it was part of the hotel services.
[Vous m'apportez des serviettes fraîches et sucer ma bite. Vous faites cela, bien sûr, il est nécessaire. N'avez-vous pas?]

DSK was denied bail today by Judge Melissa Jackson who deemed him a flight risk.

The New York City Police Department denied that DSK's behavior was protected by diplomatic immunity. The IMF has been awarded diplomatic immunity for its agents only for actions taken during the performance of  their duties. But demanding a blow job from a Argentine Ghanaian  maid may be an excellent metaphor for  official IMF activities.

In the Huffington Post we are given details from a recent interview:

Business Insider has uncovered an interview Strauss-Kahn gave to the French publication Liberation in which the IMF's chief cites "the money, women, and my Jewishness" as the three challenges to his potential bid for France's presidency.
Published just weeks ago, Strauss-Kahn's own words provide an intriguing twist on the developments of the past few days.
When pressed to elaborate, Strauss-Kahn offered the following explanation: "Yes, I love women, so what? ... For years we talk about giant pictures of orgies, but I've never seen anything out ... Let's show them!"
He imagined a scenario in which a woman is paid off to play the role of a victim of a purported assault: "A woman that he would have raped in a parking lot and to whom half a million or a million euros would be promised to make up such a story."

DSK actually seems to foresee the pickle he now is in and proactively refutes it!

Today the IMF temporarily replaced DSK with first deputy managing director John Lipsky. Lipsky is a former U.S. Treasury manager and a former banker at JP Morgan. He was probably the one making the calls at the IMF whilst Dominique was out doing his randy gamboling.

The supposed socialist Strauss-Kahn was previously noted in this blog back in April for his arrogant dismissal of the possibility that the IMF could ever take human rights issues into consideration when making loans to countries that may not have as enlightened leadership as La Belle France.
The International Labor Group's concerns were communicated to the IMF and rejected by Strauss-Kahn as follows:

"I don't believe I'm going to turn the IMF into an institution with a lot of expertise on this question," he told an audience at the Brookings Institution.
"I don't see these topics becoming defined targets for IMF programs," 
-Dominique Strauss-Kahn, April 2011


The New York Times reports that Strauss-Kahn's presidential election campaign in France may be in trouble.
Earlier this month French socialists were enraged when DSK was photographed getting into a Porsche.

I admit the possibility that this is a set up. Even Mr. Strauss-Kahn could not be this stupid; could he?
And the fact that he is a Jew is causing the extreme right wing (read neo-Nazis) extreme agita.

I do believe Americans tend to over-react to normal sexual peccadilloes. But forced oral sex on a housekeeper is generating outrage even in France. Dominique must have some enemies as head of the IMF. Indeed, he richly deserves his enemies. And more stories about his insatiability are now surfacing.
But wait. Here is the NYPD's official complaint against Mr. Strauss-Kahn. It is not pretty reading.

The Business Insider today gives us the story of his affair with Piroska Nagy, Senior Adviser to the Chief Economist of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). The affair began when she was an economist at the IMF. Piroska was married to former Argentine central bank President, Mario Blejer at the time. Mario was furious. The marriage ended. Dominique stated when the incident became public at the time:
"It was an incident in my private life and at no time did I abuse my position as the fund's managing director."
The story also lists other missteps by DSK:

-- An unnamed actress who said Strauss acted 'like a gorilla' after inviting her back to a Paris flat.
-- Tristane Banon, a French journalist, who Strauss allegedly tried to rape, or at least sexually assault.


Quotes from Dominique Strauss-Kahn


"In Spain you have a lot of rigidities, the labour market doesn't work for numerous reasons, and I think the labour unions, the government, business everybody understands this and knows what should be done...Even in good times you have a lot of people unemployed and also a lot of people on short term or transitority contracts. All these are matters which show the labor market does not work...[The labour market] has to be greater effective, .. the way people are hired, or sometime are fired, are to be done the way it is done in remainder of Europe, no greater no less." -  in Spain, May 2010

"Greek citizens shouldn't fear the IMF; we are there to try to help them." -message to the Greeks, April 24, 2010

"the money, women, and my Jewishness"- DSK's reply to the question about the three greatest challenges to his bid for the French Presidency in Liberation, a French periodical

«Oui, j’aime les femmes, et alors ?»