LONDON - If royal genes have anything to do with the result, Democrat John Kerry is destined to dethrone George W. Bush this November.
According to a theory its British proponents say has proved surprisingly accurate over the past century, the candidate with the bluest blood in his veins will win the White House. In 2000 it was Bush. This time, it's Kerry.
"Our research is not yet complete but my bet is that Kerry has more royal connections and that he is more noble than President Bush," said Harold Brooks-Baker, publishing director of Burke's Peerage, a guide to the aristocracy.
"But both candidates have a remarkable number of royal connections and both are related to (Britain's) Queen Elizabeth," he added. . . .
The 60-year-old can trace his roots back to the first Massachusetts governor, John Winthrop, to every great family in Boston and to a host of royals in Europe. . .
"Kerry can almost certainly be traced back to King James I and to the bloodlines straight through the Windsor and Hanover families," Brooks-Baker said. [...] Bush was more royal than Al Gore, his opponent four years ago, and also boasts a direct descent from Henry III and from Henry VIII's sister Mary Tudor, who was also the wife of Louis XI of France. He is also descended from Charles II of England.
A secretive initiation ceremony in the basement of a Long Island Masonic lodge went "tragically wrong" when a member mistakenly pulled out a loaded weapon and fatally shot an inductee in the face, police said Tuesday.
William James, 47, of Medford, N.Y., was pronounced dead at the scene of Monday night's shooting inside the Southside Masonic Lodge, said Suffolk County Detective Lt. Jack Fitzpatrick.
James was participating in an induction around 8:40 p.m. at the Southside Masonic Lodge when Albert Eid, 76, of Patchogue, pulled out a gun from his pants pocket with real bullets instead of blanks and shot him, Fitzpatrick said. [...] Fitzpatrick told reporters at a news conference that police believe the shooting "was completely accidental."
Police believe the Masons sat James in a chair and placed cans on a small platform around his head.
Eid was standing approximately 20 feet away holding a gun, Fitzpatrick said. A third member out of James' view held a stick, and when the gun was fired the man with the stick was supposed to knock the cans off the platform to make the inductee think that real bullets were fired.
Fitzpatrick said the ceremony was designed to create "a state of anxiety" for the inductees. Police also found a guillotine, rat traps, and a wooden board that Fitzpatrick surmised was used in some type of "walking the plank" routine in the basement of the one-story building.
Eid pleaded innocent to a second-degree manslaughter. [...] Monday's ceremony was an initiation into the Fellow Craft, which is the second degree within the Masonic system.
Police pronounced it an accident within hours. That's some crack investigation.
JOHNSON CITY [Tenn.] -- Washington County authorities say one Ku Klux Klansman accidentally shot another participant at the initiation of a new member, then ran from the incident.
Chief Deputy Patrick Littleton says about 10 people were at the KKK initiation, two of them children.
They had the initiate blindfolded and standing on tiptoes with his neck in a noose as they shot paintballs at him. This, in a woods near Limestone.
Littleton says 45-year-old Gregory Allen Freeman started firing his nine millimeter pistol into the air to add realism to the event and one of the slugs hit Jeffrey Murr as it came down again. The bullet struck the top of Murr's head and came out near the base of his skull.
Freemasons, targetted by a suicide bombing in Istanbul, are viewed with suspicion in Turkey, a secular state with strong Muslim traditions, and all the more so by Islamic extremists who accuse them of having pro-Zionist aims.
In a country of 70 million people, freemasons number no more than 14,000, belonging to three groups.
The lodge hit by two would-be suicide bombers late Tuesday belongs to the largest of these groups, the Association of the Grand Temple of Free and Accepted Masons of Turkey.
Two people were killed in the attack, including one of the bombers, and six others were wounded.
"It's a shock, a major surprise," an Ankara-based freemason told AFP.
The attack was carried out because "the man in the street thinks masonic rites are akin to Judaic rites and linked to Israel, which isn't the case," the man, who wished to remain anonymous, said.
The surviving attacker . . . was rushed to hospital after losing an arm and suffering abdominal injuries in the explosion.
He was shown on television yelling "Damn Israel, long live..." as he was wheeled into the hospital . . .
Many Jewish businessmen and intellectuals are believed to belong to Turkey's masonic orders.
The first masonic lodge was set up in what was then the Ottoman Empire in 1721 by French and British traders.
The empire occasionally cracked down on them because of their perceived foreigness or atheism. In 1740, Sultan Mahmud I outlawed their meetings throughout the empire.
A national freemason's movement emerged in 1909 at a time when the "Young Turks" were challenging the power of the sultans.
Following the creation of modern Turkey out of the ashes of the shattered empire, the government outlawed freemasons for some 10 years in the early 1930s because of their perceived "threat" to the young Republic's nationalist principles.
Lodges were officially reopened in the 1960s. . . .
The army recently asked local authorities to keep tabs on many "potentially subversive" organisations . . .
Traditionalists may be perturbed by claims that Tony Blair takes advice from lifestyle guru Carole Caplin on matters ranging from war in Iraq to war with Gordon Brown to, more alarmingly still, which underpants to wear.
Perhaps they would not mind Ms Caplin advising Mr Blair if she gave her own judicious verdict. But after Caplin receives a call from the Prime Minister she gets on the phone to her mum. Sylvia Caplin then, we are told, does a New Age reading involving a hidden force called The Light. [...] Blair would not be the first to have an unconventional guru. You can't get grander than the imperial Russian royal family, yet it relied on the bonkers Rasputin. [...] Bill Clinton used Anthony Robbins for "motivational therapy" . . . Nancy Reagan, wife of President Ronnie, used to study horoscopes and tarot cards before advising her old man. [...] President Mitterrand of France who, when not searching for deep truths with his mistresses, was consulting his court astrologer Elizabeth Teissier. In France they take these gypsy arts seriously; madame was made a doctor of philosophy by the Sorbonne.
President Mitterrand was merely following in the tradition of De Gaulle, whose astrologer, Major Maurice Vasset, drew up star charts to plot military campaigns for French generals [...]
The source is an intimate of Caplin and real-estate agent for Cherie Blair, who intimates that the Light-channeler's grandchild is fathered by Tony Blair.Sunday Times March 7, 2004:
In an e-mail to his lawyer quoted in the American magazine, Foster describes what he claims were repeated late-night calls between Tony Blair and Caplin. "Since Carole has become pregnant, Tony is now ringing nearly every night," he wrote. "She used to lay in bed next to me and talk to him but it is becoming more secretive of late."
Peter Foster claims his former fiancee was in love with the PM and that they were so close that Mr Blair became the "other man" in her life.
He says Ms Caplin - the lifestyle guru and style adviser who used to massage the Blairs and reportedly took "therapeutic" showers with Cherie - even shopped for Mr Blair's underwear. Foster says, ". . . I believe that Carole is in love with Tony, and I was caught in that triangle."
Ever since the robot rovers Spirit and Opportunity landed on Mars in January, NASA has been flooded with hundreds of daily calls and e-mails from people eager to share their own dramatic discoveries.
Medford, N.J., resident George Filer says he has spotted letters similar to E and G, written on Martian rocks. Filer and his associates at MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) believe these are the creations of intelligent beings. He's been trying to tell NASA, without success.
"They keep a lot from the public," said Filer, a retired Air Force pilot. [...] NASA scientists did more analyses of the [1976] Viking landing site and found surprises in the chemistry of the Martian soil. They decided it was an unanticipated chemical reaction that made their life-test come out positive.
The Mary R. Fisher Elementary School exercise room bustled with activity Monday and Tuesday as 450 students took part in a child identification program sponsored by the Freemasons Lodge 122 of Thompson.
CHIP is a four-part procedure: Pre-school and elementary grade students were fingerprinted, had dental impressions made, had still photos taken and then were videotaped. [...] Each student was given a bag with the CHIP logo in which the fingerprint, tooth print, photo and videotape were placed. Parents will pick up the information at scheduled parent-teacher conferences.
That last bit was unclear, but it sounds like the Freemasons hold onto to that multimedia info for a few weeks until it is given to the parents.
The University of Kansas Medical Center officially has renamed its cancer research organization the Kansas Masonic Cancer Research Institute. The new name reflects the commitment of $20 million by the Kansas Masonic Foundation to support cancer research on the KUMC campus. [...] The gifts by the Topeka-based Kansas Masonic Foundation are being used to help the institute achieve its goal to become a National Cancer Institute (NCI) Comprehensive Cancer Center. NCI, a division of the National Institutes of Health, awards the designation to cancer centers for the quality and level of their laboratory and clinical research, education and outreach activities.
So, the Masons are 'helping' UK fall in line with conventioal cancer 'research' of the fed-pharma cartel. Color me not shocked.
two crucial issues are about to be decided by the U.S. Senate, without the knowledge of the American people.
Issue 1: Should the United States ratify the Law of the Seas Treaty (Treaty Doc. 103-39)?
Issue 2: Should any U.N. treaty be ratified without full, open debate and a recorded vote? . . .
The treaty is very near ratification by unanimous consent, having never been debated, and without a recorded vote. This is the same procedure used to ratify the U.N. Convention on Desertification, back in 2000. . . .
The treaty gives a U.N. agency the authority to tax by requiring a permit to engage in any activity affecting the seabed, such as oil drilling or mining.
One by one the five sleepy boys rousted themselves from slumber and made their way down the oak staircase to the breakfast table at the new Illinois Masonic Children's Home in Murphysboro. [...] The five boys in Cottage 1 are the first residents of Murphysboro's Illinois Masonic Children's Home, which opened Jan. 19. [...] Said Theresa Miller, the home's administrator,"it can be a very, very trying time for children." . . .
Family members can come visit on the weekends. [...] Children may stay for as little as six months or they may stay there until they graduate high school. They are referred to the children's home by police departments, school social workers, mental health agencies or even the parents.
1010 WINS Mar 9, 2004: 
