Saudis reject Obama's plan for ties with Israel: Top urgency is Iran threat

DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis

August 1, 2009

Saudi FM Saud al Faisal in Washington

Saudi foreign minister Prince Saud al-Faisal's rejection of the Obama administration's Middle East approach was a lot more comprehensive than a blunt refusal to improve relations with Israel to help restart peace talks. DEBKAfile's Washington sources report that in closed-door talks with US leaders, including secretary of state Hillary Clinton, the Saudi prince urged the US to get off their backs on the Israeli-Palestinian issue and deal more seriously and effectively with top-urgency action for stopping Iran acquiring a nuclear bomb.

After those talks, Saud said his government would not consider steps suggested by the Obama administration until Israel accepted Arab demands "to withdraw from all occupied Palestinian territories."

With Clinton looking on at a joint State Department news conference Friday, July 31, the Saudi foreign minister dismissed Obama principles one by one: "Temporary security and confidence building measures will also not bring peace," he maintained and rejected "incrementalism and a step-by-step approach."

What is required, he said is "a comprehensive approach that defines the final outcome at the outset and launches into negotiations over final-status issues, including the future Palestinian state, control of Jerusalem, the return of Palestinian refugees, water and security."

Our Gulf sources note that the Saudi foreign minister thus reaffirmed in public the rejection of President Barack Obama's Middle East policies which he encountered when he met King Abdullah in Riyadh on June 3.

This week, the Saudis shot into action to elicit more rejections from the seven Arab rulers who received personal letters from the US president asking for their cooperation in the peace effort by normalizing gestures towards Israel.

DEBKAfile's political sources comment that by stipulating Israel's surrender on all its core issues with the Palestinians before negotiations even begin the Saudis render those negotiations superfluous.

It means that Israel will only be asked to arrange for the technicalities and timelines for its predetermined pullback to the pre-1967 (or 1949) lines, its handover of Jerusalem to Arab control, the distribution and administration of regional water resources and the return of the refugees and their descendants to the homes they forfeited on account of the 1948 Arab war against the new Israeli state.

Two motives account for this Saudi all-or-nothing dictatorial position on Middle East peace, DEBKAfile' s analysts reports:

1. Riyadh is loath to waste effort on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or any other elements of the Obama program such as détente with Syria when far more urgent business tops the royal agenda: The Saudis object strongly to the further entrenchment of the Shiite-ruled government in Baghdad and the restoration of Syrian influence in Beirut - both under US auspices. Washington is also seen to be making overtures towards Hizballah which can only strengthen the hand of the Lebanese Shiite extremists in the Lebanese government coalition.

Furthermore, they see the bitter rift between the Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip and the Fatah faction governing the West Bank as irreconcilable and therefore an insurmountable barrier to Middle East peacemaking.

2. The Saudis maintain that Obama and his Middle East envoy George Mitchell have been sidetracked by minor regional issues from dealing with the primary concern of the Gulf and Middle East region, the looming threat of a nuclear-armed Iran. Until that cloud is lifted, they say, no other initiatives have a chance. Paradoxically, this reading of the Middle East impasse is shared by Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his defense minister Ehud Barak.

Saudi al Faisal's angry snub of the Obama administration's Middle East plans carries a clear message: First tackle the perils besetting us from the east and the north (Iraq and Iran) before you badger us about the Israelis and Palestinians.

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Saving Annapolis by Shifting its Focus to … Iran

America Refurbishes its Gulf-Red Sea Defenses against Iran Menace

Iran Mends Fences with Arabs – Starting with Saudis

Countdown beginning again: Armageddon

August 1, 2009

“HOLLYWOOD DESTROYS THE WORLD”: New wave of movies focuses on the apocalypse

Why are film-makers so worried cataclysmic disasters are just over the horizon?

A few days ago, my three oldest sons and I saw a trailer for ‘2012,’ the new apocalyptic film starring Jon Cusack that envisions a Mayan prophecy coming true involving the end of the world occurring in less than three years. The trailer began: “How would the governments of our planet prepare six billion people for the end of the world?”

A moment later came the words….”They wouldn’t.”

The trailer triggered a conversation with my boys about how all over the world people are becoming more and more worried about coming cataclysmic events, and how Hollywood has been increasingly focused on making blockbuster disaster films about the end of the earth and the end of mankind.

A new poll finds 64% of Israelis believe the time has come to build the Third Temple, prophesied as happening in the “last days” of history. The Radical Muslim leaders of Iran say the end of the world is at hand, and are seeking nuclear weapons to bring it about. The Radical environmentalists say doomsday is coming quickly due to global warming. The History Channel kicked off 2009 with a week of documentaries about End Times prophecies, and dubbed the series, “Armageddon Week.” Evangelical Christians, like me, believe global events are lining up just as Jesus Christ and the Biblical prophets said they would in the “last days.” Books about the End Times repeatedly hit the New York Times best-sellers lists, and prophecy conferences are increasingly sold out.

Picking up a thread of this trend is an intriguing story in Friday’s Wall Street Journal headlined, “Hollywood Destroys The World”. The article explains how Hollywood is increasingly consumed with making “end of the world” films, in part because film-makers themselves fear actual disasters are just over the horizon.

Excerpts from the story:

“Director Roland Emmerich has nearly destroyed the world three times already. This time, he means to finish the job,” notes the Journal. “In his next movie, ‘2012,’ which comes out in November, the earth will rip apart, fulfilling an ancient prophecy. The director previously leveled civilization with an alien attack in the 1996 movie ‘Independence Day,’ unleashed Godzilla a couple years later and orchestrated a climate disaster in 2004’s ‘The Day After Tomorrow.’ His new film, he says, reflects a darker world view. ‘I’m really very pessimistic these days,’ he says.”….
“Most of the storytellers say they are reacting to anxiety over real threats in uncertain times: the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, two U.S. wars abroad, multiple pandemics, a global financial crisis and new attention to environmental perils. ‘The Road’ even weaves in footage shot during recent disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina, into its scenes of destruction. ‘For me, I feel like I live in an apocalyptic world with global warfare, a recession, and resource scarcity,’ says Jesse Alexander, writer and executive producer of NBC’s ‘Day One.’”….
“’Day One,’ a series coming to NBC in March, follows a handful of neighbors trying to survive and understand a calamity that erased the world’s infrastructure. ‘The Colony,’ now airing on Discovery Channel, is a reality show set in an imagined end-times period in which contestants hunt for food, water and shelter after a presumed disaster.”

Note: I’ll be speaking about such trends this weekend at Mountain Springs Church and Rocky Mountain Calvary Chapel in Colorado Springs, and next Thursday, August 6th at Greenwood Community Church just outside of Denver

NYT mag: Obama will accept a nuclear-armed Iran(Are you kidding Me?)

NYT mag: Obama will accept a nuclear-armed Iran

by Steve Rosen • Jul 30, 2009 at 8:36 pm

http://www.meforum.org/blog/obama-mideast-monitor/2009/07/nyt-mag-obama-will-accept-a-nuclear-armed-iran

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An article coming Sunday in the New York Times Magazine, based on extensive interviews with members of the Obama Mideast team, predicts that, in the end, the Administration will accept a nuclear-armed Iran.

Roger Cohen reports that, "What Obama's precise tolerance threshold is for the Iranian nuclear program is in fact unclear.

...A military strike on Iran by Israel is Obama's least-favored outcome: it would inflame the region he's trying to quiet and sabotage his outreach to the Muslim world, while perhaps only delaying Iran's nuclear program a year or two.

So deterrence may indeed be the administration's reluctant bottom line."

Cyborg Cells: (I wrote inChristian Fiction "The Genoman Project" based on this)

Organelle Simulated on Microchip for First Time

The first artificial organelle may help lead to safer heparin production and, someday, entire artificial cells.

By Charles Q. Choi

ARTIFICIAL GOLGI: Sample molecules in an artificial golgi apparatus are moved around by applying voltages at electrodes and held in place with the help of magnets. Along the way, they are exposed to enzymes that can modify them chemically in an assembly-line fashion.
COURTESY ROBERT LINHARDT ET AL.

More and more synthetic versions of key parts of the human cell, including chromosomes, have been developed by scientists in the past decade or so. Now researchers are aiming even higher, developing the first working artificial prototype of an "organ" of a human cell—the Golgi apparatus, which helps modify biomolecules and package them for delivery around the cell.

The Golgi apparatus is an organelle, akin to a miniature organ in a cell, made up of a network of sacs piled together like a stack of pancakes. The role it plays in chemically modifying proteins is crucial for their stability and function, and it also helps manufacture complex sugars. However, the Golgi apparatus remains one of the most poorly understood organelles in the body.

"The sacs are fluid and constantly change shape, so it's difficult to get a handle on," explains researcher Robert Linhardt, a chemist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. "And while we know the general direction of the flow of vesicles between stacks, we don't really know what cargoes they're carrying."

To better dissect how the Golgi apparatus works, Linhardt and his colleagues tried creating a synthetic version of it, designing a square-millimeter-sized lab-on-a-chip to mimic the assembly line of enzymes within the Golgi apparatus that modify a biomolecule. The sample molecules are attached to magnetic particles, suspended in a watery droplet 300-billionths of a liter in size and placed on the chip. When the desired location on the chip for those molecules is electrically charged, it becomes more attractive to water, causing the droplet to flow there. A larger magnet can then be kept under that spot to keep the magnetic particles attached to the biomolecules in place. In this way, the drop can be moved through chambers loaded with an assembly line of enzymes, as well as sugars and other raw materials the enzymes might attach to the sample.

In experiments with an inactive precursor of heparin, a widely used blood thinner, the scientists found their device could quickly and efficiently modify the anticoagulant to make it functional, findings they are scheduled to detail in the August 12 issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society. The researchers suggest that an artificial Golgi could lead to a faster, safer method of producing heparin than current techniques, which employ animal tissue.

This device is apparently the first instance of an artificial organelle, says biochemist and glycobiologist Jerry Turnbull of the University of Liverpool in England, who did not participate in this study. Although the proof-of-concept system Linhardt demonstrated is simple, employing just one enzyme, it "clearly has potential to be greatly diversified as a tool," he adds.

Scientists have experimented with building cells up piece by piece for decades, including the creation of simple artificial cells in the form of bubbles made of synthetic cell membranes, to better understand how life on Earth might have began. Then, in 1997, scientists devised the first artificial human chromosome. And earlier this year, molecular technologist George Church of Harvard University and his colleagues reported a breakthrough in developing artificial ribosomes, bodies inside each cell that make proteins based on instructions from DNA. Although the first artificial ribosome was created in 1968, this recent work assembled ribosomes in the kind of environment where protein synthesis normally occurs, unlike before. Such ribosomes could be inexpensive cell-independent alternatives to current industrial processes that manufacture proteins using cells, Church says.

Now that Linhardt and his colleagues have devised a primitive artificial Golgi, in the future they plan on creating a synthetic endoplasmic reticulum (ER) as well, the organelle into which ribosomes are studded, where protein synthesis and folding take place.

"We'd even like to integrate an artificial Golgi and ER together," Linhardt says. "We're basically taking pieces of a cell and making them on electronic chips, and hopefully moving on to even more complex systems. Of course, organelles are pretty complicated, with the mitochondria and chloroplasts almost having the complexity of a bacterial cell, so there's a lot of work to go."

In the near term, the artificial Golgi could help scientists understand how the actual organelle modifies biomolecules—for instance, how it glycosylates or adds sugars to proteins. The sugars on a protein can affect its structure and function, how the immune system reacts to it and how long it remains in the bloodstream.

"Over half of all proteins are glycosylated, so it's clear that it's an important process, but we just don't have good ways of studying it in the cell," Linhardt says. "This platform gives us an artificial system to test it with, see what's important."

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Radio Frequency Identification Devices~Patrick Redmond (Your Chip)

An introduction to New Technologies (Part I)

by Patrick Redmond

Patrick Redmond graduated with a Doctorate in History from the University of London, England in 1972. He taught at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad, then at Adhadu Bello University in Kano, Nigeria before joining IBM. He worked in IBM for 31 years before retiring. During his career at IBM he held a variety of jobs. These included; from 1992 until 2007 working at the IBM Toronto lab in technical, then in sales support. He has written two books and numerous articles. Here is a presentation he gave in Toronto on April 13, 2008.

* * *

I want to thank Yvon for inviting me here to talk about new technologies. What I’m going to do is give you an introduction to three technologies that are becoming more and more important. The first is RFID chips, the second genetic engineering, and the third synthetic biology. This will give you an understanding of what is happening and where science is going.

We will start with RFID chips:

So what are they? They are Radio Frequency Identification Devices. An RFID is a microchip with an attached antenna. The microchip contains stored information which can be transmitted to a reader and then to a computer.

RFID’s can be passive, semi-passive or active. Active RFID’s have an internal power source such as a battery. This allows the tag to send signals back to the reader, so if I have a RFID on me and it has a battery, I can just send a signal to a reader wherever it is. They can receive and store data, and be read at a further distance than the passive RFID’s. The batteries can only last a short while. But the current batteries in the RFID’s can last for over a hundred years, because of their self-generating power. Ultrawideband (UWB) allows the small battery operated RFID tag to be sensed over fairly wide areas. For instance, GE Aircraft Engines in Ohio has installed five readers in the factory and it covers over 30,000 square feet so they can track everything within that area with only the five readers. That gives you an idea of the distance that can be covered by an RFID tag that might be on you or on equipment.

An RFID held by a pair of tweezers

The readers can transmit over telephone or by internet to computers and they use satellites as well. For example, Digital Angel has signed contracts with satellite providers to transmit their data for military personnel location beacons (PLBs). These beacons use the COSPAS-SARSAT satellite system. This system has some 400,000 digital beacons around the world and it’s rising to some 900,000. By the year 2009 they plan to have a GL stationary satellite system that will enable them to find the location and details of any beacon. You may sometimes see these at night; the GO stationary systemscan track any beacon. Skiers sometimes use them so that they can be identified, and sailors as well, if they become lost at sea they will be able to be tracked. Anything that has an RFID tag can be tracked by a reader or a computer.

An example of such transmission is a chip sold by Zarlink. This chip is implanted in a person; it tracks problems and if one is detected, it alerts the doctor who uses a two way RF link to interrogate and adjust the implanted device. Semi-passive RFIDs have an internal power source that let them monitor environmental conditions, such as temperature and shock, but they still require RF energy from the reader to respond.

Passive RFID’s do not have a power source but use a signal sent by the scanner to power the microchip circuit to transmit back their stored information. Passive RFID’s are getting very small. Hitachi a few years ago produced a chip (called the mu chip) that was the size of a pencil point; if you take a pencil and put it on a piece of paper you get a little dot. That’s how small they’re getting. In 2007 Hitachi came out with a chip that was even smaller, they call it RFID powder. They are just like the talcum powder you would put on a baby.

Somark Innovations in Jan 10, 2007 announced an invisible RFID ink. This can be applied to cattle, prime cuts of meat, military personnel and it can be read through hair.

I brought along a couple of the larger size chips, and this particular chip I got from Gillette fusion blades. I bought one of the blades and you can see that on one side what looks like a bar code and if you open it up you can see parts of a RFID chip on the back. This one here is from the Gap. One of my daughters went to the Gap; they put the tag directly on the clothing and the instructions just say to remove before washing and wearing. If you put it up to the light you will see the RFID chip inside it. These chips are quite small and can be put on the back of labels. They would not be noticeable in badges or ID cards; they could even be put in the eye of a person, they are that small.

In order for chips to be useful, they have to have a unique product number and because of this, MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) started developing some standards. It’s called the AutoID Center. They then passed it on to the AutoID Group within the Uniform Clothes Council. It will assign codes and publish specifications, so if you have a company, government agency, or church you can contact these people and they will give you a set of numbers.

So let’s say there are three or five people in this room wearing the same white hat and each one of them has a chip on it with a different number. We could differentiate everything even if you’re all wearing the same clothes, it doesn’t really matter because everything has a unique number. MIT has the architecture of participation called EPC Global so if you go on Google and type in EPC Global and you will come up with the website they will give you instructions on how to apply and get chips. So if you want to chip yourself, your family, relatives, company or anything like that; you can do it.

It works with people who want to use this technology. One of many companies who sell the chip is called, Technic Imitations. If you have a company and you go to one of their presentations, they will give you books like this that tell you what the chips look like, how they work, the types that are sold, and what the readers look like. They will help you install chips in your company. It’s a very big business and it’s spreading very quickly.

When you use active or passive chips, active chips have advantages when you want to track items or people over longer distances. Soldiers can have active chips so they can be tracked via satellite wherever they might be in the battlefield. You can get one for your car, so you can be tracked if you are on the 407 or something.

Passive ones suffice if you are only interested in tracking over shorter distances. For example, in a sea container coming in from China, every box and every item within the box can have a chip on it. A reader can track all the items as a box passes through it. In a warehouse it is used to ensure the right shipments go to the right places. A man carrying a skid on a forklift can have the goods inside the box verified without even opening it.

They are using the chips to track inventory in order to be able to monitor what items are going where, if the right items are in the truck, etc. The passive chips are being put on devices to ensure they are valid.

There’s a lot of counterfeit drugs being produced and sold over the internet. Viagra is one of the most commonly counterfeited ones although there are many others. To ensure that people get the correct drugs they sometimes put chips on the containers so when you’re buying them you know that you are buying the correct drug.

Chipping farm animals is now required by the government

RFID’s are a great economic help to a company because they reduce theft and loss. They also streamline inventory, reduce turnaround time and handling. They’ve allowed companies to adjust production in response to inventory levels and to respond on demand. That’s why companies are interested, because of these big economic benefits and efficiency.

When you go to Wal-Mart, Best Buy, the U.S. Military and many other agencies around the world, you will see that they are all implementing RFID chips on items and increasingly on people.

The recent growth of the RFID industry has been staggering: From 1955 to 2005, cumulative sales of radio tags totaled 2.4 billion; in 2007 alone, 2.24 billion tags were sold worldwide and analysts project that by 2017 cumulative sales will top 1 trillion–generating more than $25 billion in annual revenues for the industry.

We’re starting to see chips being implemented in credit cards, debit cards and passports, driver’s licenses, health cards, and many other things. Increasingly they are being used to monitor people as well as items. RFID tags embedded into clothes and personal belongings allow people to be tracked and monitored in shopping malls, libraries, museums, sports arenas, elevators, and restrooms. American Express has them on their blue cards. They are announcing plans to place people-tracking readers in stores to track customers movements and observe their behavior. If you bought something with your credit or debit card, they will know what items you bought and if the items were chipped, they will know what you were buying. In this way they will be able to track you.

In 2006, IBM received a patent approval for an invention called, "Identification and tracking of persons using RFID-tagged items." One stated purpose was to collect information about people that could be "used to monitor the movement of the person through the store or other areas."

When somebody enters a store a reader "scans all identifiable RFID tags carried on the person," and correlates the tag information with sales records to determine the individual’s "exact identity." A device known as a "person tracking unit" which then assigns a tracking number to the shopper "to monitor the movement of the person through the store."

If I had three readers in this room, I could scan everybody in one second and I would know right away who’s here; so it would scan that quickly. The computers are getting quite sophisticated and capable of doing large numbers of scans at any given time. One company recently announced a computer that reads data transactions at 200 million/second, an incredible number.

Here’s an example of how they are being used in companies; a few oil companies have given their employees smart cards so that they know where they are at any time of the day. This ensures that people do not go where they are not authorized to go. They will see how many times an individual might go to the washroom or outside to have a cigarette; things like that. It allows continuous tracking of people, and so more and more companies are thinking it’s a novel idea.

In early 2007, the American government complained to the Canadian government that they were tracking American contractors who were visiting Canada by placing loonies ($2.00 Canadian coins) with tiny RFID transmitters in their pockets. And a CIS officer when confronted with this said: "Ah, give us a break! You might want to know where the individual was going, what meetings he’s attending, who he’s talking with and everything like that." So if they wanted they could track people with chipped loonies.

The University of Washington students, faculty and staff are being tracked as they move around the site so the details of where they’ve been, what they’re doing and with whom, will be stored in their database. One of the professors at the University was asked, "Will you check on this student?" so he checked on him and said, "Oh, he’s on the fourth floor just standing outside room 452 and now he’s moving into the classroom."

In London you can buy a monthly pass to the transit cars that have an RFID on it and if you link the bus pass to a person’s name you can track where this person is on the bus and subway system throughout London, England. Last year the police were getting four requests a month and now they are getting close to 100.

Just last week the London police announced that they were putting RFID chips on all of the 31,000 police in London. Now this may be on their ID card, they did not say if they were going to put them directly on their body, but they were getting chipped; it was published in the Daily Mail. Some of the police were complaining that they "are going to know where we are at any time, we won’t be able to go into a coffee shop and get a donut." All 31,000 police in London now have RFID’s so if they ever need to stop or control people they can direct 1,000 troops immediately to the scene.

In Southern China they’re implementing RFID readers in the city of Shenzhen to track the movement of citizens; all citizens have an ID card with a chip so they can identify who is in what part of the city at any point in time.

RFID readers in a library

The chips and National ID cards that they are trying to bring in now contain not only a number, but also a person’s work history, education, religion, ethnicity, police record and reproductive history. The United States has been trying to implement the National ID card for a few years now and there are strikes going on in different states as they try to resist this National ID that will identify everyone in the country.

Canada is adding a Real ID to the license plates and we don’t hear anything about it, its being done a lot more secretly than it is in the States where there is a lot of public debate. The increase of the use of RFID chips is going to require a increased rate of the UBF spectrum, as a result in the United States they’re going to stop using the UBF spectrum of the VHF frequency in 2009 and everything is going to go digital. You may have seen that on television in the United States.

Canada is going to do the same thing, they’ll say it still works, and instead of the antenna on your roof you’ll use a black box. The reason they’re doing this is that the UBF and VHF analog frequency are being used for the chips, so they don’t want to overload the chips with television signals, because the chips signals will now be receiving those frequencies.

A friend of mine from Quebec says his cows have a chip embedded under the skin. All farm animals have to be chipped and he says he’s no longer allowed to kill as many cows as he wants. He was given a limit of two cows that he could kill and use only for the farm. All the others had to be sold to particular companies who could control those cows and get food from them. So he could only kill two and the others he had to sell to a supermarket chain.

People are being chipped now. There’s a trend that they’re promoting in the media in terms of chipping people; they’re saying why not chip children for safety, so we can protect them, especially if they’re in the hospital then nobody could steal the newborn babies. Why don’t we chip the sick, then if someone has a heart attack and falls on the floor, we can read the signal in the chip and send someone to help them. We should chip the military so we would be able to know where the soldiers are and if they’re alive. After we could chip people on welfare so we could make sure they’re not cheating the government. Then we can chip all the criminals so that we could control them, and we’ll chip workers because a lot of them goof off at work. Then we’ll chip all the pensioners because they’re just taking money from us; and after that we’ll chip everyone else.

Some 800 hospitals in the United States are now chipping their patients. You can turn it down, but it’s available. Four hospitals in Puerto Rico have put them in the arms of the Alzheimer’s patients, and it only costs about $200 per person.

The Baja Beach Club in Barcelona gets patrons chipped. A BBC reporter went the club and got himself chipped. He said it was like getting a needle in your arm; they just rubbed it with some antiseptic and put a chip in. Because it was fairly small, he said it didn’t hurt too much and he had it inside him so whenever he ordered he would just move his arm and pay for it. The reader on the bar would read the signal and since he had his bank account information on the chip on his arm it would deduct the money from his bank account.

Nigel Gilbert of the Royal Academy of Engineering said that by 2011 you should be able to go on Google and find out where someone is at any time from chips on clothing, in cars, cell phones, and inside many people themselves.

Chips are becoming more and more sophisticated. Nature Magazine reported recently that a drug containing microchips has been developed that will release drugs at the right time and amount. They can put a chip in you and release drugs so you don’t have to take a pill every day. This particular one that they’re selling lasts for over 140 days, you just have to get chipped three times a year with this drug and it releases it every day automatically. We will probably start hearing more about things like this in the near future.

In 2006, LifeScience.com said that European researchers have developed neuro-chips, they’ve coupled together living brain cells in silicone circuits and done a lot of experimentation on rats and snails. An electrical signal from a neuron is recorded in the chips transistors, while the chip’s capitulators stimulate the neurons. They can create neuro-stimulators and use them to alleviate pain and lessen the debilitating effects of Parkinson’s disease.

The mu chip is only .05 ml in length

There are gastric stimulators that can treat obesity, they would make you feel hungry so you wouldn’t want to eat anymore, it would just be necessary to put a chip in your brain that would connect and send signals. In another study, neuro-chip implants were developed and are being used on violent prisoners. They were implanted with the microchip (but they didn’t know they were implanted), and when the implant was set at 160 megahertz’s all the subjects became lethargic and slept about 22 hours a day. The implants ended all aggression in violent prisoners. Another interesting application is a silicone chip implant that mimics the hippocampus, the area of the brain known for creating memories. If successful, the artificial brain prosthesis could replace its biological counterpart, enabling people who suffer from memory disorders to regain the ability to store new memories. It’s being developed by Professor Berger at the Center for Neural Engineering at the University of Southern California.

They’re working on rats and monkeys, so if applied to humans what this could do is restore your short-term memory which people lose as they get older, or it could replace your existing short-term memory with artificial short-term memory.

Applied Digital Solutions has a Verichip that is compatible with human tissue and can be used on implantable pacemakers or put defibrillators in artificial joints. It can be injected using a syringe and used as a sort of bar code in security applications. That’s seen as one of the easy ways to implement chips in people through injections. They could very easily inject it via a flu shot or a vaccine.

Verichip is working on a glucose microchip that would determine glucose levels. You wouldn’t have to draw blood to monitor glucose level. All you need is to have the doctor read your chip and your information and tell what your blood levels have been for the past month or two.

IBM has demonstrated a tiny device that measures heart rate and is able to sense when a person wearing it is in distress, after which it will call a cell phone for immediate help. The distress signal is sent wirelessly via Bluetooth.

Zarlink has developed the first swallowable camera capsule which uses Zarlink’s RF transmitter to relay real-time images from the gastrointestinal tract. Our MICS (Medical Implant Communication Services) platform is designed with in-body communication systems that will improve patient care, lower healthcare costs, and support new monitoring, diagnostic and therapeutic applications.

Currently the chip uses 100 hair-thin electrodes that sense the electro-magnetic signature of neurons firing in specific areas of the brain in, for example, the area that controls arm movement. The activity is translated into electrically charged signals and are then sent and decoded using a program, which can move either a robotic arm or a computer cursor. According to the Cyberkinetics’ website, three patients have been implanted with the BrainGate system. The company has confirmed that one patient (Matt Nagle) has a spinal cord injury, while another has advanced ALS.

This shows that human thoughts can be converted into radio waves and used by paralyzed people to create movement.

Matt Nagle sends the thoughts to a computer to decipher. He can turn his TV on or off, change channels, and alter the volume. (BBC 2005) He can also move his arms and pick up things.

In addition to real-time analysis of neuron patterns to relay movement, the Braingate array is also capable of recording electrical data for later analysis. A potential use of this feature would be for a neurologist to study seizure patterns in a patient with epilepsy.

Braingate is currently recruiting patients with a range of neuromuscular and neurodegenerative diseases, so if you want a computer chip in your brain you can just go on the website and volunteer.

What are the problems about these new technologies? Let me just give you a brief explanation. Chips are going to end privacy. There’s a website called Spychips.com operated by Katherine Albrecht; they research the use of RFID’s by different companies. They have been warning people about them because chips that have economic or health data could get that data stolen.

The New York Times in October of 2006 said that any card that doesn’t require swiping (in other words that doesn’t have a chip in it), is vulnerable to un-authorized charges and put people at risk for identity theft. You can buy scanners in electronics stores for $60 or more that can read the information on the chip.

They are finding that once implanted in people, chips can be damaging to our health. For example, the body of a rodent who was tested started rejecting some chips and started a development of cancer. Also there is a danger of viruses; you are all familiar with software viruses on your computers, imagine if you got a virus in your chip that deletes your information in your chip.

If chips can disseminate medicine then they can disseminate other things too; anything put inside a microchip can be activated by a signal. And finally, with this technology, subliminal mind control becomes possible. I went on to Google and did a search on mind control; you might find it interesting to check that yourself. I read one on patents; there are patents that exist for mind control. This is what one states: non-aural carriers, in the very low or very high audio frequency range or in the adjacent ultrasonic frequency spectrum, are amplitude or frequency modulated with the desired intelligence and propagated acoustically or vibrationally, for inducement into the brain. This is patent number 5,159,703 1992.

Another explains a device that can be placed in the auditory cortex of the brain. This device allows the following process: someone speaks into a microphone, the microphone then has the sounds coded into microwaves which are sent to the receiver in the brain and the receiver device will transform the microwaves back so that the person’s mind hears the original sounds. In other words, a person with this device in their head will hear whatever the programmers send via microwave signals. (Phillip L. Stoklin took out patent number 4,858,612 on this.)

What do things like this mean to people of faith? You know from the Apocalypse, which is the last book of the Bible, that microchips are unacceptable to God.

Chapter 13, Verses 16-17: "And he (the beast) shall make all, both little and great, rich and poor, freeman and bondmen, to have a character in their right hand, or on their foreheads. And that no man might buy or sell, but he that hath the character, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name."

Chapter 16, Verse 2: "The first angel poured out his vial upon the earth, and there fell a sore and grievous wound upon men who had the character of the beast; and upon them that adored the image thereof."

Chapter 20, Verse 4: "And I saw seats; and they sat upon them; and judgment was given unto them; and the souls of them that were beheaded for the testimony of Jesus, and for the word of God, and who had not adored the beast nor his image, nor received his character on their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years."

If people have chips they will be tracked wherever they are. And there is a reasonable expectation that their bodies will be controlled and manipulated, as this technology is increasingly refined. Their minds will also be manipulated, they can certainly be made or induced to follow whatever people want them to follow. It’s quite conceivable that they could be made to denounce God also.

Patrick Redmond

Stopping Rockets~Benjamin Netanyahu

On Stopping Rockets

From Benjamin Netanyahu’s July 22 Speech to a Special Session of the Knesset:

The policy which we implemented against the firing of missiles, Kassams and any other type of rocket, is that we are not prepared to hold back in such instances. We are not prepared to hold back against a trickle of rockets and missiles. In the past, they didn't react in order not to allow things to deteriorate, so they continued to increase, until you reach a situation where you have no choice but to carry out acts of a much wider scope. This is not the policy of my government.

My government has instituted a different policy, and this different policy states that we are not prepared to tolerate rockets and missiles being fired into Israel's territory. Mr. Speaker, we are not adopting a trickle policy, restraint, an increased trickle, firing upon our communities, and then a response. This is not the policy of my government. We will respond to every firing without fail. Before the elections, there were several without a response, but not since the elections.

Every result has a reaction. From the moment that I became Prime Minister, there has been a reaction to every shooting, which has been and will continue to be our policy. The public can precisely judge the results of the three months or the month prior to the elections and the months which have since passed. I think that this is the correct policy. We cannot take it for granted - I have never thought that we should take the firing of missiles on Israeli cities for granted. . . .

What has changed is that it is now possible to go to Sderot, Ashkelon and Beersheva, where our Government meeting took place a week ago, and it is possible to see what has changed. . . . Our policy is that we are not prepared to accept the firing of missiles upon our citizens.

I have visited many countries and many statesmen have visited here and told us that they don't understand how a situation like this could arise, whereby missiles are fired on your cities. The same statesman said: I know what we would have done, and that is what we are doing. If you fire one missile on Israeli communities, there will be a reaction.

Posted by Rick Richman

US to Israel: Leave the military option against Iran to us

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report

July 31, 2009, 11:03 AM (GMT+02:00)

US F-22 strike craft

The weeklong US-Israel marathon in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv ending Thursday, July 30 was the platform for the Obama administration's first unveiling of a new US diplomatic-military program for Iran and its nuclear threat, DEBKAfile's military and intelligence sources disclose.

The three-staged program was presented by US defense secretary Robert Gates and national security adviser James Jones to prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, defense minister Ehud Barak, chief of staff Lt. Gen. Gaby Ashkenazy, Mossad chief Meir Dagan and military intelligence head Amos Yadlin.

The new approach consists of three steps for thwarting Iran's drive for a nuclear bomb:

1. Diplomatic engagement as far as it will go. The American officials assured Israel they were aware of the diminishing chances of this track succeeding in view of the Islamic regime's domestic troubles, but the US administration is still determined to give it a chance up until early September.

2. If diplomacy fails, Washington will embark on the phased introduction of increasingly harsh sanctions against Iran, such as an embargo on exporting refined oil products including gasoline to Iran and a blockade on its sea ports.

3. If Iran continues to forge ahead with its nuclear and missile development, the US will resort to its military options. DEBKAfile's military sources report that the American visitors shared with Israeli leaders their specific plans of actions with details of the resources they planned to wield.

Gates and Jones wound up their presentation by stating unambiguously:

Iran is a big power issue and it behooves the United States as the leading world power to handle it. So leave it to us and act like an American ally and friendly government. The role they assigned Israel was to leave its military option on the table in order to keep Tehran under pressure.

Our Jerusalem sources report that the Netanyahu government will study the new Obama administration's program and decide how to approach it.

On the one hand, Israel's political and defense leaders were provided with the first detailed and coherent Washington has devised for dealing with the prospective Iranian nuclear menace.

It meant that Israel is not alone in the field against the Islamic Republic and has been relieved by the American plan of action of the need to resort to unilateral military action.

But on the other, the intelligence estimates the US and Israel traded in their talks this week differ on Iran's timeline for assembling nuclear warheads and devices.

By asking Israel to leave the Iranian nuclear threat to the United States, Gates and Jones were also telling Israel to accept US intelligence's longer estimate of this timeline. This might in the long run turn out to be inimical to Israel's security interests.

The Burdensome Stone~Henry Morris, Ph.D.

Thursday, July 30, 2009

The Burdensome Stone

by Henry Morris, Ph.D.

"And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it." (Zechariah 12:3)

The tiny land of Israel is an amazing phenomenon, explainable only in biblical terms. It began almost 4,000 years ago with the family of Jacob (or Israel) and his twelve sons. Most of the contemporary nations at the time--Elam, Chaldea, the Hittite empire, and others--have long been extinct as nations, but Israel is alive and well, and is in fact the very hub of international concern. It has, as God prophesied, become a "burdensome stone for all people."

Israel has indeed become a unique burden to the nations. The whole Muslim world insists that Israel be destroyed as a nation, but Israel is determined to maintain her present boundaries. For 1,800 years, "the wandering Jew" had no true home, yet survived. In accord with biblical prophecy, she had "become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword, among all nations whither the LORD shall lead thee" (Deuteronomy 28:37).

The city of Jerusalem itself, just since the time of Christ, has been controlled at various times by the Romans, Syrians, Arabs, Crusaders, Egyptians, Persians, and Turks; but never again by the Jews until our own generation.

The problem of Israel and Jerusalem is apparently intractable to the other nations of the world and so must be resolved by God. Zechariah 12 also shows that it will indeed be solved "in that day"--the day when Christ returns. At that time, He says: "I will pour upon . . . the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him" (Zechariah 12:10). In that great day, says Paul, "all Israel shall be saved." (Romans 11:26)

This article was originally published July, 2009. "The Burdensome Stone", Institute for Creation Research. http://www.icr.org/article/4706/

Beijing's Tehran Temptation (Iran & China)

Beijing's Tehran Temptation

There's no reason to panic about a China-Iran energy deal.

BY ERICA DOWNS | JULY 30, 2009

Iran's recent invitation to Chinese oil companies and banks to invest $43 billion in Iran's oil industry was understandably dismaying to U.S. policymakers. After all, Tehran is attempting to trade access to its abundant oil and natural gas reserves for diplomatic support on its uranium enrichment program, and China's growing appetite for energy makes it vulnerable to such temptations.

Iran, however, might find that taking diplomatic advantage of China's energy needs is easier said than done. Not only are China's national oil companies unable or unwilling to deliver the projects Iran is hoping for, but energy is just one of several competing interests that drive Beijing's stance toward Tehran. As a result, Washington still has an opportunity to influence China's Iran policy.

It might seem strange that a major oil producer needs this level of energy investment. But though Iran has the world's second-largest proven oil reserves, it imports as much as 40 percent of its gasoline because it lacks domestic refining capacity. Iran's current effort is aimed at getting the Chinese to bankroll the construction of refineries. If Iran can produce all the gasoline it needs at home, then the United States won't be able to follow through on its threat to cut off its supply. An agreement with China would allow Tehran to prove that U.S. efforts to isolate Iran aren't working.

Iran has good reasons to hope that its efforts to woo China's oil companies will be successful. First, Iran's underdeveloped oil and natural gas reserves are a grand prize for Chinese firms, whose late arrival to international exploration and production has made it difficult for them to acquire attractive investment opportunities abroad.

Second, Beijing has a proven track record of providing cash and infrastructure assistance to countries that supply it with oil. In the first half of 2009 alone, Chinese banks extended more than $45 billion in loans to countries including Brazil, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Venezuela, all major energy producers battered by the fall in oil prices.

Third, Chinese companies are willing to discuss new projects in Iran at a time when major international oil companies are holding back under pressure from their home governments. Last month, China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) inked a deal to replace Total in the development of the enormous South Pars natural gas field after Iran grew frustrated with the French company's foot-dragging.

But there's a catch. Chinese firms -- and their Iranian counterparts -- do not have the technology needed to liquefy Iran's natural gas and can't gain access to it due to U.N. and U.S. sanctions. It will be several years before Chinese companies are able to develop their own such technology and many years after that before they can match the technology of the major international oil companies. Although Chinese companies are working to develop their own such technology, it will probably take them several years to match that of the major international oil companies.

It's also not clear that Chinese companies are in any rush to actually pump large sums of money into Iran. Unfortunately for Tehran, these firms have a history of signing agreements for projects in which they have no intention of making substantial investments until after sanctions are lifted and geopolitical risks reduced. CNPC, for instance, signed a contract with Saddam Hussein's government for the Ahdab field in 1997, held off on investing due to U.N. sanctions, and then inked a new agreement with the postwar Iraqi regime in 2008. In short, though China's oil companies might be eager to get their foot in Iran's door, they appear just as reluctant as other foreign companies to breach sanctions.

More importantly, Beijing recognizes that a nuclear-armed Iran would almost certainly be detrimental to its energy security. Iran's development of a nuclear weapons capability -- and the regional nuclear arms race this might trigger -- would foster instability in the Persian Gulf, jeopardizing the free flow of oil into the market. It could also strain China's relationship with Saudi Arabia, which has been China's top crude oil supplier for most of this decade and opposes Iran's going nuclear. And despite appearances, China does not want to jeopardize its relationship with the United States. Not only does Beijing value its relations with Washington more than its ties to Tehran, but it relies on the U.S. Navy to protect the sea lanes between the Persian Gulf and China.

Chinese companies are unlikely to completely abandon their interest in Iran's vast hydrocarbon reserves, but if the Chinese government is assured that its country's oil firms will be "first in line" to gain access to Iran's largest oil and natural gas fields, it might be willing to step up its efforts to press Tehran on Iran's nuclear program.

Washington should remind Beijing that a nuclear-free Persian Gulf is likely to do more to bolster the security of China's oil supplies than pumping billions of dollars into a country whose nuclear ambitions might threaten those very investments. And after the recent post-election upheaval, U.S. officials can make the case that China's commercial interests would be better served by waiting to see how the Iranian political situation plays out.

With any luck, Tehran's latest temptation will be one Beijing can resist.

The Mark of the Beast~Chris Perver

The Mark of the Beast

Written by Chris Perver

This article examines the Mark of the Beast as described in the book of Revelation, and its possible fulfillment in RFID technology. Revelation 13:16-18
And he (Antichrist) causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark (incision) IN their right hand, or IN their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six (666).

I will try my best to summarize the information on the website concerning VeriChip, and how this chip - or its antitype, may fulfill the prophecy concerning the Mark of the Beast...

What it does...
Applied Digital Solutions in the USA markets the VeriChip, a microchip about the size of a grain of rice, which can be implanted under the skin. It can store 128 characters of information (about a paragraph of text). Ideally this would be used to store a unique number which could reference a database on computer containing an individuals medical history, financial assets, personal details, biometric data, etc. This chip could have a wide range of applications, from security clearance and identification, secure financial transactions, retrieving essential data for medical emergencies and the list goes on. GPS circuits are now being manufactured small enough to fit inside wrist watches, and the next generation of implantable chips may also utilize this technology, enabling the recipient to be tracked anywhere in the world...

Quote: "Applied Digital Solutions, maker of what it calls the VeriChip, says that it soon will have a prototype of a more complex device, one that is able to receive signals from global positioning system (GPS) satellites and transmit a person's location. One potential market for such a device would be kidnapping targets in foreign countries...
An embedded GPS would be slightly larger than a quarter and require actual surgery to install. Unlike the VeriChip, it also would require Food and Drug Administration approval. That will slow its U.S. introduction.

But in the mean time, I believe it is entirely possible for current RFID implants to be tracked by satellite. The distance an RFID tag can transmit radio waves is only limited by the size of the antenna on the reader.

Quote: "A group of hackers at the 2005 DefCon technology convention in Las Vegas, Nevada, used an antenna attached to an RFID reader to scan the information on a tag nearly 70 feet away. RFID proponents downplayed the demonstration, saying the apparatus was impractical and wouldn't work if the information on the RFID tag were encrypted, which is more often the case.

While it may be impractical to carry about a large transmitter for scanning RFID chips at massive distances, it would not be impractical for a satellite to transmit and receive radio frequencies from RFID chips. Satellites like the British Echelon system are already equipped to monitor virtually every communication on earth, and if faint radio frequencies can be picked up from astronauts on the moon, why not a tiny RFID chip on earth? Through triangulation it would be theoretically possible to pinpoint the location of a VeriChip transmission on earth.

How it works...
There are two different types of RFID tags, "passive" and "active". Passive tags only broadcast their information after receiving a signal from a reader. The passive tags convert the radio waves into electrical energy, store it in the capacitor, and then use this current to send a response back to the reader.

Quote: "The VeriChip™ microtransponder is a patented, small, approximately 12 mm x 2.1mm (0.43in x 0.08in) passive radio frequency (RFID) microtransponder circuit that weighs 0.06gm (0.002 oz.) and is inserted subcutaneously. The functional components are an RFID (Radiofrequency identification) integrated circuit, a capacitor, and an antenna. The RFID ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) microchip contains the unique ID number assigned to the microtransponder, and all of the electronic circuitry necessary to allow the number to be read by the Pocket Reader TM . Each integrated circuit is 128 bit read-only with a 16 digit ID. The unique identification number is laser encoded during fabrication; as a result, it cannot be erased or altered after manufacture. The capacitor controls the tuning of the radio frequency. The third primary component of the microtransponder is a coil of copper wire wound around a ferrite (iron) core. This functions as a tiny antenna to pick up the energy from the Pocket Reader TM and to send the encoded ID number from the microchip back to the Pocket Reader TM . The material used to encapsulate the electronics of the microtransponder is a biocompatible medical grade glass. The implant capsule is partially covered by a friction fit polymer sheath (anti-migration cap). The sheath is designed to facilitate bonding of soft tissue to the implant By incorporating the polymer sheath (antimigration cap), which covers half of the implant; anti-migration capabilities of the implant are provided.

The active tags continuously broadcast a signal regardless of whether they are being scanned or not. These chips are slightly larger than the passive ones, and contain a Lithium Ion battery which generates electrical current from temperature variations within the human body.

Quote: ""We believe we have solved the battery issue, which leaves the question of an antenna that can transmit through skin tissue," said Applied Digital's chief scientist, Keith Bolton. The devices will be powered by lithium ion batteries, which can be charged remotely from outside the body.

Where it goes...

RFID implant in hand

The chip is injected by syringe (incision) under the skin, much like a family pet would be "tagged". The chip is covered with a special chemical substance called polyethylene, which helps skin bond to it, to enable the chip to stay in place after insertion. According to Revelation TV, scientists spent over 1.5 billion dollars working out the best location to inject the chip into the human body. They only came up with two places, specifically the right hand or the forehead. Both these locations in the body generate the most heat, and therefore are most suitable for the Lithium Ion batteries, which recharge by harnessing the energy in temperature flow. Lithium is also an extremely poisonous metal, and if it comes in contact with the human body at all, terrible sores erupt in the flesh.

Quote: "GPS technology took a quantum leap with the development of bionics capable of being tracked by satellite once implanted in animals or humans. These tiny devices, powered by a lithium battery, could be geographically detected, using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), to within inches anywhere on the surface of the planet. Lithium is employed as a miniature power-plant for the chip since it self-energises through changes in the host's body temperature. Thus the site for the implant will usually be those body parts demonstrating the greatest variations in temperature - in the back of the hand or front of the head. Lithium does have one drawback, experts say. It produces an infection when brought into contact with exposed organic tissue.

We find a similar situation is described in Scripture concerning the Mark of the Beast.

Revelation 16:1-2
And I heard a great voice out of the temple saying to the seven angels, Go your ways, and pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the earth.
And the first went, and poured out his vial upon the earth; and there fell a noisome and grievous sore upon the men which had the mark of the beast, and upon them which worshipped his image.

Could a nuclear explosion - which through it's magnetic pulse, would destroy all electronic equipment for hundreds of miles - also be responsible for destroying the tiny chips embedded under the skin? This is just one of the possibilities.

The locations for the insertion of the chip (in the right hand or forehead) are confirmed by secular sources (page now expired - click here to read) According to Revelation TV, after the scientist involved in the research discovered that these locations were described in the Bible as places where the "Mark of the Beast" will be inserted, he deeply regretted his part in the work.

Quote: "Some current technology could have helped here (Asian Tsunami). Here's one possible scenario: The VeriChip is about the size of a grain of rice, virtually undetectable and practically indestructible once inserted under the skin – usually in your right hand or forehead. The chip has a special polyethylene sheath that helps skin bond to it, so that it stays in place. Since the chip has no battery, there are no chemicals to worry about and the chip never “runs down” – its expected life is up to 20 years.

Again, this article appeared on CNN about a Vancouver man that received an RFID tag in his hand (see also here, here). With it he is able to open doors, turn on lights and even access his computer. No company name is mentioned in the article, which is surprising. Possibly the article was written from an end-user perspective in an attempt to promote public acceptance of the implants. The chip is described as being no bigger than a grain of rice, which makes me think the maker is VeriChip.

Quote: "The RFID chip in Sklar's hand, which is smaller than a grain of rice and can last up to 100 years, was injected by a surgeon in Los Angeles. Tattoo artists and veterinarians also could insert the chips into people, he said. For years, veterinarians have been injecting similar chips into pets so the animals can be returned to their owners if they are lost. Graafstra was drawn to RFID tagging to make life easier in this technological age, but Sklar said he was more intrigued by the technology's potential in a broader sense. In the future, technological advances will allow people to store, transmit and access encrypted personal information in an increasing number of wireless ways, Sklar said.

Who is marketing the VeriChip...
A deal was signed with Indonesian firms to market this chip in the Far East. That deal was signed on the 8th of December, 2004, only 18 days before a Tsunami killed over 200,000 people in that region of the world. All the countries that signed the deal were hit by the Tsunami. 6+6+6=18. Coincidence? Interesting anyway.

The Attorney General of Mexico already has the chip implanted in him, along with his staff for security reasons.

Quote: "News reports earlier this year indicated 160 employees in the Mexican Attorney General's Office had been implanted with VeriChip RFID devices. New information indicates that only 18 individuals received the device, said Katherine Albrecht, Founder and Director of CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering). "Our concern is that dozens of news outlets have repeated the inflated number, which has reached the level of an urban legend,"... "Even Applied Digital Solutions, the creator of the VeriChip, cites the incorrect figure on their website. We have tried to contact the company to alert them to this situation, but they have not returned our calls," said Albrecht.

Conrad Chase, the Director of Baja Beach Clubs in Spain, is already offering a chipping programme for his VIP guests marketed by Applied Digital Solutions called VeriPay. Using this system, VIP guests can buy food and drinks without the need for carrying a wallet. In this interview with EFE News Agency, Conrad states the aim of Applied Digital Solutions is to bring the marketing of VeriChip to a global level, elimination the need for carrying cash and credit cards (and that no man might buy or sell save he had the mark)... Conrad also states that new gun controls will eventually be brought in, with weapons that can only be activated by the owner, through a VeriChip in the right hand.

Quote: "EFE: What advantages will a Baja Beach Club client that wants to be implanted have?
CON: You won't have to carry a wallet. By simply passing by our reader, the Baja beach Club will know who you are and what your credit balance is. From the moment of their implantation they will also have free entry and access to the VIP area which we will formally open the 25th of March.
EFE: Is it free for your clients?
CON: On the day of the launch, we are giving it for free to all of our VIPS. After that day, the cost of implantation will be 125 Euros.
EFE: If I implant myself will it only be valid at the Baja?
CON: The objective of this technology is to bring an ID system to a global level that will destroy the need to carry ID documents and credit cards. The VeriChip the we implant in the Baja will not only be for the Baja, but is also useful for whatever other enterprise that makes use of this technology.

In what is being seen as an effort to make the implant "fashionable" for young teenagers, guests on the Spanish version of the "Big Brother" television show were offered money if they would take the VeriChip implant live on set (March 20th, 2004). One of the actresses on the show, Silvia Fominaya, refused to be implanted and subsequently paid the price by being replaced with another actress. But unforeseen circumstances meant the VeriChip batch was not ready in time for the show's broadcast, and nobody ended up getting chipped. Expect to see more of this in the future, for young adults are the most susceptible target group, for they want to be seen as fashionable and may not be bound by the same reservations their parents are.

In July 2007 the company that markets the VeriChip and its various security and identification systems set up a new brand name for their products. The name is Xmark.

Quote: "Welcome to Xmark, the new corporate identity for our healthcare security products. Our new name emphasizes our focus on healthcare security. You may have known us under the eXI or VeriChip brand, but we are now bringing all our products under the Xmark name.

The VeriChip Corporation is well aware of the concern expressed by Christian groups who believe that their product may be the precursor to the Mark of the Beast as described in the book of Revelation. This makes this development all the more amazing. The Greek translation of the word "mark" mentioned in Revelation 13 is "charagma", and it's literal interpretation means an "incision" or a "cutting". This is how Strong's concordance renders it...

G5480
χάραγμα
charagma - khar'-ag-mah
From the same as G5482; a scratch or etching, that is, stamp (as a badge of servitude), or sculptured figure (statue): - graven, mark.

This reveals to us how the Mark of the Beast will be applied, though an incision or injection into the flesh. And this is exactly how RFID chips are implanted, through a cutting in the skin. As you can also see, the first letter of the word "charagma" is also the letter X or "Chi" in the Greek. So it seems the new name "Xmark" is quite intriguing, for its Greek translation identifies it closely with the book of Revelation.

RFID tattoos...
In another development, a company called Somark Innovations has unveiled an RFID enabled chipless ink, which can be injected into biological tissue. The company has successfully completed tests on cattle and laboratory mice, and hope to revolutionize the cattle industry by providing a cost-effective means of tracking livestock. They hope the product will eventually be used to track military personnel.

Quote: "Visible or invisible ink "tattoos" can be applied to the skin and tracked by RFID readers positioned a few feet away. The company, Somark, said it had successfully tested its Biocompatible Chipless RFID Ink product on cattle and laboratory rats and proved the "efficacy of injecting and reading a 'tattoo' within the skin of animals". The technology will be used initially in the livestock industry to help identify and track cattle, and help mitigate export trade loss from BSE scares. Secondary target markets include laboratory animals, dogs and cats, prime cuts of meat and military personnel, according to the company. Ramos Mays, Somark chief scientist, said, "This proves the ability to create a synthetic biometric or fake fingerprint with Biocompatible Chipless RFID Ink and read it through hair."

What the Bible says...
In the Scriptures, in the same way that cattle are branded, tagging implies ownership. Especially tagging in the forehead, which symbolically is the "seat" of the mind. So anyone putting a chip in the forehead by implication would be claiming to control or own the will of that person. Compare these passages in Ezekiel, where God sets a special mark of ownership upon those who are obedient to His will, and have not gone after the abominations of the pervading culture, while those without God's seal are destined for pending destruction...

Ezekiel 9:4-6
And the LORD said unto him (an angel), Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof.
And to the others (angels) he said in mine hearing, Go ye after him through the city, and smite: let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity:
Slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and women: but come not near any man upon whom is the mark; and begin at my sanctuary. Then they began at the ancient men which were before the house.

Interesting to note the words, "Begin at My Sanctuary". Judgement must begin at the house of God, and if judgement first begin at us, what shall the end be of all them that obey not the Gospel? (1st Peter 4:17)

The Bible is clear about one thing, that those who do accept the mark will have by implication, automatically rejected the Lord Jesus, and as a result will never see heaven. They are marked by God for destruction, and for eternal punishment in the lake of fire.

Revelation 14:9-11
And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb: And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name.

But what happens to those Christians who will accept the Mark of the Beast not knowing what it is, or perhaps out of fear for the well-being of their families, or out of their desire to hold on to this life? I don't believe a person who had accepted Jesus Christ could take the mark unknowingly. My reason for believing this is that Revelation implies that those who accept the mark of the beast will be making a conscious decision - taking the mark is linked with a conscious decision to worship the Antichrist as God, just like in the old Roman Empire where Christians were forced to worship Caesar as God. Many refused and paid with their lives.

Below are most of the verses in Revelation linked with taking the mark, and all of these closely link taking the mark with worshipping the Antichrist.

Revelation 20:4
And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and [I saw] the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received [his] mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.

Revelation 19:20
And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone.

Revelation 16:2
And the first went, and poured out his vial upon the earth; and there fell a noisome and grievous sore upon the men which had the mark of the beast, and [upon] them which worshipped his image.

Revelation 14:11
And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name.

Revelation 14:9
And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive [his] mark in his forehead, or in his hand,

But I believe this mark will only be made compulsory during the tribulation period by the Antichrist himself, therefore if the Rapture happens before the tribulation period, those who have trusted Christ have no reason for concern.

As for taking the Mark out of fear for the well-being of their families, or out of a desire to hold onto this life, this may well be a hard choice for those believers saved during the tribulation period. As I said before, the Roman armies used to knock the doors and demand that people sign a card stating their belief in the Roman Emperor as God. Those that refused faced death, but some of those Christians recanted their belief in the Saviour out of fear. They may have lost some of their eternal glory for a limited earthly peace, but they didn't loose their salvation. Regarding the Mark, Revelation makes it clear. Those that accept the Mark of the Beast during the tribulation period will not escape the judgement of God.

In Revelation we find that the Beast isn't the only one who marks his followers in the forehead...

Revelation 7:3-4
Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads. And I heard the number of them which were sealed: and there were sealed an hundred and forty and four thousand of all the tribes of the children of Israel.

Revelation 14:1
And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Sion, and with him an hundred forty and four thousand, having his Father's name written in their foreheads.

Revelation 22:3-4
And there shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him: And they shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads.

So here we have God, who has clearly identified His servants by a mark in their foreheads. Not visibly but symbolically, through the Holy Spirit indwelling them. Similarly, those who accept the Mark of the Beast will do so with a conscious decision, willing to become the property of the Antichrist, to worship him in the place of God.

What the Bible says...
I believe if the public agreed, politicians would bring the mark/chip in tomorrow. Countries around the world are already working on ID schemes, albeit limited to public acceptance. In Britain they are still trying to bring in the new chipped Passports, which will inevitably become compulsory to own, even if you aren't planning to leave the country. They are even testing a scheme to chip car licence plates.

There is no doubt, a chip in the hand would solve an awful lot of problems. For example, credit card fraud, locating missing persons, immigration problems, identifying and treating people after natural disasters, etc. But the public won't yet accept a chip because they believe it intrudes on their privacy, and they don't trust the government not to abuse their confidential information. That is, until a world crisis arises (genuine or engineered) which "persuades" everyone that this is the best course of action, for the "benefit" of mankind.

We are told a little about why a chip will eventually be brought in to tag mankind. "He causeth all". The Antichrist will be will be the person who will make it compulsory to have this chip. And the reason given is, so "that no man might by or sell" unless he had the mark. These words were written over 2000 years ago, yet only within the last 5 years have we properly understood the significance of them due to technological advancements.

On the 30th of October, 2006, a group of British academics published a report for the UK Information Commissioner, warning that within 10 years, unless regulations were brought in to control this new surveillance technology, Britons could find themselves facing the prospect of having compulsory identification implants...

Quote: "For the past six years European countries have been using RFID chips to identify pet animals. However, its use in humans has already been trialled in America, where the chips were implanted in 70 mentally-ill elderly people in order to track their movements. And earlier this year a security company in Ohio chipped two of its employees to allow them to enter a secure area. The glass-encased chips were planted in the recipients' upper right arms and 'read' by a device similar to a credit card reader. In their Report on the Surveillance Society, the authors now warn: "The call for everyone to be implanted is now being seriously debated."

There could be a number of reasons why we will eventually have a cashless society. One of the reasons could be that an economic collapse would make cash and gold worthless. We are told in the book of James that those who have heaped together treasure of the last days would find it worthless.

James 5:1-3
Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.

Ezekiel 7:19
They shall cast their silver in the streets, and their gold shall be removed: their silver and their gold shall not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the LORD: they shall not satisfy their souls, neither fill their bowels: because it is the stumblingblock of their iniquity.

With all the disasters befalling earth during this time, for instance; nuclear war, asteroid impacts, earthquakes, it's easy to see how we could have a world economic collapse. Estimates are that world oil reserves will only last another 20 years, and the world economy, if not the balance of power, is based on who controls the oil. The Bible tells us that during the tribulation, inflation will rise so high that a day's wages will only buy the equivalent of a loaf of bread.

Revelation 6:5-6
And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny (a day's wages), and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.

Another reason the chip may be brought in that has already been discussed is for security reasons. If you can control who can buy and sell, you can effectively control who lives and dies. So, much like a Social Security number, a chip in the hand could stop "terrorists" travelling, working, and buying food. The "global terrorist" phenomenon does seem to be a particular characteristic of this new century. What better way to unite the world, than to have a common threat needing to be resisted by all?

Another reason which has already been partly discussed is locating missing people. The Bible tells us in 1st Thessalonians 4:13-18 and John 14:1-6, that those who have trusted Christ as Saviour will one day be caught up to be with Him in heaven. I believe for a number of reasons, that this will happen prior to the beginning of the seven year tribulation period. Could millions of missing Christians cause a world crisis of such magnitude, that every person would be persuaded to have a chip implanted in their body so they can identify who is missing and who remains? Or could this be used as an excuse so that if another crisis occurs, people can be easily located?

The possibility of these events occurring are in the news everyday, they are no longer the realm of science fiction. Are you ready to meet God when it comes to the crunch-time?

Source Applied Digital Solutions, Emerging Worlds, CNN, NCVHS, Campaign For Truth, Star-TechCentral, CNN, Game Shout, Flickr, Flickr, Applied Digital Solutions, Spy Chips, Info Wars, Xmark , Path Guy , Computer Weekly, Daily Mail

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Thursday, July 30, 2009

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Beijing's Tehran Temptation

There's no reason to panic about a China-Iran energy deal.

BY ERICA DOWNS | JULY 30, 2009

The Mark of the Beast~Chris Perver

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