Huckabee to Make Guest Spot on First SNL Since Writers’ Strike
http://youdecide08.foxnews.com/2008/02/20/huckabee-to-make-guest-spot-on-first-snl-since-writers-strike/
Saturday Night Live’s first show since the writer’s strike forced it from the air 16 weeks ago will feature Mike Huckabee in a guest appearance, FOX News learned Wednesday.
The former Arkansas governor is not expected to host this weekend’s SNL — that job is reserved for “30 Rock” star and former cast cast member Tina Fey.
But a spot on the NBC sketch comedy show will at least give him some extra time in the limelight as rival John McCain works to close him out in the GOP race. Democratic candidate Barack Obama appeared as himself during the show’s last episode before the strike, on Nov. 3, 2007.
Huckabee has been a favorite of the late night comedy circuit since he launched his underdog bid.
Conan O’Brien, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert even staged a mock feud on their shows in early February over who “made” Huckabee.
Huckabee: This Is Not About My Ego
http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/Huckabee:_This_Is_Not_Abo/2008/02/20/74120.html
Mike Huckabee said Tuesday passion for his beliefs - not his ego - was the reason he remains in the Republican presidential race despite near-impossible odds. Rival John McCain collected another primary win in Wisconsin and moved closer to the 1,191 delegates needed to clinch the nomination. Huckabee hasn't won a contest since Feb. 9.
"Let me assure you that if it were about ego, my ego doesn't enjoy getting these kinds of evenings where we don't win the primary elections," Huckabee told reporters at a Little Rock hotel. "So it's got to be about something more than that, and it is. It's about convictions."
The former Arkansas governor said he still wanted to deliver his message about issues important to him, such as opposition to abortion and a revised U.S. tax policy.
"We're going to keep marching on," Huckabee said. He already has campaign appearances scheduled in Ohio and Texas, which hold primaries March 4.
"There are millions of Republicans across this country who have yet to be heard from," Huckabee said. "Ending this race prematurely means they don't get a voice and they don't have a choice. I know there are those who say 'let's just get this over with,' but folks, elections can be a messy thing."
Huckabee said he had spoken with McCain after the Wisconsin primary and he thanked his opponent for running a civil campaign. "Clearly we were disappointed by the results in Wisconsin," but Huckabee said he would look for the good amid the bad news.
Political analysts say Huckabee faces a nearly impossible task if he hopes to be the nominee, based on the number of votes Huckabee would need to claim in each remaining primary if he hopes to pass McCain in the delegate count. Huckabee said he's battling the belief that McCain virtually has the nomination locked up.
"We're really going against an incredible headwind every day, and what I have to remind individual voters is that their voice and their vote still counts. Nobody can take that away from them unless they just give it away," Huckabee said.
The battle to redefine what it means to be a conservative evangelical
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Perspectives/Default.aspx?id=67455
The Religious Left is successfully redefining what it means to be a conservative evangelical by misrepresenting what it means to be a conservative evangelical.
In a recent conference call hosted by Faith in Public Life, one of the emerging voices of the Religious Left, Dr. Joel Hunter, said:
"There’s also a change in the voices that are defining what is conservative now, and what is evangelical. In the past couple of decades you’ve had some very loud voices on both sides -- hard right, hard left -- and when those were the only choices, then of course many evangelicals are going to go with the hard right because, well, that’s kind of where we mostly are. Now there are many more voices that are expanding the agenda, and so those people that have always had kind of a holistic approach, rather than just a one or two issue approach, are now feeling permission and given permission to be more nuanced and more sophisticated in their approach, rather than just going in a very bifurcated system. And so, what you’re hearing now is that the old voices that appointed themselves as the definers of what was evangelical or what was conservative are not holding sway with the majority of evangelicals anymore".
By convincing America that conservative evangelicals are concerned only with two issues, stopping abortion and preserving traditional marriage, these new voices of evangelicalism are effectively making the case that conservative evangelicals ignore poverty, HIV/AIDS, and the environment. The history of evangelicalism tells a different story.
Evangelicals have set the standard throughout history for social action which continues into the present through numerous humanitarian relief organizations. The Association of Evangelical Relief and Development Organizations claim 64 such organizations as members, including World Vision, Compassion International, Samaritan’s Purse, and Mercy Ships.
One of the largest humanitarian relief organizations in the world is the Salvation Army. It defines its commitment to social services as "... an outward visible expression of the Army's strong religious principles." Those social services include disaster relief, services for the aging, AIDS education, medical facilities, and shelters for battered women. The Salvation Army impacts 30 million people a year in the United States alone. The founder of the Salvation Army, William Booth, was a Methodist minister. On its website the Salvation Army defines itself as an "evangelical group."
To these readily recognizable evangelical organizations add the innumerable evangelical churches across America that in very quiet and unrecognized ways minister to the needs of the poor and suffering every day. In my own community a local evangelical church runs the oldest and largest homeless shelter in our county. Grace Gospel Fellowship in Pontiac, Michigan, serves 127,000 meals a year, provides rehabilitation services and housing for drug addicts and single mothers, and creates jobs. It accomplishes its mission without one dime of government funding, and is "dedicated to recovery through the gospel of Jesus Christ."
The Religious Left’s appeal for the Religious Right to "broaden its agenda" to include poverty, HIV/AIDS, and the environment ignores the fact that conservative evangelicals have always had a strong commitment to these issues. So if conservative evangelicals are already leading the efforts to relieve poverty and disease, what’s behind the call to "broaden the agenda"? Another agenda altogether.
What's really happening here is an attempt by the Left to define evangelicalism down by moving it away from its emphasis on the power of the gospel to change lives. The church's ability to affect social and cultural change, bringing relief to the poor and suffering, is rooted first and foremost in its commitment to the gospel of Jesus Christ, and what the gospel says about the condition of man in sin which results in the symptoms of poverty and disease.
The Religious Left invalidates the conservative evangelical commitment to humanitarian relief because we are achieving our ends in the name of Jesus Christ through the gospel, without the assistance of government funding. The fundamental tenant of modern liberalism is that a government program funded by redistributed wealth is the preferred method of humanitarian relief rather than what the church is accomplishing by faith through compassionate hearts.
The new voices of the Religious Left are defining down what it means to be an evangelical by making the symptoms of man's sin (poverty, disease, etc.) a priority rather than addressing the cause of those symptoms (sin) and the cure found in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The argument for this reprioritizing is a convincing one, suggesting the new priorities for evangelicals ought to be determined by asking, "How would Jesus respond to (fill in your favorite social cause here)?" The implied answer is that Jesus would be more concerned about the treatment of the poor (especially illegal immigrants) and, at best, neutral on the questions of abortion and homosexual marriage because Jesus never spoke against abortion or homosexual marriage.
These new voices of evangelicalism wear the label "red letter Christians," but they are in reality "white space Christians," determining Jesus' view of abortion and homosexual marriage by focusing on what he didn't say rather than on what he did say. In Matthew 5 Jesus upholds the standard of the Mosaic Law, which is clear in its call for punishing anyone responsible for killing a child in the womb (Exodus 21:22-25). When Jesus wanted to illustrate true greatness, he set a child in the midst of the disciples and said, "Of such is the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 19:14). In Matthew 19 Jesus clearly affirmed that marriage is between one man and one woman by validating the story of Adam and Eve, holding it up as the standard for marriage. As for the question of how Jesus would respond to illegal immigrants, I'm pretty sure he would tell them to obey the law (cf. Matthew 22:21).
The new voices of evangelicalism sound eerily similar to the old voices of the social gospel movement who moved their churches away from the priority of the gospel in the early 20th Century, focusing instead on positive thinking and welfare as a solution to social ills. The result was empty pews and even emptier hearts. I'll tip my hat to the new constitution, take a bow for the new revolution, then I'll get down on my knees and pray we don't get fooled again.
Fidel Castro Resigns Cuban Presidency
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jExjQ3kxMnFKKud34nr9Yv_QZuagD8UT9PLO0
HAVANA — An ailing Fidel Castro resigned as Cuba's president Tuesday after nearly a half-century in power, saying he will not accept a new term when the new parliament meets Sunday.
"I will not aspire to nor accept — I repeat, I will not aspire to nor accept — the post of President of the Council of State and Commander in Chief," read a letter signed by Castro published early Tuesday in the online edition of the Communist Party daily Granma.
The announcement effectively ends the rule of the 81-year-old Castro after almost 50 years, positioning his 76-year-old brother Raul for permanent succession to the presidency. Fidel Castro temporarily ceded his powers to his brother on July 31, 2006, when he announced that he had undergone intestinal surgery.
Since then, the elder Castro has not been seen in public, appearing only sporadically in official photographs and videotapes and publishing dense essays about mostly international themes as his younger brother has consolidated his rule.
A new National Assembly was elected in January, and will meet for the first time Sunday to pick the governing Council of State, including the presidency that Fidel Castro has held for decades. There had been wide speculation about whether he would continue in that role.
Castro rose to power on New Year's Day 1959 and reshaped Cuba into a communist state 90 miles from U.S. shores. The fiery guerrilla leader survived assassination attempts, a CIA-backed invasion and a missile crisis that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. Ten U.S. administrations tried to topple him, most famously in the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961.
His ironclad rule ensured Cuba remained communist long after the breakup of the Soviet Union and the collapse of communism across Eastern Europe.
Monarchs excepted, Castro was the world's longest ruling head of state.
Raul Castro had long been his brother's designated successor. The longtime defense minister had been in his brother's rebel movements since 1953 and spent decades as No. 2 in Cuba's power structure.
The United States, bent on ensuring neither brother is in power, built a detailed plan in 2005 for American assistance to ensure a democratic transition on the island of 11.2 million people after Fidel Castro's death. But Cuban officials insisted there would be no transition, saying the island's socialist political and economic systems would outlive Castro.
Castro's supporters admired his ability to provide a high level of health care and education for citizens while remaining fully independent of the United States. His detractors called him a dictator whose totalitarian government systematically denied individual freedoms and civil liberties such as speech, movement and assembly.
The United States was the first country to recognize Castro after his guerrilla movement drove out then-President Fulgencio Batista in 1959. But the two countries soon clashed over Castro's increasingly radical path. Castro seized American property and businesses and invited Soviet aid.
On April 16, 1961, Castro declared his revolution to be socialist. A day later, he defeated the CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion.
The United States squeezed Cuba's economy and the CIA plotted to kill Castro. Undaunted, the Cuban president supplied troops and support to revolutionaries in Africa and Latin America.
Hostility over Cuba reached its peak on Oct. 22, 1962, when President Kennedy announced there were Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. After a tense week of diplomacy, Soviet Premier Nikita S. Krushchev pulled out the weapons.
With the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, Castro eventually made peace with many governments that once shunned him. Pope John Paul II visited the island in January 1998.
The loss of Soviet aid plunged Cuba into financial crisis, but the economy slowly recovered in the late 1990s with a tourism boom.
Castro later reasserted control over the economy, stifling the limited free enterprise tolerated during more difficult times.
Fidel Castro Ruz was born in eastern Cuba, where his Spanish immigrant father ran a prosperous plantation. His official birthday is Aug. 13, 1926, although some say he was born a year later.
He attended Roman Catholic schools and the University of Havana, where he received law and social science degrees.
Castro launched his revolutionary battle as a young man, organizing an unsuccessful July 26, 1953 attack on a military barracks in the eastern city of Santiago.
Later freed under a pardon, Castro went to Mexico and organized a rebel army that returned to Cuba and rallied support in the Sierra Maestra mountains. His rebels took power when Batista was forced to flee.
Entering Havana triumphantly, Castro declared: "Power does not interest me, and I will not take it."
Bush: U.S. Will Not Build New Military Bases in Africa
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,331366,00.html
President George W. Bush said Wednesday that the United States is not trying to expand its military influence in Africa by building new military bases on the continent.
The U.S. Defense Department created United States Africa Command last October to consolidate operations that had been split among three other regional commands, none of which had Africa as a primary focus.
Several African countries, including Libya, Nigeria and South Africa, have expressed deep reservations about the command, claiming it could signal an unwanted expansion of American military influence or turn Africa into another battleground in the global war on terror groups.
"I know that there's a controversial subject brewing around that's not very well understand and that's why would America stand up what's called AFRICOM," Bush said.
He said AFRICOM is a unique military command aimed at helping provide military assistance to African nations so that they can address conflicts on the continent, such as peacekeeping training.
"We do not contemplate adding new bases," Bush said. "In other words, the purpose of this is not to add military bases. I know there's rumors in Ghana 'All bush is coming to do is try to convince you to put a big military base here.' That's baloney. As they say in Texas, that's bull."
Get ready for the eclipse that saved Columbus
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080218195400.xhq81wua&show_article=1
The Moon will turn an eerie shade of red for people in the western hemisphere late Wednesday and early Thursday, recreating the eclipse that saved Christopher Columbus more than five centuries ago.
In a lunar eclipse, the Sun, Earth and Moon are directly aligned and the Moon swings into the cone of shadow cast by the Earth.
But the Moon does not become invisible, as there is still residual light that is deflected towards it by our atmosphere. Most of this refracted light is in the red part of the spectrum and as a result the Moon, seen from Earth, turns a coppery, orange or even brownish hue.
Lunar eclipses have long been associated with superstitions and signs of ill omen, especially in battle.
The defeat of the Persian king Darius III by Alexander the Great in the Battle of Gaugamela in 331 BC was foretold by soothsayers when the Moon turned blood-red a few days earlier.
And an eclipse is credited with saving the life of Christopher Columbus and his crew in 1504.
Stranded on the coast of Jamaica, the explorers were running out of food and faced with increasingly hostile local inhabitants who were refusing to provide them with any more supplies.
Columbus, looking at an astronomical almanac compiled by a German mathematician, realised that a total eclipse of the Moon would occur on February 29, 1504.
He called the native leaders and warned them if they did not cooperate, he would make the Moon disappear from the sky the following night.
The warning, of course, came true, prompting the terrified people to beg Columbus to restore the Moon -- which he did, in return for as much food as his men needed. He and the crew were rescued on June 29, 1504.
The Moon will be in total eclipse from 0301 GMT to 0351 GMT. This will be visible east of the Rocky Mountains in North America, as well as in all of Central and South America, West Africa and Western Europe. The zenith of totality is close to French Guiana.
It will be in partial eclipse from 0143 GMT to 0301 GMT, visible west of the Rockies and from the eastern Pacific, and from 0351 GMT to 0509 GMT, visible across the rest of Africa and Europe and much of South and West Asia.
Under a partial eclipse, Earth's shadow, or umbra, appears to take a "bite" out of the Moon.
The last total lunar eclipse took place on August 28 2007. The next will take place on December 21 2010.
A solar eclipse happens when the Moon swings between the Earth and the Sun.
Lunar Eclipse Set to Happen Wednesday Night
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,331408,00.html
The last total lunar eclipse until 2010 occurs Wednesday night, with cameo appearances by Saturn and the bright star Regulus on either side of the veiled full moon.
Skywatchers viewing through a telescope will have the added treat of seeing Saturn's handsome rings.
Weather permitting, the total eclipse can be seen from North and South America. People in Europe and Africa will be able to see it high in the sky before dawn on Thursday.
[The U.S. Navy will also take advantage of the eclipse — the dimmed moon will allow greater visibility over the northern Pacific during the first attempt at shooting down a failing satellite at around sunset Hawaiian time.]
As the moonlight dims — it won't go totally dark — Saturn and Regulus will pop out and sandwich the moon. Regulus is the brightest star in the constellation Leo.
Jack Horkheimer, host of the PBS show "Star Gazer," called the event "the moon, the lord of the rings and heart of the lion eclipse."
Wednesday's event will be the last total lunar eclipse until Dec. 20, 2010. Last year there were two.
The weather could be a spoiler for many in the United States.
Cloudy skies are expected for most of the Western states with a chance of snow from the heartland to the East Coast, said Stuart Seto of the National Weather Service.
"It looks like it's going to be a hard one to spot," Seto said.
A total lunar eclipse occurs when the full moon passes into Earth's shadow and is blocked from the sun's rays that normally illuminate it.
During an eclipse, the sun, Earth and moon line up, leaving a darkened moon visible to observers on the night side of the planet.
The moon doesn't go black because indirect sunlight still reaches it after passing through the Earth's atmosphere.
Since the atmosphere filters out blue light, the indirect light that reaches the moon transforms it into a reddish or orange tinge, depending on how much dust and cloud cover are in the atmosphere at the time.
Wednesday's total eclipse phase will last nearly an hour. Earth's shadow is expected to blot out the moon beginning around 7 p.m. on the West Coast and 10 p.m. on the East Coast.
West Coast skygazers will miss the start of the eclipse because it occurs before the moon rises.
Unlike solar eclipses which require protective eyewear, lunar eclipses are safe to view with the naked eye.
Later this year, in August, there will be a total solar eclipse and a partial lunar eclipse.
Navy Shoots Down Spy Satellite on First Try
http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/325971.aspx
WASHINGTON - A missile launched from a Navy ship successfully struck a dying U.S. spy satellite passing 130 miles over the Pacific on Wednesday, a defense official said. Full details were not immediately available.
It happened just after 10:30 p.m. EST.
Two officials said the missile was launched successfully. One official, who is close to the process, said it hit the target. He said details on the results were not immediately known.
The goal in this first-of-its-kind mission for the Navy was not just to hit the satellite but to obliterate a tank aboard the spacecraft carrying 1,000 pounds of a toxic fuel called hydrazine.
U.S. officials have said the fuel would pose a potential health hazard to humans if it landed in a populated area. Although the odds of that were small even if the Pentagon had chosen not to try to shoot down the satellite, it was determined that it was worth trying to eliminate even that small chance.
Officials said it might take a day or longer to know for sure if the toxic fuel was blown up.
Navy Gets Ready to Shoot Down Wayward Satellite
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,331432,00.html
The U.S. Navy geared up Wednesday for its first try at shooting down failed spy satellite USA 193 from three ships bobbing west of Hawaii.
As soon as space shuttle Atlantis landed in Florida, a Defense Department official declared open season on wayward surveillance birds.
"We're now into the window," he told a Pentagon press conference minutes after the shuttle landed at 9:07 a.m.
Rough seas in the northern Pacific may push the attempt back to Thursday, but conditions appeared to be improving throughout Wednesday.
Other factors, including the orientation of the satellite in its polar orbit, could influence a decision on the timing of the shootdown effort, added the official, who asked not to be named.
A final decision would be made by Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
The plan is for the Aegis missile cruiser USS Lake Erie to shoot a modified "kill vehicle" at the satellite as it streaks overhead at about 5:30 p.m. Hawaiian time (10:30 p.m. EST).
If either of the Lake Erie's two missiles aren't ready to go, the destroyer USS Decatur will launch its one backup missile.
The Navy ships will have a window of only a few seconds to, in effect, hit a bullet with a bullet.
The destroyer USS Russell will also be on the scene, but will not prepare to launch any missiles.
The weather forecast for Honolulu, just east of the huge swath of Pacific airspace the FAA had blocked out for late Wednesday afternoon and evening, called for partly cloudy skies with scattered showers and 10-mph winds in the evening.
The FAA has restricted the airspace from 4:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Hawaiian time Wednesday, and then again on Thursday and Friday.
A lunar eclipse will begin in Hawaii at about 5 p.m., aiding visibility. Sunset will be at about 6:30 p.m.
The plan is to hit USA 193, also knows as NROL-21, with a heat-seeking Aegis missile fired from the Lake Erie.
The missile's heat-seeking capabilities may not be of much use, since the satellite's been dead for over a year and won't be generating any heat of its own until it re-enters the atmosphere.
But the targeting computers on the Lake Erie and the Decatur have been adjusted to compensate for the new target.
The intercepting missile will carry no warhead; it's meant to break up the satellite by sheer force.
The Aegis system was originally designed to work against ballistic missiles re-entering the atmosphere.
The Pentagon official said Wednesday morning that the window of opportunity would remain open until Feb. 29. The Defense Department expects the satellite to re-enter the atmosphere in early March.
President Bush approved the satellite shootdown last week out of concern that toxic fuel on board the satellite could crash to earth and injure humans.
USA 193 carries about 1,000 pounds of hydrazine fuel, meant to power orbital-adjustment thrusters, in a reinforced spherical tank.
Since the spy bird went dead soon after it entered orbit on Dec. 14, 2006, very little of its fuel was used.
What's left is frozen solid, only increasing the chances the heavy metal ball will survive the heat of re-entry.
Hydrazine could seriously burn the lungs of anyone who happened to inhale the fumes from a cracked fuel tank.
Officials will know nearly immediately whether the missile has hit the satellite, but it will take a day or two to know whether it the fuel tank has been destroyed, officials said.
Independent space experts downplay the health risks, noting that falling satellites have never injured anyone.
"We are worried about something showing up on e-Bay," GlobalSecurity.org director John Pike told the Associated Press last week, pointing out that some sophisticated surveillance technology could survive re-entry.
"The Chinese and the Russians spend an enormous amount of time trying to steal American technology," Pike said. "To have our most sophisticated radar intelligence satellite — have big pieces of it fall into their hands — would not be our preferred outcome."
The Russians are angry about the planned shootdown, contending it constitutes an unauthorized test of an anti-satellite weapon.
China startled the world in January 2007 by using a ballistic missile to destroy one of its old weather satellites in orbit, drastically worsening the problem of space debris, which poses a hazard to other satellites and humans in orbit.
The USSR and U.S. abandoned their own anti-satellite-weapon programs in the mid-1980s.
Because USA 193 is already so low, the risks of the planned shootdown creating more space debris are minimal. Most of the pieces would burn up Earth's atmosphere.
In the past 50 years, about 17,000 man-made objects have re-entered the Earth's atmosphere.
Entering the Dragon’s Lair - analyzing Chinese war strategy with the U.S.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=25061
“China? There lies a sleeping giant. Let him sleep! For when he wakes, he will move the world.” Those are the words of Napoleon Bonaparte. In his time, China was an insular nation under pressure to open its ports to Western trade. Today, it is a restive giant, eager to expand its hegemony over its neighboring nations.
In one scenario suggested by the Rand Corporation after reviewing Chinese military documents China targets the US Navy’s Pacific Fleet. Its objective (in this wargame scenario) is to launch a surprise attack, catching it in port so its big ships cannot maneuver to escape, evade and defend.
The scenario is chillingly similar to that involving Japan’s Imperial Navy 67 years ago. But this scenario has a twist. In this attack, the Japanese host the American fleet at Yokosuka. It is a new era Asian power now seeking to inflict damage on America’s military might, diminishing any US counter-attack capability. The plan would be to hit quick, hard and in a way that literally knocks the wind out of our sails, leaving the American public reluctant to fight a protracted and costly conflict.
This is no Hollywood movie script. Nor is it someone’s wild imagination. It is a frightening realistic war strategy gleaned by Rand Corporation through an analysis of numerous Chinese military doctrinal writings. Rand’s assessment, entitled “Entering the Dragon’s Lair,” is that China would employ an “antiaccess” strategy. Such actions seek “to impede the deployment of U.S. forces into the combat theater, limit the locations from which those forces could effectively operate, or force them to operate from locations farther from the locus of conflict than they would normally prefer.” And, as at Pearl Harbor, the success of China’s war strategy turns on achieving surprise.
Through its comprehensive analysis of these Chinese sources, the Rand report describes what antiaccess measures China might employ against the U.S.-- the country clearly targeted throughout these various Chinese writings.
Such an attack would be multi-faceted. Surprise missile strikes would be launched against all regional US military targets, stationary and mobile, having any capability to counter-attack. Critical too in the attack plan’s success is “blinding” US military forces by disrupting and/or destroying information flow, thus hindering US ability to act or react.
Success here turns on the capability to knock down US military satellites -- a capability China effectively demonstrated last year in destroying one of its own orbiting satellites. It also involves cyber-attacks against US computer networks -- attacks China’s military
freely conducts today. US forces would be further disrupted by way of an above-surface nuclear blast, creating a devastating electromagnetic pulse (EMP) wave, destroying any unshielded electronic equipment.
The American public’s indifference towards increasing signs of an aggressive Chinese mindset is reminiscent of a famous response by 19th century British naval war hero Lord Nelson. Blind in one eye, Nelson was engaged in battle when a senior commander, fearing defeat, struck a flag onboard his ship ordering Nelson to withdraw. When subordinates pointed to the flag, Nelson -- holding his long glass to his blind eye -- said he saw nothing and continued the fight. The American public appears to be taking a similar “blind eye” approach towards China today.
But, while Nelson’s tactic eventually won him a great victory, that tactic will only spell disaster for the U.S. if we ignore signs of China’s true intentions. The Rand report and China’s continuing massive military build-up -- one including an ominous offensive punch -- should give us major cause for concern.
Unlike most Americans, the Chinese are very good students of history. They well remember what they once had and what, therefore, is possible again. Centuries ago the world witnessed the rise and fall of a great superpower. Having built the largest ships and the largest navy to ever set sail, China was a formidable power. Its influence spread throughout the then- known world. The Chinese navy flourished under the Ming dynasty but when the dynasty died, so too did China’s great navy. Fearing a foreign land threat and failing to comprehend the need to project power at sea, Ming’s successors scuttled China’s fleet, withdrawing behind the Great Wall.
Today, a resurgent China, dependent upon foreign energy (China alone is responsible for a 40% growth in world oil demand) and raw material sources, fully understands a navy’s important role. This understanding has caused Beijing to embark upon its “String of Pearls” military posturing policy -- i.e., developing a series of bases from the Middle East to the South China Sea, including now a port in Pakistan, to secure the Strait of Malacca through which 80% of China’s oil transits.
In this context, building up one’s military power to achieve this capability may sound reasonable. But China has embarked upon a growth program suggestive more of a perceived U.S. threat. This is reflected in its secret nuclear arms build-up -- undertaken, interestingly, even after the U.S. removed all tactical nuclear weapons from its naval forces, following the fall of the Soviet Union, based on its perception of a reduced strategic threat. Meanwhile, China perceives the U.S. to be “the enemy.”
That Beijing mindset should cause us further concern as Chinese companies now operate in two major U.S. west coast ports, New Orleans and the Panama Canal. A surprise attack by China would obviously take advantage of access to these locations -- locations Beijing undoubtedly has already put to use as assets in the conduct of its espionage warfare against the U.S.
Americans often have difficulty understanding who the enemy is. China has no such problem. And, while a communist state lacking a free market economy, like Mao’s China, was doomed to fail, a communist state with a quasi- free market economy, operating under old Cold War perceptions, like today’s China, poses a much greater threat to US interests.
It is time we woke up to this realization. After his attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese Admiral Yamamoto feared he had but awoken a sleeping tiger. But the Chinese dragon has no fear of the sleeping American tiger.
Chinese Press Blasts Spielberg for Withdrawing From Beijing Olympics
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,331588,00.html
Hollywood director Steven Spielberg's decision to quit the Beijing Olympics over the Darfur crisis is drawing condemnation by China's state-controlled media and a groundswell of criticism from the Chinese public.
Last week, the American director withdrew from his role as an artistic adviser to the opening and closing ceremonies of the Summer Games, accusing China of not doing enough to press for peace in the troubled Sudanese region.
Officially, the Chinese government has not directly criticized Spielberg by name, expressing only "regret" over his decision. But the state-run media and the public have been far less restrained.
In newspaper commentaries and lively Internet forums, they have expressed outrage, scorn and bewilderment that China's Olympics have come under international criticism from Spielberg and others.
A biting front-page editorial Wednesday in the overseas edition of the People's Daily, the Communist Party's official newspaper, blasted Spielberg for his decision.
"A certain Western director was very naive and made an unreasonable move toward the issue of the Beijing Olympics. This is perhaps because of his unique Hollywood characteristics," it said.
Over the weekend, the Guangming Daily, also published by the Communist Party, ran an editorial saying Spielberg "broke his promise to make his contribution to the Beijing Olympics and betrayed the Olympic spirit."
He "is not qualified to blame China because he knows nothing about the great efforts the Chinese government has made on Darfur," it said.
An editorial in the China Youth Daily was equally scathing.
"This renowned film director is famous for his science fiction. But now it seems he lives in a world of science fiction and he can't distinguish a dream from reality," it said.
China is believed to have influence over Sudanese leaders because it buys two-thirds of the African country's oil exports. China also sells weapons to the Islamic government and defends it in the United Nations.
More than 200,000 people have died in Darfur in a conflict between rebels and militias backed by government forces.
China often uses its newspapers to make statements it does not want to officially comment on. But the issue also has exploded on the Internet, where scores of Chinese have been quick to add their criticism of Spielberg.
"We should have never invited him in the first place," was one retort on Sina.com, the country's largest Internet portal.
Others asked why China's Olympic Games were being linked to Darfur.
"Spielberg used the sacred Olympics as a tool. There are so many simpler or more complicated issues than the Darfur issue in the world," one said. "I rarely heard him say anything. Why was he so keen this time?"
But the recent storm of international criticism has prodded China to take some steps.
In an interview published Wednesday, its special envoy to Darfur said Western countries can help move forward the peace process by pressuring rebel leaders to take part in negotiations.
"Western powers can exert more positive influence on those rebel leaders because many of them live in Western capitals," envoy Liu Guijin was quoted as saying in the China Daily newspaper.
Abdel Wahid Nur, one of the most influential rebel leaders, lives in France.
Liu will be making his fourth visit to Darfur later this month. In a telephone call Tuesday to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Premier Wen Jiabao detailed China's efforts to establish peace in Darfur, a move that underscored the sensitivity of the issue.
Power shift as East and West struggle for energy resources
http://www.thestar.com/News/Ideas/article/304305
Each week seems to bring another hand-wringing report about the waning influence of America in the world and the steady rise of China, India and Russia.
The issue is front and centre on Wall Street, Main Street – everywhere but on the campaign trail, where the leading Democratic and Republican presidential candidates are ignoring the economic tigers in the bushes for problems that seem closer to home but are impacted directly by developments thousands of kilometres away.
While Americans have been sleeping at the economic switch, their huge rivals are steaming ahead with eyes wide open and firmly focused on the bottom line.
Polls show that about one-third of Americans think China will soon dominate the world, and almost half fear its rise as a threat to world peace – results that could have time-travelled from the Cold War.
India, with its job-hungry, billion-strong population, and Russia, with an energy-fuelled economy and resurgent nationalist movement, also send shudders through the wealthy West as they gain influence.
Meanwhile, some experts have announced that the sun is already setting on the West and is now rising in the East.
In a rare nod to the emerging order, Hillary Clinton warns that the U.S. is facing a resurgent Russia and a newly powerful China that still needs to be integrated into the international system. John McCain urges supporters to "grasp the opportunities" as power shifts east.
But Washington's future leader will be forced to confront the new realities, for better or worse.
Amid all the criticism of America's military excesses and diplomatic clumsiness under the presidency of George W. Bush, many Americans worry that a new order dominated by the emerging powerhouses would make the American Empire look like the good old days.
"There could be a multipolar world in the next 20 to 30 years," says Forbes correspondent Robyn Meredith, author of The Elephant and the Dragon: The Rise of India and China and What it Means for All of Us. And that, she says, would reshape the world order.
India is a democracy, the world's largest, with Mahatma Gandhi as a founding father. But China is ruled by a repressive Communist cadre, and Russia's freedoms have shrunk under President Vladimir Putin. As those two countries boost their influence, says Thomas Melia, deputy executive director of Washington-based Freedom House, "in the near to medium term, we could see more retrenchment of democracy."
The think-tank tabled its annual survey last month , concluding that civil liberties have already taken a beating in the past year, with one-fifth of the world's countries suffering rollbacks. Democratic opposition and civil society groups, as well as the media, have been suppressed. "Especially important in carrying out this assault on freedom of association was a group of market-oriented autocracies and energy-rich dictatorships, including Russia, Iran, Venezuela and China," the report said.
It's no surprise that the rule of law and other liberal democratic principles that Western countries endorse are already fraying as the "war on terror" takes its toll. But some worry that in a new world of freewheeling trade and freebooting values they may not survive.
"Lifting hundreds of millions of people from dire poverty in a short time, as China has done, is an amazing achievement," says Meredith. "But we shouldn't forget that if (imprisoned Burmese opposition leader) Aung San Suu Kyi were in China, she'd be under arrest there, too."
Repression is the dark side of the emerging order. But unlike the days of the Cold War, it doesn't spring from ideology. In Russia and China, market economics and pragmatism trump Lenin's five-year plans and Mao's cultural revolution.
"In Russia, there is no ideology," says Kathryn Stoner-Weiss of Stanford University, co-author of a recent Foreign Affairs magazine essay on "The Myth of The Authoritarian Model."
"The ideology is now growth."
Although Moscow lacks the means and the will to wield the big stick of the Soviet past, she adds, it can still be a disruptive force – Russia is doing nuclear business with Iran, even while Washington urges tougher sanctions. For China, it means tapping Sudan's oil and boosting Burma's economy. Even India, which embraces democratic values, is equally bullish on economics, signing aid and trade deals with the Burmese junta.
Much of the rising powers' trade with rogue states is to snaffle urgently needed resources for ballooning populations that have higher expectations than ever before.
"China doesn't go looking for evil dictators to support," says Meredith. "But all the better neighbourhoods are already spoken for. It has to take what's left."
With the sizzling competition for energy, water and other resources, comes the threat of global warming, something the rich, energy-guzzling countries have done little to curb, while urging restraint on developing nations.
"The fly in the ointment is energy," says Michael Klare, a professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., and author of the forthcoming book Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet.
"China and India will have explosive growth and demand at a time when supplies are not going to grow fast enough to satisfy both their burgeoning requirements and those of the older powers like Europe and Japan."
If there is a struggle for resources, liberal democratic values could take a bigger battering worldwide. And if the United States and other Western countries were weakened, the process would accelerate.
"For countries like Russia that have been kicked around and patronized by the U.S., a multi-polar world is something of an article of faith," says Anatol Lieven, author of America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism. "The same may be true of China."
Many believe that in recent years the worst blows to democratic values have been struck by Washington itself, as it flouts the rule of law to pursue its "war on terror," trampling the rights and freedoms it vows to uphold.
"The message is that those who worry about the rise of China should spend time rebuilding the roots of the liberal Western system," John Ikenberry, a professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, says in an interview. "It is curious that the neocon `China hawks' are the ones who have been so disrespectful of rules of Western order, when they're the greatest asset we have for shaping how China rises."
A rules-based order is good for China and other emerging countries, Ikenberry points out. Although economic progress doesn't ensure democracy, most want to be part of a stable economic system. Instead of preaching, the West should provide greater incentives for them to join rather than fight it.
Human-rights advocates warn that countries like China will never be more liberal or democratically minded in their international dealings than they are at home. But others argue that they could be woven into a net of rules and institutions that the West has created over centuries, making for a "softer" transition of power in an uncertain future. Nothing is likely to turn back that tide, but democratic values can still survive the undertow.
"The United States position may be weakening," Ikenberry said in a recent essay in Foreign Affairs. "But the international system (it) leads can remain the dominant order of the 21st century."
McCain Says Would Keep Rights Pressure on China
http://www.newsmax.com/politics/McCain_Says_Would_Keep_Ri/2008/02/20/74261.html
Republican front-runner John McCain said on Wednesday he would keep pressure on China to improve its human rights record and expand U.S.-Sino ties if he won the U.S. presidency.
The four-term Arizona senator said he would also seek to make the U.S. military presence in Asia permanent, or "as long as nations want us there," and that the United States must adapt to a shift in economic power from Europe to Asia.
"We have to have both a short-term and a long-term strategy to deal with what is a reality -- a China superpower," McCain told a group of four reporters aboard his campaign bus.
In the short term, that would mean avoiding military confrontations with China while building up relations with Beijing and other Asian governments, he said.
But McCain would also want to see democratic improvements in Communist China if he were elected on November 4 to succeed President George W. Bush.
"I would make it clear that we remain advocates for progress, human rights, democratization," he said. "I would make it clear that we would continue to strengthen our ties to the countries in the region."
McCain, 71, also acknowledged that five years of war in Iraq had distracted U.S. policymakers from economic and diplomatic opportunities in Asia and other regions.
He said former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld mishandled the war during the first four years of the conflict.
"We're fixing it now and we are succeeding," said McCain, an early advocate of the U.S. military's current "surge" strategy of sending about 30,000 more troops to Iraq.
"But the price of failure in those other four years has manifest itself in a lot of other ways."
McCain, who would be the oldest person to win a first U.S. presidential term, has cast himself as more seasoned in foreign policy than his Democratic rivals Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama.
He criticized Obama for saying in August that he would be willing to attack inside Pakistan to strike al Qaeda targets with or without approval from the Pakistani government.
"There are ways of working with leaders of other countries and the one thing you don't want to do is embarrass them," McCain said. "I know these people and I've known them for many years, and I know I can work with them."
"And I would not broadcast to the world that I am going to bomb a sovereign nation in order to accomplish my goals."
House church leader frustrated with relentless persecution
http://www.christiantoday.com/article/house.church.leader.frustrated.with.relentless.persecution/16970.htm
An open letter from the president of the Chinese House Church Alliance has revealed the relentless persecution he and his family have endured under the hands of the Chinese Government.
Pastor Zhang Mingxuan, who heads the Chinese House Church Alliance, issued the letter on Monday to the international community out of frustration over being driven from house to house by officials with no response from the central government or the judiciary system to his appeal for justice.
Zhang, who converted to Christianity in 1986, is used to persecution after having been stalked, arrested, beaten and imprisoned 12 times for his activities in the house church movement.
But the latest incidents have been more intense and frequent, forcing the house church leader to write two open letters to President Hu Jintao and a third open letter to the international community for help after receiving no response from the government.
As detailed in his letter, high-level Chinese officials visited an orphanage – which is supported by the house church alliance – last October after which authorities forced the foreigners teaching the children to leave, drove away the students, cut off the power supply to the building, and began to monitor Zhang’s movement more closely. The orphanage was forced to relocate after the energy company refused to return electricity to the building.
In a period of a little over a month, Zhang moved six times.
“I had to appeal to the leaders of Sanhe City,” Zhang said. “However, instead of resuming the power supply, they threatened us even further. We then sued the Bureau of Electricity Services in the name of civilian rights, but the justices of the court would not accept our case. They forced the landlord to kick us out. On Christmas Day, they drove the orphans out of the school.
“In all helplessness, I wrote two open letters to President Hu Jintao. While the letters did not produce any result, they all the more persecuted the orphans and the church and they even forced two of my sons to move. On November 6, 2007, the orphanage was moved to a residential compound in Beijing. However, on the next day, the police officers from Tongzhou District of Beijing tried to force the landlord to drive us out.”
More evictions followed as the Public Security Bureau (PSB) tried to “isolate” the house church leader, Bob Fu, president of the China Aid Association (CAA), told The Christian Post.
According to Fu, the intensified campaign against Zhang is “absolutely” related to the Beijing Olympics and the government’s efforts to crack down on the house church movement. Fu said the government’s main goal is to destroy the house church network and isolate Zhang who is the leader of the underground church.
As noted by many other human rights group, China has engaged in a softer crackdown on churches by preferring to target house church leaders instead of ordinary Christians to avoid attracting international attention to human rights violations.
In his third letter, Zhang urged the international community to pray for the upcoming Beijing Olympics and to press the Chinese government to practice true religious freedom as it claims in its official laws.
“We pray to God that those brothers and sisters imprisoned for preaching Jesus Christ will be released soon and that God will make leaders in the Chinese government to treat the believers in a correct way and that God will make China a country full of love, justice, freedom and prosperity.” Zhang wrote.
On Tuesday, CAA said it just learned that 21 major house church leaders were recently sent to labour camp for re-education. They were all detained on December 7, 2007, during a massive arrest at a leadership training gathering with some 249 leaders in Shandong province.
The 21 senior church leaders were sentenced from one year and three months to three years in the labor camp, according to CAA. They were accused of being members of an "evil cult" by the PSB. Among the 21 sentenced, 17 are men and four are women.
Open Doors, a Christian persecution watchdog group, has organised a prayer campaign for persecuted Christians in China centred on the Beijing Olympics. Participants will pray for persecuted Christians in China and for a spiritual revival in the country.
On the Web: www.opendoorsusa.org
53 and 55 Year Old Christian Women Humiliated by Yunan Police Officials
http://news.christiansunite.com/Religion_News/religion06891.shtml
YUNAN PROVINCE, China -- China Aid has learned that two Christian women, Meng Xiu Lan- 55, and Zhou Cheng Xiu- 53, were detained by police in Jun Tun County on February 2, 2008.
Policemen from Jun Tun police department detained the women after they were found distributing Christmas cards. The two women were first threatened and mocked by police before being stripped completely nude and frisked violently.
Police then handcuffed the two women and escorted them back to their homes. After searching the house, police illegally confiscated CD's, handouts, Bibles, song books and calenders, without proper documentation.
The suffering and humiliation that these two Christian women were forced to endure is both shocking and horrendous. The PRC has failed to be consistent in its rhetoric of religious freedom and rule of law.
Such behavior should not be tolerated by any society, especially one chosen to host the World Olympic Games. We encourage the CPC to make amends to these innocent victims by restoring the property and dignity that was wrongfully taken from them.
To voice your concern over this incident please contact:
Chinese Embassy in Washington DC
Address: 2201 Wisconsin Avenue, N.W.,
Washington D.C. 20007
Tel: (202) 338-6688, (202)5889760
Fax: (202) 588-9760
Evangelist Beaten By Muslims in Lahore, Pakistan
http://news.christiansunite.com/Religion_News/religion06887.shtml
An evangelist, Daniel Sodager Masih (55), was beaten by Muslims at approximately 7:30 p.m. in Lahore on February 11.
Masih was preaching on the road when a Muslim man emerged from his nearby shop and began to shout at him. Masih told the man that he could not stop him from preaching God's Word.
The man slapped Masih and was soon joined by another Muslim shopkeeper. The two beat Masih until another Christian was able to intervene and stop the assault.
Pray for Masih who was injured in the attack. Pray that his attackers will come to repentance and salvation.
For more information on the persecution of Christians in Pakistan, go to www.persecution.net/country/pakistan.htm.
Powerful Shiite Threatens to End Cease-fire
http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/325822.aspx
Iraq's influential anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is threatening to end his cease-fire as soon as Saturday.
The powerful shiite leader told his militia to stand down six months ago.
Al-Sadr's Mahdi Army is among the most powerful militias in Iraq. The cease-fire he ordered last August has been credited with helping reduce violence around Iraq by 60 percent.
A spokesman for al-Sadr said that if the cleric failed to issue a statement by Saturday extending the ceasefire, "then that means the freeze is over." Al-Sadr's followers would be free to resume attacks.
If his fighters resume their attacks, it would jeopardize recent security gains that have led to the sharp drop in violence.
While the U.S. has welcomed the cease-fire, it also continued raids against what it calls Iranian-backed breakaway factions of the Mahdi Army militia.
Meanwhile, Iraqi police held funerals Wednesday for 14 officers killed the night before as they responded to a rocket attack launched from a predominantly Shiite neighborhood against U.S. bases in the capital.
A U.S. military spokesman also said a U.S. civilian was killed and a number of U.S. troops and civilian personnel were wounded in a previously unreported rocket attack in the southeastern area of Rustamiyah on Tuesday night.
Ahmadinejad: Israel Is Filthy Bacteria
http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/Ahmadinejad:_Israel_Is_Fi/2008/02/20/74171.html
In the latest verbal attack on Israel, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called the Jewish state a “filthy bacteria” established to oppress other nations in the region.
"The world powers established this filthy bacteria, the Zionist regime, which is lashing out at the nations in the region like a wild beast," Ahmadinejad told supporters at a rally.
Israel won support from the other nations that “created it as a scarecrow, so as to keep the people of this area under control," he said.
Referring to the recent assassination of Hezbollah terror chief Imad Mughniyeh, the Iranian leader said that Israel "uses terror as a threat every day, and afterwards is happy and joyful,” the Jerusalem Post reported.
In earlier comments, Ahmadinejad has called Israel a “disgraceful blot” that should be “wiped off the map,” adding menacingly that the Jewish state is “heading toward annihilation.”
Last week other senior members of the Iranian hierarchy stepped up the verbal assault on Israel.
The Islamic Republic News Agency reported that Commander-General Muhammad Ali Jafari of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps wrote in a letter to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah that he was convinced "Hezbollah's might is increasing with every passing day, and that in the near future, we will witness the disappearance of this cancerous growth called Israel."
The same day, the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of Iran, Hassan Firouzabadi, said in a letter to Nasrallah that “combatants of the Lebanese and Palestinian Islamic resistance [would] continue the struggle until the complete destruction of the Zionist regime and liberation of the entire Islamic land of Palestine."
The Israeli mission to the United Nations has written a letter to the U.N. Security Council protesting both statements.
The letter calls on the international community to condemn "these outrageous anti-Israel, anti-Semitic and racist threats, which undoubtedly constitute direct and public incitement to commit genocide."
Ahmadinejad’s unbridled attack on Israel causes foreboding. Ashkenazi sees "tough ordeal" possible soon
http://www.debka.com
DEBKAfile’s military sources report that the increasingly belligerent statements issuing from top Iranian leaders since the death of Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus earlier this month are seen as betokening serious intent. Israel's chief of staff Lt. Gen. Gaby Ashkenazi told graduating officers Wednesday, Feb. 20, that he could not rule out a possible "tough ordeal" in the near future. Israel must aim for quick victory.
President Ahmadinejad said earlier: “World powers have created a black and dirty microbe named the Zionist regime and unleashed it like a savage animal on the nations of the region.” He was addressing a rally in the southern city of Bandar Abbas, site of the Revolutionary Guards’ command center and main bases. His speech was broadcast in full by state television.
Also Wednesday, an exiled Iranian opposition leader Mohammad Mohaddessin claimed Tehran had accelerated its nuclear weapons program, including the production of nuclear warheads.
DEBKAfile: Sunday, Gen. Hassan Firouz-Abadi, commander-in-chief of all Iran’s armed forces, said at a ceremony in memory of Imad Mughniyeh: “Many millions across the world will soon receive the joyous news of the Zionist entity’s destruction.”’ He did not explain how Iran intended to perform this objective, but alluded indirectly to nuclear or radioactive measures.
The next day, Revolutionary Guards chief Mohammad Ali Jaafari referred to Israel, which denied involvement in the murder, as a “cancerous microbe.”
DEBKAfile’s sources report that in Washington and Jerusalem, these unbridled speeches are taken as an orchestrated campaign to raise Middle East temperatures up to the climax of an Iranian attack on Israel.
It is noted that Ahmadinejad’s speech was delivered on the last day of the Islamic month of Muharem, during which Muslims are prohibited from embarking on attacks. The month of Safar when it is permitted to strike enemies of Islam begins Thursday, Feb. 21.
The president went on to accuse world powers of arming Israel with billions of dollars of weapons to create “a scarecrow to frighten and dominate other nationals in the region”.
With regard to the death of Mughniyeh, Iran’s senior international terror tactician, Ahmedinejad said: "They assassinate pure and pious people and then they celebrate it, like what happened to the son of Lebanon who had stood against the savage onslaught of the Zionists and broke the Zionists' horns."
Mohaddessin, of the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran, claimed that, for the first time, Tehran had established a command and control center to work on a nuclear bomb and that southeast of the capital it was also setting up a center to produce warheads.
He called the US NIE report “not accurate" and reported that Iran had closed down one center only to open another later with the same purpose.
Israel, US discuss deploying NATO troops in West Bank
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1203343707652&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter
The United States is reviewing the feasibility of deploying a NATO force in the West Bank as a way to ease IDF security concerns and facilitate an Israeli withdrawal from the area within the coming years, defense officials have told The Jerusalem Post.
The plan, which is being spearheaded by US Special Envoy to the region Gen. James Jones, is being floated among European countries, which could be asked to contribute troops to a West Bank multinational force.
Jones, a former commander of NATO, was sent to Israel in November to help the Israelis and Palestinians frame some of the security mechanics necessary for a broader peace agreement.
As first reported in the Post last month, Jones's plan calls for stationing third-party troops in the West Bank to secure the area in the interim period following an Israeli withdrawal and before the Palestinian Authority can take over full security control.
"The deployment of such a force has come up in talks, and Jones is known to be working on it," a senior defense official said Tuesday. "At the moment, it's just an idea and has yet to be accepted or adopted by Israel."
Defense Minister Ehud Barak has met with Jones and been briefed on the plan, but has yet to finalize his position. An official close to Barak said the deployment of a multinational force in the West Bank could create operational challenges for the IDF if it decided to respond to Palestinian terror attacks following the withdrawal.
One of the issues that most concerns Israel is whether under such a withdrawal, the IDF would retain its operational freedom in the West Bank despite the presence of the multinational force.
"If they fire a Kassam rocket into Israel, will we be able to respond, or will we need to rely on the foreign troops stationed there?" one defense official asked.
On Tuesday, US Ambassador to Israel Richard Jones hinted at the possibility of deploying an international force for the period following a withdrawal and until the PA could ensure security in the West Bank.
Speaking at a meeting of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Jones also predicted that it would take several years before any such plan was implemented.
"This is going to be a long, hard slog," he said. "But once a mutually accepted vision is accepted, both sides will accept the reality and encourage each side to work towards goals set out by the road map."
Meanwhile Tuesday, Spanish Ambassador to Israel Eudaldo Mirapeix dismissed a report that appeared in the Post, according to which Israel was concerned that Spain planned to withdraw its forces from UNIFIL in the coming year.
"I wish to inform you that the Spanish government has not considered or hinted in any way whatsoever at withdrawing the Spanish troops deployed in UNIFIL," Mirapeix said.
In the report, high-ranking defense officials expressed concern that the political deadlock in Lebanon and Hizbullah threats to renew hostilities with Israel could cause European countries to gradually begin reducing their participation in UNIFIL.
Spain, whose soldiers have come under repeated attacks by terrorists in Lebanon, was mentioned by the officials as a country that might be planning to withdraw its troops from UNIFIL, a move that could have a domino effect and topple the entire peacekeeping force.
Palestinians threaten Kosovo-like independence if talks fail
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/956225.html
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, responding to an aide's call on Wednesday for a unilateral declaration of statehood if peace talks with Israel continued to falter, ruled out taking any such step soon.
"We will pursue negotiations in order to reach a peace agreement during 2008 that includes the settlement of all final status issues including Jerusalem," Abbas said in a statement.
"But if we cannot achieve that, and we reach a deadlock, we will go back to our Arab nation to take the necessary decision at the highest level," he said, without mentioning any options.
Yasser Abed Rabbo, a member of the Palestinian negotiating team with the Israelis, told Reuters that if they could not reach a deal with Israel, the Palestinians could consider declaring independence like Kosovo did on Sunday.
"If things are not going in the direction of actually halting settlement activities, if things are not going in the direction of continuous and serious negotiations, then we should take the step and announce our independence unilaterally," Abed Rabbo said.
Drawing an analogy to Kosovo, he said: "Kosovo is not better than us. We deserve independence even before Kosovo, and we ask for the backing of the United States and the European Union for our independence."
"This is what the Israelis are driving us to," he added, in an interview with the Voice of Palestine radio station.
However, the chief Palestinian negotiator, Ahmed Qureia, quickly quashed the idea of a unilateral declaration, saying it was never brought before the Palestinian leadership.
"Decisions should be taken and then declared, and not be declared and then be taken," Qureia said, in an apparent reprimand of Abed Rabbo.
Qureia said negotiations with Israel were serious, and were touching on all major issues, but that no progress has been made so far.
Saeb Erekat, another senior Palestinian negotiator, also voiced opposition to any unilateral declaration of independence, saying the Palestine Liberation Organization had already declared independence in 1988.
"Now we need real independence, not a declaration. We need real independence by ending the occupation. We are not Kosovo. We are under Israeli occupation and for independence we need to acquire independence," Erekat said.
The Palestinian officials spoke a day after a meeting between Abbas and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert at the prime minister's office in Jerusalem yielded no visible results.
Meanwhile, Erekat said late Tuesday that despite Israeli claims, Abbas and Olmert did in fact discuss the contentious topic of Jerusalem during their meeting earlier that evening.
A senior official in the Prime Minister's Office said after the talks: "The issue of Jerusalem did not come up in the discussion. I'm not aware of changes in the Israeli position."
But Erekat disputed the claim, saying the leaders had discussed "all the core issues."
Israel, PA talks to venture outside three 'core issues'
Meanwhile, Abbas and Olmert agreed on Wednesday to expand their negotiations to topics beyond the "core issues" of borders, Jerusalem and the refugees: Within two weeks, teams will be set up to discuss at least seven other issues.
The two assigned the heads of the negotiating teams on the core issues - Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and former Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qureia - the job of deciding exactly which issues the new task forces should begin discussing, and Livni hopes to reach an agreement with Qureia on this matter soon.
While the foreign minister would prefer the talks on the core issues to take place in maximum secrecy, the talks on the new issues will be conducted with far greater openness, which she hopes will attract media attention and thereby create a feeling of momentum in the negotiations.
One of the most important new issues on which Israel hopes to begin talks is the development of a "culture of peace," with an emphasis on ending incitement to terrorism.
Israel would like to reach agreements with the PA on preventing media incitement, encouraging people-to-people activities and changing parts of the Palestinian school curriculum, which Israel says negates its right to exist.
On Sunday, Livni held discussions with representatives of several other government ministries to formulate Israel's positions on these issues.
The other topics on which Israel proposes starting negotiations are as follows:
# State-to-state issues, such as an exchange of ambassadors and Palestinian membership in international organizations.
# Water. Most of the work on this issue was completed at the Camp David talks in 2000, but a few details remain to be settled.
# Internal security - primarily, future cooperation between the Israeli and Palestinian police forces on issues such as crime fighting and road safety.
# Civil security issues, such as entry permits into Israel, border crossings and Israeli-Palestinian security cooperation.
# Economic issues. The goal is to define the nature of the economic relationship between the two states, on issues such as customs duties, tax collection, free trade zones, etc.
# Environment. The focus will be on issues such as waste management, sewage and treatment of hazardous materials.
The Abbas-Olmert meeting had been widely expected to focus in part on the contradictory statements the two leaders have made about Jerusalem in recent days: Olmert has claimed that Abbas agreed to postpone this issue until the end of the talks, while Abbas denies this.
However, a senior official in the Prime Minister's Office said that while he could not say what was discussed when the two leaders met privately, "the issue of Jerusalem did not arise at all" in the portion of the talks where their staffs were present.
Olmert's office also said that both leaders expressed satisfaction with the pace of the talks and the progress to date.
The two men also discussed several more immediate issues, including Abbas' request that Olmert reopen Israel's border with Gaza.
However, Olmert declined to make any promises on this issue beyond pledging that "Israel will not allow a humanitarian crisis to develop in Gaza."
India ready to join elite nuclear strike club
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/India_ready_to_join_elite_N-strike_club/articleshow/2793635.cms
India is now finally ready to gatecrash into the exclusive club of the Big Five - US, Russia, China, France and UK - which field submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), the most reliable and deadly nuclear strike weapon.
India's SLBM, dubbed 'K-15' under the Sagarika project, is ready after 10 years of hits and misses, and four tests from "submersible pontoon launchers" over last year.
"The final test of K-15, with a strike range of 700km, will be conducted any day now (probably this month, off Visakhapatnam). Its development is complete. We are ready to integrate it with the mother ship," DRDO chief controller Dr Prahlada said.
The first of the three 6,000-tonne advanced technology vessels (ATVs), each designed to carry 12 vertical-launched nuclear-tipped SLBMs, will be "ready to go to sea" for trials by early 2009. It will, however, take two to three years for the two-stage solid-fuelled K-15 to be integrated with the first ATV and then be test-fired from it.
But when it does happen, India will finally achieve its long-standing aim to have an operational nuclear weapon triad. India already has Agni-I (700-km range) and Agni-II (2000-km-plus) ballistic missiles, as also the Agni-III (3,500-km) which has been successfully tested only once so far.
By 'mother ship', DRDO chief controller Prahlada meant the three indigenous nuclear-powered submarines being built at Visakhapatnam in the 25-year-old ATV project, which will overall cost around Rs 20,000 crore.
Fighters like Sukhoi-30MKI and Mirage-2000s, which can be jury-rigged to carry nuclear weapons, constitute the air-based leg. But the absence of nuclear-powered submarines, armed with the capability of fire nuclear-tipped missiles from under the sea, has been a gaping hole in India's strategic capabilities.
This third leg of the nuclear triad is especially important for India, which has a declared doctrine of 'no-first use' of nuclear weapons, unlike Pakistan or China. "We have custom-made the K-15 for the Navy. Naturally, it will complete the nuclear triad," said Prahlada.
A 700 to 750-km SLBM will, of course, still fall short of the over 5,000-km range SLBMs deployed by countries like US and Russia. But, as reported earlier, DRDO is already working on a submarine-launched version of Agni-III, which is to be followed by the Agni-III-plus missile with a strike range of 5,000km. "If the government wants it, we can extend the range of the Agni-III missile. We have the capability and technology," said Prahlada. This entails a third mini-stage, in the shape of another solid-propellant motor, being squeezed into the two-stage Agni-III missile to extend its range by another 1,500 km or so.
This again will mean that India will have a missile with near ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) capabilities, which are usually over 5,500-km in range and have largely remained the preserve of the Big Five countries till now.
On his part, Prahlada said the next launch of Agni-III would take place soon. "For a strategic missile, one needs to test it successfully at least three times," he said.
The first test of Agni-III in July 2006, incidentally, had flopped miserably. The second test, in April 2007, however, was successful. The missile, which will be able to hit targets deep inside China, will be ready for operational development only by 2010 or so.
Musharraf rules out resignation
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7254124.stm
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf says he has no plans to resign, despite a sweeping victory by the opposition in the country's parliamentary elections.
Mr Musharraf told the Wall Street Journal there was a need to move forward to help bring about a stable democratic government in Pakistan.
US President George Bush called the vote a victory for Pakistani democracy.
Meanwhile the party of late former PM Benazir Bhutto says it is ready to form a coalition with Nawaz Sharif's PML-N.
A union of Ms Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP) with the PML-N would have more than half parliament's seats.
The main party backing President Musharraf suffered a heavy defeat, and correspondents say the president appears to be in a very difficult position.
If a new governing coalition manages to muster a two-thirds majority in parliament, it could call for Mr Musharraf to be impeached.
However, unofficial results suggest the two leading parties will not reach this total on their own, so would need to rely on support from other parties or independents.
US ally
But Mr Musharraf said that he would try to work with any new government.
"I would like to function with any party and any coalition because that is in the interest of Pakistan," he told the Wall Street Journal.
"The clash would be if the prime minister and president would be trying to get rid of each other. I only hope we would avoid these clashes," the president added.
Mr Musharraf was re-elected to the presidency last October, in a parliamentary vote boycotted by the opposition as unconstitutional.
He has been a major US ally in the "war on terror" but his popularity has waned at home amid accusations of authoritarianism and incompetence.
President Bush, speaking in Ghana, said the elections were "judged as being fair, and the people have spoken. I view that as a significant victory".
When the new government is formed, he added, "the question then is: 'will they be friends of the United States?' and I certainly hope so".
'End of dictatorship'
At a press conference on Tuesday, Ms Bhutto's widower and the PPP leader, Asif Ali Zardari, said his party would "form a government of national consensus which will take along every democratic force".
"For now, the decision of the party is that we are not interested in any of those people who are part and parcel of the last government," he said, seemingly ruling out any coalition with the Pakistan Muslim League's pro-Musharraf wing, the PML-Q.
With votes counted in 258 out of 272 constituencies, the PPP has won 87 seats, according to the Election Commission of Pakistan.
HAVE YOUR SAY Perhaps Musharraf should leave Pakistan so that reforms can begin Clifford Power
The PML-N, or Pakistani Muslim League-Nawaz, is in second place with 66 seats so far.
The party's leader, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, said earlier on Tuesday that he was prepared to discuss joining a coalition with Mr Zardari's party in order "to rid Pakistan of dictatorship forever".
The two parties so far have a combined total of 153 seats in parliament.
PML-Q chairman, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, told Associated Press Television News his party accepted the results "with an open heart" and was prepared to "sit on opposition benches".
Pakistan nuclear staff go missing
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7240414.stm
Two employees of Pakistan's atomic energy agency have been abducted in the country's restive north-western region abutting the Afghan border, police say.
The technicians went missing on the same day as Pakistan's ambassador to Afghanistan, Tariq Azizuddin, was reportedly abducted in the same region.
Mr Azizuddin had been going overland from the city of Peshawar to Kabul.
Pakistan's north-west has witnessed fierce fighting between Islamist militants and government troops.
The pro-Taleban guerrillas declared a unilateral ceasefire last week after months of clashes with troops garrisoned there.
The workers from Pakistan's Atomic Energy Commission were on a mission to map mineral deposits in the mountains when they were kidnapped, police say.
"The technicians were going for some geological survey in the area when they were kidnapped at gunpoint along with their driver," Romail Akram, a senior police official, told Reuters news agency.
Their vehicle was intercepted by masked gunmen in the Dera Ismail Khan district, a stronghold of local militants.
"We don't know if the abductors were militants or members of some criminal gang," a local police chief, Akbar Nasir, told the AFP news agency.
He said efforts to locate the missing men had yet to yield any results.
Karzai concerned
Efforts are also continuing to locate the missing Pakistani envoy, Tariq Azizuddin.
Mr Azizuddin went missing on Monday as he was travelling overland from the Pakistani city of Peshawar to the Afghan capital, Kabul.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai said he was certain the envoy had been abducted, adding: "I hope he is safe and I hope he will be released soon."
The Khyber region has long been a base for bandits and smugglers but has seen little of the unrest linked to an uprising by Islamist militants in adjoining areas.
Pro-Taleban militants recently kidnapped more than 200 Pakistani troops in the South Waziristan region.
The soldiers were reportedly released in a prisoner exchange with Pakistani authorities.
'Protected road'
Pakistan's government has refused to confirm Mr Azizuddin has been kidnapped, saying only that he was missing.
The Pakistani embassy in Kabul said contact was lost with Mr Azizuddin at around 1045 local time (0645 GMT) on Monday.
There were reports on Pakistani television of his car going through a checkpoint without stopping.
An official of the Khyber agency tribal administration told the BBC that the ambassador went through the Khyber agency without taking a security escort that was waiting for him at the start of the tribal territory.
Correspondents say that such escorts are routinely sent with dignitaries and officials when they travel through tribal areas.
But some travellers dispense with them because they think it makes their movements more noticeable.
Mr Azizuddin is said to have previously travelled to Kabul by road, often without the tribal security escort.
The route through the agency is believed to be the shortest and quickest way between Peshawar and Kabul.
Being the main trade route, the Khyber agency road is busy in daylight hours, supplying reinforcements and to the US and Nato forces in Afghanistan.
It is also one of the most protected of all the tribal roads, with a contingent of tribal police posted every 100m. The paramilitary Frontier Corps have a fort along the road.
Group Claims Iran Speeding Up Nuke Plans
http://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/belgium_iran_nuclear/2008/02/20/74229.html
BRUSSELS, Belgium -- An exiled Iranian opposition group claimed Wednesday that Tehran was speeding up a program to develop nuclear weapons. "The Iran regime entered a new phase in its nuclear project," said Mohammad Mohaddessin of the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran.
The NCRI is the political wing of the People's Mujahedeen of Iran, which advocates the overthrow of government in Tehran. The Mujahedeen has been designated a terrorist group by the United States and the European Union as well as Iran.
Mohaddessin claimed that Tehran has established a command and research center near a Tehran university. And, he said, Iran is developing a nuclear warhead for use on medium-range missiles at a site on the southeast edge of Tehran. Mohaddessin also claimed that the regime obtained aid from North Korea.
It was not possible to independently verify the NCRI claims. Mohaddessin said his group got the information from "hundreds" of reports and sources from within the Iranian regime, whom he did not name. He said some of the sources are within the nuclear project itself.
An official of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to talk to the media, said the agency was aware of the allegations. Mohaddessin said he had provided information to the IAEA on Tuesday.
Iran has steadfastly denied it is working to obtain a nuclear bomb, arguing that its nuclear program is civilian.
A recent U.S. National Intelligence Estimate said Iran halted a nuclear weapons development program in 2003 because of international pressure. But the White House said Iran continues to hide information, remains in violation of two U.N. Security Council resolutions, tests ballistic missiles and is enriching uranium, which can be used to build an atomic bomb.
Four years ago, the group disclosed information about two hidden nuclear sites in Iran. But much of the information it has presented since to support claims of a secret weapons program has not been publicly verified.
Iran Vows Resistance in Nuclear Standoff
http://www.newsmax.com/international/iran_nuclear/2008/02/20/74096.html
TEHRAN, Iran -- President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Wednesday that Iran has brought world powers "to their knees" and successfully resisted U.S.-led efforts to get Tehran to halt its uranium enrichment.
Ahmadinejad delivered a defiant speech to cheering supporters in southern Iran, just days ahead of a new report by the International Atomic Energy Agency on the country's disputed nuclear program.
The fiery leader said Iran would not stop enriching uranium _ a process that yields material that can be used to produce nuclear fuel or bombs _ under any conditions. Tehran says its program is to generate fuel only, but Washington and some of its allies fear the program is aimed at building nuclear weapons.
"They (U.S. and its allies) expected the Iranian nation ... to surrender after a resolution is issued or sanctions are imposed, but today ... it has brought all big powers to their knees," Ahmadinejad told supporters in Bandar Abbas, in comments broadcast live on state television.
His speech drew chants of "Nuclear energy is our definite right!" from the crowd.
Iran says it has a right under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to enrich uranium for peaceful means. But it has been slapped with two rounds of U.N. sanctions over its refusal to stop enrichment.
Addressing the U.S. directly, Ahmadinejad warned Wednesday that America and its allies would face a determined nation "if you start a new game." He did not elaborate, but was likely referring to Washington's efforts to push for a new round of U.N. sanctions.
Such efforts come in the wake of a U.S. intelligence report in December that concluded Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program in late 2003 and has not resumed it since. U.S. officials continue to warn that Iran's enrichment work could easily allow Tehran to resume weapons development. Iran says it never had a weapons program.
U.S. presses N. Korea on Syria
http://washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080220/FOREIGN/435014368/1003
The United States, alarmed by mounting evidence that North Korea gave nuclear assistance to Syria, has rejected pressure from some of its partners in six-nation talks to compromise on an overdue declaration of Pyongyang's nuclear activities, U.S. officials said yesterday.
The declaration, which was due at the end of December, would complete the second phase of an October deal aimed at denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula and clear the way for promised political and economic benefits to the communist state.
"We won't have a complete and correct declaration until we have a complete and correct declaration," Christopher R. Hill, the chief U.S. negotiator, said yesterday after meeting with his North Korean counterpart, Kim Kye-gwan, in Beijing. "So I'm not sure if we yet have an understanding on that."
The Syrian connection has become a major problem for the United States since an Israeli air strike in Syria in September. The target was widely reported to be a nuclear facility under construction with help from North Korea. Current and former U.S. officials said yesterday that intelligence points to a plutonium-related facility.
Yesterday, Mr. Hill said the North's declaration must account for the Syrian connection. "We discussed all of the elements that we believe need to be included, including the Syrian matter and uranium enrichment," he said of his talks with Mr. Kim.
U.S. and Israeli officials have refused to talk about the September strike, but diplomats and analysts said even the administration's strongest advocates of engagement with Pyongyang are worried by what they have learned from intelligence sources.
Only days after the bombing, the North's official KCNA news agency reported that a high-level meeting between Syria and North Korea had taken place in Pyongyang.
"We've made it abundantly clear to the North Koreans that the issue of nuclear cooperation abroad, whether it's with Syria or other states — we need to know all about that," Mr. Hill said in a little noticed interview on Friday.
North Korea currently is saying, " 'We don't have any [nuclear programs], we won't in the future,' " said Mr. Hill. But that "is not good enough. ... We need to know what they've done in the past."
He said in the interview on the Council on Foreign Relations Web site that "some of our partners" in the six-party talks have told him, "Well, two out of three is not bad," and "Why do you worry so much about the past?"
He did not name those countries, and U.S. officials yesterday declined to do so either. But analysts said it was unlikely that Japan was one of them. The other participants in the negotiations are China, South Korea and Russia.
Bruce Klingner, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said there has been "a mood shift in Washington" since the air attack in Syria.
"The administration has taken a firmer line with North Korea," he said.
At times over the past year, Mr. Klingner said, Mr. Hill has given the impression that he was "lowering the bar" on the requirements from the North, particularly on verification of Pyongyang's claims in the declaration.
But since the Israeli strike, which was followed by criticism of the administration's policy by some Republicans, there has been no room for trusting the North Koreans blindly, Mr. Klingner said.
The administration is also insisting that Pyongyang come clean about a uranium enrichment program, which the United States first accused it of having in 2002.
In their draft declaration, the North Koreans say they currently do not have any such program and will not have one in the future, U.S. officials said. There is no mention, however, of a past program.
"The real thing we need to know about is the uranium-enrichment and any export programs that they've had," Mr. Hill said. "I don't think we can really go forward with some of our obligations until we have a complete picture."
Mr. Hill, who is in the region to prepare for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's visit to Seoul, Beijing and Tokyo next week, yesterday denied reports that he had tried to separate the Syrian and the uranium issues from the declaration to help the North Koreans save face.
"We are not talking about breaking apart the declaration," he said.
Syria, Iran foresee large clash with Israel
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/954765.html
Syrian and Iranian officials believe there will be a serious military confrontation with Israel in the near future, according to Al-Akhbar, a Lebanese daily affiliated with Hezbollah. Hezbollah's response to the assassination of Imad Mughniyah, the organization's operations chief, will force Israel to make a "difficult decision," the newspaper stated in an editorial. Hezbollah blames Israel for Mughniyah's assassination in Damascus last week.
Ibrahim al-Amin, Al-Akhbar's editor, said in a televised interview that Hezbollah does not intend to accept Mughniyah's assassination quietly. Hezbollah's response "will force Israel to make a big decision," he said. However, he insisted that Hezbollah was not interested in a war with Israel.
Meanwhile, the defense establishment is bracing for a response from Hezbollah. It is concerned the group may use an explosives-laden unmanned aerial vehicle to attack a civilian or military target in northern or central Israel. The Israel Air Force is on alert for this.
To date, Hezbollah has dispatched five Iranian-made drones against Israel, three of them during the Second Lebanon War in August 2006. Two were shot down by the air force, and one crashed. The drones were loaded with dozens of kilograms of high-grade explosives and apparently had been intended to crash in the heavily populated Dan region.
The IDF also has bolstered its forces along the northern border, anticipating Hezbollah may launch a massive rocket attack on the area. However, the army has no specific information about the group's intentions in this regard.
Meanwhile, the Lebanese media announced that Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah has appointed a successor to Mughniyah, but his identity has not been revealed. Israeli sources said Mughniyah's successor is one of three persons: Ibrahim Akil, who is in charge of southern Lebanon; Fuad Sukur, a senior militia figure; or Talal Hamiyah, who was Mughniyah's deputy. Meanwhile, the Lebanese media said none of these men are being considered.
The Lebanese daily Al-Safir reported yesterday that Hezbollah has gone on high alert in southern Lebanon and evacuated all of its local headquarters, fearing Israeli air strikes. According to the report, the organization has mobilized 50,000 militiamen.
Meanwhile, in Syria, the investigation into Mughniyah's assassination continues.
"The investigation is being carried out with complete secrecy because of Mughniyah's sensitive location before the ambush," Al-Akhbar reported yesterday.
Mughniyah had emerged from a meeting shortly before he was killed.
He was killed near the offices of the chief of Syrian intelligence, Asif Shuwekat, who is President Bashar Assad's brother-in-law.
Several Palestinians were arrested for suspected involvement in the killing, the newspaper reported.
Syrian-Hizballah plan for retaliation on Israel could start unfolding this weekend
http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=1337
Syria is not waiting for its official investigation to wind up and expose the party responsible for killing Hizballah commander and Tehran’s terror tactician in Damascus on Feb. 13 - any more than Hizballah, when its leaders accuse Israel. Tehran, Syria and Hizballah have all threatened revenge against Israel within or outside its borders.
However, Bashar Assad’s strategists are not losing a moment to cash in on the abundant conspiracy theories surrounding the death, to plant one of its own: Mughniyeh, they say, was killed in their capital by their Lebanese enemies.
Therefore, it is feared in Washington and Jerusalem that, while plotting revenge on Israel, Hizballah, backed by the Syrian commando units, will launch attacks on Lebanese national intelligence and Druze targets in Beirut and Mt. Lebanon – they point a finger at Druze leader Walid Jumblatt. Their immediate goal would be to overthrow the pro-Western, anti-Syrian government headed by Fouad Siniora and stir up a new civil war. The door would then re-open for Syria to make a comeback to the troubled country and move troops in for the first time since they were thrown out in 2005, in contravention of UN Security Council resolutions.
Syria’s machinations give substance to Director of US National Intelligence Mike McConnell’s assertion to Fox TV Sunday, Feb. 17, that, while Hizballah is blaming Israel, “…there's some evidence that it may have been internal Hezbollah. It may have been Syria. We don't know yet, and we're trying to sort that out.”
“It is a serious threat, and it's primarily against Israel,” said the US intelligence director. “But …let me just mention about Mughniyeh… (He was) responsible for more deaths of Americans and Israelis than any other terrorist with the exception of Osama bin Laden. So this man over time had lots of enemies. Remember, he's a Shia, and oftentimes his targets could be Sunni as well as against Israel.”
Last week, the FBI placed counter-terror squads on alert in the US against attacks on synagogues and other potential Jewish targets. In July 2007, McConnell referred to Hezbollah sleeper cells in the United States waiting for orders to spring into action. Our sources report they are part of the trans-continental network which Mughniyeh himself established on behalf of Hizballah and Tehran.
Meanwhile, in Beirut, DEBKAfile’s Middle East sources report sporadic clashes already erupting in Beirut in the last few days between pro-government and pro-Hizballah adherents.
Sunday, Feb. 17, unidentified gunmen shot up a Lebanese army unit near the Sabra district in south Beirut, killing one person and injuring others. Barricades and manned positions have gone up ominously in the Lebanese capital and no-go zones set up between flashpoint districts.
Syrian sources promise the results of their finished inquiry will cause an earthquake in the Arab world and Middle East when they are published Saturday, Feb. 22.
Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah has scheduled another of his broadcast speeches for the same day - this one to mark the anniversary of his predecessor Abbas Musawi’s death in 1992, which was also attributed to Israel.
The two events are feared by US and Israeli officials to have been coordinated on the same day to flash the signal for the Syrian-Hizballah plan to start unfolding.
DEBKAfile outlines the case Syria has begun putting together to incriminate its Lebanese enemies:
1. A large Mossad spy-cum-terror ring was allegedly uncovered in Damascus and Beirut. Its mission was to keep tabs on Syrian commanders, Hizballah heads and Palestinian leaders before liquidating them.
2. The ring comprised Lebanese members as well as collaborators from a key Arab intelligence body, possibly Saudi or Jordanian.
DEBKAfile sources report that Damascus, increasingly isolated in the mainstream Arab world over Lebanon and its ties with Tehran, has no qualms about confronting Saudi Arabia and Jordan and accusing their intelligence agencies of being in league with Israel to destroy the “Arab resistance movement.”
Saudi Arabia has indicated that its chair will be empty at the forthcoming Arab League summit in Damascus at the end of March.
3. Syria claims to have found evidence that two Lebanese intelligence agencies are involved in the Mossad ring.
One is the research branch of the Lebanese General Security Service, whose director, Capt. Wissam Eid, was murdered in a car bomb attack in Beirut on Jan. 25. Capt. Eid was deeply involved in gathering evidence for the Hariri assassination case and uncovering The Syrian leadership’s criminal involvement.
Our intelligence sources note that success by a Syrian undercover team in immobilizing this service would not only deprive the Fouad government of its primary security shield, but also bring the investigation into the three-year old assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister to a halt – just when the international tribunal is preparing to start work in the Netherlands.
The second clandestine Lebanese agency which Syria stigmatizes as part of the Mossad network is the Druze leader Walid Jumblatt’s private intelligence service.
Syria claims to have exposed the personal involvement of its director, Hisham Nasser e-Din. This charge would justify the targeting of the Druze leader and his domain on Mt. Lebanon. Jumblatt, whose father was assassinated on orders of Bashar Assad’s father, is marked as the Syrian president’s most implacable Lebanese foe.
4. The Syrian investigators are seeking to prove that Mughniyeh was killed while walking on foot from the house where he was staying in Damascus to the Mitsubishi SUV and that the vehicle was in fact rigged as a bomb car which detonated on his approach. They further claim that more explosive devices were planted along his path in case the first one missed its mark.
This is important to support the Syrian case, because they claim to have tracked down the vehicle’s Lebanese owner and fixed the time when he entered Syria.
5. They say the explosive was laced with 3,000 steel nails, which killed the targeted Hizballah commander and pockmarked surrounding buildings.
Jihadi regime's could spread rapidly in Africa
http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080220/EDITORIAL/922516666
As Americans debate which presidential candidate is best to confront the jihadists or at least preempt their offensives worldwide, the latter almost seized a key African country for the forthcoming Darfur peace missions.
In one day, the so-called armed opposition of Chad reached the capital N'Djamena and almost surrounded the presidential palace. In a few hours, what would become the future Taliban of Chad have scored a strategic victory not only against that government but also against the efforts by the African and European Unions to contain the Sudanese regime and stop the genocide in Darfur.
Surprising the West and Africans, those forces backing the "opposition" proved they are restless against human rights on the continent. More importantly, the events showed how unprepared are Europeans and Americans in front of jihadi regimes which seem weak on the surface but able to surprise and undermine international efforts. On Saturday Feb. 2, as French President Nicolas Sarkozy was getting married in Paris and Americans were readying for the Super Bowl, jihadi-backed forces launched a blitzkrieg across Chad with 1,000 vehicles, declaring victory to the international media. This so-called opposition — to a nonseasoned observer — would appear as "rebels" and "insurgents." In fact these forces have been backed by the jihadi regime in Khartoum and some of its funding — according to the Chadian government — has been sent from Saudi Arabia.
At the center of the confrontation is Darfur. This black Muslim province inside Sudan has been the victim of genocide at the hands of Arab fundamentalist forces known as the Janjaweed, essentially backed by the regime of Sudan. Both neighboring Chad and the United Nations have come to the help of Darfur since 2005. In return, the Wahabis of the region came to the support of Sudan's regime. France dispatched some military units to Chad and soon a European force was set under UN auspices to be dispatched on the borders between Chad and Sudan to help the Darfur refugees. The Islamists of Khartoum opposed the international initiative and were backed by the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia as well as the Syrian and Iranian regimes.
Using the classical doctrine of "Khid'aa" (or deception), the Khartoum regime bought as much time as it needed to allow the arming and training of the "rebels" inside Chad. The equipment used by the militias has been obtained in few months and "offices" were opened in several countries in the region. Oil dividends quickly poured into the future Taliban of Chad. Their political and media training accelerated. The Sudanese regime planned on aborting the Darfur UN operations by preempting Chad. The question is how the strategists in Washington and Paris failed to foresee this despite activities escalating inside Chad and media activity in support on al Jazeera.
Failing to detect the movement of thousands of armed men crossing into an allied country is alarming. The United States has just organized an Africa Command — backed by the highest technologies worldwide — and the French military have a jet squadron in the capital. On the other hand was the preparedness of the jihadi propaganda machine. Amazingly the official minister of what could have became a Taliban regime in Chad, Jibrin Issa was comfortably seated in al Jazeera's studios in Qatar. Very interestingly, the man was wearing a classical Western business outfit and was clean shaved. The PR strategy was to show the world, including France and the United States, that the forces thrusting into their ally weren't a sister to the Islamic Courts of Somalia or a Taliban "looking" militia. The game was to project this coup as "domestic" against "corruption" and the rest of the litany, thus boring for average Western public.
Issa played the script very well until reality surfaced abruptly. In impeccable Arabic with a Peninsula accent, he thanked the "Islamic Republic of Sudan" and the Saudis for their support, admitting it was indeed a Sudanese-backed operation supported by Wahhabists, as a preemptive move to undermine the forthcoming humanitarian operation in Darfur. The jihadists, kings of strategies, won another day before they were pushed back.
This is a warning: If Washington and Paris prevaricate, future Taliban-like offensives will consolidate their grip and thrust further into the Sahara. The Darfur operation will be doomed.
FBI warns of possible Hezbollah revenge in U.S.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-na-fbialert16feb16,1,4390125.story?ctrack=1&cset=true
The FBI and Department of Homeland Security have sent a bulletin to state and local law enforcement authorities advising them to watch for potential retaliatory strikes by Hezbollah, one day after the Lebanese militia group vowed to avenge the death of a top commander by attacking Israeli and Jewish targets around the world.
"While retaliation in the U.S. homeland is unlikely, Hezbollah has demonstrated a capability to respond outside the Middle East to similar events in the past," said the intelligence bulletin sent to about 18,000 state and local law enforcement officials late Friday afternoon.
The FBI also said it was intensifying its domestic intelligence-gathering efforts to identify any potential Hezbollah threats in the United States in the aftermath of Tuesday's car-bomb assassination of Imad Mughniyah in Syria.
On Wednesday, the FBI sent a confidential internal bulletin to its 101 Joint Terrorism Task Forces across the country warning of the possible domestic consequences of Mughniyah's killing. As part of that effort, FBI officials at headquarters told the bureau's field offices and multiagency task forces to increase monitoring and surveillance of suspected Hezbollah operatives and to conduct fresh interviews with sources and informants about the U.S.-designated terrorist group, according to two FBI officials.
U.S. authorities have long described Hezbollah as the "A-Team" of terrorism, with far more discipline than Al Qaeda, vast financing from the government of Iran, and a global network of sleeper operatives who could be called on to launch an attack at any time. Various federal investigations and prosecutions have uncovered dozens of Hezbollah fundraisers and supporters in the United States, but few people are believed to be actual "bomb throwers," according to a senior FBI counter-terrorism official who focuses on Hezbollah.
Though they have no evidence of specific threats in the United States, officials said that precautionary measures were warranted because of Mughniyah's stature within Hezbollah and because the organization and its Iranian supporters had publicly blamed his death on Israel and "Zionist forces."
Mughniyah, the former Hezbollah security chief and military commander, was one of the world's most wanted fugitives, accused by the United States and other nations of masterminding attacks that killed hundreds of Americans in Lebanon in the 1980s. Mughniyah also was in charge of international operations for Hezbollah, and in that capacity was believed to have inspired tremendous loyalty from a large number of operatives, fundraisers and supporters in Europe, the United States, Southeast Asia, West Africa and South America.
On Thursday, Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah told thousands of fist-waving mourners in a videotaped eulogy in Beirut that the killing of Mughniyah merited a violent response because it occurred outside the "natural battlefield" of Israel and Lebanon. "You have crossed the borders," he said, in a reference to Israel and supporters of the Jewish state. "With this murder, its timing, location and method -- Zionists, if you want this kind of open war, let the whole world listen: Let this war be open."
The FBI and Homeland Security did not give local and state law enforcement agencies specific instructions in the bulletin.
FBI officials said that was because each local jurisdiction should step up security in ways that it considered appropriate in and around government buildings, Jewish institutions and other potential targets.
The senior FBI counter- terrorism official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the bureau's efforts against Hezbollah, said the bureau was focusing its intelligence-gathering efforts on the Detroit-Dearborn area of Michigan, New York, California and several other U.S. locations with large populations of Lebanese and Muslims.
One prominent Lebanese American cautioned against an overreaction. Osama Siblani, president of the Arab American Political Action Committee in Dearborn, said Nasrallah's threats were directed at Israel, not the United States.
Siblani also said that though many Lebanese in the United States supported Hezbollah's political and social welfare efforts, "they would not tolerate or support any activities of Hezbollah inside the United States. This is our home."
Siblani said: "I think the FBI is expected to do whatever they can to make our country safer. They are trying to do their job.
"But if they start rounding up people because they are Lebanese, that is collective punishment, and we will not tolerate it."
In the past, Hezbollah has not launched any attacks in the United States. The two FBI officials and other experts said Friday that they believed that was because the organization had raised so much money here from supporters of its political and social services efforts in Lebanon that it did not want to risk stepped-up enforcement actions.
But the calls for retribution by Nasrallah and other prominent supporters of Hezbollah have been unusually strident, if not unprecedented, according to current and former FBI officials who have followed the organization over the years. They are equally concerned, they said, about retaliation from others who merely sympathize with Hezbollah.
"My understanding has always been that Hezbollah would never strike in the United States unless they believed that we participated in an operation against them," said Bob Pertuso, a former FBI special agent assigned to the Detroit Joint Terrorism Task Force from 2000 to 2004 who specialized in Hezbollah investigations. "So if they believed we assisted in the operation against Mughniyah, I would say they would strike in the United States."
Palestinian Christians live in constant fear of Radical Islam
http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists/story.html?id=317540&p=1
Here with an item from last week's news that you might not have heard about: Unidentified gunmen blew up the YMCA library in the Gaza Strip on Friday morning. While no one was hurt, two guards were temporarily kidnapped while the offices were looted, a vehicle stolen and all 8,000 books destroyed. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, although Fatah accused Hamas of being behind it. Hamas, for its part, strongly denied any responsibility and condemned the attack. Meanwhile, confidential sources in Gaza told the Jerusalem Post that the attack was in response to the reprinting of the Muhammad cartoons in Danish newspapers last week.
The supposed motivation for the attack, and the fact that it was not big news, illustrates the dire situation faced by many Christians living in the Palestinian territories.
There are only some 3,500 Christians, mostly Greek Orthodox, in Gaza. Over the past two years, al-Qaeda-affiliated groups have claimed responsibility for attacks against Christian figures and institutions with the stated goal of driving Christians out of Gaza.
If indeed the attack on the YMCA was motivated by the latest wave of violence in Denmark over the cartoon controversy, it shows how precarious the Christian position is. The Young Men's Christian Association in Gaza is open to Muslims and includes a school, sports club and community hall. It is not a centre of Christian proselytism. But if events in Denmark which have nothing to do with Christianity can produce anti-Christian violence in Gaza, then it is clear that there is nothing Christians can do to avoid such violence.
The problem is not their behaviour but, in the eyes of the violent Islamist jihadists, their very presence. They must simply live in hope that some faraway event does not inflame the anti-Christian wrath of their neighbours. Is it any wonder that Christians in such situations desire to emigrate? Could anyone judge harshly the few thousand Christians in Gaza if they were to leave entirely?
A second noteworthy dimension of the Gaza YMCA bombing is, well, how un-noteworthy it was. It was treated in the Israeli press as a sort of news brief. After all, there was the continuing story of the assassination in Damascus of Hezbollah's chief of terror operations, Imad Mughniyeh. And just hours after the YMCA attack, eight Palestinians in Gaza were killed in an explosion at the home of Ayman Fayad, a senior Islamic Jihad official. All Palestinian organizations blamed the Israeli Defence Forces for the blast; Israel denied any involvement.
So how can the destruction of a library, or the firebombing of a school, or the desecration of a church be reported against the daily toll of political violence elsewhere, to say nothing of the international stories? On the same weekend, the French foreign minister arrived for a visit, and a German newspaper reported that Israel was preparing to declare dead the two soldiers who were kidnapped in 2006, the incident which gave rise to the Second Lebanon War.
Even then, who would do the reporting? There is no free press in Gaza. Outside reporters, whether Israeli or foreign, cannot move about freely and pursue such stories. Foreign reporters in particular need extensive handlers, as they do not know the local language, the local geography or the local leaders. It is much easier to stay in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem and rewrite press statements about the visit of the latest foreign dignitary.
Even if the reporters came, what would they be told? It is well known that Christian Palestinians who have been subject to firebombings, seizures of homes and businesses, assaults and death threats still tell foreign visitors that they have excellent relations with their Muslim neighbours. After the foreigners go home, these Christians must remain, and are loath to give any reason for jihadist extremists to think that they are stirring up trouble.
And so it goes -- news trickles out about one outrage or another, but it gets lost if it gets noticed at all. Meanwhile, Christians in Gaza and the West Bank try to live quietly, never knowing whether a newspaper in Denmark or a papal speech in Germany or nothing in particular might be the pretext for violence coming to their doors.
It is an awful way to live. It is more awful still that so few know, or care about it.
Spurned Love Sparks Violence in Nigeria
http://news.christiansunite.com/Religion_News/religion06892.shtml
Five church buildings were destroyed, several people injured, and the homes of a number of Christians burned in violence in Yana, Bauchi state, Nigeria on February 2, according to a February 12 report from Compass Direct.
On the evening of February 1, Patience Yusuf met with an unidentified Muslim man outside her home upon his request. The man told her that he wanted to befriend and marry her but Yusuf refused him. The man begged her "in the name of God and his apostle, Muhammad," to become his girlfriend. Yusuf again refused, saying: "You are pleading in the name of a person I do not know. Jesus I know, but Muhammad I do not know." The man left and later that night told friends and neighbours that Yusuf had blasphemed against Muhammad.
The next morning, he led a group of Muslims to Yusuf's house to confront her. She escaped to the local police station for protection but the mob followed her and demanded that she be killed for her alleged crime in accordance with Islamic law. When the police refused to give her up, the Muslims attacked the officers and burned down the station.
Shortly afterwards, hundreds of armed Muslims rioted in the streets, attacking and injuring several Christians. Buildings belonging to the Evangelical Church of West Africa, the Church of Nigeria, the Apostolic Church, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Church of Christ in Nigeria were destroyed. Approximately 1,000 people were reportedly displaced in the violence.
Pray that those responsible for this attack will be held accountable and that justice will be fairly administered. Pray for those who must now rebuild their churches and homes in the wake of the violence. Pray that Christians in Yana, Nigeria will find strength in the Lord (2 Corinthians 1:8-9).
For more information on the persecution facing Christians in Nigeria, go to www.persecution.net/country/nigeria.htm.
60 Groups Demand GOP and Dems Move Judicial Nominees
http://news.christiansunite.com/Religion_News/religion06885.shtml
WASHINGTON -- Today, a coalition of about 60 organizations - led by the Committee for Justice (CFJ) - delivered a letter to each of the 19 members of the Senate Judiciary Committee "to express our deep concern about the lack of progress in 2007 in reporting judicial nominees . . . out of the Judiciary Committee, and to discuss reasonable expectations for progress on this issue in 2008."
The coalition cites "the remarkably low approval ratings for the 110th Congress" and decries the fact that "a year into the 110th Congress, the Judiciary Committee has held hearings for only four appeals court nominees and has voted on only six. As a result, the full Senate has fallen far short of the confirmation pace necessary to meet the historical average of 17 circuit court confirmations during a president's final two years in office [with] opposition control of the Senate."
"This letter is aimed at both Republican and Democratic senators," explained CFJ executive director Curt Levey. "Both parties have good reason to make this a priority. Senate Democrats remember that in 2004, the last time judicial nominees were an election issue in Senate races, the issue cost them and their leader, Tom Daschle, dearly. As for Republicans, Ranking Member Arlen Specter, his colleagues on the Judiciary Committee, and the Senate's GOP leadership need only look at the passions still aroused by the 2005 'Gang of 14' deal to see the peril in being perceived as soft on the judges issue."
The letter makes it clear to Judiciary Committee members that the coalition expects them to, at very least, give the full Senate "an opportunity to confirm fifteen appeals court nominees in the 110th Congress." That "would match the number of circuit court confirmations in President Clinton's final two years." "Anything less and the members of the Judiciary Committee will be remembered for presiding over historic levels of obstruction," the letter emphasizes.
The coalition reminds senators that "the Judiciary Committee's arcane 'blue slip' policy," used to deny nominees even a hearing, is "rightfully perceived as serving senators rather than the public." As examples of how this policy "exposes the Senate at its worst," the letter cites "the [Michigan] senators whose only reason for blocking two circuit court nominees is a decade-old personal grudge, or the [Maryland] senators who can do no better than argue that the nominee they are blocking is so good at his current job that he should be kept there."
The coalition names, as its "highest priority," Peter Keisler, a D.C. Circuit nominee "who has inexplicably languished in committee without action since his hearing a year and a half ago." The letter notes that "Keisler has been given the American Bar Association's highest rating - 'unanimously well- qualified' - and has the enthusiastic support of leading legal scholars and practitioners from across the ideological spectrum." Even "the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times have called for Keisler's confirmation."
The letter concludes by asking Judiciary Committee members to "fulfill your responsibility . . . by ensuring that each and every judicial nominee is given a hearing and a vote in committee. If you cannot support a particular nominee, vote him or her out of committee without a positive recommendation, or vote against confirmation on the Senate floor." But do "not stand in the way" of the full Senate "carry[ing] out its constitutional duty of advice and consent by providing each nominee with a timely up-or-down confirmation vote."
California Campaign Launched Urging Exit from Public Schools
http://news.christiansunite.com/Religion_News/religion06884.shtml
LOS ANGELES -- Parents and former public school teachers Monday urged California parents to remove their children from public school in order to protect them from new sexual indoctrination laws.
At a Los Angeles news conference, Campaign for Children and Families (CCF) kicked off a statewide campaign for parents to exit the government school system. In light of the new sexual indoctrination laws, SB 777 and AB 394, CCF has launched RescueYourChild.org which shows parents how to do whatever it takes to either homeschool or enroll their children in church-run schools.
SB 777 functionally requires public school instructional materials and school-sponsored activities to positively portray cross-dressing, sex- change operations, homosexual "marriages," and all aspects of homosexuality and bisexuality, including so-called "gay history." AB 394 requires public schools to distribute controversial material to teachers, students, and parents which promotes transsexuality, bisexuality, and homosexuality, all under the guise of "anti-harassment" training.
"Why are parents concerned? What will the implementation look like?" asked Randy Thomasson, president of Campaign for Children and Families, a leading West Coast pro-family organization, at the Feb. 11 news conference. "Imagine a teacher saying, 'Class, for our contemporary social studies non- discrimination bias component, we have a special speaker today. He will share his amazing story of growing up as a male trapped in a woman's body.' This is the type of gender-bending education which students may have to endure unless their parents rescue them from the increasingly negative public school environment."
Veteran public school teacher Nadine Williams of Torrance said the sexual indoctrination laws have motivated her to keep her grandchildren out of the public schools that she used to support. Former school board trustee Judy Ahrens said she's been standing for public education but with SB 777 and AB 394 she must reject public schools in favor of children's innocence.
Single mother Caron Strong of Los Angeles is concerned how her public-school daughter will be affected by the new sexual indoctrination laws. "I'm going to homeschool my daughter," announced Strong at Monday's news conference.
CAMPAIGN FOR CHILDREN AND FAMILIES (CCF) is a leading West Coast nonprofit, nonpartisan organization representing children and families. CCF stands for marriage and family, parental rights, the sanctity of human life, religious freedom, financial freedom, and back-to-basics education.
Faith Groups Applaud and Commend ESPN for Their Commitment to Build Religious Tolerance in the Workplace After the Network Issued a Public Statement on the Subject
http://news.christiansunite.com/Religion_News/religion06886.shtml
BRISTOL, Connecticut -- The Christian Defense Coalition and the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission believe this will be a positive first step in helping build a faith friendly culture in America's workplace.
ESPN issued the public statement after faith groups lead a series of demonstrations outside of ESPN's corporate headquarters and conducted lengthy conversations with ESPN executives on the issue of religious tolerance.
The demonstrations and dialogue were in response to Dana Jacobson, an ESPN host, using the phrase "F--k Jesus" at an officially sponsored ESPN workplace event in Atlantic City, New Jersey this past January.
As the discussions moved forward there were two critical issues the faith groups remained firm on. The first was that ESPN would sponsor a workplace seminar on religious diversity and tolerance. (Which they have never had in their over 30 year history.) Next, they would treat the negative use of "Jesus Christ" or the expression "G-d D--n" the same way they would respond to the use of the "N" word or other hateful language in the workplace.
Here is ESPN's Statement:
"Diversity and communications are important to ESPN and we have existing programs in place for both. To bring focus to the issues of religious tolerance and language as part of these efforts is totally appropriate and we will do so.
"With regard to language in the workplace, we do not have a list of forbidden phrases, but we do require appropriate workplace behavior. We will raise the profile of this issue as part of our internal dialogue and will be emphasizing to employees the importance of using language that is appropriate in the workplace."
Dr. Gary Cass, President of the Christian Anti- Defamation Commission, responds, "Working to create a workplace that is 'faith friendly' is a step in the right direction and I commend ESPN for their promise to do so. We hope this can help foster a further conversation about religious tolerance that can elevate our public discourse and reclaim a proper respect towards the religious convictions of others.
"Don Wildmon of the American Family Association, one of America's largest Christian activist organizations, is also appreciate of the good news and will not move forward with any national boycott campaign."
Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney, Director of the Christian Defense Coalition, comments, "Religious intolerance and discrimination should have no place in the American workplace. Employees should feel that their faith traditions, beliefs and value systems will be respected and honored. Just as no one should feel like a 'second-class' citizen because of their race or gender, so no employee should feel discriminated against or uncomfortable because of religious intolerance and hateful speech in the workplace.
"ESPN has taken a powerful first step toward building a culture of religious tolerance and we applaud them for that. By making a first time commitment to include religious tolerance in their diversity programs, ESPN is sending a clear signal that religious discrimination has no place at their network. ESPN has also recognized that the use of certain religiously offensive words and phrases must not be tolerated and their use is inappropriate.
"Our hope and prayer is that a national conversation will now begin on religious tolerance in the workplace and that other companies will follow ESPN's lead and work to build a 'faith friendly' environment for their employees.
"I would personally like to thank the fine work of ESPN vice-president of communications, Mike Soltys, as he spent countless hours in helping craft this public statement."
Belief in an Age of Skepticism
http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/325681.aspx
There's something of a spiritual awakening going on in New York City among the most unlikely group of people - Manhattan's cultural elites.
They're responding in a surprising way to the preaching of Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church.
Tim Keller is not a household name in the Evangelical world. He doesn't have a radio or TV ministry and rarely gives interviews.
But what began in 1989 as a handful of believers has grown to 5,000 people gathering each Sunday in places like a college auditorium on Manhattan's upper east side.
The worship service and the surroundings are rather low key.
So is Keller's speaking style.
"The average person, when they think of mega church, thinks of a style, a polish, either a very slick person.an actor or a person who's deliberately in jeans and goatee and little granny glasses who's trying to be hip," Keller said. "And they don't get either of those things with me."
What they do get are biblical insights on things like the suffering of Job.
"God allows Satan to bring just so much suffering into Job's life that it absolutely accomplishes the opposite of what Satan wanted," Keller preached.
"They're getting the solid Gospel message but put in the language of sophisticated Manhattanites who read The New York Times Book Review before they come to church," explained New York City native and author, Eric Meraxas.
Metaxas is one of Keller's long-time friends and among those who challenged him to write a book.
The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism reflects Keller's ability to address the doubts people have about God.
"Keller claims that people who reject Christianity do so because of seven basic objections, and you don't have to travel far in this city to discover he's right," Metaxas said.
Keller said that's one of the lessons we can learn from the book of Job.
"The Bible is not the record of people following the rules and grabbing the blessing," he said. "The Bible is a record of grace breaking into people's lives, usually in the form of suffering, who otherwise would never have been able to overcome their own corruption and brokenness."
That message rang true for Ellie Ellsworth. She admits she didn't understand Christians or particularly care for them.
"I thought they were not thinking people," she said. "I thought their intellect was dulled."
Ellsworth became successful in New York's entertainment industry, but said there was an emptiness in her life that she tried, in vain, to fill.
"For me, became a sexual appetite that wouldn't really stop and became necessary to have," she said. " to be adored by men as often as possible."
When one of those men invited her to attend a worship service at Redeemer, Ellsworth said she went just to please him.
"There was this man on the stage preaching and I began to hear what he was saying," she said. "I came to understand that what I was fighting and what was bothering me was sin."
Ellsworth said understanding the Gospel changed her life.
"One way to put the Gospel in a nutshell is this: You are more wicked than ever dared believe and yet, you are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than you ever dared hope," Keller said.
Today Ellsworth is an active member of Redeemer, one of many skeptical New Yorkers God has reached through Keller's ministry.
Slowly, Keller is gaining a reputation in New York and across the country.
The White House asked him to speak at the memorial service marking the the fifth anniversary of 9/11.
He loves the city and its culture and his goal is to add hundreds of churches to the nearly 20 that Redeemer has already planted there.
"My idea is that in every single neighborhood you've got churches that are not simply evangelizing tribally, not caring about the city and only trying to build up their own numbers," Keller said. "Churches that are calling people to conversion and seeking the welfare of the city in every single neighborhood.That's going to change the city, in a good way."
Renowned Evangelist Passes Away
http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/325362.aspx
Well-known evangelist Dr. D.G.S. Dhinakaran passed away on what would be Wednesday morning in India (late Tuesday night in the U.S.). He was 73.
The long-time friend of The Christian Broadcasting Network and Dr. M.G. "Pat" Robertson is known for huge evangelistic crusades along with his Jesus Calls ministry.
Dhinakaran, considered by many of his peers as the "apostle of this age to India", was known for holding powerful prayer rallies guided by the Holy Spirit, where he'd call out the names of people who were in the crowd, reveal their exact needs, and minister directly to them.
Dhinakaran was joined by Robertson at one rally not long after the beginning of the new millenium in Hyderabad, India, where they ministered to 500,000 people. He also worked closely with Robertson through the years in establishing CBN ministries in India.
The Indian evangelist's biography tells of a 20-year-old young man caught in poverty and unemployment at the point of taking his life. On his way to throw himself in front of a speeding train, he was stopped by his uncle who introduced him to Jesus Christ. He said an immediate peace overwhelmed him, and he went home with hope and a new purpose for his life.
The young Dhinakaran worked at a bank and ended up becoming a top executive for the company. Yet he had a heart for ministry that compelled him to start the Jesus Calls ministry.
Later, he had a vision of the Lord Jesus appearing to him, asking him to train lay people like himself to reach the people of his nation and other parts of Asia with the good news of the Gospel.
Later he started radio and television ministries across India. He also started other ministries related to Jesus Calls ministry, wrote books, and influenced many people in all walks of life for God.
Thousands Mourn Death of Bishop Gimenez
http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/325510.aspx
Thousands of mourners came to pay their final respects to Bishop John Gimenez at his funeral service Tuesday at Rock Church in Virginia Beach.
Hundreds filed by the casket of the man who poured out his life to serve others.
"He taught us to love people, to win souls and to love evangelism," said Danette Crawford of Joy Ministries
"He always convinced you, you were able to perform and do what God called you to do. He was just a friend to everybody," long-time friend Jim Cucuzza said.
Gimenez once sang one of his favorite tunes He Cares and gave his testimony about how he walked out of a New York prison in 1963, shot heroin for the last time - and was told by his mother to leave and never come back. But God had other plans.
"I had an encounter with Jesus Christ that totally changed me," Bishop Gimenez said. "God never changes, no matter how far down you've gone in life, no matter how wrong you've been, no matter how deep the sin, He's still there."
Dr. Pat Robertson remembered his long-time friend.
"We were dear friends. Since, 1965 - more than 40 years - we've been friends. I miss him. But the Lord is happy! As sure as I'm living I bet he's already organized an angel's choir," Robertson said.
In his amazing ministry, that spanned more than four decades, Gimenez helped plant hundreds of new churches, saw countless people come to Christ and trained hundreds of young ministers.
But he may be remembered best, simply for the way he loved people - and that he never forgot where he came from.
Robertson said, "He was a hopeless junkie out of prison, suddenly, the quote, 'Bishop' of 500 churches!"
Bishop Courtney McBath of Calvary Revival Church in Norfolk, Virginia called Gimenez "a gift that none of us ever deserved.We are what we are today because God sent this man to us!"
Robertson also encouraged the Rock Church family and others to keep the bishop's mission - to reach the world for Jesus Christ - alive.
"Pick up the torch and carry it through," he said. "We miss you, but we'll see you one day in that glorious reunion when the Lord brings us all together!"
Wesley Owen, Crown Books collecting unused Bibles for India
http://www.christiantoday.com/article/wesley.owen.crown.books.collecting.unused.bibles.for.india/16969.htm
Wesley Owen Books and Music and Crown Books have launched a Bibles for India collection.
Customers are being invited to drop off their unused Bibles at their local Wesley Owen or Crown shop between 29 March and 30 May.
The collected Bibles collected will be shipped to Operation Mobilisation in India who will distribute them to Indian Christians who are hungry for the Word but unable to afford their own copy of the Bible.
Malcolm Stockdale, Managing Director of Wesley Owen, pointed to Isaiah 55: "So it is with my word that goes out… it will not return to me empty but will accomplish what I desire, and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”
He added, "Be part of this exciting promise of God. Hand in your spare Bibles and we will send them to India to bless our Christian brothers and sisters there. Go on… strip those bookshelves bare!"
Josiah Website Launched to Encourage and Support the Disabled
http://news.christiansunite.com/Religion_News/religion06890.shtml
NASHVILLE -- Imagine what it's like to be a wheelchair-bound child. Now, meet Josiah, who will enlighten you and teach you about empathy, dignity and the power of a positive attitude.
Josiah, along with his best friend Wheely, are charming illustrated characters created by Therese Carrier (president of HisWillBeDone Productions). Carrier has just launched a website based on the Josiah character. "I wanted to honor my brother," she says. "Joe was severely disabled in a car accident and was wheelchair-bound until he passed away, several years later in 2004."
Josiah's stories are intended to spread a positive message of hope, joy and encouragement not only to the disabled, but to everyone. "Josiah has a remarkable can-do attitude and spirit," says Carrier. "It's something we can all use a little more of." A newly-published book, Josiah's School Fun Day, tells the first story about Josiah, Wheely, and their schoolmates Misty and Carter.
Besides the book, the website features links to sites of interest for disabled children (and their parents), as well as an interactive coloring page and an official Josiah(TM) store. A series of greeting cards and a line of Josiah t-shirts in both youth and adult sizes are also available.
A portion of the proceeds from sales on the site will be distributed by The Josiah Foundation to provide assistance to people across the U.S. who have physical and mental development disabilities. "There is worth and value in every individual who crosses our path," says Carrier.
To visit the Josiah website, please go to www.hwbdproductions.com
Christian Freedom International Delivers Aid in Laos
http://news.christiansunite.com/Religion_News/religion06889.shtml
VIENTIANE, LAOS -- Christian Freedom International (CFI), a U.S.-based organization that provides humanitarian aid and political advocacy for persecuted Christians around the world, is on location in the Lao People's Democratic Republic delivering Bibles and relief aid to dozens of suffering Christians.
CFI president Jim Jacobson and other CFI personnel are making the delivery to impoverished Christians in remote villages, where access to medical care and other basic necessities are virtually impossible -- particularly for those who profess the Christian faith.
Christianity is viewed as the number one "enemy of the state" in Laos, a country that is one of the last remaining Communist states in the world. Its Christians have continued to suffer under mounting persecution in recent years, including the confiscation of homes, property and churches, the arrest and imprisonment of pastors, forced renunciation of the faith, and even the threat of execution.
Hmong Christians have especially become targets for attack by the Laotian government, in a vicious genocidal campaign that has included forced starvation and the use of chemical weapons. Although its constitution supports religious freedom for all citizens, Laos has consistently ranked among the top 10 countries cited for human rights abuses, and has even openly declared its intent to "eliminate Christianity."
But the faith has continued to thrive despite the government's rising hostility, even as many believers risk imprisonment by gathering to worship in illegal underground churches. The severe restrictions have also caused a widespread shortage of Bibles in the country, leaving many Laotian Christians without access to copies of the Scriptures.
CFI has repeatedly sent medical and dental teams into Laos, along with Bibles and food supplies, for Christians who have no access to healthcare and other resources. The organization's current trip to the region comes immediately after a week-long mission in Burma, where supplies were delivered to persecuted Karen and Karenni refugees.
CFI also operates a microenterprise program in Laos and Burma, as well as several other countries, which enables impoverished Christians to generate personal income through the sale of their handcraft products in the United States.
CFI encourages the international community and its leaders to call on the Laotian government to end the mistreatment of its Christian citizens. For more information, visit Christian Freedom International online at www.christianfreedom.org.
Futurist: Computer power will match the intelligence of human beings by 2030
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Features/The_Sunday_ET/Backpage/The_last_frontier/articleshow/2788824.cms
Artificial intelligence portrayed in Hollywood movies like ‘The Terminator’ and ‘Blade Runner’ could be a reality in the next two decades.
A leading scientific “futurologist” has predicted that computer power will match the intelligence of human beings by 2030 because of the accelerating speed at which technology is advancing worldwide, ‘The Independent’ reported today. According to computer guru Dr Ray Kurzweil, there will be 32 times more technical progress during the next half century than there was in the entire 20th century, and one of the outcomes is that artificial intelligence could be on a par with human intellect in the next 20 years.
He said that machines will rapidly overtake humans in their intellectual abilities and will soon be able to solve some of the most intractable problems of the 21st century.
Computers have so far been based on two-dimensional chips made from silicon, but there are developments already well advanced to make three-dimensional chips with vastly improved performances, and even to construct them out of biological molecules.
Three-dimensional, molecular computing will provide the hardware for human-level ‘strong artificial intelligence’ by the 2020s. The more important software insights will be gained in part from the reverse engineering of the human brain, a process well under way.
“Already, two dozen regions of the human brain have been modelled and simulated,” the British newspaper quoted Dr Kurzweil as saying.
First order for pet dog cloning
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7246380.stm
A South Korean company says it has taken its first order for the cloning of a pet dog.
A woman from the United States wants her dead pitbull terrier - called Booger - re-created.
RNL Bio is charging the woman, from California, $150,000 (£76,000) to clone the pitbull using tissue extracted from its ear before it died.
The work will be carried out by a team from Seoul National University, where the first dog was cloned in 2005.
RNL Bio says this is the first time a dog will have been cloned commercially.
"There are many people who want to clone their pet dogs in Western countries even at this high price," company chief executive, Ra Jeong-chan, told the Korea Times.
The firm is expecting hundreds more orders for pets over the next few years and also plans to clone dogs trained to sniff out bombs or drugs.
One out of every four surrogate mother dogs produces puppies, according to RNL Bio's marketing director, Cho Seong-ryul.
"The cost of cloning a dog may come down to less than $50,000 as cloning is becoming an industry," he said.
Your Steak — Medium, Rare or Cloned?
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1714146,00.html
Last month the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the sale of cloned meat in the U.S., having determined that products from cloned cattle, pigs and goats are as safe to eat as meat from their naturally reproduced brethren. That makes advocates happy: Cloning enables the livestock industry to do in a fraction of the time what breeders have been doing throughout history, narrowing the gene pool to its most desirable genes. Beyond that, say cloners, future benefits include production of genetically engineered animals that could offer a variety of benefits — more nutrient-rich milk, for example, for people without adequate access to food.
Safe as it may be, there's another problem about cloned meat that the FDA approval hasn't taken into account: the unscientific "ick" factor. Though cattle are often reproduced artificially — using in vitro fertilization, for example — and though cloning is just another form of reproduction as far as scientists are concerned, the public is somewhat less phlegmatic about the technology. "You can't lobotomize people's brains to keep their morality from affecting their clinical understanding," said Sheila Jasanoff, a Harvard professor of science and technology studies, at a presentation about cloned meat at last weekend's American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Boston.
Cloned-animal products aren't on store shelves yet — the industry won't begin selling them for at least a few months, after a government-recommended "transition period" — but when they finally do appear in supermarkets you may not even notice, because they won't be labeled. "The FDA does not require labeling if there are no food safety issues," said Dr. Stephen Sundlof, director of the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, at a January press conference.
That's where Dr. Patrick Cunningham, the former director of the Animal Production and Health Division of the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization, and Ireland's current chief scientific advisor, comes in. Cunningham's 12-year-old company, IdentiGEN, specializes in DNA tracing of meat products — a process that can save valuable time during industry recalls, like the massive one on Sunday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) involving 143 million lbs. of raw and frozen beef. Currently, IdentiGEN is operating in Europe, where the mad cow crisis in the mid-'90s led to the establishment of a comprehensive system of traceability. All pork and beef products sold at the U.K.-based, worldwide megamarket TESCO, for example, have been logged by IdentiGEN and stamped with the IdentiGEN DNA TraceBack seal of approval, as are 75% of beef and pork products sold in Ireland — the seal proves that the meat originated where the supplier says it did.
Until now, the genetic traceability of meat hasn't been much of a public health issue in the U.S. But with the USDA recall and the FDA's Jan. 15 approval of cloned-animal food products, Cunningham thinks Americans will want to know where the food in their grocery store is coming from. A 2007 poll by the Consumers Union found, in fact, that 89% of consumers would prefer that cloned foods be distinguished with labels. "This idea that all our food can be anonymous, trucked from anywhere in the world with its origins lost along the way, I don't think that's acceptable in today's world," says Cunningham. He adds, "People will want to label their [products] 'clone free.'"
IdentiGEN's traceback system starts with a small DNA sample taken from an animal carcass while it is still intact. The sample is stored in a computer database, and from that point on, at any step in the distribution process, another sample can be taken from any product to confirm its origins. The entire process costs one half of 1% of the value of the animal, according to Cunningham. If cloned-animal DNA were made publicly available (cloners now keep DNA information proprietary), Cunningham says he could trace a single steak back to an individual cloned steer in less than a week. "Tracing clones is a simpler task than what we do normally, which is tracing all animals, because there are fewer clones," says Cunningham.
There are about 4,000 cloned cattle on the planet, and 600 of them in the U.S. They are used primarily for breeding purposes, and as yet, their products aren't officially sold anywhere — though there is anecdotal evidence that cloned food products have made their way into the market in the past. Currently the U.S., E.U., Australia, China, Japan and New Zealand all use cloned cattle and pigs. ViaGEN, a cloning and animal genetics company based in Austin, Tex., produces some 150 cloned cattle annually, which it sells to meat suppliers, primarily for breeding. ViaGEN says it will launch a system to log and track each of its clones, with a unique tracking number — but not its DNA — that will be stored in an independently run database. The company will also make efforts to keep any food products made from its clones out of markets that don't want them. "We're not making it voluntary," says Mark Walton, president of ViaGEN. "We will register every animal we produce and put that animal in the database so that information is available."
But a tracking number isn't enough, Cunningham says, calling it little more than a "paper trail." He says, "that's not adequate. The only way you can be sure is if you put the DNA of these clones into an independent database," pointing out that a single cow can enter a packing plant and come out the other side in as many as 1,000 different products.
In all likelihood, however, when cloned food products are finally introduced in the U.S., they will make up a minuscule part of the overall meat market. Breeding clones isn't easy or cheap — a cloned cow costs between $10,000 and $20,000 to breed, compared to as little as $50 for a standard cow. And cloned-animal products will predominantly come from the offspring of clones, which will be sexually reproduced, not from the clones themselves. Once cloned animals have run their course as breeders, says Walton, "They're either becoming commingled as burgers, or they're headed off to dog food."
IdentiGEN opened its U.S. headquarters and a DNA lab in May 2007 in Lawrence, Kansas. Last October, the company received the official go-ahead from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to launch its DNA TraceBack system and is currently offering it up to American meat producers and retailers. For the record, Cunningham says he would happily enjoy a steak from a cloned steer, but recognizes there's a "general, unscientific feeling that something that's cloned is getting too close to Frankenstein."
Targeting offenders before they strike - doctors and teachers to act as 'informers' in new 'Minority Report' plans for Britain
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=515688&in_page_id=1770&ito=1490
Doctors, teachers and social workers will be told to act as informers to identify potential violent offenders for monitoring by the police and other agencies.
Ministers hope that by spotting binge-drinkers, drug addicts and young gang members early before they commit serious crimes they can be placed on a national database and steered away from offending behaviour.
The plans have been dubbed the Minority Report powers, a reference to the 2002 Tom Cruise movie in which a futuristic "precrime" police unit uses psychics to arrest and imprison criminals just before they carry out attacks.
But civil liberty campaigners and union bosses warned that such intrusive measures by the Home Office would destroy the relationship of trust between GPs and their patients or social workers and clients.
They would also put professionals at risk of reprisals if they are seen as police informers.
Opposition MPs said recent fiascos involving huge quantities of personal data lost or leaked by the Government raised grave doubts over plans for sharing and swapping private data.
The scheme, outlined in the Government's latest Tackling Violence Action Plan, will mean redrafting the NHS's strict privacy protection rules to encourage health staff to share patients' confidential data as part of "public interest disclosures".
The document sets out plans for identifying individuals who may not have committed any offences but are judged to be |at risk of involvement in violence".
Tell-tale signs of those 'whose behaviour may be identified as risky' include drug addicts or alcoholics, mental health patients and youngsters who join gangs or who have been the victims of violence either in the home or on the street.
Ministers want GPs, social workers, mental health agencies, housing officials and school or college staff to provide tip-offs so that multi-agency Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships, including local police, can act.
The only existing systems are for monitoring convicted criminals through probation staff, so new organisations will have to be set up to watch those thought to be at risk of committing violence.
Once an individual is assessed as a high-risk potential offender, they would be placed on local and national databases and subjected to regular reviews. The Home Office claims such measures will save lives.
Ministers have cited examples such as Michael Stone, convicted of murdering Lin and Megan Russell, or Soham murderer Ian Huntley.
They repeatedly came to the notice of medics or police, but lack of data- sharing meant threatening patterns were missed.
The Home Office said examples of "interventions" for potential criminals included regular visits from social services staff, providing mentors to young people, forcing them to attend weapons awareness classes or more after-school activities to keep them off the streets.
Union officials voiced grave concerns and accused ministers of failing to consult professionals or to address concerns they had already raised.
A spokesman for Unison, the public services union, said: "These plans threaten to build a barrier of suspicion between the public and those who deliver their services."
Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said: "This is another ill-thought through measure, no doubt based on flawed databases and unreliable statistical analysis."
Shami Chakrabarti, director of human rights group Liberty, said: "Home Office edicts are unlikely to help skilled health professionals make delicate judgments on behalf of their patients. The danger is of vulnerable victims treating their own injuries for fear of being reported to the police."
Auditors Find U.N. Squandered Millions in Sudan
http://news.christiansunite.com/Religion_News/religion06888.shtml
WASHINGTON -- Tens of millions of dollars have been wasted in peacekeeping operations in Sudan over the past three years according to a new report issued by the U.N. Office for International Oversight Services. The audit slams the U.N. for having poor internal control mechanisms and for tolerating mismanagement in the war-torn country.
U.N. auditors have identified dozens of irregularities according to The Washington Post, including an "exorbitant" rate on a contract to supply gravel for peacekeeping barracks and $1.2 million in "unnecessary expenditures" for block bookings of hotel rooms that the United Nations was unable to fill.
Several instances of corruption were also cited in the report, including U.N. purchasing agents diverting contracts to companies that provided visa sponsorships and inappropriate financial compensation.
Faith J.H. McDonnell, Director of IRD's Church Alliance for a New Sudan, commented:
"The greatest tragedy here is that a little money can go a long way in helping those Sudanese who are in need. While nonprofit aid organizations and churches can do wonders with just a few hundred or thousand dollars, the U.N. wastes millions. The lost opportunities are staggering.
"There are reports in Juba of U.N. workers served luxurious brunches by five-star chefs while southern Sudanese outside scramble to piece together paltry school tuition fees. It is nothing short of a travesty.
"Southern Sudan is really the best hope for peace in the entire country. Marginalized people groups are coming together with Southern Sudanese as never before. All Sudanese who want just peace, secular democracy, and religious freedom are counting on the U.N. and African Union forces to assist them in stabilizing and developing their country, not taking control from indigenous leaders and replaying the same corruption we've seen in many other countries."
The Institute on Religion and Democracy, founded in 1981, is an ecumenical alliance of U.S. Christians working to reform their churches' social witness, in accord with biblical and historic Christian teachings, thereby contributing to the renewal of democratic society at home and abroad.
One World Religion - Proposal to create a Religious UN in Rome
http://www.agi.it
The leader of the Italian Democratic Party, Walter Veltroni, today proposed the creation of an 'Organization of Religions Nations' Rome-based, and said that the idea' liked 'by both the secretary of the UN, Ban Ki-moon, and Pope Benedict XVI.
Veltroni explained that his idea is the creation of a 'palace of religions' in Rome, like the United Nations in New York, where representatives of all faiths of the world can' meet and talk among themselves.
The political leader said that it has already proposed his initiative, which he called 'United Religions' (Religions Nations), both Pope Benedict XVI and the secretary of the UN, who' liked the idea.
Veltroni announced today that proposal during an appearance before reporters in Rome as a farewell, after it yesterday submit his resignation as mayor of the city to begin his campaign as a candidate for president of the Government in the upcoming April elections.
Rome is the headquarters for three of the United Nations agencies that deal with food: the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the Organization for Food and Agriculture (FAO) and the Global Agenda Food (WFP).
Study Will Explore the Belief in God
http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/325853.aspx
Researchers at Oxford University are launching a major study to determine why people believe in God.
Anthropologists, theologians, philosophers and professors will work together for three years to study if belief in a divine being is basic to human nature.
The director of Oxford's Science and Religion Center says research suggests that faith in God is a universal impulse found in most cultures throughout the world.
"There are a lot of issues. What is it that is innate in human nature to believe in God, whether it is gods or something superhuman or supernatural?" said Roger Trigg, acting director of the Ian Ramsey Center for Science and Religion.
"One implication that comes from this is that religion is the default position, and atheism is perhaps more in need of explanation," he said.
They will spend nearly $4 million dollars on the project. The study will be funded by the John Templeton Foundation, a U.S.-based philanthropic organization that funds wide-ranging research into questions that deal with the laws of nature and issues of spirituality.
Google Quietly Reinstates Work of News Organization Critical of U.N.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,331469,00.html
Google News quietly reinstated Tuesday the articles of a news service that routinely exposes U.N. corruption, a day after FOXNews.com ran a story about the Internet giant's decision to remove Inner City Press from its search engine.
Inner City Press returned to the Google News search late in the day, but much sooner than the "couple weeks" a Google representative had promised. The week of stories the news service ran since Google News dropped it on Feb. 13 were not restored.
The news outlet, run by journalist Matthew Lee, has been critical of the U.N. and internal corruption within the organization. Lee was informed that Google News would drop his organization in a Feb. 8 e-mail.
Someone complained to Google early this month that Inner City Press was a one-man operation, violating the Google News ground rule that news organizations listed must have two or more employees, according to Gabriel Stricker, a Google spokesman.
Lee, who insists his organization has appropriate staff, believes someone within the U.N. pressured Google to drop him. The U.N. denies the charges.
Speaking at a press briefing Tuesday, Marie Okabe, Deputy Spokesperson for the Secretary-General said, "The Secretary-General has often spoken out in favor of press freedom and will continue to do so, but that insinuating that he, or his staff, is linked to the decision taken by Google News to de-list Inner City Press is blatantly false and misleading."
Since 2005, Lee's been focusing almost entirely on stories that deal with internal corruption inside the U.N., posting several stories online almost daily.
He's been especially interested in the inner workings of what could be called the practical-applications arm of the international organization, the United Nations Development Programme.
Google said the "de-listing" was due to a misunderstanding and agreed to restore Inner City Press stories to the Google News service.
The reaction to the de-listing, however temporary, had been furious. The non-profit Government Accountability Project lambasted the company, calling Inner City Press "the most effective and important media organization for U.N. whistleblowers."
Bishop Jakes Speaks Out on the Clark Sisters' Grammy Win
http://news.christiansunite.com/Religion_News/religion06883.shtml
DALLAS -- One of America's most popular leaders, Bishop T.D. Jakes, has issued a statement congratulating the legendary Clark Sisters on the first ever Grammy wins of their 35-year professional recording career. "I was thrilled to hear that the Clark sisters won 3 Grammy awards," said Jakes. "But I was not surprised. They continue to provide the music that uplifts the soul and blesses the hearts of millions!"
In the midst of a rousing career comeback, the Detroit- based Clark Sisters won three Grammy awards last night in the categories of Best Gospel Performance, Best Gospel Song and Best Traditional Gospel Album for their latest #1 CD "Live - One Last Time." They capped off the evening with a spellbinding performance on the Grammy telecast with Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin, BeBe Winans and others.
On the heels of this stunning career achievement, Bishop Jakes' Dexterity Sounds /Rhino Entertainment recording label releases the much-anticipated compilation CD ENCORE: THE BEST OF THE WORD RECORD YEARS on February 12, 2008. ENCORE features a dozen of the sisters' biggest hits for the Word Records label in the late 1980s, many of them now out-of-print. Along with the original studio versions of such classics as "Balm In Gilead," the new collection also includes live versions of The Clark Sisters' signature hits "You Brought The Sunshine" and "Is My Living in Vain?"
ENCORE also includes a new song, "Follow the Star," spotlighting Dorinda Clark Cole on lead vocals with Bishop Jakes and Angie Winans. And 2007 American Idol contestant Melinda Doolittle contributes a new rendition of the group's hit "You Brought the Sunshine." The disc also includes new spoken word commentary on The Clark Sisters' Word Records tenure by Jacky Clark-Chisholm and Karen Clark Sheard. Over the course of their career, the sisters have influenced a generation of vocalists ranging from Mariah Carey and Faith Evans in the R&B world to Bryan Wilson and Smokie Norful in the gospel community. Visit www.dexteritysounds.com for more information.
Open Air Campaigners celebrate 40 years of sharing Christ in UK
http://www.christiantoday.com/article/open.air.campaigners.celebrate.40.years.of.sharing.christ.in.uk/16934.htm
Open Air Campaigners (OAC) will celebrate 40 years of sharing Jesus Christ in Britain this year with a special open air meeting on the beach at Brighton and Hove where the first OAC meeting took place four decades ago.
OAC was originally founded in Sydney, Australia in 1892, dedicated to the mission of ‘Presenting Christ by all means everywhere’ with particular emphasis on open air and outgoing evangelism.
The day of celebration in Brighton and Hove will mark 40 years since British evangelist David Fanstone was commissioned to begin OAC’s work in Britain in 1967. On Easter Sunday, 14 April 1968, Mr Fanstone and a team of young people from his church held the first official OAC meeting on the Brighton and Hove seafront.
The open air meeting in Brighton 40 years ago was the starting point of OAC’s growth and the ministry now covers the United Kingdom and more than a dozen countries in Europe.
The ministry’s methods have also evolved over the last four decades, seeing the ministry transition from open air preaching to now include schools and prisons ministry using creative means such as drama and escapology, as well as innovative sketchboard illustration.
The 40th anniversary celebration will include an open air meeting on the Brighton and Hove seafront near to the spot where Mr Fanstone and his team held the first open air was held. A Thanksgiving Service, which is open to the public, will be held at the Bishop Hannington Church in Hove on the theme ‘OAC Past, Present and Future’ led by the National Director Dave Glover.
The society has trained numerous effective communicators of the Gospel over the years. The Thanksgiving Day will be an occasion to praise God for the past but also to pray that OAC will remain one of the leading evangelistic agencies in the UK today.
Mr Fanstone said: “OAC has always recognised that the gift of evangelism is given to many Christians within the church who are not called to be full time evangelists. Finding these people and training them to preach in the open air has been one of the keys to spreading the work.
“The sketchboard illustration method of preaching is an ideal way of introducing people to speak in public places. Once they have mastered the art of communicating the Gospel on the street, they are equipped to minister in schools, prisons and so fulfil the OAC strapline of ‘Presenting Christ by all means everywhere’.”
For more information, go to www.oacgb.org.uk
Where did all the men go?
http://www.chron.com
Does the church discriminate against men?
For years, the familiar and partly justified criticism of the lack of women in church leadership positions has dominated attention. Now comes the opposite slant: men are not welcome in church any longer.
In an article written for Rick Warren's Ministry Toolbox, David Murrow, author of Why Men Hate Going To Church, states:
"Many common worship practices are subtly tilted toward the feminine heart. Without even realizing it, we've created the perfect environment for sensitive women and soft-hearted men to meet with Jesus. But this worship climate tends to alienate masculine men".
Murrow cites the lyrics to a popular worship chorus to illustrate his point:
Hold me close, let your love surround me.
Bring me near, draw me to your side.
I'm desparate for you, I'm lost without you.
Let my words be few.
Jesus, I am so in love with you.
This is, according to Murrow, an example of the feminization of Christian worship. Lest this be viewed and disposed of as male bias, Camerin Courtney in Christianity Today made the following observation:
"Dear guys: First of all, let me start by saying I get it. I know it's no picnic being you in a pew these days. Books such as Wild at Heart, Why Men Hate Going to Church, and No More Christian Nice Guy have raised our awareness to how feminized many American churches have become. Too much touchy-feely, felt-needs emotionalism and not enough iron sharpening iron. Too much meek and mild Jesus, not enough miracle worker and champion for the poor. Too much kum-ba-yah, not enough commitment".
This is more than a mere discussion point. According to the statistics cited by Murrow, male involvement now dwindles in American Christianity:
"This is a major reason 61 percent of the adult worshippers in our churches are female. Why some 70 percent of the volunteers and midweek participants are women. Why up to 90 percent of the boys who are raised in church will abandon it by their 20th birthday, many never to return".
Such numbers give everyone pause and cause for concern. Christians believe that they should marry in the faith. How is this possible if there is an ever-growing shortage of men?
Those of us raised in the church are disinclined to notice this so-called feminization of worship. Yet, for those who were not raised in church and for those men who are outside the faith, it is not so easy to ignore. Could it be that modern worship is becoming a turn-off to men?
Contrast this cooling of male involvement in Christianity with the rising devotion of men within Islam. More than once I've watched in admiration as a Muslim man knelt between airplane seats and prayed at the allotted time. "That," I think, "takes a real man." Perhaps, there is a lesson to be learned here for Christians: men are more into "doing" than "feeling" religion.
Christianity needs a resurgence of masculinity. We need men who, like the apostles, pioneers of faith, and missionaries take tremendous steps of faith and journey boldly forward. Families need men who are led of God and in turn, lead their families - not with coercion, but by example.
For this to happen, churches should consider becoming a more "guy-friendly" place. Encourage accomplishment and achievement. Invite tasks and challenges. All of these appeal to men. And maybe a song like "Onward, Christian Soldiers" could be sung occasionally.
Chuck Colson: Muslims are 'Better Theologians' than American Christians
http://www.christianpost.com/article/20080216/31212.htm
Chuck Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship, says radical Muslims would make better theologians than most Christians in America.
In his new book, The Faith, the prominent evangelical observes that radical Islamists have a better understanding of the Muslim faith than most Christians in America have of Christianity.
A study by Barna Group shows that 60 percent of Americans fail to name five of the Ten Commandments, cites Colson in his book.
His own interaction with those he deemed as mature Christians also confirmed that many believers are not sure what the biblical core beliefs are.
"One of the problems in the churches today is that we don't know what we believe and why we believe it and why it matters," said Colson in a statement for his book. "The result of that is the culture defines us. We are put in a stereotypical pot by the media and, of course, mischaracterized totally by the aggressive atheists who are publishing their books."
Ignorance of biblical knowledge can lead to a crippled worldview, according to Colson in his book, that prevents Christians from defending their faith against cultural threats such as postmodernism and Islamo-fascism.
"The Christian West is under assault by the twin challenges of secularism and radical Islam," he writes in The Faith. "Only through Christianity, I believe, can Western Europe and America meet these desperate challenges."
In his book, Colson calls on churches to meet these challenges by returning to what he terms "radical Christianity" or orthodox Christianity. Basic truths as handed down from teachings of the early Apostles are discussed in the book, which is co-authored by Harold Fickett.
While skeptics may perceive a return to orthodoxy to be anti-progressive, Colson asserts that "progress does not always mean discovering something new."
"Sometimes it means rediscovering wisdom that is ancient and eternal," he writes.
According to the author, the book serves to provide new theological grounding for Christians and appeal to non-believers who are interested in the basic beliefs of Christianity.
Wake up call - Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons Fastest-Growing Churches in U.S.
http://www.christianpost.com/article/20080220/31266_Jehovah%5C%27s_Witnesses%2C_Mormons_Fastest-Growing_Churches_in_U.S..htm
Jehovah's Witnesses and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints reported the largest membership increases in a year, according to an annual yearbook of churches.
The two groups are largely considered to be cults by evangelical Christians but they are currently the fastest-growing church bodies in the United States and Canada, the National Council of Churches' 2008 Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches showed.
Although Jehovah's Witnesses currently rank 25th in size with over 1.06 million members, they reported a 2.25 percent increase in membership since the publication of the 2007 Yearbook. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – also known as Mormons – grew 1.56 percent and is the fourth largest church body.
Other bodies in the top 25 largest churches list that reported membership increases include The Catholic Church with a 0.87 percent increase; the Southern Baptist Convention with a 0.22 percent increase; the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church with a 0.21 percent rise; and the Assemblies of God with a 0.19 percent growth.
The greatest losses in membership were reported by The Episcopal Church, which dropped 4.15 percent in members, and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), which decreased by 2.36 percent. Both denominations are currently wracked by theological differences and the issue of homosexuality.
American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A. and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America also experienced large losses in membership, dropping 1.82 percent and 1.58 percent, respectively.
"Some will wish to argue that the slowing growth rate is evidence of an increasing secularization of American postmodern society," said the Rev. Dr. Eileen W. Lindner, editor of the Yearbook. "While such an explanation will satisfy some, caution in drawing such a conclusion is warranted."
Lindner also observed that churches are feeling the impact of the lifestyles of Millenials – people in their 20s and 30s – who attend church but resist becoming members.
The United Methodist Church saw a 0.99 percent decrease but the mainline group remains the third largest church body with nearly 8 million members.
Only three of the top 10 largest churches are mainline Protestant churches; three of the top 25 are Pentecostal churches; and six of the top 15 are historic African American churches.
Largest 25 Churches (ranked by membership)
1. The Catholic Church – 67,515,016
2. Southern Baptist Convention – 16,306,246
3. The United Methodist Church – 7,995,456
4. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – 5,779,316
5. The Church of God in Christ – 5,499,875
6. National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Inc. – 5,000,000
7. Evangelical Lutheran Church in America – 4,774,203
8. National Baptist Convention of America, Inc. – 3,500,000
9. Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) – 3,025,740
10. Assemblies of God – 2,836,174
11. African Methodist Episcopal Church – 2,500,000
12. National Missionary Baptist Convention of America – 2,500,000
13. Progressive National Baptist Convention, Inc. – 2,500,000
14. The Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod (LCMS) – 2,417,997
15. Episcopal Church – 2,154,572
16. Churches of Christ – 1,639,495
17. Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America – 1,500,000
18. Pentecostal Assemblies of the World, Inc. – 1,500,000
19. The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church – 1,443,405
20. American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A. – 1,371,278
21. United Church of Christ – 1,218,541
22. Baptist Bible Fellowship International – 1,200,000
23. Christian Churches and Churches of Christ – 1,071,616
24. The Orthodox Church in America – 1,064,000
25. Jehovah’s Witnesses – 1,069,530
Majority of Americans expect a recession: poll
http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSN1925158420080220
A majority of Americans expect a recession in the next year as the housing downturn deepens, inflation rises and credit conditions tighten, a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday showed.
The survey of 1,105 likely voters found that 54 percent thought a recession was looming. It was the first time since the recession question was added to the monthly poll in September that more than half predicted such a downturn.
As economic anxiety grows, nearly half of those surveyed said they planned to use their government rebate checks to pay down debt or pad savings. That would blunt the impact of the $168 billion stimulus plan that President George W. Bush signed into law last week in a bid to stave off a recession.
"There are hard times ahead. It's a good time to get out of debt if you've got a freebie coming," pollster John Zogby said.
When asked about how they would use rebate checks worth up to $600 per individual and $1,200 per couple, just 16 percent said they would spend it all, and a similar number intended to save it all. Nearly one in three said they would pay down debt, while 27 percent said they would spend some and save some.
The stimulus plan was aimed at bumping up consumer spending to bolster the economy. If households instead save the money or use it to reduce debt, the economic boost will be limited.
Economic worries have supplanted the Iraq War as the top issue in this year's U.S. presidential election as the housing market fallout takes its toll. Less than one in four gave the Bush administration high marks for U.S. economic policy.
Americans remained downbeat about housing, with three out of four expecting home prices to hold steady or fall in the next year. That was little changed from a month ago.
The poll, conducted January 13-16, found that less than 40 percent thought the U.S. economy would sidestep a recession. A month ago, 47.5 percent said they expected a recession, while 44.6 percent did not.
Those nearing retirement age were particularly concerned about recession. Among those ages 50 to 64, 61.2 percent expected a recession, making them the most pessimistic group.
That group includes a large portion of the Baby Boomer generation born in the nearly two decades after the Second World War. Much of their savings is tied up in home equity and stock-based retirement plans, both of which have been under pressure in the past year.
Zogby, who at age 59 counts himself among that group, said older boomers were increasingly putting off retirement or cutting back on spending for fear of outliving their savings, so worries of a recession hit them particularly hard.
"We began as an anxiety-ridden generation and that's how we're going to punch the time clock, too," he said.
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