From: Eddie Chumney
To:      heb_roots_chr@hebroots.org
Subject: News of Interest


                           News of Interest
                      June 1 to July 4, 1999


APOSTASY AND ECUMENISM

VATICAN, LUTHERANS RESOLVE CENTURIES-OLD DISPUTE ON SALVATION
June 2, 1999 Vatican City (AP)

Coming to terms in a centuries-old dispute, Roman Catholic and
Lutheran officials will release an accord next week on the means
of salvation, both sides said Wednesday. The Joint Declaration on
the Doctrine of Justification is meant to resolve a doctrinal
debate at the heart of the 16th-century Protestant Reformation,
which split Western Christianity.

The Vatican and Lutheran World Federation crafted compromise
language on one of the key unresolved points regarding what
theologians call "justification," or how humankind achieves
salvation. For the Lutherans, it depends on the grace of God,
while Catholics maintain that good works are also involved. With
the declaration, Catholics and Lutherans have agreed that divine
forgiveness and salvation come "solely by God's grace'' and that
good works flow from that.

Cardinal Edward I. Cassidy, president of the Pontifical Council
for Promoting Christian Unity, and the Rev. Ismael Noko, general
secretary of the Lutheran World Federation, will announce joint
acceptance of the document June 11 in Geneva. Agreement was
announced by the two sides almost a year ago, but closing the
gaps on wording took months more. The Vatican council indicated
Wednesday the accord would be signed at next week's event. The
Lutheran World Federation said it expected signing to come till
later.

THE GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST: AN EVANGELICAL CELEBRATION
Religion Today Monday, June 7, 1999

A statement of faith has been signed by a wide range of
evangelical leaders.  More than 125 heads of denominations and
ministries recently signed The Gospel of Jesus Christ: An
Evangelical Celebration.  It affirms doctrines including the
Trinity, the infallibility of the Bible, and the bodily
resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Christ is the only way of
salvation, which occurs through faith alone, the document says.

Signers said they hope An Evangelical Celebration will increase
unity in the church, fulfilling Jesus' command "that they all may be
one." They promised to "watch over and care for one another, to pray
for and forgive one another, and to reach out in love and truth to
God's people everywhere, for we are one family, one in the Holy
Spirit, and one in Christ."

It is "important that evangelicals are very clear on what they
believe" in order to facilitate productive ecumenical discussions with
Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christians, David Melvin, director of
operations for the National Association of Evangelicals, told Religion
Today.  The text of the document will be published in the June 14
issue of Christianity Today magazine.

Signers include leaders of Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal,
Anglican, and Lutheran denominations, and evangelical ministries
such as Promise Keepers, Campus Crusade for Christ, and Prison
Fellowship.  Religious broadcasters Brandt Gustavson, Jerry
Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Charles Stanley, and pastors Bill
Hybels, Tony Evans, and D.  James Kennedy also signed, Religion
News Service said.

The drafting committee consisted of John Akers, John Ankerberg,
John Armstrong, D.A. Carson, Keith Davy, Maxie Dunnam, Timothy
George, Scott Hafemann, Erwin Lutzer, Harold Myra, David Neff,
Thomas Oden, J.I. Packer, R.C. Sproul, and John Woodbridge.

RUSSIAN PRELATE AND IRANIAN AYATOLLAH FIND THEY SHARE AN ENEMY
Moscow (Ecumenical News Intl.)

A meeting of high-ranking representatives of the Russian Orthodox
Church and Iran's Islamic government have found common cause in
opposing what they see as the principal enemy of their own cultures -
Western liberal secular society which, they claim, is trying to impose
its social, political and economic values upon the whole world.
Orthodox Christianity and Islam are often seen as mutually hostile,
particularly in the Balkans.  But the obvious enthusiasm between
Ayatollah Mohammad Ali Taskhiri, president of Iran's Culture and
Islamic Relations Organisation, and Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk
and Kaliningrad, head of the external relations division of the
Russian Orthodox Church's Moscow Patriarchate, when they embraced each
other at the end of a four-day theological dialogue, proves otherwise.

CARDINAL SEES TWO FAITHS AS SHAPING NEXT CENTURY
June 17, 1999 By Carl Hartman, Associated Press Washington (AP)

Christianity and Islam, and what happens between them, will set
the shape of the next century more than nations will, says
Francis Cardinal George, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of
Chicago.  Speaking to a Library of Congress conference on
"Frontiers of the Mind in the 21st Century,'' he foresaw a
decline in the importance of national governments.

"In the next millennium,'' the cardinal predicted on Wednesday,
"as the modern nation state is relativized and national
sovereignty is displaced into societal arrangements still to be
invented, it will be increasingly evident that the major faiths
are carriers of culture...'' And he added: "The conversation
between Christianity and Islam is not yet far advanced, but its
outcome will determine what the globe will look like a century
from now.''

His view of Islam's importance was endorsed by Algerian-born
Mohammed Arkoun, a retired professor of the history of Islamic
thought at the Sorbonne in Paris.  "Islam is important by its
human dimensions,'' he said in an interview.  `It covers many
societies, from Indonesia and the Philippines to Morocco, from
the Caucasus and Tajikistan to South Africa.  Islam is
everywhere.  Islam and Christianity are the only two religions
which spread all over the world.  Judaism didn't spread.
Buddhism spread in Asia...  "That's why it's so essential that a
special dialogue, a special exchange exist between these two
religions without of course neglecting the other religions...''

NATION OF ISLAM FOUNDER'S SON TAKES UNITY MESSAGE TO JEWISH
SERVICE
June 19, 1999 By Jeff Shain, Associated Press Miami (AP)

A mixed audience of Jews and Muslims warmly received the son of
Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad during a rare appearance
by a Muslim leader inside a Jewish temple.  Members of the two
faiths came together for Erev Shabbat services on Friday at the
Temple Israel of Greater Miami, where Imam W.  Deen Muhammad
who rejected his father's black separatist beliefs years ago
gave brief remarks.

"This is a sacred day,'' Muhammad said.  "I feel very much at
home in soul with you.  I feel your purity and your peace.''
Rabbi Jeffrey Kahn hoped the event would start "a very special
relationship between Jews and Muslims in the community.'' "It's a
magical evening,'' Kahn said.  "I think it's great having them all
here.''

Elijah Muhammad led the Nation of Islam to prominence by
preaching militant black nationalism.  After his death in 1975,
his son took over and soon disbanded the group upon rejecting
racial separatism.  The Nation of Islam was revived in 1978 by
Louis Farrakhan, who still preaches Elijah Muhammad's beliefs.
As head of the Chicago-based Society of Muslim Americans, W.
Deen Muhammad, 65, has worked to support interfaith dialogue
between Muslims, Christians and Jews.  He said Friday's
appearance was the second time   and the first in more than a
decade   that he has participated in Jewish Sabbath services.

About 150 Muslims and Jews gathered together after services in
small groups to share refreshments and small talk.  "Imam
Muhammad is our leader.  When he comes this close, we like to
show our support,'' said Yacub Bilal, a Muslim who drove four
hours to attend the event.  Linda Datko, a Temple Israel member
who brought her 13-year-old son, Joseph, said the event was a
needed cultural exchange.  "This was a good opportunity to learn
and not just take it out of a textbook,'' she said.

ANGLICAN BISHOP HOPES TO SET UP 'UNITED RELIGIONS' ORG
Weekend News Today By Andy Laurents Source: Ecumenical News
International June 24, 1999

Leaders of an initiative to set up a united body of the world's
religions, paralleling the United Nations, claim that their
campaign is gaining momentum.

The Christian clergyman spearheading the "United Religions
Initiative", California-based Episcopal (Anglican) Bishop William
Swing, said that religions lagged at least half-a-century behind
nation states in establishing international forums to resolve
conflicts between different faiths.  "As nations have got together for
the past 50 years to pursue global good, during the same 50 years the
religions have not spoken to each other and have not sat down to
figure out what their common vocation is," he told ENI during a visit
to Jerusalem during which he, along with the Tibetan Buddhist leader,
the Dalai Lama, attended an inter-faith conference.

"The problems, among religions, and in religions, are everyday
problems, and they are not going to be solved, or addressed or
helped, until we finally have some kind of 'United Religions',
that will parallel the United Nations, so that we can carry out
negotiations."

His goal is to set up the world body of religions by June next
year, and he remains hopeful of meeting the deadline - with God's
help.  The initiative also has the support of the Dalai Lama, whose
visit to Jerusalem this month was sponsored by Bishop Swing's
Inter-Religious Friendship Group and the Inter-Religious Co-ordinating
Council in Israel.  "The Dalai Lama and I have been talking about this
for several years and he is very supportive," said the bishop, who
added that he had also discussed his proposal with Vatican officials.

"We see Northern Ireland, we see Sri Lanka, we see the Sudan, we
see the Middle East, we see religions pitted against each other.
And we are going to see more of that, not less.  What happens
when we have five extremist religious groups in charge of five
countries with hands on atomic weapons?  "The only answer, he
said, was to set up an organisation of world regions bounded by
clear structures and principles, agreed by all the participants."

To this end, he and others of like mind have been working on a
charter that might be adopted by such a body.  He stressed that
the model should be quite different from the bureaucratic
framework of the United Nations.  The structural basis for such a body
had already been formed thanks to the growing trend to have
inter-faith groups, he said.

"In the San Francisco Bay area 19 cities have inter-faith
chapters that have just grown up spontaneously, nobody tried to
organise them," he said.  Bishop Swing said the trends were the
result of greater interaction and greater intermarriage between
races and faiths.  This was in large part due to the process of
global integration.

"It's going to be a whole new world very quickly, and there are
going to be religions living beside each other everywhere," he
said.  Later this year Bishop Swing will attend an inter-faith
forum in Atlanta, Georgia, hosted by former US President Jimmy
Carter, who has expressed interest in the project.  "We want to
build up a core group of people of many religions, who have great
respect for each other, and we will see where it goes," Bishop Swing
said.

In Chicago, US, a senior staff member of the Council for a
Parliament of the World's Religions (CPWR), Travis Rejman, said
that he personally admired many of Bishop Swing's ideas.
Stressing that he was not speaking on behalf of his organisation,
Rejman said that all ventures to promote inter-religious harmony were
welcome.

TWO YEARS AFTER ORTHODOX BOYCOTT, POPE HAPPY OVER VISIT
June 28, 1999 Vatican City (AP)

Pope John Paul II expressed delight Monday over the visit of an
Orthodox delegation for a ceremony in St.  Peter's Basilica that
was boycotted two years ago because of strained relations.  John
Paul is to lead the celebration Tuesday to mark the feast day of
Saints Peter and Paul.  For two decades, the Orthodox church had
sent representatives to the annual ceremony as part of efforts to
improve ties among Christians, but in 1997, the Orthodox skipped the
service.

This year's Orthodox delegation, as was last year's, was sent by
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, spiritual leader of the
world's 300 million Christian Orthodox.  "Your presence is for me and
the Church of Rome a source of joy, of this deep joy that results from
fraternal communion,'' John Paul told the delegates in a private
audience.  John Paul is determined to keep improving relations with
the Orthodox, making reconciliation among Christians his principal
goal for the start of the new millennium.

LUTHERAN LEADER HAS HIGH HOPES OF SHARING EUCHARIST WITH
CATHOLICS
Bratislava (ENI).  6/29/99

A senior Lutheran leader has suggested that a ground-breaking
agreement between the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) and the
Roman Catholic Church may lead to eucharistic sharing between
Lutherans and Catholics.  The LWF's president, Bishop Christian
Krause, from Germany, stressed that the agreement did not in
itself mean that there would be intercommunion between Lutherans
and Roman Catholics.  However, the agreement could serve as a
"theological basis" to bring together what was "broken apart at
the time of the Reformation".

ANTI-SEMITISM

PIUS XII'S 1943 LETTER AGAINST JEWISH STATEHOOD REVEALED
By Elli Wohlgelernter Jerusalem (July 2) Jerusalem Post

At the height of the Holocaust, Pope Pius XII made known to
President Franklin D.  Roosevelt his opposition toward Palestine
becoming a Jewish homeland, according to a letter from the US
Archives obtained by The Jerusalem Post from the Simon Wiesenthal
Center.  Dated June 22, 1943, the letter sent by A.  G. Cicognani, the
pope's special representative to the US, to Ambassador Myron Taylor,
Roosevelt's special emissary to Pius XII, is believed to be the first
explicit expression of Pius's policy against Zionism conveyed to the
American government.

"It is true that at one time Palestine was inhabited by the
Hebrew Race, but there is no axiom in history to substantiate the
necessity of a people returning to a country they left nineteen
centuries before," the letter reads.  "If a 'Hebrew Home' is desired,
it would not be too difficult to find a more fitting territory than
Palestine.  With an increase in the Jewish population there, grave,
new international problems would arise."

Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said the
letter "is an indictment of Pius XII, because it basically says
that when the pope wanted a point of view expressed about how he
clearly felt, he said it clearly.  Where is a similar letter to
Adolf Hitler, telling Hitler that the Vatican finds his policies
against the Jews repugnant? But at the height of the Holocaust,
the Vatican knew how to oppose the State of Israel."

Rabbi David Rosen, head of the Israel office of the
Anti-Defamation League and an expert on Catholic-Jewish
relations, said that "it has been well known for a long time of
the shameful policy the Holy See maintained during that period,
and this is just but one confirmation of that fact." Rosen said
Pius's anti-Zionism was a continuation of long-standing Vatican
policy, which all changed with the issuing of Nostra Aetate.

Hier said the letter, which was found two weeks ago in research
being conducted on Pope Pius, further spotlights the issue of the
church's moving forward his candidacy for sainthood.  "Many people
have asked me, what is it our business who the Catholics appoint a
saint?" Hier said.  "Normally I would agree with that. But in the
presence of survivors, tens of thousands of whom are still alive in
their last few years, that they should live out their lives knowing
that the person whom they heard nothing from, nothing but silence, has
been designated as a saint - many people around the world will say a
saint was alive in the Vatican during the Holocaust.  That is an
insult to the memory of the Holocaust, and is an insult to the
survivors."

ATTACK ON MESSIANICS IN JERUSALEM
Religion Today June 21, 1999

Messianic Jews have been attacked in Jerusalem.  Unknown
assailants threw Molotov cocktails into the apartment of Joseph
Shulam, a Messianic leader, and a Christian bookshop earlier this
year, Israel Today said.  Shulam believes that a small branch of an
Ultra-Orthodox group carried out the attacks in response to full-page
ads in local newspapers by Messianic congregations. Israeli police
have no leads in the attacks but the national media have covered the
story.  Shulam said he was able to talk about Jesus Christ when a
cable TV news service interviewed him about the incident.

RISE OF ISLAM

U.S.  STATE DEPT.  BEGINS DIALOGUE TO UNDERSTAND THE CULTURE,
RELIGION OF ISLAM
Special to World Tribune.com Friday, July 2, 1999 Washington

The State Department has launched a dialogue with American Muslim
activists in an attempt to understand modern Islam and the religious
element in national conflicts.  State Department officials said the
meetings began after Islamic leaders in the United States complained
that Islamic states in the Middle East and Africa were unfairly
portrayed by the media and misunderstood in U.S.  foreign policy.

"We began the Islamic Roundtable in order to understand the
issues coming from moderate America Islam as it relates to Muslim
thinking and Islam around the world," said Robert Seiple, recently
confirmed as U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious
freedom.  "I think we're making headway.  I don't profess to have come
to this job with a great sense of what modern Islam is.  But I have
begun to understand the beauty and richness of the faith and how it is
has been so terribly misconstrued both within the faith and outside
it."

Seiple said he hopes the dialogue will be adopted by other
agencies in the U.S.  government.  He said the conclusions of the
roundtable would be implemented within the State Department.  "We
obviously need to take what we learn at these roundtables and
implement it, otherwise they are nothing more than therapy sessions,"
he said.

PREPARATION FOR WAR

NEW ARMY: European Union Vows to Become Military Power
June 4, 1999 New York Times By Craig R. Whitney Cologne, Germany

The leaders of 15 European countries decided Thursday to make the
European Union a military power for the first time in its 42-year
history, with command headquarters, staffs and forces of its own for
peacekeeping and peacemaking missions in future crises like those in
Kosovo or Bosnia.  Long an economic giant, the European Union Thursday
has a common currency, the euro, in 11 countries. But when it comes to
foreign and defense policy, Europe does not even have a telephone
number, as Henry A.  Kissinger sarcastically observed 25 years ago
when he was Secretary of State.  All that will change by the end of
next year, the 15 leaders vowed Thursday.

By late 2000, according to the plan announced at the European
Union summit meeting here, a single foreign and security policy
czar will speak for Europe and carry out the military will of
European leaders.  The move will enable many of the members of
NATO, as well as several European nations that are not in the
alliance, to mount their own campaigns without America's might.
The European leaders declared: "The union must have the capacity
for autonomous action, backed up by credible military forces, the
means to decide to use them, and a readiness to do so, in order to
respond to international crises without prejudice to actions by NATO."

They echoed language first used by President Jacques Chirac of
France and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain six months ago
after two crises in the Balkans showed how far Europe still had
to go to be taken seriously as a military power, even on its own
continent.  Neither in Bosnia nor in Kosovo were European
countries, whose total armed forces exceed those of the United
States in size, able to project military power convincingly
enough to halt the violence.

Thursday, all 15 leaders agreed to absorb the functions of the
10-nation Western European Union, a long-dormant European defense
alliance founded a year before NATO in 1948.  They said the Western
European Union's 60,000-troop force, Eurocorps, would be put at the
disposal of the new, more assertive Europe that is taking shape under
the European Union.  "In that event," they said, "the W.E.U.  as an
organization would have completed its purpose."

CLINTON SAYS NATO IS READY TO FIGHT REPRESSION IN EUROPE, AFRICA
SKOPJE, June 22 (AFP)

Praising NATO for its campaign in Kosovo, US President Bill
Clinton said Tuesday that the alliance could intervene elsewhere
in Europe or in Africa to fight repression.  "In Africa or
central Europe, we will not allow, only because of differences in
ethnic background or religion or racism, people to be attacked. We
will stop that," Clinton told US troops gathered at the Skopje
airport.  "We can do it now.  We can do it tomorrow, if it is
necessary, somewhere else," he said.

HOW BEIJING HOPES TO DEFEAT THE WEST: Author reveals threatening
nuclear strategy By Jon E.  Dougherty   1999 WorldNetDaily.com
6/9/99

Unlike the former Soviet Union, China is not interested in
matching America "warhead for warhead," according to a noted
defense correspondent and author of a best-selling new book on
Chinese espionage.  Bill Gertz, a defense reporter for The
Washington Times and author of the new book, "Betrayal: How the
Clinton Administration Undermined American Security," said that
not only does China pose a national security threat to the United
States, but that Beijing is building up military forces for other than
regional security interests.

"The Chinese are engaged in a pretty serious strategic and
conventional military buildup," Gertz told WorldNetDaily.  "The
alarming part of that is that it doesn't appear as though they're
building up forces just for a regional conflict.  It appears as though
they're developing forces [strictly] to oppose the United States."
Gertz said the People's Liberation Army "is building nuclear missiles
and new types of warheads," based in large measure on technology
robbed from U.S.  weapons labs. "Throughout the '90s, that gleaning of
technology was also based on technology transfers" with the
cooperation and approval of the Clinton administration.

Gertz said China "still has only a modest nuclear force," but
that Beijing's "strategy is not the same as the U.S.  and Russia,
which tried to match each other warhead for warhead." Instead, he
said, China is engaged in "asymmetric warfare, where they're
developing a few high-tech weapons able to counter a better-armed
foe." That, however, includes about 20 long-range nuclear missiles --
13 of which are aimed at America, according to Gertz's sources and the
CIA.  These long-range weapons "each have huge warheads," he said, "in
the neighborhood of about five megatons each." He said intelligence
and weapons specialists called them "city busters," because the amount
of destruction they could do is enormous.

CHINESE MISSILES CAPABLE OF REACHING U.S.  HEARTLAND
CND, 06/15/99

Chinese missiles can now reach cities in the heartland of the
United States due to technological improvements, sources said,
the Hong Kong Standard reported on Monday.  The People's
Liberation Army (PLA) has succeeded in using solidified fuel in
its multi-warhead missile, making it possible for China to point
several hundred missiles at targets deep inside the United
States.  The long-lasting solidified fuel is relatively cheap and
available.  The PLA has also developed the know-how for launching
missiles from a moving base with high accuracy.

CHINA SAYS U.S.  WANTS TO BECOME 'LORD OF EARTH'
Reuters June 22, 1999 Beijing

China compared the United States to Nazi Germany Tuesday and said
NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia reflected Washington's ambition to become
"Lord of the Earth.'' "If you ask which country wants to become 'the
Lord of the Earth' as the then Nazi Germany had tried to, there is
only one answer,'' said a commentary in the People's Daily, the
flagship newspaper of China's ruling Communist Party. "It is the
hegemonism-pursuing United States.''

In likening the United States to Nazi Germany, the newspaper
cited its massive defense budget, the bombing of Yugoslavia
without U.N.  sanction and the killing of civilians during the
air campaign in Yugoslavia.  NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia "has
let more and more people see more clearly the ferocious
appearance of the U.S.  hegemonism and its ambition to dominate
the world,'' it said.

Beijing consistently opposed NATO's air campaign, fearing it
could set a precedent for "interference'' in Chinese problems
such as Taiwan and Tibet.  China's state-run media portrayed
Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic as a hero fighting NATO
aggression.  The People's Daily said NATO's intervention was
aimed at expanding its influence eastward and paving the way for
the United States to "control the entire Europe.''

RUSSIA IN BIGGEST MILITARY EXERCISE SINCE COLD WAR
Moscow, Jun 23, 1999 -- (Reuters)

A top military official said on Tuesday that Russia had launched
the biggest domestic military exercises of their kind since 1985
but these were not a show of force connected with the Yugoslavia
crisis.  Col.-Gen.  Yury Baluyevsky, first deputy chief of the
Russian General Staff, said the exercises were significant in
involving top military officials across the entire territory of
European Russia.  "All forces of five military districts from the
Black Sea to the Arctic White Sea are involved now in unprecedented
military exercises code named Zapad (West) 1999," he told a news
conference.  "They are so-called top staff level exercises involving
50,000 troops on the ground." "The exercises started on June 21," he
added.

RUSSIAN EMP
The Washington Times 06/18/1999; pp A5 by Bill Gertz and Rowan
Scarborough

Pentagon intelligence sources tell us that Russia in early April
resumed testing a high-altitude weapon that fires off an
electromagnetic pulse, or EMP.  The EMP bursts are similar to the
disruption of electronics caused by a nuclear blast that can shut down
everything from computers to cars.  The Pentagon views the Russian EMP
weapon as a serious development that may be part of Moscow's ongoing
anti-satellite weapons development program. U.S.  satellites are the
Achilles' heel of the U.S.  military' s high-technology force used for
sending orders to forces around the world as well as communicating
with troops and organizing logistics.  A recent test of a ground laser
against a U.S. satellite shocked military leaders by demonstrating how
vulnerable U.S.  satellites are to disruption.

TWO RUSSIAN BOMBERS FLEW WITHIN STRIKING DISTANCE OF USA LAST
WEEK DRUDGE REPORT JUNE 30, 1999

During a massive military exercise last week, Russia flew two of
its strategic bombers to within striking distance of the United
States.  The move, the first of its kind since the cold war,
alarmed and astounded U.S.  intelligence officials and underlined
recent Western concerns about the military leadership in Moscow, the
WASHINGTON POST is reporting in Thursday editions.  The Russian TU-95
Bear bombers were intercepted by four U.S.  F-15 fighters near Iceland
early Friday morning and escorted around the island, according to US
intelligence.

PERSECUTION

CLINTON'S EXECUTIVE ORDER DEFINES WITNESSING A HATE CRIME
News of Interest 4-26-99

"President Clinton recently signed executive order (E) 13107,
Implementation of Human Rights Treaties.  The new EO requires
federal, state and local governments to comply immediately with
all United Nations Treaties, whether or not those treaties have
been confirmed by the U.S.  Senate as required by the
Constitution.

One of these treaties, the UN Treaty of Genocide, says that
persuading someone to change his or her religion is a hate crime
punishable by international law.  The new EO 13107 is expected to be
used strongly by the newly established Office of Religious Persecution
Monitoring to arrest and imprison Christian missionaries and witnesses
anywhere in the world who preach Jesus only.  From now on, this will
be considered a hate crime -- genocide.

PREPARATIONS FOR Y2K

NEW YORK CITY'S EMERGENCY COMMAND BUNKER UNVEILED
Drudge Report Monday, June 07, 1999

Sitting on the 23rd floor of 7 World Trade Center, accessible
only by a special freight elevator that uses its own power
supply, is New York's new emergency command center, a "bunker in
the sky." "The Mayor's Emergency Operations Center" is designed
to hold up to 250 people.  It will become the Brain Room of the
city during a major crisis.  The bunker has been built with walls
designed to withstand hurricane winds and rocket attacks.  The
compound also uses a special air circulation system.  The bunker has
beds, bathrooms with showers and a kitchen.  There are rows of
computer consoles tied into government communications and emergency
systems, reports NEWSDAY's Graham Rayman.  On the walls are banks of
television monitors and projection screens.

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