>University Prof Bill Wickersham Calls for Congressional UFO Hearing

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Congress has a full plate of hearings coming up. Everything from medical liability reform, creating and promoting jobs and investigating Internet child pornography to assessing China’s behavior and making immigration work for American minorities.

Do you think the House or Senate will have any extra time to discuss UFOs? While it sometimes might seem as though our lawmakers are from outer space, this hasn’t stopped one college professor from urging Congress to take a serious look at unidentified flying objects.

Citing findings from a 12-year-old groundbreaking French UFO study, University of Missouri-Columbia psychologist and adjunct professor of peace studies Bill Wickersham has issued a call for congressional leaders to boldly go where their predecessors wouldn’t.In 1999, a special 13-member committee in France, made up of retired generals, scientists and space experts, created the COMETA Report, a study of 500 worldwide UFO sightings. The investigation narrowed down the reports to those that included radar and visual cases and previously undisclosed accounts from commercial and military pilots.

In a letter written in the Columbia Missourian, a news organization staffed by the Missouri School of Journalism, Wickersham cited the fact that the COMETA Report considered some UFO cases as possibly having an otherworldly source.

Even 12 years after that report, Wickersham, co-author of “Confronting Nuclear War: The Role of Education, Religion and the Community” (CreateSpace), feels it’s important enough to warrant Congress’ opening new, secrecy-free hearings into UFOs. …

… does Wickersham think there’s a real chance that a new congressional hearing on UFOs might actually come to pass in the current political climate?

“Not right now,” he said. “And what’s more, look at what happened to [2008 Ohio Democratic presidential candidate] Dennis Kucinich. The giggle factor, the ridicule, the ignorance, the apathy, denial — all these things that surround this issue. It takes a lot of guts for a politician [to speak out on UFOs]. Most politicians run from it.” …

via University Prof Bill Wickersham Calls for Congressional UFO Hearing.

>Professor notices Abe Lincoln’s signature on a picture hanging in his office

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When Western Illinois University’s University Television (UTV) Associate Director Roger Kent looked a bit closer at a picture that had been hanging in his office for a few years, he noticed what looked like a signature belonging to the nation’s 16th president. Curiosity got the better of him, so he contacted a Lincoln authority: the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield.

And Kent’s hunch proved to be right: the framed portrait included a piece of paper signed by Abe Lincoln.

Many years ago, when the University Union Lincoln Room changed its decor, UTV acquired a number of Lincoln artifacts to be used as props for set design. One of the framed portraits was stored in the prop room for three years until Kent “rescued” it to decorate his Memorial Hall office.

“This piece has been hanging on my office wall for two years, and one day, something just made me really look at it. That’s when I noticed a handwritten note bearing the Lincoln signature in a small window in the portrait,” Kent said. “I sent a message with a scanned image to Library Curator Dr. James Cornelius, who at first glance said the note appeared to be authentic.”

Last month, Kent drove 90 miles to Springfield for Cornelius to examine the note in person. It was there that Cornelius and other archivists verified that the note was authentic, with an estimated value of $15,000-$20,000. Cornelius’ staff created a high resolution scan to include in their official database, but turned the note back over to Kent. …

via Professor notices Abe Lincoln’s signature on a picture hanging in his office.

>Oil Crisis Just Got Real: Sinopec (Read China) Cuts Off Oil Exports

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As if a dollar in freefall was not enough, surging oil is about to hit the turbo boost, decimating what is left of the US (and global) consumer. Xinhua, via Energy Daily, brings this stunner: ” Chinese oil giant Sinopec has stopped exporting oil products to maintain domestic supplies amid disruption concerns caused by Middle East unrest and Japan’s earthquake, a report said Wednesday. The state-run Xinhua news agency did not say how long the suspension would last but it reported that the firm had said it also would take steps to step up output “to maintain domestic market supplies of refined oil products”. Oh but don’t worry, those good Saudi folks are seeing a massive drop in demand… for their Kool aid perhaps. “Sinopec would ensure supplies met the “basic needs” of the southern Chinese special regions of Hong Kong and Macao, but they also should expect an unspecified drop in supply, Xinhua quoted an unnamed company official as saying.” …

via Oil Crisis Just Got Real: Sinopec (Read China) Cuts Off Oil Exports | zero hedge.

>US deploys armed drones over Libya

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Armed US Predator drones are carrying out missions over Libya, Defence Secretary Robert Gates has said.

Mr Gates said their use had been authorised by President Barack Obama and would give “precision capability” to the military operation.

US drones are already used to target militants along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Libyan rebels have been battling Col Gaddafi’s troops since February but have recently made little headway.

“President Obama has said that where we have some unique capabilities, he is willing to use those,” Mr Gates told a news conference.

He said two armed, unmanned Predators were being made available to Nato as needed, and marked a “modest contribution” to the military operations.

Mr Gates denied that the drone deployment was evidence of “mission creep” in Libya and said there were still no plans to put US “boots on the ground” in Libya.

“There’s no wiggle room in that,” he said.

via BBC News – US deploys armed drones over Libya.

>1866 Letter: Honest Abe Lincoln was not a Christian

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He won the Civil War, ended slavery, had his bust carved into Mount Rushmore and now beams from five dollar bills. But the God-fearing patriots of Middle America are about to receive a reminder that Abraham Lincoln had a strained relationship with one of their most respected institutions: organised religion.

A three-page letter highlighting the 16th president’s unconventional relationship with the Almighty has just been put on sale. It offers a possible insight into why he was never baptised, did not attend a church and, in defiance of political protocol of the era, would refuse to publicly discuss his spiritual beliefs. Such was his reluctance to embrace piety that, if he were standing for office today, there is a good chance he would be unelectable.

The letter was written by William Herndon, a legal partner and close friend of “Honest Abe” in 1866, a year after Lincoln had been assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. And while the letter is at pains to stress that Lincoln did believe in “a God” at the time of his death, it reveals that he took a long time getting to that point. “Mr Lincoln’s religion is too well known to me to allow even a shadow of a doubt; he is, or was, a Theist and a Rationalist, denying all extraordinary, supernatural inspiration or revelation,” it reads, before detailing the president’s spiritual evolution in the years after Herndon met him in Springfield, Illinois, in the 1840s.

“At one time in his life, to say the least, he was an elevated Pantheist, doubting the immortality of the soul as the Christian world understands that term. He believed that the soul lost its identity and was immortal as a force. Subsequent to this, he rose to the belief of a God, and this is all the change he ever underwent. I speak knowing what I say. He was a noble man – a good great man for all this.”

Historians have long debated Lincoln’s religious views, and how they affected his political career. He was born into a humble Kentucky family in 1809 and raised as a Baptist, but became sceptical and rejected organised religion. He never joined a church in his adult life. …

A couple of decades after Lincoln’s death, several biographers attempted to portray him as a Christian. They were helped by the fact that he often quoted the Bible during speeches.

In today’s political environment, it is almost unthinkable that someone could be elected president without being a member of a congregation. Barack Obama, who cites Lincoln as a political hero, regularly attends churches in Chicago and Washington, even if roughly a half of Republican voters (according to several polls) believe he is a Muslim – despite the fact that he smokes, occasionally drinks, and eats pork….

via ‘Pantheist’ Lincoln would be unelectable today – Americas, World – The Independent.

>Explanation of the Court Trial Against Me

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I have to tell the world right now, there is a story going around that I am going to be in jail, which is a complete misunderstanding.

Last year, we were taking bids from different companies to run a book store inside the Egyptian Museum. There is a person, who was renting a bookstore inside the Museum. He wanted to stop the bidding process, because he thought he should keep his contract. This person filed a case with the Misdemeanor Court in Agouza, Cairo, in order to stop the bidding process. This case was filed against the Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), not against me personally, but against the role I was holding at that time.

However, before the case came to trial, the bidding process ended at the end of May 2010, and the Supreme Council of Antiquities (now the Ministry of State for Antiquities) chose a company, the Egyptian Sound and Light Company, to run the bookstore. Shortly after this decision was made, the court trial happened, at the beginning of June, so the SCA representatives did not have time to present evidence that the bidding had finished. Therefore, the court made a ruling that the bidding should stop. However, it was too late to do anything.

He still wanted to get his way, so this person continued to bring action against me in the court. In November 2010, the court made a ruling, that I was innocent, because as the Secretary General of the SCA, I was not in charge of legal affairs at the SCA, this was under the control of the Ministry of Culture at that time. But this was not enough for this person, he brought the case to the court again, claiming he had evidence that I was in fact in charge of legal affairs, and this time, the SCA did not have a legal representative present at the court. The court made the current ruling that I, as head of the SCA, was sentenced to a year in jail. This is how the court in Egypt works, and this is not an uncommon thing that the head of an organization gets sentenced like this. When a ruling like this is made, the defendant (in this case myself as Secretary General of the SCA at that time) has a certain amount of time to appeal the decision of the court.

Tomorrow, the head of the Legal Affairs Department at the Ministry of Antiquities will go to the court to file our appeal. He will present evidence that the bid for the bookstore contract was finished before the original court ruling, so therefore we could not follow the ruling to stop the bidding. We already had completed the bidding! I have every confidence that this matter will be cleared up very soon, so I want to tell everyone not to worry. I respect the laws of my country very highly, and the rulings of our courts. I intend to handle this matter entirely within our legal system. Nothing will cause me to lose focus from my goal of protecting the sites of Egypt.

via Explanation of the Court Trial Against Me | drhawass.com – Zahi Hawass.

I’ve liked him ever since I got the chance to talk to him in person about carbon dating the great pyramid. I think I caught him off guard by asking for a specific detail about the dating process he used, but he answered and gave me some advice I could use as well. I do hope he gets this resolved soon and, obviously, that he doesn’t have to go to jail. His statement is very clear.

>Web creator’s net neutrality fear

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The inventor of the web has said that governments must act to preserve the principle of net neutrality.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee told the BBC that legislation may be needed if self-regulation failed.

He been asked by the UK government to negotiate an agreement on an open internet between service providers and content firms like the BBC and Skype.

Sir Tim would prefer self-regulation by the internet industry, but progress has been slow.

“If it fails the government has to be absolutely ready to legislate,” he said.

“It may be that the openness of the internet, we should just put into law.”

Net neutrality, the idea that all traffic on the internet should be treated equally, has been a controversial issue in the United States and is now moving up the political agenda in the UK.

Two tier

Internet Service Providers have claimed that they need to be able to control the growing traffic online, and content creators fear that the result could be a two-speed internet.

Sir Tim said that he understands the need for traffic management but any move to discriminate between different content businesses would be a step too far.

“What you lose when you do that is you lose the open market,” he said.

“What the companies gain is that they get complete control of you.”

But Professor William Dutton of the Oxford Internet Institute warned that enshrining net neutrality in law had its dangers.

“Once you allow the state in, you open the door to all sorts of regulation of the internet controls on content creation,” he said.

Sir Tim, who was speaking at the opening of the World Wide Web Consortium’s UK offices in Oxford, said that internet access was now becoming a human right.

At the same time it was also a very powerful tool for either a government or a large company to get to control of.

He warned that this could lead to users being blocked from visiting sites that were not politically correct, or religiously correct, or commercially correct. …

via BBC News – Web creator’s net neutrality fear.

>The JFK-UFO Connection?

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… While researching materials for his new book, “A Celebration of Freedom: JFK and the New Frontier” (Wasteland Press), Atlanta, Ga., history teacher William Lester used the Freedom of Information Act to get some previously classified documents.

Two of them were written by Kennedy on the same date, Nov. 12, 1963 — 10 days before his assassination. One was to the CIA director, asking for UFO files; the other was to the NASA administrator, with Kennedy expressing a desire for cooperation with the former Soviet Union on mutual outer space activities.”One of his concerns was that a lot of these UFOs were being seen over the Soviet Union and he was very concerned that the Soviets might misinterpret these UFOs as U.S. aggression, believing that it was some of our technology,” Lester told AOL News.

“I think this is one of the reasons why he wanted to get his hands on this information and get it away from the jurisdiction of NASA so he could say to the Soviets, ‘Look, that’s not us, we’re not doing it, we’re not being provocative. In fact, just to show you that it’s not us, what do you think about us working together on the exploration of space?'” Lester added.

Also in his book, Lester reprints an intriguing letter written by Maxwell W. Hunter of the National Aeronautics and Space Council (from the executive office of the president) to Robert F. Packard of the Office of International Scientific Affairs. …

via The JFK-UFO Connection: Bogus Documents or Unanswered Questions?.

Found on Rense:

“Citizens of this Earth, we are not alone.”

With those dramatic words, President John F. Kennedy intended to inform the American public and the world at large that the U.S. government had made contact with aliens from deep space.

But before he could deliver the speech on November 22, 1963, the beloved leader was cut down by an assassin’s bullets.

That is the astonishing claim of JFK researcher Professor Lawrence Merrick, author of an upcoming blockbuster book Killing the Messenger: The Death of JFK.

No telling what we was going to reveal, or if it was the reason he was killed on November 22, 1963, or if his revealing something to Marilyn Monroe (who sang him happy birthday on May 19, 1962) got her killed on August 5, 1962. 

>Minister: About 1,000 relics stolen during Egyptian uprising

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Thieves stole around 1,000 relics from museums and archeological sites across Egypt since protests against the government broke out in January, Egypt’s minister for antiquities Zahi Hawass said Sunday in a newspaper interview.

“We are investigating all the incidents to find the items. Up until now we have identified many culprits, criminals who were looking for gold or mummies and who lacked knowledge of the value of the items they stole,” he told Spanish daily El Mundo.

“They were not organized, they lived near the archeological sites where the objects were kept. They would take advantage of the night to enter the archeological sites and pillage,” he added.

“About 1,000 objects were stolen, none of them major items. There is an inventory of everything and it will be difficult for the items to leave the country.”

The inventory of all the items that were stolen during the uprising and the weeks of unrest that followed will be given to UNESCO, the UN cultural agency, Hawass said.

The tomb of Hetep-ka at Saqqara and the tomb of Em-pi at Giza as well as the Egyptian museum in Cairo, which houses most of the King Tutankhamen collection, were among the places targeted by thieves, he added. …

via Minister: About 1,000 relics stolen during Egyptian uprising | Al-Masry Al-Youm: Today’s News from Egypt.

>Royal Wedding ‘to serve as rehearsal for Queen’s funeral’

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The Royal Wedding marks the beginning of a new generation of British royals, but sources are reporting the occasion will also serve as a rehearsal for a more sombre task: Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral.

Senior palace officials will take full advantage of the presence of dignitaries and Commonwealth leaders to go through rehearsals necessary for the monarch’s funeral, the Sunday Express reports.

The 29 April wedding procession will use the same route as the sovereign’s cortege, when a gun carriage will escort her coffin from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Hall.

According to the Express, the operation has discreetly been codenamed London Bridge.

“Obviously we all hope such a sad event will be a long way off – HM may be 84 but she’s in very good health – yet we need to rehearse the logistics and timings for what will be a huge ceremony,” The newspaper quoted a royal aide as saying.

“It may seem odd to think about his grandmother’s demise at the same time as William’s wedding but having all these diplomats and VIPs in London on 29 April makes it sensible to run through the procedures and things like seating plans.

“The Queen, who is very pragmatic about this sort of thing, knows about the dry run. The arrangements are reviewed annually and any significant changes have to be approved by her. There’s no sentimentality involved on her part; she actually takes rather a keen interest in the details.”

via Royal Wedding ‘to serve as rehearsal for Queen’s funeral’.