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Washington (CNN) – New legislation introduced Wednesday aims to close one loophole in the process of purchasing a gun.
The bill from Sen. Lindsey Graham and three other bipartisan lawmakers expands the scope of mental health information submitted to the background check system used by gun sellers. It has the backing of the National Rifle Association, and background check-related legislation has been considered the most likely of the various gun violence proposals to survive the legislative process.
[twitter-follow screen_name='politicalticker']
It does not address a second loophole in the background check requirements – the gun show loophole – which critics say provides an avenue for people who know they cannot pass a background check to buy firearms.
Graham stood with co-sponsors Jeff Flake, R-Arizona and Democrats Mark Begich of Alaska and Mark Pryor of Arkansas at a news conference Wednesday and said the bill addresses a "major flaw in the system."
"We have legislation that will make sure that in the future, people who find themselves in this legal category of having gone to a federal court and plead not guilty by reason of insanity, having been … judged by (a) federal court to be dangerous to themselves and others, would no longer be able legally to pass a background check," he said. "There are a lot of emotions about the gun violence issue. But I am hopeful this (is) one area where we can find tremendous bipartisan support to fix what I think is a gaping gap in our law."
This bill would expand the scope of the current federal database – the National Instant Criminal Background Check System – to flag individuals who have used an insanity defense, were ruled by a court to be dangerous, or were committed by a court to mental health treatment.
It includes, for example, individuals found not guilty because of mental illness in a criminal case, those "found guilty but mentally ill," and people found "incompetent to stand trial," according to a summary of the legislation provided to reporters by Graham's office.
The National Rifle Association announced its support for the legislation saying it would "improve" the current background check system.
"This bill will create accurate definitions of those who pose serious threats and should be barred from the ability to buy or possess a firearm, while protecting the rights of law abiding citizens and veterans," said Chris Cox, executive director of the NRA's Institute for Legislative Action.
CNN contacted the prominent gun control advocacy group the Brady Campaign to Reduce Gun Violence for comment on the legislation but did not receive a response.
The group's president, Dan Gross, said on CNN's Guns Under Fire: An AC360º Town Hall Special in January that his group was concerned about people with mental health issues slipping through the background check system, but had other concerns, too.
"The Brady Law passed in 1993 has prevented nearly 2 million convicted felons, domestic abusers, dangerously mentally ill from buying a gun," he said. "Did people fall through the cracks in those background checks? Very possibly yes, and there are things we should do about it.
"But the reality is 40% of gun sales in our country don't requite a background check," he said, referring to the gun show loophole. "Every day in our country, there are guns being purchased by dangerous people, and we can stop that just by extending background checks."
The gun violence reduction group founded by former U.S Rep. Gaby Giffords and her husband, Americans for Responsible Solutions, echoed Gross' sentiment.
"We are glad that Senators Graham, Flake, Pryor and Begich agree that America has a problem with gun violence. And we agree with their ideas for strengthening the NICS system" said Pia Carusone, executive director of the new group. "But they cannot ignore the fact that 40% of the guns purchased in this country are bought outside of the system all together –meaning dangerous people have easy access to guns."
Increasing the scope of background checks, Carusone noted, has broad support - 92% of respondents to a January CNN/TIME/ORC poll were in favor. To not pass legislation dealing with it "would be simply bowing to pressure from the gun lobby."
Begich, one of the Democratic co-sponsors of the legislation, said at Wednesday's press conference would both prevent individuals with mental health issues from purchasing guns, but also develops consistency in the legal process.
"In addition, the bill will strengthen the rights for people with mental health illnesses," he said. "It provides a specific definition of mentally incompetent … that only includes individuals involuntarily committed to treatment."
Graham is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which on Thursday will consider several pieces of gun-related legislation introduced by Democrats, including an assault weapons ban, a gun-trafficking bill and a school-safety measure.
Graham pressed Attorney General Eric Holder at a hearing Wednesday about the number of prosecutions of people who failed a background check.
Holder said cases were "individually examined" by prosecutors for suitability. In cases where the individual failed because he was a fugitive from justice, Holder said, "that is something that should perhaps be a priority prosecution, but that person may not be there to prosecute."
When proposing the background check bill, Graham cited the case of Alice Boland, who is accused of attempting to kill a school employee. She previously pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity for threatening to kill President George W. Bush.
- CNN Senior Producer Todd Sperry contributed to this report.
emotions make good law.
Progressives do not want to hurt the "feelings"
of WHITE males under 30 with Schizophrenia by having
them immediately reported to the federal gun check
system upon diagnoses.
Too extreme ! Too judgmental ! Privacy invaded !
Since they are NOT reported; when a gun check is run;
they check out just fine. The law has been followed.
Government fails again... Children die.
My step son after several stays in state mental hospitals
and MONTHS (not days) (not weeks) after being diagnosed
with Paranoid Schizophrenia
was able to purchase a shotgun with NO problem whatsoever.
To this day it is unclear whether he intended to use it on himself;
or on my wife and I; or other un-armed citizens.
He was NEVER REPORTED to the gun check system.
So when during a full blown mental melt down; (off his meds)
something NOT uncommon in people with Schizophrenia
he checked out just fine;
and could purchase whatever firearms he wanted just like anyone else.
By the way it would have been just as easy for him to purchase
"High Powered Military Style Assault Rifle with High Capacity Magazines."
It took several more (weeks) of intense effort on My part;
(NOT on the governments part) to get him red flagged
in the gun check system; so this could NOT happen again.
If I had NOT had the foresight to demand he sign medical information
release forms as a condition of him returning to live with us after his third
stay in the state mental hospital I would be S O L. So would YOU!!!
The doctors and the government both gave me grief
attempting to get him entered into the gun check system.
Government will fail you 100% of the time
most likely when you are the most vulnerable.
I just want to point out that the use of the term "gun show loophole" shows the bias present in this piece. There are NO EXEMPTIONS to existing background check laws for firearms sold at gun shows.
retire, please just go away, niether paarty likes you and your obstr. of the curant adm.
But a whack job, felon, or any other conservative and race over to the gun show in the church basement and buy an AR-15 without even showing the same ID he'd need to buy a six pack of beer.
Lindsey – just go away. You bother me.
The smokescreen of supporting a bill requiring "background checks" obfuscates the issue itself. How can you have a bill purporting to strengthen background checks if it does not close the gun show loophole? This is a travesty of reform. No wonder the NRA supports it. That should raise suspicions immediately. This is not reform, but a mockery of reform. Passing such a bill, the NRA would then say that the work is done when in fact, nothing, or close to nothing, has been done. The ever-sanctimonious Lindsay Graham should be ashamed of himself, if he were capable of such a thing.
Sen. Lindsey Graham's bill doesn't solve anything, do any good or resemble a solution for the problem which is mostly buying and selling at gun shows that some citizens in America aren't aware exist. The NRA of course is happy with the bill because it doesn't change anything from the way it already is.
Way to go .......... only back what the NRA (4 Million) dictates to you to back............ not what the American people (300mil +) Demand you do........... Vote the the GOP out 2014............
With NRA backing? Nonsense. Pass term-Limits. Till then no use.
What is the problem with closing the gun show loophole? Items sold at a public "item" show, where people must lease space to sell their wares, are not private sales. They are public sales, subject to sales taxes and any other applicable laws. For example, when people go to car shows, all car sales are subject to all local and state laws. Why are guns excepted?
Third paragraph:
It does not address a second loophole in the background check requirements – the gun show loophole – which critics say provides an avenue for people who know they cannot pass a background check to buy firearms.
Why a lobbyist organization is a factor on policy making as flawed as NRA? We are organized as a united state citizens and we pay tax and vote because we want a government by us. Why a lobbyist has to determine our fate? How about our vote?


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Mental exam ordered for Oklahoma bomb plot suspect
A judge has ordered a mental evaluation for an Illinois man accused of plotting to bomb dozens of churches in northeastern Oklahoma.
Gregory Weiler had been set for a preliminary hearing Monday, but a judge delayed that until Dec. 17 so Weiler can have a competency evaluation. He was arrested after workers found the ingredients for Molotov cocktails in a trash bin at a hotel in Miami (MY'-am-uh).
An affidavit claims that investigators found instructions for making Molotov cocktails, a list of 48 churches and a written outline of Weiler's plan to plant bombs.
The Miami News-Record reports (http://is.gd/lPhVwi) that Weiler will be taken to a state hospital in Vinita for a psychological evaluation.
Weiler's relatives have said that he has struggled with mental illness and substance abuse.
Information from: The Miami News-Record, http://www.miaminewsrecord.com

subset: commoncrawl


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Walk between the stars with me.
We'll find a moment's peace,
our spirits held secure by Gods
Who also cradle everything.
Then we'll return to earth,
our hearts and strength renewed.
We'll have the means to serve life well
and stay the course that day.
And when earth's weight bears down on us,
we'll walk the stars again.
And, once more, gain the help we need
to meet the hours ahead.
I hope my above poem conveys, to at least some small degree, the power gained when visiting the Virtual Pagan Monastery.
You might think of it as a Goddess temple, Druid grove, Faerie circle, Pagan monastery, or retreat to an otherworldly haven. It has been sanctuary, even in the hardest times.
If you're unfamiliar with this long-distance experience:
Twice a week, I lead fifteen-minute-long ceremonies via group telephone calls. This continues for six weeks—ongoing spiritual sustenance that fits into a busy day.
During every ritual, I also give a direct spiritual transmission. You receive profound care, so are better able to meet the hours ahead and live fully.
To define my particular transmissions: I was born generating a beneficial field of energy. During our meetings, it adapts to your needs, e.g., personal growth, a soul healing, physical health, joy for your wild heart, safety on the mundane and etheric planes, the spiritual strength to get back up after life's knocked you down. The transmissions do not focus on one benefit only, but bless you as a whole being. They also add luck to anything you do to improve your life.
The Virtual Pagan Monastery group meets twice a week for six weeks, starting May 12:
We'll meet from 3:15 to 3:30, EST, on Tuesdays and Fridays.
To participate, simply dial the phone.
You'll need about three minutes after each session to do a special grounding, which I'll teach.
Reserve Tuesday June 23 and Friday June 26, the usual time, for makeup sessions in case I'm unavailable for planned sessions.
Total enrollment fee: $250. Your carrier might charge you for the call.
Click the Pay Now button to enroll securely through PayPal:
Limited enrollment. Upon receipt of payment, your seat is reserved. You receive event phone number, etc., by email. Refunds unavailable. Call me for more info or to discuss scholarship, trade, or payment plan.
Explaining this event is hard because many people think Paganism lacks inward, contemplative aspects or inner adventures. For my outward efforts to be effective, powerful, and loving, I need the inner life.
My inner life is also a precious, exciting joy that fuels the passion for life in my more outward experiences. Please give yourself contemplative times and inner adventures. Visit the Virtual Pagan Monastery.
We all make choices about what's best for us and what helps us best serve others. For most folks, that excludes a huge amount of time in ritual. (Actually, I believe anything we do is ritual, but I need to define ritual in the more usual way here.) My choice was an ongoing enormous amount of rituals, which required a solitary life, since I couldn't found an in-person Pagan monastery. A description of my day is relevant to this event:
I rarely see anyone in person. My contacts are mostly between the stars, doing ritual with folks. Otherworldly time spent with students and other wonderful friends is an enormous nourishment and joy that feeds me like few things ever could, given my particular personality and spirit.
So much time alone allows me to, among other things, do devotional practices and channel shamanic rites I lead.
New terms are needed to depict spirituality that is liberating instead of oppressive. For example, devotional or contemplative activities needn't be dour, overly formal, or anti-sex. So I made up the term ecstatic contemplative to describe folks like me. I also coined Pagan monasticism to hopefully expand the sense of the possible lifestyles.
Since few people have the time that I do for ritual, I had the idea of a virtual Pagan monastery providing mini-retreats for you. You needn't be a monastic, or want to become one. Take advantage of my decades as a Pagan monastic; I'll draw on my daily experiences to create fifteen-minute rituals for you.
Many folks have "inner monasteries"—places they visit and practices they have—to nourish themselves, ensure they cleave to their paths and their truths, and engage with the Divine. But a lot of these individuals tell me lack of time keeps them from going inward often enough, let alone coming up with a ritual for themselves on top of that. Each Pagan Monastery meeting has a ritual all prepared for you, I lead you through it, and the weekly schedule is easy.
You needn't go it alone.
I usually only "open" the virtual monastery for visits in the early months of the year, but I feel it's important right now. For one thing, some of us need our spirituality more than ever, and need empowerment more than ever, but it can be hard—if not near impossible—to spiritually tend to oneself at the present time, and the virtual monastery is a quick way to do it.
In ancient shamanic culture, sacred group meetings were part of the everyday, even during major upheaval. Tribes were normally busy taking care of business—hunting, weaving, etc., and all the more so during crisis. They didn't try to shoulder on without group rites. The ones I'll lead in the Virtual Pagan Monastery are heavy duty ceremonies.
This magic is so strong that fifteen minutes of it improves your life. For example, some of these brief rituals can, all on their own, land you smack dab in the reality of you, your truest self with its wisdom, balance, and magic. When you don't arrive in the center of your personal essence during one of those rites, you likely move radically in that direction, so you stop holding your breath, exhale with enormous relief, and feel longed for peace. Plus the rites we'll do add up to the substantial claiming or reclaiming of selfhood.
You emerge from each brief session prepared to make life more serene, fulfilling, and abundant. You're more able to do whatever's needed to achieve your goals and stay centered while you're at it. This is support to be powerful.
Feedback: "Someone might think, 'I won't get much from 15 minutes.' … But Francesca's Pagan Monastery showed me how deep a 15-minute ritual can go. She knows how to do this."
If you're skeptical about these visits accomplishing what I say they can, and you suspect 15 minutes isn't worth your time or money, you're smart. The world is full of "spiritual" con-artists.
My claims aren't hype. Few people can do what I do. If one of my services or books accomplished something nothing else had for you, that starts to give you the real picture.
Add that I trained from childhood as a shaman. Then, for decades, I've dedicated my life to developing shamanic skills and innovative ritual methodologies and to becoming a guide capable of addressing a lot of different life arenas.
So when I announce I excel at facilitating shamanic experiences and making fifteen minutes relevant and extraordinary, I'm talking truth. But don't take my word. Trust what your gut tells you. It might say that, in fact, my methods have led to miracles.
All the rituals I perform combine to create my wholeness. Nevertheless, whatever I did ritually yesterday doesn't fully cover what I require today. Over and over, I need to regain emotional balance, center into the reality of a caring Goddess, and experience spiritual renewal. This is even more true for me right now.
Consistent ritual is even more vital during difficult times. During crisis, enrolling in this event might be one of the most important steps you take. For one thing, it'll help bring the most powerful you forward to face challenges and accomplish exactly what's needed.
If you need to miss some sessions, enroll. Perfect attendance isn't part of real life.
Please visit me in the Virtual Pagan Monastery. It is a beautiful place.


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Fox Marks 50th Anniversary Of March On Washington By Smearing Voting Rights Struggle
From wildly offensive treatment of civil rights history to routine mendacity on voter ID, Fox chose to mark the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington by smearing the ongoing struggle for voting rights.
Over the past week leading up to President Barack Obama's commemoration of the anniversary on August 28, Fox News has been at the forefront of right-wing media attempts to discredit links between the progressive community and the civil rights legacy of the March on Washington. Voting rights, in particular, have attracted a significant amount of misinformation and ignorance, some of it quite shocking.
On June 12, 1963, Medgar Evers, a Battle of Normandy veteran and the NAACP's first field secretary for the state of Mississippi, was assassinated in his driveway. Shot in the back, his murder was the culmination of an extensive white supremacist terror campaign against the voting rights and desegregation advocacy of the NAACP, a cause that President John F. Kennedy championed the very night of Evers' death as both a moral and constitutional issue to ensure "American citizens of any color [can] register and [] vote in a free election without interference or fear of reprisal."
Evers' widow, Myrlie Evers-Williams, was invited to speak at the original March on Washington that took place two months later, an invitation that she was finally able to accept this past weekend at the 50th anniversary events. She warned about ongoing "efforts to turn back the clock" on the civil rights movement.
Congressman John Lewis, another veteran of the voting rights struggles, was more explicit. Also the victim of brutal violence due to his efforts to protect the right to vote, Lewis referenced the infamous Shelby County v. Holder Supreme Court decision and told the crowd, "I gave a little blood on that bridge in Selma, Alabama, for the right to vote. I am not going to stand by and let the Supreme Court take the right to vote away from us...We must say to the Congress, fix the Voting Rights Act."
On the August 26 edition of her radio show, Fox News contributor Laura Ingraham chose to follow up a recording of Lewis' call to Congress to both fix the Voting Rights Act and pass immigration reform with a gunshot sound effect. As Joan Walsh of Salon observed, even "[a]fter the assassinations of Medgar Evers, John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy and Dr. King, after the gunning down of so many civil rights workers over the years, Ingraham thought it was funny, or clever, or provocative, to 'symbolically' cut off Lewis' speech with the sound of a gun."
The next day, Ingraham appeared on Fox & Friends and continued her attacks on voting rights advocates, criticizing Colin Powell for pointing out in his commemoration interview his long-standing observation that strict voter ID laws are touted as a "solution" to in-person voter fraud, a problem that is virtually non-existent. Ingraham's response was a much-used red herring of Fox News, the accusation that opposition to strict voter ID is "preposterous" because photo identification is commonplace for other activities. Fox News host Bret Baier made the same argument on August 26, with contributor Charles Krauthammer adding that opposition to strict photo requirements is "nostalgia of a movement that's intellectually bankrupt." Fox News' Neil Cavuto was baffled when he asked on August 23, "when did this become an issue of voter suppression?"
As has been repeatedly and frequently explained, "voter ID is nothing new," as voting has long required some form of sworn statement or identification. Indeed, even the option of photo identification is now commonplace, with this form of identification requested in seven states, according to the latest National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) tally. Voter ID, in general, is in place in 33. This is why right-wing media's constant reference to the 2008 Supreme Court case that upheld an apparently non-discriminatory voter ID law in Indiana is misleading. It is not voter ID laws per se that are problematic; it is those that impermissibly racially discriminate that are flawed.
Accordingly, it is the strict photo voter ID laws that voting rights advocates highlight. These unnecessarily burdensome, irrationally selective, and frequently redundant identification requirements have been repeatedly ruled to be in violation of civil rights law for their impermissible discrimination on the basis of race. But following the lead of other right-wing media outlets, Fox News doesn't make this distinction.
Indeed, before Shelby County, this photo identification requirement was only allowed in four states, a number that may change now that the conservative justices struck down the critical VRA provision that blocked strict voter ID in states like Texas and North Carolina. To answer Cavuto's earlier question, strict voter ID has been "an issue of voter suppression" at least since federal judges blocked the Texas voter ID law due to its discriminatory effect and Texas' embarrassing inability to defend the statute, a finding of illegality Fox News continues to ignore.
On August 22, Lou Dobbs even threw in the repeatedly debunked statistical fallacy of using voter turnout as evidence of the purportedly innocuous effect of strict voter ID. In defending Texas, Dobbs insisted that "studies show that minority participation rates over subsequent elections have actually risen, and participation rates are higher than that of white citizens which invalidates everything the Obama Justice Department is saying." Most recently, on the August 27 edition of The Five, Fox News host Greg Gutfeld scolded the civil rights movement for being "co-opted by the academic leftist race-drivers...[because] when we talk about this obsession with the voting rights thing, I think you need to worry less about blacks being ID'd at the voting booth and more about being ID'd at the morgue. Do you know what I mean?"
Of all things to belittle and twist, smearing the history of voting rights on the 50th Anniversary is particularly inappropriate. Sadly, this may be the unfortunate status quo for the immediate future in the wake of Shelby County, a decision Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recently denounced again as "stunning in terms of activism" for allowing states to once again suppress the vote. If President Barack Obama uses his Wednesday address on the 50th anniversary to address this fundamental right, expect more of the same.


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Easter weekend is fast approaching. Check out the events that are happening in the area and if you wish to find a place for worship there will be a list of churches at the end of this blog.
STANLEY PARK MINIATURE RAILWAY – All, $8.75 per child and includes train ride and Easter egg hunt / $3.50 per adult to ride the train
Spring has sprung at the Stanley Park Miniature Train. Ride the train, hunt for Easter eggs, enjoy Easter themed crafts and visit with the Easter Bunny. Easter egg hunts take place throughout the day. Bring your own Easter basket.
March 25 2013, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
EASTER ON GROUSE MOUNTAIN – Easter Brunch, Easter Egg Hunts & the Easter Bunny
This year's Easter festivities will feature delicious brunch classics for all ages and an exciting Easter Egg hunt led by the Easter Bunny himself.
Between 10am and 2pm, we will be offering a 3-course prix fixe and a children's buffet menu. Call 604.998.5045 to reserve your table.
Churches in the DOWNTOWN AREA– http://www.yelp.ca/search?cflt=religiousorgs&find_loc=Downtown%2C+Vancouver%2C+BC
Churches in the WEST END – http://www.yelp.ca/search?cflt=religiousorgs&find_loc=West+End%2C+Vancouver%2C+BC


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The Wave Goes "Boing"
by Chris MacIntyre
Wave Camp in Gorham, NH
I was recovering from jet lag and my wife Barbara prescribed a Season ending soaring trip. A few calls the night before and I teamed up with Peter Scarpelli and his Mosquito, for the drive up. And it was quite a drive. We were headed for Gorham NH, just beyond Mt. Washington, one of the highest mountains in the East. The whole day would be spent driving. We were on the edge of a Nor'easter, the forecast calling for it to be gone by the next day, the winds kicking up behind an accompanying cold front. We were in search of wave. High surface winds, within reason, are good, as they signal a wind at the summit sufficient to give birth to the wave. Other things make the wave go higher still, but for once the phrase "Wassamatta, da wind quit?" had some meaning. Too much wind though, and you couldn't put the gliders together and handle them on the ground.
As we pulled through the White Mountains, the peaks were impressive, even now, partially draped in cloud. An added bonus was the foliage at its most spectacular. It was easy to find the Gorham airport, it was 50 yards from downtown. The inevitable bumpy, albeit short, dirt road revealed ships but no owners, all familiar numbers. Felt like Old Home Week. In the approaching darkness, the field looked tiny, surrounded by hills. With only the barest of amenities, it seemed not to be the place for significant others with nothing to do. But it would be the launching spot for who knows what adventure, and there was the lure. With some kind of radar, Peter and I ended up at a restaurant and found the group already there. It was nice to see familiar faces in a strange place. We all launched into stories and shared experiences. We FNG's (new guys) were already picking up hints from the Old Hats.
Up the next day to howling winds, slowly clearing skies and bitter cold. Rather than rig, we got a briefing by driving up to Pinkham Notch, the starting point for a lot of hikers. Two of our members have hiked here for years and their familiarity was invaluable. Inside Pinkham Lodge is a 10-foot square model with the Presidential Range laid out in relief. We took over the room for half an hour, hands motioning to show where the lift will be, how to get back to the airport, where the rotor and sink could be trouble. Our group confused the hikers around us, I'm sure. A good learning experience, though, pointing out the geography and how quickly the weather can change in the mountains. "I thought the wave just kind of surfed over the top", one of us confessed. "I didn't realize it comes down on this side and goes "BOING!", back up into the stratosphere! I guess this isn't our benign home field in Connecticut". We traipsed outside and turned to watch Mt. Washington taunt us. It appeared and disappeared in the snow filled cap cloud within minutes. We felt the wind shift 180 degrees on the ground, watched flags flutter in opposite directions, and discussed the one landing area available at the base of the mountain. We wondered how flying in the vicinity of winds reported to be 80 knots at 6000 ft would be like. Or whether we should. The rotor cloud overhead roiled angrily to make the point.
No, this is definitely not the home field.
Back at the airport, NB, one of our most experienced pilots, pointed out the signs of wave activity and resolutely rigged. The winds were still 25K on the ground and he hung back for a while. He was the first to launch at 12:30; no one else was even out of the box. And he was gone. We took a short lunch break and got back to the field, greeted by a reduced surface wind and a flurry of activity. More club members had joined up. Everyone started pulling up to the line. Peter goes in CA, releasing in the wave at 5. NB is back, stories of the wave window stretching in front of him for miles, and effortless climbs to 14K. Sure enough, a call to CA has him out of 13.5, climbing at up to1500 fpm. The day is waning; the lift is not.
It's now 4:15, about when things are winding down at most gliderports but here the adrenaline is still flowing. The tows are going to 6000 or so and with just one tow plane, it makes for a long wait. Suited up with all the usual, plus oxygen, a down coat, gloves, electric socks, thermal underwear and boots, you'd think I'd be boiling, but it's just right. After struggling to get settled, the 15 minutes waiting for Gary, our host and tow pilot gave me a chance to plan and think. Rope break, sink, rotor. It's the same, yet it's different. The straight pipe Pawnee pulls well in the cool air as we start the evening tow. Just after breaking ground it feels like I should be hearing the Ride of The Valkyries. Stretching above my left shoulder is a snow-capped mountain about 4000 feet high. A few seconds later, when the time is available to look around, the real mountain shows up, at an impossible angle above the canopy. And Gary calmly turns towards it into the Land of Oz we go.
Boy, is this different. Constantly thinking rope break, I leave the decision of where and when to release to Gary. It's not nearly as rough as I hear wave tows can be. Gorham airport, 6 miles north and a little east of Mt. Washington, sits so you can tow without having to go through the rotor, a real boon. It's dried out after the morning's cold front and the peak is visible, along with small parallel clouds stretching downwind. Visibility is 60 miles or more, so towing up in between two of the scattered clouds presents no problem. As we climb in front of a shredded cu at 6000, it gets smooth and Gary radios "This is it." We release and turn right. All hell breaks loose as the wing goes down and the pit of the stomach is the only vario you need. Not that way, stupid! Stuffing the nose down quickly and finishing the turn smoothes it out. Not too much time to find the lift, as I need most of the altitude to get back to the field comfortably and there could be a lot of sink around. I certainly have found some of it. But pointing back at the mountain and speeding up a bit gives a reassuring push on the human vario. The other vario agrees, and starts to sing the song of lift. The altimeter winds up like a clock, and, as it can be in this manic-depressive sport, all's right with the world. Guess I won't need to worry about notching the baro.
Having read about what to do is a lot different from doing it. A little faster and the lift falls off. A little slower and that ominous leading edge of cloud gets too close. But it is falling away and diminishing quickly. The averager shows 5.5 knots for minutes on end. Soon the whole of New Hampshire is unfolding below, the airport small but at an easy angle. Magic. We have a half dozen Nutmeggers up. The perspective of altitude is different, but the chatter on the radio makes it more comfortable. We all keep an eye out, as the area of lift is only a few miles square. D7 says he's directly overhead, and a glance up reveals a small, impossibly bright, white cross, gracefully moving across my canopy. Each of us looks for the other in this vast blue canyon, occasional glints of wing the only hint of others up here enjoying the view. It almost seems to be cheating to have this kind of effortless climb. But only almost. It's a reward for seasons of 1/2-knot thermals over the quarry and low saves just outside the pattern. The tough ones make you come back to do better, the perfect ones freeze a moment of time.
As we each reach our ATC ceiling, still climbing strongly and joined by WV, it's time to tip over to more friendly climes. This climb, though, has been friendly enough, good enough for Gold. We share the experiences later, each of us unbelieving of our luck. The companionship enhances our individual enjoyment of the day.
The next morning winds are nil, sky clear. Looks like a blue thermal day. Out on the line, everyone who tied out spends as much time cleaning off frost as the others do rigging. The day is weak and even the Old Hats are less than enthusiastic. The pilot meeting demands a picture, all of us commenting on how great it is that so many have shown up. A slow but steady launch sequence has the experienced pilots starting off on the ridge upwind of Mt. Washington, the new guys towing directly to the wave area, with varying degrees of success. Gary was somewhat overwhelmed by our arrival, but he made the turnarounds as fast as possible, wanting us to come back. Nutmeg now has a letter of agreement with Boston Center to allow flights above 18,000 feet. It wouldn't have mattered much that day, as it was one of much scratching.
One of us makes it into the wave, slowly working up to 14,000 several times, others towing to it but not having any luck. Go figure. After he came back, they grilled him but he wouldn't squeal. Looked like a case of right place, right time.
We had dinner that night in one of this ski spot's many restaurants. The airport may be dinky; the town, decidedly not. We've been joined by The Great Initiators of this trip, Ron Clifford (RQ and RQette), and a half a dozen more. It rounded us out to 13 ships and 17 pilots. War stories abounded. Ron, having established a beachhead at Gypsy's bar, successfully called for reinforcements into the night. A minimum of casualties was reported.
Another quiet dawn, the wind calm, a little haze. The forecast had been for overcast skies but we lucked out. The field had settled into a bit of a routine, with those who had tied out turning the ships into the sun like inanimate sunbathers so that the frost would melt. A quick pilot meeting but no rush to launch, as the wind on the summit was less than yesterday. NB went first, as usual, and reported wave to 13. So the day began.
The barograph showed how it was. Whereas the first day was the pyramid of Cheops, and the second a sawtooth, this is a gentle sloping plateau. Eventually the Hats clawed their way up from the low tows and joined us NG's who had taken advantage of the earlier, stronger conditions. Six of us hovered at 12.5, split by a hundred feet or so; the eternal climbing contest, noses held high as if sniffing for the elusive smooth lift. The stark rock of the mountain is cut by the Cog railway. Its smoke is designed to tell us where the wind is coming from and where the wave will be. How convenient. We watch as the new arrivals seek out the tempo of this marginal day. Stories abound after we land, another satisfying day done.
"I turned off of tow and got into sink so I headed out into the valley." says our 1_34 pilot. "I thought I was doing pretty well heading back to the airport at 4000. Then I hear D7 up at 12 saying he's looking at me and I seem little low. So I started worrying again!" He got back with 3000 feet in the bank and tells how "I sort of wished at one point I could turn the channel and come back later to see how it worked out!" The chance to talk with Rudi Opitz, our clubs resident guru and hall of famer is not to be turned down. But the conversation doesn't start with his usual gentlemanly "How vas your flight?". Not this time. Even he is bubbling over Gorham's appeal. This time it's "Let me tell you about my flight! It was a very marginal wave, but I knew that if I flew exactly 330 degrees until I was over the mountain, I could turn and know that if I came back to that heading, I would be in lift, even if the canopy started to fog. This is a great site!" And every one had a story and a memory.
There were two more days at Gorham, but I had to leave the next morning. As I drove out of the fog that surrounded the field, lenticulars stacked behind Mt. Washington glowed red in the dawn. A good trek. Maybe a Diamond next time.
_Mike Lima
Authors Note: And there was a Diamond the next time. A whole slew of 'em. And Lennies. And State Records. This story, originally published in the Nutmeg News in January of 1995, was the first of a series of trips made by Nutmeg to Gorham. The wave window is now the property of the FBO at Gorham and is available (with its accompanying restrictions) to all pilots flying from the site. Nutmeg also makes club journeys to Springfield VT in the summer for an annual encampment and has a dedicated group that every year makes a month long safari down the east coast in the spring. Our latest fall sojourn was to Miflin County in the Ridge Country of Pennsylvania and is written up in both our monthly newsletter and the Letters column of Soaring Magazine.
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The Feb. 17 agreement during the World Radiocommunication Conference 2012 (WRC-12) held in Geneva, Switzerland, means better tracking of tsunamis, oil spills, ocean debris and people lost at sea.
The International Telecommunication Union's World Radiocommunication Conference 2012 (WRC-12) concluded Feb. 17 with agreement on a number of items, including improved ocean radar technology. This will yield better tracking of tsunamis, oil spills, ocean debris, and people lost at sea, according to the National Science Foundation. The meeting took place from Jan. 23 to Feb. 17 in Geneva, Switzerland.
After recent destructive tsunamis and the Gulf of Mexico oil spill increased interest in ocean radars, which have operated informally and would be quickly shut down if they caused interference with other radio systems, according to NSF. But action taken at the meeting provides specific radio frequency bands for ocean radars -– small systems typically installed on beaches and using radio signals to map ocean currents to distances as far as 100 miles.
"The WRC's decision to identify dedicated ocean radar bands will help speed up technological development of these radars. Many countries, particularly those recently devastated by ocean disasters, were particularly interested in reaching a global agreement for the use of ocean radars," said Andrew Clegg, a radio spectrum manager with NSF who chaired the international drafting group that developed the ocean radar spectrum solution.
U.S. agencies and institutions that fund or operate ocean radars include NSF, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, the Department of Defense, universities, and research organizations.
This free webinar will inform attendees on the most significant updates and modifications in the new standard, known as E1527-21 Standard Practice for Environmental Site Assessments: Phase I Environmental Site Assessment Process.


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LAS VEGAS (AP) -- Police say a chimpanzee who rampaged through a Las Vegas neighborhood last month made a second escape from her backyard enclosure.
The Las Vegas Sun reports (http://bit.ly/QSjDpQ) a resident called authorities about 4:50 p.m. Saturday to report CJ, the chimp, broke free from her cage. Las Vegas Metro Police captured her at around 5:30 p.m. after setting up a containment area and targeting her with tranquilizer darts.
On July 12, CJ and her mate Buddy broke free and roamed through their owners' neighborhood, pounding on vehicles and climbing in an unoccupied car. Buddy also jumped on cars.
An officer shot and killed him after police say he veered too closely toward onlookers.
CJ was returned to her owners then, but officials say that won't happen this time.
The Sun reports she was being secured at a local zoo.


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One hundred years after Adolf Hitler's birth near Linz in Austria on April 20 1889, and decades after his malign empire metastasized in Bavaria in Bavaria, the Hitler phenomenon remains to mainstream historians largely inexplicable, or at least unexplained. The man and his awful work seem to stand outside history looking in. Perhaps our human fear of the irrational is so great that we instinctively hold Hitler at a great remove in order that we need not admit him to our company. In light of this it isn't very surprising that an extensive literature exists seeking an occult rationale for the otherwise baffling catastrophe Hitler represents. As Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier point out in the MORNING OF THE MAGICIANS (1960), the Nazi era simply defies conventional analysis:
A self taught madman, surrounded by a handful of megalomaniacs,rejects Descartes, spurns the whole humanist culture, tramples on reason, invokes Lucifer, conquers Europe, and nearly conquers the world… The historian begins to feel anxious and to wonder whether his art is viable.1
Pauwels and Bergier were among the first postwar proponents of a black magical explanation for the Third Reich.1a About a quarter of their book is devoted to a region they call "The Absolute Elsewhere," a neverland where Nazi pseudosciences and occult methodology held official sway. They quote a Hitlerian pronouncement to demonstrate that the Fuhrer's intellectual development was on a level wholly different from that understood by the Western tradition: "there is a Nordic and National Socialist science which is opposed to Jewish-Liberal science".2 Reality was defined by politics.
Nazi "science" has brought hoots of derision from those who hold to the Cartesian model. In place of psychology there was an occult frappe composed of the mysticism of Gurdijeff, the theosophy of Madame Blavatsky and the archetypes of Nordic mythology.3 In place of Newtonian physics stood the cosmic force called vril, the bizarre geology known as the hollow earth theory, and the frigid cosmology of Hans Horbiger's Welteislehre, the doctrine of eternal ice.
Nazi thought excluded psychoanalysis, which has in fact been not very helpful in explaining the etiology of great evil, although Robert G.L. Waite's effort, quoted above and published in 1977 by Basic Books, is good on several provocative subjects: Hitler's sadomasochistic sex life; the possibility he had a Jewish grandfather; and his Viennese mentors, who are described at greater length by the authors about to be mentioned.
Nazism officially rejected the theory of relativity as "Jewish science". Not only Freud but EInstein too was forced to flee Hitler's Europe. He and other physicists eventually were able to ensure that atomic secrets remained in the hands of the allies until they could be used spectacularly to climax the Pacific war.
Horbiger's physics derived from an intuitive flash he experienced late in the nineteenth century. "… As a young engineer," he wrote, "I was watching one day some molten steel poured on wet ground covered with snow: the ground exploded after some delay and with great violence."4
This conflict of opposites, of fire and ice, is a theme that inspired Horbiger and resonated for German nationalists because it recurs in the Icelandic Eddas, the sourcebooks of Teutonic mythology. It all makes good sense in Iceland, since that island's peculiar geology feature numerous volcanic rifts in the permafrost; fire and ice are commonly juxtaposed all over the landscape. As grounds for a cosmology- the word implies universality- it is at best dubious. It would be a hard sell in Hawaii.
Nevertheless, Nazi science was influential out of all proportion to its objective validity. Hoerbiger was immensely influential in the Third Reich. His followers numbered in the tens of thousands. There were scores of Horbigerian books, hundreds of Welteislehre pamphlets, and a monthly magazine called THE KEY TO WORLD EVENTS. As one tract put it,
Our Nordic ancestors grew strong amidst the ice and snow, and this is why a belief in a world of ice is the natural heritage of Nordic men. It was Austrian, Hitler, who drove out the Jewish politicians, and another Austrian, Horbiger, (who) will drive out the Jewish scientists. By his own example Hitler has shown that an amateur to give us a thorough understanding of the Universe.5
Hitler's fatal confidence in the success of his troops on the Russian front during the 1941 – 2 winter is generally believed to have been a result of his misplaced faith in Horbiger's weather forecasts. Despite such setbacks, the Welteislehre managed to thrive even after the war. The popular speculations of Immanuel Velikovsky derive in part from Horbiger. In 1953 a survey conducted by Martin Gardner showed that more than a million people in Germany, England, and the U.S. believed that Horbiger was right6.
The Horbigerian cosmology posited an early epoch, some fifteen million years ago, during which a hugh moon moved across the sky very near the earth. Its gravitational attraction gave rise to a race of our ancestors, the giants. These giants, which appear in the ancient Norse and Icelandic sagas, sleep, yet they are alive. To the Nazis, they were Supermen. In one set of myths, contained in the Nibelungenlied, they lived beneath Teutonic mountains. In another they were prototype Aryans from the East, inhabiting vast Tibetan caverns.
Three other books that investigate hidden influences on Gerald Suster's HITLER: THE OCCULT MESSIAH; Jean-Michel Angebert's THE OCCULT AND THE THIRD REICH; and Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke's THE OCCULT ROOTS OF NAZISM 7.
Suster's book largely rehashes Pauwels and Bergier. Angebert (actually a pen name for two French writers) interestingly links Hitler to an ancient dualist tradition he traces from Manichaenism in Persia through the Essenes, Jesus's Palestinian forebears, to the Cathars in the south of France in the Middle Ages. It's philosophy in which, in its Nazi incarnation, solar forces of light represented by blond, fair-skinned Aryans strive against the evil forces of darkness, who are of course dark skinned Semites.
Both books, but especially Suster's are written in prose that stops just this side of tabloid journalese. This is too bad for two reasons. One, the authors diminish some important material by this kind of presentation. Two, the lessons we have to learn about mass psychopathology and about the history of fascism are too important to be trivalized in this way.
Goodrick-Clark's is a serious and compelling historical look at ariosophy, a dangerous amalgam of Aryan racism, pan-German nationalism, and occultism that flourished in Austria and Germany from around 1890 well into the era when Himmler's Death's Head SS was organized. Himmler is said by Pauwels and Bergier to have taken the Jesuits for his model, and to have installed a regular hierarchy ranging from lay brothers to father superior, and to have used this Black Order in horrific rites.8
THE OCCULT ROOTS OF NAZISM identifies wide circle of proto-Nazi philosophers, previously almost unknown, who saw in the chaos that beset Germany after the Treaty of Versailles the working out of ancient Aryan prophecies. Among them was Rudolf John Gorsleben, who interesting career Goodrick-Clarke sums up in a sentence: "on the basis of the runes, occultism, and the Edda, Gorsleben created an original racist mystery-religion which illuminated the priceless magical heritage of the Aryans and justified their spiritual and political world-supremacy."9
Gorsleben was active in right-wing politics in Bavaria in the years Hitler was forming his political convictions there, and he lectured to the Thule Society, a Munich club thought to have greatly influenced Nazism in its infancy (see below). He also edited a weekly newspaper called German Freedom; in 1927 he changed the name to Aryan Freedom.
He derived the word 'race' from rata, an Old Norse term meaning 'root', in order to conclude that God and race were identical…. He maintained that racial mixing was always detrimental for the racially superior partner, since his purity was debased in the progeny, and he repeated the common volkisch [folkish] conviction that woman could be 'impregnated' by intercourse, even when no conception occurred, so that her subsequent offspring bore the characteristics of her first lover. Given these overwhelming pressures towards the increasing bastardization of the German descendants of the Aryan race, only the strict practice of segregation and eugenics could guarantee the reversal of racial contamination in the world.10
Another book which hold that Hitler learned many of his occult lesson from avatars in Vienna and Munich may well be the best known black magical explanation of Nazism to have been put forth so far. Trevor Ravenscroft's THE SPEAR OF DESTINY was published by that famous British house of occultism, the aptly named Neville Spearman Ltd,.in 1972, and has since gone through many edition.11
Ravenscroft is intriguing because instead of reporting historical influences on Hitler, he presents secret history in a narrative form that purports to be factual and that-if true maybe even if only poetically "true"-goes a long way toward finding a convincing occult explanation for the Nazi phenomenon.
Two challenges to Ravenscroft's facts, discussed below, have led some readers to conclude his book is more nearly a novel than strict history. Nonetheless, its provocative premise and fluent synthesis of black magical thematics will keep it on occult booklists until a better effort at explaining Hitler comes along.
Ravenscroft, a British journalist, historian, and World War II commando officer, spent four years in Nazi prison camps after he was captured attempting to assassinate General Erwin Rommel in North Africa in 1941. His personal perspective on the Hitler era is based on material he says he got in a state of transcendent consciousness while imprisoned. He introduces his methodology by speaking of
my own experience of higher levels of consciousness whilst in a Nazi Concentration Camp during the war, and how the nature of this transcendent experience had guided me to a study of the Spear of Longinus and the legend of world destiny which had grown up around it.12
Later, in London, his intuitive suspicions about certain grail relics and their importance in occult Hitlerian history were confirmed by a Viennese exile called Dr. Walter Johannes Stein who died in 1957.
Dr. Stein spent much of the war as a British secret agent, but before that time he was a scholar who employed white magical means to clairvoyantly investigate historical events. It was his book on the grail mythos published in Stuttgart in 1928 and titled THE NINTH CENTURY: WORLD HISTORY IN THE LIGHT OF THE HOLY GRAIL13 that attracted Ravenscroft to him.
THE SPEAR OF DESTINY focuses first on Hitler's lost years in Vienna from 1909 to 1913. During that time, Ravenscroft writes, Dr. Stein was pursuing his occult researches as a student at the University of Vienna and getting to know Hitler, then a dropout living in a flophouse.
Vienna was during Hitler's years there a vortex of modern thinking. Freud was in practice at Berggasse 19; Ludwig Wittgenstein was in residence pondering avant garde philosophy and metaphysics; Gustav Mahler had returned home to die and to name his protege, Arnold Schonberg. In contrast there persisted the deep anti-Semitic currents that had caused Mahler to convert to Catholicism, that forced Freud eventually to flee to London and that informed the ancient pan-German folkoric nostalgia espoused by Guido von List.
This old black magician, whose occult lodge Ravenscroft says substituted the swastika for the cross in perversion and the practice of medieval thaumaturgy, looked like a wizard in floppy cap and long white beard. His link to Hitler was allegedly through an occult bookseller, Ernst Pretzche, in whose shop the future Fuhrer found a second home.
In the shop Dr. Stein found a copy of Wolfram von Eschenbach's PARZIVAL, the medieval grail romance that Dr. Stein was himself researching for his work on the ninth century. In the book's margins were handwritten annotations; looking them over Dr.Stein was fascinated and repelled:
This was no ordinary commentary but the work of somebody who had achieved more than a working knowledge of the black arts! The unknown commentator had found the key to unveiling many of the deepest secrets of the Grail, yet obviously spurned the Christian ideals of the Knights and delighted in the devious machinations of the Anti-Christ. It suddenly dawned on him that he was reading the footnotes of Satan!14
The footnotes, of course, proved to have been Hitler's.
Soon afterward, Dr.Stein and Hitler saw the Reich's lance together in the Imperial Museum at the Hofburg. Dr. Stein had been there before and had never failed to be moved by the sight of the old relic, supposed to have been moved by the original spear with which the Roman centurion, Longinus, pierced the side of Christ during the crucifixation. Longinus was a German, and his "spear of destiny" was fated to play a magical role in the careers of German leaders like Charlemagne, Otto the Great, and Frederick Barbarossa. Dr. Stein said the spear inspired in him the emotion expressed in the motto of the knights of the holy grail: Durch Mitleid wissen, "through compassion to self knowledge."
Then he glanced at Hitler: Walter Stein found he was not the only one moved by the sight of this historic spearhead. Adolf Hitler stood beside him, like a man in a trance, a man over whom some dreadful magic spell had been cast… The very space around him seemed enlivened with some subtle irradiation, a kind of ghostly ectoplasmic light. His whole physiognomy and stance appeared transformed as if some might Spirit now inhabited his very soul, creating within and around him a kind of evil transfiguration of its own nature and power.15 ] Latter Hitler took Dr. Stein up the Danube to visit his mystic teacher, a rustic woodcutter and herbalist named Hans Lodz "who retained in his peasant's blood the last traces of the atavistic clairvoyance of the ancient Germanic tribes" and who "resembled a mischievous yet malevolent dwarf from the pages of Grimm's Fairy Tales or an illustration from a book on ancient Germanic folklore".16 The men took a swim in the river at which Dr. Stein noticed that Hitler had only one testicle.
It was Lodz, Dr.Stein learned, who had prepared for Hitler a peyote concoction that afforded him psychedelic insight into his past lives. The peyote itself had come from Pretzche, who had lived for a time in the German colony in Mexico. Hitler had hoped that his former existences, viewed in his drug trance, would include an early incarnation as a powerful Teutonic ruler, but it was not to be.
Instead his psychedelic perception revealed non Eschenbach's Parzival to have been prophetic of events that would take place a thousand years after it was written, i.e. in the present. And it showed Hitler to have been the historical personage behind the evil sorcerer Klingsor, the very spirit of the anti-Christ and the villain of Parzival.
According to Dr. Stein's work Klingsor was in fact Landulf II of Capua, the traitorous confidant of the Holy Roman Emperor who betrayed Christianity to the Moslem invaders of Italy and Spain.
Armed with the knowledge of his black spiritual ancestry, Ravenscroft writes, Hitler moved to Germany, joined the Bavarian Army, survived the hellish trench warfare on the western front, won the Iron Cross, second class, and got discharged in Munich where he encountered the men who were to invent National Socialism.
Virtually every study of Hitler's time in Munich mentions the Thule Society as superficially a kind of Elk's Club of German mythology which met often and openly at a fancy metropolitan hotel and for a time counted Hitler as a member. Behind the scenes, however the society seems to have been considerably more sinister.
Robert Payne whose excellent Hitler biography contains no occult explanations, describes the Thule Society as the center of the right wing opposition to the brief Bavarian postwar socialist coup under the Jewish intellectual Kurt Eisner.
The reaction set in swiftly, as the extreme right gathered its forces. The headquarters of the reaction was the Hotel Vierjahreszeiten, where several floors were given over to the Thule Society, ostensibly a literary club devoted to the study of Nordic culture but in fact a secret political organization devoted to violent anti-Semitism and rule by an aristocratic elite. The name of the organization derived from ultima Thule, the unknown northern land believed to be the original home of the German race… The symbol of the Thule Society was a swastika with a dagger enclosed in laurel leaves.17
Most of the occult historians of the era believe the Thule Society operated on a deeper level still, a level headed by a mysterious figure called Dietrich Eckart. Goodrick-Clarke calls Eckart Hitler's mentor in the early days of the Nazi Party, along with Rudolf Hess and Alfred Rosenberg.18
According to Ravenscroft, Eckart, like Hitler, first achieved transcendence through psychedelic drugs. Research on peyote by the German pharmacologist Ludwig Lewin had been published in 1886, leading to widespread popular experimentation. Later a heroin addict, in earlier days Eckart used peyote in the practice on neo- pagan magic in Berlin. He came to believe that he, too was the reincarnation of ninth century character. In his case it was Bernard of Barcelona, a notorious betrayer of Christianity to the Arabs and a black magician who used thaumaturgy to hold off Carolingian armies in Spain.
Eckart assertedly organized Kurt EIsner's assassination and personally chose Hitler-by then a battle-scarred veteran of the horrors of trench warfare and a fervent critic of the armistice-to lead the Aryan race back to supremacy.
Ravenscroft writes that Hitler had been prepared for satanic initiation by his experiences in Vienna with peyote and with the spear and by his mustard gassing in 1918, which left him blind and in a state of enforced trance for several days.
He also says that the techniques Dietrich Eckart used were in part derived from the sexual magic of Aleister Crowley. In 1912 this famed British magician was named IX British head of a secret Berlin lodge called Ordo Templi Orientis which practiced various forms of sexual magic.19
Ravenscroft writes "there can be little doubt" that both Crowley and Eckart conducted deep studies of the Arabian astrological magic performed by Klingsor's real life counterpart, Landulf II. It was to Sicily-then a Moslem stronghold-that Landulf fled after his traitorous links to Islam were disclosed. And it was in a dark tower in the mountains of the southwest corner of that island that his evil soul festered with additional bitterness over his castration by the relatives of a noblewoman he had raped. There he practiced sadistic satanism of a nature that foreshadowed the horrors of Nazi concentration camps.
If the legends that have come down from these dark centuries of European history are true, these rituals carried out at Kalot Enbolot included terrible tortures such as the slitting open of the stomach of sacrificial victims and the slow drawing open of the stomach of sacrificial victims and the slow drawing of their entrails, the driving of stakes through the orifices of their bodies before disembowelling them, and the invoking of Spirits of Darkness (incubi) to rape young virgins kidnapped from their families.20
It was from his studies of the power available to practitioners of such perversities that Eckart devised the rituals he used when he "opened the centers of Adolf Hitler to give him a vision of and a means of communication with the Powers." Ravenscroft concludes, though he declines to furnish the full details: "Suffice it to say that they were indescribably sadistic and ghastly." 21
Having done his worst, Eckart soon died, proudly advising those around him:
Follow Hitler! he will dance, but it is I who have called the tune! – 8 –
I have initiated him into the "Secret Doctrine", opened his centers of vision and given him the means to communicate with the Powers. Do not mourn for me: I shall have influenced history more than any other German.22
Not unnaturally the question rises whether any of THE SPEAR OF DESTINY is true. It's certainly a great story, one which Ravenscroft elaborates with a lengthy investigation of Hitler's sex life, in which he makes a case for associating the reports of the Fuehrer's missing testis to the perversities resulting from Landulf's castration.
The problem lies with Ravenscroft's primary source, Dr. Walter Johannes Stein. And the problem with Dr.Stein is really two problems: one his method of historical research: and two, the fact that he is dead and unable to speak for himself.
Given his method, of course, this second problem should not be insurmountable. Had we the technique, Dr. Stein could presumably verify each of Ravenscroft's assertion for us from beyond the grave. For Dr. Stein is alleged to have studied history not in the libraries and archives that are the usual haunt of the historian but in an arena called the Cosmic Chronicle where, according to Ravenscroft, past present and future were united in a higher dimension of time.
What's more Ravenscroft reveals in his introduction, Dr.Stein taught the same techniques to him.
It is, however, undeniably difficult, if not unprecedented, to footnote clairvoyance. We have to take on faith that the SPEAR OF DESTINY is what Dr.Stein told Ravenscroft. This is not to say that all of his information came from the Cosmic Chronicle; Dr. Stein as we have seen is purported to have been present in Vienna during Hitler's lost years there. Nor did their close association end in Austria. Ravenscroft says Dr. Stein "watched at close quarters" the founding of the Nazi party and Hitler's association with Eckart and other sinister mentors.
When Reichsfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler ordered Dr.Stein's arrest in Stuttgart in 1933 in order to press him into service with the SS Occult Bureau, he escaped from Germany and brought with him to Britain the most authoritative knowledge of the occultism of the Nazi Party.23
Nowhere does Ravenscroft made it clear whether he's talking about eyewitness knowledge on Dr.Stein's part or about the sort of information to be gleaned from the Cosmic Chronicle. But two critics of the SPEAR OF DESTINY do cast doubt on several of the factual assertions upon the factual assertions upon which Ravenscroft's argument is built.
One is Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, whose book on the occult roots of Nazism is quoted above. In an appendix called "THE MODERN MYTHOLOGY OF NAZI OCCULTISM", Goodrick-Clarke takes Ravenscroft to task for the story about Hitler's relations with the occult bookseller in Vienna and for his claim that Guido Von List was forced to flee from outraged Viennese Catholics in 1909 after the sexual rites of his blood brotherhood were exposed. he writes flatly,
There is not a shred of evidence for such rituals. List was never obliged to leave Vienna and he enjoyed the patronage of prominent Vienna figures…The fictional nature of the whole episode surrounding the annotated copy of copy of Parzival is suggested by the similarity of Pretzsche's obscure bookshop to the one described by Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton in ZANONI (1842), which probably served Ravenscroft as a literary model.24
Goodrick-Clarke also criticizes Jean Michael Angebert's book, THE OCCULT AND THE THIRD REICH, cited above. He brands as imaginary Angebert's account of the young Hitler's association with Lanz von Lebenfels.
As noted earlier, Goodrick-Clarke's book is an important and serious piece of research on Guido von List and Lanz von Lievenfels. But the author seems a little over-sensitive toward other writers who invoke his two subjects. Nevertheless, his critique of Angebert and Ravenscroft, though brief, does offer a glimpse of the misgivings that professional historians feel regarding such material.
More extensive criticisms have been offered by Christoph Lindenberg in his review of THE SPEAR OF DESTINY in the German journal Die Drie. Lindenberg has done some effective digging at the Vienna Records office. Ravenscroft has Hitler sitting high up in the cheap seats of the Vienna Opera House in the winter of 1910 – 1 watching Wagner's Parzifal and sympathizing with Klingsor. This proves to have been impossible, because Lindenberg learned that the first performance of Wagner's opera took place three years later, on January 14,1914.
Ravenscroft's second mistake was to name the Viennese bookseller who introduced Hitler to drugs. "No better name occurred to him than Pretsche, popular among English writers of fiction for German malefactors," Lindenberg writes scornfully before revealing that extensive checks of Vienna city and business directories and police records for the years 1892 through 1920 were negative for the name in question.25
Next, Lindenberg takes issue with Ravenscroft's description of the Danube trip Hitler and Dr. Stein took in May 1913, to visit the mystic woodcutter, Hands Lodz:
We can overlook Ravenscroft's mistake of speaking of "Wachau" as a place and not of the region which really it is. But the details do not fit: the snow melting in May, the steamer running in spite of the floods, bathing in the river- it makes no sense. Certainly wrong is the statement that Hitler had only one testicle… all this has been completely refuted by [Werner] Maser.26
Ravenscroft's account of Hitler's circumstances in Vienna also come in for some heavy criticism. Dr. Stein reportedly sat in a window seat in Demel's Cafe, reading the anonymous marginalia in the copy of Parzival he'd found and concluding they were "the footnotes of Satan" when he looked through the glass and beheld "the most arrogant face and demonical eyes he had ever seen". This was of course the future Fuehrer in his legendary guise as an impoverished pavement artist, selling homemade postcards, dressed in a big black "sleazy" coat, his toes visible through the cracks in his shoes. When in August, 1912, he sought Hitler out at the "flophouse" he lived in , in Meldemannstrasse, he was told Hitler was away at Spittal-an-der-Drau collecting a legacy left him by an aunt. Thereafter, Hitler dressed well.27
Hitler did receive a legacy from his aunt, Johanna Poelzl, Lindenberg reports. But this happens in March, 1911, and the aunt lived in Spital-with-one-t, not on the Drau but in southern Austria. Furthermore,
At no time of life did Hitler live in impoverished conditions, rather he had always sufficient money. In the Meldenmannstrasse, a kind of large hotel, Hitler paid a rent of 15 Kronen a month. So he could afford a fairly expensive room and had no need to sell his pictures, which in any case were no postcards. So this scene too, that impoverished Hitler dressed in an oversized black coat selling water colors in front of the Cafe Dehmel does not agree with the facts either (cf. the two works by Werner Maser who with incredible care collected all ascertained facts of Hitler's youth).28
In his discussion of the holy lance's power to evoke transcendent experience, Ravenscroft has a scene in which the chief of the German general staff, Helmut von Moltke, visited the relic in the company of Conrad von Hoetzendorf, an Austrian general, shortly before the outbreak of World War I. The spear's presence led von Moltke to have a trance vision of himself incarnated as Pope Nicolas I, a ninth century pontiff concerned, like von Moltke, with the balance of geopolitical power between east and west.29
Untrue protests Lindenberg. "For Moltke visited Vienna neither in 1913 nor in 1914. Conrad and Moltke met on May 12, 1914 at Karlsbad, from September 7 – 10, 1913, in Silesia, and at Leipzig on October 18 at the Centenary of the Battle of Leipzig. They had no other meeting."30
Lindenberg has several other criticisms to make, such as the assertion that "A number of people who intimately knew Walter Johannes Stein in the last years of his life state that Stein never met Hitler." Unfortunately Ravenscroft's aversion to footnotes has also afflicted his critic, and Lindenberg nowhere names these people nor does he document his other assertions.
Lindenberg doesn't like Ravenscroft's book; he calls it " a pollution of our spiritual environment." And it is manifestly difficult for him or anyone to rebut research done on the cosmic level.
What, in the end, was Hitler all about? Perhaps no better explanation can be found than W.H. Auden's suggestions, made in his poem "September 1,1939" and printed as an epigram to Robert G.L. Waite's book. The date is the beginning of Hitler's Blitzkrieg against Poland:
Accurate scholarship can Unearth the whole offence From Luther until now That has driven a culture mad, Find what occurred at Linz, What huge imago made A psychopathic god: I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return.
1. Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier, THE MORNING OF THE MAGICIANS, translated from the French LE MAT DES MAGICIENS by Rollo Myers, Paris, 1960, New York: Avon Books, 1968; pp 192 – 3
1a. Lewis Spence, THE OCCULT CAUSES OF THE PRESENT WAR, first broached this explanation in 1944.
2. THE MORNING OF THE MAGICIANS, pg 228, The quote rings true, it sounds like Hitler, but it is a maddening flaw in this otherwise fascinating book that it was published-at least in translation- with few footnotes and no index.
3. Ibid.,pg 220. The book goes deeply into the occult background of the Nazi ethos, but concludes: "We are not suggesting that the reader should study an affiliation Rosy Cross-Bulwer-Lytton [Wentworth] Little [founder of the Golden Dawn]- [Aleister] Crowley-Hitler, or any similar association which include also Mme. Blavatsky and Gurdijeff. Looking for affiliations is a game, like looking for 'influences' in literature; when the game is over, the problem is till there. In literature it's a question of genius; in history, of power."
4. Ibid., pg 229- 30.
5. Ibid., pg 226.
6. Ibid., pg 247.
7. Gerald Suster, HITLER: THE OCCULT MESSIAH, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981. Jean-Michel Angebert [pseudonym for Michel Bertrand and Jean Angelini], THE OCCULT AND THE THIRD REICH, translated from the French HITLER ET LA TRADITION CATHARE by Lewis A.M. Sumberg, Paris, 1971, New York: Macmillian, 1974. Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, THE OCCULT ROOTS OF NAZISM, Wellingborough (England): THE Aquarian Press, 1985.
8. THE MORNING OF THE MAGICIANS, pg 284 – 298.
9. THE OCCULT ROOTS OF NAZISM, pg 155.
10.Ibid., pg 156 – 7
11.The book's subtitle is "The occult power behind the spear which pierced the side of Christ." I am using the Corgi paperback edition published in 1974.
12.THE SPEAR OF DESTINY, pg xviii
13.The publisher is Orient-Occident Verlag; the book is, naturally in German. It is very long. I have been told that an English translation exists, in a single typescript copy. at Rudolf Steiner House in London.
14.THE SPEAR OF DESTINY, pg 58 – 9. For a great deal more on this little known but important figure, including a wonderful photograph, see Goodrick-Clarke's book.
15.Ibid., pg 64.
16.Ibid., pg 79- 80; 171
17.Robert Payne, THE LIFE AND DEATH OF ADOLF HITLER, New York: Praeger Publishers, 1973, pg 125
18.THE OCCULT ROOTS OF NAZISM, pg 46,149
19.THE SPEAR OF DESTINY, pg 165 – 6. In one of his very rare footnotes. Ravenscroft puts the source of this information in Francis King's RITUAL MAGIC IN ENGLAND, London: Neville Spearman, 1970.
20.Ibid., pg 167.
21.Ibid., pg 169.
22.Ibid., pg 91.
23.Ibid., pg xxi.
24.THE OCCULT ROOTS OF NAZISM, pg 224.
25.Christoph Lindenberg, "THE SPEAR OF DESTINY", in DIE DREI, December 1974.
26.Ibid. The number of testicles Hitler possessed has been the subject of controversy for decades. Werner Maser argued in a 1973 book that a Russian autopsy of Hitler's body reporting one testicle was flawed by the fact that the Russians had the wrong body. But Norbert Bromberg and Verna Volz Small in their 1983 book HITLER'S PSYCHOPATHOLOGY think the evidence does point to Hitler's having had the condition known as monorchidism. What it may mean is subject to a good deal of psychological dispute; see Waite's THE PSYCHOPATHIC GOD, pg 182 – 202. Many people so afflicted insist they are "magical persons".
27. THE SPEAR OF DESTINY, pg 53 – 61
28. Lindenberg,ibid.
29. THE SPEAR OF DESTINY, pg 127 – 36.
30. Lindenberg, ibid.


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Justice Edward T. Fairchild (1872–1965)
Justice Edward T. FairchildWisconsin Supreme Court Justice: 1930–1957
Chief Justice: 1954–1957
Life: 1872–1965
"All you have to do is to use common sense, the trouble starts when you have to decide whose common sense is to prevail." – Chief Justice Edward T. Fairchild, oral history (1957)
Edward Thomas Fairchild was born on June 17, 1872, in Towanda, Pennsylvania. He was raised and educated in Dansville, New York. He was admitted to the New York Bar in 1894 and was the last Wisconsin Supreme Court justice not to earn a law degree from an institution of higher learning. Although he spent the majority of his life in Wisconsin, he never lost the connection with his hometown. He bought a farm in Dansville in the 1920s and returned to vacation there throughout his life.
In 1897, Fairchild moved to Milwaukee and practiced law for 19 years. From 1903 to 1906, he was an assistant district attorney for Milwaukee County. He was elected to the Wisconsin Senate in 1906 and served for two sessions. In 1910, he ran unsuccessfully for governor of Wisconsin, but was re-elected to the Senate in 1914.
Fairchild was appointed a circuit judge for Milwaukee County in 1916, where he served until his appointment to the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 1930. Fairchild's chambers served as the "social center of the court." Fellow justices gathered there to have tea and tell stories. A skillful storyteller, Fairchild often entertained his company with amusing accounts of political and legal battles from the turn of the century.
After 40 years of service in the state judiciary, Fairchild, 84, retired from the Supreme Court in 1957. Before retiring, Fairchild swore in his son, Thomas E. Fairchild, as a member of the state Supreme Court.
Throughout his life, Fairchild helped people. He was active in organizing Milwaukee's Community Welfare Council and the Urban League of Milwaukee. While in the Senate, he introduced legislation supporting vocational training and later became known as the "father of the Vocational School System in Wisconsin." He also served on a committee that wrote the Workmen's Compensation Act.
Fairchild died October 29, 1965, at the age of 93. He was married to Helen McCurdy Edwards. Two of their five children survived him, Anne and Thomas.


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I returned home from the AGU Fall Meeting last night, and after a good night's sleep I am almost recovered – it's amazing how tired science can make you!
The whole conference felt sort of surreal. Meeting and conversing with others was definitely the best part. I shook the hand of James Hansen and assured him that he is making a difference. I talked about my research with Gavin Schmidt. I met dozens of people that were previously just names on a screen, from top scientists like Michael Mann and Ben Santer to fellow bloggers like Michael Tobis and John Cook.
I filled most of a journal with notes I took during presentations, and saw literally hundreds of posters. I attended a workshop on climate science communication, run by Susan Joy Hassol and Richard Sommerville, which fundamentally altered my strategies for public outreach. Be sure to check out their new website, and their widely acclaimed Physics Today paper that summarizes most of their work.
Speaking of fabulous communication, take a few minutes to watch this memorial video for Stephen Schneider – it's by the same folks who turned Bill McKibben's article into a video:
AGU inspired so many posts that I think I will publish something every day this week. Be sure to check back often!


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As featured in the White House Blog
Last week, USAID Administrator Dr. Rajiv Shah gave a major address to over 200 non-governmental organizations, think-tanks, academics, and international development leaders hosted by the Center for Global Development. The text of the speech as prepared for delivery can be found here. Dr. Shah's speech on The Modern Development Enterprise addressed the current state of development and formally announced the Agency's 50th anniversary.
In his speech, Dr. Shah recognized the important role of religious and community groups in providing assistance to those most in need around the world. I thought you'd be especially interested in the excerpts below:
- American Values: When we prevent violence in Southern Sudan, we're not just avoiding future military involvement; we're also expressing America's values. When schoolchildren organize bakesales to pay for anti-malarial bed nets, they are expressing America's values. When more American families gave money to the Haiti relief than watched the Super Bowl, they were expressing America's values. When church groups across America raise money and volunteer to support children orphaned by AIDS, they are expressing America's values.
- Communities of Faith: I'm proud to know that USAID is one of CRS's largest supporters. But I'm also proud to know that we support a wide-range of faith-based organizations, from Samaritan's Purse to the American Jewish World Service. Organizations of faith not only express the moral values of millions of Americans, they also provide some of the most dependable support systems for millions in the developing world. In Kenya for example, 30% of all healthcare services are provided by Christian Hospitals. Our success depends on listening to communities of faith, connecting with them deeply, and supporting the vital work they perform around the world.
- Food Security: Instead of merely providing food aid in times of emergency, we are helping countries develop their own agricultural sectors, so that they can feed themselves. We launched Feed the Future – bringing together resources across the federal government and engaging in deeper partnerships to extend the impact of our efforts. We are now leveraging more investment from countries themselves and from other donors. Firms ranging from General Mills to local African seed companies are all doing more. As a result, in just five of our twenty focus countries we will be able to help nearly 6.5 million poor farmers – most of them women – grow enough food to feed their families and break the grip of hunger and poverty for tens of millions of people.
- Global Health: In our Global Health Initiative, instead of a scattered approach that fights individual diseases one at a time, we are pursuing an integrated approach that will generate efficiencies and strengthen health systems. We are now working with partners such as the NIH, CDC and PEPFAR to leverage recent advances in science and technology, especially in high return areas such as vaccinating children, preventing HIV, malaria and TB and focusing on childhood nutrition during pregnancy and the first two years of life.
- Smart and Transparent Investments: I want the American taxpayer to know that every dollar they invest in USAID is being invested in the smartest, most efficient, and most transparent way possible.
- 50th Anniversary: This year, USAID will celebrate its 50th anniversary. Our legacy is filled with incredible accomplishments. Throughout those fifty years, we have contributed greatly toward ending an incomprehensible measure of human suffering, and I urge you to learn more about our Agency's rich legacy through our newly launched anniversary Web site, http://50th.usaid.gov. But if I am lucky enough to live another 50 years, I hope I am also lucky enough not to witness our centennial. Instead, I hope we will be commemorating the success of USAID's mission.
Ari Alexander serves as Deputy Director at the Center for Faith-based & Community Initiatives and the Coordinator of Global Engagement.


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Bar report: 12th Ave Grill
From left: Dead Man's Wallet, Cucumber + Lemon Fizz
12th Ave Grill
In Kaimuki, 1145 12th Ave.
Of the two Kevin Hanney restaurants, Salt has commanded the cocktail spotlight. And understandably so: Whereas Salt's dining space is built around the bar, 12th Ave Grill's is the size of a ship's galley and almost as invisible. In the new 12th Ave Grill, the bar will grow into a real space, but in the meantime, bar manager Mike Hall more than makes do in his space that he shares with the kitchen pass. Fitting right in with 12th Ave Grill's philosophy of seasonal and handcrafted ingredients, Hall develops his own components such as a strawberry-basil shrub (a vinegary fruit syrup made from apple cider vinegar, fresh fruit, sugar and neutral grain spirit) and aromatic bitters. While 12th Ave Grill is best known for its food, the direction of Hall's drinks makes the bar worth returning to. On Tuesdays through Thursdays, patrons can participate in the Craft Bar happy hour, with appetizers under $10, including the 12th Ave burger, and Hall's $5 cocktail special.
The Drinks
As I waited for the Dead Man's Wallet, wine-drinking bar patrons to my left and right commented on Hall's attention to detail. "It looks like he's measuring a science experiment," one commented. Another asked if what I had ordered was "really worth waiting for." Measurement and precision are often overlooked when making drinks, I said, and I appreciate a barman who pays attention to these kinds of details. After all, what's the fun in drinking something that's inconsistent from one time to the next? Soon, everyone was ordering cocktails, and the bar was lined with Old-Fashioneds, Manhattans, and Dead Man's Wallets, the latter made with Rittenhouse Rye, Broadbent Madeira, Angostura, fresh lemon, Hall's Big Island cinnamon syrup and house bitters. It had an aroma befitting a Mad Men steakhouse. The Madeira was a nice choice, offering body and fruitiness where a sweet vermouth wouldn't.
Not all drinks in Hall's repertoire are as rich. His Yellow Watermelon+Mint Cooler, served in a mason jar, had all the elements of summer. Yellow watermelon tends to have sweeter and softer flesh than its pink cousin, and Hall let its flavor sing with Lillet Blanc, Koloa rum, fresh lemon juice, and local honey.
Some of his drinks tend to lean on certain crutches (not necessarily a bad thing). He likes the sweetening combination of dry vermouth, fresh citrus and honey simple syrup. Try the Strawberry Fields, which uses those ingredients plus his strawberry-basil shrub, cognac and ginger beer. His gin sidecar variation, the L'Orange, uses the same crutch; this time via Cocchi Americano and Kau oranges.
The drinks are accessible for wine and beer drinkers, and his housemade ingredients give cocktail enthusiasts something to look forward to.
To Be Improved
I like Hall's attention to process and technique. He's tuned into what ingredients might advance his drinks or tie in with what's going on in the kitchen. The quality of the restaurant and kitchen will help enforce high standards in terms of the bar. Those who prefer lighter, sweeter drinks will find a cocktail here, but I'd like to see more spirit-forward drinks and more attention to presentation. My guess is that his program will mature when 12th Ave moves into its new space and he actually has a bar to work behind.


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CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) — Bronco Mendenhall isn't big on fiery halftime speeches. So, with his team trailing visiting Old Dominion by 10 points at halftime, the Virginia coach's message to his players was simple.
"All I said was, 'Now that that's over, we'll start playing,'" Mendenhall said.
His defense certainly did.
Linebacker Zane Zandier returned an interception 22 yards for a touchdown, part of a dominant defensive second half, as the 21st-ranked Cavaliers rallied past the Monarchs 28-17 on Saturday night to remain undefeated.
Old Dominion's failed fourth-down try in its own territory set up Virginia's go-ahead score, a 7-yard touchdown run by Wayne Taulapapa with 10:16 to go for a 21-17 edge.
After the game, Monarchs coach Bobby Wilder defended the decision.
"We came in here to win and that is how we tried to play today," he said.
The Cavaliers (4-0) are off to their best start since opening 5-0 in 2004. The Monarchs (1-2) have lost two in a row, both to in-state ACC opponents. They lost to Virginia Tech two weekends ago, a year after stunning the Hokies in Norfolk.
Linebacker Charles Snowden finished with a game-high 15 tackles, including two of the five sacks on Old Dominion quarterback Stone Smartt. He echoed Mendenhall's sentiment that the halftime mood was more about getting reset than getting motivated.
"Just kind of gathering ourselves in the locker room, settling down, taking a breather," Snowden said. "Wasn't a lot of 'rah-rah.' It was just, 'go out and play the way we know we can play.'"
Virginia quarterback Bryce Perkins didn't have his best statistical game, but still ran for one score and threw for another. He left the game for a play on Virginia's final possession after taking a big hit from Old Dominion defensive end Keion White while trying to pick up an errant snap.
White had a big game, finishing with six tackles, including 3 1/2 for losses, and blocked a potential game-tying field goal in the second half.
"I was just trying to fight. Our team needed it," White said. "I was just trying to fight but obviously wasn't good enough."
Fueled by Virginia penalties and defensive miscues, Old Dominion jumped out to a 17-0 lead with 10:32 left in the first half. The Monarchs got an 8-yard scoring run from Smartt, and a 47-yard touchdown pass from Smartt to Matt Geiger against a busted coverage in the secondary by the Cavaliers.
"Old Dominion showed up ready and hungry and eager to play," Mendenhall said. "It took us, our program, my program, much longer to reach that same state."
A 57-yard kickoff return by Joe Reed gave Virginia the ball at the Old Dominion 33-yard line, the Cavaliers finally got going in the second quarter. It took one of Perkins' jaw-dropping runs — a 10-yard scramble that saw him dodge a rusher, outrun another defender and sidestep a third — to finally get Virginia on the board, pulling to 17-7 with 6:57 left in the first half.
The Cavaliers got their second touchdown when Smartt, under pressure, tried to force a short throw that was intercepted by Zandier and run back 22 yards for a touchdown with 10 minutes to go in the third.
"That sparks the whole team," Reed said.
Old Dominion: Smartt's running ability will help keep Old Dominion in a lot of games. He's a dynamic playmaker who can be used on designed runs or to make something out of nothing when plays break down. But what really helped the Monarchs get off to a fast start in this one was Smartt's development throwing the ball. He hit on his first six throws, threw his first touchdown pass of the season and finished . His bad decision on his interception to Zandier helped turn the game, but overall, Smartt took a step forward in the throw game.
Virginia: After a shaky start, Virginia's defense took control in the second half, holding Old Dominion to just 46 total yards while shutting out the Monarchs after the break. Led by linebackers Jordan Mack and Charles Snowden, The Cavaliers forced two three-and-outs and twice stopped Old Dominion on fourth down. Virginia finished with five sacks.
Old Dominion: The Monarchs jump into Conference USA play, hosting East Carolina and new coach Mike Houston, on Saturday night.
Virginia: The Cavaliers face their first ranked opponent when they visit Notre Dame.
More AP college football: https://apnews.com/Collegefootball and https://twitter.com/AP_Top25


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You've undoubtedly seen iris scanners being tricked by some high-tech contact or even via a scavenged eyeball in action/adventure or thriller movies when a secret agent or criminal wants to break into a vault or other high tech facility. Yet what if iris scans could be faked for real via a simple printed image to fool iris recognition systems? What if iris recognition biometric systems could be hacked?
From the Iriscode to the Iris: A New Vulnerability of Iris Recognition Systems is a Black Hat USA briefing scheduled for July 25. This strikes me as particularly interesting in light of the FBI's plans to test a database "for searching iris scans nationwide to more quickly track criminals." The Black Hat talk will be presented by Javier Galbally who described it as:
A binary iriscode is a very compact representation of an iris image, and, for a long time, it has been assumed that it did not contain enough information to allow the reconstruction of the original iris. The present work proposes a novel probabilistic approach to reconstruct iris images from binary templates and analyzes to what extent the reconstructed samples are similar to the original ones (that is, those from which the templates were extracted). The performance of the reconstruction technique is assessed by estimating the success chances of an attack carried out with the synthetic iris patterns against a commercial iris recognition system. The experimental results show that the reconstructed images are very realistic and that, even though a human expert would not be easily deceived by them, there is a high chance that they can break into an iris recognition system.
Javier Galbally has been involved with numerous biometric recognition security research projects and vulnerability assessments such as "synthetic generation of biometric traits." One European project focuses on finding potential vulnerabilities to exploit in the Tabula Rasa biometric project. According to Trusted Biometrics under Spoofing Attacks, the range of Tabula Rasa biometrics considered includes: "2D face, 3D face, multi-spectral face, iris, fingerprint, voice, gait, vein and electro-physiology, in addition to multi-modal biometrics."
Galbally has published numerous research papers on exploiting biometrics such as Vulnerabilities in Biometric Systems: Attacks and Recent Advances in Liveness Detection [PDF] and Direct attacks using fake images in iris verification. The latter used a database of fake iris images created from real iris images via the BioSec baseline database. "Iris images are printed using a commercial printer and then, presented at the iris sensor." The conclusion stated, "Results showed that the system is highly vulnerable to the two evaluated attacks. We also observed that about 40% of the fake images were correctly segmented by the system. When that this happens, the intruder is granted access with high probability, being the success rate of the two attacks of 50% or higher."
Another of Galbally's research papers, On the Vulnerability of Iris-based Systems to a Software Attack based on a Genetic Algorithm was described as "a novel indirect attack based on a genetic algorithm has been presented and used to evaluate a standard iris verification system to this type of threat. As many as 90% of the accounts are successfully broken in a similar number of generations for all the operating points considered, proving the vulnerabilities of such systems to this new attacking scheme." The main objective was "not to design a perfect method to break the security of biometric systems, but to encourage developers of algorithms and systems to seriously take into account this kind of attack and to implement specific protections and countermeasures."
Last year the FBI announced plans to roll out a nationwide face search and recognition system with one of the goals being "to put a name to every photo already collected by law enforcement." At the time, NextGov reported, "the system is being overhauled to a tune of $1 billion to be faster and more accurate as well as add other biometric markers like 'iris scans and voice recordings'." This budget justification states "one of the 'planned accomplishments for BY13' -- the budget year that begins Oct. 1 -- is to 'demonstrate iris recognition capabilities via the iris pilot'."
President and Chief Executive Officer Sean G. Mullin of BI2 Technologies said the "FBI plans to conduct an iris pilot in 2014. Local agencies in 47 states now participate in B12's nationwide Inmate Identification and Recognition System, or IRIS, which has been operating for six years." He added that "the average iris recognition time -- from when an image is captured to when an officer receives a response -- is 7.8 seconds."
"Although privacy advocates have little criticism of the use of iris scanning in correctional settings," according to AllGov, "the fact that the FBI and state prison officials are using a database owned and maintained by a private corporation, BI2 Technologies, gives many pause." Yet the company's website states that BI2's iris images are "encrypted using strong cryptographic algorithms to secure and protect them. Thus, standing alone, biometric templates cannot be reconstructed, decrypted, reverse-engineered or otherwise manipulated to reveal a person's identity. In short, biometrics can be thought of as a very secure key: Unless a biometric gate is unlocked by using the right key, no one can gain access to a person's identity."
When it comes to biometrics, we've come a long way. The military has long been using three primary biometrics: iris, finger and face. Homeland Security also uses iris scan biometrics at the border as do police when correctly identifying criminals is considered "crucial." Yet that is just the tip since intelligence agencies can use satellite imagery to track terrorists' movements by their shadows. There are DNA voice prints, heartbeat detectors, gait recognition and biometric sensors to detect abnormal sweating. Fingerprints instead of passwords can unlock encrypted hard drives, and fingerprints can be scanned from over six feet away. Unlike a credit card that be canceled if stolen, most people wouldn't go so far as biometric fraud and replace their fingerprints or irises. The EFF warned, "Some biometrics, like faces, voices, and fingerprints, are easily 'grabbed.' While Galbally's Black Hat presentation may or may not apply to BI2 Technologies, it will be interesting to hear about how iris recognition systems can be hacked.