Colony Collapse Disorder and E/M radiation from Mobile Phone Masts

HONEY, WHERE ARE THE BEES?

KOUNTEYA SINHA & ARUN RAM TIMES NEWS NETWORK ,

24 October 2009, 12:44pm IST

Not so long ago, many communities in India believed that a honeybee buzzing next to one's ears heralded good news, some said it meant a missive
was on its way. As time went by, cellular phones made that kind of anxious wait redundant. Then, one day, when the bees stopped troubling people, no one noticed it.

Unhappy as it may sound, scientists are now veering towards the belief that bees, which pollinate almost 80 per cent of all fruits and vegetables, have started to disappear. The US, Europe and the UK have been reporting large bee disappearances, posing a direct threat to the survival of thousands of plants used for food, fibers and medicines - a "potential health crisis for the planet" and an already fragile ecosystem. Financially, too, this is worrisome. According to a recent study in the journal Ecological Economics, the worldwide economic value of pollination is estimated at more than $215 billion, or about 9.5 per cent of the total agricultural production.

Frighteningly for India, the crisis may now just be hitting home. Kerala has recorded a similar phenomenon, as have other parts of the country. But what's causing this bizarre natural phenomenon could have something to do with the way you talk. Researchers investigating the trend say radio frequency radiation RFR) emitted by mobile phones and towers is the real culprit.

Dr Sainuddin Pakattazhy, a zoology expert from S N College, Punalur, said electromagnetic waves emitted by such towers hamper the navigational skills of worker bees that set out to collect nectar. During an experiment, when a cell phone was kept near a bee hive, Pakattazhy noticed that worker bees lost their way, leaving the hives with only the queens and eggs. The result: the colony collapsed within 10 days - a phenomenon many call the 'Colony Collapse Disorder' (CCD). German researchers, too, have recorded behavioural changes in bees near mobile towers.

Though theories on the cause of colony collapse blame attack from viruses, mites, pesticides and fungi for it, Pakattazhy's findings have now given an entirely new dimension to the whole thing. Dr George Carlo, who headed a study by the US government on the hazard from mobile phones, said, "I am convinced the possibility is real." Scientists in India now fear that honeybees in areas densely populated with mobile towers could be wiped out in the next few years.

"We have documented a 60 per cent decrease in the population of honeybees and sparrows in Kerala,'' Pakattazhy said, darkly. "The implications are alarming. Most of the world's crops depend on pollination by bees. The demand for crops that rely on insects for pollination has more than tripled over the last half century. Disappearance of honeybees, therefore, could cause considerable stress."

Flower nectar is one of two food sources used by honeybees. The other is pollen, which worker bees gather daily on foraging flights. As bees hunt for nectar, pollen sticks to the tiny hairs covering their bodies. Some of that pollen rubs off on the next flower the bee visits and this fertilizes it, resulting in better fruit production. The bees unload the remaining pollen when they return to the hive, which is stored in the honeycomb , providing protein and other nutrients for future use.

It's not just bees, though, that may be in trouble. On a pleasant summer morning back in 2004, R K Kohli, a scientist at the Centre for Environment and Vocational Studies , Panjab University, was taking a stroll on the sprawling green campus when a friend threw him a challenge: spot a sparrow, he said. It took Kohli five days to do that. "That's when I decided to study the reasons for the bird's disappearance," said Kohli. He looked up literature and found studies in some foreign countries that said electromagnetic radiation (EMR) from cell phone masts could be interfering with the population of some urban birds. He teamed up with V P Sharma, a zoologist in the university, and some others for a comprehensive study on the effect of EMR on birds, bees and plants in 2006. The results, some of which were published in the Journal of Total Environment last month, showed radiation from cell phone towers affected all the forms of lives studied. "In birds, EMR was found to be distorting the development of embryos," Kohli said, adding, "Now we have to see how they get affected at the cellular level." Researchers at the Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History (SACON), Coimbatore , say there are enough reasons to attribute bird mortality to these radiations. "Cell phones and towers emit microwaves of very low frequency, of 900 or 1,800 MHz. These can result in thin skulls of chicks and thin egg shells," said Dhanya R, who researches on the impact of modernisation on house sparrows. Earlier studies in Spain and Belgium, too, have established the ill-effects of EMR on birds. Chennai-based zoologist Ranjit Daniels said a combination of factors is responsible for the diminishing population of birds like the house sparrow (Passer domesticus ), red-whiskered bulbul (Pycnonotus jocosus), brahmini kite (Haliastur indus) and spotted dove (Streptopelia chinensis) in Indian cities. "Birds are known to be sensitive to magnetic radiation. Migratory birds travel long distances gauging the earth's magnetic field. Microwaves from cell phone towers can interfere with birds' sensors and misguide them while navigating and preying," Daniels said. In fact, some studies on EMR predict total extinction of sparrows in Valladolid, Spain, by 2020. "In the 77-sq km city of Chandigarh, there were 199 mobile phone towers at the beginning of the study,'' said Kohli. "Now the city has about 280. There are four towers on our university campus alone. It's like getting microwaved minus the heat."

THE BUZZ AIN'T GOOD

Globally, there has been an alarming drop in the honeybee population. But there isn't any clear explanation as to why they are dying in such large numbers

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) has affected over 36 states in the US, as well as Europe, South America and China. Theories on the cause of bee colony collapse include attacks from viruses, mites, pesticides, fungi, and now mobile phone towers

The US has lost 35 per cent of its bee population, and is losing eight per cent more every year
Honeybees are predicted to be extinct in the US by 2035, just from loss of habitat, pesticides and parasites. After CCD, it's likely to happen much sooner

In 1960, beekeepers were charging $3 per hive. By 2004, the figure stood at $60. But due to CCD, it is $180 per hive in the US currently In 2006, US beekeepers had to import bees for the first time in 80 years

Doctors speak out about H1N1 VACCINE DANGERS

The Love Police

These guys are great.

Why We're In Afghanistan

America's Phoney War in Afghanistan

by F. William Engdahl

One of the most remarkable aspects of the Obama Presidential agenda is how little anyone has questioned in the media or elsewhere why at all the United States Pentagon is committed to a military occupation of Afghanistan. There are two basic reasons, neither one of which can be admitted openly to the public at large.

Behind all the deceptive official debate over how many troops are needed to “win” the war in Afghanistan, whether another 30,000 is sufficient, or whether at least 200000 are needed, the real purpose of US military presence in that pivotal Central Asian country is obscured.

Even during the 2008 Presidential campaign candidate Obama argued that Afghanistan not Iraq was where the US must wage war. His reason? Because he claimed, that was where the Al Qaeda organization was holed up and that was the “real” threat to US national security. The reasons behind US involvement in Afghanistan is quite another one.

The US military is in Afghanistan for two reasons. First to restore and control the world’s largest supply of opium for the world heroin markets and to use the drugs as a geopolitical weapon against opponents, especially Russia. That control of the Afghan drug market is essential for the liquidity of the bankrupt and corrupt Wall Street financial mafia.

Geopolitics of Afghan Opium
According even to an official UN report, opium production in Afghanistan has risen dramatically since the downfall of the Taliban in 2001. UNODC data shows more opium poppy cultivation in each of the past four growing seasons (2004-2007), than in any one year during Taliban rule. More land is now used for opium in Afghanistan, than for coca cultivation in Latin America. In 2007, 93% of the opiates on the world market originated in Afghanistan. This is no accident.

It has been documented that Washington hand-picked the controversial Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun warlord from the Popalzai tribe, long in the CIA’s service, brought him back from exile in the USA, created a Hollywood mythology around his “courageous leadership of his people.” According to Afghan sources, Karzai is the Opium “Godfather” of Afghanistan today. There is apparently no accident that he was and is today still Washington’s preferred man in Kabul. Yet even with massive vote buying and fraud and intimidation, Karzai’s days could be ending as President.

The second reason the US military remains in Afghanistan long after the world has forgotten even who the mysterious Osama bin Laden and his alleged Al Qaeda terrorist organization is or even if they exist, is as a pretext to build a permanent US military strike force with a series of permanent US airbases across Afghanistan. The aim of those bases is not to eradicate any Al Qaeda cells that may have survived in the caves of Tora Bora, or to eradicate a mythical “Taliban” which at this point according to eyewitness reports is made up overwhelmingly of local ordinary Afghanis fighting to rid their land once more of occupier armies as they did in the 11980’s against the Russians.

The aim of the US bases in Afghanistan is to target and be able to strike at the two nations which today represent the only combined threat in the world today to an American global imperium, to America’s Full Spectrum Dominance as the Pentagon terms it.

The lost ‘Mandate of Heaven’

The problem for the US power elites around Wall Street and in Washington is the fact that they are now in the deepest financial crisis in their history. That crisis is clear to the entire world and the world is acting on a basis of self-survival. The US elites have lost what in Chinese imperial history is known as the Mandate of Heaven. That mandate is given a ruler or ruling elite provided they rule their people justly and fairly. When they rule tyrannically and as despots, oppressing and abusing their people, they lose that Mandate of Heaven.

If the powerful private wealthy elites that have controlled essential US financial and foreign policy for most of the past century or more ever had a “mandate of Heaven” they clearly have lost it. The domestic developments towards creation of an abusive police state with deprivation of Constitutional rights to its citizens, the arbitrary exercise of power by non elected officials such as Treasury Secretaries Henry Paulson and now Tim Geithner, stealing trillion dollar sums from taxpayers without their consent in order to bailout the bankrupt biggest Wall Street banks, banks deemed “Too Big To Fail,” this all demonstrates to the world they have lost the mandate

In this situation, the US power elites are increasingly desperate to maintain their control of a global parasitical empire, called deceptively by their media machine, “globalization.” To hold that dominance it is essential that they be able to break up any emerging cooperation in the economic, energy or military realm between the two major powers of Eurasia that conceivably could pose a challenge to future US sole Superpower control—China in combination with Russia.

Each Eurasian power brings to the table essential contributions. China has the world’s most robust economy, a huge young and dynamic workforce, an educated middle class. Russia, whose economy has not recovered from the destructive end pf the Soviet era and of the primitive looting during the Yeltsin era, still holds essential assets for the combination. Russia’s nuclear strike force and its military pose the only threat in the world today to US military dominance, even if it is largely a residue of the Cold War. The Russian military elites never gave up that potential.

As well Russia holds the world’s largest treasure of natural gas and vast reserves of oil urgently needed by China. The two powers are increasingly converging via a new organization they created in 2001 known as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). That includes as well as China and Russia, the largest Central Asia states Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

The purpose of the alleged US war against both Taliban and Al Qaeda is in reality to place its military strike force directly in the middle of the geographical space of this emerging SCO in Central Asia. Iran is a diversion. The main goal or target is Russia and China.

Officially, of course, Washington claims it has built its military presence inside Afghanistan since 2002 in order to protect a “fragile” Afghan democracy. It’s a curious argument given the reality of US military presence there.

In December 2004, during a visit to Kabul, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld finalized plans to build nine new bases in Afghanistan in the provinces of Helmand, Herat, Nimrouz, Balkh, Khost and Paktia. The nine are in addition to the three major US military bases already installed in the wake of its occupation of Afghanistan in winter of 2001-2002, ostensibly to isolate and eliminate the terror threat of Osama bin Laden.

The Pentagon built its first three bases at Bagram Air Field north of Kabul, the US’ main military logistics center; Kandahar Air Field, in southern Afghanistan; and Shindand Air Field in the western province of Herat. Shindand, the largest US base in Afghanistan, was constructed a mere 100 kilometers from the border of Iran, and within striking distance of Russia as well as China.

Afghanistan has historically been the heartland for the British-Russia Great Game, the struggle for control of Central Asia during the 19th and early 20th Centuries. British strategy then was to prevent Russia at all costs from controlling Afghanistan and thereby threatening Britain’s imperial crown jewel, India.
Afghanistan is similarly regarded by Pentagon planners as highly strategic. It is a platform from which US military power could directly threaten Russia and China, as well as Iran and other oil-rich Middle East lands. Little has changed geopolitically over more than a century of wars.
Afghanistan is in an extremely vital location, straddling South Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East. Afghanistan also lies along a proposed oil pipeline route from the Caspian Sea oil fields to the Indian Ocean, where the US oil company, Unocal, along with Enron and Cheney’s Halliburton, had been in negotiations for exclusive pipeline rights to bring natural gas from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan and Pakistan to Enron’s huge natural gas power plant at Dabhol near Mumbai. Karzai, before becoming puppet US president, had been a Unocal lobbyist.

Al Qaeda doesn’t exist as a threat

The truth of all this deception around the real purpose in Afghanistan becomes clear on a closer look at the alleged “Al Qaeda” threat in Afghanistan. According to author Erik Margolis, prior to the September 11,2001 attacks, US intelligence was giving aid and support both to the Taliban and to Al Qaeda. Margolis claims that “The CIA was planning to use Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda to stir up Muslim Uighurs against Chinese rule, and Taliban against Russia’s Central Asian allies.”

The US clearly found other means of stirring up Muslim Uighurs against Beijing last July via its support for the World Uighur Congress. But the Al Qaeda “threat” remains the lynchpin of Obama US justification for his Afghan war buildup.

Now, however, the National Security Adviser to President Obama, former Marine Gen. James Jones has made a statement, conveniently buried by the friendly US media, about the estimated size of the present Al Qaeda danger in Afghanistan. Jones told Congress, “The al-Qaeda presence is very diminished. The maximum estimate is less than 100 operating in the country, no bases, no ability to launch attacks on either us or our allies.”

That means that Al-Qaeda, for all practical purposes, does not exist in Afghanistan. Oops…

Even in neighboring Pakistan, the remnants of Al-Qaeda are scarcely to be found. The Wall Street Journal reports, “Hunted by US drones, beset by money problems and finding it tougher to lure young Arabs to the bleak mountains of Pakistan, al Qaeda is seeing its role shrink there and in Afghanistan, according to intelligence reports and Pakistan and U.S. officials. For Arab youths who are al Qaeda’s primary recruits, ‘it’s not romantic to be cold and hungry and hiding,’ said a senior U.S. official in South Asia.”

If we follow the statement to its logical consequence we must conclude then that the reason German soldiers are dying along with other NATO youth in the mountains of Afghanistan has nothing to do with “winning a war against terrorism.” Conveniently most media chooses to forget the fact that Al Qaeda to the extent it ever existed, was a creation in the 1980’s of the CIA, who recruited and trained radical muslims from across the Islamic world to wage war against Russian troops in Afghanistan as part of a strategy developed by Reagan’s CIA head Bill Casey and others to create a “new Vietnam” for the Soviet Union which would lead to a humiliating defeat for the Red Army and the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union.

Now US NSC head Jones admits there is essentially no Al Qaeda anymore in Afghanistan. Perhaps it is time for a more honest debate from our political leaders about the true purpose of sending more young to die protecting the opium harvests of Afghanistan.

F. William Engdahl is author of Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order. He may be reached via his website at www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15761

The Warning

"We didn't truly know the dangers of the market, because it was a dark market," says Brooksley Born, the head of an obscure federal regulatory agency -- the Commodity Futures Trading Commission [CFTC] -- who not only warned of the potential for economic meltdown in the late 1990s, but also tried to convince the country's key economic powerbrokers to take actions that could have helped avert the crisis. "They were totally opposed to it," Born says. "That puzzled me. What was it that was in this market that had to be hidden?"

PASTOR LYNDSEY WILLIAMS

These disclosures by Lyndsay Williams are part of the ongoing occult "Revelation Of The Method".

Williams predicted the massive fall in the price of oil a couple of years ago, explaining why it would happen. He was told this by the same insider who informed him of the following information (below).

Here he says a World War will start in the 'Iran region' in about 2 years time and this will lead us all into a huge world war.

This guy chills the blood. He is a Christian pastor, a genuine man and a real truth-teller, I think.

If we do not respond strongly the 'revelation' represents a process of even deeper enslavement to the elite. If we do not find a way to challenge the power of the shadow government we are in the most dreadful trouble.

PART TWO


PART ONE


PART THREE

SOMETHING MONUMENTALLY LARGE AFOOT

David Kaiser
Infowars
October 17, 2009

I am a student of history. Professionally, I have written 15 books on history that have been published in six languages, and I have studied history all my life. I have come to think there is something monumentally large afoot, and I do not believe it is simply a banking crisis, or a mortgage crisis, or a credit crisis. Yes these exist, but they are merely single facets on a very large gemstone that is only now coming into a sharper focus.

Something of historic proportions is happening. I can sense it because I know how it feels, smells, what it looks like, and how people react to it. Yes, a perfect storm may be brewing, but there is something happening within our country that has been evolving for about ten to fifteen years. The pace has dramatically quickened in the past two.

We demand and then codify into law the requirement that our banks make massive loans to people we know they can never pay back? Why?

We learned just days ago that the Federal Reserve, which has little or no real oversight by anyone, has “loaned” two trillion dollars (that is $2,000,000,000,000) over the past few months, but will not tell us to whom or why or disclose the terms. That is our money. Yours and mine. And that is three times the $700 billion we all argued about so strenuously just this past September. Who has this money? Why do they have it? Why are the terms unavailable to us? Who asked for it? Who authorized it? I thought this was a government of “we the people,” who loaned our powers to our elected leaders. Apparently not.

We have spent two or more decades intentionally de-industrializing our economy.. Why?

We have intentionally dumbed down our schools, ignored our history, and no longer teach our founding documents, why we are exceptional, and why we are worth preserving. Students by and large cannot write, think critically, read, or articulate. Parents are not revolting, teachers are not picketing, school boards continue to back mediocrity.. Why?

We have now established the precedent of protesting every close election (violently in California over a proposition that is so controversial that it simply wants marriage to remain defined as between one man and one woman. Did you ever think such a thing possible just a decade ago?) We have corrupted our sacred political process by allowing unelected judges to write laws that radically change our way of life, and then mainstream Marxist groups like ACORN and others to turn our voting system into a banana republic. To what purpose?

Now our mortgage industry is collapsing, housing prices are in free fall, major industries are failing, our banking system is on the verge of collapse, social security is nearly bankrupt, as is Medicare and our entire government. Our education system is worse than a joke (I teach college and I know precisely what I am talking about) – the list is staggering in its length, breadth, and depth.. It is potentially 1929 x ten…And we are at war with an enemy we cannot even name for fear of offending people of the same religion, who, in turn, cannot wait to slit the throats of your children if they have the opportunity to do so.

And finally, we have elected a man that no one really knows anything about, who has never run so much as a Dairy Queen, let alone a town as big as Wasilla, Alaska. All of his associations and alliances are with real radicals in their chosen fields of employment, and everything we learn about him, drip by drip, is unsettling if not downright scary (Surely you have heard him speak about his idea to create and fund a mandatory civilian defense force stronger than our military for use inside our borders? No? Oh, of course. The media would never play that for you over and over and then demand he answer it. Sarah Palin’s pregnant daughter and $150,000 wardrobe are more important.)

Mr. Obama’s winning platform can be boiled down to one word: Change. Why?

I have never been so afraid for my country and for my children as I am now.

This man campaigned on bringing people together, something he has never, ever done in his professional life In my assessment, Obama will divide us along philosophical lines, push us apart, and then try to realign the pieces into a new and different power structure. Change is indeed coming. And when it comes, you will never see the same nation again.

And that is only the beginning..

Perfidious Albion/USA

Should anyone believe a single word uttered from the mouths of UK/US politicians about Afghanistan or Pakistan. We (US/UK) pretend to be supporting the Pakistan government from the Taliban yet Webster Tarpley, who was predicting that Obama would win the presidency in January 2008 when Hilary Clinton was front-runner and hot favourite to win, states in the 2008 video below that a primary goal of Obama's presidency will be the breaking up of Pakistan. The aim is to deprive China of a natural ally and partner in the region. After this interview further evidence of UK/Taliban co-operation is posted. Go figure.



UK ARMY 'PROVIDING' TALIBAN WITH AIR TRANSPORT (link)

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 17:47:38 GMT

The British army has been relocating Taliban insurgents from southern Afghanistan to the north by providing transportation means, diplomats say.

The diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said insurgents are being airlifted from the southern province of Helmand to the north amid increasing violence in the northern parts of the country.

The aircraft used for the transfer have been identified as British Chinook helicopters.

The officials said Sultan Munadi, an Afghan interpreter who was kidnapped along with his employer, New York Times reporter Stephen Farrell, was killed by a “British sniper” as commandos executed a rescue operation to free Farrell.

They said Munadi was targeted for possessing documents and pictures pointing at the British military's involvement in the transfer operation.

The Afghan journalist also had evidence of the involvement of the foreign forces in Afghanistan in the tensions that rocked China's Xinjiang autonomous region in July, the diplomats said.

American forces have also invigorated the insurgency in the war-ravaged country by outfitting the Taliban with Russian-made weaponry used during the 1979-89 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which was fought against by the Afghan Mujahedeen, the diplomats said.

The US forces are assumed to have gathered the armaments during a campaign to "collect weapons from irresponsible people," after the 2001 invasion.

Diplomats said Afghan Interior Minister Mohammad Hanif Atmar, a Pashtun who has received his higher education in the UK, was still operating under the British guidance.

The Interior Ministry is accused of enabling the provision of arms and ammunition for the north-based militants by the Pashtun police force.

Earlier in the week, Afghan President Hamid Karzai was quoted by the BBC Persian as having ordered an investigation into reports of 'unknown' army helicopters carrying gunmen to the north.

The Afghan president said based on unconfirmed reports, the helicopters have been taking gunmen to Baghlan, Kunduz and Samangan provinces overnight for about five months now.

In early 2008, Karzai expelled two British diplomats for allegedly planning to “turn” senior Taliban commanders. According to the Times Online, the British officials had sought to persuade militant chief Mullah Mansoor Dadullah to cooperate with the UK.

Afghanistan is currently witnessing the highest level of violence since the invasion, despite the presence of more than 100,000 foreign troops.

More

New York Times News Report About The Taliban in 2001

The Taliban banned and almost completely eradicated the production of opium/heroin in Afghanistan in 2001. Now, under US/UK/Nato control, production is a unprecedented levels.

Craig Murray is an ex-UK ambassador to next-door Uzbeckistan and he was sacked for objecting to Britain's complicity in torture in this mobster-run country. Murray says that British soldiers are in Afghanistan to protect the heroin crop.

Quote: "......My knowledge of all this comes from my time as British Ambassador in neighbouring Uzbekistan from 2002 until 2004. I stood at the Friendship Bridge at Termez in 2003 and watched the Jeeps with blacked-out windows bringing the heroin through from Afghanistan, en route to Europe.

I watched the tankers of chemicals roaring into Afghanistan.

Yet I could not persuade my country to do anything about it."




Here's the 2001 article.
AT HEROIN'S SOURCE, TALIBAN DO WHAT 'JUST SAY NO' COULD NOT.

Barry Bearak – New York Times May 24, 2001

This has been heroin's great heartland, where the narcotic came to life as an opium resin taken from fragile buds of red and white poppies. Last year, 75 percent of the world's opium crop was grown in Afghanistan, with the biggest yield sprouting from here in the fertile plains of the country's south, sustained by the meander of the Helmand River.

But something astonishing has become evident with this spring's harvest. Behind the narrow dikes of packed earth, the fields are empty of their most profitable plant. Poor farmers, scythes in hand, stoop among brown stems.

Mile after mile, there is only a dry stubble of wheat to cut from the lumpy soil.

Last July, the ruling Taliban banned the growing of poppies as a sin against the teachings of Islam. The edict was issued by Mullah Muhammad Omar, referred to as Amir-ul-Momineen, the supreme leader of the faithful.

Almost every farmer complied, some grudgingly, some not. ''Even if it means my children die, I will obey my amir,'' said Nur Ali, sitting in his fields, sipping tea. Like most Afghan men, he wore a turban coiled around his head like a holy bandage. ''And the day my amir says I can grow poppy again, I will do that too,'' he said.

The world is unused to good news coming from Afghanistan, known these days as a womb for global jihad and an unsafe preservation site for Buddhist statues.

But American narcotics officials who visited the country confirmed earlier United Nations reports that the Taliban had, in one growing season, managed a rare triumph in the long and losing war on drugs. And they did it without the usual multimillion-dollar aid packages that finance police raids, aerial surveillance and crop subsidies for farmers.

''We used a soft approach,'' said Abdul Hamid Akhundzada, who heads the Taliban's anti-poppy program. ''When there were violations, we plowed the fields. At most, violators spent a few days in jail, until they paid for the plowing.''

The Taliban, of course, are not considered softies. They whip women for exposing flesh at midcalf. They jail men for trimming their beards. They hold public executions in stadiums full of cheering people.

But this spring's poppy crop seems to have died a relatively quiet death.

''No one dared disobey,'' said Saleh Muhammad Agha, a farmer with seven children and a meager wheat field. ''If they catch you, they blacken your face and march you through the bazaars with a string of poppies around your neck.''

The ban was carried out through the chain of command. The wisdom of the Holy Koran guided Mullah Omar. He in turn communicated with his provincial governors, who informed their district administrators. The administrators then explained the ban to local mullahs and tribal elders, who passed the news to the farmers.

Violators were few. In the village of Loay Bagh, one elderly man tried to conceal his poppies in a patch of onions. The camouflage proved inadequate.

''He apologized, and we plowed his field and did nothing else,'' said Mullah Shah Wali, the administrator in Nadali District. He was seated on the roof of his headquarters, not far from a 35-millimeter antiaircraft gun. He eagerly showed off his right leg, atrophied from a war wound.

Haji Din Muhammad, a tribal elder in the village of Passao, owns 150 acres. His land is nourished by an irrigation system built a half century ago with American aid. Poppies were his best crop, and he still sees nothing wrong with them. After all, he said, he just grew the drugs. He never urged anyone to use them.

''But I have readily accepted the ban,'' he insisted, seated on a fine carpet that only a wealthy man could afford. His four wives -- the maximum allowed under Islamic law -- were busy with his 18 children. ''I would never go against Amir-ul-Momineen. And I have no fear. God will provide.''

Mullah Omar hails from southern Afghanistan, where the Taliban began their conquest of the country in 1994 as a ragtag group of students and mullahs. They first fought against local warlords who had busied themselves with thievery, rape and murder. The Taliban took Kabul, the capital, in 1996, and they now control 80 to 90 percent of the country. While their stern version of Islam often encounters resentment in the cities, they remain heroes in the countryside.

Most farmers think of Mullah Omar as an Allah-appointed savior whose religious zeal has prompted the poppy ban even in the face of mass hardship it would cause.

The country is in the fourth year of a calamitous drought. More than one million people face an ''unbridgeable'' shortage of food and water before summer's end, according to the United Nations. The relatively drought-resistant poppy would have provided some of them with vital income. Instead they have parched and stunted wheat.

''A lot of us simply left the land untilled,'' said Ghulam Muhammad in the village of Shin. ''The harvest can't make up for the costs of the planting.''

Poppy was not only profitable; it spread the money around. The work was labor intensive. Landowners had to hire field hands to turn the soil and collect the opium paste. The ban has denied jobs to hundreds of thousands.

Many of these laborers have now fled to Pakistan or Iran or the huge camps that have filled up like arenas near the city of Herat. Others are found eating roots and grass. In some villages, flour is considered too precious to be used in bread; it lasts longer if mixed with water and cooked as a soup.

''The only money in my life is the money I owe,'' said a weathered old man named Jamaluddin. He was tarrying around a wheat field, hoping to trade a few hours of work for a cup of tea. ''Life is unbearable,'' he said.

International reaction to the poppy ban has largely been skeptical.

Inspection teams, including the American one, have found little or no poppy. But many critics question the Taliban's motives. In earlier years, the poppy harvest had multiplied. Why did Mullah Omar finally now decide to just say no?

Some suspect political artifice: only three nations, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, officially recognize the Taliban as a government. Perhaps the poppy ban was a push for legitimacy.

Recent swoons in opium prices are also mentioned. The Taliban stopped poppy cultivation, but they have not outlawed the drug's possession or sale. Stockpiles exist. With the price quadrupling, and more, Mullah Omar's edict has handed some a windfall.

But aid workers in Afghanistan tend to regard the ban as straightforward and commendable. ''Most anyone else would have said: we'll do this if you'll do that,'' said Leslie Oqvist, coordinator for the United Nations regional office in Kandahar. ''But the Taliban acted unilaterally, and now they're rightfully concerned that no assistance is forthcoming.''

Taliban officials stress that the poppy ban is rooted in religious principles and not in any quid pro quo. Nevertheless, they are well aware that wealthier nations often gratefully compensate third world allies in the drug war. American assistance to Colombia, Peru and Bolivia is mentioned by example.

''A fair reply to what we have done would have been some acknowledgment of the achievement,'' said Mullah Muhammad Hassan, the governor of Kandahar Province and one of the Taliban's top figures. Like many of the leaders, he was maimed in the 1980's in the jihad against Soviet troops here. Mullah Omar lost an eye in the war; Mullah Hassan drags a peg along the floor instead of a right leg.

''Our people are very needy,'' the governor said, speaking softly but pointedly. ''They have given up the poppy crop, and timely financial assistance is very important.''

Little aid has arrived for the poppy farmers. Last week, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell announced a $43 million grant for drought relief in Afghanistan. His statement mentioned ''those farmers who have felt the ban on poppy cultivation, a decision by the Taliban that we welcome.''

But most of that money is likely to be directed to emergency food and shelter. Torn by war hunger, Afghanistan is a bottomless well of need, and poppy farmers will become poppy refugees unless they find something else to plant that will feed their families.

''People require seed, fertilizer and pesticides -- the things that will again make them successful farmers,'' said Bernard Frahi, who oversees the Afghanistan situation for the United Nations Drug Control Program. ''We must provide roads, water and bridges or the poppy will come back.''

But the betting is that the ban will hold up. On a dusty lane in Kandahar, where a few dozen narrow stalls make up the city's main opium bazaar, the traders not only talk of the poppy farmer in the past tense, but also themselves as well.

''It's obvious our stocks are going down, and they won't be replaced,'' said Muhammad Sadiq, a drug dealer in a gold prayer cap. He sat with a handful of friends, all of them pouring tea out of small green pots.

The smarter traders, like Mr. Sadiq, have squirreled away their opium and now have the look of men watching straw spun into gold. Last year, a kilo (2.2 pounds) of the drug sold for $110; now it is as high as $500.

Mr. Sadiq reached behind a hanging white blanket at the rear of his stall and opened two metal chests. Inside were heavy bags of opium stuffed into heavy brown plastic. He pulled a few out.

''The days of the poppy in Afghanistan are over,'' he said. ''Opium will get scarcer, the price will get higher. I'm holding on to this as long as I can.''


www.nytimes.com/2001/05/24/world/at-heroin-s-source-taliban-do-what-just-say-no-could-not.html

HOW THE SERVANT BECAME A PREDATOR

From: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23723.htm

Brilliant discourse on the financial sector. Below is a video of Mr Black being interviewed by Bill Moyers on criminal behaviour before and during the banking collapse.

HOW THE SERVANT BECAME A PREDATOR

Finance's Five Fatal Flaws

By WILLIAM K. BLACK
Assoc. Professor, Univ. of Missouri, Kansas City

October 14, 2009 "New Deal 2.0 " -- What exactly is the function of the financial sector in our society? Simply this: Its sole function is supplying capital efficiently to aid the real economy. The financial sector is a tool to help those that make real tools, not an end in itself. But five fatal flaws in the financial sector's current structure have created a monster that drains the real economy, promotes fraud and corruption, threatens democracy, and causes recurrent, intensifying crises.

1. The financial sector harms the real economy.

Even when not in crisis, the financial sector harms the real economy. First, it is vastly too large. The finance sector is an intermediary -- essentially a "middleman". Like all middlemen, it should be as small as possible, while still being capable of accomplishing its mission. Otherwise it is inherently parasitical. Unfortunately, it is now vastly larger than necessary, dwarfing the real economy it is supposed to serve. Forty years ago, our real economy grew better with a financial sector that received one-twentieth as large a percentage of total profits (2%) than does the current financial sector (40%). The minimum measure of how much damage the bloated, grossly over-compensated finance sector causes to the real economy is this massive increase in the share of total national income wasted through the finance sector's parasitism.

Second, the finance sector is worse than parasitic. In the title of his recent book, The Predator Statehttp://books.simonandschuster.com/Predator-State/James-Galbraith/9781416566830, James Galbraith aptly names the problem. The financial sector functions as the sharp canines that the predator state uses to rend the nation. In addition to siphoning off capital for its own benefit, the finance sector misallocates the remaining capital in ways that harm the real economy in order to reward already-rich financial elites harming the nation. The facts are alarming:

• Corporate stock repurchases and grants of stock to officers have exceeded new capital raised by the U.S. capital markets this decade. That means that the capital markets decapitalize the real economy. Too often, they do so in order to enrich corrupt corporate insiders through accounting fraud or backdated stock options.

• The U.S. real economy suffers from critical shortages of employees with strong mathematical, engineering, and scientific backgrounds. Graduates in these three fields all too frequently choose careers in finance rather than the real economy because the financial sector provides far greater executive compensation. Individuals with these quantitative backgrounds work overwhelmingly in devising the kinds of financial models that were important contributors to the financial crisis. We take people that could be conducting the research & development work essential to the success of our real economy (including its success in becoming sustainable) and put them instead in financial sector activities where, because of that sector's perverse incentives, they further damage both the financial sector and the real economy. Michael Moore makes this point in his latest film, Capitalism: A Love Story.

• The financial sector's fixation on accounting earnings leads it to pressure U.S manufacturing and service firms to export jobs abroad, to deny capital to firms that are unionized, and to encourage firms to use foreign tax havens to evade paying U.S. taxes.

• It misallocates capital by creating recurrent financial bubbles. Instead of flowing to the places where it will be most useful to the real economy, capital gets directed to the investments that create the greatest fraudulent accounting gains. The financial sector is particularly prone to providing exceptional amounts of funds to what I call accounting "control frauds". Control frauds are seemingly-legitimate entities used by the people that control them as a fraud "weapons." In the financial sector, accounting frauds are the weapons of choice. Accounting control frauds are so attractive to lenders and investors because they produce record, guaranteed short-term accounting "profits." They optimize by growing rapidly like other Ponzi schemes, making loans to borrowers unlikely to be able to repay them (once the bubble bursts), and engaging in extreme leverage. Unless there is effective regulation and prosecution, this misallocation creates an epidemic of accounting control fraud that hyper-inflates financial bubbles. The FBI began warning of an "epidemic" of mortgage fraud in its congressional testimony in September 2004. It also reports that 80% of mortgage fraud losses come when lender personnel are involved in the fraud. (The other 20% of the fraud would have been impossible had these fraudulent lenders not suborned their underwriting systems and their internal and external controls in order to maximize their growth of bad loans.)

• Because the financial sector cares almost exclusively about high accounting yields and "profits", it misallocates capital away from firms and entrepreneurs that could best improve the real economy (e.g., by reducing short-term profits through funding the expensive research & development that can produce innovative goods and superior sustainability) and could best reduce poverty and inequality (e.g., through microcredit finance that would put the "Payday lenders" and predatory mortgage lenders out of business).

• It misallocates capital by securing enormous governmental subsidies for financial firms, particularly those that have the greatest political power and would otherwise fail due to incompetence and fraud.

2. The financial sector produces recurrent, intensifying economic crises here and abroad.

The current crisis is only the latest in a long list of economic crises caused by the financial sector. When it is not regulated and policed effectively, the financial sector produces and hyper-inflates bubbles that cause severe economic crises. The current crisis, absent massive, global governmental bailouts, would have caused the catastrophic failure of the global economy. The financial sector has become far more unstable since this crisis began and its members used their lobbying power to convince Congress to gimmick the accounting rules to hide their massive losses. Secretary Geithner has exacerbated the problem by declaring that the largest financial institutions are exempt from receivership regardless of their insolvency. These factors greatly increase the likelihood that these systemically dangerous institutions (SDIs) will cause a global financial crisis.

3. The financial sector's predation is so extraordinary that it now drives the upper one percent of our nation's income distribution and has driven much of the increase in our grotesque income inequality.

4. The financial sector's predation and its leading role in committing and aiding and abetting accounting control fraud combine to:

• Corrupt financial elites and professionals, and

• Spur a rise in Social Darwinism in an attempt to justify the elites' power and wealth. Accounting control frauds suborn accountants, attorneys, and appraisers and create what is known as a "Gresham's dynamic" -- a system in which bad money drives out good. When this dynamic occurs, honest professionals are pushed out and cheaters are allowed to prosper. Executive compensation has become so massive, so divorced from performance, and so perverse that it, too, creates a Gresham's dynamic that encourages widespread accounting fraud by both financial firms and firms in the real economy.

As financial sector elites became obscenely wealthy through predation and fraud, their psychological incentives to embrace unhealthy, anti-democratic Social Darwinism surged. While they were, by any objective measure, the worst elements of the public, their sycophants in the media and the recipients of their political and charitable contributions worshiped them as heroic. Finance CEOs adopted and spread the myth that they were smarter, harder working, and more innovative than the rest of us. They repeated the story of how they rose to the top entirely through their own brilliance and willingness to embrace risk. All of their employees weren't simply above average, they told us, but exceptional. They hated collectivism and adored Ayn Rand.

5. The CEOs of the largest financial firms are so powerful that they pose a critical risk to the financial sector, the real economy, and our democracy.

The CEOs can directly, through the firm, and by "bundling" contributions of its officers and employees, easily make enormous political contributions and use their PR firms and lobbyists to manipulate the media and public officials. The ability of the financial sector to block meaningful reform after bringing the world to the brink of a second great depression proves how exceptional its powers are to corrupt nearly every critical sector of American public and economic life. The five largest U.S. banks control roughly half of all bank assets. They use their political and financial power to provide themselves with competitive advantages that allow them to dominate smaller banks.

This excessive power was a major contributor to the ongoing crisis. Effective financial and securities regulation was anathema to the CEOs' ideology (and the greatest danger to their frauds, wealth, and power) and they successfully set out to destroy it. That produced what criminologists refer to as a "criminogenic environment" (an atmosphere that breeds criminal activity) that prompted the epidemic of accounting control fraud that hyper-inflated the housing bubble.

The financial industry's power and progressive corruption combined to produce the perfect white-collar crimes. They successfully lobbied politicians, for example, to legalize the obscenity of "dead peasants' insurance" (in which an employer secretly takes out insurance on an employee and receives a windfall in the event of that person's untimely death) that Michael Moore exposes in chilling detail. State legislatures changed the law to allow a pure tax scam to subsidize large corporations at the expense of their taxpayers.

Caution: Never Forget the Need to Fix the Real Economy

Economic reform efforts are focused almost entirely on fixing finance because the finance sector is so badly broken that it produces recurrent, intensifying crises. The latest crisis brought us to the point of global catastrophe, so the focus on finance is obviously rational. But the focus on finance carries a grave risk. Remember, the sole purpose of finance is to aid the real economy. Our ultimate focus needs to be on the real economy, which creates goods and services, our jobs, and our incomes. The real economy came off the rails at least three decades ago for the great majority of Americans.

We need to commit to fixing the real economy by guaranteeing that everyone willing to work can work and making the real economy sustainable rather than recurrently causing global environmental crises. We must not spend virtually all of our reform efforts on the finance sector and assume that if we solve its defects we will have solved the other fundamental reasons why the real economy has remained so dysfunctional for decades. We need to be work simultaneously to fix finance and the real economy.

Roosevelt Institute Braintruster William K. Black is an Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He is a white-collar criminologist and was a senior financial regulator. He is the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One

Howard Storm's Near-Death Experience

SAVED FROM HELL

Before his near-death experience, Rev. Howard Storm, a Professor of Art at Northern Kentucky University, was not a very pleasant man. He was an avowed atheist and was hostile to every form of religion and those who practiced it. He often would use rage to control everyone around him and he didn't find joy in anything. Anything that wasn't seen, touched, or felt, he had no faith in. He knew with certainty that the material world was the full extent of everything that was. He considered all belief systems associated with religion to be fantasies for people to deceive themselves with. Beyond what science said, there was nothing else.
On June 1, 1985, at the age of 38, Howard Storm had a near-death experience due to a perforation of the stomach and his life was forever changed. His near-death experience is one of the most profound, if not the most profound, afterlife experience I have ever documented. His life was so immensely changed after his near-death experience that he resigned as a professor and devoted his time to attending the United Theological Seminary to become a United Church of Christ minister. The following is the account of Pastor Howard Storm's near-death experience, which is an excerpt from his book, My Descent Into Death, reprinted by permission.



An Invitation to Hell From Strange Beings

[Howard Storm was in intense agony and dying.]

Struggling to say goodbye to my wife, I wrestled with my emotions. Telling her that I loved her very much was as much of a goodbye as I could utter because of my emotional distress.
Sort of relaxing and closing my eyes, I waited for the end. This was it, I felt. This was the big nothing, the big blackout, the one you never wake up from, the end of existence. I had absolute certainty that there was nothing beyond this life – because that was how really smart people understood it.
While I was undergoing this stress, prayer or anything like that never occurred to me. I never once thought about it. If I mentioned God's name at all it was only as a profanity.
For a time there was a sense of being unconscious or asleep. I'm not sure how long it lasted, but I felt really strange, and I opened my eyes. To my surprise I was standing up next to the bed, and I was looking at my body laying in the bed.
My first reaction was, "This is crazy! I can't be standing here looking down at myself. That's not possible."
This wasn't what I expected, this wasn't right. Why was I still alive? I wanted oblivion. Yet I was looking at a thing that was my body, and it just didn't have that much meaning to me.
Now knowing what was happening, I became upset. I started yelling and screaming at my wife, and she just sat there like a stone. She didn't look at me, she didn't move – and I kept screaming profanities to get her to pay attention. Being confused, upset, and angry, I tried to get the attention of my room-mate, with the same result. He didn't react.
I wanted this to be a dream, and I kept saying to myself, "This has got to be a dream."
But I knew that it wasn't a dream. I became aware that strangely I felt more alert, more aware, more alive than I had ever felt in my entire life. All my senses were extremely acute. Everything felt tingly and alive. The floor was cool and my bare feet felt moist and clammy. This had to be real. I squeezed my fists and was amazed at how much I was feeling in my hands just by making a fist.
Then I heard my name. I heard, "Howard, Howard – come here."
Wondering, at first, where it was coming from, I discovered that it was originating in the doorway. There were different voices calling me.
I asked who they were, and they said, "We are here to take care of you. We will fix you up. Come with us."
Asking, again, who they were, I asked them if they were doctors and nurses.
They responded, "Quick, come see. You'll find out."
As I asked them questions they gave evasive answers. They kept giving me a sense of urgency, insisting that I should step through the doorway.
With some reluctance I stepped into the hallway, and in the hallway I was in a fog, or a haze. It was a light-colored haze. It wasn't a heavy haze. I could see my hand, for example, but the people who were calling me were 15 or 20 feet ahead, and I couldn't see them clearly. They were more like silhouettes, or shapes, and as I moved toward them they backed off into the haze. As I tried to get close to them to identify them, they quickly withdrew deeper into the fog. So I had to follow into the fog deeper and deeper.
These strange beings kept urging me to come with them.
I repeatedly asked them where we were going, and they responded, "Hurry up, you'll find out."
They wouldn't answer anything. The only response was insisting that I hurry up and follow them.
They told me repeatedly that my pain was meaningless and unnecessary. "Pain is bullshit," they said.
I knew that we had been traveling for miles, but I occasionally had the strange ability to look back and see the hospital room. My body was still there lying motionless on the bed. My perspective at these times was as if I were floating above the room looking down. It seemed millions and millions of miles away. Looking back into the room, I saw my wife and my room-mate, and I decided they had not been able to help me so I would go with these people.
Walking for what seemed to be a considerable distance, these beings were all around me. They were leading me through the haze. I don't know how long. There was a real sense of timelessness about the experience. In a real sense I am unaware of how long it was, but it felt like a long time – maybe even days or weeks.
As we traveled, the fog got thicker and darker, and the people began to change. At first they seemed rather playful and happy, but when we had covered some distance, a few of them began to get aggressive. The more questioning and suspicious I was, the more antagonistic and rude and authoritarian they became. They began to make jokes about my bare rear end which wasn't covered by my hospital dicky and about how pathetic I was. I knew they were talking about me, but when I tried to find out exactly what they were saying they would say, "Shhhhh, he can hear you, he can hear you."
Then, others would seem to caution the aggressive ones. It seemed that I could hear them warn the aggressive ones to be careful or I would be frightened away.
Wondering what was happening, I continued to ask questions, and they repeatedly urged me to hurry and to stop asking questions. Feeling uneasy, especially since they continued to get aggressive, I considered returning, but I didn't know how to get back. I was lost. There were no features that I could relate to. There was just the fog and a wet, clammy ground, and I had no sense of direction.
All my communication with them took place verbally just as ordinary human communication occurs. They didn't appear to know what I was thinking, and I didn't know what they were thinking. What was increasingly obvious was that they were liars and help was farther away the more I stayed with them.
Hours ago, I had hoped to die and end the torment of life. Now things were worse as I was forced by a mob of unfriendly and cruel people toward some unknown destination in the darkness. They began shouting and hurling insults at me, demanding that I hurry along. And they refused to answer any question.
Finally, I told them that I wouldn't go any farther. At that time they changed completely. They became much more aggressive and insisted that I was going with them. A number of them began to push and shove me, and I responded by hitting back at them.
A wild orgy of frenzied taunting, screaming and hitting ensued. I fought like a wild man. All the while it was obvious that they were having great fun.
It seemed to be, almost, a game for them, with me as the center-piece of their amusement. My pain became their pleasure. They seemed to want to make me hurt – by clawing at me and biting me. Whenever I would get one off me, there were five more to replace the one.
By this time it was almost complete darkness, and I had the sense that instead of there being twenty or thirty, there were an innumerable host of them. Each one seemed set on coming in for the sport they got from hurting me. My attempts to fight back only provoked greater merriment. They began to physically humiliate me in the most degrading ways. As I continued to fight on and on, I was aware that they weren't in any hurry to win. They were playing with me just as a cat plays with a mouse. Every new assault brought howls of cacophony. Then at some point, they began to tear off pieces of my flesh. To my horror I realized I was being taken apart and eaten alive, slowly, so that their entertainment would last as long a possible.
At no time did I ever have any sense that the beings who seduced and attacked me were anything other than human beings. The best way I can describe them is to think of the worst imaginable person stripped of every impulse to do good. Some of them seemed to be able to tell others what to do, but I had no sense of any structure or hierarchy in an organizational sense. They didn't appear to be controlled or directed by anyone. Basically they were a mob of beings totally driven by unbridled cruelty and passions.
During our struggle I noticed that they seemed to feel no pain. Other than that they appeared to possess no special non-human or super-human abilities.
Although during my initial experience with them I assumed that they were clothed, in our intimate physical contact I never felt any clothing whatsoever.
Fighting well and hard for a long time, ultimately I was spent. Lying there exhausted amongst them, they began to calm down since I was no longer the amusement that I had been. Most of the beings gave up in disappointment because I was no longer amusing, but a few still picked and gnawed at me and ridiculed me for no longer being any fun. By this time I had been pretty much taken apart. People were still picking at me, occasionally, and I just lay there all torn up, unable to resist.
Exactly what happened was ... and I'm not going to try and explain this. From inside of me I felt a voice, my voice, say, "Pray to God."
My mind responded to that, "I don't pray. I don't know how to pray."
This is a guy lying on the ground in the darkness surrounded by what appeared to be dozens if not hundreds and hundreds of vicious creatures who had just torn him up. The situation seemed utterly hopeless, and I seemed beyond any possible help whether I believed in God or not.
The voice again told me to pray to God. It was a dilemma since I didn't know how. The voice told me a third time to pray to God.
I started saying things like, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want ... God bless America" and anything else that seemed to have a religious connotation.
And these people went into a frenzy, as if I had thrown boiling oil all over them. They began yelling and screaming at me, telling me to quit, that there was no God, and no one could hear me. While they screamed and yelled obscenities, they also began backing away from me – as if I were poison. As they were retreating, they became more rabid, cursing and screaming that what I was saying was worthless and that I was a coward.
I screamed back at them, "Our Father who art in heaven," and similar ideas. This continued for some time until, suddenly, I was aware that they had left. It was dark, and I was alone yelling things that sounded churchy. It was pleasing to me that these churchy sayings had such an effect on those awful beings.
Lying there for a long time, I was in such a state of hopelessness, and blackness, and despair, that I had no way of measuring how long it was. I was just lying there in an unknown place – all torn and ripped. And I had no strength; it was all gone. It seemed as if I were sort of fading out, that any effort on my part would expend the last energy I had. My conscious sense was that I was perishing, or just sinking into the darkness.

A Rescue From Hell By Jesus Christ

Now I didn't know if I was even in the world. But I did know that I was here. I was real, all my senses worked too painfully well. I didn't know how I had arrived here. There was no direction to follow even if I had been physically able to move. The agony that I had suffered during the day was nothing compared to what I was feeling now. I knew then that this was the absolute end of my existence, and it was more horrible than anything I could possibly have imagined.
Then a most unusual thing happened. I heard very clearly, once again in my own voice, something that I had learned in nursery Sunday School. It was the little song, "Jesus loves me, yes I know ..." and it kept repeating. I don't know why, but all of a sudden I wanted to believe that. Not having anything left, I wanted to cling to that thought. And I, inside, screamed, "Jesus, please save me."
That thought was screamed with every ounce of strength and feeling left in me.
When I did that, I saw, off in the darkness somewhere, the tiniest little star. Not knowing what it was, I presumed it must be a comet or a meteor, because it was moving rapidly. Then I realized it was coming toward me. It was getting very bright, rapidly.
When the light came near, its radiance spilled over me, and I just rose up – not with my effort – I just lifted up. Then I saw – and I saw this very plainly – I saw all my wounds, all my tears, all my brokenness, melt away. And I became whole in this radiance.
What I did was to cry uncontrollably. I was crying, not out of sadness, but because I was feeling things that I had never felt before in my life.
Another thing happened. Suddenly I knew a whole bunch of things. I knew things ... I knew that this light, this radiance, knew me. I don't know how to explain to you that I knew it knew me, I just did. As a matter of fact, I understood that it knew me better than my mother or father did. The luminous entity that embraced me knew me intimately and began to communicate a tremendous sense of knowledge. I knew that he knew everything about me and I was being unconditionally loved and accepted.
The light conveyed to me that it loved me in a way that I can't begin to express. It loved me in a way that I had never known that love could possibly be. He was a concentrated field of energy, radiant in splendor indescribable, except to say goodness and love. This was more loving than one can imagine.
I knew that this radiant being was powerful. It was making me feel so good all over. I could feel its light on me – like very gentle hands around me. And I could feel it holding me. But it was loving me with overwhelming power. After what I had been through, to be completely known, accepted, and intensely loved by this Being of Light surpassed anything I had known or could have imagined. I began to cry and the tears kept coming and coming. And we, I and this light, went up and out of there.
We started going faster and faster, out of the darkness. Embraced by the light, feeling wonderful and crying, I saw off in the distance something that looked like the picture of a galaxy, except that it was larger and there were more stars than I had seen on Earth.
There was a great center of brilliance. In the center there was an enormously bright concentration. Outside the center countless millions of spheres of light were flying about entering and leaving what was a great being-ness at the center. It was off in the distance.
Then I ... I didn't say it, I thought it. I said, "Put me back."
What I meant by telling the light to put me back, was to put me back into the pit. I was so ashamed of who I was, and what I had been all of my life, that all I wanted to do was hide in the darkness. I didn't want to go toward the light anymore – I did; yet I didn't. How many times in my life had I denied and scoffed at the reality before me, and how many thousands of times had I used it as a curse. What incredible intellectual arrogance to use the name as an insult. I was afraid to go closer. I was also aware that the incredible intensity of the emanations might disintegrate what I still experienced as my intact physical body.
The being who was supporting me, my friend, was aware of my fear and reluctance and shame. For the first time he spoke to my mind in a male voice and told me that if I was uncomfortable we didn't have to go closer. So we stopped where we were, still countless miles away from the Great being.
For the first time, my friend, and I will refer to him in that context hereafter, said to me, "You belong here."
[Howard believes his friend was Jesus.]
Facing all the splendor made me acutely aware of my lowly condition. My response was: "No, you've made a mistake, put me back."
And he said, "We don't make mistakes. You belong."
Then he called out in a musical tone to the luminous entities who surrounded the great center. Several came and circled around us. During what follows some came and went but normally there were five or six and sometimes as many as eight with us.
I was still crying. One of the first things these marvelous beings did was to ask, all with thought, "Are you afraid of us?"
I told them I wasn't.
They said that they could turn their brilliance down and appear as people, and I told them to stay as they were. They were the most beautiful, the most ...
As an aside, I'm an artist. There are three primary, three secondary, and six tertiary colors in the visible light spectrum. Here, I was seeing a visible light spectrum with at least 80 new primary colors. I was also seeing this brilliance. It's disappointing for me to try and describe, because I can't – I was seeing colors that I had never seen before.
What these beings were showing me was their glory. I wasn't really seeing them. And I was perfectly content. Having come from a world of shapes and forms, I was delighted with this new, formless, world. These beings were giving me what I needed at that time.
To my surprise, and also distress, they seemed to be capable of knowing everything I was thinking. I didn't know whether I would be capable of controlling my thoughts and keeping anything secret.
We began to engage in thought exchange, conversation that was very natural, very easy and casual. I heard their voices clearly and individually. They each had a distinct personality with a voice, but they spoke directly to my mind, not my ears. And they used normal, colloquial English. Everything I thought, they knew.
They all seemed to know and understand me very well and to be completely familiar with my thoughts and my past. I didn't feel any desire to ask for someone I had known because they all knew me. Nobody could know me any better. It also didn't occur to me to try to identify them as uncle or grandfather. It was like going to a large gathering of relatives at Christmas and not being quite able to remember their names or who they are married to or how they are connected to you. But you do know that you are with your family. I don't know if they were related to me or not. It felt like they were closer to me than anyone I had ever known.
Throughout my conversation with the luminous beings, which lasted for what seemed like a very long time, I was being physically supported by the being in whom I had been engulfed. We were in a sense completely stationary yet hanging in space. Everywhere around us were countless radiant beings, like stars in the sky, coming and going. It was like a super magnified view of a galaxy super packed with stars. And in the giant radiance of the center they were packed so densely together that individuals could not be identified. Their selves were in such harmony with the Creator that they were really just one.
One of the reasons, I was told, that all the countless beings had to go back to their source was to become invigorated with this sense of harmony and oneness. Being apart for too long a time diminished them and made them feel separate. Their greatest pleasure was to go back to the sources of all life.
Our initial conversation involved them simply trying to comfort me.
Something that disturbed me was that I was naked. Somewhere in the darkness I'd lost my hospital gown. I was a human being. I had a body. They told me this was okay. They were quite familiar with my anatomy. Gradually I relaxed and stopped trying to cover my privates with my hands.
Next, they wanted to talk about my life. To my surprise my life played out before me, maybe six or eight feet in front of me, from beginning to end. The life review was very much in their control, and they showed me my life, but not from my point of view. I saw me in my life – and this whole thing was a lesson, even though I didn't know it at the time. They were trying to teach me something, but I didn't know it was a teaching experience, because I didn't know that I would be coming back.
We just watched my life from beginning to the end. Some things they slowed down on, and zoomed in on and other things they went right through. My life was shown in a way that I had never thought of before. All of the things that I had worked to achieve, the recognition that I had worked for, in elementary school, in high school, in college, and in my career, they meant nothing in this setting.
I could feel their feelings of sorrow and suffering, or joy, as my life's review unfolded. They didn't say that something was bad or good, but I could feel it. And I could sense all those things they were indifferent to. They didn't, for example, look down on my high school shot-put record. They just didn't feel anything towards it, nor towards other things which I had taken so much pride in.
What they responded to was how I had interacted with other people. That was the long and short of it. Unfortunately, most of my interactions with other people didn't measure up with how I should have interacted, which was in a loving way.
Whenever I did react during my life in a loving way they rejoiced.
Most of the time I found that my interactions with other people had been manipulative. During my professional career, for example, I saw myself sitting in my office, playing the college professor, while a student came to me with a personal problem. I sat there looking compassionate, and patient, and loving, while inside I was bored to death. I would check my watch under my desk as I anxiously waited for the student to finish.
I got to go through all those kinds of experiences in the company of these magnificent beings.
When I was a teenager my father's career put him into a high-stress, twelve-hour-a-day job. Out of my resentment because of his neglect of me, when he came home from work, I would be cold and indifferent toward him. This made him angry, and it gave me further excuse to feel hatred toward him. He and I fought, and my mother would get upset.
Most of my life I had felt that my father was the villain and I was the victim. When we reviewed my life I got to see how I had precipitated so much of that, myself. Instead of greeting him happily at the end of a day, I was continually putting thorns in him – in order to justify my hurt.
I got to see when my sister had a bad night one night, how I went into her bedroom and put my arms around her. Not saying anything, I just lay there with my arms around her. As it turned out that experience was one of the biggest triumphs of my life.

The Therapy of Love and Enlightenment

The entire life's review would have been emotionally destructive, and would have left me a psychotic person, if it hadn't been for the fact that my friend, and my friend's friends, were loving me during the unfolding of my life. I could feel that love. Every time I got a little upset they turned the life's review off for awhile, and they just loved me. Their love was tangible. You could feel it on your body, you could feel it inside you; their love went right through you. I wish I could explain it to you, but I can't.
The therapy was their love, because my life's review kept tearing me down. It was pitiful to watch, just pitiful. I couldn't believe it. And the thing is, it got worse as it went on. My stupidity and selfishness as a teenager only magnified as I became an adult – all under the veneer of being a good husband, a good father, and a good citizen. The hypocrisy of it all was nauseating. But through it all was their love.
When the review was finished they asked, "Do you want to ask any questions?" and I had a million questions.
I asked, for example, "What about the Bible?"
They responded, "What about it?"
I asked if it was true, and they said it was. Asking them why it was that when I tried to read it, all I saw were contradictions, they took me back to my life's review again – something that I had overlooked. They showed me, for the few times I had opened the Bible, that I had read it with the idea of finding contradictions and problems. I was trying to prove to myself that it wasn't worth reading.
I observed to them that the Bible wasn't clear to me. It didn't make sense. They told me that it contained spiritual truth, and that I had to read it spiritually in order to understand it. It should be read prayerfully. My friends informed me that it was not like other books. They also told me, and I later found out this was true, that when you read it prayerfully, it talks to you. It reveals itself to you. And you don't have to work at it anymore.
My friends answered lots of questions in funny ways. They really knew the whole tone of what I asked them, even before I got the questions out. When I thought of questions in my head, they really understood them.
I asked them, for example, which was the best religion. I was looking for an answer which was like, "Presbyterians." I figured these guys were all Christians.
The answer I got was, "The best religion is the religion that brings you closest to God."
Asking them if there was life on other planets, their surprising answer was that the universe was full of life.
Because of my fear of a nuclear holocaust I asked if there was going to be a nuclear war in the world, and they said no. That astonished me, and I gave them this extensive explanation of how I had lived under the threat of nuclear war. That was one of the reasons I was who I was. I figured, when I was in this life, that it was all sort of hopeless; the world was going to blow up anyway, and nothing made much sense. In that context I felt I could do what I wanted, since nothing mattered.
They said, "No, there isn't going to be any nuclear war."
I asked if they were absolutely sure there wasn't going to be nuclear war. They reassured me again, and I asked them how they could be so sure. Their response was: "God loves the world."
They told me that at the most, one or two nuclear weapons might go off accidentally, if they weren't destroyed, but there wouldn't be a nuclear war. I then asked them how come there had been so many wars. They said that they allowed those few to happen, out of all the wars that humanity tried to start. Out of all the wars that humans tried to create, they allowed a few, to bring people to their senses and to stop them.
Science, technology, and other benefits, they told me, had been gifts bestowed on humanity by them – through inspiration. People had literally been led to those discoveries, many of which had later been perverted by humanity to use for its own destruction. We could do too much damage to the planet. And by the planet, they meant all of God's creation. Not just the people, but the animals, the trees, the birds, the insects, everything.
They explained to me that their concern was for all the people of the world. They weren't interested in one group getting ahead of other groups. They want every person to consider every other person greater than their own flesh. They want everyone to love everyone else, completely; more, even, than they love themselves. If someone, someplace else in the world hurts, than we should hurt – we should feel their pain. And we should help them.
Our planet has evolved to the point, for the first time in our history, that we have the power to do that. We are globally linked. And we could become one people.
The people that they gave the privilege of leading the world into a better age, blew it. That was us, in the United States.
When I spoke with them about the future, and this might sound like a cop-out on my part, they made clear to me that we have free will.
If we change the way we are, then we can change the future which they showed me. They showed me a view of the future, at the time of my experience, based upon how we in the United States were behaving at that time. It was a future in which a massive worldwide depression would occur. If we were to change our behavior, however, then the future would be different.
Asking them how it would be possible to change the course of many people, I observed that it was difficult, if not impossible, to change anything on Earth. I expressed the opinion that it was a hopeless task to try.
My friends explained, quite clearly, that all it takes to make a change was one person. One person, trying, and then because of that, another person changing for the better. They said that the only way to change the world was to begin with one person. One will become two, which will become three, and so on. That's the only way to affect a major change.
I inquired as to where the world would be going in an optimistic future – one where some of the changes they desired were to take place. The image of the future that they gave me then, and it was their image, not one that I created, surprised me.
My image had previously been sort of like Star Wars, where everything was space age, plastics, and technology. The future that they showed me was almost no technology at all.
What everybody, absolutely everybody, in this euphoric future spent most of their time doing was raising children. The chief concern of people was children, and everybody considered children to be the most precious commodity in the world. And when a person became an adult, there was no sense of anxiety, nor hatred, nor competition. There was this enormous sense of trust and mutual respect.
If a person, in this view of the future, became disturbed, then the community of people all cared about the disturbed person falling away from the harmony of the group. Spiritually, through prayer and love, the others would elevate the afflicted person.
What people did with the rest of their time was that they gardened, with almost no physical effort. They showed me that plants, with prayer, would produce huge fruits and vegetables. People, in unison, could control the climate of the planet through prayer. Everybody would work with mutual trust – and the people would call the rain, when needed, and the sun to shine. Animals lived with people, in harmony.
People, in this best of all worlds, weren't interested in knowledge; they were interested in wisdom. This was because they were in a position where anything they needed to know, in the knowledge category, they could receive simply through prayer. Everything, to them, was solvable. They could do anything they wanted to do.
In this future, people had no wanderlust, because they could, spiritually, communicate with everyone else in the world. There was no need to go elsewhere. They were so engrossed with where they were and the people around them that they didn't have to go on vacation. Vacation from what? They were completely fulfilled and happy.
Death, in this world, was a time when the individual had experienced everything that he or she needed to experience. To die meant to lie down and let go; then the spirit would rise up, and the community would gather around. There would be a great rejoicing, because they all had insight into the heavenly realm, and the spirit would join with the angels that came down to meet it. They could see the spirit leave and knew that it was time for the spirit to move on; it had outgrown the need for growth in this world. Individuals who died had achieved all they were capable of in this world in terms of love, appreciation, understanding, and working in harmony with others.
The sense I got of this beautiful view of the world's future was as a garden, God's garden. And in this garden of the world, full of all beauty, were people. The people were born into this world to grow in their understanding of the Creator. Then to shed this skin, this shell, in the physical world, and to graduate and move up into heaven – there, to have a more intimate and growing relationship with God.
[Webmaster note: In Howard Storm's book, "My Descent into Death" (2000), Storm describes the future of mankind as given to him by light beings he encountered during his NDE in 1985. Storm tells how they told him, in 1985, that the Cold War would soon end, because "God is changing the hearts of people to love around the world." Storm states, "Since the time in 1985 when I was told these things about the future the Cold War ended with little bloodshed due to the hearts of people being unwilling to tolerate oppressive regimes."

Storm described what the light beings told him concerning the way things will be on Earth in about 2185. He asked the light beings the question: "Will the United States be the leader of the world in this change?"

The light beings replied, "The United States has been given the opportunity to be the teacher for the world, but much is expected of those to whom much has been given. The United States has been given more of everything than any country in the history of the world and it has failed to be generous with the gifts. If the United States continues to exploit the rest of the world by greedily consuming the world's resources, the United States will have God's blessing withdrawn. Your country will collapse economically which will result in civil chaos. Because of the greedy nature of the people, you will have people killing people for a cup of gasoline. The world will watch in horror as your country is obliterated by strife. The rest of the world will not intervene because they have been victims of your exploitation. They will welcome the annihilation of such selfish people. The United States must change immediately and become the teachers of goodness and generosity to the rest of the world. Today the United States is the primary merchant of war and the culture of violence that you export to the world. This will come to an end because you have the seeds of your own destruction within you. Either you will destroy yourselves or God will bring it to an end if there isn't a change."

Storm states, ".... I don't know if the richest country in the history of the world is doomed to lose God's blessing or if the people of the United States will become the moral light of the world. How long will God allow the injustice to continue? The future lies in the choices we make right now. God is intervening in direct ways in human events. May God's will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven!"
Howard's light being friends told him more about the new world to come. According to them, God wished to usher in the kingdom within the next two hundred years. In order to do so, God had rescinded some of the free will given to creatures, in favor of more divine control over human events. This new world order, according to Howard, will resemble some near-death descriptions of heaven. People will live in such peace and harmony and love that communication will be telepathic, travel instantaneous and the need for clothing and shelter eliminated. The lion will indeed lie down with the lamb.]

Learning What Happens After Death

I asked my friend, and his friends, about death – what happens when we die?
They said that when a loving person dies, angels come down to meet him, and they take him up – gradually, at first, because it would be unbearable for that person to be instantly exposed to God.
Knowing what's inside of every person, the angels don't have to prove anything by showing off. They know what each of us needs, so they provide that. In some cases it may be a heavenly meadow, and in another, something else. If a person needs to see a relative, the angels will bring that relative. If the person really likes jewels, they will show the person jewels. We see what is necessary for our introduction into the spirit world, and those things are real, in the heavenly, the divine sense.
They gradually educate us as spirit beings, and bring us into heaven. We grow and increase, and grow and increase, and shed the concerns, desires, and base animal stuff that we have been fighting much of our life. Earthly appetites melt away. It is no longer a struggle to fight them. We become who we truly are, which is part of the divine.
This happens to loving people, people who are good and love God. They made it clear to me that we don't have any knowledge or right to judge anybody else – in terms of that person's heart relationship to God. Only God knows what's in a person's heart. Someone whom we think is despicable, God might know as a wonderful person. Similarly, someone we think is good, God may see as a hypocrite, with a black heart. Only God knows the truth about every individual.
God will ultimately judge every individual. And God will allow people to be dragged into darkness with like-minded creatures. I have told you, from my personal experience, what goes on in there. I don't know from what I saw anymore than that, but it's my suspicion that I only saw the tip of the iceberg.
I deserved to be where I was – I was in the right place at the right time. That was the place for me, and the people I was around were perfect company for me. God allowed me to experience that, and then removed me, because he saw something redeeming in putting me through the experience. It was a way to purge me. People who are not allowed to be pulled into darkness, because of their loving nature, are attracted upwards, toward the light.
I never saw God, and I was not in heaven. It was way out in the suburbs, and these are the things that they showed me. We talked for a long time, about many things, and then I looked at myself. When I saw me, I was glowing, I was radiant. I was becoming beautiful – not nearly as beautiful as them – but I had a certain sparkle that I never had before.
Not being ready to face the Earth again, I told them that I wished to be with them forever. I said, "I'm ready, I'm ready to be like you and be here forever. This is great. I love it. I love you. You're wonderful."
I knew that they loved me and knew everything about me. I knew that everything was going to be okay from now on. I asked if I could get rid of my body, which was definitely a hindrance, and become a being like them with the powers they had shown me.
They said, "No, you have to go back."
They explained to me that I was very underdeveloped and that it would be of great benefit to return to my physical existence to learn. In my human life I would have an opportunity to grow so that the next time I was with them I would be more compatible. I would need to develop important characteristics to become like them and to be involved with the work that they do.
Responding that I couldn't go back, I tried to argue with them, and I observed that if I bear that thought – the thought that I might wind up in the pit again – I pled with them to stay.
My friends then said, "Do you think that we expect you to be perfect, after all the love we feel for you, even after you were on Earth blaspheming God, and treating everyone around you like dirt? And this, despite the fact that we were sending people to try and help you, to teach you the truth? Do you really think we would be apart from you now?"
I asked them, "But what about my own sense of failure? You've shown me how I can be better, and I'm sure I can't live up to that. I'm not that good."
Some of my self-centeredness welled up and I said, "No way. I'm not going back."
They said, "There are people who care about you; your wife, your children, your mother and father. You should go back for them. Your children need your help."
I said, "You can help them. If you make me go back there are things that just won't work. If I go back there and make mistakes I won't be able to stand it because you've shown me I could be more loving and more compassionate and I'll forget. I'll be mean to someone or I'll do something awful to someone. I just know it's going to happen because I'm a human being. I'm going to blow it and I won't be able to stand it. I'll feel so bad I'll want to kill myself and I can't do that because life is precious. I might just go catatonic. So you can't send me back."
They assured me that mistakes are an acceptable part of being human.
"Go," they said, "and make all the mistakes you want. Mistakes are how you learn."
As long as I tried to do what I knew was right, they said, I would be on the right path. If I made a mistake, I should fully recognize it as a mistake, then put it behind me and simply try not to make the same mistake again. The important things is to try one's best, keep one's standards of goodness and truth, and not compromise those to win people's approval.
"But," I said, "mistakes make me feel bad."
They said, "We love you the way you are, mistakes and all. And you can feel our forgiveness. You can feel our love any time you want to."
I said, "I don't understand. How do I do that?"
"Just turn inward," they said. "Just ask for our love and we'll give it to you if you ask from the heart."
They advised me to recognize it when I made a mistake and to ask for forgiveness. Before I even got the words out of my mouth, I would be forgiven – but, I would have to accept the forgiveness. My belief in the principal of forgiveness must be real, and I would have to know that the forgiveness was given. Confessing, either in public or in private, that I had made a mistake, I should then ask for forgiveness. After that, it would be an insult to them if I didn't accept the forgiveness. I shouldn't continue to go around with a sense of guilt, and I should not repeat errors – I should learn from my mistakes.
"But," I said, "how will I know what is the right choice? How will I know what you want me to do?"
They replied, "We want you to do what you want to do. That means making choices – and there isn't necessarily any right choice. There are a spectrum of possibilities, and you should make the best choice you can from those possibilities. If you do that, we will be there helping you."
I didn't give in easily. I argued that back there was full of problems and that here was everything I could possibly want. I questioned my ability to accomplish anything they would consider important in my world. They said the world is a beautiful expression of the Supreme being. One can find beauty or ugliness depending on what one directs one's mind toward.
They explained that the subtle and complex development of our world was beyond my comprehension, but I would be a suitable instrument for the Creator. Every part of the creation, they explained, is infinitely interesting because it is a manifestation of the Creator. A very important opportunity for me would be to explore this world with wonder and enjoyment.
They never gave me a direct mission or purpose. Could I build a shrine or cathedral for God? They said those monuments were for humanity. They wanted me to live my life to love people not things. I told them I wasn't good enough to represent what I had just experienced with them on a worldly level. They assured me I would be given appropriate help whenever I might need it. All I had to do is ask.
The luminous beings, my teachers, were very convincing. I was also acutely aware that not far away was the Great being, what I knew to be the Creator. They never said, "He wants it this way," but that was implied behind everything they said. I didn't want to argue too much because the Great Entity was so wonderful and so awesome. The love that was emanated was overwhelming.
Presenting my biggest argument against coming back into the world, I told them that it would break my heart, and I would die, if I had to leave them and their love. Coming back would be so cruel, I said, that I couldn't stand it. I mentioned that the world was filled with hate and competition, and I didn't want to return to that maelstrom. I couldn't bear to leave them.
My friends observed that they had never been apart from me. I explained that I hadn't been aware of their presence, and if I went back I, again, wouldn't know they were there. Explaining how to communicate with them, they told me to get myself quiet, inside, and to ask for their love; then that love would come, and I would know they were there.
They said, "You won't be away from us. We're with you. We've always been with you. We always will be right with you all the time."
I said, "But how do I know that? You tell me that, but when I go back there it's just going to be a nice theory."
They said, "Any time you need us we'll be there for you."
I said, "You mean like you'll just appear?"
They said, "No, no. We're not going to intervene in your life in any big way unless you need us. We're just going to be there and you'll feel our presence, you'll feel our love."
After that explanation I ran out of arguments, and I said I thought I could go back. And, just like that, I was back. Returning to my body, the pain was there, only worse than before."
(Howard Storm's near-death experience ends here.)

Returning to life wasn't easy for Howard. In addition to his physical problems, he had to face the usual array of uncomprehending and insensitive responses to his new spiritual condition. It began in the hospital, he said.
Howard states: "I felt this overwhelming sense of love for everyone. I wanted to hug and kiss everyone, but I couldn't even sit up. I would say, 'Oh you're so beautiful' to anyone and everyone. I was the joke of the floor. People found it very amusing."
Like other near-death experiences, Howard's sense of empathy expanded, as well as his compassion. He could, he said, feel the emotions of others more powerfully than his own. Howard decided to enter the Christian ministry after his near-death experience.