Monday, May 7, 2012

Nebraska Student Holds To Prayer Tradition At Graduation Despite Threats From ACLU

Students in a small, Nebraska school system will continue their tradition of student-led prayer during graduation next Sunday.

This decision comes despite pressure from the American Civil Liberties Union for the Columbus Public Schools district to end the practice.

The district's graduations have been voluntary and parent-run since the ACLU first complained about the prayers in 2001.

The parent committee organizing the ceremony said graduating seniors requested the prayer be included in the program.

The ACLU would like to see the district remove religious activity from the graduation and incorporate them into the baccalaureate, which is held the night before.



U.S Military Want To Put Implantable Computer Chips Into Soldiers




The U.S. military wants to plant nanosensors in soldiers to monitor health on future battlefields and immediately respond to needs, but a privacy expert warns the step is just one more down the road to computer chips for all.
“It’s never going to happen that the government at gunpoint says, ‘You’re going to have a tracking chip,’” said Katherine Albrecht, who with Liz McIntyre authored “Spychips,” a book that warns of the threat to privacy posed by Radio Frequency Identification.

“It’s always in incremental steps. If you can put a microchip in someone that doesn’t track them … everybody looks and says, ‘Come on,’” she said. “It’ll be interesting seeing where we go.”

According to a report at Mobiledia, the U.S. military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has confirmed plans to create nanosensors to monitor the health of soldiers on battlefields.
The devices also would report data to doctors. But privacy analysts have expressed concern that the implants could be used not just to monitor health but to keep track of and possibly control people.

DARPA describes the technology on which it is working as “a truly disruptive innovation,” which would diagnose, monitor vital states and “even deliver medicine into the bloodstream.”

According to LiveScience.com, “Solving the problem of sickness could have a huge impact on the number of soldiers ready to fight, because far more have historically died due to illness rather than combat.”

The report suggested that for special forces, “the practical realization of implantable nanosensors capable of monitoring multiple indicators of physiological state could be a truly disruptive innovation.”

Already being researched is the concept of nanosensors diagnosing disease.

DARPA expects to launch a second effort focused on treatment later this year.

Albrecht said the move is another step in the trip down the road of having every person implanted with a chip that might very well monitor health but also other areas of life.

Microchipping, she said, already is “par for the course” for pets in many parts of the nation, and that acceptance will make it easier to require it for people.

She said it was expected that captive audiences, such as prisoners and troops, would be the first subjected to the requirement, which would make it easier for the general populace to accept it as well.

“It’s interesting,” she said. “I’m stunned how this younger generation is OK. They don’t see the problem. …
‘Why wouldn’t everyone want to be tracked?’”

But she said Americans will have to decide to say no to incremental advances, or by the time officials finally roll out the idea of chips for all, whether they want them or not, it will be too late to decide.

“The analogy that I draw is [that of a train], and if I’m in California and I do not want to wind up in New City, every stop brings me closer,” she said. “At some point I have to get off the train.”

Albrecht also has helped develop and launch a new project called StartPage, which now is handling some 2 million search requests per day.

The benefit of the page is its privacy. The site explains that every time a person uses a typical search program such as Google, “your search data is recorded.”

“Then they store that information in a giant database,” she explains.

As a result, corporate America and the government have access to “a shocking amount of personal information about you, such as your interests, family circumstances, political leanings, medical conditions and more.

WND reported previously that owners of pets have reported cancer in their animals after microchipping. The report documented how a dog developed a highly aggressive cancer right at the point where a chip was embedded.

Albrecht told the story of another dog, a 5-year-old Yorkshire terrier named Scotty that was diagnosed with cancer in Memphis, Tenn. Scotty developed a tumor between his shoulder blades, in the same location where the microchip had been implanted. The tumor the size of a small balloon – described as malignant lymphoma – was removed. Scotty’s microchip was embedded inside the tumor.

Verichip, a major manufacturer of the microchip implants, touts the technology’s capability to identify a lost pet and enable its return home, while dismissing potential health risks.

“Over the last 15 years,” stated the VeriChip website, “millions of dogs and cats have safely received an implantable microchip with limited or no reports of adverse health reactions from this life-saving product, which was recently endorsed by the USDA. These chips are a well-accepted and well-respected means of global identification for pets in the veterinary community.”

WND also reported there were warnings about a radio chip plan that would allow identification of individuals by government agents simply by walking through an assembly.

The proposal, which was supported by Janet Napolitano, the chief of the Department of Homeland Security, would embed radio chips in driver’s licenses, or “enhanced driver’s licenses.”

“Enhanced driver’s licenses give confidence that the person holding the card is the person who is supposed to be holding the card, and it’s less elaborate than REAL ID,” Napolitano said in a Washington Times report.

REAL ID was a plan for a federal identification system standardized across the nation that so alarmed governors many states have adopted formal plans to oppose it. However, a privacy advocate today told WND that the EDLs are many times worse.

WND also previously has reported on such chips when hospitals used them to identify newborns, a company desired to embed immigrants with the electronic devices, a government health event showcased them and when Wal-Mart used microchips to track customers.

Read More From World Net Daily

Archaeologists Find Rare Artifacts Dating Back To The First Jewish Temple

JERUSALEM, Israel -- Archaeologists in Jerusalem's Old City have uncovered a rare find dating all the way back to the time of the First Jewish Temple.

"We found under the base of the Second Temple period tunnel a part of house, part of building from the First 
Temple period," Eli Shukron of the Israel Antiquities Authority told CBN News.

Archaeologists digging in a drainage channel that runs from the Pool of Siloam to the Western Wall have been regularly finding artifacts from Second Temple Times.

Shukron explained that the most recent find is the closest First Temple period building they've ever found to the Second Temple.

He then revealed that the house contained another treasure: a tiny seal engraved with the name Matanyahu, similar to the name of Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. It means "given to God."

"And this name, we know this name from the First Temple period in Jerusalem, in the seal from Jerusalem, another seal from Jerusalem. We know it is also from the Bible," Shukron explained.
He called it a message from the past.

"Everyone has his seal and this is someone [who gave] us a love [letter] 'Okay -- I was here before 2,700 years. Remember me! Don't forget me!" Shukron said.

Part of these excavations are under Robinson's Arch, where Jewish worshippers would have entered the Temple Mount in the time of Jesus. Nearly 1,000 years earlier, King Solomon built the First Temple on the same spot.

"And the building that we found there so close to the Temple from the First Temple period -- and the pottery and the seal -- gave us more information about Jerusalem from the First Temple period," Shukron continued.

Greek Neo-Nazi Party Secures Entry In Greece's Parliament

Greek neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn warned rivals and reformers Sunday that "the time for fear has come" after exit polls showed them securing their entry in parliament for the first time in nearly 40 years.

"The time for fear has come for those who betrayed this homeland," Golden Dawn leader Nikos Michaloliakos told a news conference at an Athens hotel, flanked by menacing shaven-headed young men.

"We are coming," the 55-year-old said as supporters threw firecrackers outside.

According to updated exit polls, the once-marginal party will end up winning over six percent of the vote and sending 19 deputies to the 300-seat parliament on a wave of immigration and crime fears, as well as anti-austerity anger.

Exulting in the apparent breakthrough, Michaloliakos quoted Julius Caesar: "Veni, Vidi, Vici" -- I came, I saw, I conquered.

Michaloliakos said his party would fight against "world usurers" and the "slavery" of an EU-IMF loan agreement which he likened to a "dictatorship".

"Greece is only the beginning," he shouted at reporters as he walked to the news conference, accusing foreign media of spreading lies about his movement.

At the last general election in 2009, the virulently anti-immigrant group had scored just 0.29 percent.

Once part of the country's political fringe, the Hryssi Avgi (Golden Dawn) had already made headlines in 2010 by electing Michaloliakos, 55, to Athens' city council on a wave of anti-immigration tension in the capital's poorer districts.

Shortly after being elected to the council thanks to more than 10,000 votes in the Greek capital,

Michaloliakos made waves by giving two fascist salutes captured by a television camera.

A mathematician, Michaloliakos has said Greece could survive "very nicely" without the EU-IMF recovery deal.

"Certainly we should break the agreement," he told the Athens News English-language weekly last month.

"After that, we will survive very nicely. Greece is a rich country," he said, adding that the country would not necessarily have to return to the drachma.

On his agenda, Michaloliakos said his focus would be on "national issues, social issues, the problem of illegal immigration, attribution of responsibility for all scandals."

All illegal migrants "should leave our country," he said.

Golden Dawn has strengthened on the back of the country's deep economic crisis -- it has been bailed out twice -- with unemployment at 20 percent and poverty rising.

It has portrayed immigrants as stealing Greeks' jobs and as being responsible for a wave of crime, as the country is the first point of entry for many illegal migrants into the European Union.

The mainstream parties on the right, including New Democracy of the country's likely next prime minister Antonis Samaras, have been forced to boost their own anti-migration rhetoric to keep up.

The outgoing coalition government planned a network of detention camps around the country to hold migrants earmarked for repatriation, and its socialist predecessors began building a wire fence on the Greek-Turkish border as a deterrent.

Read More From Yahoo News

Library Bans Book "50 Shades Of Grey" Calling It Pornography

9/11 Attack Planners Show Defiance During Court Hearing

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — Khalid Shaikh Mohammed fingered his long, henna-dyed beard and stared down in silence on Saturday, pointedly ignoring a military commissions judge asking in vain whether the self-described architect of the Sept. 11 attacks understood what was being said and whether he was willing to be represented by his defense lawyers.

Minutes later, Ramzi bin al Shibh, another of the five detainees arraigned on Saturday as accused conspirators in the attacks, stood, knelt and started praying. Later, he shouted at the judge that he should address their complaints about prison conditions because “maybe you are not going to see me again.”

“Maybe they are going to kill us and say that we have committed suicide,” he added.
One defendant, Walid bin Attash, was wheeled into the courtroom in a restraint chair for reasons that were not disclosed.

Amid disruptions both passive and aggressive, the government’s attempt to restart its efforts to prosecute the five defendants in the long-delayed Sept. 11 case got off to a slow and rocky start in a trial that could ultimately result in their execution.

After hours of jostling over procedural issues, all five defendants deferred entering a plea. The judge set a hearing date for motions in mid-June; the trial is not likely to start for at least a year.

The Bush administration had started to prosecute the men in the military commissions system in 2008.

The Obama administration tried to transfer the case to a federal court in Lower Manhattan, a short distance from the World Trade Center site, but the plan collapsed amid security fears and a backlash in Congress.

As defense lawyers repeatedly tried to change the subject to security restrictions that they say have hampered their ability to do their jobs, the judge, Army Col. James L. Pohl, struggled to stick to a military commissions script that had been rewritten the day before — and so was not yet translated into Arabic.

The judge, however, was determined to keep the case on track. When a lawyer for Mr. Mohammed, David Nevin, explained that his client had decided not to respond to the judge’s questions about his assigned defense lawyers in order to protest what he saw as an unfair process, Colonel Pohl replied that he would assume that he had no objections to being represented by them.

“He has that choice,” Colonel Pohl said of Mr. Mohammed’s silence. “But he does not have a choice that would frustrate this commission going forward.”

The arraignment was the first time since 2008 that the five high-profile Qaeda detainees had been seen in public. They wore loose, light-colored garb; their lawyers complained that they had brought other clothes to wear, but that prison officials refused to let them wear it.

Four walked into the courtroom without shackles but surrounded by three large guards who stood between them when the court was not in session. With Mr. bin Attash initially restrained, guards put glasses on his face and attached his prosthetic leg.

Colonel Pohl said he would have the restraints taken off if Mr. bin Attash would pledge not to disrupt the court, but Mr. bin Attash refused to answer him. Eventually, the restraints were removed after the judge accepted a promise relayed through Mr. bin Attash’s lawyer.

While passive when the judge tried to talk to them, the detainees occasionally whispered to one another. 

During brief recesses, they talked freely to their defense lawyers, and while guards came and stood between them, they craned their necks and talked to each other as well, appearing relaxed.

Each detainee also had a bin containing items like legal papers, Korans, prayer rugs and other materials. 

Mr. Mohammed, wearing a black skullcap, took a white cloth from his bin and fashioned it into a sort of turban. One detainee, Ali Abd al Aziz Ali, had a copy of the Economist magazine, which he appeared to be reading and later handed to a detainee sitting behind him, Mustafa al Hawsawi, who leafed through it.

The detainees refused, however, to wear headphones so they could hear a simultaneous Arabic translation. 

To make sure they knew what was being asked, the judge directed translators to repeat in Arabic over a loudspeaker each phrase that was uttered in the courtroom, sometimes causing a confusing jumble and significantly slowing the process — especially after Mr. bin Attash insisted that prosecutors read the full charges, which consumed more than two hours. 

Atheist Group Threatenes Law Suits Over National Day Of Prayer

One News Now--Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) is responding to legal threats from an atheist group over public observances of the National Day of Prayer.

Those threats have been issued against various cities nationwide concerning events held during last Thursday's National Day of Prayer. ADF attorney Brett Harvey tells OneNewsNow public officials should be able to recognize public prayer activities, just as the nation's founders did.

"The Freedom From Religion Foundation and other groups like them routinely issue legal threats to cities and towns in their quest to scrub the public square free of any trace of religion," Harvey reports. "The courts have repeatedly disagreed with them because the Constitution requires no such thing. As the U.S. Supreme Court has recently stated, 'The Constitution does not oblige the government to avoid any public acknowledgment of religion's role in society.'"
ADF has defended the National Day of Prayer, its task force, and former spokesperson Shirley Dobson in a lawsuit filed by the atheist group, which was rejected last year by the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The legal group is offering free legal advice and possible representation to any local governments facing threats for honoring the prayer event, issuing their own prayer proclamations, or asking citizens to voluntarily pray for their communities and nation.

Though President Barack Obama officially recognized May 3 as the 2012 National Day of Prayer, Shirley Dobson of the National Day of Prayer Task Force noted that the White House neglected to send anyone to the observance on Capitol Hill.

Read More From One News Now

1st Grader Suspended From School For Sexual Harassment For Saying Sexual Song Lyrics To Classmate

A six-year-old boy has been suspended from school for sexual harassment after singing a line from a song entitled Sexy and I Know It.
D'Avonte Meadows was suspended for three days after reciting the line 'I'm sexy and I know it' to a first grade girl in the lunch line.
The lyrics, by American electro pop duo LMFAO, were noted as 'an unwelcome sexual advance' by officials from his Aurora, Colorado school.


Yet Aurora Police Department did not becoming involved in the case as laws only cover children of at least 10 years old.
D'Avonta told KMGH-TV he didn't even know what the song meant. It is the second time he has been in trouble for quoting the song.

His mother, Stephanie Meadows, added that her son doesn't know the meaning of sexual harassment.
'I'm just, I'm floored,' she told KMGH-TV. 'They're going to look at him like he's a pervert. And it's like, that's not fair to him.

'I could understand if he was fondling her, looking up her skirt, trying to look in her shirt. That, to me, is sexual harassment.'
But she added: 'I’m going to definitely have to sit with him and see if he understands exactly what the song means.'
In a statement, Aurora Public Schools said it is trying to provide an equal learning environment for all students.

'We have policies and protocol in place to prevent any disruption to the learning environment,' wrote spokeswoman Paula Hans.

Due to privacy laws, we are unable to discuss appropriate disciplinary consequences about a specific student.' 
 Denver attorney Craig Silverman said school students have the same rights to free speech as adults but must understand and follow the rules.
But speaking to the AP, he added that school policies should allow for exceptions.
'Sometimes when you go to a zero-tolerance policy, you end up with a zero-sense policy,' he said.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2139711/DAvonte-Meadows-Boy-6-suspended-Colorado-school-reciting-line-LMFAOs-Sexy-I-Know-It.html#ixzz1uBvbKVmu