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> The Islamic Apocalypse
> The apparitions of Medjugorje: Guns for Mary
> Book Review: Unstoppable Global Warming - Every 1,500 Years
> Is Global Warming a Galactic phenomenon?

The Islamic Apocalypse

> Islam too is obsessed with the "End of Time", making for a powerful cocktail in which politics and religions are no longer separate, as they are claimed to be.

The Jamkaran Mosque in Iran is a popular pilgrimage site for Shiite Muslims. Though far less famous in the West than the annual Hajj to Mecca, the spectacle at Jamkaran is far more intriguing. Indeed, pilgrims dropping a message into a holy well might not seem much, but they hope that it will be received by the Imam Mahdi - in the Western world probably best known through Frank Herbert's Dune, where he is the prophesised Messiah. But he is not only that on the planet Arrakis, but also on planet Earth.
Iman Mahdi is a mystical character of Islam. Most Shiites await the return of this 12th Shiite Imam, Muhammad ibn Hasan, who was/is the last direct male descendent of the Prophet Mohammed's son-in-law Ali, who disappeared in 874 AD and is believed to be in an invisible, deathless state of existence, or "occultation", awaiting his return. Many Muslims believe he is an "active force", somehow able to grant these wishes to the needy. In case you ever wondered about the difference between Sunnis and Shiites: Sunnis reject the successors of Ali and believe that the Mahdi has yet to be born.
The Mahdi is thus somewhat similar to Count de St Germain, notorious in esoteric circles of the 18th century for his claims of longevity - an estimated two millennia, at least. In this case, it was Sheikh Hassan ibn Muthlih Jamkarani, who recorded encountering the Imam Mahdi in 974 AD, near the well near the Jamkaran Mosque, from where he is expected to rise, revealing himself and signalling the arrival of a New Age. Sounds familiar? Indeed it should be.

If you are looking for an Apocalypse and a president who is gung-ho over the Rapture, you not only have George Bush… On September 12, 2006, the US President reiterated his belief that he sensed a "Third Awakening" of religious devotion in the United States that coincided with the nation's struggle with international terrorists, a war that he depicted as "a confrontation between good and evil". On the side of "evil" - from Bush's point of view - is the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is a fervent believer in the 12th Imam. When Ahmadinejad addressed the United Nations General Assembly in October of 2005, he ended his speech with a prayer imploring God to hasten the return of the 12th Imam. In another speech, Ahmadinejad is quoted as saying: "Our revolution's main mission is to pave the way for the reappearance of the 12th Imam, the Mahdi. Therefore, Iran should become a powerful, developed and model Islamic society. Today, we should define our economic, cultural and political policies based on the policy of Imam Mahdi's return. We should avoid copying the West's policies and systems."
Observers have noted that Ahmadinejad has included references to the Mahdi in almost all of his major speeches. Some might suggest he is using the apocalyptic message of the 12th Imam to rally his population behind him, but many observers agree that Ahmadinejad truly believes what he has repeatedly stated: that it is his duty to create chaos and destruction to hasten the return of the 12th Imam.

The appearance of the Mahdi is also known as the Greater Occultation or Zuhur - the Islamic Apocalypse. His return is the most significant expectation for the Shiite faithful. His return is believed to occur shortly before the Final Judgement and the end of history. Imam Mahdi will return at the head of the forces of righteousness and do battle with the forces of evil in one, final, apocalyptic battle. When evil has been defeated once and for all, the Mahdi will rule the world for several years under a perfect government and bring about a perfect spirituality among the peoples of the world. And it is here where it gets really treacherous, for after the Imam Mahdi has reigned for several years, it is time for the "Christian Apocalypse", namely the return of Jesus Christ (raj'a), as will Husayn and others.
The Islamic Apocalypse therefore incorporates coincides with a Christian End Time and is thus appealing for both Apocalyptic Christians and Apocalyptic Shiites. With George Bush on one end and Ahmadinejad on the other end, it is clear that not so much oil, as religious doctrine is at the core of this debate - and this explains largely why Bush defies many of his advisors, including his father, all of whom are more economic and politically orientated - not religious.
Bush may be Rapture ready, but so, he believes, is Ahmadinejad, who belongs to the radical Hojjatieh sect, which is the strongest follower of the Mahdi doctrine. His return is furthermore an active agenda; the Hojjatieh faith puts inordinate stress on the human ability to direct divinely appointed events. By creating the apocalyptic chaos, the Hojjatiehs believe it is entirely in the power of believers to bring about the Mahdi's reappearance. In short, they believe that for the Mahdi to appear, they will have to create a situation that will force or allow him to return.
The Hojjatieh movement is considered to be so radical that it was banned in 1983 by the Ayatollah Khomeini and is still opposed by the majority of the Iranian clerics, including the Supreme Leader of the Supreme National Security Council, Ayatollah Ali Khamanei. Still, it is believed that Ahmadinejad has brought in several fellow followers into position of his government, thus strengthening the apocalyptic powerbase ruling in Iran.

An Apocalyptic man in charge of a major nation has of course sent waves of terror throughout the Arab world: not everyone is of the Shiite faith, let alone a radical follower of Hojjatieh's interpretation of the faith. Hence, Iran's desire to develop nuclear technology for non-military purposes seems innocent and valid enough, but the fear is that the technology will be used to make nuclear weapons and bring the Zuhur about. Though unlikely (Iran could more easily and quickly buy nuclear weapons if it wanted to), it has led to several conflicts, mainly with the US. Furthermore, on May 8, 2006, Ahmadinejad sent a personal letter to Bush to propose "new ways" to end Iran's nuclear dispute. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley both reviewed the letter and dismissed it as a negotiating ploy and publicity stunt. What is interesting is Ahmadinejad's reaction a few days later at a meeting in Jakarta: "the letter was an invitation to monotheism and justice, which are common to all divine prophets." Enough said!

Specifically worried about this scenario is Israel, a country that has the site of Megiddo set aside for "Armageddon". The situation is further complicated as there are Orthodox Jews who themselves reject Israel as a nation, believing that the Jewish State should only come about following the coming of the Messiah.
Is it therefore a coincidence to find Israel, the US and Iran engaged in a battle of words that may soon escalate in a real war? Privately, Bush has expressed views that strikes against Iran would stall "the End Times" with five to seven years, leaving it unclear whether he truly wants this or not, but underlining that he is convinced we are on an apocalyptic course, with two presidents in the firm believe that they have a divine mission, and are personally privileged to survive the coming End Times. All observers should meanwhile realise that religious zealots in political offices is never a good sign… and signs are all important, it seems, for apocalyptic believers.

The apparitions of Medjugorje: Guns for Mary

> The apparition of the Virgin Mary in Medjugorje may have been engineered, massaged or used by the Vatican and Croatian Catholics to act as the catalyst to start the break-up of Yugoslavia in the various religious groups. But the event may have involved the likes of Roberto Calvi, Opus Dei and the Knights of Malta.

On June 24, 1981, the Virgin Mary made her first appearance in the Croatian village of Medjugorje. Six young parishioners saw on the hill Crnica (on the place called Podbrdo) an apparition: a white form with what appeared to be a child in her arms. Surprised and scared, the witnesses did not approach.
The next day at the same time (6pm), four of the original group felt strongly drawn towards the place once again. This time, they identified the apparition as the Virgin Mary, talked to her and prayed with her. From that day onward, they had daily apparitions, either together or separately.
By 1986, the Vatican began to show an interest and decided to investigate the authenticity of the apparitions. Already, Medjugorje had developed itself into a popular pilgrimage site, with the Virgin's messages speaking about Satan having taken the upper hand in the control for our souls.

When Sam Osmanagich reported about the discovery of a Bosnian pyramid, some critics actually alleged that this was Bosnia's reprisal for the Medjugorje apparitions - with the commentator implying that both pyramid and apparitions were politically motivated creations, i.e. not real.
Indeed, the apparitions at Medjugorje did not appear within a political void. Yugoslavia - as it was known in 1981 - was a confederation of minorities, with different ethnic, religious and cultural strata. By 1980, Bosnia was growing more Islamic... and Croatia, it seemed, had to become more Catholic. The apparitions were - literally - a gift from heaven: they underlined a Catholic agenda, that Satan - Islam - was getting the upper hand. At the same time, the messages could be seen as highly prophetic, for four years later, there would be Serbian aggression towards Croatia.

Is Medjugorje a genuine otherwordly phenomenon, or is there more to it? Guy Patton, in "Web of Gold", has written about Medjurgorje and argues that "It would appear that Opus Dei, and other factions within the Vatican, could see the opportunities presented by the disintegration of the Yugoslavian Republic and may well have manipulated the civil war to their own advantage. Serbian intelligence confirmed their suspicions of Vatican influence when they acquired Croatian finance ministry files that showed a 2000 million dollar loan agreement arranged through the Sovereign Military Order of the Knights of Malta." In short, the implication is that these apparitions were seized upon by Catholic authorities to get, consolidate and extend their foothold in Croatia, thus perhaps quickening the disintegration of Yugoslavia.
200 million dollar is a major loan, provided, of course, that we can trust the Serbian discovery. It appears that the loan was a ten-year interest-free loan. But rather than being used to build churches, it was intended to supply the Roman Catholic Croatians with armaments and equipment to continue the fight against the Orthodox Serbs. The twelve page document was undated and unsigned, though accompanying correspondence was dated to October 1990, between the Croatian army and Monsignor Roberto Coppola. Observers have therefore concluded that "this certainly suggests some collusion between the Vatican and the Croatian leadership to support and legitimize their war against Serbia."
However, just when it all made sense, it was learned that Coppola was a confidence trickster, who had tried to extract $200,000 from the Croatians as an up-front commission for the loan. The Knights of Malta denied he was a member of their organisation and showed documents dating back to the 1970s, revealing that he had tried to play this trick on numerous occasions. Hence, though this was a conman trying to con the Croatian army, the Croatian government seemed to have treated it as a genuine offer.

So: are these genuine apparitions? A British Channel 4 television documentary, "Scandal of Medjugorgje", broadcast on November 20 1997, uncovered a real and deep collusion between the Catholic Church and the Croatian army, with Medjugorje at the centre of the controversy. According to the programme, at the outbreak of the Croatian-Serbian war, businessman Bernard Ellis, director of Anglo-Steel, set up a charity in England to provide aid for the adults and children affected by the war in the area of Medjugorje. Ellis arranged convoys of aid worth twenty million pounds per year and the programme alleged that Anglo-Steel profited, by many hundreds of thousands of pounds, in the administration of this charity; the full extent of this was apparently concealed in creative accounting.
In addition, a project called 'Mother's Village' was conceived by a Franciscan priest to provide a home for children of the area, allegedly orphaned by the fighting, and a British appeal was set up to raise funds to sponsor the building of new houses. The documentary revealed that Medjugorje was actually a prosperous town that had completely escaped the ravages of the war. The funds raised for an orphanage, for which there is no demand, were instead used to provide a crèche and nursery school for the children of the town's affluent residents. As for the remainder of the Mother's Village project: only three houses of the proposed village had been built, with £180,000 of the money used for building a church instead.

Nothing too outrageous, you may think. But the biggest revelation was that amongst the material sent from the UK, was little refugee aid: instead, the convoys consisted of camouflage nets, military-style clothing, footwear and ex-army surplus equipment. It was transported by ex-army trucks to a grenade factory and a base for the Croatian Liberation Army, housed behind the charity storage unit in Medjugorje. In fact, the unit itself turned out to be a supply depot for the Croatian Liberation Army.
Amongst the aid items were a very large quantity of handcuffs, allegedly to assist the police to maintain law and order in the event of looting; however, it appears that they were instead used on the Muslims that were "led" out of Mostar. Despite the eventual peace agreement, every effort was made to prevent the Muslims from returning to their homes and over 8000 were evicted. Who was responsible for this feat? The commander was the mayor of Medjugorje, a long-time friend of Bernard Ellis.

What do these events have to do with the apparitions themselves? It is claimed that Roberto Calvi, the chairman of Banco Ambrosiano, dubbed by the press as "God's Banker", was involved with Medjugorje. Calvi had a close association with the Vatican. When his bank collapsed in one of Italy's biggest modern political scandals, shortly afterwards, Calvi allegedly committed suicide in London in June 1982 - a conclusion that has now officially been overturned into "murder". It is claimed that Calvi, at the time of his death, was in the possession of a briefcase, in which there was evidence of money being transferred to Medjugorje. Seeing Calvi was so close to the Vatican, was Calvi indeed used to transfer money to the Croatian Catholics? This scenario lends credence to Serbian claims, which had branded the Vatican policy as "dishonest and untrustworthy" and was convinced that Opus Dei and the papal nuncio in Zagreb, Guilio Einaudi, had enabled Croatia to equip a new national army with an arsenal of modern weaponry. Serbia even alleged that Father Stanislav Crnica, the Opus Dei regional vicar in Zagreb, had direct access to President Franjo Tudjman's office.

So, at present, it is clear that the apparitions in Medjugorje were used by local politicians to rally the Catholic cause, both religious but specifically military. And the Vatican's interest in Medjugorje does not seem to date from 1986, but from day one of the apparitions.
Robert Hutchinson in "Their Kingdom Come" (1997) focused on the link between Opus Dei, the 20th century version of the Knights Templar, sent out by the Vatican to battle the march of communism and Islam, and the Croatian war. He notes that in 1997, Medjugorje had become the fourth most popular Christian pilgrimage site in the world. The site has become a massive revenue earner, specifically for the Franciscan order that runs the site.
One question remains: what about the apparitions? Genuine, or invented. There are "conspiracy theories" that it was in fact the Franciscan order that was behind the creation of this apparition. Indeed, the apparitions were used by the local Franciscan Order to challenge the authority of the diocese. Others suggest that the bishop's negative judgement was influenced by a contrary animosity. In the end, Medjugorje's true nature is not the key question. Whether engineered or genuine, by its very nature, the people involved knew that Medjugorje could become an Eastern Lourdes - and went to work. The Vatican immediately realised the potential to use the apparitions to get money, but specifically weapons, into Croatia, to fight the enemy - a fight against Satan, with the Vatican able to defend this position, for was this not what the Virgin had said? And in the final analysis, that is indeed what it was: whether the Vatican had purely mundane reasons for arming the Croats or were following the Virgin's divine command, Medjugorje was "Guns for Mary".

Book Review: Unstoppable Global Warming - Every 1,500 Years

> "Unstoppable Global Warming - Every 1,500 Years" is written by S. Fred Singer and Dennis Avery (Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2007)

As the exaggerations and hype about global warming rage on daily in the media and in some of the more dubious scientific reports, a flood of serious scientific papers emerges monthly. These do not support the strident alarms of environmentalists warning us about man-made global warming, since much of the phenomena effecting climate are natural. The basic scientific facts continue to challenge the alarmist work of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations, and the strange non-scientific efforts of Al Gore and his "Inconvenient Truth".
Among the several excellent new books on the subject, Unstoppable Global Warming (UGW) is one of the best. This flood of new information is continuous and is difficult to keep up with, even though the media largely ignore it. Singer and Avery have done heroic work in putting between two covers much of the recent information.

The interesting title of the book is explained on page xii in the prologue. The authors point out that data from ice core and seabed sediments show that there have been about 600 warming periods in the last million years. Because of the cyclic nature of the findings, we can surmise that there have also been about 599 cooling periods during this same time.
Thus, on an average of every 1500 years, plus or minus a few centuries, the climate changes. Evidence shows that the climate has been changing, warming and cooling, for millions of years. Obviously, since most of these precede the existence of coal plants and SUVs, other natural forces are involved in climate change. Similarly, atmospheric CO2 has been cycling up and down as well. When one compares these two cycling processes, Singer and Avery point out (p. 11) that historically, peaks in atmospheric CO2 precede the peaks in temperatures.
This is evidence that the CO2-global temperature relationship is inverted, as was also pointed out in the relatively recent Channel 4 document, which received major criticism for daring to challenge the new paradigm. But the evidence indeed does not support the claim that CO2 increases global temperature. Whatever the CO2/temperature relationship is, it may be the reverse, or it may be completely unobservable, swamped by more powerful climate driving forces.

The book is very readable, far reaching, and heavily referenced to the scientific literature. Chapter 9 entitled "The Earth tells its Own Story", for example, provides extensive information about the Earth and its climate over millions of years. This chapter has 121 references to the scientific literature. The remaining 15 chapters contain many more. A lot of people need to do their homework and explain why all of these data are wrong.
At a time when a "second Kyoto Protocol" is the topic of international political debate, the last chapter, titled "The Ultimate Failure of the Kyoto Protocol', is a gem and lays out for the reader why this UN sponsored act was a failure. Conventional wisdom has it that it is the United States and President Bush are isolated from the rest of the world on the issue of the Kyoto Protocol. Why? The Protocol would dangerously cripple the US ability to produce electricity, as well as provide fuels for the transportation sectors. In fact, according to the authors, it is the Europeans who are isolated from the rest of the world. China, India, Brazil and much of the developing world have joined the US in rejecting the Kyoto Protocols. These countries have recognized that the restrictions resulting from the rationing of energy (with the resulting large increases in the costs of energy), would impede their economic growth and development. Many also recognize that the Kyoto Protocols would directly restrict the energy use and the economic development of the African nations. In short, non-conformance to the Kyoto Protocols is a sign of defiance, stating a country will not let its citizens starve or die, in the pursuit of "the Green Myth" and attaining an international target. Despite what one may think, the US economy has rightfully placed itself amongst a league of nations that is fighting for economic survival.

The global warming debate is filled with political and personal agendas which have precious little to do with science or climate. This book is a very comprehensive scientific compilation which demonstrates exactly that.

Is Global Warming a Galactic phenomenon?

> Ian Brockwell argues that Global Warming (or climate change as some people prefer to call it) is the result of some influence from our own galaxy or beyond.

A recent discovery has suggested that our solar system does not originate from the Milky Way, as we have always thought, but from a dwarf galaxy called Sagittarius. It would seem that for the last two billion years, the Milky Way has been eating our own galaxy and a study suggests that "Sagittarius has reached a critical phase in what had been a slow dance of death."
For only a few percent of its 240 million-year orbit around the Milky Way galaxy does our Solar System pass through the path of Sagittarius debris. Remarkably, stars from Sagittarius are now raining down onto our present position in the Milky Way. Stars from an alien galaxy are relatively near us.
Several people, including Ian Brockwell, believe that a "Galactic" factor is probably behind the Global Warming effect on our planet (and the others in our system). For, indeed, they argue that global warming is not unique to Earth, but is manifesting itself across our solar system. As we have no human presence on these other planets, manmade warming on Venus or Jupiter is thus unlikely to explain the phenomenon.
It prompted Brockwell to write the book "Global Warming - The Final Solution", to publish his views and to warn others of this possibility. "It has been postulated that this is the real reason for both global warming since higher energy levels of the Milky Way are almost certain to cause our Sun to burn hotter and emit higher energies. Indeed, temperatures have been seen to rise on virtually all the planets in our system. This seems quite apart from any local phenomenon like greenhouse gases etc."

The "marriage" of our birth galaxy with our new adopted Milky Way galaxy is causing energy shifts that are obvious just about everywhere. Here are some changes being watched by scientists:
- A growth of dark spots on Pluto.
- Reporting of auroras on Saturn.
- Reporting of Uranus and Neptune polar shifts (They are magnetically conjugate planets), and the abrupt large-scale growth of Uranus' magnetosphere intensity.
- A change in light intensity and light spot dynamics on Neptune.
- The doubling of the magnetic field intensity on Jupiter (based upon 1992 data), and a series of new states and processes observed on this planet as an aftermath of a series of explosions in July 1994, caused by "Comet" SL-9. That is, a relaxation of a plasmoid train which excited the Jovian magnetosphere, thus inducing excessive plasma generation and it's release in the same manner as Solar coronal holes inducing an appearance of radiation belt brightening in decimeter band (13.2 and 36 cm), and the appearance of large auroral anomalies and a change of the Jupiter - Io system of currents.
- A series of Martian atmosphere transformations increasing its biosphere quality. In particular, there has been a cloudy growth in the equator area and an unusual growth of ozone concentration.
- Significant physical, chemical and optical changes observed on Venus; an inversion of dark and light spots detected for the first time, and a sharp decrease of sulphur-containing gases in its atmosphere.

Just as the Earth experiences cycles in its temperatures, so does the Solar System. Our system travels around the galaxy once every 250 million years, and every 30 million years passes through the densest part of the galaxy. This increases the risks of asteroids being "sucked" into our system, and although we passed through this area a million years ago, it can take this long for it to happen.
Could it be that our planet (or solar system) passes through an area in our Milky Way that has higher than normal levels of cosmic microwaves? Scientists have known for many years that these waves appear stronger in some spots of the universe, so this is a possibility.

That global warming is a pan-solar system phenomenon seems likely. It would seem that our current problem became most noticeable around the year 1987, when space probes also recorded increased temperatures on almost all of the planets in our solar system, indicating for the first time that the "global warming" we were experiencing, was not just the result of man-made pollution, or some climatic trend, but something much more widespread.
Pluto was just one example. As the planet passed in front of a distant star in July 2002, it was possible to compare data with a previous event in 1988. Observers discovered that the planet's thin atmosphere had cooled over the 14 year period (which is what you would expect as it moves further from the Sun), but they noticed that the surface was actually getting warmer.
The Sun showed a higher degree of activity in the last fifty years than it had in more than one thousand years previously. Venus became much brighter, with dramatic atmospheric changes in a period of less than thirty years. The ice caps on Mars have begun to disappear and huge storms have developed. The plasma clouds of Jupiter, the largest planet in our system, showed an increase in brightness, as did Uranus and Neptune. Saturn too revealed dramatic changes and these occurred over a very short time.

But what does all this mean? Brockwell has suggested that our climate could resemble that experienced 250 million years ago, which is not an unreasonable assumption if our solar system is passing through an area of the Milky Way that caused this problem last time. "If it does, we are looking at a potential catastrophe that could kill billions (not millions) of humans, and large numbers of animal life (and plants)." That seems a dire forecast, and though it is a possibility, in truth, we do not know at present how far it will go, or what form it will take. One question that should perhaps be posed is this: if this phenomenon is able to kill off all life on Earth, is it possible that it killed off life on other planets of our solar system at some other point in time, specifically Mars?

Can we do anything to stop it? "No, if this is our destiny, we have to accept it. However, there are some things we can do to give a small percentage of the population a chance to survive." Brockwell believes that "it would be very surprising if the leaders of the world (especially the US) were not aware of this situation, and I believe they are." He sees chemtrails as an attempt to try and block the rays that are causing the damage. "Of course, there are many who don't believe this and go to a lot of trouble in trying to convince you that they don't exist, but evidence suggests that they are real enough. I can understand a governments desire to hide a possible 'Global Disaster' from the public, but if it is going to happen, we will all find out soon enough. Wouldn't it be better to prepare us for that moment?" That, it seems, is lifted from the script of the movie "Deep Impact".
Though Brockwell, like everyone else, speculates about the effect of global warming, it may be that he is potentially correct in identifying the cause of global warming. And though he fears we may not be able to do anything about it, we at least stand a better chance of being able to do something about a situation, when we have identified the precise source of the problem. Alas, if it is pan-solar system phenomenon, and if it were detrimental for Mankind, it seems that going to neighbouring planets will not be an option, as they too are affected by this. However, that it is unlikely to come to such a dire ending, seems to be in evidence from the history of planet Earth itself, where there is a clear evidence that life, though with some adaptations, has survived for four billion years. That's a long time...