Britain's terrorist threat level was raised tonight from “substantial” to “severe” - meaning that counter-terrorism agencies believe an attack is “highly likely”.

The measure was approved at a meeting of the Government’s Cobra emergency committee and announced by Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary.

The Times understands that the decision to raise the threat level is connected to the conference on Afghanistan taking place at Lancaster House, London, next Thursday.

Sources said there had been intensive discussions throughout the day relating to intelligence suggesting a possible attempted “spectacular” by an al-Qaeda affiliated group.

"The next world war could happen in cyberspace and that would be a catastrophe. We have to make sure that all countries understand that in that war, there is no such thing as a superpower," Hamadoun Toure said.

"Loss of vital networks would quickly cripple any nation, and none is immune to cyberattack," added the secretary-general of the International Telecommunications Union during the ITU's Telecom World 2009 fair in Geneva. (Breitbart)

"The Perimeter system is very, very nice," he says. "We remove unique responsibility from high politicians and the military." He looks around again.

Yarynich is talking about Russia's doomsday machine . That's right, an actual doomsday device - a real, functioning version of the ultimate weapon, always presumed to exist only as a fantasy of apocalypse-obsessed science fiction writers and paranoid über-hawks. The thing that historian Lewis Mumford called "the central symbol of this scientifically organized nightmare of mass extermination ." Turns out Yarynich, a 30-year veteran of the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces and Soviet General Staff, helped build one.

Ephraim Sneh, Israel's deputy defence minister until 2007, said a nuclear-armed Iran was an unacceptable threat to Israel. No Israeli government could put its faith in President Barack Obama's efforts to bring Tehran to the negotiating table over its nuclear program, he said.

"The Israeli government is the only entity that is responsible for the existence of the Jewish people," he said. "Iran has been explicit in its hostility to Israel time and again. They would use these weapons.

"We believe that Iran has the capacity and the delivery capability for nuclear weapons. They can proceed to production. We have got two months to act - before the end of 2009."

Further along the dusty road he checks his device once more. "You see, the meter is now reading 21," he says. "If we were in a city far away from here it would read about 0.1. The radiation increases very quickly."

The reason Mr Oleg is keeping such a close eye on background radiation is because we are standing on the very spot where, 60 years ago, the Soviet Union launched the Cold War, with the detonation of its first nuclear bomb . Watched from a lead-lined bunker by Stalin's feared secret police chief Lavrenti Beria, First Lightning exploded at exactly 7am on 29 August 1949, throwing up an enormous mushroom cloud which billowed over the steppe and, unbeknownst to people nearby, dumping huge quantities of radioactive material on them, their houses and their fields.

Advances in artificial intelligence promise many benefits, but scientists are privately so worried they may be creating machines which end up outsmarting — and perhaps even endangering — humans that they held a secret meeting to discuss limiting their research.

At the conference, held behind closed doors in Monterey Bay, California, leading researchers warned that mankind might lose control over computer-based systems that carry out a growing share of society’s workload, from waging war to chatting on the phone, and have already reached a level of indestructibility comparable with a cockroach.

“These are powerful technologies that could be used in good ways or scary ways,” warned Eric Horvitz, principal researcher at Microsoft who organised the conference on behalf of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.

Several demonstrators held up a placard depicting a pair of hands smashing a missile with "U.S." written on it, according to footage taken by APTN in Pyongyang on the anniversary of the day North Korean troops charged southward, sparking the three-year Korean War in 1950.

North Korean troops will respond to any sanctions or U.S. provocations with "an annihilating blow," one senior official vowed—a pointed threat as an American destroyer shadowed a North Korean freighter sailing off China's coast, possibly with banned goods on board. 

North Korea's communist regime has warned of a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula while vowing to step up its atomic bomb-making program in defiance of new U.N. sanctions.

The North's defiance presents a growing diplomatic headache for President Barack Obama as he prepares for talks Tuesday with his South Korean counterpart on the North's missile and nuclear programs.

Nuclear bombs are humankind's most powerful weapon, but their destructive impact would unlikely alter the spinning of the Earth on its axis.

One way to see this is to compare the energy of a nuclear blast to that of the rotational motion of the Earth. The largest nuclear bombs have an explosive energy of several tens of megatons, or about 10^17 Joules, whereas the Earth's rotational energy is around 10^29 Joules.

So even if all the force of a nuclear explosion was used to push the Earth in a particular direction, the energy in this push would be less than a trillionth that of the rotational energy.

It would be like trying to divert a speeding car with the energy of a flying mosquito.

Even the largest earthquakes have only a miniscule effect on our planet's spinning. Scientists calculated that the colossal tsunami-causing 2004 Sumatra earthquake caused a slimming of the Earth that shortened the day by a few millionths of a second and shifted the North Pole by an inch.

Interfax quoted an unnamed security source as saying a stand-off triggered by Pyongyang's nuclear test on Monday could affect the security of Russia's far eastern regions, which border North Korea.

"The need has emerged for an appropriate package of precautionary measures," the source said.

The test comes less than two months after the North enraged the US and its allies by test firing a long-range ballistic missile.

The KNCA news agency, the regime's official mouthpiece, said: "We have successfully conducted another nuclear test on 25 May as part of the republic's measures to strengthen its nuclear deterrent."

THE TEST...
'ON A PAR WITH HIROSHIMA'...
GAVE USA LESS THAN HOUR'S NOTICE...
Could carry out more...
Fires 3 short-range missiles...

 View Original Post

This is NOT a religious debate.

Religion has always shaped politics. In the Middle Ages religion made the laws and government enforced them by judgement and punishment.

Even today, religion propels politics; the right wing and the left wing are on the same bird.

Religious institutions hold more wealth than governments. They own hospitals, real estate, colleges, universities, private schools, and have their hands in most every commercial venture through their stock portfolios.

He who controls the wealth rules the world.

Research polls show that over the past several years, many people who followed the traditions of various religions have left the churches. They have lost a greater number than ever before and new converts are few. This poses a danger to the structure of our society; churches are beginning to loose both their wealth and control of the masses.

Many of these drop-outs have started to ask real questions for the first time. They are realizing that their religions are based on mysticism and superstition. They have been lied to and duped.

The accessibility of information through the internet has had a lot to do with the re-education of these mesmerized crowds.

Now, these people face a greater danger.

This excerpt was copied from a church sermon. It seems to be a threat to the defectors. And why not? Because they are afraid of these people who can influence the others. Never mind that there are many published sources of information to find truth; they fear that personal relationships are more influential. They do not want defectors spilling the beans and enlightening others to their tricks.


There is a plan in place to silence the educators. The sheep must be kept dumb. Religions are now seeing a great threat to their finances and power. The great depopulation plan will take place soon.

There is no sky daddy directing this. It is a body of evil psychopaths who have manipulated this plan for a long time. It will soon come to fruition.

This has nothing to do with any local preachers; many are deluded themselves. Many ministers are unaware that they themselves, are being used to accomplish this.

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After years of conjecture, details have begun to emerge of a "kill weapon" developed by the Chinese to target and destroy U.S. aircraft carriers.

First posted on a Chinese blog viewed as credible by military analysts and then translated by the naval affairs blog Information Dissemination, a recent report provides a description of an anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) that can strike carriers and other U.S. vessels at a range of 2000km.

The new hypersonic cruise missiles with increased range are designed to strike "aircraft carriers of the potential enemy if they pose a direct threat to Russia's security," the ministry said. It added that the missiles are also capable of hitting land targets. Russia has increasingly relied on nuclear weapons to compensate for the decline of its conventional forces. In December, the chief of the Russian general staff, General Nikolai Makarov, said Russia will keep its arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons , which he said were necessary to counter a massive Nato advantage in conventional weapons. Tactical nuclear weapons have a much shorter range compared to strategic nuclear weapons. They are intended for use within a theatre of battle. Earlier this week, the Russian navy's deputy chief of staff said the role of tactical nuclear weapons in the Russian navy may grow. Vice-Admiral Oleg Burtsev said the increasing range and precision of tactical nuclear weapons makes them an important asset. - Independent

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith highlighted the danger posed by new technologies and failed states around the world as she published an updated counter-terror strategy.

The report - known as Contest Two - is the first unclassified document to contain a detailed account of UK officials' assessment of the underlying causes of the terrorist threat and its likely future direction.  It contains a stark warning about the likelihood of an attack involving a "dirty bomb".

The study by leading international conservation scientists compared major conflict zones with the Earth's 34 biodiversity hotspots identified by Conservation International (CI). The hotspots  are considered top conservation priorities because they contain the entire populations of more than half of all plant species and at least 42 percent of all vertebrates, and are highly threatened.

The researchers also suggested they were open to increased oversight to prevent misuse of research in the life sciences, but that governmental intervention would not be welcome.

The council, working with the American Association for the Advancement of Science, sent surveys in 2007 to 10,000 AAAS members to assess their thoughts on "dual-use" biological research that produces vaccines and other clear benefits but also expertise, tools and procedures that could be misused. A total of 3,524 scientists submitted full or partial responses.

Egypt hosted talks aimed at ending the violence.

Flames and smoke rose over Gaza City amid heavy fighting. The Israeli threat to launch a "new phase" in its two-week-old offensive that has already killed more than 800 Palestinians came in defiance of international calls for a cease-fire.

Israeli tanks and troops launched a ground offensive in the Gaza Strip Saturday night with officials saying they expected a lengthy fight with Hamas militants in the densely populated territory after eight days of punishing airstrikes failed to halt rocket attacks on Israel.

Hamas vowed that Gaza would be a "graveyard" for Israelis forces.

The IDF is drawing up options for a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities that do not include coordination with the United States, The Jerusalem Post has learned. While its preference is to coordinate with the US, defense officials have said Israel is preparing a wide range of options for such an operation.

"It is always better to coordinate," one top Defense Ministry official explained last week. "But we are also preparing options that do not include coordination." Israeli officials have said it would be difficult, but not impossible, to launch a strike against Iran without receiving codes from the US Air Force, which controls Iraqi airspace. Israel also asked for the codes in 1991 during the First Gulf War, but the US refused.

"Any aggression against Iran will start a world war," deputy chief of staff for defence publicity, Brigadier General Masoud Jazayeri, said in a statement carried by the agency.

Iran is under international pressure to halt uranium enrichment, a process which lies at the core of fears about Iran's nuclear programme as it can make nuclear fuel as well as the fissile core of an atom bomb.

 Source : Breitbart / AP News

Instead, such an assault may be carried out in cyberspace by shadowy hackers half a world away. And Internet security experts believe that it could be just as devastating to the U.S.'s economy and infrastructure as a deadly bombing.

Experts say last week's attack on the former Soviet republic of Georgia, in which a Russian military offensive was preceded by an Internet assault that overwhelmed Georgian government Web sites, signals a new kind of cyberwar, one for which the United States is not fully prepared.

Georgia launched a major military offensive today to retake the breakaway province of South Ossetia. Rebel leaders said about 1,400 had been killed.

The offensive prompted Moscow to send tanks into the region in a furious response that threatens to engulf Georgia, a staunch US ally, and Russia in all-out war.

It was by far the worst outbreak of hostilities since the province won de-facto independence in a war against Georgia that ended in 1992. Witnesses said the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali was devastated.

 Source : Independent UK